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Today my book Rockefeller: Controlling the Game is released internationally by Skyhorse Publishing.
It has been a long journey. Almost exactly 15 years ago, as a PhD Candidate in Technology and Social Change at Linköping University, I started researching the politics behind climate change.
In the summer of 2008 I had decided to scrutinise the allegations against skeptical scientists, that they were paid by oil companies to discredit AGW (the theory of anthropological global warming). I found that these allegations were mostly unfounded, with a few notable exceptions (e.g. the Global Climate Coalition). I saw mainly a number of scientists who actually stood up for a genuinely scientific approach; who would not let themselves be bought by political trends and fat research grants. All skeptical scientists were not even critical of the AGW theory but only contended the degree of the human influence on climate, or the efficacy and wisdom of proposed mitigation policies.
Upon further digging, I instead, much to my surprise, found that oil companies were actually pumping money into projects which embraced Al Gore’s doomsday message! And had done so since early 1960s!
I asked myself where the threat of climate change really came from. When did it start? Alas, I found no answer. No one at the Centre for Climate Science and Policy Research (to which I was affiliated at the time) knew. There were many who did research on climate-related issues without having the faintest idea about the origin of their mission. But if the UN had declared that it is a crucial issue for humanity it must be true, seemed to be their reasoning; “everyone thinks so”. There were always references to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). The debate was over.
I wanted answers. When no one else could provide me with those answers I realised I had to research the matter myself. I found documentation in a book published by the Royal Institute of International Affairs, where the development of the climate change issue was briefly described. A few key events were listed, which I used as a starting point: the International Geophysical Year 1957-58; a climate conference organised by the Conservation Foundation in 1963; the UN Conference on the Human Environment in Stockholm in 1972; and the Conferences in Villach, Austria in the first half of the 1980s.
I found out which actors were involved, what documents they used, who financed them, and what policy suggestions they came up with to solve the alleged problem of climate change.
I had initially planned on writing five pages but it landed on close to 50. The result was surprising and somewhat shocking. A clear pattern emerged. I knew it would be controversial to communicate these findings. They contradicted the views preached by the believers. Especially concerning the fact that a number of U.S. oil billionaires had gotten involved at an early stage. This was especially the case with most prominent oil family of them all. The founders of Standard Oil/Exxon. The Rockefellers.
I included the chapter in my doctoral thesis, which struck down like a bomb upon its publishing in December 2012.
In early 2016 I decided to do a more thorough investigation. It resulted in the first Swedish edition of Rockefeller, which was released on Easter Monday 22 April 2019. I asked a number of questions:
Why had the Rockefeller family funded and influenced climate research since the 1950s and helped shape climate policy since the 1980s?
And why did Rockefeller Brothers Fund in 2014 announce that they would divest from all of their fossil energy holdings? Why attack the very industry on which their immense wealth was founded? What was their motive in their own words – and how did it all begin?
The answers can be found in the book. Published one day after Easter Monday 2024, and available as hardback, ebook (kindle) and audiobook.
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At 38, Jules doesn’t look like someone who would be diagnosed with lung cancer and she believe this, coupled with her non-respiratory symptoms, meant she wasn’t diagnosed as quickly as she could have been. She is sharing her experience to help others avoid similar delays.
“I think people would look at me and never believe I have stage 4 lung cancer which has spread to three points in my spine and pelvis but this is my reality.
“I was diagnosed on 5th November after a series of what I now know to be lung cancer symptoms. I had been suffering from back ache, shoulder pain and then developed a lump in my neck. I was totally unaware that any of these were signs of lung cancer and my doctors didn’t piece it together either.
“My backache was put down to sciatica. My shoulder pain was diagnosed as tennis elbow – over the phone – whilst the lump in my neck was dismissed as a cyst or swollen gland that people get when they are run down. I wasn’t happy with this so pushed back and was referred to an ear, nose and throat specialist and this was how I finally started on the path to diagnosis.
“The ENT doctor sent me for an ultrasound and they told me they were taking biopsies. That was when alarm bells started to ring.
“My worst fears were soon confirmed and I was diagnosed with lung cancer. At that point, we didn’t really know what was going on. The person who delivered the news was not a lung cancer specialist and so couldn’t answer any of our questions. I was left fearing the worst.
As a mother, you just think of all the worst scenarios. I thought I was going to die and how was I going to tell my son. It just doesn’t feel real. You just keep asking yourself ‘Is this actually happening to me?’
JULES WAS DIAGNOSED WITH LUNG CANCER AGED 38
“Three days later, I had a phone call to tell me the scans showed it had spread to my spine and pelvis. We were completely devastated and so scared. We were still waiting on the results of the biopsies so I still didn’t have a treatment plan. All those worst case scenarios were feeling like they were coming true. All we knew for sure was that it was stage 4 and it felt like the end of the road.
“But then my treatment plan came in. I met my consultant and asked ‘Can anything be done?’ and he said yes! He told me about a targeted therapy that was showing great success, especially in the younger generation, by basically putting my cancer to sleep. And that is what is happening.
“Each day, I take this one little pill – I call it my magic medicine – and every scan since has shown my cancer is stable.
“It doesn’t come without side effects. I think that’s the price you pay for having a drug working so invasively in your system. I have mouthwashes constantly. My skin is cracked and dry because all the oil has been extracted from my body. I have diarrhea, sickness, loss of appetite and fatigue. The list goes on but that’s where your lung nurse comes in. She will make everything more manageable.
I’m now approaching a year since my diagnosis and I have come to peace with it. I do not live with cancer; my cancer lives with me. I am the one in control.
“However, I do still feel angry. I’m not a medical professional so I couldn’t have known that my body was sending out a message. I believe those little jigsaw pieces should have been picked up by a medical professional. I should have been scanned sooner and then my lung cancer could have been found out at a lower stage instead of stage four.
“I think lung cancer is very much associated to men. It has been largely thought of a manly illness, maybe someone who was a heavy smoker, or a man that worked in the asbestos industry.
“I want to break that stigma. And I will do everything in my power to do just that.”
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Turbo Lung Cancer in Under 40
Thailand – Dr. Krittai Thanasombatkul was diagnosed with Stage 4 Lung Cancer in Oct. 2022 died on Dec. 5, 2023.
Nov. 30, 2023 – TURBO CANCER – NY – 40 year old Sophia Sheffer was diagnosed with Stage 4 Lung cancer in Oct. 2023 & died on Nov. 30, 2023. Dx to death: 1 month.
Nov. 5, 2023 – 32 year old Bonginkosi Ntuli, South African professional soccer player was diagnosed with Stage 4 Lung cancer shortly before his unexpected death on Nov. 5, 2023.
Oct. 15, 2023 – Norfolk, UK – 31 year old Jessica Robinson was told she just had wisdom tooth pain. She was then diagnosed with Stage 4 Lung Cancer”and the cancer spread, engulfing her whole left lung as well as her aorta and infusing into her spine”. She died 45 days after cancer diagnosis, on Oct. 15, 2023. “Family was told that doctors had not been looking for lung cancer because she was too young.”
Oct. 4, 2023 – 36 year old NY Army National Guard Captain Patrick John Cassidy, who was also a rugby player died after 9 month battle with Stage 4 Lung Cancer.
Oct. 1, 2023 – UK – 29 year old Hannah Williams died suddenly on Oct. 1, 2023 just 4 months after being diagnosed with Stage 3 Lung Cancer while she was pregnant. Diagnosis to death: 4 months.
Sep. 9, 2023 – Ft.Pierce, FL – 40 year old Lindsey Porter is a nurse. She is also a new mom and was just diagnosed with Stage 4 Lung cancer with brain metastases.
Sep. 5, 2023 – Glasgow, Scotland – 28 year old Cheryl Robertson was given a Stage 4 Lung Cancer (ALK-positive) Diagnosis in March 2023 and she died six months later. She had no smoking history. The lung cancer spread to both her lungs and lymph nodes.
Aug. 29, 2023 – Aug.29, 2023 – NY – 39 year old Stefanie Frances Lampf Kennedy, a successful real estate lawyer died on Aug. 29, 2023 from a rare, aggressive lung cancer.
Aug. 20, 2023 – Pretoria, South Africa – 24 year old Angie Oeh, Afrikaans rap sensation died suddenly on Aug. 20, 2023 only 6 days after being diagnosed with Stage 4 Lung Cancer.
Aug. 18, 2023 – Reno, NV – 29 year old Ezti Villanueva, who works at the veterinary clinic, was just diagnosed with Stage 4 Lung Cancer after presenting to ER with a collapsed lung and fluid in her chest.
July 21, 2023 – Oakville, ON – 40 year old Anoop Singh, whose wife is a Senior advisor to Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, died on July 21, 2023 after a 7 month battle with Stage 4 Lung Cancer.
My Take…
At this time, no other physician in the world is publishing detailed clinical accounts of mRNA Induced Turbo Cancers in the COVID-19 Vaccinated – and certainly no one is even talking about the bizarre and extremely aggressive Turbo Lung Cancers that are presenting at Stage 3 or Stage 4, especially in the age group under 40.
Interestingly, I have found Lung cancer to be frequent enough in the COVID-19 Vaccinated, that it is either in the top 5 of most frequent Turbo Cancers or very close to it.
Preliminary data shows that these are all Non-small cell lung cancers with an unusually poor prognosis, refractory to all standard treatments.
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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.
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
Apparently, the “peace negotiations” about Ukraine continue to take place, even without any Russian involvement in the talks. According to German Chancellor Olaf Scholz, several diplomatic initiatives are taking place to end – or at least freeze – the conflict, but Moscow continues to be excluded from such processes, which obviously invalidates the negotiations.
Eleanor Parker writes in her book, Winters in the World, that “in Anglo-Saxon poetry winter is often imagined as a season when the earth and human beings are imprisoned, kept captive by the ‘fetters of the frost’. Naturally enough, then, spring is associated with images of liberation and freedom once those fetters are released.”
On June 29, 2018, Christopher Bunch received the Gardasil vaccine at a routine doctor’s visit. Within two and half weeks, he started complaining of a sore throat, and by July 31, he was complaining about a terrible sore throat and headache. (Sore throats and headaches are listed on the Gardasil 9 vaccine insert at common adverse effects.)
Within just 24 hours of the horrific mass shooting in Moscow’s Crocus City Hall on March 22nd, which left at least 137 innocent people dead and 60 more critically wounded, US officials blamed the slaughter on ISIS-K, Daesh’s South-Central Asian branch.
A controversial redistricting map drawn up in 2021 by a supposed independent commission resulted in the domination of the Michigan State Legislative seats and Gubernatorial office by the Democratic Party after the 2022 elections.
Israeli warplanes infiltrated Syrian airspace via Jordan. They used the Syrian airspace over the illegal US base in Al Tanf (on the border with Jordan) to proceed towards the depths of the central Syrian Badia or desert area at low altitude to avoid detection.
Kosovo became the first and only European state today that is ruled by the terroristic warlords as a party’s possession – the (Albanian) Kosovo Liberation Army (the KLA). This article aims to investigate the nature of NATO’s war on Yugoslavia in 1999 which has as an outcome the creation of the first terroristic state in Europe – the Republic of Kosovo.
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Tens of thousands of Israelis gathered across Tel Aviv and other occupied cities on the evening of 30 March for protests against their Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu.
Tens of thousands of Israelis are demonstrating in Tel Aviv tonight, calling on Netanyahu to do more to release the hostages held by Hamas in Gaza. This is the biggest demonstration since October 7 pic.twitter.com/Qs9cWUYcts
For the first time, the families of the Israeli prisoners being held by the resistance in Gaza, who normally hold separate rallies, joined the massive crowds of anti-government protesters – whose movement initially started with the prime minister’s controversial overhaul initiative last year.
“The rallies are over, the protests have just begun,” said the spokesman for the Hostages and Missing Families Forum, Haim Rubinstein.
Large-Scale Protests are ongoing tonight in Tel Aviv. Israelis are marching along Tel Aviv’s Dizengoff Street urging the release of the hostages.pic.twitter.com/quCH2VyI5D
Israeli police detained over a dozen people and used water cannons against the protesters – who had blocked major roads in Tel Aviv.
Around a thousand protested outside the Israeli defense ministry in Tel Aviv, demanding an immediate prisoner exchange deal.
Demonstrators also clashed with police in Jerusalem, where around 200 rampaged through police barricades in order to protest outside Netanyahu’s home in the occupied holy city. In occupied Caesaria, protesters were arrested while cutting off roads near the prime minister’s residence.
Protests erupted in a number of other occupied cities, including Sderot, Or Akiva, and Beersheba. These were the largest demonstrations since the outbreak of the war on 7 October, The Times of Israel reported.
Representatives of the anti-government protesters held a meeting last month with members of the Shin Bet security service – which aimed to “prevent the crossing of Red Lines,” as the Shin Bet warned at the time that protesters trying to break through the perimeter of Netanyahu’s private home could be shot, according to Haaretz.
The demonstrations followed a statement released by prisoners’ families labeling the Israeli premier an “obstacle to a deal.” Members of the families of imprisoned soldiers in Gaza met with Netanyahu on 28 March, expressing deep annoyance and anger over the failure to reach an agreement.
A senior intelligence source on the team of Israeli negotiator Nitzan Alon was cited by Haaretz as saying,
“There are increasing signs that [Netanyahu is] doing almost everything possible to postpone, delay and ruin the chance of a deal to release the hostages.”
The frustration comes as Netanyahu has just walked away from the latest rounds of negotiations in Qatar, aimed at reaching a truce and prisoner exchange agreement.
Hamas has continued to stand by its terms for a permanent end to hostilities, a withdrawal of Israeli troops from Gaza, allowing the distribution of aid across the Gaza Strip, and the return of the displaced, which Israel has repeatedly rejected throughout talks in recent months.
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Eleanor Parker writes in her book, Winters in the World, that “in Anglo-Saxon poetry winter is often imagined as a season when the earth and human beings are imprisoned, kept captive by the ‘fetters of the frost’. Naturally enough, then, spring is associated with images of liberation and freedom once those fetters are released.” (p. 93) Even the title of the book, Winters in the World, described one’s age, e.g. I have 30 winters in the world, a recognition of the harshness of the winters which one had survived.
Historically, the transition from winter to spring was symbolised by many traditions that reflected the end of difficult times and the coming of the new season of growth and rebirth. These traditions ranged from the celebration of vegetation deities through fertility rites, and the public rituals associated with Carnival/Fat Tuesday (February/March), Lent (February/March), Easter (fires/eggs/hares) (March/ April) and Rogation Days (April). Many rituals were taken over by the Christian church and given new meanings which themselves are now being secularised.
However, since the development of industrial farming in the early twentieth century, the connection between local farming and spring rituals associated with the land have declined and taken on a commercialised aspect separated from nature. We can see this with Carnival and Easter, while Lent fasting is not practised so much anymore.
This is not to say that the ending of the underlying reasons for carnival and the fasting of Lent, i.e. the finishing up of winter stocks and the privation until new crops grew, is such a bad thing, but our dependence on the current global system of industrial farming is worrying at a time when climate change is affecting food production around the world.
This change is also partly due to unsustainable agricultural methods that are negatively affecting our ability to farm in the future, for example, the spread of desertification, whereby fertile areas become arid due to the overexploitation of soil.
Furthermore, supermarkets packed to the gills with produce from all over the world deflects our attention from looming disasters. In Ireland we know the difference between famine (widespread scarcity of food) and hunger (in Irish Gaelic, An Gorta Mór, the great hunger) … ‘when a country is full of food and exporting it’.
Moreover, governmental measures to deal with land issues may be too little too late, or ineffective, as new laws are simply ignored by vested interests.
The Past
Vegetation Deities and Fertility Rites
From earliest times our relationship with nature had an element of awe and respect that resulted in the belief in vegetation deities “whose disappearance and reappearance, or life, death and rebirth, embodies the growth cycle of plants.” Many vegetation deities were also considered fertility deities, that is, “a god or goddess associated with fertility, sex, pregnancy, childbirth, and crops.”
In Mesopotamian culture (dating back to the mid-4th millennium BCE) religion “involved the worship of forces of nature as providers of sustenance” and which later became personified as a range of gods with different functions. Natural phenomena in nature were seen to be directed by nature spirits, thus:
“A nature deity can be in charge of nature, a place, a biotope, the biosphere, the cosmos, or the universe. Nature worship is often considered the primitive source of modern religious beliefs and can be found in pantheism, panentheism, deism, polytheism, animism, Taoism, totemism, Hinduism, shamanism, some theism and paganism”.
In some cases the gods die and later return to life, particularly in religions of the ancient Near East. These dying-and-rising, death-rebirth, or resurrection deities are associated with the seasons as allegories of the death of nature and the rebirth of nature during spring, for example, Osiris, the god of fertility, agriculture, the afterlife, the dead, resurrection, life, and vegetation in ancient Egyptian religion, and Persephone in Greece, the goddess of spring and nature whose return from the underworld each spring is a symbol of her immortality.
Image: Persephone, Queen of the underworld, Goddess of spring, the dead, the underworld, grain, and nature. Statue of syncretic Persephone-Isis with a sistrum. Heraklion Archaeological Museum, Crete
Similarly, many later Roman gods and goddesses were the subjects of fertility rites and celebrations. The festival of Liberalia was held on the 17th March to celebrate the spring return of life. Liber was one of the original Roman gods. A favourite of the plebeians, he was the god of fertility and wine. His festival, the Liberalia, celebrated on the 17th March was an occasion to mark the return of life:
“The celebration was meant to honor Liber Pater, an ancient god of fertility and wine (like Bacchus, the Roman version of the Greek god Dionysus). Liber Pater was also a vegetation god, responsible for protecting seed. Again like Dionysus, he had female priestesses, but Liber’s were older women known as Sacerdos Liberi. Wearing wreaths of ivy, they made special cakes, or libia, of oil and honey which passing devotees would have them sacrifice on their behalf. Over time this feast evolved and included the goddess Libera, and the feast divided so that Liber governed the male seed and Libera the female.”
The Present
Carnival/Fat Tuesday (February / March)
Of all the ancient festivals that survived into current times Carnival is probably the most prominent. Winter spirits have been forced out to make way for the new season since antiquity. Carnival symbolised this transition from winter to summer and darkness to light. The carnival was a feast whereby ordinary people feasted on the last of the winter stocks before they rotted. This in turn created the obligatory restraint and fasting until new produce was available. The Christian festival consists of Quinquagesima or Shrove Sunday, Shrove Monday, and Shrove Tuesday or Mardi Gras. Therefore:
“Carnival typically involves public celebrations, including events such as parades, public street parties and other entertainments, combining some elements of a circus. Elaborate costumes and masks allow people to set aside their everyday individuality and experience a heightened sense of social unity. Participants often indulge in excessive consumption of alcohol, meat, and other foods that will be forgone during upcoming Lent.”
The phrase ‘Shrove Tuesday’ comes from ‘shrive’ to be absolved of one’s sins and therefore shriven before the start of Lent.
It is also the last day of the Christian liturgical season which in French is known as Mardi Gras (‘Fat Tuesday’) the last night of eating well before the ritual fasting beginning on the next day, Ash Wednesday.
Lent begins on Ash Wednesday and lasts around six weeks. In this Christian religious observance, (according to the Gospels of Matthew, Mark and Luke) Jesus Christ spent 40 days fasting in the desert and enduring temptation by Satan.
The word Lent comes from the lengthening days of spring and is considered a period of grief which ends with the celebrations of Easter.
Lent observers, including a confraternity of penitents, carrying out a street procession during Holy Week, in Granada, Nicaragua. The violet color is often associated with penance and detachment. Similar Christian penitential practice is seen in other Christian countries, sometimes associated with fasting.
Easter (March / April)
Easter is derived from pagan customs that celebrated the victory of Spring over Winter. They lit fires that helped to accelerate the end of Winter and spread the ashes over the fields to help fertilise the soil in fertility rites. Easter bonfires “have been a tradition in Germany since the 11 century. The Christians adopted the pagan custom and reinterpreted it. The fire was now seen as the light of Jesus, reminding people of the life and resurrection of Christ.” The Christian festival commemorates the resurrection of Jesus from the dead after his crucifixion by the Romans at Calvary c. 30 AD. Easter is also called Pascha (Aramaic, Greek, Latin) or Resurrection Sunday.
Other cultural traditions associated with Easter include Easter parades, communal dancing (Eastern Europe), the Easter Bunny and egg hunting. It is likely that the eggs and the prodigious reproduction of rabbits and hares led to their depiction as symbols of fertility.
Rogation Days (April)
Rogation Days follow some weeks after Easter when processions are formed to to pray or beseech (Latin ‘rogare’) God for protection from from natural disasters such as hailstorms, floods, and droughts and to ask to ask for blessings on the fields. Rogation processions started at a very early date in order to counteract the Roman Robigalia processions that the pagans made in honor of their gods:
“The Robigalia was a festival in ancient Roman religion held April 25, named for the god Robigus. Its main ritual was a dog sacrifice to protect grain fields from disease. Games (ludi) in the form of “major and minor” races were held. The Robigalia was one of several agricultural festivals in April to celebrate and vitalize the growing season, but the darker sacrificial elements of these occasions are also fraught with anxiety about crop failure and the dependence on divine favor to avert it.”
Blessing the Fields on Rogation Sunday at Hever, Kent in 1967
As can be seen in these regular prayers, blessings, and processions throughout the Spring season, the anxiety of the people regarding their crops shows a deep understanding of the vagaries of nature and an awareness of their lives dependence on the health of their cultivation work.
The Future
Industrial Farming
By the early twentieth century agriculture started to change due to new developments that brought in the era of industrial farming. Previously a wide variety of foods were produced by many small farms. However, that was all about to change as modern science was applied to various aspects of farming:
“In 1909, a scientific breakthrough by German chemist Fritz Haber—the “father of chemical warfare”—enabled the large-scale production of fertilizer (and explosives), igniting the industrialization of farming. Synthetic fertilizers, along with the development of chemical pesticides, allowed farmers to increase their crop yields (and their profits). Farmers began specializing in fewer crops, namely corn and soy, grown to feed farmed animals. Chickens became the first factory farmed animal when a farmer decided to try to raise ten times as many birds in a chicken house that was only built for 50. Other farmers followed suit.”
Thus followed the new era of industrial farming. The effect of mass production led to the use of antibiotics, selective breeding to increase the size of farm animals, and the mechanisation of slaughter houses.
These developments led to the collapse of the many small farmers who could not compete with farming on an industrial scale. For example, now in the USA “small independent and family-run farms use only 8% of all agricultural land. In just under a century, and especially since the 1960s, agriculture has become dominated by large-scale multinational corporations. Driven by profit, these food giants rely on practices that, by design, exploit and abuse animals, destroy natural habitats, and generate pollution”.
In more recent decades industrialisation has led to more innovations in “agricultural machinery and farming methods, genetic technology, techniques for achieving economies of scale in production, the creation of new markets for consumption, the application of patent protection to genetic information, and global trade.”
This type of intensive farming has a low fallow ratio, and a high level of agrochemicals and water, producing higher crop yields per unit land area. Most of the meat, dairy products, eggs, fruits, and vegetables available in supermarkets are produced by such farms.
Costs to the Environment
Despite the current massive production of food globally, industrialized farming has costs that do not augur well for the future. It has been noted that intensive farming pollutes air and water (through the release of manure, chemicals, antibiotics, and growth hormones), destroys wildlife, facilitates the spread of viruses from animals to humans, fosters antimicrobial resistance, and is linked to epidemics of obesity and chronic disease, through the production of a wide variety of inexpensive, calorie-dense and widely available foods.
Regenerative Agriculture
The increasing awareness of the types of problems that intensive farming could be leading us to in the future is turning some farmers back to more traditional methods of farming. Regenerative agriculture focuses on “topsoil regeneration, increasing biodiversity, improving the water cycle, enhancing ecosystem services, supporting biosequestration, increasing resilience to climate change, and strengthening the health and vitality of farm soil.” Regenerative agriculture also includes different philosophies of farming such as permaculture, agroecology, agroforestry, restoration ecology, crop rotation, and uses “no-till” and/or “reduced till” practices often described as sustainable farming.
Nature Restoration and Practice
The negative aspects of industrial farming have come to the notice of governmental bodies such as Eu parliament which has adopted a law to restore habitats and degraded ecosystems in all member states. It notes that “over 80% of European habitats are in poor shape” and “sets a target for the EU to restore at least 20% of the EU’s land and sea areas by 2030 and all ecosystems in need of restoration by 2050.”
However, resistance to positive changes and procrastination deal serious blows to good intentions. The recent referral of Ireland to the EU Court of Justice for failing to halt the continued cutting of peat in areas designated to conserve raised bogs and blanket bogs is a good example. The infringement is one of the longest running infringement cases in Europe, having begun in 2010.
Conclusion
Our long running relationship with nature has benefited from science in the form of the production of plentiful food on a global scale.
Yet our deep respect for nature in the past was partly due to our lack of understanding of the processes of biology which led to much anxiety and fear of starvation.
All of the polytheistic and monotheistic debates over the influence of gods and goddesses or God have been replaced by scientific processes, but no less anxiety about the future of farming.
Farming has always been reliant on predictability as plants are very sensitive to sudden climatic changes such as drought or frost, which can destroy a crop overnight (unseasonal frost) or slowly (extreme drought). Such incidences of crop failures are sporadic if examined on a global scale but if these incidences multiply rapidly then we will see food price rises and their disastrous social consequences. A new respect for nature is called for that echoes down the centuries when those that did not heed the warnings witnessed the collapse of civilisations.
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Caoimhghin Ó Croidheáinis an Irish artist, lecturer and writer. His artwork consists of paintings based on contemporary geopolitical themes as well as Irish history and cityscapes of Dublin. His blog of critical writing based on cinema, art and politics along with research on a database of Realist and Social Realist art from around the world can be viewed country by country here. Caoimhghin has just published his new book – Against Romanticism: From Enlightenment to Enfrightenment and the Culture of Slavery, which looks at philosophy, politics and the history of 10 different art forms arguing that Romanticism is dominating modern culture to the detriment of Enlightenment ideals. It is available on Amazon (amazon.co.uk) and the info page is here. He is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG).
Featured image: The Fight Between Carnival and Lent (1559) by Pieter Bruegel the Elder
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“On June 29, 2018, Christopher Bunch received the Gardasil vaccine at a routine doctor’s visit.
Within two and half weeks, he started complaining of a sore throat, and by July 31, he was complaining about a terrible sore throat and headache. (Sore throats and headaches are listed on the Gardasil 9 vaccine insert at common adverse effects.)
On August 1, his mother, Destiny, took him to express care where he tested negative for strep throat. He was sent home with instructions to treat the symptoms.
Christopher was checked into the emergency room, and blood work was ordered quickly. From there, his health rapidly deteriorated. He was piercing his lips together and fidgeting with his fingers trying to take off his oxygen monitor.
He wasn’t really speaking but would nod and give a thumbs up. His blood work came back and it showed that he had an elevated white blood cell count. Since there were no other signs of bacterial or viral infection or illness, Christopher was sent to Iowa City Children’s Hospital for further testing. When Christopher arrived at Iowa City Children’s Hospital, they immediately ordered more blood work, a CT Scan, an MRI, and a spinal tap.
The tests revealed that Christopher’s brain was swelling and that he had lesions on his brain. Destiny and the doctors went over his last couple of months in detail to try and pinpoint the reason for swelling and lesions. The only thing that was different was that he had received the Gardasil vaccine.
On Friday, August 10, Christopher was moved to the PICU as he needed more observation and medical attention. His neurologist explained that they were diagnosing him with Acute Disseminated Encephalomyelitis (ADEM) and, given his medical history, he was “100% sure that the HPV vaccination caused the ADEM for Christopher… “The week of August 6, Christopher started football practice. After practice, he showered and slept until the following afternoon when it was time for practice again. Thinking that Christopher was dehydrated from practice and the heat, he was encouraged to eat and drink. After dinner, he went back to sleep.
On August 8, after several attempts to wake Christopher, his mother decided he needed to see a doctor and headed to Trinity Medical Center. On the way to the hospital, Christopher was disoriented and said he felt very confused.
By Saturday, August 11, Christopher ‘s health became even more unstable and he stopped breathing on his own. His doctors told his family that they were unsure what the quality of his life would be if he recovered given the level of brain damage that had occurred from the massive amount of brain swelling.
On August 12, the doctors decided that in order to give Christopher the best chance of survival, they had to remove a portion of his skull to relieve the pressure caused by the swelling. His family was told that they would have to wait for two days to see if he had brain function.
On Tuesday, August 14, 2018 at 11 AM, doctors tested Christopher to see the level of activity in his brain. At 11:20 AM, Destiny, and his father, Elijah, were given the news that their precious baby boy was brain dead. Destiny and Elijah made a decision that no parent should ever have to make. They decided to unhook their son from life support.
Christopher Eugene Bunch passed on August 14, 2018 at 1:02 PM.”
Christopher Eugene Bunch (12/5/03-8/14/18)
On December 5, 2003, Christopher Bunch was born into this world. He weighed eight pounds and one ounce and was absolutely perfect. Christopher quickly captured the heart of his parents, older brother, and family. Everyone who met Christopher was instantly drawn in with his beautiful bright blue eyes, his outgoing personality, and his ability to light up the room. Christopher excelled in athletics, playing baseball and football, and was an exceptional student with a 3.9 GPA. He was an incredible son, the best brother you could ever ask for, and a supportive friend and boyfriend. Everyone loved Christopher. He was creative, kind, compassionate, and hilarious. He had a knack for making YouTube videos and described himself as “a kid from a small town trying to make it big.”
Sadly, Christopher passed on August 14, 2018, from a severe form of Acute Disseminated Encephalomyelitis (ADEM), a rare inflammatory demyelinating disease of the central nervous system which his doctors confirmed was caused by the HPV vaccination he had received earlier that summer.
Source: Jessica Rojas
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My Take…
Are HPV Vaccines dangerous for boys?
There are some interesting cases in VAERS.
VAERS 405821 – 15 year old boy (New Jersey) had Gardasil on Aug.30, 2010 and died suddenly while playing hockey on Sep. 27, 2010 (4 weeks later).
VAERS 421582 – 17 year old boy had Gardasil Nov. 1, 2010 and died from sudden cardiac death on the lacrosse field 5 months later on April 1, 2011.
VAERS 437999 – 18 year old boy (Ohio) got Gardasil 2nd dose on July 22, 2011 and committed suicide by hanging on July 27, 2011. “The patient had no medical history,” “physician also reported that there was no indication from the patient that he was troubled,” “Toxicology screen indicated that there were no medications involved in the patient’s death.”
VAERS 457904 – 14 year old boy (Wisconsin) had Gardasil on Apr. 2, 2012 and June 4, 2012. On June 7, 2012 he shot himself in the head. “Physician stated this young male was happy go lucky, healthy, and never had any psychiatric issues in the past.”
VAERS 510130 – 14 year old boy (California) had 2nd Gardasil vaccine on Aug.19, 2013. “Victim was found unresponsive/cardiac arrest in bed at home in the morning of Aug. 20, 2013 (next day). Autopsy showed cause of death was myocarditis.”
VAERS 515434 – 16 year old boy (Louisiana) had Gardasil on May 23, 2013. He died 6 weeks later on July 4, 2013. “Sudden death. He was perfectly healthy. This vaccination is the only thing I can think of that would have caused this. Everything else in his life was normal, the same.”
Do pediatricians or family doctors discuss these risks with their patients? I would bet none of them do.
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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.
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Global cancer incidence is increasing, particularly among those under 50, with a notable rise in breast, uterine, prostate, lung, colorectal, pancreatic, and stomach cancers, with early-onset breast cancer incidence climbing by 3.8% annually between 2016 and 2019
The global death toll from early-onset cancers has surged by nearly 28% from 1990 to 2019, with predictions indicating a potential rise in mortality rates
Dietary changes, particularly the increase in obesity and consumption of processed foods rich in linoleic acid (LA), a polyunsaturated fat found in seed oils, are identified as major contributors to the rising cancer rates
LA intake is linked to several mechanisms promoting cancer, including disruption in energy production in cells, hormonal imbalances, increased oxidative stress, and damage to cellular and mitochondrial membranes
Limit your LA intake and avoid processed foods and certain animal products to mitigate your cancer risk
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According to the latest statistics, global cancer incidence is on the rise, especially among younger people. Between 1990 and 2019, incidence of 29 cancers rose worldwide in those younger than 50, with rates rising faster among women. Cancers on the rise include breast, uterine, prostate, lung, colorectal, pancreatic and stomach cancers.
Between 2016 and 2019, early-onset breast cancer incidence rose by 3.8% annually.1 As reported by the journal Nature in mid-March 2024,2 even teens are now being diagnosed with “improbable” cancers previously only seen in seniors, such as advanced gastrointestinal cancers. And it’s not just happening in the U.S. Oncologists in China and India have also noted this trend.3 According to Nature:4
“Statistics from around the world are now clear: the rates of more than a dozen cancers are increasing among adults under the age of 50. This rise varies from country to country and cancer to cancer, but models based on global data predict that the number of early-onset cancer cases will increase by around 30% between 2019 and 2030.5
In the United States, colorectal cancer — which typically strikes men in their mid-60s or older — has become the leading cause of cancer death among men under 50.6 In young women, it has become the second leading cause of cancer death …
[The] number of deaths from early-onset cancers has risen by nearly 28% between 1990 and 2019 worldwide. Models also suggest that mortality could climb …
As calls mount for better screening, awareness and treatments, investigators are scrambling to explain why rates are increasing. The most likely contributors — such as rising rates of obesity and early-cancer screening — do not fully account for the increase.”
Likely Culprits
The conventional medical model is beyond clueless when they believe the solution for this dilemma is better screening. This is unadulterated nonsense and fails to address the cause, which is a disruption in the microbiome that obliterates the healthy obligate anaerobes in the large intestine.
When your body fails to make enough cellular energy because the mitochondria are dysfunctional as a result of being regularly poisoned by LA and estrogen, they simply are unable to maintain an environment that allows the healthy beneficial bacteria to grow.
When the beneficial bacteria disappear, they are replaced by facultative anaerobes that tolerate oxygen, as a result of the lack of competitive inhibition by the beneficial bacteria. It is these bacteria that are increasing GI cancers, not a lack of screening.
Excessive LA Intake Promotes Cancer
The Nature article7 does, however, point to there being a dietary culprit, stating “The prominence of gastrointestinal cancers and the coincidence with dietary changes in many countries point to the rising rates of obesity and diets rich in processed foods as likely culprits in contributing to rising case rates.”
While the Nature article does not go into specifics about what it might be about our modern diets that contribute to cancer, my own research has singled out linoleic acid (LA) — an omega-6 fat found in seed oils (and hence most processed foods) — as a key contributor.
Like other experts in bioenergetic medicine, I’m convinced that chronic diseases such as Type 2 diabetes, Alzheimer’s and cancer are bioenergetic diseases rooted in dysfunctional metabolism resulting in poor energy production, and polyunsaturated fats (PUFAs) appear to be a primary contributing factor in this chain of events. As reported by bioenergetic researcher Georgi Dinkov in an October 2022 blog post:8
“The bad news for PUFA (in this case linoleic acid) just keep piling on. At this point, there is hardly a chronic condition out there that has not been linked to elevated PUFA and/or their peroxidation products.
[A December 2022 study in Antioxidants & Redox Signaling9] makes the argument that PUFA peroxidation byproducts (created by the increased reactive oxygen species (ROS) itself driven by PUFA) such as 4-hydroxynonenal (4-HNE), are the cause of diabetes and cancer.
In fact, the study makes the argument that the two conditions are basically slightly different points on the same spectrum of systemic disease (i.e. cancer being the more severe one).”
The study10 published in Antioxidants & Redox Signaling highlights the increased risk diabetic patients face in developing several types of cancer, including hepatocellular carcinoma, pancreatic cancer, colorectal cancer, and breast cancer.
This elevated risk is attributed to several factors that promote cancer growth in diabetic individuals. These factors include insulin resistance, hyperglycemia, dyslipidemia, chronic inflammation, and elevated levels of insulin-like growth factor-1 (IGF-1). These conditions contribute to reductive stress that disrupt the body’s redox balance. As explained by the authors:11
“The consequent oxidative stress associated with lipid peroxidation appears to be a possible pathogenic link between cancer and diabetes” and “the major bioactive product of oxidative degradation of polyunsaturated fatty acids (PUFAs), the reactive aldehyde 4-hydroxynonenal (4-HNE) … may be the key pathogenic factor linking diabetes and cancer …
Controlling the production of 4-HNE to avoid its cytotoxicity to normal but not cancer cells while preventing its diabetogenic activities could be an important aspect of modern integrative biomedicine.”
4-HNE Linked to Obesity and Cancer
In her book, “Deep Nutrition: Why Your Genes Need Traditional Food,”12 Dr. Cate Shanahan details the hazards of 4-HNE, which forms during the processing of most vegetable oils. 4-HNE is highly toxic to gut bacteria, and consumption of 4-HNE has been correlated with having an obesogenic balance of gut flora.
4-HNE is also cytotoxic (toxic to cells), causes DNA damage, and instigates free radical cascades that damage the mitochondrial membrane. As noted by Shanahan in a 2017 interview:
“You can’t design a better delivery vehicle for a toxin that’s going to destroy your health slowly over the course of maybe 10, 20 years, depending on the genetics of your antioxidant system capacity.”
Importantly, 4-HNE occurs even if the oil is obtained from organic crops. It’s an intrinsic byproduct of the refining and processing of the oil, no matter how healthy the oil initially was.
Elevated LA Destroys Mitochondrial Function
Dinkov’s blog also draws attention to another noteworthy study,13 albeit its focus is on Alzheimer’s Disease instead of cancer. The study reveals that individuals with Alzheimer’s have cells that are inefficient at producing energy.
This inefficiency stems from a deficiency in glycocholic acid and an excess of LA. Essentially, LA triggers the production of damaging reactive oxygen species (ROS), which then hampers the cells’ ability to generate energy.
Moreover, PUFAs, like LA, disrupt your body’s hormonal equilibrium, imitating the effects of estrogen and cortisol while counteracting androgens and progesterone. Additionally, they alter cellular interactions with water, making cells more water-attracting. Dinkov suggests that these effects, beyond merely generating ROS, play a much more critical role in the harmful effects of PUFAs on a wide variety of chronic diseases, including cancer.
Seed Oils Undermine Your Health in Myriad Ways
In summary, seed oils in general and LA in particular have been shown to harm health by:14
Make your fat cells more insulin sensitive, thereby causing insulin resistance.15
Creating high amounts of oxidation products when used in cooking (as they are very susceptible to heat), including aldehydes, which are what cause oxidized low-density lipoprotein (LDL) associated with heart disease. Aldehydes also crosslink tau protein and create neurofibrillary tangles, thereby contributing to the development of neurodegenerative diseases.
Damaging the endothelium (the cells lining your blood vessels) and causing an increase in penetration of LDL and very low-density lipoprotein (VLDL) particles into the subendothelium.16
In other words, these oils get integrated in your cell and mitochondrial membranes, and once these membranes are damaged, it sets the stage for all sorts of health problems. With a half-life of 600 to 680 days,17 it can take years to clear them out of your body. They also get incorporated into tissues such as your heart and brain.
Damaging your mitochondria and DNA by making your cell membranes more permeable, allowing things to enter that shouldn’t.
Making the cell membrane less fluid, which impacts hormone transporters in the cell membrane and slows your metabolic rate.
Inhibiting cardiolipin,18 an important component of the inner membrane of your mitochondria that needs to be saturated in DHA to perform optimally and facilitate optimal function of the electron transport chain and production of ATP. Cardiolipin can be likened to a cellular alarm system that triggers apoptosis (cell death) by signaling caspase-3 when something goes wrong with the cell.
If the cardiolipin is not saturated with DHA, it cannot signal caspase-3, and hence apoptosis does not occur. As a result, dysfunctional cells are allowed to continue to grow, which can turn into a cancerous cell.
Inhibiting the removal of senescent cells, i.e., aged, damaged or crippled cells that have lost the ability to reproduce and produce inflammatory cytokines that rapidly accelerate disease and aging.
Stripping your liver of glutathione (which produces antioxidant enzymes), thereby lowering your antioxidant defenses.19
Inhibiting delta-6 desaturase (delta-6), an enzyme involved in the conversion of short-chained omega-3s to longer chained omega-3s in your liver.20
Exposing you to toxic 4-HNE, which is highly toxic to gut bacteria, causes DNA damage, and instigates free radical cascades that damage your mitochondrial membranes.21
Exposing you to glyphosate residues, as most vegetable oils are made with genetically engineered crops. Glyphosate has been shown to disrupt the tight junctions in your gut and increase penetration of foreign invaders, especially heated proteins, which can cause allergies.
How to Avoid These Dangerous Fats
Considering the profoundly serious damage they cause, eliminating seed oils from your diet can go a long way toward improving your health. This includes soy, canola, sunflower, grapeseed, corn, safflower, peanut and rice bran oil.
Also, be mindful of olive oil and avocado oil, as both are commonly adulterated with cheaper seed oils. That said, even pure olive and avocado oil are loaded with LA. If, like me, you’re in the habit of eating olive oil, I would strongly encourage you to limit your intake to 1 tablespoon per day or less. In my view, olive oil is not a magic bullet and if you are already consuming 80 grams of LA per day, it will only worsen, not help, your health.
Additionally, as you can see in the video below from Brad Marshall, whose interview with me will post shortly, olive oil is no all it is cracked up to be.
To avoid these oils, don’t cook with them, of course, but also avoid processed foods, condiments, fast foods and restaurant foods. If you eat out, you’re undoubtedly eating unhealthy amounts of seed oils, as most restaurant foods are loaded with it.
Fried foods, dressing and sauces tend to be key culprits. Your best bet is to prepare most of your food at home, so you know what you are eating and, in the case of seed oils, what you’re not. Chicken and pork are also high in LA and are therefore best avoided. Since these animals, even healthy organically grown animals, are typically fed grains, they are loaded with omega-6 fats and may have 10 times the LA content that beef, lamb or buffalo do.
How Much Linoleic Acid Is Too Much?
Ideally, consider cutting LA down to below 5 grams per day, which is close to what our ancestors used to get before all of these chronic health conditions, including obesity, diabetes, heart disease and cancer, became widespread. If olive oil puts you over the limit, consider cooking with tallow or lard instead.
If you’re not sure how much you’re eating, enter your food intake into Cronometer — a free online nutrition tracker — and it will provide you with your total LA intake. The key to accurate entry is to carefully weigh your food with a digital kitchen scale so you can enter the weight of your food to the nearest gram.
Cronometer will tell you how much omega-6 you’re getting from your food down to the 10th of a gram, and you can assume 90% of that is LA. Anything over 10 grams is likely to cause problems. To learn more about the biological impact of LA, be sure to watch the video at the top of this article, and/or read through my in-depth report, “Linoleic Acid — The Most Destructive Ingredient in Your Diet.”
mRNA Injections and Turbo Cancer
Another significant factor in the increase of cancer cases is likely the COVID vaccine. I’m convinced that excessive intake of LA was already a key issue contributing to rising cancer rates before the COVID era. Nonetheless, the introduction of mRNA vaccines has compounded the problem.
Specifically, these vaccines seem to be linked to the emergence of “turbo cancers,” which are rapidly growing cancers that often prove fatal. The sheer speed of their growth leaves little opportunity for effective treatment.
Canadian oncologist and cancer researcher Dr. William Makis in the HighWire interview above,22replacing the uracil in the RNA used in the COVID shots with synthetic methylpseudouridine (to improve RNA stability) is known to be problematic.23 When substituting parts of the code in this way, the resulting protein can easily get misfolded, and this has been linked to a variety of chronic diseases.24
Importantly, the insertion of synthetic pseudouridine can suppress your innate immune surveillance by dampening the activity of toll-like receptors, and one downstream effect of that is reduced cancer surveillance.
“The more mRNA shots you take, the greater the immune system damage, the greater your risk of impaired cancer surveillance and hence, the greater your risk of turbo cancer,” Makis says.
The World Health Organization’s International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) predicts more than 35 million new cancer cases in 2050 — a 77% increase from the estimated 20 million cancer cases that occurred in 2022.25 Not surprisingly, the same drug companies that made the mRNA shots are now in a race to be the first to come up with new cancer drugs, including Pfizer and Johnson & Johnson.26
mRNA-Based Cancer Drugs Under Development
Disturbingly, many of the cancer drugs currently under development depend on the same mRNA-based technology responsible for the turbo cancer trend in the first place. Here are a handful of notable examples:
Personalized cancer vaccines — Companies like BioNTech (which partnered with Pfizer for the COVID-19 vaccine) and Moderna have been working on personalized mRNA vaccines for cancer. These vaccines are designed to stimulate the patient’s immune system to target tumors based on the unique mutations in their cancer cells.27
mRNA technology for solid tumors — Moderna is also developing an mRNA vaccine targeting solid tumors.28 This approach involves using mRNA to produce tumor-specific antigens inside the body to encourage the immune system recognize and destroy cancer cells.
Combination therapies — Researchers are exploring the combination of mRNA vaccines with existing cancer treatments, such as checkpoint inhibitors, to enhance the immune system’s ability to fight cancer.
Neoantigen targeting — Several biotech firms are focusing on neoantigens, which are new antigens that arise due to tumor mutations.29
mRNA-based CAR-T cell therapy — Efforts are also being made to combine mRNA technology with CAR-T cell therapy, a type of treatment that modifies a patient’s T-cells to attack cancer cells. mRNA is used to allow CAR-T therapy to be rapidly tailored to different types of cancer.30
Considering the mRNA technology itself appears to produce carcinogenic results, I’d be extremely wary about cancer drugs based on it. Time will tell if they can somehow perfect it, but why wait? As mentioned, excess LA in the diet is a major driver of cancer, with or without the mRNA shots, and that is something you have complete control over.
As discussed in previous articles, you also want to avoid excess estrogen, which is a major driver of many cancers, especially breast cancer. For a refresher, see “What You Need to Know about Estrogen and Serotonin.”
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Within just 24 hours of the horrific mass shooting in Moscow’s Crocus City Hall on March 22nd, which left at least 137 innocent people dead and 60 more critically wounded, US officials blamed the slaughter on ISIS-K, Daesh’s South-Central Asian branch.
For many, the attribution’s celerity raised suspicions Washington was seeking to decisively shift Western public and Russian government focus away from the actual culprits – be that Ukraine, and/or Britain, Kiev’s foremost proxy sponsor.
Full details of how the four shooters were recruited, directed, armed, and financed, and who by, are yet to emerge. The savage interrogation methods to which they have been, and no doubt continue to be subjected are concerned with prising this and other vital information from them. The killers may end up making false confessions as a result. In any event, they themselves likely have no clue who or what truly sponsored their monstrous actions.
Contrary to their mainstream portrayal, as inspired purely by religious fundamentalism, Daesh are primarily guns for hire. At any given time, they act at the behest of an array of international donors, bound by common interests. Funding, weapons, and orders reach its fighters circuitously, and opaquely. There is almost invariably layer upon layer of cutouts between the perpetrators of an attack claimed by the group, and its ultimate orchestrators and financiers.
Given ISIS-K is currently arrayed against China, Iran, and Russia – in other words, the US Empire’s primary adversaries – it is incumbent to revisit Daesh’s origins. Emerging seemingly out of nowhere just over a decade ago, before dominating mainstream media headlines and Western public consciousness for several years before vanishing, at one stage the group occupied vast swaths of Iraqi and Syrian territory, declaring an “Islamic State”, which issued its own currency, passports, and vehicle registration plates.
Devastating military interventions independently launched by the US and Russia wiped out that demonic construct in 2017. The CIA and MI6 were no doubt immensely relieved. After all, extremely awkward questions about how Daesh were comprehensively extinguished. As we shall see, the terror group and its caliphate did not emerge in the manner of lightning on a dark night, but due to dedicated, determined policy hatched in London and Washington, implemented by their spying agencies.
‘Continuingly Hostile’
RAND is a highly influential, Washington DC-headquartered “think tank”. Bankrolled to the tune of almost $100 million annually by the Pentagon and other US government entities, it regularly disseminates recommendations on national security, foreign affairs, military strategy, and covert and overt actions overseas. These pronouncements are more often than not subsequently adopted as policy.
For example, a July 2016 RAND paper on the prospect of “war with China” forecast a need to fill Eastern Europe with US soldiers in advance of a “hot” conflict with Beijing, as Russia would undoubtedly side with its neighbour and ally in such a dispute. It was therefore necessary to tie down Moscow’s forces at its borders. Six months later, scores of NATO troops duly arrived in the region, ostensibly to counter “Russian aggression”.
Similarly, in April 2019 RAND published Extending Russia. It set out “a range of possible means” to “bait Russia into overextending itself,” so as to “undermine the regime’s stability.” These methods included; providing lethal aid to Ukraine; increasing US support for the Syrian rebels; promoting “regime change in Belarus”; exploiting “tensions” in the Caucasus; neutralising “Russian influence in Central Asia” and Moldova. Most of that came to pass thereafter.
In this context, RAND’s November 2008 Unfolding The Long War makes for disquieting reading. It explored ways the US Global War on Terror could be prosecuted once coalition forces formally left Iraq, under the terms of a withdrawal agreement inked by Baghdad and Washington that same month. This development by definition threatened Anglo dominion over Persian Gulf oil and gas resources, which would remain “a strategic priority” when the occupation was officially over.
“This priority will interact strongly with that of prosecuting the long war,” RAND declared. The think tank went on to propose a “divide and rule” strategy to maintain US hegemony in Iraq, despite the power vacuum created by withdrawal. Under its auspices, Washington would exploit “fault lines between [Iraq’s] various Salafi-jihadist groups to turn them against each other and dissipate their energy on internal conflicts”, while “supporting authoritative Sunni governments against a continuingly hostile Iran”:
“This strategy relies heavily on covert action, information operations, unconventional warfare, and support to indigenous security forces…The US and its local allies could use nationalist jihadists to launch proxy campaigns to discredit transnational jihadists in the eyes of the local populace…This would be an inexpensive way of buying time…until the US can return its full attention to the [region]. US leaders could also choose to capitalize on the sustained Shia-Sunni Conflict…by taking the side of conservative Sunni regimes against Shiite empowerment movements in the Muslim world.”
‘Great Danger’
So it was that the CIA and MI6 began supporting “nationalist jihadists” throughout West Asia. The next year, Bashar Assad rejected a Qatariproposal to route Doha’s vast gas reserves directly to Europe, via a $10 billion, 1,500 kilometre-long pipeline spanning Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Syria and Turkey. As extensively documented by WikiLeaks-released diplomatic cables, US, Israeli and Saudi intelligence immediately decided to overthrow Assad by fomenting a local rebellion, and started financing opposition groups for the purpose.
This effort became turbocharged in October 2011, with MI6 redirecting weapons and extremist fighters from Libya to Syria, in the wake of Muammar Gaddafi’s televised murder. The CIA oversaw that operation, using the British as an arm’s length cutout to avoid notifying Congress of its machinations. Only in June 2013, with then-President Barack Obama’s official authorisation, did the Agency’s cloak-and-dagger connivances in Damascus become formalised – and later admitted – under the title “Timber Sycamore”.
