On July 15, 2020, the right-wing candidate for the upcoming October 20 presidential elections in Bolivia, Luis Fernando Camacho, issued an appeal to the Organization of Americans States (OAS). Camacho, who led the violent coup (backed by Trump, Trudeau and the OAS) against Evo Morales last fall complained about the electoral system.

Camacho concluded that “we must not allow the elections to become an act of resurrection” of Evo’s party MAS (Movement for Socialism). It is an open appeal to the US-controlled OAS to interfere once again in the elections as it did last fall. Camacho, according to the polls, would garner only 7 per cent of the votes while the MAS ticket is ahead in the polls.

After the coup last fall, Evo was forced into exile while the Camacho clique carried out massacres against the Indigenous and violent suppression of the MAS militants.

Evo Morales tweeted on July 15:

“Asking the OAS to rule on the suspension of the elections in Bolivia is a new blow against democracy, it is a form of intervention against the sovereignty of the State and the dignity of the people;  and furthermore it is being asked by those responsible for the tragic events of 2019”

Pedir que la @OEA_oficial se pronuncie para que se suspendan las elecciones en #Bolivia es un nuevo golpe contra la democracia, es una forma de intervención contra la soberanía del Estado y la dignidad del pueblo; y lo piden los responsables de los trágicos sucesos de 2019. pic.twitter.com/LDYts3EAHQ

— Evo Morales Ayma (@evoespueblo) July 15, 2020

Moreover, the resistance seems to be gearing up. On July 16, the on-the-ground Kawsachun News reported that:

“The Central Obrera Boliviana (COB), Bolivia’s main workers federation, demands adhesion to the September 6th election date as adopted by the TSE [Election authority].”

The Central Obrera Boliviana (COB), Bolivia's main workers federation, demands adhesion to the September 6th election date as adopted by the TSE. The regime is pursuing criminal charges against the COB's leadership for the nationwide protests held on Tuesday. pic.twitter.com/BT8FhFUqKK

— Kawsachun News (@KawsachunNews) July 16, 2020

This is a story in development. However (for the moment) in order to provide some background information, please take the time to view this short YouTube clip. It forecasts the role of the Trudeau government as an active proponent of the coup.

This second youtube clip consists of my appeal to Canadians, Québécois and Indigenous nations in English, French and Spanish.

This appeal is, generally speaking, still applicable. We have to act now to stop the hand of Trudeau — once again — to back this latest blatant attempt to interfere in the internal affairs of Bolivia.

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This article was originally published on The Canada Files.

Featured image is from TCF

If you are adamant about not wearing a mask, you are not going to like this news one bit.  Coming into this week, Costco, Starbucks, Best Buy and Panera Bread were requiring customers to wear masks to come into their stores, but most other major retailers were still giving people the freedom to choose whether they wanted to wear a mask or not.  I know that a lot of people appreciated this freedom to choose, but it is about to come to an abrupt end.  On Wednesday, Walmart and Kroger announced that they will be starting to require consumers to wear masks in all of their stores, and the National Retail Federation is pushing all of the rest of their members to do the same thing.  In the days ahead it is expected that most of them will follow suit, and that means that soon there will be very few major retail stores that you are able to enter without wearing a mask.

Walmart says that they decided to make this change in order to “bring consistency” across all of their stores.  The following comes from the official Walmart website…

As the number of confirmed cases has spiked in communities across the country recently, so too have the number and types of face covering mandates being implemented. Currently about 65 percent of our more than 5,000 stores and clubs are located in areas where there is some form of government mandate on face coverings. To help bring consistency across stores and clubs, we will require all shoppers to wear a face covering starting Monday, July 20. This will give us time to inform customers and members of the changes, post signage and train associates on the new protocols.

In the region of the country where I live, there are a ton of people that feel very strongly about not wearing masks, and this announcement is going to hit them really hard.

There is only one Walmart within a 90 minute drive of where I live, and virtually everyone in the region pops in there at some point.  But now those that do not want to wear masks will be excluded, and there will be some very hard feelings over this.

If you try to enter a Walmart without a mask next week, you will be greeted at the door by a “Health Ambassador” wearing a black shirt.  I find it very interesting that they specifically chose the color black, and I think that it would have been helpful if they had chosen a more friendly color.  In any event, these new positions are being created in order to ensure that only people wearing masks are able to get into the stores.  Of course Walmart is trying to make this sound as non-threatening as possible…

In addition to posting clear signage at the front of our stores, Walmart has created the role of Health Ambassador and will station them near the entrance to remind those without a mask of our new requirements. Our ambassadors will receive special training to help make the process as smooth as possible for customers. The ambassadors, identifiable by their black polo shirts, will work with customers who show up at a store without a face covering to try and find a solution. We are currently considering different solutions for customers when this requirement takes effect on July 20.

Needless to say, this announcement by Walmart is likely to spark an avalanche of other announcements by major retailers.

In fact, Kroger made an announcement just hours after Walmart did…

Within hours, Kroger — the largest U.S. supermarket chain — said it will also require shoppers to wear masks starting July 22.

And as I mentioned above, the National Retail Federation is already pushing all of their members to fall in line…

The president of the  National Retail Federation trade group wants retailers to adopt a nationwide policy that requires customers to wear masks, and hopes Walmart’s decision to do so would galvanize other companies to take similar action, reports Reuters.

“Shopping in a store is a privilege, not a right. If a customer refuses to adhere to store policies, they are putting employees and other customers at undue risk,” the NRF says.

We will be told that this is just a “temporary” thing, but at what point will we be able to start shopping without masks again?

It certainly won’t be any time in 2020.  This week, CDC director Robert Redfield saidthat he anticipated that this fall and winter “are probably going to be one of the most difficult times that we’ve experienced in American public health”…

I am worried. I do think the fall and the winter of 2020 and 2021 are probably going to be one of the most difficult times that we’ve experienced in American public health because of what you said — the co-occurrence of Covid and influenza, and this is where I’d like to continue to work with you to get the American public to embrace the influenza vaccine so we can try to minimize the impact of inluenza, because I think those two respiratory pathogens hitting us at the same time do have the potential to stress our health system.

Ultimately, we will probably be forced to wear masks until the pandemic ends.

But what if this pandemic lasts for years?

A couple days ago, I authored an article in which I discussed three separate scientific studies which all showed that COVID-19 antibodies disappear very, very rapidly.  In fact, some patients no longer had detectable antibodies just weeks after originally testing positive for antibodies.

What this means is that it appears that COVID-19 is very similar to many other less dangerous coronaviruses that are floating around out there.  Just like there is no lasting immunity to “the common cold”, there also appears to be no lasting immunity to COVID-19.

Early on July 16, unidentified warplanes conducted at least 3 airstrikes on the Turkish-occupied town of al-Bab in the Syrian province of Aleppo. The strikes destroyed a large building in the town center and led to multiple casualties. Pro-Turkish sources claim that there were civilian casualties only and that the United States or Russia were behind the strikes.

A few hours later, the Turkish Interior Ministry reported that a reconnaissance plane crashed in the Turkish province of Van, near the Iraqi border. 7 personnel, including 2 pilots, on board died in the incident that happened on Mount Artos.

Earlier this year, a series of airstrikes by unidentified aircraft killed several prominent terrorists, including well-known ISIS members, that were freely hiding in the Turkish-controlled part of Syria. The July 16 strikes could be a part of this campaign.

In response to all these developments, Turkish sources cried foul about the killed terrorists and Turkish-led forces were conducting strikes on positions of the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces on the contact line in northern Syria. The Turkish Army reacted in a similar way to the July 16 events by shelling SDF positions near Tell Rifat.

On July 15 afternoon, a weapon depot of the SDF exploded in the province of al-Hasakah. The explosion that erupted next to the residential area of the al-Asrafiyah district reportedly killed or injured several SDF members.

Last month, an ammo depot of the SDF in in the vicinity of the town of Rmelan in the same province also exploded. Some sources claimed that Turkish warplanes destroyed it. However, the SDF didn’t provide any information on the incident.

On top of this, a series of explosions rocked the SDF-controlled city of Raqqa on July 14. Three IEDs exploded inside an abandoned building in the al-Tub al-Hadith district in the city center and the fourth one in the al-Jazzrah district in the western part of the city. There have been no reports on casualties and no group has claimed responsibility for the attack. Nonetheless, the main suspect is ISIS cells, which recently increased activity on the eastern bank of the Euphrates.

Meanwhile, the Syrian Army artillery struck positions of Turkish proxies near the villages of al-Bara, Fatterah, Sufuhon and Fleifel in southern Idlib. The tensions in the region heightened since the car bomb attack on a joint Russian-Turkish patrol on July 14. Pro-militant sources reported multiple artillery and air strikes on their positions claiming that the Russians and Assad regime are once again opressing peaceful al-Qaeda members.

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China’s special administration region of Hong Kong saw the passing of a security law outlawing acts universally recognized as criminal and threats to any nation’s security and sovereignty.

Despite what would appear to be common sense legislation, the Western media has cried “controversy.” While the West claims it fears curbs on freedoms inside China – it is becoming increasingly clear that the West’s real fears revolve around the “freedom” of its proxies and their attempts to maintain Hong Kong as a defacto Western foothold.

British state media, the BBC in their article, “Hong Kong security law: What is it and is it worrying?,” would note:

Hong Kong was always meant to have a security law, but could never pass one because it was so unpopular. So this is about China stepping in to ensure the city has a legal framework to deal with what it sees as serious challenges to its authority.

The BBC would also list acts criminalized under the law which include:

• secession – breaking away from the country
• subversion – undermining the power or authority of the central government
• terrorism – using violence or intimidation against people
• collusion with foreign or external forces

Nothing on the list is in any way controversial, with virtually all other nations on Earth maintaining similar laws on their respective books.

Additionally, Hong Kong – a region that belonged to China before being taken by force by the British Empire in 1841 and a region that now once again belongs to China after its handover to Beijing in 1997 – is clearly China’s to govern and to do so in any manner China decides. Laws it passes regarding Hong Kong are not Washington or London’s business just as laws passed regarding US or UK territory are none of Beijing’s.

The BBC and many others across the Western media have attempted to claim the new security law is “controversial” simply because despite the UK’s handover of Hong Kong to China in 1997, the UK and the US have both attempted to maintain the region as a foothold inside China – and to do so specifically by engaging in literally everything on the list outlawed by the bill – including secession, subversion, terrorism, and collusion.

The BBC article explains:

Hong Kong was handed back to China from British control in 1997, but under a unique agreement – a mini-constitution called the Basic Law and a so-called “one country, two systems” principle.

The BBC never explains why China should be bound by an agreement made with the UK – a hostile foreign occupier now fully departed from China’s restored sovereign territory.

Those complaining the loudest in Hong Kong – according to the BBC article itself – include culprits guilty of all the above – including Joshua Wong and his US-backed “Demosisto” political party and other recipients of US and UK funding and support.

Wong and mobs he helped organize and lead systematically destroyed Hong Kong’s infrastructure, used violence against political opponents, and openly appealed to the US and UK to intervene.

Repeatedly exposed have been the vast amounts of resources from the US government funneled into Hong Kong propping up this so-called “pro-democracy” movement.

The generally pro-Western South China Morning Post even admitted to extensive US meddling in Hong Kong in an article titled, “US has been exposed for funding last year’s Hong Kong protests.”

The article noted:

Imagine how the American government would react if multiple Chinese state agencies such as Xinhua were exposed secretly helping protest groups across the United States to evade surveillance and crackdowns by law enforcement agencies.

Washington would probably threaten China with war. Roughly, though, the little-known but powerful US Agency for Global Media has been doing just that in Hong Kong. It oversees funding for various news and information operations around the world, including Voice of America and Radio Free Asia.

About US$2 million was earmarked for the protest movement in Hong Kong, but has now been frozen as part of a general overhaul and restructuring by a new agency boss.

As clear as the South China Morning Post article makes US meddling in Hong Kong, it is just scratching the surface of the scale and duration of US meddling in China’s internal affairs – particularly in regards to Hong Kong.

Virtually every aspect of Hong Kong’s opposition is a product of US meddling with the majority of protest leaders having literally been hosted in Washington D.C. and the direct recipients of US funding and support to build up their respective movements and carry out US objectives under the smokescreen of promoting “democracy.” This has been the case for years, long before the most recent protests.

All of this constitutes a clear breech of China’s sovereignty – a violation of international law and norms – but also a violation in terms of Washington’s own laws. For example, were China – as the South China Morning Post article imagined – aiding subversion in the US in a similar manner – it would be deemed absolutely illegal under US law and those involved would face equal or harsher punishments than under Hong Kong’s new security law.

That China’s move to shield its borders from overt, admitted foreign meddling should be considered “controversial” by the West illustrates just how deep the West’s double standards run and how Western foreign policy is driven by the principle of “might makes right” with all other principles serving merely as smokescreens.

And while the US and UK condemn China for reasserting itself over its own territory and people, the US and UK both continue illegal wars and occupations thousands of miles from their own shores all across the globe. The Western media is tellingly silent about this hypocrisy.

While the US and UK may believe crying “controversy” over the new Hong Kong security law helps paint themselves as defenders of “human rights,” “freedom,” and “democracy,” it in fact only further paints Western foreign policy as dangerously hypocritical.

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Tony Cartalucci is a Bangkok-based geopolitical researcher and writer, especially for the online magazine “New Eastern Outlook” where this article was originally published. He is a frequent contributor to Global Research.

Featured image is from Global Times

After the corona crisis, may the world be facing a monumental paradigm shift of power towards a more balanced civilization – more social justice and equity? The global almost total lockdown, chosen by most governments around the globe in response to mastering the Covid-19 crisis, devastated the world economy, as we know it – and hundreds of millions of lives. Was it necessary? Will there be a time when those responsible for this universal, scientifically unnecessary lockdown be held accountable?   

The last six months, governments around the world have almost unilaterally committed an auto-destruction of their socioeconomic fabric and collectively of the global economy. It may never return to the “normal” of the times before COVID. That, per se, may not be a bad omen, though, as our pre-corona existence – especially in the west – was everything else but an ethical “normal”.

Pre-Corona Globalization and Economic Development

Neoliberal economics have “normalized” greed, inequity, exploitation of people and depletion of resources. This was largely possible due to an ever more reckless ultra-capitalist globalization and privatization of everything – goods, services and assets through international corporatism and globalized private banking.

Global finance was – and still is to some extent – dominated by a fiat US-dollar system aiming at total control of the world’s riches towards a global economic and resources hegemony, enforced by sanctions and confiscation of assets, coercing dissenting nations under the dictate of the United States and her western allies. The countries that did not cave in – Cuba, Venezuela, Iran, Syria, Yemen, North Korea – and not least, of course, China and Russia are relentlessly assailed.

The corona pandemic temporarily slowed western pressure on China and Russia, as it brought about an abrupt stop to world economic activities, causing a melt-down of assets, plunging stock markets by over 30 percent, creating untold bankruptcies, unemployment and human misery unrecorded in past history. The calamity may be far surpassing the Credit Crisis of 1772, the Great Depression (1929 – 1933) and the Financial Crisis of 2007 – 2009, possibly by orders of magnitude, once the dust settles and a more accurate accounting can take place. This may take months, if not years.

Estimates from the International Labor Office (ILO) now predict unemployment and underemployment may reach up to 2.0 billion people, worldwide, more than half of the globes total workforce, many of them living in precarious conditions well before the corona outbreak. The World Food Program (WFP) fears that hundreds of millions of people may be affected by famine and tens of millions may die. This is a somber base from which to look forward into – let’s hope – a brighter future.

The silver lining of this dark corona cloud is that the dollar hegemony is coming to an end, and instead the world is presented with a wide-open window of new opportunities to stitch a social fabric that fits all or most of humanity – forging a new social contract towards creating a common future for mankind.

Salient features under globalization as we know it

Economic development under unfettered globalized capitalism has in the past 70 years ravaged the globe and in the Global South has drastically increased inequality, injustice among peoples and nations. The Washington Consensus (1989) has given free reign for forging unequitable trade agreements which often undermined and even annihilated national sovereignties of poorer countries, for example, driving local farmers off their land by forcing subsidized western agricultural crops into their countries.

Globalization under the neoliberal concept has also brought privatization of everything, but especially of social services and infrastructure, destroying the peoples’ accumulated asset base – shuffling social capital from the bottom to the top, to the western private banking sector and a few oligarchs, thereby destroying the little and often flimsy social safety nets poorer nations may have established – safety nets which would come in handy now with Covid-caused poverty skyrocketing. CNBC reports that America’s billionaires added US$ 434 billion to their fortunes during the 3 months of U.S. lockdown between mid-March and mid-May 2020.

China’s 1949 Revolution initiated by Chairman Mao presented a new concept of economic and social development, one that still holds as of today. After western devastation of China, it started wisely in building strength by seeking self-sufficiency in education, health and nutrition – and in eradicating poverty. The Chinese society worked and keeps working in a flux of constant creation – with natural ups and downs and trials and errors – but steadily advancing, learning – and succeeding which, in turn, motivates new creation, new achievements.

After reaching this first objective of basic autonomy, China opened her gates to the world to continue the harmonious flow of creating relationships for trade and investments, educational and cultural exchange and gradually moving into research and cutting-edge science to share with the world. It is the contrary of what the west is used to. It is cooperation instead of competition. A concept hardly understood in the profit-driven capitalist west.

The idea of cooperation in economic development coupled with an endless flow of creation – avoiding conflicts and moving forward, a solid Tao principle – has grown China to where she stands today – becoming the world’s second largest economy, after starting practically from zero only 70 years ago. China is a vivid example of socialist success. Or, as the Chinese would say, “socialism with Chinese characteristics”. A nation that never seeks conflicts or invasions of other countries, but strives for partnerships and peaceful cohabitation. This worries the west, especially the self-declared US empire.

On 7 September 2013, Visionary President Xi Jinping re-initiated the ancient 2100-year-old Silk Road at Kazakhstan’s Nazarbayev University. Adjusted to the 21^st Century, it is called the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), but it is based on the same old principles building bridges between peoples, exchanging goods, research, education, knowledge, cultural wisdom, peacefully, harmoniously and ‘win-win’ style.

In his inauguration speech, President Xi spoke about “People-to-People Friendship and Creating a better Future”. But he went further, pointing to the history of exchanges under the Ancient Silk Road among people from different creeds and cultures,

“they had proven that countries with differences in race, belief and cultural background can absolutely share peace and development as long as they persist in unity and mutual trust, equality and mutual benefit, mutual tolerance and learning from each other, as well as cooperation and win-win outcomes.”

This is the corner stone for the development endeavor of the 21^st century. It signals a globalization under different terms – a globalization under equals. And, yes, a New Social Contract. Partner countries are invited, not coerced, to participate in this mammoth enterprise to span the world with land and maritime routes, for trade, for joint research and scientific exchanges, leading to an endless flow of ideas for new technologies but also of social sciences to enhance peaceful human interactions. A case in point may be the new China-Cuba collaboration in health science that emerged from the corona crisis.

Globalization under a new normal

China will play a major role in the new emerging world order – not a One World Order, as a small western elite envisions, but a new paradigm built on partnership, on equality on building bridges, instead of walls, avoiding and resolving conflicts peacefully and without violence. Call it a new Social Contract to span the world for all those who are interested in participating. The corona crisis is gradually bringing an awakening for a new consciousness, one that we always had but got buried in the rush of things – greed, power, comfort and also neglect for the less privileged and destitute.

China may be a guiding light for the realization of this new paradigm. Why? – Because China experienced in her 70 years of Revolution what the corona-devastated world needs today to rebuild and to restart with a new set of values towards a better equilibrium of access to goods, services and resources, while maintaining a healthy environment.

What propelled China forward, was the simple principle of local production for local markets and local consumption with a local currency through a public banking system managed by a sovereign central bank working for the good of the people (not for shareholders), gearing towards an equitable development and self-sufficiency for all. This does not preclude private sector participation at all. But the State sets rules and parameters within which private interests may move. That’s why China is “A socialist nation with Chinese characteristics.”

Prospects for a new concept of globalization

China’s economy is strong. Despite a practical standstill of about two months, China has almost recovered, while the west is still struggling to find common denominators for collaboration and for revamping their economies. The IMF had originally predicted a global GDP decline of 3% for 2020, and a slight growth for 2021. In the meantime, the IMF adjusted the decline to 5.5 %; still way too little, since the world hasn’t even seen the tip of the iceberg yet of this global mammoth socioeconomic disaster. For China the IMF foresees a modest growth of 1.1% in 2020. Both figures are likely underestimates. Given the massive wipe-out of much of the global economy, 2020 negative GDP for the world may be as high as 10% to 15% when the chips are down and counted.

On the other hand, China having recovered rather quickly and with a public banking sector destined to address the economy’s weak spots, 2020 growth might be in the order of 3% to 3.5%. But as a leading economist from the International Monetary Institute (IMI) of Beijing’s Renmin University says – “we are talking about quality growth”, meaning, growth will focus on the social dimension of people’s needs.

China will forge ahead with the socioeconomic development program of the century – the BRI and expand her partner and associate members, already more than 160 today. Due to the corona catastrophe, foreign debt has been rising almost in reverse proportion as GDP has declined. President Xi has pledged 2 billion dollars to fight the virus. Additional debt relief especially to the poorer debt-strangled Belt and Road partners, might facilitate progress towards a better-connected world.

A new kind of globalization will rise from the ashes of the corona crisis. Restoring individual countries sovereignty, as well as their monetary, financial and economic autonomy and without a debt stranglehold preventing them from prospering, is crucial for becoming equal partners in a new globalized world. BRI is the new vehicle promoting self-assured partners that do not have to fear “sanctions” for wanting to preserve their sovereignty.

The west, especially Washington may not like this “game changer” approach. Therefore, China may not be spared in the foreseeable future from western bashing and aggressions. The reasons are NOT corona guilt or mismanagement, or unfair trade, reasons Washington likes to propagandize. These false accusations are meant to denigrate China to break or weaken the world’s trust in China’s economy and in particular her strong and gold backed currency, the yuan.

China’s central bank (People’s Bank of China – PBC) has just launched a trial run in a number of cities, including Shenzhen, Suzhou, Chengdu, and Xiong’an of her new crypto-currency, the e-RMB (Ren Min Bi, meaning People’s Money), or Yuan.

Eventually the new cyber money will be rolled out internationally for trade, commodity pricing – and even as a safe and stable reserve currency. The digital blockchain money assures the users total security, no interference from outside. It is a protection from” sanctions” and arbitrary confiscation. This will add a new dimension to China’s economic strength. Not only will her economy soon outrank that of the United States, but the yuan may also shortly become the key reserve currency in the world.

Look at the huge continent of Eurasia which is also connected to Africa. To serve this enormous landmass no seas have to be crossed. Its easy trading, friendly relations, no conflicts, because equal partners strive for the real meaning of trade, no losers, only win-win. Then there are the countries of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO), which in addition to China include also Russia, India and Pakistan – and soon also Iran, with Malaysia and Mongolia in observation status waiting in the wings.

China is also boosting trade among the ASEAN+3 countries (Association of Southeast Asian Nations – Brunei, Cambodia, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, Myanmar, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand, and Vietnam; plus 3 = Japan, South Korea and China). Monetary transactions will take place in local currencies, not the US dollar. They will be using CIPS (Cross-Border Interbank Payment System), avoiding the dollar controlled SWIFT payment scheme.

SCO and ASEAN+3 account for about half the world population and for one third of the globes economic output. It is a formidable market and most of it on this huge landmass called Eurasia. No need for the belligerent west.

This new form of non-aggressive and non-invasive globalization may make example and evoke reflection. Perhaps it may serve others, Europe for instance – as a vehicle to recover from the colossal corona collapse. Imagine a globalized world among equals – a community seeking a common future for mankind.

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This article was originally published on New Eastern Outlook.

Peter Koenig is an economist and geopolitical analyst. He is also a water resources and environmental specialist. He worked for over 30 years with the World Bank and the World Health Organization around the world in the fields of environment and water. He lectures at universities in the US, Europe and South America. He writes regularly for Global Research; ICH; New Eastern Outlook (NEO); RT; Countercurrents, Sputnik; PressTV; The 21st Century; Greanville Post; Defend Democracy Press; The Saker Blog, the and other internet sites. He is the author of Implosion – An Economic Thriller about War, Environmental Destruction and Corporate Greed – fiction based on facts and on 30 years of World Bank experience around the globe. He is also a co-author of The World Order and Revolution! – Essays from the Resistance. He is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization.

Though Bernie Sanders is less dishonest than any other of the U.S. political leaders who have contested in the 2016 and 2020 U.S. Presidential primary campaigns, no one should trust his endorsements of the DNC’s choice (which was what it was) of Joe Biden to carry the Party’s banner against Trump. Sanders knows that he was cheated out of the nomination by the DNC’s billionaires in 2020, just as he had been in 2016. And he knows that Biden is just as corrupt as Trump. Why, then, does Sanders endorse Biden?

Is it because “the voters of the Democratic Party chose Biden?” Well, in a sense, they did — from 29 February 2020 onward they did, because the billionaires were no longer donating mainly to Pete Buttigieg (23 billionaires), Cory Booker (18), Kamala Harris (17), Michael Bennett (15) and Joe Biden as #5 (at 13). (Sanders was at 0.) So, they suddenly piled in, on Biden, right after Sanders’s win in Nevada, the last before the February 29th South Carolina primary, and the final score of billionaires became Biden 66, Buttigieg 61, Klobuchar 33, Steyer 13, Warren 6, Gabbard 3, Bloomberg 1, and Sanders still 0 (and nothing being shown for candidates who had withdrawn early).

Instead — and no one can say why or what with any certainty — Sanders probably has some commitment from Biden regarding national policies once Biden becomes the President. (Trump himself does everything he can to assist that outcome, Biden’s Presidency. He might not be doing it intentionally, but he is doing it very successfully.)

Furthermore, Sanders knows, or ought to know, that Joe Biden was one of the leading segregationists in the U.S. Senate and was condemned in 1977 by Ted Kennedy and others for the insincerity of his protestations to the contrary. At the very same time in the 1960s when Sanders himself was being arrested in Chicago for demonstrating peacefully against the segregationist policies of Mayor Richard J. Daley, Joe Biden was a college playboy but subsequently lied to say that while in college he worked with civil rights leaders to end segregation. Yet Sanders, himself, remains silent about Biden’s lying, and about Biden’s actual support for segregation. Why?

Everything in politics is for only two purposes: winning power, and exercising power.

Sanders’s promise to support the Party’s nominee was implicitly based upon his expectation that he would not be, yet again, cheated out of receiving its nomination. That expectation was not fulfilled. The DNC knew, even back in May 2016, that Sanders would be stronger than Hillary against Trump, but they nonetheless rigged the results for Hillary against Sanders (and sometimes even blatantly) because their billionaires are more important to them than their voters are. And the same happened with Biden against Sanders in 2020. So: what obligation does Sanders have now to the DNC? Clearly, none. What obligation does he have to the American people? To keep on his fight to become FDR’s successor! If he withdraws from it, then surely America is heading into a massive economic crash which will result (under a President Biden) in martial law, and, then, an extremely bloody revolution, the outcome from which can’t be predicted (but one can only hope that enough troops will quit or even mutiny against their commanders).

Consequently, only a private commitment from Biden can explain this.

In a dictatorship such as the United States is, a politician’s commitments made to the public, such as Barack Obama’s back in 2007 and 2008, that he would have a “public option” in his healthcare plan, are lies, which they have no intention to fulfill (and Obama dropped his “public option” virtually the day after he beat John McCain for the Presidency in November 2008). However, a politician’s private commitments to the billionaires who funded his career are kept and honored. As a general rule, also the private commitments that are made to other politicians — such as to Sanders — are kept.

We just don’t know what those commitments are.

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Investigative historian Eric Zuesse is the author, most recently, of  They’re Not Even Close: The Democratic vs. Republican Economic Records, 1910-2010, and of  CHRIST’S VENTRILOQUISTS: The Event that Created Christianity.

What nations say they stand for and what the evidence suggests they stand for can be – and frequently are – two entirely different things. This highly thought-provoking book puts the world’s most powerful nation in the spotlight and compares the US government’s stated aims with its actual behaviour. The US government projects an image of itself as the global guardian of freedom and democracy; as ever watchful and as prepared, reluctantly, to intervene in the politics of other nations if, and only if, freedom and democracy are under threat. However, in contrast to opposing tyranny in all its forms, the author notes how, in reality, the US government actually funds, arms and trains a wide range of oppressive governments, including dictatorships, if such support is regarded as being in US interests, irrespective of the track records (with respect to democracy and human rights) of the governments themselves.

Supporting dictatorship

In the introductory sections, David Swanson considers the wide range of oppressive governments backed by the US and then specifically focusses on dictatorships, since they are the regimes that the US government regularly claims to oppose. He shows how the majority of the world’s ‘unfree’ states (as defined by Rich Whitney [2017] who, in turn bases his approach on the taxonomy provided by ‘Freedom House’, an organisation funded by the US government – ‘free’, ‘partly free’ and ‘unfree’) are supported militarily by the US. He shows also that, contrary to the contention that US military intervention is always on the side of ‘democracy’, the US commonly sells weapons to both sides involved in numerous conflicts around the world. The author both highlights the longevity of this approach: that it is in no way merely to be viewed as a feature of the Trump presidency and contends that the US position of support for oppressive governments follows from the powerful alliance between the US government and US arms producers (the so-called ‘military industrial complex’).

In the following sections, Swanson looks at the great majority of the world’s current dictatorships and shows how they are supported by the US, particularly militarily. He does so by providing twenty current case-studies of dictatorships from around the world, all of whom are backed by the US. We argue that, in so doing, the author provides compelling evidence to refute the view that the US stands in opposition to dictators and the nations they control. The author notes the value of providing corroboratory evidence in the form of lists. It is always very difficult to shift opinion from its established position. A weight of evidence is usually required, especially when the strength of vested interests is extremely high.

In the concluding sections, the author highlights the US government’s highly unconventional behaviour in arming and training overseas militaries. He provides strong statistical evidence for his claim that the US is, by far, the leading international supplier of weapons, responsible for widespread war-related deaths across the globe and the operator of 95% of the world’s military bases located outside their controlling nation.

The author discusses how the so-called ‘Arab Spring’ of 2011 highlighted the contradictory stance of US; it publicly claimed to support the forces pushing for increased democracy but, in reality, its actions had provided important props for the regimes led by the dictators attacked by the protest movements. He develops the line of argument in a highly convincing manner by pointing to the fact that the US has a track record of supporting dictatorships for long periods – most often militarily – and then turning against them once it feels its interests have changed. He points to US support of Saddam Hussein, Noriega and Assad by way of examples and goes on to provide numerous other instances, such as Rafael Trujillo, Francisco Franco, Francoise Duvalier, Jean-Claude Duvalier, Anastasio Somoza Debayle, Fulgencio Batista, and the Shah of Iran.

Rhetoric vs reality

We argue that Swanson hits the nail on the head when he notes:

‘If U.S. support for dictators seems to be at odds with U.S. rhetoric about spreading democracy, part of the explanation for that may lie in the use of “democracy” as a code word for “our side” regardless of any connection to actual democracy or representative government or respect for human rights’ (p.88).

He then argues that if the enemy is not actually,

‘tyranny but rather the Soviet Union or Communism or Terrorism or Islam or Socialism or China or Iran or Russia, and if anything done in the name of defeating the enemy is labelled “pro-democracy,” then plenty of so-called democracy spreading can involve supporting dictatorships and all kinds of other equally oppressive governments’ (p.88).

In his conclusion to this part of the work, the author also stresses the importance of finance, again backed up by numerous examples, in particular, the significant extent of foreign funding of the think tanks which are highly influential on the shaping of US policy.

The final section of the book deals with the pressing and challenging issue of how US support for dictatorships might be ended. Swanson points to ‘The Stop Arming Human Rights Abusers Act, H.R. 5880, 140’, introduced by Congresswoman Ilhan Omar. Swanson notes that if the bill became law it would prevent the US government from providing a wide range of support to the world’s most oppressive governments. It is hard to disagree with the sentiment expressed by author at the end of his book:

‘The world desperately needs to take control of its governments away from tyrants and executioners. The United States desperately needs to shift its own priorities from out-of-control militarism and weapons dealing to peaceful enterprises. Such a move would be superior morally, environmentally, economically, and in terms of the impact on prospects for human survival’ (p.91).

The author produces a highly convincing falsification of the argument that the US always fights on the side of democracy, arguing instead that whether a state (or leader) is viewed as pro-US or anti-US is the key question (a viewpoint that can, and frequently does, change). The nature of the foreign government itself is not the driver of intervention.

As abroad, so at home

Swanson thus highlights the deeply contradictory approach to foreign policy and looking deeper, we argue that contrasts are equally apparent in domestic policy. According to popular (American) opinion, freedom is the foundation on which the USA is built. But in the application of this supposedly fundamental principle the American government is worryingly selective – in domestic as well as foreign policy. American citizens’ First Amendment freedom of speech and peaceful assembly have in many cases been ignored by their own government when inconvenient to the latter’s interests.

Rarely has this been more apparent than in the response to ongoing Black Lives Matter protests following the murder of George Floyd. Despite clear First Amendment protection, many peaceful protests have been repressed by force. One June 1^stincident is emblematic, in which police used tear gas, rubber bullets and flash-bang grenades to clear Lafayette Square of peaceful protestors to allow President Trump a photo-op outside St John’s church (Parker et al 2020). Meanwhile in a White House speech, the president proclaimed himself an ‘ally of all peaceful protesters’ – an ally, it seems, who condones the use of entirely non-peaceful methods to shut down free speech.

Interestingly, similar repression of protest has been unequivocally condemned when another country is the perpetrator. In a May 2020 tweet, Trump urged the Iranian government not to use violence against protestors and to ‘let reporters roam free’. Such a principled defence of the importance of a free press has not, however, led the president to acknowledge or condemn the numerous police attacks on journalists covering the Black Lives Matter protests in the USA (according to U.S Press Freedom Tracker, as of June 15, physical attacks on journalists by police officers number at 57). The root of this inconsistency is not difficult to explain.

Nor, unfortunately, is the disregard for First Amendment freedoms exclusive to the tumultuous Trump presidency, or even to those of Republicans. The Obama administration, for example, saw the 2016 Standing Rock protests against the construction of the Dakota Access Pipeline on Native American land – to which police responded with tear gas, concussion grenades and water cannons in freezing temperatures. President Obama failed to condemn this rampant police violence against peaceful protestors (Colson 2016), a clear case of free speech being repressed by force.

Whilst this current climate of repression is extreme, it is not entirely unprecedented. The US government’s selective approach to the importance of freedom is apparent in its treatment of its own citizens, especially in the realm of protest (Price et al 2020). Ultimately, constitutional rights mean little in practice if they are ignored or outright violated by the government which is supposed to uphold them, and instead decides to enact policy which flies in the face of democracy.

At the beginning of the work the author notes,

‘The purpose of this short book is to make people aware that U.S. militarism supports dictatorships, toward the end of opening up minds to the possibility of questioning militarism’ (p.11).

We argue that he is surely successful in achieving this goal. Importantly, he does so whilst highlighting the deep contradictions involved in US foreign policy; contradictions which we argue above are also apparent in domestic policy. US policy is thus ‘consistently inconsistent’. It is presented as being fundamentally based upon the defence of freedom and democracy whereas, in practice, it is founded upon following the interests of the US government and the powerful pressure groups behind the US establishment.

We believe that Swanson’s book makes a significant contribution to the debate; he backs up all his arguments with highly persuasive evidence; evidence that we argue should be enough to convince the open-minded reader of the validity of his analysis. We heartily recommend this work to all those interested in understanding the driving forces that lie behind the conduct of US foreign policy.

