Crooked Bough News Round-up

— WHO Chief, TPLF Leader Tedros Silent About His Party’s Theft of World Food Program Fuel

 

at 9/3/22 2:14pm

UN World Health Organization chief Dr. Tedros Adhanom is also the world’s most prominent advocate of the Tigrayan People’s Liberation Front. He has said nothing about the TPLF’s recent theft of fuel intended for UN relief efforts in Ethiopia. By Ann GARRISON On the morning of August 24th, fighting in Ethiopia’s Amhara Region shattered a ceasefire in a nearly two-year war between the Ethiopian government and the Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF). Then, in the late afternoon of August 24th, UN World Food Program (WFP) Chief David Beasley tweeted shocking news: Hours ago, Tigrayan authorities stole 570,000 liters of fuel for @WFP operations in #Tigray! Millions will starve if we do not have fuel to deliver food. This is OUTRAGEOUS and DISGRACEFUL. We demand return of this fuel NOW. — David Beasley (@WFPChief) August 24, 2022 Stéphane Dujarric, Spokesperson for United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres, had included more detail in his August 24, 2022 briefing. According to Dujarric, after the TPLF broke into World Food Programme facilities, it overwhelmed UN staffers and stole 12 fuel tanker trucks: “I was asked what the impact of the renewed fighting was having. This morning, on August 24th, a World Food Programme warehouse in Mek’ele was forcibly entered by Tigrayan forces who took 12 fuel trucks/tankers with 570,000 liters of fuel. The team on the ground unsuccessfully tried to prevent this looting.   These stocks of fuel were to be used solely for humanitarian purposes, with the distribution of food, fertilizer, and other emergency relief items. This loss of fuel will impact humanitarian operations in supporting communities in all of Northern Ethiopia. We condemn any looting or confiscation of humanitarian goods or humanitarian premises, and we call on all parties to uphold their obligations under international humanitarian law and to respect humanitarian personnel, activities, assets, and goods.” The TPLF, who control Tigray regional state, have always claimed to represent the people of Tigray, who are no doubt suffering as a consequence of the war. But the faction’s brazen heist of fuel needed for humanitarian relief operations makes it difficult to believe it actually cares about the conflict’s human toll. US Special Envoy to the Horn of Africa Mike Hammer and EU Special Envoy to the Horn of Africa Annette Weber went to Tigray to talk and snap a selfie with TPLF leaders Debretsion Gebremichael and Getachaw Reda. This was several weeks before the resumption of the Ethiopian civil war and the TPLF fuel heist. As Tedros’ party steals from UN’s largest humanitarian agency, he looks the other way One hour after Dujarric’s August 24 briefing, UN World Health Organization Secretary-General Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus was busy tweeting about a conference in Togo. By early afternoon on August 25th, Tedros had returned to do more of the same before moving on to tweeting about Ebola vaccinations in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Yet Tedros – who also happens to have been a leader of the TPLF and the faction’s prominent advocate – had absolutely nothing to say about his political party’s theft of 600,000 liters of fuel from the UN’s most important humanitarian agency. One week later, many of Tedros’s 1.8 million Twitter followers are still waiting for the WHO chief’s response to the TPLF fuel heist. As The Grayzone revealed, UN staffers have previously accused Tedros of flagrantly violating UN code to further the objectives of his political allies in Ethiopia’s conflict. Tedros tweeted his anguish about Tigray the day before the civil war resumed and the TPLF stole 570,000 liters of fuel meant for delivering humanitarian relief Tedros uses his UN post to lobby for his TPLF party Tedros served as the TPLF’s Health Minister from October 2005 to November 2012, and its Foreign Minister from November 2012 to November 2016, while it held power in Ethiopia’s capital Addis Ababa. Eight months after leaving the foreign ministry, in July 2017, he was appointed as the World Health Organization’s Director General and thus, beginning in 2020, the manager of the global coronavirus pandemic. In 2018, a year after Tedros assumed his post at the WHO, a popular uprising ousted the TPLF from power, after which they retreated to Tigray. Ethiopia’s parliament then elected Abiy Ahmed as prime minister; he won a popular election two years later. In November 2020, in a seeming bid to return to power, the TPLF attacked fellow soldiers at Ethiopia’s Northern Command Base, initiating the ongoing civil war. Prime Minister Abiy immediately dispatched national troops to Tigray to stop the insurrection but withdrew them in July 2021. The TPLF then invaded Amhara and Afar regional states, until the Ethiopian national army and regional forces drove them back into Tigray and the Ethiopian government declared the humanitarian truce that ended on August 24th. Throughout this time, no one has been more vocal and visible than Tedros in accusing the Ethiopian government of deliberately fomenting a humanitarian crisis in Tigray, blockading food aid to Tigray, and even committing genocide in the region. He has never, however, acknowledged the pain and displacement that the TPLF has inflicted on Amharas and Afaris. Throughout April and May of this year, I traveled through Amhara and Afar regional states and saw thousands huddled in IDP camps, all in dire need of food, water, medicine, and sanitation. Around this time, the Internal Displacement Monitoring Center reported, “Conflict and violence triggered more than 5.1 million new displacements in Ethiopia in 2021, three times the number in 2020 and the highest annual figure ever recorded for a single country. The conflict in the northern region of Tigray deepened, spreading to neighboring regions and uprooting millions of people from their homes.” US humanitarian interventionists cry genocide, ignore TPLF human rights abuses Within hours of the unprovoked TPFL attack on Ethiopia’s national army in November 2020, the TPLF and its advocates took to Twitter to cry “Tigray genocide!” Meanwhile, the most vehement humanitarian interventionists in the US, from  USAID Chief Samantha Power to congress members Tom Malinowski, Brad Sherman, Ilhan Omar, and Gregory Meeks, to name a few, joined the calls to defend Tigray and destabilize the government in Addis Ababa. Malinowski’s bill, House Resolution 6600, which has yet to reach a vote on the House floor, demands the Ethiopian government’s total capitulation. “Sanctions will be lifted,” it says, “only after: (1) The Government of Ethiopia has ceased all offensive military operations associated with the civil war and other conflicts in Ethiopia.” The TPLF enjoyed wholehearted US support throughout its 27-year rule, from 1991 to 2018, in exchange for its compliance with the US agenda in Africa. As former CIA and State Department official Cameron Hudson commented to Foreign Policy, “This is a major strategic shift in the Horn of Africa, to go from an anchor state for US interests to become a potential adversary to US interests.” In 2015, shortly after the TPLF announced that it had won a thoroughly implausible 100% of the seats in Ethiopia’s parliament, Susan Rice and Barack Obama traveled to Addis Ababa to congratulate the party on its democratic achievements. How do the TPLF keep fighting? If Tigray is suffering such terrible deprivation, as the WHO’s Tedros, the TPLF, and their humanitarian interventionist allies insist, where do the TPLF find the resources to keep fighting? War is expensive. It requires the constant resupply of weapons, munitions, vehicles, food, emergency trauma care, and intelligence technology. We may have a partial answer to that question now that both WFP Chief David Beasley and the UN Secretary-General’s spokesperson Stéphane Dujarric report that the TPLF have broken into a WFP warehouse and stolen 12 fuel tankers containing 570,000 liters of fuel that is desperately needed for humanitarian relief operations. Hundreds of WFP aid convoy trucks have also disappeared into Tigray, though without a trace of official outrage. The TPLF’s  seizure of food aid and its use of food to force recruitment and otherwise exploit civilians has been widely reported by Tigrayan IDPs who have fled to the Amhara region, as well as by Tigrayan troops who were captured or who surrendered in Afar Region. Again, none of this malfeasance triggered protests at the very top of the UN hierarchy as the fuel heist has. Will WHO Chief Tedros call WFP Chief David Beasley to explain this heinous crime by his political faction? thegrayzone.com