At this time, Western officials universally referred to their Syrian proxies as “moderate rebels”. Yet, Washington was well-aware its surrogates were dangerous extremists, seeking to carve a fundamentalist caliphate out of the territory they occupied. An August 2012 US Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) report released under Freedom of Information laws observes that events in Baghdad were “taking a clear sectarian direction,” with radical Salafist groups “the major forces driving the insurgency in Syria.”
These factions included Al Qaeda’s Iraqi wing (AQI), and its umbrella offshoot, Islamic State of Iraq (ISI). The pair went on to form Daesh, a prospect the DIA report not only predicted, but seemingly endorsed:
“If the situation unravels, there is the possibility of establishing a declared or undeclared Salafist principality in eastern Syria…This is exactly what the supporting powers to the opposition want in order to isolate the Syrian regime…ISI could also declare an Islamic state through its union with other terrorist organizations in Iraq and Syria, which will create great danger.”
Despite such grave concerns, the CIA inexorably dispatched unaccountably vast shipments of weapons and money to Syria’s “moderate rebels”, well-knowing this “aid” would almost inevitably end up in Daesh’s hands. Moreover, Britain concurrently ran secret programs costing millions to train opposition paramilitaries in the art of killing, while providing medical assistance to wounded jihadists. London also donated multiple ambulances, purchased from Qatar, to armed groups in the country.
Leaked documents indicate the risk of equipment and trained personnel from these efforts being lost to Al-Nusra, Daesh, and other extremist groups in West Asia was judged unavoidably “high” by British intelligence. Yet, there was no concomitant strategy for countering this hazard at all, and the illicit programs continued apace. Almost as if training and arming Daesh was precisely the desired outcome.
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Kit Klarenberg is an investigative journalist and MintPress News contributor exploring the role of intelligence services in shaping politics and perceptions. His work has previously appeared in The Cradle, Declassified UK, and Grayzone. Follow him on Twitter @KitKlarenberg.
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A controversial redistricting map drawn up in 2021 by a supposed independent commission resulted in the domination of the Michigan State Legislative seats and Gubernatorial office by the Democratic Party after the 2022 elections.
This shift in the fortunes of the Democrats was the first time they have been in complete control of the state government in four decades.
The idea behind the independent commission was the result of a petition campaign and state-wide referendum in 2018 to change the way districts are drawn.
The idea was to place an impartial body over the process taking it away from the incumbent political officials in Lansing, the state capitol.
However, a number of African American voters filed suit against the redistricting commission saying that the new map diluted the overall electoral power of their communities. The claims of the African American voters were upheld by a federal court decision in December which ordered yet another redrawing of districts. These newly drawn districts are scheduled to be in place for the upcoming November state legislative elections in Michigan.
“The original lawsuit contesting the Detroit-area seats was filed by a group of Black residents who argued that the map diluted their voting power.
The group had similarly opposed the newly submitted map, saying it favors incumbents elected under the previous map and doesn’t include enough majority-black districts. The three-judge panel disagreed in its approval of the map and pointed to the fact that the new ‘plan created three majority-black districts, whereas before there were none.
Federal law provides us no basis to reject the Commission’s remedial House plan,’ the panel wrote in an 11-page decision released Wednesday. Six state Senate districts will still need to be redrawn by a later deadline due to senators’ terms not expiring until 2026.”
At present the State Legislature is deadlocked between Democrats and Republicans due to the abandonment of two seats by politicians who were elected to municipal offices. With 2024 being a presidential election year, Democrats are anticipating that they will be able to secure a slim majority in the State House.
Other Factors Which Could Reduce Voter Participation in Michigan and Other States
Nonetheless, discontent over the handling of several issues may place these assumptions in question. There is widespread dissatisfaction over the Democratic President Joe Biden’s handling of the genocidal onslaught in the Gaza Strip in Palestine. During the Democratic primary in Michigan 101,000 people cast their vote as “uncommitted” as a means of expressing their rejection of the White House position on the Palestinian question.
Also, despite the campaign talking points asserting that the economy is performing to the benefit of the majority of the population, many working people are suffering as a result of the rising prices for gasoline, heating, electricity, water, food, clothing, rents and mortgage rates. The federal minimum wage has not been increased by Congress since 2009, some fifteen years ago. At present the federal minimum wage stands at a grand total of $7.25.
Any increase in salaries for most working class people has been gained through protest actions, strikes and the demand for labor within certain sectors of the economy.
The increase in the federal minimum wage in 2009 took place amid the worst capitalist downturn since the Great Depression.
Millions of working families lost their homes after the collapse of the real estate markets stemming directly from the mad drive for megaprofits by the banks and other financial institutions during the late 1990s and early 2000s.
Another major issue for African Americans is the failed promises by Biden when he was running for president in 2020 to pass legislation aimed at reforming the police services.
The George Floyd rebellions of that year was one of the motivating factors for the large turnout among African Americans and other oppressed communities aimed at removing former President Donald Trump from the White House.
The campaign pledge by Biden to pass the John Lewis Voting Rights Act never materialized. This act was designed to counter the monumental restriction placed on access to the ballot in the aftermath of the Shelby v. Holder Supreme Court of 2013 decision which struck down the enforcement provisions of the 1965 Voting Rights Act.
Wisconsin Supreme Court Rules Against Lawsuit to Redraw Congressional Districts
A recent unanimous decision by the Wisconsin Supreme Court to reject a lawsuit filed by Democratic voters to throw out a Congressional map adopted by Republicans over a decade ago, has placed the outcome of the upcoming 2024 election in doubt. The Wisconsin high court is now composed of a Democratic majority and the decision to change the boundaries of federal districts will maintain a configuration which favors Republican politicians.
“The decision leaves the state’s current congressional district boundaries in place for the November election. The decision not to hear the congressional challenge comes after the court in December ordered new legislative maps, saying the Republican-drawn ones were unconstitutional.
The GOP-controlled Legislature, out of fear that the court would order maps even more unfavorable to Republicans, passed ones drawn by Democratic Gov. Tony Evers. He signed those into law on Feb. 19 and urged the court to take up the congressional map challenge. The Elias Law Group, which filed the congressional challenge on behalf of Democratic voters, said the court’s decision on the legislative maps opened the door to them revisiting the other maps. But the court declined to take up the case. It did not give a reason in the unanimous unsigned order.”
Wisconsin is a key battleground state where the results of the presidential elections in November could be pivotal in deciding who will occupy the White House and the Congress. The state was lost by Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton in 2016 along with others such as Michigan, Pennsylvania and Ohio.
Later in 2020, all of these states went to Biden securing a firm lead for him in the national elections. However, the issues related to the Gaza genocide, police-community relations and the capacity of unions to organize remain unresolved.
CBS News in a report on the mood of African American voters in Milwaukee and other areas in the state emphasized that:
“President Biden’s winning coalition in 2020 was led by Black voters, particularly in major cities in battleground states. But this time around, there are signs that his support among this bloc of voters has softened. A CBS News poll in late February showed 76% of likely Black voters said they backed his reelection bid, down from 87% who voted for him in 2020. The more than a dozen Black voters and organizers interviewed by CBS News in battleground states have shared a sense of disappointment about the impending rematch of the 2020 presidential election, with worries it will translate to voters staying home in November.”
In combination with restrictions on voting rights for African Americans and other people of color, the lack of enthusiasm for a Biden reelection are the greatest threat to the Democratic Party.
Despite the economic statistics related to unemployment, if the people are not feeling this purported progress, it will not translate into a massive turnout in November for the presidential, congressional and state legislative contests.
Hopefully, the results of the 2024 elections will prompt a broad-based discussion on the future role of voters from the national oppressed and working class electorate.
Whether Biden or Trump wins the elections in November, the social conditions of the majority within society will not change fundamentally until there is an independent political formation which can speak and act in its own names.
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Abayomi Azikiwe is the editor of the Pan-African News Wire. He is a regular contributor to Global Research.
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For 75 years, the United Nations, i.e. the global community, has paid for the care and subsistence of the 700,000 Palestinians (and their descendants) expelled from their homes by the start-up state of Israel in 1948. Instead of the occupiers then footing the bill, the world was forcibly saddled with the liability through a hastily formed, UN Agency, UNRWA. The United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East is a UN agency that supports the relief and human development of Palestinian refugees.
For about a century, the Israeli state has allowed the world to pay for its illegal occupation.
Now is the time for the occupier to take responsibility for its illegal acts and to pay the cost – not the American tax-payer! And now, there are over two million Palestinian refugees in Gaza alone, less those already massacred by Netanyahu’s IDF.
And today, the US, Germany and UK, increase their shipments of bombs, missiles, drones and war planes in order to kill hundreds more defenceless Palestinians. It’s called democracy!
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We’re seeing more and more of the cynical, obnoxious plan of the western liberal political-media class to try and pin the blame for the entire multinational genocidal campaign in Gaza solely on Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
“There is growing opposition to Netanyahu’s war machine,” reads a new tweet by Senator Bernie Sanders. “More Americans than ever are standing up against this horrific war in Gaza, which is causing tremendous suffering amongst the Palestinian people.”
This is on the same day we learned that the Biden administration has quietly signed off on the delivery of billions of dollars worth of 2,000-pound bombs and warplanes for Israel to use in its ongoing massacres of civilians in Gaza. There is absolutely no excuse for continuing to babble about “Netanyahu’s war” this far into a US-backed genocide. This is Biden’s war as much as it is Netanyahu’s — and Sanders supports Biden.
There is growing opposition to Netanyahu's war machine. More Americans than ever are standing up against this horrific war in Gaza, which is causing tremendous suffering amongst the Palestinian people.https://t.co/olNZgtJoUa
Sanders has been at this schtick for a while now, working to insert the idea into public consciousness that what we are seeing from Israel today is some kind of fluke aberration in the apartheid state’s history and not the obvious fulfillment of its inbuilt nature. The other day he publicly griped that “the Israel of today is not the Israel of Golda Meir,” falsely suggesting that there was once some kind of golden age in which Israel was not an abusive ethnostate built on ethnic cleansing, oppression, racism and injustice.
In an Al Jazeera article published earlier this month titled “This is not ‘Netanyahu’s war’, it is Israel’s genocide,” Ahmad Ibsais berates Sanders and his fellow “progressive” senator Elizabeth Warren for this pernicious narrative control campaign, saying that “Blaming Israel’s blatant human rights abuses, disregard for international law, and open celebration of war crimes on Netanyahu alone is nothing but a coping mechanism for liberals like Sanders and Warren.”
Ibsais writes the following:
“By blaming Netanyahu for the suffering and oppression of the Palestinian people, past and present, they keep alive the lie that Israel was built on progressive ideals, rather than ethnic cleansing.
“By blaming Netanyahu, they whitewash their seemingly unconditional support for a state blatantly committing war crimes and crimes against humanity.
“By blaming Netanyahu, and casting Israel as a progressive, well-meaning state that would respect international humanitarian law but is currently taken over by a bad leader, they are absolving themselves — and the US at large — of complicity in Israel’s many war crimes.”
This is not 'Netanyahu’s war', it is Israel’s genocide — #AJOpinion by Ahmad Ibsais.
But that’s exactly what the Democratic Party has been trying to do in recent weeks. A couple of weeks ago Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer drew the ire of the Israeli right wing with a speech on the Senate floor saying that Netanyahu has become a “major obstacle to peace” who has allowed “his political survival to take precedence over the best interests of Israel,” calling for new elections to oust the prime minister.
“But despite Democrats’ repeated suggestion that Netanyahu is the impetus for Israel’s war, political analysts say that in reality the prime minister’s actions are in step with Israel’s political mainstream. ‘Schumer is operating in this fantasy that if you get rid of Netanyahu, you might be able to get somebody else who’s more moderate who could then save the relationship between the US and Israel under the pretense of support for progressive values and democracy,’ said Omar Baddar, a Palestinian American political analyst. But this narrative ignores how Israeli politicians almost across the board agree with Israel’s conduct in Gaza, as do the majority of Israelis. Yair Lapid, the former prime minister and head of the Israeli opposition, supports the ongoing assault, as does war cabinet member Benny Gantz, Netanyahu’s main political rival and the man who, according to polling, would become prime minister if Israel held elections today…
“Instead of constituting a substantive shift in US support for Israel, experts say, Democrats’ emboldened critique of Netanyahu should be understood as an attempt to respond to growing voter frustration without changing policy, as the Biden administration remains unwilling to use US aid and arms exports to Israel as leverage to demand a change in behavior.”
NEW from me on Schumer’s speech, which was a significant shift in how the top Senate Dem approaches Israel. But in focusing on the far right, he exemplified his party’s strategy of blaming Bibi to isolate the PM and pacify voters without changing policy. https://t.co/Q4Xad1zWmB
Portuguese author and journalist Bruno Maçães recently tweeted that “One possible outcome of this is 200,000 Palestinians will be dead, Gaza will be destroyed, hundreds of thousand will be expelled and everyone will blame Netanyahu and move on.”
Would it surprise you if this happened? Would it not be entirely in keeping with what we have been seeing from the US empire in recent years? Would it be very different from what happened after the US destroyed Iraq, blamed George W Bush and Dick Cheney, and then moved on without anyone having been held responsible or any meaningful policy changes implemented?
That’s the entire goal here. The empire managers want nothing to change about Israel, nothing to change about Washington’s relationship with Israel, nothing to change about US foreign policy or the US war machine in general, and for the mainstream public to be thrown some cognitive bone to chew on while the amnesia of the daily news cycle sets in.
No it’s not—and what establishment ‘journalists’ like James O’Brien are doing is a transparent, cynical and desperate attempt to pin the blame for the genocide solely on Netanyahu in order to salvage the Zionist settler state’s standing and perceived legitimacy. It won’t work. pic.twitter.com/MXeHDLXaoZ
They want everyone to pin all the blame for the Gaza genocide on Netanyahu, but this is not all the fault of Netanyahu. It’s the fault of the entire Israeli state. It’s the fault of Joe Biden. It’s the fault of the Democrats. It’s the fault of all the Israel supporters on Capitol Hill. It’s the fault of the western press. It’s the fault of the Israel lobby. It’s the fault of the unelected empire managers in US government agencies. It’s the fault of the entire US empire and all its imperial member states like Australia, the UK, the EU, and Canada.
Gaza is proof that the US empire cannot be permitted to exist any longer, and they’re trying to get everyone to ignore this fact and blame the whole thing on one guy. Don’t let them do this. Don’t let them deceive you into losing sight of what they’ve done.
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Russian President Vladimir Putin recently warned about the consequences that NATO would face if it delivered US-made F-16s to the Kiev regime, particularly if those fighter jets were to deploy from third countries that are officially not involved in the ongoing NATO-orchestrated Ukrainian conflict. He dismissed the mainstream propaganda machine’s insistence that Russia would allegedly “attack Europe” as nonsense, but warned that direct interference won’t be tolerated and that any and all airbases housing these fighter jets would be legitimate targets. The statements come on the heels of NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg’s announcement that the Neo-Nazi junta will have the right to attack targets “beyond Crimea” (i.e. Russia’s undisputed territory).
However, how good will the F-16 be for the Kiev regime forces?
Namely, the former is designed for high-intensity combat against an actual, near-peer adversary. In other words, while F-16s are built to fight largely helpless countries targeted by the political West, the Soviet Union/Russia built its military to fight any opponent while being able to survive the horrible conditions of warfare. However, this isn’t where the differences end, as the sheer robustness of Soviet-built aircraft is only the tip of the iceberg. Namely, unlike the Neo-Nazi junta, Russia actually improved and modernized the massive military it inherited from the USSR. It has also built several types of extremely high-end fighter jets such as the now legendary Su-35S and the next-generation Su-57. These jets alone make the US-made F-16 virtually obsolete.
And yet, some top Soviet gear that Russia inherited is so advanced and ahead of its time that it’s relevant even now, well over 40 years after being inducted into service. This is particularly true for the superfast, high-flying MiG-31. Apart from being adapted as the launch platform for the deadly 9-A-7660 “Kinzhal” missile system (the MiG-31K/I), there’s also the heavily upgraded MiG-31BM, the undisputed epitome of what an interceptor is and should be. Moscow’s incremental upgrades to the jet over the last three decades have not only preserved the MiG-31’s contemporary relevance, but also ensured its dominance in the coming decades. This includes everything from its avionics and ease of maintenance to missiles and other types of armament.
This is particularly true when it comes to the terrifying R-37M hypersonic air-to-air (AA) missile, with its unrivaled 400 km range, effectively making the MiG-31BM a “flying S-400”. The jet has been one of the primary threats to the Kiev regime forces, shooting down multiple enemy fighters with impunity, often without having to ever leave Russian airspace. Even if NATO were to supply the latest F-16V (Block 70/72) variant to the Neo-Nazi junta, it would still be effectively helpless against the Russian interceptor. The best AA missile that F-16s can use is the AIM-120D AMRAAM, with a range of 160 km. The R-37M is not only around 50% faster (hypersonic Mach 6 vs. the latter’s Mach 4), but it also leaves the US-made missile in the dust when it comes to range (400 km vs. 160 km).
In addition to its state-of-the-art upgrades, the MiG-31BM is also a two-seat jet with a dedicated weapon systems officer (WSO), making it even deadlier in AA engagements. Its highly aerodynamic design allows it to fly supersonic even at low altitudes, which is precisely how the F-16s in the Kiev regime’s service will have to fly in order to survive Russia’s second-to-none air defenses and other fighter jets armed with long-range AA missiles. In addition, the MiG-31’s Soloviev D-30F6 (PS-30) low-bypass turbofan (bypass turbojet) engines ensure not only an unmatched speed of over 3000 km/h, but also a massive 3000 km range that the F-16 could never hope to match. Its avionics also give it an unprecedented look-down/shoot-down capability.
This will be particularly deadly for the much lower-end F-16, especially considering the fact that the latter would be forced to fly low, just like any other jet in the Neo-Nazi junta’s service. The MiG-31BM’s Zaslon-M PESA (passive electronically scanned array) radar, based on the legendary Zaslon, the world’s first ESA, detects hostile aircraft at a staggering 400 km range, meaning that it could detect and track the F-16 long before the latter is even aware of the MiG-31BM’s presence. In addition, it gives the Russian jet the ability to track at least 24 hostile targets and engage six simultaneously. The MiG-31BM also has excellent network-centric warfare capabilities, being able to share battlefield data within a group of other fighter jets.
For instance, just four MiG-31BM can cover a frontline of nearly 1000 km, sharing data with friendly jets and SAM (surface-to-air missile) systems. In addition, ground-based radars can relay information to MiG-31BMs in air and enable radar-silent engagements, making them even deadlier in AA combat, particularly against F-16s. Apart from the jamming-resistant Zaslon-M, the jet boasts an advanced IRST/FLIR (infrared search and track/forward-looking infrared) sensors with a range of approximately 60 km. This also gives the MiG-31BM the ability to target enemy aircraft in complete radar silence. Thus, as previously mentioned, the chances of even the latest iterations of the US-made F-16 against the Russian interceptor are very slim to none.
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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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Apparently, the “peace negotiations” about Ukraine continue to take place, even without any Russian involvement in the talks. According to German Chancellor Olaf Scholz, several diplomatic initiatives are taking place to end – or at least freeze – the conflict, but Moscow continues to be excluded from such processes, which obviously invalidates the negotiations.
In an interview with German media, Scholz confirmed the existence of diplomatic initiatives to end hostilities. He said that “a number of countries, including Ukraine, are currently discussing at the level of security advisers what something that could lead to a peace process might look like.”
In the same interview, Scholz also stated that dialogue is taking place to reach an agreement on the protection of the Zaporozhye Nuclear Power Plant (ZNPP). Since 2022, the Russian Federation has been reporting Ukrainian bombings against nuclear facilities and warning about the risk of radiation leakage as a result of the attacks. International observation missions have already visited the region, proving the veracity of the Russian allegations. However, Western countries and international organizations remain silent about the case.
It is very curious to see that such “negotiations” are taking place without Russian participation, as Moscow is one of the parties in the conflict, which makes any agreement dependent on Russian acceptance. Furthermore, specifically with regard to ZNPP, it is even more illogical that talks are being held only with the Ukrainian side, since the Kiev regime is precisely the aggressor bombing the plant. As the ZNPP is located in a region under Russian control, there is no doubt about the responsibility of the attacks against the plant, but the West ignores this and continues “talking” with the regime that promotes nuclear terror.
Scholz also made some other nonsensical and hypocritical statements during the interview. According to him, “peace” can be achieved at any time if Moscow agrees to withdraw its troops from the special military operation zone. Scholz obviously ignores the legitimacy of the Russian interest in preventing the expansion of NATO and the rehabilitation of Nazism in its strategic environment. By calling for the mere “withdrawal of troops”, Scholz endorses an unfeasible position, nullifying any chance of a serious peace conversation.
In response to Scholz’s statement, Russian authorities confirmed that there was no invitation to Moscow to participate in new peace talks.
According to the Kremlin, the chancellor’s statement “does not change the essence of the ongoing events.” In other words, Russia will continue to act militarily until the objectives of the operation in Ukraine are fully achieved.
Western countries’ opinion on this does not seem to matter much now, as these countries have ignored all attempts at a peaceful resolution of the Ukrainian crisis before 2022. Now, the Russians are resolute in their decision to use military force to prevent Ukraine from continuing to be a base for Western aggression – and “European diplomacy” does not appear to have any capacity to change Russian plans.
Obviously, Moscow remains open to peace talks. Since the beginning of the operation, Russia has been active in seeking negotiations. However, being the winning side and having an irreversible military advantage, Moscow has a list of demands that need to be fulfilled by the Ukrainian side and its Western partners. Without these peace conditions, which include Ukraine’s neutral status and demilitarization, Russia does not have sufficient security guarantees to end hostilities.
The West, however, refuses to meet Russian demands, which makes peace unfeasible. It is impossible for peace talks to take place properly without direct Russian participation. The terms of talks are invalid as one of the belligerent parties was not invited to the process. There is no possibility of achieving peace unilaterally or through the terms of the defeated side, which makes the “initiatives” referred to by Scholz absolutely useless.
Furthermore, with the rise of terror on Russia’s borders – in addition to the high possibility of Ukrainian involvement in the Crocus massacre – the chances of a diplomatic resolution are running out even more quickly. The Kiev regime is proving to be a dictatorship that sponsors terrorism, forcing Moscow to use all necessary means of coercion to neutralize it, as negotiating with terrorists is not a reasonable option.
Although the end of hostilities is important and desirable, there will only be true peace when the legitimate interests of the Russian Federation are met. “Freezing” the conflict or creating temporary ceasefire measures is not in Moscow’s interest, which is why such directives will never be enough to end the war in Ukraine.
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Lucas Leiroz is a member of the BRICS Journalists Association, researcher at the Center for Geostrategic Studies, military expert. You can follow Lucas on X (former Twitter) and Telegram. He is a regular contributor to Global Research.
Featured image: Olaf Scholz, federal chancellor of Germany, meets Volodymyr Zelenskyy, president of Ukraine, in Kiev, Feb. 14, 2022. (President of Ukraine)
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Biden has been guilty of breaking a U.S. law against providing U.S. weapons to a nation using them against a civilian population as Israel has been doing openly for five months.
“When the President of the United States becomes aware of the possibility of violations of the Arms Export Control Act (AECA), the law mandates specific actions:
Prompt Notification to Congress: The President is required to promptly notify Congress about the potential violations.”
Not only could U.S. President Biden have stopped Israel fromcontinuously bombing the homes of a civilian population, reducing whole cities to rubble and murdering 32,000 of Israel’s captive, entrapped and illegally militarily occupied Palestinians in Gaza, but Biden was and is legally obligated by U.S. lawto have done so by ending his constant replenishing of the bombs, missiles and shells Israel keeps raining down on the Palestinian population of Gaza that is mostly women and children.
When a U.S. President is aware of violations of the defensive use restriction on U.S. supplied weapons, U.S. law requires him to report violations of the use of U.S. weapons to Congress.
When the President is aware of even thepossibility of violations of the AECA, the law requires a report to Congress on the potential violations. [1]
October 25, 2023
Biden said he’s sure innocent people have been killed, and he said that’s the price of waging a war.[2]
A war? No! Israel slaughtering entrapped and imprisoned Palestinians cannot be called a war.
No nation can declare war against its own militarily captive population, because a nation is illegally responsible for the well-being of its militarily occupied populations.
“Israel has a right to defend itself, but can’t claim it when it comes to the people it oppresses [or] whose land it colonizes,” UN Special Rapporteur on the Occupied Palestinian Territories Francesca Albanese tweeted on April 8.[3]
UN officials have clearly stated hostilities between an illegally military occupied nation and its illegal militarily occupiers cannot be called a war! [3]
January 25, 2024
Time Magazine, reported that a federal court case filed against President Joe Biden and two U.S. cabinet officials for allegedly being complicit in Israel’s genocide against Gazansmoved forward with a hearing on Friday.
The case, which names Biden, Secretary of State Antony Blinken, and Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin as defendants, was filed by Palestinian human rights groups and individuals with help from the nonprofit Center for Constitutional Rights. Defense for Children International–Palestine v. Biden seeks to stop the U.S. from supporting Israel, which plaintiffs say has cost them the lives of family members, and will be heard in Oakland, Calif.
After government attorneys argued the court has no standing to decide on what they say is a matter of foreign policy, the federal judge dismissed a lawsuit against Biden but implored his administration to reconsider its “unflagging support” for Israel’s war on Gaza.
U.S. Judge Found ‘U.S. Foreign Policy of Genocidal Bombing and Starvation Crime Unprosecuteable for the principle of Separation of Executive and Judicial Branches of Government. [Intercept, Feb. 1, 2024]
So U.S. Genocide As Foreign Policy is ‘Above the Law?’
Starving a militarily occupied population is a crime against humanity as stipulated in the UN adopted Nuremberg Principles of International Law first used to prosecute high officials of Nazi Germany,
February 8, 2024
Biden issues a superfluous memorandum as a ploy to silence criticism of his non-compliance with existing Arms Export Control Act giving Israel space and time to argue falsely of its compliance.
February 22, 2024
The national security memorandum, published on Feb. 8, states that prior to supplying U.S. weapons, a country must give the U.S. “credible and reliable written assurances” that it will use any such weapons in accordance with international humanitarian law.
The Biden administration gave Israel until mid-March to sign a letter, provided by the U.S. on Tuesday, that gives assurances it will abide by international law while using U.S. weapons and allow humanitarian aid into Gaza, three U.S. and Israeli officials told Axios, Feb. 22, 2024.[4]
For over 5 months hundreds of trucks of food and water, many financially contributed to by American agencies, blocked entry by Isreal military.
Countries engaged in conflicts, like Israel, have 45 days from the day the memo was issued to provide the written assurances and have them certified by Secretary of State Tony Blinken.45 days – Plenty of Time to Kill Thousands More The
memo requires the administration to provide an annual report to Congress on whether countries are adhering to international law.
(Annual! That’s Once a Year – Kids Are Dying Every Day)
March 19, 2024
UN Special Rapporteur on the Right to Food, Michael Fakhri, said the United States is ‘complicit’ in the Gaza starvation.[5]
March 21, 2024
Oxfam and Human Rights Watch provide evidence of Israel’s violations of international humanitarian law in Gaza, undermining credibility of assurances for President Biden’s NSM-20 arms policy[6[
March 22, 2024
U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres visitedthe Rafah crossing on March 23. Receiving him, regional governor Mohamed Shousha said some 7,000 trucks were waiting in North Sinai to deliver aid to Gaza, Guterres spoke as follows.
“Here from this crossing, we see the heartbreak and heartlessness of it all. A long line of blocked relief trucks on one side of the gates, the long shadow of starvation on the other,”
Many UN and U.S. laws against allowing starvation
The Foreign Assistance Act, which governs U.S. foreign aid, prohibits U.S. security assistance “when it is made known to the President that the government of such country prohibits or otherwise restricts, directly or indirectly, the transport or delivery of United States humanitarian assistance.”
March 23, 2024
Democratic lawmakers warned the U.S. president that the Netanyahu government’s restriction on the delivery of humanitarian aid into Gaza makes Israel ‘ineligible to receive continued U.S. weapons. [Haaretz | Israel News]
March 26, 2024
As indicated in the title of this article and short chronology, President Biden will for sure not be prosecuted for the facilitating the deathsby bombing and starvation of many tens of thousands of Israel’s captive and illegally militarily occupied Palestinians of Gaza.
No U.S. President was ever legally held to account for the crimes against humanity which he ordered or participated in as part of the very frequently inhumane and massively deadly ‘foreign policy’ of America. However Biden is already today prosecuted in the minds and hearts of the survivors of the U.S. – Israel Gaza genocide and millions, and in time billions, of good people across the globe who have learned, or will have learned, of the great anguish and cruel suffering of the Palestinians for which Biden is ultimately responsible.
Peoples historians will have added Joe Biden to Noam Chomsky’scontinually updated list of all the U.S. Presidents after FDR, who would have been “hanged if the Nuremberg laws were applied.”[7]
Since the end of the Second World War, U.S.A., American presidents and America have able to get away with so much mass murder, so many invasions, bombings of so many smaller nations., for the powerful and wide reach of U.S. media having put Americans up on a pedestal of having saved the world by defeating Adolph Hitler and his Nazis and thus earning the gratitude of all humanity.
With the present U.S. debacle in Gaza, American exceptionality and presidential prestige has evaporated and the U.S. media’s invented story of America’s World War Two grand accomplishment has already taken a hit, and with the rise of media prowess of giant China and now equally giant India, the truth will out.
The president of America’s designated revolutionary enemy Venezuela, Nicolas Madura, has lowered the boom on America’s WWIIlie and its present evil support of Israel at the same time.
“Modern Israel enjoys “the same encouragement, the same funding, and the same support” of the collective West like Adolf Hitler’s Nazi Germany before the World War II. The Western elites kept quiet because they were preparing Hitler for him to launch his military power against the Soviet Union, ultimately, Hitler was a construct, a monster created by the collective West.
The criminal military apparatus of the State of Israel also has the same encouragement, the same funding, and the same support of the West,” [Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro, who urged Jewish people who are still true to their roots to end the ongoing “massacre” of the Palestinians.][8]
Although Western media ignored Maduro’s disclosure of what has already been well documented in financial records of America’s major corporations, with the growing media power and rising influence of the enormously populated nations of China and India, the truth of the making of the Second World War will out, and will reduce the present stature of America and its chief executives.
There has arisen great hope, in some good part due to today’s Instant world-wide communication capability, that a new multi-polar world led by China and India will bring about humanity being released from five centuries of inhumane Western hegemony violently led during most of the present century by the United States of America.
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Jay Janson is an archival research peoples historian activist, musician and writer; has lived and worked on all continents; articles on media published in China, Italy, UK, India, in Germany & Sweden Einartysken,and in the US by Dissident Voice; Global Research; Information Clearing House; Counter Currents; Minority Perspective, UK,and others; now resides in NYC; First effort was a series of articles on deadly cultural pollution endangering seven areas of life emanating from Western corporate owned commercial media published in Hong Kong’s Window Magazine 1993; Howard Zinn lent his name to various projects of his; Weekly column, South China Morning Post, 1986-87; reviews for Ta Kung Bao; article China Daily, 1989. Is coordinator of the Howard Zinn co-founded King Condemned US Wars International Awareness Campaign, and website historian of the Ramsey Clark co-founded Prosecute US Crimes Against Humanity Now Campaign, which contains a history of US crimes in 19 nations from 1945 thru 2012.
He is a regular contributor to Global Research.
Notes
1. The Arms Export Control Act of 1976 (Title II of Pub. L.
Tooltip Public Law (United States)
94–329, 90 Stat.729, enacted June 30, 1976, codified at 22 U.S.C.ch. 39) gives the President of the United States the authority to control the import and export of defense articles and defense services. The H.R. 13680 legislation was passed by the 94th Congressional session and enacted into law by the 38th President of the United States Gerald R. Ford on June 30, 1976.[1]
2. Biden says he’s worried about civilian deaths in Gaza but questions death toll stats
3.“Israel has a right to defend itself, but can’t claim it when it comes to the people it oppresses [or] whose land it colonizes,” UN Special Rapporteur on the Occupied Palestinian Territories Francesca Albanese, April 8.
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Israeli Aggression Against Syria Takes a New Turn – Escalation or Desperation?
Official statement from the Syrian Ministry of Defence:
At 1:45 am, the Israeli enemy launched an air attack from the direction of Athriya, southeast of Aleppo, targeting several points in Aleppo countryside, in conjunction with a drone attack carried out by terrorist organizations from Idlib and Aleppo western countryside, in an attempt to target civilians in Aleppo city and its surrounding.
The aggression resulted in the martyrdom and injury of several civilians and soldiers, and material losses to public and private property.
Aleppo Under Attack
Israeli warplanes infiltrated Syrian airspace via Jordan. They used the Syrian airspace over the illegal US base in Al Tanf (on the border with Jordan) to proceed towards the depths of the central Syrian Badia or desert area at low altitude to avoid detection. The missiles were fired from the Athriya area with U.S. cover towards several targets in the eastern Aleppo suburbs that until December 2016 were occupied by the Western-midwived terrorist gangs.
Simultaneously terrorist groups in Idlib (north-west) dominated by HTS (Al Qaeda) launched a massive attack with suicide drones on civilians in Aleppo City in an attempt to divert the Syrian Air Defence teams.
The Israeli aggression targeted the Jibreen area of eastern Aleppo, close to the Aleppo International Airport and the Ibn Al Khaldoun psychiatric hospital whose patients were terrified having already endured the five year occupation by the same terrorist gangs.
This combined attack was intended to stretch the capability of the Air Defence in defending Aleppo against the dual attacks.
Israel not only targeted Jibreen, it also targeted Kfarjoum to the West of Aleppo.
Sites hit included a gas station, weapon depots and various buildings and is considered as the most intensive attack on the Aleppo governorate by Israel – so far there are at least 30 martyrs (the number is still expected to rise) including women and children. Friends in Aleppo described it as “judgement day”, the explosions were so loud and the attack so intense.
These are people who lived through war since 2012.
There were also Syrian Arab Army martyrs and from Hezbollah units in the area. Some of the names of the martyred Hezbollah fighters:
Ahmad Jawad Shhemeh, 1964
Mustafa Ahmad Makkeh, 1984
Ibrahim Anis Al-Zein, 1982
Ali Mohammad Al-Haf, 1982
Mustafa Ali-Nasif , 1991
A sixth fighter is reported to have died from his wounds.
Explosions continued for at least two hours due to the interception of the Syrian Air Defence combined with the fire and explosions from the weapons depots.
The day before at 5.50pm Israel had carried out a failed assassination attempt against a farm in Bahdaleyah town next to Sayyeda Zainab in the southern Damascus countryside. The farm was completely destroyed but the Hezbollah fighters had evacuated minutes before the strike and escaped. Two civilians were injured.
The two attacks within eight hours demonstrates Israel’s mounting desperation to inflict damage upon Hezbollah bases and fighters in Lebanon and Syria which is known to be the backbone of the resistance and a safe haven for the Hezbollah forces who were instrumental in the liberation of specific Syrian territory from US allied terrorist groups since the regime change war began in 2011.
Both aggressions targeted Hezbollah sites. The attack on Aleppo was unexpected – it is far away from the southern Lebanon front and logistically speaking it is not a natural target for Israel.
Therefore it can only be interpreted as an Israeli attempt to expand the war against Hezbollah specifically while triggering an escalation from the north-western Al Qaeda groups to further pressure the Syrian Arab Army forces and Air Defence teams and to distract the Syrian-based Resistance groups away from any attacks on Israel.
I believe that the intensity of the clash and escalation with the Israeli enemy has increased and that the moment of heading to a battle that may develop into a war is approaching.
I believe that the Israeli enemy is preparing itself for a military campaign against Lebanon, and is now working to get rid of some of the obstacles it has, such as ammunition and the American green light.
I believe that the visit of Security Minister Gallant comes in the context of preparing for the attack on Lebanon and not for the Rafah operation.
Most Israeli military analysts speak with certainty about launching a campaign against Lebanon and that it is a matter of time.
All of this may be for exaggeration, but I believe that the time for exaggeration for Israel ended on October 7, especially after it faced the existential threat.
What this does show is that Israel is cornered. It is losing the ground war in Gaza against a relatively ill-equipped, starving and besieged Palestinian Resistance while the IOF forces on the ground in Gaza commit hourly atrocities against civilians, all caught on camera. Israel’s image as the ‘most moral army’-’only democracy in the middle east’ is irretrievably destroyed.
Israeli intelligence officials told The Telegraph that the government’s stated goal to “eradicate Hamas” in the Gaza Strip has become unachievable after the US “turned its back” on Tel Aviv by abstaining during a UN Security Council (UNSC) vote earlier this week.
“If you’d asked me this a month ago, I would definitely say yes [we can eliminate Hamas] because, at that time, the Americans were backing Israel,” an Israeli intelligence official told the British daily, reportedly suggesting this assessment “had now changed.”
“The US doesn’t support going into Rafah, which they did before, so the cards right now are not good, meaning Israel has to do something dramatic and drastic to change the momentum and climate,” the source added, highlighting that “pressure is mounting on Israel to reach some sort of a deal, which means Hamas could survive. Both Hamas and the Iranians are playing on that.”
In the north on the border with Lebanon the 200,000 settlers and businesses that fled the conflict are destined to never return. Yemen has effectively blockaded an arterial sea route and even with the aid of the ‘normalised’ Abrahamic Accords regional countries like UAE, Jordan etc Israel’s economy is dying and military morale is on its knees.
The veils have been lifted. Israel is trying to expand the war to gain a victory which will ensure its survival. It has clearly demonstrated its allegiance to the Zionist-allied Al Qaeda factions in Idlib and is losing face globally. It has isolated itself even from the U.S. thanks to Netanyahu-hubris. It is trapped and flailing but perhaps at its most dangerous.
It is worth noting that ISIS attacks have also been increasing exponentially since October 7th, many coming from the US illegal military base at Al Tanf, used by Israel to launch attacks on Syria.
It is no longer possible to deny that the clear and present axis of terrorism in Syria is US-UK-Israel-Turkey-EU-Jordan-ISIS-Al Qaeda. The battle lines are no longer blurred, they are crystal clear. Those Palestinian supporters still promoting Idlibistan as a beacon of support for Palestine should take note.
Will Israel maintain escalation? What will the U.S. and U.K. do with elections looming? Whatever the outcome the Resistance is ready. Israel, the Zionist colonialist settler state, will not win this war.
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Many thanks to Syrian journalist and researcher Ibrahim Wahdi for his help in compiling this information. You can follow him on Twitter or Telegram or at Press TV.
Vanessa Beeley is an independent journalist and photographer who has worked extensively in the Middle East – on the ground in Syria, Egypt, Iraq and Palestine, while also covering the conflict in Yemen since 2015. In 2017 Vanessa was a finalist for the prestigious Martha Gellhorn Prize for Journalism which was won by the much-acclaimed Robert Parry that year. In 2019, Vanessa was among recipients of the Serena Shim Award for uncompromised integrity in journalism. Vanessa contributes regularly to UK Column News, RT, Press TV and many independent media outlets. You can find her work at her Substack and Patreon.
Featured image: “Israel stood by our side…We wouldn’t have survived without Israel’s assistance” – including weapons the Netanyahu regime supplied. Spokesman for one extremist group in Syria 2017 (Source: Vanessa Beeley)
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Twice this year, the leaders of Hamas indicated their readiness to accept a Palestinian State within the 1967 borders. Khaled Meshaal, Hamas leader, informed former president Jimmy Carter of this decision in April 2008. In May 2008, it was revealed that Yves Aubin de La Messuziere, a retired senior French diplomat had held discussions with Ismael Haniyeh and Mahmoud Zahar, two prominent Hamas leaders who confirmed Hamas’ readiness to accept a Palestinian State within the 1967 border, reflecting an unofficial acceptance of Israel. But this truce is contrary to the Zionism ideals:
“The settlement of the Land of Israel is the essence of Zionism. Without settlement, we will not fulfill Zionism. It’s that simple.” (Yitzhak Shamir (Maariv, 02/21/1997).
Thus, it became necessary to punish those who sought peace – and wage war.
Sadly, this was not the first time. History has repeated itself. Only our media has successfully managed to throw sands of ignorance in our eyes and blind us with bigotry, keeping our wits dull with misinformation. For the sake of the innocent victims everywhere, the truth must be exposed. We must revisit history.
Hamas, an Islamic Resistance Movement, was born with the first Palestinian uprising in December 1987.
With the end of the Intifada and the initiation of the Oslo peace process, the resistance component of the Palestinian struggle -so critical to Hamas’s political thinking and action- was undermined. In the two- to three-year period before the second Intifida in 2000, Hamas was no longer prominently or consistently calling for political or military action against the occupation, but was instead shifting its attention to social works and the propagation of Islamic values and religious practice.
The start of the second Palestinian Intifada on September 28, 2000, coupled with the impact of September 11, dramatically changed the environment in the West Bank and Gaza. Pre-existing political arrangements were disrupted, economic conditions deteriorated, and social structures weakened. Within a context of desperation and hopelessness Hamas reasserted itself.
At the same time, under the leadership of Ariel Sharon, land expansions through land expropriations and economic dispossession escalated. His agenda did not include a Palestinian state. The United States uneven handling of the conflict encouraged Sharon’s plans. With a weak Palestinian leadership in place, and the increasing significance of Hamas influence, the U.S. opened dialogue with a senior Hamas leader in early September of 2002. Israeli reactions clearly indicated it did not want to have any Palestinian engaged in dialogue with the U.S. for fear that there may be a political solution to the Israel-Palestine conflict.
United States-Hamas contacts of which Israel was fully aware, ended when the Israeli army arrested a politically moderate Hamas official in Ramallah on September 9, which Hamas interpreted as a deliberate attempt by the Sharon government to undermine its exchange with the Americans. A few days later, Israel launched an attack in Rafah that killed nine Palestinians, including civilians. Predictably, a suicide bomber staged an attack on a bus in Tel Aviv on September 19, killing six people. Other Hamas-Palestinian Authority (PA) cease-fires have been undermined by Israeli attacks. Alex Fishman, the security commentator for the right-of-center Yediot Ahronot, Israel’s largest mass-circulation newspaper, detailed in the November 25, 2001 issue of the newspaper how the assassination that November of Mahmud Abu Hanud, a key Hamas figure, shattered a Hamas promise not to carry out suicide bombings inside Israel:
“Whoever gave the green light to this act of liquidation knew full well that he was thereby shattering in one blow the gentleman’s agreement between Hamas and the PA; under that agreement, Hamas was to avoid in the near future suicide bombings inside the Green Line – Israel’s pre-1967 borders – of the kind perpetrated at the Dolphinarium, a discotheque in Tel Aviv.( Perry, 2004,7)(1).
In effect, Israel’s actions led Hamas to play into their hands. Having already marginalized the PLO and Yasser Arafat, by instigating Hamas suicide bombings Sharon would ensure that negotiations for a Palestinian state would not take place, no matter what the cost.
Once again, the actions and motives of the Israeli government are ignored. The relentless Israeli siege on Gaza is cheered on by the “civilized world”, the American government topping the list. Reminiscent of Amphitheatres in Roman times, the “West” is looking on as the innocent Palestinians are being butchered by American weapons, funded by taxes; enabled through lack of Arab leadership and unity, and an absence of human indignation. The lust for blood goes on. UN Security Council has called for “restraint by urging an end to all violence in Gaza”. This is the same UN body that sanctions Iran for being a “threat to peace” while pursuing its inalienable right within the framework of the law, yet it urges restraint when it comes to genocide. Perhaps it should not come as a surprise given that Newt Gingrich at the American Enterprise Institute declared that the United Nations should be made a tool of the United States and Israel:
“The United States and Israel share a special bond rooted in our democratic traditions of government, our pluralistic societies, and our common respect for faith — not just one faith, but all faiths, and for all people of goodwill. These values are central to our national identities and unite us in a common vision for what we expect from the U.N. The U.N.’s past and current treatment of Israel has fallen dramatically short of these ideals. When the U.N. moves finally to end the second class treatment of Israel, it will provide an important indication that U.N. reform is truly moving in the right direction.
“The challenge before those of us who believe in the principles of the United Nations Charter, but who also believe that the UN as it operates today has betrayed these principles, is to effect change in the voting practices at the UNGA. I believe the United States can lead other countries in an effort to successfully reform the United Nations but it will take significant work over the long haul.
“In the first place a decision will have to be made that the UN is important enough to us to link our multilateral diplomacy with our bilateral diplomacy.
“A key first test for a concerted effort by the U.S. to win U.N. votes should be an upcoming vote in the (GA Assembly) concerning the abolishment of the Committee on the Exercise of the Inalienable Rights of the Palestinian People and of the Division of Palestinian Rights.” (2)
The United Nations is at the mercy of man’s inhumanity. Israel can make its way by ruin of others and hear “Restraint”! Perhaps the weakness of the UN body is based on fear for Israel has been successful at intimidation.
Having successfully targeted high profile British personnel to chase them out of the British Mandate Palestine, the United Nations Mediator, Count Folke Bernadotte was assassinated on September 17, 1948 when he flew from Damascus to Jerusalem in order to negotiate the boundaries between Palestine and present day Israel. He was shot six times at point blank, along with his aide Colonel Andre Pierre Serot (3). The Bernadotte assassination sent a clear message to all nations and to future representatives of the United Nations: Israel would never compromise.
“Take the American declaration of Independence. It contains no mention of territorial limits.We are not obliged to fix the limits of the State.” – Moshe Dayan (Jerusalem Post, 08/10/1967)
Every person that does not speak up and make another aware is a spectator cheering for blood sport. Jonathan Swift aptly said:
“I never wonder to see men wicked, but I often wonder to see them not ashamed.”
We can each save a life, collectively; we can save the people under siege.
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Soraya Sepahpour-Ulrich has a Master of Public Diplomacy from USC Annenberg for Communication. She is an independent researcher with a focus on U.S. foreign policy and the influence of lobby groups. This article was first published by PalestineChronicle.com.
Notes
(1) Perry, M. “Israeli Offensive Disrupts US-Hamas Contacts,” Palestine Report, October 9, 2002 Downloaded April 23, 2004; www.jmcc.org/ media/report/02/Oct/2b
(3) J. Bowyer Bell, “Assassination in International Politics”, International Studies Quarterly, Vol. 16, No. 1 (Mar., 1972), pp. 59-82
Featured image: Statue of the founder of Zionism Theodor Herzl, unveiled in 2012 at the Mikveh Israel synagogue in Tel Aviv. It is called “Herzl meets Emperor Wilhelm II”
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In a World Economic Forum, someone from the audience asked a question about patient engagement.
“Even if you make the greatest drug, the greatest wearable, there is no guarantee that the patient is gonna take the drug or wear the device. How are you thinking about technology to engage the patient?”
Watch the video to see what Pfizer CEO Albert Bourla said.
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On December 9 2023, the European Parliament published a press release, where it stated that it reached a political deal with the Council of the European Union “on a bill to ensure AI in Europe is safe, respects fundamental rights and democracy“.
The future bill was supposed to ban “AI systems that manipulate human behaviour to circumvent their free will“. According to the press release the deputies “agreed“ as well on “clear obligations“ with respect to “AI systems used to influence the outcome of elections and voter behaviour“.
In November 2023, 11 world human rights organizations presented to the European Commission a legislation proposal, where they tried to make sure that the European legislation on Artificial Intelligence will not allow just attacks on close distance by brain-computer interfaces, but as well attacks on fundamental human rights and democracy from large distance (see this).
On February 2nd 2024, they received this reply:
“Thank you for the above letter, which has received our fullest attention.
The answer to your letter requires further work which is currently in progress.
You can normally expect a reply within one month of receiving this letter”.
“Your letter from 10th November has been passed to our services and well received.”
In June 2023, U.S. liquefied natural gas (LNG) developer Venture Global LNG said it had signed a 20-year deal to provide Germany’s Securing Energy for Europe GmbH (SEFE) with 2.25 million tonnes per year of LNG and in this way became Germany’s largest LNG supplier. Construction of the CP2 project in Cameron Parish, Louisiana, was expected to begin in the same year (see this). On January 26th, 2024, the U.S. President Joe Bidenreleased a statement, where he announced a temporary pause on pending decisions of Liquefied Natural Gas exports. Among others it pertained to CP2 project in Cameron Parish, Louisiana.
The European Union depends at present time in great part on the American liquefied gas and this American decision meant that the EU economy will not be able to grow in future years due to the lack of energy supplies.
Did the USA which has got to project how to control the population in large areas of the planet by controlling the activity of human brains of their inhabitants from ionosphere and project how to control the minds of their opponents around the world decide to stop the effort of the European Union to protect fundamental human rights from abuse by neurotechnologies and artificial intelligence? Was the European Union, which was freshly separated from the supplies of Russian natural gas and transferred its energy security from Russia to the United States, again exposed to political pressure which it did not have a chance to resist, if it wished to continue its prosperity?
On March 13 2024, the European Parliament adopted the legislative resolution laying down harmonised rules on Artificial Intelligence. On page 6 it states:
“AI may generate risks and cause harm to public interests and fundamental rights that are protected by Union law. Such harm might be material or immaterial, including physical, psychological, societal or economic harm”.
“AI-enabled manipulative techniques can be used to persuade persons to engage in unwanted behaviours, or to deceive them by nudging them into decisions in a way that subverts and impairs their autonomy, decision-making and free choices. The placing on the market, the putting into service or the use of certain AI systems with the objective to or the effect of materially distorting human behaviour, whereby significant harms, in particular having sufficiently important adverse impacts on physical, psychological health or financial interests are likely to occur, are particularly dangerous and should therefore be forbidden. Such AI systems deploy subliminal components such as audio, image, video stimuli that persons cannot perceive as those stimuli are beyond human perception or other manipulative or deceptive techniques that subvert or impair person’s autonomy, decision-making or free choice in ways that people are not consciously aware or, where they are aware, they are still deceived or are not able to control or resist. This could be facilitated, for example, by machine-brain interfaces or virtual reality as they allow for a higher degree of control of what stimuli are presented to persons, insofar as they may materially distort their behaviour in a significantly harmful manner.”
The EU document does not state that such actions can be performed not only by machine-brain interfaces, but as well at distance by electromagnetic fields and in this way may act on masses of people.
The document does not propose the establishment of agencies where people could complain in case that they would be exposed to such abuse of their fundamental human rights by anybody, including government agencies.
If the technology, which can be used to remotely control human minds is not published, people cannot understand what is actually happening to them, if they are exposed to such attacks, and will possibly consider themselves to be mentally ill. In this way governments are in a position where they can execute totalitarian powers over their citizens and the citizens are not able to find out about it or prove it. It is happening already at present time that people, who complain about being abused in this way, end up in mental hospitals, unable to prove that governments or anybody else have violated their privacy and personal freedom.
