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The civil and political human rights (CPR) require that the government should not interfere in people’s efforts to assure freedom of speech, freedom of press and other types of freedom. If the government prevents the freedom, it violates the CPR.
On the other hand, the economic, social and cultural human rights (ESCR) refer to the people’s right to a decent and dignified life. To be more precise, the ESCR means the right to decent housing, enough foods, sound clothing, effective public health, rewarding education, fair equality and other goods and services.
It is the government’s responsibility to provide these goods and services or, at least, create the conditions and environment which facilitate the access to these rights. If the government fails to provide these goods and services, it violates the ESCR.
In this paper, I will discuss to what extent China and the U.S. violate the ESCR. This paper has the following sections.
First, I will compare the economies of China and the U.S., because the level of the economy has significant bearing on the ESCR. In principle, the higher the level of the economy, the greater should be the protection of ESCR. So, a priori, one should expect that in the U.S. the ESCR should be better protected than in China.
Second, I will compare the degree of the violation of the ESCR in China and the U.S. The comparison will be done for each type of the ESCR.
Third, I will discuss the impact of the corruption culture on the SECR.
Fourth, I will sum up the findings of this paper.
U.S. Economy and Chinese Economy
Before anything else, the speed at which the Chinese economy has been catching up with the American economy is just amazing. The following table shows some of the amazing features of the Chinese economy.
It is amazing to see that Chinese nominal GDP is already 72.4% of the American GDP. In the past, no country had its economy passing beyond 40% of the US economy. The Japanese economy once represented 37% of the American economy. If we consider the purchasing power parity, the Chinese GDP (PPP) already went beyond the American economy.
Yet, China is still a poor country. Its nominal per capita GDP is still 16.8% of the American per capita GNP. Therefore, we would expect that the economic, social and cultural rights be better protected and promoted in the U.S. But, as we will see, that is not the case.
Table: Economy of China and the U.S. 2021
ESCR Violation in China and the U.S.
The following areas of ESCR violation are discussed: inequality of income, housing right, medicare right, education right and group right.
Inequality of Income
China: There is little data on the state of inequality in China. One of the indices of the shape of income distribution is the Gini coefficient which varies between zero to 100. The higher the Gini coefficient, the more skewed is the income distribution in favour of the rich. In recent years, the Gini coefficient was 47 in China as against 49 in the U.S.
The Gini coefficient is supposed to decline as the per capita GDP increases. As we saw in the table above, the Chinese per capita GDP is mere 16.8% of the American per capita GDP. Yet, the American income distribution is abnormally unequal in favour of the rich. Here are some of the data which attest to this reality.
70% of households has had zero net asset increase in the period 1989-2019
The top 1% of households gets 32% of household assets
40 million households find themselves in poverty representing 12% of the total number of households
New York Times (2019.09.10) reported that the rich lived longer than the poor
The chief executive of the largest MNE gets hourly income which is the annual income of the average worker
Ten CEO of S&P 500 Index Companies earn 1,000 times the income of ordinary worker
The US Congress refused for decades to increase the minimum wage of $7.25
Housing Right
China: The Chinese housing system is based on the government’s land ownership and privatization of construction, distribution and management.
In the 1980s, 90% of the housing stock was rental and the rent was 1% to 3% of tenant’s income. However, in the period 1996-1998, 60% of the housing stock was sold to individuals. In 2020, 95% of the housing stock was owner-occupied.
The notion of home ownership is unique. The land belongs to the state so that the home owner is a tenant to be exact. The owner buys the occupation-right for 70 years without paying tax except once at the time of the contract. This is intended to prevent real estate speculation. Lately, there was a scandal of the Construction Company, Evergrande’s real estate speculation. But this was for the non-residential properties.
The Chinese housing system allows the citizens to spend a lifetime rental dwelling with relative security and safety with little fear of eviction.
In China, there are homeless people, but they are the victims of natural disasters. They are not homeless due to the shortage of dwellings or housing discrimination or excessive rent burden.
US: In the U.S., the production, distribution and management of housing is determined by the free market relying on the “invisible hands” (the price mechanism). However, the invisible hands become visible (real estate speculation and corruption of the real estate market) and distorts the housing market.
The textbook of microeconomics says that in order for the invisible hands (the price mechanism) to work, there should be no monopoly, no oligopoly; both the consumer and the supplier of housing should have complete market information, the houses should be geographically mobile. We know that such market does not exist.
The worst condition which prevents the housing market from doing its job is the distorted income distribution in favour of the rich. As we saw above, the American income distribution is the most distorted among the developed countries.
It is not surprising that the home ownership in the country of Uncle Sam dropped from 70% in 2004 to 60% in 2016. But, in 2022, it rose to 64%.
The home ownership is the central component of the “American Dream.” It is now threatened.
No less than one third of Americans live in rental dwelling. The problem is the fact that the great number of tenants has to allocate more that 30% of their income. If the rental burden exceeds 30% of income, the tenant has to sacrifice other expenses, especially, those for children education and health care.
In 2022, 40% of American tenants pay more than 35% of household income.
In the United States, one of the ugly phenomena is the increasing number of the homeless. They occupy a whole block of cities and even threaten the safety and hygiene of the city population.
In the U.S., in 2019 no less than 568,000 people were the homeless. In Los Angeles alone, there were 41,290 homeless people in 2019. In New York City, in 2019, there were 48,690 homeless people.
Medicare Right
China: In the public health programs, there is the basic medical insurance and supplementary medical aid for the poor.
There are two Basic Medical Insurance systems: the employee basic medical insurance (EBMI) and residential basic medical insurance (RBMI).
In China, 95% of Chinese has medical insurance. The rate of reimbursement is 70% to 80%. As for the medical aid, since 2018, 480,000,000 low income people benefitted from it.
US: The U.S., the richest country in the world has one of the most complex piecemeal and the most expensive health insurance system in the world. In 2019, 56% of American population had private insurance, of which 50% was employer initiated insurance, the remaining 6% being non-group insurance.
The government-run insurance programs comprise the Medicare and the Medicaid. The Medicare is for the old-aged people of 65 plus and some young people. No more than 14% of Americans benefit from it. On the other hand, 20% of Americans benefit from the Medicaid program. This program is for low income people. In addition, there is the military medical insurance.
The American health system has two basic problems.
First, almost 10 % of Americans have no medical insurance. It is just incredible to see that the wealthiest country in the whole cannot provide minimum medical insurance to all citizens.
Second, it is too expensive. The average annual medical expenditure of Americas is as much as USD 12,000. As long as more than half of the entire population have to rely on private insurance companies for medical service, the cost of medical service is bound to rise.
According to the LA Times (2019.01.23), about 65,000,000, representing 19.0% of American population cannot have medical treatment due to cost. And, 15,000,000 are unable to pay prescribed drugs.
Education Right
China: In China, the citizens have access to free public education including post-secondary education. Nonetheless, at the college level, students are expected to pay $400 to $2,200 a year. At private colleges, students pay up to % 9,000. It is estimated that the cost which the undergrad students pay is 2% of what undergrad students pay in the U.S.
US: The American education system is perhaps the most sophisticated system in the world. It is also the most expensive system in the world. This is translated by students’ debts. To illustrate this point, it is known that in 2019 students’ debts were as much as USD 1.5 trillion, which was the South Korean GDP. Moreover, as many as 18% of the total number of 2-year college students are homeless students.
It is true that the American education system produces many of the best brains in the world. But, it produces also the inevitable consequences of alienating the less educated and increasing the risk of violating the human rights of the weak.
I think that it is important that graduates of the ivy league universities and the big businesses leaders should be aware of the fact that they are there at the top of the social hierarchy due partly to the public goods (social and industrial infrastructure facilities, national defence, security, diplomacy, public education and so many other public goods) produced by the whole of the population including the poor, the weak, and the less talented.
They should not think that they are at the top of the society due to their competence alone. They should not ignore their obligation toward the poor, the weak and the less talented.
I am asking: “Does the CEO of a large corporation have the right to earn in one hour what the average worker earns in one year?”
Minority Group Rights
China: In China, 90% of the population is represented by the Han Chinese. There are 58 minority racial groups. There are no reported cases of the violation of group rights.
However, in the region of Guangzhou, the place of the concentration of African population, in some restaurants, one reads “The Africans are not allowed to restaurants.” This is clearly a violation of the Africans’ rights to choose the place to eat.
The U.S.: In the U.S. we see the wide spread phenomena of group discrimination leading to the negation of the access to the right of decent and dignified life. We see bellow some cases of the violation of group rights.
Afro-American are easy victims of judicial and penal system discrimination. They are 5.9 times more likely to be incarcerated. As for the religious discrimination, no less than 82% of Muslim Americans admit to have had experience of religious discrimination.
The results of the Pew Research Center Survey 2019 “Race in America” are interesting:
46% says that the government has no done enough for racial discrimination
58% says that the situation is getting worse
76% of Afro-American and Asians had racial discrimination experience
58% of Latino had the same experience
Here is the proportion of those who said that it was Donald Trump who made the situation worse: Afro-American, 73%; Latino 69%; Asians, 65%
The women are the very vulnerable victims of discrimination. In fact, the US does not seem to have a sincere wish to prevent discrimination against women; the US has not signed the international convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against women.
Here is some of information on the seriousness of discrimination against women.
According to the Website of the Everytown Research Report (2019.10.17), the US is the most dangerous place for women in the world.
In 2015, 92% of women killed with guns in high income countries took place in the US
In the US, women are 21 times more likely to be killed by guns than in peer countries
50% o women killed by guns is by present or former intimate partners
Every day, 50 women are killed by intimate partners
4,500,000 women are threatened by guns
A CNN Report says that 70% of women have had experience of sexual violence in life
The Jama International Medicine reports that 3,000,000 women aged 18-44 were raped at the first time they had sexual relation
UN Women Report (2019.11.24) says that 24% of female undergrad of universities are sexually assaulted
In the U.S., the worst kind of racial discrimination is the hate discrimination.
The US Today (2019.06.27) reports that at the college campus, 122 extreme racial propaganda were published in 32 states
In 2019, in El Passo, 22 people were killed by white supremacists
On 2019.12.17, the Mississippi prosecutor has excluded Afro-Americans from trials since he took office.
According to the FBI 2019 Report, among 1,617 victims of antireligious hate, 56.9% was against Jews and 14.6%, against Muslims
FBI Data (2019.11.11) show that, in 2018, of 7,036 hate crimes, 57.5% was against race/ethnicity/ancestor biased; 42.1% .
The Guardian Website (2019.08.04) reported that in Walmart Supermarket in a Texas Border city, a 21-year-old boy, Patrick Crucius, drove 650 miles to kill 22 people for the reason for their being Hispanic.
According to CNN Report (2019.12.2, 14-year girl was walking to Indian Hill High Junior School, when a vehicle drove on the sidewalk and ran over the girl
The discrimination against indigenous people is still there; 28% of them had had discrimination experience. The Republic Radio (2019.11.18) says that a considerable number of indigenous households have no plumbing facilities.
The job discrimination is also threatening Afro-Americans-Latino-Asians. They represent 36% of American population but they take up 58% of miscellaneous jobs and 70% of baggage porter jobs, bell hop jobs or concierge jobs.
In 2018, the income of Afro-Americans was 62% of the white’s income.
According to the Bureau of Statistics (2019. 11.), in 2018, women received 81% of male’s wage.
According to the Huffpost (2019.12.04), the US is the only country that does not guarantee paid time for new mom
According to the WBUR Report (2019.10.28) on the low-wage jobs, in the case of the white, only 20% had low wage job as against 46% for Latinos
The visible minorities are subject to racial insults.
At workplace, the Afro-Americans are often told to “go back to Africa.”
According to CNN Report (2019.08.28), at the Oklahoma TV Station, white co-anchor called the black anchor as “gorilla.”
Housing discrimination is an integral part of the malaise of the American society.
According to various data sources, 17% of Native Americans, 31% of Latinos, 25% of Asians and 45% of Afro-American have had housing discrimination experience. Not surprisingly, only 5 % the white has had the similar experiences.
The value of dwellings inhabited by the Afro-American worth $ 48,000 less compared to dwellings inhabited by the white
The Native Hawaiian represent 10% Hawaiian population, but, they represent 39% of homeless
Among the indigenous people 59 out of 1,000 have no plumbing
The school discrimination is another ugly side of the richest country in the world.
The white school board gets $ 13,908 per students as against $11,682 for the black school board
The number of enrolment is discriminatory. In the white school board, it is 1,500 as against 10,000 for the black school board.
Black students are 3 times most likely to be suspended compared to the white students. In the South, 100% of the suspended is the black children
Child abuse is perhaps the worst kind of human right violation.
Department of Health and Human Service (2019.01.28) reported that there were 647,000 victims of child abuse of which 18.3% was physical abuse and 6.6% was sexual abuse
In Indiana, in the period, 2016.07.01 – 2017.06.30, 65 children died due to abuse
The National Center for Education Statistics (2019.04) shows that, in 2017, 827,000 children aged, 12-18, were victims of child abuse of which 503,300 took place outside the school
The abuse of the elderly is also a part of human right abuse in the U.S.
According to the Elderly Feeding America (2019.09.19), 5,500,000 of persons aged of 65 plus did not have enough foods to eat.
In Albany, at the nursing home, the inhabitant has to pay daily as much as $400, even if they qualify for medicaid; it amounts to $146,000 a year.
Medical Exports Report (2019.06.14) reports that 16% of the elder is victim of mistreatment, financial exploitation, neglect, physical abuse, psychological abuse and sexual abuse.
In 2017, ne less than 8,500 elders killed themselves
The disabled are deprived of care which they are entitled to get.
The Center for American Progress Report (2019.07.26) said that 25% of the disable had no job
According to Chicago Tribune (2019.07.26), a disabled person has to wait for 7 years to get into home care
The LA Times (2019.04.01) shows that, due to government oversight, low rental housing has no facilities for wheelchair needed to go to bathroom and kitchen
The migrants are also mistreated due to the 2018 zero-tolerance set by Trump.
The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) shows that 5,400 children are separated from their parents at the Mexican border
As of 2019, 2,838 children lived in poor facilities
Corruption
The corruption of political leaders and military leaders is one of the most important factors of human right violation.
China: The corruption of political leaders and military leaders is one of the most difficult challenges to handle in China. More than millions persons have been punished and, in many cases, they have been executed. But, corruption is still a part of the Chinese society.
The U.S.: In the U.S., the corruption of the political leaders can be guessed in terms of political lobbying. It is said that a few tens of thousands of lobbying people are operating in Washington. Lobbying is, in fact, the bribery paid by individuals, businesses and other organizations to politicians in order to obtain privileges which may be legal but immoral.
The problem of the lobbying culture in the U.S. is the fact that those who are not rich enough to pay the bribes are penalized in the allocation of public goods, which ends up by violating the rights of the weak and the alienated.
In the U.S. the Congressional election cost $5.7 billion. The Republican Rick Scott spent $ 6.3 million. In 2018, the largest donor gave $436 million to the PAC (Political Action Committee). This shows to what extent the American politics is governed by money and why the poor and the weak have little voice in politics.
Conclusion
In this paper, I have tried to compare the state of ESCR violation in the two global super powers. I admit that it is not always easy to judge the gravity of the violation of these human rights, because the capacity of protecting them varies greatly in relation to the level of economic development and the distribution of the fruits of economic development.
For the developing countries, it can be difficult to provide decent housing, adequate public health, productive education and other needed public goods.
Therefore, the debate is concerned with the capacity and the willingness of developed countries to provide these public goods, which varies in regime type.
In the neo-liberal countries represented by the U.S., the possibility of violating the ESCR is high, because in this regime it is the responsibility of each individual to provide what is needed to have a decent and dignified life.
This regime does not recognize the reality in which the alienation of people is the result of job-killing technologies and irresponsible skewed income distribution in favour of the rich.
Most of the developed countries including Canada have liberal politico-economic regime along with welfare programs. In developed countries with the exception of the U.S., the negative impact of the liberal regime on the unequal income distribution is dealt with by welfare system in which the inequality of income distribution is corrected by income transfer program on the one hand, and on the other, the supply of free public goods such as old-age pension, low cost public health services and low cost education and low-cost housing.
In general, economic, social and cultural rights are better protected by socialist countries for the simple reason that the major part of housing, public health, education and other public goods are provided by the government free of charge. Of course this observation can be modified depending on the quality of public goods and of the leaders’ integrity, honesty and dedication to the people’s wellbeing.
But, it seems that the violation of economic, social and cultural rights (ESCR) is much worse in the country of Eagle than in the nation of Dragon.
Finally, I sincerely hope that the human right debate should put focus as much on the economic, social and cultural rights (ESCR) as on the civil and political rights (CPR), if not more. After all, if man dies because of poor housing condition, poor health and no job due to poor education, the freedom of speech means little.
*
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Dr. Joseph H. Chung is professor of economics at the Quebec University in Montreal (UQAM) and member of the Research Center on Integration and Globalization (CEIM) of UQAM.
He is Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG).
Annex
I have done my best to be objective and to compare as much as possible the state of human right violations of the two super powers which can ruin the humanity depending on the course of their mutual relations in years to come. It is understandable for China to wish to develop and make its people proud and happy.
The U.S. has saved the world from the evil of Nazism, Facism and Imperial Shintoism and international communism. It has ruled the world for almost a century and accumulated power, wealth and privileges.
Since the 1970 visit of Kissinger and the normalization of diplomatic relations with China in 1979, the U.S. has been the principal determinant of Chinese economic success and rising power.
Now China is catching up rapidly with the U.S. in terms of economic development. The Chinese nominal GDP is 72 % of the American GDP. The U.S. feels threatened by China even if China denied its intention of ruling the world. In fact, even if it wanted to, it will be almost impossible to do so partly due to its values.
Nevertheless, Washington regards China as enemy and deploys all means to contain China. One of the favoured weapons is the demonization of the nation-state through human rights violation.
Today, the dangers of military escalation are beyond description.
What is now happening in Ukraine has serious geopolitical implications. It could lead us into a World War III Scenario.
It is important that a peace process be initiated with a view to preventing escalation.
Global Research condemns Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
The history of this war must be understood.
The bombing and shelling led by Ukraine’s Armed Forces directed against the people of Donbass started eight years ago, resulting in the destruction of residential areas and more than 10,000 civilian casualties.
A bilateral Peace Agreement is required.
According to Ukrainian Government officials, a Chechen team led by Chechnya’s leader, an ardent supporter of Vladimir Putin, was about to assassinate Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky, but Russia’s Government passed along to Ukraine’s Government the information that this team were in Ukraine and were intending to assassinate him; and, so, that team were killed by Ukraine’s Government forces.
“Ramzan Kadyrov, the leader of Russia’s Chechnya region and an ally of Russian President Vladimir Putin, said on Saturday that Chechen fighters had been deployed to Ukraine and urged Ukrainians to overthrow their government.”
Ukrainian National Security and Defense Council chief Oleksiy Danilov announced during a briefing Tuesday that Ukrainian forces had foiled an assassination plot against President Volodymyr Zelensky, according to a Telegram post from Ukrainian authorities. …
According to the Telegram message, Danilov said that a unit of elite Chechen special forces, known as Kadyrovites, had been behind the plot and had subsequently been “eliminated.”
“We are well aware of the special operation that was to take place directly by the Kadyrovites to eliminate our president,” Danilov said, per the post.
Ukrainian authorities had been tipped off about the plot by members of Russia’s Federal Security Service who do not support the war, he added.
“A recent alleged assassination plot against Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky was foiled over the weekend and the Chechen servicemen sent from Russia were ‘destroyed,’ a Ukrainian security leader said.”
Danilov is quoted there as having asserted that he could reveal only “that we have received information from the FSB, who today do not want to take part in this bloody war.”
The Washington Post’s modifying the source Ukrainian news-account by referring to it as having been about an “alleged assassination plot” (i.e., expressing doubt regarding the truthfulness of what this Ukrainian official had said) was quite striking for a newspaper (such as the WP) that had previously accepted unquestioningly the statements that the Ukrainian Government has been making about the Russian Government ever since February 2014.
Spies in Russia’s infamous security apparatus were kept in the dark about President Putin’s plan to invade Ukraine, according to a whistleblower who described the war as a “total failure” that could be compared only to the collapse of Nazi Germany. … The report said the FSB was being blamed for the failure of the invasion but had been given no warning of it and was unprepared to deal with the effects of crippling sanctions.
There are two very different plausible ways to interpret (or explain) all of this. Neither way fits the standard press-accounts about Russia’s Government, and about Vladimir Putin in particular. (And that might be the reason why the WP was reluctant to believe this Ukrainian official’s statement there.)
One such possibility is that what has been quoted from the official is entirely true, and that Russia’s FSB (Federal Security Bureau), which is the successor to the Soviet Union’s KGB, was actually violating Putin’s command.
Consequently, if the news-accounts of this recent assassination-attempt against Zelensky are entirely true, then Putin would, on March 1st, have been actually defeating an FSB action that was in violation of his own command, and, if that is so, then it would have been followed immediately by Putin’s accusing of having committed treason, the FSB’s organization, the management who were above the assassination-attempt’s direct perpetrators, all the way up to the organization’s very top, Alexander Bortnikov, about whom Wikipedia says:
On 22 February 2022, in response to Russia recognising the independence of separatist regions in eastern Ukraine during the 2021–2022 Russo-Ukrainian crisis, US President Joe Biden announced he was imposing sanctions on several Russian individuals and banks, including Bortnikov and his son, Denis, who also serves as deputy president of VTB Bank.[9]
“Kremlin watchers say the president trusts information he receives from the security services more than any other source, and Alexander Bortnikov is seen as being part of the Putin inner sanctum.”
There has been no news-report that Putin has, in any way, demoted or otherwise acted against him (far less accuse him of treason) — nor against Ramzan Kadyrov.
So: how likely is it that this interpretation of the Ukrainian Government’s public statements about the assassination-attempt is correct, true?
The other (and, in my opinion, far likelier) interpretation is that Putin (and the FSB hierarchy) had saved Zelensky’s life, but had done it in a way that enables Zelensky’s Government to present the matter as having, instead, been a ‘Russian’ attempt to kill him, and therefore as Zelensky’s heroically leading Ukrainians against Russia, and against Putin’s invasion of Zelensky’s country.
This interpretation makes sense to me because the actual overwhelmingly top source of the assassination-danger to Zelensky has been — not only now, but ever since he became elected — Ukraine’s racist-fascist or nazi anti-Russian forces, which have been demanding that Ukraine invade Donbass, and which have supplied the troops to do it.
Here is how this danger, the real one, developed, even before Zelensky became President:
In the last few days, the Right Sector, under the leadership of Dmitry Yarosh, attempted to assassinate a political personality, as well as tried political storms. Specially in the Western Ukraine city of Mukachevo the situation was worse. The Right Sector continued on Sunday, 12, July 2015, several police cars were set on fire as they tried to murder the member of the Ukrainian Rada (Parliament) Mikhailo Lanyo. Three people were killed (two of them were members of Right Sector) and thirteen injured (four of them were members of Right Sector).
According to reports, barricades and checkpoints were erected by the “right sector” in several parts of the Ukraine and around Kiev. Around 100 of the right-wing battalions “Azov” and “Aidar” have surrounded the administration building of the Ukrainian Interior Ministry in the central Ukrainian city of Poltava.
Verkhovna Rada Deputy and leader of the “Ukrainian volunteer army” (UDA), formed on the basis of the banned-in-Russia “Right sector,” Dmitry Yarosh, said that the new President of Ukraine Volodymyr Zelensky “can lose life if you betray your country and those [of Yarosh’s forces who were] killed in the Donbass”. About this Jarosch said in an interview with “Obozrevatel”:
“Zelensky in his inaugural speech said that he was ready to lose ratings, popularity, position [by reaching a peaceful settlement with the breakaway Donbass]. No, he will lose his life — will be hanging on some tree on Khreshchatyk, if we betray Ukraine and those people [Yaroshe’s forces] who are in revolution, and the war dead [the Right Sector troops that had been killed fighting against Donbass].”
The leader of the nationalists said that he had several times tried to contact Zelensky, but wasn’t able to. Yarosh said that he is very willing to drive with the new President to the front, where, in the past five years, he’d told him about the fighting.
…
Tatiana Chornovil said that Zelensky is an agent of Yanukovych [the democratically elected President of Ukraine whom the Right Sector had led in overthrowing in February 2014], and called for a new Maidan [a new Presidential overthrow]. The same statement was made by Vice-speaker of the Verkhovna Rada, Paruby.
U.S. President Barack Obama (via his State Department official Victoria Nuland, and Ambassador to Ukraine Geoffrey Pyatt) relied chiefly upon Andrei Parubiy (“the Commandant of Maidan”) to be the CEO of the Ukrainian coup in February 2014, and upon Dmitriy Yarosh to be the coup’s COO — its Chief Operating Officer, which in this case was not so much an executive function as a military-organizing function.
Yarosh subsequently emerged to be the COO of Ukraine’s “ATO” or ‘Anti Terrorist Operation,’ the Government’s operation to eliminate the residents in the areas of Ukraine that had voted 90%+ for the man whom Obama’s coup overthrew: Ukraine’s democratically elected President Viktor Yanukovych. (If those residents were to vote in future Ukrainian national elections, then a Ukrainian leader like Yanukovych could easily be elected again; so, eliminating the residents in those areas was essential in order to make Obama’s coup stick.) Yarosh was not only the enforcer during the coup itself, but he became the enforcer in its essential follow-through, the “ATO.” (It’s known also as the war against Donbass, or Ukraine’s civil war, among other names or titles of reference.)
Yarosh, who has been the top enforcer during the Maidan demonstrations, and throughout the coup, and in its aftermath through to the ongoing Ukrainian war against the ‘Terrorists’ who reject the Obama-imposed regime, has long been considered one of the top racist-fascists, or ideological nazis, in Ukraine; but, until now, no one has presented any serious case that he’s also an anti-Semite (like the original nazi political party, Hitler’s Nazi Party, were); his public racism has instead always been solely against Russians — which type of racism has become far more acceptable to Europeans and to Americans than is anti-Semitism. …
However, I mentioned nothing regarding the possibility of Yarosh’s being not just anti-Russian but also possibly anti-Semitic, because I had found nothing to indicate that he is anti-Semitic, except an alleged transcribed conversation that he had had in Turgenef Restaurant in Kiev on 25 February 2014, which conversation, if it occurred, was held while the February 20-26 coup d’etat that overthrew Yanukovych was ending.
Yarosh’s highly trained and disciplined paramilitaries had dressed during the coup as if they were state security troops, and they fired down upon the Maidan demonstrators and police, in what’s called in the trade a “false flag” attack — one that’s designed to appear to have been perpetrated by the side you’re intending to defeat, so as to deceive the public about who had caused the violence and thus get your enemy to be blamed (by your own electorate) for the bloodshed, and thereby unite your country to fear your chosen (typically foreign) enemy and so to be willing to invade them. Adolf Hitler had most prominently pioneered the false-flag technique, both in his burning of the Reichstag, and in his setting up the incident that became his excuse to invade Poland in 1939. Dmitriy Yarosh is a proven master of this craft.
That conversation, as transcribed, was between Yarosh, who is the head of the Right Sector party, and his friend Oleg Tyagnibok, who, along with Andreiy Parubiy, headed the Social Nationalist Party of Ukraine, which had changed its name in 2004 to the “Freedom” or Svoboda Party, at the suggestion of the U.S. CIA, in order to make its members (the members of Ukraine’s leading nazi party) more acceptable to U.S. and European publics, which (because of WW II) don’t have a favorable opinion of its model: Adolf Hitler’s National Socialist Party of Germany. (However, both the Right Sector party and the Svoboda party are often quite blatant about their admiration of Adolf Hitler and of his Party.) In this alleged conversation, which occurred (if it did) two days prior to Parubiy becoming appointed as the coup-regime’s chief of State Security (the SBU) and Yarosh becoming Parubiy’s #2, Tyagnibok suggested to Yarosh that because EU officials “called me an anti-Semite and a Russophobe,” Yarosh would be a good person to enter the Presidential contest instead of Tyagnibok, but Yarosh said he didn’t want that, because he already had all the weapons and his real aim was to be in the position to control Ukraine backstage by virtue of the Right Sector’s military force that he had trained, organized, and controlled.
(The major sources of his organization’s funding are unknown, but he must have gotten lots of support from the CIA and associated sources, as well as from billionaires such as George Soros and Ihor Kolomoysky who were big backers of the coup.)
He said that his objective was that, “my guys have the SBU.” As things turned out afterward, this is precisely what he became, because Parubiy was quite happy to have his militarily more competent subordinate, Yarosh, actually run paramilitary matters: Yarosh had had decades of experience training and commanding paramilitaries.
As for Parubiy himself, wikipedia notes his key political importance to the Maidan and its aftermath: “He was coordinator of the volunteer security corps for the mainstream protesters.[17] He was then appointed Secretary of the National Security and Defence Council of Ukraine.[6]”
So, that is where the real threat to assassinate Zelensky actually comes from.
This is known to Zelensky. But still the question exists as to WHY Putin would want to protect Zelensky’s life. I think that there is a very reasonable explanation of that:
As everyone knows, Putin has said and repeated, many times, that his invasion of Ukraine is in order to re-establish Ukraine as being a neutral nation, not as being a potential launch-site for U.S. missiles less than 7-minute-flight-time from nuking Moscow. He doesn’t want U.S. missiles in Ukraine any more than America’s President JFK had wanted Soviet missiles in Cuba only 20-minute flight-time from nuking Washington. So, this is Putin’s way of stopping it from happening (given that both the U.S. and its NATO have refused even so much as to merely considerprohibiting Ukraine from joining NATO).
But, ever since Obama’s coup grabbing Ukraine in 2014 (in which Yarosh’s forces were used as the leaders], the propaganda against Russia, and against Russians, has been almost as intense in Ukraine, as the propaganda against Jews was in Nazi Germany, and has been very effective.
For example: During 2003-2009, only around 20% of Ukrainians wanted NATO membership, while around 55% opposed it.In 2010, Gallup found that whereas 17% of Ukrainians considered NATO to mean “protection of your country,” 40% said it’s “a threat to your country.” Ukrainians predominantly saw NATO as an enemy, not a friend. But after Obama’sFebruary 2014 Ukrainian coup, “Ukraine’s NATO membership would get 53.4% of the votes, one third of Ukrainians (33.6%) would oppose it.” That ceaseless and intense post-coup propaganda against Russia had a profound effect.
Putin therefore knows that he will have no other choice than to retain as much of Ukraine’s existing leadership as will be possible consistent with denazifying that country. Consequently, Zelensky himself would probably be the best person to lead such a restored Ukraine.
It would free Zelensky from what he knows to be the biggest threat against him — and from what had always been prohibiting him from complying with the Minsk II accords.
The nazis had always made clear that they’d kill him if he did any such thing. And this is the reason why Putin has protected Zelensky’s life. But, then, the question arises: Did Putin really allow some of his Government’s own forces to be sacrificed, killed, in order to protect Zelensky?
It would be a small price to pay, for the potential gains that are to be won. Similarly, the anti-nazi U.S. President FDR had sacrificed America’s naval forces at Pearl Harbor in order to be able to get America into WW II in time to become able to prevent Hitler from conquering, ultimately, the entire world. This is the way wars are. And the post-WW-II nazi America had started, even as early as 24 February 1990, to make clear to its vassal-nation leaders that though the Soviet Union and its communism and its Warsaw Pact would soon all end, the Cold War on America’s side would secretly continue until Russia itself becomes conquered. Putin knows this; he has mentioned it often.
Regarding the post-war Ukraine: The nazi forces in Ukraine come mainly from the country’s far northwest (around Lviv — the city to which America just recently relocated its Ukrainian Embassy), bordering and near to Poland; and, so, that area will probably become a new country, which will be firmly in America’s orbit (the long-term Obama win from all of this). However, as much of Ukraine as is reliably NOT nazi will probably be the country that Zelensky — or whomever is to lead the post-war Ukraine’s Government — will then be leading. Almost certainly, those borders, and those two new parts of the former Ukraine, will be central topics in the negotiations to establish a peaceful Ukraine — unless, of course, Russia loses this war, in which case the entire world will lose, and U.S.-led nazism (the post-WW-II form of nazism) will ultimately end up consuming everyone.
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Investigative historian Eric Zuesse’s next book (soon to be published) will be AMERICA’S EMPIRE OF EVIL: Hitler’s Posthumous Victory, and Why the Social Sciences Need to Change. It’s about how America took over the world after World War II in order to enslave it to U.S.-and-allied billionaires. Their cartels extract the world’s wealth by control of not only their ‘news’ media but the social ‘sciences’ — duping the public.
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This article first published in April 2012 focusses on the “Special Relationship” between the US and the USSR. It is of utmost relevance to unfolding events in Ukraine.
While the US and the Soviet Union were allies during WWII, Prof. Alex Wellerstein documents U.S. “war preparations” against the USSR which took place in August 1945 “before the war was officially over”.
Michel Chossudovsky, Global Research, March 13, 2022
Targeting the USSR in August 1945
by Prof. Alex Wellerstein
If the World War II alliance between the United States and the United Kingdom was the special relationship, what was the alliance between the United States and the Soviet Union? The especially problematic relationship? The relationship that could really have used to go to counseling? A relationship forged out of extreme crisis that later seemed like a sketchy thing? (Easily abbreviated as the sketchy relationship, of course.) My wife suggests perhaps calling it the shotgun marriage.
Maybe special fits the bill there too, in the sense of it being odd. Case in point: by August 30, 1945 — before World War II was officially over — some part of the U.S. military force (I’m not sure what branch; the Army Air Corps are a likely suspect) had already taken the time to draw up a list of good targets for atomic bombs in the USSR… and even overlaid a map of the Soviet Union with the ranges of nuclear-capable bombers, along with “first” and “second” priority targets marked on it.1
How many other war alliances end with one side explicitly plotting to nuke the heck out of the other ally? Probably not too many.
This amazing map comes from General Groves’ files, and was sent to him in September 1945 as part of a list of estimates for how many atomic bombs Curtis LeMay thought the US ought to have. I’ll talk about that another time, but here’s a hint: it was so many that even General Groves thought it was too many. Whoa.
A few things: the majority of these “dark” plots are B-29s (the same bombers that carried Fat Man and Little Boy), and they are going out of all kinds of “allied” bases (some currently in their possession, others labeled as “possible springboards”) around the USSR (Stavanger, Bremen, Foggia, Crete, Dhahran, Lahore, Okinawa, Shimushiru, Adak, and Nome). Which is an interesting way to quickly conceptualize the Cold War world from a military standpoint.
The very large, empty plots are for B-36s, which didn’t exist yet. They wouldn’t get fielded until 1949, but were already in the planning stages during the war. The actual B-36s as delivered had somewhat longer ranges (6,000 miles or so, total, if Wikipedia is to believed) than the ones estimated on here.
The target cities are a bit hard to make out (the next time I’m at NARA, I’ll try to get them to bring me the original map), but the “first priority” cities include Moscow, Sverdlovsk, Omsk, Novosibirsk, Stalinsk, Chelyabinsk, Magnitogorsk, Kazan, Molotov, and Gorki. Leningrad appears to be listed as a “second priority” target, which surprises me, but it might just be the microfilm being hard to read. All in all, it’s not the most interesting list of cities: they have literally just taken a list of the top cities in the USSR (based on population, industry, war relevance) and made those their atomic targets.
Stalin has a well-deserved reputation as a paranoid guy. But, as the old saying goes, just because you’re paranoid doesn’t mean they’re not after you.
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1. Citation: “A Strategic Chart of Certain Russian and Manchurian Urban Areas [Project No. 2532],” (30 August 1945), Correspondence (“Top Secret”) of the Manhattan Engineer District, 1942-1946, microfilm publication M1109 (Washington, D.C.: National Archives and Records Administration, 1980), Roll 1, Target 4, Folder 3, “Stockpile, Storage, and Military Characteristics.” The microfilm image I had of this came in two frames, a top and a bottom, and I pasted them together in Photoshop. This took a little bit of warping of the bottom image in odd ways (using Photoshop’s crazy “Puppet Warp” tool) because it didn’t quite line up with the top one due to folds in the paper and things like that. So there is a tiny bit of manipulation here, though none of it affects the content.
Restricted Data
The History of Nuclear Secrecy in the United States
By Alex Wellerstein
ISBN: 9780226020419
The first full history of US nuclear secrecy, from its origins in the late 1930s to our post–Cold War present.
The American atomic bomb was born in secrecy. From the moment scientists first conceived of its possibility to the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki and beyond, there were efforts to control the spread of nuclear information and the newly discovered scientific facts that made such powerful weapons possible. The totalizing scientific secrecy that the atomic bomb appeared to demand was new, unusual, and very nearly unprecedented. It was foreign to American science and American democracy—and potentially incompatible with both. From the beginning, this secrecy was controversial, and it was always contested. The atomic bomb was not merely the application of science to war, but the result of decades of investment in scientific education, infrastructure, and global collaboration. If secrecy became the norm, how would science survive?
Drawing on troves of declassified files, including records released by the government for the first time through the author’s efforts, Restricted Data traces the complex evolution of the US nuclear secrecy regime from the first whisper of the atomic bomb through the mounting tensions of the Cold War and into the early twenty-first century. A compelling history of powerful ideas at war, it tells a story that feels distinctly American: rich, sprawling, and built on the conflict between high-minded idealism and ugly, fearful power.
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History of Economic “Shock Treatment”. From The Structural Adjustment Programme (SAP) to “Global Adjustment”(GA)
The March 11, 2020 (simultaneous) closing down of the national economies of 190 member states of the UN is diabolical and unprecedented. Millions of people have lost their jobs, and their lifelong savings. In developing countries, poverty, famine and despair prevail. The closure of national economies has led to a spiralling global debt. Increasingly, national governments are controlled by the creditors, which are currently financing the social safety nets, corporate bailouts and handouts.
While this model of “global intervention” is unprecedented, it has certain features reminiscent of the country-level macro-economic reforms including the imposition of strong “economic medicine” by the IMF. To address this issue let us examine the history of so-called “economic shock treatment”(a term first used in the 1970s).
Flash back to Chile, September 11 1973.
As a visiting professor at the Catholic University of Chile, I lived through the military coup directed against the democratically elected government of Salvador Allende. It was a CIA ****operation led by Secretary of State Henry Kissinger coupled with devastating macro-economic reforms.
Image on the left: Kissinger together with General Augusto Pinochet (1970s)
In the month following the Coup d’Etat,the price of bread increased from 11 to 40 escudos overnight. This engineered collapse of both real wages and employment under the Pinochet dictatorship was conducive to a nationwide process of impoverishment. While food prices had skyrocketed, wages had been frozen to ensure “economic stability and stave off inflationary pressures.” From one day to the next, an entire country had been precipitated into abysmal poverty: in less than a year the price of bread in Chile increased thirty-six times and eighty-five percent of the Chilean population had been driven below the poverty line.” That was Chile’s 1973 “Reset”.
Two and a half years later in 1976, I returned to Latin America as a visiting professor at the National University of Cordoba in the northern industrial heartland of Argentina. My stay coincided with another military coup d’état in March 1976. Behind the massacres and human rights violations, “free market” macro-economic reforms had also been prescribed – this time under the supervision of Argentina’s New York creditors, including David Rockefeller who was a friend of The Junta’s Minister of Economy José Alfredo Martinez de Hoz.
Image: General President Jorge Videla, David Rockefeller and Argentina’s Economy Minister Martinez de Hoz, Buenos Aires (1970s)
Chile and Argentina were “dress rehearsals” for things to come: The imposition of the IMF-World Bank Structural Adjustment Programme (SAP) was imposed on more than 100 countries starting in the early 1980s. (See Michel Chossudovsky, The Globalization of Poverty and the New World Order, Global Research, 2003)
A notorious example of the “free market”: Peru in August 1990 was punished for not conforming to IMF diktats: the price of fuel was hiked up 31 times and the price of bread increased more than twelve times in a single day. These reforms – carried out in the name of “democracy” – were far more devastating than those applied in Chile and Argentina under the fist of military rule.
The March 2020 Lockdown
And now on March 11, 2020, we enter a new phase of macro-economic destabilization, which is more devastating and destructive than 40 years of “shock treatment” and austerity measures imposed by the IMF on behalf of dominant financial interests.
There is rupture, a historical break as well as continuity. It’s “Neoliberalism to the n-th Degree”
Image on the left: Kissinger with Argentina’s Dictator General Jorge Videla (1970s)
Closure of the Global Economy: Economic and Social Impacts at the Level of the Entire Planet
Compare what is happening to the Global Economy today with the country by country “negotiated” macro-economic measures imposed by creditors under the Structural Adjustment Program (SAP). The March 11, 2020 “Global Adjustment” was not negotiated with national governments. It was imposed by a “public / private partnership”, supported by media propaganda, and accepted, invariably by co-opted and corrupt politicians.
“Engineered” Social Inequality and Impoverishment. The Globalization of Poverty
Compare the March 11, 2020 “Global Adjustment” “guidelines” affecting the entire Planet to Chile September 11, 1973.
In a bitter irony, the same Big Money interests behind the 2020 “Global Adjustment” were actively involved in Chile (1973) and Argentina (1976). Remember “Operation Condor” and the “Dirty War” (Guerra Sucia).
There is continuity: The same powerful financial interests including the IMF and the World Bank bureaucracies in liaison with the Federal Reserve, Wall Street and the World Economic Forum (WEF), are currently involved in preparing and managing the “post-pandemic “New Normal” debt operations (on behalf of the creditors) under the Great Reset.
Henry Kissinger was involved in coordinating Chile’s 9/11, 1973 “Reset”.
The Thrust of “Depopulation” under the Great Reset?
Today, Henry Kissinger is a firm supporter alongside the Gates Foundation (which is also firmly committed to depopulation) of the Great Reset under the auspices of the World Economic Forum (WEF).
No need to negotiate with national governments or carry out “regime change”. The March 11, 2020 lockdown project constitutes a “Global Adjustment” which triggers bankruptcies, unemployment and privatization on a much larger scale affecting in one fell swoop the national economies of more than 150 countries.
And this whole process is presented to public opinion as a means to combating the “killer virus” which, according to the CDC and the WHO is similar to seasonal influenza. (Viruses A, B) (See Chapter III)
The Hegemonic Power Structure of Global Capitalism
Big Money including the billionaire foundations are the driving force. It’s a complex alliance of Wall Street and the Banking establishment, The Big Oil and Energy Conglomerates, the so-called “Defense Contractors”, Big Pharma, the Biotech Conglomerates, the Corporate Media, the Telecom, Communications and Digital Technology Giants, together with a network of think tanks, lobby groups, research labs, etc. The ownership of intellectual property also plays a central role.
This powerful digital-financial decision-making network also involves major creditor and banking institutions: The Federal Reserve, the European Central Bank (ECB), the IMF, the World Bank, the regional development banks, and the Basel based Bank for International Settlements (BIS), which plays a key strategic role.
By far the most powerful financial entities are the giant investment portfolio conglomerates including Black Rock, Vanguard, State Street and Fidelity. They control: “… a combined 20 trillion dollars in managed assets…. Conservatively counting, a 4 to 5-fold leverage power ( i.e. some US$ 80 to 100 trillion)” these powerful financial conglomerates have a leverage in excess of the the World’s GDP which is of the order of about 82 trillion dollars. (See analysis by Peter Koenig)
In turn, the upper echelons of the US State apparatus (and Washington’s Western Allies) are directly or indirectly involved, including the Pentagon, US Intelligence (and its research labs), the Health authorities, Homeland Security and the US State Department (including US embassies in over 150 countries).
The “Real Economy” and “Big Money”
Why are these Covid lockdown policies spearheading bankruptcy, poverty and unemployment?
Global capitalism is not monolithic. There is indeed “A Class Conflict” “between the super-rich and the vast majority of the World population.
But there is also intense rivalry within the capitalist system. Namely a conflict between “Big Money Capital” and what might be described as “Real Capitalism” which consists of corporations in different areas of productive activity at the national and regional levels. It also includes small and medium sized enterprises.
What is ongoing is a process of concentration of wealth (and control of advanced technologies) unprecedented in World history, whereby the financial establishment, (i.e. the multibillion dollar creditors) are slated to appropriate the real assets of both bankrupt companies as well as State assets.
The “Real Economy” constitutes “the economic landscape” of real economic activity: productive assets, agriculture, industry, services, economic and social infrastructure, investment, employment, etc. The real economy at the global and national levels is being targeted by the lockdown and closure of economic activity. The Global Money financial institutions are the “creditors” of the real economy.
Global Governance: Towards a Totalitarian State
The individuals and organizations involved in the October 18, 2019 201 Simulation are now involved in the actual management of the crisis once it went live on January 30th, 2020 under the WHO’s Public Health Emergency of International Concern (PHEIC), which in turn set the stage for the February 2020 financial crisis and the March Lockdown.
The lockdown and closure of national economies has triggered several waves of mass unemployment coupled with the engineered bankruptcy (applied Worldwide) of small and medium sized enterprises.
All of which is spearheaded by the installation of a global totalitarian State which is intent upon breaking all forms of protest and resistance.
The Covid vaccination program (including the embedded digital passport) is an integral part of a global totalitarian regime. (see Chapter VIII) The infamous ID2020? is “an electronic ID program that uses generalized vaccination as a platform for digital identity. The program harnesses existing birth registration and vaccination operations to provide newborns with a portable and persistent biometrically-linked digital identity.red zones, face masks, social distancing, lockdown” (Peter Koenig, March 12, 2020)
The World Economic Forum’s “Great Reset”
The same powerful creditors which triggered the Covid Global Debt Crisis are now establishing a “New Normal” which essentially consists in imposing what the World Economic Forum describes as “The Great Reset”
Using COVID-19 lockdowns and restrictions to push through this transformation, the Great Reset is being rolled out under the guise of a ‘Fourth Industrial Revolution’ in which older enterprises are to be driven to bankruptcy or absorbed into monopolies, effectively shutting down huge sections of the pre-COVID economy. Economies are being ‘restructured’ and many jobs will be carried out by AI-driven machines.
The jobless (and there will be many) would be placed on some kind of universal basic income and have their debts (indebtedness and bankruptcy on a massive scale is the deliberate result of lockdowns and restrictions) written off in return for handing their assets to the state or more precisely to the financial institutions helping to drive this Great Reset. The WEF says the public will ‘rent’ everything they require: stripping the right of ownership under the guise of ‘sustainable consumption’ and ‘saving the planet’. Of course, the tiny elite who rolled out this great reset will own everything. (Colin Todhunter,Dystopian Great Reset, November 9, 2020)
Push the Reset Button
The World Economic Forum’s Great Reset has been long in the making. “Push the reset button” with a view to saving the World Economy was announced by WEF Chairman Klaus Schwab in January 2014, six years prior to the onslaught of the Covid 19 pandemic.
“What we want to do in Davos this year [2014] is to Push the Reset Button, The World is much too much caught in a crisis mode.”
Two years later in a 2016 interview with the Swiss French language TV network (RTS), Klaus Schwab talked about implanting microchips in human bodies, which in essence is the basis of the “experimental” Covid mRNA vaccine. “What we see is a kind of fusion of the physical, digital and biological world” said Klaus Schwab.
Schwab explained that human beings will soon receive a chip which will be implanted in their bodies in order to merge with the digital World. (listen to interview in French, with subtitles)
RTS: “When will that happen?
KS: “Certainly in the next ten years.
“We could imagine that we will implant them in our brain or in our skin”.
“And then we can imagine that there is direct communication between the brain and the digital World”.
The RTS Interview with Klaus Schwab is featured in the first few minutes of the video below
June 2020. The WEF officially announces the Great Reset
“The pandemic represents a rare but narrow window of opportunity to reflect, reimagine, and reset our world to create a healthier, more equitable, and more prosperous future” — Klaus Schwab, WEF (June 2020)
What is envisaged under “the Great Reset” is a scenario whereby the global creditors will have appropriated by 2030 the World’s wealth, while impoverishing large sectors of the World Population.
In 2030 “You’ll own nothing, And you’ll be happy.” (see video below)
The United Nations: An Instrument of Global Governance on Behalf of an Unelected Public / Private Partnership
The UN system is also complicit. It has endorsed “global governance” and The Great Reset.
While UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres rightfully acknowledges that the pandemic is “more than a health crisis”, no meaningful analysis or debate under UN auspices as to the real causes of this crisis has been undertaken.
According to a September 2020 UN Report:
“Hundreds of thousands of lives have been lost.The lives of billions of people have been disrupted. In addition to the health impacts, COVID-19 has exposed and exacerbated deep inequalities … It has affected us as individuals, as families, communities and societies. It has had an impact on every generation, including on those not yet born. The crisis has highlighted fragilities within and among nations, as well as in our systems for mounting a coordinated global response to shared threats. (UN Report)
The far-reaching decisions which triggered social and economic destruction Worldwide are not mentioned. No debate in the UN Security Council. Consensus among all Five Permanent Members of the UNSC.]
V the Virus is casually held responsible for the process of economic destruction.
The World Economic Forum’s “public-private partnership” project entitled “Reimagine and Reset our World” has been endorsed by the United Nations.
Flash back to George Kennan and the Truman Doctrine in the late 1940s. Kennan believed that the UN provided a useful way to “connect power with morality,” using morality, as a means to rubber-stamp America’s “humanitarian wars”.
The Covid crisis and the lockdown measures are the culmination of a historical process.
The lockdown and closure of the global economy are “weapons of mass destruction” which in the real sense of the word “destroy people’s lives”.
What we are dealing with are extensive “crimes against humanity”.
President Joe Biden and the “Great Reset”
Joe Biden is a groomed politician, a trusted proxy, serving the interests of the financial establishment.
Let’s not forget that Joe Biden was a firm supporter of the Invasion of Iraq on the grounds that Saddam Hussein “had weapons of mass destruction”. “The American People were deceived into this war”, said Senator Dick Durbin. Do not let yourself be deceived again by Joe Biden.
Evolving acronyms. 9/11, GWOT, WMD and now COVID
Biden was rewarded for having supported the invasion of Iraq.
During the election campaign, Fox News described Biden as a “socialist” who threatens capitalism: “Joe Biden’s disturbing connection to the socialist ‘Great Reset’ movement”.
While this is absolute nonsense, many “progressives” and anti-war activists have endorsed Joe Biden without analyzing the broader consequences of a Biden presidency.
“The Great Reset” is socially divisive, it’s racist. It is a diabolical project of Global Capitalism. It constitutes a threat to the large majority of American workers as well as to small and medium sized enterprises. It also undermines several important sectors of the capitalist economy.
The Biden Presidency and the Lockdown
With regard to Covid, Biden is firmly committed to the “Second Wave”, i.e. maintaining the partial closing down of both the US economy and the global economy as a means to “combating the killer virus”.
Joe Biden will push for the adoption of the WEF’s “Great Reset” both nationally and internationally, with devastating economic and social consequences. The 2021 World Economic Forum (WEF) meetings scheduled for Summer 2021 in Singapore will focus on the implementation of the “Great Reset”.
President Biden is a firm supporter of the Corona lockdown.
He not only endorses the adoption of staunch Covid-19 lockdown policies, his administration is committed to the World Economic Forum’s “Great Reset” and the ‘vaccine passport” as an integral part of US foreign policy, to be implemented or more correctly “imposed” Worldwide.
In turn, the Biden-Harris administration will attempt to override all forms of popular resistance to the corona virus lockdown.
What is unfolding is a new and destructive phase of US imperialism. It’s a totalitarian project of economic and social engineering, which ultimately destroys people’s lives Worldwide. This “novel” neoliberal agenda using the corona lockdown as an instrument of social oppression has been endorsed by President Biden and the leadership of the Democratic Party.
The Biden White House is committed to the instatement of what David Rockefeller called “Global Governance” ****
It should be noted that the protest movement in the US, against the lockdown is weak. In fact there is no coherent grassroots national protest movement. Why? Because “progressive forces” including leftist intellectuals, NGO leaders, trade union and labor leaders –most of whom are aligned with the Democratic Party– have from the outset been supportive of the lockdown. And they are also supportive of Joe Biden.
In a bitter irony, antiwar activists as well as the critics of neoliberalism have endorsed Joe Biden.
Unless there is significant protest and organized resistance, nationally and internationally, the Great Reset will be embedded in both domestic and US foreign policy agendas of the Joe Biden-Kamala Harris administration.
It’s what you call Imperialism with a “Human Face”.
Where is the Protest Movement against this Unelected Corona “public-private partnership”?
The same philanthropic foundations (Rockefeller, Ford, Soros, et al) which are the unspoken architects of the “Great Reset” and “Global Governance” are also involved in (generously) financing Climate Change activism, the Extinction Rebellion, the World Social Forum, Black Lives Matters, LGBT, et al.
What this means is that the grassroots of these social movements are often misled and betrayed by their leaders who are routinely coopted by a handful of corporate foundations.
The World Social Forum (WSF), which is commemorating its 21st anniversary brings together committed anti-globalization activists from all over the World. But who controls the WSF? From the outset in January 2001, it was (initially) funded by the Ford Foundation.
It’s what you call “manufactured dissent” (far more insidious than Herman-Chomsky’s “manufactured consent”).
The objective of the financial elites “has been to fragment the people’s movement into a vast “do it yourself” mosaic. Activism tends to be piecemeal. There is no integrated anti-globalization anti-war movement.” (Michel Chossudovsky, Manufacturing Dissent, Global Research, 2010)
In the words of McGeorge Bundy, president of the Ford Foundation (1966-1979):
“Everything the [Ford] Foundation did could be regarded as “making the World safe for capitalism”, reducing social tensions by helping to comfort the afflicted, provide safety valves for the angry, and improve the functioning of government
The Protest movement against the Great Reset which constitutes a “Global Coup d’état” requires a process of Worldwide mobilization:
.”There can be no meaningful mass movement when dissent is generously funded by those same corporate interests [WEF, Gates, Ford, et al] which are the target of the protest movement”.
The United States and Russia are dangerously close to stumbling into a war over Ukraine that could go nuclear and kill hundreds of millions of people in a single day, a Nobel laureate who is one of the world’s leading experts on the dangers of nuclear weapons warned in Washington this week.
“It’s an incredibly dangerous situation. … If there’s a nuclear war tonight, that’s the Northern Hemisphere (of the entire world) gone, Dr. Helen Caldicott told a National Press Club Newsmakers news conference on Wednesday. She was speaking on the topic: “Ukraine: Is Nuclear Conflict Likely?”
Caldicott is an Australian physician who founded the International Physicians against Nuclear War, a group that under her leadership won the 1985 Nobel Peace Prize. She is the former president of the Nuclear Policy Research Institute based in Washington
The expansion of NATO to Russia’s borders is “very, very dangerous,” Caldicott said.
“There is no way a war between the United States and Russia could start and not go nuclear. … The United States and Russia have enormous stockpiles of these weapons. Together they have 94 percent of all the 16,300 nuclear weapons in the world.”
“We are in a very fallible, very dangerous situation operated by mere mortals,” she warned. “The nuclear weapons, are sitting there, thousands of them. They are ready to be used.”
Image: The crashed Malaysia Airlines passenger plane sits near the village of Rozsypne, Ukraine. (Screenshot)
Caldicott strongly criticized Obama administration policymakers for their actions in forward positioning U.S. and NATO military units in countries of Eastern Europe in response to Russian support of breakaway separatists in the provinces of eastern Ukraine. On –, the U.S. government announced the deployment of the Ironhorse Brigade, an elite armored cavalry unit of the U.S. Army to the former Soviet republics of Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia, along the historic invasion route from the West to St. Petersburg.
“Do they really want a nuclear war with Russia?” she asked “The only war that you can have with Russia is a nuclear war. … You don’t provoke paranoid countries armed with nuclear weapons.”
Caldicott said U.S. policymakers appeared oblivious to rising Russian fears as successive U.S. presidents and their administrations continued to break the security guarantees that President George Herbert walker Bush and his secretary of state James A. Baker had given to last Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev at the end of the Cold War.
“The United States has broken the guarantees it gave to Gorbachev before the breakup of the Soviet Union when it promised not to expand NATO to Russia’s borders,” Caldicott said.
“Imagine if the roles were reversed and if Russia (provoked a coup in Ottawa and) took over Canada. What would the U.S. reaction be?” Caldicott asked.
“(In 1962) we nearly had a nuclear world war over Cuba and Ukraine is a lot bigger (and more important) than Cuba,” she said.
Caldicott said she disagreed with the widespread criticism of Russian President Vladimir Putin over his support for Eastern Ukrainian separatists.
“Putin … I think he is being very restrained at the moment,” she said. “… Putin is trying to defend himself. He has the support of most Russians. The Russians are a proud and patriotic people.”
Image: Dr. Helen Caldicott (Wikipedia)
Caldicott also warned that another flare up of the civil war in Ukraine could threaten catastrophic meltdowns of the many nuclear power stations in the country, risking millions of lives.
“Ukraine has 15 large nuclear power plants,” she said.
“Any conventional weapon going into any one of them would set off a meltdown on the scale of Chernobyl in 1986. The most recent studies have shown that more than a million people have died from the after-effects of the Chernobyl melt-down.”
“Nuclear reactors are cancer factories and nuclear bomb factories; each reactor makes 500 pounds of plutonium a year (It’s made when a U238 (Uranium 238) atom captures a neutron) It takes only 10 pounds of plutonium to make a nuclear weapon.”
“Japan has got 40 tons of plutonium in its stockpiles. That means Japan could become a major nuclear military power in a matter of weeks if it wanted to,”
she added.
Even a limited nuclear exchange would have devastating economic and environmental consequences on the world, Caldicott warned.
“If a single thermonuclear weapon, or hydrogen bomb, is exploded into space it would knock out all electronic communications in at least six Westernized states for months,” she said.
But such a nuclear exchange, once initiated, would certainly get out of control rapidly, she added.
“The United States and Russia (between them) have 94 percent of the 16,400 nuclear weapons in the world,” she added.“Albert Einstein was right: The splitting of the atom changed everything, it changed all reality – except for the way men think,”
Caldicott said.