[Category: Editor's Choice, Ethiopia, Globalism, UN, WHO]

— Is the Age of Big Bang Cosmology and ‘the Science of Scarcity’ Finally Coming to an End?

 

at 9/3/22 2:11pm

The two opposing cosmologies currently at odds with each other (open vs closed systems) strike on the very nature of life vs death, Matthew Ehret writes. It appears increasingly like our world is being shaped by ideas and intentions that have a pseudo-religious like commitment to limits and reducing human activity upon the earth. Whether it is in the halls of Davos, where big wig corporate magnates and powerful technocrats proclaim how important it is to cut back on food consumption, energy use and breathing or in such events as COP26 where these same elites promote decarbonization schemes that threaten to reduce not only carbon production through “global Green New Deals” but life itself, we find notions of “nature”, “equilibrium” and “limits to growth” shaping the contours of all permitted discussion of ecological, economic and political policy among those stuck within the trans-Atlantic “rules based order”. Where does this dismal “science of managing scarcity” come from? Certainly it has not always been this way. Previous generations created abundance through investments into large scale infrastructure and cutting-edge discoveries that not only improved the conditions of life of people and increased the industrial productive powers of nations but even increased the abundance of the biosphere itself as we find in such former desert zones of California which were turned into lush agricultural areas through projects like the New Deal and water projects of the 1960s. But we are told that those days are long gone, and anti-Malthusian leaders like FDR, Enrico Mattei, Charles de Gaulle and JFK have disappeared from the political landscape of western societies. In their stead, we find only synthetic political hacks, misanthropic technocrats and several generations of Malthusians who took over the helm of our ship of state in the early 1970s. This takeover was punctuated by such policy documents as Henry Kissinger’s NSSM-200 in 1974 which redefined U.S. foreign policy from the “old wisdom” of promoting infrastructure to poor nations, to the “new wisdom” of promoting population control. Kissinger’s close misanthropic associates who shared his commitment to stasis and control found themselves in positions of vast influence during this time, as witnessed by Kissinger’s student Klaus Schwab inaugurating the World Economic Forum in 1971, and Kissinger’s patron David Rockefeller co-founding the Trilateral Commission in 1973 where the paradigm of limits to growth was turned into a political religion. Large scale infrastructure investments seized up along with the crash science programs that had defined our earlier breakthroughs with NASA’s funding collapsing from 4.5% of GDP in 1966 to less that 1% in 1976 [see graph]. Fusion research similar shrivelled up as all research into next generation breakthroughs in science were handicapped throughout the 1970s resulting in the demoralized adage “fusion is always 30 years away” which become a cynical truism. With the Malthusian takeover of Trans-Atlantic governments, the world was slowly turned inside out and a former viable industrial economic system was turned into a post-industrial consumer cult whose growth was defined increasingly in purely speculative monetary terms devoid of any actual genuine metrics of value or GDP. And so now, we find ourselves trapped within a shrinking box of resources, and increased rates of scarcity across all fields that directly support life: energy, healthcare, agriculture. It isn’t that this scarcity is necessary. Even if next generation technological breakthroughs in all domains had not been sabotaged (they were), then even existing technologies and resources, IF organized and used justly, as the new multipolar alliance is doing, could eliminate hunger and want for the currently existent 7.7 billion souls on the earth with relative ease. However, we don’t want to be merely satisfied with solving the errors in thinking that have brought us into today’s absurd crisis of scarcity, but we want to ensure that such errors are never brough back in the future. As such, it were expedient to exit for the time being the realm of geopolitics and appreciate the more subtle scientific ideas shaping standard theory physics itself which in turn influence the thinking of both economic, ecological and political science in profound ways since all three “practical” domains derive their legitimacy from concepts of science that are in turn influenced by theories that extend into the largest domains of existence and the smallest domains of subatomic physics. NASA’s James Webb Telescope Threatens Big Bang Cosmology In June of this year, NASA’s James Webb telescope began its work scanning the cosmos with a high powered infra red lens providing a measure of clarity and definition to the images of both deep space and our surrounding environment within the solar system unlike anything ever seen before. However, with new deep penetrating images of the furthest reaches of the cosmos ever photographed, problems have begun to emerge which are threatening the entire edifice of the already fragile and self-contradictory ivory tower of Standard Model Cosmology. Images of deep space galaxies which should be few in number, and underdeveloped in form are turning out to be so old (according to the rules of current physics that interpret red shift as a measure of distance and velocity from a point of observation) that current calculations are determining must have existed long before the supposedly 13.77 billion year date which mainstream physicists have agreed the universe was “born” from nothing in the form of the big bang. Renowned physicist Eric Lerner (author of the 1992 best seller ‘The Big Bang Never Happened’) had this to say about the crisis and newly published scientific papers which acknowledge the crisis in physics: “Since that hypothesis [big bang theory] has been defended for decades as unquestionable truth by the vast majority of cosmological theorists, the new data is causing these theorists to panic. “Right now I find myself lying awake at three in the morning,” says Alison Kirkpatrick, an astronomer at the University of Kansas in Lawrence, “and wondering if everything I’ve done is wrong.” In this sequal to my previous article “Open System Thinking with Vladimir Vernadsky”, I would like to discuss additional evidence for the fallacies underlying Big Bang cosmology which will hopefully liberate our crisis-ridden world from certain poisonous dogmas that have kept the scientific community in a stagnant box for far too long, and have justified the outdated and closed-system pseudo-science of “limits to growth” and Malthusianism permeating the western world. This exercise will bring us into an appreciation of some major suppressed discoveries in embryology, life sciences and cosmology during the 19th and 20th centuries and will have us encounter certain scientists with names like Halton Arp, Alexander Gurwitsch, Hans Driesch and Fritz Popp. These names should be known far and wide due to the profound nature of their discoveries into the creative foundations of life, electromagnetism etc. However, due to the infantile period of oligarchism which humanity has struggled with in its still-early stages of life in the universe, these names have remained in obscurity. Who was Halton Arp? The recently deceased Halton Arp (1927-2013) remains one of the pioneers of modern astrophysics whose observational work during the 1960s formed the bedrock for much of today’s descriptive cosmology. In 1966, Arp published an incredible book called “The Atlas of Peculiar Galaxies” which catalogued hundreds of cases of anomalous observations which broke the chains of “standard theory cosmology” which was quickly shackling mainstream scientific research. For this work and the decades of