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In our complex world, understanding global events is crucial. We hunger for truth about Amazon rainforests, Tibet and China, Niger in Africa, Antarctica, Guyana, and the ongoing tensions between Russia and Europe in Ukraine, as well as the conflict between Hamas and Israel supported by the United States. To make informed decisions, we must carefully analyze the facts.
History teaches us that truth can be suppressed under regimes like Stalinist Russia, Hitlerite Germany, or the Iraq war waged on false intelligence. Manipulated narratives, elegant lies, and misinformation have led to devastating consequences, from gulags and wars to concentration camps. Yet, brave individuals—Socrates, Abraham Lincoln, Gandhi, George Orwell, and Martin Luther King Jr.—stood by the truth, regardless of the odds.
Today, Julian Assange stands alongside these names. His work challenges power structures, revealing uncomfortable truths hidden by the United States Government.
We are now reaching a critical stage in Julian Assange’s fight against U.S. extradition with appeal hearings taking place at the U.K. High Court on February 20 and 21.
The new UN Special Rapporteur on Torture Alice Jill Edwards on Tuesday called on the U.K. to halt the extradition, stating that if it goes forward, Assange would be at risk of treatment amounting to torture or other forms of ill-treatment or punishment.
Amnesty International in a petition it organizes says that “USA must drop charges against Julian Assange. He fully deserves to be released; he already paid a heavy price for what he did”.
To put as much pressure on the court as possible, we would also urge all of you to support these events before the hearings:
February 14: The Geneva Press Club, alongside RSF Switzerland, hosting an online and in-person talk with Stella Assange. Stella will be available for interviews after the event.
February 15: The Freedom of the Press Foundation online event on Assange. Speakers include Cindy Cohn, executive director of the Electronic Frontier Foundation; Carrie DeCell, senior staff attorney at the Knight First Amendment Institute; Trevor Timm, executive director of Freedom of the Press Foundation; and Ben Wizner, director of the ACLU’s Speech, Privacy, and Technology Project.
Let us champion honest information, for it is our shield against propaganda and our path to a more just world.
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Dimitris Eleas is a New York City–based writer, independent researcher, and political activist.
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Rishi Sunak’s immediate response to military atrocities that have now killed 28,000 people, more than 11,000 of them children, was to tell Israel: “We want you to win.”
In October, Keir Starmer informed the Labour conference that Israel had “the right” to withhold water and power from Gaza. Interviewers on C4 and BBC failed to challenge the bellicose assertions of Israel’s British ambassador, Tzipi Hotovely. The journalists-turned-courtiers of the mainstream media are spinning acts of genocide against Gazans in terms of “Israel’s right to self-defence.” Meanwhile, the slaughter, privation and suffering continues.
Comma Press provide an effective antidote to the poison of corporate-controlled journalism in the form of an authentic voice from the front line of oppression. Don’t Look Left is a diary of devastation by Atef Abu Saif, a writer and minister for culture in the Palestinian Authority. Atef’s despatches — delivered to Comma’s Ra Page in English as WhatsApp texts and voice-memos — open with the onset of Israel’s war on Gaza on October 7 and cover 84 days of grief and courage. It’s harrowing, but life-affirming: Atef’s family and friends exhibit a breathtaking determination to retain their humanity and survive.
I would urge Alice Wairimu Nderitu, the UN special adviser on genocide who offered no criticism of Israel following the first wave of atrocities, to read Atef’s eyewitness accounts.
Inevitably, Atef reports body counts, woundings, grieving families and lives ruined by amputation or loss of sight — that’s where compassion must be directed in times of atrocity. But genocide exploits tools other than death and mutilation: the annihilation of a people requires the destruction of hope, the erasure of identity and the denial of opportunity to think of anything beyond survival.
Atef sees a pattern in the Israeli air strikes: the chosen targets are places reflecting the Gazans’ sense of self-worth, pride in their culture and belief in progress. For example, he describes an attack on the Karmel Tower, an exciting development that generated considerable investment and housed several media centres. Thriving bookstores, new housing complexes and mosques are reduced to rubble. For Atef, the message encoded in the cacophony of bombs and heaps of rubble is that any effort to make Gaza look anything but “poor and ugly” is doomed to futility.
But there is always hope, and resistance takes many forms. Twelve days into the attacks, Atef glimpses a girl in a hospital corridor, “amid all the chaos and the crowds,” quietly doing her school homework.
At the start of February, Israel accused people working for the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) of involvement in terrorism. This led 16 countries to suspend funds to UNRWA. It is apparent from Atef’s diary that this catastrophic decision, led by the US, will intensify suffering in Gaza. Children are educated in UNRWA schools, displaced families shelter in UNRWA welfare centres, children queue at UNRWA water stations; and the agency is even involved in rubbish collection.
Atef’s writing is precise and vivid. The facts are horrendous — 600 people died in the attacks of October 22-23 — but the terrors of displacement go beyond the numbers. There are the smells of ash, burning metal and bodies rotting in the rubble; there are the screeches, flashes and explosions of Israeli ordnance; there are splintered doors, shattered windows and twisted aluminium; and there are heartbreaking scenes in which the people of Gaza wrestle with grief, fear and a growing sense of disconnection from reality.
A father wanders streets and alleys shouting to his dead children: “Wake up kids.”His lamentations are all but unbearable. Following an explosion, Atef is unable to retrieve the bodies of his sister-in-law’s family for eight days, and then locates a nephew’s body at the top of a building 70 metres away.
Hospitals, protected by international law, are destroyed; bakeries where children queue for bread and falafel are wiped out. On the fifth day of the conflict, Atef grabs a sandwich in the souk of Nuseirat Camp; later, he notes those queuing for food on the 15th day will have died in a targeted attack.
I’m happy to report that Atef and his 15-year-old son, Yasser, have survived their trek from the rubble of their family home to reach Port Said. But, as the author notes, his thoughts remain in Gaza. His diary entry for Day 20, when the death toll stood at 7,000, posed a question we should understand as a call to action: “How many of us need to die before the world is awakened from its slumber?”
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The 2023-2024 Gaza Massacre has continued now for nearly 4 months while the World looks on. The Zionist-subverted and US lackey Australian Labor Government has fervently assisted Apartheid Israel diplomatically, with key arms supplies, intelligence, weapons targeting and now with cessation of support for UNRWA – racist Labor is complicit in the US-Israeli massacre of Palestinian children. Zionist-subverted Australian Mainstream media are complicit by lying for Apartheid Israel.
Set out below is a quantitative view of the Gaza Genocide from truthful reportage (notably from some prize-winning Western journalists) but which is overwhelmingly ignored by Zionist-subverted Mainstream Western and Australian media:
(1) Apartheid Israel allowed the 7 October (10/7) event to happen (like the US re 9/11).
(2) The 10/7 Breakout by lightly armed Palestinians from the Gaza Concentration Camp was to get hundreds of Israeli hostages to trade for 10,000 Palestinians in Israeli military prisons and indeed for 5.6 million highly abusively confined Occupied Palestinians.
(3) The IDF response with high explosive tank shelling and helicopter missiles was responsible for a substantial proportion of the 1,200 Israelis killed – if deaths were proportional to firepower then most of the Israeli deaths on 7-8 October were due to the IDF.
(4) 97.5% (1,170) of the Israelis killed (1,200) were adults involved militarily in the 56 year Occupation because of Israeli compulsory military service. 2.5% (30) were children).
(5) 84.2% (1,010) of the Israeli dead were present serving Israeli military responsible for violently maintaining the 56-year Occupation and hermetically sealing the bombed and blockaded Gaza Concentration Camp.
(6) The Israeli-complicit 10/7 carnage (like the US-complicit 9/11 carnage from massive intelligence failure as adverted by both former US president Donald Trump and former US Vice President Al Gore) provided the “excuse” for disproportionate violence with genocidal intent.
(7). As of mid-January 2024, after 100 days of the Gaza Massacre 100,000 Palestinians were killed, missing or wounded, and 31,497 Palestinians had been killed including 12,345 children, 6,471 women and 245 health workers. 1,500 Palestinian fighters were killed in Israel on 7-8 October for a total of 33,000 Palestinians killed.
(8) In the present Gaza Massacre there is an Occupied/Occupier Reprisals Death Ratio of 33,000/1,200 = 27.5 (55 if the IDF killed 50% of the Israeli victims) versus the 10 ordered by Nazi leader Hitler in 1944 (and effected in the Ardeatine Massacre), and 30,000,000/3,000 = 10,000 in the post-9/11 US War on Terror (this including avoidable deaths from war-imposed deprivation in 20 countries violated by the US Alliance).
(9) International Law expert Professor Francesca Albanese states that under International Law subjugated Occupied people (the Occupied Palestinians) have the right to defend themselves but the war criminal Occupiers (the genocidally racist Israelis) in an occupied territory do not.
(10) US, UK and Australian Mainstream media reportage is overwhelmingly dominated by lying Israeli propaganda. Thus a Google Search for “Hamas massacre” yields 500,000 results whereas that for “IDF massacre” yields 1,400 results.
(11) Most of 2.3 million Gazans (nearly half of them children, nearly three quarters women and children) are living in tents, denied requisite water, food, sanitation, medicine and medical care, and facing an existential catastrophe due to deprivation and disease.
(12) The forced displacement of Gazans to the south is a Third major mass population expulsion after the 1948 Nakba (800,000 expelled) and the 1967 Naksa (400,000 expelled), with a feared Fourth mass population expulsion of 2.3 million Palestinians into the Egyptian Sinai desert. Genocidally racist, settler-colonialist Apartheid Israel wants all the land of Palestine (plus neighbouring lands) but not the Indigenous inhabitants.
The civilized World is utterly horrified but must translate that horror into urgent action as summarized below:
(1) Boycotts, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS).
(2) Dump the US dollar.
(3) UNSC, UNGA and other action over genocidal Israeli violation of the South Africa-requested ICJ ruling on the Gaza Genocide.
(4) Young-impelled decent Third Parties (e.g. Greens) to urgently replace war criminal and climate criminal Western duopolies (e.g. the US Republican/ Democrat, UK Conservative/Labour and Australian Coalition/Labor political duopolies).
(5) Decent voter backlash in the US, UK, and US Alliance e.g. Australians voting for either the unforgivable, Apartheid Israel-supporting Australian Labor Government or the even worse Coalition are complicit in genocidal Apartheid Israeli crimes.
(6) Unexceptional and immediate granting of equal rights and all Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR)-specified human rights for 15 million sorely oppressed Palestinians.
(7) In relation to the present horrifying, Israel-imposed Gaza circumstances the Indigenous Palestinians should at the very least be immediately given the rights accorded in law to pets and livestock in the West.
(8) If Palestinians are to continue to be denied life without foreign occupation the World should immediately insist on occupation by a decent non-Invader country (e.g. Switzerland, Ireland, Fiji).
(9) Immediate ceasefire with war criminal Apartheid Israel out of Gaza and the Occupied Palestinian Territories immediately to permit entry of life-saving security, humanitarian aid, health workers, reconstruction teams, and forensic teams to examine all the dead (Israel was a world leader in illegal organ trading).
(10) Action now – if the US Alliance-, UK- and Australia-backed US and Apartheid Israel continue to get away with mass murder of children in Gaza then we are all existentially threatened.
For details and documentation (including the censoring and sacking of decent, truth-telling Australian journalists) see Gideon Polya, “Lying Australian Media & Labor Government Complicit In US-Israeli Massacre Of Palestinian Children”, Countercurrents, 7 February 2023: see this. Please inform everyone you can – the mendacious Mainstream presstitutes certainly won’t.
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Dr Gideon Polya taught science students at La Trobe University, Melbourne, Australia over 4 decades. He published some 130 works in a 5 decade scientific career, notably a huge pharmacological reference text “Biochemical Targets of Plant Bioactive Compounds” (2003). He has also published “Body Count. Global avoidable mortality since 1950” (2007, 2021), “Jane Austen and the Black Hole of British History” (1998, 2008, 2022), “US-imposed Post-9-11 Muslim Holocaust & Muslim Genocide” (2020), and “Climate Crisis, Climate Genocide & Solutions” (2020), and contributed to Soren Korsgaard (editor) “The Most Dangerous Book Ever Published – Dangerous Deception Exposed!” (2020). For images of Gideon Polya’s huge paintings for the Planet, Peace, Mother and Child, see this.
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First, much credit is due to both Tucker Carlson and Vladimir Putin for having agreed to speak to each other – or rather President Putin speaking to Tucker, as it was a lesson in Russian history and Russian culture and Russian soul, that President Putin gave not only to Tucker, but to the rest of the western world, most of whom have no clue what Russia is, and what makes Russia tick.
Tucker shared his reflections straight after his interview with Putin…
“You’d have to be crazy to think that Russia will give up Crimea.”
“You’d have to be an idiot to think that Russia is an expansionist power; it’s already huge and doesn’t need more territory.”
“You’d have to be an idiot to think that Russia could roll tanks into Vienna; there’s no evidence of such intentions.”
“We are ruled by lunatics”— referring to the US leadership’s desire for regime change in Russia.
After this widely anticipated interview, announced, and awaited with high expectations, Tucker Carlson has been widely demonized by western media and politicians. “How dare you talking to our prime enemy!” was the common tenor.
Unelected EU Commissioner, Madame Von der Leyen, talked about “sanctioning” Tucker Carlson, by banning him from entering the EU. It is more than ridiculous and will never happen. The sheer propaganda moment in such a statement shows how desperate the EU is – to follow in the boots steps of America – for the EU as well as the Washington Masters, are falling apart rapidly.
In the US, voices could be heard to call for taking Tucker’s US nationality away, to ban him from re-entering the US. And these voices were even louder than those decrying the Biden Administration-made immigrant scandal at the Texas border – that many are afraid could work itself from destabilizing American society into an outright civil war.
This is the state of affairs in a – not crazy, but defunct – world. How to get out of it?
Tucker Carlson has tried an opening to the East, to Russia; preparing for a geopolitical olive-branch, bringing back conscience in the ranks of American politicians. Will it work? It remains to be seen.
For all those who still believe in the mainstream’s vilification of Vladmir Putin, but are ever-more doubtful and would like to know the truth, President Putin tells an extraordinary story of reality about Russia, the country’s history, all the way back to the 8th century, laying out very clearly that not only eastern but also western Ukraine – Kiev – is historically a part of Russia.
If comparing this Russia knowledge of history with the Zionist claim over Palestine – you know who is telling the truth and who is lying through their teeth, just for grandeur, dominance, and power – all to achieve a Greater Israel – stamped out of nowhere – to present themselves to the world as “the Chosen People”.
Fortunately, eventually Light will prevail over Darkness and the Zionists will not achieve their wicked objectives. Unfortunately, though, with the pathologically sick support of western leaders, their defeat could take years – and the death toll during this period could become astronomical.
And who says or believes that Greater Israel would be the endgame?
From what can be seen today, and also read into President Putin’s interview statements, the West, the combination of the dying empire, US of A, and the puppet Europe with her unelected leadership, and the individual EU countries with World Economic Forum (WEF)-implants as Young Global Leaders (YGL), speak tyrants – those who were privileged to absolve Klaus Schwab’s Academy of dictatorship and fascist-teaching – Trudeau, Macron, Von der Leyen, Scholz, Rutte et al – are hell-bent to go to war with Iran for her riches and because Iran, a close ally of Russia and China, is a disturbance for the west.
Iran is a powerhouse for the new BRICS. A western attack on Iran would be as suicidal as an assault on Russia and China. Russia assumes currently the leadership of the BRICS. Under Vladimir Putin, it will be a strong leadership.
Nothing of this was put in words by President Putin – but it is as much of what he did not say and one can read implicitly between the lines – as what he did say, that makes President Putin a formidable diplomat and indeed leading Statesman. The west has none of his kind. This interview may become an extraordinary milestone of history.
Despite being showered with western insults and sanctions for years non-stop, President Putin used not one word of insult against western leaders.
To the contrary, when asked by Tucker, how Putin’s counterparts reacted to his approaches, conversations, or suggestions for negotiations, on Ukraine, for example, Putin said he would not comment, and the good journalist, who Tucker Carlson is, might better ask directly at the source.
It is also clear, Russia does not have, never had at least during the last 300-plus years – any ambitions for expansion. Russia’s territory of some 17.1 million square kilometers (km2), of which about 16.4 million km2 land area, representing about 11% of the earth’s total landmass – and the riches of natural resources it harbors – are so huge, there is no need for more, as President Putin had already pointed out on many earlier occasions.
There is no reason at all for any recently-joined-NATO Scandinavian countries to be afraid of a Russian invasion. The ugly truth is, the leadership (sic) of these countries know it, but they play along with the US-EU-NATO Russia-Russia-Russia demonization.
Do they think, it is good for them?
Or have they been coerced, or even threatened to play along?
What do they get for the lies they spread and fear they plant in their people? For the crime they commit?
When President Putin spoke about the western so-called “invasion” of Ukraine on 22 February 2022, he made clear that the war started already in 2014, when on 21 February 2014, almost to the day eight years before, the democratically elected and Russia-friendly President Yanukovich was ousted by a coup and had to flee Ukraine.
NATO Secretary Stoltenberg recently said the same – the war started already in 2014.
The great diplomat, President Putin, did not say that this coup was inspired and planned way ahead by the US with the help of the European Union (remember Victoria Nuland’s infamous “f*ck Europe”?), but it was obvious to most listeners and, of course, also to the interviewer, Tucker Carlson.
President Putin was visibly and deeply disappointed and disturbed, when he found out that the September 2014 Minsk Agreement, and the “Second Minsk” in march 2015, both sponsored by France and Germany, under which Ukraine essentially had to disarm, become neutral and de-nazify her society, were never meant to be adhered to.
In December 2022, then Chancellor Angela Merkel told Die Zeit, “The 2014 Minsk agreement was an attempt to give Ukraine time; it [Ukraine] also used this time to become stronger, as you can see today.” This was a Bombshell, not just for Vladimir Putin, for most of the “innocent” – still believing – world.
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The 2-hour-7-min interview is maybe best summarized by Scott Ritter who spoke to Sputnik on “X “ (6 minute-video) – providing a brilliant summary of the interview (9 February 2024):
“The most important first step on a journey that can save humanity.”
Analyst and former UN weapons inspector Scott Ritter praised US journalist Tucker Carlson’s interview with Russian President Vladimir Putin Thursday, complimenting Carlson’s professionalism and Putin’s… pic.twitter.com/cvPr2Bn9Sm
Mr. Ritter lauded both President Putin and Tucker Carlson for their courage and in many ways audacity – and especially professionalism – to sit together and talk about Ukraine. Though, as we know by now – the interview was much more than an exchange of views, questions , and answers about Ukraine. The interview was more a lesson to the world on the Russian – Ukrainian joint past and – without mentioning it in words – western interference in a clearly internal affair.
Scott Ritter referred to the interview as a tour de force, where the Russian President was introducing an American audience to the nuances of Russian history and the complexity of the Russian soul. Because if you do not understand the basics of Russian history and how Russia functions, then you are on a journey without a map. So, Scott Ritter. He believes this may be the real value of the interview, creating a map.
According to Scott Ritter, Mr. Putin created a map for not only Tucker Carlson to understand, but the entire western world to start grasping, what makes Russia’s heart and soul.
President Putin attempted again to make the West understand what Russia is all about – namely not aggression and expansion, but seeking harmony and peace, while defending eastern Ukraine – especially the Donbass area from Kiev’s Nazi aggressions. He knows exactly what he is talking about.
The Stepan Bandera Nazi Nazi forces were fighting alongside Hitler’s Nazi army against the Soviet Union – causing countless deaths and misery.
Mr. Putin clearly referred in this interview to a MUST de-Nazification of Ukraine – and he also pointed to the other three main objectives of Russia’s intervention, making Ukraine a neutral state, no NATO in Ukraine, and foremost defending the Russian communities especially in Eastern Ukraine, from Kiev’s Nazi aggressions.
Tucker Carlson opened the door into modern-day Russia, into understanding President Putin, into the History of Russia and into the Russian soul.
President Putin’s tireless effort in seeking harmony and cooperation, may be one of the key points shining through in the interview.
Mr. Putin knows, of course, that so far, the west has no interest whatsoever in seeking cooperation and harmonious cohabitation with Russia. To the contrary – the west wants to weaken Russia – hence, the senseless war funded by trillions of dollars or euros of US and EU taxpayers’ money – to dominate Russia and usurp her natural resources.
Despite this recognition, Vladimir Putin’s sending out positive signal and vibes, one day may bear fruit. That is the sense of peace seeking, of cooperation and friendship – that is a major objective of the Tao philosophy.
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According to RT (Russia Today) of 10 February 2024, the two-hour interview gathered more than 46 million views on Carlson’s “X” account (formerly Twitter) and just under a million views on YouTube in the first hours since its release on Friday, 9 February.
In a previous post on “X” earlier this week, Carlson accused Western media outlets of lying to “their readers and viewers” by promoting Kiev’s stance while ignoring Russia’s.
“That’s wrong. Americans have the right to know all they can about a war they are implicated in,” he said.
Speaking to Russia’s Izvestia newspaper on Friday, Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said:
“This is phenomenal. Their reaction reveals the mendacity of their approaches so much that, frankly speaking, you can’t believe it.”
According to Ms. Zakharova,
“they’ve had a hysterical fit – the White House, the Department of State, all the mainstream media are shouting at the top of their lungs one thing only: don’t watch [President Putin’s interview], and that an American journalist shouldn’t conduct the interview.”
She added that such behavior takes the wind out of Washington’s sails in its attempts to present itself as a beacon of morality, human rights, democracy, [if there ever was ‘democracy’- PK comment] and freedom of speech.
Ms. Zakharova is more than right. This applies equally to the spineless EU. Let’s stay tuned for further fallouts from this interview – hopefully turning from negative to positive.
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Peter Koenig is a geopolitical analyst and a former Senior Economist at the World Bank and the World Health Organization (WHO), where he worked for over 30 years around the world. He lectures at universities in the US, Europe and South America. He writes regularly for online journals and is the author of Implosion – An Economic Thriller about War, Environmental Destruction and Corporate Greed; and co-author of Cynthia McKinney’s book “When China Sneezes: From the Coronavirus Lockdown to the Global Politico-Economic Crisis” (Clarity Press – November 1, 2020).
Peter is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG). He is also a non-resident Senior Fellow of the Chongyang Institute of Renmin University, Beijing.
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While US Secretary of State Blinken is on a mission to the Middle East with the declared aim of preventing the war from spreading in the region and obtaining a ceasefire in Gaza, heavy bombers from the United States attack Yemen, Iraq, and Syria, aiming at Iran, and Israel attacks Rafah, which has become a huge production camp, where Israeli soldiers also shot wounded civilians waiting outside a hospital.
In this situation, the initiative “Let’s mobilize against genocide” was born. Anyone who wants to contribute to this Campaign, based on the reasons set out here, can do so by subscribing to the channel: Telegram.
Let’s Mobilize Against Genocide
We representatives of civil society in Italy – a country whose Constitution repudiates war as an instrument of attack on the freedom of other peoples and as a means of resolving international disputes – support the complaint, accompanied by extensive documentation of the evidence, presented by the Republic of South Africa at the United Nations International Court of Justice against the State of Israel for the crime of genocide against the Palestinian people.
We express our appreciation for the fact that this initiative was promoted by South Africa. This country went through the experience of apartheid, similar to what the Palestinian people are going through, from which South Africa emerged thanks to the long and hard struggle of Nelson Mandela, who is the historical emblem.
We underline the importance that South Africa’s initiative not only for the Palestinian people but for people around the world.
It constitutes a concrete act, based on the principles set out in the United Nations Charter, to save future generations from the scourge of war and guarantee fundamental human rights to all the world’s peoples.
We reiterate the need to support the role of the United Nations International Court of Justice to guarantee legal certainty and the consequent defense of any people who are victims of a war of aggression or deprived of their fundamental rights.
In the absence of all this, we are aware that, the “right of force” will prevail with consequences that can be catastrophic for the entire world in the era of nuclear weapons.
We therefore call on all components of civil society to support South Africa’s initiative at the United Nations International Court of Justice.
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This article was originally published in Italian on Il Manifesto.
Manlio Dinucci, award winning author, geopolitical analyst and geographer, Pisa, Italy. He is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization.
The elections in Pakistan today were much freer and fairer than I had expected. Hence, the preliminary results simply reflected the obvious for most of us: former Prime Minister Imran Khan’s political party, PTI (the movement for justice) – facing ruthless repression over the past year – have swept the elections in every single province of the country.
For almost a century, it was understood that fluoride could dramatically improve the dental health of millions of people everywhere. Virtually everyone is now familiar with this principle.
Palestinians sheltering in Rafah, the last remaining ‘safe-place’ in Gaza, are awaiting extermination at the hands of the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) after Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu gave the IDF orders to ‘evacuate’ over 1 million people.
A week after Hamas launched its surprise attack on Israel, the social media page Facts For Peace was created with the message, “Get the facts on Hamas, Israel, and peace in the region.”
A notable feature of the post-pandemic world has been the brazen way in which global political leaders have continued promoting COVID-19 vaccines as safe. A rare exception in this respect is Slovakia’s Prime Minister Robert Fico, who, in a recent parliamentary speech, admitted that deaths from various cardiovascular events in his country have risen because of the vaccinations.
Washington is a place where a clueless politician like former Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi can, with a straight face and providing no evidence, claim that pro-Palestinian protesters in the United States are working for Russia and/or China. She has asked the FBI to investigate.
Despite calendars and clocks and all the mental gymnastics we use to control life and time, surprises are at the heart of existence. This may seem like a truism, but if so, it is one of those truths we often avoid in our desire for stability and the quelling of anxiety.
Without even taking into account the fact that Russian President Vladimir Putin just dispelled all the nonsensical speculation about the mythical “Russian invasion of Europe” in his interview with Tucker Carlson, we will delve into the reasoning of the author and why his analysis is “slightly off”, to put it euphemistically.
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Although his questions were on the sophomoric side, Tucker Carlson did a good thing by giving us a two hour view of how Putin thinks.The neoconservative warmongers and the shills for the armament industries are angry, because Putin did not present as they have portrayed him–an evil aggressor out to conquer Europe.
What comes across from Carlson’s interview with Putin is that Putin remains a captive, after all the betrayals and deceptions he has suffered, of his ideal of reaching an agreement with the West.He discounts Washington’s insistence on its hegemony.The fact doesn’t fit with Putin’s idealistic approach to international relations. Putin still hopes for sanity and good will to emerge in the West.His idealism blocks him from proactive actions, which he regards as provocative. He is yet to accept that his tolerance of Western aggression encourages more aggression and thus continues to frustrate the emergence of the cooperative multipolar world that he envisions.
I don’t think we are going to get the mutual defense treaty between Russia, China, and Iran that would cause Washington’s neoconservatives to accept reality and to give up their goal of American hegemony.
Watching the interview will help to free you from the propaganda that keeps you in The Matrix.
My concern remains that Putin’s reasonableness will continue to be taken advantage of by Washington until the conflict Putin seeks to avoid becomes unavoidable.
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Paul Craig Roberts is a renowned author and academic, chairman of The Institute for Political Economy where this article was originally published. Dr. Roberts was previously associate editor and columnist for The Wall Street Journal. He was Assistant Secretary of the Treasury for Economic Policy during the Reagan Administration. He is a regular contributor to Global Research.
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Palestinians sheltering in Rafah, the last remaining ‘safe-place’ in Gaza, are awaiting extermination at the hands of the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) after Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu gave the IDF orders to ‘evacuate’ over 1 million people.
In this case, the term evacuate means exterminate. There is nowhere to go. Some have wondered if they might be forced to walk to the north of Gaza, but that area is bombed to the ground by the IDF. Any remaining structures that could have been used to shelter have been demolished by the IDF engineering unit, after setting demolition explosives and bringing the buildings down to rubble.
The US, Egypt and Qatar worked on a draft proposal for a ceasefire in Gaza with Hamas representatives, but Netanyahu rejected the proposal without offering a counter-proposal. While leaders around the world, including the western democracies, have pressed US President Joe Biden to get a ceasefire approved with Israel for Gaza, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken has come up empty handed after meeting with Netanyahu.
Karim A. A. Khan is the Prosecutor of the ICC, serving a nine-year term beginning in 2021. He was born in Edinburgh, Scotland of a Pakistani father and a British mother. Khan is a Muslim, but has never lived under a brutal military occupation, or siege. Khan has been born, and lived his entire life in a free, western and democratic society. He has no experience living under the Israeli occupation of Palestine which denies all human rights to six million people.
On November 17, 2023, Khan issued a statement that five states: South Africa, Bangladesh, Bolivia (Plurinational State of), Comoros, and Djibouti, had referred information concerning war crimes committed by Israel. South African Foreign Minister Naledi Pandor asked Khan why he was able to issue an arrest warrant for Russian President Putin, but not for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
On December 6, 2023, Khan issued a statement after a trip to Palestine and Israel. He made points concerning Israeli actions in Gaza, and Israeli settler extremism in the Occupied West Bank, but the statement was mere words, and the victims are waiting for real justice.
On January 24, 2024, French lawyer Gilles Devers, along with a legal army composed of human rights groups and more than 600 lawyers, presented evidence of genocide by Israel to Khan at the ICC. A 56-page lawsuit arrived at the prosecutor’s office last November demanding the opening of an investigation into crimes by the Israeli army in Gaza since Oct. 7, that have killed more than 25,000 people, mainly women and children.
The Jordan Bar Association, and the Arab Lawyers Union participated in the submission of the case to the ICC of crimes including genocide committed by Israel against the Palestinian people. The international team includes the Jordanian, Palestinian, Algerian, Tunisian, and Mauritanian Bar Associations, as well as the National Union of Algerian Judges.
Dr. Anis Qasim, an international law expert, called for the removal of Khan at the ICC, due to his obvious bias in favor of the Israeli occupation. Qasim explained that Khan has failed to take steps against Israel, even though the statements made by Israeli leaders were sufficient to convict them under the ICC, given the demonstration of criminal intent.
Al-Haq’s General Director Shawan Jabarin told Al Jazeera, “US officials, the administration, I can say they are helping and complicit in the war crimes taking place in Palestine. We’re killed by the American weapons.”
Experts fear that Khan will attempt to convict Hamas of war crimes connected to the October 7 attack, and let Israel off free of charges.
“Khan’s is aligned with the Western rejection of any investigation into Israel’s crimes. Recall that former British Prime Minister Boris Johnson reassured Israel about Khan’s nomination for the position of Prosecutor General, claiming he would “fix the International Criminal Court,” and that his country would oppose the court’s investigation into crimes committed in Palestine,” wrote Aicha el Basri.
In the view of Khan, Hamas is a terrorist organization following Radical Islam. He equates Hamas with Al Qaeda and ISIS. Khan has stated that Hamas is not representative of Islam, because Islam is a loving religion. Experts would ask Khan, “Is Hamas a religious organization, or is it a resistance organization?” There is a huge difference, but Khan can’t see it, because he has never lived it.
Because Khan feels no solidarity with his fellow Muslims living under brutal siege and occupation in Palestine, he has no concept of resistance. Although Khan is a legal expert, he seemingly does not recognize the Geneva Convention, and the guarantee that all people under occupation have the right to armed struggle.
Hamas has stated they are not fighting to kill all Jews; they are fighting for the freedom of the Palestinian people. Hamas is a resistance group among many in the Middle East, all fighting for the same goal, to restore the human rights to about 6 million Palestinian people in Gaza and the Occupied West Bank.
Regardless of Khan’s religion, he is a British man first and foremost. He is well versed in defending Israel’s interest. Most experts doubt that Khan will make any meaningful attempt to bring Israel to account for obvious war crimes that the UN, Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch have researched and documented.
In the court of public opinion, Israel has already been convicted. In a recent poll, a majority of Americans have said that even though the Hamas attack was horrific, that it was justified because of the past history of the Israeli brutality against the Palestinian people. The protests against Israel have brought millions of people into the streets across the US, UK and all over Europe. The ICC may be part of a western democratic society, but Khan is far removed from the British people in the streets of London demanding a ceasefire and an end to the occupation of Palestine. Khan is running his court according to his own views and he is biased towards Israel, and where is the justice in that?
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The social-democratic New Democratic Party (NDP) of British Columbia has been buffeted by a political storm that was unleashed by the comments of its post-secondary education minister, Selina Robinson. She publicly and brazenly asserted that, prior to the creation of Israel, Palestine had been nothing more than a ‘crappy piece of land’.
Despite Robinson’s attempts to backtrack and the party leadership’s efforts at damage control, the outrage that her deeply racist comments generated was so powerful and sustained that she has now been forced out of the cabinet.
On 5 February, Premier David Eby finally bowed to the inevitable and announced that following ‘discussions with Minister Robinson we have reached a challenging and necessary decision that Selina will be stepping down in her role asadvanced education minister.’
To appreciate the importance of this development, it is first necessary to understand the role of Robinson in promoting anti-Palestinian racism and undermining Palestine solidarity. Her comments on 30 January were delivered at a gathering that was organised by the hardline Zionist body, B’nai B’rith Canada and they were posted on YouTube.
Robinson suggested that critics of Israel were ill informed on the supposed realities of what existed before the 1948 Nakba. As she put it, they ‘don’t understand that it was a crappy piece of land with nothing on it. You know, there were several hundred thousand people but other than that, it didn’t produce an economy.’
Terra Nullius
With these appalling comments, Robinson advanced the infamous notion of terra nullius, that was employed by colonising powers, including those in Canada, to claim that Indigenous populations were too primitive and economically undeveloped to retain possession of their land. The brazen crudity of these remarks immediately generated outrage in a number of communities. There were immediate and continuing calls for her to resign or be removed from her position in the government.
Laith Sarhan, a Vancouver-based Palestinian Canadian lawyer and activist, challenged Robinson’s false historical view and called for her to be removed from the provincial cabinet. This was echoed by, among others, Independent Jewish Voices Canada, Indigenous leaders, and federal NDP MP Matthew Green.
It was immediately apparent to Robinson and her government colleagues that she had gone too far and measures of damage control were set in motion. She declared that,
‘I understand that this flippant comment has caused pain and that it diminishes the connection Palestinians also have to the land.’
However, she didn’t acknowledge the racist and thoroughly colonialist nature of her words, but instead suggested that she had chosen them incautiously:
‘I said awful things. It came out not the way I intended. I was sloppy with my storytelling,’ she said.
For his part, Premier David Eby offered the view that her ‘comments increase divisions in our province. They increase the feelings of alienation of groups of people, especially people of Palestinian descent and people who are concerned about the death and the destruction in Palestine that is happening right now.’
Eby added that, ‘She has apologized unequivocally, as she should. And she’s got some more work to do’, and he stressed that she will now be ‘reaching out to communities to repair the damage herremarks caused.’ Clearly Eby hoped that admitting serious failings, while stressing Robinson’s readiness to mend her ways, would be enough to weather the storm without the loss of his minister.
There were, however, some glaring problems with this display of concern and contrition. Robinson’s remarks carried a very clear and deliberate message that can’t be explained away as some careless turn of phrase. Moreover, what she had to say on 30 January was not an isolated incident.
As Robinson dealt with the reaction to her ugly views, another example of her pro-Israel approach was coming home to roost. The Federation of Post-Secondary Educators of BC and the Canadian Association of University Teachers released a letter on 1 February that also called on Eby to remove Robinson from his cabinet. This was over her intervention in the case of Natalie Knight, who had been an instructor at Langara College in Vancouver.
Last October, Knight addressed a rally in Vancouver in which she referred to ‘the amazing, brilliant offensive waged on Oct. 7’ by Hamas and other organisations, in which they broke out of Gaza. Langara launched an investigation into her conduct and she was placed on leave. However, this led to the conclusion that the words she had spoken ‘were not clearly outside the bounds of protected expression’ and she was reinstated.
At this point, Robinson used her ministerial position to intervene and ensure that Knight would lose her job. On 26 January, Langara announced that Knight was no longer employed by them, and this reversal took place one day after Robinson had taken to social media to declare that she was ‘disappointed that this instructor continues to have a public post-secondary platform to spew hatred and vitriol.’ She also made clear that she had met with the college leadership to drive home her views.
Michael Conlon, executive director of the Federation of Post-Secondary Educators of BC, responded to Robinson’s actions by noting that the ‘notion that a minister would intervene directly with a college and call for the termination of a tenured faculty member is highly inappropriate and unprecedented. We will assist the Langara Faculty Association in grieving this unjustified termination.’
Popular Anger
From the record of Robinson’s social-media activity, her support for anti-Palestinian and Islamophobic perspectives became clear, as did her readiness to slander those taking to the streets to demand a ceasefire in Gaza. Thousands of people put their names to a letter to David Eby that asserted that a ‘member of your cabinet, Selina Robinson, has continually repeated Islamophobic stereotypes, vilified Muslims, Arabs and Palestinians. She has spread misinformation by aligning herself with the IDF and right-wingmedia like Fox News.’
On 4 February, it was reported that ‘representatives from more than a dozen B.C. mosques and Islamic associations have sent a letter to Premier David Eby calling for the minister of post-secondary education to be removed from her role. They also say no NDP MLA or candidate for the next election is welcome in their sacred spaces until the premier takes action against Selina Robinson.’
With this growing level of popular anger at work, the effort to protect Robinson was clearly falling short. Having already issued dubious apologies, she now promised, rather desperately, to take ‘anti-Islamophobia training’, again assuring everyone that, ‘I am committed to making amends, learning from the pain I have caused and doing whatever I canto rebuild relationships.’ None of this was working, however, and later that day she no longer had a place at the cabinet table.
Robinson’s misfortunes lay in the jarring fashion in which she justified Israel’s colonial project, but she was by no means an entirely discordant note in the government of which she was a part. Last November, with the slaughter in Gaza underway, the BC NDP’s annual convention passed a resolution calling for a ceasefire but the motion was added to the agenda belatedly, in the face of a Palestine solidarity protest outside the building.
The emergency resolution was opposed by some who considered it inadequate and David Eby wouldn’t associate himself with the demand for a ceasefire, claiming that ‘he wants peace in the Middle East, but his responsibility as premier is to the people of B.C. and addressing the rise in hate seen heresince the Oct. 7 attack.’ From all this, it isn’t hard to appreciate that the leadership of the BC government was ready to tolerate someone like Robinson until she provoked a level of outrage that made her a liability.
Robinson’s political downfall is a welcome development at a critical time for the Palestinian struggle and the movement of solidarity with it. Canada has seen the weaponisation of anti-Semitism and an ongoing effort to intimidate those who speak out or take to the streets against Israel’s brutality.
Since the genocidal assault on Gaza got underway, the movement of solidarity with Palestine has grown in strength and confidence. In the face of efforts to criminalise it, it has continued to mobilise and defy attempts to stifle it. It is an indication of the new power and resilience of this movement that anti-Palestinian racism could be challenged so effectively and that Selina Robinson held accountable as she so richly deserved to be.
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John Clarke became an organiser with the Ontario Coalition Against Poverty when it was formed in 1990 and has been involved in mobilising poor communities under attack ever since.
Featured image: Selina Robinson. Photo: Province of British Columbia / Flickr / CC BY-NC-ND 2.0
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It’s hard to imagine this happening in modern times. Even an assault on a single grave is a criminal act in a civilized (sic) country. The very idea is reviled everywhere. So what about Israel’s ongoing assaults on Palestinian cemeteries across Gaza?
The terror received passing reference, first in a fleeting video on Twitter, then in an international news outlet. For a day. That CNN report exposed how widespread was Israel’s upturning and ravaging graves.
Yet, while it may have generated some shock, outrage was surprisingly muted. Moving images – red-stained shrouds clutched by sobbing boys; rows of silent, bent mothers: wandering, stunned orphans: all compete for our rationed sympathy. Dying and grieving display feelings, if not hope. They’re more compelling. Long-dead bodies, their shrouds obscenely shredded, and bones scattered irreverently in pits are best left to archeologists. We wring our hands in moral indignation about genocide and starvation while we swallow our shame watching whole neighborhoods fleeing by foot to they-not-know where.
Is it not enough to order families – old, young, infirmed, pregnant – from their homes, driving them into a road carrying a handful of belongings? Is it not enough to destroy hospitals so that the screaming wounded, often without family nearby, die unnecessarily in corridors or endure amputations without anesthesia? Is it not enough to assassinate anyone daring to disobey orders to shelter among ruins of a bombed hospital or school, or among the raw rubble of their home – any home? Is it not enough to assassinate journalists who dare report realities from the field, to strike United Nations staff whose mission is caring for the needy? Is it not enough to delay essential food delivery to hundreds of thousands? Is it not enough to roundup men, strip them and whisk them away for torture and execution? Is it not enough to level two major Gaza universities, completely obliterating them? Is it not enough to shame decent Jews across the world – orthodox, reformed or non-observant – who watch as this abhorrence is carried out in the name of their Jewish state? Apparently not.
We now have marauding Israeli forces going after the dead, even the dead!
It’s surely impossible for people of conscience to overlook this, as grievous as watching Palestinians turned out of their homes, their contents tossed hither and thither as they are bulldozed, their fields of carefully nurtured olive trees uprooted. Bones and shrouded remains of recently deceased are left exposed, then run over by Israeli tanks and bulldozers.
Cement vaults and hastily dug graves of newly buried are treated equally unfeelingly. (Although given what we are seeing day-to-day, Israelis may actually delight in these actions.) Whatever the pretense for this final assault on a people, these misdeeds expose a distinct degree of incivility. These violations are unarguably intended to deepen the pain of those who dare to survive this calamity. Such crimes are bound to heighten hostility towards their perpetrators.
Israelis don’t need a journalist or theologian to remind them of the sanctity of burial sites. Their behavior is especially poignant given how, in 2005, with the handover of Jewish settlements in Gaza to Palestinian refugees, departing settlers insisted that their loved ones be unearthed for transport to Israel with them. That’s a sign of the care Jews give their ancestors. Muslims and Christians are hardly different—cemeteries are for us more than a resting place of the dead. They mark a family history; they represent love; they signify respect for one’s grandparents, for all ancestors. Israeli sociologists and policy makers and those operating those bulldozers know how, after the annual Eid Al-Fitr, every Muslim family revisit graves of their ancestors. That day is a cherished, cheerful time when children and adults gather among the graves to enjoy a meal, chatting and playing near the spirits of protected loved ones. Christian neighbors join Muslim families at cemeteries on that hallowed Eid.
I recall a heartbreaking sight in a video clip from Iraq almost twenty years ago. Decimated by a decade of embargo, the invasion and sedition aggravated by occupying US troops, internal (sectarian) strife erupted, causing widespread terror. An elderly Iraqi man looking into the camera of a journalist wept agonizingly: “Look, look at what we have become!” I wonder: might some Jewish people staring at those graves smashed and desecrated so savagely, feel similarly?
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A century ago Yogmaya and Durga Devi, two women champions of justice, emerged from a remote corner of rural Nepal to offer solutions to their nation’s social and political ills. Then they were forgotten.
Years after their demise, in 1980 veteran anthropologist Barbara Nimri Aziz first uncovered their suppressed histories in her comprehensive and accessible biographies. Revelations from her decade of research led to the resurrection of these women and their entry into contemporary Nepali consciousness.
This book captures the daring political campaigns of these rebel women; at the same time it asks us to acknowledge their impact on contemporary feminist thinking. Like many revolutionaries who were vilified in their lifetimes, we learn about the true nature of these leaders’ intelligence, sacrifices, and vision during an era of social and economic oppression in this part of Asia.
After Nepal moved from absolute monarchy to a fledgling democracy and history re-evaluated these pioneers, Dr. Aziz explores their legacies in this book.
Psychologically provocative and astonishingly moving, “Yogmaya and Durga Devi” is a seminal contribution to women’s history.
Mentre il Segretario di Stato USA Blinken è in missione in Medio Oriente allo scopo dichiarato di impedire l’allargamento della guerra nella regione e ottenere un cessate-il-fuoco a Gaza, bombardieri pesanti provenienti dagli Stati Uniti attaccano lo Yemen, l’Iraq e la Siria, mirando all’Iran, e Israele attacca Rafah, divenuto un enorme campo profughi, dove cecchini israeliani sparano anche ai civili feriti in attesa fuori da un ospedale.
In tale situazione nasce l’iniziativa “Mobilitiamoci contro il genocidio”. Chiunque voglia contribuire a questa Campagna, sulla base delle motivazioni qui esposte, lo può fare iscrivendosi al canale Telegram https://t.me/Mobilitiamocicontroilgenocidio.
MOBILITIAMOCI CONTRO IL GENOCIDIO!
Noi esponenti della società civile dell’Italia – Paese la cui Costituzione ripudia la guerra come strumento di offesa alla libertà degli altri popoli e come mezzo di risoluzione delle controversie internazionali – sosteniamo la denuncia, corredata da un’ampia documentazione delle prove, presentata dalla Repubblica del Sudafrica alla Corte Internazionale di Giustizia delle Nazioni Unite contro lo Stato d’Israele per il reato di genocidio nei confronti del popolo palestinese.
Esprimiamo il nostro apprezzamento per il fatto che tale iniziativa sia stata promossa dal Sudafrica, Paese che ha vissuto l’esperienza dell’apartheid, analoga a quella che sta vivendo il popolo palestinese, dalla quale il Sudafrica è uscito grazie alla lunga e dura lotta di cui Nelson Mandela è l’emblema storico.
Sottolineiamo l’importanza che l’iniziativa del Sudafrica riveste non solo per il popolo palestinese, ma per i popoli di tutto il mondo. Essa costituisce un atto concreto, in base ai principi enunciati nella Carta delle Nazioni Unite, per salvare le future generazioni dal flagello della guerra, per garantire i fondamentali diritti umani a tutti i popoli del mondo.
Ribadiamo la necessità di sostenere il ruolo della Corte Internazionale di Giustizia delle Nazioni Unite per garantire la certezza del diritto e la conseguente difesa a qualunque popolo sia vittima di una guerra di aggressione, sia privato dei suoi fondamentali diritti.
Siamo consapevoli che, in mancanza di tutto questo, prevalga il “diritto della forza” con conseguenze che, nell’era delle armi nucleari, possono essere catastrofiche per il mondo intero. Chiamiamo quindi tutte le componenti della società civile a sostenere l’iniziativa del Sudafrica alla Corte Internazionale di Giustizia delle Nazioni Unite.
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Global Research is a website whose focus is principally on truth and government accountability, and one of the most important divisions on this subject is on the question of the truth behind war. [1]
And while we have been speaking frequently in the past few years on the question of the War in Ukraine, the War in Yemen, and similar violence against Libya, Syria, Afghanistan, Iraq, Yugoslavia, etc, there is another important component that is somewhat disregarded. That piece has to do with the Weaponization of Space.
The United States Space Force was founded in 2019. It is a division of the U.S. Armed Forces, alongside the Navy, Army, Marines and Air Force, and would exist to provide access to space operations and consequently a new field on which to target enemies. This extra dimension seems seldom discussed in public media discussion. But it’s consequences could be fundamental in anyone concerned about war in 2023 and beyond. [2]
The Global Network against Weapons and Nuclear Power in Space (GN) has been in existence since 1992. It was founded by the Florida Coalition for Peace & Justice (FCPJ); Citizens for Peace in Space (Colorado Springs); and New York-based Journalism professor Karl Grossman. Bruce Gagnon has served as its coordinator. The organization has been an effective educational tool to its members and the 170 organizations around the world with which it is affiliated. [3]
On this 31st annual general meeting held over ZOOM on the 15th of July presents a number of eloquent discussions encapsulating not only Ballistic Missile Defense systems (Star Wars) but also the development of NATO into the Asia-Pacific, Full Spectrum Dominance, and the evolution of propaganda in the era of social media and the internet. These discussions are the focus of this summertime edition of the Global Research News Hour.
Appearing in this discussion were GN Board Chair Dave Webb, Korean-American Juyeon Rhee, independent journalist Christian Sorenson, retired educator and organizer Lisa Savage, and Canadian peace activist and academic Tamara Lorincz.
Dave Webb is Professor Emeritus and the Convener of the GN board of directors. He is a retired university engineering professor who switched to Peace and Conflict Studies. He was chair of the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (CND) in the UK and is chair of the Yorkshire Region CND and a patron of the UK group Scientists for Global Responsibility.
Juyeon Rhee has been a member of New York-based Nodutdol for Korean Community Development since 2000. She is also a board member at Korea Policy Institute, and also a steering committee member of Tongil Peace Foundation. She holds multiple memberships with overseas Korean organizations supporting peace and reunification work.
Christian Sorensen is a New England-based researcher and independent journalist in the US mainly focused on the corporations profiting from war. An Air Force veteran, he is the author of the book Understanding the War Industry.
Lisa Savage is a retired educator, organizer, and past candidate for the U.S. Senate in 2020. She lives in Solon, Maine and blogs at https://went2thebridge.substack.com
Tamara Lorincz is a PhD candidate in Global Governance at the Balsillie School for International Affairs at Wilfrid Laurier University in Canada. She’s a member of the Canadian Voice of Women for Peace and serves on the board of the GN.
CIXX 106.9 FM, broadcasting from Fanshawe College in London, Ontario. It airs Sundays at 6am.
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A week after Hamas launched its surprise attack on Israel, the social media page Facts For Peace was created with the message, “Get the facts on Hamas, Israel, and peace in the region.”
A few days later, the page began advertising its content. “Here is Hamas’ Founding Charter in Their Own Words,” one sponsored post reads alongside video clips of Hamas leaders speaking and snapshots of the document. The page has spent more than $945,000 on Facebook ads since the war began nearly four months ago, and according to POLITICO, was the single largest pro-Israel advertiser between November 2 and December 1, spending over $450,000 on Meta ads. The ads have mainly reached male-identifying Facebook users under the age of 35 in California, Texas, New York, and Florida.
Labeled as a media/news company on Facebook, now Meta, the page’s posts and its supporters appear less concerned with accurate reporting and more involved in shaping public opinion.
In November, news website Semafor reported real-estate billionaire Barry Sternlicht launched Facts For Peace and sought $1 million in donations each from some of the world’s wealthiest individuals. “This is just one of several behind-the-scenes efforts by business tycoons — many, though not all of them Jewish — to support Israel since the attack by Hamas,” Samafor reported.
“Public opinion will surely shift as scenes, real or fabricated by Hamas, of civilian Palestinian suffering will surely erode [Israel’s] current empathy in the world community,” Sternlicht wrote in an email, seen by Semafor, soliciting contributions from Wall Street, Hollywood, and tech moguls. “We must get ahead of the narrative.”
The main objective of the "Facts for Peace" media campaign is to blame Palestinian deaths & suffering on Hamas instead of on their occupier, Apartheid Israel. pic.twitter.com/TaEy7ZNcGJ
Sternlicht wrote that he’s aiming to raise $50 million from the recipients and secure a matching donation from an unnamed Jewish charity. With the funds, Facts For Peace seeks to “define Hamas to the American people as a terrorist organization” and “not just the enemy of Israel but of the United States.”
According to Bloomberg and Forbes data, the recipients have a combined net worth of almost $500 billion and include media tycoon David Geffen, former New York City mayor Michael Bloomberg, Apollo CEO Marc Rowan, investors Michael Milke, Nelson Peltz, and Bill Ackman, and tech tycoons Eric Schmidt and Michael Dell. Facts For Peace did not respond to MintPress News inquiries about its campaign objectives.
Paying for Propaganda
Following its debut ad on the Hamas charter, Facts For Peace has gone on to publish hundreds of sponsored posts, with some conflating support for Palestine with support for Hamas or calling for the destruction of Israel. Only one ad was taken down since Facts For Peace’s launch for violating the platform’s advertising standards by not adding a paid for by disclaimer.
One ad, which hasn’t been active since Jan. 22, 2024, depicts a pro-Palestine march with participants chanting, “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free.”
“Does this sound like peace and freedom? No,” the ad reads, followed by stating the protest ballad is a call for “genocide.” The ad then tells the viewer this slogan is sung at nearly every pro-Palestine rally and immediately jumps into saying, “Hamas wants to destroy and take over the entire area where Israelis and Palestinians live.”
The ad then ends with, “Anyone who says these words…is calling for a world without Israel.”
In another advertised video, a man approaches pedestrians in New York City, asking them to sign “a quick petition to help Hamas free Palestine.” He then reads off the petition’s“terms and conditions,” which include, “You agree that every Jew, Christian, and non-Muslim in the world must be slaughtered,” “You believe Iran should use Palestinians as puppets to spread radical jihad and destroy the west,” and “You want a terrorist group that beheads babies and rapes girls to replace the only democracy in the Middle East.”
A similar video shows a man approaching pedestrians in Washington, D.C., asking them to sign the same petition. In this video, the “terms and conditions” outlined include agreeing “Hamas should keep enforcing anti-West values like murdering gay Palestinians,” and “You want Hamas to win the war so they can spread their death cult to the U.S. and massacre all non-Muslims.”
As a reminder, those demonstrating in support of Palestine are generally not siding with Hamas, and using the slogan, “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free,” isn’t genocidal but rather expressing freedom from oppression across the historical land of Palestine.
While pro-Palestine activists have been condemned for this phrase, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu did not receive similar backlash when he called to take over the “area from the river to the sea.”
“Every area that we evacuate, we receive terrible terror against us. It happened in South Lebanon, in Gaza, and also in Judea and Samaria [the occupied West Bank], which we did it,” Netanyahu said earlier this month. “And therefore, I clarify that in any other arrangement, in the future, the state of Israel has to control the entire area from the river to the sea.”
Another now-inactive ad encourages viewers to take a quiz to determine “Who do you really support in the Middle East Conflict?” The ad then directs to a Facts For Peace online quiz asking questions related to democracy, human rights, and equality. If you answer positively, your results say, “your views are more in line with Israel’s.”
“It seems that Facts for Peace is another transparent effort to wrap up genocide propaganda in lies and push the public conversation in counterproductive directions,” rapper and activist Lowkey said.
Currently, the page is running two ads on Instagram. On January 28, Facts For Peace launched an ad with the caption, “The International Court of Justice [ICJ] just confirmed Israel’s right to self-defense.” In this video, Facts For Peace said because the ICJ didn’t call for an immediate ceasefire “establishes Israel’s military actions are a defensive response to the Oct 7 attacks.”
The page is also running an ad featuring a video interview with Abbey Onn, an American-Israeli who had five members of her family kidnapped by Hamas on October 7. The video was produced by Middle East Intel, yet the only record of this organization is a black-and-white webpage containing only its name in large font. Another website, Israel Palestine Chronicles, features the same design as Middle East Intel but links to accounts on Facebook, Instagram, and YouTube as well as noting that it is paid for by Facts For Peace LLC. These websites mirror Facts For Peace’s own website, which also dons a black-and-white theme and links to its social media pages.
Facts For Peace’s mission falls in line with the United States’ vast Israel lobby. American journalist and executive director of the Institute for Public Accuracy, Norman Solomon, explained the lobby’s current tactics since Israel’s war began.
“The Israel lobby extends far beyond literal lobbyists on Capitol Hill,” Solomon told MintPress.
Israel-can-do-no-wrong defenders have been in ongoing damage-control mode since October, and part of that effort is focused on smearing principled supporters of human rights like Congresswomen Rashida Tlaib and Cori Bush.”
Facts For Peace appears part of these damage-control efforts with its own media blitz. “The lobby’s influence is inclusive of, and perhaps mainly composed of, ferocious media offensives – now denying that Israel is engaged in the mass murder of civilians in Gaza and slandering the movement that demands an immediate and permanent ceasefire,” Solomon said.
Despite Facts For Peace’s continuous ad expenditure, Solomon doubts, however, that the campaign can make a real impact on public opinion, telling MintPress:
Its website is rudimentary and appears to be going through the motions. Not major players in the manipulative game of smearing people who advocate for human rights of Palestinian people.”
Who Is Behind Facts for Peace?
Facts For Peace’s website offers little transparency beyond giving a contact email address and social media links and stating it’s paid for by Facts For Peace LLC. Yet who manages the campaign isn’t listed. Facts For Peace was incorporated in New York on September 15, 2022, and was originally called Fulfill the Promise LLC. It changed its name to Change the Narrative Coalition LLC on October 13 before finally landing on Facts For Peace on October 16.
According to Semafor, Facts For Peace hired Josh Vlasto, a former aide to U.S. Sen. Chuck Schumer and ex-New York governor Andrew Cuomo, to advise it. The number listed on Facts For Peace’s Meta Ad Library account is the same one for Vlasto’s public relations firm, Bamberger & Vlasto. The firm is run by Vlasto and Richard Bamberger, both former Cuomo aides who reportedly assisted Cuomo in his smear attempts against former aide Lindsey Boylan, who accused Cuomo of sexual harassment.
MintPress could not reach Vlasto’s firm for comment. However, Vlasto has already shared Facts For Peace’s content on his X profile. According to The Bureau of Investigative Journalism, Facts for Peace, Israel Palestine Chronicles, and Bamberger & Vlasto, websites all share the same IP addresses, suggesting they are hosted on the same server.
Semafor also reported that Sternlicht discussed Facts For Peace with CNN owner David Zaslav and that Endeavor CEO Ari Emanuel agreed to coordinate the endeavor. However, neither Saslav nor Emanuel responded to MintPress inquiries on their involvement.
Facts For Peace’s known head, Sternlicht, has previously funded Birthright, the Anti-Defamation League (ADL), and the American Jewish Committee (AJC) through his foundation and according to the foundation’s 2022 tax filing, available on ProPublic’s Nonprofit Explorer database, it gave $20,000 to the American Jewish Committee’s “to support [its] pro-Israel media campaign.”