In the text quoted above, the EU tacitly admits that the AI could be used even to make people commit crimes whithout being truly responsible for them. The same possibility confirmed in 2021 the International Bioethics Committee of UNESCO writing:
“External tools that may interfere with our decisions can call into question, or even challenge, an individual’s free will, and consequently an individual’s responsibilities. In this way, neurotechnology could affect freedom of thought, decision-making and action. Taken together, these could have a profound impact on justice systems and social organizations” (pg. 36).
It has been two months since the European Commission promised to 11 world human rights organizations in an e-mail to contact them within one month again on those issues, but it did not happen. Evidently the European Union gave in to the U.S. pressure and published only the fact that human minds can be manipulated at close distance by brain-computer interfaces and did not publish the feasibility of individual and mass manipulation of human thinking and behavior at distance by electromagnetic waves or other physical fields.
The battle to ban technologies for remote control of human minds cannot be stopped by the decision of the U.S. president to stop accepting new orders for liquefied gas to Europeans. The governments must not be able to play with their or foreign citizens as if they were just only their toys. You can still support the petition requesting the European Union to ban the remote control of human minds in an effective way and in this way help the European Union to set an example to the USA and rest of the world here.
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Mojmir Babacek was born in 1947 in Prague, Czech Republic. Graduated in 1972 at Charles University in Prague in philosophy and political economy. In 1978 signed the document defending human rights in communist Czechoslovakia „Charter 77“. Since 1981 until 1988 lived in emigration in the USA. Since 1996 he has published articles on different subjects mostly in the Czech and international alternative media.
In 2010, he published a book on the 9/11 attacks in the Czech language. Since the 1990‘s he has been striving to help to achieve the international ban of remote control of the activity of the human nervous system and human minds with the use of neurotechnology.
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Prosecutors representing the United States, whether by design or incompetence, refused — in the two-day hearing I attended in London in February — to provide guarantees that Julian Assange would be afforded First Amendment rights and would be spared the death penalty if extradited to the U.S.
The inability to give these assurances all but guaranteed that the High Court — as it did on Tuesday — would allow Julian’s lawyers to appeal. Was this done to stall for time so that Julian would not be extradited until after the U.S. presidential election? Was it a delaying tactic to work out a plea deal? Julian’s lawyers and U.S. prosecutors are discussing this possibility. Was it careless legal work? Or was it to keep Julian locked in a high security prison until he collapses mentally and physically?
If Julian is extradited, he will stand trial for allegedly violating 17 counts of the 1917 Espionage Act, with a potential sentence of 170 years, along with another charge for “conspiracy to commit computer intrusion” carrying an additional five years.
The court will permit Julian to appeal minor technical points — his basic free speech rights must be honored, he cannot be discriminated against on the basis of his nationality and he cannot be under threat of the death penalty.
No new hearing will allow his lawyers to focus on the war crimes and corruption that WikiLeaks exposed. No new hearing will permit Julian to mount a public-interest defense. No new hearing will discuss the political persecution of a publisher who has not committed a crime.
The court, by asking the U.S. for assurances that Julian would be granted First Amendment rights in the U.S. courts and not be subject to the death penalty, offered the U.S. an easy out — give the guarantees and the appeal is rejected.
The hearing in February was Julian’s last chance to request an appeal of the extradition decision made in 2022 by the then British home secretary, Priti Patel, and many of the rulings of District Judge Vanessa Baraitser in 2021.
If Julian is denied an appeal, he can request an emergency stay of execution from the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) under Rule 39, which is given in “exceptional circumstances” and “only where there is an imminent risk of irreparable harm.” But it is possible the British court could order Julian’s immediate extradition prior to a Rule 39 instruction, or decide to ignore a request from the ECtHR to allow Julian to have his case heard there.
Julian has been engaged in a legal battle for 15 years. It began in 2010 when WikiLeaks published classified military files from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan — including footage showing a U.S. helicopter gunning down civilians, including two Reuters journalists, in Baghdad.
Image: Julian Assange was secretly recorded while living at the Ecuadorean embassy in London. (Source: EPV)
Julian took refuge in the Embassy of Ecuador in London for seven years, fearing extradition to the U.S. He was arrested in April 2019 by the Metropolitan Police, who were permitted by the Embassy to enter and seize him. He has been held for nearly five years in HM Prison Belmarsh, a high-security prison in southeast London.
The case against Julian has made a mockery of the British justice system and international law. While in the embassy, the Spanish security firm UC Global provided video recordings of meetings between Julian and his lawyers to the CIA, eviscerating attorney-client privilege.
The Ecuadorian government — led by Lenin Moreno — violated international law by rescinding Julian’s asylum status and permitting police into their embassy to carry Julian into a waiting van. The courts have denied Julian’s status as a legitimate journalist and publisher. The U.S. and Britain have ignored Article 4 of their Extradition Treaty that prohibits extradition for political offenses. The key witness for the U.S., Sigurdur Thordarson — a convicted fraudster and pedophile — admitted to fabricating the accusations he made against Julian in exchange for immunity for past crimes.
Julian, an Australian citizen, is being charged under the U.S. Espionage Act although he did not engage in espionage and was not based in the U.S when he was sent the leaked documents. The British courts are considering extradition, despite the CIA’s plan to kidnap and assassinate Julian, plans that included a potential shoot-out on the streets of London, with involvement by London’s Metropolitan Police.
Julian has been held in isolation in a high-security prison without trial, although his only technical violation of the law is breaching bail conditions after he obtained asylum in the Embassy of Ecuador. This should only entail a fine.
Finally, Julian did not, unlike Daniel Ellsberg, leak the documents. He published documents leaked by U.S. Army whistleblower Chelsea Manning.
Three of the nine legal grounds were accepted by the judges as potential points for appeal. The other six were denied. The two-judge panel also rejected the request by Julian’s lawyers to present new evidence.
Julian’s legal team asked the court to introduce into the case the Yahoo! News report that revealed, after the release of the documents known as Vault 7, that the then-director of the CIA Mike Pompeo, considered assassinating Julian. Julian’s lawyers also hoped to introduce a statement from Joshua Dratel, a U.S. attorney, who said that Pompeo’s use of the terms “non-state hostile intelligence service” and “enemy combatant” were phrases designed to give legal cover for an assassination. The third piece of evidence Julian’s lawyers hoped to introduce was a statement from a Spanish witness in the criminal proceedings underway in Spain against UC Global.
The CIA is the engine behind Julian’s extradition. Vault 7 exposed hacking tools that permit the CIA to access our phones, computers and televisions, turning them — even when switched off — into monitoring and recording devices. The extradition request does not include charges based on the release of the Vault 7 files, but the U.S. indictment followed the release of the Vault 7 files.
Justice Sharp and Justice Johnson dismissed the report in Yahoo! News as “another recitation of opinion by journalists on matters that were considered by the judge.” They rejected the argument made by the defense that Julian’s extradition would be in violation of Section 81 of the U.K. Extradition Act of 2003, which prohibits extraditions in cases where individuals are prosecuted for their political opinions. The judges also dismissed the arguments made by Julian’s attorneys that extradition would violate his protections under the European Convention of Human Rights — the right to life, the prohibition of inhuman and degrading treatment, the right to a free trial and protections against punishment without law respectively.
The U.S. largely built its arguments from the affidavits of the U.S. prosecutor Gordon D. Kromberg. Kromberg, an Assistant U.S. Attorney in the Eastern District of Virginia has stated that Julian, as a foreign national, is “not entitled to protections under the First Amendment, at least as it concerns national defense information.”
Ben Watson, King’s Counsel, who represented the U.K. government during the two-day hearing in February, conceded that if Julian is found guilty under the Espionage Act, he could receive a death penalty sentence.
The U.S. and the U.K. Secretary of State were urged by the judges to offer the British court assurances on these three points by April 16.
If the assurances are not provided, the appeal will proceed.
If the assurances are provided, lawyers for both sides have until April 30th to make new written submissions to the court. At that point, the court will convene again on May 20 to decide if the appeal can go forward.
The goals in this Dickensian nightmare remain unchanged. Erase Julian from the public consciousness. Demonize him. Criminalize those who expose government crimes. Use Julian’s slow motion crucifixion to warn journalists that no matter their nationality, no matter where they live, they can be kidnapped and extradited to the U.S. Drag out the judicial lynching for years until Julian, already in a precarious physical and mental condition, disintegrates.
This ruling, like all of the rulings in this case, is not about justice. It is about vengeance.
*
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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: The Crucifixion of Julian Assange – by Mr. Fish
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25 years commemoration of NATO’s military intervention against the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia (the FRY) in March−June 1999 once again opened the question of the Western foundation for Kosovo’s secession from Serbia and its unilateral proclamation of a quasi-independence in February 2008. Kosovo became the first and only European state today that is ruled by the terroristic warlords as a party’s possession – the (Albanian) Kosovo Liberation Army (the KLA). This article aims to investigate the nature of NATO’s war on Yugoslavia in 1999 which has as an outcome the creation of the first terroristic state in Europe – the Republic of Kosovo.
Terrorism and Kosovo Independence
The KLA terrorists with support from the US and the EU’s administrations launched full-scale violence in December 1998 for the sole purpose of provoking NATO’s military intervention against the FRY as a precondition for Kosovo secession from Serbia hopefully followed by internationally recognized independence. To finally resolve the “Kosovo Question” in the favor of the Albanians, the US Clinton administration brought two confronting sides to formally negotiate in the French castle of Rambouillet in France in February 1999 but in fact to impose an ultimatum to Serbia to accept de facto secession of Kosovo. Even though the Rambouillet ultimatum de iure recognized Serbia’s territorial integrity, the disarmament of terroristic KLA and did not mention Kosovo’s independence from Serbia, as the conditions of the final agreement were in essence highly favorable to the KLA and its secessionist project towards independent Kosovo, Serbia simply rejected them. The US’s answer was a military action led by NATO as a “humanitarian intervention” in order to directly support the Kosovo Albanian separatism. Therefore, on March 24th, 1999 NATO started its military operation against the FRY which lasted till June 10th, 1999. Why the UN’s Security Council was not asked for the approval of the operation is clear from the following explanation:
“Knowing that Russia would veto any effort to get UN backing for military action, NATO launched air strikes against Serbian forces in 1999, effectually supporting the Kosovar Albanian rebels”.[1]
The crucial feature of this operation was a barbarian, coercive, inhuman, illegal, and above all merciless bombing of Serbia for almost three months. Nevertheless, NATO’s military intervention against the FRY – Operation Allied Force, was propagated by its proponents as a purely humanitarian operation, it is recognized by many Western and other scholars that the US and its client states of NATO had mainly political and geostrategic aims that led them to this military action.
The legitimacy of the intervention in the brutal coercive bombing of both military and civilian targets in Kosovo province and the rest of Serbia became immediately controversial as the UN’s Security Council did not authorize the action. Surely, the action was illegal according to international law but it was formally justified by the US administration and the NATO’s spokesman as legitimate for the reason that it was unavoidable as all diplomatic options were exhausted to stop the war. However, a continuation of the military conflict in Kosovo between the KLA and Serbia’s state security forces would threaten to produce a humanitarian catastrophe and generate political instability in the region of the Balkans. Therefore, “in the context of fears about the ‘ethnic cleansing’ of the Albanian population, a campaign of air strikes, conducted by US-led NATO forces”[2] was executed with a final result of the withdrawal of Serbia’s forces and administration from the province: that was exactly the main requirement of the Rambouillet ultimatum.
It is of crucial importance to stress at least five facts to properly understand the nature and aims of NATO’s military intervention against Serbia and Montenegro in 1999:
It was bombed only Serbian side involved in the conflict in Kosovo while the KLA was allowed and even fully sponsored to continue its terroristic activities either against Serbia’s security forces or the Serbian civilians.
The ethnic cleansing of the Albanians by the Serbian security forces was only a potential action (in fact, only in the case of direct NATO’s military action against the FRY) but not a real fact as a reason for NATO to start coercive bombing of the FRY.
NATO’s claim that the Serbian security forces killed up to 100.000 Albanian civilians during the Kosovo War of 1998−1999 was a pure propaganda lie as after the war it was found only 3.000 bodies of all nationalities in Kosovo.
The bombing of the FRY was promoted as a “humanitarian intervention”, which means a legitimate and defensible action, that scholarly should mean “…military intervention that is carried out in pursuit of humanitarian rather than strategic objectives”[3]. However, today it is quite clear that the intervention had political and geostrategic ultimate objectives but not the humanitarian one.
The NATO’s military intervention in 1999 was a direct violation of the UN principles of international conduct as it is said in the UN Charter that:
“All Members shall refrain in their international relations from the threat or use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of any state, or in any other manner inconsistent with the Purposes of the United Nations”.[4]
What happened in Kosovo when NATO started its military campaign was quite expected and above all wishful by the US administration and the KLA’s leaders: Serbia made a much stronger military assault on the KLA and the ethnic Albanians who supported it. As a consequence, there was a significantly increased number of refugees – up to 800.000 according to the CIA’s and the UN’s sources. However, the US administration presented all of these refugees as the victims of the Serb-led policy of systematic and well-organized ethnic cleansing (alleged “Horse Shoe” operation) regardless of the facts that:
The overwhelming majority of them were not real refugees but rather “TV refugees” for the Western mass media.
The minority of them were simply escaping from the consequences of NATO’s merciless bombing.
Just part of the refugees have been the real victims of the Serbian “bloody revenge” policy for NATO’s destruction of Serbia.
Nevertheless, the final result of NATO’s sortie campaign against the FRY was that the UN’s Security Council formally authorized NATO’s (under the official name of KFOR)[5] ground troops to occupy Kosovo and give to the KLA free hands to continue and finish with the ethnic cleansing of the province from all non-Albanians. That was the beginning of the making of the Kosovo independence which was finally proclaimed by the Kosovo Parliament (without national referenda) in February 2008 and immediately recognized by the main Western countries.[6] In such a way, Kosovo became the first legalized European mafia state.[7]
Nevertheless, in addition, the EU’s and the US’s policies to rebuild peace on the territory of ex-Yugoslavia did not manage to deal successfully with probably the main and most serious challenge to their proclaimed task to re-establish regional stability and security: al-Qaeda-linked terrorism, especially in Bosnia-Herzegovina but also in Kosovo-Metochia.[8]
Members of the U.S. sponsored Kosovo Liberation Army in 1999 during NATO’s aggression on the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia
Dilemmas
According to the NATO’s sources, there were two objectives of the alliance’s military intervention against the FRY in March−June 1999:
To force Slobodan Miloshevic, a President of Serbia, to accept a political plan for the autonomy status of Kosovo (designed by the US administration).
To prevent (alleged) ethnic cleansing of the Albanians by Serbia’s authorities and their armed forces.
However, while the political objective was in principle achieved, the humanitarian one had quite the opposite results. By bombing the FRY in the three air strikes phases NATO succeeded in forcing Miloshevic to sign a political-military capitulation in Kumanovo on June 9th, 1999, to handle Kosovo to NATO’s administration and practically to authorize the KLA’s-led Islamic terror against the Christian Serbs.[9] A direct outcome of the operation was surely negative as NATO’s sorties caused approximately 3000 killed Serbian military and civilians in addition to an unknown number of killed ethnic Albanians. An indirect impact of the operation cost many ethnic Albanian killed civilians followed by massive refugee flows of Kosovo Albanians[10] as it provoked the Serbian police and the Yugoslav army to attack. We can not forget that the greatest scale of war crimes against the Albanian civilians in Kosovo during NATO’s bombing of the FRY was most probably, according to some research investigations, committed by the Krayina refugee Serbs from Croatia who after August 1995 in the uniforms of the regular police forces of Serbia as a matter of revenge for the terrible Albanian atrocities committed in the Krayina region in Croatia only several years ago against the Serb civilians[11] when many of Kosovo Albanians fought the Serbs in the Croatian uniforms.
The fundamental dilemma is why NATO directly supported the KLA – an organization that was previously clearly called a “terrorist” by many Western Governments including the US administration too? It was known that a KLA’s warfare of partisan strategy[12] was based only on direct provoking of Serbia’s security forces to respond by attacking the KLA’s posts with an unavoidable number of civilian casualties. However, these Albanian civilian victims were not understood by NATO’s authorities as “collateral damage” but rather as the victims of deliberate ethnic cleansing. Nevertheless, all civilian victims of NATO’s bombing in 1999 were presented by NATO’s authorities exactly as “collateral damage” of NATO’s “just war”[13] against the oppressive regime in Belgrade.
Here we will present the basic (academic) principles of a “just war”:
Last resort – All diplomatic options are exhausted before the force is used.
Just cause – The ultimate purpose of the use of force is to self-defend its own territory or people from military attack by the others.
Legitimate authority – To imply the legitimate constituted Government of a sovereign state, but not by some private (individual) or group (organization).
Right intention – The use of force, or war, had to be prosecuted on morally acceptable reasons, but not based on revenge or the intention to inflict damage.
Reasonable prospect of success – The use of force should not be activated in some hopeless cause, in which human lives are exposed for no real benefits.
Proportionality – The military intervention has to have more benefits than losses.
Discrimination – The use of force must be directed only at purely military targets as the civilians are considered to be innocent.
Proportionality – The used force has to be no greater than it is needed to achieve morally acceptable aims and must not be greater than the provoking cause.
Humanity – The use of force cannot be directed ever against the enemy personnel if they are captured (the prisoners of war) or wounded.[14]
If we analyze NATO’s military campaign regarding just above presented basic (academic) principles of the “just war”, the fundamental conclusions will be as follows:
The US administration in 1999 did not use any real diplomatic effort to settle the Kosovo crisis as Washington simply gave the political-military ultimatum in Rambouillet only to one side (Serbia) to either accept or not in full required blackmails: 1) To withdraw all Serbian military and police forces from Kosovo; 2) To give Kosovo administration to the NATO’s troops; and 3) To allow the NATO’s troops to use a whole territory of Serbia for the transit purpose. In other words, the basic point of the US’s ultimatum to Belgrade was that Serbia would voluntarily become a US colony but without Kosovo province. Even the US President at that time – Bill Clinton, confirmed that Miloshevic’s rejection of the Rambouillet ultimatum was understandable and logical. It can be said that Serbia in 1999 did the same as the Kingdom of Serbia did in July 1914 by rejecting the Austro-Hungarian ultimatum which was also absurd and abusive.[15]
This principle was misused by the NATO’s administration as no one NATO country was attacked or occupied by the FRY. In Kosovo at that time it was a classic anti-terroristic war launched by the state authorities against the illegal separatist movement but fully sponsored in this case by the neighboring Albania and the NATO.[16] In other words, this second principle of the “just war” can be only applied to the anti-terroristic operations by the state authorities of Serbia in Kosovo province against the KLA rather than to NATO’s military intervention against the FRY.
The Legitimate authority principle in the Kosovo conflict case of 1998−1999 can be applied only to Serbia and her legitimate state institutions and authorities which were recognized as legitimate by the international community and above all by the UN.
The morally acceptable reasons officially used by NATO’s authorities to justify its military action against the FRY in 1999 were quite unclear and above all unproved and misused for the very political and geostrategic purposes in the coming future. Today we know that NATO’s military campaign was not based on the morally proven claims to stop a mass expulsion of the ethnic Albanians from their homes in Kosovo as a mass number of displaced persons appeared during NATO’s military intervention but not before.
The consequences of the fifth principle were selectively applied as only Kosovo Albanians benefited from both short and long-term perspectives by NATO’s military engagement in the Balkans in 1999.
The sixth principle also became practically applied only to Kosovo Albanians which was, in fact, the ultimate task of the US and NATO administrations. In other words, the benefits of the action were overwhelmingly single-sided. However, from the long-term geostrategic and political aspects, the action was very profitable with a minimum loss for the Western military alliance during the campaign.
The practical consequences of the seventh principle became mostly criticized as NATO obviously did not make any difference between the military and civilian targets. Moreover, the NATO alliance deliberately bombed many more civilian objects and non-combat citizens than military objects and personnel. However, all civilian victims of the bombing of all nationalities became simply presented by NATO’s authority as unavoidable “collateral damage”, but, in fact, it was a clear violation of international law and one of the basic principles of the concept of a “just war”.
The eighth principle of a “just was” surely was not respected by NATO as the used force was much higher as needed to achieve proclaimed tasks and above all was much stronger than the opposite side had. However, the morally acceptable aims of the Western policymakers were based on the wrong and deliberately misused “facts” concerning the ethnic Albanian victims of the Kosovo War in 1998−1999 as it was primarily with the “brutal massacre of forty-five civilians in the Kosovo village of Račak in January 1999”[17] which became a formal pretext for the NATO’s intervention. Nevertheless, it is known today that those Albanian “brutally massacred civilians” were, in fact, the members of the KLA killed during the regular fight but not executed by the Serbian security forces.[18]
Only the last principle of a “just war” was respected by NATO for the very reason that there were no captured soldiers from the opponent side. The Serbian authorities also respected this principle as all two NATO’s captured pilots were treated as prisoners of war according to international standards and even were free very soon after the imprisonment.[19]
Crucified Christian (Serb Orthodox) Kosovo after the war by the KLA’s members in power
Conclusions
The crucial conclusions of the article after the investigation of the nature of NATO’s “humanitarian” military intervention in Kosovo in 1999 are:
NATO’s military intervention against the FRY during the Kosovo War in 1998−1999 was done primarily for political and geostrategic purposes.
A declarative “humanitarian” nature of the operation just served as a formal moral framework for the realization of the genuine goals of the post-Cold War US policy in the Balkans whose foundations were laid down by the Dayton Accords in November 1995.
The US administration of Bill Clinton used the terrorist KLA to press and blackmail the Serbian Government to accept the ultimatum by Washington to transform Serbia into the US’s military, political, and economic colony with NATO membership in the future for the exchange for formal preservation of Serbia’s territorial integrity.
The Western Governments originally labeled the KLA as a “terrorist organization” – that is combat strategy of directly provoking Serbia’s security forces was morally unacceptable and would not result in either diplomatic or military support.
During the Kosovo War in 1998−1999, the KLA, basically, served as NATO’s ground forces in Kosovo for direct destabilization of Serbia’s state security which were militarily defeated at the very beginning of 1999 by Serbia’s regular police forces.
NATO’s sorties in 1999 had as the main goal to force Belgrade to give Kosovo province to the US and EU’s administration to transform it into the biggest US and NATO military base in Europe.
NATO’s “humanitarian” intervention in 1999 against the FRY violated almost all principles of the “just war” and international law – an intervention that became one of the best examples in the post-Cold War history of unjust use of coercive power for the political and geostrategic purposes and at the same time a classic case of coercive diplomacy that fully engaged the Western Governments.
Some 50.000 NATO troops displaced in Kosovo after June 10th, 1999 did not fulfill the basic tasks of their mission: 1) Demilitarization of the KLA as this paramilitary formation was never properly disarmed; 2) Protection of all Kosovo inhabitants as only up to January 2001 there were at least 700 Kosovo citizens murdered on the ethnic basis (mostly of them were the Serbs); 3) Stability and security of the province as most of the Serbs and other non-Albanians fled the province as a consequence of systematic ethnic cleansing policy committed by the KLA in power after June 1999.
The US’s reward for the KLA’s loyalty was to install the army’s members to the key governmental posts of today’s “independent” Republic of Kosovo which became the first European state administered by the leaders of an ex-terrorist organization that started immediately after the war to an execute a policy of ethnic cleansing of all non-Albanian population and to Islamize the province.
The ultimate national-political goal of the KLA in power in Kosovo was to include this province into the Greater Albania projected by the First Albanian Prizren League in 1878−1881 and for the first time realized during WWII.[20]
Probably, the main consequence of NATO’s occupation of Kosovo after June 1999 up to today is a systematic destruction of the Christian (Serb) cultural inheritance and feature of the province followed by its obvious and comprehensive Islamization and therefore transformation of Kosovo into a new Islamic State.
What concerns the case of the Kosovo crisis in 1998−1999, the first and authentic “humanitarian” intervention was that of Serbia’s security forces against the terroristic KLA in order to preserve the human lives of the ethnic Serbs and anti-KLA Albanians in the province.
The Balkan Stability Pact for both Bosnia-Herzegovina and Kosovo-Metochia attempted to under-emphasize the traditional concept of sovereignty giving a full practical possibility to the UN’s (in fact the West’s) administrative control over these two ex-Yugoslav territories.[21]
NATO’s “humanitarian” intervention in 1999 against the FRY clearly violated the recognized international standards of non-intervention, based on the principle of the “inviolability of borders” going beyond the idea of “just war” according to which self-defense is the crucial reason, or at least formal justification, for the use of force.
While NATO declaratively fulfilled “the international responsibility to protect” (the ethnic Albanians) by heavily bombing Serbia and too much little extent Montenegro, bypassing the UN’s Security Council it is clear that this 78-day terror effort was counterproductive as “creating as much human suffer-refugees as it relieved”.[22]
The fundamental question regarding the Kosovo “humanitarian” interventions today is why the Western Governments are not taking another “humanitarian” coercive military intervention after June 1999 to prevent further ethnic cleansing and brutal violation of human rights against all non-Albanian population in Kosovo but above all against the Serbs?
Finally, NATO’s military intervention was seen by many social constructivists as a phenomenon of “warlike democracies” as a demonstration of how the ideas of liberal democracy “undermine the logic of democratic peace theory”.[23]
*
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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] S. L. Spiegel, J. M. Taw, F. L. Wehling, K. P. Williams, World Politics in a New Era, Thomson Wadsworth, 2004, 319.
[2]A. Heywood, Global Politics, New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2011, 320.
[3]Ibid., 319.
[4]J. Haynes, P. Hough, Sh. Malik, L. Pettiford, World Politics, Harlow: Pearson Education Limited, 2011, 639.
[5]The 1244 UN Security Council Resolution on June 10th, 1999. The KFOR’s basic responsibilities were:
To protect aid operations.
To protect all Kosovo population.
To create a stable security in the province in order that the international administration can function normally.
[6]This recognition of the self-proclaimed Kosovo independence from a democratic country of Serbia with a pro-Western regime, basically gave victory to the Albanian Kosovo radicals of the ethnic cleansing after June 1999. The Albanians from Kosovo started their atrocities against the Serbs immediately after the Kumanovo Agreement in June 1999 when the KLA returned back to Kosovo together with NATO’s occupation ground troops. Up to February 2008 there were around 200.000 expelled Serbs from Kosovo and 1.248 non-Albanians who have been killed in some cases even very brutally. The number of kidnapped non-Albanians is still not known but presumably majority of them were killed. There were 151 Serb Orthodox spiritual and cultural monuments in Kosovo destroyed by the Albanians in addition to 213 mosques built with financial support from Saudi Arabia. Before Kosovo independence was proclaimed, there were 80 percent of graveyards which were either completely destroyed or partially desecrated by the Albanians. On Kosovo right to independence, see [M. Sterio, The Right to Self-Determination under International Law: “Selfistans”, Secession, and the Rule of the Great Powers, New York−London: Routledge, Taylor & Francis Group, 2013, 116−129]. On secession from the point of the international law, see [M. G. Kohen, Secession: International Law Perspectives, New York: Cambridge University Press, 2006].
[7]T. Burghardt, “Kosovo: Europe’s Mafia State. Hub of the EU-NATO Drug Trail”, 22-12-2010, http://www.globalresearch.ca/kosovo-europe-s-mafia-state-hub-of-the-eu-nato-drug-trail/22486.
[8]J. Haynes, P. Hough, Sh. Malik, L. Pettiford, World Politics, Harlow: Pearson Education Limited, 2011, 588.
[9]On the “just peace”, see [P. Allan, A. Keller (eds.), What is a Just Peace?, Oxford−New York: Oxford University Press, 2006].
[10]According to the official Western sources, even up to 90 percent of the Kosovo Albanian population became refugees during NATO’s military intervention. Therefore, it should be the largest displacement of the civilians in Europe after WWII. Nevertheless, all of these Albanian refugees are unquestionably considered to be “expelled” from their homes by Serbia’s security forces and the Yugoslav army.
[11]For example, in the “Medak Pocket” operation on September 9th, 1993 there were killed around 80 Serbian civilians by the Croatian forces [В. Ђ. Мишина (уредник), Република Српска Крајина: Десет година послије, Београд: Добра воља Београд, 2005, 35] in which Kosovo Albanians served too.
[12] The “partisan” or “guerrilla” war is fought by irregular troops using mainly tactics that are fitting to the geographical features of the terrain. The crucial characteristic of the tactics of the partisan war is that it uses mobility and surprise but not direct frontal battles with the enemy. Usually, the civilians are paying the highest price in the course of the partisan war. In the other words, it is “war conducted by irregulars or guerrillas, usually against regular, uniformed forces, employing hit-and-run, ambush, and other tactics that allow smaller numbers of guerrillas to win battles against numerically superior, often heavily-armed regular forces” [P. R. Viotti, M. V. Kauppi, International Relations and World Politics: Secularity, Economy, Identity, Harlow: Pearson Education Limited, 2009, 544]. With regard to the Kosovo War in 1998−1999 the reconstruction of the Albanian guerrilla strategy is as following:
“…a police patrol is passing a village, when a sudden fire is open and some policemen killed and wounded. The police return the fire and the further development depends on the strength of the rebellious unit engaged. If the village appears well protected and risky to attack by the ordinary units, the latter stops fighting and calls for additional support. It arrives usually as a paramilitary unit, which launches a fierce onslaught” [P. V. Grujić, Kosovo Knot, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania: RoseDog Books, 2014, 193].
[13]The “just war” is considered to be a war that has a purpose to satisfy certain ethical standards, and therefore is (allegedly) morally justified.
[14]A. Heywood, Global Politics, New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2011, 257.
[15]М. Радојевић, Љ. Димић, Србија у Великом рату 1914−1915, Београд: Српска књижевна задруга−Београдски форум за свет равноправних, 2014, 94−95.
[16]For instance, Albania supplied the Albanian Kosovo separatists by weapons in 1997 when around 700.000 guns were “stolen” by the Albanian mob from Albania’s army’s magazines but majority of these weapons found their way exactly to the neighboring Kosovo. The members of the KLA were trained in Albania with the help of the NATO’s military instructors and then sent to Kosovo.
[17]R. J. Art, K. N. Waltz (eds.), The Use of Force: Military Power and International Politics, Lanham−Boulder−New York−Toronto−Oxford: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc., 2004, 257.
[18]В. Б. Сотировић, Огледи из југославологије, Виљнус: приватно издање, 2013, 19−29.
[19]On the NATO’s “humanitarian” intervention in the FRY in 1999, see more in [G. Szamuely, Bombs for Peace: NATO’s Humanitarian War on Yugoslavia, Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2013].
[20]A Greater Albania as a project is “envisaged to be an area of some 90.000 square kilometres (36.000 square miles), including Kosovo, Greece, Macedonia, Serbia and Montenegro” [J. Haynes, P. Hough, Sh. Malik, L. Pettiford, World Politics, Harlow: Pearson Education Limited, 2011, 588].
[21]R. Johnson, “Reconstructing the Balkans: The effects of a global governance approach”, M. Lederer, P. Müller (eds.), Criticizing Global Governance, New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2005, 177.
[22]A. F. Cooper, J. Heine, R. Thakur (eds.), The Oxford Handbook of Modern Diplomacy, Oxford−New York: Oxford University Press, 2015, 766.
[23]J. Haynes, P. Hough, Sh. Malik, L. Pettiford, World Politics, Harlow: Pearson Education Limited, 2011, 225.
The cause of the global increase, which is said to have sparked alarm among scientists, is hotly debated. But while improved diagnostic methods, genetic predispositions, lifestyles, and as yet unknown environmental factors have all been proposed as possible reasons, the roles of some other possible influences are essentially being ignored.
The interminable and abhorrent saga of Julian Assange’s incarceration for the crime of journalism continues. And once again, the headline news is a lie, one designed both to buy our passivity and to buy more time for the British and US establishments to keep the Wikileaks founder permanently disappeared from view.
Turkey is set to become the United States’ largest supplier of artillery shells as NATO allies have exhausted their stocks and now struggle to ship ammunition to Ukraine. Turkey’s indirect support for Ukraine is also supplemented by direct support, such as producing drones and warships, yet Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan offers himself as a viable partner in searching for peace between Ukraine and Russia.
Recent developments suggest that Israel’s full-scale ground offensive in Rafah could take place at any time. What we have been told by Israeli officials, is that the operation will require the evacuation of the city, presumably so the IDF can inflict the same level of destruction on Rafah as was inflicted on Khan Yunis and Gaza City.
As a cardiologist, my two greatest fears concerning COVID-19 vaccine myocarditis are: 1) sudden cardiac death, 2) permanent damage to the heart resulting in scar.
Soldiers in uniforms round up civilians at gunpoint. They separate the men from the women and children. The men are stripped naked and blindfolded, then taken into a room by the soldiers, gunshots are heard, and finally only the soldiers emerge from the room.
Do cell phones, Bluetooth devices, WiFi and other wireless tech cause cancer or is it just another “coincidence” that tin-foil hat conspiracy theorists are sharing on their smartphones?
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The interminable and abhorrent saga of Julian Assange’s incarceration for the crime of journalism continues. And once again, the headline news is a lie, one designed both to buy our passivity and to buy more time for the British and US establishments to keep the Wikileaks founder permanently disappeared from view.
The Guardian – which has a mammoth, undeclared conflict of interest in its coverage of the extradition proceedings against Assange (you can read about that here and here) – headlined the ruling by the UK High Court today as a “temporary reprieve” for Assange. Nothing could be further from the truth.
Five years on, Assange is still caged in Belmarsh high-security prison, convicted of absolutely nothing.
Five years on, he still faces a trial in the US on ludicrous charges under a century-old, draconian piece of legislation called the Espionage Act. Assange is not a US citizen and none of the charges relate to anything he did in the US.
Five years on, the English judiciary is still rubber-stamping his show trial – a warning to others not to expose state crimes, as Assange did in publishing details of British and US war crimes in Afghanistan and Iraq.
Five years on, judges in London are still turning a blind eye to Assange’s sustained psychological torture, as the former United Nations legal expert Nils Melzer has documented.
The word “reprieve” is there – just as the judges’ headline ruling that some of the grounds of his appeal have been “granted” – to conceal the fact that he is prisoner to an endless legal charade every bit as much as he is a prisoner in a Belmarsh cell.
In fact, today’s ruling is yet further evidence that Assange is being denied due process and his most basic legal rights – as he has been for a decade or more.
In the ruling, the court strips him of any substantive grounds of appeal, precisely so there will be no hearing in which the public gets to learn more about the various British and US crimes he exposed, for which he is being kept in jail. He is thereby denied a public-interest defence against extradition. Or in the court’s terminology, his “application to adduce fresh evidence is refused”.
Even more significantly, Assange is specifically stripped of the right to appeal on the very legal grounds that should guarantee him an appeal, and should have ensured he was never subjected to a show trial in the first place. His extradition would clearly violate the prohibition in the Extradition Treaty between the UK and the US against extradition on political grounds.
Nonetheless, in their wisdom, the judges rule that Washington’s vendetta against Assange for exposing its crimes is not driven by political considerations. Nor apparently was there a political factor to the CIA’s efforts to kidnap and assassinate him after he was granted political asylum by Ecuador, precisely to protect him from the US administration’s wrath.
What the court “grants” instead are three technical grounds of appeal – although in the small print, that “granted” is actually subverted to “adjourned”. The “reprieve” celebrated by the media – supposedly a victory for British justice – actually pulls the legal rug from under Assange.
Each of those grounds of appeal can be reversed – that is, rejected – if Washington submits “assurances” to the court, however worthless they may end up being in practice. In which case, Assange is on a flight to the US and effectively disappeared into one of its domestic black sites.
Those three pending grounds of appeal on which the court seeks reassurance are that extradition will not:
deny Assange his basic free speech rights;
discriminate against him on the basis of his nationality, as a non-US citizen;
or place him under threat of the death penalty in the US penal system.
The judiciary’s latest bending over backwards to accommodate Washington’s intention to keep Assange permanently locked out of view follows years of perverse legal proceedings in which the US has repeatedly been allowed to change the charges it is levelling against Assange at short notice to wrong-foot his legal team. It also follows years in which the US has had a chance to make clear its intention to provide Assange with a fair trial but has refused to do so.
Washington’s true intentions are already more than clear: the US spied on Assange’s every move while he was under the protection of the Ecuadorian embassy, violating his lawyer-client privilege; and the CIA plotted to kidnap and assassinate him.
Both are grounds that alone should have seen the case thrown out.
But there is nothing normal – or legal – about the proceedings against Assange. The case has always been about buying time. To disappear Assange from public view. To vilify him. To smash the revolutionary publishing platform he founded to help whistleblowers expose state crimes. To send a message to other journalists that the US can reach them wherever they live should they try to hold Washington to account for its criminality.
And worst of all, to provide a final solution for the nuisance Assange had become for the global superpower by trapping him in an endless process of incarceration and trial that, if it is allowed to drag on long enough, will most likely kill him.
Today’s ruling is most certainly not a “reprieve”. It is simply another stage in a protracted, faux-legal process designed to provide constant justifications for keeping Assange behind bars, and never-ending postponements of judgment day, when either Assange is set free or the British and US justice systems are exposed as hand servants of brutish, naked power.
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Jonathan Cook is the author of three books on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and a winner of the Martha Gellhorn Special Prize for Journalism. His website and blog can be found at www.jonathan-cook.net
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The curved course of the ubiquitous banana has often been the peel of empire, its sweetness masking a sharp, bitter legacy. Arab conquerors introduced it to the African continent as they cultivated a slave market. European imperialism did the same to the Americas via the Canary Islands, insinuating the luscious fruit into markets of solid exploitation and guaranteed returns. In time, demand for bananas grew. Cheap capital cushioned it.
Corporation power and secondary colonisation, exercised through such ruthless entities as the United Fruit Company (now the jauntily labelled Chiquita), continued the legacy, collaborating with corrupt elites while exerting control over large swathes of the local economy. The Banana Republic was axiomatic to the exertion of US power in the agriculture of the South. Names like Lorenzo D. Baker, who first imported bananas to the US in 1870, preceding Philadelphia’s World Fair promotion in 1876, and Minor C. Keith and Andrew W. Preston, should be marked in bold in such efforts. It is they who led the way to the creation of the United Fruit Company.
Marcelo Bucheli offers an adequate description about United Fruit as a broad based alliance that led to the creation of an “impressive production and distribution network” made up of “plantations, hospitals, roads, railways, telegraph lines, housing facilities, and ports in the producing companies, a steamship fleet (the Great White Fleet, which eventually became the largest privately owned fleet in the world), and a distribution network in the United States.” Some fruit; some capital.
The company’s indelible staining of Latin America’s politics was ingloriously affirmed with its role in overthrowing the democratically elected Guatemalan leader Jacobo Árbenz, whose expropriating measures to award property to landless citizens proved too much. The resulting Washington-backed coup, encouraged by such figures as United Fruit’s main shareholder Samuel Zemurray, resulted in a military dictatorship leading to 200,000 deaths.
In 1954, with the coup in full swing, Árbenz could only observe with tragic sadness that “the pretext of anti-communism” had been cited to overthrow his government.
“The truth is very different. The truth is to be found in the financial interests of the fruit company and other US monopolies which have invested great amounts of money in Latin America and fear that the example of Guatemala would be followed by other Latin American countries”.
There is good reason then to take a rather withering view of the banana trade. It has become the feature fruit of monstrous monopolies, a brutal currency of exchange, the means by which exploitation has been cultivated for huge corporate gain. In some cases, its pricing has been kept low as the costs in production, be they in terms of land and people. They are the unwanted ghosts in the unaccounted equation.
Following the fruit to lands of its cultivation is to take a journey to inequality. The island of Mindanao in the Philippines produces 84% of the country’s bananas and hosts 25% of the country’s population. On that same island live over 35% of the country’s poorest residents. Historically, it was only the advent of the cooperative FARMCOOP and the passing of the Land Reform Law that enabled landless, indigent farmers to claim some degree of autonomy from the crushing conditions of the international banana market.
After the viciousness of imperialism, exploitation and profit, the banana now faces something of a different challenge. Climate, it has become trite to say, is playing up. The banana moguls, sellers and cultivators are getting anxious. Supply lines and prices are being affected. “Producers like Guatemala, El Salvador, and Costa Rica, will see a negative impact of rising temperatures over the next few decades,” predicts a confident Dan Bebber, a student of crop pathogens and sustainable agriculture.
Climate disruptions have also been something of an encouragement to threatening diseases to the crop, notably the TR4 fungus. The World Banana Forum, which benignly sounds like the Sorghum Appreciation Society with polite tea breaks and conference papers, offered a stolid seriousness. The BBC was there to gather some material, coming with such prosaic spurts as those of Pascal Lu, a senior economist at the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO): the impact of climate change was such as to pose an “enormous threat” to banana production.
CBS News was also at hand to be told by Sabine Altendorf, yet another economist at the UNFAO with an interest in supply chains of agricultural products, that any such infection would essentially doom the crop. “Once a plantation has been infected, it cannot be eradicated. There is no pesticide or fungicide that is effective.”
Lu offers a diplomatic splash on the whole matter. He speaks of certification, keeping the bananas “greener” (no irony intended) and extols the value of such regulations as “they help producers seize the opportunity of making their production systems more sustainable.” Inevitably, he offers the following: “But of course, they also come with costs for producers because they require more control and monitoring systems on the part of the producers and the traders. And these costs have to trickle down to the final consumers.”
Ultimately, such certification remains overwhelmingly voluntary, by which the producers pay a fee for the process, thereby receiving price premiums and market access for upholding certain market standards.
The environmental ledger for humanity, and much of the globe, engenders worry. Climate change is dooming us in various ways. States and communities will be submerged. Droughts will empty tracts of land of agrarian occupation. Agricultural patterns will alter. It is making the cultivation of crops in certain areas of the world unfeasible and untenable. And this potassium rich source, so revered for shape, size and flavour, its brutal legacy often ignored at the shopping counter, may have met its match.
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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]
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Turkey is set to become the United States’ largest supplier of artillery shells as NATO allies have exhausted their stocks and now struggle to ship ammunition to Ukraine. Turkey’s indirect support for Ukraine is also supplemented by direct support, such as producing drones and warships, yet Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan offers himself as a viable partner in searching for peace between Ukraine and Russia.
“Turkish supplies of trinitrotoluene, known as TNT, and nitroguanidine, which is used as a propellant, would be crucial in the production of Nato-standard 155mm calibre ammunition — potentially tripling production, according to officials familiar with the discussions,” a Bloomberg report said, adding: “Turkey is already on track to becoming the biggest seller of the artillery shells to the US as early as this year.”
The surge in demand has delayed global orders and has put pressure on defence supply chains, especially for components such as TNT. According to the outlet, to help alleviate this issue, Turkish defence company Repkon’s production lines are expected to produce about 30% of all US-made 155mm artillery shells by 2025.
The Pentagon said in a statement about investment in Texas’ defence industry with Turkish counterparts that working with allies “is key to building a global defence industrial base.”
Additionally, Washington purchased 116,000 rounds of battle-ready ammunition from Turkish company Arca Defense, with delivery expected later this year and further purchases believed to be concluding soon to be ready for delivery in 2025.
As Bloomberg admitted,
“The US and European efforts are part of a race to catch up with Moscow, whose war machine has put it in a position to produce or procure – according to some estimates – 4 million rounds this year, including shipments from North Korea. By contrast, the European Union expects to triple its production of artillery shells this year to around 1.4 million units.”
It is unsurprising that Turkey has been awarded a lucrative contract, given the recent announcement that Erdogan will visit the White House on May 9, the first time since US President Joe Biden took office.
The agreement with Ankara also reveals a delicate balance between the NATO allies, whose relations have been strained by the Russian military operation in Ukraine and Turkey’s months-long block on Sweden’s membership in the Atlantic Alliance. However, with Turkey greenlighting Sweden’s accession and plans to contribute to Ukraine’s military-industrial complex, the country is now being rewarded with export contracts and approval to upgrade its aging F-16 fighter jet fleet.
The Turkish-made Bayraktar TB2 unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) have been used by the Ukrainian military against Russian forces. The drone maker, Baykar, has initiated the construction of a factory in Ukraine, and the company’s CEO said in February that they aim to complete the project within approximately 12 months and produce around 120 units a year.
At the same time, it is recalled that in February, France, Greece, and Cyprus blocked financing for the supply of Bayraktar drones and artillery shells for Ukraine, which were to be purchased with European funds. Turkey was set to be financed from EU funds for some time, but once the order was confirmed, the three countries swiftly blocked the financing.
Although the initiative failed, the US recognised Turkey’s rapprochement with the West and is now rewarding the country with imports and exports in the defence sector. This is despite the fact that the issue of the acquisition of the Russian-made S-400 is not resolved, which is the reason Turkey was booted from the F-35 fifth-generation fighter jet program to begin with.
Erdogan announced his offer to host a peace summit between Ukraine and Russia earlier this month following a meeting with his Ukrainian counterpart Volodymyr Zelensky.
“Since the beginning, we have contributed as much as we could toward ending the war through negotiations,” Erdogan said. “We are also ready to host a peace summit in which Russia will also be included.”
Although Erdogan claims to have contributed as much as possible to ending the war through negotiations, his country has also contributed to prolonging it. It is also recalled that during Zelensky’s visit to Turkey, he visited the shipyard where the two corvettes are being built for the Ukrainian Navy. At the same time, Turkey is providing drones to the Ukrainian military and is now replenishing the US’ artillery stocks. This is even though Ukraine has no chance of winning the war, meaning Turkey is not an honest broker for peace.
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Ahmed Adel is a Cairo-based geopolitics and political economy researcher. He is a regular contributor to Global Research.
O ataque terrorista à sala de concertos de Moscou, que resultou na morte de 140 civis indefesos (um número que pode aumentar devido ao alto número de feridos), foi realizado por quatro assassinos profissionais, membros do ISIS-K (Estado Islâmico Khorasan), que realizaram o massacre com uma frieza implacável. A dinâmica do ataque mostra que é impossível que eles tenham agido sozinhos.
Isso foi enfatizado pelo presidente Putin em seu discurso aos cidadãos da Rússia: “Eles tentaram fugir e estavam indo em direção à Ucrânia, onde, de acordo com informações iniciais, uma abertura foi preparada para eles no lado ucraniano para cruzar a fronteira do estado. Estamos no processo de identificar e desmascarar a base de cúmplices por trás desses terroristas: aqueles que lhes forneceram transporte, planejaram as rotas de fuga da cena do crime e prepararam os esconderijos com armas e munição. No entanto, já está claro que não estamos lidando simplesmente com um ataque terrorista cuidadosa e cinicamente planejado, mas com um assassinato em massa premeditado e organizado. Assim como os nazistas que realizaram massacres em territórios ocupados, eles planejaram uma execução demonstrativa, um ato sangrento de intimidação. Todos os autores, organizadores e mentores desse crime serão punidos de forma justa e inevitável, sejam eles quem forem e quem os dirigiu. Identificaremos e levaremos à justiça todos os indivíduos que estão por trás desses terroristas.”
O ISIS-K é uma facção do ISIS, o movimento islâmico promovido, financiado e armado pelos EUA, pelos membros europeus da OTAN e pelas monarquias do Golfo, para destruir o Estado sírio por dentro e fragmentar ainda mais o Iraque, a Líbia e outros países. Quando, depois de vinte anos de guerra, os EUA e a OTAN são forçados a se retirar do Afeganistão, onde o Talibã assume o controle, o ISIS-K inicia uma série de ataques terroristas sangrentos no Afeganistão, que depois se espalham para o Irã e o Paquistão à medida que a área e a influência do BRICS, baseada na estreita cooperação entre a Rússia e a China, se expande.
Estamos, portanto, diante de um renascimento do “terrorismo islâmico”, principalmente pelos serviços secretos dos EUA e da Grã-Bretanha, com a participação de ucranianos e outros. O objetivo é atacar a Rússia por dentro, em um momento em que ela está prevalecendo militarmente sobre a Ucrânia de Kiev, e justificar a guerra de Israel contra os palestinos e as operações de guerra dos EUA no Oriente Médio, fazendo-as parecer ações defensivas contra o “terrorismo islâmico”. Como parte dessa estratégia, existe a possibilidade de ataques terroristas até mesmo em países europeus membros da OTAN.
Manlio Dinucci : Jornalista e geógrafo, ex-diretor executivo italiano da International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War, que ganhou o Prêmio Nobel da Paz em 1985. Porta-voz do Comitato no Guerra no Nato (Itália) e pesquisador associado da Global Research (Canadá). Vencedor do Prêmio Internacional de Jornalismo 2019 para Análise Geoestratégica do Club de periodistas de México.
Aparentemente, as “negociações de paz” sobre a Ucrânia continuam a decorrer, mesmo sem qualquer envolvimento russo nas conversações. Segundo o primeiro-ministro alemão, Olaf Scholz, estão a decorrer diversas iniciativas diplomáticas para pôr fim – ou pelo menos congelar – o conflito, mas Moscou continua excluído de tais processos, o que obviamente invalida as negociações.
Numa entrevista à imprensa alemã, Scholz confirmou a existência de iniciativas diplomáticas para pôr fim às hostilidades. Ele disse que “vários países, incluindo a Ucrânia, estão atualmente discutindo, ao nível dos conselheiros de segurança, como seria algo que poderia levar a um processo de paz”.
Na mesma entrevista, Scholz afirmou ainda que está em curso um diálogo para se chegar a um acordo sobre a proteção da Central Nuclear de Zaporozhye (ZNPP). Desde 2022, a Federação Russa têm relatado bombardeios ucranianos contra instalações nucleares e alertado sobre o risco de vazamento de radiação como resultado dos ataques. Missões internacionais de observação já visitaram a região, comprovando a veracidade das alegações russas. No entanto, os países ocidentais e as organizações internacionais permanecem em silêncio sobre o caso.
É muito curioso verificar que tais “negociações” decorrem sem a participação russa, já que Moscou é uma das partes no conflito, o que torna qualquer acordo dependente da aceitação russa. Além disso, especificamente no que diz respeito ao ZNPP, é ainda mais ilógico que as conversações estejam a ser mantidas apenas com o lado ucraniano, uma vez que o regime de Kiev é precisamente o agressor que bombardeia a central. Como a ZNPP está localizada numa região sob controle russo, não há dúvidas sobre a responsabilidade dos ataques contra a usina, mas o Ocidente ignora isso e continua “conversando” com o regime que promove o terror nuclear.
Scholz também fez algumas outras declarações absurdas e hipócritas durante a entrevista. Segundo ele, a “paz” pode ser alcançada a qualquer momento se Moscou concordar em retirar suas tropas da zona de operações militares especiais. Scholz ignora obviamente a legitimidade do interesse russo em impedir a expansão da OTAN e a reabilitação do nazismo no seu ambiente estratégico. Ao apelar à mera “retirada das tropas”, Scholz endossa uma posição inviável, anulando qualquer possibilidade de uma conversação de paz séria
Em resposta à declaração de Scholz, as autoridades russas informaram que não houve convite a Moscou para participar em novas conversações de paz. Segundo o Kremlin, a declaração do chanceler “não altera a essência dos acontecimentos em curso”. Em outras palavras, a Rússia continuará a agir militarmente até que os objetivos da operação na Ucrânia sejam plenamente alcançados. parecem importar muito agora, uma vez que estes países ignoraram todas as tentativas de uma resolução pacífica da crise ucraniana antes de 2022. Agora, os russos estão resolutos na sua decisão de usar a força militar para evitar que a Ucrânia continue a ser uma base para a agressão ocidental – e a “diplomacia europeia” não parece ter qualquer capacidade para alterar os planos russos.