advances on these insights, Arp was never forgiven by the scientific establishment and his work at the Carnegie Institute of Washington was ended along with his access to the telescopes needed to conduct his work, while his writings would no longer be published or peer reviewed, forcing him to eventually leave the U.S.A all together. Even though he recruited a loyal following of students and researchers internationally, his work which totally abolishes the foundations of Big Bang (and implicitly Heat Death) cosmology remains inaccessible for most students of physics and citizens alike. What Did Arp Discover? In his decades of fruitful work, Arp tackled the Achilles heal of big bang cosmology by demonstrating that quasars (the furthest and thus oldest objects visible from the earth), do not give off their extremely large red shifts due to the doppler effect which mainstream theorists wish to believe, but actually contain a form of “intrinsic redshift” indicative of their young age as “galactic seedlings” or embryos having only recently been born of more mature parent galaxies in their vicinities. These parent galaxies were found to exhibit redshifts of a much lower magnitude indicating their age and phase of evolution more than serving as any form of indication of the recession or speed from the point of observation as is commonly thought. Figure 1 A simple example of the Doppler Effect as it expresses red or blue shifting observations The importance of maintaining adherence to the Doppler Effect interpretation of redshift (the phenomenon caused by degrees of shifting of spectroscopic data from electromagnetic signatures of various celestial bodies towards the red or towards the ultraviolet part of the spectrum) is due to the fact that linear extrapolations into the past using redshift permits scientists to determine “when” the universe began. In the case of quasars, their redshift is especially important since it’s extreme intensity implies a maximum distance from us putting them onto the supposed “edge” of the universe (beyond which a vast nothingness is assumed to exist). This assumed distance creates a certain “boundary condition” around which all other metrics of time, relationships and distances of all other visible objects are established. Imposing this bounded, finiteness onto a potentially unbounded, infinite universe has given big bang cosmologists the arrogance to assert in absolute terms that our universe is definitely 13.77 billion years old[1]. Before the universe exploded onto the scene in the form of the Big Bang from an infinitely dense and small singularity which contained all energy now in existence, these physicists insist that all that existed was an expanse of eternal nothingness and just as National Geographic reported in the opening quote, it will be this nothingness that we are destined to eventually return once more. Figure 2 The popular model of the universe now hegemonic across the scientific establishment. Everything “before” the light 13.77 billion years ago and “outside” the limited boundaries assumed to exist is essential an infinitely extended ocean of nothing. These big bang models have also established with certainty that in only 4.5 billion years the blue shifted Andromeda galaxy near the Milky Way’s Galaxy will smash into us[2] causing unimaginable destruction. In his work Arp catalogues hundreds of instances of galaxies who exhibit immensely different redshifts which would suggest incredible distances of hundreds or even thousands of light years of separation from one another and yet whom are consistently bounded by material filaments emitting electromagnetic energy from all across the spectrum. The three cases of the companion galaxies NGC7630 and its companion galaxy taken from x ray and radio wave filters showcases this phenomenon excellently. Each galaxy feature vastly different redshifts implying a separation of over hundreds of millions of light years, but they are undeniably connected by filaments of gas and energy making this interpretation impossible! Additionally we see two extremely redshifted quasars which would imply a distance of thousands of millions of light years more [see figure 4]. Figure 3 Seyfert galaxy NGC 7603 and its companion high redshift companion galaxy connected by a filament of x ray emitting gas Figure 4 Another filter taken of the same galactic anomaly features the redshifts of two young quasars (objects 2 and 3) whose immense redshifts should place them at the edge of the Big Bang universe and yet who obviously sit in between the two companion galaxies. During his years of research, Arp accumulated a vast array of quasars which tended to be found in the proximity of parent galaxies either within the filaments themselves connecting galaxies [as featured in images 3 and 4], or in the jet streams emitted by the polar axis of seyfert galaxies (ie: spiral) galaxies [image 5 and 6] Figure 5 Galaxy NGC 4258 with two optically active x ray emitting quasars found symmetrically within the conic zones surrounding the parent galaxy’s line of axis. Figure 6 Another example of the same common observation taken from the side view of another galaxy Keep in mind, most galaxies feature some form of jet streams visible in various parts of the electromagnetic spectrum which also creates vast problems for big bang cosmologists who wish to maintain that galaxies are held “together” by a combination of powerful black holes internally, and vast arrays of “dark matter” and “dark energy” pushing all stuff together. The case of Centaurus A Radio galaxy (featuring filters of other parts of the spectrum) is useful to showcase the point. The fact that vast emissions of new energy is being created by these jet streams including small quasars should not be seen as surprising. Figure 7 The Centaurus A radio galaxy These anomalies demonstrated several revolutionary truths: That high redshift quasars could not exist on the “edge of our universe” as mainstream scientists imply, but rather must exist in close proximity to the parent galaxy that birthed them That among the thousands of quasars documented, the expected continuous array of various redshifts one would expect to find in a universe governed by randomness were nowhere to be found. Rather only a handful of harmonically ordered frequencies moving from higher (younger) to lower (older) frequencies in a discrete manner[3]. This harmonic character implies an organized state of the universe which favors order over chaos and also specific phases of the quasar’s evolution towards maturity as its parts differentiate and the space time field of the system matures accordingly. [see figure 8] That since redshift properties were “intrinsic” to their respective galaxies and expressed a signature to said galaxies’ rate of maturation, a process of creative life rather than death and decay fundamentally organize our universe! Figure 8 This illustration of a side view of a parent galaxy ejecting two high redshift quasars demonstrates their slow motion away from the parent as they evolve lowering their redshifts to become spiral (seyfert) galaxies Describing this process in 2009, Arp wrote: “When quasar-like companions are associated with a parent galaxy they tend to be smaller, higher surface brightness and show emission line activity. In quasars large energies are packed into absurdly small initial volumes. As they evolve they have no place to go except to brighten towards being galaxies and lessening intrinsic redshifts with time. The important point however is that the excess redshift companions are in the process of evolving into more “normal” galaxies and it is the numerical value of the redshifts themselves evolving by steps into smaller values”.