Barry Sternlicht, the individual heading Israel's $50 million propaganda campaign, Facts for Peace, has previously funded Birthright, the ADL, and one of Israel's national institutions, the UJIA.
Lowkey stressed Sternlicht’s funding ventures should be cause for concern, telling MintPress that:
Sternlicht has a history of funding projects aimed at radicalizing young people and converting them to settler-colonists. Birthright offers free trips to occupied Palestine and the occupied Syrian Golan Heights to young Jews around the world.”
The ADL notoriously spied on thousands of Arab students and pro-Palestine and anti-apartheid activists, including Archbishop Desmond Tutu, and even sold that information to South African intelligence agents in the 1980s.
Another notable person linked to Facts For Peace is ex-Google CEO Schmidt, who co-founded the Israeli tech company Team8 in 2015 with Nadav Zafrir, former head of Israeli military intelligence Unit 8200, which is infamous for surveilling Palestinians. Schmidt has met with Netanyahu over the years, and during their last meeting in Sept. 2023, Schmidt agreed to join Netanyahu’s advisory forum on artificial intelligence.
Project Nimbus is the final phase of Google's integration into the Israeli military.
Ten years ago, Google head Eric Schmidt held an intimate press conference with Israeli PM Netanyahu; not long after, Schmidt founded a tech hub with the former head of Israeli intelligence. pic.twitter.com/byLghBcBt0
According to a MintPress investigation, at least 99 former agents of Unit 8200 are currently employed in significant roles at Google, including as Head of Strategy.
Other Facts For Peace’s email recipients have also expressed support for Israel as of late. Wall Street executives Ackman and Rowan criticized universities’ handling of pro-Palestinian demonstrations — calling to withhold their donations.
Facts For Peace’s ads are often stuffed with prominent voices like comedian Mikey Greenblatt, actors Nathaniel Buzolic and Zach Sage Fox, and Mosab Hassan Yousef, a Palestinian who worked undercover for the Shin Bet, Israel’s internal security service and has strongly opposed calls for a ceasefire.
Despite this Rolodex of high-profile support, netizens have questioned the campaign and its agenda in a Reddit forum.
One user responded:
answer: It’s a Zionist propaganda group manufactured to try and counter, belittle, and discredit the organic anti Zionist sentiments on social media.
Edit: their increased presence is fueled by monetary investments by pro Zionist individuals and groups that dislike the fact that younger individuals are anti Zionist.
Jewish ≠ Zionist
Jewish ≠ Israeli
Anti Zionist ≠ Anti Semitic
Public opinion polls indicate that support for Israel is waning, with a November 2023 Reuters/Ipsos survey noting that around 68% of respondents in the U.S. agreed with the statement that “Israel should call a ceasefire and try to negotiate.” And with Israel charging forward with its unrelenting war on Gaza — killing more than 26,000 Palestinians so far in the assault — amid growing international pressure, sponsored social media ads may not be enough to return Israeli favor in the world’s eyes.
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Jessica Buxbaum is a Jerusalem-based journalist for MintPress News covering Palestine, Israel, and Syria. Her work has been featured in Middle East Eye, The New Arab and Gulf News.
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A notable feature of the post-pandemic world has been the brazen way in which global political leaders have continued promoting COVID-19 vaccines as safe. A rare exception in this respect is Slovakia’s Prime Minister Robert Fico, who, in a recent parliamentary speech, admitted that deaths from various cardiovascular events in his country have risen because of the vaccinations. Describing COVID-19 vaccines as “experimental” and “unnecessary,” Fico has bravely committed his government to telling Slovak people the truth about what actually happened during the pandemic.
The Slovak Prime Minister’s speech came only weeks after announcing that his political party would not support strengthening the powers of the World Health Organization (WHO) in managing the fight against future pandemics. Explaining this decision, Fico stated that “such nonsense could only have been invented by greedy pharmaceutical companies, which began to perceive the resistance of certain governments against mandatory vaccination.” Subsequent to his announcement, the WHO admitted that the plans for its controversial global pandemic agreement are at risk of falling apart. Aided by proposed amendments to the International Health Regulations of 2005, the ratification of this agreement would essentially transform the WHO into a global health dictatorship.
Who Actually Organized the COVID-19 Circus?
Fico’s parliamentary speech addresses a number of key issues, such as how many expired vaccines Slovakia has left and how much money has been wasted on them. He also openly refers to the President of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, and secret text messages that she reportedly exchanged with Pfizer Chairman and CEO Albert Bourla. A multi-billion euro vaccine deal was subsequently completed with Pfizer, the largest such purchase in the European Commission’s entire history. “We will simply never know the truth of what role the pharmaceutical companies played,” suggests Fico, “and who actually organized the whole circus around COVID-19.”
Fico believes that the Slovak people need answers to important questions such as why people were vaccinated with various experimental vaccines, and why all sorts of drugs were used on them. An Office of the Government Plenipotentiary has therefore been created to deal with these issues. This Plenipotentiary has been empowered in terms of obtaining information from various Slovak institutions.
Fico says he is “absolutely convinced” that this investigation will lead to results and that his government will ultimately be able to tell Slovak citizens what actually happened during the pandemic. Meantime he alleges that previous governments in his country are responsible for 21,000 excess deaths since 2020 and openly accuses them of making “a huge amount of money on the unnecessary purchase of various medical equipment and vaccines.”
Will the Slovak investigation uncover at least some of the truth about the COVID-19 circus? And if it does, will it succeed in making it public? Time will tell, but investigations carried out in other countries have thus far left many questions unanswered. The total cost of the ongoing UK inquiry is eventually expected to run to more than half-a-billion pounds ($630 million), for example, but is already turning into a whitewash. In his laudable attempt to find out what really happened during the pandemic, Prime Minister Fico is likely going to have a fight on his hands.
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***
“It really raises the question. Do you want your NTP (National Toxicology Program) which is supposed to be all about science – independent science – do you want these political bodies to have sort of a veto power over them? And that’s what we see happening with fluoride. This veto power from political bodies over the scientists at the NTP!” – Michael Connett, Attorney for Fluoride Action Network, from this week’s interview.
For almost a century, it was understood that fluoride could dramatically improve the dental health of millions of people everywhere. Virtually everyone is now familiar with this principle. [1]
“Look Ma! No cavities!” [2]
Consequently, communities throughout the United States and Canada began actually inserting fluoride in the form of Silicofluorides into our drinking water. [3]
Over 70 percent of communities in America and almost 40 percent in Canada have fluoride added to their tap water. Meanwhile, throughout Europe, the vast majority of water is not fluoridated. Are North American teeth that much more improved than European teeth? [4][5][6]
No.
Far more disturbing is the scientific research coming out for decades now signalling that fluoridated, like lead and arsenic, could be toxic. Studies show it’s use in water has apparently resulted in dental fluorosis, skeletal weakness, thyroid issues, and irritable bowel syndrome. In particular, studies have come out linking fluoridated water with lowering children’s IQs! [7][8]
Now, for the first time ever, citizens’ groups, armed with studies and research, took the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to a Federal Court over their failure to respect a petition calling for the agency to ban the use of an industrial chemical if it presents an unreasonable risk to human health. The lawsuit was submitted in 2017. [9]
It is only now, almost seven years later, that the court hearings are going into its second phase after a delay. [10]
What is behind the delays in a case ultimately determining the fate of millions of citizens? Is there an outside factor beyond “science” weighing in with their huge thumbs on the scales of human health regulation? And where the hell is mainstream media in all of this? These are some of the many factors weighing in on this week’s episode of the Global Research News Hour.
In our first half hour, we have a conversation with Dr. Robert Dickson (Dr. Bob) about the use and history of artificial water fluoridation in Canada, the health impacts studies, and about some of the ways forward for people seeking to free themselves from virtually “compulsive” consumption of the substance.
In our second half hour, the amazing journalist Derrick Broze hosts a discussion with Michael Connett, the lead attorney representing the plaintiffs in the federal court lawsuit on fluoride in water. He discusses the background, and the core principles involved. His arguments will astonish you!
Dr. Robert C Dickson is the founder of Safe Water Calgary, and the chair of Fluoride Free Canada. He has a degree in Physical Education and an MD from the University of Calgary, and certification in Paramedics from SAIT in Calgary. Dr. Dickson co-led the anti-fluoridation program in Calgary from 1999 which resulted in water fluoridation being halted in 2011, and continues to actively volunteer with the issue of artificial water fluoridation. His site is www.fluoridefreecanada.ca
Michael Connett is the lead attorney for Food & Water Watch,Fluoride Action Network,Moms Against Fluoridation and other advocacy groups and individuals currently suing the EPA in a bid to force the agency to prohibit water fluoridation in the U.S. due to fluoride’s toxic effects on children’s developing brains.
CIXX 106.9 FM, broadcasting from Fanshawe College in London, Ontario. It airs Sundays at 6am.
WZBC 90.3 FM in Newton Massachusetts is Boston College Radio and broadcasts to the greater Boston area. The Global Research News Hour airs during Truth and Justice Radio which starts Sunday at 6am.
Campus and community radio CFMH 107.3fm in Saint John, N.B. airs the Global Research News Hour Fridays at 7pm.
CJMP 90.1 FM, Powell River Community Radio, airs the Global Research News Hour every Saturday at 8am.
Caper Radio CJBU 107.3FM in Sydney, Cape Breton, Nova Scotia airs the Global Research News Hour starting Wednesday afternoon from 3-4pm.
All Global Research articles can be read in 51 languages by activating the Translate Website button below the author’s name (only available in desktop version).
To receive Global Research’s Daily Newsletter (selected articles), click here.
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Washington is a place where a clueless politician like former Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi can, with a straight face and providing no evidence, claim that pro-Palestinian protesters in the United States are working for Russia and/or China. She has asked the FBI to investigate. But in spite of that and for a change there was also some good news coming out of the Federal Capital though it was far outweighed by the bad things that the US government does almost reflexively, clearly with little regard for possible consequences.
The good news is that Ukraine and Israel, incorrectly described by the New York Times as America’s “allies,” might not soon be getting their expected fat checks and planeloads of military equipment from Washington, which will no doubt hamper their plans to weaken Russia while also killing Palestinians.
The GOP controlled House presented a unilateral standalone bill giving $17.6 billion to Israel but ignoring other alleged national security obligations being advanced by the White House. The bill was submitted “under suspension,” which is a procedural tactic that fast-tracks an item for a vote but requires a two-thirds majority to pass. It failed 250-180 in the voting last Tuesday. The House bill went down when the Democrats were able to muster enough votes to block its passage in support of White House objections, even though a formidable percentage of the House normally votes to support anything and everything related to Israel. The “no” voters argued that the GOP bill was an attempt to “undermine the possibility of a comprehensive bipartisan funding package that addresses America’s national security challenges in the Middle East, Ukraine, the Indo-Pacific region and throughout the world.”
If the bill had passed and eventually reached Biden’s desk for signature, a possibility that the White House had dismissed as a “cynical political maneuver,” he would have refused to sign it in spite of his often expressed great love for Israel. Over last weekend, White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre issued a statement declaring that
“The security of Israel should be sacred, not a political game. We strongly oppose this ploy which does nothing to secure the border, does nothing to help the people of Ukraine defend themselves against Putin’s aggression, and denies humanitarian assistance to Palestinian civilians, the majority of them women and children, which the Israelis supported by opening the access route.”
It should be noted that Jean-Pierre is lying. It is the White House, not the GOP bill, which “denies humanitarian assistance” to the Gazans by supporting Israeli total control over the importation of relief supplies and food. According to the UN, 95% of emergency supplies are being blocked or interfered with by Israel, which continues to bomb civilians throughout the strip. In response to that reality, the White House has issued a national security memorandum that will require that countries receiving US military aid not impede the delivery of humanitarian assistance even during wartime, though the Thursday memorandum does not specifically mention it as applying to Israel, only to “allies and partners.” The aid recipients must also confirm in writing that they “will use any such defense articles in accordance with international humanitarian law.”
In a bid to counter the Republican efforts and advance his own agenda, President Joe Biden and whoever pulls his strings came up with their own war funding plan, which came apart and “crumbled” in a close 49 to 50 vote due to lack of sufficient support in the Senate on Wednesday night. The Democrats had the brilliant idea of tying in their offering of $14.1 billion in aid to Israel to the $60 billion to be given to Ukraine to get them through the next year plus $4 billion for Taiwan.
Also included was $10 billion in humanitarian aid, but as the United Nations Relief and Works Agency program for Palestine (UNRWA) was predictably blocked from receiving any of it, the $1.4 billion allocated to Gaza would likely not actually have been delivered in any case in spite of Biden’s promotion of the “humanitarian” aspect of the legislation. If the bill had passed, one would not have been surprised to see the bulk of the humanitarian aid winding up in Israel to compensate it for its perpetual victimhood, this time allegedly meted out by Hamas!
The White House’s reasoning behind the initiative was that by wrapping all the commitments together in an omnibus Senate bill, Congress wouldn’t dare withhold money from Israel and the other aid packages could slide through the process without any serious opposition. But the Republicans were able to muster enough “no” votes from congressmen concerned about where the money was coming from to pay for the aid to block the Senate bill. A third “national security” spending bill is nevertheless now in the works, having passed through the Senate on Thursday night by a filibuster proof 67 to 32 vote. It includes the money for Ukraine and Israel as well as for Taiwan and for “humanitarian” programs, but it still has to pass through further tweaking in the Senate to satisfy Republican concerns about immigration and the border, followed by a second vote in the Senate before it then goes on to the House of Representatives for final approval before landing on the presidential desk. So at this point nobody gets anything, which is a perfect solution when one is fighting three or four technically illegal wars, one involving genocide, in which money provided to Israel plausibly involves the United States in supporting a crime against humanity.
On the same previous day as the vote in the House on the Israel aid, the GOP, unfortunately, also failed in its bid to impeach Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas by a vote of 216-214. Four Republicans voted against together with all the Democrats on grounds that impeaching a cabinet secretary over policy disagreements sets a bad precedent. Mayorkas’ record regarding relatively free entry of waves of literally millions of illegal immigrants from Mexico is well known, but the presumption is that he is carrying out policies under instructions from the president. The border has become known as such an easy way to enter the US that charter flights to Mexico from places like India and Africa are regularly being run to bring in the new illegals. Interestingly the failed Senate bill relating to Israel and Ukraine funding also included as a sweetener some guidelines regarding changes regarding border and migrant “security” issues, though Republicans observed that the language was such that Mayorkas would continue to have a free hand in setting policy and enforcement, meaning that there would likely be no change from the current laissez faire. Mayorkas defended himself against attacks in a Senate hearing by Republican Senator Josh Hawley, who was, ironically, challenging the secretary over a pro-Palestinian employee at Homeland Security, by characteristically citing his Jewish ancestry-bestowed victimhood and the so-called holocaust. He said angrily
“Perhaps he does not know that I am the child of a Holocaust survivor. Perhaps he does not know that my mother lost almost all her family at the hands of the Nazis. And so I find his adversarial tone to be entirely misplaced. I find it to be disrespectful of me and my heritage. And I do not expect an apology.”
So the utterly incompetent Mayorkas survived, But the worst news of the week has to relate to the continuing warfare going on and also escalating in the Middle East. The region has been simmering ever since Israel launched its devastating attack on the mostly civilian population of Gaza in early October. The bombing and shooting of civilians has continued in spite of a judgment by the International Court of Justice (ICJ) that Israel was engaging in actions that could be characterized as genocide. The United States, which is continuing to arm and fund Israel, could be seen, in legal terms, as an accessory to genocide given the terms of the court ruling. Israel, for its part, was warned that it must cease and desist from targeting and killing civilians, blocking food and other relief supplies to encourage both famine and disease, and destroying critical infrastructure like water treatment plants and hospitals.
The United States is responsible for escalating the conflict through its total support of Israel and its attack on the Houthis as well as the current strikes against targets in Syria and Iraq. Hypocritically the White House is at the same time boasting that it is not expanding the war because it has not yet struck Iran, as the Israelis are stridently seeking. To retaliate against a drone attack that killed three US soldiers at a base straddling the Jordan-Syria border, the United States attacked more than 85 targets in Syria, Iraq and Yemen simultaneously, killing at least forty civilians in Syria as well as a high level Iraqi militia commander in Baghdad. The multi-million-dollar cruise missiles and smart bombs being used by the Navy and Air Force are reportedly expensive and already hard to replace. And why is the White House bombing so many targets in Iraq and Syria when only one US base which may have actually been in completely illegally in Syria was hit? The one site that launched the device that struck the base was reportedly among the targets, but the effectiveness of the retaliation is unknown, meaning that the US is engaged in collective punishment and killing innocent tribesman living in the deserts in western Iraq and eastern Syria as well as in the Iraqi capital Baghdad. This is itself an escalation and more will surely follow, inevitably creating new enemies who will be motivated to seek revenge against Americans at the remaining bases. The smart policy would be to shut down the illegal bases in both Syria and Iraq, as has been demanded by the local governments and people, but that would mean not being able to steal more Syrian oil. This escalation was not the right response, but no one expects Biden and his crew to be smart.
In fact, the local militia fighters wasted no time and struck back immediately, killing six US-supported Kurdish fighters by way of a drone strike on a US base in eastern Syria. The men were killed in an attack on the US facility located at al-Omar oilfield in Syria’s eastern Deir ez-Zor province. A further 18 militiamen were wounded. Additional attacks on US bases in Syria and Iraq are likely to increase, not decrease in the coming weeks, with no end in sight. If anyone can explain why the United States continues to shoot itself in the foot both worldwide and at home it would certainly be interesting to hear a whole new series of lies to justify bad policies and performance. In 2015 distinguished journalist Robert Fisk asked what is “The difference between America and Israel?” He answered “There isn’t one. Netanyahu knows he can get away with anything in America – with the same confidence that he can support his army when they slaughter hundreds of children in Gaza.” He has now observed that the 2016 election was between a “Liberal American Zionist fascist,” and a “Conservative American Zionist fascist,” with the latter winning in 2016, and the former in 2020. And now we’re likely back to the latter in 2024.
Joe Biden is clearly getting nervous. In an impromptu speech on Thursday responding to disparaging comments made by the special counsel investigating his mishandling of classified documents, he denied suffering from memory problems. Unfortunately, in his comments he described Egypt’s President Abdul Fattah al-Sisi as the leader of Mexico. But he also delivered a scathing comment on Netanyahu that has resonated, saying “I’m of the view, as you know, that the conduct of the response in Gaza, in the Gaza Strip, has been over the top. I’ve been pushing really hard, really hard, to get humanitarian assistance into Gaza. There are a lot of innocent people who are starving. There are a lot of innocent people who are in trouble and dying. And it’s got to stop.” Israel is currently bombing the Rafah area in Gaza, which is packed with refugees as Israel had previously declared it to be a “safe” zone. During Secretary of State Anthony Blinken’s recent visit to Israel, he reportedly told Netanyahu that that Washington wouldn’t support any “unplanned” ground operation in Rafah. The Israeli Prime Minister angrily rejected the advice and Israel escalated attacks anyway.
One has to wonder if Joe Biden is up to improving his re-electoral prospects in the nine months remaining until the election by abandoning his hitherto sordid defense of Israel’s crimes. And, if he does so, what will he do when Bibi and the Israel Lobby begin pushing back real hard on him, as they inevitably will?
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This article was originally published on The Unz Review.
Philip M. Giraldi, Ph.D., is Executive Director of the Council for the National Interest, a 501(c)3 tax deductible educational foundation (Federal ID Number #52-1739023) that seeks a more interests-based U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East. Website is councilforthenationalinterest.org, address is P.O. Box 2157, Purcellville VA 20134 and its email is [email protected].
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On February 6, The Telegraph, one of the oldest publications in the United Kingdom, ran a story about the supposed “inability of Russia to deal with Europe, without the United States”.
Without even taking into account the fact that Russian President Vladimir Putinjust dispelled all the nonsensical speculation about the mythical “Russian invasion of Europe” in his interview with Tucker Carlson, we will delve into the reasoning of the author and why his analysis is “slightly off”, to put it euphemistically. First of all, the author seems to lack a basic understanding of the actual size of global economies, as well as the fact that industrial capacity, particularly a robust defense industry, is key to military power.
Lilico claims that the Russian economy is “fairly small, only around 85% of the size of Italy’s” and that “its population of about 140 million is less than that of Germany plus France combined”. Using the nominal GDP to measure economic power can be described as either functional illiteracy or propagandistic tendencies. The idea that Italian and Russian economies are not only comparable, but that the former is 15% larger, is simply ludicrous. Otherwise, instead of Moscow, Rome would’ve been the one with the world’s largest arsenal of thermonuclear weapons. In addition, the claim that Russia’s population is “only about 140 million” is false, as the latest data shows that the Eurasian giant has over 147 million people, which also includes the Crimean Peninsula, but excludes the four former Ukrainian regions that joined it on September 30, 2022.
Those additional areas push Russia’s population well over 150 million, meaning that the claim that it has a smaller population than France and Germany combined is also false. Lilico then goes on to parrot debunked propaganda tropes about Moscow’s supposed “inability to defeat Ukraine – a country that when Russia invaded was the world’s 53rd largest economy, below New Zealand and Peru”. Once again, the author’s premise is based on the deeply flawed nominal GDP data, while he completely ignores the fact that the Kiev regime is an extremely militarized entity. Data on its armed forces shows that if the Neo-Nazi junta was officially in NATO, it would’ve been among its top 3 members in terms of conventional military power. And yet, its casualty ratio against the Russian military is around 10:1 in Moscow’s favor.
If such an atrocious performance of the Neo-Nazi junta’s forces against the Russian military is a “defeat” for the Kremlin, it really makes you wonder what a “victory” would look like. However, Lilico still insists that Kiev is winning. What’s more, he further claims that even if the US leaves, the EU and the UK could “easily defeat Russia”. Interestingly, at one point, even the author himself implies that “having a higher GDP does not imply being more militarily powerful”. And while this is certainly true, Lilico’s admission is simply an attempt to justify his flawed logic on why Italy has a supposedly “larger economy”, but only a fraction of Russia’s military might. The author then tries to analyze how a potential conflict would play out precisely on this false premise of Moscow’s “fairly small economy”, which, in reality, is the fifth largest in the world.
Lilico then goes on to parrot other ludicrous claims, such as the idea that “an authoritarian state might be able to conscript more of its population to fight, but it might also have what we might term a ‘morale’ disadvantage – its forces might become unable or unwilling to fight at a lower loss rate than would be the case for forces fighting for what they regard as a more noble cause”. This premise shows the author’s complete lack of understanding of Russia and its military traditions that have been largely preserved, unlike in the political West, where service in the military is increasingly unpopular. Even Lilico himself admits that Western societies have become “sufficiently self-hating or decadent that they do not regard their own cause as noble enough to fight for”, meaning they wouldn’t have a “higher morale”.
This inaccurately postulated analysis then becomes even worse, as the author claims that “the Russian economy is about 10% of the size of the EU’s”, although the actual number is around 28%. Once again, based on this false premise, Lilico pushes another one. Namely, he claims that, based on the percentage of military spending in both the EU and Russia, the latter “would need to mobilize more than 40% more troops” than the former. Thus, to match 1.4 million EU troops, Russia would supposedly need around two million soldiers (or three million if it decided to invade). Thinking that a modern conflict is about the number of troops shows just how little understanding of military power and doctrine the author has. The very idea that Moscow would send millions of people to invade Europe is beyond ridiculous.
If Russia ever had to deal with the EU military, it would need zero invasion troops. And the reason is quite simple. Russian long-range strike systems completely negate the need to send any ground troops to any European country. Its cruise missiles (particularly the “Kalibr” family) would devastate EU airbases long before any large fighter jet squadrons could be mustered to launch strikes within Russia. Moscow’s ballistic and hypersonic missiles would neutralize any large formations of EU ground forces, while its massive (and rapidly expanding) fleet of strike drones would pick off any leftover units. The EU’s military-industrial capacity would also be targeted from thousands of kilometers away, as Russia has the world’s second-largest fleet of strategic bomber/missile carriers that would easily launch hundreds of cruise missiles.
In other words, the Kremlin wouldn’t wage war in the way Lilico imagines. It’s not WWI or WWII, where millions of soldiers are needed to inflict a strategic defeat on an enemy. It’s important to note that Russia could accomplish all this through conventional means only and some of the top former American generals already confirmed this, explaining that the entire NATO would be unable to match this without resorting to thermonuclear war. And yet, even in that case, Moscow would have an advantage, as it possesses an unrivaled strategic arsenal, composed of monstrosities such as the RS-28 “Sarmat”. However, Lilico ignores all of this and concludes his analysis with a claim that Russia is supposedly “losing hundreds of billions of dollars” due to Western sanctions and that this allegedly “undercuts” Russian military power.
In his closing remarks, the author claims that “Moscow cannot threaten the EU, let alone Britain”. Deep-seated in his “reality bubble”, Lilico believes that the UK is more of a threat to Russia than even the EU. In the meantime, London is going through one humiliation after another, as the very cornerstone of its military power projection capabilities, the Royal Navy, is in disarray. Its aircraft carriers are breaking down, while the destroyers are in no better condition. Although the data is certainly a state secret, given the horrible state of the most important branch of the UK’s military, it’s highly questionable whether London’s strategic arsenal is functioning as it should. Thus, it would be extremely unwise for the “Perfidious Albion” to keep poking the “Russian Bear”.
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This article was originally published on InfoBrics.
Drago Bosnic is an independent geopolitical and military analyst. He is a regular contributor to Global Research.
Featured image: The Australian-made DefendTex Drone40 kamikaze drones sent to Ukraine in 2022. (Photo: United States Marine Corps)
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In yet another instance of American attacks against Iran-backed organizations in the Levant, the US Central Command (CENTCOM) confirmed in a statement on February 7 that it “conducted a unilateral strike in Iraq in response to the attacks on US service members, killing a Kata’ib Hezbollah commander responsible for directly planning and participating in attacks on US forces in the region.” The US drone strike targeted Abu Baqir al-Saadi, the influential commander of Iran-backed Kata’ib Hezbollah militia, suspected of carrying out the attack on an American base in Jordan. Yesterday, Yehia Rasool, the spokesperson for the commander in chief of the Iraqi Armed Forces, described this American military action as a “blatant assassination”, adding that the US-led international coalition in the country has “become a factor of instability”, and that “the American forces jeopardize civil peace, violate Iraqi sovereignty, and disregard the safety and lives of our citizens.”
On February 3 Washington started airstriking the Iranian Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) and other targets in Syria and Iraq, as a response to the January 28 drone attack in Jordan that killed three American personnel. According to Pentagon deputy press Secretary Sabrina Singh, the attack had the “footprints” of the Iran-backed Kata’ib Hezbollah militia.
The assassination of the aforementioned militia commander, largely seen as a violation of Iraq’s sovereignty (which it is), triggered wide condemnation and protests in Baghdad, thereby escalating US-Iraq tensions. As I wrote, since last month top Iraqi authorities including Iraqi Prime Minister Mohammed Shia’ al-Sudani have been reiterating their calls for US troops to leave the country. And now Baghdhad is seriously threatening to expel the American forces. Washington had already “left” the country but in a way paradoxically, as it seems, it never really left.
The past American occupation of Iraq, complete with “nation-building” efforts, is often described as a (failed) “neocolonial” endeavor. That occupation might have come to an end in 2011, after eight years, but the presence of US troops in that Levantine nation is still at the center of a major controversy. As I argued last year, an emboldened and empowered Islamic Republic of Iran emerged as the main winner of this US disaster in Iraq. Tehran in fact is arguably today’s main power in the Middle East – and not Washington. The Persian nation’s rising influence today is also felt in the wider West Asian region, as we have recently seen with regards to Pakistan-Iranian tensions over both countries having struck each other’s territory while targeting a terrorist group that operates on their shared border (the two nations have recently resumed their diplomatic relations).
Back to the series of attacks carried out by the United States in the Levant and also in the Red Sea, one can argue they are indeed part of an escalating US-Iran confrontation involving Iranian “proxies” or regional partners and the so-called axis of resistance. The rising tensions have much to do with Washington’ support for its Israeli ally: a large part of the ongoing turmoil in the Middle East today after all is about the escalation of the long going “fuel war” and of the so-called shadow war between Iran and the Jewish state. Today’s escalation is in any case mostly a spillover effect of the US-backed disastrous Israeli military campaign in Palestine, as I detailed elsewhere.
Since 2011, that is, for over a decade, Washington has been mostly “withdrawing” from the Middle East, a trend that became abundantly clear ten years later, when its troops left Afghanistan in 2021 – the latest developments however could all arguably be seen as signs that it is making a “come-back” in the area. In a way, from Washington’s perspective, the region keeps pulling it back in – to a large degree thanks to an Israel ally the US cannot quite control or curb.
US national security adviser Jake Sullivan said on February 4 that the strikes against Iranian allies were “the beginning, not the end.” The problem, from an American perspective, is that such a retaliatory campaign has no deterrence effect. With regards to the ongoing Red Sea crisis, in particular, the world has recently learned that for about three months Washington basically begged its Chinese rival to help by pressuring Iran into curbing the Houthi rebels – in a clear display of weakness. Beijing, in any case, simply has no reason, as I’ve explained, to exert too much pressure, the mess being largely a problem caused by American foreign policy mistakes.
According to a recent The Economist piece, one of the reasons American deterrence against Iran is not working pertains to the fact that Washington, in the larger Middle Eastern context, simply cannot decide whether it will “leave” or “stay” and basically does not seem to know what to do in the region. The clearly overburdened Atlantic superpower could be described as being “stuck” in West Asia. As I wrote before, Washington, it appears, wishes to pivot away from the Middle East towards the Indo-Pacific and Eastern Europe plus part of Central Asia – even while its naval supremacy seems to be coming to an end.
The idea that the Middle East should no longer be a priority for Washington began with former president Barack Obama and kept evolving under Donald Trump, to then gain clearer contours under Joe Biden’s administration. The United States however do not wish to give up its role of “global policeman”, as the American Establishment sees it, and thus it is faced with a conundrum: according to Sedat Laçiner, a Turkish academic specialist on the Middle East, “given the geostrategic and cultural significance it embodies, it would not be an overstatement to assert that sustained global leadership is unattainable for any power that fails to exert dominance over the Middle East region in the long term”. Laçiner’s reasoning is that the North American superpower simply cannot “leave” the area, a center of oil and petrodollars. However it is not quite welcome “back” there, as the local actors are pursuing new relationships.
According to the aforementioned The Economist piece,
“in the Middle East America is torn between leaving and staying and cannot decide what to do with the forces it still has in the region.” Moreover, it desires “to pivot away from the region while simultaneously keeping troops in it”, thus maintaining a “military presence” that invites tensions but fails to “constrain” its Iranian rival. The world is a complex place with many points of tension, but an undecided declining superpower that refuses to show restraint certainly contributes a lot to bringing stability to the planet – including in the Middle East.
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Uriel Araujo is a researcher with a focus on international and ethnic conflicts.
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Despite calendars and clocks and all the mental gymnastics we use to control life and time, surprises are at the heart of existence. This may seem like a truism, but if so, it is one of those truths we often avoid in our desire for stability and the quelling of anxiety. Our expectations, a form of knowledge based on the past, are efforts to avoid pain and the joy of the new. They are often scarecrows to frighten away reality, as Ortega y Gassett put it. Habits of mind meant to forget that life is an experiment yet to be tried or known; that tomorrow is always unknown country. That death is the greatest surprise of all.
The English psychoanalyst Adam Philips writes in Side Effects:
The fact of death has made us addicted to prophecy, and to its secular equivalent, predictability; and therefore to a strange relationship to time. The fact of conception could make us more wedded to randomness and accident [I would say mystery]. Surprise could replace mourning as our preferred depth-charge.
I was thinking of this recently when I awoke to read about an outstanding professional athlete who was injured at the top of his game the night before. A shock to be sure, disappointing and depressing, yet not unheard of in the world of sports. He ruptured his Achilles tendon. Now his rehabilitation will offer him a chance to embrace the challenge and meditate on the vagaries of life. Sometimes we discover in difficult circumstances that courage and determination are central to our characters, as I think is the case with this young man who has overcome other challenges.
Sports in themselves are not important. They are fun to play and are big business, but who wins or loses the games doesn’t matter in any significant way. They are forgettable trifles, and as the word sport’s etymology tells us – desporter (Old French from Latin), to divert, amuse, carry away – they divert us from more serious matters. And while they can amuse and entertain us, they can also get us to muse about the nature of play and the significance of surprises along life’s way. How life itself is a play, in many meanings of the word.
Key to Freud’s genius, much of which he learned from the poets who understood that the free flow of words was a key to human liberation, was his invention of the therapeutic method of free association.
To freely associate is to open one’s mouth to hear yourself say the unexpected.
It is to step out of the cage of convention, to exit that play to play at catching a different form of consciousness. The possibility of freedom inherent in Freud’s idea is no doubt one reason why he has come under continual attack in recent decades. Nor is it an accident that we are living at a time when free speech is under assault by all shades of authoritarians who fear what people might say and whom they may associate with. Freedom is dangerous. Individuals, not just in psychotherapy but in social life, need to talk freely but are often fearful to do so. They may surprise themselves privately and publicly, and that is why speech must be controlled by the authorities, those outside and the cop inside.
It is also why great artists are in short supply today and art is under assault, for great art threatens safety while always venturing into unknown territory. To think that a book is brilliant because The New York Times calls it a bestseller – which seems to be the case for most new books on library shelves these days – is as naïve as to consider that newspaper of record a bastion of good journalism.
It is hard when caged in cells controlled by authoritarians to encounter the unexpected. Formulaic writing of all sorts is widespread. It is part of a larger spell of total and instantaneous propaganda and a movement for elite social control under the guise of social improvement. What we euphemistically call mass communication is mass seduction, and the desire to be seduced is one old truth that still holds popular appeal.
Historically it has always been the poets, essayists, and novelists who have led the way into a freer world. While it is still true, to find their voices amid the cacophony of today’s co-mingling of repetitive political, show business, and advertising rants is difficult. They have been marginalized, as have journalists who counter the propaganda of the corporate mainstream media. All has become show, the business of creating perpetual distractions from what is important.
“The modern version of hell is purposelessness,” wrote the English novelist John Fowles in a brilliant essay accompanying photographs of individual trees in an oddly titled book about trees, The Tree. While ostensibly writing about trees, Fowles writes about the need to get lost, to literally wander through the green chaos of forests and the mental greenwood of our psyches without a planned route – purposeless. He writes about art and the art of life as analogous to wandering through a dense woodland and stumbling in wonder upon a hidden treasure, something akin to Tolstoy’s green stick that contains the secret to happiness, no matter how brief. He argues that it is because so much of the natural surround is useless that there is so much hostility toward it. Everything and everyone has become commodified, and only valued for their use value. Science, as opposed to art, seeks to categorize and control us and nature; to impose on our minds the idea that nature is outside us, separate, alien territory to enter only with a map and shield. The wild green man or woman, open to the flow of experience, to wandering, to the serendipitous, the unexpected is a dangerous outlaw. That the woods have long represented places of freedom to our ancestors in fact and in fiction is not just because life was more rural then but because the wild world hidden among trees corresponds to needs of the soul. Fowles compares trees, the woods, walking planless through them, as the best analogue of prose fiction:
All novels are also, in some way, exercises in attaining freedom – even when, at an extreme, they deny the possibility of its existence. Some such process of retreat from the normal world – however much the theme and surface is to be of the normal world – is inherent in any act of artistic creation, let alone that specific kind of writing that deals in imaginary situations and characters. And a part of that retreat must always be into a ‘wild,’ or ordinarily repressed and socially hidden, self: into a place always a complexity beyond daily reality, never fully comprehensible or explicable, always more potential than realized; yet where no one will ever penetrate as far as we have. It is our passage, our mystery alone, however miserable the account that is brought out for the world to see or hear or read at second-hand.
I would say it is also the best analogue of living. Sitting still too much is the real sin against the Holy Ghost, said Nietzsche, who was a great walker “on lonely mountains or near the sea where even the trails become thoughtful.” And he was not alone. Thoreau, Rimbaud, D. H. Lawrence, Rousseau, Gandhi, et al. knew that only by getting off your ass and putting it behind you might you discover something new, an unexpected treasure only available to an outsider with no expectations, no plans, having relinquished control.
Speaking of control and planning, even with the best intentions, I am reminded of a lake with a little beach opposite woods up the hill from where we live and often walk. Since September 11, 2001 this town has been massively gentrified with mansions and upscale stores and venues. It has become a magnet for wealthy urbanites who have fled in fear from the New York/New Jersey area to this small town 130 miles north. Now the small rustic beach with its bumpy dirt parking lot and the road along the lake are being converted into a replica of all the imitative city greenways that have sprouted up across the country. Huge numbers of trees have been felled, an expanded asphalt parking lot is being constructed, and the road converted from cars to walkers, leading from the town’s choice neighborhood on the hill. This construction project is symbolically creating a gated community without a fence. Anyone having to drive to the beach will have to come from the other direction to the parking lot, directing all car traffic through that poorer neighborhood and part of town. All this in the name of saving the lake and making life better for the locals. But better primarily for wealthier residents, who now will have their own one way access to the area and much less traffic passing their way.
It is a good example of what Philip Slater wrote about in his 1970 book, The Pursuit of Loneliness: American Culture at the BreakingPoint. Slater was writing about the rise of totalitarian tendencies in the U.S. as the U.S savagely bombed Vietnam and Cambodia [read Iraq, Gaza, Yemen, Syria, Russia, etc.], when the fear of the poor was widespread and wealth and power idolized, consumerism reigned supreme, and privatization was being carried out under the benevolent mask of an inchoate neo-liberalism that has since become a full-fledged monster.
And he was holding a mirror up to “the grim monotony of American facial expressions [read masks] – hard, surly, and bitter – and by the aura of deprivation that informs them.” Central to this was the fanatical acquisitiveness of his compatriots and the fading of stable local neighborhoods where different social classes could flourish together. “It is difficult to become reaccustomed to seeing people already weighted down with possessions acting as if every object they did not own were bread withheld from a hungry mouth,” he wrote, upon returning from overseas. Deep-rooted social problems were being avoided by being flushed away under the guise of superficial improvements – what he called “the toilet assumption”: “the notion that unwanted matter, unwanted difficulties and obstacles will disappear if they are removed from our immediate field of vision.” In the name of social control, the country was coming apart. As is true now, the prettification of social spaces was serving as an unintentional pursuit of loneliness where the wealthy sophisticates and the “deplorables” would occupy separate worlds and their separate symbols [read Trump and Biden] would engage them in heated pseudo-debates.
What is our Achilles’s Heal?
I suggest it is our rupture from nature symbolized in our efforts to control experience through planning. In Goethe’s Faust this is flipped so that Goethe’s ultimate salvation and happy ending is tied to his land reclamation project from the sea – engineering – and the conquest of nature. While such planning obviously has its place, it has become a modern paradigm that serves as a solution to so many of life’s problems [technological fixes] and a hedge against surprising discoveries. Only when one is willing to get lost, can one stumble upon Tolstoy’s green stick of happiness and discover truths that authoritarians try to deny us.
The poet’s truth, as always.
Terra Incognito
By D. H. Lawrence
There are vast realms of consciousness still undreamed of vast ranges of experience, like the humming of unseen harps, we know nothing of, within us. Oh when man has escaped from the barbed-wire entanglement of his own ideas and his own mechanical devices there is a marvellous rich world of contact and sheer fluid beauty and fearless face-to-face awareness of now-naked life and me, and you, and other men and women and grapes, and ghouls, and ghosts and green moonlight and ruddy-orange limbs stirring the limbo of the unknown air, and eyes so soft softer than the space between the stars, and all things, and nothing, and being and not-being alternately palpitant, when at last we escape the barbed-wire enclosure of Know Thyself, knowing we can never know, we can but touch, and wonder, and ponder, and make our effort and dangle in a last fastidious fine delight as the fuchsia does, dangling her reckless drop of purple after so much putting forth and slow mounting marvel of a little tree.
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This article was originally published on the author’s website, Behind the Curtain.
Edward Curtin is a prominent author, researcher and sociologist based in Western Massachusetts. He is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG).
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The leader of the Ukrainian opposition, Viktor Medvedchuk, revealed that Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky is preparing to flee the country after acquiring a luxury apartment in Dubai valued at almost $17 million. This is another example of how Zelensky continues to enjoy a high-end lifestyle despite his peoples immense suffering.
“A modest 600-square-metre apartment awaits Zelensky on an island with a warm sea. This is why hundreds of thousands of Ukrainians are dying today,” the opposition leader warned in an article published on the website of the party The Other Ukraine.
Medvedchuk revealed that Zelensky acquired, through his frontmen, a luxurious apartment in Dubai in the Bvlgari Marina Lofts complex for $16.9 million.
“Zelensky apparently lost hope in the Americans and in the mansion in Florida that they promised him,” he noted.
The opposition leader indicated that the Ukrainian president “found a new homeland and luxury housing, while millions of his compatriots live as refugees and lost their homes.”
“Instead of helping the pensioners for whom he whines so much in the West, Zelensky diverts the money ‘honestly earned’ in the war to tax havens and does not plan to invest in Ukraine, in the economy, in the country’s defence,” he said.
As revealed by Medvedchuk, the Ukrainian president registers properties and companies abroad through Serhiy Shefir, his close friend, to whom he transferred all his assets in tax havens before the 2019 presidential elections. In November 2023, it emerged that Shefir and his brother Boris bought two yachts for a total value of $75 million, he said.
The opposition leader alleged that the luxury apartment in Dubai was registered in the name of Serhiy Shefir, and the deal was closed on December 22, according to the ‘Dubai Land Department,’ the government entity that registers real estate transactions.
“This rat dug another burrow to escape (…) What do you care about retirees, disabled people or public workers?” he emphasised. “Zelensky claims that Ukrainians fight for themselves, for their lives, but that is a crude lie.”
Medvedchuk acknowledged that Moscow provides all kinds of help to residents of the former Ukrainian territories that joined Russia in September 2022 following referendums.
“The president of Russia, Vladimir Putin, declared on numerous occasions that for the Russians, the Ukrainians were not enemies. That is why Zelensky’s power will be defeated and not the Ukrainian people. Today, Ukrainian soldiers die not for Ukraine that the regime sold to the West, but because of the corruption that enriches Zelensky and his entourage,” he added.
Although Zelensky is unlikely about to flee, the crux of the story is that Zelensky is spending millions upon millions on his lavish lifestyle while Ukrainians are suffering like no other people on the European continent and at a time when the West portrays the Ukrainian president as an anti-corruption crusader.
Zelensky became president in 2019 on the platform of fighting domestic corruption, which meant finding economic and administrative lapses and punishing those who benefitted. However, it is very evident that Zelensky has been benefitting from corruption.
Property purchases in Dubai are far from the only scandals in which Zelensky has been embroiled. He is regularly accused of owning properties overseas, and it is known his wife goes on lavish shopping trips on her travels, such as in New York and Paris.
While Zelensky and his family are living extravagantly, Ella Libanova, director of the Institute of Demography and Social Studies at the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine, warned that male life expectancy in the war-torn country had decreased from 66-67 years to 57-58 years due to the conflict, meaning that only Chad (54), Nigeria (54), Lesotho (55) and the Central African Republic (55) had lower life expectancies. This reflects the nightmarish situation Ukraine has put itself in by continuing the war, a reality that Zelensky has mostly insulated himself from.
Worse, there are no immediate prospects for improving economic, societal, and demographic issues.
One example is that foreign direct investment in Ukraine has plummeted from $6.5 billion in 2021 to just $570 million in 2022, following Russia’s launch of the special military operation, whilst the National Bank of Ukraine has thus far refused to publish figures on foreign investments in 2023. Ukraine is struggling to find funds for its economy and the war effort, and given that corruption is even at the level of the presidency, it cannot be expected that many foreign companies will invest in the country.
Therefore, whether Zelensky flees to one of his overseas properties or not, he will continue to live lavishly, having extracted what he wanted from Ukraine, while ordinary Ukrainians will continue to suffer.
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Ahmed Adel is a Cairo-based geopolitics and political economy researcher. He is a regular contributor to Global Research.
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A MintPress study of major U.S. media outlets’ coverage of the Yemeni Red Sea blockade has found an overwhelming bias in the press, which presented the event as an aggressive, hostile act of terrorism by Ansar Allah (a.k.a. the Houthis), who were presented as pawns of the Iranian government. While constantly putting forward pro-war talking points, the U.S. was portrayed as a good faith, neutral actor being “dragged” into another Middle Eastern conflict against its will.
Since November, Ansar Allah has been conducting a blockade of Israeli ships entering the Red Sea in an attempt to force Israel to stop its attack on the people of Gaza. The U.S. government, which has refused to act to stop a genocide, sprang into action to prevent damage to private property, leading an international coalition to bomb targets in Yemen.
The effect of the blockade has been substantial. With hundreds of vessels taking the detour around Africa, big businesses like Tesla and Volvo have announced they have suspended European production. Ikea has warned that it is running low on supplies, and the price of a standard shipping container between China and Europe has more than doubled. Ansar Allah, evidently, has been able to target a weak spot of global capitalism.
Western airstrikes on Yemen, however, according to Ansar Allah spokesperson Mohammed al-Bukhaiti, at least, said that they have had only a “very limited” impact so far. Al-Bukhaiti made these comments in a recent interview with MintPress News.
MintPress conducted a study of four leading American outlets: The New York Times, CNN, Fox News and NBC News. Together, these outlets often set the agenda for the rest of the media system and could be said to be a reasonable representation of the corporate media spectrum as a whole.
Using the search term “Yemen” in the Dow Jones Factiva global news database, the fifteen most recent relevant articles from each outlet were read and studied, giving a total sample of 60 articles. All articles were published in January 2024 or December 2023.
For full information and coding, see the attached viewable spreadsheet.
The study found the media wildly distorted reality, presenting a skewed picture that aided U.S. imperial ambitions. For one, every article in the study (60 out of 60) used the word “Houthis” rather than “Ansar Allah” to describe the movement which took part in the Yemeni Revolution of 2011 and rose up against the government in 2014, taking control of the capital Sanaa, becoming the new de facto government. Many in Yemen consider the term “Houthi” to be a derogatory term for an umbrella movement of people. As Mohammed Ali al-Houthi, Head of Yemen’s Supreme Revolutionary Committee, told MintPress:
‘Houthis’ is not a name we apply to ourselves. We refuse to be called Houthis. It is not from us. It is a name given to us by our enemies in an attempt to frame the broad masses in Yemeni society that belong to our project.”
Yet only two articles even mentioned the name “Ansar Allah” at all.
Since 2014, Ansar Allah has been in control of the vast majority of Yemen, despite a U.S.-backed Saudi coalition attempting to beat them back and restore the previous administration.
Many of the articles studied, however (22 of the 60 in total), did not present Ansar Allah as a governmental force but rather as a “tribal group” (the New York Times), a “ragtag but effective” rebel organization (CNN), or a “large clan” of “extremists” (NBC News). Fourteen articles went further, using the word “terrorist” in reference to Ansar Allah, usually in the context of the U.S. government or American officials calling them such.
Some, however, used it as a supposedly uncontroversial descriptor. One Fox article, for example, read: “For weeks, the Yemeni terrorist group’s actions have been disrupting maritime traffic, while the U.S. military has been responding with strikes.” And a CNN caption noted that U.S. forces “conducted strikes on 8 Houthi targets in Iranian-backed Houthi terrorist-controlled areas of Yemen on January 22.”
Ansar Allah is responding to an Israeli onslaught that has killed tens of thousands of civilians and displaced around 1.9 million Gazans. Yet Israel and its actions were almost never described as “terrorism,” despite arguably fitting the definition far better than the Yemeni movement. The sole exception to this was a comment from al-Houthi, whom CNN quoted as calling Israel a “terrorist state.” Neither the United States nor its actions were ever described using such language.
Eyes on Iran
Although the perpetrator of the attacks on shipping is unquestionably Ansar Allah, corporate media had another culprit in mind: Iran. Fifty-nine of the 60 articles studied reminded readers that the Yemeni group is supported by the Islamic Republic, thereby directly pointing the finger at Tehran.
It is indeed true that Iran supports Ansar Allah politically and militarily. When directly asked by MintPress if Tehran supplies it with weapons, al-Bukhaiti dodged the question, calling it a “marginal issue.” Why this facet of the story needed to be repeated literally hundreds of times is unclear. Often, the media studied would repeat it ad nauseam, to the point where a reader would be forgiven for thinking Ansar Allah’s official name was the “Iran-backed Houthis.” One CNN round-up used the phrase (or similar) seven times, a Fox News article six times, and an NBC News report five times.
Not only was the “Iran-backed” factoid used constantly, but it was also made a prominent part of how the issue was framed to the American public. The title of one Fox News report, for instance, read (emphasis added throughout): “U.S.-U.K. coalition strike Iran-backed Houthi targets in Yemen after spate of ship attacks in Red Sea,” its subheadline stated that: “Yemen’s Iranian-backed Houthi militants have stepped up attacks on commercial vessels in the Red Sea in recent weeks,” and its first sentence read: “The United States and Britain carried out a series of airstrikes on military locations belonging to Iran-backed Houthis in Yemen early Friday in response to the militant group’s ongoing attacks on vessels traveling through the Red Sea.”
From a stylistic point of view, repeating the same phrase continuously is very poor form. It does, however, drive the point home, suggesting perhaps that this was an inorganic directive from above.
This is far from an unlikely event. We know, for example, that in October, new CNN CEO Mark Thompson sent out a memo to staff instructing them to always use the moniker “Hamas-controlled” when discussing the Gazan Health Ministry and their figures for deaths from Israeli bombardment. This was done with the clear intent to undermine the Palestinian side of the story.
Not only did the four outlets studied constantly remind readers that Ansar Allah is supported by Iran, but they also regularly framed the violence as orchestrated by Tehran and that Ansar Allah is little more than a group of mindless, unthinking pawns of Ayatollah Khamenei. As the New York Times wrote:
Investing in proxy forces — fellow Shiites in Lebanon, Iraq and Yemen, and the Sunni Hamas in the Gaza Strip — allows Iran to cause trouble for its enemies, and to raise the prospect of causing more if attacked…The Houthi movement in Yemen launched an insurgency against the government two decades ago. What was once a ragtag rebel force gained power thanks at least in part to covert military aid from Iran, according to American and Middle Eastern officials and analysts.”
This “Iran is masterfully pulling all the strings” framing was present in 21 of the 60 articles.
The fearmongering about Iran did not stop there, however, with some outlets suggesting Tehran is building an international terror network or constructing an atomic bomb. The New York Times quoted one analyst who said:
Iran is really pushing it…It’s another reason they don’t want a war now: They want their centrifuges to run peacefully.” The Iranians do not have a nuclear weapon but could enrich enough uranium to weapons-grade in a few weeks, from the current 60 percent enrichment to 90 percent, he said. ”They’ve done 95 percent of the work.’”
The point of all this was to demonize Ansar Allah and ramp up tensions with Iran, leading to the inevitable calls for war. “The U.S. needs to strike Iran, and make it smart,” ran the (since changed) title of a Washington Post editorial. “The West may now have no option but to attack Iran,” wrote neoconservative Iran hawk John Bolton in the pages of The Daily Telegraph. Bolton, of course, is part of a group called United Against Nuclear Iran that, since its inception, has been attempting to convince the U.S. to bomb Iran. Earlier this year, MintPress News profiled the shady think tank.
While the media in the sample reminded us literally hundreds of times that Ansar Allah is Iran-backed, similar phrases such as “U.S.-backed Saudi Arabia” or “America-backed Israel” were never used, despite the fact that Washington props both those countries up, with diplomatic, military and economic support. The Biden administration has rushed more than $14 billion in military aid to Israel since October 7, sent a fleet of warships to the region, and blocked diplomatic efforts to stop Israel’s attack on Gaza.
Meanwhile, it is doubtful whether Saudi Arabia would exist in its current form without U.S. support. Militarily alone, the U.S. has sold tens of billions of dollars worth of weaponry to Riyadh, helping the petro-state to convert its oil profits into security. From 2014 to 2023, Saudi Arabia led a U.S.-backed coalition force attempting to remove Ansar Allah from power. This consisted primarily of a massive bombing campaign against civilian targets in Yemen, including farms, hospitals and sanitation infrastructure. The violence turned Yemen into what the United Nations regularly called the “world’s worst humanitarian crisis,” with around 400,000 people dying and tens of millions going hungry and lacking even basic healthcare.
The U.S. backed Saudi Arabia the whole way, selling the government at least $28.4 billion worth of arms, according to a MintPress study. In 2021, the Biden administration announced it would only sell the kingdom “defensive” technology. However, this has included shipments of cruise missiles, attack helicopters, and support for gunships.
Both Saudi Arabia and Israel featured prominently in the articles studied. But only five of the 60 mentioned U.S. support for Saudi Arabia, and none at all for Israel. This context is extremely important for American audiences to know. Without their government’s political, military, economic and diplomatic support, none of this would be possible, and the current situation would be radically different. Only six articles mentioned U.S. support for the Saudi onslaught against Yemen – and none featured the fact prominently as they did with Iranian support for Ansar Allah.
Only one article in the sample suggested that Ansar Allah might not simply be an Iranian cat’s paw. The New York Times wrote that: “The Houthis are an important arm of Iran’s so-called ‘axis of resistance,’ which includes armed groups across the Middle East. But Yemeni analysts say they view the militia as a complex Yemeni group, rather than just an Iranian proxy.” This was the sum total of information given suggesting Ansar Allah is an independent actor.
A Humanitarian Blockade?
Yemen considers its actions in blocking Israeli traffic from the Red Sea as a humanitarian gesture, similar to the “right to protect” concept the U.S. frequently invokes to justify what it sees as humanitarian interventions across the world. As al-Houthi toldMintPress:
First, our position is religious and humanitarian, and we see a tremendous injustice. We know the size and severity of these massacres committed against the people of Gaza. We have suffered from American-Saudi-Emirati terrorism in a coalition that has launched a war and imposed a blockade against us that is still ongoing. Therefore, we move from this standpoint and do not want the same crime to be repeated.”
Al-Bukhati said that Ansar Allah did not intend to kill anyone with their actions and that they would stop if Israel ceased its attack on Gaza, telling MintCast host Mnar Adley that:
We affirm to everyone that we only target ships associated with the Zionist entity [Israel], not with the intention of sinking or seizing them, but rather to divert them from their course in order to increase the economic cost on the Zionist entity [Israel] as a pressure tactic to stop the crimes of genocide in Gaza.”
However, this “humanitarian” framing of Yemen’s actions was not prominently used and was only introduced by identifying it as a Houthi claim. Many articles only alluded to the position of Ansar Allah. CNN wrote that “The Iran-backed Houthis have said they won’t stop their attacks on commercial shipping in the Red Sea until the war between Israel and Hamas in Gaza ends.” Meanwhile, NBC News and Fox News frequently presented Ansar Allah’s actions as purely in support of their ally, Hamas, as the following two examples illustrate:
“The Iran-backed militants, who say their actions are aimed at supporting Hamas, vowed retaliation and said the attacks had killed at least 5 fighters at multiple rebel-held sites” (NBC News).
“Houthi forces have taken credit for continued attacks on merchant vessels and threatened to expand their targets to include U.S. and British vessels — all in a campaign to support Hamas in its war against Israel” (Fox News).
Therefore, humanitarian action was refashioned into support for terrorism.
Other articles also suggested a wide range of reasons for the blockade, including to “expand a regional war” and “distract the [Yemeni] public” from their “failing…governance” (New York Times), to “attempt to gain legitimacy at home,” (CNN), and “revenge against the U.S. for supporting Saudi Arabia,” (NBC News). Many offered no explanation for the blockade whatsoever.
A War “Nobody Wants”
As al-Bukhaiti’s comments suggest, there would be a very easy way to end the blockade: get Israel to end its operations in Gaza. But only twice in 60 articles was this reality even mentioned; one noting that Omani and Qatari officials advised that “reaching a cease-fire in Gaza would remove the Houthis’ stated impetus for the attacks,” and once in the final sentence of an NBC News article quoting al-Bukhaiti himself saying exactly as much. However, due to the placement of the information and the fact that it came from an organization regularly described as an Iran-backed extremist terrorist group, that idea likely held little weight with readers. Instead, military solutions (i.e., bombing Yemen) were the overwhelming response offered by the corporate press in their reporting.
Despite this, the media consistently presented the United States as a neutral and honest actor in the Middle East, on the verge of being “sucked” into another war against its will. As the New York Times wrote, “President Biden and his aides have struggled to keep the war contained, fearful that a regional escalation could quickly draw in American forces.” There was a profound “reluctance,” the Times told readers, from Biden to strike Yemen, but he had been left with “no real choice” but to do so.
This framing follows the classic trope of the bumbling empire “stumbling” into war that media watchdog Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting has documented, where the United States is always “responding” to crises and is never the aggressor. “How America Could Stumble Into War With Iran,” wrote The Atlantic; “Trump could easily get us sucked into Afghanistan again,” Slate worried; “What It Would Take to Pull the US Into a War in Asia,” Quartz told readers.
None of the journalists writing about the U.S.’ frequent misfortune with war ever seem to contemplate why China, Brazil, Indonesia, or any other similarly large country do not get pulled into wars of their own volition as the United States does.
The four media outlets studied regularly presented the U.S. bombing one of the world’s poorest countries as a method of defending itself. CNN wrote that “Administration officials have repeatedly said that they see these actions as defensive rather than escalatory,” without comment. And Fox News ran with the extraordinary headline, “U.S. carries out ‘self-defense’ strike in Yemen against Iran-backed Houthi missiles” – a framing which could surely only fly in a deeply propagandized nation.