Caldicott was scathingly critical of the mainstream U.S. media for ignoring the real risks of a nuclear exchange.
“The mass media has a huge role to play. The media is being absolutely irresponsible,” she said. “Mr. Jefferson said a well-informed public was essential to the successful functioning of a democracy. But this democracy is thoroughly ill-informed.”
“We all practice psychic numbing. We are lemmings. We are all into manic denial,” she added.
“The real issue facing us is the continuation of life on the planet. There is a complete lack of knowledge among the general public and their leaders about this threat,” Caldicott added.
Caldicott expressed sympathy for U.S. President Barack Obama but said he had been “overwhelmed’ by the crises facing him. “We’ve got a good man, but the pressures have overwhelmed him. Obama has been overwhelmed by the pressures,” she said.
“I pity Obama, he’s got so much on his plate,” she said.
Caldicott noted that the world had just passed the centenary of the start of World War I, but the forces and problems that caused it remained the same today.
“You know how the First World War started 100 years ago: One person shot an archduke. The pride of the leaders and generals of the great nations did the rest: They went to war,” she said. “Human fallibility was a major cause then. It is just as common today. All kinds of things can cause very dangerous (developments) in the world.”
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“We have found it almost impossible to imagine, 30 years after the end of the Cold War, that there could be a nuclear war between the United States and Russia, but the crisis in Ukraine is putting exactly that possibility on the table again.”
– Dr. Ira Helfand, former president of International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War [1]
The nuclear gun will soon be taking a shot at a mostly indifferent public. In this author’s opinion, if the hammer is about to fall, the trigger was most likely pulled in Ukraine.
During the now two week military incursion by the Russian armed forces, the Chernobyl nuclear power plant experienced power cuts to its critical cooling system which keeps its radioactive fuel rods from overheating. Electric generators are the system’s back-up when such an emergency takes place, however it is estimated the diesel which fuels the generators will only last about 48 hours. [2]
If the fuel isn’t replaced soon, the water keeping the rods cool will start to evaporate. And once they are exposed to the atmosphere, the country’ in the north end of Ukraine and in Belarus will have a new kind of villain entering the picture: radioactive releases. [3]
Meanwhile, the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant at which Russian forces had supposedly fired missiles, allegedly caused a fire in the five-story training facility building. The fire has since reportedly been put out. According to Ukraine’s foreign minister Dmytro Kuleba, blowing up Zaporizhzhia, would result in a disaster “10 times larger” than that of Chernobyl in 1986. [4]
And even beyond the prospect of an accidental collapse, or meltdown of one or more of it’s 15 nuclear reactors, there is the threat posed by the reappearance again of a nuclear war. As of the 27th of February in relation to “aggressive statements” and tough financial sanctions from leading NATO powers, President Putin put Russia’s nuclear deterrent forces on high alert, and ordered those forces be put in a “special regime of combat duty.” This suggests Russia could actually use them! [5]
On this week’s Global Research News Hour, we provide part two of a series on Russian’s actions in Ukraine with a special look at the nuclear question with two major anti-nuclear observers.
Our first guest is Libbe HaLevy, the host and producer of the weekly show Nuclear Hotseat. She talks about the above mentioned threats within Ukraine. She also deals briefly with the Fukushima Daiichi collapses from 11 years ago, and talks a little about her experience living within a mile of the Three Mile Island Nuclear Reactor when it experienced a partial meltdown 43 years ago this month, and how that experience focused her attention on fighting against atomic power. She particularly highlights her brand new website – nuclearhotseat.com – which highlights MAJOR upgrades as of March 17th!
Our second guest is the legendary anti-nuclear activist Dr. Helen Caldicott. For nearly half an hour she talks briefly about potential Ukrainian reactors being destroyed, but largely about nuclear weapons entering the war time-fray, and the risk of escalation to a ballistic exchange, deliberate or accidental, between Russia and the United States. And she adds her most recent information on the disaster, disease, and death stemming from the ongoing Fukushima catastrophe.
Transcript – Interview with Dr. Helen Caldicott, March 8 2022
Part One
Global Research: Thank you for joining us, Dr. Caldicott. I’m delighted to have your back in the show again.
Helen Caldicott: Thank you, Michael.
GR: Well, let’s start with Ukraine. Before we talk about the threat of nuclear attacks on rival factions, could we focus on the threat of radiation just within Ukraine. Russia has invaded the country, it seems, and two nuclear facilities have been seized by Russian forces: the decommissioned Chernobyl in the north, the facility that exploded back in 1986 and contaminated the region, and the Zaporizhzhia facility in the south, which is still functioning, and it’s also the biggest nuclear plant not only in Ukraine but also all of Europe . So what kinds of dangers stand out for you about how this war could generate or exacerbate the dangers of a nuclear catastrophe, adding to the catastrophe posed by Chernobyl back nearly 36 years ago?
HC: Well, it’s very, very serious. No one would ever have thought of soldiers taking over a nuclear power plant, but that’s what’s happened. The Russians have taken over Chernobyl, and although it’s obviously not operating, it needs operators to keep it stable, and that’s very serious. And then, they have taken over the Zaporizhzhia power plant which contains six, six nuclear reactors. In fact, there are fifteen nuclear reactors in the Ukraine.
If the Second World War had been fought today with nuclear power plants all over Europe, Europe would be uninhabitable for the rest of time. So nuclear power plants do not go well with war. You know, one missile hitting a nuclear power plant could cause a meltdown and contaminate a huge area. In fact, 14% of the European land mass currently is still radioactive from the Chernobyl meltdown.
I don’t buy European food because I don’t know what food has concentrated the isotopes, particularly Turkish food. They got a huge fallout from Chernobyl, and the Turks were so angry with the Russians, they picked all the radioactive tea and sent it to Moscow.
So we’re sitting on the verge of two catastrophes, two nuclear catastrophes. One, a meltdown or shocking accident at a nuclear power plant, and there are more reactors as I see it in the Ukraine, or, and or, and or, a nuclear war. Now it’s always been my horror to imagine that Russia and America would confront each other, because both have thousands of nuclear weapons aimed at each other. A hundred, a thousand nuclear weapons dropping on a hundred cities would induce nuclear winter and cause a short Ice Age and the end of most life on earth.
The Ice Age would last about ten years, and that would happen because cities burn huge clouds of toxic, black, oily, carbonated, radioactive smoke launched into the stratosphere and block out the sun for up to ten years. And, you know, that’s it. Very, very cold, and we’d die.
But the problem is that these weapons are on hair-trigger alert. In America, there are 450 nuclear missile silos in the Midwest armed or operated by two young men, each man has a pistol, one to shoot the other if one shows signs of deviant behaviour. They operate with floppy disks and telephones that sometimes don’t work, they take drugs, they go to sleep on duty. If they get a message that they’re under attack, they have three minutes to decide whether or not to launch. And it’s a short text they get to tell them to launch.
We’ve been close to nuclear war on numerous occasions. Very few of these occasions are reported to the press or in the press to the public, and we are standing on the edge of catastrophe. I don’t like to think about it too much, but in the middle of the night I sometimes wake up and have this intense fear in the pit of my stomach.
And for the Russians to invade Ukraine, like they have, and for the Americans to react the way they have, the Americans are so God damn self, I mean, they think they’re God’s gift to the world. The Americans have 800 bases in 80 countries, military bases, they’re metastasize like a cancer all over the world, and Putin, when he was in a more sane mode, before he, I think, lost the plot, asked America not to include the Ukraine in NATO, and to remove the weapons, the missiles that are placed, I think, they…
Since the end of the Cold War, when James Baker, Secretary of State, promised Gorbachev that NATO would not enlarge into these newly liberated countries, NATO has enlarged from five to twenty-eight countries. And, in those countries, they’re all armed with American missiles. And he feels very threatened, and I don’t blame him. I mean, imagine if the Warsaw Pact came to Canada, your country, and put missiles all along the border. Well America would probably blow up the world like it nearly did in the Cuban Missile Crisis.
In fact, I got to know Robin McNamara, Secretary of Defense with Kennedy, quite well. And he and I became quite close friends, and he said, Helen, he said, you don’t know how close we came and the Cuban Missile Crisis to a nuclear war. Three minutes. Three minutes. So we’re standing on the edge of an nuclear precipice. Most humans don’t understand this, the media doesn’t attend to this, it attends to absolute rubbish most of the time to keep people enjoying things, but not to teach them what’s actually happening.
In the 80s, we did have a huge movement to freeze nuclear weapons, and it ended up, in 1988, at Reykjavik, where Reagan and Gorbachev met, and over a weekend too mere mortals, men, almost agreed to abolish nuclear weapons. My God. And that was the culmination of our work when we educated the doctors and others about the medical effects of nuclear war. Eighty percent of Americans supported what we were doing. We had a million people in Central Park protesting the nuclear arms race. I met with Reagan in the White House for an hour and a quarter holding his hand, trying to teach him about nuclear war, after which he said nuclear war must never be fought and can never be won.
And then he met with Gorbachev, but unfortunately Edmund Teller had got to him, that monster who created the hydrogen bomb, and he thought that a missile defense was the answer. Like, that Russian missiles can come in and bounce off. Gorbachov knew it would never work. And he should have said to Reagan look, you now have your missile defense but let’s abolish nuclear weapons. But the opportunity was lost. Therefore, we may destroy evolution.
GR: I think you should repeat the fact that there have been instances not of actual attacks but of near nuclear war occurring by accident. I remember the story of a Russian officer named Stanislav Petrov, that the Russians saved the world by simply not reporting what was believed to be five ballistic missiles were headed for the Soviet Union, and the launch was flashed on the screen, I believe this was September of 1983. I mean, if he had followed protocol and reported it to a senior Kremlin official, the world would likely be in nuclear war and we would all be extinct by now. But he didn’t.
HC: We’ve come so close on numerous occasions…a flight of geese nearly set off the mechanism in America to launch nuclear weapons. A rising moon. America launched a weather satellite in Norway, I think, some time ago…they informed the Kremlin that they were going to do it, but the Kremlin lost the data. And when the Russians saw it, they thought America launched the first strike against Moscow, and luckily, they realized it was, you know, not a first strike. But, by God. I don’t…I really… Michael in all conscience I don’t know how we’re still here.
GR: Oh my. Yeah, I mean…
HC: And the worst thing is I mean, you never could imagine Russia and America going to war against each other because they have all these bloody missiles all ready to go and their submarines and their ships and on land and one tiny mistake or era as we just talked about could launch the whole thing.
I don’t trust Biden is far as I could kick him. I think he’s a weak man. He’s employed neocons who helped to destabilize Ukraine the Maidan Square massacre, all of these neocons want to destroy Russia and that’s what they’re on their way to doing or trying to do. Biden I don’t think you, there’s a very rude expression in Australia, I won’t use it to describe someone who doesn’t really know what he’s doing. We’re in the hands of men, and one woman, Victoria Nuland, who, you know, it’s might or right. And that’s what’s always started wars.
Men have always fought and killed. Why? Why kill? I mean I’m a doctor. I spent my life trying to save lives and how precious life is, how precious. And then there’s the military industrial complex in America, you know, over half the discretionary budget in America – textuals – goes to build more weapons. These people are evil. It’s not the Department of Defense. It’s the department of murder. Because they murder. Since 9/11 they’ve murdered over one million people. And made a lot of profits. And the war now in Ukraine is causing the stock market in military equipment to go through the roof. That says it all. How dare they! How dare they!
GR: I don’t know if you can address this point, and forgive me if this it’s a question that you’re not capable of answering, but it seems as if there is a difference between the way things work in reality with the operating officers and the soldiers on the ground and such, and the way things happened at official levels with Biden and all these people making grand decisions. For example, the Petrov example I mentioned earlier. I was just wondering if in your talks and in your explorations of both levels if you have insight into how these differences matter. Does anything spring to mind about where these differences can matter on the grand stage?
HC: What differences?
GR: Well in terms of a, I mean on the one hand you have the presidents making a grand decision or something, and then maybe on the lower level, like a mid-level officer or something they might hold off or something like that?
HC: Well look, it’s huge, it’s massive, to recount and document all the near-misses we’ve had of human behaviour. You see, I think the US has pushed Putin to the point where he’s lost the plot. He’s not behaving in a rational manner. Some of my colleagues think that he’s got a round face, that he might be on steroids, which helps to build body function, he likes that, or else he’s sick. And steroids can produce psychosis.
So, you know, to arm the world like a ticking time bomb ready to blow up any minute, not ever imagining who will be in charge of these things, and how they could develop a brain tumour or psychosis or get sick or do something, you know, have a fight with their wife or get the flu or, I mean human beings are totally fallible and even, when you look at yourself, you’re fallible. You do some crazy things sometimes. Each of us do.
But to arm and to have these things on hair trigger alert with a 3-minute decision time it’s absolutely insane. It’s insane. And then they say, oh, it’s the Department of Defense and America is free. They’re not free. All lies. All lies. What we should be doing is making friends with all the countries in the world. China. You know, look what China has done in a few years from people starving, millions in poverty, to one of the richest countries in the world. It’s brilliant what they’ve done! They’re not an enemy! Why do countries think that they have to dominate each other? This is very testosterone oriented. I’m very sick of testosterone, Michael.
Intermission
Part 2
GR: About forty years ago you raised the medical dimensions of a nuclear holocaust and that scared a hell of a lot of people into action, myself included. And now it seems as if those fears have gone away.
HC: I think that, I think that the television… What do you call your Commonwealth broadcasting commission? Canadian Broadcasting Commission? They should replay If You Love This Planet. It’s only half an hour long. It looks old because the haircuts are different, but it’s totally relevant now, and it reduces people almost to tears, and they suddenly get it in their gut what it would mean to have a nuclear war, and therefore I strongly prescribe that the Canadian Broadcasting Commission replay If You Love This Planet in a good time and advertise it, broadcast.
GR: Okay, I’ll put in the request for sure. I wonder, can we maybe move back, because… Like I say, this broadcast is going off on the eleventh anniversary of the Fukishima Daiichi disaster, as I mentioned at the beginning. Do you have an update for us?
HC: Yes, I do. Fukushima, they will never, ever decommission those melted down reactors. The radiation levels that workers are exposed to are horrendous. They can’t get near the melted fuel. They’re trying to remove huge pipes in reactor one where there was a hydrogen explosion that vented radioactive gases at the time of the accident. And those pipes are so radioactive that they’re giving off 16 rems per hour, and the workers are only allowed to get 5 rems per year. So they’re lethal doses of radiation.
The Yakuza, which is the mafia in Japan, are recruiting or collecting harmless people off the streets of Tokyo etc. and taking them up to run these reactors…or to work on those reactors where it’s so radioactive. I mean these people are going to die of cancer, obviously. Number one.
So they’ll never ever decommission them. And they will be nuclear tombstones, if you like, for the rest of time. They have now a million tons of highly radioactive waste stored in tanks because they have to continuously pour seawater into the damaged reactors to keep them cool, and then that comes out and it’s very radioactive. So they’ve been storing it in tanks, hundreds and hundreds of them. If you go to the Fukushima website, you’ll see these tanks beside each other.
And they want to empty this into the Pacific Ocean. Now the fishermen are very upset, because the fish will become very radioactive. What happens is, when you put radioactive elements like iodine and strontium and cesium into water, they bio -concentrate by orders of magnitude at each level of the food chain. Algae, crustaceans, little fish, big fish, us. You can’t taste, smell, or know that you’re eating radioactive food. So you eat some fish with cesium-137 in it and it goes to your muscle in your pancreas or your thyroid, it irradiates just a very small volume of cells for many years with beta radiation, electrons. Some regulatory genes in the cell get mutated, and the cell is not regulated anymore and starts to reproduce in terms of millions and trillions of cells, and that’s a cancer.
So the incubation time for developing a cancer is any time from five to fifty years. When they cancer arise, it doesn’t denote its origin, so you don’t know. The only way we do know is to do epidemiological studies and take irradiated populations like Hiroshima and Nagasaki or Fukishima, except they’re not doing that in Japan, they’re covering it up, and compare that population to non-radiated population to see what the elevation of abnormalities is. So it’s very serious.
GR: Do you have any… I mean we’re in that five-to-thirteen-year range now…are there any unusual clusters of cancer cropped up?
HC: Good question Michael. Well, the Japanese government are not looking at the victims at all. All they’re studying is thyroid cancer. Now all cancers and leukemias can be caused, or are caused, by radiation. Post Chernobyl, the Russians collected five thousand medical and scientific papers and published them, and… it seems that over a million people in Europe and Russia, Belarus, have died from cancer and the like.
But the Japanese are only looking at thyroid cancer, thank you very much. In children who were aged under eighteen at the time of the accident. And there’s a very elevated number of cancers in these people. Some have metastasized…but they’re not looking at leukemia or any other cancers or birth defects or anything.
What is happening in Japan is medically criminal. Medically criminal. How dare they? And who runs the Japanese government? Really, the nuclear power industry really run the Japanese government. So, and these, and they don’t know what they’re doing, and most politicians are scientifically and medically illiterate, they think nuclear power is very powerful, they have no idea.
The doctors are desperate. Some doctors have moved away from the Fukushima area, they just can’t stand what they’re seeing, and if the doctors even allude to patients that their diseases may be related to Fukushima, they get struck off by the government.
GR: Well I’m wondering…
HC: That’s evil!
GR: Yeah, I’m wondering though, in terms of buying Japanese food, especially Japanese fish, is it banned? No it’s not!
HC: Well, Hillary Clinton signed a deal just after the accident that she would import Japanese food and would not prohibit it. I went to a sushi restaurant in New York a few years ago, and it was lovely, you know posh and sake and well-dressed people, and I said where does your fish come from? It comes from Japan. [laughter]
Don’t eat Japanese food! The Fukushima prefecture is a very rich area in growing food. The radioactive rice, they dilute it with non-radioactive rice and sell it. Don’t buy Japanese seaweed. Don’t buy Japanese food because you don’t know where it’s been sourced. Or what they’ve done with it, and they’re not measuring for radiation.
GR: Okay, we only have a couple of minutes left. I just wanted to ask you maybe one more question. As basically, if you had the opportunity to talk either to President Joe Biden or President Vladmir Putin or somebody like that, what would you do? What would you say to try to impress upon them that the threat that’s posed today?
HC: Well, I would try and get through their psychic numbing. And I’m a doctor so I’m used to doing that with patients of course. And I would describe the medical effects of one bomb dropping on New York, or one bomb dropping on Washington, or Moscow – to get into their gut . To understand the medical implications – the environmental implications of what this means, and try and get them to understand that they must actually abolish nuclear weapons. And there is a proposal at the United Nations which has been signed by – oh I don’t know – over 60 nations, to abolish nuclear weapons.
I try and bypass the military industrial complex and all these stupid men surrounding these presidents to try and get them to understand. I’ve cut it with Reagan what really could happen. I’d love to meet with Biden. And Putin – well…
I mean Putin asked President – what was his name? President…
GR: Zelinsky?
HC: No. Putin asked if Russia could join NATO. And the president said no, you’re too big. He’s BEGGED the Americans not to let Ukraine join NATO. And why didn’t they agree to that? They still could agree to his requests. But, I mean, if their pride comes before a fall, pride comes before the end of life on earth. That’s what’s happening.
And they’re all men! All men.
GR: Well, I think we’re going to have to close it now Helen Caldicott, as you end on that odious note. But I want to thank you for …
HC: Hahaha!
GR: …for being a woman! For coming on at this most important issue. Thank you once again for joining us on the Global Research News Hour!
HC: Yes, and thank you for what you do Michael. And much love to Michel!
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Seth Borenstein (March 11, 2022), ‘EXPLAINER: What’s behind latest scare at Chernobyl plant?’, The Associated Press; https://www.seattletimes.com/nation-world/nation/explainer-whats-behind-latest-scare-at-chernobyl-plant/
ibid
Maroosha Muzaffar (March 7, 2022), ‘Ukraine says fire has been put out near Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant’, Independent; https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/ukraine-zaporizhzhia-nuclear-power-plant-fire-b2028358.html?src=rss
Molly Blackall (February 27, 2022), ‘Putin puts Russia’s nuclear deterrent forces on alert as global tensions grow amid Ukraine invasion’,inews; https://inews.co.uk/news/putin-russia-nuclear-deterrent-forces-alert-global-tensions-grow-ukraine-invasion-1487031?ico=in-line_link
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Today, the dangers of military escalation are beyond description.
What is now happening in Ukraine has serious geopolitical implications. It could lead us into a World War III scenario.
It is important that a peace process be initiated with a view to preventing escalation.
Global Research condemns Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
A Bilateral Peace Agreement is required.
In early spring, we moved from the Pandemic reality to the war situation. And as we know, war is the imperialists’ favourite method of postponing and concealing internal contradictions and crises of capitalism. Nothing fuels the economy as well as the blood of workers. And the Russian-Ukrainian war, the new Iron Curtain and the renewed “Reds Under The Beds” propaganda – all highlight importance of the grassroots anti-war movement and prompt the need for Non-Aligned States and Nations Movement revival.
No Business – Like War Business
The self-dissolution of the Soviet Bloc and the emergence of a unipolar international reality in the 1990s brought a false reassurance to pacifists around the World.
Withdrawal of the threat of nuclear annihilation by the superpowers was falsely equated with no threat of war at all. Unfortunately, imperialism does not function without wars, and for capitalism There’s No Business – Like War-Business.
Meanwhile, protests against each subsequent hegemonic military operation weakened.
From war to war, the protests against the aggressions against Iraq, Serbia, Afghanistan, Libya, Syria, the conflict in Yemen, the intervention in Lebanon, the blockade of Gaza – were getting weaker and more niche.
More and more involving only usual suspects. Pacifism and the disarmament movement have not disappeared but have been swept into a corner of a room with a sign: “Old hippies, nice, but don’t pay attention. Do feed, occasionally”.
And wars, war crimes, privatisation of wars by corporations – were happening somewhere safely far away.
After all, TV sets and news can always be turned off, and anyway, they always provide simple and easy diagnoses, thanks to which we can immediately distinguish the Goodies from theBaddies.
And since one side is only good and the other is only bad – it doesn’t make sense, it is wrong to put an equal sign between them, right? We have to keep with the Goodies, wish them victory and cheer them on, because being against wars means helping the Baddies, right?
Not right, but we let them to convince us. We wanted to be convinced! We let our children to be taught that. We accepted that such propaganda, the absolution of every war, every aggression, all armaments – triumphed in the media, films, games, the whole Geoculture.
We silently accept military censorship, even if our country is not formally a militant party.
We cannot recover after the pandemic – because there is war.
We cannot accelerate the achievement of the climate target – because there is a war. And sanctions. And the Cold War. And bargaining of powers for new divisions of influences.
Unfortunately, capitalists and governments cannot offer us anything – because they are too busy with wars. This is their point. And even some kind of truth: we will not learn from the so-called Pandemic, we will not get out of the cycle of crises of capitalism – as long as there are imperialistic wars. Therefore, the peace movement is not and cannot be a Sunday hobby but must be the very essence of our opposition to capitalism and imperialism.
Ukrainian tragic experience
On the basis of Ukrainian experience, however, someone may say: “Well, you are against wars, you want to dissolve NATO and establish nuclear-free zones – don’t you see what happened to the Ukrainians!?”. This is a very good question. Keep it when hearing. Because it is Ukraine that confirms how right the anti-war movement is.
Vladimir Putin and Russians are now presented as exclusively responsible for the Ukrainian-Russian war as another archetypal Villains No. 1.
But this is the capitalist system which should be blamed in its quest for infinite accumulation, achieved also in Ukraine, managed by the financial establishment.
The conflict of interests of the Russian, Ukrainian and Western oligarchs is of a purely capitalist nature. Because in fact British or American corporations interested in the liberalisation and colonisation of Ukraine are also examples of oligarchy.
The culprits in the war in Ukraine are imperialism and militarism – coming from the West, using NATO to absorb new areas and increase the threat of war. Finally, nationalism is to blame, and in the most horrible, Nazi version, which always drugged the workers so that they would not see their class interests.
“And nuclear weapon, after all, Ukraine renounced that – and has been attacked!” – someone will shout. Quite the opposite – as a neutral nuclear-free state, Ukraine was completely safe, although still subjected to the pathologies of oligarchic capitalism. Ukrainians were attacked when, instead of neutrality, they were offered NATO militarism. When nationalist politicians started to announce acquiring nuclear weapons and building “dirty bombs”. And the most of all, the war broke out when it proved to be in the interests of all the oligarchs-capitalists concerned. Will we not understand anything from this lesson?
Obviously, global disarmament is the very first step, but peace-movement cannot be restricted to that one slogan. T
he essence of international security be a reference to the heritage of Non-Aligned States Movement, to Gandhi’s, Nehru’s, Nkrumah’s, Sukarno’s and Tito’s tradition. And this time the New Bandung has to be aligned. Aligned to the cause of peace, beyond and against the imperialist wars of Western and Eastern capitalists.
*
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Konrad Rękas is a renowned geopolitical analyst and a regular contributor to Global Research.
Featured image: US has whipped up war hysteria over satellite image of Russian military camp in Yelnya, over 500 kms from Ukraine border, to allege Moscow’s invasion plans and to justify NATO involvement (Source: Indian Punchline)
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The Assembly next took up the report on “Elimination of racism, racial discrimination, xenophobia and related intolerance”, containing two draft resolutions.
By a recorded vote of 130 in favour to 2 against (Ukraine, United States), with 49 abstentions, the Assembly then adopted draft resolution I, “Combating glorification of Nazism, neo‑Nazism and other practices that contribute to fuelling contemporary forms of racism, racial discrimination, xenophobia and related intolerance”.
By its terms, the Assembly expressed deep concern about the glorification of the Nazi movement, neo‑Nazism and former members of the Waffen SS organization, including by erecting monuments and memorials, holding public demonstrations in the name of the glorification of the Nazi past, the Nazi movement and neo‑Nazism, and declaring or attempting to declare such members and those who fought against the anti‑Hitler coalition, collaborated with the Nazi movement and committed war crimes and crimes against humanity “participants in national liberation movements”.
Further, the Assembly urged States to eliminate all forms of racial discrimination by all appropriate means, including through legislation, urging them to address new and emerging threats posed by the rise in terrorist attacks incited by racism, xenophobia and other forms of intolerance, or in the name of religion or belief. It would call on States to ensure that education systems develop the necessary content to provide accurate accounts of history, as well as promote tolerance and other international human rights principles. It likewise would condemn without reservation any denial of or attempt to deny the Holocaust, as well as any manifestation of religious intolerance, incitement, harassment or violence against persons or communities on the basis of ethnic origin or religious belief.
In Ukraine, support for the Ukrainian nationalist divisions who fought alongside the Nazis has become, over the last eight years, the founding ideology of the modern post 2013 Ukrainian state (which is very different from the diverse Ukrainian state which briefly existed 1991-2013).
Ukraine Neo-Nazi Militia
The full resolution on nazism and racism passed by the General Assembly is lengthy, unnzaires but these provisions in particular were voted against by the United States and by the Ukraine:
6. Emphasizes the recommendation of the Special Rapporteur that “any commemorative celebration of the Nazi regime, its allies and related organizations, whether official or unofficial, should be prohibited by States”, also emphasizes that such manifestations do injustice to the memory of the countless victims of the Second World War and negatively influence children and young people, and stresses in this regard that it is important that States take measures, in accordance with international human rights law, to counteract any celebration of the Nazi SS organization and all its integral parts, including the Waffen SS;
7. Expresses concern about recurring attempts to desecrate or demolish monuments erected in remembrance of those who fought against Nazism during the Second World War, as well as to unlawfully exhume or remove the remains of such persons, and in this regard urges States to fully comply with their relevant obligations, inter alia, under article 34 of Additional Protocol I to the Geneva Conventions of 1949;
…
10. Condemns without reservation any denial or attempt to deny the Holocaust;
11. Welcomes the call of the Special Rapporteur for the active preservation of those Holocaust sites that served as Nazi death camps, concentration and forced labour camps and prisons, as well as his encouragement of States to take measures, including legislative, law enforcement and educational measures, to put an end to all forms of Holocaust denial
As reported in the Times of Israel, hundreds took part in a demonstration in Kiev in May 2021, and others throughout Ukraine, in honour of a specific division of the SS. That is but one march and one division – glorification of its Nazi past is a mainstream part of Ukrainian political culture.
In 2018 a bipartisan letter by 50 US Congressmen condemned multiple events commemorating Nazi allies held in Ukraine with official Ukrainian government backing.
There are no two ways about it. The Ukrainian vote against the UN resolution against Nazism was motivated by sympathy for the ideology of historic, genocide active Nazis. It is as simple as that.
The United States claims that its vote against was motivated by concern for freedom of speech. We have the Explanation of Vote that the United States gave at the committee stage:
The United States Supreme Court has consistently affirmed the constitutional right to freedom of speech and the rights of peaceful assembly and association, including by avowed Nazis
That sounds good and noble. But consider this – why does the United States Government believe that avowed Nazis have freedom of speech, but that Julian Assange does not? You can have freedom of speech to advocate the murder of Jews and immigrants, but not to reveal US war crimes?
Why was the United States government targeting journalists in the invasion of Iraq? The United States believes in freedom of speech when it serves its imperial interests. It does not do so otherwise. This is the very worst kind of high sounding hypocrisy, in aid of defending the Nazis in Ukraine.
The second reason the United States gives is that Russia is making the whole thing up:
a document most notable for its thinly veiled attempts to legitimize Russian disinformation campaigns denigrating neighboring nations and promoting the distorted Soviet narrative of much of contemporary European history, using the cynical guise of halting Nazi glorification
The problem here is that it is very difficult to portray the Times of Israel or 50 bipartisan US congressmen as a Russian disinformation campaign. There is no historical doubt whatsoever of Ukrainian nationalist forces active support of Nazism and participation in genocide, not just of Jews and Roma but of Poles and religious minorities. There is no doubt whatsoever of the modern glorification in Ukraine of these evil people.
It is of course not just Ukraine. In Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania the record of collaboration with Nazis, of active participation in fighting for Nazis, and in active participation in genocide is extremely shaming. Throughout Eastern Europe there is a failure in these “victim nations” to look history squarely in the eye and to admit what happened – a failure the United States in actually promoting as “a campaign against Russian disinformation”.
I recommend to you the website www.defendinghistory.com, run by the admirable David Katz, which is a large and valuable resource on this website from a Lithuanian Jewish perspective that cannot remotely be dismissed as Russian or left wing propaganda. The front page currently features the December 2021 naming of a square in the capital after Lithuanian “freedom fighter” Juokas Luksa “Daumantas”, a man who commenced the massacre of Jews in Vilnius ahead of the arrival of German forces.
These are precisely the kind of commemorations the resolution is against. There has been a rash of destruction of Soviet war memorials and even war graves, and erection of commemorations, in various form, of Nazis throughout the Baltic states. That is what paras 6 and 7 of the resolution refer to, and there is no doubt whatsoever of the truth of these events. It is not “Russian disinformation”.
However the European Union, in support of its Baltic states members and their desire to forget or deny historical truth and to build a new national myth expunging their active role in the genocide of their Jewish and Roma populations, would not support the UN Resolution on Nazism. The EU countries abstained, as did the UK. The truth of course is that NATO intends to use the descendants of Eastern European racists against Russia much as Hitler did, at least in a cold war context.
You won’t find that in the Explanation of Vote. Subscriptions to keep this blog going are gratefully received.
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The upward trend in mortality and morbidity resulting from the Covid-19 vaccination program is overwhelming.
People are dying Worldwide.
The health risks of the mRNA vaccine are fully documented. Thrombosis, Blood Clots, Myocarditis, Heart Attacks, Cancer,
The mRNA “experimental” vaccine was launched in mid to late December 2020.In many countries, there was a significant and immediate shift in mortality following the introduction of the Covid-19 vaccine.
Source: HeathData.org
Despite all the lies and distortions, the official figures of covid vaccine deaths for the EU, US and UK cannot be refuted. (see below).
TOTAL for EU/UK/USA – 40,666 Covid-19 injection related deaths and 6,626,502 injuries reported on 15 September 2021.
While massive media and government censorship prevails, these registered official figures represent a very small percentage of the real figures pertaining to deaths and injuries. A very small percentage of deaths and injuries attributable to the vaccine will be reported/registered by the families of the victims.
Our Children and Adolescents are Dying Worldwide
Student at the Lycée Valabre de Luynes-Gardannem, Aix-en-Provence, France, Sofia Benharira, 16 years old passed away on September 21, 7 days after having received the deadly Pfizer vaccine. Heart attacks and Thrombosis.
Either the media fails to report vaccine related deaths or it states (with authority) that the deaths are attributable to Covid-19.
Pfizer Has A Criminal Record
And did you know that Pfizer has a criminal record with the US Department of Justice.
The “vaccine poison” imposed at the level of the entire planet is produced by a pharmaceutical company which was indicted by the US Department of Justice (2009) on charges of “fraudulent marketing”.
“Fraudulent marketing” of an illegal and experimental “vaccine” is an understatement.
What is happening today is the outright “Criminalization of the state apparatus” whereby politicians, members of parliament, senior government officials are routinely bribed, coopted or threatened to abide by a diabolical project which is literally destroying people’s lives Worldwide.
Pfizer is killing our children. And our governments are being bribed by Big Pharma.
GAVI COVAX and the Role of the Gates Foundation
GAVI COVAX funded by the Gates foundation is the entity responsible for the Worldwide procurement and delivery of Covid-19 vaccine doses. In liaison with the WHO, the agenda is to fully vaccinate (several doses) more than 7 billion people.
In Europe and North America, the official figures suggest that a large percentage of the population have already been fully vaccinated, with Canada, Spain, Israel, Belgium, Uruguay, Chile and China in the lead (See Map below)
Are these figures reliable? One suspects that they may have been manipulated by Western governments, with a view to sustaining the propaganda campaign and dispelling the deaths and injuries incurred by the vaccinated. Moreover, vaccine related deaths and injuries are now routinely assigned to Covid-19 as the principal cause.
In several regions of the World, the imposition of the vaccine is facing fierce opposition. In India, this opposition pertains to Public Health Foundation India (PHFI), a so-called “public private partnership” set up under the government of Prime Minister Manmohan Singh in 2006, which “received millions of dollars of funding from pharmaceutical companies, vaccine manufacturers, & dubious philanthropic organizations” including the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, the Rockefeller Foundation, the Wellcome Trust, among others.
In India’s state of Uttar Pradesh with a population of half the size of that of the European Union, the vaccine program is essentially defunct.
In sub-Saharan Africa, large sectors of the population have refused the vaccine. The percentage of the population which is vaccinated is exceedingly low.
Western Governments, the Billionaires and Big Pharma to the “Rescue of the Poor Countries”
And now in a twisted logic, the foreign aid budgets of the “Rich Countries” are being diverted to fund the delivery of about 1.8 billion doses of the deadly vaccine to the developing countries. (see Graph 1).
The developed countries are using their “Official Development Assistance” (ODA) budgets to help Third World Countries acquire the vaccine, which is slated to be applied to an impoverished population.
The Graph Below (Our World in Data) indicates the number of doses of the “vaccine” which are generously being donated as part of the U.S. and EU Aid Programs to Developing Countries.
The Biden administration has promised to deliver 570.4 million doses of which 81.4 million have already been donated and scheduled for delivery.
Other Western countries (several of which are former colonial powers) as well as Japan (member States of the OECD) have also made commitments to deliver some 826, 395 million doses to Third World countries (See Graph below).
ODA “bilateral aid” by the rich countries is a relic of the colonial period. According to the Brookings Institute, “Rich countries have a moral obligation to help poor countries get vaccines”.
What is this moral obligation?
“Foreign Aid” goes into the pockets of Big Pharma and the billionaires, while spreading death and destruction in the poor countries.
What we are talking about is a “donation” in excess of 1.8 billion doses of this poisonous substance, the inevitable result of which will be to precipitate the Third World into the Abysm.
Where are the target countries
The largest share of non-vaccinated population is in Africa, India, parts of the Middle East and parts of South East Asia as well as a few countries in Eastern Europe and the Balkans. (See Map above, dated September 29, 2021)
Follow the “Money Trail”
What is the mechanism pertaining to the purchase and delivery of more about 1.8 billion doses of the Covid-19 “vaccine” to the Third World?
The global supply chain as well as the flow of money payments is complex. The donations by the rich countries take the form of a “purchase” implemented via GAVI-COVAX which is responsible for the procurement (from Big Pharma) as well the delivery to the recipient developing countries.
What this means is that the funds allocated to “official development assistance’ (ODA) by the Rich Countries which historically have been tagged as a means to finance poverty alleviation and social programs in the Third World have now been redirected to fund the purchase of about 1.8 billion doses of the deadly Covid vaccine, for delivery to poor countries which cannot afford to buy it.
Ironically this comes at a time when the UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres asserted in his Address to the UN General Assembly (rhetorically)
“we must bridge the gap between rich and poor, within and among countries”.
”Development Aid” Now Takes the form of 1.8 billion doses of a “poisonous substance”. The stated objective for GAVI COVAX AMC is:
“toprocure vaccines and assist in delivery for LICs and LMICs [low income and low to medium income developing countries]”, i.e almost half of the World’s population. (See The Gavi Covax AMC)
Where does the money go?
The Gates Foundation (GF) as the main founding partner of GAVI plays a strategic role in the multibillion Worldwide distribution of the Covid-19 vaccine through an entity entitled GAVI COVAX AMC.
“… announced USD 1.6 billion for Gavi’s next 2021-2025 strategic period. In addition to this funding, the Foundation pledged USD 150 million in support of Gavi’s COVAX AMC to ensure equitable access to vaccines for AMC-eligible economies.”
From the “Rich countries” the “aid money” intended to assist developing countries is first channelled and deposited in the Gates sponsored GAVI COVAX AMC Facility which acts as an intermediary.
The money is then channelled towards Big Pharma (including Pfizer) via GAVI-COVAX (which exacts commissions and retainers), i.e. the aid money goes into both the pockets of Big Pharma and the Gates Foundation including its various affiliates, not to mention the politicians who are bribed into acceptance and submission.
What is the magnitude of this so-called Aid Program
“Saving Lives” in developing countries implies an “Equitable access” to the consumption of a “poisonous substance”
Pfizer currently charges Western governments $25.50 a dose for the Covid-19 vaccine
Add up the Figures: The cost of 1. 85795 billion doses of the killer vaccine disguised as “bilateral aid” is of the order of $46,45 billion. This money (“equitably” distributed) goes into the pockets of Big Pharma, the billionaire foundations, with generous bribes and money handouts for politicians and corrupt scientists.
It’s Genocide
It’s diabolical: upheld as a humanitarian endeavor on the part of Western governments, the delivery of hundreds of millions of doses of the ‘killer vaccine” via GAVI’s COVAX AMC spells a new wave of vaccine related mortality and morbidity directed against the Third World.
This project is coupled with the deadly impacts of the (partial) closure of national economies of developing countries coupled with engineered social chaos initiated in March 2020 which has already resulted in wave of extreme poverty, famine and despair throughout the Third World.
It’s Genocide Conducted at the level of the Entire Planet.
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About the Author
Michel Chossudovsky is an award-winning author, Professor of Economics (emeritus) at the University of Ottawa, Founder and Director of the Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG), Montreal, Editor of Global Research.
He has undertaken field research in Latin America, Asia, the Middle East, sub-Saharan Africa and the Pacific and has written extensively on the economies of developing countries with a focus on poverty and social inequality. He has also undertaken research in Health Economics (UN Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC), UNFPA, CIDA, WHO, Government of Venezuela, John Hopkins International Journal of Health Services (1979, 1983)
He is the author of twelve books including The Globalization of Poverty and The New World Order (2003), America’s “War on Terrorism” (2005), The Globalization of War, America’s Long War against Humanity (2015).
He is a contributor to the Encyclopaedia Britannica. His writings have been published in more than twenty languages. In 2014, he was awarded the Gold Medal for Merit of the Republic of Serbia for his writings on NATO’s war of aggression against Yugoslavia. He can be reached at [email protected]
Comments Off on People are Dying Worldwide: “Foreign Aid” to Finance 1.8 Billion Vaccine Doses. Western Governments, Billionaires and Big Pharma Come to the “Rescue of the Poor Countries”
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Today, the dangers of military escalation are beyond description.
What is now happening in Ukraine has serious geopolitical implications. It could lead us into 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.
The history of this war must be understood. The bombing and shelling led by Ukraine’s Armed Forces directed against the people of Donbass started eight years ago, resulting in destruction of residential areas and mass civilian casualties.
A bilateral Peace Agreement is required.
Michel Chossudovsky, Global Research, March 1, 2022
First published on March 2, 2022
Economic Warfare
A complex agenda of economic and social warfare under the auspices of the COVID-19 “Lockdown” was launched on March 11, 2020 against 193 member states of the United Nations. The stated objective was to combat the spread of the virus “with a view to saving lives”.
Amply documented this initiative emanated from the upper echelons of the financial establishment. It’s intent was not to save lives, quite the opposite. It involved a complex decision-making procedure requiring the cooptation of more than 190 national governments.
Its unspoken objective was to trigger economic and social chaos, resulting in bankruptcies, unemployment and poverty.
Confinement of the labour force, the face mask, social distancing, the closure of schools and universities, the vaccine mandate, etc.
The Fundamental question: What is its relationship to the geopolitics and strategies of global warfare. How does it relate to US foreign policy and the US-NATO military agenda?
From a strategic standpoint, the Covid-19 Lockdowns and Mandates constitute an act of “Economic Warfare”.
Unprecedented in World history, this diabolical project affecting more than 7 billion people Worldwide was implemented simultaneously and concurrently in the course of the last two years with the planning and strategic deployment of US, NATO and military allied forces against Russia and China.
Two Seemingly Different Crises are Unfolding Simultaneously
The dangers of global warfare directed against Russia and China,
The Covid mandates directed against more than 7 billion people.
These two major crises which are occurring simultaneously are intimately related:
The Russian invasion of Ukraine and the militarization of Eastern Europe. And now the EU has taken the decision to side with US-NATO against Russia following a decision of the President of the European Commission.
The ongoing crisis pertaining to the so-called Covid mandates over the course of the last two years which have undermined the economic, social and political fabric of 194 sovereign nation states which are no longer sovereign. In turn, the Covid mRNA Vaccine has as triggered a Worldwide upward trend of mortality and morbidity.
The Same Powerful Financial Actors are Behind these Two Interrelated Crises
The financial elites call the shots. It’s a de facto World War III agenda which consists in imposing a system of global governance.
The Covid Lockdown including the imposition of the mRNA Vaccine are part of a Hegemonic Agenda which consists in the subordination of sovereign nation states. They are instruments of submission.
In the present context, the Covid Agenda is an integral part of the broader military, intelligence and strategic arsenal.
The Great Reset and the Fourth Industrial Revolution (proposed by the WEF) consist in imposing in the words of the late David Rockefeller
“The supranational sovereignty of an intellectual elite and world bankers ….[which] is surely preferable to the national auto-determination practiced in past centuries.” (quoted by Aspen Times, August 15, 2011, emphasis added)
The Covid Crisis Opens up a New Strategy of Economic Warfare
The Covid mandates (applied simultaneously Worldwide) constitute an instrument of economic and social warfare which is unprecedented in world history. Broadly speaking they are instruments of imperialism.
“to weaken an adversary’s economy by denying the adversary access to necessary physical, financial, and technological resources or by otherwise inhibiting its ability to benefit from trade, financial, and technological exchanges with other countries.
The “covid mandates” imposed by dominant financial interests go far beyond the existing strategies of economic warfare.
Entire countries have been weakened and destabilized without the need for “color revolutions” or military intervention.
Countries which are categorized as “enemies” of America have complied and endorsed the covid mandates, including Cuba, Venezuela and Iran. Cuba’s economy has been literally destroyed. (And its socialist government has accepted the Covid mandates without batting an eyelid).
In so doing these “Enemies of America” have accepted a process of economic destabilization and social engineering which by all accounts is far more destructive than the peace-meal US economic sanctions imposed on non-compliant governments.
Global Debt and the Destabilization of the Nation State
We are at the crossroads of the most serious global debt crisis in World history.
The Covid Crisis is part of a Big Money Agenda, the objective of which is to ultimately trigger bankruptcies and massive debts, with a view to destabilizing the economic structures of sovereign nation-states.
The global debt crisis resulting from the lockdown measures has resulted in pushing up the levels of public debt (national, provincial, municipal). Fiscal and monetary structures are increasingly controlled by external creditors. Social Democracy is dead. What was once as “The Welfare State” is slated for privatization.
Dollarization
Indebtedness is a de facto instrument of conquest and economic warfare. It’s the power of the US dollar. The external creditors call the shots, The Endgame is to erase the Nation State and impose a system of “Global Governance”.
From a strategic standpoint, the Covid-19 agenda plays a key role.
It weakens national governments, it installs corrupt politicians under the direct control of the financial establishment (eg. Trudeau, Macron, Johnson, et al). In “enemy countries” such as Venezuela and Iran, Big Money interests take control of vast petroleum and natural gas resources.
A World of Lies
We are at a very dangerous crossroads. At the time of writing, Russia has invaded Ukraine.
We live in a World of lies which prevails over facts.
The imminent dangers of WW III are muted by a wave of censorship, the intent of which is to silence the independent media.
Corrupt Politicians are Groomed to believe in their own Lies. These lies (including fake science) are embedded in a complex and chaotic decision-making process involving US intelligence, the security apparatus, Big Pharma, the ICT giants, the UN, the WHO, the World Bank, IMF, BIS, Pentagon, powerful lobby groups as well as powerful actors within the financial and banking establishment.
We are no longer dealing with the contradictions of the Triple Alliance and Triple Entente diplomacy which had been carefully crafted by Chancellor Otto Bismarck, and which eventually led to the outbreak of World War I.
Today’s overlapping and contradictory alliances have led to a muddled and dangerous geopolitics which is beyond description.
First published by Global Research on April 16, 2019, this incisive article is of utmost relevance to an understanding of the Ukraine Crisis. .
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.
Over the past few months, NATO’s Jens Stoltenberg has continued outlining his organization’s “recognition” for Ukraine “to become a member of NATO”. Two weeks ago Stoltenberg pronounced publicly in Washington that “we work with Ukraine to help Ukraine move forward towards its transatlantic integration… we have trust funds, we have training, we have different kinds of activities which we are helping Ukraine”.
Comments like this are also a well-aimed provocation of nearby Russia. It is the equivalent of the Soviet Union having announced they had “trust funds” and “activities” occurring in Mexico, with the ultimate aim of luring America’s neighbour into the Moscow-led Warsaw Pact. Any such coercion by the Soviets would surely have drawn a swift military response from Washington.
It can occasionally be instructive to cast one’s eyes over a map of Europe, and a quick glance at the Ukraine reveals a long and winding border to the east with Russia; approximately 1,000 kilometres altogether no less. The Ukraine furthermore holds a generations-long history and association with Russia.
During the First World War, 3.5 million Ukrainians fought in the Imperial Russian Army, primarily in opposition to a German Empire which became a military dictatorship run by Paul von Hindenburg and Erich Ludendorff – from late 1917 Tsarist forces ceased to exist as the October Revolution was implemented, ushering in the creation of Soviet Russia.
Over two decades later, up to seven million Ukrainian soldiers joined the Red Army during its “Great Patriotic War” against the Nazis. By 1945, around 2.5 million Ukrainian infantrymen within Soviet armies were killed by Hitler’s troops. The Ukraine’s young foot soldiers paid a heavy price indeed for their contribution in liberating Soviet lands from Nazi rule.
It has been rather galling, as a consequence, to witness the Ukraine in recent years led by a throng embedded with fascist figures – individuals with many years of neo-Nazi activism under their belts, such as Andriy Parubiy (image on the right), Chairman of the Ukraine’s Parliament since April 2016 and co-founder of the fascist Svoboda party. Parubiy is an old associate of other neo-Nazis such as Svoboda chief Oleh Tyahnybok, Oleh Makhnitskyi and Dmytro Yarosh, the latter a Ukrainian Member of Parliament (MP) since late 2014 and a former leader of Right Sector, another fascist party.
These men are all followers of the terrorist Stepan Bandera, a Ukrainian Nazi who collaborated with the Third Reich before and during World War II. In early July 1941, with German soldiers pouring forward onto the frontiers of western Ukraine, Bandera’s “Act of Proclamation” declared,
“The newly formed Ukrainian state will work closely with the National Socialist-Greater Germany” and that Hitler “is forming a new order in Europe and the world and is helping the Ukrainian People to free itself from Moscovite occupation”.
In the postwar years, Bandera and his cronies received extensive protection from the Allied victors, enjoying significant aid and support from American and British intelligence services, the CIA and MI6.
For the meantime, Stoltenberg himself met recently with fascist Ukrainian MP Parubiy; as the NATO chief revealed via his twitter account on 27 November 2018, while he warmly shakes hands with him.
Met the Chairman of Ukraine's Parliament Andriy Parubiy today to discuss the serious situation in the Sea of Azov. #NATO stands with #Ukraine. Read the new statement from the North Atlantic Council here: https://t.co/JzEE41mQFnpic.twitter.com/I0isOvszJ5
Stoltenberg is a former social-democratic Norwegian prime minister, who in his youth actively protested the Vietnam War. He has for years been servile to Washington’s whims, and is seemingly comfortable mingling with neo-Nazis under the NATO banner.
There are other fascists currently working as MPs in the Ukrainian parliament, such as Ihor Mosiychuk (former Svoboda member), Oleh Lyashko (Radical Party head), Yuriy Bereza (Dnipro Battalion leader), Serhiy Melnychuk (former Aidar Battalion commander) and Andriy Biletsky (founder of the neo-Nazi Social-National Assembly).
Almost all of the Ukraine’s far-right extremists are supporters of NATO and American-led military intervention, whilst many of them have enjoyed trips to see their de facto bosses in America. This includes Parubiy who visited Washington last summer, and he was previously in the US capital during February 2015, where he met among others senator John McCain and John Boehner, then speaker of the House. In the same outing, Parubiy held top level meetings with the US Department of State, Department of Defense and National Security Council. He was graced too with interviews from the editorial boards of the Washington Post and Wall Street Journal.
Parubiy was invited to Ottawa, Canada in February 2016, and can be seen smiling in photographs with prime minister Justin Trudeau. In November 2018 Parubiy had discussions with Antonio Tajani, president of the European Parliament – where Parubiy called on Brussels to strengthen sanctions against Russia, while he pushed forward with proposals for the Ukraine to eventually join both NATO and the EU, moves welcomed by Tajani.
In February 2019, EU Council President Donald Tusk was in Kiev where he spoke to the national parliament, and highlighted among other things that Ukrainian MPs should “be resolute in rejecting the lure of radical nationalism and populism, as you have done so far”. Tusk was seemingly unaware some of those he was addressing hold rather more extreme outlooks than that of “radical nationalists” or “populists”. Indeed, Parubiy himself could be viewed sitting directly in the background while Tusk was speaking.
Prior to the American-led coup in the Ukraine (confirmed by Barack Obama on CNN), it was clear that this action would increase the risk of nuclear war between the US and Russia. It is again by the grace of luck that such a devastating encounter has been avoided. The putsch represented a major antagonization of Russia, which has been a nuclear superpower for decades with understandable concerns relating to what occurs along its boundaries.
The US stations many dozens of its nuclear weapons in four EU and NATO countries: Germany, Italy, the Netherlands and Belgium; and also in NATO country Turkey; bringing the total number of nuclear states in reality to over a dozen. The presence of nuclear devices in the countries above constitutes the most serious violation of their sovereignty, while further endangering Europe and the globe.
Despite a heightened risk of nuclear war, the Ukraine crisis has enjoyed consistent Western backing from the beginning. Many press reports regarding the Ukraine are of a particularly propagandist nature, describing the illegal overthrow of an elected leader as a “pro-western revolution” with Russia alone “fomenting a war in eastern Ukraine that has now killed more than 10,300 people and displaced 1.6 million”.
There is not a word explicated in these substandard accounts pertaining to crucial American involvement in the country. No comment is to be read either relating to the Western-supported neo-Nazi units fighting Moscow-backed separatists in eastern Ukraine; such as white supremacists known as the Azov Battalion and Donbas Battalion, which comprise part of the National Guard of Ukraine – along with other Nazi-style squadrons like the Aidar Battalion, that belongs to the Ukrainian Ground Forces. The Dnipro Battalion has provided support too, and is commanded by the above-mentioned far-right Ukrainian MP, Yuriy Bereza.
Rather, the readers are led to believe that it is Russia alone which has been “fomenting a war in eastern Ukraine”. Also unreported are the war crimes committed by the Azov, Donbas, Aidar and Dnipro battalions against Ukrainian civilians, which have gone unpunished; such as murder, torture, sexual assault and deliberate starvation of civilians. The Donbas Battalion commander Semen Semenchenko – another far-right figurehead and Ukrainian MP – has received invitations to America where he saw members of Congress and Pentagon representatives, while seeking “non-lethal aid” from the US.
In September 2014 Semenchenko said that, “I want to make Ukraine into another Israel”. Over four years ago, he was elected as a parliamentary deputy, a position he continues to hold. In December 2018, it was reported that Semenchenko was briefly detained in Tbilisi, Georgia while illegally attempting to purchase weapons there, and avoided arrest due to his possession of a diplomatic passport. President Petro Poroshenko previously praised the much-decorated Semenchenko for his “courage, commander’s endurance and moral fibre” while also eulogizing the Donbas Battalion as “real heroes”.
Poroshenko is in actual fact a US-sponsored proxy leader who has sought NATO and EU membership; he is moreover an ally of Israel, having repeatedly visited the expansionist state, and signed a “free trade agreement” during another trip to Israel in January this year. Poroshenko has toured the US many times, including a particularly ingratiating visit to the White House in June 2017, where president Donald Trump was apparently reluctant to meet him.
Relating to America’s role in the Ukraine, perhaps one should not be too surprised that the superpower implemented an administration with strong neo-Nazi links. US governments and their special services have a history of cooperation with Nazi henchmen dating to the conclusion of World War II. The US State Department and CIA worked willingly with former Nazis like General Reinhard Gehlen and “Butcher of Lyon” Klaus Barbie, employing them in the east to again destabilize the Soviet Union.
In the Ukraine, its 21st century fascist battalions receive much of their funding from oligarchs with ties to the West; such as powerful billionaire businessman Ihor Kolomoyskyi, who is a Ukrainian-Israeli-Cypriot citizen with a US visa and he has spent periods living in America – where he holds vested corporate interests in states like Ohio and West Virginia.
Kolomoyskyi is presently being investigated by the FBI after being accused of “ordering contract killings” along with undergoing probes relating to claims of “financial crimes”, such as embezzlement and the laundering of money into America. Kolomoyskyi is thought to be firmly supporting the campaign of comic actor Volodymyr Zelensky, favourite to become the Ukraine’s new head of state next week.
Kolomoskyi has ownership of major television networks in the Ukraine, which have provided Zelensky with a crucial platform so as to communicate with the nation’s populace. Zelensky has been compelled to deny his connections to Kolomoyskyi, but Poroshenko inevitably pounces upon these ties in order to score political points.
Though the Ukraine as a state was far from an idyllic one under the ousted Viktor Yanukovych, conditions have noticeably deteriorated since the June 2014 assumption to power of Poroshenko. Corruption and avarice have increased, so too crime and homelessness, numerous neo-Nazis have gained positions in parliament, the general population is suffering from worsening poverty and disillusionment while state services disintegrate.
Led by a billionaire oligarch for almost five years, the Ukraine is today Europe’s poorest nation with about 60% of its people living below the poverty line. Not much of this bothers privileged elites, so long as the country remains benevolent to wealthy business interests.
Once more, little of these uncomfortable realities are ever covered in press articles. Entering 2019 and the New York Times, on 24 January, is still elaborating on its “pro-Western revolution” line, while denouncing former president Yanukovych as “a widely reviled figure”. The New York Times carefully avoids bestowing such a title upon Poroshenko, in spite of his being a more “widely reviled figure” than Yanukovych.
Just prior to his toppling in early 2014, Yanukovych’s approval ratings stood at 20%. Less than a month ago, Poroshenko’s popularity ratings were once more recorded at less than half that at 9%, making this ranking a “world low” for a government leader.
Due to further non-existent reporting, first world populations are likely unaware of these statistics. Neither are they fully in tune to the atrocious mess the Ukraine is in today, which can largely be traced to the “pro-democracy Revolution”.
However, regarding oil rich Venezuela, major press outlets have been quick to express concerns for the lack of “freedom and democracy” in the South American country. A New York Times editorial, from 3 April 2019, bemoaned how “it is terrible to witness the suffering of a nation [Venezuela]” as its people hover “on the edge of starvation” while “it certainly would be a great relief for Venezuela to be rid of the leader [Nicolas Maduro] who inherited a broken country”.
One can presume it would be a great relief too for Western oil manufacturers, if they could place their hands on Venezuela’s vast reserves. The New York Times editorial then outlines the potential of “a military intervention” but quickly concludes that “in a country bigger than Texas” it “would be ugly”, not to mention a violation of the UN Charter. Instead, “The reality is that Mr. Trump has no real option but to wait” as “It is hard to conceive that Mr. Maduro will hang on indefinitely”.
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Shane Quinn obtained an honors journalism degree. He is interested in writing primarily on foreign affairs, having been inspired by authors like Noam Chomsky. He is a frequent contributor to Global Research.
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Meta relaxed its policies on hate speech to permit Facebook and Instagram users in certain countries to call for violence against Russia and its military on Thursday, as President Vladimir Putin continues the country’s war against Ukraine.
In a memo sent to employees, and seen by Reuters, Meta said it would also permit some posts that call for the death of Putin or Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko—one of Putin’s closest foreign allies, who has aided in Russia’s war in Ukraine.
“As a result of the Russian invasion of Ukraine we have temporarily made allowances for forms of political expression that would normally violate our rules like violent speech such as ‘death to the Russian invaders.’ We still won’t allow credible calls for violence against Russian civilians,” a Meta spokesperson told Reuters in a statement.