Obviamente, Moscou continua aberta a conversações de paz. Desde o início da operação, a Rússia tem estado ativa na procura de negociações. No entanto, sendo o lado vencedor e tendo uma vantagem militar irreversível, Moscou tem uma lista de exigências que precisam de ser cumpridas pelo lado ucraniano e pelos seus parceiros ocidentais. Sem estas condições de paz, que incluem o estatuto neutro da Ucrânia e a desmilitarização, a Rússia não tem garantias de segurança suficientes para pôr fim às hostilidades.
O Ocidente, no entanto, recusa-se a satisfazer as exigências russas, o que torna a paz inviável. É impossível que as negociações de paz tenham lugar adequadamente sem a participação direta da Rússia. Os termos das conversações são inválidos porque uma das partes beligerantes não foi convidada para o processo. Não há possibilidade de alcançar a paz unilateralmente ou através dos termos da parte derrotada, o que torna absolutamente inúteis as “iniciativas” referidas por Scholz.
Além disso, com o aumento do terror nas fronteiras da Rússia – além da grande possibilidade de envolvimento ucraniano no massacre de Crocus – as possibilidades de uma resolução diplomática estão a esgotar-se ainda mais rapidamente. O regime de Kiev está a revelar-se uma tirania que patrocina o terrorismo, forçando Moscou a utilizar todos os meios de coerção necessários para neutralizá-lo, uma vez que negociar com terroristas não é uma opção razoável.
Embora o fim das hostilidades seja importante e desejável, só haverá verdadeira paz quando os interesses legítimos da Federação Russa forem satisfeitos. “Congelar” o conflito ou criar medidas de cessar-fogo temporárias não é do interesse de Moscou, razão pela qual tais diretivas nunca serão suficientes para acabar com a guerra na Ucrânia.
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Among the Nazis’ first actions after taking power was to dismantle the German trade unions and labour power. By March 1933 the first concentration camp was erected at Dachau, soon to be followed by others, where numerous communists, socialists and other undesirables were interned. The German masses were thereafter transformed largely into devoted followers of Hitler, subjected regularly to Nazi propaganda; much of the techniques of which Gauleiter of Berlin Joseph Goebbels had learnt in the 1920s from Edward Bernays, the influential American propaganda merchant.
The Third Reich’s destruction of the left, along with Hitler’s stated intention to preserve big business, was welcomed by corporate managers. Before Hitler had even come to power, his views had drawn approval abroad from leading industrialists; like the American tycoon Irénée du Pont, a proponent of racial superiority and until 1925 the president of chemical multinational DuPont; and Henry Ford, founder of the Ford Motor Company, a fervent anti-Semite who in the early 1920s wrote ‘The International Jew: The World’s Problem’.
A number of business moguls in America were overtly anti-Semitic, and Hitler’s rants against the supposed Jewish problem met with their approval. Ford’s writings in fact seem to have influenced Hitler and other Nazis like Baldur von Schirach, future head of the Hitler Youth. At the Nuremberg trials in May 1946, von Schirach said he had read Ford’s above work “and became anti-Semitic. In those days this book made such a deep impression on my friends and myself, because we saw in Henry Ford the representative of success”.
Ford himself was providing funds to the Nazi Party since the 1920s, when it was a miniscule political organisation (1). Hitler kept a life-size portrait of Ford behind his desk in Munich, and in 1931 the Nazi leader told a Detroit news reporter, “I regard Henry Ford as my inspiration”. Each year Ford also sent money to Hitler personally on his birthday through Swiss or Swedish banks, between around 10,000 to 20,000 Reichsmarks annually. These payments to Hitler continued until 1944, more than two years after the German declaration of war on America. (2)
However, as Hitler became chancellor on 30 January 1933, the Nazi Party’s coffers were virtually empty and large bills remained unpaid. Just a few weeks before, Goebbels complained in his diary that “financial troubles make all organised work impossible” and “the danger now exists of the whole party going to pieces” (3). This indicates that, up until Hitler took control, the Nazis received rather limited funding from big business. Greater contributions would be forthcoming, almost as soon as Hitler gained the chancellorship.
To help solve the Nazi Party’s financial plight and increase his grip on power, Hitler invited over 20 industrialists to attend a conference, on 20 February 1933, held at the official residence in Berlin of Hermann Göring. He was Hitler’s second-in-command, a morphine addict and President of the Reichstag. Among those who turned up at the meeting were well known individuals like Gustav Krupp (owner of the Krupp steel company); Fritz von Opel (Opel AG board member, grandson of founder Adam Opel); Georg von Schnitzler (IG Farben board member); Hjalmar Schacht (reinstated as Reichsbank president by Hitler in March 1933); and Albert Vögler (politician and businessman, centrally involved in arming the Wehrmacht).
Addressing the industrialists at length Hitler informed them, in a nutshell, that the choice now in Germany was between his rule – which respects the rights of private property and business – or that of communism, which he insisted would do the opposite and must be destroyed.
Highly impressed with Hitler’s speech, on behalf of the industrialists, Krupp expressed to the Nazi leader their “gratitude for having given us such a clear picture of his ideas”. Göring then informed Krupp and colleagues that the Nazi Party urgently required funds, to enable them to campaign sufficiently for the critical 5 March 1933 elections. The businessmen dispensed immediately with two million Reichsmarks (equivalent to about nine million Euro today). The notorious chemical corporation IG Farben, who we will come to later, provided the largest contribution to the Nazi Party at this meeting, giving 400,000 Reichsmarks. Further cash would be granted to the Nazis in coming days from German industry; while political opposition groups, such as the communists, were terrorised and intimidated by brown-shirted mobs.
The American historian Henry Ashby Turner, who has closely but skeptically analysed the links between German big business and the Nazis, acknowledged of the above funding, “These contributions unquestionably aided Hitler significantly” while Germany’s industrialists had always viewed the Weimar Republic “with misgiving”, primarily due to its accommodation of labour power. (4)
Goebbels wrote late in 1936 how Hitler confided to him that he had “wanted to shoot himself” in 1927, on account of having accumulated large debts. Coming to Hitler’s rescue was Emil Kirdorf, one of Germany’s foremost industrialists over the previous half century, who gave him 100,000 Reichsmarks (5). Kirdorf, who held far-right views, donated to the Nazi Party in the late 1920s; as too did another high level German businessman, the aforementioned Albert Vögler, founder of the United Steelworks (Vereinigte Stahlwerke AG).
Image below: Prescott Bush
By 1933 the Nazis were receiving funds not merely through German business, but also from investments arriving across the Atlantic. The New York Herald Tribune reported on 31 July 1941 that the Wall Street firm, Union Banking Corporation, which the American banker Prescott Bush was managing, had in 1933 sent $3 million to the Nazi Party. This is indeed the same Prescott Bush who was the father of George H. W. Bush, and grandfather to George W. Bush, both of whom would later become presidents.
Prescott Bush was a founder of the Union Banking Corporation in 1924, along with others like W. Averell Harriman, a wealthy businessman and future US Ambassador to the Soviet Union. Up until 1933, the Union Banking Corporation transferred an estimated total of $32 million to “Nazi bigwigs” in Germany, as noted by Moniz Bandeira, a prominent Brazilian historian. (6)
The Union Banking Corporation was closely connected to conglomerates owned by Fritz Thyssen, a German steel magnate and Nazi Party member since 1931, whose factories were an essential component of Hitler’s war industry. Thyssen supplied funds to the Nazis, both prior to and after their taking power. This money helped corrupt politicians like Göring to pursue luxurious lifestyles. Some of Thyssen’s cash funnelled to the Nazi Party went through “an account with a Dutch bank, which was interlocked with a Wall Street outfit called the Union Banking Corporation”. (7) (Preparata, Conjuring Hitler, p. 198)
Prescott Bush, a director and shareholder in the Union Banking Corporation and other Nazi-linked businesses, such as the Consolidated Silesian Steel Company (CSSC), had “played a central role in Hitler’s financing and armament”, according to two American historians who co-wrote a biography on George H. W. Bush, Webster Griffin Tarpley and Anton Chaitkin.
Image on the right: Fritz Thyssen (CC BY-SA 3.0 de)
This is pertaining mostly to Prescott Bush’s connections to Thyssen, who had amassed great wealth through Hitler’s rearmament policies. Even after Hitler declared war on America in late 1941, and information began to leak out regarding Nazi crimes, Prescott Bush continued to work for firms like the Union Banking Corporation. A Guardian newspaper account outlined that he “profited from companies closely involved with the very German businesses that financed Hitler’s rise to power” (8). Union Banking Corporation’s assets were seized by the US government on 20 October 1942, under the Trading with the Enemy Act of 1917.
For his share in the Union Banking Corporation, Prescott Bush received $1.5 million, equivalent to over $20 million today (9). Likewise having shares in this bank was E. Ronald Harriman, a US financier and younger brother of W. Averell Harriman, along with a couple of Nazi Party members (10). Moniz Bandeira wrote that the money earned by Prescott Bush here “allowed his son, George H. W. Bush, to set up the firms Bush-Obervey Oil Development Co., and Zapata Petroleum, later called Harbinger Group Inc., bringing together several companies to explore oil in the Gulf of Mexico and Cuba”.
Prescott Bush was also a director at the previously mentioned CSSC, a company which exploited resource rich Silesia in the Third Reich for the benefit of Hitler’s war machine. The CSSC used slave labour in the concentration camps, including Auschwitz. Another firm that Prescott Bush worked for, the New York-based Brown Brothers Harriman, served as a US business platform for the ubiquitous Thyssen. The founding partners of Brown Brothers Harriman included the two Harriman brothers and Prescott Bush. Both firms, the Union Banking Corporation and Brown Brothers Harriman, had during the 1930s according to the Guardian “bought and shipped millions of dollars of gold, fuel, steel, coal and US treasury bonds to Germany, both feeding and financing Hitler’s build-up to war”.
Some of America’s largest corporations had investments in Germany by the early 1930s, such as DuPont, General Electric, Gilette, Coca-Cola and Eastman Kodak. In the years ahead, many of these companies’ profits would grow substantially.
For example a Kodak branch in neutral Switzerland was, through 1942 and 1943, buying photographic equipment from Nazi Germany, Nazi-occupied France and also Hungary, allied to the Third Reich. America’s embassy in London described these dealings by Kodak as “fairly substantial purchases from enemy territory”. A separate Kodak branch in fascist Spain was purchasing goods from the Reich, such as in early 1942. The latter deal was defended by William Beaulac, the US chargé d’affaires in Madrid. (11)
Wall Street, the financial heartbeat of America, had looked on with some concern at the rise of communism. Its bankers instead viewed fascism overall rather favourably as avant-garde (12). When it became clear that Hitler was favourable to the status quo, while he wiped out labour influence, some Catholic, evangelical and even Jewish bankers connected to Wall Street engaged in business with the Nazis. They granted the Hitler regime about $7 billion in credit during the 1930s, as revealed in 1943 by George Seldes, a US investigative journalist. (13)
The historian Gaetano Salvemini, compelled to leave Mussolini’s Italy because of death threats, later said “almost 100% of American big business” was sympathetic towards Mussolini and Hitler’s dictatorships; because of their lucrative armament programs and destruction of labour.
One of the hallmarks of state capitalism is generating money through the business of war, as seen through the decades, with Western governments providing billions worth of weaponry to autocracies in Saudi Arabia, Iraq, Kuwait and elsewhere.
The Nazis’ repressive policies enabled many companies linked to the Reich, such as Ford, to reduce their labour costs, from 15% of business volume in 1933 to just 11% in 1938. While Ford more than doubled their profits in Germany by 1939, they were also benefiting through a subsidiary in Nazi-occupied France, by posting earnings there of 58 million francs in 1941 alone. For this it received warm praise from Edsel Ford, president of the Ford Motor Company and son of founder Henry Ford.
By 1942 of the Wehrmacht’s 350,000 trucks in the field, around 120,000 of them were built by Ford factories in Germany (14). The General Motors-owned Opel plant in Rüsselsheim, western Germany, produced all-wheel-drive trucks for the Wehrmacht, which were most useful on the mud-soaked Eastern front and in the North African deserts.
On 13 December 1941, six days after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbour, president Roosevelt issued a secret decree. He thereby granted special authorisation, so that certain US corporations could continue their business ventures with enemy nations, and with neutral countries on good terms with hostile states (15). This was a violation of the Trading with the Enemy Act; but Roosevelt, reliant on many of the same corporations in the prosecuting of war against Japan and Germany, was careful to appease big business. The American public had little idea of course that famous American companies, like Standard Oil, Ford, General Motors, and others were doing deals with the enemy.
The US manufacturing firm ITT – already involved through a German subsidiary (C. Lorenz AG) in producing Luftwaffe military aircraft with Focke-Wulf – was furthermore supplying high quality communications equipment to the Nazis, in conjunction with IBM, a US technology corporation. This had assisted in the synchronised Blitzkrieg warfare decisive to the Germans quickly defeating Poland, France, the Low Countries, and capturing parts of the western USSR. (16)
In late June 1940, Germany’s easy victory over France was celebrated by some US business leaders at dinners and parties held in New York, such as at the Waldorf Astoria hotel. Among those attending were the ITT founder and CEO, Sosthenes Behn, who had met Hitler in August 1933, James D. Mooney, a senior General Motors executive who saw Hitler on separate occasions, and Edsel Ford.
For their services to the Reich, Hitler lavished awards on Americans like Mooney and Henry Ford. At the beginning of Hitler’s rule US bankers flew to Nazi Germany, such as Winthrop Aldrich, chairman of Wall Street’s Chase National Bank. Aldrich met Hitler in the autumn of 1933, as too did Henry Mann of the National City Bank. Aldrich and Mann subsequently told William Dodd, the US Ambassador to Nazi Germany, that they were willing to “work with him [Hitler]”.
In August 1934 the US media tycoon William Randolph Hearst, who owned dozens of newspapers and magazines, visited Berlin to see Hitler. On returning home, Hearst described the dictator as “certainly an extraordinary man” and he wrote about Nazi Germany’s “great policy” and “great achievement” of saving Germany from communism.
During the late 1930s, the Ford Motor Company was shipping mineral resources to Nazi Germany, sometimes through its subsidiaries in third countries. At the start of 1937 for instance, Ford sent almost two million pounds of rubber and 130,000 pounds of copper to the Nazi regime (17). Ford retained a more than 50% share in their subsidiary in Cologne, Ford-Werke, following the December 1941 German announcement of hostilities against America.
Douglas Miller, America’s acting commercial attaché in Berlin, had predicted in 1935 that by 1937 the Nazis would be producing enough oil and gas out of soft coal “for a long war”. Miller revealed that the Standard Oil Company of New York was collaborating in these ventures by “furnishing millions of dollars to help”. (18)
Standard Oil Refinery No. 1 in Cleveland, Ohio, 1897 (Public Domain)
Standard Oil, owned by the Rockefeller family, had sent $2 million to the Nazis as early as December 1933 – of which Ambassador Dodd in Berlin informed president Roosevelt during October 1936. Dodd also wrote to Roosevelt that Standard Oil “has made $500,000 a year in helping the Germans make ersatz gas for war purposes”. Standard Oil, along with other major US firms like DuPont, was working with IG Farben, the German chemical corporation. IG Farben was firmly incriminated in slave labour and the Holocaust, having provided the Nazis with the infamous poison gas Zyklon B, used to kill more than one million people at Auschwitz.
No less than 53 American companies had connections to IG Farben alone (19). At the Nuremberg trials, US judge Paul M. Hebert called IG Farben “one of Hitler’s greatest assets”.
From the mid-1930s, the Nazis had been hoarding imported oil in preparation for war – and considerable amounts of this vital resource was supplied to Hitler by American corporations, such as Standard Oil of New Jersey and Texaco, the latter company headquartered in Beaumont, Texas. Under Texaco’s pro-Nazi chairman Torkild Rieber, a Norwegian-American who was friends with Göring, the company made significant profits in granting oil to the Nazis.
After the start of European hostilities in September 1939, both Standard Oil and Texaco were supplying Nazi Germany with diesel fuel, lubricating oil and other petroleum substances (20). The Standard Oil and Texaco shipments to Germany came via ports in General Franco’s Spain. Through 1940 and 1941, American oil deliveries to Germany increased further, large amounts of which were sent into the Reich through US subsidiaries in neutral European countries. The Texaco chairman Rieber had illegally dispatched shipments of oil to Spain’s fascist forces during the Spanish Civil War, a factor in Franco’s eventual victory.
Image below: A Luftwaffe Ford V3000 truck, Italy, 1943 (CC BY-SA 3.0 de)
Ford and General Motors’ German subsidiaries, which together controlled 70% of the car market in Nazi Germany by 1939, were shifted increasingly towards producing military hardware. After all, even greater profits can be accrued from building the endless weapons of war. Ford and GM subsidiaries in the Reich built almost 90% of the Wehrmacht’s armoured “mule” three ton half-tracks, along with over 70% of Hitler’s medium and heavy-duty trucks. US intelligence reports highlighted this and stated that these vehicles served as “the backbone of the German Army transportation system”. (21)
The Belgian-born historian Jacques R. Pauwels wrote, “Many of Hitler’s wheels and wings were produced in the German subsidiaries of GM and Ford” and that “At one point, GM and Ford together reportedly accounted for no less than half of Germany’s entire production of tanks”.
The German Navy was supplied with some shipments of fuel by William Rhodes Davis, a Texan oil financier. In collaboration with US entrepreneur Fred Koch, father of future billionaires Charles and David Koch, Davis helped to build an oil refinery in Hamburg during the early stages of Hitler’s rule. This oil refinery became the third largest in the Reich, which refined high-octane oil for Luftwaffe warplanes. (22)
The American diplomat Dodd, who stepped down from his ambassadorship to Nazi Germany in December 1937, told the media the following month that US industrialists are “working closely with the fascist regimes in Germany and Italy. I have had plenty of opportunity, in my post in Berlin, to witness how close some of our American ruling families are to the Nazi regime”. (23)
In 1942 Standard Oil, through an independent headquarters in Switzerland, asked for authorisation to continue selling oil to Germany; on this occasion, from fields that Standard was exploiting in Romania, a country closely allied to Hitler under its dictator Ion Antonescu. Again in 1942 a Standard Oil subsidiary, the West India Oil Company – which was established to exploit raw materials in Cuba and elsewhere in the Caribbean – sent oil to the Reich through a firm located in Buenos Aires, called the Cia Argentina Comercial de Pesquería (24). A number of banking houses in Wall Street profited from doing business with the Nazis, such as the Bank of America (Forbes), Morgan Bank, Read & Co., and Chase Manhattan Bank.
Also pursuing business deals with the Reich were General Electric and the Dow Chemical Company. Dow Chemical, with its main headquarters in Michigan, conducted business with IG Farben, which was strongly supporting German rearmament. In 1934 and 1935, Dow Chemical delivered to IG Farben almost nine million pounds of magnesium, a substance used in airplane manufacturing, incendiary bombs and ammunition. IG Farben was granted this magnesium at a 30% lower cost, in comparison to Dow Chemical prices generally sold to American customers. (25)
During the war years, other US corporations were conducting covert business operations with the Nazis: such as Standard Oil of California, Phillips Petroleum, Mack Trucks and Firestone Tires, which had subsidiaries in neutral nations like Sweden and Switzerland. Many of their products, once completed in those countries, was sent to the Reich (26). After the Nazis became an official enemy of America from December 1941, General Motors and Ford among others continued dealing with Hitler. This was mainly through their German subsidiaries in Rüsselsheim or Brandenburg. General Motors’ Opel subsidiary in Brandenburg produced Junkers Ju-88 fighter aircraft, land mines, trucks and torpedo detonators for the German armed forces. By 1944 General Motors was still importing goods into Nazi Germany from another subsidiary based in Sweden. (27)
The US companies Chase National Bank, and National City Bank, developed ties with the Nazi-linked Bank for International Settlements (Bank für Internationalen Zahlungsausgleich). The latter bank, located in Basel, Switzerland, was involved in the transfer of gold that the Nazis had stolen from Jewish populations in Europe. The gold was melted down and marked with a date preceding World War II, in order to obscure its origins and be used freely by senior Nazis.
Between 1940 and 1946, the Bank für Internationalen president was Thomas H. McKittrick, a Harvard-educated American banker. In this position McKittrick became a Nazi stooge, as the Bank für Internationalen mediated business with the Axis countries; while it was effectively controlled by Nazi officials like Emil Puhl, vice-president of Germany’s Reichsbank and Walther Funk, the German Minister for Economic Affairs. Funk was later sentenced to life imprisonment at Nuremberg.
McKittrick was a friend of Allen Dulles, a US intelligence officer and future CIA director, whom he met in Switzerland where Dulles was stationed during the war. Dulles, also a corporate lawyer, previously met Hitler and Mussolini when acting as a legal adviser at the League of Nations.
After a business trip to Germany in 1935, Dulles was reportedly disturbed at the treatment of Jews (28). Allen, with his brother John Foster Dulles, were partners of Sullivan & Cromwell, a New York law firm which established a separate office in Berlin by 1928, but which closed in 1935. The Dulles brothers established contacts with various elites in Germany, including some Nazis (29). From 1933 onwards, Standard Oil and IG Farben were producing significant quantities of oil, gasoline and synthetic rubber for the Nazis from bituminous coal, through a hydrogenation process.
The furnishing of these important natural resources to the Nazi war machine, performed a role in enabling Hitler to swiftly defeat Poland; by his sending 5,000 gas and oil-guzzling panzers and Luftwaffe bombers across Polish territory. At the Nuremberg trials, Judge Hebert said that the German ability to continually produce synthetic rubber, of which Standard Oil and IG Farben were involved in, “made it possible for the Reich to carry on the war independently of foreign supplies”. (30)
Another crucial synthetic material, tetraethyl lead, assisted greatly in the high speed performance of Luftwaffe fighter aircraft. Tetraethyl lead was provided to the Germans in 1935 by a US fuel additive company, Ethyl Gmbh, a daughter firm of Standard Oil and General Motors and connected also to IG Farben. Tetraethyl lead was a key component concerning the whole concept of Blitzkrieg warfare. More than 30 years after the war Albert Speer, Hitler’s armaments minister from February 1942, said that without different types of synthetic fuel supplied by American companies Hitler “would never have considered invading Poland”. (31)
In early 1938, Standard Oil presented IG Farben with the complete technical details for the creation of butyl rubber – a superior type of synthetic rubber, made from petroleum, and that was used in tyre construction for Wehrmacht vehicles like trucks. Germany is a resource poor country, so the collaboration with US business was clearly important to the Nazi regime. By 1940 the Germans possessed 40,000 tons of synthetic rubber, increasing to 70,000 tons by 1941 as they attacked the Soviet Union.
General Motors’ fully-owned German subsidiary, Opel AG, controlled 50% of the automobile market in the Reich by 1935, making it the largest car manufacturer there. Along with Ford, Opel became one of Nazi Germany’s largest panzer producers (32). General Motors chairman Alfred P. Sloan, an American industralist, acknowledged by 1942 – with the US and Nazi Germany now at war – that GM’s entire investment with Opel “amounted to about $35 million” (today equivalent to over $550 million). In December 1941, at the time of the Pearl Harbour attack, Standard Oil had invested $120 million in the Reich (over $2 billion today).
American companies like Pratt & Whitney and Bendix Aviation, the latter of which General Motors had a controlling stock interest in, were selling military patents to German corporations embedded in war production, such as BMW and Siemens. This came to light through a 1940 US Senate investigation. That same year, in return for royalties, Bendix Aviation provided full data regarding aircraft and diesel engine starters to Bosch, a German technology company centrally involved in Nazi armaments production. Bendix had to bypass the British blockade of Germany to push through with the deal. (33)
Japanese professor of business history, Yuji Nishimuta, who has analysed US industrial ties to the Nazis, wrote that, “The German subsidiaries of American corporations formed an important, even essential element, in the so-called ‘miracle of the German economy’” from the period 1933 to 1939. During the months after Hitler’s invasion of Poland in September 1939, US dealings in Nazi Germany “did not change”, according to Nishimuta, as “big American business conducted, as it were, ‘joint business operations’ with the Nazi government through their German subsidiaries” (34). Problems in the relationship only surfaced following Hitler’s declaration of war on 11 December 1941, but even then, as discussed, various US business operations continued.
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Notes
1 Luiz Alberto Moniz Bandeira, The World Disorder: US Hegemony, Proxy Wars, Terrorism and Humanitarian Catastrophes (Springer; 1st ed. 2019 edition, 4 Feb. 2019) p. 19
2 Ibid.
3 Trials of War Criminals Before The Nuremberg Military Tribunals, Under Control Council Law No. 10, Volume VII, October 1946-April 1949, p. 16
4 Henry Ashby Turner Jr., Big Business and the Rise of Hitler, Jstor, Oct. 1969, page 13 & 14 of 15
5 Peter Ross Range, The Unfathomable Ascent: How Hitler Came to Power (Little, Brown and Company, 11 Aug. 2020) Chapter 16, Impending Catastrophe
6 Bandeira, The World Disorder, p. 15
7 Guido Giacomo Preparata, Conjuring Hitler: How Britain and America Made the Third Reich (Pluto Press; Illustrated edition, 20 May 2005) p. 198
8 Ben Aris, Duncan Campbell, “How Bush’s grandfather helped Hitler’s rise to power”, The Guardian, 25 September 2004
9 Bandeira, The World Disorder, p. 16
10 John Simkin, “Prescott Bush”, Spartacus International, September 1997 (Updated January 2020)
11 John S. Friedman, “Kodak’s Nazi Connections”, The Nation, 8 March 2001
12 Bandeira, The World Disorder, p. 16
13 Ibid.
14 Yuji Nishimuta, Nazi Economy and U.S. Big Businesses – The Case of Ford Motor Co., Jstor, October 1995, p. 8 of 14
15 Jacques R. Pauwels, “Profits über Alles! American Corporations and Hitler”, Global Research, 7 June 2019
16 Ibid.
17 Ibid.
18 Bandeira, The World Disorder, p. 18
19 Gabriel Kolko, American Business and Germany, 1930-1941, Jstor, Dec. 1962, page 7 of 16
20 Pauwels, Global Research, 7 June 2019
21 The Industrialization Reorganization Act: Hearings Before The Subcommittee On Antitrust And Monopoly, Of The Committee On The Judiciary United States Senate, 93rd Congress, Second Session, p. 22
22 National Public Radio, “Hidden History of Koch Brothers Traces Their Childhood And Political Rise”, 19 January 2016
23 Bandeira, The World Disorder, p. 19
24 Ibid, p. 18
25 Harry Aubrey Toulmin, Diary of Democracy: The Senate War Investigating Committee (Richard R. Smith; 1st edition, 1 Jan. 1947) p. 94
26 Bandeira, The World Disorder, p. 20
27 Ibid.
28 John Simkin, “Allen Dulles”, Spartacus International, September 1997 (Updated January 2020)
29 Pauwels, Global Research, 7 June 2019
30 Kolko, American Business and Germany, 1930-1941, p. 10
31 Pauwels, Global Research, 7 June 2019
32 Kolko, American Business and Germany, 1930-1941, p. 13
33 Ibid., p. 14
34 Yuji Nishimuta, Nazi Economy and U.S. Big Businesses, The Case of General Motors Corporation, Jstor, April/October 1996, p. 17 of 17
Veteran War Correspondent and Associate Editor of Global Research Felicity Arbuthnot reminds us of the crimes against humanity committed against the Iraqi people at the height of Iraq War I, euphemistically described as The Gulf War. It happened on Valentine’s Day. Forty-three years of killings and destruction.
Iraq War I was followed by Iraq War II (March 2003) and Iraq War III (2014), which was casually presented to public opinion as a bona fide “counter-terrorism campaign” launched by president Obama in 2014 against ISIL-ISIS-Daesh, an Al Qaeda affiliate which happens to be supported by the CIA.
The extensive bombing campaign ordered by Nobel Peace Laureate Obama was portrayed by the media as a humanitarian endeavour on behalf of the people of Iraq and Syria.
“I will not hesitate to take action against ISIL in Syria, as well as Iraq. This is a core principle of my presidency: if you threaten America, you will find no safe haven”
What next? Joe Biden
Michel Chossudovsky, February 13, 2021
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Thirty-three years ago, on the night of 13th/14th February 1991, the Ameriya Shelter, on Baghdad’s outskirts, was deliberately targeted by US missiles, in a war crime which near excelled the litany of criminal acts in the onslaught which then Secretary of State, James Baker, promised would: “reduce Baghdad to a pre-industrial age.”
My memories of Ameriya have been left in their immediacy, rather than again updated. (See below.)
On 13th/14th February this year [2010], the US is still extinguishing Iraqis, detaining without trial (and almost certainly worse) in the name of “nation building” (read: nation erasing) after near seven years of murderous occupation. In the other country the US and UK are systematically destroying, Afghanistan, on precisely the anniversary of the Shelter bombing, they have launched another St Valentine’s Eve and Day massacre. It is also another equally infamous anniversary: that of the fire bombing of Dresden.
“Operation Moshtarak”, in Helmand Province, the biggest “surge” since the numerous other biggest surges since 2001, in this graveyard of Empires and Afghans, is set to create Ameriya’s incendiary tragedy throughout the towns and villages of the region.
The US military is to “clear” (read kill) “suspected Taliban” (their trained and paid allies when the USSR invaded) from the region. Rule of law shredded, “suspects” are no longer tried, simply summarily executed. Over the years, a surprising number of “suspects” have still been in diapers. Quite a few have also been in wedding dresses.
The US military, of course, reverted to their old habit to “avoid civilian casualties.” They dropped leaflets telling the locals to leave to avoid casualties. According to UNICEF, just 28% of the population is literate, far less in rural areas. In the frozen wastes of a February Afghan winter, where are they to go? (In 1991, the US dropped several tonnes of leaflets with the same warning to the Marsh Arabs in Iraq. Illiterate but not stupid, they sold this bounty to the government, unable to import paper under the embargo.)
In 1750, Ahmad Shah’s army, is said to have lost eighteen thousand men in Afghanistan from cold, in a single night in February, the most Siberian month, where the temperature falls to an average low of -8 C., and the eastern reaches of the Hari river can freeze so hard that people travel it as a road.
“This is not going to be a Falluja” said Major General Nick Carter, “that’s not the model.” Oh good. “Moshtarak” means “together”, in the Dari language. At least it’s not the Wild West “Panther’s Claw” mark two, title of the last absolutely “final surge.”
In more quaint army-speak, General Carter refers to “inserting” the fifteen thousand testosterone-driven troops, backed by bombs, bullets, possibly the odd bit of white phosphorous and other aids to “pacification” and “bringing the government in behind us.” One could almost think it was a raunchy Friday night on the town, rather than a killing spree.
The troops refer to this “insertion” as: “lawn mowing.” What is it about blood baths and gardening euphemisms? Remember those military human shredding machines,”daisy cutters”?
So as Ameriyah is commemorated in the hearts of Iraqis, a day which is as yesterday for all Baghdadis, keep the Afghan people also in your hearts, in their terror, this Dresden replicating Valentine’s Day.
In her new book, to be launched on Wednesday 17th February, Iraqi writer and activist Haifa Zangana comments of Iraq:
“We wanted to put an end to this but we failed. The war and occupation in 2003, apart from shattering Iraq as a country and a people, has brought about many more imprisonments, many more deaths.
Abu Ghraib is only one of many symbols. In occupied Iraq, torture became an instrument of humiliation and of a way to force a nation into submission. As we resist occupation now, our message is clear: We did not struggle for decades to replace one torturer with another.”(1)
An eloquent encapsulation for those in both occupied, invaded, terrorised, defiled lands.
A last word on the Ameriya Shelter comes from Dahr Jamail:
“I learned that the Amiriyah Bomb Shelter has been closed by the Americans, due to the fact that an Islamic Fundamentalist group was keeping it open. I am glad I went when I did a couple of weeks ago, for when monuments/schools/buildings are closed and/or occupied by the Americans here, they have a tendency not to reopen.” (2)
This uniquely poignant shrine, marking an unimaginable end, is now designated: an “Islamic Fundamentalist” site, by Iraq’s liberators, the new Crusaders.
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The food transition, the energy transition, net-zero ideology, programmable central bank digital currencies, the censorship of free speech and clampdowns on protest.
What’s it all about? To understand these processes, we need to first locate what is essentially a social and economic reset within the context of a collapsing financial system.
Writer Ted Reece notes that the general rate of profit has trended downwards from an estimated 43% in the 1870s to 17% in the 2000s. By late 2019, many companies could not generate enough profit. Falling turnover, squeezed margins, limited cashflows and highly leveraged balance sheets were prevalent.
Professor Fabio Vighi of Cardiff University has described how closing down the global economy in early 2020 under the guise of fighting a supposedly new and novel pathogen allowed the US Federal Reserve to flood collapsing financial markets (COVID relief) with freshly printed money without causing hyperinflation. Lockdowns curtailed economic activity, thereby removing demand for the newly printed money (credit) in the physical economy and preventing ‘contagion’.
According to investigative journalist Michael Byrant, €1.5 trillion was needed to deal with the crisis in Europe alone. The financial collapse staring European central bankers in the face came to a head in 2019. The appearance of a ‘novel virus’ provided a convenient cover story.
The European Central Bank agreed to a €1.31 trillion bailout of banks followed by the EU agreeing to a €750 billion recovery fund for European states and corporations. This package of long-term, ultra-cheap credit to hundreds of banks was sold to the public as a necessary programme to cushion the impact of the pandemic on businesses and workers.
In response to a collapsing neoliberalism, we are now seeing the rollout of an authoritarian great reset — an agenda that intends to reshape the economy and change how we live.
Shift to Authoritarianism
The new economy is to be dominated by a handful of tech giants, global conglomerates and e-commerce platforms, and new markets will also be created through the financialisation of nature, which is to be colonised, commodified and traded under the notion of protecting the environment.
In recent years, we have witnessed an overaccumulation of capital, and the creation of such markets will provide fresh investment opportunities (including dodgy carbon offsetting Ponzi schemes) for the super-rich to park their wealth and prosper.
This great reset envisages a transformation of Western societies, resulting in permanent restrictions on fundamental liberties and mass surveillance. Being rolled out under the benign term of a ‘Fourth Industrial Revolution’, the World Economic Forum (WEF) says the public will eventually ‘rent’ everything they require (remember the WEF video ‘you will own nothing and be happy’?): stripping the right of ownership under the guise of a ‘green economy’ and underpinned by the rhetoric of ‘sustainable consumption’ and ‘climate emergency’.
Climate alarmism and the mantra of sustainability are about promoting money-making schemes.
But they also serve another purpose: social control.
Neoliberalism has run its course, resulting in the impoverishment of large sections of the population. But to dampen dissent and lower expectations, the levels of personal freedom we have been used to will not be tolerated. This means that the wider population will be subjected to the discipline of an emerging surveillance state.
To push back against any dissent, ordinary people are being told that they must sacrifice personal liberty in order to protect public health, societal security (those terrible Russians, Islamic extremists or that Sunak-designated bogeyman George Galloway) or the climate. Unlike in the old normal of neoliberalism, an ideological shift is occurring whereby personal freedoms are increasingly depicted as being dangerous because they run counter to the collective good.
The real reason for this ideological shift is to ensure that the masses get used to lower living standards and accept them. Consider, for instance, the Bank of England’s chief economist Huw Pill saying that people should ‘accept’ being poorer. And then there is Rob Kapito of the world’s biggest asset management firm BlackRock, who says that a “very entitled” generation must deal with scarcity for the first time in their lives.
At the same time, to muddy the waters, the message is that lower living standards are the result of the conflict in Ukraine and supply shocks that both the war and ‘the virus’ have caused.
The net-zero carbon emissions agenda will help legitimise lower living standards (reducing your carbon footprint) while reinforcing the notion that our rights must be sacrificed for the greater good. You will own nothing, not because the rich and their neoliberal agenda made you poor but because you will be instructed to stop being irresponsible and must act to protect the planet.
Net-zero Agenda
But what of this shift towards net-zero greenhouse gas emissions and the plan to slash our carbon footprints? Is it even feasible or necessary?
Gordon Hughes, a former World Bank economist and current professor of economics at the University of Edinburgh, says in a new report that current UK and European net-zero policies will likely lead to further economic ruin.
Apparently, the only viable way to raise the cash for sufficient new capital expenditure (on wind and solar infrastructure) would be a two decades-long reduction in private consumption of up to 10 per cent. Such a shock has never occurred in the last century outside war; even then, never for more than a decade.
But this agenda will also cause serious environmental degradation. So says Andrew Nikiforuk in the article The Rising Chorus of Renewable Energy Skeptics, which outlines how the green techno-dream is vastly destructive.
He lists the devastating environmental impacts of an even more mineral-intensive system based on renewables and warns:
“The whole process of replacing a declining system with a more complex mining-based enterprise is now supposed to take place with a fragile banking system, dysfunctional democracies, broken supply chains, critical mineral shortages and hostile geopolitics.”
All of this assumes that global warming is real and anthropogenic. Not everyone agrees. In the article Global warming and the confrontation between the West and the rest of the world, journalist Thierry Meyssan argues that net zero is based on political ideology rather than science. But to state such things has become heresy in the Western countries and shouted down with accusations of ‘climate science denial’.
Regardless of such concerns, the march towards net zero continues, and key to this is the United Nations Agenda 2030 for Sustainable Development Goals.
Today, almost every business or corporate report, website or brochure includes a multitude of references to ‘carbon footprints’, ‘sustainability’, ‘net zero’ or ‘climate neutrality’ and how a company or organisation intends to achieve its sustainability targets. Green profiling, green bonds and green investments go hand in hand with displaying ‘green’ credentials and ambitions wherever and whenever possible.
It seems anyone and everyone in business is planting their corporate flag on the summit of sustainability. Take Sainsbury’s, for instance. It is one of the ‘big six’ food retail supermarkets in the UK and has a vision for the future of food that it published in 2019.
Here’s a quote from it:
“Personalised Optimisation is a trend that could see people chipped and connected like never before. A significant step on from wearable tech used today, the advent of personal microchips and neural laces has the potential to see all of our genetic, health and situational data recorded, stored and analysed by algorithms which could work out exactly what we need to support us at a particular time in our life. Retailers, such as Sainsbury’s could play a critical role to support this, arranging delivery of the needed food within thirty minutes — perhaps by drone.”
Tracked, traced and chipped — for your own benefit. Corporations accessing all of our personal data, right down to our DNA. The report is littered with references to sustainability and the climate or environment, and it is difficult not to get the impression that it is written so as to leave the reader awestruck by the technological possibilities.
However, the promotion of a brave new world of technological innovation that has nothing to say about power — who determines policies that have led to massive inequalities, poverty, malnutrition, food insecurity and hunger and who is responsible for the degradation of the environment in the first place — is nothing new.
The essence of power is conveniently glossed over, not least because those behind the prevailing food regime are also shaping the techno-utopian fairytale where everyone lives happily ever after eating bugs and synthetic food while living in a digital panopticon.
Fake Green
The type of ‘green’ agenda being pushed is a multi-trillion market opportunity for lining the pockets of rich investors and subsidy-sucking green infrastructure firms and also part of a strategy required to secure compliance required for the ‘new normal’.
It is, furthermore, a type of green that plans to cover much of the countryside with wind farms and solar panels with most farmers no longer farming. A recipe for food insecurity.
Those investing in the ‘green’ agenda care first and foremost about profit. The supremely influential BlackRock invests in the current food system that is responsible for polluted waterways, degraded soils, the displacement of smallholder farmers, a spiralling public health crisis, malnutrition and much more.
It also invests in healthcare — an industry that thrives on the illnesses and conditions created by eating the substandard food that the current system produces. Did Larry Fink, the top man at BlackRock, suddenly develop a conscience and become an environmentalist who cares about the planet and ordinary people? Of course not.
Any serious deliberations on the future of food would surely consider issues like food sovereignty, the role of agroecology and the strengthening of family farms — the backbone of current global food production.
The aforementioned article by Andrew Nikiforuk concludes that, if we are really serious about our impacts on the environment, we must scale back our needs and simplify society.
In terms of food, the solution rests on a low-input approach that strengthens rural communities and local markets and prioritises smallholder farms and small independent enterprises and retailers, localised democratic food systems and a concept of food sovereignty based on self-sufficiency, agroecological principles and regenerative agriculture.
It would involve facilitating the right to culturally appropriate food that is nutritionally dense due to diverse cropping patterns and free from toxic chemicals while ensuring local ownership and stewardship of common resources like land, water, soil and seeds.
That’s where genuine environmentalism and the future of food begins.
For further insight into the issues discussed above, you can access the author’s two free e-books on the food system here and here.
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Renowned author Colin Todhunter specialises in development, food and agriculture. He is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG).
Featured image: Original image by Birch Gold Group staff
Read Colin Todhunter’s e-Book entitled
Food, Dispossession and Dependency. Resisting the New World Order
We are currently seeing an acceleration of the corporate consolidation of the entire global agri-food chain. The high-tech/big data conglomerates, including Amazon, Microsoft, Facebook and Google, have joined traditional agribusiness giants, such as Corteva, Bayer, Cargill and Syngenta, in a quest to impose their model of food and agriculture on the world.
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Medical errors are a significant global issue, with the World Health Organization estimating they cause 2.6 million deaths annually worldwide. In the U.S., this number could be as high as 440,000, making it the third leading cause of death
10% of all deaths in the U.S. are attributable to some kind of medical error, and it continues to be a leading cause of death today, ranking somewhere between third and first place, depending on the scope of medical mistakes you include in the equation
The documentary “Medical Errors: Why Doctors Make Mistakes” underscored a crucial issue in the medical community: the reluctance to openly discuss mistakes, which can hinder learning and improvement, contributing to ongoing errors
A mix of inexperience, fatigue and diagnostic challenges contributes significantly to medical errors, complicating the efforts to reduce these mistakes
To minimize your risk of harm from medical errors, consider creating a “Caregivers and Consent” document that spells out what your doctor may or may not do to you while you’re hospitalized. Also be sure to always bring family member or friend who can act as your advocate and keep track of what’s being done to you
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The documentary above, “Medical Errors: Why Doctors Make Mistakes,” explores the causes behind medical errors, which according to the World Health Organization claim 2.6 million deaths each year, worldwide, with at least 250,000 of those in the U.S.1
In July 2022, the National Institutes of Health updated their library on medical errors, saying that number could be as high as 440,000 — and possibly even higher due to poor reporting — making it the third leading cause of death in the U.S.2
A Historical Look at Statistical Data on Medical Errors
In July 2010, Dr. Barbara Starfield published an article in JAMA titled “Is U.S. Health Really the Best in the World?”3 Buried in the tables of that article were data showing that physicians were the third leading cause of death in the United States. I created that headline 24 years ago and it has been a meme ever since.
For over 15 years, when you typed in “doctors are the third leading cause of death,” my article from 2000 came up first. Of course, those days are now long gone, since Google began censoring me from its search engine eight years ago. Sadly, the claim that “doctors are the third leading cause of death” remains true to this day.
One of the first indications that medical errors were a significant problem emerged in 1989, when professor Lucian Leape from the Harvard Medical School — a pioneer in patient safety who is featured in the documentary — published a study on medical errors. (He also published the book “Making Healthcare Safe: The Story of the Patient Safety Movement”4 in 2021, which you can read and download for free here.)
Leape analyzed 30,000 medical records from 50 New York hospitals, concluding that nearly 4% had suffered an injury caused by treatment, and of those, two-thirds “were caused by an error in care and therefore are potentially preventable,” Leape said.
Extrapolating from that data, Leape estimated that 1.3 million American patients are injured each year due to medical mistakes and 180,000 die — the equivalent of three jumbo-jet crashes every two days. In the UK, according to statistics cited in the documentary, medical mistakes claim the lives of an estimated 40,000 Britons each year.
Properly Prescribed Drugs Are the Fourth Leading Cause of Death
In 1998, another eye-opening study was published. Researchers at the University of Toronto, led by professor Bruce Pomeranz, concluded that properly prescribed and correctly taken pharmaceutical drugs were the fourth leading cause of death in the U.S.5,6
Pomeranz’s analysis was the largest and most complete of its kind at that time. In all, they calculated that somewhere between 76,000 and 137,000 American patients died each year from correctly administered drugs.
Might Doctors Be the No. 1 Cause of Death?
In a 2003 article aptly titled, “Death by Medicine,”7 Dr. Carolyn Dean, Gary Null, Ph.D., Dr. Martin Feldman, Dr. Debora Rasio and Dorothy Smith, Ph.D., described in excruciating detail how the modern conventional American medical system has bumbled its way into becoming the LEADING cause of death and injury in the United States, claiming the lives of nearly 784,000 people annually.
Using those figures, that would put the health care system as the No. 1 cause of death in the U.S., bypassing cardiovascular disease. These iatrogenic deaths (meaning deaths resulting from the activity of physicians) include everything from adverse drug reactions and avoidable medical errors to hospital-acquired infections, surgeries gone bad and deaths from unnecessary medical procedures.
The authors took statistics straight from the most respected medical and scientific journals and investigative reports by the IOM, showing that overall, American medicine is causing more harm than good. For clarity, the reason Dean et. al. came up with a much higher number than anyone else, even in later years, is likely because they included a broader range of mistakes.
Medicine Is Still a Leading Cause of Death
In 2010, a report in The New England Journal of Medicine,8 and another in the Journal of General Internal Medicine,9 revealed just how little things had changed since 2003.
Out of 62 million death certificates dated between 1976 and 2006, nearly 250,000 deaths were coded as having occurred in a hospital setting due to medication errors,10 and an estimated 450,000 preventable medication-related adverse events occurred every year.
Three years later, in 2013, a Journal of Patient Safety study11,12,13,14 concluded preventable medical errors kill anywhere from 210,000 to 440,000 patients a year. In 2016, Johns Hopkins patient safety experts, led by Dr. Martin Makary, calculated that more than 250,000 patients died each year from medical errors — the same death count found by Starfield in 2010.
Then, in 2022, the WHO announced that unsafe care by medical professionals and hospitals result in a “horrifying” 2.6 million deaths annually, worldwide, with at least 250,000 of those deaths occurring in the U.S.15 And, as mentioned, that summer the NIH stated the death toll might be closer to 440,000, or more.16
So, medical errors have been the third leading cause of death for years, with 10% of all deaths being attributable to some kind of medical error,17,18 and it continues to be a leading cause of death today, ranking somewhere between third and first place, depending on the scope of medical mistakes you include in your equation.
Misdiagnosis Rates Are on the Rise
Death isn’t the only outcome of medical mistakes. Permanent disability is another. When permanent disability and death are lumped together, the toll from medical mistakes reaches as high as 795,000 annually in the U.S. alone, according to data published in 2023.19
Researchers at Johns Hopkins School of Medicine have described diagnostic errors as “the most under-resourced public health crisis we face.”20 When you visit a doctor, whether you’re at a doctor’s office or hospital, you depend on getting expert care, including a correct diagnosis. But about 11% of the time, medical conditions are misdiagnosed.21,22
The likelihood of misdiagnosis varies widely, however, depending on the type of medical problem and the symptoms presented. For instance, only about 1.5% of heart attacks are misdiagnosed, compared to 62% of spinal abscesses, a rarer condition.
But even among strokes, a leading cause of disability in the U.S., misdiagnosis occurs more than 17.5% of the time.23 When a stroke occurs, some patients may experience only dizziness or headaches, which can easily be confused with other conditions. In all, 15 diseases account for 50.7% of the serious harms due to misdiagnosis while just five — stroke, sepsis, pneumonia, venous thromboembolism and lung cancer — account for 38.7%.24
A 2023 review25 of nearly 300 studies by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services’ Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality also found that a startling number of patients who visit U.S. emergency rooms get an incorrect diagnosis.
Overall, their research showed about 1 in 18 people who visit an emergency room will be misdiagnosed, 1 in 50 will suffer an adverse event as a result, and 1 in 350 will suffer from permanent disability or death. Out of the 130 million visits to emergency departments (EDs) that occur every year in the U.S., this amounts to 7.4 million misdiagnoses, 2.6 million related adverse events and 370,000 serious harms from diagnostic error. According to the authors:26
“Put in terms of an average ED [emergency department] with 25,000 visits annually and average diagnostic performance, each year this would be over 1,400 diagnostic errors, 500 diagnostic adverse events, and 75 serious harms, including 50 deaths per ED …
The strongest, most consistent predictors of ED diagnostic error were individual case factors that increased the cognitive challenge of identifying the underlying disorder, with nonspecific, mild, transient, or ‘atypical’ symptoms being the most frequent.”
Effort to Reduce Medical Mistakes in the UK
As noted in the documentary, the UK has implemented something called “League tables” in an effort to cut down on medical mistakes. League tables are rankings that compare the performance of National Health Service (NHS) hospitals based on various quality and performance metrics such as patient satisfaction, clinical outcomes, waiting times and efficiency measures, among others.
The purpose of these tables is to provide transparency, stimulate improvements in healthcare delivery, and reduce medical mistakes by:
While league tables can drive improvements in healthcare quality and patient outcomes, they are not without criticism. Concerns have been raised about the potential for these rankings to oversimplify complex issues, penalize hospitals serving disadvantaged populations, or encourage gaming of the system. Nevertheless, they remain a key tool in the NHS’s strategy to improve healthcare quality and reduce medical mistakes in England.
How Is the US Tackling Medical Mistakes?
In the U.S., several mechanisms and tools parallel the concept of league tables in England, aiming to improve medical care quality and reduce medical mistakes. These tools include hospital rankings, reporting systems and quality improvement programs, which serve to enhance transparency, promote best practices, and ensure accountability in healthcare.
For example, the U.S. News & World Report Hospital Rankings is a publication that ranks hospitals nationally in various specialties, conditions, and procedures. The rankings are based on several factors, including patient outcomes, patient experience, nurse staffing levels, and expert opinions.
The Leapfrog Group also assigns letter grades to hospitals based on their performance in preventing medical errors, injuries, accidents, and infections. Leapfrog’s Hospital Safety Grade is intended to help consumers choose the safest hospital for their care.
There are also a variety of quality improvement organization (QIOs) that work with healthcare providers, including hospitals and physicians, to help them improve the care they provide to Medicare beneficiaries, as well as reporting and surveillance systems that track data on things like hospital-acquired infections.
Patient safety organizations also exist, as do clinical practice guidelines intended to help healthcare providers make consistent, evidence-based decisions to reduce variability in care and prevent medical errors. The electronic health records system is also intended to help prevent medication errors, ensure timely follow-ups, and support adherence to clinical guidelines.