[4] When one treats the facts discovered by Arp seriously, we confront the happy reality that evidence points not towards a dying heat death as the ultimate abysmal conclusion of our death-dominated universe, but rather to a universe characterized by life, creativity and directed upward evolution! This is a universe which has more in common to the principles of open system embryology than to the closed system lifeless processes that characterized an engine or randomized “gas theory”, and the second law of thermodynamics (entropy) underlying the statistical logic of big bang cosmology. A Fresh Look at Embryology Just as astronomers began to discover the fascinating geometries of galaxies at the end of the 19th century, parallel discoveries were being made on the microcosm with new insights into the mechanisms defining the growth of living matter. Embryology was a relatively new field as two opposing schools of thought began to clash in Europe. One school known as vitalism found its champion in the form of the great epigenesist Hans Driesch (1867-1941), the other was called the mechanistic/preformism school led by the figure of Wilhelm Roux (1850-1924). Both schools were fascinated by the obvious directionality and design expressed by the unfolding of an organism from a fertilized single cell all the way to becoming a fully formed organism. In the field of embryology, it was more obvious than any other field that randomness, chaos and chance played no role in this complex yet harmonic process of growth, multiplication and differentiation of cells over the course of an embryo’s existence. What mechanisms determined how the parts would unfold over time as the embryo grew? An elementary question during this time was: did the parts define the whole or did the whole define the parts? How could we know at what point the undifferentiated cell’s fate becomes sealed by its destiny? The mechanist school of Roux assumed that one could know only what a cell would do a “moment” before or after one observes it, but that the pathway was assumed generally unknowable beyond this point. The vitalist school of Driesch on the other hand presumed that only the “end phase” of an embryo could be known, but nothing of its individual changes. To prove his case, Roux began by burning one of the two cells making up a frog zygote which resulted in the eventual formation of a half frog. This incredible experiment implied of course that all information determining the fate of all subsequent phases of embryonic evolution were contained within each of those two original cells. If Driesch were correct, then that single cell should have grown up into a full frog. While this appeared at first to be a “win” for the mechanist school, it wasn’t long enjoyed, as Driesch formulated a new experiment whereby instead of killing one of the two cells of the frog zygote, he used a four celled sea urchin embryo cut in half using a fine baby’s hair which now resulted not in two half organisms as Roux and the mechanists had expected, but rather two fully formed sea urchins! While these experiments contributed much towards answering some fundamental questions about the mechanism of creative growth, many other questions remained unanswered and still required a few decades for a new generation of scientists to tackle the problem with a fresh perspective. One of the most prominent of these scientists being a brilliant Ukrainian naturalist named Alexander Gurwitsch. Gurwitsch Takes the Stage Rather than simply side with the vitalists or mechanists, Gurwitsch took the best of both schools and added something extra by asking the question “how do cells communicate and harmonize their behaviour in one unifying system”? Considering that the average human baby comprises approximately 10 trillion cells with 10 million dying and being born with every passing second, and considering that each cell has within it over one million molecular actions/second it is nothing short of a miracle that these trillions of cells can communicate and harmonize with one another, let alone “decide” when an undifferentiated cell should take on a function such as a liver cell, brain cell, heart cell, etc that will define its “destiny”. Gurwitsch realized that the vast intercommunication of cells could not be accounted for through mere molecular activity or the motion of enzymes from one place to another in the body. Something more had to be occurring. But what? It was in the period of rich creative development of the 1920s that Gurwitsch configured his famous “onion root experiment” which involved simply configuring two onion roots in a perpendicular set up. While one onion root grew downwards, the other was caused to grow towards it [see image]. When the stems came into close proximity, a 30% increased rate of growth was induced in the first onion stem and it was now obvious that high rate of young cell mitoses occurring at the tip of the stem were accompanied by some form of invisible energy emission inducing the increased growth rate, but what was its nature? What sort of energy was being admitted from one stem to another? Figure 9 Alexander Gurwitsch and his original onion root experiment. Two onions (Z1 and Z2) grow perpendicularly with point W representing the point of intersection of the younger root emitted from Z1 and the older root of Z2 separated by a quartz lens blocking the emissions of ultra violet emissions from Z1 to Z2. To answer this next question, Gurwitsch tested various quartzes that blocked all but the ultraviolet part of the electromagnetic spectrum and discovered that the increased cell growth only occurred when UV light was permitted to transmit. Even though no instrumentation would be invented for another 30 years sensitive enough to pick up these ultra weak UV photon emissions, Gurwitsch’s elegant experiment demonstrated what sort of electromagnetic properties were causing living tissues to harmonize! Gurwitsch termed this newly discovered phenomena “Mitogenetic Radiation” with this idea created several new interconnected fields of 1) molecular morphology, 2) cellular morphology and 3) organismic morphology which all encompassed the concept of Gurwitsch’s “biogenic field”. Despite an intensive counter operation run by the Rockefeller Foundation which attempted to discredit Gurwitsch under the scientific hack A. Hollaender who intentionally bungled his experiments producing negative results, small networks of committed scientists continued this valuable work [5]. Several decades had to pass until A.B. Burkalov, inspired by Gurwitsch’s onion roots, set up a similar experiment using two sets of fertilized fish embryos separated by a glass divider and a small opening- one set of embryos being slightly older than the other. Burkalov discovered that as long as the age separating the two sets was not too great, placing each set into proximity caused the younger eggs to speed up in their development greatly. However when the age difference was too far removed beyond a certain bandwidth, the younger eggs grew into malformed mutants [6]. Popp, Montagnier and the Schumann Resonance Over the years, this research continued in the fringes of the scientific community with some of the most interesting developments occurring under the guidance of Fritz Popp who discovered a wide array of ultra weak bio-photon emissions from all forms of life[7]. Popp established that coherent photon fields are emitted by all cells and molecules expressing life- each carrying unique signatures and information from that cell across the entire body triggering an intricate array of chemical reactions necessary for the functions of living matter to endure. Working with Walter Nagel, Popp additionally discovered techniques which interpreted the scattering patterns of cell photons in order to adduce information about viral and bacterial infections. Popp claimed that “every change in the biological field or physiological state of the living system is reflected by a corresponding change of biophoton emission”. Figure 10 Fritz Popp (left) and Dr Luc Montagnier (right) This work was amplified by the later work by the Nobel Prize winning virologist Dr. Luc Montagnier who discovered how ultra weak photon emissions were not only occurring in the UV range but also in the radio wave spectrum[8]. Montagnier went even further to measure the frequency of these emissions occurring from DNA which was placed in liquid solutions within test tubes. In these experiments which advanced the work of Jacques Benveniste on water memory, Montagnier discovered how the radio signals emitted from the DNA structured the water molecules in such a manner that even after all traces of the DNA were filtered out of the water, DNA-specific radio signatures continued to be emitted from the liquid solution and even caused a clone replica of the original DNA to be created out of random organelles, proteins and nucleotides when placed within the resonant solution. The only caveat here was that this cloning only occurred under the singular condition that the solution were exposed to a 7.8 Hertz background radiation in the laboratory.