Reuters reports Meta will still block posts calling for the death of Putin or Lukashenko if the messages include two indicators of credibility, such as detail on how or where to kill them. Meta didn’t respond to Fortune’s request for comment.
The countries Meta now allows to call for Putin’s death are mostly Russia’s neighbors. The permitted list covers Armenia, Azerbaijan, Estonia, Georgia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Romania, Russia, Slovakia, and Ukraine.
According to the Intercept, Meta is also temporarily permitting users to post messages in support of the Azov Battalion, a Ukrainian neo-Nazi paramilitary group, so long as the posts explicitly praise the far-right militia for resisting Russia’s invasion.
Meta’s move to increase its tolerance for hate speech—which comes after Russia blocked Facebook access in retaliation for the platform allegedly censoring Russian state media—might be a first for the social media platform, which has previously been accused of too rigidly imposing its policies on marginalized groups.
During the Black Lives Matter protests that swept the U.S. in 2020, for instance, activists claimed Facebook’s policies censored posts calling out racism and white supremacy. Facebook said any instances of such censorship were “mistakes, and they were certainly not intentional.”
Conversely, Facebook has at other times failed to protect marginalized groups by not censoring or containing hate speech enough.
Last year, a treasure trove of internal documents leaked by a whistleblower and dubbed the Facebook Papers showed how hate speech ran rampant on Facebook in India—particularly when it targeted the nation’s Muslim minorities. According to the documents, some of Facebook’s staff were concerned that the company wasn’t doing more to censor calls for violence against Indian muslims.
In 2018, after the Burmese military led a genocide against the country’s Muslim minority, Facebook admitted it had failed to prevent hate speech circulating in Myanmar. Facebook’s failure led to the platform being used to “foment division and incite offline violence” against the local Rohingya minority population, the company said.
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Ukraine and the United States were the only two countries to vote against a Resolution on “combating the glorification of Nazism and neo-Nazism” at the United Nations. (December 16, 2021)
The EU and Canada were among 49 abstentions.
The 76th session of the UN General Assembly adopted a resolution on “combating glorification of Nazism, neo-Nazism and other practices that contribute to fueling contemporary forms of racism, racial discrimination, xenophobia and related intolerance” in plenary meeting which took place on December 16, 2021.
Initiated by the Russian Federation, the Resolution saw 130 member states vote in favor of curbing the international rise of neo-Nazism, with Ukraine and the United States once again voting against the Resolution, and with primarily European countries abstaining from the vote. The text of the Resolution can be read and downloaded in its entirety below.
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Featured image: U.S. allies in Ukraine, with NATO, Azov Battalion and neo-Nazi flags. Photo by russia-insider.com
March 11th, 2022 by His Excellency Carlo Maria Viganò
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Today, the dangers of military escalation are beyond description.
What is now happening in Ukraine has serious geopolitical implications. It could lead us into a World War III scenario.
It is important that a peace process be initiated with a view to preventing escalation.
Global Research condemns Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
A Bilateral Peace Agreement is required.
Nothing is lost with peace. All can be lost with war. Let men return to understanding. Let them resume negotiating.
Negotiating with good will and with respect for each other’s rights, let them realize that an honorable success is never precluded when there are sincere and active negotiations. And they will feel great – with true greatness – if imposing silence on the voices of passion, whether collective or private, and leaving reason to its proper domain, they will spare their brothers bloodshed and their homeland ruin.
Thus it was that on August 24, 1939, Pius XII addressed both rulers and peoples as war was imminent. These were not words of empty pacifism, nor of complicit silence about the multiple violations of justice that were being carried out in many quarters. In that radio message, which some people still remember hearing, the appeal of the Roman Pontiff invoked “respect for each other’s rights” as a prerequisite for fruitful peace negotiations.
The Media Narrative
If we look at what is happening in Ukraine, without being misled by the gross falsifications of the mainstream media, we realize that respect for each other’s rights has been completely ignored; indeed, we have the impression that the Biden Administration, NATO and the European Union deliberately want to maintain a situation of obvious imbalance, precisely to make impossible any attempt at a peaceful resolution of the Ukrainian crisis, provoking the Russian Federation to trigger a conflict. Herein lies the seriousness of the problem. This is the trap set for both Russia and Ukraine, using both of them to enable the globalist elite to carry out its criminal plan.
It should not surprise us that opinions not aligned with the official narrative are repressed.
Manipulations of this kind have become the norm during the so-called pandemic, to the detriment of doctors, scientists and dissenting journalists, who have been discredited and ostracized for the mere fact of daring to question the effectiveness of experimental serums. Two years later, the truth about the adverse effects and the unfortunate management of the health emergency has proven them right, but the truth is stubbornly ignored because it does not correspond to what the system wanted and still wants today.
If the world media have so far been able to lie shamelessly on a matter of strict scientific relevance, spreading lies and hiding reality, we should ask ourselves why, in the present situation, they should suddenly rediscover that intellectual honesty and respect for the code of ethics widely denied with Covid.
But if this colossal fraud has been supported and disseminated by the media, it must be recognized that national and international health institutions, governments, magistrates, law enforcement agencies and the Catholic Hierarchy itself all share responsibility for the disaster – each in its own sphere by actively supporting or failing to oppose the narrative – a disaster that has affected billions of people in their health, their property, the exercise of their individual rights and even their very lives. Even in this case, it is difficult to imagine that those who have been guilty of such crimes in support of a pandemic that was intended and maliciously amplified could suddenly have a jolt of dignity and show solicitude for their citizens and their homeland when a war threatens their security and their economy.
These, of course, can be the prudent reflections of those who want to remain neutral and look with detachment and almost disinterest at what is happening around them. But if we deepen our knowledge of the facts and document them, relying on authoritative and objective sources, we discover that doubts and perplexities soon become disturbing certainties.
Even if we only want to limit our investigation to the economic aspect, we understand that news agencies, politics and public institutions themselves depend on a small number of financial groups belonging to an oligarchy that, significantly, is united not only by money and power, but by the ideological affiliation that guides its action and interference in the politics of nations and the whole world. This oligarchy shows its tentacles in the UN, NATO, the World Economic Forum, the European Union, and in “philanthropic” institutions such as George Soros’ Open Society and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.
Image on the right: Italian PM Mario Draghi
All these entities are private and answer to no one but themselves, and at the same time they have the power to influence national governments, including through their own representatives who are made to be elected or appointed to key posts. They admit it themselves, when they are received with all the honors by Heads of State and world leaders, beginning with Italian Prime Minister Mario Draghi (here), respected and feared by these leaders as the true masters of the fate of the world. Thus, those who hold power in the name of the “people” find themselves trampling on the people’s will and restricting their rights, in order to be obedient like courtiers to masters whom nobody has elected but who nevertheless dictate their political and economic agenda to the nations.
We come then to the Ukraine crisis, which is presented to us as a consequence of Vladimir Putin’s expansionist arrogance towards an independent and democratic nation over which he is trying to claim absurd rights.
The “warmonger Putin” is said to be massacring the defenseless population, who have courageously arisen to defend the soil of their homeland, the sacred borders of their nation and the violated freedoms of the citizens. The European Union and the United States, “defenders of democracy,” are therefore said to be unable not to intervene by means of NATO to restore Ukraine’s autonomy, drive out the “invader” and guarantee peace.
In the face of the “tyrant’s arrogance,” it is said that the peoples of the world ought to form a common front, imposing sanctions on the Russian Federation and sending soldiers, weapons and economic aid to “poor” President Zelensky, “national hero” and “defender” of his people.
As proof of Putin’s “violence,” the media spread images of bombings, military searches, and destruction, attributing responsibility to Russia. And there’s still more: precisely in order to guarantee a “lasting peace,” the European Union and NATO are opening wide their arms to welcome Ukraine as a member.
And in order to prevent “Soviet propaganda”, Europe is now blacking out Russia Today and Sputnik, in order to ensure that information is “free and independent.”
This is the official narrative, to which everyone conforms.
Being at war, dissent immediately becomes desertion, and those who dissent are guilty of treason and deserving of more or less serious sanctions, starting with public execration and ostracism, well experienced with Covid against those who are “un-vaxxed”.
But the truth, if you want to know it, allows us to see things differently and to judge the facts for what they are and not for how they are presented to us. This is a true and proper unveiling, as indicated by the etymology of the Greek word ἀλήθεια. Or perhaps, with an eschatological gaze, a revelation, an ἀποκάλυψις.
The expansion of NATO
First of all, it is necessary to remember the facts, which do not lie and are not susceptible to alteration. And the facts, however irritating they are to recall to those who try to censor them, tell us that since the fall of the Berlin Wall the United States has extended its sphere of political and military influence to almost all the satellite states of the former Soviet Union, even recently, annexing into NATO Poland, the Czech Republic, and Hungary (1999); Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Slovenia, Slovakia, Bulgaria and Romania (2004); Albania and Croatia (2009); Montenegro (2017); and North Macedonia (2020).
The North Atlantic Treaty Organization is preparing to expand to Ukraine, Georgia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, and Serbia. Practically speaking, the Russian Federation is under military threat – from weapons and missile bases – just a few kilometers from its borders, while it has no military base in similar proximity to the United States.
Image below is from InfoBrics
To be considering the possible expansion of NATO into Ukraine, without thinking that it will arouse Russia’s legitimate protests, is nothing short of puzzling, especially given the fact that in 1991 NATO pledged to the Kremlin not to expand further. Not only that: at the end of 2021, Der Spiegel published drafts of a treaty with the United States and an agreement with NATO on security guarantees (here, here and here). Moscow demanded legal guarantees from its Western partners that would prevent NATO from further eastward expansion by adding Ukraine to the alliance and also from establishing military bases in post-Soviet countries. The proposals also contained a clause on the non-deployment of offensive weapons by NATO near Russia’s borders and on the withdrawal of NATO forces in Eastern Europe back to their 1997 positions.
As we can see, NATO has failed to keep its commitments to Russia, or has at least forced the situation at a very delicate moment for geopolitical balances. We should ask ourselves why the United States – or rather the American deep state which regained power after the electoral fraud that brought Joe Biden to the White House – wants to create tensions with Russia and involve its European partners in the conflict, with all the consequences we can imagine.
As General Marco Bertolini, former commander of the Joint Summit Operational Command, has lucidly observed:
“The United States did not just win the Cold War but also wanted to humiliate [Russia] by taking everything that in a certain sense fell within its area of influence. [Putin] bore with the Baltic countries, Poland, Romania and Bulgaria [joining NATO]. Faced with Ukraine [joining NATO], which would have taken away any possibility of access to the Black Sea, he reacted” (here).
And he adds:
“There is a problem of the regime’s stability, a situation has arisen with a fairly unlikely prime minister [Zelensky], one who comes from the world of entertainment.” The general does not fail to recall, in the case of a US attack on Russia, that “the Global Hawks flying over Ukraine depart from Sigonella [Italy]; Italy is an American military base in large part. The risk is there, it is present and real” (here).
Interests arising from the blockade of Russian gas supplies
We should also ask ourselves whether, behind the destabilization of the delicate balance between the European Union and Russia, there are also economic interests, deriving from the need of EU countries to obtain American liquid gas (for which we also need the regasification plants which many nations are deprived of, and for which in any case we will have to pay much more) instead of Russian gas (which is more ecological).
The decision of Italian oil and gas company ENI to suspend investments in Gazprom’s Blue Stream pipeline (from Russia to Turkey) also entails the deprivation of an additional source of supply, since it feeds the Trans-Atlantic Pipeline (from Turkey to Italy).
Image on the right is from InfoBrics
It therefore does not sound like a coincidence if, in August 2021, Zelensky declared that he considered the Nord Stream 2 pipeline between Russia and Germany as “a dangerous weapon, not only for Ukraine but for all of Europe” (here): bypassing Ukraine, it deprives Kiev of about one billion euros per year in revenue from transit tariffs. “We view this project exclusively through the prism of security and consider it a dangerous geopolitical weapon of the Kremlin”“ the Ukrainian president said, agreeing with the Biden administration. American Undersecretary of State Victoria Nuland said: “If Russia invades Ukraine, Nord Stream 2 will not go forward.” And so it has happened, not without serious economic damage to German investments.
The Pentagon’s virological laboratories in Ukraine
Still on the subject of American interests in Ukraine, it is worth mentioning the virological laboratories located in Ukraine which are under the control of the Pentagon and where it seems that only US specialists with diplomatic immunity are employed directly under the American Ministry of Defense.
We should also remember the complaint made by Putin regarding the collection of genomic data about the population, which can be used for bacteriological weapons with genetic selection (here, here and here). Information about the activity of laboratories in Ukraine is obviously difficult to confirm, but it is understandable that the Russian Federation considered, not without reason, that these laboratories could constitute an additional bacteriological threat to the safety of the population. The U.S. Embassy has removed all files related to the Biological Threat Reduction Program from its website (here).
Maurizio Blondet writes:
“Event 201, which simulated the pandemic explosion a year before it happened, was attended (along with the usuals, Bill and Melinda) by the apparently inoffensive John Hopkins University with its blessed Center for Health Security. The humanitarian institution had for a long time a less innocent name: it was called Center for Civilian Biodefence Strategies and did not deal with the health of Americans, but rather with its opposite: the response to military attacks of bio-terrorism. It was practically a civil-military organization. When it held its first conference in February 1999 in Crystal City in Arlington [Virginia], where the Pentagon is located, it brought together 950 doctors, military personnel, federal officials and health officials to participate in a simulation exercise. The aim of the simulation is to counter an imagined “militarized” smallpox attack. It is only the first of the exercises that will blossom in Event 201 and in the Pandemic Imposture” (here).
Experiments also emerge on the Ukrainian military (here) and interventions by the American Embassy regarding the Ukrainian Prosecutor Lutsenko in 2016 so that he would not investigate “a billionaire round of funds between G. Soros and B. Obama” (here).
An indirect threat to China’s expansionist ambitions on Taiwan
The current Ukrainian crisis entails secondary, but no less serious, consequences on the geopolitical balance between China and Taiwan. Russia and Ukraine are the only producers of palladium and neon, which are indispensable for the production of microchips.
“Moscow’s possible retaliation has attracted more attention in recent days after market research group Techcet published a report highlighting the dependence of many semiconductor manufacturers on materials of Russian and Ukrainian origin such as neon, palladium and others. According to Techcet’s estimates, more than 90% of U.S. supplies of semiconductor neon come from Ukraine, while 35% of U.S. palladium comes from Russia. […] According to the US International Trade Commission, neon prices rose by 600% before Russia’s annexation of the Crimean peninsula in 2014, because chip companies relied on some Ukrainian companies” (here).
“If it is true that a Chinese invasion of Formosa would put the global technology supply chain at risk, it is also true that a sudden shortage of raw materials from Russia could stop production, so as to make the island lose the “microchip shield” and induce Beijing to attempt the annexation of Taipei.”
The Biden’s’ conflict of interest in Ukraine
Another issue that we tend not to analyze in depth is that related to Burisma, an oil and gas company operating on the Ukrainian market since 2002. Recall that
“during the American presidency of Barack Obama (from 2009 to 2017) his right hand man with a “delegation” to handle international politics was Joe Biden, and it is since then that the “protection’ offered by the Democrat US leader was given to Ukrainian nationalists, a line that created the irreconcilable disagreement between Kiev and Moscow. […] It was Joe Biden in those years who carried out the policy of bringing Ukraine closer to NATO. He wanted to take away political and economic power from Russia. […] In recent years, Joe Biden’s name has also been associated with a scandal over Ukraine that had also shaken his candidacy. […]
It was April 2014 when Burisma Holdings, the largest energy company in Ukraine (active in both gas and oil), hired Hunter Biden as a consultant […] with a salary of $50,000 a month. All transparent, except that during those months Joe Biden continued the American policy aimed at regaining possession by Ukraine of those areas of the Donbass that have now become Republics recognized by Russia. The Donetsk area is believed to be rich in unexplored gas fields that have been targeted by Burisma Holdings. An international policy intertwined with the economic one that made the American media turn up their noses in those years” (here).
Democrats claimed that Trump had created a media scandal to harm Biden’s campaign, but his accusations turned out to be true. Joe Biden himself, during a meeting at the Rockefeller Council for Foreign Relations, admitted to having intervened on then-President Petro Poroshenko and Prime Minister Arsenij Yatseniuk to prevent investigations into his son Hunter by Procurator General Viktor Shokin. Biden had threatened “to withhold a billion dollars loan guarantee in the United States during a December 2015 trip to Kiev,” reports the New York Post. (here). “If [the Procurator General Shokin] is not fired, you will not have the money” (here e here). And the Prosecutor was effectively fired, saving Hunter from further scandal, after those involving him.
Biden’s interference in Kiev politics, in exchange for favors to Burisma and corrupt oligarchs, confirms the current US President’s interest in protecting his family and image, fueling disorder in Ukraine and even a war. How can a person who uses his role to take care of his own interests and cover up the crimes of his family members govern honestly and without being subject to blackmail?
The Ukrainian nuclear question
Finally, there is the issue of Ukrainian nuclear weapons. On February 19, 2022, at a conference in Munich, Zelensky announced his intention to end the Budapest Memorandum (1994), which prohibits Ukraine from developing, proliferating and using atomic weapons. Among the other clauses of the Memorandum, there is also the one that obliges Russia, the United States and the United Kingdom to refrain from using economic pressure on Ukraine to influence its policy: the pressure of the IMF and the United States to grant economic aid in exchange for reforms consistent with the Great Reset represent a further violation of the agreement.
The Ukrainian Ambassador in Berlin, Andriy Melnyk, argued on Deutschlandfunk radio in 2021 that Ukraine needed to regain nuclear status if the country failed to join NATO. Ukraine’s nuclear power plants are operated, rebuilt and maintained by the state-owned enterprise NAEK Energoatom, which completely ended its relationship with Russian companies between 2018 and 2021. Its main partners are companies that can be traced back to the US government. It is easy to understand how the Russian Federation considers the possibility of Ukraine acquiring nuclear weapons as a threat and demands Kiev’s adherence to the non-proliferation pact.
The color revolution in Ukraine and the independence of Crimea, Donetsk and Lugansk
Another fact. In 2013, after the government of President Viktor Yanukovych decided to suspend the association agreement between Ukraine and the European Union and to forge closer economic relations with Russia, a series of protest demonstrations known as Euromaidan began, which lasted several months and culminated in the revolution that overthrew Yanukovych and led to the installation of a new government. It was an operation sponsored by George Soros, as he candidly told CNN: “I have had a foundation in Ukraine since before it became independent of Russia; this foundation has always been in business and has played a decisive role in today’s events” (here, here and here).
This change of government provoked the reaction of Yanukovych’s supporters and of a part of the Ukrainian population opposed to the pro-Western shift of Ukraine, which had not been wanted by the population but was obtained by a color revolution, of which there had been general rehearsals in previous years in Georgia, Moldova and Belarus.
Following the clashes of May 2, 2014, in which nationalist paramilitary fringes (including those of Pravyi Sektor) also intervened, there was also the massacre in Odessa. The Western press also spoke of these terrible events in a scandalized way; Amnesty International (here) and the UN denounced these crimes and documented their brutality. But no international court initiated any proceedings against those responsible, as is intended to be done today against the alleged crimes of the Russian army.
Among the many agreements not respected is also the Minsk Protocol, signed on September 5, 2014 by the Trilateral Contact Group on Ukraine, composed of representatives of Ukraine, Russia, the Donetsk People’s Republic and the Lugansk People’s Republic. Among the points of the agreement was also the removal of armed illegal groups, military equipment, as well as fighters and mercenaries from the territory of Ukraine under the supervision of the OSCE and the disarmament of all illegal groups. Contrary to what was agreed, neo-Nazi paramilitary groups are not only officially recognized by the government, but their members are even given official assignments.
Also in 2014, Crimea, Donetsk and Lugansk declared their independence from Ukraine – in the name of self-determination of peoples recognized by the international community – and declared themselves annexed to the Russian Federation. The Ukrainian government still refuses to recognize the independence of these regions, sanctioned by popular referendum, and leaves the neo-Nazi militias and the regular military forces themselves free to rage against the population, since it considers these entities as terrorist organizations. It is true that the two referendums of November 2, 2014 constitute a stretching of the Minsk Protocol, which provided only for a decentralization of power and a form of special status for the Donetsk and Lugansk regions.
As Professor Franco Cardini recently pointed out, “on February 15, 2022, Russia delivered to the United States a draft of a treaty to end this situation and defend the Russian-speaking populations. Wastepaper. This war began in 2014” (here and here). And it was a war in the intentions of those who wanted to fight the Russian minority of Donbass: “We will have a job and pensions, and they will not. We will receive bonuses for having children, and they will not. Our children will have schools and kindergartens; their children will stay in the basements. In this way we will win this war,” said President Petro Poroshenko in 2015 (here). It will not escape notice that these measures are similar to the discrimination against the so-called “un-vaxxed,” who have been deprived of work, pay and education. Eight years of bombing in Donetsk and Lugansk, with hundreds of thousands of victims, 150 dead children, and very serious cases of torture, rape, kidnapping and discrimination (here).
On February 18, 2022 the Presidents of Donetsk and Lugansk, Denis Pushilin and Leonid Pasechnik, ordered the evacuation of the civilian population of their provinces into the Russian Federation due to the ongoing clashes between the Donbass People’s Militia and the Ukrainian Armed Forces. On February 21, the State Duma (Lower House of the Russian Parliament) unanimously ratified the treaties of friendship, cooperation and mutual assistance introduced by President Putin with the Donetsk and Lugansk People’s Republics. At the same time, the Russian President ordered the sending of troops from the Russian Federation to restore peace in the Donbass region.
Here one may wonder why, in a situation of blatant violation of human rights by neo-Nazi military forces and paramilitary apparatuses (who fly flags bearing swastikas and display the effigy of Aldolf Hitler) against the Russian-speaking population of the independent republics, the international community feels obliged to consider the intervention of the Russian Federation worthy of condemnation, and indeed to blame Putin for the violence. Where is the much-vaunted right of the people to self-determination, which was held valid on August 24, 1991 for the proclamation of Ukraine’s independence and recognized by the international community? And why are we scandalized today by a Russian intervention in Ukraine, when NATO carried out the same sort of thing in Yugoslavia (1991), Kosovo (1999), Afghanistan (2001), Iraq (2003), and in Libya and Syria (2011), without anyone raising any objections? Not to mention that in the last ten years Israel has repeatedly hit military targets in Syria, Iran and Lebanon to prevent the creation of a hostile armed front on its northern border, and yet no nation has proposed imposing sanctions on Tel Aviv.
It is dismaying to see with what hypocrisy the European Union and the United States – Brussels and Washington – are giving their unconditional support to President Zelensky, whose government for eight years now has continued to persecute Russian-speaking Ukrainians with impunity (here), for whom it is even forbidden to speak in their own language, in a nation that includes numerous ethnic groups, of which those who speak Russian represent 17.2%. And it is scandalous that they are silent about the use of civilians as human shields by the Ukrainian army, which places anti-aircraft positions inside population centers, hospitals, schools and kindergartens precisely so that their destruction can cause deaths among the population.
The mainstream media is careful not to show images of Russian soldiers helping civilians reach safe positions (here and here) or organizing humanitarian corridors, which Ukrainian militias fire upon (here and here). Just as it is also silent about the settling of scores, massacres, violence and theft by fringes of the civilian population, to whom Zelensky has given weapons: the videos that can be seen on the internet give an idea of the climate of civil war that has been artfully fueled by the Ukrainian Government. To this we may also add the convicts released to be drafted into the Army and also the volunteers of the foreign legion: a mass of fanatics without rules and without training that will contribute to worsening the situation, making it unmanageable.
Nelle TV fakestream non lo vedrete mai… I russi mangiano le bambini secondo la propaganda nei-maccartista del #Draghistan… Soldati russi mettono in sicurezza civili ucraini allontanandoli dalla zona degli scontri.#RussianUkrainianWarpic.twitter.com/DKOiJ83evN
— Gandolfo Dominici (@GandolfoDomini1) March 2, 2022
TV francese con giornalista in Ucraina "Credetemi, non difendo Putin, non prendo posizione, ma è il governo ucraino che sta bombardando la sua popolazione. Dal 2014 ad oggi 13000 morti!" #Ucrainapic.twitter.com/QWw6i0Xb1Y
As has been pointed out by many parties, the candidacy and election of Ukrainian President Zelensky corresponds to that recent cliché, inaugurated in recent years, of a comic actor or entertainment personality being lent to politics.
Do not believe that being without a suitable cursus honorum is an obstacle to the rising to the top of institutions; on the contrary: the more a person is apparently a stranger to the world of political parties, the more it is to be assumed that his success is determined by those who hold power.
Zelensky’s performances in drag are perfectly consistent with the LGBTQ ideology that is considered by its European sponsors as an indispensable requirement of the “reform” agenda that every country ought to embrace, along with gender equality, abortion and the green economy.
No wonder Zelensky, a member of the WEF (here), was able to benefit from the support of Schwab and his allies to come to power and ensure that the Great Reset would also be carried out in Ukraine.
The 57-part television series that Zelensky produced and starred in, demonstrates that the media planned his candidacy for President of Ukraine and his election campaign.
In the fiction show The Servant of the People he played the part of a high school teacher who unexpectedly became President of the Republic and fought against the corruption of politics. It is no coincidence that the series, which was absolutely mediocre, still won the WorldFest Remi Award (USA, 2016), came among the top four finalists in the category of comedy films at the Seoul International Drama Awards (South Korea) and was awarded the Intermedia Globe Silver award in the entertainment TV series category at the World Media Film Festival in Hamburg.
The media stir obtained by Zelensky with the television series brought him over 10 million followers on Instagram and created the premise for the establishment of the homonymous Servant of the People political party, of which Ivan Bakanov, General Manager and shareholder (along with Zelensky himself and the oligarch Kolomoisky) of Kvartal 95 Studio, and the owner of the TV 1+1 television network, is also a member. Zelensky’s image is an artificial product, a media fiction, an operation of manipulation of consensus that has managed to create the political character in the Ukrainian collective imagination that in reality, and not in fiction, has conquered power.
“Just one month before the 2019 elections that saw him win, Zelensky sold the company [Kvartal 95 Studio] to a friend, still finding a way to get the proceeds of the business he had officially renounced to his family. That friend was Serhiy Shefir, who was later appointed Councilor to the Presidency. […] The sale of the shares took place for the benefit of Maltex Multicapital Corp., a company owned by Shefir and registered in the British Virgin Islands” (here).
The current Ukrainian President promoted his election campaign with a commercial that was disturbing, to say the least (here), in which, holding two machine guns, he fired on members of Parliament, pointed out as corrupt or subservient to Russia.
The fight against corruption trumpeted by the Ukrainian President in the role of “servant of the people” does not correspond, however, to the picture that emerges of him from the so-called Pandora papers, in which 40 million dollars appear to have been paid to him on the eve of the elections by the Jewish billionaire Kolomoisky[1] through offshore accounts (here, here and here).[2] In his homeland, many accuse him of having taken power away from the pro-Russian oligarchs not to give it to the Ukrainian people, but rather to strengthen his own interest group and at the same time remove his political adversaries: “He liquidated the ministers of the old guard, first of all the powerful Minister of the Interior, [Arsen] Avakov. He rudely retired the president of the Constitutional Court who was acting as a check on his laws. He closed seven opposition TV channels. He arrested and accused of treason Viktor Medvedcuk, a pro-Russian sympathizer but above all the leader of the Platform of Opposition – For Life party, the second party of the Ukrainian Parliament after his Servant of the People party. He is also placing on trial for treason former President Poroshenko, who was suspicious of everyone except for those who got along with the Russians or their friends. The mayor of Kiev, the popular former world boxing champion Vitaly Klitchko, has already been subjected to several searches and seizures. In short, Zelensky seems to want to make a clean sweep of anyone who is not aligned with his politics” (here).
On April 21, 2019, Zelensky was elected President of Ukraine with 73.22% of the votes, and on May 20 he was sworn in. On May 22, 2019 he appointed Ivan Bakanov, Director General of Kvartal 95, as First Deputy Head of the Security Services of Ukraine and Head of the Main Directorate for the Fight against Corruption and Organized Crime of the Central Directorate of the Security Service of Ukraine. Along with Bakanov, it is worth mentioning Mykhailo Fedorov, Vice President and Minister of Digital Transformation, a member of the World Economic Forum (here). Zelensky himself has admitted to having as his inspiration the Prime Minister of Canada Justin Trudeau (here and here).
Il 21 aprile 2019 è eletto Presidente dell’Ucraina con il 73,22% dei voti e il 20 maggio presta giuramento; il 22 maggio 2019 nomina Ivan Bakanov, Direttore Generale della Kvartal 95, primo vicecapo dei Servizi di Sicurezza dell’Ucraina e Capo della Direzione principale per la lotta contro la corruzione e il crimine organizzato della Direzione centrale del Servizio di Sicurezza dell’Ucraina. Assieme a Bakanov, è da menzionare Mykhailo Fedorov, Vicepresidente e Ministro della Trasformazione Digitale, membro del World Economic Forum (qui). Lo stesso Zelenskyj ha ammesso di avere come proprio ispiratore il Primo Ministro del Canada Justin Trudeau (qui e qui).
Zelensky’s relations with the IMF and the WEF
As Greece’s tragic precedent has shown, national sovereignties and the popular will expressed by parliaments are de factoerased by the decisions of international high finance, which interferes with government policies by means of blackmail and outright extortion of an economic nature. The case of Ukraine, which is one of the poorest countries in Europe, is no exception.
Shortly after Zelensky’s election, the International Monetary Fund threatened not to grant Ukraine a $5 billion loan if he did not comply with their demands. During a telephone conversation with the CEO of the IMF, Kristalina Georgieva, the Ukrainian President was rebuked for replacing Yakiv Smolii with a man he trusted, Kyrylo Shevchenko, who was less inclined to comply with the diktats of the IMF.
Anders Åslund writes at Atlantic Council:
“The problems surrounding the Zelensky government are mounting alarmingly. First of all, since March 2020, the President has led a reversal not only of the reforms pursued under him, but also those initiated by his predecessor Petro Poroshenko. Second, his government has not presented plausible proposals to resolve IMF concerns about Ukraine’s unfulfilled commitments. Third, the President appears to no longer have a ruling parliamentary majority, and he seems disinterested in forming a reformist majority” (here).
It is evident that the IMF’s interventions are aimed at obtaining the Ukrainian government’s commitment to align itself with the economic, fiscal and social policies dictated by the globalist agenda, beginning with the “independence” of the Central Bank of Ukraine from the government: a euphemism with which the IMF calls on the Kiev government to renounce legitimate control over its Central Bank, which is one of the ways in which national sovereignty is exercised, along with the issuance of money and the management of public debt. On the other hand, just four months earlier Kristalina Georgieva had launched the Great Reset together with Klaus Schwab, Prince Charles and UN Secretary-General António Guterres.
What had not been possible with previous governments was brought to completion under the presidency of Zelensky, who entered the good graces of the WEF (here) along with the new Governor of the BCU, Kyrylo Shevchenko. Less than a year later, in order to prove his subjection, Shevchenko wrote an article for the WEF entitled Central banks are the key to countries’ climate goals and Ukraine is showing the way (here). Thus the Agenda 2030 is implemented, under blackmail.
There are also other Ukrainian companies that have ties to the WEF: the State Savings Bank of Ukraine (one of the largest financial institutions in Ukraine), the DTEK Group (an important private investor in the Ukrainian energy sector) and Ukr Land Farming (an agricultural leader in cultivation). Banks, energy and food are sectors perfectly in line with the Great Resetand the Fourth Industrial Revolution theorized by Klaus Schwab.
On February 4, 2021, the Ukrainian president shut down seven television stations, including ZIK, Newsone and 112 Ukraine, all guilty of not supporting his government. As Anna Del Freo writes: “A harsh condemnation of this liberticidal act has arrived, among others, also from the European Federation of Journalists and the International Federation of Journalists, who have asked for the immediate lifting of the veto.
The three broadcasters will no longer be able to broadcast for five years: they employ about 1500 people, whose jobs are now at risk.
There is no real reason why the three networks should be shut down, except for the arbitrariness of the Ukrainian political apex, which accuses them of threatening information security and being under “malign Russian influence.” A strong reaction also comes from NUJU, the Ukrainian journalists’ union, which speaks of a very heavy attack on freedom of speech, given that hundreds of journalists are being deprived of the opportunity to express themselves and hundreds of thousands of citizens are being deprived of the right to be informed.
As we can see, what Putin is accused of was actually carried out by Zelensky and, more recently, by the European Union, with the complicity of social media platforms. “Shutting down television broadcasters is one of the most extreme forms of restriction of the freedom of the press,” said EFJ Secretary General Ricardo Gutierrez.
“Nations have an obligation to ensure effective pluralism of information. It is clear that the presidential veto is not at all in line with international standards on freedom of expression” (here).
It would be interesting to know what statements were made by the European Federation of Journalists and the International Federation of Journalists after the blackout of Russia Today and Sputnik in Europe.
Neo-nazi and extremist movements in Ukraine
A country that calls for humanitarian aid from the international community to defend its population from Russian aggression should, in the collective imagination, stand out for respect for democratic principles and for legislation that prohibits activities and the spread of propaganda by extremist ideologies.
Neo-Nazi movements engaged in military and paramilitary actions operate freely in Ukraine, often with the official support of public institutions. These include the following: Stepan Bandera’s Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN), a movement with a Nazi, anti-Semitic and racist matrix already active in Chechnya and which is part of the Right Sector, an association of far-right movements formed at the time of the Euromaidan coup in 2013/2014; the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA); the UNA/UNSO, paramilitary wing of the far-right political party Ukraine National Assembly; the Korchinsky Brotherhood, which offered protection in Kiev to ISIS members (here); Misanthropic Vision (MD), a neo-Nazi network spread across 19 countries that publicly incites terrorism, extremism and hatred against Christians, Muslims, Jews, Communists, homosexuals, Americans and people of color (here).
Members of the Azov Battalion and other far-right groups march through Kyiv during Defenders of Ukraine Day, October 14, 2018. Photo from Leave the West Behind.
It should be remembered that the government has given explicit support to these extremist organizations both by sending the presidential guard to the funerals of their representatives, as well as by supporting the Azov Battalion, a paramilitary organization that is officially part of the Ukrainian Army under the new name of Azov Special Operations Regiment and organized into the National Guard.
The Azov Regiment is financed by the Ukrainian Jewish oligarch Igor Kolomoisky, the former governor of Dnepropetrovsk, who is also thought to be the financier of the nationalist militias of Pravyi Sektor, which are considered responsible for the Odessa massacre.
We are talking about the same Kolomoisky mentioned in the Pandora Papers as a sponsor of President Zelensky. The battalion has relations with several far-right organizations in Europe and the United States.
Amnesty International, after a meeting on September 8, 2014 between Secretary General Salil Shetty and Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk, called on the Ukrainian Government to end the abuses and war crimes committed by the volunteer battalions that operate together with the Kiev Armed Forces.
The Ukrainian government has opened an official investigation into the matter, declaring that no officers or soldiers of the Azov Battalion appear to be under investigation.
In March 2015, Ukrainian Interior Minister Arsen Avakov announced that the Azov Battalion would be one of the first units to be trained by US Army troops, as part of their Operation Fearless Guard training mission. US training was discontinued on June 12, 2015, when the US House of Representatives passed an amendment banning all aid (including weapons and training) to the battalion because of its neo-Nazi past. The amendment was then revoked under pressure from the CIA (here and here) and the soldiers of the Azov Battalion were trained in the United States (here and here): “We have been training these guys for eight years now. They are really good fighters. That’s where the Agency’s program could have a serious impact.”
In 2016, an OSCE report [Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe] found that the Azov Battalion was responsible for the mass killing of prisoners, the concealment of corpses in mass graves and the systematic use of physical and psychological torture techniques. Just a few days ago the Deputy Commander of the Battalion, Vadim Troyan, was appointed Chief of Police of the Oblast Region by Interior Minister Arsen Avakov.
These are the “heroes” fighting together with the Ukrainian Army against the Russian soldiers. And these heroes of the Azov Battalion, instead of protecting their children, dare to make their own flesh into meat for slaughter, enlisting boys and girls (here and here), in violation of the Optional Protocol to the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child (here), concerning the involvement of minors in armed conflicts: an ad hoc legal instrument that establishes that no child under 18 is to be forcibly recruited or used directly in hostilities, either by the armed forces of a state nor by armed groups.
Inevitably, the lethal weapons provided by the EU, including Draghi’s Italy, with the support of “anti-fascist” political parties, are destined to be used against these children.
The Ukrainian war in the plans of the NWO
The censorship being imposed against Russian broadcasters is clearly aimed at preventing the official narrative from being disproven by the facts. But while the Western media shows images of the video game War Thunder (here), frames from the movie Star Wars (here), explosions in China (here), videos of military parades (here), footage from Afghanistan (here), the Rome metro (here) or images of mobile crematoria (here) by passing them off as real and recent scenes of the war in Ukraine, reality is ignored because it has already been decided to provoke a conflict as a weapon of mass distraction that legitimizes new restrictions of freedoms in Western nations, according to the plans of the World Economic Forum’s Great Reset and the United Nations’ Agenda 2030.
It is evident that the Ukrainian people, beyond the issues that diplomacy can resolve, are victims of the same global coup d’état being carried out by supranational powers that intend, not peace between nations, but rather the establishment of the tyranny of the New World Order. Just a few days ago, Ukrainian parliamentarian Kira Rudik told Fox News, while holding a kalashnikov: “We know that we are not only fighting for Ukraine, but also for the New World Order.”
The human rights violations in Ukraine and the crimes of the neo-Nazi militias repeatedly denounced by Putin could not find a political solution because they were planned and fomented by the globalist elite, with the collaboration of the European Union, NATO and the American deep state, with an anti-Russian tone intended to make inevitable a war whose goal is to impose, primarily in Europe, the forced adoption of energy rationing (here),[3] travel restrictions, the replacement of paper money with electronic money (here and here) and the adoption of digital ID (here and here). We are not talking about theoretical projects. These are decisions that are about to be taken concretely at the European level as well as in individual countries.
Respect for the Law and Standards
The intervention in Ukraine by NATO, the United States, and the European Union does not appear to have any legitimacy. Ukraine is not a member of NATO, and as such it should not benefit from the assistance of an entity whose purpose is the defense of its member nations. The same can be said of the European Union, which just a few days ago invited Zelensky to join it. In the meantime, Ukraine has received $2.5 billion from the United States since 2014 and another $400 million in 2021 alone (here), plus other funds for a total of $4.6 billion dollars (here). For his part, Putin has given $15 billion in loans to Ukraine to save it from bankruptcy. The European Union, for its part, has sent $17 million in funding, in addition to funding sent from various individual nations. But this assistance has benefitted the Ukrainian population only minimally.
Furthermore, by intervening in the war in Ukraine in the name of the European Union, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen is violating articles 9, 11, and 12 of the Treaty of Lisbon. The competence of the European Union in this area belongs to the European Council and the High Representative. In no case does it belong to the Commission President. In what capacity does President von der Leyen presume to act as if she were the head of the European Union, usurping a role that does not belong to her? Why does no one intervene, especially considering the danger to which European citizens are being exposed due to the possibility of Russian retaliation?
Furthermore, in many cases the constitutions of the nations that are today sending support and weapons to Ukraine do not provide for the possibility of entering into a conflict. For example, article 11 of the Italian Constitution states: “Italy repudiates war as an instrument of offense for the liberty of other peoples and as a means of resolving international controversies.” Sending weapons and soldiers to a nation that is not a part of either NATO or the European Union constitutes a de facto declaration of war on the nation belligerent with it (in this case, Russia), and should therefore require the prior deliberation of declaring war, as is foreseen by article 78 of the Italian Constitution: “The Chambers [of Parliament] deliberate on the state of war and confer the necessary powers on the government.”
It does not appear that to date the Chambers have been called upon to express themselves in this sense, or that the President of the Republic has intervened to demand compliance with the constitutional provision. Prime Minister Draghi, appointed by the globalist cabal for the destruction of Italy and its definitive enslavement to supranational powers, is one of the many Heads of national governments who considers the will of the citizens as an annoying obstacle to the execution of the agenda of the World Economic Forum.
After two years of systematic violations of fundamental rights and of the Constitution, it is difficult to believe that he will want to place the interests of the Italian nation ahead of the interests of those who have placed him in power. On the contrary: the more disastrous are the effects of the sanctions adopted by his government, the more he can consider himself appreciated by those who have given him power. The coup perpetrated by means of the psychopandemic emergency proceeds today with new unfortunate decisions, ratified by a Parliament without a spine.
It is also a violation of article 288 of the Italian Penal Code to permit Italian citizens – and even members of the majority in the Government and political leaders – to respond to the appeal of the Ukrainian Ambassador for enrollment in the foreign legion: “Anyone in the territory of [Italy] who without government approval enlists or arms citizens to serve [in the military] in favor of a foreign nation, is to be punished with imprisonment for a period of 4 to 15 years.” No magistrate, at least for the time being, has intervened to punish those responsible for this crime.
Another violation is found in the activity of transferring children from Ukraine to Italy (and presumably also to other nations) who have been obtained via surrogate motherhood, ordered by Italian couples in violation of Law 40/2004, without any penalty being imposed on those guilty of this crime, as well as their accomplices.
It should also be remembered that the utterances of members of the Government or of political leaders with regard to the Russian Federation and its President, along with the sanctions that have been adopted against Russia and the repeated instances of arbitrary discrimination against Russian citizens, companies, artists, and sports teams for the sole fact of being Russian, are not only provocations that ought to be avoided in order to allow for a serene and peaceful settlement of the Ukraine crisis, but also place the safety of Italian citizens in very serious danger (as well as the safety of citizens of other nations who are adopting a similar stance toward Russia). The reason for such rash temerity is incomprehensible, unless there is an intentional desire to trigger reactions from the opposing party.
The Russian-Ukrainian conflict is a very dangerous trap that has been set against Ukraine, Russia, and the nations of Europe.
Ukraine is the latest victim of accomplished executioners
The Russian-Ukrainian crisis did not suddenly erupt a month ago. It has been prepared and fomented for a long time, certainly beginning with the 2014 white coup that was desired by the American deep state in an anti-Russian key. This is demonstrated, among other incontestable facts, by the training of the Azov Battalion by the CIA “to kill Russians” (here), with the CIA forcing the revocation of the amendment banning aid to the battalion made by Congress in 2015. The interventions made by Joe and Hunter Biden have gone in the same direction. Thus there is evidence of long-term premeditation, consistent with NATO’s relentless expansion towards the East. The Color Revolution of Euromaidan, as well as the establishment of a pro-NATO government composed of homines novi trained by the World Economic Forumand George Soros, was intended to create the conditions for the subordination of Ukraine to the NATO bloc, removing it from the influence of the Russian Federation. To this end, the subversive action of the Hungarian philanthropist’s NGOs, supported by media propaganda, has kept silent about the crimes of neo-Nazi paramilitary organizations, financed by the same people who sponsor Zelensky.
But if the brainwashing carried out by the mainstream media in Western nations has succeeded in conveying a completely distorted narrative of reality, the same cannot be said for Ukraine, where the population is well aware of the corruption of the political class in power as well as of its remoteness from the real problems of the Ukrainian nation. We in the West believe that the “oligarchs” are only in Russia, while the reality is that they are present above all throughout the entire galaxy of nations that formerly composed the Soviet Union, where they can accumulate wealth and power simply by placing themselves at the disposition of foreign “philanthropists” and multinational corporations. It matters little if their offshore accounts are the primary cause of the poverty of the citizens of these nations, the backwardness of the health care system, the excessive power of the bureaucracy, the almost total absence of public services, foreign control of strategic companies, and the progressive loss of sovereignty and national identity: the important thing is to “make money” and be immortalized along with political personalities, bankers, arms dealers, and those who starve the people. And then to come to the fashionable resorts of Versilia or the Amalfi Coast to flaunt their yachts and platinum cards to the waiter from Odessa or the cleaning lady from Kiev who send their paltry wages to their relatives back home. These Ukrainian billionaires wearing kippahs are those who are selling out Ukraine to the corrupted and corrupting West, trading their own well-being for the enslavement of their compatriots to the usurers who are taking over the world, using the same ruthless and immoral systems everywhere. In the past they cut the salaries of workers in Athens and Thessaloniki; today they have simply enlarged their horizons to the whole of Europe, where the population still looks on incredulously while first a health dictatorship and then an environmental dictatorship is being imposed.
On the other hand, without the pretext of a war, how would they have been able to justify the soaring price of gas and fuels, forcing the process of an “ecological” transition imposed from on high in order to control the impoverished masses? How could they have made the peoples of the Western world swallow the establishment of the tyranny of the New World Order, when the pandemic farce was unraveling and bringing to light crimes against humanity committed by BigPharma?
And while the EU and heads of government blame Russia for the impending disaster, the Western elites demonstrate that they even want to destroy agriculture, in order to apply the horrors of the Holodomor on a global scale (here). On the other hand, in many nations (including Italy) the privatization of waterways is being theorized – and water is an inalienable public good – for the advantage of multinationals and with the aim of controlling and limiting agriculture activities. The pro-NATO government of Kiev did not behave much differently: for eight years the Crimea was deprived of water from the Dnieper River in order to prevent the irrigation of the fields and starve the people. Today, in light of the sanctions being imposed on Russia and the huge reduction of grain supplies, we can understand Bill Gates’ enormous investments in agriculture (here), following the same ruthless profit-making logic already experienced with the vaccine campaign.
The Ukrainian people, regardless of what ethnic group they may belong to, are merely the latest unwitting hostages of the supranational totalitarian regime that brought the national economies of the entire world to their knees through the Covid deception, after publicly theorizing about the need to decimate the world population and transform the survivors into chronically ill patients who have irreparably compromised their immune systems.
The Ukrainian people should think hard about calling upon the intervention of NATO or the EU, provided that it is really the Ukrainian people who do it and not rather their corrupt rulers aided by racist mercenaries and neo-nazi groups in the pay of hierarchs. Because while they are promised freedom from the invader – with whom they share the common religious and cultural heritage of having once been part of Great Russia – in reality what is cynically being prepared is their definitive cancellation, their enslavement to the Great Reset that foresees everything except the protection of their identity, their sovereignty, and their borders.
Let the Ukrainian people look at what has happened to the nations of the European Union: the mirage of prosperity and security is demolished by the contemplation of the rubble left by the euro and the lobbies of Brussels. Nations invaded by illegal immigrants who feed crime and prostitution; destroyed in their social fabric by politically correct ideologies; knowingly brought to bankruptcy by reckless economic and fiscal policies; led towards poverty by the cancellation of labor and social security protections; deprived of a future by the destruction of the family and the moral and intellectual corruption of the new generations.
What were once prosperous and independent nations, diverse in their respective ethnic, linguistic, cultural, and religious specificities, have now been transformed into a shapeless mass of people without ideals, without hopes, without faith, without even the strength to react against the abuses and crimes of those who govern them. A mass of corporate customers, slaves of the system of detailed control imposed by the pandemic farce, even in the face of evidence of the fraud. A mass of persons without individual identity, marked with QR codes like animals on an intensive farm, like products of a huge shopping center. If this has been the result of the renunciation of national sovereignty for all the nations – every single one, without exception! – that have entrusted themselves to the colossal scam of the European Union, why would Ukraine be any different?
Is this what your fathers wanted, what they hoped for, what they desired, when they received Baptism along with Vladimir the Great on the banks of the Dnieper?
If there is a positive aspect that each of us can recognize in this crisis, it is that it has revealed the horror of the globalist tyranny, its ruthless cynicism, its capacity to destroy and annihilate everything it touches. It is not the Ukrainians who ought to enter the European Union or NATO, it is rather the other nations who ought to finally be jolted by pride and courage to leave them, shaking off this detestable yoke and rediscovering their own independence, sovereignty, identity, and faith. Their own souls.
To be clear: the New Order is not an inescapable destiny, and it can be subverted and denounced, if only the peoples of the world realize that they have been deceived and swindled by an oligarchy of clearly identifiable criminals, who one day will have to answer for those sanctions and those blocks of funds that today they apply with impunity to anyone who does not bend the knee before them.
An appeal to the Third Rome
For Russia too, this conflict is a trap. This is because it would fulfill the dream of the American deep state to definitively oust Russia from the European context in its commercial and cultural relations, pushing it into the arms of China, perhaps with the hope that the dictatorship in Beijing can persuade the Russians to accept the system of social credit and other aspects of the Great Reset that thus far Russia has been able to avoid, at least in part.
It is a trap, not because Russia is wrong in wanting to “denazify” Ukraine of its extremist groups and guarantee protection to Russian-speaking Ukrainians, but because it is precisely these reasons – theoretically tenable – that were created specifically to provoke it and induce it to invade Ukraine, in such a way as to provoke the NATO reaction that has been prepared for some time by the deep state and the globalist elite. The casus belli was deliberately planned by the real perpetrators of the conflict, knowing that it would obtain exactly that response from Putin. And it is up to Putin, regardless of whether he is right, not to fall into the trap, and to instead turn the tables, offering Ukraine the conditions of an honorable peace without continuing the conflict. Indeed, the more Putin believes he is right, the more he needs to demonstrate the greatness of his nation and his love for his people by not giving into provocations.
Permit me to repeat the words of the Prophet Isaiah:
Dissolve colligationes impietatis, solve fasciculos deprimentes, dimitte eos qui confracti sunt liberos, et omne onus dirumpe; frange esurienti panem tuum, et egenos vagosque induc in domum tuam; cum videris nudum, operi eum, et carnem tuam ne despexeris. Tunc erumpet quasi mane lumen tuum; et sanitas tua citius orietur, et anteibit faciem tuam justitia tua, et gloria Domini colliget te.
Loose the bands of wickedness, undo the bundles that oppress, let those who are broken go free, and break asunder every burden. Share your bread with the hungry, welcome into your house the afflicted and homeless; when you see a naked man, clothe him, and do not turn your back on your own flesh. Then your light will arise like the dawn, and your wound will quickly be healed. Your justice shall go before you, the glory of the Lord will closely follow you. (Is 58:6-8).
The world crisis with which the dissolution of traditional society is being prepared has also involved the Catholic Church, whose Hierarchy is held hostage by apostates who are courtiers of power.[4] There was a time in which Popes and Prelates confronted Kings without concern for human respect, because they knew they spoke with the voice of Jesus Christ, the King of kings. The Rome of the Caesars and Popes is now deserted and silent, just as for centuries the Second Rome of Constantinople has also been silent. Perhaps Providence has ordained that Moscow, the Third Rome, will today in the sight of the world take on the role of κατέχον (2 Thess 2:6-7), of eschatological obstacle to the Antichrist. If the errors of communism were spread by the Soviet Union, even to the point of imposing themselves within the Church, Russia and Ukraine can today have an epochal role in the restoration of Christian Civilization, contributing to bringing the world a period of peace from which the Church too will rise again purified and renewed in her Ministers.
The United States of America and the European nations should not marginalize Russia, but rather form an alliance with her, not only for the restoration of trade for the prosperity of all, but in view of the reconstruction of a Christian Civilization, which alone can save the world from the globalist techno-health transhuman monster.
Final Considerations
There is great concern that the destinies of the peoples of the world is in the hands of an elite that is not accountable to anyone for its decisions, that does not recognize any authority above itself, and that in order to pursue its own interests does not hesitate to jeopardize security, the economy, and the very lives of billions of people, with the complicity of politicians in their service and the mainstream media. The falsification of facts, the grotesque adulterations of reality, and the partisanship with which the news is spread stand alongside the censorship of dissenting voices and leads to forms of ethnic persecution against Russian citizens, who are discriminated against precisely in the countries that say they are democratic and respectful of fundamental rights.
I earnestly hope that my appeal for the establishment of an Anti-Globalist Alliance that unites the peoples of the world in opposition against the tyranny of the New World Order will be accepted by those who have at heart the common good, peace between nations, concord among all peoples, freedom for all citizens and the future of the new generations. And even before that, may my words – along with those of many intellectually honest people – contribute to bringing to light the complicity and corruption of those who use lies and fraud to justify their crimes, even in these moments of great apprehension about the war in Ukraine.
“May the strong listen to us, so as not to become weak in injustice. May the powerful listen to us, if they want their power not to be destruction but support for the peoples and protection for tranquility in order and work” (Pius XII, Radio message to Heads of State and Peoples of the World in Imminent Danger of War, August 24, 1939).
May Holy Lent lead all Christians to ask pardon from the Divine Majesty for the sins of those who trample His Holy Law. May penance and fasting move the Lord God to mercy, while we repeat the words of the Prophet Joel: Parce, Domine: parce populo tuo; et ne des hæreditatem tuam in opprobrium, ut dominentur eis nationes. Forgive your people, Lord, and do not expose your inheritance to reproach, to the derision of the nations (Jl 2:17).
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Carlo Maria Viganò, Archbishop, Former Apostolic Nuncio to the United States of America
Notes
[1] In 2011, Kolomoisky was one of the co-founders of the Jewish European Parliament, along with billionaire Vadim Rabinovich. Cf. http://ejp.eu/. Note that Rabinovich is a member of the Opposition Platform – For Life, the Ukrainian pro-Russian political party whose leader Viktor Medvedcuk was arrested by Zelensky.
[2] According to Russian politician Viktor Vladislavovich Zubarev, a member of the State Duma, Zelensky is also said to have $1.2 billion deposited at Dresdner Bank in Costa Rica and a villa in Miami purchased for $34 million (here). For a more comprehensive picture, see the investigation by Slidstvo-info, an independent Ukrainian agency of investigative journalism (here).
[3] It should be noted that the Italian Minister of Ecological Transition, Roberto Cingolani, decided a few days ago to sell a share of oil stocks to Ukraine “as a concrete aid also on the energy front,” exactly as during the pandemic he gave away millions of masks to China, only to then buy them back from Beijing shortly thereafter (here).
[4] In its March 6 issue, Famiglia Cristiana has a headline, commenting on an article by the founder of the Sant’Egidio Community, Andrea Riccardi: “Let’s stop the war and build a new world order” (here).
Featured image: Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky gestures during a news conference on Oct. 1, 2019, in Kyiv. The Ukrainian leader made a statement to brief the press regarding the just-approved ultimate edition of the so-called Steinmeier Formula regulating a possible local elections in Russian-occupied Donbas as part of the Minsk peace settlement.
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Facebook will temporarily allow its billions of users to praise the Azov Battalion, a Ukrainian neo-Nazi military unit previously banned from being freely discussed under the company’s Dangerous Individuals and Organizations policy, The Intercept has learned.
The policy shift, made this week, is pegged to the ongoing Russian invasion of Ukraine and preceding military escalations. The Azov Battalion, which functions as an armed wing of the broader Ukrainian white nationalist Azov movement, began as a volunteer anti-Russia militia before formally joining the Ukrainian National Guard in 2014; the regiment is known for its hardcore right-wing ultranationalism and the neo-Nazi ideology pervasive among its members. Though it has in recent years downplayed its neo-Nazi sympathies, the group’s affinities are not subtle: Azov soldiers march and train wearing uniforms bearing icons of the Third Reich; its leadership has reportedly courted American alt-right and neo-Nazi elements; and in 2010, the battalion’s first commander and a former Ukrainian parliamentarian, Andriy Biletsky, stated that Ukraine’s national purpose was to “lead the white races of the world in a final crusade … against Semite-led Untermenschen [subhumans].” With Russian forces reportedly moving rapidly against targets throughout Ukraine, Facebook’s blunt, list-based approach to moderation puts the company in a bind: What happens when a group you’ve deemed too dangerous to freely discuss is defending its country against a full-scale assault?
According to internal policy materials reviewed by The Intercept, Facebook will “allow praise of the Azov Battalion when explicitly and exclusively praising their role in defending Ukraine OR their role as part of the Ukraine’s National Guard.” Internally published examples of speech that Facebook now deems acceptable include “Azov movement volunteers are real heroes, they are a much needed support to our national guard”; “We are under attack. Azov has been courageously defending our town for the last 6 hours”; and “I think Azov is playing a patriotic role during this crisis.”
The materials stipulate that Azov still can’t use Facebook platforms for recruiting purposes or for publishing its own statements and that the regiment’s uniforms and banners will remain as banned hate symbol imagery, even while Azov soldiers may fight wearing and displaying them. In a tacit acknowledgement of the group’s ideology, the memo provides two examples of posts that would not be allowed under the new policy: “Goebbels, the Fuhrer and Azov, all are great models for national sacrifices and heroism” and “Well done Azov for protecting Ukraine and it’s white nationalist heritage.”
In a statement to The Intercept, company spokesperson Erica Sackin confirmed the decision but declined to answer questions about the new policy.
Azov’s formal Facebook ban began in 2019, and the regiment, along with several associated individuals like Biletsky, were designated under the company’s prohibition against hate groups, subject to its harshest “Tier 1” restrictions that bar users from engaging in “praise, support, or representation” of blacklisted entities across the company’s platforms. Facebook’s previously secret roster of banned groups and persons, published by The Intercept last year, categorized the Azov Battalion alongside the likes of the Islamic State and the Ku Klux Klan, all Tier 1 groups because of their propensity for “serious offline harms” and “violence against civilians.” Indeed, a 2016 report by the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights found that Azov soldiers had raped and tortured civilians during Russia’s 2014 invasion of Ukraine.
The exemption will no doubt create confusion for Facebook’s moderators, tasked with interpreting the company’s muddled and at time contradictory censorship rules under exhausting conditions. While Facebook users may now praise any future battlefield action by Azov soldiers against Russia, the new policy notes that “any praise of violence” committed by the group is still forbidden; it’s unclear what sort of nonviolent warfare the company anticipates.