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Sources

Colson, N., ‘Obama’s Cowardly Silence on Standing Rock’, Socialist Worker December 1, 2016.

Freedom House, ‘Countries and Territories’.

Parker, A., Dawsey, J. and Tan, R., ‘Inside the push to tear-gas protesters ahead of a Trump photo op’, Washington Post June 2, 2020.

Price, M., Smoot, H., Clasen-Kelly, F. and Deppen, L. (2020), ‘“None of us can be proud.” Mayor slams CMPD. SBI to review chemical agent use at protest,’ Charlotte Observer June 3.

Whitney, R., ‘US Provides Military Assistance to 73 Percent of World’s Dictatorships,’ Truthout, September 23, 2017.

The unspoken truth is that the novel coronavirus provides a pretext to powerful financial interests and corrupt politicians to trigger the entire World into a spiral of  mass unemployment, bankruptcy, extreme poverty and despair. 

Michel Chossudovsky interviews Economist and Geopolitical analyst Peter Koenig on the Global Research Report.

“Imagine, you are living in a world that you are told is a democracy – and you may even believe it – but in fact your life and fate is in the hands of a few ultra-rich, ultra-powerful and ultra-inhuman oligarchs. They may be called Deep State, or simply the Beast, or anything else obscure or untraceable – it doesn’t matter. They are less than the 0.0001%.” (Peter Koenig, July 2020)

The COVID-19 Lockdown. Economic and Social Impacts

 

In June 2019, the small landlocked nation of Moldova found itself in a life or death struggle between two opposing futures: Oligarchs like the notorious Vladimir Plahotniuc had worked diligently for years to bring this nation into the hull of the collapsing NATO-EU Titanic while nationalists sought to re-align Moldova’s future with the new emerging Multipolar Alliance led by China and Russia.

The greatest moment of decision (until now) occurred in June 2019 when elections resulted in a three-way split between a pro-Russian Socialist Party, the pro-EU ACUM and another pro-western Democratic Party run by the arch Moldavian kleptocrat Vladimir Plahotniuc.

Vlad Plahotniuc: Deep State Tool and Force of Regime Change

A renowned oligarch whom by all accounts is known as the richest man in Moldova, Plahotniuc was not only a media and advertising mogul controlling the vast majority of the news, and entertainment of the small nation, but was also a power in Moldova’s banking, hotel and services industry who, with the support of Victoria Nuland, took charge of the pro-EU Democratic Party from December 2016. Although his highest political office was Deputy Speaker of Parliament, it was known by all, that Plahotniuc was the hidden hand controlling the state and aspired to make that power official by becoming Prime Minister.

During the dark days of the Obama era, Plahotniuc interfaced closely with Asif Chaudhry (U.S. Ambassador to Moldova from 2008-2011) who acted as power broker and mediator during the tumultuous period of change that saw the elimination of the pro-Russian Communist Party and the rise of the pro-Euro Integration movement under the Democratic Party in the wake of the 2009 “Twitter Revolution” (sometimes called the “revolution of Twits”). This crisis saw a near color revolution as 30 000 Jacobin youth in Chisinau aspired to overthrow the government by declaring the recent elections to be fraudulent. The slogans shouted by the mob included “we want Europe”, “we are Romanians” and “down with Communism”. Romania had joined NATO in 2004 and the movement to absorb Moldova into Romania was supported by many in the west wishing to see NATO’s unabated growth.

Beginning in April 7, 2009, these mobs took over (and set fire to) government buildings and replaced Moldovan flags with Romanian and European Union flags. While this effort was quashed by crackdowns by police, a taste of the potential for regime change was felt by all and then-President Vladimir Voronin called it a “coup d’etat”.

In hindsight, we can observe the growth of the media empire under the control of Plahotniuc and the vast investments into “democracy building” by the National Endowment of Democracy to get a sense of the causal hand behind these events, though at the time the culprits never came to light.

One thing is clear: The American State Department’s hand pervaded this story as Ambassador Chaudhry (connected closely to Victoria Nuland according to Wikileaks emails), was a major power broker and brags that his work in carrying out Moldovan democracy reforms during this time was the most rewarding experience of his career.

In the wake of this attempted coup, three pro-western opposition parties created the Alliance for European Integration winning 53 seats and pushing out the Communist Party from power.

By 2014, the long-sought for EU association agreements were signed by Moldova, Georgia and Ukraine with NATO’s bureaucrats salivating at the prospect of assimilating all three. At this time, Ukraine’s pro-Russian government had just fallen to its own color revolution and the new regime of Yatseniuk was calling for speedy NATO entry. Even though its 1994 Constitution prevented it, Moldova was already a part of the NATO Partnership for Peace Program and had participated in NATO’s Kosovo Force since 2014. A change in Constitution to permit for NATO entry by way of Euro integration (or total regime change) was not a huge stretch of the imagination at this point.

During this time high level Obama-era regime change agents like Joe Biden and John McCain made stops in Moldova and encouraged speedy western integration, meeting with kleptocrats like Plahotniuc and celebrating the new age of western “liberalism” that would transform the eastern bloc.

With such a powerful machine supporting them, Plahotniuc and other local Moldovan kleptocrats had every reason to feel as though they had the power of gods. The lords of high finance of London and Wall Street had ensured their unchallenged success for years, and with Moldova’s full integration into the NATO/EU cage nothing would hold them back… but with this hubris came a fair dose of sloppiness.

“The Theft of the Century” and Its Aftermath

Working closely with Israeli-Moldovan businessman Ilan Shor and fellow oligarchs Vyacheslav Platon and Vlad Filat, Plahotniuc carried out a blatant “theft of the century” to the tune of $1 billion stolen from Moldova (representing 1/8^th of the nation’s GDP) between 2011-2014. The model was simple and based on the use of offshore shell companies which laundered money and received fraudulent loans issued by the Moldovan Central Bank. That bank had itself taken over three major financial institutions (the Banca de Economii, Unibank and Banca Sociala) which extended fraudulent loans and businesses controlled by Ilan Shor and others within Plahotniuc’s network to the tune of $1 billion. $100 million were used directly by Plahotniuc to purchase, banks, businesses, hotels and other luxury real estate around Europe and Moldova.

Even though the facts of this fraud could not long be kept secret, Plahotniuc’s control on the levers of justice (especially the Constitutional Court which is packed with his partisans) ensured that little could be done to bring the oligarch to justice.

Vlad Filat was sacrificed by his former partner in 2016 and given 3 years in prison for bribes and participation in the heist while Ilan Shor was charged with laundering and embezzlement in abstentia though never saw a jail cell. In April 2017, Vyacheslav Platon was found guilty and given 18 years in prison but Plahotniuc never faced a single charge in Moldova. Things were a bit different elsewhere however and in 2017, Moscow’s Basmanny Court found the oligarch guilty of attempted murder.

In 2019, a Moscow court found Plahotniuc guilty of drug trafficking and money laundering and he was also charged with 28 counts of smuggling and sales of drugs (mostly hashish from North Africa)- and to these charges Plahotniuc obviously cried “Russian fantasies and fake news”.

During the hot phase of blowback during 2016, Plahotniuc was a guest of the pro-NATO Atlantic Council in Washington where he met with Victoria Nuland and other members of the Obama regime change party. The ‘Atlantic Council Moldova Program’ was also advancing a steady stream of pro-NATO propaganda funded by Jashi’s Trans Oil Group (on whose board sat former U.S. Ambassador Chaudhry).

Upon his return from America, Plahotniuc speedily moved to take full control of the Democratic Party.

In spite of his control of mass media, news of this “theft of the century” spread widely, and in an impoverished nation ranked lowest on the European Union poverty index where nearly 50% of the male population lives and works abroad as cheap labor, public tolerance for Plahotniuc’s sank to new lows with a 96% disapproval rating. The Democratic Party machine fell from favor and the pro-Russian Socialist Party again took power under Igor Dodon.

President Dodon wasted no time accelerating Moldova’s observer status in the Eurasian Economic Union which was made official on March 14, 2018 when Dodon called for a pro-Europe and pro-Russia policy (a blasphemy for some technocrats). At this time, Putin laid out the philosophy of EU-EAEU cooperation saying: “The Eurasian Union will be built on universal integration principles as an integral part of a harmonious community of economies from Lisbon to Vladivostok.”

In a February 2020 interview, Dodon echoed this orientation stating: “I believe in a big Europe, from Lisbon to Vladivostok. It was Charles de Gaulle who came up with this idea and its repeated often by various world leaders. I think this is the only solution to make Europe stronger.”

This had to be stopped.

From 2017-2019, the Plahotniuk apparatus licked its wounds, regrouped, and waited for the right moment to strike… and on June 7, 2019 that moment came.

Plahotniuc Attacks and Trips

Three months had passed since the February 2019 elections and a government had not yet formed. The three opposing parties that each won over 20% of the votes included Plahotniuc Democratic Party, the pro-EU ACUM party of PM Maia Sandu and the Socialist Party of Igor Dodon. Sandu’s role as a former World Bank executive didn’t bode well, but luckily her recognition that an alliance with Plahotniuc was political suicide kept her from making a devils pact and at the last minute chose to form a coalition government with Dodon in defense of the nation’s true interests where both parties united in the common cause to flush the swamp of oligarchs.

This alliance was arranged at the same moment that Plahotniuc’s Constitutional Court deemed the February elections invalid (party leaders have 3 months to shape a new government after elections). The court demanded that Dodon be deposed as President (for failing to call new elections), and the new coalition government declared null and void. Former PM Pavel Filip refused to recognize the new government calling it illegal and demanding a new election while Plahotniuc waited with bated breath for his moment to take over.

From June 7-15^th a dual power struggle erupted and with the highest court in the land backing regime change, it wasn’t looking good. The Democrats staged demonstrations and blocked state buildings for days. Everything was in place for a coup.

The only missing ingredient was the expected American support that had always been there for Plahotniuk and the Trans Oil Machine which ran Moldova for decades.

Then something unexpected happened.

On June 15, 2019 Moldova’s Democratic Party officially announced that their leader had left the country to visit family “for a couple of days”. Over a year later, the oligarch still has not returned knowing that to do so could mean decades in a Moldovan (and possibly even Russian) prison.

Although there are many facets to this plot twist that are still hidden from public view, TASS’s coverage on June 15 made clear that the Democratic Party “leaders had never stopped to hope for Washington’s support in the confrontation with the President, parliament and Sandhu cabinet, but received none.”

U.S. Ambassador Horgan revealed in December 2019 that Plahotniuc’s departure was the result of his news that the USA would not help him.

Without this support, all hope was lost.

Within a month PM Sandu described the anti-corruption crackdown underway saying: “We are in the process of liberating this captured state. The servants of the Plahotniuc regime are leaving, one after the other.” Although Plahotniuc may have been a corrupt beast, he was no dummy and recognized the Transparency International report published in June 2019 outlining his sordid role in the $1 billion bank theft was not going to disappear.

By August 2019, a Russian arrest warrant was unveiled after Plahotniuc was tried in abstentia in Moscow for “creating and participating in criminal groups” and “carrying out illegal transactions in foreign currencies and rubles using fake documents”- referring to $569 million scheme that turned Moldova into a laundromat using the oligarch’s offshore shell companies. It was at this time that the oligarch applied officially for asylum in the USA.

As Sandu was replaced by PM Igor Chicu in November 2019, the cleaning of the swamp continued in full force with the new Prosecutor General Alexandru Stoianoglo tasked with bringing Plahotniuc to justice. In May 2020, Moldovan prosecutors charged Plahotniuc again and sought extradition from the USA where he has been holed up illegally in Florida.

Why do I say “illegally”?

Because on January 9, 2020, the USA State Department annulled his (and his family’s) VISA, with Pompeo declaring in a public statement four days later:

 “Today, I am designating former Moldovan official and oligarch Vladimir Plahotniuc due to his involvement in significant corruption. In his official capacity, Plahotniuc was involved in corrupt acts that undermined the rule of law and severely compromised the independence of democratic institutions in Moldova… Once the Secretary of State designates officials of foreign governments for their involvement, directly or indirectly, in significant corruption, those individuals and their immediate family members are ineligible for visas to the United States.”

The fearful oligarch has taken the unprecedented decision to launch a last Hail Mary effort to save his skin by suing the U.S. State Department on June 11 2020 saying “this action arises out of an unlawful and unjustified designation as ‘undesirable’ entered against Vladimir Plahotniuk and his immediate family members by the State Department” adding without a shred of evidence that Putin even attempted to kill him using Albanian hitmen on several occasions.

The question now remains:

Who is protecting Plahotniuc?

It is obvious that the Obama-era deep state that ran Moldova’s 2009-2016 EU/NATO integration insanity is no longer the sole force driving U.S. foreign policy and a fight between this apparatus and the Trump presidency has been waging for four years. Plahotniuc’s current status in Florida, in spite of an undesirable status and with no VISA indicates powerful forces are protecting him. Both in America and abroad alike.

The fact that within the same Florida luxury complex that Plahotniuc has been seen living in, also contains a $2.2 million condo owned by Trans Oil executive Dmitriy Kurilo should be taken seriously. The fact that Kurilo’s purchase was carried out by Trans Oil president Vaja Jhashi to whom Kurilo gave powers of attorney should also be considered. The connection of these figures to former U.S. Ambassador Asif Chaudhry who sits on Trans Oil’s board of directors and last served as the architect of Obama’s “Asia Pivot” while serving as advisor to the Chief of the NAVY in the Pentagon from 2011-2014 should also not be ignored. Lastly the fact that the Trans Oil group’s monopoly over Moldovan agriculture was made possible by multimillion-dollar U.S. government loans granted to the company while Chaudhry was the American Ambassador to Moldova is worth holding in mind.

We already know there are many two faced figures within the Trump presidency who project one patriotic face publicly yet who have actively worked against Trump’s oft-stated desires to have “good relations with Russia and China”, rebuild American manufacturing and end the “forever wars”. Bolton and Bannon were two of them, but Pompeo himself is another. Even former director of National Intelligence Richard Grenell had worked for Plahotniuc on various occasions.

Then there is the matter of international deep state support. For example, France’s Interpol has stalled repeatedly from issuing an international arrest warrant even though both Russian and Moldovan governments have made legitimate requests. Why this resistance? Even the European Parliament has passed a resolution in 2018 calling Moldova “a state captured by oligarchic interests”- making Interpol’s resistance ever more odd.

So where does Moldova go from here?

Regardless of whether or not Plahotniuc is extradited sooner or later, the game is most certainly up, and beginning in late 2019, Moldova began to reclaim its ancient heritage as a keystone in China’s East-West Silk Road as two major infrastructure deals worth $400 million were signed with China, including two major highways: One encircling Chisinau and the other connecting to Ukraine.

President Dodon beautifully expressed his understanding of this process in March 2020 saying:

“We should acknowledge that this pandemic has shown ‘who is who,’ who is a real friend and who will be always by our side in need, even if they also face hard times… I will cite as an example Russia and China here because these were the first countries that responded to our request.”

“We enjoy strategic partnership and strategic dialogue at the levels of presidents, prime ministers, and parliament speakers… I think one of the major achievements is that we have got rid of the oligarch regime,” he said. “An important result is that we started carrying out a balanced foreign policy. Even against the background of those deals signed with the European Union, we managed to obtain an observer status in the Eurasian Economic Union.”

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Matthew J.L. Ehret is a journalist, lecturer and founder of the Canadian Patriot Review.

Featured image is from SCF

Israel just bombed Iran. And no one noticed.

On July 2, 2020, two explosions erupted in Iran, and both seem to have been ignited by Israel. Neither explosion attracted much reporting, and what reporting there has been remains thin and confused.

The first report came out on the afternoon of July 3. The Jerusalem Post picked up a story from Kuwait’s Al-Jarida, reporting that a fire had broken out at Iran’s civilian Natanz nuclear enrichment site. The Kuwaiti report says that an unnamed senior source informed them that the fire was caused by an Israeli cyber attack. They suggest that Iran will need about two months to recover from the attack. Iranian officials have since confirmed that, though none of the underground centrifuges were damaged, the above ground damage is extensive, and that their centrifuge program has been substantially set back.

The second attack exploded near Parchin, at a site claimed to be a missile production facility. Citing the same Kuwaiti paper, The Times of Israel attributed the Parchin explosion to missiles dropped by Israeli F-35 stealth fighters.

The Parchin story has drawn little further attention and remains undeveloped, but the Natanz story has confusingly evolved. Though unnamed Iranian officials seemed at first to side with the cyber attack theory, some experts sided with a different theory: that the Natanz explosion was not a cyber attack but an actual, bolder physical attack. In a rare piece of mainstream reporting, The New York Timesseems to confirm the physical attack theory. Relying on a “Middle Eastern intelligence official with knowledge of the episode,” the Times reports that the Natanz nuclear complex was not hit by a cyber attack, as it has been previously, but by a “powerful bomb.” The intelligence official added that “Israel was responsible for the attack.” The Times report supports the intelligence source by adding that a “member of the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps who was briefed on the matter also said an explosive was used.” According to the Revolutionary Guards source, it is likely that someone carried the bomb into the building.

SATELLITE IMAGES OF NATANZ NUCLEAR PLANT. PICS: GOOGLE (BEFORE) AND IRAN INTERNATIONAL (AFTER) (IMAGES VIA SKY NEWS)

These two attacks seem to add dropping missiles from the sky and walking bombs in on the ground to Israel’s resume of acts of war on Iran. And the resume is long.

Cyber Attacks

Though Israel did not hit the Natanz facility with a cyber attack this time, it has hit it with a serious cyber attack in the past. In the past operation, Israel partnered with the United States, specifically Israel’s secret military unit 8200 partnered with the American CIA and NSA.

When a massive virus called Flame was injected into Iranian computers, it mapped and monitored the system of Iranian computers and sent intelligence back that was used to prepare for cyber war campaigns against Iran. Officials have confirmed that Flame is one part of a joint project of the CIA, NSA and unit 8200.

One of the cyber wars that Flame prepared the way for is the now famous Stuxnet. Stuxnet was a computer virus that infected Iran’s centrifuges and sent them spinning wildly out of control before playing back previously recorded tapes of normal operations that plant operators watched unsuspectingly while the centrifuges spun faster and faster until they literally tore themselves apart. The New York Times says that, according to intelligence and military experts, the Dimona nuclear complex in Israel was the testing ground for the virus. There are nuclear centrifuges in Dimona that are virtually identical to Iran’s, making it a perfect model to test the effectiveness of the virus. Stuxnet seems to have wiped out about 20% of Iran’s nuclear centrifuges.

So that puts missile attacks, bomb attacks and cyber attacks on the Israeli resume of acts of war on Iran. And the cyber attack was an act of war. A NATO study has admitted that Stuxnet qualified as an “illegal act of force.” According to Stephen Cohen, after the U.S. accused Russia of hacking computers, NATO issued a statement saying that “hacking a member state might now be regarded as war against the entire military alliance, requiring military retaliation.”

Assassinations

But the resume is nowhere near exhausted. It also includes assassination, multiple assassinations. On January 12, 2010, Massoud Ali-Mohammadi was killed when a remote-control bomb planted on a motorcycle detonated next to his car. The investigation undertaken by Iranian security forces led to the arrest of ten Iranians who were accused of working for the Israeli Mossad. One of them, Jamali Fashi, who had a computer and cell phones that tied him both to Mossad in general and to the assassinations specifically, confessed to being recruited and trained by Mossad to assassinate Ali-Mohammadi.

In November 2010, Majid Shahriyari, was killed when motorcycle riders attached a magnetized bomb to his car. On the same day, assassins tried to kill Fereydoun Abbasi-Davani in the same way but failed when he noticed the suspicious motorcyclists and jumped out of his car. Also a scientist, Abbasi-Davani was named head of Iran’s Atomic Energy Association a few months later. He says that British spies shadowed him to gather information ahead of the failed assassination attempt.

The Iranian physicist and nuclear scientist Darioush Rezainejad was killed when two gunmen on motorcycles opened fire on him while he was entering his garage. His wife was also wounded. This was the fourth consecutive assassination or attempted assassination employing motorcyclists. According to the IAEA, Rezainejad played a key role in Iran’s nuclear program. Iran has blamed the United States, Britain and Israel for his assassination. And “a source in Israel’s intelligence community” told Germany’s Der Spiegal that Mossad was behind the assassination of Rezainejad.

In January 11, 2012, Mostafa Ahmadi Roshan, a scientist involved in purchasing equipment for Iran’s nuclear program, was assassinated when a motorcycle placed a magnetized bomb on the roof of his moving car. Thirteen people found to be working for an Israeli spy ring were arrested.

A fifth important player in the Iranian nuclear game was killed in November when a massive explosion at the military arms depot that houses Iran’s long-range Shahab missiles killed seventeen and wounded fifteen more. Included in the dead was Major General Hassan Moqqadam, a pioneer in Iranian missile development. An earlier explosion occurred at a Shahab missile base in October of 2010. Time Magazine revealed in November 2011 that a western intelligence source says that Mossad is behind the explosion.

Two senior officials in the Obama administration revealed to NBC news that the assassinations were carried out by the Mujahideen-e-Khalq (MEK), an Iranian opposition group that spent many years on America’s terrorist list. They also confirm that the MEK was being financed, armed and trained by the Israeli Mossad and that the assassinations were carried out with the awareness of the Obama administration. The Americans, too, have secretly trained and supported the MEK.

Qassem Suleimani

The American assassination of Iranian general Qassem Suleimani drew tons of media attention. But Israel’s role in the assassination did not. According to an “Israeli army officer with knowledge of Israeli military assessments,” the assassination of Suleimani “did not come as a surprise” because, according to Israeli military and diplomatic analysts, “Israel had advance notice of the U.S. plan.” Channel 13’s Barak Ravid reported that “the United States informed Israel about this operation in Iraq, apparently a few days ago.” Netanyahu was the only American ally to know about the operation, having been informed by Secretary of State Mike Pompeo.

But Israel did more than know about it. Israel participated in it. “Israeli intelligence was instrumental” in the assassination. Suleimani was killed in Baghdad when his vehicle was struck by American hellfire missiles. Israeli intelligence “confirmed and verified” informants’ information tipping the U.S. off to which plane Suleimani was on.

In a report published on July 7, 2020, U.N. expert on extrajudicial killings, Agnes Callamard, concluded that the assassination was “unlawful” and that it was an “arbitrary killing” that was in violation of the U.N. charter.

That adds assassinations and political assassinations to the resume.

Economic Warfare and Isolation

The New York Times article that reports that the Natanz attack was actually a bomb adds that the sneaking of the bomb into the enrichment facility would not be the first time Israel has been able “to strike in the heart of Iran.” They add Mossad’s 2018 breaking into a secret nuclear archive in Tehran to the list of Israeli attacks in Iran. That would add another violation of Iranian territory and act of aggression to the Israeli resume if it were true. But, it’s not true.

Though Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu claimed that the stolen archival documentation proved that “Iran lied, big time, after signing the nuclear deal in 2015,” it was Netanyahu who was lying.  Olli Heinonen, the chief inspector of the IAEA at the time of the JCPOA negotiations – and not someone who was in any way soft on Iran – said that the IAEA first saw the “significant new” evidence that Netanyahu revealed thirteen years earlier in 2005. Watching Netanyahu’s revelation, Heinonen could only say, “I just saw a lot of pictures I had seen before.” Those old pictures had been carefully discredited by many experts, including Gareth Porter in Manufactured Crisis. The IAEA was finished with them by December of 2015. The day after Netanyahu’s revelation, the IAEA said that there was “no credible indications” of Iran working on a nuclear weapons program for several years before the JCPOA. As Gareth Porter has shown in many places, including The CIA Insider’s Guide to the Iran Crisis, the archival documents were contaminated by inaccuracies that clearly revealed that they were fabrications.

Nonetheless, when Donald Trump illegally withdrew from the JCPOA Iranian nuclear agreement, he boasted that Netanyahu’s revelation “showed that I’ve been 100 percent right.” And, citing only Netanyahu’s presentation as evidence, he pulled out of the agreement, locked Iran back into isolation and put it under economic siege: an act of economic warfare.

Though Israel did not really physically attack Iran by breaking into the Tehran warehouse, the fabrication and sleight of hand propaganda war epitomized Israel’s crucial role in massaging and pushing Trump into a maximum pressure economic war on Iran.

So, although The New York Times was wrong, it was right. The illusory event did not add another physical act of war to Israel’s resume. It added another new kind of war to the resume: missile attacks, bomb attacks, cyber attacks, assassinations, political assassinations and, now, economic warfare. How many different ways can Israel wage war on Iran before it is transparent that Israel is waging war on Iran?

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A human being is by nature a social being, related to the community of fellow human beings, and has a natural inclination for the good. According to Thomas Aquinas this is “written in his heart” by the eternal law (lex aeterna). It helps him to better recognize what is right in nature. A human being is also autonomous and thus able to see himself as a being of freedom and to act from this freedom. This enables him to refuse obedience to “authorities”. The free human being has the power to refuse (Adorno).

Equipped with these natural abilities, we humans should be able to stand up to a small group of ultra-rich and ultra-inhuman cerberus. They want to sell us the planned New World Order (NWO), which is in reality a satanic one, euphemistically as technical progress and “4th Industrial Revolution”. In the past, these irresponsible psychopaths have instructed the governments of the world to let us citizens look briefly into the abyss by means of gigantic crimes. Since they revealed their diabolical agenda, we were able to get to know them – and are not afraid of them (anymore).

“They’re not robbing a bank, they’re going to be bank president”

If you comb through the biographies of the so-called elite of this world from politics, economy, military and partly also from science and art, this reads in places like pure “psychopathology”, the doctrine of pathological changes in the life of the soul. The Canadian criminal psychologist and university professor emeritus Robert D. Hare lists a total of 20 criteria in his Psychopathology Checklist (PCL-R). Here is a small selection:

Tricky eloquent dazzlers with superficial charm, considerably exaggerated self-esteem, pathological lying, fraudulent manipulative behavior, lack of remorse or guilt, emotional coldness, lack of empathy, unwillingness and ability to take responsibility for one’s own actions, parasitic lifestyle, etc., etc. (1)

According to Wikipedia, people with this personality disorder are not only overrepresented among criminals and in prisons, but also in higher hierarchical levels, about six times in leadership positions. For this reason, the founder of psychopathology research said: “They’re not robbing a bank, they’re going to be bank president.” (2)

“Strength does not come from physical ability. It comes from an indomitable will.”

The Indian lawyer, moral teacher and pacifist Mahatma Gandhi, from whom the quote originates, was able to show the world in the last century what a person with an unbending will can achieve. The Indian independence movement, of which he was the spiritual and political leader, took up his ideas of non-violent action and civil disobedience and in August 1947 reached the end of British colonial rule over India. Why should we, the citizens of today, not succeed in this?

On the role of the individual in a situation perceived as hopeless, the writer and philosopher Albert Camus wrote in a “Letter to a Desperate Man” shortly after the outbreak of the Second World War:

“Every human being has a more or less large sphere of influence. (…). You can convince ten, twenty, thirty people that this war was not and is not inevitable, that not all means have been tried to stop it, that one must say it, write it if possible, shout it out if necessary! These ten or thirty people will pass it on to ten others, who in turn will pass it on. If you are held back by inertia, well, start again with others.“ 3)

So we have something in hand. A few months ago, when the WHO declared a worldwide epidemic (pandemic), most people initially became very afraid and reacted with a reflex of obedience, especially since this feeling of fear was stirred up by totalitarian governments from outside (“The diabolical “game” with fear as an instrument of domination”) (4). But in the meantime the cerberus of the New World Order (NWO) have revealed their diabolical agenda. Thus, what is going on in the world right now is no longer an indefinite threat, but quite obviously the agenda of nefarious psychopaths.

This means that we citizens no longer have to be afraid, but can do everything we can to ensure that these human parasites will not succeed with their planned “scientific dictatorship” (Huxley) and their “Green New Deal”, this so-called ecological turn of industrial society or 4th Industrial Revolution.

It is a great joy to observe how relatives, good friends and other fellow citizens are becoming more and more sensitive and are waking up more and more, because they want to look their children and their children’s children openly and without shame in the eyes, when one day they will ask them what role they played in these difficult and obscure times.

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This article was originally published on NRhZ-ONLINE.

Dr. Rudolf Hänsel is a graduate psychologist and educationalist.

Notes

(1) https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_D._Hare

(2) https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psychopathie

(3) Marin, L. (ed.) (2013). Albert Camus – Libertarian writings (1948-1960). Hamburg, p. 273

(4) http://www.nrhz.de/flyer/beitrag.php?id=26792&css and https://www.globalresearch.ca/diabolical-game-fear-instrument-domination/5712556

Belarus blamed Russia last month for stoking Color Revolution unrest ahead of its presidential election in early August, but even though this accusation is completely false, it still risks being instrumentalized as part of a perception management plot to convince its largely Russophilic population to accept the country’s accelerated pivot towards the West (deceptively disguised as a “balancing” act) in the predictable event that President Lukashenko wins another term in office.

The Syrian government seems to be deploying Pantsir-S1 air defense systems to Libya to assist forces of Field Marshal Khalifa Haftar in their battle against the Turkish-controlled Government of National Accord.

An unusual Pantisr-S1 air defense system was for the first time spotted in Libya last week, when local activists released a video of a Libyan National Army convoy moving towards the port city of Sirte besieged by Turkish-led forces.

A spokesman for the GNA forces in the region, Brig. Abdul Hadi Draa, also said that the Pantsir-S1 systems and other weapons were deployed at the Sirte airport on July 11. One of the convoys moving towards the airport included the Pantsir-S1 system on the unusual KAMAZ-6560 8×8 chassis. Previously, all the Pantsir-S1 systems operated by the LNA were based on the German MAN SX 45 8×8 chassis. This variant was supplied by Russia to the UAE, which later supplied systems to the LNA.

Other discriminant marks of the filmed Pantsir-S1 were a desert yellow paint and the older passive electronically scanned array search radar. The only country in the Middle East that operates Pantsir-S1 systems with such specifications and supports the Libyan National Army is Syria.

Earlier in 2020, Syria officially established diplomatic ties with the House of Representatives, a democratically elected body that supports the Libyan National Army and manages the daily social and economic life in the territories controlled by it.

Damascus also sees the Libyan National Army and the House of Representatives as a natural ally because they also fight against the occupation of their country by Turkey.

In the last few weeks, Syrian Il-76 cargo planes made several unusual flights between Damascus International Airport and the al-Khadim Air Base in northeast Libya. The base is known to be hosting service members of the UAE that are involved in the assist and advice mission to support Haftar’s forces. The Pantsir-S1 system spotted on the road to Sirte may have been shipped from Syria to Libya during one of these flights.

At the same time, the Syrian government currently have good relations with Egypt, the UAE – the main backers of the Libyan National Army, and obviously with Russia – the producer of Pantsir-S1 systems and the country that provides background diplomatic support to the UAE-Egypt bloc in the conflict.

The Syrian Air Defense Forces operate dozens of Pantsir-S1 systems. Most of the Syrian systems are equipped with the advanced active electronically scanned array search radar. Therefore, Damascus may have opted to sell a part of its older systems to Haftar.

If this is confirmed, this move will likely allow Syria to improve its relations with the Libyan National Army, the UAE and Egypt, complicate Turkish plans to capture Srite, and last but not least strengthen the Syrian regional positions, which were significantly undermined by the ongoing war inside the country.

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For the past several years, the war between Ukraine and the breakaway and still-unrecognized Donetsk People’s Republic and Lugansk People’s Republic has settled into a tense routine of attritional trench warfare, punctuated by sniping, clashes between patrols, small-scale raids, offensive minelaying, and ambushes using anti-tank guided missiles. There have been few operations by units larger than company. The front line has remained almost entirely unchanged. At the same time, both sides have been preparing for the possible next round of high-intensity warfare. What would happen if the fighting were to break out again?

That particular prediction is made more difficult by the very fact of the long lull in high-intensity fighting during which both sides have undergone a certain degree of transformation which remains relatively unknown to the other party. Both sides have seen certain material improvements, though apparently nothing dramatic.

Ukraine’s armored vehicle fleet still relies on the same, but now even more worn out vehicles it went to war with in 2014. The planned re-equipment with the Oplot MBT never took place, and even the upgraded T-64BU Bulat was found to be flawed. Therefore the elderly T-64BV remains the main tank of Ukraine’s forces. Light armored vehicle fleet has seen some improvement thanks to domestic production and deliveries from former Warsaw Pact member states. If there is one area where Ukraine’s military may have made a major step forward, it is the artillery, using the large store of inactive weapons for Soviet-era reserve forces. However, artillery munition production continues to be a problem.

While the number of Ukraine’s brigades has grown, the military experiences major problems with recruitment and retention, meaning that many of these brigades have the strength of a reinforced combined arms battalion.

On Novorossia’s side the situation is hardly different. DPR and LPR units continue to use the same types of equipment they used during the campaigns of five years ago. The numeric strength does not appear to have changed much, either, and here too recruitment and retention remains a problem.

The other factor making predictions difficult is the level of morale of these two forces that have been bogged down in an apparently endless war that is beyond their power to finish. The combination of trench warfare boredom and terror means it is debilitating to the units’ morale and proficiency if they are forced to remain in the trenches for too long. While the most offensive-capable forces are kept out of the trenches as mobile reserves, they too can only maintain their state of alert for so long before losing their edge.

Paradoxically, this state of affairs give an advantage to the side that intends to go on the offensive, because the preparations for the attack and associated training would imbue the troops with the hope that, after the next big push, the war will finally be over. At the same time, both sides know such an offensive would be an exceedingly risky proposition, because if it fails, it will grind down the attacking side’s most effective units and render the army vulnerable to a counteroffensive to which it would not be able to respond.

Therefore the likelihood of renewed fighting also heavily depends on who actually makes the decision. While local leaders may be cautious enough, foreign ones in distant capitals may have different considerations in mind.

A big unknown hanging over the future of the Donbass is the position of Joe Biden, the Democratic Party nominee and the potential winner of the November elections. Biden has already played a highly destructive role in the politics of Ukraine and the US-Russia relations. It is Biden that blackmailed Poroshenko into firing the Chief Prosecutor Shokin due to his interest in the corrupt dealings of the Burisma energy company which infamously had Joe’s son Hunter on its board of directors. It is also Biden who held a lengthy, 30-45 minute telephone conversation with Poroshenko on the day MH17 was shot down and promptly came out blaming Russia for it, even as the wreckage was still smoking where it fell. Biden identified himself as a Russia foe much earlier, during the 2012 vice-presidential debates where he positioned himself as being “hard on Putin”, which in retrospect proved to be an early indicator of where the second-term Obama administration foreign policy would go. It also goes without saying Biden is an ardent promoter of the “RussiaGate” effort to paint Donald Trump as a Russian agent/stooge/fellow traveler/useful idiot.

At the same time, Biden’s line against China has hardened as well, which may have implications for US-Russia relations during the probable Biden presidency. As late as May 2019, Biden would describe People’s Republic of China as “they are not bad folks”, adding that “they are not competition to us”, comments that may yet come to haunt him on the campaign trail. However, once the COVID-19 broke out of control in the United States, Biden sought to out-do Trump in his accusations the high US death toll was due to China misleading the United States on the nature of the virus and not allowing US public health officials access to Wuhan and China’s epidemiology labs. Even before that, Hunter Biden resigned from boards of directors of China-based firms. While that might have been motivated by his, and his dad’s, desire to keep a low profile due to the scrutiny Hunter’s business dealings have attracted during Donald Trump’s impeachment proceedings, it may also have been preparation for Joe Biden’s anti-China pivot.

