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With the Venezuelan presidential election coming up on July 28, retired diplomat Edmundo González is reported to be leading the polls, even though the former ambassador was unknown to the majority of the population up to a few months ago and never sought elected office. By his own admission, he had “absolutely no plans to be a presidential candidate… much less to be president” until April this year when he was invited by the Venezuelan opposition to be their presidential candidate after the authorities prevented both María Corina Machado, the former candidate, and her stopgap from running.
The whole issue about María Corina Machado’s would-be candidacy is controversial. It is worth highlighting that by the end of March this year there were no less than 11 opposition candidates in Venezuela – albeit the country is often described as dictatorship. Each and every one of those was able to register as candidates without issues, Machado being the only one refused.
It would be fair to describe Machado as an extremist: for example, she took part in the Pedro Carmona’s 2002 attempted military coup, signing the infamous Carmona Decree. Carmona was a business leader (president of the Venezuelan Federation of Chambers of Commerce), who acted as de facto president of Venezuela for just one day. During his brief rule, both the Supreme Court and the National Assembly were dissolved, with the Constitution being declared void. There were various arbitrary detentions, including that of then president Hugo Chavez, Maduro’s predecessor. With the support of crowds of demonstrators and the military, Chavez was then restored to office. Carmona is also known to have defended sanctions against his own people.
Last week, the Venezuelan government arrested some people involved in Machado’s campaign (including her campaign manager), under the accusation of having taken part in a violent plot. Considering their record, such accusations should be taken seriously, albeit one is tempted to quickly denounce them as political persecution and nothing else.
Machado in fact faces a 15-year disqualification for her involvement in the whole Juan Guiado’s affair. Her alternate, Corina Yoris (a little known academic who has never held public administration positions) was similarly unable to register due to technicalities. Namely, Yoris own political party was an unregistered one (all she had to do was to find a registered political party and join it).
Then, without many alternatives, the little known academic and retired diplomat Edmundo González Urrutia was named as a kind of temporary replacement. And now he seems to be leading the polls.
In 2021, after the Juan Guaido’s imbroglio, the Venezuelan opposition itself recognized President Nicolas Maduro’s government, as I wrote at the time – although it oscillates between participating in elections and boycotting them. For years, the South American nation has been facing heavier US sanctions and falling oil prices, which contributed to an oil production collapse, export revenue being the cornerstone of the Venezuelan economy. On top of that, Washington plus several European governments blocked Maduro’s government’s access to over $7 billion of state funds held overseas. It did bring about a national catastrophe. In a bizarre situation, control of the nation’s bank accounts (frozen by the US) is given to the opposition, without accountability – unsurprisingly, corruption charges against opposition leaders abound since at least 2019.
Image: Hugo Chavez (Source: CADTM)
Some context is needed. Hugo Chavez, whether one likes him or not, was indeed a very popular president in his country and, contrary to what many believe in the West, he and his Bolivarian Revolution did bring about a number of social advances, pertaining to education, inequality, health and income. Even the 2010 OAS report which denounces Venezuela’s human rights standards acknowledges that “in terms of economic, social, and cultural rights, the IACHR recognizes the State’s achievements with regard to the progressive observance of these rights, including, most notably, the eradication of illiteracy, the reduction of poverty, and the increase in access by the most vulnerable sectors to basic services such as health care.”
According to the United Nations Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC), poverty rates fell from 49.4% in 1999 to 23.9% in 2012, this being the largest success in poverty reduction among 11 countries in the region. All of this explains the long-lasting cult of Hugo Chavez to this day among sectors of the population. However, the country has been facing serial economic problems for a while, and Maduro’s popularity is clearly declining for a number of reasons.
Besides the aforementioned economic and humanitarian catastrophe, geopolitically-wise, the country faces challenges pertaining to the oil discoveries in Guyana and Suriname, amid the Washington-Beijing trade war. The geopolitical dispute between these two superpowers actually goes beyond trade, encompassing the diplomatic and military realms. The specter of a US intervention still haunts the region, with rising tensions involving Colombia. Venezuela largely counts on both Iran and, indirectly, on China, to counter American sanctions and to project its oil market share. It would not be reasonable to expect the current Venezuelan opposition to have the diplomatic wisdom to pursue a pragmatic foreign policy, given their ideological profile and lack of experience.
Venezuela faces many problems which also include bad policy choices, mismanagement and issues involving freedoms, with a PSUV (the hegemonic party) in crisis. It cannot live on Chavez’s nostalgia forever. One however would be mistaken to assume that the Venezuelan opposition today represented by the likes of María Corina Machado and Juan Guaidó are some sort of “democratic” alternative. They are not and their records speak otherwise. They are part of a violent radicalized minority heavily funded by the US without training in politics or public policy.
There are indeed cultural and social reasons beyond the phenomenon of newcomer Edmundo González leading the polls – if the group behind takes over Venezuelans could face problems similar to the ones one can see today in Argentina, with Javier Milei. And this could have serious impacts on the continent.
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This article was originally published on InfoBrics.
Uriel Araujo is a researcher with a focus on international and ethnic conflicts. He is a regular contributor to Global Research.
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A team of Italian researchers verified what they called “the real impact of the vaccination campaign” by comparing the risk of all-cause death among vaccinated and unvaccinated residents of the Italian province of Pescara.
COVID-19 vaccines were linked to an increase in all-cause mortality in a new peer-reviewed study that analyzed data from the Italian National Healthcare System.
Based on their analysis, a team of Italian researchers verified what they called “the real impact of the vaccination campaign” by comparing the risk of all-cause death among vaccinated and unvaccinated residents of the Italian province of Pescara.
In their univariate analysis, the researchers found the risk of all-cause death to be over 20% higher for those vaccinated with two or more doses of the COVID-19 vaccine compared to the unvaccinated.
In contrast, prior research done in the same region suggested those with three or four doses had a lower risk of all-cause death.
“We also found a slight but statistically significant loss of life expectancy for those vaccinated with 2 or 3/4 doses,” they said in the report, which they published June 30 in Microorganisms.
“These findings call for an immediate halt of COVID-19 vaccination across the globe and a thorough investigation of what went wrong during the COVID-19 vaccine campaign.”
McCullough wrote on Substack that the paper’s main point is that
“COVID-19 vaccination did not ‘save lives’ as so many in Washington have proclaimed without evidence.”
Alberto Donzelli, one of the Italian study’s authors, told The Defender the study is “an important advance” because it looks at all-cause mortality broken down by vaccination status, and accounts for confounding variables that may have affected earlier reports on COVID-19 vaccination and all-cause mortality.
Very few studies in the world have successfully done that, he said.
McCullough also told The Defender the study’s findings are “cohesive” with those of a recent German study — currently available as a preprint — which found COVID-19 vaccination was linked to increased all-cause death in 16 German states.
The earlier study — which followed up with people two years after the start of the COVID-19 vaccination campaign — found that those who received one or two doses had a significantly higher risk of all-cause death, while those who received three or more vaccine doses had a lower risk of death.
However, these results were likely distorted due to “immortal time bias,” Donzelli and his co-authors said.
Immortal time bias is a common study design flaw that can throw off statistical estimations between an exposure (such as a COVID-19 shot) and an outcome (such as an increased risk of death), according to the University of Oxford’s Catalogue of Bias.
Donzelli said the bias “afflicts most observational studies on mortality from COVID-19.” So he and his co-authors took the necessary steps to correct for the bias and reanalyzed the same data.
They looked at vaccination records from Jan. 1, 2021, through Dec. 31, 2022, for people ages 10 and up.
They also looked at follow-up data collected from Jan. 1, 2021, through Feb. 15, 2023, for these people, as long as they hadn’t tested positive for COVID-19 on the date of the follow-up.
They also looked at other variables, such as pathologies other than COVID-19, that may have affected people’s health.
“The results are startling,” wrote McCullough, after doing calculations using the report’s data. “COVID-19 specific deaths were not reduced with vaccination, however there was a U-shaped trend of note when COVID-19 deaths were adjusted per 1000 population: unvaccinated 1.98/1000, one dose 0.27/1000, two doses 1.08/1000, and 3/4 doses 3.5/1000.”
Additionally, Donzelli and his co-authors in their multivariate analysis found that those who received one dose of the COVID-19 vaccine had a hazard risk ratio — which is a statistical estimate of risk — of 2.4 for all-cause mortality, meaning they were much more likely to die compared to the unvaccinated.
“Those vaccinated with two doses showed an almost double hazard ratio of death: 1.98,” Donzelli pointed out.
These numbers are significantly worse than what was reported in the original study that hadn’t corrected for the immortal time bias, he said. Correcting for that bias changed the results for those who were vaccinated with three or more doses, too.
The original study authors had claimed that being vaccinated three or more times reduced the risk of mortality more than four-fold. Based on his and his co-authors corrected analysis, Donzelli called the claim “implausible.”
He said of the multivariate analysis,
“Those vaccinated with three or more doses turned out to die at the same rate as the unvaccinated.”
However, taken together with univariate analyses and life expectancy estimates, all COVID-19 vaccine dosing regimens show an overall increase in all-cause mortality.
CDC: COVID Shots ‘Save Lives’
The Defender asked the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) if it planned to modify its statement that “COVID-19 vaccines save lives” in light of the study’s findings.
A CDC spokesperson told The Defender that the CDC “does not comment on findings or claims by individuals or organizations outside of CDC.” The spokesperson declined to provide studies or data supporting the agency’s claim that the vaccines save lives.
“CDC research has continuously found that COVID-19 vaccines are safe and effective,” the spokesperson said.
UPDATE: This article was updated to state the researchers found the risk of all-cause death to be over 20% higher for those vaccinated with two or more doses of the COVID-19 vaccine compared to the unvaccinated.
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Suzanne Burdick, Ph.D., is a reporter and researcher for The Defender based in Fairfield, Iowa.
Featured image is from CHD
The Worldwide Corona Crisis, Global Coup d’Etat Against Humanity
by Michel Chossudovsky
Michel Chossudovsky reviews in detail how this insidious project “destroys people’s lives”. He provides a comprehensive analysis of everything you need to know about the “pandemic” — from the medical dimensions to the economic and social repercussions, political underpinnings, and mental and psychological impacts.
“My objective as an author is to inform people worldwide and refute the official narrative which has been used as a justification to destabilize the economic and social fabric of entire countries, followed by the imposition of the “deadly” COVID-19 “vaccine”. This crisis affects humanity in its entirety: almost 8 billion people. We stand in solidarity with our fellow human beings and our children worldwide. Truth is a powerful instrument.”
Reviews
This is an in-depth resource of great interest if it is the wider perspective you are motivated to understand a little better, the author is very knowledgeable about geopolitics and this comes out in the way Covid is contextualized. —Dr. Mike Yeadon
In this war against humanity in which we find ourselves, in this singular, irregular and massive assault against liberty and the goodness of people, Chossudovsky’s book is a rock upon which to sustain our fight. –Dr. Emanuel Garcia
In fifteen concise science-based chapters, Michel traces the false covid pandemic, explaining how a PCR test, producing up to 97% proven false positives, combined with a relentless 24/7 fear campaign, was able to create a worldwide panic-laden “plandemic”; that this plandemic would never have been possible without the infamous DNA-modifying Polymerase Chain Reaction test – which to this day is being pushed on a majority of innocent people who have no clue. His conclusions are evidenced by renown scientists. —Peter Koenig
Professor Chossudovsky exposes the truth that “there is no causal relationship between the virus and economic variables.” In other words, it was not COVID-19 but, rather, the deliberate implementation of the illogical, scientifically baseless lockdowns that caused the shutdown of the global economy. –David Skripac
A reading of Chossudovsky’s book provides a comprehensive lesson in how there is a global coup d’état under way called “The Great Reset” that if not resisted and defeated by freedom loving people everywhere will result in a dystopian future not yet imagined. Pass on this free gift from Professor Chossudovsky before it’s too late. You will not find so much valuable information and analysis in one place. –Edward Curtin
ISBN: 978-0-9879389-3-0, Year: 2022, PDF Ebook, Pages: 164, 15 Chapters
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First published on May 24, 2024, Revised on June 19, 2024
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Introduction
There is a complex history behind Israel’s October 2023 plan to “Wipe Gaza off the Map”. It’s an ongoing genocide, an absolute slaughter, coupled with atrocities:
It’s a criminal undertaking based on Israel’s doctrine of “Justified Vengeance” which was first formulated in 2001.
The “Justified Vengeance” doctrine propounds in no uncertain terms that Palestine (despite its limited military capabilities) is “the Aggressor” and that “Israel has the right to defend itself” which since October 7, 2023 consists in the conduct of a carefully planned genocide against the People of Palestine.
Paul Larudee begs the question:
“Is there a point at which the genocide in Gaza becomes egregious enough to provoke other countries to directly intervene in the Gaza Strip to prevent further genocide?
Can Israel exterminate the entire population without anyone stopping them?”
The answer to that question is provided by the International Criminal Court (ICC) in the form of the most despicable set of accusations directed against Palestinians who are the victims of “An Act of Genocide” instigated by Israel with the unbending support of most Western governments.
False Flag. “Palestine Attacks Israel”
Below is the statement of the ICC Prosecutor and King’s Counsel Karim A.A. Khan which accuses Palestine of committing crimes against humanity as well as war crimes, while carefully ignoring the evidence pertaining to Israel’s “false flag” operationwhich has resulted quite “deliberately” on the part of Netanyahu government in the deaths of innocent Israeli civilians.
“A false flag” in relation to Israel constitutes a carefully planned Israeli-US intelligence operation which results in the deaths of innocent Israeli civilians. In turn, Israel will place the blame on the State of Palestine, with view to justifying “A State of Readiness for War” against the Gaza Strip.
Military operations are invariably planned well in advance. The October 7, 2023 “Operation Al-Aqsa Storm” was not a “surprise attack”.
The false flag logic –which has resulted in Israeli casualties–, has provided Israel with a justification to undertake a genocide against Palestinians.
On that same day of October 7, 2023 Netanyahu launched a military operation against the Gaza Strip entitled “State of Readiness For War”.
Had “Operation Al-Aqsa Storm” been a “surprise attack” as parroted by the media, Netanyahu’s “State of Readiness For War” could not have been carried out (at short notice) on that same day, namely October 7, 2023.
Palestinian Children: The Victims of Israeli atrocities
As a former intelligence officer, I find it impossible to believe that Israel did not have multiple informants inside Gazaas well as electronic listening devices all along the border wall which would have picked up movements of groups and vehicles.
In other words, the whole thing might be a tissue of lies as is often the case. (October 8, 2023)
According to Israel’s defence ministry “the barrier includes hundreds of cameras, radars and other sensors, it spans 65km
The ministry said the project’s “smart fence” is more than six metres high and its maritime barrier includes means to detect infiltration by sea and a remote-controlled weapons system.
“False Flag” in Support of “Israel’s Act of Genocide”
It should be understood that the implementation of the False Flag was carefully coordinated with Israel’s “Act of Genocide” directed against the People of Palestine.
On that same day of October 7, 2023 Netanyahu launched a military operation against the Gaza Strip entitled “State of Readiness For War”.
Had “Operation Al-Aqsa Storm” been a “surprise attack” as parroted by the media, Netanyahu’s “State of Readiness For War”could not have been carried out (at short notice) on that same day, namely October 7, 2023.
“…This is the “green light to terror” theme which the Military Intelligence (Ama”n) has been promoting since 1997, when its anti-Oslo line was consolidated. This theme was since repeated again and again by military circles, and eventually became the mantra of Israeli propaganda… (See Chossudovsky, October 23, 2023)
There is continuity: Israel’s Military Intelligence remains in charge of implementing false flag operations coupled with “Acts of Genocide” directed against Palestine.
“Israel is the Victim of Palestinian Aggression”. The International Criminal Court (ICC) Accuses Palestine
In a bitter irony, the ICC Prosecutor’s accusations against Palestine –which include alleged acts of “Extermination”, “Murder” and “Torture” contends that the State of Israel rather than Palestine is the victim of Genocide:
According to the ICC Statement, Palestine’s “Act of Aggression” against Israel consists in:
Extermination as a crime against humanity, contrary to article 7(1)(b) of the Rome Statute;
Murder as a crime against humanity, contrary to article 7(1)(a), and as a war crime, contrary to article 8(2)(c)(i);
Taking hostages as a war crime, contrary to article 8(2)(c)(iii);
Rape and other acts of sexual violence as crimes against humanity, contrary to article 7(1)(g), and also as war crimes pursuant to article 8(2)(e)(vi) in the context of captivity;
Torture as a crime against humanity, contrary to article 7(1)(f), and also as a war crime, contrary to article 8(2)(c)(i), in the context of captivity;
Other inhumane acts as a crime against humanity, contrary to article 7(l)(k), in the context of captivity;
Cruel treatment as a war crime contrary to article 8(2)(c)(i), in the context of captivity; and
Outrages upon personal dignity as a war crime, contrary to article 8(2)(c)(ii), in the context of captivity.
What these insidious legal statements imply is that the ICC has de facto given “its stamp of approval” to Israel’s “Justified Vengeance” against the People of Palestine, which is currently ongoing. The atrocities committed against Palestinians are beyond description:
”burnt alive after Israeli forces bombed tents”
Accusations against Hamas
‘Inasmuch as the issue of the False Flag (despite extensive evidence) has been casually dismissed by the ICC, as well as by Western governments and the media:
The accusations against Hamas are meaningless. They should be withdrawn.
International law is unambiguous in its endorsement of “armed struggle” for peoples who seek self-determination under “colonial and foreign domination.”
United Nations resolution 37/43, dated 3 December 1982, “reaffirms the legitimacy of the struggle of peoples for independence, territorial integrity, national unity and liberation from colonial and foreign domination and foreign occupation by all available means, including armed struggle.” Palestine Chronicle (emphasis added)
The Endgame is the Exclusion of Palestinians from their Homeland
The Lie has become the Truth
Amply documented Israel is involved in acts of “Extermination” against Palestinians.
Yet it is Israel which is described by the ICC as the “Victim of Palestinian Aggression.”
Genocide and False Flags
While the ICC fails to acknowledge the conduct of a “False Flag”, numerous documents, witnesses and statements, confirm Israel’s False Flag initiative.
In a bitter irony, the False Flag Attack Strategy had been acknowledged by Netanyahu in consultation with the Likud Party. It comes from the Horse’s Mouth:
“Anyone who wants to thwart the establishment of a Palestinian state has to support bolstering Hamas and transferring money to Hamas,” he [Netanyahu] told a meeting of his Likud party’s Knesset members in March 2019. “This is part of our strategy – to isolate the Palestinians in Gaza from the Palestinians in the West Bank.” (Haaretz, October 9, 2023, emphasis added)
Moreover, “Transferring Money by the Netanyahu government to Hamas intelligence assets” was confirmed in a Times of Israel October 8, 2023 Report:
“Hamas was treated as a partner to the detriment of the Palestinian Authority to prevent Abbas from moving towards creating a Palestinian State.
Hamas was promoted from a terrorist group to an organization with which Israel conducted negotiations through Egypt, and which was allowed to receive suitcases containing millions of dollars from Qatar through the Gaza crossings.” (emphasis added)
The False Flag operation was used to justify the conduct of a carefully planned “Genocide”.
The Evidence
There are numerous government documents which describe in detail the planning and conduct of the genocide.
What we have on record (which is the object of our analysis) is:
This intelligence memorandum was prepared well in advance of October 7, 2023.
It was available to the ICC Team.
The thrust of the document describes what is currently unfolding, namely the Exclusion of Palestinians from Their Homeland.
This is Israel’s Plan (Before our Very Eyes)
“The forcible and permanent transfer of the Gaza Strip’s 2.2 million Palestinian residents to Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula”.
It’s a longstanding and carefully prepared initiative by Israel’s Ministry of Intelligence, which was declassified on October 13, 2023, namely one week after the commencement of the invasion of the Gaza Strip.
Concurrently, Israel’s Ministry of Intelligence was responsible for the implementation of the False Flag.
The endgame is the exclusion of Palestinians from their homeland.
We are dealing with an absurd “upside down rhetoric” “Mundus inversus” on the part of the ICC Prosecutor.
The Lie has become the Truth
Amply documented Israel is involved in acts of “Extermination” against Palestinians. Yet it is Israel which is described by the ICC as the “Victim of Palestinian Aggression.”
The Lie Prevails. International Law is Criminalized
The actual conduct of the genocide against Palestine —confirmed by numerous official Israeli documents to which the ICC had access– are casually ignored by the ICC Prosecutor.
I have reviewed the official ICC statement. There is not a single reference to the word “genocide”.
What we have on record (which is the object of our analysis) is:
the memorandum confirms Israel’s planning of a Genocide against the People of Palestine.
This intelligence memorandum was prepared well in advance of October 7, 2023. The thrust of the document describes what is currently unfolding, namely the Exclusion of Palestinians from Their Homeland:
“The forcible and permanent transfer of the Gaza Strip’s 2.2 million Palestinian residents to Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula”.
Ask the ICC Prosecutor Karim A. A. Khan: What is the significance of this document?
Option. C. The Evacuation of the Civilian Population from Gaza to the Sinai
The Option C which was declassified, is the Blueprint of Israel’s War against Palestine (among many classified intelligence documents), the underlying intent of which is to:
Destroy Palestine as a Nation State and Exclude Palestinians from their Homeland.
The Overthrow of Hamas is contemplated, which if carried out would no doubt result in the implementation of the three ICC Hamas Arrest Warrants.
Option C. calls for:
“The Evacuation of the civilian population from Gaza to Sinai”
See details below from the original document (emphasis added)
Israel is to act to evacuate the civilian population to Sinai. In the first stage, tent cities will be established in the area of Sinai.
The next stage includes the establishment of a humanitarian zone to assist the civilian population of Gaza and the construction of cities in a resettled area in northern Sinai.
A sterile zone of several kilometers should be created within Egypt, and the return of the population to activities/residences near the border with Israel should not be allowed.
In addition, a security perimeter should be established in our [Israel’s] territory near the border with Egypt. (Option C)
Whereas the killings, destruction and the engineered famine are not acknowledged in the official government document, they are an integral part of the Option C. Agenda:
Hunger is a creeper. People will survive for months on their bodily reserves and on the little food they can scrape together.
But suddenly, people get under the absolute minimum in bodily assets and mass deaths will start on an industrial scale.
Once erupted, hunger and disease deaths will be enormous.
Holocaust – death brought by Israel on civilians on industrial scale will erupt, if this is not reversed NOW. (Karsten Riise)
With regard to propaganda, lobbying and public relations, the focus is on:
“harnessing the support of the United States and additional pro-Israeli countries for the endeavor”. (Text of Option C)
The role of Egypt in Option C is of course crucial:
Egypt has an obligation under international law to allow the passage of the population.
Israel must act to promote a broad diplomatic initiative aimed at countries that will support assisting the displaced population and agree to absorb them as refugees.(Option C)
Solidarity with Palestine
It is important as part of the Palestine solidarity movement that Option C be fully understood. It is a criminal endeavor. It is part of Israel’s “Act of Genocide”.
The State of Israel is in blatant violation of the Genocide Convention. And so is the ICC prosecutor.
We are dealing with an absurd “upside down rhetoric” “Mundus inversus” on the part of the ICC Prosecutor.
While the ICC Prosecutor accuses Palestine, he rightfully acknowledges the crimes committed by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Israeli Defence Minister Yoav Gallant, specifically with regard to the starvation of civilians as a method of warfare.
This issue is fundamental. Starvation in the Gaza Strip is ongoing. It’s a crime against humanity. It’s Genocide.
For nearly 8 months, Israel still chokes off nearly all food and other vital supplies to Gaza.
Gaza needs 500 trucks of supply every day, and near-nothing is coming through.
The US pier supplies 25-50 trucks per day, and everything else is closed.
With irregular intervals, reports have come the past months, but never about more than some 100 or 150 trucks on a few days.
Reports about starvation are made public, and this is obviously getting worse. (Karsten Riise, communication to the author)
ICC Prosecutor Karim A. A. Khan’s presentation is cautious.
He essentially contends that “crimes have been committed by both sides” while intimating that “The Fourth Military Power” on the Planet, “Has a Right to Defend Itself” (in the words of Joe Biden on October 7).
The False Flag which constitutes a crime against humanity, is not addressed by the ICC, nor is the issue of the Genocide against the People of Palestine.
The document (above) confirms the State of Israel’s prior intent to implement genocide against the people of Palestine in violation of the Genocide Convention.
ICC Prosecutor Karim A..A. Khan does not want to be accused of “double standards”.
Netanyahu and Gallant are “The Fall Guys”
ICC prosecutor Karim Khan KCissued a statement [on May 20] proposing that arrest warrants are issued for Mr Netanyahu, Israel’s defence minister Yoav Gallant, Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar, Mohammed al-Masri, Hamas’s military chief, and Ismail Haniyeh, Hamas’s political leader. (Independent)
Karim Khan’s allegations directed against Netanyahu and Yoav Gallant which are fully corroborated, coupled with arrest warrants, are intent to:
—reach out and mislead the anti-Zionist peace movement,
—provide a sense of (fake) “legitimacy” to the ICC’s far-reaching accusations against Palestine (“extermination and murder”).
— Dispel the existence of a False Flag. Deny Israeli civilian casualties linked to the “False Flag”
—provide a “human face” to Karim Khan KC
Nowhere in the ICC Prosecutor’s report is the issue of “Israel’s genocide directed against the People of Palestine” mentioned.
In this regard, the Arrest Warrants directed by the ICC against the three Hamas leaders serve to:
“Side Track” the Strategic Role of the “False Flag Operation“
Refute the very existence of a Genocide,
Endorse Israel’s “Act of Self Defense” against Palestine.
In regards to the arrest warrants directed against Netanyahu and Gallant, it is highly unlikely that they will be carried out.
(Netanyahu already has a criminal record. In November 2019, he was officially “indicted for breach of trust, accepting bribes, and fraud”)
Of relevance, the CIA has been operating in the background in collaboration with Israeli intelligence.
The three arrest warrants directed against the leaders of Hamas are intended to “confirm” that the alleged October 7, 2023 Act of “Aggression” against Israel was NOT (despite the evidence) part of a “False Flag” (i.e. inside intelligence op. carefully coordinated by Israeli and U.S. intelligence).
The ICC Arrest Warrants directed against Netanyahu and Gallant (which will never be carried out), serve the useful purpose of placing the blame while at the same time deflecting our understanding as to who from a strategic standpoint is behind the conduct of the Genocide directed against the People of Palestine.
What this does is to distract public opinion. It misleads the peace movement. It creates divisions within the solidarity movement with Palestine.
Big Money Economic Interests
Bear in mind there are powerful economic interests which are supportive of the Genocide.
They have their eyes on Gaza’s Multibillion Offshore Maritime Gas Reserves.
The ICC Arrest Warrants directed against Netanyahu and Gallant (which will never be carried out), serve the useful purpose of placing the blame while at the same time deflecting our understanding as to who from a strategic standpoint is behind the conduct of the Genocide directed against the People of Palestine.
What this does is to distract public opinion. It misleads the peace movement. It creates divisions within the solidarity movement with Palestine.
I should mention that the False Flag issue –which constitutes a crime against humanity on the part of Israel and the U.S.– has been casually ignored both by the International Court of Justice (IJC) (Chief Justice Donahue, former adviser to Hillary Clinton). (January 2024)
And now by the International Criminal Court (ICC) on behalf of His Majesty’s Prosecutor, K.C. (King’s Counsel).
In this regard, the Arrest Warrants directed against the three Hamas leaders serve not only to Side Track the Role of the “False Flag Operation“, but also to endorse the legitimacy of the Genocide which is portrayed as an Act of Self Defense by Israel.
It is worth noting that the conduct of False Flag Attacks have been endorsed by Netanyahu:
“Anyone who wants to thwart the establishment of a Palestinian state has to support bolstering Hamas and transferring money to Hamas,” he [Netanyahu] told a meeting of his Likud party’s Knesset members in March 2019. “This is part of our strategy – to isolate the Palestinians in Gaza from the Palestinians in the West Bank.” (Haaretz, October 9, 2023, emphasis added)
Today I am filing applications for warrants of arrest before Pre-Trial Chamber I of the International Criminal Court in the Situation in the State of Palestine.
.
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On the basis of evidence collected and examined by my Office, I have reasonable grounds to believe that Yahya SINWAR (Head of the Islamic Resistance Movement (“Hamas”) in the Gaza Strip), Mohammed Diab Ibrahim AL-MASRI, more commonly known as DEIF (Commander-in-Chief of the military wing of Hamas, known as the Al-Qassam Brigades), and Ismail HANIYEH (Head of Hamas Political Bureau) bear criminal responsibility for the following war crimes and crimes against humanity committed on the territory of Israel and the State of Palestine (in the Gaza strip) from at least 7 October 2023:
Extermination as a crime against humanity, contrary to article 7(1)(b) of the Rome Statute;
Murder as a crime against humanity, contrary to article 7(1)(a), and as a war crime, contrary to article 8(2)(c)(i);
Taking hostages as a war crime, contrary to article 8(2)(c)(iii);
Rape and other acts of sexual violence as crimes against humanity, contrary to article 7(1)(g), and also as war crimes pursuant to article 8(2)(e)(vi) in the context of captivity;
Torture as a crime against humanity, contrary to article 7(1)(f), and also as a war crime, contrary to article 8(2)(c)(i), in the context of captivity;
Other inhumane acts as a crime against humanity, contrary to article 7(l)(k), in the context of captivity;
Cruel treatment as a war crime contrary to article 8(2)(c)(i), in the context of captivity; and
Outrages upon personal dignity as a war crime, contrary to article 8(2)(c)(ii), in the context of captivity.
My Office submits that the war crimes alleged in these applications were committed in the context of an international armed conflict between Israel and Palestine, and a non-international armed conflict between Israel and Hamas running in parallel. We submit that the crimes against humanity charged were part of a widespread and systematic attack against the civilian population of Israel by Hamas and other armed groups pursuant to organisational policies. Some of these crimes, in our assessment, continue to this day.
My Office submits there are reasonable grounds to believe that SINWAR, DEIF and HANIYEH are criminally responsible for the killing of hundreds of Israeli civilians in attacks perpetrated by Hamas (in particular its military wing, the al-Qassam Brigades) and other armed groups on 7 October 2023 and the taking of at least 245 hostages. As part of our investigations, my Office has interviewed victims and survivors, including former hostages and eyewitnesses from six major attack locations: Kfar Aza; Holit; the location of the Supernova Music Festival; Be’eri; Nir Oz; and Nahal Oz. The investigation also relies on evidence such as CCTV footage, authenticated audio, photo and video material, statements by Hamas members including the alleged perpetrators named above, and expert evidence.
It is the view of my Office that these individuals planned and instigated the commission of crimes on 7 October 2023, and have through their own actions, including personal visits to hostages shortly after their kidnapping, acknowledged their responsibility for those crimes. We submit that these crimes could not have been committed without their actions. They are charged both as co-perpetrators and as superiors pursuant to Articles 25 and 28 of the Rome Statute.
During my own visit to Kibbutz Be’eri and Kibbutz Kfar Aza, as well as to the site of Supernova Music Festival in Re’im, I saw the devastating scenes of these attacks and the profound impact of the unconscionable crimes charged in the applications filed today. Speaking with survivors, I heard how the love within a family, the deepest bonds between a parent and a child, were contorted to inflict unfathomable pain through calculated cruelty and extreme callousness. These acts demand accountability.
My Office also submits there are reasonable grounds to believe that hostages taken from Israel have been kept in inhumane conditions, and that some have been subject to sexual violence, including rape, while being held in captivity. We have reached that conclusion based on medical records, contemporaneous video and documentary evidence, and interviews with victims and survivors. My Office also continues to investigate reports of sexual violence committed on 7 October.
I wish to express my gratitude to the survivors, and the families of victims of the 7 October attacks, for their courage in coming forward to provide their accounts to my Office. We remain focused on further deepening our investigations of all crimes committed as part of these attacks and will continue to work with all partners to ensure that justice is delivered.
I again reiterate my call for the immediate release of all hostages taken from Israel and for their safe return to their families. This is a fundamental requirement of international humanitarian law.
Benjamin Netanyahu, Yoav Gallant
On the basis of evidence collected and examined by my Office, I have reasonable grounds to believe that Benjamin NETANYAHU, the Prime Minister of Israel, and Yoav GALLANT, the Minister of Defence of Israel, bear criminal responsibility for the following war crimes and crimes against humanity committed on the territory of the State of Palestine (in the Gaza strip) from at least 8 October 2023:
Starvation of civilians as a method of warfare as a war crime contrary to article 8(2)(b)(xxv) of the Statute;
Wilfully causing great suffering, or serious injury to body or health contrary to article 8(2)(a)(iii), or cruel treatment as a war crime contrary to article 8(2)(c)(i);
Wilful killing contrary to article 8(2)(a)(i), or Murder as a war crime contrary to article 8(2)(c)(i);
Intentionally directing attacks against a civilian population as a war crime contrary to articles 8(2)(b)(i), or 8(2)(e)(i);
Extermination and/or murder contrary to articles 7(1)(b) and 7(1)(a), including in the context of deaths caused by starvation, as a crime against humanity;
Persecution as a crime against humanity contrary to article 7(1)(h);
Other inhumane acts as crimes against humanity contrary to article 7(1)(k).
My Office submits that the war crimes alleged in these applications were committed in the context of an international armed conflict between Israel and Palestine, and a non-international armed conflict between Israel and Hamas (together with other Palestinian Armed Groups) running in parallel.
We submit that the crimes against humanity charged were committed as part of a widespread and systematic attack against the Palestinian civilian population pursuant to State policy. These crimes, in our assessment, continue to this day.
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NATO’s three-day summit in Washington DC achieved the objective for which it was designed, to create a public forum in which all 32 members of the Alliance could express their unanimous support for upcoming attacks on the Russian Federation. That was the real purpose of the confab. The managers of the event, sought a dramatic display of unity to justify future hostilities with Moscow and to reduce the possibility that any one person would be held responsible for starting World War 3.
The summit was followed by the release of a formal Declaration which strongly suggests that the decision to go war has already been made. As many people know, NATO has green-lighted a policy that allows the firing of missiles at targets inside Russian territory. This policy will also apply to the numerous NATO F-16s that will be deployed to Ukraine sometime in the near future. (F-16s can carry nuclear missiles) Despite overwhelming support for these policies among the members, we must not forget that these are blatant acts of aggression that are forbidden under international law. No amount of public relations hoopla can conceal the fact that NATO is on-track to commit the “supreme crime”.
It’s worth noting, that NATO intends to take a more active role in the conduct of the war. According to National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan, the Alliance plans to formally establish a NATO office inside Ukraine that will be used to oversee military operations. In short, the managers of the conflict no longer have any interest in concealing their involvement. This is now a NATO operation. Here’s an excerpt from an article at the World Socialist Web Site:
This NATO office will accompany the creation of a NATO command to oversee the war in Ukraine, transitioning the provision of weapons and logistical oversight from an ad hoc group led by the United States to the NATO alliance itself.
Sullivan’s remarks outlined the main agenda items of the three-day summit in Washington, which is expected to signal a major escalation of the conflict with Russia in Ukraine and plans to significantly increase NATO’s capabilities to fight a full-scale war throughout Europe….
He said the summit will also announce “a new NATO military command in Germany led by a three-star general that will launch a training, equipping, and force development program for Ukrainian troops….”
The creation of a NATO office in Kiev and the reorganization of weapons provision, training and military logistics under a direct NATO command marks the end of any pretense that the conflict in Ukraine is not a war between NATO and Russia. It marks a dangerous new phase in the war, raising the prospect of a major escalation. Washington summit will announce plans to set up NATO office inside Ukraine, WSWS
Add all of this to the fact that the Summit Declaration posits that Ukraine is now on an “irreversible” path to NATO membership, and it becomes clear that every effort is being made to provoke Moscow.
Not surprisingly, Russia was thoroughly demonized in the Declaration which follows the familiar pattern we have seen with other enemies of Washington including Saddam, Qaddafi and Assad. Here’s a brief summary of “evil” Russia directly from the text:
Russia remains the most significant and direct threat to Allies’ security…
Russia bears sole responsibility for its war of aggression against Ukraine, a blatant violation of international law, including the UN Charter.
There can be no impunity for Russian forces’ and officials’ abuses and violations of human rights, war crimes, and other violations of international law.
Russia is responsible for the deaths of thousands of civilians and has caused extensive damage to civilian infrastructure.
We condemn in the strongest possible terms Russia’s horrific attacks on the Ukrainian people, including on hospitals, on 8 July…
We are determined to constrain and contest Russia’s aggressive actions and to counter its ability to conduct destabilizing activities towards NATO and Allies… Washington Summit Declaration, NATO
Washington’s ferocious repudiation of Russia leaves no doubt as to where all this is heading. It’s headed for war.
The authors of this declaration were reiterating the views of the billionaire elites who are determined to roll-back Russia’s battlefield gains, topple the political leaders in Moscow, and splinter the country into smaller, more-manageable statlets. Russia represents the most formidable obstacle to Washington’s overall geopolitical strategy of projecting power into Asia, encircling China, and establishing itself as the preeminent power in the world’s most prosperous region. These strategic objectives are invariably omitted in the media’s coverage, but they are the underlying factors that shape events. Here’s Biden:
In Europe, Putin’s war of aggression against Ukraine continues. And Putin wants nothing less than Ukraine’s total subjugation; to end Ukraine’s democracy; to destroy Ukraine’s culture; and to wipe Ukraine off the map.
And we know Putin won’t stop at Ukraine. But make no mistake, Ukraine can and will stop Putin — (applause) — especially with our full, collective support. And they have our full support. “Ukraine can and will stop Putin.” The White House
It’s all nonsense, but it helps to build the case for war which is Biden’s obvious intention. (Here’s John Mearsheimer’s response to Biden’s claim that Putin wants to conquer Europe. You Tube; :30 second mark)
The truth is that the war was triggered by NATO enlargement, an inconvenient fact that NATO chairman Jens Stoltenberg has admitted on numerous occasions. Some readers might also recall that—during the peace negotiations between Kiev and Moscow in April 2022—Russia’s primary demand was that Ukraine reject NATO membership and declare permanent neutrality. Zelensky agreed to those terms which, in effect, prove that Putin’s action was linked to NATO expansion. There is virtually no proof that Putin wants to conquer Europe. None. Putin simply wants Ukraine to honor its treaty obligations regarding neutrality. Check out this excerpt by Ted Snider at Antiwar.com:
Ukraine.. promised to stay out of NATO. Its non-alignment was enshrined in the foundational documents of the independent state of Ukraine.
Article IX of the 1990 Declaration of State Sovereignty of Ukraine states that Ukraine “solemnly declares its intention of becoming a permanently neutral state that does not participate in military blocs.” That promise was repeated in Ukraine’s 1996 Constitution, which committed Ukraine to neutrality and prohibited it from joining any military alliance. But in 2019, President Petro Poroshenko amended the Ukrainian Constitution, committing Ukraine to the “strategic course” of NATO and EU membership.
Given NATO’s past behavior, this was viewed as a direct threat by Russia. When asked in 2023 if Russia still recognizes the sovereignty of Ukraine, Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov answered, “We recognized the sovereignty of Ukraine back in 1991 on the basis of the Declaration of Independence, which Ukraine adopted when it withdrew from the Soviet Union… One of the main points for [Russia] in the declaration was that Ukraine would be a non-bloc non-alliance country; it would not join any military alliances… In that version, on those conditions, we support Ukraine’s territorial integrity.” NATO’s 75th Anniversary: The Broken Promises That Led to War,Antiwar.com
The issue, of course, could have been resolved long ago if Washington had acted in good faith, but Washington has not acted in good faith. In fact, Washington is still determined to inflict a “strategic defeat” on Russia in order to implement its “pivot to Asia” strategy to ensure its future as the world’s only unchallenged superpower. These goals cannot be achieved without escalation, confrontation and a full-blown war. The NATO summit is merely a prelude to a broader and more violent conflict between the nuclear superpowers.
The question we should being asking ourselves is whether NATO can actually win a war with Russia. Can it?
The answer is “No”, it cannot.
Why?
Here’s how military analyst Will Schryver answers that question:
I have done my research — for years, dating back long before 2022…. I repeatedly warned that it (Ukraine) was a war the US/NATO could never win….There is a VAST difference between the “on paper” strength of NATO (including the US) and their actual war-fighting capability. The US could not assemble, equip, field, and sustain even 250k combat effectives in eastern Europe, and any attempt to do so would necessitate the evacuation of every major US base on the planet. The US/NATO not only could not win a war against Russia, but they would be eviscerated in the attempt.
Alerted by the US/NATO destruction of Yugoslavia, Iraq, and Libya, the Russians have spent the past 25 years — and particularly the past two years — engaged in a massive and exceedingly impressive military build up and modernization in preparation for an eventual war against the US/NATO. In the past 2+ years, t hey have methodically destroyed Ukraine’s three successive proxy armies with one arm tied behind their back. Their force generation, combat training, and military industrial production far exceed the entire NATO bloc combined. I appreciate the degree to which military analytical tourists like yourself have been thoroughly propagandized by Hollywood fantasies and the western state-controlled media, but wars are not fought and won by imaginary narratives and flashy superheroes. They are won by raw firepower — a metric by which the tripartite alliance of Russia, China, and Iran now possess supremacy over their hubris-drunken enemies in the rapidly eroding American Empire. There is only one sane option at this point: relinquish empire and make peace with the resurgent civilizational powers of the earth. Otherwise much of modern human civilization itself is at risk of being destroyed, and it will take centuries to recover. Ukraine Can’t Win, Will Schryver, Twitter
There’s also the niggling issue of “magazine depth” which refers to the stockpiles of weaponry and munitions required to outlast and eventually defeat the enemy. Here’s Schryver again:
There is no doubt Israel (just like its great benefactor, the United States) is, in the context of a “big war”, capable of executing several damaging strikes against a potential peer or near-peer adversary. But, throughout the imperial domain, there are fatal weaknesses that exist right now, and which cannot be turned into strengths at any point in the near- or medium-term. The first is what military types call “magazine depth”: munitions stockpiles sufficient to offensively overwhelm, defensively defeat, and strategically outlast the enemy. Neither the United States, nor any of its largely impotent client nations, possess “magazine depth” sufficient to prosecute anything more than a relatively brief campaign against their potential peer adversaries: Russia, China, Iran — and all or any of their lesser-power partners. Magazine Depth, Will Schryver, Twitter
What Schryver is saying is as profound as it is alarming. The United States and NATO will not prevail in a war with Russia because they do not have the industrial capacity, the force generation, the combat training, the magazine depth or the overall firepower of Russia. By every metric, they are the inferior fighting force. Additionally, Russia has already killed or captured hundreds of thousands of the “the best-trained and best-equipped soldiers in the Ukrainian army”. That army has already been effectively annihilated. The troops in the trenches today are poorly trained, unskilled, low-morale rookies who are being slaughtered by the thousands. Does anyone seriously believe that NATO involvement can turn this train around and secure a victory? Here’s more from Schryver:
The Russians have demonstrated that they can routinely shoot down ANY species of strike missile the US/NATO can field against them — not all of them all of the time, but most of them most of the time. And they get better and better at it as time goes on.
Indeed, over the past few months it is increasingly becoming “all of them most of the time”…. As Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu reported earlier this week:
“We are using air defence systems in a comprehensive manner during the special military operation. This significantly improved their responsiveness and strike range. Over the last six months, we have shot down 1,062 of NATO’s HIMARS rockets, short-range and cruise missiles, and guided bombs.”
No other military on the planet has previously attested this level of capability. The US does not have it, and is at least a decade away from developing it….
The current front-line inventory of US tactical ballistic missiles and sea- and air-launched cruise missiles would present no greater technical challenge for Russian air defenses than what they have already seen and defeated in the Ukraine War. The significance of this battlefield development defies exaggeration. It alters the war-fighting calculus that has been assumed for many decades. Empty Quiver, Will Schryver, Twitter
Some readers may find it hard to believe that NATO would rush into a war without thoroughly researching its prospects for success. But that is precisely what’s happening here. Blustery Uncle Sam foolishly believes that he will win as soon as he “throws its hat in the ring. He can’t accept that the scales are tipped in Russia’s favor and that his entry into the war will be met with a thunderous response. But that is the reality he faces. Here’s Schryver one last time:
NATO would face enormous problems of coordination, doctrine and force generation, even if it could agree an objective. Its troops are not trained for this kind of war and have never operated together…..
(they) would be hard-pressed to field a force more powerful than the reported nine Brigades trained and equipped by the West for the Great Offensive of 2023, which just bounced off the Russian forces without achieving anything of note….