Why Do Doctors Make So Many Mistakes?
Yet despite all these tools, the rates of medical mistakes aren’t dropping. According to the film, there are many potential reasons for this, including the taboo among doctors to discuss their mistakes openly.
Junior doctors also make mistakes due to inexperience. As noted in the film, doctors fresh out of medical school are literally “practicing” medicine on their patients, performing procedures they’ve never done before without oversight. Other factors include fatigue, as hospital doctors typically work very long shifts, and the fact that many conditions share symptoms.
In short, diagnosis isn’t necessarily easy, even with advanced medical tests. The same goes for treatment. Even with a correct diagnosis, choosing the best treatment isn’t black-and-white.
Experience comes into play and, I would say, a certain level of intuition, which requires your doctor to have a strong connection to his or her consciousness or Spirit. Unfortunately, that’s rare these days, as solid intuition requires a certain level of biological optimization that few have, even if they’re doctors.
How to Reduce Your Risk of Misdiagnosis
As a patient, taking an active role in your health care may help you receive the best care possible and reduce your risk of getting an incorrect diagnosis. This starts with choosing healthcare providers who listen to your concerns and have a holistic view of health.
Seek a healthcare practitioner who will help you understand the foundational causes of your health challenges, and create a customized and comprehensive — i.e., holistic — treatment plan for you.
What’s more, you can have an impact on your doctor’s tendency to recommend natural alternatives, as when you inquire about them, some do in fact listen. If they don’t, then keep shopping. Further, if something doesn’t sound right about the diagnosis you’re given, ask questions and get a second, or third, opinion if needed.
Remember, your doctor works for you, not the other way around. Ideally, health care should be a partnership, where you work together with your providers to identify the best solutions. Either way, if you’re not satisfied with their know-how or the tools in their toolbox, find another doctor. If you’re hospitalized or in an emergency situation, this is more challenging since you can’t always choose who’s providing your care.
There are many cases when it’s in your best interest to avoid hospitals, particularly for elective procedures or chronic conditions, but if you’re hospitalized due to a life-threatening emergency, be sure to have an advocate with you who can manage your care and act as a power of attorney if necessary.
If you’re seriously ill, it can be very difficult to explain what’s wrong while keeping tabs on what they’re asking you to sign and the medications and treatments they’re giving you, so having someone there who can double-check everything and advocate for you is essential. And no matter where you’re receiving medical care, be sure to explain all symptoms you’re experiencing thoroughly. The more information you provide, theoretically the better the outcome should be.
Create a Caregivers and Consent Document
Last but not least, I strongly recommend creating a “Caregivers and Consent” document, as detailed in “How to Save Your Life and Those You Love When Hospitalized.” A template for this was created by Laura Bartlett and Greta Crawford in response to the abhorrent medical mistreatment experienced by patients during the COVID pandemic.
Bartlett and Crawford have founded an organization to address the lethal and, in many cases, forced treatments patients receive when they’re hospitalized for COVID-19, but the same strategy can be used to protect yourself against other medical hazards as well.
When you enter a hospital, you must sign a general consent authorization form. This is basically a contract between you and the hospital. Since you have bodily autonomy, they need your consent before they can do anything to you.
Typically, the general consent form authorizes hospital staff to test, treat and care for you in whatever way they see fit — and when a patient signs the general consent authorization, physicians feel justified that they can implement a hospital protocol without further explaining the risks, benefits or alternatives of that protocol to the patient.
Now, if you’re well enough to read the entire document, and see something in there that you don’t agree with, you can strike the sentence or paragraph and initial it, to indicate that you do not consent to that specific detail. However, that still doesn’t offer you much protection.
What you need is a much more specific document where you detail the types of treatments you consent to and the ones you don’t.
You need to carve out a niche from the general consent form that specifies exactly what you do (and do not) consent to. And you need to be clear. Fortunately, the Caregivers and Consent document carves out that niche to communicate clearly to all physicians your exact consent wishes. And, they are legally required to respect your written directives.
A template Caregivers and Consent document can be found on OurPatientRights.com. Also be sure to read through “How to Save Your Life and Those You Love When Hospitalized,” as there are specific procedures that must be followed to make the document binding.
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After six months of blocking ceasefire resolutions at the United Nations, the US delegation submitted its own draft resolution on Friday ostensibly aimed at stopping the hostilities so humanitarian aid can reach the starving people of Gaza. Unfortunately, the American team linked the proposed ceasefire to the release of hostages and to the repudiation of Hamas which merely restates the Israeli position on a final settlement. The draft resolution also failed to explicitly demand an immediate ceasefire, but inserted deliberately-ambiguous language intended to give Israel sufficient legal flexibility to continue its aggression. In short, the US draft resolution was a cynical hoax concocted by the backers of Israel’s bloody campaign in Gaza that blew up in the US delegations face heaping more shame on the administration and the American people.
The media’s coverage of the ceasefire fiasco has been predictably biased and deceptive. The US delegation did not “call” for an “immediate ceasefire” as has been widely reported in the West. In fact, that was the issue that prompted the Russian and Chinese vetoes. Whatthe draft resolution said was that “an immediate and sustained ceasefire” was “imperative.” There is a world of difference between a resolution that invokes the authority of the UN to ‘demand’ a ceasefire, and one that merely says a ceasefire is necessary. And, it is a difference that senior-level diplomats fully grasp, because in diplomacy, words matter. The words that the US delegation chose, were intentionally chosen to subvert the process, link the ceasefire to a release of the hostages, and to give Israel a green light to continue its military operations until a diplomatic agreement could be reached. The Russian ambassador summed it up like this:
If this resolution were adopted, it would definitively close the debate on the need for a ceasefire in Gaza, give Israel a free hand and condemn Gaza and its entire population to extermination or expulsion.
He’s right, this maliciously-worded resolution was designed to legitimize Israel’s rampage and provide legal cover for future aggression. Here is the excerpt from the US draft resolution that has drawn the most attention and criticism:
(The Security Council) Determines the imperative of an immediate and sustained ceasefire to protect civilians on all sides, allow for the delivery of essential humanitarian assistance, and alleviate humanitarian suffering, and towards that end unequivocally supports ongoing international diplomatic efforts to secure such a ceasefire in connection with the release of all remaining hostages.
And here’s a brief explanation from political analyst Trita Parsi:
The clause does not demand a ceasefire but determines that it is imperative. Its support is not directly for the ceasefire but for the negotiation process the U.S. has been co-leading and whose parameters the U.S. has sought to determine in favor of Israel. The text points out that this effort to secure a ceasefire is “in connection with the release of all remaining hostages. Why the Ceasefire Proposal Failed at the UNSC, Responsible Statecraft
In other words, the draft resolution is not aimed at bringing the hostilities to an end at all but, rather, to transforming the Security Council into another battlefield on which Israel’s bloody war can be waged. So, to dismiss this meticulously-engineered hoax as merely another example of US trickery, vastly understates the real objective of the operation which is to provide legal cover for the killing of civilians. Andre Damon at the World Socialist Web Site summed it up like this:
The cynicism of Biden’s call for a “ceasefire” while continuing to fund and arm the government massacring over a hundred Palestinians every day and starving the entire Gazan population is beyond description. The Biden administration hopes that by proclaiming its support for a “ceasefire” loudly enough, it will make the world’s population forget that it fully supports and enables the US-Israeli “final solution” of the Palestinian question. The Fraud of Biden’s call for a “ceasefire” in Gaza, Andre Damon, World Socialist Web Site
The point we’ve been trying to make becomes clearer when we consider the comments of US ambassador Linda Thomas-Greenfield who said the following just prior to the voting:
Many of us here share the same goals. First, we want to see an immediate and sustained ceasefire as part of a deal that leads to the release of all hostages which are being held by Hamas and other groups and that will allow much more life-saving humanitarian aid to get into Gaza … By adopting the resolution before us, we can put pressure on Hamas to accept the deal on the table... I urge all council members to vote “yes”; to vote for a resolution that at long last condemns Hamas for its horrific terrorist attacks and sexual violence that makes clear that all civilians ….should be able to live without fear of violence. United Nations News (see video)
Thomas-Greenfield is mistaken; the purpose of the ceasefire is not to resolve the hostage crisis or to “condemn Hamas” or “to put pressure on Hamas to accept the deal on the table.” Those are Israel’s objectives not the Security Council’s. The purpose of the ceasefire is to stop the killing of innocent civilians and to make sure they get the food and medicine they need to survive. Full stop. As we said earlier, the US ambassador is merely parroting the demands of the Israeli government and then characterizing those demands as a ceasefire. Naturally, the Russians saw through this ruse and voted accordingly. Nevertheless, the ploy has succeeded in providing the Biden team with a welcome public relations triumph by making them look like peacemakers. (which is entirely undeserved.)
Without a doubt, the most powerful analysis of Washington’s failed draft resolution was by Russian ambassador Vassily Nebenzia who—once again—revealed himself to be principled statesman with a keen grasp of the issues. Here’s a lengthy excerpt of his comments that (predictably) appear no where in the western media and can only be found on the Kremlin website:
Mr. President,
For six months now, the UN Security Council has been unable to adopt a resolution demanding a ceasefire in Gaza. Time and again, the United States thwarted any attempt to do so by using a veto in cold blood as many as four times.
During that time, we have heard many different excuses from our American colleagues. For example, that it is premature to seek a ceasefire because it is necessary to give space “for Israel’s counter-terrorism efforts”; that the Council should not interfere with Washington’s “effective diplomacy on the ground”; that we should wait until Ramadan, when, they say, an agreement on a cessation of violence will definitely be made.
Now, six months later, whenGaza has been practically leveled to the ground, the US representative says without batting an eye that Washington has finally started to realize the need for a ceasefire. This leisurely thinking process by Washington has cost the lives of 32,000 Palestinian civilians, two-thirds of them women and children.
And even now we see a typical hypocritical show, when in the cloak of a “ceasefire” the United States is trying to sell to the members of the Security Council and the entire international community something else – a vague phrase about “defining the imperative of a ceasefire”. Such philosophy about ‘moral imperatives’ might seem normal in the works of Immanuel Kant, but it’s not going to save the lives of Palestinians. And that is not at all what the mandate of the UN Security Council suggests, which has a unique toolkit to demand a ceasefire and, if necessary, enforce it.
In an official interview to Al Hadath in Jeddah on 20 March, Secretary of State Blinken said, “Well, in fact, we actually have a resolution that we put forward right now that’s before the UNSC that does call for an immediate ceasefire tied to the release of hostages and we hope very much that countries will support that”. However, the US-proposed draft resolution does not make such call. It appears that either the US Permanent Representative to the United Nations or the US Secretary of State is deliberately misleading the international community.
Colleagues,
From the very beginning, it was obvious that the “negotiations” on the draft resolution held by our American colleagues were only meant to (buy) time. All our comments and “red lines” were ignored, as well as the proposals of a number of other delegations….
The US draft is a thoroughly politicized document, which only aims at pulling on voters’ heartstrings before the US elections by throwing them a “bone” in the form of at least some mention of a “ceasefire” in Gaza. The draft also seeks to consolidate US policy in the region through “terrorist labels” and to ensure impunity for Israel, whose criminal actions the draft gives no assessment to.
Let me also stress that the American draft contains a de facto green light for Israel to conduct a military operation in Rafah. At least, the sponsors have tried to make sure that nothing in their draft would prevent West Jerusalem from completing the deadly cleanup of southern Gaza.
That is actually what Washington wants. We already said that we will no longer pass meaningless resolutions that do not demand a ceasefire and lead us nowhere.
This draft must not pass with the majority of UNSC votes in order to send a message that Washington’s not even palliative but devious concepts are unacceptable. It will be extremely strange if those members of the Council (and they are the majority), who realize this and have been saying to us that the US draft is a flawed one, will now raise their hand in favor. If you do so, you will smear yourselves in disgrace.
Think what this will make you look in the eyes of the people of the Middle East and your own countries, if you support this hypocritical endeavor designed to disorient the international community and, in fact, undermine the authority of the Council by rendering it unable to influence the situation on the ground and making it “stay out of White House’s way”. Are you ready to play a part in this shameful show?
Russia will not do this. As a permanent member of the Security Council and one of the founders of the United Nations, we recognize the global historical responsibility for the maintenance of international peace and security and cannot allow the Council to become a tool of Washington’s destructive policy in the Middle East. If this resolution were adopted, it would definitively close the debate on the need for a ceasefire in Gaza, give Israel a free hand and condemn Gaza and its entire population to extermination or expulsion.
In our work, we are not guided by what pleases Washington or its satellites who are ready to cast a vote at the US behest, but by what is necessary for the Palestinians and what promotes peace.
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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).
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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I was quite intrigued by this advertisement from the American Civil Liberties Union that I saw on the internet yesterday. I wanted to know what issues the American Civil Liberties Union is concerned about, and whether they wanted to know what we the citizens are worried about—whether they want to hear our voices.
You see the American Civil Liberties Union, which occasionally plays an important role, has become a corrupt lapdog of the elite, granted it aims for the charity donations market of the progressive-flavor elite who oppress working people through their stock holdings, but show a walrus-style concern for the poor[1].
In any case, when I clicked, I discovered, much as I expected, that the ACLU is not interested in learning what issues we citizens are concerned with, but has already decided for us what issues are critical for us. Let us take a look at what choices they gave us, and did not give us.
Allow me to make a few general comments about each point, and invite others with different perspectives, to add their opinions.
Defend Voting Rights
Voting rights are a major issue in the United States, and must be defended. It has been consistantly true, however, that the ACLU has jumped at Republican attempts to suppress the votes of African Americans, which is a real issue, but has ignored efforts of Democrats to alter or erase votes for Republicans. The most classic case is the embrace by the ACLU of the victory of Biden in the 2020 election. We do not have any idea who won in 2020, but that massive voter fraud took place on the Democratic, and Republican, sides is an easily proven fact. The fact that Donald Trump, for all his weaknesses, was placed under house arrest on bogus charges of suffering from the mythical disease COVID-19 during the campaign was an illegal action that has never been addressed by a single Democrat, or progressive, that I know of—and I am sure the ACLU is not interested in that case.
Trump lost because the Democrats, backed by global finance, could buy off even more people. It is as simple as that.
Think what you want about Donald Trump, but the ACLU should have been all over the Democrats, not supporting and legitimizing their criminal rule.
Fight for Systematic Change to Achieve Racial Equality
The terms employed here are ambiguous, but it is clear that the ACLU is not considering the cause of the tremendous divisions between working Americans of different ethnities: campaigns funded by the power elite that use the term “race” to stir up hostility that is totally unnecessary. Of course there is real racial discrimination in the United States, but to assume that our goal should be to create racial equality, and only racial equality, without concern for who owns what, leaves us barking up the wrong tree.
The primary struggle in the United States is a class struggle and an enormous number of Americans who are classified as caucasians are the victims. In fact many Americans who are white have considerable African American DNA, and vice versa. To focus exclusively race in an artificial process without addressing class issues has led to serious abuses and poisoned the civil rights movement. The result is justified hostility among working-class people.
The ACLU decision to focus on race issues, without concern for economic and social issues, is is precisely what the multinational corporations want because such rhetoric does not threaten them but divides the public.
Protect Free Speech by Ensuring a Free Press, the Right to Protest, and Protection for Whistleblowers
Protecting free speech is essential. But what has the ACLU done for the whistleblowers who took on the 9.11 incident, Federal Reserve fraud, or the use of bogus vaccines and lockdowns (martial law) under the COVID-19 regime? Nothing. The ACLU has ignored, or even justified, this reign of terror. So free speech is only an issue when the progressive-flavored elites say it should be.
I know for a fact that friends of mine, and myself as well, have reached out to ACLU about the manner in which we suffered explicit political persecution and without exception, we were ignored, often not even having our phone calls returned. You see ACLU collects money from you, but there really is no way to go to them about your case and they have decided, precisely because they want to raise big money, that they will be silent about state crimes.
Protect Reproductive Rights
Abortion is such a divisive issue for Americans, and there are clear ethical ambiguities that may never be fully resolved, that I hesitate to make a catagoricial statement on the abortion until I have had a chance to speak to a broad range of citizens.
Addressing the conflicts, often stirred up by interest groups, surrounding abortion will require us to look at related serious contradictions in American society.
I would say, however, that the Alabama ruling on fertilized cells as humans is profoundly unscientific and also undemocratic. I would also say that although I think that access to abortion must be defended in this current environment. And only when women are protected, and guaranteed certain rights, can we talk about the most difficult aspects of abortion. We must also consider how transhumanism is employing the debate on abortion for its own dangerous goals.
I think that the ACLU needs to be clear about what it means here, but basically I support reproductive rights as defined by the ACLU.
Defend Constitutionally Protected Right to Due Process for Immigrants and Asylum Seekers
I most certainly suppport the constitution and due process for immigrants and asylum seekers. I think the statements by many politicians suggesting that we face an immigration crisis that demands an end to constitutional protections is extremely dangerous.
At the same time, we must recognize that immigrants, and especially illegal immigrants, are being used by the power elite to destroy the economy of the United States, to undermine unions, to reduce pay, and to create chaos. The violence perpetuated by these illegal immmigrants is a real threat and that those who are only concerned with the constitutional rights of immigrants, without considering this state of war between multinational corporations and citizens, alienate citizens and fail to understand the real reasons for hostility towards immigrants.
As long as the ACLU refuses to address the true story about how immigration is weaponized, it will serve primarily the agenda of the elite. Both sides of the story must be told.
Ensuring That LGBTQ People Have Equal Rights and Access to Employment, Housing, Restrooms, Businesses, and Healthcare
The term LGBTQ has no scientific basis and it has suddenly appeared in our vocabulary, forced on us by the Department of Education and other institutions without any scientific or legal justification as a way of asserting power.
I have found responding to questions about my position on LGBTQ (lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer) to be extremely difficult.
On the one hand, I think that the government does not have a role in dictating what citizens do in the privacy of their homes.
On the other hand, it is clear that the entire culture of transgender has been radically expanded NOT as a civil rights movement to defend the rights of an oppressed minority, but as a Homeland Security operation designed to sow division and confusion among citizens, and to use sexuality, especially in the case of young people, as a tool to create uncertainity, and also induce narcissistic behavior that is intended to break up families and communities, cause unnecessary conflicts and culture wars.
The point of such Homeland Security operations is to keep citizens from forming organizations that can resist the take over of society by multinational banks and corporations. Those operations are paid for by those banks.
Allowing men who “identify” as women to enter into women’s restrooms, or play on women’s sports teams is a strategy intended to create chaos and sow devision between citizens—not to mention violence and trauma for women. It must be opposed. If the ACLU is actually protecting transgender use of restrooms, it is betraying its basic principles.
At the same time, we must recognize that there are Americans who are influenced by this culture and who accept all sorts of definitions of sexuality. We can we can argue that their identities were created intentionally to confuse and divide, but for them as individuals the identity issues are very real. We should be understanding of the confusion and uncertainty young people suffer through, by empathetic, and never be harsh and cruel to these people. Nonetheless, we must recognize that this is a political strategy, not the product of a real “radical left” but rather of organized corporate operations meant to destroy civil 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.
Note
[1] “I like the Walrus best,’ said Alice: `because you see he was a little sorry for the poor oysters.’
`He ate more than the Carpenter, though,’ said Tweedledee. `You see he held his handkerchief in front, so that the Carpenter couldn’t count how many he took: contrariwise.’
`That was mean!’ Alice said indignantly. `Then I like the Carpenter best–if he didn’t eat so many as the Walrus.’
`But he ate as many as he could get,’ said Tweedledum.
This was a puzzler. After a pause, Alice began, `Well! They were both very unpleasant characters–”
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The Ukrainian conflict would have meant a return to the Cold War between Russia and the US and a return to the Doctrine of Containment, the foundations of which were laid out by George F. Kennan in his essay “The Sources of Soviet Behavior” published in the journal Foreign Affairs in 1947 and whose main ideas are summarized in the quote
“Soviet power is impervious to the logic of reason but very sensitive to the logic of force”.
This would include the entry of Finland and Sweden into NATO military structures and the increase of military forces with four new battalions deployed on the European border with Russia and the Russian response to the installation of missiles in Belarus Iskander-M equipped with multi-purpose warheads as well as S-40 anti-aircraft missiles following the dynamics of the Cold War (action-reaction).
We are also witnessing the fifth phase of the deployment of the anti-missile shield in Europe (Euro DAM) which began in May 2016 when the Aegis Ashore anti-ballistic defence system entered into service at the Deveselu base (Romania), just 600 km from the Crimean peninsula. For its part, Russia would have installed in Kaliningrad the missiles Iskander M equipped with multipurpose warheads as well as anti-aircraft missiles S-400 with what in the words of the political scientist Vladimir Abrámov “the province of Kaliningrad will again play the role of pistol in the temple of Europe as two decades ago” and in the event of closing NATO the exit of the Soviet enclave of Kaliningrad to the Baltic Sea, could be reissued the Kennedy-Khrushchev Missile Crisis (October, 1962) which would have as its epicenter Kaliningrad.
Is the Signing of Peace in the Ukrainian Dispute Close?
With regard to the United States, in the Democratic field, the signs of Biden’s senility, the fentanyl pandemic and high inflation would have sunk the popularity of the Democratic leader, which could facilitate the triumphant return of Donald Trump in the 2024 presidential elections by clearing his way to the White House after the latest decisions of the Supreme Cour. Consequently, a republican victory in 2024 would represent the decline of the Atlantist strategy of Biden and Soros committed to defend Putin from power, the signing of a peace agreement in Ukraine and the return to the Doctrine of Peaceful Coexistence with Russia.
Thus, after Trump’s victory we could see the signing of a Peace Agreement that establishes that Ukraine will not enter NATO and that the Ukrainian dispute is outlined with the division of Ukraine into two halves, leaving the East of the country, including Crimea, the Donbas, Zaporizhia and Kherson under Russian orbit.
Meanwhile, the Center and West of present-day Ukraine will sail under the tutelage of Poland, with which Putin will achieve total control of the Sea of Azov and Ukraine would ensure its exit to the Black Sea, while the imaginary line linking Kharkov, Zaporiyia, Bajmut and Rubizhne will become the new Berlin Wall of the Cold War 2.0.
This agreement will seek to be torpedoed by Zelensky, who will do his utmost to involve NATO in the Ukrainian conflict, so that Mr Zelensky would already be a liability for the US, which should be removed immediately, not being ruled out that he should be accused of corruption and forced into exile in the US.
Are Poland and Romania Seeking to Annex Part of Ukraine?
Poland seeks to become a local player in the Eastern European hornet’s nest and extend its influence to the Ukrainian area by claiming its right to incorporate the Ukrainian region of Lviv on the Polish map, which was occupied by Poland from 1918 to 1939.Thus, according to the director of the Foreign Intelligence Service (SVR) of Russia, Sergey Naryshkin in statements to RIA Novosti “the leaders of Poland intend to hold referendums in western Ukraine to achieve the annexation of the territories of Lviv, Ivano-Frankivsk and most of the oblasts of Ternopil in Ukraine”.
To achieve this, Poland has suspended the Treaty on Conventional Armed Forces in Europe implying that Poland “would no longer be obliged to comply with NATO provisions on limiting the size of armed forces and their deployment” and would therefore be free to occupy the Ukrainian region of Lviv and subsequently incorporate it into Poland following the signing of the future Peace Treaty between Ukraine and Russia.
Claudiu Tarziu, president of the National Board of Directors of the Alliance for the Union of Romanians (AUR), in a speech in the Romanian city of Iasi, listed the territories that Romania should annex: the Northern Bukovina region, the Bessarabia region, the territory of Hertsa, included in the Ukrainian region of Chernovtsi, bordering with Romania, and the Ukrainian region of Transcarpathia, with which the Ukrainian cartography under control of Kiev wanted to reduced notably.
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Germán Gorraiz López is a political analyst. He is a regular contributor to Global Research.
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The cause of the global increase, which is said to have sparked alarm among scientists, is hotly debated. But while improved diagnostic methods, genetic predispositions, lifestyles, and as yet unknown environmental factors have all been proposed as possible reasons, the roles of some other possible influences are essentially being ignored.
Illustrating the scale of the problem, the annual cancer incidence rate among British individuals aged between 25 and 49 has reportedly reached 162.4 cases per 100,000 people. This represents a 22 per cent increase over the figure in the 1990s.
At the global level, a study published in the BMJ Oncology journal last year revealed that, between 1990 and 2019, there was a 79 percent surge in the incidence of early-onset cancer and a 27 percent higher number of early-onset cancer deaths.
Cancers previously seen as being more common in older age groups are increasingly being diagnosed in younger adults.
Examples include breast, colorectal, esophageal, gastric, and pancreatic cancers, among others. With healthcare systems still struggling to recover from the impact of policies imposed during the COVID-19 pandemic, there is growing concern that in the years ahead, the burden on national economies will escalate still further.
The Fall in the Nutrient Content of the Global Food Supply
While diet is being discussed as a contributory cause to the rise in cancer cases, important scientific evidence that could help explain the phenomenon would appear to be being ignored.
Of particular relevance are studies conducted in the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, the Netherlands, Finland, and other countries, which show that the nutrient content of the global food supply has fallen significantly over the past 70 to 80 years. The suspected causes of this include the increasing worldwide shift towards industrial forms of agriculture.
In some cases, the reduction in nutrient levels has been dramatic. Between 1951 and 1999, for example, the calcium content of broccoli in Canada fell by almost 63 percent. Similarly, the vitamin A content of Canadian broccoli fell by almost 56 percent, with the vitamin B2 content falling by almost 43 percent and the vitamin B1 content by 40 percent. Changes in nutrient levels for potatoes were also concerning, with iron and vitamin C content falling by over 57 percent, vitamin B2 by 50 percent, vitamin B3 by 45 percent and, most disturbingly of all, vitamin A by 100 percent. With similar reductions being seen in other countries, it is unthinkable that this would not result in negative health consequences.
Significantly, therefore, Dr. Matthias Rath’s Cellular Medicine research has revealed that long-term deficiencies of vitamins, minerals, and other essential nutrients are the primary cause of chronic diseases such as cancer. Based on this finding, a patented combination of nutrients has now been successfully tested against more than 55 different types of cancer cells. Cutting-edge scientific studies carried out at the Dr. Rath Research Institute have demonstrated that these nutrients are able to inhibit cancer cell invasion and metastasis, cancer cell multiplication and tumor growth, the formation of new blood vessels to feed tumors (angiogenesis), as well as induce the natural death of cancer cells (apoptosis).
Reversing the worldwide rise in cancer cases will necessitate improving global nutrient intakes. Achieving this for people of all ages could lead to a significant reduction in the overall number of cases, including those now being seen in younger people. Towards this goal, as well as encouraging and facilitating the use of science-based nutrient supplementation, governments should also consider promoting organic agriculture. Research shows that food produced organically contains higher levels of nutrients.
COVID-19 Vaccines and ‘Turbo Cancers’
Action also needs to be taken regarding the use of mRNA-based COVID-19 vaccines. Research published in the Viruses journal suggests these experimental injections could significantly inhibit DNA damage repair. The effective repair of DNA – the biological software of each cell – is essential for maintaining a proper immune defense and protecting against a multitude of diseases, including cancer.
In the years ahead, far from successfully reversing the rise in cancer incidence, the continued use of these vaccines could potentially even increase the number of cases. Indeed, some observers are already linking the shots to rapidly developing so-called ‘turbo cancers.’ In this respect, with mRNA vaccine profiteer Pfizer recently making a $43 billion bet that cancer will become more prevalent in future, questions are being asked as to whether it knows something that it hasn’t disclosed. Rather than treating the pharma industry as benevolent saviors of humankind, it is time for governments to realize that reversing the cancer ‘epidemic’ also requires confronting the entities that are benefiting from it.
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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
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).
To receive Global Research’s Daily Newsletter (selected articles), click here.
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Recent developments suggest that Israel’s full-scale ground offensive in Rafah could take place at any time. What we have been told by Israeli officials, is that the operation will require the evacuation of the city, presumably so the IDF can inflict the same level of destruction on Rafah as was inflicted on Khan Yunis and Gaza City. Once the ground forces are deployed, the Palestinians will be forced to flee to the Egyptian border where they will seek refuge from the Israeli onslaught. What happens next is uncertain but –given the numerous meetings between Israeli and Egyptian officials and their respective Intel chiefs– we think there may be an agreement to allow over a million Palestinian refugees to cross the border into Egypt. Here are a few recent articles suggesting that Egypt may be getting paid to participate in Israel’s ethnic cleansing operation.
The International Monetary Fund (IMF) said on Wednesday it would increase its current loan programme with Egypt by $5 billion…. The new agreement is an expansion of the $3 billion, 46-month Extended Fund Facility that the IMF struck with Egypt in December 2022….
Egypt is also seeking a separate loan from the IMF’s Resilience and Sustainability Facility which promotes climate transition financing. Egyptian Prime Minister Mostafa Madbouly said that loan would be $1.2 billion
The European Union on Sunday, March 17 announced a €7.4 billion aid package for cash-strapped Egypt as concerns mount that economic pressure and conflicts in neighboring countries could drive more migrants to European shores….
The aid package includes both grants and loans over the next three years for the Arab world’s most populous country, according to the EU’s mission in Cairo….
The deal comes amid growing concerns that Israel’s looming ground offensive on Gaza’s southernmost town of Rafah could force hundreds of thousands of people to break into Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula. The Israel-Hamas war, now in its sixth month, has pushed more than 1 million people to Rafah.
The World Bank on Monday said it would provide Egypt with over $6 billion, boosting the global bailout for the North African nation’s struggling economy to more than $50 billion in the past few weeks….
The announcement comes a day after the European Union pledged around $8 billion in aid, loans and grants. Those funds followed a newly-expanded $8 billion International Monetary Fund program that was unveiled hours after authorities enacted the nation’s biggest rate hike ever and devalued the currency for the fourth time since early 2022.
Obviously, heaping billions of dollars of loans on a debt-ridden nation whose moribund economy shows no sign of a rebound, is not normal procedure. One can only conclude that the money is being offered for some alternate purpose, that is, to deal with the surge of refugees that will soon be pouring over the border. But, if these articles have not yet convinced readers that the Egyptian government is in cahoots with Israel, then perhaps this March 23 column will:
The European Commission is officially sidelining the European Parliament’s scrutiny role when it comes to €1bn of loans being sent to Egypt. The announcement came ahead of a €7.4bn cash-for-migration-control agreement with Cairo, posing tricky questions for an increasingly frustrated European Parliament.
European Commission president Ursula von der Leyen says, in a letter dated 15 March and seen by EUobserver, that the urgency of wiring the money to Cairo requires her to bypass the assembly. She has since decided to trigger article 213 in the EU treaty, allowing the European Commission to go at it alone.
“For reasons of utmost urgency and highly exceptionally, the recourse to of Article 213 TFEU is considered as appropriate legal basis for the first operation of EUR 1 billion,” she writes, in a letter sent to European Parliament president, Roberta Metsola..
Why would the president of the European Commission feel such an unbearable sense of urgency over the dodgy finances of a failed state in east Africa? And why did Ms. von der Leyen chose to ignore the limits of her legal authority by wiring the funds to Cairo without first acquiring the approval of the assembly?
If all of this seems rather unusual, it’s because it is. Political powerbrokers across the West are doing whatever they can to assist Israel in its plan to ethnically cleanse Palestine. Ms. von der Leyen is just one of the contributors to this malign project but there are others as well. The point we are trying to make is that Israel’s destruction of Gaza and the herding of its population towards the southern border is part of a broader plan that has many moving parts and many powerful players. Israeli leaders know what it takes to carry off an operation like this because they have conducted similar operations in the past as this excerpt from an article at Counterpunch helps to illustrate:
Ethnic cleansing was and remains integral to the Zionist project…
In order to create a Jewish state in Palestine the Zionists had to create an overwhelming Jewish majority…. Nazi Germany helped by driving out Jews from Europe… but there still existed no realistic prospect anytime soon of creating an overwhelming Jewish majority by attracting Jewish settlers….
Israel’s first round of ethnic cleansing began in 1947, intensified in 1948, and continued into 1949. Altogether, 720,000 Palestinians, some eighty percent of the Palestinians in the territories occupied by Jewish/Israeli forces, were expelled during this period; this amounted to half the Arab population of mandatory Palestine.
Israel engaged in a second round of ethnic cleansing during and after the capture in June 1967 of the West Bank, Gaza and East Jerusalem… Palestinians who were present in the Occupied Territories but were not counted in an Israeli census after the June War were denied the right of residence in Israel…. by these and other means, Israel had ethnically cleansed one-fifth of the Palestinians in the occupied territories.
In the decades following the June 1967 War, Israel made life increasingly difficult for the Palestinians in the occupied territories…. Between 1970 and 2000 the population of the West Bank and Gaza tripled, increasing from one million to three million. Inside its de factor borders, Israel now contained 4.1 million Palestinians and 5 million Jews. This was ringing alarm bells. Something had to be done about this…. Postscripts on Israel: October 7 Surprise?, M. Shahid Alam, Counterpunch
What we can infer from this excerpt is that the expulsion of Palestinians from Gaza is not aimed at quashing terrorism but at changing the demographic make-up of the area between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea. The fact is that one cannot preserve a Jewish-majority state without a clear Jewish majority. By annexing the occupied territories of Gaza and the West Bank, Israel will dramatically increase the number of Arabs within its borders putting that core principle at risk. Here’s more from the same article:
Israel’s Jewish population grew tenfold between 1948 and 2023, increasing from 717,000 to 7,181,000. Nearly half the world’s Jewish population now lives in Israel.
Yet Israel has not been winning the demographic race. In 2023, the Palestinians outnumbered the Jews in historic Palestine—7.4 million Palestinians versus 7.1 million Jews…. Postscripts on Israel: October 7 Surprise?, M. Shahid Alam, Counterpunch
Israel’s military operation in Gaza is merely a response to a demographic problem that has bedeviled Israeli leaders since the inception of the Jewish state. In light of that fact, we can see that Hamas is just the pretext that’s being used to conceal the motive driving the hostilities. In truth, it wouldn’t matter if the Palestinians were Hispanic, Asian or Scots-Irish. If their numbers threatened to exceed those of the Jewish majority, their fate would be the same.
Naturally, the de facto annexation of additional Arab territory poses a numerical challenge for which there is ultimately only one solution; ethnic cleansing. And while the formulation has been repeatedly repackaged to sound less oppressive, (transfer, evacuation, resettlement, voluntary migration) the practice remains the same. (Ethnic Cleansing def– The mass expulsion or killing of members of one ethnic or religious group in an area by those of another. Oxford) Here are a few recent iterations on the same theme:
In a document from October 17, 2023, Israels’ Intelligence Ministry, examined the option of ‘evacuating’ the Gazans to the Sinai, and claimed that this would “yield positive, long-term strategic outcomes for Israel.”….
An Israeli think tank, the Misgav Institute, also made a similar pitch. It argued that the conditions in Gaza offered “a unique and rare opportunity to evacuate the whole Gaza Strip and its coordination with the Egyptian government.”….
Jonathan Adler, a Hurford Fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, writing on December 31, 2023, asserts that “today there is a growing momentum [in Israel] to carry out mass transfer—with American support.” Some Israeli politicians and officials—including a former Brigadier General and a former Israeli ambassador to the United States—“suggest that Palestinians should flee Gaza through the Rafah border crossing with Egypt and seek refuge in the Sinai Peninsula…
On October 20, the White House asked Congress for funds to “address potential needs of Gazans fleeing to neighboring countries.” If the White House was preparing to finance the ethnic cleansing of Gazans, it is unlikely that this happened without prior discussions with Israel and Egypt. Did these discussions happen before October 7?… Counterpunch
Clearly, what Israel wants a Palestine without the Palestinians, and in the last six months they have done everything in their power to achieve just that. Now that the goal is within their grasp, they will do anything –even jeopardize relations with their most important ally– to reach their objective. That is why on Wednesday “Netanyahu said that Israel “had no choice” but to move into Rafah as the country’s “very existence is on the line.” In truth, Israel is in no danger at all, Netanyahu is merely trying to conceal the real aim of Israel’s ground offensive which is to exile over a million Palestinians into Egypt. According to a report in CNN:
Netanyahu had earlier told the delegation that displaced Palestinians in Gaza could “just move” out of Rafah and “move with their tents.”
“Move with their tents”?
So, now, Netanyahu is admitting what his critics have been saying from the very beginning, that Israel’s military onslaught is actually an ethnic cleansing operation aimed at pushing the Palestinians out of Gaza and into tent cities in the Sinai Desert?
It appears so, and it also looks like Egypt is going along with the plan. According to the Guardian:
Egypt has begun building an enclosed area ringed with high concrete walls along its border with Gaza that appears intended to house Palestinians fleeing a threatened Israeli assault on the southern city of Rafah.
Photos and videos released by the Sinai Foundation for Human Rights (SFHR), a monitoring group, show workers using heavy machinery erecting concrete barriers and security towers around a strip of land on the Egyptian side of the Rafah crossing….
Everything from the clearing of land in the Sinai desert to the issuance of humongous loans to Egypt, to the secret meetings of Intel chiefs in Doha (CIA, Mossad, Egypt’s General Intelligence) to the blustery pronouncements of Israeli officials, to the frenetic leapfrogging of Anthony Blinken from Jedda to Jerusalem to Doha to Cairo and back again, suggests that we are about to begin the final phase of Israel’s malignant ethnic cleansing operation. Here’s how Johnathan Adler at the Carnegie Endowment summed it up:
….. it is becoming increasingly clear that the war is in pursuit of a second goal: the mass expulsion of Palestinians from the Gaza Strip. Israeli politicians and officials from the Israeli defense establishment have called for a second Nakba and urged the military to flatten Gaza. Some suggest that Palestinians should flee Gaza through the Rafah border crossing with Egypt and seek refuge in the Sinai Peninsula, including former Brigadier General Amir Avivi and the former Israeli ambassador to the United States Danny Ayalon.
Avivi and Ayalon insist that evacuating Palestinians out of Gaza is simply a humanitarian measure, protecting civilians while Israel conducts its military operations. But other reports suggest that Palestinians would be permanently resettled outside of Gaza, in an act of ethnic cleansing….
Today’s plans for mass transfer thus bear a closer historical resemblance to the 1948 Nakba and its aftermath. After 200,000 Palestinian refugees had fled from historic Palestine to Gaza by March 1949, the United States pushed for a UN proposal to resettle tens of thousands in the Sinai desert….
Over the past few weeks, Egyptian President Abdel Fattah El-Sisi has resisted Israeli and American pressure to allow Palestinians to evacuate through Rafah into the Sinai… But in exchange for accepting Palestinians from Gaza, the US has reportedly offered Cairo economic incentives at a time when Egypt faces an extreme debt crisis…. South into the Sinai: Will Israel Force Palestinians Out of Gaza?, Carnegie Endowment
In all probability, there’s nothing that can be done to prevent Israel’s flattening of Rafah or the inevitable eviction of the Palestinians from their last refuge. The only hope is that the international community will condemn Israel’s illegal occupation of Gaza by imposing painful economic, political and military sanctions that will last until the land is returned to its rightful owners. That is not sufficient restitution for the death and suffering the Palestinians have endured over the last half century, but it’s a step in the right direction.
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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).
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As a cardiologist, my two greatest fears concerning COVID-19 vaccine myocarditis are: 1) sudden cardiac death, 2) permanent damage to the heart resulting in scar.
The reason why scar is important is because it puts the patient at risk for two late complications: 1) malignant arrhythmias and cardiac arrest, 2) development of dilated cardiomyopathy and heart failure.
In clinical practice I have observed a few patients with small areas of damage (<15% of the left ventricle with late gadolinium enhancement) return to normal on follow-up cardiac MRI. However I remain concerned about patients with larger areas of damage.
Warren and colleagues studied patients with COVID-19 vaccine myocarditis with serial MRI data and the following abstract results:
“Sixty-seven patients with C-VAM (mean age 30 ± 13 years, 72% male) underwent CMR evaluation. Median time from vaccination to CMR was 548 (range 398-603) days. Twenty patients (30%) had persistent LGE, most frequently found in the basal inferolateral segment (n = 11). At diagnosis, nine patients (13%) were classified as definite and 58 (87%) as probable myocarditis. With integration of CMR LGE data, 16 patients (28%) were reclassified from probable to definite myocarditis. Persistent LGE on CMR occurs in one third of patients with C-VAM. Without CMR at diagnosis, almost one third of patients are misclassified as probable rather than definite myocarditis.”
However, it was Table 3 that caught my eye—particularly those with baseline and follow up MRI scans completed out to 556 days.
Apparently 47% of this small sample had persistently abnormal MRI scans far more than a year after the initial diagnosis of vaccine damage. These patients may have permanently scarred hearts by COVID-19 vaccination and could have a lifetime of worry about severe outcomes years into the future.
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Featured image is from Mercola
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
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).
To receive Global Research’s Daily Newsletter (selected articles), click here.
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16 Lebanese have died from Israeli airstrikes on the south of Lebanon since March 27. The first strike was on Hebbarieh, where seven young paramedic volunteers died, in the second attack five died at Tair Harfa, of which three were Hezbollah paramedics, and then an attack on Naqoura killed four, of which two were paramedics from the Amal Movement.
Seven young medical volunteers were killed in an Israeli airstrike on Hebbarieh. The Islamic Emergency and Relief Corps operate a medical center in the Sunni village of 2,000 inhabitants which has never before been targeted by Israel. There had been ten persons earlier at the center, and after some left, the center was hit in a massive airstrike that residents recalled as being similar to an earthquake. The volunteer medical crew were all young, with the oldest of the dead just 25 yrs.
The center was run by the Jamaa Islamiya (Islamic Group), a Sunni Muslim group affiliated with the Muslim Brotherhood which had been established as a Lebanese political party over 50 years ago.
Sheikh Mohammed Takkoush, the Secretary-General of the Islamic Group, said coordination with Hezbollah, the Shiite resistance organization, is vital to fight Israel.
The Muslim Brotherhood is a global organization with a very heavy presence in America and Great Britain. US President Barak Obama was particularly closely affiliated with the Muslim Brotherhood and elevated the group to an ally status when he used their armed fighters as foot-soldiers in his project to overthrow the Syrian government.
Senator Ted Cruz of Texas has brought forward several legislative bills aimed at outlawing the Muslim Brotherhood in the US, but he has not had support from the US Congress.
Usually, Israel strikes Hezbollah and Shiite targets in Lebanon, but this marks a first for Hebbarieh. The village elder reported at least ten houses had been destroyed in the attack, along with numerous cars which were burnt.
The south of Lebanon is home to Christians, Sunnis, Druze and Shiites. During the Israeli occupation of Lebanon, 1985-2000, all the various religious communities suffered equally under the brutal Israeli military regime, which saw even women and children imprisoned at al-Haim prison. After the Israelis left in 2000, the prison was opened as a museum and memorial to the torture and suffering the Lebanese endured for decades. In the summer 2006 Israeli war on Lebanon, the prison was completely destroyed by Israeli airstrikes in an effort to erase the evidence of crimes against humanity committed there.
Hezbollah released a statement condemning Israel’s heinous criminal aggression, and pointed out that the center targeted was a medical center serving families in the village.
Other health centers in the south are operated by Hezbollah’s Islamic Health Society, and the Amal Movement’s Risala Scouts, whose medical teams have carried out the majority of rescue missions since the war broke out in southern Lebanon in October.
Progressive Socialist Party (PSP), and Druze leader Walid Jumblatt, condemned the Israeli airstrike on the medical volunteers in Hebbarieh calling it a heinous crime. Jumblatt called the attack a massacre that goes against all international laws, and called for an urgent complaint to the UN Security Council. Jumblatt is well known for his close relationship with America.
Wael Abou Faour, Member of Parliament representing the PSP, described the attack as a “mass crime” against humanitarian workers.
The Amal Movement referred to it as a massacre, and a war crime committed by Israel. The movement also said that the international community could no longer remain silent or turn a blind eye to what the Israeli war machine is committing in Palestine and Lebanon, considering these acts to be tantamount to crimes against humanity.
Nabieh Berri, the leader of the Amal Movement, and has held the office of Speaker of the Parliament for decades. He is an American citizen of Lebanese birth, having lived in the US previously. His movement is allied strategically with Hezbollah, which is also a political party which won through open elections seats in the Lebanese Parliament.
The American media paints Lebanon as a country under the domination of an armed group, Hezbollah. However, Lebanon is home to many resistance groups, who may be from different religions, or political parties, but all hold the same passionate view towards Israel: that the occupation of Palestine must end, and Israel must end the occupation of Lebanese territory in Shebaa Farms. The armed resistance to occupation is guaranteed to all peoples by the Geneva convention.
Tair Harfa Attack
Israel bombed Tair Harfa after sunset on March 27, killing five, three of whom were Islamic Health Society paramedics. The president of the Tair Harfa municipal council, Qassem Haidar, said that the Israeli airstrike targeted a house in the village, completely destroying it.
Naqoura Massacre
Naqoura is a small city in southern Lebanon. Since March 23, 1978, the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL) has been headquartered in Naqoura.
Israel bombed Naqoura shortly after the Tair Harfa attack. Two paramedics from the Risala Scouts were killed along with three others at a café as they were about to break their fast in the Holy month of Ramadan.
The Amal Movement announced the death of two of its members: Ali Ahmad Mahdi, and first responder Hussein Ahmad Hojeir. Both men were from Naqoura and were killed in the Israeli attack.
Nearly 240 Hezbollah resistance fighters and about 40 civilians have died in Lebanon, while the cross-border exchanges of fire have killed nine civilians and 11 soldiers in Israel.
Israeli strikes on southern Lebanon had already killed more than half a dozen medical personnel and rescue workers, according to Lebanon’s health ministry.
Other Israeli Strikes on Lebanon
Israeli artillery shelling targeted the outskirts of the town of Mais al-Jabal and shelled the town of Blida in the Marjayoun district.
Heavy Israeli artillery fire targeted the outskirts of Adaisseh, with two Israeli artillery shells falling east of the village of Taybeh, and the Israeli army fired with machine guns at residential neighborhoods in the village of Kfar Kila and the outskirts of Odaisseh, also an Israeli drone fired a missile on a House in Dhaira, Sour district, but the explosive failed to detonate.
Hezbollah Strikes Back
In response to the recent deadly attacks on southern Lebanon, Hezbollah fired dozens of rockets at the northern Israeli city of Kiryat Shmona and the military base of the Israeli 769th Brigade in the Kiryat Shmona barracks, which killed one person.
Hezbollah also said they fired on surveillance equipment at the Israeli site of Miskav Am, opposite the Lebanese village of Adaisseh.
More than 32,000 people have been killed in Gaza and 74,000 wounded, women and children make up two-thirds of the dead. Hezbollah, and many other resistance groups, are standing in solidarity with the suffering Palestinian people.
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Soldiers in uniforms round up civilians at gunpoint. They separate the men from the women and children. The men are stripped naked and blindfolded, then taken into a room by the soldiers, gunshots are heard, and finally only the soldiers emerge from the room. The scene, panic, terror and brutality remind us of the Nazi abuse of Jews in the holocaust. But, this time it is the Jews who are killing and abusing, having learned nothing of humanity from their past suffering.
The Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) entered Al Shifa Hospital in northern Gaza city on March 18 and have claimed to have made 500 arrests. Doctors and nurses are made to be guides to the 500 IDF invading soldiers as they search the hospital and torture their victims. Patients, their families and medical staff have been forced to stand outside the hospital as human shields, protecting the IDF from resistance to the occupation of the hospital, while 250 people have been killed by the IDF since entering the hospital.
Although most of those arrested were males, in some cases they did arrest mothers and their children. When the women and children became unnecessary to the IDF goals, they forced them to walk long distances to the south without and water or food for days. When they finally arrived in the south, some were near death from dehydration and the children starving.
Al Shifa is the largest medical complex in Gaza. It began as a British Army barracks, and over the decades of use as a hospital, areas were added on and in the 1980’s Israel constructed underground bunkers which included a tunnel system.
The hospital was first attacked and raided on November 15, 2023, with the UN, WHO and other humanitarian organizations condemning the attack which caused the deaths of patients and premature babies. The IDF claimed the Al Shifa hospital was being used by Hamas as a command center, and pointed to the Israeli built tunnels under the hospital as having supported Hamas and its resistance fighters. Despite the IDF’s incessant accusation, the Washington Post and Amnesty International both said there was no credible evidence to support the IDF’s claim.
Since then, the hospital has been under intermittent attack by the IDF, culminating in the recent invasion and occupation of the hospital which has resulted in mass arrests, executions, sexual abuse, humiliation of innocent civilians, deprivation of both water and food, and the attack on civilian homes near the hospital.
The IDF goal was to justify their claim that Al Shifa served as a Hamas asset. If they couldn’t find the evidence they needed, they could manufacture the proof they sought. The IDF needed to arrest hundreds of men and claim they were Hamas resistance fighters, or their allies. The hospital was sheltering 30,000 people, and many were men accompanied by their families. But, the IDF needed more men, so they began attacking the homes surrounding the hospital, and then invading the homes and removing the males found to add to their list of fighters they were creating
One family in a nearby house hunkered down and tried to survive by hiding in a small room, while the father of the large family would crawl to the kitchen to find anything to feed his children. Then the house began to fall apart after days of shelling, which allowed the IDF to invade the home and remove the man, blindfolded and naked. This was repeated among the neighborhood.
Gaza is a conservative society, and men and women wear clothes to cover themselves up as a sign of respect of themselves, their family and their society. Whereas in the West, going shirtless and in very short shorts might be acceptable, in Gaza it is not. The IDF stripped arrested men to their under pants alone and sent them to the neighboring houses near Al Shifa to warn residents they had 30 minutes to evacuate or die in the bombing.
The eye witness accounts are coming out of Gaza about severe sexual abuse by the IDF. Females have reported being raped by IDF soldiers in a gang rape scene, as well as alone in front of their fathers, brothers or husband. In the religious and conservative society of Gaza, these crimes will be hushed up, swept under the rug, in an effort by male members of the family to preserve the honor and dignity of the victim. However, this leaves the victim to deal with the trauma of sexual abuse alone, and without a support system that gets the facts into the light of day. The abuse and trauma are magnified because she can’t talk about it. But, many women and girls are defying the taboos and telling their story to humanitarian workers.
There are no foreign journalists in Gaza. The one and only foreign journalist who was granted a Visa to go inside Gaza by the Israelis was CNN’s Clarissa Ward, and she was only allowed several hours in December. Despite the bombardment and siege of Gaza, emails, Facebook messages and Whatsapp messages and videos continue to emerge from the battle zone.
Al Shifa hospital’s current nightmare is but one of many healthcare service providers in Gaza who have been under siege. Food and medicine had been going into Gaza in a slow trickle, but now the doors are shut and sealed. Israel refuses to allow any UN trucks into Gaza after they claimed the UNRWA is in a conspiracy with Hamas. Other humanitarian aid groups say their aid is also prevented from entering Gaza.