The emergence of PRC as Biden’s perceived number one international adversary may mean a desire to improve relations with Russia in the way that Trump, compromised from the start by RussiaGate and without a history of own anti-Russia rhetoric to fall back on, could never deliver. Biden, however, is in the same position as Nixon was in the late 1960s. His earlier anti-Russian rhetoric and actions now make him nearly immune from the same sort of accusations which, even though false, nevertheless effectively stuck to Trump. Nixon’s own enthusiastic participation in McCarthyite witch hunts made it possible for him to do what his Democratic Party predecessor Lyndon Johnson could not: end Vietnam War, engage in arms control treaties with USSR and “go to China” in order to exploit the growing divide between the two main Communist powers. Biden has the political capital necessary to repeat the process: end the war in Afghanistan (something he had proposed already as vice president), enter into arms control treaties with China and…go to Moscow, which is currently seen in Washington in the same way that Beijing was in the 1970s, namely the secondary challenger which needs to be peeled away from the primary one. Moreover, just as in the early 1970s, United States of the 2020s is wracked by a massive internal crisis requiring international retrenchment in order to focus on internal reforms.

But that optimistic scenario remains less likely than the prospect of renewed escalation. Nixon-era United States was not suffering from the hubris of American Exceptionalism. On the contrary, it was a country full of self-doubt and under no illusion concerning the limits of its power. It entered into arms control treaties because it did not feel it could win them. Disasters abroad and at home notwithstanding, the US elite still has not been shaken out of its complacency, and it does appear to sincerely believe it can win a strategic and conventional arms race against both China and Russia. We have not seen any indications so far that Biden intends any moderation in the area of foreign policy or returning to a policy of cooperation with Russia. One should expect that, in the event of Biden victory, Ukraine will launch an offensive against the Donbass shortly after the inauguration, in other words, in February or March of 2020. This offensive would accomplish two objectives for Biden. One, it would establish his hawkish, “patriotic” bona fides, make him look “presidential” in the eyes of the mainstream media and the national security establishment. Secondly, it would allow the US to exert even more pressure on Germany and other EU member states concerning North Stream and other areas of cooperation with Russia.

In order to achieve these goals, particularly the second one, the offensive would not need to overrun the Donbass, in fact, that would not be the aim at all. Rather, the goal would be to force Russian forces to intervene directly in support of the Lugansk and Donetsk republics to justify depicting Russia as the aggressor in the matter. And even if the republics’ militaries can cope with the UAF assault on their own, the sheer level of violence will still make enough headlines to satisfy Biden’s requirements. Whether Zelensky wants that kind of escalation for his country is almost irrelevant. Both he and Biden know very well what the balance of power in that relationship is. Ukraine is a failing state seriously dependent on foreign financial assistance in the form of continual IMF loans, debt rescheduling, favorable trade deals, etc. Biden knew how to use these levers to achieve an important change in Ukraine’s politics that benefited him personally, he will not hesitate to use them again.

Moreover, even if Biden were driven by the Nixonian motives described above, it’s doubtful the foreign policy Deep State would allow him to do that. Biden’s own conversations with Poroshenko no doubt contain great many embarrassing moments whose release would instantly embroil him in a massive scandal. The fact that Donald Trump was impeached solely due to the desire of national security apparatchiks to continue their pet war in Ukraine is indicative of their power to make foreign policy quite independently of their supposed civilian bosses.

The situation is further complicated by the widening rift between the Western neo-liberal world and conservative societies of eastern European countries. This includes a large part of the Ukrainian population which is committed to traditional values. The rapidly deteriorating social and economic situation in Ukraine contributes to a further antagonism of this part of the society towards the forcefully imposed Western ideology and its local agents. Another point of tensions is the existing contradictions between the Orthodox Church (Moscow Patriarchy) and the artificially assembled pseudo-church organizations in Ukraine. The Moscow Patriarchy is returning to its former position among the Ukrainian faithful. In the event of a further dissatisfaction of the society by the declared pseudo-Western way of development, positions of Russia and the Moscow Patriarchy will strengthen even more.

While a Ukrainian offensive is relatively unlikely in 2020, its probability increases considerably in 2021, particularly in the event of a Biden victory. The conflict in Ukraine has lasted this long mainly because Ukraine’s current sponsors in the West are not interested in ending it, irrespective of what the will of the Ukrainian people might be. The situation will get even worse should the US presidency be taken over by someone with a well-established hostility toward Russia who believes his aims would be better served by another bloody campaign on the Donbass.

The next US administration will employ every option that it has in order to prevent the return of Russian influence in the country. Besides furthering the conflict in eastern Ukraine, it will expand efforts against it in the ideological sphere as well, likely including direct provocations.

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The rage, desperation, and determination which continue to bring tens of thousands of Americans to the streets in protest against racism and injustice hopefully will be just the beginning. They are sick and tired of systemic racism against Black people, of bigotry at the top, crude discrimination, police brutality, a prejudiced criminal justice system, economic disparity, and society’s robbing black people of experiencing real freedom and equality. Hypocritically, white people blame the victims of racism for their own plight, claiming that Black people would do better in life if they were only willing to work harder.

We are now reaping the harvest of the seeds of racism and discrimination—the devaluation of black life. The whole socio-economic and cultural system is lopsided, as it lacks the fundamentals of justice and equality. The pandemic provided the wakeup call that pointed out the ugly tradition of subjugation of the Black community, which sadly did not stop with the end of slavery, but continued in the wanton indifference to their pain and agony, our uncanny negligence, and our failure to understand what they are really experiencing.

Ingrained Racism

The fact that Black people were slaves, and the carefully cultivated myth that slaves were always obedient and happily served their white masters, left an indelible imprint on white people that has lasted generations. They maintain that African Americans were born to servitude and hence they do not qualify for equal treatment, equal opportunity, and equal status.

Films such as D.W. Griffith’s immensely influential Birth of a Nation (1915), which helped to reestablish the Ku Klux Klan, also reinforced the racist stereotype that Black men are unintelligent and an inherent danger to the white community—specifically white women. When on May 25 (the same day George Floyd was killed) a white woman, Amy Cooper, called the cops on a Black man, Christian Cooper, who was birdwatching in Central Park, she was tapping into the long history of that racist trope. To put it plainly, Black lives are simply not valued the way white lives are, as white people consciously or subconsciously view Black man as both sub- and supra-human, threatening, and expendable.

Thus, due to this entrenched prejudice, any activity, however innocent, in which a Black man is engaged in invites suspicion, alarm, and often puts the life of Black men in danger – such as 25-year-old Ahmaud Arbery, who was shot and killed by white residents of the suburban Georgia neighborhood he was jogging in. The mayor of Minneapolis bluntly said “Being black in America should not be a death sentence.” Racism, to be sure, is so ingrained it flows in the veins of many Americans without notice.

The insidious, learned biases pitting white against Black Americans directly leads to the treating of Black Americans as second-class citizens and suppression by white Americans—a necessary ingredient that satisfies their ego and elevates their self-worth. Although the majority of white Americans may not be white supremacists, they certainly hold onto their privileges in all walks of life as they view their relation with Black people (and other people of color) as a zero-sum game, as if a Black man’s gain invariably chips away at a white man’s privileges.

Wanton discrimination

Racial prejudice in America takes a heavy toll on African Americans, which translates to discrimination in all walks of life, including education, job opportunities, professional advancements, and medical treatment, especially maternal health. Black workers receive 22 percent less in salary than whites with the same education and experience; Black women receive even less—34.2 percent. According to a University of Chicago/Duke 2016 study, when factoring in all African American and white men (inclusive of those incarcerated or otherwise out of the workforce), the racial wage gap is the same as it was in the 1950s. Even where racial discrimination should not occur, in medical treatment, when Black patients access medical care, doctors regularly prescribe fewer pain medications and believe Black patients feel less pain than white patients, even among veterans seeking care.

Whereas Black men have served in the military and fought and died alongside white soldiers in every war since the Revolutionary War (when 5,000-8,000 Black soldiers fought against the British), they had to face the revulsion of discrimination and segregation while still serving in the military, hardly recognized for acts of bravery. Indeed, until 1948—after the end of WWII—the US military was entirely segregated. While the top brass of the military, who are mostly white, like to claim that military institutions are ‘colorblind’, the reality is that “racism and discrimination remain extensive problems even in the U.S. military”.

Police brutality

Although police brutality against Black men in particular, which instigated the current protests, is a known phenomenon, police killings of Black men continue unabated. It can and has taken different forms historically – including harassment and intimidation, assault and battery, torture and murder, and even complicity with the KKK. Often, police officers approach any situation connected to a Black man with apprehension and fear. White police officers see threats where they do not exist; they are too quick to draw and as quick to fire to kill.

Here are just a few glaring examples: a Black man taking a nap in a car in a parking lot was shot dead. Another pulled over in a traffic stop was shot and killed in front of his girlfriend and her daughter. A Black man sitting in his home eating ice cream was shot dead by his neighbor, an off-duty white police officer. A Black woman playing video games with her nephew was shot and killed through her window. A Black woman (and EMT) sleeping in her home was shot eight times when officers entered her apartment executing a no-knock warrant.

It is rare for a prosecutor to decide to charge a police officer, especially because they often know each other and have developed close working relationships. Even Internal Affairs divisions of police departments, which ostensibly exist to investigate and report misconduct among officers, have widely conducted sub-standard investigations and failed to identify problem officers who commit wanton abuse.

This cultural pattern enables police officers like Derek Chauvin, Daniel Pantaleo, and Nathan Woodyard to commit the heinous crime of slowly squeezing the life out of George Floyd (MN), Eric Garner (NY), and Elijah McClain (CO). As troubling is the fact that police officers have been known to give false testimony in court, whether to avoid punishment for their own criminal and/or unconstitutional actions, to ensure a conviction, or for other reasons.

Disproportionate incarceration

Although the US judiciary is considered to be just and impartial, in most court hearings race is present albeit it is not spelled out. It is as though Black men inherently have no equal rights and to this day, 230 years since the constitution was written, injustices still exist in both federal and state courts.

Blacks are incarcerated at more than five times the rate of whites—while they are 13 percent of the total US population, they constitute 40 percent of the total male prison population. The mass incarceration of African Americans in this country has created what sociologist Becky Pettit, citing the novelist Ralph Ellison, calls “invisible men”—the millions of black men in the American penal system. Prison inmates are not included in most data-collecting national surveys, so these men are effectively invisible to social institutions, lawmakers, and most social science research. It is almost as if they do not exist, they do not count; their reality is ignored, neglected, and brushed aside.

A staggering 75 percent of young Black men will be imprisoned at some point in their lives. These statistics can only begin to convey the enormity of the injustice that is being compounded day after day. Pettit’s book reveals that “penal expansion has generated a class of citizens systematically excluded from accounts of the American populace. This exclusion raises doubt about the validity of even the most basic social facts and questions the utility of the data gathered for the design and evaluation of public policy and the data commonly used in social science research. As a consequence, we have lost sight of the full range of the American experience.”

Economic disparity

Economic disparity between white and Black Americans is glaring, and reverberates through generations of Black families. Economic exclusion is the source of inequality. It is caused by a confluence of factors, beginning with nearly 250 years of chattel slavery (during which Black families were torn apart, let alone able to accumulate wealth), to sharecropping and unrestrained lynchings, to 90 years of Jim Crow laws, to redlining neighborhoods on demographic lines. All of these factors are manifested today in hiring decisions, property valuation, mortgage applications, interest charges, and even how credit scores are tabulated. The average white family’s net worth is more than ten times greater than a Black family. Economic disparity, to be sure, is the “mother of all evil” in the lives of Black people.

A poor Black man cannot pay for decent housing, cannot pay for health care, and cannot afford to send his kids to higher education, which directly impacts his social standing and professional competency. Thus, he has to settle for menial jobs, low wages, and little or no prospect of ever climbing out of the vicious cycle. The saddest thing of all is that he is blamed for his own dilemma, as if the conditions and lack of opportunities in which he lives has nothing to do with his sorry state of affairs.

The bigotry of the leadership

During the past four years, racism in America has been on the rise and in no small measure Trump, the Racist-in-Chief, has made race a campaign issue from the very start. He began his political campaign by branding Hispanics as rapists; in his presidency he banned Muslims from entering the US, cruelly separated children from their parents at the borders, described white supremacists in Charlottesville as “very fine people”, and celebrated this 4th of July by defending Confederate statues.

Trump’s racism against Blacks in particular is nothing new. It was there in 1973 when Trump Management Inc. was sued by the Department of Justice for housing discrimination against African-American renters. We could see it in 1989, when he took out a full-page advertisement in four New York City newspapers calling for the reinstatement of the death penalty over the Central Park Five, who were wrongfully convicted and sent to prison. Trump refuses to apologize for that, even though, as Innocence Project founder Barry Scheck said, “…by calling for the reinstitution of the death penalty, it contributed to an atmosphere that deprived these men of a fair trial.” He also refused to apologize for his persistent perpetuation of the ‘birther’ lie that Obama was not born in the US.

Trump’s Independence Day speech at Mount Rushmore was laden with racially divisive and partisan rhetoric, but that makes no difference to many conservative Republican leaders and his misguided supporters who follow him blindly. They wrap themselves with the flag as a sign of American patriotism, when in fact their patriotism is defined by their racism and intolerance of people of color.

Although some Republican leaders disagree with him on race, they are fearful of his anger to say anything publicly, lest they risk losing their power or position. Sadly, their silence suggests consent, which only reinforces Trump’s racism. With Trump, as with much of the country, racism is deeply ingrained, something he refuses to admit.

Although racism did not start when Trump came to power – as it is imbued into America’s history and culture – and it will not end with his departure from office, his overt racism brought to focus racism in America. The persistent protests reveal the deep sense of frustration with a president who fans the flame of racism, who sees the country as his own enterprise, who does whatever he wants to serve his own interests. He is cruel, cunning, and careless about the pain and suffering of Black America; he cannot count on their political support and hence completely rejects their outcry.

Unlike any other protests in the past against racism, this year’s protests have had a greater impact in part due to the spread of the coronavirus and its disproportionate impact on Black people, who are being infected and dying at higher rates than whites. That, and in conjunction with a presidential election, provides a rare opportunity to start a process of mitigating racism in earnest. What will be necessary, however, is for the protests to persist through Election Day in the hopes that the Racist-in-Chief will be ousted. Only then we stand a better chance that a new day will dawn and a new administration will commit to relentlessly addressing the plight of Black people for the sake of all Americans, especially because the day when America will have a majority of people of color is fast approaching.

Although there are scores of measures that must be taken and many years and huge financial resources to make a discernible change for the better in the life of Black Americans, we have no choice but to start, regardless of how insurmountable the obstacles and the culture of resistance to change. It will take the collective efforts, determination, and consistency of local, state, and federal authorities to begin this process if we ever want to reach a modicum of equality.

The work to change the culture of innate racism in America will be long and hard, but we must not shy away from it. As a small start, the immediate focus should be on educating students about Black history, changing the police culture and training, investing in housing in black neighborhoods, offering educational support for young Black boys and girls starting at elementary age, up to providing free education for them to attend college or professional schools, and providing job opportunities and equal pay to give them the chance to climb up over time the social ladder.

The continuing demonstrations throughout the country suggest not only the obvious—that Black lives matter—but that racism is consuming America from within, that injustice affects the perpetrators just as much as the victims, that enough is enough.

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Dr. Alon Ben-Meir is a professor of international relations at the Center for Global Affairs at NYU. He teaches courses on international negotiation and Middle Eastern studies. He is a frequent contributor to Global Research.

According to US Energy Information Agency data, America, Russia, and Iran are the world’s leading natural gas producers, in that order — followed by Qatar, Canada and China.

US shale oil and gas development made it the world’s leading producer of both energy sources.

According to data compiled by Forbes magazine, published in early July, the US has a “23.1% share of global natural gas production” — ahead of Russia’s 17% and 17.4% for Middle East countries combined.

In 2019, the world’s top 10 natural gas producing nations accounted for around 70% of global supply.

The US has a 40% market share of global liquified natural gas (LNG) — what it’s pressuring and bullying EU countries to buy in lieu of much cheaper and readily available natural gas from neighboring Russia.

When completed, Moscow’s 745-mile-long Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline beneath the Baltic Sea will deliver 55 billion cubic meters of natural gas annually to Germany and other EU countries.

Together with Nord Stream 1, both pipelines will deliver 110 billion cubic feet of natural gas to Western Europe.

Nord Stream 2 gas will come through exclusive economic zone territorial waters of five countries: Russia, Finland, Sweden, Denmark and Germany.

Russian natural gas is around 30% cheaper than US liquified natural gas (LNG), why Western Europe highly values it.

Trump regime hardliners are going all-out to block completion of the project — projected to be operational by yearend or early 2021.

On July 15, the State Department  “updated…guidance for Section 232 of the Countering America’s Adversaries Through Sanctions Act (CAATSA)” that imposed unlawful US sanctions on Russia, Iran and North Korea.

The measure signed into law by Trump on August 2, 2017 flagrantly breached the UN Charter and other international law.

At the time, CAATSA was congressionally adopted with only 2 Senate and 3 House profile in courage members voting against the illegitimate measure.

Nations complying with it are complicit in US lawlessness against three nonbelligerent UN member-states threatening no one.

The State Department updated its so-called “guidance” to include threatened lawless sanctions on “investments or other activities related to a broader scope of Russian energy export pipelines, including Nord Stream 2 and the second line of TurkStream (a joint project with Turkey to go through Bulgaria, Serbia and Hungary to Vienna),” adding:

“Persons making such investments or engaging in such activities, including but not limited to financing partners, as well as pipe-laying vessels and related engineering service providers engaging in the deployment of the pipelines, may be subject to (lawless) sanctions pursuant to Section 232.”

Both right wings of the US war party consider legitimate actions by Russia, China, Iran, and other nations on its target list for regime change “threats to US national security and foreign policy interests” — including completion of Nord Stream 2.

Defying reality, the Trump regime’s State Department falsely claimed that Nord Stream 2 and Turkstream “strengthen Russia’s ability to use its energy resources to coerce our European partners and allies (sic),” adding:

“The projects would hinder the process of European energy diversification (sic).”

“These projects could also severely limit gas transit through Ukraine, depriving the Ukrainian government of significant transit revenues and reducing a large deterrent against further Russian aggression against Ukraine (sic).”

Last December, Moscow and Kiev agreed on delivering 65 billion cubic meters of Russian natural gas to and through Ukraine in 2020, another 40 billion cubic meters from 2021 – 2024 at a discounted price – on condition that the recipient country enables deliveries to Western Europe.

The State Department “encourage(d)” nations and entities “to reassess their participation in Russian energy export pipelines subject to Section 232” — threatening sanctions on noncompliars with its unacceptable demands.

In response to the above threats, Russia’s Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova slammed what she called a textbook example of politicized “unfair competition,” adding:

It shows “weakness of the American system…Except for raw power, (Trump regime hardliners) don’t have any effective tools.”

Pompeo warned participants in Russia’s Nord Stream 2 project to “(g)et out now or risk the consequences.”

A Final Comment

According to Germany’s Die Welt,  Gazprom’s Akademik Cherskiy pipe-laying vessel is completing Nord Stream 2, overcoming US aims to block the pipeline from becoming operational.

Russian Energy Minister Alexander Novak explained that the “project has already been completed in terms of investment and economic viability.”

“All possible technical means are used for the purely physical completion of construction work.”

Vladimir Putin said Nord Stream 2 will be completed and become operational no later than early 2021, two Russian pipe-laying vessels finishing its construction.

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Award-winning author Stephen Lendman lives in Chicago. He can be reached at [email protected]. He is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG)

His new book as editor and contributor is titled “Flashpoint in Ukraine: US Drive for Hegemony Risks WW III.”

http://www.claritypress.com/LendmanIII.html

Visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com.

Featured image is from Asia Times

Let’s assume that the events of the last five months are neither random nor unexpected.

Let’s say they’re part of an ingenious plan to transform American democracy into a lockdown police state controlled by criminal elites and their puppet governors.

And let’s say the media’s role is to fan the flames of mass hysteria by sensationalizing every gory detail, every ominous prediction and every slightest uptick in the death toll in order to exert greater control over the population.

And let’s say the media used their power to craft a message of terror they’d repeat over and over again until finally, there was just one frightening storyline ringing-out from every soapbox and bullhorn, one group of governors from the same political party implementing the same destructive policies, and one small group of infectious disease experts –all incestuously related– issuing edicts in the form of “professional advice.”

Could such a thing happen in America?

What’s most astonishing about the Covid-19 operation is the manner in which the elected government was circumvented by public health experts (connected to a power-mad billionaire activist.) That was a stroke of genius. Most people regard the US as a fairly stable democracy and yet, the first sign of infection triggered the rapid transfer of power from the president to unelected “professionals” whose conflicts of interest are too vast to list.

Equally fascinating is the fact that the lockdowns were not the brainchild of Donald Trump but the mainly Democrat governors who shrugged-off any Constitutional limits to their power and arbitrarily ordered people to stay in their homes, wear masks and avoid close physical contact with other humans.

All of this was done in the name of “science” and condoned under “emergency powers” despite the fact that mass quarantines of healthy people have no historical precedent or scientific basis. No matter, this was never about science or logic anyway, and it certainly wasn’t about saving lives. It was always about power, pure, unalloyed political power. The power to push the economy into freefall destroying millions of jobs and businesses. The power to bail out Wall Street while diverting attention to a fairly-mild infection that kills roughly 1 in every 500 people. The power to create a permanent underclass willing to work for table scraps or less. And the power to fundamentally restructure human relations so that normal intimacies like handshakes, hugs or social gatherings are entirely banned. This, of course, was the most ambitious part of the project, the basic changes to human interaction that date back thousands of years, and which are now seen as an obstacle to a new order in which the individual must be isolated, desensitized and kept in a constant state of fear to be more easily controlled and manipulated.

On top of that, all of this is taking place in plain sight where anyone with even minimal critical thinking skills should be able to see what is happening, but very few do. Why is that?

Fear. Fear has gripped the population and is preventing typically intelligent, perceptive people from seeing something that’s right beneath their noses. Check out this clip from an article titled “When Will the Madness End?”:

“What’s happening now is a spread of this serious medical condition to the whole population… The public is adopting a personality disorder … paranoid delusions, and irrational fear. … It can happen with anything but here we see a primal fear of disease turning into mass panic….

…. Once fear reaches a certain threshold, normalcy, rationality, morality, and decency fade and are replaced by shocking stupidity and cruelty.…..We find that whole communities suddenly fix their minds upon one object, and go mad in its pursuit; that millions of people become simultaneously impressed with one delusion, and run after it, till their attention is caught by some new folly more captivating than the first. ..…

…This is made far worse by politics, which has only fed the beast of fear. This is the most politicized disease in history, and doing so has done nothing to help manage it and much to make it all vastly worse.” (“When Will the Madness End?“, AIER)

We’re not saying that Covid doesn’t kill people, and we’re not suggesting that Covid is a bioweapon released on the public for nefarious purposes. (although that’s certainly a possibility.) What we’re saying is that scheming elites and their allies in the media and politics see every crisis as an opportunity to advance their own authoritarian agenda.

In fact, the restructuring of basic democratic institutions can only take place within the confines of a major crisis. That’s why the CIA, the giant corporations, the WHO and the Gates Posse gathered for meetings that anticipated an event just like the Covid outbreak. They needed a crisis of that magnitude to achieve their ultimate objective; total control. That’s what they mean when they say there will be “no return to normal”, they mean they’re replacing representative government with a new totalitarian model in which the levers of state power will be controlled by them. So while the virus outbreak might be coincidental, the management of the crisis certainly is not. This is from an article by Gary Barnett:

“We are in the midst of an attempt by the oligarchs to eliminate the human spirit, and if this attempt is successful, the singular majesty of the human experience will have been abolished, and only a technocratic black hole of emptiness and despair will remain. This is the essence of a failed society brought about by the destruction of human intellect by state education, mass propaganda, and the planned control of individuals through physical and psychological manipulation due to fear.”(“Pandemic Madness: The State’s Plan Rests on the Destruction of the Human Spirit“, Gary Barnett, Lew Rockwell)

Is the author exaggerating?

I don’t think so. Our species has withstood myriad epidemics in the past without ever resorting to the extremist measures we have taken during this latest outbreak. Take the state of Oregon, for example, whose Democratic governor Kate Brown just signed another executive order extending a state of emergency through Sept. 4. The move comes months after the peak in deaths was reached in mid-April. As of Tuesday, Oregon’s death toll is a meager 240 nearly 90% of who are over 65 with underlying health conditions. That means that Brown shut down a $226 billion per year economy, put tens of thousands of people out of work, destroyed countless small and medium-sized businesses and plunged the state deep into debt, to save roughly 24 or 25 people under 65 with no underlying health conditions. That’s not the reaction of an intelligent, responsible political leader acting in the best interests of the people. That is the reaction of someone who is either criminally insane or doing someone else’s bidding. So which is it?

Like many of the other mainly Democrat governors, Brown also issued a “mask” mandate, punishable by a fine. The new executive order was neither approved by the House or by any other democratic body. It’s just Brown testing the limits of her new emergency powers. Interestingly, the mask mandate comes a full three months after the state reached its peak in fatalities which means that it has less to do with controlling the infection than it does with using the virus to usurp tyrannical powers. Does that mean Brown or the other Democrat governors are closet tyrants?

Probably not. But it does suggest that the people who fund Brown’s campaigns and pull her strings want to see how far they can push things before the public fights back. Here’s a comment by Carlo Caduff in the Medical Anthropology Quarterly that helps to put these developments into perspective:

“Across the world, the pandemic unleashed authoritarian longings in democratic societies allowing governments to seize the opportunity, create states of exception and push political agendas. Commentators have presented the pandemic as a chance for the West to learn authoritarianism from the East. This pandemic risks teaching people to love power and call for its meticulous application.” (“What Went Wrong: Corona and the World After the Full Stop“ Academia.edu)

Once again, we are not denying that Covid kills people. All we’re saying is that powerful elites are using crisis management to advance their own narrow political agenda.

It should be no surprise that states governed by Democrats are doing considerably worse than those run by Republicans. Watching the eagerness with which the Dems impose their economy-crushing measures, one can only wonder how the states will ever dig out of the current mess and regain solvency. Of course, maybe that’s the goal, to generate so much red ink that essential social services will have to be slashed, the poor will be left to starve, and the big money guys will buy-up public assets for pennies on the dollar. Indeed, that must be the plan, “shock therapy for the proles while the Democrat governors act as a battering ram to open the state to the plunder and looting of their Wall Street crony friends and others in the parasite class. Here’s how Israel Shamir summed it up in a recent article at the Unz Review:

“There are people who think we have it too good. They think we did nothing to deserve our high civilization. They think we shouldn’t be able to afford food, the roof above our heads and other goodies. This is the view of some very wealthy people. They are annoyed at seeing Tom, Dick and Harry going to Acapulco and eating in a restaurant, instead of being at their beck and call. They want to lower our income and raise the cost of living. They are willing to fund anyone who calls for more austerity.

Now they support lockdowns, claiming that it is the best way to fight disease. Yesterday they were calling on us to shut down industry in order to save the climate. Today these same people are still trying to reduce us to poverty, this time for the sake of Covid” (“Unmasking Freedom, The Unz review)

Shamir is right of course, the justifications are forever changing while the ultimate goal remains the same, wreak havoc the economy, divide the people into warring camps, and clear the way for the new streamlined system of authoritarian government, the glorious NWO. And the speed at which we are moving towards this new order is truly breathtaking. Take a look at this sampling of articles I’ve compiled which illustrates the catastrophic damage that is being done to the economy but swept under the rug by the media. In short, Covid is the diversion that keeps the American people from realizing that the system that keeps them employed, pays the mortgage and puts food on the table is being decimated by voracious oligarchs who want to start fresh. Check out these articles:

• Some 42% Of Jobs Lost In Pandemic Are Gone For Good
• US Consumer Credit Crashes As Americans Repay A Record Amount Of Credit Card Debt
• A Tidal Wave of Bankruptcies is Coming
• “More Than Half Of The US Population Is Not Working”
• “52% Of Small Businesses Expect To Be Out Of Business Within Six Months
• “53% Of Restaurants Closed Amid Coronavirus Have Shuttered Permanently”
• Tsunami” Of Evictions Could Make 28 Million Americans Homeless This Summer Alone
• Hurtling towards Depression–Based on information as of May 2020, we show that global consumption losses amount to 3.8$tr, triggering significant job (147 million full-time equivalent) and income (2.1$tr) losses.
• Eighty percent feel country is spiraling out of control, according to Wall Street Journal/NBC poll

Anyway, you get the picture, the situation is dire. But as severe as the economic carnage may be, the psychic damage is that much worse. Many readers probably already know that suicides, divorces, child abuse, alcoholism, drug abuse and domestic violence have all risen sharply in the last 5 months. The impact of the lockdowns on people suffering from chronic depression or other mental health conditions has also increased dramatically. As Doctor Waqar Rashid opines in an article at The Spectator:

“Many people are… still terrified.,… afraid of venturing back into the outside world…. Masks are everywhere, and are compulsory on public transport. The result is a reminder that this ‘new normal’ is utterly unlike what we are used to. Even to those who don’t suffer from mental health problems it’s a depressing and dispiriting sight. And I fear this ongoing state of stress and anxiety is doing profound damage to people’s psychological wellbeing...

It was widely acknowledged before the pandemic struck that mental health problems were not only increasing in number but also being seen more frequently in younger people. As a neurologist, the people I see are especially at risk from suffering from mental health problems. It’s a sad fact that in my line of work, we can cure very little. But we can try to control and mitigate the illnesses we seek to treat. Much of this relies on the patient remaining hopeful and optimistic about their prospects. But now, surrounded as we are by this ‘invisible enemy’, all too often hope has been substituted for fear, even terror.” (“What’s the true cost of lockdown?”, The Spectator)

Covid-19; Phase 1 of the “Permanent Crisis”

It all boils down to this: Ruling class elites are using a public health crisis to wage a full-scale war on the American people and their system of representative government. The Democrat-CIA-Media Axis has been instrumental in prosecuting the conflict, as they were in the Russiagate fiasco. These are the shock troops who execute the battleplan of economic strangulation, covert skulduggery, and relentless disinformation. By the time the American people figure out what’s going on, the political landscape will have changed completely.

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This article was originally published on The Unz Review.

Mike Whitney is a frequent contributor to Global Research.

Featured image is from Shutterstock

Israeli Proxies Profit from U.S. Coronavirus Funding

By Philip Giraldi, July 16, 2020

Recipients included 600 mostly large equity and asset management firms that were actually ineligible because of their involvement in “investment or speculation.” Cash rich law firms also benefited with more than 45 of top firms receiving at least $210 million in PPP loans while companies owned in whole or part by nine congressmen also received funds. A business partially owned by Paul Pelosi, husband of Speaker Nancy Pelosi, obtained a loan as did a real estate project run by the family of Jared Kushner.

Chaos in UK Health Care. NHS Staff Are Being Silenced Over COVID-19. “Lose Their Jobs if They Speak Out”

By The Bernician, July 16, 2020

The trust has been running empty ambulances during lockdown and is still doing it now. By this I mean ambulances are driving around, with their emergency alert systems active (sirens & / or lights) with no job to go to. This I believe has been to give the impression to the public that there is more demand for ambulances than there actually is. Staff only wear face coverings/ masks & social distance when public facing, as soon as they are out of public view, the masks come off and social distancing is not observed. Indeed jokes are made about the measures, and I have heard staff express amazement that despite warnings on packets and at point of sales, telling people masks are totally ineffective and dangerous , the public still buy them, because a politician has told them too.

Top Amazon Deforestation Satellite Researcher Sacked by Bolsonaro

By Jenny Gonzales, July 16, 2020

National Institute of Space Research (INPE) researcher Lubia Vinhas, the general coordinator for INPE’s Earth Observation Agency (CGOBT) was dismissed Monday. Vinhas was responsible for overseeing the missions of the DETER and PRODES satellite systems that measure the nation’s monthly and annual deforestation respectively — both pathfinding systems long hailed as the gold standard for deforestation monitoring.

Towards a Totalitarian Regime? European Commission Adopts GMO Vaccine to Combat Non Existent Covid-19 Virus

By Julian Rose, July 16, 2020

In a decision which will shock many, the European Commission has taken a big step towards its ambition to subject its citizens to a totalitarian regime in which DNA altering technology forms the centre piece of mass control and unapologetic rule by despotism. 

Under the chairmanship of the German Minister of Health, Jens Spahn, The Commission has adopted a new ruling which calls for ‘the swift development of a GMO vaccine against Covid-19’.

The Battle for Pandemic Sanity: Hydroxychloroquine Efficacy vs. Its Suppression

By Elizabeth Woodworth, July 16, 2020

During February and March of 2020, there was a lot of excitement in the medical community[i] because early indications in China and France seemed to show a cure for people in the early stage of Covid-19. The ancient anti-malarial drug quinine (aka chloroquine, aka hydroxychloroquine, aka HCQ) had been repurposed to show very promising results against Covid-19 when given to outpatients with early symptoms.

Britain Caves to US, Bans Huawei from 5G Network Build-Out, More US Anti-China Sanctions Coming

By Stephen Lendman, July 16, 2020

Britain is on an “irreversible path” to eliminate what he called “high-risk vendors (sic).”

So-called Chinese “risk” has nothing to do with security issues, everything to do with US war on China by other means and trillions of dollars of market potential that 5G technology represents.

Exporting Toxic Chemical Waste to Poor Countries Must End, Says UN

By Alan MacLeod, July 16, 2020

The practice of dumping banned, toxic chemical waste on poorer societies by big corporations in rich countries must end, say experts at the United Nations Human Rights Council. “In nearly every case there is no legitimate public interest justification,” said Baskut Tuncak, a Turkish-American UN special rapporteur on the environment and the disposal of toxic waste.

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Today, the Trump administration has announced a major weakening of the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA). This rollback would increase the risk of environmental damages from major development projects, and limit the power of the communities to weigh in on such projects, according to the Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS).

Below is a statement by Dr. Kathleen Rest, executive director of UCS.

“With this decision, the administration has chosen to accept permanent damage to our communities and ecosystems in exchange for short-term gains for politically connected industries. The administration is now using the COVID-19-driven economic crisis as an excuse for this rollback, undermining public health protections in the midst of one of the worst public health crises this country has ever faced.

“These changes weaken the ability of communities—especially communities of color—to weigh in on projects that could impact their own lives for a very long time. The administration would leave communities with less information and less power to challenge corporations, and enable development to proceed without consideration of the long-term impacts. And the rollback specifically reduces the federal government and communities’ ability to consider the impacts of climate change.

“At a time when we need to be prioritizing health, justice and the long-term well-being of our communities, the Trump administration is speeding in the opposite direction—prioritizing short-term industry gains rather than addressing racial inequity and environmental damage. This rollback is short-sighted, insulting, cynical and dangerous.”

UCS experts have written about the administration’s efforts to undermine NEPA. Dr. Rest examined the proposed changes in detail. Adrienne Hollis, senior climate justice and health scientist for the Climate and Energy Program at UCS, interviewed environmental justice leader Dr. Mildred McClain about the impacts and dangers of rolling back NEPA. Senior fellow Derrick Jackson wrote on the racially discriminatory effects of weakening NEPA. And Karen Perry Stillerman, senior analyst and senior strategist for the Food and Environment Program at UCS, wrote about the history and importance of NEPA.

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Dr. Kathleen Rest is the Executive Director of the Union of Concerned Scientists.