In reality, the United States’ military meddling in Yemen did not start this winter. Biden is the fourth successive U.S. president to bomb the country. In December, the White House confirmed that there are already American troops in Yemen, though what their precise focus is remains unclear.
How Propaganda Works
This sort of wildly skewed coverage does not happen by accident. Rather, it is the outcome of structural and ideological factors inherent within corporate media. The New York Times is committed to Zionism as an ideology, and its writers on the Middle East are not neutral actors but protagonists in the ongoing displacement of Palestinians. The newspaper owns property in West Jerusalem that was seized from the family of writer Ghada Kharmi during the 1948 ethnic cleansing. And while many Times writers are openly supportive of the Israeli project and have family members serving in the Israeli Defense Forces, staff who speak out against the ongoing genocide are promptly shown the door.
Fox News is no less complicit in the Israeli project. Its owner, Rupert Murdoch, is a major owner in Genie Energy, a company profiting from oil drilling in the illegally occupied Golan Heights region. Murdoch is famously hands-on as a boss and makes sure all of his media outlets follow his line on major issues. And on Israel, the Australian billionaire is explicit: “Israel is the greatest ally of democracy in a region beset with turmoil and radicalism,” he said in 2013. The network’s massive Evangelical Christian viewership would expect little else than strong support for the U.S.-Israeli position, either.
CNN, meanwhile, operates a strict, censorious, top-down approach to its Middle East coverage, with everything the outlet prints having to go through its notoriously pro-Israel Jerusalem bureau before publishing. Senior executives send out directives instructing staff to make sure that Hamas (not Israel) is always presented as responsible for the current violence while, at the same time, barring any reporting of Hamas’ viewpoint, which its senior director of news standards and practices told staff was “not newsworthy” and amounted to “inflammatory rhetoric and propaganda.”
Therefore, the results of this study, while shocking, should not be surprising, given this context. Through examining the coverage of Yemen in four leading U.S. outlets, it is clear that corporate media are failing to inform the public of many of the basic realities of who Ansar Allah is, why they are carrying out their campaign, and what it would take to end the hostilities, they are perpetuating this war, and therefore are every bit as responsible as the politicians and military commanders who keep the bloodshed going.
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The Biden administration claims that U.S. foreign policy works to uphold human rights and democracy while containing rising authoritarian powers such as Russia and China.
Biden administration officials routinely condemn the jailing of opposition figures in Russia like Alexey Navalny and by socialist governments like Nicaragua and Venezuela.
But the Biden administration has voiced no outcry over the arrest of Pakistan’s former Prime Minister Imran Khan, who just days ahead of parliamentary elections on February 8, was given a ten-year prison sentence for revealing state secrets about how the U.S. pushed for his removal from power.[1]
The document that Khan revealed showed that U.S. State Department officials had threatened Pakistani officials with consequences were Khan not removed from office, citing anger over Khan’s neutral stance on the Russia-Ukraine conflict.
Captain of Pakistan’s national cricket team throughout the 1980s and 1990s, Khan served as Pakistan’s Prime Minister from August 2018 until his ouster in April 2022.
In May 2023, he was arrested by paramilitary troops as part of a wave of repression directed against his Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) Party along with independent journalists like Arshad Sharif, who was hounded out of Pakistan and assassinated in Kenya.[2]
According to a January report in Time magazine, thousands of PTI members have since been arrested and dozens of party leaders resigned following lengthy interrogations.
Khan’s name was even banned from Pakistani media, and the PTI Party was banned from using its trademark cricket logo on ballot paper, significantly hampering its chances among an electorate that is 40% illiterate.[3]
Arif Rafiq, a Pakistani specialist at the Middle East Institute, told The Intercept that
“Khan was convicted on flimsy charges following a trial where his defense was not even allowed to produce witnesses. He had previously survived an assassination attempt, had a journalist aligned with him murdered, and has seen thousands of his supporters imprisoned. While the Biden administration has said that human rights will be at the forefront of their foreign policy, they are now looking away as Pakistan moves toward becoming a full-fledged military dictatorship.”
Over the last two decades, the U.S. government has provided billions of dollars of military aid to Pakistan, which has long been used as a base for clandestine operations into Afghanistan. This aid has helped to fortify the military’s power and fuel state repression.
The National Endowment for Democracy (NED), a CIA offshoot spent $3.952,238 in Pakistan in 2021 supporting civil society groups. Part of the purpose of the funding was likely to assist in regime change efforts once it was clear that Khan was too independent.
Khan’s rise to power had resulted not only from his status as a cricket star but also his generous philanthropy. The World Socialist Website (WSWS) criticized him for embracing austerity measures recommended by the International Monetary Fund (IMF) that resulted in the slashing of social spending and food subsidies and selling off of public sector enterprises wholesale.
Athiyan Silva and Kumaran Irawrote that Khan “exploited social anger at the previous PML-N government to win the July [2018] election, making demagogic promises, including to create more jobs and provide relief for the poor, while criticizing the murderous U.S. drone attacks in the Federally Administered Tribal Area.”
Once in power, Khan “formed his government by picking ministers who have already worked under former military ruler General Pervez Musharraf, Pakistan Muslim League (Nawaz), and Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) governments, which imposed IMF austerity measures and collaborated with the U.S.-led NATO war in Afghanistan.”
Dropping his campaign rhetoric against U.S. drone murder, Khan met with U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo after his election and began tacking closer to Washington, though sustained commitment to developing Pakistan’s economy and industry via the multi-billion dollar China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) project, the “flagship project” of China’s Eurasian BRI (Belt and Road Initiative).[4]
Launched in 2015, the CPEC is a planned network of roads, railways and energy projects linking western China to Pakistan’s strategic Gwadar Port on the Indian Ocean, near the oil-rich Persian Gulf.
Pompeo stated that it would be “unacceptable” for Pakistan to use U.S. financial aid to pay off infrastructure and industrial debts to China, which is a key reason why Khan became a target for regime change alongside his lack of support for U.S. policy toward Ukraine.
Imran Khan and Mike Pompeo in 2018: The friendship did not last. [Source: en.m.wikipedia.org]
In a March 2022 meeting, Donald Lu, the Assistant Secretary of State for South and Central Asian Affairs, told the Pakistani ambassador to the U.S., Asad Majeed Khan, that Khan had to be removed as Prime Minister in a parliamentary vote of no confidence. Otherwise, Lu said, there would be consequences for Pakistan.[5]
Just days before the meeting with Majeed, Lu had been questioned at a Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing over the neutrality of India, Sri Lanka and Pakistan in the Ukraine conflict.
In response to a question from Senator Chris Van Hollen (D-MD)[7] about a recent decision by Pakistan to abstain from a UN resolution condemning Russia’s role in Ukraine, Lu said,
“Prime Minister Khan has recently visited Moscow, and so I think we are trying to figure out how to engage specifically with the Prime Minister following that decision.”[8]
Lu subsequently told Majeed Khan that “people here and in Europe are quite concerned about why Pakistan is taking such an aggressively neutral position [on Ukraine], if such a position is even possible. It does not seem such a neutral stand to us.”
Lu in turn said:
“I think if the no-confidence vote against the Prime Minister succeeds, all will be forgiven in Washington because the Russia visit is being looked at as a decision by the Prime Minister. Otherwise, I think it will be tough going ahead.”[9]
The day before the meeting, Khan had addressed a rally responding directly to European calls that Pakistan support Ukraine. “Are we your slaves?” Khan thundered to the crowd: “What do you think of us? That we are your slaves and that we will do whatever you ask of us?” he asked. “We are friends of Russia, and we are also friends of the United States. We are friends of China and Europe. We are not part of any alliance.”
Khan’s fiercely independent stance was intolerable for the U.S., which demands obedience like a Mafia godfather. And so Khan had to go, like Lumumba, Castro, Qaddafi, and so many others.
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Jeremy Kuzmarov is Managing Editor of CovertAction Magazine. He is the author of five books on U.S. foreign policy, including Obama’s Unending Wars (Clarity Press, 2019), The Russians Are Coming, Again, with John Marciano (Monthly Review Press, 2018), and Warmonger. How Clinton’s Malign Foreign Policy Launched the U.S. Trajectory From Bush II to Biden (Clarity Press, 2023). He can be reached at: [email protected].
Notes
Khan has now been sentenced to an additional 14 years in prison for allegedly accepting illicit gifts while he was in office and was barred from holding public office for ten years. His wife, Bushra Bibi, was also given a 14-year prison sentence. Khan questioned the fairness and impartiality of the trial during the hearing, asking the judge: “Why are you in a hurry to announce the verdict? I have not even recorded my final statement.” Mr. Khan then exited the courtroom, and the judge announced the sentence in his absence.
According to The Intercept, the Pakistani military has enshrined authoritarian powers for itself that drastically reduce civil liberties, criminalize criticism of the military, expand the institution’s already expansive role in the country’s economy, and give military leaders a permanent veto over political and civil affairs.
Charlie Campbell, “Pakistan Can Keep Imran Khan Out of Power, but It Can’t Keep His Popularity Down,” Time, January 17, 2024. Khan was the target of several assassination attempts and was shot and wounded in a political rally. In November, Imaan Mazari, a human rights lawyer on who represents families of those forcibly disappeared, works on issues of forced evictions and media freedom, was taken from her home by men in plainclothes and elite security forces at 3am without an arrest warrant after speaking at a rally against enforced disappearances. Mazari was charged under the broad Anti-Terrorism Act including sedition, rebellion against the state, and terror-financing. PTI leaders have only been able to contest the upcoming elections as independents and have been subjected to police raids and harassment.
Shehbaz Sharif was the younger brother of three-time Pakistani Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif, a protégé of the late U.S.-backed dictator General Zia-ul-Haq, who contributed to the Islamicization of Pakistan in the 1980s when he provided support under the CIA’s oversight for the anti-Soviet Afghan mujahadin. In 2017, Pakistan’s Supreme Court ordered Nawaz Sharif to step down as prime minister due to Panama Papers-related corruption revelations.
Interestingly, Senator Van Hollen, whose father was a foreign service officer and whose mother worked for the CIA and State Department, was born in Karachi, Pakistan.
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Landmark new study from the Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research and Global South Insights provides an illuminating analysis of the world situation today.
Hyper-Imperialism: A Dangerous, Decadent New Stage makes a compelling case that imperialism, integrated by United States, operates as a highly organised, unified, militarised bloc of countries in the global North which aims to dominate the countries of the global South, the majority of humanity.
Due to the relative economic decline of the US-led bloc compared to the global South, including China, the US is increasingly forced to rely on its continuing lead in military power as it attempt to maintain global dominance.
“The bottom line is that there is one world system that is managed dangerously by an imperialist bloc,” writes Vijay Prashad, director of the Tricontinental Institute. Indeed, the study comprehensively demolishes any notion that the United States is engaged in an “inter-imperialist rivalry” with Russia or China.
In the case of China the US regards the rise of this “socialist independent” country, an economic superpower with an economy now larger than the US’s in purchasing power parity (PPP) terms, as an existential threat to its global hegemony.
Hyper-Imperialism shows the US’s aggression towards Russia is because it is a “strongly sovereign seeking” country and therefore unwilling to subordinate itself to Washington. Russia and China, both powerful countries, have become closer in recent years. “The dual defeat of Russia and China” is identified as the principal goal of the US’s international strategy.
This US strategic agenda was strongly echoed in January 2024 in a speech by Britain’s Defence Secretary Grant Shapps who said:
“The era of the peace dividend is over … in five years’ time we could be looking at multiple theatres [of war] involving Russia, China, Iran and North Korea.”
There is a significant danger that should such a global confrontation take place, it could escalate into a nuclear war with the potential to destroy human civilisation.
The responsibility on the international anti-war movement to provide the clearest leadership in opposing this US-led war drive is obvious.
Hyper-Imperialism is an invaluable resource for the movement because it offers an extremely clear explanation of the dangerous world situation we face today, which can be drawn upon to strengthen the understanding and anti-imperialist orientation of the movement.
US Imperialism Is the Main Enemy
Hyper-imperialism presents a clear analysis that it is the US which poses the greatest threat to humanity, with its dominance of on the means of destruction.
The study cites ground-breaking research showing that the US’s military spending is more than twice the amount acknowledged by the US government — at a staggering $1.5 trillion in 2022.
The US has 902 overseas foreign military bases “heavily concentrated in bordering regions or buffer zones around China.”
The extent of the US’s military power extends further due to Washington’s control of the global North as “an integrated military, political, and economic bloc composed of 49 countries.” This means that the US controls, through Nato and other means, an astounding 74.3 per cent of all military spending globally.
The contrast between the US and China is also astonishing. The US spends 21 times more on its military per person than China does. China has one foreign military base compared to 902 US foreign military bases.
These facts entirely disprove the idea, adopted by some sections of the Western left, that both the US and China represent a “threat” to humanity and the world faces an “inter-imperialist rivalry.” The main threat to humanity clearly emanates from Washington not Beijing.
A Unified Imperialist Bloc
A central point made in Hyper-Imperialism is that the world is today is not defined by “inter-imperialist rivalry,” that the contradictions between imperialist countries now are “non-antagonist and secondary” with “Germany, Japan, France and all other imperialist powers” subordinating their interests on essential issues to those of the US.
The Nato-proxy war in Ukraine against Russia and Israeli offensive in Gaza are identified as key developments that have consolidated “an integrated, military focused imperialist bloc” which aims to “maintain a grip on the global South” and “dominate Eurasia” — a part of the world that has escaped the US’s control. It is also reflected in Europe’s increasing subordination to Washington’s new cold war offensive against China.
This reflects a fundamental change in the organisation of the global North. In previous global crises of the imperialist system, as shown in World War I and World War II, there was a violent clash between imperialist powers and the global South, including socialist forces, operated in that overall context.
Today the main contradiction is between a unified imperialist bloc led by the US against the global South as whole, including socialist states.
Of course contradictions within the imperialist global North camp continue to exist, and progressives should attempt to exploit these, but they are of a secondary character.
The Rise of the China and the Global South
The US’s increasing military aggression is a response to immense global shifts in recent decades, accelerated following the financial crash of 2008, which has seen the power of the global North eroded in many spheres, including economically, diplomatically and technologically.
Such developments strike against the core of the world order as it has existed for centuries. As Hyper-Imperialism strikingly puts it: “For the first time in over 600 years, there is now a credible economic and political alternative to the domination of world affairs by the Europeans and their descendant white-settler colonial states. First, is the socialist grouping led by China. Second, are the growing aspirations for national sovereignty, economic modernisation, and multilateralism, emerging from the global South.”
The emergence of China as the world’s largest and most dynamic economy, the rise of the global South and the growth of projects for South-South economic development are thoroughly analysed. The relative decline of the US and wider global North is also examined.
Hyper-Imperialism is clear to stress, however, that unlike the global North, the global South is not a unified bloc.
What is emerging is “new mood” in the global South that has seen the global South increasingly reject the US’s aggressive foreign policy agenda. This has been very evident in the US/Nato proxy war in Ukraine against Russia which the global South has refused to support, instead continuing to cooperate economically with Russia and advocating for a peaceful resolution of the conflict not escalation.
The global South has also strongly pushed for ceasefire in Gaza, isolating the US and Israel at the UN general assembly on multiple occasions. South Africa’s decision to take a case accusing Israel of committing genocide in Gaza to the International Court of Justice is another example of the independent mood in the global South.
The US is desperate to stop the rise of China and the increasing independence of the global South. Hyper-Imperialism warns that “there is a clear and present danger that imperialism will continue its militarist path and rely on its military dominance to offset its growing relative economic and political decline.”
The most important task for progressives today is to build the broadest possible movement against this US-led attack on humanity. Hyper-imperialism is a must-read for those who want to sharpen their understanding of the key threat facing the world.
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China’s embassy in Japan has lashed out over Wednesday’s leak of radioactive waste water from the tsunami-battered Fukushima nuclear power plant, rebuking its operator the Tokyo Electric Power Company (Tepco) and the Japanese government.
“Japan’s repeated accidents in the process of treating Fukushima nuclear-contaminated water have fully exposed the chaos and disorder of Tepco’s internal management,” an embassy spokesman said on Thursday.
“The Japanese government’s supervision measures are lacking and ineffective, which once again proves that the nuclear-contaminated water treatment equipment lacks long-term reliability.”
The spokesman added that the incident “further highlights the need for the international community to engage in supervision”.
Echoing the sentiments in separate comments on Thursday afternoon, Wang Wenbin, a spokesman for China’s foreign ministry, said China was assessing the situation.”
Japan has a responsibility to share information about the incident in a timely, comprehensive, and transparent manner and provide a proper explanation,” he said.
About 5,500 litres of water is estimated to have leaked from a caesium absorption tower – a section of the plant used for treating contaminated water – on Wednesday morning after a valve was left open during cleaning work.
According to Tepco, the leaked water is a mix of contaminated water from the plant’s absorption system and filtered water used for cleaning. It is estimated to contain around 0.022 Terabecquerels (TBq) of radioactive substances.
Tepco said there was no risk to the public and the surrounding environment was unaffected by the leak, which was noticed by a contractor shortly before 9am local time and stopped 23 minutes later.
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The elections in Pakistan today were much freer and fairer than I had expected. Hence, the preliminary results simply reflected the obvious for most of us: former Prime Minister Imran Khan’s political party, PTI (the movement for justice) – facing ruthless repression over the past year – have swept the elections in every single province of the country.
Khan, surviving two assasination attempts and languishing in a supermax dungeon since last August, is more popular than ever. Among the youth, Gallup Pakistan surveys have consistently reported around 80-90 percent support for Khan and his party.
The tyranny of the generals in the military high command along with the kleptocratic and dynastic political parties entailed even the suppression of PTI’s symbol (a cricket bat) and virtually a ban, with horrific consequences if violated, on candidates running on a PTI ticket. Thus, all of these candidates ran as independents.
Of course, we have now become used to one criminal travesty after the next by Pakistan’s military-intelligence apparatus. So, we are cautious about any temporary victory for people’s democracy, triumphing over the Washington-backed totalitarian military and political elite. The latter are in full-blown panic mode, and are trying their best at tampering and rigging before announcing the final results.
The preliminary results, regardless of the fraudulent shenanigans of the national security state expected in the next few days, already represents a resounding defeat of the neo-colonial comprador oligarchy in Pakistan. One just needs to see how highly strung the spokesperson of the State Department was in addressing questions related to these elections.
There is one sign of both hope and danger. For the first time in Pakistan’s history, the normally unified and disciplined armed forces are now experiencing deep divisions. The majority of military officers and and 95 percent of soldiers are repulsed by the behavior of Wasington’s minions in the top brass. To the surprise of many of us, these divisions also exist within the intelligence agencies. We are witnessing in an unprecedented way a refusenik impulse within the military. Not to sound like the bogus alarmism we’re used to from Washington think tanks, it’s still worth remembering that Pakistan is a country of 240 million, nuclear-armed.
The Pakistani people badly need international solidarity at this point.
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Prof. Junaid S. Ahmad teaches religion, law, and global politics and is the Director of the Center for Islam and Decoloniality, Islamabad, Pakistan. He is a regular contributor to Global Research.
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At a time of increasingly adverse weather conditions related to climate change, there is growing urgency of adopting protective policies towards small farmers and pastoralists. Unfortunately, it is in these difficult conditions that the Tanzanian government has been adopting policies which are further increasing the difficulties of small farmers and pastoral people.
According to a recent study by GRAIN, a Europe-based organization known for its commitment to protecting small farmer communities, there was an earlier wave of corporate based farming in the post-2008 years which was promoted by multinational companies and donors and led to several land conflicts and destruction of livelihood of small farmers. Several of these projects collapsed, leaving behind a trail of misery spread across many villages.
Despite this terrible experience behind them, now the Tanzanian authorities are repeating a somewhat similar phase of export-led, large farm based agriculture by aggressively turning thousands of hectares into block farms that produce export crops. One difference now is that this more recent change is linked more closely to China. As GRAIN states,
“With China looking to Tanzania as a new supply source of soybeans, the stage is set for another wave of land grabs, with dire consequences for small farmers.”
This report recommends that instead of wasting scarce public resources on “failed model of corporate agriculture” the Tanzanian government should instead focus on efforts to address the real needs of the country’s millions of small food producers.
Meanwhile, this country’s another important rural group of pastoralists, which too is highly vulnerable to climate change, has been increasingly threatened by projects which are often publicized as conservation projects but in reality are often more oriented towards the commercial aspects of safari tourism and related activities. The US-based Oakland Institute has been repeatedly drawing attention to the increasing problems of pastoralists, small cultivators and indigenous communities threatened by such projects in terms of displacements, curtailment of livelihood rights and harassment by park authorities and rangers.
Last year the Oakland Institute had released reports regarding several such communities of people facing increasing problems in some conservation and park project areas, including those linked to generous funding from the World Bank.
Now in more recent information releases, the Oakland Institute has stated that problems in some of these areas are intensifying further. In the Ngorongoro Conservation Area (NCA), for example, in mid-January a new plan was announced to remove about 100,000 pastoralists. A big concern is that they are being asked to move away to areas where there is scarcity of water and grazing land. Moreover, already people are living here. Where will they go? So if this displacement takes place it is likely that a series of new land-conflicts can get imposed on two vulnerable rural groups who may be devastated by this. It may be recalled here that at the root of several conflicts in Africa are several land disputes triggered by wrong and distorted policies going back to colonial and neo-colonial legacies.
A little earlier rangers raided a village near Tarangire National Park, shooting several Maasai villagers, arresting 80 of them and seizing nearly 800 of their cattle. In the Ruaha Park area the harassment reported earlier has been increasing.
It is clear that such distorted tourism and conservation policies need to change, and instead new policies should seek to include people as partners in any such initiatives, utilizing the rich local biodiversity knowledge of indigenous and local people to take forward conservation, enhancing livelihoods instead of diminishing or threatening them.
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Bharat Dogra is Honorary Convener, Campaign to Save Earth Now. His recent books include ‘India’s Quest for Sustainable Farming and Healthy Food’, ‘Man over Machine’ and ‘Protecting Earth for Children’. He is a regular contributor to Global Research.
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On January 26, the International Court of Justice (ICJ) ruled in South Africa’s genocide case against Israel. The results were welcomed by South Africa as well as Palestinian leaders, diaspora, and solidarity activists: in its ruling, the court ordered Israel to “take all measures within its power to prevent the commission of acts of genocide” and to allow humanitarian aid into the deliberately starved territory. The court also ordered Israel to prevent its forces from violating the 1948 Genocide Convention “with immediate effect.”
In all, the ICJ has found that Palestinians are a protected national group at risk of irreparable harm under the Genocide Convention. The court also found plausible risk that Israeli forces are committing or will commit genocide in Gaza.
Israeli representatives had been calling for the ICJ to simply throw out the case, arguing that South Africa has no legitimate quarrel with Israel at the world’s top court. By issuing provisional measures against genocide and moving forward with South Africa’s case, the ICJ has sided with South Africa, dealing a huge blow to Israel’s already tattered credibility on the world stage.
Near unanimously [15-1], the court was convinced that South Africa made a plausible case demonstrating that Israel has displayed the intent to execute genocide. As a result, the court is required, by international law, to proceed with a full hearing and, ultimately, to render a verdict on the seminal question: Is Israel guilty of the crime of genocide in Gaza?
While the court stopped short of ordering a ceasefire, the ICJ’s provisional measures would amount to a ceasefire if implemented. Essentially, the court has called for a ceasefire by implication. As South Africa’s Foreign Minister Naledi Pandor said after the ruling, “I believe that in exercising the order, there would have to be a ceasefire. Without it, the order doesn’t actually work.”
It is worth noting that during a number of previous genocide cases at the ICJ, including Bosnia in the 1990s and Myanmar in 2019, the ICJ did not directly call for a ceasefire.
The ICJ’s ruling puts the lie to the dominant claims by Western media and government officials that Israel is simply defending itself against terrorism, and its actions in Gaza, however excessive, are nonetheless justified. In short, the global majority has rejected the West’s framing of the Israeli war on Gaza.
What will follow this historic ICJ ruling? Unless the US exerts leverage on Israel to rein in its genocidal military campaign against Palestinians, little will happen. While ICJ rulings are legally binding, Israel has never let international law moderate its violence, whether the massacre of civilians or the expansion of illegal settlements. And global institutions, dominated as they are by Western powers and especially the US, have never been especially interested in holding Israel accountable.
Even so, the ICJ ruling represents a historic victory for Palestinians and a rejection of Israeli and Western propaganda on the world stage.
For its part, Israel responded to the ICJ ruling with typical bellicosity, with Defence Minister Yoav Gallant (who was cited during the lawsuit for calling Palestinians “human animals”) claiming the world court is “antisemitic” and that “Israel does not need to be lectured on morality.”
The response by Western countries, meanwhile, has been to continue their unconditional support for Israel—despite the fact that, in the eyes of The Hague, many Western powers are now plausibly complicit in the genocide of Palestinians.
The US government responded to the ICJ ruling predictably: by dismissing the case without discussing its merits. A State Department spokesperson claimed that the Hague “did not make a finding about genocide… in its ruling,” which is untrue. At this stage of ICJ proceedings, the court is deciding whether or not South Africa presented a plausible case that Israel is committing genocide, which the overwhelming majority of judges did. The case will continue, although it could be years before a final verdict is reached.
In an interview with Owen Jones, geopolitical analyst Mouin Rabbani stated that Washington’s response to the ruling is “[like] saying someone on trial for murder has not been found guilty on the first day of the trial.”
The Canadian response has been similarly spineless.
Prior to the ruling, Trudeau had spoken dismissively of South Africa’s genocide case, telling reporters: “Our wholehearted support of the ICJ and its processes does not mean that we support the premise of the case brought forward by South Africa.”
On January 26, the day the ICJ ruled Israel is plausibly committing genocide in Gaza, Foreign Affairs Minister Mélanie Joly once more reiterated Canada’s support for Israel. The statement repeats Trudeau’s earlier remarks while proclaiming that Canada “support[s] Israel’s right to exist and defend itself.”
Statement by Minister Joly on the International Court of Justice’s decision on South Africa’s request for provisional measures in its case against Israel
Joly’s statement calls on Hamas to release the Israeli hostages taken on October 7, but makes no demands for Israel to cease its bombings of civilians, schools, hospitals, and UN shelters, or its targeted assassinations of journalists and artists, or the genocidal incitement of its leaders.
Currently over 26,000 Palestinians have been reported killed in Gaza, with almost 65,000 injured. Gazans suffer acute shortages of food, clean water, and medicine, while 85 percent of the enclave’s residents have been internally displaced. According to the UN, 60 percent of Gaza’s infrastructure has been damaged or destroyed.
While simply noting “concern” about the “humanitarian crisis” in Gaza, Joly’s language fills with vitriol once Palestinian attacks are mentioned:
Nothing can justify Hamas’ brutal attacks on October 7, including the appalling loss of life, and the heinous acts of violence perpetrated in those attacks, including sexual violence… Hamas must release all hostages, stop using Palestinian civilians as human shields, and lay down its arms.
Meanwhile, Israel’s response to the ICJ ruling did not stop at combative words. Shortly after the verdict, Israel released a statement accusing staff members of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) of participating in the October 7 attacks.
It is reasonable to assume that these accusations, based on “confessions” drawn from interrogations, were extracted through torture. This did not stop UNRWA donors, including the US and Canada, from cutting funding for the agency.
UNRWA was founded in 1949 to provide relief for Palestinians dispossessed by the Nakba. Since then, it has served as a lifeline for millions of Palestinian refugees. The UN agency currently supports nearly six million refugees, mostly in Gaza and Jordan, across 58 camps. It also supports 706 schools, 140 primary health care facilities, and provides food and cash assistance to 1.8 Palestinians.
As analyst Mouin Rabbani outlines, Israel’s accusations are curiously timed:
My understanding is that Israel timed the release of a statement accusing twelve UNRWA staff of having been directly and personally involved in the Palestinian attacks on Israel of October 7. [The accusations seem] timed and released to coincide with the ICJ [verdict] in an effort to divert attention from it.
In Rabbani’s view, UNRWA “spectacularly mishandled this issue” by taking actions that could be seen as validating the accusations. These actions gave Israel’s Western sponsors the justification they needed to pull funding from the UN agency.
Israel has long sought to delegitimize UNRWA. Indeed, former foreign ministry official Noga Arbell has openly called for its dismantling.
“It will be impossible to win the war if we do not destroy UNRWA,” Arbell stated in parliament in early January. “This destruction must begin immediately.”
"It will be impossible to win the war if we do not destroy Unrwa, and this destruction must begin immediately"
Earlier this month on 4 January, Noga Arbell, a former Israeli official, called for the destruction of Unrwa during a discussion in the Israeli parliament. pic.twitter.com/VooVg39fVL
UNRWA has stated that if funds are not restored, the agency will need to end all services after February, a catastrophic prospect for millions of Palestinian refugees. Yet Canada doesn’t seem to care. Gaza was already facing a famine before the aid cuts. Millions of Palestinians are living on a knife’s edge, barely able to subsist amidst unimaginable conditions of bombardment, starvation, and genocidal brutality.
As NDP MP Heather McPherson asked in the House of Commons yesterday, “Why are Canada’s Liberals… abandon[ing] Palestinians in their greatest hour of need?”
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Featured image: Health center operated by the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) in the southern Gaza Strip. UNRWA was established by the General Assembly in 1949 and mandated to provide assistance and protection to some 5.6 million registered Palestine refugees. Photo by United Nations/Flickr.
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Since Hamas’ October 7 attack triggered the most recent, brutal round of violence in Gaza, the discourse surrounding the conflict has remained stunningly stagnant. Both sides find themselves emboldened at home.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s war cabinet continues to argue that its vicious military campaign is necessary to destroy Hamas and secure the release of over 100 Israeli hostages held in Gaza. Yet, it is becoming increasingly clear that neither goal will be achieved by force. Hamas and Palestinian factions, battered and divided, continue to call for a permanent cease-fire and the full Israeli withdrawal from Gaza, the release of thousands of Palestinian detainees and prisoners, and an end to occupation—resulting in a Palestinian state. None of these goals appear to be achievable by force either. The international community, nearly unanimously, has been calling for a cease-fire which has been repeatedly rejected by Israel and its military and diplomatic backers in the White House.
While the discourse remains gridlocked, developments on the ground are not. Palestinian casualties, in the tens of thousands, are mounting daily. As physicians, we despair at the inability to recognize our common humanity as Gaza’s healthcare system has totally collapsed, food and medicine are scarce, and nearly half of all buildings have been completely or partially destroyed, leaving 90% of Gazans displaced on uninhabitable lands facing famine and outbreaks of infectious diseases.
Of further concern, the violence has spilled over into Lebanon, Syria, and Yemen. Three U.S. troops were killed and more were injured in a recent drone attack in Jordan. The conflict is positioned for further escalation, jeopardizing regional peace and threatening U.S. interests.
Physicians are frequently faced with difficult dilemmas, and we often advocate for plans to help treat conditions and alleviate suffering by weighing variables we can and cannot control. We believe there is a clear path to address the wants and needs of people in the region outside of war, not only resolving this round of violence but also setting the stage for lasting peace. The U.S. has tremendous leverage on all sides and enormous resources in the region, and we must bring them to bear now. We urge the Biden administration to utilize this leverage and present a clear framework to end the violence and suffering.
Our prescription for a framework leading to a peaceful resolution is:
1) An immediate cease-fire to stop the bloodshed on all sides and allow for desperately needed aid to enter Gaza while concurrently working with stakeholders and international partners to negotiate terms of a sustained peace agreement. Calls to limit civilian casualties, including limited pauses in fighting, have not been successful. Continued violence will only result in further suffering and complicate efforts to end the war.
2) An immediate exchange of hostages and detainee and prisoners. Both sides have negotiated such agreements with mediation provided by regional partners. In fact, CIA Director Bill Burns is already mediating constructive negotiations with the support of Qatar and Egypt. Several reports are indicating that both sides are closing in on a deal to release the hostages.
3) Advocating for Palestinians to govern Gaza and the West Bank. The Palestinian Authority, the Palestinian Liberation Organization, or a new technocratic Palestinian body can be tasked with governing the strip with power handed off from Hamas. Arab countries can play a role in providing security assurances in return for Israel withdrawing from Gaza and lifting the blockade to allow rebuilding of the strip.
4) Providing a clear and credible plan for resumption of peace talks on the basis of leading to a two-state solution in return for normalization of relations and security. Israel and the U.S. have made normalization between Israel and Arab countries a top priority. A two-state solution has been endorsed by the U.S. and nearly every country in the Middle East and is the clearest path for self-determination and an end of the occupation. The Biden administration can and should begin working toward the recognition of a Palestinian State and create the conditions necessary for Palestinians to self-govern free of military occupation.
While these ideas are not novel, we believe it is time for the Biden administration to publicly adopt and advance them. The inhumane status quo must not continue. The United States faces increasing isolation on the global stage in opposing a cease-fire and fueling the war with weapons. With the implementation of these steps, a path for lasting peace and prosperity in the region is possible.
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Yazeed Ibrahim, D.O. is the co-president of Physicians for Social Responsibility Los Angeles (PSRLA).
Dr. Ira Helfand is a past president of Physicians for Social Responsibility and serves as the co-president of the group’s global federation, the International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War, which was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1985.
Robert Dodge, a frequent Common Dreams contributor, writes as a family physician practicing in Ventura, California. He is the Co-Chair of the Security Committee of National Physicians for Social Responsibility, serves as the President of Physicians for Social Responsibility Los Angeles, and is a steering committee member of Back from the Brink.
David E. Drake, D.O. is a past president of Physicians for Social Responsibility National and a current PSR National Board member.
All Global Research articles can be read in 51 languages by activating the Translate Website button below the author’s name (only available in desktop version).
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I started my journey with the Centre for Employment Innovation on Monday, October 26, 2020 as the Research Coordinator for the Nova Scotia Works Diversity and Inclusion & Certification projects in Canada. It was an exciting, welcoming and also a difficult tenure trying to make sense of the wide variety of documents to be reviewed, understood and analyzed, coupled with the readings on data gathering methods and analysis for Developmental Evaluation for Social Impact course.
Introduction
Appreciative Inquiry stood out for me, because it is both a research philosophy and is used in data collection.
I learnt that Appreciative Inquiry is framework or approach that centers the contributions of community and stakeholders in self-determined change. It is used to identify challenges from a systems point-of-view and to look at the strengths of teams and communities using internal capacities.
For example, instead of an outside expert asking a community, ‘what is going wrong and what can I do to solve the problem?’ a developmental evaluator who uses the appreciative inquiry approach would ask the community:
What were the strengths?
What were the points of tensions, setbacks and weaknesses? What did we learn and what can we apply from the moments of strengths in the next course of action?’
This is evident in Michael Patton’s (2011) argument where he states that a developmental evaluator is embedded into the project and he or she is not just gathering data, analyzing it and writing a report but actively engaging communities and stakeholders (p.305). He further went on to explain that the co-creation process involves: conceptualizing the social innovation together along with generating inquiry questions, figuring out what data to collect and how to collect it and tracking changing conditions, what emerges and paying attention to new learnings (Patton, 2011, p.307).
This therefore means that appreciative inquiry requires a shift in thinking from seeing problems as a matter of individual deficit but recognizing that members of the eco-system have an instrumental role to play in social innovation and change. Change does not occur in a linear, predictable fashion neither does it happen when there is ‘ONE VOICE’ shaping, directing and determining the narrative. Change happens when the community involved, is able to see themselves as partners in the change making process rather than mere recipients of program benefits. All community members and stakeholders should be involved from conceptualizing, designing, collecting data, analyzing it and putting together the report like a group, putting the pieces of large puzzle to make sense of the big picture.
This is directly related to my past work experiences where we are in the early phases of creating developmental evaluation for both projects. We were not at the stage where we are doing interviews and focus group discussions but we are at the stage where I have to collect data in real-time such as attending Zoom/Microsoft Teams meetings, email exchanges and listening out for important information in informal spaces such as lunch discussions or face to face meetings where we socially distance.
I have personally witnessed cases where discussions may go ‘off tangent’ from the original agenda item and then I will ask questions for clarity such as ‘could you share some more details on why is this so?’ and participants would give me broader political and historical context of about the origins of a problem- that is multiple, systemic barriers for African Nova Scotians and Peoples of African descent to find meaningful work and why this persists.
I would then observe the moments of tensions to the moments where the group decide on how to proceed whether through forging partnerships with social innovators who have similar goals or drawing on the expertise of local community people for support as the program develops.
Learning by doing is key. I have applied what Patton (2011) calls ‘situational responsiveness as a developmental evaluator” (p.314). Situational responsiveness is simply knowing when to be an active voice, when to be interactive with the team and when to be reactive or allow conversations and directions for action to unfold organically. In other words, a developmental evaluator is not expected to be ‘dead silent or dominate the discussion’ in meetings or collecting any form of data in real-time.
Appreciative Inquiry also challenges me to understand that before I collect/gather data, I need to know what are the values underpinning the research, what data to collect, for what purpose and for whom?
This leads us into the course reading by Cobb and Donnelly (2015) where both state that the values that underpin a project are the same ones that inform the evaluation (p.6). I immediately connected this quote by reflecting on the work of the Centre for Employment Innovation (CEI). Although research and innovation is one of the four (4) pillars for our work, research and innovation do not stand alone but is combined with collaboration and engagement. We are doing research that is community-based, practitioner-based and one that also seeks to identify innovative or exemplary practices to make the development and delivery of employment services more diverse and inclusive. Having established these clear principles and purpose, it is better to determine what data collection methods are to be used. Surveys are popular quantitative data methods of collection used in research for our company and other institutions.
Quantitative data methods of collection like surveys are advantageous in terms of cost and time effectiveness and they answer question like how many or what percentage of a population is affected by the problem to be researched? (Ferris, 2011). However, the disadvantage with using quantitative methods of data collection like surveys is that, you need an experienced statistician to develop the data collection instrument in a way that the population to be surveyed represents the general population (representative sample) by using a confidence interval. For example, in a 2018 group research project entitled ‘The Socio-Demographic Factors that affect Voter Turnout in the 2011 General Elections in Jamaica’, the researchers including myself, surveyed 1,500 people using a confidence interval of 95%. It is not possible to survey all 2.9 million people living in Jamaica so the confidence interval was used to help the researchers come up a sample that represents the total population. Without doing this, when it comes on to interpreting and analyzing quantitative data, the data will be inaccurate and virtually useless.
Additionally, numbers alone cannot give a comprehensive picture on why a problem exists/persists and how is it affecting a community. This is not to say that quantitative methods of data collection are not important but it is dependent on the purpose of the research, the problem to be researched, research question/s and research values.
This is where qualitative methods of data collection such as focus group discussions and in-depth interview become more useful. According to Curry (2015) in-depth interviews explore individual experiences and perceptions in rich detail while focus group discussions generate unique insights into shared experiences and norms. These are applicable to previous phases for the developmental evaluation reports for the Nova Scotia Works Diversity and Inclusion project and the new phase of the project that I worked on. In-depth interviews are helpful when a developmental evaluator/researcher wants to address sensitive topic by examining an in-depth, individual point of view and in the case of the project, sensitive topics would encompass discrimination, exclusion, feelings of alienation in the workplace or not finding work for long periods of time, racism and so on.
A major challenge using this data collection method is how to build trust with the participant so that there is no fear of reprisal. This is connected with the topic of ‘research ethics’ where you follow a set of principles or guidelines to ensure a participant is protected such as confidentiality, anonymity and informed consent but ethics in and of itself will not allow a participant who is a victim of institutionalized/ systemic oppression to speak up boldly. I learnt some ideas from breakout room session from the Developmental Evaluation for Social Impact course where a researcher has to abide by both ethics and come up with creative ways of asking interview questions to elicit rich insights or detail and that includes: being conversational in tone, relatability of the researcher to the participant but not being too involved, active and empathetic listening and asking very clear or simple questions. You can could ask questions that evoke images or tie questions to culturally relevant or sensitive themes. For example, Peoples of African descent are connected to a history and culture of orality or oral expressions so if you can tie questions to popular, community proverbial expressions , dance or song or any community custom, this would be a good way to engage and encourage more relaxed and authentic communication.
On the other hand, focus group discussions are ways of getting a group perspective on an issue in great detail. Focus group discussions are ideal for including persons from diverse backgrounds and different generations to broaden the spectrum of looking at a problem and it will provide safe space especially for members of the community who are not literate or shy to speak up alone. The challenge with a focus group is observing and controlling the power dynamics- those who speak up boldly vs those who don’t, the perspective of men vs. perspective of women, old versus young and so on. It is critical that a fair and equal opportunity is given to different voices to share their experiences and perceptions and equally critical that a researcher pays keen attention to the moments of silence and when to step in to give another group member a chance to share. My big takeaway from this course on Developmental Evaluation for Social Impact comes from Dr. Paula Romanow towards the end of Thursday’s discussion where she says when doing qualitative data analysis, even if one person shares their experience or perception, it is still important.
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Tina Renier is an independent researcher based in Jamaica. She is a volunteer at Just Peace Advocates and a regular contributor to Global Research. She received a Master of Arts in International Development Studies in Nova Scotia, Canada.
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Of all the campaign issues that conservatives like to be overheard talking about, illegal immigration is among the top 6 or 7th in importance behind boycotting Bud Light, 2nd Amendment issues, and trolling abortion fanatics.
Beyond AOC conducting a staged photo-op crying next to an empty parking lot in order to try and make President Trump look like a racist for separating children from parents, (a policy that was a carry-over from the Obama presidency oddly enough), Democrats tend to avoid discussing the absolute flood of undocumented refugees currently awaiting processing, mostly because they don’t want to upset their sugar daddy George Soros or make President Biden look bad.
For the 12 months ending Sept. 30, 2022, Customs and Border Protection Administration CBP stopped migrants more than 2,766,582 times, compared to 1.72 million times for fiscal 2021, the previous yearly high. The 2022 numbers were driven in part by sharp increases in the number of Venezuelans, Cubans and Nicaraguans making the trek north, according to CBP. The major source of immigration is listed as Brazil, Columbia, Cuba, Ecuador, El Salvador, Guatemala, Haiti, Honduras, Mexico, Nicaragua, and Venezuela with 1,535,492 so far attempting to enter this year and 2,217,141 last year (see this).
US-run color revolutions and coups, economic warfare, sanctions, narco-terrorism, Communist/Maoist terrorism, natural disasters, and severe poverty caused by policies imposed by the International Monetary Fund and World Bank all make up the major reasons that people flee their countries of origin.
However, despite the utterly disgusting record of the United States throughout the 20th Century and the 23 years of this century in imposing grinding poverty, usurious debt payments, and virtual colonial economic conditions, too many Americans parrot the “illegal immigrant” line which is the favorite boogeyman scapegoat now that “Muslim terrorism/extremist” is not being repeated endlessly on cable news, or worse, state that “it’s not their concern” as one of my taxi customers stated recently when I described the topic of this article.
A surprising opinion given that there is group of 300 refugees being warehoused at an auditorium in Portland Maine from Algeria who are protesting their conditions and discussions are under way to bring refugees to my locality despite there being absolutely no means of supporting them. A brief glance at the latter half of the 20th century shows why such opinions are utterly immoral. After WW1, the US has conducted wars, coups, and other military operations of various kinds in the Western Hemisphere mostly using the cover of “fighting Communism.” Because of the complexity of Communist/Socialist/Maoist history, its strange relationship with the old British Empire, and how they fit into the perpetual conflict schemes of various geopoliticans and used to terrible effect on the lives of untold numbers of souls, that subject will be gone over at length in part 2.
For most of the 19th and 20th century up until the passing of statesman James G. Blaine, the assassination of President McKinley, and ascendancy of anglophile freak Teddy Roosevelt, the US policy of support for our “sister republics” via the Monroe Doctrine was subverted into a colonial policy.
One company in particular, exemplified exploitation and looting of Central America and the Caribbean, The United Fruit Company, often called “The Octopus” because of its dominance over entire countries from which the term “Banana Republic” came.
I thought that you should get to see both the approved and sanitized narrative that is generally shown on numerous websites and videos that describe its history and then the ugly reality which brand x historians won’t touch with a hundred foot pole.
Birth of the Octopus
1870: The Boston Fruit Company was established by sailor Lorenzo Dow Baker when he started purchasing bananas in Jamaica.
1899: Minor C. Keith’s company Tropical Trading and Transport Co. merges with rival Andrew W. Preston’s Boston Fruit Co. to form the United Fruit Company. It engaged in the production, transportation, and marketing of bananas, sugar, cocoa, abaca, and other tropical agricultural products. Preston brought to the partnership his plantations in the West Indies, a fleet of steamships, and his market in the U.S. Northeast. Keith brought his plantations and railroads in Central America and his market in the U.S. South and Southeast. Within weeks, UFCo acquires seven independent companies that have been operating in Honduras. Preston is made president and Keith is vice-president. Preston’s lawyer Bradley Palmer is made permanent member of the executive committee and director and from a business point of view, Palmer was United Fruit.
1910: UFCo rival Samuel Zemurray conspires with the newly exiled General Manuel Bonilla and masterminds a coup d’état against Honduran President Dávila. On Christmas Eve, Samuel Zemurray, U.S. General Lee Christmas, and General Bonilla use Zemurray’s yacht “Hornet” with a gang of New Orleans mercenaries and attacks the ports of Trujillo and La Ceiba forcing President Dávila to step down. Bonilla becomes dictator and awards UFCo tax breaks and huge land grants.
1928: 25,000 banana workers in Columbia went on strike demanding a 6-day work week, payment with money rather than company coupons, compensation for work accidents, & increase in wages for workers earning less than 100 pesos per month. With the bottom line threatened, the strikers are branded Communists and UFCo gets the U.S. Government to threaten to invade, using the U.S. Marine Corps that were stationed off the shores of Ciénaga should the Colombian government not act to protect United Fruit’s interests. Dec. 6, 1928, Columbian troops gun down protesters outside of UFCo headquarters. The number killed is disputed, but a month later, the U.S. Ambassador to Bogotá, Jefferson Caffery, sent a dispatch informing Washington: “I have the honor to report…that the total number of strikers killed by the Colombian military exceeded one thousand.”
1929: After an unsuccessful price war against Samuel Zemurray’s Cuyamel Fruit Company which he had purchased in 1910, United Fruit decides to buy Zemurray out. He eventually becomes its biggest stockholder.
1930: UFCo. has absorbed more than twenty rival firms and is the largest employer in Central America. It owned or leased property in Honduras, Costa Rica, Guatemala, Panama, Colombia, Cuba, Jamaica, and numerous other Central American, South American, and West Indies countries.
1933: Members of UFCo’s board of directors vote to name Zemurray general director of the company.
1938: Zemurray becomes President of UFCo.
1947: United Fruit’s net worth is in excess of $250 million, and the company controlled nearly a half-mile of dock space in the Port of New Orleans for loading and unloading of its passengers, bananas and general freight.
June 1954 President Jacobo Arbenz of Guatemala became the first Latin American leader overthrown in a coup organized by the US government [SIC!]. On taking power, President Arbenz had proposed land reforms that were considered a threat to the interests of United Fruit Company despite the fact that only 15% of their land was being utilized. Arbenz was labelled a communist by Washington and the US company lobbied for his removal. BBC interview with President Jacobo Arbenz’s son.
1958: UFCo acquires the rights to explore petroleum and natural gas in Colombia, Panama, and Ecuador. During the 1950’s, UFCo. starts acquiring numerous companies such as A&W Root Beer and Foster Grants.
1959: Fidel Castro begins his agrarian reform and seizes the sugar plantations of United Fruit in Cuba.
United Brands (1970–1984)
Corporate raiderEli M. Black bought 733,000 shares of United Fruit in 1968, becoming the company’s largest shareholder. In June 1970, Black merged United Fruit with his own public company, AMK (owner of meat packer John Morrell), to create the United Brands Company.
1974: Central American governments began levying a large export tax on bananas. In September hurricane Fifi hit Central America, wiping out 70% of the company’s Honduran plantations and causing losses of more than $20 million. Rising feed costs puts Morrell $6 million in the hole. Black sells UFCo to Foster Grant for almost $70 million.
1975: Black commits suicide by jumping from his office in the Pan-Am building in New York. The investigations following his death reveal a multi-million-dollar bribery scandal in which Black and United Brands pay off Central American countries in exchange for reduced taxes.
Chiquita Brands International
After Black’s suicide, Cincinnati-based American Financial Group, one of billionaire Carl Lindner, Jr.‘s companies, bought into United Brands. In August 1984, Lindner took control of the company and renamed it Chiquita Brands International. The headquarters was moved from New York to Cincinnati in 1985.
2014 Chiquita Brands International conducts an all stock merger with the Irish Fruit Company Fyffes for $1.07 Billion and controls 29% of the global banana market. As of 2017 Fyffes is owned by the Japanese Sumitomo Corporation.
2019 The company’s main offices leave the United States and relocate to Switzerland.
“Chiquita Brands International operates in 70 countries and employs approximately 20,000 people as of 2018. The company sells a variety of fresh produce, including bananas, ready-made salads, and health foods. The company’s Fresh Express brand has approximately $1 billion of annual sales and a 40% market share in the United States.” Global corporate structure
Corporatism Writ Large in Mountains of Corpses
“I helped make Mexico, especially Tampico, safe for American oil interests in 1914. I helped make Haiti and Cuba a decent place for the National City Bank boys to collect revenues in. I helped in the raping of half a dozen Central American republics for the benefits of Wall Street. The record of racketeering is long. I helped purify Nicaragua for the international banking house of Brown Brothers in 1909-1912. I brought light to the Dominican Republic for American sugar interests in 1916. In China I helped to see to it that Standard Oil went its way unmolested.” –Excerpt from a speech delivered in 1933, by Major General Smedley Butler, USMC (retired).
When one brings up terms like corporatism, Mussolini or Hitler is referenced because of the overt relationship between financiers, industrial corporations and the government/ dictatorships. Long before any of that existed, there was the East India Company, a crown chartered company which plundered China and the Indian subcontinent for 300 years from 1600 to 1874 after which it was merged into the British Empire. In America, one finds around the Boston area, very old families that are given the descriptive moniker of blue bloods or Brahmins. See this.
Sociologist Harriet Martineau visited Boston in the 1830s and concluded its Brahmins were “perhaps as aristocratic, vain, and vulgar a city, as described by its own “first people,” as any in the world.”
Typically, these were merchant families who got filthy rich off of the slave and opium trade (or clipper trade). Among the American patrician families who have played key roles in both United Fruit and the British East India Company are the Forbes, Higginsons and Lees. Other old-line Episcopalian families involved with UFCo are the Peabodys of Morgan-Peabody, whose patriarch, J. Endicott Peabody, established Groton prep (the American Eton) to brainwash generations of U.S. policymakers in British Empire worship. In 1899, these and other Anglophile families arranged the merger of the Boston Fruit Co.’s “Great White Fleet” with International Railways of Central America (a railroad crisscrossing the region) to form the United Fruit Company. Sons of opium war Perkins Syndicate agent Joseph Coolidge, Thomas Jefferson Coolidge & Thomas Jefferson Coolidge II merged their Old Colony Trust Company with the First National Bank of Boston so that the boards of the Bank of Boston and the UFCo around 1929 were the same.
Also involved was the Swiss Iselin family through Central Trust Bank of New York, controller of railroads from New Orleans up to the midwest. The Bank of Boston will later play a part in helping organized crime take over Hollywood. In 1988 The Bank of Boston was caught laundering $2.5 million of drug money in connection with the infamous Columbian Medellin drug cartel connected BCCI bank, yet, got off with a $500,000 fine because of Attorney General William Weld, whose family also got filthy rich on the China Clipper Trade. See this.
For further information about this long ignored aspect of treason, please consult Anton Chaitkins ground breaking history research in “Treason In America.”
The other side of United Fruit came from Sicilians Joseph Macheca and his successor Charles Matranga, the mob bosses of New Orleans, the original organized crime organization in the US beginning in the Civil War era. See this.
Macheca was a protege of Anarcho-Revolutionary Guiseppi Mazzini, who in turn was an agent in the employ of Lord Palmerston, the 19th century architect of Britain’s opium wars. See this.
Macheca owned a small shipping company that shipped cargo from New Orleans to Central America starting in 1874. The Macheca Brothers firm eventually sold its shipping assets to United Fruit. His 1943 obituary lists Matranga as merely a retired stevedore for the United Fruit Company, and for Standard Fruit & Steamship Company but his funeral was attended by the business elite of New Orleans and the corporate board of UFCo.
The aforementioned Samuel Zemurray, also a mobster in New Orleans, had come to the U.S. as part of the same wave of immigration (sponsored by the Baron de Hirsch Foundation) that brought the Bronfmans, Jacobs, Fishers and others to this country. With Rothschild backing from London, they welded together a nationwide organized crime network during Prohibition, and then, in the mid-1930s, shifted their profitable business fronts from bootleg liquor to narcotics. According to past U.S. drug enforcement authorities, an estimated 25 percent of the cocaine that entered the United States annually was smuggled on United Brands’ ships.
To its “credit”, United Fruit in the last century has engineered two Marine invasions of Nicaragua, a war between Honduras and EI Salvador, an attempted Nicaraguan invasion of Costa Rica thirty years ago, and more than a dozen coups d’etat. In the bloodbath that followed the Company’s 1954 coup against the republican Arbenz forces in Guatemala, 35,000 people were murdered by death squads.
In 1929, the Justice Department demanded that Zemurray sell out to UF in order to stave off a war that the two companies had helped foment between Guatemala and Honduras. Another 40,000 to 50,000 have been killed by repressive rampages in EI Salvador and Honduras. When added to the deaths suffered under Anastasio Somoza García, Luis Somoza Debayle and Anastasio Somoza Debayle who ruled Nicaragua from 1933 to 1979, it is safe to estimate that United Fruit’s commitment to preserve “banana republics” and obliterate all potential for the development of sovereign nations modeled on America’s own founding principles has taken hundreds of thousands of lives during the last 100 years alone. This is the story of United Fruit: it is the anathema of everything the American republic ever stood for. It is the story of dope pushers, assassins, and mass murderers hired to keep Central America as a backward fiefdom of an Anglo-American “empire.” A deadly relationship of blue blood families setting policies, mobsters providing the muscle, and ruthless local dictators to keep the slaves in line.
True to its nickname El Pulpo or “The Octopus” one finds central figures like John Foster Dulles, who represented United Fruit while he was a law partner at Sullivan & Cromwell – he negotiated the crucial United Fruit deal with Guatemalan officials in the 1930s and was Secretary of State under Eisenhower; his brother Allen, who did legal work for the company and sat on its board of directors, was head of the Central Intelligence Agency under Eisenhower and Kennedy.
The law firm and both brothers were on the company payroll for 38 years; Henry Cabot Lodge (whose family ancestors were involved in the West Indies slave trade) who was America’s ambassador to the UN, was a large owner of United Fruit stock; Ed Whitman, the United Fruit PR man, was married to Ann Whitman, Dwight Eisenhower’s personal secretary. Sigmund Freud’s nephew, Edward Bernays was hired in 1941 as consultant.
His 1928 book “Propaganda” argued “The conscious and intelligent manipulation of the organized habits of the masses is an important element in democratic society. Those who manipulate this unseen mechanism of society constitute an invisible government which is the true ruling power of our country… It is the intelligent minorities which need to make use of propaganda continuously and systematically. In the active proselytizing minorities, in whom selfish interest and public interest coincide, lie the progress and development of America.” His method was used during the 1954 Guatemala coup by having reporters make up lurid stories of “communist terror” and that Arbenz was “going communist”. With such high powered American interests involved, to say that UFCo. was mixed up in the Bay Of Pigs incident, the Kennedy assassination, was involved in Israeli terrorist organizations, or promoted Malthusian depopulation schemes shouldn’t be a stretch.
In the late 1940s through Sam Zemurray and other employees, UFCo became engaged in a massive project to smuggle weapons to the Haganah and Irgun terrorist groups in Israel using puppet Central American governments. As one result of this project, the Israeli Mossad was created. Israel, in return was among the leading arms suppliers to UFCo’s puppet Central American dictatorships, particularly Anastasio Somoza. For the Haganah project, Sam Zemurray was co-opted by Edmund de Rothschild to the board of the Palestine Economic Commission (PEC) (see this) which would shortly evolve into the state sector of the Israeli economy. Co-sponsoring him for this high-level Zionist post was Sen. Herbert H. Lehman of the investment house, Lehman Bros., who headed the U.S. side of the PEC. Lehman Bros., which acquired its initial fortune running cotton and slaves past the Union blockade of Charleston and New Orleans, was the first bank brought onto UFCo’s board. (See this JSTOR Article)
Dr. Carlos Gutierrez of the post Somoza Government of National Reconstruction (GNR) gave an interview with Executive Intelligence Review about the recent history of Nicaragua in 1979
Q: Doctor Gutierrez, one of the facts we have been able to verify is that Zionism is in many ways supporting Somoza’s dictatorship. It’s well known that Israel supplies arms to Somoza. But that’s not all. United Brands formerly the famous United Fruit – is directed by a Zionist leader and it is known that Zionist networks involved in drug trafficking are intimately associated with Somoza and the National Guard. What can you tell us about that?
A: Well, the United Fruit problem has been reduced somewhat in Nicaragua. Many years ago we were a “banana country”; Nicaragua lived through a sorry experience. It was a country which produced bananas in fearful quantities. It produced tuberculosis in the same proportion. A member of the Group of Twelve made a documentary in the United States which includes 400 photographs showing the history of Nicaragua … with the whole process in which the United States has intervened since William Walker, a Filibuster from New Orleans who made himself president of Nicaragua [for 10 months in 1853- ed.], was recognized in less than 48 hours by the United States, and wanted to annex our territory to the slave states. In some of those photos, we see the homes – if you can call them homes – made of straw, of palm leaves, in the midst of water and mud, belonging to the banana workers.