The US has no ground combat units in Europe remotely suited to high-intensity land warfare…. Given enough time, money, political will and organization, most things are possible. But there is no chance… of NATO assembling a force which would constitute anything more than a nuisance to the Russians, while putting many lives in danger…… NATO’s Phantom Armies, Will Schryver, Substack
I am convinced that there is a delusional element within the foreign policy establishment that have convinced themselves that NATO will defeat Russia if they face each other on a battlefield in Ukraine. Schryver’s analysis helps to show why that’s not going to happen.
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This article was originally published on The Unz Review.
Michael Whitney is a renowned geopolitical and social analyst based in Washington State. He initiated his career as an independent citizen-journalist in 2002 with a commitment to honest journalism, social justice and World peace.
He is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG).
We bring to the attention of our readers the outstanding production of the McCullough Foundation, featuring Peter McCullough and John Leake.
Global Research remains indebted to the McCullough Foundation
The incident on July 13 in Butler, Pennsylvania is the first time a would-be assassin has shot at a U.S. president or presidential candidate since John Hinckley shot President Ronald Reagan on March 30, 1981. As such, it is the first assassination attempt in our era in which most citizens are carrying cell phones equipped with video cameras.
Instead of one “Zapruder film,” we now have hundreds of videos of the incident, shot from multiple locations and angles.
The incident on July 13 in Butler, Pennsylvania is the first time a would-be assassin has shot at a U.S. president or presidential candidate since John Hinckley shot President Ronald Reagan on March 30, 1981. As such, it is the first assassination attempt in our era in which most citizens are carrying cell phones equipped with video cameras.
Instead of one “Zapruder film,” we now have hundreds of videos of the incident, shot from multiple locations and angles.
Instead of depending on the mainstream media for reporting, we now have hundreds of citizen documentarians who can capture footage and rapidly upload it to the internet.
In this video production of the McCullough Foundation,we analyze multiple video recordings and witness testimonies of the Trump assassination attempt. Please check out our critical presentation and evaluation of this historically significant incident and share it with your friends.
Endeavoring to learn the truth of this incident lies at the heart of the McCullough Foundation’s mission.
To learn more about our work, please visit the McCullough Foundation website by clicking on the icon below and consider making a donation to support our ongoing efforts to protect our Constitutional republic from tyrants.
Postscript:
Multiple commentators have proposed that the counter-snipers on the barn did not have a clear line of sight on the assailant.
This is contradicted by the fact that at least one of the counter-snipers did—AFTER the assailant fired multiple shots—succeed in shooting the assailant in the head.
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We are witnessing accusations of anti-semitism, in colleges and universities, coupled with police intervention, arrests, prison sentences, for all those who act in solidarity with the people of Palestine.
But there something very fishy going on.
While Western governments are actively repressing the protest movements against Israel’s act of genocide, —with mass arrests on charges of antisemitism—, those same governments are supporting Ukraine’s Nazi movement which actively participated and collaborated with Nazi Germany in the genocide directed against the Jewish population of Ukraine during World War II
Update. The French Elections. “The Left” Supports the Nazi Regime in Kiev?
Ironically, the only party firmly committed to suspending military aid to the Nazi Kiev regime is Marine Le Pen’s National Rally (RN) which is tagged by people on the Left as fascist and anti-semitic.
Meanwhile, according to the Kiev Post, Ukraine is rejoicing.
Several of France’s leftist parties which are part of the NFP socialist coalition are firmly supportive of Ukraine’s Nazi regime.
A message to my friends on the Left: How is it that people who are committed to social democracy and socialism are endorsing a Neo-Nazi regime in Ukraine?
The World is Upside Down.
The Left is misinformed. Supporting the Nazis in Ukraine, serves the interests of the Global Financial Establishment and the hegemonic interests of the US.
C’est Le Monde à l’Envers
M. C., July 9, 2024
The following image is revealing, from Left to Right: the Blue NATO flag, the Azov Battalion’s Wolfangel SS of the Third Reich and Hitler’s Nazi Swastika (red and white background) are displayed, which points to collaboration between NATO and the Neo-Nazi regime.
Western countries have been financing the Nazi Summer Camps
My question is: Who are the Anti-Semites? The answer is obvious.
Our Western governments (including the majority of NATO member states), which are generously financing the Neo-Nazi regime in Kiev.
From a legal standpoint, this is a criminal act on the part of our governments, which should be opposed by a vast social movement in all NATO member-states.
The dominant Nazi faction within the Kiev government regime (which is supported by our governments) exerts its power within the realm of intelligence, internal affairs, national security and the military.
Andriy Parubiy founded in 1991 the Social-National Party of Ukraine (subsequently renamed Svoboda [Freedom]), together with Oleh Tyahnybok. Parubiy was subsequently appointed Chairman of Ukraine’s Parliament (Verkhovna Rada).
According to Andriy Parubiy: Adolf Hitler was “the torchbearer of democracy”.
“I’m a major supporter of direct democracy,… By the way, I tell you that the biggest man, who practised a direct democracy, was Adolf Aloizovich [Hitler]”. (Quoted by South Front)
Remember Victoria Nuland of F**k the EU Fame
The US Congress, Canada’s Parliament, the British Parliament, the European Parliament, have invited and praised M. Parubiy.
Parubiy with Assistant Secretary of State Victoria Nuland (Obama Adminstration)
Here is Victoria Nuland with the leader of the Svoboda Nazi Party, Tyannybok.
Tyannybok (leader of Neo-Nazi Svoboda Party (left), Yatseniuk (right)
The Holocaust in Ukraine
With the formation of a new government composed of NeoNazis, the Jewish community in Kiev is threatened. This community is described as “one of the most vibrant Jewish communities in the world, with dozens of active Jewish organizations and institutions”.
A significant part of this community is made up of family members of holocaust survivors.
“Three million Ukrainians were murdered by the Nazis during their occupation of Ukraine, including 900,000 Jews.” (indybay.org, January 29, 2014).
Ukraine’s Nazi movement collaborated with Nazi Germany in the early 1940s. The Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN) participated in the killings of Ukraine’s Jewish Population.
The map below is the territory under Nazi Germany occupation (recorded in 1942) extending from Galicia to Kiev and Odessa.
It indicates cities with Jewish ghettoes, as well as the locations of major massacres.
“Before World War II, the 1.5 million Jews living in the Soviet republic of Ukraine constituted the largest Jewish population within the Soviet Union, and one of the largest Jewish populations in Europe. … The number of Jews in the Ukrainian Soviet Republic (UkrSSR) rose to 2.45 million people [from 1939-1941]”
Amply documented the OUN-B and its National Insurgent Army (UPA) were actively involved in the massacres of Jews, Poles, Communists and Roma in major cities including Odessa and Kiev.
At the outset of Operation Barbarossa, (June, 22 1941) in coordination with the death squads (Einsatzgruppen) of Nazi Germany, members ofthe OUN-B were instrumental in the killings in the City of Lviv, Western region of Galicia, resulting inthe massacre and deportation of more than 100,000 Jews:
The members of OUN-B actively collaborated with the Wehrmacht’s occupation forces (1941-1944).
In Ukraine: “..up to a million Jews were murdered by Einsatzgruppen units, Police battalions, Wehrmacht troops and local Nazi collaborators” (emphasis added)
On September, 1 1941, the Nazi-sponsored Ukrainian newspaper Volhyn wrote, in an article titled Let’s Conquer the City, namely Lviv:
“All elements that reside in our land, whether they are Jews or Poles, must be eradicated.
We are at this very moment resolving the Jewish question, and this resolution is part of the plan for the Reich’s total reorganization of Europe.
The empty space that will be created, must immediately and irrevocably be filled by the real owners and masters of this land, the Ukrainian people”. (Emphasis added)
The map below is the territory under Nazi Germany occupation (1942) extending from Galicia to Kiev and Odessa.
It indicates cities with Jewish ghettoes, the locations of major massacres.
In this regard, the Janowska concentration camp was established in the outskirts of Lviv in September 1941.
Lviv had a Jewish population of 160,000. The Janowska camp combined “elements of labor, transit, and extermination”.
What this means is that our governments —which claim to be firmly committed to social democracy– are actively supporting and financing the Neo-Nazi Kiev regime.
Specifically, the German penal codeprohibits “The Denial of the Holocaust” as well as the “dissemination of Nazi propaganda”.
We are dealing with something far more serious than Nazi “hate speech”, namely the relationship of the German Government with the Kiev regime’s Nazi Movement.
Our governments, including the totality of NATO member states have been instructed by Washington to SUPPORT and SPONSOR Ukraine’s Neo-Nazi regime, which came to power in 2014. in the wake of a US sponsored coup d’Etat.
For more analysis on the Holocaust in Ukraine, see:
WESTERN GOVERNMENTS WHICH SUPPORT THE NEO-NAZI KIEV REGIME ARE ANTI-SEMITIC
There can be no peace when elected governments are supporting Ukraine’s NAZI Movement.
There can be no peace when US-NATO are actively supporting and financing Neo-Nazism in Ukraine.
NATO = NAZISM
There can be NO PEACE when the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) Summit (scheduled for 9-11 July 2024) has already announced its unbending support for the Kiev Nazi regime.
NATO is the protagonist of fraud and crimes against humanity.
NATO’S MANDATE IS TO SUPPORT NAZISM AND ANTI-SEMITISM.
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Evee Gayle Clobes had her 6-month checkup and scheduled immunizations a day and a half before she passed and was found to be in perfect health, as she was her whole life.
She was giggling, eating solids, and telling me “no” just the night before her passing.
PRELIMINARY autopsy results have been INCONCLUSIVE, the medical examiner stated that no abnormalities were found, no visible reason to the doctor as to why she passed.
She did state that they are running tests to determine if vaccinations were the cause. I do not know what tests exactly yet, but she did agree it was of concern.
Please share Evee’s story.
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Our thanks to Dr. William Makis for bringing this to our attention.
A recente tentativa de assassinato do ex-presidente Donald Trump chocou o mundo. Os EUA, um país que se descreve como defensor da democracia, da liberdade e dos direitos humanos, estão a tornar-se uma nação instável, perigosa e caótica. As tentativas de assassinato contra candidatos presidenciais são um assunto extremamente sério e indicam um estado de fracasso institucional.
Em 14 de julho, Trump foi atingido de raspão na orelha direita durante um comício eleitoral na Pensilvânia. O atirador foi rapidamente morto pelas forças de segurança após o tiroteio, o que torna difícil investigar quem ou o que estava por trás do ataque. Segundo o FBI, o atirador agiu sozinho e não tinha ligação com inteligência ou redes terroristas. A mídia ocidental está divulgando a narrativa do FBI, tornando o discurso “oficial”. No entanto, importa sublinhar que testemunhas afirmaram ter avisado a polícia sobre a presença de um homem com uma arma apontada a Trump no telhado de um edifício. Segundo testemunhas, a polícia ignorou os avisos, o que parece suspeito. Nenhuma explicação foi dada até o momento para o caso.
Na verdade, são muitas as possibilidades a serem analisadas. Trump poderia ter sido alvo de inimigos políticos ou agentes de inteligência (ambos estrangeiros ou americanos). O ex-presidente americano tem muitos adversários dentro e fora do país, principalmente devido às suas posições “dissidentes” na política externa. Promete abertamente acabar com o apoio militar à Ucrânia, o que irrita o lobby pró-Kiev nos EUA. Além disso, apesar de ser um sionista radical, Trump tem vários desentendimentos pessoais com o primeiro-ministro israelense, Benjamin Netanyahu, e criticou repetidamente a forma como Tel Aviv está a conduzir a atual guerra em Gaza – razão pela qual é possível que o lobby pró-Israel nos EUA quer “punir Trump”.
Considerando que o atirador foi eliminado, o processo de investigação será frustrado e nunca será alcançado um consenso sobre as razões do crime. A narrativa de que o atirador era um “lobo solitário” certamente se tornará hegemônica, com a mídia considerando qualquer interpretação adversa como “notícia falsa”. Também nunca será possível saber se a intenção do atirador era matar o ex-presidente, e o ataque falhou, ou se na verdade apenas o feriu, como “gesto de alerta”. Na prática, a verdade parece quase impossível de ser descoberta.
Porém, mais importante do que descobrir a verdade sobre o caso específico do ataque a Trump, é necessário compreender o contexto político americano como um todo. O simples fato de ter sido feita uma tentativa de assassinato contra um candidato presidencial é suficiente para mostrar que o país se encontra numa grave crise institucional e social. A maior potência mundial encontra-se numa situação semelhante à de muitos países pobres de África ou da América Central, onde os políticos são assassinados por criminosos e as eleições são conduzidas de forma violenta, fraudulenta e caótica.
A violência política nos EUA não é nova. O assassinato de JFK, por exemplo, chocou a sociedade internacional durante a Guerra Fria. As infames relações entre setores do governo e do Congresso americano com redes criminosas, máfias e agências de inteligência estrangeiras são bem conhecidas, com inúmeros relatórios, livros e artigos sobre o assunto disponíveis ao público. No entanto, é inegável que esta violência aumentou nos últimos tempos, com a situação interna nos EUA a piorar progressivamente.
Vários relatórios de inteligência alertam que os EUA poderão enfrentar uma guerra civil num futuro próximo. As tensões raciais e a polarização política são alguns dos principais problemas sociais do país. Recentemente, os sentimentos separatistas do Sul foram fortalecidos pela crise migratória no Texas, e houve até uma acusação formal de violação do pacto federal por parte de Washington. A tendência é que este cenário se deteriore ainda mais daqui para frente, especialmente nos estados de maioria conservadora, onde a reação popular à tentativa de assassinato de Trump deverá ser intensa.
Trump, sem dúvida, emerge do ataque mais forte. Diversas pesquisas já indicavam que ele era o favorito na disputa presidencial – agora, seus ganhos políticos serão ainda mais significativos. Joe Biden, que já foi criticado pelos sinais claros de problemas mentais, está ainda mais fraco agora. Será difícil para os Democratas reverterem a enorme vantagem dos Republicanos.
Por outro lado, os Democratas continuam a controlar o governo, os meios de comunicação social e a maior parte dos setores estratégicos do país. Tendem a reagir agressivamente à ascensão dos republicanos. Os juízes pró-democratas poderiam, por exemplo, tomar medidas como uma possível intervenção judicial contra a elegibilidade de Trump.
Tudo isto mostra como os EUA caminham para um ciclo vicioso de caos, violência política e instabilidade. Não parece haver qualquer possibilidade de um futuro pacífico para Washington nos próximos anos.
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“Whenever any American’s life is taken by another American unnecessarily—whether it is done in the name of the law or in the defiance of law, by one man or a gang, in cold blood or in passion, in an attack of violence or in response to violence—whenever we tear at the fabric of life which another man has painfully and clumsily woven for himself and his children, the whole nation is degraded.”— Robert F. Kennedy on the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. (1968)
There’s a subtext to this assassination attempt on former President Trump that must not be ignored, and it is simply this: America is being pushed to the brink of a national nervous breakdown.
More than 50 years after John F. Kennedy, Martin Luther King Jr., and Robert F. Kennedy were assassinated, America has become a ticking time bomb of political violence in words and deeds.
Magnified by an echo chamber of nasty tweets and government-sanctioned brutality, our politically polarizing culture of callousness, cruelty, meanness, ignorance, incivility, hatred, intolerance, indecency and injustice have only served to ratchet up the tension.
Consumed with back-biting, partisan politics, sniping, toxic hate, meanness and materialism, a culture of meanness has come to characterize many aspects of the nation’s governmental and social policies. “Meanness today is a state of mind,” writes professor Nicolaus Mills in his book The Triumph of Meanness, “the product of a culture of spite and cruelty that has had an enormous impact on us.”
This casual cruelty is made possible by a growing polarization within the populace that emphasizes what divides us—race, religion, economic status, sexuality, ancestry, politics, etc.—rather than what unites us: we are all Americans, and in a larger, more global sense, we are all human.
This is what writer Anna Quindlen refers to as “the politics of exclusion, what might be thought of as the cult of otherness… It divides the country as surely as the Mason-Dixon line once did. And it makes for mean-spirited and punitive politics and social policy.”
This is more than meanness, however.
We are imploding on multiple fronts, all at once.
This is what happens when ego, greed and power are allowed to take precedence over liberty, equality and justice.
This is the psychopathic mindset adopted by the architects of the Deep State, and it applies equally whether you’re talking about Democrats or Republicans.
Beware, because this kind of psychopathology can spread like a virus among the populace.
As an academic study into pathocracy concluded, “[T]yranny does not flourish because perpetuators are helpless and ignorant of their actions. It flourishes because they actively identify with those who promote vicious acts as virtuous.”
People don’t simply line up and salute. It is through one’s own personal identification with a given leader, party or social order that they become agents of good or evil. To this end, “we the people” have become “we the police state.”
By failing to actively take a stand for good, we become agents of evil. It’s not the person in charge who is solely to blame for the carnage. It’s the populace that looks away from the injustice, that empowers the totalitarian regime, that welcomes the building blocks of tyranny.
This realization hit me full-force a few years ago. I had stopped into a bookstore and was struck by all of the books on Hitler, everywhere I turned. Yet had there been no Hitler, there still would have been a Nazi regime. There still would have been gas chambers and concentration camps and a Holocaust.
Hitler wasn’t the architect of the Holocaust. He was merely the figurehead. Same goes for the American police state: had there been no Trump or Obama or Bush, there still would have been a police state. There still would have been police shootings and private prisons and endless wars and government pathocracy.
Why? Because “we the people” have paved the way for this tyranny to prevail.
By turning Hitler into a super-villain who singlehandedly terrorized the world—not so different from how Trump is often depicted—historians have given Hitler’s accomplices (the German government, the citizens that opted for security and order over liberty, the religious institutions that failed to speak out against evil, the individuals who followed orders even when it meant a death sentence for their fellow citizens) a free pass.
This is how tyranny rises and freedom falls.
None of us who remain silent and impassive in the face of evil, racism, extreme materialism, meanness, intolerance, cruelty, injustice and ignorance get a free pass.
Those among us who follow figureheads without question, who turn a blind eye to injustice and turn their backs on need, who march in lockstep with tyrants and bigots, who allow politics to trump principle, who give in to meanness and greed, and who fail to be outraged by the many wrongs being perpetrated in our midst, it is these individuals who must shoulder the blame when the darkness wins.
“Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate, only love can do that,” Martin Luther King Jr. sermonized.
The darkness is winning.
It’s not just on the world stage we must worry about the darkness winning.
The darkness is winning in our communities. It’s winning in our homes, our neighborhoods, our churches and synagogues, and our government bodies. It’s winning in the hearts of men and women the world over who are embracing hatred over love. It’s winning in every new generation that is being raised to care only for themselves, without any sense of moral or civic duty to stand for freedom.
John F. Kennedy, killed by an assassin’s bullet five years before King would be similarly executed, spoke of a torch that had been “passed to a new generation of Americans—born in this century, tempered by war, disciplined by a hard and bitter peace, proud of our ancient heritage—and unwilling to witness or permit the slow undoing of those human rights to which this nation has always been committed, and to which we are committed today at home and around the world.”
Once again, a torch is being passed to a new generation, but this torch is setting the world on fire, burning down the foundations put in place by our ancestors, and igniting all of the ugliest sentiments in our hearts.
This fire is not liberating; it is destroying.
We are teaching our children all the wrong things: we are teaching them to hate, teaching them to worship false idols (materialism, celebrity, technology, politics), teaching them to prize vain pursuits and superficial ideals over kindness, goodness and depth.
Freedom demands that we stop thinking as Democrats and Republicans and start thinking like human beings, or at the very least, Americans.
JFK was killed in 1963 for daring to challenge the Deep State.
King was killed in 1968 for daring to challenge the military industrial complex.
Image: Robert F. Kennedy giving his speech on the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. (Licensed under Fair Use)
Robert F. Kennedy offered these remarks to a polarized nation in the wake of King’s assassination:
“In this difficult day, in this difficult time for the United States, it is perhaps well to ask what kind of a nation we are and what direction we want to move in. [Y]ou can be filled with bitterness, with hatred, and a desire for revenge. We can move in that direction as a country, in great polarization…filled with hatred toward one another. Or we can make an effort … to understand and to comprehend, and to replace that violence, that stain of bloodshed that has spread across our land, with an effort to understand with compassion and love… What we need in the United States is not division; what we need in the United States is not hatred; what we need in the United States is not violence or lawlessness; but love and wisdom, and compassion toward one another, and a feeling of justice toward those who still suffer within our country, whether they be white or they be black.”
Two months later, RFK was also killed by an assassin’s bullet.
We haven’t dared to dream that dream in such a long time.
But imagine…
Imagine what this country would be like if Americans put aside their differences and dared to stand up—united—for freedom.
Imagine what this country would be like if Americans put aside their differences and dared to speak out—with one voice—against injustice.
Imagine what this country would be like if Americans put aside their differences and dared to push back—with the full force of our collective numbers—against government corruption and despotism.
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The lodestar of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s talks with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Moscow on July 8-9, it must be the disclosure by the Deputy Head of the Presidential Administration in the Kremlin Maxim Oreshkin that the two leaders discussed the topic of cash payments with the use of cards of national payment systems as an important element of trade support infrastructure and interaction in general.
Oreshkin added that the two countries are also putting in place an arrangement on interaction between their central banks on the issue of accepting national payment card.
At one stroke, Modi electrified the forthcoming BRICS Summit in Kazan in October. Modi also informed Putin that he will be attending the summit meeting. It is no secret that the BRICS member states are seeking to improve the international monetary and financial system and are prioritising the creation of a platform that will enable them to conduct transactions in national currencies in mutual trade.
The Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov had announced after a meeting of the economic bloc’s foreign ministers in Nizhny Novgorod, Russia, last month that “Our agenda is extensive. It includes issues that will directly affect the future world order based on fair grounds.” Indeed, more and more countries are having doubts about SWIFT, after many Russian banks were cut off from the Belgium-based financial messaging system following the start of the Ukraine conflict in 2022.
From the American perspective, the terrible beauty about Modi’s Russia trip is that behind his anti-war rhetoric, PM created an ambience of high moral standing for Delhi that he promptly exploited to bring about a paradigm shift in the India-Russia relations.
Make no mistake, SWIFT translates as US hegemony; it is about isolating Russia from the international financial system; and here we see India teaming up with Russia to create a payment system using local currencies. Notionally, this is not an anti-American move, because the bulk of trade continues to be in the US currency. Cynics may say India is running with the hounds and hunting the hares. But who cares? Americans must be going nuts. Oil, fertiliser, nuclear power plants, ABM system, joint development and production of weaponry — and now, an ecosystem that ignores SWIFT.
Coincidence or not, Modi arrived in Moscow on the same day that NATO’s 75th anniversary summit meeting began in Washington with an agenda loaded against Russia while Modi chose to spend that evening closeted with the Russian leader at his country residence in the Moscow suburbs for a private meal, a walk in the woods and several hours of intense conversation to choreograph a quantum leap in the Russian-Indian relations. And all this while the NATO summit made a renewed pledge to defeat Russia in the Ukraine war.
A Russian pundit at the Academy of Sciences and concurrently a professor at the Diplomatic Academy of the Russian foreign ministry, Andrey Volodin summed up Modi’s visit as signifying a “breakthrough” in Russian-Indian relations characterised by a “new climate of trust, which existed in relations between the Soviet Union and India during the times of Indira Gandhi and Rajiv Gandhi.”
Volodin listed the increase in the bilateral trade turnover and the transition of the economic relations to national currencies as the second important outcome of the visit. He flagged that cooperation in the military-industrial sphere “received a certain boost” as indeed the development of the International North-South Corridor, which “opens up unprecedented opportunities.”
Indeed, disregarding the US state department spokesman’s repeated expressions of concern this week over the consolidation of the Indian-Russian relations, the Putin-Modi joint statement defiantly asserted that the Intergovernmental Commission on Military and Military Technical Cooperation will hold its session in Moscow in the second half of this year. The joint statement added,
“Responding to India’s quest for self-sufficiency, the partnership is reorienting presently to joint research and development, co-development and joint production of advanced defence technology and systems. The Sides confirmed commitment to maintain the momentum of joint military cooperation activities and expand military delegation exchanges.”
“India has declared itself as a developing world power that does not succumb to external pressures,” and, second, “an impetus has been given (this trend will continue in the future) to the development of the security system in Eurasia. Some countries hoped that India would avoid this dialogue, but it did not avoid this dialogue.”
This is the crux of the matter. At the grand ceremony in St Andrew’s Hall of the Grand Kremlin Palace where Putin presented the Order of St Andrew the Apostle to Modi on Tuesday, the prime minister made a highly revealing statement.Modi said:
“Our relationship is extremely important not only for our two countries, but is also of great significance for the entire world. In the current global context, India and Russia, as well as their partnership, have taken on a new importance. We are both convinced that further efforts are needed to ensure global stability and peace. In the future, we will continue to work together to achieve these goals.”
The big picture is that India has taken a leap of faith. It is one thing not to give in to US bullying but it is another thing altogether that Delhi is co-relating the Indian experience with that of Russia — and even China. Interestingly, Modi left Moscow Tuesday and headed for Austria whose neutrality is anchored in Joseph Stalin’s statesmanship.
Today, India-Russia relations “are blossomingand getting stronger as time goes by” and their cooperation “represents a guarantee for the future of our people” — to borrow Modi’s words. Make no mistake, this thought process goes way beyond strategic autonomy. No country on earth can dictate the trajectory of the India-Russia relationship.
To be sure, the walk in the woods by Putin and Modi in the presidential estate at Novo-Ogaryovo was much more than a photo-op. Putin had done his ‘homework’ alright.
Actually, we got a preview of it in Lavrov’s hugely significant remarks at the 10th Primakov Readings international forum in Moscow on June 26 pinned on the ‘media leak’ that Modi was due to travel to Russia in a fortnight’s time. That was one of the most important speeches by Lavrov in recent times.
Lavrov disclosed that Russia has plans to convene meetings with India and China again in the RIC format. Lavrov underscored that Russia, India and China will only benefit from the revival of RIC format.
“It is also obvious that the United States is trying to drag India into its anti-China project… Both China and India are much more deeply involved in the Western system of globalisation in terms of the volume of financial, investment, and trade agreements and many other things. But the fact is that just like us [Russia], China and India are fully aware of the discriminatory nature of what the West is doing,” Lavrov said.
It is a seductive thought that a long journey into the Asian Century may be beginning. If the RIC format revives on the sidelines of the BRICS Summit in Kazan, the journey will accelerate. China probably senses it.
Global Times featured two commentaries on successive days commending Modi’s foreign policies. (here and here) The second commentary cites Chinese expert opinion that “The deepening of relations between Russia and India is an important step toward global strategic balance.” (here)
While Modi was still in Moscow, China’s special representative on border talks with India, Foreign Minister Wang Yi messaged National Security Advisor Ajit Doval to express his willingness to collaborate with Delhi to “properly handle” border-related issues amid the ongoing dispute in eastern Ladakh.
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Featured image: President Vladimir Putin (R) and Prime Minister Narendra Modi (L) took a walk in the woods at the presidential estate in Novo-Ogaryovo, Moscow Region, July 8, 2024 (From Indian Punchline)
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ABC News is reporting that the building on which the gunman (identified as Thomas Matthew Crooks) perched when he shot at Trump was the “police tactical staging area” for the providing event security.
The report makes the following strange assertions (my emphasis in bold).
ABC News learned the building was the same building a local police tactical team was using as a staging area to watch over the crowd at the Butler Farm Show grounds.
It is unclear if the team was inside the building, which sources said had been swept before the rally. Investigators are still working to learn if the roof was locked down.
According to a source who spoke with ABC News, Crooks did not use a ladder to get access to the roof.
Officials said an officer was “vaulted” up to the roof after rallygoers called attention to Crooks, who then turned and aimed his gun at the officer.
AP reported the officer retreated down the ladder and Crooks turned around and began shooting.
Note that none of the above makes any sense.
1). Though the building (with a parking lot, located just north of event) was indeed a logical place for a police staging ground, its single most valuable feature for the purpose “to watch over the crowd” was its roof. Why were no police posted on its roof?
2). Obviously the roof was NOT locked down, or else Crooks could not have accessed it in broad daylight in front of multiple witnesses who noticed him on the roof while he crawled up to the roof ridge to rest his rifle and shoot at Trump.
3). The part about the officer being “vaulted” up to the roof sounds like something Inspector Clouseau would do. After being “vaulted” up to the roof, why did the officer then “retreat down the ladder”?
4). If Crooks turned his rifle on the police officer who was “vaulted” onto the roof, why didn’t the counter-sniper—who was watching Crooks through his scope—shoot Crooks then? That is, why did the counter-sniper wait for Crooks to return his aim away from the vaulting police officer and back at Trump for long enough to fire at Trump?
Note that the barn roof on which the counter-snipers were positioned was higher than the low roof on which the would-be assassin was perched. From their vantage point, they could see Crooks well enough to hit him with a fatal head shot. Why did they wait for him to fire first?
Something tells me our mainstream media is not going to pursue answers to these questions with much rigor.
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When the Monroe Doctrine was declared, in 1823,it was aimed at European colonial powers. It told them to butt out: the US “sphere of influence” included all of Latin America and the Caribbean. During the past two centuries, virtually every Latin American and Caribbean country has had to endure US intervention and interference in their internal affairs. The coups, political manipulation and aggression directed by Washington have been relentless.
One of the most victimized countries has been Nicaragua. In this article, I will review the different types of aggression used by Washington against Nicaragua. This is not ancient history; the interference continues to today. The methods change but the purpose remains the same: to subjugate nominally independent countries and use them in the interests of US corporations, elites and government. When nations resist domination and insist on independence, the US goal becomes to prevent them from succeeding.
July 19, 2024
On July 19 Nicaragua will celebrate the 45th anniversary of the Sandinista revolution. On that day, Nicaraguans overthrew the US backed Somoza dictatorship. In Managua, Nicaraguans will honor the day and re-assert their sovereignty and independence. Nicaraguan leaders will likely denounce US interference and their right to have friendly relations with any country they choose to. At the same time, we will surely see negative comments about Nicaragua from Washington and US media.
There have been eight distinct typesofUS interference and aggression against Nicaragua:
1. Conquest 1855-56
In 1855, with a small army of US and European soldiers, William Walker (image on the right; from the Public Domain) arrived in Nicaragua. The country was in the midst of a civil war and the foreign military turned the tide. When Walker’s forces seized control of the Nicaraguan city of Grenada, he declared himselfPresident of Nicaragua.Walker’s presidency was quickly recognized by US President Franklin Pierce. Supported by southern slave holding US states, one of Walker’s early actions as Nicaraguan president was to re-legalize slavery which had been outlawed in 1832. Nicaraguans did not accept this. Within a couple years, Walker’s forces were defeated, and in 1857 he was executed in neighboring Honduras.
2. Military Occupation 1909-1933
Beginning in 1909, US Marines invaded and occupied Nicaragua when US financial interests were not being considered paramount. Nicaraguans were considering borrowing money from European countries to finance a canal running across the isthmus. For the next three decades, the US Marines were ever present to insure Washington and Wall Street controlled major decisions. USMC Major General Smedly Butler later reflected on his role:
“I spent 33 years and four months in active military service and during that period I spent most of my time as a high class muscle man for Big Business, for Wall Street and the bankers. In short, I was a racketeer, a gangster for capitalism…. I helped in the raping of half a dozen Central American republics for the benefit of Wall Street. I helped purify Nicaragua for the International Banking House of Brown Brothers.”
Beginning in 1927, US foreign military dominance was increasingly challenged by a peasant army led by Augusto Cesar Sandino. Sandino’s July 1, 1927 manifesto denounces the collaborators and commits to “defend the national honor and redeem the oppressed.” By 1930, Sandino’s army was 5,000 strong and inflicting serious blows. In 1933 the last US Marines left Nicaragua following the election of Juan Batista Sacasa.
3. US-backed Dictatorship 1934-1969
Image: Anastasio Somoza García (From the Public Domain)
The US Marines departed but left behind trained surrogates. In 1934, the “National Guard” reneged on a peace agreement with Sandino and murdered him, his brother and two generals.They proceeded to destroy Sandino’s army and then overthrew the elected government.With US support, the Somoza family dominated the country for the next 45 years. Poverty and illiteracy were widespread while corruption was rampant. In 1961,armed opposition to the Somoza dictatorship was formed under the banner ofthe Sandinista Front for the Liberation of Nicaragua (FSLN).After 50,000 deaths, the Somoza dictatorship was overthrown on 19July 1979.
4. Terrorism 1969-1980
Under the FSLN, Nicaragua made huge improvements with land reform and a very successful literacy campaign.For the first time, medical help was made available in remote communities and schools were open to all children.But in Washington, the Reagan administration could not accept an independent Nicaragua. US President Reaganwas obsessed with overthrowing the Sandinista government.They tried to do this by creating a “Contra” army which attacked community clinics, bombed gas pipelines and infrastructure and killed healthcare and rural cooperative members. They even killed foreign aid workers such as young US engineer Ben Linder who was constructing a small hydroelectric dam to provide electricity to a remote village.
In the face of such obvious crimes, Nicaragua filed charges against the United States before the International Court of Justice (ICJ). They won their case and the US was ordered to pay compensation for the damages caused. Flaunting the ruling of the highest court in the world, the Reagan administration refused to pay damages to Nicaragua and continued to support the terrorist army. Under popular pressure, Congress passed the Boland amendment outlawing US assistance to the terrorist Contras. The Reagan administration ignored this as well,funding the Contras through a scheme where weapons were sent to the Contras in small private airplanes. The same planes were used to bring Colombian cocaine into the US.The profits went to the Contras while crack cocaine flooded poor and largely Black communities. A recent book from a CIA “Black Ops”agent documents the creation, training and financing of the terrorist Contras.
5.Economic Warfare 1985 to 1990
In 1985, an economic embargo was applied by the US against Nicaragua. US products could no longer be exported to Nicaragua and Nicaraguan products were barred from entering the US.The goal was clearly to hurt the Nicaraguan economy and pressure the Nicaraguan people to turn against the government.The justification stated:
“I, Ronald Reagan, President of the United States of America, find that the policies and actions of the Government of Nicaragua constitute an unusual and extraordinary threat to the national security and foreign policy of the United States and hereby declare a national emergency to deal with that threat.”(emphasis added)
The truth was the exact opposite: the policies of aggression by the United States was an extreme threat to Nicaragua.
6. Election Interference 1984 to Today
The first democratic election in Nicaragua’s history took place in 1984. The FSLN won against a very divided opposition. Chuck Kaufman analyzed what happened then and afterward:
“Already in 1984, we saw the United States place itself as the final judge and jury as to whether or not an election was legitimate… Delegitimizing elections is one of the primary overt tools used by the United States to subvert democracy around the world…. The 1990 election is where the US game plan for election intervention was written, perfected and victorious…. Through the use of money and pressure, the US took advantage of Nicaragua’s lack of laws controlling foreign money in its elections to create a unified 14 party anti-Sandinista coalition … The US then spent more money per Nicaraguan voter than George H W Bush and Michael Dukakiscombined spent per US voter in our 1988presidential election. At the same time the US warned Nicaraguan voters that the Contra War, which had cost them 40,000 sons and daughters, would continue if Daniel Ortega won reelection.”
US intervention was “successful” in bringingthe US-supported team into power in Managua. A slim majority of Nicaraguans cried uncle in the face ofUS aggression and threats. The US and western media was surprised when Daniel Ortega and the FSLN peacefully left office and passed on the leadership.
Image: Daniel Ortega
Neoliberal policies reigned for the next 16 years. While they were good for the wealthy and elites, they were a disaster for the majority of Nicaraguans.Health care and education was again privatized. Land reform measures and the literacy campaign were ended. Illiteracy again became widespread.State controlled infrastructure including roads, water and electricity was not improved, it was in disrepair and decline.
In the elections of 2006, Daniel Ortega and the FSLN won a plurality. There were multiple reasons: first, the economy and deteriorating infrastructure was a disaster.Second, the US failed to unite the right. Third, US election interference was publicly revealed after the US ambassador unwisely told some visiting activists how many millions were allotted for interfering in the election.
7.Subversion Through NGOs and “Color Revolution”
After 16 years in opposition, the FSLN came back to power in 2007 under the leadership of Ortega.With ever increasing electoral support, they have governed since then. The reasons for their popularity are practical.Healthcare and education are provided free.Roads and highways have been greatly improved and now extend across the country to the Caribbean. Electricity and running water have been continuously expanded and are now available throughout 98% of the country. Nicaragua is in the world top 10%in gender equality and renewable energy. Nicaragua actively assists small farmers and is 90% food sovereign.
Washington has not rushed to congratulate Nicaragua on their successes. On the contrary, this success has been noted with displeasure and Nicaragua has returned to the list of countries targeted for destabilization.
Over the past decades, the US has developed a softer approach to undermining governments which are deemed to be “adversary”. A key component of this is funding “non-governmental organizations” (NGOs). These organizations may have innocuous or even progressive sounding purposes but inevitably serve US goals. The NGOs receive much of their funding from US government related organizations such as USAID and the National Endowment for Democracy. As documented by Max Blumenthal in June 2018, the NGOs proudly boasted of their role in “laying the groundwork for insurrection” and “nurturing the current uprisings”.
With salaries which are high in comparison to local standards,the NGOs attract and influence ambitious students and youth. The directors of the NGOs learn which youth are promising to their objectives and what issues motivate them.In Nicaragua there were dozens of NGOs with a mission of“democracy promotion”.In essence these were training sessions in anti-government activism.Other focal points were journalism and the use of social media. There was little or no monitoring of these foreign funded activities.
Masked protesters backed by the CIA who were part of 2018 coup plot against Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega. [Source: idcommunism.com]
In the spring of 2018, there was an attempt to overthrow the elected Sandinista government. The coup attempt was driven by youth influenced byUS-funded NGOs with muscle provided by mercenary thugs and gangs. The coup attempt, from beginning to end, is described in a series of articles by Nicaraguan resident and journalist John Perry and author Dan Kovalik. This was similar to “color revolutions” carried out in numerous other countries on US target list.The common characteristics are: youth mobilized by US-funded NGOs, heavy use of social media, false or exaggerated accusations of government violence,false claims that the protests are strictly “peaceful” when there are actually widespread provocations and violence.
Nicaragua passed through this stage from April to July 2018. The insurrection died when it became clear the violence was instigated by the protesters and the average Nicaraguan was being deeply hurt by the continued disruption and roadblocks.Dozens of police and hundreds of civilians were killed in the confrontations. Hundreds of government buildings, police stations and schools were attacked and the economy severely disrupted.
Ultimately, the insurrection and coup attempt collapsed.With police ordered to stay in their barracks, it was clear who was responsible for the violence. The public became increasingly angry at the protesters because their roadblocks and violence were ruining lives and the economy. The silver lining is that it sparked a realization in the FSLN that they needed to be more vigilant about education of youth and monitoring foreign funded organizations.
8.Information Warfare and Extreme Sanctions
Beginning with the 2018 coup attempt in Nicaragua, the US information war on Nicaragua escalated dramatically.In 2020, Nicaragua started regulating foreign-backed organizations.Given thatforeign supported organizations played a big role in the insurrection resulting in hundreds of deaths and billions in economic damage, the need to do this was clear.The new regulations require foreign-backed organizations to document where their funding comes from and how it is spent. The US has the same requirement known as the Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA), but that does not stop western media from claiming that these laws are “dismantling civil society”.On the contrary, many NGOs registered and continued as before. Those who refused to register were denied a permit, just as they would be in the United States.
US government influence extends to many “human rights” groups and some branches of the United Nations. For example the UN’s Human Rights Council established a “Group of Human Rights Experts on Nicaragua” to investigate alleged Nicaraguan human rights violations and abuses since April 2018. Their mandate was extended until February 2025 but they have issued two preliminary reports that claim Nicaragua is committing crimes, violations and abuses including “persecution ofany dissenting voice”, torture and the “deprivation of Nicaraguan nationality.”
The reports by three “experts”, none of whom is Nicaraguan, are extremely biased.They have been rebutted in a detailed article co-written by international legal scholar Alfred de Zayas. It is endorsed by 85 different organizations and over 450 individuals including Nicaraguan citizens and residents. The article reveals that the “experts” failed to comply with their own mandate to gather information from all sides. The report of the Group of Human Rights Experts on Nicaragua (GHREN) is solely based on the opinions and accusations of the dissidents and is a mockery of what should be an objective report based on evidence from all sides.
Along with the drumbeat of negative accusations based on subjective or no evidence, the US keeps adding more and more sanctions on Nicaragua. Unknown to most Americans, sanctions (called ‘unilateral coercive measures’) have been repeatedly condemned by the United Nations General Assembly.They are considered to bein violation of international law and the UN Charter. Ignoring the opinions of 75%of the world, the US Treasury Department has recently issued a slew of sanctions on Nicaraguan officials, state corporations, judges, mayors and attorney general.
In late 2021,three years after the coup attempt, Nicaragua held its national election.Western criticisms of the election were refuted in this article. International observers were impressed with organization, large turnout and enthusiasm. The US administration and media falsely claimed the main opposition candidates had been imprisoned. In fact, the few imprisoned individuals represented no parties or significant base of support. They claimed to be “precandidates” not because they were viable contenders but because they sought to avoid prosecution while slandering the Nicaraguan government.
On the contrary, there were five opposition candidates representing genuine parties and movements. The voters had a real choice. With 66% of the electorate voting, 75% voted for Daniel Ortega and the FSLN over the competitors.The theme of the election was “Soberania”, beautifully sung by a young Nicaraguan patriot at the house where Cesar Augusto Sandino grew up.
Nicaragua continues to assert its sovereignty and pursue its own foreign policy. In September 2021, Nicaragua cut ties with Taiwan and established diplomatic relations with China. In October 2022, Nicaragua refused to condemn Russia for its intervention in Ukraine, blaming the US and NATO for having provoked the conflict. On Oct 24 2023, Nicaragua called for an emergency session of the UN General Assembly to consider “protection of the Palestinian civilian population.” Later, Nicaragua’s Foreign Minister Denis Moncada said the Palestinian cause is one of the most just causes of our times.In January 2024, Nicaragua filed charges at the International Court of Justice against Germany for being an accomplice to genocide in Gaza.
In June the results of an extensive poll conducted by the independent and well regarded M&R Consultants were released. They indicate high satisfaction with the direction and leadership of the country. Confidence in the “stability,security, and economic progress” of the country has risen from 36.8% in 2018 to 74.8% today.
Nicaragua has good reason to be wary of the United States. In the eight different ways described above,the US has interfered with Nicaragua’s independence for 170 years.The vast majority of Nicaraguans continue toresist, calmly insisting on their independence and sovereignty. As the song “Soberania” says, “Respect my flag or go away.”
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Rick Sterling is a journalist based in the San Francisco Bay Area. He is a regular contributor to Global Research. He can be reached at [email protected]
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It comes back in a rush, the stench of raw sewage, the groan of the diesel, sloth-like Israeli armored personnel carriers, the vans filled with broods of children, driven by chalky faced colonists, certainly not from here, probably from Brooklyn or somewhere in Russia or maybe Britain.
Little has changed. The checkpoints with their blue and white Israeli flags dot the roads and intersections. The red-tiled roofs of the colonist settlements — illegal under international law — dominate hillsides above Palestinian villages and towns. They have grown in number and expanded in size. But they remain protected by blast barriers, concertina wire and watchtowers surrounded by the obscenity of lawns and gardens. The colonists have access to bountiful sources of water in this arid landscape that the Palestinians are denied.
The winding 26-foot high concrete wall that runs the 440 mile length of occupied Palestine, with its graffiti calling for liberation, murals with the Al-Aqsa mosque, faces of martyrs and the grinning and bearded mug of Yasser Arafat — whose concessions to Israel in the Oslo agreement made him, in the words of Edward Said, “the Pétain of the Palestinians” — give the West Bank the feel of an open air prison. The wall lacerates the landscape. It twists and turns like some huge, fossilized antediluvian snake severing Palestinians from their families, slicing Palestinian villages in half, cutting communities off from their orchards, olive trees and fields, dipping and rising out of wadis, trapping Palestinians in the Jewish state’s updated version of a Bantustan.
It has been over two decades since I reported from the West Bank. Time collapses. The smells, sensations, emotions and images, the lilting cadence of Arabic and the miasma of sudden and violent death that lurks in the air, evokes the old evil. It is as if I never left.
I am in a battered black Mercedes driven by a friend in his thirties who I will not name to protect him. He worked construction in Israel but lost his job — like nearly all Palestinians employed in Israel — on Oct. 7. He has four children. He is struggling. His savings have dwindled. It is getting hard to buy food, pay for electricity, water and petrol. He feels under siege. He is under siege. He has little use for the quisling Palestinian Authority. He dislikes Hamas. He has Jewish friends. He speaks Hebrew. The siege is grinding him, and everyone around him, down.