More than 32,200 Palestinians have since been killed and over 74,500 injured amid mass destruction and shortages of necessities.
The international community agrees that only a ceasefire along with massive aid distribution can save Gaza from genocide and starvation. Yesterday, the UN Security Council passed a non-binding resolution calling for a ceasefire for the remainder of the month of Ramadan. But, will Israel comply? The International Court of Justice gave Israel an instruction to improve the humanitarian aid into Gaza or face an ultimate ruling by the court of genocide. However, Israel until now has completely disregarded the court’s urging.
In the end, only US President joe Biden holds the keys to turning off the IDF war machine in Gaza. Only Biden has the power to cut off the weapons flow to Israel. But, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has stood firm on his promise to invade Rafah, whether it causes mass deaths beyond comprehension, or not. Will Netanyahu enter Rafah in defiance of Biden and the UN? If he does, will Biden turn on the red-light?
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Rarely has the International Court of Justice been so constantly exercised by one topic during a short span of time. On January 26, the World Court, considering a filing made the previous December by South Africa, accepted Pretoria’s argument that the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide was applicable to the conflict in so far as Israel was bound to observe it in its military operations against Hamas in Gaza. (The judges will determine, in due course, whether Israel’s actions in Gaza meet the genocidal threshold.) By 15-2, the judges noted that “the catastrophic humanitarian situation in the Gaza Strip is at serious risk of deteriorating further before the Court renders its final judgment.”
At that point 26,000 Palestinians had perished, much of Gaza pummelled into oblivion, and 85% of its 2.3 million residents expelled from their homes. Measures were therefore required to prevent “real and imminent risk that irreparable prejudice will be caused to the rights found by the Court to be plausible, before it gives its final decision.”
Israel was duly ordered to take all possible measures to prevent the commission of acts under Article II of the Genocide Convention; prevent and punish “the direct and public incitement to genocide” against the Gaza populace; permit basic services and humanitarian assistance to the Gaza Strip; ensure the preservation of, and prevent destruction of, evidence related to acts committed against Gaza’s Palestinians within Articles II and III of the Convention; and report to the ICJ on how Israel was abiding by such provisional measures within a month. The balance sheet on that score has been uneven at best.
Since then, the slaughter has continued, with the Palestinian death toll now standing at 32,300. The Israelis have refused to open more land crossings into Gaza, and continue to hamper aid going into the strip, even as they accuse aid agencies and providers of being tardy and dishonest. Their surly defiance of the United States has seen air drops of uneven, negligible success (the use of air to deliver aid has always been a perilous exercise). When executed, these have even been lethal to the unsuspecting recipients, with reported cases of parachutes failing to open.
On March 25, the UN Security Council, after three previous failed attempts, passed Resolution 2728, thereby calling for an immediate ceasefire for the month of Ramadan “leading to a lasting sustainable” halt to hostilities, the “immediate and unconditional release of all hostages”, “ensuring humanitarian access to address their medical and other humanitarian needs” and “demands that the parties comply with their obligations under international law in relation to all persons they detain”.
Emphasis was also placed on “the urgent need to expand the flow of humanitarian assistance to and reinforce the protection of civilians in the entire Gaza Strip”. The resolution further demands that all barriers regarding the provision of humanitarian assistance, in accordance with international humanitarian law be lifted.
Since January, South Africa has been relentless in its efforts to curb Israel’s Gaza enterprise in The Hague. It called upon the ICJ on February 14, referring to “the developing circumstances in Rafah”, to urgently exercise powers under Article 75 of the Rules of Court. Israel responded on February 15. The next day, the ICJ’s Registrar transmitted to the parties the view of the Court that the “perilous situation” in the Gaza Strip, but notably in Rafah, “demands immediate and effective implementation of the provisional measures indicated by the Court in its Order of 26 January 2024”.
Throughout the following month, more legal jostling and communication took place, with Pretoria requesting on March 6 that the ICJ “indicate further provisional measures and/or to modify” those ordered on January 26. The application was prompted by the “horrific deaths from starvation of Palestinian children, including babies, brought about by Israel’s deliberate acts and omissions … including Israel’s concerted attempts since 26 January 2024 to ensure the defunding of [the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) and Israel’s attacks on starving Palestinians seeking to access what extremely limited humanitarian assistance Israel permits into Northern Gaza, in particular”.
Israel responded on March 15 to the South African communication, rejecting the claims of starvation arising from deliberate acts and omissions “in the strongest terms”. The logic of the sketchy rebuttal from Israel was that matters had not materially altered since January 26 to warrant a reconsideration: “the difficult and tragic situation in the Gaza Strip in the last weeks could not be said to materially change the considerations upon which the Court based its original decision concerning provisional measures.”
On March 28, the Court issued a unanimous order modifying the January interim order. Combing through the ghoulish evidence, the judges noted an updated report from March 18 on food insecurity from the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification Global Initiative (IPC Global Initiative) stating that “conditions necessary to prevent Famine have not been met and the latest evidence confirms that Famine is imminent in the northern governorates and projected to occur anytime between mid-March and May 2024.” The UN Children’s Fund had also reported that 31 per cent of children under 2 years of age in the northern Gaza Strip were enduring conditions of “acute malnutrition”.
In the face of this Himalaya of devastation, the Court could only observe “that Palestinians in Gaza are no longer facing a risk of famine, as noted in the Order of 26 January 2024, but that famine is setting in, with at least 31 people, including 27 children, having already died of malnutrition and dehydration”. There were “unprecedented levels of food insecurity experienced by Palestinians in the Gaza strip over recent weeks, as well as the increasing risks of epidemics.”
Such “grave” conditions granted the Court jurisdiction to modify the January 26 order which no longer fully addressed “the consequences arising from the changes in the situation”. In view of the “worsening conditions of life faced by Palestinians in Gaza, in particular the spread of famine and starvation”, Israel should take “all necessary and effective measures to ensure, without delay, in full cooperation with the United Nations, the unhindered provision at scale by all concerned of urgently needed basic services and humanitarian assistance”.
The list of what is needed is also enumerated: food, water, electricity, fuel, shelter, clothing, hygiene, sanitation requirements, and “medical supplies and medical care to Palestinians throughout Gaza, including by increasing the capacity and number of land crossing points and maintaining them open for as long as necessary”.
A less reported aspect of the March 28 order, passed by fifteen votes to one, was that Israel’s military refrain from committing “acts which constitute a violation of any rights of the Palestinians in Gaza as a protected group” under the Genocide Convention “including by preventing, through any action, the delivery of urgently needed humanitarian assistance.”
In this, the Court points to the possible, and increasingly plausible nexus, between starvation, famine and deprivation of necessaries as state policies with the intent to injure and kill members of a protected group. It is no doubt something that will weigh heavily on the minds of the judges as they continue mulling over the nature of the war in Gaza, which South Africa continues to insist is genocidal in scope and nature.
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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]
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Two legal cases posing globe-spanning threats to our most basic freedoms unfolded separately in Britain and the Netherlands this week. Neither received more than perfunctory coverage in western establishment media like the BBC.
One was the last-ditch appeal of Wikileaks founder Julian Assange in London against efforts by the United States to extradite him so he can be locked away for the rest of his life.
Assange’s crime, according to the Biden administration, is that he published leaks exposing the systematic war crimes signed off on by the US and British establishments in Iraq and Afghanistan. The British government, perhaps not surprisingly, has assented to his extradition.
The other case was heard by the International Court of Justice (ICJ) in The Hague. Weeks after the World Court judges deemed it plausible that Israel was carrying out genocide against Palestinians in Gaza, the US client state was back in the dock on a separate matter.
The judges have been asked by the United Nations General Assembly to provide an advisory opinion on whether Israel’s now-permanent occupation and colonisation of the Palestinian territories amounts to an illegal annexation of territory where it has established an apartheid regime.
Separately, Israel also has to report back on whether it has adhered to the court’s earlier ruling that it cease activities that might amount to genocide.
While the cases of Assange and Israel might appear to share little in common, they are, in fact, intimately connected – and in ways that have underscored the degree to which the West’s so-called “rules-based order” is being exposed as a hollow sham.
Media Silence
One telling similarity is the limited media coverage each case has attracted despite the gravity of what is at stake. The BBC’s main evening news dedicated mere seconds to the first day of the Assange hearing, and near the end of its running order.
If the US gets its way, the courts would effectively hand the White House the power to seize any publisher who shines a light on US state crimes, and then disappear them into its draconian incarceration system.
The purpose of reclassifying investigative journalism as espionage is to further chill critical reporting and free speech. Any journalist contemplating taking on the US national security state would remember Assange’s cruel fate.
But in truth, much of the establishment media appears to need no such threats, as confirmed by the many years of obedient, near-non-existent reporting on Assange’s mistreatment by British and US authorities.
Meanwhile, if The Hague rules in its favour, Israel would be emboldened to accelerate its theft and colonisation of Palestinian land. The ethnic cleansing and oppression of Palestinians would deepen, with the risk that current regional tensions could further escalate into a wider war.
A win for Israel would rip up the legal framework written after the horrors of the Second World War and the Holocaust, stripping the weak and vulnerable of the protections supposed to be afforded to them by international humanitarian law. Conversely, it would signal to the strongest and most belligerent that they can do as they please.
The legal clock would be set back eight decades or more.
Stinging Hypocrisy
Yet strangely, both of these momentous cases – critical to the preservation of a modern liberal democratic order and the rule of law – have received barely a fraction of the interest and media attention dedicated to the death of Alexei Navalny, a critic of Russian President Vladimir Putin.
In flaunting their concerns about Navalny, the western media have once again echoed rather than tackled the all-too-obvious hypocrisies of western governments.
US President Joe Biden this week announced sanctions against Moscow for the targeting of the Russian political dissident. That is the very same Biden seeking, at the same time, to lock a dissident Australian journalist, Assange, out of sight for up to 175 years for bringing to light US war crimes.
For years, the western media have paraded their horror over Navalny’s treatment and various attempts on his life, which they always ascribe to the Kremlin. But there has been barely an eyebrow raised over reported discussions by the CIA in 2017 plotting potential ways to abduct and assassinate Assange.
Few have highlighted the fact that Assange has already suffered a stroke amid his persecution and the 15-year confinement imposed on him by US and UK authorities. He was too unwell to attend this week’s court hearings or even to watch the proceedings via a digital link from the court.
The former UN special rapporteur on torture, Nils Melzer, has long warned that Assange is being slowly “crushed” through isolation and psychological torture, with grave consequences for his health.
Assange’s lawyers warned the High Court in London this week that there was a serious danger the US would add more charges once Assange was extradited, including ones warranting the death penalty. This threat to the life of a western journalist fell under the media radar.
According to medical experts, and accepted by the first judge to hear the extradition case, Assange is in danger of committing suicide should he end up in the strict isolation of a US super-max prison.
The media’s tears for Navalny sting with their hypocrisy.
Blank Cheque
Another revealing similarity between the Assange and Israel cases is that both are in front of the courts only because Washington has dug in its heels and refused to resolve the legal issues, despite their deeply ominous implications.
Were the US to withdraw its extradition request, Assange could be set free immediately. The oppressive cloud hanging over the future of a free society, one that has the right and ability to hold its officials to account for wrongdoing, would instantly lift.
Basic freedoms, such as those enshrined in the First Amendment of the US Constitution, are being shredded only because a consensus reigns among the US political class – from Democrats to Republicans – to snuff out such rights.
Similarly, were the US to insist that the mass slaughter of children in Gaza stop – more than 12,000 have died so far – Israel’s guns would fall silent immediately.
Were it to demand that Israel bring to an end its occupation of the Palestinian territories and 17-year siege of Gaza, and were the US to take a genuinely even-handed approach to peace talks, the World Court could set aside its hearings against Israel. Its opinion would be superfluous.
Washington, whatever its protestations, has such power. It is the US and its allies supplying Israel with bombs and ammunition. It is the US and its allies providing the military aid and diplomatic cover that allows Israel to act as an attack dog in the oil-rich Middle East.
Israel’s intransigence, its hunger for others’ land, its dehumanisation of the Palestinian people, and its constant resort to military options would have to be abandoned, however unwillingly, were it not being written a blank cheque by the US.
Instead, the US cast a veto this week at the Security Council, blocking efforts to impose a ceasefire to end the genocide. The UK abstained.
Also this week, US officials told the World Court’s judges they should not call for Israel to end its occupation anytime soon. In Orwellian fashion, decades of violent oppression by Israel and the illegal settlement of Palestinian land were characterised by the US as “Israel’s very real security needs”.
Intimidation Campaign
The cases are connected in yet another way.
In the Assange case, the US demands an absolute global legal jurisdiction to hound critics, those who wish to pull away the veil of secrecy that shields western officials from accountability for their crimes.
It wishes to silence those who would expose its lies, deceptions and hypocrisies. It hopes to be able to disappear into its prison system those seeking to enforce the West’s self-professed commitment to a democratic order and lawful behaviour.
In parallel, and for similar reasons, Washington demands the opposite for itself and client states such as Israel. It insists on absolute global legal immunity, whatever they do.
Its veto at the Security Council is wielded to that effect, and so is its campaign of intimidation against judicial authorities who entertain the fanciful notion that the same international law used to rein in enemies might constrain Washington and its allies.
Israel’s legal team at the ICJ (Source: Al Jazeera)
When the ICJ’s sister court at The Hague, the International Criminal Court, sought to properly investigate the US for war crimes in Afghanistan, and Israel for atrocities in the occupied Palestinian territories, Washington went on a rampage.
It placed financial sanctions on leading figures of the ICC and blocked entry to its investigators so they could not carry out their duties. Israel has similarly barred a series of UN special rapporteurs from entering the occupied Palestinian territories to report on human rights abuses there.
Just as the persecution of Assange is meant to terrorise other journalists from considering holding US officials to account for their crimes, the bullying of the highest legal authorities on the planet is intended to send a clear message to national court systems. Certainly, that message appears to have been loudly received in London.
Information Void
Another connection is perhaps the most significant. Assange once observed: “Nearly every war that has started in the past 50 years has been a result of media lies.”
It is only because of a void of real information – whether omitted by journalists for fear of upsetting powerful actors, or shielded from view by those same powerful actors’ self-serving secrecy policies – that states can persuade their publics to get behind wars and violent resource grabs.
The only people to gain from these wars are a tiny, wealthy elite at the top of society. All too often it is ordinary people who pay the price: either with their lives or through damage to the parts of the economy on which the public depends.
The continuing proxy war in Ukraine – a Nato-funded and armed war with Russia, using Ukraine as the battlefield – is a perfect illustration. It is ordinary Ukrainians and Russians who are dying.
Despite the West spurring on the bloodshed, European economies have been wrecked and further deindustrialised, while as a direct result of the fighting, yet another surge in consumer prices has hit the most vulnerable.
But a few – including major energy corporations and arms manufacturers, as well as their shareholders – have reaped a large windfall from the war. It has been precisely the same game plan in Gaza.
It is the job of the media to connect the dots for western publics by serving as a watchdog on power. But once again, they have failed in this, their most important professional and moral duty. The villains have yet again gotten away with their crimes.
It is the war criminals and genocide enablers in Washington who are free, while Assange is locked up in a dungeon and the people of Gaza are slowly being starved to death.
Assange’s project was designed to reverse all that. It was about bringing the war criminals in western capitals to book through truth-telling and transparency. It was about pulling back the veil.
Were Assange free, and were the whistleblowers and people of conscience in the corridors of power emboldened rather than terrorised by his treatment, we might live in a society where our leaders dared not arm a genocide; and dared not conspire in the starvation of two million people.
This is why the fates of the people of Gaza and Julian Assange are so tightly sealed together.
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Do cell phones, Bluetooth devices, WiFi and other wireless tech cause cancer or is it just another “coincidence” that tin-foil hat conspiracy theorists are sharing on their smartphones?
Let me tell you about such a “coincidence” I witnessed firsthand…
Many years ago, I hired a young lady to help out around the apartment and in the office, as my wife was quite ill and I was already working seven days a week (still am, I guess). The new assistant came in six days a week for a few hours and completed a long list of items in record time. The whole time she’d be singing and was a joy to have around.
Until, after about six months, she began slowing down and making mistakes. I asked her what was up. She said she was having trouble getting to sleep and staying asleep at night.
I asked her a few questions about her sleeping arrangements. It turned out to be an EMF nightmare: she and her husband both slept in a small, loft room, upon a large futon on the floor with a tin roof above them. On either side of their bed, they each had their laptops and their smartphones active, recharging and certainly not in airplane mode. They also kept their WiFi blasting all night.
I suggested that maybe they should experiment and get all the tech out of their sleeping chamber and kill the WiFi at night.
She looked at me like I had suggested they move out to the wilderness and live in a cave.
I then told her about the $30 million, ten-year study the US Department of Health and Human Services conducted, exposing rats to 2G and 3G cellphone radiation. I believe the scientists were trying to prove that wireless tech was harmless.
Their experiment failed.
The study concluded
“there is clear evidence that male rats exposed to high levels of radio frequency radiation (RFR) like that used in 2G and 3G cell phones developed cancerous heart tumors, according to final reports released today. There was also some evidence of tumors in the brain and adrenal gland of exposed male rats.”
She told me that she wasn’t worried about that and Jesus would heal her if she got cancer.
Well, you can’t argue with faith. So I didn’t mention it again.
Fast forward a few months and she’d become quite sick — throwing up and having to lie down after an hour of work. She had to quit.
A week later, she emailed to let us know that she had cancer and was beginning chemotherapy. The doctors found one tumour on her heart (just like the rats in the study) and the other in her neck.
Coincidence? Sure. Just like getting vaccinated and dying suddenly is a coincidence.
There is a pile of studies, such as the above, showing that EMFs from wireless tech affect our physical and mental health. It’s not a tin-foil hat theory (in fact, wearing a tin-foil hat would turn your head into an EMF antenna).
Of course, Apple, Facebook and Samsung don’t want you to know that these addictive, can’t-sleep-without-them-by-my-side, money-making devices may be slowly killing you. And neither does the $176 billion a year cancer drug industry (vaccines only manage half that revenue at about $88 billion per year). By 2026, cancer drug sales are expected to almost double to $320.6 billion.
Chemotherapy ain’t cheap.
But the 2024 EMF Hazard Summit is. In fact, it’s free to attend.
Nick Pinault, the “EMF Guy,” has brought together 20 doctors, scientists and researchers — who aren’t being bribed by Big Tech or Big Pharma — to talk about the big dangers of EMF exposure and how to protect yourself (hint: don’t sleep with your cellphone and laptop recharging beside your bed).
Jesus didn’t save my assistant from cancer — just like he won’t save you from an oncoming train if you stand on the tracks. Instead, he counselled that we should “be as wise as serpents and harmless as doves.”
The online event begins April 11th, but you can wisely register now and get instant access to Nick Pineault’s free EMF guide (“6 Signs You Might be Electro-Sensitive”) here.
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John C. A. Manley is the author of Much Ado About Corona: A Dystopian Love Story , the forthcoming All The Humans Are Sleeping and other works of speculative fiction. You get free chapters from his novels by subscribing to his Blazing Pine Cone email newsletter.
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Here’s a live broadcast of the disaster area in Baltimore, Maryland.
“Can we take the idea that this [Baltimore bridge collapse] was a terrorist attack off the table … and absolutely we cannot do that,” President Trump’s former national security adviser (and retired lieutenant general) Michael Flynn told Alex Jones in an online interview.
REPORT: There were no vehicles traveling on the Francis Scott Key Bridge when it fell into the ocean thanks to heroic police officers who jumped into action.
It has now been confirmed that the only people on the bridge when it collapsed was a pothole repair crew.
Meanwhile, the White House and federal government agencies have been quick to declare this was not a terror attack.
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Update (1423ET):
Maritime job placement company BalticShipping shows the captain of the container ship is a Ukranian.
Update (1356ET):
Bloomberg Intelligence reports:
Reinsurers Could Bear Brunt of Baltimore Bridge Collapse Claims
The bulk of claims from the March 26 Baltimore bridge collapse will likely fall on reinsurers. The ship has about $3 billion of reinsurance coverage over a $100 million retention. Chubb is reported to be the lead insurer on the bridge’s property cover but might recover losses paid. We note it’s still early, and this will be a complex loss.
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Update (1229ET):
President Biden is expected to address the press at 1230 PM EST regarding the Francis Scott Key Bridge collapse at the Port of Baltimore. At 0130 AM EST, a container ship lost propulsion and collided with the 1.6-mile-long bridge, leading to an instant collapse.
The current issue revolves around an emerging disruption in mid-Atlantic supply chains. The major East Coast port is now paralyzed due to the mangled bridge blocking the only shipping lane in and out of the harbor.
Bloomberg reports that the US automotive supply chain will be disrupted. Data shows that Mazda Motor and Mercedes Benz, Subaru of America, Mitsubishi Motors of North America, and Volkswagen Group have the most exposure to the port.
Source: Bloomberg
“It’s a large port with a lot of flow through it, so it’s going to have an impact,” John Lawler, Ford Motor Co.’s chief financial officer, said Tuesday on Bloomberg TV.
Lawler continued, “We’ll work on the workarounds. We’ll have to divert parts to other ports along the East Coast or elsewhere in the country.”
Earlier, Consol Energy shares plunged nearly 10%, the most since October, as the bridge collapse will affect its massive coal terminal, which is served by CSX trains.
A major sugar refinery owned by American Sugar Refining Inc. warned its Domino Sugar refinery only has six to eight weeks of raw sugar supplies as the blockage affects ships moving in and out of the port.
Major cruise ship terminal
The supply chain snarls have sent major logistics companies scrambling across the US East Coast on Tuesday afternoon.
“Our first priority is engaging clients to make plans for containers that were originally routed to Baltimore that will be discharged at other ports on the Eastern Seaboard,” Paul Brashier, vice president of drayage and intermodal for ITS Logistics, told CNBC.
“These diverted volumes will impact the ports of New York/New Jersey, Norfolk and the Southeast and we have to prepare trucking and transload capacity to get that freight to its intended network,” Brashier said.
Goetz Alebrand, senior vice president and head of ocean freight for the Americas at DHL Global Forwarding, told CNBC:
“The immediate impact is with the cargo on board and its accessibility. Other planned shipments through Baltimore will likely be rerouted, potentially increasing cargo flow to New York, Norfolk, and nearby ports.
“Bulk and car carriers reliant on Baltimore must assess operations in the event of a prolonged closure.”
According to the shipping journal Lloyd’s List, Baltimore is the eleventh-largest port in the nation, making an average of 207 port calls per month.
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Update (1018ET):
An unclassified report from the DHS National Operations Center says the container ship “lost propulsion” before it rammed the Francis Scott Key Bridge.
Here’s a video of the incident:
Video seems to show repeated power losses on ship just before it destroyed Francis Scott Key Bridge.pic.twitter.com/REoGCL9zcu
Bloomberg’s Brendan Murray explains how the collapsed bridge blocking the only shipping lane in and out of the Port of Baltimore is about to spark a supply chain crisis across the Mid-Atlantic:
An economic disruption along the US East Coast is unfolding with potentially tragic human consequences after a container ship struck the Francis Scott Key Bridge in Baltimore, sending nearly the entire roadway structure crumbling into the water.
The immediate priority of the rescuers is finding people who may have been on the bridge either working or driving across. The ship, the Singapore-registered Dali, was operated by charter company Synergy Group and is time chartered by Maersk carrying Maersk customers’ cargo.
Of secondary concern in the days ahead will be tough questions about the effect on business, commuters, holiday travelers and the economy across the region.
The Port of Baltimore — the biggest handler of US imports and exports of cars and light trucks — looks to be out of commission indefinitely. The resulting bottleneck could accelerate a shift of goods through West Coast ports. Another crucial question: Which other ports have spare capacity to handle the Ro-Ro vessels that carry automobiles if Baltimore is closed for an extended period.
And it begins:
One very big logistical complication in the Baltimore bridge collapse is that the Francis Scott Key Bridge was the main route for hazardous materials (which aren't allowed to be transported through the tunnels) pic.twitter.com/dj2vR7OVdL
ABC News reports the Singapore-flagged “Dali” container ship “lost propulsion” as it left the Port of Baltimore just before it rammed the Francis Scott Key Bridge.
“The vessel notified MD Department of Transportation (MDOT) that they had lost control of the vessel and a collision with the bridge was possible,” ABC quoted the US Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency as saying, adding, “The vessel struck the bridge causing a complete collapse.”
Bloomberg’s Josh Wingrove says, “Authorities are heavily downplaying the risk of foul play here.”
Authorities are heavily downplaying the risk of foul play here.
"We don't see anything that relates to that at this time. It's an open investigation but there's nothing that points to that, " Wiedefeld said.
No indication as of now of "nefarious intent," per the White House.
BREAKING🚨: Mass Casualties. Ship collides with Francis Scott Key Bridge in Baltimore. This comes just days after the Crocus terror attack in Moscow which has been widely blamed on the West. pic.twitter.com/zgC4tO24wH
A massive container ship chartered by Maersk and moving outbound from the Port of Baltimore struck the Francis Scott Key Bridge around 0130 ET. The bridge collapse has paralyzed a large swath of the largest inland port on the East Coast. The port is ranked 9th for total dollar value of cargo and 13th for cargo tonnage among US ports.
Governor Wes Moore released a statement on the collapse, declaring a State of Emergency in Maryland:
“My office is in close communication with US Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg, Baltimore Mayor Brandon Scott, Baltimore County Executive Johnny Olszewski, and the Baltimore Fire Department as emergency personnel are on the scene following the collapse of the Francis Scott Key Bridge. I have declared a State of Emergency here in Maryland and we are working with an interagency team to quickly deploy federal resources from the Biden Administration. We are thankful for the brave men and women who are carrying out efforts to rescue those involved and pray for everyone’s safety. We will remain in close contact with federal, state, and local entities that are carrying out rescue efforts as we continue to assess and respond to this tragedy.”
Chief Kevin Cartwright, the Baltimore City Fire Department’s director of communications, told Fox Baltimore that at least 20 people and several vehicles had fallen into the river.
In markets, Maersk shares in Copenhagen are trading down more than 3% on the news.
Shocking radio transmission: “The entire Key Bridge is in the harbor.”
Radio traffic from the first arriving @BaltimoreFire unit.
“SOC5 to Battalion 6 and Communications, I’m at Fort Armistead, be advised the entire bridge, the entire Key Bridge is in the harbor.” pic.twitter.com/wTlPxLStRf
Shocking footage is coming from Baltimore City, home to one of the nation’s largest marine ports. It shows a container ship striking the 1.6-mile-long Francis Scott Key Bridge and collapsing it.
🚨#BREAKING: Mass Casualty has been Declared after a Large Container Ship Collides with Key Bridge Causing it completely Collapse⁰ 📌#Baltimore | #Maryland
Currently, numerous agencies, including the Coast Guard and fire department have just declared a mass casualty incident as… pic.twitter.com/wvOTOVbvHE
The Francis Scott Key Bridge in Baltimore, Maryland which crosses the Patapsco River has reportedly Collapsed within the last few minutes after being Struck by a Large Container Ship; a Mass Casualty Incident has been Declared with over a Dozen Cars and many Individuals said to… pic.twitter.com/SsPMU8Mjph
“This effectively shuts down the Port of Baltimore completely. I’m truly speechless,” one X user said.
Pictured: Francis Scott Key Bridge collapsed. This is the bridge I drive every single day. This effectively shuts down the Port of Baltimore completely. I’m truly speechless pic.twitter.com/BzqPa3axJ2
According to the ship tracking website MarineTraffic, the Singapore-flagged cargo ship “Dali” slammed into the Francis Scott Key Bridge around 0130 ET. Bloomberg notes the ship was chartered by Maersk (remember Maersk’s Ever Given in the Suez Canal a few years ago?).
The bridge spans the Patapsco River and carries an estimated 11.5 million vehicles annually. In this collapse, the only shipping lane in and out of the port was severed.
Baltimore is the most inland port on the East Coast and is connected to the I-95 highway network. With no commercial vessels sailing in and out of port anytime soon, this is catastrophic for port operations and could spark supply chain snarls in the Mid-Atlantic and Northeast. We suspect inbound vessels are rerouting sails this morning.
The bridge collapse has severed these major marine terminals. It’s unknown when operations will be restored.
According to the Maryland government’s website, the Port of Baltimore handled over 52 million tons of international cargo valued at more than $80 billion last year, ranking it as the ninth busiest port in the United States. The data shows that the port handled 847,158 autos and light trucks in 2023, the most of any US port. The port also handles farm and construction machinery, sugar, gypsum, and coal.
The port supports 15,330 direct jobs and 139,180 jobs in Maryland, according to the Maryland government’s website.
Baltimore Mayor Brandon Scott’s office posted on X:
“I’m aware of and en route to the incident at the Key Bridge. I have been in contact with Baltimore Fire Chief James Wallace, Gov. Wes Moore (and the county executives of Baltimore and Anne Arundel counties). Emergency personnel are on scene, and efforts are underway.”
Developing…
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All images in this article are from ZH unless otherwise stated
Os ataques ucranianos a Belgorod continuam a acontecer. O regime de Kiev intensifica cada vez mais a sua violência contra pessoas comuns nas fronteiras russas, atingindo alvos civis e matando cidadãos pacíficos. Nos meios de comunicação ocidentais, a responsabilidade pelos ataques é normalmente atribuída a supostos “grupos dissidentes russos”, mas, segundo fontes locais, esta informação é incorreta e destina-se a disfarçar o envolvimento direto da inteligência ucraniana nos ataques.
No dia 14 de março, fui a Belgorod durante uma expedição de imprensa da Associação de Jornalistas do BRICS. A intenção da viagem era investigar os ataques ucranianos na região durante o dia anterior ao início do processo eleitoral na Federação Russa. Cobrimos a situação local e relatamos vários bombardeios contra áreas civis. Porém, além de mostrar a realidade sobre os ataques ucranianos, também tivemos a oportunidade de obter algumas informações interessantes sobre os verdadeiros responsáveis pelos crimes cometidos em Belgorod.
Durante o meu trabalho no terreno, falei com vários militares locais e ouvi alguns detalhes interessantes sobre estes ataques. Afirmam que, ao contrário do que afirma a comunicação social ocidental, estes ataques não são levados a cabo por cidadãos russos expatriados, mas por profissionais ucranianos, apesar de os assassinos se descreverem publicamente como “guerrilheiros russos”.
Os militares de Belgorod dizem que o chamado “Corpo de Voluntários Russos” (RDK, na sigla em russo) e a “Legião Russa da Liberdade” são, na verdade, organizações falsas. Os seus supostos “líderes” são, na verdade, cidadãos russos expatriados, que trabalham como propagandistas do regime de Kiev. No entanto, o pessoal destas organizações, segundo fontes, não é na verdade composto por soldados russos, mas por comandos ucranianos. Com isto, seria possível cumprir o objetivo de propagandear a alegada existência de uma “forte oposição” dentro da Federação Russa. Afirmam que tais grupos estão diretamente subordinados à inteligência militar de Kiev, não tendo autonomia nas suas ações.
Os militares afirmam que não há provas de qualquer migração significativa de “dissidentes russos” para território ucraniano desde o início da operação militar especial. Seria necessário um grande número de expatriados para criar milícias armadas suficientemente fortes para realizar ataques contra Belgorod – ainda mais depois de as forças russas terem eliminado vários dos invasores, impondo baixas consideráveis aos grupos. Apesar de terem perdido vários dos seus soldados, estas milícias continuam a atacar frequentemente a fronteira, o que mostra que têm a capacidade de substituir rapidamente o pessoal. É virtualmente impossível que todos estes soldados sejam dissidentes russos, o que indica que os ucranianos estão a lutar na região sob a bandeira dos “guerrilheiros russos”.
Na opinião pública ocidental, há um impacto propagandístico relevante com a história dos “guerrilheiros” russos que lutam na Ucrânia. Cria-se uma narrativa infundada para dizer que existe uma forte oposição interna ao governo de Putin, com muitos cidadãos russos dispostos até a lutar na guerra por Kiev. A mídia induz as pessoas comuns a acreditar que a operação militar especial não tem apoio popular, descrevendo-a como uma medida rejeitada a tal ponto que vários russos decidiram lutar contra o seu próprio país.
Tudo isso, porém, é uma falácia. Os resultados do processo eleitoral russo mostram como o atual governo é amplamente aprovado pelo povo. Além disso, o apoio à operação especial na Ucrânia é quase unânime na Rússia, como mostram várias sondagens de opinião. A única alternativa que resta ao Ocidente face a tal apoio ao governo e à operação é utilizar mecanismos de guerra psicológica e propaganda para distorcer a realidade. Fazer com que as pessoas comuns no Ocidente acreditem que a Rússia é uma “ditadura ilegítima” combatida por milícias “partidárias” é uma forma de promover a guerra, fazendo com que os contribuintes apoiem o envio de mais dinheiro e armas para Kiev.
A informação recolhida no terreno é vital para desmascarar a narrativa ocidental. Os militares locais, que lidam diariamente com o terror ucraniano e conhecem bem os seus inimigos, têm uma opinião que difere de tudo o que é dito pelos jornais ocidentais. No entanto, o bloqueio midiático imposto aos canais russos e pró-Rússia impede que esta informação relevante chegue à opinião pública ocidental, criando uma barreira de comunicação. Esta é a forma como o Ocidente tem espalhado mentiras sobre o conflito nos últimos dois anos.
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The US has supported Islamic terror before, ISIS, Al Qaeda, Al Nusra, and in Chechnya – yes, the US has even supported Islamic terror inside Russia in the Caucasus.
During the war in Bosnia-Herzegovina, the US flew Islamic terrorists into ex-Yugoslavia.
Already within 55 minutes of the Crocus terror attack, all US media in coordinationannounced that “Ukraine didn’t do it”. How could the US know before anyone else – unless Washington KNEW beforehand what was planned and happening.
Already before 8 March 2024, the US embassy in Russia warned Americans in Moscow against terror at “concerts.” The US clearly had knowledge, but yet the US withheld from Russia concrete information which Russia could act on.
The terror suspects are not the usual jihadists – they were doing it for money, and they fled the scene, not wanting to die as “martyrs”.
An image alleging to be the perpetrators before the attack was clearly made-up by westerners.
Faces were blurred, not usual for ISIS. And the “fighters” raised their left hand, not the right hand which in Islam is the clean hand.
Ukraine (with US support) has committed several acts of severe terror inside Russia before.
Ukraine has for years shielded Jihadists and ISIS terrorist leaders – and given them Ukrainian passports with false identities. The CIA knew all the time. See this.
The suspects of the Crocus terror crime were heading towards Ukraine – where the Ukrainians had “opened a window” for their passage.
Ukraine’s security services are created, steered, monitored, and supported by the USA – in all details.
Based on the smoking trail linking the Crocus terror attack to Kiev and Washington, Russia is right now quickly digging into Ukrainian and US relations with Islamic terrorists.
In early March 2022, the BBC quoted Syria-based terrorist group Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) explicitly expressing solidarity with the Kiev regime. High-profile HTS member al-Shamali al-Hurr took to Telegram to cheer Ukrainian victories by sharing footage and graphic images of damaged Russian military hardware and dead soldiers. See this.
Even without a “smoking gun” proving US guilt, it is becoming more and more clear where this is going.
Russia is right now seeing criminal evidence and intelligence information piling up which all points to US-Ukrainian organization of the Crocus terror crime.
Devastating for the US in the World
One of my friends in international relations pointed out that it is pivotal whether Russia can deliver this perspective to the rest of the world. Russia will of course never be able to sell to the US and the West – Russia knows that, and Russia doesn’t care too much about that either.
China
But as Russia digs up the evidence, Russia will have enough of evidence and intelligence information to deliver this perspective to China. And China will know, that China can be the next target of US-organized “Islamic” terror at any time.
China will draw the consequences – not openly, but very, very effectively at the policy level. It will be extremely bad for the USA. China siding with Russia on this will already be a game-changer for Global Politics.
India
Russia is already getting top-attention among the broad Indian public to the perspective, that US-Ukraine were the real perpetrators, using “ISIS-K” as a front for their own act of terror against Russia. See these two popular videos from two big Indian news media on that issue.
The following is going out directly to 1.4 billion Indians:
This is completely devastating for the USA.
Russia will obviously present its evidence to top circles in Delhi – and top circles in Delhi will be sufficiently convinced to make some unannounced but big underlying changes as well. If it goes as I see it most likely, it will put an enormous road-block on how far India is willing to ever go with the USA.
Africa
Then you have Africa. I am not on doubt, that a lot of African states – if not outright the vast majority of them – will accept Russia’s narrative. After all, what Russia has suffered, Africa suffers all the time…
The US Going Down?
The US media – steered by the CIA and its think tanks – is already spinning its own net of lies and parallel realities.
With US participation in the Israeli genocide starving one million people in Gaza, and now US commitment of incredible terrorism, the majority of the world sees the US as a decrepit, failing, and Nihilistic violent entity.
The US is going down in the non-Western world – which is the majority in both numbers and power.
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Karsten Riise is a Master of Science (Econ) from Copenhagen Business School and has a university degree in Spanish Culture and Languages from Copenhagen University. He is the former Senior Vice President and Chief Financial Officer (CFO) of Mercedes-Benz in Denmark and Sweden.
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WE, participants of the International Conference held in Belgrade on March 22-24, 2024, on the occasion of marking the 25th anniversary of NATO’s armed aggression against the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia (Serbia and Montenegro) dedicated to the theme “From the Aggression to a New Just Order”, gathered from all over the world, hereby declare:
We belong to different countries, nations, ideologies, religions and civilizations, but stand firmly united in our commitment to peace, equality, and prosperity for all peoples, as well as in our condemnation of interventionism, expansion, domination, and hegemonism.
We firmly condemn the unprovoked armed aggression by NATO against the FRY (Serbia and Montenegro) in 1999 as an unlawful, invading and criminal war against a sovereign, peace-loving European country, waged devoid of a UN Security Council mandate, in blatant violation of the United Nations Charter, the OSCE Helsinki Final Act (1975) and the fundamental principles of international law.
We underline:
That the aggression was carried out under false pretexts and that therefore NATO’s responsibility cannot be diminished.
It was not state authorities but, instead NATO’s expansionism that actually threatened a ‘humanitarian disaster’. What happened in Rachak was not a ‘massacre of civilians’, but instead legitimate response of the state to terrorism.
The ‘Horseshoe Plan’ did not exist. ‘Humanitarian’ wars or interventions do not exist. Prevention of human suffering can hardly be prevented by depleted uranium, cluster bombs and by poisoning air, soil and water.
Back in 1999, NATO reintroduced the war on the European soil, ironically, a war that Europe waged on itself.
Image is licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0
It was neither a “little Kosovo war”, but rather a war of these geopolitical goals:
a) carving the Autonomous Province of Kosovo and Metohija out of Serbia and a full control over the Balkans;
b) deployment of the US troops in the Balkans for the purposes of the strategy of Eastward expansion;
c) creating a precedent for subsequent interventions conducted in violation of international law and of the inviolability of the UN Security Council;
d) justifying the existence of NATO and its acting beyond the area defined in its Founding Act of 1949.
“Wherever the law presented obstacle to the policy of expansion, it must be removed” – was yet another NATO new rule.
The NATO aggression embodied the undoing of the legal order of peace and security in Europe and the world, established on the outcome of the Second World War.
Today, the Balkans is more unstable, Europe militarized on dangerous tracks, without autonomy, identity and vision.
The aggression took lives of 1,139 soldiers and police officers, about 3,000 civilians also including 89 children, while some 10,000 people were wounded. However, the consequences of prolonged effects of weapons filled with depleted uranium and toxic compounds are by far greater.
NATO, also, bombed the Embassy of the PR of China, in Belgrade, killing three Chinese journalists and destroying the building of the Chinese Embassy.
We pay our highest respect to all the fallen innocent people and express our deepest, sincere condolences to their families.
The aggressor had been systematically destroying or badly damaging civilian infrastructure, such as railways, roads, bridges, airports, energy system, as well as apartment buildings, industrial facilities, schools, hospitals, kindergartens, and many more objects. Over thirty radio and TV stations and transmitters had been bombed including the national public TV RTS killing 16 professional employees on duty. The direct damage totals some USD 100 billion.
We emphasize that NATO and its member states, participants in the illegal act of aggression, are obliged to compensate Serbia for the war damage they have inflicted.
We appeal that special state and expert bodies, tasked with determining the consequences of aggression on the health of people and the environment, resume their work, and that the war crimes against civilians and crimes of non-compliance with the war-related conventions be prosecuted and sanctioned.
We express our strong support and solidarity with Serbia’s efforts to mitigate the consequences of the aggression and her endeavoring to prevent the continuation of NATO’s armed aggression by other means.
We express our full support to the sovereignty and territorial integrity of Serbia in her internationally recognized borders within which she continued her membership in the UN, the OSCE, and other universal international organizations.
We are deeply concerned about the mass-scale violation of the basic human rights of the Serbian community in Kosovo and Metohija embodied in continuation of their systematic expulsion from, and in preventing the free and safe return of over 250,000 expelled Serbs and other non-Albanians to, their homes and property.
We firmly believe that the future status of the Province of Kosovo and Metohija may be resolved only in accordance with international law and, in particular, with UN Security Council Resolution 1244 of June 10, 1999, which is lasting, legally binding document. We demand that all provisions of the UNSC resolution 1244 be fully respected and implemented.
We condemn each and all violations of that Resolution and the policy of blackmail and pressuring, and all one-sided steps aimed at legalizing the seizure of state territory and completing the ethnic cleansing of the remaining Serbian population, in preparation to create the so-called Greater Albania.
We oppose the unipolar world order based on the strategy of hegemonism and global domination with NATO as its military feast. The aggression against the FRY in 1999 was speeding up of the strategy of expansion to the East, and a source of danger to peace in Europe and the world. At the time of the aggression, NATO had 19 members, and today counts 32. After the erection of US military base Camp Bondsteel in Kosovo and Metohija, there followed dozens of new NATO bases. Presently, Europe hosts a far larger number of foreign military bases and stockpiles of nuclear weapons than it did during the bipolar world and the Cold War era.
We express our deepest concern about the accelerated escalation of hostilities and conflicts in global relations that add fuel to the fire of conflict, continued provocations, and the looming danger of a global conflict. The world sits on the brink of the abyss. Humanity will either restrain the rampant aggressiveness of the alienated power centers, or fall into that abyss.
This makes us stand unified in the demand for an immediate beginning of the dialogue at the strategic level, under the auspices of the UN, aimed at putting to a halt the escalation, the accumulation of conventional and nuclear weapons, and the breaching of international agreements.
We demand the closure of foreign military camps, the complete withdrawal from Europe of the US tactical nuclear weapons and installations of the so-called anti-missile defenses that make security more volatile.
We call for an end to war-mongering rhetoric, and invite all responsible statesmen to resort to dialogue and to finding peaceful, just and sustainable solutions to the ongoing conflicts and crises.
We appeal to all peace-loving forces in the world to join forces in the struggle for the observance of international law, sovereignty and territorial integrity of all countries, reinforcing the authority and role of the United Nations and other universal international organizations, the observance of principles of equality, sovereignty and territorial integrity, and for cooperation and coordination in the fight against terrorism and separatism as global threats.
We support the process of multi-polarization of global relations and their democratization on the basis of the sovereign equality of all states and peoples.
We support the peace, security and development initiatives that are based on the principle of mutual indivisibility of peace, security and development, and that take note of the root causes of problems. The key roles in that process play BRICS, EAEU, Global Initiative “Belt and Road”, Shanghai Cooperation Organization, NAM. We support the abolition of all monopolies, privileges based on ‘exceptionalism’. We refuse unilateral sanctions, erection of new ‘walls’ or divisions. Attempt to divide the world into ‘democracies’ and ‘autocracies’ is a trickery of the power-centers designed to extend the life of the unipolar world order.
The policy of confrontation, interventionism, and interference in internal affairs, backed by the military-industrial complex and large financial capital, must give way to dialogue, partnership, respect for fundamental norms of international law and the multi-polar world order.
Peace, stability, democracy and inclusive development require radical changes in present global relations, observance of sovereign equality, non-interference in the internal affairs of other countries, multilateralism, respect of common interests, and exclusion of any egoism, protectionism and privileges of the past.
The biggest obstacle to the world order of sovereign equal nations is the relics of the Cold War. That is why NATO should be dissolved and the doctrine of hegemonism, expansionism and neo-colonialism consigned to history.
We condemn the mass-scale killing of the innocent Palestinian people, in particular of children, and call for an immediate ceasefire in the Gaza Strip and other areas inhabited by the Palestinian people, in order to finally stop this human suffering unprecedented in recent history, and for unhindered delivery of food, medicines, water, and other necessities of life to the vulnerable population.
We support a two-state solution, the free and safe return of all expelled persons, the abolition of the occupation and the establishment of a Palestinian state within the pre-June 4, 1967 borders, with East Jerusalem as the capital, all in accordance with the United Nations Resolutions.
We express our solidarity with the people of Cuba who have been suffering the devastating consequences of the unilateral US embargo for many years. The Cuban people have an inalienable right to choose the paths of internal development of their own, without external interference. We demand respect for the UN positions on the lifting of the US blockade of Cuba, and the removal of Cuba from the list of ‘states sponsoring terrorism’ because it was inserted without any bases.
We hold that the Ukrainian crisis is a corollary of NATO’s strategy of expansion to the East, under betrayal of all agreements of the otherwise.
We believe this crisis can be resolved peacefully, by acknowledging and removing the causes and by guaranteeing equal security for all countries. The common future of humanity excludes egotism and selfish approaches such as the ‘golden billion’ security thesis.
We express our acknowledgment and gratitude to our hosts – the Belgrade Forum for a World of Equals, the Club of Generals and Admirals of Serbia, SUBNOR of Serbia, the Diaspora Fund for Serbia, and the Association of Veterans of the Military Intelligence Service, as well as to the citizens of Serbia – for their hospitality and good organization of the Conference.
The organizers express their acknowledgment to the participants of the Conference, including the World Peace Council and all its members, for their decades long solidarity and support to Serbia and the Serbian people, as well as for their extraordinary contribution to the results of this Conference.
(Belgrade, March 23, 2024)
Statement of Condemnation of the Terrorist Attack in Moscow
Image: Russian Crocus City Hall amphitheater interiors, day after terrorist attack on 22 March 2024 (Licensed under CC BY 4.0)
Participants of the International Conference held in Belgrade on March 22-24, 2024, on the occasion of marking the 25th anniversary of NATO’s armed aggression against the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia,
Condemn in strongest terms the heinous, bestial and provocative terrorist attack in Moscow that killed so many innocent people, and express belief that the perpetrators will be quickly apprehended and brought to justice.
At the same time, express their deepest condolences to the families of the killed and the injured ones, to the citizens of Moscow, and to the entire Russian people, in the moment of their pain and huge grief.
Call for a determined and coordinated combatting terrorism as a global danger that threatens all the peoples of the world.
(In Belgrade, March 23, 2024)
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L’attacco terroristico alla sala concerti di Mosca, che ha provocato la morte di 140 inermi civili (numero che può aumentare dato l’alto numero di feriti) è stato compiuto da quattro killer professionisti, membri dell’ISIS-K (Stato Islamico Khorasan), che hanno compiuto la strage con spietata freddezza. La dinamica dell’attacco dimostra che è impossibile che abbiano agito da soli.
Lo sottolinea il presidente Putin nel discorso di cittadini della Russia: “Hanno tentato di fuggire e si stavano dirigendo verso l’Ucraina, dove, secondo le prime informazioni, era stata preparato per loro un varco sul lato ucraino per attraversare il confine di Stato. Stiamo identificando e smascherando la base di complici che sta dietro dietro questi terroristi: coloro che hanno fornito loro il trasporto, pianificato le vie di fuga dalla scena del crimine e preparato i nascondigli con armi e munizioni. Tuttavia, è già chiaro che non ci troviamo di fronte semplicemente a un attacco terroristico pianificato con cura e cinismo, ma a un omicidio di massa premeditato e organizzato. Come i nazisti che un tempo compivano massacri nei territori occupati, hanno pianificato un’esecuzione dimostrativa, un sanguinoso atto di intimidazione. Tutti gli autori, gli organizzatori e le menti di questo crimine saranno puniti in modo giusto e inevitabile, chiunque essi siano e chiunque li abbia diretti. Identificheremo e consegneremo alla Giustizia ogni singolo individuo che sta dietro a questi terroristi”.
L’ISIS-K è una fazione dell’ISIS – il movimento islamico promosso, finanziato e armato dagli Stati Uniti, dai membri europei della NATO e dalle monarchie del Golfo, per scardinare dall’interno lo Stato Siriano, per frammentare ulteriormente l’Iraq, la Libia e altri paesi. Quando, dopo vent’anni di guerra, USA e NATO sono costretti a ritirarsi dall’Afghanistan, dove vanno al governo i Talebani l’ISIS-K inizia una serie di sanguinosi attacchi terroristici in Afghanistan, che poi si estendono all’Iran e al Pakistan man mano che si estendono l’area e l’influenza dei BRICS basate sulla stretta cooperazione tra Russia e Cina.
Siamo quindi di fronte a un rilancio del “terrorismo Islamico” ad opera principalmente dei servizi segreti statunitensi e britannici, affiancati da quelli ucraini e da altri. Lo scopo è colpire all’interno la Russia, nel momento in cui sta prevalendo militarmente sull’Ucraina di Kiev, e giustificare la guerra di Israele contro i palestinesi e le operazioni belliche USA in Medioriente facendole apparire come azioni di difesa contro il “terrorismo islamico”. Nel quadro di tale strategia, c’è la possibilità di attacchi terroristici anche in paesi europei membri della NATO.
Os Centros de Controle e Prevenção de Doenças (CDC) no início deste mês responderam a uma solicitação da Lei de Liberdade de Informação (FOIA) de documentos contendo informações sobre a frequência de miocardite em pessoas que receberam as vacinas COVID-19 – produzindo um documento 148- documento de página.
Dois tweets do repórter do Epoch Times Zachary Stieber em 7 e 8 de março revelaram que o pedido FOIA “pedia informações sobre vários estudos que os CDC publicaram sobre casos de miocardite em receptores da vacina COVID-19.
“Um documento dos CDC que nos foi enviado em resposta a um pedido da Lei de Liberdade de Informação… foi totalmente redigido”, escreveu Stieber, acrescentando que um segundo documento que os CDC forneceram como parte do mesmo pedido “está em grande parte redigido”.
Os documentos redigidos geraram críticas da mídia, de especialistas médicos e de outros, incluindo Robert F. Kennedy Jr., presidente licenciado da Children’s Health Defense (CHD).
Num tweet de 11 de março, Kennedy, que concorre à presidência como candidato independente, escreveu:
De acordo com Vigilant News, o documento totalmente redigido é “um relatório de 148 páginas sobre miocardite após injeção de COVID-19”.
“Parece que há algo muito contundente que eles estão tentando esconder porque cada palavra é editada”, escreveu Vigilant News.