[9] This 7.8 Hz background radiation is of course the same frequency which characterizes the earth’s natural electromagnetic environment between the ionosphere and surface of the earth itself. This phenomenon was first discovered in 1923 and was given the name Schumann Resonance for its discoverer Winfried Otto Schumann (1888-1974)[10]. As Magnetic Resonance Imaging developed in the 1970s, it was also discovered that 7.8 Hz happens to also be the same frequency that the human brain emits when in a calm meditative state. The electromagnetic environment shaped by the earth’s evolving ionosphere, magnetosphere and Van Allen Belts (themselves influenced by the growth of free oxygen over long expanses of time contributing to the ozone layer) not only “tunes” but is tuned in return by the evolving systems of life on the earth leading up to the most advanced yet seen: the human brain. Re-Uniting the Macro and Microcosmos As you can see, the flow of these discoveries has brought us from the macrocosm of galaxies birthing seedling galaxies in the form of quasars within a dense intergalactic and interplanetary medium of plasma (not dark matter or the nebulous dark energy which so many statistical Big Bang Cosmologists assume must exist by virtue of their denial of Arp’s discoveries). We moved from the realm of galaxies into the realm of cellular evolution, and the dynamic equilibrium maintained by the space time of living organisms. We then continued our journey through the electromagnetic properties and fields of life throughout the 20th century until we arrived back at the Schumann resonance defined by the earth’s Van Allen belts, magnetic field and the broader magnetic field shaped by the sun in our small corner of the Milky Way galaxy which is itself just one of billions if not trillions of suns being shaped by our galaxy. Although it is not well understood, our solar system exists not in “empty space” with planetary bodies falling in random locations orbiting our star, but rather in a densely saturated ocean of plasma and cosmic radiations with harmonic least action pathways defining each pulsating orbit. While each revolution of our star the sun occurs every 365 days, our solar system itself is revolving around the galactic center once every 220-250 million years during which time our solar system passes through arms of the Milky Way and bobs above and below the galactic plane. These insights are inferred primarily from measuring the relative rates of radioactive decay in fossil records and the relatively cyclical mass extinction (and mass creation events) which have been archeologically uncovered in recent years. Figure 11 Various periodic activities discovered in long term activities of the earth have found a correlation to such long term periodic behaviour only occurring on the level of galactic activity illustrated above [image from the Schiller Institute] Just as the living organism is a sort of universe unto itself defined by trillions of cellular interactions occurring throughout a life, a galactic body is made up of trillions of stars and many more planetary bodies within each system harmonized by the living space time of that particular galaxy’s phase of evolution from young Quasar seedling to a more advanced mature state such as the blue-shifted Andromeda galaxy which may in fact be MUCH closer than the 2.5 million light years assumed by Big Bang theorists. From this new and healthier re-framing of the forces and principles at play in our living, creative universe, Andromeda’s blue shift is no longer seen as the rate at which this large galaxy is racing towards our Milky Way where we are destined to collide in 4.5 billion years… but rather becomes seen as indicative of its older, parental relationship to our younger galaxy from which it once gave birth (as well as all other galaxies within our local galactic constellation). If you haven’t realized it, the two opposing cosmologies currently at odds with each other (open vs closed systems) strike on the very nature of life vs death. Where one system assumes the principle of death to be primary in a universe of decay and entropy, the other paradigm sees life as primary within a universe of creative growth and perfectibility. So before you find yourself agreeing to the assumption that “scarcity” and “limits to growth” are absolute laws which define our choices going into the 21st century and beyond, it were wise to look at nature itself from this standpoint and ask if it were not MORE NATURAL to leap beyond our mental and physical limits by making discoveries into our potentially unbounded, albeit finite universe and live as though we were made in the image of the creator ? The author recently delivered a lecture on this topic which can be viewed here: Footnotes [1] Oldest surviving light reveals the universe’s true age, Rafi Letzter – LiveScience, July 17, 2020 [2] We Finally Know When Our Milky Way Will Crash Into the Andromeda Galaxy, Mike Wall, Space.com, February 08, 2019 [3] The redshifts found among quasars do not occur at any randomized interval but tend to occur at specific quantized periodicities implying a higher yet-to-be discovered harmony which Arp termed “harmonic oscillations”. These periodicities are: 0.3, 0.6, 0.96, 1.41 and 1.96 which physicist Ray Gallucci discovered to correlate directly with the rates of decreasing density of the quasars on their transformative journey to becoming galaxies [4] Halton Arp, C. Fulton, D. Carosati, Intrinsic Redshifts in Quasars and Galaxies, 2009 [5] Describing his visit to Hollaender alongside Fritz Popp in 1985, the eminent mathematician Jonathan Tennenbaum wrote: “Hollaender admitted having been deployed by the Rockefeller Foundation to Russia with the sole purpose to “investigate” Gurwitsch and his laboratory, bringing back the story that Gurwitsch’s experimental technique was allegedly “sloppy” and his results “unreliable”. Hollaender subsequently carried out and published in 1937 his own botched series of experiments, alledgly failing to discover any evidence of Gurwitsch’s radiation. Confronted with Popp’s detailed measurements of mitogenetic radiation using modern photomultiplier instruments, Hollaender admitted, without blinking an eyelash, that he “had always suspected Gurwitsch had been right.” [21st Century Science and Technology, Winter 1998-99 “On the Fate of Gurwitsch’s Work”] [6] A.B Burlakov, Biophotonic patterns of optical interactions between fish eggs and embryos, June 2003Indian journal of experimental biology [7] Marco Bischof, A Tribute to Fritz-Albert Popp on his 70th Birthday, Indian Journal of Experimental Biology, vol. 46, May 2008 [8] L. Montagnier, DNA waves and water, July 2011 Journal of Physics Conference Series [9] This story was told in full by this author in Dr. Luc Montagnier and the Coming Revolutions in Optical Biophysics, Rising Tide Foundation [10] It is worth noting that like the quasar redshifts, the Schumann resonances do not occur in randomized frequencies, but rather in harmonic oscillating maxima of 7.83, 14.1, 20.3, 26.4, and 32.4 Hertz  