“A few more months like this and we’re finished,” he says puffing nervously on a cigarette. “People are desperate. More and more are going hungry.”
We are driving the winding road that hugs the barren sand and scrub hillsides snaking up from Jericho, rising from the salt-rich Dead Sea, the lowest spot on the earth, to Ramallah. I will meet my friend, the novelist Atef Abu Saif, who was in Gaza on Oct. 7 with his 15-year-old son, Yasser. They were visiting family when Israel began its scorched earth campaign. He spent 85 days enduring and writing daily about the nightmare of the genocide. His collection of haunting diary entries have been published in his book “Don’t Look Left.” He escaped the carnage though the border with Egypt at Rafah, traveled to Jordan and returned home to Ramallah. But the scars of the genocide remain. Yasser rarely leaves his room. He does not engage with his friends. Fear, trauma and hatred are the primary commodities imparted by the colonizers to the colonized.
“I still live in Gaza,” Atef tells me later. “I am not out. Yasser still hears bombing. He still sees corpses. He does not eat meat. Red meat reminds him of the flesh he picked up when he joined the rescue parties during the massacre in Jabalia, and the flesh of his cousins. I sleep on a mattress on the floor as I did in Gaza when we lived in a tent. I lie awake. I think of those we left behind waiting for sudden death.”
We turn a corner on a hillside. Cars and trucks are veering spasmodically to the right and left. Several in front of us are in reverse. Ahead is an Israeli checkpoint with thick boxy blocks of dun colored concrete. Soldiers are stopping vehicles and checking papers. Palestinians can wait hours to get past. They can be hauled from their vehicles and detained. Anything is possible at an Israeli checkpoint, often erected with no advance warning. Most of it is not good.
We back up. We descend a narrow, dusty road that veers off from the main highway. We travel on bumpy, uneven tracks through impoverished villages.
It was like this for Blacks in the segregated south and Indigenous Americans. It was like this for Algerians under the French. It was like this in India, Ireland and Kenya under the British. The death mask — too often of European extraction — of colonialism does not change. Nor does the God-like authority of colonists who look at the colonized as vermin, who take a perverse delight in their humiliation and suffering and who kill them with impunity.
The Israeli customs official asked me two questions when I crossed into occupied Palestine from Jordan on the King Hussein Bridge.
The Palestinians want their land back. Then they will talk of peace. The Israelis want peace, but demand Palestinian land. And that, in three short sentences, is the intractable nature of this conflict.
I see Jerusalem in the distance. Or rather, I see the Jewish colony that lines the hills above Jerusalem. The villas, built in an arc on the hilltop, have windows intentionally narrowed into upright rectangles to double as gun slits.
Israeli checkpoint outside the Palestinian city of Ramallah. August 2004 (From the Public Domain)
We reach the outskirts of Ramallah. We are held up in the snarl of traffic in front of the sprawling Israeli military base that oversees the Qalandia checkpoint, the primary checkpoint between East Jerusalem and the West Bank. It is the scene of frequent demonstrations against the occupation that can end in gunfire.
I meet Atef. We walk to a kebab shop and sit at a small outdoor table. The scars of the latest incursion by the Israeli army are around the corner. At night, a few days ago, Israeli soldiers torched the shops that handle money transfers from abroad. They are charred ruins. Money from abroad will now be harder to get, which I suspect was the point.
Israel has dramatically tightened its stranglehold on the more than 2.7 million Palestinians in the occupied West Bank, who are surrounded by more than 700,000 Jewish colonists housed in some 150 strategically placed developments with their own shopping malls, schools and medical centers. These colonial developments along with special roads that can only be used by the colonists and the military, checkpoints, tracts of land that are off limits to Palestinians, closed military zones, Israeli-declared “nature preserves” and military outposts form concentric circles. They can instantly sever the flow of traffic to isolate Palestinians cities and towns into a series of ringed ghettos.
“Since Oct. 7 it is hard to travel anywhere in the West Bank,” Atef says. “There are checkpoints at the entrances of every city, town and village. Imagine you want to see your mother or your fiancée. You want to drive from Ramallah to Nablus. It can take seven hours because the main roads are blocked. You are forced to drive through back roads in the mountains.”
The trip should take 90 minutes.
Israeli soldiers and colonists have killed 528 Palestinian civilians, including 133 children, and injured more than 5,350 others in the West Bank, since Oct. 7, according to the UN human rights chief. Israel has also detained over 9,700 Palestinians — or should I say hostages? — including hundreds of children and pregnant women. Many have been severelytortured, including doctors tortured to death in Israeli dungeonsand aid workers killed upon their release. Israel’s National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir has called for the execution of Palestinian prisoners to free up space for more.
Ramallah, the seat of the Palestinian Authority, was in the past spared the worst of Israeli violence. Since Oct. 7, this has changed. Raids and arrests take place almost daily in and around the city, sometimes accompanied by lethal gunfire and aerial bombardments. Israel has bulldozed or confiscated more than 990 Palestinian dwellings and homes in the West Bank since Oct. 7, at times forcing owners to demolish their own buildings or pay exorbitant fines.
Heavily armed Israeli colonists have carried out murderous rampages on villages east of Ramallah, including attacks following the murder of a 14-year-old colonist on April 12 near the village of al Mughayyir. The colonists, in retaliation, burned and destroyed Palestinian homes and vehicles across 11 villages, ripped up roads, killed one Palestinian and wounded more than two dozen others.
Israel has ordered the largest West Bank land seizure in more than three decades, confiscating vast tracts of land northeast of Ramallah. The extreme rightwing Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, who lives in a Jewish colony and is in charge of colonial expansion, has promised to flood the West Bank with a million new colonists.
Smotrich has vowed to obliterate the distinct areas in the West Bank created by the Oslo accords. Area A, which comprises 18 percent of the West Bank, is under exclusive Palestinian control. Area B, nearly 22 percent of the West Bank, is under Israeli military occupation, in collusion with the Palestinian Authority. Area C, over 60 percent of the West Bank, is under total Israeli occupation.
“Israel realizes that the world is blind, that no one will force it to end the genocide in Gaza, and no one will pay attention to the war in the West Bank,” Atef says. “The word war is not even used. This is called a normal Israeli military operation, as if what is happening to us is normal. There is no distinction now between the status of the occupied territories, classified as A, B and C. The settlers are confiscating more land. They are carrying out more attacks. They do not need the army. They have become a shadow army, supported and armed by Israel’s rightwing government. We have lived in a continuous war since 1948. This is simply the newest phase.”
Jenin and its neighboring refugee camp are assaulteddaily by Israeli armed units, undercover commando teams, snipers and bulldozers, which level entire neighborhoods. Drones equipped with machine guns and missiles, as well as warplanes and Apacheattack helicopters, circle overhead and obliterate dwellings. Medics and doctors, as in Gaza, are assassinated. Usaid Kamal Jabarin, a 50-year-old surgeon, was killed on May 21 by an Israel sniper as he arrived for work at the Jenin Governmental Hospital. Hunger is endemic.
“The Israeli military carries out raids that kill Palestinians and then departs,” Atef says. “But it returns a few days later. It is not enough for the Israelis to steal our land. They seek to kill as many of the original inhabitants as possible. This is why it carries out constant operations. This is why there are constant armed clashes. But these clashes are provoked by Israel. They are the pretext used to continually attack us. We live under constant pressure. We face death daily.”
The dramatic escalation of violence in the West Bank is overshadowed by the genocide in Gaza. But it has become a second front. If Israel can empty Gaza, the West Bank will be next.
“Israel’s objective has not changed,” he says. “It seeks to shrink the Palestinian population, confiscate larger and larger tracts of Palestinian land and build more and more colonies. It seeks to Judaize Palestine and strip the Palestinians of all the means to sustain themselves. The ultimate goal is the annexation of the West Bank.”
“Even at the height of the peace process, when everyone was mesmerized by peace, Israel was turning this peace proposal into a nightmare,” he goes on. “Most Palestinians were opposed to the peace accords Arafat signed in 1993, but still they welcomed him when he returned. They did not kill him. They wanted to give peace a chance. In Israel, the prime minister who signed the Oslo accords was assassinated.”
“A few years ago, someone daubed a strange slogan on the wall of the U.N. school east of Jabaliya,” Atef wrote from the hell of Gaza. “‘We progress backwards.’ It has a ring to it. Every new war drags us back to basics. It destroys our houses, our institutions, our mosques and our churches. It razes our gardens and parks. Every war takes years to recover from, and before we’ve recovered, a new war arrives. There are no warning sirens, no messages sent to our phones. War just arrives.”
The Jewish settler colonial project is protean. It changes its shape but not its essence. Its tactics vary. Its intensity comes in waves of severe repression and less repression. Its rhetoric about peace masks its intent. It grinds forward with its deadly, perverted, racist logic. And yet, the Palestinians endure, refusing to submit, resisting despite the overwhelming odds, grasping at tiny kernels of hope from bottomless wells of despair. There is a word for this. Heroic.
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Chris Hedges is a Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist who was a foreign correspondent for fifteen years for The New York Times, where he served as the Middle East Bureau Chief and Balkan Bureau Chief for the paper. He previously worked overseas for The Dallas Morning News, The Christian Science Monitor, and NPR. He is the host of show The Chris Hedges Report.
Featured image: Which Genocide Are You On? – by Mr. Fish via ScheerPost
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Just days after the attempted assassination of former President Donald Trump, theories are flying from all directions. Many who ridiculed the “conspiracy theories” of conservatives are now suggesting the whole event was a set-up to boost Trump in the polls ahead of the election. Others suggest it was the “deep state” or even foreign actors who organized it.
Former US Navy Seal and founder of Blackwater, Erik Prince, claims that
“The fact that [the Secret Service] allowed a rifle armed shooter within 150 yds to a preplanned event is either malice or massive incompetence.” He went on to observe that, “unaccountable bloated bureaucracies continue to fail us as Americans,” adding that “unserious and unworthy people in positions of authority got us to this near disaster. Merit and execution must be the only deciding factors in hiring and leadership, not the social engineering priority of the day.”
Video has emerged showing that for at least two minutes law enforcement knew someone with a gun was on a roof aiming at the former President and no one communicated the need to pull Trump from the stage. You can clearly hear the crowd warning law enforcement that someone was on the roof. Yet he was unhindered until the first shots rang out.
Considering this fact, Erik Prince has a point.
If this is like any previous governmental foul-ups, we can expect hearings, investigations, and commissions that will actually serve to hide the official errors or even malicious intent by some in the government. That’s what government does no matter who is in office: protect itself from actual scrutiny and resist being exposed as incompetent or worse.
But what if there was a genuine investigation that actually revealed the truth about what happened at the Trump rally over the weekend? Could we rely on the mainstream media to even report it? This is the same media that, after Trump was clearly shot on live television, reported “Trump escorted away after loud noises at PA rally.” (Washington Post). And “Secret Service rushes Trump offstage after he falls at rally.” (CNN).
This is the same mainstream media that has been comparing Donald Trump to Hitler for years, and now pretends to be shocked that their vile rhetoric ended up in violence. There is a good reason why the mainstream media is regarded by the American public with record levels of contempt.
The current Director of the Secret Service has been interviewed expressing her dedication to “diversity” in hiring agents. What if her dedication to DEI goals led to an agency that is more “diverse” but fails at its core mission? Can we rely on the media to inform us of this? Or will they, as usual, just blame it all on the Second Amendment?
What if the problem with the Secret Service is that it was moved into the bloated, incompetent, and menacing Department of Homeland Security, the creation of which I strongly opposed when I was in Congress?
We shouldn’t count on hearing the truth about the attempted assassination from the mainstream media. No wonder the elites remain determined to censor social media sites like Twitter/X and TikTok. We live in an empire of lies, propped up by the mainstream media. And seeking the truth in this empire of lies is the greatest challenge for us in the moral bankruptcy in which we live.
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The recent assassination attempt on former President Donald Trump has shocked the world.
The US, a country which describes itself as a defender of democracy, freedom and human rights, is becoming an unstable, dangerous and chaotic nation. Assassination attempts against presidential candidates are an extremely serious matter and indicate a status of institutional failure.
On July 14, Trump was grazed in the right ear during an election rally in Pennsylvania. The [alleged] shooter was quickly killed by security forces after the shooting, which makes it difficult to investigate who or what was behind the attack.
According to the FBI, the shooter acted alone and had no connection to intelligence or terrorist networks. The Western media is spreading the FBI narrative, making the speech “official”. However, it must be emphasized that witnesses claimed to have warned the police about the presence of a man with a rifle targeting at Trump on the roof of a building. According to witnesses, the police ignored the warnings, which seems suspicious. No explanation has been given so far for the case.
In fact, there are many possibilities to be analyzed. Trump could have been targeted by political enemies or intelligence agents (both foreign or American ones). The former American president has many opponents inside and outside the country, mainly due to his “dissident” positions in foreign policy.
He openly promises to end military support for Ukraine, which irritates the pro-Kiev lobby in the US. Furthermore, despite being a radical Zionist, Trump has several personal disagreements with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and has repeatedly criticized the way Tel Aviv is conducting the current war in Gaza – which is why it is possible that the pro-Israel lobby in the US wants to “punish Trump”.
Considering that the shooter was eliminated, the investigation process will be thwarted and a consensus on the reasons for the crime will never be reached.
The narrative that the shooter was a “lone wolf” will certainly become hegemonic, with the media considering any adverse interpretation as “fake news”.
It will also never be possible to know whether the shooter’s intention was to kill the former president, and the attack failed, or whether he actually just injured him, as a “warning gesture”. In practice, the truth seems almost impossible to be discovered.
However, more important than discovering the truth about the specific case of the attack on Trump, it is necessary to understand the American political context as a whole. The mere fact that an assassination attempt was made against a presidential candidate is enough to show that the country is in a serious institutional and social crisis.
The world’s greatest power is in a situation similar to that of many poor African or Central American countries, where politicians are assassinated by criminals and elections are conducted in a violent, fraudulent and chaotic manner.
Political violence in the US is not new. The assassination of JFK, for example, shocked international society during the Cold War. The infamous relationships between sectors of the American government and Congress with criminal networks, mafias and foreign intelligence agencies are well known, with numerous reports, books and articles on the subject available to the public. However, it is undeniable that this violence has increased in recent times, with the domestic situation in the US progressively worsening.
Several intelligence reports warn that the US could face a civil war in the near future. Racial tensions and political polarization are some of the country’s main social problems. Recently, southern separatist sentiments were strengthened by the migration crisis in Texas, and there was even a formal accusation of violation of the federal pact on the part of Washington. The tendency is for this scenario to deteriorate even further from now on, especially in the conservative majority states, where the popular reaction to the assassination attempt on Trump is likely to be intense.
Trump undoubtedly emerges from the attack stronger. Several polls already indicated that he was the favorite in the presidential race – now, his political gains will be even more significant. Joe Biden, who has already been criticized for his clear signs of mental problems, is even weaker now. It will be difficult for the Democrats to reverse the Republicans’ huge advantage.
On the other hand, the Democrats remain in control of the government, the media and most of the country’s strategic sectors. They tend to react aggressively to the rise of the Republicans. Pro-Democratic judges could, for example, take measures such as possible judicial intervention against Trump’s eligibility.
All of this shows how the US is heading towards a vicious cycle of chaos, political violence and instability. There does not seem to be any possibility of a peaceful future for Washington in the coming years.
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This article was originally published on InfoBrics.
Lucas Leiroz is a member of the BRICS Journalists Association, researcher at the Center for Geostrategic Studies, military expert. He is a regular contributor to Global Research. You can follow Lucas on X (formerly Twitter) and Telegram.
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“The fact that [the Secret Service] allowed a rifle armed shooter within 150 yds to a preplanned event is either malice or massive incompetence.” — Security expert Erik Prince, Navy Seal and founder of Blackwater
One of the most puzzling aspects of the near assassination of Donald Trump on the Secret Service’s watch is the shooter’s expectation to find the buildings within the protected area unoccupied by Secret Service and no agents guarding the sniper positions on the buildings.
It is very unusual that an intended assassin would expect to be able to appear with a rifle in a protected area and not be accosted. In other words, it reeks of the smell of a stand down.
Here is the Russian state news agency RIA-Novosti’s comment:
“The assassination attempt on Donald Trump is surprising only because it happened on July 13, and not earlier — a year, three or eight years ago. The upstart, who challenged not only most of the American establishment, but also the ‘Washington swamp’ as such, has risked his head very much all these years… It is clear that now the ‘swamp denizens’ are biting their elbows because they did not think to kill Trump before November 2016: they underestimated the threat, did not believe in the reality of his victory.”
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said that the atmosphere of hatred created around Trump by the Biden regime has led to the near assassination of Donald Trump.
“After numerous attempts to remove Trump from the political arena with the help of legal tools, courts, the prosecution, attempts to politically discredit and compromise the candidate, it was clear to all outside observers that his life was in danger.”
Trump Pledges to Fight Evil
“We will FEAR NOT, but instead remain resilient in our Faith and Defiant in the face of Wickedness.” — Donald Trump
Trump understands that the real fight is against the evil that has in its grasp the Democrat Party, the media, the liberal-left intellectuals who control the educational system, and the financial system that enslaves the population to debt service.
It is extraordinary that former Presidents Bill Clinton, George W. Bush and Barack Obama along with Biden and Trump himself have issued statements thanking the Secret Service for their “swift intervention.” Think about this for a minute. To get five presidents, including the nearly assassinated Trump, to issue thanks to the Secret Service, thanks not justified by the Secret Service’s failure, took organization. That this presidential support came so quickly implies prior organization which supports the hypothesis of a planned attack on Trump. It is a pity that Trump himself was roped into participating in what could be a pre-planned coverup.
Swift intervention? After an assassin in plain view of the Secret Service fires a series of shots that kill one person and dangerously injures two others standing behind Trump and misses killing Trump by a quarter of an inch? Only when the assassin finishes firing does the Secret Service intervene.
How does a Secret Service that totally fails in its responsibility to protect a presidential candidate get congratulations for preventing an assassination?
Trump’s assassination failed because Trump turned his head when the assassin shot, thus throwing the bullet off mark. The Secret Service did nothing to prevent Trump’s assassination.
Is it the case that once the Secret Service saw Trump was down, Trump was believed to be mortally injured and it was the time to eliminate, like happened to Oswald, the shooter before he could talk?
I don’t say this is the case. It is a question that needs investigation.
The question of the unsecured buildings from which the intended assassin fired has produced a dispute between the Secret Service and local police. The Secret Service claims the neglected shooting positions were the responsibility of the local police. The local police say they are merely the ordered around adjuncts of the Secret Service, who are in charge. Let’s assume the local police were responsible for the security of the nearby sites. Why did not the Secret Service check if the police performed their alleged duty?
The greatest puzzle is the near assassin’s unencumbered access to perfect spots for a successful assassination.
To those few Americans still capable of thought, the outpouring of former presidents clearing the Secret Service with praise of its non-performance suggests it was an establishment attack on Donald Trump’s life.
Trump’s response to the attack on his life is not promising. Indeed, he is already moving off-task. He says he is going to reunite the country. This assumes that America has no internal enemies intent on destroying her, her values, and her liberties, and in her place erecting a Sodom & Gomorrah Tower of Babel.
How can Trump reunite a country when the Democrat half is dedicated to the country’s destruction via open borders and the legitimization of all forms of sexual perversion? Is Trump going to compromise with his enemies and give them, in the false name of unity, part of their agenda?
What is the point of a raised fist with blood running down your face shouting “fight, fight, fight” if you are going to compromise?
Trump has to root out the evil, to extinguish the evil. He has to find and appoint and get confirmed a government that will support him in this battle. Anything less and he is a failure.
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Paul Craig Roberts is a renowned author and academic, chairman of The Institute for Political Economy where this article was originally published. Dr. Roberts was previously associate editor and columnist for The Wall Street Journal. He was Assistant Secretary of the Treasury for Economic Policy during the Reagan Administration. He is a regular contributor to Global Research.
Normalization of diplomatic relations with the Russian Federation had first been proposed by Donald Trump in 2017. Even prior to the inauguration of president Trump, the US media in liaison with US intelligence had launched successive waves of smears directed against President-elect Donald Trump. The objective from the very outset was to discredit president Trump, presenting him as a Manchurian candidate serving the interests of the Kremlin.
In a highly controversial decision, the Supreme Court on June 28 reversed a 40-year old ruling, reclaiming the Court’s role as interpreter of statutory law as it applies to a massive body of regulations imposed by federal agencies in such areas as the environment, workplace safety, public health and more.
In our strange era in which we are contending with the Matrix, it is important to remember that there are good conspiracy theories and bad conspiracy theories. Good conspiracy theories are supported by evidence that stands up to critical scrutiny.
The Iranian people voted for him because they wanted a “reformist” who’d gradually change their country’s domestic and foreign policies, knowing that nothing radical can be expected due to the strict system of checks and balances that’s in place to prevent this.
Over the years, the number of those killed or seriously injured in gun violence continues to accumulate. In surveys, one out of five Americans have stated that a family member or someone very close has been fatally shot.
Tara Rodas is an HHS whistleblower who exposed how the US government is using taxpayer dollars to traffic illegal migrant children all throughout the United States. Yesterday Tara testified before Senator Grassley’s committee.
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The USA in the only country in the world where there are more firearms than people.
46% of all households have a firearm. This is the average. In some places this can be over 60%.
About 48,000 people die in gun-violence in a year, the majority of this being suicide cases.
When seen in the context of comparable rich countries, the US gun homicide rate is about 25 times higher while gun suicide rate is about 10 times higher.
For every victim of shooting who dies, there are more than double the number who go to emergency rooms in hospitals for the treatment of their injuries.
Over the years, the number of those killed or seriously injured in gun violence continues to accumulate. In surveys, one out of five Americans have stated that a family member or someone very close has been fatally shot.
However the harm done by excessive number of firearms goes much beyond the actual shootings. Many people in certain communities say that due to the excessive number of people having or carrying firearms, they live in perpetual fear and their life has become much more stressful than it would otherwise be without so many guns. Even within families the life of several family members is very adversely affected, particularly of women in families with a history of domestic violence. Schools have also come under the shadow of the stress caused by the wide spread of gun violence and gun culture, including most students as well as teachers.
While there is wide concern over the easy availability of guns and bullets, those people and social movements who have been campaigning against such easy and widespread availability of guns have not been successful so far in reducing the presence of guns and the supporters of easy and unhindered gun availability are known to be politically influential and powerful. They are known to often take very aggressive positions.
While there is obvious need to curb gun violence and the wide presence of guns and gun culture, supported by gun movies and other popular media, some other important questions also need to be raised. These relate to why such popular gun culture flourishes, who fuels it and why such a large number of people feel the need to have so many firearms. Unless such broader questions are also examined sincerely, it may not be possible to reduce the demand for guns and the supply of guns.
Of course the industry which feeds on the sales of such huge numbers of guns and bullets on a continuing basis is also likely to acquire a strong interest in such continuing sales and these powerful economic interests may also be fueling popular gun culture and keeping the demand and supply of civilian firearms at a very high level.
However there are also factors beyond this which also need to be considered. The aggression of the US establishment abroad has to be matched by a popular culture of aggression at home as these two trends feed off each other. It appears that maintaining and popularizing aggressive cultures, using Hollywood movies and other devices, is considered desirable by the establishment to create domestic perceptions and thinking that are supportive towards external aggression.
The military industrial establishment, which has emerged as a powerful force, is also fine with the continuation of external as well as internal aggression, both being supportive of each other.
Hence while gun control efforts and campaigns are obviously justified and deserve the support of people, these may not be able to progress much on their own, unless they become part of wider peace campaigns which seek to check internal as well as external aggressive trends of the USA. Such a broader peace movement can also be helpful in checking some other important social problems of the USA as well, while also contributing to world peace.
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Bharat Dogra is Honorary Convener, Campaign to Save Earth Now. His recent books include Protecting Earth for Children, Planet in Peril, A Day in 2071 and Man over Machine. He is a regular contributor to Global Research.
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The Iranian people voted for him because they wanted a “reformist” who’d gradually change their country’s domestic and foreign policies, knowing that nothing radical can be expected due to the strict system of checks and balances that’s in place to prevent this.
Iranian President-Elect Masoud Pezeshkian, who won the snap elections that were called after former President Ebrahim Raisi’s death in a tragic helicopter crash in mid-May, published a refreshing foreign policy vision at the Tehran Times on Friday titled “My message to the new world”. The reason why it’s described as refreshing is because it moves beyond the zero-sum thinking that the Mainstream Media (MSM) and many folks from the Alt-Media Community (AMC) nowadays espouse.
Both media camps largely believe that the world is divided into the West and the non-West, with the US leading the first and China the second, and they’re both supposedly predestined to clash. Each recoils whenever one of their own cooperates with their side’s perceived rival. The MSM was apoplectic that Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban visited Moscow as part of his peace mission earlier this month while the AMC reacted similarly when Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi visited DC last summer.
Iran has hitherto been considered by many in the MSM and the AMC alike to be one of those zero-sum countries considering its regional role in the global systemic transition to multipolarity and the opprobrium that this has provoked from the West in response. Such a perception was just shattered by Pezeshkian, however, who declared in his article that he’s prepared to improve ties with his country’s adversaries so long as they treat it with respect and allow it to preserve its dignity in all ways.
In his words, “we will welcome sincere efforts to alleviate tensions and will reciprocate good-faith with good-faith”, beginning with Iran’s home region and then spreading outwards. In connection with that, he called for expanding relations with Turkiye, Saudi Arabia, Oman, Iraq, Bahrain, Qatar, Kuwait, the United Arab Emirates; doing the same with respect to Russia and China; and then trying to find a way forward with the West. His goal is to create stable international conditions for peace and development.
Pezeshkian is associated with the “reformist” school of policymakers who advocate gradual changes in Iranian policy at home and abroad, while their “friendly rivals” are the “principalists” who believe that that reforms might corrupt the country and could ultimately lead to a pro-US regime change. Regardless of whatever one’s views are about these two, the fact of the matter is that they’re each patriots in their own way, and there’s no way that the Iranian system would ever allow a “traitor” to rise to power.
This clarification is required to dispel the false perceptions among some in the AMC who assumed that Pezeshkian’s critiques of various policies were proof of him being a “Trojan Horse”. Iran’s post-1979 system is chock-full of checks and balances which prevent any such figure from ruining the country. Nothing of significance can be done without the approval of the Supreme Leader, who acts as the leading bulwark against radical policies, though they’re also backed up by the IRGC and other groups.
The point is that Pezeshkian’s interest in exploring a rapprochement with the West doesn’t make him a “sell-out” to the multipolar cause. China is in a relationship of complex economic interdependence with those countries despite being one of the world’s most powerful multipolar engines, while India proudly multi–aligns between the West and the non-West, the pragmatic approach of which Pezeshkian apparently wants to emulate. There’s nothing wrong with either and they both deserve praise.
In fact, it’s far more common for non-Western countries to balance between their side and the West than it is for them to not have any significant ties with the West, so Iran, Russia, North Korea, and a few others are the exception, not the rule. The only reason why they don’t have a similar level of ties with the West as their peers do is because the West sanctioned them for their foreign policy, thus being the ones who decided that they didn’t want cordial relations, not Iran and company.
To be sure, the West oftentimes exploits these selfsame relations by gradually making them lopsided in its support and thus creating disproportionate dependence on its markets, investments, arms, etc., but it’s possible to avoid such a trap if non-Western leaders are careful. Pezeshkian is confident that Iran can thwart the hybrid threats connected with resuming trade with the West in the scenario that some of those countries are interested, but to be honest, it’s unlikely that his outreaches will be reciprocated.
While the MSM and AMC are almost equally influenced by zero-sum thinking, it’s only the West as a whole that actually formulates policy according to this paradigm, not non-Western countries. This is evidenced by the former’s comprehensive pressure campaigns against Russia, Iran, and North Korea, while the latter proved its strategic autonomy by not cutting off ties with those three in solidarity with the West nor cutting off ties with the West out of solidarity with those three.
It’s therefore natural that the MSM is caught in zero-sum thinking, but those in the AMC who have such views are mostly ideologically driven activists who are so committed to the cause that they subconsciously behave as though they’re “more multipolar than the top multipolar countries”. No value judgement is being implied here, it’s just a reflection of reality to help readers understand why many in the AMC promote views that are at variance with most of the non-West’s who they claim to represent.
This is crucial to keep in mind when reflecting on some of the dire predictions that were made about Pezeshkian before his election and in assessing the intentions behind his newly articulated foreign policy. The Iranian people voted for him because they wanted a “reformist” who’d gradually change their country’s domestic and foreign policies, knowing that nothing radical can be expected due to the strict system of checks and balances that’s in place to prevent this.
In the event that the West rejects his outreaches as is expected, then Iran will simply continue along the foreign policy course that Raisi charted for it, in which case nothing will change. On the off chance that at least some of them positively respond to his appeal, then the most that might happen is a boost in bilateral trade and a reduction in tensions. Nothing dramatic will likely happen either way, but at least Pezeshkian is trying to promote peace despite the odds, which speaks to his personal integrity.
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Andrew Korybko is an American Moscow-based political analyst specializing in the relationship between the US strategy in Afro-Eurasia, China’s One Belt One Road global vision of New Silk Road connectivity, and Hybrid Warfare. He is a regular contributor to Global Research.
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I’ve seen a few Substack posts from authors who claim that the assassination attempt was staged in order to garner sympathy for Trump. One author asserted that there is a lack of visible blood on Trump’s right hand immediately after he touches his right ear immediately after the shots ring out, and that this lack of blood visible (in a millisecond of video) on his right hand at this instant is proof that his ear was not actually wounded.
Another Substack author boldly proclaimed that the direction of blood flow down Trump’s face indicates that the apparent blood flow was staged.
As one who has a written a book about staged suicides for which I consulted top bloodstain pattern analysts, I can confidently state that both of these authors are making the wildest of assumptions.
A high-velocity bullet that superficially grazes the outer ear will NOT necessarily produce a wound that bleeds instantly. In Trump’s case, it appears that the wound only started to bleed with sufficient volume to run down his face AFTER he was placed in a kneeling position by Secret Service. It is perfectly plausible that the wound only started to bleed in this manner after he was placed in this position. I have personally suffered multiple wounds that only began to bleed with notable volume after a few seconds.
Note that the direction of flow in this photograph is consistent with his head being held approximately in this position for several seconds.
Copyright Getty Images
In order to make a persuasive case that the assassination attempt was staged, the Substack commentators would have to explain away the following:
1) Multiple, credible witnesses stated independently that they saw the shooter on the roof, firing a rifle towards Donald Trump.
2) Video recordings of a young man on the roof in the prone position, aiming a rifle at Trump at same time that multiple shots can be heard coming from the direction of the roof.
3) The death of Cory Comperatore, whose fatal gunshot wound to the head was observed by multiple witnesses, including an ER doctor in the audience who tried to resuscitate him.
If the young man on the roof was—as some commentators have suggested—merely firing blanks—and Donald Trump crushed a theatrical blood capsule onto his ear while he was in a kneeling position—these commentators must present a persuasive explanation of what killed Cory Comperatore and—according to reports—wounded David Dutch, 57, of New Kensington, Pennsylvania, and James Copenhaver, 74, of Moon Township, Pennsylvania. Both are purportedly being treated at Allegheny General Hospital in Pittsburgh.
I wonder if those who propose the staging theory could present evidence that Cory Comperatore was not fatally shot in the head—and that David Dutch and James Copenhaver were not severely wounded—in the same fusillade.
If—as some commentators have suggested, Comperatore, Dutch, and Copenhaver were sacrificial victims to make the staging seem real, I wonder if these commentators can present evidence to support their theory?
In our strange era in which we are contending with the Matrix, it is important to remember that there are good conspiracy theories and bad conspiracy theories. Good conspiracy theories are supported by evidence that stands up to critical scrutiny.
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Featured image is by Evan Vucci / Licensed under Fair Use
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In a highly controversial decision, the Supreme Court on June 28 reversed a 40-year old ruling, reclaiming the Court’s role as interpreter of statutory law as it applies to a massive body of regulations imposed by federal agencies in such areas as the environment, workplace safety, public health and more.
The Court’s 6-3 conservative majority overturned a 1984 ruling, also issued by that Court’s conservative majority, that granted authority to a federal agency if a Congressional statute involving that agency was ambiguous or incomplete. It left the interpretation of the law to the agency rather than the courts.
This principle blocked individuals and businesses from suing agencies in court for damages incurred when the agencies exceeded their Congressional mandates.
“Chevron deference,” the name given the 1984 decision due to the litigation involving that company, has been grounds for upholding thousands of regulations by a host of federal agencies over the last four decades. Opinions by commentators on its reversal range from “an epic disaster, … one of the worst Supreme Court rulings … another huge gift to special interests and corporations,” to “a victory for the common man” and “an important win for accountability and predictability at a time when agencies are unleashing a tsunami of regulation — in many cases clearly exceeding their statutory authority ….”
On July 10, Reuters reported that House Republicans had asked all federal agencies to begin reviews of regulations that could be affected by the recent ruling, noting:
Three House committees — Agriculture, Oversight, and Education and Workforce — targeted agencies including the Environmental Protection Agency, the Securities and Exchange Commission and Department of Labor in what the chamber’s No. 2 Republican, Steve Scalise, called a “fight to free the American people from the power-hungry administrative state.”
The “administrative state” had modest beginnings during George Washington’s presidency, with the formation of the Defense, State, Treasury and Justice Departments. Today it has mushroomed into more than 400 agencies. For the 178 laws passed by Congress in 2020 alone, federal agencies issued an average of 19 rules and regulations for each law passed, for a total of 3,382 such rules. The Federal Register, a common measure of regulatory action, hit an all-time high 95,894 pages in 2016. That’s 75 times The Complete Works of William Shakespeare, which contains 1280 pages.
The issues raised by the Chevron doctrine go back to the founding of the country and make for an interesting lesson in civics. But first a look at the fishing case that reversed it.
The Fishermen Who Challenged a Bureaucracy
On Jan. 17, 2024, the U.S. Supreme Court heard oral arguments in two combined cases, Loper Bright Enterprises v Raimondo and Relentless, Inc v Department of Commerce, which would determine the fate of Chevron. On June 28, the Court ruled in favor of the fishermen plaintiffs in the Loper Bright case, rejecting the deference that courts have given federal agencies in cases where the law is unclear. The Court did not rule on the merits — the question whether the agency had exceeded its statutory authority. It just ruled on the judicial question whether Chevron blocked the case from proceeding. Chief Justice John Roberts, who wrote the Opinion of the Court, stated:
Chevron’s presumption is misguided because agencies have no special competence in resolving statutory ambiguities. Courts do. …
Chevron is overruled. Courts must exercise their independent judgment in deciding whether an agency has acted within its statutory authority, as the APA [Administrative Procedures Act] requires.
The case was therefore allowed to go forward in the lower D.C. District Court where it originated. Those proceedings are expected to begin this fall.
The plaintiffs are three New Jersey herring fishermen who challenge what they say is an unlawful requirement that forces them to surrender 20% of their earnings to pay at-sea monitors – individuals who gather information used to regulate their industry. The cost works out to as much as $700 a day, which can be more pay than the crews themselves take home.
The requirement was imposed on them by the U.S. Department of Commerce, which oversees the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, which regulates the nation’s fisheries. The fishermen don’t contest that federal law allows the government to require at-sea monitors on their boats, but they argue that Congress never gave the executive branch authority to pass monitoring costs onto the fishermen. They contend that the NOAA abused its power, but they were handicapped by Chevron in fighting the rule.
“We are grateful the Court has overruled Chevron,” said Bill Bright, one of the fishermen plaintiffs. “Restoration of the separation of powers is a victory for small, family-run businesses like ours, whether they’re involved in fishing, farming or retail.”
Paul Clement, former U.S. Solicitor General and attorney for the fishermen, echoed that sentiment, stating, “We are gratified that the Court restored the constitutionally mandated separation of powers.” And that Constitutional mandate is what makes for an interesting civics lesson on the issues.
Designing a Republic with a Balanced Separation of Powers
The Founding Fathers were famously afraid of centralized power, and they designed the Constitution and Bill of Rights to avoid it. Power was balanced among separate branches of the government — watchers watching the watchdogs, with no one imperial controller.
In colonial America, judges were appointed and paid by the monarchy, receiving salaries that were raised from duties paid by the colonists. King George exercised sole authority to appoint colonial governors to represent the Crown’s interests. For legislative control, the monarchy possessed the powers of the purse and the sword, stationing soldiers in the colonies while requiring that colonists house, feed, and pay taxes for the soldiers’ imported supplies.
The judicial branch is presumably an independent branch of government, alongside the legislative and executive branches. But many regulatory agencies have their own in-house court systems, called administrative law courts (ALCs). In ALCs, agencies choose their own judges, pay their salaries, and set the rules of procedure. Agencies rarely lose in their own courts. And their abuses to established constitutional norms have garnered the attention of federal courts in recent years especially in antitrust and securities law matters.
In administrative law courts, private litigants are deprived of basic constitutional privileges, including the right to trial by jury, freedom to petition a case before a Constitutional (Art. III) court, and equal application of justice under the law. Litigants who lose may or may not be granted the right to appeal to a federal court; but even if they succeed in getting on the appellate court docket, the process is lengthy and expensive, undemocratically excluding those who cannot afford the cost or the time to wait for a decision.
The New Jersey fishermen in the two herring boat cases were not required to go through the administrative law court system, but the result was the same: the agency made the rules and enforced them; and under “Chevron deference,” the plaintiffs were powerless to contest the outcome.
Alexander Hamilton wrote in The Federalist that any irreconcilable differences between the Constitution and the laws passed by Congress were to be decided in favor of protecting the Constitution as the supreme law of the land. The power of judicial review was first asserted in the Supreme Court’s 1803 decision in Marbury v. Madison, recognizing the Constitution as the highest law in the land. Through judicial review, the Court reinforced that constitutional system by checking the power of other branches. Not just the administrative arm of the executive branch but the legislature itself could be restrained from passing legislation that violated the Constitution.
In 1946, Congress passed the Administrative Procedure Act (APA) to codify the procedure for executing administrative law. The APA provides that the “reviewing court shall decide all relevant questions of law, [and] interpret… statutory provisions.”
It is that deviation from the constitutional system as codified in the APA that the Supreme Court intended to rectify. Justice Elena Kagan, who wrote the dissenting opinion, stated that “the majority’s decision today will cause a massive shock to the legal system, ‘cast[ing] doubt on many settled constructions’ of statutes and threatening the interests of many parties who have relied on them for years.” But Justice Roberts made clear that prior decisions relying on Chevron were not automatically nullified but stood under stare decisis (to “stand by things decided”). The issues could be challenged in new cases, but the challenged rules had to be shown to exceed the mandate of Congress.
The Question of Corporate Capture
No doubt the floodgates to new cases will be opened, as other critics have stated; and it will be a major burden for the court system, which is already backlogged. But it is actually a democratic development. As Robert F. Kennedy Jr. explains on X:
The Chevron decision cuts both ways. The original ruling allowed agencies to function effectively, which they cannot if every interpretative gray area in the law requires a court decision.
If the agency is working in the public interest, we definitely want it to exercise broad…
— Robert F. Kennedy Jr (@RobertKennedyJr) July 2, 2024
The Chevron decision cuts both ways. The original ruling allowed agencies to function effectively, which they cannot if every interpretative gray area in the law requires a court decision. If the agency is working in the public interest, we definitely want it to exercise broad interpretive leeway. For instance, almost every important environmental decision in federal court over the past 40 years is based upon Chevron. Without it, the EPA (not an entirely captured agency) is virtually powerless. But when corporate interests have captured a federal agency, then the same interpretive leeway gives the agency even more power to serve their corporate masters at the expense of the public interest. Thus we have the FDA sending armed police to shut down Amish farmers and grocery stores for selling raw milk, while they allow into our food supply hundreds of harmful but profitable chemical additives that are banned in other countries. The Chevron controversy is therefore a false dilemma with no solution. The real issue is corporate capture. If federal agencies served the public interest, then no one would want to hamstring them.
Although critics say the ruling is a boon to corporations, it is the agencies themselves that are notoriously susceptible to “corporate capture.” As explained in Investopedia:
Regulatory capture is a process by which regulatory agencies may come to be dominated by the industries or interests they are charged with regulating. The result is that an agency, charged with acting in the public interest, instead acts in ways that benefit incumbent firms in the industry it is supposed to be scrutinizing.
It is that sort of corporate capture that Chevron deference protected from the reach of the courts, and that the Supreme Court’s latest ruling has opened to private challenge. The APA tells agencies they cannot act illegally, arbitrarily, or without letting the public meaningfully participate in the creation of new rules. Many agency rules are now vulnerable to judicial review for violating those standards.
Agency Overreach: Some Areas of Vulnerability
Technically, the Federal Reserve, the FDIC, the Treasury, the State Department, the IRS and even the Defense Department are agencies falling under the Administrative Procedure Act and its rules. Even those secretive, non-transparent, unaccountable intelligence agencies sometimes called the “deep state” could be subject to APA review. But as detailed in a Vanderbilt Law School article titled “The Politics of Deference,” “national security” has its own special deference under separate case law, so it probably cannot be reached.
The more likely initial targets will be agencies such as the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC).
MSNBC experts expect electric vehicles to be most at risk. A Reuters article titled “Biden Tailpipe Emission Rules on Shakier Ground after Supreme Court Ruling” explains, “That’s because the rules target mobile sources of greenhouse gas rather than stationary ones like power plants, even though environmental laws are ambiguous on whether regulators have the mandate to do that.” Another expert says the controversial tailpipe regulations “will eliminate most new gas cars and traditional hybrids from the U.S. market in less than a decade.”
Steve Forbes argues that Congress would not have passed such a prohibition because of intense public opposition, so it got kicked over to the EPA, which was thought to be untouchable under Chevron. But Chevron deference is no more. On July 3, 26 states filed suit against the Administration over EV mandates. The Petition for Review states, “the final rule exceeds the agency’s statutory authority and otherwise is arbitrary, capricious, an abuse of discretion, and not in accordance with law.”
Other agency regulations expected to be the subject of lawsuits include the SEC’s imposition of civil penalties without the benefit of a jury trial, and FDA and CDC regulations involving vaccines, pharmaceuticals and dietary supplements.
The administrative law system does not follow constitutional principles, which it must if it is ruling on regulations having the force of law. Removing some of the arbitrary red tape hampering small business, local politicians, schools and families by holding administrative regulations up to Constitutional standards can not only stimulate economic productivity and lower inflation and taxes but can help restore the system of checks and balances so important to our country’s founders.
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His entire set of teeth, and gums, must be gold plated by now. Former British Prime Minister Tony Blair has decided to let the world, and more specifically Sir Keir Starmer’s freshly elected government, in on a secret: that artificial intelligence is inexorably majestic, glorious and sovereign. Embrace it and fob off the doomsdayers. Importantly for Blair, embracing it will ensure that the rivers of gold continue to flow into his private purse.
In May, the Tony Blair Institute for Global Change (TBI) released a report that unabashedly embraced the role of AI in influencing the way states govern. It is the accompanying document to Blair’s own address given at the Future of Britain Conference on July 9, which called for reimagining the state through the prism of AI. As he spoke, the sound of money going out the door was palpable.
The former PM would have the new Labour government believe, plucking various numbers out of the air, that technological reforms made to the public sector could see £12 billion of “annual fiscal space” at the conclusion of the first term, followed by £40 billion at the end of the second, with cumulative savings of £15 billion in the first term and £150 billion in the second.
As one has come to expect from Blair’s ruminations, complexity and troubling consequence is obscured by anaemic waffle. He found it hard to avoid the prospect that this enthusiastic embrace of AI by governments would see a contraction of the public sector, offering no details about chronology or severity. Little, as well, on how the revolution could offer “the best route to a society that is not only more productive but one that is more equitable… a contemporary version of the combination of economic efficiency and social justice.”
In Governing in the Age of AI: A New Model to Transform the State, the institute takes a hammer to the traditional caution expressed by the state. “Like all well-established organisations, the state has a bias towards caution. But this is an illusion – a failure to modernise, reform and deliver is a perilous course for a nation and those who govern it.” With a breezy confidence, the report estimates that £40 billion in annual savings will be made as things stand with current technology. “But of course, over time, this technology will accelerate dramatically in its capability, and so will the savings.”
The report is shameless in charting out the institute’s own marketing strategy. Here is the scenario, and we are happy to offer our services in facilitating it, swooping in for the corporate kill. “To access this opportunity [presented by AI], government will need a coordinated strategy to put in place the necessary infrastructure, sovereign capability and skills.” Appropriate data, “interoperable” across departments, will require investment. Models will need to be trained, with necessary computing power to “for AI to run at scale”. Enter the linking of hands between government and the private sector, something the institute is more than willing to facilitate.