Featured image is from FAIR

Washington D.C. is surely one of the most corrupt places on earth. Money talks and nearly everyone into the game sometimes referred to as politics has his or her hand out and expects to end up a millionaire. Given that, it should surprise no one to learn that a large chunk of the CARES Business Assistance Program’s trillions of dollars recently doled out for coronavirus relief, sold to the public as intended to help small businesses survive, has instead gone to those who are politically connected through lobbyists and other special interests.

A recent Time magazine article describes what it calls “a familiar lobbying bonanza.” To be sure, the details regarding who got the cash makes for depressing reading, though there is a familiar smell to it in light of the many boondoggled programs to make America “safe” over the past twenty years. The Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) has provided no less than 663,000 loans over $150,000, but much of the money has gone to “billionaires, country clubs, lobbyists, political allies, Wall Street, and big business,” all of which have better access to government than does the small business owner.

Recipients included 600 mostly large equity and asset management firms that were actually ineligible because of their involvement in “investment or speculation.” Cash rich law firms also benefited with more than 45 of top firms receiving at least $210 million in PPP loans while companies owned in whole or part by nine congressmen also received funds. A business partially owned by Paul Pelosi, husband of Speaker Nancy Pelosi, obtained a loan as did a real estate project run by the family of Jared Kushner.

Other decidedly questionable recipients include Planned Parenthood, the Church of Scientology, and rapper Kanye West, up until recently a Trump favorite, who, with his wife Kim Kardashian, owns a shoe and clothing company worth an estimated $3 billion.

Given the apparent fact that obtaining a loan was largely a matter of who you know, it is perhaps not surprising that the state of Israel and its myriad supporting entities in the United States were in front of the line when the money was passed out.

I recently wrote about the apparent holocaust scam run out of Israel whereby gullible foreigners have been receiving emails and seeing media solicitations regarding how Jewish survivors of World War 2 currently in Israel are living in squalor and starving due to the impact of the coronavirus. Readers commented that there are similar ads running on television in the U.S. soliciting money from “Christians and Jews” to help relieve the suffering. There have recently been allegations of fraud regarding the millions of dollars that have been raised by Christian groups in the United States. As Israel is a wealthy, socialist state with world class medical and social services systems in part paid for by the U.S. taxpayer, as well as pensions provided mostly by Germany for all survivors, the entire business definitely has a bad smell to it.

If so-called holocaust survivors are actually suffering, the fault should be firmly placed where it belongs: the Jewish “charitable” organizations and the state of Israel itself, which are custodians for the money coming from Europe and elsewhere. Professor Norman Finkelstein has demonstrated in his book The Holocaust Industry: Reflections on the Exploitation of Jewish Suffering how all the billions of dollars extorted by Israel and Jewish groups has been diverted and rarely reaches those who might actually have suffered.

A review of the Finkelstein book notes

“…that very little of the recently extracted ‘compensation’ has reached its nominal beneficiaries. Instead, the industry’s concern today lies with winning compensation for law firms, consultants, politicians, Holocaust organizations, and industry elites. ‘When Jewish elites rob Jewish survivors no ethical issues arise; it’s just about the money…’”

In the current economic and healthcare crisis, some of these groups including Israeli start-up companies and proxy groups that lobby in the United States are eligible to received PPP under the multi-trillion dollar CARES Business Assistance Program as long as they have some salaried U.S. employees. The loans can be up to two and a half times the cost of wages actually paid to employees up to a total of $10 million and are issued at 1% interest that is repayable within two years, with a six-month grace period before payments are due. The loan would be converted into a grant if the company can demonstrate that the money was actually spent on salaries that prevented terminating employees.

Predictably, Israeli connected law firms in the U.S. were immediately out of the starting gates.

“’In this program, it’s all about being first to the prize,’ said Attorney Oz Halabi, a partner and head of the U.S. taxation department at the New York office of law firm Pearl Cohen Zedek Latzer Baratz and a former senior official at the Israel Tax Authority. ‘It is very important to submit applications as soon as possible and to understand that the program is relevant to 99% of Israeli startups.’”

Because Israeli companies are well wired into political and financial power brokers in Washington and New York, they inevitably have had insider help applying early and obtaining immediate approvals for loans that struggling American small businesses will not receive. Reportedly 1,000 Jewish and Israel linked groups have already received $500 million but then proceeded to lay off employees anyway after they received their money. There has been, of course, no reciprocity of tax breaks or loans for U.S. companies operating in Israel.

The full measure of PPP spending has yet to be appreciated, but Grant Smith at the Institute for Research: Middle East Policy (IRMEP) has described a C-Span interview that reveals the extent to which Israel has taken advantage of CARES. Smith reports that “Israel lobby organizations such as the Zionist Organization of America ($2-5 million), Friends of the IDF ($2-5 million) and the Israeli American Council ($1-2 million) are grabbing huge loans from the CARES Act PPP program. According to SBA data, Israel’s Bank Leumi has doled out a quarter to a half billion dollars under the program, despite being called out for operating in the occupied West Bank. It has given sweetheart deals to the Israeli company Oran Safety Glass (which defrauded the U.S. Army on bulletproof glass contracts) and Energix, which operates power plants in the occupied Golan Heights and West Bank.”

Grant has also identified PPP money going to the Jewish Institute for National Security of America (JINSA), which inter alia arranges “terrorism” training for American police; the Jewish National Fund, which supports Israel’s illegal settlements; and the Israel on Campus Coalition, which has harassed students critical of the Jewish state on American campuses. Several of the organizations being supported with American taxpayer money are little more than front organizations promoting Israeli interests in the U.S. They should be required to be registered under the Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA) of 1938 but the Justice Department never does anything about Israeli government fronts active in the United States.

Note that an Israeli bank has somehow been able to grant as much as a half billion dollars of U.S. taxpayer money under the program, all of it apparently going to Israeli businesses and other Israel-linked entities. One wonder what the screening process was like, if there even was one. And note that the Zionist Organization of America is essentially an Israeli lobbying group. It too gets the cash, as does the similar Israeli America Bank. Oran Safety Glass, which “won” a Pentagon contract for bulletproof glass for U.S. Army vehicles even though it could not produce the glass, also gets money.

But the most outrageous grant is to the Friends of the Israel Defense Forces (FIDF), an organization that raises money in the U.S. for the Israeli military. It held a gala event in Hollywood in 2017 that raised $53.8 million while one in New York City in the same year promoted as a “A Night of Heroes” raised $35 million, so it clearly does not need the money but took it anyway. Donations to FIDF are tax deductible as the organization is registered with the U.S. Treasury as a 501(c)3 educational and charitable non-profit foundation. One might well ask how it is possible that the American taxpayer should subsidize a foreign military organization that is regularly accused of war crimes in its ongoing brutal and genocidal occupation of the Palestinian West Bank and East Jerusalem? Where are the screams of outrage from Congress and the media, which are silent even as an estimated 100,000 American small businesses meanwhile go bust?

The multitude of gifts to Israel come at a time when the cover provided by the coronavirus and the BLM disruption have hidden from sight the expansion of the Israeli-American national security state. Writing at MintPress in an article entitled “The Merging of US and Israeli National Security States is Accelerating Amid COVID-19,” Raul Diego reports that:

“A two-pronged initiative by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and the Department of Homeland Security is set to substantially increase Israel’s already significant role in America’s digital health, artificial intelligence (AI), critical health infrastructure, as well as law enforcement, public and border protection and other key sectors. Citing ‘health challenges’ posed by COVID-19, the U.S.-Israel Business Initiative (USIBI), a venture of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, is advancing a new eight-point policy framework to facilitate a ‘more robust bilateral collaboration’ between Israeli and American companies to realize the ‘potential’ of technologies emerging out of Israel relating to telehealth, robotic diagnostics and AI-powered applications in healthcare.”

Diego also observes how “In a recent article, investigative reporter Whitney Webb uncovered the deep Israeli military roots of virtually every ‘health’ tech startup to emerge in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic and their extensive relationships with the U.S. government at both the federal and state level. Regarding the policy framework, Webb stated that it was likely ‘part of a broader effort aimed at using the coronavirus crisis to facilitate the integration of Israeli tech companies, particularly in the “digital health” sector, into the U.S. technology ecosystem. Many, if not the vast majority, of these companies’, she continued, ‘were either founded by ex-members of Israeli intelligence or military intelligence, but also serve as contractors to Israel’s government or its military.’”

Inevitably, the rape of America and its remaining resources by Israel will accelerate with hardly a peep out of politicians or the media. The U.S. Chamber of Commerce U.S.-Israel Business Initiative only works in one direction, delivering money and jobs to Israel as it simultaneously makes Americans poorer and unemployed. The joint projects also enable the stealing of U.S. technology to advance the Jewish state’s own high-tech sector at no cost. There will also be major national security implications as the Israelis will be able to access every telephone to confront “health challenges” while monitoring the movement of Americans as they also record classified conversations to send the “take” back to Jerusalem.

And it all starts with the presumption that Israel is some kind of friend, which it is not. Fake charities and various schemes to otherwise defraud and impoverish the U.S. taxpayer is the name of the game and Israel goes on from there to become a “business arrangement” and “health initiative partner” plus “national security asset.” When will it ever end? Ask your congressman. He or she will not reply. Or write a letter to the Washington Post or New York Times. They will not print it.

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This article was originally published on The Unz Review.

Philip M. Giraldi, Ph.D., is Executive Director of the Council for the National Interest, a 501(c)3 tax deductible educational foundation (Federal ID Number #52-1739023) that seeks a more interests-based U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East. Website is https://councilforthenationalinterest.org, address is P.O. Box 2157, Purcellville VA 20134 and its email is [email protected]. He is a frequent contributor to Global Research.

Featured image is from TUR

KoBold Metals, a start-up backed by a coalition of billionaires led by Bill Gates, plans to scour for cobalt in Canada using advanced mapping technology and it’s targeting northern Quebec, just south of Glencore’s Raglan nickel mine.

The company, founded in 2018, has acquired rights to an area of about 1,000 square kilometres (386 sq. miles), where it plans to begin collecting geophysical data before the end of the year.

KoBold’s backers include big names such as Venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz and Breakthrough Energy Ventures. The latter is financed by well-known billionaires including Jeff Bezos, Ray Dalio, Michael Bloomberg, Richard Branson and Gates.

KoBold aims to create a “Google Maps” of the Earth’s crust, with a special focus on finding cobalt deposits. It collects and analyzes multiple streams of data — from old drilling results to satellite imagery — to better understand where new deposits might be found.

Algorithms applied to the data collected determine the geological patterns that indicate a potential deposit of cobalt, which occurs naturally alongside nickel and copper.

Chief executive officer Kurt House believes the company’s exploration activities at the site in Quebec could help prove the value of its approach.

“The subtleties in the geophysical signals are really only evident when you have all of the data and can evaluate it in a systematic, statistically rigorous way,” House told Bloomberg on Tuesday. “It’s just too much for the human brain to handle.”

KoBold’s boss noted the company was likely to begin collecting geophysical data in the next three to six months. Drilling, House said, could start in a couple of years.

The California-based firm also expects to bring in other investors, potentially including its current backers, on a deposit-by-deposit basis. It will also seek mining-savvy partners once it has identified an interesting project.

Not a miner

KoBold, as House has stated multiple times, does not intend to be a mine operator “ever.”

This is not the first time the American start-up eyes Canada. Public records show that Faith in Gravity Holdings Inc., which is registered in British Columbia, staked last year claims in the northeast corner of Saskatchewan.

The holding company’s directors, according to The Star Phoenix, are Kobold Metals’ top three executives.

Currently, about 65% of the world’s cobalt is mined in the Democratic Republic of Congo, much of it by hand and employing children and young men.

New cobalt mines outside the DCR could become the preferred source of ethically-mined cobalt in the medium-term.

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Featured image: KoBold Metals has acquired rights to an area in northern Quebec, just south of Glencore’s nickel mine. (Image: Raglan nickel mine. Courtesy of Glencore.)

The conflict between Azerbaijan and Armenia has become increasingly serious. Both countries claim the territory of Nagorno-Karabakh and between the late 1980s and early 1990s there was a war between them to decide the control of the region. Tens of thousands of people died in the conflict, which ended in 1994 with a ceasefire agreement, without a winner. The agreement places the Nagorno-Karabakh region as a de facto autonomous republic, remaining de jure as part of Azerbaijan. This agreement gave a break in the massacres but did not prevent the continuation of the territorial disputes between both countries, which until today claim the region, and the situation has worsened even more recently.

On July 12, there was an armed clash in the region, with an uncertain number of victims. Azerbaijani forces accuse Armenia of violating territorial limits. In contrast, the Armenian government blames the opposing country for such violations. Since then, according to Armenian observers, bombings on the border have been reported every 15 to 20 minutes. Data on the dead or injured people remain uncertain.

Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan accuses Azerbaijan of initiating hostilities and says that no violence will go unpunished, promising to react to every move by the enemy country. Data from the Armenian Ministry of Defense points to records of artillery attacks against Armenian territory in the early hours of July 12, when the fighting was recorded. According to the Armenian government, Armenian troops only retaliated against the attacks received. Pashinyan accuses not only Azerbaijan, but also Turkey of involvement in the attacks.

The charges are not unfounded. Turkey has shown support for Azerbaijan in the dispute, encouraging annexation and not a peaceful resolution of the impasse. The day after the clashes at the border, the Turkish foreign minister, Mevlut Cavusoglu, spoke in defense of Azerbaijan, saying that this country “is not alone” in the conflict. The statement becomes controversial and dangerous amid an escalation of violence, as it connotes not only support from Ankara, but also an interest in intervening in the conflict. Armenia reacted with severe criticism, blaming Ankara for the return of the violence. According to the Armenian government, Turkey has an interest in destabilizing peace in the region to gain greater control and influence over neighboring territories.

In return, the European Union issued a public note calling on both parties to reduce violence and to avoid the use of force. Likewise, the US State Department classified violence in the region as unacceptable and urged both parties to seek a peaceful solution to the dispute. In the same vein, the Russian government has called on both countries for a peaceful resolution, without showing support for either party. Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov urged Armenia and Azerbaijan to an immediate ceasefire and to comply with the terms of the Minsk Group, a committee created in 1992 to manage peace in the region. Since both countries are former Soviet republics, the role of Russian diplomacy in managing the conflict is essential, due to the weight of its influence in the region.

It is important to note the difference in the approach of the Russians, Americans and Europeans to the Turkish stance to the crisis. Demonstrating open support for any party in the current phase of the conflict can be crucial to intensify disputes and encourage an increase in violence. Being Turkey a military potency, the declared support in a conflict in its early stages may encourage the progress of hostilities. In this sense, it is likely that Azerbaijan, with the support of Ankara and possible Turkish intervention, will continue the bombing, assuming strategic advantage and superiority over its opponent. This is the great danger behind the Turkish pronouncement.

The situation, however, must be analyzed in a complete context. Turkey has shown interest in increasing its regional and international geopolitical relevance and, for this purpose, it has called for bold and provocative acts, such as, for example, its role in the Syrian War and the recent conversion of Hagia Sophia into a mosque, which provoked outcries all over the world for being an unnecessary attack on the memory of Greek Christianity, provoking the resurgence of religious tensions in the region that had not existed for a long time.

In fact, Erdogan has clear plans to constitute a neo-Ottoman geopolitical projection, regaining power and influence at a regional level throughout the territory where the Ottoman Empire, predecessor of the modern Turkish state, operated in the past. Relations between Turks and Armenians, in this sense, do not have a good record and are alive in Armenian memory with the ethnic-religious genocide perpetrated against Christian Armenians in the early 20th century.

In this sense, Turkish interest in creating an area of ​​instability that favors its regional influence can be costly. Russia, as the regional power with the greatest historical influence in the Caucasus, must counterbalance Turkish advances through diplomacy, while Erdogan must be internationally pressured to avoid any intervention in the dispute between neighboring countries.

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Lucas Leiroz is a research fellow in international law at the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro.

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Russia is conducting “military intimidation” in the Mediterranean according to RAND in a newly published article titled “Russia Is Eyeing the Mediterranean. The U.S. and NATO Must Be Prepared.” The authors claim that “As part of its great power exertions Russia seeks more access and freedom of movement in the Mediterranean region, and is bolstering its military footprint to achieve this objective.” The authors also urge the U.S. and NATO to meet “this rising challenge” by developing “a more robust southern strategy with a reinforced air and naval presence.”

RAND is considered the U.S. Air Force’s think tank as it was established by General H. H. “Hap” Arnold, Chief of Staff of the Air Force, and by aeronautical engineer Theodore von Kármán. The bulk of its funding in its early formation was from the Air Force. Therefore, when reading RAND reports it must be noted that articles are written through the eyes of US unilateralism and unipolarity.

The authors argue that “By upgrading its military posture in the region, Russia seems to believe it can be more successful in projecting power and minimizing the influence of the United States and NATO.” However, this would imply that NATO has a unified policy in the Mediterranean when in actual fact the Alliance has never been so divided over its so-called southern flank. The article claims that Russia is in direct conflict with NATO and their interests in the Mediterranean, but ignores that the Alliance is deeply divided in Libya, Syria and the Aegean.

It is especially in Libya where NATO’s division is observed, with Turkey supporting the Muslim Brotherhood Government of National Accord (GNA) based in Tripoli, and Greece and France backing Libya’s House of Representatives based in Tobruk. RAND’s position on Libya is clearly in favor of the Muslim Brotherhood government by claiming it is “United Nations–backed” but omits the GNA’s mandate from the UN to rule was for a two-year period that expired in December 2017. The authors then describe Field Marshal Khalifa Belqasim Haftar as a “warlord” despite being appointed as commander of the Libyan National Army by the Libyan House of Representatives, the only institution that has been elected by the Libyan people. By falsely claiming that the Muslim Brotherhood government is UN-backed and describing Haftar as a warlord demonstrates the very division in NATO as RAND also completely omits that the GNA is attempting to steal maritime space from NATO-member Greece.

Russia is on the side of Haftar, and it is here that RAND is willing to gloss over the fact that the Turkish-backed militias fighting for the GNA are overwhelmingly jihadist and include former ISIS fighters. It is also for this reason that RAND ignores that Haftar was appointed by the only elected body in Libya and has the support of NATO members Greece and France. Therefore, RAND is not dealing with the realities occurring in the Mediterranean and rather expects all NATO members to fall into line and ignore their own strategic and security interests in the Mediterranean for the sake of opposing greater Russian influence in the region.

This expectation led RAND to write that “A greater U.S. and NATO presence might also reassure allies in the Mediterranean, which could help by buttressing their own southern-facing postures.” Greece and France do not need to be “reassured” that Russia is not a threat in the Mediterranean, but rather that Turkey’s plan to steal Greek maritime space is thwarted and the jihadists it arms and trains to fight in Libya do not enter Europe. It appears that RAND is trying to unite NATO under the guise of opposing Russia in the Mediterranean, something that is not a major concern for the Mediterranean NATO members, with the exception of Turkey. A unified front in opposing Russia in the Mediterranean is only in the interests of the US and Turkey and not the entire Alliance. Therefore, RAND is effectively admitting that NATO is just a tool used to strengthen Washington’s influence and demands with no interest of other members’ security concerns.

As RAND is one of the most influential think tanks in the US today, sidelining NATO’s deep divisions on the idea that the alliance will unite to oppose Russian influence in the Mediterranean shows how it is divorced from the realities on the ground and demonstrates why Washington is having little influence over events in Syria and Libya, and has a disinterest in de-escalating Turkey’s aggression against Greece in the Aegean. It is for this reason that French President Emmanuel Macron correctly and continually asserts that NATO is experiencing a “brain death” and is open to the idea of Europe restoring relations with Russia.

The disillusionment of RAND is summed up in its conclusion: “Western priorities could change. The United States and NATO might give more thought to a strategy that could better deter potential Kremlin risk-taking in the Mediterranean.”

This is an unlikely scenario since Greece and France are not only on the same side as Russia in Libya, but Greece has fully restored relations with what RAND calls the “Assad regime” in Syria, while France is slowly beginning to thaw its relations with Damascus. Although RAND wants a re-energized and united NATO to oppose Russia in the Mediterranean, its dismissal of the realities and power games in the region will only lead to more misguided foreign policy decisions in Washington that not only weakens their position in region, but helps strengthen Moscow’s as it finds mutual cooperation with Mediterranean countries like France, Greece, Libya, Syria, Egypt, Cyprus and others to oppose Turkish ambitions.

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This article was originally published on InfoBrics.

Paul Antonopoulos is an independent geopolitical analyst. 

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Just days after the publication of data showing that deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon has reached destructive levels not seen since the mid-2000s, the administration of President Jair Bolsonaro sacked the top scientist responsible for tracking and analyzing the data.

National Institute of Space Research (INPE) researcher Lubia Vinhas, the general coordinator for INPE’s Earth Observation Agency (CGOBT) was dismissed Monday. Vinhas was responsible for overseeing the missions of the DETER and PRODES satellite systems that measure the nation’s monthly and annual deforestation respectively — both pathfinding systems long hailed as the gold standard for deforestation monitoring.

INPE’s satellite-based deforestation alert system detected 1,034 square kilometers of forest clearing during June 2020, bringing the twelve-month total to 9,564 square kilometers, 89% higher than just a year ago. The extent of deforestation over the past year is the highest recorded since INPE started releasing monthly numbers in 2007.

June 2020 represents the 15th consecutive month of increasing forest loss; Bolsonaro took office in January 2019, roughly 18 months ago. According to DETER, which gathers daily deforestation alerts through satellite images, deforestation grew by 25% from January to June 2020 compared to the same period in 2019.

Word of Vinhas’ dismissal was published in the Official Gazette of the Union (DOU) and signed by the Minister of Science and Technology Marcos Pontes. No justification was given for the removal.

Contacted by Mongabay on Monday, the Ministry of Science press office sent an email response concerning the sacking:

“The Ministry of Science, Technology and Innovations (MCTI) clarifies that the dismissal of Dr. Lubia Vinhas published in the Official Gazette of the Union is part of her reallocation from the position of General Coordinator of the CGOBT to the position of Chief of the Strategic Project Division, to be created as part of the restructuring of the National Institute for Space Research (INPE)….

“The INPE restructuring, which will be announced at a press conference [today] at the MCTI headquarters, aims to seek synergies and optimize the institute’s human and infrastructure resources for a more efficient functioning. Dr. Lubia Vinhas has participated in this process and is in agreement with the changes, which were foreseen and have no relation to the production and dissemination of deforestation data, which will continue to follow the same procedures with quality and transparency.”

Lubia Vinhas, PhD in applied computing (far left), who was removed from her general coordinator position at INPE Monday. She stands alongside Ricardo Galvão, former INPE director, fired last year by the Bolsonaro government. Image courtesy of INPE.

Yesterday, Vinhas told the O Estado de S.Paulo newspaper that she only learned of her dismissal when she read the DOU and that it would be up to INPE Director Darcton Policarpo Damião to explain the reason.

Later that same day, the former coordinator seemed to have gained new information, saying that

“I believe that my departure [as general coordinator] is directly related to the restructuring process of INPE that has been proposed by the current management, and not in direct response to figures related to monitoring.”

Marcio Astrini, executive secretary of the Climate Observatory — a network formed in 2002, composed of 50 non-governmental organizations and social movements — questioned the Science ministry’s response:

“The justification that the government brings does not make sense, because the CGOBT general coordinator was removed from her role with the promise of taking over a department that does not even exist. Her withdrawal causes a problem with no plausible explanation, since, at a critical moment in the Amazon, when fires are starting and deforestation numbers are being finalized, she would be removed from [her position] and going nowhere.”

Planet image showing fire on recently deforested land near Itaúba in the State of Mato Grosso, Brazil on June 29, 2020. Fire identified by MAAP. Image courtesy of Planet.

Indeed, Vinhas’ removal after the release of Amazon deforestation statistics upsetting to the administration does have precedent. It was just last year that Bolsonaro questioned the reliability of INPE’s data which similarly reflected a rapidly rising Amazon deforestation rate. He even voiced suspicion that Ricardo Galvão, then director of the institute, was manipulating the data in “the service of some NGOs.” Bolsonaro and Ricardo Salles, Minister of the Environment, also went so far as to say that the INPE data were false. Shortly after, in August 2019, Bolsonaro fired Galvão.

Suely Araújo, former president of IBAMA, Brazil’s environmental agency, and a senior public policy specialist at the Climate Observatory, responded critically to the firing of Vinhas, telling Mongabay that “Changes in the INPE team during a period of… intensification of [DETER] analysis is very worrying. In this critical phase, changes in coordination tend to lead to demobilization in work and less transparency. If that is the intention, the [Bolsonaro] government will not be successful. Research institutes and civil society organizations will monitor what is happening in terms of [Amazon] deforestation and fires and demand the necessary measures.” Annual deforestation data for the PRODES system is still scheduled to be released in November.

Araújo is especially concerned that the dismissal comes as the Amazon fire season is beginning, a critical period for monthly satellite monitoring. The Administration last week decreed a 120-day ban on fires in the Amazon and has already deployed the army to the region to try to rein in burning. But fires are already well underway despite it being early in the dry season, according to analysis of satellite data by Amazon Conservation’s MAAP project.

Brazilian Amazon deforestation is occurring at the highest rate since 2007. Image by Fábio Nascimento / Mongabay.

Araújo concluded:

“INPE is an organization with highly specialized and internationally respected technicians. I sincerely hope that the government knows this and does not intend to restructure the institute.”

Astrini is also concerned that the news of Vinhas’ dismissal could be an indicator of Bolsonaro’s future plans for INPE.

“It is no secret that since last year the government has desired to intervene in INPE. Ricardo Galvão’s noisy resignation prevented this, but the dismissal of Lubia Vinhas may be an indication that the plan was never abandoned,” Astrini said. “That this happens in [the midst of the] full acceleration of deforestation, when the government needs to contain threats of [economic] disinvestments, is a sign that Bolsonaro seems to be addressing the concerns of agribusiness and investors as he addresses the concerns of Brazilians terrified by the Coronavirus.”

At present, Bolsonaro is enduring intensifying pressure from major international and Brazilian businesses and investors who are threatening action if Brazil doesn’t curb deforestation, along with warnings from European Union nations who say they may not ratify the $19 trillion dollar EU-Mercusor trade agreement unless Brazil improves its record on the environment, especially Amazon deforestation and climate change.

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Featured image: Besides large-scale farming and logging, many Amazonian rainforests are being slowly fragmented for rural electrification and other activities

While other countries are still lifting quarantine or planning to re-open public activities, Vietnam – a small, developing country that has about 1,400 km of land, river and stream and borders with China – has been opened up for more than a month. Until now, Vietnam has recorded only just over 300 cases on its soil and not a single death as of 15^th June. What “magic” did the country that has a population of 97 million people use to prevent the coronavirus spread? How is Vietnamese people’s daily life after quarantine time? Is it true that Vietnam successfully controlled the pandemic?

“Vietnam has responded well to the COVID-19 epidemic from the very outset, preventing its spread”, the World Health Organization (WHO) says. WHO has indicated one of the most crucial measures that made Vietnam win its “war” on coronavirus: Vietnam prepared for the outbreak before it recorded its first case; a wise decision that many countries did not make. The World Health Organization said in a statement Saturday that the first days of the outbreak, when China had detected just 27 cases of the acute respiratory disease, COVID-19, in Wuhan City, Vietnam’s Health Ministry had already issued prevention guidelines, including close monitoring of border areas and steps to prevent possible infections among people. Vietnam enacted measures that other countries would take months to move on.

Vietnam recorded its first cases on January 23 in Ho Chi Minh City, two days before the Lunar New Year holidays. Two Chinese men from Wuhan had arrived in Vietnam on January 13 and traveled throughout the country before being hospitalized on January 23. Immediately, the Vietnamese government ramped up its response by organizing the National Steering Committee on Epidemic Prevention on January 30, the same day the World Health Organization (WHO) declared the outbreak to be a Public Health Emergency of International Concern. On February 1, when the country had only recorded six confirmed cases, Vietnamese Prime Minister Nguyen Xuan Phuc signed a decision declaring a national epidemic of what was then known only as the novel coronavirus (nCoV). The Vietnamese government recognized that the medical system would soon become overwhelmed, even by a mild spread of the virus, so they instead chose to focus on prevention early, and on a massive scale.

By mid-March, Vietnam was sending everyone who entered the country – and anyone within the country who’d had contact with a confirmed case – to quarantine centers for 14 days. At the beginning of March, Hanoi recorded the first case in the city. A section of Truc Bach Street, Ba Dinh District, Hanoi City, where the COVID-19 patient lived after traveling to some European countries, was put under quarantine. 61 households with 191 residents were forced to stay at home for 14 days, even though the patient declared that she had not contacted with any neighbors. It may be considered extreme and an over-reaction but it was cost-effective.

This was how the country named the best COVID-19 fighter globally by Politico responded to the pandemic.

On March 16, Prime Minister Nguyen Xuan Phuc said “Vietnam is now at the “golden stage” of COVID-19 prevention and control”. During the 15-day social distancing period from April 1^st to 15^th, residents had to stay at home and could only go outside for “essential needs,” such as food, medicines, urgent medical services or to go to work at companies that were permitted by the government to remain open. Gatherings of more than two people in public areas other than hospitals or workplaces were banned. People had to keep a distance of at least two meters between each other. Schools were closed for the Lunar New Year holiday at the end of January and remained closed until mid-May. Travel from virus-hit areas to other cities and provinces was banned, except for essential reasons, such as the delivery of food or transportation of workers and materials for production. The government directed many businesses across the country, from restaurants to gyms, to shut down and restricted international and domestic flights. As Vietnam saw only a modest increase in coronavirus cases, which went up to 268, with all but 44 recovered and no fatalities, the country eased its coronavirus lockdown. Vietnam successfully took advantage of the “golden stage” to effectively contain the spread of the disease.

As well as the swift government response, another key that made Vietnam’s fight against COVID- 19 successful was cooperation. Social media did a great job of raising citizens’ awareness about the pandemic by the news, dramas, advertisement, and music videos… People had no choice but receive the COVID- 19 information. Vietnamese people understood the seriousness of the pandemic, and knew basic steps to protect themselves and others from the virus. And they voluntarily filled in health declaration forms (nearly 6,5 million NCOVI app downloads within one month). There was a survey conducted by Singapore’s leading social research agency, Blackbox Research and ITWP Group’s Toluna Company, aiming to assess the level of satisfaction of people in 23 countries and territories for their government’s efforts in COVID-19 prevention and control. With 77 points, Vietnam ranks second in the world and ranks first in Southeast Asia in terms of people’s satisfaction with government measures in the prevention and control of COVID-19. The success of Vietnam was not only up to the drastic actions of the government but also the cooperation and trust of the citizens.

More than two months have passed since the country’s last community transmission and it has already returned to a more normal status that aims to increase economic growth and protect people from COVID-19 effectively. The Prime Minister allowed the reopening of the border gate with China, Cambodia, Laos, and so on. Students and workers now go to schools, offices, and factories without wearing masks. Businesses across the countries operate normally. On May 23, the first official football match took place in Thien Truong Stadium with thousands of spectators. It was also the first football match in the world that allowed thousands of spectators to enter after the COVID-19 pandemic. Preventing COVID-19 is not the most urgent issue of the government at this stage. This small country is looking for solutions to recover the economy and stimulate domestic tourism after the effects of the pandemic. Vietnamese people feel safe and live normally. Additionally, the citizens are grateful to their government for protecting them by drastic and immediate actions. Sometimes, they even forget that COVID-19 is still causing problems in many countries around the world.

In short, Vietnam’s success is thanks to both the government and the citizens. The government responded well to the pandemic since most countries disregarded or knew little about it. The country’s leaders also took many correct and timely actions: giving information, instructing people on how to prevent COVID-19 on a massive scale, putting people under quarantine… Vietnamese people’s awareness about COVID-19 and their cooperation with the government are significant. These are the lessons that several developed countries would benefit from learning.

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These easily discernible strategic chain reactions were regrettably missed by many experts owing either to unfamiliarity with the guiding motivations of each related party and/or pressure to comply with the so-called “political correctness” being pushed by some of the players whereby it was previously considered “taboo” to criticize Indian-Iranian relations or rely upon factual evidence to forecast their inevitable weakening.

In Chile, the Covid-19 pandemic is raging with an unprecedented speed. There are more than 300,000 confirmed cases with one of the highest per capita infection rates of 13,000 cases for every 1 million people. The economy is severely experiencing the repercussions of Coronavirus-caused restrictions and the historically high national unemployment rate of 11.2% is an indicator of such damage. Chileans have took to the street to protest against the malfunctioning right-wing government of the billionaire president Sebastian Pinera and the police force has responded aggressively by shooting dead a young agitator.

Amid this Coronavirus chaos, the Chilean lithium sector is poised to economically expand itself due to an anticipated increase in demand. Albemarle, a North Carolina-based corporation and one of the two companies extracting lithium from the Chilean salt plain Salar de Atacama with Sociedad Química y Minera (SQM) or Chemical and Mining Society, said that “the current slump in prices is belying a looming supply shortfall, especially as expansion projects are delayed by the crisis”. TDK, a Japanese multinational electronics companies and battery giant, predicts that the global market is going to witness a surge in demand for lithium. Shigenao Ishiguro, the CEO of the company, told in an interview that “Digital transformation is a huge opportunity for us and I have no doubt that the coronavirus will push the world to go that direction at a faster pace,”.

In spite of Covid-19 pandemic, the battery market is expected to grow “at a compound annual growth rate of about 7% during 2019-2024. The market in cathode for lithium ion batteries, the most common rechargeable car battery, is expected to jump to $58.8 billion by 2024 from $7 billion in 2018”. According to Bloomberg, the pandemic can prove to be an opportunity for the lithium market “with at least some governments, including those of Germany and France, using virus recovery funds to help accelerate a transition from internal combustion engines to battery-powered alternatives. France will offer about 8 billion euros ($9 billion) to its auto sector to bolster support for electric vehicles; Germany’s stimulus package includes about 5.6 billion euros for the sector and will require gas stations to install charging units.”

A likely intensification of lithium exploitation in Chile does not bode well for the working class and the myriad indigenous communities such as the Atacameños, Licanantay, Colla, Aymara and Quechua living in the Atacama desert. The most recent manifestation of the exploitative practices of lithium mining companies has been the maintenance of “operational continuity” to achieve a minimal impact on output. This basically translates into a policy of profit maximization, brutally indifferent towards the existential conditions of workers. In the lithium mining region of Antofagasta, the Coronavirus positivity rate was a stupendous 46.1%. Along with this sheer infliction of necropolitical violence upon the working class, the indigenous people are also reeling under the pressures of lithium extraction in the form of a water crisis. While singular focus has been placed on the issues of water scarcity in urban areas, it is important to remember that indigenous communities living in Salar de Atacama too are coping with an acute water scarcity, artificially caused by lithium operations. In the aforementioned mining region, 65% of water has been consumed by lithium activities. This is one among the many environmental injuries sustained by the ecosystem of the Atacama desert due to the unhindered workings of lithium imperialism.

Instead of seeing the ongoing suppressive squeezing of the working class and indigenous communities in Chile as a one-off phenomenon, it is necessary that it be contextualized in the global structure of lithium imperialism. Lithium imperialism came to be installed as a fraction of global capital and primary commodity production due to two major developments – planetary mine and green extractivism. Firstly, planetary mine, as said by Martin Arboleda, “designates a convoluted terrain where fences, walls, and militarized borders coexist with sprawling supply chains and complex infrastructures of connectivity.” This denotes the establishment of an extractive economic exoskeleton on a planetary scale through the simultaneous use of violent and militarized techniques of oppression and policing.

