Tropas estadounidenses “preparadas para morir”: el teniente general Richard Clark confirma una “asociación” entre Estados Unidos e Israel
November 20th, 2023 by Ben Bartee
Notre site en Français: mondialisation.ca
Nuestro sitio en español: GlobalizacionNovember 20th, 2023 by Ben Bartee
November 19th, 2023 by Jorge Fonseca
November 19th, 2023 by Konrad Rękas
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The truth is that today we are chanting “in our thousands, in our millions we are all Palestinians”, but in fact we are not there. We do not live in a Gaza that is being murdered, bombed and wiped out. The foreign, occupying state does not cut off the light and water in our homes, we do not need a passport to go to work, and on the way to our workplaces, no one will search us, spit on us, insult us, beat us, arrest us or shoot us.
Not yet, because in reality Nazism and fascism are not some pathologies of liberalism, some bad response to it. While the Zionism is only a variant of Nazism, the Nazi state is directly a defensive stage of capitalism, recalled when it moves closer to another inevitable crisis. This is a straight line, even if we don’t see it now: populism, limiting workers’ and trade union rights, stigmatising entire groups of citizens, e.g. migrants, chauvinism, jingoism, then authoritarianism, fascism and war, endless war, above all, against civilians, against the innocent, there are all just methods of maximising capitalist profits. The war in Palestine, a war that has been going on since 1948, is just an element of the escalatory strategy of global capitalism, which once again distracts attention from its own internal problems by multiplying fronts. In this sense, Israel is at the forefront of what is the worst and most destructive in the current global system. The struggle of the Palestinian people is therefore our common struggle, so even though we are not in Gaza, we all can and should feel Palestinians today!
Zionist aggression is also a matter of special responsibility of British policy. Meeting almost on the anniversary of the infamous Balfour Declaration, we must make it clear that without the British influence there would be no permanent crisis in the Middle East, no Nakba, no wars and no Palestinian genocide. It was Lord Palmerston who announced an intention to create the new Zion in 1840, of course as a place and organisation helping to spread the interests of the British Empire and, of course, without asking the opinion of European Jews themselves whether they wanted to act as agents of British imperialism at all.
At the end the Great War British administration, army and intelligence did not hesitate to betray their Arab allies who were crucial for the British victory over Turkey in the Middle East. The new colonial division of Palestine, Transjordan, Iraqi and Syria contributed significantly to the beginning of the Zionist colonisation of these areas, and Israel itself was created as an Anglo-Saxon sphere of influence, thanks to which it would become possible to divide and conquer again, to provoke and quarrel Jews and Arabs who had previously lived in peace for the centuries. It was the British Empire that sowed the seeds of hatred, the poisonous fruits of which continue to grow to this day.
Nevertheless the poison works both ways. As a result of the war in Palestine and Zionist aggression, British politics is also poisoned. Under the banner of ‘fighting against the Antisemitism’, freedom of speech and scholar debate are being restricted in the UK. The Labour Party has become not only a party of war, but also a party of militant Zionism, which leads it to continuing disintegration. Under Sir Keir Starmer’s leadership, Labour first replaced red banners with blue ones, then with blue and yellow Ukrainian ones (possibly with the Nazi Wolfsangel, which we have seen so many times in Whitehall), and now shamelessly raises Zionist blue star flags, the same ones under which Netanyahu’s butchers are murdering civilians in Gaza. The Labour Party’s support first for Ukrainian Nazism and now for Zionism is a disgrace and shame for all people with the progressive, internationalist sensibility. So, what if the discredited Tories finally give up power when the same murderous lovers come in their place?
The influential American journalist, Ann Applebaum wrote a few years ago that it is in the Anglo-Saxon interest to create and support ‘even extreme, but after all fine nationalism in Ukraine’. We all know how this specific kind of ‘fine extreme pro-Western nationalism’ is called: NAZISM. Until recently, we also heard a lot that a ‘positive Zionism’ is also possible, one that would find a way to a peaceful agreement with the Palestinians. Today we should understand that there is no such option, and Israel is not only a criminal state, but also an increasingly authoritarian one.
We have all surely seen films documenting the brutality of the Israeli police and army against Orthodox Jews protesting against the government’s policies. We often hear that ‘Israel is a bastion of democracy and Western tolerance in the Middle East’. Today it is no longer possible to hide the truth. Zionist Israel is an Apartheid, Nazi state and Gaza is a modern-day extermination camp. I am Polish, I was born and lived for many years in Lublin, the city where during the World War 2 was located Konzentrationslager Majdanek, the second largest German Nazi extermination camp, so I can recognise a Holocaust when I see it. And in Palestine I see the Holocaust of the Palestinians.
During the WW2 the UK could have bombed the railways to Auschwitz, Majdanek and other death camps, it could have done much more to stop and prevent the Shoah, which the Polish resistance reported to no avail. The UK (nor the USA) did nothing. And now it is much worse, the UK and NATO not only fail to prevent the Holocaust of the Palestinians but are also responsible for complicity in the genocide. It is a crime against humanity, but it is even more than that, it is a deadly mistake which leads the entire world another step closer to World War 3.
That is why we must say no to war, no to NATO and Anglo-Saxon imperialism, no to Nazism and no to Zionism.
Palestine will be free for the world to survive!
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Konrad Rękas is a regular contributor to Global Research.
Featured image is from Jewish Voice for Peace
November 19th, 2023 by Drago Bosnic
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For well over a year and a half, we have been listening and reading about all the mythical “victories” of the Kiev regime forces. If we were to believe the mainstream propaganda machine, Russia is about to collapse, its forces are in disarray, President Putin is in perpetual hiding in some bunker, etc. And yet, concurrently, that same mainstream propaganda machine is publishing texts about the massive increase in the number of forcibly conscripted women in the Neo-Nazi junta forces. This begs the obvious question, why? Why would the side that’s supposedly “winning” enforce conscription on anyone, let alone women? Men are far more suitable to be soldiers for evident biological reasons (unless you’re an ultra-liberal, “woke” extremist).
Women can surely play a part in the defense of their own country, but ideally, this shouldn’t be encouraged. Warfare has always been quite an ugly business, even for the toughest of men, as evidenced by the number of veterans with PTSD. In this regard, frontline units are particularly exposed to the horrors of war and female soldiers should certainly be kept as far as possible from direct combat zones. The dread that male POWs (prisoners of war) can go through is more than enough, while women in the same situation are at the risk of experiencing even worse horrors. This alone should disqualify female soldiers from serving in frontline units. Notwithstanding many famous women who served in wars during momentous times in history, this is something that should be an axiom.
However, it seems the Kiev regime didn’t get the memo. Worse yet, not only are they sending women to the trenches, but are now forcibly conscripting pregnant ones. Yes, you read that right – pregnant Ukrainian women are being sent to the frontline.
Anyone remotely sane would call that a war crime. Those who are sending them can only be described as enemies of their own people.
Pregnant women are by far the most precious humans one could possibly imagine and treating them with anything less than absolute care is simply criminal.
Taking into account the unrelenting demographic collapse of Ukraine, women (particularly pregnant ones) should be the top priority in terms of ensuring their safety and well-being. However, the Neo-Nazi junta and its NATO overlords have other plans.
What they are really after is an endless supply of cannon fodder. So far, there have been at least a quarter of a million KIA (killed in action), while there are several times more WIA/MIA (wounded/missing in action). Some, such as the US Army Colonel Douglas McGregor (ret.) claim that the numbers are far worse. According to his estimate, there are upwards of half a million Ukrainian men who have died in battle so far. The numbers might be up for debate, but there’s no doubt they’re horrendous. However, that’s still not enough for the political West and its favorite puppet regime. The Neo-Nazi junta forces are actively conscripting women to replace those losses, as attempts to forcibly draft Ukrainian refugees living abroad failed, with the host countries simply refusing to enforce it.
Hundreds of thousands of young Ukrainians who haven’t got the chance to leave the country are in hiding, as there’s no other way to avoid the ruthless draft commissions that regularly grab people in the streets and then send them off to frontline units. Obviously, those who are loyal to the Kiev regime are exempt, as well as those who can afford to pay hefty bribes to military medical commissions (MMCs). Thus, sons of numerous corrupt oligarchs get the chance to live their lavish lifestyles abroad (all at the expense of the Ukrainian people), while pregnant women are sent to war. What’s more, recently released combat footage shows some have already been captured by the Russian military. The video in question shows a woman shouting “[I’m] pregnant!” while surrendering to Russian soldiers.
Although it could be argued that the female soldier in the video is simply saying this out of fear, there have already been complaints from pregnant women who got conscription notices. As there are upwards of 50,000 female soldiers currently serving in various units, the number of pregnant ones is difficult to determine, but it could easily be in the hundreds (if not even thousands). And while legal limitations previously protected women by barring them from serving in frontline units, most of those have been lifted after the special military operation (SMO) started. Thus, female soldiers can now serve as machine gunners, tank commanders, snipers, truck drivers, etc. Unfortunately, this is hardly surprising given that people with severe physical and mental disabilities are also being deemed “fit for service”.
The Neo-Nazi junta frontman Volodymyr Zelensky is obsessed with pleasing his NATO overlords and this includes military “victories” at any cost. This only resulted in further escalation of the conflict between Zelensky and the Kiev regime’s top commander, General Valery Zaluzhny. The latter simply doesn’t want to throw away the lives of countless soldiers just to accomplish tactical “victories” that don’t really change the overall situation on the battlefield. Zelensky’s direct meddling in military affairs (for which he completely lacks any sort of expertise) is a constant source of frustration for Zaluzhny and his officers. He’s simply so out of touch that this is making the already miserable lives of hundreds of thousands of Ukrainian soldiers even more difficult, as they’re without proper training and supplies.
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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: Ukrainian snipers attend shooting training near the front line amid Russia-Ukraine war in Zaporizhzhia, Ukraine, on February 18, 2023. [Source: businessinsider.com]
November 19th, 2023 by Dr. Binoy Kampmark
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The unpardonable, outrageous trial of Australian whistleblower David McBride was a brief affair. On November 13, it did not take long for the brutal power of the Commonwealth to become evident. McBride, having disclosed material that formed the Australian public about alleged war crimes by special forces in Afghanistan, was going to be made an example of.
McBride served as a major in the British army before becoming a lawyer for the Australian Defence Force, serving two tours in Afghanistan over 2011 and 2013. During that time, he gathered material about the culture and operations of Australia’s special forces that would ultimately pique the interest of investigators and lead to the Brereton Inquiry which, in 2020, made 36 referrals to the Australian Federal Police related to alleged war crimes.
McBride was subsequently charged with five national security offences. He was also denied immunity from prosecution under the near-unworkable provisions of the Public Interest Disclosure Act 2013 (Cth).
A central contention of the Crown was that McBride had, first and foremost, a duty to follow orders as a military lawyer. Such a duty flows on from the oath sworn to the sovereign, and no public interest could trump that undertaking. “A soldier,” contended Trish McDonald in her astonishing submission, “does not serve the sovereign by promising to do whatever the soldier thinks is in the public interest, even if contrary to the laws made by parliament.”
Even a layperson’s reading of the oath would surely make a nonsense of this view, but Justice David Mossop was in little mood to suggest otherwise. “There is no aspect of duty that allows the accused to act in the public interest contrary to a lawful order.” It was a point he would be putting to the jury, effectively excluding any broader public interest considerations that might be at play in disobeying a military order.
For anybody vaguely familiar with military law since the Nuremberg trials of Nazi leaders in 1945, such orders are never absolute, nor to be obeyed without qualification. Following orders without question or demur in all cases went out – or so the 1945 trials suggested – with Nazi officialdom and the Third Reich. There are cases when a soldier is under a positive duty to disobey certain orders. But McDonald was trapped in a fusty pre-Nuremberg world, evidenced by her use of a 19th century authority on military justice that would have sat well with the German defence team: “There is nothing so dangerous to the civil establishment of the state as an undisciplined or reactionary army.”
Chief counsel representing McBride, Stephen Odgers, hoped to drag Australian military justice into the twenty-first century, reaffirming the wisdom of Nuremberg: there are times when a public duty supersedes and transcends the narrow demands of authority, notably when it comes to the commission or concealment of crimes. The oath McBride swore as a member of the ADF to serve the sovereign comprised an element to act in the public interest, even when opposed to a lawful order.
There being no direct Australian decision on the subject (in itself, a startling fact) McBride’s legal team took the matter of duty to the Court of Appeal of the Australian Capital Territory on November 16, hoping to delay the trial and argue the point. Chief Justice Lucy McCallum heard the following submission:
“His only real argument is that what he did was the right thing. There was an order: don’t disclose this stuff, but he bled, and did the right thing, to use his language, and the question is does the fact that he’s in breach of orders mean that he’s in breach of his duty, so that he’s got no defence?”
If such an approach was adopted, Odgers went on to state, it “may well mean that the consequence is that he’s got no real alternative but to enter pleas of guilty and that would obviously shorten things but he seeks an opportunity to have that critical issue determined by the court of appeal.” Were the jury to understand that a public interest test applied in certain cases, they would then work on the “basis that there is a powerful public interest that members of the defence force do obey orders, but circumstances might arise in which that is not in the public interest.”
What Justice Mossop was essentially saying was “not that orders are relevant to the question of duty but rather that they trump anything else, so that you must obey”. This was irrespective of “how unreasonable or in breach of fundamental principles of justice they may be, and will commit criminal offence if he does not”.
Odgers suggested an example elementary but salient. Picture a junior officer, being given a supposedly lawful order to commit what would be seen as a war crime. “Is that junior officer necessarily in breach of his duty? And there’s no way that a jury can say no he didn’t have a duty to obey that order? That’s the implications we say of his honour’s decision.”
Unfortunately for McBride, McCallum would not be swayed. Mossop’s ruling was “not obviously wrong.” She did not feel “that there is sufficient doubt about his honour’s ruling on either issue to warrant interrupting the trial.”
With the trial resuming on November 17, Mossop issued another stinging order: that the Attorney-General’s office remove classified documents in McBride’s possession that could be presented to the jury at trial. As one of the defence team, Mark Davis, told reporters,
“We received the decision just this afternoon, which was in essence to remove evidence from the defence.” In doing so, “The Crown, the government, was given the authority to bundle up evidence and run out the backdoor with it.”
With such gloomy prospects, McBride requested a new indictment on lesser charges, to which he pleaded guilty. Facing sentencing in the new year, he may be eligible to serve time outside carceral conditions, though a decade long stint is also in the offing.
“The result of today’s outcome,” wrote transparency advocate and former Senator Rex Patrick, “is one brave whistleblower likely behind bars and thousands of prospective whistleblowers lost from the community.”
In June this year, Australian Attorney-General Mark Dreyfus proudly claimed that
“the Albanese government has delivered on our promise to the Australian people to strengthen protections for public sector whistleblowers.”
Hardly. While modest amendments were made to the unspeakably clumsy Public Interest Disclosure Act, including the establishment of a National Anti-Corruption Commission, McBride had little reason to cheer. Dreyfus refused to use Section 71 of the Judiciary Act 1903 (Cth), which gives the country’s chief lawmaker to drop prosecutions against individuals charged with “an indictable offence against the laws of the Commonwealth”.
Dreyfus, however, did discontinue the obscene prosecution of former ACT attorney-general Bernard Collaery under that same provision but refrained from exercising that same power regarding McBride and the Australian Tax Office whistleblower, Richard Boyle. His reasoning proved strikingly inconsistent: only in “very unusual and exceptional circumstances” could Dreyfus use such discretion. We are on slippery terrain when revealing alleged war crimes is a matter usual and unexceptional.
In McBride’s understandably distressed reading of the result, he warned that, in joining the Australian military, you were not “joining a noble profession, just a criminal gang like any other criminal gang: silence and complicity are the touchstones. A judge has made that clear.” And, sadly, more besides.
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Dr. Binoy Kampmark was a Commonwealth Scholar at Selwyn College, Cambridge. He currently lectures at RMIT University. He is a regular contributor to Global Research and Asia-Pacific Research. Email: [email protected]
Featured image is from Riotact
November 19th, 2023 by Greg Reese
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The world cries for peace as America pushes for war.
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November 19th, 2023 by Karsten Riise
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The US government’s debt stands at nearly $34 trillion. Even worse, the deficits of the US governments are only getting bigger and bigger. As the debt and rate of interest go up, so go the total debt payment. As Ukraine, Gaza, and Taiwan heat up, so both parties agree on ever bigger military spending. Furthermore, not even the Republicans want to cut in social spending or in Obama-care, as the Republicans realize that they depend more and more on votes from disadvantaged Americans including the less educated, the low earners, ordinary workers, and the Black and Latino communities.
US government needs to borrow and will therefore go up – a lot.
Bad for the USA that fewer and fewer want to lend money to the US.
The Chinese stopped buying US debt – they are now selling it. The Japanese stopped buying US debt as well – and will now buy their own debt instead. The rich Saudis and Emirates are also less inclined to buy US debt, as they have their own mega project like the Saudi NEOM city to spend trillions on. See this.
Even worse – to combat inflation, the US Federal Reserve Bank is forced to reverse “Quantitative Easing”, where the US Central Bank used to indirectly purchase US government debt. With “quantitative easing”, the US Central Bank bought US government debt in a masked way by way of buying private debt owned by US banks in exchange US banks buying fresh issued US government debt. But “quantitative easing” is now being replaced by the reverse, by “quantitative tightening”, as the US Central Bank is more inclined to sell debt than to buy it, worsening the financial situation of the US government even more.
So, what happens when a bad quality commodity like US government debt becomes more abundant, and fewer and fewer want to buy it? As always, the price goes down – and when US treasury bonds get cheaper, the rate of interest the US government has to pay goes further sharply up. Higher rates of interest and ever higher levels of debt further exacerbates the US government’s deficit and its needs to borrow go further up. It’s a vicious circle for the US government.
The US is now in a vice – squeezed between higher loan needs and fewer lenders.
The US government is so badly off that it has to pay a real rate of interest (that is, the rate of interest above inflation) of around 2.25% – that is nearly the same high level as Italy.
Because foreign buyers and the US Federal Reserve Bank are all selling off US debt instead of buying it, the US government from now on depends solely on private US investors to finance its debt.
As there is only a definite amount of private investment capital available inside the USA, the continuation of ever-bigger private purchases of US government bonds has to “crowd out” (that is, replace) more and more investments in private enterprises, which create jobs.
In return, the required market rate of interest in the USA goes up, not only on US bonds, but on US shares and real estate as well.
And as the required market rate of interest goes up on stocks and real estate, the price of these assets goes down, incurring either less profits or even losses in fortunes for private US investors. Moreover, the resulting less private US investments in companies and real estate will incur a loss in US jobs.
US government deficit is now an extreme strong and unstoppable force dragging down on the US economy. Yes, the US economy may continue signs of growing, but like a swimmer wearing a belt of lead, the US economy will get more and more “tired” as it is inexorably dragged towards the bottom. Sooner or later, a drowning may occur – and that realization among private investors may come rather suddenly, creating an unstoppable break-down of the entire US financial system.
A break-down which cannot be stopped like the last couple of times by the US government injecting trillions into the private economy and banking sector to revive it – because this time, precisely such mega US government trillion injections are the cause, not any solution, to this deadly disease threatening the entire US financial system.
The whole world will feel the pain as well when this hits.
The worst thing for the US is that there is no end, no solution, in sight to this situation. Neither party in the US is going to cut spending. The problem can only be solved by raising taxes. And not just raise taxes by a little bit, but enormously, and that will also hit the US economy dramatically. Neither party in the US is going to raise taxes.
This is therefore only going to get worse – and faster and faster.
The financial abyss awaits the USA.
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Karsten Riise is a Master of Science (Econ) from Copenhagen Business School and has a university degree in Spanish Culture and Languages from Copenhagen University. He is the former Senior Vice President and Chief Financial Officer (CFO) of Mercedes-Benz in Denmark and Sweden.
He is a regular contributor to Global Research.
Featured image is from Pixabay
November 19th, 2023 by Steven Sahiounie
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Israel has insisted that the Al Shifa Hospital in Gaza is sitting on top of a network of tunnels which are the Hamas headquarters in Gaza. The Israeli government have offered no credible proof, and only cite secret intelligence as their source.
Lieutenant Colonel Peter Lerner, Israeli army spokesperson, told CNN the hospital and compound were for Hamas “a central hub of their operations, perhaps even the beating heart and maybe even a centre of gravity”.
US President Joe Biden was not falling for their claims, and on Tuesday insisted that hospitals must be protected.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu called Biden, and Biden flip-flopped his position and gave the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) the green-light to attack and occupy the hospital.
While CNN was covering the Trump trials, and the 2024 US presidential race, Al Jazeera and other Middle Eastern media with journalists inside Gaza, were broadcasting images of terrified doctors and patients lining the halls of the hospital. Doctors on duty at the time reported that IDF soldiers were tying up doctors and health professionals in the hospital, while beating some doctors and patients as well.
Where is the credible evidence to justify an attack and occupation of a hospital in a war zone? Human rights experts point out that hospitals, healthcare workers and ambulances are protected by international law.
Israel gets a lot of their secret intelligence from informants inside Gaza. People who are poor and need the paycheck, or those who may have an ideological difference with Hamas.
The other common source Israel depends on is torture. On October 7, the day of the Hamas attack on Israelis, some Hamas members may have survived and were captured. Every Palestinian arrested by the IDF are always tortured, including women and children.
Torture has been proven to produce worthless intelligence. Any person who is undergoing excruciating pain will answer anything to get the beatings to stop. Research has proven that the answers, or information you get from torture are mainly faulty, and this has caused many intelligence services in the Middle East and in the West to drop the practice.
Did someone under the pain of torture say that Al Shifa Hospital sits atop the Hamas command center?
A military expert in the Middle East, on the condition of anonymity, said that Hamas likely keeps the location of their headquarters secret, and the information is available on a ‘need to know’ basis. Only the most senior members would likely know the location, and the local informants would not have that information, nor would the fighters who participated on the October 7 attack.
The same military expert offered his theory: that the IDF want the Al Shifa Hospital as their headquarters because it is centrally located in the north, a substantial building, and has plenty of resources inside for electricity production and health care for the IDF. If his theory is correct, we may be presented with fabricated evidence of a secret Hamas headquarters by the IDF.
Regardless of how flimsy the evidence, the White House will rubber-stamp it with their seal of approval. We can’t forget General Colin Powell in Congress in 2003 with the small vial of baby powder claiming it to be Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction. Fabrications and lies are a specialty served up hot on a bed of media distortions by the Biden administration.
The IDF hurriedly deleted a social media post they made claiming that all hospitals and ambulances in Gaza were a legitimate military target as Hamas used them. They were working up to the Al Shifa Hospital attack and wanted to test the waters.
Gaza’s largest hospital, al-Shifa Hospital, located in northern Rimal in Gaza City, was built in 1946 during British rule.
“In Gaza, as Israeli forces enter Al-Shifa hospital, we call once again for the protection of medical staff, patients and displaced civilians sheltered inside the hospital,” Doctors Without Borders said on X.
“We are extremely worried for their lives,” it stressed.
“There are reports that some people who fled the hospital have been shot at, wounded and even killed,” wrote WHO on X on Saturday.
Decomposed bodies were buried in a mass grave at the hospital to ward off contagions. Dr. Ahmad Mokhallalati, a surgeon who is currently in the hospital, told Al Jazeera that gunshots can be heard surrounding the hospital.
Mokhallalati said 650 patients remain at the hospital, including about 100 in critical condition, with 2,000 to 3,000 displaced Palestinians seeking shelter in the building, and 700 medical staff.
36 premature babies were recently taken off their incubators because the station supplying them oxygen was destroyed in Israeli shellings three days ago, and three babies died.
The IDF have stripped naked people in the courtyard of the hospital amid rain and winter temperatures while interrogating them as Israel tanks approached while firing.
At least 11,320 Palestinians have been killed, including over 7,800 women and children, and more than 29,200 others have been injured, according to the latest figures from Palestinian authorities.
According to experts, the Al Shifa attack and occupation is part of the Israeli vision for a forceful displacement of everyone in northern Gaza. Food and water supplies have run out, and the destruction of the last remaining source of medical care is a strategic Israeli military goal.
“The war against [Hamas] is advancing with full force, and it has one goal: to win. There is no alternative to victory,” Netanyahu said on Saturday, and has rejected international calls for a ceasefire.
Netanyahu has clearly stated it is his goal to remain in Gaza as an occupying force indefinitely, despite the US, Egypt, and Jordan opposing such a plan.
Netanyahu also made clear he wanted Israel to retain overall security control after any conflict “with the ability to go in whenever we want in order to kill terrorists”.
In the face of millions of protesters across the world, we still have never once heard Biden call for a ceasefire.
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This article was originally published on Mideast Discourse.
Steven Sahiounie is a two-time award winning journalist. He is a regular contributor to Global Research.
All images in this article are from MD
November 19th, 2023 by Germán Gorraiz López
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The Greek philosopher Aristotle in his treatise “Politics”, defined man as ‘political animal’ ( zoom politikon) to indicate that ‘man is a social and rational being who lives in societies organized politically and in whose public affairs he participates to a greater or lesser extent, with the aim of achieving the common good pursued by politics: the happiness of citizens”.
Historically, the party idea was inherent in the conception of shared power (antagonistic to the monarchy’s idea of monopoly power) and responsible to the various parts of society that over time was consolidated as a means of expression of the citizen’s will and government action.
Initially, the primary role of the parties was to promote the participation of citizens in democratic life and to contribute to the integration of national representation; But the bleeding cases of corruption of the majority of the parliamentary parties combined with the transformation of these parties into entities totally refractory to the basic needs of the citizenry, would have provoked the disaffection of broad layers of citizens.
Thus, the political ruling caste would have been transformed into a power clique (equivalent to a mini-state within the state), which would use nepotism to perpetuate itself in the party for life and in turn, would be choked by the pressure lobbies of the establishment.
Likewise, the political parties would be afflicted according to Ortega and Gasset of the “aristophobia or fear of the best” because “the sentimental rebellion of the masses, the hatred of the best and the scarcity of them in politics would be the real reason for the great Hispanic failure”. As a solution, at the end of the essay “Invertebrate Spain”, Ortega points to the “imperative of selection that should govern the spirits and orient the wills and using it as a chisel, set to forge a new type of man”.
The German philosopher Hannah Arendt in her book “On the Revolution”, 1963 states that
“the party system has prevailed in Western societies, imposing representation as the only form of government. They also present definite political programs, which prevent the citizens from exercising their ability to form and express their own opinion”.
For Arendt, “the representative government has become oligarchic: public freedom and happiness have become the privilege of a few”. The political parties would therefore be part of an obsolete and fossilized system, so it advises the council system as “the only form of organization of a large political community that ensures the right to the participation of all its members in the public sphere as they constitute real political spaces, apt to serve as scenarios of action”.
In conclusion, it is urgent to renew the internal structures of political parties to ensure a transversality that allows the implementation of channels of dialogue with citizens and facilitates the creation of spaces available for free interaction. This would facilitate their participation in the preparation of the electoral programs of the parties as well as the lists of candidates for the various elections, combining representation with action to avoid that the citizenry is condemned in eternis to be only “political animal” in his private life.
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Germán Gorraiz López is a political analyst. He is a regular contributor to Global Research.
November 19th, 2023 by Dr. William Makis
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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.
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
Price: $11.50 FREE COPY! Click here (docsend) and download.
We encourage you to support the eBook project by making a donation through Global Research’s DonorBox “Worldwide Corona Crisis” Campaign Page.
November 19th, 2023 by Jonathan Cook
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***
The White House faces a dilemma. It has the power to stop the death and destruction in Gaza in its tracks, at any time of its choosing. But it chooses not to.
The US is determined to back its client state to the hilt, giving Israel licence to wreck the tiny coastal enclave, seemingly whatever the cost in Palestinian lives.
But the optics – and that is all that concerns Washington – are disastrous.
TV images have shown hundreds of thousands of Palestinians fleeing their destroyed homes, on a scale unseen since Israel’s earlier mass ethnic cleansing operations of 1948 and 1967.
Even the western media is struggling to obscure the veritable mountain of crushed and bleeding bodies in Gaza. The known death toll has now surpassed 11,000, with thousands more buried under rubble. Those who survive face a genocidal policy, starving them of food, water and power.
By the weekend, Israel’s declared war on Hamas had shifted into an open war on Gaza’s hospitals. Medicins San Frontieres reported that al-Shifa hospital in Gaza City had been bombed repeatedly and its power cut off, with horrific scenes of premature babies dying after their incubators had stopped functioning. Staff who tried to evacuate, as Israel had ordered them to, were shot at. Similar scenes unfolded at al-Rantisi hospital.
Western publics are growing increasingly incensed. Protest marches have attracted numbers not seen since the mass demonstrations against the Iraq war 20 years ago.
Western allies are finding it harder to obscure and justify their complicity in what are indisputable Israeli crimes against humanity. French President Emmanuel Macron broke ranks at the weekend. His message was summed up bluntly by the BBC: “Macron calls on Israel to stop killing Gaza’s women and babies.”
In private, US allies in the Middle East are pleading with the US to use its leverage to restrain Israel.
Meanwhile, Washington is only too aware of how quickly Israel’s regional opponents could get dragged in, dangerously expanding and escalating the conflict.
Its immediate response has been desperate, and preposterous, stop-gaps to ease the criticism, including from 500 administration staff who submitted a letter to Biden on Tuesday protesting the White House’s blanket support for Israel.
Those measures have included the president calling for “less intrusive action” from Israel towards the hospitals, shortly before Israeli forces were reported storming al-Shifa, and rumours that Tony Blair, the former British prime minister who joined the US attack on Iraq in 2003 in violation of international law, might serve as the West’s “humanitarian coordinator” in Gaza.
But what the Biden administration really needs is a cover story to justify the fact that it is continuing to supply the weapons and funding needed by Israel to carry out its crimes in broad daylight.
US Secretary of State Antony Blinken set out his stall last week at the G7 summit. The goal is to shift the focus away from Israel’s genocidal policies in Gaza, and Washington’s backing for them, to a purely theoretical discussion about what might happen after the fighting ends.
Outlining his post-war “vision” for Gaza, Blinken said:
“It’s also clear that Israel cannot occupy Gaza. Now, the reality is that there may be a need for some transition period at the end of the conflict… We don’t see a reoccupation and what I’ve heard from Israeli leaders is that they have no intent to reoccupy Gaza.”
James Cleverley, Britain’s former foreign secretary, echoed his US counterpart, insisting power would in Gaza be handed to “a peace-loving Palestinian leadership”.
Both appear to favour the Palestinian Authority’s Mahmoud Abbas taking over Gaza – or what’s left of it.
This bad-faith manoeuvre is off the charts, even by the pair’s usual mendacious standards. Both the US and Britain want us to believe, at least while Palestinians are being massacred day after day, that they are serious about reviving the long-cold cadaver of the two-state solution.
The layers of deceit are so plentiful they need to be peeled away one by one.
The first glaring deception is Washington’s insistence that Israel avoid “reoccupying” Gaza. Blinken wants us to believe that the strip’s occupation ended long ago, when Israel dismantled its Jewish colonies in 2005 and pulled out the soldiers who protected the settlers.
But if Gaza was not actually occupied before Israel’s current ground invasion, how does Washington explain the Israeli blockade of the tiny enclave for the past 16 years? How did Israel manage to seal off Gaza’s land borders, block access to Gaza’s territorial waters, and patrol Gaza’s skies 24/7?
The reality is that Gaza has not experienced a day free of Israeli occupation since 1967. All that Israel did 18 years ago when it pulled out its Jewish settlers, was to run the occupation more remotely, exploiting new developments in weapons and surveillance technologies.
Israel developed and refined a very sophisticated, arm’s length occupation, using Israeli teenagers with joysticks at distant sites to play God with the lives of 2.3 million imprisoned Palestinians.
Israel is not in danger of “reoccupying” Gaza. It never stopped occupying it.
Another deceit is the impression Blinken is intentionally creating that the US is preparing for a confrontation with Israel over Gaza’s future.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has made clear he is in no mood to sit down with Palestinian leaders, even of the “peace-loving” kind. At the weekend, he once again declared that Israel would take “security control” of the enclave as soon as Hamas was gone.
“There will be no Hamas,” he told Israelis on Saturday evening. “There will be no civilian authority that educates their children to hate Israel, to kill Israelis, to destroy the state of Israel.”
He added that Israeli troops would be able to “go in [to Gaza] whenever we want in order to kill terrorists”.
Certainly, Israeli military commanders seem to be taking this message to heart, vowing that they are back in Gaza for good.
Israeli officer: “The happiest month of my life as long as I live over 40 years… the land is ours. The whole country! All of it! Including Gaza! Including Lebanon! The whole promised land! We’re going to come back big time! Gush Katif is this small compared to what we’ll reach!” pic.twitter.com/oKJS3IWuir
— David Sheen (@davidsheen) November 4, 2023
But the suggestion that Israel and Washington are not on the same page is pure trickery. The “row” is entirely confected, designed to make it look like the Biden administration, in pushing for negotiations, is taking the Palestinians’ side against Israel. Nothing could be further from the truth.
The pretence is a boon to both sides. The US wants to look like one day – after all Gaza’s homes are destroyed and its people ethnically cleansed – it will drag Netanyahu to the negotiating table kicking and screaming.
An embattled Netanyahu, meanwhile, is able to score popularity points with the Israeli right by posturing defiantly against the Biden administration.
It is pure theatre. The confrontation will never materialise. The US “vision” is nothing more than make-believe.
The truth is that Washington formally abandoned the so-called two-state solution years ago, aware that Israel would never allow even the most circumscribed of Palestinian states.
Over the past three decades, Israel has gone from the pretence – maintained during the Oslo process – that it might one day concede a sham, demilitarised Palestinian state, cut off from the rest of the Middle East, to outright rejection of Palestinian statehood on any terms at all.
Back in July, before Hamas’ 7 October attack, Netanyahu was widely reported to have told a closed Israeli parliamentary meeting that Palestinian hopes of a sovereign state “must be eliminated”.
Will the same Israel that refused to countenance a state under Abbas, the Palestinian leader who called security coordination with Israel “sacred”, really be ready to hand over the keys to the kingdom after its latest rampage?
Remember, it was Netanyahu who explained to his ruling Likud party in 2019 that “bolstering Hamas and transferring money to Hamas” were the best way for Israel to “thwart the establishment of a Palestinian state”.
This was not some rogue position. It was shared across the military and security establishments.
The strategy was achieved through Israeli policies designed to permanently split, physically and politically, the two main territorial components of any future Palestinian state: the West Bank and Gaza.
Movement between the two was made all but impossible, and Israel cultivated different, antagonistic local leaderships for each territory so neither could claim to represent the Palestinian people.
At the July parliamentary meeting, Netanyahu also insisted it was a vital Israeli interest that the PA be propped up in the West Bank.
At the same time, the necessary capital of a Palestinian state, Jerusalem, has been physically sealed off from both territories, and stripped of any Palestinian political representation.
As the Biden administration knows only too well, Israel would never allow a “moderate” Palestinian leadership to become established in Gaza, uniting it with the West Bank and strengthening the case for a sovereign Palestinian state.
But talk of a revived two-state solution does serve as a useful distraction from the actual solution Israel is implementing in plain view.
Israeli actions tell that story. The bombing into rubble not only of Gaza’s homes but of the civilian infrastructure – hospitals, schools, United Nations compounds, bakeries, mosques and churches – needed to support one of the most overcrowded places on earth.
The population in Gaza’s north has been forcibly dislocated to create an even smaller, even more overcrowded holding pen in southern Gaza, ensuring the enclave is “a place where no human being can exist”, as Giora Eiland, a former Israeli national security adviser, phrased it.
The goal is transparent: to expel Gaza’s population into the neighbouring Egyptian territory of Sinai. And given Israel’s previous form, the only reasonable conclusion to draw is that Gaza’s refugee families – some of them about to be exiled by Israel for a second or third time – will never be allowed to return to the ruins.
The Biden administration can pretend to be resurrecting a non-existent two-state solution. But the reality is that Israel has had just such an expulsion plan – called the Greater Gaza Plan – on the drawing board for decades.
According to reports, Washington has been signed up to the creation of a Palestinian enclave in Sinai since at least 2007.
Assuming anything of Gaza survives the current onslaught, Blinken’s next deceit is the suggestion that Abbas and the Palestinian Authority are able or willing to take Hamas’ place.
There is, of course, the small matter of how Abbas could rule a population with which he has so discredited himself in the past by endlessly accommodating Israel’s crimes. After all, his Fatah party was ousted from Gaza in 2006 after it was defeated in Palestinian legislative elections.
But Abbas is losing even more credibility with Palestinians as he sits passively through the horrors unfolding in Gaza. As former British ambassador Craig Murray has noted, with Palestine a member of the UN, Abbas could invoke the Genocide Convention against Israel.
That, in turn, would require a ruling from the International Court of Justice. It would put Israel, the US and the UK firmly on the back foot. But Abbas has once again sacrificed his people to avoid angering the US.
Even more preposterous is the idea that Israel would ever let the Palestinian Authority rule Gaza when that same PA is not allowed to be in charge of the West Bank.
Abbas has no control of any kind over the 62 per cent of the West Bank that the Oslo Accords placed – temporarily – under full Israeli rule, enforced by the Israeli army and Jewish settler militias. What was intended by Oslo to be temporary was long ago made permanent by Israel.
In another quarter of the West Bank, the PA is nothing more than a glorified local authority, running the schools and emptying the bins.
And in the remaining fifth of the territory, chiefly the built-up areas, Abbas has extremely circumscribed powers. The PA does not have control over borders, internal movement, airspace, electronic frequencies, currency, or the population register.
Abbas has no more than a police force in these cities, one that acts as a local security contractor for the Israeli military. When the Israeli army decides to do the job itself, and bursts into a West Bank city unannounced, Abbas’ forces shrink into the shadows.
The idea that Abbas can take charge of Gaza when he is powerless in his “stronghold” of the West Bank is a fairytale.
But perhaps the most fraudulent of the White House deceptions is the assumption that Hamas – and by extension, all Palestinian resistance – can be eradicated from Gaza.
Palestinian fighters are not some alien force that invaded the enclave. They are not occupiers, even though that is the way they are portrayed by every western government and media outlet.
They emerged organically out of a population that has endured decades of military abuse and oppression from Israel. Hamas is the legacy of that suffering.
Israel’s genocidal policies – unless it intends to wipe out every Palestinian in Gaza – will not moderate that impulse for resistance. Israel will simply inflame more anger and resentment, and a stronger motive for vengeance.
Even were Hamas to be wiped out, another, probably more desperate and vicious resistance group would surface to take its place.
Most of the Palestinian children now being bombed and terrorised, made homeless along with their families, and witnessing loved ones being killed, will not grow up over the next few years to become young peace ambassadors.
Their birthright will be the gun and the rocket. Their ambition will be to avenge their families and restore their honour.
Israel and the US know all this, too. History is crammed full of such lessons taught to greedy, arrogant colonisers and occupiers.
But their goal, whatever they claim, is not a solution or a resolution. It is permanent war. It is perpetuating the “cycle of violence”. It is greasing the tank treads of the West’s profitable war machine by spawning the very enemies that western publics are told they need protecting from.
Whether Palestinians are returned to the Stone Age in Gaza, as Israeli military commanders have long desired, or expelled to live in refugee camps in Sinai, they will not accept a fate in which they are treated as “human animals”.
Their fight will go on. And Israel and Washington will have to keep inventing new, ever more fanciful stories to try to persuade us that the West’s hands are clean.
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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)
November 19th, 2023 by Jacob G. Hornberger
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***
On the eve of Chinese President Xi Jinping’s current visit to the United States, the New York Times published an article detailing some of Xi’s thoughts about the United States.
The article states:
In Mr. Xi’s telling, China sought to rise peacefully, but Western powers would not accept the idea that a Communist-led China was catching up and could someday overtake them in global primacy. The West would never stop trying to derail China’s ascent and topple its Communist Party, he said in speeches to the military that are largely unreported by the media.
In 2015, Xi told military commanders:
“Some Western countries absolutely never want to see a socialist China grow strong under the leadership of the Chinese Communist Party.”
The Times writes that Xi’s speeches “voiced an almost fatalistic conviction … that China’s rise would prompt a backlash from Western rivals seeking to maintain their dominance.” Xi told Chinese Air Force officers in 2014, “The faster we develop, the bigger the external shock will be, and the greater the strategic blowback.” According to the Times,
“In Mr. Xi’s worldview, the West has sought to subvert the Chinese Communist Party’s power at home and contain the country’s influence abroad.”
The problem, one that all too many Americans are loathe to confront, is that Xi Jinping is right about the U.S. Empire.
Throughout history, empires have loathed rivals, opponents, adversaries, and competitors. They do everything they can to prevent them from rising, including the imposition of harmful economic measures but even going so far as to initiate wars against them, all with the aim of weakening what they perceive as a rising rival to their empire.
Of course, such measures inevitably also damage the people living in the empire, but the idea is that the empire, because it is already economically stronger, can withstand the economic deprivation better than the targeted nation, which ordinarily has a lower standard of living.
For decades after the Communist Party took control over China, the Party established and maintained a strict socialist system, one in which the government owned and controlled most everything. The result was massive poverty across the land, which, of course, meant a Chinese communist government with relatively few resources.
Then a few decades ago, China began liberalizing its economy, permitting the Chinese people to engage in economic enterprise, engage in trade, open businesses, and accumulate large amounts of wealth. The result was a tremendous increase in economic prosperity.
For a time, Americans celebrated this economic phenomenon. And why not? For decades, many Americans had criticized China’s socialist system precisely because it generated so much poverty among the Chinese people. Now the standard of living of people was soaring. Why wouldn’t everyone celebrate the fact that people in other parts of the world are escaping poverty?
Moreover, the rising prosperity in China meant that the Chinese people were increasingly able to purchase goods and services from Americans. The resulting trade made everyone better off.
But the U.S. Empire — specifically, the Pentagon, the CIA, and the NSA — saw trouble in all this. That’s because China’s economic prosperity meant vast new tax revenues for the Chinese communist regime — resources that enabled the regime to increase the size of its military and also to increase its influence around the world.
During the 20 years that the U.S. government was waging war against the people of Afghanistan and Iraq, China had no such burden. Rather than using its tax revenues to kill large numbers of people, as the U.S. Empire was doing, China was using them to expand its influence around the world by helping countries with big, grandiose socialist projects.
Thus, in the eyes of the U.S. national-security establishment, China’s rise posed a grave threat to its post-Cold War role as the world’s sole remaining empire. Something had to be done to bring China down, even if it harmed the American people at the same time. By suppressing China’s economic prosperity, the empire aimed to diminish the amount of tax revenues flowing into the Chinese government’s coffers, thereby limiting its ability to expand its military and its influence around the world.
It’s just the way empires have always worked. Questions naturally arises though for the American people: Is it right for the U.S. government to be wreaking economic damage on the people of another country? Indeed, is it right for the U.S. government to even be an empire?
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Jacob G. Hornberger is founder and president of The Future of Freedom Foundation. He was born and raised in Laredo, Texas, and received his B.A. in economics from Virginia Military Institute and his law degree from the University of Texas. He was a trial attorney for twelve years in Texas. He also was an adjunct professor at the University of Dallas, where he taught law and economics. In 1987, Mr. Hornberger left the practice of law to become director of programs at the Foundation for Economic Education. He has advanced freedom and free markets on talk-radio stations all across the country as well as on Fox News’ Neil Cavuto and Greta van Susteren shows and he appeared as a regular commentator on Judge Andrew Napolitano’s show Freedom Watch. View these interviews at LewRockwell.com and from Full Context. Send him email.
Featured image: China’s president Xi Jinping in London, 2015. (Photo: FCDO / Flickr)
November 19th, 2023 by Manlio Dinucci
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Siamo coinvolti in due guerre, in Europa e Medioriente, che hanno conseguenze sempre più gravi sulle nostre condizioni di vita e sulla nostra sicurezza.
Sul fronte europeo è stato compiuto, nel settembre 2022, quello che il Wall Street Journal definisce “uno dei più grandi atti di sabotaggio in Europa dalla Seconda Guerra Mondiale”: gli Stati Uniti, coadiuvati da Norvegia e Polonia, hanno fatto esplodere il Nord Stream, il principale gasdotto che trasportava in Germania e da qui in altri paesi europei gas russo a basso costo. La dinamica di questa azione bellica è stata ricostruita, in base a precise prove, dal giornalista statunitense Seymour Hersh e da una inchiesta tedesca.
Il segretario di Stato USA Blinken ha definito il blocco del Nord Stream “una enorme opportunità strategica per gli anni avvenire” e ha sottolineato che “gli Stati Uniti sono divenuti il principale fornitore di gas naturale liquefatto all’Europa”, gas che noi cittadini europei paghiamo molto più di quello che importavamo dalla Russia.
Allo stesso tempo gli Stati Uniti stanno scaricando sull’Europa l’enorme costo della guerra NATO in Ucraina contro la Russia. La Commissione Europea sta aprendo la via al prossimo ingresso dell’Ucraina nella UE, con la conseguenza che saremo noi cittadini europei a pagare l’enorme deficit ucraino.
Sul fronte mediorientale l’Unione Europea sostiene la guerra con la quale Israele, con alle spalle gli Stati Uniti e la NATO, attacca la Pelestina e alimenta un conflitto regionale mirando in particolare all’Iran. L’Italia, che dal 2004 è legata a Israele da un patto militare, ha fornito i caccia su cui si addestrano i piloti israeliani, che bombardano Gaza facendo strage di civili, e sostiene in diversi modi le forze armate israeliane. In compenso il premier Netanyahu ha promesso alla premier Meloni che l’Italia diverrà hub energetico per lo smistamento in Europa del gas che Israele invierà attraverso il gasdotto EastMed.
La sezione del giacimento offshore di gas, di cui Israele si attribuisce la proprietà esclusiva, è situata in gran parte nelle acque territoriali del Territorio Palestinese di Gaza e in quello della Cisgiordania. Attraverso il gasdotto EastMed Israele esporterà quindi in Italia e nella UE il gas naturale palestinese di cui si è impadronito con la forza militare.
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Manlio Dinucci, autore premiato, analista geopolitico e geografo, Pisa, Italia. È ricercatore associato del Centro di ricerca sulla globalizzazione.
November 19th, 2023 by Prof Michel Chossudovsky
This article was written in the last days of February 2004, completed and published on February 29th, on the day of President Jean Bertrand Aristide‘s kidnapping and deportation by the US, Canada and France. .