Blair’s donor base is impossible to discount when considering his speeches on the subject of AI and the reports of his institute. Over the years, the billionaire co-founder of Oracle, Larry Ellison, has forked out vast sums to the organisation. In 2021, Ellison, through his philanthropic offices, furnished the institute with US$33.8 million, with a promise of US$49.4 million in 2022. These contributions should suggest more than a bit of string pulling by the likes of Ellison over the TBI research agenda, a case of purchasing corrupted advice that can be duly advertised to government and corporate clients the world over.
Benedict Macon-Cooney, the body’s chief policy strategy, is dismissive of the suggestion. “There is no conflict of interest, and donations are ringfenced.” He did, however, concede that the institute did partner public officials with companies to attain their respective goals. “Sometimes the state is the best way to do things, but if we are [to] look around and see private providers which would be better helping with reforms, then we will say so.”
In what seems like a mud wrestle between the mendacious and truth in slant, Goldman Sachs has begged to differ from the TBI’s dreams of technological nirvana in a dampening analysis. On this occasion, the devil is singing in different registers. In its June 2024 report, the investment banking colossus notes that the vast sums being expended – an estimate of US$1 trillion over the next few years is offered – on data centres, chips, AI infrastructure and the power grid has, and will have “little to show for it in so far beyond reports of efficiency gains among developers.”
The report features an interview with MIT’s Daron Acemoglu, who estimates that a mere quarter of tasks subject to AI “will be cost effective to automate within the next 10 years, implying that AI will impact less than 5% of all tasks.” In his interview, Acemoglu observes that numerous tasks currently being performed by humans “for example in the area of transportation, manufacturing, mining, etc., are multifaceted and require real-world interaction, which AI won’t be able to materially improve any time too soon.”
The GS Head of Global Equity Research, Jim Cavello, is even less impressed, noting that AI technology, to be viable, must be able to solve complex problems. AI technology is not the holy grail of company valuations, being simply too costly in terms of building critical products such as GPU chips and unable, so far, to “replicate humans’ most valuable capabilities.”
There you have it. On the one hand, the flowery promises of AI benefits and savings arising from a fierce embrace of technology by governments, as put forth by Blair and his institute. Then we have Goldman Sachs, similarly famed for its ruthless tailoring of advice to swell monetary returns. Neither is encouraging, but Blair’s offerings always come with a barely concealed odour of self-interest masquerading as human salvation.
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Dr. Binoy Kampmark was a Commonwealth Scholar at Selwyn College, Cambridge. He currently lectures at RMIT University. He is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG). Email: [email protected]
Normalization of diplomatic relations with the Russian Federation had first been proposed by Donald Trump in 2017.
Under RussiaGate (2016), President-elect Donald Trump had been accused oftreason “after President Obama announced new sanctions [in late December 2016] against Russia and Trump praised Vladimir Putin’s response to the sanctions.” (Daily Caller, December 30, 2016, emphasis added)
Former Secretary of Defense and CIA Director Leo Panetta had already intimated prior to the elections that Trump was a threat to national security.
Even prior to the inauguration of president Trump, the US media in liaison with US intelligence had launched successive waves of smears directed against President-elect Donald Trump.
The objective from the very outset was to discredit president Trump, presenting him as a Manchurian candidate serving the interests of the Kremlin.
The RussiaGate objective as formulated in 2016 was:
“to get rid of a President who intended to normalize relations with Russia, thus curtailing the budget and power of the military/security complex.” (Paul Craig Roberts, emphasis added)
In January 2019, the FBI Russia investigation was quoted by the media as “evidence” that Trump was “wittingly or unwittingly” an agent of the Kremlin.
What is the stance of the FBI today in regard to the candidacy of Donald Trump? The FBI played a key role in sustaining RussiaGate. (P. C Roberts). I should mention that the FBI is also responsible (coincidentally) for the investigation of the attempted assassination of Donald Trump in Pennsylvania.
Let us wake up to REALITY.
The levels of political manipulation, fraud and criminality have reached their pinnacle.
The ultimate intent of the campaign against Trump in 2016-19, led by the Neocons and the Dems Clinton faction was to destabilize the Trump presidency.
From RussiaGate 1.0 to RussiaGate 2.0
There is continuity: Under RussiaGate 2.0(2024) which we are currently experiencing, various accusations of treason against Trump will once more go into high gear, ultimately with a view to sabotage the peace process as well as destabilize Trump’s candidacy to the presidency of the U.S.
Trump has confirmed: …
“that if reelected, he would swiftly bring an end to the war in Ukraine by speaking with Putin.
“I will have that war settled between Putin and Zelensky as president-elect before I take office on January 20.
I’ll have that war settled,” Trump said on June 27 during a debate with Biden, adding,
“I’ll get it settled fast, before I take office.” (Quoted by Newsweek)
Speaking with Putin is regarded as an act of treason. This courageous statement, reminiscent of Donald Trump –the alleged Manchurian Candidate— is unlikely to be accepted by the “Deep State”, the Military Industrial Complex and the powerful financial groups which support the Democratic Party leadership.
What will be the ultimate outcome?
Real peace negotiations are an integral part of Trump’s election campaign.
Trump’s national security advisory team has prepared a balanced plan: if the Kiev regime does not enter into peace talks with Moscow, the U.S. would (under a Trump presidency) immediately suspend the flow of US weapons to Ukraine:
“Under the plan drawn up by [General Keith] Kellogg and Fred Fleitz, who both served as chiefs of staff in Trump’s National Security Council during his 2017-2021 presidency, there would be a ceasefire based on prevailing battle lines during peace talks, Fleitz said.
They have presented their strategy to Trump, and the Republican presidential candidate responded favorably”. (Reuters, June 23, 2024)
It is worth noting that this peace proposal — which is part of his election campaign — was formulated barely a few weeks prior to the failed attempt to assassinate Donald Trump in Pennsylvania.
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Canadian citizen and journalist Laith Marouf along with Hadi Hotait were reporting for Free Palestine TV (FPTV) in the south of Lebanon, when the Israeli military attempted to assassinate them.
Laith Marouf described the attack to Steven Sahiounie of MidEastDiscourse.
“The Israeli military have been targeting media workers in Gaza and Lebanon, and even in the West Bank. We can remember before October 7 they assassinated Shireen Abu Akleh in the West Bank.”
“And, now over 160 journalists have been martyred in Gaza, and of course here in Lebanon the Israelis have assassinated four journalists in the south. The enemy is vicious and they do not like people that do journalism work, because that brings the truth to the world. This is especially true for those who write in English.”
“We were alone, and nobody was around us when we were targeted. Thank God the shells fell 200 meters away from us. There was a short cement fence which partially protected us, and the wind was blowing away from us, so the white phosphorus that fell in the first shell did not injure us, thank God.”
According to Hotait, he and Marouf were near an open field taking photos when the shell landed on the edge of a house near them. Hotait told The Canada Files that this was obviously a targeted assassination attempt because there were no weapons or military assets in the area. Israel has a long history of killing journalists.
White phosphorous was dropped by Israel, and soon afterwards an Israeli guided missile landed in the same area. The white phosphorous remains active, very toxic and flammable for much longer than previously known.
Lebanese researchers and experts are warning that Israel’s tactics are causing long-term and potentially irreversible damage to south Lebanon’s environment, agriculture and economy, potentially making it uninhabitable.
By March 6, 117 phosphoric bombs had been dropped on southern Lebanon, according to Lebanon’s National Council for Scientific Research (CNRS).
The Israeli military knows that white phosphorus is detrimental, that it reignites even up to a month after being dropped, and is toxic to the environment.
The Lebanese side is completely barren land, but the Israelis are cultivating down to the last inch before the border. The white phosphorus used by Israel is effectively making the south of Lebanon uninhabitable.
The continuous Israeli bombing has caused huge evacuations, but those who have to remain in their homes recognize the smell of the white phosphorus, which is similar to garlic.
White phosphorous ignites when exposed to the oxygen in the air at temperatures above 30C (86F) and rains down streaks of dense white smoke mixed with phosphorus oxides. The fragments burn plants, houses and human flesh.
On March 19, Oxfam and Human Rights Watch reported that cited Israel’s use of white phosphorus on Gaza and south Lebanon as one in “a wide range of Israeli violations of international humanitarian law” and called on the Biden administration to “immediately suspend arms transfers to Israel”.
This isn’t new in Lebanon, as the Israeli army targeted civilians with white phosphorus in the 1982 invasion and since October 7 there has been a lot of white phosphorus used on forests, plantations, olive and fruit trees.
Experts in the field have said that the use of white phosphorus is ‘environmental terrorism’ and ‘psychological warfare’.
Over the last 46 years or more, experts and officials say a pattern has become clear; Israel is creating a barren ‘no-man’s-land’ in the south of Lebanon as their buffer zone.
Israel’s invasions of Lebanon in 1978 and 1982, its occupation from 1985 to 2000, and the wars between Hezbollah and Israel in 2006 and 2023-2024 have eroded the land on the Lebanese side of the border.
The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) has conducted investigations as of July 12, 2024 which showed at least 108 journalists and media workers were among the more than 39,000 killed since the Gaza war began, making it the deadliest period for journalists since CPJ began gathering data in 1992. CPJ is investigating almost 350 additional cases of potential killings, arrests and injuries.
The Canada Files’ Editor-in-Chief, Aidan Jonah, and Marouf, co-host a weekly show called Canada and Palestine: The War on Zionism. Marouf appears on other shows regularly every week, and regularly is interviewed by prominent Canadian lawyer and journalist Dimitri Lascaris.
FPTV now does reports from the field on the border between South Lebanon and Israel/occupied Palestine and a weekly show called Wartime Café where Lebanese pro-resistance activists, artists and thinkers are interviewed, and translation of all the resistance videos coming out from Palestine, Lebanon and Iraq, around the whole of the Axis of Resistance.
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Tara Rodas is an HHS whistleblower who exposed how the US government is using taxpayer dollars to traffic illegal migrant children all throughout the United States.
Yesterday Tara testified before Senator Grassley’s committee.
Oral Testimony for U.S. Senate Roundtable Witness: Tara Lee Rodas, HHS Whistleblower
Roundtable Title: “The Exploitation Crisis: How the U.S. Government is Failing to Protect Migrant Children from Trafficking and Abuse”
Tuesday, July 9, 2024 at 2:30 PM EST
Senator Grassley and Honorable Senators, thank you for your tireless efforts to protect migrant Unaccompanied Children from abuse, neglect, labor trafficking, sex trafficking, and other unspeakable horrors.
I especially appreciate Senator Grassley’s oversight unit’s extensive and multi-year investigations into sponsors who have obtained children under suspicious circumstances and sponsors who have known criminal histories to include gang affiliation.
What keeps me up at night is wondering about the safety & well-being of children:
I think about a 16-year-old girl from Guatemala.I’ll call her Carmen.Her sponsor claimed to be her older brother. But after Carmen was released from the Unaccompanied Children (UC) Program to her sponsor in North Carolina, she appeared in a photo on his social media. He was touching her inappropriately. It was clear her sponsor was not her brother. Later, Carmen appeared on her sponsor’s social media again – this time she was alone and all-dolled-up: her hair was styled; her makeup was done; and her shirt was unbuttoned. ORR’s Federal Field Specialist said Carmen looked drugged and that she was for sale. It was discovered that Carmen’s sponsor had other social media accounts containing child pornography. What keeps me up at night is wondering if Carmen is safe.
I thinkabouta 13-year-old girl from El Salvador.I’ll call her Maria. Maria was released from the Unaccompanied Children (UC) Program to a sponsor in Ohio with confirmed MS-13 gang affiliation. It’s unthinkable that a child was released to the home of the sponsor affiliated with a gang. What keeps me up at night is wondering if Maria is safe.
More than 500,000 children like Carmen and Maria have arrived at our border alone. These children are funneled through a network of U.S. government agencies and contractors and
Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs) who have little or no training in how protect children from trafficking and abuse.
More than 8,300 of these children were funneled through the Pomona Fairplex Emergency Intake Site where I served as the Deputy to the Director of the Federal Case Management Team. If I hadn’t seen it with my own eyes, I would not believe that a federal government agency is using billions of taxpayer dollars to place vulnerable migrant children into the hands of sponsors who have criminal history and gang affiliation. It’s shocking and shameful.
As a whistleblower, I’d like to thank Senator Grassley for being a trusted pathway to report the most horrific injustices against children that I’ve witnessed in my federal career. When I reported the MS-13 case and provided evidence that other MS-13 and 18th Street gang members were sponsoring children, ORR retaliated against me. In just 16 days after making my first protected disclosure to the Department of Justice Inspector General, the Honorable Michael Horowitz:
I was taken off the MS-13 case by ORR’s Federal Field Specialist (FFS),
The FFS told me I was under investigation,
I was escorted off my job by the FFS & security, and
My badge was taken.
For my personal safety, my home agency offered to send armed agents to escort me from California back to Washington, DC.
So, Senator Grassley and Honorable Senators, I thank you for protecting whistleblowers like me. And, again, I thank you for your tireless efforts to protect children from trafficking and abuse.
I’d be happy to answer any questions that you may have.
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Perhaps the most remarkable feature of the human species is that inherently it is neither particularly constructive not particularly destructive. How human beings actually behave and live depends to a large extent on the ideas, information, and understandings to which they are exposed, particularly in the formative years of their life but also later.
So for all those who are committed to the creation of a better world,a key concern should be the extent to which people and particular children and teenagers are being exposed in interesting and creative ways to ideas and understanding of justice, equality, peace, social harmony and protection of environment and biodiversity. Unfortunately, the situation just now in this context is not at all encouraging. Although people are exposed to mountains of information and news, mostly this is of a frivolous kind. Reading habit is fast diminishing, particularly in terms of serious study.
Secondly, even when ideas of justice, environment protection and peace are taken up, often there are serious distortions in these. To give an example, some action of a big power which is promoted as an action of peace may actually turn out to be provocation of violence. Or something promoted by a big multinational company as being taken up for environment protection may ultimately be revealed to be a cover-up for wider destruction of environment.
Hence at a time when there is great urgency of promoting sincere ideas of justice, peace and environment protection rooted in truth, this task is actually suffering from shocking neglect, apathy and inadequacy.
As remedial action, perhaps the first step in this direction is to select certain key messages based on secular ethics around which the social change role of education should be carried forward. These messages need to reach all groups so certainly such an educational effort should not remain confined to just schools and colleges. Of course when different age-groups are covered, the same messages are discussed and debated in very different ways that are appropriate for different age groups.
Some of the key messages relate to important aspects of social relationships and behavior. One key message can be that as far as possible one should avoid trying to cause any distress to anyone in daily life. One has to discipline oneself accordingly and train oneself for this, for this does not come naturally. This may appear to be a very simple message, but look at the implications of this, how the world will change or how a single village will change in very important ways if all the people are consciously trying not to cause any distress to anyone.
Another key message is that we should not discriminate between any fellow human beings, whether on the basis of religion, ethnicity, caste, color or in any other way. This opens up our hearts and minds and we can be receptive to the friendship of all people and wish for the welfare of all people.
Thirdly, whenever we are interacting with anyone poorer to us, or less advantaged than us, our effort should be to be kind and generous, while entirely avoiding being exploitative or taking undue advantage of the weaker state of the other person or persons.
Another important message is to have a firm commitment to one’s family and its welfare, and be very respectful towards women. This includes avoiding all forms of domestic violence—physical and emotional—which is one of the biggest causes of human distress.
All these key messages involving social distress are of course related to each other, but nevertheless it is useful to state these separately.
Then there can be some key messages relating to personal behavior. Here perhaps the most important message can be to entirely avoid all intoxicants including alcohol, tobacco, smokeless tobacco and gutka, opium as well various other kinds of intoxicating drugs. These are the cause of not just too many health problems but in addition increase human distress in many other ways as well. A wider message along the same lines can be to avoid all harmful and wasteful consumption.
In terms of community actions certain key messages should emphasize that we all should all contribute to maintaining public hygiene and sanitation. We should contribute to protection of environment as a part of community efforts and also try as far as possible to keep our life pattern and life style in keeping with the needs of environment protection. We should contribute whenever we can to the early resolution of any disputes around us and contribute to maintaining social harmony in our surroundings.
If most people behave in accordance with these messages, then we would have a world much better than it is and our community and surroundings would also be much better than these are. We ourselves would be much more creative and happier persons if we tried to live according to these messages and tried to spread them in our social relationships.
However there is a much bigger reason why these messages are important. Our world is faced with very serious environmental problems, highly destructive wars and arms race. There is much injustice and the resulting distress. To create a different world, we need support for an agenda of peace, justice and environment protection from a very large number of people. Education for social change based on important key messages can help to create a very wide and strong base of people, including the upcoming generation, who believe more firmly in peace, justice and environment protection and therefore will be more active for these causes.
Education for social change is a very creative process in which poems, songs, stories, essays are created around certain key messages all the time and ordinary people including children also contribute with their real life experiences. It is an effort which starts contributing some good results from the very initial stages and keeps contributing more and more for a better world the longer it continues and the more creative it becomes over a period of time with all its valuable experiences.
Hence this concept of education for social change which continues beyond school and college for all age-groups should get wider attention.
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Bharat Dogra is Honorary Convener, Campaign to Save Earth Now. His recent books include Earth without Borders, Man over Machine, Planet in Peril, When the Two Streams Met and A Day in 2071. He is a regular contributor to Global Research.
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Attempting to avoid this scenario, Moscow kept its cool even in moments of almost universal public anger and cries for retaliation. However, things changed dramatically after June 23. Whether the date was chosen by NATO to nearly coincide with the beginning of “Barbarossa” (June 22) is unclear, but its symbolism cannot be ignored.
The political West has demonstrated time and again that it’s the virtual heir to Nazi Germany and much of the same actions and policies that Berlin used 80 years ago are now being recycled by NATO.
This was a step too far for the Kremlin and it reacted. Since the terrorist attack on Sevastopol, the Russian Aerospace Forces (VKS) were instructed to start suppressing or even downing US/NATO ISR (intelligence, surveillance, reconnaissance) assets over the Black Sea to ensure these cannot help the Neo-Nazi junta target Russian civilians.
Ever since, the world’s most aggressive racketeering cartel hasn’t dared fly close to Crimea, mostly limiting its activities to airspace over NATO-occupied Romania. However, the Russian military realized it needs to do even more to ensure the safety of its people. While detecting and targeting NATO-sourced weapons was always a priority for Moscow, as evidenced by regular updates on the destruction of various assets, particularly the overhyped HIMARS, June 23 was a turning point.
Thus, a more intense hunt for HIMARS, M270/MARS and ATACMS started. By June 27, at least two launchers were destroyed by an “Iskander-M” SRBM (short-range ballistic missile). The HIMARS and M270 were stored in a warehouse near the settlement of Yasenovoe in the Donetsk oblast (region). On June 27, video footage of the precision strike was posted on various social networks, particularly Telegram.
According to various military sources, at least 20 enemy soldiers were neutralized, composed most likely of mixed NATO crews and the Neo-Nazi junta forces. Apart from the destruction of the system itself, the elimination of personnel capable of operating and maintaining the launchers is a high priority for the Russian military. Another system was detected by a drone while withdrawing to a warehouse near the settlement of Shevchenkove in the Nikolayev oblast. The warehouse was then promptly obliterated by an “Iskander-M”. The video of the precision strike appeared online on June 28, while the after-action reports suggested that the strike neutralized 25 enemy troops. However, the Kiev regime and NATO were given no time to consolidate, as the Russian military continued hunting down their overhyped HIMARS and M270 already the next day. What’s more, the damage was even worse this time.
Namely, according to military sources, another precision strike on the village of Matveyevka in the Zaporozhye oblast resulted in the destruction of a warehouse with various munitions for the HIMARS/M270. The building reportedly housed both rockets and ATACMS tactical ballistic missiles. Another stockpile was hit shortly afterward in the nearby Kamennoye settlement. This forced the Neo-Nazi junta troops to disperse to reduce losses. However, the situation was hardly better. Quite the contrary, it turned out to be even worse. In the last two days alone, reports surfaced about the destruction of seven more HIMARS/M270 systems, including those armed with ATACMS missiles. The destruction of the first three was reported on July 8. The Russian Ministry of Defense (MoD) posted video footage from one of its tactical ISR drones, showing the elimination of the systems in the Kherson oblast.
The precision strike was conducted at night, after the launchers were detected near the village of Klapaya. Minutes later, an “Iskander-M” obliterated the position. The Russian MoD reported that dozens of NATO personnel were eliminated, while it was also suggested that these launchers were among those used in the previously mentioned terrorist attack on a packed beach in Sevastopol. Some unofficial reports also suggest that this Russian night strike thwarted a NATO plan to launch another attack on the Crimean peninsula, as the launchers were loaded precisely with the ATACMS missiles when the “Iskander-M” hit their position. However, this wasn’t the end of it, as on July 9, more footage was posted by the Kremlin’s MoD, with reports showing the destruction of another four HIMARS systems, and once again, the “culprit” was the “Iskander-M”. Two were destroyed in the Zaporozhye and another two in the Kherson oblast.
The latter were detected in Novopetrovka in the Kherson oblast, with the precision strike destroying two launchers, five escort vehicles and neutralizing at least 20 enemy personnel. The enhancement of the Russian military’s tactical and strategic ISR capabilities resulted in the easier detection and destruction of assets such as the HIMARS.
The Kiev regime has had a lot of trouble in this regard, particularly in recent months, as its overhyped NATO-sourced weapons are having trouble going past the world-class Russian electronic warfare (EW) systems, meaning that their lethality has been greatly reduced. At the same time, the aforementioned Russian ISR is making it far riskier to engage in combat with the HIMARS, with or without the ATACMS. The usage of regular guided rockets has become ineffective due to EW, while the usage of larger ATACMS makes it easier to detect and neutralize the launchers.
This sort of catch-22 situation is turning the HIMARS/M270 into yet another overhyped NATO-sourced weapon that can’t really do what its manufacturers are marketing it for, denting its reputation, most of which was the result of NATO propaganda either way. And it should be noted that this certainly isn’t the only Western weapon whose reputation has been tarnished by the Russian military. This was particularly apparent during last year’s much-touted counteroffensive, when NATO-sourced armor was obliterated by Russian drones, attack helicopters and specialized ATGM teams.
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This article was originally published on InfoBrics.
Drago Bosnic is an independent geopolitical and military analyst. He is a regular contributor to Global Research.
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Before the attempt on Donald Trump’s life, while questions raged about the health of President Joe Biden, officials downplayed the importance of the physical leader. White House spokesperson Karine Jean-Pierretold reporters to look at the administration, not the man. “What we are saying,” she said, “is there are results, his record.” As my podcast partner Walter Kirn wrote, we were “being introduced to the idea that the presidency is a diffuse impersonal ‘office,’ and the bucks stops nowhere that is… conventionally identifiable.”
But we live in a physical world, and individuals still matter. Official actions betray this more than anything else. When a populist movement built on frustration over decades of misrule began having electoral success, they created a legend that the backlash was irrational and the fault of one Donald Trump, building him into a figure of colossal art, a super-Hitler. It became cliché that he was the embodiment of all evil and needed to be stopped “at all costs.” By late last year, mainstream press organizations were saying legal means had failed, and more or less openly calling for a truly final solution to the Trump problem.
Now he’s been shot, in an incident that’s left two dead. We don’t exactly know why yet. We barely know the “who,” as stories about slain 20-year-old suspect Thomas Matthew Crooks are citing investigations into “whether the shooter had accomplices,” as NBC put it. New York Times analysts say the gunman fired eight shots. That’s a lot of rage, and even if we don’t know its direct source, it can’t have been much lower than what was already in the air around Trump. He and his supporters have been dehumanized as part of an induced collective madness that’s a bigger crime than the coverup of Biden’s incapacity.
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I recently was asked about COVID-19 vaccination and colon cancer. Are they related? What is new in the literature?
Akkus et al studied the impact of COVID-19 vaccination more than 3 months before newly diagnosed with a special kind of colon cancer. Microsatellite instability-high (MSI-H) colon cancer is a type of colon cancer where tumor cells are highly unstable due to a high number of genetic mutations. Instability occurs when mismatch repair (MMR) genes, which correct errors during cell division, stop functioning properly. As a result, errors accumulate and tumors become unstable. MSI-H colon cancer cells look and behave abnormally, making it easier for the immune system to recognize them as invaders and with proper immune surveillance, the tumor cells are effectively killed.
Akkus E, Karaoglan B, Akyol C, Ünal AE, Kuzu MA, Savaş B, Utkan G. Types and Rates of COVID-19 Vaccination in Patients With Newly Diagnosed Microsatellite Stable and Instable Non-Metastatic Colon Cancer. Cureus. 2024 Jun 6;16(6):e61780. doi: 10.7759/cureus.61780. PMID: 38975417; PMCID: PMC11227084.
Exposure to the Pfizer mRNA COVID-19 vaccine was associated with a > 6-fold increased risk for this form of cancer. Because the Spike protein is believed to impair tumor surveillance systems, among several cancer-promoting mechanisms, it is plausible that these cancerous cells are allowed to proliferate among the vaccinated where the cancer was not yet detectable at the time of injection.
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The Worldwide Corona Crisis, Global Coup d’Etat Against Humanity
by Michel Chossudovsky
Michel Chossudovsky reviews in detail how this insidious project “destroys people’s lives”. He provides a comprehensive analysis of everything you need to know about the “pandemic” — from the medical dimensions to the economic and social repercussions, political underpinnings, and mental and psychological impacts.
“My objective as an author is to inform people worldwide and refute the official narrative which has been used as a justification to destabilize the economic and social fabric of entire countries, followed by the imposition of the “deadly” COVID-19 “vaccine”. This crisis affects humanity in its entirety: almost 8 billion people. We stand in solidarity with our fellow human beings and our children worldwide. Truth is a powerful instrument.”
Reviews
This is an in-depth resource of great interest if it is the wider perspective you are motivated to understand a little better, the author is very knowledgeable about geopolitics and this comes out in the way Covid is contextualized. —Dr. Mike Yeadon
In this war against humanity in which we find ourselves, in this singular, irregular and massive assault against liberty and the goodness of people, Chossudovsky’s book is a rock upon which to sustain our fight. –Dr. Emanuel Garcia
In fifteen concise science-based chapters, Michel traces the false covid pandemic, explaining how a PCR test, producing up to 97% proven false positives, combined with a relentless 24/7 fear campaign, was able to create a worldwide panic-laden “plandemic”; that this plandemic would never have been possible without the infamous DNA-modifying Polymerase Chain Reaction test – which to this day is being pushed on a majority of innocent people who have no clue. His conclusions are evidenced by renown scientists. —Peter Koenig
Professor Chossudovsky exposes the truth that “there is no causal relationship between the virus and economic variables.” In other words, it was not COVID-19 but, rather, the deliberate implementation of the illogical, scientifically baseless lockdowns that caused the shutdown of the global economy. –David Skripac
A reading of Chossudovsky’s book provides a comprehensive lesson in how there is a global coup d’état under way called “The Great Reset” that if not resisted and defeated by freedom loving people everywhere will result in a dystopian future not yet imagined. Pass on this free gift from Professor Chossudovsky before it’s too late. You will not find so much valuable information and analysis in one place. –Edward Curtin
ISBN: 978-0-9879389-3-0, Year: 2022, PDF Ebook, Pages: 164, 15 Chapters
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Driving Vice President-elect Kamala Harris by an undetected bomb. Refusing extra resources for a presidential candidate. Admitting an agent on a White House detail assaulted her supervisor.
Long before the attempted assassination of former President Donald Trump on Saturday night such focused a harsh light on the Secret Service, the presidential security agency was already facing difficult questions about its capability, training, recruitment and emphasis on diversity.
Secret Service agents reportedly were even circulating a petition raising questions about their management a few weeks ago.
Those questions are now certain to receive intense new attention after video footage showed a gunman on was able to scale a building less than 200 yards from Trump, get to a shooting perch with a rifle and fire several rounds before being neutralized by a Secret Service sniper team at the event Saturday night in Butler, Pennsylvania.
Several witnesses said they started to yell the man had a gun before he started shooting. And several lawmakers say they are now investigating reports that the Trump campaign had requested additional security resources recently, and was turned down.
“How could you have somebody on the rooftop?” House Majority Leader Steve Scalise, himself a victim of political violence when he was seriously wounded at a congressional baseball practice. “There are reports that people watched him climb up the roof and even alerted authorities, and we’re going to be looking into that.”
How could that happen with all the authorities around that they miss something so clear that the shooter was able to get that kind of line of sight just 150 yards away from the stage?”
House Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer on Saturday night demanded the Secret Service provide Congress immediate answers as to how it failed to stop the assassination attempt.
Comer announced just hours after Trump survived the attack that he would be demanding testimony from the head of the Secret Service as well as documents and other evidence.
”I have already contacted the Secret Service for a briefing and am also calling on Secret Service Director Kimberly Cheatle to appear for a hearing,” he said on X. “The Oversight Committee will send a formal invitation soon. There are many questions and Americans demand answers.”
Criticism of the Secret Service spread quickly on social media – from X owner Elon Musk to members of Congress. Several urged Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mallorca to reconsider his denial of Secret Service resources for third-party presidential candidate Robert F Kennedy Jr.
“Extreme incompetence or it was deliberate. Either way, the SS leadership must resign,” Musk wrote.
Democrats also are likely to face new questions after Rep. Benny Thompson sought to end Trump‘s Secret Service protection recently and President Joe Biden reportedly told donors in recent days it was time to put a “bullseye” over his Republican rival.
Back in May, Congress requested a briefing with the Secret Service, after several incidents allegedly raised internal concerns over the quality of its trainings.
A petition within the Secret Service has reportedly been circulating because of the incidents and called for a congressional investigation into the agency, according to Comer.
One incident saw a Secret Service agent assigned to Vice President Kamala Harris allegedly attack her superior and other agents. The unnamed agent also exhibited other “concerning” behavior, according to her colleagues.
Comer mentioned the incident in a letter to Secret Service Director Kimberly Cheatle and asked for a briefing on how the Secret Service is responding to the allegations of “inadequate training.”
“This incident raised concerns within the agency about the hiring and screening process for this agent,” Comer wrote in his letter. “Specifically [concerns] whether previous incidents in her work history were overlooked during the hiring process as years of staff shortages had led the agency to lower once stricter standards as part of a diversity, equity and inclusion effort.”
Comer also flagged concerns from the petition related to a “double standard in disciplinary actions, and a vulnerability ‘to potential insider threats’ that could pose a risk to U.S. national security.”
The letter requests the briefing by June 13, and cites “potential vulnerabilities” that could keep the Secret Service from “fulfilling its mission to ensure the safety and security of its protectees,” including the president, vice president, and their families.
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Days before the attempted assassination of Donald Trump, President Joe Biden publicly declared that “it’s time to put a bullseye on Trump.” While Biden clearly wasn’t openly calling for the assassination of Trump, words have meaning. And at a time when heated rhetoric can fuel political violence, everyone—including the President and former President—need to weigh their words carefully.
In David Cronenberg’s 1983 film, The Dead Zone (based upon a novel written by Stephen King), Christopher Walken plays a schoolteacher named Johnny Smith who, after nearly dying in an accident, awakens from a coma possessed with psychic powers—an ability to see into the future. This new power turns into a curse after Smith shakes the hand of Greg Stillson, a populist third-party candidate for the US Senate, played by Martin Sheen. Smith has a vision of Stillson becoming president and ordering a nuclear strike against the USSR. Smith confers with his neurologist/therapist, Dr. Sam Weizak (played by Herbert Lom), who is cognizant of Smith’s psychic power. Weizak postulates the question, “What would you do if you could go back in time and kill Adolf Hitler?” before he committed his many atrocities. After pondering this question, Smith decides that the only course of action left to him is to assassinate Stillson before he becomes president.
I don’t know what motivated Thomas Matthew Crooks, the 20-year-old Pennsylvania resident whom authorities have named as the person who fired the shots that wounded former President Donald Trump and two bystanders, and killed another innocent bystander, before himself being killed by the Secret Service. There will presumably be a very thorough investigation into this criminal act of political violence.
What I do know is that the rhetoric which had superheated the American political scene in the months, weeks and days leading up to the attempted assassination at a pro-Trump political rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, mirrored in tone, content, and purpose the advice Dr. Weizack gave to Johnny Smith about how best to deal with the threat posed by the potential election of Greg Stillson.
The perpetrators of this rhetorical lambasting populate the entire spectrum of societal influence and control, from the President of the United States, Joe Biden, to the former Speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi, to numerous Senators and Representatives in the US Congress, to various pundits, experts, and analysts who provide commentary on political events for the mainstream media, and to their respective echo chambers and independent content creators on social media.
All are complicit in the attempted assassination, just as Dr. Weizack was complicit in the crime planned by Johnny Smith. The difference between Weizack and these modern conspirators, however, is that one event takes place as part of a fictional narrative, and the other as part of a national reality.
Image: A defiant Donald Trump following the failed attempt on his life
President Biden has emerged as the principal voice among the crowd of politicians, pundits, and politicized activists who have been defining former President Donald Trump as an existential threat to American democracy, and America itself.
Just to be clear (because words do matter), an existential threat is a threat to something’s very existence—when the continued being of something is at stake or in danger.
It is, literally, about life and death.
This apocalyptic description has now been attached to any supporter of Donald Trump (reviled by Biden as “MAGA”, the acronym for “Make American Great Again”, the rallying cry of the pro-Trump movement).
Perhaps Biden and his supporters forgot that Trump pulled in some 74 million votes in 2020—about 47% of the participating electorate. There is no more certain way to incite a literal Civil War than to label one half of the country as an existential threat that must be neutralized come hell or high water.
“I believe in free and fair elections and peaceful transfer of power,” Biden proclaimed at an Arizona election event in September 2023. “I believe there’s no place in America—none, none, none—for political violence,” Biden said.
If only he had remained on script.
“There’s something dangerous happening in America now,” Biden at the same event. “There’s an extremist movement that does not share the basic beliefs of our democracy: The MAGA movement.”
Later, in December 2023, Biden went further.
“Donald Trump and his MAGA Republicans are determined to destroy American democracy,” Biden declared. “We cannot let him win.”
Speaking on the occasion of the 80th anniversary of the Normandy landings, Biden invoked the imagery of war when speaking about defending American democracy.
“American democracy asks the hardest things: to believe that we’re part of something bigger than ourselves,” Biden said. “So, democracy begins with each of us.”
As Biden spoke, his campaign released a video which declared,
“There is nothing more sacred than our democracy. But Donald Trump’s ready to burn it all down.”
Biden literally invoked the struggle against Hitler as being synonymous with his struggle against Trump and the MAGA Republicans.
Biden speaking in Arizona in September 2023
A day before the attempted assassination of Donald Trump, Biden, speaking in Michigan, announced that the gloves were coming off.
“We’re going to say who he is, what he intends to do. Folks, Donald Trump is a convicted criminal.” Biden later declared that “Most importantly, and I mean this from the bottom of my heart, Trump is a threat to this nation.”
Donald Trump is no more a threat to the United States than Joe Biden.
Each articulates policies the other finds reprehensible.
But these policies must pass through the gauntlet of constitutional processes before becoming policy.
And, when speaking of the United States, it is these very processes that give us the right to call ourselves a Constitutional Republic.
There is nothing undemocratic about having differences of opinion.
That is what elections are all about.
But there is something inherently unconstitutional in promoting political violence by converting these political differences into articulations of existential gravitas, where literal life and death outcomes hinge on who prevails in an election.
By labeling Donald Trump as a threat to America, Joe Biden was—literally—saying that to preserve America, this threat must be eliminated.
This is not an extreme interpretation of how Biden’s words can be construed by those inclined to believe Donald Trump is a danger to the Republic. The actress Lea DeLaria, who appears in the popular television drama, Orange Is the New Black, recently uploaded a video to her Instagram channel.
“Joe,” DeLaria declared (referring to the current President of the United States), “you’re a reasonable man. You don’t want to do this. But here’s the reality: This is a fucking war. This is a war now, and we are fighting for our fucking country. And these assholes are going to take it away. They’re going to take it away. Thank you, [Supreme Court Justice] Clarence ‘Uncle’ Thomas. Joe, you now have the right to take that bitch Trump out. Take him out, Joe. If he was Hitler, and this was 1940, would you take him out? Well, he is Hitler. And this is 1940. Take him the fuck out!”
As Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes noted in a landmark 1919 decision regarding the First Amendment of the US Constitution, free speech does not give one the right to shout “fire” in a crowded movie theater.
Nor should it empower anyone, from the President on down to radical personalities such as Lea DeLaria, the right to incite political violence—especially against a former US President who aspires—not without reasonable justification—to be the next President of the United States.
Threatening the president of the United States is a federal felony under United States Code Title 18, Section 871. The law prohibits anyone from making “any threat to take the life of, to kidnap, or to inflict great bodily harm upon the president of the United States.” The law also includes presidential candidates, vice presidents, and former presidents. The Secret Service is responsible for investigating suspected violations of this law.
The Secret Service needs to pay Lea DeLaria a visit. So does the FBI. She should be detained, questioned and charged appropriately.
Lea DeLaria (left), Jacquline Marsaw (right)
So, too, should anyone who articulates in favor of political violence against Donald Trump or Joe Biden. This includes US Congressman Bennie Thompson, who has openly called for Donald Trump to be stripped of his Secret Service protection if sentenced to prison, holding that prison authorities would be responsible for the protection of Trump.
Ask Jeffrey Epstein how that worked out.
And, just to prove the point that Bennie Thompson’s intention behind his proposed legislation wasn’t driven by pure legislative motive, enter, stage right, Thompson’s Field Director, Jacqueline Marsaw, who posted on her Facebook page the following comment: “I don’t condone violence but please get you some shooting lessons so you don’t miss next time oops that wasn’t me saying that.”
But it was Jacqueline Marsaw that said it. Her subsequent removal of the post doesn’t erase the deed.
And she should be held accountable.
So, too, should everyone who articulates actual violence as a solution to the issues that divide the nation when it comes to presidential politics.
I don’t take these matters lightly. On March 21, 1981, I was in the Student Union of Franklin and Marshall College checking my mail when the news broke about the attempted assassination of President Reagan. “I hope he dies,” one of my fellow students announced, after watching the shooting on a television located in the common area.
The attempted assassination of President Reagan, March 1981
I immediately put him up against the wall and told him I took violent exception to his support for the attempted assassination of my commander in chief (I was fresh out of the Army at that time).
My antics earned me a trip to the Dean of Student Affairs, who informed me (I was a newly arrived Freshman) that I would probably be expelled from college.
“We don’t tolerate acts of violence among students,” the Dean said.
“But you do tolerate the promotion of the political assassination of the President of the United States,” I retorted. “I’m curious what the Secret Service would think about that.”
The Dean thought on my words, and the incident was resolved by having me apologize to the student in question for roughing him up, and the student apologizing for his “insensitive” comments about President Reagan.
Today I made the decision to suspend the chatroom associated with my Telegram channel. This suspension will last 24 hours.
I made the decision after participants commented in response to a post I made about the attempted assassination.
The post was as follows:
The attempted assassination of former President Trump underscores the extraordinarily precarious situation America finds itself in at this point in time in history.
Political violence is tragically not unknown in America—the assassination and attempted assassination of American Presidents is a sad reality of the American experience.
That an estranged citizen would convert his personal demons into an action designed to end the life of the person he blamed for what haunts him is sadly a byproduct of a society conditioned to accept violence as a means of resolving disputes, regardless of the underlying legality of the action. The Second Amendment, and the Supreme Court’s current interpretation of its articulation and implementation, is the living manifestation of this reality.
But America has never before experienced a situation where the political environment itself has contributed so heavily to an atmosphere where political violence is openly advocated by a sitting President and his political party.
The depiction of Donald Trump by President Joe Biden as a criminal who represents a direct threat not only to democracy but also the existential survival of the American Republic creates a causal linkage that leads inevitably to the attempted assassination. Biden’s words have been echoed by the Democratic Party and anti-Trump activists on mainstream and social media in such a fashion that it constitutes a veritable green lighting of political violence against the former President.
At a time when the American people and nation are fundamentally divided on political issues for which it seems there is no middle ground, when these divisions are articulated in stark existential terms, and when the Democratic Party is already being accused—with good reason—of politicizing and weaponizing the apparatus of judicial power to prevent Donald Trump from successfully challenging Joe Biden in the upcoming presidential election, the articulation by Biden and his supporters of Trump as a threat to the survival of the Republic that must be stopped at all costs is little more that an open directive for political violence.
America has never been closer to Civil War at any time since 1861. The assassination of the former President on the orders—perceived or otherwise—of a sitting president and the establishment he directs would likely result in the permanent irreconcilable division of the nation along ideological grounds and lead to massive outbreaks of violence and the potential fracturing of the physical unity of the nation.
We live in a very precarious moment. The fever pitch of political rhetoric must be cooled down immediately. If both sides cannot walk back their respective political passions, then what happened in Bulter Pennsylvania yesterday will become the inevitable norm, and violence, not reason, will become the chosen means of ideological differences.
And if that is the direction America is heading, God help us all.
In response to this post, several chat participants posted content which endorsed political violence in American, to include the attempted assassination of Donald Trump.
You can’t shout “fire” in a crowded theater.
And you can’t advocate for the assassination of a candidate for the presidency of the United States.
Not in my chat.
And not in my America.
Postscript (movie spoiler alert):
Johnny Smith doesn’t shoot Gregg Stillson. Stillson’s loathsome character is exposed to the public, which rejects him, ending his political career. Therein lies the lesson: let politicians be themselves. And trust the American people to make the right choice. And if your choice doesn’t win, do better next time. Because in America, if we actively participate in the democratic processes that underpin our Constitutional Republic, there will always be a next time.
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Featured image: Christopher Walken, as Johnny Smith, draws a bead on Martin Sheen’s Greg Stillson in The Dead Zone / All images in this article are from the author unless otherwise stated
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Although perfectly healthy, Saba had a severe and life changing reaction to a 2010 flu vaccine at age 11 months.
She suffered severe brain damage and multi-organ failure. Saba has been diagnosed as having cerebral palsy from an acquired brain injury. Saba required and will continue to require intensive rehabilitation for the rest of her life.
“We had a perfect pregnancy with Saba and an easy natural birth. Saba was a very healthy little girl who had a loving, cheeky & strong-willed personality.
Saba has been diagnosed now as having cerebral palsy from an Acquired Brain Injury caused by the flu vaccination (‘Flu-vax’ by CSL). She is a spastic quadriplegia (GMSCF level 5 – the worst) has epilepsy and respiratory weakness.
We are reminding you to be INFORMED and do your research before you make the decision to vaccinate your children with ‘any’ form of vaccine ~ Saba’s Parents
This could have been prevented.
The West Australian Health Department knew that there had been some terrible adverse reactions to the flu vaccine cc, particularly in children, but didn’t issue a warning.
The flu program continued for two more days. Parents continued to vaccinate their children, unaware of the permanent damage it had caused to Saba and dozens of other children. Fluvax is now banned for children under the age of five in Australia after hundreds of children suffered from adverse reactions in 2010. See this.
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Settlement for Saba Button, Severely Disabled After Flu Vaccine
Saba Button with her parents Kirsten and Mick in 2011.(ABC News)
The family of a West Australian child left severely disabled after receiving a flu jab has reached a settlement with the vaccine’s manufacturer and the State Government.
Saba Button suffered brain and organ damage after getting the Fluvax shot when she was 11 months old in 2010.
Her parents launched legal action in the Federal Court against the vaccine’s manufacturer, CSL Limited.
CSL cross-claimed against the State of WA and the Health Minister.
All parties have reached a confidential settlement which has today been accepted by Federal Court Justice Michael Barker.
…
Her mother Kirsten Button said she was relieved the legal action had been finalised.
“It doesn’t matter how much you have because you can’t buy your health but it is a good outcome, and the fact that it’s settled, we’re quite a strong family and we have moved forward but I think having that hanging over your head as such can be stressful so now we can move forward knowing that it’s all over.”
Mr Button said the funds would help Saba continue ongoing therapy and explore new options both in Australia and overseas.
“This doesn’t just stop now, once all the cameras are gone, it’s back to business and we’ve got a lot to do with Saba,” he said.
Problems with flu vaccine sparked national ban
In his judgement, Justice Barker said Saba had suffered hypoxic brain injury and consequential, severe disabilities.
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Her disabilities are profound and permanent. She will require constant care for the remainder of her life.
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Hundreds of children suffered adverse reactions after they were given the flu shot in 2010 with many of them taken to hospital.
It led to an Australia-wide suspension of the vaccination for children under five.
Authorities were criticised for not acting quickly enough to advise GPs of the problems or identifying that there was an issue.