Secondly, green extractivism refers to “the subordination of human rights and ecosystems to endless extraction in the name of “solving” climate change.” Lithium serves as an important modality for substituting fossil fuel extractivism with green extractivism and consistently maintaining a relentless system of commodification. Instead of “tackling the systemic bloating of northern economies and the excessive demands this places on the world’s resources.”, green lithium extractivism allows capitalists to stabilize the unequal imperialist architecture of core-peripheral countries. Tesla, for examples, uses the discourse of electronic vehicles to cloak its capitalistic carnage of Latin America with the cosmetic coverings of climate change.

Lithium imperialism indicates the cohesive amalgamation of planetary mining with a climate change-covered discourse of extractivism. The fusion of these two distinct strategies initiates a reign of hyper-exploitation, extraction, violence and dispossession in the name of climate change. But this oppressive underside of lithium business is sordidly shadowed by the propagandist puffery of an energy transition which actually feeds upon the body of oppressed workers of Global South. Lithium imperialism, therefore, involves the perpetuation of core-periphery relations under the discursive regime of climate change.

Chile is a victim of contemporary lithium imperialism due to the vast lithium reserves which it has. The country has 48% of the total lithium reserves in the world which amounts to 7.5 million tonnes of lithium, of which 6 million tonnes is found in Salar de Atacama. Chile is part of the lithium-rich area christened and commodified by the bourgeoisie as the “Lithium Triangle”. It is formed by northern Chile, northern Argentina and south Bolivia and has 70%of the world’s lithium brine deposits. Apart from the abundance of lithium, Chile is also attractive for lithium neo-conquistadors “because it costs about $2,000 to $3,800 a ton to extract lithium from brine, compared with $4,000 to $6,000 a ton in Australia, where lithium is mined from rock.” Capital cost for exploration and construction is lower in brine extraction than hard rock extraction due to the different locations of brine lakes and hard rock lithium reserves: “A hard rock project in a remote mountain location with limited access to transportation and energy infrastructure is going to require a lot more money in the exploration budget than a salar in flat terrain…with well-established mining roads and a line to the electrical grid.” In terms of quality, Salar de Atacama “has the best quality reserves of lithium in terms of lithium to potassium concentration as well as low magnesium to lithium ratio.”

The low-cost and high-grade lithium brine deposits have spelled doom for the indigenous people living in the Atacama Salt Flats (AFSs). While lithium brine extraction is economically viable for capitalists, it has deleterious effects on water availability and is therefore, injurious to the social metabolism of indigenous communities. In lithium brine extraction, “up to 95 per cent of the extracted brine water is lost to evaporation and not recovered”. Furthermore, to extract a ton of lithium from brine, 500,000 gallons of water is required. The two companies, Albemarle and SQM, operating in Salar de Atacama have been given “licences to extract almost 2,000 litres of brine per second.” Besides brine water, mining companies “need the fresh water to clean machinery and pipes, and also to produce an auxiliary product from the brine – potash – which is used as a fertiliser.” The use of fresh water by mining companies is indicated by the fact that between 2000 and 2015, the amount of water that was extracted from Atacama was 21% greater than the flow of water to that area.

According to a report produced by the Observatory of Mining Conflicts of Latin America (translated from Spanish), “The greatest socio-environmental impact of lithium mining lies in the indiscriminate expenditure of water for the evaporation of brines and the production of the necessary tasks. Considering that the Atacama salt flat is located in one of the most arid regions in the world, the Atacama desert, the large-scale extraction of water and the basic processing of lithium brines generates severe damage to the fragile ecosystems that depend on those sources.” In the same report, it is written that “the communities originating from the high Andean salt flats suffer serious environmental damage due to the indiscriminate and poorly controlled extraction from the hydro-saline deposits of the salt flats, thus reinforcing their historic place of marginalization, exploitation and subordination.”

This indicates that water scarcity is not a localized phenomenon, restricted to a mere depletion in water levels. Rather, water scarcity contributes to a generalized impoverishment of indigenous people and drastically degrades their everyday living. Degeneration of existential conditions happens, inter alia, through the degradation of soil and vegetation covers. In the Atacama region, indigenous collectivities grow quinoa and look after llamas. For the growth of quinoa plants, an evenly moist soil is required and for herding llamas, it is necessary that there be an adequate vegetation cover on which they can feed. But lithium operations have undermined both these prerequisites and School of Sustainability at Arizona State University reportsthat “An expansion of lithium brine mining area of one square kilometre was found to correspond to a significant decrease in the average level of vegetation and in soil moisture.”

Through the deliberate disorganization of traditional occupational configurations, lithium companies are able to culturally colonize and proletarianize the spiritual and agro-pastoral practices of communal indigeneity. In the international value chains of lithium, the utter subjugation of indigenous people to the deformed logics of e-mobility is cruelly concealed and as said by the Plurinational Observatory of Andean Salares (translated from Spanish), “The incessant production of disposable electronic devices and the growing market for electric cars for the energy transition of countries in the global north…is becoming today the main threat to the subsistence of any form of life in the basins that host these [lithium] mining deposits”.

Chilean indigenous people have not acquiesced to the economically destructive and culturally catastrophic operations of mining corporations and have reacted strongly to lithium imperialism. In 2019, indigenous people protested against the water-intensive mechanisms of lithium brine extraction and the state, in response, paradoxically charged some communities for “water robbery”. The protests were initially triggered by the underhand dealings of SQM in which “the Chilean economic development agency CORFO signed a contract with SQM that enabled the company to triple its lithium extraction over the coming years and extended its mining access to the Atacama until 2030.” The tripling of lithium extraction till 2030 raised SQM’s lithium extraction quota to 350,000 tons. It is not entirely coincidental that a month after the agreement, Eduardo Bitran, head of CORFO, met with Tesla to propose “a project to Tesla in which SQM would provide brine, the raw material from which lithium is produced, to the carmaker for refining into battery component lithium hydroxide in Chile.”

It was in opposition to this intricate complex of lithium imperialism that indigenous people protested. These protests smoothly synchronized with the larger anti-neoliberal protests occurring in Chile and bolstered the indigenous-working class alliance. But this working class-indigenous movement was soon suppressed by the Chilean state which, in order to stabilize neoliberalism and lithium imperialism, cracked down on protests through rapid detentions, declaration of a state of emergency and the deployment of more than 9,000 soldiers. Because of the protection provided by the state, Ricardo Ramos, the CEO of SQM, was able to say that the protests won’t “be a strong issue in our business goals in the medium and long term.” He further added that “We are going to deliver our products to our customers according to our previous forecast despite the situation in Chile,”. From Ramos’s statement, we discern that there exists a structural arrangement for the cementing of lithium imperialism: companies like SQM economically exploit and culturally hegemonize lithium-rich areas; indigenous people combatively confront the predatory mechanisms of these companies; the Chilean state ultimately intervenes in order to regularize mining operations through the violent deactivation of protests.

While it may seem that the 2019 protest against lithium extraction was a spontaneous eruption of anger, it is necessary that we briefly examine the historical background against which it took place. Apart from signing a shady deal without any consultation, SQM “has been investigated for several cases of tax evasion, money laundering and illegal campaign-funding. In a major public scandal in 2014, politicians from across the spectrum were found to have received major sums of money to look after the company’s interests.” SQM also has a dubious distinction of causing major conflicts and in 2007, for example, there was a skirmish between the company and the Toconao community. Increased extraction of water from unauthorized wells and the contamination of water sources by sewage discharge were the contributory causes behind the SQM-Toconao conflict. Albemarle too has been progressing in its march towards class struggle-free lithium imperialism and in 2017 CORFO amended the corporation’s agreement through which Albemarle got “sufficient lithium to produce over 80,000 MT annually of technical and battery grade lithium salts over the next 27 years at its expanding battery grade manufacturing facilities in La Negra, Antofagasta.”

The rapid ramping up of lithium production by two companies in Chile has successfully benefitted major electronic companies such as Samsung, Apple and Panasonic. In the automobile sector, Toyota, General Motors, Tesla, Volkswagen and BMW are some of the companies reaping economic advantages of the lithium sources of Chile. Figure 1 and 2 depict the multiplex and labyrinthine circuit of lithium in the international market. To satiate the vampire-like thirst of different companies for lithium, there has been a global increase in production and the role of Chile in catering to the lithium hunger of “white gold rush” is indicated by the contemporaneous expansion of Chilean lithium output with world lithium output: “The value of Chile’s lithium carbonate production rose to US$200 million by 2007, to US$500 million by 2012 and to more than US$800 million by 2017. It exceeded US$1 billion in 2018. There was a parallel surge in the value of world first-stage lithium output— reaching US$484 million in 2007, US$998 million by 2013 and US$2865 million in 2017.”

Figure 1, Source: Washington Post, “Indigenous people are left poor as tech world takes lithium from under their feet“

Figure 2, Source: Danwatch, “There’s probably Chilean lithium behind the screen you’re reading this on”

With the demand for lithium expected to grow in the global market, indigenous people and the working class would start encountering greater difficulties in sustaining themselves as indigenous ecosystems are efficiently eradicated and labor productivity is ruthlessly increased. During the Fastmarkets’ 11th Lithium Supply and Markets Conference in Santiago, “Producers Albemarle, SQM and Tianqi [which has a 23.77% stake in SQM]… agreed that flexibility in production remains vital for addressing diverse industrial and technological challenges.” This was a colloquial way of saying that workers need to be ready to be exploited, discarded and denigrated as mere commodities. For the indigenous people in Chile, life would be wrung economically dry as energy transition occurs in the Global North and magnificent Tesla vehicles silently operate on their blood-stained lithium batteries.

We need to remember that this dystopia of EVs parasitically procuring lithium from the open veins of Chile is avoidable and as said by Thea Riofrancos, “A world buzzing with hundreds of millions of Teslas (or worse, e-Escalades), made with materials rapaciously extracted without the consent of local communities, manufactured under a repressive labor regime in polluting factories — in other words, a world not unlike our own, but powered by wind and sun — is not an inevitability.” To move away from such lithium imperialism, we need to listen to the smothered voices of the Global South. An economic-ecological model based upon the anti-imperialist foundations of the Global South is radically different from capitalist models of extraction. Instead of conceptualizing a “development alternative”, the oppressed masses of the Global South imagine an “alternative to development”. In the interstices of this “alternative to development”, one can locate the seeds of resistance to lithium imperialism.

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Yanis Iqbal is a student and freelance writer based in Aligarh, India. Read other articles by Yanis.

Trump regime hardliners are pushing a diabolical full-court press to weaken and isolate China on the world stage — wanting its economic, industrial and technological development undermined.

I stressed these points in earlier articles, stressing as well the risk that US war on China by other means could turn hot by accident or design.

What’s manufactured in the US and escalating is the stuff wars are made of.

Possible global war 3.0 should terrify everyone.

What’s unthinkable in the nuclear age is an ominous possibility because Washington is hellbent to rule the world unchallenged by whatever it takes to achieve its objectives.

Two major developments occurred Tuesday. Britain bent to the will of US hardliners as expected.

After initially working with Chinese tech giant Huawei to build out its 5G network, the Boris Johnson government reversed itself.

Culture secretary Oliver Dowden said no new (state-of-the-art) Huawei 5G equipment can be bought after December 31, adding:

Britain is on an “irreversible path” to eliminate what he called “high-risk vendors (sic).”

So-called Chinese “risk” has nothing to do with security issues, everything to do with US war on China by other means and trillions of dollars of market potential that 5G technology represents.

Bipartisan US hardliners want China shut out from what they want to be a sales and profit bonanza for corporate America.

They want other nations to buy American, ignoring Huawei’s 5G technological superiority over what US and other Western firms can offer.

Former Tory leader Iain Duncan Smith called for banning Huawei “altogether,” meaning its 2, 3, and 4G networks in the country.

Britain’s Huawei 5G ban will mean a delay to roll out this technology of two to three years and cost up to two billion pounds, Dowden explained — a high price for bending to Washington’s will, likely to be passed on to UK consumers.

Until the policy shift, Britain agreed to let Huawei supply around 35% of its 5G equipment.

No longer. In deference to Washington, harming UK interests, Johnson ignored Beijing’s threat of “consequences” by treating China as a “hostile partner.”

According to the Johnson regime ruling, UK firms now using Huawei equipment must remove it all by 2027.

They’ll incur a significant economic cost by the ruling, along with political fallout for Britain to bear for unacceptably bending to Washington’s will.

The US wants Huawei and other Chinese tech firms shut out of the US market and from using US high-tech products.

Responding to Britain’s action, Huawei’s UK spokesman Edward Brewster said the following:

“We remain confident that the new US restrictions would not have affected the resilience or security of the products we supply to the UK,” adding:

“Regrettably our future in the UK has become politicized. This is about US trade policy and not security.”

“We will conduct a detailed review of what today’s announcement means for our business here.”

From last year to June this year, the Johnson regime shifted from relying on Huawei’s superior technology to banning it.

What clearly was an unacceptable politicized decision, Johnson acted against the interests of UK telecom firms that urged him not to ban Huawei.

According to Singapore-based geopolitical analyst Greg Austin, Britain was “forced into a corner by (months of) stepped-up US pressure,” adding:

Banning Huawei from the UK is “entirely political and based on exaggeration of the intelligence value to China of Huawei’s 5G.”

The move is a “big blow” to its operations in the country. “Many jobs (will) be lost, and business relationships torn up.”

“China will (no longer) trust the UK as a business partner.” Beijing will likely take appropriate retaliatory action in its own way at a time of its choosing.

Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Zhao Lijian said Beijing “will closely watch (Britain’s) decision.”

He warned that what happened suggests that Britain may not be safe for Chinese investments.

It’s unclear whether other European countries will bend to US pressure and exclude or limit Huawei’s involvement in building out their 5G networks.

Separately, Trump signed the so-called Hong Kong Autonomy Act (HKAA) into law.

Unanimously adopted by Congress, not a single profile of courage in either house opposed the unacceptable politicized measure with no legitimacy.

China’s new national security law was the convenient pretext — legitimate legislation to protect its sovereign territory (including Hong Kong) from hostile and/or intrusive actions by foreign powers.

The unacceptable HKAA was adopted as part of Washington’s war on China by other means.

The measure imposes unlawful sanctions on entities the US claims “violate China’s obligations to Hong Kong,” along with secondary sanctions on banks doing business with these entities.

Ignored by the HKAA is that the city is sovereign Chinese territory. Under the UN Charter and other international law, nations are forbidden from meddling in the internal affairs of others — what never deters the US and its imperial partners from doing as they please extrajudicially.

In response to Trump’s signing the measure into US law — that contravenes international and US constitutional law — a statement by China’s Foreign Ministry said the following:

The US law…maliciously denigrates Hong Kong’s national security legislation, threatens to impose sanctions on China, and seriously violates international law and basic rules of international relations,” adding:

“It is gross interference in Hong Kong affairs and China’s internal affairs.”

Separately, Trump signed an executive order that ends US preferential treatment and special trade arrangements for the city.

Defying reality, he falsely claimed China’s national security law “extinguish(es) Hong Kong’s freedom (sic).”

His remarks included a litany of misinformation, disinformation, and mass deception about China.

Threatening no one, Beijing seeks cooperative relations with other countries in contrast to US sought global dominance by pressure, bullying, bribing, and smashing other nations if other tactics don’t accomplish its aims.

It’s a prescription for endless wars on humanity by hot and/or other means.

Considered US public enemy No. 1 for its growing prominence on the world stage, bipartisan Chinaphobes in Washington risk hot war with a nation able to hit back hard if preemptively attacked.

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Award-winning author Stephen Lendman lives in Chicago. He can be reached at [email protected]. He is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG)

His new book as editor and contributor is titled “Flashpoint in Ukraine: US Drive for Hegemony Risks WW III.”

http://www.claritypress.com/LendmanIII.html

Visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com.

Featured image is from The Bullet

A constitutional claim against Canadian government actors for their actions in COVID-19 has just been filed at the Superior Court in Toronto, Canada.

A lawsuit against the Trudeau Government for its handling of the COVID-19 Crisis has been launched.

What is at stake is the violation of the fundamental rights of Canadians.

“The mass and indiscriminate containment of citizens, the restriction of access to parliament, the courts, medical and educational services, the destruction of local economies and livelihoods, and the requirement to physically distance, along with the forced use of non-medical masking are extraordinary measures that have never before been imposed on the citizens of Canada.”

The Lawsuit against the Federal and Ontario governments is now in the Ontario Superior Court. Listen to Constitutional Lawyer Rocco Galati

Canadians should support this legal initiative, which has barely been acknowledged by the mainstream media. In fact there is a total media blackout.

The legal action against the Trudeau government is not an object of media attention.

Let us not be under illusions. The lockdown, the fear campaign, social engineering not to mention “corrupt science” and “fake data” constitute a criminal undertaking which has resulted in mass unemployment, poverty, famine, and despair. And much more.

Things are not going to “go back normal” unless people across the land, nationally and internationally confront the architects of this diabolical project (including the governments, the financial elites as well as the WHO).

 

Watch Constitutional Lawyer Rocco Galati Files Claims against Trudeau Government

 

 

Remember the 2009 H1N1 Pandemic. It turned out to be Fake. Lots of people in Canada fell sick after receiving the H1N1 ArepanrixTD vaccine.

And that vaccine killed a little girl called Amina Abu, which then led to a ten year lawsuit against GSK. That legal procedure is still ongoing.

It was a criminal undertaking on behalf of Big Pharma. There was ample evidence of corruption at the WHO and at the highest levels of government.

Today’s COVID-19 pandemic is far more serious. Governments are using the virus as pretext to close down a large part of the global economy, with devastating economic and social consequences.

Politicians are either stupid or totally corrupt. They believe in their own lies. And the lie has become the truth.

Michel Chossudovsky, July 16, 2020

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The steadfast city of Al Sqeilbiyyeh responds strongly to the move of neo-Ottoman would-be-Emperor, Erdogan, to convert the historic church of Hagia Sophia from a secular, inclusive museum into a Mosque.

According to Turkish media (Hurriyet) changes will be applied immediately to the 1500 year old World Heritage building. The holy Christian icons and mosaics may be covered to make way for Muslim prayer, the first will be on Friday 24th July.

The legendary icons include a mosaic made in the 9th or 10th century featuring a seated Jesus holding a book with the words “Peace be with you. I am the light of the world.” There is also a mosaic of Jesus dating back to 1261.

“In 1934, under the rule of the founder of modern Turkey, Kemal Ataturk, Hagia Sophia became a museum. Since Ataturk’s conversion of the building it has been a symbol of secular Turkey and religious coexistence.”

The Syrian Christian Orthodox city of Al Sqeilbiyyeh in northern Hama is responding with resistance against this attack on the secular co-existence that is now threatened by Erdogan’s neo-Ottoman ambitions.

Image on the right: Nabel Alabdalla. (Photo: Vanessa Beeley)

The city of Al Sqeilbiyyeh resisted the sectarian extremism that attempted to wipe Christianity from the map of Syria and the region, for ten long years. All members of this resilient community have upheld the pluralist culture of their nation and of their President Bashar Al Assad and they will not allow the same sectarian supremacist agenda to destabilise the region any further.

Nabel Alabdalla, the commander of the National Defence Forces is proposing an initiative to build a symbolic scaled down version of the church in defiance of Erdogan’s decision and to name it after Hagia Sophia. The cornerstone for the church will be laid in Sqeilbiyyeh with the blessings of the Bishop of Hama, Nicola Baalbaki.

Erdogan and his extremist proxies in Syria and throughout the region threaten Christianity with extinction in the Middle East. Syria is the birthplace of Christianity and Nabel has taken this decision because of his profound love for his President, his homeland, its history and its diverse, multi-faith tapestry which must be defended and protected at all costs. The sacrifices of the martyrs and those injured fighting for justice should not be in vain.

Al Sqeilbiyyeh June 2020 (Photo: Vanessa Beeley)

Syria. The cradle of Humanity and the heart of resistance.

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All images in this article are from the author unless otherwise stated

Last year, at least 30 rich countries exported locally-banned toxic substances to poorer ones, allowing corporations to write off their costly waste and transferring the costs to some of the poorest people on earth.

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The practice of dumping banned, toxic chemical waste on poorer societies by big corporations in rich countries must end, say experts at the United Nations Human Rights Council. “In nearly every case there is no legitimate public interest justification,” said Baskut Tuncak, a Turkish-American UN special rapporteur on the environment and the disposal of toxic waste.

“These loopholes are a political concession to industry, allowing their chemical manufacturers to profit from inevitably poisoned workers and communities abroad, all the while importing cheaper products through global supply chains and fueling unsustainable consumption and production patterns. It is long-overdue that States stop this exploitation.”

While stricter regulations apply regarding dumping in regions like Europe and North America, they are often virtually non-existent in African, Asian or Latin American countries. Last year, at least 30 rich countries exported locally-banned toxic substances to poorer states, primarily to save money and resources, allowing corporations to write off their costly waste as an externality, transferring the costs on to some of the poorest people on earth.

“The ability to manufacture and export toxic substances banned from use domestically is one, albeit large, element of how states have institutionalized externalities through discriminatory national laws and an outdated system of global governance for chemicals and wastes,” added Tuncak.

The Agbogbloshie dump in Ghana is a prime example of the relationship between rich and poor nations. 10,000 workers shift through millions of tons of Western electronic waste that pollutes the air, land and water for miles around, burning plastics and melting metals, hoping to find small amounts of valuable minerals, drastically reducing their own life expectancies.

“When I was a small boy, I used to be a footballer — but not anymore,” said 28-year-old Abdullah Boubacar, who makes a living burning plastic insulation off wires to salvage copper. “[Now] I have stomach ulcers and I run out of energy very easily.”

There are usually far fewer regulations against harmful substances in poorer countries, often because their governments have been deposed by Western ones, with institutions like the World Bank imposing extreme forms of neoliberalism governance on them, forcing them to deregulate and privatize their economies. The U.S. government made glue manufacturer H.B. Fuller remove a dangerous and addictive additive in one of its adhesives. However, the company continued to sell the same product across Latin America, despite knowing that tens of millions of children were sniffing it to alleviate pain or hunger, leading to terrible health consequences, including death.

When multinational corporations pollute in rich countries, governments have the power to stand up to and punish them. But this is usually not the case with poorer states in the global south. After the Deepwater Horizon oil spill, the Department of Justice imposed a fine of over $4.5 billion on petrochemical giant BP. Yet when Ecuador attempted to punish Chevron-Texaco for the massive destruction of its Amazon jungle — spilling 80 times the amount of oil BP dumped in the Gulf of Mexico, they simply refused to pay. Furthermore, Chevron-Texaco has managed to get a New York court to prosecute Steven Donziger, the lawyer representing over 30,000 poisoned Ecuadorians. Since then he has had his accounts frozen and has been under house arrest for successfully standing up to the corporation. The court’s decision was condemned by 29 Nobel laureates.

The UN position strongly clashes with that of the World Bank. In 1991, the Bank’s Chief Economist, Larry Summers, argued that his organization should be “encouraging more migration” of pollution to the poorest countries. “I’ve always thought that under-populated countries in Africa are vastly UNDER-polluted,” he wrote, adding that, in his opinion, “the economic logic behind dumping a load of toxic waste in the lowest wage country is impeccable and we should face up to that.” Summers also bemoaned the fact that the United States and Europe could not export their transport emissions. Summers is now a key advisor to Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden. Activist groups such as Greenpeace and the Working Families Party are attempting to convince Biden to remove him from his position, citing his abysmal record on economics, the environment, and on gender.

On the issue of toxic dumping, some progress is being made. France recently prohibited the export of domestically-produced toxic chemicals, while 25 African countries made it illegal to export to them any substances forbidden from use in their country of manufacture. These laws, however, should not be necessary, according to the experts, who noted that exporting banned chemicals is already illegal under international law. “Failing to address this longstanding exploitation is discrimination, pure and simple,” they concluded.

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Alan MacLeod is a Staff Writer for MintPress News. After completing his PhD in 2017 he published two books: Bad News From Venezuela: Twenty Years of Fake News and Misreporting and Propaganda in the Information Age: Still Manufacturing Consent. He has also contributed to Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting, The Guardian, Salon, The Grayzone, Jacobin Magazine, Common Dreams the American Herald Tribune and The Canary.

Featured image: Young men burning electrical wires to recover copper at Agbogbloshie, Accra, Ghana. Sept 02, 2019. Photo | Muntaka Chasant | CC

On July 14th and 15th, Syrian Army artillery units and warplanes of the Russian Aerospace Forces conducted extensive strikes on positions of Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, the Turkistan Islamic Party and other radical groups in northern Lattakia and southern Idlib. The main strikes hit fortified positions, weapon depots and gatherings of fighters and equipment near Kbana, Sifouhn, al-Muzarra, Ain al-Aruz, Kansafra, Kafr Uwayd, Mawzrah and Humaymat. According to pro-government sources, over a dozen militants were killed and injured, and 2 weapon depots were destroyed.

These strikes came in response to a suicide vehicle-borne improvised explosive device attack on a joint Turkish-Russian patrol on the M4 highway in southern Idlib on July 14. The explosion hit the patrol near Ariha. According to the Russian Defense Ministry, 3 Russian soldiers and some Turkish troops were injured. The Turkish Defense Ministry added that nobody was killed, but 2 vehicles of the convoy were damaged. A photo of the damaged BTR-82A is also circulating online.

A previously unknown group, Kataib Hattab ash-Shishani, claimed responsibility for the attack saying that the suicide bomber was one of theirs. Nonetheless, there is no such group active in Idlib. Most likely, this is a fake brand used to draw attention away from the real attackers. The main suspect would be the coalition of al-Qaeda-linked groups Fa Ithbatu, which recently lost a conflict for money and power to its elder brother Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, which used to be the official branch of al-Qaeda in Syria. The Fa Ithbatu leadership sees the current ceasefire in Idlib as a threat to its interests because Hayat Tahrir al-Sham is using it to solidify its control over the few Idlib areas where its influence is still limited. The new round of clashes between the Syrian Army and Turkish-led forces in Idlib is the only thing that can help it to keep its independence and its access to resources for a significant period of time.

The Turkish military reacted to the situation by sending additional troops and equipment, including trucks with concrete blocks, to Idlib city. Instead of fighting terrorists, Ankara seems to be planning to create more fortifications to protect them from a possible offensive by the Syrian Army or its allies.

Meanwhile, the Syrian Army detained 3 members of the US-backed militant group Maghawir al-Thawra near Palmyra. The militants were tasked with collecting data about Russian, Iranian and Syrian military targets in central Syria. Earlier, Russia warned that the US-led coalition is training groups of militants in al-Tanf  to conduct sabotage operations against civilian and military infrastructure in the government-controlled part of Syria.

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We must make clear that it is imperialism that degrades and destroys the earth, makes water a commodity, food a luxury, education an impossibility, and health care a distant dream.

The following is excerpted from a presentation by Ajamu Baraka to a national webinar Electoral School of the Black Is Back Coalition for Social Justice, Peace and Reparations, June 13 and 14.

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The Context of Struggle:

The great African revolutionary, Amilcar Cabral, reminded us that without revolutionary theory there can be no revolution.

His reminder was not a call for abstract theorizing, quite the contrary. What he meant was that one cannot  advance in practice unless that practice is guided by the most advanced understanding of the material and ideological conditions that revolutionary forces face.

Over the next two days we will ground ourselves in our particular realities as they relate to our strategic and tactical engagement with bourgeois electoral system in the United States.

Let’s begin:

The ongoing and current capitalist crisis has created the most serious crisis of legitimacy since the collapse of the capitalist economy during the years referred to as the Great Depression.

The economic collapse comes on the heels of the deep crisis of the economy that occurred in 2007-8. With the economic instability and the increasing economic competition among capitalist states, divisions have emerged among the nations that those of us in BAP refer to as the U.S./EU/NATO Axis of Domination.

The U.S. has responded by moving toward a more confrontational posture, not only with its allies in Europe. It has also elevated China and Russia as national security threats.

Domestically, the African working class never recovered from the collapse of 2007-8. The continued restructuring of the U.S. economy to a low-wage economy has resulted in the African working class being relegated to the lower rungs of the labor force joining undocumented migrants, immigrants, and other colonized workers.

We are now seeing with the economy the genocidal implications of economic conditions, in which young Black workers have more value as human generators of profit locked up in prisons than as participants in the economy as low-wage workers. This reality is one of the factors driving the obscene phenomenon of Black and Brown mass incarceration in the largest prison system on the planet.

Astronomical youth unemployment, millions of Africans without health care, poisoned environments, and crumbling schools reflect the objective conditions that, with COVID-19, are ravaging the Black communities.

This is the colonial/capitalist system in its neoliberal stage. And that was before the coronavirus pandemic!

The Pandemic pulled the ideological curtain from the system and exposed the brutal realities of a rapacious system of greed, human exploitation and degradation, social insecurity, corruption, and the normalization of coercive state violence.

Bipartisan support for neoliberal capitalist policies over last four decades revealed the devastating impacts of neoliberal policies – the closing of public healthcare facilities, including hospitals as giant for-profit hospital chains consolidated; millions, disproportionately Africans, living precarious lives at the bottom of the labor markets and as gig workers with no benefits, no sick leave, no vacation, no security when ordered to shutter in place by capitalist state because the privatization of healthcare resulted in a healthcare system unable to respond to a national healthcare crisis.

Hundreds of Africans are dying unnecessarily from the virus because of conditions of colonial oppression, which amounts to state-sanctioned murder!

So, the murders of Floyd, Breonna Taylor, Ahmaud Aubrey and the phenomenon of vicious killer cops are just the tip of the iceberg

But because there was no video of grandma, alone and shoveled into a corner of the hospital taking her last breath on a ventilator, along with all of the other thousands of Africans who are unnecessarily dying from COVID-19, it took the video of George Floyd to bring the people out of their houses and into the streets.

This is context for the current Black is Back election school as we approach the next round of bourgeois elections. This context informs the ideological, political, and economic issues of the bourgeois electoral arena, and how we see and approach the electoral system.

The Context Determines the Strategy: 

Let me share a few points that I believe must inform how we see and engage the electoral arena in a way that develops and advances our forces.

1. There can be no ideological confusion – we must be clear in language that cannot be co-opted or commodified by the state or its associated institutions like liberal funders. So, we must state in unequivocal language that it is the Western colonial/capitalist imperialist system, now led by the U.S., that is responsible for the billions of human beings living in poverty. It is imperialism that degrades and destroys the earth, that makes water a commodity, food a luxury, education an impossibility, and health care a distant dream. It is the rapacious greed and absolute disregard for human life by imperialism that drives the arms trade, turns human incarceration into a profitable enterprise, and transforms millions into migrants and refugees because of war and economic plunder. This parasitic imperialist domination would be impossible without imperialism’s core instrument of enforcement and control – state violence. Beginning with the European invasion of the Americas’ in 1492 to this very moment, previously unimaginable brutality and systematic violence was used to enslave, commit genocide, steal lands, despoil cultures and assault the earth, all in the service of what became the Pan-European colonial/capitalist white supremacist patriarchal project. When you start from that foundation, not only are you clear but everyone that you engage with will be clear where you stand.

2. The struggle is for power not reform. We make demands against the state and the system, but it is clear that those demands are in context of a program for winning power. Demands are strategic – participation in electoral system must be seen as an aspect of the process of building dual and contending power. The BIB 19-point program  represents a useful roadmap for building and shifting power to the people.

3. The entry point for participating in electoral process must be through organization. Reject candidate centered politics. Engagement with electoral system by progressive forces must be informed by a collective power-building strategy that is part of a broader strategy for building independent popular power. Individualistic, candidate-centered politics lacks accountability and is inherently corruptible.

Issue selection – focus on issues that if won will reflect a significant shift in power to the people. Defund the police – questionable, but if linked to community control of the police, stopping Israeli training of police, cutting the military budget and transferring money to the people; and electoral proportional representation represent demands that can’t be easily co-opted by the state.

4. Focus on local races – county commissions, city councils, school board, mayors. The emphasis on the local is connected to what I see as the inevitable disintegration of the U.S. state. As a settler colonial state, the U.S. is, and has always been, a fragile and inauthentic state. That is precisely why a civil war was fought just 70 years after its inception as a constitutional republic in 1791.

We remember the importance of having some degree of local control with the Katrina crisis, where the surrounding white municipalities used their local power to prevent Black people, escaping from the hurricane, to enter their communities. And we watched how regional coalitions were formed during COVID-19 crisis as the Federal Government failed to provide national leadership.

As national and state power become increasingly unable to hold on to a centralized power and there is generalized descent into chaos, having some degree of local control of the state apparatus will be especially important.

In closing.

We are facing some difficult times, but we have faced difficult times before. As we ground ourselves over these next two days during our electoral school, we acknowledge that we are an African people and we are at war! We did not ask for this war – and it has been a one-sided war so far – but we do not intent for that situation to last that long because we do not intend to lose. We understand that we must win this war – for ourselves and for global humanity!

All Power to the People

No Compromise, No Retreat!

Uhuru!

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This article was originally published on Black Agenda Report.

Ajamu Baraka is the national organizer of the Black Alliance for Peace and was the 2016 candidate for vice president on the Green Party ticket. Baraka serves on the Executive Committee of the U.S. Peace Council and leadership body of the United National Anti-War Coalition (UNAC). He is an editor and contributing columnist for the Black Agenda Report and contributing columnist for Counterpunch. He was recently awarded the US Peace Memorial 2019 Peace Prize and the Serena Shirm award for uncompromised integrity in journalism.

Featured image is from The Unz Review

In a decision which will shock many, the European Commission has taken a big step towards its ambition to subject its citizens to a totalitarian regime in which DNA altering technology forms the centre piece of mass control and unapologetic rule by despotism. 

Under the chairmanship of the German Minister of Health, Jens Spahn, The Commission has adopted a new ruling which calls for ‘the swift development of a GMO vaccine against Covid-19’.

Overturning its own earlier regulatory position, the Commission issued a press release on 14 July 2020, stating that this new act provides a ‘temporary derogation’ of clinical trials for a vaccine under what it cites as ‘the contained use of genetically modified organisms.’

The press release goes on to say

“The regulation will apply only as long as Covid-19 is regarded as a pandemic by the World Health Organisation, or as long as an implementing act by which the Commission recognises a situation of public health emergency due to Covid-19 applies.”

The text goes on to state

“The derogation provides that most operations related to the conduct of clinical trials will not require a prior environmental risk assessment or consent.”

Jens Spahn is quoted as saying

“A vaccine against Covid-19 is urgently needed. This regulation will ensure that clinical trials in the EU can start without delay and that no precious time is lost. The act adopted today shows that the EU is ready to take the lead in the global effort to secure the development of a safe and efficient vaccine.”

The European Commission, in need of a further ‘fear factor’ to exacerbate worry about a ‘second wave’, has clearly adopted the deeply flawed and widely disproven WHO position, that Covid-19 is a ‘public health emergency’. More than this, it has decided that only a GMO Vaccine can eradicate that which is supposedly the cause of this emergency.

One could hardly ask for a more blatant example of the New World Order centralised control system – being pressed into service at the hands of unelected technocrats, Big Pharma and  vaccination moguls whose names we are already all too familiar with. 

This calls for a large scale act of international resistance and a reversal of the deeply arrogant rule by despotism which is attempting to wrest control of the planet.

The URL for the Commission’s Press Release and details of the regulation here.

Full text below

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Julian Rose is an early pioneer of UK organic farming, writer, international activist, entrepreneur and teacher. His latest book ‘Overcoming the Robotic Mind – Why Humanity Must Come Through’ is particularly prescient reading for this time: see www.julianrose.info. He is a frequent contributor to Global Research.

The Sino-Venezuelan agreement by which the Chinese state petrochemical company Sinopec will invest 14,000 million dollars to achieve daily oil production of 200,000 barrels per day of crude in the Orinoco Oil Belt, (considered the most abundant oil field in the world ), would be a missile on the waterline of the US global geopolitics (whose unequivocal objective would be to dry up China’s energy sources), so the US swore to achieve the defenestration of Maduro.