Truly lamentable conditions of life. … And, on the other side, we see the mansions because they truly were mansions – lived in by the United Fruit executives. The production of bananas in Nicaragua fell as a result of the political ambitions of Somoza and the use of methods of exploiting current production without bothering to replant the banana trees. Naturally we still have plantations. Many, in fact, belong to Somoza and many of the fruit growing and fruit processing activities in Nicaragua are represented by U.S. companies or U.S.-owned companies associated with Somoza.
As far as Israel is concerned, we have simply this to say: it is unimaginable for a nation for which the word “genocide” was invented to be an accomplice in committing genocide. This is a tremendous incongruity and, believe me, I’m not saying that out of hatred, but out of anger. I, personally, and the Nicaraguans in general, cannot applaud the Nazi crimes against the Jewish people in any way. Like all humanity, we condemn them. For civilized man, it is impossible to accept things like that. But, at the same time that we condemn Hitler for his crimes against the Jews, we Nicaraguans have the painful obligation of condemning Israel for complicity in the genocide, in the massacre, of the people of Nicaragua. You know that there have been several proven cases of Israeli support for Somoza – not for Nicaragua, but for Somoza. It ranges from supplies of arms, munitions, rockets, mustard bombs to unconfirmed reports that the Israelis are testing certain arms in Nicaraguan territory.”
When Somoza helped sponsor the 1961 Bay of Pigs invasion of Castro’s Cuba, it was launched from Nicaragua’s Swan Island on land owned outright by UFCo. along with a radio signal tower run by the CIA. Plans for the Bay of Pigs invasion became utterly fantastic: Cuban exiles trained in Guatemala under protection of Castillo Armas were to be transported to Cuba on two United Fruit Co. ships; hit teams trained at a camp provided by the New Orleans mafia were to infiltrate Cuba and assassinate Castro; agents of mobster Meyer Lansky’s casinos and drug rings in Cuba were to proclaim a “national liberation struggle;” and the U.S. Naval fleet was to invade in support of these “patriotic” forces. The entire operation failed miserably because of President Kennedy’s staunch opposition to playing along with the British Empire’s manipulated Cold War intrigue despite the fact that his father Joseph Kennedy had made his initial fortune selling bootleg whiskey from exclusive British liquor franchises to the same gangster elements involved with UFCo.
Historian Anton Chaitkin describes the European groupings that General Lemnitzer inherited upon being fired and joining NATO; “a covert apparatus of Mafia killers, Hitler Nazis, Mussolini Fascists, French colonial diehards, and white mercenaries fuming about the loss of Africa.”
The close connections between the United Fruit Co. and the networks named by New Orleans District Attorney Jim Garrison as being behind Kennedy’s assassination shortly afterward is graphically illustrated in the case of William Gaudet, publisher of the UFCo funded Latin American Report in the 1950s and early 1960s.
At the time of his employment by UFCo, Gaudet worked out of the International Trade Mart (ITM), a New Orleans branch of the Permindex Corp., established in 1958, nominally as an international trading company arranging trade expositions and managing real estate projects housing corporate management offices. The founder of Permindex was Major Louis Mortimer Bloomfield, a personal protege of British Special Operations Executive head Sir William Stephenson. Bloomfield, in addition to having a pivotal position within the FBI Division Five and the Office of Naval Intelligence, was a leading financial conduit for the Meyer Lansky – run International narcotics cartel. Among the leading shareholders in Permindex were mob attorney Roy M. Cohn; George Mantello, an attorney for the Italian Black Nobility House of Savoy; Ferencz Nagy, the former pro-Hitler President of wartime Hungary; and Tibor Rosenbaum, the 1960s director of Israeli Mossad operations in Western Europe (based out of his Meyer Lansky – connected Geneva bank). Permindex had been expelled in 1962 from both Italy and Switzerland, and had also been identified as responsible for trying to organize the assassination of French President de Gaulle. Sharing offices with Gaudet was Lee Harvey Oswald’s “Fair Play for Cuba Committee” and many others named by Garrison as being involved with Oswald in the Kennedy assassination. Among these were Clay Shaw, who headed ITM with Zemurray’s successor in the New Orleans mob, Carlos Marcelo.
Also involved was Edward Bannister, Southeastern Regional Director of Division Five (Counterintelligence) of the FBI, for which Bloomfield served as the chief recruiter and agent-handler at the time of the Kennedy assassination. Bannister was named by Garrison as being in charge of providing Oswald with a credible Communist cover. When Oswald traveled to Mexico on his notorious trip to visit the Soviet and Cuban Embassies there, UFCo agent William Gaudet’s signature appeared directly below his in the registry of the American Embassy during an unexplained side-trip. Curiously, the Warren Commission never looked at Gaudet’s connection to Oswald, nor at Garrison’s other evidence.
At least three Warren Commission members had close personal or family ties to United Fruit Co. primarily the Dulles brothers but also prominent persons like John J. McCloy “Chairman of the Establishment”. An honorary Rockefeller family member, McCloy was chairman of the board of David Rockefeller’s Chase Manhattan Bank, a director of the Rockefeller Foundation and United Fruit. His pedigree can be summed up by his attitude on the interning of Japanese-Americans in 1942: “If it is a question of safety of the country . . . why the Constitution is just a scrap of paper to me.”
McCloy, along with Allen Dulles, Whitney Shephardson, John Foster Dulles, William Draper, and Averell Harriman schemed to purge the wartime and postwar intelligence services and postwar German occupation authority of any Franklin Roosevelt loyalists who were committed to eliminating all forms of colonialism. At the outbreak of the Cuban Missile Crisis in October 1962, John J. McCloy, ostensibly a private citizen but still serving as chairman of the President’s Arms Control and Disarmament Board, was abruptly recalled from a business trip in Europe and flown back to Washington. When first briefed on the existence of nuclear-capable missiles in Cuba, McCloy’s response was to call for immediate air strikes to take out the weapons.
Another top Wall Street oligarch, William F. Buckley, Sr., who worked with Standard Oil, Royal Dutch Shell, and Morgan-Lamont interests to stage multiple countercoup attempts against the Mexican Revolution until he was thrown out of the country in 1921 as a “pernicious foreigner” and his oil holdings confiscated. Buckley next moved to Venezuela, where he gained control over two-thirds of the country’s oil deposits as a junior partner of Rockefeller’s Standard Oil. Buckley, Sr. personally trained Nelson Rockefeller who worked with him at Standard’s Venezuelan subsidiary, Creole Petroleum, to carry out a series of revolving-door coups that used networks of Buckley, Sr.’s close associate Argentine dictator Juan Peron and Spanish corporatist dictator Francisco Franco. Creole Petroleum was later to provide cover for operations run by the Dulles brothers in the Caribbean, working with the United Fruit Company to orchestrate the 1953 Arbenz coup in Guatamala and the 1963 Bay of Pigs invasion. Coudert Brothers, the law firm for the Buckleys’ estimated $110 million oil empire, also had a fascist pedigree as the legal counsel to Vichy France. See this.
The Buckleys are associated with the Permindex networks. George De Mohrenschildt, a White Russian aristocrat who was assassinated before he could testify on his role as a “controller” of Lee Harvey Oswald, maintained close ties with the family. De Mohrenschildt worked for Nelson Rockefeller, then Coordinator for Inter-American Affairs, during World War II; later, he joined the Buckleys’ Pantepec oil firm in Venezuela which was integrated into Standard Oil’s Caribbean intelligence operations. When De Mohrenschildt left Pantepec, he developed several joint ventures with the Schlumberger Corporation, which is represented by the Buckleys’ law firm, Coudert Brothers. Schlumberger is not only a major part of the United Fruit/Creole Petroleum, private intelligence operation that virtually ran the Bay of Pigs, but Jean de Menil was on the board of Permindex, and his wife was an international sponsor of the Muslim Brotherhood terrorists. You might remember the central role Schlumberger played as Vice President Dick Cheney’s choice for looting Iraq while he was on the board of directors, a major stockholder and receiving $100,000 in deferred salary while his wife Lynne was a senior fellow of the American Enterprise Institute, a recipient of a “charity donation”.
An aside is necessary at this point because of the nature of discussing the Kennedy assassination and the problem of how the majority of historians replicate the methods of Sherlock Holmes when going through the minutia of what the main suspects were wearing, what did they eat for lunch that day, the spot they were standing on the day of November 21 at 3:32pm, and similar distractions. It should be obvious from what is discussed in the material that Kennedy was facing organizations that had no compunction about conducting high level assassinations when economic interests were threatened which was the ultimate theme that played out all during the administration’s existence. An excellent study is Battling Wall Street by Donald Gibson, a unique approach at exposing the fundamental battle between government “of, by, and for the people” and a government that serves selfish private interests before anything else. This has played out throughout our nation’s history whenever presidents have been murdered openly such as Presidents Garfield and McKinley or more secretly as in the case of Presidents Taylor or Harding and the result has been fundamental changes in national and economic policies. See this.
Donald Gibson was interviewed by EIR editor Michelle Steinberg in May 5 2000. See this.
“EIR: You go into this in the final chapter in “Assassination Cover-Up” — the Wall Street Journal, Time-Life, Luce, etc. Bitter opposition.
Gibson: When I was finishing the first book, and I was getting a sense that Kennedy was, in fact, in deep conflict with Wall Street and other interests, I then looked at the cover-up process. People involved in creating the Warren Commission were essentially agents of the same powers who opposed Kennedy. So, that really set me off again, in terms of a new round of investigation and research.
EIR: There’s always some opposition. What do you think was so unique about what Kennedy represented, that would have made the Establishment take such drastic steps?
Gibson: What bothered them about Kennedy—Kennedy was aggressively threatening almost all of the broad strategies that the upper class was in the process of adopting, and in fact, he and, especially if his brother had followed him, would have gotten in the way of everything from post-industrialism to globalization. JFK’s nationally oriented, pro-development, pro-growth policies, not only for the United States, but also for other countries, would have been at odds with two of the central thrusts of the last 25 years: that is, the post-industrial society and globalization.”
Gibson interestingly brings up the role of Lord Bertrand Russell and his creation in early 1964, of the “Who Killed Kennedy Committee” (see this and this) months before the Warren Commission issues its report and his friendship with Warren Commission critic Mark Lane and his 1966 book Rush to Judgment, the first of roughly 400 books that have been produced, in which Gibson pinpoints Russell’s role in leading what “became a vast industry of misdirection about the assassination.” Adding to the obfuscation was the 1975 Rockefeller Commission On CIA Domestic Activities that was headed by Nelson A. Rockefeller, (see this) which featured Lyman Lemnitzer, the former lunatic head of the Joint Chiefs of Staff who was the most vocal for an invasion of Cuba and for suggesting in “Operation Northwoods” that the government use fake Cubans to carry out terrorist incidents in the US in order to terrify the public into supporting an invasion. You can read more about this in James Bamfords “Body of Secrets: Anatomy of the Ultra-Secret National Security Agency”.
Chief Investigator for the Warren Commission, David Belin, provided Sen. Richard Schweiker (D-Pa.) with CIA documents that implied a possible link between Castro and the Kennedy assassination based upon the statements of a Cuban defector. In leaking the documents to AP, Belin indicated that the Warren Commission had access to the same documents but had ignored them. Ironically, Belin, had just written an absolution of the Warren Commission’s “lone assassin” and magical “single bullet theory” for William F. Buckley’s National Review Magazine of Feb. 6, 1976.
UFCo.’s leading agronomist William C. Paddock became part of a group of neo-Malthusians calling for wartime style “triage measures” for Mexico and Central America in order to radically reduce populations. Paddock received training in plant biology at Cornell and began a career in tropical agronomy in the late 1940s. For the decade of the 1950s he lived in Central America, primarily Guatemala and Honduras, and took frequent trips to Mexico. In the 1960s, he established a private consulting firm in tropical agronomy, Paddock and Paddock, and devoted increasing portions of his time to work with his brother, Paul Paddock, in researching the issue of world population growth.
Paul Paddock (deceased in the early 1970s) was a career State Department officer serving in Mexico in the late 1930s. William served as the President of the Escuela Agricola Panamericana (Pan American Agricultural School), near Tegucigalpa, Honduras (see this). This school, founded by United Brands, has for decades been their flagship “research” center in the area, and is funded to this day by the United Brands Foundation. The Environmental Fund (see this), created in 1973 was to promote forced abortion and sterilization as opposed to the more mainstream family planning groups. Its statement of purpose described it as “an effort to stimulate thinking about the unthinkable.”
Zero Population Growth (now Population ConnectionPC Critique) and the Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR) were similar population reduction movements Paddock sat on the board of directors of and was a financier. His famous book Famine, 1975! America’s Decision: Who Will Survive? (1967) explicitly calls for coercive family planning, William Hardin, University of Chicago-trained biologist, issued a 1968 manifesto (see this) for the American Academy for the Advancement of Science which for the first time openly stated that the voluntary birth control programs were insufficient to halt world population growth and for the urgent need of “lifeboat economics”, and Paul Ehrlich’s 1968 book, The Population Bomb, popularized Paddock and Hardin’s work. It became a national bestseller across the United States. “Many apparently brutal and heartless decisions will have to be made,” Ehrlich wrote. This seminal work by Paddock, Hardin and Ehrlich took place during the same years, under the broad direction of a larger effort: the creation of the Club of Rome by the planning agencies of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization NATO.
The Club of Rome, officially created in 1969 based on organizing efforts in which Zbigniew Brzezinski played a prominent role, immediately launched the umbrella concept within which triage and lifeboat ethics found their place: Limits to Growth. Similar themed policy papers such as Global 2000 (1977) which recommends reducing the world population by 2 billion people by the turn of the century, Henry Kissinger’s National Security Study Memorandum (NSSM200) completed in Dec. 1974 specified population reduction as the means of controlling resources, the 1974 Rockefeller led Bucharest Conference on Population from which the global warming lie was birthed, the “controlled disintegration” economic wrecking job of Federal Reserve Chairman Paul Volcker, and other measures such as the genocidalist Pol-Pot regime in Cambodia all borrowed from Paddocks theories and made them real. (See this)
Out of the Fire and Into the Microwave
Once we reach the 1970’s, the UFCo. begins a new chapter with the 1970 takeover by Eli Black, the merger into United Brands, the mysterious “suicide” of Black 5 years later and the ascension of Max Fisher, at the time a junior “Zemurray” as head of both a small Israeli oil refining company (PAZ) and Detroit’s Purple Gang; one of the prohibition eras most violent Jewish extortion and booze smuggling operations in collaboration with the Bronfman family in Canada.
Fisher’s early career was shaped by his association with Purple Gang member Jack Rothberg, who helped him get started in the oil refinery business. If you have a strong enough stomach, you can browse the poorly coded worship website The Max Fischer Archives that has “Respected Leader” and “The Legacy of a World Citizen” at the top. (See this)
In February 1975, United Brands (UB) Chairman of the Board Eli Black walked out of a window on the 4th floor of the Pan-American building in New York City. Within two months of his mysterious death, Max Fisher (who had threatened the release of incriminating evidence on Black’s various bribery schemes) was appointed acting chairman of the company, and subsequently became its new Chairman of the Board.
By 1975, Fisher and two of his close associates, Carl Lindner of Cincinnati and Seymour Milstein of New York City, held a total of 48 percent of the stock of UB and its subsidiary companies. Fisher’s appointment was sponsored by two individuals: Sol Linowitz and Donald R. Gant, a Goldman Sachs partner and Henry Kissinger associate. The Carter administration’s special envoy for Panama Canal treaty negotiations, Linowitz was an international policy adviser to Maritime Fruit Company, the Israeli counterpart to United Brands, and sat on the board of Marine Midland Bank, which in 1979 merged with the Hong Kong and Shanghai Banking Corporation, long the central clearinghouse bank for the Golden Triangle Far Eastern heroin trade since the Opium Wars. One of Fisher’s first actions as board chairman was to appoint Bert C. Reiss as Vice-President in charge of transportation. Reiss came from National Bulk Carriers Corporation (NBC), a firm involved in shipping and construction throughout Latin America.
NBC was owned by Daniel K. Ludwig, an associate of Meyer Lansky, who was responsible for the harbor-dredging project that led to the building of the scandal-ridden Paradise Island in the Bahamas. Once at UB, Reiss excluded all non-company cargo from United Brands ships and from its New Orleans port facilities, throwing a shroud of total secrecy around the company’s Caribbean/Central American shipping activities. Through his Paz holdings, Fisher next bought into a significant piece of the Israeli state sector, and gained half ownership in Zim Shipping Company, the largest line in the Middle East, one of who’s ships was exposed in 1978 by the Jerusalem Post as carrying millions of dollars worth of liquid hashish into New York. (See this)
Between 1959 and the late 1980s, Charles Keating was the business partner of Carl Lindner, the Cincinnati, Ohio-based financier who would be one of the central figures in the $200 billion Savings and Loan collapse and taxpayer bailout in 1989. In 1959, Lindner and Keating co-founded American Financial Corporation (AFC). Keating served as the mortgage and insurance company’s general counsel, and later as vice president. Between 1974 and 1976, Lindner and Keating engineered a series of stock purchases and mergers with some of the leading figures in the Lansky crime syndicate—who had followed the Bronfman family recipe, and gone from “rags, to rackets, to riches, to respectability.”
In 1975, Lindner’s AFC allied with Detroit financier Max Fisher; Detroit real estate developer Alfred Taubman (a Fisher associate); and Paul and Seymour Milstein, to grab a 50% controlling interest in the United Fruit/Brands Company. Drug Enforcement Administration officials had confirmed to Executive Intelligence Review, that United Fruit was a major force in the Latin American cocaine trade—a business that skyrocketed following the Lindner-Fisher, et al. takeover. At the same time that Lindner, Fisher et. al. were grabbing United Fruit, Lindner’s AFC simultaneously allied with a group of other Lansky-linked entities to establish a formidable pool of interlocking companies that would collectively form the core of the infamous 1980’s era of junk-bond raiders, featured in books like Predators Ball by Connie Bruck or the “Money Machine: How KKR Manufactured Power and Profits” by Sarah Bartlett.
As Lindner and Keating were forging their corporate alliances with Steinberg, Tisch, Fisher, Riklis, and Posner, two of the leading Anglo-American financial groups—JP Morgan and the banking and brokerage empire of Baron Edmund de Rothschild Banque Lambert de Bruxelles were sealing their own alliance. These top bankers transformed the relatively small investment bank/brokerage house of Drexel Harriman Ripley, during the 1970s, into Drexel Burnham Lambert. Baron Edmund de Rothschild personified the intersection of the overworld of high finance with the underworld. Between the 1950s and the 1970s, the Geneva-based Rothschild had bankrolled the careers of Max Fisher; pyramid swindler Bernie Cornfeld of Investors Overseas Services (IOS) infamy; pioneer drug-money launderer Robert Vesco; and hedge fund pirate George Soros.
The newly built Drexel Burnham dispatched hotshot bond trader Michael Milken to his newly established Beverly Hills, California office to begin the era of Junk Bonds and hostile takeovers. In 1979, Federal Reserve Chairman Paul Volcker began driving interest rates up over 20%, gutting America’s productive agro-industrial sector.
You almost have to picture the strategic bombing campaign of WW2 to imagine the leveraged buyouts and looting of auto plants, steel companies, foundries, machine shops and similar heavy industries being destroyed systematically and former prosperous cities and towns transformed into drug infested hell holes. The passage of the Staggers Act in 1980, Garn-St Germain in 1982 along with other deregulation measures turned the once productive economy into a post-industrial wasteland that is dominated by the FIRE (Finance Insurance Real Estate) companies and the increasing amount of entertainment and drugs used to keep most of the population who’s living standards were becoming worse and worse, occupied and pacified.
At age 96, Max Fisher died on March 3, 2005, at his home in the Detroit suburb of Franklin. His fortune was estimated at $775 million in Forbes magazine’s annual ranking of the nation’s 400 wealthiest individuals. The fawning picture of a successful businessman and generous philanthropist to important causes is what you find online in Wikipedia or other websites like The Jewish Historical Society of Michigan website. JHSM “Business and financial success was just part of Max Fisher’s global impact. He firmly believed that his success obligated him to give back to the causes he supported. Fisher became a giant in philanthropy. Education, Jewish and secular, was a priority for his generosity. He focused on Israel and the support available from American Jewry. He became Chairman of the United Jewish Appeal and then the United Israel Appeal. He chaired the board of the Jewish Agency for Israel for many years, serving as a shadow diplomat between the Israeli and U.S. governments. In 1977, President Carter invited Fisher to watch Israel’s prime minister and Egypt’s president sign the Camp David accords.”
Communists, the Invention of Imperialist Mass Murderers
Communist/Maoist movements. The perfect excuse for endless bloodshed. If anyone still remembers the Iran Contra scandal, who would have thought it a good idea to finance a guerilla war against “Godless Communists” with the proceeds of drug sales provided by Narco-terrorists which allow you to imprison large numbers of the poorest sections of society in privatized prisons that double as virtual slave labor camps?
Welcome to the Bizarro world of Cold War logic. The network of Cubans trained by the CIA for the Bay of Pigs invasion was under the supervision of Theodore G. Shackley, who became famous during the Iran-Contra scandal for being the head of the “secret team” charged with ferrying weapons to the Nicaraguan Contras in CIA airplanes, and returning the airplanes with cargos of cocaine from the Medellin Cartel. (See this) Apart from Shackley, the “team” was put together by his longstanding aide Thomas Cline and by Gen. Richard Secord. Among the leading Cuban operatives in the project were Rafael Quintero, Felix Rodriguez, and Luis Posada Carriles, former official of Venezuela’s DISIP (the intelligence and counter intelligence agency created in 1969).
In 1960, CIA director Allen Dulles put Shackley in charge of Operation 40, as the plan to invade Cuba was called, and to carry out sabotage and assassination operations with the collaboration of Meyer Lansky, Santos Trafficante, and others, who controlled smuggling and drug-trafficking in the Caribbean. Under Shackley’s supervision, the plan’s name was changed to Operation Mongoose, for which two bases were established, one in Miami and the other in Guatemala, the latter being referred to by Figueres above.
In 1965, Operation Mongoose was closed down, and Shackley and Cline were transferred to Laos. Ted Shackley was named assistant CIA station chief in Laos, and Cline his assistant.
Accompanying them were various Cuban operatives they had trained. The same operation was repeated in Laos: training locals for terrorist operations and to link up with the drug-traffickers to finance their operations. Upon arrival in Laos, they established contact with Vang Pao, an opium trafficker, to whom they provided aerial support. See this.
Pao’s competitors mysteriously disappeared. In 1971, Shackley was transferred to America as chief of western hemisphere operations. In 1973 he returned to Southeast Asia as CIA station chief in Vietnam, where he carried out Operation Phoenix between 1974 and 1975, whose mission was to eliminate the entire administrative elite of Vietnam to prevent its functioning after the U.S. evacuation. During that period, he joined with Richard Armitage who was in charge of the financial operations of the Secret Team. Between 1976 and 1979, various corporations and subsidiaries were established to hide the operations of the Secret Team. In Switzerland three were created: Lake Resources, Inc.; The Stanford Technology Trading Group, Inc.; and the most notorious of all, Compagnie de Service Fiduciaire (CSF), founded by Willard Zucker, also director of the legal department of Investors Overseas Services (lOS) of Bernie Cornfeld and Robert Vesco.
CSF had a Central American subsidiary: CSF Investments, Ltd. In 1978, they went to Central America, beginning their operations, and in 1981, Lt. Col. Oliver North put the Secret Team in charge of support operations for the Nicaraguan Contras.
In that effort, the Cubans Rafael Quintero, Felix Rodriguez, and ex-DISIP commissioner Luis Posada Carriles actively participated.
Cuba: Tierra Del Mal
Since Cuba is central in much of the drama we’ve been discussing, a brief history might be needed. From the time of the landing of Christopher Columbus up until the Spanish American War, Cuba was a Spanish colony.
Freemasonry was abolished in 1824, but secret lodges sprang up nonetheless, to agitate for the island’s phony “independence,” often in collusion with U.S.-based Freemasons, among other things to ensure the continuation of the institutions of slavery and free trade.
In the 1850s, Mazzini’s Young America and Young Cuba movements fomented revolution on the island against Spain, while simultaneously organizing the invasion of mercenaries from New York—the “filibusters”—who hoped to seize control of the island, and annex it to the Union as a slave state. A bloody conflict that would last for 10 years. The career of Filibuster William Walker of New Orleans and the Knights of the Golden Circle which formed the core of what would become the Confederacy and then the Ku Klux Klan in his invasions of Mexico and Nicaragua can be seen as the prelude to the later depredations of United Fruit (see this).
Following the defeat of the Spanish by America in 1898, Cuba became a protectorate and in 1902 is granted independence with Guantanamo Bay base leased to the US. In 1906 with the collapse of the government, the US invaded to defend the sugar plantations and remained as an occupier until 1909. In 1912, the US invades to assist UFCo. in suppressing the Afro-Cuban revolt.
In 1917, the US invades again to defend the sugar plantation system from leftist rebels who were challenging the contested election of President Menocal and remained as an occupying force until 1933 when they gain independence again under President Roosevelt’s Good Neighbor policy. With the election of Fulgencio Batista (son of a United Fruit employee) in 1944 and his military dictatorship in 1952, Cuba becomes the headquarters of organized crime, most notably, Meyer Lansky (chairman of the crime syndicate for 50 years), Morris “Moe” Dalitz the mob boss of Cleveland for the Purple Gang, owner of casinos in Las Vegas and Miami, and Benjamin “Bugsy” Siegel.
Their business: gambling, narcotics, money laundering and sex tourism.
After Fidel Castro ousts Batista in 1959, the Cuban government passes a law to nationalize U.S. businesses in 1960: the Cuban Electricity Company, the telephone company (ITT), petrol refineries, and 36 sugar refineries with an approximate value of 800 million pesos. The mob similarly was forced off the island and Lansky set up operations in the Bahamas with the complicity of British authorities. The US places an embargo on sugar and restricts exports of anything except food and medicine.
After the abortive invasion at the Bay of Pigs in 1961, Castro calls on the Russians to assist in defending Cuba from the United States which leads into the Cuban Missile Crisis.
After 13 terrifying days of a naval blockade, the Russians pull their nuclear missiles out and the US pulls their nuclear weapons out of Turkey. Castro holds the title of Premier until 1976 when Cuba becomes a one party dictatorship with Castro as the sole leader until health concerns made him relinquish power in 2008. However, unlike the popular romantic story told by clueless Commies, Castro and Che didn’t lead a lone revolution in the mountains slowly gathering disgruntled Cubans to his cause until he emerged victorious. Like anything we’ve talked about, the story is far more complicated than is usually told and requires that you suspend your preconceived ideas.
Like Batista, Castro’s father worked a sugar plantation for UFCo. and then owned his own plantation in the Mayari province giving him a relatively decent middle class living standard. Fidel went to Jesuit run schools throughout his youth and upon his 1946 graduation from Colegio de Belén, in Havana Father Amando Llorente wrote “You could see this … That he was to do great things … That he is for great things, not for ordinary things.” [See Appendix A]
In 1947, while in college, Castro began being radicalized by an attempt of the recently formed Caribbean League to overthrow Rafael Trujillo the dictator of the Dominican Republic. The members of the league were ex-communists like Venezuela’s Carlos Andrés Pérez and Rómulo Betancourt; Costa Rica’s Pepe Figueres; Cuba’s Carlos Prío Socarrás; and Peru’s Víctor Raúl Haya de la Torre. See this. Carlos Prío Socarrás in particular, while using the term Social Democrat, when elected president of Cuba in 1948 gave his full blessing for Meyer Lansky’s takeover and until his death was a board member of Permindex.
It’s estimated that he spent $5 million to finance terrorist operations against Batista and gave $250,000 to Castro’s guerrilla movement. The relationship didn’t last very long however since most of them broke with Castro after 1961. The Caribbean Legion was sponsored at the time by “State Department socialists” like Jay Lovestone, David Dubinsky, Serafino Romualdi, and Adolf Berle – all bankrolled by Nelson Rockefeller. UFCo./UB maintained Figueres as one of their chief assets in the region through the years.
For example, during his second presidential term in the early 1970s, Figueres arranged the amicable government purchase of UFCO holdings in Costa Rica, a deal by which Figueres profited handsomely through his son-in-law, Danilo Jimenez Nevia, who became a UB stockholder according to reliable Central American diplomatic sources. It should also be noted that indicted financier Robert Vesco was granted asylum and residence in Costa Rica during this period-by President Figueres personally, in exchange for Vesco putting money into Figueres’ farm, “La Lucha.” It was during this same period that Figueres also permitted the opening of a large, well-staffed Soviet embassy in San Jose, Costa Rica. Meanwhile Figueres told the New Republic magazine of April 23, 1977:
“I did everything possible to involve the United States and the CIA in Central American politics, in an era when the special democrats of the region were threatened by the communists on the one hand, and the military on the other.”
Of particular importance is Peru’s APRA and Víctor Raúl Haya de la Torre as the spreading of nominally communist leaning terrorist movements throughout central and south America that will be discussed later.
In 1971, Robert Vesco fled the United States to escape embezzlement charges regarding IOS to set up shop in the Bahamas and Costa Rica. He had a new assignment: to direct the founding of a cocaine “cartel,” organizing the disparate operations of traffickers into an integrated, Americas-wide “industry,” operating under centralized production, transport, distribution, financing, and protection.
The results transformed the Western Hemisphere into the greatest drug production region in the world, a region bled by marauding narco-terrorist armies. Media stories that Vesco joined Colombia’s Carlos Lehder and Cuba’s Fidel Castro in the dope trade somewhere along the way, invert reality. In three central areas, Vesco played a critical role in creating the Medelin and associated Cali cartels, as institutions:
He picked up small-time Colombian thug and ex-convict, Lehder, providing him with the political protection and financial backing he required to set up the cocaine transport pipeline between Colombia and the United States;
He set up the cartel’s first sophisticated money laundering schemes; and
He brokered the provision of political and military protection for spreading drug plantations across the region, by Cuba-aligned terrorist forces-protection continued today by the members of the Sao Paulo Forum.
‘New instruments of chance’ When he first fled the United States, Vesco found assured protection in two Caribbean countries which had long served as operations bases for the Meyer Lansky mob and the “men above suspicion” which deployed it: the British Crown Colony and offshore banking center of the Bahamas (whose prime minister, Lynden Pindling, was in Lansky’s hip pocket), and Costa Rica. Vesco went first to the Bahamas, and then in 1972, moved to Costa Rica, where he lived until 1978, under the personal protection of President Jose “Pepe” Figueres. From the time he first seized power in 1948 in a farcical five-week “guerrilla war,” Figueres had run Costa Rica as a regional deployment center for the Caribbean Legion, a Social Democratic political machine linked to the Lansky mob and backed by the Rockefeller and J. Peter Grace interests.
The Legion, using exiled communist fighters from the Spanish Civil War, trained various guerrilla operations over the decades; its most famous operation was its sponsorship of Castro’s 1957 expedition back to Cuba on the Granma. Figueres sent a letter in 1972 to President Richard Nixon, reporting that Vesco “has been visiting Costa Rica with a view to helping us establish some new instruments of finance and economic development.” Figueres promoted Vesco’s financial schemes-which included plans to turn the Caribbean and Central America into a “Hongkong West” arguing that this was vital for regional “development.”
He wrote,
“I am impressed by his ideas, his group of business leaders, and the magnitude of the anticipated investments. He may provide the ingredient that has been lacking in our plans to create, in the middle of the Western Hemisphere, a showpiece of democratic development.”
When a new Costa Rican President took office in 1978, he expelled Vesco, who returned to the Bahamas, where he had already established operations. In 1977, Lehder had begun setting up drug transshipment headquarters on a small Bahamian island, Norman Cays, later owned in its entirety by Vesco and Lehder together. Lehder associates, turned government informants, later reported that Lehder considered Vesco a “financial genius,” and told them that Vesco was “schooling him in the use of offshore banks to launder money,” according to the book Kings of Cocaine, by Guy Gugliotta and Jeff Leon (1989). Lehder also bragged that it was Vesco who had introduced him to both Bahamian Prime Minister Pindling and Castro.
When heat from the United States ran him out of the Bahamas in 1981, Vesco began moving between the British colony of Antigua and Sandinista Nicaragua.
By 1983, however, he settled in Havana, Cuba. As an adjunct of the dope trade, Vesco provided the Castro regime aid in smuggling into Cuba high-technology goods banned by the U.S. embargo. On Aug. 4, 1985, Castro made Cuba’s protection of the cartel architect official. He told foreign reporters: “Is it just, that the country where people speak so much of human rights [the United States] … goes after someone said to have evaded paying taxes?” He announced that he had told Vesco, “If you want to live here, live here.”
From the outset of the Medellin cartel, Castro’s most critical role in the transformation of the Americas into a drug empire has not been through the extensive logistical support the cartel has provided on the island of Cuba nor the shipments allowed through Cuban territory. Rather it has been Cuban deployment of narco-terrorism, directing allied terrorist forces in other Ibero-American countries, both to defend the drug trade and to assault government and political forces seeking to suppress it.
Today, despite their protestations to the contrary, Cuba and its allies in the Sao Paulo Forum remain intensely involved in the drug trade. The best known exemplars of Cuban-allied narco-terrorism from the 1980s are Colombia’s M-19 and Nicaragua’s Sandinistas. Lehder’s alliance with the M-19 was publicly hailed by Lehder and M-19 leaders alike. The M19’s most devastating blow for the drug trade was the 1985 seizure and destruction of Colombia’s Justice Palace and the resulting murder of 12 members of the Supreme Court.
Likewise, the Nicaraguan Sandinistas, whose 1978-79 “revolution” was financed in part by Vesco partner Pepe Figueres, were in on the drug trade from the beginning. Vesco was a frequent visitor in Nicaragua throughout the 1980s; U.S. government sources identified Vesco as the boss of Federico Vaughn, the ex-vice minister of the interior filmed by DEA undercover agents in 1984 loading cocaine on a plane waiting at a Nicaraguan military air base. His 1995 arrest for fraud involving Castro’s brother Raul and Richard Nixon’s son Robert over a laboratory experiment to investigate an anti-cancer treatment put him in jail until he passed away in 2007, although his associate, “ex” CIA agent Frank Terpil claims he escaped to Sierra Leone in Africa. (See this and this)
The reason for Lansky’s and Vesco’s preference for using the Bahamas has to do with the 300-year criminal history which unites all the different strands of money laundering and the drug trade, revealing how the British orchestrate that trade. Its story could be repeated for each of the other exotic offshore British financial centers. In 1973, the Bahamas was granted nominal independence. Even though the country elects a prime minister, King Charles is the head of state of the islands, and the Kings Privy Council’s “say so” is final in all legal matters. The population is impoverished, while banking and tourism constitute a huge portion of the Bahamas’ fragile economy. The Bahamas has a dual function: It is both a drop spot and transshipment point for drugs, and a drug-money-laundering center. The Bahamas is an archipelago of 700 islands, of which the closest is 50 miles away from Florida.
Since only 40 of the 700 islands are populated, the others make perfect drop points for drugs. During the 1980s, according to U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration reports, up to 75% of the drugs that reached the United States from Ibero-America went through the Bahamas first. American authorities, fearful of the drug flow into the United States, forced the Bahamas to take measures to cut back the drug flow.
The June 7, 1996 London Financial Times reported, “It is guessed that no more than 10-15% of illegal drugs shipments to the U.S. now go through the islands.” That may be an underestimation, and the Financial Times admits that the drug flow is increasing, now that U.S. radars to monitor drug trafficking were taken down in Grand Bahamas, Exuma, and Great Inagua, in a cost-saving measure.
This is part of the Bahamas’ historic profile. During the American Revolutionary War (1775-83) and the War of 1812, when Britain invaded America, the British used their colony of the Bahamas as a base for naval assaults on the United States. Because of this, in 1776, the American revolutionaries occupied the Bahamas. After the Revolutionary War, Tory sympathizers fled to the Bahamas, and became part of the establishment. During the British-backed Confederate uprising of the American Civil War, the British used the Bahamas as a base to run ships through the North’s shipping blockade against the South. A successful blockade running voyage could earn $300,000.
During World War II, the pro-Nazi Edward VIII Duke of Windsor was exiled to the Bahamas, but was placed in the very important post of Bahamian governor general. During this time, the duke used Axel Wenner-Gren, the Swedish eugenicist and Nazi agent, to launder money to Mexico. During the 1960s, organized crime godfather Meyer Lansky built the Resorts International casino on Paradise Island (the location of Axel Wenner-Gren’s mansion) as an international money-laundering center. The money-laundering Canadian banks dominate the Bahamian banking scene, hiding behind Bahamian bank secrecy and lax Canadian banking laws to shelter drug money. In the Dec. 24, 1985 Montreal Gazette, in an article entitled, “How Canadian Banks Are Used to ‘Launder’ Narcotics Millions,” William Marsden wrote that drug money is “hauled to Canadian banks [in Nassau, Bahamas] in huge stacks of small bills sometimes millions of dollars at once stuffed into suitcases, duffle bags, paper bags and boxes by narcotics smugglers . . . Trusted drivers and security guards ensure that their cash gets into the banks safely. And once the money is deposited, laws that forbid Bahamian bankers to disclose bank records ensure that it’s safe from investigation by foreign narcotics and tax agents . . .”
Canadian banks, which handle 80% of banking business in the Bahamas, have become key instruments in ‘laundering’ illicit money-giving it a clean history-for smugglers hiding hundreds of millions of dollars from U.S. and Canadian narcotics agents. “By taking these huge cash deposits, which is not illegal, the Canadian banks are facilitating criminal activity . . .” In the past four years, Bank of Nova Scotia twice stonewalled U.S. investigations by refusing to hand over bank records of drug smugglers to a [U.S.] grand jury. The bank finally yielded after paying nearly $2 million in fines.” Under U.S. pressure, the Bahamian banking system has made changes in its money acceptance practices, but during the past decade, the volume of laundered drug money has gone up. See this.
The Caribbean British and Dutch money laundering centers
When we reach the 1980’s and beyond, we now enter the era of globalization and the economic hitman. President Nixon, under the direction of Milton Friedman, George Shultz, and Henry Kissinger brings an end to the gold-reserve fixed exchange rate system of the post WW2 Bretton Woods monetary system in 1973. With currencies fluctuating, it becomes child play for international financiers like George Soros to use vast amounts of money from British offshore money laundering centers to speculate against currencies in combination with pressures from the international lending agencies like the International Monetary Fund IMF and World Bank to make governments devalue their currency, privatize services and sell off national assets.
As John Perkins recalled in his expose “Confessions of An Economic Hitman”, the global debt-masters employ “economic hit men,” like himself, to trap targeted nations in bankruptcy, and then force them to turn over their national patrimony of raw material wealth and labor power. When a particular nationalist head of state resists, the debt-masters next bring in the “jackals,” the professional assassins, to arrange an airplane crash “accident,” or some other convenient “tragedy” to eliminate the misguided leader and serve notice on his successors that such behavior is not to be tolerated.
In the exceedingly rare case in which the jackals fail in their mission, pretexts are arranged and imperial wars of conquest like the 1989 invasion of Panama, and the 1991 and 2003 invasions of Iraq—take place. In the next chapters, we’ll go through the examples of each of the countries listed as sources for much of the immigration/migrants coming into the United States and the role that both the International Monetary Fund and Communist/Maoist linked narco-terrorism have played in the utter disaster of the human tidal wave hitting the United States, due solely to the apathy and disregard for the effects the policies of the United States has on other people.
However, with the mass imprisonment of the narco-terrorist gangs in Nicaragua, the explicit endorsement of Franklin Roosevelts New Deal by Mexico’s president Manuel Lopez Obrador and Daniel Ortega banning the Jesuits from Nicaragua, (see this and this) there are signs of life in addition to the growing number of nations deciding to participate in the international development oriented policies of the BRICS nations. (See this BRICS in Nicaragua)
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Featured image is from Canadian Patriot
Appendix
For those not familiar, The Society of Jesus is a paramilitary order nominally inside the Catholic Church but traditionally operating outside papal control. For a 40 year period beginning in 1763 it was officially condemned by the Papacy. Throughout its history, since its founding as a branch of the inquisition, its hallmark has been a process of indoctrination or brainwashing and the creation, penetration, and deployment of religious cults and of particular note, assassins who swear an oath of loyalty to the order above the Pope or any temporal power. Their most notable feature is their practice of regicide (murder of a king). With funding from United Fruit/United Brands, the Loyala Center in New Orleans became a training center for thousands of labor leaders that showed up as leaders of terrorist gangs on both sides. According to Malachi Martin, Vatican reporter for William Buckley’s National Review “Q: Well I’ve noticed that the Theology of Liberation is very much talked about in certain orders – the Jesuits seem to be very active. M: Jesuits, Dominicans, Franciscans. But they go much further, I mean, they actually trained the Marxist guerrilla in their military tactics. And we have photographs of nuns in Guatemala shouldering machine-guns in the jungles, in the scrub. They have gone that far.” The influence of the order can be seen during a visit to Chile in 1972, where Castro met for 6 hours with a Jesuit group “Christians for Socialism” claiming an alliance of revolutionary Christians and Marxists could be strategic, a movement known as Liberation Theology of which we’ll hear about later.
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An association of five emerging economies popularly referred to as BRICS under Russia’s presidency (2024) has begun its work with the first meeting of of Sherpas/Sous-Sherpas, held January 30 – February 1, with participation of new countries – Ethiopia, Egypt, Iran, the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia. The meeting wholeheartedly noted substantial contributions in shaping the 2024 agenda and comprehensive plan of activities scheduled to take place in the Russian Federation.
During its chairmanship of BRICS, Russia will do its best to find solutions to economic, policy and humanitarian issues, to strengthen common consensus and approaches with partner countries.
During the meeting, chaired by Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs, Russia’s Sherpa in BRICS, Sergey A. Ryabkov, the priorities of the association were outlined.
Representatives of Russian ministries and departments gave detailed briefings on key areas of cooperation. The importance of implementing a number of Russian initiatives was noted, in particular, the launch of an Integrated Early Response System to the risks of mass infectious diseases, the establishment of an Industrial Competence Center based on UNIDO, the BRICS Medical Association and a specialized journal, and strengthening cooperation in the field of transport and tourism.
As part of the implementation of the instructions of the leaders of the BRICS countries following the results of the XV summit of the association (Johannesburg, August 22-24, 2023), discussions continued on the modalities of the category of BRICS partner states, as well as increasing the role of national currencies and payment instruments in cross-border transactions of the “ten” countries.
All participants in the meeting confirmed their focus on further constructive work within the three “baskets” of the BRICS strategic partnership: in the field of politics and security, economics and finance, culture and humanitarian ties.
It was pointed out that it’s about time to tackle extraordinary challenges and to steer the association towards creating a more fairer and interactive world. A quick analysis shows that the present situation is engulfed with new conflicts and unprecedented threats that endanger further sustainable development. But in a conscientious manner, BRICS is set to handle the collective tasks and priorities, the fragile situation in Ukraine, the human catastrophe emerging from the horrific Israeli war against Palestine and its impact on the Middle East and the Mediterranean.
At the same time, Ukraine appeared in the discussions. It was pointed out that Russia pays great attention and respects the initiatives put forward by the BRICS countries regarding a settlement in Ukraine. This includes the Brazilian initiative, the proposals of the People’s Republic of China, and the outstanding role of the Republic of South Africa in discussing and promoting approaches to a potential peace settlement.
In addition, BRICS is also targeting result-oriented work and opportunities in the developing countries, especially those in the Global South. Its invaluable platforms are available to ensure cohesive and sustainable responses to the challenges, and for fostering cooperation and for renewed multidimensional partnerships, for instance, with Africa.
Despite dozens of applications to join, BRICS added only five new members on January 1, 2024. Unsurprisingly, Argentina turned down its invitation, citing sovereign right to make such as a final decision based on domestic problems and limited internal resources. At present, Algeria, Bahrain, Bangladesh, Belarus, Bolivia, Cuba, Honduras, Indonesia, Kazakhstan, Kuwait, Morocco, Nigeria, Pakistan, Palestine, Senegal, Thailand, Venezuela and Vietnam are all awaiting an invitation to join BRICS after filing an official membership application.
Over those three days (Jan. 30 – Feb. 1) the meeting held ten working sessions, during which representatives of Russian ministries and departments, business and academic circles presented detailed briefings on key areas of cooperation in BRICS and the initiatives of the Russian chairmanship in the association. BRICS partners have assured to lend their support for the chairmanship plans and their readiness to vigorously work together this year.
Fruitful and constructive discussions took place on a number of pressing issues in the fields of trade and investment, transport and energy, technology and innovation, and sustainable development. They exchanged views on strengthening cooperation in the fields of education, healthcare and sports, and confirmed their focus on maintaining and deepening ties between business and experts.
This year members will work to implement the BRICS Economic Partnership Strategy until 2025, including by strengthening supply chains, developing the digital economy, supporting small and medium-sized businesses, stimulating tourist flows, and interaction in the field of transport. They are aimed at launching the BRICS Contact Group on Climate and Sustainable Development, initiated by the Russian side.
It noted the great potential for cooperation between the BRICS countries in the field of healthcare, and hope that this year the practical work of the Integrated Early Warning System for the risks of mass infectious diseases will be launched. The meeting plans to facilitate the connection of new countries to the BRICS Vaccine Research Center. There was also the proposal to create a Medical Association and a BRICS specialized journal. They welcome the start of the functioning of the Working Group on Nuclear Medicine.
Under Russia’s presidency, BRICS will also continue focusing on strengthening cooperation along anti-terrorism, anti-corruption and anti-drug lines, as well as in the field of international information security, and continue coordinating the approaches of the BRICS countries to resolving key foreign policy issues, including at such international platforms as the UN, G20, and WTO.
They also consider it important to increase humanitarian ties between our peoples, contacts between ordinary people, and expand opportunities for mutual enrichment of the countries included in the association.
The BRICS association sees a growing interest of friendly, like-minded states around the world in developing cooperation with BRICS. They are impressed by the basic principles on which interaction is based: compliance with international law, respect for each other’s interests and the right of each state to a sovereign choice of development path. Responding to the desire of a wide range of countries to strengthen ties with BRICS, the association has begun to develop modalities for the category of partner states of the association. It is envisaged also to actively use the outreach/BRICS plus dialogue mechanisms to interact with third countries to make significant contributions to achieving practical results in all areas of the strategic partnership.
Newcomers at BRICS
BRICS welcomed its newcomers including Ethiopia, Egypt, Iran, the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia, based on the decision by BRICS leaders made in Johannesburg, officially became full-fledged members from January 2024. Egypt expects Russia’s BRICS chairmanship to address the challenges in the area of food and energy security, Egyptian Deputy Foreign Minister and head of the country’s delegation in BRICS, Ragui al-Etrebi said at the meeting.
“We are perfectly aware of the fact that gradual integration and new members completely joining the BRICS work is a serious challenge. However, we are convinced that under the skilled management, everything will be managed to successfully solve each of those challenges,” the official said.
He further touched other important issues such as finances, deepening of cooperation in such areas as investment and trade, industrial transformation, the use of ICT [information and communications technologies] for the interest of development, boosting maritime transport, logistics, as well as solution of problems of the lack of food and energy security.
Tehran expects the shift to payments in national currencies within BRICS to increase during Russia’s chairmanship, Iranian Deputy Foreign Minister on economic issues, the republic’s BRICS Sherpa Mehdi Safari said at the meeting. It was connected with ways to more actively use national and local currencies and payment tools in cross-border transactions in order to reduce the negative side effects of the current dollar-dominated global economic system.
The Iranian side plans to participate actively in BRICS events this year, the diplomat added.
“We are also ready to work on all necessary solutions and documents for the 16th BRICS summit in Kazan in October,” he noted. “As far as 2024 is concerned we hope that the economic and financial direction of cooperation, in particular, the issues of the banking sector, payment instruments, cancellation of cross-national currency and the use of national currencies will be solved.”
Lavrov’s Thoughts at BRICS meeting
Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov at a BRICS sherpa and sous-sherpa meeting on January 31, also outlined the agenda parameters – related to the objective processes underway and deep transformation of international architecture. This also connects the present-day notion of multilateralism and the popular slogan of inclusiveness intended change the global politics, security and the economy.
“Washington and its European satellites are spending vast amounts of money to contain Russia, in stark contrast to the Western capitals’ approach to the Global South, especially the African countries. There are cases where support for Ukraine is financed by suspending projects in Africa and the Middle East,” according to Lavrov.
Nevertheless, the Global Majority – the states of Eurasia, the Asia-Pacific region, the Middle East, Africa, Latin America and the Caribbean – gain a stronger foothold in the world system. Most of these countries are increasingly asserting their national interests and identities and striving for genuine strategic independence in pragmatic pathways.
In principle, Russia’s BRICS chairmanship is “Strengthening Multilateralism for Equitable Global Development and Security” – and as BRICS is an association with mutual principles for the Global South and East. Its basic principles are based on mutual respect, a sovereign choice of development path and the implementation of the fundamental principle of the UN Charter, that is, the sovereign equality of states.
Lavrov spoke about visible impact of the turbulent geopolitical situation, the key trends of forming a multi-polar world, emphasised the growing impact of the cultural and civilisational factor on world politics, and the importance of facilitating various cooperation mechanisms that would be resistant to the destructive actions of unfriendly countries. He also pointed to successful creation of the New Development Bank (NDB) and the BRICS Vaccine Research and Development Centre.
BRICS Vaccine R&D Center
In March 2022, BRICS made one more huge step forward, perhaps driven by the Covid-19 pandemic that spread across the world, to launch finally the BRICS Vaccine R&D Center strongly backed by China. Under the leadership of Russia, it first proposed cooperation on countering infectious diseases as a priority for BRICS. The final joint declaration of the 2015 BRICS summit in Ufa, Russia, contains instructions by the leaders to work consistently on managing the risk of disease outbreaks.
“We are concerned about growing and diversifying global threats posed by communicable and non-communicable diseases. It has a negative impact on economic and social development, especially in developing and in the least developed countries,” stated the 2015 BRICS declaration.
Among the group, China and India are ready stepping up to share information, and experiences with BRICS members, conduct joint research and develop drugs and vaccines based on respecting each other’s sovereignty and national conditions. Later during the rotating chairmanship of South Africa, it firmly re-proposed the creation of full-scale coordinating research and development center and planned to be located in Johannesburg, South Africa.
Nevertheless, there has not been any practical achievements in that direction. But as China took the helm of BRICS, effective from January 2022, experts and research analysts have since showed deep interests. Finally, March 22 marked the launch the BRICS Vaccine Research and Development Center, involving the heads of relevant agencies from the five countries. The initiative to establish the BRICS Vaccine R&D Center, as said earlier, was incorporated in the final declaration of the BRICS summit in Johannesburg, South Africa (July 26-27, 2018).
It has brought together leading research institutions and companies in the member states – the Oswaldo Cruz Foundation (Brazil), the Anatoly Smorodintsev Research Institute of Influenza (Russia), the Indian Council of Medical Research (India), the Sinovac Life Sciences company (China) and South African Medical Research Council (South Africa).
The main objective is to share best practices and strengthen practical cooperation in research, development, production and distribution of vaccines to ensure their greater availability as BRICS countries account for 40% of the global population and the potential of research is at the highest level. It makes possible to swiftly respond to biological threats, coordinate efforts to control infectious diseases and ensure protection of the population.
China’s Foreign Ministry Spokesperson Wang Wenbin explained, during his regular media briefing on March 23, that the BRICS Vaccine R&D Center and workshop on vaccine cooperation would be a network of internet-based virtual centers, and the establishment of physical centers would only begin after comprehensive feasibility assessment.
The establishment of the BRICS Vaccine R&D Center demonstrated the determination of BRICS countries to focus on vaccine cooperation, deepen public health cooperation and promote public health, scientific and technological cooperation among BRICS countries. It was first Russia’s initiative to establish the BRICS Integrated Early Warning System for preventing mass infectious disease risks, but the Center was created during the Chinese chairmanship of the BRICS.
BRICS New Development Bank
The New Development Bank (NDB), created by the BRICS countries, works proactively on financial issues concerning projects in member countries. The agreement on establishing the BRICS New Development Bank was reached on July 15, 2014 in Brazil’s Fortaleza. The bank’s starting capital was set at $100 bln. The Shanghai-headquartered bank has been set up to finance infrastructure projects and projects for sustainable development of BRICS and other developing countries.
Over the years, the bank has approved over 100 projects for a total of more than $33 billion in areas such as transportation, water supply, clean energy, digital and social infrastructure, and urban construction. In 2021, the NDB began expanding its membership and admitted Bangladesh, Egypt, the United Arab Emirates and Uruguay as its new member countries. It has the second representative office in South Africa.
As an association, it follows the same trends but on a global scale. BRICS represents a cooperation network for regional and subregional processes in Asia, Africa, and Latin America. BRICS association boasts an aggregate GDP, in terms of purchasing power parity, that has reached about one third of the global value and has exceeded that of the G7 countries. BRICS accounts for 30 percent of dry land and 45 percent of the world’s population, a substantial part of the global production of oil and other resources, and about 25 percent of global exports. In a nutshell, the association now has the ability to form a global agenda by consistently upholding the interests of the Global Majority.
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Kester Kenn Klomegah, who worked previously with Inter Press Service (IPS), Weekly Blitz and InDepthNews, is now a regular contributor to Global Research. He researches Eurasia, Russia, Africa and BRICS. His focused interest areas include geopolitical changes, foreign relations and economic development questions relating to Africa. As a versatile researcher, he believes that everyone deserves equal access to quality and trustworthy media reports.
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What is most urgently needed in the context of the Gaza conflict today?
Firstly, of course we need ceasefire which is durable, not temporary.
Secondly, such conditions of durable safety should be created in which all people can return to their homes safely and this should be accompanied by a very large-scale rehabilitation and reconstruction effort, relating to homes as well as all essential infrastructure, an effort that should be completely free from corruption and should prioritize the real needs of people.
Thirdly, all hostages of Israel should be released and most Palestinian prisoners should also be released.
Fourthly, the various aggressions in the West Bank part of Palestine too should stop.
Last but not the least, all this should be done in conditions where there is minimal chance of re-eruption of hostilities, or else all achievements will be undone all too soon.
For this to be achieved, it is very important to have mutual trust on both sides and there should be almost complete transparency in the peace process. Hence the way ahead should be based on transparency, peace and trust (TPT).
TPT should move ahead with commitment to a two-state solution.
To move ahead forces of TPT on both sides should be strengthened, while those that stand for continuing, almost endless aggression should be weakened.
On the Israeli side it is very important to oust Prime Minister Netanyahu and those of his colleagues who are committed to a policy of extreme aggression and displacement of a large number of Palestinians. With this kind of agenda being pursued by the more powerful side any durable peace with justice is just not possible. Hence peace should be pursued along with transparent, democratic methods for the removal of Netanyahu and the most aggressive elements from all positions of power because of the various illegal and highly aggressive acts committed by them. There should be a very big international peace campaign for this, to help local democratic efforts. Once a government more committed to peace is in place, it should form a peace committee of those eminent citizens of Israel who have been most firmly committed to peaceful solutions in the past.
Similarly on the side of the people of Gaza, local and international peace efforts should collaborate to create a committee of about 25 or so eminent citizens of Gaza known for their commitment to peace and for their well-established integrity. It is this committee which should negotiate for peace. This should also eventually become a permanent committee and regardless of who is elected in the next elections in Gaza, this committee should continue to have a leading continuing role as far as peace efforts in relation to Israel are concerned.
The UN should form a peace committee to bring together these two peace committees of Palestine and Israel and provide all support and strength to the peace efforts.
This entire process can be strengthened by a detailed and impartial investigation of the October 7 attack to probe the very high possibility that at least a section of the top Israeli authorities had advance knowledge of the attack but allowed it to go ahead, even left the border less secure on that particular day (with forces down to almost half their size and a cultural event close to the border given an extended permission in very insecure conditions) so that an attack on Israel could provide the justification for a much bigger and disproportionate assault to create an existential threat for the people of Gaza.
It will be impossible for the Netanyahu regime, with all its previous and known misdeeds and illegalities, to survive if it can be shown convincingly that the October 7 attack was allowed to happen despite knowledge of this (along with pre-existing knowledge of the facilitation of support for the Hamas by Netanyahu etc. for years).
However even those academics who understand that two-state and justice-based peace solutions are almost impossible to achieve as long as Netanyahu is in command are reluctant to take up this issue, which has been raised by voices within Israel as well, because of their training and caution.
At the same time, those who support Hamas to the extent of glorifying it are reluctant to take up this investigation further because once the entire truth about the October 7 attack and the earlier facilitation of support for Hamas by Netanyahu etc. is known, then it will be very difficult to justify any glorification of Hamas.
However it is important for all forces of peace-with justice solutions to realize that as long forces of aggression dominate on both sides, it is just not possible to achieve peace or make any progress on the TPT path. TPT can be taken forward only with greater unity of forces of peace-with-justice of Israel, Palestine and the rest of the world (with special emphasis on neighboring countries and western countries) with the help of the UN and the UNRWA. We should also never forget the wider reality that the entire world is close to an existential crisis caused by environmental factors and weapons of mass destruction and this region in particular is highly vulnerable to this crisis, for example to climate change. Hence to advance on the path of TPT (including two-state solution but adding further several more justice, peace and environmental issues) is of the greatest importance for Israel and Palestine. This is possible only with much greater support from the worldwide peace movement and the United Nations, with better understanding of what exactly is needed.