Today, almost 20 years later, the Biden Administration in consultation with America’s allies. has been calling for a renewed deployment of a UN sponsored “police operation” to Haiti. The UN Security Council approved the conduct of a plan to be carried out by Kenya consisting of an initial deployment of 1,000 Kenyan police officers to Haiti
“The mission to Haiti is ostensibly designed to assist in establishing security in the country of 11 million which is considered the poorest nation in the western hemisphere. If the deployment goes forward it would represent yet another intervention since the 2004 invasion by the United States, France and Canada which removed the government of former President Jean-Bertrand Aristide and deported him to the Central African Republic (CAR). (Abayomi Azikiwe, November 16, 2023)
We stand in solidarity with the people of Haiti.
The article below provides a detailed analysis of the events leading up to the US-Canada-France Coup d’Etat against the democratically elected government of President Jean Bertrand Aristide.
At the height of the Bush Administration, The White House had called into question Haitian President Jean-Bertrand Aristide‘s “fitness to continue to govern his country”. According to the official White House statement released one day before Aristide’s kidnapping:
“His failure to adhere to democratic principles has contributed to the deep polarization and violent unrest that we are witnessing in Haiti today… His own actions have called into question his fitness to continue to govern Haiti. We urge him to examine his position carefully, to accept responsibility, and to act in the best interests of the people of Haiti”
Now should we not apply the same “democratic principles” to President George W. Bush who has lied to the American people, violated international law and waged two major wars (Afghanistan and Iraq) in the course of his mandate?
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This article was subsequently published in my book entitled. “The Globalization of War: America’s Long War against Humanity”
(see details at foot of article)
Michel Chossudovsky, Global Research, November 18, 2023
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The armed insurrection which contributed to unseating President Aristide on February 29th 2004 was the result of a carefully staged military-intelligence operation.
The Rebel paramilitary army crossed the border from the Dominican Republic in early February. It constitutes a well armed, trained and equipped paramilitary unit integrated by former members of Le Front pour l’avancement et le progrès d’Haiti (FRAPH), the “plain clothes” death squadrons, involved in mass killings of civilians and political assassinations during the CIA sponsored 1991 military coup, which led to the overthrow of the democratically elected government of President Jean Bertrand Aristide
The self-proclaimed Front pour la Libération et la reconstruction nationale (FLRN) (National Liberation and Reconstruction Front) is led by Guy Philippe, a former member of the Haitian Armed Forces and Police Chief. Philippe had been trained during the 1991 coup years by US Special Forces in Ecuador, together with a dozen other Haitian Army officers. (See Juan Gonzalez, New York Daily News, 24 February 2004).
The two other rebel commanders and associates of Guy Philippe, who led the attacks on Gonaives and Cap Haitien are Emmanuel Constant, nicknamed “Toto” and Jodel Chamblain, both of whom are former Tonton Macoute and leaders of FRAPH.
In 1994, Emmanuel Constant led the FRAPH assassination squadron into the village of Raboteau, in what was later identified as “The Raboteau massacre”:
“One of the last of the infamous massacres happened in April 1994 in Raboteau, a seaside slum about 100 miles north of the capital. Raboteau has about 6,000 residents, most fishermen and salt rakers, but it has a reputation as an opposition stronghold where political dissidents often went to hide… On April 18 [1994], 100 soldiers and about 30 paramilitaries arrived in Raboteau for what investigators would later call a “dress rehearsal.” They rousted people from their homes, demanding to know where Amiot “Cubain” Metayer, a well-known Aristide supporter, was hiding. They beat people, inducing a pregnant woman to miscarry, and forced others to drink from open sewers. Soldiers tortured a 65-year-old blind man until he vomited blood. He died the next day.
The soldiers returned before dawn on April 22. They ransacked homes and shot people in the streets, and when the residents fled for the water, other soldiers fired at them from boats they had commandeered. Bodies washed ashore for days; some were never found. The number of victims ranges from two dozen to 30. Hundreds more fled the town, fearing further reprisals.” (St Petersburg Times, Florida, 1 September 2002)
During the military government (1991-1994), FRAPH was (unofficially) under the jurisdiction of the Armed Forces, taking orders from Commander in Chief General Raoul Cedras. According to a 1996 UN Human Rights Commission report, FRAPH had been supported by the CIA.
Under the military dictatorship, the narcotics trade, was protected by the military Junta, which in turn was supported by the CIA. The 1991 coup leaders including the FRAPH paramilitary commanders were on the CIA payroll. (See Paul DeRienzo, See also see Jim Lobe, IPS, 11 Oct 1996). Emmanuel Constant alias “Toto” confirmed, in this regard, in a CBS “60 Minutes” in 1995, that the CIA paid him about $700 a month and that he created FRAPH, while on the CIA payroll. (See Miami Herald, 1 August 2001). According to Constant, the FRAPH had been formed “with encouragement and financial backing from the U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency and the CIA.” (Miami New Times, 26 February 2004)
The so-called “Democratic Convergence” (DC) is a group of some 200 political organizations, led by former Port-au-Prince mayor Evans Paul. The “Democratic Convergence” (DC) together with “The Group of 184 Civil Society Organizations” (G-184) has formed a so-called “Democratic Platform of Civil Society Organizations and Opposition Political Parties”.
The Group of 184 (G-184), is headed by Andre (Andy) Apaid, a US citizen of Haitian parents, born in the US. (Haiti Progres) Andy Apaid owns Alpha Industries, one of Haiti’s largest cheap labor export assembly lines established during the Duvalier era. His sweatshop factories produce textile products and assemble electronic products for a number of US firms including Sperry/Unisys, IBM, Remington and Honeywell. Apaid is the largest industrial employer in Haiti with a workforce of some 4000 workers. Wages paid in Andy Apaid’s factories are as low as 68 cents a day. (Miami Times, 26 Feb 2004). The current minimum wage is of the order of $1.50 a day:
“The U.S.-based National Labor Committee, which first revealed the Kathie Lee Gifford sweat shop scandal, reported several years ago that Apaid’s factories in Haiti’s free trade zone often pay below the minimum wage and that his employees are forced to work 78-hour weeks.” (Daily News, New York, 24 Feb 2004)
Apaid was a firm supporter of the 1991 military coup. Both the Convergence démocratique and the G-184 have links to the FLRN (former FRAPH death squadrons) headed by Guy Philippe. The FLRN is also known to receive funding from the Haitian business community.
In other words, there is no watertight division between the civilian opposition, which claims to be non-violent and the FLRN paramilitary. The FLRN is collaborating with the so-called “Democratic Platform.”
In Haiti, this “civil society opposition” is bankrolled by the National Endowment for Democracy which works hand in glove with the CIA. The Democratic Platform is supported by the International Republican Institute (IRI), which is an arm of the National Endowment for Democracy (NED). Senator John McCain is Chairman of IRI’s Board of Directors. (See Laura Flynn, Pierre Labossière and Robert Roth, Hidden from the Headlines: The U.S. War Against Haiti, California-based Haiti Action Committee (HAC)).
G-184 leader Andy Apaid was in liaison with Secretary of State Colin Powell in the days prior to the kidnapping and deportation of President Aristide by US forces on February 29. His umbrella organization of elite business organizations and religious NGOs, which is also supported by the International Republican Institute (IRI), receives sizable amounts of money from the European Union. (See this).
It is worth recalling that the NED, (which overseas the IRI) although not formally part of the CIA, performs an important intelligence function within the arena of civilian political parties and NGOs. It was created in 1983, when the CIA was being accused of covertly bribing politicians and setting up phony civil society front organizations. According to Allen Weinstein, who was responsible for setting up the NED during the Reagan Administration: “A lot of what we do today was done covertly 25 years ago by the CIA.” (‘Washington Post’, Sept. 21, 1991).
The NED channels congressional funds to the four institutes: The International Republican Institute (IRI), the National Democratic Institute for International Affairs (NDI), the Center for International Private Enterprise (CIPE), and the American Center for International Labor Solidarity (ACILS). These organizations are said to be “uniquely qualified to provide technical assistance to aspiring democrats worldwide.” See IRI)
In other words, there is a division of tasks between the CIA and the NED. While the CIA provides covert support to armed paramilitary rebel groups and death squadrons, the NED and its four constituent organizations finance “civilian” political parties and non governmental organizations with a view to instating American “democracy” around the World.
The NED constitutes, so to speak, the CIA’s “civilian arm”. CIA-NED interventions in different part of the World are characterized by a consistent pattern, which is applied in numerous countries.
The NED provided funds to the “civil society” organizations in Venezuela, which initiated an attempted coup against President Hugo Chavez. In Venezuela it was the “Democratic Coordination”, which was the recipient of NED support; in Haiti it is the “Democratic Convergence” and G-184.
Similarly, in former Yugoslavia, the CIA channeled support to the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) (since 1995), a paramilitary group involved in terrorist attacks on the Yugoslav police and military. Meanwhile, the NED through the “Center for International Private Enterprise” (CIPE) was backing the DOS opposition coalition in Serbia and Montenegro. More specifically, NED was financing the G-17, an opposition group of economists responsible for formulating (in liaison with the IMF) the DOS coalition’s “free market” reform platform in the 2000 presidential election, which led to the downfall of Slobodan Milosevic.
The IMF and the World Bank are key players in the process of economic and political destabilization. While carried out under the auspices of an intergovernmental body, the IMF reforms tend to support US strategic and foreign policy objectives.
Based on the so-called “Washington consensus”, IMF austerity and restructuring measures through their devastating impacts, often contribute to triggering social and ethnic strife. IMF reforms have often precipitated the downfall of elected governments. In extreme cases of economic and social dislocation, the IMF’s bitter economic medicine has contributed to the destabilization of entire countries, as occurred in Somalia, Rwanda and Yugoslavia. (See Michel Chossudovsky, The globalization of Poverty and the New World Order, Second Edition, 2003)
The IMF program is a consistent instrument of economic dislocation. The IMF’s reforms contribute to reshaping and downsizing State institutions through drastic austerity measures. The latter are implemented alongside other forms of intervention and political interference, including CIA covert activities in support of rebel paramilitary groups and opposition political parties.
Moreover, so-called “Emergency Recovery” and “Post-conflict” reforms are often introduced under IMF guidance, in the wake of a civil war, a regime change or “a national emergency”.
In Haiti, the IMF sponsored “free market” reforms have been carried out consistently since the Duvalier era. They have been applied in several stages since the first election of president Aristide in 1990.
The 1991 military coup, which took place 8 months following Jean Bertrand Aristide’s accession to the presidency, was in part intended to reverse the Aristide government’s progressive reforms and reinstate the neoliberal policy agenda of the Duvalier era.
A former World Bank official Mr. Marc Bazin was appointed Prime minister by the Military Junta in June 1992. In fact, it was the US State Department which sought his appointment.
Bazin had a track record of working for the “Washington consensus.” In 1983, he had been appointed Finance Minister under the Duvalier regime, In fact he had been recommended to the Finance portfolio by the IMF: “President-for-Life Jean-Claude Duvalier had agreed to the appointment of an IMF nominee, former World Bank official Marc Bazin, as Minister of Finance”. (Mining Annual Review, June, 1983). Bazin, who was considered Washington’s “favorite”, later ran against Aristide in the 1990 presidential elections.
Bazin, was called in by the Military Junta in 1992 to form a so-called “consensus government”. It is worth noting that it was precisely during Bazin’s term in office as Prime Minister that the political massacres and extra judicial killings by the CIA supported FRAPH death squadrons were unleashed, leading to the killing of more than 4000 civilians. Some 300,000 people became internal refugees, “thousands more fled across the border to the Dominican Republic, and more than 60,000 took to the high seas” (Statement of Dina Paul Parks, Executive Director, National Coalition for Haitian Rights, Committee on Senate Judiciary, US Senate, Washington DC, 1 October 2002). Meanwhile, the CIA had launched a smear campaign representing Aristide as “mentally unstable” (Boston Globe, 21 Sept 1994).
Following three years of military rule, the US intervened in 1994, sending in 20,000 occupation troops and “peace-keepers” to Haiti. The US military intervention was not intended to restore democracy. Quite the contrary: it was carried out to prevent a popular insurrection against the military Junta and its neoliberal cohorts.
In other words, the US military occupation was implemented to ensure political continuity.
While the members of the military Junta were sent into exile, the return to constitutional government required compliance to IMF diktats, thereby foreclosing the possibility of a progressive “alternative” to the neoliberal agenda. Moreover, US troops remained in the country until 1999. The Haitian armed forces were disbanded and the US State Department hired a mercenary company DynCorp to provide “technical advice” in restructuring the Haitian National Police (HNP).
“DynCorp has always functioned as a cut-out for Pentagon and CIA covert operations.” (See Jeffrey St. Clair and Alexander Cockburn, Counterpunch, February 27, 2002) Under DynCorp advice in Haiti, former Tonton Macoute and Haitian military officers involved in the 1991 Coup d’Etat were brought into the HNP. (See Ken Silverstein, Privatizing War, The Nation, July 28, 1997)
In October 1994, Aristide returned from exile and reintegrated the presidency until the end of his mandate in 1996. “Free market” reformers were brought into his Cabinet. A new wave of deadly macro-economic policies was adopted under a so-called Emergency Economic Recovery Plan (EERP) “that sought to achieve rapid macroeconomic stabilization, restore public administration, and attend to the most pressing needs.” (See IMF Approves Three-Year ESAF Loan for Haiti, Washington, 1996).
The restoration of Constitutional government had been negotiated behind closed doors with Haiti’s external creditors. Prior to Aristide’s reinstatement as the country’s president, the new government was obliged to clear the country’s debt arrears with its external creditors. In fact the new loans provided by the World Bank, the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB), and the IMF were used to meet Haiti’s obligations with international creditors. Fresh money was used to pay back old debt leading to a spiraling external debt.
Broadly coinciding with the military government, Gross Domestic Product (GDP) declined by 30 percent (1992-1994). With a per capita income of $250 per annum, Haiti is the poorest country in the Western hemisphere and among the poorest in the world. (see World Bank, Haiti: The Challenges of Poverty Reduction, Washington, August 1998).
The World Bank estimates unemployment to be of the order of 60 percent. (A 2000 US Congressional Report estimates it to be as high as 80 percent. See US House of Representatives, Criminal Justice, Drug Policy and Human Resources Subcommittee, FDHC Transcripts, 12 April 2000).
In the wake of three years of military rule and economic decline, there was no “Economic Emergency Recovery” as envisaged under the IMF loan agreement. In fact quite the opposite: The IMF imposed “stabilization” under the “Recovery” program required further budget cuts in almost non-existent social sector programs. A civil service reform program was launched, which consisted in reducing the size of the civil service and the firing of “surplus” State employees. The IMF-World Bank package was in part instrumental in the paralysis of public services, leading to the eventual demise of the entire State system. In a country where health and educational services were virtually nonexistent, the IMF had demanded the lay off of “surplus” teachers and health workers with a view to meeting its target for the budget deficit.
Washington’s foreign policy initiatives were coordinated with the application of the IMF’s deadly economic medicine. The country had been literally pushed to the brink of economic and social disaster.
More than 75 percent of the Haitian population is engaged in agriculture, producing both food crops for the domestic market as well a number of cash crops for export. Already during the Duvalier era, the peasant economy had been undermined. With the adoption of the IMF-World Bank sponsored trade reforms, the agricultural system, which previously produced food for the local market, had been destabilized. With the lifting of trade barriers, the local market was opened up to the dumping of US agricultural surpluses including rice, sugar and corn, leading to the destruction of the entire peasant economy. Gonaives, which used to be Haiti’s rice basket region, with extensive paddy fields had been precipitated into bankruptcy:
“By the end of the 1990s Haiti’s local rice production had been reduced by half and rice imports from the US accounted for over half of local rice sales. The local farming population was devastated, and the price of rice rose drastically ” ( See Rob Lyon, Haiti-There is no solution under Capitalism! Socialist Appeal, 24 Feb. 2004).
In matter of a few years, Haiti, a small impoverished country in the Caribbean, had become the World’s fourth largest importer of American rice after Japan, Mexico and Canada.
The presidential elections were scheduled for November 23, 2000. The Clinton Administration had put an embargo on development aid to Haiti in 2000. Barely two weeks prior to the elections, the outgoing administration signed a Letter of Intent with the IMF. Perfect timing: the agreement with the IMF virtually foreclosed from the outset any departure from the neoliberal agenda.
The Minister of Finance had sent the amended budget to the Parliament on December 14th. Donor support was conditional upon its rubber stamp approval by the Legislature. While Aristide had promised to increase the minimum wage, embark on school construction and literacy programs, the hands of the new government were tied. All major decisions regarding the State budget, the management of the public sector, public investment, privatization, trade and monetary policy had already been taken. They were part of the agreement reached with the IMF on November 6, 2000.
In 2003, the IMF imposed the application of a so-called “flexible price system in fuel”, which immediately triggered an inflationary spiral. The currency was devalued. Petroleum prices increased by about 130 percent in January-February 2003, which served to increase popular resentment against the Aristide government, which had supported the implementation of the IMF economic reforms.
The hike in fuel prices contributed to a 40 percent increase in consumer prices (CPI) in 2002-2003 (See Haiti—Letter of Intent, Memorandum of Economic and Financial Policies, and Technical Memorandum of Understanding, Port-au-Prince, Haiti June 10, 2003). In turn, the IMF had demanded, despite the dramatic increase in the cost of living, a freeze on wages as a means to “controlling inflationary pressures.” The IMF had in fact pressured the government to lower public sector salaries (including those paid to teachers and health workers). The IMF had also demanded the phasing out of the statutory minimum wage of approximately 25 cents an hour. “Labour market flexibility”, meaning wages paid below the statutory minimum wage would, according to the IMF, contribute to attracting foreign investors. The daily minimum wage was $3.00 in 1994, declining to about $1.50- 1.75 (depending on the gourde-dollar exchange rate) in 2004.
In an utterly twisted logic, Haiti’s abysmally low wages, which have been part of the IMF-World Bank “cheap labor” policy framework since the 1980s, are viewed as a means to improving the standard of living. In other words, sweatshop conditions in the assembly industries (in a totally unregulated labor market) and forced labor conditions in Haiti’s agricultural plantations are considered by the IMF as a key to achieving economic prosperity, because they “attract foreign investment.”
The country was in the straightjacket of a spiraling external debt. In a bitter irony, the IMF-World Bank sponsored austerity measures in the social sectors were imposed in a country which has 1,2 medical doctors for 10,000 inhabitants and where the large majority of the population is illiterate. State social services, which were virtually nonexistent during the Duvalier period, have collapsed.
The result of IMF ministrations was a further collapse in purchasing power, which had also affected middle income groups. Meanwhile, interest rates had skyrocketed. In the Northern and Eastern parts of the country, the hikes in fuel prices had led to a virtual paralysis of transportation and public services including water and electricity.
While a humanitarian catastrophe is looming, the collapse of the economy spearheaded by the IMF, had served to boost the popularity of the Democratic Platform, which had accused Aristide of “economic mismanagement.” Needless to say, the leaders of the Democratic Platform including Andy Apaid –who actually owns the sweatshops– are the main protagonists of the low wage economy.
In February 2003, Washington announced the appointment of James Foley as Ambassador to Haiti. Foley had been a State Department spokesman under the Clinton administration during the war on Kosovo. He previously held a position at NATO headquarters in Brussels. Foley had been sent to Port au Prince in advance of the CIA sponsored operation. He was transferred to Port au Prince in September 2003, from a prestige diplomatic position in Geneva, where he was Deputy Head of Mission to the UN European office.
It is worth recalling Ambassador Foley’s involvement in support of the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) in 1999.
Amply documented, the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) was financed by drug money and supported by the CIA. (See Michel Chossudovsky, Kosovo Freedom Fighters Financed by Organized Crime, Covert Action Quarterly, 1999)
The KLA had been involved in similar targeted political assassinations and killings of civilians, in the months leading up to the 1999 NATO invasion as well as in its aftermath. Following the NATO led invasion and occupation of Kosovo, the KLA was transformed into the Kosovo Protection Force (KPF) under UN auspices. Rather than being disarmed to prevent the massacres of civilians, a terrorist organization with links to organized crime and the Balkans drug trade, was granted a legitimate political status.
At the time of the Kosovo war, the current ambassador to Haiti James Foley was in charge of State Department briefings, working closely with his NATO counterpart in Brussels, Jamie Shea. Barely two months before the onslaught of the NATO led war on 24 March 1999, James Foley had called for the “transformation” of the KLA into a respectable political organization:
“We want to develop a good relationship with them [the KLA] as they transform themselves into a politically-oriented organization,’ ..`[W]e believe that we have a lot of advice and a lot of help that we can provide to them if they become precisely the kind of political actor we would like to see them become… “If we can help them and they want us to help them in that effort of transformation, I think it’s nothing that anybody can argue with..’ (quoted in the New York Times, 2 February 1999)
In the wake of the invasion “a self-proclaimed Kosovar administration was set up composed of the KLA and the Democratic Union Movement (LBD), a coalition of five opposition parties opposed to Rugova’s Democratic League (LDK). In addition to the position of prime minister, the KLA controlled the ministries of finance, public order and defense.” (Michel Chossudovsky, NATO’s War of Aggression against Yugoslavia, 1999)
The US State Department’s position as conveyed in Foley’s statement was that the KLA would “not be allowed to continue as a military force but would have the chance to move forward in their quest for self government under a ‘different context'” meaning the inauguration of a de facto “narco-democracy” under NATO protection. (Ibid).
With regard to the drug trade, Kosovo and Albania occupy a similar position to that of Haiti: they constitute “a hub” in the transit (transshipment) of narcotics from the Golden Crescent, through Iran and Turkey into Western Europe. While supported by the CIA, Germany’s Bundes Nachrichten Dienst (BND) and NATO, the KLA has links to the Albanian Mafia and criminal syndicates involved in the narcotics trade. (See Michel Chossudovsky, Kosovo Freedom Fighters Financed by Organized Crime, Covert Action Quarterly, 1999)
Is this the model for Haiti, as formulated in 1999 by the current US Ambassador to Haiti James Foley?
For the CIA and the State Department the FLRN and Guy Philippe are to Haiti what the KLA and Hashim Thaci are to Kosovo.
In other words, Washington’s design is “regime change”: topple the Lavalas administration and install a compliant US puppet regime, integrated by the Democratic Platform and the self-proclaimed Front pour la libération et la reconstruction nationale (FLRN), whose leaders are former FRAPH and Tonton Macoute terrorists. The latter are slated to integrate a “national unity government” alongside the leaders of the Democratic Convergence and The Group of 184 Civil Society Organizations led by Andy Apaid. More specifically, the FLRN led by Guy Philippe is slated to rebuild the Haitian Armed forces, which were disbanded in 1995.
What is at stake is an eventual power sharing arrangement between the various Opposition groups and the CIA supported Rebels, which have links to the cocaine transit trade from Colombia via Haiti to Florida. The protection of this trade has a bearing on the formation of a new “narco-government”, which will serve US interests.
A bogus (symbolic) disarmament of the Rebels may be contemplated under international supervision, as occurred with the KLA in Kosovo in 2000. The “former terrorists” could then be integrated into the civilian police as well as into the task of “rebuilding” the Haitian Armed forces under US supervision.
What this scenario suggests, is that the Duvalier-era terrorist structures have been restored. A program of civilian killings and political assassinations directed against Lavalas supporter is in fact already underway.
In other words, if Washington were really motivated by humanitarian considerations, why then is it supporting and financing the FRAPH death squadrons? Its objective is not to prevent the massacre of civilians. Modeled on previous CIA led operations (e.g. Guatemala, Indonesia, El Salvador), the FLRN death squadrons have been set loose and are involved in targeted political assassinations of Aristide supporters.
While the real economy had been driven into bankruptcy under the brunt of the IMF reforms, the narcotics transshipment trade continues to flourish. According to the US Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA), Haiti remains “the major drug trans-shipment country for the entire Caribbean region, funneling huge shipments of cocaine from Colombia to the United States.” (See US House of Representatives, Criminal Justice, Drug Policy and Human Resources Subcommittee, FDHC Transcripts, 12 April 2000).
It is estimated that Haiti is now responsible for 14 percent of all the cocaine entering the United States, representing billions of dollars of revenue for organized crime and US financial institutions, which launder vast amounts of dirty money. The global trade in narcotics is estimated to be of the order of 500 billion dollars.
Much of this transshipment trade goes directly to Miami, which also constitutes a haven for the recycling of dirty money into bona fide investments, e.g. in real estate and other related activities.
The evidence confirms that the CIA was protecting this trade during the Duvalier era as well as during the military dictatorship (1991-1994). In 1987, Senator John Kerry as Chairman of the Subcommittee on Narcotics, Terrorism and International Operations of the Senate Foreign Affairs Committee was entrusted with a major investigation, which focused on the links between the CIA and the drug trade, including the laundering of drug money to finance armed insurgencies. “The Kerry Report” published in 1989, while centering its attention on the financing of the Nicaraguan Contra, also included a section on Haiti:
“Kerry had developed detailed information on drug trafficking by Haiti’s military rulers that led to the indictment in Miami in 1988, of Lt. Col. Jean Paul. The indictment was a major embarrassment to the Haitian military, especially since Paul defiantly refused to surrender to U.S. authorities.. In November 1989, Col. Paul was found dead after he consumed a traditional Haitian good will gift—a bowel of pumpkin soup…
The U.S. senate also heard testimony in 1988 that then interior minister, Gen. Williams Regala, and his DEA liaison officer, protected and supervised cocaine shipments. The testimony also charged the then Haitian military commander Gen. Henry Namphy with accepting bribes from Colombian traffickers in return for landing rights in the mid 1980’s.
It was in 1989 that yet another military coup brought Lt. Gen. Prosper Avril to power… According to a witness before Senator John Kerry’s subcommittee, Avril is in fact a major player in Haiti’s role as a transit point in the cocaine trade.” ( Paul DeRienzo, Haiti’s Nightmare: The Cocaine Coup & The CIA Connection, Spring 199)
Jack Blum, who was Kerry’s Special Counsel, points to the complicity of US officials in a 1996 statement to the US Senate Select Committee on Intelligence on Drug Trafficking and the Contra War:
“…In Haiti … intelligence “sources” of ours in the Haitian military had turned their facilities over to the drug cartels. Instead of putting pressure on the rotten leadership of the military, we defended them. We held our noses and looked the other way as they and their criminal friends in the United States distributed cocaine in Miami, Philadelphia and New, York.” (See this)
Haiti not only remains at the hub of the transshipment cocaine trade, the latter has grown markedly since the 1980s. The current crisis bears a relationship to Haiti’s role in the drug trade. Washington wants a compliant Haitian government which will protect the drug transshipment routes, out of Colombia through Haiti and into Florida.
The inflow of narco-dollars –which remains the major source of the country’s foreign exchange earnings– are used to service Haiti’s spiraling external debt, thereby also serving the interests of the external creditors.
In this regard, the liberalization of the foreign-exchange market imposed by the IMF has provided (despite the authorities pro forma commitment to combating the drug trade) a convenient avenue for the laundering of narco-dollars in the domestic banking system. The inflow of narco-dollars alongside bona fide “remittances” from Haitians living abroad, are deposited in the commercial banking system and exchanged into local currency. The foreign exchange proceeds of these inflows can then be recycled towards the Treasury where they are used to meet debt servicing obligations.
Haiti, however, reaps a very small percentage of the total foreign exchange proceeds of this lucrative contraband. Most of the revenue resulting from the cocaine transshipment trade accrues to criminal intermediaries in the wholesale and retail narcotics trade, to the intelligence agencies which protect the drug trade as well as to the financial and banking institutions where the proceeds of this criminal activity are laundered.
The narco-dollars are also channeled into “private banking” accounts in numerous offshore banking havens. (These havens are controlled by the large Western banks and financial institutions). Drug money is also invested in a number of financial instruments including hedge funds and stock market transactions. The major Wall Street and European banks and stock brokerage firms launder billions of dollars resulting from the trade in narcotics.
Moreover, the expansion of the dollar denominated money supply by the Federal Reserve System , including the printing of billions of dollars of US dollar notes for the purposes of narco-transactions constitutes profit for the Federal Reserve and its constituent private banking institutions of which the most important is the New York Federal Reserve Bank. See (Jeffrey Steinberg, Dope, Inc. Is $600 Billion and Growing, Executive Intelligence Review, 14 Dec 2001)
In other words, the Wall Street financial establishment, which plays a behind the scenes role in the formulation of US foreign policy, has a vested interest in retaining the Haiti transshipment trade, while installing a reliable “narco-democracy” in Port-au-Prince, which will effectively protect the transshipment routes.
It should be noted that since the advent of the Euro as a global currency, a significant share of the narcotics trade is now conducted in Euro rather than US dollars. In other words, the Euro and the dollar are competing narco-currencies.
The Latin American cocaine trade –including the transshipment trade through Haiti– is largely conducted in US dollars. This shift out of dollar denominated narco-transactions, which undermines the hegemony of the US dollar as a global currency, largely pertains to the Middle East, Central Asian and the Southern European drug routes.
In the weeks leading up to the Coup d’Etat, the media has largely focused its attention on the pro-Aristide “armed gangs” and “thugs”, without providing an understanding of the role of the FLRN Rebels.
Deafening silence: not a word was mentioned in official statements and UN resolutions regarding the nature of the FLRN. This should come as no surprise: the US Ambassador to the UN (the man who sits on the UN Security Council) John Negroponte. played a key role in the CIA supported Honduran death squadrons in the 1980s when he was US ambassador to Honduras. (See San Francisco Examiner, 20 Oct 2001)
The FLRN rebels are extremely well equipped and trained forces. The Haitian people know who they are. They are Tonton Macoute of the Duvalier era and former FRAPH assassins.
The Western media is mute on the issue, blaming the violence on President Aristide. When it acknowledges that the Liberation Army is composed of death squadrons, it fails to examine the broader implications of its statements and that these death squadrons are a creation of the CIA and the Defense Intelligence Agency.
The New York Times has acknowledged that the “non violent” civil society opposition is in fact collaborating with the death squadrons, “accused of killing thousands”, but all this is described as “accidental”. No historical understanding is provided. Who are these death squadron leaders? All we are told is that they have established an “alliance” with the “non-violent” good guys who belong to the “political opposition”. And it is all for a good and worthy cause, which is to remove the elected president and “restore democracy”:
“As Haiti’s crisis lurches toward civil war, a tangled web of alliances, some of them accidental, has emerged. It has linked the interests of a political opposition movement that has embraced nonviolence to a group of insurgents that includes a former leader of death squads accused of killing thousands, a former police chief accused of plotting a coup and a ruthless gang once aligned with Mr. Aristide that has now turned against him. Given their varied origins, those arrayed against Mr. Aristide are hardly unified, though they all share an ardent wish to see him removed from power.” (New York Times, 26 Feb 2004)
There is nothing spontaneous or “accidental” in the rebel attacks or in the “alliance” between the leader of the death squadrons Guy Philippe and Andy Apaid, owner of the largest industrial sweatshop in Haiti and leader of the G-184.
The armed rebellion was part of a carefully planned military-intelligence operation. The Armed Forces of the Dominican Republic had detected guerrilla training camps inside the Dominican Republic on the Northeast Haitian-Dominican border. (El ejército dominicano informó a Aristide sobre los entrenamientos rebeldes en la frontera, El Caribe, 27 Feb. 2004)
Both the armed rebels and their civilian “non-violent” counterparts were involved in the plot to unseat the president. G-184 leader Andre Apaid was in touch with Colin Powell in the weeks leading up to the overthrow of Aristide; Guy Philippe and “Toto” Emmanuel Constant have links to the CIA; there are indications that Rebel Commander Guy Philippe and the political leader of the Revolutionary Artibonite Resistance Front Winter Etienne were in liaison with US officials. (See BBC, 27 Feb 2004).
While the US had repeatedly stated that it will uphold Constitutional government, the replacement of Aristide by a more compliant individual had always been part of the Bush Administration’s agenda.
On Feb 20, US Ambassador James Foley called in a team of four military experts from the U.S. Southern Command, based in Miami. Officially their mandate was “to assess threats to the embassy and its personnel.” (Seattle Times, 20 Feb 2004). US Special Forces are already in the country. Washington had announced that three US naval vessels “have been put on standby to go to Haiti as a precautionary measure”. The Saipan is equipped with Vertical takeoff Harrier fighters and attack helicopters. The other two vessels are the Oak Hill and Trenton. Some 2,200 U.S. Marines from the 24th Marine Expeditionary Unit, at Camp Lejeune, N.C. could be deployed to Haiti at short notice, according to Washington.
With the departure of President Aristide, Washington, however, has no intention of disarming its proxy rebel paramilitary army, which is now slated to play a role in the “transition”. In other words, the Bush administration will not act to prevent the occurrence of killings and political assassinations of Lavalas and Aristide supporters in the wake of the president’s kidnapping and deportation.
Needless to say, the Western media has not in the least analyzed the historical background of the Haitian crisis. The role played by the CIA has not been mentioned. The so-called “international community”, which claims to be committed to governance and democracy, has turned a blind eye to the killings of civilians by a US sponsored paramilitary army. The “rebel leaders”, who were commanders in the FRAPH death squadrons in the 1990s, are now being upheld by the US media as bona fide opposition spokesmen. Meanwhile, the legitimacy of the former elected president is questioned because he is said to be responsible for “a worsening economic and social situation.”
The worsening economic and social situation is largely attributable to the devastating economic reforms imposed by the IMF since the 1980s. The restoration of Constitutional government in 1994 was conditional upon the acceptance of the IMF’s deadly economic therapy, which in turn foreclosed the possibility of a meaningful democracy. High ranking government officials respectively within the Andre Preval and Jean Bertrand Aristide governments were indeed compliant with IMF diktats. Despite this compliance, Aristide had been “blacklisted” and demonized by Washington.
Washington seeks to reinstate Haiti as a full-fledged US colony, with all the appearances of a functioning democracy. The objective is to impose a puppet regime in Port-au-Prince and establish a permanent US military presence in Haiti.
The US Administration ultimately seeks to militarize the Caribbean basin.
The island of Hispaniola is a gateway to the Caribbean basin, strategically located between Cuba to the North West and Venezuela to the South. The militarization of the island, with the establishment of US military bases, is not only intended to put political pressure on Cuba and Venezuela, it is also geared towards the protection of the multibillion dollar narcotics transshipment trade through Haiti, from production sites in Colombia, Peru and Bolivia.
The militarisation of the Caribbean basin is, in some regards, similar to that imposed by Washington on the Andean Region of South America under “Plan Colombia’, renamed “The Andean Initiative”. The latter constitutes the basis for the militarisation of oil and gas wells, as well as pipeline routes and transportation corridors. It also protects the narcotics trade.
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This article is largely based on my book entitled Moon Landing 2023 – Science or Science-fiction?
Given that a 2019 poll, conducted by YouGov, found that 29 percent of respondents 50 years old or younger expressed some belief that the U.S. government “faked the 1969 Apollo moon landing,”, [1] this article will examine the evidence for the claimed ISRO moon landing in 2023; and the ongoing controversy surrounding NASA’s Apollo moon landings. Then we will dive a little deeper into the matrix of deception and illusion; and what may lie behind it.
The India Space Research Organisation (ISRO) informed the world that their Chandrayaan Mission-3 spacecraft landed on the moon on August 23rd 2023, as detailed on the organisation’s website. We can view the video footage that ISRO has released as purported evidence of this historical ‘moon landing’. The following is a video posted by the UK’s Guardian newspaper:
According to Jim Bridenstine, who led NASA as administrator from 2018 to 2021, “They should feel very proud of this accomplishment”[2]. It is also remarkable that this incredible achievement appears to have been achieved on a shoestring budget. According to CNBC:
“In 2020, the Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO) estimated the Chandrayaan-3 mission would cost about $75 million…But that rivals the lowest-cost lunar lander missions in development in the U.S. NASA in recent years turned to having companies compete for fixed-price contracts to build moon landers, under a program it calls Commercial Lunar Payload Services. The CLPS program has a maximum budget of $2.6 billion over 10 years, with 14 companies vying for mission contracts typically worth upwards of $70 million each. Overall, NASA’s annual budget dwarfs that of its Indian counterpart. In 2023, the U.S. agency received $25.4 billion in funding, compared to the ISRO’s budget of about $1.6 billion.”[3]
Considering that a Hollywood movie could cost twice that to produce it certainly sounds like an impresssive achievement for just $75 million. Here in Ireland, $75 million would build about 10 Km of motorway,[4]; and I note the 2016 movie Star Trek Beyond had a budget of $185 million – so to go to the moon and back for just $75 million odd is ‘beyond’ impressive. It seems to be cheaper to go to the moon that to build 10 km of motorway!
Let us consider what ISRO had to achieve with just $75 million. It is claimed by space agencies and modern science that the moon is around 240,000 miles away from the Earth. So, the ISRO spacecraft had to travel 240,000 miles to the moon and then achieve lunar orbit. The spacecraft then had to ‘descend’ from orbit onto the moon surface (apparently a distance of around 60 miles or more). Upon landing, we are told, the spacecraft opened up and a rover vehicle called ‘Pragyan’ (CGI picture released by ISRO below) rolled out onto the moon, in a purported vacuum at 1/6 Earth gravity. We are told the vehicle and rover stayed on the moon for two weeks to conduct various scientific experiments. All this sounds truly incredible or, perhaps… it is too incredible to be true.
ISRO sources said:
“Chandrayaan-3 will perform a raft of experiments, including a spectrometer analysis of the mineral and chemical composition of the Moon’s surface, returning valuable data on the properties of lunar soil and rocks. It hopes to confirm the presence of water ice in the region, which could supply oxygen, fuel, and drinking water for future space exploration.”[5]
Meanwhile, we were told, ISRO ground control on Earth attempted to communicate with the vehicle. We are told the rover is powered by solar energy – which seems an odd decision given the speculations of space agencies that the moon has a south pole with regions permanently in shadow. Furthermore, according to ISRO the vehicles are subjected to temperatures between minus 156 degrees Celsius at night to plus 121 degrees Celsius during the day, but have been equipped with systems to deal with this massive thermal stress. This is also interesting, considering electronic devices usually have a temperature limit something along the lines of -10 °C to 75 °C while in use.
The ISRO website even provides video footage of the spacecraft traveling over the moon’s surface[6]. This should be amazing to watch! Let us take a look here.
Wait! What is this I am watching? This footage looks like computer video game animation from the 1980s! What ‘on Earth’ is going here? The picture below is a screenshot from the ISRO video footage taken from the spacecraft supposedly orbiting the moon – does this image look real to you or does it look like CGI (computer generated imagery)?
The two images below are of the yellow ISRO vehicle as displayed on ISRO-released video footage. These images were displayed to the ISRO employees at ground control as the spacecraft ‘descended’ toward the moon surface. The video ISRO provide is clearly CGI animation. Clearly, these videos of ISRO’s yellow-coloured spacecraft were not intended as real actual footage of the spacecraft landing, but as a simulation of what was supposed to be taking place.
Then, as the yellow-coloured spacecraft touched down in the real-time simulation, the ISRO employees watching this simulation in the ISRO command centre on Earth are seen to cheer and clap wildly in the belief that the actual ISRO space vehicle is actually touching down on the surface of the moon.
We are told the lander weighs 1749.86 Kg, including a 26 Kg Rover vehicle, 14 payloads, and the rover consisting of scientific instrumentation designed to measure various aspects of the moon’s surface and subsurface. For example, instruments to measure the thermal properties and the seismic activity of the surface; and an alpha-particle x-ray spectromoter to measure the chemical composition of the surface.
ISRO provided the following video posted here,[7], by the UK’s Guardian newspaper. We are told this is actual real footage of the rover leaving the lander vehicle and travelling on the moon surface. It is little more professional looking, but, in my opinion, it is hazy, and does not look real – it looks like CGI animation or film production. Furthermore, there is nothing in the footage that enables anyone to verify it as being filmed on the moon – there is no point of reference, no view of space, and no view of the Earth from the moon that would indicate it is real.
Below is a picture of the ISRO Moon Rover claimed to be rolling onto the moon surface. The picture is a screengrab from the above video footage posted by the Guardian newspaper. A question has also been raised as to why, upon close examination, there appears to be no wheel imprints left by the front left wheel on the lunar soil (for example at 0.13 seconds in the above video).
After landing, ISRO claim the ‘rover’ took the following ‘real’ image of the landing craft.
It appears to me that the above hazy video and the above black and white picture are not proof of anything. Actual real video of the moon planet, or of any foreign planet, would surely be magnificent with detailed views stretching to a distant horizon. Just as there are detailed views of landscapes here on Earth. Instead, we are presented with CGI images, and a black and white picture that looks more like a few yards of barren desert that could just as easily be Nevada or a Hollywood film set.
Additionally, there are no stars in the background. On platforms, such as YouTube, people are leaving sceptical comments such as the following:
“So far only CGI computer generated images Where are the real images of the Moon? If you compare Indias moon coverage to a football game, 99% of footage released was of spectators, Godi media, ISRO cheering instead of the actual Moon Footage. I want to believe India went to the moon but they are making it very difficult. Looks like another Hollywood 🇺🇲NASA basement production.”
[Aside: Godi media is a pejorative term coined and popularised by ex-NDTV journalist Ravish Kumar for the sensationalist and biased Indian print and TV news media, which supports the currently ruling NDA government.]
ISRO provide nothing – no visual evidence – no reference point in the picture or brief video that would justify in any shape or form their assertion that they landed a spacecraft on the moon. It appears that nothing we can see here above enables us to verify this moon landing as ‘actually happening’. What we see mainly is a load of well-paid employees celebrating and cheering, whilst watching numbers and animation on a screen that justify in their heads what they believe is happening 240,000 miles away on the moon. Note that in the picture or in the video there is no point of reference, no detailed backdrop video of the Earth, for example.
Despite the fact that there is no point of reference in the picture or video, most people simply accept the narrative of the ISRO, and the mainstream corporate-owned media. It is unfortunate that many people simply accept these images and videos without question. However, due to decades of analysis of the so-called NASA moon missions a notable percentage of the world population know that the NASA moon landings were faked; and that any claims of a moon landing should be scrutinised.
The amount of data indicating the NASA moon landings were faked is significant, yet, you are unlikely to find this this data via mega-corporate-owned plaforms, such as google, Facebook, twitter etc., as all the major platforms utilse algorithms to decide what information will be presented to you, and what will not be presented. I also note an article by Professor Michel Chossusdovsky on this subject, which cites a 2010 Google transparency report listing over 151,000 items named for removal from since 2009. He states in the article:
“Google has introduced algorithms intended to downgrade independent and alternative media… Freedom of Expression on internet-based news outlets is being routinely shunted by Google… Google is already helping the government write, and rewrite, history. Here, from its transparency report, are some stats on the amount of information… wiped from the web based on requests by U.S. agencies:… 1,421 requests for “content removal“, Google complied with content removal requests 87% of the time.” – Professor Michel Chossudovsky
As I write these words in 2023, I note that this online knowledge filtration has become very sophisticated and the technologies utilized are known as AI (artificial intelligence). Thus, what has been taking place for decades is a form of mass-hypnosis, manipulation, and indoctrination of the public consciousness. This is, in fact, a central intent of the so-called elites controlling the corporate-media matrix, as detailed for example in my book Transcending the Climate Deception Toward Real Sustainability.
It appears that even with the $75 million plus funding for this vehicle that ISRO could not afford to put a single camera on board pointed at the Earth to give us some high-quality pictures and video footage of the earth from the moon or from space. The rights to such amazing footage would surely fund the ISRO for years to come. So, we are expected to believe they can put a spectrometer on the moon to test the surface, along with the apparatus for several additional scientific experiments, but they cannot put a single high-quality camera on the vehicle or the rover and point it at the Earth? No, it appears our ‘postcard from the moon’ is to be a hazy picture of the ISRO Moon Rover rolling onto a moon surface that is not dissimilar to a Hollywood film set.
According to the ISRO the spacecraft used a camera and radar to scan the surface for craters to ensure a successful landing. Yet it seems nobody thought it would be a good idea for the camera to take a single picture of the Earth during the landers 14 day stay on the moon. What a pity. Snap-happy tourists planning a futuristic vacation to the moon would not be happy with this no pictures allowed policy!
ISRO then informed us the rover had completed its assignments and was ‘parked’ and set into sleep mode; and that the battery was fully charged and that the solar panel had been oriented to receive light at the next sunrise; and that they were hoping for a successful awakening for the next set of assignments. ISRO then informed us they lost connection with the rover and landing craft and “efforts to establish communication with the lander and rover are underway” (this was the case as of 28 September[8]).
ISRO’s ‘moon landing’ has resulted in a spate of videos being posted online ridiculing the project as “a silly charade” and as “another fake moon landing”, for an example[9].
The reality is that, there is way more evidence to support the assertion that man never went to the moon than vice-versa, including the absence of stars in the NASA photos, and no blast crater under the lander module. A simple camera pointed at the earth from the moon would settle the issue. I assert this will never occur – if it does occur it will be more CGI fabrication. In fact, it appears to me that there is no verifiable evidence mankind has ever travelled any significant ‘cosmic’ distance above the Earth.
In my humble analysis, the ISRO landing is not space history being made, it is just another example of the chicanery and trickery of the mega-corporate matrix; and the so-called elite financial network that controls it. As detailed in my previous books, a group of financialists have controlled the mega-corporate, institutional, and media world, since hijacking the money creation process in the Federal Reserve Coup of 1913. By controlling the creation and dissemination of money, the private banking cartel and their institutional networks that run the economic world, have been funding or defunding any media narrative, agenda, trickery, fake science, or godless chicanery they wish. NASA is part of this cabal of tricksters.
The ISRO moon landing is reminiscent of NASA’s moon landings, which are shrouded in controversy to this day. The following is an apt extract from an article title The Apollo Moon Landings are Science Fiction, published on March 8th, 2022[10]:
“Since the alleged moon landings, no country even claims to have gone more than 400 miles from Earth and that was in the Space Shuttle… There is a big difference between 240,000 miles and 400 miles. Why can’t anyone make it more than 400 miles from Earth today if we could make a 480,000 mile round trip in 1969?
NASA further asserts that three men were loaded into a rocket, flew 240,000 miles to the moon… and they then hung out on the moon for up to three days in 250-degree heat, hit golf balls, rode a moon buggy — but what powered their life support and equipment? They say BATTERIES.
They then supposedly blasted off the surface of the moon, docked with the third man going around the moon at over 4000 miles per hour, and made it 240,000 miles back to Earth. They re-entered Earth’s atmosphere going 25,000 mph, but parachutes assured a safe landing in the ocean. We hope you will agree that… proves the absurdity of NASA’s claim in a clear and convincing fashion.”