Likewise, Maduro’s decision to confiscate the General Motors plant was seen by the Trump Administration as an attack against the interests of American multinationals, a scenario that was seized by the US Secretary of State, Rex Tillerson, (President and CEO of Exxon Mobil when it was nationalized in 2007 by Hugo Chávez), to try a hand coup against Maduro. Exxon Mobil would be part of the Fourth Branch of the US Government, a true shadow power that makes decisions on foreign policy and at the request of Tillerson, the Chavista revolution was already declared a “dangerous enemy of the US”.

Tillerson affirmed that “We are evaluating our political options, reviewing what we can do to create a change of conditions from which, Maduro decides that he has no future and decides to leave power on his own or that we can return the constitutional processes to its Constitution ”, a whole declaration of intent that was reflected in the implementation of sanctions against Venezuela of the countries that surround it to turn it into “territory besieged and ready to be engulfed”.

After a systematic and intense destabilizing campaign based on the selective shortage of basic necessities, obscene speculation, the amplification in the media of the growing citizen insecurity, the taking of the streets by the opposition and the application of sanctions to Venezuelan crude for cause the default or cessation of payments and the fiasco of Guaidó, we would be attending the final phase of the plot to achieve the defenestration of Maduro, for which Putin’s approval seems inevitable.

Trump and Putin would have had a recent telephone conversation in which Putin would have confirmed to Trump their unequivocal will to “not militarily support Maduro” and in this context, we attended the presentation by the US Attorney General, William Barr of charges against the Chavista summit that they accuse of “plotting a conspiracy with the FARC to flood the United States with drugs.” They also offer a million dollar reward that ranges between 10 and 15 million for “providing information that allows the arrest and prosecution of the Chavista summit,” including Maduro, Cabello Diosdado, retired generals Carvajal Barrios and Clíver Alcalá as well as the Minister of Industry, Tareck el Aissami.

Thus, Mike Pence announced the implementation of new measures against two companies that transport Venezuelan crude oil to Cuba, as well as against the 34 ships that PDVSA uses for such a task, together with a possible naval blockade with the avowed objective of causing the “energy suffocation of Cuba. ”Through the amputation of the umbilical cord that unites Venezuela and Cuba with what the Island would be doomed to an energy suffocation of unpredictable results.

Given that the Trump Administration would have amortized Juan Guaidó and that Maduro plans to appoint a tailor-made National Electoral Council for the next legislative elections, the United States will move its pieces to force exile to Cuba from the Chavista leadership and the subsequent formation of a Transitional Government made up of consensus figures from both the opposition and Chavismo that must prepare new Legislative and Presidential Elections for 2021 on the post-mature stage, Cuba in passing getting the US to suspend the energy blockade on the Island.

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Introduction

The following article by Fernando Ravsberg appeared in the Salvadorian digital daily news site ContraPunto on June 24. The translation from the Spanish, which includes a few explanatory additions, is by The Bullet.

It is worth mentioning some of the significant developments that have occurred in the two weeks since Ravsberg’s article appeared.

• Cuba’s efforts against the virus continue to show remarkable results. July 7 marked the 11th consecutive day without a single death attributable to Covid-19. As of that date, the country had seen only 2,399 confirmed cases of infection by the virus, and of these, 2,242 of those infected have recovered. The death toll is only 86.
• Significantly, given the experience of wealthy countries in North America and Western Europe, not a single Cuban health worker, whether a doctor or a floor cleaner, has succumbed to the virus.
• The country is not lowering its guard. The goal is to prevent the virus from taking root anywhere in the country. The aggressive pursuit of the virus that Ravsberg describes continues. The difference is that now that the virus is in retreat, the strategy is even more effective. Nevertheless, the virus is proving to be most tenacious in the province of Havana, and particularly in the capital city. The province accounts for some 57 per cent of all confirmed cases on the island, and half of those killed by the virus lived in the capital city.
• Recovery of social and economic life is proceeding cautiously, through a three-stage process based on objective criteria. Provinces and localities advance through the stages according to their progress in fighting the epidemic. Thirteen of the 15 provinces officially entered the first phase of recovery on June 18, followed by Matanzas a few days later. On July 3 Havana entered phase one, and all the other provinces except Matanzas entered phase two.
• Interprovincial passenger transportation remains suspended, but public transportation within cities has been restored. Restoring urban transportation in the vast city of Havana, essential for economic activity and social life, is presenting some difficult challenges. Transport capacity is limited, so special efforts must be made to avoid overcrowding, to enforce social distancing and mask wearing on the buses and at bus stops, and, most of all, to convince people to behave responsibly.
• The country has begun to welcome international tourists, along the lines explained by Ravsberg.
• Cuba’s medical internationalism, demonstrated so powerfully during the pandemic, has gained a good deal of attention and admiration internationally. An international campaign to nominateCuba’s Henry Reeves brigades for the Nobel Peace Prize is now under way. Initial signatories of the petition include Nobel Peace Prize winner Adolfo Pérez Esquivel; former president of Ecuador, Rafael Correa; actors Danny Glover and Mark Ruffalo; writers Alice Walker, Noam Chomsky and Nancy Morejón; filmmakers Oliver Stone and Petra Costa; and Cuban singer-songwriter Silvio Rodríguez. Meanwhile, the fund appeal of the Canadian Network on Cuba has, to date, raised $45,000 to support the work of the Cuban international brigades fighting the pandemic.

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Cuba is only a few days away from ending its coronavirus quarantine. Except for Havana, all the other provinces are free of the contagion and have begun moving toward a new normality. The capital will have to wait a couple of weeks more because it still averages between one and ten new infections per day and has about a hundred people suffering from Covid-19.

The measures adopted by the Cuban government have been extremely successful. The archipelago is emerging from the crisis with a total of just 2,319 people who were infected with the virus, 2,130 of which have recovered, while 85 have died. [The remainder, approximately 100 people, are still undergoing treatment…eds.] The Cuban public health system was prepared for massive casualties, but the truth is that in the worst moments of the crisis less than 60 per cent of its hospital resources were needed.

Currently, local and interprovincial transport is moving again, except in Havana, and hotels have begun opening their doors to Cuban vacationers. International tourism is slated to begin on July 1, but only on the adjacent islands [the Cays], which have their own airports. All tourists who arrive at these resorts will be tested for Covid-19, as will the staff who work there. Tourists and hotel staff will not be allowed to leave the cays or come into contact with the neighbouring populations.

The Cuban Strategy

Cuba’s quarantine-based process to deal with the pandemic developed gradually. Initially, some Cubans criticized the delay in closing the country’s borders or suspending school. However, once the full lockdown went into effect, international travel ended completely. The only passenger planes that landed on the island during this period were those provided by countries that had requested emergency medical aid from Cuba. These flights carried Cuban medical teams back to those countries. More generally, the authorities established a deadline, after which no one was allowed to leave the country. Some 7,000 Cubans resident in other countries who were visiting the island at the time and about 5,000 foreigners chose to stay and ride out the pandemic in Cuba.

The government suspended all interprovincial and urban transportation. All vehicles were used exclusively to transport health workers or other essential services personnel. The police controlled the streets, enforcing the mandatory use of face masks, dispersing gatherings and maintaining the necessary distance between people lined up outside the stores. These lineups to buy food became one of the main health dangers. [Severe shortages of basic foodstuffs are common in Cuba, as are long lines once supplies do arrive in the shops…eds.]

The troops of the Armed Forces, prepared for chemical or bacteriological warfare, sprayed the streets with chlorine, using their tank trucks and motorized pumps. To prevent the spread of the virus, thousands of soldiers stopped people from leaving heavily infected areas. People coming from areas with very few positive cases were allowed only limited access to infected areas. [The local quarantines were adjusted frequently, in accordance with the severity of the outbreak in the area. They were lifted as the threat receded…eds.]

Payment of taxes, electricity, water, gas, telephone, and internet bills was postponed, as were the installments on bank loans. The state – owner of 90 per cent of the companies – covered the wages of those laid off because of the pandemic. Social workers brought food to the elderly who lived alone, so that they would not have to venture out into the street. Restaurants sold food for consumption at home.

Whenever the public health authorities identified an individual carrying the virus, they investigated who might have been the source of the infection, and who the infected person might have been in contact with after they were infected. All of the people identified in that way became suspects. Some were transferred to quarantine centers for special treatment; others were quarantined at home for 14 days, watched over by their neighbors. Doctors visited them every day. At the slightest symptom, they were transferred to the hospital and tested for the virus. Even today, some 2,000 tests are still being performed every day. This system allows many asymptomatic people, the most dangerous category, to be detected.

At the same time, a country-wide investigation was rolled out, going from house to house across the whole island. Doctors, nurses and students of medicine, nursing and stomatologists knocked on every door to inquire whether or not anyone in the family had any symptoms. [Stomatology is the branch of medicine or dentistry concerned with the structures, functions, and diseases of the mouth…eds.] This very morning a student stopped by my house to ask: “Is everyone all right, does anyone have a cough or fever?” The Minister of Health, Dr. José Ángel Portal, has explained the strategy this way: “It is to not wait for the virus to appear, but to go out and look for it.”

Paradoxically, information – one of the major deficiencies in this country – has been available like never before. Every morning at nine am, the chief of Public Health Epidemiology, Dr. Francisco Durán, presents a report on national TV to share the statistics of the previous day. Cubans then find out how many people remain under observation, how many tests were performed, how many infections have been detected, how many patients are in serious or critical condition, and how many have died during the previous 24 hours.

Crises Are in the Cuban DNA

In spite of Cuba’s small size and population, and its lack of material resources, it has been one of the most successful countries in the world in dealing with the pandemic.

One of Cuba’s secrets is that it has spent 60 years preparing and training for a US attack. Cubans are accustomed to living in a state of crisis. Three-quarters of them have lived their whole lives suffering the effects of the US economic blockade. The Cuban system includes mechanisms, such as a ration book, that enable it to distribute products equitably. The Cuban Civil Defense system can mobilize hundreds of thousands of people in a few hours.

In Cuba, both the rulers and the governed operate more quickly and efficiently in critical times, when centralized decisions must be taken and all the material and human resources of the country must be mobilized to overcome the crisis. The country goes on a war footing. No one questions the orders. Citizen controls are activated, and suspects are watched carefully. During the Covid crisis, additional health measures included tracking down the contacts of those found to be carrying the virus, quarantining towns or neighborhoods when necessary, mandatory treatment in special residential centers for some of the infected population, and overall vigilance of the health situation, block by block.

Above all, Cuba can count on a health system that serves all citizens without exception, with 85,000 nurses and 95,000 doctors for 11 million inhabitants, three times more physicians per capita than Spain. In total, the Cuban system employs more than half a million health professionals, including health technicians and stomatologists (since dental care is also free). The practice of private medicine is prohibited, so all hospitals, polyclinics, family doctors’ houses in the community, and all human and material medical resources belong to the government.

Well-Trained Doctors

Cuban doctors have a lot of experience in combating epidemics. Cuban international health brigades stationed on the island have faced all kinds of diseases in a variety of countries. Some of these medical missions, such as the ones sent to fight Ebola in Africa or the 8,000 doctors who worked in Brazil, coordinated their efforts with the World Health Organization (WHO), with which Cuba maintains close collaboration.

Weeks before the first infected persons were detected on the island, specialists from Cuba were already receiving training from the WHO on how to fight the coronavirus. In January, the first Cuban doctors arrived in China to study the situation. More than 20 Cuban health brigades, with some 2,500 members, have responded to requests for help from other countries. They are now active fighting Covid-19 in Africa, Latin America, the Caribbean, Italy, and Andorra.

Cuba’s task has been made especially difficult because even during the pandemic the Trump Administration has increased pressure on companies to prevent them from trading with the island. The US has even prevented donations of health supplies and equipment from reaching Cuba. For example, Washington threatened to impose financial sanctions on the Colombian airline, Avianca, thereby forcing it to cancel its contract to transport medical equipment and face masks from China to Havana. The supplies had been donated by Chinese businessmen. Washington has also intervened to prevent companies from selling ventilators to Cuba.

The White House is working hard to dissuade countries from calling on Cuba for medical services. It is preparing new legislation that will allow it to impose sanctions on countries that do so. It understands that this is a strategic sector of the Cuban economy, since the sale of medical services represents 75 per cent of Cuba’s foreign exchange earnings. Despite the US pressure, Cuba’s health brigades are present in more than 60 nations, and that number continues to grow. For example, the United Arab Emirates has just requested permanent healthcare assistance from Cuba.

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The Tests: Covid-19 and the Benign Common Cold Coronavirus. Can They be Distinguished?

By Dr. Christian Drosten and Dr. Gary G. Kohls, July 15,

Some virologists are now saying that there are people who have become immune to Covid-19, and that this “unnoticed” immunity is attributable to the (comparatively harmless) coronavirus related to the common cold, which they have had in the past.

Warnings of Possible Cover-Up in Progress as Trump Orders Hospitals to Stop Sending Coronavirus Data to CDC

By Jake Johnson, July 15, 2020

Public health experts are warning that coronavirus statistics will soon be newly vulnerable to political manipulation after the Trump administration ordered hospitals to send Covid-19 patient data directly to a Department of Health and Human Services system rather than the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which usually receives the information and releases it to the public.

US Sanctions Are Part of a Multi-front War on Syria, and Its Long-suffering Civilians Are the Main Target

By Eva Bartlett, July 15, 2020

On June 17, the US implemented the Caesar Act, America’s latest round of draconian sanctions against the Syrian people, to “protect” them, America claims. This, after years of bombing civilians and providing support to anti-government militants, leading to the proliferation of terrorists who kidnap, imprison, torture, maim, and murder the same Syrian civilians.

Profit Driven “Military Contracting” Camouflages Military Costs, Exacerbates Inequality

By Heidi Peltier, July 15, 2020

Military contracting was sold to the American people as a way to reduce the cost of military operations, yet the result has been quite the opposite. Recent research of mine has shown that rather than reduce costs, military contracting — or what I call the “Camo Economy” because it camouflages human and financial costs — has resulted in higher costs to taxpayers. It has also distorted labor markets and contributed to rising inequality, as military contractors earn excessive profits that enable them to pay their employees and particularly their top executives much more than their counterparts in the public sector and most other private sector jobs.

America, You’ve Been Blacklisted: McCarthyism Refashioned for a New Age

By John W. Whitehead, July 15, 2020

For those old enough to have lived through the McCarthy era, there is a whiff of something in the air that reeks of the heightened paranoia, finger-pointing, fear-mongering, totalitarian tactics that were hallmarks of the 1950s.

Back then, it was the government—spearheaded by Senator Joseph McCarthy and the House Un-American Activities Committee—working in tandem with private corporations and individuals to blacklist Americans suspected of being communist sympathizers.

US-Mexico Relations: The Outcome of the Trump-AMLO Meeting in Washington?

By Nino Pagliccia, July 14, 2020

Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador (AMLO) has ended his trip to Washington that was intended to celebrate with the signing of a joint declaration pertaining to the new United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA) that took effect last July 1. Canada’s Prime Minister Justin Trudeau was the only leader of the three who was absent.

Iran, Coronavirus and U.S. Sanctions

By Robert Fantina, July 14, 2020

In 2018, the United States, under the confused and confusing leadership of the bizarre Donald Trump, violated domestic and international law by withdrawing from the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action. This was an agreement made with Iran and China, France, Russia, the United Kingdom, the United States, Germany and the European Union that regulated Iran’s nuclear program in exchange for the lifting of sanctions against that country. Among the provisions of the agreement were regular inspections of Iranian nuclear development sites by the United Nations, and the U.S. Congress had to certify to the president, every six months, that Iran was in compliance.  On January 16, 2016, the agreement went into effect, and sanctions against Iran were lifted.

Lockdowns: Essential to the Master Plan

By Renee Parsons, July 14, 2020

In early 2020, Neil Ferguson of the UK’s Imperial College used a scare tactic to predict that 80% of Americans would be infected and that there would be 2.2 million American deaths – neither of which materialized.   Yet Ferguson’s extremism accomplished its intended purpose in establishing the basis for draconian Lockdown requirements.  Ferguson later retracted his earlier prediction down to 20,000 fatalities.

Vaccine Choice Canada, a not-for-profit society founded by families who have suffered from vaccine reactions and injuries, is suing Trudeau’s Liberal Government along with Ford’s Government of Ontario to hold them “accountable” for their “overreach and the draconian and unjustifiable measures taken in response to COVID-19.”

“The mass and indiscriminate containment of citizens, the restriction of access to parliament, the courts, medical and educational services, the destruction of local economies and livelihoods, and the requirement to physically distance, along with the forced use of non-medical masking are extraordinary measures that have never before been imposed on the citizens of Canada,” the group stated in a press release.

“The impact of these aberrant measures on our physical, emotional, psychological, social and economic well-being is profoundly destructive and these actions are unsustainable, unwarranted, extreme and unconstitutional.”

In a press release sent out Thursday, Vaccine Choice Canada (VCC) announced that they filed legal action in the Ontario Superior Court against “multiple parties” for their actions “with respect to COVID-19 measures.” The parities also include, among others, the Municipality of Toronto, various public health officers, and the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation.

The VCC Statement of Claim lists the defendants as Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, Ontario Premier Doug Ford, Canada’s Chief Medical Officer Dr. Theresa Tam, Transport Minister Marc Garneau, Ontario Ministers Christine Elliot (Health) and Stephen Lecce (Education), Toronto Mayor John Tory, and Ontario’s Chief Medical Officer Dr. David Williams.

The lawsuit also lists as defendants Toronto’s chief medical officer Dr. Eileen De Villa, the County of Wellington-Dufferin-Guelph and their chief medical officer, and Windsor Essex County and their chief medical officer, and the state-funded Canadian broadcaster, the CBC.

The VCC suit lists multiple plaintiffs which include nurses and citizens who argue that the COVID-19 lockdown measures have negatively affected them in both mental and physical health.

In addition to seeking to be paid for the cost of the lawsuit, the VCC is seeking that the defendants do not force any mandatory COVID-19 vaccine on Canadians as it would violate one’s rights under the Canadian constitution.

The VCC is also asking for a declaration that face masks not be mandated, that social distancing measures be retracted as they are “extreme,” and that the closures of churches, schools, and playgrounds were unwarranted and “scientifically” not valid.

The VCC is also seeking $1 million in general and $10 million in punitive damages from the CBC for spreading “misinformation” and “false news” about COVID-19.

In their Statement of Claim summary, the VCC claims that the entire COVID-19 was a “pre-planned” and “false pandemic” perpetrated by the World Health Organization, Bill Gates, and other “Billionaire Oligarchs,” to install a “New World (Economic) Order” with the aim of control and putting wealth in the hands of a few.

They are also claiming that Trudeau’s shutting down of parliament and Ford’s declaration of provincial emergencies was not warranted. The VCC states that the lockdown measures put in place have no basis in scientific fact and therefore, contravene sections of the charter.

In their press release, the VCC states that “during times of emergency,” Canadians’ Constitutional rights “do not stop being important” but rather “become even more important.”

The VCC press release says that Toronto lawyer, Rocco Galati, will serve as their legal counsel.

LifeSiteNews reached out to Ted Kuntz, president of VCC, to ask him about the lawsuit.

Kuntz responded by saying that although they recognize governments can enact laws that limit constitutional rights, it’s up to them to prove that the limits are needed.

“We recognize that governments may enact laws and pursue policies that limit Constitutional rights and freedoms, but the onus is on the government to prove that the limit is minimal, necessary, finite, and demonstrably justifiable in a free and democratic society,” Kuntz told LifeSiteNews.

VCC held a press conference Thursday at their legal counsel’s office in Toronto. Kuntz told LifeSiteNews that it is “telling that none of the mainstream media attended the press conference.”

In their news release, VCC says that they have made “numerous formal requests of the Government of Canada and various provincial governments” to provide them with evidence that justifies the COVID-19 measures taken, but they have gone unanswered

“An over-hyped COVID-19 pandemic narrative is being utilized to create unnecessary panic and to justify the systemic violation of the rights and freedoms that form the basis of our society, including our Constitutional rights, sovereignty, privacy, rule of law, financial security, and even our very democracy,” states the VCC news release.

The VCC says that there are many “recognized global health and research experts” who have given a valid criticism of “government overreach and the draconian and unjustifiable measures taken in response to COVID-19.”

“The warning bells are being rung about the dire consequences of these unwarranted, irresponsible, and extreme actions that are in violation of the rights and freedoms well established in Canadian and international law. All this continues to fall on the deaf ears of governments,” states the VCC news release.

VCC has been a vocal opponent of government responses to the coronavirus crisis and has a page dedicated to the virus on their website

Recently, the VCC heavily opposed a controversial New Brunswick bill that would have mandated kids to be vaccinated to attend public schools.

The bill was defeated, as lawmakers rejected removing “non-medical” religious and philosophical vaccine exemptions from existing law.

In May, Kuntz told LifeSiteNews that any type of forced vaccination, including a COVID-19 vaccine, is “morally repugnant” and unconstitutional after being asked about Health Canada approving human trial testing of a coronavirus vaccine derived from an aborted fetal cell line.

“The decision by Health Canada to approve human trial testing for a SARS-CoV-2 vaccine should concern us all,” Kuntz told LifeSiteNews.

“Bypassing standard and prudent safety protocols and rushing a vaccine to market not only increases the risk of producing a product that will cause more harm than good, it has the very real potential to severely undermine trust in our health professionals, our health agencies, and in the entire vaccine paradigm.”

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As I have told my friends for many years, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) is incapable of helping nations grow their economies. I do not believe the IMF can point to any success story, where its policies led to improving the standard of living of the population. Their macro-monetarist ideology fails to understand the essential driver of real (not monetary) growth. Following IMF prescriptions usually results in more suffering for the victim nation.  For a more in depth analysis read my article from last year: Africa Needs Real Economic Growth, Not IMF Accountants.

The report cited by the ActionAid and Public Service International highlights the failure of the IMF:  IMF Told Countries Facing Critical Health Worker Shortages to Cut Public Sector Wages. The statistics are revealing, but should not be shocking to those of us who study physical economics. Throughout its history we have seen the IMF insist on cuts to meet to macro-economic goal at the expense of the population. This report clearly pinpoints the effects of tying loans to cuts back in healthcare. Africa was suffering from an acute shortage of healthcare workers before the COVID-19 pandemic. Sub-Saharan Africa has the fewest physicians per 1,000 population and the lowest number of hospital beds per 1,000 population.

It was pointed out by Ethiopian Prime Minister, Abiy Ahmed, earlier this year, that payments of debt service equaled or surpassed the amount of money nations spent on healthcare. He wrote “In 2019, 64 countries, nearly half of them in sub-Saharan Africa, spent more on servicing external debt than on health. Ethiopia spends twice as much on paying off external debt as on health.

African nations, or any country for that matter, should not be subjected to this kind of treatment. Human life is real and precious. Debt is merely a financial accounting mechanism. There is no equivalence.

The COVID-19 pandemic has revealed the failure of the world globalized financial system, which has been become decoupled from the real economy. Genuine economic growth uses credit to promote human life. President Franklin Roosevelt’s Bretton Woods system, in its perverted form, came to an end on August 15, 1971. For the last fifty years, the City of London-Wall Street centered financial system has become more corrupt each decade, serving the interest of a tiny few. Now is the time to launch a New Bretton Woods, dedicated to improve the conditions of life for all people of all nations. I will be writing more on this subject in the future.

Below are excerpts from the cited report:

Read the full report: IMF Told Countries Facing Critical Health Worker Shortages to Cut Public Sector Wages

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This article was originally published on the author’s blog site, Africa and the World.

Lawrence Freeman is a Political-Economic Analyst for Africa, who has been involved in the economic development policy of Africa for 30 years. He is the creator of the blog: lawrencefreemanafricaandtheworld.com

Featured image is from Africa and the World

Public health experts are warning that coronavirus statistics will soon be newly vulnerable to political manipulation after the Trump administration ordered hospitals to send Covid-19 patient data directly to a Department of Health and Human Services system rather than the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which usually receives the information and releases it to the public.

The New York Times reported Tuesday that the HHS database now positioned to collect daily Covid-19 information from hospitals “is not open to the public, which could affect the work of scores of researchers, modelers, and health officials who rely on CDC data to make projections and crucial decisions.”

“Health and Human Services said that going forward, hospitals should report detailed information on a daily basis directly to the new centralized system, which is managed by TeleTracking, a health data firm with headquarters in Pittsburgh,” the Times noted.

The administration’s new directive came in the form of a document (pdf) quietly posted online last week by HHS, an agency headed by former pharmaceutical executive and Trump appointee Alex Azar.

“As of July 15, 2020, hospitals should no longer report the Covid-19 information in this document to the National Healthcare Safety Network site,” the directive states, referring to the CDC’s data-gathering system.

Dr. Nicole Lurie, who served in former President Barack Obama’s HHS, told the Times that “centralizing control of all data under the umbrella of an inherently political apparatus is dangerous and breeds distrust.”

“It appears to cut off the ability of agencies like CDC to do its basic job,” said Lurie.

HHS spokesperson Michael Caputo confirmed in a statement to NBC News that the CDC will “no longer control” coronavirus data collection but said the agency will still participate in the process.

Trump has been insistently announcing for weeks he wants to cover up the scale of the epidemic by slowing down testing. https://t.co/ygxrMmbY9H

— Chris Hayes (@chrislhayes) July 14, 2020

While administration officials portrayed the order as part of an attempt to streamline data-collection efforts, health experts were alarmed by the move given President Donald Trump‘s public attacks on the CDC and his complaints about how the recent surge in coronavirus cases “makes us look bad.”

“Speechless—Trump White House is now muzzling, bypassing, and kneecapping the CDC,” tweeted epidemiologist Dr. Eric Feigl-Ding. “No other ways to spin this.”

Dr. Leana Wen, a visiting professor at the Milken Institute School of Public Health at George Washington University, said in an interview on MSNBC late Tuesday that the decision to cut the CDC off from crucial Covid-19 patient data could undermine the U.S. response to the pandemic as infections surge across the nation.

“The CDC is supposed to analyze the data coming from different regions of the country,” said Wen. “I’m really deeply concerned about what we’ve seen with the attacks on science and public health in recent days, because public health hinges on public trust. And when politicians—including the top public official, the elected official of our country, President Trump—start attacking public health, it really undermines of all of local, state, and federal response to this pandemic.”

While many governments suppress the virus, the U.S. suppresses information about the virus. https://t.co/Ai6tyW8zIP

— James Hamblin (@jameshamblin) July 14, 2020

The administration’s order came just hours after four former CDC directors wrote in a Washington Post op-ed Tuesday that “no president ever politicized [the CDC’s] science the way Trump has.”

“Trying to fight this pandemic while subverting scientific expertise is like fighting blindfolded,” wrote Tom Frieden, Jeffrey Koplan, David Satcher, and Richard Besser. “It is not too late to give the CDC its proper role in guiding this response. But the clock is ticking.”

In a column for Esquire Tuesday, Charles Pierce urged hospitals to ignore the Trump administration’s directive and “send the data to the CDC anyway.”

“It’s time for hundreds of little rebellions,” Pierce wrote.

From Common Dreams: Our work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 License. Feel free to republish and share widely.

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Featured image is from Morning Star

“Two ancient Asian cultures, two partners in the sectors of trade, economy, politics, culture and security with a similar outlook and many mutual bilateral and multilateral interests will consider one another strategic partners” – these were the opening words of an 18-page document that confirmed a multi-billion dollar deal between China and Iran that blatantly defies U.S. imposed sanctions against the Islamic Republic.

According to The New York Times, the agreement that Iran and China drafted is an economic and security partnership that would allow China to invest in Iran’s banking, telecommunications, ports, railways and dozens of other projects, “undercutting the Trump administration’s efforts to isolate the Iranian government because of its nuclear and military ambitions.”

In Tehran’s view, China and Iran are long-standing strategic partners who are now reinforcing their strategies on the international stage to oppose U.S. unilateralism. Both countries had already agreed on a strategic partnership in 2016, but this latest agreement allows Iran’s economy to have a semblance of normalcy with this flurry of desperately needed investments.

The New York Times claims that the military ties include “joint training and exercises, joint research and weapons development and intelligence sharing” to fight “the lopsided battle with terrorism, drug and human trafficking and cross-border crimes.”

Effectively, the agreement between the two countries “represents a major blow to the Trump administration’s aggressive policy toward Iran.” The agreement is expected to guarantee the supply of Iranian oil to China for the next 25 years, which undoubtedly benefits both parties as the U.S. intends to completely block Iranian crude exports to starve the country of foreign money.

The deal is a major win for China’s Belt and Road Initiative as Iran’s major new investments in transportation, rail, ports, energy, industry, commerce and services will improve China’s network in the region. Iran serves as a meeting point between South Asia, Central Asia, the Caucasus and the Middle East, making it one of the most important countries for the Belt and Road Initiative. The agreement secures the supply of oil and gas to China with an overland route that gives another option away from Southeast Asian waterways, especially at a time when hostilities between China and the U.S. in the South China Sea are increasing.

The deal will see $400 billion worth of Chinese investments into Iran’s infrastructure, including upgrades in the oil industry and the construction of a 900-kilometer railway between Tehran and Mashhad, the second city of Iran and a center of pilgrimage near the borders with Afghanistan and Turkmenistan. Not only will this railway line connect two of Iran’s most important cities, but as its on the doorstep of Central Asia, it will give both China and Iran greater access into Eurasia.

Zbigniew Brzezinski argued in his book The Grand Chessboard that Central Asia was the center of global power and that it was imperative that no power, indirectly referring to Russia and China, should arise that could challenge U.S. dominance in the region. If something like this happened, the global power of the U.S. would erode. Halford John Mackinder argued in his 1904 article, The Geographical Pivot of History, that whoever ruled the “Heartland,” ruled the world. He defined the Heartland as the great Eurasian expanse of Siberia and Central Asia.

Iran is certainly a major gateway into Central Asia, and China’s enormous investment into the Islamic Republic shows that it is making a strong push to control the region. In accordance to Brzezinski’s and Mackinder’s theories, by China being the major influencer in Central Asia, it is making a strong push to control the entire region and/or world. Although Russia is another major power with vast influence in Central Asia, their relationship with China in the region can be considered cooperative at best or friendly rivals at worst. However, both are making strong efforts to limit U.S. influence in the region.

Russia simply cannot economically challenge China in the region, but due to the long history of the Russian Empire and Soviet Union controlling the region, it still has large influence for historical reasons that also includes a significant Russian minority and Russian being the second language of Central Asia. Although Russia deals with Iran, it does not have the capabilities of investing hundreds of billions into the country, meaning that the Islamic Republic will certainly come under much stronger Chinese influence, and there is not much the U.S. can do to stop it.

“The United States will continue to impose costs on Chinese companies that aid Iran, the world’s largest state sponsor of terrorism,” a State Department spokeswoman wrote in response to questions about the draft agreement. “By allowing or encouraging Chinese companies to conduct sanctionable activities with the Iranian regime, the Chinese government is undermining its own stated goal of promoting stability and peace.”

It appears the U.S. will penalize Chinese companies dealing with Iran, but China would have anticipated this. How Beijing plans to deal with such penalizations that can unravel a worsening of already tense relations with the U.S. remains to be seen, but China certainly would have prepared for such a scenario. Despite some harsh words from the State Department, it is highly unlikely that Washington can respond to this immense deal that will give the beleaguered Iranian economy and currency a major lifeline. The deal will also encourage other states wary of U.S. sanctions to begin dealing with Iran again knowing that they can have Chinese support and backing.

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This article was originally published on InfoBrics.

Paul Antonopoulos is an independent geopolitical analyst.

Featured image is from InfoBrics

The US is waging multiple fronts of war against Syria, including brutal sanctions, while claiming concern over the wellbeing of Syrian civilians – the vast majority of whom are suffering as a direct result of US policies.

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We know that wearing a mask outside health care facilities offers little, if any, protection from infection. — The New England Journal of Medicine, May 21, 2020

(T)hey told us exactly what was coming, and advised us to shut up and follow orders. Tragically, most people have done just that. — CJ Hopkins, 2020

It’s difficult to imagine a crueler attack on the human family than the insidious prevention of person-to-person contact.

What amounts to house arrest, plus enforced wearing of masks, plus the order to stay a body length from others, has the stated aim of preventing contagion, but as philosopher Giogio Agamben put it recently, “It is political contagion, let it be understood”. He’s correct. The contagion that must be checked is not viral but political. The triad of official mandates hinders communication that cannot be monitored. If online, unauthorized political discourse and strategy can be recorded for the individual’s dossier. In the street not so, at least not yet.

In 1933, Hitler suspended the Weimar Constitution following the Reichstag fire. Citizens rights under that Constitution were abolished and never reinstated.

A similar drama continues to play out in the United States since the 9/11 attack, which resulted in the Patriot Act (of ironic title) that trashes the U.S. Constitution, resulting in free rein for the nation’s intelligence organizations in concert with the social media giants. The First Amendment is being negated according to someone’s definition of “hate speech” or “community standards”, with entire sites of information and opinion being “deplatformed”. The Fourth Amendment is a hollow lie in that each citizen’s every act is recorded toward that planned-for day in which all activities are digitally recorded, and woe betide creative souls who offend the rules.

The lockdown was never really about a pandemic. Covid19 was just the pretext. Bill Gates himself admitted (in an unguarded moment?) that earlier SARS and MERS were more “fatal,” i.e., more lethal, than Covid19, yet they came and went without crashing the economy. But more than just the economy, it was day-to-day existence as we all live it that was a prime target of the lockdown. Ending the lockdown tomorrow would not counter the damage already done. We’ve been psychologically mauled, and there’s no end in sight. Warnings of “spikes” and of future waves come daily. Yes, countless jobs and businesses are being lost, but it is the devastating psychological impact that permeates society throughout that is inescapable. The emotional and spiritual damage will not be healing anytime soon. As intended, we are disoriented and will be for decades as the “conspiring internationalists”, so-called by David Rockefeller, prepare us for a life according to their globalist design.

The cloth masks seen everywhere now are symbolic. However useful in stopping airborne droplets, they do not hinder the passage of viruses, made clear by the warning on a box of the type of mask commonly seen. The media’s favorite expert, Anthony Fauci, stated flatly on CBS 60 Minutes in March that “There’s no reason to be walking around with a mask”. Two months later, as lockdown demands intensified, his stance shifted to the mask as “a symbol for people to see”. Review articles indicating that masks are ineffective, or even counterproductive, rarely make it to mainstream viewers, or they are simply disappeared. But symbol the mask certainly is — a symbol of subjugation.

Living fully and free carries a normal level of risk. In addition to assorted germs and parasites that are a part of nature, there are lightning strikes, auto collisions, falling down stairs and being victimized by criminals — primarily elements within our governing structures. We are being conned with a manufactured terror campaign by a power bloc that considers the bulk of ordinary society a herd to be manipulated. The many who understand this, but who nevertheless wear a mask simply to conform to what they assume to be majority agreement, are allowing themselves to become part of the con. Take the damned thing off! Breathe free!

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Bill Willers is an emeritus professor of biology, University of Wisconsin at Oshkosh. He is founder of the Superior Wilderness Action Network and editor of Learning to Listen to the Land, and Unmanaged Landscapes, both from Island Press. He can be contacted at [email protected]. Read other articles by Bill.