[Category: Society, Science, Space]

— Remembering the Sabra Shatila Massacre, Forty Years Later

 

at 9/3/22 11:04am

By Dr. Swee ANG – Ellen SIEGEL Forty years ago, during the week of September 12, we were working in a Palestine Red Crescent Society facility, Gaza Hospital, in Sabra Shatila camp in West Beirut. As health care workers, we were trying to heal the wounds and repair the mutilated and destroyed bodies of those injured by Israel’s Invasion of Lebanon in June 1982. We had been working there following the evacuation of the Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO), mediated by US Middle East envoy Philip Habib. Crucial to the evacuation agreement was the protection of the civilians left behind after the evacuation of the PLO, and Israel’s undertaking not to invade and occupy Beirut. With the guarantee of protection by the multinational peace keeping force, thousands of displaced civilian war victims returned to Sabra Shatila to rebuild their homes and lives. Unknown to these people who returned hoping to pick up and mend their shattered lives, the multinational peace keeping force left West Beirut on 11 September 1982. On the evening of September 14, 1982, we became aware that the President-elect of Lebanon had been assassinated. Around the break of dawn on the following day, we heard planes flying low into Beirut. Within hours, sounds of heavy artillery and machine guns could be heard close by. It continued all day and soon the periphery of the camp was hit relentlessly. We went to an upper floor of the hospital where we watched as flares went off, lighting areas of the camps, followed by gunfire. As hours passed, we hectically received and tended to the thousands of camp residents who fled to us or were brought into the hospital seeking emergency medical care, safety, and security. The hospital ran out of food, water, medication – and blood for the wounded. On Saturday, September 18, along with the other international health care volunteers, we were ordered by the Phalangists (Lebanese Christian militia working under Israeli control) to assemble at the front of the hospital. We were marched, at machine-gun point, down Sabra Street, the main street of the camp – passing dead bodies, passing hundreds of women and children from the camps being lined up and held at gun point by soldiers. We heard the chatter of ongoing communication from the militias’ walkie-talkies. Eventually we were turned over to the Israel Defense Force (IDF) forward command post where Israeli soldiers were looking down on the camps with binoculars. We were driven out of the area by IDF vehicles. From there, Ellen went to the American Embassy to report what she had seen and heard over the previous few days. Swee walked to the Commodore Hotel to inform the many journalists stationed there of what happened in the camp. In the days following we learnt that thousands of unarmed defenceless people were butchered while we were struggling to save those survivors brought to our hospital for treatment. Within weeks, Gaza Hospital re-opened and we returned to practice our profession faithfully on those who survived, those who remained. We heard that an Israeli Commission of Inquiry into the Massacre was being established in Jerusalem. We asked to go to Jerusalem to bear witness, to testify, to speak for those who could not. We asked for justice at the Israeli Commission of Inquiry. But we knew that a greater universal justice beyond the Commission of Inquiry must be restored to the Palestinians. The Commission was only investigating the conduct of the Israeli Army in the camp massacre. But even that justice has been denied. Forty years have passed, and many generations later, the painful memories remain. Investigations, interests, questions continue. Israel claimed recently that the archives concerning the communications between the Christian militia blamed for the massacre, the Lebanese authorities, and Israel have been lost! There is still much to learn, and more information needs to come to light. Israel must be held directly responsible for this atrocity. The role and guilt of the US has not yet been fully examined. The failures to allow the voices of the surviving victims of the massacre to be heard and preventing fair investigations to be held continue to obstruct the pursuit of justice. To the survivors, we want you to know that we will never forget you, the massacre, your loved ones, your martyrs. We keep the memories of your land, your olive trees and orange groves, the keys that you still have to your homes in Palestine in our hearts. We love you. counterpunch.org

[Category: Editor's Choice, Israel, Lebanon, Palestinе, War Crimes]

— Our materials in Telegram (27.08 – 02.09)

 

at 9/2/22 2:57pm

Dear readers, Since the SCF website is inaccessible in a number of countries, we encourage you to join our Telegram channel, where you can read all of our materials without going to the website.   Our materials in Telegram Lessons From Gorbachev’s Peace Vision Betrayed By U.S. NATO’s Five Steps to Control Any Country Systemic Shift China’s BRI Shapes a Multipolar Future for Saudi Arabia Begum Case Only Highlights the Dirty World of Western Intel Agencies and Their Dirty Job in Syria Why the United States Has Set Itself Up for Failure in the Semiconductor Race for Military Supremacy Which Crime Syndicate Murdered Darya Dugina? Ukrainian Refugees: Top 10 Receiving Countries NATO’s Xinjiang and Related Problems America’s Wars Take on a Divisive Edge These Countries Are the World Leaders in Microchip Exports Biogeochemistry and Open System Thinking With Vladimir Vernadsky Big Boys’ Rules in Ukraine

— Lessons From Gorbachev’s Peace Vision Betrayed By U.S.

 