The NASA missions to the moon reportedly cost the US government, and thus the American tax payer, in the region of $2400 billion, yet all NASA have to show for it apparently is some moon dust and a few small rocks that they claim came from the moon. That is a lot of money to obtain a few rocks! Sounds like quite a lucrative deal if you can get it. NASA must be very grateful that the American taxpayers have funded the organization for decades. If you live in the U.S. your taxes are funding these tricksters.
How was it so easy for NASA to send multiple successful Apollo missions to the moon and bring the astronauts home safely, but since then not a single person has ever left low-earth orbit? What to speak of going to the moon? NASA have even stated “we lost the technology we used to get us to the Moon” and also tell us that “All the moon rocks were stolen including the safe they were in” at NASA Headquarters. NASA also claim that all the important telemetry data from the moon missions was lost or destroyed. Really? Is it any wonder that over the past decades there has been a growing consensus that NASA faked the Apollo moon missions in the 1960’s – that it was only a hyped-up TV show.
According to several commentators on the subject NASA has lost all data, blueprints and records from the Apollo missions. Following Freedom of Information requests in America NASA admitted it had lost original video footage, voice data, bio-medical monitoring data, and telemetry data to monitor the location and functioning of the spaceship, and original plans/blueprints for the lunar modules, space suits and lunar rovers, and for the entire multi-sectioned Saturn V rockets. They lost ‘all’ the alleged record of the moon landings, including 13,000 reels that are said to be ‘missing’! I once lost a set of housekeys, but you don’t lose hundreds of boxes unless you lose them on purpose. Something is clearly amiss. Even Wikipedia, states:
“over 700 boxes of magnetic data tapes recorded throughout the Apollo program that have not been found… On August 16, 2006, NASA announced its official search, saying, “… NASA engineers are hopeful that when the tapes are found they can use today’s digital technology to provide a version of the moonwalk that is much better quality than what we have today.”[11]
I humbly suggest that the only ‘moonwalk’ we will ever see is the 1980’s dance craze version popularized by the singer Micheal Jackson! In addition, NASA are supposed to have taken over 5,000 pictures whilst on the moon during the Apollo missions, but not one of these pictures is of the Earth! It is a joke. The Apollo moon landings were a glorified TV show – no wonder NASA ‘lost’ all the data.
Also look at press conference with the astronauts after their return from the NASA Apollo 11 moon landing, at around from 32 minutes into the video[12]. Do they look like three guys who had just been part of the biggest mission in modern history landing on a foreign planet? No, they look like three embarrassed kids who know they have been naughty and are just waiting for the parents to find out what they have been up to. They look to be full of shame that they had to lie to the whole world. Look at their faces – does it look like three men having performed the biggest mission in mankind’s history returning from a foreign planet?
It also appears that Neil A. Armstrong, the first man to supposedly walk on the moon, in over 40 years since the event, aside from NASA’s initial press conference, has never given one proper on-camera interview to anyone – ever. Why?
In the above book Moon Landing 2023 – Science or Science-fiction? I also detail many of the well documented anomalies in the video footage from Apollo missions, and other relevant topics, including:
Furthermore, the ancient Vedic texts describe the current time in human history as ‘Kali-yuga’ – a time dominated by large-scale illusion, cheating, lying, and demonic pursuits. In this current Kali-yuga society there is much fakery and deception, including the faked moon landings. There are the ‘cheaters’ and the ‘cheated’, and one cannot exist without the other. Why do people fall for such deceptions? It is because on some inner level they want to believe it. To challenge the mainstream narrative is unthinkable for the ‘connected’ masses hypnotized by the mainstream mega-corporate media and scientific orthodoxy peddling fake science.
When you use the gadgets and platforms of the current corporate system you inevitably come into contact with a mass worldwide collective hypnosis, a conditioned mentality that has been molded by corporate TV, corporate media, social media which is filtered and ‘fact-checked’ by computer algorithms, smartphone applications, etc. I ask who gets to fact-check the fact-checkers? The pressure to comply and conform with the accepted reality and cleverly designed propaganda of these collectives is huge.
For the past many decades, what many believe to be science is actually paid promotional narratives and ads by trillion-dollar industries that make up their own science, science that mostly benefits them, not you. These technological tricks are used to support large-scale bogus narratives, such as the bogus moon landings, and the ulterior agendas of the corporate-communist mechanics of the ultra-rich Davos Group. It is vast amounts of money, not truth, that currently controls the world’s economic and scientific institutions. At the root of this orthodoxy of lies are the private banking families that hijacked the money creation process and financial world in 1913 via the Federal Reserve coup. For more information please see my books Godless Fake Science, and CO2 Hoax – How Bankers Hijacked the Environment Movement.
As I described in my book No Worries No Virus it is difficult for many people that have for decades placed their faith in mainstream corporate-media to realise and fully accept that Covid-19 was a fake pandemic. It is very difficult for most of us to replace our ’window on the world’. Yet, the reality is the Covid-19 fake pandemic, was another engineered deception, in which mega-corporations sold billions of vaccines.
In my humble opinion this was not ‘India’s moon landing’, it was ISRO’s claim to have landed on the moon – a claim, which has not been verified. Given that millions of people realise the NASA moon landings were faked, it is incumbent upon ISRO, and all space agencies, to provide clear evidence of any claimed moon landing. The picture and video released by ISRO is not evidence of anything. For more information see the book Moon Landing 2023 – Science or Science-fiction?
In the book Godless fake Science I also describe that much of the scientific narrative we have been taught from our school days onwards, is based on falsehood, and that the institution of ‘science’ itself has in many ways been hijacked by financial interests seeking to advance their own narrative and agenda. This includes many sectors such as climate science; the fake Covid-19 pandemic; the biopharmaceutical sector; and neo-Darwinian evolution. Modern science, like economics, banking, and corporate-owned mass media, has become part of a paradigm borne by deceit, and corporate greed; and which paints God out of the picture.
One thing is for sure many of us got a good laugh out of this ‘space opera’, yet, the unfortunate reality is that billions of children are being taught this moon landing doctrine in schools, without a shred of real evidence. I am reminded of a lyric from a pop song: “if you tolerate this then your children will be next…”
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Mark Gerard Keenan, is a former scientist at the UK Government Dept. of Energy and Climate Change, and at the United Nations Environment Division. He is author of the following books:
Notes
[1] Source: https://checkyourfact.com/2020/02/21/fact-check-89-americans-45-moon-landing-fake-staged/
[2] Source: https://www.cnbc.com/2023/08/23/india-chandrayaan-3-moon-landing-came-at-small-cost.html
[3] Source: https://www.cnbc.com/2023/08/23/india-chandrayaan-3-moon-landing-came-at-small-cost.html
[4] Source: https://fora.ie/ireland-motorway-ibec-2677182-Apr2016/
[5] Source: https://www.nature.com/articles/d44151-023-00116-x
[6] Source: https://www.isro.gov.in/index.html
[7] Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rrTtLze5Ydk
[8] Source: https://www.isro.gov.in/Chandrayaan3.html
[9] An example is the following video titled “India’s Moon Landing Madness” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=inANVeIU_4w&t=6s
[10] Source: https://krishna.org/the-apollo-moon-landings-are-science-fiction/
[11] Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apollo_11_missing_tapes
[12] The Apollo 11 conference can be viewed at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZzhyZQGAmzU
November 18th, 2023 by Ethan Huff
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First published on November 8, 2023
In a first for the developed world, the European nation of Italy has decided to ban all fake meat from the country, citing “serious health concerns.”
Numerous recent studies show that lab-grown synthetic meat of the kind being promoted by billionaire eugenicist Bill Gates is triggering the formation of turbo cancers in humans – Wuhan coronavirus (COVID-19) “vaccines” are doing the same thing, by the way.
In contrast to a recent decision by the Biden regime to fast-track the approval of synthetic meat here in America, Italy is taking the opposite approach by banning the stuff outright before it gets the chance to harm the Italian people.
“Italy is the first nation to say no to synthetic food, to so-called ‘synthetic meat,'” announced Health Minister Orazio Schillaci. “It does so with a formal and official act.”
“The resolution calls for a commitment to ban the production, marketing, and import of synthetic foods within our territory.”
According to Schillaci, Italy’s new regulations against synthetic meat aim to protect the general public against any situation in which “the environmental public health could be at risk, or when there is uncertainty regarding the effects of certain products that are being or will be introduced to the market or consumed.”
“It is crucial to have measures in place to address these potential risks and ensure the safety of the environment and public health in such cases,” he added – watch the video below:
Italy becomes the First Nation to BAN synthetic meats. pic.twitter.com/dfOOPXdKny
— Stew Peters (@realstewpeters) October 20, 2023
Much of the push in favor of synthetic meat comes not only from Gates but also other globalists such as Klaus Schwab, the goon in charge of the World Economic Forum (WEF), who claim it is necessary to stop “global warming” and “climate change.”
Back in 2021 in promotion of his book “How to Avoid a Climate Disaster,” Gates told MIT Technology Review that “all rich countries should move to 100 percent synthetic beef.”
Gates’ dream for the world probably will not come to fruition, at least as he envisioned it, because science continues to show that synthetic meat consumption is linked to cancer via the immortalized cell lines that the body uses to manufacture cancer cells in the presence of a provoking substance, in this case fake meat.
Fake president Joe Biden’s regime has so far indicated its full support for the unleashing of fake meat here in the U.S., where private corporate interests seem to control just about everything.
In an unprecedented move, Biden’s U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) approved the sale of Gates’ lab-grown “chicken meat” back in late June. This approval from regulators will allow fake meat companies everywhere to flood the U.S. food market with their toxic, deadly products.
“Now we need to ban any WEF and NOW (new world order) product or message,” one commenter wrote in response to the good news out of Italy.
“Back in old blighty, our bribery whores in UN parliament will happily push this crap on us,” wrote another, presumably from the United Kingdom where, like in the U.S., fake meat and other garbage is more easily approved and pushed on the public due to government corruption.
“Expect widespread BS plus a taxpayer-funded ad campaign to promote this new highly toxic product.”
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Featured image is from NaturalNews.com
November 18th, 2023 by Dr. Gary Null
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First published on July 12, 2023
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One of the many goals for wrapping the planet in a pulsating dome of 5G electromagnetic frequencies is to increase the human community’s connectivity with each other. We are invited to imagine the spectacular wonder of a single integral system for communication, financial efficiency, international banking and transportation, and a large variety of technological tools at our fingertips to ease life’s struggles. There is also a darker specter to monitor every movement of the world’s growing population. Consequently, wireless electromagnetic frequency radiation (EMF) and microwave exposure are becoming increasingly more omnipresent and will continue to permeate every aspect of our common daily lives without any escape.
Yet the warnings about the health risks and effects from EMF exposure, especially for vulnerable populations such as children, have been well documented for many decades and go unheeded. Aside from a casual nod by those who are mandated to regulate EMF levels and monitor its adverse risks, the scientific evidence for a crucial cause of alarm continues to mount, and this is especially true for protecting children from unnecessary EMF, which is now indisputable. Federal agency capture by the telecom industry and the developers of wireless, microwave and other EMF producing technologies have thwarted every effort to properly regulate this technology.
Children are exposed to EMF from various wireless devices, such as smartphones, tablets, and Wi-Fi routers. Although these devices generally comply with FCC guidelines, there are serious concerns about the cumulative effects of exposure, particularly for children who use wireless devices extensively. Studies show that children’s exposure to EMF from wireless devices far exceeds recommended safety limits, especially when devices are held close to the body for prolonged periods.
By examining available research studies conducted by prominent scientists and institutions to better understand the crisis facing children who are increasingly being exposed to EMF can guide parents and communities to take necessary precautions to protect our children.
Perhaps the most important study investigating the impact of EMF emissions from electronic devices on adolescent social and brain development is the multi-institutional Adolescent Brain Cognitive Development Study, which enrolled 10,000 children and followed them for a decade. Those who spent the most hours per day on cell phones, computers and other wireless items had the highest rate of rapid thinning of the cortex, which is associated with premature aging.
A dozen years ago, the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) classified electromagnetic fields as “possibly carcinogenic to humans.” Research conducted by prominent scientists, such as Lennart Hardell and Michael Carlberg in Sweden, has identified links between long-term exposure to electromagnetic fields and an increased risk of childhood leukemia. These studies analyzed data from children exposed to various sources of electromagnetic radiation, including power lines and wireless devices. Since then other studies have confirmed that children living in the proximity of overhead high-voltage power lines had a higher risk of developing leukemia, further supporting EMF’s potential carcinogenic effects. This is not only true for thermal radiation, but also for non-thermal low intensity non-ionizing radiation now believed to be contributing to the rising incidence of brain cancers, notably glioblastomas, in children and adolescents across developed nations.
Government regulators fail to address this danger. The Environmental Health Trust (EHT) notes that government regulations for wireless cell phone use were evaluated upon the anatomical basis of a 220-pound man’s head. Children’s heads are notably smaller, their skulls are thinner, and therefore children “can absorb up to ten times the radiation in the bone marrow of their skulls than adults.” A University of Utah analysis reported that EMF exposure increases by a compounding rate of 10-15 percent for every millimeter closer to a mobile phone’s antenna. EHT criticizes the FCC cell phone radiation standards for ignoring these “unique vulnerabilities” in children’s anatomy as well as pregnant women. Younger brains will also proportionally absorb more radiation into the eye and the brain’s grey matter.
Another carcinogenic risk is electronic radiation’s disruption of stem cell activity. Throughout the course of their development, children have more active stem cells than adults. Stem cells are far more sensitive to microwave radiation than are differentiated cells. This makes children more susceptible to DNA double strand breaks contributing carcinogenic mutations.
EMF’s deleterious effects on the nervous system are well documented. Despite oxygen’s crucial role in biological reactions, oxygen can also contribute to toxic by-products known as reactive oxygen species (ROS), which damage proteins, lipids and DNA. However the body’s antioxidant defense system keeps radical oxygen under control. A Turkish review of the medical literature shows that several studies report that EMF exposure results in oxidative stress in different tissues, cellular DNA and will increase free radical concentrations.
Early experimental studies conducted by Nora Volkow and her colleagues showed that exposure to cell phone radiation can alter brain activity in regions closest to the antenna. These studies utilized brain-imaging techniques to measure changes in brain metabolism and neuronal activity after exposure to electromagnetic fields. Consequently quantifying abnormal changes was very precise. The clinical significance of Volkow’s findings raised concerns about the potential neurological effects of long-term exposure to electromagnetic radiation, which have since been validated in multiple further studies.
Separate studies by the University of Southern California and UCLA suggest an association between prenatal exposure due to maternal mothers’ cell phone radiation and neurodevelopmental disorders in their children afterwards. These studies highlight the critical importance of considering the potential risks of electromagnetic radiation during the crucial stages of child development. A Yale University mouse study found that pregnant mice when exposed to cell phone signals give birth to animals with hyperactivity and impaired memory.
There is a large body of animal research confirming EMF’s adverse effects on genetic expression and DNA integrity. However, more clinical trials on humans need to be conducted to bring the crisis to greater public attention. EMF’s long term effects on the male and female reproductive systems of pre-pubescent children needs to be investigated more thoroughly. Given the rapid rise of gender dysphoria beginning in earlier ages, it is incumbent to better understand EMF’s impact on child development now that wireless devices are being used daily. Interruption of the reproductive system’s metabolomics from mobile phone EMF exposure has a broad range of adverse effects. These include decreases in sperm motility, protein synthesis disorders, abnormal nitric oxide levels and antioxidant disruption in germ cells. Research also indicates that EMF exposure affects calcium ion channels, potentially disrupting intracellular calcium signaling, which plays a crucial role in cellular processes
Sleep is crucial for the proper physical and cognitive development of children. However, exposure to electromagnetic fields from wireless devices may disrupt sleep patterns in children. A 2010 study found that exposure to radiofrequency EMF from mobile phone base stations was associated with sleep disturbances. Similarly, another study reported an association between exposure to electromagnetic fields from wireless devices in the home and sleep disturbances in adolescents.
Public activism needs to pressure child health associations and government agencies to revise regulations regarding EMF exposure limits. This includes establishing specific guidelines for non-ionizing radiation, considering cumulative exposure effects, and incorporating research findings on potential long-term health risks associated with EMF.
Given the increasing data being gathered as research continues to identify EMF’s effects on human biology, the precautionary principle, critically for children, should be applied. Once the technology is developed to dramatically lessen radiation exposure, it is essential to limit childhood exposure and especially in schools and bedrooms where children spend a substantial amount of time during every 24-hour cycle.
Organizations like the American Academy of Pediatrics recommend limiting children’s exposure to wireless devices. Although the Academy emphasizes the importance of educating parents, teachers, and healthcare professionals about EMF’s risks, no notable funding has been spent to make these health concerns a national emergency. Of course, schools and parents can adopt strategies such as wired internet connections, reducing screen time, and providing distance from wireless devices to minimize children’s EMF exposure, however, this requires a national educational campaign.
Manufacturers are making efforts to develop low-radiation devices, such as cell phones with reduced Specific Absorption Rate (SAR) values. Unfortunately, there has not been sufficient regulatory pressure on telecom corporations to make major advancements. Other research has focused on exploring electromagnetic shielding to design techniques to reduce exposure risks without compromising technological functionalities. Again, innovation of electronic devices continues to trump public health.
When we reflect upon our politicians’ and institutions’ repeated claims that they care about the health and well-being of children, we need to peer behind the words to expose the double-speak. Today, the most aggressive voices want to persuade us that the government is a more responsible parent than children’s own biological kin. Only recently are parents waking up to push back against this collective social conditioning. However, it required over two years of passive obedience for parents to realize they were sheepishly following unjustified government demands to close schools, quarantine children, and mandate mask-wearing and social distancing. When will parents realize they maybe innocently contributing to their kids’ delayed physical, mental and emotional development by giving them free reign on their mobile phones, laptops, tablets and other EMF-emitting devices? This is not an issue based upon class and prestige. Rich or poor, politically left or right, no child is excused from EMF risks. Since the regulatory officials at the EPA and FCC are fully compromised by the private telecom and wireless industries, parents must assume the responsibility to monitor and control their children’s exposure to EMF radiation.
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Richard Gale is the Executive Producer of the Progressive Radio Network and a former Senior Research Analyst in the biotechnology and genomic industries.
Dr. Gary Null is host of the nation’s longest running public radio program on alternative and nutritional health and a multi-award-winning documentary film director, including his recent Last Call to Tomorrow.
They are regular contributors to Global Research.
November 18th, 2023 by Dr. Naomi Wolf
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***
Incisive analysis by Dr. Naomi Wolf, first published by Global Research on May 31, 2022
***
I’ve been silent for some weeks. Forgive me.
The truth is: I’ve been rendered almost speechless — or the literary equivalent of that — because recently I’ve had the unenviable task of trying to announce to the world that indeed, a genocide — or what I’ve called, clumsily but urgently, a “baby die-off” — is underway.
The WarRoom/DailyClout Pfizer Documents Research Volunteers, a group of 3000 highly credentialled doctors, RNs, biostatisticians, medical fraud investigators, lab clinicians and research scientists, have been turning out report after report, as you may know, to tell the world what is in the 55,000 internal Pfizer documents which the FDA had asked a court to keep under wraps for 75 years.
By court order, these documents were forcibly disclosed. And our experts are serving humanity by reading through these documents and explaining them in lay terms. You can find all of the Volunteers’ reports on DailyClout.io.
The lies revealed are stunning.
The WarRoom/DailyClout Volunteers have confirmed:
that Pfizer (and thus the FDA) knew by December 2020 that the MRNA vaccines did not work — that they “waned in efficacy” and presented “vaccine failure.” One side effect of getting vaccinated, as they knew by one month after the mass 2020 rollout, was “COVID.”
Pfizer knew in May of 2021 that 35 minors’ hearts had been damaged a week after MRNA injection — but the FDA rolled out the EUA for teens a month later anyway, and parents did not get a press release from the US government about heart harms til August of 2021, after thousands of teens were vaccinated. [See this]
Pfizer (and thus the FDA; many of the documents say “FDA: CONFIDENTIAL” at the lower boundary) knew that, contrary to what the highly paid spokesmodels and bought-off physicians were assuring people, the MRNA, spike protein and lipid nanoparticles did not stay in the injection site in the deltoid, but rather went, within 48 hours, into the bloodstream, from there to lodge in the liver, spleen, adrenals, lymph nodes, and, if you are a woman, in the ovaries. [See this]
Pfizer (and thus the FDA) knew that the Moderna vaccine had 100 mcg of MRNA, lipid nanoparticles and spike protein, which was more than three times the 30 mcg of the adult Pfizer dose; the company’s internal documents show a higher rate of adverse events with the 100 mcg dose, so they stopped experimenting with that amount internally due to its “reactogenicity” — Pfizer’s words — but no one told all of the millions of Americans who all got the first and second 100 mcg Moderna dose, and the boosters.
Pfizer skewed the trial subjects so that almost three quarters were female — a gender that is less prone to cardiac damage. Pfizer lost the records of what became of hundreds of their trial subjects.
In the internal trials, there were over 42,000 adverse events and more than 1200 people died. Four of the people who died, died on the day they were injected.
Adverse events tallied up in the internal Pfizer documents are completely different from those reported on the CDC website or announced by corrupted physicians and medical organizations and hospitals. These include vast columns of joint pain, muscle pain (myalgia), masses of neurological effects include MS, Guillain Barre and Bell’s Palsy, encephaly, every iteration possible of blood clotting, thrombocytopenia at scale, strokes, hemorrhages, and many kinds of ruptures of membranes throughout the human body.
The side effects about which Pfizer and the FDA knew but you did not, include blistering problems, rashes, shingles, and herpetic conditions (indeed, a range of blistering conditions oddly foreshadowing the symptoms of monkeypox).
The internal documents show that Pfizer (and thus the FDA) knew that angry red welts or hives were a common reaction to the PEG, a petroleum-derived allergen in the vaccine ingredients — one that you are certainly not supposed to ingest. Indeed, PEG is an allergen so severe that many people can go into anaphylactic shock if they are exposed to it. But people with a PEG allergy were not warned away from the vaccines or even carefully watched by their doctors, EpiPen in hand. They were left to their shock.
Pfizer knew that “exposure” to the vaccine was defined — in their own words – as sexual contact (especially at time of conception), skin contact, inhalation or lactation. [See this]. ‘Fact-checkers’ can deny this all they want. The documents speak for themselves.
Of course, people who have tried to raise any of these issues have been deplatformed, scolded by the President, called insane, and roundly punished.
Athletes and college students and teenagers are collapsing on football and soccer fields. Doctors wring their hands and express mystification. But BioNTech’s SEC filing shows a fact about which the CDC and the AMA breathe not a word: fainting so violently that you may hurt yourself is one of the side effects important enough for BioNTech to highlight to the SEC.
But not to highlight to you and me.
I was able to process all of this and keep simply reporting. But in the last few weeks the horror overcame me. Because now, the Volunteers, under the excellent leadership of Program Manager Amy Kelly, have confirmed that there is a genocide underway, intentionally driven or not. And Israeli journalist Etana Hecht has added her own superb analysis. Here is Ms Hecht’s summary of the Volunteers’ findings:
It seems that there can indeed be a happenstance genocide. Reproduction itself is targeted, intentionally or not, by the mRNA vaccines. And if you know that reproduction is harmed, and babies and fetuses are harmed, and you know that this is at scale, which everyone at Pfizer and at the FDA who read these documents, knew —and if you do not stop — then does that not ultimately become a genocide?
The WarRoom/DailyClout volunteers have confirmed that lipid nanoparticles, the tiny hard fatty casings that contain the MRNA, traverse the amniotic membrane. That means that they enter the fetal environment, of course. (They also traverse the blood-brain barrier, which may help explain the post-MRNA vaccination strokes and cognitive issues we are seeing). The Volunteers have drilled deep into the Pfizer documents’ reports about pregnancy and found that the assurance that the vaccine is “safe and effective” for pregnant women, was based on a study of 44 French rats, followed for 42 days (the scientists who ran the study are shareholders or employees of BioNTech). [See this]
The Volunteers found that while pregnant women were excluded from the internal studies, and thus from the EUA on which basis all pregnant women were assured the vaccine was “safe and effective”, nonetheless about 270 women got pregnant during the study. More than 230 of them were lost somehow to history. But of the 36 pregnant women whose outcomes were followed – 28 lost their babies.
The Volunteers found that a baby died after nursing from a vaccinated lactating mother, and was found to have had an inflamed liver. Many babies nursing from vaccinated mothers showed agitation, gastrointestinal distress, and failure to thrive (to grow), and were inconsolable.
I am hearing anecdotal reports of these symptoms in babies nursing from vaccinated mothers, now, from across the country.
The Pfizer documents also show that some vaccinated mothers had suppressed lactation, or could produce no milk at all.
Doctors, of course, are stumped by all this. Stumped.
The NIH database has a preprint study making the case that there are negligible amounts of PEG in the breast milk of vaccinated women. [See this]
But what is a negligible amount of a petroleum product in mother’s milk, when you are a tiny newborn with no immunities, just arriving in the world? The NIH preprint itself reported higher levels of GI distress and sleeplessness in the infants studied, and one mother had elevated PEG levels in breast milk, and the fine print concludes that more study is needed:
“Larger studies are needed to increase our understanding of transfer of PEG into human milk, and potential effects after ingestion by the infant. Although expert consensus states there is minimal or no potential risk for the infant from maternal COVID-19 vaccination(20,21), the minor symptoms that were reported (sleep changes and gastrointestinal symptoms) could be further investigated in future studies to determine if they are related to vaccination.”
Since no babies died in the brief time frame of the tiny study, the study concluded that nursing babies suffered no real ill effects from vaccinated mothers. But the study did not follow these poor babies, with their acknowledged sleeplessness and their confirmed GI distress, to see if they actually “thrived” — gained weight and developed normally.
On such faulty science were women assured that the vaccines were “safe and effective” for them and their nursing babies.
But — four of the lactating vaccinated women in the Pfizer documents reported “blue-green” breast milk. I am not making this up. And the nursing baby who died, with an inflamed liver — the case has been buried; has not made headlines.
Coincidentally — or not — the SAME FDA that turned a blind eye to vast harms to humans, and to the subcategory of moms and babies, in the Pfizer documents, declared that Abbot, a major producer of baby formula in the US, had to close its factory. [See this]
Coincidentally, with little formula available and with some or many (we don’t know) vaccinated moms having compromised breast milk, it turns out that Bill Gates, Jeff Bezos, Richard Branson, and Mark Zuckerberg have all invested in a startup called “BioMilq” — which produces lab grown breast milk from mammary cells. [See this]. Reports of this startup include this Frankenstein-like language as if this is normal:
“The BIOMILQ team creates its product from cells taken from human breast tissue and milk, donated by women in the local community, who get a Target giftcard in return.” [See this]
As if all of this is not horrific enough, Ms Hecht drew studies from three countries — Canada, Scotland and now Israel – -to show that babies are dying disproportionately, during and after 2021, in highly vaccinated countries, and that newborns are dying disproportionately if they have vaccinated mothers versus unvaccinated mothers.
In highly vaccinated Scotland, almost twice the number of babies died in 2021 as died in baseline numbers.
In Ontario, Canada, 86 babies died in 2021, versus a baseline of four or five; this was a baby die-off so severe that a brave Parliamentarian brought the issue to Parliament. [See this].
In Israel, at RamBam Hospital in Haifa, there were 34% more spontaneous abortions and stillbirths to vaccinated women as to unvaccinated women.
Ms Hecht also notes that menstrual dysregulation in vaccinated women is fully confirmed now by many studies, with an average of one extra day of bleeding a month (a side effect about which I warned about in March of 2021, which in turn got me called names by a CNN commentator and permanently deplatformed from Twitter).
You don’t have to know more than eighth grade biology to know that a dysregulated menstrual cycle, not to mention spike protein accumulating in the ovaries, not to mention the traversing of the bodies’ membranes, including the amniotic sac, by tiny hard fatty lipid nanoparticles, not to mention PEG in breast milk, is all going to affect fertility, fetal health, childbirth, and babies’ GI wellbeing or distress, and thus their ability or failure to thrive (let alone to bond).
And now, the babies are dying. Now scale the data from Canada, Scotland and Israel to all the vaccinated nations in the world.
What do we do with all of this?
Knowing as I now do, that Pfizer and the FDA knew that babies were dying and mothers’ milk discoloring by just looking at their own internal records; knowing as I do that they did not alert anyone let alone stop what they were doing, and that to this day Pfizer, the FDA and other demonic “public health” entities are pushing to MRNA-vaccinate more and more pregnant women; now that they are about to force this on women in Africa and other lower income nations who are not seeking the MRNA vaccines, per Pfizer CEO Bourla this past week at the WEF, and knowing that Pfizer is pushing and may even receive a US EUA for babies to five year olds — I must conclude that we are looking into an abyss of evil not seen since 1945.
So I don’t know about you, but I must switch gears with this kind of unspeakable knowledge to another kind of discourse.
I am not saying that this is exactly like finding evidence of Dr Mengele’s experiments; but I am saying, with these findings, that now the comparison may not be that excessive.
These anti-humans at Pfizer, speaking at the WEF; these anti-humans at the FDA; knowing what they know; are targeting the miraculous female body, with its ability to conceive, gestate, birth and nurture life. They are targeting the female body’s ability to sustain a newborn human being with nothing but itself. They are targeting the amniotic membrane, the ovaries that release the ovum, they are targeting the lymph and blood that help support the building up of mother’s milk, they are targeting the fetus in utero, helpless.
They are targeting the human fetus’ very environment, one of the most sacred spaces on this earth, if not the most sacred.
And they know it.
I don’t know about you, and I am not proselytizing, but as you may know if you read me here, these apocalyptic days, I turn to prayer. I have started to say in public, once I had to face the fact of the die-off of the babies, that this is a Biblical time; and I mean Old Testament Biblical.
It is a time like that of the construction of the Tower of Babel — of massive arrogance against divine plans. Men such Bill Gates tamper with and seek to outdo God’s best works in lab after lab, and Tech Bros “disrupt” the human competition for their unsought-after goods and services, by targeting human processes and by ruining the bodies made in the image of God.
It is a time like that when the ten plagues assailed the Egyptians in Exodus 11:4-6:
“4 So Moses said, “This is what the Lord says: ‘About midnight I will go throughout Egypt.5 Every firstborn son in Egypt will die, from the firstborn son of Pharaoh, who sits on the throne, to the firstborn son of the female slave, who is at her hand mill, and all the firstborn of the cattle as well. 6 There will be loud wailing throughout Egypt—worse than there has ever been or ever will be again. 7”
This was the worst plague of all, the slaying of the firstborn.
It is a time of ha-Satan — Satan — “going to and fro in the earth, and […] walking up and down in it”, as Job 2 describes him.
It is a time of demons sauntering around in human spaces, though they look human enough themselves, smug in their Italian suits on panels at the World Economic Forum.
Ha-Satan – and his armies: ruining the conception, the milk, the menses, the touch, the cradling of the infant by its mother, ruining the feeding of the infant; ruining the babies themselves.
I read the Prophets a lot these days — because how could I not? I am looking for what writer Annie Lamott called “Operating Instructions.” What do you do when humanity itself is threatened? When there are professional battalions and bureaucratic departments of people who act with anathema toward the human race?
Surely there must be a clue.
So I reread the story of Noah, and the Book of Esther, a lot these days; I reread Jeremiah.
We’ve been here before. Embarrassingly often, when it comes to that.
The story is always the same, at least in the Hebrew Bible (in the New Testament, of course, God skips to the end and upends the plot).
At least in the Hebrew Bible, God is always trying to get our attention, always, it seems, simply asking us just to walk alongside him; simply asking us to keep his not–too-challenging commandments; not, indeed, asking a lot.
Jeremiah 1:13:
“The word of the Lord came to me again: “What do you see?”
“I see a pot that is boiling,” I answered. “It is tilting toward us from the north.”
14 The Lord said to me, “From the north disaster will be poured out on all who live in the land. 15 I am about to summon all the peoples of the northern kingdoms,” declares the Lord.
“Their kings will come and set up their thrones
in the entrance of the gates of Jerusalem;
they will come against all her surrounding walls
and against all the towns of Judah.
16 I will pronounce my judgments on my people
because of their wickedness in forsaking me,
in burning incense to other gods
and in worshiping what their hands have made.”
In the Hebrew Bible, anyway, the math is simple. We turn, we listen, and we are saved; or we carry on heedlessly, worshipping what our own hands have made, sluts to other gods — to “the science,” to media lies; to the narcissism of convention, these days, one might say — and thus we are lost.
We have been nearly lost, time after time after time.
This time could really be the last time; these monsters in the labs, on the transnational panels, are so very skillful; and so powerful; and their dark work is so extensive.
If God is there — again — after all the times that we have tried his patience — and who indeed knows? – will we reach out a hand to him in return, will we take hold in the last moment out of this abyss, and simply find a way somehow to walk alongside him?
Or will we this time, in losing the babies, and heedlessly carrying on nonetheless — be truly lost ourselves?
*
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Publisher: All Seasons Pr (May 31, 2022)
ISBN-10: 1737478560
ISBN-13: 978-1737478560
Reviews
“Naomi Wolf is one of the bravest, clearest-thinking people I know. The reason you hear the forces of repression so desperately trying to dismiss her is because she is right.” – Tucker Carlson
“The pandemic response is the biggest crisis of our time. It is going to make wars look small. There are very few books exploring the pandemic, its origins and the ramifications of the response. Dr. Naomi Wolf’s ‘The Bodies of Others’ focuses on the extremely important issue of bodily autonomy, that you decide what happens to your body. The greatest loss to our freedom is when our leaders makes decisions on the bodies of others. Buy this important book to understand the consequences.” – Dr. Peter McCullough, cardiologist, COVID-19 early treatment advocate, president, Cardio Renal Society of America
“Dr. Naomi Wolf’s book stands apart in a world of groupthink. It is an impeccable, thought-provoking compilation of the troubling and distressing consequences of the COVID-19 pandemic, including censorship and the suppression of alternatives to the mainstream narrative.” – Dr. Paul Alexander, former WHO COVID pandemic evidence-synthesis advisor
November 18th, 2023 by Philip Giraldi
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First published on November 6, 2023
***
Mainstream media and official government commentary on the violence in Gaza appears to have acquired a certain rhythm to make sure that everyone understands that it is the poor Israelis who are the real victims being assailed by a group called Hamas that is invariably labeled as “terrorists.”
It is absolutely obligatory in the first paragraph of an article on developments in the fighting to remind the reader that on October 7th the “terrorist” group Hamas “invaded” Israel and killed 1,400 Israelis, taking 200 additional Israelis as hostages.
Israel is described as “retaliating” and it is frequently seen as relevant to state that it was the most dreadful mass killing of Jews since the alleged “holocaust.”
To add a bit of current cultural and historic relevance, “9/11” and “Pearl Harbor” are often also cited to suggest that it was a both a surprise attack and a game changer in terms of how Israel now sees the external threat and will have to harden its national security imperatives. And there might even be inserted a comment from Congresswoman Nancy Pelosi or Senator Chuck Schumer that “Israel has a right to defend itself!” Joe Biden was also quoted as saying it was 15 “9/11”s for Israel given the comparative size and populations of the US and the Jewish state, emphasizing the enormity of the tragedy.
And that’s just in the first paragraph to make sure that the reader gets his or her mind right. The second paragraph is the really important contribution to the discussion, raising the issue of “surging antisemitism” in the United States and Europe, frequently including a quote from the relentless Jonathan Greenblatt of the redoubtable and widely feared Anti-Defamation League (ADL). Greenblatt is cited frequently, often intoning something along the lines of
“There is a growing, radical movement on many campuses in which opposition to Israel and Zionism is required to be fully accepted, effectively marginalizing campus Jewish communities.”
The intention of raising the antisemitism issue is to lead the reader away from any possible perception that an apartheid Israel was attacked because of its exceptionally brutal behavior towards the Palestinians over the past 76 years and was instead a victim of vicious terrorists who did what they did largely because they hate Jews.
In that fashion, the possible issue of Israeli responsibility for what occurred goes away and Benjamin Netanyahu and his fanatical and racist colleagues Bezalel Smotrich and Itamar Ben-Gvir get a pass to do whatever they want to solve their Arab problem. Both men have expressed their dream of an Israel without any Palestinians, whom they regard as not quite acceptably human, and have endorsed shoot to kill authority for policemen and soldiers who are confronted by any Arab demonstrators. More than 100 Palestinians have already been killed on the West Bank by armed settlers, police and soldiers who will not be held accountable for the murders while there have also been hundreds of arrests of protesters.
In America Fox News has been a leader in pumping out the interviews and reports suggesting that America’s Jewish students are so terrified by the threats implicit and explicit in the antisemitic rage that is manifest on college campuses and elsewhere that they have stopped eating at the university kosher dining halls lest they become the targets of a madman.
And there are the inevitable calls to completely ban gatherings expressing sympathy with the Palestinians or even waving or displaying Palestine’s flag. The moaning about surging antisemitism is indeed all over the mainstream media even though there are quite a few things wrong with the narrative about Israel-Palestine and the events on October 7th and subsequently. In short, the American and European public are being subjected to the usual con job when it comes to anything having to do with Israel. And the propagandization is certainly also given additional effectiveness when it is repeated by senior politicians coming from both parties with a unanimous Senate vote of 97-0 and a House of Representatives vote of 412 to 10 on resolutions pledging unconditional and total support for Israel and whatever it chooses to do, backed up by two US carrier groups plus Marines standing by in the Eastern Mediterranean.
Colleges and universities have been particularly targeted by Israel’s many friends, with mostly Jewish alumni holding back donations from those schools that do not explicitly denounce Hamas and praise Israeli “restraint” or that permit demonstrations by students supporting Gaza.
Students who sign on to protests about what is being done to the Palestinians are being identified and placed on lists that will be submitted to potential future employers and universities to make it more difficult for them to get good jobs or secure academic appointments and fellowships. Ambitious politicians out to endear themselves to Jewish campaign donors and voters, like Governor Ron DeSantis of Florida, have gone to extremes, banning Palestinian political groups at state universities and considering prosecution of members of such organizations for “hate crimes” as they are automatically being regarded as motivated by “antisemitism.” DeSantis has also vowed that his state will not accept any Palestinian refugees, though it is not clear how he would enforce that, basing his decision on his judgment that they are “all antisemites,” and Florida has recently purchased $135 million’s worth of so-called Israel Bonds to help in the Jewish state’s war effort. Senator Lindsey Graham has said that there should be “no limit” on Israelis killing Palestinians while Donald Trump has called for all Palestinian students in the US to be deported. It is just one more example of how low and even inhumane our politics have become when Israel is in any way involved, but it is also interesting to note that several European countries and Israel itself are also silencing critics of the Gaza massacres, in some cases by firing them from their jobs.
Part of the problem is that the narrative of what took place on October 7th and subsequently has been so spun by the media and talking heads that it continues to be somewhat unclear regarding what actually happened. The Israelis have persistently claimed that 1,405 Jews and Asian farm workers were killed by Hamas, 386 of whom were apparently soldiers. But how they died is where the tale goes adrift. Israeli survivors of the attack have told journalists that they were treated well when captured by Hamas and that the real killing began when Israeli Army units including tanks, artillery and helicopters counter-attacked Hamas, creating a brutal cross fire referred to in the trade as “friendly fire” which killed many if not most of the civilians. Houses in one kibbutz, where civilians were sheltering, were largely destroyed by fire from heavy weapons, which Hamas did not possess.
What we now also know from a growing body of evidence obtained from the Israeli media and eyewitnesses is that the Israeli military appear to have been overwhelmed by the day’s events. The reaction may have triggered an apparently long-standing policy referred to as the “Hannibal procedure” that seeks to prevent Israeli soldiers from being taken captive due to the high price the Israeli public insists on paying to make sure that the soldier-prisoners are returned. As a result, the military command has authorization to order Israeli troops to kill fellow soldiers rather than allow them to be taken prisoner. For the same reason, Hamas expends a great deal of energy in trying to find innovative ways to seize soldiers.
The possible reality that the Israeli military killed many of its own soldiers and civilians is, of course, being suppressed in the mainstream and by politicians eager to assist Israel in the Gazan genocide, but it is nevertheless out there. There is, however, another part of the story that is devastating in terms of its implications, and that is the immediate response to the crisis by offering to send Israel $14.5 billion to help in its defense, an incomprehensibly large figure that appears to have been pulled out of some lobbyist’s behind, which translates to performing genocide in Gaza and committing a host of war crimes along the way. The tribute payments, as some have described it, was approved by a party-line 226-196 vote in Congress last Thursday. The vote would have been closer to unanimous but for a partisan dispute over the funding of the measure. If Joe Biden and Congress are not aware that genocide is a big time crime against humanity as defined by the United Nations charter and by the Geneva Conventions and most international lawyers would agree that arming and funding an organization or state that is exterminating a nation or identifiable ethnicity is complicity or even participation in the crime.
Biden and Blinken may not have any idea of how much money Israel gets from the American taxpayer at all levels of government in a year beyond the $3.8 billion per year that it gets in direct “military assistance,” a gift from Barack Obama. Additional money flows from joint military projects, through dubious charities and via state and even local level development boards that bring the total up to roughly $10 billion. That contributes to making Israel a wealthy country which can afford to give its Jewish citizens free health care and college education as well as subsidized housing and it does not need additional US support to fight its wars.
And, by the way, that brings us to the final issue, Israel’s secret nuclear program which certainly should be of concern to US policymakers confronted by an exploding conflict that could engulf the entire Middle East and even spread beyond that area. The fact that Israel uniquely has the nukes in the region, numbering more than 200 by some estimates, is significant. In the United States government there exists a so-called “legislative rule” that no federal employee can confirm that Israel has nuclear weapons. The rule is ridiculous as the existence of the Israeli nuclear arsenal is well attested, including by Colin Powell, who once confirmed that “Israel had over 200 nuclear weapons pointed at Iran.” Powell made the statement when he was out of office but even prominent Israel-firster Senator Chuck Schumer has confirmed the existence of the arsenal.
The reason for acute sensitivity by the Israel Lobby and its bought-and-paid-for politicians over its nukes is the Symington Amendment in Section 101 of the US Arms Export Control Act of 1976 which bans foreign aid to any country that has nuclear weapons and has not signed the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. Which means that Israel’s annual $3.8 billion in aid would be in jeopardy if Washington were to enforce its own laws, though one cannot imagine that President Joe Biden or the Attorney General Merrick Garland, both fervent Zionists, will take the necessary steps to do so.
Another sticky bit of law consists of the so-called Leahy Amendments, which prohibit the US Department of State and Department of Defense from providing military assistance to foreign security force units that violate human rights “with impunity.” Israel’s numerous brutal assaults on Gaza, including the current one in which it is targeting hospitals and churches, bombing and killing helpless civilians, half of whom are children, is a textbook case for when the Leahy Amendments should be applied, but, of course, they never will be.
That reality illustrates once again the actual political power of the Jewish Lobby in the United States backed up as it is by Christian Zionists like the new Speaker of the House Mike Johnson.
Finally, one must take a look at the Israeli nuclear arsenal itself coupled with the country’s reckless and aggressive leadership and what that represents, a subject that no one currently is even considered as a factor in what the expanding Gaza war might lead to. Twenty years ago, when the United States President George W. Bush initiated his disastrous neocon devised “war on terror” Israel’s Prime Minister Ariel Sharon saw the war as an opportunity and Israel as a major beneficiary, poised as it was to draw the US into the much-desired attack against Iran coupled with a renewed drive to terrorize the remaining Palestinians into fleeing into the neighboring Arab states. Israel clearly intended its nuclear capability to be used against its neighbors if needed, as described in the 1991 book by veteran investigative journalist Seymour Hersh, entitled The Samson Option.
The book’s title refers to the Israeli government’s nuclear strategy whereby Israel would launch a massive nuclear retaliatory strike if the state itself was under threat from outside forces and was in danger of being overrun, just as the Biblical figure Samson pushed apart the pillars of a Philistine temple, bringing down the roof and killing himself and the thousands of Philistines who had gathered to see him humiliated. One of Hersh’s sources in the Israel intelligence service reportedly told him “We can still remember the smell of Auschwitz and Treblinka. Next time we’ll take all of you with us.”
When Sharon was queried about how the rest of the world might respond to Israel using its nukes to effectively wipe out its Arab neighbors, he responded “That depends on who does it and how quickly it happens. We possess several hundred atomic warheads and rockets and can launch them at targets in all directions, perhaps even at Rome. Most European capitals are targets for our air force. Let me quote General Moshe Dayan: ‘Israel must be like a mad dog, too dangerous to bother.’ I consider it all hopeless at this point. We shall have to try to prevent things from coming to that, if at all possible. Our armed forces, however, are not the thirtieth strongest in the world, but rather the second or third. We have the capability to take the world down with us. And I can assure you that that will happen before Israel goes under.”
So, there we are, poised on the edge of what might plausibly be the second avoidable nuclear war mishandled by Joe Biden and the muttonheads that he has chosen to “advise” him. Colonel Douglas Macgregor is rightly referring to the exploding crisis that contains a nuclear threat as an “Armageddon War.” Few Americans know that Israel only has nuclear weapons because it stole the enriched uranium and triggers from the United States with the cooperation of a Jewish industrialist Zalman Shapiro, owner of the NUMEC plant in Pennsylvania and a Jewish-Israeli Hollywood producer Arnon Milchan, neither of whom has ever been seriously held accountable by the US government.
So, we have an Israel with a secret nuclear arsenal that no American official can even mention and that it currently is at “war” and is in theory prepared to use the weapons, most likely against an arch-enemy like Iran, but if threatened, to “take the world down.” As for the mostly silent majority of us Americans who would like to see a government that actually tries to do good for the people who live here and pay taxes, having a world at peace where Washington leaves everyone alone and is in return left along by others, is an aspiration whose time seemingly has expired.
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This article was originally published on The Unz Review.
Philip M. Giraldi, Ph.D., is Executive Director of the Council for the National Interest, a 501(c)3 tax deductible educational foundation (Federal ID Number #52-1739023) that seeks a more interests-based U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East. Website is councilforthenationalinterest.org, address is P.O. Box 2157, Purcellville VA 20134 and its email is [email protected].
He is a regular contributor to Global Research.
November 18th, 2023 by Michael Snyder
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Of utmost relevance, this carefully research article was originally published in 2018.