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Bharat Dogra is Honorary Convener, Campaign to Save Earth Now. His recent books include Planet in Peril, Protecting Earth for Children, Earth without Borders, Man over Machine and A Day in 2071. He is a regular contributor to Global Research.
Featured image: Jewish activists call for Gaza ceasefire in DC. October 18, 2023 (JVP Twitter)
February 9th, 2024 by Canadians for Justice and Peace in the Middle East
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Canadians for Justice and Peace in the Middle East (CJPME) is calling out the Canadian government for disseminating misleading information about Canada’s arms trade and humanitarian aid. Over the past week, Ministers have made irresponsible comments which obfuscate Canada’s role vis-à-vis the unfolding genocide in Gaza, including the false suggestion that Canada is not exporting weapons to Israel. First, CJPME notes that Canada continues to export military goods to Israel at record-high levels, despite comments otherwise from Minister Joly and others. Second, CJPME points out that Canada’s suspension of funding to the UN agency for Palestine refugees (UNRWA) contradicts Ministers’ statements expressing concern about the humanitarian situation in Gaza.
“Instead of explaining its poor arms trade policy decisions, this government is misleading Canadians into thinking that we aren’t exporting weapons to Israel. And instead of concretely addressing an unfolding genocide, Canadian ministers are cutting aid and claiming that their hands are tied. This is disgraceful,” said Thomas Woodley, President of CJPME. “Canada must end its obfuscating and take immediate action to end its complicity in Israel’s genocide in Gaza,” added Woodley.
CJPME rejects the false claim that Canada is not exporting weapons to Israel. International Development Minister Ahmed Hussen recently claimed “We haven’t exported arms to Israel in 30 years,” and Foreign Affairs Minister Mélanie Joly told a committee that “there [have] been no weapons sent under my watch,” while suggesting that Canada is exporting only “non-lethal” military goods. These attempts to downplay Canada’s exports are undermined by the reporting data, which shows that Canada has approved $114M in military goods to Israel since 2015, and has continued to approve military exports since October 7. CJPME points out that these ministers are defining “arms” and lethality in a very narrow and unconventional way — a way which ignores the role of weapons components and other military goods which continue to pose a human rights risk. CJPME has developed a Frequently Asked Questionsresource which explores these issues in more detail. “As Canadians increasingly demand that their government impose an arms embargo on Israel, politicians are trying to pretend that the arms trade doesn’t exist,” said Woodley.
CJPME is also concerned by statements from Minister Joly and Minister Hussen which suggest that Canada is concerned about humanitarian access to Gaza, despite their political decision to defund UNRWA without seeing any evidence to back up Israel’s accusations. Despite Canada’s announcement of additional aid funding to other organizations, CJPME has pointed out that the redirection of funding away from UNRWA threatens the collapse of humanitarian infrastructure and may violate the provisional orders of the International Court of Justice. “Canada cannot claim to be a champion of humanitarian access to Gaza when its irresponsible actions threaten to break the backbone of the aid operation itself,” said Woodley.
Finally, CJPME is unconvinced by statements from Immigration Minister Marc Miller that he is frustrated by the lack of progress on bringing the loved ones of Canadians out of Gaza. Miller implies that Canada has no agency in terms of acting in support of relatives of Canadians trapped in Gaza, and this is false. If indeed Miller and his Ministry have no negotiating power with the nations involved, then the government either needs to change the leadership within the Ministry, or change its international policy. CJPME also notes that Canada’s visa aid program is one of the most restrictive of its kind, with an arbitrary cap of 1,000 people, and requiring unprecedented levels of personal information of people who are trying to flee a war zone. CJPME reiterates its concerns that these restrictions appear to be based on the idea that Palestinians are an inherent security threat. “Canada cannot impose its own barriers on the visa process, and then claim to have its hands tied by others,” added Woodley.
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If committed activists needed an additional reason for why what they are doing is essential and just, then the ICJ’s ruling is a chilling reminder of what is at stake here.
The moral and brave approach by South Africa to the International Court of Justice (ICJ), hoping for a ruling that would bring an end to the genocide of the Palestinians in Gaza, was not matched by the court on Friday, January 26, 2024.
I am not underestimating the significance of the court’s ruling. True, the court confirmed the right of South Africa to approach the ICJ and substantiated the facts it presented, including the assumption that Israel’s actions could be defined as genocide under the terms of the genocide convention.
In the long run, the language and the definitions used by the ICJ in its first ruling will constitute a huge symbolic victory on the way to Palestine’s liberation.
But this is not why South Africa approached the ICJ. South Africa wanted the court to stop the genocide. And therefore, from an operative point of view, the ICJ missed an opportunity to stop the genocide, mainly because it still treated Israel as a democracy and not a rogue state.
Palestinians, and whoever supports any struggle against crimes committed by countries of the global north, ceased a long time ago to be impressed by symbolic actions. Actions against rogue states only are meaningful if they have an operative side to them.
The operative actions suggested by the ICJ are basically a demand from Israel to submit, in one month’s time, a report on measures taken to prevent genocide in Gaza.
No wonder, the Israeli government has already hinted that such an assignment would not be high on its agenda and, most importantly, would not have any impact on its policies on the ground.
Even if the ICJ would have demanded, as it should have, a ceasefire, it would have taken quite a while to implement it, given the Israeli intransigence. But the message to Israel would have been clear – and effective.
License to Commit Genocide
The important thing to remember in any engagement with Israel is that what matters is not how the message is intended but how it is understood by Israeli policymakers.
The Western solidarity with Israel, shown on October 7, 2023, was understood by its policymakers as a free license to commit genocide in Gaza. Similarly, opting for a report instead of action is understood in Israel as a slight slap on the hand, which gives Israel at least another 30 days to continue its genocidal policies.
If this is the case, what would be left of Gaza in a month? What would be the magnitude of the genocide in a month’s time, if not only the West but also the ICJ, refuses to call for an immediate ceasefire? I am afraid that there is no need to answer these terrible questions.
More importantly, the crime has already been committed, it is not as if there is still time to stop it. Therefore, unless the ICJ believes that Israel’s actions be reversed and rectified, it sends a very confused message. It seems to hint that, although the actions may be a crime, if the carnage is limited, then this would be welcomed by the ICJ.
History of Failure in Palestine
The ICJ seemed to lack courage when it refrained from demanding what many countries in the global south and a huge number of people in the global civil society were asking for in the last three months.
If this whole process ends with the usual conclusion that international law has no power to stop the destruction of Palestine and the Palestinians, this will have even a greater impact on the question of Palestine.
In fact, this awareness could severely undermine the confidence, which is already very low, of the global south in the universality of intentional law.
Ever since its final institutionalization after the Second World War, the international law failed to deal properly with colonialism as a crime and was never able to challenge settler colonial projects like Israel.
It also became clear that imperialist policies pursued by the US and Britain, in clear violation of international law, are totally exempt from international law’s jurisdiction. Hence, the US was able to invade Iraq with a stark violation of international law and Britain now plans to send, without fear of reprisal, asylum seekers to Rwanda.
In the case of Palestine, throughout 75 years of the ongoing Nakba, international law – through its official and informal representatives, practitioners and delegations – was completely ineffective. It did not stop the killing of one single Palestinian; it did not lead to the release of one single Palestinian political prisoner, nor did it prevent the ethnic cleansing of Palestine. Indeed, the list of its failures is too long to be detailed here.
But There Is Hope
There is a new, important lesson that should shape our activity and inform our hopes for the future.
We already learned that there is no hope for change within Israeli society, a lesson that was ignored by those involved in the so-called peace process.
The failure to understand the DNA of the Zionist society allowed Israel, since its inception, to kill Palestinians incrementally and massively either directly, by shooting them, or indirectly, by denying them basic human conditions for living.
This process, led by the US, was based on the formula that only after “peace” is restored, Israel would be obliged to change its ruthless policies on the ground.
This false paradigm has totally collapsed, even if the Biden Administration attempts, these days, to resurrect it, along with the few Palestinians who, for some reason, still put their faith in the two-state solution.
And now comes the new, important lesson: not only can we not hope for a change within Israel, we cannot rely on international law to protect the Palestinians from genocide.
This, however, does not mean that there is no hope in the future for liberation and decolonization. The Zionist project is in the process of imploding from within.
Israel’s Jewish society is disintegrating, its economy is failing, and its international image is deteriorating.
The Israeli army did not function in October and the government is in tatters and unable to provide basic services to its citizens. Under these circumstances, only wars and cynical Western interests will keep this project alive, but for how long?
And yet, such a process of implosion in history can be long, brutal and violent as it transpires in front of our eyes these days.
And we are not just onlookers. The activists among us understand that we have to double and triple what we already know has to be done.
We continue, outside of Palestine, to try and move the ‘B’ and ‘D’, in Boycott and Divestment, to ‘S’, as in Sanction.
This effort can be intensified by pushing in two directions. On one hand, we should exert more pressure on the governments of the global south to be more active, particularly in the Arab and Muslim worlds. On the other hand, we should find better ways to increase the electoral pressure on our representatives in the global north.
There is no need to tell the Palestinian Resistance what to do to defend itself and its people. There is no need to tell the liberation movement how to strategize for the future. Wherever they are, Palestinians who are involved in the struggle will continue to persevere and be resilient. What they truly need is for any external effort to be more effective, realistic and bold.
One can not but admire what the solidarity movement with Palestine has already achieved, especially in the last three months.
However, if its loyal and committed activists needed an additional reason for why what they are doing is essential and just, then the ICJ’s ruling is a chilling reminder of what is at stake here.
If there is hope to stop the genocide all over historical Palestine, it lies in the ability of the global civil society to take the lead. Because it is far too obvious that governments and international bodies are unwilling or unable to do so.
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Ilan Pappé is a professor at the University of Exeter. He was formerly a senior lecturer in political science at the University of Haifa. He is the author of The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine, The Modern Middle East, A History of Modern Palestine: One Land, Two Peoples, and Ten Myths about Israel. He is the co-editor, with Ramzy Baroud of ‘Our Vision for Liberation.’ Pappé is described as one of Israel’s ‘New Historians’ who, since the release of pertinent British and Israeli government documents in the early 1980s, have been rewriting the history of Israel’s creation in 1948. He contributed this article to The Palestine Chronicle.
Featured image: Ilan Pappe” ‘The ICJ missed an opportunity to stop the genocide in Gaza.’ (Image: Palestine Chronicle)
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On February 7, 2024, a U.S. drone strike assassinated an Iraqi militia leader, Abu Baqir al-Saadi, in the heart of Baghdad. This was a further U.S. escalation in a major new front in the U.S.-Israeli war on the Middle East, centered on the Israeli genocide in Gaza, but already also including ethnic cleansing in the West Bank, Israeli attacks on Lebanon and Syria, and the U.S. and U.K.’s bombing of Yemen.
This latest U.S. attack followed the U.S. bombing of seven targets on February 2, three in Iraq and four in Syria, with 125 bombs and missiles, killing at least 39 people, which Iran called “a strategic mistake” that would bring “disastrous consequences” for the Middle East.
At the same time, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken has been touring the shrinking number of capitals in the region where leaders will still talk to him, playing the United States’ traditional role as a dishonest broker between Israel and its neighbors, in reality partnering with Israel to offer the Palestinians impossible, virtually suicidal terms for a ceasefire in Gaza.
What Israel and the United States have proposed, but not made public, appears to be a second temporary ceasefire, during which prisoners or hostages would be exchanged, possibly leading to the release of all the Israeli security prisoners held in Gaza, but in no way leading to the final end of the genocide. If the Palestinians in fact freed all their Israeli hostages as part of a prisoner swap, it would remove the only obstacle to a catastrophic escalation of the genocide.
When Hamas responded with a serious counter-proposal for a full ceasefire and Israeli withdrawal from Gaza, Biden dismissed it out of hand as “over the top,” and Netanyahu called it “bizarre” and “delusional.”
The position of the United States and Israel today is that ending a massacre that has already killed more than 27,700 people is not a serious option, even after the International Court of Justice has ruled it a plausible case of genocide under the Genocide Convention. Raphael Lemkin, the Polish holocaust survivor who coined the term genocide and drafted the Genocide Convention from his adopted home in New York City, must be turning in his grave in Mount Hebron Cemetery.
The United States’ support for Israel’s genocidal policies now goes way beyond Palestine, with the U.S. expansion of the war to Iraq, Syria and Yemen to punish other countries and forces in the region for intervening to defend or support the Palestinians. U.S. officials claimed the February 2 attacks were intended to stop Iraqi Resistance attacks on U.S. bases. But the leading Iraqi resistance force had already suspended attacks against U.S. targets on January 30th after they killed three U.S. troops, declaring a truce at the urging of the Iranian and Iraqi governments.
A senior Iraqi military officer told BBC Persian that at least one of the Iraqi military units the U.S. bombed on February 2nd had nothing to do with attacks on U.S. bases. Iraqi Prime Minister Mohammed Shia Al-Sudani negotiated an agreement a year ago to clearly differentiate between Popular Mobilization Force (PMF) units that were part of the “Axis of Resistance” fighting a low-grade war with U.S. occupation forces, and other PMF units that were not involved in attacks on U.S. bases.
Tragically, because the U.S. failed to coordinate its attacks with the Iraqi government, al-Sudani’s agreement failed to prevent the U.S. from attacking the wrong Iraqi forces. It is no wonder that some analysts have dubbed al-Sudani’s valiant efforts to prevent all-out war between U.S. forces and the Islamic Resistance in his country as “mission impossible.”
Following the elaborately staged but carelessly misdirected U.S. attacks, Resistance forces in Iraq began launching new strikes on U.S. bases, including a drone attack that killed six Kurdish troops at the largest U.S. base in Syria. So the predictable effect of the U.S. bombing was in fact to rebuff Iran and Iraq’s efforts to rein in resistance forces and to escalate a war that U.S. officials keep claiming they want to deter.
From experienced journalists and analysts to Middle Eastern governments, voices of caution are warning the United States in increasingly stark language of the dangers of its escalating bombing campaigns. “While the war rages in Gaza,” the BBC’s Orla Guerin wrote on February 4, “one false move could set the region alight.”
Three days later, Orla would be surrounded by protesters chanting “America is the greatest devil,” as she reported from the site of the U.S. drone assassination of Kataib Hezbollah leader Abu Baqir al-Saadi in Baghdad – which could prove to be exactly the false move she feared.
But what Americans should be asking their government is this: Why are there still 2,500 U.S. troops in Iraq? It is 21 years since the United States invaded Iraq and plunged the nation into seemingly endless violence, chaos and corruption; 12 years since Iraq forced U.S. occupation forces to withdraw from Iraq at the end of 2011; and 7 years since the defeat of ISIS, which served as justification for the United States to send forces back into Iraq in 2014, and then to obliterate most of Mosul, Iraq’s second largest city, in 2017.
Successive Iraqi governments and parliaments have asked the United States to withdraw its forces from Iraq, and previously scheduled talks are about to begin. But the Iraqis and Americans have issued contradictory statements about the goal of the negotiations. Prime Minister al-Sudani and most Iraqis hope they will bring about the immediate withdrawal of U.S. forces, while U.S. officials insist that U.S. troops may remain for another two to five years, kicking this explosive can further down the road despite the obvious dangers it poses to the lives of U.S. troops and to peace in the region.
Behind these contradictory statements, the real value of Iraqi bases to the U.S. military does not seem to be about ISIS at all but about Iran. Although the United States has more than 40,000 troops stationed in 14 countries across the Middle East, and another 20,000 on warships in the seas surrounding them, the bases it uses in Iraq are its closest bases and airfields to Tehran and much of Iran. If the Pentagon loses these forward operating bases in Iraq, the closest bases from which it can attack Tehran will be Camp Arifjan and five other bases in Kuwait, where 13,500 U.S. troops would be vulnerable to Iranian counter-attacks – unless, of course, the U.S. withdraws them, too.
Toward the end of the Cold War, historian Gabriel Kolko observed in his book Confronting the Third World that the United States’ “endemic incapacity to avoid entangling, costly commitments in areas of the world that are of intrinsically secondary importance to [its] priorities has caused U.S. foreign policy and resources to whipsaw virtually arbitrarily from one problem and region to the other. The result has been the United States’ increasing loss of control over its political priorities, budget, military strategy and tactics, and, ultimately, its original economic goals.”
After the end of the Cold War, instead of restoring realistic goals and priorities, the neocons who gained control of U.S. foreign policy fooled themselves into believing that U.S. military and economic power could finally triumph over the frustratingly diverse social and political evolution of hundreds of countries and cultures all over the world. In addition to wreaking pointless mass destruction on country after country, this has turned the United States into the global enemy of the principles of democracy and self-determination that most Americans believe in.
The horror Americans feel at the plight of people in Gaza and the U.S. role in it is a shocking new low in this disconnect between the humanity of ordinary Americans and the insatiable ambitions of their undemocratic leaders.
While working for an end to the U.S. government’s support for Israel’s oppression of the Palestinian people, Americans should also be working for the long-overdue withdrawal of U.S. occupying forces from Iraq, Syria and elsewhere in the Middle East.
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Moscow has never refused to hold talks on Ukraine and is confident that the conflict will sooner or later end in peace and relations between the two countries’ people will be restored, Russian President Vladimir Putin said in an interview with Tucker Carlson published on the US journalist’s website. The Russian leader also did not rule out that US national Evan Gershkovich, charged with espionage in Russia, might be released, and shared his opinion of celebrity entrepreneur Elon Musk.
TASS has gathered the key takeaways from the president’s interview.
On talks on Ukraine
Russia has never refused to engage in dialogue on Ukraine but after the Istanbul talks were suspended in March 2022, Moscow has no intention of taking the first step. “Why do we have to bother ourselves and correct somebody else’s mistakes?”
The conditions for resolving the issue, including the option of keeping the situation where it is now, need to be discussed. “It is a subject matter for the negotiations no one is willing to conduct or, to put it more accurately, they’re willing, but do not know how to do it. I know they want to. It is not just I see it, but I know they do want it, but they are struggling to understand how to do it.”
On why London disrupted Istanbul talks
“Who knows. I don’t understand it myself. There was a general starting point. For some reason, everyone had the illusion that Russia could be defeated on the battlefield. Because of arrogance, because of a pure heart, but not because of a great mind.”
On future relations with Ukrainians
The West is wrong when it thinks that “the Russian people have been split by hostilities forever”: “Sooner or later it will result in an agreement.” “This probably sounds strange given the current situation but the relations between the two peoples will be rebuilt anyway. It will take a lot of time, but they will heal.”
On Ukraine’s borders
Ukraine is an artificial state in a sense, “shaped at Stalin’s will” particularly of Hungarian, Polish and Romanian lands. Putin said he had never discussed a possible return of the Hungarian lands, which had been handed over to Ukraine under Stalin, with Hungary’s Prime Minister Viktor Orban. As for the Black Sea region, it “had no historical connection with Ukraine whatsoever.”
On responsibility for Ukrainian crisis
“I know one can say it is our mistake. It was us who intensified the situation and decided to put an end to the war that started in 2014, in Donbass. As I have already said, by means of weapons.” However, NATO’s expansion in breach of earlier promises is also something to remember. “Let us go back to the coup d’etat in Ukraine in 2014. It is pointless, though, isn’t it? We may go back and forth endlessly.”
On ‘Russian threat’
Allegations of the “Russian threat” are aimed at intimidating common people: “We have no interest in Poland, Latvia or anywhere else. <…> It’s just threat mongering.”
On possible conversation with Biden
Putin has repeatedly warned US President Joe Biden that he is “making a huge mistake of historic proportions <…> by pushing Russia away.” Russia and the US currently maintain contact at the level of various government agencies with Moscow saying that Washington needs to stop supplying weapons to Kiev and “it will be over within a few weeks.”
On Gershkovich case
Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich was definitely engaged in espionage. Moscow is ready to release him if its “partners take reciprocal steps:” “We have done so many gestures of goodwill out of decency that I think we have run out of them.” Russian and US intelligence agencies are in talks. “I do not rule out that <…> Mr. Gershkovich may return to his motherland.” There are some people jailed in the West who, according to Moscow, “are not connected with special services,” including “a person (it may be alleged Russian national Vadim Krasikov convicted in Germany – TASS), who, “due to patriotic sentiments, eliminated a bandit in one of the European capitals.”
On Nord Stream pipelines
Russia has not presented the evidence it has with regard to the Nord Stream pipeline explosions because “in the war of propaganda, it is very difficult to defeat the United States because the United States controls all the world’s media and many European media.” “So it is possible to get involved in this work, but it is cost prohibitive, so to speak. <…> It is clear to the whole world what happened.”
On cooperation with China
Allegations that cooperation with China is dangerous for Russia are nothing but boogeyman stories. Europe maintains even closer cooperation with China. “Ask Europeans, are they afraid?”
On Russia in NATO
Moscow inquired into the possibility of joining NATO and invited Washington to build a common missile defense system together. US presidents supported the initiatives but their administrations rejected them. “And then they just told us to get lost. <…> We created hypersonic systems with intercontinental range, and we continue to develop them.”
Washington kept putting pressure on Moscow particularly because there were too many experts on confrontation with the Soviet Union in the US. “It is necessary to get rid of this. There should be new, fresh forces, people who look into the future and understand what is happening in the world.”
On US policies
Washington’s policy does not depend on who the country’s president is. “It is not about the personality of the leader. It is about the elites’ mindset.” Today, the United States is trying unsuccessfully to adapt to the changing world by using force but “the tools that the US uses don’t work.” The world will “change regardless of how the developments in Ukraine end.” The US position in the world will also change, and “the only question is how this will happen, painfully and quickly or gently and gradually.”
On technologies and Elon Musk
Humanity needs to make agreements on regulating the field of artificial intelligence, genetic research and other research activities that are “impossible to stop.”
“There are reports that Elon Musk has already had a chip implanted in the human brain. <…> I think there’s no stopping Elon Musk. He will do as he sees fit. Nevertheless, you’ll need to find some common ground with him. Search for ways to persuade him.”
Vladimir Putin answered questions from Tucker Carlson, a journalist and founder of Tucker Carlson Network.
On February 22, 2022, you addressed your country in your nationwide address when the conflict in Ukraine started and you said that you were acting because you had come to the conclusion that the United States through NATO might initiate a quote, “surprise attack on our country”. And to American ears that sounds paranoid. Tell us why you believe the United States might strike Russia out of the blue. How did you conclude that?
Vladimir Putin: It’s not that the United States was going to launch a surprise strike on Russia, I didn’t say so. Are we having a talk show or serious conversation?
Tucker Carlson: That was a good quote. Thank you, it’s formidably serious!
Vladimir Putin: You were initially trained in history, as far as I know?
Tucker Carlson: Yes.
Vladimir Putin: So if you don’t mind I will take only 30 seconds or one minute of your time for giving you a little historical background.
Tucker Carlson: Please.
Vladimir Putin: Let’s look where our relationship with Ukraine started from. Where does Ukraine come from?
The Russian state started to exist as a centralized state in 862. This is considered to be the year of creation of the Russian state because this year the townspeople of Novgorod (a city in the North-West of the country) invited Rurik, a Varangian prince from Scandinavia, to reign. In 1862, Russia celebrated the 1000th anniversary of its statehood, and in Novgorod there is a memorial dedicated to the 1000th anniversary of the country.
In 882, Rurik’s successor Prince Oleg, who was, actually, playing the role of regent at Rurik’s young son because Rurik had died by that time, came to Kiev. He ousted two brothers who, apparently, had once been members of Rurik’s squad. So, Russia began to develop with two centers of power, Kiev and Novgorod.
The next, very significant date in the history of Russia, was 988. This was the Baptism of Russia, when Prince Vladimir, the great-grandson of Rurik, baptized Russia and adopted Orthodoxy, or Eastern Christianity. From this time the centralized Russian state began to strengthen. Why? Because of a single territory, integrated economic ties, one and the same language and, after the Baptism of Russia, the same faith and rule of the Prince. The centralized Russian state began to take shape.
Back in the Middle Ages, Prince Yaroslav the Wise introduced the order of succession to the throne, but after he passed away, it became complicated for various reasons. The throne was passed not directly from father to eldest son, but from the prince who had passed away to his brother, then to his sons in different lines. All this led to the fragmentation and the end of Rus as a single state. There was nothing special about it, the same was happening then in Europe. But the fragmented Russian state became an easy prey to the empire created earlier by Genghis Khan. His successors, namely, Batu Khan, came to Rus, plundered and ruined nearly all the cities. The southern part, including Kiev, by the way, and some other cities, simply lost independence, while northern cities preserved some of their sovereignty. They had to pay tribute to the Horde, but they managed to preserve some part of their sovereignty. And then a unified Russian state began to take shape with its centre in Moscow.
The southern part of the Russian lands, including Kiev, began to gradually gravitate towards another ”magnet“ – the centre that was emerging in Europe. This was the Grand Duchy of Lithuania. It was even called the Lithuanian-Russian Duchy, because Russians were a significant part of its population. They spoke the Old Russian language and were Orthodox. But then there was a unification, the union of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania and the Kingdom of Poland. A few years later, another union was signed, but this time already in the religious sphere. Some of the Orthodox priests became subordinate to the Pope. Thus, these lands became part of the Polish-Lithuanian state.
During decades, the Poles were engaged in the ”Polonization“ of this part of the population: they introduced their language there, tried to entrench the idea that this population was not exactly Russians, that because they lived on the fringe (u kraya) they were “Ukrainians”. Originally, the word ‘Ukrainian’ meant that a person was living on the outskirts of the state, near the fringe, or was engaged in border service. It didn’t mean any particular ethnic group.
So, the Poles were trying in every possible way to polonize this part of the Russian lands and actually treated it rather harshly, not to say cruelly. All that led to the fact that this part of the Russian lands began to struggle for their rights. They wrote letters to Warsaw demanding that their rights be observed and that people be commissioned here, including to Kiev…
Tucker Carlson: I beg your pardon, can you tell us what period… I am losing track of where in history we are?
Vladimir Putin: It was in the 13th century.
Now I will tell what happened later and give the dates so that there is no confusion. And in 1654, even a bit earlier, the people who were in control of the authority over that part of the Russian lands, addressed Warsaw, I repeat, demanding their rights be observed that they send to them rulers of Russian origin and Orthodox faith. When Warsaw did not answer them and in fact rejected their demands, they turned to Moscow so that Moscow took them away.
So that you don’t think that I am inventing things… I’ll give you these documents…
Tucker Carlson: It doesn’t sound like you are inventing it, but I am not sure why it’s relevant to what’s happened two years ago.
Vladimir Putin: But still, these are documents from the archives, copies. Here are letters from Bogdan Khmelnitsky, the man who then controlled the power in this part of the Russian lands that is now called Ukraine. He wrote to Warsaw demanding that their rights be upheld, and after being refused, he began to write letters to Moscow asking to take them under the strong hand of the Moscow Tsar. There are copies of these documents. I will leave them for your good memory. There is a translation into Russian, you can translate it into English later.
Russia would not agree to admit them straight away, assuming that the war with Poland would start. Nevertheless, in 1654, the Pan-Russian Assembly of top Clergy and Landowners headed by the Tsar (Zemsky Sobor), which was the representative body of power of the Old Russian state, decided to include a part of the Old Russian lands into the Moscow Kingdom.
As expected, the war with Poland began. It lasted 13 years, and then in 1654, a truce was concluded. And 32 years later, I think, a peace treaty with Poland, which they called ”eternal peace,“ was signed. And these lands, the whole left bank of the Dnieper, including Kiev, went to Russia, and the whole right bank of the Dnieper remained in Poland.
Under the rule of Catherine the Great, Russia reclaimed all of its historical lands, including in the south and west. This all lasted until the Revolution. Before World War I, Austrian General Staff relied on the ideas of Ukrainianization and started actively promoting the ideas of Ukraine and the Ukrainianization. Their motive was obvious. Just before World War I they wanted to weaken the potential enemy and secure themselves favourable conditions in the border area. So the idea which had emerged in Poland that people residing in that territory were allegedly not really Russians, but rather belonged to a special ethnic group, Ukrainians, started being propagated by the Austrian General Staff.
As far back as the 19th century, theorists calling for Ukrainian independence appeared. All those, however, claimed that Ukraine should have a very good relationship with Russia. They insisted on that. After the 1917 Revolution, the Bolsheviks sought to restore the statehood, and the Civil War began, including the hostilities with Poland. In 1921, peace with Poland was proclaimed, and under that treaty, the right bank of the Dnieper River once again was given back to Poland.
In 1939, after Poland cooperated with Hitler — it did collaborate with Hitler, you know —Hitler offered Poland peace and a treaty of friendship and alliance (we have all the relevant documents in the archives), demanding in return that Poland give back to Germany the so-called Danzig Corridor, which connected the bulk of Germany with East Prussia and Konigsberg. After World War I this territory was transferred to Poland, and instead of Danzig, a city of Gdansk emerged. Hitler asked them to give it amicably, but they refused. Still they collaborated with Hitler and engaged together in the partitioning of Czechoslovakia.
Tucker Carlson: May I ask… You are making the case that Ukraine, certain parts of Ukraine, Eastern Ukraine, in fact, has been Russia for hundreds of years, why wouldn’t you just take it when you became President 24 years ago? Your have nuclear weapons, they don’t. It’s actually your land. Why did you wait so long?
Vladimir Putin: I’ll tell you. I’m coming to that. This briefing is coming to an end. It might be boring, but it explains many things.
Tucker Carlson: It’s not boring.
Vladimir Putin: Good. Good. I am so gratified that you appreciate that. Thank you.
So before World War II, Poland collaborated with Hitler and although it did not yield to Hitler’s demands, it still participated in the partitioning of Czechoslovakia together with Hitler. As the Poles had not given the Danzig Corridor to Germany, and went too far, pushing Hitler to start World War II by attacking them. Why was it Poland against whom the war started on 1 September 1939? Poland turned out to be uncompromising, and Hitler had nothing to do but start implementing his plans with Poland.
By the way, the USSR — I have read some archive documents — behaved very honestly. It asked Poland’s permission to transit its troops through the Polish territory to help Czechoslovakia. But the then Polish foreign minister said that if the Soviet planes flew over Poland, they would be downed over the territory of Poland. But that doesn’t matter. What matters is that the war began, and Poland fell prey to the policies it had pursued against Czechoslovakia, as under the well-known Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, part of that territory, including western Ukraine, was to be given to Russia. Thus Russia, which was then named the USSR, regained its historical lands.
After the victory in the Great Patriotic War, as we call World War II, all those territories were ultimately enshrined as belonging to Russia, to the USSR. As for Poland, it received, apparently in compensation, the lands which had originally being German: the eastern parts of Germany (these are now western lands of Poland). Of course, Poland regained access to the Baltic sea, and Danzig, which was once again given its Polish name. So this was how this situation developed.
In 1922, when the USSR was being established, the Bolsheviks started building the USSR and established the Soviet Ukraine, which had never existed before.
Tucker Carlson: Right.
Vladimir Putin: Stalin insisted that those republics be included in the USSR as autonomous entities. For some inexplicable reason, Lenin, the founder of the Soviet state, insisted that they be entitled to withdraw from the USSR. And, again for some unknown reasons, he transferred to that newly established Soviet Republic of Ukraine some of the lands together with people living there, even though those lands had never been called Ukraine; and yet they were made part of that Soviet Republic of Ukraine. Those lands included the Black Sea region, which was received under Catherine the Great and which had no historical connection with Ukraine whatsoever.
Even if we go as far back as 1654, when these lands returned to the Russian Empire, that territory was the size of three to four regions of modern Ukraine, with no Black Sea region. That was completely out of the question.
Tucker Carlson: In 1654?
Vladimir Putin: Exactly.
Tucker Carlson: You have, I see, encyclopedic knowledge of this region. But why didn’t you make this case for the first 22 years as president, that Ukraine wasn’t a real country?
Vladimir Putin: The Soviet Ukraine was given a great deal of territory that had never belonged to it, including the Black Sea region. At some point, when Russia received them as an outcome of the Russo-Turkish wars, they were called “New Russia” or Novorossiya. But that does not matter. What matters is that Lenin, the founder of the Soviet State, established Ukraine that way. For decades, the Ukrainian Soviet Republic developed as part of the USSR, and for unknown reasons again, the Bolsheviks were engaged in Ukrainianization. It was not merely because the Soviet leadership was composed to a great extent of those originating from Ukraine. Rather, it was explained by the general policy of indigenization pursued by the Soviet Union. Same things were done in other Soviet republics. This involved promoting national languages and national cultures, which is not bad in principle. That is how the Soviet Ukraine was created.
After World War II, Ukraine received, in addition to the lands that had belonged to Poland before the war, part of the lands that had previously belonged to Hungary and Romania (today known as Western Ukraine). So Romania and Hungary had some of their lands taken away and given to the Ukraine and they still remain part of Ukraine. So in this sense, we have every reason to affirm that Ukraine is an artificial state that was shaped at Stalin’s will.
Tucker Carlson: Do you believe Hungary has a right to take back its land from Ukraine? And that other nations have a right to go back to their 1654 borders?
Vladimir Putin: I am not sure whether they should go back to the 1654 borders, but given Stalin’s time, so-called Stalin’s regime — which as many claim saw numerous violations of human rights and violations of the rights of other states – one may say that they could claim back those lands of theirs, while having no right to do that, it is at least understandable…
Tucker Carlson: Have you told Viktor Orbán that he can have a part of Ukraine?
Vladimir Putin: Never. I have never told him. Not a single time. We have not even had any conversation on that, but I actually know for sure that Hungarians who live there wanted to get back to their historical land.
Moreover, I would like to share a very interesting story with you, I’ll digress, it’s a personal one. Somewhere in the early 80’s, I went on a road trip on a car from then-Leningrad (now St. Petersburg) across the Soviet Union through Kiev, made a stop in Kiev, and then went to Western Ukraine. I went to the town of Beregovoye, and all the names of towns and villages there were in Russian and in a language I didn’t understand – in Hungarian . In Russian and in Hungarian. Not in Ukrainian – in Russian and in Hungarian.
I was driving through some kind of a village and there were men sitting next to the houses and they were wearing black three-piece suits and black cylinder hats. I asked, ”Are they some kind of entertainers?“ I was told, ”No, they’re not entertainers. They’re Hungarians. ‘I said, ‘What are they doing here?’ — ‘What do you mean? This is their land, they live here.’ This was during the Soviet time, in the 1980’s. They preserve the Hungarian language, Hungarian names, and all their national costumes. They are Hungarians and they feel themselves to be Hungarians. And of course, when now there is an infringement….
Tucker Carlson: And there’s a lot of that though, I think. Many nations feel upset about — there are Transylvanians as well as you, others, you know — but many nations feel frustrated by their re-drawn borders after the wars of the 20th century, and wars going back a thousand years, the ones that you mention, but the fact is that you didn’t make this case in public until two years ago in February, and in the case that you made, which I read today, you explain a great length that you thought a physical threat from the West and NATO, including potentially a nuclear threat, and that’s what got you to move. Is that a fair characterization of what you said?
Vladimir Putin: I understand that my long speeches probably fall outside of the genre of an interview. That is why I asked you at the beginning: ”Are we going to have a serious talk or a show?“ You said — a serious talk. So bear with me please.
We are coming to the point where the Soviet Ukraine was established. Then, in 1991, the Soviet Union collapsed. And everything that Russia had generously bestowed on Ukraine was ”dragged away“ by the latter.
I’m coming to a very important point of today’s agenda. After all, the collapse of the Soviet Union was effectively initiated by the Russian leadership. I do not understand what the Russian leadership was guided by at the time, but I suspect there were several reasons to think everything would be fine.
First, I think that the then Russian leadership believed that the fundamentals of the relationship between Russia and Ukraine were: in fact, a common language — more than 90 percent of the population there spoke Russian; family ties — every third person there had some kind of family or friendship ties; common culture; common history; finally, common faith; co-existence within a single state for centuries; and deeply interconnected economies. All of these were so fundamental. All these elements together make our good relations inevitable.
The second point is a very important one. I want you as an American citizen and your viewers to hear about this as well. The former Russian leadership assumed that the Soviet Union had ceased to exist and therefore there were no longer any ideological dividing lines. Russia even agreed, voluntarily and proactively, to the collapse of the Soviet Union and believed that this would be understood by the so-called (now in scare quotes) ”civilized West“ as an invitation for cooperation and associateship. That is what Russia was expecting both from the United States and the so-called collective West as a whole.
There were smart people, including in Germany. Egon Bahr, a major politician of the Social Democratic Party, who insisted in his personal conversations with the Soviet leadership on the brink of the collapse of the Soviet Union that a new security system should be established in Europe. Help should be given to unify Germany, but a new system should also be established to include the United States, Canada, Russia, and other Central European countries. But NATO needs not to expand. That’s what he said: if NATO expands, everything would be just the same as during the Cold War, only closer to Russia’s borders. That’s all. He was a wise old man, but no one listened to him. In fact, he got angry once (we have a record of this conversation in our archives): ”If, he said, you don’t listen to me, I’m never setting my foot in Moscow once again.“ He was frustrated with the Soviet leadership. He was right, everything happened just as he had said.
Tucker Carlson: Well, of course, it did come true, and you’ve mentioned it many times. I think, it’s a fair point. And many in America thought that relations between Russia and United States would be fine after the collapse of the Soviet Union, at the core. But the opposite happened. But have never explained why you think that happened, except to say that the West fears a strong Russia. But we have a strong China that the West doesn’t seem to be very afraid of. What about Russia, what do you think convinced the policymakers to take it down?
Vladimir Putin: The West is afraid of a strong China more than it fears a strong Russia because Russia has 150 million people, and China has a 1.5 billion population, and its economy is growing by leaps and bounds — over five percent a year, it used to be even more. But that’s enough for China. As Bismark once put it, potentials are most important. China’s potential is enormous — it is the biggest economy in the world today in terms of purchasing power parity and the size of the economy. It has already overtaken the United States, quite a long time ago, and it is growing at a rapid clip.
Let’s not talk about who is afraid of whom, let’s not reason in such terms. And let’s get into the fact that after 1991, when Russia expected that it would be welcomed into the brotherly family of ”civilized nations,“ nothing like this happened. You tricked us (I don’t mean you personally when I say ”you“, of course, I’m talking about the United States), the promise was that NATO would not expand eastward, but it happened five times, there were five waves of expansion. We tolerated all that, we were trying to persuade them, we were saying: ”Please don’t, we are as bourgeois now as you are, we are a market economy, and there is no Communist Party power. Let’s negotiate.“ Moreover, I have also said this publicly before (let’s look at Yeltsin’s times now), there was a moment when a certain rift started growing between us. Before that, Yeltsin came to the United States, remember, he spoke in Congress and said the good words: ”God bless America“. Everything he said were signals — let us in.
Remember the developments in Yugoslavia, before that Yeltsin was lavished with praise, as soon as the developments in Yugoslavia started, he raised his voice in support of Serbs, and we couldn’t but raise our voices for Serbs in their defense. I understand that there were complex processes underway there, I do. But Russia could not help raising its voice in support of Serbs, because Serbs are also a special and close to us nation, with Orthodox culture and so on. It’s a nation that has suffered so much for generations. Well, regardless, what is important is that Yeltsin expressed his support. What did the United States do? In violation of international law and the UN Charter it started bombing Belgrade.
It was the United States that let the genie out of the bottle. Moreover, when Russia protested and expressed its resentment, what was said? The UN Charter and international law have become obsolete. Now everyone invokes international law, but at that time they started saying that everything was outdated, everything had to be changed.
Indeed, some things need to be changed as the balance of power has changed, it’s true, but not in this manner. Yeltsin was immediately dragged through the mud, accused of alcoholism, of understanding nothing, of knowing nothing. He understood everything, I assure you.
Well, I became President in 2000. I thought: okay, the Yugoslav issue is over, but we should try to restore relations. Let’s reopen the door that Russia had tried to go through. And moreover, I’ve said it publicly, I can reiterate. At a meeting here in the Kremlin with the outgoing President Bill Clinton, right here in the next room, I said to him, I asked him, ” Bill, do you think if Russia asked to join NATO, do you think it would happen?“ Suddenly he said: ”You know, it’s interesting, I think so.“ But in the evening, when we had dinner, he said, ”You know, I’ve talked to my team, no-no, it’s not possible now.“ You can ask him, I think he will watch our interview, he’ll confirm it. I wouldn’t have said anything like that if it hadn’t happened. Okay, well, it’s impossible now.
Tucker Carlson: Were you sincere? Would you have joined NATO?
Vladimir Putin: Look, I asked the question, ”Is it possible or not?“ And the answer I got was no. If I was insincere in my desire to find out what the leadership’s position was…
Tucker Carlson: But if he would say yes, would you have joined NATO?
Vladimir Putin: If he had said yes, the process of rapprochement would have commenced, and eventually it might have happened if we had seen some sincere wish on the side of our partners. But it didn’t happen. Well, no means no, okay, fine.
Tucker Carlson: Why do you think that is? Just to get to motive. I know, you’re clearly bitter about it. I understand. But why do you think the West rebuffed you then? Why the hostility? Why did the end of the Cold War not fix the relationship? What motivates this from your point of view?
Vladimir Putin: You said I was bitter about the answer. No, it’s not bitterness, it’s just a statement of fact. We’re not the bride and groom, bitterness, resentment, it’s not about those kinds of matters in such circumstances. We just realised we weren’t welcome there, that’s all. Okay, fine. But let’s build relations in another manner, let’s look for common ground elsewhere. Why we received such a negative response, you should ask your leader. I can only guess why: too big a country, with its own opinion and so on. And the United States – I have seen how issues are being resolved in NATO.
I will give you another example now, concerning Ukraine. The US leadership exerts pressure, and all NATO members obediently vote, even if they do not like something. Now, I’ll tell you what happened in this regard with Ukraine in 2008, although it’s being discussed, I’m not going to open a secret to you, say anything new. Nevertheless, after that, we tried to build relations in different ways. For example, the events in the Middle East, in Iraq, we were building relations with the United States in a very soft, prudent, cautious manner.
I repeatedly raised the issue that the United States should not support separatism or terrorism in the North Caucasus. But they continued to do it anyway. And political support, information support, financial support, even military support came from the United States and its satellites for terrorist groups in the Caucasus.
I once raised this issue with my colleague, also the President of the United States. He says, ”It’s impossible! Do you have proof?“ I said, ”Yes.“ I was prepared for this conversation and I gave him that proof. He looked at it and, you know what he said? I apologise, but that’s what happened, I’ll quote. He says, ”Well, I’m gonna kick their ass“. We waited and waited for some response – there was no reply.
I said to the FSB Director: ”Write to the CIA. What is the result of the conversation with the President?“ He wrote once, twice, and then we got a reply. We have the answer in the archive. The CIA replied: ”We have been working with the opposition in Russia. We believe that this is the right thing to do and we will keep on doing it.“ Just ridiculous. Well, okay. We realised that it was out of the question.
Tucker Carlson: Forces in opposition to you? Do you think the CIA is trying to overthrow your government?
Vladimir Putin: Of course, they meant in that particular case the separatists, the terrorists who fought with us in the Caucasus. That’s who they called the opposition. This is the second point.
The third moment, a very important one, is the moment when the US missile defense (ABM) system was created. The beginning. We persuaded for a long time not to do it in the United States. Moreover, after I was invited by Bush Jr.’s father, Bush Sr. to visit his place on the ocean, I had a very serious conversation with President Bush and his team. I proposed that the United States, Russia and Europe jointly create a missile defense system that, we believe, if created unilaterally, threatens our security, despite the fact that the United States officially said that it was being created against missile threats from Iran. That was the justification for the deployment of the missile defense system. I suggested working together – Russia, the United States, and Europe. They said it was very interesting. They asked me, ”Are you serious?“ I said, “Absolutely”.
Tucker Carlson: May I ask what year was this?
Vladimir Putin: I don’t remember. It is easy to find out on the Internet, when I was in the USA at the invitation of Bush Sr. It is even easier to learn from someone, I’m going to tell you about.
I was told it was very interesting. I said, ”Just imagine if we could tackle such a global, strategic security challenge together. The world would change. We’ll probably have disputes, probably economic and even political ones, but we could drastically change the situation in the world.“ He says, ”Yes.“ And asks: ”Are you serious?“. I said, ”Of course.“ ”We need to think about it,“ I’m told. I said, ”Go ahead, please.“
Then Secretary of Defense R.Gates, former Director of the CIA, and Secretary of State C.Rice came here, in this cabinet. Right here, at this table, they sat on this side. Me, the Foreign Minister, the Russian Defense Minister – on that side. They said to me, ”Yes, we have thought about it, we agree.“ I said, ”Thank God, great.“ – ”But with some exceptions.“
Tucker Carlson: So, twice you’ve described US presidents making decisions and then being undercut by their agency heads. So, it sounds like you’re describing a system that is not run by the people who are elected, in your telling.
Vladimir Putin: That’s right, that’s right. In the end they just told us to get lost. I am not going to tell you the details, because I think it is incorrect, after all, it was a confidential conversation. But our proposal was declined, that’s a fact.
It was right then when I said: ”Look, but then we will be forced to take counter measures. We will create such strike systems that will certainly overcome missile defense systems.“ The answer was: ”We are not doing this against you, and you do what you want, assuming that it is not against us, not against the United States“. I said, ”Okay.“
Very well, that’s the way it went. And we created hypersonic systems, with intercontinental range, and we continue to develop them. We are now ahead of everyone – the United States and other countries – in terms of the development of hypersonic strike systems, and we are improving them every day.
But it wasn’t us, we proposed to go the other way, and we were pushed back.
Now, about NATO’s expansion to the East. Well, we were promised, no NATO to the East, not an inch to the East, as we were told. And then what? They said, ”Well, it’s not enshrined on paper, so we’ll expand.“ So there were five waves of expansion, the Baltic States, the whole of Eastern Europe, and so on.
And now I come to the main thing: they have come to Ukraine ultimately. In 2008 at the summit in Bucharest they declared that the doors for Ukraine and Georgia to join NATO were open.
Now about how decisions are made there. Germany, France seemed to be against it as well as some other European countries. But then, as it turned out later, President Bush, and he is such a tough guy, a tough politician, as I was told later, ”He exerted pressure on us and we had to agree.“ It’s ridiculous, it’s like kindergarten. Where are the guarantees? What kindergarten is this, what kind of people are these, who are they? You see, they were pressed, they agreed. And then they say, ”Ukraine won’t be in NATO, you know.“ I say, ”I don’t know, I know you agreed in 2008, why won’t you agree in the future?“ ”Well, they pressed us then.“ I say, ”Why won’t they press you tomorrow? And you’ll agree again.“
Well, it’s nonsensical. Who’s there to talk to, I just don’t understand. We’re ready to talk. But with whom? Where are the guarantees? None.
So, they started to develop the territory of Ukraine. Whatever is there, I have told you the background, how this territory developed, what kind of relations there were with Russia. Every second or third person there has always had some ties with Russia. And during the elections in already independent, sovereign Ukraine, which gained its independence as a result of the Declaration of Independence, and, by the way, it says that Ukraine is a neutral state, and in 2008 suddenly the doors or gates to NATO were open to it. Oh, come on! This is not how we agreed. Now, all the presidents that have come to power in Ukraine, they’ve relied on an electorate with a good attitude to Russia in one way or another. This is the south-east of Ukraine, this is a large number of people. And it was very difficult to desuade this electorate, which had a positive attitude towards Russia.
Viktor Yanukovych came to power, and how: the first time he won after President Kuchma – they organised a third round, which is not provided for in the Constitution of Ukraine. This is a coup d’état. Just imagine, someone in the United States wouldn’t like the outcome…
Tucker Carlson: In 2014?
Vladimir Putin: Before that. No, this was before that. After President Kuchma, Viktor Yanukovich won the elections. However, his opponents did not recognize that victory, the US supported the opposition and the third round was scheduled. What is this? This is a coup. The US supported it and the winner of the third round came to power. Imagine if in the US, something was not to someone’s liking and the third round of election, which the US Constitution does not provide for, was organized, Nonetheless, it was done in Ukraine. Okay, Viktor Yushchenko who was considered a pro-Western politician, came to power. Fine, we have built relations with him as well. He came to Moscow with visits, we visited Kiev. I visited it too. We met in an informal setting. If he is pro-Western, so be it. It’s fine, let people do their job. The situation should develop inside the independent Ukraine itself. As a result of Kuchma’s leadership, things got worse and Viktor Yanukovich came to power after all.
Maybe he wasn’t the best President and politician. I don’t know, I don’t want to give assessments. However, the issue of the association with the EU came up. We have always been lenient to this: suit yourself. But when we read through that treaty of association it turned out to be a problem for us, since we had a free-trade zone and open customs borders with Ukraine which, under this association, had to open its borders for Europe, which could have led to flooding of our market.
We said, “No, this is not going to work. We shall close our borders with Ukraine then”. The customs borders, that is. Yanukovich started to calculate how much Ukraine was going to gain, how much to lose and said to his European partners: “I need more time to think before signing”. The moment he said that, the opposition began to take destructive steps which were supported by the West. It all came down to Maidan and a coup in Ukraine.
Tucker Carlson: So, he did more trade with Russia than with the EU? Ukraine did…
Vladimir Putin: Of course. It’s not even the matter of trade volume, although for the most part it is. It is the matter of cooperation ties which the entire Ukrainian economy was based on. The cooperation ties between the enterprises were very close since the times of the Soviet Union. One enterprise there used to produce components to be assembled both in Russia and Ukraine and vice versa. There used to be very close ties.
A coup d’etat was committed, although, I shall not delve into details now as I find doing it inappropriate, the US told us, “Calm Yanukovich down and we will calm the opposition. Let the situation unfold in the scenario of a political settlement”. We said, “Alright. Agreed. Let’s do it this way”. As the Americans requested us, Yanukovich did use neither the Armed Forces, nor the police, yet the armed opposition committed a coup in Kiev. What is that supposed to mean? “Who do you think you are?”, I wanted to ask the then US leadership.
Tucker Carlson: With the backing of whom?
Vladimir Putin: With the backing of CIA, of course. The organization you wanted to join back in the day, as I understand. Maybe we should thank God they didn’t let you in. Although, it is a serious organization. I understand. My former vis-à-vis, in the sense that I served in the First Main Directorate – Soviet Union’s intelligence service. They have always been our opponents. A job is a job.
Technically they did everything right, they achieved their goal of changing the government. However, from political standpoint, it was a colossal mistake. Surely, it was political leadership’s miscalculation. They should have seen what it would evolve into.
So, in 2008 the doors of NATO were opened for Ukraine. In 2014, there was a coup, they started persecuting those who did not accept the coup, and it was indeed a coup, they created a threat to Crimea which we had to take under our protection. They launched a war in Donbass in 2014 with the use of aircraft and artillery against civilians. This is when it started. There is a video of aircraft attacking Donetsk from above. They launched a large-scale military operation, then another one. When they failed, they started to prepare the next one. All this against the background of military development of this territory and opening of NATO’s doors.
How could we not express concern over what was happening? From our side, this would have been a culpable negligence – that’s what it would have been. It’s just that the US political leadership pushed us to the line we could not cross because doing so could have ruined Russia itself. Besides, we could not leave our brothers in faith and, in fact, a part of Russian people, in the face of this “war machine”.
Tucker Carlson: So, that was eight years before the current conflict started. What was the trigger for you? What was the moment where you decided you had to do this?
Vladimir Putin: Initially, it was the coup in Ukraine that provoked the conflict.
By the way, back then the representatives of three European countries – Germany, Poland and France – arrived. They were the guarantors of the signed agreement between the Government of Yanukovich and the opposition. They signed it as guarantors. Despite that, the opposition committed a coup and all these countries pretended that they didn’t remember that they were guarantors of peaceful settlement. They just threw it in the stove right away and nobody recalls that.
I don’t know if the US know anything about that agreement between the opposition and the authorities and its three guarantors who, instead of bringing this whole situation back in the political field, supported the coup. Although, it was meaningless, believe me, because President Yanukovich agreed to all conditions, he was ready to hold early election which he had no chance to win, frankly speaking, Everyone knew that. Then why the coup, why the victims? Why threatening Crimea? Why launching an operation in Donbass? This I do not understand. That is exactly what the miscalculation is. CIA did its job to complete the coup. I think one of the Deputy Secretaries of State said that it cost a large sum of money, almost 5 billion. But the political mistake was colossal! Why would they have to do that? All this could have been done legally, without victims, without military action, without losing Crimea. We would have never considered to even lift a finger, if it hadn’t been for the bloody developments on Maidan.
Because we agreed with the fact that after the collapse of the Soviet Union our borders should be along the borders of former Union’s republics. We agreed to that. But we never agreed to NATO’s expansion and moreover we never agreed that Ukraine would be in NATO. We did not agree to NATO bases there without any discussion with us. For decades we kept asking: don’t do this, don’t do that.
And what triggered the latest events? Firstly, the current Ukrainian leadership declared that it would not implement the Minsk Agreements, which had been signed, as you know, after the events of 2014, in Minsk, where the plan of peaceful settlement in Donbass was set forth. But no, the current Ukrainian leadership, Foreign Minister, all other officials and then President himself said that they don’t like anything about the Minsk Agreements. In other words, they were not going to implement it. A year or a year and a half ago, former leaders of Germany and France said openly to the whole world that they indeed signed the Minsk Agreements but they never intended to implement them. They simply led us by the nose.
Tucker Carlson: Was there anyone free to talk to? Did you call the US President, Secretary of State and say if you keep militarizing Ukraine with NATO forces, we are going to act?
Vladimir Putin: We talked about this all the time. We addressed the United States’ and European countries’ leadership to stop these developments immediately, to implement the Minsk Agreements. Frankly speaking, I didn’t know how we were going to do this but I was ready to implement them. These Agreements were complicated for Ukraine; they included lots of elements of those Donbass territories’ independence. That’s true. However, I was absolutely confident, and I am saying this to you now: I honestly believed that if we managed to convince the residents of Donbass – and we had to work hard to convince them to return to the Ukrainian statehood – then gradually the wounds would start to heal. When this part of territory reintegrated itself into common social environment, when the pensions and social benefits were paid again, all the pieces would gradually fall into place.
No, nobody wanted that, everybody wanted to resolve the issue by military force only. But we could not let that happen. And the situation got to the point, when the Ukrainian side announced: ”No, we will not do anything“. They also started preparing for military action. It was they who started the war in 2014. Our goal is to stop this war. And we did not start this war in 2022. This is an attempt to stop it.
Tucker Carlson: Do you think you have stopped it now? I mean have you achieved your aims?
Vladimir Putin: No, we haven’t achieved our aims yet, because one of them is denazification. This means the prohibition of all kinds of neo-Nazi movements. This is one of the problems that we discussed during the negotiation process, which ended in Istanbul early last year, and it was not our initiative, because we were told (by the Europeans, in particular) that ”it was necessary to create conditions for the final signing of the documents“. My counterparts in France and Germany said, ”How can you imagine them signing a treaty with a gun to their heads? The troops should be pulled back from Kiev. ‘I said, ‘All right.’ We withdrew the troops from Kiev.
As soon as we pulled back our troops from Kiev, our Ukrainian negotiators immediately threw all our agreements reached in Istanbul into the bin and got prepared for a longstanding armed confrontation with the help of the United States and its satellites in Europe. That is how the situation has developed. And that is how it looks now.
Tucker Carlson: What is denazification? What would that mean?
Vladimir Putin: That is what I want to talk about right now. It is a very important issue.
Denazification. After gaining independence, Ukraine began to search, as some Western analysts say, its identity. And it came up with nothing better than to build this identity upon some false heroes who collaborated with Hitler.
I have already said that in the early 19th century, when the theorists of independence and sovereignty of Ukraine appeared, they assumed that an independent Ukraine should have very good relations with Russia. But due to the historical development, these territories were part of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth – Poland, where Ukrainians were persecuted and treated quite brutally as well as were subject to cruel behavior. There were also attempts to destroy their identity.
All this remained in the memory of the people. When World War II broke out, part of this extremely nationalist elite collaborated with Hitler, believing that he would bring them freedom. The German troops, even the SS troops made Hitler’s collaborators do the dirtiest work of exterminating the Polish and Jewish population. Hence this brutal massacre of the Polish and Jewish population as well as the Russian population too. This was led by the persons who are well known – Bandera, Shukhevich. It was these people who were made national heroes – that is the problem. And we are constantly told that nationalism and neo-Nazism exist in other countries as well. Yes, there are seedlings, but we uproot them, and other countries fight against them. But Ukraine is not the case. These people have been made into national heroes in Ukraine. Monuments to these people have been erected, they are displayed on flags, their names are shouted by crowds that walk with torches, as it was in Nazi Germany. These were the people who exterminated Poles, Jews and Russians. It is necessary to stop this practice and prevent the dissemination of this concept.
I say that Ukrainians are part of the one Russian people. They say, ”No, we are a separate people.“ Okay, fine. If they consider themselves a separate people, they have the right to do so, but not on the basis of Nazism, the Nazi ideology.
Tucker Carlson: Would you be satisfied with the territory that you have now?
Vladimir Putin: I will finish answering the question. You just asked a question about neo-Nazism and denazification.
Look, the President of Ukraine visited Canada. This story is well known, but is silenced in the Western countries: The Canadian parliament introduced a man who, as the speaker of the parliament said, fought against the Russians during the World War II. Well, who fought against the Russians during World War II? Hitler and his accomplices. It turned out that this man served in the SS troops. He personally killed Russians, Poles, and Jews. The SS troops consisted of Ukrainian nationalists who did this dirty work. The President of Ukraine stood up with the entire Parliament of Canada and applauded this man. How can this be imagined? The President of Ukraine himself, by the way, is a Jew by nationality.