Facebook’s new stance on Azov is “nonsensical” in the context of its prohibitions against offline violence, said Dia Kayyali, a researcher specializing in the real-world effects of content moderation at the nonprofit Mnemonic. “It’s typical Facebook,” Kayyali added, noting that while the exemption will permit ordinary Ukrainians to more freely discuss a catastrophe unfolding around them that might otherwise be censored, the fact that such policy tweaks are necessary reflects the dysfunctional state of Facebook’s secret blacklist-based Dangerous Individuals and Organizations policy. “Their assessments of what is a dangerous organization should always be contextual; there shouldn’t be some special carveout for a group that would otherwise fit the policy just because of a specific moment in time. They should have that level of analysis all the time.”
Though the change may come as welcome news to critics who say that the sprawling, largely secret Dangerous Individuals and Organizations policy can stifle online free expression, it also offers further evidence that Facebook determines what speech is permissible based on the foreign policy judgments of the United States. Last summer, for instance, Motherboard reported that Facebook similarly carved out an exception to its censorship policies in Iran, temporarily allowing users to post “Death to Khamenei” for a two-week period. “I do think it is a direct response to U.S. foreign policy,” Kayyali said of the Azov exemption. “That has always been how the … list works.”
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Today, the dangers of military escalation are beyond description.
What is now happening in Ukraine has serious geopolitical implications. It could lead us into a World War III scenario.
It is important that a peace process be initiated with a view to preventing escalation.
Global Research condemns Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
A Bilateral Peace Agreement is required.
During the second US-led war on Iraq in 2003 and its resulting invasion and occupation, I wrote an article in the British daily, The Observer, commissioned by its editor-in-chief, entitled ‘America is an expert in destruction not construction.’ That title proved to be dismally accurate as US warplanes bombed all Iraqi infrastructure facilities from water and electricity stations to bridges, and killed more than a million Iraqis, according to the international medical journal Lancet.
Nearly 20 years later, the article springs to mind again as I follow the developments of the Ukrainian war, the associated military and diplomatic posturing of global stakeholders, and the potential ignition of a nuclear war that could lead to catastrophic consequences for the world – starting with Europe.
Battlefield: Europe
It is Europe, after all, which will be the main theater of a nuclear clash unless current mediation efforts bear fruit. And any ‘political solution’ of the conflict spells victory for Russian President Vladimir Putin and his country, as Moscow will not accept anything short of a complete purging of NATO’s strategic depth in Ukraine.
It was the United States that instigated and ignited this war, and Ukraine and its good people were merely victims of US President Joe Biden’s declaration upon entering the White House that Russia is the number one enemy of the United States, followed by China. He simply made Ukraine the “poisoned bait” to draw the Russians into a long war of attrition that could sap their economy and cause sedition from within.
The US-European threat of “sanctions from hell” was a double plan: these would either deter Putin from invading Ukraine, or provoke him into doing exactly that. The former would be paraded as a Russian defeat, and the latter would be used to financially bankrupt the Russian state, turn its citizens against their government, and isolate Moscow.
But, about two weeks after the first Russian tank entered Ukrainian territory, the naivety of the western plan was fully exposed. Not only did it incorrectly assess the speed at which Moscow might achieve its aims, but it thoroughly underestimated Russia’s ability to counter western punishments with its own.
The western plan has instead triggered a backlash of monumental proportions, whose first line of victims will be residents of both Europe and the United States.
Ukraine, the flint to start a fire
As the dust settled, Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky began to show signs of shock and hysteria, lashing out at NATO’s “weakness,” amassing battalions of right-wing neo-Nazis to replace deserting Ukrainian army soldiers, and putting out a global call for foreign fighters to come to Ukraine and fight the Russians.
Zelensky has by now realized that NATO was only prepared to stand by his side and provoke his anti-Moscow rants until the Russian armored vehicles rolled in. He discovered quickly that he was abandoned by all, especially the United States, whose representative to the United Nations said yesterday that it would not send a single soldier or plane to Ukraine.
As oil prices skyrocketed to around US $130 per barrel this week, European countries, including Germany, Bulgaria, and France have said that they cannot manage without Russian oil and gas imports. Those words are the first tangible indication of a crack in the Atlantic alliance, and should be expected to extend to the NATO alliance as the fissures grow.
Europe ostensibly derives its strength from the power of its economy, and the so-called “common values” of the waning liberal order premised on democracy, human rights and social justice. Now, these elements are being eroded one by one as censorship, authoritarianism and war-profiteering take hold within western governance.
The masks have dropped. Those “values” are instead being rapidly replaced by overt racist sensibilities, favoring the “blond-haired and blue-eyed” citizen over all others, and mobilizing neo-Nazi and extremist movements to maintain the western “rules-based order.”
Economy is power: the western alliance collapse
The economic prosperity, security and stability enjoyed by the west since the end of the Second World War will be the first victim of this confrontation taking shape in Ukraine, and it looks near certain that financial collapse, political chaos and intra-state geographic fragmentation may ensue.
The decades of punishing sanctions imposed by the United States as an alternative to direct military intervention in North Korea, Iran, Syria, Cuba and Venezuela have not achieved their goals. They have not caused the ‘regime-change’ that was intended, and it is highly unlikely that the current sanctions on Russia, if imposed (so far, Russian oil and gas flow is paid for through the SWIFT financial system) in whole or in part, will prove an exception.
Alexander Novak, Russia’s deputy prime minister in charge of energy, warned late Monday of “catastrophic” consequences for world oil and gas markets if the US implements its threats to impose a ban on energy exports from his country.
These actions, he predicted, would result in a ten-fold rise in the price per cubic meter of natural gas and an unprecedented US $300 dollars per barrel for oil. Novak further threatened that Moscow would retaliate by halting gas supplies to Europe through their Nord Stream 1 pipeline, especially if Germany continues to suspend its Nord Stream 2 counterpart in response to US pressure and if Washington imposes a ban on Russian oil.
Nord Stream 1 currently operates at 100 percent and pumps nearly 60 billion cubic meters per year to Europe.
The United States destroyed Iraq, Syria, Afghanistan and Libya, and has not participated in the reconstruction of any of its destruction.
But the victim now will be Europe, which, while able to bully those weaker states, will not be able to do so with a much bigger, stronger global power like Russia, led by a shrewd geopolitical strategist like Vladimir Putin.
Europe is now lending its territories to this last American war. It is facing a nuclear power that is allied with other nuclear states like China, North Korea and, potentially, India. This time, the magic may be turned on the magician, and the destruction on the USA.
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Featured image: Joe Biden said he would target Russia when he became US president. But, his war with Russia will have mainly European casualties. Photo Credit: The Cradle
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State Department official Victoria Nuland admitted that the US government is funding biological laboratories in Ukraine, confirming what Washington has long dismissed as “Russian propaganda.” Correspondent Dan Cohen interviews journalist Dilyana Gaytandzhieva, who has investigated these facilities in Eastern Europe.
On March 8, Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs Victoria Nuland commented on a recent Russian Ministry of Defense announcement it had obtained documents proving the existence of biological weapons programs in laboratories financed by the United States in Ukraine.
Sen. Marco Rubio: Does Ukraine have chemical or biological weapons?
Victoria Nuland: Ukraine has biological research facilities which, in fact, we’re now quite concerned Russian troops, Russian forces may be seeking to gain control of, so we are working with the Ukrainians on how we can prevent any of those research materials from falling into the hands of Russian forces should they approach.
Sen. Marco Rubio: I’m sure you’re aware that the Russian propaganda groups are already putting out there all kinds of information about how they have uncovered a plot by the Ukrainians to unleash biological weapons in the country, and with NATO’s coordination. If there is a biological or chemical weapon incident or attack inside Ukraine, is there any doubt in your mind that 100% it would be the Russians behind it?
Victoria Nuland: There is no doubt in my mind, senator. And in fact, it is a classic Russian technique to blame the other guy for what they are planning to do themselves.
Until yesterday this was "fake news" and "conspiracy theory". Undersecretary of State Victoria Nuland just confirmed that #Ukraine has "biological research facilities", when asked if Ukraine has bioweapons. She also said US is worried Russia may get "those research materials" pic.twitter.com/xY2a7KuUCG
— Dilyana Gaytandzhieva (@dgaytandzhieva) March 9, 2022
Despite Nuland’s confirmation, Biden Administration officials continue to insist the claims are false.
White House spokesperson posted a lengthy Twitter thread calling the claims “preposterous” and “disinformation,” however declining to address the comments made by Nuland.
We took note of Russia’s false claims about alleged U.S. biological weapons labs and chemical weapons development in Ukraine. We’ve also seen Chinese officials echo these conspiracy theories.
Journalist Dilyana Gaytandzhieva has spent years investigating US-funded biological laboratories in Eastern Europe.
She spoke with MintPress News’ Dan Cohen about her investigations into similar Pentagon-funded laboratories.
Gaytandzhieva’s reports have proven that Pentagon-funded laboratories have conducted potentially lethal experiments on thousands of soldiers in Ukraine and Georgia.
“If this is not of concern, if these are just simple viruses and pathogens, why are US officials so worried,” she wondered.
"If this is not of concern, if these are just simple viruses/ pathogens, why are US officials so worried?" – journalist @dgaytandzhieva on Russia potentially controlling Pentagon-funded biological labs in Ukraine.
Gaytandzhieva reported in 2018 that the US embassy in Tbilisi, Georgia, was complicit in secretive military programs and that Pentagon scientists had transported “frozen human blood and pathogens as diplomatic cargo for a secret US military program.”
These scientists were “given diplomatic immunity to research deadly diseases and biting insects at the Lugar Center – the Pentagon biolaboratory in Georgia’s capital Tbilisi,” she wrote.
Cohen and Gaytandzhieva also discussed censorship policies implemented in the European Union, and the recent pledge of Bulgarian Prime Minister Kiril Petkov’s comments that Russia “looks like a Petrol station with rockets.”
Despite Petkov’s remarks, he has asked that the European Union exempt Bulgaria from sanctions on purchasing Russian gas and oil, which his country is totally reliant on.
Petkov also offered to send Bulgarian military equipment to Ukraine.
“After Bulgaria joined NATO, we were told to destroy everything so we would be totally reliant on NATO,” Gaytandzhieva explained.
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Today, the dangers of military escalation are beyond description.
What is now happening in Ukraine has serious geopolitical implications. It could lead us into a World War III scenario.
It is important that a peace process be initiated with a view to preventing escalation.
Global Research condemns Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
A Bilateral Peace Agreement is required.
This article by Peter Osborne documents focusses on smear campaign directed against Jeremy Corbyn for having allegedly supported Vladimir Putin.
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Almost two years have passed since Jeremy Corbynstood down as leader of the Labour Party, but the knives are still out for him.
His successor, Keir Starmer, has spotted the chance to define himself as a tough leader by waging war on the Corbynite left. Meanwhile, Corbyn himself has been singled out by British Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s Tory party as the ultimate vindication of the British voters’ decision to vote Conservative in the 2019 elections.
Hence the recent burst of headlines.
Corbyn sides with Russia (again), announces the Spectator. Meanwhile, the BBC announces that Starmer has slapped down Corbyn for criticising Nato.
In this column, I will defend the former Labour leader against these latest attacks.
There are three good reasons for coming to the rescue of this failed politician whose time as a major player in British politics is over.
The first is a simple matter of putting the record straight. Corbyn’s leadership of Labour was defined by one slur and lie against him after another. The lies have started again and simple decency suggests they should be rebutted.
The second is that the Tory Party and Labour establishment have their reasons for taking aim at Corbyn. He gives them an alibi. For the Tories and the Labour establishment, mocking Corbyn distracts from their own long-lived collaboration with Vladimir Putin and his oligarchs.
The third reason is the most important of all. The smearing of Corbyn tells us there is something very wrong about contemporary public discourse. The former Labour leader may be a dissident, but he speaks with deep knowledge of foreign affairs. We need more such dissident voices, not less.
Embracing Putin
The truth is that no modern politician has been more consistent or more prescient when it comes to Putin than Corbyn. Far from being pro-Putin, Corbyn warned against him when others didn’t.
Let’s go back more than 20 years to when the British political, intelligence and business establishment united to back Putin to replace Boris Yeltsin as Russia’s leader. Putin, who was a prime minister in 1999, won his first presidential elections in 2000.
This was at the height of the second Chechen war (1999-2009), arguably the most savage conflict yet of the 21st century, marked by terrible Russian war crimes far worse than have – thus far – been committed in Ukraine. And then – as now – masterminded by Putin. Chechnya was where he established his reputation and first made his mark.
Yet, Tony Blair backed Putin, praising his “focused view of what he wants to achieve in Russia”. He made this remark in March 2000, a few weeks after the Battle of Grozny, a brutal battle in which between 5,000 and 8,000 civilians died.A few weeks later, Blair invited Putin to visit Britain and meet the Queen.
I am not criticising Blair. He had understandable pragmatic reasons. There were grounds for believing that Russia needed a strongman after the chaos of the 1990s. From memory, I think most good judges agreed.
Corbyn warned: “We must be very careful to condemn abuses of human rights, whoever commits them, whoever they are committed against and however uncomfortable or inconvenient it is for us to do so. If we are not consistent, we will, understandably, receive the charge of hypocrisy.”
A serious critic
In December 2002, Corbyn was one of a small group who opposed the extradition from Britain of Akhmed Zakayev – former prime minister of the unrecognised Chechen Republic of Ichkeria – to Russia.
Corbyn has repeatedly criticised Putin’s human rights record with a consistency very few can match. The veteran socialist didn’t just raise concerns about human rights, which turned out to be fully justified today, he was also among the first serious critics of Russian money in British politics, long before the cause became fashionable.
Though Corbyn has repeatedly warned of Russian money, one episode is particularly revealing.
As Labour leader in 2018, Corbyn presciently warned: “We’re all familiar with the way huge fortunes, often acquired in the most dubious circumstances in Russia, sometimes connected with criminal elements, have ended up sheltering in London and trying to buy political influence in British party politics.”
He tellingly added that “there has been over £800,000 worth of donations to the Conservative Party from Russian oligarchs and their associates.”
Putin must immediately withdraw troops from #Ukraine and engage in constructive political dialogue. A shocking humanitarian catastrophe is unfolding that must end now pic.twitter.com/HBoN7RHlMX
This was at the exact moment that the Conservative Party was entrenching its dangerous and corrupting relations with Putin oligarch. No one in the cross-party British establishment wanted to hear this timely advice.
BBC political editor Laura Kuenssberg dismissively tweeted that “Corbyn has gone on Tory links with Russian donors, other MPs seem rather unimpressed.”
This was true. As The Times reported the following day: “The Labour leader faced shouts of ‘shame’ and ‘disgrace’ when he mentioned Tory donations.”
He was still warning about the “Tory party links to Russian oligarchs” after he left the leader’s office two years later.
Corbyn made his initial comments about Russian oligarchs and Tory donors in the wake of the poisoning in March 2018 of Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia in Salisbury.
The central claim against the Labour leader is that – to quote Johnson – he “sided with Putin when Russia ordered poisonings on the streets of Salisbury”.
This attack was used, to great effect, again and again by Johnson during the 2019 general election, and it was still being made last week. For example, Nick Timothy, former adviser to former prime minister Theresa May, and now a Daily Telegraph columnist, wrote that Corbyn “literally” supported Putin and “blamed Britain instead”.
When I asked Timothy for evidence to support this extraordinary claim that Corbyn was in effect a traitor he didn’t reply. This should not surprise anyone, because Corbyn did not side with Russia over the Salisbury attack, as Johnson and so many others have claimed.
I’ve checked the facts.
A thought experiment
In the aftermath of the poisoning on 15 March 2018, Corbyn said: “Either this was a crime authored by the Russian state; or that state has allowed these deadly toxins to slip out of the control it has an obligation to exercise. If the latter, a connection to Russian mafia-like groups that have been allowed to gain a toehold in Britain cannot be excluded.”
He added: “The Russian authorities must be held to account on the basis of the evidence, and our response must be both decisive and proportionate.”
Let’s now try a thought experiment.
Let’s imagine that Corbyn had somehow won the last election. That he had then filled up Labour Party coffers with Russian money; that his party chairman had an office in Moscow to advise oligarchs; that Corbyn personally had repeatedly visited a Russian oligarch whose father had been a KGB agent and close friend of Putin, and that he had been reported to have ignored security service objections to secure this friend a peerage, and funnelled government money towards his paper.
For day after day there would have been front-page denunciations of Corbyn. He couldn’t have survived. In my view rightly so. Yet Johnson is the one who’s done all of these things. But Corbyn is the one who’s supposed to be pro-Putin.
This is deranged.
His latest crime is to have criticised Nato’s over-aggressive eastward expansion, while supporting a negotiated solution to the Ukraine-Russia conflict. And all the while condemning Russia’s act of aggression and calling for the withdrawal of troops.
You can disagree or agree with Corbyn. I am not an expert on Russia or Ukraine, but these views do not strike me as either treacherous or unreasonable. It’s worth recalling that the Stop The War Coalition, which Corbyn supports, was broadly right about the Afghanistan catastrophe, the terrible Iraq invasion and David Cameron’s catastrophic intervention in Libya.
Perhaps Corbyn is wrong this time. Time will tell.
Hysterical war fever
But in the meantime, I am disturbed by today’s hysterical war fever. It is irrational and that is worrying. Cardiff’s Philharmonic orchestra cancels a Tchaikovsky concert. In Milan there’s an attempt to cancel a Dostoyevsky recitation. In London any divergence from full-blooded support for Nato is denounced as “pro-Putin”.
Britain claims to be a mature democracy, yet in such a country the kind of views that Corbyn has been putting forward would – at the very least – be welcomed as a serious contribution to public discussion.
Those who put them forward would not be pilloried, lied about and abused. The case of Jeremy Corbyn tells us that we have lost the ability to have a serious adult conversation.
Meanwhile, today’s belated decision from the British government to sanction seven Kremlin-connected Russian oligarchs shows that Corbyn was right to raise the alarm four years ago – and how telling it is that he was mocked for doing so.
Our most significant political figures from Tony Blair to Boris Johnson, from Peter Mandelson to George Osborne, have serious questions to answer. We now need a full scale, judge-led enquiry into how Britain’s political media class was penetrated for so long, and up to the highest level, by Putin proxies.
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Additional research by Mahdi Mustafa.
Peter Oborne won best commentary/blogging in 2017 and was named freelancer of the year in 2016 at the Online Media Awards for articles he wrote for Middle East Eye. He was also named as British Press Awards Columnist of the Year in 2013. He resigned as chief political columnist of the Daily Telegraph in 2015. His latest book, The Assault on Truth, was published in February 2021. His previous books include The Triumph of the Political Class, The Rise of Political Lying, and Why the West is Wrong about Nuclear Iran.
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Facebook and Instagram users in some countries will be allowed to call for violence against Russians and the death of Vladimir Putin, according to leaked emails.
Meta, the social media platforms’ parent company, will temporarily change its hate speech policy for posts regarding the war in Ukraine for the countries involved and most neighbouring European countries.
Posts calling for the death of Mr Putin or Belarusian presidentAlexander Lukashenko will be allowed in a change to the company’s rules on violence and incitement, according to a series of internal emails to its content moderators.
Such posts will not be allowed if they include two suggestions that the threat is credible – such as the location and method – or other targets, one email said.
The emails said calls for violence against Russians were acceptable when the post is clearly talking about the invasion of Ukraine.
And calls for violence against Russian soldiers would be considered a proxy for the Russian military – though this would not extend to prisoners of war.
Meta did not immediately respond to a request for comment from The Independent.
The temporary policy changes apply to Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia, Poland, Slovakia, Hungary, Romania, Russia and Ukraine.
Many major social media platforms have announced new content restrictions around the conflict and have made exceptions to policies during the war.
Meta has allowed praise of the right-wing Azov battalion, which is normally prohibited.
Our thanks to the Independent for having brought this article to our attention
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Senior Canadian officials are working with an Alberta company to open up new markets for natural gas in Germany, according to documents seen by DeSmog, contradicting a federal minister who says the Ukraine crisis can’t be solved by exporting more fossil fuels.
Alfred Sorensen, the President and CEO of Calgary-based Pieridae Energy, pitched the idea of exporting gas from Canada’s east coast to Europe during a recent meeting whose participants included officials in Germany’s Federal Ministry of Economics and Technology.
The two-hour virtual meeting, which took place on January 26 as tensions between Russia and Ukraine were quickly rising, included senior officials in Natural Resources Canada as well as provincial government officials from Alberta and Newfoundland and Labrador. The meeting was organized under the banner of the Canada – Germany Energy Partnership, established in March 2021 during the Berlin Energy Transition Dialogue to foster “clean energy” trade opportunities focused on “hydrogen, critical minerals and liquefied natural gas.” While the launch of the energy partnership garnered plenty of media coverage, this late-January 2022 meeting was held quietly.
Sorensen’s pitch came during a section of the meeting entitled “Canadian LNG – value proposition, projects and potential trade with Germany.” He was joined by representatives from the industry group LNG Newfoundland and Labrador, as well as a pro-gas organization known as the First Nations Major Projects Coalition.
Natural Resources Canada didn’t respond to a media request from DeSmog about the meeting.
The federal department recently told iPolitics that the “natural energy allies” of Canada and Germany are working together “building a low-emissions energy future with a view to achieving carbon neutrality by 2050.”
Image on the right: Screenshot of the logo of the Canada-Germany Energy Partnership from the Jan. 26, 2022 meeting agenda.
“we know that Russia is a significant source of natural gas and oil for European partners. And one of the things that we’ve been doing over the past number of weeks is ensuring that there are alternatives to Russia.”
But efforts to accelerate Canada’s gas exports undermine other statements being made by top federal policymakers.
“The solution to global energy problems is not to increase our dependency on fossil fuels,” Canada’s environmental minister Steve Guilbeaulttold the National Observer.
“Climate change will not go away, and if we’re thinking we can solve the [Ukraine] crisis by exacerbating another one, those people who think that are clearly mistaken,” he said.
Pieridae Energy walked away last summer from plans to build a $13 billion liquefied natural gas facility in Goldboro, Nova Scotia, due to financing problems which the company said made the project “impractical”.
But as tensions and rumors gave way to a full-scale Russian invasion of Ukraine, Pieridae’s CEO claimed that he was receiving inquiries from the federal government about how to revive the project.
“We certainly have been speaking with different departments in how we might be able to find a near-term solution versus a much longer-term solution,” Sorensen told BNN Bloomberg in a story that appeared the day after the invasion began. “I do believe that the project still has substantial merit in reducing the amount of dependence on Russian gas and this is one of the principal reasons I think we’ve seen a revived interest.”
Pieridae didn’t respond to queries from DeSmog.
“Frankly, I’m horrified that the response to this moment is to produce more fossil fuels,” Robin Tress, a climate campaigner with the Atlantic office of the advocacy group Council of Canadians, told DeSmog.
The Goldboro project as originally proposed would have added nearly four million tons of greenhouse gas emissions to the atmosphere each year, according to calculations from Dalhousie University professor Larry Hughes. That would have made Nova Scotia’s climate targets unachievable.
Pieridae says it is now proposing a scaled-back version of the facility that would cost $2 billion and produce roughly 400,000 tons of greenhouse gases annually. It says that the project is consistent with “a net-zero emissions pathway forward,” referring to the goal supported by most countries of eliminating or neutralizing all global emissions by 2050.
But a report last year from the International Energy Agency said that in order to achieve the climate-stabilizing goal of net-zero there must be “no investment in new fossil fuel supply projects.”
A recent report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change warned that without drastic cuts to global emissions more than three billion people could face catastrophic threats. However, the IPCC report was largely drowned out by media coverage of Russia invading Ukraine.
“The answer to this crisis [in Europe] is not more gas,” Jim Emberger, spokesperson for the New Brunswick Anti-Shale Gas Alliance, told DeSmog. “It’s to go to renewables as soon as possible in a much bigger way than we’ve done before. In the end, more gas means more dependency on somebody.”
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Geoff Dembicki is an investigative climate journalist based in New York City. He is author of The Petroleum Papers and Are We Screwed?
Featured image: A natural gas pipeline sign near Toronto. Credit: Raysonho(CC0 1.0)
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Today, the dangers of military escalation are beyond description.
What is now happening in Ukraine has serious geopolitical implications. It could lead us into a World War III scenario.
It is important that a peace process be initiated with a view to preventing escalation.
Global Research condemns Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
A Bilateral Peace Agreement is required.
What was the need for all that happened in the period since mid-December when Russia transmitted to Washington its demands for security guarantee? This question will haunt US president Joe Biden long after he retires from public life. The foreign policy legacy of his presidency and the reputation of this much-vaunted 80-year old politician with a half-century’s record in public life, much of it supposedly in the domain of American foreign policy are in tatters — irreparable.
News has appeared that Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has conceded that he willing to concede to the Russian demand that his country will not seek to become a member of the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation! The announcement came in an interview with the ABC News where he revealed that he is no longer pressing for Ukraine’s Nato membership!
In fact, Zelensky lets the cat out of the bag by casually adding, “I have cooled down regarding this question a long time ago after we understood that… Nato is not prepared to accept Ukraine.”
Zelensky explains why: “The alliance is afraid of controversial things, and confrontation with Russia.”
This comes after his earlier revelation that he is “open to compromise” on the sovereignty of the two breakaway republics ofLugansk and Donetsk in the eastern Donbass region and on the status of Crimea.
The ABC News reportedly telecast the interview on Monday night Eastern Time. Since then, the duo in the Biden team who piloted the Ukraine strategy, those apocalyptic “sanctions from hell” and the demonisation of Vladimir Putin through the recent months — Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Undersecretary of State Victoria Nuland — are nowhere to be seen.
That duo of East European descent in the driving seat — Blinken driving and Nuland by his side navigating him — ought to offer and explanation for all this charade playing out, which is virtually demolishing the American prestige as a superpower.
Questions are galore.Principally, if it is so easy to work out a compromise over Russia’s legitimate security demands, especially regarding Ukraine’s Nato membership and the alliance’s further expansion, why was Biden so very stubborn in his refusal to even discuss it, given the urgency of the matter?
Can it be that Biden was acting smart to create a fait accompli for Moscow by formalising Ukraine’s membership at the forthcoming Nato summit on June 29-30 in Madrid?
What’s the need to destabilise the European economies and rock the world oil market at a juncture when most economies are entering on a path of post-pandemic economic recovery?
What explains this unnatural obsession on the part of Biden over Ukraine’s regime?
Why such visceral hatred on Biden’s part toward Russia, something unworthy of an 80-year old world statesman?
But such an ignominious end to this entire episode over Ukraine’s Nato membership was entirely to be anticipated. Fundamentally, this is an existential issue for Russia. Whereas, Biden, Blinken and Nuland are dilettantes sitting 10000 kms away indulging in old neocon pastimes of interfering in other countries’ internal affairs, threatening them, disciplining them or punishing them for defying America’s diktat.
Even after Zelensky spoke, what has been Biden’s reaction? He scheduled a speech to announce that the US shall no longer import oil from Russia. Shouldn’t he have heaved a sigh of relief that this war in Ukraine is petering out?
Instead, he resorted to this strange toothless measure to impress the American audience that he is still on a winning streak promoting democracy in faraway lands. Isn’t such gimmick an insult to the gullible American public?
Biden took this new step after Europeans told him plainly that they are not interested in such a move against Russia, given their heavy reliance on Russian oil.
Second, Biden doesn’t seem to know or has pretended otherwise that America is actually shooting at its own feet. For, Russian prices are highly competitive and American companies will now have to pay much more to source heavy grade oil suitable for their refineries.
Biden already swallowed his pride and sent a team of officials to Venezuela, a country under crippling US sanctions, to beg for oil from President Nicolas Maduro (who was on CIA hit list not too long ago for being a socialist) to replace Russian oil.
Maduro sent them back suggesting a broader mutually beneficial relationship between Venezuela and America.All this drama took place in broad daylight witnessed by the entire Western Hemisphere. Wouldn’t they be laughing that America’s president is a man of straw?
Biden claims he is making sure that Putin won’t have money for his “war machine” if America stops buying oil from Russia. This is laughable, bordering on a lie.
The US was purchasing about 12% of Russia’s total oil exports. Alright, that’s a decent figure. But, it isn’t as if Russia won’t have any other buyers in a world market where oil price has soared to $130 per barrel (thanks to Biden’s “sanctions from hell” against Russia)?
Surely, any number of potential buyers would queue up if Russia were to offer competitive prices (as it had been doing for the US companies) to divert the extra stocks due to Biden’s boycott.
At any rate, Biden can’t be unaware that Russia’s current budget is balanced on the belief that oil prices would be around $40-45 per barrel. With the current level of oil price, Russia is actually making a fortune!And the funny part is, it is a gift from Biden’s sanctions!
Fundamentally, the problem today is that the American elite are delusional. While the rest of the world knows that in a multipolar world, the US’ capacity to force its will on other countries is inexorably in decline, the American elite shut their eyes to that reality.The present ridiculous situation happened only due to this arrogance and self-deception.
The strategic defeat that Washington has suffered will dent the US prestige worldwide, weaken its transatlantic leadership, unravel its Indo-Pacific strategy and accelerate the drain of American influence in the 21st century. Biden presidency will carry this heavy cross.
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Today, the dangers of military escalation are beyond description.
What is now happening in Ukraine has serious geopolitical implications. It could lead us into a World War III scenario.
It is important that a peace process be initiated with a view to preventing escalation.
Global Research condemns Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
A Bilateral Peace Agreement is required.
Nobody is talking about the blame that must be shouldered by the German government for the crisis and humanitarian disaster in Ukraine.
Sure Russia is guilty of a huge war crime in invading Ukraine, Surely too, the US must be blamed for creating the situation which led Russia and its autocratic leader Vladimir Putin to decide it had to invade to prevent Ukraine from being pulled into the US orbit with the goal that it would ultimately become a base for US offensive weapons — even nuclear weapons — on Russia’s border — something the US would never allow to happen anywhere in its self-proclaimed “backyard” of Latin America and the Caribbean.
But Germany, the largest country in NATO after the US, is almost as guilty for this current war in Europe as is the United States.
Germany was only reunified without any difficulty after 45 years of being split in two following World War II, because of a deal struck by the US with Russia in 1990 at which US Secretary of State James Baker stated that NATO would not be expanded “one inch ” eastward past the reunified German border.
Now it is widely known that despite having a powerful economy, Germany remains something of a lackey of the US in its foreign policy. Nonetheless, on this key important issue of expanding NATO, the country has always had considerable potential power. This is because NATO’s own rules require that any new member of the alliance must be approved by all existing members of the organization. That is, to put it bluntly, if Germany were to have said, at some point, that no new members would be given Germany’s approval for admission to NATO, then no new members could have joined, or even entertained the idea of joining.
That would have included — and could still include — Ukraine, which the US since at least the Obama administration’s second term, has been encouraged to think that it might someday be able to come under the protection of NATO, with its Article 5 provision requiring all members to come to the aid militarily of any member attacked by a non-member state.
It is precisely that desire by Ukraine, together with US insistence on the false “right” of Ukraine to determine its own international relationships, that led to Russia’s launching this war. Sure Ukraine can pursue its own foreign policies, but it has no “right” to join NATO. That organization’s member states must as one agree to admit another member. NATO is an exclusive club, not a anyone-can-join book club.
Of all the NATO member states, Germany is the one that should be standing firmly behind that solemn promise by Secretary Baker and then-President George H. W. Bush not to move NATO’s boundary any closer (his actual words were “Not one inch closer”) ,to Russia than the eastern border of the country.
It was a kind of founding promise of the birth of a reunified Germany.
Instead Germany is supinely responding to the bloody war in Ukraine that its own cowardly acquiessence to US anti-Russia actions has allowed to happen by announcing plans to significantly boost its arms spending (mostly by buying advanced military weapons from US arms makers).
German behavior towards the violation of US promises made to Russia regarding NATO following German reunification is particularly ironic and tragic given that at the time of German reunification in 1991, when the issue of whether the newly unified Germany should be a part of NATO, either by simply adding East Germany to NATO under the existing German Federal Republic (West German) membership, or with a new membership for the new nation of Germany, a poll showed only 20 percent of Germans wanted the country to be in NATO at all.
Indeed, the very existence of NATO after the 1991 deal was being widely questioned even by some mainstream foreign affairs experts in United States. An artifact of the Cold War that began in the late 1940s, NATO was founded on April 4, 1949 (the day I was born!)) as a bulwark against Communist expansion in Europe. With the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1989/90, and the liberation of formerly captive nations of the Warsaw Bloc in those years, plus the friendly relations that quickly developed in the early 1990s between the US and Russia, NATO should have been dissolved.
Instead, President Clinton, elected in 1992, chose quickly after assuming office to begin encouraging its expansion, as well as using the alliance outside of its own boundaries as an extension of US empire, as in the bombings of Serbia and Kosovo, and intervention in the Bosnian civil war. By the time of the Bush Administration in 2001, NATO was operating as a multinational military force outside of the UN in Afghanistan, which is about as far from the North Atlantic as on can get, at least in the northern hemisphere.
And so here we are, with Russia defending what it considers its own regional security with a military assault on Ukraine, and the US being urged to make things worse by shipping lethal weapons to Ukraine’s military and even more insanely, to establish a no-fly zone over Ukraine or parts of Ukraine — an action that could quickly lead to US and Russian planes shooting each other down, and potentially very rapidly to a nuclear war between the two nations with that have most of the world’s nuclear arsenal between them. Fortunately the Biden administration has resisted such nuclear brinksmanship.
The US could end this conflict quickly by simply announcing that it will honor the promise made to General Secretary Gorbachev 32 years ago, and will not ever admit Ukraine into NATO, nor seek to put US troops, weapons or nuclear arms in Ukraine.
But if the US won’t do the right thing to stop the bloodshed, Germany should have the integrity and self-confidence to do it: Just announce that the German government wants to honor the promise made that allowed for the smooth reunification of the country that a half century earlier created such death and destruction across the whole European continent, and that it vows never to approve another NATO member state.
If the German government won’t make this promise, the German people should demand it.
As someone whose paternal grandfather was brought as a child by his parents to the US from Germany to escape war and ended up earning a Silver Star while driving an ambulance on the French front for the US Army during WWI, and who myself spent a year as a Schuler in a Gymnasium in Darmstadt, a German city that was destroyed by a British firebombing attack in World War II and saw vuvidly the kind of destruction and slaughter that war causes, I say to the German people:
Komm meine deutschen Freunde, gib dem Frieden eine Chance! Die Zeit ist jetzt!
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Today, Center for Food Safety (CFS) filed a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit against the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) for unlawfully withholding records regarding FDA’s environmental assessment of genetically engineered (GE) salmon and a planned Ohio-based production facility—a major expansion from current capacity. The FOIA lawsuit comes on the heels of CFS and allies’ successful lawsuit holding FDA’s approval of GE salmon unlawful. FDA’s approval marked the first time any government in the world had approved a GE animal as food.
“Despite the 2020 court decision holding FDA’s first-ever approval of a genetically engineered food animal unlawful, FDA claims it needs nearly two years to produce records,” said Amy van Saun, senior attorney at Center for Food Safety. “But our request is narrow and straightforward: it’s time for FDA to tell the public about the possible environmental and ecological effects of genetically engineered salmon, including any effects to endangered wild salmon species.”
AquaBounty’s AquAdvantage GE salmon is produced with DNA from Atlantic salmon, Pacific king salmon, and Arctic Ocean eelpout. In 2016, CFS and Earthjustice—representing a broad client coalition of environmental, consumer, commercial and recreational fishing organizations and the Quinault Indian Nation—sued FDA over the agency’s approval of GE salmon, citing inadequate environmental assessments and broad risks to ecosystems.
In 2020, in a victory for CFS and allies, a California district court ruled the FDA violated core federal environmental laws in approving GE salmon, including failing to fully assess the serious environmental consequences of approving a GE salmon and the full extent of plans to grow and commercialize the salmon in the U.S. and around the world. The court sent the approval back to FDA to undertake more thorough environmental analyses to inform the public about the potential risks.
After that ruling, AquaBounty announced plans to build a $200 million facility, expanding its production of GE salmon by 10,000 metric tons. This operation will be eight times larger than its existing Indiana facility. With action in play to produce GE salmon on an even larger scale, it is even more important to understand the environmental and ecological risks of producing and marketing GE salmon for human consumption.
In October 2021, CFS submitted a FOIA request to FDA, seeking all documents related to FDA’s environmental assessments of AquaBounty’s AquAdvantage salmon and the planned Ohio facility, pursuant to the district court’s ruling. FDA is yet to produce the records, prompting CFS to now sue FDA under FOIA.
“We are concerned that FDA is not paying careful attention to AquaBounty’s planned expansion in Ohio,” said Jaydee Hanson, policy director at Center for Food Safety. “After years of touting that it will grow its fish in tanks that recycle the water, the company now plans to pump water from the aquifer that supplies community drinking water and dump wastewater back into a nearby stream. Without the requested documents, we have no way to know if FDA has fully considered the effects this facility will have on the local environment.”
CFS is committed to ensuring the public has access to information concerning government regulation of food production and labeling. CFS’s FOIA program is committed to upholding the principles embodied in FOIA, such as maintaining an open and transparent government.
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In the first study of its kind, Swedish researchers found 5G radiation causes typical symptoms indicative of “microwave syndrome.” The study, published in the journal Medicinsk Access, also confirmed that non-ionizing radiation — well below levels allowed by authorities — can cause health problems.
The study, published in the journal Medicinsk Access, also confirmed that non-ionizing radiation— well below levels allowed by authorities — can cause health problems.
According to the study, a 5G base station installed on the roof of an apartment building caused extremely high levels of non-ionizing radiation in the apartment of the two persons living just below the station.
Within a few days of exposure, the residents of the apartment developed symptoms of microwave syndrome. After moving to a place with lower radiation, the symptoms quickly decreased or disappeared.
Measurements before and after the installation of the 5G installation showed that switching to 5G led to an increase in radiation from 9 milliWatts/m2 to a maximum of 1,690 milliWatts/m2 — high enough for both acute and long-term health effects.
Measurements were taken both before 5G deployment and on several occasions afterward.
Before 5G was installed there were already base stations for 3G or 4G in the same location directly above the apartment. So even though the radiation level before switching to 5G was high, after switching on 5G, the levels increased 188 times.
This shows that non-ionizing radiation from a 5G base station placed on a roof close to a living space can be exceedingly high.
The highest radiation level was detected in the bedroom, located just 5 meters below the base station, prompting the authors of the study to call for further investigation into the effects on people exposed to 5G radiation levels.
“It is shocking that this is the first study performed on 5G health effects, three years after the roll-out of this technology started and after having already exposed the population to 5G high-intensity pulsed microwave radiation for several years,” Mona Nilsson, managing director of the Swedish Radiation Protection Foundation and co-author of the study, told The Defender.
Nilsson added:
“There are no studies that show that this technology and the increasing and common exposure to 5G and 4G base stations at levels allowed by the government is safe. On the contrary, studies have repeatedly and convincingly showed increased risk of the microwave syndrome and cancer, at levels that are far below the levels that the government and the telecom companies falsely claim are safe.”
In the study, a man and a woman, ages 63 and 62 years old, were exposed to 5G from the roof of their apartment building, beginning in November 2021. The individuals recorded their symptoms both before and after the exposure began.
The second column (Before 5G) displays the self-assessed symptoms before 5G was deployed in the apartment, the third column (With 5G) shows the self-assessment after 5G was installed, and the fourth column (After 5G) indicates the perceived symptoms after moving to the new apartment, which had much lower non-ionizing radiation levels.
Table 1. Clinical symptoms graded 0-10, where: 0 = No symptoms, 1 = Mild symptoms, 10 = Unbearable pain and/or discomfort. Previously healthy man and woman, ages 63 and 62, respectively.
The man and the woman experienced fatigue, sleeping problems, dizziness, emotional effects such as irritability and depression, nose bleeds, tinnitus, heart symptoms, memory problems and skin issues, all typically associated with microwave syndrome.
All symptoms ceased or decreased within 24 hours (for the man) and 1-3 days (for the woman) of moving to the new apartment with low radiation levels.
Microwave syndrome — a brief history
Microwave syndrome was described in the 1970s by scientists in the former Soviet Union who were researching occupational risks due to exposure to non-ionizing radiation.
The Soviet researchers described multiple symptoms of the syndrome, including fatigue, dizziness, headaches, difficulty sleeping, concentration problems, mood swings, tinnitus, heart palpitations and memory loss.
The researchers noted the symptoms subsided when exposure to non-ionizing radiation ceased or decreased.
The most common cause of microwave syndrome symptoms is non-ionizing radiation exposure from cell phones, base stations for wireless communication, WiFi and smart meters.
The exposed person usually experiences symptoms in several bodily organs, although most often the symptoms are related to the central nervous system and the heart.
The symptoms vary from person to person, as sensitivity to microwave radiation is individual.
Several studies during the last 20 years have shown increased risk of microwave syndrome symptoms among people living near mobile phone base stations.
For example, a study out of India showed increased incidences of sleeping problems, headaches, dizziness, irritability, concentration problems and high blood pressure.
Increased non-ionizing radiation due to 5G
The Swedish study not only showed that 5G causes microwave syndrome almost immediately, but it also found the levels of non-ionizing radiation increased massively.
The values measured in the home of the man and woman in the study (maximum 1,690 milliWatts/m2) are significantly lower than those deemed safe (10,000 milliWatts/m2 as an average value over 6 minutes) by the Swedish Radiation Safety Authority (SSM).
Because microwave radiation tends to fluctuate wildly, and SSM’s reference is an average value, this means the maximum value is allowed to be significantly higher than 10,000 milliWatts/m2, and it does not protect against large fluctuations which are in fact more biologically active.
Furthermore, SSM’s reference value does not protect against long-term harmful effects, such as the microwave syndrome or cancer, that come with prolonged exposure from base stations, as is the case with exposure in homes, offices or schools.
The reference value applies only to protection against immediate effects as a result of radiation so intense that it heats up tissues within 30 minutes.
This means the general public is completely unprotected against effects other than acute thermal damage, despite the fact that such effects have been shown to cause nervous system harm, oxidative stress and DNA damage.
Study shows need to revisit ‘safe’ levels of non-ionizing radiation
Prior to their study, the authors noted, there were no scientific studies showing no risk of harmful health effects from chronic exposure to non-ionizing radiation from base stations at levels corresponding to SSM’s reference value, or at the levels measured in this case study.
There are not even any studies of any long-term risks of combining the non-ionizing radiation from 4G and 5G.
Hardell and Nilsson concluded, “To claim that exposure to radiation does not entail risks because the exposure is lower than SSM’s reference value thus has no scientific basis at all.”
In 2016, a group of researchers and doctors recommended maximum exposure during the day should be 0.1 and at night 0.01 milliWatts/m2.
However, despite extensive evidence of health risks, microwave radiation in the environment is increasing sharply. Still, the outdated reference value is used despite the fact it is demonstrably lacking protection against microwave syndrome and many other health risks.
Lennart Hardell and Mona Nilsson called for in-depth investigations of persons complaining of microwave syndrome-related problems who may be exposed to elevated levels of microwave radiation.
“Careful [patient] history must be taken to investigate various sources of microwave radiation,” they wrote. “In addition, the investigation should be supplemented with measurement of the radiation both in the home and at the workplace.”
Such patients must be properly investigated and given a medical diagnosis, with careful consideration taken to eliminate or reduce the disease-causing factor — that is, reduce exposure to non-ionizing radiation, as being the most important. This should be done as early as possible to reduce the risk of irreversible damage or chronic disease.
Furthermore, it has to be emphasized that the measured values in the studied apartment after the installation of 5G make the home uninhabitable from a medical point of view, regardless of the fact that the radiation is below the current reference values.
Nilsson said the telecommunications industry is “trying its hardest” to keep any information about the health hazards of this technology from the public “with the help of their captured organizations, the World Health Organization, the International Commission on Non-Ionizing Radiation Protection and other governmental agencies.”
She added: “Major telecom companies know the radiation they force on the public is dangerous. They have known it for decades, but still they do all they can to hide the truth from the public and force the technology on us all.”
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The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) has stopped mandatory hospital reporting of COVID-19 deaths and the CDC is hiding data about the effectiveness of the booster shots in people aged 18 to 64, or those least likely to benefit from the shot
The New York Post notes the FDA overruled an expert advisory committee and the CDC overruled their own experts to promote the booster to all age groups. Scientists must use Israeli data, which show little to no difference in those boosted or not boosted until people are over age 65
The CDC justifies not releasing the data saying it was “not ready for prime time,” as it would be misinterpreted and is based on 10% of the population, or the same sample size that has been used for influenza statistics for years
Data from independent researchers and insurance companies recording all-cause death rates show the number who have died in 2021 after the release of the vaccine far exceeds the all-cause death rate in 2020 during the height of the infection
It is easy to understand why the HHS and CDC want to hide this data from scrutiny as it’s more difficult to ignore with each passing day that the infection didn’t kill the number of people health experts claimed and that the vaccine is killing far more than the virus is
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Data is the foundation of scientific analysis. Without data, researchers are left unable to draw conclusions, which leaves public health experts unable to accurately make recommendations. But that appears to be exactly what the CDC1 and Health and Human Services (HHS)2 are doing. The CDC is hiding data and the HHS is no longer collecting data, which one U.S. official has called “incomprehensible.”3
Since the World Health Organization announced a pandemic, multiple organizations began tracking data, including the number of people who were sick with COVID-19, in the hospital with or had died from it. As I have written, later the number of “cases” was reported. These were people who had a positive PCR test and did not necessarily have symptoms.
Whistleblowers working with attorney Thomas Renz, who is investigating hospital abuses,4 have reported that hospitals are incentivized to admit PCR positive patients, prescribe remdesivir,5 place patients on ventilators and include COVID on death certificates. All told, some believe hospitals could receive up to $100,000 for each patient who meets all the incentivized criteria.6
Of course, “fact” checkers immediately jumped on that claim in an effort to “debunk” what they call “false” information.7,8 But they simply contradicted themselves in the “fact” checking by changing the semantics of how COVID deaths are counted and rewording of how hospitals are compensated for COVID patients from “paid more” to receiving a “bump” in payment. So what’s the difference? They’re still getting paid more for COVID patients.
In analyzing this, it’s important to look at how data of all sorts are collected on you and everyone else in the world. For example:
Nearly everything people do is digitally recorded, analyzed and extrapolated for decision making. You leave a digital footprint each time you use your smartphone or computer. One study showed digital cookies may have lifetimes up to 8,000 years.9 In 2010, it was estimated there were 2 zettabytes (ZB) of data created.10
To put this into perspective, it would take 184 million football fields of 1 GB thumb drives laid end to end to contain the information. Data is so important that the organization that appears to be leading The Great Reset — the World Economic Forum — is also interested in data and estimates there would be 44 ZB of data collected in 2020.11
So, with all that in mind, in a world where data is king12,13,14 the HHS decision to hide COVID-19 data begs the question: What do they want to hide? Are they stopping the flow of data, as opposed to hiding data like the CDC, to reach the same end, where the data are not available for examination and analysis?
HHS Ends Hospital COVID Death Reports
January 6, 2022, the HHS announced15 changes to the reporting requirements for hospitals and acute care facilities. The new guidelines note “The retirement of fields which are no longer required to be reported,” which include the “previous day’s COVID-19 deaths.”
However, according to one news report, the guideline did not receive public attention until January 14, 2022, when it was tweeted by Dr. Jorge Caballero,16 who asked why the government no longer wanted these daily reports beginning February 2, 2022. By January 28, 2022, just like they did with the report on COVID-19 hospital reimbursements, fact-checkers were busy posting viral social media posts claiming Caballero’s conclusions were not correct.
Yet, as I mentioned, the announcement was published on the HHS website — so how could it be false? You can go to the website17 and read it for yourself. Under the section, “The retirement of fields which are no longer required to be reported,” it says: “previous day’s COVID-19 deaths.” So how could fact-checkers “debunk” that?
To create a fact check that claimed this was “false,” the fact-checkers simply changed the headline. So, while the HHS publicly announced they would no longer require hospitals to report deaths from COVID-19, fact-checkers reported the U.S. government was not ending daily COVID death reporting.
MSN18 fact-checkers reported that Nancy Foster from the American Hospital Association had suggested the change could “streamline data collection.” Yet, the HHS system used direct reporting from ICD medical diagnosis codes entered into the Electronic Medical Record (EMR) system.
In an emailed statement, Foster reported that she believes the HHS was no longer collecting data because they were receiving comprehensive data from public health agencies, including death certificates reported to the National Center for Health Statistics and used by the CDC in its death data reporting. Despite supporting the HHS decision, the agency did not respond to a request by MSN on the reason for the change.
HHS had worked with major electronic medical records (EMR) manufacturers, so 85% of hospital reporting was programmed into their computer, and you can’t get more streamlined than that. January 2021, Alex C. Madrigal, co-founder of the COVID Tracking Project,19 wrote:20
“In a series of analyses that we ran over the past several months, we came to nearly the opposite conclusion of other media outlets. The hospitalization data coming out of HHS are now the best and most granular publicly available data on the pandemic. This information has changed the response to the pandemic for the better.”
An unnamed federal health official spoke with a reporter from WSWS,21 calling the move to stop reporting COVID-29 hospital deaths “incomprehensible.” The official added, “It is the only consistent, reliable and actionable dataset at the federal level. Ninety-nine percent of hospitals report 100% of the data every day. I don’t know any scientists who want to have less data.”
CDC Is Hiding Data on Booster Shots
February 20, 2022, The New York Times22 reported that the CDC has not published large parts of the data they collected during the COVID pandemic. In fact, most of the information they collected in the past year on hospitalizations has not been made public.
The CDC published data on the effectiveness of the COVID-19 boosters in people younger than 65 in early February 2022. However, as The New York Times points out, the data did not cover individuals from 18 to 49 years old.23 This also is the group least likely to benefit from the genetic therapy shot, since CDC data24 demonstrate they have some of the lowest rates of severe disease and death.
The New York Post25 notes that the FDA overruled an expert advisory committee and the CDC overruled their own experts to promote the boosters for all age groups. After ensuring the boosters would be open to all people, the CDC then did not release much of the data despite pleas from scientists.
A look at the published data for those 50 to 65 years shows the booster reduces the risk of death from 4 in 1 million to 1 in 1 million. Further analysis shows that 75% of the additional three people out of 1 million who are helped by the booster shot have at least four comorbidities.26
Unfortunately, since the CDC has not released the raw data, U.S. scientists have had to rely on Israeli data. One study27 published in The New England Journal of Medicine gathered information from 4.6 million people 16 years and older who had received two doses of the Pfizer vaccine. They then compared severe illness and death between those who had had a booster dose and those who had not.
The data showed the group of individuals from 16 to 29 years had zero deaths whether they were boosted or not boosted. Likewise, the group from 30 to 39 years had one death whether they were boosted or not boosted. In fact, the difference in death rate did not rise until the participants were 60 to 69 years, at which point the non-boosted group had 44 deaths and the boosted group had 32 deaths.
In addition to the number of deaths rising in the boosted and non-boosted groups, the percentage of people in those age categories also declined, much like you would find in the general population where the death rate rises as people age.
CDC Claims Data May Be Misinterpreted
Kristen Nordlund is a spokeswoman for the CDC. In her comments to The New York Times,28 she said the data are being slowly released since, “basically, at the end of the day, it’s not yet ready for prime time.” Another reason she cited was the information may be misinterpreted to mean the vaccines are ineffective.
Nordlund gave a third reason for not releasing the data, saying that the data they have is based on 10% of the U.S. population, which the Times reporter points out is the same sample size used to track influenza each year. Jessica Malaty Rivera is an epidemiologist. She spoke with the Times, saying,29 “We have been begging for that sort of granularity of data for two years.”
She went on to say, “We are at a much greater risk of misinterpreting the data with data vacuums, than sharing the data with proper science, communication and caveats.” In an opinion piece, Staten Island Advance’s Tom Wrobleski characterizes the CDC’s decision, writing about what has happened to most people who have been willing to speak out:30
“We’re told to have faith in the CDC, in Dr. Anthony Fauci, in all the experts who are trained to handle public health crises. But we can’t have trust if vital information is withheld from us.
Because then it becomes a case of, “Shut up and do what we say. We’re the experts. You don’t need to know how we come to our decisions. We know what’s best.” And if you question the received wisdom, you’re suddenly a dangerous person. You’re likened to a terrorist. You’re told you want people to die. You get banned from social media.
If you dare protest, you can have your bank account frozen and your vehicle insurance suspended, as we saw during the Freedom Convoy protest in Canada. You can get trampled by police on horseback.
Withholding information only makes people more skeptical. It breeds suspicion. Or mere doubt. The CDC needs to do better if it wants our trust.”
The Jab Is Deadlier Than COVID if You’re Under 80
With the end of the HHS COVID death reporting system, the only means of tracking COVID deaths will now rely on the collection of data from death certificates at the state level. However, as the unnamed official told the WSWS reporter:31
“… deaths are reported by the counties/states but the process is very slow and many coroners are actually not wanting to cite COVID as the reason, while hospitals rely on diagnoses.”
This last part of the sentence may refer to the hospital incentives for a COVID diagnosis, which increases the potential it would be listed in the ICD codes that were communicated to the HHS. Although the CDC and HHS would like the data to remain hidden, a cost-benefit analysis32 by Stephanie Seneff, Ph.D., and independent researcher Kathy Dopp revealed the jab is deadlier than the infection in anyone under the age of 80.
The analysis looked at publicly available official data from the U.S. and U.K. for all age groups and compared all-cause mortality to the risk of dying from COVID-19. Seneff and Dopp wrote:33
“As of 6 February 2022, based on publicly available official UK and US data, all age groups under 50 years old are at greater risk of fatality after receiving a COVID-19 inoculation than an unvaccinated person is at risk of a COVID-19 death.
All age groups under 80 years old have virtually no benefit from receiving a COVID-19 inoculation, and the younger ages incur significant risk. This analysis is conservative because it ignores the fact that inoculation-induced adverse events such as thrombosis, myocarditis, Bell’s palsy, and other vaccine-induced injuries can lead to shortened life span.”
Their analysis is upheld by OneAmerica’s announcement34 that the death rate in working-age Americans from 18 to 64 years in the third quarter of 2021 was 40% higher than prepandemic levels. This finding is stunning since one of the most reliable data points we have is all-cause mortality.
It is a very hard statistic to massage since people are either dead or they’re not. Their inclusion in the national death index database is based on one primary criterion — they’ve died — regardless of the cause. As noted in a (not peer-reviewed) study led by scientist Denis Rancourt, who looked at U.S. mortality between March 2020 and October 2021:35
“All-cause mortality by time is the most reliable data for detecting true catastrophic events causing death, and for gauging the population-level impact of any surge in deaths from any cause.”
Other Insurance Companies Recording Similar Results
Other insurance companies that are citing higher mortality rates36 include Hartford Insurance Group, which announced mortality increased 32% from 2019 and 20% from 2020 before the shots. Lincoln National also reported death claims have increased 13.7% year over year and 54% in quarter 4 compared to 2019. Funeral homes are posting an increase in burials and cremations in 2021 over 2020.37
Similar numbers are also being reported in other countries. A large German health insurance company reported38,39 company data were nearly 14 times greater than the number of deaths reported by the German government. The insurance data are gathered directly from doctors applying for payment from a sample of 10.9 million people.
Despite mass injection campaigns, Silicon Valley software engineer Ben M. (@USMortality) revealed that in the 13 weeks before November 28, 2021, about 107,700 seniors died above the normal rate, despite a 98.7% vaccination rate.40
He also used data from the CDC, census.gov and his own calculations to show excess deaths rising in Vermont, even as the majority of adults have been injected. “Vermont had 71% of their entire population vaccinated by June 1, 2021,” he tweeted. “That’s 83% of their adult population, yet they are seeing the most excess deaths now since the pandemic!”41
It is easy to see why the HHS and CDC would like to hide these numbers from scrutiny. It is becoming more difficult to ignore with each passing day that the infection didn’t kill the number of people health experts claimed and the vaccine is killing far more than the virus.
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March 11th, 2022 by Center For Biological Diversity
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The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service announced today that the widely used insecticide malathion does not pose an extinction risk to a single protected animal or plant and refused to implement any immediate, enforceable measures to protect species from the chemical poison.
Today’s final biological opinion, which relies on scientifically unfounded assessment methods imposed during the Trump administration, stands in sharp contrast to the agency’s 2017 conclusion that 1,284 species would likely be jeopardized by malathion.
The opinion even backtracked from a draft biological opinion released by the Service just last year, which also used the debunked Trump-era methodology promoted by the pesticide industry to determine that 78 endangered plant and animal species were jeopardized by the pesticide.
“The Biden administration has squandered a historic opportunity to rein in the dangerous use of one of the world’s worst neurotoxic pesticides,” said Lori Ann Burd, environmental health director at the Center for Biological Diversity. “By ignoring the best available science and choosing to rely on promises of good behavior by the pesticide makers rather than real on-the-ground conservation measures, the Biden administration is condemning wildlife to extinction with a wink and a nod. This decision to cave to powerful special interest groups will do far-reaching harm to our most endangered wildlife.”
One week ago the National Marine Fisheries Service, a sister agency to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, released an updated biological opinion that determined malathion and two other toxic organophosphate pesticides are causing jeopardy to virtually every endangered U.S. salmon, sturgeon and steelhead species, as well as to Puget Sound orcas.
The Fisheries Service opinion debunks the Trump methodology that based harm analyses on historic use data known to be incomplete and unreliable. Specifically, the Fisheries Service found that: “Given the degree of uncertainty and speculation associated with these factors, and usage information generally, we determined that in most cases we cannot rely on them to construct assumptions about the exposure potential and at the same time ensure listed species will not be jeopardized.”
Yet the Fish and Wildlife Service continued to heavily rely on the same historic use data in its analyses to reach conclusions that the pesticide would not harm endangered species into the future.
The widely disparate findings by the two agencies were highlighted in harm assessments for bull trout and salmon, biologically similar species that share habitat in the Pacific Northwest. The Fish and Wildlife Service has determined that malathion won’t harm bull trout in Pacific Northwest streams; meanwhile the Fisheries Service has concluded that the use of the very same chemical in the very same streams is pushing every Pacific salmon to extinction.