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Dr. William Makis is a Canadian physician with expertise in Radiology, Oncology and Immunology. Governor General’s Medal, University of Toronto Scholar. Author of 100+ peer-reviewed medical publications.
As I have observed in previous columns, our era in the United States is frequently beset with incidents characterized by a catastrophic loss of competence. Decades of procedural knowledge seem to vanish from one day to the next, leaving sensible people wondering how it could possibly happen.
Trump’s security guards immediately killed the shooter, no attempt whatsoever to arrest him, so he could NOT be put on trial. There is no trace and Thomas can no longer talk about his possible motives, what may have prompted his shooting, whether he acted alone or in a team or whether he was in one way or another prepared for the assault – if so, by whom. He was silenced.
NATO held a summit in Washington from July 9 to 11 to celebrate its 75th anniversary and discuss strategies for dealing with the current global issues. Instead of reaching any consensus on making meaningful changes to improve global security and advance diplomacy, Western states focused only on thinking of ways to continue the war, despite the disadvantageous conditions for the alliance.
One thing that should be completely clear is that the United States gets absolutely nothing out of the relationship with Israel, which all flows in only one direction to the tune of what probably amounts to more than a billion dollars a month if all the extras and the inevitable fraud are taken into account.
There is a period of history that the US Secret Service can learn from and that is from the Dirección General de Inteligencia (DGI) or Cuban Intelligence that protected Cuba’s Fidel Castro for many years from the US government, namely, the CIA. You may ask, what can the US Secret Service learn from Cuban Intelligence?
Concluding his opening remarks, Biden handed over to Zelenskiy with the words: “Now I want to hand it over to the president of Ukraine, who has as much courage as he has determination.” “Ladies and gentlemen, President Putin!”
As a nation, the United States, as if we did not already know, is convulsed. Paranoid and divided, giddy with conspiracy and deranged by a fear of totalitarian seizure, hyper partisan and hostile to debate and any loose definition of facts (this condition afflicts the entire political spectrum), the only thing missing so far was this: an assassination attempt on a presidential candidate.
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NATO held a summit in Washington from July 9 to 11 to celebrate its 75th anniversary and discuss strategies for dealing with the current global issues. Instead of reaching any consensus on making meaningful changes to improve global security and advance diplomacy, Western states focused only on thinking of ways to continue the war, despite the disadvantageous conditions for the alliance.
Under the current circumstances, there is little that NATO can do to escalate the war against Russia. The alliance is already sending to the Kiev regime all possible types of weapons, except nuclear ones, as well as a large number of mercenaries. In practice, a further escalation of hostilities would be an extremely dangerous scenario, and could even reach the level of open global war. However, the bloc does not seem interested in de-escalating and starting diplomatic talks. Instead, NATO’s internal negotiations are being advanced to further worsen the crisis.
For example, during the summit in Washington, US officials promised to deploy new long-range missiles to Germany as part of a “preparation” for the event of open war in Europe. The US plans to use German territory as an important operational hub in case of hostilities against Russia, which is why from 2026 on many advanced missile systems will start to be placed in German strategic areas.
The alliance has not only promised to strengthen its positions in member countries, but has also made it clear that expansion of the bloc remains a possibility. Despite constant Russian calls for NATO to stop expanding, the group appears to have little interest in any kind of diplomatic dialogue. In a joint statement, the countries announced their intention to grant membership to countries in the Western Balkans region. In addition, it was stated that the Black Sea – a key region of Russia’s strategic environment – is one of NATO’s points of greatest interest, suggesting that an expansion of maritime activities in that area may be about to happen.
“The Western Balkans and the Black Sea regions are of strategic importance for the alliance. [We promise to help] counter malign influence, including disinformation, hybrid, and cyber threats, posed by both state and non-state actors (…) NATO supports the Euro-Atlantic aspirations of interested countries in this region,” the statement reads.
It is important to emphasize that any expansion into the Black Sea could cause a serious crisis in the current context. The conflict in Ukraine already forces Russia to maintain constant military activities in the Black Sea. In addition, NATO has been illegally providing intelligence and geolocation data to Kiev’s forces through Western drones that are circulating in the Black Sea region. This data has been vital for Ukraine to plan terrorist attacks against fully demilitarized Russian cities, which is leading Moscow’s patience to gradually run out. If NATO decides to promote further expansion into the Black Sea, it is possible that the escalation of the conflict will reach a point of no return.
A map showing the location of the Black Sea and some of the large or prominent ports around it. The Sea of Azov and Sea of Marmara are also labelled. (Licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0)
Russia was not the only target of NATO’s war plans. China was also heavily targeted by NATO strategists during the event in Washington. Delegations from member countries accused China of being an important “enabler” of Russian military actions. According to Western logic, if a country maintains diplomatic and trade relations with Russia, it automatically becomes a co-participant in the hostilities in Ukraine and should therefore be punished, sanctioned and isolated.
Beijing has never supplied weapons to Russia – both because it is not part of Chinese foreign policy to participate in conflicts and because Moscow is strong enough to face its enemies alone, without needing external help. Instead of being interested in conflicts, China is focused on maintaining strategic and mutually beneficial trade ties that generate profits for both sides and gains for ordinary people. This is why Russians and Chinese are increasingly engaged in cooperation projects, with the alliance between the two countries not being a military pact.
The reason why the Russian-Chinese partnership is causing fear in NATO is simple: Moscow and Beijing are rivals of American hegemony and publicly advocate for the reconfiguration of the geopolitical order. For the Atlantic alliance, this is a reason to go to war – which is why Ukraine is already being used as a proxy and tensions in the Pacific are getting worse. The only thing that became clear after the Washington summit is that, even weakened, NATO will not give up its war plans.
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This article was originally published on InfoBrics.
Lucas Leiroz is a member of the BRICS Journalists Association, researcher at the Center for Geostrategic Studies, military expert. He is a regular contributor to Global Research. You can follow Lucas on X (formerly Twitter) and Telegram.
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Diana Johnstone’s just published book, Circle in the Darkness: Memoir of a World Watcher, is the best book I have ever read, the most revealing, the most accurate, the most truthful, the most moral and humane, the most sincere and heartfelt, and the best written.Her book is far more than a memoir.It is a history that has not previously been written.If you want the truth of the last 60 years in place of the contrived reality constructed for us by controlled explanations, it is in this book.
This book is so extraordinary in its truthfulness and conciseness that it is difficult for a less gifted writer to do it justice.It is a book without a superfluous sentence.
Herein I will provide some of the books message.In future columns I hope to present some of the history in the book.
In the Western World the legitimate national interest of people has become identified with racism and fascism.Corporate globalism requires open borders, and the left has aligned with globalism and has become the most zealous enforcer of open borders, which has come to mean the right of refugees with victim status to other peoples’ countries.The left has abandoned the working class and anti-war activity.Today the left is pro-war in order to enforce “human rights” on alleged dictators by bombing their peoples into oblivion, thus producing refugees and tag along opportunistic immigrants that flock to the Western aggressor nations.
Image is from Zero Hedge
Self-styled moral censors, such as Antifa, denounce hate while violently hating those they denounce. Everything is settled by controlled explanations that cannot be questioned or examined in debate.Those who engage in critical free thinking are censored, shouted down, beaten up, fired, and cancelled.The cancel culture permits no debate, only enthusiastic acquiesce to explanations that have been settled in advance.
Antifa by shutting down open debate actually serves to protect the authoritarian center consisting of “the Clintonian Democratic Party, mainstream media, the military industrial complex and globalized neoliberal finance capital.”Antifa turns the left into a support group for the authoritarian center.
In the European Union’s so-called constitution, private corporate interests take precedence over—indeed do not permit—the socialized elements of European mixed economies that made the societies livable communities. Today people are sacrificed to the greed of the global elite as social services are curtailed and privatized.
In the “Western democracies,” democracy–that is, rule by the people and a rule of law– has been extinguished. European peoples were forced into the European Union at the expense of their national sovereignty despite having voted down EU membership.The French people voted 54.7% against EU membership and 45.3% for.The Dutch people voted 61% against the EU and 39% for.Faced with an unacceptable democratic outcome, the ruling elites removed the question from the people by turning EU membership into a “treaty” that could be signed by governments without input from the peoples.When the French Constitutional Court ruled that the “treaty” was contrary to the French Constitution, the French Constitution was changed to accommodate the “treaty.”Only the Irish government gave the people a choice by putting the “treaty” to a referendum, and the people rejected it. Chastised for allowing the people to decide their own fate, the Irish government collapsed under elite pressure and after a period of intense propaganda in favor of the “treaty” forced it through on a second referendum.The Western “democratic” media were principal agents of the elite in stripping European peoples of any control over how they are governed.
In the West lies and orchestrated deceit have replaced truth in government and media. Instead of spreading facts and mutual understanding, media have deceived the public in order to gain support for unjustifiable wars.Deceit “reached an extravagant new peak of danger with the campaign of calumny against Russia” culminating in the preposterous charge investigated by a “special prosecutor” that Hillary Clinton’s defeat was caused by a Putin/Trump plot involving Russian interference in the US presidential election.
Image: A US government propaganda poster from the 1940s (Source: Multipolarista)
“Western values” are constantly invoked, but what are these values?They are not the values that made the West what it is, or rather was.These values are rejected.Free speech is out if it challenges official explanations whether the government’s or the left’s or uses any words that can be misrepresented as “hate speech.”Democracy is out as demonstrated by the anti-democratic formation of the European Union. Truth is out as it is “offensive.”Rational inquiry is regarded as denial of emotion-based proclamations.It goes on and on.Diana Johnstone notes that government repression is most significant not against violent acts of rebellion but against Julian Assange for exercising press freedom to convey information to the public.
Where does this leave us?We have the West against the world, the West against itself, and the people against themselves.Washington is unable “to view the world other than as a field for exercising US ‘leadership,’ and all who balk are considered deadly enemies.”The diplomacy of the US and its NATO vassals consists of dropping sanctions and bombs on those who refuse to submit to Washington’s will, while the West itself dissolves into “diversity” and the mutual hatred of Identity Politics, which has progressed to the point that the transgendered are busy at work hating feminists. Diana Johnstone puts it best:
“When individuals are bunched into groups assigned intrinsic qualities—from victimhood to racism—normal human ties of mutual concern, shared purpose, comprehension and compassion are severed. In a grotesque development, new gender identities are invented, whose ‘cause’ overshadows the real problems of genuinely disadvantaged people. Economic issues are forgotten as groups mobilize solely to police attitudes.Billionaires prosper more than ever before, while down below people bicker over safe spaces and toilet use.”
Hubris has destroyed humanity:
“The countries of the Western world are in a state of schizophrenic overconfidence and self-doubt. Their leaders persist in proclaiming ‘our values’ as the model for the rest of humanity, while their own people are increasingly divided and disillusioned.
“The 18th century was the century of the liberated mind. The 19th century was the century of Great Men. The 20th century was the century of the common man. And the 21st century’s looks like it may become a negation of all of them. The century of nobody at all.
“Irrationality and censorship restore chains to thought. Great Men are only statues to be demolished. The common man, once hailed as the hero of a radiant future, has been degraded to a superfluous nuisance, probably racist and homophobic. Ordinary folks have been reassigned from the glorious concept of ‘the people’ to their derogatory redefinition under the rubric of populism’ [and Trump deplorables].
People are reduced to ‘consumers,’ while being told that by consuming, they are destroying the planet. Identity Politics has not only turned people against each other by group, but its late manifestation, Vegan speciesism, even turns people against people altogether, for being an overprivileged life form.”
What will our future be? Currently we live in a dystopia of deceit. But the failure of our leaders to deal adequately with a health crisis and their hostility to an economic system that serves people rather than the wealth of elites are marking the Western world as a massive failure. Will realization of this failure cause the people to revolt as the Yellow Vests have, or will it break the people and further diminish them?
As we are confined at home in an effort to avoid infection and to limit the spread of infection, now is a good time to read a clear explanation of what has happened to us in our time, assess the failures that have undermined our existence as a united and free people, and prepare for reconstructing a livable and humane society.
Diana Johnstone’s book is available from Clarity Press.
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Paul Craig Roberts is a renowned author and academic, chairman of The Institute for Political Economy where this article was originally published. Dr. Roberts was previously associate editor and columnist for The Wall Street Journal. He was Assistant Secretary of the Treasury for Economic Policy during the Reagan Administration. He is a regular contributor to Global Research.
“Diana Johnstone spent over half a century chronicling contemporary history from the Cold War to the rise of groups such as Antifa. Her memoir, Circle in the Darkness, is not only a fascinating window into a contemporary event, but also a blistering attack on the Left, which she argues, correctly, betrayed its historical role as a champion of social justice and peace, replacing it with the boutique activism of identity politics, political correctness, and what has become known as humanitarian intervention.” —CHRIS HEDGES
” … fiercely courageous and independent reporting, historical analysis, and activism … With her eyes on the prize, Diana Johnstone has stayed the course to oppose U.S. and Western aggression, using her critical skills to expose endless horror and insisting that a truthful understanding of historical events remains a necessary tool against murder and illegality. We are deeply indebted to her.” —JOHN MARCIANO, Monthly Review.
“Diana Johnstone’s just published book, Circle in the Darkness: Memoir of a World Watcher, is the best book I have ever read, the most revealing, the most accurate, the most truthful, the most moral and humane, the most sincere and heartfelt, and the best written.Her book is far more than a memoir.It is a history that has not previously been written.” —PAUL CRAIG ROBERTS
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The following three sets of international treaties for arms control, disarmament, the control of emerging technologies, and international security are absolutely essential to reverse the covert drive for war, even world war, that is taking place at every level in human society, that has accelerated over the last twenty years, and has spun out of control over the last eight months. The current drive for war, and the destruction of all government institutions in the United States make world war inevitable if we cannot formulate a viable alternative now.
Although these treaties cannot be realized overnight, and cannot be enacted by a Congress in the United States that is led by shills for private equity, pawns for billionaires, operatives for Israeli private intelligence, and consultants for weapons contractors, the decision to promulgate a serious proposal for meaningful arms control and disarmament treaties has tremendous value in that it offers a roadmap forward to those who have been discouraged by the vain and self-serving blather of cardboard messiahs and the prattle of limited-hangout “truth tellers” who refuse to face the truth about world war.
Demanding the drafting and signing of such treaties, including mutual inspection regimes, as opposed to globalist conniving, or the destructive fiction of isolationism which suggests that we can simply withdraw into our shells, will be a transformative act for us and we will find allies where we least expected them to be when we embrace true internationalism, grounded in sovereign rights and opposed to globalism, either in its pure narcissistic form, or disguised as nationalism.
Before we present a solution, it is critical that we firmly, and unambiguously, condemn the efforts of certain public intellectuals to denounce all efforts of the United Nations, and before the United Nations, the League of Nations, to establish treaties, guidelines, and norms to regulate the military and to promote arms control and disarmament.
Although the United Nations, the League of Nations, and Hague Conventions before, did not realize their full potential, and they all included some corrupt elements, it is simply not true that they were the tools the globalists, or a plot by the banks to establish one world government. International institutions are essential and that fact that current international organizations are the pawns of the rich does not mean that true international institutions cannot be established again in the future.
The United Nations and the League of Nations served as a critical platform for the establishment of international policies for peace and cooperation, and they developed sophisticated practices to promote disarmament, prohibit war crimes, and encourage diplomacy that made a difference.
It was the “globalists” who worked hard to keep the League of Nations and the United Nations from reaching their full potential because both these institutions offered a vision for peace and international cooperation that undermined their financial plots.
The infection of the United Nations by global finance and the Gates Foundation (and other such catspaws of billionaires) is a consequence of the extreme power of money in the current political economy, and the decay of ideology. Today, the wealthy employ the very institutions that were developed for promoting world peace as weapons against the citizens so as to promote and justify militarization as a way of generating financially beneficial consumption.
We need international institutions that serve the people and that can only be achieved if the nations that participate in them are run in a participatory manner so that money does not determine policy. We must fight at the local level to guarantee transparency and the rule of law and that will allow us to establish meaningful treaties. If national governments are run by multinational corporations, there will be no meaningful international treaties.
It is mistaken to assume that arms control treaties are not possible, or not enforceable. They have worked in the past and they are the only effective way to protect ourselves.
History shows that it is possible for nations to create a civil service that works for the people in a transparent and accountable manner, and limits the power of the rich, granted the innate limitations of human nature.
It is possible to sign binding treaties on weapons that include inspection regimes, to limit, and then eliminate most dangerous weapons. It is possible for the United States to accept and embrace invasive inspection regimes that address directly its corrupt and decadent military industrial complex. It is not an issue of law, or of science, but rather of will.
International treaties for arms control and disarmament, including inspection regimes, are the only thing that can save our sick nation at this point, that can give us a new birth of freedom, and a government of the people, by the people and for the people that shall not perish from the earth.
The proposed treaties and international agreements are arranged in three sets:
Set One: The full implementation of existing treaties and proposals for treaties for arms control and disarmament
Set Two: Proposals for new treaties that address emerging weapons and their proliferation
Set Three: Treaties and agreements that bring the quest for international peace and security up to date
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Set One: The Full Implementation of Existing Treaties and Proposals for Treaties for Arms Control and Disarmament
1) International treaties limiting conventional weapons
The United States will draft and sign robust and enforceable treaties on conventional arms between the major powers that will limit the numbers of tanks, bombers, fighter planes, missiles, warships, conventional artillery, and troop size and that will be enforced through mutual transparent inspection regimes to be honored by all nations of the Earth—starting with the United States. The 1990 Treaty on Conventional Armed Forces in Europe (CFE) will serve a starting point for the negotiations for these treaties that will extend also to missiles and other conventional weapons systems.
The treaties will be linked to concrete steps to take the profit out of weapons sales and to promote peace and international cooperation in a concrete manner around the world by demonstrating to citizens how funding for weapons manufacturers is used as a means to transfer wealth to the elites.
2) Set of international treaties limiting, and the eliminating, nuclear weapons
A comprehensive treaty for the reduction and elimination of nuclear weapons will be drafted and signed by the United States in which it, and the other nuclear powers, fully embrace the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons of 1968. All nations with nuclear weapons, starting with the United States, will follow the imperative for “the cessation of the manufacture of nuclear weapons, the liquidation of all their existing stockpiles, and the elimination from national arsenals of nuclear weapons and the means of their delivery pursuant to a treaty on general and complete disarmament under strict and effective international control” expressed explicitly in the original treaty. Because the realization of this part of the treaty has been criminally overlooked by the United States and other nuclear powers, all attention must be focused on this first step.
As part of that process, the United States and the other nuclear powers will join the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons (TPNW) and start to dismantle their arsenals immediately.
All nuclear weapons will be eliminated within ten years by the United States, and other nations, and the radioactive materials employed within those weapons will be designated as sensitive substances and kept out of the hands of any organization that might use them for a military purpose. The end of the nuclear power system, and the corporate lobby promoting nuclear power and nuclear weapons, must be a part of this process so as to ensure the end of nuclear weapons.
3) Treaty on lethal autonomous weapons systems
The United States will take the United Nations resolution on the Dangers of Lethal Autonomous Weapons Systems (2023) as the basis for a comprehensive international treaty banning the development, sale, and deployment of autonomous weapons systems. The United States will draft and promulgate such a treaty in cooperation with the other nations of the Earth.
4) Ban on Weapons in Space
The United States will draft with the other nations of the Earth a comprehensive treaty banning weapons from space, and strictly regulating the deployment of satellites with military or dual-use functions. The treaty will build on the Outer Space Treaty of 1967 banning weapons of mass destruction in space, this time establishing a binding treaty, supported by mutual inspection regimes, that grows out of the 1981 United Nations resolution “Prevention of an Arms Race in Outer Space.”
Among the measures that will be included in the treaty to end the militarization of space will be the banning of the deployment of satellites, and the launch of cargos into space, by private for-profit corporations, and a ban on the development of space-based weapons.
Armed satellites and spacecraft will be prohibited by the treaty. Other weapons systems that include the use of satellites will be eliminated over the next ten years.
All deployment of satellites in space, or other objects, must be carried out in a completely transparent manner by public monopolies that are accountable to the government and to the international community at every level so as to assure that they have no military functions.
Strict regulations on satellites with possible military/intelligence use will be enforced and the use of satellites to observe the Earth will be subject to careful control regimes that assure that the information cannot be abused using international inspection regimes.
5) Ban on landmines and cluster bombs
The United States will enact a robust international ban on landmines that follows the conventions established by the International Campaign to Ban Landmines, and will join the Convention on Cluster Munitions and enact an international ban on all cluster munitions, including a prohibition on research and development of such inhuman weapons. The ban on landmines and cluster bombs can be covered by a single international treaty.
Set Two: Proposals for New Treaties that Address Emerging Weapons and Their Proliferation
1) Treaty limiting the use of radioactive substances
The full range of dangerous technologies related to radioactive substances and nuclear technologies must be regulated, and eventually eliminated, and the weaponization of radioactivity must be banned, through an international treaty. That treaty will recognize the danger of all radioactive materials, the threat posed by nuclear power for the environment and for health, and the innate linkage of nuclear power to the development of nuclear weapons. The treaty will set up a strict regulation and enforcement regime for nuclear technologies in general that makes them unprofitable so that they cease to serve as opportunities for exploitation and profit.
Weapons such as depleted uranium shells, hybrid nuclear/conventional weapons, and other weapons systems that employ radioactive materials will be prohibited by this treaty. A strict regime for the long-term control of radioactive substances will be established internationally that will permit the use of radioactive materials for medical treatments, and other scientific processes, but strictly regulate that process.
2) Treaty banning nano-weapons
The secret development and deployment of nano-weapons around the world by nation states and multinational corporations is one of the greatest threats we face which must be addressed by an international treaty. Nano-weapons (whether nano-robots, hydrogel, or nano-particles) are being introduced covertly into medicines, foodstuffs, water and the air as weapons that target the health, and the mental well-being of citizens.
Such nano-weapons must be prohibited explicitly by an international treaty demanding that the true nature of current nano-weapons programs be made public (as they are currently developed and deployed in secret) and that nano-robots, nano-particles, and other nano-substances with dual use must be strictly regulated.
3) Treaty regulating drones, robots, and satellites, and banning the most dangerous versions
The United States will lead the establishment of a series of international treaties that severely limit the use of armed drones, robots, and satellites, including the prohibition of the most dangerous of them. The regulations will extend to drones, robots and satellites that have potential dual use.
There must be stringent limits on the use of armed drones, robots and satellites (both autonomous and remote controlled) and also control over the development of potentially dangerous new technologies.
In the future, in order to reduce opportunity for abuse of such technologies, they will be handled exclusively by regulated public monopolies and kept out of the hands of private corporations which stand to profit from their manufacture and deployment.
4) Treaty banning the use of energy weapons
The development of dangerous new energy weapons is highly destabilizing and, because these weapons are effectively unregulated, they are already being employed covertly. The United States will draft and sign with other nations a comprehensive international treaty that bans energy weapons and that will strictly regulate all devices with potential dual-use.
The international treaty will ban directed energy weapons, and prohibit their deployment in space, in the air via airplanes and drones, on tanks, trucks and boats, and elsewhere. The development of the relevant technologies for directed energy weapons will be subject to strict international control conventions, including mutual open inspections.
Other energy weapons currently being developed, including electromagnetic radiation weapons (often disguised using the term 5G), microwave radiation weapons, infrared radiation weapons, terahertz radiation weapons, and other energy weapons currently being developed and deployed must be declassified, made open knowledge, and then subject to strict bans, and or regulations, on development and deployment.
Bans, restrictions, and robust inspection regimes will not be limited to weapons systems, but will also cover dual use technologies (such as 5G or infrared cameras) that can be rendered as a weapon through a turnkey maneuver at any moment.
5) International treaty banning bioweapons
The United States will draft and sign a comprehensive global treaty that bans the development, deployment, and use of bioweapons of a variety of forms (to be determined in negotiations). The term bioweapon refers not only to viruses, bacteria, and other biological materials that have been modified to serve as weapons, but also to weapons innocuously disguised as medicines such as the COVID-19 vaccines. Nano-technologies are also classified in some cases as bioweapons.
The treaty will set in place walls that prevent the weaponization of medical and scientific research. Above all, there will be a clear wall that separates 1) scientific inquiry into the nature of natural phenomena from 2) the development of medications and treatments, from 3) the speculation of private capital, and from 4) the development of weapons and security-related technologies.
6) International treaty banning all weather modification programs
The United States will establish an international treaty banning all programs for weather modification globally and making it a crime to release chemicals (or particles) into the atmosphere aimed at modifying the weather, at contaminating the water or soil, or harming the health of citizens. Such actions will be considered to be acts of war, even if they are supposedly undertaken to fight climate change, and the chemicals, or devices, released will be considered as weapons.
All existing weather modification programs will be immediately declassified and if criminal intent is revealed, legal action will be taken.
The atmosphere belongs to all citizens of the Earth and any effort to contaminate the atmosphere, to affect the climate, or to contaminate the air, the water, or the soil will be seen as a grievous attack on all citizens of the Earth. This treaty will have broad implications for air pollution as well—making it impossible for corporations to pollute the air with impunity.
7) Strict international regulation of GMO technology and ban on GMO weapons
The United States will establish an international treaty banning the use of GMO (genetically modified organisms) plants and animals, as well as weapons that cause the genetic modification of plants, animals, and humans using biological or nanotechnological means. The weaponization of plants, animals, and humans by means of GMO technology as a means of controlling sources of food, destroying biodiversity, and modifying humanity is an act of war, and the GMO technologies thus employed, including vaccines, must be designated as weapons.
This long-term project to establish slavery and subjugation through the use of GMO technologies must be stopped. The United States will create a strict inspection regime to enforce this international treaty, prohibiting the development and use of GMOs, as well as the technologies employed to surreptitiously modify the genetic material of plants and animals.
Set Three: Treaties and Agreements that Bring the Quest for International Peace and Security Up to Date
1) Treaty banning super-computer assisted mass psychological operations
The United States will propose an international treaty banning the use of supercomputers to coordinate mass psychological operations, such as the COVID-19 operation, that employ false narratives, the disruptive stimulation of the brain through advertisements and media, electromagnetic radiation, and other tools so as to induce a hypnotic state or to impede rational thinking by citizens.
The treaty will prohibit the destruction of the capacity of citizens to think for themselves through the use of addictive, repetitious, or mentally degrading stimulation. Such weapons are currently being deployed and employed through the corporate media, educational institutions, the internet, and elsewhere around the world.
The strategy of using supercomputers that run sophisticated algorithms driving international campaigns to dumb down, distract, and delude citizens using a weaponized media-entertainment-education complex must be rightfully identified as a criminal campaign, an act of war, and the tools employed, such as supercomputers and social media algorithms, must be designated as weapons that are potentially even more dangerous than bombs in that they attack the ability of citizens to think independently.
We must develop international regulations on such weapons of psychological manipulation that will be strictly enforced through an international treaty, including inspection regimes for supercomputer banks so that wealthy citizens (and the trusts and corporations that represent them) cannot employ computers that run complex psychological operations to manipulate the entire population of the Earth.
2) Treaty banning the military use of Antarctica, the Artic, the oceans, and other wildlands
The United States will establish an international treaty to ban the military use Antarctica, the Artic, the oceans, and other natural wildlands around the world.
The vast majority of the natural formations of the Earth shall be placed off limits for military activity, and in many cases for commercial exploitation as well.
The United States will strengthen the Antarctic Treaty of 1959 so as to end all military use of Antarctica, starting with the declassification of all current projects that will reveal, and terminate, all of the illegal and unethical uses of Antarctica by the US military, and other militaries, taking place today.
We will establish a similar treaty for the Artic that will ban all military exploitation of that region by all militaries and intelligence agencies of the United States, and other countries. Moreover, we will establish large sections of the oceans and of wildlands (forests, jungles, and mountains) that will be similarly off limits for use by the military, and also off limits for commercial exploitation.
The sea floors will be off limits for military exploitation, and also for commercial exploitation for minerals, gas, and oil. We must protect the ocean for future generations, looking forward for hundreds of years, and not destroy them for the short-term profits of corporations. We will also set substantial restrictions on the use of destructive fishing technologies.
New technologies for digging tunnels under the Earth will be tightly regulated, perhaps in a separate treaty, especially tunnels with military, or dual use, applications. The Earth beneath our feet, and the sky above our head, is the common property of all of humanity that no one has a right to exploit, above all not in a covert manner.
The protection of the natural environment for future generations will be the primary mandate in security discourse in the United States. The role of future militaries will be to protect those natural environments.
3) Ban on secret treaties for diplomatic and security cooperation
The current crimes against humanity taking place around the world, whether rigged up military conflicts, false-flag operations, or covert actions to kill (quickly or slowly) citizens through radiation, false medications, food additives, pesticides, and other weapons would not be possible if not for the presence of a lattice of secret treaties (intelligence agreements and secret corporate-government contracts) that permit such clandestine cooperation in the development and deployment of such weapons between nations, multinational corporations and banks, and international governmental organizations such as the United Nations and the World Bank.
These secret agreements currently overrule the constitutions, local and national laws, as well as the chain of command within the nation state (and in international bodies) in a manner that is illegal, unconstitutional, and unethical.
Secret agreements in the form of non-disclosure agreements for employees, secret contracts, classified directives and national security letters, or secret laws and guidelines issued by nations, global organizations, or private corporations and banks make possible an invisible chain of command that is beyond the reach of the political system and is capable of overruling every organization in the nation.
We will establish an international treaty that will severely limit the use of secret treaties and agreements (including nondisclosure agreements and secret law) between nations, multinational corporations, and international organizations as a means to determine policy and process.
The treaty will require that all existing secret treaties and agreements (whether agreements between governments and governments, or between multinational corporations, intelligence sharing agreements, or other cooperative agreements between governments and private entities) that are illegal or unethical be declassified and made available to the public.
4) Bring the definition of the actors making political and security decisions up to date through a revision of the language of international law and treaties
Efforts to promote diplomacy are hobbled by forced adherence to outdated concepts concerning the actors involved in international relations that are promoted intentionally so as to obscure the true players determining policy.
Citizens, scholars, government officials and politicians currently are forced to speak only in terms of nation states in the discussion of diplomatic and security policy. This practice continues on even though it is self-evident that political decisions are not made by presidents and ambassadors, but rather by private equity and investment banks, multinational corporations, private intelligence and consulting firms, global special interests such as the World Economic Forum, the World Health Organization, and the Gates Foundation, and other opaque and undemocratic institutions that serve the rich and powerful.
The United States will draft and promote an international treaty that lays out clearly who these non-state actors are and how they will be treated in the discussion on international relations and in practice. These institutions are too powerful, and too dangerous, to be permitted to operate at will in secret.
Whereas the term “non-state actors” is employed to refer exclusively to terrorist organizations in current policy debate, the fact is that many non-state actors exist which are not terrorist organizations but that have displaced nation states as the functional unit in international relations—many are involved in planning and carrying out state crimes.
We must extend the use of the term “non-state actor” to include multinational banks, private equity, private trusts, multinational corporations, political consulting and lobbying firms, the private research and PR teams of wealthy individuals and families, and the forest of pay-to-play private intelligence firms. Together, these organizations work to corrupt and subvert the rule of law in nation states and they must be treated as threats, at times as criminal institutions, that are formally named in the discourse on security and international relations and responded to directly.
Their illegal activities, and their manipulation of government policy in nation states through institutionalized bribery, cannot be dismissed as lobbying and consulting, but must be treated explicitly in public discourse on international relations, and in treaties and security agreements, as corruption, as an attack on the nation, and as a tremendous threat to international security.
For example, we will identity the parts of the United States Department of Defense, or of the intelligence community, that no longer serve as part of the United States government due to privatization or infiltration by such non-state actors as private equity and investment banks as “non-state actors.”
When appropriate, we will bring criminal charges against those units responsible for state crimes and strip them of all authority as a government institution. Their members will no longer be permitted to employ clearance to hide their crimes, and all classified documents and non-disclosure agreements related to such criminal syndicates will be made public.
5) International treaty that establishes clear institutional walls domestically and internationally between 1) finance, 2) scientific research, 3) the development and manufacture of weapons, and 4) healthcare and medical treatment
The dangerous merger of finance, science, weapons, and medicine has created deadly alliances for profit between fields that should be inherently autonomous and distinct thus creating to a weaponized medical system that is aimed at the unsuspecting citizen.
The United States will take the lead in drafting a set of international treaties, and domestic laws, that establish clear walls between banks and financial institutions, scientific research institutions and universities, weapons manufacturers, and medical and health care providers that follow the model of the Glass-Steagall Act of 1933 which separated investment and commercial banking so as to avoid dangerous speculation.
Banks will be limited to the cooperative function of serving the needs for finance of individual citizens and prohibited from speculation in scientific research, weapons, or health care. Corporations will be stripped of their unconstitutional powers as “persons” and in many cases closed down in response to their criminal activities over the last twenty years.
Scientific research at institutes and universities will be conducted as an investigation of natural phenomenon, or an effort to provide technologies that improve the lives of citizens in a concrete and unambiguous manner, and that research will be separated from financial speculation, the production of weapons, or any efforts to create profits from medical treatments.
Weapons are necessary at some level in human society, but will be produced only by highly-regulated public monopolies for specific purposes, and the manufacturers must be cut off all ties to financial speculation by banks, and to scientific research in its pure form, and the medical field.
Healthcare and medicine must focus on the wellbeing of citizens, on diet, air and water quality, food quality and nutrition, exercise, long-term health, and treatment of acute injuries and diseases as well as chronic conditions.
Although the government can play a role in supporting healthcare, healthcare must be cut off from the speculation of banks and from the development of biological weapons. Healthcare is intimately connected to scientific research, but it must be at a distance from that process lest citizens become the subjects of research and development themselves, rather than the beneficiaries of effective treatments.
The most important aspect of these treaties will be taking the profit out of speculation in weapons and weapons systems and thus eliminating the incentive for promoting conflict.
A lively debate among experts and citizens on the nature of a healthy financial system, on science and technology, on security, and on healthcare must be conducted in an objective environment that assures that profit plays no role in the assessment of the interests of society.
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This article was originally published on Fear No Evil.
Emanuel Pastreich served as the president of the Asia Institute, a think tank with offices in Washington DC, Seoul, Tokyo and Hanoi. Pastreich also serves as director general of the Institute for Future Urban Environments.
Pastreich declared his candidacy for president of the United States as an independent in February, 2020.
He is a regular contributor to Global Research.
Featured image: Former Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev and U.S. President Ronald Reagan signed a landmark nuclear arms control treaty in 1987. (Photo: White House Photographic Office/National Archives and Records Administration)
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In a recent article discussing how US Treasury Department tax breaks are exploited by groups that raise money in America in support of the Israeli so-called Defense Forces (IDF), I concluded that it does not require any particular brilliance on the part of even a casual observer to realize that both politically and economically Israel and Israelis are not treated like everyone else by governments at various levels in the United States, quite the contrary in many cases.
Nevertheless, some key questions must be asked even at risk of being repetitive about Israel’s clearly privileged status. One must consider how is it possible that organizations that are committed to financially supporting war crimes and even genocide by a foreign nation are allowed to have tax breaks that enable them to collect more money which in turn helps them to corrupt the system that feeds them while also empowering those foreign militaries? How is it possible that the foreign army carrying out the war crimes is also allowed to benefit directly from the US laws that have created exemption from taxation? In short, is there no sense of responsibility and/or consequences on the part of American government when it comes to the behavior of the pariah apartheid Jewish state?
In the event, comments and insights from some readers both on my posting and privately in emails and on Facebook have convinced me that I have greatly understated the case. Those who argue, perhaps somewhat in jest, the Congress is the Knesset West and that both Donald Trump and Joe Biden are in fact Israeli puppets are very close to being on the mark, making Israel and its all-powerful billionaire funded lobby indisputably in control of many key aspects of American government beyond the obviously targeted foreign policy. Combine that with control over the media and entertainment industries that shape the Israeli preferred narrative at all times, and you have a situation where when Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu says “jump” 95% of Congress and everyone in the White House begin hopping. We will no doubt see that in play when the monstrous Netanyahu arrives in Washington to address a joint session of Congress on July 24th. The performing monkeys who will appear on television leaping up and down while cheering Bibi will definitely be something to see, though one hopes that at the same time there will also be a million demonstrators surrounding Capitol Hill calling for the head of the world’s leading war criminal.
One thing that should be completely clear is that the United States gets absolutely nothing out of the relationship with Israel, which all flows in only one direction to the tune of what probably amounts to more than a billion dollars a month if all the extras and the inevitable fraud are taken into account. And that does not even include special donations like the $14 billion recently granted by Congress and President Joe Biden to fund Israel’s never-ending war of extermination against the Palestinians. In my recent piece, I took particular aim at 501(c)(3) non-profits set up in New York City and in Massachusetts which exist to provide funds to the Israeli army. Friends of the Israel Defense Forces (FIDF), based in New York but with twenty branches in the US, boasts on its website that it has provided tens of millions of dollars to the Israeli military. The money contributed is federal income tax exempt and most of the donors are able to write the contributions off on their own federal taxes as an inducement to give. Such non-profits are generally granted that special status through demonstrating that they are religious, charitable or educational. Sending money to the Israeli army satisfies none of those requirements.
Not only does Israel take advantage of a tax break on money coming from groups that are ostensibly US-based, one of my correspondents advised me that the corruption goes far deeper than that, consisting of the fact that 501(c)(3) organizations must be registered through what is referred to as a “domicile.” Most are in the United States but domiciles in Canada and Mexico are also accepted given the economic realities of the North American market. Only one other country has an acceptable domicile and that is, of course, and, inevitably, Israel. In other words, an allowable exemption and the related deductible contribution for US tax purposes, might uniquely consist of US taxpayer money that goes to a charity registered in Israel. As Israeli charities have no reporting requirements vis-à-vis the US Treasury and no mechanism exists to validate their function and activity, they only answer to the government of the state of Israel.
And of course the pandering to Israel includes much more in the way of manipulating the political process to provide benefits to the Jewish state. It has long been a cliché in Washington that any long bill like defense appropriations that passes through the Congress will inevitably have some goodies for Israel inserted in it. Recent and current legislation reflects the perceived need by Congressmen to show the flag, which would be the Star of David rather than the Stars and Stripes, given the Israeli engagement in the military extermination of Palestinians that has no sign of ending as it is entering into its tenth month. The United States is not only funding and arming the Israelis, it is also providing political cover by vetoing nearly every United Nations proposal that would have led to a cease fire accompanied by some kind of exchange of hostages and prisoners. Along the way, no excess by Israel is considered to be too outrageous to require an objection coming from Congress and/or the White House, including Israel’s National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir’s proposal that he would relieve the overcrowding in the prisons with Palestinians who are being held without charges by taking them out and killing them, one pistol shot to the head each. Former defense minister Avigdor Liberman has gone one step farther, calling on his country to use its nuclear weapons to obliterate Iran, presumably with full US approval. Israel has also been charged with killing journalists, humanitarian workers, medical workers including doctors, and torturing and starving Palestinian prisoners, but hey, that all constitutes minor stuff when one is best friends with the “Chosen” in Israel.
Image: Health center operated by the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) in the southern Gaza Strip. UNRWA was established by the General Assembly in 1949 and mandated to provide assistance and protection to some 5.6 million registered Palestine refugees. Photo by United Nations/Flickr.
And there is much more. The International Criminal Court ruling that Israel’s Prime Minister and Defense Minister should be on the receiving end of arrest warrants over war crimes and possible genocide in Gaza was responded to by US Congress with a letter threatening the jurors and their families if the court were to proceed. The US also cut off all funding and even cooperation with the United Nations’ UNRWA which, Israel has declared to be a terrorist organization, but which has been the major source of what food and medicine was actually getting through to Gaza in spite of Israeli efforts to block it. Congress also has moved to ignore any reports coming from the remaining Gazan authorities revealing the casualties resulting from the Israeli bombing and other killing, as if hiding the death toll will make it go away. The respected British medical journal The Lancetis now reporting that as many as 186,000 Gazans might be dead, mostly among the rubble of their homes, uncounted because the Gazan officials who would have performed that task are dead and whole families are wiped out so no one is reported missing. It is a far larger number than the ca. 37,000 that keeps appearing in the western media in an attempt to mitigate what Israel is up to.
And there is also the really petty stuff that surfaces regularly from the pro-Israel message control network. Three Columbia University senior officials have been removed from their positions because of comments and private emails they have written deriding the claims of “surging” antisemitism at colleges. Among the “evidence” was an intercepted message suggesting that a panelist could have used recent campus protests as a fundraising opportunity and another that appeared critical of a campus rabbi’s essay about antisemitism.
The university will also launch a “vigorous” antisemitism and antidiscrimination training program.” Meanwhile a leading New York law firm Sullivan & Cromwell, headed by an Orthodox Jew, is setting up an index that will identify law students who have been demonstrating against Israel, creating a “do not hire” list of the names so they will not be offered employment after graduation. “The firm is scrutinizing students’ behavior with the help of a background check company, looking at their involvement with pro-Palestinian student groups, scouring social media and reviewing news reports and footage from protests. It is looking for explicit instances of antisemitism as well as statements and slogans it has deemed to be ‘triggering’ to Jews.” And then there is Donald Trump using the word “Palestinian” as a slur in his debate with Joe Biden and efforts by politicians like Governor Ron DeSantis to reject the arrival of any refugee Palestinians as immigrants to Florida as they are all “terrorists.” You know, little stuff like that and the efforts at criminalization of free speech if it comes to criticizing either Israeli or Jewish group behavior. You know, minor stuff. Pretty soon we Americans will all be terrorized into dancing to the same tune that Congress and the White House dance to. Then it will be too late.
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This article was originally published on The Unz Review.
Philip M. Giraldi, Ph.D., is Executive Director of the Council for the National Interest, a 501(c)3 tax deductible educational foundation (Federal ID Number #52-1739023) that seeks a more interests-based U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East. Website is councilforthenationalinterest.org, address is P.O. Box 2157, Purcellville VA 20134 and its email is [email protected].
He is a regular contributor to Global Research.
Featured image: US Embassy in Jerusalem. Image: Israel Ministry of Foreign Affairs/ Flickr
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Thomas Matthew Crooks is the identified shooter who tried to murder the future Republican nominee for President, Donald Trump from a rooftop roughly 130 yards away during a rally in Butler, Pennsylvania hitting the former president in the upper part of his right ear while speaking to his supporters. Crooks was eventually killed by secret service agents but only after he fired several rounds at the former president and killing one person and injuring two others in the crowd. It looks like the US Secret Service was either incompetent or in on the assassination plot by letting it happen, that’s the only conclusion that can come out of this incident.
However, many people in the Democratic Party, from politicians, to celebrities to voter’s alike all instigated for someone to kill Trump because he is a “threat” to democracy. Celebrities such as Snoop Dogg whose music video “Lavender” where Trump is dressed as a clown and the rapper points a gun at him and shoots him in the head to comedian Kathy Griffin who back in May 2017, posted a photo of her holding a bloody, decapitated Trump head. The singer Madonna also said that she had “thought an awful lot about blowing up the White House” during a speech at a Women’s March in Washington back in January 2017.
It’s fair to say that these celebrities (most of them are hardcore Democrats) added to the flames of hatred called Trump Derangement Syndrome also known as TDS which many liberals have to this day. These celebrities and some politicians have instigated violence against Trump since he became President in 2016.
But there is a period of history that the US Secret Service can learn from and that is from the Dirección General de Inteligencia (DGI) or Cuban Intelligence that protected Cuba’s Fidel Castro for many years from the US government, namely, the CIA. You may ask, what can the US Secret Service learn from Cuban Intelligence?
Well for starters, the CIA and other intelligence services tried to assassinate Fidel Castro more than 638 times. Yes, 638 times and not once a bullet got close enough to Fidel Castro.
Cuban Intelligence agents led by its director, Fabián Escalante, protected Castro for close to five decades until the Cuban leader died of natural causes at the age of 90. In 2016, The New York Daily News had an interesting article titled, ‘Fidel Castro survived over 600 assassination attempts, Cuban spy chief said’ published what Fabián Escalante, a former director of Cuban Intelligence had said about Castro’s assassination attempts by various US presidents from both sides of the aisle:
Before old age finally took its toll, Cuban dictator Fidel Castro had survived a mob hit, poisoning at the hands of a former flame and cigars dosed with drugs. All told, the revolutionary survived over 600 assassination attempts, Cuban officials boasted.
The U.S. government’s attempts on Castro’s life — who died Friday at the age of 90 — were so frequent that the former director of Cuban intelligence, Fabián Escalante, broke them down by administration: Eisenhower, 38; Kennedy, 42; Johnson, 72; Nixon, 184; Carter, 64; Reagan, 197; Bush Sr., 16; Clinton, 21
Cuban Intelligence agents were obviously competent enough to prevent 638 assassination attempts on the Cuban leader. In fact, Castro once said that “If surviving assassination attempts were an Olympic event, I would win the gold medal.”