Tucker Carlson: Really, my question is: What do you do about it? I mean, Hitler has been dead for eighty years, Nazi Germany no longer exists, and it’s true. So, I think, what you are saying, you want to extinguish or at least control Ukrainian nationalism. But how do you do that?
Vladimir Putin: Listen to me. Your question is very subtle.
And can I tell you what I think? Do not take offense.
Tucker Carlson: Of course!
Vladimir Putin: This question appears to be subtle, it is quite pesky.
You say Hitler has been dead for so many years, 80 years. But his example lives on. People who exterminated Jews, Russians and Poles are alive. And the president, the current president of today’s Ukraine applauds him in the Canadian Parliament, gives a standing ovation! Can we say that we have completely uprooted this ideology if what we see is happening today? That is what denazification is in our understanding. We have to get rid of those people who maintain this concept and support this practice and try to preserve it – that is what denazification is. That is what we mean.
Tucker Carlson: Right. My question is almost specific, it was, of course, not a defense of Nazism. Otherwise, it was a practical question. You don’t control the entire country, you don’t seem like you want to. So, how do you eliminate that culture, or an ideology, or feelings, or a view of history, in a country that you don’t control? What do you do about that?
Vladimir Putin: You know, as strange as it may seem to you, during the negotiations in Istanbul we did agree that – we have it all in writing – neo-Nazism would not be cultivated in Ukraine, including that it would be prohibited at the legislative level.
Mr. Carlson, we agreed on that. This, it turns out, can be done during the negotiation process. And there is nothing humiliating for Ukraine as a modern civilized State. Is any state allowed to promote Nazism? It is not, is it? That is it.
Tucker Carlson: Will there be talks? And why haven’t there been talks about resolving the conflict in Ukraine? Peace talks.
Vladimir Putin: They have been. They reached a very high stage of coordination of positions in a complex process, but still they were almost finalized. But after we withdrew our troops from Kiev, as I have already said, the other side (Ukraine) threw away all these agreements and obeyed the instructions of Western countries, European countries and the United States to fight Russia to the bitter end.
Moreover, the President of Ukraine has legislated a ban on negotiating with Russia. He signed a decree forbidding everyone to negotiate with Russia. But how are we going to negotiate if he forbade himself and everyone to do this? We know that he is putting forward some ideas about this settlement. But in order to agree on something, we need to have a dialog. Is not that right?
Tucker Carlson: Well, but you would not be speaking to the Ukrainian president, you would be speaking to the American president. When was the last time you spoke to Joe Biden?
Vladimir Putin: I cannot remember when I talked to him. I do not remember, we can look it up.
Tucker Carlson: You do not remember?!
Vladimir Putin: No, why? Do I have to remember everything? I have my own things to do. We have domestic political affairs.
Tucker Carlson: But he is funding the war that you are fighting, so I think that would be memorable?
Vladimir Putin: Well, yes, he funds, but I talked to him before the Special Military Operation, of course. And I said to him then, by the way – I will not go into details, I never do – but I said to him then: ”I believe that you are making a huge mistake of historic proportions by supporting everything that is happening there, in Ukraine, by pushing Russia away.“ I told him, told him repeatedly, by the way. I think that would be correct if I stop here.
Tucker Carlson: What did he say?
Vladimir Putin: Ask him, please. It is easier for you, you are a citizen of the United States, go and ask him. It is not appropriate for me to comment on our conversation.
Tucker Carlson: But you haven’t spoken to him since before February of 2022?
Vladimir Putin: No, we haven’t spoken. Certain contacts are been maintained though. Speaking of which, do you remember what I told you about my proposal to work together on a missile defense system?
Tucker Carlson: Yes.
Vladimir Putin: You can ask all of them. All of them are safe and sound, thank God. The former President, Condoleezza is safe and sound, and, I think, Mr. Gates, and the current Director of the Central Intelligence Agency, Mr. Burns, the then Ambassador to Russia, in my opinion, a very successful Ambassador. They were all witnesses to these conversations. Ask them.
Same here, if you are interested in what Mr. President Biden responded to me, ask him. At any rate, I talked to him about it.
Tucker Carlson: I am definitely interested. But from the other side it seems like it could devolve, evolve into something that brings the entire world into conflict, and could initiate a nuclear launch, and so why don’t you just call Biden and say “let’s work this out”?
Vladimir Putin: What’s there to work out? It’s very simple. I repeat, we have contacts through various agencies. I will tell you what we are saying on this matter and what we are conveying to the US leadership: ”If you really want to stop fighting, you need to stop supplying weapons. It will be over within a few weeks. That’s it. And then we can agree on some terms before you do that, stop.“
What’s easier? Why would I call him? What should I talk to him about? Or beg him for what? ”You’re going to deliver such and such weapons to Ukraine. Oh, I’m afraid, I’m afraid, please don’t.“ What is there to talk about?
Tucker Carlson: Do you think NATO was worried about this becoming a global war or nuclear conflict?
Vladimir Putin: At least that’s what they’re talking about. And they are trying to intimidate their own population with an imaginary Russian threat. This is an obvious fact. And thinking people, not philistines, but thinking people, analysts, those who are engaged in real politics, just smart people understand perfectly well that this is a fake. They are trying to fuel the Russian threat.
Tucker Carlson: The threat I think you were referring to is Russian invasion of Poland, Latvia – expansionist behavior. Can you imagine a scenario where you send Russian troops to Poland?
Vladimir Putin: Only in one case: if Poland attacks Russia. Why? Because we have no interest in Poland, Latvia or anywhere else. Why would we do that? We simply don’t have any interest. Its just threat mongering.
Tucker Carlson: Well, the argument, I know you know this, is that, well, he invaded Ukraine – he has territorial aims across the continent. And you are saying unequivocally, you don’t?
Vladimir Putin: It is absolutely out of the question. You just don’t have to be any kind of analyst, it goes against common sense to get involved in some kind of global war. And a global war will bring all of humanity to the brink of destruction. It’s obvious.
There are, certainly, means of deterrence. They have been scaring everyone with us all along: tomorrow Russia will use tactical nuclear weapons, tomorrow Russia will use that, no, the day after tomorrow. So what? These are just horror stories for people in the street in order to extort additional money from US taxpayers and European taxpayers in the confrontation with Russia in the Ukrainian theatre of war. The goal is to weaken Russia as much as possible.
Tucker Carlson: One of our senior United States senators from the State of New York, Chuck Schumer, said yesterday, I believe, that we have to continue to fund the Ukrainian effort or US soldiers, citizens could wind up fighting there. How do you assess that?
Vladimir Putin: This is a provocation, and a cheap provocation at that.
I do not understand why American soldiers should fight in Ukraine. There are mercenaries from the United States there. The biggest number of mercenaries comes from Poland, with mercenaries from the United States in second place, and mercenaries from Georgia in third place. Well, if somebody has the desire to send regular troops, that would certainly bring humanity on the brink of a very serious, global conflict. This is obvious.
Do the United States need this? What for? Thousands of miles away from your national territory! Don’t you have anything better to do?
You have issues on the border, issues with migration, issues with the national debt – more than 33 trillion dollars. You have nothing better to do, so you should fight in Ukraine? Wouldn’t it be better to negotiate with Russia? Make an agreement, already understanding the situation that is developing today, realizing that Russia will fight for its interests to the end. And, realizing this, actually return to common sense, start respecting our country and its interests and look for certain solutions. It seems to me that this is much smarter and more rational.
Tucker Carlson: Who blew up Nord Stream?
Vladimir Putin: You, for sure. (L a u g h i n g.)
Tucker Carlson: I was busy that day. I did not blow up Nord Stream.
Vladimir Putin: You personally may have an alibi, but the CIA has no such alibi.
Tucker Carlson: Do you have evidence that NATO or CIA did it?
Vladimir Putin: You know, I won’t get into details, but people always say in such cases: ”Look for someone who is interested“.
But in this case we should not only look for someone who is interested, but also for someone who has capabilities. Because there may be many people interested, but not all of them are capable of sinking to the bottom of the Baltic Sea and carrying out this explosion. These two components should be connected: who is interested and who is capable of doing it.
Tucker Carlson: But I am confused. I mean, that’s the biggest act of industrial terrorism ever and it’s the largest emission of CO₂ in history. Okay, so, if you had evidence and presumably, given your security services, your intel services, you would, that NATO, the US, CIA, the West did this, why wouldn’t you present it and win a propaganda victory?
Vladimir Putin: In the war of propaganda it is very difficult to defeat the United States because the United States controls all the world’s media and many European media. The ultimate beneficiary of the biggest European media are American financial institutions. Don’t you know that? So it is possible to get involved in this work, but it is cost prohibitive, so to speak. We can simply shine the spotlight on our sources of information, and we will not achieve results. It is clear to the whole world what happened, and even American analysts talk about it directly. It’s true.
Tucker Carlson: Yes. But here is a question you may be able to answer. You worked in Germany, famously. The Germans clearly know that their NATO partner did this, that they damaged their economy greatly – it may never recover. Why are they being silent about it? That is very confusing to me. Why wouldn’t the Germans say something about it?
Vladimir Putin: This also confuses me. But today’s German leadership is guided by the interests of the collective West rather than its national interests, otherwise it is difficult to explain the logic of their action or inaction. After all, it is not only about Nord Stream-1, which was blown up, and Nord Stream-2 was damaged, but one pipe is safe and sound, and gas can be supplied to Europe through it, but Germany does not open it. We are ready, please.
There is another route through Poland, called Yamal-Europe, which also allows for a large flow. Poland has closed it, but Poland pecks from the German hand, it receives money from pan-European funds, and Germany is the main donor to these pan-European funds. Germany feeds Poland to a certain extent. And they closed the route to Germany. Why? I don’t understand. Ukraine, to which the Germans supply weapons and give money.
Germany is the second sponsor after the United States in terms of financial aid to Ukraine. There are two gas routes through Ukraine. They simply closed one route, the Ukrainians. Open the second route and, please, get gas from Russia. They do not open it. Why don’t the Germans say: ”Look, guys, we give you money and weapons. Open up the valve, please, let the gas from Russia pass through for us.
We are buying liquefied gas at exorbitant prices in Europe, which brings the level of our competitiveness, and economy in general down to zero. Do you want us to give you money? Let us have a decent existence, make money for our economy, because this is where the money we give you comes from“. They refuse to do so. Why? Ask them. (Knocks on the table.) That is what it is like in their heads. Those are highly incompetent people.
Tucker Carlson: Well, maybe the world is breaking into two hemispheres. One with cheap energy, the other without it. And I want to ask you that, if we are now a multipolar world, obviously we are, can you describe the blocs of alliances? Who is in each side, do you think?
Vladimir Putin: Listen, you have said that the world is breaking into two hemispheres. A human brain is divided into two hemispheres: one is responsible for one type of activities, the other one is more about creativity and so on. But it is still one and the same head. The world should be a single whole, security should be shared, rather than meant for the ”golden billion“. That is the only scenario where the world could be stable, sustainable and predictable. Until then, while the head is split into two parts, it is an illness, a serious adverse condition. It is a period of a severe disease that the world is now going through.
But I think that, thanks to honest journalism — this work is akin to work of the doctors, this could somehow be remedied.
Tucker Carlson: Well, let’s just give one example — the US dollar, which has, kind of, united the world in a lot of ways, maybe not to your advantage, but certainly to ours. Is that going away as the reserve currency, the universally accepted currency? How have sanctions, do you think, changed the dollar’s place in the world?
Vladimir Putin: You know, to use the dollar as a tool of foreign policy struggle is one of the biggest strategic mistakes made by the US political leadership. The dollar is the cornerstone of the United States’ power. I think everyone understands very well that, no matter how many dollars are printed, they are quickly dispersed all over the world. Inflation in the United States is minimal. It is about 3 or 3.4 per cent, which is, I think, totally acceptable for the US. But they won’t stop printing. What does the debt of 33 trillion dollars tell us about? It is about the emission.
Nevertheless, it is the main weapon used by the United States to preserve its power across the world. As soon as the political leadership decided to use the US dollar as a tool of political struggle, a blow was dealt to this American power. I would not like to use any strong language, but it is a stupid thing to do, and a grave mistake.
Look at what is going on in the world. Even the United States’ allies are now downsizing their dollar reserves. Seeing this, everyone starts looking for ways to protect themselves. But the fact that the United States applies restrictive measures to certain countries, such as placing restrictions on transactions, freezing assets, etc., causes grave concern and sends a signal to the whole world.
What did we have here? Until 2022, about 80 per cent of Russia’s foreign trade transactions were made in US dollars and euros. US dollars accounted for approximately 50 per cent of our transactions with third countries, while currently it is down to 13 per cent. It was not us who banned the use of the US dollar, we had no such intention. It was the decision of the United States to restrict our transactions in US dollars. I think it is a complete foolishness from the point of view of the interests of the United States itself and its tax payers, as it damages the US economy, undermines the power of the United States across the world.
By the way, our transactions in Yuan accounted for about 3 per cent. Today, 34 per cent of our transactions are made in Rubles, and about as much, a little over 34 per cent, in Yuan.
Why did the United States do this? My only guess is self-conceit. They probably thought it would lead to a full collapse, but nothing collapsed. Moreover, other countries, including oil producers, are thinking of and already accepting payments for oil in yuan. Do you even realize what is going on or not? Does anyone in the United States realize this? What are you doing? You are cutting yourself off… all experts say this. Ask any intelligent and thinking person in the United States what the dollar means for the US? You are killing it with your own hands.
Tucker Carlson: I think that is a fair assessment. The question is what comes next? And maybe you trade one colonial power for another, much less sentimental and forgiving colonial power? Is the BRICS, for example, in danger of being completely dominated by the Chinese economy? In a way that is not good for their sovereignty. Do you worry about that?
Vladimir Putin: We have heard those boogeyman stories before. It is a boogeyman story. We are neighbours with China. You cannot choose neighbours, just as you cannot choose close relatives. We share a border of 1000 kilometers with them. This is number one.
Second, we have a centuries-long history of coexistence, we are used to it.
Third, China’s foreign policy philosophy is not aggressive, its idea is to always look for compromise, and we can see that.
The next point is as follows. We are always told the same boogeyman story, and here it goes again, though in a euphemistic form, but it is still the same bogeyman story: the cooperation with China keeps increasing. The pace at which China’s cooperation with Europe is growing is higher and greater than that of the growth of Chinese-Russian cooperation. Ask Europeans: aren’t they afraid? They might be, I do not know, but they are still trying to access China’s market at all costs, especially now that they are facing economic problems. Chinese businesses are also exploring the European market.
Do Chinese businesses have small presence in the United States? Yes, the political decisions are such that they are trying to limit their cooperation with China.
It is to your own detriment, Mr Tucker, that you are limiting cooperation with China, you are hurting yourself. It is a delicate matter, and there are no silver bullet solutions, just as it is with the dollar.
So, before introducing any illegitimate sanctions — illegitimate in terms of the Charter of the United Nations — one should think very carefully. For decision-makers, this appears to be a problem.
Tucker Carlson: So, you said a moment ago that the world would be a lot better if it were not broken into competing alliances, if there was cooperation globally. One of the reasons you don’t have that is because the current American administration is dead set against you. Do you think if there was a new administration after Joe Biden that you would be able to re-establish communication with the US government? Or does it not matter who the President is?
Vladimir Putin: I will tell you. But let me finish the previous thought. We, together with my colleague and friend President Xi Jinping, set a goal to reach 200 billion dollars of mutual trade with China this year. We have exceeded this level. According to our figures, our bilateral trade with China totals already 230 billion, and the Chinese statistics says it is 240 billion dollars.
One more important thing: our trade is well-balanced, mutually complementary in high-tech, energy, scientific research and development. It is very balanced.
As for BRICS, where Russia took over the presidency this year, the BRICS countries are, by and large, developing very rapidly.
Look, if memory serves me right, back in 1992, the share of the G7 countries in the world economy amounted to 47 per cent, whereas in 2022 it was down to, I think, a little over 30 per cent. The BRICS countries accounted for only 16 per cent in 1992, but now their share is greater than that of the G7. It has nothing to do with the events in Ukraine. This is due to the trends of global development and world economy that I mentioned just now, and this is inevitable. This will keep happening, it is like the rise of the sun — you cannot prevent the sun from rising, you have to adapt to it. How do the United States adapt? With the help of force: sanctions, pressure, bombings, and use of armed forces.
This is about self-conceit. Your political establishment does not understand that the world is changing (under objective circumstances), and in order to preserve your level — even if someone aspires, pardon me, to the level of dominance — you have to make the right decisions in a competent and timely manner.
Such brutal actions, including with regard to Russia and, say, other countries, are counterproductive. This is an obvious fact; it has already become evident.
You just asked me if another leader comes and changes something. It is not about the leader, it is not about the personality of a particular person. I had a very good relationship with, say, Bush. I know that in the United States he was portrayed as some kind of a country boy who does not understand much. I assure you that is not the case. I think he made a lot of mistakes with regard to Russia, too. I told you about 2008 and the decision in Bucharest to open the NATO’s doors to for Ukraine and so on. That happened during his presidency. He actually exercised pressure on the Europeans.
But in general, on a personal human level, I had a very good relationship with him. He was no worse than any other American, or Russian, or European politician. I assure you, he understood what he was doing as well as others. I had such personal relationships with Trump as well.
It is not about the personality of the leader, it is about the elites’ mindset. If the idea of domination at any cost, based also on forceful actions, dominates the American society, nothing will change, it will only get worse. But if, in the end, one comes to the awareness that the world has been changing due to objective circumstances, and that one should be able to adapt to them in time, using the advantages that the U.S. still has today, then, perhaps, something may change.
Look, China’s economy has become the first economy in the world in purchasing power parity; in terms of volume it overtook the US a long time ago. The USA comes second, then India (one and a half billion people), and then Japan, with Russia in the fifth place. Russia was the first economy in Europe last year, despite all the sanctions and restrictions. Is this normal, from your point of view: sanctions, restrictions, impossibility of payments in dollars, being cut off from SWIFT services, sanctions against our ships carrying oil, sanctions against airplanes, sanctions in everything, everywhere? The largest number of sanctions in the world which are applied – are applied against Russia. And we have become Europe’s first economy during this time.
The tools that the US uses don’t work. Well, one has to think about what to do. If this realization comes to the ruling elites, then yes, then the first person of the state will act in anticipation of what the voters and the people who make decisions at various levels expect from this person. Then maybe something will change.
Tucker Carlson: But you are describing two different systems. You say that the leader acts in the interests of the voters, but you also say that these decisions are not made by the leader – they are made by the ruling classes. You have run this country for so long, you have known all these American presidents. What are those power centers in the United States, do you think? And who actually makes the decisions?
Vladimir Putin: I don’t know. America is a complex country, conservative on the one hand, rapidly changing on the other. It’s not easy for us to sort it all out.
Who makes decisions in the elections – is it possible to understand this, when each state has its own legislation, each state regulates itself, someone can be excluded from the elections at the state level. It is a two-stage electoral system, it is very difficult for us to understand it.
Certainly there are two parties that are dominant, the Republicans and the Democrats, and within this party system, the centers that make decisions, that prepare decisions.
Then, look, why, in my opinion, after the collapse of the Soviet Union, such an erroneous, crude, completely unjustified policy of pressure was pursued against Russia? After all, this is a policy of pressure. NATO expansion, support for the separatists in the Caucasus, creation of a missile defense system – these are all elements of pressure. Pressure, pressure, pressure.
Then, dragging Ukraine into NATO is all about pressure, pressure, pressure. Why? I think, among other things, because excessive production capacities were created. During the confrontation with the Soviet Union, there were many centers created and specialists on the Soviet Union, who could not do anything else. It seemed to them, they convinced the political leadership: it is necessary to continue ”chiseling“ Russia, to try to break it up, to create on this territory several quasi-state entities and to subdue them in a divided form, to use their combined potential for the future struggle with China. This is a mistake, including the excessive potential of those who worked for the confrontation with the Soviet Union. It is necessary to get rid of this, there should be new, fresh forces, people who look into the future and understand what is happening in the world.
Look at how Indonesia is developing? 600 million people. Where can we get away from that? Nowhere, we just have to assume that Indonesia will enter (it is already in) the club of the world’s leading economies, no matter who likes or dislikes it.
Yes, we understand and are aware that in the United States, despite all the economic problems, the situation is still normal with the economy growing decently, the GDP is growing by 2.5 percent, if I am not mistaken.
But if we want to ensure the future, then we need to change our approach to what is changing. As I already said, the world would nevertheless change regardless of how the developments in Ukraine end. The world is changing. In the United States themselves, experts write that the United States are nonetheless gradually changing their position in the world, it is your experts who write that, I just read them. The only question is how this would happen – painfully and quickly or gently and gradually. And this is written by people who are not anti-American; they simply follow global development trends. That’s it.
And in order to assess them and change policies, we need people who think, look forward, can analyze and recommend certain decisions at the level of political leaders.
Tucker Carlson: I just have to ask. You have said clearly that NATO expansion eastward is a violation of the promise you were all made in the 1990s. It is a threat to your country. Right before you sent troops into Ukraine the Vice-President of the United States spoke at the Security Conference and encouraged the President of Ukraine to join NATO. Do you think that was an effort to provoke you into military action?
Vladimir Putin: I repeat once again, we have repeatedly, repeatedly proposed to seek a solution to the problems that arose in Ukraine after the 2014 coup d’etat through peaceful means. But no one listened to us. And moreover, the Ukrainian leaders who were under the complete US control, suddenly declared that they would not comply with the Minsk agreements, they disliked everything there, and continued military activity in that territory.
And in parallel, that territory was being exploited by NATO military structures under the guise of various personnel training and retraining centers. They essentially began to create bases there. That’s all.
Ukraine announced that the Russians were (a law was adopted) a non-titular nationality, while passing laws that limit the rights of non-titular nationalities in Ukraine. Ukraine, having received all these southeastern territories as a gift from the Russian people, suddenly announced that the Russians were a non-titular nationality in that territory. Is it normal? All this put together led to the decision to end the war that neo-Nazis started in Ukraine in 2014.
Tucker Carlson: Do you think Zelensky has the freedom to negotiate the settlement to this conflict?
Vladimir Putin: I don’t know the details, of course it’s difficult for me to judge, but I believe he has, in any case, he used to have. His father fought against the fascists, Nazis during World War II, I once talked to him about this. I said: “Volodya, what are you doing? Why are you supporting neo-Nazis in Ukraine today, while your father fought against fascism? He was a front-line soldier.” I will not tell you what he answered, this is a separate topic, and I think it’s incorrect for me to do so.
But as to the freedom of choice – why not? He came to power on the expectations of Ukrainian people that he would lead Ukraine to peace. He talked about this, it was thanks to this that he won the election overwhelmingly. But then, when he came to power, in my opinion, he realized two things: firstly, it is better not to clash with neo-Nazis and nationalists, because they are aggressive and very active, you can expect anything from them, and secondly, the US-led West supports them and will always support those who antagonize with Russia – it is beneficial and safe. So he took the relevant position, despite promising his people to end the war in Ukraine. He deceived his voters.
Tucker Carlson: But do you think at this point – as of February 2024 – he has the latitude, the freedom to speak with you or government directly, which would clearly help his country or the world? Can he do that, do you think?
Vladimir Putin: Why not? He considers himself head of state, he won the elections. Although we believe in Russia that the coup d’etat is the primary source of power for everything that happened after 2014, and in this sense, even today’s government is flawed. But he considers himself the president, and he is recognized by the United States, all of Europe and practically the rest of the world in such a capacity – why not? He can.
We negotiated with Ukraine in Istanbul, we agreed, he was aware of this. Moreover, the negotiation group leader, Mr. Arakhamia is his last name, I believe, still heads the faction of the ruling party, the party of the President in the Rada. He still heads the Presidential faction in the Rada, the country’s parliament, he still sits there. He even put his preliminary signature on the document I am telling you about. But then he publicly stated to the whole world: “We were ready to sign this document, but Mr. Johnson, then the Prime Minister of Great Britain, came and dissuaded us from doing this saying it was better to fight Russia. They would give everything needed for us to return what was lost during the clashes with Russia. And we agreed with this proposal.“ Look, his statement has been published. He said this publicly.
Can they return to this or not? The question is: do they want it or not?
Further on, President of Ukraine issued a decree prohibiting negotiations with us. Let him cancel that decree and that’s it. We have never refused negotiations indeed. We hear all the time: is Russia ready? Yes, we have not refused! It was them who publicly refused. Well, let him cancel his decree and enter into negotiations. We have never refused.
And the fact that they obeyed the demand or persuasion of Mr. Johnson, the former Prime Minister of Great Britain, seems ridiculous and very sad to me. Because, as Mr. Arakhamia put it: “We could have stopped these hostilities, this war a year and a half ago already. But the British persuaded us, and we refused this.” Where is Mr. Johnson now? And the war continues.
Tucker Carlson: That is a good question. Why did he do that?
Vladimir Putin: Hell knows. I don’t understand it myself. There was a general starting point. For some reason, everyone had the illusion that Russia could be defeated on the battlefield. Because of arrogance, because of a pure heart, but not because of a great mind.
Tucker Carlson: You have described the connection between Russia and Ukraine; you have described Russia itself, a couple of times as Orthodox – that is central to your understanding of Russia. What does that mean for you? You are a Cristian leader by your own description. So what effect does that have on you?
Vladimir Putin: You know, as I already mentioned, in 988 Prince Vladimir himself was baptized following the example of his grandmother, Princess Olga, and then he baptized his squad, and then gradually, over the course of several years, he baptized all the Rus. It was a lengthy process – from pagans to Christians, it took many years. But in the end, this Orthodoxy, Eastern Christianity, deeply rooted itself in the consciousness of the Russian people.
When Russia expanded and absorbed other nations who profess Islam, Buddhism and Judaism, Russia has always been very loyal to those people who profess other religions. This is her strength. This is absolutely clear.
And the fact is that the main postulates, main values are very similar, not to say the same, in all world religions I’ve just mentioned and which are the traditional religions of the Russian Federation, Russia. By the way, Russian authorities were always very careful about the culture and religion of those peoples who came into the Russian Empire. This, in my opinion, forms the basis of both security and stability of the Russian statehood – all the peoples inhabiting Russia basically consider it their Motherland.
If, say, people move over to you or to Europe from Latin America – an even clearer and more understandable example – people come, but yet they have come to you or to European countries from their historical homeland. And people who profess different religions in Russia consider Russia their Motherland, they have no other Motherland. We are together, this is one big family. And our traditional values are very similar. I’ve just mentioned one big family, but everyone has his/hers own family, and this is the basis of our society. And if we say that the Motherland and the family are specifically connected with each other, it is indeed the case, since it is impossible to ensure a normal future for our children and our families unless we ensure a normal, sustainable future for the entire country, for the Motherland. That is why patriotic sentiment is so strong in Russia.
Tucker Carlson: Can I say, the one way in which religions are different is that Christianity is specifically a non-violent religion. Jesus says “Turn the other cheek, don’t kill”. How can a leader who has to kill, of any country, how can a leader be a Christian? How do you reconcile that to yourself?
Vladimir Putin: It is very easy: when it comes to protecting oneself and one’s family, one’s homeland. We won’t attack anyone.
When did the developments in Ukraine start? Since the coup d’etat and the hostilities in Donbass began, that’s when they started. And we are protecting our people, ourselves, our homeland and our future.
As for religion in general.
You know, it’s not about external manifestations, it’s not about going to church every day or banging your head on the floor. It is in the heart. And our culture is so human-oriented. Dostoevsky, who is very well known in the West as the genius of Russian culture, Russian literature, spoke a lot about this, about the Russian soul.
After all, Western society is more pragmatic. Russian people think more about the eternal, about moral values. I don’t know, maybe you won’t agree with me, but Western culture is more pragmatic after all.
I’m not saying this is bad, it makes it possible for today’s “golden billion” to achieve good success in production, even in science, and so on. There’s nothing wrong with that, I’m just saying that we kind of look the same, but our minds are built a little differently.
Tucker Carlson: So do you see the supernatural at work? As you look out across what’s happening in the world now, do you see God at work? Do you ever think to yourself: these are forces that are not human?
Vladimir Putin: No, to be honest, I don’t think so. My opinion is that the development of the world community is in accordance with the inherent laws, and those laws are what they are. It’s always been this way in the history of mankind. Some nations and countries rose, became stronger and more numerous, and then left the international stage, losing the status they had accustomed to. There is probably no need for me to give examples, but we could start with Genghis Khan and the Horde conquerors, the Golden Horde, and then end with the Roman Empire.
It seems that there has never been anything like the Roman Empire in the history of mankind. Nevertheless, the potential of the barbarians gradually grew, as did their population. In general, the barbarians were getting stronger and began to develop economically, as we would say today. This eventually led to the collapse of the Roman Empire and the regime imposed by the Romans. However, it took five centuries for the Roman Empire to fall apart. The difference with what is happening now is that all the processes of change are happening at a much faster pace than in Roman times.
Tucker Carlson: So when does the AI empire start do you think?
Vladimir Putin: (Laughing) You are asking increasingly more complicated questions. To answer them, you need to be an expert in big numbers, big data and AI.
Mankind is currently facing many threats. Due to genetic researches, it is now possible to create a superhuman, a specialized human being – a genetically engineered athlete, scientist, military man.
There are reports that Elon Musk has already had a chip implanted in the human brain in the USA.
Tucker Carlson: What do you think of that?
Vladimir Putin: Well, I think there’s no stopping Elon Musk, he will do as he sees fit. Nevertheless, you need to find some common ground with him, search for ways to persuade him. I think he’s a smart person, I truly believe he is. So you need to reach an agreement with him because this process needs to be formalized and subjected to certain rules.
Humanity has to consider what is going to happen due to the newest developments in genetics or in AI. One can make an approximate prediction of what will happen. Once mankind felt an existential threat coming from nuclear weapons, all nuclear nations began to come to terms with one another since they realized that negligent use of nuclear weaponry could drive humanity to extinction.
It is impossible to stop research in genetics or AI today, just as it was impossible to stop the use of gunpowder back in the day. But as soon as we realize that the threat comes from unbridled and uncontrolled development of AI, or genetics, or any other fields, the time will come to reach an international agreement on how to regulate these things.
Tucker Carlson: I appreciate all the time you’ve given us. I just want to ask you one last question and it’s about someone who is very famous in the United States, probably not here. Evan Gershkovich who is the Wall Street Journal reporter, he is 32 and he’s been in prison for almost a year. This is a huge story in the United States and I just want to ask you directly without getting into details of your version of what happened, if as a sign of your decency you’ll be willing to release him to us and we’ll bring him back to the United States?
Vladimir Putin: We have done so many gestures of goodwill out of decency that I think we have run out of them. We have never seen anyone reciprocate to us in a similar manner. However, in theory, we can say that we do not rule out that we can do that if our partners take reciprocal steps.
When I talk about the “partners”, I, first of all, refer to special services. Special services are in contact with one another, they are talking about the matter in question. There is no taboo to settle the issue. We are willing to solve it, but there are certain terms being discussed via special services channels. I believe an agreement can be reached.
Tucker Carlson: So, typically, I mean, this stuff has happened for, obviously, centuries. One country catches other spy within its borders and trades it for one of its own intel guys in other country. I think what makes it, and it’s not my business, but what makes it different is that this guy is obviously not a spy, he is a kid and maybe he was breaking a law in some way but he is not a superspy and everybody knows that and he has been held hostage and exchange, which is true, with respect, it’s true and everyone knows it’s true. So maybe he is in a different category, maybe it’s not fair to ask for somebody else in exchange for letting him out. Maybe it degrades Russia to do that.
Vladimir Putin: You know, you can give different interpretations to what constitutes a “spy”, but there are certain things provided by law. If a person gets secret information, and does that in a conspiratorial manner, then this is qualified as espionage. And that is exactly what he was doing. He was receiving classified, confidential information, and he did it covertly. Maybe he had been implicated in that, someone could have dragged him into that, maybe he did that out of carelessness, or on his own initiative. Considering the sheer facts, this is qualified as espionage. The fact has been proven, as he was caught red-handed when he was receiving this information. If it had been some far-fetched excuse, some fabrication, something not proven, it would have been a different story then. But he was caught red-handed when he was secretly getting confidential information. What is it, then?
Tucker Carlson: But are you suggesting he was working for the US government or NATO? Or he was just a reporter who was given material he wasn’t supposed to have? Those seem like very different, very different things.
Vladimir Putin: I don’t know who he was working for. But I would like to reiterate that getting classified information in secret is called espionage, and he was working for the U.S. special services, some other agencies. I don’t think that he was working for Monaco, as Monaco is hardly interested in getting that information. It is up to the special services to come to an agreement. Some groundwork has been laid. There are people who, in our view, are not connected with special services.
Let me tell you a story about a person serving a sentence in an allied country of the U.S. That person, due to patriotic sentiments, eliminated a bandit in one of the European capitals. During the events in the Caucasus, do you know what he [bandit] was doing? I don’t want to say that, but I will do it anyway. He was laying our soldiers, taken prisoner, on the road and then he drove his car over their heads. What kind of a person is that? Can he be even called a human? But there was a patriot who eliminated him in one of the European capitals. Whether he did that of his own volition or not, that is a different question.
Tucker Carlson: Evan Gershkovich, that’s a completely different, I mean, this is a thirty-two year old newspaper reporter.
Vladimir Putin: He committed something different.
Tucker Carlson: He is just a journalist
Vladimir Putin: He is not just a journalist, I reiterate, he is a journalist who was secretly getting confidential information.
Yes, it is different, but still, I am talking about other people who are essentially controlled by the U.S. authorities wherever they are serving a sentence. There is an ongoing dialogue between the special services. This has to be resolved in a calm, responsible and professional manner. They are keeping in touch, so let them do their work.
I do not rule out that the person you referred to, Mister Gershkovich, may return to his motherland. By the end of the day, it does not make any sense to keep him in prison in Russia. We want the U.S. special services to think about how they can contribute to achieving the goals our special services are pursuing. We are ready to talk. Moreover, the talks are underway, and there have been many successful examples of these talks crowned with success. Probably this is going to be crowned with success as well, but we have to come to an agreement.
Tucker Carlson: I hope you’ll let him out. Mister President, thank you!
Vladimir Putin: I also want him to return to his homeland at last. I am absolutely sincere. But let me say once again, the dialogue continues. The more public we render things of this nature, the more difficult it becomes to resolve them. Everything has to be done in a calm manner.
Tucker Carlson: I wonder if that’s true with the war though also, I mean, I guess I want to ask one more question which is, and maybe you don’t want to say so for strategic reasons, but are you worried that what’s happening in Ukraine could lead to something much larger and much more horrible and how motivated are you just to call the US government and say “let’s come to terms”?
Vladimir Putin: I already said that we did not refuse to talk. We are willing to negotiate. It is the Western side, and Ukraine is obviously a satellite state of the U.S. It is evident. I do not want you to take it as if I am looking for a strong word or an insult, but we both understand what is happening.
The financial support, 72 billion U.S. dollars, was provided. Germany ranks second, then other European countries come. Dozens of billions of U.S. dollars are go to Ukraine. There is a huge influx of weapons.
In this case you should tell the current Ukrainian leadership to stop and come to the negotiating table, rescind this absurd decree. We did not refuse.
Tucker Carlson: Well, sure, you have already said it — I didn’t think you meant it as an insult — because you have already said, correctly, it’s been reported that Ukraine was prevented from negotiating peace settlement by the former British prime-minister acting on behalf of the Biden administration. Of course, it’s our satellite, big countries control small countries, that’s not new. And that is why I asked about dealing directly with the Biden administration, which is making these decisions, not president Zelensky of Ukraine.
Vladimir Putin: Well, if the Zelensky administration in Ukraine refused to negotiate, I assume that they did it under the instruction from Washington. If Washington believes it to be the wrong decision, let it abandon it, let it find a delicate excuse so that no one is insulted, let it come up with a way out. It was not us who made this decision, it was them, so let them go back on it. That is it.
However, they made the wrong decision and now we have to look for a way out of this situation, to correct their mistakes. They did it so let them correct it themselves. We support this.
Tucker Carlson: So, I just want to make sure I am not misunderstanding what you are saying — and I don’t think that I am — I think you are saying you want a negotiated settlement to what’s happening in Ukraine.
Vladimir Putin: Right. And we made it, we prepared a huge document in Istanbul that was initialed by the head of the Ukrainian delegation. He affixed his signature to some of the provisions, not to all of it. He put his signature and then he himself said: “We were ready to sign it and the war would have been over long ago, eighteen months ago. However, Prime Minister Johnson came, talked us out of it and we missed that chance.” Well, you missed it, you made a mistake, let them get back to that, that is all. Why do we have to bother ourselves and correct somebody else’s mistakes?
I know one can say it is our mistake, it was us who intensified the situation and decided to put an end to the war that started in 2014 in Donbas, as I have already said, by means of weapons. Let me get back to further in history, I already told you this, we were just discussing it. Let us go back to 1991 when we were promised that NATO would not be expanded, to 2008 when the doors to NATO opened, to the Declaration of State Sovereignty of Ukraine declaring Ukraine a neutral state. Let us go back to the fact that NATO and US military bases started to appear on the territory of Ukraine creating threats for us. Let us go back to coup d’état in Ukraine in 2014. It is pointless though, isn’t it? We may go back and forth endlessly. But they stopped negotiations. Is it a mistake? Yes. Correct it. We are ready. What else is needed?
Tucker Carlson: Do you think it is too humiliating at this point for NATO to accept Russian control of what was two years ago Ukrainian territory?
Vladimir Putin: I said let them think how to do it with dignity. There are options if there is a will.
Up until now there has been the uproar and screaming about inflicting a strategic defeat on Russia on the battlefield. Now they are apparently coming to realize that it is difficult to achieve, if possible at all. In my opinion, it is impossible by definition, it is never going to happen. It seems to me that now those who are in power in the West have come to realize this as well. If so, if the realization has set in, they have to think what to do next. We are ready for this dialogue.
Tucker Carlson: Would you be willing to say, ”Congratulations, NATO, you won?“ And just keep the situation where it is now?
Vladimir Putin: You know, it is a subject matter for the negotiations no one is willing to conduct or, to put it more accurately, they are willing but do not know how to do it. I know they want. It is not just I see it but I know they do want it but they are struggling to understand how to do it. They have driven the situation to the point where we are at. It is not us who have done that, it is our partners, opponents who have done that. Well, now let them think how to reverse the situation. We are not against it.
It would be funny if it were not so sad. This endless mobilization in Ukraine, the hysteria, the domestic problems – sooner or later it all will result in an agreement. You know, this will probably sound strange given the current situation but the relations between the two peoples will be rebuilt anyway. It will take a lot of time but they will heal.
I will give you very unusual examples. There is a combat encounter on the battlefield, here is a specific example: Ukrainian soldiers got encircled (this is an example from real life), our soldiers were shouting to them: “There is no chance! Surrender yourselves! Come out and you will be alive!” Suddenly the Ukrainian soldiers were screaming from there in Russian, perfect Russian, saying: “Russians do not surrender!” and all of them perished. They still identify themselves as Russian.
What is happening is, to a certain extent, an element of a civil war. Everyone in the West thinks that the Russian people have been split by hostilities forever. No. They will be reunited. The unity is still there.
Why are the Ukranian authorities dismantling the Ukranian Orthodox Church? Because it brings together not only the territory, it brings together our souls. No one will be able to separate the soul.
Shall we end here or there is anything else?
Tucker Carlson: Thank you, Mr. President.
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The House Select Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government on Monday revealed yet another facet of the Biden Administration’s sprawling censorship system that targeted dissenting books. It appears that, as with social media companies, it succeeded in getting the company not to promote disfavored books.
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[This article was originally published in December 2023.]
As the Israeli attack on Gaza, Lebanon and Syria intensifies, the U.S. public watch on aghast. A new poll finds that Americans support a permanent ceasefire by a more than 2:1 ratio (including the vast majority of Democrats and a plurality of Republicans).
And yet, despite this, only 4% of elected members of the House support even a temporary ceasefire, and the United States continues to veto U.N. resolutions working towards ending the violence. Walter Hixson, a historian concentrating on U.S. foreign relations, told MintPress News:
Unfettered support for Israel and the lobby consistently puts the United States at odds with international human rights organizations and the vast majority of nations over Israel’s war crimes and blatant violations of international law. The current U.N. vote on a ceasefire in Gaza [which the U.S. vetoed] is just the latest example.”
Here, Hixson is referring to the pro-Israel lobby, a loose connection of influential groups that spend millions on pressure campaigns, outreach programs, and donations to American politicians, all with one goal in mind: making sure the United States supports the Israeli government’s policies full stop, including backing Israeli expansion, blocking Palestinian statehood and opposing a growing boycott divestment and sanctions movement (BDS) at home.
Internationally, Israel has lost virtually all its support. But it still has one major backer: the United States government. Part of this is undoubtedly down to the extraordinary lengths the lobby goes to secure backing, including showering U.S. politicians with millions of dollars in contributions. In this investigation, MintPress News breaks down the top ten currently serving politicians who have taken the most pro-Israel cash since 1990.
#1 Joe Biden, $4,346,264
The largest recipient of Israel lobby money is President Joe Biden. From the beginning of his political career, Biden, according to his biographer Branko Marcetic, “established himself as an implacable friend of Israel,” spending his Senate career “showering Israel with unquestioning support, even when its behavior elicited bipartisan outrage.” The future president was a key figure in securing record sums of U.S. aid to the Jewish state and helped block a 1998 peace proposal with Palestine.
The support for Israeli policies has continued into the present, with his administration insisting that there are “no red lines” that it could cross that would cause it to lose American support. In essence, Biden has given Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu a carte blanche to break any rules, norms or laws he wishes to.
This has included ethnic cleansing and war crimes such as the bombing of schools, hospitals and places of worship using banned weapons like white phosphorous munitions. The arms Israel is using come supplied directly by the U.S. In November, the Biden administration rubber-stamped another $14.5 billion military aid package to Israel, ensuring the carnage would continue.
For his staunch support, Biden has received more than $4.3 million from pro-Israel groups since 1990.
#2 Robert Menéndez, $2,483,205
The New Jersey senator has received nearly $2.5 million in contributions and, in the wake of the Hamas attack on October 7, has been a key figure in drumming up support for Israel. Describing Operation Al-Aqsa Flood as “barbaric atrocities” that were an “affront to humankind itself,” Menéndez gave an impassioned speech on the Senate floor where he addressed Biden directly, stating:
Mr. President, in the face of unspeakable evil, we must not mince words. We must not waver in our resolve. Every single one of us in this chamber has a moral responsibility to speak out — unequivocally and unapologetically — as we stand shoulder-to-shoulder with Israel and her people. I’ve been staunchly devoted to this cause for 31 years in Congress.”
He went on to claim that Israel and the United States are intrinsically linked and were founded on the same principles.
Menéndez also courted controversy after he demanded that the U.S. help Israel “wipe Hamas from the face of the Earth,” even as Israel was leveling Gaza by carpet bombing it.
In October, he co-sponsored a Senate resolution “standing with Israel against terrorism” that passed unanimously, without dissent.
#3 Mitch Mcconnell, $1,953,160
The Senate Minority Leader is one of the most powerful politicians in America and has used his influence to attempt to force through legislation criminalizing BDS. He has described the peaceful tactic as “an economic form of anti-Semitism that targets Israel.”
McConnell is known to be very close to Prime Minister Netanyahu and supported a bill condemning the United Nations and calling on the U.S. to continue to veto any U.N. resolution critical of Israel. Last month, he strongly opposed steps taken towards applying basic U.S. and international law on weapons shipments to Israel.
Under current U.S. law, Washington is duty-bound to stop supplying arms to nations committing serious human rights violations. McConnell, however, said that applying these standards to Israel would be “ridiculous,” explaining that:
Our relationship with Israel is the closest national security relationship we have with any country in the world, and to condition, in effect, our assistance to Israel to their meeting our standards it seems to me is totally unnecessary… This is a democracy, a great ally of ours, and I do not think we need to condition the support that hopefully we will give to Israel very soon.”
McConnell has received nearly $2 million from pro-Israel groups.
#4 Chuck Schumer, $1,725,324
Next on the list is McConnell’s Democratic opponent, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, who had taken over $1.7 million from Israel lobbying groups. In recent weeks, Schumer has taken the lead in steering the public conversation away from Israel’s crimes and towards a supposed rise in anti-Semitism across America. “To us, the Jewish people, the rise in anti-semitism is a crisis. A five-alarm fire that must be extinguished,” the New York Senator said, adding that “Jewish-Americans are feeling singled out, targeted and isolated. In many ways, we feel alone.”
The idea that anti-Semitic hate is exploding across the United States comes largely from a report published by the Anti-Defamation League (ADL), which claims that anti-Semitic incidents have risen by 337% since October 7. Buried in the small print, however, is the fact that 45% of these “anti-Semitic” incidents the ADL has tallied are pro-Palestine, pro-peace marches calling for ceasefires, including ones led by Jewish groups like If Not Now or Jewish Voice for Peace. (MintPress recently published an investigation into the ADL’s fudged numbers and its history of working for Israel and spying on progressive American groups.)
Schumer, however, has deliberately tried to conflate opposition to Israel’s bombardment of its neighbors with anti-Jewish racism, writing:
Today, too many Americans are exploiting arguments against Israel and leaping toward a virulent antisemitism. The normalization and intensifying of this rise in hate is the danger many Jewish people fear most.”
He has even gone so far as to label Dave Zirin – a Jewish journalist who supports justice for Palestinians – as an anti-Semite.
As Senate Majority Leader, Schumer has used his influence to push through military aid packages to Israel, even as it carries out actions many have labeled war crimes, writing that:
One of the most important tasks we must finish is taking up and passing a funding bill to ensure we, as well as our friends and partners in Ukraine, Israel, and the Indo-Pacific region, have the necessary military capabilities to confront and deter our adversaries and competitors.”
He added that “Senators should be prepared to stay in Washington until we finish our work” and that they should expect to work “long days and nights, and potentially weekends in December,” until the deal was done.
#5 Steny Hoyer, $1,620,294
The former House Majority Leader is one of Israel’s most vocal supporters in the House of Representatives. Hoyer has demanded that “Congress must immediately and unconditionally fund Israel,” thereby giving the Netanyahu administration the green light to do whatever it pleases.
An ardent Zionist, the Maryland native explained that he believes it is:
…[T]he world’s duty that set aside a land, a land that Israel has occupied for millennia, and said: this is your place of security, this is your place of sovereignty, this is your place of safety.”
Hoyer speaks at the Jewish Community Relations Council’s Stand with Israel event on October 13, 2023. Photo | House.gov
Earlier this month, Hoyer also voted in favor of a bill stating that anti-Zionism is inherently anti-Semitic, thereby declaring all criticism of Israel to be invalid and racist.
Hoyer has received more than $1.6 million in donations from pro-Israel lobbying groups.
#6 Ted Cruz, $1,299,194
Over his career, the Texas Republican has received $1.3 million from the Israel lobby. After October 7, Cruz sprang into action, announcing that it was “critical” that every American supports Israel “100 percent.” “Israel is going to be demonized by Democrats in the current corrupt corporate media. We need to make clear that Hamas is using human shields and Israel has a right to defend itself,” Cruz said, hitting many of the classic pro-Israel talking points.
Cruz also went above and beyond in his defense of Israeli crimes in a bizarre interview with Breaking Points’ Ryan Grim. When asked if he opposes Israeli officials suggesting a nuclear attack on Gaza, Cruz replied:
I condemn nothing that the Israeli government is doing. The Israeli government does not target civilians; they target military targets… There is no military on the face of the planet, including the U.S. military, that goes to the lengths that the Israeli military goes to avoid civilian casualties.”
When confronted with statements from the IDF directly refuting his point, noting that their focus is on damage, not precision, Cruz flipped his answer around, replying, “Yes, damage to Hamas, to terrorists.” And when Grim gave him more statements from senior IDF officials explicitly contradicting his previous statement, Cruz retorted, “That’s simply not true. They are targeting the terrorists,” thereby defending the IDF even from itself.
#7 Ron Wyden, $1,279,376
Senator Ron Wyden (D—OR) has long been one of Israel’s staunchest advocates in Washington, supporting President Trump’s decision to move the U.S. Embassy to Jerusalem and opposing BDS in all its forms.
In 2017, he co-sponsored a bill that made it a federal crime, punishable by a maximum prison sentence of 20 years, for Americans to participate in or even encourage boycotts against Israel and illegal Israeli settlements.
On the settlements, he was one of the most vigorous opponents of UN Security Council Resolution 2334, which describes them as a “flagrant violation” of international law.
For his troubles, Wyden has received $1,279,376 from pro-Israel groups.
#8 Dick Durbin, $1,126,020
In some ways, Dick Durbin owes his political career to the Israel lobby. In 1982, the then-obscure college professor benefitted enormously from AIPAC money to defeat incumbent Paul Findley, a strong proponent of the Palestinian people.
The Illinois Democrat has called for immediate military aid to Israel and co-signed a Senate resolution reaffirming Washington’s support for Israel’s “right to self-defense” in the wake of October 7.
Despite this, he has angered some in the pro-Israel crowd by supporting President Obama’s initiatives to reduce tensions with Iran and has now come out in favor of a ceasefire in Gaza.
#9 Josh Gottheimer, $1,109,370
Despite only being in office since 2017, Gottheimer has already received more than $1.1 million from pro-Israel lobbying groups. The New Jersey Congressman has served as a pro-Israeli attack dog in Washington, co-sponsoring the bill equating opposition to Israeli government policy with anti-Semitism and introducing legislation to block and criminalize boycotting the state of Israel.
In the wake of October 7, Gottheimer has attempted to cancel a number of public figures. Earlier this month, for instance, he tried to pressure Rutgers University into calling off an event on Palestine featuring former CNN anchor Marc Lamont Hill and organizer and journalist Nick Estes, both of whom support Palestinian rights and statehood.
Gottheimer has even caused rifts within his own party, attacking the small, progressive wing of Democrats who have failed to toe the line on Israel and Hamas. “Last night, 15 of my Democratic colleagues voted AGAINST standing with our ally Israel and condemning Hamas terrorists who brutally murdered, raped, and kidnapped babies, children, men, women, and elderly, including Americans. They are despicable and do not speak for our party,” he wrote, making a number of highly incendiary and questionable assertions.
#10 Shontel Brown, $1,028,686
Perhaps no other political case reveals the power of the Israel lobby than Shontel Brown. In 2021, Nina Turner, a democratic socialist, national co-chair of Bernie Sanders’ 2020 election campaign, and an outspoken advocate for justice in Palestine, ran for election in Ohio’s 11th congressional district. Her opponent was the little-known but strongly pro-Israel Brown.
Brown received more pro-Israel money than any other politician nationwide during that two-year election cycle, helping her overcome a double-digit polling deficit to defeat Turner. Over $1 million was spent plastering Cleveland with attack ads against Turner. In her acceptance speech, Brown praised Israel and later thanked the Jewish community for “help[ing] me get over the finish line”
Since then, she has supported Israeli actions in Gaza and rejected the idea of Israel as an apartheid state, writing:
Let’s be clear: Israel is not an apartheid state. Any mischaracterizations otherwise attempt to delegitimize Israel, a robust democracy, and will only serve to fuel rising antisemitism. I will always advocate for a strong U.S.-Israel relationship founded on our shared values.”
Check out the bag dropping ahead of tomorrow's #OH11 primary. DMFI has spent more opposing Nina Turner than nearly all other outside spending combined. pic.twitter.com/2QC8py0sWu
The most well-known and likely most influential group in the loose coalition referred to as the Israel lobby is AIPAC. With a staff of around 400 people and annual revenues that frequently top over $100 million, the organization is a huge, conservative force in American politics, flooding the system with gigantic amounts of money. Worse still, the group does not disclose the sources of its funding.
To make America’s friendship with Israel so robust, so certain, so broadly based, and so dependable that even the deep divisions of American politics can never imperil that relationship and the ability of the Jewish state to defend itself.”
Yet Israel is widely recognized by international bodies such as the United Nations and human rights groups like Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch as an apartheid state. It has near total control over the Gaza Strip, which, even before the latest attack, was an “unlivable” “open-air prison.” It is this state and these injustices that AIPAC and others seek U.S. support for.
American intransigence on Israel has helped make it a pariah nation, one that constantly has to veto U.N. resolutions and has lost its voting rights at UNESCO.
Not only does it give more money to Republicans than Democrats, but AIPAC also floods conservative Democrats’ coffers with funds, especially when they are up against progressive, pro-Palestine challengers.
In 2022, it spent $2.3 million in a (failed) bid to stop leftist Summer Lee from being elected to Congress. However, it fared better in North Carolina, where $2 million was given to Valeria Foushee over Nida Allam, the director of Sanders’ 2016 campaign. Meanwhile, $1.2 million in donations to Henry Cuellar might have been the deciding factor in an extremely close win over progressive activist Jessica Cisneros in Texas’ 28th congressional district. And a number of prominent Michigan Democrats have come forward claiming that AIPAC offered them $20 million each to primary Rashida Tlaib, the only Palestinian-American in Congress.
“Certainly the lobby can influence elections, but it doesn’t win them all,” Hixson, the author of “Architects of Repression: How Israel and Its Lobby Put Racism, Violence and Injustice at the Center of US Middle East Policy,” said, adding:
It targets the aforementioned House progressives every two years but can’t always dictate the outcome of localized elections. They do better with broader canvasses; hence, no one in the Senate other than Bernie takes them on. When it comes to Israel, most American politicians are craven hypocrites.”
Yet Sanders’ recent refusal to endorse a permanent ceasefire (a position held by virtually the entire world) has earned him AIPAC’s praise.
— AIPAC | Text ISRAEL to 24722 | #StandWithIsrael (@AIPAC) December 10, 2023
Is the Tail Wagging the Dog?
As such, AIPAC acts as a bulwark against progressive political change. In such a divisive political environment, few political issues unite Democrats and Republicans, as well as Israel and shutting down anti-establishment figures. As Hixson told MintPress:
Other than a handful of progressives (Bernie Sanders, Rashida Tlaib, Ilhan Omar, etc.), the U.S. Congress invariably gives the lobby everything it wants, namely massive regular funding for Israeli militarism and an endless series of resolutions condemning Israel’s international foes and domestic critics.”
The question that arises from this is why? Why does Israel always seem to receive full support from Washington? Is the lobby really that effective? Why do so many U.S. politicians go along with it? Mazin Qumsiyeh, a professor at Bethlehem University, characterized Washington as full of amoral careerists, telling MintPress that:
They [Senators and Congresspersons] do not buy the Zionist argument. It is strictly personal interest: money and good media coverage and avoiding blackmail, as the Zionists have their dirty secrets which they could expose if they step out of line.”
Yet Israel also serves a vital purpose for the American empire. The region is not only geographically strategic but home to the world’s largest resources of hydrocarbons. Washington has always made it a top priority to control the flow of oil around the world, and Israel helps them do this. Militarily, Israel serves as a conduit the U.S. can work through, farming out its dirty work to Tel Aviv. It, therefore, represents an unofficial and beneficial “51st state.” As Joe Biden said in 1986 and has regularly repeated, Israel is the best investment the U.S. makes. “Were there not an Israel, the United States of America would have to invent an Israel to protect our interests in the region,” he added.
Many other nations or industries have lobbied in Washington, D.C. But few have proven to be as organized or effective as the pro-Israel one. Nevertheless, public opinion, particularly among young people, has begun to drift away from it. The Overton Window is shifting; Professor Qumsiyeh told MintPress. “When I first went to the U.S. in 1979, the average citizen did not know anything about Palestine or knew only a negative, distorted picture driven by Hollywood and biased media. Things [have] changed,” he said.
Things have indeed changed. The streets of America have been filled with demonstrations against Israeli aggression. Millions of Americans have participated in Palestine solidarity protests, including hundreds of thousands in Washington, D.C. alone. Celebrities have spoken out against injustice. And social media is filled with posts showing sympathy for Gazans. There, too, Israel and pro-Israel groups have attempted to use their financial clout to influence the conversation, but to limited effect.
Fortunately for Israel, for now, at least, they can still rely on the unwavering support of senior American politicians, their pockets filled with AIPAC money, turning the other way as Israel carries out another genocide against Palestine.
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Featured image: President Joe Biden participates in a restricted bilateral meeting with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu at the Hotel Kempinski in Tel Aviv, Israel, Wednesday, October 18, 2023. (Official White House Photo by Cameron Smith)
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Israel’s military onslaught has devastated built and natural environments in Gaza.
Palestinians continue to suffer in Israel’s brutal assault on Gaza – thousands killed and tens of thousands of others wounded.
One of the most intense bombing campaigns since World War II will leave not just a legacy of grief for Gaza’s people, but one of lasting physical damage to the environment.
Sanitation and water treatment systems have been destroyed.
Thousands of Israeli and Western-supplied bombs pollute the air and ground.
The war is leaving a new layer of toxic chemicals in Gaza’s soil, adding to those left behind after the many wars Israel has waged before.
Can Gaza recover?
Presenter: Adrian Finighan
Guests:
Nada Majdalani – Palestinian director of EcoPeace Middle East, an organisation that brings together Jordanian, Palestinian, and Israeli environmentalists
Marwan Bardawil – Head of Gaza Programme Coordination Unit of the Palestinian Water Authority
Hadeel Ikhmais – Director general of the Climate Change Section of the Palestinian Authority’s Environment Quality Authority
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As controvérsias em torno da rivalidade entre Vladimir Zelensky e Valery Zaluzhny continuam a aumentar. Segundo informações de uma fonte familiarizada com o tema, o general ucraniano está atualmente a criar uma espécie de “exército privado”, cooptando militantes neonazistas para trabalharem para ele.