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There is a clear consensus among the global elite that overpopulation is the primary cause of the most important problems that the world is facing and that something desperately needs to be done about it. They truly believe that humans are a plague upon the earth and that we will literally destroy the planet if we are left to our own devices…
…The following are 30 population control quotes which show that the elite truly believe that humans are a plague upon the earth and that a great culling is necessary:
1. UK Television Presenter Sir David Attenborough: “We are a plague on the Earth. It’s coming home to roost over the next 50 years or so. It’s not just climate change; it’s sheer space, places to grow food for this enormous horde. Either we limit our population growth or the natural world will do it for us, and the natural world is doing it for us right now”
2. Paul Ehrlich, a former science adviser to president George W. Bush and the author of “The Population Bomb”: “To our minds, the fundamental cure, reducing the scale of the human enterprise (including the size of the population) to keep its aggregate consumption within the carrying capacity of Earth is obvious but too much neglected or denied”
3. Paul Ehrlich again, this time on the size of families: “Nobody, in my view, has the right to have 12 children or even three unless the second pregnancy is twins”
4. Dave Foreman, the co-founder of Earth First: “We humans have become a disease, the Humanpox.”
5. CNN Founder Ted Turner: “A total world population of 250-300 million people, a 95% decline from present levels, would be ideal.”
He was quoted saying: “We’re too many people; that’s why we have global warming.”
Unfortunately for him and other fervent depopulationists, both the overpopulation myth and the man-made global warming hoax, have been repeatedly debunked.
6. Japan’s Deputy Prime Minister Taro Aso about medical patients with serious illnesses: “You cannot sleep well when you think it’s all paid by the government. This won’t be solved unless you let them hurry up and die.”
7. David Rockefeller: “The negative impact of population growth on all of our planetary ecosystems is becoming appallingly evident.”
8. Environmental activist Roger Martin: “On a finite planet, the optimum population providing the best quality of life for all, is clearly much smaller than the maximum, permitting bare survival. The more we are, the less for each; fewer people mean better lives.”
9. HBO personality Bill Maher: “I’m pro-choice, I’m for assisted suicide, I’m for regular suicide, I’m for whatever gets the freeway moving – that’s what I’m for. It’s too crowded, the planet is too crowded and we need to promote death.”
10. MIT professor Penny Chisholm: “The real trick is, in terms of trying to level off at someplace lower than that 9 billion, is to get the birthrates in the developing countries to drop as fast as we can. And that will determine the level at which humans will level off on earth.”
11. Julia Whitty, a columnist for Mother Jones: “The only known solution to ecological overshoot is to decelerate our population growth faster than it’s decelerating now and eventually reverse it — at the same time we slow and eventually reverse the rate at which we consume the planet’s resources.
Success in these twin endeavors will crack our most pressing global issues: climate change, food scarcity, water supplies, immigration, health care, biodiversity loss, even war. On one front, we’ve already made unprecedented strides, reducing global fertility from an average 4.92 children per woman in 1950 to 2.56 today — an accomplishment of trial and sometimes brutally coercive error, but also a result of one woman at a time making her individual choices. The speed of this childbearing revolution, swimming hard against biological programming, rates as perhaps our greatest collective feat to date.”
12. Colorado State University Professor Philip Cafaro in a paper entitled “Climate Ethics and Population Policy”: “Ending human population growth is almost certainly a necessary (but not sufficient) condition for preventing catastrophic global climate change. Indeed, significantly reducing current human numbers may be necessary in order to do so.“
13. Professor of Biology at the University of Texas at Austin Eric R. Pianka: “I do not bear any ill will toward people. However, I am convinced that the world, including all humanity, WOULD clearly be much better off without so many of us.”
14. Detroit News Columnist Nolan Finley: “Since the national attention is on birth control, here’s my idea: If we want to fight poverty, reduce violent crime and bring down our embarrassing drop-out rate, we should swap contraceptives for fluoride in Michigan’s drinking water.
We’ve got a baby problem in Michigan. Too many babies are born to immature parents who don’t have the skills to raise them, too many are delivered by poor women who can’t afford them, and too many are fathered by sorry layabouts who spread their seed like dandelions and then wander away from the consequences.”
15. John Guillebaud, professor of family planning at University College London: “The effect on the planet of having one child less is an order of magnitude greater than all these other things we might do, such as switching off lights. An extra child is the equivalent of a lot of flights across the planet.”
16. Democrat strategist Steven Rattner: “WE need death panels. Well, maybe not death panels, exactly, but unless we start allocating health care resources more prudently — rationing, by its proper name — the exploding cost of Medicare will swamp the federal budget.”
17. Matthew Yglesias, a business and economics correspondent for Slate, in an article entitled “The Case for Death Panels, in One Chart”:
“But not only is this health care spending on the elderly the key issue in the federal budget, our disproportionate allocation of health care dollars to old people surely accounts for the remarkable lack of apparent cost effectiveness of the American health care system. When the patient is already over 80, the simple fact of the matter is that no amount of treatment is going to work miracles in terms of life expectancy or quality of life.”
18. Planned Parenthood Founder Margaret Sanger: “All of our problems are the result of overbreeding among the working class”
19. U.S. Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg: “Frankly I had thought that at the time Roe was decided, there was concern about population growth and particularly growth in populations that we don’t want to have too many of.”
20. Planned Parenthood Founder Margaret Sanger: “The most merciful thing that the large family does to one of its infant members is to kill it.”
21. Salon columnist Mary Elizabeth Williams in an article entitled “So What If Abortion Ends Life?”: “All life is not equal. That’s a difficult thing for liberals like me to talk about, lest we wind up looking like death-panel-loving, kill-your-grandma-and-your-precious-baby storm troopers. Yet a fetus can be a human life without having the same rights as the woman in whose body it resides.”
22. Alberto Giubilini of Monash University in Melbourne, Australia and Francesca Minerva of the University of Melbourne in a paper published in the Journal of Medical Ethics:
“[W]hen circumstances occur after birth such that they would have justified abortion, what we call after-birth abortion should be permissible. … [W]e propose to call this practice ‘after-birth abortion’, rather than ‘infanticide,’ to emphasize that the moral status of the individual killed is comparable with that of a fetus … rather than to that of a child.
“Therefore, we claim that killing a newborn could be ethically permissible in all the circumstances where abortion would be. Such circumstances include cases where the newborn has the potential to have an (at least) acceptable life, but the well-being of the family is at risk.”
23. Nina Fedoroff, a key adviser to Hillary Clinton: “We need to continue to decrease the growth rate of the global population; the planet can’t support many more people.”
24. Barack Obama’s primary science adviser, John P. Holdren: “A program of sterilizing women after their second or third child, despite the relatively greater difficulty of the operation than vasectomy, might be easier to implement than trying to sterilize men.
The development of a long-term sterilizing capsule that could be implanted under the skin and removed when pregnancy is desired opens additional possibilities for coercive fertility control. The capsule could be implanted at puberty and might be removable, with official permission, for a limited number of births.”
25. David Brower, the first Executive Director of the Sierra Club: “Childbearing [should be] a punishable crime against society, unless the parents hold a government license … All potential parents [should be] required to use contraceptive chemicals, the government issuing antidotes to citizens chosen for childbearing.”
26. Thomas Ferguson, former official in the U.S. State Department Office of Population Affairs: “There is a single theme behind all our work–we must reduce population levels. Either governments do it our way, through nice clean methods, or they will get the kinds of mess that we have in El Salvador, or in Iran or in Beirut. Population is a political problem. Once population is out of control, it requires authoritarian government, even fascism, to reduce it…”
27. Mikhail Gorbachev: “We must speak more clearly about sexuality, contraception, about abortion, about values that control population, because the ecological crisis, in short, is the population crisis. Cut the population by 90% and there aren’t enough people left to do a great deal of ecological damage.”
28. Jacques Costeau: “In order to stabilize world population, we must eliminate 350,000 people per day. It is a horrible thing to say, but it is just as bad not to say it.”
29. Finnish environmentalist Pentti Linkola: “If there were a button I could press, I would sacrifice myself without hesitating if it meant millions of people would die”
30. Prince Phillip, husband of Queen Elizabeth II and co-founder of the World Wildlife Fund: “In the event that I am reincarnated, I would like to return as a deadly virus, in order to contribute something to solve overpopulation.”
Bonus by HumansAreFree.com
31. Henry Kissinger, a top architect of the New World Order, is believed by many to be one of the biggest war criminals alive. He has worked hard to put his depopulation plans into action.
He was also quoted saying:
“Depopulation should be the highest priority of foreign policy towards the third world, because the US economy will require large and increasing amounts of minerals from abroad, especially from less developed countries”.
32. Bill Gates is possibly the biggest depopulationist alive. According to him, his father was the head of Planned Parenthood and has influenced his views on population control from an early age.
In a TEDx lecture, he explains that one way to lower the CO2 levels (which, by the way, are not a problem AT ALL, since the total CO2 level) by decreasing the human population:
“The world today has 6.8 billion people. That’s heading up to about nine billion. Now if we do a really great job on new vaccines, health care & reproductive health services, we could lower that by perhaps 10 or 15 percent.”
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November 18th, 2023 by Manlio Dinucci
Siamo coinvolti in due guerre, in Europa e Medioriente, che hanno conseguenze sempre più gravi sulle nostre condizioni di vita e sulla nostra sicurezza.
Sul fronte europeo è stato compiuto, nel settembre 2022, quello che il Wall Street Journal definisce “uno dei più grandi atti di sabotaggio in Europa dalla Seconda Guerra Mondiale”: gli Stati Uniti, coadiuvati da Norvegia e Polonia, hanno fatto esplodere il Nord Stream, il principale gasdotto che trasportava in Germania e da qui in altri paesi europei gas russo a basso costo. La dinamica di questa azione bellica è stata ricostruita, in base a precise prove, dal giornalista statunitense Seymour Hersh e da una inchiesta tedesca.
Il segretario di Stato USA Blinken ha definito il blocco del Nord Stream “una enorme opportunità strategica per gli anni avvenire” e ha sottolineato che “gli Stati Uniti sono divenuti il principale fornitore di gas naturale liquefatto all’Europa”, gas che noi cittadini europei paghiamo molto più di quello che importavamo dalla Russia.
Allo stesso tempo gli Stati Uniti stanno scaricando sull’Europa l’enorme costo della guerra NATO in Ucraina contro la Russia. La Commissione Europea sta aprendo la via al prossimo ingresso dell’Ucraina nella UE, con la conseguenza che saremo noi cittadini europei a pagare l’enorme deficit ucraino.
Sul fronte mediorientale l’Unione Europea sostiene la guerra con la quale Israele, con alle spalle gli Stati Uniti e la NATO, attacca la Palestina e alimenta un conflitto regionale mirando in particolare all’Iran. L’Italia, che dal 2004 è legata a Israele da un patto militare, ha fornito i caccia su cui si addestrano i piloti israeliani, che bombardano Gaza facendo strage di civili, e sostiene in diversi modi le forze armate israeliane. In compenso il premier Netanyahu ha promesso alla premier Meloni che l’Italia diverrà hub energetico per lo smistamento in Europa del gas che Israele invierà attraverso il gasdotto EastMed.
La sezione del giacimento offshore di gas, di cui Israele si attribuisce la proprietà esclusiva, è situata in gran parte nelle acque territoriali del Territorio Palestinese di Gaza e in quello della Cisgiordania. Attraverso il gasdotto EastMed Israele esporterà quindi in Italia e nella UE il gas naturale palestinese di cui si è impadronito con la forza militare.
Manlio Dinucci
VIDEO YOUTUBE :
VIDEO : https://www.byoblu.com/2023/11/17/le-due-guerre-delloccidente-grandangolo-pangea/
November 18th, 2023 by Luis Bruschtein
November 17th, 2023 by Techno Fog
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“The California governor has widely been considered as a possible presidential contender, and some see him as a potential candidate come 2028. Newsom has repeatedly fended off speculation he could challenge Biden for the Democratic presidential nomination in 2024.
… Newsom has in recent weeks been outspoken in his support for Biden’s reelection bid, and he has directly attacked Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R), who is running for the GOP’s 2024 nomination. Newsom is expected to debate DeSantis on Fox News this month. (The Hill)
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Something to keep in mind:
The attacks on Biden from the Democrat Establishment coincide with the ascent of Gavin Newsom.
How could the DNC avoid a messy primary and nominate their preferred candidate (Newsom)?
It’s in the fine print.
Biden is increasingly frail and confused, his dementia is worsening and his economic plan is faltering.
His popularity continues to crumble even among Democrats.
Consider the possibility that he resigns after receiving the Presidential nomination at the DNC 2024 convention.
Why that specific timing?
Because –
Rules adopted by the Democratic National Committee in 2022 leave the DNC as the sole authority to appoint a Presidential nominee where that nominee resigns after the August 2024 convention.
No vote or primary needed.
Newsom is already running a presidential campaign – his tour of China, Xi’s visit to SF (why not DC?), his civil rights stops in the US.
The question is whether he is targeting 2024 or 2028.
Maybe it’s both.
This is Newsom’s final term as governor; he’s barred from running in 2026.
Strategically, it is better for him to run now rather than wait until 2028. Think momentum.
What does Newsom have to say about a presidential run? Curious non-denials.
Something to think about.
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November 17th, 2023 by Peiyu Li
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***
Heiwai Tang, Emanuel Yi Pastreich, HE Weiwen, George S. Geh, JIANG Shan, XU Zhengzhong, LÜ Xiang, LI Chen regret rising deglobalization and call for communication to restore China-U.S. ties.
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This transcript is Part II of “Reframing US-China Bipolar Dynamics by Pluralizing into China-West Relations” roundtable from the 8th China Global Think Tank Innovation Forum, covering eight more speakers:
The Oct. 23 forum was organized by the Center for China and Globalization (CCG) and Chinese People’s Association for Friendship with Foreign Countries (CPAFFC), supported by the Academy of Contemporary China and World Studies (ACCWS), China-United States Exchange Foundation (CUSEF), and Konrad-Adenauer-Stiftung (KAS), in partnership with China-West Dialogue (CWD).
The full video is available on YouTube. It was also broadcast online by CCG and remains available in China both in English and Chinese.
Please note that this transcript is transcribed by CCG from the audio and video recordings and may contain errors. It hasn’t been reviewed by the speakers.
Emphasis added by Global Research
In the interest of time, I’m just going to make three points. I actually had a prepared speech, but I’m going to skip it because I was so inspired since this morning, and also heard a lot in this session. First of all, thank you, Henry Wang, for creating this opportunity for me to speak. This is a wonderful event. This is exactly what we need to have a lot more of in both China and the United States.
The first point I want to make is related to this morning’s session when people talked about respect and dialogue. And I think the ultimate goal is to have more mutual understanding between the two countries, as well as trying to build trust between them.
And I have to say, you know, I come from Hong Kong, and I taught in the United States for over 15 years. One thing that I realized in the US is that academics, I’m talking about academics, increasingly had difficulty coming to this part of the world just to engage in some regular, normal academic activities.
I tried my best to invite some of my friends in the US teaching in public universities to come to Hong Kong to give academic talks. And they told me they don’t want to do it, not because they find Hong Kong to be very dangerous.
It’s because they had to go through multiple levels of approvals in the universities and requirements from the IT department in the university for them to bring an empty laptop to Hong Kong.
OK. So, I think this is not encouraging for people to exchange ideas and to learn about each other, and I’m really seeing a downward spiral due to these kinds of restrictive policies. My former colleague, Hal Brands, at Johns Hopkins SAIS, wrote a piece in 2017 published in Bloomberg magazine, pointing out a very obvious point, saying that during the Cold War era, there were a lot of students studying Russian, the language, and also the country, the Soviet Union.
But now, in 2023, he started seeing basically older universities shutting down departments on China, on Chinese history, on China studies. And this is not helpful for the Americans to know something more about China. And I’m pretty sure the same thing is happening in mainland China too. And again, living in Hong Kong, I have the luxury to basically go to the US without much restriction. So that’s my first point.
My second point is related to the title of this session, which is pluralism. I think I would like to add a word that is related, and that is decentralization. When we look at global macro phenomena, de-dollarization, decoupling, deglobalization, whatever words that start with the letter “d”, we tend to connect them to geopolitics right away.
But in fact, technologies are also creating these kinds of trends, allowing countries to outsource from multiple places, allowing companies not to produce everything in one single location. So, I think we need to think harder about why we are living in such a world that is increasingly more fragmented, more fractured. Partly because of geopolitics, but also partly because of new technologies like AI, blockchains, whatever.
The third point I want to make is that, due to the tension between the United States and China, there are up and rising star countries in Southeast Asia, in the Middle East, in Latin America. So those new emerging markets are exactly what we are going to see in the next five to ten years. We are indeed moving towards a multipolar world.
And I understand, sort of the underlying meaning of Professor Nye’s statement this morning. I think we are too obsessed with looking at the two biggest powers in the world and focus too much on the tension and ignore the global South, the rest of the world, and those are our strategic partners. No country wants to take sides. If you go to Southeast Asia,
I would bet, besides the Philippines, most of the countries would say, I don’t want to take sides, don’t force me to do so.
And, importantly, I’m happy to see new regional economic and trade agreements, like RCEP, or the new Bricks that has six new members. And I think many countries are giving up relying on some improving relationship between the two powers. And they’re starting to do something important for their economies. And they don’t want to be trapped in these many years of geopolitical tension between the two powers. So, these are my three points. I could make more, but I should let Emanuel and others speak. Thank you.
I want to say that Chinese is a common international language, when Chinese people start speaking in English, it makes it difficult for those who don’t know English to participate in our discussions. Therefore, I am basically against it. Opinions should be expressed in one’s native language. But I think that it will cause some problems because this is an international setting, so I’ll be speaking in English instead, though I can speak Chinese.
Confucius mentioned the idea of the rectification of names, let’s say, 正名一词, the names and things should be in harmony together. And this is the primary cause of problems and breakdown in governance. And I think if we look at both the American and the Chinese side, that break is really at the core. And since we don’t talk so much about it in many of these discussions, I’ll go out on a limb and say a couple of words.
First, I’m going to talk about the United States, but everything I say applies to China, although with Chinese characteristics. First is the government. Obviously, the government is critical, but we see a radical tendency to privatize the government, whether it’s in the legislature, in which government-elected officials and staff members go work for hedge funds for several years to enrich themselves, or the outsourcing of processes to for-profit organizations with their own conflicts of interest.
This spills over into the military, which is also increasingly and intelligently outsourced, often to multinational corporations whose interests do not correspond with the nation-state necessarily. And with the word “bank,” I’d like to say that the term “bank” we used, but in fact, in many cases, it no longer corresponds with “bank” in the sense that we knew it 40 years ago, or even 15 years ago. The nature of banks and the nature of banking, the nature of money, has profoundly shifted, and the term, the concept, has not kept up with these transformations.
Journalism, the passing on of accurate information to the people about what’s happening in the world, has also been transformed by the nature of journalism and its commercialization, and this has had a terrible effect, both in the United States and China and globally. And finally, I think the most serious, although it’s probably not discussed that much, is the terms “science” and “technology.” I’ve had a lot of problems, especially in China, but also the United States.
People use the term “science” and “technology” together as if they’re the same thing. In fact, science is the complete opposite of technology. Science is the philosophical pursuit of truth, using a variety of methods, and the scientific method being the most prominent, to ascertain what is accurate or true. Technology is a process or a system which produces a result, and often they’re in conflict. As we know, in this digitalized world, in which we have systems of technology which often produce untrue results. Thank you.
I would like to make three points. First, on managing China-US relations. I’m not sure whether we can use the term “China-US bipolar dynamics,” because we are not in a bipolar world. Nonetheless, maintaining a stable China-US relationship is of vital importance for world stability and prosperity. Over the past few months, we have witnessed an interesting phenomenon.
On one side, the differences between the two countries are intensifying. On the other side, the tensions between the two countries are mounting. This might become the new normal in the coming months and even years ahead because both countries are seeking ways to stabilize the relationship based on the UN charter and principles, namely, mutual respect for sovereignty and territorial integrity, non-aggression, non-interference in internal affairs, equality and mutual benefits, and peaceful coexistence. Regardless of our significant differences, we can maintain a stable state-to-state relationship. This will also enlighten our relations with other Western countries. That’s one point.
The second point is to enhance China-Western relations. The China-US relationship, no matter how important, is only a part of China-West relations. We need to adopt a broader perspective.
Did you know that 50% of China’s trade is with Asia? Another 20% is with Europe. Only 16% of China’s trade is with North America. Over the past ten years or more, plurilateral mechanisms have played an increasingly important role in stabilizing the global situation and addressing the world’s pressing issues. We should continue this approach. While we aim to strengthen China-West relations, our focus should be on specific hot topics.
The third point is to support re-globalization. This might be a relevant topic for China-West Dialogue. Currently, the world is grappling with geopolitical segmentation and geoeconomics fragmentation.
This geoeconomics fragmentation now has a term: Homeland Economics. It’s becoming prevalent in many countries. However, according to an IMF study, if geoeconomics fragmentation continues, it will curtail global GDP growth by a minimum of half a percent, and up to 12% at most. This would be detrimental for everyone, including China, the West, and the developing world. As we navigate the 4th Industrial Revolution, marked by breakthroughs in big data, artificial intelligence, quantum computing, new energies, and new materials, the rapidly evolving technologies might outpace the capabilities of all our countries, potentially overshadowing our differences.
We should collectively focus on strategies for managing the global supply chain, pinpointing, and addressing differences, and ensuring security in these changing times. How can we optimize a global supply chain for the maximum benefit of all countries and minimize risks? To achieve this, we should collaborate with industrial associations and transnational corporations, drawing from their latest experiences, knowledge, and insights. If we can contribute in this manner, it will be beneficial for both China and the West, as well as the broader global community. Thank you.
Thank you. Maybe I could bring a little bit different perspective than most speakers here today. We all know, politicians come and go. We all know policies change over time.
But the cultural aspect, educational aspect of human society, will always stay, right? Which is why 97 years ago, American educators John Dewey and Paul Monroe, and Chinese educators, Mr. Hu Shi and Guo Bingwen, founded what is called China Institute in America in New York City. Now, 97 years later, we are still going on with one mission from day one, which is to build a bridge between the American people and Chinese people through programs in arts and culture, in education, in business. Which is why I’m the CEO of the Institute, and I have my co-chair Peter Walker over there. We are here to participate in this discussion, and we want to make sure the exchanges between the peoples will continue to be strong, especially in today’s geopolitical environment. Thank you.
Thank you very much, Mr. Chair. So, from the very beginning of the morning, I have been listening to what our top experts have in their mind about international affairs and China-US relations. I have been deeply inspired. I engaged in some economic activities between China and the United States for some time. So, I want to share with you from that perspective.
We have experienced economic globalization and China’s reform and opening up. I can see that most of you are in your fifties or sixties. So, I think the decades that we have experienced have brought great opportunities to China and to the whole world. And now we are facing unprecedented changes and a lot of dynamics in the international situation. We have seen COVID-19 and the increasing tensions between China and the United States.
So, it is very necessary for us to talk about China-U.S. relations, especially the business ties. When we talk about business ties in the past, we often say that business ties are the ballast stone and stabilizer of our relations. Without the business ties, yes, indeed, it is impossible for us to be here today. I still believe that business ties are crucial.
As some scholars have put it, during the Cold War era, the former Soviet Union and the United States had no economic ties or engagements. But in the past four decades, we have become part of each other, and we are inseparable from each other.
Our trade rose from 2.5 billion at the establishment of diplomatic ties to 750 billion (according to China), or 690 billion, according to the United States—an increase of several hundreds of folds. So, in the past few decades, our business relations have also gone through ups and downs, and we have experienced a lot of arguments or fierce negotiations. And finally, we can find our consensus for common progress.
So, between China and the United States, we have established more than ten mechanisms for dialogue. Economically, we have the strategic economic dialogue and China-US Joint Commission on Commerce and Trade. And also, in the early 1990s, the textile products and market access, the joining into the WTO, etc. We had a lot of debate between each other on these topics. We had a lot of verbal fights. But finally, we can see that it turns out to be the fact that we reached an agreement, and we finally joined the WTO.
So, my point is that the US exports to China, e.g., mechanical products, soybean, or services, or US movies into China, e.g., we just watched the Oppenheimer. We will never forget the McCarthy era when it hurt the scientists of the United States, and we do not want to see the bad impacts of protectionism on the benefits of the two peoples. So, in one world, economic ties have brought tangible benefits to both countries. They are good for our consumers and also promoters of regional and global economies.
When we talk about decoupling, actually, the past 40 years, we have already established complete ties and bonds and connections in terms of supply chains. That is the result of our exchanges. It is not happening within one particular country, but rather, it goes beyond one country into the whole region, the whole world. So, if now we want to cut it off, which took 40 years to be established, does that mean we will take another four decades to rebuild it? So that will be lose-lose.
So according to some experts, when China’s trade transfers to other developing countries, that will be good for those countries, indeed, but in this process of transfer, it will also be negative too, e.g., infrastructure, ports, roads, water, electricity and gas, labor. China has a lot of advantages in all those areas. When those replaceable goods move to other developing countries, those developing countries do not have as good advantages as China. So, the export price to the United States will be higher; the US consumers will have to shoulder the burden of a high cost.
Of course, we can tap deeper into this topic. However, I don’t think it is the right time for us to talk about decoupling. Rather, we need to talk about dialogue and negotiation and working together.
Just now, some friends talked about the 1st phase or the 2nd phase of dialogue, but actually, in the past, we achieved our progress today after going through all rounds of negotiations. And now we have restored the three working groups between the governments—economic, financial, and commercial at the deputy ministerial level. So, through certain negotiations, we can serve to resolve the problems. And also, the export control, and people-to-people exchange limitations or restrictions are also bad for our contacts. I believe I remember, in the past, 5 million visitors traveled between China and the United States, and every day, over 100 flights were flying between China and the US.
But today, we can never surpass or achieve that level. So, what we need to do is to restore our normal people-to-people exchanges, and through negotiations, we need to build trust and remove the conflicts or differences of opinions. And we need to expand further our market in terms of rules, development, management, and standard development. We also need to further open our market. We have over 20 pilot free trade zones, and in our pilot free trade zones, we can do a lot of experiments. At the same time, China and the US should make the cake bigger because our total economy accounts for more than 40% of the world economy.
So as someone said this morning, our interests outweigh the conflicts in energy and food and climate; we have a lot of comparative advantages that we could leverage, e.g., I said a few days ago in petrochemicals and energy, China has a lot of advantages. In terms of agriculture, elderly care, and climate change, there are many opportunities for us to tap. So, we should focus on tapping these potentials to make greater contributions to the region and to humanity.
Today, I’d like to briefly address an important development in China-U.S. relations, given the time constraints. We are witnessing a crucial shift towards a pattern characterized by competition, cooperation, and mutual benefits. As we step into the era of the digital economy, there’s a fundamental transformation in the competitive landscape.
The traditional notion of finding balanced prices has become obsolete, and the landscape of operating systems has shifted from multiple providers to universal acceptance of a single system. This marks the emergence of a new paradigm. Within this framework, a novel economic, political, and social phenomenon has surfaced, aptly termed “coopetition”—a blend of competition and cooperation that is shaping new markets.
we know that relations between states are largely founded on those between enterprises. E.g., in 1984 the 1st Kentucky opened in Beijing; in1990, and McDonalds also came. the KFC did a lot of research, but McDonalds just open to a store opposite KFC. They brought fast foods, American style fast food, into China.
The same thing happened between Chinese companies among Hisense and Haier, Mengniu Dairy and Yili. in general, digital economy, or corporate competitions, have taught us a lesson that we could expand the market through competition, increase the benefits for all peoples. I think that this is also the EU and China are now developing 3rd party markets. So, in the interest of time, this is all I have to share. Thank you.
There is news that we may have missed today. The governor of California has arrived in Hong Kong and will soon visit Shenzhen, Guangzhou, Shanghai, Suzhou, and Beijing.
If we look at the editorial by Global Times yesterday and if we look at the statement by the Californian government, we may get the impression that the US and China are very friendly countries in the world. So, we need to consider that there are very good moments of cooperation on regional levels in both countries. We see that California has two valleys: the Sacramento Valley and the San Joaquin Valley.
The San Joaquin Valley produces half of the fruits and nuts in the US, and the demand for this trade is significant. If we consider these positive factors more in the bilateral relations, I believe the future between the two countries, although I don’t want to use the word “bright,” will at least not be as pessimistic as it feels now.
I’m more than delighted to see my old friend Mr. Pillsbury. He made every effort to come to Beijing. We had an in-depth conversation, and I believe our discussions reached the leadership and decision-making levels of both sides.
It played a crucial role in the subsequent signing of the phase one trade agreement between China and the US. But after the signing of the agreement, shortly afterward, COVID-19 broke out and became a global pandemic.
We saw US politics become chaotic, and we still haven’t seen a correction in this chaotic trend in politics in the US. This visit by the governor of California, I think, is more representative of the future of our relations. Under Trump’s administration, when things were tough, we were able to reach an agreement. So, in today’s environment, I think it’s all the more possible that we can reach a better agreement. Thank you.
I also want to make three points. First, I believe stability is not something optional for the international community; it’s the foundation of international society. Because I recall Secretary Blinken arguing a few weeks ago that geopolitical instability is a feature of the current international order.
I think the US strategy, the competition strategy, includes toleration, even taking advantage of unstable situations. For example, in the recent Biden administration’s policy towards the Middle East conflict, the US even takes advantage of the Middle East conflict to promote more budgets. Not only for the Middle East and the European situation but also for programs all course.
We need to realize that if we want to promote stability, we should constrain allies, and we should promote more cooperation among the great powers. So, I believe the major responsibility of all the great powers includes reducing and constraining instability and promoting stability. We have to facilitate a transition from instability to stability.
The second thing I want to mention is the revival of multilateralism in crisis management and conflict management because right now we are facing major crises in the Middle East, in Europe, and in the Asia Pacific as well. I don’t think that any single great power or any single bloc can dominate in the management of these crises and conflicts. So, we need a division of labor, and we need some trust among great powers to do crisis management and conflict management.
The third point I want to mention is the so-called AI arms control. Some people recently wrote articles arguing that we need to learn lessons from nuclear arms control during the Cold War for the arms control of AI today. There are some differences between AI and nuclear weapons. While nuclear weapons are primarily just that, AI is a technology that can be applied to both civilian life and the military. I think the US approach to AI, in relation to China, is a little confusing. Because if we want to suppress the AI infrastructure and AI research and development in China, it’s quite challenging to have any serious negotiations with China on the so-called military risk of AI.
So, I believe we need a two-track approach to AI arms control. Track one: cooperation and exchanges on the application of AI for the welfare of all people. And secondly, serious discussions about the uncertainties and risks of AI to both civilian life and military applications. Thank you.
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November 17th, 2023 by Al-Jazeera
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US President Joe Biden and Chinese President Xi Jinping have concluded more than four hours of talks with a commitment to stabilise strained bilateral ties and restore some military-to-military communications.
The two leaders met on Wednesday for the first time in a year at Filoli Estate, a country retreat about 40 kilometres (25 miles) south of San Francisco.
After a handshake and smiles, they sat down for talks that lasted more than two hours.
Next was a working lunch with key officials, followed by a stroll around the manicured gardens.
Writing on social media site X, Biden said he valued the conversation he had had with Xi.
“I think it’s paramount that we understand each other clearly, leader to leader,” Biden wrote. “There are critical global challenges that demand our joint leadership. And today, we made real progress.”
It was the two leaders’ first face-to-face meeting in a year and it coincided with the annual summit of the 21-member Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) a short drive away in San Francisco.
“Planet Earth is big enough for the two countries to succeed,” Xi told Biden.
….
A US official told reporters there was significant back and forth between the two leaders over Taiwan, with Biden chiding China over its massive military build-up around the island, and asking it to respect the territory’s electoral process.
Presidential and parliamentary elections are scheduled for January, with William Lai, the current vice president and a man Beijing has labelled a “separatist” leading opinion polls.
Xi, meanwhile, stressed the island was part of China.
“The US side should … stop arming Taiwan, and support China’s peaceful reunification,” Xi told Biden, according to China’s Foreign Ministry. “China will realise reunification, and this is unstoppable.”
Click here to read the full article on Al Jazeera.
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Featured image: President Joe Biden greets President of the People’s Republic of China Xi Jinping, Wednesday, November 15, 2023, at the Filoli Estate in Woodside, California. (Official White House Photo by Carlos Fyfe)
November 17th, 2023 by Dr. William Makis
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2023 Feb (Hsuan-Chi Chen et al) – Pemphigus aggravation following Pfizer-BioNTech vaccination: A case report and review of literature
2023 Jan (Hsieh et al) – Dyshidrotic bullous pemphigoid developing after Moderna mRNA-1273 vaccination
2022 Dec (Merilleno et al) – Bullous pemphigoid in a patient with psoriasis after mRNA COVID-19 vaccination
2022 Oct (Vincent Wan et al) – Association between COVID-19 vaccination and bullous pemphigoid – a case series and literature review
2022 Sep (Agharbi et al) – Pemphigus vulgaris following second dose of mRNA‐(Pfizer‐BioNTech) COVID‐19 vaccine
2022 Aug (Bryan Daines et al) – A new eruption of bullous pemphigoid following mRNA COVID-19 vaccination
2022 July (Norimatsu et al) – Pemphigus vulgaris with advanced hypopharyngeal and gastric cancer following SARS-CoV-2 vaccination
2022 Jun (Shanshal) – Dyshidrosiform Bullous Pemphigoid Triggered by COVID-19 Vaccination
2022 Apr (Desai et al) – Bullous Pemphigoid Following the Moderna mRNA-1273 Vaccine
2022 Apr (Calabria et al) – Autoimmune mucocutaneous blistering diseases after SARS-Cov-2 vaccination: A Case report of Pemphigus Vulgaris and a literature review
2022 Feb (Maronese et al) – Bullous Pemphigoid Associated With COVID-19 Vaccines: An Italian Multicentre Study
Examples in photographs below:
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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.
Featured image is from NaturalNews.com
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
Price: $11.50 FREE COPY! Click here (docsend) and download.
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November 17th, 2023 by Robert J. Burrowes
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As the Elite program to kill or enslave us all proceeds virtually unimpeded, one way in which this is being accomplished is by using two of the Elite’s oldest known tools: War and genocide. With the active complicity of its agents in governments and elsewhere, the Elite is killing off substantial numbers of ‘ordinary’ people (but certainly not Elite members or agents) in wars between various countries, most notably, Ukraine and Russia, as well as in genocidal attacks such as that by Israel against the Palestinian ghetto of Gaza.
While I have previously explained how the war between Russia and Ukraine (along with the latter’s NATO allies) is being used to advance the Elite program – see ‘The War in Ukraine: Understanding and Resisting the Global Elite’s Deeper Agenda’ – it is equally clear that wars anywhere, as well as genocides, serve the same purpose.
In this article I will focus on how the genocidal assault on Gaza and the ongoing military attacks on the occupied West Bank constitute a fundamental threat to the people of Palestine while at the same time they are only a local manifestation of the wider assault on humanity.
Unfortunately, very few people are perceiving this connection and the fundamental threat it poses to us all and, in the sense that this is being achieved, the genocide in Gaza is successfully distracting people from the wider program to kill or enslave everyone.
This is obvious from any candid assessment of the evidence readily available to those seeking it. Let me start with an overview of the evidence in relation to Israel’s genocidal assault on Gaza.
To begin, this evidence reveals the fact that the Israeli government has long supported and funded Hamas as one part of its strategy to divide and disempower the official Palestinian leadership, keep ordinary Israelis and Palestinians in a state of fearful submission to their respective elites, and undermine any efforts to achieve Palestinian statehood.
There are many studies that discuss various elements and motivations for this arrangement. See, for example,
‘How and why Israel helped create Hamas?’,
‘Hamas’ Attack on Israelis Strengthens, Not Weakens, Israel’s Right Wing Political Elite’ and
‘Hamas Created by Israel and Recognised by Council of Europe’.
In the words of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu cited in the Israeli newspaper Haaretz: ‘Anyone who wants to thwart the establishment of a Palestinian state has to support bolstering Hamas and transferring money to Hamas’.
See ‘Analysis: Another Concept Implodes: Israel Can’t Be Managed by a Criminal Defendant’.
It includes evidence that, despite the claim of an ‘intelligence failure’ by Israel when Mossad is possibly the most powerful intelligence agency on the planet – see ‘No, the Hamas Invasion Was Not an Israeli “Intelligence Failure”’ – Israel and Hamas colluded to facilitate the Hamas incursion into Israel on 7 October 2023. According to former Israeli intelligence analyst Efrat Fenigson: ‘To me this surprise attack seems like a planned operation…. the work of the Deep State…. the people of Israel and the people of Palestine have been sold, once again, to the higher powers that be.’
And, according to one source citing a former commander of the Kerem Shalom Battalion which oversaw a section of the high-security barrier between Gaza and Israel, and who knows the area in detail: ‘The obstacle is built so that even a fox cannot pass it.’ He goes on to elaborate why this is the case in considerable detail.
Probably as part of the official cover-up, this was effectively denied by General Herzl Halevi, formerly head of the IDF Southern Command and now Israel Defense Force Chief of Staff. See ‘Israeli army chief admits “failure”’.
Barrier against tunnels along the Israel-Gaza Strip border 2019 (Licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0)
But let us assume for a moment that Hamas is not an Israeli collaborator. Was the raid on 7 October ‘The Most Successful Military Raid of this Century’ as it was characterized and described by military analyst Scott Ritter?
See ‘The October 7 Hamas Assault on Israel: The Most Successful Military Raid of this Century’.
Did it actually matter that Hamas appears to have achieved movement in the direction of its stated goals – as noted by Ritter: to reassert the right of the Palestinian people to a homeland, release of the 10,000-plus Palestinian political prisoners (including children) locked up in Israel, a return to the sanctity of the Al Aqsa Mosque – as Ritter claims and despite or even because of the enormous ‘sacrifice’ made by the ordinary men, women and children of Gaza?
Did all of those Palestinians – including children – who weren’t consulted about the raid and have been (or will be) killed during Israel’s genocidal response knowingly and willingly sacrifice their lives? Or were they hapless victims of the violent ideology of their leaders who do not value ‘ordinary’ lives?
Despite the truism that Ritter identifies – ‘you can’t solve a problem unless you first properly define it…. any solution which has nothing to do with the problem involved is, literally, no solution at all’ – with which I agree, Ritter has a very limited, essentially military, interpretation of the conflict and what will be necessary to resolve it. That is, he suggests, the conflict is between the Israeli government and Hamas, it is military in nature and it will be won (or lost) according to political shifts the military resistance offered by Hamas generates in other parts of the world (including the Arab/Islamic worlds and the United States).
But as will be obvious from my explanation below, Ritter does not understand this conflict, particularly the global forces driving it and their reasons for doing so and that, from the perspective of ‘ordinary’ people, the ‘gains’ from the raid he nominates (and the genocide following) are worth nothing, and that the deaths of both ordinary Israelis and Palestinians as a result is a terrible price to pay.
For brief attempts to offer some insight into this overall conflict and ways forward, these articles by Professor Johan Galtung (written more than a decade ago) are worth considering:
‘Palestine/Israel: What Peace Would Look Like’ and
‘Israel’s Sociocide, Genocide, Ecocide in Gaza’.
In any case, whatever the origin of the military raid by Hamas (and its ongoing engagement with Israeli forces in Gaza), the evidence of the killing of ordinary Israelis and Palestinians is well documented.
This includes evidence that, in accordance with the Israeli military’s ‘Hannibal Directive’ – crudely, ‘better dead than abducted’ – the Israeli military was responsible for a significant number of the military and civilian deaths of its own citizens during the attack by Hamas.
It includes evidence that the Hamas incursion known as ‘Operation Al-Aqsa Flood’ and the ongoing Israeli response has led to hostilities that have so far killed well over a thousand ordinary Israeli citizens and soldiers (and zero governing Israelis) as well as more than 10,000 ordinary Palestinian men, women and children, and some ‘soldiers’ (but zero leading Palestinians).
‘Israel-Palestine: Names released of 7,028 Palestinians killed after Biden questions death toll’ and
‘More than 10,000 Palestinians killed since 7 October, say health officials’.
It includes evidence that Israel intends to ‘ethnically cleanse’ Gaza, possibly by forcing the Palestinian population out of Gaza and into the Sinai desert in Egypt.
See ‘Israeli Intelligence Ministry Policy Paper on Gaza’s Civilian Population, October 2023’ and
‘Expel all Palestinians from Gaza, recommends Israeli gov’t ministry’.
In his thoughtful analysis of the situation, former UN Special Rapporteur on Palestine Professor Richard Falk offers a similar conclusion:
My analysis leads me to conclude that this ongoing war is not primarily about security in Gaza or security threats posed by Hamas, but rather about something much more sinister and absurdly cynical.
Israel has seized this opportunity to fulfill Zionist territorial ambitions amid “the fog of war” by inducing one last surge of Palestinian catastrophic dispossession. Whether it is called “ethnic cleansing” or “genocide” is of secondary importance, although it already qualifies as one of the biggest humanitarian catastrophes of the 21st century. See ‘Israel-Palestine war: Israel’s endgame is much more sinister than restoring “security”’.
While Hasan Illaik argues that the plan to ‘displace millions of Palestinians’ is ‘nigh impossible to achieve’ and notes that the plan has been rejected by Egyptian President Abdel Fattah Al-Sisi – see ‘The US is fueling, not avoiding, a regional war’ – even its substantial or just partial fulfillment would open new possibilities for Israel and the United States.
Nevertheless, despite the evidence presented above and the considered opinion of the experts cited, Scott Ritter argues that Israel will find it extraordinarily difficult to defeat Hamas. Ritter offers historical evidence of battles taking place in confined spaces where damage has been inflicted by prior bombing that impedes subsequent ground operations because of the vast quantities of rubble. He also cites other battles where large tunnel networks were extremely difficult to neutralize. In Ritter’s view, Hamas has both of these battlefield advantages in Gaza, including over 500 kilometres of tunnels.
See ‘Israel Faces “Near Impossible Task” in Gaza’.
Unfortunately, however, there is some evidence that Israel is planning to flood Hamas tunnels with nerve gas – see ‘Israel-Palestine war: Israel plans to flood Hamas tunnels with nerve gas, source says’ – but, whether or not it does so, a ground invasion is not the only way to ‘clear’ Gaza of its ‘surface’ population with another weapon already being used by Israel against Gaza.
Image: Featured image: US Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin (L) and Defense Minister Yoav Gallant meet in Brussels on June 15, 2023. (Photo Credit Elad Malcha/Defense Ministry)
As in earlier manifestations of war and genocide, military forces have sometimes laid siege to a trapped population to starve it to death. And this is now happening in Gaza. According to Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant: ‘We are imposing a complete siege on Gaza. There will be no electricity, no food, no water, no fuel. Everything will be closed. We are fighting against human animals, and we are acting accordingly.’
See ‘Israeli Defense Minister Announces Siege On Gaza To Fight “Human Animals”’.
Employing this tactic in Gaza will compound the death toll dramatically as time goes by with water treatment plants and medical facilities, such as hospitals, already destroyed by a sophisticated combination of weapons.
See ‘They let humanitarian aid in. Then they bombed it so that Gaza would starve’ and ‘“Operation Al-Aqsa Flood” Day 20: Human rights group warns Israel is “using starvation as a weapon of war” in Gaza’.
You can see photos of the devastation in Gaza and its genocidal impact on the Palestinian people in the compilation presented by Antonio C. S. Rosa here: ‘Genocide in Pictures: Worth a Trillion Words’.
In any case, if we step back from the immediacy of this conflict and consider the Elite perspective on what is taking place, plenty of people are being killed and other Elite objectives are being achieved by what is happening.
Beyond what happens in Gaza, however, the conflict includes evidence that this war could be expanded beyond Israeli and Palestinian borders into the wider region so that the killing can be compounded and a wider set of Elite objectives fulfilled.
This could occur by engaging Hezbollah in Lebanon – although prior speculation regarding the role of Hezbollah in supporting the Palestinians was toned down following Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah’s carefully-crafted speech on 3 November, which was notably moderate: see ‘Hezbollah’s Hassan Nasrallah speech on Israel-Hamas war: Key takeaways’ – resistance groups in Syria and by attacking Iran.
While previously considered ‘unlikely’ by the prominent analyst Professor Michel Chossudovsky, he now believes ‘The war on Iran Is No Longer On Hold’.
and
In fact, as Chossudovsky points out in his most recent video interview, Israel has a vast military (including nuclear) capability compared to the poorly-armed Palestinians and is reinforced by both extensive military aid from the United States as well as a major US military presence (including two aircraft carrier battle groups, a substantial fleet of fighter aircraft and special forces troops) that has been deployed to the Middle East to engage in a wider war in pursuit of long-standing US political objectives to subjugate Iran and reshape the Middle East.
Professor Michael Hudson agrees. In an interview, Hudson indicated that ‘the United States has always viewed Israel as just our foreign military base, not Israel…. [our] landed aircraft carrier… takeoff point’ for the US to control the Middle East with its vast oil and gas reserves. But in elaborating his explanation, Hudson goes on to highlight that the US supports Netanyahu (rather than Israel itself), ‘an unpleasant, opportunist, and corrupt person’ to distract attention from the US role in supplying the military weapons to kill people in Gaza and the West Bank which is essentially designed to provoke a response from Hezbollah in Lebanon. Why? By using the corporate media to keep talking about Hamas and Hezbollah as puppets of Iran, the intention is to use any military response from Hezbollah to ‘justify’ a ‘move not only against Lebanon, but all the way via Syria, Iraq, to Iran’ with the aim of controlling Middle Eastern oil. This would make it possible ‘to cut off oil and gas and to sanction any country that tries to go multipolar, any country that tries to resist US unipolar control.’ In essence, Hudson summarizes, ‘Basically, there’s a fight for who is going to control the world right now’.
Watch ‘Why Does the US Support Israel?’
Many analysts have discussed the possibility of a wider war with Hasan Illaik arguing that ‘Both in practice, and publicly, the US government and military are running this Israeli war’ with the intention of fueling a wider one. See ‘The US is fueling, not avoiding, a regional war’. Huseyin Vodinali considers the possible role of countries like Yemen and Turkey as the war expands and argues that ‘China and Russia support Palestine and declare that they will stand by Syria and Iran.’
See ‘“A Big Event is Coming, its Name is a Regional War”? The Danger Waiting for Turkiye’.
In contrast, however, Scott Ritter cogently argues that the US and Israel combined do not have the logistical capacity to successfully fight and defeat Iran. See ‘US Not Ready for War With Iran’.