at 9/2/22 1:52pm

Mikhail Sergeyevich Gorbachev may be resting in peace. But the rest of the world is not. Three decades since the supposed end of the Cold War, unrelenting U.S. aggression and countless NATO wars around the world have demonstrated the complete futility and naivety of trying to make peace with American imperialism. There is no appeasing or reasoning with a predator. The death of Mikhail Gorbachev this week at the age of 91 is a timely reminder of how much has changed, or perhaps not changed, since the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991. Gorbachev was the last leader (1985-1991) of the Soviet Union (1917-1991) whose final dissolution he oversaw. That historic event was supposed to hail the end of the Cold War that had frozen international relations over nearly five decades since the end of the Second World War. The dread of a nuclear conflagration was henceforth presumed to have been removed. Who can honestly say that now given the NATO-backed war in Ukraine on Russia’s doorstep? In 1990, Gorbachev declared that the reforms he was pursuing laid the foundations for a new era of world peace. Back then, the United States and Western allies likewise were crowing about the “end of history” and a “new world order” of peaceful relations based on so-called “liberal democracy”. The Cold War was purportedly over and decades of militarism would, in theory, be replaced by the harmonious coexistence of nations able to enjoy a transformative peace dividend from economic revival without the drain of a non-stop arms race. That rosy view of history has been cruelly demolished by subsequent events. Admittedly, there were some apparent gains from significant reductions in nuclear arsenals held by the United States and the Russian Federation, the successor of the Soviet Union. Gorbachev and his American counterpart Ronald Reagan had signed the breakthrough Intermediate-range Nuclear Forces (INF) treaty in 1987 and other arms control agreements. In 1991, Moscow was assured that there would be no expansion of the U.S.-led NATO military alliance whose founding credo in 1949 was based on confronting the Soviet Union. The assurances were bogus if not deliberate deception. The military bloc has since more than doubled its member nations to 30, some of which are bordering Russia and are marked by regimes that spout rabid Russophobia and nostalgia for fascism. How spectacularly wrong Gorbachev’s earlier vision of peace has turned out to be. Many other people around the world have been thwarted in their hopes for a peace dividend. The past 30 years have witnessed relentless U.S.-led wars in the Middle East and Africa all of which have made a mockery of international law. Millions of lives have been destroyed and whole nations raped and gutted. The unprecedented expansion of NATO members has resulted in American missiles being placed ever closer to Russia’s borders. The present war in Ukraine is the culmination of this U.S.-led aggression. Today, the United States and its NATO allies are spending more on military weapons and forces than at the height of the Cold War. Indeed, regrettably, one can say with total confidence that the Cold War never ended. The U.S. has unceremoniously dumped the INF and other arms-control treaties. It has pursued a remorseless and duplicitous policy of encircling Russia with existential threats to its national security. Not only that, but the United States and its Western allies have adopted a parallel policy of wanton confrontation against China. Arming Taiwan duplicates the provocative weaponizing of Ukraine. War, war, and more war is the only objective, it seems, that drives the United States. It’s a war junkie that needs a fix. Meanwhile, as America and its NATO partners spend grotesque amounts of money on militarism, the citizens of these nations are subjected to ever-more deterioration in their social conditions from economic austerity. That ludicrous contradiction is surely a clarion call for definitive condemnation. The heinous fact is that U.S.-led Western capitalism cannot possibly exist without militarism, wars and constant aggression. The notion of peaceful relations and a new order of mutual cooperation is a pathetic delusion. It is also a dangerous delusion if indulged. Russia, China and a growing number of other nations have repeatedly called for a multipolar world based on genuine cooperation, partnership and on the founding charter no less of the United Nations that was established in 1945 amid the ashes and horrors of World War Two. In recent years, the United States and its Western lackeys have brazenly resisted any such progressive development precisely because such a development is anathema to the war economy that underpins Western capitalism. The euphemism of “rules-based order” is in actuality the law of the jungle according to the U.S. and its NATO acolytes. One could further posit that the vain, self-serving euphemisms of the United States are not unlike the self-righteous, self-justifying pronouncements of the Nazi Third Reich. There is a long and odious deeper history here of systematic connections between Western capitalism and fascism, connections that are increasingly becoming visible in today’s world. The eight-year build up of NATO militarism in Ukraine since the CIA coup in 2014 is testimony to the inherent warmongering that resides in the dark heart of U.S.-led imperialism. All diplomatic attempts by Russia to negotiate a detente with NATO and for a peace settlement in Ukraine in particular have failed. Washington and its minions have rebuffed all of those principled efforts through diplomacy for a security treaty. Russian President Vladimir Putin was right to remark in 2005 that the collapse of the Soviet Union was a catastrophe for international relations. The last three decades and the NATO-backed war in Ukraine in which the Kiev regime is being armed to the teeth to threaten Russia are proof of that conclusion. Western media, however, turn that objective observation upside-down by trying to cast Putin as a Soviet revanchist. Putin offered his condolences this week and paid respects at Gorbachev’s coffin. He generously said that the former president had tried his best to bring about reforms to the Soviet Union and to make world peace. But ultimately, it can be said that Gorbachev’s reforms only led to years of turmoil for the Russian people and economic chaos. His successor Boris Yeltsin took those reforms to an even lower level of disorder and ruin for the Russian Federation, owing to the ransacking of the Russian economy by Western capitalists and their cronies. Russia has recovered remarkably from that period of economic mayhem. The country is much stronger and more stable largely because the Western exploitation of its resources was decisively checked. Russia’s military strength has also been rebuilt to a formidable level. That no doubt is partly the background to the resurgence in U.S.-led aggression towards Russia. The only kind of Russia that Washington wants and would accept is a weak one. Crucially, too, Moscow is no longer harbouring delusions of peaceful coexistence with the U.S.-led Western order. Gorbachev’s vision was naive and delusional. It nearly led to the entire collapse and subjugation of Russia by NATO. No wonder Western leaders and media were this week eulogizing Gorbachev as a “great statesman”. Ironically, there were disingenuous attempts in the Western media to try to portray Putin as “betraying” Gorbachev’s supposed peace legacy. What legacy? All the evidence shows that U.S.-led imperialism has moved like a serial predator on Russia as well as China and other nations deemed to be obstacles to American hegemonic ambitions. A line has been drawn in Ukraine. The present danger is that the war could turn into a nuclear World War Three. Russia’s military strength might hold the line. But the reality is: that there can be peace with the U.S.-led order. Mikhail Sergeyevich Gorbachev may be resting in peace. But the rest of the world is not.

[Category: Editorial, Security, War and Conflict, Arms Race, Capitalism, Cold War, Diplomacy, NATO, United States, USSR, West]

— Systemic Shift

 