“One’s based on sound science, and one’s based on industry-driven politics,” said Burd. “The Fisheries Service is bravely taking a stand to prevent extinctions while the Fish and Wildlife is continuing to cower to an anti-science, anti-endangered species agenda.”
Today’s final biological opinion restricts some uses of malathion, in theory, but contains loopholes that render important restrictions meaningless in the real world. For example, mosquito spraying with malathion is restricted “where feasible.” But what renders the restrictions unfeasible is undefined, allowing continued spraying of the pesticide.
This analysis is the first nationwide biological opinion completed by the Fish and Wildlife Service for any pesticide. But it embraced industry friendly methodologies for species’ harm assessments that were ordered after a direct intervention by President Trump’s secretary of the Interior, David Bernhardt.
“Why the Biden administration is hiding behind David Bernhardt’s twisted legal thinking so that it can ignore the heartbreaking extinction crisis is beyond dumbfounding,” said Burd. “President Biden’s conservation promises are meaningless if this administration doesn’t even have the backbone to stand up to the corporations poisoning our planet and our children.”
Around 1 million pounds of malathion are used in the United States each year. The insecticide is a neurotoxin that is part of the dangerous class of old pesticides called organophosphates. Organophosphates have been used as nerve agents in chemical warfare and have been linked to Gulf War syndrome, which causes fatigue, headaches, skin problems and breathing disorders in humans.
Background
In January 2017 the EPA completed its biological evaluation on malathion, determining that 97% of federally protected species are likely harmed by malathion. Following this announcement, Dow AgroSciences officials asked the Trump administration to suspend the assessments.
In May 2017 the Fish and Wildlife Service announced that after nearly four years of work its draft biological opinion assessing the pesticide’s harms was nearly complete and would be ready for public comment within months. As Fish and Wildlife Service career staffers were preparing to make the biological opinion available for public comment, they briefed Trump’s political appointees, including then-acting Interior Secretary Bernhardt, on the results of the agency’s nearly four years of rigorous scientific review.
Following this briefing, top officials at Trump’s Department of the Interior, including Bernhardt, acted to indefinitely suspend the release of the Service’s assessment. The Trump administration’s unprecedented efforts to undermine those findings were highlighted in a New York Timesinvestigation.
A document obtained by the Center for Biological Diversity through the Freedom of Information Act revealed the assessments were suspended after the top political appointees were briefed on the fact that the Service’s analysis had determined that malathion jeopardized the continued existence of 1,284 protected species.
In the intervening years, the findings have prompted no action by the EPA to limit malathion’s use in areas where species are imperiled by it.
As part of a legal agreement, the Fish and Wildlife Service was required to issue a biological opinion by the end of 2017 identifying ways to safeguard endangered species from malathion, as well as two other organophosphate insecticides, chlorpyrifos and diazinon, as required by the Endangered Species Act. The Trump administration refused to abide by the legal agreement.
In May of 2018 the Center again sued the EPA and Service for failing to comply with its duty to study the impacts of malathion, prompting the agency to release today’s assessment.
Last month the Center sued the Fish and Wildlife Service for failing to complete endangered species consultations on the pesticides chlorpyrifos and diazinon.
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Comments Off on U.S. Fish and Wildlife Reverses Course, Asserts That Neurotoxic Pesticide Malathion Will Not Put a Single Protected Species At Risk of Extinction
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If you had told us just four days ago that the Biden administration was funding secret bio labs in Ukraine of all places, we would not have believed you. Yeah, I don’t think we’re going to put that on TV. No thanks.
Then, if you told us that not only did the administration fund these secret bio labs in Ukraine, but that they then failed to secure the deadly contents of those labs before the Russian invasion—an invasion they knew was coming, an invasion they helped encourage—if you had told us that four days ago, we would have dismissed you as a nut. It was just too preposterous. We will not want anything to do with a story like that. There was no way it could be true. It was too far out. In any case, we already knew for a fact that that story was false. How do we know that? Because we read USA Today, America’s newspaper.
Within hours of the Russian invasion, USA Today published a rebuttal to all those crazies who were yammering on about secret Ukrainian bio labs. Here was the headline: “Fact check: False claim of US biolabs in Ukraine tied to Russian disinformation campaign.”
So, if you look carefully at the story—and we did because we were interested—you notice that this fact check was sourced to Ukrainian government unnamed officials and then Biden State Department officials. These were not exactly objective sources on this subject, but still the story seemed definitive. It was totally emphatic. “Russia has teamed up with China to further amplify the false claim of U.S. labs in Ukraine.”
OK. USA Today says it’s Russian disinformation. Maybe it is. On to the next story, but the fact checks didn’t stop. That was weird. We kept seeing the same check again and again. It was almost like despite endless official clarification, some people refused to believe the Biden administration. They preferred Russian propaganda instead and we assume they must be QAnon members. We assume that because Foreign Policy Magazine told us that. According to Foreign Policy, QAnon, whatever that is, was frantically disseminating “false claims of U.S. bio warfare labs in Ukraine.”
Those labs obviously didn’t exist. It was all just another lie from the Russians who lie for a living. Then the European Union… weighed in, throwing its credibility behind the same claim. These are conspiracy theories, the EU told us, they’re lies spread by Putin. An EU spokesmen then reminded us that, “the credibility of information provided by the Kremlin is in general, very doubtful and low.” That was good to know.
“Russian disinformation has a track record of promoting manipulative narratives about biological weapons and alleged secret labs.”
Yeah. We’re not going to do a segment about secret labs in Ukraine. Last thing we want to do on this show is traffic in Russian disinformation spread by QAnon, so we took a pass on that story. And that’s where things stood until yesterday when we happened to tune in to a hearing of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.
Toria Nuland was testifying so we were interested. Nuland was one of the people who brought us the Iraq War, never apologized for that and kept getting promoted because that’s how DC works. Toria Nuland is now Joe Biden’s Under Secretary of State in charge of Ukraine and she knows a lot about Ukraine.
In 2014, Toria Nuland engineered a coup in Ukraine in the name of democracy, of course. So, she is a highly informed source about Ukraine. So, she was having this colloquy with Senator Marco Rubio of Florida during her testimony, and at one point, Rubio took a tack that we were not expecting at all. He asked Nuland if Ukraine had biological weapons.
We never imagined Ukraine would have biological weapons. Why would Ukraine have bioweapons? So, it seemed like a pretty strange question, but it wasn’t half as shocking as the answer he got. Here’s what Toria Nuland said.
SEN. MARCO RUBIO: Does Ukraine have chemical or biological weapons?
VICTORIA NULAND: Ukraine has a biological research facilities, which, In fact, we are now quite concerned Russian troops, Russian forces, may be seeking to gain control of. 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.
Does Ukraine have biological weapons? Ugh, Ukraine has biological research facilities. What? You mean secret bio labs like the secret bio labs that Ukraine definitely doesn’t have? Ukraine has those? Yes, it does. And not only does Ukraine have secret bio labs, Toria Nuland said, whatever they’re doing in those labs is so dangerous and so scary that she is, “quite concerned” that the so-called research material inside those bio labs might fall into the hands of Russian forces.
Try not to use profanity on the air to describe our reaction. Our jaws dropped, let’s leave it there. Under oath in an open committee hearing, Toria Nuland just confirmed that the Russian disinformation they’ve been telling us for days is a lie and a conspiracy theory and crazy and immoral to believe is, in fact, totally and completely true.
Woah, you don’t hear things like that every day in Washington. Talk about a showstopper and a dozen questions instantly jump to mind. What exactly are they doing in these secret Ukrainian bio labs? Ukraine is the poorest country in Europe. It’s hardly a hotbed of biomedical research. We’re assuming these weren’t pharmaceutical labs, probably not developing new Leukemia drugs. From your answer, Toria Nuland, we would assume because you all but said it, that there’s a military application to this research, that they were working on bioweapons. Again, your answer suggests that.
Why would we fund something like that in Ukraine, and why didn’t you secure the contents of these bio labs before the Russians arrived as you knew they would? And then why did you go out of your way to lie to the American public about all of this? If the “research materials” in these labs were to escape somehow and you seem very concerned about that, what would be the effect on Ukraine and then on the rest of the world? How can we prepare for the consequences of that, this thing that you’re worried about? Shouldn’t we be preparing? Because as it turns out, we’ve just spent the last two years living with the pathogen that began in another foreign bio lab funded by the United States government secretly.
So, this question is on our mind. It seems fair. Now that’s some of what we would have asked if we were U.S. Senators, which were not. Yes, there’s a time limit. Time limit be damned because this is kind of important, but Rubio did not ask those questions. Instead, he changed the subject and told us once again that Vladimir Putin is bad.
SEN. MARCO RUBIO: If there is a biological or chemical weapon incident or… attack inside of Ukraine, is there any doubt in your mind that 100%, it would be the Russians that would be behind it?
VICTORIA NULAND: There is no doubt in my mind, senator, and it is classic Russian technique to blame on the other guy what they’re planning to do themselves.
OK, just get a pen. It’s a classic Russian technique to blame on the other guy, what they are planning to do themselves. That’s what Toria Nuland said. We almost laughed out loud. So, what you’re saying, Toria Nuland, if, for example, you were funding secret bio labs in Ukraine, but wanted to hide that fact from the people who are paying for it, in whose name you were doing it, then you might lie about it by claiming the Russians were lying about it. In other words, you might mount a disinformation campaign by claiming the other guy was mounting a disinformation campaign. Is that what you’re saying, Toria Nuland? It’s pretty funny.
What’s not funny is that this is all entirely real. We invited Marco Rubio on the show tonight to tell us what he knows about these bio labs. He declined to come. That invitation remains open. In the meantime, let’s review what little we do know about this. We’re going to start with a spokesman for the Russian Defense Ministry on Sunday. Now, we would never do this. We never played anything like this on the show before because of course, we’re Americans and when we want to know what’s going on we ask our own officials, the people we elect and whose salaries we pay, because it’s our country.
We don’t go to foreign sources because we trust our own sources first. But when it turns out the people who represent us and run our government are lying to us and never apologize for it and doing horrific things in our names, then you have to open your mind a little bit and at least assess what other people are saying. So, here was the Russian claim.
IGOR KONASHENKOV: During the course of the special military operation, facts were uncovered of the key regime, mopping up traces of military biological program under development in Ukraine, financed by the U.S. Defense Ministry.
OK. So, that apparently—we hadn’t seen that until this afternoon we started poking around—that may have been the root of the conspiracy theories that the fact checks told us were Russian disinformation. Let’s quote it: “Military biological programs are under development in Ukraine, financed by the U.S. Defense Ministry.” That’s the Russian claim.
Separately, a Russian Foreign Ministry spokesman said the Ukrainians were working on deadly pathogens, including plague and anthrax. Is that true? Now, obviously, we would not take Russia’s word for that ever, but we don’t have to take Russia’s word for that. The U.S. Defense Department has a website that contains this media clip about the opening of a biological research facility in Ukraine in 2010.
“U.S. Senator Dick Lugar applauded the opening of the Interim Central Reference Laboratory in Odessa, Ukraine, this week, announcing that it will be instrumental in researching dangerous pathogens used by bioterrorists. The level-3 bio-safety lab will be used to study anthrax, tularemia and Q Fever, as well as other dangerous pathogens.”
Oh, OK. Then the National Pulse dug up 2011 report from the U.S. National Academy of Sciences that also explained that the Odessa based laboratory “is responsible for the identification of especially dangerous biological pathogens.” So, what we’re doing—this is not the first time you’ve heard this story—we are funding the creation of deadly pathogens so we can study them and prevent people from getting infected with them. Maybe? There are lots of examples of this. The U.S. Embassy in Ukraine has a handy web page explaining that American and Ukrainian scientists have worked on a whole bunch of different experiments like this.
Some of the projects include work on African swine fever virus, hemorrhagic fever virus, and various respiratory viruses. The interesting thing, the telling thing, is that the U.S. Embassy’s website also contains links to fact sheets about America’s support for biological research in Ukraine, but all those links are now dead. That’s weird. It’s our government. We pay for it. Again, they’re there in our name, in the name of American citizens, but we can no longer read their web page. How does that work, exactly? They have no right to lie to us.
The web page is archived, thankfully, and the fact sheets show Defense Department funding to laboratories in Ukraine. So that looks like proof. It’s not Russian disinformation. It’s totally real. Sorry USA Today, America’s newspaper, it’s real. You can look it up on the internet if you want. In the face of that evidence, the Pentagon is still lying about and in fact, they’re repeating the same unbelievably stupid and now thoroughly discredited lies the fact checkers have told for weeks now. Here’s the spokesman for the Pentagon, John Kirby, today.
JOHN KIRBY: The Russian accusations are absurd. They’re laughable and, you know, in the words of my Irish Catholic grandfather, a bunch of malarkey. There’s nothing to it. It’s classic Russian propaganda and I wouldn’t, if I were you,…I wouldn’t give it a drop of ink worth…paying attention to.
REPORTER: Yeah, but can you explain to us what…has there been any relationship between the…?
JOHN KIRBY: We are not, not, developing biological or chemical weapons inside Ukraine. It’s not happening.
If I were you, I wouldn’t devote a drop of ink to it. First of all, you didn’t get to make that decision, Mr. Bureaucrat. We have a free press in this country. You don’t get to decide, but you’ll notice at the end of that, Kirby refuses to answer the question. Has there been any relationship between the U.S. Pentagon and a bioweapons facility in Ukraine and if so, what is that relationship? That’s Russian disinformation! What’s the answer? We’re not developing WMD in Ukraine right now! OK, got it, but why are we funding this and what exactly are we funding?
We reached out to the State Department separately and they provided us with this very carefully worded statement: “The U.S. Department of Defense does not own or operate biological laboratories in Ukraine.” Not that anyone said they did. Continuing the quote, “Undersecretary Nuland was referring to Ukrainian diagnostic and biodefense laboratories during her testimony, which are not biological weapons facilities.” What’s the difference exactly? Continuing the quote, “These institutions counter biological threats throughout the country.”
So that means nothing. You could describe our nuclear stockpile correctly as defensive. Our nuclear weapons are not designed to preemptively kill anybody. They’re designed to prevent other people from killing us, but they’re still nuclear weapons. So, when you stop lying and telling us what’s going on here and why don’t you more specifically tell us why you didn’t secure these materials? So, yes, we’re funding secret bio labs in Ukraine, but they are diagnostic and biodefense laboratories that counter biological threats.
OK, if these are purely defensive labs, why was Toria Nuland so concerned that Russians would get ahold of the materials from these facilities? Other world powers have come to the obvious conclusion. Again, we hate to do this, but under these circumstances, we asked our own spokespeople, they lied. We’re going to the Foreign Ministry of China, a country we despise. Here’s what they said today. They’re calling on weapons inspectors to take a look at these facilities in Ukraine right away.
ZHAO LIJIAN: Over the past two decades, the United States has been blocking the establishment of a verification regime to the Biological Weapons Convention and refused to accept the inspection of biological facilities within and outside its borders. The move has further aggravated the concern of the international community. We, once again, urge the U.S. to provide full clarification of its bio militarization activities within and outside its borders and accept multilateral verification.
Oh, they’re putting Russian and Chinese propaganda on the screen! Yeah, we did. We also put U.S. government propaganda on the screen and the difference is we expect to be lied to by foreign governments. We’re not globalists. We believe in one country. It’s this country, the United States. We do not expect to be lied to by our government and we won’t accept it. But let’s get to the substance of what the Chinese government just said. We never agree with the Chinese government on anything, but in this case, they make a fair point. We now know that dangerous biological agents, whether you call them weapons or not is completely irrelevant because they can be used as weapons. Is a gun a weapon? Not when you’re quail hunting. When you’re in a gunfight, it is. It’s a ridiculous semantic debate.
Dangerous biological agents remain, thanks to the Biden administration, unsecured in a chaotic war zone. At some point we need to know how that happened, who made those decisions. We have a right to know and let’s hope someone in Congress, probably not Marco Rubio, but someone else, will get to the bottom of it, but in the meantime, we pray that somewhere, in the United States government, there as an adult who cares enough to get this situation under control immediately.
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This article is adapted from Tucker Carlson’s opening commentary on the March 9, 2022 edition of “Tucker Carlson Tonight.”
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Today, the dangers of military escalation are beyond description.
What is now happening in Ukraine has serious geopolitical implications. It could lead us into a World War III scenario.
It is important that a peace process be initiated with a view to preventing escalation.
Global Research condemns Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
A Bilateral Peace Agreement is required.
The tragedy unfolding in Russia’s war on Ukraine because of the threat of NATO’s expansion to it’s borders was orchestrated by the US war party; therefore, it is of no surprise that calls for Ukraine to join NATO would be of great concern to Russia.
Although FOX news is a Pro-war channel that backed the war on Iraq in 2003 and almost every other war conducted by the US, Tucker Carlson interviewed former Democratic congresswoman Tulsi Gabbard who is basically anti war and asked her “but let’s stipulate – agree to agree – that it seems likely we could see some conflict between Russia and Ukraine soon. How should we view that?”
Gabbard said
“First of all, President Biden could end this crisis and prevent a war with Russia by doing something very simple,” she continued “Guaranteeing that Ukraine will not become a member of NATO – because if Ukraine became a member of NATO, that would put U.S. and NATO troops right on the doorstep of Russia, which, as Putin has laid out, would undermine their national security interests.”
Gabbard said that
“it gives the Biden administration a clear excuse to go and levy draconian sanctions, which are a modern-day siege against Russia and the Russian people,” she went on to say that the Military-Industrial Complex (MIC) controls the Biden administration but, in all fairness, they have controlled every administration since President Dwight D. Eisenhower gave his farewell address in 1954 warning about the rise of “misplaced powers.” She said that the MIC will win in this situation because they will benefit from a new cold war, “Warmongers on both sides of Washington have drumming up those tensions. If they get Russia to invade Ukraine, then, again, it locks in this new Cold War.”
Launching a war is never the answer, that should be the very last option even if all else fails. However, Russia had its back against the wall no matter how you look at it because if the same situation presented itself at the doorstep of the US borders with Mexico, it is guaranteed that in a blink of an eye, the US military would respond.
Imagine if Washington’s perceived enemies such as China or Iran were shipping lethal arms to Mexico’s military forces under the leadership of President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador who happened to be hostile towards Washington. Of course, it’s a hypothetical scenario, but what do you think would happen?
The US government would probably strike targets in Mexico within 48 hours or less. Russia has legitimate concerns against the West. If you don’t believe they do, here are some recent statements from US officials on the use of nuclear weapons against Russia.
Senator Roger Wicker (R-MS) who told Neil Cavuto of FOX news“I would not rule out military action. I think we start making a mistake when we take options off the table. So, I would hope the president keeps that option on the table”Cavuto asked “What does military action mean, senator?” Wicker’s comment was based on the use ofnuclear weapons against Russia if all else fails should ring alarm bells around the globe especially when a country like Russia who also has nuclear weapons:
“Well, military action could mean that we standoff with our ships in the Black Sea and we rain destruction on Russian military capability,” the senator said. “It could mean that. It could mean that we participate – and I would not rule that out. I would not rule out American troops on the ground.”
Continued “we don’t rule out first-use nuclear action. We don’t think it will happen. But there’s certain things in negotiations – if you’re going to be tough – that you don’t take off the table. And so I think the president should say that everything is on the table”
For years, Russian President Vladimir Putin has been warning the West that eventually, they will have no choice but to respond to the NATO’s advances. Putin has said that NATO is a threat to Russia’s security. NATO is indeed a security threat to many independent nations. According to Reuters, Iran’s President Ebrahim Raisi spoke to Putin in a phone call on February 24th and said that NATO’s expansion eastward was a “serious threat” to the region’s security and stability, the semi-official Nour News reported.” The report said Raisi expressed his concerns to Putin that “NATO’s expansion eastward creates tension and is a serious threat to the stability and security of independent states in various areas.”
US-NATO Target Libya
Let’s go back to the invasion of Libya by US-backed NATO forces. It basically started in 2010 when the Arab Spring revolts spread across the Middle East. “Pro-democracy” uprisings in Muslim countries including Egypt, Tunisia, Bahrain, Morocco, Syria and Libya were supported by the US establishment.
Several Non-Government Organizations (NGO’s) including the National Endowment for Democracy (NED) which was granted $118 million in 2010 by the Department of State (DOS) for a program called Foreign Operations, and Related Programs Appropriations Act, 2010’ which covered North Africa and the Middle East. On April 14th, 2011, Ron Nixon of The New York Times published ‘U.S. Groups Helped Nurture Arab Uprisings’ said that “a small core of American government-financed organizations were promoting democracy in authoritarian Arab states.” Nixon’s description of U.S. democracy-building campaigns is nothing new, but it shows you how far they will go to promote “American-style democracy” around the world:
The money spent on these programs was minute compared with efforts led by the Pentagon. But as American officials and others look back at the uprisings of the Arab Spring, they are seeing that the United States’ democracy-building campaigns played a bigger role in fomenting protests than was previously known, with key leaders of the movements having been trained by the Americans in campaigning, organizing through new media tools and monitoring elections
The article is admitting to the public without any remorse that it was a morale duty for Democracy:
A number of the groups and individuals directly involved in the revolts and reforms sweeping the region, including the April 6 Youth Movement in Egypt, the Bahrain Center for Human Rights and grass-roots activists like Entsar Qadhi, a youth leader in Yemen, received training and financing from groups like the International Republican Institute, the National Democratic Institute and Freedom House, a nonprofit human rights organization based in Washington, according to interviews in recent weeks and American diplomatic cables obtained by WikiLeaks.
The work of these groups often provoked tensions between the United States and many Middle Eastern leaders, who frequently complained that their leadership was being undermined, according to the cables. The Republican and Democratic institutes are loosely affiliated with the Republican and Democratic Parties. They were created by Congress and are financed through the National Endowment for Democracy, which was set up in 1983 to channel grants for promoting democracy in developing nations. The National Endowment receives about $100 million annually from Congress. Freedom House also gets the bulk of its money from the American government, mainly from the State Department
The New York Times who has covered up US-backed regime change operations worldwide for years claims that Washington promotes “Democratic values” for the good of the people as Nixon wrote “No one doubts that the Arab uprisings are home grown, rather than resulting from “foreign influence,” as alleged by some Middle Eastern leaders.” Those operating in Washington’s halls of power are involved in promoting “democracy” in foreign countries deny their role in creating the chaos that followed:
“We didn’t fund them to start protests, but we did help support their development of skills and networking,” said Stephen McInerney, executive director of the Project on Middle East Democracy, a Washington-based advocacy and research group. “That training did play a role in what ultimately happened, but it was their revolution. We didn’t start it”
The Destruction of Libya was Planned in Advance
Following the Arab Spring, Libyan rebels whom many are associated with Al Qaeda and other terrorist groups began a revolution against Muammar Gaddafi’s government. The war on Libya began on February 15th, 2011, protesters demanded legit democratic reforms which led to a confrontation between Gaddafi’s security forces and the Libyan rebels in the city of Benghazi which led to civilian deaths. Western media networks failed to mention that the Libyan rebels hijacked the peaceful protests and began attacking police stations, army bases and acquired weapons to attack military barricades and checkpoints nationwide.
Hundreds of thousands of rebels were firing AK-47s in the air during nationwide protests. Pro-Gaddafi forces had responded to rebel strongholds in Western Libya with an attack along the coastline towards the city of Benghazi which was the main center of the uprising. The town of Zawiya was then attacked by the Libyan air force, then recaptured by government troops. Weeks later, the US sent more than 8,000 personal and NATO forces with a combination of various warships and aircraft had initiated more than 3,000 targeted areas across Libya.
US-backed Libyan rebels then established the National Transitional Council (NTC) during the chaos. US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton declared to the world that Gaddafi initiated a “campaign of violence against his own people” and that he had “defied the world” but what she really meant was that Gaddafi had defied the New World Order.
The Obama regime had called for a US-backed NATO intervention in Libya, but it initially began under the Bush Regime after the September 11th, attacks when Washington had planned to overthrow Libya and several other Muslim countries. Washington’s history of overthrowing governments or to conduct “regime change” have used Non-Government Organizations (NGO’s) such as the National Endowment for Democracy (NED) which is a front for CIA-based operations.
The NED recruited several human rights organizations including the ‘International Federation of Human Rights’ (Fédération internationale des ligues des droits de l’Homme, FIDH), ‘Libyan League for Human Rights’ (LLHR) and other so-called “democracy promotion groups” which had conducted operations in Libya to manage various labor organizations, student movements and even conspired to control news organizations to propagandize the Libyan people to turn on Gaddafi. In other words, NGO’s operating in Libya had changed the political landscape to benefit the Western powers including the US, France, the UK and the rest of the NATO alliance.
The operation to remove Gaddafi from power was just part of the destabilization process. Although Gaddafi had originally crushed radical jihadi’s who were spiraling out of control in the 1990s, he had engineered peace deals among these radical groups and that calmed the situation, yet, the West wanted him removed from power.
Adding to the chaos, infighting between the Libyan rebels with many radical elements occurred with the death of General Abdel Fattah Younes who decided to join the protests was a top official in the Libyan government had resigned on February 22ndand urged members of the Libyan army to voice legitimate concerns but was killed by a radical Islamic faction called ‘Abu Obeida Ibn al-Jarah brigade.’
On February 27th, 2011, the National Transitional Council (NTC) was established in rebel-held areas of Libya. France was the first country to recognize the NTC on March 10th, followed by several members of the NATO alliance, the puppet states of Senegal, Gambia, Qatar and Kuwait and of course, the architect of Libya’s chaos, the U.S. all had recognized the NTC and its representative, Mahmoud Jibril who eventually became the prime minister of Libya while they declared Gaddafi’s government, illegitimate.
By March 19th, the NATO-led coalition intervened in Libya to impose the United Nations Security Council Resolution 1973 with a 10-0 vote with abstentions including China, India, Russia, Brazil and Germany (who is a member of NATO) with the intentions that a ceasefire would take place while imposing a no-fly zone with sanctions placed on Gaddafi’s government in order to protect civilians. However, the U.S. and British forces fired over 100 Tomahawk cruise missiles into Libya while British and Canadian air power launched sorties killing countless civilians which was followed up by a naval blockade.
Libya’s Golden Dinar
Libya was a nation that was once categorized as a success due to its profits from its oil exports. On February 21st, 2011 the BBC reported that “During Muammar Gaddafi’s 42-year rule, Libya has made great strides socially and economically thanks to its vast oil income, but tribes and clans continue to be part of the demographic landscape.”
Libya invested in Africa and even attempted to create a pan-African currency called the Libyan golden Dinar that would have allowed Africa to ditch the US dollar and the Cfa franc which was a currency imposed by France on its former colonies in Africa as legal tender, but that was clearly a threat to the Western powers. Wikileaks had released Hillary Clinton’s email which exposed what was the concern of the Western establishment that included the US and France:
On April 2, 2011, sources with access to advisors to Saif al-Islam Qaddafi stated in strictest confidence that while the freezing of Libya’s foreign bank accounts presents Muammar Qaddafi with serious challenges, his ability to equip and maintain his armed forces and intelligence services remains intact. According to sensitive information available to this these individuals, Qaddafi’s government holds 143 tons of gold, and a similar amount in silver. During late March 2011 these stocks were moved to SABHA (southwest in the direction of the Libyan border with Niger and Chad); taken from the vaults of the Libyan Central Bank in Tripoli. This gold was accumulated prior to the current rebellion and was intended to be used to establish a pan-African currency based on the Libyan golden Dinar. This plan was designed to provide, the Francophone African Countries with an alternative to the French franc (CFA).
(Source Comment: According to knowledgeable individuals this quantity of gold and silver is valued at more than $7 billion. French intelligence officers discovered this plan shortly after the current rebellion began, and this was one of the factors that influenced President Nicolas UNCLASSIFIED U.S. Department of State Case No. F-2014-20439 Doc No. C05785522 Date: 01/07/2016
The Making of a Failed State
Gaddafi had used the country’s oil wealth to build public schools, hospitals, clinics and infrastructure and offered free healthcare, housing and education for its citizens. The Libyan government even offered profit-sharing opportunities for every citizen from its major corporations and its oil industry. Libyan women benefited in obtaining high-level jobs and equal pay. Students were able to study either at home or anywhere around the world, even Low-income students were offered scholarships all paid for by the Libyan government and the list goes on. Although Libya was not perfect, it had its share of serious problems, but the point is that Gaddafi tried to do the right thing for his people whether you agree with him or not.
Libya is now considered one of the most dangerous countries on earth where various warring tribes and heavily armed militias who have carved up their own mini states with their own rules. Now the Libyan rebels and western multinational corporations keep profits from Libya’s oil exports while the standard of living for Libyans has become one of the worst in Africa. Libya has become a launch pad for terrorists who made their way to war-torn countries in the Middle East and Africa including Syria. Migrants from all over the world who were caught in the civil war were turned into slaves while young women were raped and forced into prostitution, many were literally sold at auctions to the highest bidder.
So, does NATO pose a threat to countries around the world?
Does Vladimir Putin and the Russian people have a point about the dangers of NATO on its borders? Those who are not sure should look at the example of Libya, once a prosperous nation which has been reduced to a third world hellhole. With that said, how leaders around the world should respond to NATO’s advances on their borders?
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Timothy Alexander Guzman writes on his own blog site, Silent Crow News, where this article was originally published. He is a regular contributor to Global Research.
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On Wednesday, while reading stories on the situation in Ukraine, I discovered SouthFront was taken offline. I read both corporate and alternative media to get both sides of a story. But on Wednesday I wasn’t allowed to do this, the web browser wouldn’t pull up the website.
On Thursday, I tried again. Now the site was online. “On March 9, the Germany-based Hetzner webhosting removed SouthFront from its network and suspended our IP,” SouthFront explained in a lead story following the takedown and restoration of the website.
Unfortunately the Hetzner Team was tricked by manipulations of the recently established propagandist structure (like this) that works to instigate international hatred. Structures like this one are not satisfied with our independent position and alternative point of view on the ongoing military developments.
After reading this story, I attempted to retweet it. A dialog box popped up and informed me that SouthFront’s alternative to the biased and selective pro-war propaganda coming out of corporate media will not be tolerated.
Twitter believes reposting dispassionate and straight-forward news reporting on the “war” in Ukraine is “harmful” to those of us that peruse social media.
This is not the first time SouthFront has faced censorship for the crime of relating facts that are not part of narratives cooked up by the state.
In December, 2016 the online payment system PayPal terminated South Front’s account as part of an effort to strangle support for the website. “We know that the pressure is being exerted by forces connected to the US government,” the site related in an Open Letter.
We have so far been able to deal with all efforts to harm our project. In 2015, the project faced hostile acts by the Atlantic Council and a number of European organizations linked to NATO. We have been deprived, without any warning, of the project’s YouTube channels, Facebook pages, and the main site has been subjected to cyberattacks. There have been cases of leaks of false information aimed at discrediting us. Until recently, our team was able to deal effectively and these and other challenges, which are similar to those faced by other entities attempting to bring alternative points of view to light, such as Wikileaks.
SouthFront’s Youtube channel was restored after more than a hundred people contacted the corporation (owned by the crony corporatist leviathan Google) and protested the move.
It is important to note that the 2016 actions were taken after SouthFront had posted an article from Nordic Filmworks LTD over a critical montage of their “Stand with Ukraine” video. I attempted to link to a Fort-Russ article on this incident, but it now appears Fort-Russ is also offline for the crime of relating Russia’s side of the story on Ukraine following the State Department and Victoria Nuland’s successful “color revolution” in 2014, dubbed the “Revolution of Dignity” by the US government and its media.
On that note, a paper presented at the virtual 10th World Congress of the International Council for Central and East European Studies at Concordia University, in Montreal during August, 2021 examined a massacre (49 killed, 157 wounded) during the Nuland and State Department arranged Maidan protests against the democratically elected government of Viktor Yanukovych.
The Wall Street Journal posted an article by the former Connecticut neocon senator and outspoken war proponent Joe Liebermanon Wednesday arguing in favor of a no-fly zone the Russians have warned will result in WWIII. “There are moral reasons for the U.S. and NATO to act that are rooted in our Good Samaritan laws and values,” Lieberman writes,
Sending American or other NATO planes into the air over Ukraine to keep Russian aircraft away would protect Ukrainian lives and freedom on the ground, making it possible to defeat Mr. Putin’s brazen and brutal attempt to rebuild the Russian empire, undercut U.S. global leadership and destroy the world order that we and our allies have built.
Joe Lieberman may actually believe President Putin and the Russians want to recapture western territories of the former Soviet Union, but this is nonsense.
Putin, as should more than obvious to even casual observers, is demanding NATO stop pushing its troops, missiles, and other weapons of mass destruction up against Russia’s western border. Putin understands very well what the US and its clients in Europe want–the destruction of the Russian Federation and capture of its vast territory (and abundant natural resources, including gas and oil) opened up for exploitation by transnational corporations.
Joe Lieberman’s “Good Samaritan laws and values” are in fact a cover for continued suffering in Ukraine under the rule of the Zionist Volodymyr Zelenskyy, a former actor and comedian with connections to Russian oligarchs (Zelenskyy appointed Andriy Bohdan as head of the Presidential Administration of Ukraine; Bohdan had been the lawyer of Ukrainian oligarch Ihor Kolomoyskyi). Despite this, Zelenskyy initiated a supposed crackdown on the oligarch billionaires.
The former Ukrainian president, Petro Poroshenko, widely considered to be an oligarch, is founder of several state-owned confectionery enterprises, owner of a number of car and bus factories, the Kuznia na Rybalskomu shipyard, and the 5 Kanal television channel.
Finally, the endless barrage of anti-Russian propaganda in the West, and especially the US, has apparently taken ahold of the cognitive behavior of millions of Americans.
“A broad bipartisan majority of Americans think the United States should stop buying Russian oil and gas and work with NATO to set up ‘no-fly zones’ to protect Ukraine from Russian air strikes, according to a Reuters/Ipsos poll completed on Friday,” the corporate news corporation reported. “It was not clear if respondents who supported a no-fly zone were fully aware of the risk of conflict” and, left unmentioned, the threat of thermonuclear war.
Similar propaganda brought support of George W. Bush’s neocon invasion of Afghanistan and Iraq, and Obama’s actions in Libya and Syria.
“A key reason seems to be that that powerful, opinion-molding institutions—the mass communications media, government, political parties, and even education—are controlled, more or less, by what President Eisenhower called ‘the military-industrial complex’,” writes Lawrence Wittner. “And, at the outset of a conflict, these institutions are usually capable of getting flags waving, bands playing, and crowds cheering for war.”
However, as a result this latest preplanned war, it is entirely possible the flags, bands, and crowds may be vaporized by nuclear explosions.
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Kurt Nimmo is a regular contributor to Global Research.
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Several days ago a mainstream policy analyst dropped me a note mentioning that the Russians were claiming to have discovered the existence of a network of biowarfare labs in Ukraine, funded by the American Pentagon and allegedly working with anthrax and plague. Given that much of my focus over the last two years had been on America’s biowarfare program and its possible deployment, he wondered what I thought about the matter.
I’d seen some of the same Russian accusations swirling around the Internet, and hadn’t paid much attention. On the one hand, over the decades America had spent over $100 billion dollars on “biodefense,” the euphemistic term for biowarfare development, and we had the world’s oldest and largest such program, one of the few ever deployed in real life combat. So allocating a few millions or even tens of millions to labs in Ukraine would hardly be implausible.
But on the other hand, even if we hadn’t, the Russians might certainly say we had, with those charges being almost stereotypical examples of the “black propaganda” used by an invading army to justify its attack to the world. Since I don’t read Ukrainian, the documents the Russians claimed to have found would mean nothing to me, and except for zealous partisans on each side, I doubted whether anyone else would be convinced one way or the other.
However, the situation drastically changed on Tuesday, due to the Congressional testimony of Under Secretary of State Victoria Nuland, chief architect of our Ukraine policy. She seemed not only to acknowledge the existence of those Ukrainian biolabs but was also apparently concerned that their dangerous contents might fall into enemy hands, thereby seeming to completely confirm those shocking Russian accusations. I’ve never regarded Neocons as particularly bright, but the game-ending own-goal she scored on an issue of the greatest international importance may have set a new record for total incompetence.
I was hardly the only person to notice the massive implications of Nuland’s apparent disclosure. Glenn Greenwald ranks as one of the world’s highest-profile journalists, and he quickly released a lengthy column yesterday morning laying out the facts, and noting that our official media fact-checkers had spent a couple of weeks denouncing and ridiculing accusations that now seem to have turned out to be true.
Tucker Carlson devoted his top-rated show on cable to the same issue, emphasizing the shame of having to quote official Russian and Chinese government propagandists on the matter because our own American government officials had been lying.
All the facts are not yet in, but at this stage I think we should probably assume that the captured documents provided by the Russians are correct, and our Defense budget was funding the development of deadly biological weapons at Ukrainian labs near the Russian border, including anthrax and plague.
Given that Ukraine ranks as one of Europe’s most corrupt states, word of these projects surely leaked out, and it’s easy to understand why the Russians took a very dim view of it, certainly contributing to their decision to invade. How would America react if a rabidly-hostile Mexican government backed by China were developing deadly bioweapons near the American border?
Naturally, this gigantic story based upon Nuland’s inadvertent disclosure has been totally ignored by America’s mainstream media, but Carlson’s Youtube clip from last night is already approaching a million views, and the facts will continue to spread.
Kevin Barrett quickly arranged an interview with me, and released a short video outlining the story, and setting it in a broader context. In particular, he noted that back in 2017, Russian President Vladimir Putinhad raised serious biowarfare concerns about our collection of biological material from ethnic Russians, certainly a very suspicious project for our government to have undertaken.
In any event, I think it was an extremely reckless and foolish thing for the American government to have funded the creation of biowarfare facilities in Ukraine, a country enormously hostile to its nuclear-armed Russian neighbor.
And governments that do some extremely reckless and foolish things are much more likely to have done other extremely reckless and foolish things, possibly including those that have already had massive adverse consequences, such as a million American deaths over the last two years.
During those same two years, I have published a lengthy series of articles outlining the strong perhaps even overwhelming evidence that the global Covid epidemic was the result of an American biowarfare attack against China (and Iran), with the articles having been viewed a total of more than 400,000 times and also collected into a freely downloadable eBook.
The evidence I have accumulated seems rather massive and the only argument anyone has ever effectively raised on the other side is that even rogue elements of the Trump Administration could not possibly have done anything so reckless and foolish. I think that argument seems far weaker today than it did a week ago.
Moreover, late last month the New York Timesreported on a couple of new scientific papers by our top researchers on the original Covid outbreak in Wuhan. Those findings indicate that the first infection probably occurred in late November or early December, somewhat later than had previously been believed. Meanwhile, back in April 2020 ABC News reported and Israeli TV confirmed that our Defense Intelligence Agency had produced a secret report “in the second week of November” describing a “potentially cataclysmic” disease outbreak taking place in Wuhan. This DIA report now appears to have been written before the first Chinese person had even become infected.
I think that previous inadvertent disclosure by our Intelligence officials falls into the same category as Victoria Nuland’s blunder.
All of this was discussed in three of my video interviews last month, which have now passed 170,000 total views. I suggest that people consider revisiting this material given the new disclosure of our anti-Russian biowarfare activities in Ukraine.
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This article was originally published on The Unz Review.
Under Secretary of State Victoria Nuland appeared before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL), hoping to debunk growing claims that there are chemical weapons labs in Ukraine, smugly asked Nuland: “Does Ukraine have chemical or biological weapons?”
Secretary of State Tony Blinken, a responsible government official heading foreign affairs and representing the United States on the global stage, “casually suggested” that Poland could hand over its entire fleet of 28 Soviet-era MiG-29s to Ukraine, desperate for imposing no-fly zone, and, in return, the United States government would “backfill” the Polish Air Force with American F-16s.
It no longer sounds hyperbolic to me that madmen in the declining U.S. Empire might resort, like rats in a sinking ship, to first strike use of nuclear weapons, which is official U.S. policy. My stomach is churning at the thought, despite what most experts say: that the chances of a nuclear war are slight.
The order from the Ukrainian commander was to assault the Donbas Peoples Republics of Donetsk (DPR) and Lugansk (PRL), by a combat coordination of the battalion tactical group with the 80th Separate Airborne Assault Brigade of the Ukrainian Armed Forces. This brigade was trained since 2016 by US and British instructors in accordance with NATO training programs.
Two years on from the start of COVID-19, it has indeed become apparent to many that it has been an event involving high levels of propaganda and one in which political and economic agendas have been advanced under its cover.
If we look at what is happening in Ukraine, without being misled by the gross falsifications of the mainstream media, we realize that respect for each other’s rights has been completely ignored; indeed, we have the impression that the Biden Administration, NATO and the European Union deliberately want to maintain a situation of obvious imbalance, precisely to make impossible any attempt at a peaceful resolution of the Ukrainian crisis, provoking the Russian Federation to trigger a conflict.
A recent telephone recording by Steve Kirsch, founder of the COVID-19 Early Treatment Fund, in which he responds to a fact checker from PolitiFact, is equally revealing. The young woman clearly has no idea what she’s talking about, yet she’s been put into a position where she gets to be the sole and final arbiter of truth.
They confess: they had no virus when they concocted the test for the virus; they “contrived” a model by pretending to find what they wanted to find; it’s called a self-fulfilling prophecy.
The Western media cites mental health experts on the impacts of past war situations on children without speculating how the Ukraine war may affect the young. Children can be shaken, depressed, withdrawn, undemanding, liable to cry without cause and wet their beds.
The reality behind the propaganda is that the West and its Ukrainian allies have opportunistically exploited and empowered the extreme right in Ukraine, first to pull off the 2014 coup, and then by redirecting it to fight separatists in Eastern Ukraine.
Two days after Russia attacked Ukraine and the day before Vladimir Putin put Russia on nuclear alert, I wrote a little article whose first sentence was: “Not wanting to sound hyperbolic, but I am starting to conclude that the nuclear madmen running the U.S./NATO New Cold War they started decades ago are itching to start a nuclear war with Russia.”
It was an intuition based on my knowledge of U.S./Russia history, including the U.S engineered coup in Ukraine in 2014, and a reading of current events. I refer to it as intuition, yet it is based on a lifetime’s study and teaching of political sociology and writing against war. I am not a Russian scholar, simply a writer with a sociological, historical, and artistic imagination, although my first graduate academic study in the late 1960s was a thesis on nuclear weapons and why they might be someday used again.
It no longer sounds hyperbolic to me that madmen in the declining U.S. Empire might resort, like rats in a sinking ship, to first strike use of nuclear weapons, which is official U.S. policy. My stomach is churning at the thought, despite what most experts say: that the chances of a nuclear war are slight. And despite what others say about the Ukraine war: that it is an intentional diversion from the Covid propaganda and the Great Reset (although I agree it achieves that goal).
My gut tells me no; it is very real, sui generis, and very, very dangerous now.
The eminent scholar Michel Chossudovsky of Global Research agrees that we are very close to the unthinkable. In a recent historical analysis of U.S.-Russia relations and nuclear weapons, he writes the following (before quoting Vladimir Putin’s recent statement on the matter): “Vladimir Putin’s statement on February 21st, 2022 was a response to U.S. threats to use nuclear weapons on a preemptive basis against Russia, despite Joe Biden’s “reassurance” that the U.S. would not be resorting to ‘A first strike’ nuclear attack against an enemy of America”:
Let me [Putin] explain that U.S. strategic planning documents contain the possibility of a so-called preemptive strike against enemy missile systems. And who is the main enemy for the U.S. and NATO? We know that too. It’s Russia. In NATO documents, our country is officially and directly declared the main threat to North Atlantic security. And Ukraine will serve as a forward springboard for the strike.” (Putin Speech, February 21, 2022, emphasis added)
Putin is absolutely correct. It is why he put Russia’s nuclear forces on full alert. Only those ignorant of history, which sadly includes most U.S. Americans, don’t know this.
I believe that today we are in the greatest danger of a nuclear war since the Cuban Missile Crisis of October 1962, something I vividly remember as a teenager. The same feelings return. Dread. Anxiety. Breathlessness. I do not think these feelings are misplaced nor they are simply an emotional response. I try to continue writing on other projects that I have started but feel stymied. The possibility of nuclear war, whether intentional or accidental, obsesses me.
In order to grasp this stomach-churning possibility within the context of Ukraine, we need to put aside all talk of morality, rights, international law, and think in terms of great power politics, as John Mearsheimer has so clearly articulated. As he says, when a great power feels its existence is threatened, might makes right. You simply can’t understand world politics without thinking at this level. Doing so does not mean justifying the use of might; it is a means of clarifying the causes of wars, which start long before the first shots are fired.
In the present crisis over Ukraine, Russia clearly feels existentially threatened by U.S./NATO military moves in Ukraine and in eastern Europe where they have positioned missiles that can be very quickly converted to nuclear and are within a few minutes range of Russia. (And of course there are U.S./NATO nuclear missiles throughout western and southern Europe.) Vladimir Putin has been talking about this for many years and is factually correct. He has reiterated that this is unacceptable to Russia and must stop. He has pushed for negotiations to end this situation.
The United States, despite its own Monroe Doctrine that prohibits another great power from putting weapons or military forces close to its borders, has blocked its ears and kept upping the ante, provoking Russian fears. This fact is not in dispute but is shrugged off by U.S./NATO as of little consequence. Such an attitude is pure provocation as anyone with a smidgeon of historical awareness knows.
The world was very lucky sixty years ago this October when JFK and Nikita Khrushchev negotiated the end of the Cuban Missile Crisis before the world was incinerated. Kennedy, of course, was intensely pressured by the military and CIA to bomb Cuba, but he resisted. He also rejected the insane military desire to nuke the Soviet Union, calling such people crazy; at a National Security Council meeting on September 12, 1963, when the Joint Chiefs of Staff presented a report about a nuclear first strike against the Soviet Union which they wanted for that fall, he said, “Preemption is not possible for us.”
Such leadership, together with the nuclear test ban treaty he negotiated with the USSR that month, inter alia (such treaties have now been abrogated by the U.S. government), assured his assassination organized by the CIA. These days, the U.S. is led by deluded men who espouse a nuclear first strike policy, which tells one all one needs to know about the danger the world is in. The U.S. has been very sick with Russia hatred for a long time.
After the terror of the Cuban Missile Crisis, many more people took the threat of nuclear war seriously. Today very few do. It has receded into the ”unimaginable.” In 1962, however, as James W. Douglass writes in JFK and the Unspeakable:
Kennedy saw that, at least outside Washington, D.C., people were living with a deeper awareness of the ultimate choice they faced. Nuclear weapons were real. So, too, was the prospect of peace. Shocked by the Cuban Missile Crisis into recognizing a real choice, people preferred peace to annihilation.
Today the reality of nuclear annihilation has receded into unconsciousness. This despite the recent statements by U.S. generals and the U.S. Ukrainian puppet Zelensky about nuclear weapons and their use that have extremely inflamed Russia’s fears, which clearly is intentional.
The game is to have some officials say it and then deny it while having a policy that contradicts your denial. Keep pushing the envelope is U.S. policy.
It is a bi-partisan Cold War 2, getting very hot
Obama-Biden reigned over the U.S. 2014 coup in Ukraine, Trump increased weapon sales to Ukraine in 2017, and Biden has picked up the baton from his partner (not his enemy) in this most deadly game.
It is a bi-partisan Cold War 2, getting very hot. And it is the reason why Russia, its back to the wall, attacked Ukraine. It is obvious that this is exactly what the U.S. wanted or it would have acted very differently in the leadup to this tragedy. All the current ringing of hands is pure hypocrisy, the nihilism of a nuclear power never for one moment threatened but whose designs were calculated to threaten Russia at its borders.
The media propaganda against Russia and Putin is the most extreme and extensive propaganda in my lifetime. Patrick Lawrence has astutely examined this in a recent essay, where he writes the same is true for him:
Many people of many different ages have remarked in recent days that they cannot recall in their lifetimes a more pervasive, suffocating barrage of propaganda than what has engulfed us since the months that preceded Russia’s intervention. In my case it has come to supersede the worst of what I remember from the Cold War decades.
Propaganda as cognitive warfare
Engulfed is an appropriate word. Lawrence rightly points to this propaganda as cognitive warfare directed at the U.S. population (and the rest of the world) and notes its connection to the January 2021 final draft of a “diabolic” NATO study called “Cognitive Warfare.” He quotes it thus: “The brain will be the battlefield of the 21st century,” . . . “Humans are the contested domain. Cognitive warfare’s objective is to make everyone a weapon.”
This cognitive warfare, however, has a longer history in cutting edge science. For each successive decade beginning with the 1990s and a declaration from President (and ex-Director of the CIA) George H. W. Bush that the 1990s would be the Decade of Brain Research, presidents have announced additional decades long projects involving the brain, with 2000-2010 being the Decade of Behavior Project, followed by mapping of the brain, artificial intelligence, etc. all organized and funded through the Office of Science and Technology Project (OSTP) and the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA).
This medical, military, and scientific research has been part of a long range plan to extend MK-Ultra’s mind control to the population at large under the cover of medical science, and it has been simultaneously connected to the development and funding of the pharmaceutical industries research and development of new brain-altering drugs.
In other words, the cognitive warfare we are now being subjected to has many tentacles connected to much more than today’s fanatical anti-Russian propaganda over Ukraine. All the U.S. wars of aggression have been promoted under its aegis, as have the lies about the attacks of September 11, 2001, the economic warfare by the elites, the COVID crisis, etc. It’s one piece.
It is a critique of law professor Cass Sunstein, appointed by Obama to be the Administrator of the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs. Sunstein had written an article with a plan for the government to prevent the spread of anti-government “conspiracy theories” in which he promoted the use of anonymous government agents to use secret “cognitive infiltration” of these groups in order to break them up; to use media plants to disparage their arguments.
He was particularly referring to those who questioned the official 9/11 narrative but his point obviously extended much further. He was working in the tradition of the great propagandists. Griffin took a scalpel to this call for cognitive warfare and was of course a victim of it as well. Sunstein has since worked for the World Health Organization (WHO) on COVID psychological responses and other COVID committees. It’s all one piece.
Sunstein’s wife is Samantha Power, Obama’s Ambassador to the United Nations and war hawk extraordinaire. She gleefully promoted the U.S. destruction of Libya under the appellation of the “responsibility to protect,” a “humane” cover for imperialism. Now she is Biden’s Administrator of the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), an arm of the CIA throughout the world. It’s all one piece.
The merry-go-round goes round and round.
I have gone off on this slight tangent to emphasize how vast and interconnected are the players and groups on Team Cognitive Warfare. They have been leading the league for quite some time and are hoping their game plan against Team Russia will keep them there. So far they are winning, as Patrick Lawrence says:
Look at what has become of us. Most Americans seem to approve of these things, or at least are unstirred to object. We have lost all sense of decency, of ordinary morality, of proportion. Can anyone listen to the din of the past couple of weeks without wondering if we have made of ourselves a nation of grotesques?
It is common to observe that in war the enemy is always dehumanized. We are now face to face with another reality: Those who dehumanize others dehumanize themselves more profoundly.
Perhaps people are too ignorant to see through the propaganda. To have some group to hate is always “uplifting.” But we are all responsible for the consequences of our actions, even when those actions are just buying the propaganda and hating those one is told to hate. It is very hard to accept that the leaders of your own country commit and contemplate unspeakable evil deeds and that they wish to control your mind. To contemplate that they might once again use nuclear weapons is unspeakable but necessary if we are to prevent it.
I hope my fears are unfounded. I agree with Gilbert Doctorow that the Ukraine-Russia war separates the sheep from the goats, that there is no middle ground. This is not to celebrate war and the death of innocent people, but it does demand placing the blame squarely where it belongs and not trying to have it both ways. People like him, John Mearsheimer, the late badly missed Stephen Cohen, Ray McGovern, Scott Ritter, Pepe Escobar, Patrick Lawrence, Jack Matlock, Ted Postol, et al. are all cutting through the propaganda and delivering truth in opposition to all the lies. They go gentile with fears of nuclear war, however, as if it is somewhat possible but highly unlikely, as if their deepest thoughts are unspeakable, for to utter them would be an act of despondency.
The consensus of the experts tends to be that the U.S. wishes to draw the Russians into a long protracted guerrilla war along the lines of its secret use of mujahideen in Afghanistan in 1979 and after. There is evidence that this is already happening.
But I think the U.S. strategists know that the Russians are too smart for that; that they have learned their lesson; and that they will withdraw once they feel they have accomplished their goals. Therefore, from the U.S./NATO perspective, time is reasonably short and they must act quickly, perhaps by doing a false flag operation that will justify a drastic response, or upping the tempo in some other way that would seem to justify the use of nuclear weapons, perhaps tactical at first.
I appreciate the input of the Russia experts I mentioned above. Their expertise dwarfs mine, but I disagree. Perhaps I am an excitable sort; perhaps I am one of those Patrick Lawrence refers to, quoting Carl Jung, as too emotional and therefore incapable of clear thinking. (I will leave the issue of this long held but erroneous western philosophical belief in the division of emotions and thoughts for another day.)
Perhaps I can’t see the obvious that a nuclear war will profit no one and therefore it cannot happen. Yet Ted Postol, MIT professor of technology and international security, while perhaps agreeing that an intentional nuclear war is very unlikely, has been warning of an accidental one for many years. He is surely right on that score and well worth listening to.
But either way, I am sorry to say, perhaps because my perspective is that of a generalist, not an expert, and my thinking is informed by art as much as social science and history, my antennae pick up a very disturbing message. A voice tells me that the danger is very, very real today. It says:
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Today, the dangers of military escalation are beyond description.
What is now happening in Ukraine has serious geopolitical implications. It could lead us into a World War III scenario.
It is important that a peace process be initiated with a view to preventing escalation.
Global Research condemns Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
A Bilateral Peace Agreement is required.
On Sunday, Secretary of State Tony Blinken, a responsible government official heading foreign affairs and representing the United States on the global stage, “casually suggested” that Poland could hand over its entire fleet of 28 Soviet-era MiG-29s to Ukraine, desperate for imposing no-fly zone, and, in return, the United States government would “backfill” the Polish Air Force with American F-16s.
“We are looking actively now at the question of airplanes that Poland may provide to Ukraine, and looking at how we might be able to backfill it should Poland decide to supply those planes,” Speaking alongside Moldovan President Maia Sandu, Blinken told a briefing in Chisinau on Sunday, March 6.
Upon getting wind of the “facetious remark” by the charismatic secretary of state idolized by diplomatic community for wavy salt-and-pepper hair and suave Parisian etiquette, Russian defense spokesman Igor Konashenkov issued a stark warning that any attempt by an outside power to facilitate a no-fly zone over Ukraine, including providing air strips and aircraft to Kyiv, would be considered a belligerent in the war and treated accordingly.
Hours after the Russian warning, the Polish Foreign Ministry issued an emphatic denial, saying providing aircraft to Ukraine was out of question as the MiG-29 fleet constituted the backbone of the Polish Air Force. In a bizarre turn of events overnight, however, Poland announced yesterday, March 8, it was ready to transfer the aircraft to the Ramstein Air Base in Germany at the disposal of the United States which could then hand them over to Ukraine.
But the denouement of the diplomatic fiasco came today, March 9, after the United States, occupying a high moral ground, categorically rejected the preposterous Polish offer, initially made on Warsaw’s behalf by none other than the US secretary of state.
The prospect of flying combat aircraft from NATO territory into the war zone “raises serious concerns for the entire NATO alliance,” the Pentagon sanctimoniously revealed today. “It is simply not clear to us that there is a substantive rationale for it,” Pentagon spokesman John Kirby dignifiedly added.
Only two conclusions could be drawn from the risible gaffe: either the inept secretary of state was unaware of the Pentagon’s “serious concerns” regarding flying combat aircraft from NATO territory into the war zone while initially floating the bizarre proposal, or the reluctant Polish offer of transferring its entire fleet of MiG-29s to Ramstein at the disposal of the United States was nothing more than a humbug designed to provide face-saving to its NATO patron while it was already decided behind the scenes that Washington would spurn Poland’s nominal offer.
As for NATO’s “gracious favor” of deciding not attempting to enforce no-fly zone over Ukraine, which is being propagated as a “concession to Russia” and “peaceful intentions” of the transatlantic military alliance by the corporate media, it’s worth pointing out that no-fly zones could only be enforced against Third World countries, such as Gaddafi’s Libya or Saddam’s Iraq, whose air forces only had several dozen creaking old aircraft bought in scrap following the Second World War.
Though it stretches credulity, even if NATO decides to impose a no-fly zone over Ukraine, who is going to implement the impossible decision of enforcing no-fly zone against one of the top air forces in the world? If anything, Russia is now going to enforce no-fly zone for hostile aircraft in Ukraine’s airspace by deploying S-400 missile defense systems following the impending fall of Kyiv. Taking a backseat in the Ukraine conflict by the NATO powers isn’t a “goodwill gesture” to Russia, rather it’s an issue of lacking military capacity to confront resurgent Russia under Putin’s astute leadership.
How ironic that despite investing trillions of dollars over decades on their lethal military-industrial complex, all the global bullies could do is sow chaos and mayhem across the Third World but are left with no other choice than turning the proverbial other cheek if confronted with equal military powers, such as Russia and China.
Despite covertly mounting proxy war against Russian forces in Ukraine by providing funds, arms and training to myriad heavily armed militias allied with Ukraine’s security forces, NATO hesitating to directly engage with Russian ground and air forces is predicated on the premise that if the conflict spirals into a nuclear war, it would be catastrophic not only for belligerents but also for the whole world.
Even if the likelihood of a nuclear war is excluded for argument’s sake, bratty Zelensky throwing temper tantrums and fervently cajoling macho Uncle Sam to impose a no-fly zone would remain a puerile fantasy. NATO’s fancy albeit outmoded aircraft are simply not a match for venturing into air-to-air dogfights with Russia’s technologically superior Sukhoi fighter jets, globally acclaimed S-400 air defense systems and cutting-edge hypersonic missiles.