Military and geopolitical analyst Andrei Martyanov agrees. In a wide-ranging interview in which he referred to the two US aircraft carriers now in the region as ‘sitting ducks’, he offered an outline of Iran’s sophisticated air-defense systems and its ballistic missile capabilities (which could easily knock out all US bases in the Middle East, the carrier battle groups now in the region and leave ‘Tel Aviv and Jerusalem… burning’) as just two of the problems confronting the US and Israel in any consideration of an attack on Iran.
Beyond these problems and among others, he mentioned that the mythology attached to the Israeli military was largely propaganda from 1967 and 1973 and did not apply now. He described the Israeli army as a ‘very well equipped police force’ and also briefly discussed the debilitating decline in US military production and noted that ‘the decline and degradation of the American political class is astonishing’. Watch ‘The US and Israel cannot defeat Iran’.
And what about nuclear weapons, which neither Ritter nor Martyanov considered in the cited sources? While the US and Russia might be reluctant to use nuclear weapons, Col. Douglas Macgregor (ret.) argues that Israel cannot be relied upon in the same way.
Watch ‘Israel A “Nuclear Wildcard” On “Dangerous Road To Armageddon”’.
Former CIA agent, Philip Giraldi agrees. See ‘The Gaza Genocide Continues: Israel is an unrestrained monster that endangers all of us’.
In contrast, and despite the use of a nuclear weapon on Gaza being advocated by Israeli government Heritage Minister Amichai Eliyahu, Timothy Alexander Guzman argues that ‘There is no doubt that Russia and other world powers including China would not allow Israel to hit Iran with a nuclear bomb. If Israel decided to use a nuclear weapon anywhere in the Middle East, it would unite all Muslims against Israel’ and that is something for which Tel Aviv and Washington are not prepared.
See ‘“Drop a Nuclear Bomb on Gaza”: Israeli Minister Says Using Nukes on Gaza an Option’.
In essence, while there are sound political and military reasons for both Israel and the US to avoid the use of nuclear weapons, given the insanity of some key figures in this conflict, it is difficult to assert anything with certainty in this regard.
Moreover, irrespective of the many factors that might be considered in relation to the ‘wider war’ issue, it should be noted that there are plenty of ‘minor’ military clashes already taking place throughout the Middle East. As reported by the highly reputable ‘South Front’, and confirmed by the Telegram channel ‘War Monitor’, ongoing military engagements are being reported taking place involving Hezbollah (for example, targeting Israeli army positions on the Lebanese-Palestinian border), Syria (for example, using air defences to confront Israeli targets in the vicinity of Damascus), Yemen (for example, with the Houthis reporting the targeting of sensitive sites in Israel’s Eliat area on the Gulf of Aquaba) and the US Pentagon (reporting engagement by pro-Iranian groups in both Syria and Iraq).
These reports are also confirmed in the article by Professor Adham Saouli who suggests that, like the US, ‘Hezbollah is using the time to set the stage for a regional war should that become necessary.’
See ‘Hezbollah and the 2023 Israeli War on Gaza’.
Before proceeding however, there is one more critical issue to consider, nothwithstanding what has been written above.
What is the prospect of the US orchestrating a false flag attack – perhaps on a US vessel in one of its two carrrier strike groups in the region – to ‘justify’ an attack on Iran?
With the USS Gerald R. Ford and escort vessels stationed in the eastern Mediterranean Sea and the USS Dwight D. Eisenhower and escorts currently operating in the Gulf of Oman off the Arabian Peninsula – see ‘Aircraft Carrier USS Dwight D. Eisenhower Now in Gulf of Oman’ – such an attack could ignite a regional war (and easily expand beyond the Middle East).
How might this be done?
Most simply by directing Israel to launch a missile (from land, sea or air) at the designated target and then deluging the corporate media with the claim that it was Iran that launched the missile.
Under cover of the initial confusion, it would be simple enough to initiate military action against Iran (and, possibly, certain allies) by Israeli and US forces to ‘respond’ to this attack and any debate about the source of the attack would be relegated to the backburner while the war quickly inflamed and national populations were manipulated to ‘rally around the flag’.
You might ask, of course, why would this be done? Why start a war where there is none?
The answer is the same as it has been throughout history. If you like, you can read brief accounts of 42 false flag attacks in the past century.
See ‘42 ADMITTED False Flag Attacks’.
Wars enable Elites to consolidate and expand their power, and make vast profits. Every weapon fired represents profit; every weapon, building and other asset destroyed represents profit (for example, in subsequent rebuilding); every country subjugated represents profit in the form of control of its resources (strategic minerals, fossil fuels, fresh water, cultural heritage…); every person killed represents progress in the Elite depopulation program; and every war presents opportunities for tightening Elite control (particularly while submissively frightened populations tolerate government actions supposedly to enhance ‘national security’ but really to enslave us in one of the Elite’s increasingly technocratic prisons cities).
Have you ever wondered why governments are never really interested in avoiding or even winning wars (despite rhetoric to the contrary)?
The Elite most effectively consolidates its power and maximizes its profit by ensuring perpetual war. And it simply ensures that its agents in government make this happen.
In this scheme of things, you are the victim in every sense of the word: You vote in elections believing you are living in a ‘democracy’, you pay the taxes to buy the weapons, you join the military to fight (believing you are defending ‘your country’), you are the soldier or civilian who is killed (not a member of the Elite profiting from your killing/dying), and you do the suffering when someone you love dies.
War is one of the Elite’s most profitable enterprises and control of everything from the human ‘socialization’ (that is, terrorization) process and ‘education’ systems to the messaging of the corporate media and ‘entertainment’ industry means that you learn that violence is not only ‘necessary’ but really the ‘only’ effective way to deal with international conflict.
You are always the victim.
Separately from the nuclear threat and whether or not there is a false flag attack to precipitate a wider war, there is some expert opinion that the war could expand into World War III, although Guzman draws attention to another US problem: It’s ‘$33 trillion… debt with a US dollar reserve currency that is not so popular as before’.
In any case, the conflict is attracting meaningful attention from well beyond the region with statements, for example, from key Russian leaders including President Vladimir Putin expressing solidarity with the people of Palestine.
See ‘Vladimir Putin held a meeting with members of the Security Council and Government, and the heads of security agencies’ and ‘Russia’s public pivot to Palestine’.
So far, however, Putin has shown himself to be adept at avoiding direct military confrontation with the USA over the war in Ukraine and, from a nation-state perspective, the latter clearly lacks the capacity to engage Russia directly for the reasons Martyanov gave in relation to the USA and Iran.
But to elaborate my point above: There are plenty of powerful vested interests with a stake in this conflict and a lot of insane individuals involved too which means that there are enormous pressures pushing for a wider regional war. However, if the war expands beyond Israel and Palestine, there is no guarantee it will remain contained within the region either.
And, as explained just above, it doesn’t matter what countries are involved or how many are killed. The Elite will carefully consider its options with the inclination to expand its power and increase its profits at every opportunity.
Before departing this immensely complex subject, about which a great deal has been written, there is another dimension to this conflict that is invariably ignored. And that dimension concerns the role of the Rothschild family.
Why highlight the Rothschild family? Consider the following.
As noted by Richard S. Dunn in his historical overview of events leading to the establishment of a Jewish homeland in Palestine – see ‘Israel Should Know: “What Thou Sowest, Thou Shall Also Reap”’ – the letter advising the Jews of the British government intention was sent to Lionel Rothschild.
According to the official Rothschild Archive:
On November 2, 1917, the British Government expressed its sympathy with Jewish Zionist aspirations and announced that it would use its “best endeavours” to facilitate “the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people”. The announcement came in a letter from Foreign Secretary Arthur Balfour to Lionel Walter, 2nd Lord Rothschild (1868-1937), the unofficial leader of the British Jewish community. The Balfour agreement became the diplomatic foundation stone of the state of Israel….
The Balfour Declaration used deliberately vague language. The term “national home” was chosen in order to minimize the Zionist dream, to make Palestine a Jewish state. The Arabs, whose “civil and religious” (not national and political) rights were not to be prejudiced as the declaration put it, were referred to only as “existing non-Jewish communities”. You can read the letter and the Rothschild commentary on it here: ‘Walter Rothschild and the Balfour Declaration’.
The Rothschild commentary on this development includes these words: ‘Beginning in 1916, the British hoped that in exchange for their support of Zionism, “the Jews” would help to finance the growing expenses of the First World War, which was becoming increasingly burdensome. More importantly, policy-makers in the Foreign Office believed that Jews could be prevailed upon to persuade the United States to join the War.’
Since the founding of the state of Israel in 1948 (at the expense of the indigenous Palestinians), in which they played such a critical role, the Rothschilds have continued to exercise their enormous political and economic clout to both build the state of Israel and ‘defend’ Israel, including by mobilizing the military and financial support for it from the United States. While some of this support is publicly known (such as that of James de Rothschild in financing the building of the Knesset in Israel), as with the bulk of Rothschild affairs (including in the US), most of this support is concealed behind a myriad of Rothschild-controlled corporations, front groups and ‘third parties’, many with significant public profiles.
And this explains why supposedly scholarly books such as Jews in American Politics do not reference the Rothschilds even once while Benjamin Ginsberg, one of the authors, readily acknowledges that ‘the greatest triumph of American Jewish organizations during the postwar period [was] recognition of the state of Israel. Despite the opposition of large segments of the British government and the U.S. State and Defense departments, American Jewish groups succeeded in securing President Truman’s support for the creation of a Jewish state to house Jewish refugees from Europe. Over the ensuing decades, American Jews successfully urged the U.S. government to provide Israel with billions of dollars in American military and economic assistance. In recent years, Jewish groups have fought not only for aid for Israel but for American humanitarian intervention in other regions of the world as well.’
While not discounting the roles of other prominent individuals and families, it is nevertheless the case that the long-standing Rothschild practice of obscuring their role has ensured that much of what it does is concealed. This is why, for example, few people know that the Rothschilds control the US Federal Reserve and own substantial holdings (again, often through tightly-controlled ‘third parties’) in the global (including US) weapons industry. So while Molly Gott and Derek Seidman offer a fine report on ‘Corporate Enablers of Israel’s War on Gaza’ and even name some prominent individual donors to pro-Israeli lobby groups, rarely do studies of this nature expose the human individuals who ultimately own the weapons corporations.
And yet, as official Rothschild biographer Oxford scholar Niall Ferguson candidly noted ‘If late-nineteenth-century imperialism had its “military-industrial complex” the Rothschilds were unquestionably part of it.’
See The House of Rothschild: Volume 2: The World’s Banker: 1849-1998: Volume 2: The World’s Banker: 1849-1999 p. 579.
But now with a significantly expanded range of ways of obscuring the family investments, such as through the private but major asset management corporation Vanguard, the Rothschilds will benefit handsomely from President Biden’s recent announcement of a ‘giant’ weapons package to Israel – see ‘Biden asks Congress for Israel, Ukraine aid in giant defense package’ – with most of the money going to US weapons corporations in which the Rothschilds have substantial investments. Profiting from war (and military conflict generally) is the second oldest trick (after profiting from money) in the Rothschild money-making machine.
See Historical Analysis of the Global Elite: Ransacking the World Economy Until ‘You’ll Own Nothing.’
And there is a third old trick too: ownership of massive resource corporations, starting with oil and gas.
Thus, yet another part of the long-standing plan behind the current genocide is undoubtedly to enable Israeli seizure of the gigantic Leviathan maritime natural gas reserves in the Mediterranean Sea off the coast of Gaza. See ‘“Wiping Gaza Off The Map”: Big Money Agenda. Confiscating Palestine’s Maritime Natural Gas Reserves’.
While Felicity Arbuthnot, in the 2013 article just cited, nominated the interest of the BG Group in Gaza’s gas and oil reserves, in early 2016, the BG Group became part of Shell Global.
See ‘Combining Shell and BG: a simpler and more profitable company’.
Of course, Shell has been a Rothschild corporation since the very early 20th century. According to the Rothschild Archive: ‘As it turned out, Rothschilds had a decisive influence in shaping Royal Dutch Shell, more so than anyone had previously imagined.’ See ‘Searching for oil in Roubaix’. But Shell does not represent the only Rothschild investment in energy supplies.
Another motivation for Rothschild involvement concerns a long-standing interest of the family’s. Following a brief discussion with British Prime Minister Benjamin Disraeli on 14 November 1875, Lionel Rothschild agreed to finance the British Government’s purchase of 177,000 shares in ‘one of the world’s great commercial and strategic assets’, the Suez Canal Company, from Egypt’s debt-ridden Khedive for £4,000,000 at 3% interest. See The Rothschilds: A Family Portrait pp. 150-152. This gave the British government a majority holding in the waterway that enabled commercial and military shipping to bypass the Cape of Good Hope in traveling from Europe to Asia and Oceania.
In 1882 the UK invaded and occupied Egypt, taking control of the country as well as the Suez canal which then became a geopolitical weapon during subsequent wars. It also later became critical for the transport of oil from the Middle East to Europe (and elsewhere).
During and following World War II, Britain maintained a vast military complex at Suez with a garrison of some 80,000 soldiers.
But following a military coup that removed the Egyptian monarchy in 1952 and in the context of a geopolitical world in considerable turmoil on various levels (including the decolonization process, the Cold War, and the Arab-Israeli conflict), ownership of the Suez Canal became increasingly contentious. Thus, on 26 July 1956, the Suez Canal Company was nationalized by Egyptian president Gamal Abdel Nasser. This led to the Suez Crisis in October when Israel and, subsequently, the UK and France invaded Egypt and Gaza in an attempt to remove President Nasser and restore western control. Pressure from the United States and the UN led to withdrawal of the invaders.
Today, the Suez Canal earns Egypt $US9.4billion each year. See ‘Suez Canal records historic high as revenues reach $9.4B’.
But what if there was a second canal through Israel?
In fact, in 1963 there was a plan to investigate the creation of another canal, this one known to Israelis as the Ben Gurion Canal. The plan was to use 520 nuclear weapons to blast a new canal from the Gulf of Aquaba to the Mediterranean Sea, exiting adjacent to Gaza.
See ‘Use of Nuclear Explosives for Excavation of Sea-Level Canal Across the Negev Desert’,
‘Israel Destroys Gaza to Control World’s Most Important Shipping Lane’ and
‘An alternative to the Suez Canal is central to Israel’s genocide of the Palestinians’.
The plan was eventually shelved, presumably at least in part because the fallout from the nuclear explosions would have made the environmental cost of the project prohibitive. But what if such a plan was now feasible and the shortest route went through Gaza?
Is there a more ‘acceptable’ (that is, non-nuclear) weapon that could be deployed to create the canal now?
The obvious domain to look for possible answers is the expanding range of geoengineering weapons.
Why?
After many years spent researching geoengineering weapons, in a 1996 article, Dr. Rosalie Bertell summarized 50 years of destructive programs targeting control of the upper atmosphere. She concluded the article with the following words: ‘The ability of the HAARP/Spacelab/rocket combination to deliver very large amounts of energy, comparable to a nuclear bomb, anywhere on earth via laser and particle beams, is frightening.’ See ‘Background on the HAARP Project’ but you can read much more in Dr. Bertell’s book Planet Earth: The Latest Weapon of War.
So if one considers the range of geoengineering weapons that might be used in this context, one possibility would be to use HAARP: the High Frequency Active Auroral Research Program. HAARP is currently ‘the most important facility used to generate extremely low frequency (ELF) electromagnetic radiation in the ionosphere. In order to produce this ELF radiation the HAARP transmitter radiates a strong beam of highfrequency (HF) waves modulated at ELF…. high-power ELF radiation generated by HF ionospheric heaters, such as the current HAARP heater, can cause Earthquakes, Cyclones and strong localized heating.’ See ‘High-power ELF radiation generated by modulated HF heating of the ionosphere can cause Earthquakes, Cyclones and localized heating’.
If this weapon could be used, it would need to be calibrated to perform the massive task of excavating the canal (or at least pulverizing the materials that need to be excavated into a readily removable form).
Another possibility would be what are called ‘Rods from God’ (Kinetic Orbital Bombardment).
See ‘Aerospace Historical Engineering Analysis: Project Thor – When the U.S. tried to turn Telephone Poles into Weapons of Mass Destruction’ and ‘“Rods from God” not that destructive, Chinese study finds’.
These weapons were used to create the earthquake in Turkey in February 2023.
See ‘Serdar Hussein Yildirim statement re Turkish earthquake’ with an English transcript of Serdar Hussein’s statement here.
So, as in the case in relation to the HAARP ELF radiation option, if this weapon was to be used to construct another canal, it would need to be calibrated to be less destructive than those used in Turkey.
But whatever technological challenges might remain in choosing the geoengineering weapon(s) and deploying it/them effectively, the financial rewards of having a second canal would be vast. And given existing Rothschild financial interests in infrastructure – ‘Over the last 200 years the Rothschilds have systematically gained control of much of the infrastructure of the modern industrial world.’
See Enemies of the People: The Rothschilds and their corrupt global empire p. 23. – and geoengineering – see ‘The Rothschilds and the Geoengineering Empire’ – it is reasonable to postulate their interest in financing such a project and profiting from it indefinitely into the future.
Beyond its profound control of money, weapons, energy and infrastructure (not to mention other sectors), the Rothschilds own a substantial proportion of the corporate media, again both directly and through agents. For example, by the late C19th their Paribas Bank ‘controlled the all-powerful news agency Havas, which in turn owned the most important advertising agency in France.’
See Hidden History: The Secret Origins of the First World War p. 214.
But Rothschild interests in the corporate media extend far beyond France. If you would like to read more about the extensive Rothschild ownership and control of the media, Paul Cudenec offers more examples in his thoughtful and wide-ranging overview of the family’s extraordinary violence and exploitation in Enemies of the People: The Rothschilds and their corrupt global empire.
Their extensive media ownership means that the Rothschilds have significant control of the primary narrative presented in worldwide ‘news’ outlets, including in relation to Israel: the ‘victim’ Israel must always ‘defend’ itself. So that even when some accurate and graphic media get through some corporate social media channels (Facebook, X, Youtube…) or some events not sponsored by the Elite, such as the current wave of pro-Palestinian demonstrations around the world, are reported in the corporate media – see ‘Around the world, people take to the streets for Palestine’ and ‘More Demonstrations for Palestine’ – it doesn’t mean anything. Even footage of demonstrations that are protesting the genocide in Gaza can be blandly presented as demonstrations ‘calling for a ceasefire’ or something equally effective at distracting people from the truth. And even if they do not, demonstrations are routinely ignored. History records the futility of such protest demonstrations even when they garner some attention for a secondary narrative.
The reason for this is simple. Demonstrations as well as any number of randomly advocated ‘actions’ – such as those nominated in lists such as these: ‘What You Can Do’, ‘Defund Israeli Genocide & Colonialism – 8 Tips for Getting Involved’ and ‘Calendar of Resistance for Palestine! Events and actions around the world’ – mean nothing in a strategic sense. Why?
Because for any particular tactic (action) to have strategic value, it must be derived from a strategy that has been designed to alter the power relationship between the actual perpetrator and their victim. If there is no comprehensive strategy to guide tactical choice, or if the tactic is chosen to achieve a political objective rather than a strategic goal – see ‘The Political Objective and Strategic Goal of Nonviolent Actions’ – it is not possible for the tactic to achieve a strategic gain (although it might allow those doing the action to let off a little emotional steam and feel good about themselves).
Unfortunately, demonstrations and many other ‘actions’ are routinely endorsed by those who have never considered the importance of using strategic guidance to determine tactical choice (and ensuring this does not happen is also an excellent way of subverting the resistance).
See ‘The Elite Coup to Kill or Enslave Us: Why Can’t Governments, Legal Actions and Protests Stop Them?’
But to return to the theme above, if you believe that the Rothschilds do not leverage their ownership and control of such vast assets (in money, weapons, energy, infrastructure and media to name just a few key sectors) to achieve outcomes in the perceived interest of the family, including by manipulation of political leaders, you can read relevant Rothschild history – and even the official biography written by Niall Ferguson cited above – which documents a rather endless list of ‘gifts’ (that is, bribes) to a range of monarchs, including the British Crown, and political leaders.
Moreover, while many people are a little squeamish in response to the profoundly distasteful images of Palestinian children mangled by Israeli-fired weapons, the Rothschilds had turned their backs on such suffering more than 200 years ago. You cannot profit by financing both sides of wars for more than 200 years and have any sense of human compassion. From the Rothschild perspective and compared to other mass slaughters from which they have profited enormously, such as World Wars I and II, the genocide in Gaza is inconsequential.
Hence, if we are to understand the current Israeli genocidal campaign against the Palestinians in Gaza, it is necessary to understand the foundations of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and the background role that the Rothschilds continue to play. Using a longstanding network of allies and agents, which includes corrupt (that is, ‘bought’) politicians in Israel and the United States as well as such networks as the ‘The Israel Lobby’ in the USA, it is not difficult to shape the words that come out of the mouths of Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu and US President Biden as well as the military actions that follow.
Which is why it also matters nought that Netanyahu and Biden are registering their highest unpopularity ratings with their respective electorates at the moment.
See ‘Shock at Attack, Fury at Failure: How Netanyahu’s Approval Ratings Have Hit Rock Bottom in Israel’ and ‘How un/popular is Joe Biden?’
They do not answer to their electorates and Netanyahu and Biden are well aware of that. As long as they serve their masters faithfully, their roles are secure (however they unfold), even despite their extensively-documented corruption as well.
See ‘Benjamin Netanyahu’s corruption scandals, explained’ and ‘Joe Biden – Corrupt’.
Of course, Rothschild allies and agents ensure that these two individuals are surrounded and supported by a wide coterie of equally corrupt and politically unaccountable agents ranging from a wide spectrum of other national political leaders, to members of the US Congress and Israeli Knesset.
These allies and agents also ensure that those who are openly critical of Israeli apartheid and genocide are subjected to sufficient backlash so that many, and more of those who witness the treatment, are cowed into silence. As Sam Adler-Bell points out: ‘For decades, it has been the explicit mission of pro-Israel groups to disallow certain kinds of speech, conflating criticism of Israel with antisemitism.’ But this is just the start of a wide range of censure options used against those who support the liberation of Palestine.
See ‘War of the Statements: The unusual way Americans have processed the Israel-Hamas War’,
‘The Free Speech Exception: Support for Palestinian rights is facing a McCarthyite backlash’ and
‘Lawless in Gaza: Why Britain and the West back Israel’s crimes’.
It also explains why statements by powerless actors ranging from the UN Secretary-General – see ‘UN chief says “clear violations of international humanitarian law” in Gaza’ and ‘Secretary-General’s statement – on the situation in Gaza’ – and some UN agency heads – see ‘“Enough is enough. This must stop now,” UN agency chiefs say in joint statement urging Gaza ceasefire’ as well as some US diplomats – see ‘U.S. diplomats slam Israel policy in leaked memo’ – are a waste of time although they achieve their purpose by deceiving some people into believing that ‘key’ people are concerned and something might happen. It won’t.
In fact, issuing statements is an industry in itself and highlights the powerlessness of a staggering array of actors, some of whom might be more meaningfully engaged in the struggle to liberate Palestine were they given strategically impactful actions to take. See ‘War of the Statements: The unusual way Americans have processed the Israel-Hamas War’.
But to return to the main point, as Emanuel Pastreich characterizes this connection, ‘The billionaires made Israel and the United States their toys, using the armies, the economies, and the technologies of these two countries to advance their plans for world domination.’ See ‘The Forbidden Truth: Israel and the U.S. Are “Toys of the Billionaires”. “A War with Iran Is Just Around the Corner”.’
Consequently, and despite possible initiatives by third parties, a critical variable that cannot be ignored is that containing the insane Global Elite that is driving these wars and genocides as well as the overall descent into technocracy is extraordinarily difficult. See ‘The Global Elite is Insane Revisited’.
And it means that their wars, genocides and the ongoing imposition of their technocracy won’t be stopped by statements, petitions, lobbying politicians, protests or legal challenges although Elite-controlled media will talk about these as part of their strategy to ensure our dissent is absorbed and dissipated.
Thus, as is happening behind the scenes of mass slaughter of ordinary (mainly Ukrainian but also Russian) soldiers in Ukraine, where the creation of all of the infrastructure necessary to impose the Global Elite’s technocracy on both populations proceeds apace with Presidents Putin and Zelensky fully complicit – again, see ‘The War in Ukraine: Understanding and Resisting the Global Elite’s Deeper Agenda’ – there is little doubt that the heavily technocratized Israel at the behest of the United States and (intentional or otherwise) complicity of Hamas, is simply killing Palestinians in Gaza (and the West Bank) while displacing as many as possible. This is being done to precipitate responses from other countries that will enable the United States to ‘justify’ pursuit of a range of geopolitical goals – inevitably involving more killing – on behalf of its Elite masters, while facilitating the more elaborate imposition of the necessary ‘smart city’ technologies on whatever population lives in Gaza when the genocide is concluded and the inevitable technocratic rebuilding commences.
My point is unpalatable but simple: The Global Elite is in the process of implementing its long-planned and complex program to kill off vast numbers of people and imprison those left alive as transhuman slaves in their technocratic cities. So while there is value in considering events from various perspectives, it is important that sight is not lost of this fundamental Elite program and the insight that this perspective offers.
Of course, the Elite’s ‘kill or enslave’ program is being implemented everywhere, not just in war zones and zones of obvious genocide. And all governments are complicit, not just the US and Israeli governments and the Palestinian leadership.
So whatever position we might take on any given war, genocide or other violent conflict, we also need to understand and resist the fundamental Elite program – see below – if we are to successfully defend ourselves and those we love, from both its genocidal programs and rapidly advancing technocracy.
In addition, as always, if we want to end war as an instrument of Elite policy, we must strategically campaign to do so.
See ‘Strategic Goals for Ending War’.
And if national populations such as the Palestinians wish to defend themselves from genocidal attacks, rather than simply lobby for the beneficial intervention of third parties, they must use an appropriate strategic response (modified from this template).
See ‘Strategic Goals for Defeating a Genocidal Assault’.
Of course, it they wish to liberate themselves from occupation, they must bypass the corrupt Palestinian leadership in both the West Bank and Gaza and mobilize ‘ordinary’ Palestinians and international solidarity activists to campaign strategically to do so, as I have been explaining since the early 1990s.
See ‘Nonviolent Defense/Liberation Strategy’ or, for the fullest elaboration, The Strategy of Nonviolent Defense: A Gandhian Approach.
This means they must do far more than encourage involvement in just a few tactics as advocated by the Boycott Divestment Sanctions Movement. Of course, these tactics could usefully form part of a comprehensive strategy.
In any case, a start on this comprehensive strategy – both to end the genocide and end the occupation – is just starting to happen with trade unionists in Palestine calling for solidarity action from fellow unionists worldwide.
See ‘Palestinian Trade Unions Call for an End to Arming Israel’. And this is getting some traction as unions start to respond. See ‘Unions Worldwide Boycott Arms Supplies to Israel’.
Needless to say, there are a great many social groups (within Palestine, in Israel and in third-party countries) – identified on the ‘Strategic Goals’ page – who can be mobilized to take action, as well as a large number of nonviolent acts of noncooperation and intervention – listed in ‘198 Tactics of Nonviolent Action’ – from which the appropriate combination of tactics can be strategically chosen as explained in ‘Strategic Considerations in the Selection and Implementation of Nonviolent Tactics’. By following this process, concerned people anywhere can take solidarity action with Palestine (not just protest) to end the genocide in the short term and the occupation in the medium term.
The reality is simple: Unless Palestinians commit to developing and implementing a comprehensive nonviolent strategy of liberation, Palestine will continue to be the victim of forces beyond its control at the cost of an enormous number of lives, whatever optimism some might feel at the outpouring of popular support being exhibited by those attending Palestinian solidarity demonstrations around the world at the moment.
Strategy is determinative; not numbers.
Beyond the defense of Palestine, if you are committed to being strategic in your resistance to the Elite’s ongoing imposition of its genocidal and technocratic programs on us all, you are welcome to participate in the ‘We Are Human, We Are Free’ campaign which identifies a list of 30 strategic goals for doing so.
More simply, and as a minimum, you can download the ‘We Are Human, We Are Free’ one-page flyer that identifies a short series of crucial nonviolent actions that anyone can take. This flyer, now available in 23 languages (Chinese, Croatian, Czech, Danish, Dutch, English, Finnish, French, German, Greek, Hebrew, Hungarian, Italian, Japanese, Malay, Polish, Portuguese, Romanian, Russian, Serbian, Spanish, Slovak and Turkish) with more languages in the pipeline, can be downloaded from here: ‘One-page Flyer’.
You are also welcome to consider sharing the article ‘Policing the Elite’s Technocracy: How Do We Resist This Effectively?’ with your local police. Resistance by police will be vital to the success of our resistance efforts.
And you might also consider organizing or participating in a local strategy to halt the deployment of 5G, given its crucial role in making the Elite’s ‘smart city’ technocratic prisons function. See ‘Halting the Deployment of 5G’.
If you like, you can also watch, share and/or organize to show, a short video about the campaign here: ‘We Are Human, We Are Free’ video.
Moreover, if this strategic resistance to the ‘Great Reset’ (and related agendas) appeals to you, consider joining the ‘We Are Human, We Are Free’ Telegram or Signal groups (with advice on accessing the necessary links on the website).
The world system is a system of power. And it is extraordinarily violent.
See ‘Why Violence?’ and ‘Fearless Psychology and Fearful Psychology: Principles and Practice’.
This world system is controlled by a small group of extremely wealthy and powerful families that had established their supremacy in world affairs by the late 19th century.
See Historical Analysis of the Global Elite: Ransacking the World Economy Until ‘You’ll Own Nothing.’
Thus, what happens now in a particular global, regional, national or even local context has been fundamentally shaped by detailed Elite plans that have been ongoingly formulated and refined, as well as progressively implemented over the past 5,000 years. And we have long ago past the point in which a local population confronts a local Elite in what might once have been a local fight.
Consequently, what happens in this world system is an outcome of power. Laws and legal systems, human rights and human needs count for nothing in this world, unless they do not impact power relationships. Whatever laws exist are breached when it is convenient for powerful actors to do so. And no-one holds those responsible for such breaches accountable. Do you really think that anyone in Israel, or the Rothschild family and its agents, will be held accountable for the genocidal atrocities inflicted on Gaza?
However, just because the Elite and its agents are extraordinarily powerful, operate beyond the rule of law and have no conception of morality, it does not mean that they cannot be stopped. But if we are to stop them in any context, we must work together both strategically and in sufficient numbers. Turning up at a demonstration or doing any one or more of a million things when it suits us will not stop them.
Thus, if we are to resolve any conflict, including those that involve military violence, several things are necessary.
Primarily, the conflict configuration must be analyzed very carefully so that it is fully understood. This includes an understanding of who, most fundamentally, is driving the conflict, why (and for what purposes and benefits) and how they are doing so. This is essential and in sharp contrast to just assuming the conflict is how it is routinely presented or even how it superficially appears.
We must then design a strategy that, if implemented, will succeed in achieving our desired outcome. And, finally, we must mobilize sufficient people to participate in implementing this strategy.
For example, in the current context, it is easy to perceive that people like Klaus Schwab, Yuval Noah Harari and Bill Gates are benefiting from the World Economic Forum push to impose a technocracy on us all, but they are just the front men, positioned to act on behalf of far more powerful global actors.
And it is easy to identify that Benjamin Netanyahu is benefiting from the violence in Palestine but this is utterly superficial. Like any politician he is the lackey of more powerful global actors who offer him trinkets (but of value to him) to do their bidding.
So we have a choice. Whether as a global population or a local one, we can continue to be the victims while we attribute blame to the puppets (political leaders and a vast range of organizations) put in place to perform on behalf of others.
Or, as I have tried to do in this article, we can do the work to understand how the world works, who really exercises power, the means they are using to exercise it, and then mobilize enough people to participate in carefully-designed nonviolent strategies to stop them.
If we do not take the latter course very soon now, those of us left alive will all be enslaved in one of the Elite’s technocratic (‘smart city’) prisons.
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Robert J. Burrowes has a lifetime commitment to understanding and ending human violence. He has done extensive research since 1966 in an effort to understand why human beings are violent and has been a nonviolent activist since 1981. He is the author of ‘Why Violence?’ His email address is [email protected] and his website is here. He is a regular contributor to ‘Global Research’.
Featured image is from Jewish Voice for Peace
November 17th, 2023 by Dr. Joseph Mercola
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“CITIZENFOUR” is a documentary about NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden. It came out in 2014, but it’s even more pertinent today than it was then
In January 2013, when documentary film director/producer Laura Poitras received an encrypted email from a stranger who called himself “Citizen Four”
In June 2013, Poitras flew to meet Snowden at the Mira Hotel in Hong Kong, together with columnist Glenn Greenwald and Guardian intelligence reporter Ewen MacAskill. After four days of interviews, Snowden’s identity was made public at his request
Today, Snowden’s warnings ring truer than ever. Artificial intelligence now scours social media, podcasts and videos for key words identifying “anti-vaxxers,” for example. It doesn’t even matter if they agree with what you’re writing or saying. The mere inclusion of certain words will get you axed from the platform
Next, the plan is to eliminate privacy altogether by requiring a digital identity to access the internet
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“CITIZENFOUR” is a documentary about U.S. National Security Agency (NSA) whistleblower Edward Snowden. It came out in 2014, but it’s even more pertinent today than it was then, so if you haven’t seen it, I urge you to do so.
The Snowden story began in January 2013, when documentary film director/producer Laura Poitras received an encrypted email from a stranger who called himself “Citizen Four.” Snowden reportedly chose this codename “as a nod to three NSA whistleblowers who came before him: Bill Binney, J. Kirk Wiebe and Thomas Drake.”
Poitras had already spent several years working on a film about monitoring programs in the U.S., and had been placed on a secret watch list after her 2006 film “My Country, My Country,”1 a documentary about Iraqis living under U.S. occupation. In his initial email, Snowden wrote:
“Laura. At this stage, I can offer nothing more than my word. I’m a senior government employee in the intelligence community. I hope you understand that contacting you is extremely high risk and you’re willing to agree to the following precautions before I share more. This will not be a waste of your time …
The surveillance you’ve experienced means you’ve been ‘selected’ — a term which will mean more to you as you learn about how the modern SIGINT system works.
For now, know that every border you cross, every purchase you make, every call you dial, every cell phone tower you pass, friend you keep, article you write, site you visit, subject line you type, and packet your route, is in the hands of a system whose reach is unlimited, but whose safeguards are not.
Your victimization by the NSA system means that you’re well aware of the threat that unrestricted secret police pose for democracies. This is a story few but you can tell.”
In June 2013, Poitras flew to meet Snowden at The Mira Hong Kong, together with columnist Glenn Greenwald and Ewen MacAskill, an intelligence reporter for The Guardian. After four days of interviews, Snowden’s identity was made public at his request.
Within two weeks, the U.S. government demanded Snowden’s extradition. Facing prosecution in the United States, Snowden scheduled a meeting with the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees and applied for refugee status.
He managed to depart Hong Kong, but became stranded at the Sheremetyevo International Airport in Moscow when his passport was canceled. There he remained for 40 days, until the Russian government finally granted him asylum.
The U.S. government implemented Stellar Wind, a program to actively — and illegally — spy on all Americans within days of the 2001 9/11 attack. Ten years later, in 2011, construction began on a NSA data center in the Utah desert. It’s now the largest surveillance storehouse in the U.S.
In his correspondence, Snowden warned Poitras that “telecommunication companies in the U.S. are betraying the trust of their customers.” Through Stellar Wind, all phone calls and text messages were being intercepted and stored, and the Stellar Wind program has only expanded from there.
The NSA not only intercepts American citizens emails, phone conversations and text messages, but also Google searches, Amazon.com orders, bank records and more.
“We are building the greatest weapon for oppression in the history of man,” Snowden wrote, “yet its directors exempt themselves from accountability … On cyber operations, the government’s public position is that we still lack a policy framework. This … was a lie.
There is a detailed policy framework, a kind of martial law for cyber operations created by the White House. It’s called ‘Presidential Policy Directive 20’ and was finalized at the end of last year.”
As explained in the film, a key aspect of control through surveillance is the linkability of data. One piece of data about you is linked to another piece. For example, your bus pass can be linked to the debit card you used to buy the pass. Your debit card is also linked to all other purchases.
With two key pieces of information — WHERE you went on a given day, and WHEN you made purchases, they can determine who you spoke with and met up with by linking those data points with those of other people who were in the vicinity at the same time. And that’s without even using your cellphone data.
When all these various data points are aggregated — location data, purchases, phone calls, texts, social media posts and more — you end up with a collection of metadata that tells a story about you. However, while the story is made up of facts, it’s not necessarily true.
For example, just because you were standing at a particular street corner does not mean you had anything to do with the crime that was reported on that same corner at the time you happened to be there. The problem is, your data could be used against you in that way.
The January 6 prisoners are a perfect example of how bits and pieces of data can be misused. Many have now spent years in jail simply because their cellphone data showed them as being in the wrong place at the wrong time.
When asked by Greenwald why he decided to become a whistleblower, Snowden replied:
“It all comes down to state power against the people’s ability to meaningfully oppose that power. I’m sitting there every day, getting paid to design methods to amplify that state power.
And I’m realizing that if the policy switches that are the only thing that restrain these states were changed, you couldn’t meaningfully oppose [them].
I mean, you would have to be the most incredibly sophisticated tactical actor in existence. I’m not sure there’s anybody, no matter how gifted you are, who could oppose all of the offices and all the bright people, even all the mediocre people out there with all of their tools and all their capabilities.
And as I saw the promise of the Obama administration be betrayed … and in fact, [how they] actually advanced the things that had been promised to be sort of curtailed and reined in and dialed back … As as I saw that, that really hardened me to action …
We all have a stake in this. This is our country, and the balance of power between the citizenry and the government is becoming that of the ruling and the ruled, as opposed to the elected and the electorate.”
“I remember what the internet was like, before it was being watched, and there’s never been anything in the history of man like it,” Snowden said.
“You could have children from one part of the world having an equal discussion, where they were sort of granted the same respect for their ideas and conversation, with experts in a field from another part of the world on any topic, anywhere, anytime, all the time.
It was free and unrestrained. And we’ve seen the chilling of that, and the changing of that model towards something in which people self police their own views. They literally make jokes about ending up on ‘the list’ if they donate to a political cause, or if they say something in a discussion. It’s become an expectation that we’re being watched.
Many people I’ve talked to have mentioned that they’re careful about what they type into search engines, because they know that it’s being recorded, and that limits the boundaries of their intellectual exploration.”
Today, after the extreme ramp-up of censorship, surveillance and harassment we’ve endured since the COVID pandemic began, Snowden’s warnings ring truer than ever.
Artificial intelligence now scours social media, podcasts and videos for key words identifying “anti-vaxxers,” for example. It doesn’t even matter if they agree with what you’re writing or saying. The mere inclusion of certain words will get you axed from the platform.
Snowden’s worst fears have indeed come true, and today most people have come to realize just how dangerous this kind of blanket surveillance can be. Countless individuals whose only “crime” was to share their story of how the COVID shot ruined their lives have had their posts censored and social media accounts shut down.
Canadians whose only “crime” was to donate a few dollars to a peaceful protest had their bank accounts frozen. Small companies and nonprofit organizations with the “wrong” viewpoints have had their online payment services cancelled, effectively strangling their ability to make a living and keep the operation going.
Others have been debanked without recourse, including yours truly. My CEO and CFO and all of their family members also had their accounts and credit cards canceled, apparently for no other reason than the fact that they work for me. In other words, guilt by association.
I recently posted an interview with investigative journalist Whitney Webb in which she talks about the next steps in the ramp-up of tyranny. The World Economic Forum has warned we may face a cyberattack on the banks before the end of 2024. That means we almost definitely will, seeing how they like to announce plans ahead of time.
Such a cyberattack will not only destroy the current banking system and usher in programmable central bank digital currencies. It will also eliminate privacy online by requiring everyone to have a digital identification tied to their ISP.
The principles of “know your customer” (KYC) will be imposed on everybody for everything, and anything that doesn’t have that will be made illegal under National Security justifications.
Essentially, what we’re looking at is a cyber Patriot Act, which will allow for the unfettered surveillance of everyone’s online activities, and the ability to restrict or block access to the internet. As noted by Webb, “The internet as you know it will not exist after this happens.”
The goal is to surveil all online activity in real time and have AI perform predictive policing to prevent crime before it happens. At that point, all bets are off. Data points alone may land you behind bars. Thought-crimes will also have ramifications, potentially resulting in the seizure of private property and/or removal of “privileges” previously understood as human rights.
During their first meeting with Snowden in Hong Kong, he explained that a global infrastructure, built by the NSA with the cooperation of other governments, was already in place. That was 10 years ago, so you can imagine how it’s grown since then.
At that time, that network was already automatically intercepting every digital communication, every radio communication and every analog communication. This blanket siphoning of data allows the NSA and others that have access to the network to retroactively search an individual’s communications, even if all they have is a single identifier. Snowden explained:
“So for example, if I wanted to see the content of your email … all I have to do is use what’s called a selector, any kind of thing in the communications chain that might uniquely or almost uniquely identify you as an individual.
I’m talking about things like email addresses, IP addresses, phone numbers, credit cards, even passwords that are unique to you that aren’t used by anyone else.
I can input those into the system, and it will not only go back through the database … it will basically put an additional level of scrutiny on it moving into the future that says, ‘If this is detected now or at any time in the future, I want this to go to me immediately,’ and [it will] alert me in real time that you’re communicating with someone. Things like that.”
According to Snowden, the British Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ) has “the most invasive network intercept program anywhere in the world.” That program, Tempora, intercepts all content, in addition to metadata, on everything and everyone.
Snowden also describes the “SSO,” which stands for Special Sorters Operations. The SSO passively collects data across networks, both in the U.S. and internationally. Domestically, this is done primarily through corporate partnerships.
“They also do this with multinationals that might be headquartered in the U.S. whom [they can] just pay into giving them access,” Snowden said. They also do it bilaterally with the assistance of other governments.
Snowden also pointed out some of the many ways in which you’re being spied upon by the digital devices around you. As just one example, all VoIP phones, which transmit calls over an IP network such as the internet, have little computers inside of them that can be hot mic’d even if servers are down. As long as the phone is plugged in, someone can use it to listen in on your conversations.
Within days of their first meeting in Hong Kong, Greenwald and Poitras were publishing stories about the NSA’s illegal blanket spying domestically and internationally. CNN Live reported:
“Another explosive article has just appeared, this time in the Washington Post … that reveals another broad and secret U.S. government’s surveillance program.
The Washington Post and The Guardian in London reporting that the NSA and the FBI are tapping directly into the central servers of nine leading internet companies, including Microsoft, Yahoo, Google, Facebook, AOL, Skype, YouTube, and Apple.
The Post says they’re extracting audio, video, photographs, emails, documents, and connection logs that enable analysts to track a person’s movements and contacts over time.”
Greenwald also made numerous live news appearances. In one, he stated:
“In 2008, they eliminated the warrant requirement for all conversations, except ones that take place among Americans exclusively on American soil.
So they don’t need warrants now for people who are foreigners outside of the U.S., but they also don’t need warrants for Americans who are in the United States, communicating with people reasonably believed to be outside of the U.S.
So … the fact that there are no checks, no oversight about who’s looking over the NSA’s shoulder, means that they can take whatever they want, and the fact that it’s all behind a wall of secrecy, and they threaten people who want to expose it, means that whatever they’re doing, even violating the law is something that we’re unlikely to know until we start having real investigations and real transparency into what it is that the government is doing.”
At this point, we’re beyond merely needing transparency. The intent to surveil and control every move we make and thought we express is now being openly expressed.
We can just assume that any digital devices can and probably are collecting data on our activities and whereabouts, and that those data are nowhere near held private and can be used against us in myriad ways.
Today, a decade after Snowden broke the dam of secrecy around the global surveillance scheme, we have but one choice left, and that is to actively reject that system by changing how we live our day to day lives. Everyone must now choose between freedom and enslavement, and the option to choose freedom is rapidly closing. Putting off making that choice is itself a choice.
Rejecting the control system means reverting back to “dumb” appliances and devices to the extent you’re able. It means getting savvier about privacy technologies such as deGoogled phones and computers2 that cannot spy on you. It means using cash as much as possible and rejecting CBDCs and digital tokens. As noted by Whitney Webb in the interview I linked to earlier:
“There’s a huge need for to divest from Big Tech as much as possible, and it needs to happen quickly, because the choice is either participate in the system being designed for you by crazy people and become a slave, or don’t become a slave. And if you don’t want to be a slave, you have to invest now in Big Tech alternatives, unless you want to live a completely analog life …
The easiest route is to go the slavery route, and that’s how they’ve designed it on purpose. The whole selling point of that system is that it’s convenient and easy. So, obviously, it’s going to take some work to go the other route, but the future of human freedom depends on it so I think it’s a pretty easy choice.”
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Notes
November 17th, 2023 by Stephen Karganovic
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As the late Tatiana Gracheva never tired of pointing out, the key component in the collective West’s battle plan is cultural and spiritual fragmentation of its perceived Russian adversary. Once the divisive groundwork had been successfully laid, the expectation is that political disintegration, creating opportunities for plunder on an epic scale, would follow as a matter of course.
The conflict in Ukraine raises the practical question of how realistic such expectations actually are. That question is very serious.
We would contend that more likely than not the indicated expectation is based on a colossal misreading of the target’s mentality and on woeful ignorance of its impressive historical record of resilience. The target, of course, is the Russian world as such, in the broad sense of the term, encompassing three pivotal components, Russia, Ukraine, and Belarus, but more than that as well.
Estrangement on all levels of Ukraine from Russia (Brzezinski: “Without Ukraine, Russia ceases to be an empire”) is a fundamental objective in the multi-layered conflict engendered by the West between Russia and Ukraine.
There are, of course, other parallel goals that the Ukrainian operation is meant to serve. The results are mixed. Some of those goals, such as depopulation in preparation for the possible implantation of another ethnic group to replace Ukrainians, are being accomplished fairly successfully. But contrary to the best laid plans, regime change in Russia is a conspicuous failure. The most fundamental of these objectives, work on which was patiently and assiduously begun long before February 23, 2022, is to lay the foundation for irreversible decoupling of the two large and kindred Slavic groups, Russians and Ukrainians. As the fiendish Brzezinski correctly noted, whether they are together or apart makes a huge and qualitative geopolitical difference.
Hence the aspect of the Ukrainian conflict, as it was deliberately orchestrated by the West, that reaches beyond purely economic or military concerns.