Some of the assassination attempts where even so ridiculous that it seemed that the ideas were made for a comedy series on TV including an attempt to get Castro to smoke an explosive cigar to blow his head off or giving him poisoned ice cream in Havana by the Italian mafia who was angry that they got kicked out of Cuba. They even attempted to get Castro to put on a “flesh-eating wetsuit” filled with fungus. That’s how desperate the CIA became to kill the Cuban leader.
According to The Gaurdian, the last known assassination attempt was in 2000,
“As recently as 2000, when Castro was due to visit Panama, a plot was hatched to put 200lb (90kg) of high explosives under the podium where he was due to speak. Castro’s personal security team carried out their own checks before he arrived and foiled the plot.”
The US government, the CIA and the Right-Wing Cubans in Miami tried everything in the book to kill Castro, but it never happened because the Cuban Intelligence agents could protect Castro wherever he went. They were steps ahead of the CIA.
Dirección General de Inteligencia (DGI) has been considered one of the best spy agencies in the world with the ability to identify threats before they happen. The DGI was established in 1961 with the help of the former Soviet Union’s KGB shortly after Castro came to power.
Trump’s security detail failed to access the area for any potential threats. The US Secret Service failed to protect Trump especially against those in the Democratic party who has ruthless insiders like Hillary Clinton who is closely tied to the Deep State. They want Trump gone because he is on the projection to win in a landslide on November 5th and they can’t stand it.
Trump has embarrassed the political establishment especially in the Democratic party and even a handful of politicians from the Republican party with their failed methods of trying to take him out of the elections with what is now called “Lawfare” by prosecuting him in court with numerous made-up charges and it all has failed.
This is not to say that Trump is anti-establishment in any way because in his last administration, he had many people from the deep state as well including his Secretary of State, Mike Pompeo and many others, but that’s besides the point.
The point is that the TDS crowd is still calling for Trump’s head. It’s a dangerous situation and there is still three and a half months before the Presidential elections take place, so put on your seatbelt, it’s going to be a wild and unpredictable ride.
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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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According to the official story, an apparent lone nut, 20 years old Republican named Thomas Matthew Crooks, allegedly fired from a rooftop around 150 meters from the stage, where former President Trump gave a Presidential Campaign address.
One of the bullets brushed Trump’s ear, causing blood spilling over his face but without causing major damage. However, an assistant of Trump’s campaign tour was killed and two spectators gravely injured.
The presumed shooter was shot dead by Secret Service snipers stationed on a different rooftop.
Was Thomas Crooks indeed the shooter?
This is currently being investigated by the FBI.
This happened just two days before the beginning of the Republican Party Convention, on 15 July 2024, in Milwaukee. Coincidence?
Thomas Crooks lived in Bethel Park, a small town also in Pennsylvania, about an hour’s drive south from Butler. Thomas Crooks graduated in 2022 from Bethel Park High School, according to a statement from the Bethel Park School District received by a local ABC affiliate. He was apparently not known to police.
When his dad was contacted by the media and police, he seemed to be shocked, having no idea what happened to his son, a quiet young man, who graduated with honors.
Trump’s security guards immediately killed the shooter, no attempt whatsoever to arrest him, so he could NOT be put on trial. There is no trace and Thomas can no longer talk about his possible motives, what may have prompted his shooting, whether he acted alone or in a team or whether he was in one way or another prepared for the assault – if so, by whom. He was silenced.
Isn’t it typical for this type of assassination attempt or shooting? The alleged murderers are silenced.
No traces, no witnesses, no trial, nobody can talk. Thomas Crooks will be registered as lone nut who committed this atrocious crime.
Wasn’t this the case with the Kennedy Brothers and Dr. Martin Luther King? Until much later, when the truth surfaced, or at least the lie about the “lone nut”. The truth is still not officially out about the JFK killing. But Donald Trump said, when he will be President, he will open the “secret” files and make them available to the public.
There was clearly a major security lapse. No close-by security protection surrounded Trump when he was speaking. The sharpshooters from the rooftops were warned by at least one man that there was a man on a roof with a gun. They did not react. See this from Reuters.
Also see this video clip (1:59 min) with a close-up witness who ran to help Trump.
An eyewitness said in a BBC interview that his alerting the secret security detail, the snipers on the roof, was ignored. This prompted Elon Musk (“X” former Twitter) calling on the leader of the Trump security team to resign.
The head of the Secret Service and the leader of this security detail should resign https://t.co/ihlEC5NP1w
Right now, the news are full with speculations, hearsay and finger-pointing. There are even people, who suggest it may have been a Trump fabricated attempt at himself, so his popularity would increase. This assumption is insane because he could have been killed.
The bullet missed his brain by just a few centimeters.
No doubt, though, Trump’s popularity may increase due to this botched “martyr event”.
However, what nobody ever talks about anymore these days is the science-refined MK-Ultra brain manipulation program designed by DARPA (Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency), a semi-secret Pentagon think-tank, that often works hand-in-hand with the CIA and Mossad – and frequently also with the British MI6.
Vulnerable people are “recruited” by the program. They are told their mission was secret and could not be talked about. During their training, their brains are prepared to react to certain signals, music, specific words, specific noise – or other trigger moments. Then they are told to attend the event where their target is or targets are located. Maybe they are given a weapon to be able to “defend” their target if necessary.
When the “trigger” moment happens, they start shooting at the target. They may not even know what happens to their mind. If they were given a chance to wake up from their trance condition, they might not remember what they did.
This is of course not to say, that this is what happened. Far from it. It is just one more option thrown in the ring for consideration because the MK-Ultra program exists, is alive, and has been used on many instances before.
Who would be interested in “canceling” Donald Trump from the Presidential race – just before the Republican Convention, July 15 to 18, 2024, in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, where Mr. Trump will most likely be nominated as the Republican candidate for the November 5, 2024, Presidential elections?
Mr. Trump has already an almost-landslide lead over Joe Biden, the (still) official candidate of the Democrats.
Earlier this year, Mississippi Rep. Bennie Thompson proposed legislation that would strip this protection from former presidents convicted of felonies, as Trump was in May.
After Saturday’s shooting, one of Thompson’s staffers wrote on Facebook that the shooter should “get some shooting lessons so you don’t miss next time.” Ms. Thomson removed the post, which Republicans called despicable. (RT – 14 July 2024 – see this).
Guessing whose interest is at stake is up to the reader.
Abroad, who might be interested in a true Democrat Party alternative to Biden, a Globalist as new US President? Another Globalist, of course. Someone who may be Zionist / Jewish and in full support of Netanyahu’s killing spree and attempt at establishing Greater Israel – with the Ben Gurion Canal, gradually replacing the Suez Canal, with the foremost petrol riches of the Middle East falling under the control of the Zionists, the same Zionists who also largely control Washington, and by proxy, Brussels, the EU gnomes.
Let us not forget, Donald Trump is not a Globalist. He is a nationalist. He wants a sovereign United States for a sovereign US population. Quite the contrary form what the Dems strive for – a Globalist, One World Order.
Not too long ago, Donald Trump has distanced himself from a unilateral support for Israel, warning Bibi Netanyahu about his atrocious genocide war in Gaza.
The truth is hanging in the air.
Will it ever hit the ground and continue shaking people awake – open and receptive to the truth, and nothing but the truth?
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Peter Koenig is a geopolitical analyst and a former Senior Economist at the World Bank and the World Health Organization (WHO), where he worked for over 30 years around the world. He 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 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 button below the author’s name (only available in desktop version).
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The interview covered the hardly noticeable but with warp speed advancing digitization of everything, the implementation of what Klaus Schwab — World Economic Forum (WEF) — professes in his “Fourth Industrial Revolution”. A dystopian world, where humans are enslaved by digital means, transhumanism, self-driving cars, total control through QR-codes, and – the final straw – by a fully digitized monetary system.
If it goes unnoticed, as the masters of the universe would like it, it will lead to a drastically reduced-world populations, with mostly transhuman survivors, who will own nothing but are happy.
Only We, the People can stop it, if and when, we wake up, and reject the plan, simply refuse to go along with it, creating an alternative life society, alternative monetary system – and re-introducing true human values, ethics, togetherness, solidarity, work-places that care, trust and friendships.
It is high time.
We can do it.
We MUST do it.
The interview streamed on 11 July 2024.
This is a loose transcript of the interview.
Questions or topics of conversation were introduced by Dr. Ana Mihalcea of Humanity United Now.
Dr. Ana Mihalcea (DAM): How do you see the progression of digital ID and digital money evolving?
Peter Koenig (PK): Unfortunately digitization is advancing rapidly, without most people noticing it. Publication about it is sparse, and mostly only by the non-mainstream media.
Digital money is evolving much faster than digital ID. On purpose.
Why?
Digital ID has been propagated by the EU to such an extent that rejection became loud.
So, they switched to an alternative.
Full digitization of money. Because once money is fully digitized, with or without the infamous so-called Central Bank Digital Currency (CBDC), a formal digital ID is just a question of converting each one of our QR code into an ID. And bingo. The money is controlled and so are we.
Yes, we all have a QR code. During Covid, whether vaccinated or not, each time we were compelled to take a PCR test, we were given a QR code. This personal QR code is automatically linked to all other QR codes we use… in restaurants, purchasing goods, airline tickets / boarding passes …. Just about anything is QR coded nowadays.
Back to digital money: In fact, CBDC is not even necessary, if all banks go along with digitization – and if the respective governments tell them they must – they will, no choice, if they don’t want to be sidelined or completely closed then cash can be abandoned basically from one day to the next.
Several countries have been selected to test-case the digitization of money. Switzerland is one of them. Selected banks have agreed to do so.
I know from personal experience.
When refusing to change my bank account transactions to using a QR code, my bank account was blocked. For over three weeks I had no access to it. Only when I agreed, thinking of changing banks afterwards, they gave me access to my account again.
I am now with another bank, where I have an alternative option – for now. How long that will last – I have no idea.
DAM: Do we have a chance to stop it?
PK: Yes, we do. By insisting on using cash, by refusing to use credit cards, and electronic payment systems as much as possible.
This is a challenge, as most people are still unaware of what digital payment modes eventually will do to them. Especially young people find it cool to be able to just pass a card over a payment device, or pay with their watch, or their cell phone, or in some Scandinavian countries, they have an option of an implanted chip in their hand, between the index finger and the thumb.
We, the elders, must find ways to tell the up-and-coming generation to what dangers they expose themselves, full enslavement – if they fall for the comfort of paying “playing” digitally.
Many will not listen. Their answer is often – “Well, I have nothing to hide”. This is very shortsighted, of course.
Maybe more importantly – we must launch public activities, protests, against digital money – more protests, more people become aware of the risk and start thinking by themselves.
Because the best method of awakening is when someone feels the spark of conscience by himself.
And we must become more vociferous in the non-mainstream – and to the extent possible – in the mainstream, about preserving CASH.
Even banks, I have noticed when talking to bankers, are not convinced about a future of exclusively digital money. Because they too, may become victims of repressive actions, for example, if they do not follow globalist rules – of which they have no clue today, that they may come.
DAM: How does slavery and social credit system connect in your view with the push for digital money?
PK:Digital money IS already slavery. At first it is slavery in a passive stage, but it can be activated at will of the powers-that-be.
The slavery is already occurring, even without digital money. It has happened in France and Canada – and maybe other countries, that people’s bank accounts have been blocked, because they did not conform to the rules of Government, or because they have not been paying a so-called government-issued fine for misbehaving.
The government has access to your bank account.
This option is already open for governments under the “Rules-based Order”.
As to social credit systems – as far as I know, China is the only country that uses Social Credit system. It is not linked to individual bank accounts.
In China, although digital money is very popular – cash is still available and can be used almost everywhere.
If the WEF and the UN want to introduce a Social Credit System, link it to our bank accounts – to help push through their Agenda 2030, it is again up to us the People, to say no and resist it.
If we stand up in masses, there is little so-called authorities can do to implement it. But to stand up in masses, it needs a critical mass. And today we are not yet there.
Our honest thinking – and the thoughts of living in another sphere, outside of the darkness and government-imposed globalist actions — will proliferate without our knowing. Without thoughts of anger and revenge, we may have what we often call a “butterfly effect”. It is part of quantum science. We just start learning about it.
DAM: Can you explain how far along we are in the process?
PK: As I said at the beginning, unfortunately, the process of digitization of everything is already quite advanced. It is what Klaus Schwab, the WEF’s (former) boss, calls the “Fourth Industrial Revolution”. It consists of first reducing the world population to the extent possible, and replacing the survivors with robots or transhumans or completely with AI-driven robots.
Gadgets such as “ChatGPT”, translations by AI, driverless cars – and much — are being introduced, if accepted, made mandatory. That we must be aware of. This is not just a trial.
The trial are We, the people.
If we accept, bingo – it will become mandatory. Accepting is not objecting, not protesting; it is going along with it, even if we do not like it. Active resistance is needed.
Otherwise, our chance has gone.
We must stop evil at the gate; like right now, REFUSING, to being subjected to driverless cars.
Go even further, refuse all digitized cars, with everything from the car window to turning on and off the engine at red light… and so on, request old-style cars where you open your window by hand – no automatics, the less digitized the better. Same for kitchen equipment and other household tools.
It is hard to believe that less than 50 years ago we have lived analogue lives, without digitization whatsoever. Life was less complicated, human contact was warmer and closer. Solidarity was of the order.
Again, what is needed, are aware people, who know of the dangers of digitization, of the risk of total enslavement by AI.
We are not there yet.
Programs such as yours [Humanity United Now] can and will help bringing more people to senses; to think for themselves what AI and digitization can do to them.
DAM: What concrete things can the average citizen do?
PK: Well, some of them, I mentioned before:
refusing digital money – insisting in using CASH instead.
take to the streets – talk to each other about the enslavement risk of digitization, of digitized money
Write about it…
For example, quit banks that have been pre-selected to digitize money by using the QR code.
The QR code can accumulate almost unlimited amounts of personal information, and eventually knows you better than you know yourself.
Stay away to the extent possible from QR codes.
For example, I know restaurants they presented their menus ONLY by giving you a QR code to read in our cellphone. By doing that – you have already been caught and registered.
Since, using a QR code to read the menu is also uncomfortable, many customers have complained. So, many of these restaurants have gone back to printed menus.
That is a small success, but every big change starts small.
DAM:How do you view the threat of Artificial Intelligence and convergence of man and machine?
PK: Yes, listening to the WEF’s Great Reset and UN Agenda 2030, there is a chance that such convergences may happen. For sure, they are working on it – in the various Silicon Valley IT corporations.
Their goal is: for those who survive, “you will own nothing but be happy.” That would be typical for a trans-humanized being.
But it is my strong belief they will not succeed for a simple reason. Anything digital, including AI, is based on linear information, on linear inputs, maybe millions of them, but still linear. Human beings are living beings, and living beings are not linear or digital, they are dynamic, adjusting to circumstances, often spontaneously, unpredictably. That is also why making economic projections – I’m talking as an economist – usually does not work. Since they are all based on linear inputs.
The longer-term such projections are attempted – I know from experience with the World Bank – the further off reality they are.
Dynamism is perhaps a forerunner of quantum mechanics that can switch dimensions instantaneously.
If we Humans are convinced and aware that we belong to the creation of LIFE – which is analogue and has nothing to do with digital linearism, they will not succeed.
I am convinced of it.
The timing is crucial, though. The longer it takes for Us, the People, to become conscience of these facts and act accordingly, the more damage their attempts to digitize the world and us humans can do.
It is up to We, the People, to stop it.
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Peter Koenig is a geopolitical analyst and a former Senior Economist at the World Bank and the World Health Organization (WHO), where he worked for over 30 years around the world. He lectures at universities in the US, Europe and South America. He writes regularly for online journals and is the author of Implosion – An Economic Thriller about War, Environmental Destruction and Corporate Greed; and co-author of Cynthia McKinney’s book “When China Sneezes: From the Coronavirus Lockdown to the Global Politico-Economic Crisis” (Clarity Press – November 1, 2020).
Peter is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG). He is also a non-resident Senior Fellow of the Chongyang Institute of Renmin University, Beijing.
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[First published in 2022, with updates on 14 July 2024.]
Trump’s near assassination this weekend represents an incredibly important reminder of the stakes going into the 2024 election amidst a vast systemic collapse and heightened threat of a thermonuclear war. At this stage, despite the cast of compromised characters among Trump’s support network, no one has displayed so consistent a quality of leadership that qualifies them for dealing with the current crisis as Trump has displayed.
I thought it fitting to revisit the recent Canadian Patriot Review film (based upon the essay “Why Assume There Will be a 2024 Election?“) where we are introduced into this dense period of history from the orchestrated demolition of the financial system in 1929, the Wall Street/London fueled “economic miracle solution” of fascism and eugenics between 1930-1934, and the story of FDR’s war with the financier oligarchy’s London and Wall Street tentacles. From this vantage point, we are then thrust into a deep dive into the person of Smedley Butler and his courageous defense of the republic.
Why Assume There Will be a 2024 Election? America’s 1934 “Bankers’ Coup Plot” Revisited
By Matthew Ehret-Kump, July 19, 2022
Earlier this week, former President Donald Trump announced his intention to run in the 2024 elections which is a no-brainer considering his support among potential republican contenders is 49% (compared to a 25% support for DeSantis) and no other candidate earning above 7%.
It didn’t take two days before Defense Authorization Act of 2022 (HR-4350) was passed by the House of Representatives giving the President full controls over the military in all domestic operations and which takes direct aim at all “domestic extremists” in the USA.
Obviously, the senile and politically compromised Biden’s days in power are shaky to say the least and echoes of the 1933 Reichstag fire that provided a newly elected Hitler regime the excuse it needed to impose tyrannical ‘enabling acts’ rings in the memory.
With the perfect storm of crises now converging onto our beleagured world (economic meltdown, energy crisis, food crisis, and general dangers of both civil and global wars), it is worth considering the very real possibility that the days of elections may soon be over. Despite the many talking heads yapping about the 2024 elections as if it were a football game, reality and real history paints a very different picture of bankers’-directed military coups both in the USA and abroad.
In order to best understand this danger and also gain insight into how it might be circumvented, I suggest revisiting the 1932-1934 efforts by the international deep state to impose a fascist dictatorship upon Americans and even overthrow the elected government of Franklin Roosevelt with a JP Morgan-funded military coup d’état.
The Fascist Economic Miracle Solution of 1932
1932-1934 was a period of history that saw the world torn down into a deep depression which the people of Europe and America were told by their media, could only be solved by the “economic miracle solution” of a new system of governance known as “fascism”.
This “fascist economic solution” took hold in Europe with the quick rise of Nazism, Franco and Mussolini’s Corporatism as well what later became Vichy France. In English Canada, the League for Social Reconstruction was ready to take power in 1932 and French-speaking Canada was quickly embracing the Nazi-inspired political party of Adrien Arcand. The British governing class, led by the royal family were fully backing Nazism, and Sir Oswald Mosley’s British Union of Fascists was rising faster than ever. All of these movements came in different flavors but were united under a cold utilitarian philosophy of government, a devout love for eugenics (the racist “science” of population control) and addiction to City of London/Wall Street money.
In the United States however, things weren’t going as smoothly.
The Rise of Franklin Roosevelt
Even though the financial elite of Wall Street had pulled the plug on the system four years earlier, the population had still not been broken sufficiently to accept fascism as the solution which Time magazine told them it was. Instead, the people voted for one of the few anti-fascist presidential candidates available in 1932 when Franklin Roosevelt was elected under the theme of taking the money lenders out of power and restoring the constitution.
“Practices of the unscrupulous money changers stand indicted in the court of public opinion, rejected by the hearts and minds of men. True they have tried, but their efforts have been cast in the pattern of an outworn tradition. Faced by failure of credit they have proposed only the lending of more money. Stripped of the lure of profit by which to induce our people to follow their false leadership, they have resorted to exhortations, pleading tearfully for restored confidence. They know only the rules of a generation of self-seekers. They have no vision, and when there is no vision the people perish. The money changers have fled from their high seats in the temple of our civilization. We may now restore that temple to the ancient truths. The measure of the restoration lies in the extent to which we apply social values more noble than mere monetary profit.”
During FDR’s famous 100 Days, an all-out war was declared on the “economic royalists” that had taken over the nation. Audits and investigations were conducted on the banks in the form of the Pecora Commission, and the biggest financial houses which had spent billions on fascist parties of Europe were broken up while speculation was reined in under Glass-Steagall. Meanwhile a new form of banking was unveiled more in alignment with America’s constitutional traditions in the form of productive credit and long term public works which created real jobs and increased the national productive powers of labor.
Many people remain totally ignorant that even before his March 4, 1933 inauguration, Franklin Roosevelt narrowly avoided an assassination attempt in Florida which saw 5 people struck by bullets and the mayor of Chicago dying of his wounds 3 weeks later. Within days of the mayor’s death, the assassin Giuseppe Zingara was speedily labelled a “lone gunman” and executed without any serious investigation into his freemasonic connections. This however was just a pre-cursor for an even greater battle which Wall Street financiers would launch in order to overthrow the presidency later that year. This effort would only be stopped by the courageous intervention of a patriotic marine named Smedley Darlington Butler.
Who was General Butler?
Born in 1881 to a family of patriotic Quakers, Smedley Butler quickly rose through the ranks of the military becoming the most decorated military figure of U.S. History- a record he holds to this day with multiple medals of honor, an Army distinguished service medal and Marine Corps Bruvet medal (to name just a few).
By the end of the British-orchestrated meat grinder known as WWI, the General had become an activist patriot giving speeches across America in denunciation of the private financiers steering America’s war-driven economy. Speaking to veterans in August 1933, the general said:
“I have spent 33 years being a high-class muscle man for Big Business, for Wall Street and the bankers. In short, I was a racketeer for capitalism… I helped purify Nicaragua for the international banking house of Brown Brothers in 1909-1912. I helped make Mexico and especially Tampico safe for American oil interests in 1916. I helped make Haiti and Cuba a decent place for the National City [Bank] boys to collect revenue in. I helped rape half a dozen Central American republics for the benefit of Wall Street… In China, I helped see to it that Standard Oil went its way unmolested… I had a swell racket. I was rewarded with honors, medals, and promotions. I might have given Al Capone a few hints. The best he could do was operate a racket in three cities. The Marines operated on three continents…”
In spite of his outspoken criticism of crony capitalism, Wall Street’s elite simply presumed all men had their price, and Butler was probably just indignant because he was never given a big enough piece of pie.
The Wall Street Putsch Is Launched
These financiers needed someone like Butler to channel the rage of the striking veterans of WWI across America who had been fighting for the bonus pay promised them years earlier but which didn’t exist due to the 1929 collapse. A force of hundreds of thousands of disgruntled seasoned soldiers was exactly what was needed to overthrow Roosevelt, but leadership was sorely lacking, and General Butler was their man for the job. He was a war hero who was seen as honest and loved by the veterans. He was perfect.
Under the guiding hand of JP Morgan’s Grayson Prevost Murphy, two representatives of the American Legion (Commander Bill Doyle and bond salesman Gerald MacGuire) approached Butler in July 1933 for the job of rallying the Legion’s veterans and began dropping hints of a larger coup plot. Butler became suspicious, but continued playing along with the plan to see how far this went up the ladder of power[1].
Over the course of the next several months, Butler discovered that America’s financial elite centered around John Pierpont Morgan Jr., the Harrimans, the Melons, Warburgs, Rockefellers and Duponts were at the heart of the plot. These men used their agents such as Gerald MacGuire a Morgan-affiliated bond salesman, Democratic Party controllers John W. Davis and Thomas Lamont (both occupying directorships in the House of Morgan), Robert Sterling Clark (heir to the Singer sewing machine fortune), Grayson Prevost Murphy and Harriman Family investment banker Prescott Bush. All of these characters had become well known “investors” in European fascism, owned the biggest media platforms including Fortune and Time Magazine (both of which promoted Mussolini extensively for years), and controlled the levers of industry.
Luckily, the 1932-1934 Pecora Commission exposed these forces publicly as the architects of the great depression, making their ability to acquire popular support and sympathy more than a little difficult.
Outlining his Committee’s findings Pecora had written publicly:
“Undoubtedly, this small group of highly placed financiers, controlling the very springs of economic activity, holds more real power than any similar group in the U.S.A.”
Butler Blows the Whistle
When the time was right, Butler blew the whistle by approaching the Special Committee on Un-American Activities (the McCormack-Dickstein Committee) which began an investigation on November 20, 1934. Unlike the Committee on Un-American Activities which made its reputation destroying patriotic lives under the communist witch hunt of McCarthyism, this earlier version was aligned to FDR and dedicated solely to identifying Nazi activity in America.
At first sceptical of the general’s claims, the committee soon substantiated everything over the course of a month long investigation and made their findings public to FDR and congress on December 29, 1934. An invaluable part of the hearings were the testimonies of journalist Paul Comly French whom Butler recruited to act as the general’s intermediary with the bankers.
Butler told the committee that MacGuire stated it
“wouldn’t take any constitutional change to authorize another cabinet official, somebody to take over the details of the office—to take them off the President’s shoulders” and that “we’d do with him what Mussolini did to the King of Italy”.
When French asked MacGuire how the coup would help solve unemployment, MacGuire responded:
“We need a fascist government to save the nation from the Communists… It was the plan that Hitler had used in putting all of the unemployed in labor camps or barracks—enforced labor. That would solve it overnight.”
Although the full transcripts were not made public, Butler did get the message to the population by giving his story to as many journalists as possible and recorded a message to the people in 1935 which should be listened to in full.
The Aftermath of the Exposure
This exposure, alongside the Pecora Commission findings, and earlier failed assassination attempt gave FDR the ammunition he needed to force America’s deep state into submission (at least for a while). As I outlined in my recent paper, FDR’s fight to stop a central bankers’ dictatorship started from the earliest days of his presidency to his dying breath on April 14, 1945.
Incredibly, after the sanitized and redacted 1934 report was published, the committee was disbanded (to be reformed later under a fascist mandate), and the thousands of pages of transcripts were buried for years- only officially made public in the 21st century- the contents of which can be found here with censored testimony in red.
The coup plotters lost no time forming a new organization on August 22, 1934 called the American Liberty League which spent the next decade sabotaging FDR’s New Deal. This group made every effort to promote an American alliance with Axis powers (until 1941’s Pearl Harbor attack), widely financed eugenics, and after FDR died, acted as the driving force behind the McCarthyite police state in America during the Cold War. Without understanding this fascist deep state operation within the heart of the American establishment, it were impossible to make sense of the manichean Cold War dualism that destroyed FDR’s vision for a world of cooperating sovereign nation states or.
This organization also gave birth to such think tanks as the American Enterprise Association, Heritage Foundation and CATO institute which incrementally made Austrian school economics a part of the American right. Anyone wishing to understand what created the Frankenstein Monster called “neo-conservativism” during the last 60 years would not get very far without understanding the role of the American Liberty League and its hell spawn.
Today, a new systemic meltdown of a $1.5 quadrillion derivatives bubble has similarities to the 1929 crash and other similarities to the 1923 hyperinflation of Weimar. While the coronavirus may or may not be used to trigger this new blowout, one thing is certain: a new fascist coup and general war should be taken more seriously than ever.
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[1] The Legion was a very different beast from the benign organization of old veterans it is known as today, as it was originally founded with Wall Street capital in 1919 and was run early on as a fascist machine. Legion Commander Alvin Owsley made this explicit in 1921 when he said: “If need be the American Legion is ready to protect the institutions of this country and its ideals, in the same way as the Fascists have treated the destructive forces threatening Italy. Don’t forget that the Fascists are for today’s Italy what the American Legion is for the United States.”
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As I have observed in previous columns, our era in the United States is frequently beset with incidents characterized by a catastrophic loss of competence. Decades of procedural knowledge seem to vanish from one day to the next, leaving sensible people wondering how it could possibly happen.
The attempted assassination of Donald Trump this evening at the the Butler Farm Show Grounds is a perfect example of this bizarre phenomenon. The shooter climbed onto the roof—purportedly with an AR-15 style semi-automatic rifle —120 meters from Trump on the stage. From this vantage point, he had a clear line of sight for a shot that would have been easy for even a middling marksman. The following aerial photograph shows the shooter’s position relative to Trumps.
As anyone who understands the rudiments of security knows, the FIRST thing you do is secure all rooftops within sniper range. Note in the following video that a counter sniper (with the word POLICE embroidered on the back of his vest) on the roof behind Trump is scoping the would-be assassin’s position.
He appears to see the would-be assassin and start to engage (while flinching) right before the would-be assassin’s shots can be heard. Clearly the counter snipers knew that the rooftop presented a high risk position or they wouldn’t have been scoping it.
Why wasn’t this building—AGR International Inc., a manufacturing plant just north of the Butler Farm show ground—secured before Trump began speaking? It seems to me that this building would be the first thing a security detail would secure. The green pin on the roof to the east of Trump’s position marks where the counter snipers are posted. Again, why didn’t they just secure the building onto which the shooter climbed? This makes no sense.
The gunman apparently fired right as Trump looked to the right, towards the gunman. The grazing shot to Trump’s right ear was just a centimeter to the left (from the gunman’s POV) of a fatal head shot. I emphasize that the gunman was positioned at very close range. In the following video, I hit a small condiment package at 75 yards on the second shot with the same kind of rifle with open sights.
Note what appears to be a vapor trail behind the bullet.
The Nato 5.56 cartridge fires the bullet at a velocity of 3,250 feet per second — almost three times the speed of sound (1,125 feet per second). A bullet moving at this speed induces air pressure changes around the bullet that produce a contrail similar to those that form on the low pressure side of aircraft wings.
What could possibly explain the catastrophic failure to secure the perimeter around the stage? It’s hard for me to imagine a legitimate explanation for such a lapse of such elementary security procedures.
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“Berit “Bear” was healthy when he was born on January 29th, 2015. He was three weeks early, but never had any issues whatsoever. (He received his first dose of the Hepatitis B vaccine on January 30th.) Being a first time mom I was very protective, but not protective enough.
He had started smiling and rolling over and was really alert. Bear was a cuddle bug. He loved to be held. He was a happy baby and very laid back until he was done with that and wanted to be held. He would smile when he heard people talking, especially if they were talking to him.
The days before his 2-month checkup I started feeling like I really didn’t want to get him vaccinated. I expressed my concerns to the doctor which they told me “many parents feel this way before their child’s shots” and assured me he would be fine. Bear was vaccinated on the 26th of March. He received the DTaP, Hep. B, IPV, Hib, Pneumo Conjugate 13, and Rotavirus vaccines.
After his shots, he slept a lot. He slept almost all day. I had to wake him up to feed him – that was very unusual. He cried so much more than normal. He never ran a fever. Looking back on pictures now I can see his eyes were glazed over. He was not alert anymore, and he was swollen.
It was the 28th of March at 3:00 a.m., I woke up having really bad cramps (I had ovarian cysts ever since I received the HPV/Gardasil vaccine). I had Bear sleeping on my chest (he was wanting to be held more than usual), so when I got up, I had to put him down. He went right back to sleep. I put him down in bed on his back and went to take a bath.
I came back 15 minutes later and picked him up — he was limp. I screamed. Woke up my now ex-husband and he began doing CPR while I called 911. I remember I was in such a shock that I told them our old address and not our new one. I finally gave up trying to explain and told them to call the hospital in our town and tell them we were coming. We lived two minutes away.
When we got there, the doctors and nurses immediately took Bear from us and started working on him. By the time we got there, he had blood running out of his nose. They got him back and lost him several times. That beeping sound still to this day makes me feel like my heart is being ripped out of my chest. Neonatal nurses were flown in from Oklahoma University via helicopter to try to stabilize him, so we could transfer him. It wasn’t happening. Even on the ventilator he was still going in and out.
Around 9:00 a.m., all family and close friends were there. The doctor pulled us back to a room by ourselves and told us Bear was without oxygen to his brain for too long and he would never be able to have a normal life. We were still losing him on and off at this point too.
We had to make the hardest decision ever. We decided to take him off of the machine and hold him while he took his last breaths. At 10:13 a.m., he was pronounced dead.
Those months following, and still to this day, are sometimes unbearable. Sometimes it’s like you think you’ll eventually wake up from this nightmare that’s actually your life. I’ve had two children since then – a girl (2016) and a boy (2018). Neither are vaccinated and both are very healthy.
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The European Union’s legal service informed members of the bloc that Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán’s recent visit to Moscow and his meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin violated EU treaties, the Financial Times reported on July 11. Nonetheless, despite EU threats to have Hungary stripped of the presidency of the Council of the European Union, Orbán remains committed to his “peace mission” to end the war in Ukraine and even shunned US President Joe Biden to meet with his predecessor instead, Donald Trump.
On July 7, Orbán visited Russia for talks with Putin. The Hungarian prime minister described his visit as a continuation of the “peace mission” he began with a trip to Kiev in early July. Nonetheless, the EU’s legal service told member states on July 10 that Orbán had violated agreements that prohibit “any measure which could jeopardise the attainment of the Union’s objectives,” FT reported, citing sources familiar with the matter.
At the same time, the Hungarian leader is said to have violated a provision requiring all members to conduct foreign policy “unreservedly in a spirit of loyalty and mutual solidarity.”
According to sources involved in the investigation, during the NATO summit in Washington on July 10, European leaders were discussing, among other things, a joint letter to Orbán that clarified their objections to his actions and demanded that he stop his independent foreign policy initiative. Another suggestion was a special meeting of EU foreign ministers specifically on the subject.
Some diplomats told the FT that many EU members have also discussed a possible boycott of informal ministerial meetings during Hungary’s presidency of the Council of the European Union.
A smaller number of countries have launched informal talks on how to use the EU treaty to limit Orbán’s ability to act during his presidency. Some EU officials have even privately suggested taking the presidency away from Budapest.
Politico reported that Hungary’s EU envoy, Balint Odor, was verbally heckled by his Brussels counterparts like never before.
“It’s unprecedented that the presidency would be reprimanded in such a way by all the others,” a senior EU diplomat said on condition of anonymity.
Since Budapest took over the rotating EU presidency in July, Orbán has undertaken self-declared “peacekeeping missions” to Kiev, Moscow, Beijing, and Washington. However, they were “not conducted in the name of the European Union or any of its institutions,” Hungarian EU Affairs Minister János Bóka stressed at a news conference.
Media outlets reported earlier that Orbán had also sent confidential letters to European Council President Charles Michel and EU leaders detailing his recent trips to Kiev, Moscow and Beijing. Orbán reportedly said that Russia and China hoped that peace talks between Moscow and Kiev would begin by the end of this year.
Hungarian Foreign noted that Orbán met with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan on the sidelines of the NATO summit.
“We [Hungary and Turkey] have taken a common position that in the coming times, a peace conference in which both parties to the conflict will participate will be necessary. This is the only opportunity to reach an agreement,” he told M1 television.
Szijjártó also highlighted that the peace conference in Switzerland failed because Russia was not involved, adding:
“It is important that the peace conference planned for the second half of this year, whether in Saudi Arabia or elsewhere, involves both sides, Russia and Ukraine, to give the best opportunity to find a solution.”
Although the EU is outraged by Orbán’s peace mission, the Hungarian leader is a realist and has consistently said that Russia has won the war and that Western powers are just prolonging the suffering by continually sending weapons to Ukraine. In fact, he is so much of a realist that he, along with most pollsters, believes Donald Trump will win the US election and, therefore, he decided to fly into Mar-a-Lago on July 11 to discuss the Ukraine situation, effectively shunning Joe Biden by not requesting a bilateral meeting on the sidelines of the NATO summit.
Orbán has not had an official meeting with Biden since he became president nearly four years ago. The Hungarian prime minister met Trump in March this year in Mar-a-Lago and has endorsed him several times throughout the past eight years, even describing the billionaire as a “man of honour.”
It is unlikely that Hungary will be stripped of its presidency of the Council of the European Union, but it does indicate the anger and frustration that Orbán’s peace mission has caused in Brussels. Although the EU desperately wants the Kiev regime to prevail over Russia, a Trump reelection will all but end the war in a relatively short time, and this is the reality that Orbán is working with.
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This article was originally published on InfoBrics.
Ahmed Adel is a Cairo-based geopolitics and political economy researcher. He is a regular contributor to Global Research.
Featured image: Vladimir Putin and Viktor Orban made statements for the press. Photo: Aleksey Maishev, RIA Novosti
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The FBI is investigating an assassination attempt on former President Donald Trump at a rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, on July 13.
Former President Donald Trump is injured but safe after a bullet fired by a would-be assassin pierced his right ear about 10 minutes after the start of the rally.
The FBI named Thomas Matthew Crooks, 20, of Bethel Park, Pennsylvania, as the subject involved in the assassination attempt. The agency said the investigation remains active and ongoing. Agency officials said they believe Mr. Crooks acted alone. No motive has been identified.
Corey Comperatore, a firefighter and father of two daughters, was identified as the sole slain victim. Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro said he died protecting his family.
The two rally attendees who were injured have been identified as David Dutch, 57, of New Kensington, Pennsylvania, and James Copenhaver, 74, of Moon Township, Pennsylvania. Both are in a stable condition, according to the Pennsylvania State Police
Former President Trump on July 14 called for unity, adding that it was “God alone who prevented the unthinkable from happening.”
What else we know so far:
The Secret Service shot and killed the attacker, who fired from a nearby rooftop with a direct line of sight to the former president.Several witnesses on the ground say they saw the man on the roof prior to the shooting and had warned law enforcement officers.
The FBI says it is investigating the attack as both an attempted assassination and a potential domestic terrorism act. Mr. Crooks was not on the agency’s radar as a potential threat before the attack, officials said. The FBI also found a “suspicious device” while sweeping Mr. Crooks’s car and later diffused it.
President Joe Biden has vowed a “thorough and swift” investigation of the assassination attempt and has directed an independent review of the security at the Saturday rally. The president said he had a “short, but good conversation” with former President Trump on Saturday evening. He condemned the assassination attempt, calling it “contrary to everything we stand for as a nation.”
Democrats, Republicans, and world leaders expressed shock and issued an outpouring of well wishes.
The Trump campaign confirmed in a statement that the former president will appear as planned at the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee, where he will be formally nominated to represent the GOP in the presidential election.
House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) and other lawmakers said that Congress intends to conduct a full investigation into the attack.
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Biden Urges Americans to Stand Together in Oval Office Address
President Joe Biden on July 14 addressed the nation from the Oval Office, highlighting a need to “lower the temperature on our politics” in the wake of the assassination attempt against his rival, former President Donald Trump.
“We are not enemies. We’re neighbors or friends, coworkers, citizens, and most importantly, we’re our fellow Americans,” he said. “We must stand together.”
This was his first Oval Office address since the Oct. 7 Hamas terrorist attack in Israel last year.
He said the political rhetoric in the country “has gotten very heated.”
“It’s time to cool it down,” the president added.
The shooting, he said, calls on Americans to “take a step back, take stock of where we are, how we go forward from here.”
The president reiterated his condemnation of the attack, saying,
“There is no place in America for this kind of violence, for any violence ever. Period. No exceptions. We can’t allow this violence to be normalized.”
“The power to change America should always rest in the hands of the people, not in the hands of would-be assassins,” the president said.
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Featured image is by Evan Vucci / Licensed under Fair Use
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Western-supported Zionists bomb civilians in areas identified as “safe” as policy.
Gaza journalist Bisan Owda describes how Zionists recently bombed and massacred, from the air and the sea, about 300 civilians taking shelter in their tents.
The number 300, she says, does not include those buried alive or those who have not interfaced with hospitals.
The bombs upturn the earth and bury people alive.
This massacre of 300 is only one of the 3,000 that have so-far been committed by Zionists against Gazan civilians.
Imagine that. No, we can not imagine that. Impossible.
This genocide is even more impossible for Westerners to imagine because not only do the American-supplied bombs bury people alive, but the Zionists also target civil defence workers and ambulances.
This of course is all part of the Western/Zionist-imposed genocide against Palestine and Palestinians.
As mentioned earlier, the genocide also involves targeting electrical, water, and health care infrasctructure, with a view to further imposing famine, disease, and disaster. Famine and disease are fabricated instruments of genocide.
In this video, Dr. Ahmad Yousaf, reporting from Deir Al Balah, describes the staggering and grossly under-reported death count from the bombs and the bleeding, from the siege and the restrictions on humanitarian aid.
Author and human rights lawyer Dan Kovalik noted on his Telegram page,
“Today’s horrific massacre & savage bombing of displaced Palestinians in Israeli designated ‘safe’ zones of Muassi, Khan Younis is the latest in an escalation that has turned all of Gaza into one massive death zone. American bombs & shells rain down on Gaza while the Israeli government & thugs succeed in preventing any form of medical, food, or fuel supplies from reaching the devastated population.”
This is genocide, in plain view, for all to see.
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Mark Taliano is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG) and the author of Voices from Syria, Global Research Publishers, 2017. He writes on his website where this article was originally published.
Featured image is a screenshot via Mark Taliano
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NATO celebrated the 75th anniversary of its foundation at the Washington Summit, it should have been held on April 4, but Washington – which for 75 years has been keeping the key commands of NATO starting from the Supreme Allied Commander in Europe, an American general has always been appointed by the President of the United States – decided to celebrate it more than three months later for its internal political reasons.
The official history of NATO, presented at the Washington Summit, explained the birth of NATO thus:
“In 1949, 12 European and North American countries, faced with the growing threat from the Soviet Union, signed a Treaty based on the principle of collective defence.”
The text is accompanied by the front page of a newspaper dated August 29, 1949, with a headline in large letters: “RUSSIA HAS ATOMIC BOMB” – “RUSSIA HAS THE ATOMIC BOMB”.
It is a colossal historical fake. The Soviet Union emerged from the Second World War largely destroyed, after being attacked and invaded in June 1941 by Nazi Germany with 201 divisions, including 5.5 million soldiers equal to 75% of all German troops, 3,500 tanks, and 5000 aircraft, plus 37 divisions from satellite countries (including Italy). The USSR had repeatedly asked the Allies to open a second front in Europe, but the United States and Great Britain had deliberately delayed doing it.
Image: Ruins in Stalingrad, typical of the destruction in many Soviet cities. (From the Public Domain)
The price paid by the Soviet Union was very high: around 27 million deaths, over half of them civilians, corresponding to 15% of the population (compared to 0.3% in the USA throughout the Second World War); around 5 million deported to Germany; over 1700 cities and large population centres, 70 thousand small villages devastated; 30 thousand factories destroyed. The Soviet Union could not therefore constitute a threat to the West, also because the United States was the only one to possess the atomic weapon, of which it held a monopoly from 1945 to 1949. Already from September 1945, just a month after the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the Pentagon calculated that around 200 nuclear bombs were needed to attack the USSR. In 1949 the US arsenal rose to around 170 atomic bombs. At this point, the United States was confident that it would have enough bombs to attack the Soviet Union within a short time. In that same year, however, the American dream of maintaining the monopoly on nuclear weapons vanished. On August 29, 1949, the Soviet Union carried out its first experimental atomic explosion. Now the USSR also has the Bomb. At this point, the nuclear arms race between the two superpowers begins.
Since then, for 75 years, NATO has justified its war strategy with the false claim of being threatened. Today’s “threat” comes, according to the Washington Summit, from the “growing alignment of Russia, China, Iran, and North Korea”. For this reason, “NATO works increasingly closely with partners in the Indo-Pacific and with the European Union to help maintain peace and protect the rules-based international order”. Based on this historical falsification, NATO – which has expanded from 12 to 32 countries increasingly close to Russia – is dragging Europe and the world into catastrophe.
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This article was originally published in Italian on Grandangolo, Byoblu TV.
Manlio Dinucci, award winning author, geopolitical analyst and geographer, Pisa, Italy. He is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG).
Featured image: The NATO Summit at the Washington Convention Center in Washington, D.C., July 11, 2024 (Photo by U.S. Department of State from United States / From the Public Domain)
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This article was first published on March 9, 2022, revised and expanded on October 5, 2022, minor revisions on May 25, 2023.
Introduction
At no point since the first atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima on August 6th, 1945, has humanity been closer to the unthinkable. All the safeguards of the Cold War era, which categorized the nuclear bomb as “a weapon of last resort”, have been scrapped.
Let us also recall the unspoken history of America’s doctrine pertaining to the conduct of nuclear war.
Barely six weeks after the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki,the U.S. War Department released a Secret Plan on September 15, 1945 to bomb 66 cities of the Soviet Union with 204 atomic bombs.
The September 1945 Plan was to “Wipe the Soviet Union off the Map” at a time when the US and the USSR were allies. Confirmed by declassified documents, Hiroshima and Nagasaki served as a “Dress Rehearsal” (see historical details and analysis below).