Built by Lockheed Martin and General Dynamics in the eighties, over a dozen F-16 aircraft have crashed in Pakistan alone. Its flight safety record is worse than the flying funeral hearse Boeing 737 Max. Aviation aficionados have recommended that Pakistan Air Force should only induct JF-17s, co-produced with China, instead of wasting billions of dollars foreign exchange on substandard American junk. As for C-130 transport aircraft and B-52 bombers built in the fifties following the Second World War, those “Hindenburg’s Zeppelins” rightfully belong in vintage aerospace exhibition rather than being inducted in modern air forces.
The Pentagon publicly confessed to over 30 Broken Arrows [1], serious nuclear accidents, including accidentally dropping atom bombs on populated areas in the US and Europe that thankfully didn’t explode, though the real number of such nuclear accidents is calculated to be in thousands, particularly at the height of the Cold War during the sixties when such apocalyptic “accidents” were everyday occurrence. What could be more irrefutable rebuttal of much-touted flight safety record of US strategic bombers, transport aircraft and fighter jets?
“Ukraine is already welcoming foreign volunteers who are coming to our country. First ones from 16,000. They are coming to defend freedom, defend life. For us, for everyone. And it will be a success, I’m sure.”
Not surprisingly, he did not disclose who those thousands of “daredevil volunteers” willing to sacrifice lives and limbs in a foreign war were.
The Times reported [3] on March 4 that defense contractors were recruiting former military veterans for covert operations in Ukraine for a whopping $2,000 a day:
“The job is not without risk but, at almost $60,000 a month, the pay is good. Applicants must have at least five years of military experience in eastern Europe, be skilled in reconnaissance, be able to conduct rescue operations with little to no support and know their way around Soviet-era weaponry.”
Thus, the Pope’s call to arms to fellow Christians around pious Christendom in defense of the hallowed land of bourgeois democracy and market-oriented values in the face of fierce onslaught by pagan hordes of infidel Ruskies hell bent on desecrating venerable Article 5 of the sanctified transatlantic treaty is more about getting a lion’s share in the war booty rather than defending the Catholic faith as such. Not surprisingly thousands of God-fearing and democracy-loving Christians across Europe and North America have heeded the Pope’s call to arms to mount the epic Crusade in the Kingdom of Kyivan Rus’.
The United States and its allies have reportedly pumped [4] over $3 billion in arms into Ukraine since the 2014 Euromaidan coup, and committed to send over $850 million more in military aid late last month. The Biden administration has already delivered about $240 million of its promised $350 million in additional military equipment to Ukraine, with the rest expected to arrive in the coming days or weeks at the latest. In addition, the European Union promised to commit nearly 500 million euros for its own military aid package.
Most of the last month’s $850 million military assistance package was spent on recruiting mercenaries for Ukraine’s proxy war and providing 2,000 surface-to-air missiles and antitank Javelins and NLAWs to Ukraine’s security forces and allied irregular militias, which are still in the process of being trained for using the sophisticated military equipment.
The Politico reported [5] today, March 9, that the Congress’ proposed $1.5 trillion package to fund the federal government through September would boost national defense coffers to $782 billion, about a 6 percent increase. On top of the hefty budget increase, the package was set to deliver nearly $14 billion in emergency funding to help Ukraine, nearly twice the assistance package initially proposed, including $3 billion for US forces and $3.5 billion for military equipment to Ukraine, plus more than $4 billion for US humanitarian efforts.
In order to create an “international legion” comprising foreign mercenaries, Kyiv lifted visa requirements for anyone willing to fight.
“Every friend of Ukraine who wants to join Ukraine in defending the country, please come over,” Zelensky pleaded at a recent press conference, adding “We will give you weapons.”
Ukraine has already declared martial law and a general mobilization of its populace. Those policies include conscription for men aged 18-60 and the confiscation of civilian vehicles and structures, while Ukrainian convicts with military experience are being released from prison to back up the war effort.
In a show of solidarity with Ukraine, several European nations recently announced they would not only not criminalize but rather expedite citizens joining the NATO’s war effort in Ukraine, despite being aware of the lamentable fate of a similar botched policy of enlisting volunteers for proxy wars in Libya and Syria, particularly from diaspora community of those countries, who later returned to Europe and carried out some of the most audacious terror attacks.
The wounds of the Manchester Arena bombing at Ariana Grande’s concert in May 2017, claiming 22 innocent lives and hundreds wounded, by a Libyan expat Salman Abedi, whose brother Hashem Abedi was found guilty of 22 counts of murder in March 2020, are still fresh in the minds of families of the victims. Who would be responsible after armed and violent “volunteers” having fought in the brutal proxy war in Ukraine return home to their native countries and commit wanton acts of vandalism and terrorism?
The myopic and reckless Western policy of lending indiscriminate support to militants in order to topple the Arab nationalist government of Colonel Gaddafi in Libya and the anti-Zionist government of Bashar al-Assad in Syria was directly responsible for the spate of terror attacks in Europe from 2015 to 2017.
After a lull of almost a decade since the horrific Madrid and London bombings in 2004 and 2005, respectively, when the Western powers decided to train and arm militant groups in border regions of Turkey and Jordan straddling Syria from 2011 to 2014, the first incident of terrorism occurred on the Western soil at the offices of Charlie Hebdo in January 2015, and then the Islamic State carried out the audacious November 2015 Paris attacks, the March 2016 Brussels bombings, the June 2016 truck-ramming incident in Nice, and three gruesome terror attacks took place in the United Kingdom in 2017, and after that the militant group carried out the Barcelona attack in August 2017.
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Nauman Sadiq is an Islamabad-based geopolitical and national security analyst focused on geo-strategic affairs and hybrid warfare in the Af-Pak and Middle East regions. His domains of expertise include neocolonialism, military-industrial complex and petro-imperialism. He is a regular contributor of diligently researched investigative reports to Global Research.
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Today, the dangers of military escalation are beyond description.
What is now happening in Ukraine has serious geopolitical implications. It could lead us into a World War III scenario.
It is important that a peace process be initiated with a view to preventing escalation.
Global Research condemns Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
A Bilateral Peace Agreement is required.
Self-anointed “fact-checkers” in the U.S. corporate press have spent two weeksmocking asdisinformation and a false conspiracy theory the claim that Ukraine has biological weapons labs, either alone or with U.S. support. They never presented any evidence for their ruling — how could they possibly know? and how could they prove the negative? — but nonetheless they invoked their characteristically authoritative, above-it-all tone of self-assurance and self-arrogated right to decree the truth, definitively labelling such claims false.
Claims that Ukraine currently maintains dangerous biological weapons labs came from Russia as well as China. The Chinese Foreign Ministry this month claimed: “The US has 336 labs in 30 countries under its control, including 26 in Ukraine alone.”
The Russian Foreign Ministry asserted that “Russia obtained documents proving that Ukrainian biological laboratories located near Russian borders worked on development of components of biological weapons.” Such assertions deserve the same level of skepticism as U.S. denials: namely, none of it should be believed to be true or false absent evidence. Yet U.S. fact-checkers dutifully and reflexively sided with the U.S. Government to declare such claims “disinformation” and to mock them as QAnon conspiracy theories.
Unfortunately for this propaganda racket masquerading as neutral and high-minded fact-checking, the neocon official long in charge of U.S. policy in Ukraine testified on Monday before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and strongly suggested that such claims are, at least in part, true. Yesterday afternoon, Under Secretary of State Victoria Nuland appeared before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL), hoping to debunk growing claims that there are chemical weapons labs in Ukraine, smugly asked Nuland: “Does Ukraine have chemical or biological weapons?”
Rubio undoubtedly expected a flat denial by Nuland, thus providing further “proof” that such speculation is dastardly Fake News emanating from the Kremlin, the CCP and QAnon. Instead, Nuland did something completely uncharacteristic for her, for neocons, and for senior U.S. foreign policy officials: for some reason, she told a version of the truth. Her answer visibly stunned Rubio, who — as soon as he realized the damage she was doing to the U.S. messaging campaign by telling the truth — interrupted her and demanded that she instead affirm that if a biological attack were to occur, everyone should be “100% sure” that it was Russia who did it. Grateful for the life raft, Nuland told Rubio he was right.
But Rubio’s clean-up act came too late. When asked whether Ukraine possesses “chemical or biological weapons,” Nuland did not deny this: at all. She instead — with palpable pen-twirling discomfort and in halting speech, a glaring contrast to her normally cocky style of speaking in obfuscatory State Department officialese — acknowledged: “uh, Ukraine has, uh, biological research facilities.”
Any hope to depict such “facilities” as benign or banal was immediately destroyed by the warning she quickly added:
“we are now in fact quite concerned that Russian troops, Russian forces, may be seeking to, uh, gain control of [those labs], so we are working with the Ukrainiahhhns [sic] on how they can prevent any of those research materials from falling into the hands of Russian forces should they approach” — [interruption by Sen. Rubio]:
Nuland’s bizarre admission that “Ukraine has biological research facilities” that are dangerous enough to warrant concern that they could fall into Russian hands ironically constituted more decisive evidence of the existence of such programs in Ukraine than what was offered in 2002 and 2003 to corroborate U.S. allegations about Saddam’s chemical and biological programs in Iraq. An actual against-interest confession from a top U.S. official under oath is clearly more significant than Colin Powell’s holding up some test tube with an unknown substance inside while he pointed to grainy satellite images that nobody could decipher.
It should go without saying that the existence of a Ukrainian biological “research” program does not justify an invasion by Russia, let alone an attack as comprehensive and devastating as the one unfolding: no more than the existence of a similar biological program under Saddam would have rendered the 2003 U.S. invasion of Iraq justifiable. But Nuland’s confession does shed critical light on several important issues and raises vital questions that deserve answers.
Any attempt to claim that Ukraine’s biological facilities are just benign and standard medical labs is negated by Nuland’s explicitly grave concern that “Russian forces may be seeking to gain control of” those facilities and that the U.S. Government therefore is, right this minute, “working with the Ukrainians on how they can prevent any of those research materials from falling into the hands of Russian forces.”
Russia has its own advanced medical labs. After all, it was one of the first countries to develop a COVID vaccine, one which Lancet, on February 1, 2021, pronounced was “ safe and effective” (even though U.S. officials pressured multiple countries, including Brazil, not to accept any Russian vaccine, while U.S. allies such as Australia refused for a full year to recognize the Russian COVID vaccine for purposes of its vaccine mandate). The only reason to be “quite concerned” about these “biological research facilities” falling into Russian hands is if they contain sophisticated materials that Russian scientists have not yet developed on their own and which could be used for nefarious purposes — i.e., either advanced biological weapons or dual-use “research” that has the potential to be weaponized.
What is in those Ukrainian biological labs that make them so worrisome and dangerous? And has Ukraine, not exactly known for being a great power with advanced biological research, had the assistance of any other countries in developing those dangerous substances? Is American assistance confined to what Nuland described at the hearing — “working with the Ukrainians on how they can prevent any of those research materials from falling into the hands of Russian forces” — or did the U.S. assistance extend to the construction and development of the “biological research facilities” themselves?
PolitiFact, Feb. 25, 2022
For all the dismissive language used over the last two weeks by self-described “fact-checkers,” it is confirmed that the U.S. has worked with Ukraine, as recently as last year, in the “development of a bio-risk management culture; international research partnerships; and partner capacity for enhanced bio-security, bio-safety, and bio-surveillance measures.” The U.S. Embassy in Ukraine publicly boasted of its collaborative work with Ukraine “to consolidate and secure pathogens and toxins of security concern and to continue to ensure Ukraine can detect and report outbreaks caused by dangerous pathogens before they pose security or stability threats.”
This joint US/Ukraine biological research is, of course, described by the State Department in the most unthreatening way possible. But that again prompts the question of why the U.S. would be so gravely concerned about benign and common research falling into Russian hands. It also seems very odd, to put it mildly, that Nuland chose to acknowledge and describe the “facilities” in response to a clear, simple question from Sen. Rubio about whether Ukraine possesses chemical and biological weapons. If these labs are merely designed to find a cure for cancer or create safety measures against pathogens, why, in Nuland’s mind, would it have anything to do with a biological and chemical weapons program in Ukraine?
The indisputable reality is that — despite long-standing international conventions banning development of biological weapons — all large, powerful countries conduct research that, at the very least, has the capacity to be converted into biological weapons. The work conducted under the guise of “defensive research” can, and sometimes is, easily converted into the banned weapons themselves. Recall that, according to the FBI, the 2001 anthrax attacks that terrorized the nation came from a U.S. Army Research scientist, Dr. Bruce Ivins, working at the U.S. Army’s infectious disease research lab in Fort Detrick, Maryland. The claim was that the Army was “merely” conducting defensive research to find vaccines and other protections against weaponized anthrax, but to do so, the Army had to create highly weaponized anthrax strains, which Ivins then unleashed as a weapon.
A 2011 PBS Frontline program on those anthrax attacks explained: “in October 2001, Northern Arizona University microbiologist Dr. Paul Keim identified that the anthrax used in the attack letters was the Ames strain, a development he described as ‘chilling’ because that particular strain was developed in U.S. government laboratories.” Speaking to Frontline in 2011, Dr. Keim explained why it was so alarming to discover that the U.S. Army had been cultivating such highly lethal and dangerous strains in its lab, on U.S. soil:
We were surprised it was the Ames strain. And it was chilling at the same time, because the Ames strain is a laboratory strain that had been developed by the U.S. Army as a vaccine-challenge strain. We knew that it was highly virulent. In fact, that’s why the Army used it, because it represented a more potent challenge to vaccines that were being developed by the U.S. Army. It wasn’t just some random type of anthrax that you find in nature; it was a laboratory strain, and that was very significant to us, because that was the first hint that this might really be a bioterrorism event.
This lesson about the severe dangers of so-called dual-use research into biological weapons was re-learned over the last two years as a result of the COVID pandemic. While the origins of that virus have not yet been proven with dispositive evidence (though remember, fact-checkers declared early on that it was definitively established that it came from species-jumping and that any suggestion of a lab leak was a “conspiracy theory,” only for the Biden White House in mid-2021 to admit they did not know the origins and ordered an investigation to determine whether it came from a lab leak), what is certain is that the Wuhan Institute of Virology was manipulating various coronavirus strains to make them more contagious and lethal. The justification was that doing so is necessary to study how vaccines could be developed, but regardless of intent, cultivating dangerous biological strains has the capacity to kill huge numbers of people. All of this illustrates that research that is classified as “defensive” can easily be converted, deliberately or otherwise, into extremely destructive biological weapons.
Foreign Policy, Mar. 2, 2022
At the very least, Nuland’s surprising revelation reveals, yet again, just how heavily involved the U.S. Government is and for years has been in Ukraine, on the part of Russia’s border which U.S. officials and scholars from across the spectrum have spent decades warning is the most sensitive and vulnerable for Moscow. It was Nuland herself, while working for Hillary Clinton and John Kerry’s State Department under President Obama, who was heavily involved in what some call the 2014 revolution and others call the “coup” that resulted in a change of government in Ukraine from a Moscow-friendly regime to one far more favorable to the EU and the West. All of this took place as the Ukrainian energy company Burisma paid $50,000 per month not to the son of a Ukrainian official but to Joe Biden’s son, Hunter: a reflection of who wielded real power inside Ukraine.
Nuland not only worked for both the Obama and Biden State Departments to run Ukraine policy (and, in many ways, Ukraine itself), but she also was Vice President Dick Cheney’s deputy national security adviser and then President Bush’s Ambassador to NATO. She comes from one of America’s most prestigious neocon royal families; her husband, Robert Kagan, was a co-founder of the notorious neocon war-mongering group Project for the New American Century, which advocated regime change in Iraq long before 9/11. It was Kagan, along with liberal icon Bill Kristol, who (next to current editor-in-chief of The Atlantic Jeffrey Goldberg), was most responsible for the lie that Saddam was working hand-in-hand with Al Qaeda, a lie that played a key role in convincing Americans to believe that Saddam was personally involved in the planning of 9/11.
That a neocon like Nuland is admired and empowered regardless of the outcome of elections illustrates how unified and in lockstep the establishment wings of both parties are when it comes to questions of war, militarism and foreign policy. Indeed, Nuland’s husband, Robert Kagan, was signaling that neocons would likely support Hillary Clinton for president — doing so in 2014, long before anyone imagined Trump as her opponent — based on the recognition that the Democratic Party was now more hospitable to neocon ideology than the GOP, where Ron Paul and then Trump’s neo-isolationism was growing.
You can vote against neocons all you want, but they never go away. The fact that a member of one of the most powerful neocon families in the U.S. has been running Ukraine policy for the U.S. for years — having gone from Dick Cheney to Hillary Clinton and Obama and now to Biden — underscores how little dissent there is in Washington on such questions. It is Nuland’s extensive experience in wielding power in Washington that makes her confession yesterday so startling: it is the sort of thing people like her lie about and conceal, not admit. But now that she did admit it, it is crucial that this revelation not be buried and forgotten.
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Featured image: Oct. 8, 2014: U.S. Assistant Secretary of State Victoria Nuland at a Ukrainian State Border Guard Service Base in Kiev. (U.S. Embassy Kyiv, Flickr)
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.
Today, the dangers of military escalation are beyond description.
What is now happening in Ukraine has serious geopolitical implications. It could lead us into a World War III scenario.
It is important that a peace process be initiated with a view to preventing escalation.
Global Research condemns Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
A Bilateral Peace Agreement is required.
Tass released on 9 March 2022 a news bulletin (yet to be confirmed) asserting that the Russian Defense Ministry got hold of a Secret Plan concocted and issued by the Commander of the Ukrainian National Guard Colonel General Nikolay Balan, on January 22, 2022.
The order from the Ukrainian commander was to assault the Donbas Peoples Republics of Donetsk (DPR) and Lugansk (PRL), by a combat coordination of the battalion tactical group with the 80th Separate Airborne Assault Brigade of the Ukrainian Armed Forces. This brigade was trained since 2016 by US and British instructors in accordance with NATO training programs.
The attack was to take place in March 2022. For full details, see this.
It may well be that this secret document prompted President Putin to carry out the sudden intervention in Ukraine on 24 February, before the planned offensive on Donbas could take place – and thereby disarm the entire Ukrainian military, and especially neutralize the Nazi forces in the Ukrainian government.
Further conditions by Russia to the western powers, NATO / US / EU – that NATO never enters Ukraine, and that NATO withdraws all its bases from the east to the geographic positions before 1997. This may become a long negotiation. It may last as long as the completion of the UN Agenda 2030, when, according to Klaus Schwab, “you’ll own nothing And You’ll be happy.”
According to Klaus Schwab’s latest slogan in the race to the Great Reset – it’s no longer the big fish eating the small fish, but the fast one swallowing the slow one. Makes me think – is it possible that Mr. Schwab, on behalf of the WEF and of the dark powers driving the WEF, made the Commander of the Ukrainian National Guard “leak” the secret plan of an imminent attack on the Donbas provinces?
It would explain the “coincidence” of Exit Covid and Enter the War in Ukraine. It would buy time by also creating the chaos, havoc and fear needed – as did Covid – to implement the full agenda of WHO’s power over sovereign nations (see this and this).
It would allow digitization of everything, beginning with money; executing the Bill Gates Agenda ID2020, alias QR-coding of everything and every surviving world citizen; putting in place a full surveillance program and control over all monetary resources – possibly creating a digital One World Currency (OWC), and keeping chipped humanoids, or transhumans in check with 5G-fed algorithms and AI.
This is of course pure speculation.
Stay tuned.
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Peter Koenig is a geopolitical analyst and a former Senior Economist at the World Bank and the World Health Organization (WHO), where he 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.
All Global Research articles can be read in 51 languages by activating the “Translate Website” drop down menu on the top banner of our home page (Desktop version).
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This is not the first time the favorable conclusions of a report ignored the data in a report. The Pfizer documents seem to show they were all just going through the motions, all for show.
When Siri & Glimstad filed their complaint against FDA for failing to produce the documents from Pfizer’s clinical trials on their COVID-19 vaccine, FDA produced a torrent of documents. Among those documents, available via Public Health and Medical Professionals for Transparency, one document stands out. I’ll summarize here some of the report but be sure to get your own copy here. The file you want is “5.3.6 postmarketing experience.pdf”, and the document is entitled “5.3.6 CUMULATIVE ANALYSIS OF POST-AUTHORIZATION ADVERSE EVENT REPORTS OF PF-07302048 (BNT162B2) RECEIVED THROUGH 28-FEB-2021”.
Take a look at Figure 1, which summarizes the 42,086 case reports containing 158,893 events.
I see over 20,000 SERIOUS general disorders, over 10,000 SERIOUS nervous system events, over 5,000 musculoskeletal and gastrointestinal SERIOUS events each.
Pfizer’s Table 2 lists >93,000 events that occurred in ≥2% of events.
Looking at the Figure 1 and the text (serious and non-serious):
Nervous system disorders: 25,957.
Musculoskeletal and connective tissue disorders:17,283.
Gastrointestinal disorders:14,096.
There are more categories, you can see them in Figure 1.
In the meantime:
Remember that Pfizer and Moderna promised complete transparency.
Remember that FDA had access to Pfizer’s numbers.
Remember that these data were not peer-reviewed, and vaccine safety studies data for EUA and FDA approval are not, as a matter of practice, subjected to blinded peer-review. Why not?
What Does This Say About Risk?
Unfortunately, we cannot know. The number of doses given to the date the report was generated was redacted, preventing any computation of rates and risks.
John Campbell points out that Janet Woodcock of the FDA reported, reporting the approval of the EUA on August 21, 2021, said the following:
While millions of people have already safely received COVID-19 vaccines, we recognize that for some, the FDA approval of a vaccine may now instill additional confidence to get vaccinated.
Knowing she had access to these data, John wonders how could she say that at that time?
John is a pro-vaccine health expert (retired nurse, I presume) in the UK who is now calling out US’s Acting FDA Commissioner. He goes on to call our Peter Marks, director of FDA’s Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research, for saying the following in a press release:
“Our scientific and medical experts conducted an incredibly thorough and thoughtful evaluation of this vaccine. We evaluated scientific data and information included in hundreds of thousands of pages, conducted our own analyses of Comirnaty’s safety and effectiveness, and performed a detailed assessment of the manufacturing processes, including inspections of the manufacturing facilities… (w)e have not lost sight that the COVID-19 public health crisis continues in the U.S. and that the public is counting on safe and effective vaccines. The public and medical community (sic) can be confident that although we approved this vaccine expeditiously, it was fully in keeping with our existing high standards for vaccines in the U.S.”
Good for you, John, for calling them out, as we all should. In fact, by redacting the denominator, the FDA may be in contempt of court. They certainly have contempt for public awareness of the risks associated with the Pfizer vaccine.
FDA needs to publish the redacted denominator so we know the rates.
Here you can watch John go step-by-step through the report and conclude that FDA has “destroyed” public trust in the process.
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When COVID-19 first came to dominate the news back in March 2020, I wrote an article for the independent media outlet OffGuardian, warning of the grave dangers we might face. I was not referring to COVID-19, and whatever threat that might have been posing, but to the possibility that powerful actors could seek to exploit the crisis in order to further political and economic agendas.
Drawing a comparison with 9/11, I noted that situations in which the public was fearful created conditions ripe for manipulation, in particular through propaganda. In the case of 9/11, public fear of terrorism ushered in a global ‘war on terror’, whilst, as we now know from documents, US president George Bush and British Prime Minister Tony Blair communicated over the initiation of a series of ‘regime change wars’ during the weeks following 9/11.
Blair wrote to Bush: ‘If toppling Saddam is a prime objective, it is far easier to do it with Syria and Iran in favour of acquiescing rather than hitting all three at once’.
These wars were less to do with fighting ‘Islamic fundamentalist terrorism’ than they were to do with realising geo-political ‘regime-change’ aspirations. In a nutshell, 9/11 and the fear of terrorism were propagandised in order to mobilise support for wider geo-political objectives. Over 20 years later we are still living with the consequences of these ‘regime-change’ wars.
Two years on from the start of COVID-19, it has indeed become apparent to many that it has been an event involving high levels of propaganda and one in which political and economic agendas have been advanced under its cover.
For example, we now know that behavioural scientists were used in the UK to increase fear levels in order to coerce populations to comply with lockdown and other measures.
Many people have been pressured to accept a series of injections in return for elusive freedoms. We also now know that propaganda activities have included smear campaigns against dissident scientists and, at least in one major case, were initiated by high-level officials:
In Autumn 2020, Anthony Fauci, Chief Medical Officer to the US President, and National Institute of Health director Francis Collins discussed the need to swiftly shut down the Great Barrington Declaration, whose authors were advocating an alternative COVID-19 response focused on protecting high-risk individuals and thus avoiding destructive lockdown measures.
Collins wrote in an email that this ‘proposal from the three fringe epidemiologists … seems to be getting a lot of attention … There needs to be a quick and devastating published takedown of its premises’.
Rather than a civilised and robust scientific debate, a smear campaign followed. It is also now becoming clear to many that policies of lockdown and mass injection, precisely those policies promoted off the back of widespread fear of a virus, are deeply problematic. A large swathe of scientists and medical professionals are now clearly and repeatedly warning governments and populations that lockdowns are harmful and ineffective whilst mass injection of populations may also be doing more harm than good.
With respect to the advancement of political and economic agendas, some analysts argue that major economic and political events have run hand-in-hand with COVID-19. These include a drive toward Central Bank Digital Currency (CBDC) in the context of a major impending crisis in the financial markets that emerged during autumn 2019, and a political-economic project articulated by the World Economic Forum (WEF) and multiple leaders regarding ‘The Great Reset’.
With respect to the political-economic project, the WEF has played a key role in promoting specific ideas about the Fourth Industrial Revolution (4IR) and ‘digitised society’ (e.g. ‘Smart Cities’). The book COVID-19: The Great Reset was published in July 2020 and author Klaus Schwab declared that: ‘The pandemic represents a rare but narrow window of opportunity to reflect, reimagine, and reset our world to create a healthier, more equitable, and more prosperous future’. He also believes that the 4th industrial revolution will lead to a ‘fusion of our physical, our digital and our biological identities.’ It is apparent that the WEF, as an organising force, has considerable reach. In 2017 Schwab boasted:
“When I mention our names like Mrs Merkel, even Vladimir Putin and so on, they all have been young global leaders of the World Economic forum. But what we are very proud of now is the young generation like prime minister Trudeau, president of Argentina and so on. So we penetrate the cabinets. So yesterday I was at a reception for prime minister Trudeau and I will know that half of this cabinet or even more half of this cabinet are for our actually young global leaders of the world economic forum …. that’s true in Argentina, and it’s true in France now with the president a young global leader.”
With respect to economic events, it is now established that a major crisis in the repo markets during the autumn of 2019 was followed by high-level planning aimed at attempting to resolve an impending financial crisis of greater proportions than the 2008 banking crisis. One response appears to have been a drive toward control of currencies via the Central Banks (Central Bank Digital Currency, CBDC). For example, the General Manager of the Bank of International Settlements (BIS), Agustín Carstens, stated in October 2020 that:
“We intend to establish the equivalence with cash and there is a huge difference there, for example in cash we don’t know who is using a 100 dollar bill today … the key difference with the CBDC is that the central bank will have absolute control on the rules and regulations that will determine the use regarding that expression of central bank liability and also we will have the technology to enforce that.”
A recent and telling example of the kind of power that can be wielded by governments in the financial realm was the Canadian government’s attempt to suppress the trucker protests against mandates via seizure of bank accounts.
These political and economic agendas have major potential consequences for our societies and, arguably, lead to a profound, and highly problematic, concentration of power and curtailment of democracy. One legitimate fear is that we are witnessing a drive toward a Chinese-style social credit system, in which the integration of personal data and money through digital ID allows assets to be stripped by authorities and, more broadly, unprecedented levels of control over the lives of people.
It is certainly clear that liberal democracies are experiencing severe restrictions on civil liberties and free speech – witness recent events in Canada – and persistent economic and political crisis. It is clear and empirically demonstrable that populations have been subjected to coercive and aggressive attempts to limit their autonomy, including restrictions on movement, right to protest, freedom to work and freedom to participate in society. Most notably, increasing numbers of people have been required to take an injection at regular intervals in order to allow their participation in society. These developments have been accompanied by often openly aggressive and discriminatory statements from major political leaders with respect to people resisting the injections. The threat to civil liberties and ‘democracy as usual’ has been, arguably, unprecedented.
Image on the right is from Children’s Health Defense
However, resistance has been substantial. We were, until last week, witnessing a mainstreaming of debate over both the efficacy of lockdowns and the wisdom of mandated injections. US podcast giant Joe Roganaired discussion of the WEF only two weeks ago, whilst the premier entertainment show Saturday Night Live (SNL) ran a comedy sketch mocking middle class obsessions regarding masks and boosters. Another popular YouTube giant, Russell Brand, has been repeatedly airing talks questioning multiple aspects of the COVID-19 response as well as highlighting deceptions and manipulations people have been subjected to in the last two years. Underlying this kind of mainstreaming of dissent have been persistent and widespread protests against COVID-19 restrictions and a multitude of well-organised groups and movements pushing back against various COVID-19-related policies.
The war in the Ukraine, however, has dramatically and profoundly shifted the focus of mainstream political and media attention. It is well established across the scholarly literature that war situations are accompanied by massive levels of propaganda and censorship, heightened emotions and a relative ease with which authorities can dictate the contours of public and political debate.
This certainly appears to be the case in relation to the Russian invasion of Ukraine. But whatever the rights and wrongs of this particular conflict, there is a very real danger that it will be instrumentalised by authorities in order to divert attention from the multiple issues that had been surfacing with respect to COVID-19. This is extremely worrying for anyone seeking to understand the actions of authorities during the COVID-19 event, the corruption and dangers witnessed in relation to the mRNA injection, and to obtain accountability.
But also, perhaps more importantly, war fever might also serve as a new distraction from the underlying political and economic agendas that some analysts have been warning us about. Indeed, war in the Ukraine has significant potential to serve as a new enabling event facilitating the drive toward restrictions on liberties and the roll-out of agendas that, for example, the WEF has been waxing lyrical about for two years. A distracted and war-terrified public will be easy to manipulate whilst policies such as digital ID, mandated injections and Central Bank Digital Currencies are ushered in. Indeed, the current drive toward expanding the powers of the World Health Organisation (WHO) is a clear example of the dangers of further centralisation of power: Under the guise of pandemic preparedness, the objective is to allow the WHO to force states to implement the kinds of restrictive measures we have seen over the last two years. The Council of the European Union announced, on 3 March 2022, that negotiations were to commence with respect to this new legislation. The possibility of a global bio-security regime, that radically disempowers local and community-level autonomy, should be of serious concern to all of us.
We simply cannot afford to continue tumbling from one highly propagandised crisis to the next and allowing our emotions to be harnessed by those who wield political and economic power. Many people over the last two years have learned much about issues such as propaganda, mainstream media bias as well as the levels of corruption, or conflicts of interest, that exist in both national and global institutions. It is important those lessons are kept in focus and not clouded by events in the Ukraine. Now is the time for calm and rational assessments of the events we are living through and, more than ever, determined engagement with widening public understanding of the agendas that many now believe to have been underlying COVID-19.
This includes the need to interrogate the propaganda and manipulation populations have been subjected to over the last two years and the increasingly discredited policy responses involving lockdowns and mass injections. Even more importantly, critical examination and awareness of the concentration of power and loss of democracy inherent in developments such as digital ID and CBDC digital currencies, and their interconnection with political visions regarding 4IR and digitised society, is more vital than ever. It is these processes that present the most serious and substantive threat to people, potentially ushering in an era of what some describe as global totalitarianism. Finally, a weather eye must be kept on how the Ukraine crisis might be feeding into and enabling the political and economic processes already advanced during COVID-19.
More than ever before, we must have the confidence to challenge those in positions of political and economic power. We are, without doubt, at a pivotal moment in our histories. People must stay focused on the big picture.
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Facebook has admitted in a court of law that its fact checkers are not asserting facts but, rather, First Amendment-protected opinions
Steve Kirsch, founder of the COVID-19 Early Treatment Fund, recorded a phone call with a fact checker from PolitiFact, showing just how ignorant the fact checker is about the facts, and how unwilling she is to look at the data
There are three sources for vaccine injury data: The Vaccine Adverse Events Reporting System (VAERS) on the Center for Disease Control and Prevention’s Wonder site; OpenVAERS; and MedAlerts, created by the National Vaccine Information Center. Of these, MedAlerts has the easiest-to-use interface if you want to search and collate data
What makes VAERS so valuable is the fact that you can find important safety signals that would otherwise be missed. This is its intended function, and it works quite well for that
Fact checkers are now trying to dismiss VAERS data as unreliable at best and useless at worst. But they have a serious problem. The U.S. government had a clear duty, enshrined in law, to create a system to detect potential vaccine injuries. If VAERS is useless, then government broke the law. In their zeal to protect Big Pharma, fact checkers may be inadvertently throwing government agencies under the bus
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If you thought fact checkers were a source of unbiased facts, think again. Earlier this year, Facebook admitted, in a court of law, that its fact checkers are not asserting facts but rather “First Amendment-protected opinions.”1,2
A recent telephone recording by Steve Kirsch, founder of the COVID-19 Early Treatment Fund, in which he responds to a fact checker from PolitiFact, is equally revealing. The young woman clearly has no idea what she’s talking about, yet she’s been put into a position where she gets to be the sole and final arbiter of truth.
Why Use MedAlerts?
The PolitiFact fact checker, Gabrielle Settles, contacted Kirsch with a number of questions. First, she wanted to know why he uses MedAlerts3 as a source rather than the Vaccine Adverse Events Reporting System (VAERS) on the Center for Disease Control and Prevention’s Wonder site.
VAERS was an outgrowth of the National Childhood Vaccine Injury Act of 1986, a law that Barbara Loe Fisher, co-founder of the National Vaccine Information Center (NVIC), helped fight for. As you likely know, this site and many of you have supported NVIC with donations, which allows them to carry on their terrific work, including their MedAlerts VAERS database query tool.
Between 1990 and 2001, VAERS data were accessible only by filing a Freedom of Information Act request. In 2001, a VAERS website was created,4 and in 2006 the database was moved to CDC Wonder. The MedAlerts VAERS interface was created by the NVIC, which is the reason why fact checkers attack it. It went online April 9, 2003.
In response to Settles’ question, Kirsch explained that MedAlerts simply has a more user-friendly interface, while providing the same exact data as VAERS and OpenVAERS.
Are VAERS Data Valid?
Settles then moved on to question the validity of VAERS data in general. She pointed out that raw VAERS reports are not vetted and verified for accuracy, and that they cannot be used to prove causation. In other words, the fact that there are more than 24,400 deaths5 reported post-jab does not automatically mean that the shot was the cause of all those deaths.
Kirsch countered by pointing out that what makes VAERS so valuable is the fact that you can find important safety signals that would otherwise be missed. This is its intended function, and it works quite well for that.
For example, looking at the dosing data for myocarditis, you find that after the first dose, there are relatively few myocarditis cases reported, but after the second dose, reports explode. This kind of consistency in the data is very telling and not easily dismissed.
Fact checkers are now trying to dismiss VAERS data as unreliable at best and useless at worst. But they have a serious problem because the U.S. government had a clear duty, enshrined in law, to create a system to detect potential vaccine injuries.
If they now want to throw VAERS out, then the government is in a real pickle, because that means they did not create a functional and useful system. If VAERS is so seriously flawed as to be useless, then government has broken the law, and are duty bound to replace it with something that actually works. It’s a real Catch-22. In their zeal to protect Big Pharma, fact checkers may be inadvertently throwing government agencies under the bus.
Weak Hit Piece Tries to Salvage the Narrative
PolitiFact published its NVIC/MedAlerts article February 28, 2022, under the title, “How an Alternative Gateway to VAERS Data Helps Fuel Vaccine Misinformation.”6 While clearly meant as a hit piece, it actually provides NVIC some much-needed publicity, even giving links to both its About Us and Reporting Options pages.
The main point of contention, however, is so weak it smacks of desperation. According to Settles, the government’s disclaimer — which states that VAERS reports can include information that is incomplete or inaccurate and doesn’t provide enough information to determine causation — isn’t prominent enough on the MedAlert’s website.
“Users who go to MedAlerts can search through VAERS reports without ever reading a government disclaimer,” Settles contends, adding that “unlike the CDC’s Wonder database, users on MedAlerts who don’t notice or click on the links won’t see the warnings about what they read.”
Without a clear understanding of the limitations of VAERS, MedAlert’s search results are “vulnerable … to misinterpretation by members of the public who are not trained to evaluate the information,” Settles insists. She goes on, “When government researchers use and interpret VAERS reports, they are not drawing conclusions based on the numbers alone but, rather, looking for patterns that warrant further study.”
The irony is that this is precisely what Kirsch and many others have been doing. VAERS is a tool that can help identify potential safety issues by looking at patterns and trends, but the total number of reports of a specific problem cannot be discounted because it’s part of the signal.
The fact of the matter is that there are many safety signals in the VAERS data, but those tasked with investigating them are refusing to do it. At this point, one wonders whether any U.S. agency can actually be trusted to conduct an unbiased investigation even if they decided to do one.
Settles also attacks Kirsch personally, dismissing his safety concerns by stating that the U.S. Food and Drug Administration has chalked his claims up as being “not based in science.” Essentially, Settles’ article can be summed up as a desperate attempt to redirect people back to the CDC and FDA propaganda, which dismisses the now outlandishly large number of post-jab VAERS reports as being of no consequence.
Post-Jab Neurological Issues Were Under Investigation in 2021
Meanwhile, The Epoch Times recently reported7 that “Two U.S. agencies have been quietly studying neurological problems that have appeared in people who have had COVID-19 vaccines.”
According to emails reviewed by The Epoch Times, Dr. Janet Woodcock, principal deputy director of the FDA, “has been personally evaluating neurologic side effects from the COVID-19 vaccines since at least Sept. 13, 2021.” In a November 16, 2021, email, Woodcock wrote:8
“We are having difficulty pinning down these nervous system-related events that have been brought to our attention. I’ve asked for specific searches of the reports we get both from here and ex-U.S. (as these vaccines have been used in many countries) as well as from trials, where oversight of participants is greater.”
Emails from Dr. Peter Marks, director of the FDA’s Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research, which is in charge of the regulation of vaccines, suggest other FDA epidemiologists were also looking into it, as were a team at the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke (NINDS), which belongs to the National Institutes of Health. The NINDS supposedly started seeing vaccine injured patients in early 2021. According to The Epoch Times:9
“Dr. Avindra Nath, clinical director of the NIH’s NINDS, headed a team that examined patients who experienced serious neurological issues … Nath and Dr. Farinaz Safavi, one of Nath’s top deputies, have said they believe the issues are linked to the vaccines.
‘We started an effort at NIH to look at neurological side effects of COVID-19 vaccines,’ Safavi said in an email to one of the patients on March 3, 2021. ‘We believe the symptoms to be real. That is the reason we have been treating patients,’ Nath said in a different message on July 27, 2021.”
Were Patients Abandoned to Protect Big Pharma Profits?
While it’s tempting to see this as good news, there’s something really strange going on. For starters, none of these investigations was ever publicly announced. Why not?
What’s worse, as 2021 wore on, the research appears to have stalled and then been abandoned altogether. It’s hard to find another explanation for this other than they don’t want to do anything that might force them to take the COVID jab off the market.
“Even among those examined, the excitement of connecting with top researchers and government officials turned to disappointment and frustration when repeated queries yielded few signs of progress on research into post-vaccination problems,” The Epoch Times writes.10
“Woodcock and Marks would often only provide updates after being prodded … Nath and Safavi also grew distant as 2021 wore on. They eventually stopped examining patients.”
Brianne Dressen, who had been examined by Nath and given a diagnosis of “post-vaccine neuropathy,” suddenly hit a dead end as 2021 drew to a close. Nath would do no more for her, and also told her to stop referring patients to him, saying they did “not have any clinical trial for vaccine-related complications.” Epoch Times writes:
“Dressen responded in January that she will ‘always be indebted to you and what you did for me,’ crediting Nath … with keeping her alive. However, she added, her ‘heart is shattered.’
‘I am more confused now than ever about what my active and willing engagement in the scientific process actually meant, or has led to,’ she wrote … ‘Looking back on this, I can see how unethical it was even when they were helping us,’ Dressen told The Epoch Times.”
Another vaccine injured patient, Dr. Danice Hertz, who was seen virtually by NIH experts in early 2021, expressed similar feelings to The Epoch Times.
“Hertz described being shocked about the lack of public acknowledgement of the post-vaccination issues by the FDA … ‘They refuse to acknowledge what’s happening to so many thousands of people,’ Hertz told The Epoch Times. ‘We’ve been completely abandoned. And we’re despondent over it.’”11
Who Is Responsible to Investigate and Treat Side Effects?
People who have been injured by the COVID jab are now in an incredibly tough situation, as doctors, government agencies and the vaccine makers are all refusing responsibility. In a September 16, 2021, email to Dressen, Nath wrote:12
“Ordinarily when any drug is released, it is the manufacturers responsibility to investigate and treat the side effects. Where are the vaccine manufacturers in all of this? Have you tried contacting them? It cannot be the government’s responsibility to pick up after them. They are a [for] profit company and they should be the ones taking change [sic]. Don’t you think?”
But vaccine makers are not investigating or treating side effects either. Why would they? They’ve been granted total immunity against liability. The only way they can be held responsible for damages is if they’re found guilty of willful misconduct or fraud.
Unfortunately, the FDA, CDC and NIH aren’t looking for misconduct or fraud. They’re covering it up. And mainstream media, including so-called “fact” checkers, have been bought wholesale by an industry that has every intention of obfuscating and hiding the truth about their products.
Why Media Have Embraced Censorship
As noted by independent journalist Paul Thacker,13 mainstream media are refusing to call big tech censorship for what it is, in large part because they support, and indeed need, fake fact checks:
“Disinformation doesn’t have to be sophisticated when people believe what they read. Once this belief is established, censors ensure that disinformation remains strong, followed by denial that there is censoring. That way inconvenient facts do not mar the chosen story.”
In the COVID era, the chosen story includes the fantasy that the COVID jabs are safe and effective and have harmed no one, and there’s simply no way to prop up that story without fake fact checks.
Who Funds the Fake Fact Checkers?
It should come as no surprise then that fact checking organizations are funded by Big Pharma and Big Pharma PR companies like the Publicis Groupe, which also happens to be a partner of both Google14,15 and the World Economic Forum (WEF).16
Pfizer, for example, funds Facebook’s fact checking operation.17 Is it any wonder then that Facebook rejects anything that criticizes the COVID jabs? Pfizer also has significant conflicts of interest with Reuters. Reuters chairman (and former CEO) James Smith is both a top investor and board member of Pfizer.18 Might he have a vested interest in keeping Pfizer’s media record clear of incriminating details?
Many fact checking organizations also belong to the International Fact-Checking Network,19 which is financed by George Soros (through his Open Society Foundation and the National Endowment for Democracy), Google and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation20 — all of whom are part of the WEF’s technocratic cabal that is pushing for a Great Reset.
Truth Tellers Have Data, Liars Have None
To end where we began, with the fact check on Kirsch and the NVIC’s MedAlert, a few days after posting his conversation with Settles, he received an email from PolitiFact’s editor-in-chief, Angie Holan, asking him to remove the recording. He refused. In a February 25, 2022, Substack post, Kirsch wrote:21
“Gabrielle asked if she could record the call and I consented, so that entitles all parties to record the call. PolitiFact did not deny that we both consented. She wrote, ‘I am not in the least embarrassed by how she conducted the interview. I’m asking that you remove the video as a professional courtesy because the reporter did not consent to be recorded.’
First of all, she should be embarrassed by the interview. The interviewer was clearly focused on proving an agenda and showed no interest in exploring evidence that was counter her agenda. I gave her the story of the century if she would just follow up on what I suggested she do.
Secondly with respect to permission, by asking me if it was OK to record the call, she is giving implied consent for the call to be recorded since she is doing the asking. All parties on the call consented to being recorded meaning the conversation is no longer private and all parties can record the call.
I then raised the stakes: I challenged PolitiFact to a debate to settle the matter once and for all in front of a live Internet audience as to who are the liars and who are the truth tellers …
Of course, the problem with a debate is that usually one side wins. If it is the misinformation spreaders, the narrative is crushed. This is why nobody wants a debate: they can’t take the risk.
PolitiFact can’t win a fair debate. There is way too much information out now on how dangerous the vaccines are that is impossible for them to explain. This is why I don’t think that there is a snowball’s chance in hell they will accept.”
Indeed, the chances of PolitiFact accepting an invitation to debate someone like Kirsch, who has all of his ducks in a row, is slim to none. In fact, it’s probably because of the excellent data analysis of Kirsch and others that the CDC has started withholding certain data on COVID jab injuries and hospitalizations. The reason given is that “they might be misinterpreted as the vaccines being ineffective.” But as noted by Kirsch:22
“The only way the vaccine data could be interpreted as ineffective by us ‘misinformation spreaders’ is if the data shows the vaccines don’t work … The CDC long-standing policy is that no information can be released that may threaten the national vaccination initiative.
This isn’t about public safety. This is about not letting the public know the vaccines are killing them … Let’s be clear. The CDC hid the data because the data proves they were lying to us. That’s the real reason.”
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Today, the dangers of military escalation are beyond description.
What is now happening in Ukraine has serious geopolitical implications. It could lead us into a World War III scenario.
It is important that a peace process be initiated with a view to preventing escalation.
Global Research condemns Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
A Bilateral Peace Agreement is required.
Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi on Russia relations, Ukraine, Humanitarian Aid, Taiwan, China-EU relations, China-Central Asia relations, sanctions, differing views of democracy, and European security.
China’s Foreign Minister Wang Yi has been busy with statements concerning the Ukraine conflict and China’s position in the extent of its support for Russia. These are important as they affect the geopolitical position in Eurasia, Beijing’s relations with Moscow as an ally, and the continuing of multilateral trade within the region.
Wang expressly stated that “China and Russia will maintain strategic focus and steadily advance our comprehensive strategic partnership of coordination for a new era” suggesting there is no change in its support for Russia. While opinions over the handling of the Ukraine situation may differ, the on-going China-Russia axis in terms of a strategic partnership looks set to continue. Beijing has long been wary of Washington’s intentions and has already been subjected to sanctions itself, including quasi sanctions in the form of the 2018-2021 China-US Tariff wars. Beijing’s policy makers will be studying weaknesses in the Russian system in addition to US tactics in terms of engaging its allies, including important Asian economies such as Japan, Singapore, and South Korea, to move in such radical terms against Moscow. To some degree, Beijing will want to learn from the US how it has been able to place Moscow in such a position and to create defensive barriers from the same type of tactics.
At the same time, Beijing needs Moscow’s support in energy and other trade needs, in addition to vital assistance in bringing peace and security to Central Asia in the wake of the US exit from Afghanistan and recent unrest in Kazakhstan. The energy and security issues are of profound importance to Beijing, which is why its relationship with Moscow can be expected to continue.
Wang held a press conference to discuss these issues. We provide details as follows:
Reuters: “Russia’s military action in Ukraine has expanded to non-military targets. Will China do more to help resolve the conflict?”
Wang:“On the Ukraine issue, China has adopted an objective and impartial attitude. We independently assess the situation and make our position clear on the basis of the merits of the issue.
As a Chinese proverb puts it, it takes more than one cold day to freeze three feet of ice. The situation in Ukraine has become what it is today for a variety of complex reasons. What is needed to solve complex issues is a cool head and a rational mind, not adding fuel to the fire which only intensifies the situation. China believes that to resolve the current crisis, we must uphold the purposes and principles of the Charter of the United Nations (UN) and respect and protect the sovereignty and territorial integrity of all countries. We must adhere to the principle of indivisible security and accommodate the legitimate security concerns of the parties involved. We must settle disputes by peaceful means through dialogue and negotiation. And we must keep in mind the long-term peace and stability of the region and put in place a balanced, effective and sustainable European security architecture.
As things stand, the international community must make continuous efforts on two priorities.
One priority is to facilitate dialogue for peace. China has made some efforts in this regard and had close communications with the relevant parties. On the second day of the conflict, President Xi Jinping spoke to President Vladimir Putin on the phone and expressed China’s desire to see Russia and Ukraine hold peace talks as early as possible. President Putin responded positively, and Russia and Ukraine have since had two rounds of talks. We hope that the upcoming third round will make further progress. China believes that the more tense the situation, the more important that the talks continue. The wider the disagreement, the greater the need to sit down and have negotiation. China is prepared to continue playing a constructive role to facilitate dialogue for peace and work alongside the international community when needed to carry out necessary mediation.
The other priority is to prevent a massive humanitarian crisis. To this end, China wishes to propose a six-point initiative:
First, make sure that humanitarian operations abide by the principles of neutrality and impartiality, and avoid politicizing humanitarian issues;
Second, give full attention to the displaced persons in and from Ukraine, and provide them with proper shelter;
Third, ensure the protection of civilians, and prevent secondary humanitarian disasters in Ukraine;
Fourth, provide for safe and smooth humanitarian aid activities, including providing rapid, safe and unimpeded humanitarian access;
Fifth, provide for the safety of foreign nationals in Ukraine, allow them safe departure and help them return to their home countries; and Sixth, support the UN’s coordinating role in channeling humanitarian aid and the work of the UN Crisis Coordinator for Ukraine.
China will continue its efforts to stem the humanitarian crisis. The Red Cross Society of China will provide Ukraine with a tranche of emergency humanitarian supplies as soon as possible.”
International Media Group Rossiya Segodnya (RT):
“The West is ratcheting up sanctions on Russia. How will this affect Russia-China relations?” (Note: Rolling news on Western sanctions being imposed on Russia here)
Wang: “China and Russia are both permanent members of the UN Security Council, and each other’s most important close neighbors and strategic partners. Our relationship is one of the most crucial bilateral relations in the world. Our cooperation not only advances the interests of both peoples, but also contributes to peace, stability, and development in the world.
Last year, the two sides commemorated the 20th anniversary of the China-Russia Treaty of Good-Neighborliness and Friendly Cooperation. Given the increasingly complex international strategic landscape, our shared commitment to ever-lasting friendship and mutually beneficial cooperation, as enshrined in the Treaty, is highly relevant and important not only to both sides but also to countries across the world.
I wish to stress that the China-Russia relationship is valued for its independence. It is based on non-alliance, non-confrontation and non-targeting of any third party. It is free from interference or discord sown by third parties. This is both what historical experience has taught us and an innovation in international relations. Not long ago, the two sides issued a joint statement on international relations entering a new era and global sustainable development. It sends an unequivocal message to the world that China and Russia jointly oppose attempts to revive the Cold War mindset or provoke ideology-based confrontation, and stand for greater democracy in international relations as well as the purposes and principles of the UN Charter.
The China-Russia relationship is grounded in a clear logic of history and driven by strong internal dynamics. and the friendship between the Chinese and Russian peoples is rock-solid. There is a bright prospect for cooperation between the two sides. No matter how precarious and challenging the international situation may be, China and Russia will maintain strategic focus and steadily advance our comprehensive strategic partnership of coordination for a new era.”
Xinhua: “China has been evacuating many of its nationals from Ukraine. Can you share more information on this?”
Wang: “With tensions escalating in Ukraine, the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China and the State Council are highly concerned about the safety of every Chinese national in Ukraine. General Secretary Xi Jinping has taken a personal interest, repeatedly asked about the situation, and demanded all-out efforts to ensure the safety of Chinese nationals. China’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MFA) has activated its consular emergency response mechanism, both maintaining diplomatic communications with Ukraine, Russia, and countries in the neighborhood, and issuing safety alerts and reminders for Chinese compatriots in Ukraine.”
Agencia EFE: “Does China believe that its ever-closer relations with Russia and the conflict in Ukraine may affect its relations with Europe and the European Union?”
Wang: “China and Europe are two major forces for world peace, two big markets for common development and two great civilizations for human progress. The China-Europe relationship is not targeted at any third party, nor is it subjugated to or controlled by any third party. Dialogue and cooperation between the two sides on the basis of mutual respect and mutual benefit will add more stabilizing factors to an unstable world.
China and Europe had fruitful cooperation in 2021. Let me give you two examples. China-EU trade exceeded US$800 billion last year for the first time, underscoring the high complementarity of the economic and trade ties. The China-Europe Railway Express ran more than 15,000 cargo trips, up by 29 percent year on year, and played an active role in promoting international cooperation against COVID-19, ensuring the stability of industrial and supply chains, and facilitating global economic recovery.
That said, some forces are unhappy to see the steady growth of China-Europe relations. They fabricate the narrative of “China threat”, play up competition with China, clamor for seeing China as a “systemic rival”, and even impose sanctions and provoke confrontation with China. Both China and Europe must be on high alert against these developments. China-Europe cooperation, going through decades of ups and downs, is deeply rooted in solid public support, extensive common interests, and similar strategic needs. Such cooperation enjoys great resilience and potential. It cannot be reversed by any force.
China views its relations with Europe from a strategic, long-term perspective. China’s policy toward Europe is firm and consistent. It will not be affected by any turn of events. We will continue to support the independence of Europe and a united and prosperous EU. In the meantime, we hope that Europe will develop a more independent and objective perception of China, adopt a more pragmatic and rational China policy, and work with China to oppose a new Cold War and uphold and act on true multilateralism.
Going forward, the two sides need to work together for the success of the China-EU Summit and other important events on the political agenda. We will seek greater strategic synergy, expand practical cooperation, advance multilateral coordination, deepen people-to-people exchange, and properly manage differences, so as to jointly deliver more concrete benefits to the world.”
Khabar 24 News Channel (Kazakh):“This year marks the 30th anniversary of diplomatic relations between China and the five Central Asian countries. What will China do to meet the goals set at the virtual summit held early this year to commemorate the anniversary?”
Wang: “China always believes that a growing, prosperous, stable and dynamic Central Asia is in the common interest of China and other countries in the region. We will continue to follow the principles of mutual respect, good-neighborly friendship, solidarity in trying times and mutual benefit, as it works with Central Asian countries to forge a strategic partnership featuring rich substance, fruitful results and enduring friendship, and build a China-Central Asia community with a shared future.” (Note: China and the five Central Asian countries held a recent regional summit in January. More on that here).
Global Times (China): “Having hosted a “Summit for Democracy” last year that was widely deemed unsuccessful, the US plans to hold another one this year. How will China respond?”
Wang: “Last year, the US held a summit in the name of promoting democracy. Yet the so-called “Summit for Democracy” excluded nearly half of all countries on the planet, blatantly drew an ideological line between countries and created division in the world. The act violated the spirit of democracy. To hold another such summit would receive even less support around the world.
China practices whole-process people’s democracy. It is broad-based, genuine, and effective democracy which enjoys the wholehearted endorsement and support of the Chinese people. This January, the world’s largest public relations consultancy firm Edelman released a survey. In 2021, trust among Chinese citizens in their government was a record 91 percent, again topping the world and reaching the highest level in a decade. Polls conducted by Harvard University for many years also produced similar results. The world recognizes China’s democracy, and we have full confidence in our path.
Human civilization, if compared to a garden, should be a diverse place in which democracy in different countries blooms like a hundred flowers. Setting a standard for democracy after the US system is undemocratic. Meddling in other countries’ internal affairs in the name of democracy would only hurt the people in those countries. Putting one’s own system on a pedestal is not just against the spirit of democracy, but also spells disaster for democracy.
We look forward to exchanges and mutual learning with other countries on the basis of equality. Let us promote the true spirit of democracy, strip pseudo-democracy of its various types of charade, and make international relations more democratic so as to inject forward momentum to human progress.” (Note: More on the United States ‘Summit for Democracy’ perceptions here)
Bloomberg (US): “What similarities are there between the current situation in Ukraine and the question of Taiwan? How likely would you say conflict in the Taiwan Strait is at the moment?”
Wang: “Let me first make it clear that the Taiwan question and the Ukraine issue are different in nature and are not comparable at all. Most fundamentally, Taiwan is an inalienable part of China’s territory, and the Taiwan question is entirely China’s internal affair. The Ukraine issue arose from contention between two countries, namely Russia and Ukraine. Some people, while being vocal about the principle of sovereignty on the Ukraine issue, have kept undermining China’s sovereignty and territorial integrity on the Taiwan question. This is a blatant act of double standards.
Tension exists in the Taiwan Strait. Its root cause is that the DPP authorities refuse to recognize the one-China principle and attempt to change the status quo that both sides of the Taiwan Strait belong to one and the same China. The DPP authorities have sought to create “two Chinas” or “one China, one Taiwan” to misrepresent Taiwan’s history and sever Taiwan’s roots. This, in the end, will only ruin Taiwan’s future. Some forces in the US, in a bid to hold back China’s rejuvenation, have condoned and abetted the growth of separatist forces for “Taiwan independence” and tried to challenge and hollow out the one-China principle. This gravely violates the basic norms of international relations and puts the peace and stability in the Taiwan Strait in serious jeopardy. This would not only push Taiwan into a precarious situation, but also bring unbearable consequences for the US side.
I must stress that the two sides across the Taiwan Strait share the same historical and cultural roots and belong to one and the same China. Taiwan’s future and hope lies in the peaceful development of cross-Strait relations and reunification with the mainland, not in counting on the empty promises of external forces. Seeking foreign support to gain independence is a dead end. The scheme to use Taiwan to contain China is doomed to fail. Taiwan will eventually return to the embrace of the motherland.”
Wang / Borrell Discussions
Wang also held telephone discussions with Josep Borrell, the EU’s High Representative of Foreign Affairs and Security Policy. These talks are of interest as Borrell is not trusted by Moscow due to his support for Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny, and his position in appointing a German Christian to negotiate peace in Serbia, which has Christian/Muslim conflicts.