Everything about the Ukrainian bedlam is calculated to produce maximum enmity between two kindred and practically indistinguishable Slavic populations and, in terms of the Anglo-Saxon understanding of human nature, to inflame that animosity and make it permanent and incurable. At all cost Russia must be thwarted from ever becoming again what they perceive as an “empire.”
At least two characteristics of the Ukrainian conflict feed into the collective West’s confident expectation that its morbid calculus might bear the desired fruit.
The first is the aggressive, in-your-face activation of the Nazi element on the Ukrainian side. Many decades later Russians remain keenly sensitive to the traumatic memory of the Great Patriotic War. Nazi symbols to them have the effect of the red cloth in the Spanish corrida. The purpose of flaunting such symbols in Ukraine is to inflame and enrage.
It is important to bear in mind that the engagement Nazi auxiliaries to fight on the side of the Kiev regime is entirely and purposefully the decision of Ukraine’s Western curators.
If they had not desired it, if that did not fit into their hybrid warfare master plan, and without their explicit orders, it most likely would not have happened as it did. Given the multi-layered nature of conflict planning, the insertion of the Nazi element had a double purpose. One was to enhance the military efficacy of Kiev regime forces with ideologically motivated units.
The more important purpose however was by enraging to affect the deeper layers of the Russian psyche, known to be sensitive to any manifestation of Nazi symbolism, in order to stoke resentment by association and direct it indiscriminately against the population of Ukraine as a whole. On the Russian side, this attempt to create an irreparable rift has been a complete failure. The Russian people, to their credit, have proved sufficiently mature to recognise the distinction between loathsome, swastika tattooed Azov thugs and their own Ukrainian relatives and neighbours.
On the Ukrainian side, the divisive Western strategy arguably has had more success.
It was based principally on the expectation of hatred that should have been aroused from the infliction of disproportionate casualties by the vastly superior Russian army.
That expectation is not wholly unreasonable given the operational doctrine followed by the Russian high command.
It provides for primary reliance on technical assets (artillery, rockets, and bombs) rather than man-on-man combat to attrite the opponent’s manpower while preserving Russian human resources to the utmost possible extent.
Competent estimates have it that the application of that doctrine has brought frightful losses to the Armed Forces of Ukraine, at least half a million killed in action and up to a million and a half in other types of casualties.
The combination of this Russian military doctrine and Ukrainian leadership’s and their Western curators’ callous disregard for the loss of Ukrainian lives has produced monumental casualties, wiping out entire age categories of Ukrainian manhood.
The resulting situation increasingly resembles Paraguay’s catastrophic male population losses in the War of the Triple Alliance in the 1860s. The recently surfaced heart rending video documenting the capture by a Russian patrol of a pathetic, pregnant Ukrainian female, probably forcibly conscripted and dispatched to the front by the criminal Kiev regime, speaks to this point quite eloquently.
Au, trudnica mobilisana. Sve u pm. pic.twitter.com/nd1DnJmf5b
— BUNT (@Grile8336138129) November 10, 2023
With characteristic Schadenfreude, the Neocon cabal and its culturally clueless protégées gloat that the hostility they have inflamed should benefit their cause significantly. Coming from an entirely different perspective, noted analyst and recognised Russian affairs expert Andrei Martyanov appears to favor a variant of such a view, but without the anti-Russian sting of course. In his podcasts, which a large audience watches avidly, he has commented that for the foreseeable future Ukrainian enmity is bound to remain very deep, though perhaps not as eternal as the Russia hating cabal would prefer it to be. He has repeatedly suggested that what remains of Ukraine, including even such traditionally Russian areas as Kharkov and Odessa, the Russians would find ungovernable because of the strong resentment generated by the combination of insidious brainwashing and the conduct of military operations, as noted above.
We may agree that no matter how limited and regardless of how short it falls of the intensity and destructive violence that characterises full-scale war, Russia’s military intervention is bound to inflict deep scars on the Ukrainian psyche. It is debatable, however, whether such scars will necessarily have the effect of permanently damaging Russian-Ukrainian relations.
Firstly, historical experience shows that in the medieval period, prior to the political consolidation of the unitary Russian state, of which the Kievan Rus’, or Ukraine, has been an integral part, there was intense internecine warfare between competing Russian principalities and city states. In terms of violence and mayhem, those hostilities were roughly comparable to the impact of current military operations, account being taken of the relative potency of the technological resources available at that time.
There is plenty of historical evidence that the scars left by those conflicts were at least as deep as they are today and that they took considerable time to heal. Yet heal they did, grievances were ultimately set aside and a united Rus’ was forged. The aggressive interference today of the foreign factor, determined to impose its fragmentation agenda, should not be minimised. But in the past, against similar odds, reconciliation and unity were nevertheless achieved. Historical experience suggests that this can happen again.
Secondly, even in the absence of external machinations, the Slavic commonwealth historically has been susceptible to powerful centrifugal tendencies. The identitarian common core which unites various Slavic communities was always precarious and in a state of permanent tension with local allegiances and micro-identities.
Traditionally, for the Slavs that has always been a point of extreme weakness and it remains so today. Foreign conquerors have used that vulnerability to great effect by fabricating artificial identities and allegiances for targeted Slavic groups in order to pit one kindred tribe against another. Such artificial and regional identitarian constructs were always in opposition to the unifying counterweight of the Pan Slavic “collective unconscious,” which often would emerge unexpectedly to neutralise them. It is reasonable to expect therefore that deeply embedded and natural commonalities will prevail once again over contrived differences. In the end, culturally, linguistically, and spiritually intermingled Ukrainians and Russians are likely to find that they still have infinitely more in common with each other than with the alien and manipulative West. The subliminal level will militate strongly against the permanency of the fabricated schism.
Thirdly, it is difficult to assess how intractable the hurt and resentment are on the Ukrainian side and whether or not, in the short or perhaps slightly longer term, the massive commonalities will prove sufficient to assuage and overcome them.
The part of Ukraine under the control of the Kiev regime is governed by fear and the real mood of the population cannot accurately be gauged. Retaliation for the slightest departure from the officially dictated canons of thinking and expression is known by everyone to be quick and ruthless. Intimidated passivity constitutes proof not of adherence but of paralysing anxiety. In order to sort out their traumas, collective entities, like individuals, require the passage of time. Only when calm is re-established, and the fruit of cultural normalisation and recovery, or perhaps lack of it, is evident will a realistic reassessment of future relations with Russia become possible.
Lastly, the good performance against all odds by the Ukrainian military is not an indication of the intensity of its hatred of the Russian “enemy.” It reflects the fact that they are Slavs and that soldiering is built into their genetic code, irrespective of what side they happen to be fighting on. That is another important cultural detail that Western “experts” routinely miss. They are prone to draw unfounded conclusions based on misperceptions.
There is an anecdote going back to the First World War about Bosnian Serb soldiers involuntarily conscripted into the Austro-Hungarian army. They were surrounded by troops from Serbia proper and asked to surrender. Their response to the besiegers, who were fellow Serbs, was apposite to the conduct of many Ukrainian soldiers today: “We are Serbs, and Serbs do not surrender.” To the culturally attuned that speaks volumes not just about the martial disposition of that particular unit of Slavic conscripts over a century ago, but also more specifically about the tenaciousness shown by many Ukrainian conscripts in the present conflict. Without the proper culturological context an ordinary Western observer, particularly with a worthless degree (as Andrei Martyanov would wryly put it) in law, journalism, or political science would be at a loss what to make of it. It is conduct that he would necessarily misconstrue, and completely in terms of his own cultural biases.
But passions will subside and induced states of consciousness eventually must dissipate. Kievan Rus’, or what in contemporary discourse goes by the name of Ukraine, will safely drift back to its ancient spiritual moorings.
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Stephen Karganovic is president of “Srebrenica Historical Project,” an NGO registered in the Netherlands to investigate the factual matrix and background of events that took place in Srebrenica in July of 1995. He is a regular contributor to Global Research.
Featured image is from The Atlantic Council
November 17th, 2023 by CODEPINK
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In the wake of alarming statements by Israeli officials, including Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, which have been perceived as incitement to genocide in Palestine, CODEPINK and its international partners are spearheading a global letter-writing initiative calling for an investigation by the International Criminal Court (ICC) into Israel’s actions in Gaza.
Since the commencement of Israel’s military offensive after October 7, 2023, Gaza has been subjected to a series of war crimes and crimes against humanity. According to Article 5 of the Rome Statute, the ICC holds jurisdiction in cases where states are “unable” or “unwilling” to prosecute these offenses themselves.
The CODEPINK-led campaign cites a myriad of offenses, including continuous Israeli airstrikes on densely populated civilian areas, the bombing of hospitals, schools, and United Nations buildings, the imposition of a suffocating siege, forced displacement of the population, use of toxic gas, and the denial of basic necessities like food, water, fuel, and electricity.
These actions, as outlined in the letter to ICC Prosecutor Karim Khan, are asserted to amount to genocide, incitement to genocide, crimes against humanity, and war crimes, in violation of Articles 6, 7, and 8 of the Rome Statute.
The letter also highlights explicit statements made by Israeli officials, reinforcing their alleged intent to commit genocide:
Isaac Herzog, Israeli President, on October 13, 2023, suggesting civilians in Gaza as legitimate targets.
Benjamin Netanyahu, Israeli Prime Minister, on October 27, 2023, citing a biblical reference to justify the slaughter of all women and children in Gaza.
Yoav Gallant, Israeli Defense Minister, on October 9, 2023, characterizing the situation in Gaza as a fight against “human animals.”
CODEPINK urges concerned individuals and organizations to join this international effort to hold Israel accountable for alleged war crimes. For more information on the campaign and to support the cause, please contact: Nour Jaghama at [email protected].
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Featured image: A view from the area after Israeli airstrikes on Jabalia refugee camp in northern Gaza, on October 31, 2023. [Stringer – Anadolu Agency
November 17th, 2023 by Younes Arar
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The Canadian Prime Minister was kicked out from a restaurant due to his position on the aggression on Palestinians…
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Featured image is from 2019 (Source: Yves Engler)
November 17th, 2023 by Barbara Nimri Aziz
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Revolutionaries are sometimes forgotten, despite their mission having been successful. Their struggle over, it’s often condensed to a single heroic figure, recast by history into a pacifist and a statesman. Nelson Mandela, for example.
Revolutionaries unable to overthrow their oppressor or if they build a state that doesn’t comply with Western interests, are dismissed as radicals, even terrorists. Shoved to the backside of history.
Mandela is rightly celebrated as a remarkable individual at multiple levels. None questions his crowning. Yet, among forgotten revolutionaries are his fellow militants, members of MK –uMkhonto weSizwe, People of the Spear. This was the militant wing of the African National Congress founded by Mandela himself (a fact often overlooked.) MK continued the costly yet essential armed struggle moving through stages of successful sabotage actions, then decline, exile, followed by revival and importance. It continued while Mandela was in prison.
Ms. Osvalde Lewat, the Franco-Cameroonian director of the 2022 film MK-Mandela’s Secret Army, opening in New York, taps the memories and sentiments of veteran MK fighters. She weaves their gently-proud testimonies with (almost lost) footage of MK’s secret military training camps outside South Africa. The women and men interviewed here joined MK during the critical years after 1961. The Sharpeville Massacre that year marked a turning point when ANC leaders Mandela and Oliver Tambo decided “the time has come that the black masses, all 25 million, should join in one determined offensive…”.
“…We tried to solve problems with other methods”, Tambo continues (in a archived clip in the film); “Since these were not forthcoming, we must solve problems with what is available to us; and the stage that’s been reached (that’s) … available to us now, are those methods of violence…used against us, because the worst of all horrors in the world is to live forever as a slave, as hated, despised, subhuman; and this we reject”.
Words reinforced by Mandela’s assertion (also documented here) –
“…Armed struggle for the freedom of Black South Africans rose after years of unsuccessful mass demonstrations and after the white apartheid regime responded to (our) non-violent actions with increased violence.”
This film’s history of MK opens with rousing yet calm declarations sung by MK fighters, some no longer living, affirming:
“We are more powerful than apartheid”; “We come from the bush”; “We will defeat you”.
Ex-fighter Dudu Msomi recalls her mother’s response to her decision, when barely out of her teens, to join in armed resistance:
“Because anyway you living in this country, you are going to die”: “We have two choices: submit or fight… Submit or die”, asserts Zola Maseko, another veteran.
These statements cannot be heard without realizing the background, motive and logic of Palestinian resistance that is hardly uttered behind the flood of current news stories of the war presently underway in occupied Palestinian fields, homes and schools. Like the ineffective Black civil mass resistance that forced the shift to armed resistance led by MK’s militant cadres half a century ago, Palestinian resistance arose after Israel’s decades-long apartheid rule. This film’s images of beatings, jailings and shootings of Black protesters by South Africa’s apartheid troops, shocking to view, are surpassed by the genocide underway in Gaza today.
Accounts of terror imposed by South Africa’s apartheid forces parallel Israel’s oppressive measures (noted by Mandela’s grandson in 2019) that confine the population into ghettos, imprison and kill with impunity, humiliate, usurp land, and thwart economic independence – all carried out year-after-year without hope of relief or even a modicum of self-rule. In both places, resistance was labeled terrorist, its leaders denied a voice in international forums.
The decline and downfall of South Africa’s apartheid regime entered western consciousness after years of armed struggle, and then only within the boycott movement. (Palestinian’s BDS drive has limited parallels.) When the boycott of South Africa gained momentum, those joining as late as 1985 credited Pretoria’s policy change to their efforts. Meanwhile MK, Mandela’s Secret army’s ongoing role was subsumed. Veteran MK fighter Mac Maharaj explains that co-opting:
“The idea that Mandela should be portrayed as a pacifist is again to appropriate our history and place it in the model of a colonial mentality.” He continues to insist, “The foremost truth about Mandela was that he was a freedom fighter”
In a recent interview in Africultures, the filmmaker herself asserts
“It’s hard to remember that this (victory) was achieved at the cost of thousands of lives sacrificed; but it is essential to remember that it was not just the good conscience of the West (through embargo action) that suddenly woke up”.
Ms. Lewat explicit goal is to amplify and uphold uMkhonto weSizwe’s essential role in overturning the hated South African policy.
“In South Africa as elsewhere, their importance in the anti-apartheid struggle is little understood. This film is to fill this recognition gap” and “move away for the polite image of Nelson Mandela”.
It’s surprising to learn from Lewat of her difficulties in locating MK’s archives.
“… Lack of images reveals the lack of communication about the MK”. Footage shot in MK’s foreign-based training camps have recruits learning guerrilla tactics, topography, explosives, tank and gun operation, their rigorous training reinforced by dances and rallying calls, shouts and praises that sustained soldiers. (Their poetic compositions somehow relayed to Blacks at home helped inspire new recruits.) Gathering personal testimonies from veterans was more difficult than might be imagined. Lewat notes in her 2023 Africulture interview that many veterans were unwilling to discuss the disappointing aftermath of their struggle. After the peace agreement, they were marginalized and psychologically damaged. They found themselves economically destitute, especially when they refused to participate in the much-celebrated Truth and Reconciliation Commission.
Nevertheless Lewat found seven men and women, all MK veterans, to join this film history. Moving, proud testimonies, even their delight in their earlies sabotage efforts that targeted electrical transmission towers and military bases, give an overarching reality to the struggle. Their quiet, reflective comments form the film’s backbone. With subdued bitterness they recall sustained torture and imprisonment, the lost comrades, the sacrifice of families, and their own dismay over fellow cadres having been cast aside. The pride and candor of their testimonies is surely their final effort to validate the role of armed struggle. And where is Mandela himself? Lewat makes clear that her motive was to reject MK-founder’s sanitized image, but to recognize “Nelson Mandela had been at the origin of the creation of an armed wing, that it was he who had pushed the ANC, which was a peaceful party, to violence.” This discovery was her motive for this new contribution to African history and resistance movements.
MK-Mandela’s Secret Army, premiers Nov. 26 at the African Diaspora International Film Festival in NYC is distributed by https://ArtMattanFilms.com.
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Barbara Nimri Aziz whose anthropological research has focused on the peoples of the Himalayas is the author of the newly published “Yogmaya and Durga Devi: Rebel Women of Nepal”, available on Amazon.
She is a regular contributor to Global Research.
By Barbara Nimri Aziz
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.
November 17th, 2023 by Abayomi Azikiwe
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A plan authorized by the United Nations Security Council to send 1,000 Kenyan police officers to Haiti in an effort to restore order amid widespread violence has spawned skepticism in the East African state.
In early October a court challenge by an opposition politician, Ekuru Aukot, resulted in a postponement of the deployment.
Aukot argued before the Kenyan court that the deployment is unconstitutional saying there is no treaty which could provide a legal basis for the UN-endorsed operation in Haiti. As a lawyer, Aukot helped draft the 2010 constitution for Kenya. The politician also claimed that the Kenyan government had failed to secure its own borders against external threats.
The mission to Haiti is ostensibly designed to assist in establishing security in the country of 11 million which is considered the poorest nation in the western hemisphere. If the deployment goes forward it would represent yet another intervention since the 2004 invasion by the United States, France and Canada which removed the government of former President Jean-Bertrand Aristide and deported him to the Central African Republic (CAR). Taking into consideration these developments, this is why organizations such as the Haiti Action Committee have publicly opposed the latest UN mission. (See this)
After the initial intervention by the U.S., Canada and France nearly two decades ago, an UN force took over in Haiti. During this period, there were many documented cases of abuse including murders by the UN troops.
During the period after 2010, there were two major earthquakes which further impacted any attempts to stabilize the social situation in Haiti. The presence of UN troops in the Caribbean Island nation was blamed for a devastating outbreak of cholera.
Just two years ago then President Jovenal Moise was assassinated in his home prompting calls from elements in the U.S. and Haiti to advocate for another military intervention. A contingent of Pentagon troops were sent into the country by President Joe Biden. These troops were said to be confined to the U.S. embassy in Port-au-Prince. (See this)
A major concern from people inside of Kenya is the troubled history of law-enforcement in the country. In recent months, mass demonstrations in Kenya against inflation due to the imposition of neo-liberal economic policies were ruthlessly attacked resulting in the deaths and serious injuries of hundreds. If these actions were taken by police during protests, then many are concerned that the level of misconduct and brutality could very well be far worse in Haiti.
Source: Abayomi Azikiwe
President William Ruto introduced a Finance Bill which passed the national parliament in June. The legislation was immediately subjected to a legal challenge temporarily halting its implementation until another ruling in late July unfreezing the new measure.
Many analysts are predicting an even sharper rise in prices which will negatively impact impoverished and working people. Another series of demonstrations occurred in the aftermath of the adoption of the 2023 Finance Bill.
The state of the economy in Kenya is reflective of a pattern across Africa where rising international debt has resulted in the adoption of International Monetary Fund (IMF) and World Bank methods for curtailing inflation. However, these IMF-World Bank prescriptions for “economic recovery” have proved to be quite detrimental to the living standards of the masses of people. Governments are compelled to eliminate subsidies on energy resources automatically raising prices on fuel, agricultural products, transportation, education, housing, etc.
Demonstrations in Kenya have been organized largely by the main opposition party Azimio Coalition, led by former prime minister and perennial presidential candidate Raila Odinga. Nonetheless, other parties did participate in the protests along with members of Ruto’s ruling Kwanza Party in some counties.
The Armed Conflict Location & Event Data Project (ACLED, a non-profit organization which monitors police conflict with civilians, said of the situation in Kenya during 2023:
“Police use of excessive force during demonstrations has received widespread criticism from various groups. The Law Society of Kenya, a coalition of 29 human rights organizations such as Amnesty International Kenya and Kenya Human Rights Commission, as well as Western envoys, members of the clergy, and others, are calling for a dialogue between the opposition and the government. Civil society organizations have alleged that the police may be collaborating with a private militia to carry out attacks against civilians. Some opposition lawmakers also claimed that the government had recruited youth to harm Azimio leaders and their supporters during the protests.
With the Kenyan police leading a supposed stabilization mission to Haiti there is a potential for clashes between the people and the police. Although the Kenyan government has indicated that the police are being given intensive courses in French, the people of Haiti have their own language which grew out of an historical experience dating back to the period of enslavement and colonization by Paris.
Haiti has been a focal point for destabilization and underdevelopment since the time of its independence in 1804. Embargoes by Paris and Washington remained in force between 1804 and the U.S. Civil War of the early and mid-1860s.
French indemnity beginning in 1825 forced Haitians to purportedly “repay” the losses of private property, being land, plantations and enslaved Africans during the 1791-1804 period. The U.S. withheld recognition of Haiti as an independent state from the time of the Revolution until the war between the states leading to the legal abolition of involuntary servitude.
In many ways the Haitian Revolution prefigured the national liberation movements in Africa, Asia, Latin America and the Caribbean during the post-World War II era. In Kenya, the British colonial system exploited the land and labor of the African people. During the 1950s, when the Kenyan people rose up against colonialism, the British inflicted harsh measures of repression resulting in the torture and deaths of thousands.
Since independence in 1963, successive Kenyan governments have not been able to throw off the neo-colonial system inherited from imperialism. In a recent visit to Kenya by British King Charles III, the monarch expressed his regret over the legacy of colonialism. Yet no apologies were forthcoming. Regarding the U.S., there has never been an apology for the centuries-long system of enslavement since it would raise the question of reparations for the harm done on a systematic level.
Therefore, based upon a similar historical trajectory, Haiti and Kenya should be working together to recuperate the wealth stolen by Britain, France as well as the U.S. Haiti has undergone several occupations by the U.S. during the 20th and 21st centuries. Kenya remains committed to military and economic collaboration with the U.S. and Britain despite being exploited by these two imperialist powers.
In a statement issued by the Communist Party of Kenya (CPK) through the Department of Propaganda of the Central Organizing Committee (DPCOC), they denounce the proposal for sending police to Haiti while pledging their solidarity with the Caribbean nation. The CPK emphasizes that the rhetoric of President Ruto should not be taken seriously as the Kenyan state remains under the influence of the U.S.
Sections of the statement read as follows:
“President Ruto’s attempts to sway public opinion with rhetoric about Pan-Africanism and black solidarity are deemed unconvincing, given his track record of speaking contrary to his actions. The Communist Party exposes Ruto’s double standards, accusing him of being captured by foreign interests, particularly the IMF and World Bank. This highlights the recurring theme of leaders using grandiose speeches to mask their compliance with external powers. The Communist Party of Kenya expresses a lack of trust in the Kenyan police, known for corruption, unprofessionalism, and human rights violations. Recent incidents of police violence during demonstrations further highlight the force’s incapacity to handle pro-people missions. The Party asserts that deploying such a force to Haiti will only serve as a front for the United States’ occupation strategy. In conclusion, the Communist Party of Kenya sees the Kenyan government’s collaboration with the United States as a new means of maintaining global hegemony. The deployment is predicted to worsen the crisis in Haiti, with the Party vowing to hold those responsible accountable in both Kenyan courts and the court of public opinion as the inevitable body bags arrive from Port-au-Prince to Nairobi. This intervention, motivated by imperialist designs on Haiti’s resources, threatens not only the stability of the Haitian nation but also the credibility and integrity of Kenya’s commitment to principles of justice and sovereignty.”
The problems of governance and economic development in Haiti cannot be resolved without a struggle against the imperialist system that is represented by the U.S., Canada, France and other NATO states. Genuine independence and sovereignty for Haiti and Kenya can only be secured through the efforts of the workers, farmers and youth in their quest for total liberation and social emancipation.
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Abayomi Azikiwe is the editor of the Pan-African News Wire. He is a regular contributor to Global Research.
Featured image is from Abayomi Azikiwe
November 17th, 2023 by Rep. Ron Paul
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Ron Paul’s important statement in 2009.
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In 2009, Rep. Ron Paul (R-TX) said on the House floor that Israel ‘encouraged and started Hamas.’
Ron Paul in the floor against the House’s one-sided Gaza Strip resolution supporting Israel’s war against Gaza.
“We have a moral responsibility especially now that weapons being used to kill many Palestinians are American weapons and American funds are essentially being used for this.”
Full Transcript of his statement below
TRANSCRIPT
“What’s happening in the Middle East, in particular with Gaza right now, we have some moral responsibility for both sides in a way because we provide help and funding for both Arab nations and Israel,” Paul said.
“We have a moral responsibility, especially now today the weapons being used to kill so many Palestinians are American weapons and American funds are being used for this,” he added.
“But there’s a political liability, which I think is something we fail to look at because too often there’s so much blowback from our intervention in areas that we shouldn’t be involved in,” he continued.
“You know Hamas, if you look at the history, you’ll find out that Hamas was encouraged and really started by Israel because they wanted Hamas to counteract Yasser Arafat,” Paul commented.
“You say, Well, yeah, it was better then and served its purpose, but we didn’t want Hamas to do this. So then we, as Americans, say, Well, we have such a good system; we’re going to impose this on the world. We’re going to invade Iraq and teach people how to be democrats. We want free elections. So we encouraged the Palestinians to have a free election. They do, and they elect Hamas,” Paul continued.
“So we first, indirectly and directly through Israel, helped establish Hamas. Then we have an election where Hamas becomes dominant, then we have to kill them. It just doesn’t make sense.
During the 80s, we were allied with Osama bin Laden and we were contending with the Soviets. It was at that time our CIA thought it was good if we radicalize the Muslim world. So we finance the Madrassas school to radicalize the Muslims in order to compete with the Soviets. There is too much blowback,” he said.
“There are a lot of reasons why we should oppose this resolution. It’s not in the interest of the United States, it is not in the interest of Israel either,” he added.
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November 17th, 2023 by Juan Carlos Junio
November 17th, 2023 by Global Research News
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Undoing the Doubters of the Climax Hoax. Peter Koenig
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The October 7 Hamas Assault on Israel. Scott Ritter
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Video: Why Does the US Support Israel? Michael Hudson and Ben Norton
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An Epistle to Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.
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Is this the Beginning of the End of the War in Ukraine?
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November 17th, 2023 by Global Research News
Broken by Design: Why the Elites Want Everything and Everyone to Have an “Expiry Date”
By , November 16, 2023
So, are we living in an era where humanity is being led along a tragic “course in their paths”? How are our median economic, environmental, geopolitical, societal and technological conditions faring?
Performance of Russia’s Defense Industry: Buoyant Weapons Exports, Despite the Sanctions
By , November 16, 2023
Despite restrictions, foreign clients showed remarkable interest in the Russian defense industry, particularly weapons such as the top-of-the-line Su-35 fighter jets, Ka-52 attack helicopters, T-90 tanks, TOS-1A heavy flamethrowers, regular and rocket artillery, missiles, drones, electronic warfare systems, etc.
By , November 16, 2023
According to CDC and FDA, appendicitis was the most common Serious Adverse Event (non-fatal) for the Pfizer COVID-19 mRNA Vaccine Trial. FDA suggested more studies, so 3 major studies were done and they were sponsored by either Pfizer, CDC or Astrazeneca (and a few other big pharma companies).
Ceasefire Now! Stop Apartheid Israel’s Genocide and Ethnic Cleansing of the Palestinian People
By , November 16, 2023
On October 31, 25 close family members of Dr. Izzeldin Abuelaish professor of Global Health at the University of Toronto – including his sisters, nephews and nieces – were killed in their homes when apartheid Israel’s occupation forces bombed the Jabalia refugee camp in the occupied Gaza Strip.
By , November 16, 2023
To be an anti-semite all you have to do is to make a criticism, no matter how small or how legitimate, of any Israeli policy. If your moral conscience is assaulted by, for example, Israel’s massacre of Palestinians in the open air concentration camp in which Israel keeps them pinned up, and you express your legitimate feelings against such inhumanity, you are an anti-semite. By definition, anyone with a moral conscience is an anti-semite.
Washington’s Long War Against Us All
By , November 16, 2023
What is happening in Gaza now is an example of longstanding Western military policy of murdering civilians. October 7 was a largely manufactured pretext so the West and its allies/proxies could falsely proclaim righteousness, even as many of the casualties on October 7 were inflicted by the IDF itself.
By , November 16, 2023
Gil Dikman, an Israeli with family members held captive in Gaza, publicly responded to statements made by Galit Distel Atbaryan, a Likud Party and Knesset member who had controversially suggested that “Gaza should be wiped off the face of the earth.”
US President Biden Sued for ‘Complicity’ in Israel’s ‘Genocide’ in Gaza
By , November 16, 2023
A federal complaint (PDF), filed on Monday against President Joe Biden, Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin, accuses them of “failure to prevent and complicity in the Israeli government’s unfolding genocide”.
100 State Dept Officials Sign Dissent Memo Saying Biden “Complicit in Genocide” in Gaza
By , November 16, 2023
The scathing memo goes after Biden directly, saying he is “spreading misinformation” and in his unreserved support for Israel the president is “complicit in war crimes”. As for the “misinformation” charge, the memo takes the White House to task for recently “questioning the number of deaths” issued from Gaza’s Health Ministry.
Biden’s Legacy Should be Forever Haunted by the Names of Gaza’s Dead Children
By , November 16, 2023
As Israel intensified its attacks on Gaza last week, including strikes against multiple hospitals, and presided over a forced exodus of hundreds of thousands of civilians from their homes, President Joe Biden was asked about the chances of a Gaza ceasefire. “None,” Biden shot back. “No possibility.”
November 17th, 2023 by Javier de la Sotilla
November 16th, 2023 by Drago Bosnic
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***
After the special military operation (SMO) started well over a year and a half ago, the political West imposed sanctions and restrictions that initially prevented countries from doing business with Russia.
While this nuisance certainly caused damage in the first several months of 2022, Moscow and its numerous international partners found ways to circumvent sanctions and continue their close economic cooperation.
However, one aspect of Russia’s resurgent economy that was most targeted by the political West is its massive military industry.
It should be noted that this segment of its economy was under attack years before the SMO started. Namely, the infamous 2017 CAATSA (Countering America’s Adversaries Through Sanctions Act) was passed in the United States precisely with the intention of hurting Moscow’s military exports (among other things).
Needless to say, the aforementioned sanctions were tightened significantly in the aftermath of the SMO. The mainstream propaganda machine was soon flooded with boastful predictions of the supposedly “impending collapse of the Russian economy”, which was also supposed to “lead to an inevitable crash in arms exports”. And indeed, it seemed that was the case, as certain countries canceled procurement deals. However, the effect of these restrictions soon proved to be grossly overblown. Despite laughable attempts to portray Moscow as the “losing side”, the performance of Russian weapon systems in Ukraine only reinforced its status as a virtually unrivaled military and technological superpower. Coupled with its firm stand against Western aggression, this persuaded international partners to continue military cooperation with Russia.
This year’s Dubai Airshow was the latest example of Moscow’s resilience and the sheer quality of its defense products.
Despite restrictions, foreign clients showed remarkable interest in the Russian defense industry, particularly weapons such as the top-of-the-line Su-35 fighter jets, Ka-52 attack helicopters, T-90 tanks, TOS-1A heavy flamethrowers, regular and rocket artillery, missiles, drones, electronic warfare systems, etc. Deputy General Director of Rostec, Vladimir Artyakov mentioned all of the above and more, stating that there is a significant increase in demand for these systems, primarily because of their combat usage. He also specifically mentioned the “Msta-S” self-propelled howitzers, “Tornado-G” and “Tornado-S” MLRS (multiple launch rocket systems), as well as ZALA “Kub-E” loitering munitions, in addition to air defense systems and small arms.
In an interview with Rossiyskaya Gazeta, Artyakov said that the performance of Russian systems, particularly against the grossly overhyped NATO weapons, resulted in an increase in interest and demand for these systems, despite the looming threat of sanctions. Artyakov further stated that all of Rostec’s customers keep a close eye on the combat performance of Russian weapons, making assessments on how they could fit the roles they need. He also explained that the industry works directly with the Russian military, constantly making adjustments. Officers, military officials, designers and engineers are all coordinating their efforts in this regard, resulting in timely updates and improvements, while also increasing cost-effectiveness. All this is done despite continued attempts to artificially undermine Russian competitiveness in the ever-changing international market.
Artyakov also refuted the March data published by the Swedish SIPRI (Stockholm International Peace Research Institute) which claims that the US share of global arms exports rose from 33% to 40%, while Russia’s supposedly fell from 22% to 16% during the 2013-17 and 2018-22 period, respectively. He stated that “the portfolio of orders of Rosoboronexport is stable” and that “[it] currently stands at over four trillion rubles” (roughly $45-50 billion). Artyakov said that “we are constantly working to expand the geography and range of supplies to friendly countries, promoting products for all types of armed forces and branches of troops” and that “the most promising areas are now considered the air force, air defense, armored vehicles, and small arms”. And indeed, there is a long line of countries expecting access to the latest Russian weapon systems.
According to Alexander Mikheyev, the chairman of Rosoboronexport, there’s a strong interest in the multi-purpose, super-maneuverable Su-35 fighter jet, one of the most advanced air superiority platforms on the planet. The now legendary Ka-52 “Alligator” is also among the most sought-after Russian systems, particularly after it left hundreds of pieces of NATO-sourced armor burning in the endless steppes of Ukraine. The “Alligator” was among the most prominent Russian assets that halted the Kiev regime’s much-touted counteroffensive. At least half a dozen countries have expressed interest in acquiring the Russian attack helicopter. What’s more, Rostec Director General Sergey Chemezov stated that even the members of the American delegation at the Dubai Airshow 2023 were curious about the Ka-52 and approached their Russian counterparts.
“It’s not as if military officials will use the show to rip us off. First, it’s not that easy. One would first have to disassemble the helicopter, its systems, equipment, and so on. They [demonstrated] an interest in the helicopter, which is involved in military activities. It proved very effective, and everyone is aware of that,” Chemezov commented on the US delegation’s visit and inspection of the Ka-52 displayed at the Dubai Airshow.
American interest in Russian attack helicopters is hardly surprising. The Ka-52 is particularly important in this regard due to its unique coaxial rotors, as US companies are struggling to develop similar designs, with the Sikorsky S-97 and SB-1 “Defiant” (canceled in December last year) being the most prominent examples. While the “Alligator” has suffered some losses during the SMO, considering the frequency of its usage, as well as the fact that the Neo-Nazi junta forces received hundreds of billions worth of advanced Western weapons, its performance has been nothing short of exceptional. While the US and its vassals and satellite states keep claiming that Russian weapons supposedly “perform poorly”, in reality, they’re terrified of them and are trying everything in their power to prevent the export of these systems to other countries, as they too might use it just as effectively against Western aggression.
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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 is from InfoBrics
November 16th, 2023 by Lucas Leiroz de Almeida
A crise institucional na Ucrânia parece ser uma realidade perigosa. Segundo um importante antigo funcionário do regime, o Presidente Vladimir Zelensky está atualmente em conflito com os militares locais e existe uma situação de desunião e desconfiança entre os tomadores de decisões em Kiev. É provável que esta crise se agrave significativamente num futuro próximo, à medida que o colapso ucraniano se aproxima.
Numa entrevista aos meios de comunicação ocidentais, Aleksey Arestovich, antigo conselheiro de Zelensky, revelou o elevado nível de desunião entre o presidente ucraniano e os seus subordinados militares. Segundo ele, muitos sinais foram dados em declarações de ambos os lados, mostrando um estado de divergência entre o presidente e o chefe militar. Mencionou um discurso recente de Valery Zaluzhny, comandante-em-chefe do exército ucraniano, onde afirma que o conflito com a Rússia atingiu um “impasse”, o que contradiz a narrativa oficial do governo.
Zelensky admite dificuldades, mas não fala em qualquer “impasse” na guerra para não prejudicar a sua própria posição de líder. O objetivo do presidente ucraniano é mostrar que uma “vitória” contra os russos ainda é possível, apesar dos problemas que o exército enfrenta no campo de batalha. Esta história é vital para que o líder neonazista continue a angariar o apoio ocidental. Por outro lado, ao falar em “impasse”, Zaluzhny desacredita a imagem pública de Zelensky.
“Há um conflito entre o presidente e os militares. Mas foi Zaluzhny quem disse a verdade. Agora temos uma situação em que o comandante-em-chefe diz uma coisa sobre a guerra e sobre as perspectivas de vitória, e o presidente diz algo completamente diferente. Não é uma situação normal”, disse.
Como pode ser visto, Arestovich concorda pessoalmente com Zaluzhny. Ele afirma que a situação trágica da Ucrânia se deve às “políticas ineficazes” do presidente. Arestovich também critica o fato de Zelesnky estar adotando uma postura cada vez mais “emocional” em seus discursos, o que considera antiestratégico nos tempos atuais. O ex-oficial diz que os erros do presidente os levaram à derrota na recente “contraofensiva”, apesar de toda a ajuda recebida do Ocidente.
“O principal motivo é a contra-ofensiva mal sucedida. A ajuda ocidental não está a ser utilizada de forma adequada. Conheço o presidente, sei que tipo de política ele segue e é totalmente infrutífera. Agora este é o principal problema. O nível de competência é insuficiente, atingimos o limite. E para vencermos, precisamos multiplicar a nossa eficácia. Por exemplo, em tudo o que diz respeito à nossa indústria de armas. Mesmo na utilização da ajuda americana e europeia, devemos ser cada vez mais eficazes”, acrescentou.
Na verdade, este conflito interno de interesses na Ucrânia não é novidade. Analistas e fontes locais há muito que afirmam que há desunião e desconfiança entre os tomadores de decisões ucranianos, particularmente no que diz respeito aos laços entre Zelensky e os seus militares. Obviamente, os altos funcionários do regime não estão satisfeitos com a humilhação que têm sofrido durante o conflito. Eles culpam Zelensky e querem substituí-lo. Mais do que isso, a própria OTAN tinha a substituição de Zelensky como objetivo prioritário, como revelam os documentos vazados do Pentágono. Zelensky esgotou claramente a sua imagem política e precisa de ser substituído se se espera que o apoio a Kiev continue popular entre a opinião pública ocidental.
O problema é que com o início de um novo conflito no Oriente Médio, a atenção dos EUA e dos seus parceiros foi completamente distraída. Não há mais foco na mudança do presidente ucraniano ou pressão para enviar novos pacotes de ajuda militar ao regime. O lobby sionista é muito forte nos EUA e consegue mobilizar quase todo o cenário político local para o mesmo objectivo de apoiar Israel no projecto de limpeza étnica contra os palestinos, deixando Kiev fora das prioridades americanas.
Zelensky aproveita esse momento de desatenção para fazer algumas mudanças e evitar ser substituído. Foi neste sentido, por exemplo, que adiou as eleições de 2024 – nas quais se esperava que tanto Arestovich como Zaluzhny concorressem. No entanto, estas medidas ditatoriais não impedem a intensificação da desunião e o crescimento das rivalidades e da polarização.
Considerando o colapso das forças ucranianas no campo de batalha, Zelensky certamente terá muita dificuldade para manter um governo estável nos próximos meses – e a inimizade com os militares é um problema sério, já que as forças armadas poderiam dar um golpe de estado a qualquer momento.
Lucas Leiroz de Almeida
Artigo em inglês : Zelensky allegedly in conflict with Ukrainian military, 15 de Novembro de 2023
Imagem : InfoBrics
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Lucas Leiroz, jornalista, pesquisador do Center for Geostrategic Studies, consultor geopolítico.
Você pode seguir Lucas Leiroz em: https://t.me/lucasleiroz e https://twitter.com/leiroz_lucas
November 16th, 2023 by Dr. Mathew Maavak
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“They don’t make them like they used to anymore” is an ancient lament that has resonated through the ages in various forms. It applies both to humans and their material outputs. The Greek philosopher Socrates had this to say of the youths of his day (circa 470 BC):
“Children; they have bad manners, contempt for authority; they show disrespect for elders and love chatter in place of exercise. They no longer rise when elders enter the room, they contradict their parents and tyrannise their teachers. Children are now tyrants.”
Juvenile absolutists can indeed become thorns in the societal flesh. Think of the routine theatrics of a young Scandinavian “environmentalist” who is on a mission to save humanity? Hobnobbing with leaders who wage “eco-friendly” wars seems to be part of that salvation process.
The prophet Isaiah, who preceded Socrates by three centuries, summed up this absurdity very well (Isaiah 3:12):
My people — children are their oppressors, and women rule over them. O my people, your guides mislead you and they have swallowed up the course of your paths”. (Note: Only in a mad juvenile world can women and girls be violated by males claiming to be otherwise in designated bathrooms!)
So, are we living in an era where humanity is being led along a tragic “course in their paths”?
How are our median economic, environmental, geopolitical, societal and technological conditions faring?
An argument can be made that the malaise is systemic and global. Technology, in particular, is universally gauged by the quality of products but these now generate a daily tsunami of scathing reviews and complaints.
Household products and popular gadgets are becoming more fragile and less durable by the day in spite of their “energy efficiency” and “eco-friendly” stamps.
Much like the manufactured stalwarts of Gens X, Y and Z, more money seems to be spent on PR blitzes than on quality control.
In fact, product regression was part of a plan first articulated in 1932 by American real estate broker Bernard London. In a paper titled Ending the Depression Through Planned Obsolescence, London began his pro-corporate spiel by paraphrasing the notorious Thomas Malthus, who, in 1798 foresaw a future Hobson’s Choice between population growth and food production.
London’s paper was published at the height of the Great Depression, when the vast majority of consumers had lost their spending power. As a result, the shelf-lives of consumer items were being extended via ingenious means. London however viewed that as a cardinal obstacle to progress.
In his rather meandering tract, London complained that
“people everywhere are today disobeying the law of obsolescence…
They are using their old cars, their old tires, their old radios and their old clothing much longer than statisticians had expected on the basis of earlier experience.”
Quality surplus products, including buffer food stocks in granaries, were making “new production unattractive and unprofitable”. He omitted to mention that the population surge of the 1930s would have resolved this imbalance if not for the mass impoverishment caused by runaway Wall Street greed. Just when did the production of durable products become a socioeconomic problem?
We see this sinister logic being repeated nearly a century later under different pretexts. The European Union and Britain, for example, have pledged to ban new diesel and petrol cars from 2035 onwards. This climate-linked policy has also resulted in senseless campaigns against livestock and vegetation.
London’s solutions also appear to foreshadow the Great Reset:
“I would have the Government assign a lease of life to shoes and homes and machines, to all products of manufacture, mining and agriculture, when they are first created, and they would be sold and used within the term of their existence definitely known by the consumer. After the allotted time had expired, these things would be legally “dead” and would be controlled by the duly appointed governmental agency and destroyed if there is widespread unemployment. New products would constantly be pouring forth from the factories and marketplaces, to take the place of the obsolete, and the wheels of industry would be kept going and employment regularized and assured for the masses.”
It gets worse. London urged that “taxes should be levied on the people who are retarding progress”.
Ergo, the world needs to punish individuals who conserve resources for the sake of corporations which generate disposable junk on an industrial scale, straining our natural environments in the process.
And just how do you tax people over clothes and shoes that come with an officially-mandated expiry date?
Will electronic micro-sensors be embedded into products of the future? Likewise, will humans be cattle-tagged with similar sensors to ensure consumerist compliance and the profitability of corporations?
Such a universally panoptic regime is no longer a far-fetched prospect. According to the Kenyan Post, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation (BMGF) has just inked a deal with the Kenyan government on the roll out of a third-generation Digital Identification Document (ID) system dubbed Maisha Namba.
The ID will be “assigned to every Kenyan at birth, and will be used from birth to death”. If details of this deal appear scant, it is because “most of the engagements” between Bill Gates and the Kenyan government have been “shrouded in secrecy”, as the Post noted. How this squares up with the BMGF’s decade-old commitment to the International Aid Transparency Initiative (IATI) is an open question.
But it gets worse. Bill Gates, along with the United Nations Development Program (UNDP), has announced plans to roll out “digital IDs” worldwide by the year 2030, and they will be mandatory for people who wish to participate in society, say Reclaim the Net, who advocate for free speech and individual liberty online. Talk about the Mark of the Beast being unveiled out in the open! This is the “New Normal” of the World Economic Forum (WEF); one which effectively plots and determines the “course of your paths” as foretold by Isaiah.
Furthermore, the WEF’s mantra of “you will own nothing and be happy” by 2030 is only six years away.
Yet nothing concrete has appeared from Davos’ utopian gumbo of Artificial Intelligence, the Fourth Industrial Revolution, Big Data, Reskilling and Upskilling and an assorted melange of similar buzzwords.
Where are the building blocks of this transformative global shift? Except for reductionist catchphrases and patently anti-human pronouncements, one would be hard-pressed to even detect the first scaffolds of the post-2030 global construct.
But like London who avoided fingering Wall Street for the manifold failures of his generation – which inevitably led to WWII and hundreds of millions dead – our unelected global technocracy is blaming our current planetary failings on everyone but themselves. And they can get away with these travesties as humans are becoming as fragile and as obsolete as the products they consume.
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This article was originally published on RT News.
Dr. Mathew Maavak, who researches systems science, global risks, geopolitics, strategic foresight, governance and Artificial Intelligence. He is a frequent contributor to Global Research.
Featured image is from SHTFplan.com
November 16th, 2023 by Ben Bartee
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Author Ben Bartee confirms in the article below, quoting Lt General Richard Clark that:
American Troops are “prepared to die for the Jewish State”.
What should be understood by this statement is that the US and Israel have a longstanding Military “Partnership” as well as a “Signed” Military Agreement (classified) regarding Israel’s attack on Gaza. Our analysis confirms that the U.S. is pulling the strings.
Lt. General Richard Clark is U.S. Third Air Force Commander, among the highest-ranking military officers in the U.S. Armed Forces.
While he refers to Juniper Cobra, “a joint military exercise that has been conducted for almost a decade”, his statement points to a much broader military-intelligence agreement (classified) which no doubt consists on the unconditional endorsement of the Israeli genocidal attack against Gaza by President Joe Biden, leading to the annexation of all Palestine territories to the State of Israel.
While this so-called “signed agreement” remains classified (not in the public domain), it would appear that Biden is obeying the orders of the perpetrators of this diabolical military agenda.
Does President Biden have the authority (under this “Signed agreement”) to save the lives of innocent civilians including the children of Palestine:
Q (Inaudible) Gaza ceasefire, Mr. President?
THE PRESIDENT: Pardon me?
Q What are the chances of a Gaza ceasefire?
THE PRESIDENT: None. No possibility.
White House Press Conference, November 9, 2023
which suggests that the genocide is implemented by Netanyahu on behalf of the United States.
It is worth noting that a federal complaint (PDF), was filed on November 13, against President Joe Biden, Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin, accusing them of:
“failure to prevent and complicity in the Israeli government’s unfolding genocide”.