Military contracting was sold to the American people as a way to reduce the cost of military operations, yet the result has been quite the opposite. Recent research of mine has shown that rather than reduce costs, military contracting — or what I call the “Camo Economy” because it camouflages human and financial costs — has resulted in higher costs to taxpayers. It has also distorted labor markets and contributed to rising inequality, as military contractors earn excessive profits that enable them to pay their employees and particularly their top executives much more than their counterparts in the public sector and most other private sector jobs.

In 2019, $370 billion — more than half of all Department of Defense (DOD) spending — went to contractors. While contracting is sometimes called “privatization,” I think this is an inaccurate description, since military contracting serves a public purpose and uses public funds, while contractors earn profits at the taxpayer’s expense and are often not subject to the competitive pressures of private markets.

Many contractors operate more as monopolies than as competitive firms. Last year, 45 percent of DOD contracts were classified as “non-competitive.” And even among competitive contracts, many of these are “cost-type” contracts, which means that the firm will be reimbursed all its reasonable costs, and therefore has no incentive to reduce costs as competitive, non-monopolistic firms would. Additionally, firms such as Lockheed Martin have created monopolies for themselves by selling weapons systems (like the F-35 fighter aircraft) and other equipment to the DOD that come with “lifetime service agreements” in which only Lockheed can service the equipment.

Military contractors, then, act more as commercial monopolies than as competitive private firms. And using their monopoly powers they are able to earn excessive profits. In 2018, Lockheed Martin Corporation earned $8 billion in profits. About 85 percent of their business was government contracts.

High profits allow military contractors to pay high wages, which contributes to rising inequality. While the average wage across all occupations in the U.S. last year was about $53,000, at Lockheed Martin the average wage was about $115,000, over twice as much. KBR, a contractor that provides various services in the Middle East, had an average wage of $104,000, nearly twice the national average. The CEO of Lockheed earned nearly $2 million in base pay, well above the national average of $193,000 for CEOs; once we include stock options and other compensation, however, Lockheed’s CEO earnings shoot up to over $24 million.

The Camo Economy has made war more politically palatable by camouflaging its various costs. Contractors now outnumber troops in the Central Command (CENTCOM) region that includes Iraq and Afghanistan, 53,000 to 35,000. Deaths of U.S. contractors since September 2001 are approximately 8,000, compared to 7,000 troops. Yet contractors receive neither the public recognition nor the honor of serving abroad, despite the increased risks they face. The Camo Economy is politically useful, as the White House can claim troop reductions while at the same time increasing U.S. presence abroad by relying more heavily on contractors.

The financial costs of military contracting are also opaque. While we know some top-line numbers, we know very few details about where our tax dollars go once they are paid out to contractors. We do know that contracting is more expensive, as contractors have limited incentives to reduce costs and they build profits into their contract agreements. As contractors then use sub-contractors, who also build in profits, there can be multiple layers of guaranteed profits built into a contract between the sub-contractors performing the work and DOD paying the prime contractor. Add in the waste, fraud, and abuse in addition to the excessive profits, and the costs to government quickly balloon.

It will not be easy to reform the Camo Economy. Firms such as Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman, and Raytheon each spent about $13 million on lobbying last year. Political connections operate alongside high profits and paychecks to keep the Camo Economy entrenched and growing. But reforms can be made. Reducing the size of the military budget is a vital first step. The National Priorities Project at the Institute for Policy Studies has detailed various ways to do this.

Next, the portion of military spending that is paid to contractors should be reduced and some services should be brought back in-house, including those on and near the battlefield. And third, the contracting process itself should be reformed, so that more contracts are legitimately competitive and create incentives for firms to reduce costs.

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Heidi Peltier is Director of “20 Years of War,” a Costs of War initiative based at Boston University’s Pardee Center for the Study of the Longer-Range Future. She is also a board member of the Institute for Policy Studies.

Featured image: Credits:360b/Shutterstock By Fabian Res /Flickr; F-16 drops MK82 bombs (USAF photo); Child victim of attack in which MK82 bomb built by Lockheed Martin was dropped on his school bus Aug. 9, 2018. (VOA/Screengrab)

Saudi Arabia has become a hostage of its own military campaign in Yemen. The Kingdom suffers from both its own inability to achieve a military victory in the conflict and regular losses from the retaliatory actions of the Houthis. At the same time, the Saudi leadership has no opportunity to withdraw from the conflict and abandon its proxies there because this will undermine its already shaky position in the region and cause a wide-scale political crisis inside Saudi Arabia itself. The impact from such a crisis will be especially devastating.

Over the past years, the Kingdom has been passing through turbulent times due to the economy slowing down and the acute struggle for power within the Saudi elites. In 2020, with the global economic crisis and the COVID-19 outbreak, the situation inside Saudi Arabia became even more complicated.

On July 13, the Houthis announced that they had conducted a new combined missile and drone strike on targets inside the Kingdom. According to Brigadier General Yahya Sari, a spokesman for the Armed Forces of the Houthi government, the strikes hit the following targets:

• positions of US-made Patriot missile systems, warplanes’ shelters and the housing complex for pilots at Khamis Mushait;
• military sections of Abha, Jizan and Najran airports;
• the oil infrastructure in Jizan.

Additionally, Brigadier General Sari said that missiles and drones hit the Saudi-operated Tadawin camp in the Yemeni province of Marib during the meeting between Saudi officers and leaders of Saudi-backed forces. Dozens of members of Saudi-led forces were killed and injured in the attack, according to Brigadier General Sari.

The Houthis warned that they will continue their strikes on Saudi Arabia utill the end of the Saudi-led blockade of Yemen. This is the second Houthi strike on targets inside the Kingdom in less than a month. On June 23, Houthi forces launched missiles and drones at military targets near the Saudi capital of Riyadh.

Commenting on the July 13 incident, the Saudi military claimed that it had intercepted 8 “booby-trapped” drones and four ballistic missiles launched towards Saudi Arabia. The coalition often denies any losses or casualties as a result of Houthi strikes and works to censor data appearing through social media networks. However, results of the previous Houthi strikes and the success rate of Patriot missile systems deployed in Saudi Arabia are a sign that this statement may be an ordinary attempt to cover yet another military failure.

On July 1, Saudi Arabia announced the start of a new air bombing campaign to neutralize and destroy the offensive capabilities of the Houthis, first of all its missile and drone arsenal. Since then, multiple Saudi airstrikes have hit the provinces of Saada, Ma’rib, al-Jawf, Hajjah, al-Bayda as well as on the Yemeni capital of Sanaa. Many of the hit targets were located in urban areas. The Saudi coalition provided few details regarding the targets destroyed.

On July 2, Col. Turki al-Maliki, a spokesman for the coalition, declared that the first round of airstrikes destroyed ballistic missile and drone storage facilities, assembly workshops and communication stations of the Houthis. On July 3, the coalition announced that its warplanes had destroyed two booby-trapped boats 6km south of Salif Port in the province of al-Hudaydah.

The Houthis slammed Saudi claims as propaganda claiming that most of the bombed targets were civilian ones. In particular, Brigadier General Sari said the July 3 strike hit fishing boats and a salt factory. The July 13 strike on Saudi Arabia contributes to the version that the Saudi coalition at least overestimated results of its bombing campaign.

At the same time, the Houthis continued successful offensive operations against Saudi-backed forces in the provinces of Marib and al-Bayda.

In the current conditions, the further development of the conflict creates a real threat that the Kingdom’s leadership will not only loose the campaign in Yemen, but will struggle to deal with a Houthi offensive in the south of Saudi Arabia. Such a scenario may eventually lead to the collapse of the current Saudi regime.

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Introductory Note by Dr. Gary Kohls

It has long been known that benign coronavirus species are capable of causing 15 – 30 % of common colds [influenza] (usual symptoms: runny nose, cough, sore throat).

This reality was recently mentioned by a renowned virologist from Germany, in an interview where he also admitted that laboratory confirmation of COVID-19 is next to impossible given the high incidence of both false-positive “COVID-19” PCR swab tests and false positive “COVID-19”  serum antibody tests.

Apparently, neither test seems to be able to distinguish between the benign coronaviruses that can cause common colds and the more serious coronavirus that actually causes COVID-19!

Dr Fauci’s ignorance of (or his ”conflict of interest-generated” failure to reveal) that fact justified his oft-repeated assertions in his endless media rounds and White House press conferences prior to the ill-fated economic shut-down:

“I think we should be overly aggressive (even if we) get criticized for over-reacting. I think Americans should be prepared … to hunker down.”

Below is an interview with Dr Drosten made last month, in which he revealed that the benign coronavirus that causes the common cold cannot be differentiated by the COVID test kits, over 200 of which are currently in development by profiteering medical device companies.

Dr. Gary G. Kohls, July 14, 2020

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Translation from German by Global Research

Good news: Some virologists are now saying that there are people who have become immune to Covid-19, and that this “unnoticed” immunity is attributable to the (comparatively harmless) coronavirus related to the common cold [influenza], which they have had in the past. In the NDR podcast “Coronavirus Update” Dr. Christian Drosten explains what this new theory is all about.

“What this refers to is that there may be an unnoticed background immunity – due to the [common] cold coronaviruses, because they are related to the SARS CoV-2 virus in a certain way,” said the expert on Thursday.

The scientist had already spoken about the corona [common] cold viruses [influenza] last week. At the time, he pointed out that 15 percent of the [common] colds [flu, influenza]were caused by well-known corona viruses. And these are so similar to the current virus that they can even cause false positive antibody tests.

Incidentally, previous corona viruses have no influence on the PCR test, which is routinely used to test for Sars-CoV-2.

The important question now is: do these well-known corona viruses also become immune to the new virus? This is possible, the virologist continues:

“It could be that some people who had a cold virus a year or two ago are protected in an unprecedented way.”

Drosten reports on a preprint study from China that has just been published and in which households with infected people have been under close observation. The so-called “day rate”, the number of people who contracted infection, was very low. “That is 12, 13 percent,” said the scientist. “How can it be that so many who were in the house do not become infected? Does something like background immunity play a role in this?”

The underling concept [idea] is extremely obvious to virologists, even if there is “residual uncertainty”, Drosten said. In our current situation, this is comforting, but the lockdown was still necessary, he says.

In conclusion, Drosten says:

“In the current phase, even if you include the background immunity in models, the medical system and intensive care unit capacity would still be overloaded and it is therefore right to have taken these measures at the moment . “

Sars-CoV-2 is a new form of corona virus – a type of virus that causes flu-like infections. In most cases in Germany, the infection with the coronavirus is symptom-free to mild: you could experience a slight fever, sore throat and fatigue.

After that, the disease usually subsides.

The virus can become really dangerous, especially if you belong to a risk group: older people or those with previous illnesses (such as cancer or lung diseases) should contact their doctor if they suspect an infection.

Virologe Drosten: Warum eine Erkältung immun gegen Corona machen könnte

Eine tolle Nachricht: Einige Virologen gehen inzwischen davon aus, dass es Menschen gibt, die unbemerkt immun gegen Covid-19 wurden, weil sie in der Vergangenheit eine (vergleichsweise harmlose) Corona-Erkältung durchlaufen haben. Im NDR-Podcast “Coronavirus-Update” erklärt Christian Drosten, was es mit dieser neuen Theorie auf sich hat.

“Es ist durchaus so, dass wir damit rechnen, dass es möglicherweise eine unbemerkte Hintergrunds-Immunität gibt – durch die Erkältungscoronaviren. Denn die sind auf eine gewisse Art und Weise verwandt mit dem Sars-CoV-2-Virus”, so der Experte am Donnerstag.

Über die Corona-Erkältungsviren hatte der Wissenschaftler schon vergangene Woche gesprochen. Damals wies er darauf hin, dass 15 Prozent der Erkältungen durch altbekannte Coronaviren hervorgerufen würden. Und diese ähneln dem jetzigen Virus so stark, dass sie sogar falsch positive Antikörpertests hervorrufen können. Auf den PCR-Test, der üblicherweise angewandt wird, um auf Sars-CoV-2 zu testen, haben bisherige Coronaviren übrigens keinen Einfluss.

Die wichtige Frage ist nun: Machen diese altbekannten Coronaviren auch immun gegen das neuartige Virus? Das ist möglich, so der Virologe weiter:

“Es könnte sein, dass gewisse Personen, die einen Erkältungsvirus vor ein bis zwei Jahren hatten, auf eine bisher unbemerkte Art und Weise geschützt sind.”

Drosten berichtet von einer Preprint-Studie aus China, die gerade erst publiziert worden sei und in der Haushalte mit Infizierten intensiv beobachtet wurden. Dabei sei die sogenannte “Tag-Rate”, die Anzahl der Menschen, die sich bei Infizierten ansteckten, sehr niedrig gewesen. “Die liegt bei 12, 13 Prozent”, so der Wissenschaftler. “Wie kann das sein, dass sich so viele nicht infizieren, die mit im Haus waren? Spielt dabei so etwas wie Hintergrundimmunität eine Rolle?”

Der Gedanke sei für Virologen extrem naheliegend, auch wenn eine “Restunsicherheit” bleibt, so Drosten. In unserer jetzigen Situation ist das zwar tröstlich, der Lockdown sei dennoch nötig gewesen, sagt er.

Drosten sagt abschließend:

“In der jetzigen Phase ist es so, dass – selbst wenn man die (Hintergrundimmunität) in Modelle reinrechnet – das Medizinsystem und die Intensivstation-Kapazität immer noch überlastet wäre und darum ist es im Moment richtig, diese Maßnahmen gemacht zu haben.”

Sars-CoV-2 ist eine neue Form des Coronavirus – einem Virus-Typ, der grippeähnliche Infekte auslöst. In den allermeisten Fällen in Deutschland verläuft eine Ansteckung mit dem Coronavirus symptomfrei bis milde: Du könntest leichtes Fieber, Halsweh und Abgeschlagenheit erleben.

Danach klingt die Krankheit meist wieder ab. Wirklich gefährlich kann das Virus vor allem dann werden, wenn du zu einer Risikogruppe gehörst: Ältere Menschen oder solche mit Vorerkrankungen (wie Krebs oder Lungenkrankheiten) sollten im Falle eines Infektionsverdachts ihren Arzt kontaktieren.

 

…

 

“If we confuse dissent with disloyalty—if we deny the right of the individual to be wrong, unpopular, eccentric or unorthodox—if we deny the essence of racial equality then hundreds of millions in Asia and Africa who are shopping about for a new allegiance will conclude that we are concerned to defend a myth and our present privileged status. Every act that denies or limits the freedom of the individual in this country costs us the confidence of men and women who aspire to that freedom and independence of which we speak and for which our ancestors fought.”—Edward R. Murrow

For those old enough to have lived through the McCarthy era, there is a whiff of something in the air that reeks of the heightened paranoia, finger-pointing, fear-mongering, totalitarian tactics that were hallmarks of the 1950s.

Back then, it was the government—spearheaded by Senator Joseph McCarthy and the House Un-American Activities Committee—working in tandem with private corporations and individuals to blacklist Americans suspected of being communist sympathizers.

By the time the witch hunts carried out by federal and state investigative agencies drew to a close, thousands of individuals (the vast majority of them innocent any crime whatsoever) had been accused of communist ties, investigated, subpoenaed and blacklisted. Regarded as bad risks, the accused were blacklisted, and struggled to secure employment. The witch hunt ruined careers, resulting in suicides, and tightened immigration to exclude alleged subversives.

Seventy years later, the vitriol, fear-mongering and knee-jerk intolerance associated with McCarthy’s tactics are once again being deployed in a free-for-all attack by those on both the political Left and Right against anyone who, in daring to think for themselves, subscribes to ideas or beliefs that run counter to the government’s or mainstream thought.

It doesn’t even seem to matter what the issue is anymore (racism, Confederate monuments, Donald Trump, COVID-19, etc.): modern-day activists are busily tearing down monuments, demonizing historic figures, boycotting corporations for perceived political transgressions, and using their bully pulpit to terrorize the rest of the country into kowtowing to their demands.

All the while, the American police state continues to march inexorably forward.

This is how fascism, which silences all dissenting views, prevails.

The silence is becoming deafening.

Image on the right is from Bleacher Report

After years of fighting in and out of the courts to keep their 87-year-old name, the NFL’s Washington Redskins have bowed to public pressure and will change their name and team logo to avoid causing offense. The new name, not yet announced, aims to honor both the military and Native Americans.

Eleanor Holmes Norton, a delegate to the House of Representatives who supports the name change, believes the team’s move “reflects the present climate of intolerance to names, statues, figments of our past that are racist in nature or otherwise imply racism [and] are no longer tolerated.”

Present climate of intolerance, indeed.

Yet it wasn’t a heightened racial conscience that caused the Redskins to change their brand. It was the money. The team caved after its corporate sponsors including FedEx, PepsiCo, Nike and Bank of America threatened to pull their funding.

So much for that U.S. Supreme Court victory preventing the government from censoring trademarked names it considers distasteful or scandalous.

Who needs a government censor when the American people are already doing such a great job at censoring themselves and each other, right?

Now there’s a push underway to boycott Goya Foods after its CEO, Robert Unanue, praised President Trump during a press conference to announce Goya’s donation of a million cans of Goya chickpeas and a million other food products to American food banks as part of the president’s Hispanic Prosperity Initiative.

Mind you, Unanue—whose grandfather emigrated to the U.S. from Spain—also praised the Obamas when they were in office, but that kind of equanimity doesn’t carry much weight in this climate of intolerance.

Image below is from Britannica

Not to be outdone, the censors are also taking aim at To Kill a Mockingbird, Harper Lee’s Pulitzer Prize-winning novel about Atticus Finch, a white lawyer in the Jim Crow South who defends a black man falsely accused of rape. Sixty years after its debut, the book remains a powerful testament to moral courage in the face of racial bigotry and systemic injustice, told from the point of view of a child growing up in the South, but that’s not enough for the censors. They want to axe the book—along with The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn—from school reading curriculums because of the presence of racial slurs that could make students feel “humiliated or marginalized.”

Never mind that the N-word makes a regular appearance in hip-hop songs. The prevailing attitude seems to be that it’s okay to use the N-word as long as the person saying the word is not white. Rapper Kendrick Lamar “would like white America to let black people exclusively have the word.”

Talk about a double standard.

This is also the overlooked part of how oppression becomes systemic: it comes about as a result of a combined effort between the populace, the corporations and the government.

McCarthyism worked the same way.

What started with Joseph McCarthy’s headline-grabbing scare tactics in the 1950s about Communist infiltrators of American society snowballed into a devastating witch hunt once corporations and the American people caught the fever.

McCarthyism was a contagion, like the plague, spreading like wildfire among people too fearful or weak or gullible or paranoid or greedy or ambitious to denounce it for what it was: an opportunistic scare tactic engineered to make the government more powerful.

McCarthy, a young Republican senator, grasped the opportunity to make a name for himself by capitalizing on the Cold War paranoia of the time. In a speech in February 1950, McCarthy claimed to have a list of over 200 members of the Communist Party “working and shaping the policy of the U.S. State Department.” The speech was picked up by the Associated Press, without substantiating the facts, and within a few days the hysteria began.

McCarthy specialized in sensational and unsubstantiated accusations about Communist infiltration of the American government, particularly the State Department. He also targeted well-known Hollywood actors and directors, trade unionists and teachers. Many others were brought before the inquisitional House Committee on Un-American Activities for questioning.

“McCarthyism” eventually smeared all the accused with the same broad brush, whether the evidence was good, bad or nonexistent.

The parallels to the present movement cannot be understated.

Even now, with modern-day McCarthyism sweeping the nation and America’s own history being blacklisted, I have to wonder what this sudden outrage and crisis of conscience is really all about.

Certainly, anyone who believes that the injustices, cruelties and vicious callousness of the U.S. government are unique to the Trump Administration has not been paying attention.

No matter what the team colors might be at any given moment, the playbook remains the same. The leopard has not changed its spots.

Scrape off the surface layers and you will find that the American police state that is continuing to wreak havoc on the rights of the people under the Trump Administration is the same police state that wreaked havoc on the rights of the people under every previous administration.

So please spare me the media hysterics and the outrage and the hypocritical double standards of those whose moral conscience appears to be largely dictated by their political loyalties.

While we squabble over which side is winning this losing battle, a tsunami approaches.

While the populace wages war over past injustices, injustice in the here and now continues to trample innocent lives underfoot. Certainly, little of significance is being done to stem the tide of institutional racism that has resulted in disproportionate numbers of black Americans who continue to be stopped, frisked, shot at, arrested and jailed.

I’ve had enough of the short- and long-term amnesia that allows political sycophants to conveniently forget the duplicity, complicity and mendacity of their own party while casting blame on everyone else.

When you drill right down to the core of things, the policies of a Trump Administration have been no different from an Obama Administration or a Bush Administration, at least not where it really counts.

In other words, Democrats by any other name have been Republicans, and vice versa.

War has continued. Surveillance has continued. Drone killings have continued. Police shootings have continued. Highway robbery meted out by government officials has continued. Corrupt government has continued. Profit-driven prisons have continued. Censorship and persecution of anyone who criticizes the government have continued. The militarization of the police has continued. The devastating SWAT team raids have continued. The government’s efforts to label dissidents as extremists and terrorists has continued.

The more things change, the more they have stayed the same.

We’ve been stuck in this political Groundhog’s Day for so long that minor deviations appear to be major developments while obscuring the fact that we’re stuck on repeat, unable to see the forest for the trees.

This is what is referred to as creeping normality, or a death by a thousand cuts.

It’s a concept invoked by Pulitzer Prize-winning scientist Jared Diamond to describe how major changes, if implemented slowly in small stages over time, can be accepted as normal without the shock and resistance that might greet a sudden upheaval.

Diamond’s concerns related to Easter Island’s now-vanished civilization and the societal decline and environmental degradation that contributed to it, but it’s a powerful analogy for the steady erosion of our freedoms and decline of our country right under our noses.

As Diamond explains,

“In just a few centuries, the people of Easter Island wiped out their forest, drove their plants and animals to extinction, and saw their complex society spiral into chaos and cannibalism… Why didn’t they look around, realize what they were doing, and stop before it was too late? What were they thinking when they cut down the last palm tree?”

His answer:

“I suspect that the disaster happened not with a bang but with a whimper.”

Much like America’s own colonists, Easter Island’s early colonists discovered a new world—“a pristine paradise”—teeming with life. Yet almost 2000 years after its first settlers arrived, Easter Island was reduced to a barren graveyard by a populace so focused on their immediate needs that they failed to preserve paradise for future generations.

The same could be said of the America today: it, too, is being reduced to a barren graveyard by a populace so focused on their immediate needs that they are failing to preserve freedom for future generations.

In Easter Island’s case, as Diamond speculates:

The forest…vanished slowly, over decades. Perhaps war interrupted the moving teams; perhaps by the time the carvers had finished their work, the last rope snapped. In the meantime, any islander who tried to warn about the dangers of progressive deforestation would have been overridden by vested interests of carvers, bureaucrats, and chiefs, whose jobs depended on continued deforestation… The changes in forest cover from year to year would have been hard to detect… Only older people, recollecting their childhoods decades earlier, could have recognized a difference.Gradually trees became fewer, smaller, and less important. By the time the last fruit-bearing adult palm tree was cut, palms had long since ceased to be of economic significance. That left only smaller and smaller palm saplings to clear each year, along with other bushes and treelets. No one would have noticed the felling of the last small palm.”

Sound painfully familiar yet?

We’ve already torn down the rich forest of liberties established by our founders. It has vanished slowly, over the decades. Those who warned against the dangers posed by too many laws, invasive surveillance, militarized police, SWAT team raids and the like have been silenced and ignored. They stopped teaching about freedom in the schools. Few Americans know their history. And even fewer seem to care that their fellow Americans are being jailed, muzzled, shot, tasered, and treated as if they have no rights at all.

The erosion of our freedoms happened so incrementally, no one seemed to notice. Only the older generations, remembering what true freedom was like, recognized the difference. Gradually, the freedoms enjoyed by the citizenry became fewer, smaller and less important. By the time the last freedom falls, no one will know the difference.

This is how tyranny rises and freedom falls: with a thousand cuts, each one justified or ignored or shrugged over as inconsequential enough by itself to bother, but they add up.

Each cut, each attempt to undermine our freedoms, each loss of some critical right—to think freely, to assemble, to speak without fear of being shamed or censored, to raise our children as we see fit, to worship or not worship as our conscience dictates, to eat what we want and love who we want, to live as we want—they add up to an immeasurable failure on the part of each and every one of us to stop the descent down that slippery slope.

We are on that downward slope now.

The contagion of fear that McCarthy helped spread with the help of government agencies, corporations and the power elite is still poisoning the well, whitewashing our history, turning citizen against citizen, and stripping us of our rights.

What we desperately need is the kind of resolve embodied by Edward R. Murrow (image on the right from Britannica), the most-respected newsman of his day.

On March 9, 1954, Murrow dared to speak truth to power about the damage McCarthy was inflicting on the American people. His message remains a timely warning for our age.

We will not walk in fear, one of another. We will not be driven by fear into an age of unreason, if we dig deep in our history and our doctrine; and remember that we are not descended from fearful men. Not from men who feared to write, to speak, to associate, and to defend causes that were for the moment unpopular. This is no time for men who oppose Senator McCarthy’s methods to keep silent, or for those who approve. We can deny our heritage and our history, but we cannot escape responsibility for the result. There is no way for a citizen of a republic to abdicate his responsibilities. As a nation we have come into our full inheritance at a tender age. We proclaim ourselves, as indeed we are, the defenders of freedom, wherever it continues to exist in the world, but we cannot defend freedom abroad by deserting it at home. The actions of the junior Senator from Wisconsin have caused alarm and dismay amongst our allies abroad, and given considerable comfort to our enemies. And whose fault is that? Not really his. He didn’t create this situation of fear; he merely exploited it—and rather successfully. Cassius was right. ”The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars, but in ourselves.”

America is approaching another reckoning right now, one that will pit our commitment to freedom principles against a level of fear-mongering that is being used to wreak havoc on everything in its path.

The outcome rests, as always, with “we the people.” As Murrow said to his staff before the historic March 9 broadcast: “No one can terrorize a whole nation, unless we are all his accomplices.”

Take heed, America.

As I make clear in my book Battlefield America: The War on the American People, this may be your last warning.

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This article was originally published on The Rutherford Institute.

Constitutional attorney and author John W. Whitehead is founder and president of The Rutherford Institute. His new book Battlefield America: The War on the American People  is available at www.amazon.com. Whitehead can be contacted at [email protected]. He is a frequent contributor to Global Research.

Featured image is from Wikimedia Commons

On Friday, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan signed a decree changing the status of the Byzantine-era built Hagia Sophia from a museum to a mosque. The first Islamic service in the formerly Christian Orthodox Cathedral is scheduled for July 24 and a flurry of international condemnation has been heard. Greece of course has been the dominant voice in condemning the conversion, but UNESCO “deeply regrets” Turkey’s decision, France said Hagia Sophia should continue to represent “the diversity of religious heritage, dialogue and tolerance,” the World Council of Churches expressed “grief and dismay,” and Bishop Hilarion Alfeyev, the chairman of the Russian Orthodox Church’s Department of External Church Relations, said “it is a blow to global Christianity … For us [Hagia Sophia] remains a cathedral dedicated to the Saviour.”

Both Washington and Moscow however seem not too concerned. The U.S. State Department said that although it was “disappointed” with the decision, they understood that “the Turkish Government remains committed to maintaining access to the Hagia Sophia for all visitors, and look forward to hearing its plans for continued stewardship of the Hagia Sophia.” In Moscow, the chairman of the Foreign Affairs Committee of the upper house of the Russian parliament, Konstantin Kosachev, said “this will trigger an extremely negative response throughout the entire Christian world,” but Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov dismissed the issue as an “internal affair” of Turkey’s.

The question begs however, why after 18 years of ruling Turkey has Erdoğan only now decided to convert Hagia Sophia into a mosque.

Istanbul journalist and TELE 1 editor-in-chief Merdan Yanardağ said that Hagia Sophia’s change of status was a political manoeuvre.

“I do not think Turkey needs a new mosque. There are plenty of mosques in Istanbul and the existing mosques are not full even during Friday prayers,” said Yanardağ. “I believe that the desire to turn the Hagia Sophia into a mosque again is an effort to achieve narrow Islamist goals. The goal is to use people’s religious feelings.”

This certainly appears to be true, especially as many moderate Muslim associations and theologians have condemned the conversion of Hagia Sophia, while radical Islamic Republics like Iran and Pakistan, and terrorist organizations like Hamas and Jaish-e-Mohammed, celebrated it. There is a clear divide between moderate Muslims and radical Muslims, with moderate Muslims quoting Quranic verses that forbid the conversion of Christian sites into Islamic ones, while radical Muslims see the conversion as a right of conquest.

However, despite all the religious undertones and official reasoning, the conversion of Hagia Sophia is for purely political reasons. Turkey has a struggling economy, coronavirus is still out of control despite the official narrative, there are costly wars in Syria, Iraq and Libya, and there has been a significant decline in human rights. With all of this combined, Erdoğan’s popularity is rapidly declining. According to Metropoll, Erdoğan’s approval rating in March was 55.8%. It is not known what it currently is, but it surely would have significantly risen with the conversion of Hagia Sophia.

To improve his declining popularity, Erdoğan has used one of his major trump cards. Erdoğan has been in power for 18 years and always threatened to convert the Hagia Sophia. This however is not a move that he did lightly, and it was precisely only to be done in times of crisis for domestic consumption, appeasing both nationalists and Islamists.

Although Erdoğan might get an immediate spike of approval in Turkey with this move, it will not last long as the repercussions of the conversion will be strongly felt as the EU, through strong campaigning by France, Greece and Cyprus at yesterday’s EU Foreign Ministers meeting, may apply sanctions against Turkey if they do not reverse their conversion by August. The EU sanctions are likely to hit Turkey’s economy by specifically targeting its tourism and banking sectors, something that will greatly affect the Turkish lira and starve Turkey of desperately needed foreign currencies. Sanctions have not officially been placed yet, but tour companies are already cancelling their excursions to Turkey, depriving Turkey of precious foreign currencies at a time when Ankara is pleading to Germany and the EU to allow European travellers to go to Turkey this summer.

There is little doubt that the conversion of Hagia Sophia was for political reasons and domestic consumption to boost Erdoğan’s approval at a time when it is declining. But it will likely prove to be a short-term solution when the full affects of sanctions against Turkey’s economy is felt. The Turkish lira hit a record low on May 7, and it is likely when sanctions are placed the Turkish lira will hit a new record low that will see Erdoğan’s approval rating plunge, despite converting Hagia Sophia. The Hagia Sophia conversion was a short-term gain for Erdoğan that will have longstanding economic repercussions for Turkey and will work against him not only internationally, but also domestically.

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This article was originally published on InfoBrics.

Paul Antonopoulos is an independent geopolitical analyst.

Featured image is from InfoBrics

中国在国际舞台上日益增长的存在，对美国领导的世界秩序是一个不可否认的威胁。本世纪中国成为大国的关键，是其在中亚国家不断扩大的影响力。中亚地区矿产储量丰富，是地球上最具战略意义的地区之一。控制中亚可以确保获得石油或天然气等原材料，同时它又是抵御美国在更南边波斯湾霸权的 “前哨”。

中亚的面积比印度大得多，由五个国家组成，目前最大的是哈萨克斯坦，其次是土库曼斯坦、乌兹别克斯坦、吉尔吉斯斯坦和塔吉克斯坦。中亚人口稀少，总人口只有7000多万，这主要是因为中亚60%的土地是沙漠地带，但也有鲜为人知的高耸的山峰和广阔的无树草原。中亚北面和东面与俄罗斯和中国接壤，西面是高加索和里海，西南面不远处是能源丰富的中东地区。

 

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你可以点击下面的链接阅读整篇文章的英文版，也可以用手机翻译

China’s Growing Influence in Central Asia and the Middle East Will Lead to Further US Decline

By Shane Quinn, July 10, 2020

Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador (AMLO) has ended his trip to Washington that was intended to celebrate with the signing of a joint declaration pertaining to the new United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA) that took effect last July 1. Canada’s Prime Minister Justin Trudeau was the only leader of the three who was absent.

The author is not aware of any official invitation from president Trump to Trudeau. There has been a nudge from AMLO in a phone conversation to join him but it was not AMLO’s role to extend one. Trump does seem to have a reputation of preferring one-to-one meetings.

However, Trudeau may have not been in the mood for celebrations when the Trump administration is threatening to reimpose tariffs on aluminum imports from Canada despite the USMCA. The Prime Minister admitted to that when he announced he would not attend the meeting “citing tensions over possible U.S. tariffs on Canadian aluminum”. The concerns over the coronavirus pandemic that forced closing the Canada-U.S. border may have been overplayed since Canadian External Affairs François-Philippe Champagne did travel by car to New York in mid-June for the vote at the UN where Canada lost its bid to a seat at the UNSC.

But even with Canada absent there was plenty to analyse with the Trump-AMLO meeting from both sides of the border.

From Mexico’s standpoint

AMLO initially justified his visit, the first trip abroad during his presidency, as a good neighbourly action but he also added that U.S.-Mexico relationship is “also an indispensable commercial and economic relationship.” This is a very pragmatic approach coming from a president who was elected for his firm foreign policy position against a U.S. administration in defense of Mexican sovereignty promising that he would not be bullied by his Northern neighbour.

As if accepting the USMCA was not enough to show the “indispensable…relationship”, AMLO saw it necessary to give a more visible sign of acquiescence to Washington. Hence his seemingly ingratiating  trip via a commercial flight at a time of COVID-19 pandemic that is at its worst in the U.S. One wonders if his repeated “nudge” to Trudeau to join him was AMLO’s way not to be seen as the only compliant partner. Or, was he perhaps following Trump’s request to make an invitation that he knew would be refused? We will never know.

On the U.S.-Venezuela issue AMLO had said diplomatically that he would not take sides in the dispute, which might explain his lack of involvement in the so-called Lima Group that seeks a regime change in Venezuela. But he also stated that “he would sell gasoline to Venezuela for ‘humanitarian’ reasons if asked to, despite U.S. sanctions on the South American country and its state-run oil firm, PDVSA.” That kind of promise by other governments has typically received a very strong threatening reaction by the Trump administration. Consequently, some Mexican firms and people, allegedly involved in trading Venezuelan oil, were not the exception and were hit by U.S. extraterritorial sanctions less than three weeks before the trip. In an apparent obedient action the Mexican government’s financial crime department froze the bank accounts of companies and people that were blacklisted by the U.S.

On the domestic front AMLO had received criticism even before his visit to the White House. But it must have been very hard, and possibly incomprehensible, for many Latin Americans to hear a Latin American president say, “you have never sought to impose anything on us, violating our sovereignty. Instead of the Monroe Doctrine, you have followed in our case the wise advice of … prudent George Washington, who said, ‘Nations should not take advantage of the unfortunate condition of other peoples.’ You have not tried to treat us as a colony. On the contrary, you have honored our condition as an independent nation. That’s why I’m here, to express to the people of the United States that their president has behaved with us with kindness and respect.”

It must have been very hard, and possibly incomprehensible, for many Mexicans to hear their president addressing Trump during a joint press conference say, “We have received from you understanding and respect.” They may still remember Trump’s anti-immigrant policies and accusations against Mexicans as criminals and rapists. As if reassuring both Mexicans and Americans Lopez Obrador also said, “Some thought that our ideological differences would take us inevitably to a confrontation. Fortunately that omen did not happen.”  (The full transcript of the press conference can be read here). On a separate occasion he reiterated, “we are not fighting, we are friends.”

More ominously, AMLO has been confronting serious opposition at home with a movement that wants to oust him before the end of his term in 2024. A recent investigative reporting points at “far-right oligarchs” in Mexico bent at toppling AMLO and who would welcome U.S. help for doing that.