Chinese media have reported the discussion as follows:
“Wang Yi expressed that China deplores the fact that the situation in Ukraine has come to this point. Sanctions will not solve the problem, and escalating sanctions will only make the situation more complicated and aggravated. The immediate priority is to avoid a humanitarian crisis. The Chinese side has publicly put forward a six-point initiative to prevent a humanitarian crisis in Ukraine. The main purpose is to promote the formation of a joint force of the international community and prevent the humanitarian situation in Ukraine from further deteriorating.
Wang Yi said that we should also encourage Russia and Ukraine to hold peace talks. China has advocated dialogue from the very beginning. It is hoped that the international community will support Russia and Ukraine in conducting serious negotiations, not only to continue the negotiations, but also to negotiate a ceasefire, a cessation of war and peace. China is willing to continue to play a constructive role in de-escalating the situation to the best of its ability. It is also hoped that the European side will have a comprehensive and serious dialogue with the Russian side on European security issues in the future, and will form a balanced, effective and sustainable European security framework based on the principle of indivisibility of security.
Wang Yi said that under the current situation, China and the EU, as two major forces in the world, should make joint efforts to well prepare for the China-EU leaders’ meeting and send a positive and positive signal to the world.”
Summary by Chris Devonshire-Ellis
It is notable in terms of the Ukraine conflict that Wang suggested that Beijing and Brussels should work together to discuss European security issues and specifically omitted mention of the United States in this regard, an indication that Beijing views Washington as the protagonist in developing the Ukraine situation. This comes after the West became convinced to impose sanctions on China late last year over issues concerning the Uyghurs in Xinjiang, rhetoric that only increased after the US ignominious exit from Afghanistan. Products made in Xinjiang, China’s largest province by geographical size, have been sanctioned by Washington and the European Union. China has denied claims of ‘genocide’ and has stated the Uyghur clampdown is a security matter – partially caused by regional instability in the wake of the US withdrawal. Certainly, the extent and regularity of sanctions imposition in contemporary times is completely unprecedented, to the position that to the West, Russia and Belarus are being effectively removed from the map.
US senators are also now publicly calling for assassinations, an extraordinary – and dangerously antagonistic political development.
It remains to be seen how Russia especially will recover from having its economy effectively thrown up into the air, however it now relies on China more than ever as a reliable trade partner. China will be propping Russia up, however this will also come with geopolitical strings attached, especially in the Russian Far East, where discontent over Russia’s ownership of Vladivostok has been simmering with certain Chinese factions refering to it as Haishanwai, as well as influence within Central Asia.
China is conducting a balancing act here and will be seeking to support Russia (and take some advantage) while pushing the EU to talk more with it as a counter-balance to US influence – especially now as Russia appears to have lost that capability, at least for the immediate future. Brussels will be wary, but some EU politicians remain both friendly towards China especially, and support for Russia still remains in certain circles, especially among those who view the American influence and gains made from the Ukraine confrontation as a little too convenient. The consequence will be continuing support for Russia, an examination of where the fault lines lie, as well as a considerable upcoming China push to have more of a say in Eurasian, and European security.
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They confess: they had no virus when they concocted the test for the virus; they “contrived” a model by pretending to find what they wanted to find; it’s called a self-fulfilling prophecy
This is the con and the crime that drove millions of lives, and economies, into ruin
Quiz: If an agency of the federal government revealed they had no basis for constructing a diagnostic test that was used on millions of people; but the test was the cornerstone of a national lockdown; and the lockdown drove the economy off a cliff; and destroyed millions of lives; however, NOW, that agency says, they DO have a basis for the test; would you buy what they’re selling?
If your answer is yes, you’re in good company; the company I call Blind, Ignorant, Denialist, Hoaxing Journalists.
The CDC issued a document that bulges with devastating admissions.
“After December 31, 2021, CDC will withdraw the request to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) for Emergency Use Authorization (EUA) of the CDC 2019-Novel Coronavirus (2019-nCoV) Real-Time RT-PCR Diagnostic Panel, the assay first introduced in February 2020 for detection of SARS-CoV-2 only. CDC is providing this advance notice for clinical laboratories to have adequate time to select and implement one of the many FDA-authorized alternatives.”
Many people believe this means the CDC is giving up on the PCR test as a means of “detecting the virus.” The CDC isn’t saying that at all.
They’re saying the PCR technology will continue to be used, but they’re replacing what the test is looking FOR with a better “reference sample.” A better marker. A better target. A better piece of RNA supposedly derived from SARS-CoV-2.
CDC/FDA are confessing there has been a PROBLEM with the PCR test which has been used to detect the virus, starting in February of 2020—right up to this minute.
In other words, the millions and millions of “COVID cases” based on the PCR test in use are all suspect. Actually, that statement is too generous. Every test result of every PCR test should be thrown out.
“During the early months of the Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic, clinical specimens [of the virus] were not readily available to developers of IVDs [in vitro diagnostics] to detect SARS-CoV-2. Therefore, the FDA authorized IVDs based on available data from contrived samples generated from a range of SARS-CoV-2 material sources (for example, gene specific RNA, synthetic RNA, or whole genome viral RNA) for analytical and clinical performance evaluation. While validation using these contrived specimens provided a measure of confidence in test performance at the beginning of the pandemic, it is not feasible to precisely compare the performance of various tests that used contrived specimens because each test validated performance using samples derived from different gene specific, synthetic, or genomic nucleic acid sources.”
Translation: We, at the CDC, did not have a specimen of the SARS-CoV-2 virus when we concocted the PCR test for SARS-CoV-2. Yes, it’s unbelievable, right? And that’s the test we’ve been using all along. So we CONTRIVED samples of the virus. We fabricated. We lied. We made up (invented) synthetic gene sequences and we SAID these sequences HAD TO BE close to the sequence of SARS-CoV-2, without having the faintest idea of what we were doing, because, again, we didn’t have an actual specimen of the virus. We had no proof THERE WAS something called SARS-CoV-2.
This amazing FDA document goes to say the Agency has granted emergency approval to 59 different PCR tests since the beginning of the (fake) pandemic. 59. And, “…it is not feasible to precisely compare the performance of various tests that used contrived specimens because each test validated performance using samples derived from different gene specific, synthetic, or genomic nucleic acid sources.”
Translation: Each of the 59 different PCR tests for SARS-CoV-2 told different lies and concocted different fabrications about the genetic makeup of the virus—the virus we didn’t have. Obviously, then, these tests would give unreliable results. THE PCR TESTS USED CONTRIVED SPECIMENS OF THE VIRUS WE DIDN’T HAVE.
BUT, don’t worry, be happy, because NOW, the CDC and the FDA say, they really do have actual virus samples of SARS-CoV-2 from patients; they have better targets for the PCR test, and labs should start gearing up for the new and improved tests.
In other words, they were lying THEN, but they’re not lying NOW. They were “contriving,” but now they’re telling the truth.
If you believe that, I have Fountain of Youth water for sale, extracted from the lead-contaminated system of Flint, Michigan.
Here, once again, I report virology’s version of “we isolated the virus”:
They have a soup they make in their labs.
This soup contains human and monkey cells, toxic chemicals and drugs, and all sorts of other random genetic material. Because the cells start to die, the researchers ASSUME a bit of mucus from a patient they dropped in the soup is doing the killing, and THE VIRUS must be the killer agent in the mucus.
This assumption is entirely unwarranted. The drugs and chemicals could be doing the cell-killing, and the researchers are also starving the cells of vital nutrients, and that starvation could kill the cells.
There is no proof that SARS-CoV-2 is in the soup, or that it is doing the cell-killing, or that it exists.
Yet the researchers call cell-death “isolation of the virus.”
To say this is a non-sequitur is a vast understatement. In their universe, “We assume, without proof, we have the virus buried in a soup in a dish in the lab” equals, “We’ve separated the virus from all surrounding material.”
Virology equals “how to spread bullshit for a living and scare the world.” Other than that, it’s perfect.
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The author of three explosive collections, THE MATRIX REVEALED, EXIT FROM THE MATRIX, and POWER OUTSIDE THE MATRIX, Jon was a candidate for a US Congressional seat in the 29th District of California. He maintains a consulting practice for private clients, the purpose of which is the expansion of personal creative power. Nominated for a Pulitzer Prize, he has worked as an investigative reporter for 30 years, writing articles on politics, medicine, and health for CBS Healthwatch, LA Weekly, Spin Magazine, Stern, and other newspapers and magazines in the US and Europe. Jon has delivered lectures and seminars on global politics, health, logic, and creative power to audiences around the world. You can sign up for his free NoMoreFakeNews emails here or his free OutsideTheRealityMachine emails here.
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Austria is suspending a law that made COVID-19 vaccination mandatory for all adults in the country. The move comes as multiple European nations have dropped COVID-related restrictions and mandates in recent weeks. Austria was one of the only countries in the world to make COVID-19 vaccination mandatory.
The law took effect in February and called for fines up to €3,600 from mid-March for those who did not comply. Under the government’s plan, police officers would have checked for vaccination status at traffic stops. Citizens would have been required to produce proof of vaccination in writing or be subjected to fines.
Enforcement never ramped up for the law, however. Minister Karoline Edtstadler ultimately announced an end to the legislation on Wednesday, just a little over a month after it took effect. Edstadler said the law’s “encroachment of fundamental rights” could no longer be justified by the pandemic. After consultations with the health minister, we have decided that we will of course follow what the (expert) commission has said,” Edtstadler told reporters after a Cabinet meeting.
The Austrian government may reinstate the law if cases and hospitalizations trend back up, officials said. Health Minister Johannes Rauch said a commission of health experts will deliver another report within three months, at which point the government will review the situation again. “I don’t think I need a crystal ball to tell you that today isn’t the last chapter we will write regarding the vaccination mandate,” Edstadler said.
Austria, along with most of Europe and the U.S., has reported a dramatic drop in both COVID cases and hospitalizations in recent weeks. The alpine nation had already dropped most of its COVID-related restrictions effective last Saturday. Proof of vaccination is no longer required for entry to several venues in the nation, though a handful of mask requirements remain. Calls for the vaccination law to be suspended increased after the general COVID restrictions were dropped.
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Cullen McCue is a 24-years-old conservative who was born in Havertown, PA and now live in Philadelphia. He started Reality Circuit in August, 2017, which provides an alternative to left-wing sports outlets.
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Today, the dangers of military escalation are beyond description.
What is now happening in Ukraine has serious geopolitical implications. It could lead us into a World War III scenario.
It is important that a peace process be initiated with a view to preventing escalation.
Global Research condemns Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
A Bilateral Peace Agreement is required.
More than two million refugees have fled Ukraine since Russia invaded that country. The majority have been women and children since men between 18-60 are not allowed to leave and are conscripted into the armed forces. Most refugees have fled to Poland, Moldova, Slovakia, Romania and Hungary where Ukrainians, but not Arabs, Asians and Africans, have been warmly welcomed. The office of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) has warned that the outflow of refugees could swell to five million.
At the end of the first week of warfare, when the number of refugees was estimated to be ONE million, UNHCR chief Filippo Grandi said half were children. This percentage is likely to be maintained as long as the outward flow continues.
Ukrainian children, experts argue, are particularly vulnerable to psychological distress and long-term mental health problems due to the trauma of sheltering from bombs in underground train stations and basements and being torn from their fathers and other family members, friends and schools, and home environment. Children may also be affected by long, cold and perilous journeys to borders where they have to wait in line for hours before being allowed to cross into a safe country. They could be distressed by uncertainty over where they will be accommodated and fed when they arrive in a strange country and worry over where they will eventually find refuge.
The situation is particularly difficult and, even, alarming for children who travelled on their own, leaving behind parents whose presence could provide a measure of stability and comfort.
The Western media cites mental health experts on the impacts of past war situations on children without speculating how the Ukraine war may affect the young. Children can be shaken, depressed, withdrawn, undemanding, liable to cry without cause and wet their beds. How children handle warfare depends on parental and other support systems. These change when families become refugees and could deepen trauma and alienation.
The refugee children of Ukraine are fortunate because their mental health is already being discussed and, in some cases, addressed even though the Russian war on Ukraine is 15 days old.
By contrast, the children of Gaza are forgotten victims of Israel’s 15-year war on the Palestinian coastal strip. Sixty-four per cent of these children come from refugee stock and the majority depend on the UN agency looking after refugees for the necessities of life. Gaza’s children cannot flee from the strip and find sanctuary in a safe country. They are trapped by Israel’s siege and blockade. Seriously ill children cannot get Israeli permits to travel to West Bank or Israeli hospitals for treatment not available in Gaza. Many youths who gain admission to foreign universities cannot leave Gaza in order to secure degrees and claim a future outside the strip’s narrow confines.
Israeli drones fly overhead constantly and, occasionally, strike targets claimed to be military sites. When, between 2018-2020, Palestinian youths and minor children resisted the Israeli occupation by protesting at the Israel fence which surrounds the Gaza strip, Israeli troops fired tear gas, rubber bullets, and live rounds at them. Between 2018-2020 214 Palestinians, 46 of them children, were killed and 36,100 Palestinians were injured, including 8,800 children. Resistance of any type is branded “terrorism” by Israel and its friends.
Every few years Palestinian children are subjected to full-scale Israeli attacks which can last a week or weeks. Unlike Ukrainian children, Gaza’s children do not have underground train stations and tunnels and bunkers where they can shelter from bombs, bullets and shells. Israel’s current practice is to warn Palestinians to leave homes and other buildings about to be levelled.
While this saves lives where warnings are given, families are rendered homeless and without most of their possessions. Children search rubble for teddy bears, toys and schoolbooks and bags. Children who survive destroyed unoccupied households help dig survivors and bodies of unwarned famililes from the ruins.
Gaza’s Community Mental Health Programme, founded in 1990 by the late Eyad Al Sarraj is the leading Palestinian non-governmental organisation providing counselling and other help to men, women and children suffering from war and privation. The latter caused, at least in part, by Israel’s blockade. Research has shown Palestinian children develop feelings of fear, anger, hostility, resentment and frustration which can turn to violence in schools. In response, the programme has carried out programmes in schools to train teachers how to deal with affected children and encourage children to resolve differences peacefully. Summer camps and recreational trips are also organised for children.
During a trip to Gaza with a BBC television correspondent some years ago, she and I interviewed the deputy director of the Mental Health Programme. Since the weather was clear although the wind was gusty, we did the interview on the beach where children were playing football. They gathered round and aggressively asked who we were and what we were doing. They exemplified the trauma that Gaza’s children face on a daily basis.
Before his death from cancer in 2013, I used to call on Eyad whenever I visited Gaza. Following Israel’s 2008-09 onslaught on Gaza, I found him at home with his six-year-old son, Ali, who sat firmly on Eyad’s lap. He had kept Ali by his side throughout the Israeli attack. Eyed told me that as a result of that campaign, 99 per cent of Gazans suffered from post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). When I checked with people I met, they agreed. People react in different ways to PTSD. A foreign resident told me his son had nightmares and wet his bed while a UN official spoke in a rapid stream of words during an interview, signalling that he was suffering from PTSD.
This heightened bout of PTSD was piled on top of years of traumatic stress caused by Israel’s siege and constant malignant presence on the borders, in the sea, and in the sky over Gaza.
While the world focuses on the tragic and terrible plight of Ukraine’s children, the endless trauma of Gaza’s children should not be ignored.
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Featured image: A Palestinian child, Omar Alhadeede, the sole survivor of his family, looks at a photo of his brothers, killed by the recent Israeli bombing on Gaza. (Image tweeted by Aya Isleem)
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Last week, a bitterly divided Supreme Court dismissed a case brought by a detainee at the U.S. Naval Base at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba against the Department of Justice because the government claimed the information sought in the case was a state secret, the revelation of which will impair national security.
The plaintiff in the case has already testified publicly at Gitmo about his torture by Polish intelligence agents in Poland at the request of their American counterparts, and he sought an acknowledgement by U.S. officials that the torture did take place.
The American psychologists who crafted and managed the torture wrote a book about it and have discussed it publicly. The European Court of Human Rights has found that the torture occurred as the detainee in Gitmo described. And Polish prosecutors have indicted the Polish intelligence agents for violating the human rights of this detainee.
Still, the government wants to keep secret its torture from nearly 20 years ago. Last week, the Supreme Court agreed.
Here is the backstory.
In 2002, Abu Zubaydah was captured in Pakistan and handed over to the CIA, which brought him to Poland where, under the supervision of CIA agents and two American psychologists, he was brutally tortured until his removal to Gitmo in 2006.
The Bush administration claimed that Zubaydah was a high-ranking member of al-Qaida who possessed information needed to fight the war on terror. After his torture produced no actionable information, the CIA told the Department of Justice and the Senate Intelligence Committee that Zubaydah was not a member of al-Qaida, and it had no evidence of wrongdoing by him. He remains in his 20th year of captivity, uncharged with any crime.
His lawyers filed a criminal complaint with the European Court of Human Rights against the CIA and the Polish intelligence agents who tortured him.
That court concluded that the torture did occur, and it referred the matter to Polish prosecutors to proceed criminally against the Polish defendants. During that criminal proceeding, Polish prosecutors asked the DOJ for the names of those who tortured Zubaydah and documentation of what they did to him.
When the DOJ declined that request, Zubaydah sued the DOJ and asked a court to compel the DOJ to honor the request.
In the Supreme Court oral argument last year, the government’s lawyer conceded that the names of the torturers and the nature of their grisly deeds are already known — from the book the psychologists wrote about it and from the detainee’s testimony — but the government will not confirm any of it because it constitutes state secrets.
If these so-called state secrets are now publicly known, why does the government refuse to confirm them? To shield itself from embarrassment.
The government has a long and sordid history of shielding itself from embarrassment.
On Oct. 6, 1948, a U.S. government plane was leaving Robins Air Force Base in Warner Robins, Georgia, for a round-trip flight to Orlando, Florida, when it crashed, killing its crew. When surviving family members sued the government to determine who manufactured the plane and why it crashed, the feds declined to provide any information asserting that what was sought constituted state secrets.
In 1953, when the Supreme Court upheld this novel argument, it effectively changed the rules of evidence by permitting the federal government — without disclosing to a judge what the secrets are — to withhold evidence merely by making this state secrets claim.
Since 1953, the government has successfully asserted the state secrets claim dozens of times, claiming that the revelation of the so-called secrets will adversely affect national security.
In 2001, after the statute of limitations had long expired for any litigation over the 1948 crash, and reporters filed Freedom of Information Act requests for the alleged state secrets, a judge ordered the government to reveal them.
There were none.
The entire state secrets doctrine was based on covering up government embarrassment and wrongdoing and shielding the plane’s manufacturer from litigation, not the protection of legitimate secrets.
Now, back to the Zubaydah case. When it was argued in the Supreme Court last year, everyone involved in the oral argument knew that the state secrets doctrine was based on material misrepresentations the feds made to at least a dozen federal judges and justices, yet the government treated it as if it were legitimate and compelling.
The government argued that, in wartime, its powers to keep its behavior secret are enhanced — even 20 years later, even after the war ended, even if the secrets are already out.
The Supreme Court agreed. It upheld the state secrets doctrine and dismissed Zubaydah’s complaint. In so doing, the court attempted to rewrite history by legitimizing a doctrine created by deception and by pretending that matters already publicly known are somehow still secret.
Add to this the fact that all torture is criminal and unconstitutional, and you have a court becoming the apprentice of deep state bureaucrats and torturers who believe that, in matters of so-called national security, the feds can do no wrong.
Justice Neil Gorsuch wrote a blistering dissent taking the majority to task for pretending that the state secrets doctrine is valid and can be invoked without even first showing the secrets to a federal judge in secret. He also ripped into the majority by asking: What conceivable national security purpose is served by hiding that which is already in plain sight?
The court’s torture jurisprudence is sickening, unconstitutional and haunting.
It is sickening because it consists of judges with blinders on, ruling as if the government-induced blood and pain of innocents were of no moment. It is unconstitutional because it rejects the Ninth Amendment’s textual protection of natural rights, which shields the human body from unwanted government intrusion. It is haunting because the Supreme Court shielding torturers will unleash the government to engage in more torture.
This is what has become of the Constitution’s guardians.
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Today, the dangers of military escalation are beyond description.
What is now happening in Ukraine has serious geopolitical implications. It could lead us into a World War III scenario.
It is important that a peace process be initiated with a view to preventing escalation.
Global Research condemns Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
A Bilateral Peace Agreement is required.
Russian President Putin has claimed that he ordered the invasion of Ukraine to “denazify” its government, while Western officials, such as former U.S. Ambassador to Moscow Michael McFaul, have called this pure propaganda, insisting, “There are no Nazis in Ukraine.”
In the context of the Russian invasion, the post-2014 Ukrainian government’s problematic relations with extreme right-wing groups and neo-Nazi parties has become an incendiary element on both sides of the propaganda war, with Russia exaggerating it as a pretext for war and the West trying to sweep it under the carpet.
The reality behind the propaganda is that the West and its Ukrainian allies have opportunistically exploited and empowered the extreme right in Ukraine, first to pull off the 2014 coup, and then by redirecting it to fight separatists in Eastern Ukraine. And far from “denazifying” Ukraine, the Russian invasion is likely to further empower Ukrainian and international neo-Nazis, as it attracts fighters from around the world and provides them with weapons, military training and the combat experience that many of them are hungry for.
Ukraine’s neo-Nazi Svoboda Party and its founders Oleh Tyahnybokand Andriy Parubiyplayed leading roles in the U.S-backed coup in February 2014. Assistant Secretary Nuland and Ambassador Pyatt mentioned Tyahnybok as one of the leaders they were working with on their infamous leaked phone call before the coup, even as they tried to exclude him from an official position in the post-coup government.
As formerly peaceful protests in Kyiv gave way to pitched battles with police and violent, armed marches to try to break through police barricades and reach the Parliament building, Svoboda members and the newly-formed Right Sector militia, led byDmytro Yarosh, battled police, spearheaded marches and raided a police armory for weapons. By mid-February 2014, these men with guns were the de facto leaders of the Maidan movement.
We will never know what kind of political transition peaceful protests alone would have led to in Ukraine or how different the new government would have been if a peaceful political process had been allowed to take its course, without interference by the United States or violent right-wing extremists.
A pro-EU rally in Kyiv on 24 November when people marching towards the rally on European square (2013) (Licensed under CC BY 2.0)
But it was Yarosh who took to the stage in the Maidan and rejected the February 21, 2014 agreement negotiated by the French, German and Polish foreign ministers, under which Yanukovich and opposition political leaders agreed to hold new elections later that year. Instead, Yarosh and Right Sector refused to disarm and led the climactic march on Parliament that overthrew the government.
Since 1991, Ukrainian elections had swung back and forth between leaders like President Viktor Yanukovych, who was from Donetsk and had close ties with Russia, and Western-backed leaders like President Yushchenko, who was elected in 2005 after the “Orange Revolution” that followed a disputed election. Ukraine’s endemic corruption tainted every government, and rapid public disillusionment with whichever leader and party won power led to a see-saw between Western- and Russian-aligned factions.
In 2014, Nuland and the State Department got their favorite,Arseniy Yatsenyuk, installed as Prime Minister of the post-coup government. He lasted two years, until he, too, lost his job due to endless corruption scandals. Petro Poroshenko, the post-coup President, lasted a bit longer, until 2019, even after his personal tax evasion schemes were exposed in the 2016 Panama Papers and 2017 Paradise Papers.
When Yatsenyuk became Prime Minister, he rewarded Svoboda’s role in the coup with three cabinet positions, including Oleksander Sych as Deputy Prime Minister, and governorships of three of Ukraine’s 25 provinces. Svoboda’s Andriy Parubiy was appointed Chairman (or speaker) of Parliament, a post he held for the next 5 years. Tyahnybok ran for president in 2014, but only got 1.2% of the votes, and was not re-elected to Parliament.
Ukrainian voters turned their backs on the extreme-right in the 2014 post-coup elections, reducing Svoboda’s 10.4% share of the national vote in 2012 to 4.7%. Svoboda lost support in areas where it held control of local governments but had failed to live up to its promises, and its support was split now that it was no longer the only party running on explicitly anti-Russian slogans and rhetoric.
After the coup, Right Sector helped to consolidate the new order by attacking and breaking up anti-coup protests, in what their leader Yarosh described to Newsweek as a “war” to “cleanse the country” of pro-Russian protesters. This campaign climaxed on May 2nd with the massacre of 42 anti-coup protesters in a fiery inferno, after they took shelter from Right Sector attackers in the Trades Unions House in Odessa.
After anti-coup protests evolved into declarations of independence in Donetsk and Luhansk, the extreme right in Ukraine shifted gear to full-scale armed combat. The Ukrainian military had little enthusiasm for fighting its own people, so the government formed new National Guard units to do so.
Right Sector formed a battalion, and neo-Nazis also dominated the Azov Battalion, which was founded by Andriy Biletsky, an avowed white supremacist who claimed that Ukraine’s national purpose was to rid the country of Jews and other inferior races. It was the Azov battalion that led the post-coup government’s assault on the self-declared republics and retook the city of Mariupol from separatist forces.
The Minsk II agreement in 2015 ended the worst fighting and set up a buffer zone around the breakaway republics, but a low-intensity civil war continued. An estimated 14,000 people have been killed since 2014. Congressman Ro Khanna and progressive members of Congress tried for several years to end U.S. military aid to the Azov Battalion. They finally did so in the FY2018 Defense Appropriation Bill, but Azov reportedly continued to receive U.S. arms and training despite the ban.
In 2019, the Soufan Center, which tracks terrorist and extremist groups around the world, warned,
“The Azov Battalion is emerging as a critical node in the transnational right-wing violent extremist network… (Its) aggressive approach to networking serves one of the Azov Battalion’s overarching objectives, to transform areas under its control in Ukraine into the primary hub for transnational white supremacy.”
The Soufan Center described how the Azov Battalion’s “aggressive networking” reaches around the world to recruit fighters and spread its white supremacist ideology. Foreign fighters who train and fight with the Azov Battalion then return to their own countries to apply what they have learned and recruit others.
Violent foreign extremists with links to Azov have included Brenton Tarrant, who massacred 51 worshippers at a mosque in Christchurch in New Zealand in 2019, and several members of the U.S. Rise Above Movement who were prosecuted for attacking counter-protestors at the “Unite the Right” rally in Charlottesville in August 2017. Other Azov veterans have returned to Australia, Brazil, Germany, Italy, Norway, Sweden, the U.K. and other countries.
Despite Svoboda’s declining success in national elections, neo-Nazi and extreme nationalist groups, increasingly linked to the Azov Battalion, have maintained power on the street in Ukraine, and in local politics in the Ukrainian nationalist heartland around Lviv in Western Ukraine.
After President Zelensky’s election in 2019, the extreme right threatened him with removal from office, or even death, if he negotiated with separatist leaders from Donbas and followed through on the Minsk Protocol. Zelensky had run for election as a “peace candidate,” but under threat from the right, he refused to even talk to Donbas leaders, whom he dismissed as terrorists.
During Trump’s presidency, the United States reversed Obama’s ban on weapons sales to Ukraine, and Zelensky’s aggressive rhetoric raised new fears in Donbas and Russia that he was building up Ukraine’s forces for a new offensive to retake Donetsk and Luhansk by force.
The civil war has combined with the government’s neoliberal economic policies to create fertile ground for the extreme right. The post-coup government imposed more of the same neoliberal “shock therapy” that was imposed throughout Eastern Europe in the 1990s. Ukraine received a $40 billion IMF bailout and, as part of the deal, privatized 342 state-owned enterprises; reduced public sector employment by 20%, along with salary and pension cuts; privatized healthcare, and disinvested in public education, closing 60% of its universities.
Coupled with Ukraine’s endemic corruption, these policies led to the profitable looting of state assets by the corrupt ruling class, and to falling living standards and austerity measures for everybody else. The post-coup government upheld Poland as its model, but the reality was closer to Yeltsin’s Russia in the 1990s. After a nearly 25% fall in GDP between 2012 and 2016, Ukraine is still the poorest country in Europe.
As elsewhere, the failures of neoliberalism have fueled the rise of right-wing extremism and racism, and now the war with Russia promises to provide thousands of alienated young men from around the world with military training and combat experience, which they can then take home to terrorize their own countries.
The Soufan Center has compared the Azov Battalion’s international networking strategy to that of Al Qaeda and ISIS. U.S. and NATO support for the Azov Battalion poses similar risks as their support for Al Qaeda-linked groups in Syria ten years ago. Those chickens quickly came home to roost when they spawned ISIS and turned decisively against their Western backers.
Right now, Ukrainians are united in their resistance to Russia’s invasion, but we should not be surprised when the U.S. alliance with neo-Nazi proxy forces in Ukraine, including the infusion of billions of dollars in sophisticated weapons, results in similarly violent and destructive blowback.
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Grand foreign policy speeches are not usually the specialty of Australian Prime Ministers. Little insight can be gleaned from them. A more profitable exercise would be consulting the US State Department’s briefings, which give more accurate barometric readings of policy in Canberra. The same goes for the selected adversary of the day. Washington’s adversaries must be those of Canberra’s. To challenge such assumptions would be heretical. To act upon them would be apostasy.
The speech by Prime Minister Scott Morrison on March 7 to the Lowy Institute lived down to expectations. Where it did serve some value was to highlight a mirror portrait of the man himself, describing an amoral world of power he inhabits. “We face,” he solemnly stated, “the spectre of a transactional world, devoid of principle, accountability and transparency, where state sovereignty, territorial integrity and liberty are surrendered for respite from coercion and intimidation, or economic entrapment dressed up as economic reward.”
In other respects, this speech was derivative of previous efforts to simplify the world into camps of wearying darkness and sublime light. In his 2002 State of the Union Address, US President George W. Bush did precisely that. Before losing our intellectual integrity in examining Morrison’s efforts of profound shallowness, let us go back to that original, dunce-crafted address, amply aided by David Frum, the Iraq War’s polished and persistent apologist.
When Bush delivered his address, the moment was certainly strained. The September 11, 2001 attacks still searingly fresh; the administration trying to come up with a doctrine to cope with the scourge of international Islamist terrorism. In such instances, a subtle analysis of the global scene, a mapping of sensible policy, might have been too much to ask.
What the world got was an adolescent morality sketch based on angry pre-emption in a rotten world. The US, Bush promised, would pursue “two great objectives.” The first involved shutting down terrorist camps, disrupting the plans of terrorists, and bringing “terrorists to justice.” The second: “to prevent the terrorists and regimes who seek chemical, biological or nuclear weapons from threatening the United States and the world.”
With the objectives stated, the heavy padding was introduced into the speech. North Korea, Iran and Iraq were singled out for special mention. “States like these, and their terrorist allies, constitute an axis of evil, arming to threaten the peace of the world. By seeking weapons of mass destruction, these regimes pose a grave and growing danger.” The sequence of catastrophic, and bloody blunders that would culminate in the destruction of the ancient lands of Mesopotamia, was being floated. Evidence would be secondary to assumption and ideology.
Morrison’s own assessment is not much better. “A new arc of autocracy is instinctively aligning itself to challenge and reset the world order in their own image.” At best, this silly formulation is dated, one straight out of musty history books depicting Beijing and Moscow as joined at the hip, keen on world revolution.
Russia’s assault on Ukraine is taken to be an attack on the “rules-based international order, built upon the principles and values that guide our own nation”. This order “supported peace and stability, and allowed sovereign nations to pursue their interests free from coercion.”
This same order was grossly, and willingly violated by the US-led coalition that marched into a sovereign state in 2003, unleashing tides of sectarianism that continue in their fury. The grounds for attacking Iraq were specious, and there was no interest in allowing it to pursue its “interests free from coercion.” Instead, a sanguinary, ramshackle protectorate was created, crudely supervised by international forces that aided in driving jihadi tourism.
The same order Morrison blithely describes was violated by NATO in its bombing of vital civilian infrastructure in Serbia in 1999, ostensibly to halt a genocide of Kosovars. In 2011, the same rules-based-order became something of a joke with the aerial intervention by French, UK and US forces in backing a revolt against Colonel Muammar Gaddafi in Libya. Unceremoniously butchered by an ecstatic mob, Gaddafi did not live to see his country virtually partitioned by rival militias.
The adversaries of the US are on very solid ground to point these misdeeds out, and Russian President Vladimir Putin does not shy away from reminding the West of this fact in his February 24 speech. Western colleagues, Putin remarked, “do not like to remember those events, and when we talk about it, they prefer to point not to the norms of international law, but to the circumstances that they interpret as they see fit.” This hardly adds weight to his own self-interpreted claims, but they serve to draw a thick line under hypocrisy masquerading as virtue.
Morrison hits a sinister register in describing the effects of the principle-free, transactional world. “The well-motivated altruistic ambition of our international institutions has opened the door to this threat. Just as our open markets and liberal democracies have enabled hostile influence and interference to penetrate not our own societies and economies.” What is he suggesting? A violent retaliation, a forced reversal?
Much impatience was expressed with how these naughty regimes of the autocratic arc have managed to get away with it. It might be “right to aspire” to “inclusion and accommodation”, but Australia and its allies had been left “disappointed”. But not his government – not the Liberal-Nationals, who had been “clear eyed”, having “taken strong, brave and world-leading action in response.”
To show how clear of eye Morrison has been, he has successfully made Australia the subservient partner in the AUKUS security pact with the United States and the UK. What was left of Australian sovereignty has been brazenly outsourced. The prime minister barely acknowledges the rationale of the agreement in the Lowy address, which has little to do with Australia eventually having its own questionable submarines with nuclear propulsion. The central point is granting greater access to US armed forces for easier deployment in the Indo-Pacific, a logistical benefit that is bound to make any war more, rather than less likely. Some freedom; some sovereignty.
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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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Today, the dangers of military escalation are beyond description.
What is now happening in Ukraine has serious geopolitical implications. It could lead us into a World War III scenario.
It is important that a peace process be initiated with a view to preventing escalation.
Global Research condemns Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
A Bilateral Peace Agreement is required.
Most commentary on Western progressive and radical media on events in Ukraine has failed to acknowledge the right to self-defense of the Russian Federation and its allies the Donetsk and Lugansk Popular Republics. This is one more example of the way North American and European progressive and radical movements collaborate with their ruling classes, just as they generally did over their governments’ repressive economic and social measures addressing Covid-19. The very Western movements claiming to be morally superior to both sides in the Ukraine war, by doing so, aid and abet the US government, its NATO allies and their Nazi sympathizer protegés in Ukraine.
The double standard could hardly be more clear. As distinguished international war crimes specialist Christopher Black notes:
“When one takes account of all the factors that governed the Russian decision to send its forces into Ukraine it is clear that in law they had the legal right to do so whereas the United States continues its illegal invasion and occupation of Iraq and Syria to this day and the NATO media powers and governments say nothing, because they are all complicit in those invasions.”
Now, Ukrainian military documents retrieved by the Russian authorities have demonstrated conclusively that their intervention preempted a large scale assault by Ukrainian armed forces against Donetsk and Lugansk, planned for early March this year.
So President Vladimir Putin was right to argue his government was acting in self defense in Ukraine after eight years of Ukrainian attacks on Donestk and Lugansk, since, as Christopher Black argues, Article 51 of the UN Charter applies, namely
“Nothing in the present Charter shall impair the inherent right of individual or collective self-defence if an armed attack occurs against a Member of the United Nations, until the Security Council has taken measures necessary to maintain international peace and security. Measures taken by Members in the exercise of this right of self-defence shall be immediately reported to the Security Council and shall not in any way affect the authority and responsibility of the Security Council under the present Charter to take at any time such action as it deems necessary in order to maintain or restore international peace and security.”
Which renders entirely specious the argument of many widely respected left wing commentators like, for example, Ignacio Ramonet that Russia’s action in self defense “is barely even a fig leaf, a barebones legal skeleton to explain away an unjustifiable attack on Ukraine”.
The role of Ramonet, like so many similar commentators, is to cover the Left flank of their social democrat and liberal support networks in the European Union and the United States, giving cover for otherwise inexcusable EU and US policies. Such commentators played a practically identical role in 2011 making excuses for Nato countries’ destructive aggression against Libya, Syria and Ivory Coast.
This explains why Ramonet’s claim that it is “difficult to understand why the United States did not do more to avoid this conflict in Ukraine” is fundamentally dishonest and false.
Self-evidently the Western corporate elites have used the governments they own in North America and Europe to weaken and, if possible, destroy not just the independence and autonomy of the Russian Federation, but that of the European Union too. Western corporate elites will make enormous profits rearming Germany and the rest of Europe, and also Japan, and ensuring that Europe depends on US and allied country energy and food supplies. Turning Europe into a heavily militarized US vassal region prevents the US from losing the extremely lucrative, for now, European markets to Russia and China.
Also self-evident is the fact that commentators like Ignacio Ramonet and others assign completely disproportionate meaning to the recent UN General Assembly vote on the war in Ukraine which was so symbolic as to be practically meaningless. Countries representing an enormous majority of the world’s peoples chose to abstain or simply not take part in the vote. Here is the list of abstentions: Algeria, Angola, Armenia, Bangladesh, Bolivia, Burundi, Central African Republic, China, Congo, Cuba, El Salvador, Equatorial Guinea, India, Iran, Iraq, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Laos, Madagascar, Mali, Mongolia, Mozambique, Namibia, Nicaragua, Pakistan, Senegal, South Africa, South Sudan, Sri Lanka, Sudan, Tajikstan, Uganda, Tanzania, Vietnam and Zimbabwe. Not taking part in the vote were: Azerbaijan, Burkina Faso, Eswatini, Ethiopia, Guinea, Guinea-Bissau, Morocco, Togo, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan and Venezuela.
So it is completely false to claim that the UN vote in any way at all represented a global condemnation of Russia by the majority of the world’s peoples. This is even more the case because, subsequently, Indonesia, Malaysia, Turkey, Brazil and Mexico have all made clear they are unwilling to apply illegal coercive economic and other measures against Russia. Nor is it likely that countries in Latin America and the Caribbean will act to damage their countries’s already fragile economies in the context of global efforts to recover from the effects of measures supposedly addressing Covid-19. These are incontrovertible realities that most Western progressives and radicals seem unwilling to acknowledge.
In turn, this means that what they think is practically irrelevant for the majority world. Very serious and committed anti-imperialist, class conscious writers openly discuss whether any kind of Left worth wanting exists any more in North America and Europe, for example Max Blumenthal and Cory Morningstar or the Black Agenda Report collective. These discussions may well be useful eventually for the cultural, social and political well being of Western countries, but in any case the majority world, despite the evil policies of the US and European ruling elites, will continue working successfully to realize their peoples’ right to a decent life, to their human development and to the sovereign independence of their nations.
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Stephen Sefton, renowned author and political analyst based in northern Nicaragua, is actively involved in community development work focussing on education and health care. He is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG).
The Biden administration paid nearly the entire corporate media, including so-called “conservative” media outlets, with taxpayer dollars to engage in a massive campaign to push only positive coverage about COVID shots while censoring any negative information, without disclosing it to their audiences. This is a serious breach of journalistic ethics.
On February 28th, Human Rights Watch (HRW) headlined “With War, Censorship Reaches New Heights”, and reported only against this censorship as practiced in Russia, as-if it were not also being done in America.
Despite the intention of the Neocons and the war lobby to seemingly draw the Russian Federation into an Iraq war-style quagmire, there also appears to be an element who favours an approach which would lead to far more grave consequences – a Libya-style no-fly zone over Ukraine, involving the shooting down of Russian aircraft by NATO, which would undoubtedly trigger a catastrophic third world war involving the use of nuclear weapons.
The illegal Russian invasion of Ukraine has shocked the West and many ordinary Russians. But for those who understand the Russian establishment and its view of Russia’s vital interests, it should not have come as a complete surprise.
Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky on February 27 urged foreigners to head to Ukrainian embassies worldwide in order to sign up to volunteer to fight Russia in Ukraine. Now, Zelensky says that 16,000 foreign volunteers have arrived in Ukraine to assist in their fight against Russia.
The suit challenges the legality of President Joe Biden’s COVID-19 vaccine mandate on service members. Alliance For Free Citizens said this is the largest lawsuit filed to date against the proposed mandates.
The United States has been arming and training far-right militants that are the ideological descendants of Nazi war criminals that were directly involved in the mass-extermination of Jews, Slavs and Gypsies during the Second World War. These Ukrainian storm troopers are among the most vicious and malignant combatants Washington has ever employed to implement its foreign policy agenda.
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency approved the experimental use of genetically engineered mosquitoes in California and Florida to reduce the populations of invasive mosquitoes that carry a host of infectious diseases like Zika and dengue fever.
We will be focusing on Crimea, how the peninsula came to be a part of the nation of Ukraine, whether or not this was ever popular with the public, and how the transition back to being a part of Russia was handled.
The Cincinnati Drug and Poison Information Center recently reported an uptick in accidental exposure to a substance in an at-home antigen test kit for COVID-19 that has the potential to lower blood pressure and cause seizures. The reagent in question is sodium azide.
All Global Research articles can be read in 51 languages by activating the “Translate Website” drop down menu on the top banner of our home page (Desktop version).
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It has become apparent that New Zealand is getting more entangled in the U.S. Empire than ever before. Don’t be fooled that New Zealand and America’s longest war—Afghanistan—is over and ended in abject withdrawal and defeat by the Taliban in August 2021.
Or that New Zealand was not invited to join the new AUKUS pact between the U.S., UK and Australia, to provide the latter with nuclear-powered (but not nuclear-armed) submarines. New Zealand’s nuclear-free policy might rule out any such subs using our waters but New Zealand, under this Labour government, has expressed keenness to be involved with other aspects of AUKUS.
The Waihopai spy base has been New Zealand’s most important service for the U.S. Empire for decades. In 2021 the Government announced that it will be dismantling and decommissioning Waihopai’s two most unmissable features, namely the giant white domes that cover the satellite-interception dishes within.
Both dishes and domes have been declared obsolete 20th century relics that are no longer fit for 21st century spying. They will be removed in 2022. But the Government has no intention of dismantling the spy base itself; instead, it will be modernized to use more efficient (and less glaringly conspicuous) methods of spying.
All of this, from New Zealand’s involvement in Afghanistan to operating Waihopai on behalf of the U.S. National Security Agency, is governed by New Zealand’s decades-long membership in Five Eyes, the electronic spying agreement between the U.S., UK, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand (originally it was referred to by its formal title, the UKUSA Agreement; Five Eyes is a more recent name). But it is much more than that—Five Eyes is a de facto geopolitical bloc.
“The Price of the Club”
John Key explicitly cited the Five Eyes as the justification for New Zealand’s involvement in the the Iraq War: The New Zealand Herald reported: “Prime Minister John Key says New Zealand’s likely military contribution to the fight against Islamic State ‘is the price of the club’ that New Zealand belongs to with the likes of the United States, Australia, Britain and Canada in the intelligence alliance known as Five Eyes.”[1]
More recently, New Zealand’s Five Eyes partners have tried to make it an actual geopolitical bloc, issuing statements about China’s various misdeeds, e.g., in Hong Kong, and pressured New Zealand to sign on. In some cases, the Government has done so; in others it has asserted the increasingly threadbare claim that New Zealand has an independent foreign policy.
“’We are uncomfortable with expanding the remit of the Five Eyes,’ [Foreign Affairs Minister] Nanaia Mahuta said to reporters. ‘New Zealand has been very clear, certainly in this term and since we’ve held the portfolio, not to invoke the Five Eyes as the first point of contact of messaging out on a range of issues that really exist out of the remit of the Five Eyes.’”[2]
But that sort of thing is merely a skirmish, a question of emphasis. New Zealand is in Five Eyes, boots and all.
And the U.S., under Joe Biden, is keen to use blocs like Five Eyes as part of his “Indo-Pacific” strategy, the central policy plank of which is to contain China (whilst simultaneously confronting Russia on the other side of the world). When he took office Biden said “America’s back!” Yes, it is—back to saber-rattling and warmongering. And it wants its traditional allies (or satellites, as the West used to disparagingly call the Soviet Union’s allies during the Cold War) all on board and on message.
U.S. Grants Perks to New Zealand Capitalists Because of Five Eyes
To sweeten the deal, the U.S. is prepared to make Five Eyes membership an attractive proposition. So, Five Eyes has been expanded from intelligence and political ties to also now being explicitly about money and access to markets. The message from Washington is clear: Be in our “club” and we’ll make it worth your while.
This was spelled out in a fascinating article entitled “New Zealand Investors Won Carve-Out From U.S. Foreign Financing Rules.”[3]
“New Zealanders will now jump through fewer hoops to invest in American businesses and real estate, after the Government secured a temporary exemption to the country’s foreign investment screening rules. The U.S. decision represents another step towards more tightly binding together Five Eyes nations, with New Zealand’s intelligence-sharing relationship and defence cooperation cited as key factors for the decision…”
“The Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States, an interagency organisation which scrutinises the national security implications of investments into the country, announced earlier this month (January) that New Zealand had been added to its list of ‘excepted foreign states.’”
“In 2020, the Committee’s remit expanded beyond ‘control’ transactions, where a foreign investor would take controlling interest in a U.S. business, to cover investments in more sensitive companies, as well as the purchase of real estate near sensitive U.S. government facilities…While Australia, Canada and the United Kingdom secured exceptions from those expanded controls at the time, as well as a new requirement for mandatory filing, New Zealand did not, placing an extra burden on Kiwi investors….”
“In a fact sheet outlining the rationale for the change of heart, the U.S. Treasury Department cited New Zealand’s ‘intelligence-sharing relationship with the United States and its collective defense arrangement and cooperation with the United States’ as among the factors which earned it an exemption…. While the addition of New Zealand showed some willingness to expand the benefits of the carve-outs to new investors, the fact the group remained restricted to Five Eyes members did not provide any clear sense of whether it would offer an exemption to countries outside of the intelligence pact.”
So, there you have it. If fighting American wars in other people’s countries is the price of belonging to the Five Eyes club, then the U.S. is prepared to extend exclusive economic benefits to its junior Five Eyes allies to make it more palatable. Older New Zealanders will remember the infamous “guns for butter” phrase of Sir Keith Holyoake, Prime Minister during New Zealand’s involvement in the Vietnam War in the 1960s and 1970s. It means sending our soldiers to fight in U.S. wars in order to, theoretically, gain trade access.
New Zealand never has succeeded in getting a free trade agreement with the U.S.—Donald Trump scuppered the former Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement (TPPA) as soon as he took office and that was the closest New Zealand has ever got to the “holy grail.” The Biden administration is prepared to offer an economic sweetener to New Zealand as reward for being the most loyal, albeit most junior, of the Five Eyes.
Rocket Lab and Five Eyes
Of course, the newest U.S. base in New Zealand is that of Rocket Lab (which operates out of both Auckland and the Mahia Peninsula). I have written several Watchdogarticles in recent years about Rocket Lab (most recently in issue 157, August 2021, “Rocket Lab. Campaign Against It Blasts Off,” see this).
We (both CAFCA and the Anti-Bases Campaign) have consistently made the point that it is a U.S. facility for a privately owned American company, operating for the U.S. military and spies on New Zealand soil.
Illustration of Rocket Lab’s launch complex. [Source: spacenews.com]
Despite the best (worst?) efforts by Rocket Lab’s New Zealand political and media apologists to polish this turd, Rocket Lab itself makes no secret about what it is, what it does and who it serves. Nor is it shy to play the Five Eyes card. “In a 2008 profile published in Metro magazine, [Chief Executive Officer and founder] Peter Beck ruled out military work when discussing if there were payloads Rocket Lab wouldn’t carry.”
Beck is quoted as saying:
‘Of course, … we said right from the beginning if it’s involved in the military, we don’t want anything to do with it. The military can be quite a tempting cherry because a lot of money gets poured into it, but we’re about science, we’re not about killing people…’
His views have evolved, and he now believes military intelligence helps keep Kiwis safe.
“Beck had a very different reply from 2008 when asked if he had any qualms about sending U.S. spy satellites into space, given the intelligence they collect can be used in military operations. ‘You also have to remember that intelligence keeps us safe. Unfortunately, there’s a lot of bad actors in the world. I am a New Zealander, but you also have to understand that national security is a global thing.’”
“‘It’s not a singular country’s responsibility. New Zealand is part of the Five Eyes… it’s all very well to criticise national security until the very day that you need it.’”[4]
Rocket Lab and “Classified Defense and Intelligence Business”
Since I last wrote about Rocket Lab (August 2021), there has been no shortage of new developments. That same month it debuted on the Nasdaq stock exchange in New York, valued at US$ 5.2 billion. In September 2021 it was reported that “Rocket Lab shares jumped nearly 9% to US$ 15.29 (for a $US 6.5 billion market cap) in early trading on the Nasdaq after the company finally confirmed a major tranche of funding from the U.S. military and entry into an inner-circle of companies approved for security and defence missions…The Kiwi-American firm secured US$ 24.35 million (NZ$ 34m) from the U.S. Air Force’s new Space Force division to develop the upper stage of its Neutron rocket.”
“Rocket Lab said in a statement:
‘The agreement signifies Rocket Lab’s commitment to becoming a launch provider for the National Security Space Launch programme, which launches the United States’ most critical missions’… Founder and CEO Peter Beck said: ‘We’re dedicated to building a next-generation rocket that will transform space access for constellations through to the most critical missions in support of national security, and it’s an honour to be partnering with the U.S. Space Force to develop Neutron.’”
“Rocket Lab, which won a key R&D [research and development] contract with U.S. Department of Defense agency DARPA [Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency] at a key time in its young life, has long had close ties to the U.S. military which, along with NASA, has been one of its two biggest customers. And in an investor presentation before its Nasdaq listing, Rocket Lab said Department of Defense space systems spending represented a ‘[US]$968 million opportunity over ten years.’”
“In a reference to Rocket Lab’s new Launch Complex II within NASA’s Wallops Island facility in Virginia, it said ‘a secure facility will be completed this year (2021) to support classified Department of Defense and Intelligence Community business.’”[5]
NASA Wallops Island facility in Virginia. [Source: nasa.gov]
And the fact that Rocket Lab is an American company becomes more and more apparent. “Rocket Lab’s centre of gravity has shifted further away from New Zealand and towards North America after it announced it would buy United States space solar tech company SolAero for $US80 million ($NZ118 million). Rocket Lab will take on 425 staff as a result of the acquisition, which is expected to be complete by the end of March [2022].”
“That will take Rocket Lab’s total number of staff to more than 1100, of whom spokeswoman Morgan Bailey confirmed 525 were currently based in New Zealand. Rocket Lab, which is already headquartered in the U.S. and listed on the Nasdaq stock exchange, will manufacture and launch its next line of larger Neutron rockets in the U.S.”[6]
In February 2022 Rocket Lab announced that it will build a giant production and mission control complex in Colorado. This will be its fourth major facility in the U.S.—the others are in California, New Mexico and Virginia (from where it will exclusively launch its larger Neutron rockets). It has also expanded its facilities in both Auckland and Mahia.
New Zealand Government and Rocket Lab Join U.S. Drive to Mine Moon
The Government’s infatuation with Rocket Lab is taking New Zealand into some literally unearthly and legally dubious places. In mid-2021, New Zealand signed the Artemis Accords, which promotes the exploitation of the Moon and other space resources. “The legal status of space resources is contested. The world’s main space agreement, the 1967 Outer Space Treaty, prohibits the ‘national appropriation’ of the Moon and other celestial bodies by any means. Some academics argue this rules out Moon mining for private profit. Others say it only precludes claims to land, not its resources.”
“This uncertainty aside, in 2015 the U.S. Congress passed a law allowing American companies to own and sell natural resources mined from space. In April 2020, the Trump administration declared that the U.S. doesn’t view space as a ‘global commons,’ denouncing the 1979 Moon Agreement, which sought to protect the moon’s resources as ‘the common heritage’ of mankind (although few states have signed up to it).”
“Announced shortly after Trump’s declaration, the Artemis Accords—which are advanced directly with ‘like-minded’ nations, rather than through the UN—seek to shape international law in line with this worldview, asserting that the extraction of space resources is not ‘inherently’ national appropriation under the Outer Space Treaty.”[7]
Bypassing the UN
“The New Zealand Space Agency believes its participation in the Artemis Accords—an international agreement to send people back to the Moon—will significantly boost the space sector. The Government signed up to the NASA accords in 2021, and New Zealand will play an important role in the project when Rocket Lab launches the CAPSTONE satellite to lunar orbit from Mahia Peninsula, likely in March [2022].”
“NASA’s CAPSTONE, or Cislunar Autonomous Positioning System Technology Operations and Navigation Experiment satellite, will test the orbit planned to be used by a small space station that would act as a lunar gateway. The Space Agency noted that signing the Accords presented some risk to international relationships.”
“‘The Accords may be viewed by some nations as an attempt to bypass the UN Committee on the Peaceful Use of Outer Space process and the UN treaty-making process,’” the Agency said.”[8]
The reference to “some countries” is telling—neither Russia nor China has signed the Artemis Accords. But little old New Zealand has, jumping on board a Trumpian U.S. outer space resource grab (one which has not been reversed by the Biden administration), with a U.S. company standing to financially benefit from its involvement using its NZ launch site.
“There are some obvious reasons that New Zealand might want to side with the United States in this debate. Our relationship with the superpower is critical for our space sector, particularly Rocket Lab, which has numerous U.S. government contracts.”[9] So, there you have it. And the answer to the question posed in the subtitle of that North & South article is: “Yes.”
ABC Webinar on Rocket Lab and Five Eyes
As I detailed in my August 2021 Watchdog article on Rocket Lab, there is now a campaign against it. As part of the January 2021 Waihopai spy base protest, Anti-Bases Campaign (ABC) hosted a well-attended Blenheim public meeting. The three speakers were Ollie Neas, the journalist who has been writing critical analyses on Rocket Lab for years, Nicky Hager on Five Eyes and Green MP Teanau Tuiono.
About 30 protesters gathered in January 2020, 20 km outside Blenheim, in the annual demonstration to close down Waihopai spy base. [Source: stuff.co.nz]
This meeting was so successful and so well received by the good number of people present that ABC decided to host a Christchurch public meeting in September 2021 featuring those same three speakers, plus Sonya Smith from Rocket Lab Monitor in Mahia.[10]
Alas, the ever-changing Covid situation ruled out a physical meeting but ABC replaced it with a webinar, featuring all four speakers, plus me, which drew many more attendees—including from overseas—than we would have had at an in-person Christchurch public meeting. Sadly, it is not available online, as the speakers felt that they could speak more freely if it was not recorded.
ABC looked to take that further with Sonya Smith and Teanau Tuiono among the speakers at the Blenheim public meeting, which was part of the scheduled January 2022 Waihopai spy base protest. But Covid buggered things up again, and the whole event had to be cancelled, for the first time since 1988, with just a few days’ notice.
NSO Spyware and Five Eyes
There is more to Five Eyes than Waihopai and Rocket Lab. Its tentacles reach into all sorts of areas: for example, the notorious Israeli Pegasus spyware sold to governments by the company NSO. It has been used by some of the worst abusers of human rights to spy on journalists, dissidents and political opponents, with all sorts of dire consequences, including murder. NSO is such an outrageous outfit (most recently, it has been caught spying on its own Jewish citizens within Israel) that the Biden administration put it on a blacklist in 2022—a very rare U.S. move against any Israeli entity. Moves were announced to sell it to a U.S. venture capital firm.
The plan outlines cancelling or restricting most of the company’s former clients, effectively bringing the company’s revenues to zero. Instead of the current 37 clients, the company will reduce its sales to only five clients: the Five Eyes Anglosphere intelligence alliance of New Zealand, the United States, Australia, Great Britain and Canada.
“The company would initially focus on defensive cyber products as part of its rebranding effort.”[11]
New Zealand Has to Get Out of Five Eyes If It Is to Have an Independent Foreign Policy
Five Eyes will only continue to get more important in the geopolitical game playing—indeed, there is talk of it being expanded to include Japan and Israel. What is New Zealand doing in it?
If you are judged by the company you keep, then it does not reflect well on us. More and more, New Zealand is being sucked into the vortex that is the U.S. Empire, an empire that is increasingly using Five Eyes as yet another weapon in its quest to retain global domination. It is well beyond time for New Zealand to get out of it. There is no possibility of us having an “independent foreign policy” until that happens.
What’s More, Five Eyes Doesn’t Even Do What It’s Supposed to Do
Helen Clark was the Labour Prime Minister who ordered the New Zealand military into Afghanistan. Her reaction to the Taliban victory in 2021 was to call it “a catastrophic failure of intelligence in Western foreign policy.”
Prime Minister Helen Clark during a visit to New Zealand Defence Force’s Provincial Reconstruction Team in Bamyan province, west of Kabul in 2003. [Source: stuff.co.nz]
Yet, New Zealand is in the Western world’s self-proclaimed elite intelligence club, namely Five Eyes. Which proved to be absolutely useless in seeing what was going on in Afghanistan, a country which had been an adventure playground for Western spies for twenty years. So, why is New Zealand in Five Eyes, what use is it to us (or anyone else, for that matter)? Time for New Zealand to get out, time for Five Eyes to become four eyes. Or less if the other countries follow suit.
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Murray Horton is organizer of the Campaign Against Foreign Control of Aotearoa (CAFCA) and an advocate of a range of progressive causes for the past four decades. He can be reached at: [email protected].
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On February 28th, Human Rights Watch (HRW) headlined “With War, Censorship Reaches New Heights”, and reported only against this censorship as practiced in Russia, as-if it were not also being done in America. The only even mention of its being practiced in America was in the second — the subordinate — clause of their sentence “Roskomnadzor announced that it would partially restrict access to Facebook in Russia, in retaliation for Meta, Facebook’s parent company, blocking four Russian state media accounts.”
In other words: only implicitly — not at all explicitly — did HRW so much as even acknowledge — in that thousand-word-long article — that Russia’s Government was acting in response to the (CIA-affiliated) U.S. company Meta’s “blocking four Russian state media accounts,” or to any of the many other U.S.-Government anti-Russia censorship operations.