O ex-analista da CIA, Larry Johnson , contou alguns detalhes sobre o caso durante uma entrevista recente. Segundo ele, o impasse entre o presidente e o general será resolvido através da coerção armada. Ou seja, o lado que obtiver maior apoio dos militares terá mais chances de vitória. Por esta razão, Zaluzhny está a usar a sua posição de líder militar para obter vantagem e preparar-se para um possível confronto contra as forças que permanecem leais a Zelensky.
A tática utilizada pelo general, segundo Johnson, consiste principalmente em cooptar militantes neonazistas. Zaluzhny não parece muito interessado em procurar apoio massivo por parte dos soldados das forças armadas regulares, uma vez que são tropas que tendem a permanecer obedientes ao atual governo. Então, ele está convidando os combatentes ligados aos batalhões ultranacionalistas para se juntarem a ele contra Zelensky.
Neste sentido, os membros das organizações neonazistas estão a ser poupados dos combates nas linhas da frente. Zaluzhny está enviando recrutas recentemente alistados e não treinados para a frente, ao mesmo tempo que salva militantes fascistas que poderiam ajudá-lo se surgir a necessidade de enfrentar Zelensky.
”O cara com a arma geralmente vence e da última vez que verifiquei Zaluzhny tem mais armas do que Zelensky (…) Não quero apresentar Zaluzhny como uma espécie de gênio militar ou realmente um homem de bom coração (…) [Ele é] um pouco canalha [que] abraça a ideologia neonazista (…) Ele tem sido muito cuidadoso para não inserir as tropas mais ideologicamente motivadas – as unidades Azov e Kraken – nas linhas de frente onde costumam morrer, porque ele quer preservá-los. Em vez disso, ele está enviando as tropas regulares pra servirem de bucha de canhão”, disse Larry.
As palavras de Larry são fundamentadas por algumas evidências recentes de tal processo. Por exemplo, em 2 de fevereiro, Andrey Stempitsky,, conhecido membro do grupo neonazista “Right Sector”, publicou uma foto com Zaluzhny nas redes sociais. Na imagem, ele entrega ao general uma carteira de identidade honorária que o certifica como “primeiro integrante” de uma brigada do Right Sector. Ao fundo da imagem é possível ver uma bandeira com uma foto do colaborador nazista ucraniano Stepan Bandera – considerado um “herói nacional” pelo regime.
Outros especialistas também interpretaram a postagem de Stempitsky como uma provocação contra Zelensky. Acredita-se que Zaluzhny esteja demonstrando força, deixando claro que conta com o apoio das tropas, podendo se voltar contra o governo e, se necessário, combatê-lo e derrotá-lo. E isto não é realmente “novo”, uma vez que sempre foi precisamente o papel dos grupos neonazistas na Ucrânia.
As organizações nacionalistas foram incorporadas nas forças do Ministério da Administração Interna em 2014 e desde então têm lutado constantemente pelos interesses da Junta Maidan. Os neonazistas foram os principais agressores contra o povo étnico russo em Donbass e também trabalharam em importantes batalhas contra as forças russas desde o início da operação militar especial. Contudo, deve ser enfatizado que o seu papel sempre foi maior do que o de meros soldados.
Na prática, os neonazistas são os verdadeiros “guarda-costas” do regime. Eles foram fortalecidos ao longo dos anos, a fim de ganhar força suficiente para proteger os interesses originais do Golpe do Maidan. Como são doutrinados no ódio anti-russo, são vistos como tropas mais leais ao Maidan do que as próprias forças armadas ucranianas. Por outras palavras, se o governo ucraniano eventualmente decidir negociar com a Rússia ou começar simplesmente a desobedecer aos patrocinadores ocidentais, espera-se que os neonazis tas derrubem o governo e restaurem o projeto original de Maidan.
Na situação atual, existe um cenário óbvio de desilusão ocidental com Zelensky. O Presidente ucraniano continua a lutar contra a Rússia e não desobedeceu a nenhuma ordem até agora, mas parece cada vez mais fraco, incapaz de liderar o país, não sendo mais útil para os interesses ocidentais na Ucrânia. Portanto, é natural que os neonazistas sejam mobilizados para proteger tais interesses.
Zaluzhny é uma das figuras públicas que mais se destacou na “corrida” para substituir Zelensky. O Ocidente espera que este processo seja concluído de forma pacífica, mas se for necessário enfrentar Zelensky através da violência, Zaluzhny terá o apoio dos militantes neonazistas – que estão mais preparados e bem armados do que o atual exército ucraniano”.
Obviamente, qualquer cenário de conflito interno será catastrófico para a Ucrânia. Com o país militarmente enfraquecido e à beira da derrota absoluta, estas fricções internas apenas prejudicam ainda mais Kiev no campo de batalha. Mas para as elites belicistas ocidentais, uma mudança na liderança ucraniana parece ser a última oportunidade para recuperar o apoio público à política de escalada da ajuda militar.
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To end the war in the Middle East and the continued slaughter of thousands of innocent civilians in Gaza, Israel must pay reparations to the families of the 600,000 Palestinian victims of the 1948 Naqba, whose then assets were stolen by Jewish, displaced, immigrant refugees from all over Europe subsequent to the defeat of National Socialism, in 1945 Germany.
Those same immigrant refugees were subsequently paid substantial reparations from the German government, each year, and have continued to date. The Claims Conference representing Jewish survivors has pursued reparations from Germany since 1951, and has secured more than $90 billion in payments, subsequently, for the benefit of those who had lost families, homes, businesses and other assets, as a result of theft, expropriation by the state, and war.
Why has the state of Israel, then, not paid reparations to the indigenous Palestinians whose homes and assets it expropriated by threat of violence to indigenous Arabs in villages throughout Palestine, (as in Deir Yassin) in the run-up to the unilateral Declaration of Independence for an independent state of Israel, in 1948?
Since that time, not only did Israel expropriate Palestinian homes and businesses, but it has also received billions upon billions of American tax monies, authorised by a U.S. House of Representatives, in Congress, that is apparently beholden to the Israel lobby, AIPAC, one of the most powerful pressure groups that determines US foreign policy both in the Middle East and elsewhere. This lobby is composed of millions of both evangelical Christian Zionists and Jewish Zionists, resident in the US, who all believe in the literal word of the Christian/Judeo Bible.
Overall, the state of Israel has received more money, aid, grants and interest free loans from both the US and the community of nations, than any other state in the world. Notwithstanding this astonishing fact, there are now 5 million dispossessed Palestinian Arabs still living as refugees under a violent occupation.
Whilst there is no equivalence in numbers, 600,000: 6,000,000 I.e. one tenth, there is every equivalence in substantive fact, justice, humanity and morality. The state of Israel must pay reparations now, to every family whose homes and assets it expropriated illegally by violence.
If not, there will never be peace in the Holy Land but will bring nuclear war to the entire world.
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Hans Stehling is a regular contributor to Global Research.
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US President Joe Biden is facing the most difficult election campaign of his life. His opponent, former President Donald Trump is leading in the polls, and most analysts expect that Trump will win in November 2024 by a landslide against Biden.
Even most Democrats doubt Biden could win, and many Democrats have even gone so far as to suggest he withdraw from the race, and let another person take a shot at winning.
In the American football jargon of the NFL, the “Hail Mary” pass is a long thrown football by the quarterback, when the team is about to lose, and only a miracle catch and touchdown could turn into a win.
Biden is facing such a situation in his 2024 presidential re-election campaign. Most Democrats disapprove of his policy in the Gaza war. Younger voters overwhelmingly disapprove of his support for the Israeli genocide in Gaza.
American voters know that the weapons Israel uses to carry out war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide are supplied by the US Biden administration, and paid for the hard-working American tax payer.
From coast to coast, Biden’s poll numbers were way down before October 7, and now are at the lowest point. Michigan is a key state that Biden must win in order to be re-elected, but right now he is losing Michigan.
Michigan has a high concentration of Arab Americans, and they have promised not to vote for Biden because of his refusal to ask for a ceasefire, and the unbridled flow of weapons to Israel even though the flow is in violation of State Department rules which prevent weapons going to any country which is liable to use them in violation of human rights.
Jews make up about 2% of the US population, and they are divided on the Gaza War. We have seen Jewish activists protesting against the Biden policy in Gaza. African Americans have voiced opposition to Biden because of Gaza. They equate the racial injustice their communities had suffered, and some continue to suffer, in the US with the racist policy in Israel which treats Jews as deserving of human rights, but deny Palestinians their most basic rights. African Americans are on the side of oppressed people, not the oppressor. They recall Nelson Mandela when he said, “We will not be free until the Palestinian people are free.”
But, Biden still has time to pull off a miraculous win with his version of a “Hail Mary” pass.
Biden would call for an immediate ceasefire in Gaza, with an exchange of hostages for prisoners held in Israel without trial. Why would Israel agree to that? Because Biden could shut down the weapons flow, adhering to existing State Department rules that weapons will not be shipped to countries engaged in humanitarian violations, which means holding Israel to the same standards as all the other countries on earth.
Biden could organize an international conference between the Palestinian representatives, the Arab League, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Jordan, the US, and Israel designing a reasonable proposal to implement the existing UN resolution calling for a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The conference would outline a time table toward a full Palestinian state.
Biden could get a commitment from Hamas, Hezbollah and Iran that they will cease any attacks on Israel during the peace process with a time frame attached.
Hamas has said they do not seek the extermination of the Jewish people, but are fighting for the freedom of Palestine.
Iran has stated they are fighting for the freedom of Palestine, and they will respect any peace deal the Palestinians will accept.
Hezbollah is fighting for the freedom of Palestine, but also they are resisting the Israeli military occupation of a piece of Lebanese land.
Israel would need to relinquish the Shebaa Farms in Lebanon in return for a lasting piece on their northern border.
If, Biden were to lead the initiative to bring peace to the Middle East, he would not only win the US election in November, but he would likely win the Noble Peace Prize, which Obama won for doing nothing.
The UN and many humanitarian and human rights organizations have labeled Israel as an Apartheid state, and that was long before the Gaza war began. Those same groups have added the crime of genocide to the list of complaints against Israel, who Biden calls America’s strongest ally in the Middle East, and the only democracy in the Middle East.
Israel is not a democracy and does not share American values. A democratic nation does not hold half of their population under brutal occupation and siege for decades. America values include freedom, justice, and giving each person a fair chance to succeed.
Many Palestinians and Arabs have migrated in the past to the US, and have lived the “American Dream”. Many of those migrants started with nothing, and ended up owning a home, putting their kids through college, and enjoying a life of freedom from oppression and racism.
When they stepped off the boat in the US, they found a job, worked hard, obeyed the laws, and respected their neighbor’s rights, just as they expected their neighbors to respect their rights. That is the foundation of the American lifestyle: work hard, pay your taxes, and obey the laws.
The Palestinians in the Occupied West Bank and Gaza hate the US foreign policy which is designed to prevent them any freedom or human rights. Despite the US being the only force on earth that could improve their lives, and refuses to do so, the Palestinians still love the concept of the “American Dream”. That dream is the Palestinian dream as well, but the Oval Office prevents the chance at such a life of success and accomplishment.
A two-state solution, and a lasting peace in Israel and Palestine makes the Middle East and the entire world more stable. Israeli citizens will win as much as the Palestinians in a peace deal. Biden would win his election, and Americans would be able to be proud of their freedom, values and the “American Dream”.
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Blackdot has recently examined the claim that Yemen’s Ansar Allah plans to cut off 99% of the world’s internet following the circulation of the news on different social media platforms, and eventually refuted it and confirmed its falsity.
Claim: A ‘Houthi’ Attack on Red Sea Fiber Optics Cables?
On December 24, several platforms claimed that an Ansar Allah-affiliated Telegram channel shared a photo of the seabed that contains submarine cables that connect several regions of the world and supply them with internet.
The photo was captioned:
“There are maps of international cables connecting all regions of the world through the sea. It seems that Yemen is in a strategic location, as internet lines that connect entire continents — not only countries—pass near it.”
Once news platforms and users obtained the photo, claims were made accusing the Yemeni Armed Forces of threatening to cut off the world’s internet supply in support of Gaza amid the Israeli genocide, and the US’ targeting of Yemen in support of “Israel”.
Tracing back to the source of the news, it was found that the Middle East Media Research Institute was behind the spread of the claim, an American organization that has been explicitly pro-‘Israel’.
Map of communications cables network near Yemen, February 7, 2020. (Social Media)
Nothing to Back It
The Middle East Media Research Institute is the only original source that kickstarted the frenzy, while other social media platforms only circulated the piece with no substantial evidence that proves its legitimacy, primarily proving its fallacy.
The second indicator was the absence of a tangible connection between the Telegram channel and Ansar Allah, as well as the absence of an official statement from their side. The news solely relied on a theory that was meant to stir tensions.
The third indicator was the direct rejection of the claim itself by the Ministry of Telecommunications and Information Technology of Yemen. Only two days after the American research institute made its claims, the Yemeni ministry released a statement denying the accusations and asserting that Yemen intends to keep the cables secure.
Therefore, this rids the initial claim of any validity.
Press Release Issued by the Ministry of Telecommunications and Information Technology, on the Submarine Cables- Republic of Yemen- Sana’a pic.twitter.com/wRgNi6dekA
In response to the decision to designate the Ansar Allah as a Global Terrorist, the head of the movement’s Negotiating Envoy and top official, Mohammad Abdul-Salam said that the US has used the designation for “political purposes.”
He slammed the decision, emphasizing that it “will not deter [Yemen] from our steadfast support for the Palestinian people.”
The official underlined that the decision will have minimal to “no effectiveness on the ground,” adding that it will only “strengthen [Ansar Allah’s] commitment to supporting” Palestine.
Ansar Allah’s Politburo released a statement responding to the decision saying that the classification “is ironically amusing, coming from the global state of terrorism.” The committee said that its decision is “an honorary badge,” highlighting the group’s “supportive stance toward the Palestinian people.”
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First published on March 27, 2021
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The top-down reorganization of the world economy by a cabal of technocratic corporativists, led by the group around the Davos World Economic Forum– the so-called Great Reset or UN Agenda 2030– is no future proposal. It is well into actualization as the world remains in insane lockdown for a virus. The hottest investment area since onset of the coronavirus global lockdowns is something called ESG investing.
This highly subjective and very controlled game is dramatically shifting global capital flows into a select group of “approved” corporate stocks and bonds. Notably it advances the dystopian UN Agenda 2030 or the WEF Great Reset agenda. The development is one of the most dangerous and least understood shifts in at least the past century.
The UN “sustainable economy” agenda is being realized quietly by the very same global banks which have created the financial crises in 2008. This time they are preparing the Klaus Schwab WEF Great Reset by steering hundreds of billions and soon trillions in investment to their hand-picked “woke” companies, and away from the “not woke” such as oil and gas companies or coal.
What the bankers and giant investment funds like BlackRock have done is to create a new investment infrastructure that picks “winners” or “losers” for investment according to how serious that company is about ESG—Environment, Social values and Governance.
For example a company gets positive ratings for the seriousness of its hiring gender diverse management and employees, or takes measures to eliminate their carbon “footprint” by making their energy sources green or sustainable to use the UN term. How corporations contribute to a global sustainable governance is the most vague of the ESG, and could include anything from corporate donations to Black Lives Matter to supporting UN agencies such as WHO.
The crucial central goal of ESG strategists is to create a shift to inefficient and costly alternative energy, the Zero Carbon promised utopia. It is being driven by the world’s major financial institutions and central banks. They have created a dazzling array of organizations to drive their green investing agenda.
In 2013, well before the coronavirus, the major Wall Street bank, Morgan Stanley, created its own Institute for Sustainable Investing. This was soon expanded in 2015 when Morgan Stanley joined the Steering Committee of the Partnership for Carbon Accounting Financials (PCAF). On its website the they state,
“PCAF is based upon the Paris Climate Agreement’s position that the global community should strive to limit global warming to 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels and that society should decarbonize and reach net zero emissions by 2050.”
By 2020 the PCAF had more than 100 banks and financial institutions including ABN Amro, Nat West, Lloyds Bank, Barclays, Bank of America, Citi Group, CIBC, Danske Bank and others. Several of the PCAF member banks have been indicted in money laundering cases. Now they sense a new role as virtue-models to change the world economy, if we are to believe the rhetoric. Notably, former Bank of England Governor, Mark Carney is an “Observer” or consultant to the PCAF.
In August 2020 the PCAF published a draft standard outlining a proposed approach for global carbon accounting. This means the bankers are creating their own accounting rules for how to rate or value a company’s carbon footprint or green profile.
The Central Role of Mark Carney
Mark Carney is at the center of reorganizing world finance to back the UN 2030 green agenda behind the WEF Davos Great Reset, where he is a member of the Board of Trustees. He also is Adviser to the UN Secretary General as United Nations Special Envoy for Climate Action. He has described the PCAF plan as follows:
“To achieve net zero we need a whole economy transition – every company, every bank, every insurer and investor will have to adjust their business models, develop credible plans for the transition and implement them. For financial firms, that means reviewing more than the emissions generated by their own business activity. They must measure and report the emissions generated by the companies they invest in and lend to. PCAF’s work to standardise the approach to measuring financed emissions is an important step to ensuring that every financial decision takes climate change into account.”
As Governor of the Bank of England Carney played a key role getting world central banks behind the Green Agenda of the UN 2030 scheme. The major central banks of the world, through their umbrella Bank for International Settlements (BIS) in Basle, created a key part of the growing global infrastructure that is steering investment flows to “sustainable” companies and away from those like oil and gas companies it deems “unsustainable.”
When then-Bank of England Governor Mark Carney was head of the BIS’ Financial Stability Board (FSB) he established something called Task-force on Climate-related Financial Disclosure (TCFD) in 2015.
The central bankers of the FSB nominated 31 people to form the TCFD. Chaired by billionaire Michael Bloomberg, it included in addition to BlackRock, JP MorganChase; Barclays Bank; HSBC; Swiss Re, the world’s second largest reinsurance; China’s ICBC bank; Tata Steel, ENI oil, Dow Chemical, mining giant BHP and David Blood of Al Gore’s Generation Investment LLC.
Anne Finucane, the Vice Chair of the Bank of America, a member of both the PCAF and the TCFD, noted,
“we are committed to ensuring that climate-related risks and opportunities are properly managed within our business and that we are working with governments and markets to accelerate the changes required… climate change presents risks to the business community, and it is important for companies to articulate how these risks are being managed.”
The Bank of America vice chair describes how they assess risks in its real estate loan portfolio by assessing, “acute physical risk analysis on a sample portfolio of Bank of America residential mortgages across the US Each property was given a score based on the level of risk associated with 12 potential hazards: tornado, earthquake, tropical cyclone, hailstorm, wildfire, river flood, flash flood, coastal flood, lightning, tsunami, volcano, and winter storm.”
As well, the banks’ investment “risk” in oil and gas as well as other industrial sectors is reviewed using the criteria of Carney’s TCFD. All risks are defined as related to CO2, despite the fact there is no conclusive scientific proof that manmade CO2 emission is about to destroy our planet by global warming. Rather evidence of solar activity suggests we are entering an unstable cooling period, Grand Solar Minimum. That’s of no concern to the financial interests who stand to reap trillions in the coming decade.
Another key part of the financial preparation for the Great Reset, the fundamental transformation from a high-energy intensity economy to a low and economically inefficient one, is the Sustainability Accounting Standards Board (SASB).
SASB says it “provides a clear set of standards for reporting sustainability information across a wide range of issues… “ This sounds reassuring until we look at who makes up the members of the SASB that will give the Climate-friendly Imprimatur. Members include, in addition to the world’s largest fund manager, BlackRock (more than $7 trillion under management), also Vanguard Funds, Fidelity Investments, Goldman Sachs, State Street Global, Carlyle Group, Rockefeller Capital Management, and numerous major banks such as Bank of America and UBS. Many of these are responsible for the 2008 global financial collapse.
What is this framework group doing? According to their website, “Since 2011, we have has been working towards an ambitious goal of developing and maintaining sustainability accounting standards for 77 industries.”
Where this is all going is to create a web of globally-based financial entities who control combined wealth including insurance and pension funds into what they claim to be worth $100 trillion. They are setting the rules and will define a company or even a country by the degree of carbon emission they create.
If you are clean and green, you potentially get investment.
If you are deemed a carbon polluter as the oil, gas and coal industries are deemed today, the global capital flows will disinvest or avoid funding you.
The immediate target of this financial cabal is the backbone of the world economy, the oil and gas industry along with coal. [It has also geopolitical and strategic implications].
Hydrocarbons Under Attack
The immediate target of this financial cartel is the backbone of the world economy, the oil, coal and natural gas sector. Oil industry analysts predict that over the next five years or less investment flows into the world’s largest energy sector will fall dramatically. “Given how central the energy transition will be to every company’s growth prospects, we are asking companies to disclose a plan for how their business model will be compatible with a net zero economy,” BlackRock’s chairman and CEO Larry Fink wrote in his 2021 letter to CEOs. Blackrock is the world’s largest investment group with over $7 trillion to invest. Another BlackRock officer told a recent energy conference, “where BlackRock goes, others will follow.”
“To continue to attract capital, portfolios have to be built around core advantaged assets – low-cost, long-life, low carbon-intensive barrels,” said Andrew Latham, Vice President, Global Exploration at WoodMac, an energy consultancy.
The Biden Administration is already making good on his pledge to phase out oil and gas by banning new leases in Federal lands and offshore and the Keystone XL oil pipeline. The oil and gas sector and its derivatives such as petrochemicals are at the heart of the world economy. The 50 largest oil and gas companies in the world, including both state-owned and publicly traded companies, recorded revenues of about $5.4 trillion in 2015.
As a new Biden Administration pushes their ideological opposition to so-called fossil fuels, the world will see a precipitous decline in oil and gas investment. The role of the Davos globalists and the ESG financial players are out to guarantee that.
And the losers will be us.
Energy prices will skyrocket as they did during the recent Texas blizzards. The cost of electricity in industrial countries will become prohibitive for manufacturing industry. But rest well. This is all part of the ongoing Great Reset and its new doctrine of ESG investing.
In 2010 the head of Working Group 3 of the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, Dr Otmar Edenhofer, told an interviewer, “…one must say clearly that we redistribute de facto the world’s wealth by climate policy. One has to free oneself from the illusion that international climate policy is environmental policy. This has almost nothing to do with environmental policy anymore…” The WEF Great Reset is not simply a big idea of Klaus Schwab reflecting on the economic devastation of the coronavirus. It has been long planned by the money masters.
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F. William Engdahl is strategic risk consultant and lecturer, he holds a degree in politics from Princeton University and is a best-selling author on oil and geopolitics, exclusively for the online magazine “New Eastern Outlook” where this article was originally published.
He is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization.
Featured image is by Dennis Schroeder / NREL
Seeds of Destruction: Hidden Agenda of Genetic Manipulation
Author Name: F. William Engdahl
ISBN Number: 978-0-937147-2-2
Year: 2007
Pages: 341 pages with complete index
List Price: $25.95
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This skilfully researched book focuses on how a small socio-political American elite seeks to establish control over the very basis of human survival: the provision of our daily bread. “Control the food and you control the people.”
This is no ordinary book about the perils of GMO. Engdahl takes the reader inside the corridors of power, into the backrooms of the science labs, behind closed doors in the corporate boardrooms.
The author cogently reveals a diabolical world of profit-driven political intrigue, government corruption and coercion, where genetic manipulation and the patenting of life forms are used to gain worldwide control over food production. If the book often reads as a crime story, that should come as no surprise. For that is what it is.
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First published on October 23, 2023
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Introduction
War, on anything other than a localised dispute level, is a contrived and preplanned event based on ulterior motive.
In the era of globalisation, war is used to create a distraction from something of more lasting significance which the protagonists want to introduce under cover of the smoke and fire dominatingimagery and rhetoric of the battleground.
Something that will further enslave a large body of humanity to conform to the desired end game – and at a much faster rate than would otherwise prove possible.
War is also motivated by the desirability of an economic upturn to the fortunes of the military industrial complex, and, of course, as a harbinger of chaos.
Chaos is a vital factor in inducing traumatised populations to call for a big brother saviour to end the conflict.
The conflict that these same ‘saviour’ promoting elite control agents have had a major part in starting in the first place.
Given that world events are politically and economically manipulated to give ever greater power to ever fewer institutions and those who run them, ‘enemies of the people’ are easily identified.
However, the difference between a 21st century enemy and an enemy of previous eras, is that the 21st century version uses advanced psychological manipulation as the main weapon of an increasingly virtual armoury.
Today’s public enemy no. 1 – is a master of deception.
Grasping this means recognising that we have a new dimension to get to grips with in order to develop a strategy able to lay bare this deception and to explode its psychological hold over the better part of humanity.
This can only be done by those who possess the foresight and awareness which enables them to identify the behaviour patterns and motivations common to the chief operatives behind the process of human enslavement.
It includes recognising the main causal elements behind the mass hypnosis of humanity. The inducing of a state of mind (and being) which leads good people ‘not to act’ when everything around them instinctively demands taking immediate action.
On further scrutinising this dire state of affairs, it becomes apparent that there is something jamming the broader survival instinct of a great swathe of the human population.
By ‘survival state,’ I mean more than somehow managing to stay alive in a crisis where one’s physical being is at risk.The state which is jammed is not this, it is at the psychic and spiritual level.
That state which instinctively gives one a sense of what is right and what is wrong – and a connectedness with others as well as with the natural environment which nurtures us.
When this connected state is healthy, we instantly feel outraged that any part of this collective living entity of which we are a part, is under threat from the egregious acts of other human beings.
But when it is not healthy – when it is sick – this instinctual outrage fails to cut in. Instead, the predominant emotion is one of withdrawal and passive self-preservation. And it is this retreat into a self-interested cul-de-sac of indifference to the fate of the family of man and nature – which is the real pandemic of our time.
I have described in previous articles how the techno-industrial digitalised-god of mass abstraction, coupled to its promise of ‘a culture of convenience’, has played a large part in drawing mankind away from making any effort to connect to its deeper nature, to respond to the call of a higher goal and guiding soul.
A selfish preoccupation with personal preference is accompanied by an indulgence in essentially cosmetic concerns. And this comes at the very time when the world is being torn apart by pre-planned and harshly enforced divisions that are vampiring human values and setting the stage for the central control system to become fully despotic.
Those able to afford the false luxury of selfish self-interest at a time like this, brutally stand-out as prime examples of a complete breakdown of humanitarian and spiritual sensitivities which provide life with its true resonance and real meaning.
What we have to do in order to get somewhere in dealing with this all pervading crisis, is to pin-point the source and nature of this great deception being perpetrated on a largely non-resistant mankind.
Not just the technology – but that which stands behind the tech and which has hypnotised living beings into following its poisonous surveillance and control programme.
Here, once we look deeply enough, we find the anti-life agenda which belongs to that category of human sicknesses we know as psychotic, psychopathic and sadistic.
This is a cult persuasion. It is the predominant position held by the rump of world ‘leaders’ today.
Their predominant state of being, no less. The younger ones have been trained by Klaus Schwab and his henchmen to be impenetrable and immune to human feelings. This is considered an imperative in the cause of the full techno-digital take over of daily life.
So our job is to understand this. Not to consign it to a box labelled ‘sickness of the 2%’ and put on the windowsill to be forgotten. It is up to us to acknowledge our part in accepting and allowing this cult siege of life on earth.
We, the people, are at least 90% of the problem. At each historical point, when conditions offered the chance to break the dark spell, we opted out. We failed to take action and take control of our destinies as fellow human beings who value truth, wisdom and justice above all else.
The Role of the World Economic Forum
We instead allowed the red carpet to be rolled out for WEF ‘Young leaders’ and other psychotic power seekers to do their worst. Helped along by billionaire ego maniacs, corporate kings, queens and vulture bankers.
And if a brave group should rise up and block-off the centre of repressive power, as in Canada for example, then ‘we the people’s’ applause is fulsome.
However, on an individual basis most say “Well done them!” but nevertheless revert to an impassive state of isolation, consigning the potentially life changing event to the same box on the window mantlepiece, while ruing the missed opportunity to rise-up as one and turn the tide of history.
It is undoubtedly the case that each of these ‘non-uprisings’ is a gift to our dark enslavers. Each clampdown which follows is more pervasive and more brutal than the last.
The subsequent fear, anxiety and confusion that comes with this, is the fuel which the cult needs to maintain its oppressive c regime.
This is not idle talk. Those who worship at the alter of Baphomet pledge to ensure their monster master will be well fed. Masonic temples exist within the British House of Parliament. Wherever ambition involves trampling on others to achieve desired aims, oppressive forces are involved.
Washington DC, Canberra (capital of Australia), and the Vatican in Rome are architecturally designed according to “Satanic symbolism” that embraces and worships money and power as the supreme goal of life. The City of London ‘square mile’ adopts this same obsession and no doubt Wall Street does too – and other such centres of unrestrained Mammon worship.
The deep state operatives could not achieve their global enforcement regime without a direct link tocentres of dark energy. Those most determined to be top dog will go to any lengths to achieve their ends.
So what is it that keeps mankind on its knees to those who freely indulge in continuous acts of murder?
Fear? Incredulity? Too much comfort? Cynical satisfaction with the ‘bargain slavery of the day’?
Something of each, no doubt. But more than all put together, it is my contention that the key is lack of self-belief. And self-belief does not mean ‘a big ego’, quite the opposite. It means knowing one is responding to that which offers guidance at the deepest level of one’s being.
Actions which come from this source are the only actions that will finally destroy the perpetrators of deep evil. There is no other answer to achieving the emancipation of mankind. There is no other force capable of deflating and defeating the globalist vagabonds whose manifest life hating villainy spreads – almost unchecked – throughout a war-torn world today.
For Some of Us, Spiritualty May Be The Answer
Our true work, here and now, is to strengthen this bond we each have with our Creator and thereby to become properly prepared spiritual warriors, primed for confrontation with that which intends to destroy us and all trace of that Divine Spark which stirs our souls and makes us into real Human Beings.
Nurturing this spark to grow into a never dimming fire – this is our true challenge today. The call upon us all that will be the true catalyst to cast out the parasites and bring about the birth of a New Civilization.
Courage, dear friends, courage. Victory is ours if we truly want it – and are ready to fight for it.
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Julian Rose is an early pioneer of UK organic farmer, a writer, broadcaster and international activist. He is author of three books, the most recent of which is ‘Overcoming the Robotic Mind’. Go to his website for further information www.julianrose.info. He is a regular contributor to Global Research.
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First published on December 18, 2023
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The global pandemic preparedness accord (‘pandemic treaty’) currently being put in place by the World Health Organization (WHO) will pave the way for “a fascist approach to societal management.” The beneficiaries will be unscrupulous corporations and investors whom the COVID‐19 response served well. This will result in the loss of human rights and individual freedom.
So says Dr David Bell, a clinical and public health physician with a PhD in population health and former WHO scientific and medical officer. The treaty represents a terrifying power grab that, if successful, will give the WHO a central directing role and monopoly power in global health governance.
As currently drafted, the treaty will hand the WHO the authority to order measures, including significant financial contributions by individual states, lockdowns, travel restrictions, forced medical examinations and mandatory vaccinations during a public health emergency of its own declaring.
The WHO will have sole and extensive power to declare Public Health Emergencies of International Concern (PHEIC) for any potential or real threat for extended areas, whether these threats are biological, climate or environment related. And it will do so without proper proof and solely decide measures and medical substances to be imposed on the public without informed consent.
Its powers will also include the official censorship of information, including free speech — views opposing the official narrative put out by the WHO — and it will be accountable to no national parliament or be limited by any constitutional safeguards.
A group of prominent lawyers, doctors and concerned citizens have written to Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Minister of Health and Family Welfare Shri Mansukh L Mandaviya urging them to reject the WHO’s global pandemic treaty. The signatories are listed at the end of this article, and the 10-page letter can be accessed in full with all relevant links and references on the Awaken India website: WHO Pandemic Treaty Ultra Vires of the Constitution).
The WHO released a Zero Draft of the WHO CA+ (this ‘pandemic treaty’ is now officially known as an ‘accord’) with 38 Articles on 1 February 2023 and, subsequently, another draft with 41 Articles on 2 June 2023. The accord marks a fundamental change in how the WHO will function. It seeks secretively, behind closed doors, sweeping powers under its director general.
The signatories make clear that, under the proposed accord, the WHO can, at will, call a pandemic, declare a PHEIC and then take over the authority of national governments to detain citizens, restrict their travel, require them to have vaccine passports (forced testing and vaccination) and increase social media censorship. The accord would also operate as a ‘framework convention’ that’s on-going, year after year, indefinitely. It facilitates a dictatorship role for the WHO as it moves to acquire unfettered power.
Two instruments, the accord itself and amendments to the International Health Regulations (IHR) 2005, are designed to operate in parallel to give draconian powers to the WHO. Both texts irremediably entail the transfer to the WHO of the power to threaten health freedom, thereby representing a fundamental threat to national, medical and bodily autonomy.
In their letter, the authors state that the WHO is an external, unelected body, which may not and cannot be appointed to such a dictatorship position. During the COVID-19 event, the WHO’s role in facilitating medical tyranny was clear to see.
It advocated enforced lockdowns, which destroyed the livelihoods of millions in India and across the world and created a surge in mental health problems. It shut down schools, putting back the education of a generation. It promoted incompletely tested and unapproved vaccines under EUA (Emergency Use Authorisation) that despite the claims of ‘safe and effective’ where nothing of the sort and caused a sharp rise in spike protein-induced heart and brain disease.
If adopted at the 77th World Health Assembly in May 2024 by a simple majority vote, the ‘pandemic treaty’ will come into force within 12 months for all countries, unless a country proactively files rejections or reservations within a 10-month period.
The letter to the prime minister and the health minister states that the accord and those pushing it are:
“Manifestly violative of Fundamental Rights of the citizens of India and, therefore, Ultra Vires of the Indian Constitution. In their very intent, they cancel the fundamental right to bodily autonomy and integrity, through mandating medical procedures, coercion and further grossly illegal acts.”
The letter adds:
“This is a breathtaking and terrifying onslaught on fundamental civil liberties. It must be understood as fundamental, that the negation of bodily integrity of any human being means the loss of all human rights.”
In making its point, the letter refers to the Nuremberg Code (1947) by stating:
“The consent of the human subject is absolutely essential. The International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights resumed this ban against unintentional experimentation in its 1966 text, which states: no one may be subjected without his consent to medical or scientific experiment.”
It also references the Geneva statement for doctors (1948):
“I will respect the autonomy and dignity of my patient. I will not use my medical knowledge to infringe human rights and civil liberties, even under force. I will keep absolute respect for human life, from conception. I will consider my patient’s health as my first concern.”
The signatories note that there is little alternative but to jettison the WHO from national life and implore the prime minister and the health minister to act to uphold the sovereignty of India and the rights of every citizen.
They add that unelected, unaccountable and largely unknown delegates from 194 countries meet in Geneva during World Health Assembly meetings, as they did in 2022 when they adopted amendments to the IHR. The process is fraught with secrecy, autocracy and impending tyranny, blatantly devoid of any transparent, democratic process.
These country delegates are unelected and do not represent the people of their country. The signatories ask:
“How can they negotiate on behalf of nations, let alone an international/global health regulation binding on 194 countries?”
If the ‘global pandemic treaty’ is forced through, we could see perpetual lockdowns. At the same time, corporate interests will dominate. Pandemics will become self-sustaining by creating a bureaucracy whose existence will depend on them.
People will be at the mercy of the police and bureaucrats who will be immune to any penalty for any acts carried out in ‘good faith’. These acts could take the form of mandatory medical procedures, forced entry into premises, forced isolation and quarantine.
It was bad enough in 2020 with the full force of the state lined up against the public, especially those who did not agree with COVID policies, but imagine the abuse of power that could occur if the WHO acquires the powers it seeks.
The seeds of totalitarianism were clear to seewith Anthony Fauci saying that he is ‘the science’, former New Zealand PM Jacinda Arden declaring the government as the ‘single source of truth’ and social media companies working hand in glove with the deep state to censor and deplatform prominent figures and world-renowned scientists who questioned the official narrative.
We saw the suspension of fundamental civil liberties with the threat of state violence on hand, often resulting in citizens being abused by de facto paramilitary police forces for breaching ‘pandemic rules’ that had no scientific basis.
Governments declared that they were ‘following the science’, but what we saw were inflated death numbers, manipulated data and the fraudulent use of RT-PCR tests to help create the perception of a deadly pandemic in the minds of the public. Readers can consult the online article Stay Home, Save Lives: Uncovering the COVID Deception, which provides insight into the various deceptions that helped instil fear into the global population in 2020.
The WHO also provided a wrong projection of mortality. The exaggeration caused panic in the population — part of a carefully orchestrated ‘fear pandemic’ — and paved the way for lockdowns and the mass uptake of vaccines sold to the public based on false claims. The synthetic spike protein of the vaccines has resulted in clotting, bleeding, heart problems and brain blood clotting as well as neurodegenerative problems. And what we are seeing across so many countries since the vaccine rollout is significant excess mortality, which the media is silent about.
Moreover, the WHO operates within a biopharmaceutical complex, a complicated syndicate that has formed over time, which instructs world health policies. This complex involves the health agencies of national governments, including India, the US and the UK, the World Economic Forum, the Gates Foundation, the Welcome Group and major pharmaceutical companies. Revolving door arrangements between these organisations have resulted in regulatory capture.
Researcher and campaigner Yohan Tengra of the Awaken India Movement conducted a two-year investigation into how this works in India. Through his research, he exposed the billionaire cartel that controlled India’s COVID-19 Task Force. Tengra listed not just the names of those who sat on this task force, but he also detailed how they are financially connected to the pharmaceutical-vaccine industry.
The task force was responsible for the aggressive push to lockdown, mandatory mask requirements, forced testing of asymptomatic people, dropping ivermectin from the national protocol, suppressing vaccine adverse events and much more.
Tengra also exposed how India’s prominent public health personalities, who regularly appeared in the media and on TV, are connected to the Gates Foundation, Rockefeller Foundation, Welcome Trust, USAID, the World Bank and other aspects of the global deep state.
We have every right to be concerned about a ‘pandemic treaty’ shaped by powerful interests with stakes in closing down economies (see the online article Systemic Collapse and Pandemic Simulation by Fabio Vighi), mandatory vaccination programmes and digital surveillance who are all too willing to strip away our fundamental rights for their own gain.
The letter to India’s prime minister and the minister of health makes clear that the WHO’s massive conflict of interest should disqualify it from any role in world health.
Signatories:
Dr. Jacob Puliyel, Delhi, MD, MRCP, MPhil, Paediatrician and Visiting Faculty International
Prashant Bhushan, New Delhi, Senior Advocate, Supreme Court of India
Colin Gonsalves, New Delhi, Senior Advocate, Supreme Court of India
Nilesh Ojha, Mumbai, President – Indian Bar Association, Advocate Bombay High Court and Supreme Court of India, Human Rights Activist
Author Dr. Amitav Banerjee, Pune, MD, Formerly Epidemiologist, Indian Armed Forces
Dr Aseem Malhotra, London (Overseas Citizen of India), MBChB, MRCP. Consultant Cardiologist
Aruna Rodrigues, Mhow, Lead Petitioner: GMO PIL in the Supreme Court and Member Iridescent Blue Fish (IBF)
Dr. Donthi Narasimha Reddy, Hyderabad, Public Policy Expert and Campaigner
Dr. Megha Consul, Gurugram, Paediatrics, Senior Consultant, Neonatologist
Dr. Pravin Chordia, Pune, MD Surgeon
Dr. Lalitkumar Anande, Mumbai, MBBS, PG Diploma in Clinical Research
Dr. Vijay Raghava, Bangalore, MBBS Dr. Veena Raghava, Bangalore, MBBS, DA
Dr. Kuldeep Kumar, Haridwar, MBBS MS (GENERAL SURGERY) Dr. Praveen Saxena, Hyderabad, Radiologist & Clinical metal toxicologist, MBBS, DMRD Osmania
Dr. Biswaroop Roy Chowdhury, Faridabad, Ph.D (Diabetes)
Dr. Gautam Das, Kolkata, MBBS, General Physician
Saraswati Kavula, Hyderabad, Documentary Filmmaker & Freelance Journalist, Awaken India Movement
Bhaskaran Raman, Mumbai, Professor, Dept. of Computer Science & Engineering. Indian Institute of Technology Bombay Advocate
Ishwarlal S. Agarwal, Mumbai Advocate
Tanveer Nizam, Mumbai
Dr. Susan Raj, Chattisgrah, BSc Nurse, MSW(M&P), Doctorate Humanities, Behavior Specialist
Jagannath Chaterjee, Bhubhaneshwar, Social Activist
Dr. Abhay Chedda, Mumbai, BHMS, CCAH, FCAH
Dr. Gayatri Panditrao, Pune, Homeopathic Physician, BHMS, PGDEMS
Dr. G Prema, Tamil Nadu, Classical Homeopath, Aasil Health Care
Dr. S. G. Vombatkere, Mysuru, Human Rights Activist Advocate
Anand Singh Bahrawat, Indore, High Court of Indore Advocate
Vijay Kurle, Mumbai
Advocate L Shunondo Chandiramani, Indore, High Court of Indore
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Renowned author Colin Todhunter specialises in development, food and agriculture. He is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG).
Featured image is from Reclaim the Net
Read Colin Todhunter’s e-Book entitled
Food, Dispossession and Dependency. Resisting the New World Order
We are currently seeing an acceleration of the corporate consolidation of the entire global agri-food chain. The high-tech/big data conglomerates, including Amazon, Microsoft, Facebook and Google, have joined traditional agribusiness giants, such as Corteva, Bayer, Cargill and Syngenta, in a quest to impose their model of food and agriculture on the world.
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Militaries around the world routinely disperse tiny bits of aluminum-coated fiberglass and plastic — known as “chaff” — into the air column, to shield aircraft and ships from enemy radar
Chaff has been used for decades, without clear evidence that it’s safe for humans and the environment
In response to a United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report issued in August 2021, the U.N. announced it’s considering spraying sulfate aerosols into the Earth’s stratosphere to modify climate. The tiny reflective particles would act as reflectors, bouncing sunlight back into space instead of onto the Earth’s surface
The U.N.’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) is using “climate science” as a vehicle to promote socialist ideology
According to Dane Wigington, founder of Geoengineeringwatch.org, the risks of geoengineering are so immense, it poses an extinction-level threat to humanity, and the window of opportunity to save ourselves is rapidly closing
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In addition to the weather modification1 going on around the world, militaries around the world are also routinely dispersing tiny bits of aluminum-coated fiberglass and plastic — known as “chaff” — into the air column, to shield aircraft and ships from enemy radar.2 Not surprisingly, this has been done for decades, without clear evidence that it’s safe for humans and the environment.
According to a 1998 General Accounting Office report3 and a 1999 follow-up report4 by the Naval Research Laboratory, the environmental, human and agricultural impacts of chaff used in military training scenarios at the time were “negligible and far less than those from other man-made emissions,” but does that really mean it’s safe? As explained in a 2001 Navy Medicine paper:5
“Radiofrequency (RF) chaff is an electronic countermeasure designed to reflect radar waves and obscure planes, ships, and other assets from radar tracking sources.
Chaff consists of aluminum-coated glass fibers (also referred to as dipoles) ranging in lengths from 0.8 to 0.75 cm. Chaff is released or dispensed from military vehicles in cartridges or projectiles that contain millions of dipoles.
When deployed, a diffuse cloud of dipoles is formed that is undetectable to the human eye. Chaff is a very light material that can remain suspended in air anywhere from 10 minutes to 10 hours and can travel considerable distances from its release point, depending on prevailing atmospheric conditions.
Training for military personnel, particularly aircraft pilots, in the use of chaff is necessary to deploy this electronic countermeasure effectively. As with most acquired skills, the deployment of chaff must be maintained by practicing in-flight release during training.
It is estimated that the U.S. Armed Forces dispense about 500 tons of chaff per year, with most chaff being released during training exercises within the continental United States.”
Is Chaff Safe?
According to the Naval Medicine investigation, inhalation of whole, intact chaff fibers pose “no risk” to humans due to their larger size. “If inhaled, dipoles are predicted to deposit in the nose, mouth, or trachea and are either swallowed or expelled,” the paper states.6
Note the use of the word “predicted,” however. Predictions are not evidence. They’re basically guessing. Open questions also remain about what happens when the fibers degrade.
“Several investigations have demonstrated that Al-coated dipoles are resistant to weathering and breakdown under desert conditions,” the paper states.7
“A 1977 US Navy-sponsored a study found no evidence to indicate that chaff degrades significantly or quickly in water from the Chesapeake Bay nor did this material leach significant amounts of aluminum into the Bay.
A recent study by our group found no evidence that 25 years of chaff operations at the Naval Research Laboratory detachment at Chesapeake Beach, MD resulted in a significant increase in sediment or soil aluminum concentrations (Wilson et al 2000).
However, additional studies are needed to determine the half-life of chaff dipoles in various soils and environmental conditions and whether dipoles breakdown to respirable particles …
Although there is no definitive evidence from the epidemiological literature that chaff exposure is not harmful, there is epidemiological information available on workers involved in the glass fiber manufacturing industry. Data from these studies suggests that exposure to fibrous glass is not associated with increased risk of death from respiratory disease.”
The problem with that is that fiberglass workers are equipped with protective gear, including respirators, Tyvek suits and safety goggles8 — gear that normal people don’t wear when they’re out and about. All this tells us is that chaff is unlikely to cause harm to public health, provided people are wearing respirators, which they don’t.
Remarkably, not much beyond these three reports exist. While all admitted the need for continued research, none appears to have been published, so there’s really no telling what the real-world impact might be. That said, common sense tells us that air dispersed aluminum and fiberglass is highly likely to have some sort of impact on the environment and human health.
Geoengineering Has Been Going On for Decades
Aluminum and fiberglass are not the only toxins being sprayed across our skies. As detailed by Dane Wigington, founder of Geoengineeringwatch.org, weather modification, also known as geoengineering, in which various toxic metals and chemicals are dispersed at high altitude, has been going on for more than 70 years, and is increasing rather than declining.
In response to a United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report issued in August 2021,9,10 which called for radical measures to prevent further global warming, the Biden Administration launched a research effort in 2022 to determine the most effective way to dim the sun.11
One proposal involves injecting sulfur dioxide aerosols into the Earth’s stratosphere. The tiny reflective particles would bounce sunlight back into space instead of onto the Earth’s surface.12According to Harvard researchers,13 this strategy is not only “technically possible” but also “remarkably inexpensive,” having a price tag that is “well within the reach of several nations.”
Earth’s climate is largely controlled by how much solar radiation reaches the Earth and how much is absorbed by its surface or reradiated to space. Cloud coverage and greenhouse gasses are examples of factors that influence the reflectance of solar radiation.14
“If geoengineering proposals are to influence global climate in any meaningful way, they must intentionally alter the relative influence of one of these controlling mechanisms,” Britannica explains.15
The U.N. report mentions solar radiation management and greenhouse gas removal as forms of geoengineering.16 Sulfate aerosols fall into the solar radiation management category. By reflecting more solar radiation back into space, the aerosols lower global temperatures but also have a serious “side effect” — they lower average precipitation.
As a result, additional geoengineering techniques — such as thinning out cirrus clouds in the upper atmosphere — would be necessary to counteract the decrease in precipitation. What could possibly go wrong?
Supercomputers have run models to predict how solar radiation management may affect different parts of the Earth, not only in terms of temperature but also rainfall and snowfall. Report author Govindasamy Bala, from the Indian Institute of Science, said “the science is there,”17 but it’s far from an exact one.
“I think the next big question,” Bala told Reuters, “is, do you want to do it? … That involves uncertainty, moral issues, ethical issues and governance.” As Reuters reported, “That’s because every region would be affected differently. While some regions could gain in an artificially cooler world, others could suffer by, for example, no longer having conditions to grow crops.”18
‘Catastrophic Risks’
Three months after the IPCC published its panic-inciting report, Australian and British researchers published an original research article warning that stratospheric aerosol injection carries “catastrophic risks” that may well lead us into “a fate worse than [global] warming”:19
“Injecting particles into atmosphere to reflect sunlight, stratospheric aerosol injection (SAI), represents a potential technological solution to the threat of climate change. But could the cure be worse than the disease? …
SAI plausibly interacts with other catastrophic calamities, most notably by potentially exacerbating the impacts of nuclear war or an extreme space weather event. SAI could contribute to systemic risk by introducing stressors into critical systems such as agriculture.
SAI’s systemic stressors, and risks of systemic cascades and synchronous failures, are highly understudied. SAI deployment more tightly couples different ecological, economic, and political systems. This creates a precarious condition of latent risk, the largest cause for concern …
A well-coordinated use of a small amount of SAI would incur negligible risks, but this is an optimistic scenario. Conversely, larger use of SAI used in an uncoordinated manner poses many potential dangers. We cannot equivocally determine whether SAI will be worse than warming. For now, a heavy reliance on SAI seems an imprudent policy response.”
In June 2023, the European Commission put out a call for “international talks on the dangers and governance of geoengineering,” warning that geoengineering schemes aimed at altering the global climate pose “unacceptable” risks. During a news conference, EU climate policy chief Frans Timmermans stated:
“Nobody should be conducting experiments alone with our shared planet. This should be discussed in the right forum, at the highest international level.”
Time will tell whether such talks ever take place. In September 2023, the Climate Overshoot Commission, chaired by Pascal Lamy, a former World Trade Organization chief, called for a worldwide moratorium on solar radiation modification experiments “that would carry risk of significant transboundary harm,” and to focus instead on strategies to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.20,21 But, as of yet, no such moratorium has been agreed upon.
Socialist Ideology? Not Climate Science
Zuzana Janosova Den Boer experienced Communist rule in Czechoslovakia before moving to Canada. In her article, “I Survived Communism — Are You Ready for Your Turn?” she detailed the “all-too familiar signs of the same propaganda” starting to permeate her adopted country.22
In relation to geoengineering, she points out that communism has been subverting the environmentalist movement since the 1970s, when then-chairman of the Communist Party USA, Gus Hall, published a book called “Ecology,” in which he stated:23
“Human society cannot basically stop the destruction of the environment under capitalism. Socialism is the only structure that makes it possible … We must be the organizers, the leaders of these movements.”
Den Boer writes:24
“This idea was incorporated into the U.S. Green Party program in 1989 … in which the fictitious threats of ‘global warming’ and ‘climate change’ are used to scare the public into believing humanity must ‘save the planet’:
‘This urgency, along with other Green issues and themes it interrelates, makes confronting the greenhouse [effect] a powerful organizing tool … Survival is highly motivating, and may help us to build a mass movement that will lead to large-scale political and societal change in a very short time …
First of all, we [must] inform the public that the crisis is more immediate and severe than [they] are being told, [that] its implications are too great to wait for the universal scientific confirmation that only eco-catastrophe would establish.’”
The U.N.’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), Den Boer suggests, is promoting not climate science but socialist ideology, citing as evidence comments made by Ottmar Georg Edenhofer, former co-chair of the IPCC Working Group III, who in a 2010 interview stated that climate issues are about economics, and that:25
“We must free ourselves from the illusion that international climate policy is environmental policy … We must state clearly that we use climate policy de facto to redistribute the world’s wealth.”
GR Editor’s Note: The fake consensus on climate change is largely supported by the World Economic Forum (WEF) which represents powerful financial interests. Left-leaning Environmentalists endorse this consensus.
In turn, The United Nations has a formal agreement with the World Economic Forum (WEF) pertaining to “Sustainable Development 2030”. The climate agenda is being used to destabilize family farms which are being acquired by powerful corporate interests.
Geoengineering Poses Extinction-Level Threat to Humanity
Even without factoring in social control, the practical risks of geoengineering are impossible to ignore. According to scientific studies, the particulates dispersed during these geoengineering events “shred” the ozone layer. They also disrupt the hydrological (rain) cycle, which leads to another host of downstream effects, and this is in addition to spreading toxins across the entire planet surface.
So, while some of the planet might benefit from these programs, other parts could be decimated by droughts, raging forest fires, flooding or storms. Moreover, while global cooling is the stated aim of most of these geoengineering programs, as the planet warms, the laws of physics state you need more precipitation to cool it, not less, because the atmosphere carries more moisture as the temperature rises.
To cool the planet, you need to create more rain, but these programs have resulted in less rain, and the reason for the reduction in rain fall is due to the particulates in the atmosphere. In addition to deflecting heat from the outside, these particles also trap heat down below, making the overall heating of the planet massively worse.
The risks are so immense, Wigington warns geoengineering already poses an extinction-level threat to humanity. The window of opportunity to save ourselves is rapidly closing.
Unfortunately, if people really understood the totality of the situation — not just that the climate is being manipulated, but that as a result, the global climate systems have deteriorated to the point that the entire Earth is in serious trouble; in short, that these programs may have created a runaway extinction event — the emotional impact might be too great to bear for many. Wigington addressed this in an interview I did with him back in 2016:
“Our situation is far more severe than most people have any understanding of,” he said. “Climate engineering is making the situation worse, not better.
So [they must] try to keep the population from panicking because of the severity and immediacy of the climate implosion, and keep the population in the dark because the climate intervention programs have helped to accelerate this process and toxified every single one of us in the process.
Every single human subject we test is packed full of aluminum, barium — all the heavy metals we know are associated with these programs. It doesn’t matter where they live.
And we know it’s coming down in the precipitation in unimaginable quantities — quantities enough to change soil pH values in the Pacific Northwest 10 to 12 times total alkaline — that’s an unimaginable amount of metal coming down in the rain.
If populations understood, truly, what’s been done to them, what’s been done to the planet … they’d be taking to the streets with pitchforks and torches all over the globe.”
California Aquatic and Terrestrial Insect Life Has Been Decimated
Geoengineeringwatch.org lists a number of lab tests that have been performed on rain water, air sample and more, and their results. You can find them under the Tests section.
“In regard to the effect in the environment, in Northern California alone … what we’ve seen in the last decade … is a 90% decline in aquatic and terrestrial insect life — a virtual crash,”Wigington told me in 2016.
“There’s so much aluminum coming down the precipitation, affecting the soil pH, and — this is very important — the UV radiation level is off the charts, and that we can link directly to climate engineering … We’re seeing UVB levels about 1,000% higher than we’re being told. It’s burning the bark off of trees. It’s killing plankton. It’s affecting insect life …
[It increases UVB radiation] because it shreds the natural protection for the planet. When you put a particle in the atmosphere, it doesn’t matter whether it’s from a back of a jet or a volcano; it causes a chemical reaction in the atmosphere that destroys ozone. Period. So the more of these particles you put in the atmosphere, the more rapid the ozone destruction is.”
With all of that in mind, it’s highly unlikely that military chaff dispersements have no negative impact. An argument could be made that chaff is too important of a defense system to get rid of, and that may be true. But the climate-specific engineering is another matter altogether.
In years past, it was kept hush-hush, and dismissed as a conspiracy theory. Since then, however, governments around the world, and international bodies like the U.N. have become quite open about the use of geoengineering for climate control, and if the global public does not push back against these efforts, we might not survive to regret it.
Geoengineeringwatch.org has a list of action items you can review if you want to get involved and get the word out. I also recommend watching Wigington’s documentary “The Dimming,” below, to learn more.
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The House Select Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government on Monday revealed yet another facet of the Biden Administration’s sprawling censorship system that targeted dissenting books. It appears that, as with social media companies, it succeeded in getting the company not to promote disfavored books.
Judiciary Chairman Jim Jordanrevealed on X that the White House was directly involved in the censorship campaign. That includes a 2021 email from one Biden official asking to discuss “the high levels of propaganda and misinformation and disinformation of [sic] Amazon?”
THE AMAZON FILES – “feeling pressure from the White House”
Internal docs subpoenaed by @JudiciaryGOP & @Weaponization indicate that @amazon bowed down to Biden White House pressure to censor BOOKS.
Amazon in turn appears to ask only how high the Biden White House wants it to jump on censorship: “[i]s the [Biden] Admin asking us to remove books, or are they more concerned about search results/order (or both)?”
After the meeting, Amazon confirmed in an email that it was actively doing what the government demanded in suppressing sales by not promoting disfavored books: “As a reminder, we did enable Do Not Promote for anti-vax books whose primary purpose is to persuade readers vaccines are unsafe or ineffective on 3/9, and will review additional handling options for these books with you.”
This effort notably parallels demands from Democratic leaders who have called for enlightened algorithms to frame what citizens access on the internet. In 2021, Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) objected that people were not listening to the informed views of herself and leading experts. Instead, they were reading views of skeptics by searching Amazon and finding books by “prominent spreaders of misinformation.”
Warren blamed Amazon for failing to limit searches or choices: “This pattern and practice of misbehavior suggests that Amazon is either unwilling or unable to modify its business practices to prevent the spread of falsehoods or the sale of inappropriate products.” In her letter, Warren gave the company 14 days to change its algorithms to throttle and obstruct efforts to read opposing views.
It is important to keep in mind that these efforts at censorship targeted scientists who have been vindicated in many of their objections to policies and claims of the government. For example, a new scientific review by 12 researchers from leading universities found little support for the claims that masks reduced Covid exposures.
The Centers for Disease and Control Prevention (CDC) initially rejected the use of a mask mandate. However, the issue became a political weapon as politicians and the press claimed that questioning masks was anti-science and even unhinged. In April 2020, the CDC reversed its position and called for the masking of the entire population, including children as young as 2 years old. The mask mandate and other pandemic measures like the closing of schools are now cited as fueling emotional and developmental problems in children.