Video: The Dangers of Nuclear War: Michel Chossudovsky with Caroline Mailloux
Vladimir Putin’s statement on February 21st, 2022 was a response to US threats to use nuclear weapons on a preemptive basis against Russia, despite Joe Biden’s “reassurance” that the US 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)
In July 2021, the Biden administration launched its Nuclear Posture Review (NPR) which was formally announced in October 2022.
The 2022 NPR includes what is described as a “nuclear declaratory policy of the United States”.
The 2022 NPR largely confirms the nuclear options developed by the Obama and Bush administrations predicated on the notion of preemptive nuclear war raised in President Putin’s speech.
The underlying US nuclear doctrine consists in portraying nuclear weapons as a means of “self defense” rather than as a “weapon of mass destruction”.
The NPR does not rule out the possibility of a “first strike” nuclear attack against Russia. According to theUS Congress Research Service:
“The NPR [2022] suggests that the United States may use nuclear weapons in circumstances that do not involve potential adversaries’ potential use of nuclear weapons. …The review also asserts that an ‘effective nuclear deterrent is foundational to broader U.S. defense strategy,’ but does not elaborate. (…)”
“Should deterrence fail, ‘the United States would seek to end any conflict at the lowest level of damage possible on the best achievable terms’— language implying that the United States might use nuclear weapons for purposes other than deterrence.” (CRS Reports. US Congress 2022 NPR, emphasis added)
The Privatization of Nuclear War
It should be understood, that there are powerful financial interests behind the NPR which are tied into the $1.3 trillion nuclear weapons program initiated under President Obama.
Although the Ukraine conflict has so-far been limited to conventional weapons coupled with “economic warfare”, the use of a large array of sophisticated WMDs including nuclear weapons is on the drawing board of the Pentagon.
Dangerous narrative: The NPR proposes “increased integration of conventional and nuclear planning”, which consists in categorizing tactical nuclear weapons (e.g. B61-11 and 12) as conventional weapons, to be used on a preemptive basis in the conventional war theater (as a means of self defense)
According to the Federation of American Scientists, the total number of nuclear warheads Worldwide is of the order of 13,000. Russia and the United States “each have around 4,000 warheads in their military stockpiles”.
The Dangers of Nuclear War are Real. Profit Driven. Two Trillion Dollars
Under Joe Biden, public funds allocated to nuclear weapons are slated to increase to 2 trillion by 2030 allegedly as a means to safeguarding peace and national security at taxpayers expense. (How many schools and hospitals could you finance with 2 trillion dollars?):
The United States maintains an arsenal of about 1,700 strategic nuclear warheads deployed on intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs) and submarine-launched ballistic missiles (SLBMs) and at strategic bomber bases. There are an additional estimated 100 non-strategic, or tactical, nuclear weapons at bomber bases in five European countries and about 2,000 nuclear warheads in storage. [see our analysis of B61-11 and B61-12 below]
The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) estimated in May 2021 that the United States will spend a total of $634 billion over the next 10 years to sustain and modernize its nuclear arsenal. (Arms Control)
In this article, I will focus on
The Post Cold War shift in US Nuclear Doctrine,
A brief review of the History of US-Russia Relations since World War I,
An Assessment of the history of nuclear weapons going back to the Manhattan Project initiated in 1939 with the participation of both Canada and the United Kingdom.
Most people in America do not know that the Manhattan Project in the immediate wake of bombing of Hiroshima, Nagasaki in August 1945, was intended to formulate a nuclear attack against the USSR, at a time when the Soviet Union and the U.S. were allies.
What I am referring to is the U.S Blueprint of September 15, 1945 according to which the US War Department planned to drop more than 200 atomic bombs on 66 cities of the Soviet Union. This is not mentioned in the history books. See:
A Note on the History of US-Russia Relations. The Forgotten War of 1918
From a historical standpoint the US and its Allies have been threatening Russia for more than 104 years starting during World War I with the deployment of US and Allied Forces against Soviet Russia on January 12, 1918, (two months following the November 7, 1917 revolution allegedly in support of Russia’s Imperial Army).
The 1918 US-UK Allied invasion of Russia is a landmark in Russian History, often mistakenly portrayed as being part of a Civil War.
It lasted for more than two years involving the deployment of more than 200,000 troops of which 11,000 were from the US, 59,000 from the UK. Japan which was an Ally of Britain and America during World War I dispatched 70,000 troops.
The US threat of nuclear war against Russia was formulated more than 76 years ago in September 1945, when the US and the Soviet Union were allies. It consisted in a “World War III Blueprint” of nuclear war against the USSR, targeting 66 cities with more than 200 atomic bombs. This diabolical project under the Manhattan Project was instrumental in triggering the Cold War and the nuclear arms race. (See analysis below).
Chronology
1918-1920: The first US and allied forces led war against Soviet Russia with more than 10 countries sending troops to fight alongside the White Imperial Russian army. This happened exactly two months after the October Revolution, on January 12, 1918, and it lasted until the early 1920s.
The Manhattan Project initiated in 1939, with the participation of the UK and Canada. Development of the Atomic Bomb.
Operation Barbarossa, June 1941. Nazi Invasion of the Soviet Union. Standard Oil of New Jersey was selling oil to Nazi Germany.
February 1945: The Yalta Conference. The meeting of Roosevelt, Churchill and Stalin.
“Operation Unthinkable”: A Secret attack plan against the Soviet Union formulated by Winston Churchill in the immediate wake of the Yalta conference. It was scrapped in June 1945.
April 12, 1945:The Potsdam Conference. President Harry Truman and Prime Minister Winston Churchill approve the atomic bombing of Japan.
September 15, 1945: A World War III Scenario formulated by the US War Department: A plan to bomb 66 cities of the Soviet Union with 204 atomic bombs, when the US and USSR were allies. The Secret plan (declassified in 1975) formulated during WWII, was released less than two weeks after the official end of WWII on September 2, 1945
1949: The Soviet Union announces the testing of its nuclear bomb.
Post Cold War Doctrine: “Preemptive Nuclear War”
The Doctrine of Mutually Assured Destruction (MAD) of the Cold War Era no longer prevails. It was replaced at the outset of the George W. Bush Administration with the Doctrine of Preemptive Nuclear War, namely the use of nuclear weapons as a means of “self-defense” against both nuclear and non-nuclear weapons states.
In early 2002, the text of George W. Bush’s Nuclear Posture Review had already been leaked, several months prior to the release of the September 2002 National Security Strategy (NSS) which defined, “Preemption” as:
“the anticipatory use of force in the face of an imminent attack”.
Namely as an act of war on the grounds of self-defense
The MAD doctrine was scrapped. The 2001 Nuclear Posture Review not only redefined the use of nuclear weapons, so-called tactical nuclear weapons or bunker buster bombs (mini-nukes) could henceforth be used in the conventional war theater without the authorization of the Commander in Chief, namely the President of the United States.
Discussing “requirements for nuclear strike capabilities,” the report lists Iran, Iraq, Libya, North Korea, and Syria as “among the countries that could be involved in immediate, potential, or unexpected contingencies.” …
Three of these countries (Iraq, Libya and Syria) have since then been the object of US-led wars. The 2001 NPR also confirmed continued nuclear war preparations against China and Russia.
“The Bush review also indicates that the United States should be prepared to use nuclear weapons against China, citing “the combination of China’s still developing strategic objectives and its ongoing modernization of its nuclear and non-nuclear forces.”
“Finally, although the review repeats Bush administration assertions that Russia is no longer an enemy, it says the United States must be prepared for nuclear contingencies with Russia and notes that, if “U.S. relations with Russia significantly worsen in the future, the U.S. may need to revise its nuclear force levels and posture.” Ultimately, the review concludes that nuclear conflict with Russia is “plausible” but “not expected.” [that. was back in 2002] ( Arms Control) emphasis added.
The Privatization of Nuclear War
With tensions growing in major regions of the World, a new generation of nuclear weapons technology was unfolding making nuclear warfare a very real prospect. And with very little fanfare, the US had embarked on the privatization of nuclear war under a first-strike “preemptive” doctrine. This process went into full swing in the immediate wake of the 2001 Nuclear Posture Review (2001 NPR) adopted by the US Senate in 2002.
On August 6, 2003, on Hiroshima Day, commemorating when the first atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima (August 6 1945), a secret meeting was held behind closed doors at Strategic Command Headquarters at the Offutt Air Force Base in Nebraska. Senior executives from the nuclear industry and the military industrial complex were in attendance.
This mingling of defense contractors, scientists and policy-makers was not intended to commemorate Hiroshima. The meeting was intended to set the stage for the development of a new generation of “smaller”, “safer” and “more usable” nuclear weapons, to be used in the “in-theater nuclear wars” of the 21st Century.”
Nuclear War against both China and Russia is contemplated
Russia is tagged as “Plausible” but “Not Expected”. That was back in 2002.
Today at the height of the Ukraine war, a Preemptive Nuclear attack against Russia is on the drawing of the Pentagon. That does not however mean that it will be implemented.
A Nuclear War Cannot be Won?
We recall Reagan’s historic statement: “A nuclear war cannot be won and must never be fought. The only value in our two nations possessing nuclear weapons is to make sure they will never be used.”
Nonetheless, there are powerful voices and lobby groups within the US establishment and the Biden administration that are convinced that “a nuclear war is winnable”.
Flashback to Inter-War Period: Wall Street Finances Hitler’s Election Campaign
According to Yuri Robsov, Wall Street and the Rockefellers were funding Germany’s war machine as well as Adolf Hitler’s election campaign:
American cooperation with the German military-industrial complex was so intense and pervasive that by 1933 the key sectors of German industry and large banks such as Deutsche Bank, Dresdner Bank, Danat-Bank (Darmstädter und Nationalbank), etc. were under the control of American financial capital.
The political force that was intended to play a crucial role in Anglo-American plans was being simultaneously prepared. We are talking about the funding of the Nazi party and Adolf Hitler personally.
On January 4th, 1932, a meeting was held between British financier Montagu Norman (Governor of the Bank of England), Adolf Hitler andFranz Von Papen (who became Chancellor a few months later in May 1932) At this meeting, an agreement on the financing of the Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei(NSDAP or Nazi Party) was reached.
This meeting was also attended by US policy-makers and the Dulles brothers, something which their biographers do not like to mention.
A year later, on January 14th, 1933, another meeting was held between Adolf Hitler, Germany’s Financier Baron Kurt von Schroeder, Chancellor Franz von Papen and Hitler’s Economic Advisor Wilhelm Keppler took place, where Hitler’s program was fully approved.
It was here that they finally resolved the issue of the transfer of power to the Nazis, and on the 30th of January 1933 Hitler became Chancellor. The implementation of the fourth stage of the strategy thus begun.
World War II: “Operation Barbarossa”
There is ample evidence that both the US and its British ally were intent upon Nazi Germany winning the war on the Eastern Front with a view to destroying the Soviet Union:
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“Stalin and his entourage’s growing suspicions, that the Anglo-American powers hoped the Nazi-Soviet War would last for years, were based on well-founded concerns. This desire had already been expressed in part by Harry S. Truman, future US president, hours after the Wehrmacht had invaded the Soviet Union.
Truman, then a US Senator, said he wanted to see the Soviets and Germans “kill as many as possible” between themselves, an attitude which the New York Times later called “a firm policy”. The Times had previously published Truman’s remarks on 24 June 1941, and as a result his views would most likely not have escaped the Soviets’ attention. (Shane Quinn, Global Research, March 2022)
Hitler’s Operation Barbarossa initiated in June 1941 would have failed from the very outset had it not been for the support of Standard Oil of New Jersey (owned by the Rockefellers) which routinely delivered ample supplies of oil to the Third Reich. While Germany was able to transform coal into fuel, this synthetic production was insufficient. Moreover, Romania’s Ploesti oil resources (under Nazi control until 1944) were minimal. Nazi Germany largely depended on oil shipments from US Standard Oil.
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Trading with the Enemy legislation (1917) officially implemented following America’s entry into World War II did not prevent Standard Oil of New Jersey from selling oil to Nazi Germany. This despite the Senate 1942 investigation of US Standard Oil.
While direct US oil shipments were curtailed, Standard Oil would sell US oil through third countries. US oil was shipped to occupied France (officially via Switzerland, and from France it was shipped to Germany: “… The shipments went through Spain, Vichy France’s colonies in the West Indies, and Switzerland.”
Without those oil shipments instrumented by Standard Oil and the Rockefellers, Nazi Germany would not have been able to implement its military agenda. Without fuel, the Third Reich’s eastern front under Operation Barbarossa would most probably not have taken place, saving millions of lives. The Western front including the military occupation of France, Belgium and The Netherlands would no doubt also have been affected.
The USSR actually won the war against Nazi Germany, with 27 million deaths, which in part resulted from the blatant violation of Trading with the Enemy by Standard Oil.
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“Operation Unthinkable”: A World War III Scenario Formulated During World War II
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A World War III scenario against the Soviet Union had already been envisaged in early 1945, under what was called Operation Unthinkable, to be launched prior to the official end of World War II on September 2, 1945.
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Roosevelt, Churchill and Stalin met at Yalta in early February 1945 largely with a view to negotiating the post war occupation of Germany and Japan.
“If you thought the Cold War between East and West reached its peak in the 1950s and 1960s, then think again. 1945 was the year when Europe was the crucible for a Third World War.
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The plan called for a massive Allied assault on 1 July 1945 by British, American, Polish and German – yes German – forces against the Red Army. They aimed to push them back out of Soviet-occupied East Germany and Poland, give Stalin and bloody nose, and force him to re-consider his domination of East Europe. … Eventually in June 1945 Churchill’s military advisors cautioned him against implementing the plan, but it still remained a blueprint for a Third World War. …The Americans had just successfully tested an atomic bomb, and there was now the final temptation of obliterating Soviet centres of population”
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Churchill’s “Operation Unthinkable” against Soviet Forces in Eastern Europe (see above) was abandoned in June 1945.
During his mandate as Prime Minister (1940-45), Churchill had supported the Manhattan Project. He was a protagonist of nuclear war against the Soviet Union, which had been contemplated under the Manhattan project as early as 1942, when the US and the Soviet Union were allies against Nazi Germany.
A Blueprint for a Third World War using nuclear weapons against 66 major urban areas of the Soviet Union was officially formulated on September 15, 1945 by the US War Department (see section below).
The Potsdam Conference
Vice President Harry S. Truman was sworn in as president of the United States on April 12, 1945, after the death of Franklin D. Roosevelt, who died unexpectedly of a cerebral hemorrhage.
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At the Potsdam meetings, President Truman entered into discussions (July 1945) with Stalin and Churchill: (see image right). The discussions were of a different nature to those of Yalta, specifically with regard to both Truman and Churchill who were both in favour of nuclear warfare:
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“[British] PM [Churchill] and I ate alone. Discussed Manhattan (it is a success). Decided to tell Stalin about it. Stalin had told PM [Churchill] of telegram from Jap emperor asking for peace. Stalin also read his answer to me. It was satisfactory. Believe Japs will fold up before Russia comes in. I am sure they will when Manhattan appears over their homeland. I shall inform Stalin about it at an opportune time. (Truman Diary, July 17, 1945, emphasis added)
What this statement from Truman’s Diary confirms is that Japan would “fold up” and surrender to the US “before Russia comes in”. Ultimately this was the objective of the atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
While Stalin was casually informed by Truman regarding the Manhattan Project in July 1945, sources suggest that the Soviet Union was aware of the Manhattan Project as early as 1942. Did Truman tell Stalin that the atom bomb was intended for Japan?
“We met at 11.00am. today.[ That is, Stalin, Churchill and the US president].
But I had a most important session [without Stalin?] with Lord Mountbatten and General Marshall [US joint Chiefs of Staff] before that. [This meeting was not part of the official agenda] We have discovered the most terrible bomb in the history of the world. It may be the fire destruction prophesied in the Euphrates Valley era, after Noah and his fabulous ark. Anyway, we think we have found the way to cause a disintegration of the atom. An experiment in the New Mexico desert was startling – to put it mildly. Thirteen pounds of the explosive caused a crater six hundred feet deep and twelve hundred feet in diameter, knocked over a steel tower a half mile away, and knocked men down ten thousand yards away. The explosion was visible for more than two hundred miles and audible for forty miles and more.
This weapon is to be used against Japan between now and August 10th.I have told the secretary of war, Mr Stimson, to use it so that military objectives and soldiers and sailors are the target and not women and children. Even if Japs are savages, ruthless, merciless and fanatic, we as the leader of the world for the common welfare cannot drop this terrible bomb on the old capital or the new. He and I are in accord. The target will be a purely military one and we will issue a warning statement asking the Japs to surrender and save lives. I’m sure they will not do that, but we will have given them the chance. It is certainly a good thing for the world that Hitler’s crowd or Stalin’s did not discover this atomic bomb. It seems to be the most terrible thing ever discovered, but it can be made the most useful.” (Truman’s Diary, Potsdam meeting on July 18, 1945)
The discussion on the Manhattan Project does not appear in the official minutes of the meetings.
The Infamous “WW III Blueprint” to Wage a Nuclear Attack against the Soviet Union (September 15, 1945)
Barely two weeks after the official end of World War II (September 2, 1945), the US War Department issued a directive (September 15, 1945) to “Erase the Soviet Union off the Map” (66 cities with 204 atomic bombs), when the US and USSR were allies, confirmed by declassified documents. (For further details see Chossudovsky, 2017)
All major cities of the Soviet Union were included in the list of 66 “strategic” targets. The tables below categorize each city in terms of area in square miles and the corresponding number of atomic bombs required to annihilate and kill the inhabitants of selected urban areas.
Six atomic bombs were to be used to destroy each of the larger cities including Moscow, Leningrad, Tashkent, Kiev, Kharkov, Odessa.
The Pentagon estimated that a total of 204 atomic bombs would be required to “Wipe the Soviet Union off the Map”. The targets for a nuclear attack consisted of sixty-six major cities.
One single atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima resulted in the immediate death of 100,000 people in the first seven seconds. Imagine what would have happened if 204 atomic bombs had been dropped on major cities of the Soviet Union as outlined in a secret U.S. plan formulated during the Second World War.
Hiroshima in the wake of the atomic bomb attack, 6 August 1945
The document outlining this diabolical military agenda had been released in September 1945, barely one month after the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki (6 and 9 August, 1945) and two years before the onset of the Cold War (1947).
The secret plan dated September 15, 1945 (two weeks after the surrender of Japan on September 2, 1945 aboard the USS Missouri, see image below) , however, had been formulated at an earlier period, namely at the height of World War II, at a time when America and the Soviet Union were close allies.
The Manhattan project was launched in 1939, two years prior to America’s entry into World War II in December 1941. The Kremlin was fully aware of the secret Manhattan project as early as 1942.
Hiroshima and Nagasaki: Dress Rehearsal for Planned Nuclear Attack against the Soviet Union
Were the August 1945 Hiroshima and Nagasaki attacks used by the Pentagon to evaluate the viability of a much larger attack on the Soviet Union consisting of more than 204 atomic bombs? The key documents to bomb 66 cities of the Soviet Union (15 September 1945) were finalized 5-6 weeks after the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombings (6, 9 August 1945):
“On September 15, 1945 — just under two weeks after the formal surrender of Japan and the end of World War II — Norstad sent a copy of the estimate to General Leslie Groves, still the head of the Manhattan Project, and the guy who, for the short term anyway, would be in charge of producing whatever bombs the USAAF might want. As you might guess, the classification on this document was high: “TOP SECRET LIMITED,” which was about as high as it went during World War II. (Alex Wellerstein, The First Atomic Stockpile Requirements (September 1945)
The Kremlin was aware of the 1945 plan to bomb sixty-six Soviet cities.
The documents confirm that the US was involved in the “planning of genocide” against the Soviet Union.
Let’s cut to the chase. How many bombs did the USAAF request of the atomic general, when there were maybe one, maybe twobombs worth of fissile material on hand? At a minimum they wanted 123. Ideally, they’d like 466. This is just a little over a month after the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
Of course, in true bureaucratic fashion, they provided a handy-dandy chart (Alex Wellerstein, op. cit)
Central to our understanding of the Cold War which started (officially) in 1947, Washington’s September 1945 plan to bomb 66 cities into smithereens played a key role in triggering the nuclear arms race.
The Soviet Union was threatened and developed its own atomic bomb in 1949 in response to 1942 Soviet intelligence reports on the Manhattan Project.
While the Kremlin knew about these plans to “Wipe out” the USSR, the broader public was not informed because the September 1945 documents were of course classified. They were declassified 30 years later in September 1975
Today, neither the September 1945 plan to blow up the Soviet Union nor the underlying cause of the nuclear arms race are acknowledged. The Western media has largely focussed its attention on the Cold War US-USSR confrontation. The plan to annihilate the Soviet Union dating back to World War II and the infamous Manhattan project are not mentioned.
Washington’s Cold War nuclear plans are invariably presented in response to so-called Soviet threats, when in fact it was the U.S. plan released in September 1945 (formulated at an earlier period at the height of World War II) to wipe out the Soviet which motivated Moscow to develop its nuclear weapons capabilities.
The assessment of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists mistakenly blamed and continue to blame the Soviet Union for having launched the nuclear arms race in 1949, four years after the release of the September 1945 US Secret Plan to target 66 major Soviet cities with 204 nuclear bombs:
“1949: The Soviet Union denies it, but in the fall, President Harry Truman tells the American public that the Soviets tested their first nuclear device, officially starting the arms race. “We do not advise Americans that doomsday is near and that they can expect atomic bombs to start falling on their heads a month or year from now,” the Bulletin explains. “But we think they have reason to be deeply alarmed and to be prepared for grave decisions.” (Timeline of the Doomsday Clock, Bulletin of Atomic Scientists, 2017)
IMPORTANT: Had the US decided NOT to develop nuclear weapons for use against the Soviet Union, the nuclear arms race would not have taken place.
Neither The Soviet Union nor the People’s Republic of China would have developed nuclear capabilities as a means of “Deterrence” agains the US which had already formulated plans to annihilate the Soviet Union.
The Soviet Union lost 26 million people during World War II.
The Cold War Era
The Nuclear Arms Race was the direct result of America’s September 1945 plan to “blow up the Soviet Union”, formulated by the US War Department.
The Soviet Union tested its first nuclear bomb in 1949. Without the Manhattan Project and the War Department’s September 15, 1945 “World War III Blueprint”, the Arms Race would not have occurred.
The September 15, 1945 War Department set the stage for numerous plans to wage World War III against Russia and China:
The Cold War List of 1200 Targeted Cities
This initial 1945 list of sixty-six cities was updated in the course of the Cold War (1956) to include some 1200 cities in the USSR and the Soviet block countries of Eastern Europe (see declassified documents below). The bombs slated for use were more powerful in terms of explosive capacity than those dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
Excerpt from list of 1200 Soviet cities targeted for nuclear attack in alphabetical order. National Security Archive, op. cit.
“According to the 1956 Plan, H-Bombs were to be Used Against Priority “Air Power” Targets in the Soviet Union, China, and Eastern Europe. Major Cities in the Soviet Bloc, Including East Berlin, Were High Priorities in “Systematic Destruction” for Atomic Bombings. (William Burr, U.S. Cold War Nuclear Attack Target List of 1200 Soviet Bloc Cities “From East Germany to China”, National Security Archive Electronic Briefing Book No. 538, December 2015
During the Cold War, the doctrine of Mutually Assured Destruction (MAD) prevailed, namely that the use of nuclear weapons would result in “the destruction of both the attacker and the defender”.
In the post Cold war era, US nuclear doctrine was redefined. “Offensive” military actions using nuclear warheads are now described as acts of “self-defense”.
Humanitarian Nuclear Warfare under Joe Biden
US-NATO led military Interventions (Yugoslavia, Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Syria, Yemen) which have resulted in millions of civilian casualties are heralded as Humanitarian Wars, as a means to ensuring Peace.
This is also the discourse underlying US-NATO intervention in Ukraine.
“I just want you to know that, when we talk about war, we’re really talking about peace” said George W. Bush
“Humanitarian Nuclear Bombs”
This kind of window dressing of “humanitarian nuclear bombs” is not only embedded into Joe Biden’s foreign policy agenda, it constitutes the mainstay of US military doctrine, namely the so-called Nuclear Posture Review, not to mention the 1.2 trillion nuclear weapons program initiated during the Obama administration.
The B61 Mini-nukes Deployed in Western Europe
The latest B61-12 “mini nuke” is slated to be deployed in Western Europe, aimed at Russia and the Middle East (replacing the existing of B61 nuclear bombs).
B-61-12 is portrayed as a “more usable” “low yield” “humanitarian bomb” “‘harmless to civilians”. That’s the ideology. The reality is “Mutual Assured Destruction” (MAD).
The B61-12 has a maximum yield of 50 kilotons which is more than three times that of a Hiroshima bomb (15 kilotons) which resulted in excess of 100,000 deaths in matter of minutes.
If a preemptive attack using a so-called mini nuke were to succeed, targeted against Russia or Iran, this could potentially lead humanity into a WW III scenario. Of course these details are not highlighted in mainstream media reports.
F-15E Eagle Strike Eagle Fighter for the Delivery of the B-61-12
Low Yield Nukes: Humanitarian Warfare Goes Live
And when the characteristics of this “harmless” low yield nuclear bomb are inserted into the military manuals, “humanitarian warfare” goes live: “It’s low yield and safe for civilians, let’s use it” [paraphrase].
The US arsenal of B61 nuclear bombs directed against the Middle East are currently located in the military bases of 5 non-nuclear states (Italy, Germany, the Netherlands, Belgium, Turkey). The command structure pertaining to the B61-12 is yet to be confirmed. The situation with regard to Turkey’s Incirlik base is unclear.
Upholding WMDs as Instruments of Peace is a Dangerous Gimmick
Throughout History, “Mistakes” have Played a Key Role
We are at a Dangerous Crossroads. There is no Real Anti-war Movement in Sight.
Why? Because War is Good for Business!
And the powers of Big Money which are behind US-NATO led wars control both the anti-war movement as well as the media coverage of US led wars. That’s nothing new. It goes back to the so-called Soviet-Afghan War (1979-) which was spearheaded by US National Security Advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski.
Through their “philanthropic” foundations (Ford, Rockefeller, Soros et al) the financial elites have over the years channelled millions of dollars into financing so-called “progressive movements” including the World Social Forum (WSF)
It’s Called “Manufactured Dissent”: Big Money is also behind numerous coups d’état and color revolutions.
Meanwhile, important sectors of the Left including committed anti-war activists have endorsed the Covid mandates without verifying or acknowledging the facts and the history of the so-called pandemic.
It should be understood that the lockdown policies as well as the Covid-19 “Killer Vaccine” are an integral part of the financial elite’s “broader arsenal”. They are instruments of submission and tyranny.
The World Economic Forum’s Great Reset is an integral part of the World War III scenario which consists in establishing through military and non military means an imperial system of “global governance”.
The same powerful financial interests (Rockefeller, Rothschild, BlackRock, Vanguard, et al) which are supportive of the US-NATO military agenda are firmly behind the “Covid Pandemic Op”.
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The Historic Battle for Peace and Democracy. A Third World War Spells the End of Humanity?
Relentless War Propaganda and Media Disinformation Is the Driving Force. It Must be Confronted.
Is “Peaceful Coexistence” and Diplomacy between Russia and the U.S. an Option?
“War is Good for Business”: Corrupt Governments which Uphold the Interests of Big Money Must be Challenged
ISBN Number: 978-0-9737147-5-3 Year: 2012 Pages: 102
PDF Edition: $6.50 (sent directly to your email account!)
Michel Chossudovsky is Professor of Economics at the University of Ottawa and Director of the Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG), which hosts the critically acclaimed website www.globalresearch.ca . He is a contributor to the Encyclopedia Britannica. His writings have been translated into more than 20 languages.
Reviews
“This book is a ‘must’ resource – a richly documented and systematic diagnosis of the supremely pathological geo-strategic planning of US wars since ‘9-11’ against non-nuclear countries to seize their oil fields and resources under cover of ‘freedom and democracy’.” –John McMurtry, Professor of Philosophy, Guelph University
“In a world where engineered, pre-emptive, or more fashionably “humanitarian” wars of aggression have become the norm, this challenging book may be our final wake-up call.” -Denis Halliday, Former Assistant Secretary General of the United Nations
Michel Chossudovsky exposes the insanity of our privatized war machine. Iran is being targeted with nuclear weapons as part of a war agenda built on distortions and lies for the purpose of private profit. The real aims are oil, financial hegemony and global control. The price could be nuclear holocaust. When weapons become the hottest export of the world’s only superpower, and diplomats work as salesmen for the defense industry, the whole world is recklessly endangered. If we must have a military, it belongs entirely in the public sector. No one should profit from mass death and destruction. –Ellen Brown, author of ‘Web of Debt’ and president of the Public Banking Institute
A Cúpula de Washington, com a qual a OTAN comemorou o 75º aniversário de sua fundação, deveria ter sido realizada em 4 de abril, mas Washington – que há 75 anos detém os principais comandos da OTAN, a começar pelo de Comandante Supremo Aliado na Europa, sempre um general norte-americano nomeado pelo presidente dos EUA – decidiu, por motivos próprios também de política interna, celebrá-la mais de três meses depois. A história oficial da OTAN, apresentada na Cúpula de Washington, explica o nascimento da OTAN da seguinte forma
“Em 1949, diante da crescente ameaça da União Soviética, 12 países europeus e norte-americanos assinaram um tratado baseado no princípio da defesa coletiva.”
O texto é acompanhado pela primeira página de um jornal datado de 29 de agosto de 1949, com uma manchete em letras grandes: “RÚSSIA TEM BOMBA ATÔMICA”.
Uma falsificação histórica colossal. A União Soviética emergiu da Segunda Guerra Mundial em grande parte destruída, tendo sido atacada e invadida em junho de 1941 pela Alemanha nazista com 201 divisões, compreendendo 5,5 milhões de soldados ou 75% de todas as tropas alemãs, 3.500 tanques e 5.000 aeronaves, além de 37 divisões dos países satélites (incluindo a Itália). A URSS havia pedido repetidamente aos Aliados que abrissem uma segunda frente na Europa, mas os EUA e a Grã-Bretanha haviam deliberadamente adiado.
O preço pago pela União Soviética é muito alto: cerca de 27 milhões de mortos, mais da metade deles civis, o que corresponde a 15% da população (em comparação com os 0,3% dos EUA em toda a Segunda Guerra Mundial); cerca de 5 milhões de deportados para a Alemanha; mais de 1.700 cidades e grandes vilas, 70 mil pequenos vilarejos devastados; 30 mil fábricas destruídas. Portanto, a União Soviética não poderia representar nenhuma ameaça para o Ocidente, até porque somente os Estados Unidos possuíam a arma atômica, da qual detinham o monopólio de 1945 a 1949. Já em setembro de 1945, apenas um mês após o bombardeio de Hiroshima e Nagasaki, o Pentágono calculou que seriam necessárias cerca de 200 bombas nucleares para atacar a URSS.
Em 1949, o arsenal dos EUA aumentou para cerca de 170 bombas nucleares. A essa altura, os EUA estavam confiantes de que logo teriam bombas suficientes para atacar a União Soviética. No entanto, naquele mesmo ano, o sonho americano de manter o monopólio das armas nucleares desapareceu. Em 29 de agosto de 1949, a União Soviética realizou sua primeira explosão nuclear experimental. Agora a URSS também tem a bomba. Nesse momento, teve início a corrida armamentista nuclear entre as duas superpotências.
Desde então, há 75 anos, a OTAN tem justificado sua estratégia de guerra com a falsa alegação de estar sendo ameaçada. A “ameaça” de hoje vem, de acordo com a Cúpula de Washington, do “crescente alinhamento da Rússia, China, Irã e Coreia do Norte”. É por isso que “a OTAN está trabalhando cada vez mais estreitamente com seus parceiros do Indo-Pacífico e com a União Europeia para ajudar a manter a paz e proteger a ordem internacional baseada em regras”. Com base nessa falsificação histórica, a OTAN – ampliada de 12 para 32 países cada vez mais próximos da Rússia – está arrastando a Europa e o mundo para uma catástrofe.
Manlio Dinuccié geógrafo e jornalista, e ex-diretor executivo italiano da International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War, associação que recebeu o Prêmio Nobel da Paz em 1985. Porta-voz do Comitato no Guerra no Nato (Itália) e pesquisador associado do Centre de recherche sur la Mondialisation (Canadá). Vencedor do Prêmio Internacional de Jornalismo de Análise Geoestratégica 2019 do Club de Periodistas de México.
Documentos internos recentemente divulgados pelo Instituto Robert Koch (RKI), a agência federal de controlo e prevenção de doenças da Alemanha, revelam uma forte desconexão entre o conhecimento especializado e as mensagens de saúde pública durante a pandemia da COVID-19.
Os documentos de janeiro de 2020 a abril de 2021 sugerem que os consultores científicos adaptaram as suas recomendações médicas e políticas sobre a COVID-19 para se alinharem com as diretivas políticas e não com as evidências disponíveis.
Comentando o vídeo de Homburg, o ex-vice-presidente da Pfizer, Michael Yeadon, chamou a interferência política nas análises e recomendações científicas do RKI de “terrível” e o cumprimento contínuo do RKI de “covarde”.
‘Este evento foi totalmente político’
O RKI desempenhou um papel fundamental na definição da resposta do país à COVID-19. Os arquivos divulgados recentemente incluem atas de reuniões internas da equipe de gestão de crises da agência.
Posteriormente, o RKI disponibilizou publicamente mais de 2.500 páginas, em sua maioria não editadas, em 30 de maio, citando “interesse público no conteúdo dos protocolos da equipe de crise do COVID-19”.
De acordo com a introdução do RKI aos ficheiros divulgados, as atas “refletem o discurso científico aberto em que diferentes perspectivas são abordadas e ponderadas”.
O instituto alertou que as declarações individuais nos documentos “não representam necessariamente uma posição coordenada do RKI e nem sempre são compreensíveis sem o conhecimento do contexto”.
Yeadon escreveu: “Não creio que exista um documento equivalente que admita repetidamente que este evento foi totalmente POLÍTICO e que as decisões foram inteiramente conduzidas por pessoas políticas não tecnicamente qualificadas no topo do governo”.
‘Os especialistas sabiam disso, mas afirmaram o contrário’
Homburg discutiu como os documentos do RKI expõem diversas discrepâncias entre as discussões internas de especialistas e as mensagens de saúde pública:
Gravidade da COVID-19: Ao contrário das mensagens públicas, as discussões internas sugeriram que a COVID-19 pode ser menos grave do que a gripe típica. “Mais pessoas morrem numa onda normal de gripe”, diz uma entrada. “O principal risco de morrer de COVID-19 é a idade.”
“Certo – 83 anos para ser mais preciso, na Alemanha”, disse Homburg.
“Em vez disso, o público foi enganado e forçado durante anos a usar máscaras FFP2”, disse Homburg.
Fechamento de escolas: Os especialistas recomendaram o fechamento de escolas apenas nas áreas fortemente afetadas. “O fechamento de escolas em áreas que não são particularmente afetadas não é recomendado”, afirmam os documentos.
No entanto, Homburg observou: “Na mesma semana, os políticos decidiram fechar todas as escolas alemãs por meses”.
Eficácia da vacina e imunidade coletiva: Já em janeiro de 2021, os especialistas do RKI questionaram a propaganda em torno da imunidade coletiva. Uma nota diz: “Estamos nos despedindo da narrativa da imunidade coletiva por meio da vacinação?”
“O ensaio clínico anterior da Pfizer não demonstrou proteção contra doenças graves e nem sequer testou proteção contra transmissão”, destacou Homburg. “Os especialistas sabiam disso, mas afirmaram o contrário em público e até mesmo perante os nossos tribunais.”
Efeitos colaterais da vacina: Um arquivo revela preocupações sobre os efeitos colaterais graves da vacina AstraZeneca. “A trombose sinusal é um efeito colateral da vacina AstraZeneca”, afirma o documento. “Há também uma incidência 20 vezes maior em homens.”
Homburg alegou que logo após esta declaração, “os políticos alemães fingiram ter recebido a vacina AstraZeneca”. Ele mostrou imagens de vários jornais anunciando vacinações da chanceler Angela Merkel, do ministro da Saúde Karl Lauterbach e outros.
Apesar deste reconhecimento interno, Homburg observou: “Os especialistas não informaram a população sobre este perigo, mas insistiram que a AstraZeneca era segura e eficaz”.
‘Corona foi uma fraude singular’
Os documentos revelam um nível preocupante de influência política nas recomendações científicas. Um verbete ilustra claramente essa pressão: “Risco ainda alto, ordem do Ministério Federal da Saúde: nada será alterado até primeiro de julho”.
Esta diretiva aparentemente levou à promoção de avaliações de alto risco, apesar do declínio do número de casos. Homburg argumentou que esta interferência política ajudou a continuação dos mandatos pandêmicos.
“Na verdade, nada mudou durante três anos”, disse ele. “Para recordar, no verão de 2020, os casos de Corona aproximavam-se de zero e o público queria a suspensão das medidas.”
Os arquivos também expõem os receios dos especialistas de perderem as suas funções consultivas se não cumprirem as diretivas políticas. Uma entrada diz: “Se o RKI não cumprir o requisito político, existe o risco de os decisores políticos desenvolverem eles próprios indicadores e/ou deixarem de envolver o RKI em tarefas semelhantes”.
“Corona foi uma fraude singular”, concluiu Homburg. “O vírus substituiu a gripe, enquanto o número total de doenças permaneceu inalterado.”
Políticos alemães divididos quanto à resposta
A divulgação dos documentos acendeu um debate acirrado sobre a gestão da pandemia COVID-19 na Alemanha, chegando ao Bundestag alemão. O texto a seguir foi adaptado da reportagem de Schreyer de 30 de abril na Rádio Munique (traduzido do alemão).
Em 24 de abril de 2024, o Parlamento deliberou sobre uma moção do grupo parlamentar Alternativa para a Alemanha (AfD) para estabelecer uma comissão de inquérito para rever o período Corona. A comissão proposta examinaria os limites dos direitos de intervenção dos governos estaduais e federais e revisaria os papéis dos atores relevantes, como o RKI.
O debate revelou divisões profundas entre os partidos políticos. A AfD e o Partido Democrático Livre (FDP) apoiaram a criação de uma comissão de inquérito, enquanto o Partido Social-Democrata (SPD) e os partidos Verdes (também denominados Aliança 90) se opuseram, defendendo abordagens alternativas, como um conselho de cidadãos. O grupo União Democrata Cristã (CDU) e União Social Cristã (CSU) sugeriu, em vez disso, um grupo de trabalho federal-estadual.
Alguns políticos expressaram preocupação com os arquivos RKI. Simone Borchardt, membro da CDU, argumentou que o tratamento dos documentos RKI – primeiro divulgando-os com supressões e depois permitindo o acesso a versões não redigidas – sugeria uma tentativa deliberada de controlar ou limitar a informação.
O debate também abordou questões mais amplas, com alguns a pedirem amnistia para os cidadãos que violaram as medidas de confinamento. Outros alertaram contra a busca de bodes expiatórios ou a divulgação de “ideias de conspiração incompletas”.
Desde o relatório de Schreyer, o cenário político na Alemanha mudou significativamente. As eleições parlamentares europeias de junho de 2024 registaram um declínio no apoio aos partidos da coligação no governo, enquanto a AfD, de extrema-direita, obteve ganhos substanciais, provavelmente fortalecendo a posição daqueles que criticam a resposta do governo à pandemia.
Yeadon apelou a um maior ativismo para chamar mais atenção às revelações de Homburg e Schreyer, especialmente à luz do recente “ruído de ‘gripe aviária‘” ou gripe aviária .
“Esta tarefa não pode ser deixada a um pequeno número de nós com a informação, porque estamos tão eficazmente amordaçados em relação a alcançar um grande número de pessoas que os perpetradores já não estão preocupados com o fato de nos manifestarmos”, escreveu ele.
De 1996 a 2003, atuou no Conselho Consultivo Científico do Ministério Federal das Finanças da Alemanha. Ele também foi membro da Comissão de Federalismo do Bundestag e do Bundesrat de 2003 a 2004, e do Conselho de Sustentabilidade do Governo Federal de 2004 a 2007.
Ele é autor de vários livros sobre macroeconomia e teoria tributária e tem sido regularmente convocado como especialista para audiências do Bundestag sobre legislação tributária e financeira.
Homburg foi geralmente visto com bons olhos pela imprensa até 2020, quando começou a questionar as políticas pandêmicas da Alemanha. Desde então, escreveu artigos científicos e posts em blogs sobre a crise do coronavírus e temas relacionados, publicou podcasts e participou de entrevistas e talk shows.
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In September 2024, the first 10 international students in the fields of Medicine and Dentistry within the quota of the Government of the Russian Federation are expected to arrive at Donetsk State Medical University named after M. Gorky.
Russian public figures discussed the possibility of cooperation between the Ministry of Higher Education of the Republic of Cameroon and educational institutions of the Donetsk People’s Republic.
The Minister of Higher Education of Cameroon, Mr. Jacques Fame Ndongo, expressed interest in closer cooperation between Russia and Cameroon in the field of education, emphasizing the desire to actively cooperate with specialized universities focused on development and training in complex specialized areas. According to the minister, in the modern world, not just basic education is especially important, but the training of specialists in high-tech and promising fields such as neurology and cardiology, who can effectively solve complex problems and tasks.
During the meeting, the head of the delegation Vladislav Chevachin spoke in detail about the wide opportunities of Donetsk State Medical University named after M. Gorky in training professional staff, touched upon the issues of expanding academic student exchange between Russia and Cameroon, as well as professional development for teachers from Cameroon in cooperation with Russian universities. Mr. Jacques Fame Ndongo confirmed Cameroon’s readiness to consider Donetsk as an international base for the training of medical specialists, in coordination with the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Republic.
The Minister supported the proposal for a partnership to strengthen the professional training of Cameroonian teachers using the Russian teaching methodology through industrial training practice, continuing education, and multifaceted academic cooperation. Mr. Jacques Fame Ndongo proposed to hold an expanded meeting of the Ministry in the near future with the participation of all relevant departments on strengthening Russian-Cameroonian cooperation in the field of education. The new system of distribution of Russian scholarships has become the subject of special attention from the Ministry of Higher Education of the Republic of Cameroon.
During the meeting, the Minister of Higher Education of the Republic of Cameroon proposed to work out mechanisms to improve the scholarship distribution system of the Government of the Russian Federation. According to Mr. Jacques Fame Ndongo, they are aimed at providing more effective and equitable access to financial support for students who seek quality education abroad. One of the key proposals of the Minister is the creation of transparent criteria and procedures for the selection of fellows. This will ensure equal opportunities for everyone who wants to get an education in Russia.
At the end of the meeting, the Minister of Higher Education of Cameroon was presented with memorable gifts, as well as an invitation to personally visit the Donetsk People’s Republic. In the near future, a number of educational events are planned in Cameroon and other African countries about the possibilities of studying in the Donetsk People’s Republic.
These steps are aimed at strengthening friendly ties between Russia and Cameroon, as well as expanding opportunities for future cooperation in the field of education and health between the two countries.
*
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Lucas Leiroz de Almeida is a Brazilian journalist, geopolitical analyst. Graduated from the Cultural Extension Program of the Brazilian War College. Researcher at the Center for Geostrategic Studies. Professionally, he works as a journalist and geopolitical analyst. Researcher in the “Crisis, Development and International Relations” research group at the Federal Rural University of Rio de Janeiro. At the invitation of the Russian Delegation in Geneva, he presented a report on the use of chemical weapons by the Ukrainian Armed Forces at the 52nd Session of the UN Human Rights Council and at the OSCE’s “Supplementary Discussions”.
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***
First published on February 7, 2023
Author’s Introduction
My long-standing commitment is to “the value of human life”, “the criminalization of war” , “peaceful co-existence” between nation states and “the future of humanity” which is currently threatened by nuclear war.
I have been researching nuclear war for more than 20 years focussing on its historical, strategic and geopolitical dimensions as well as its criminal features as a means to implementing what is best described as “genocide on a massive scale”.
What is presented below is a brief history of nuclear war: a succession of U.S. nuclear war plans going back to the Manhattan Project (1939-1945) leading up to the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in August 1945.
Unknown to the broader public, the first U.S. Doomsday Blueprint of a nuclear attack directed against the Soviet Union was formulated by the US War Department at the height of World War II, confirmed by “Top Secret” documents on September 15, 1945 when the US and the Soviet Union were allies.
There is an element of political delusion and paranoia in the formulation of US foreign policy. The Doomsday Scenario against the Soviet Union has been on the drawing board of the Pentagon for almost 80 years.