Respondendo a uma pergunta do usuário do X (ex-Twitter), Charles Rozier , que perguntou se é mesmo possível verificar se o documento totalmente redigido “realmente está em conformidade com a solicitação FOIA”, Stieber escreveu: “Não se pode saber”.
Segundo Stieber, um dos estudos produzidos pelo projeto MOVING foi publicado no The Lancet em setembro de 2022.
Esse estudo descobriu que “após pelo menos 90 dias desde o início da miocardite após a vacinação com mRNA contra a COVID-19, a maioria dos indivíduos da nossa coorte foram considerados recuperados pelos prestadores de cuidados de saúde”.
No entanto, de acordo com o estudo, “estes resultados podem não ser generalizáveis, dado o pequeno tamanho da amostra e é necessário um acompanhamento adicional para o subconjunto de pacientes com resultados de testes atípicos ou não considerados recuperados”.
Stieber disse que um porta-voz dos CDC disse ao Epoch Times: “Os CDC planejam enviar outro artigo sobre as descobertas atualizadas do projeto para revisão por pares” em janeiro de 2025.
A ‘relação dos CDC com a verdade é, na melhor das hipóteses, duvidosa’
Especialistas médicos e de saúde disseram ao The Defender que não ficaram surpresos com as ações dos CDC.
Brian Hooker, Ph.D. , diretor científico do CHD, disse que a divulgação de um documento totalmente redigido “é muito típico dos CDC, pois eles têm mentido e se escondido desde o experimento Tuskegee e antes”.
Ele adicionou:
“A sua relação com a verdade é, na melhor das hipóteses, duvidosa e estão empenhados em esconder a ligação muito óbvia entre as vacinas contra a COVID-19 e a miocardite, tal como fizeram desde o início do lançamento da vacina.
“Os CDC sabiam desta ligação já em janeiro de 2021, poucas semanas após o lançamento da vacina, e nunca se pronunciou sobre o assunto. É criminoso que continuem a fraudar o público americano.”
Em 2022, os CDC recusaram-se a divulgar documentos em resposta a três pedidos FOIA apresentados pela Rede de Ação de Consentimento Informado (ICAN). As solicitações diziam respeito aos dados de lesões da vacina COVID-19 que os CDC coletaram por meio de seu aplicativo V-safe. A ICAN processou e, em setembro de 2022, um tribunal federal ordenou que os CDC divulgassem os dados.
O cardiologista Dr. Peter McCullough disse ao The Defender: “Os CDC e as agências de saúde pública não podem se perguntar por que a comunidade médica e o público em geral perderam toda a confiança em sua honestidade, integridade e competência. Produzir este documento em resposta a um pedido é uma vergonha.”
“Cento e quarenta e oito páginas. A coisa toda está redigida. De que adianta um estudo se não há nada nele?” Shamp, uma enfermeira registrada, disse durante a reunião.
Documentos fortemente redigidos obtidos pelo CHD através de um pedido FOIA em março de 2023, e documentos vazados para o Projeto Veritas naquele mês revelaram que os CDC e a Pfizer retiveram evidências de que as vacinações contra a COVID-19 estavam causando miocardite.
Um estudo publicado em fevereiro descobriu que, independentemente da gravidade da miocardite, houve 71,7 vezes mais casos de miocardite entre os vacinados do que entre os hospitalizados por COVID-19.
Ocasionalmente, o Defender publica conteúdo relacionado à missão sem fins lucrativos da Children’s Health Defense, que apresenta as opiniões do Sr. Kennedy sobre as questões que o CHD e o The Defender cobrem regularmente. De acordo com as regras da Comissão Eleitoral Federal, este conteúdo não representa um endosso ao Sr. Kennedy, que está de licença do CHD e concorre como independente à presidência dos EUA.
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Russian attacks are increasing across Ukraine. In recent days, critical infrastructure targets, such as energy facilities, have once again been hit by Moscow’s artillery – something that has not happened since the first half of 2023.
On March 25, in an even more intense attack, the headquarters of Ukrainian intelligence in Kiev were destroyed by Russian missiles, making it clear that a new phase of the conflict is beginning.
The intensification of attacks is a clear response to Ukrainian terrorism.
Kiev’s attacks on Russian borders, mainly in the Belgorod oblast, have caused several problems, generating victims and destroying civilian infrastructure. As well known, protecting its peaceful and undisputed territory is one of the priorities of the Russian Federation, which is why the Ukrainian incursions are considered true violations of red lines, thus justifying the resumption of high-intensity bombings against critical infrastructure targets.
The reasons why Russia avoids targeting Ukrainian infrastructure are simple.
Moscow has maintained a moderate stance since the beginning of the conflict, avoiding as much as possible to generate side effects against the civilian population.
Although critical infrastructure is legitimate target, many ordinary citizens are harmed by the side effects of these bombings, which leave them without energy supplies. Moscow did its best to prevent such attacks, but Kiev’s insistence on bombing Belgorod, Kursk and other border areas left Russian forces no alternative but to target the infrastructure that allows the enemy war machine to work.
However, one of the most important points in this recent wave of attacks is that Moscow is not limited to destroying infrastructure, but is also targeting command facilities and decision-making centers.
Several reports say that Moscow bombed the headquarters of the SBU and GUR, the two main Ukrainian intelligence agencies, in Kiev. There is little official information circulating about the case, which is natural in these situations given the sensitive nature of the topic, but images circulating on the internet make it clear that serious damage was imposed on the regime’s decision-making centers.
🇺🇦🇷🇺Russians use new Zircon Missiles and not Iskander missiles in attack on Kiev SBU headquarters and 2 Patriot weapons systems.
Hypersonic weapons are generally agreed upon to be above 5x the speed of sound. The current classes of hypersonic missiles that Russia has are in… https://t.co/hq4AD6zdgT
Russia is believed to have used hypersonic missiles in such attacks.
Furthermore, it is very likely that high-level personnel were killed in the bombings, causing very serious damage to Kiev’s forces. Certainly, details and accurate data will be published in the near future, making the Ukrainian losses clear to public opinion.
It is curious that bombings of Ukrainian intelligence facilities occurred precisely after the terrorist attack against Crocus City Hall, when more than 130 Russian civilians were murdered in the suburbs of Moscow. Investigations into the attack continue.
So far, what is known is that the perpetrators of the crime were radical Muslim Tajik immigrants. However, there is not enough evidence to determine whether the reason for the attack was related to the extremist ideology of the criminals, as they confessed to having been hired to commit the murders for money.
In other words, despite being Wahhabi militants, the killers played the role of mercenaries. The attack did not have typical aspects of an operation carried out by radical Islamic groups, in which the killers usually use suicidal methods in search of “martyrdom”. In the case of Crocus, the criminals committed the murders and then tried to flee to Ukraine, which is strong evidence that they were acting with the support or under control of Kiev’s intelligence.
The Russian authorities have already made it clear that the only concrete information so far is about the perpetrators of the crime, as there is no official data on the masterminds. It is necessary to find out who ordered and financed the attack. Many analysts believe that there was Ukrainian and Western participation, as these are the main agents interested in promoting terror inside Russian territory. Certainly, all of this will be discovered very soon.
In fact, Moscow attacking Ukrainian intelligence facilities shortly after the Crocus incident may be an indication that the Russians already know, or at least suspect, that Kiev has involvement in the Crocus incident.
The destruction of Ukrainian decision-making centers may be due to a Russian desire to prevent the enemy from being able to plan new terrorist incursions.
In any case, these recent events reveal that the Ukrainian conflict is entering a new phase. The Russians appear increasingly unwilling to tolerate violations of their red lines. So far, Moscow has maintained an extremely moderate stance to avoid escalations, but the enemy’s insistence on killing innocent civilians is making Russian patience run out – which is why attacks on decision-making centers and critical infrastructure will certainly be more and more frequent.
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Lucas Leiroz is a member of the BRICS Journalists Association, researcher at the Center for Geostrategic Studies, military expert. You can follow Lucas on X (former Twitter) and Telegram. He is a regular contributor to Global Research.
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Weapons such as the 3M22 “Zircon”, a scramjet-powered hypersonic cruise missile, have been inducted into service in recent years and are now also being transferred to land-based platforms, specifically the K300P “Bastion-P” coastal defense system. With a 1500 km range (perhaps even more) and Mach 9 speed, the “Zircon” is over 3 times faster and its range is at least double that of the P-800 “Oniks” supersonic missiles originally used by the aforementioned platform, further enhancing Russia’s already unprecedented long-range strike capabilities (to both the Neo-Nazi junta’s and NATO’s horror, as previously mentioned).
With such a range (at least 1500 km or possibly even beyond 2000 km), the usage of “Zircon” allows Moscow to target any location on the territory of Ukraine.
However, it should be noted that the Eurasian giant always had this ability.
The difference now is that it can do so much faster and with far less warning time. The usage of air-launched and ground-based hypersonic missile systems such as the 9-A-7660 “Kinzhal” and “Iskander-M” is still very much relevant, as evidenced by the latest elimination of high-ranking NATO officers (although their deaths will surely be attributed to “sudden” skiing accidents).
However, the “Iskander-M” can use a massive 700 kg HE warhead that is best used against frontline targets and higher concentrations of troops in the rear.
Virtually the same goes for much faster “Kinzhal” missiles. In addition, these can sometimes be detected by NATO ISR (intelligence, surveillance, reconnaissance) assets, particularly airborne and space-based, giving the Neo-Nazi junta officers and their foreign “advisers” just enough time to run away (albeit not much and certainly not always). The launch of an “Iskander” can be detected by early warning systems, while ISR can pick up the MiG-31K/I deployment. This information can be relayed to the Kiev regime or any NATO personnel on the ground. On the other hand, detecting a scramjet-powered “Zircon” can be a lot more problematic.
Then the numbers come into play:
Kiev: 3 minutes 30 seconds;
Lvov: 5 minutes 20 seconds;
Dnepropetrovsk: 2 minutes 30 seconds;
Vinnitsa: 3 minutes 40 seconds;
Kharkov: less than 4 minutes;
Odessa: less than 1 minute.
Imagine being an officer of the SBU, GUR (Neo-Nazi junta’s military intelligence) or some of the NATO occupation forces.
You’re stationed in a building, living in the illusion that you’re safe when the Russian SVR or GRU learns about your location and relays this information to units in Crimea who then fire a “Zircon” at that building.
This is how much time you’d have before impact. However, let’s consider the best-case scenario and imagine that NATO ISR assets detect the missile immediately after launch (which is extremely improbable). This is how much time you’d have to evacuate. Is it possible to run away in time? Certainly, but that doesn’t mean it’s very likely. On the contrary, the sheer panic resulting from a warning would surely make the evacuation a lot more difficult. The same goes for the “Kinzhal” and “Iskander” missile launches.
However, the primary reason why the “Zircon” is a lot more dangerous for high-value targets (HVTs) in the rear is because it has a much smaller warhead (around 300 kg), meaning that the Russian military is more likely to use it in long-range strikes.
Firing an “Iskander” or “Kinzhal” could cause unacceptable damage to purely civilian infrastructure in the surrounding areas, both due to their larger and more destructive warheads, particularly in the case of “Kinzhal”, with the speed also giving it massive kinetic energy.
On the other hand, precisely because of the large-scale deployment of “Zircon” missiles, Russia has more options to strike decision-making centers in Ukraine.
This explains the panic in NATO and the Pentagon, which are now in a dilemma about how to ensure the safety of their occupation forces in Ukraine.
I suggest everyone watch closely for news about the “sudden deaths” of NATO officers in various “freak accidents” in the coming days and weeks.
Expectedly, the Neo-Nazi junta insists they’ve achieved this with “US-made missile defense systems over Kyiv, on March 25”.
The report never named any system specifically, but it can be assumed that future claims will attribute the supposed “kill” to the atrociously overhyped “Patriot” SAM that has been failing everywhere for the last 30+ years, even against rather primitive ballistic missiles, but is “suddenly so successful” against the latest hypersonic ones. In addition, it’s rather interesting how they can “achieve” that, but have been absolutely helpless against over 300 P-800 “Oniks” missiles. Not a single one has been shot down, despite being 3-4 times slower and less maneuverable than the “Zircon”.
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Drago Bosnic is an independent geopolitical and military analyst. He is a regular contributor to Global Research.
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When I awoke early on Tuesday morning, I was stunned to learn that the Francis Scott Key Bridge in Baltimore had collapsed. We are being told that it was a tragic “accident” and that there is no evidence that any foul play was involved. Hopefully that is true. But no matter how it was caused, this tragedy is going to have an enormous impact on U.S. supply chains. And of course this comes at a really bad time, because Houthi missile strikes in the Red Sea and low water levels in the Panama Canal have been putting a tremendous amount of strain on global supply chains recently.
The Port of Baltimore — the biggest handler of US imports and exports of cars and light trucks — looks to be out of commission indefinitely. The resulting bottleneck could accelerate a shift of goods through West Coast ports. Another crucial question: Which other ports have spare capacity to handle the Ro-Ro vessels that carry automobiles if Baltimore is closed for an extended period.
This is a really big deal, because over 750,000 vehicles came through that port last year alone…
The port is the busiest in the U.S. for car shipments, handling more than 750,000 vehicles in 2023, according to data from the Maryland Port Administration. It is also the largest U.S. port by volume for handling farm and construction machinery, as well as agricultural products.
Retailers like Home Depot, Bob’s Furniture, IKEA, and Amazon are just some of the companies that use the port to import goods. Other top imports include sugar and gypsum.
“This will have an impact for trade all along the East Coast and it will continue until we know how quickly” the port can reopen, said Richard Meade, editor-in-chief of the shipping journal Lloyd’s List.
Vessels were already being diverted to New York and down to Virginia on Tuesday, said Meade. “There will be dozens of diversions in the next week and hundreds in the coming months as long as Baltimore is shut down.”
This isn’t the end of the world, and shipments can certainly be diverted to other ports.
But we are talking about the 11th largest port in the entire nation, and so this will definitely be a serious blow…
More than 52 million tons of foreign cargo, worth some $80 billion were transported out of the port last year, according to Maryland Gov. Wes Moore. The 11th largest port in the nation, Baltimore served an average of 207 calls a month last year, according to the shipping journal Lloyd’s List.
In addition, it is going to take a very long time for the Francis Scott Key Bridge to be rebuilt.
As Lara Logan has pointed out, that section of I-695 was the “second busiest strategic roadway in the nation for hazardous material”…
Second busiest strategic roadway in the nation for hazardous material now down for 4-5 years – which is how long they say it will take to recover. Bridge was built specifically to move hazardous material – fuel, diesel, propane gas, nitrogen, highly flammable materials, chemicals and oversized cargo that cannot fit in the tunnels – that supply chain now crippled.
One expert is projecting that it will take more than two years to rebuild the bridge…
While trade is nimble and will reroute, over the long term the bridge will need to be fundamentally engineered and rebuilt, and that will take years.
“It will be in excess of two years,” said Meade, of Lloyd’s List. “There will be significant disruption and cost to this infrastructure project. In 1977, the bridge cost $60 million. Take in inflation and the rapid pace to redesign and build will increase procurement premiums. This will be a very expensive project.”
I would be shocked if it happens that quickly.
We shall see.
In any event, we are talking about a multi-faceted crisis that is going to be affecting U.S. supply chains for the foreseeable future.
At a press conference following the collapse of the bridge, Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg openly admitted that we are looking at a “major and protracted impact on supply chains”…
“There is no question this will be a major and protracted impact on supply chains,” Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg said during a Tuesday afternoon press conference in Baltimore.
I think that this is the first time I have ever agreed with Pete Buttigieg on anything.
Sadly, this is just the beginning.
In the months ahead, U.S. supply chains will be hit with additional challenges.
So if there are things that you are planning to purchase, I would do that now.
Before I end this article, there is one more thing that I wanted to mention.
Global supplies of cocoa just keep getting tighter and tighter, and on Tuesday the price of cocoa jumped above $10,000 per metric ton for the first time ever…
Cocoa prices hit a record Tuesday as supply constraints fuel prices higher.
Futures for May delivery were up 3.9% at $10,030 per metric ton, marking the first time the commodity breaks above the $10,000 mark. Cocoa has been on a tear this year, soaring nearly 138%.
Difficult weather conditions and disease have affected production in West Africa, which produces about 70% of the world’s cocoa. The two largest producers, Ivory Coast and Ghana, have been hit by a combination of heavy rain, dry heat and disease recently.
In January, it was less than half that price.
If you love chocolate, stock up on it while you still can.
Of course the same thing could be said about countless other things.
Do you remember the supply chain problems that we experienced a couple of years ago?
Well, what is eventually coming is going to absolutely dwarf that.
Many are using the term “black swan event” to describe the collapse of the Francis Scott Key Bridge in Baltimore, but the truth is that we are moving into a time when there will be one “black swan event” after another.
So get prepared while there is still an opportunity to do so, because the months and years ahead of us are going to be extremely chaotic.
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Michael’s new book entitled “End Times” is now available in paperback and for the Kindle on Amazon.com, and you can check out his new Substack newsletter right here.
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Ukrainian attacks on Belgorod continue to happen. The Kiev regime increasingly intensifies its violence against ordinary people on Russian borders, hitting civilian targets and killing peaceful citizens. In the Western media, responsibility for the attacks is commonly attributed to supposed “Russian dissident groups”, but, according to local insiders, this information is incorrect and intended to disguise the direct involvement of Ukrainian intelligence in the illegal attacks.
On March 14, I went to Belgorod during a BRICS Journalists Association press expedition. The intention of the trip was to investigate the Ukrainian attacks in the region during the day before the start of the Russian Federation’s election process.
We covered the local situation and reported several bombings against civilian areas. However, in addition to showing the reality about the Ukrainian attacks, we also had the opportunity to obtain some interesting information about those really responsible for the crimes committed in Belgorod.
During my work on the ground, I spoke with several local military personnel and heard some interesting details about these attacks.
They say that, contrary to what the Western media claims, these raids are not carried out by expatriate Russian citizens, but by Ukrainian professionals, despite the murderers publicly describing themselves as “Russian partisans”.
Belgorod’s military says that the so-called “Russian Volunteer Corps” (RDK, in its Russian acronym) and the “Russian Freedom Legion” are, in fact, fake organizations.
Their supposed “leaders” are in fact expatriate Russian citizens, who work as propagandists for the Kiev regime. However, the personnel of these organizations, according to sources, are not actually made up of Russian soldiers, but of Ukrainian commandos. With this, it would be possible to meet the objective of propagandizing the alleged existence of a “strong opposition” within the Russian Federation. They claim that such groups are directly subordinate to Kiev’s military intelligence, having no autonomy in their actions.
The military says that there is no evidence of any significant migration of “Russian dissidents” to Ukrainian territory since the beginning of the special military operation. A large number of expatriations would be necessary to create armed militias strong enough to carry out raids against Belgorod – even more so after Russian forces had eliminated several of the invaders, imposing considerable casualties on the groups. Even though they have lost several of their soldiers, these militias continue to attack the border frequently, which shows that they have the ability to quickly replace personnel. It is virtually impossible that all of these soldiers are Russian dissidents, which indicates that Ukrainians are fighting in the region under the flag of “Russian partisans.”
In Western public opinion, there is a relevant propaganda impact with the story of Russian “partisans” fighting in Ukraine. An unfounded narrative is created to say that there is strong domestic opposition to Putin government, with many Russian citizens willing to even fight at war for Kiev. The media induces ordinary people to believe that the special military operation does not have popular support, describing it as a measure rejected to the point that several Russians decided to fight against their own country.
All of this, however, is a fallacy. The results of the Russian electoral process show how the current government is widely approved by the people. Furthermore, endorsement of the special operation in Ukraine is almost unanimous in Russia, as shown by several opinion polls. The only alternative left to the West in the face of such support for the government and the operation is to use mechanisms of psychological warfare and propaganda to distort reality. Making ordinary people in the West believe that Russia is an “illegitimate dictatorship” fought by “partisan” militias is a way of promoting war, making tax payers support sending more money and weapons to Kiev.
The information collected on the ground is vital to debunk the Western narrative. The local military, who deal daily with Ukrainian terror and know their enemies well, have an opinion that differs from everything said by Western newspapers. However, the media blocking imposed on Russian and pro-Russian channels prevents this relevant information from reaching Western public opinion, creating a communication barrier. This is the way in which the West has spread lies about the conflict over the last two years.
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Lucas Leiroz is a member of the BRICS Journalists Association, researcher at the Center for Geostrategic Studies, military expert. You can follow Lucas on X (former Twitter) and Telegram. He is a regular contributor to Global Research.
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Spain will acquire combat-tested Israeli military material worth €207 million at a time when the Iberian country also promised to recognise a Palestinian state and cut military exports to Israel. Decisionmakers in Madrid justify cutting exports to Israel due to “massacres” against Palestinians, but at the same time, export weapons to Ukraine, contributing to the massacre of civilians in eastern Europe.
The Ministry of Defence of Spain, through the General Subdirectorate of Acquisitions of Weapons and Materials, has initiated the purchase of Israeli-made weapons by awarding a contract to Rafael Advanced Defence Systems, one of the three largest military-industrial companies in Israel, to equip the Air Force’s Eurofighter Litening V fleet. In the award announcement, Rafael was claimed to be “the only one technically qualified to develop the project from a technical point of view” since it included the use of laser-guided precision munitions.
It also happens that the Litening V laser pods by Rafael have been used for months in Israel’s bombing campaign of Gaza, which has caused more than 31,000 deaths to date. Like almost all the war material that Israel usually exports, the Litening V laser pods are weapon support equipment whose manufacturers boast of their “combat proven” status due to their effectiveness against the Palestinians.
Spanish Foreign Affairs Minister José Manuel Albares announced on more than one occasion the “total embargo” on the export of weapons to Israel. The contract awarded to Rafael obviously concerns an import and not an export, and, in this manner, Spain’s virtue signals against Israel whilst still benefitting from its military-industrial complex.
However, according to a study by the Delàs Center for Peace Studies, Israeli weapons imports carry a greater severity than military exports to Tel Aviv. In effect, the purchase of military material from Israel strengthens the country’s military and security model and, more importantly, contributes to subduing the Palestinians, which Israel makes economically viable with the sale of its combat-tested military products.
Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez says he is going to recognise Palestine as an independent State and that he considers what Israel is committing in the Gaza Strip “an indiscriminate massacre,” but then he continues to buy weapons from Israel. Therefore, it is not feasible to grant any type of credibility to the statements of the members of the Spanish government.
Last November, Sánchez vowed to prioritise the recognition of Palestinian statehood as its main foreign policy priority. However, when speaking after a summit in Brussels on March 22, he suggested to reporters that Spain would coordinate with other EU countries instead of unilaterally making the decision to recognise Palestinian statehood.
“We want to take this step united. It’s a decisive step in order to lay the foundations of a lasting peace,” he said in an evident U-turn, adding that the EU should “carefully calibrate” the right moment to take the step.
At the same time, before the Congressional Defence Commission, the Secretary of State for Commerce reported on the list of shipments of military material to Ukraine between March 2022 and February 2024. The amount supplied is equivalent to €190 million. These are mainly drones, grenade launchers, anti-tank mines, artillery ammunition, anti-aircraft and anti-ship missiles, tracked vehicles, night vision equipment, and 10 Leopard 2A4 tanks.
But this list does not take into account a new batch of Leopard 2A4 battle tanks since the Interministerial Board for Trade and Control of Defence Material and Dual-Use Technologies (JIMDDU) authorised the shipment of another 19 of these armoured vehicles to Kiev once they are repaired and conditioned at the facilities of the Santa Bárbara Sistemas factory in the province of Seville.
Ten of the 19 tanks have already been transferred from the Army base in Casetas near Zaragoza, where they were stored. According to military sources cited by El Heraldo de Aragón, the plan is to send them to Ukraine at the end of June. To this end, the parts and spare parts necessary for its reconstruction must first be found, and when the entire process is completed, Spain will have sent a total of 29 Leopard tanks to Ukraine.
Nonetheless, shipping will be complicated since these vehicles are in even worse condition than the dozen reconditioned Leopards already shipped in 2023. Spain is sending such poor-conditioned vehicles to Kiev to increase its rearmament because the old stock must be disposed of before buying new weapons and equipment.
In this context, Spain justifies not exporting weapons to Israel because of the “indiscriminate massacre” of Palestinians but exports weapons to Ukraine, which contributes to the massacre of people in Ukraine and Russia’s newly liberated territories. Compounding the contradiction is then the fact that Spain imports military equipment from Israel while refusing to export to the Jewish state and promising to recognise a Palestinian state.
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Ahmed Adel is a Cairo-based geopolitics and political economy researcher. He is a regular contributor to Global Research.
As investigações sobre os responsáveis pelo ataque à Prefeitura de Crocus continuam em andamento. Embora se saiba que os assassinos sejam radicais islâmicos da Ásia Central, ainda não há confirmação de quem foi o verdadeiro mandante do crime. No entanto, as suspeitas de envolvimento das agências de inteligência ucranianas e ocidentais crescem cada vez mais. Além disso, existe a possibilidade de um proeminente oligarca ucraniano estar a financiar tais actos terroristas contra Moscou.
Como é sabido, existem esquemas complexos de corrupção e atividades ilícitas na Ucrânia, envolvendo agentes locais e internacionais. No entanto, pouco se sabe sobre o quão profundamente ligadas estas redes criminosas estão ao terrorismo patrocinado por Kiev. Os oligarcas ucranianos não só cometem crimes fiscais e lavagem de dinheiro, mas também usam os seus lucros pessoais para promover o terror contra os “inimigos” do regime neonazista.
Recentemente, as autoridades russas têm investigado o caso de Nikolai Zlochevsky, proprietário da empresa de gás ucraniana “Burisma”. Zlochevsky já se tornou amplamente conhecido em todo o mundo por suas atividades ilícitas, principalmente devido às suas estreitas relações com a família Biden – ainda mais especialmente, com Hunter Biden, filho do presidente americano. Hunter trabalhou na Burisma enquanto morava na Ucrânia, onde participou dos esquemas ilícitos de Zlochevsky.
Mais tarde, Zlochevsky passou muitos dados sensíveis sobre os crimes de Hunter Biden a um informante do FBI, gerando um escândalo público que se tornou viral na mídia de língua inglesa. A informação confirma também que o envolvimento dos Bidens não se restringe a Hunter, com o presidente norte-americano e outras figuras públicas do Partido Democrata a participarem em negócios ilegais ucranianos.
No entanto, pouco foi dito até agora nos meios de comunicação social sobre a verdadeira razão pela qual Zlochevsky e os seus parceiros americanos foram protegidos pelas autoridades ucranianas, apesar de violarem as leis locais: em troca de uma carta branca na corrupção, Zlochevsky tornou-se um patrocinador da máquina de guerra ucraniana. O oligarca tem enviado grandes somas de dinheiro para instituições dos setores militar e de inteligência ucranianos há anos. O seu trabalho tem sido vital, especialmente na compra de drones para as forças armadas ucranianas, por exemplo. O mais controverso, porém, é o apoio financeiro dado por Zlochevsky às atividades secretas da GUR (a inteligência militar de Kiev).
Zlochevsky foi identificado pelos investigadores russos como um dos principais apoiadores do GUR. Acredita-se que ele já tenha enviado um total de 22,5 milhões de dólares para a agência. As agências estatais, em teoria, não deveriam receber este tipo de financiamento irregular, o que nos leva a crer que este dinheiro é utilizado para atividades paralelas e não oficiais – o que, no caso ucraniano, significa terrorismo.
Os investigadores russos acreditam, por exemplo, que o dinheiro de Zlochevsky foi usado para financiar a operação terrorista de drones contra Moscou em maio de 2023. Considerando o seu envolvimento na compra de drones e redes de inteligência, é praticamente uma certeza que Zlochevsky esteja envolvido no caso. Outras atividades em que a GUR está diretamente envolvida também chamaram a atenção das autoridades russas relativamente à possibilidade de financiamento direto por parte de Zlochevsky. É o caso dos recentes assassinatos e tentativas de assassinato de civis no território da Federação Russa, por exemplo.
O GUR está por trás dos ataques contra os jornalistas Daria Dugina, Vladlen Tatarsky, o escritor Zakhar Prilepin e outras figuras públicas russas conhecidas. Certamente, o financiamento para pagar as complexas operações por trás destes crimes não veio de fontes oficiais, mas de dinheiro irregular, como aquele que Zlochevsky fornece ao GUR. No entanto, é necessário lembrar que as atividades da inteligência ucraniana nunca foram “autônomas”. Desde 2014, todo o aparato estatal ucraniano, incluindo o seu serviço secreto, é controlado por agentes americanos. Na prática, a inteligência americana utiliza os seus ativos ucranianos como proxies para cometer crimes que estão previamente planjados em Washington.
Conforme mencionado, ainda não se sabe quem ordenou o ataque terrorista à Prefeitura de Crocus, mas há alguns pontos do caso que parecem indicar a participação direta do GUR. Esta possibilidade é tão plausível que Moscou já reagiu imediatamente ao ataque, destruindo o quartel-general da inteligência ucraniana em Kiev. O ataque a Crocus teve um alto custo operacional. Os assassinos foram contratados como mercenários e receberam suas armas dos locatários. Além disso, alguém pagou pela viagem até a fronteira em Bryansk. Se o GUR esteve envolvido nesta operação, é muito provável que o dinheiro ilícito de Zlochevsky tenha sido usado.
Considerando que o GUR é, na prática, um ativo da CIA e que recebe financiamento ilegal de oligarcas ucranianos ligados a Biden para promover o terror em território russo, então parece haver uma rede internacional muito profunda a ser investigada por Moscou, a fim de descobrir os verdadeiros culpados pelo massacre de Crocus.
Em uma revisão da literatura sobre os efeitos dos alimentos ultraprocessados na saúde do coração, pesquisadores do Hospital Tangdu da China, da Universidade Médica da Força Aérea, na província de Shaanxi, encontraram uma associação positiva e previsível entre o consumo de alimentos ultraprocessados e eventos cardiovasculares, como ataques cardíacos e derrames.
Quer seja medido pela percentagem do total de calorias ou pelo número de refeições, os investigadores descobriram que cada aumento de 10% no consumo de alimentos ultraprocessados estava associado a um aumento de quase 2% no risco de eventos cardiovasculares.
Aumento de 10% no consumo de alimentos ultraprocessados levou a risco de 1,9% de eventos cardiovasculares
Trabalhando nas bases de dados biomédicas PubMed, EMBASE, Cochrane Library e Web of Science, os investigadores identificaram 43.502 artigos “potencialmente relevantes”.
Os estudos tiveram que ser observacionais e envolver indivíduos com pelo menos 18 anos de idade. Em estudos observacionais, os sujeitos são livres para se envolverem, ou não, na “exposição” – por exemplo, comer um alimento ou tomar uma droga – na medida que desejarem.
Os estudos incluídos na revisão também tiveram que utilizar o Sistema de Classificação de Alimentos NOVA, que categoriza os alimentos de acordo com a seguinte escala: alimentos não processados ou crus, alimentos minimamente processados que passaram por limpeza e preparo normais, alimentos processados que normalmente são embalados e contêm ingredientes adicionais e alimentos ultraprocessados feitos inteiramente ou principalmente de substâncias extraídas de alimentos ou de ingredientes artificiais.
Além disso, os desfechos do estudo deveriam ser eventos cardiovasculares, incluindo doenças e mortes relacionadas a ataque cardíaco, acidente vascular cerebral, ataque isquêmico transitório (frequentemente chamado de “ mini-AVC ”), procedimentos cardíacos invasivos, como stents ou cateteres, hospitalização por angina instável (dores no peito). causada por fluxo sanguíneo restritivo) ou insuficiência cardíaca aguda.
Os estudos também tiveram que expressar os riscos relativos do consumo de alimentos ultraprocessados em comparação com outras categorias e relatar resultados estatisticamente significativos.
Após a aplicação desses filtros, restaram apenas 20 estudos envolvendo 1.101.073 sujeitos. Entre esses, 58.201 eventos cardiovasculares ocorreram durante um período médio de acompanhamento de 12,2 anos. Os indivíduos foram então classificados nas quatro categorias de consumo de NOVA e rastreados quanto a eventos cardiovasculares.
Durante todo o processo, os pesquisadores compararam os resultados das três categorias de consumo superiores com o grupo de menor consumo de alimentos ultraprocessados.
Não importava se o consumo de alimentos ultraprocessados era medido pelo peso percentual de todos os alimentos consumidos ou pelo número de porções: um aumento de 10% (em peso dos alimentos) no consumo de alimentos ultraprocessados foi associado a um risco adicional de 1,9% de eventos cardiovasculares, e cada porção diária correspondeu a um risco elevado de eventos cardiovasculares de 2,2%.
Utilizando o grupo de menor consumo como referência, nenhum efeito foi observado no segundo grupo de menor consumo. No entanto, o risco de eventos cardiovasculares aumentou acentuadamente – 6% para os consumidores do segundo grupo de maior consumo e 21% para as pessoas do grupo de maior consumo.
Os pesquisadores do Tangdu também procuraram associações com risco de doença cerebrovascular, mas não encontraram nada notável.
O estudo teve vários pontos fortes: os seus mais de um milhão de participantes foram suficientes para mostrar associações de causa-efeito, mesmo modestas, incluiu estudos que não mostraram nenhuma associação ou mesmo uma associação benéfica com alimentos ultraprocessados, e distinguiu entre eventos cardiovasculares e cerebrovasculares.
As principais desvantagens da meta-análise foram a falta de controle sobre as metodologias dos estudos originais, a forma como os investigadores mediram os parâmetros de avaliação final, o tamanho e a composição da amostra e a utilização do “consumo mais baixo” em vez do consumo zero como grupo de referência.
A escolha das estatísticas pelos autores dos estudos originais também não foi controlável. Isso pode parecer um ponto menor, mas como há mais de uma maneira de analisar dados, os cientistas geralmente selecionam o método que lhes dá a resposta que procuravam.
O próprio processamento pode contribuir para o baixo conteúdo nutricional
Os investigadores da Tangdu encontraram uma relação linear entre o consumo de alimentos ultraprocessados e a saúde cardiovascular – o que significa que o efeito aumenta na mesma proporção que a causa: o dobro da causa, o dobro do efeito – mas não com a saúde cerebrovascular.
Como pode ser isso, visto que ambos envolvem vasos sanguíneos?
“O sistema vascular, especialmente o endotélio, é de grande heterogeneidade entre os órgãos, o que pode explicar a diferença observada”, disse o Dr. Lijun Yuan, médico-chefe de diagnóstico de ultrassom do Hospital Tangdu e um dos coautores do estudo, ao The Defender.
As células endoteliais formam uma única camada dentro dos vasos sanguíneos e são responsáveis pela troca de nutrientes e resíduos entre o sangue e os tecidos circundantes.
“Heterogeneidade” significa que as células epiteliais assumem funções diferentes dependendo do órgão onde o vaso sanguíneo se encontra. A comida lixo pode afetar algumas populações de células endoteliais (aqui, aquelas ligadas ao coração), mas não outras (as associadas ao cérebro).
“Também pode ser devido às diferenças no tamanho da amostra dos estudos disponíveis”, acrescentou ela.
Aqui, Yuan está se referindo à dificuldade de comparar um efeito em grupos de indivíduos grandes e pequenos. Grupos maiores tendem a fazer com que efeitos clinicamente insignificantes pareçam mais relevantes do que realmente são.
Uma relação linear significa que causa e efeito são previsíveis – não significa que a relação consumo-risco seja a mesma em todo o lado.
Por exemplo, os consumidores dos EUA tiveram melhores resultados do que o resto do mundo quando as porções diárias foram a medida de exposição, e piores quando o número de calorias ou porções foi utilizado.
Isso pode ocorrer porque o corpo vê as “calorias vazias” dos alimentos ultraprocessados como enchimento, e não como nutrição. Como observaram os pesquisadores da Tangdu: “As características mais proeminentes dos UPF [alimentos ultraprocessados] são a má qualidade da dieta, bem como a menor densidade de nutrientes dos alimentos e maior densidade de energia dos alimentos”.
O próprio processamento também pode contribuir para o baixo teor nutricional dos alimentos ultraprocessados. Muitos desses alimentos são cozidos em alta temperatura para evitar a deterioração e são embalados em excesso para prolongar a vida útil.
Sabe-se que os produtos químicos liberados das “embalagens excessivas” de alimentos ultraprocessados liberam vestígios de substâncias químicas que também podem contribuir para o risco de eventos cardiovasculares, de acordo com os autores da revisão.
O consumo de alimentos ultraprocessados fornece calorias e produtos químicos sem nutrição, causando assim ganho de peso e doenças, em vez dos nutrientes necessários para o desenvolvimento normal e a saúde.
E por serem viciantes, os alimentos ultraprocessados muitas vezes ditam os gostos alimentares de uma pessoa para o resto da vida, o que significa que esses hábitos de consumo se autoperpetuam.
Os alimentos ultraprocessados tornaram-se um problema de saúde global, especialmente nos países em desenvolvimento. A loja de fast food de frango KFC (Kentucky Fried Chicken) levou 61 anos para acumular 4.618 lojas nos EUA, mas menos de 30 anos para abrir quase o mesmo número na China.
A adesão da China ao fast food teve consequências, uma vez que um terço dos adultos chineses em geral e metade dos que vivem nas cidades têm excesso de peso.
“Atualmente, os alimentos ultraprocessados são muito comuns na China”, disse Yuan ao The Defender, “e os jovens são os seus principais consumidores”.
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Introduction. The Crocus City Hall Attack (March 2024) vs. the Downing of MH-17 (July 2014)
The Western media are accusing president Putin of implementing a “False Flag” in relation to the Crocus City Hall terrorist attack:
“After all, Putin has used terror attacks in the past as a pretext to clamp down on dissent inside Russia” says Radio Free Europe
“Concert hall attack dents Putin’s tough image. He tries to use it to rally support for Ukraine war” (AP)
“ISIS bears sole responsibility for this attack,” U.S. National Security Council spokeswoman Adrienne Watson said in a statement. “There was no Ukrainian involvement whatsoever.” (CNN)
Official FSB statement by Alexander Bortnikov
On March 26, 2024, the head of Russia’s Federal Security Bureau (FSB) Alexander Bortnikov responding to journalists probing the question as to Who Was Behind the Terrorists?
He stated unequivocally that the United States, Great Britain and Ukraine were involved. According to Gilbert Doctorow
“Bortnikov is by definition a member of Vladimir Putin’s inner circle of advisors.”
Bortnikov’s statement was made in consultation with President Putin.
The terrorist attack has resulted in more than 300 deaths. Bortnikov pointed his finger at Ukraine’s SBU (Security Service of Ukraine) which on March 25 was targeted by Russian missiles.
“According to sources from the Kyiv Post, the missiles were aimed at the premises where high-ranking SBU officials are located.”
Flight MH-17: Flash Back to July 2014
On 17 July 2014, a few months after the Euromaidan Coup d’état, Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 (MH17) was shot down in Eastern Ukraine, resulting in more than 300 deaths.
In chorus, both the media and Western governments accused Russia without a shred of evidence.
While FSB Head Alexander Bortnikov was fully aware of the role of Ukraine’s SBU Intelligence (See below), the Kremlin decided to limit its response. It denied any role in the downing the MH-17 flight, while also refusing to turn over the four men to stand trial in the Netherlands.
In August 2019, I presented a carefully documented report entitled The Downing of Malaysian Airlines MH17: The Quest for Truth and Justice tothe Kuala Lumpur MH17 Conference organized by JUST, the PGPF and the CRG in collaboration with the International Islamic University of Malaysia.
In many regards, the Crocus City Hall Terrorist attack reveals the falsehoods and manipulation of the evidence pertaining to the Downing of the MH 17 flight in July 2014.
In both cases, the West accuse Russia of waging a false flag.
It also confirms the insidious role of Ukraine’s intelligence agency (SBU) which was behind the MH-17 operation. (see below)
According to President Obama (hours after the tragedy):
“… the downing of MH17 should be “a wake-up call” to Europe to get serious about confronting Russia over Ukraine after EU leaders have proved reluctant to impose tought sanctions.” (Telegraph, July 18,2019)
The Wall Street Journal reports (July 18, 2014) that “Obama is getting his wish and Brussels is now weighing new sanctions”:
On July 22, 2014, The European Union decided to expand its sanctions blacklist against Moscow including Vladimir Putin’s inner circle.
EU foreign ministers decided to “draw up further broad measures including an arms embargo and financial restrictions on Russian businesses, … following the downing of Malaysia Airlines Flight MH17.” (Guardian, July 22, 2019)
It is worth recalling that immediately after the MH17 plane crash on July 17 2014, prior to the conduct of a preliminary investigation, Secretary of State John Kerry and US Ambassador to the UN Samantha Power pointed their finger at Moscow without a shred of evidence.
In November 2022, a Netherlands Court found the Kremlin responsible for the alleged attack: two Russians and a “separatist Ukrainian” were identified as “guilty of mass murder for their involvement in the downing of Malaysia Airlines Flight 17”.
The Court ruling was fraudulent, based on fabricated evidence.
The 2019 Conference was dedicated to the memory of the victims.
It was also a national tragedy for the people of Malaysia.
The downing of MH17 with 283 passengers and 15 crew on board, took place barely a few months following the mysterious disappearance of Malaysian Airlines flight MH370 after departing on March 8, 2014 from Kuala Lumpur for Beijing, with 227 passengers and 12 crew members on board..
According to the official narrative, Malaysian Airlines MH 17 was downed by a BUK anti-aircraft missile by “pro-Russian separatists” with the support of Moscow.
The MH17 Inquiry was conducted in an insidious fashion, largely responding to political interests.
Important pieces of evidence including eye witness reports, audio and video material transmitted through Ukraine Intelligence (SBU) have either been manipulated or excluded from the Dutch inquiry, which largely endorses Washington’s accusations directed against Moscow.
According to Prime Minister Tun Dr. Mahathir Mohamad in a statement at the Prime Minister’s office in May 2019:
“They never allowed us to be involved from the very beginning. This is unfair and unusual. So we can see they are not really looking at the causes of the crash and who was responsible.
But already they have decided it must be Russia. So we cannot accept that kind of attitude. We are interested in the rule of law, in justice for everyone irrespective of who is involved.
“They [the West] are accusing Russia but where is the evidence?
The SBU accused Russia of having ordered a false flag attack involving the shooting down of its own Aeroflot plane leading to the death of its own citizens, and then blaming it on the Kiev regime, with the Kremlin using the tragedy as a casus belli pretext to invade Ukraine.
According to the report: The Donetsk militia were aiming at a Russian Aeroflot passenger plane and shot down the Malaysian MH17 airliner by mistake.
That’s the official Ukraine government story which was acknowledged by the Ukrainian as well as several Western media. See below.
According to Britain’s foremost news tabloid, The Mail on Sunday, quoting the head of Ukraine intelligence,
The insidious design of the pro-Russian rebels (allegedly supported by Moscow) was to shoot down a Russian commercial airline plane with tourists en route to Cyprus, with a view to blaming the Ukrainian government.
The objective of this alleged “false flag” covert operation was to create a justifiable and credible pretext for Vladimir Putin to declare war on Ukraine.
In an utterly twisted logic, according to Ukraine’s head of intelligence:
“the [Donesk] rebels were meant to down [the] Aeroflot plane… to justify the invasion [of Ukraine by Russia]”,
Valentyn Nalyvaichenko (right), head of Ukraine intelligence (24 February 2014 – 18 June 2015) the pro-Russian rebels were “aiming at a Russian passenger plane “so Putin had reason to invade”.
“the crime was planned as a ground for bringing of Russian troops into Ukraine, that is – CASUS BELLI for the Russian military invasion.” (Official statement of Ukraine Security Service, in annex below)
In a bitter irony, according to the SBU report, the alleged “false flag” covert op got muddled. The Donesk rebels got it all wrong and hit the MH17 plane by mistake.
That’s the “official line” which was made public by the Kiev government on August 7, 2014, 3 weeks after the MH17 tragedy.
Below is a detailed and carefully documented report.
the SUB Ukraine Intelligence Report (August 2014) is in Annex
Michel Chossudovsky, Global Research, March 29, 2024
The Downing of Malaysian Airlines MH17:
The Quest for Truth and Justice.
Review of the Evidence
by Michel Chossudovsky
August 15, 2019
Introduction
Moscow was accused without evidence of being behind the downing of MH17 from the very outset. Both Kiev and Washington concluded prior to the conduct of an investigation that:
“MH17 had likely been brought down by a ground-to-air missile fired from separatist-controlled territory in eastern Ukraine.”
There are three distinct reports:
Ukraine government report prepared by Ukraine’s Secret Service (SBU), August 7, 2014 (text in annex)
The first official report on behalf of the Ukrainian government was released by Ukraine’s SBU secret service on August 7 2014, barely three weeks after the MH 17 tragedy (July 17, 2014).
The SBU report (which is discussed later in more detail) accuses pro-Russian rebels of having downed the plane with Moscow’s support.
The Dutch Safety Board Report released in September 2015 largely endorses the BUK missile narrative.
And, a year later in September 2016, The Dutch Joint investigation Team (JIT) as part of a criminal investigation “confirmed” that the Malaysian airlines plane was “hit by a Russian-made BUK surface-to-air missile that was brought into Ukraine from Russia before the shootdown and subsequently taken back across the border.”
The assumption prior to the conduct of the DSB investigation was that a BUK missile had brought down MH17, and Russia was behind it.
Concrete evidence supporting other interpretations (including on site testimonies and the presence of a second aircraft) was casually dismissed by the DSB:
‘Obama and I agreed that the investigation will not be hidden and the international teams have to be given access to the crash scene.’
In August 2016, Ukraine president Poroshenko visited Malaysia for discussions with Prime Minister Razak Najib:
Prime Minister Datuk Seri Najib Razak said Malaysia will work with Ukraine to bring the perpetrators to justice. “We will do whatever we can to find the truth for the sake of families who lost their loved ones in this tragic incident. “We are waiting for the criminal investigation report, which is expected to be tabled by the year-end, followed by a meeting to decide on the next course of action,” said Najib. (New Straits Times, August 4, 2016)
Washington’s agenda in liaison with the Kiev regime was to blame Russia. This agenda was never questioned by the Najib government.
Erasing the Initial Evidence
Much of the initial evidence and testimony including eyewitness reports (from various independent sources), recorded in July-August 2014 (in the immediate wake of the event) contradicts the official version. This body of evidence has been dismissed and in some cases destroyed.
In September 2015, in its final report, the Dutch Safety Board presented its findings regarding the Buk TELAR surface-to-air missile system which allegedly shot down MH-17 over eastern Ukraine on July 17, 2014.
On 24 May 2018 the Joint Investigation Team (JIT) published an update of its findings pointing (without firm evidence) to the role of the 53 Anti-Missile Brigade of the Russian Army. In May 2018, they launched an appeal for people in Donesk to come forward to corroborate their “findings” re. the deployment of the BUK missile system:
On the following day, the governments of Australia and the Netherlands officially declared that “they hold Russia responsible for the incident”. (see Polygraph Info, May 25, 2018)
Moscow remains the “main suspect” in this politically twisted investigation, which has now led to a legal procedure in the Netherlands directed against the alleged perpetrators.
On June 19, 2019, the International Joint Investigation Team (JIT) announced (video) that international arrest warrants have been issued against four “separatist commanders” of the Donetsk People’s Republic (DNR). These warrants concern Ukrainian citizen Leonid Kharchenko, and Russian citizens Sergei Dubinsky, Oleg Pulatov, and Igor Girkin.
Moreover, Britain’s Foreign Secretary Jeremy Hunt announced in mid-July 2019 that “the UK will provide financial support to the specialist criminal court in the Hague” which is slated to host the trial of the four suspects.
In this report we will first focus on the Timeline as well as selected evidence which has been suppressed including the presence of a second aircraft.
We will then review the official report of the Kiev government prepared by Ukraine’s intelligence service (SBU) as well as the role of the SBU in feeding “evidence” to the Dutch Safety Board (DSB) and the Joint Investigation Team (JIT)
Analysis of the Evidence
Timeline
July 15, 2014. Two Days Before the Tragic Event
A division of Buk missile systems of the Ukrainian Armed Forces was, according to Pravda, deployed to the Donetsk Oblast on July 15, two days before the downing of the Malaysian airlines MH17 flight. The Buk missile system has the capabilities of downing an aircraft flying at 35,000 feet.
Russian Defense sources confirmed the presence of several Ukraine missile batteries in the Donesk oblast operated by the Ukraine armed forces:
‘The Ukrainian military has several batteries of Buk surface-to-air missile systems with at least 27 launchers, capable of bringing down high-flying jets, in the Donetsk region where the Malaysian passenger plane crashed, Russian Defense Ministry said”(RT, July 17, 2014)
The Prosecutor General of Ukraine Vitaliy Yarema confirmed that the Donesk rebels did not have [Ukrainian] Buk or S 300 ground to air missiles which could have downed the plane, which suggests that the missiles of the Ukraine armed forces had been deployed but they were not in the possession of the rebels, a premise which remains central to the US-Kiev official version that the rebels, supported by Moscow, were responsible for attacking Malaysian Airlines MH17.
According to the Kiev Post report:“Ukrainian prosecutor general says militants did not seize Ukrainian air defense launchers”:
“Members of illegal armed units have not seized air defense launchers of the Ukrainian Armed Forces in Donetsk, Ukrainian Prosecutor General Vitaliy Yarema said.” (Kiev Post, July 19, 2014)
According to Russia’s Itar-Tass report (July 2014)
“After the passenger airliner was downed, the military reported to the president that terrorists do not have our air defense missile systems Buk and S-300,” the general prosecutor [of Ukraine] said. “These weapons were not seized,” he added.
Ukrainian Interior Minister Anton Gerashchenko said on July 17 that the Malaysia Airlines Boeing 777 airliner had been downed by an air defense missile system Buk.
From both Russian and Ukrainian sources there was evidence of Ukrainian BUK missiles deployed in Eastern Ukraine and official statements that the Donesk rebel forces had no access to the Ukraine Buk air missiles. The Kiev Post report did not (in this July 19 report) mention the presence of Russia BUK missiles in Donetsk oblast.
July 17, 2014. Day of the MH17 Tragedy
The Boeing-777 of the Malaysian Airlines flight MH17 from Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur “disappeared from the radars and crashed on Thursday evening July 17 near Grabovo in Ukraine’s Donetsk oblast.
The Flight Path of MH17 Was Changed? July 17 Plane Route was over the Ukraine War-zone
The maps below clearly indicate a change in flight path for Malaysian airlines MH17 on July 17. They also indicate on the map the two regions of Ukraine which are part of the warzone, namely Donetsk and Lugansk.
The first dynamic map compares the two flight paths:
It indicates the regular flight path on July 16th which takes the plane in a Southeasterly direction across the Sea of Azov.
The second flight path which is that of July 17th takes the plane over the Donesk oblast warzone, bordering onto Lugansk oblast.
The four static images indicate screen shots of the Flight Paths of MH17 for July 14-17, 2014
The information conveyed in these maps suggests that the flight path on July 17 was changed.
MH17 was diverted from the normal South Easterly route over the sea of Azov to a path over the Donetsk oblast.