From the U.S. standpoint

While AMLO’s critics ponder whether his visit to the White House was timely before the U.S. presidential elections in November, in the U.S. the visit is a definite gain for Republicans and their candidate. The signing of the USMCA is by itself a major political score for Trump who had campaigned on the promise to re-write the previous NAFTA agreement. To have the president of Mexico come and sing praises in Trump’s ears is the proverbial icing on top of the cake; and the cherry on top of it all is AMLO’s not meeting with Democrat contender Joe Biden. However, not much should be read in the avoidance at meeting with him because regardless who will be elected in November, U.S. foreign policy will not substantially change.

Trump showed his gratitude to the president of Mexico by bestowing him with words of admiration both personally about their shared friendship “against all odds”, and for the “incredible” Mexican people.

Concluding thoughts

It is too early to judge the full consequences of the Trump-Lopez Obrador meeting in Washington given their respective domestic political realities. Relationships between governments are delicate as well. We may be having a glimpse of this delicate balance, albeit based on trade and not on ideology, even between two close friends like the U.S. and Canada, which prevented Trudeau from attending the USMCA celebration.

In geopolitical terms, relationships can also quickly change especially when Venezuela is currently the political force that can trigger the ire of the U.S. against any world government, but especially in the region, that will dare challenge U.S. dominance and hegemony in its “backyard” of which Mexico is considered to be part.

Both the U.S. and Mexico have a lot at stake. The U.S. is facing a contended election in November. and AMLO’s visit may help Trump’s odds. Mexico is facing a domestic rightwing opposition to progressive policies, and AMLO’s visit to Washington may defuse that perception by showing his close alliance with Washington. But at the same time he will have to maintain his core support from the majority of Mexicans. In diplomatic terms, both presidents may have gotten what they were looking for but the final gain will de decided at home.

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This article was originally published on OneWorld.

Nino Pagliccia is a frequent contributor to Global Research.

Mentre molte attività bloccate dal lockdown stentano a ripartire dopo l’allentamento delle restrizioni, ce n’è una che, non essendosi mai fermata, ora sta accelerando: quella di Camp Darby, il più grande arsenale Usa nel mondo fuori dalla madrepatria, situato tra Pisa e Livorno.

Completato il taglio di circa 1.000 alberi nell’area naturale «protetta» del Parco Regionale di San Rossore, è iniziata la costruzione di un tronco ferroviario che collegherà la linea Pisa-Livorno a un nuovo terminal di carico e scarico, attraversando il Canale dei Navicelli su un nuovo ponte metallico girevole. Il terminal, alto una ventina di metri, comprenderà quattro binari capaci di accogliere ciascuno nove vagoni.

Per mezzo di carrelli movimentatori di container, le armi in arrivo verranno trasferite dai carri ferroviari a grandi autocarri e quelle in partenza dagli autocarri ai carri ferroviari. Il terminal permetterà il transito di due convogli ferroviari al giorno che, trasportando carichi esplosivi, collegheranno la base al porto di Livorno attraverso zone densamente popolate. In seguito all’accresciuta movimentazione di armi, non basta più il collegamento via canale e via strada di Camp Darby col porto di Livorno e l’aeroporto di Pisa. Nei 125 bunker della base, continuamente riforniti dagli Stati uniti, è stoccato (secondo stime approssimative) oltre un milione di proiettili di artiglieria, bombe per aerei e missili, cui si aggiungono migliaia di carrarmati, veicoli e altri materiali militari.

Dal 2017 nuove grandi navi, capaci di trasportare ciascuna oltre 6.000 veicoli e carichi su ruote,  fanno mensilmente scalo a Livorno, scaricando e caricando armi che vengono trasportate nei porti di Aqaba in Giordania, Gedda in Arabia Saudita e altri scali mediorientali per essere usate dalle forze statunitesi, saudite e altre nelle guerre in Siria, Iraq e Yemen.

Proprio mentre è in corso il potenziamento di Camp Darby, il più grande arsenale Usa all’estero, una testata toscana online titola «C’era una volta Camp Darby», spiegando che «la base è stata ridimensionata, per i tagli alla Difesa decisi dai governi Usa». e il quotidiano Il Tirreno annuncia «Camp Darby, sventola solo il tricolore: ammainata dopo quasi 70 anni la bandiera Usa». Il Pentagono sta chiudendo la base, restituendo all’Italia il territorio su cui è stata creata? Tutt’altro.

Lo US Army ha concesso al Ministero italiano della Difesa una porzioncina della base (34 ettari, circa il 3% dell’intera area di 1.000 ha) prima adibita ad area ricreativa, perché vi fosse trasferito il Comando delle forze speciali dell’esercito italiano (Comfose), inizialmente ospitato nella caserma Gamerra di Pisa, sede del Centro addestramento paracadutismo (il manifesto, 5 marzo 2019).

Il trasferimento è avvenuto silenziosamente durante il lockdown e ora il Comfose annuncia che il suo quartier generale è situato nel «nuovo comprensorio militare», di fatto annesso a Camp Darby, base in cui si svolgono da tempo       addestramenti congiunti di militari statunitensi e italiani. Il trasferimento del Comfose in un’area annessa a Camp Darby, formalmente sotto bandiera italiana, permette di integrare a tutti gli effetti le forze speciali italiane con quelle statunitensi, impiegandole in operazioni coperte sotto comando Usa. Il tutto sotto la cappa del segreto militare.

Visitando il nuovo quartier generale del Comfose, il ministro della Difesa Lorenzo Guerini lo ha definito «centro nevralgico» non solo delle Forze speciali ma anche delle «Unità Psyops dell’Esercito».  Compito di tali unità è «creare il consenso della popolazione locale nei confronti dei contingenti militari impiegati in missioni di pace all’estero», ossia convincerla che gli invasori sono missionari di pace.

Il ministro Guerini ha infine indicato il nuovo quartier generale quale modello del progetto «Caserme Verdi». Un modello di «benessere ed ecosostenibilità», che poggia su un milione di testate esplosive.

Manlio Dinucci

In 2018, the United States, under the confused and confusing leadership of the bizarre Donald Trump, violated domestic and international law by withdrawing from the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action. This was an agreement made with Iran and China, France, Russia, the United Kingdom, the United States, Germany and the European Union that regulated Iran’s nuclear program in exchange for the lifting of sanctions against that country. Among the provisions of the agreement were regular inspections of Iranian nuclear development sites by the United Nations, and the U.S. Congress had to certify to the president, every six months, that Iran was in compliance.  On January 16, 2016, the agreement went into effect, and sanctions against Iran were lifted.

Most of the world community praised the agreement, with the only notable exceptions being the apartheid regime of Israel, which considers Iran a threat to its regional hegemony, and Saudi Arabia, which also considers Iran a rival. Additionally, the Republican members of the U.S. House of Representatives and the Senate also opposed it, due mainly to their obligations to pro-Israel lobbies who help to finance their re-election campaigns. Those lobbies also financed the campaigns of Democrats, but since the JCPOA was brokered at least in part by the Democratic President Barack Obama, they were willing to displease their Israeli allies to orchestrate what they saw as a ‘win’ for Obama.

The following January, Trump, who described the JCPOA as the ‘worst deal ever’, became president, following his popular-vote loss to the odious Hillary Clinton: the bizarre electoral college installed a minority-vote president for the second time in sixteen years. In 2018, with the United Nations inspectors and the U.S. Congress regularly certifying Iranian compliance, Trump withdrew from the agreement, thus doing exactly what he said Iran would eventually do, and threatened sanctions against the European counterparts if they continued to do business with Tehran. The fact that the leaders of these and several other nations begged him not to violate the agreement meant nothing to Trump.

And once again, brutal, crippling sanctions were issued against Iran.

Early in 2020, the coronavirus struck, hitting several countries, including Iran, particularly hard, and U.S.-imposed sanctions have worsened the situation. Iran’s Foreign Minister, Javid Zarif, who had referred to the sanctions as ‘economic terrorism’ has since referred to them as ‘medical terror’. Trump has again ignored the requests of the world community by not lifting, or at least easing, the sanctions, so much-needed medical supplies can enter Iran. Some U.S. politicians have also made the request, along with the highly- (but undeservedly) respected New York Times; others have encouraged Trump to maintain the sanctions.

Trump apparently believes that such barbaric cruelty by the U.S. against Iran will cause the Iranians to reject the revolution that overthrew the oppressive, U.S.-support Shah, and seek a new agreement with the U.S. This is the same philosophy that the U.S. has used for over 60 years against Cuba: a belief that sanctions will cause the people to rise up against their own government in exchange for concessions from the U.S. This practice has been a dismal failure for the U.S. in Cuba, and sanctions are only maintained today to please a small but vocal Cuban-American community in Florida.

The result will be the same in Iran. The people of Iran know that it is not their government, but the U.S., which is the cause of their current difficulties. They have no desire to make concessions to the author of their misfortunes; they understand, better than many U.S. politicians who have no working knowledge of Iranian history or culture, that their revolution was a great victory for people over profits, and human rights over colonialism.

In June of 2017, when this writer visited Iran, he spent time in two busy, prosperous and exciting cities: Tehran and Mashhad. He was scheduled to return in February, but the coronavirus pandemic prevented that trip. But while there in 2017, he visited beautiful mosques dating back centuries, and observed how Iranians lived; he found it no different than any other city in the world he has visited.

Unlike in the United States, which currently has national guardsmen patrolling the streets of major cities, this writer saw two soldiers in Iran, both of them, like him, awaiting a flight at the airport in Mashhad. He saw one police officer, directing traffic at a busy intersection in Tehran.

And now, due to harsh and unjust U.S.-imposed sanctions, the economy of Iran is suffering, and innocent people are unable to obtain the medical supplies needed to combat coronavirus.

Prior to the U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003, the U.S. issued sanctions for a period of several years against that country; it is estimated that at least 500,000 innocent children died because of those sanctions. When then Secretary of State, Madeline Albright, was asked about that tragic statistic, she said that that number of deaths of children was “worth it”. How many deaths of innocent people will the current administration see as ‘worth it’ to achieve its unjust and repressive geopolitical goals?

Although the European signatories of the JCPOA are far from blameless in the suffering of the Iranian people, it is the United States that is fully culpable. The U.S. was the original country to violate the agreement, contrary to the advice of all the other signatories and nearly every nation on the planet except apartheid Israel and Saudi Arabia. It is the United States that has not heeded calls for lifting the sanctions so the Iranian government can obtain needed medical supplies. This may mirror the U.S. government’s own incompetent and haphazard handling of the pandemic within the U.S.: It is the country with the highest number of cases, the highest number of deaths, and the ninth highest number of deaths per 1,000,000 people. Iran, as of this writing, ranks 30^th in deaths per 1,000,000 people.

This is how the United States government operates. It will do anything to achieve its geopolitical goals of worldwide power and increasing profits for the already super-rich. The suffering of countless innocent men, women and children means nothing; it is simply collateral damage in an ongoing war against the world to maintain hegemony at any cost. Whether the occupant of the White House is a Republican or a Democrat, the playbook has remained the same for centuries, and there is no reason to look for change anytime soon.

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This article was originally published on Peace Data.

Robert Fantina is an activist and journalist, working for peace and social justice. A U.S. citizen, he moved to Canada shortly after the 2004 presidential election, and now holds dual citizenship. He serves on the boards of Canadians for Palestinian Rights, and Canadians for Justice in Kashmir, and is the former Canadian Coordinator of World Beyond War. He has written the books Propaganda, Lies, and False Flags: How the U.S. Justifies its Wars.; Empire, Racism and Genocide: A  History of U.S. Foreign Policy and Occupied Palestine: Israel, the U.S. and International Law. He is a frequent contributor to Global Research.

The narrow re-election of Polish President Duda saved the country from returning under Brussels’ Euro-Liberal yoke, yet the electorate’s clear-cut age and locality divides bode ominously for the country’s future since they suggest that the opposition might inevitably return to power if voting trends remain constant.

If given the choice between maintaining a toxic world of fear, pollution and violence controlled by the State or a society of prosperity and compassion based on freedom and individual rights, there is little doubt that the majority of Americans would want the old paradigm of synthetic events to take a hike; except that choice has been distorted under the guise of what the World Health Organization (WHO) has mislabeled the most deadly virus in history. 

The coronavirus crisis arrived in a flash with little time to analyze exactly what was going on.  Americans struggled to process what is real, trustworthy and authentic as the unraveling of deep political decay revealed a behind-the-scenes subterranean power struggle that has surfaced with the intent on disintegration of  American Society.

While the country is fast approaching an existential crisis on steroids, millions experienced an inner knowing that some indefinable thing was not right with recognition that the early explanations were hogwash while others, addicted to mainstream/social media who still believed in the illusion of democracy, were on board with the litany of spin from the medical and political establishment.

While the Lockdown could have been a wake up call for humanity to change its consciousness with a paradigm shift –  whether it be a spiritual awakening, a political realignment or re-evaluating one’s own personal health choices, since, after all, humanity was locked in a major health crisis.  And most importantly, it was an opportunity to acknowledge that the planet itself is ailing from abuse and neglect with CV as a metaphor urging a personal reconnection with Nature.

In early 2020, Neil Ferguson of the UK’s Imperial College used a scare tactic to predict that 80% of Americans would be infected and that there would be 2.2 million American deaths – neither of which materialized.   Yet Ferguson’s extremism accomplished its intended purpose in establishing the basis for draconian Lockdown requirements.  Ferguson later retracted his earlier prediction down to 20,000 fatalities.

With  current infection fatality rate at 0.20%, Lockdowns have been devoid of science and are based on arbitrary, contradictory and inconsistent requirements. Just a few examples come to mind such as liquor stores and big chains are considered ‘essential’ and remain open but stand-alone, independent, mom ‘n pops are not.  Barbers may be open but hair salons may not.  While it is advised to get tested for Covid 19, a colonoscopy or other elective surgery are not allowed.  While vitamins C and D and Sunshine strengthen the immune system, all outdoor sport programs have been canceled.

In an unexpected development, a recent JP Morgan study asserted that the Lockdowns failed to “alter the course of the pandemic” as it “destroyed millions of livelihoods”  and that as infection rates ‘unrelated to often inconsistent lockdown’ measures decreased, fewer outbreaks were reported as the quarantines were lifted.

As the official narrative of the Covid 19 as an existential threat has collapsed, it is interesting to follow how ‘hot spots’ occur just as a particular State, like Florida, announces re-opening.  It is as if a DEW(directed energy weapon) or a neuro weapon had strategically targeted that location for a resurgence.  Those new hot spots encourage a reinvigorated debate over mandatory face masks and social distancing with its success depending on a duplicitous media instilling panic and a naive public still believing Covid 19 to be a variant of the seasonal flu.

Why Lockdown Asymptomatic Citizens?

• Dr. Maria Van Kerkhove, technical lead of WHO’s COVID 19 Task Force threw a monkey wrench in the works recently by stating “what we really want to focus on.. if we followed all the symptomatic cases, isolate those cases, follow those contacts and quarantine those contacts, we would drastically reduce..transmission.  We would do very, very well..” Dr. Van Kerkhove then explained that transmission of the virus from asymptomatic patients who exhibit no symptoms appears to be “very rare. “It still seems to be rare that an asymptomatic person actually transmits onward to a secondary individual”.

The next day, there was  panic at the WHO but Dr. Van Kerkhove’s uncensored comments were very clear as they validated questioning the purpose of the entire Lockdown process. If an asymptomatic person is not spreading the disease but might publicly increase herd immunity, then why wear a face mask or be quarantined?

House Speaker Pelosi called for a national mask mandate as HHS Secretary Azar reported that Pence and Trump are tested daily and are asymptomatic; therefore not required to wear a mask.

Why Face Masks?

To date, there is no standard for what constitutes a ‘safe’ face mask or instructions for disposal considering that a used face mask will be a contaminated bio-hazard material; ergo a face mask is more of a device to require citizen compliance than a safety precaution.

• Adding a partisan narrative to the crisis, the most expansive lockdown restrictions (some with criminal penalties) came from predominantly Democratic Governors and Mayors who offered no science or forensic data to prove that either mandatory face masks or home sequestration have failed to prevent a spread of the virus. During a House Oversight committee meeting, the mask debate broke down along party lines with Dems dutifully covered while strenuously objecting to their mask-free peers.
• A rivetingJune 23^rd Palm Beach County Commission public hearing on a proposed Mandatory Face Mask ordinance drew overwhelming opposition.
• While OSHA’s (Occupational Safety and Health Agency) responsibility is to oversee the health and safety of every American worker as each work place is expected to comply with OSHA standards, its website regarding COVID 19 states that cloth based face masks “will not protect the wearer against airborne transmissible infectious  agents due to loose fit and lack of seal or inadequate filtration.“

OSHA goes on to inform that a safe level of oxygen must be maintained as an oxygen deficient atmosphere (defined as below 19.5% by volume) creates a respiratory risk.

• While there is no sound science or evidence to prove the benefits of mandatory usage, the NE Journal of Medicine reported that:

“We know that wearing a mask outside health care facilities offers little, if any, protection from infection” and that “The chance of catching Covid-19 from a passing interaction in a public space is therefore minimal.  In many cases, the desire for widespread masking is a reflexive reaction to anxiety over the pandemic.”

• More recently, NIAID Director Dr. Anthony Fauci declared masks as largely ‘symbolic’ as he was setting an example for what other people should be doing.
• Risk of Hypoxia to All Mask Wearers: Dr. Russell Blaylock and Dr. Zach Bush

Social Distancing aka Quarantine

With not a whit of science in support, Social Distancing which is a mutually exclusive phrase since there is nothing social about enforced distancing from other humans, has been attributed to a CIA protocol in use since the 1950’s to break a prisoner’s resistance or a teenage science project.

In any case, SD has proven a great way to erode an individual’s normal need for social contact, to effectively starve the brain function of human interaction and comparable to other emotionally unhealthy deprivations.   As former Vietnam POW John McCain related “It crushes your spirit more effectively than any other form of mistreatment.”

Rules 3 and 44 of the Nelson Mandela Rules warn of being cut off from the outside world and prohibits more than two weeks of isolation as cruel and inhumane treatment.

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While the manufactured COVID 19 health crisis opened the door for the World Economic Forum and its friends to activate One World Government, millions of Americans continue to play the cognitive dissonance game with little awareness they are witnessing a government takeover with increased surveillance and censorship.  As coordinated violent protests in Seattle and DC spread a thinly veiled political coup, all accomplished more easily while the American public were in Lockdown.

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Renee Parsons has been a lifelong registered Democrat.  She has also been  member of the ACLU’s Florida State Board of Directors and President of the ACLU Treasure Coast Chapter.   She has been an elected public official in Colorado, an environmental lobbyist with Friends of the Earth and staff member in the US House of Representatives in Washington, DC.  Renee is a student of the Quantum Field.  She may be reached at [email protected]. She is a frequent contributor to Global Research.

Se bem que muitas actividades bloqueadas pelo ‘lockdown’ lutem para recomeçar, após o afrouxamento das restrições, há uma que, nunca tendo parado, está agora a acelerar: a de Camp Darby, o maior arsenal USA no mundo, fora da pátria, localizado entre Pisa e Livorno.

Depois de cortar cerca de 1.000 árvores na área natural “protegida” do Parque Regional de San Rossore, começou a construção de uma secção ferroviária que ligará a linha Pisa-Livorno a um novo terminal de carga e descarga, atravessando o Canale dei Navicelli sobre uma nova ponte metálica giratória. O terminal, com cerca de vinte metros de altura, incluirá quatro trilhos capazes de acolher, cada um deles, nove vagões.

Por meio de carrinhos de movimentação de contentores, as armas recebidas serão transferidas dos vagões para grandes camiões e as que saem dos camiões irão para os vagões. O terminal permitirá o transporte diário de dois comboios ferroviários que, transportando cargas explosivas, ligarão a base ao porto de Livorno através de áreas densamente povoadas. Após o aumento de movimento de armas, já não é suficiente a ligação por canal e por estrada de Camp Darby ao porto de Livorno e ao aeroporto de Pisa. Nos 125 bunkers da base, fornecidos continuamente pelos Estados Unidos, estão armazenados mais de um milhão de projecteis de artilharia, bombas e mísseis (de acordo com estimativas aproximadas), aos quais se juntam milhares de tanques, veículos e outros materiais militares.

Desde 2017, navios de grande porte recentes, capazes de transportar cada um deles, mais de 6.000 veículos e cargas sobre rodas, fazem ligações mensais para Livorno, descarregando e carregando armas que são transportadas para os portos de Aqaba na Jordânia, Jeddah na Arábia Saudita e outros aeroportos do Médio Oriente para serem usadas ​​pelas forças americanas, sauditas e outras, nas guerras na Síria, no Iraque e no Iémen.

No momento em que está em curso a expansão de Camp Darby, o maior arsenal dos EUA no exterior, o título de um  jornal online da Toscana, “Era uma vez Camp Darby”, explicando que “a base foi redimensionada, devido aos cortes na Defesa, decididos pelo governo USA” e o jornal Il Tirreno anuncia “Camp Darby, ondula sob a bandeira italiana: a bandeira dos EUA foi baixada após quase 70 anos”. O Pentágono está a fechar a base, restituindo à Itália, o território na qual ela foi criada? Absolutamente o contrário.

O Exército dos EUA concedeu ao Ministério da Defesa italiano uma porção da base (34 hectares, cerca de 3% de toda a área de 1.000 ha) anteriormente usada como área de lazer, para que fosse transferido o Comando das Forças Especiais do exército italiano (COMFOSE), inicialmente alojado no quartel Gamerra de Pisa, sede do Centro de Treino de Paraquedismo (il manifesto, 5 de Março de 2019).

A transferência ocorreu silenciosamente durante o ‘lockdown’ e agora o COMFOSE anuncia que o seu quartel general está localizado na “nova área militar”, de facto, anexada ao Camp Darby, uma base onde o treino conjunto de soldados americanos e italianos está a ocorrer há algum tempo. A transferência do COMFOSE para uma área anexa ao Camp Darby, formalmente sob a bandeira italiana, permite a total integração das forças especiais italianas com as dos EUA, utilizando-as em operações encobertas, sob comando USA. Tudo sob a capa do segredo militar.

Ao visitar o novo quartel general do COMFOSE, o Ministro da Defesa, Lorenzo Guerini, designou-o como “o centro nervoso” não só das Forças Especiais, mas também das “Unidades de Psyops do Exército”. A tarefa dessas unidades é “criar o consenso da população local em relação aos contingentes militares empregados em missões de manutenção da paz no exterior” ou seja, convencê-los de que os invasores são os missionários da paz.

O Ministro Guerini indicou, finalmente, o novo quartel general como sendo o modelo do projecto das “Casernas Verdes”. Um modelo de “bem-estar e eco-sustentabilidade”, que repousa sobre um milhão de ogivas explosivas.

Manlio Dinucci

 

Artigo original em italiano :

Sotto il tricolore che sventola a Camp Darby

Tradutora: Maria Luísa de Vasconcellos

The coronavirus pandemic has caused an “unprecedented education emergency” with up to 9.7 million children affected by school closures at risk of never going back to class, Save the Children warned Monday.

The British charity cited UNESCO data showing that in April, 1.6 billion young people were shut out of school and university due to measures to contain COVID-19 – about 90 percent of the world’s entire student population.

“For the first time in human history, an entire generation of children globally have had their education disrupted,” it said in a new report, Save our Education.

It said the economic fall-out of the crisis could force an extra 90 to 117 million children into poverty, with a knock-on effect on school admissions.

With many young people required to work or girls forced into early marriage to support their families, this could see between seven and 9.7 million children dropping out of school permanently.

At the same time, the charity warned the crisis could leave a shortfall of $77 billion in education budgets in low and middle income countries by the end of 2021.

“Around 10 million children may never return to school – this is an unprecedented education emergency and governments must urgently invest in learning,” Save the Children chief executive Inger Ashing said.

“Instead we are at risk of unparallelled budget cuts which will see existing inequality explode between the rich and the poor, and between boys and girls.”

The charity urged governments and donors to invest more funds behind a new global education plan to help children back into school when it is safe and until then support distance learning.

“We know the poorest, most marginalised children who were already the furthest behind have suffered the greatest loss, with no access to distance learning – or any kind of education – for half an academic year,” Ashing said.

Save the Children also urged commercial creditors to suspend debt repayments for low-income countries – a move it said could free up $14 billion for education programmes.

“If we allow this education crisis to unfold, the impact on children’s futures will be long lasting,” Ashing said.

“The promise the world has made to ensure all children have access to a quality education by 2030, will be set back by years, ” she said, citing the United Nations goal.

The report listed 12 countries where children are most at risk of falling behind: Niger, Mali, Chad, Liberia, Afghanistan, Guinea, Mauritania, Yemen, Nigeria, Pakistan, Senegal and Ivory Coast.

Before the crisis, an estimated 258 million children and adolescents were already missing out on school, the charity said.

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Dear Friends,

A deep disappointment and a fatigue together with the regular and unanimous will to deal with this increasingly difficult situation continue to help each other, that is, as far as I can tell it, the predominantly sense of life of the Syrian people. However, this asks people nothing but to let the people live in peace in their own country with the wide possibilities that are rightfully theirs.

The war is already going on for more than nine years. This, what they call a war, had nothing to do with a “spontaneous popular uprising ”or a“ civil war ” because, there have not been any of this . We have seen how it started here in Syria. The superpowers wanted the oil, build the gas for themselves, built the “American” pipeline and especially break the independence of a sovereign Syria.

The people, the army and the government however, held on to their sovereignty and their country. Therefore, the “International community” an overwhelming military coalition kill the people and destroy their land. They Western Coalition tried to kill and destroy Syria, but didn’t succeed, the people, army and government remained united and upright, also because of the loyal allies, like Russia and Hezbollah. The Western powers justified these crimes to the public opinion worldwide, they use the media “monsters” and spread lies over a president (president Assad) who allegedly tortures his own people, starves them and kills. This remains the pretext of the Western politics and media to this day.

An unrelenting flow of gruesome headhunters recruited by the Western powers and thanks to international aid which supplied them, they killed without any effort, paid and armed, in Syria, by the West. But the Syrian people are not yet on their knees for these criminal rulers. Embargoes and sanctions were imposed to suffocate life and a free fall was planned for the Syrian lira (of SL 60 for the war to SL 1000 during the war now to SL 2500 for one dollar!). The pinnacle now is the draconian Caesar law which is heavily punishing anyone who in any way supports the Syrian people. Instead of supporting the people against the terrorists, or with the reconstruction and the fight against the corona virus, the international community is starving the Syrian people in the most inhumane way.

We are also in rebellion against Western politics and their leaders.

We revolt against the sanctions imposed on 17 million Syrians who live in the area controlled by the government. We revolt against the illegal occupation of 30% of our country, which is approved among the 50 founders of the UN. We revolt against the illegal occupation by the Turkish and US military and the occupation of oil wells, while the country itself is in dire need of oil. We revolt against the unlimited Turkish and Western support and support from international NGOs to the fanatical terrorists who occupy Idlib province ”!

Our Belgian, Dutch, most EU politicians and media again provide a striking illustration of support for this hypocritical and criminal policy.

Last Tuesday, Germany and Belgium, proposed in front of the UN Security Council to launch “humanitarian aid” for Syria Turkey and Jordan, out of Syria’s control, for an extension of one year . The pretext is to help refugees in Northern Syria (Idlib). The the reality is to continue to support for the terrorists in the areas which are controlled by Turkey and America. Already, these illegal occupiers, prevented Syrians who want to flee to government territory, instead they are making an so-called independent Kurdistan.

Obviously, Russia and China voted against this UN proposal. Russia has now put forward a proposal to bring humanitarian aid to Syria, meaning the sovereign state controlled by the government. Of course, this was voted down (7 against, 4 for, 4 abstentions). Our EU politicians and journalists (bought by the EU) are the real cause of suffering and injustice in Syria. They know by now the real situation and are therefore the unscrupulous accomplices of a satanic work. The Syrian people are exhausted but remain determined to revolt against this international organized criminal network.

Father Daniel, Qara, Syria

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Featured image: Father Daniel and Brother Jean working at the fields of the Monastery. Father Daniel is an 80 year old Priest from Belgium and living in Syria for 20 years. 

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Mark Taliano combines years of research with on-the-ground observations to present an informed and well-documented analysis that refutes  the mainstream media narratives on Syria. 

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On Friday July 10, Turkey’s highest court has repealed a previous decision that saw the 1934 conversion of the Hagia Sophia from a mosque into a museum, and put restrictions on prayers being performed at the site.

A week earlier, Turkey’s Council of State received arguments by lawyers pressing for an annulment of a 1934 decision by its Council of Ministers which turned the historic monument into a museum.

In the case, lawyers appealed to the foundation charter of the Hagia Sophia itself, personal property of Sultan Mehmet II, which forbids changes of any sort to the endowment, its lands, and use.

“At the heart of this controversial case is a bid to restore religious freedoms,” says Mark Jefferson, an analyst for Omran Strategic Studies Institute.

“Early modern Turkey cracked down on the practice of faith, wearing of religious garb and expression of religion, and one of the policies they enacted was to deny its religious Muslim community a place that served as a deeply symbolic place of prayer for nearly five centuries,” he says.

“It is worth recalling the ‘Declaration on the Inadmissibility of Intervention in the Domestic Affairs of States and the Protection of Independence and Sovereignty’, adopted by UN General Assembly Resolution 2131 on 21 December 1965, which saw a unanimous ratification,” notes Hassan Imran, an international lawyer who spoke to TRT World prior to the court’s ruling.

“Whether the court ruling is in favour or against annulment, respect for the rule of law is essential. To that end, the judiciary should uphold their independence, free of any political consideration,” he adds.

Freedom of worship preserved

Authorities have consistently communicated that the features of Hagia Sophia, a significant historical and cultural heritage site dating back to the sixth century AD, will continue to be preserved and protected, and will remain open to the public in the same manner the Blue Mosque is open to visitors and tourists of all denominations and faiths.

Turkey’s presidential spokesman Ibrahim Kalin also maintained that allowing prayers in Hagia Sophia would not deprive it of its identity.

“Turkey will still preserve the Christian icons there, just like our ancestors preserved all Christian values”, said Kalin.

“Hagia Sophia’s status is not an international matter but a matter of national sovereignty for Turkey,” Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu said earlier Thursday.

“Hagia Sophia, like all cultural assets on our lands, is the property of Turkey,” adds Turkish Foreign Ministry spokesperson Hami Aksoy.

With its multifaceted and rich past, questions arise surrounding Hagia Sophia’s significance and meaning to Turkey. For some, it was founded as a church. For others, Mehmet Fatih II’s conquest of Constantinople in 1453, and his subsequent preservation and restoration of the ancient cathedral, has made it a keystone of national culture and modern Turkish heritage.

A painting of Hagia Sophia by Gaspare Fossati in 1852. (Gaspare Fossati / )

While some criticism has been leveled against the annulment of restriction on prayers in the monument, Khalid Yacine, anthropologist of antiquities at the University of Setif says there’s nothing unusual about it all.

“The Hagia Sophia is a part of Turkey’s origin story. Without it there would be no Turkey, and no Istanbul,” he says in an interview with TRT World.

“It’s ties to multiple faiths will likely give rise to sensitivities, but if worshippers and visitors are allowed as they have been before, then this is more than was done by others.”

When asked what he means, he chuckles and resumes.

“Most people don’t know that St. Peter’s Basilica, in the Vatican itself, is built over several Roman temples. When Spain expelled Muslims in the inquisition, it changed the Grand Mosque of Cordoba into a cathedral, where Muslims are forbidden to pray to this day,” he elaborates.

“Many mosques were outright destroyed or converted into Churches. By the same token, when the Spanish went to the New World, they also changed places of worship into churches. The Mexico City Metropolitan Cathedral is built on the ruins of an Aztec temple,” he adds.

But the list goes on.

“The Church of Prophet Elija in Thessaloniki, Greece was a former mosque. In Bulgaria, the Sveti Sedmochislenitsi Church of Sofia was converted from a Mosque into a church. In Croatia too, three Ottoman mosques were converted into churches. Vietnam saw the French destroy Buddist and Taoist places of worship to build the St. Joseph Cathedral.”

“Turkey has ruled to allow people to carry out prayers in Hagia Sophia. That hardly compares to getting arrested in the Grand Mosque of Cordoba for saying something in Arabic or converting it into a cathedral. If anything, the Hagia Sophia stands today because of Turkey’s efforts to restore it,” he points out.

Istanbul’s birth

Written on a 66-meter length of carefully preserved gazelle skin, Fatih Sultan Mehmed Foundation, Sultan Mehmet II, writes:

“All the things I have explained and designated here have been set down in written form in the foundation charter in the manner appointed; the conditions may not be altered; the laws may not be amended; they may not be diverted from their original purpose; the appointed rules and principles may not be diminished; interference of any sort in the foundation is interdicted… May the curse of Allah, the angels and all human beings be upon anyone who changes even one of the conditions governing this foundation.”

The Sultan’s charter is carefully preserved, and treated multiple times a year to ensure its longevity. (AA)

Shortly after his conquest of Constantinople and renaming of the city to Istanbul, the Sultan performed his first Friday prayers there. Apocrypha tells a story of a young Sultan who is said to have fallen to his knees in prayers of gratitude upon entering the ancient cathedral.

Shortly after, he established an endowment to care for and govern the new ‘Great Mosque’, with an annual income of 14,000 gold pieces per year to restore, expand and preserve the civilizational monument. The endowment’s charge was significant not only as an edict, but spiritually as well.

Islamic jurisprudence forbids the alteration of an endowment or foundation’s charter or purpose without consultation and approval of the owner, a principle that has since become ubiquitous in modern law.

Out of respect to the multi-faithed citizens of the city and his empire, Sultan Mehmet II ordered new decorations that did not destroy the previous interior detailing within Hagia Sophia.

At the time, the Hagia Sophia was already 900 years old, and had suffered at least two fires and three earthquakes, one of which caused the entire dome to collapse. It had also been ransacked and desecrated during the Fourth Crusade by Crusaders.

Buried History

With Istanbul’s conquest, Hagia Sophia quickly became a cultural icon, bearing deep heritage to Turkey today. Named a ‘Great Mosque’, every effort was made to preserve it and improve upon a structurally flawed design caused by a heavy central dome perched on a long basilica.

Buttresses were added to the Hagia Sophia’s sides to prevent it from collapse during the reign of Murad III by the historical architect Sinan who would be inspired by the ancient edifice, and fusing its style with Islamic art and aesthetics in a series of Grand Mosques.

A series of additions were made including a school, and fountain during Sultan Mahmud I’s rule, and a clock room during Sultan Abdulmejid’s time, which also saw the most thorough restoration of the ancient structure carried out by Swiss architects from 1847-1849.

At the time, Russian historian Peter Ouspensky, commented ironically.

“The Turks showed more understanding for the city’s monuments than the Crusader armies that occupied Istanbul in 1204.”

Hagia Sophia would also become home to the largest calligraphy collection in the empire, with countless gold inscriptions, tiles, artistic reflections of Turkey’s civilizational heritage.

In the words of Necip Fazıl Kısakürek, a Turkish poet,

“The Hagia Sophia is neither stone, nor line, nor color, nor matter, nor a symphony of substance; it is pure spiritual meaning, meaning alone.”

But Hagia Sophia is also more than just a monument to the grandeur of human achievement and artistic expression. It also serves as the final resting place for five sultans and their families, giving it a venerated historical status befitting its age and history.

With the ruling opening the way for permitting worshippers to pray in the Hagia Sophia, there is no doubt that the ancient site will remain respected by adherents of many faiths around the world, and one of Turkey’s most revered sites of heritage.

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Adam Bensaid is a deputy producer at TRT World.