This case is brought on behalf of Palestinian human rights organizations and individuals to enforce what is perhaps the most basic and important legal, and moral, obligation in the world – the obligation to prevent genocide, the destruction of a people.
This duty is enshrined in the 1948 Genocide Convention, to which the United States, Israel and Palestine have all acceded, and it is judicially enforceable as a peremptory norm of customary international law. Plaintiffs seek an order of this Court requiring that the President of the United States, the Secretary of State, and the Secretary of Defense adhere to their duty to prevent, and not further, the unfolding genocide of Palestinian people in Gaza.
Michel Chossudovsky, November 16, 2023
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The multinational corporate state’s apparent goal here — it can only be inferred, based on the behavior of key, high-level state actors — is to test how in-your-face the governing authorities can get with their Israel First agenda without inflicting serious political damage on themselves.
So far, for reasons that are disconcerting if not inexplicable, the Make America Great Again movement, by and large, with a few notable exceptions like Candace Owens who suggested that Nikki Haley should run for president of Israel, appears to be taking it good and hard. The spineless sycophants ought to swap those MAGA caps with “Cucks For Israel” replacements.
Via Jerusalem Post:
“’As far as decision-making, it is a partnership,’ [Lt. Gen. Richard Clark] continued, stressing nonetheless that ‘at the end of the day it is about the protection of Israel – and if there is a question in regards to how we will operate, the last vote will probably go to Zvika [Haimovitch].’
Washington and Israel have signed an agreement which would see the US come to assist Israel with missile defense in times of war and, according to Haimovitch, “I am sure once the order comes we will find here US troops on the ground to be part of our deployment and team to defend the State of Israel.”
And those US troops who would be deployed to Israel, are prepared to die for the Jewish state, Clark said. ’We are ready to commit to the defense of Israel and anytime we get involved in a kinetic fight there is always the risk that there will be casualties. But we accept that – as every conflict we train for and enter, there is always that possibility,’ he said.”
Notice the glaring — and quite remarkable in its brazenness — lack of any pretext of American troops in the Middle East promoting American national security interests whatsoever (a wild concept, admittedly) in this rhetoric from Lt. Gen. Clark.
It’s straight to the servicing of Israel.
The question is: why bother wearing an American flag on that uniform at all?
Better yet, why not swap the whole thing out wholesale for an IDF uniform like the one that Rep. Brian Mast wore in the American Congress last month, who somehow escaped so much as a word of criticism from his Republican comrades, much less censure and removal from office?
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This article was originally published on the author’s Substack, Armageddon Prose.
Ben Bartee, author of Broken English Teacher: Notes From Exile, is an independent Bangkok-based American journalist with opposable thumbs. He is a regular contributor to Global Research.
Featured image: The Israeli and American flags displayed on the walls of the Old City in Jerusalem (Photo: Yonatan Sindel)
November 16th, 2023 by Drago Bosnic
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Intercontinental ballistic missiles, or ICBMs for short, are the most important weapons a country that wants to preserve its sovereignty could possess.
The importance of these terrifying missiles cannot possibly be overstated, as they’re the fastest, the deadliest and generally the most effective way to deliver a crushing blow to any enemy, virtually anywhere on the planet.
They are the weapon of last resort and one of the very few things that could end human civilization.
It could easily be argued that ICBM-armed states are the only truly independent and sovereign countries, as there is no one who could possibly force them to do anything. Thus, the importance of keeping these weapons up and running is a top priority for such powers.
And yet, it would seem some, such as the United States, have become far too lulled by their own delusions of grandeur, indispensability and other forms of self-styling, the most recent being that it’s supposedly “the most powerful country in the history of the world“. Some would probably say that “pride cometh before a fall”, but that’s probably just another “conspiracy theory”. In all seriousness, the belligerent thalassocracy seems to be going precisely through such a phase and it’s starting to show even in its strategic military might.
Namely, on November 13 Secretary of the US Air Force (USAF) Frank Kendall admitted that research and development work on the new ICBM slated to replace the atrociously outdated “Minuteman 3” missiles is struggling.
The weapon in question, designated LGM-35A “Sentinel”, is being developed by the notorious Northrop Grumman Corporation, one of the most prominent companies of the infamous US Military Industrial Complex (MIC). Kendall stressed that the program, officially known as the Ground Based Strategic Deterrent (GBSD), is one of the biggest and most complex ever undertaken by the US. While he praised the development of the B-21 “Raider” strategic bomber/missile carrier, which just had its maiden flight on November 10, stating that “[he’s] fairly optimistic comparatively about [it]”, but that “the ‘Sentinel’ is, quite honestly, struggling a little bit”. And indeed, despite being in the early stages of development, the GBSD program is already in trouble.
It’s facing not only cost overruns and delays, but there are also serious problems with even the most basic technologies that shouldn’t really be a problem for a country like the US. Still, the issues that the USAF is facing, along with the massive cost of the GBSD program, have resulted in proposals for it to retire the ancient LGM-30G “Minuteman 3” completely and divert the freed-up resources to LGM-35A “Sentinel”. However, this would leave Washington DC completely without the land-based leg of its triad, effectively eroding it into a dyad composed of strategic bombers and SLBMs (submarine-launched ballistic missiles). Some top NATO members, such as the United Kingdom and France, rely precisely on such strategic posturing.
However, since the US is now faced with multiple near-peer and regional adversaries simultaneously, primarily thanks to its virtually all-out aggression against the entire world, this isn’t a viable strategy for the foreseeable future. Namely, in the best-case scenario, the LGM-35A “Sentinel” would enter service in 2029-2030. This would mean that Washington DC would be left without strategic land-based missiles for at least five years (in case it decides to retire old “Minuteman 3” ICBMs). And yet, when taking into account recent setbacks, this deadline could easily be pushed to the mid or even late 2030s, meaning that the US would be stuck with a dyad for over a decade, possibly even longer, which is a highly unpredictable strategic risk.
Worse yet, all current projections by the Pentagon and its numerous think tanks suggest that several US adversaries, both global and regional, would reach their peak precisely in this timeframe. What’s more, the LGM-35A “Sentinel” is most likely inferior to the already existing Russian equivalents such as the RS-24 “Yars”, which boasts a depressed flight path and limited maneuvering capabilities. In addition, Russian Strategic Missile Forces (RVSN) already possess 150-160 of these ICBMs, 90% of which are road-mobile, meaning that they have a much higher survivability than the LGM-35A “Sentinel” which will be entirely confined to silos. All this is without even considering hundreds of other strategic weapons in Moscow’s unrivaled arsenal.
For instance, there are Russian monstrosities such as the RS-28 “Sarmat”, a superheavy ICBM that stands in a league of its own. This missile quite literally has no analogs in range (effectively unlimited), payload capacity (equivalent to 750 Hiroshima bombs) and technologies applied to it (uses unique hypersonic maneuvering warheads). “Sarmat” is also complemented by other weapons, such as the notorious “Poseidon” nuclear-tipped underwater drones that are so destructive they can cause literal radioactive tsunamis. However, while being America’s deadliest rival, Russia is not the only one. Other countries, such as China and North Korea, are already upgrading their arsenals with weapons that are much newer and more advanced than the old “Minuteman 3”.
“You cannot life-extend ‘Minuteman 3’… It is getting past the point of [where] it’s not cost-effective to life-extend ‘Minuteman 3’. You’re quickly getting to the point [where] you can’t do it at all. That thing is so old that in some cases the [technical] drawings don’t exist anymore, or where we do have drawings, they’re like six generations behind the industry standard. And there’s not only [no one] working that can understand them – they’re not alive anymore,” former head of the US Strategic Command Admiral Charles A. Richard (ret.) warned back in early 2021.
Indeed, the “Minuteman 3” is based on early 1960s technologies and has been in service for over half a century at this point. The original designers have all probably died decades ago, while the technical documentation is beyond obsolete, as it predates the digital era. Secretary Kendall himself warned that the difficulties of developing a successor partially stem from the fact that the necessary know-how has been lost for decades. He said that “there are ‘unknown unknowns’… …that are affecting the [LGM-35A ‘Sentinel’] program”, because “it’s been a very long time since we did an ICBM”. This notion is further reinforced by a string of recent launch failures of both the existing “Minuteman 3” missiles and the new components in testing for the “Sentinel”.
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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.
November 16th, 2023 by Mirko C. Trudeau
November 16th, 2023 by Middle East Eye
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“My cousin is there. My cousin’s wife is there. There are babies Jews, and Arabs.”
Gil Dikman, an Israeli with family members held captive in Gaza, publicly responded to statements made by Galit Distel Atbaryan, a Likud Party and Knesset member who had controversially suggested that “Gaza should be wiped off the face of the earth.”
During a meeting in the Knesset, which included relatives of Israelis held by Hamas in Gaza, Dikman emphasised the value of life in Gaza, stating that his own family and others reside there.
He urged for a reconsideration of destructive rhetoric and appealed for a focus on the well-being and existence of people in Gaza.
Dikman also criticised Minister of Interior Moshe Arbel for not engaging with the families of captives and reiterated his call to prioritise life over destructive slogans.
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Featured image is a screenshot from the video
November 16th, 2023 by Al-Jazeera
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The president of the United States and two of his cabinet members are being sued for failing to prevent and aiding and abetting “genocide” in Gaza.
A federal complaint (PDF), filed on Monday against President Joe Biden, Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin, accuses them of “failure to prevent and complicity in the Israeli government’s unfolding genocide”.
Click here to read the complete document.
New York civil liberties group the Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR) filed the suit on behalf of Palestinian human rights organisations, Palestinians in Gaza and US citizens with relatives in the besieged enclave that has faced more than a month of relentless bombardment by Israel, which receives funding and weapons from the US government.
More than 11,200 Palestinians have been killed in Gaza since Israel launched attacks on October 7. This followed a Hamas attack in Israel, in which about 1,200 people were killed.
“Numerous Israeli government leaders have expressed clear genocidal intentions and deployed dehumanizing characterizations of Palestinians, including ‘human animals’,” the CCR wrote in the introduction to its complaint.
It said those “statements of intent”, when combined with the “mass killing” of Palestinians, reveal “evidence of an unfolding crime of genocide”.
Numerous legal scholars, rights groups and humanitarians have also called Israel’s actions in Gaza genocide.
“Immediately after the launch of Israel’s unprecedented bombing campaign on Gaza, President Biden offered ‘unwavering’ support for Israel, which he and administration officials have consistently repeated and backed up with military, financial, and political support, even as mass civilian casualties escalated alongside Israeli genocidal rhetoric,” the CCR said.
The complaint noted that the US is Israel’s closest ally and strongest supporter, as well as its biggest provider of military assistance – with Israel being the largest cumulative recipient of US foreign assistance since World War II. Because of this, it said, the US could have a “deterrent effect on Israeli officials now pursuing genocidal acts against the Palestinian people”.
Instead, the group said, Biden, Blinken, and Austin “have helped advance the gravest of crimes” by continuing to provide Israel with unconditional military and diplomatic support while undermining efforts by the international community to stop Israel’s bombardment.
Speaking to Al Jazeera, Astha Sharma Pokharel, a lawyer at the CCR, said:
“They have a significant responsibility under customary international law, under federal law, to prevent this genocide, to stop supporting this genocide. At every step of the way, at every opportunity, they have failed. They have continued to provide cover to Israel; they have continued to provide material support to Israel; and currently, they intend to send more money and more weapons to Israel.”
Laila al-Haddad, a US citizen and one of the plaintiffs in the case, has lost five relatives in Gaza since Israel launched its attacks.
“I paid for Israel to kill my cousins and my aunt, there’s no two ways around it,” she told Al Jazeera. “It was my tax dollars that did that, that sent those bombs to Israel to kill my family. And so I feel I and all other American taxpayers have a very unique responsibility to hold our government and our elected officials responsible.”
The lawsuit also calls for an end to the $3.8bn in annual military support the US sends to Israel.
The White House has not yet responded to Al Jazeera’s requests for comment on the case.
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Featured image: Dr Suleiman Qaoud surveys the damage at the Rantisi Specialist Hospital, part of the Nasser Medical Complex in Gaza City, following Israeli missile attacks on November 6, 2023 [Abdelhakim Abu Riash/Al Jazeera]
November 16th, 2023 by Ahmed Adel
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The former advisor to Ukrainian President Leonid Kuchma (1994 to 2005), Oleg Soskin, said on social media on November 13 that the country’s military wants President Volodymyr Zelensky to resign. He suggested that the military leadership will no longer take orders from the president that will result in many deaths for no gain, and this aligns with what other experts have said.
In a video, Oleg Soskin recalls that the counteroffensive announced by Zelensky will complete six months in the first week of December without any major progress achieved. Furthermore, the expert pointed out that parliamentarians have already said that Kiev will try to initiate criminal proceedings against a group of generals.
“Will the generals obey; will they behave like sheep going to the slaughterhouse? I think that in the military environment, everything has already matured, and they want Zelensky, so to speak, to retire,” said the former advisor.
However, this has already been occurring and is well documented. In a revealing article in Time Magazine, correspondent Simon Shuster wrote that “Some front-line commanders,” according to one of Zelensky’s close aides, “have begun refusing orders to advance, even when they came directly from the office of the President.”
Shuster then revealed how an order was received to “retake” the city of Gorlovka, a strategic outpost near Donetsk city, but that the answer came back in the form of a question:
“With what? They don’t have the men or the weapons,” said the officer. “Where are the weapons? Where is the artillery? Where are the new recruits?”
Ukrainian deputy Oleksiy Goncharenko also warned on November 13 that Zelensky’s office had started a movement against the country’s military bloc, which, according to the Kiev-based outlet Strana, has been talking about a possible candidacy of the commander-in-chief of the Armed Forces, Valerii Zaluzhny.
According to the parliamentarian, procedural actions will be carried out in the coming days against high-ranking soldiers of the Ukrainian Army.
The Washington Post published on November 8 that Zaluzhny is extremely popular in the country and could represent a threat to the current Ukrainian president if he begins a political career. According to the newspaper, recent statements by the military showed the impasse for Ukrainian troops, revealing that
“There will most likely be no deep and beautiful breakthrough.”
The counteroffensive began on June 4, and after three months, Russian President Vladimir Putin declared that the Ukrainian front was not only stagnant but also a failure. By the beginning of October, Kiev had lost more than 90,000 Armed Forces personnel, including dead and injured, and according to Russian Defence Minister Sergei Shoigu, the Ukrainian Army was unable to achieve any of its objectives.
For the editor-in-chief of New York-based magazine CovertAction, Jeremy Kuzmarov, the cancellation of the elections in Ukraine could lead to a coup d’état in the country. The author of five books explained that Zelensky is unpopular in the country and would lose the elections if they were open and fair.
“Ukrainians have begun to reach their breaking point as a society and cannot survive Zelensky’s misrule much longer and need to negotiate an end to the war with Russia,” Kuzmarov said, adding that the Ukrainian president provoked an un-winnable war with Russia and spent most of his time courting foreign military support instead of being out there on the front lines with his people.
In addition, recent corruption scandals in the Zelensky regime have caused high-ranking officials to resign: four deputy ministers, five regional governors and advisors. Compounding the allegations of bribery and the purchase of overpriced food amid the conflict, Kiev officials have adopted a luxurious lifestyle that does not match their salaries.
According to former CIA agent Larry Johnson, the CIA and MI6 in the UK are already preparing for a coup against Zelensky. In his view, Zelensky will either be forced to recall the Presidential election scheduled for next March that he cancelled and then be replaced or be replaced anyway in a Maidan-style coup.
Stephen Bryen, who served as staff director of the Near East Subcommittee of the US Senate Foreign Relations Committee and described Larry Johnson as his “friend and colleague,” said that Zelensky was “working in opposition to his own generals,” naming specifically Zaluzhny and Colonel-General Oleksandr Syrsky, who leads the country’s ground forces.
The claim that Zelensky works in opposition to Zaluzhny and Syrsky would also explain why Oleg Soskin believes that the country’s military wants Zelensky to resign. Ultimately, it was Zelensky’s decisions and choices that have led to the Ukrainian military effectively being destroyed and now putting the country in an even worse bargaining position with Russia. Some in Kiev and the West think replacing Zelensky can fix many of these issues, but this is not very likely.
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Ahmed Adel is a Cairo-based geopolitics and political economy researcher. He is a regular contributor to Global Research.
Featured image: Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky delivers an address in Kiev, Ukraine, April 15, 2022. (Credit: Ukrainian Presidency)
November 16th, 2023 by Khaled Mouammar
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An Angus Reid poll published on November 7 shows two-thirds of Canadians are calling for an immediate ceasefire.
On October 31, 25 close family members of Dr. Izzeldin Abuelaish professor of Global Health at the University of Toronto – including his sisters, nephews and nieces – were killed in their homes when apartheid Israel’s occupation forces bombed the Jabalia refugee camp in the occupied Gaza Strip.
On November 11, apartheid Israel’s occupation forces bombed the Mahdi Maternity Clinic in the occupied Gaza Strip killing Dr. Basel Mahdi along with his brother Dr. Raed Youssef Mahdi and his wife Iman Khreis and their seven children – Dr. Samira Mahdi, Youssef Mahdi, Ahmed Mahdi, Amro Mahdi, Mohammed Mahdi, Abboud Mahdi and Mira Mahdi.
On November 13, Palestinian Canadians paid their consolation to Rima Khreis, sister of Iman Khreis, at Palestine House of Mississauga for the massacre of her sister’s family in the occupied Gaza Strip.
The latest figure released by the Palestinian Ministry of Healthy and reported by Wafa news agency, was 11,180 civilians killed by Israel’s occupation forces in the occupied Gaza Strip – including 4,609 children, 3,100 women, and 678 elderly people. The figure covers the casualties from October 7 to November 12.
There are reports of 3,250 people still missing or under the rubble, including 1,700 children.
During the same period, Israel’s occupation forces and illegal settlers in the West Bank and East Jerusalem killed 195 Palestinians and injured at least 2,700.
Every day that passes allows apartheid Israel’s occupation forces to kill more Palestinian children and women and to forcibly transfer them from their homes, hospitals, UN agencies, mosques and churches where they sought shelter.
Canadians want their government to stand unequivocally for human rights and peace, and prevent a repeat of the 1948 catastrophe that forced me along with 750,000 of my countrymen to leave our homeland, by calling for an immediate and permanent ceasefire in the occupied Gaza Strip.
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Khaled Mouammar is a Christian-Palestinian-Canadian who was forced to flee his hometown Nazareth in 1948. He is one of the founders of the Canadian Arab Federation and a former member of the Immigration and Refugee Board of Canada. He received the Queen’s Silver Jubilee Award from the Governor General of Canada in 1977. He is a frequent contributor to Global Research.
Featured image is from Craig Murray
November 16th, 2023 by Jeremy Scahill
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As Israel intensified its attacks on Gaza last week, including strikes against multiple hospitals, and presided over a forced exodus of hundreds of thousands of civilians from their homes, President Joe Biden was asked about the chances of a Gaza ceasefire. “None,” Biden shot back. “No possibility.”
With a death toll that has now surpassed 11,000 Palestinians, including nearly 5,000 children, the extent of Biden’s public divergence from his “great, great friend” Benjamin Netanyahu’s scorched-earth war of annihilation amounts to meekly worded suggestions of “humanitarian pauses.”
On Friday, Secretary of State Antony Blinken remarked,
“far too many Palestinians have been killed; far too many have suffered these past weeks, and we want to do everything possible to prevent harm to them and to maximize the assistance that gets to them.”
These disingenuous platitudes melt into a puddle of blood when juxtaposed with the administration’s actions.
The Biden administration has funneled weapons, intelligence support, and unwavering political backing for Israel’s public campaign to erase from the earth Gaza’s existence as a Palestinian territory. As Israeli settlers wage campaigns of terror against the Palestinians in the West Bank, the U.S. remained entrenched in its global isolation, voting last week against a U.N. resolution demanding an end to the illegal settlements. The resolution condemned illegal Israeli settlements, calling them “illegal and an obstacle to peace.” The resolution, which passed 145-7, called for “the immediate and complete cessation of all Israeli settlement activities in all of the Occupied Palestinian Territory.” Only five countries joined the U.S. and Israel in voting “no”: Canada, Hungary, the Marshall Islands, Micronesia, and Nauru.
As the capitals of major world cities have seen massive protests on a scale not registered since the 2003 Iraq invasion, Netanyahu has been on a U.S. media blitz, appearing on Sunday talk shows to cast the stakes of his war “to destroy Hamas” as akin to World War II. “Without it none of us have a future. And it’s not only our war, it’s your war too. It’s the battle of civilization against barbarism,” he said on CNN’s “State of the Union.” “And if we don’t win here, this scourge will pass. The Middle East will pass to other places. The Middle East will fall. Europe is next. You will be next.”
Netanyahu has brazenly exploited the grief of Israeli citizens whose lives were torn apart on October 7 when Hamas launched a series of coordinated attacks inside Israel. Those raids resulted in the deaths of 846 civilians, 278 Israeli soldiers, and 44 police officers, according to the latest figures provided by Israel.
Some family members of the victims, as well as relatives of the 240 hostages taken by Hamas and other militant groups — among them infants and the elderly — have emerged as some of the most vocal critics of Netanyahu’s government. A small number have spoken out against his attacks on Gaza, though their voices are largely drowned out by pro-war voices in Western media coverage.
“I beg you, I beg also my government, and the pilots and soldiers, who may be called to go into Gaza. Don’t agree. Protect the area around the Gaza Strip, but don’t agree to go in and kill innocent people,” said Noy Katsman, whose older brother Hayim was killed on October 7 at the kibbutz he had lived on for a decade. Maoz Inon’s parents were also killed that day. “Today, Israel is repeating an old mistake it made many times in the last century. We must stop it,” Inon wrote. “Revenge is not going to bring my parents back to life. It is not going to bring back other Israelis and Palestinians killed either. It is going to do the opposite. It is going to cause more casualties. It is going to bring more death.”
Over the past month, Biden has cast doubt on the extent of Palestinian civilian deaths, defended Netanyahu’s violent extremist agendas, and made clear that the U.S. position amounts to this: collectively punishing Palestinians for the actions of Hamas falls under the doctrine of “self-defense.” Biden has stood by Israel as government officials have openly described an agenda of ethnically cleansing Palestinians, proclaiming a “Gaza Nakba,” threatening to do to Beirut what Israel has done to Gaza, labeling hospitals and ambulances “legitimate military targets,” and accusing U.N. workers of being Hamas and journalists of being “accomplices in crimes against humanity.” More than 100 U.N. workers and at least 40 journalists and media workers have been killed in Gaza since October 7. Approximately one in 200 Palestinians have died in Gaza since the start of Israel’s attacks.
"We are now actually rolling out the Gaza Nakba," says Avi Dichter, Israel's Minister for Agriculture and former head of Shin Bet.
— Hanno Hauenstein (@hahauenstein) November 11, 2023
National security adviser Jake Sullivan, when asked Sunday on CNN if Israel is abiding by the rules of war, replied,
“I’m not going to sit here and play judge or jury on that question. What I’m going to do is state the principle of the United States on this issue, which is straight forward: Israel has a right, indeed a responsibility, to defend itself against a terrorist group.”
DANA BASH: "Is Israel operating according to the rules of war?"
JAKE SULLIVAN: "Well, Dana, I'm not going to sit here and play judge or jury on that question." pic.twitter.com/tfnjRBz352
— Waleed Shahid 🪬 (@_waleedshahid) November 12, 2023
The U.S. is simultaneously increasing the flow of weapons to Israel — and Biden proposed $14.5 billion in additional military assistance — while its senior national security official cannot state whether Israel is conducting operations in contravention of international law.
Keenly aware of the growing opposition to Israel’s war at home and abroad, and even within his own administration, Biden and his advisers have sought to push a narrative that they are seeking to moderate Israel’s tactics. They make sure the U.S. press know that Biden had urged against a full-scale ground invasion, proposed limited pauses to the bombing, and expressed concerns about the humanitarian crisis for Palestinian civilians. On Monday, after days of relentless Israeli attacks on Gazan hospitals and desperate pleas from international doctors and health and aid organizations, Biden finally addressed the issue, but only after being directly asked.
“Hospitals must be protected,” he said in response to a question from the press. “My hope and expectation is that there will be less intrusive action relative to hospitals.”
The White House’s mounting effort to spin itself as being concerned about civilian deaths and doing all it can to urge Israel to avoid massacring civilians on an industrial scale is an effort to obfuscate the U.S. role as Israel’s central ally enabling this slaughter. It is a grotesque parlor game that only works if facts and history don’t matter. And in Biden’s case, that history is extensive.
For 50 years, Biden has been consistent in his support for Israel’s wars against the Palestinians. Time and again he has backed and facilitated campaigns of terror waged by a nuclear power against a people who have no state, no army, no air force, no navy, and an almost nonexistent civilian infrastructure. As Gaza burns in a smoldering pyre of death and destruction, 80-year-old Biden may be overseeing the final act in his devotion to Israel’s most extreme agenda. His legacy should be forever haunted by the names of the dead children of Gaza, thousands of whom have died in a matter of weeks under the hellfire of U.S.-manufactured weapons and support.
Biden has been in public office longer than almost any U.S. politician in history. His career in the U.S. Senate began on the eve of the 1973 Arab–Israeli war when he traveled to meet Israeli Prime Minister Golda Meir.
“I sat across the desk for an hour as she flipped those maps up and down, chain smoking, telling me about the [1967] Six Day War,” Biden said. He called it “one of the most consequential meetings I’ve ever had in my life.”
But, as has been in the case with more than a few of Biden’s vignettes about his central role in historical events, in his numerous and varied retelling of that story, he seems to have exaggerated how important that meeting was to Meir and the Israelis.
Over the ensuing decades and up to the current horrors being inflicted on the people of Gaza, Biden has operated as one of the staunchest promoters of Israel’s colonialist agenda, often defending Israel’s disproportionate use of force, collective punishment, and at times outright massacres.
“Were there not an Israel, the United States would have to invent an Israel to protect her interests in the region,” Biden said on the Senate floor in 1986.
He repeated that same line earlier this year during a July visit by Israeli President Isaac Herzog to Washington. During Biden’s trip to Israel last month, as Israel intensified its attacks on Gaza and the civilian death toll skyrocketed, he told Netanyahu and his war cabinet,
“I don’t believe you have to be a Jew to be a Zionist, and I am a Zionist.”
Building support for Israel’s military might and funneling money and political support to Israel has been a central component of Biden’s career-long foreign policy agenda. He is fond of calling himself “Israel’s best Catholic friend.” In 2016, during a visit to Israel, Netanyahu heaped praise on Biden, then vice president.
“The people of Israel consider the Biden family part of our family,” he said. “I want to thank you personally for your, for our personal friendship of over 30 years. We’ve known each other a long time. We’ve gone through many trials and tribulations. And we have an enduring bond that represents the enduring bond between our people.”
There is one story from these decades of Biden’s dedication to Israel that seems eerily prescient given the bloodbath playing out in Gaza right now. It took place early in the Israeli invasion of Lebanon in 1982. In public, Biden was neither a cheerleader for the invasion nor an opponent. But in a private meeting of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee with Prime Minister Menachem Begin in June 1982, Biden’s support for the brutality of the invasion appeared to outstrip even that of the Israeli government.
As the Israeli prime minister was grilled in the Senate over Israel’s disproportionate use of force, including the targeting of civilians with cluster bomb munitions, Biden, in Begin’s words, “rose and delivered a very impassioned speech” defending the invasion. Upon his return to Israel, Begin told Israeli reporters he was shocked when Biden “said he would go even further than Israel, adding that he’d forcefully fend off anyone who sought to invade his country, even if that meant killing women or children.” Begin said,
“I disassociated myself from these remarks,” adding, “I said to him: No, sir; attention must be paid. According to our values, it is forbidden to hurt women and children, even in war. Sometimes there are casualties among the civilian population as well. But it is forbidden to aspire to this. This is a yardstick of human civilization, not to hurt civilians.”
Coming from Begin, the comments were striking, because he had been notorious as a leader of the Irgun, a militant group that carried out some of the worst acts of ethnic cleansing accompanying the creation of the state of Israel, including the 1948 Deir Yassin massacre. The details of his exchange with Biden about Lebanon did not receive attention in the U.S. press. Instead, the New York Times focused on what it termed the “bitterest exchange” between Biden and Begin over the issue of Israeli settlements, which Biden opposed because, he said, it was hurting Israel’s reputation in the U.S. “He hinted — more than hinted — that if we continue with this policy, it is possible that he will propose cutting our financial aid,” Begin alleged.
Over the years, Biden has referenced this confrontation when explaining his opposition to the expansion of Israeli settlements in the West Bank as a disagreement among very good friends. Biden has long argued that these expansions undermine prospects for a peace agreement between Israel and the Palestinians, though his rhetoric has often been contradicted by his actions, as was the case with his opposition to last week’s U.N. vote labeling the settlements illegal.
Image: U.S. Vice President Joe Biden speaks at the American Israel Public Affairs Committee’s annual policy conference in Washington, D.C., on May 5, 2009. Photo: Saul Loeb/AFP via Getty Images
In the 1990s, as Biden solidified his reputation as a top foreign policy senator, he often helped shepherd legislation and funding packages to Israel that human rights groups and international aid organizations said would hinder efforts at brokering lasting peace and further entrench the state of apartheid imposed on millions of Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza.
Biden was an early proponent of moving the U.S. Embassy in Israel to Jerusalem, a move that finally took place in 2018 under the Trump administration. In 1995, Biden helped pass a Senate resolution demanding that the embassy be moved by May of that year. Despite objections that it would harm ongoing Israeli–Palestinian peace talks by deciding a key issue by fiat, Biden said the move would send a positive signal to the region.
“To do less would play into the hands of those who would do their hardest to deny Israel the full attributes of statehood,” Biden said.
In 2001, following rare public criticism from the Bush administration directed at Israel’s policy of assassinating suspected Palestinian militants, Biden defended Israel’s right to carry out such killings and even rebuked President George W. Bush for criticizing them.
“My view has always been that disagreements between Israel and the United States, those differences should be aired privately, not publicly,” Biden said.
He also defended the legality of targeted killings, which at the time were considered highly questionable by legal experts for occurring outside a declared conflict.
“I don’t believe this is a policy of assassinations,” Biden said, referring to the targeting of suspected Hamas members. “There is in effect a declared war, a declaration by an organization that has said its goal is to do as much as it can to kill Israeli civilians.”
In July 2006, Israel was bombing both Gaza and southern Lebanon, with Biden cheering it on. The Israelis, Biden said on MSNBC, “have in both cases, both in Gaza and in southern Lebanon, done the right thing.” In the face of international condemnations of Israel’s brutality in its attacks, Biden defended Israel.
“I find it fascinating — people talk about, ‘Has Israel gone too far?’ No one talks about whether Israel’s justified in the first place,” he said on “Meet the Press.” Unless critics of Israel recognize that it was a victim of terrorism, he said, “I think it’s awful — I think it’s a secondary question whether Israel’s gone too far.”
Biden said his “only criticism of the Israelis is they’re not that great at public relations.” He compared Israel’s attacks on Gaza and Lebanon to the U.S. invasion and occupation of Afghanistan after the September 11 attacks.
“It’s a little bit like the same thing we had when we went into Afghanistan,” Biden said at a press conference in July 2006. “We went into Afghanistan, remember, we took out a wedding party by accident? Remember, we took out — with these very sophisticated missiles we had, we accidentally killed some citizens? Was ever a war more justified than us going into Afghanistan? I can’t think of any war since World War II more justified. Yet innocents got killed in us trying to protect America’s interests.”
By August 2006, more than 1,000 people were killed in Israel’s war against Lebanon, and UNICEF estimated that 30 percent of the casualties were children.
During his time as vice president, Biden often played the role of placating his friend Netanyahu who famously loathed President Barack Obama. During those eight years, Obama largely maintained long-standing U.S. posture of showering Israel with weapons and other aid despite repeated political spats with Netanyahu, most prominently over Iran and Israeli settlements. During numerous episodes when Israel unleashed gratuitous violence, drawing international condemnation, Biden served as Israel’s most prominent American defender.
In the early summer of 2010, a group of mostly Turkish activists attempted to deliver a flotilla of humanitarian aid to the besieged Gaza Strip. The attempt was interdicted by the Israeli military, which launched a raid on one ship that resulted in the deaths of nine people, including one American citizen. The raid triggered an international outcry and led to a diplomatic crisis between Israel and Turkey, while drawing further attention to the civilian impact of the ongoing Israeli siege of Gaza.
Biden took the lead in defending the raid to the U.S. public. In an interview with PBS, he described the raid as “legitimate” and argued that the flotilla organizers could have disembarked elsewhere before transferring the aid to Gaza.
“So what’s the big deal here? What’s the big deal of insisting it go straight to Gaza?” Biden asked about the humanitarian mission. “Well, it’s legitimate for Israel to say, ‘I don’t know what’s on that ship. These guys are dropping eight — 3,000 rockets on my people.’”
No weapons were ever found on the ship, only humanitarian supplies. Amid the fury that the raid generated and the muted response from Obama, Biden’s remarks were welcomed by AIPAC spokesperson Josh Block, who said at the time,
“We appreciate the many strong statements of support for Israel from members of Congress and the vice president today.”
After the 2014 Gaza war — a seven-week Israeli ground invasion that killed more than 2,000 Palestinians (two-thirds of them civilians) and caused widespread displacement and destruction of civilian infrastructure — Biden boasted of how the Obama administration had “steadfastly stood before the world and defended Israel’s right to defend itself,” declaring,
“We have an obligation to match the steel and the spine of the people of Israel with an ironclad, nonnegotiable commitment to Israel’s physical security.”
In May 2021, a few months into Biden’s presidency, Israel intensified its ethnic-cleansing campaign against Palestinians in East Jerusalem, forcibly evicting people from their homes to hand them over to Israeli settlers. The incendiary situation was then exacerbated during a Ramadan siege by Israeli forces at one of the holiest sites in Islam, Al Aqsa mosque in Jerusalem. In response, Hamas began launching rockets into Israel. Netanyahu retaliated by ordering a massive 11-day bombing campaign against Gaza, striking residential buildings, media outlets, hospitals, and a refugee camp.
As the civilian death toll among Palestinians began to rise, Ned Price, the State Department spokesperson, characterized the operation as Israel exercising its right to self-defense. When he was then asked whether the principle of self-defense also applied to Palestinians, he struggled to answer before saying,
“Broadly speaking, we believe in the concept of self-defense. We believe it applies to any state.”
When Matt Lee of The Associated Press pointed out that Palestinians do not have a state, Price said,
“I’m not in a position to debate the legalities from up here.”
More than 250 Palestinians died during Israel’s siege, including dozens of children. More than 70,000 Palestinians were displaced. Throughout the bombing, the U.S. staunchly defended Israel’s disproportionate attacks, with Biden declaring on May 16, “there has not been a significant overreaction” from Israel before pivoting to condemn Hamas’s firing of rockets into civilian areas of Israel.
Following Hamas’s horrifying attacks on October 7, Biden and his administration have defended Israel’s mass bombardment of Gaza, and U.S. weapons shipments have been accelerated. Biden called his proposal for additional military support an “unprecedented commitment to Israel’s security that will sharpen Israel’s qualitative military edge,” saying, “We’re going to make sure other hostile actors in the region know that Israel is stronger than ever.”
This crisis has undoubtedly solidified Biden’s legacy as one of the premiere American defenders of Israel’s crimes, including disproportionate attacks against an overwhelmingly defenseless civilian population, in the history of U.S. politics.
In an alternate reality — one where the rule of law is applied equally to all states — Israeli leaders would likely face war crimes charges for the razing of Gaza. Leading genocide scholars and international law experts have cited the statements of Israeli officials about the aims of their operations in Gaza as potential evidence of “genocidal intent.” A coalition of international lawyers representing Palestinian rights groups has already petitioned the International Criminal Court to open a criminal inquiry and issue arrest warrants for Netanyahu and other officials.
Such attempts at accountability should not focus solely on Israeli leaders, according to some U.S. constitutional law organizations. The U.S. is Israel’s premiere bankroller and arms dealer, not to mention its political defender. There are several U.S. laws and treaties that prohibit support for, and failure to prevent, genocidal activities. Among these is the Genocide Convention Implementation Act, signed into law in 1988. Its sponsor? A senator named Joe Biden.
On Monday, the Center for Constitutional Rights filed a federal lawsuit on behalf of Palestinians in Gaza seeking to block the Biden administration from providing further military aid to Israel. The suit names Biden, Blinken, and Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin.
“They have continued to provide both military and political support for Israel’s unfolding genocidal campaign while imposing no red lines,” said Katherine Gallagher, one of the lawyers who filed the case. “The United States has a clear and binding obligation to prevent, not further, genocide. They have failed in meeting their legal and moral duty to use their considerable power to end this horror. They must do so.”
It is unfathomable, given the current world order, that any meaningful legal accountability will be served on U.S. or Israeli leaders. But on a moral level, it is important to remember these legal efforts to confront the slaughter and the complicity of Biden and other Western leaders. The U.S.-enabled horrors of the past five weeks should remain a bloody, permanent stain on the fabric of Biden’s political career and legacy. Among the U.S. political elite, it will simply be noted as Biden doing his job.
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November 16th, 2023 by If Americans Knew
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Palestinian death toll: 11,025[1] (10,829 in Gaza[2] (including at least 4,506 children and 3,027 women), and at least 196 in the West Bank).
Palestinian injuries: 30,076[2] (including at least 27,490 in Gaza[2] and 2,625 in the West Bank).
It remains unknown how many Americans are among the casualties. About 1.6 million people have been displaced; 3,500 are missing (1,740 children) and presumed to be under rubble.
Israel has now killed more Palestinians in a little over a month than in all the previous 22 years combined.
Reported Israeli death toll has been reduced to ~1,200[3] (The Israeli spokesman said the original figure of deaths on March 7 was an “initial estimate” – 3 killed in West Bank, 49 in Gaza), including 32 Americans, and ~5,400 injured). The names of the 1,162 identified (33 of them children) are here.
At least 21,927 Palestinians and 2,597 Israelis have been killed by someone from the other side since 2000.
Humanitarian update: A total of 115 trucks with humanitarian aid items crossed into Gaza on 13 November as of 18:00 hrs. This brings the number of trucks that have entered Gaza since 21 October to 1,096. Prior to the start of hostilities, an average of 500 truckloads entered Gaza every working day.
According to UNRWA, humanitarian operations at Rafah crossing are expected to cease by 14 November, due to the depletion of fuel to operate trucks and machinery to take supplies from the border and unload them in Gaza; if no additional fuel comes in, other supplies will not come in either.
Israeli authorities continue to ban the entry of fuel, which is desperately needed to operate electricity generators to run life-saving equipment.
People sheltering in tents at UN schools in Rafah, south Gaza, are now facing a new problem as rains have brought heavy flooding. One man at a UN shelter called for urgent intervention saying that people are already suffering from a lack of food, water, electricity and other necessities. “If our children do not die from war, they will die from the cold of winter and hunger,” he said. (09:35 GMT)
People who can no longer get out of their homes and those who need ambulances for the wounded often wait in vain, due to the lack of fuel for ambulances and intense fighting near hospitals. (09:20 GMT)
Gaza hospitals update: All but one of the hospitals in Gaza city and northern Gaza are reportedly out of service, as of 13 November, due to the lack of power, medical consumables, oxygen, food and water, compounded by bombardments and fighting in their vicinities. Al Ahli Hospital, in Gaza city, which currently accommodates over 500 patients, is reportedly the sole medical facility able to receive patients, amid increasing shortages and challenges.
No room for “newborns injured by bombings”: NICU nurse Warda al-Awawda says there has been a rising influx of newborns requiring intensive care amid Israel’s ongoing bombardment of the enclave. “We have received cases of newborns injured by bombings…There are children who survived but lost both of their parents…We do not have water to wash milk bottles for newborns or premature babies. The beds are full. On one occasion we received eight cases and we placed them in six incubators.” (07:20 GMT)
Hospital rejects allegations of hostages in basement: Israel’s military released footage of al-Rantisi Children’s Hospital – which its forces entered over the weekend – showing weapons it said were found inside. Images included rooms in the basement where it alleged Palestinian fighters are holding hostages. The video showed what appeared to be a hastily installed toilet and ventilation system.
The health ministry in Gaza rejected the allegations, saying the basement shown was part of the hospital and had been turned into a shelter for war-displaced people. “The hospital was forcefully evacuated at gunpoint … Why didn’t they detain any of the alleged resistance fighters or alleged hostages?” a ministry statement said, denying the facility had anything to do with a tunnel Israeli forces uncovered nearby.
Ashraf al-Qudra, a spokesman for Gaza’s Health Ministry, said the hospital repeatedly invited international organizations to tour al-Shifa to confirm its neutrality but has not received a response.
No anesthesia: Gaza surgeon Fadel Naim says patients with injuries “up to the moderate level” are having to undergo surgery without anesthesia because of a lack of medical supplies. “[It’s] to preserve the remaining supply of anesthesia, which is on the verge of depletion at any moment, for major and critical surgeries. The pain experienced by the patients during the surgical interventions without anesthesia is beyond what humanity on this Earth can endure.”
Patient evacuation proposal: Palestinian authorities proposed a Red Cross-supervised evacuation of a hospital beset by fighting in Gaza on Tuesday, as health officials warned that the only way to save three dozen newborns trapped there would be to call a cease-fire and transport them out of the besieged territory.
The ministry said 40 patients, including three babies, have died since the hospital’s emergency generator ran out of fuel Saturday.
Hospital surrounded: After days of battles with Palestinian resistance fighters, Israeli forces have encircled Shifa Hospital, where hundreds of patients, medical staff and displaced people are trapped with dwindling supplies and without electricity to run incubators and other equipment.
The Red Cross tried Monday to evacuate some 6,000 people from another Gaza City hospital, Al-Quds, but said its convoy had to turn back because of shelling and fighting.
Update on Israeli military actions: Israel has carried out multiple airstrikes in southern Gaza, the so-called “safe zone” for people fleeing the north. There are reports of fatalities; the process of extracting the wounded from the rubble is slow, due to lack of fuel to run equipment. (09:25 GMT)
Drone attacks: A surgeon at al-Shifa Hospital in the Gaza Strip, Ghassan Abu Sitta, says more than 20 people have sought treatment for “chest and neck” gunshot wounds in firing from Israeli quadcopter drones. “This is a low-flying sniper drone. When it comes to killing, they are so innovative,” he said on X. (12:10 GMT)
Southern Gaza: An Israeli airstrike on Khan Younis in southern Gaza has left at least 13 dead. Southern Gaza was designated a “safe zone” by Israel. (06:45 GMT)
Bombing reconstruction HQ: The Qatari Ministry of Foreign Affairs has condemned the Israeli army’s bombing of the headquarters of the Qatar Committee for the Reconstruction of Gaza.
“Equivalent to 2 nuclear bombs”: According to the Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor, Israel has dropped more than 25,000 tonnes (27,500 tons) of explosives on the Gaza Strip since October 7 – equivalent to two nuclear bombs.
Israel’s use of internationally banned weapons in its attacks on the Gaza Strip has been documented, said Euro-Med Monitor, especially the use of cluster and phosphorus bombs, cause severe second- and third-degree burns.
The rights organization further stressed that Israel’s destructive and arbitrary attacks are in violation of international humanitarian law, and that killing civilians is considered a war crime in both international and non-international armed conflicts and may amount to a crime against humanity.
Human Rights Watch: Investigate Israel for war crimes: A new HRW report declares:
The Israeli military’s repeated, apparently unlawful attacks on medical facilities, personnel, and transport are further destroying the Gaza Strip’s healthcare system and should be investigated as war crimes…
The World Health Organization (WHO) has reported that at least 521 people, including 16 medical workers, have been killed in 137 “attacks on health care” in Gaza as of November 12. These attacks, alongside Israel’s decisions to cut off electricity and water and block humanitarian aid to Gaza, have severely impeded health care access…
“Israel’s repeated attacks damaging hospitals and harming healthcare workers, already hard hit by an unlawful blockade, have devastated Gaza’s healthcare infrastructure,” said A. Kayum Ahmed, special adviser on the right to health at Human Rights Watch.
West Bank news: Overnight in the Palestinian city of Tulkarem, Israeli special forces, snipers, bulldozers, and drones conducted a major raid in which at least 7 Palestinians were killed. (09:40 GMT)
Mass arrests continue across the West Bank, with at least 31 overnight – 2 of them children. To date, 2,570 people have been arrested since October 7. Israel’s detention campaigns have been accompanied by torture, intense beatings, threats and house vandalism, according to rights groups. (12:05 GMT)
20-year-old Muhammad Abd al-Majid al-Halayqa was shot and killed by Israeli forces near the town of Beit Ainun, located northeast of Hebron in the occupied West Bank after allegedly attempting to carry out a stabbing attack. (05:20 GMT) Israeli forces alleged that the young man had a knife. After shooting him multiple times, they left him bleeding on the ground and refused ambulances trying to reach him. The soldiers instead let him bleed to death on the ground. The alleged knife was never found.
Lebanon front: Washington is apparently concerned that Israel is trying to provoke Hezbollah in order to manufacture a pretext for a wider war in Lebanon in what has been described as a cynical move to embroil the US and the region in prolonged conflict. White House officials are said to be alarmed that Israeli strikes in Lebanon are aimed at goading Hezbollah into a response that justifies a full-scale Israeli assault.
Israel news: Israel’s military on Tuesday confirmed the death of a soldier held captive in Gaza after Hamas issued video of her alive followed by images of what the Palestinian faction said was her body after she was killed in an Israeli strike.
In the last 24 hours, two Israeli soldiers were reportedly killed in Gaza, bringing the total number of soldiers killed since the start of ground operations to 49, according to official Israeli sources.
The firing of rockets by Palestinian armed groups towards Israeli population centres has continued over the past 24 hours, with no reported fatalities. (Information on rocket attacks is here.) It appears that the last time a rocket killed an Israeli was October 7, as reported by Ha’aretz. Ten Israelis were killed – 4 of them Palestinian Israelis.
Ethnic cleansing recommended in Wall Street Journal: On Monday, lawmakers Danny Danon, former ambassador to the UN, and Ram Ben-Barak, former deputy director of the Mossad, published an op-ed piece in the Wall Street Journal in which they urged the “voluntary” immigration of Gazans to countries around the world:
The international community has a moral imperative—and an opportunity—to demonstrate compassion, help the people of Gaza move toward a more prosperous future and work together to achieve greater peace and stability in the Middle East…
We simply need a handful of the world’s nations to share the responsibility of hosting Gazan residents. Even if countries took in as few as 10,000 people each, it would help alleviate the crisis.