Had it not been for the September 1945 plan to “wipe the Soviet Union off the map” (66 urban areas and more than 200 atomic bombs), neither Russia nor China would have developed nuclear weapons. There wouldn’t have been a Nuclear Arms Race.
Numerous US nuclear war plans have been formulated from the outset, leading up to The 1956 Strategic Air Command SAC Atomic Weapons Requirements Study (Declassified in December 2015) which consisted in targeting 1200 urban areas in the Soviet Union, Eastern Europe and China.
The World is at a dangerous crossroads: it should be understood that the use of nuclear weapons in relation to the confrontation between US-NATO and Russia would inevitably lead to escalation and the end of humanity as we know it.
Video en français : Les Dangers de la guerre nucléaire
Video Odysee
Earlier video interview, April 2022
Click to access full screen
What is required is a Worldwide peace movement coupled with the banning of nuclear weapons.
In recent developments, several EU-NATO proxy heads of state and heads of government including President Macron (acting on behalf of powerful financial interests) have candidly intimated the need for NATO to wage war against Russia on behalf of a Neo-Nazi government, which indelibly would lead us into a World War III scenario.
What is unfolding is not only “the criminalization of “La Classe politique”,
the judicial system is also criminalized with a view to upholding the legitimacy of the war criminals in high office.
And the corporate media through omission, half truths and outright lies upholds war as a peace-making endeavor. In the words of the Washington Post, “war makes us safer and richer”
Globe and Mail
Business Insider
Washington Post
And Many More…
Michel Chossudovsky, Global Research, March 3, 2024
***
The Hiroshima Nagasaki “Dress Rehearsal”:
Oppenheimer and the U.S. War Department’s
Secret September 15, 1945 “Doomsday Blueprint” to
“Wipe the Soviet Union off the Map”
by
Michel Chossudovsky
February 1, 2023
90 Seconds to Midnight according to the Doomsday Clock
The Nobel Peace Laureates are casually blaming Russia, without recalling the history of nuclear war, not to mention Joe Biden’s 1.3 trillion dollar program to develop “more usable”, “low intensity” “preemptive nuclear weapons” to be used on a “first strike basis” against both nuclear and non nuclear states as a means of “self defense”.
This is the nuclear doctrine which currently prevails in US-NATO’s confrontation against Russia.
It is clearly outlined in the NeoCons’ Project for the New American Century (PNAC)
America’s Manhattan Project
Let us recall the history of the “doomsday scenario” which was part of America’s Manhattan project launched in 1939 with the participation of Britain and Canada.
The Manhattan Project was a secret plan to develop the atomic bomb coordinated by the US War Department, headed (1941) by Lieutenant General Leslie Groves.
Prominent physicist Dr. J. Robert Oppenheimer had been appointed by Lt General Groves to head the Los Alamos Laboratory (also known as Project Y) which was established in 1943 as a “top-secret site for designing atomic bombs under the Manhattan Project”. Oppenheimer was entrusted in recruiting and coordinating a team of prominent nuclear scientists including Italian Physicist and Nobel Prize Laureate Dr. Enrico Fermi who joined the Los Alamos Laboratory in 1944.
Oppenheimer not only played a key role in coordinating the team of nuclear scientists, he was also engaged in routine consultations with the head of the Manhattan project Lieutenant General Groves, specifically withregard to the use of the first atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, which resulted in more than 300,000 immediate deaths.
The September 15, 1945 Blueprint to “Wipe the Soviet Union off the Map”
Barely two weeks after the official end of World War II (September 2, 1945), the US War Department issued a blueprint (September 15, 1945) to “Wipe the Soviet Union off the Map” (66 cities with 204 atomic bombs), when the US and the USSR were allies. This infamous project is confirmed by declassified documents. (For further details see Chossudovsky, 2017)
Below is the image of the 66 cities of the Soviet Union which had been envisaged as targets by the US War Department.
The preparatory documents (see below) confirm that the data pertaining to the Hiroshima and Nagasaki attacks were being used to evaluate the viability as well as the cost of a much larger attack against the Soviet Union. These documents were finalized 5-6 weeks after the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombings (6, 9 August 1945).
“To Ensure our National Security”
Note the correspondence between Major General Norstad and the head of the Manhattan Project, General Leslie Groves, who was in permanent liaison with Dr. J. Robert Oppenheimer, head of the Los Alamos team of nuclear scientists.
On September 15, 1945 Norstad sent a memorandum to Lieutenant Leslie Groves requesting an estimate of the “number of bombs required to ensure our national security” ( The First Atomic Stockpile Requirements )
Lieutenant General Groves no doubt in consultation with Dr. Oppenheimer responded to Major General Norstad in a Memorandum dated September 29, 1945 in which he refers to Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
See section 2, subsections a, b and c.
“It is not essential to get total destruction of a city in order to destroy its effectiveness. Hiroshima no longer exists as a city even though the area of total destruction is considerably less than total.”
Read carefully. The text below confirms that Hiroshima and Nagasaki was “A Dress Rehearsal”.
Bear in mind the name of the country which is threatening America’s “national security” is not mentioned.
Answering your memorandum of 15 September 1945, [see response below]
The 1949 “Dropshot Plan”: 300 Nuclear Bombs, Targeting More than 100 Soviet Cities
Numerous US war plans (under the Truman presidency) to attack the Soviet Union were “formulated and revised on a regular basis between 1945 and 1950”. Most of them were totally dysfunctional as outlined by J.W. Smith in his book entitled “The World’s Wasted Wealth 2”.
“The names given to these plans graphically portray their offensive purpose: Bushwhacker, Broiler, Sizzle, Shakedown, Offtackle, Dropshot, Trojan, Pincher, and Frolic.
The US military knew the offensive nature of the job President Truman had ordered them to prepare for and had named their war plans accordingly”
Dr. Michio Kaku and Daniel Axelrod in their book entitled: “To Win a Nuclear War: the Pentagon’s Secret War Plans,”provide evidence (based on declassified documents) that the September 1945 blueprint was followed by a continuous plan by USG to bomb the Soviet Union (as well as Russia in the post-Cold War era):
“This book [preface by Ramsey Clark] compels us to re-think and re-write the history of the Cold War and the arms race… It provides a startling glimpse into secret U.S. plans to initiate a nuclear war from 1945 to the present.”
The September 1945 Blueprint (66 Cities) was followed in 1949 by another insidious project entitled the Dropshot Plan:
According to Kaku and Axelrod, the 1949 DropShot consisted of a plan directed against the Soviet Union to “drop at least 300 nuclear bombs and 20,000 tons of conventional bombs on 200 targets in 100 urban areas, including Moscow and Leningrad (St. Petersburg).
According to the plan Washington would start the war on January 1, 1957.
The Dropshot Plan was formulated prior to Russia’s August 1949 announcement pertaining to the testing of its nuclear bomb.
The Cold War List of 1200 Targeted Cities
The initial 1945 Blueprint to attack 66 cities, the subsequent 1949 Dropshot Plan (targeting 100 cities) were updated in the course of the Cold War. The 1956 Planincluded some 1200 cities in the USSR, the Soviet block countries of Eastern Europeand China (see declassified documents below).
The bombs slated for the attack significantly more powerful in terms of explosive capacity than those dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki (see below)
We are talking about planned genocide against the Soviet Union, China and Eastern Europe .
Excerpt from list of the 1200 cities targeted for nuclear attack in alphabetical order. National Security Archive, op. cit.
Details pertaining to the “The SAC [Strategic Air Command] Atomic Weapons Requirements Study for 1959, produced in June 1956 were declassified on December 22, 2015 (Excerpts below, click to access full text).
According to the National Security Archive www.nsarchive.org, the SAC, 1956:
“…provides the most comprehensive and detailed list of nuclear targets and target systems that has ever been declassified. As far as can be told, no comparable document has ever been declassified for any period of Cold War history.
The SAC study includes chilling details. … the authors developed a plan for the “systematic destruction” of Soviet bloc urban-industrial targets that specifically and explicitly targeted “population” in all cities, including Beijing, Moscow, Leningrad, East Berlin, and Warsaw.
The SAC document includes lists of more than 1100 airfields in the Soviet bloc, with a priority number assigned to each base. …
A second list was of urban-industrial areas identified for “systematic destruction.” SAC listed over 1200 cities in the Soviet bloc, from East Germany to China, also with priorities established. Moscow and Leningrad were priority one and two respectively. Moscow included 179 Designated Ground Zeros (DGZs) while Leningrad had 145, including “population” targets. … According to the study, SAC would have targeted Air Power targets with bombs ranging from 1.7 to 9 megatons.
Exploding them at ground level, as planned, would have produced significant fallout hazards to nearby civilians. SAC also wanted a 60 megaton weapon which it believed necessary for deterrence, but also because it would produce “significant results” in the event of a Soviet surprise attack. One megaton would be 70 times the explosive yield of the bomb that destroyed Hiroshima. (emphasis added).
Read carefully:
Had this diabolical project been carried out against the Soviet Union and its allies, the death toll would be beyond description (ie. when compared to Hiroshima. 100,000 immediate deaths). The smallest nuclear bomb contemplated had an explosive yield of 1.7 megatons, 119 times more “powerful’ than a Hiroshima bomb (15 kilotons of TNT)
The 9 megaton bomb mentioned above was 630 times a Hiroshima bomb, The 60 megaton bomb: 4200 times a Hiroshima bomb.
The Bulletin: Founded by Manhattan Project Scientists in September 1945
In a bitter irony, in the immediate wake of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists was founded in 1945 in Chicago by Manhattan Project scientists, who had been involved in the development of the atomic bomb.
Two years later, in 1947, The Bulletin devised the Doomsday Clock, “with an original setting of seven minutes to midnight”.
The initiative was formulated at a time when there was no arms race:
There was only one nuclear weapons state, namely the USA, which was intent upon carrying out a Doomsday scenario (genocide) against the Soviet Union formulated in September 1945.
In 1947, when the Doomsday Clock was created, the “justification” which was upheld by The Bulletin was that:
“the greatest danger to humanity came … from the prospect that the United States and the Soviet Union were headed for a nuclear arms race.”
The underlying premise of this statement was to ensure that the US retain a monopoly over nuclear weapons.
While in 1947, “The Plan to Wipe the Soviet Union of the Map” was still on the drawing Board of the Pentagon, the relevant documents were declassified thirty years later in 1975. Most of the former Manhattan project scientists were unaware of the September 1945 blueprint against the Soviet Union.
The Soviet Union emerged as a nuclear power in August 1949, two years after the launching of the Doomsday Clock, largely in view of applying what was later entitled “deterrence”, namely an action to discourage a nuclear attack by the US. At the height of the Cold War and the Arms Race, this concept eventually evolved into what was defined as “Mutually Assured Destruction”.
While several authors and scientists featured by The Bulletin have provided a critical perspective concerning America’s nuclear weapons program, there was no cohesive attempt to question the history nor the legitimacy of the Manhattan Project.
The broader tendency has been to “erase history”, sustaining the “rightfulness” of the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, while also casually placing the blame on Russia, as well as China and North Korea.
Nuclear War versus the “Imminent Dangers of CO2”
In the last fews years, The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists “seeks to provide relevant information about nuclear weapons, climate change, and other global security issues”.
According to Mary Robinson, Chair of The Doomsday Clock Elders and former President of the Republic of Ireland (2023 statement):
The Doomsday Clock is sounding an alarm for the whole of humanity. We are on the brink of a precipice. … From cutting carbon emissions to strengthening arms control treaties and investing in pandemic preparedness, we know what needs to be done. … We are facing multiple, existential crises. Leaders need a crisis mindset. (emphasis added)
This perspective borders on ridicule. CO2 is casually put forth as a danger to humanity comparable to nuclear war. It becomes an instrument of propaganda.
The Doomsday Clock is now said to “represent threats to humanity from a variety of sources” according to a collective of Nobel Prize Laureates.
Presenting C02 or Covid as a danger comparable to nuclear war is an outright lie.
Its intent is to mislead public opinion. It is part of a rather unsubtle propaganda campaign which provides legitimacy to the US doctrine of first strike “preemptive nuclear war”, i.e. nuclear war as a means of “self-defense” (formulated in the 2001 Nuclear Posture Review).
What is of concern is that U.S. decision makers including Joe Biden believe in their own propaganda, that a preemptive first strike nuclear war against Russia is “winnable”. And that tactical nuclear weapons are “instruments of peace”.
Meanwhile history is erased. America’s persistent role in developing “a Doomsday Agenda” (aka genocide) since the onslaught of the Manhattan Project in 1939 is simply not mentioned.
What is of concern is that there is a continuous history of numerous projects and WWIII scenarios consisting in “Wiping Russia off the Map” and triggering a Third World War.
Nuclear war against Russia has been embedded in US military doctrine since 1945.
ISBN Number: 978-0-9737147-5-3 Year: 2012 Pages: 102
PDF Edition: $6.50 (sent directly to your email account!)
Michel Chossudovsky is Professor of Economics at the University of Ottawa and Director of the Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG), which hosts the critically acclaimed website www.globalresearch.ca . He is a contributor to the Encyclopedia Britannica. His writings have been translated into more than 20 languages.
Reviews
“This book is a ‘must’ resource – a richly documented and systematic diagnosis of the supremely pathological geo-strategic planning of US wars since ‘9-11’ against non-nuclear countries to seize their oil fields and resources under cover of ‘freedom and democracy’.” –John McMurtry, Professor of Philosophy, Guelph University
“In a world where engineered, pre-emptive, or more fashionably “humanitarian” wars of aggression have become the norm, this challenging book may be our final wake-up call.” -Denis Halliday, Former Assistant Secretary General of the United Nations
Michel Chossudovsky exposes the insanity of our privatized war machine. Iran is being targeted with nuclear weapons as part of a war agenda built on distortions and lies for the purpose of private profit. The real aims are oil, financial hegemony and global control. The price could be nuclear holocaust. When weapons become the hottest export of the world’s only superpower, and diplomats work as salesmen for the defense industry, the whole world is recklessly endangered. If we must have a military, it belongs entirely in the public sector. No one should profit from mass death and destruction. –Ellen Brown, author of ‘Web of Debt’ and president of the Public Banking Institute
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Using creative tactics, the Resistance to U.S.-Israeli terror is causing frustration and reversals for the oppressors. Consider the following:
CNN reported June 22 that the U.S. will support Israel in the event of a war with Hezbollah with everything it has.
U.S. officials publicly reassured top Israeli officials at a series of meetings in Washington, D.C., on June 20 that if a full-out war were to break out between Israel and Hezbollah, the Biden administration is fully prepared to back its ally.
The U.S. officials gave the assurances in person to a delegation of Israeli security officials, including National Security Adviser Tzachi Hanegbi and Minister of Strategic Affairs Ron Dermer. The face-to-face assurances come amid active Israeli mobilization on the Lebanese border.
Faced with months of failure in Gaza, both Israeli and the U.S. war planners appeared determined to go in another direction — widen the war.
Israeli officials issued multiple threats claiming they will launch a major attack on Lebanon. This includes attacking civilian areas in the capital, Beirut, in order to provide security for 100,000 displaced Israeli settlers so they can return to northern Israel. Major infantry and armored forces werebeing moved into place along the Lebanese border.
Israeli war threats on Lebanon became the big media story, crashing in from every direction.
From the BBC on June 22:
“Unable to back down, Israel and Hezbollah move closer to all-out war.”
The Jerusalem Post announced June 24:
“Countdown to war between Israel and Hezbollah has begun – Israel will do what it needs to do.”
Politico asks:
“Are Israel and Hezbollah about to square up?”
Time Magazine’s headline of June 22:
“The Coming Israeli-Hezbollah War.”
Corporate think tank, The Center for Strategic and International Studies announced its assessment:
“The Coming Conflict with Hezbollah.”
Then a Sudden U.S. Change
After the promises at the White House to support Israel to the max in war with Hezbollah, it took only four days for a reversal. In a national news conference, Joint Chiefs of Staff Chair Gen. Charles Brown suddenly warned Israel that the U.S. was likely unable to assist Israelin an all-out war with Hezbollah, unlike the way the U.S. stepped in during the April drone launch from Iran.
What caused this reversal? General Brown said that any Israeli military offensive into Lebanon could risk triggering a broader war, pulling in Iran and putting U.S. forces in danger. He said the safety of U.S. forces was the priority. He admitted that it is hard to fend off the shorter-range rockets Hezbollah fires.
Air Force Gen. Brown must understand that even with U.S. military backing, Israel can’t reverse the creative low-tech capacity that the Palestinians in Gaza, the Ansarullah movement in Yemen and the Hezbollah movement have developed under the pressure of decades of occupation, bombings and invasions.
Hezbollah Video with Exact Coordinates
Just days after the June 20 White House meetings, on June 22, Hezbollah released a 10-minute video that showcases the most vital targets in Israel, with locations believed known only by those working with Israeli and U.S. military security systems. (The video is titled “To Whom it May Concern. Here is the link.)
Screenshot from the linked video
The widely distributed video includes drone footage, with the exact pinpoint coordinates of strategic Israeli facilities. The video opens with Hezbollah Secretary General Hassan Nasrallah’s declaration that “if a war is imposed on Lebanon, Hezbollah will fight without restraints and without limits” and that Israel’s seaports and airports will be targeted. This was a clear warning.
Using small “Hoopoe” drones, the Lebanese resistance group monitors Israeli military installations, strategic structures like power stations, a swath of Israeli commercial centers and in the Haifa region also arms factories, power plants, warship docks and oil reservoirs. Haifa isa key seaport. Shutting Haifa down would ravage the Israeli economy, already crumbling. (same verb tense)
The Hoopoe drone, named after a small bird in the region, uses low-altitude flyovers that evade Israeli radar.
The video includes precise coordinates and visuals of key Israeli military installations Iron Dome batteries, David’s Sling defenses, the Dimona nuclear reactor, missile testing radar and more. Hezbollah thus demonstrated its ability to penetrate Israeli air defenses and reach deep into Israel without detection.
Israeli analyst Or Heller, whose media work is widely read, explained on Iran’s Press TV that Hezbollah “wants to show Israel that it has the ability to fly over its airspace as Israel flies over Lebanon.” Striking critical infrastructure such as substations and hydro plants can paralyze neighborhoods, even entire cities.
“Hezbollah is putting everyone in check,” Heller continued. “If the Israeli regime invades and strikes Lebanese citizens, then they can be reached too.”
The destruction of the economy in northern Israel, paired with the shut-down on Israel’s southern tip of the port of Eilat on the Red Sea by Yemen’s Ansarullah Movement, warns Israeli top brass that their best assets are at risk. Military sites have now been identified, labeled and displayed for the world to see. (presstv.ir, June 23)
The Jerusalem Post admitted June 19 that the video was a challenge for the Israeli regime, because “it is used to being the hi-tech superpower in the region and prides itself on being able to use drones and other means of surveillance against enemies near and far.”
Hezbollah spent the past two decades training revolutionary militia units and accumulating military, scientific and technical expertise to deter Israel from attacking Lebanon.
Palestinian-American journalist Rami Khouri, senior public policy fellow at American University of Beirut, summarized this new development: “If Hezbollah has these capabilities, you can be pretty sure that its friends and allies all around the region have either the same or something similar, and/or Iran or Hezbollah will help them develop it soon. … About two years ago, we passed the point where Israel and the U.S. dominated the strategic realities, military realities, in the Middle East. (democracynow.org, June 24)
Hezbollah Technical / Military Capacity Grows
Hezbollah not only has the exact coordinates of Israeli sites, but according to Haaretz News,
“Hezbollah has managed to increase its stockpile of missiles, shells and drones by hundreds of percentages, either smuggled through Syria into Lebanon or produced locally, despite all attempts by the [Israeli] Air Force in Syria and on the Syrian-Iraqi border to thwart and disrupt the entry of these weapons.”
This claim is corroborated by Hezbollah’s Resource and Border Affairs official Nawaf Al-Musawi, who told Al-Mayadeen in March that Hezbollah is opening new warehouses for more accurate missiles and that they can restock in a month what they used to restock in six months.
Both Hezbollah in Lebanon and Ansarallah in Yemen have said since October that their strikes on Israel and its backers will end only when an agreement is reached in Gaza.
Why Is Israel Unable to Defeat Hamas?
It is revealing to read how the Zionist media evaluates the reasons for Israel’s failure in Gaza.
An article in the June 23 issue of the Jerusalem Post asked in a headline, “Why is Israel unable to defeat Hamas?”
“The most widespread public frustration regarding the war, after the October 7 failure,” continued this article, “concerns Israel’s inability to defeat Hamas. Although Israel put boots on the ground in Gaza and carried out a massive military maneuver, almost unlimited in resources or time, Hamas is still standing on both feet. The organization populates the tunnels, maneuvers in them, maintains a chain of command, mobilizes armed forces, and holds hostages underground. …
“[I]t was impossible to imagine that the strongest military power in the region, which previously defeated several armies in six days, would not be able to defeat a local terrorist organization when forced to do so. … The area above the ground is controlled by Israel, and below the ground is occupied by Hamas.
“The use that Hamas was able to make of the tunnels is groundbreaking, giving it technological supremacy in the underground battlefield.” The tunnels are the “underground iron dome” of the Resistance.
“The Biden administration first clearly supported the dismantling of Hamas, but stopped doing so when it realized that, unfortunately, this goal was not practical with the existing capabilities.”
Numerous other articles and video footage from Resistance organizations working in the tunnels give video evidence of how Palestinians now have the capacity to build small shoulder rockets by repurposing the endless supply of unexploded Israeli bombs dropped on them.
Yemen Develops Hypersonic Missiles
Since Israel opened its all-out attack on Gaza, following the October 7 military action by Hamas, the Ansarullah Movement in Yemen has vowed to block ships traveling the Red Sea through the Suez Canal to Israeli ports on the Mediterranean Sea.
According to reports in Bloomberg News, from mid-November to May 1 approximately 65 merchant ships have been attacked for attempting to violate the Ansarullah ban on trade with Israel at a time when Israel is waging a genocidal war on Gaza. Cargo shipping traffic has dropped by about half. U.S. efforts using aircraft carriers and jet bombers have failed to stop the missile, drone and small-boat attacks against commercial vessels linked to Israeli shippers.
The Yemeni movement now claims to have developed a hypersonic missile. They announced a strike on the U.S. Aircraft Carrier Eisenhower. The commander of the giant warship denied it was hit. But the U.S. Navy did pull the aircraft carrier, valued at $4.5 billion dollars, further out of range.
Israel Lacks Troops, Preparation and Morale
In Gaza, Israel has failed to achieve any of its publicized goals, despite almost nine months of continuing genocidal attacks. Netanyahu’s war cabinet has crumbled in resignations. Escalating internal dissention and demonstrations of tens of thousands of people within Israel are demanding negotiations. Finding housing, schools, jobs and subsidies for over 100,000 angry settlers driven out of stolen lands is creating a crisis in Zionist ideology and in the economy.
The head of the Israel Occupation Forces Herzi Halevisaid the army is facing troop shortages amid rising casualties in the war against Hamas in Gaza. Enlisting more troops is difficult due to rising public opposition to the war. There is open conflict between Netanyahu, his defense minister and conflicting infighting among his gaggle of small reactionary political parties.
The U.S. military machine has overwhelming deadly capacity. Imperialist strategists flaunt their power in obscene ways. Military contractors sell their weapons in ways that increase their profits and ensnare countries in debt traps.
Israel, as a primary ally in U.S. regional domination of West Asia, has access and use of an endless supply, paid for by workers in the U.S. from the U.S. treasury.
Impoverished and developing countries, determined to assert their sovereignty and escape a colonial death grip, are using science and applying their limited locally available resources to engineer weapons and strategies of self-defense that can prevent the destructive U.S. mega-weapons from determining the outcome.
The Zionist movement and its U.S. imperialist backers face a strategic dilemma — in order to avoid a very destructive wider war, for which they are not prepared and cannot win, they need to end the current genocidal war on Gaza. Ending the war without defeating the resistance would be a huge setback for the Zionist movement and an even larger humiliation for its protector and co-conspirator — U.S. imperialism. It will be a huge advance on a world scale.
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Iran has a new president, but that won’t affect the US-Iran relationship, because the US is held hostage to the Israel Lobby, AIPAC. Masoud Pezeshkian, a 69-year-old cardiac surgeon, former health minister, and current Member of Parliament, won 53% of the vote in a runoff election in Iran.
Pezeshkian is open to a new relationship with the US, but any policy change will have to wait until the outcome of the US election in November. Similarly, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is waiting for the outcome of the US election.
“I have come … to seek lasting peace and tranquility and cooperation in the region, as well as dialogue and constructive interaction with the world,” Pezeshkian said in a speech.
Regardless of which candidate will be elected, they will be a supporter of Israel. President Donald Trump will remember in his 2020 election race Netanyahu stabbed him in the back, and came out publically in support of Joe Biden, even though Trump had done more for Israel than any previous US president.
“I haven’t spoken to him since,” Trump said in an interview with Axios’ Barak Ravid in December 2021, in reference to Netanyahu. “F**k him,” he said.
Israel keeps Iran as their designated ‘Enemy Number One’. Regardless of leadership change, or international diplomacy, Iran is destined to remain the bad guy in the Israeli drama.
The US has a similar policy, which is designed to keep the American public in fear of something foreign. At one time, Americans were afraid of Al Qaeda, and then it morphed into ISIS. Putin has taken the place of the enemy as portrayed in the Biden-controlled US media.
Pezeshkian has been a member of parliament since 2008, representing Tabriz in northwestern Iran. His father is of Turkic descent, while his mother is Kurdish. Pezeshkian grew up speaking Turkic, Kurdish, and Farsi. Some analysts see Pezeshkian as a moderating force who may sympathize with minorities.
According to Netanyahu, Iran seeks to develop a nuclear bomb with which to ‘nuke’ Israel into non-existence. According to the Iranian supreme leadership, Iran wants nuclear ability to have a source of electricity, rather than polluting the environment by burning fossil fuels.
Saudi Arabia, a close US ally and US-made weapons customer, also has told the US administration they will pursue building a nuclear power plant, which is common in many Western countries. The US will allow the Saudis their nuclear project, but in exchange for signing the Abraham Accords, which will normalize diplomatic relations with Israel. Experts view Saudi Arabia as the powerhouse in the Middle East, and signing a deal with Israel has been one of the two main goals of Netanyahu since taking office. His second goal is to expand the illegal settlements in the West Bank, effectively annexing the land. The Gaza War has put normalization plans on hold as Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman has reiterated the official Saudi position rejecting the occupation of Palestine and demanding a two-state solution.
Iran and Hezbollah, and others in the resistance movement are demanding the end of the occupation of Palestine. If Israel would negotiate a final peace deal with the Palestinian people, there would be no armed resistance. In theory, the UN, the US, the UK, and almost every country have agreed that the UN resolution for a two-state solution should be implemented as soon as possible. That peace deal would mark the end of violence against Israel, and both Israelis and Palestinians could live in peace, and with human rights.
Pezeshkian signaled there would be no change in Iran’s backing of Hezbollah, whose attacks since Oct. 7 have raised the specter of a wider war in the region. He wrote to Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah that “support for resistance groups will continue vigorously.”
But, Netanyahu’s extremist government has said they will never give one inch of land to the Palestinians, and instead want to keep Gaza under military occupation forever and continue to hold the 3 million Palestinians in the Occupied West Bank under an iron-fist rule which is designed never to end.
The US has a two-faced policy on Israel. On the one hand, the US President says they are committed to a two-state solution, and on the other hand, he is sending Israel all the weapons they request to keep the genocide going in Gaza. On April 20, the House passed a bill to provide $26.3 billion in assistance to Israel. This split personality is due to AIPAC. From the White House to Capitol Hill, every politician knows their political career depends on bowing down to AIPAC.
The White House, regardless of its occupant, will have the opportunity to see whether a serious diplomatic process containing the nuclear issue and de-escalation is possible with the Pezeshkian leadership.
Although Pezeshkian is open to dialog with the West, he will face a serious obstacle because the US is unwilling to engage in diplomacy with Iran, and that stems from the political power of AIPAC which is determined to keep Iran as the enemy.
Iran is a regional power with important allies: Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Yemen and Palestine. Pezeshkian recently thanked Russia and China for their support during some of the darkest days in Iran.
The US would like to isolate Iran, but that has failed, as the days of the US as the sole superpower are over, and a new world is emerging with opportunities for change and growth.
Pezeshkian will not likely change the US-Iran relationship fundamentally, but he might be able to improve the lives of Iranians.
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It is of extreme importance to understand the concept and motivation of soft power by China – the most rising emerging market power today and already the first export nation with the second-largest economy in the world.
Concerning China and its foreign policy, soft power is one of the most frequently used political and social concepts during the last two decades. It has to be immediately noticed that one of the major reasons for China’s easy acceptance of soft power is that soft use of power has historically a strong cultural foundation in traditional Chinese foreign policy (for instance, in the case of the Korean Peninsula). Traditional China has a rich military-free culture, which mostly contributes to China’s use of cultural power in its foreign relations[1]. The revival of material and cultural power prompts China to easily find an echo in the concept of soft power. As a matter of fact, all ethnic Chinese people are proud of their cultural history.
Given that soft power is highly related to culture, it can be said that it is natural that China should stress the importance and use of cultural and soft power concerning its competitive cultural advantage in international society. Additionally, for most Chinese political and economic elites, the factor of civilization is playing a key role in shaping the future global order of world politics. In other words, in the eye of the Chinese elite, the way civilizations shape world order is not through clashes, as Samuel P. Huntington claims (a theory of Clash of Civilizations), but through dialogue between them. Such belief in civilization as well as is reinforcing the Chinese emphasis on soft power. Another reason for this is that Chinese society is fundamentally a relation-based society. This means, practically that social power is originating mostly, but not entirely, from the density of relational networks. Social power should be used for strengthening rather than disrupting the balance of social relations. Such a particular understanding of power is as well as consistent with the nature of soft power.
Some principles relating to Chinese use of soft power in foreign policy could be summarized briefly as follows:
At the cultural level, people from different cultures and civilizations should be mutually appreciated through communication. Diplomacy is, therefore, understood by the Chinese political authorities to be a useful means to reduce tensions among different civilizations.
At the economic level, China prefers to use persuasive rather than coercive means in order to address political disputes. In practice, in many cases, China insists that disputes cannot easily and simply be resolved through economic sanctions.
At the societal level, soft power building should help to establish mutual social assistance systems in international areas. That is why China is stressing the importance of transnational societal linkage in a globalized world.
It has to be emphasized that most citizens of China like officials and scholars are fully aware of the great gap in terms of soft power capacity between China and the USA. There is an opinion when the long line at the USA embassy visa application window in Beijing starts to get shorter, this may well mean that the soft power gap between China and the USA has become more balanced. In a soft power survey in East Asian countries in 2008, for instance, the Chicago Council on Global Affairs showed that the USA has much more soft power than China in East Asia. Even more, China’s soft power, in some indices, was even weaker than that of South Korea and Japan[2]. Through the opposite lens, with the growing wave of China-craze and businessmen’s rush to China, however, is it accurate to think that China is facing an unprecedented opportunity to upgrade its soft power around the globe?
It is frequently reported that China’s image in Africa, compared with its image there before the reform program started in 1979, is quite mixed. On one hand, China greatly increased its official aid to several African states, but on the other hand, its image is more or less damaged by some Chinese companies’ profits-before-everything activities there (that is the same with many Western companies too).
Several indicators are showing that China’s soft power is increasing in Asia and the rest of the world during the last 20 years, particularly after the 2008 global financial crisis that started in the USA[3]. From that time onward, soft power has become a keyword in Chinese foreign policy as there is great potential for the development of China’s soft power[4]. It has to be noticed that in many countries in developing world of emerging market economies Chinese formula of authoritarian government and successful market economy (China’s tripling of its GDP over 30 years) has become more popular than the previously dominant American formula of liberal market economics with democratic government.
However, from a general point of view, even if the authoritarian growth model produces soft power for China in authoritarian countries, it does not produce attraction in democratic countries. In other words, what attracts Venezuela, may repel in France[5]. However, many Western nations are losing their image and soft power in developing countries in their race with both China and Russia because of their neo-imperialistic policies recognized as such by ex-Western colonies in Africa, Latin America, and Asia. For instance, the G. W. Bush (Junior) administration’s general tendency towards unilateralism and in particular its approach to the “war on terror” damaged the USA’s soft power and bred resentment, particularly within the Muslim world. This US unilateralism was dramatically demonstrated by the USA’s 2003 invasion of Iraq. Indeed, the then UN Secretary-General, Kofi Annan, declared explicitly that, as the invasion had not been sanctioned by the OUN SC, and was not following the principles of the UN Charter, it was a clear breach of international law (like NATO’s aggression on the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia in 1999). The 2003 Iraq War demonstrated how the OUN could be reduced to the role of a bystander in a world dominated by the hegemonic USA. However, such action undoubtedly weakened the USA’s soft power[6].
Instead of placing weight only on the economy and material resources, for the application of soft power, the future of China’s soft power will depend on what kinds of ideas China can contribute to the world, especially under the current uncertain international conditions and global rivalry between China and the USA and the USA and Russia.
The most significant challenge to US power and global hegemony is the rise of emerging market states (like BRIC) especially China. In general warnings about the decline of US global hegemony date back after the Vietnam War and the Iranian Islamic revolution. The rise of China is, nevertheless, the most significant phenomenon in IR during the last 40 years, suggesting the emergence of a new global hegemon, with China, set to overtake the USA in economic terms during the 2020s. Although China’s global power is very closely related to its economic resurgence, its influence is as well as growing in other respects.
China has by far the largest army in the world and is second only to the USA in terms of military spending. Chinese influence over Africa, in particular, has expanded considerably due to massive financial investment, linked to securing supplies of energy and raw materials. China’s structural power is as well as growing, as is reflected in the growing influence of the G-20, its role within the WTO, and the fate of both the 2009 Copenhagen Climate Change and the 2021 Glasgow Climate Change conferences. China’s soft power is linked to its association with anti-colonialism and its capacity to portray itself as the representative of the global South.
On the other hand, the USA’s soft power has declined in several respects. Its reputation has been damaged by its association with corporate power and widening global inequality, and resentment developing against “globalization as Americanization”. Serious damage has also been done to the USA’s moral authority by the military invasion of Iraq and by the terrible treatment of prisoners at Abu Ghraib and the Guantanamo detention camp.
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Dr. Vladislav B. Sotirović is a former university professor in Vilnius, Lithuania. He is a Research Fellow at the Center for Geostrategic Studies. He is a regular contributor to Global Research.
Notes
[1] See more in [Lei Haizong, Chinese Culture and Chinese Soldiers in History, Beijing: Commercial Press, 2001 (in Chinese)].
[2] Christopher Whitney, David Shambaugh, Soft Power in Asia: Results of a 2008 Multinational Survey of Public Opinion, Chicago Council on Global Affairs [www.thechicagocouncil.org].
[3] Sheng Ding, The Dragon’s Hidden Wings: How China Rises with Its Soft Power, Lanham: Lexington Books, 2008.
[5] Ingrid d’Hooghe, The Limits of China’s Soft Power in Europe: Beijing’s Public Diplomacy Puzzle, Clingendael Diplomacy Papers, No. 25, Netherlands Institute of International Relations, Clingandel, 2010.
[6] By definition, soft power is the power of attraction rather than coercion. It is the ability to influence others by persuading them to follow or agree to norms and aspirations that produce the desired behavior, as opposed to using threats or rewards.
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As a nation, the United States, as if we did not already know, is convulsed. Paranoid and divided, giddy with conspiracy and deranged by a fear of totalitarian seizure, hyper partisan and hostile to debate and any loose definition of facts (this condition afflicts the entire political spectrum), the only thing missing so far was this: an assassination attempt on a presidential candidate.
Till now, we were seeing the cruel spectacle of an aged president visibly and publicly being mauled, a wounded beast let out on safari in order to be hunted by all manner of trophy hunting punditry. Joe Biden has mumbled and fumbled his way through a haze, even as his stage managers desperately try to operate the strings. With each day, another Democratic lawmaker is expressing concern that he voluntarily yields to a fitter model.
In this whole business, the presumptive Republican nominee, Donald Trump, has remained unusually reticent. Let the Democrats keep finding the rope, and the rest will follow. Then came the shots at a rally held in Pennsylvania on July 13.
Cue to the event. Videos aplenty to choose from. Faint gunshots register in the background. Trump seems to grab his head and proceeds to fall to the ground. Secret Service agents form a scrum. Trump is then lifted, blood streaking his head, seemingly from a grazing wound. A moment of near martyred glory follows: Trump, pausing the agents, salutes to the crowd.
“I knew immediately that something was wrong in that I heard a whizzing sound, shots, and immediately felt the bullet ripping through the skin,” he stated in a post on Truth Social. “Much bleeding took place, so I realized what was taking place.”
The shooter in question is said to have been shot by the Secret Service, making this the first attempt to assassinate either a president or presidential candidate since an effort was made on Ronald Reagan’s life in 1981. One spectator was also killed, with two others “critically injured”. “It is incredible that such an act can take place in our Country. Nothing is known at this time about the shooter, who is now dead,” stated Trump.
President Biden, in condemning the attack, told reporters that “the idea – the idea – that there’s political violence, or violence in America like this, is just unheard of, it’s just not appropriate.”
Far from this being incredible, such acts of violence speckle and blood US politics. Candidates have been previously gunned down in cold blood. Presidents, whether going to the theatre or appearing in public motorcades, have been very publicly assassinated.
Within minutes, the metre on the political gauge was ticking, making Trump sound like an oppressed jihadi warrior. These are the effusive words of Texan Gov. Greg Abbott: “They try to jail him. They try to kill him. It will not work. He is indomitable.” The state’s Attorney General Ken Paxtonsounded forbiddingly biblical: “The world is evil. Praise God that President Trump was able to walk away on his own. Praying for his complete healing and that this person is captured immediately.”
Republican Florida Senator Rick Scott also gave an inkling about how the shooting will be processed in the political mix. “Democrats and liberals in the media have called Trump a fascist. They’ve compared him to Hitler. They’ve tried to lock him up. They tried to remove his Secret Service protection.” This was nothing less than “an assassination attempt by a madman inspired by the rhetoric of the radical left.”
While the US is a republic proud of overthrowing a supposedly tyrannical monarch, it sports one unassailable kingdom: that of conspiracy. With its vast court, it exercises a curious tyranny over the mind. All can fall for it. There are those who will assume, and already have, that Trump staged his own shooting for the sheer convenience of it all. Nothing he will say will convince them otherwise, seeing that his relationship with truth is estranged beyond repair.
On the other side, there will be a narrative that lone shooters in these instances never exist. Behind the gun is a long cast shadow of the Establishment: the intelligence community, law enforcement, and other dark annexes of the Deep State.
As both Trump and Biden have been seen by their respective detractors as satanic guarantors of doom should they return to the White House, the moderates have a mere sliver to work with. The tedious words of “existential threat” are used as wounding weapons to excoriate opponents.
Despite such cheap language, the United States has previously endured an effort to constitutionally and tangibly divide it, leading to a Civil War that continues its haunting reach. It has also survived the assassination of its political figures, in large part because the Republic, at some point, took less interest in representative politics than politics bought. It was a point Gore Vidal proved relentless on: Why run for office when you can buy its occupants?
A mad patient, an inspired experiment, a cruel manifestation, a sprawling empire, the republic will continue surviving, even in decline, overseen by corporate boardrooms and unelected figures. “The lesson,” the Financial Reviewremarked optimistically, “is that American democracy has proven itself resilient.” Despite making the usual error about a political system that is distinctly not democratic – the Founding Fathers hated the idea of a fully represented demos – the paper is unlikely to be proved wrong. A spell of febrile lunacy, however, is likely to follow first.
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Dr. Binoy Kampmark was a Commonwealth Scholar at Selwyn College, Cambridge. He currently lectures at RMIT University. He is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG). Email: [email protected]
Featured image: Evan Vucci / Licensed under Fair Use
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It’s been just over two years since NATO officially restarted the Cold War. Obviously, the conflict never really stopped, as the world’s most aggressive racketeering cartel kept expanding eastward, exclusively through lies and deceit. Namely, it turned out that NATO deliberately crossed all Russian red lines in order to provoke a reaction. Moscow kept its cool, but American belligerence made it virtually impossible to maintain even basic bilateral ties. The Kremlin realized it could not rely on any sanity in Washington DC, as the warmongering elites fully took power. NATO’s strategic setup for yet another Western invasion of Russia was all done, or so it seemed. Namely, after eight years of futile attempts to reason with the political West, Moscow realized it was time for action (SMO).
In the last nearly two and a half years, the NATO-backed Neo-Nazi junta became the proverbial punching bag for probing Russian military might. And while the mainstream propaganda machine is doing a somewhat decent job hiding the atrocious results, the massive amount of resources that the Kiev regime is demanding only keeps growing, clearly indicating what’s really going on. What was supposed to be NATO’s third most powerful member (had it ever joined) turned into a virtual junkyard of the latest Western military equipment. And yet, it seems there are several other nations in NATO that would want this horribly unflattering role as well. Namely, Poland is the “logical” choice for many, although most of those people don’t seem to understand the gravity of the current situation.
High-ranking NATO officials have already announced a number of major moves that can only be described as extremely hostile toward Russia.
The annual NATO summit in Washington DC this week is a clear indicator of that. Apart from the regular weapons shipments to the Neo-Nazi junta, particularly air defense systems, the much-touted F-16s are in the spotlight again. The Netherlands, Denmark and the United States jointly announced that the deliveries of these US-made jets are ongoing. The Dutch F-16 are of particular concern, as they’re also nuclear-capable. However, while this could certainly lead to an uncontrollable escalation, the moves of some individual member states are a real danger to global peace. As previously mentioned, the situation with Poland is particularly concerning.
For instance, on July 10, Polish Army Chief of Staff General Wieslaw Kukulaopenly called for Warsaw to prepare its troops for an all-out war, insisting that it shouldn’t focus on asymmetric warfare, but a full-scale one. Although he didn’t really mention any specific country, it’s only logical to presume he was talking about war with Russia. Such provocative statements accomplish nothing, and yet, here we are.
“Today, we need to prepare our forces for full-scale conflict, not an asymmetric-type conflict,” General Kukula said at a press conference, adding: “This forces us to find a good balance between the border mission and maintaining the intensity of training in the army.”
Another thing that’s easy to miss in General Kukula’s statement is the escalating situation on the border with Belarus, the closest Russian ally and member of virtually all international multipolar organizations as Russia itself, including the CSTO and SCO (Shanghai Cooperation Organization). What’s more, Minsk and Moscow are part of the Union State. Although still de facto not implemented, this post-Soviet supranational entity gives both countries security from outside threats. Namely, while Belarus is important for Russia historically, ethnically, culturally, militarily, you name it, Minsk needs Moscow for the same reasons, as well as geopolitical and economic stability. Not to mention that Russia repeatedly warned that attacking Belarus also means attacking Russia itself.
“Speaking at the same event, Deputy Defense Minister Pawel Bejda said that as of August, the number of troops guarding Poland’s eastern border would be increased to 8,000 from the current 6,000, with an additional rearguard of 9,000 able to step up within 48 hours notice,” Reuters reported.
And indeed, Poland is investing billions in “beefing up defenses”, particularly along the Belarussian and Russian border. It’s also massively increasing troop numbers, a trend that is the complete opposite of what’s going on in the vast majority of other NATO member states.The current size of the Polish military is estimated at 190,000 soldiers, but the government wants it at a staggering 300,000 in the next several years. Such a massive expansion also suggests that Warsaw is preparing for “something big”. This is without even taking into the latest agreement between Poland and the Kiev regime which will effectively allow Warsaw to target Russian missiles, making Poland a direct party to the NATO-orchestrated Ukrainian conflict. This alone could light the fuse of a new war in Europe.
Neighboring Belarus might be smaller and less populous, but its military is similarly sized and it has not one, but two superpower allies – Russia and China. Minsk acquired a number of technologies from both sides to help modernize its military industry, while exercises are regularly conducted with both Moscow and Beijing. In fact, one such with the latter was conducted this week. However, apart from that, Belarus can also use Russian nuclear weapons stationed in the country in case of a foreign aggression. In other words, Poland is risking thermonuclear war by allowing its top-ranking military officials to openly talk about preparations for an all-out conflict. And to say nothing of the possibility of Poland shooting down Russian missiles in airspace under the Neo-Nazi junta’s control.
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This article was originally published on InfoBrics.
Drago Bosnic is an independent geopolitical and military analyst. He is a regular contributor to Global Research.
US-NATO led military Interventions (Yugoslavia, Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Syria, Yemen) which have resulted in millions of civilian casualties are heralded as Humanitarian Wars, as a means to ensuring Peace.
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