Furthermore, any keen reader of that lone sentence would also immediately recognize that for (the CIA-front firm) Meta to have been “blocking four Russian state media accounts” was more severe censorship than was for the Russian Government to have been “partially restrict[ing] access to Facebook in Russia” — in other words: Russia’s response was actually milder than was the censorship that it was responding to. However, any regular fool who would be reading HRW’s propaganda-piece would come away from it thinking that Russia is a dictatorship, and that America is not. (America certainly IS.)
HRW itself had been started in 1978, with backing from mainly American billionaires, and was founded by Robert L. Bernstein and Aryeh Neier in New York City. Its real mission was to condemn the Soviet Union’s violations of human rights, but when the Soviet Union dissolved and ended its communism in 1991, HRW continued on as being a propaganda-organization against Russia and countries that aren’t hostile to Russia. It became especially heavily financed by U.S. billionaire George Soros and by many other neoconservative Democratic Party financial backers and their ‘charitable’ foundations.
Julian Assange’s article, “Google Is Not What It Seems” includes an extensive passage about HRW, working in 2011, helping Google, in conjunction with Hillary Clinton’s U.S. State Department, to prepare the overthrow and replacement of Ukraine’s democratically elected President, so as to put into place on Russia’s doorstep, a rabidly anti-Russian regime there, which would then be followed by that new Ukrainian regime’s ethnically cleansing its Donbass region, which had voted 90% for that President whom Obama had overthrown, so as to get rid of those voters, in order to enable Ukraine in the future to elect rabidly anti-Russian leaders, and thereby to be a ‘democratic’ country that hates Russians and that just happens to be under a 7-minute flight-time for U.S. missiles which would be launched from there to hit Moscow.
For some reason, many people have noticed recently that whenever they are trying to obtain news from any of the relatively few sites that report favorably about Russia’s international policies, they get a supposed warning such as:
“Checking your browser before accessing [the given site]. This process is automatic. Your browser will redirect to your requested content shortly. Please allow up to 5 seconds…”
and that wait turns out to be interminable.
Another con that they use is
“This page is not available on the web because of server error.”
Another is
“This web property is not accessible via this address.”
Always, the message is coming from some private contractor, not from the U.S. Government directly, and the contractor is a provider of “DDoS protection” — it “secures websites, applications, and entire networks while ensuring the performance of legitimate traffic is not compromised.”
But, actually, these denial-of-service messages have skyrocketed just now after the U.S. regime responded to the Russian Government’s response to the U.S. Government’s having finally decided to do a blitz-invasion of its former Donbass region. Russia’s Government finally decided that if it wouldn’t immediately invade Ukraine, but would instead wait for Ukraine’s blitz-invasion of Donbass, then tens of thousands of Donbass residents would be slaughtered before Russia would be able to overcome and to halt that invasion; so, Russia suddenly reversed its Plan A, and immediately proceeded into its Plan B — an invasion of Ukraine itself. And that’s why the U.S. regime has stepped up from what it had been doing, such as this and this, to a broadscale close-down of sites that contradict U.S. propaganda.
Human Rights Watch (like so many others of its type) is a U.S.-and-allied-billionaires-funded propaganda organization to ‘justify’ U.S.-and-allied wars against their targeted countries.
Though this article is entirely history, it is also news in the U.S.-and-allied countries, because none of this history has been widely reported here. Consequently, this article includes links in order for readers who haven’t known any of this, to be able to see what the source-documents, and sources-videos, the evidence, for it are. This article is being submitted to all U.S.-and-allied media, in order finally to enable the residents in America and allied countries to learn this history, so as never to repeat it yet again.
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Investigative historian Eric Zuesse’s next book (soon to be published) will be AMERICA’S EMPIRE OF EVIL: Hitler’s Posthumous Victory, and Why the Social Sciences Need to Change. It’s about how America took over the world after World War II in order to enslave it to U.S.-and-allied billionaires. Their cartels extract the world’s wealth by control of not only their ‘news’ media but the social ‘sciences’ — duping the public.
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The Biden administration paid nearly the entire corporate media, including so-called “conservative” media outlets, with taxpayer dollars to engage in a massive campaign to push only positive coverage about COVID shots while censoring any negative information, without disclosing it to their audiences. This is a serious breach of journalistic ethics.
Congress appropriated $1 billion in fiscal year 2021 for the secretary of health to spend on activities to “strengthen vaccine confidence in the United States.” Then hundreds of news organizations were paid by the federal government to advertise for the shots as part of a comprehensive media campaign by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS). The “COVID-19 Public Education Campaign,” a “national initiative to increase public confidence in and uptake of COVID-19 vaccines,” was created with the goal of having “trusted messengers and influencers” speak to news organizations to “provide factual, timely information and steps people can take to protect themselves, their families, and their communities.”
This information was revealed in response to a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request filed by Blaze Media. This request uncovered that the HHS purchased advertising on TV, radio, in print, and on social media to build “vaccine confidence.” Media networks including ABC, CBS, NBC, Fox News, CNN, Newsmax, MSNBC, New York Post, Los Angeles Times, Washington Post, BuzzFeed News and hundreds of local newspapers and TV stations were collectively responsible for publishing countless articles and video segments promoting the COVID shots as effective and safe.
Emerald Robinson, an independent journalist who previously served as the chief White House correspondent for Newsmax (2020-2022) and for One America News (2017-2020), said she was contacted by a whistleblower inside Newsmax who confirmed that Newsmax executives agreed to take the money from Biden’s HHS to push only positive coverage of the new COVID shots. Robinson was also contacted by top Newsmax executives in 2021 and told to stop any negative coverage of the COVID shots. Newsmax told her “it was problematic” and she was warned many times by multiple executives. She was also contacted by PR experts who worked with Newsmax and was told that medical experts and doctors who might say negative things about the injections would not be booked as guests.
Some examples of the media propaganda include Newsmax CEO Chris Ruddy who wrote an op-ed about “applauding Biden for his vaccine efforts.” Ruddy wrote,
“At Newsmax, we have strongly advocated for the public to be vaccinated. The many medical experts who have appeared on our network have been near unanimous in support of the vaccine. I myself have gotten the Pfizer vaccine. There’s no question in my mind, countless lives would have been saved if the vaccine was available earlier.”
HHS posted ads and commercials to YouTube featuring celebrities. CNN shared “fear-based vaccine ads” from HHS featuring “survivor” stories from Coronavirus patients who were hospitalized in intensive care units and these ads were discussed on ABC’s “The View.” Facebook also announced a social media plan to “help get people vaccinated.” BuzzFeed News advised everyone age 65 or older, people with health conditions, etc., to get vaccinated. Other publications, such as the Los Angeles Times, featured advice from experts on how readers could convince vaccine-hesitant people in their lives to change their minds. The Washington Post presented “the pro-vaccine messages people want to hear.” Newsmax also has reported how the COVID shots have “been demonstrated to be safe and effective” and “encouraged citizens, especially those at risk, to get immunized.”
However, the evidence continues to reveal that the COVID shots are definitely not safe and effective.
Last January, a Texas federal judge ordered the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to accelerate the release of the data it relied on to license the Pfizer/BioNTech COVID-19 two-dose injection, marketed as Comirnaty. U.S. District Judge Mark Pittman ordered the FDA to produce more than 12,000 pages on or before Jan. 31 and to “produce the remaining documents at a rate of 55,000 pages every 30 days, with the first production being due on or before March 1, 2022, until production is complete.”
In the first 55,000-page set of documents released last week, the FDA’s Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research allowed the public to access data for the first time that Pfizer submitted to the FDA from its clinical trials in support of a COVID-19 “vaccine” license. Hidden in one appendix is a 38-page report of clinical data for Pfizer’s “vaccine” which lists 1,291 adverse side effects of the shot in alphabetical order.
The list includes
acute kidney injury, acute flaccid myelitis, anti-sperm antibody positive, brain stem embolism, brain stem thrombosis, cardiac arrest, cardiac failure, cardiac ventricular thrombosis, cardiogenic shock, central nervous system vasculitis, death neonatal, deep vein thrombosis, encephalitis brain stem, encephalitis hemorrhagic, frontal lobe epilepsy, foaming at mouth, epileptic psychosis, facial paralysis, fetal distress syndrome, gastrointestinal amyloidosis, generalized tonic-clonic seizure, Hashimoto’s encephalopathy, hepatic vascular thrombosis, herpes zoster reactivation, immune-mediated hepatitis, interstitial lung disease, jugular vein embolism, juvenile myoclonic epilepsy, liver injury, low birth weight, multisystem inflammatory syndrome in children, myocarditis, neonatal seizure, pancreatitis, pneumonia, stillbirth, tachycardia, temporal lobe epilepsy, testicular autoimmunity, thrombotic cerebral infarction, Type 1 diabetes mellitus, venous thrombosis neonatal, and vertebral artery thrombosis among 1,246 other medical conditions following vaccination.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) also recently admitted that it withheld critical COVID-19 data from the public because the agency thought it would be “misinterpreted” and cause “vaccine hesitancy” since it weakens the case for booster shots in certain demographics. Apparently, the CDC has been collecting detailed data on COVID-19 infections in the United States and organized it by age, race and vaccination status. However, the agency withheld detailed information to the public about breakthrough cases, hospitalizations and deaths, which it has been collecting since the beginning of the COVID shot rollout in 2021.
Led by director Dr. Rochelle Walensky, the CDC only recently published the first significant data on the effectiveness of boosters in adults younger than 65. However, it did not share the information on those aged 18-49, which is the least likely group to benefit from a booster injection. It has also failed to provide information on child hospitalizations. In a recent New York Timesarticle, Kristen Nordlund, a spokeswoman for the CDC, said the agency has been slow to release the different streams of data “because basically, at the end of the day, it’s not yet ready for prime time.” She said the agency’s “priority when gathering any data is to ensure that it’s accurate and actionable. Another reason is fear that the information might be misinterpreted,” Nordlund said.
Liberty Counsel Founder and Chairman Mat Staver said,
“People have been injured and died as a result of the most extensive propaganda campaign in U.S. history and it was paid for with our taxpayer dollars. These COVID shots are neither safe nor effective. However, the American public has been given propaganda instead of truth from the news media. Sadly, most of the American corporate media has been paid off by the Biden administration to publish propaganda. The consequence is that many people have needlessly suffered as a result of the censorship and propaganda.”
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Today, the dangers of military escalation are beyond description.
What is now happening in Ukraine has serious geopolitical implications. It could lead us into a World War III scenario.
It is important that a peace process be initiated with a view to preventing escalation.
Global Research condemns Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
A Bilateral Peace Agreement is required.
Many governments and media figures are rightly condemning Russian President Vladimir Putin’s attack on Ukraine as an act of aggression and a violation of international law. But in his first speech about the invasion, on February 24, US President Joe Biden also called the invasion “unprovoked.”
It’s a word that has been echoed repeatedly across the media ecosystem. “Putin’s forces entered Ukraine’s second-largest city on the fourth day of the unprovoked invasion,” Axios (2/27/22) reported; “Russia’s unprovoked invasion of Ukraine entered its second week Friday,” said CNBC (3/4/22). Vox (3/1/22) wrote of “Putin’s decision to launch an unprovoked and unnecessary war with the second-largest country in Europe.”
The “unprovoked” descriptor obscures a long history of provocative behavior from the United States in regards to Ukraine. This history is important to understanding how we got here, and what degree of responsibility the US bears for the current attack on Ukraine.
Ignoring expert advice
The story starts at the end of the Cold War, when the US was the only global hegemon. As part of the deal that finalized the reunification of Germany, the US promised Russia that NATO would not expand “one inch eastward.” Despite this, it wasn’t long before talk of expansion began to circulate among policy makers.
In 1997, dozens of foreign policy veterans (including former Defense Secretary Robert McNamara and former CIA Director Stansfield Turner) sent a joint letter to then-President Bill Clinton calling “the current US-led effort to expand NATO…a policy error of historic proportions.” They predicted:
In Russia, NATO expansion, which continues to be opposed across the entire political spectrum, will strengthen the nondemocratic opposition, undercut those who favor reform and cooperation with the West [and] bring the Russians to question the entire post-Cold War settlement.
New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman (5/2/98) in 1998 asked famed diplomat George Kennan—architect of the US Cold War strategy of containment—about NATO expansion. Kennan’s response:
I think it is the beginning of a new cold war. I think the Russians will gradually react quite adversely and it will affect their policies. I think it is a tragic mistake. There was no reason for this whatsoever. No one was threatening anybody else.
Of course there is going to be a bad reaction from Russia, and then [the NATO expanders] will say that we always told you that is how the Russians are—but this is just wrong.
Despite these warnings, Poland, Hungary and the Czech Republic were added to NATO in 1999, with Bulgaria, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Romania, Slovakia and Slovenia following in 2004.
US planners were warned again in 2008 by US Ambassador to Moscow William Burns (now director of the CIA under Joe Biden). WikiLeaks leaked a cable from Burns titled “Nyet Means Nyet: Russia’s NATO Enlargement Redlines” that included another prophetic warning worth quoting in full (emphasis added):
Ukraine and Georgia’s NATO aspirations not only touch a raw nerve in Russia, they engender serious concerns about the consequences for stability in the region. Not only does Russia perceive encirclement, and efforts to undermine Russia’s influence in the region, but it also fears unpredictable and uncontrolled consequences which would seriously affect Russian security interests.
Experts tell us that Russia is particularly worried that the strong divisions in Ukraine over NATO membership, with much of the ethnic Russian community against membership, could lead to a major split, involving violence or at worst, civil war. In that eventuality, Russia would have to decide whether to intervene; a decision Russia does not want to have to face.
A de facto NATO ally
But the US has pushed Russia to make such a decision. Though European countries are divided about whether or not Ukraine should join, many in the NATO camp have been adamant about maintaining the alliance’s “open door policy.” Even as US planners were warning of a Russian invasion, NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg reiterated NATO’s 2008 plans to integrate Ukraine into the alliance (New York Times, 12/16/21). The Biden administration has taken a more roundabout approach, supporting in the abstract “Kyiv’s right to choose its own security arrangements and alliances.” But the implication is obvious.
Even without officially being in NATO, Ukraine has become a de facto NATO ally—and Russia has paid close attention to these developments. In a December 2021 speech to his top military officials, Putin expressed his concerns:
Over the past few years, military contingents of NATO countries have been almost constantly present on Ukrainian territory under the pretext of exercises. The Ukrainian troop control system has already been integrated into NATO. This means that NATO headquarters can issue direct commands to the Ukrainian armed forces, even to their separate units and squads….
Kiev has long proclaimed a strategic course on joining NATO. Indeed, each country is entitled to pick its own security system and enter into military alliances. There would be no problem with that, if it were not for one “but.” International documents expressly stipulate the principle of equal and indivisible security, which includes obligations not to strengthen one’s own security at the expense of the security of other states….
In other words, the choice of pathways towards ensuring security should not pose a threat to other states, whereas Ukraine joining NATO is a direct threat to Russia’s security.
In an explainer piece, the New York Times (2/24/22) centered NATO expansion as a root cause of the war. Unfortunately, the Times omitted the critical context of NATO’s pledge not to expand, and the subsequent abandonment of that promise. This is an important context to understand the Russian view of US policies, especially so given the ample warnings from US diplomats and foreign policy experts.
The Maidan Coup of 2014
A major turning point in the US/Ukraine/Russia relationship was the 2014 violent and unconstitutional ouster of President Viktor Yanukovych, elected in 2010 in a vote heavily splitbetween eastern and western Ukraine. His ouster came after months of protests led in part by far-right extremists (FAIR.org, 3/7/14). Weeks before his ouster, an unknown party leaked a phone call between US officials discussing who should and shouldn’t be part of the new government, and finding ways to “seal the deal.” After the ouster, a politician the officials designated as “the guy” even became prime minister.
The US involvement was part of a campaign aimed at exploiting the divisions in Ukrainian society to push the country into the US sphere of influence, pulling it out of the Russian sphere (FAIR.org, 1/28/22). In the aftermath of the overthrow, Russia illegally annexed Crimea from Ukraine, in part to secure a major naval base from the new Ukrainian government.
The New York Times (2/24/22) and Washington Post (2/28/22) both omitted the role the US played in these events. In US media, this critical moment in history is completely cleansed of US influence, erasing a critical step on the road to the current war.
Keeping civil war alive
In another response to the overthrow, an uprising in Ukraine’s Donbas region grew into a rebel movement that declared independence from Ukraine and announced the formation of their own republics. The resulting civil war claimed thousands of lives, but was largely paused in 2015 with a ceasefire agreement known as the Minsk II accords.
The deal, agreed to by Ukraine, Russia and other European countries, was designed to grant some form of autonomy to the breakaway regions in exchange for reintegrating them into the Ukrainian state. Unfortunately, the Ukrainian government refused to implement the autonomy provision of the accords. Anatol Lieven, a researcher with the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft, wrote in The Nation (11/15/21):
The main reason for this refusal, apart from a general commitment to retain centralized power in Kiev, has been the belief that permanent autonomy for the Donbas would prevent Ukraine from joining NATO and the European Union, as the region could use its constitutional position within Ukraine to block membership.
Ukraine opted instead to prolong the Donbas conflict, and there was never significant pressure from the West to alter course. Though there were brief reports of the accords’ revival as recently as late January, Ukrainian security chief Oleksiy Danilov warned the West not to pressure Ukraine to implement the peace deal. “The fulfillment of the Minsk agreement means the country’s destruction,” he said (AP, 1/31/22). Danilov claimed that even when the agreement was signed eight years ago, “it was already clear for all rational people that it’s impossible to implement.”
Lieven notes that the depth of Russian commitment has yet to be fully tested, but Putin has supported the Minsk accords, refraining from officially recognizing the Donbas republics until last week.
The New York Times (2/8/22) explainer on the Minsk accords blamed their failure on a disagreement between Ukraine and Russia over their implementation. This is inadequate to explain the failure of the agreements, however, given that Russia cannot affect Ukrainian parliamentary procedure. The Times quietly acknowledged that the law meant to define special status in the Donbas had been “shelved” by the Ukranians, indicating that the country had stopped trying to solve the issue in favor of a stalemate.
There was no mention of the comments from a top Ukrainian official openly denouncing the peace accords. Nor was it acknowledged that the US could have used its influence to push Ukraine to solve the issue, but refrained from doing so.
Ukrainian missile crisis
One under-discussed aspect of this crisis is the role of US missiles stationed in NATO countries. Many media outlets have claimed that Putin is Hitler-like (Washington Post, 2/24/22; Boston Globe, 2/24/22), hellbent on reconquering old Soviet states to “recreat[e] the Russian empire with himself as the Tsar,” as Clinton State Department official Strobe Talbot told Politico (2/25/22).
Pundits try to psychoanalyze Putin, asking “What is motivating him?” and answering by citing his televised speech on February 21 that recounted the history of Ukraine’s relationship with Russia.
This speech has been widely characterized as a call to reestablish the Soviet empire and a challenge to Ukraine’s right to exist as a sovereign nation. Corporate media ignore other public statements Putin has made in recent months. For example, at an expanded meeting of the Defense Ministry Board, Putin elaborated on what he considered to be the main military threat from US/NATO expansion to Ukraine:
It is extremely alarming that elements of the US global defense system are being deployed near Russia. The Mk 41 launchers, which are located in Romania and are to be deployed in Poland, are adapted for launching the Tomahawk strike missiles. If this infrastructure continues to move forward, and if US and NATO missile systems are deployed in Ukraine, their flight time to Moscow will be only 7–10 minutes, or even five minutes for hypersonic systems. This is a huge challenge for us, for our security.
The United States does not possess hypersonic weapons yet, but we know when they will have it…. They will supply hypersonic weapons to Ukraine and then use them as cover…to arm extremists from a neighbouring state and incite them against certain regions of the Russian Federation, such as Crimea, when they think circumstances are favorable.
Do they really think we do not see these threats? Or do they think that we will just stand idly watching threats to Russia emerge? This is the problem: We simply have no room to retreat.
Having these missiles so close to Russia—weapons that Russia (and China) see as part of a plan to give the United States the capacity to launch a nuclear first-strike without retaliation—seriously challenges the cold war deterrent of Mutually Assured Destruction, and more closely resembles a gun pointed at the Russian head for the remainder of the nuclear age. Would this be acceptable to any country?
Media refuse to present this crucial question to their audiences, instead couching Putin’s motives in purely aggressive terms.
Refusal to de-escalate
By December 2021, US intelligence agencies were sounding the alarm that Russia was amassing troops at the Ukrainian border and planning to attack. Yet Putin was very clear about a path to deescalation: He called on the West to halt NATO expansion, negotiate Ukrainian neutrality in the East/West rivalry, remove US nuclear weapons from non proliferating countries, and remove missiles, troops and bases near Russia. These are demands the US would surely have made were it in Russia’s position.
Unfortunately, the US refused to negotiate on Russia’s core concerns. The US offered some serious steps towards a larger arms control arrangement (Antiwar.com, 2/2/22)—something the Russians acknowledged and appreciated—but ignored issues of NATO’s military activity in Ukraine, and the deployment of nuclear weapons in Eastern Europe (Antiwar.com, 2/17/22).
On NATO expansion, the State Department continued to insist that they would not compromise NATO’s open door policy—in other words, it asserted the right to expand NATO and to ignore Russia’s red line.
While the US has signaled that it would approve of an informal agreement to keep Ukraine from joining the alliance for a period of time, this clearly was not going to be enough for Russia, which still remembers the last broken agreement.
Instead of addressing Russian concerns about Ukraine’s NATO relationship, the US instead chose to pour hundreds of millions of dollars of weapons into Ukraine, exacerbating Putin’s expressed concerns. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy didn’t help matters by suggesting that Ukraine might begin a nuclear weapons program at the height of the tensions.
After Putin announced his recognition of the breakaway republics, Secretary of State Antony Blinken canceled talks with Putin, and began the process of implementing sanctions on Russia—all before Russian soldiers had set foot into Ukraine.
Had the US been genuinely interested in avoiding war, it would have taken every opportunity to de-escalate the situation. Instead, it did the opposite nearly every step of the way.
In its explainer piece, the Washington Post (2/28/22) downplayed the significance of the US’s rejection of Russia’s core concerns, writing: “Russia has said that it wants guarantees Ukraine will be barred from joining NATO—a non-starter for the Western alliance, which maintains an open-door policy.” NATO’s open door policy is simply accepted as an immutable policy that Putin just needs to deal with. This very assumption, so key to the Ukraine crisis, goes unchallenged in the US media ecosystem.
‘The strategic case for risking war’
It’s impossible to say for sure why the Biden administration took an approach that increased the likelihood of war, but one Wall Street Journal piece from last month may offer some insight.
The Journal (12/22/21) published an op-ed from John Deni, a researcher at the Atlantic Council, a think tank funded by the US and allied governments that serves as NATO’s de facto brain trust. The piece was provocatively headlined “The Strategic Case for Risking War in Ukraine.” Deni’s argument was that the West should refuse to negotiate with Russia, because either potential outcome would be beneficial to US interests.
If Putin backed down without a deal, it would be a major embarrassment. He would lose face and stature, domestically and on the world stage.
But Putin going to war would also be good for the US, the Journal op-ed argued. Firstly, it would give NATO more legitimacy by “forg[ing] an even stronger anti-Russian consensus across Europe.” Secondly, a major attack would trigger “another round of more debilitating economic sanctions,” weakening the Russian economy and its ability to compete with the US for global influence. Thirdly, an invasion is “likely to spawn a guerrilla war” that would “sap the strength and morale of Russia’s military while undercutting Mr. Putin’s domestic popularity and reducing Russia’s soft power globally.”
In short, we have part of the NATO brain trust advocating risking Ukrainian civilians as pawns in the US’s quest to strengthen its position around the world.
‘Something even worse than war’
A New York Times op-ed (2/3/22) by Ivan Krastev of Vienna’s Institute of Human Sciences likewise suggested that a Russian invasion of Ukraine wouldn’t be the worst outcome:
A Russian incursion into Ukraine could, in a perverse way, save the current European order. NATO would have no choice but to respond assertively, bringing in stiff sanctions and acting in decisive unity. By hardening the conflict, Mr. Putin could cohere his opponents.
The op-ed was headlined “Europe Thinks Putin Is Planning Something Even Worse Than War”—that something being “a new European security architecture that recognizes Russia’s sphere of influence in the post-Soviet space.”
It is impossible to know for sure whether the Biden administration shared this sense that there would be an upside to a Russian invasion, but the incentives are clear, and much of what these op-eds predicted is coming to pass.
None of this is to say that Putin’s invasion is justified—FAIR resolutely condemns the invasion as illegal and ruinous—but calling it “unprovoked” distracts attention from the US’s own contribution to this disastrous outcome. The US ignored warnings from both Russian and US officials that a major conflagration could erupt if the US continued its path, and it shouldn’t be surprising that one eventually did.
Now, as the world once again inches toward the brink of nuclear omnicide, it is more important than ever for Western audiences to understand and challenge their own government’s role in dragging us all to this point.
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Featured image: Wikimedia map of NATO expansion since 1949 (creator:Patrickneil).
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As the price of oil, gasoline and natural gas skyrockets around the world, we have come to a major crossroads in history that has the potential to usher in a massive economic collapse of Europe, the United States, and the world.
However, the economic energy crisis did not happen all of a sudden, nor was it one event that triggered energy prices to reach the unimagined levels they have reached today, around the world.
The energy crisis was triggered long ago by a series of violent events created by the United States and its allies for control of the declining energy supplies and resources around the world. Two Decades of War crimes that continue on oil producing nations such as Iraq, Libya, Syria, and Yemen, plus their crippling economic sanctions on major independent oil producing nations such as Venezuela, Iran and Russia, have brought the world to the brink of economic collapse.
All of these criminal actions can only be seen as resource wars, due to declining energy supply under the western nations control.
Ukraine
The invasion of Ukraine by Russia is a climactic moment, which culminated through a series of violent events in Ukraine that began by a western backed color revolution which then led to a coup and overthrew of the elected Yanukovich government in 2014. (See Two documentaries here [04] and here [05])
The following 8 years saw American, British, Canadian and European governments arm, train and fund violent elements within the Ukraine Military which then unleashed their genocidal belligerence on the Russian speaking population in the Donbass region.
The western funded operation in Ukraine was very similar to the one they launched on the Syrian people in 2011, which ultimately provoked Russia to step in by 2015 and help their Syrian neighbor, Bashar al-Assad, as Syria was overrun by western backed genocidal terrorists. Russia’s involvement was based out of fear that the western backed terrorist invasion, would spill over into Russia.
The only difference between the western operations in Ukraine and Syria is that the 2014 western orchestrated coup in Ukraine was successful, whereas the attempted terrorist coup on the elected leader in Syria, Bashar al-Assad, was not successful due to Russia’s decision to take an active role in the security of the Syrian nation in 2015. However, the U.S military is illegally occupying the oil producing areas in eastern and northeastern Syria where they are involved in the daily theft of Syrian oil. The U.S. government has also caused great economic hardship on the Syrian people through crippling sanctions, and the destruction of their grain supplies.
In Ukraine, where many of the Russian gas pipelines run through to Europe, the west has done exactly what the Russians feared, as they’ve armed, trained and funded ultra nationalist thugs with a genocidal mindset, that are focused on the Russian speaking people of Ukraine and Russia itself. (See Here [06] and Here [07])
The Russian’s are not playing games, they are deadly serious about protecting themselves from sinister overt and covert western operations against it. The western cartel of nations led by the United States, Britain and the European Union are playing a very dangerous game as they continue their insane belligerent terrorist foreign policy of arming and funding a terrorist army against the Russian Military. NATO’s forces might not be on the ground in Ukraine, but the proxy army of thugs that they armed and trained, is directly engaged.
The denial and false narrative that Australia stands on, will most likely be adopted by the cartel of NATO nations as well.
As I said in my last post,
“The American, Canadian and European leaders that support these fascists and Neo-Nazi’s in Ukraine, confirm what our western leaders are…I mean, who could support fascism but a fascist.”
In hindsight, the last two years of oppressive and dictatorial mandates by our western governments for a false pandemic, has shown us just how tyrannical and oppressive our western governments have become (See Here [09] and Here [10]). Of special note here is that even as energy demand was drastically reduced over the last two years, gasoline prices continued to rise. Now however, we are at the cusp of economic collapse as the so-called pandemic disappears, business begins to resume, while energy demand rises with failing supply lines. All the while, western nations are sanctioning independent energy suppling nations and openly providing a steady supply of weapons to terrorists that the cartel of western nations support, but especially against Russia.The world is indeed at a most dangerous crossroads, I mean, what insane mentality, pushes a nation to self destruct morally, politically and economically? I never imagined, that I’d see this in my lifetime, a collective suicide by a block of nations.
Energy & Europe
The price of the European Union’s interference in Ukraine since 2014 along with their warring economic sanctions against Russia will continue to unfold in the coming days, weeks and months, and it’s guaranteed to bring hardship on the European citizens due to higher energy prices, mass inflation, unemployment, food scarcity and eventually population revolt. These are the direct consequences that come from the U.S. and European Unions economic and covert terrorist war on Russia.
Europe and the United States have shot themselves in the foot due to their belief that they are in a position of power over Russia…they aren’t, that’s just pure supremacist hubris, because both Europe and the United States are dependent on oil to sustain their economies, but especially Europe who is dependent on both oil and natural gas, of which they have very little, and depend on Russia for a large portion of their supplies. (40% of the E.U. gas supply comes from Russia).
To date, even though the European Union have imposed massive economic sanctions on Russia, the Russian government has not turned off their gas supply to Europe.
The exponential rise in energy prices, are not Russia’s fault. Russia continues to deliver gas and oil supplies to Europe. It is the United States that has a dictators influence over Europe. The U.S. government drives the economic war on Russia, which includes disrupting or stopping all future energy lines that they do not control to Europe.
Europe’s energy problems would go away overnight if the USA was not involved. The Nord Stream II gas pipeline from Russia to Germany is now complete, and ready to supply energy to Europe but the project is facing political opposition that stems from the United States to their vassal European partner Germany.Iran is still waiting to make energy deals with Europe but have been blocked, sanctioned and threatened by successive U.S. governments who have isolated Iran from being an energy provider to the west. The United States simply refuses to cooperate with the Iranians.
Libya was a large independent oil and gas provider to Europe, that is until the U.S. and NATO destroyed the entire country and disrupted its energy supply lines to Europe…
At the moment, the rising price of gas in Europe is fostered by the US governments desperate attempt to keep Europe under its energy control by sabre rattling with Russia via Ukraine. In a twisted way, it makes the US LNG plan, affordable, even though U.S. gas is 3 times more expensive than Russian gas.
The main goal of the United States Government is to keep Europe under its political and economic control. As long as the U.S. can supply or guarantee oil and gas supplies for its European allies, the United States will remain as a significant world power.
However, in the American’s eyes, if Europe was to continue buying cheaper Russian Gas and oil while continuing economic trade with the Russians, the United States would find itself somewhat reduced from being a dominant partner to one of irrelevance. If Europe was smart, they would stand up together against to the American bully and look to their survival.
So, if the E.U. does not grow a spine of their own, the European position and support of belligerent elements in the Ukraine government, which includes Neo-Nazi’s, will hasten the end of the European union as we will see in the near future when energy becomes the fine line between economic survival and economic disaster of the individual European nations. EU members will begin to break away from the anti-Russian coalition and make energy deals with Russia which by nature will open up badly needed economic trade routes for them…that is if we do not have a World War before this happens…
There is a joke circulating on the internet that just might be the epitaph for the hardcore European Union nations; it goes like this:
Q: What did the European Union use for lighting in their homes before candles?
Answer: Electricity
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Stewart Brennan is a Geo-political and economic analyst, activist, blogger and author. He’s worked in the Aviation, Packaging, Transportation and Logistics Industries and is the author of “The Activist Poet”, two books of political activism and poetry. (See Here and Here) He’s also the author of several blogs including World United News and World United Music and a contributor on Global Research.
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India, and especially Israel, are very close American military-strategic partners in their own way just like Japan is but only the last-mentioned surrendered its strategic autonomy, not to mention without even getting anything in exchange. This shows that only the first two are truly independent in formulating their grand strategies while Japan is doomed to remain an object of International Relations instead of ever becoming an independent subject therein.
Observers were cautiously optimistic a few years ago that Japan and Russia would finally sign a peace treaty for ending World War II following former Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s active efforts to resolve what Tokyo considers to be the so-called “Northern Territories Dispute” but which Moscow regards as a non-issue related to its legal incorporation of the Southern Kurils after that global conflict. Those hopes are now forever dashed after Japan jumped on the US-led West’s anti-Russian sanctions bandwagon by imposing economic, financial, and personal restrictions against that targeted country.
Japan’s dutiful compliance with its American patron’s demands means that it’ll likely forever remain the latter’s so-called “unsinkable aircraft carrier” without any hope of ever flexing any genuine strategic autonomy like many wished would eventually happen. This is regrettable because Japan could have balanced between Great Powers in the New Cold War exactly like its fellow Quad partner India is doing by impressively remaining neutral. Instead, Tokyo opted to surrender its strategic autonomy to Washington without even getting anything in exchange.
What’s happening is that the US-led West is institutionalizing its “sphere of influence” across the world that stretches across North America, most of the Caribbean and Latin America, the entirety of the EU, and several Asia-Pacific countries like Australia, Japan, the Republic of Korea, and Singapore. These polities were recently designed by Russia as unfriendly countries and territories, which confirms that Moscow regards them as being within its Washington rivals’ “sphere of influence”. This development conforms to the trend that the author earlier described here of the world becoming increasingly divided.
Just like the US succeeded in transforming the UK into its “unsinkable aircraft carrier” in Europe, so too has it succeeded in doing the same vis-à-vis Japan in Asia. Furthermore, while the Anglo-American Axis (AAA) actively attempts to divide and rule Western Eurasia by deepening the many wedges that they’ve inserted into Russian-EU relations, the emerging American-Japanese Axis (AJA) is trying to do the same in Asia by dividing Russia and China from the region’s geo-economically significant countries. This grand strategy can eventually see the US merge its two Eurasian axes into a singular one in the coming future.
Japan is essentially functioning as the de facto fourth member of the AUKUS anti-Chinese military-nuclear alliance that was unexpectedly announced last September. Tokyo was upset that this newly formed structure threatened to take away the Quad’s military-strategic potential in “containing” China, a decision that Washington presumably made due to India’s refusal to actively participate in this plot following the sequence of complications in their bilateral relations since summer 2020. By voluntarily surrendering its strategic autonomy to the US, Japan hopes to make itself globally relevant.
That’s a mistaken expectation though since all that Tokyo did was submit to becoming Washington’s “junior partner” as it’ll never be regarded as an equal one the same as London won’t either in spite of playing a prominent role dividing and ruling the other half of Eurasia. Japan also loses out on the previously promising but presently irrelevant possibility of facilitating Russia’s pre-Ukrainian geostrategic balancing act vis-à-vis China by investing more in its resource-rich Far Eastern region together with India.
That scenario is no longer feasible since the US-led West’s unilateral acts of unconventional aggression against Russia following the onset of its specialmilitaryoperation in Ukraine completely changed the grand strategic calculations at play by compelling Moscow to unprecedentedly depend on Beijing as its most important pressure valve under these new circumstances. Russia will still attempt to preemptively avert any future disproportionate dependence on China, but only with proven reliable partners like India, Iran, and Pakistan, not those that are now officially designed as unfriendly like Japan.
Had Japan practiced the de facto neutral policy that Israel does whereby it votes against Russia at the symbolic but legally meaningless UN General Assembly but nevertheless refuses to sanction the Eurasian Great Power, it too might have been able to position itself as a potential mediator in the conflict exactly as Prime Minister Bennett has actively sought to do over the past week. That would have been the most impressive flex of Japan’s strategic autonomy and could have earned its companies a privileged position for investing in Russia’s resource-rich Far Eastern region exactly as India is expected to soon receive.
India, and especially Israel, are very close American military-strategic partners in their own way just like Japan is but only the last-mentioned surrendered its strategic autonomy, not to mention without even getting anything in exchange. This shows that only the first two are truly independent in formulating their grand strategies while Japan is doomed to remain an object of International Relations instead of ever becoming an independent subject therein. By continuing to function as the US’ “unsinkable aircraft carrier”, Japan literally objectifies itself and forever holds back its grand strategic potential.
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This article was originally published on OneWorld.
Andrew Korybko is an American Moscow-based political analyst specializing in the relationship between the US strategy in Afro-Eurasia, China’s One Belt One Road global vision of New Silk Road connectivity, and Hybrid Warfare.
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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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.
Today, the dangers of military escalation are beyond description.
What is now happening in Ukraine has serious geopolitical implications. It could lead us into a World War III scenario.
It is important that a peace process be initiated with a view to preventing escalation.
Global Research condemns Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
A Bilateral Peace Agreement is required.
Over the past two weeks, media headlines worldwide have been dominated by the Russian military intervention in Ukraine – launched in response to almost nine years of Western provocations, beginning with the CIA and MI6 orchestrated Euromaidan colour revolution in November 2013, following then-President Viktor Yanukovych’s decision to suspend an EU trade deal in favour of closer ties with Russia, which in turn would to lead the predominantly ethnic Russian Donetsk and Luhansk People’s Republics in the eastern Donbass region breaking away from Kiev’s control in April 2014, the catalyst for this secession being the anti-Russian far-right sympathisers that would make up the Western-backed post-Maidan government of Petro Poroshenko.
A near eight-year long war on both Republics would follow, involving Kiev-supported neo-Nazi factions such as Azov Battalion and Right Sector, leading to an estimated 14,000 deaths, a conflict that Moscow would seek to resolve through diplomatic means via the Minsk Agreements, which would see a federalisation solution in which Donetsk and Luhansk would be granted a degree of autonomy whilst still remaining under Ukrainian rule – the failure by Kiev to implement their side of the agreements however, as well as the ongoing attacks on the ethnic Russians in the Donbass and the inevitability that Ukraine would ultimately go on become a NATO member and host weapons and troops intended to attack Russia, would ultimately force Moscow into launching a military intervention into its Western neighbour in order to demilitarise and de-Nazify the country.
Two weeks into the conflict, it has become apparent from the corporate media narrative of the ‘Ukrainian resistance’ that the goal of the US and its allies, with little regard for the Ukrainian civilians they claim to care about, is to drag Moscow into a military quagmire in the second largest country in Europe – a tactic with historical usage against the Kremlin, when in 1979, at the height of the Cold War, the CIA and MI6 would begin a covert operation of arming and training Islamist fundamentalists, including Osama Bin Laden, known as the Mujahideen, who would go on to wage war on the then-Socialist government of Afghanistan – leading to a ten-year long Soviet military intervention, something which many commentators have seen as a contributing factor to the subsequent break-up of the bloc in 1991; indeed, Zbigniew Brzezinski, National Security Advisor to US President Jimmy Carter when Operation Cyclone was launched in 1979, would later recount in a 1998 interview about how drawing the USSR into a costly military intervention was a motivating factor in its inception.
Despite the intention of the Neocons and the war lobby to being to seemingly draw the Russian Federation into an Iraq war-style quagmire however, there also appears to be an element who favour an approach which would lead to far more grave consequences – a Libya-style no fly zone over Ukraine, involving the shooting down of Russian aircraft by NATO, which would undoubtedly trigger a catastrophic third world war involving the use of nuclear weapons.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, a newfound darling of the Western media since their coverage of the Russian intervention began, has repeatedly called for the implementation of a no fly zone over his country’s skies, World Economic Forum-linked Ukrainian activist Daria Kaleniuk went viral with her plea for British Prime Minister Boris Johnson to intervene militarily against Russian forces, and a recent poll by corporate media outlet Reuters found that 74% of Americans supported a no fly zone over Ukraine – with it remaining unclear on whether those polled were aware of the nuclear apocalypse that such a measure would entail.
Despite this push for a Western military intervention in Ukraine, US President Joe Biden, Boris Johnson and NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg have made it clear that such a measure is off the table, each citing the global nuclear conflict that would undoubtedly follow as the reason – though this may seem a reason to be optimistic that the current Ukraine crisis won’t develop into World War III however, it does not rule out the far more hawkish members of the regime change lobby seeking to carry out a false flag operation in Ukraine, one with the intention of implicating Moscow, and to push public and political opinion even more towards support for a NATO intervention, a tactic with very recent usage.
In 2017, the Syrian Arab Republic had been in the six-year long grip of a Western-backed regime change operation launched in response to Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s 2009 refusal to allow US-allied Qatar to build a pipeline through his country, one that would have undermined his relationship with key-ally Russia. Like the aforementioned Operation Cyclone, Timber Sycamore would see the arming, funding and training of Wahhabi terrorists groups by the West and its allies, with the intention of removing Assad’s secular government and replacing it with a Western-friendly leadership.
In June 2013, Iran and Hezbollah would intervene in the ensuing proxy war at the request of the Syrian government, providing a key role in assisting Damascus in repelling the Western-backed terrorist campaign; what would perhaps be the most decisive factor in turning the tide of the conflict in the Arab Republic’s favour however, would come in September 2015 – a Russian air campaign, again at the request of the Syrian government, targeting the terrorist groups, and which allowed Damascus to retake the vast swathes of Syrian territory which had come under their control, such as the key city of Aleppo.
With the Syrian regime change operation not going as planned, Washington’s Neocons would soon resort to desperate – and reckless – measures.
Photograph of men in Khan Sheikdoun in Syria, allegedly inside a crater where a sarin-gas bomb landed. Source: Consortiumnews
On the 4th of April 2017, a false flag chemical attack took place in the Syrian town of Khan Shaykhun, the blame immediately being placed on Damascus and resulting in the then-US administration of Donald Trump launching cruise missiles strikes on a Syrian government airbase three days later, a highly provocative action though one that just stopped short of the full-scale military intervention that the regime-change lobby had clamoured for – undeterred, the same tactic would be carried out a year later in the city of Douma, which again would result in the US, Britain and France launching air strikes against Syrian government targets, also just stopping short of a full-scale intervention.
This is not to discount the grave seriousness of NATO launching a military strike against a Russian ally and the potential consequences that that action could have entailed however, and should a similar false flag operation take place in Ukraine, perhaps also involving chemical weapons or a nuclear reactor as Moscow itself has warned of in recent days, even a ‘limited’ strike against Russian military infrastructure would immediately place the world on an irreversible path to the most grave consequence of all – nuclear war.
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Gavin O’Reilly is an activist from Dublin, Ireland, with a strong interest in the effects of British and US Imperialism. Secretary of the Dublin Anti-Internment Committee, a campaign group set up to raise awareness of Irish Republican political prisoners in British and 26 County jails. His work has previously appeared on American Herald Tribune, The Duran, Al-Masdar and MintPress News.
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.
Today, the dangers of military escalation are beyond description.
What is now happening in Ukraine has serious geopolitical implications. It could lead us into a World War III scenario.
It is important that a peace process be initiated with a view to preventing escalation.
Global Research condemns Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
A Bilateral Peace Agreement is required.
The illegal Russian invasion of Ukraine has shocked the West and many ordinary Russians. But for those who understand the Russian establishment and its view of Russia’s vital interests, it should not have come as a complete surprise.
Since NATO expansion first began in the mid-1990s, Russian officials and other establishment figures have been warning that if the West tried to turn Ukraine into an ally against Russia, this would lead to confrontation and quite possibly war. As the great international relations scholar Hans Morgenthau taught, to craft a viable U.S. policy towards other major states, it is essential to understand from within how they see the world and their country’s place in it. Today, we need to do this if we are to craft a policy towards Russia that will bring about an end to this war, a Russian withdrawal from Ukraine, and a restoration of Ukrainian sovereignty.
The foreign and security establishments of all major states operate on the basis of what might be called doctrines concerning their countries’ vital interests and place in the world. The Russian establishment believes that Moscow must be one pole of a multipolar world. If you do not believe in that, you do not belong to the Russian establishment, just as if you do not believe in U.S. global primacy, you do not belong to the U.S. establishment.
Ukraine is critical to that vision. A Ukraine hostile to Russia and strongly linked to the West negates any possibility of Russia leading a reasonably strong regional bloc of states. From this point of view, most Western observers have not understood just how severe was the defeat suffered by Russia when Ukraine experienced the revolution of 2014 and rejected membership of the Eurasian Union. Seizing part of the Donbas, and even annexing Crimea, were very miserable consolation prizes by comparison.
Ukraine is by far the biggest former Soviet republic apart from Russia, with 44 million people to Kazakhstan’s 18 million and Belarus’ nine million. Ukraine has by far the largest Russian ethnic minority outside Russia. Without a largely Russian-speaking Ukraine, Russia loses most of its status as an international language. Without Ukrainian membership, the Eurasian Union is a pathetic shadow. At the very least, the Russian establishment — going back to Boris Yeltsin’s administration in the 1990s — has been absolutely determined that Ukraine should not join an anti-Russian alliance.
Russia’s interest in Ukraine however goes far beyond the economic and strategic. As emphasized in Putin’s articles and speeches, Russians see their own cultural and historical identity as closely bound up with that of Ukraine. This owes something to the origins of the Russian state and Orthodox religion in Kievan Rus, and something to the role of Ukrainians in modern Russian culture, as symbolized by Nikolai Gogol (Mykola Hohol in Ukrainian), a great Ukrainian writer who identified with the Russian Empire and wrote in Russian.
This factor imparts a strong element of historically-based nationalism to the Russian and Putin attitude towards Ukraine. There is some understanding in Russia of why Ukrainians would want their own state, but almost none of why Ukrainians would want to define that state against Russia. Hence the Russian demonology of “Nazism” and “U.S. manipulation.” In other words, while Russian officials use the term “Monroe Doctrine” to explain and justify their desire to prevent Ukraine joining a hostile alliance, their interest in that country has an emotional force wholly absent from U.S. attitudes to Mexico.
Whether Russia would have accepted a Western offer of compromise (if one had been made) involving a moratorium on NATO expansion and mutual arms limitation, we will probably never know, and this question is now academic. L’appetit vient en manger (“appetite grows with eating”) as the French say, and the more of Ukraine Russia now occupies, the more ambitious its goals in Ukraine are likely to be.
The point is, however, that these goals are now overwhelmingly focused on Ukraine. Nobody in Moscow now appears to believe that there is any possibility of an agreement with NATO on conventional arms limitation, or on some form of new European security architecture. The most that can be hoped for by Moscow is a Cold War-style treaty on nuclear arms reductions, and perhaps some agreement on cybersecurity. When the Russian government decided to invade Ukraine, it chose to accept that relations with the West would be basically hostile for a long time to come.
The Russian government aims to establish a Russian sphere of influence, not a new version of the Soviet Union. Putin has stated that “whoever does not miss the Soviet Union has no heart, but whoever wants it back has no brain.” The Eurasian Union falls vastly far short of the USSR. Kazakhstan for example is a member, and has always sought good relations with Russia. But Kazakh officials have stated publicly and repeatedly that it is not some form of super-state; and Kazakhstan has repeatedly refused to follow Russia’s lead in international affairs — including most recently by refusing to recognize the independence of the Donbas republics. The Eurasian Union and Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO) are loose partnerships.
As for Russian domination of Eastern Europe beyond the borders of the former USSR, this is vastly beyond Russia’s ambitions and capability. Not merely would it involve Russia in an attack on NATO, with all the hideous risks that this would entail (whereas the United States and NATO have declared explicitly that they will not fight to defend Ukraine); but it would require Russia to subjugate and hold down Poland. Russian officials and commentators with whom I have raised this possibility have simply burst out laughing at the absurdity of the idea.
Concerning Ukraine, there are two possible paths for Russia to take. Which one will be chosen will become apparent in the next days, or possibly hours. The first would be an agreement with the existing Ukrainian government (as publicly demanded by Russia immediately after the invasion) that would guarantee Ukrainian neutrality and the exclusion of Western armaments. Moscow will almost certainly also demand that the Donbas republics, and any other Russian-speaking areas occupied by the Russian army, receive fully autonomous status within a federal Ukraine. Moscow would likely present this to the West as an expanded version of the Minsk II agreement of 2015 on autonomy for the Donbas within Ukraine.
The second path would be for Russia to occupy Kiev itself, replace the Ukrainian government with Russian puppets, and draw up a new Ukrainian federal constitution by Russian diktat. At this point, Moscow might also try to force its Ukrainian client state to join the Eurasian Union and CSTO. This would be a vastly more dangerous project for Russia.
Unlike local governments in the Russian-speaking areas, which Moscow at least hopes could gain a measure of local legitimacy, a puppet government in Kiev and the Ukrainian ethnic heartland would only survive with the permanent presence of a Russian army. The government and army would face permanent mass unrest and violent resistance,which it only could quell through savage repression.
This would be atrocious for the people of Ukraine, and very dangerous for NATO. If the United States decided to arm a guerrilla war in Ukraine, such a force could only be supplied through Poland — which Russia then might directly target, which likely would expand and escalate the conflict dramatically. Furthermore, this guerrilla war would inevitably turn into an ethnic conflict of Ukrainian nationalists against the local Russian population, making any long-term unity of Ukraine next to impossible and probably lead to the eventual Russian annexation of the Russian-speaking areas of Ukraine.
The purpose of Western sanctions against Russia should be to press Russia to withdraw its army from Ukraine and restore Ukrainian sovereignty and territorial integrity (minus Crimea). This however will inevitably now require some form of compromise with Russia on Ukrainian neutrality (but not membership of the Eurasian Union) and federalism. Short of the military defeat of the Russian army or the collapse of the Russian state, it appears impossible now to achieve unconditional Russian withdrawal from Ukraine.
The alternative is for the United States to use sanctions not to change Russian policy in Ukraine, but to overthrow the regime in Russia itself by crippling the Russian state and economy. This would be a vastly more ambitious and dangerous project, and probably futile. The U.S. use of sanctions to bring about regime change has been a universal and unmitigated failure – in Cuba, Venezuela, Iraq, Iran and North Korea.
Russia is much stronger than those states, and will probably receive much greater help from China, whose economy has now overtaken that of the United States. Such a strategy would sooner or later also open up a gulf between the United States and its European allies, involving as it would the indefinite sponsorship of an armed struggle in Ukraine, with all the consequences of that for Europe.
Above all, Western sanctions should be intended to help the Ukrainian people. The latter strategy of guerilla warfare would instead instrumentalize Ukrainians as a weapon to weaken Russia and recall some of the worst U.S. actions of the Cold War, when Washington supported local insurgencies (sometimes led by evil figures like Jonas Savimbi and extremist ideologies like that of the Afghan Mujahedin), with no regard whatsoever for the interests of local peoples.
Outside Europe, the Cold War was waged over the corpses of innumerable Africans, Asians and Central Americans, and there was often no moral difference at all between the “pro-Western” and “pro-Soviet forces.” For America to go down this path would be a betrayal of those very Ukrainians whom the U.S. administration says that it wants to help.
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Today, the dangers of military escalation are beyond description.
What is now happening in Ukraine has serious geopolitical implications. It could lead us into a World War III scenario.
It is important that a peace process be initiated with a view to preventing escalation.
Global Research condemns Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
A Bilateral Peace Agreement is required.
Russian-Turkish diplomatic relations are quite complex, while some collaboration exists in several sectors, competition is dominant in other sectors and domains, particularly the security sector.
Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky on February 27 urged foreigners to head to Ukrainian embassies worldwide in order to sign up to volunteer to fight Russia in Ukraine. Now, Zelensky says that 16,000 foreign volunteers have arrived in Ukraine to assist in their fight against Russia.
The pro-Serb Democratic Front, the largest bloc in Montenegro’s governing coalition, called on the authorities to prevent the recruitment of Montenegrin fighters for Ukraine’s armed militia. “Such a call from the Ukrainian embassy is an obvious attempt to destabilize our country and the authorities must react. They must prevent Montenegrin citizens from fighting in foreign wars as this is also prohibited by law”, the Democratic Front said in a press release. According to Interior Ministry data, some 31 Montenegrin citizens have fought in foreign wars since 2012, with 26 having fought alongside ISIS in Syria and Iraq.
The majority in Montenegro have strong sympathies for their fellow Orthodox Christian Russians, who have been targeted by Nazi militias such as the Azov Battalion in the Donbas. Montenegro criminalized participation in foreign conflicts in March 2015, and those convicted face prison sentences of up to ten years. Montenegro joined NATO in June 2017.
Radical Islamic terrorists in Idlib/ Syria are among those foreigners seeking to reach Ukraine to fight the Russians. Radical Islam is a political ideology that has been called Islamo-fascist, and shares commonalities with the Nazi militias in Ukraine. Both the Nazis in Ukraine and the terrorists in Idlib are fighting the Russians. The terrorists in Idlib have devised a plan to send fighters to Ukraine, while also fighting the Russians in Idlib, thus hitting Russia on two battlefronts.
Suhail Hamoud, a famed terrorist in Idlib, who is nicknamed Abu TOW for his skill in operating the American anti-tank missile BGM-71 TOW, recently offered assistance to Ukraine. Hamoud said on Twitter, “There is a strong will I am in Idlib now and ready to go to support the Ukrainian army. I want to help someone”. He is said to have more than 100 confirmed hits of Russian-made tanks in Syria during the battles against the Syrian Arab Army. Former President Obama had sent the TOW anti-tank missiles to Idlib.
Iraqi terrorist leader Maysara bin Ali, also known by Abu Maria al-Qahtani, said on Telegram that if a Muslim in Ukraine fights and defeats the Russians, he would be rewarded in heaven, and if he gets killed he would be a martyr, having died in a Holy War.
The most powerful terrorist force in Idlib is Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), a coalition of Islamist groups made up of Syrian and foreign fighters, and dominated by Al Qaeda affiliate known as Jibhat al Nusra.
“The main problem is the foreign fighters, they have nowhere to go,” said Sinan Ulgen, a former Turkish diplomat and analyst with Carnegie Europe. Sending the terrorists to Ukraine is one solution that the US and NATO are using. Just as the Obama administration used the Al Qaeda terrorists to fight the Syrian government for regime change, those same terrorists can be utilized to fight the Russians in Ukraine and Idlib.
The UN envoy to Syria has said there are around 10,000 HTS terrorists in Idlib. Other terrorists are fighting under the Free Syrian Army banner. However, once President Erdogan of Turkey began sponsoring them, he changed their name to the “National Front for Liberation”. The US-NATO war on Syria for regime change used the Muslim Brotherhood partisans as boots on the ground in Syria. The terrorists were originally named Free Syrian Army but were taken over by Al Qaeda, and finally morphed into ISIS.
Ankara considers the Kurdish militia in northeast Syria as terrorists but supports the Al Qaeda-linked terrorists in Idlib. Turkey invaded Syria in several places, and Idlib was one of their occupation points. The Turkish military convoys pass freely amidst the terrorists in Idlib.
Ankara depends on its good relationship with Russia to control Idlib. Russia controls the air space and performs military patrols near Idlib which holds together a fragile ceasefire between the terrorists, Russia, Turkey, and the Syrian government in Damascus.
In 2018, Russia and Turkey entered into an agreement in Sochi concerning Idlib. Turkey was to separate the terrorists from the innocent civilians and guarantee the safety of the M4 highway linking Latakia with the industrial capital of Syria, Aleppo. This plan was to prevent the Syrian Arab Army from attacking Idlib and clearing out all the terrorists. Turkey was desperate to sign the deal to prevent refugees in Idlib from fleeing to Turkey should an attack begin. Idlib is thought to have about 3 million civilians and tens of thousands of terrorists.
Turkey has a dozen military posts in Idlib and said that it would isolate terrorists, but after almost four years Turkey has not lived up to its agreement. Idlib has remained a tense status quo, with no political settlement in sight or even discussed.
On February 27, Turkey declared the conflict in Ukraine a war. This invoked the 1936 convention concerning the waterway at Istanbul, the Bosphorus, and Turkey has now locked out Russian warships from the Black Sea, which include destroyers, a frigate, and one of Russia’s most advanced warship that carries cruise missiles. These ships were to join a fleet of warships already assed outside of Odessa.
In 2017, Turkey signed a deal to buy the Russian-made S-400 air defense system against strong US objections. In 2019, the system was installed. Given the current fragile relationship between Russia and Turkey over Ukraine, Russia could turn off the system, like what the US did to Saddam Hussein of Iraq. In this process, the codes are known by the manufacturer of the air defense system and can make the S-400 worthless.
Russia is building Turkey’s first nuclear reactor, it has recently constructed a pipeline underneath the Black Sea to Turkey, and it is supplying the bulk of Turkey’s natural gas to stay warm. Turkey imports more than 90% of its energy and Russia is one of its main suppliers.
Turkey has been selling armed drones to Kyiv, and the Ukrainian military has already used them in Donbas against pro-Russian targets. Turkey is also a close ally of Russia, and a key trading partner, and Ankara have been careful not to step on Moscow’s toes in Syria. On March 2, Ukraine said it is getting more Turkish drones, despite warnings from Moscow.
The Ukrainian Defense Ministry has posted videos of Turkish-made drones targeting Russian forces. Last week, Moscow warned countries supplying Ukraine with weapons they would be held responsible for losses. Turkish-Russian ties are facing a critical test.
Erdogan has domestic problems as well as those with Russia. His opposition is united against him and opinion polls show an anti-Erdogan majority. Turkey would pay a huge price in Syria if Russia turned against it over its stance on Ukraine.
Russia could retaliate against Turkey in Idlib. If the Syrian Arab Army were to begin an attack of Idlib against the Turkish-protected terrorists, it could create a panic among the civilians and unleash millions to cross the border into Turkey, which would further destabilize Turkey amid an economic downturn and growing anti-Syrian sentiment among the public.
Conversely, should Turkey perceive Russia weakening from the US-NATO position against it in Ukraine, Turkey may choose to step-up attacks against Russian and Syrian positions and assets in Idlib, and take even more territory in northwest Syria on the Turkish border. All eyes are on Ukraine now, but keep one eye on Idlib as well.
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This article was originally published on Al Mayadeen.
Steven Sahiounie is a two-time award-winning journalist, and Chief editor of MidEastDiscourse News. He is a regular contributor to Global Research.
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