The authors went on to make baseless accusations against Hamas, and to criticize the UN for “doing nothing tangible to help Gaza’s residents,” but failed to acknowledge Israel’s refusal to allow humanitarian aid to enter the strip, or to stop the indiscriminate bombing of residential neighborhoods, infrastructure, UN facilities, hospitals, and other civilian sites.
Far-right minister Bezalel Smotrich wrote in a Facebook post,
I welcome the initiative of members of Knesset Ram Ben-Barak and Danny Danon on the voluntary immigration of Gaza Arabs to the countries of the world. This is the right humanitarian solution for the residents of Gaza and the entire region.
The reception of refugees by the countries of the world that really want their best interests, with the support and generous financial assistance of the international community, and within the state of Israel is the only solution that will bring to the end of the suffering and pain of Jews and Arabs alike.
Former executive director of Human Rights Watch Kenneth Roth views Israel’s efforts in Gaza as ethnic cleansing. Many other leading organizations and individuals agree. Ethnic cleansing is a war crime.
AL-JAZEERA: The number of Palestinians killed following Israeli raids that targeted two homes in Khan Yunis, south of the Gaza Strip, has risen to 13.
FOLLOW OUR LIVE BLOG: https://t.co/ZtDvnogDEa pic.twitter.com/x6OQads4Bk
— The Palestine Chronicle (@PalestineChron) November 14, 2023
🚨Continuous attacks by the IOF against our Staff in the field. Today in Tulkarm camp where an ambulance was surrounded, inspected, and a wounded person inside was detained. Infrastructure around the camp was also destroyed, making it difficult for ambulances to reach.… pic.twitter.com/Vum56HGe6y
— PRCS (@PalestineRCS) November 14, 2023
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Notes
[1] IAK does not yet include 471 Gazans killed in the Al Ahli hospital blast since the source of the projectile is being disputed; although much evidence points to Israel as the culprit, experts are still looking into the incident. Israel is blocking an international investigation.
[2] It is impossible to offer an accurate number of injuries in Gaza due to the ongoing bombardment and communication disruption. The Associated Press has reported ~32,000 in Gaza, while the UN number is somewhat lower. Our total for Gaza and the West Bank is based on the conservative figure.
[3] It is unknown at this time how many of the deaths and injuries in Israel may have been caused by Israeli soldiers; additionally, since Israel has a policy of universal conscription, it is unknown how many of those attending the outdoor rave a few miles from Gaza on stolen Palestinian land were Israeli soldiers.
November 16th, 2023 by Zero Hedge
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Yet another, bigger State Department dissent memo has emerged which slams President Biden’s handling of the Israel-Gaza crisis. The memo obtained by Axios is signed by 100 State Department and USAID employees and bluntly asserts that the United States is supporting Israeli “war crimes”.
Axios notes that the memo was organized by a foreign affairs officer who has in the recent past made public statements saying Biden is “complicit in genocide” – given the soaring Palestinian death toll, now at over 11,200 Gazans killed since Oct.7.
The memo characterizes the Israeli aerial and ground assault as follows:
“all constitute war crimes and/or crimes against humanity under international law”–but says it’s made worse by the US doubling “down on our unwavering military assistance to the (Israeli government) without clear or actionable redlines.”
The scathing memo goes after Biden directly, saying he is “spreading misinformation” and in his unreserved support for Israel the president is “complicit in war crimes”. As for the “misinformation” charge, the memo takes the White House to task for recently “questioning the number of deaths” issued from Gaza’s Health Ministry.
A separate memo was reported last week by Politico which had similar criticisms, but this latest dissent memo is the most significant to date, given the numbers of officials involved.
As a potential solution to the crisis, the 100 State Dept/USAID personnel urge that the White House press for ceasefire. “We strongly recommend that the (U.S. government) advocate for the release of hostages by both Hamas and (Israel)” it says, while underscoring the “thousands” of Palestinians being held in Israel, and many detained “without charge.”
The memo also goes after Biden’s national security team on the NSC. “Members of the White House and (the National Security Council) displayed a clear disregard for the lives of Palestinians, a documented unwillingness to de-escalate, and, even prior to October 7, a reckless lack of strategic foresight,” it states.
Axios says of the context and how the memo came to originate:
Since the Vietnam War, the State Department has maintained a “dissent channel” to give diplomats — in distant embassies and in the department’s headquarters — a way to register their opposition to policies.
From 9/11 as a unit of measurement to Dresden. Not sure this is the comparison he was looking for here since the Dresden bombing is often viewed as a war crime. https://t.co/HfZhhHinKX
— Jack Murphy (@JackMurphyRGR) November 13, 2023
Separately at the start of the week CNN reported that American diplomats in the Middle East sent a cable, since leaked, to the White House warning that US full-throated support for Israel’s military campaign “is losing us Arab publics for a generation.”
Akin to the new dissent memo, the cable linked US policy to “material and moral culpability in what they consider to be possible war crimes.” It also said that as the Palestinian death toll mounts, “We are losing badly on the messaging battlespace.” The cable also said, “President Biden’s cruelty and disregard for Palestinians exceeded all previous US presidents.”
Meanwhile, the White House has remained unwavering it its request for Congress to approve $14 billion in additional security aid for Tel Aviv to support its operations in Gaza.
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Featured image: US Embassy in Jerusalem. Image: Israel Ministry of Foreign Affairs/ Flickr
November 16th, 2023 by Dr. Paul Craig Roberts
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***
Former British Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn “was undone” by being accused of antisemitism. Ask yourself why anyone should be ruined by such a meaningless accusation.
To be an anti-semite all you have to do is to make a criticism, no matter how small or how legitimate, of any Israeli policy. If your moral conscience is assaulted by, for example, Israel’s massacre of Palestinians in the open air concentration camp in which Israel keeps them pinned up, and you express your legitimate feelings against such inhumanity, you are an anti-semite. By definition, anyone with a moral conscience is an anti-semite.
This is something of which to be proud, so why does it ruin you?
Why did the US Congress censor the one member who spoke against, instead of in favor of, the massacre?
Why have the governments of France, Germany, and the UK banned as anti-semitic demonstrations against Israel’s ongoing genocide of Palestinians and theft of their country?
Why did US law firms and corporations collect the names of university students who protested against the slaughter and blacklist them from employment simply because they have a moral conscience?
Now ask yourself, how did Zionists achieve such power over the entirely of the Western world as to place Israel and Jews off limits for criticism no matter their behavior?
Of all the peoples of Earth, Israelis alone can do whatever they please and no one is allowed to say one word against it.
Why does every Western government submit to such humiliation?
Why do they consent to having their voice and their moral conscience silenced?
Why does the Western world cower in fear of being called anti-semite?
The Biden regime is so terrified of Israel that it will even sacrifice America’s reputation for Israel: see this.
The State Dept memo bluntly asserts that the United States is supporting Israeli “war crimes”.
Will 100 with a conscience be declared anti-semites and forced to resign?
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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.
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)
November 16th, 2023 by Mark Taliano
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***
What is happening in Gaza now is an example of longstanding Western military policy of murdering civilians.
October 7 was a largely manufactured pretext so the West and its allies/proxies could falsely proclaim righteousness, even as many of the casualties on October 7 were inflicted by the IDF itself.
The West has a long history of creating atrocity stories to falsely claim victimization. Western-supported terrorists, as an example, use chemical weapons as false flags, to falsely blame the Assad government. Western-supported terrorists target and slaughter civilians as policy in Syria. The death squads (ISIS, al Qaeda and affiliates) are all fully supported by Western governments and their agencies. (1)
Currently the West and its proxies illegally occupy resource-rich (sovereign Syrian) territory. This was all by design, not by chance.
The goal, per Prof. Chossudovsky, is not necessarily to win wars militarily, but to destroy countries and their peoples and to open up new territories for exploitation. Vietnam, explains Chossudovsky, won the Vietnam War militarily, but the country was subjugated nonetheless. (2)
Apartheid Israel, right now, with full support from the West, is mass-slaughtering mostly civilians in Gaza and the West Bank. Israel is committing genocide, and that is the goal. It is conquest cloaked beneath lies of victimization and self-defence.
None of these wars are isolated. Per the Project for a New American Century (PNAC) policy, multiple wars are being waged simultaneously. They are part of a long war against us all.
Iran is next.
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Mark Taliano is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG) and the author of Voices from Syria, Global Research Publishers, 2017. He writes on his website where this article was originally published.
Notes
(1) Jeremy Kuzmarov, “Mainstream Media Colludes with U.S. Government To Conceal Source of Syria’s Heartbreaking Humanitarian Crisis.’ 30 CovertAction Magazine, 30 June, 2023 (Mainstream Media Colludes with U.S. Government To Conceal Source of Syria’s Heartbreaking Humanitarian Crisis – CovertAction Magazine) Accessed 15 November, 2023.
(2) Prof. Michel Chossudovsky, “Imperial Conquest: America’s “Long War” against Humanity. Michel Chossudovsky.” Global Research, 15 November, 2023. (Imperial Conquest: America’s “Long War” against Humanity. Michel Chossudovsky – Global ResearchGlobal Research – Centre for Research on Globalization) Accessed 15 November, 2023.
The “globalization of war” is a hegemonic project. Major military and covert intelligence operations are being undertaken simultaneously in the Middle East, Eastern Europe, sub-Saharan Africa, Central Asia and the Far East. The U.S. military agenda combines both major theater operations as well as covert actions geared towards destabilizing sovereign states.
ISBN Number: 978-0-9879389-0-9
November 16th, 2023 by Mouin Rabbani
November 16th, 2023 by Ron Unz
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[This interview of Ron Unz by Mike Whitney was originally published in June this year.]
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“Much of the current political legitimacy of today’s American government and its various European vassal-states is founded upon a particular narrative history of World War II, and challenging that account might have dire political consequences.”—Ron Unz
Mike Whitney: Let’s start with Hitler. In the West it is universally accepted that:
Is this interpretation of WW2 true or false? And, if it is false, then—in your opinion—what was Hitler trying to achieve in Poland and could WW2 have been avoided?
Ron Unz: Until the last dozen years or so, my views on historical events had always been fairly conventional, formed from the classes I’d taken in college and the uniform media narrative I’d absorbed over the decades. This included my understanding of World War II, the greatest military conflict in human history, whose outcome had shaped our modern world.
But in the years after the 9/11 Attacks and the Iraq War, I’d grown more and more suspicious of the honesty of our mainstream media, and begun to recognize that history books often merely represent a congealed version of such past media distortions. The growth of the Internet has unleashed a vast quantity of unorthodox ideas of all possible flavors and since 2000 I’d been working on a project to digitize the archives of our leading publications of the last 150 years, which gave me convenient access to information not easily available to anyone else. So as I later wrote:
Aside from the evidence of our own senses, almost everything we know about the past or the news of today comes from bits of ink on paper or colored pixels on a screen, and fortunately over the last decade or two the growth of the Internet has vastly widened the range of information available to us in that latter category. Even if the overwhelming majority of the unorthodox claims provided by such non-traditional web-based sources is incorrect, at least there now exists the possibility of extracting vital nuggets of truth from vast mountains of falsehood. Certainly the events of the past dozen years have forced me to completely recalibrate my own reality-detection apparatus.
As a consequence of all these developments, I published my original American Pravda article a decade ago, which contained that passage. In that article I emphasized that what our history books and media told us about the world and its past might often be just as dishonest and distorted as the notorious Pravda of the vanished USSR.
Our American Pravda
By Ron Unz, The American Conservative, April 29, 2013, 4,500 Words
At first, my focus had been on more recent historical events, but I soon began doing a great deal of reading and investigation into the history of World War II as well, gradually realizing that a large fraction of everything I’d always accepted about that war was completely incorrect.
Perhaps I shouldn’t have been too surprised to discover this. After all, if our media could lie so blatantly about events in the here and now, why should we trust it on matters that had happened long ago and far away?
I eventually concluded that the true history of World War II was not only quite different from what most of us had always believed, but was largely inverted. Our mainstream history books had been telling the story upside-down and backwards.
With regard to Hitler and the outbreak of the war, I think an excellent starting point would be Origins of the Second World War, a classic work published in 1961 by renowned Oxford historian A.J.P. Taylor. As I described his conclusions in 2019:
Hitler’s final demand, that 95% German Danzig be returned to Germany just as its inhabitants desired, was an absolutely reasonable one, and only a dreadful diplomatic blunder by the British had led the Poles to refuse the request, thereby provoking the war. The widespread later claim that Hitler sought to conquer the world was totally absurd, and the German leader had actually made every effort to avoid war with Britain or France. Indeed, he was generally quite friendly towards the Poles and had been hoping to enlist Poland as a German ally against the menace of Stalin’s Soviet Union.
The recent 70th anniversary of the outbreak of the conflict that consumed so many tens of millions of lives naturally provoked numerous historical articles, and the resulting discussion led me to dig out my old copy of Taylor’s short volume, which I reread for the first time in nearly forty years. I found it just as masterful and persuasive as I had back in my college dorm room days, and the glowing cover-blurbs suggested some of the immediate acclaim the work had received. The Washington Post lauded the author as “Britain’s most prominent living historian,” World Politics called it “Powerfully argued, brilliantly written, and always persuasive,” The New Statesman, Britain leading leftist magazine, described it as “A masterpiece: lucid, compassionate, beautifully written,” and the august Times Literary Supplement characterized it as “simple, devastating, superlatively readable, and deeply disturbing.” As an international best-seller, it surely ranks as Taylor’s most famous work, and I can easily understand why it was still on my college required reading list nearly two decades after its original publication.
Yet in revisiting Taylor’s ground-breaking study, I made a remarkable discovery. Despite all the international sales and critical acclaim, the book’s findings soon aroused tremendous hostility in certain quarters. Taylor’s lectures at Oxford had been enormously popular for a quarter century, but as a direct result of the controversy “Britain’s most prominent living historian” was summarily purged from the faculty not long afterwards. At the beginning of his first chapter, Taylor had noted how strange he found it that more than twenty years after the start of the world’s most cataclysmic war no serious history had been produced carefully analyzing the outbreak.Perhaps the retaliation that he encountered led him to better understand part of that puzzle.
Numerous other leading scholars and journalists, both contemporaneous and more recent, have come to very similar conclusions, but they too often suffered severe retaliation for their honest historical assessments. For decades William Henry Chamberlin had been one of America’s most highly-regarded foreign policy journalists, but after he published America’s Second Crusade in 1950, he vanished from most mainstream publications. David Irving quite possibly ranks as the most internationally successful British historian of the last 100 years, with his seminal books on World War II receiving enormous critical praise and selling in the millions; but he was driven into personal bankruptcy and narrowly avoided spending the rest of his life in an Austrian prison.
Hitler Returning in Triumph to Berlin After Reunification with Austria
By the late 1930s Hitler had resurrected Germany, which had become newly prosperous under his rule, and he had also managed to reunite it with several separated German populations. As a result, he was widely recognized as one of the most successful and popular leaders in the world, and he hoped to finally settle the Polish border dispute, offering concessions far more generous than any of his democratically-elected Weimar predecessors had ever considered. But Poland’s dictatorship instead spent months rejecting his attempts at negotiations and also began brutal mistreatment of its German minority, finally forcing Hitler into declaring war. And as I discussed in 2019, provoking that war may have been the deliberate goal of certain powerful figures.
Perhaps the most obvious of these is the question of the true origins of the war, which laid waste to much of Europe, killed perhaps fifty or sixty million, and gave rise to the subsequent Cold War era in which Communist regimes controlled half of the entire Eurasian world-continent. Taylor, Irving, and numerous others have thoroughly debunked the ridiculous mythology that the cause lay in Hitler’s mad desire for world conquest, but if the German dictator clearly bore only minor responsibility, was there indeed any true culprit? Or did this massively-destructive world war come about in somewhat similar fashion to its predecessor, which our conventional histories treat as mostly due to a collection of blunders, misunderstandings, and thoughtless escalations?
During the 1930s, John T. Flynn was one of America’s most influential progressive journalists, and although he had begun as a strong supporter of Roosevelt and his New Deal, he gradually became a sharp critic, concluding that FDR’s various governmental schemes had failed to revive the American economy. Then in 1937 a new economic collapse spiked unemployment back to the same levels as when the president had first entered office, confirming Flynn in his harsh verdict. And as I wrote last year:
Indeed, Flynn alleges that by late 1937, FDR had turned towards an aggressive foreign policy aimed at involving the country in a major foreign war, primarily because he believed that this was the only route out of his desperate economic and political box, a stratagem not unknown among national leaders throughout history. In his January 5, 1938 New Republic column, he alerted his disbelieving readers to the looming prospect of a large naval military build-up and warfare on the horizon after a top Roosevelt adviser had privately boasted to him that a large bout of “military Keynesianism” and a major war would cure the country’s seemingly insurmountable economic problems. At that time, war with Japan, possibly over Latin American interests, seemed the intended goal, but developing events in Europe soon persuaded FDR that fomenting a general war against Germany was the best course of action. Memoirs and other historical documents obtained by later researchers seem to generally support Flynn’s accusations by indicating that Roosevelt ordered his diplomats to exert enormous pressure upon both the British and Polish governments to avoid any negotiated settlement with Germany, thereby leading to the outbreak of World War II in 1939.
The last point is an important one since the confidential opinions of those closest to important historical events should be accorded considerable evidentiary weight. In a recent article John Wear mustered the numerous contemporaneous assessments that implicated FDR as a pivotal figure in orchestrating the world war by his constant pressure upon the British political leadership, a policy that he privately even admitted could mean his impeachment if revealed. Among other testimony, we have the statements of the Polish and British ambassadors to Washington and the American ambassador to London, who also passed along the concurring opinion of Prime Minister Chamberlain himself. Indeed, the German capture and publication of secret Polish diplomatic documents in 1939 had already revealed much of this information, and William Henry Chamberlin confirmed their authenticity in his 1950 book. But since the mainstream media never reported any of this information, these facts remain little known even today.
I discussed these historical events at great length in my 2019 article.
American Pravda: Understanding World War II
By Ron Unz, The Unz Review, September 23, 2019, 20,500 Words
Mike Whitney: Germany launched the “Blitz” on England in order to terrorize the British people into submission. Do you agree with this or were there other factors involved which have been omitted in western history textbooks? (Like Churchill’s bombing of Berlin?)
Ron Unz: Once again, this standard account of World War II is largely the opposite of the truth. In that era, the aerial bombardment of urban centers far behind military lines was illegal and considered a war crime, with Hitler having absolutely no intention of attacking Britain’s cities in that way.
Indeed, the German leader had always favorable views toward Britain and also believed that the preservation of the British Empire was in Germany’s strategic interest since its collapse would create a geopolitical vacuum that might be filled by a rival power.
After Germany attacked Poland, Britain and France declared war. The Polish army was defeated in just a few weeks, and Hitler then offered to withdraw his forces from the Polish territories they had occupied and make peace, but the two Western powers vowed to continue the war until Germany was crushed. Little fighting occurred until spring of 1940 when the Germans finally attacked and defeated the huge French army, seizing Paris and knocking France out of the war.
The British forces were evacuated at Dunkirk and there’s quite a lot of evidence that Hitler deliberately allowed them to escape as a face-saving gesture rather than ordering them captured. He followed his victory in France by offering extremely generous terms to the British government, making no demands against them and instead proposing a German alliance, including military support for protecting the security of their worldwide empire. Hitler naturally believed that they would accept such an attractive offer and end the war, which he assumed was essentially over.
Several of the top British leaders seemed eager to make peace on Hitler’s generous terms, and according to the evidence found by renowned British historian David Irving, Prime Minister Winston Churchill himself seemed willing to do so before changing his mind and pulling back. Churchill had spent decades seeking to become Prime Minister, and Irving plausibly argues he realized that losing a disastrous war within weeks of finally achieving that position would have rendered him a laughingstock in the history books.
But given Britain’s military defeat on the Continent and the very generous terms Hitler was offering, Churchill faced a huge problem in persuading his country to continue a war that was widely regarded as lost. Therefore, he began ordering a series of bombing raids against the German capital, an illegal war crime, hoping to provoke a German response. This led Hitler to repeatedly warn that if they continued bombing his cities, he would be forced to retaliate in kind, and he finally did so. Since the British public was unaware that their own government had initiated the campaign of urban bombing, they regarded those retaliatory German aerial attacks as monstrous, unprovoked war crimes, and just as Churchill had hoped, they became fully committed to continuing the war against Germany.
Irving and others explain all these important facts in their books, and a riveting Irving lecture summarizing his information is still available on Bitchute after having been purged from Youtube.
Irving is a crucial source for much important information on the war and in 2018 I explained why the results of a high-profile lawsuit against Deborah Lipstadt had demonstrated that his historical research was extremely reliable:
These zealous ethnic-activists began a coordinated campaign to pressure Irving’s prestigious publishers into dropping his books, while also disrupting his frequent international speaking tours and even lobbying countries to bar him from entry. They maintained a drumbeat of media vilification, continually blackening his name and his research skills, even going so far as to denounce him as a “Nazi” and a “Hitler-lover,” just as had similarly been done in the case of Prof. Wilson.
That legal battle was certainly a David-and-Goliath affair, with wealthy Jewish movie producers and corporate executives providing a huge war-chest of $13 million to Lipstadt’s side, allowing her to fund a veritable army of 40 researchers and legal experts, captained by one of Britain’s most successful Jewish divorce lawyers. By contrast, Irving, being an impecunious historian, was forced to defend himself without benefit of legal counsel.
In real life unlike in fable, the Goliaths of this world are almost invariably triumphant, and this case was no exception, with Irving being driven into personal bankruptcy, resulting in the loss of his fine central London home. But seen from the longer perspective of history, I think the victory of his tormentors was a remarkably Pyrrhic one.
Although the target of their unleashed hatred was Irving’s alleged “Holocaust denial,” as near as I can tell, that particular topic was almost entirely absent from all of Irving’s dozens of books, and exactly that very silence was what had provoked their spittle-flecked outrage. Therefore, lacking such a clear target, their lavishly-funded corps of researchers and fact-checkers instead spent a year or more apparently performing a line-by-line and footnote-by-footnote review of everything Irving had ever published, seeking to locate every single historical error that could possibly cast him in a bad professional light. With almost limitless money and manpower, they even utilized the process of legal discovery to subpoena and read the thousands of pages in his bound personal diaries and correspondence, thereby hoping to find some evidence of his “wicked thoughts.” Denial, a 2016 Hollywood film co-written by Lipstadt, may provide a reasonable outline of the sequence of events as seen from her perspective.
Yet despite such massive financial and human resources, they apparently came up almost entirely empty, at least if Lipstadt’s triumphalist 2005 book History on Trial may be credited. Across four decades of research and writing, which had produced numerous controversial historical claims of the most astonishing nature, they only managed to find a couple of dozen rather minor alleged errors of fact or interpretation, most of these ambiguous or disputed. And the worst they discovered after reading every page of the many linear meters of Irving’s personal diaries was that he had once composed a short “racially insensitive” ditty for his infant daughter, a trivial item which they naturally then trumpeted as proof that he was a “racist.” Thus, they seemingly admitted that Irving’s enormous corpus of historical texts was perhaps 99.9% accurate.
I think this silence of “the dog that didn’t bark” echoes with thunderclap volume. I’m not aware of any other academic scholar in the entire history of the world who has had all his decades of lifetime work subjected to such painstakingly exhaustive hostile scrutiny. And since Irving apparently passed that test with such flying colors, I think we can regard almost every astonishing claim in all of his books—as recapitulated in his videos—as absolutely accurate.
The Remarkable Historiography of David Irving
By Ron Unz, The Unz Review, June 4, 2018, 1,700 Words
Mike Whitney: In the 1940s, there was a purge of antiwar intellectuals and pundits similar to the purge of critics of US policy in social media today. Can you briefly explain what happened, who was targeted, and whether the first amendment should apply in times of national crisis?
Ron Unz: Around 2000, I began a project to digitize the archives of many of our leading publications of the last 150 years and I was astonished to discover that some of our most influential figures from the years prior to World War II had been “disappeared” so completely that I’d never heard of them. This played a major role in my growing suspicions that the standard narrative I’d always accepted was false, and I later described the situation using the analogy of the notorious historical lies of the old Soviet Union:
I sometimes imagined myself a little like an earnest young Soviet researcher of the 1970s who began digging into the musty files of long-forgotten Kremlin archives and made some stunning discoveries. Trotsky was apparently not the notorious Nazi spy and traitor portrayed in all the textbooks, but instead had been the right-hand man of the sainted Lenin himself during the glorious days of the great Bolshevik Revolution, and for some years afterward had remained in the topmost ranks of the Party elite. And who were these other figures—Zinoviev, Kamenev, Bukharin, Rykov—who also spent those early years at the very top of the Communist hierarchy? In history courses, they had barely rated a few mentions, as minor Capitalist agents who were quickly unmasked and paid for their treachery with their lives. How could the great Lenin, father of the Revolution, have been such an idiot to have surrounded himself almost exclusively with traitors and spies?
But unlike their Stalinist analogs from a couple of years earlier, the American victims who disappeared around 1940 were neither shot nor Gulaged, but merely excluded from the mainstream media that defines our reality, thereby being blotted out from our memory so that future generations gradually forgot that they had ever lived.
A leading example of such a “disappeared” American was journalist John T. Flynn, probably almost unknown today but whose stature had once been enormous. As I wrotelast year:
So imagine my surprise at discovering that throughout the 1930s he had been one of the single most influential liberal voices in American society, a writer on economics and politics whose status may have roughly approximated that of Paul Krugman, though with a strong muck-raking tinge. His weekly column in The New Republic allowed him to serve as a lodestar for America’s progressive elites, while his regular appearances in Colliers, an illustrated mass circulation weekly reaching many millions of Americans, provided him a platform comparable to that of an major television personality in the later heyday of network TV.
To some extent, Flynn’s prominence may be objectively quantified. A few years ago, I happened to mention his name to a well-read and committed liberal born in the 1930s, and she unsurprisingly drew a complete blank, but wondered if he might have been a little like Walter Lippmann, the very famous columnist of that era. When I checked, I saw that across the hundreds of periodicals in my archiving system, there were just 23 articles by Lippmann from the 1930s but fully 489 by Flynn.
An even stronger American parallel to Taylor was that of historian Harry Elmer Barnes, a figure almost unknown to me, but in his day an academic of great influence and stature:
Imagine my shock at later discovering that Barnes had actually been one of the most frequent early contributors to Foreign Affairs, serving as a primary book reviewer for that venerable publication from its 1922 founding onward, while his stature as one of America’s premier liberal academics was indicated by his scores of appearances in The Nation and The New Republic throughout that decade. Indeed, he is credited with having played a central role in “revising” the history of the First World War so as to remove the cartoonish picture of unspeakable German wickedness left behind as a legacy of the dishonest wartime propaganda produced by the opposing British and American governments. And his professional stature was demonstrated by his thirty-five or more books, many of them influential academic volumes, along with his numerous articles in The American Historical Review, Political Science Quarterly, and other leading journals.
A few years ago I happened to mention Barnes to an eminent American academic scholar whose general focus in political science and foreign policy was quite similar, and yet the name meant nothing. By the end of the 1930s, Barnes had become a leading critic of America’s proposed involvement in World War II, and was permanently “disappeared” as a consequence, barred from all mainstream media outlets, while a major newspaper chain was heavily pressured into abruptly terminating his long-running syndicated national column in May 1940.
Many of Barnes’ friends and allies fell in the same ideological purge, which he described in his own writings and which continued after the end of the war:
Over a dozen years after his disappearance from our national media, Barnes managed to publish Perpetual War for Perpetual Peace, a lengthy collection of essays by scholars and other experts discussing the circumstances surrounding America’s entrance into World War II, and have it produced and distributed by a small printer in Idaho. His own contribution was a 30,000 word essay entitled “Revisionism and the Historical Blackout” and discussed the tremendous obstacles faced by the dissident thinkers of that period.
The book itself was dedicated to the memory of his friend, historian Charles A. Beard. Since the early years of the 20th century, Beard had ranked as an intellectual figure of the greatest stature and influence, co-founder of The New School in New York and serving terms as president of both The American Historical Association and The American Political Science Association. As a leading supporter of the New Deal economic policies, he was overwhelmingly lauded for his views.
Yet once he turned against Roosevelt’s bellicose foreign policy, publishers shut their doors to him, and only his personal friendship with the head of the Yale University Press allowed his critical 1948 volume President Roosevelt and the Coming of the War, 1941 to even appear in print. Beard’s stellar reputation seems to have begun a rapid decline from that point onward, so that by 1968 historian Richard Hofstadter could write: “Today Beard’s reputation stands like an imposing ruin in the landscape of American historiography. What was once the grandest house in the province is now a ravaged survival”. Indeed, Beard’s once-dominant “economic interpretation of history” might these days almost be dismissed as promoting “dangerous conspiracy theories,” and I suspect few non-historians have even heard of him.
Another major contributor to the Barnes volume was William Henry Chamberlin, who for decades had been ranked among America’s leading foreign policy journalists, with more than 15 books to his credit, most of them widely and favorably reviewed. Yet America’s Second Crusade, his critical 1950 analysis of America’s entry into World War II, failed to find a mainstream publisher, and when it did appear was widely ignored by reviewers. Prior to its publication, his byline had regularly run in our most influential national magazines such as The Atlantic Monthly and Harpers. But afterward, his writing was almost entirely confined to small circulation newsletters and periodicals, appealing to narrow conservative or libertarian audiences.
In these days of the Internet, anyone can easily establish a website to publish his views, thus making them immediately available to everyone in the world. Social media outlets such as Facebook and Twitter can bring interesting or controversial material to the attention of millions with just a couple of mouse-clicks, completely bypassing the need for the support of establishmentarian intermediaries. It is easy for us to forget just how extremely challenging the dissemination of dissenting ideas remained back in the days of print, paper, and ink, and recognize that an individual purged from his regular outlet might require many years to regain any significant foothold for the distribution of his work.
I’d written those last words in June 2018 and ironically enough, sweeping social media purges and shadow-banning soon engulfed many present-day dissenters, greatly reducing their ability to distribute their ideas.
American Pravda: Our Great Purge of the 1940s
By Ron Unz, The Unz Review, June 11, 2018, 5,500 Words
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A theoretical physicist by training, Mr. Unz serves as founder and chairman of UNZ.org, a content-archiving website providing free access to many hundreds of thousands of articles from prominent periodicals of the last hundred and fifty years. From 2007 to 2013, he also served as publisher of The American Conservative, a small opinion magazine, and had previously served as chairman of Wall Street Analytics, Inc., a financial services software company which he founded in New York City in 1987. He holds undergraduate and graduate degrees from Harvard University, Cambridge University, and Stanford University, and is a past first-place winner in the Intel/Westinghouse Science Talent Search. He was born in Los Angeles in 1961.
Michael Whitney is a renowned geopolitical and social analyst based in Washington State. He initiated his career as an independent citizen-journalist in 2002 with a commitment to honest journalism, social justice and World peace. He is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG).
November 16th, 2023 by Global Research News
Video: Why Does the US Support Israel? Michael Hudson and Ben Norton
By , November 15, 2023
In this video today, I’m going to be explaining the geopolitical and economic reasons why Israel is such an important part of U.S. foreign policy and Washington’s attempt to dominate not only the region of the Middle East, but really the entire world.
Netanyahu: Israel Will Govern Gaza. Manlio Dinucci
By , November 13, 2023
Netanyahu openly announced their plan: to take over Gaza by transforming it from Palestinian territory into Israeli territory. This is confirmed by the fact that the Israeli armed forces are not only massacring the Palestinian population but are making Gaza no longer inhabitable by Palestinians: in the northern part of the Strip they have already destroyed over 30% of all buildings.
The Politics of Indefinite Detention in Australia
By , November 16, 2023
The High Court of Australia is not known for its zealotry in protecting human rights, and certainly not when considering the persuasive pull of international law and conventions. The Australian Parliament is usually given a generous hand in making policies that tend to outrage such conventions, a freedom made that much easier by an absence of any bill of rights.
We the Exploited: The U.S. Government Buys and Sells Its Citizens for Profit and Power
By , November 15, 2023
Americans have become easy prey for hackers, scammers, snitches, spies, and con artists. But don’t be fooled into thinking the government is protecting you. To the contrary, the U.S. government is selling us (or rather, our data) to the highest bidders.
By , November 15, 2023
Next Pandemic (“Disease X”) is coming very soon (my guess, within a few months). It will be blamed on “Climate Change”, causing a jump from animals to humans. The media is conditioning the public to expect something “exotic”, hence the stories of “vampire virus”, “new viruses discovered”, “Disease X” and so on.
Pakistan’s Expulsion of Afghans Could Fuel New Refugee Crisis in Europe
By , November 15, 2023
Pakistan’s caretaker Interior Minister Sarfraz Bugti ordered on October 4 for “illegal immigrants” to vacate the country by the end of the month, a move which threatens to spark another migration crisis in Europe. Although Europe is focused on dealing with refugees from Ukraine and Palestine, it is naïve to the looming refugee crisis that Pakistan can cause if it goes ahead with the mass deportations of Afghans, many of whom fled Taliban rule.
Is the Zionist Project Over? Applied Zionism Demonstrates Its Radical Extremism
By , November 15, 2023
What a bitter irony that the Israeli aggressor has so flagrantly leaped over the line to enter and defile its own “Never Again” precaution. Former UK MP, George Galloway, understands the exact implications of this defilement. On 12 November he described as a Holocaust the obscenity of the spectacle of mass murder underway in Gaza.
By , November 15, 2023
The diplomatic community was shocked when US Secretary of State, Antony Blinken, claimed alongside Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu, “…I come as a Jew.” This broke diplomatic rules and norms which prohibit interjecting yourself, and your personal culture, while representing a nation and its interests.
Is the Financial Theft of the Ukraine War Over? “Corruption May be a Primary Driver of this War”
By , November 15, 2023
For years, Ukraine was recognized as one of the most, if not “the” most, corrupt nation in Europe. It held on to that reputation all the way up to the day Russia invaded in late February 2022, at which point media worldwide suddenly started rewriting history.
By , November 15, 2023
One of the entities receiving funding for development of the spy clothing is the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), whose faculty has also been involved in the creation of insect-sized drones, and a body-armor suit giving soldiers powers straight out of a Marvel comic.
November 16th, 2023 by Dr. Binoy Kampmark
November 16th, 2023 by Dr. Joseph Mercola
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Mean sperm counts in men around the world have dropped by 51.6% over the past 50 years. Total sperm counts (TSC) are down by 62.3%, and the decline is accelerating
An environmental factor that might play a significant role in this trend is electromagnetic field (EMF) exposures from wireless technologies, also referred to as electromagnetic radiation (EMR) or radiofrequency EMF (RF-EMF)
Recent research found that men who used their cellphones more than 20 times a day had significantly lower sperm concentrations and total sperm counts (TSC) than those who only used them once a week or less, placing them at a 30% increased risk for having sperm concentration below the reference value for fertile men, and a 21% increased risk for having TSC below the fertile range
Previous studies have linked EMR from cellphones to an 8.1% reduction in sperm motility and a 9.1% reduction in sperm viability, as well as significantly higher rates of DNA fragmentation
Wi-Fi-equipped laptop computers have been linked to decreased sperm motility and an increase in sperm DNA fragmentation after just four hours of use
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According to a scientific review1 published in November 2022, mean sperm counts in men around the world have dropped by 51.6% over the past 50 years. Total sperm counts (TSC) are down by 62.3%, and the decline is accelerating. Proposed culprits include pollution, alcohol and drug use, stress, poor diet, sedentary lifestyle and chemical exposures.
Another environmental factor that might play a bigger role than people would like to imagine is electromagnetic field (EMF) exposures from wireless technologies, also referred to as electromagnetic radiation (EMR) or radiofrequency EMF (RF-EMF).
EMFs are such an underappreciated health hazard, I spent several years researching and writing the book, “EMF*D,” which may be one of the most comprehensive reviews of this pernicious environmental influence to date.
Several studies have found that EMFs have a deleterious effect on the reproductive systems of both men and women. Most recently, research2 published online November 1, 2023, found that men who used their cellphones more than 20 times a day had significantly lower sperm counts than those who only used them once a week or less.
As reported by the authors:3
“A total of 2,759 men answered the question concerning their mobile phone use, and 2,764 gave details on the position of their mobile phone when not in use. In the adjusted linear model, a higher frequency of mobile phone use (>20 times per day) was associated with a lower sperm concentration and a lower TSC [total sperm count].
In the adjusted logistic regression model, this translates to a 30% and 21% increased risk for sperm concentration and TSC to be below the World Health Organization reference values for fertile men, respectively …”
Previous studies have linked low-level electromagnetic radiation exposure from cellphones to an 8.1% reduction in sperm motility and a 9.1% reduction in sperm viability,4 as well as significantly higher rates of DNA fragmentation.5 Wi-Fi-equipped laptop computers have also been linked to decreased sperm motility and an increase in sperm DNA fragmentation after just four hours of use.6 A mini-review published in 2020 noted:7
“Presently, there is a rise in the use of mobile phones, laptops, and wireless internet technologies such as Wi-Fi and 5G routers/modems across the globe; these devices emit a considerable amount of electromagnetic radiation (EMR) which could interact with the male reproductive system either by thermal or nonthermal mechanisms.
The aim of this review was to examine the effects of mobile phone use on male fertility. Related studies that reported on the effects of EMR from mobile phones on male fertility from 2003 to 2020 were evaluated …
Based on the outcomes of both human and animal studies analyzed in this review, animal and human spermatozoa exposed to EMR emitted by mobile phones had reduced motility, structural anomalies, and increased oxidative stress due to overproduction of reactive oxygen species.
Scrotal hyperthermia and increased oxidative stress might be the key mechanisms through which EMR affects male fertility. However, these negative effects appear to be associated with the duration of mobile phone use.”
That mini-review also cites studies showing:8
Women also need to be mindful of their EMF/EMR exposure, especially during pregnancy, as studies have found prenatal exposure to power-frequency fields can nearly triple a pregnant woman’s risk of miscarriage.9 As noted by senior research scientist at Kaiser Permanente’s research division, Dr. De-Kun Li:10
“This study provides fresh evidence, directly from a human population, that magnetic field exposure in daily life could have adverse health impacts.”
According to Li, there are also at least six other studies, in addition to two of his own, showing this link.11,12,13,14,15
Martin Pall, Ph.D., a professor emeritus of biochemistry at Washington State University and a specialist in chronic fatigue syndrome, multiple chemical sensitivity and the effects of low-intensity microwave frequency EMFs on the human body, has identified and published several papers16,17,18,19describing the likely molecular mechanisms of how EMFs from cellphones and wireless technologies damage plants, animals and humans.
The process begins when low−frequency microwave radiation activates voltage-gated calcium channels (VGCCs)20 — channels in the outer membrane of your cells. Once activated, the VGCCs open up, allowing an abnormal influx of calcium ions into the cell.
This increased intracellular calcium and the accompanying increase in calcium signaling appears to be responsible for most of the damage that occurs.
The excess calcium activates nitric oxide that then reacts with superoxide to produce peroxynitrites — extremely potent oxidant stressors believed to be a root cause for many of today’s chronic diseases.21 Nitric oxide is the only molecule in your body produced at high enough concentrations to outcompete other molecules for superoxide and is a precursor for peroxynitrite.22
Inside your body, peroxynitrites modify tyrosine molecules in proteins to create a new substance, nitrotyrosine and nitration of structural protein.23 Changes from nitration are visible in human biopsy of atherosclerosis, myocardial ischemia, inflammatory bowel disease, amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, and septic lung disease.24
Significant oxidative stress from peroxynitrites may also result in single-strand breaks of DNA.25This pathway of oxidative destruction — triggered by low−frequency radiation emitted from mobile devices — may at least partially explain the unprecedented growth rate of chronic disease since 1990.26
Other mechanisms of effect have been complied and published in the European Journal of Oncology in collaboration with the International Commission for Electromagnetic Safety (ICEMS) and the Ramazzini Institute.27 Thousands of studies showing biological effects from low-intensity EMF were also summarized in the 2012 BioInitiative Report, demonstrating immune system effects, neurological effects, cognitive effects and much more.28
As suggested by the studies cited above, EMR-induced oxidative stress may also be part of the explanation for the dramatic rise in infertility among men. Figure 2 in the mini-review29 quoted from earlier illustrates how EMR from wireless devices increases ROS in Leydig cells, thereby inhibiting testosterone production.
It also increases ROS in Sertoli cells and seminiferous tubules, both of which have crucial roles in the creation of healthy sperm.30 The seminiferous tubules are the site of germination and maturation of sperm cells in the male testes.
The tubules are made up of Sertoli cells, which help transform germ cells into spermatozoa, in part via direct contact, and in part by controlling the environment within the seminiferous tubules.
Spermatogenesis — the development of sperm from germ cells — is regulated by testosterone’s action on the Sertoli cells. This is why low testosterone alone can adversely impact a man’s fertility. So, in summary, EMR can impair male fertility through three primary mechanisms: By inhibiting production of testosterone, and by damaging the Sertoli cells and seminiferous tubules through oxidative stress. The end result is reduced sperm count, motility and viability.
That male fertility would be imperiled by EMFs is also predicted by Pall’s theory. He proposed that the physical locations where VGCCs are the densest would be indicative of the diseases you might expect from chronic excessive exposure to EMFs.
As it turns out, the highest density of VGCCs are found in your nervous system, the pacemaker in your heart — and in male testes. As a result, EMFs are likely to contribute to neurological and neuropsychiatric problems, heart issues and male reproductive problems.
Indeed, studies dating back to the 1950s and ‘60s show the nervous system is the organ most sensitive to EMFs. Some of these studies show massive changes in the structure of neurons, including cell death and synaptic dysfunction.
When VGCCs are activated in the brain they release neurotransmitters and neuroendocrine hormones. In animals exposed to EMFs there are massive, cumulative effects in the brain. Genetic polymorphism studies also show that elevated VGCC activity in certain parts of the brain produces a variety of neuropsychiatric effects. Hence, Pall predicted that chronic EMF exposure could result in anxiety, depression, autism, and Alzheimer’s disease.31
Pall also warned that unchecked proliferation of wireless technologies poses a significant threat to fertility. In a 2017 commentary on the health and safety of Wi-Fi, Pall wrote:32
“The FCC guidelines as are many other such guidelines, are based on the assumption that only heating effects of microwave/lower frequency EMFs can have biological effects. However, that assumption has been falsified by thousands of studies published from the 1950’s to the present, each showing that non-thermal levels of exposure often produce biological effects.
For example, in 1971, the U.S. Office of Naval Medical Research produced a document reporting over 100 different non-thermal effects … Changes affecting fertility including tubular degeneration in the testis, decreased spermatogenesis, altered sex ratio, altered menstrual activity, altered fetal development, programmed cell death (what is now known as apoptosis) and decreased lactation …
Wi-Fi exposures produce impact on the testis leading to lowered male fertility … We are, of course, seeing major lowering of sperm counts and sperm quality in many countries around the world; given the major impact of EMF exposures on sperm count and quality in human and in animal studies, the pattern of evidence is very worrying.”
This Sunday I will be speaking at the Everything Matters Event in Miami. It will be a very small event of only a few hundred people at the Sacred Space in Miami and we will be diving deep into the world of quantum healing and spiritual connection. For the first time ever I will be sharing my spiritual journey and my latest insights on how to optimize your health through bioidentical progesterone therapy that I just learned last week and am using myself to balance my hormones.
It is a rare opportunity to hear me speak as the next time I am scheduled to speak will be at Biohacking in June next year. You will also have an opportunity to have dinner with me on Sunday evening. And one of the biggest surprises is that the tickets for this event are 95% less expensive than Biohacking. The dinner and admission is only $200 next week and is $5000 at Biohacking. My guess is that tickets for the event will sell out today.
So come and see me speak live and have dinner with me next Sunday at the Everything Matters Event in Miami. You can enjoy the warm weather and sunshine with temperatures projected to be 82 for a high and 72 for a low in lovely south Florida. It will likely be the last opportunity to hear me speak before the next crisis hits. Hope to see you there.
If you are planning to have a baby, or are struggling with infertility, definitely look around and assess your EMF exposures. Chances are you’re bathing in wireless radiation 24/7, and if that’s the case, you need to do something about that if you want to optimize your odds of having a baby, let alone a healthy one. Below are several suggestions that will help reduce your EMF exposure.
You can also find guidance and solutions for mitigating electric and magnetic fields at the end of “Healthy Wiring Practices,”33 a document created by building biologist Oram Miller. In this document, he also details specific workarounds for various devices, including cellphones, MacBooks, Roku and Apple TV.
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Notes
1 Human Reproduction Update November 15, 2022; 29(2): 157-176
2 Fertility and Sterility November 1, 2023 Epub ahead of print
3 Fertility and Sterility November 1, 2023 Epub ahead of print, Results
4 Environ Int. 2014 Sep; 70C:106-112
5 Central European Journal of Urology 2014; 67(1): 65–71
6 Fertility and Sterility January 2012; 97(1): 39-45.e2
7 Journal of Human Reproductive Sciences July-September 2020; 13(3): 174-183
9 Scientific Reports 2017; 7 Article number 17541
10 Microwave News December 18, 2017
11 American Journal of Epidemiology 1992 Nov 1;136(9):1041-51
12 Bioelectromagnetics 1993;14(3):229-36
14 Journal of Environmental Health Science and Engineering 2015; 13: 34
15 Chinese Journal of Integrative Medicine May 2017; 23(5): 345-349
16 Rev Environ Health. 2015;30(2):99-116
17 International Journal of Innovative Research in Engineering and Management, September 2015; 2(5)
18 J Cell Mol Med. 2013 Aug;17(8):958-65
19 Current Chemical Biology 2016; 10(1): 74-82
20, 25 Journal of Cellular and Molecular Medicine 2013; 17(8):958
21, 26 The Root Cause in the Dramatic Rise of Chronic Disease, May 2016
22, 23, 24 American Journal of Physiology 1996; 1(5): 1494
27 ElectromagneticHealth.org ECEMS Monograph, Parts 1 and 2
28 The Bioinitiative Report 2012
29 Journal of Human Reproductive Sciences July-September 2020; 13(3): 174-183, Figure 2
30 Semin Cell Dev Biol August 1998; 9(4):411-6
31 Journal of Chemical Neuroanatomy 2016 Sep;75(Pt B):43-51
32 Wi-Fi as a Very Substantial Threat to Human Health
33 Createhealthyhomes.com, Healthy Wiring Practices (PDF)
34 Amazon.com Mission Darkness Faraday Bag for Phones
35 The Global Healing Center November 13, 2014
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