The closing of schools and businesses was also challenged by some critics as unnecessary. Many of those critics were also censored. It now appears that they may have been right. Many countries did not close schools and did not experience increases in Covid. However, we are now facing alarming drops in testing scores and alarming rises in medical illness among the young.
Masks became a major social and political dividing line in politics and the media. Maskless people were chased from stores and denounced in Congress. Then-CDC Director Dr. Robert Redfield said during a Senate hearing that “face masks are the most important powerful health tool we have.”
The head of the World Health Organization even supported censorship to combat what he called an “infodemic.”
A lawsuit opposing these efforts was filed by Missouri and Louisiana and joined by leading experts, including Drs. Jayanta Bhattacharya (Stanford University) and Martin Kulldorff (Harvard University). Yet, universities joined social media companies and politicians in targeting dissenters and silencing opposing voices.
Bhattacharya previously objected to the suspension of Dr. Clare Craig after she raised concerns about Pfizer trial documents. Those doctors were the co-authors of the Great Barrington Declaration, which advocated for a more focused Covid response that targeted the most vulnerable population rather than widespread lockdowns and mandates. Many are now questioning the efficacy and cost of the massive lockdown as well as the real value of masks or the rejection of natural immunities as an alternative to vaccination. Yet, these experts and others were attacked for such views just a year ago. Some found themselves censored on social media for challenging claims of Dr. Fauci and others.
The media has quietly acknowledged the science questioning mask efficacy and school closures without addressing its own role in attacking those who raised these objections. Even raising the lab theory on the origin of Covid 19 (a theory now treated as plausible) was denounced as a conspiracy theory. The science and health reporter for the New York Times, Apoorva Mandavilli, even denounced the theory as “racist.”
Again, the objection to the censorship system is not that all of these views are correct, but that the public was being actively hampered in reading or hearing opposing views.
The new emails also show direct federal efforts supporting censorship. I testified at the first hearing by the special committee investigating the censorship system. I warned that there was ample evidence of a system based on “censorship by surrogate” where government agencies used academic and media allies to silence those with opposing views.
Now we can add private demands to target dissenting books to suppress sales. It is far more appealing to certain sensibilities than banning publications or removing copies. After all, why burn books if you can bury them?
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From U.S. military attacks on Syria, Iraq, and Yemen to the related complicity in Israel’s genocide in Gaza and settler violence in the West Bank, Biden’s course of action is a danger to U.S. national security.
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It’s three in the morning and I can’t sleep again. Those of us concerned about Gaza and the West Bank are spending sleepless nights and busy days trying desperately to pressure the Biden administration to stop its complicity in the relentless Israeli genocide in Gaza; to halt the provision of weapons and money to Israel; and to demand an end to the carnage.
This is our demand: Cease-Fire Now!
We awakened to the news that the U.S. has attacked Syria, Iraq, and Yemen in retaliation for militants firing missiles into U.S. troop areas in Syria and Jordan and Houthis targeting Red Sea cargo vessels. Why have there been attacks on U.S. troops and interests?
The answer is simple. Because the U.S. is providing military weapons and international protection to Israel in its genocidal military operations in Gaza.
It seems obvious to everyone but you, that for our national security, the U.S. must stop its irrational protection of Israeli war crimes and demand that Israel stop its massacre of Palestinians in Gaza.
Scenes of another day of Israeli bombing of Gaza with tens of thousands of buildings destroyed, Israeli commandos storming a hospital and assassinating three young men as they slept in their hospital beds, heavy rains pouring into makeshift tents for the million Palestinians now crammed into the area around Rafah, the daily and nightly raids of Israeli military into the West Bank cities and villages destroying roads, homes, cultural centers, Israeli occupation forces stripping men and boys of their clothes, forcing them to kneel for hours in humiliating positions and beating them for days in detention camps, finding 30 bodies in a mass grave in a schoolyard, Palestinians who were shot to death with their hands tied behind them by Israeli forces.
Going to the Heartless U.S. Congress
Every day we go to the offices of U.S. congresspersons and plead for them to back a ceasefire and to pressure the Biden administration to refuse to provide more weapons and money to the Israeli military. After 118 days of Israeli pounding of Gaza, most Senators and Representatives are still repeating some version of this: “No to a cease-fire. Israel has a right to self-defense. Israel has the right to destroy Gaza and kill as many Palestinians as is necessary to kill the last Hamas militant.”
At least 10 Senators and Representatives have Israeli flags alongside the U.S. flag in front of their offices which brings into question where their loyalties lie. Rep. Brian Mast (R-Mich.) wore his Israel military uniform into the U.S. Congress in October and is one of the most hate-filled members of Congress, treating the deaths of Gaza children as just fine.
Meanwhile, Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich.), the only Palestinian-American member of Congress, continues to receive death threats. Those who speak out to stop the genocide in Gaza are targeted by the American Israeli Public Affairs Council (AIPAC) with incitement to violence messaging and their associated Super PAC running candidates to replace them in Congress.
Protests in Washington against the genocide in Gaza and the massacres in the West Bank occur daily. A 9-day encampment in the narrow public land on each side of the two-lane road in front of Secretary of State Antony Blinken’s home on Chain Bridge Road has brought Palestinian supporters from Virginia, Maryland, and the District of Columbia who make sure Blinken know that he has blood on his hands for green-lighting the genocide in Gaza.
Biden and Powers Interrupted in Public Talks
President Biden was interrupted repeatedly with “Genocide Joe” in his public speaking engagement, first at a church in South Carolina and last week in Manassas, Virginia when he gave a speech on reproductive rights. U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) chief Samantha Power was interrupted in her speech in Washington, D.C. last week by persons who have worked for USAID. In her Pulitzer Prize-winning book “A Problem From Hell,” Power documents America’s repeated failure to stop genocides around the world. Now she is complicit in the Biden administration for refusing to recognize genocide in Gaza and do nothing to oppose it.
As the promo for her book states: “Power, a professor at the Harvard Kennedy School and the former U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations, used exclusive interviews with Washington’s top policymakers, thousands of declassified documents, and her own reporting from modern killing fields to provide the answer. “A Problem from Hell” shows how decent Americans inside and outside government refused to get involved despite chilling warnings, and tells the stories of the courageous Americans who risked their careers and lives in an effort to get the United States to act.”
Power needs to re-read her own book.
Protests in the Streets and Dissent by Government Officials
Millions of people around the world have taken to the streets in protests. Thousands in the U.S. have been arrested for blocking streets, highways, and bridges as well as for disrupting Congressional hearings, sitting down and singing in congressional buildings, and for chaining themselves to the fence at the White House.
Scores of government employees continue to publish statements calling into question the silence of their governments on the genocide of Gaza.
On February 2, 800+ government employees from the U.S. and 12 nations and E.U. organizations published a letter protesting Israeli policies and stating that the leaders of their countries and organizations could be complicit in war crimes in Gaza.
The letter states: “Our governments’ current policies weaken their moral standing and undermine their ability to stand up for freedom, justice and human rights globally…there is a plausible risk that our governments’ policies are contributing to grave violations of international humanitarian law, war crimes and even ethnic cleansing or genocide.”
Approximately 80 of the signers are from American agencies, with the biggest group being from the State Department. National-level officials from nine member nations of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, as well as Sweden and Switzerland, signed the letter.
In November, more than 500 employees from about 40 U.S. government agencies sent a letter to President Biden criticizing his policies on the continuous Israeli attack on Gaza. In that letter, the officials also did not reveal their names due to the probability of retaliation by the agencies.
More than 1,000 USAID employees released an open letter with the same concerns. Dozens of State Department officials have sent at least three internal dissent cables to Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken.
According to the New York Times, hundreds of officials in the European Union have signed at least two separate letters of dissent to the bloc’s leadership.
Robert Ford, a former U.S. ambassador to Algeria and Syria who resigned in 2014 over the Obama administration’s Syria policy is quoted in the Times article, stating that he had never seen a cross-border dissent letter like this new one in three decades of working at the State Department.
Ford added that some diplomats had learned a lesson from the run-up to the Iraq War begun by President George W. Bush: that keeping quiet about objections to misguided policies or not going public with them when the stakes are high could contribute to a disastrous outcome.
As one of three U.S. diplomats who resigned from the U.S. government on the decision in 2003 of the Bush administration to wage war on Iraq, I appeal for others in the U.S. government to continue to sign letters and to consider resignation as Josh Paul has done from the State Department and Tariq Habash has done from the Department of Education.
Biden Wants More Billions for Israel to Continue Its Genocide of Gaza
Despite all of our efforts, it is likely that on Wednesday, February 7, 2024, the U.S. Senate will pass a national security supplemental to provide Israel with another 14 billion dollars, three times what the U.S. provides annually to Israel. Israel is already the largest recipient of U.S. military financing and the added $10 billion will blow up the foreign affairs budget.
ICJ and World Public Opinion Will Hold Biden and the U.S. Government Accountable
The International Court of Justice (ICJ) has warned countries assisting with weapons used in a genocide that leaders are complicit and can be held liable.
President Biden, in case your advisors have not mentioned this, both you and they are definitely up to your eyeballs in genocide and we and the world will hold you accountable.
[From Common Dreams: Our work is licensed under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0). Feel free to republish and share widely.]
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Ann Wright is a 29 year US Army/Army Reserves veteran who retired as a Colonel and a former US diplomat who resigned in March 2003 in opposition to the war on Iraq. She served in Nicaragua, Grenada, Somalia, Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan, Sierra Leone, Micronesia and Mongolia. In December 2001 she was on the small team that reopened the US Embassy in Kabul, Afghanistan. She is the co-author of the book “Dissent: Voices of Conscience.”
Featured image: I Scream, You Scream, We All Scream- by Mr. Fish
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When Tucker Carlson was fired by Fox News back in April last year (for doing his job, mind you), it seemed as if the last vestiges of press freedom in the United States were destroyed. And that’s certainly true when it comes to corporate media. However, despite how bad it looked at the time, it turned out to be one of the best things that happened in Carlson’s professional career. Namely, the fact that he worked for one of the largest news networks in America meant that he was constrained by their editorial policies and would’ve never reached his full potential as a world-class journalist. As a result of his truthful and objective reporting, Carlson became the target of Washington DC’s top vassal, the infamous Kiev regime, that effectively ended his long-running career at Fox News. Many in America were quite happy to see him go, but none more so than the Neo-Nazi junta frontman Volodymyr Zelensky, whose endless corruption and dictatorial behavior were regularly exposed precisely by Carlson.
And yet, getting him ousted from American corporate media backfired spectacularly, as there was now nothing preventing Carlson from unleashing his full potential, unrestrained by corporate bosses and politicized editorial “guidelines” (i.e. orders). However, when the mainstream propaganda machine failed miserably in its attempts to tarnish his reputation, one of the top American intelligence agencies stepped in. Namely, back in 2021, the infamous NSA hacked into Carlson’s phone and found out that he was planning an interview with Russian President Vladimir Putin. This was an attempt to intimidate him and make sure this never happens, as Carlson was already revealing “way too many” uncomfortable truths about the troubled Biden administration and its favorite Neo-Nazi puppets. The mainstream propaganda machine simply had no way to counter Carlson’s rational, highly informed, witty and mostly unbiased analyses, extremely popular both in the US and worldwide.
His reporting was always an insurmountable obstacle for the warmongering propaganda. Carlson is often accused of alleged “pro-Russian bias”, particularly by the DNC-dominated institutions that simply don’t want to let go of their obsession with Moscow and its leadership. In complete contrast to the deranged ideologues in Washington DC, Carlson is a realist. He fully understands the dangers of a potential global conflict and wants to do everything in his power to make sure it never happens. This includes talking to the leader of the country that the US is determined to antagonize to the point of pushing it precisely into one such conflict. Carlson simply wants to do his job and understand (and also help his viewers understand) Putin’s viewpoint. And yet, this is precisely what the US government is terrified of, because Putin has always been very good at articulating his points, which is why the mainstream propaganda machine hates interviewing him and usually resorts to quoting him out of context.
This fear extends to the entire political West, as the European Union is now threatening to sanction Carlson for his interview with President Putin, set to be released later today (not yet published as of this writing). As we all know now, he visited Russia this week, despite years of threats to Carlson and his family. Of course, he’s completely unmoved by the threats of the anemic EU and its laughable bureaucrats. Why would he be, considering the fact that he’s being targeted by US intelligence, the same one that essentially destroyed the life of Carlson’s colleague Julian Assange and tried to do the same to their former employee Edward Snowden, who was saved only thanks to being in Russia. According to Newsweek, Carlson’s trip to Russia could result in a not-very-dissimilar witch-hunt. This was confirmed by EU lawmakers and high-ranking political leaders, such as Guy Verhofstadt, former Belgian prime minister and current member of the European Parliament (MEP).
Verhofstadt wants a travel ban on Carlson, who he also described as “a mouthpiece” of Putin and former US President Donald Trump. He also accused Carlson of “aiding Putin’s war crimes”. This is precisely why no sane person is really interested in the opinions of EU bureaucrats. They’re simply incapable of using reason, which is what Carlson has been warning about for years, pointing out the importance of dialogue instead of going on mindless rants such as the one Verhofstadt just did. Carlson articulately explained his motivation for interviewing President Putin, making Verhofstadt’s comments all the more ludicrous and, quite frankly, deranged. According to Newsweek, even EU officials are having a difficult time finding legal grounds for sanctioning Carlson. One, who wished to remain anonymous, told Newsweek that any sanctions would require evidence that Carlson is “linked to Moscow’s aggression”, something that “is absent or hard to prove”. What this means is that the sanctions would be illegal.
However, the political West never had any issues circumventing its own laws for political reasons. After all, this is the centerpiece of the vaunted “rules-based world order“. It should be noted that Verhofstadt is not alone in his determination to go after Tucker Carlson. Luis Garicano, a former MEP, told Newsweek he agreed with his stance. MEP Urmas Paet, former Estonian foreign minister, joined the witch-hunt, complaining that Carlson is “giving a platform to a man wanted by the International Criminal Court and accused of genocide and war crimes”. Once again, this is precisely what Carlson has been criticizing for years. The vast majority of Western leaders and top-ranking officials live in a sort of “reality bubble” that has very little to do with the actual world. This makes it impossible to engage in any sort of dialogue with such people, let alone make a long-lasting agreement with them, which is highly dangerous, not just for Europe and Russia, but the entire world.
Another person interviewed by Newsweek, Polish MEP Witold Waszczykowski, also a former foreign minister, is a good case in point. According to Waszczykowski, American media should deal with Tucker, as he’s a journalist. However, he went a step further in his belligerence and slammed EU leaders for talking to Putin at all.
“Here in the EU, we have top politicians [such] as [French President Emmanuel] Macron and [German Chancellor Olaf] Scholz who keep talking with Putin. I would like rather Mr. Verhofstadt to take care of those European politicians who keep searching for how to appease Russia instead of helping Ukraine to win the war.”
Once again, this is a perfect example of why it’s extremely dangerous to have such people in power. Considering the fact they’re extremely Russophobic, but are still top-ranking policymakers and political leaders in various EU countries, how could we ever hope to see any long-lasting peace between Russia and the political West?
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This article was originally published on InfoBrics.
Drago Bosnicis an independent geopolitical and military analyst. He is a regular contributor to Global Research.
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Garden City, MI – Jennifer Ormiston Novak is a Manager at CVS Pharmacy
Dec. 14, 2021: “Got OUR boosters today. Moderna. Arms are hurting feeling feverish and super tired. Thought we would not have side effects. How long will this last?”
Dec. 6, 2023: “Son of a gun! I waited to get the latest vaccine because I felt sick. No no no! I’m too busy for this! Yes I took more than one test and thought it was maybe strep or a bad sinus infection.”
Dec. 17, 2023: “How can this even be happening? I felt better, tested negative, went back to work. Had a headache and fever all day now I come home to this. No!”
Dec. 19, 2023: “Update. I still have COVID. Slept for over 48 hours now. On and off in bed. Headache is still excruciating. Fever…advance sorry to my hubby who is getting the brunt of my anger.”
Dec. 28, 2023: “Folks this is NOT a drill. COVID is back up and skyrocketing. I had/have it. Three weeks now with a headache that won’t quit. Nothing like I have ever experienced”. Please mask up.”
Jan. 2, 2024 – Jennifer Ormiston Novak had a heart attack.
“Rob my husband had a stroke and went to the hospital. When I went to that hospital the next day I had a major heart attack in the ER before I could even go to his room. I was revived 3 times and paddled 20 times.”
“An emergency stent was put into my heart through my leg area. From that stent insertion, my veins were damaged when pulling the stent out causing blockage in my leg. Emergency vascular surgery was done on my leg but was unsuccessful and my leg started to die which ended up in 2 amputations of my leg. First one below my knee then a second one above my knee.”
“Rob was there every day and night at my side after just having a stroke”
My Take…
I have covered dozens of stories of multiple COVID-19 Vaccinated family members having vaccine injuries or dying suddenly.
This tragic story of Jennifer and Rob is unique, because we have confirmation that Jennifer and Rob took the Moderna COVID-19 mRNA booster shots together.
If they had a bad vaccine batch, a “hot lot”, both of them would have been developing internal damage. It’s important to have mRNA Vaccine serial numbers from all the vaccines they took (and check the serial numbers for adverse events on howbadismybatch.com)
It is highly probable that both continued to take mRNA vaccines together, as she lamented that she had not taken the most recent booster shot as she was sick.
Husband had a stroke, and she had two heart attacks, all within 24 hours. Both are very common vaccine side effects, and the recent COVID infection may have had a contribution as well.
Another indication of vaccine injury is this: the COVID-19 Vaccinated often have severe complications from even the most minor surgical procedures. The reason for this is unknown but usually due to clotting abnormalities.
It was the minor procedure of a cardiac stent that led to severe complications that required the amputation of her leg. This is so rare, it’s virtually unheard of.
Overall, a tragic, shocking story of someone who had no idea of the toxicity of the experimental pharmaceutical products she continued taking with her husband.
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Dr. William Makis is a Canadian physician with expertise in Radiology, Oncology and Immunology. Governor General’s Medal, University of Toronto Scholar. Author of 100+ peer-reviewed medical publications.
The Worldwide Corona Crisis, Global Coup d’Etat Against Humanity
by Michel Chossudovsky
Michel Chossudovsky reviews in detail how this insidious project “destroys people’s lives”. He provides a comprehensive analysis of everything you need to know about the “pandemic” — from the medical dimensions to the economic and social repercussions, political underpinnings, and mental and psychological impacts.
“My objective as an author is to inform people worldwide and refute the official narrative which has been used as a justification to destabilize the economic and social fabric of entire countries, followed by the imposition of the “deadly” COVID-19 “vaccine”. This crisis affects humanity in its entirety: almost 8 billion people. We stand in solidarity with our fellow human beings and our children worldwide. Truth is a powerful instrument.”
Reviews
This is an in-depth resource of great interest if it is the wider perspective you are motivated to understand a little better, the author is very knowledgeable about geopolitics and this comes out in the way Covid is contextualized. —Dr. Mike Yeadon
In this war against humanity in which we find ourselves, in this singular, irregular and massive assault against liberty and the goodness of people, Chossudovsky’s book is a rock upon which to sustain our fight. –Dr. Emanuel Garcia
In fifteen concise science-based chapters, Michel traces the false covid pandemic, explaining how a PCR test, producing up to 97% proven false positives, combined with a relentless 24/7 fear campaign, was able to create a worldwide panic-laden “plandemic”; that this plandemic would never have been possible without the infamous DNA-modifying Polymerase Chain Reaction test – which to this day is being pushed on a majority of innocent people who have no clue. His conclusions are evidenced by renown scientists. —Peter Koenig
Professor Chossudovsky exposes the truth that “there is no causal relationship between the virus and economic variables.” In other words, it was not COVID-19 but, rather, the deliberate implementation of the illogical, scientifically baseless lockdowns that caused the shutdown of the global economy. –David Skripac
A reading of Chossudovsky’s book provides a comprehensive lesson in how there is a global coup d’état under way called “The Great Reset” that if not resisted and defeated by freedom loving people everywhere will result in a dystopian future not yet imagined. Pass on this free gift from Professor Chossudovsky before it’s too late. You will not find so much valuable information and analysis in one place. –Edward Curtin
ISBN: 978-0-9879389-3-0, Year: 2022, PDF Ebook, Pages: 164, 15 Chapters
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“Economic thinking about immigration is generally quite superficial. It is a fact that in different [rich] countries, reproducible national capital is on the order of four times yearly national income. As a result, when an additional immigrant worker arrives, in order to build the necessary infrastructure (housing, hospitals, schools, universities, infrastructure of all kinds, industrial facilities, etc.), additional savings equal to four times the annual salary of this worker will be needed. If this worker arrives with a wife and three children, the additional savings required will represent, depending on the case, ten to twenty times the annul salary of this worker, which obviously represents a very heavy burden for the economy to bear.“—Maurice Allais(1911-2010), 1988 Nobel Prize in economics, 2002.
“What is the role of the Canadian government [in regards to immigration]? If it follows the recommendations of immigration advocates, it makes policies to maximize world welfare and its goal should be high, if not unlimited immigration. If its policies are to maximize the welfare of the native (Canadian) population, immigration policies should be designed to eliminate the fiscal burden (of between $20 and $26 billion a year) so that only positive economic benefits occur through immigration.” —HebertGrubel (1934- ), Emeritus professor of economics, Simon Fraser University, 2013.
“You cannot simultaneously have free immigration and a welfare state.” —Milton Friedman (1912-2006), Professor of Economics, University of Chicago, 1999.
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There’s no magic in economics.
To consume, you must produce, and to produce, you must save (income minus consumption expenses) and invest in productive capital, in infrastructure and in other means of supporting production. A stock of productive capital (businesses, factories, machinery, equipment, infrastructure) is required, plus innovations, technical progress, knowledge, management, reliable sources of energy and, above all, qualified workers, capable of contributing to increasing productivity and to raising the annual output of goods and services per capita.
That is how living standards and the average person’s well-being rise in some economies and why living standards remain stagnant or increase slowly in other economies.
This is explained in some economies by the lack of savings and productive capital relative to the numbers and skills of workers as well as other factors. Indeed, other economic indicators of human development do take into account the quality of life (economic and political stability, public health, education, individual security, etc.) of a population, beyond just the average of domestic output of goods and services per capita, the latter possibly distributed in a very unequal manner.
Nowadays, the so-called ‘advanced’ Western economies are considered relatively productive and their populations enjoy a relatively high standard of living, as measured by the average gross domestic product per capita. This is essentially because their stock of productive capital is high and because they benefit from technical progress, cheap energy sources and have access to a qualified labor force.
However, such relative success is not necessarily permanent and a foreclosed conclusion, if the conditions for economic growth atrophy or are replaced by other less efficient factors. A decline in living standards is not inevitable, but it can become possible, or even likely, if public policies are poorly designed.
Indeed, there have been structural changes taken place in Western economies, over several decades now, in Europe and North America. These has been a slowdown in new productive investments, a relative expansion of the services sector, an influx of low-skilled workers resulting from illegal immigration, the adoption of energy transition policies to encourage an increased reliance on more costly and less reliable energy sources and a chaotic geopolitical environment that has enhanced the possibility of hegemonic wars.
1. A simple model to understand the sources of real economic growth in the long term
Let’s start with a simple model of the real economic growth, i.e. the Solow model.
This model states that an economy’s long-run economic output growth depends on its stock of productive capital, resulting from savings, technological progress and the supply of labor.
The higher the stock of capital available in an economy, the more abundant the yearly domestic output of goods and services will be, for a given population.
If we consider that the living standard of a population ultimately depends on the stock of accumulated capital and that the annual growth of gross domestic product (GDP) depends largely on this capital, it follows that the more workers are qualified and the more they have access to capital (businesses, factories, machinery, equipment), the more productive they are, and the higher the living standard of the entire population will be.
2. An industrialized economy relies on more capital than a less developed economy
It has been observed that for an industrialized economy, it takes an average value of about $4 of capital to generate an annual domestic output of $1, at a ratio of 4:1. In a subsistence or stagnant economy, conversely, where the living standard is low, the capital/annual production ratio is low, possibly not exceeding the ratio of 1:1.
This may explain, to a large extent, the tendency towards large-scale population migrations, originating from countries with low living standards and a high demographic growth, towards countries with high living standards and highly capitalized.
In the short- and medium-term, such a migratory phenomenon is not necessarily to the advantage of advanced economies, which may see their rate of economic growth decline and the living standard of their population fall, if enough new investments are not added to the existing stock of capital.
3. Economic growth vs. population growth
One thing to understand is the following. If the population increases in an industrialized economy, either through the natural process or through a high influx of immigrants, it is then necessary that the stock of productive capital and the infrastructures of such an economy increase also, in a ratio of 4:1, (in the absence of technological progress), so as to maintain the standard of living of the entire population.
In other words, if the level of capitalization of a country with an advanced economy does not increase in proportion, and at the same time, as a strong demographic expansion takes place, a decline in income per capita and a general lowering of the living standard can be expected.[1]
It has become trivial to say that Western economies have become consumer societies. They are economies in which the percentage of goods and services produced and consumed occupy more than sixty percent of total production.
It is a complex evolution which is linked to the phenomenon of deindustrialisation that has been observed for half a century in most Western economies. It is measured by the decline of the part of industrial added value and industrial jobs, in GDP and in total employment.[2]
Such a phenomenon is accompanied by a national relocation of certain high productivity industries towards emerging economies, under the influence of economic globalization. This has meant a relative expansion of the production and consumption of private services (commerce, finance, transport, catering, entertainment, etc.) and of public services (teaching, health care, administration, etc.), a sector generally less likely to record important productivity gains.
4. Structural dissavings of governments through debt
Relative deindustrialization and the shift to a service economy in Western economies has forced governments to increase their budgetary deficits, pushing some countries into a level of total public debt that currently exceeds the level of their gross domestic product.
Those advanced economies with the highest levels of national debt relative to their annual gross domestic product, in 2024, as measured by the percentage of public debt to annual GDP, are:
P.S.: Japan is a special case because of its high household saving rate. Personal savings in Japan averaged 13.09% from 1963 until 2023, reaching an all time high of 62.10% in June of 2020. Moreover, Japan’s public debt is nearly all domestic.
For a more complete picture, one must add to the current public dissavings of governments the increasing waste of resources devoted to the global arms industry and to recurring ruinous and polluting wars, some of which could eventually lead to a catastrophic nuclear war.
5. Global warming and the energy crisis
There is a great complementarity between productive capital and energy. Indeed, when energy sources were abundant and could be considered unlimited, they were considered a given. Since pollution resulting from the burning of fossil fuels is one of the causes of global warming, this cannot be the case in the future.
Moreover, the global warming crisis has persuaded several governments to take drastic measures to reduce the combustion of fossil fuels, which are relatively abundant but non-renewable, easy to exploit and highly energy efficient (coal, oil, natural gas, etc.). The goal is to gradually replace them, over the coming decades, with less abundant renewable energy sources (solar, wind, hydraulic, etc.), some of which are intermittent and less reliable, in addition to being expensive to exploit.
The nuclear sector falls between these two categories of energy sources. Nuclear power accounts for about 10% of electricity generation globally. Nuclear power has advantages and disadvantages, but it is very expensive to produce. However, certain countries lacking alternative energy sources, such as France, will not have much choice but to resort more to it in the future.
6. Energy has played a big role in the rapid rise in living standards
Since the first Industrial Revolution, from 1750 to 1900 in Europe, and its acceleration in the 20th century, the availability of abundant and inexpensive energy sources of fossil fuels has been an important factor that has propelled industrial and commercial civilization upwards. Indeed, this is what has transformed economies that, for millennia, had been agrarian and artisanal, into urbanized industrial and commercial economies, like those of today.
In the beginning of the Industrial Revolution, the advent of machines in the textile industry as well as in agriculture, followed by electrification and the subsequent multiplication of the means of transport, helped to multiply the physical and manual labor of workers and increase the production and distribution of products on a high scale. This resulted in considerable increases in labor productivity and in real GDP growth. GDP per capita followed, propelling upward the standard of living and the wealth of nations, as well as the quality of life of their populations.
For example, during the forty years between 1960 and 2000, a period of strong economic growth and relative international peace, French researcher Simon Yaspo estimated that GDP per capita in France, Germany and in the U.S. grew by more than 250 percent.
Such a rise has never been seen before in the history of the world. It is possible that humanity might never again experience such a long golden period of economic growth, with such a rapid rise in living standards.
7. Government policies and the energy transition
There is currently, in certain government circles, great optimism regarding the possibility of decarbonizing some national economies over the next quarter of a century, that is to say by the year 2050. This is based on the belief that substitution policies can be designed to promote a relatively rapid shift, from more polluting energies to cleaner ones. The objective is to limit the rise in global warming to 1.5℃ by the year 2050 and to keep it below 2.0℃ by the year 2100.
However, numerous economic and political obstacles could stand in the way of such an otherwise very laudable scenario.
The 2023 energy report, published by the International Energy Agency (IEA), is somewhat less hopeful that a quick reduction of fossil energies can occur before 2050. Indeed, according to the organizations’s most recent energy forecasts, global consumption of oil and natural gas, which is expected to peak during the current decade, is seen to remain more of less around that level, until the year 2050. This is a consequence of the inertia and synergy that exist in energy systems. In other words, the development of new energy sources requires the use of fossil energies.
However, IEA is optimistic about a rapid reduction in the global consumption of coal, the most available and cheapest energy source. It predicts that such a consumption, after a peak reached also during the current decade, will quickly fall by 40% by the year 2050, which could bring it back to the level observed in the year 2000.
Nevertheless, coal and charcoal wood play a major role in heating, cooking and electricity production in several emerging and developing countries. The Chinese economy alone, for example, is responsible for 50% of global coal consumption. In Africa, coal represents 70% of the continent’s total energy consumption. Some resistance to switching from coal to more costly sources of energy could be expected from these regions.
Moreover, even in Western nations, some political resistance could be expected about the negative economic effects that an imposed energy transition could have on living standards and on the quality of life of populations. Some governments, seen as being too hasty on the issue or ill-prepared to mitigate its consequences, could be overthrown and be replaced by political leaders more inclined to resort to adaptation measures rather than to simple suppression, concerning energy production and consumption of various sources of energy.
Conclusions
The Great Recession of 2007-2008 may have served as a warning sign that the sources of economic growth in Western economies were beginning to fade. That deep recession forced major central banks to push interest rates way down, even towards zero, in order to stimulate growth.
In the coming years, Western economies will have to face structural developments even riskier to their future prosperity.
Indeed, Western economies risk suffering, all at the same time, from: 1- a slowdown in productive investments and productivity gains, the results of deindustrialization and the transition to a service economy; 2- a pressure from largely under-qualified illegal immigration, which could lower the ratio of productive capital per capita and accentuate the push towards consumption of public and private services; 3- public dissaving, the result of high public budgetary deficits and a resulting public over-indebtedness; 4- a waste of resources due to the expansion of the unproductive arms sector, in a global context of geopolitical instability and wars; and, 5- an energy transition that will be difficult to achieve, with policies aimed at penalizing inexpensive fossil fuels, in favor of more costly and less reliable alternative energies.
With these economic headwinds interacting and reinforcing each other, western economies could face lower economic growth rates ahead. This could also translate into a relative drop in standards of living, and also possibly, in people’s quality of life, over the coming years and coming decades.
In fact, in a not too far away future, the main limiting factor to economic growth in Western economies could likely come from more expensive sources of energy, which are less reliable than in the past. Likewise, demographic growth rates that are too rapid in relation to the stock of available productive capital, the result of uncontrolled immigration, could also become a cause of economic impoverishment.
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This article was originally published on the author’s blog site, Dr. Rodrigue Tremblay.
Prof. Rodrigue Tremblay is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG).
Notes
1. The decline and fall of the Western Roman Empire, in the 5th century AD, is probably the most complex and most important historical phenomenon of an economic, political and military system that collapsed under the effect of several causes, but notably following a fall in income.
2. For example, the share of industrial jobs in total employment dropped by more than half in advanced economies, from 1970 to 2016.
The share of industrial jobs in total employment went from 46% to 17% in the U.K., from 31% to 17% in the U.S., from 39% to 18% in France, from 45% to 17% in Belgium. In Canada, the share of manufacturing jobs in total employment fell from 19.1% to 9.1%, from 1976 to 2019.
(For Quebec and Ontario, during the same period, the share of manufacturing employment, in total provincial employment, dropped from 23.2% to 11.5%, in the first case, and 23.2% to 10.2%, in the second case.
The Code for Global Ethics: Ten Humanist Principles
Humanists have long contended that morality is a strictly human concern and should be independent of religious creeds and dogma. This principle was clearly articulated in the two Humanist Manifestos issued in the mid-twentieth century and in Humanist Manifesto 2000, which appeared at the beginning of the twenty-first century. Now this code for global ethics further elaborates ten humanist principles designed for a world community that is growing ever closer together. In the face of the obvious challenges to international stability-from nuclear proliferation, environmental degradation, economic turmoil, and reactionary and sometimes violent religious movements-a code based on the “natural dignity and inherent worth of all human beings” is needed more than ever. In separate chapters the author delves into the issues surrounding these ten humanist principles: preserving individual dignity and equality, respecting life and property, tolerance, sharing, preventing domination of others, eliminating superstition, conserving the natural environment, resolving differences cooperatively without resort to violence or war, political and economic democracy, and providing for universal education. This forward-looking, optimistic, and eminently reasonable discussion of humanist ideals makes an important contribution to laying the foundations for a just and peaceable global community.
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In the municipality of Birmingham, the second largest in the United Kingdom, the City Council filed for bankruptcy in September.
The Council said that due to payments owed to women for years of discriminatory pay differentials, the municipality could not meet its existing financial obligations.
In a September 6 article published in Fortune magazine, it emphasized that:
“In 2012, the Supreme Court ruled in favor of a group of mostly female employees who didn’t receive bonus payments that were given to those occupying traditionally male-dominated roles at Birmingham’s council. Birmingham’s council said in June that it had already paid £1.1 billion ($1.4 billion) in equal pay claims over the last decade, but still had some remaining claims which it estimated would accrue at the rate of between £5 million ($6.3 million) and £14 million ($17.6 million) a month.”
These developments in Birmingham are reflective of the vast socio-economic problems impacting the working class and poor in Britain. During 2023, a series of large-scale strikes by trade unions in the transportation, healthcare, education, civil service and other sectors of the labor force revealed the level of discontent among millions of the people around the country.
Conservative Prime Minister Rishi Sunak ruled out any bailout of Birmingham along with other municipalities which have also filed for bankruptcy. Sunak, a proponent of tax cuts for the ruling class, imperialist military interventions and the mass deportation of migrants from Britain, said publicly that cities like Birmingham are in financial difficulty due to the mismanagement of their budgets.
The City Council, which is dominated by the Labor Party, pointed to the cuts imposed by successive Conservative governments in London. Also, huge cost overruns for the installation of a new IT system in Birmingham raised costs from an initially estimated 19 million pounds to nearly 100 million.
Birmingham hosted the Commonwealth Games in 2023 which contributed to the shortfall in public revenue. A previous advisor to the Birmingham city government told the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) that the holding of this international sports competition was one of the factors which drove the city into bankruptcy.
“Sharon Thompson, deputy leader of the council, told CNN, ‘Local government is facing a perfect storm. Like councils across the country, it is clear that this council faces unprecedented financial challenges, from huge increases in adult social care demand and dramatic reductions in business rates incomes to the impact of rampant inflation.’”
Along with the tremendous responsibility of addressing the plight of the impoverished, senior citizens and the disabled through social spending, there is the question of the status of 10,000 municipal civil servants. Without the necessary funds to meet its obligations, there could very well be large-scale layoffs of municipal employees.
In a BBC report on the Birmingham bankruptcy published in the aftermath of the announcement by the City Council, it notes:
“Meanwhile, talks are continuing to safeguard the thousands of jobs at the city council.
Sharon Graham, general secretary of the Unite union – which represents hundreds of workers, said: ‘Birmingham City Council’s workers must not pay the price for the council’s or central government’s incompetence and financial mismanagement. Our members undertake vital frontline services that are essential for the communities they serve and they should not be impacted through no fault of their own.’ Thurrock Council in Essex declared itself bankrupt in December (2022) and the leader of its Labor opposition, John Kent, warned people in Birmingham they were likely to see noticeable changes in the city – and quickly. ‘We’ve seen dirtier streets, grass being cut less frequently, our only theatre is now under threat and every subsidized bus route in the borough was just cancelled,’ he told BBC WM. He also said council tax in Thurrock rose by 10% last year and was likely to increase by the same again this year. ‘That’s the situation we will be in for many years to come. People are rightly very, very angry.’”
Despite the draconian austerity imposed by five consecutive Conservative prime ministers since 2010, the party remains in power. The Labor Party underwent a purge of many left-wing activists over the last several years.
The Palestinian question remains a major issue within the Labor Party as many rank-and-file, mid-level and top leaders were accused of antisemitism. Any solidarity efforts with the Palestinians aimed at shifting British foreign policy was labelled as being anti-Jewish. Consequently, the current leadership of the Labor Party under Keir Starmer are as pro-Zionist as their Conservative counterparts.
In the latest military siege on Gaza by the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) which has lasted for more than four months, the British administration of Sunak has pledged its ongoing unconditional support to Tel Aviv. The government has downplayed the solidarity demonstrations with Palestine involving hundreds of thousands of people, representing some of the largest manifestations in the imperialist countries.
Britain has joined the White House under President Joe Biden in launching the so-called Operation Prosperity Guardian by carrying out aerial strikes and shelling of Yemen which has taken a firm position against the genocide in Gaza. The Yemeni resistance organization, Ansar Allah, is imposing a blockade on Israeli-linked vessels and those utilizing their ports in solidarity with Palestine saying that the campaign will not stop until there is a permanent ceasefire in Gaza.
Since the repeated bombing of Yemen by London and Washington, the resistance forces say they will attack U.S. and British ships operating in the Red Sea and its contiguous waterways off the coasts of the Arabian Peninsula and the Horn of Africa. A mounting regional war in West Asia will only further the declining social conditions of working and oppressed people of Britain and the U.S.
Farmers Across Europe Protest Over Declining Incomes
Although the British electorate voted to leave the European Union (EU) in 2016 being convinced that the conditions for the people would improve, similar contemporary economic problems facing the UK are occurring on the continent. In France during 2023, millions of trade unionists and students engaged in months of strikes and demonstrations to halt a pension reform bill which was eventually passed absent of legislative action.
Later a nationwide rebellion erupted in opposition to police brutality after a youth of North African descent was killed by the security forces. The demonstrations on the part of farmers began during the latter months of 2023 and have continued to the present time.
Militant actions by farmers in France were called off in early February after promises were made by the government in Paris. However, there is no guarantee that the assistance pledged by President Emmanuel Macron and his cabinet will resolve the issues negatively impacting the farmers.
Since the beginning of the Russian Special Military Operation in Ukraine two years ago, the economic situation of EU farmers has deteriorated. Although reporting on the recent protests in the corporate and capitalist-controlled governmental media refuses to acknowledge the impact of sanctions against Moscow, it is quite obvious that the glut in the supply of agricultural products, rising prices for inputs and the demands placed upon farmers by EU governments are underlining the crisis.
Tens of thousands of farmers in various EU states including France, Belgium, Germany, the Netherlands, among others, are engaging in highway and street blockades to demonstrate the urgency of their situations. In journalistic accounts of the protests, the western media dwells on the problems related to the transition to more environmentally sustainable agriculture as mandated by the United Nations Climate Conferences held annually as a major cause for the demonstrations.
Nonetheless, the costs of the proxy war against the Russian Federation related to arms transfers, direct monetary assistance to Ukraine as well as the loss of revenue due to the prohibition of trade in essential energy resources has raised the cost of living for farmers and workers substantially. The official policy of the U.S. and the EU has been to continue the sanctions and the funding of the Ukrainian military despite the tremendous failures on the battlefield.
Any serious negotiations for a ceasefire have been ruled out by the imperialist states headquartered in Washington and London. Biden’s failed approach of a sanctions-regime against Moscow has not resulted in a change in its foreign policy orientation towards Russia.
French farmers block motorway to Paris
In one Associated Press article from January 30 during the French farmers’ blockade, it does take the Ukraine war into account saying:
“The Russian invasion of Ukraine has caused painful economic shocks, including higher costs, bringing farmers’ anger to a head in France and other European countries…. On the barricades, Ukraine in particular is on some protesters’ lips. Fast-tracked for EU membership talks, it’s seen as a potentially fearsome rival with its vast fields of grain and other agricultural products that have flooded into Europe since the invasion.”
Therefore, capitalist methods of production and aggressive imperialist militarism are responsible for the declining incomes and living standards of workers and farmers. A change in the system is required to bring about an equal distribution of wealth and the end to wars of occupation and domination.
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Abayomi Azikiwe is the editor of the Pan-African News Wire. He is a regular contributor to Global Research.
All images in this article are from the author; featured image: Italian farmers protest harsh economic conditions
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Important and timely article, first published on April 10, 2020. The late Henry Kissinger has played a key role in the formulation of the “Depopulation Agenda”
“The International” is the world-renowned battle song of the socialist labor movement. The English version of the original French text reads:
“Wake up, damned of this earth, who are still forced to starve! (…) Army of slaves, wake up! (…) Peoples, hear the signals! To the final battle! There is no supreme being, no God, no emperor or tribune to save us. To put us out of our misery, that is something we can only do ourselves.”
This call was made to the international labor movement after the violent suppression of the Paris Commune in May 1871. It was not issued to the ruling “Elite” of the exploiters and oppressors.
However, it is precisely this so-called elite that seems to be blowing to the last battle today, in that it is seeking to reduce the population (depopulation) by means of a compulsory “mass protective vaccination”. The pathogenic or even deadly composition of this vaccine, which will also contain Nano-chips to control humanity, has certainly already been mixed in the world’s secret laboratories.
Even the active euthanasia of elderly and sick fellow citizens by means of strong sleeping pills and opiates has already set these dark figures on their way.
Likewise a worldwide redistribution of general wealth from the bottom to the top, from the poor to the super rich. Should we citizens of this world, remembering these plans of the cabal, not recall to whom the call for the final battle was actually made?
Two of these “world citizens” who are involved in such sinister plans are the former US Secretary of State and Nobel Peace Prize winner Henry Kissinger and the wealthy US entrepreneur and patron of the arts Bill Gates.
More than 50 years ago, Kissinger was Secretary of State, head of the US National Security Council and author of an important US foreign policy document:
“According to the [Kissinger] memorandum, depopulation should be “the highest priority in US foreign policy towards the Third World”, (…) because “the US economy needs large and growing amounts of raw materials from overseas, especially from the less developed countries” (Eggert, W. (2003).
“a first step to develop ‘new techniques and technologies for infection control and appropriate vaccines for large populations’. (…) In a second step, the focus should now be on ‘healing the wounds of the global economy’. (quoted in RT Deutsch)
The citizens of the world should therefore – whether they want to or not – be vaccinated and, in addition, it should be checked whether they have complied with this vaccination obligation.
In the RT (Deutsch article just mentioned), Nobel Peace Prize winner Kissinger is also referred to as a war criminal because, as the architect of the US aggression against Vietnam and other covert CIA secret operations, he is responsible for the death of millions of people.
Vaccination
Kissinger and the The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation seem to agree on the question of “mass protection vaccination”. On March 31, 2020, the “Washington Post” published an opinion article by Gates in which he describes his vision to vaccinate people around the world:
But creating a vaccine is only half the battle. To protect Americans and people around the world, we’ll need to manufacture billions of doses. (Without a vaccine, developing countries are at even greater risk than wealthy ones, because it’s even harder for them to do physical distancing and shutdowns.)
We can start now by building the facilities where these vaccines will be made. Because many of the top candidates are made using unique equipment, we’ll have to build facilities for each of them, knowing that some won’t get used. Private companies can’t take that kind of risk, but the federal government can. It’s a great sign that the administration made deals this week with at least two companies to prepare for vaccine manufacturing. I hope more deals will follow.
In 2015, I urged world leaders in a TED talkto prepare for a pandemic the same way they prepare for war — by running simulations to find the cracks in the system. As we’ve seen this year, we have a long way to go. But I still believe that if we make the right decisions now, informed by science, data and the experience of medical professionals, we can save lives and get the country back to work.
Is the vaccination program related to the objective of reducing world population?
In this context, let us recall Kant’s Enlightenment motto “Sapere aude!”: “Have the courage to use your own intellect!”
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Dr. Rudolf Hänsel is a graduate psychologist and educationalist.
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First posted on Global Research on December 12, 2021
Listen to Dr. Michael Yeadon, former Vice President and Chief Science Officer of Pfizer, talking about the pandemic, the PCR test and the COVID vaccine.
Watch the video below.
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Featured image: Dr Michael Yeadon, a former Pfizer vice president and co-founder of Doctors for COVID-19 Ethics. Photo credits: The Last American Vagabond / Odysee
Although South Africa’s legal initiative was directed against the State of Israel, the conduct of the genocide is a joint Israel-U.S. project, with U.S. military and intelligence operatives collaborating directly with their Israeli counterparts. This collaboration is also supported by an extensive flow of military aid.
There has been a lot of comment on General Sir Patrick Sanders’s recent speech urging preparations for a “citizen’s army” ready to confront Russia whenever the latter gets through Vladimir Putin’s Ukraine adventure.
Green New Deal links directly into the Agenda 2030 ‘Sustainability’ program whereby the WEF proposes to 100% disenfranchise farmers and substitute synthetic GMO laboratory foods for real food grown in real soil.
‘Swarming’ has been associated more recently with a radical evolution in modern warfare (most evident in Ukraine), where the use of autonomous swarming drones, continuously communicating with each other via AI, select and direct the attack to targets identified by the swarm.
In a sweeping victory for family farmers and dozens of endangered plants and animals, a federal court today revoked approval of the extremely volatile, weed-killing pesticide dicamba.
Forty years past the time that George Orwell envisioned the stomping boot of Big Brother, the police state is about to pass off the baton to the surveillance state. Fueled by a melding of government and corporate power—the rise of the security industrial complex—this watershed moment sounds a death knell for our privacy rights.
Very few of us saw the COVID-19 pandemic back decades. Yet the underpinnings and timeline for the pandemic response go back many years and date stamped by the 2005 PREP Act which provided immunity to “countermeasures” which we later learned included masks, lockdowns, vaccines, etc.
The conflict between the Commander of the Ukrainian Armed Forces, Zaluzhny and President Zelensky is coming to a head with the latter showing extreme weakness after weeks of claims that Zaluzhny had been sacked but with Zaluzhny still in place.
“War is fun”, the helmets in Vietnam used to say with bleakest irony, meaning that if a war is revealed as having no purpose other than to justify voracious power in the cause of lucrative fanaticisms such as the weapons industry, the danger of truth beckons.
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If asked to compare a community of forest produce gathering people about 7000 years ago with a most modernized group of people in New York City today, most people would say that of course, the later situation reflects much greater development and progress of humanity in terms of easily accessing so many comforts and luxuries, not just needs.
However if we start exploring questions like which life-patterns reflect greater environment protection and sustainability, more justice and equality, more peace, contentment and harmony with other people as well as other forms of life, then in all likelihood the thousands of years old community would reflect a more ‘advanced’ state.
The past five to six hundred years are often regarded as the years of greatest progress. Yet cruelty, plunder, injustice, massacres and genocides (sometimes to the extent of nearly 90 per cent of the people of vast regions being killed) have also been seen in some of their worst forms during these centuries.
The last century has been called the century of the greatest progress but in fact this is the century in which the basic life-nurturing conditions of the planet have been ravaged the most, largely due to the folly of the richest 10 per cent of people, endangering not just the entire humanity but also the thousands and thousands of other forms of life.
Hence history must never be seen as a history of continuing human progress. Instead history must strive to understand the conditions relating to justice, equality, protection of environment and biodiversity, concern for all forms of life and compassion, peace and harmony in various places and times and then to understand progress or regression in these terms.
Similarly other social sciences and humanities must change to reflect such an improved and more comprehensive understanding of progress/regression and wellness/illness of various societies. This is certainly true of sociology, political science and perhaps most of all of Economics.
Unfortunately distortions in the study and understanding of Economics have often led to many economists, including some of the most reputed ones, contributing to injustice, inequality and ecological ruin instead of contributing to justice, equality and protection of environment.
Social sciences and social scientists must increasingly be more inward looking to honestly evaluate their role and contribution in times which are perhaps the most troubling in the history of humanity on earth, times when entirely human-made factors have brought the planet to a stage where its basic life-nurturing conditions are very badly threatened.
Why is it that many social scientists have not been able to contribute in more meaningful and effective ways on the side of justice and equality, environment protection and peace? Why several of them are increasingly seen to be on the side of problems rather than solutions? Why an even higher number has chosen to be wrapped up in advancing their own comforts instead of taking a more active role in challenging injustices and helping to create a better, safer world?
There is much need for honest introspection by the community of social scientists regarding their role. Is their role to be seen only or mainly in careerist terms (which would be a very narrow understanding for a profession that should be seen in terms of a very noble and important role, all the more so in these difficult times)? What needs to be done to increase the possibilities of more and more social scientists being able to contribute more meaningfully to creating a better and safer world?
The other aspect relates to reframing, restructuring or perhaps even re-defining various social sciences in terms of the needs and requirements of creating a better, more just, sustainable and safer world. Both aspects of this introspection are of course related to each other, both are equally important. Initiatives relating to such introspection are likely to result in various useful suggestions, including some that can be taken up immediately and some that need longer-term processes and much wider efforts. If these can be shared and together lead to a more broad-based effort, cutting across narrow boundaries, then a more specific agenda of meaningful changes can emerge within a year or two.
What is true beyond any doubt is that in order to check the existential crisis before it is too late, and do this within a framework of justice, peace and democracy, the world deeds vary basic changes in the near future. Social scientists and social sciences must change in order to be able to contribute adequately to this. It is within this wider perspective that the suggestions made here should be seen.
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Bharat Dogra is Honorary Convener, Campaign to Save Earth Now. His recent books include Protecting Earth for Children, Planet in Peril, Earth without Borders, Man over Machine and A Day in 2071. He is a regular contributor to Global Research.
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So how has this “post-war” Britain been working out for you?
There has been a lot of comment on General Sir Patrick Sanders’s recent speech urging preparations for a “citizen’s army” ready to confront Russia whenever the latter gets through Vladimir Putin’s Ukraine adventure.
But the most remarkable contention by the head of the British army was the one asserting that we have been dwelling in a “post-war world” but now need to man up for a “pre-war” one.
It might well suit an eminent general to wish to blank out the last generation since they have been inglorious, to say the least, in terms of British martial prowess.
But these are the facts of the real world we have actually been enduring. Over the last 25 years, Britain has fought in Yugoslavia, Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Syria and now Yemen.
It has further been a deeply involved proxy party to the continuing war in Ukraine, and in the Saudi/UAE aggression against Yemen prior to the present direct attacks. And our politicians are underwriting Israel’s genocide in Gaza.
So we have neither been in a “post-war” world, nor a “pre-war” one, but a world of war. We are living in a country almost permanently fighting somewhere with someone.
Many of these wars have been flagrantly illegal — the aggressions against Yugoslavia and Iraq and the intervention in Syria most blatantly. Others have been in a grey area from that point of view.
A legal war is not necessarily a just, prudent or sustainable one. But the point is worth stressing given the fondness of British politicians for wrapping themselves in legality and plumping their bottoms on what they hope is the moral high ground.
In fact, Britain is a rogue state. And a bipartisan rogue state at that. All the wars just listed have enjoyed full-throated support from the front benches of both Labour and Tories. It has not mattered one whit who is in government and who is the “official opposition.”
That consensus briefly broke down when Labour successfully opposed strikes on Syria in 2013. Then leader Ed Miliband was so overcome with embarrassment at this victory that he never alluded to it again.
And under Jeremy Corbyn’s leadership Labour challenged the attacks in Iraq and Syria in 2015, although for reasons that remain utterly incomprehensible it permitted a free vote to the party’s entitled imperialist faction in the Commons.
But war is by and large an Establishment project that all politicians buy into. There is dissent on the US right over continuing to prolong the Ukraine conflict, but in the Conservative Party here not a peep.
A third observation is that several of these conflicts were Nato-badged and led — the bombardment of Yugoslavia, the occupation of Afghanistan and regime change in Libya. All aggressions, and all disasters — a point to remember when anyone extols Nato’s “purely defensive” character.
With the obvious exception of the US, no other country in the world engages so consistently in military aggression. France may perhaps run Britain close, but even Paris sat out the Iraq calamity.
And all this is without mentioning the Pacific, where Britain is flexing its military and diplomatic muscles through Aukus and aircraft carriers without as yet doing any actual fighting.
Sir Patrick was exercised about fighting Russia — perhaps a “citizens’ navy” to confront China too was an imaginative leap too far.
The point is that, despite all the complaints of the brasshats and their media epigones that the British armed forces are now too enfeebled to stand sentinel on our sovereignty, Britain fights wars almost continually and all over the place.
Indeed Richard Gott, once of The Guardian before that organ took up permanent residence on the dark side, set out to write a book showing that Britain had been fighting somewhere or other every year from the 18th century on.
His researches terminated, likely through exhaustion, several hundred pages in but only in the mid-19th century. There will be a second volume eventually, and probably a larger one. Gott is attempting the literary equivalent of painting the Forth rail bridge.
So the question is not — how do we fight Russia, but why do we fight so much? The answer is surprisingly terse — finance capital, in two words, or imperialism if you feel one is sufficient.
Britain’s centuries-long record of aggression, now continuing unabated, is the direct extension of the hegemony of the City of London in our capitalist system. First, it funded the plundering of much of the world through trading, while using government debt incurred in war-fighting to assume a dominant place in the state.
Then it became the vehicle for the massive export of capital which greased the establishment of a formal empire, an informal empire alongside it, and a central financial role in world monopoly capitalism as a whole. Not a project that could be undertaken without sustained violence.
And so on into the sterling area, the invention of the eurodollar market, the post-cold war globalisation and every phase in the metamorphosis of imperialism. If you are laundering surplus value from across the globe, you need an open world market for capital — and that requires a world police force.
Today, capital’s global cop is clearly the US. The imperative for bourgeois Britain is to stay close to Washington above all, to ensure that the world order accommodates the parasites of the Square Mile.
So today Britain’s wars are usually fought as junior partner to the US. Even when London takes the lead, as it did with Paris in attacking Libya, US military back-up is vital.
And when Britain’s contribution is mostly symbolic — the RAF can be doing nothing in the Red Sea that the Pentagon could not do for itself — it is still a down payment on a world order it profits from.
The point here is that support for finance capital, for the City of London, is support for war in the end. In a week when Keir Starmer and Rachel Reeves have fallen over themselves to appease big capital — on corporation tax, on bankers’ bonuses and likely on private equity taxation — that seems relevant.
I met Ed Balls a dozen years ago, when he was shadow chancellor. On being urged not to follow New Labour by letting the City dictate economic policy, he said that such a proposal was “not a break with the last Labour government, but with the policy of the last 200 years.”
He gets more marks for historical erudition than political courage. The worst of it is not bankers getting rich while industrial workers get laid off, bad as that self-evidently is. It is that British finance capital is always marching us to war.
There is no need to be too mechanistic. Clearly Gordon Brown could have carried on obliging the bankers and Tony Blair could still have declined to invade Iraq.
The tendency to war is ineluctable, but no particular conflict is inevitable. The masses get a vote if we press hard enough.
But the connection remains tight. We have never been “post-war” because we are not “post-capitalist.”
Now that would be an objective worth forming a citizen’s army for. Gen Sanders may however prefer to find a berth with the Royal Hedge Fund Fusiliers.
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Featured image: Secretary of State for Defence Grant Shapps, speaks to Chief of the General Staff General Patrick Sanders during a visit to a military training camp in East Anglia in the UK, November 29, 2023
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It’s going to be a very big push and will complement other protests taking place throughout Europe.
Poland has the largest number of family farms in Europe – over one million. These farms are a vital resource not just for national food production but also for the maintenance of Poland’s unique biodiversity.
Particular to this Polish farmer’s effort will be a central attack on ‘Green New Deal’ (see below) which is of course a critically important issue vis-a-vis ensuring the future of all farmers/farming.
Green New Deal links directly into the Agenda 2030 ‘Sustainability’ program whereby the WEF proposes to 100% disenfranchise farmers and substitute synthetic GMO laboratory foods for real food grown in real soil.
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A part of the announcement of the NSZZ of Individual Farmers “Solidarity” on the General Strike (from February 9 to March 10, 2024)
“…Our patience has been exhausted. The position of Brussels at the end of January 2024 is unacceptable to the entire agricultural community. In addition, the lack of response from the Polish authorities and declarations of cooperation with the European Commission, along with announcements to respect all decisions on the import of agricultural and food products from Ukraine, leave us no choice but to declare a general strike…We cannot accept the implementation of the “European Green Deal”, the European Union’s farm-to-table strategy and the proposed form of the Common Agricultural Policy.
The Polish government must present a clear plan for agricultural production, its profitability, the reconstruction of domestic processing and trade. We will fight for this until it happens. Polish farm families are the foundation of our country’s food security….
We ask compatriots to be understanding and aware of the situation in which we all find ourselves. We are fighting for our common good, which is to save Polish family-owned, often multi-generational farms from collapse and bankruptcy….”
Map of agricultural protests starting on February 9, 2024:
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