Who was behind the change of the flight path? And why was the flight path changed?
CLICK IMAGES TO ENLARGE
Changing MH17 Route From July 14, 2014 to July 17, 2014
Screenshots of Flight Paths of MH17 for July 14-17, 2014
The Presence of a Second Aircraft
The presence of another aircraft is corroborated by the Russian Ministry of Defense which pointed to the presence of a Ukrainian Su-25 jet in the flight corridor of the MH17, within proximity of the plane.
While Russian official sources may be considered unreliable and politically inclined, the presence of a second aircraft was also confirmed by numerous witnesses in Donesk oblast as well as by a BBC report conducted at the crash site on July 23.
“eyewitnesses in the Donetsk region saw Ukrainian warplanes near the passenger jet. They say they heard sounds of powerful blasts and saw a Ukraine warplane shortly before the crash. (ITAR Tass)
The presence of a second aircraft was also confirmed by air traffic controller Luis Lopez reporting in real time (on his twitter) from the Borisopol airport. This source is controversial and cannot be corroborated. His twitter account was closed down. He was reported to have left Ukraine. He gave a couple of interviews and then disappeared. Was his life threatened?
Suppressed BBC Report
All the eyewitnesses interviewed by the BBC confirmed the presence of a Ukrainian military aircraft flying within proximity of Malaysian Airlines MH17 at the time that it was shot down:
Eyewitness #1: There were two explosions in the air. And this is how it broke apart. And [the fragments] blew apart like this, to the sides. And when …
Eyewitness #2: … And there was another aircraft, a military one, beside it. Everybody saw it.
Eyewitness #1: Yes, yes. It [second aircraft] was flying under it, because it could be seen. It was proceeding underneath, below the civilian one.
Eyewitness #3: There were sounds of an explosion. But they were in the sky. They came from the sky. Then this plane [second plane] made a sharp turn-around like this. It changed its trajectory and headed in that direction [indicating the direction with her hands].
BBC Report below (removed by BBC) scroll down for alternative youtube version
The original BBC Video Report published by BBC Russian Service on July 23, 2014 was removed by the BBC.
In a bitter irony, The BBC is suppressing its own news productions.
This is the BBC Report which is still available on Youtube
BELOW SCREENSHOT OF BBC TV REPORT ENTITLED “AND THERE WAS ANOTHER AIRCRAFT” SUPPRESSED BY THE BBC
It had been blocked [March 8, 2016] once more by the BBC. The BBC censors its own reports.
Several other reports and eyewitness testimonies confirm the presence of a second aircraft. Of significance is a December 2014 report by Komsomolskaya Pravda which conducted an interview with a Ukrainian serviceman.
While the substance of the interview (translated from Russian) is contradictory it nonetheless suggests the presence of a second aircraft as confirmed by the suppressed BBC report.
The BBC Refutes and Confirms its Own Lies
It is worth noting that subsequent BBC reports tend to refute the substance of their first onsite investigation in Donesk Oblast with the exception of a May 2016 BBC documentary which puts forth “several theories”.
The documentary puts forth evidence which initially refutes the official story while also intimating and concluding that Russia might have been behind the MH17 tragedy.
The official investigation report into MH17 flight argues that only a powerful ground-to-air missile could be responsible. Yet, there are eyewitness accounts of other aircrafts seen flying next to MH17 close to impact. To further fuel the conspiracies, Russia and Ukraine blame each other but both countries are unable to provide all the critical radar data from that day. ( See BBC notice here),
According to Australia News in a review of the May 2016 BBC documentary, the Kiev regime is identified as the culprit:
A CONTROVERSIAL new documentary will investigate claims that Malaysia Airlines flight MH17 was shot down by a Ukraine fighter jet, instead of a Russian missile.In a new BBC documentary titled ‘The Conspiracy Files: Who Shot Down MH17?’, eyewitnesses will share their accounts of how they saw the aircraft being downed by a nearby fighter jet.
“There are eyewitness accounts of other aircraft seen flying next to MH17 close to impact,” a statement from the BBC said.
Link to the May 2016 BBC Documentary
Bullet Sized Holes
According to the report of German pilot and airlines expert Peter Haisenko, the MH17 Boeing 777 was not brought down by a missile.
What he observed from the available photos were perforations of the cockpit:
This aircraft was not hit by a missile in the central portion. The destruction is limited to the cockpit area. Now you have to factor in that this part is constructed of specially reinforced material
It is worth noting that the initial statements by OSCE observers (July 31) broadly confirm the findings of Peter Haisenko:
Monitors from the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe reported that shrapnel-like holes were found in two separate pieces of the fuselage of the ill-fated Malaysia Airlines aircraft that was believed to have been downed by a missile in eastern Ukraine.
Michael Bociurkiw of the OSCE group of monitors at his daily briefing described part of the plane’s fuselage dotted with “shrapnel-like, almost machine gun-like holes.” He said the damage was inspected by Malaysian aviation-security officials .(Wall Street Journal, July 31, 2014)
The monitoring OSCE team has not found evidence of a missile fired from the ground as conveyed by official White House statements. As we recall, the US ambassador to the UN Samantha Power stated –pointing a finger at Russia– that the Malaysian MH17 plane was “likely downed by a surface-to-air missile operated from a separatist-held location”:
The team of international investigators with the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) are uncertain if the missile used was fired from the ground as US military experts have previously suggested, the Wall Street Journal (WSJ) reported. (Malay Mail online, emphasis added)
The initial OSCE findings dispelled the claim that a BUK missile system brought down the plane.
Evidently, inasmuch as the perforations are attributable to shelling, a shelling operation conducted from the ground could not have brought down an aircraft traveling above 30,000 feet.
No firm evidence that a BUK missile had actually been fired on July 17th 2014
Expert analysis confirms that the firing of a BUK missile would have left a visible white vapor trail in the sky for about ten minutes after firing (see below).
According to witnesses in Donesk oblast, no vapor trail was seen in the sky on that day. What they saw was a second plane.
There were various images of smoke trails presented and analyzed. (see the BBC documentary). These pictures however do not correspond to a clearcut white vapor trail associated with the launching of a BUK missile.
There were no satellite images or photographic evidence of a vapor trail.
The following images (from BUK missile tests) indicate the nature of the vapor trail.
Screenshots of RT documentary, October 22, 2019
Report of the Russian Union of Engineers (RUE)
A detailed and comprehensive report by the Russian Union of Engineers (English translation) largely corroborates the presence of a Second Aircraft (confirmed by eye witnesses, BBC interviews).
“… Russian air traffic control recorded the ascent of a Ukrainian Air Force aircraft, presumably an Su-25, in the direction of the Malaysian Boeing 777. The distance between the SU-25 aircraft from the Boeing 777 was between 3 and 5 km.”
The RUE report also corroborates the “bullet hole” analysis as well as the statements of the OSCE and Peter Haisenko (mentioned above):
A detailed analysis of its fragments can provide a more complete picture of the causes of the crash. … you can see the different forms of damage to its shell or skin – tears and factures, holes with folds on the outer and the inner sides of the fuselage, tell- tale signs of a powerful external impact on the plane.
Of particular note are the holes folded inward in the fuselage. They are round- bored, and usually grouped. Such holes can only be formed by metal objects with a circular cross-section, possibly rods or shells from an aircraft gun. The question arises: who could deliver such projectiles to the aircraft, by what means, and what might they look like?
The report also focusses on the absence of photographic evidence of a visible vapor trail of a BUK missile.
In this case there has been no evidence of a trail of white condensation which would be by-product of the consumption of rocket fuel which would appear and persist for some minutes after the launch and be visible to those standing in a radius of within 10 km from the missile launch-site. (RUE report, p. 7)
It concludes after careful investigation that the MH17 Boeing 777 was “not brought down by the means of anti-aircraft missile fire from a BUK-M1 installation.”
According to the Russian Union of Engineers: the MH17 Boeing 777 “flying a horizontal course at 10000 metres could quite feasibly find itself within range of the Rocket / Cannon armament of a fighter, either a MIG-29 or an SU-25.”
Thus, according to the analysts from the Russian Union of Engineers, we have the complete destruction of the Boeing 777 as [a result of] missile systems using “air-to-air” close-combat missiles as well as a 30-mm aircraft cannon or an SPPU-22 container with GSh-23L 23-mm dual-barrel guns. At the same time, when firing on a target, a laser range finder can be used, or a laser sight, that allows for significantly improved accuracy. This is indicated by the pattern of damage and the dispersal of the fragments: there are round holes, which are typically produced as a result of gun shots, and discontinuous holes characteristic of flechette rockets. (RUE report, page 12)
Media Spin: Shrapnel, Bullet Holes, “High Energy Objects”
The media has reported that a BUK surface to air missile was indeed fired and exploded before reaching its target.
According to the official explanation (DSB), it was not the missile that brought down the plane, it was the shrapnel resulting from the missile explosion (prior to reaching the plane) which punctured the plane and then led to a loss of pressure.
This is largely the position of the Dutch Safety Board which explains the holes as a result of the explosion of the missile. This is analysis is tenuous. A shelling operation from a jet fighter was simply not considered by the DSB.
The holes according to the DSB report were the result of so-called “high energy objects coming from the warhead [Buk missile]” (i.e shrapnel from the missile). This assessment was used to dispel the evidence concerning the second aircraft.
According to a BBC report (September 9, 2014) “Cockpit window contained numerous small puncture holes suggesting small objects entered from above level of cockpit floor. Damage to forward section indicates plane penetrated by large number of high energy objects from outside”.
The holes from outside were presented as the result of the explosion of the missile, according to the DSB (13 October 2015)
At 13.20 UTC (Coordinated Universal Time) a 9N314M warhead, launched by a Buk surface-to-air missile system from a 320-square-kilometre area in the eastern part of Ukraine, detonated to the left and above the cockpit. The forward section of the aircraft was penetrated by hundreds of high-energy objects coming from the warhead.
The statement of the OSCE observer Michael Bociurkiw is not acknowledged by the Dutch Safety Board and JIT reports.
“… international investigators believed data from the flight recorders show “the reason for the destruction and crash of the plane was massive explosive decompression arising from multiple shrapnel perforations from a rocket explosion”.
Surface-to-air missiles such as the Buk system widely believed to have shot the passenger jet down can explode near their targets, blasting a cloud of shrapnel into them.”
” The downed Malaysia Airlines jet in eastern Ukraine suffered an explosive loss of pressure after it was punctured by shrapnel from a missile…. They say the information came from the plane’s flight data recorders, which are being analysed by British experts.”
“Machine Gun Like Holes” Caused by a Second Aircraft or a BUK Missile?
The shrapnel marks should be distinguished from the small entry and exit holes “most likely that of a 30 millimeter caliber projectile” fired from a military aircraft. According to the findings of Peter Haisenko:
If we now consider the armament of a typical SU 25 we learn this: It is equipped with a double-barreled 30-mm gun, type GSh-302 / AO-17A, equipped with: a 250 round magazine of anti-tank incendiary shells and splinter-explosive shells (dum-dum), arranged in alternating order. The cockpit of the MH 017 has evidently been fired at from both sides: the entry and exit holes are found on the same fragment of it’s cockpit segment
Our review of the evidence points to
the presence of a second aircraft,
“bullet like holes” pointing to the possibility of an attack by a second aircraft
No firm evidence of a BUK missile attack directed against MH17.
Absence of photographic evidence of a vapor trail from a BUK style missile on July 17, 2014
The Official Kiev Government Report Prepared by Ukraine Intelligence (SBU)
Of significance, Ukraine’s Secret Service (SBU) was given the mandate by the Ukraine authorities of coordinating and gathering the evidence in Eastern Ukraine as well as transmitting it to the Dutch Safety Board and the JIT.
According to the official SBU report entitled Terrorists and Militants planned cynical terrorist attack at Aeroflot civil aircraft published on August 7, 2014, the SBU accused Russia of having ordered a false flag attack involving the shooting down of its own Aeroflot plane leading to the death of its own citizens, and then blaming it on Kiev, with Russia using the tragedy as a casus belli pretext to invade Ukraine. According to the report: The Donetsk militia were aiming at a Russian Aeroflot passenger plane and shot down the Malaysian MH17 airliner by mistake.
That’s the official Ukraine government story which was acknowledged by the Ukrainian as well as several Western media. See below.
According to Britain’s foremost news tabloid, The Mail on Sunday, quoting the head of Ukraine intelligence, the insidious design of the pro-Russian rebels (allegedly supported by Moscow) was to shoot down a Russian commercial airline plane with tourists en route to Cyprus, with a view to blaming the Ukrainian government. The objective of this alleged “false flag” covert op was to create a justifiable and credible pretext for Vladimir Putin to declare war on Ukraine.
In an utterly twisted logic, according to Ukraine’s head of intelligence:
“the [Donesk] rebels were meant to down [the] Aeroflot plane… to justify the invasion [of Ukraine by Russia]”,
Valentyn Nalyvaichenko (right), head of Ukraine intelligence (24 February 2014 – 18 June 2015) that the pro-Russian rebels were “aiming at a Russian passenger plane “so Putin had reason to invade”.
“the crime was planned as a ground for bringing of Russian troops into Ukraine, that is – CASUS BELLI for the Russian military invasion.” (Official statement of Ukraine Security Service, in annex below)
In a bitter irony, according to the report, the alleged “false flag” covert op got muddled. The Donesk rebels got it all wrong and hit the MH17 plane by mistake.
That’s the “official line” which was made public by the Kiev government on August 7, 2014, 3 weeks after the MH17 tragedy.
The former head of Ukraine’s secret service has claimed rebels intended to down a Russian airliner to give Vladimir Putin a pretext for invasion – but blasted Flight MH17 out of the sky by mistake.
Why on earth would pro-Russian rebels who are at war with the Kiev regime shoot down a Russian passenger plane AFL-2074 allegedly with a view to harnessing Russia’s support? It does not make sense.
What’s more, according to SBU Chief Valentyn Nalyvaichenko’s statement, Moscow was helping the pro-Russian rebels in their alleged false flag op to shoot down Russia’s Aeroflot plane by providing them with a Buk missile system, which allegedly had been discretely smuggled across the border to the Donesk region of Eastern Ukraine. The Aeroflot plane was slated to be “shot down over territory controlled by Ukrainian government troops” with the support of Russia:
Valentyn Nalyvaichenko said that Russian-backed fighters were supposed to take their BUK rocket launcher – which had been transported across the Russian border – to a village called Pervomaiskoe in Ukrainian-held territory west of Donetsk.
But they “screwed up”. The Buk rocket launcher was apparently positioned in the wrong rural location and because of that it targeted the MH17 by mistake:
Instead, they mistakenly positioned it in a rebel-controlled village of the same name to the east of the city.
Got it wrong? Valentyn Nalyvaichenko claims pro-Russian rebels targeted the wrong civilian airliner
If they had gone where they had been ordered, he said, they would have hit an Aeroflot flight carrying civilians travelling from Moscow to Larnaca in Cyprus.
Crucially, the crash site would have been in Ukrainian-held territory. (Mail on Sunday, August 9, 2014)
The August 2014 “intelligence” report released by SBU Chief Nalyvaichenko bordered on ridicule and incompetence to say to the least.
(Since its release in August 2014, the link to the original SBU report is no longer available. The text of the SBU report (press release) is published in annex to this article.
Who is Valentyn Nalyvaichenko. His role in the MH17 investigation
Valentyn Nalyvaichenko commissioned the SBU report on behalf of the Kiev government in July 2014 in coordination with The National Security and National Defense Committee (RNBOU) of which the Secretary General was Andriy Parubiy (February 27, 2014 — August 7, 2014), followed by the appointment of Oleksandr Turchynov (December 16, 2014 — 19 May 2019)
The RNBOU oversees National Security and Intelligence (SBU), the Ministry of Defense, the Armed Forces, Law Enforcement.
Parubiy who became president (chair) of the Ukrainian Parliament is the co-founder of the Neo-Nazi Social-National Party of Ukraine (subsequently renamed Svoboda). He has been routinely received with red carpet treatment in Canada, the US and the European Union.
Both Nalyvaichenko and Parubiy are followers of Ukrainian Nazi leader Stepan Bandera, who collaborated in the mass murderer of Jews, Russians and Poles during World War II. (For more details on Parubiy click here)
Can we trust the SBU?
Following the MH17 tragedy, the head of Ukraine’s SBU was entrusted with the gathering and feeding of evidence to the Dutch inquiries. In fact most of the information and analysis (including recordings of telephone conversations, video, audio material) transmitted to the JIT emanated from the SBU.
Is the information and evidence transmitted by the SBU reliable?
An indepth forensic analysis conducted by OG IT Forensic Service led by Akash Rosen points to the manipulation of telephone conversations, video and audio material by the SBU. The OG IT report confirms unequivocally that the “evidence” submitted by Ukraine’s SBU to the JIT has been manipulated.
Akash Rosen was interviewed in the MH17 documentary entitled MH17 Call for Justice, directed by Yana Yerloshova, which sheds light on the deceptive role of Ukraine’s Secret Service.
Fraud and Corruption within the SBU. The Neo-Nazi connection
While the media has remained silent on the matter, the insidious and corrupt role of the SBU has nonetheless been acknowledged. A December 2015 report in the Irish Times suggests that:
The Dutch government has been warned that the criminal case against those who shot down Malaysia Airlines Flight MH17 could be undermined because the Ukrainian security service, the SBU, which has provided key evidence, is widely regarded as institutionally corrupt.
Both justice minister Ard van der Steur and the Dutch public prosecutor’s office are coming under increasing pressure to make statements about the integrity of the evidence gathered by the SBU following a string of scandals, including the sacking of its boss, Valentyn Nalyvaichenko.
The SBU has played a crucial role in two elements of the MH17 investigation. It has handed over phone conversations between pro-Russian rebels intercepted shortly before the jet, … It was also responsible for securing the main elements of the Boeing 777’s shattered fuselage in the hours after it crashed in the Donetsk region of eastern Ukraine, spreading debris over 50 sq km.
“Institutionally corrupt” is an understatement. The former head of the SBU is an avowed Nazi. Ukraine’s intelligence service not to mention the National Guard and elements within the military in 2014-2015 were largely under the control of the two neo-Nazi parties: Svoboda and Right Sector.
The SBU was also in permanent liaison with Western intelligence including the CIA and MI6.
The head of Ukraine intelligence Valentyn Nalyvaichenko appointed by the Kiev regime worked in tandem with the Neo-Nazi Right Sector leader Dmitro Yarosh who in turn played a key role in setting up the Azov Battalion (see image right), a National Guard entity integrated by Neo-Nazis, operating in Eastern Ukraine in so-called “anti-terrorist” operations. Dmitro Yaroch, who became member of parliament was appointed advisor to the Chief of general staff of the Ukrainian army.
Eduard Dolinsky, director of the Ukrainian Jewish Committee, “made the accusation on Facebook against Valentyn Nalyvaichenko, head of the Security Service of Ukraine (see the news website evreiskiy.kiev.ua report) after Nalyvaichenko said his organization [the SBU] needed to base its work on the Ukrainian Insurgent Army, or UPA, which murdered thousands of Jews in the ’40s. The UPA under the leadership of Stepan Bandera collaborated with the Third Reich during World War II”( quoted in The Times of Israel 15 April 2015)
In an [April 2015] interview with the local media … Nalyvaichenko said the Security Service “does not need to invent anything new, it is important to build on the traditions of the [Nazi] Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists and UPA in the 1930-1950 years.”
The popularity of UPA, which for a time collaborated with the Nazi occupation to further UPA’s ambitions of sovereignty from Russia, has soared in Ukraine since a 2013 revolution that led to armed conflict with pro-Russian militias in Ukraine’s east.
Earlier this month [April 2015], the Ukrainian Parliament passed a bill that opened the door to state recognition of UPA, previously a taboo because of the widespread war crimes committed by its troops. The Times of Israel (15 April 2015)
Those war crimes have not ceased. The Atlantic Council, (June 18, 2015) a Washington Think Tank with close links to both the Pentagon and the US State Department acknowledged that the Right Sector had permeated Ukraine’s military intelligence apparatus:
Poroshenko Bloc MP Serhiy Leshchenko released a document confirming old rumors that Right Sector’s Dmitro Yarosh [Neo-Nazi leader] worked for Nalyvaichenko when he was a member of parliament from 2012 to 2014. While the connection between the two raises some questions about the events of Euromaidan and the origins of Right Sector, this attack alone wasn’t enough to discredit Nalyvychenko. Yarosh is now a member of parliament and an advisor to the chief of general staff of the Ukrainian army. In other words, Yarosh has been legitimized by the political establishment. . . .
Details of the SBU Report
While the SBU report focussing on an alleged false flag was casually acknowledged by the Western media, Washington remained silent on the matter. Nobody in the US intelligence community acknowledged or corroborated the statement of their Ukrainian counterparts.
Moreover, while the SBU was feeding “evidence” to the Dutch inquiries, the SBU report (August 7, 2014) was not acknowledged or mentioned in the reports of the Dutch Safety Board and the JIT.
As we recall, immediately after the MH17 plane crash on July 17 2014, Secretary of State John Kerry and US Ambassador to the UN Samantha Power pointed their finger at Moscow without a shred of evidence. In the wake of this official and “authoritative” SBU August 7 2014 announcement by the Kiev regime, Obama, Kerry, Samantha Power et al, chose to remain mum. The Ukraine Secret Service’s official statement concerning the crash of Malaysian airlines MH17 was so outlandish. It simply did not fit the usual mold of media disinformation.
In a new and rather unusual twist, however, according to the Kiev regime, the Donetsk militia did not intend to shoot down Malaysian airlines MH17.
What the “pro-Russian rebels” (according to the SBU report) were aiming at was a Russian Aeroflot passenger plane. The MH17 was shot down “by mistake” according to an official statement by the head of Ukraine’s Secret Service, Valentyn Nalyvaichenko (Ukraine News Service, August 7, 2014).
According to SBU Chief Nalyvaichenko:
“Ukraine’s law enforcement and intelligence agencies have established during the investigation into a terrorist attack on the Boeing… that on that day, July 17, and at that time military mercenaries and terrorists from the Russian Federation planned to carry out a terrorist attack against a passenger aircraft of Aeroflot en route from Moscow to Larnaca… as a pretext for the further invasion by Russia,”
“This cynical terrorist attack was planned for the day when the [Malaysia Airlines] plane happened to fly by, planned by war criminals as a pretext for the further military invasion by the Russian Federation, that is, there would be a casus belli,” he added.
Thus, according Nalyvaichenko, the terrorists downed the Malaysian airliner by mistake.” (Ukraine Interfax News, August 8, 2014)
The head of Ukraine’s secret service has claimed rebels intended to down a Russian airliner to give Vladimir Putin a pretext for invasion – but blasted Flight MH17 out of the sky by mistake.
Nalyvaichenko said that the Kiev government reached this conclusion “in the course of its own investigation into the downing of MH17”.
“Had the terrorists succeeded in downing the Aeroflot jet, it would have created the needed casus belli for Russia to invade Ukraine from its East to its West” according to Nalyvaichenko (see Tweet above, see also Transcript of August 7, 2014 SBU document in Annex)
While Nalyvaichenko was dismissed by Poroshenko from the SBU in June 2015, much of the “evidence” of MH!7 had been gathered and processed during his mandate.
There was no visible shift in direction of the SBU following his dismissal. Nalyvaichenko’s Deputy Vasyl Hrytsak was appointed head of SBU (July 2015- May 2019)
The so-called “pro-Russian rebels” had allegedly planned an Operation Northwoods type “false flag” with utmost proficiency.
The covert op allegedly consisted in downing a Russian passenger plane with Moscow’s support. The alleged objective was for Moscow to place the blame on the government of Ukraine for having ordered the downing of the Aeroflot plane (resulting in the deaths of Russian tourists), thereby creating a “useful wave of indignation” across the Russian Federation.
The alleged “false flag” slated to be implemented by the Donetsk “terrorists and mercenaries” would then, according to the scenario depicted by Ukraine’s Chief Spy, spearhead public support for a Russian invasion of Ukraine, with patriotic Russian troops coming to the rescue of the “pro-Russian separatists”:
The mass killing of Russian tourists could then have been blamed on the Ukrainian army, giving Moscow a justification for invasion, said Mr Nalyvaichenko, head of the Ukrainian intelligence service, the SBU. (Daily Mail, August 9, 2014)
The official SBU report states that the:
“The Russian side would need a compelling argument for such a step, for example accusation of the Ukrainian government in mass murder of the Russian citizens [on the plane]” (See complete SBU statement in Annex below).
According to the head of Ukraine’s Secret Service: “It is incredibly cynical that the act of terrorism was planned [by the rebels] against peaceful innocent Russian citizens who were on the way to their holidays with children”:
‘This cynical terrorist act was intended to justify an immediate military invasion by the Russian Federation,’ he said.
Aeroflot flight AFL2074 was close to Malaysia Airlines flight MH17 when it was blown out of the sky on July 17, killing all 298 on board, he said.
… He claimed this was a significant conclusion of Kiev’s probe into MH17’s downing. (Daily Mail, August 8, 2019)
A Russian invasion plan had allegedly been scheduled –according to the official SBU report– to commence on July 18, on the day following the planned downing of Aeroflot flight 2074. But when the MH17 flight was downed by mistake, the Russian invasion plan scheduled for July 18, according to the Kiev scenario, was cancelled.
This whole scenario was fabricated. There were no indications or evidence that Russia was preparing to invade Ukraine on July 18th, 2014.
Mainstream Media Response to Kiev Regime’s Accusations
Normally, the Western media would provide ample coverage and commentary to an official Kiev statement pertaining to MH17 accusing Russia. It’s part of the MSM routine of “Russia bashing” and demonizing president Vladimir Putin.
With the exception of Ukraine News Service and London’s Daily Mail, however, the official statement of the head of Ukraine’s Secret Service went largely unnoticed. Normally, a declaration of this nature would be picked up by the wire services with syndicated reports flooding the front page of the Western news chain.
Screenshot Daily Mail on Sunday, August 09, 2014
Was the mainstream media instructed to temporarily “put a hold” on reporting the “revelations” of Ukraine’s Secret Service.
The Kiev regime’s allegations are far-fetched to say the least: the Donesk rebels –largely involved in combat operations– had neither the capabilities nor the desire to undertake a complex intelligence operation of this nature. What purpose would it serve? Cui Bono?
Does Russia require a fake humanitarian pretext to intervene when several thousand civilians in the Donbass region had been killed by the Azov Battalion (image right, flag with Nazi SS symbol) and Ukrainian Armed Forces, not to mention the Odessa massacre perpetrated by the Kiev regime’s Neo-Nazi national guard.
Ironically, barely four days after being accused by Kiev of planning to invade Ukraine, Russia’s President Putin agreed with European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso that Moscow would not only collaborate with the Red Cross on channeling humanitarian aid to Eastern Ukraine through Russian territory, but that the agreement reached with the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), had the support of the Kiev government.
It is worth noting that neither the Russian government nor the Russian media have commented extensively on (or responded to) the accusations directed against Moscow contained in Ukraine’s dodgy Secret Service’s MH17 report.
Was Washington consulted before the release of the dodgy SBU False Flag report?
Did Washington give them the “Green Light” to release the SBU report as a means of “Framing Russia”?
Or did the White House or the State Department decide that the SBU’s “fake intelligence” was visibly flawed and could not effectively be used for propaganda purposes against Russia?
Were the CIA and MI6 consulted? Britain’s Secret Service MI6 subsequently had access to the plane’s black box, which was handed over by a Malaysian official to the Dutch task force and which in turn was entrusted to an unnamed partner entity in the UK.
Concluding Remarks
The Day After
According to the SBU in its August 7, 2014 official report on behalf of the Ukraine government, the Kremlin’s planned “false flag” to bring down a commercial Aeroflot flight en route to Cyprus and blame the tragedy on the Kiev regime, was to be used to justify the launching of a major war against Ukraine.
the crime was planned as a ground for bringing of Russian troops into Ukraine, that is – CASUS BELLI for the Russian military invasion. …
“the [Donesk] rebels were meant to down [the] Aeroflot plane… to justify the invasion [of Ukraine by Russia]” (see complete text in Annex)
These statements border on ridicule. They reveal the corrupt and criminal nature of the SBU.
If a Russian military invasion of Ukraine had been planned to commence on July 18th, 2014 there would have been ample evidence of deployment and movement of Russian forces in proximity of the border in the days prior to the July 17th tragedy. Sloppy intelligence? No such evidence was forthcoming indicating the movement of Russian forces.
It is worth noting that the only movement of military hardware documented by both Ukrainian and Russian sources was the deployment of a BUK missile system belonging to the Ukrainian armed forces, reported on July 15, 2014.
According to Ukrainian sources, the Prosecutor General of Ukraine Vitaliy Yarema confirmed that “the Donesk rebels did not have [Ukrainian] Buk or S 300 ground to air missiles which could have downed the plane”, which suggests that the missiles of the Ukraine armed forces had been deployed but they were not in the possession of the rebels, a premise which remains central to the US-Kiev official version that the rebels, supported by Moscow, were responsible for attacking Malaysian Airlines MH17.
A final note:
The alleged Russian Invasion Plan was slated to start on the 18th according to SBU Chief Nalyvaichenko.
Intelligence data proved that on July 18 the militants have already waited for the introduction of Russian Armed forces into the territory of Ukraine. (See official report of Ukraine Security Service (SBU, in annex below)
This account seems to be at odds with both the SBU and JIT statements that the alleged Russian BUK Missile had been brought in secretly on the 16th of July into Donesk, and was planned to be discreetly moved back across the border into Russia on the 17th or 18th.
If Russia had been planning an invasion to commence on July 18th, why on earth would they need to discretely move their military hardware back across the border to Russia.
During the investigation of Malaysia Airlines Boeing-777 downing the law enforcement and intelligence bodies established that terrorists and militants have cynically planned the terrorist attack at Aeroflot civil aircraft, AFL-2074 Moscow-Larnaca, which was flying over the territory of Ukraine at that moment. Hereof informed the Head of the Security Service of Ukraine Mr. Valentyn Nalyvaichenko during the briefing today.
He underlined – the crime was planned as a ground for bringing of Russian troops into Ukraine, that is – CASUS BELLI for the Russian military invasion.
According to the official Ukrainian data, June 17, 2014, at the mentioned time two regular international flights were operating over the territory of Ukraine following the filed requests for aircraft clearance – MAS17 plane of the Malaysia Airlines and AFL-2074 one of Aeroflot.
The routes of the mentioned international flights were approaching the sky over Donetsk. At 16:09 in the area of Novomykolaivka town the routes of the mentioned flights crossed. It is worth noting that the flight specifications of the aircrafts were almost identical – the Malaysian aircraft flew at a height of 10,100 m at a speed 909 km/h, while the Russian one – at a height of 10,600 m at a speed 768 km/h.
At 16:20 from the area of ‘Pervomaiske’ village, north-east from Donetsk, near the town of Torez, terrorists shot down the Malaysian jet, which then crashed near Grabove, Donetsk region.
According to the intercepted and published data about the ‘Buk” missile system, the terrorists had received an order to place the system near ‘Pervomaiskoe’ village, V. Nalyvaichenko mentioned. The namesake village is located about 20 km to the north-east from Donetsk.
The terrorists (most of them are not locals, but the Russian mercenaries) misrecognized the namesake villages and moved the other way, the SSU Head said. The odd route of the ‘Buk’ missile system on the territory of Ukraine proves that fact. The system crossed the Russia-Ukraine border in Luhansk region, then was deployed westward to Donetsk and moved back to the border between Donetsk and Luhansk regions afterwards.
By setting up the ‘Buk’ missile system in ‘Pervomaiske’ village located to the west from Donetsk and taking into consideration the military specifications of the weapon, the terrorists could have shot down the Russian civilian jetliner with its further crashing on the Ukrainian territory controlled by the ATO [Ukraine] forces.
In that case Russia would receive an opportunity to accuse the Ukrainian authorities of downing the Russian plane, assaulting the Russian citizens and would use this irresistible proof for its invasion into Ukraine.
Russian side would need a compelling argument for such a step, for example accusation of the Ukrainian government in mass murder of the Russian citizens.
“A peculiar cynicism appears in the fact that the terrorist act was planned just against the peaceful, innocent Russian citizens, who were flying with their children on vacation”, – V. Nalyvaichenko, stressed.
Intelligence data proved that on July 18 the militants have already waited for the introduction of Russian Armed forces into the territory of Ukraine. The Russian side had been giving grounding for such developments for the several previous days. The Russian Mass Media had massively published information about the alleged shelling of the RF territory from the Ukrainian side.
For further details see [link no longer available]
Aparte de la declaración semioficial, nada indica que ISIS haya llevado a cabo el ataque al Crocus City Hall en Moscú.
Las agencias de noticias occidentales informan que, a través de su vehículo oficial, la agencia de noticias Amaq, ISIS declaró que “el ataque se produce en el contexto de una guerra violenta entre el Estado Islámico y los países que luchan contra el Islam”.
Esta afirmación no tiene sentido cuando miramos el país que fue atacado. Rusia es uno de los mayores aliados de los países islámicos. Y no me parece que ISIS esté precisamente preocupado por luchar contra los enemigos del Islam, ya que también se atribuyó la responsabilidad de un reciente ataque que mató a casi 100 personas en Irán, un país musulmán.
¿Qué naciones estarían “luchando contra el Islam”? En primer lugar, tenemos obviamente a Israel, que promueve el genocidio en Gaza. Todos los musulmanes militantes ven a Israel como el mayor enemigo del Islam. Pero ISIS no comete ataques en Israel, aunque eso sería muy fácil para Hamás o la Jihad Islámica. Hezbollah y Ansarullah también han atacado a Israel.
ISIS no ataca a Israel. Tampoco ha llevado a cabo ningún ataque importante en Estados Unidos, aunque es visto por la mayoría de los creyentes musulmanes como el segundo mayor enemigo del Islam y el mayor patrocinador de Israel.
Francia ha aplicado medidas dictatoriales contra los creyentes musulmanes, pero ha pasado un tiempo desde que ISIS llevó a cabo ataques importantes en el país. Lo mismo ocurre en el Reino Unido, donde la policía arresta a manifestantes que protestaban por la masacre de musulmanes en Gaza. En Alemania, el canciller Olaf Scholz ha sido uno de los más firmes partidarios del genocidio israelí, pero esto no parece molestar a ISIS.
Ninguno de los atacantes capturados declaró ser miembro de ISIS, ni siquiera haber sido reclutados para una misión sagrada, aunque la mayoría aparentemente son de origen musulmán.
De hecho, según ha difundido hasta el momento las autoridades rusas, los delincuentes declararon que actuaron exclusivamente por motivos económicos. No eran militantes de ningún grupo, ni de ISIS. Eran mercenarios pagados para matar gente, sin ideología declarada.
La prensa controlada por el imperialismo occidental difunde la creencia ciega en la atribución del ataque al ISIS. Todo empezó, como siempre, con noticias de Estados Unidos.
Parece un intento de establecer una verdad como cierta para evitar cualquier cuestionamiento, cualquier declaración diferente, que luego sería considerada una teoría de conspiración o persecución por parte del gobierno ruso contra Ucrania.
El gobierno estadounidense se apresuró a decir que Ucrania no tenía nada que ver con el ataque, mucho antes de que se formularan acusaciones contra los ucranianos. Todo el mundo conoce la historia del culpable que, justo después de hacer algo mal, es el primero en decir que no fue él. Esta declaración de Washington huele muy mal.
María Zajárova dio en el clavo: ¿cómo pueden los EE.UU. asegurar con tanta vehemencia que no fue Ucrania, si todavía nadie tiene información sobre lo que pasó? Si saben que supuestamente no era Ucrania, ¡entonces tienen pistas de quién fue!
Estados Unidos también se contradice al declarar, a través de John Kirby, que no tenía conocimiento de un complot en Moscú, y luego afirma que avisó a los rusos a principios de mes. Aunque advirtieron, considerando que no se puede creer a Estados Unidos, la información pudo haber sido una bandera falsa para despistar a los rusos y bajar la guardia ante el ataque que se produciría apenas dos semanas después.
El grupo musical Picnic, que actuaba en el teatro, apoya la operación militar especial en Ucrania. Según las investigaciones de las autoridades rusas, los responsables del ataque planeaban huir a Ucrania, donde ya tenían contactos que les ayudarían a escapar.
Vale, Ucrania es la frontera más cercana y segura para un terrorista que acaba de perpetrar un atentado en Moscú. Pero seamos realistas, en plena guerra entre Ucrania y Rusia, esto también huele muy mal para el lado ucraniano.
Sobre todo porque el secretario del Consejo Nacional de Defensa y Seguridad de Ucrania, Alexei Danilov, dijo a la televisión ucraniana que “les ofreceremos este tipo de entretenimiento más a menudo”. Los ucranianos, como los israelíes, no son muy discretos…
Los medios de propaganda occidentales habían causado revuelo anteriormente por las palabras de Dmitri Peskov, quien afirmó que Rusia se encuentra, en la práctica, en estado de guerra. Sería la prueba faltante de la amenaza, el peligro, la agresión y la megalomanía asesina de Vladimir Putin para apoderarse de Ucrania y del mundo.
El mismo día, respondiendo a una pregunta sobre si la OTAN estaba preparada para un conflicto con Rusia, Robert Bauer, miembro del comité militar de la OTAN, afirmó: “¡la respuesta es sí! Esta es nuestra principal tarea por hacer”. Sobre esto la prensa guardó silencio.
La situación actual muestra una peligrosa tendencia hacia la escalada de la guerra. Emmanuel Macron consideró enviar tropas francesas, mientras oficiales alemanes fueron sorprendidos discutiendo un ataque al puente de Crimea.
También en vísperas del ataque, Ucrania incrementó los bombardeos contra las regiones fronterizas. Todos estos son signos de una escalada del conflicto. Desde que Rusia puso en funcionamiento su picadora de carne, allá por 2022, ya se informó que ucranianos desesperados se embarcarían en acciones terroristas en territorio ruso, ya que no tendrían ninguna posibilidad de victoria en el campo de batalla.
Las embajadas de Ucrania son notorias reclutadoras de terroristas. El 10 de marzo, la embajada de Ucrania en Tayikistán publicó un anuncio para el reclutamiento de mercenarios tayikos. Según información preliminar, algunos de los capturados tras el atentado en Moscú son tayikos.
Los ataques que mataron a Darya Dugina en agosto de 2022 y a Vladlen Tatarsky en abril de 2023 son parte de esta nueva estrategia ucraniana. La muerte de Evgeny Prigozhin, en agosto de 2023, está ahora más cerca de ser obra de los ucranianos que de los propios rusos.
El periodista ruso Andrey Medvedev cita algunos puntos: 1) Amaq News no se había utilizado durante algún tiempo para informar sobre las acciones de ISIS; 2) los integrantes de este grupo huyeron luego del ataque y no tomaron rehenes, lo que difiere de las acciones anteriores.
Rusia acababa de vivir un momento de éxtasis con la abrumadora reelección de Vladimir Putin. Un momento de extrema felicidad y celebración para el Kremlin y la inmensa mayoría de la población rusa. Esta elección fue boicoteada, saboteada y calumniada por todo el imperialismo occidental, que patrocina a Ucrania, y lógicamente fue vista por él como una clara señal del fortalecimiento del gobierno ruso.
Al mismo tiempo, sería un buen momento –precisamente por la guardia baja debido al ambiente festivo– para un ataque sorpresa como este.
Ucrania y sus patrocinadores de la OTAN tienen todas las razones – sabiendo cómo piensan y actúan durante décadas – para llevar a cabo este tipo de cobardía contra Rusia. ISIS no tiene ningún motivo.
Pero incluso si en realidad fue orquestado por ISIS, eso no exime de culpa a Estados Unidos y sus satélites. Después de todo, quienes están detrás de ISIS son las mismas personas detrás de Vladimir Zelensky.
Eduardo Vasco
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Eduardo Vascoé jornalista especializado em política internacional, correspondente de guerra e autor dos livros-reportagem “O povo esquecido: uma história de genocídio e resistência no Donbass” e “Bloqueio: a guerra silenciosa contra Cuba”.
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How much longer will the Biden administration and the mainstream media continue to deny that we are in the midst of a very painful economic downturn? Debt levels have never been higher, delinquency rates are spiking, the commercial real estate market is crashing, the banking industry is mired in turmoil and large companies are conducting mass layoffs all over the nation. Anyone that attempts to claim that the U.S. economy is in good shape is just being delusional. Unfortunately, it is those that are at the bottom of the economic food chain that are being hurt the most.
If you want to know what is really going on with the economy, pawn shops are a great place to look.
When the economy is doing well, pawn shop inventories tend to go down because people aren’t pawning much stuff and there is lots of buying going on.
But when the economy is not doing well, pawn shop inventories tend to go up because people are pawning lots of stuff for fast cash and there aren’t as many buyers as there were during the good times.
So what are we seeing during the early stages of 2024?
One pawn shop owner that was recently interviewed by USA Today admitted that he has “a glut of inventory” right now…
Clay Baron has everything in his pawn shop from gold rings and pearl necklaces to vintage cowboy boots, silver belt buckles, stereos and ticking clocks.
The only thing he’s short on is space. “Right now we have a glut of inventory,” Baron said, “which tells me that our clientele doesn’t necessarily have money.”
Accumulating pawn shop inventory means fewer buyers than sellers – a sign that for the lowest-income Americans, times remain tough.
That same article pointed out that inventory levels have also grown rapidly at some of the largest pawn shop chains in the entire nation…
Two of the largest, publicly traded pawnshop corporations in the U.S. – which between them own roughly 1,700 pawnshops nationwide – are also reporting growing inventory and increased demand for short-term loans.
FirstCash Holdings Inc. operates nearly 1,200 pawnshops under the FirstCash and Cash America brands in 29 states and the District of Columbia. The company reported “record pawn receivables” in its most recent year-end earnings report and a 10% increase in inventory at its U.S. stores.
EZCORP Inc. also owns 530 pawnshops in the U.S. and reported an 8% increase in inventory at U.S. stores in the company’s latest earnings report. The “challenging macro-economic backdrop” continued to fuel demand for short-term cash loans, the company said.
If anyone comes to you and tries to convince you that the economy is doing well, just show them these numbers.
That will be the end of any debate.
One of the reasons why so many Americans need fast cash is because debt loads have risen to unprecedented levels. Here is just one example…
For Denise and Paul Nierzwicki, credit cards are the only way to make ends meet. The couple, ages 69 and 72, respectively, have about $20,000 in debt spread across multiple cards, all with interest rates above 20%.
The trouble started during the pandemic, when Denise lost her job and a business deal for a bar that they owned in their hometown of Lexington, Kentucky, went bad.
They applied for Social Security, which helped, and Denise now works 50 hours a week at a restaurant. Still, they’re barely scraping together the minimum payments for their credit card debt.
Can you imagine how much stress they must be feeling on a daily basis?
Sadly, there are millions of others that are in similar positions.
The combination of high debt levels and high interest rates has created a “perfect storm” of suffering for U.S. consumers, and so it should be no surprise that delinquency rates have been surging…
The signs are obvious. Last week we noted that banks’ charge-offs are accelerating, and are now above pre-pandemic levels.
…and leading this increase are credit card loans – with delinquencies that haven’t been this high since Q3 2011.
On top of that, while credit cards and nonfarm, nonresidential commercial real estate loans drove the quarterly increase in the noncurrent rate, residential mortgages drove the quarterly increase in the share of loans 30-89 days past due.
When large numbers of people start getting behind on their mortgages, it is only a matter of time before foreclosures start to spike.
Home foreclosures rose again in February as Americans continue to grapple with the ongoing cost-of-living crisis.
That is according to a new report published by real estate data provider ATTOM, which found that there were 32,938 properties in February with foreclosure filings, which includes default notices, scheduled auctions and bank repossessions.
Sadly, things are only going to get worse during the months ahead, because the labor market is starting to get very tight.
Cheyenne Barton, 26, of Kissimmee, Florida, graduated in December with one degree in biomedical sciences and another in computing technology and software development – the kind of practical background employers have coveted.
She initially targeted software development jobs but is now looking for “really any job” where she can use her degrees.
Barton has applied for about 1,000 positions but hasn’t yet notched an interview.
Companies “say they want recent grads who are teachable and can learn quicker,” she says. “But then you apply for the job and it’s like, ‘Oh, we already have over 100 applications with people who are more qualified.’”
Wait a second.
Joe Biden told us that good jobs are easy to find these days.
So why can’t Cheyenne Barton even get an interview?
Something is not adding up.
Of course the truth is that we have seen a major shift in the labor market in recent months. According to Challenger, Gray & Christmas, the number of layoffs in February was the highest that they have ever recorded for that particular month…
The pace of job cuts by U.S. employers accelerated in February, a sign the labor market is starting to deteriorate in the face of ongoing inflation and high interest rates.
That is according to a new report published Thursday by Challenger, Gray & Christmas, which found that companies planned 84,638 job cuts in February, a 3% increase from the previous month and a 9% jump from the same time last year.
It marked the highest layoff total for the month of February in data going back to 2009.
The outlook for the rest of the year is absolutely dismal.
So even more Americans will fall into poverty.
And even more Americans will fall into hunger.
And even more Americans will end up homeless.
Over the weekend, a story about a homeless man in Wasco, California that was apparently eating “a severed human leg” has been going viral…
Video footage shot in Wasco, California appears to show a crazed maniac waving around a severed human leg and taking bites out of it before police apprehended him Friday.
Reports have suggested that the man ‘stole’ the leg from the scene of a train accident, where a person was earlier hit and killed.
The footage shows the man, identified as 27-year-old Resendo Tellez, holding and examining the limb, with witnesses saying he was eating parts of it, before attempting to walk away waving it around as multiple police cars close in on him.
That is pretty shocking.
But it is also a preview of where this country is heading.
The economic suffering of the past couple of years has been very painful, but the truth is that it isn’t even worth comparing to what is in front of us.
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To the uninitiated, I explain first that the FSB is the successor organization to the Soviet Union’s well-known and much feared KGB. However, the FSB today might be better compared with the FBI in the United States. It deals with domestic criminality of all kinds and with threats to Russian civilians such as terrorism. The agency and its head are rarely in the news.
In this respect, the FSB is less visible both at home and abroad than the Foreign Intelligence Service headed by Sergei Naryshkin, a state figure who spent five years of this millennium as chairman of the State Duma, Russia’s lower house of the legislature, and also three years as head of the Presidential Administration. In both positions Naryshkin was very often seen on television performing his duties.
By contrast, Bortnikov spent the past 15 years in his FSB offices out of sight. However, the spectacular attack on the Crocus City Hall concert venue has propelled him to center stage and yesterday he met with the Russian state television journalist Pavel Zarubin for an interview and then allowed himself to be questioned further by a gaggle of other journalists on his way out along a corridor. This spontaneous Q&A was later broadcast on the television news. What Bortnikov had to say was extraordinary and bears directly on whether you and I should now be looking for bomb shelters. Regrettably you will not find any of it in the lead stories of today’s mainstream media. The Financial Times, for example, features an account of Xi’s meeting with CEOs of American businesses to mend ties: interesting, but not very relevant if we are at the cusp of WWIII.
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Bortnikov is by definition a member of Vladimir Putin’s inner circle of advisors. He, Putin and Naryshkin are all roughly the same age. At 72, Bortnikov is just several years older.
I was struck in particular by his poise and prudent, carefully weighed choice of words while setting out where the investigation is heading with transparency and a ‘let the chips fall where they may’ unaffected demeanor.
The journalists were all probing the question of who stood behind the terror attack. Bortnikov told them…and us: standing behind the terror act committed by Islamist extremists are the United States, Great Britain and Ukraine.
Russian Crocus City Hall amphitheater interiors, day after terrorist attack on 22 March 2024 (Licensed under CC BY 4.0)
Bortnikov said that the preliminary findings indicate that the four perpetrators of the slaughter were headed by car to the border with Ukraine where they were awaited on the other side.
He very calmly explained that the involvement of foreign powers is being clarified and that he will say nothing out of pure emotion now but will wait for the facts to be solidly collected before being presented.
Nonetheless, it was entirely newsworthy that he named the United States, Great Britain and Ukraine as the likely puppet masters of the terror act. Let us remember that following the bombing of the Nord Stream pipelines, the most significant attack on critical civilian infrastructure globally in the last 50 years, Russian officials did not point the finger directly at any country. There was innuendo but no direct accusations such as we heard from Bortnikov yesterday.
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Meanwhile, quite apart from Mr. Bortnikov’s chat with journalists, a lot of new elements to the terror attack at Crocus City Hall were posted yesterday on the Russian state television news and analysis program Sixty Minutes.
In particular, we learned that in the last days of February and first couple of days of March two of the four attackers were in Istanbul. The departure and arrival of one at a Moscow airport was recorded on video. We were told which hotels they stayed in, and the selfies and other photos taken by one in Istanbul were put up on the screen. It is still not clear with whom they met in Turkey. However, the timing itself is very important, because the point was made that they returned to Moscow to carry out a terror attack on 8 March, International Women’s Day, a sacred date on the Russian calendar. Had they done so on that day, the effect would have been catastrophic for the presidential elections in Russia one week later.
However, per Sixty Minutes, it was determined that Russian state security on 8 March was too tight for the terrorist mission to succeed and the United States decided to pull the plug on that operation. Note that this is approximately the time when Victoria Nuland tendered her resignation at the State Department (5 March). The possible causal link here surely deserves attention by my peers in the U.S. ‘dissident’ community.
In any case, the scenario which was explored later in the day on the Evening with Vladimir Solovyov talk show is that the Ukrainians decided to proceed with the terror attack a week after the Russian presidential elections, when it lost most of its rationale. They did so over the objections of Washington.
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From time to time, readers ask why I pay attention to talk shows like Vladimir Solovyov’s. These skeptics tend to ignore that Solovyov invites not just the usual irresponsible academics and journalists who can amuse the public but also some very serious statesmen who are close to the center of power in Russia and exert influence on the conduct of foreign and domestic policy, including in particular committee chairmen and other key personalities from the State Duma.
So it was last night when we heard from a member of the Committee on Relations with the Commonwealth of Independent States (Former Soviet Union). With reference to the never ending terror attacks on civilians in the Russian border region of Belgorod coming from nearby Kharkiv (Ukraine), he said it is time to raze Kharkov to the ground: issue a warning to the population to get in their cars and head West, then blow it all to bits. Kharkiv is, by the way, Ukraine’s second most populous city after Kiev.
In general, the mood of panelists and of the host Solovyov himself is now changing in a cardinal manner: Ukraine is seen as an enemy state and the sooner it is finished off the better. There was talk last night on the need for missile strikes to flatten the presidential palace in Kiev along with all military and other decision making government centers in the capital.
As we have observed repeatedly over the past two years. President Putin has been a voice for moderation and restraint, resisting actions that might precipitate WWIII. That is clearly coming to an end when his own FSB director names the United States and the UK as planners of the biggest terror attack in Russia in 20 years.
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Featured image: Alexander Bortnikov (Licensed under CC BY 4.0)