at 9/2/22 1:42pm

Soon enough it is probable that most countries, however reluctantly, may have to choose which of the two incompatible financial systems they want to align with. And one of them is already obsolete. It is accepted that changing a deeply entrenched complex system is virtually impossible. The Western neo-liberal economic model is a prime example of this, even as it fails it is incapable of adjusting to that reality. It is a system that is driven by avarice to the exclusion of all other considerations, there is no delayed gratification, returns must be immediate, for patience is not hailed as a virtue in this system. The system has always been kind to those that created it for their own benefit. For a short time, it provided for a comfortable Western middle class. But it has always been cruel and brutal to those in the “lesser” nations of the Global South. The system had power, military power which was uncontested until comparatively recently. The military was there to ensure that nations stayed in the dollar-dominated neo-liberal model. Even when a country tried to liberate itself from the Empire model, it had nowhere else to go. There was no alternative to the international financial and banking system. Until now. Systems rarely change effectively, they seldom evolve, they are overtaken by better systems, systems that in time make the old systems obsolete. We are witnessing this now as China’s economic model is winning favour throughout the world. With more than 150 countries now partnered with China in the BRI, China’s approach is markedly in contrast to their partner countries’ previous experiences with the Western empire mindset. The win-win, mutual benefit approach of the Chinese is generating much goodwill globally. Generating goodwill has never been a consideration of the West, that didn’t need it, it could just pressure or threaten nations to bend to its will. The BRI has been slandered in the West as a debt trap, as if countries in the Global South didn’t know what a debt trap was, they had all met the IMF. However recently even Harvard University reluctantly had to admit the it wasn’t the case. Between 2000-2019 it cancelled more than $3.4 billion in loans and restructured more than $15 billion in African debt. It has just announced that it is now cancelling 23 interest free loans to 17 African nations. China is also increasing investment in Africa with more infrastructure projects planned across the continent. The differences in the Chinese and IMF approaches is clear here. The IMF is a tool of Western financial capitalism, its Empire model has always been to keep the Global South impoverished and weak, and thus easier to exploit. The Chinese model is the reverse, it depends on prosperity for all. More prosperity more customers, more business opportunities. China’s motives have long been questioned, it certainly isn’t altruism, but neither is it nefarious, China is very clear what is in it for them. The communist party still rules China but then economy is anything but communist. Before the reforms introduced by Deng Xiaoping in 1979 China had already abandoned many of the tenets of communism. They had learned from their own failures in collectivism and the State control of production, they had also witnessed these failures in Soviet Russia. The main lesson they learned was that the fixation on “the distribution of wealth” missed the essential point, you have to create wealth before you distribute it. And they understood that only private enterprise provided the incentive for the necessary wealth creation. China’s growth since 1980 has mainly been driven by private enterprise. China’s state sector covers mainly, energy, education, medical, banking, transportation and infrastructure. All the essentials of everyday living and business, to be clear none of those are free, but they are affordable, and the basic necessities of life don’t account for a huge portion of the average Chinese income. Freeing up more disposable income to spend into the economy. The state provides the world class infrastructure and affordable energy required to run a functional business. In China, the state sector is there to enable private business, not compete with it. The competitive advantages that have driven Chinese growth globally, have grown out of the business-friendly environment created by the government. Their model of “public banking” enables China to affordably build enormous infrastructure projects with long-term low interest loans. Not just in China, but in more than 100 countries around the world. These produce growth, development and prosperity. Sadly, in the West, private capital shuns infrastructure development because the returns are too low and take too long to mature. Ever wonder why nothing gets built in the West anymore? That’s why. The West’s model of “financial capitalism” incentivises all the wrong things. The financial predators have been detached from the real, the physical economy for too long. It is at the heart of the problems that the West is now facing. China’s model is more “industrial capitalism”, like they used to have in the West, back when they still invested in industry. When it invests, it builds, it develops and everyone wins, except of course the financial predators. National, public banking is what the financial powers have been violently resisting for centuries. They continue to do so. More than 70 countries are hovering dangerously close to defaulting on their international debts according to the World Bank. Traditionally, the IMF would already be in those countries to administer some neo-liberal solutions to their problems. Yet they have no solutions that will provide for hungry, increasingly angry people who can’t afford the basic necessities of life. The only concern of the IMF is that irrespective of a country’s problems, servicing the debt is the most important thing. The IMF is not known for its forgiving nature when it comes to debts, and as may be expected it cares little about goodwill. China’s debt forgiveness in Africa has shown it to be reasonable and understanding of other nations problems. For many suffering countries, China may be their last, best hope of avoiding a future of IMF financial control. Many countries through Africa and Latin America are turning away from the Western financial system and are developing their own regional currencies. These countries have never had the opportunity to develop their own economies independent of Western interference. For them the example set by the Chinese economic model shows how a country can rise out of absolute poverty to become the most dynamic economy in the world in just 3 generations. It is not necessary to adopt China’s political model, and China wouldn’t suggest so. Yet the economic lessons learned from China on how to run a political economy, how to industrialise and develop, will be used by many of the newly independent nations. The neo-liberal model is in its death throes, it is about to unleash a global financial cataclysm upon all and yet still presumes to lecture countries about their economies. It is a system that can’t protect itself from its own greed and arrogance, and now all will pay. That model has been exposed of all its frailties. Like the Chinese model the neo-liberal model depended on prosperity in their domestic economies, but unlike the Chinese they never invested in that prosperity. Little or no infrastructure has been built in North America or Western Europe for decades, the evidence for this is everywhere and can serve as metaphor for the wider societal decay. Neo-liberalism won’t disappear overnight, but it has been proven obsolete, exposed by a more equitable and productive model and mindset. Many countries will be forced to reset their economies in the near term, availed of the choice, most countries would not choose the neo-liberal model, but another, a better system, like the Chinese one but with their own unique national characteristics. In 2008 when the Western financial system last crashed, it threatened to take down the world economy with it. While in the West the response was austerity and cutbacks, China launched the BRI initiative and increased investment in all areas. At the outset of the crisis it lost 30 million jobs in China, it replaced them in a year. China’s policies saved the world economy from total collapse through its increased purchases in raw materials and food stuffs. It is now faced with a similar dilemma. With an economic philosophy that depends on global prosperity what do you do when everyone is broke? If it doesn’t assist partner countries in rebuilding their economies, its own model will be in jeopardy. The long spoken of de-coupling is already happening. Distinct blocs are shaping up U.S./Europe, Russia, China, countries are being pressured by the West not to do business with the other side. The threat of sanctions don’t carry the weight they once did and are widely resented and ignored. Most nations proclaim neutrality, at least publicly. However, soon enough it is probable that most countries, however reluctantly, may have to choose which of the two incompatible financial systems they want to align with. And one of them is already obsolete.

[Category: Asia-Pacific, World, Belt and Road Initiative, China, Economy, New World Order]

— NATO’s Five Steps to Control Any Country

 

at 9/2/22 12:54pm

NATO employs the five basic processes to subjugate every country that makes it onto their hit list, Declan Hayes writes. NATO employs the five basic processes of location, dependency, bribery, civilian control and force to subjugate every country that makes it onto their hit list. NATO must first decide on which country it wants to colonize at any particular time. This is, of course, a movable feast because, as Churchill explained, NATO has no permanent friends, only permanent interests. These interests motivate NATO to target countries like Nigeria or Iraq that are resource rich or others, like Ireland, Serbia or Estonia that might supply geographical or political leverage at any given time. Having picked its quarry, just as a parasite makes itself indispensable to its host, so also must NATO make its prey dependent on it for survival. Because this is best done by controlling the preys export revenues, NATO must make those revenues dependent upon what NATOs The Economist magazine calls Free Trade, NATOs rules based order, where the host can only export on NATOs terms and in NATOs currency of choice, now almost invariably the Yankee dollar. Thus, after the British set up its puppet Irish Free State in 1922, Britains fifth columnists still controlled Irelands beef, banking, biscuit and beer industries. Just as that regime was in no position to challenge its neo colonial master, so also are all of the resource rich Latin American and African countries in NATOs orbit in no position to challenge their masters, whether it be France looting Yemen, the United States looting Iraq and Syria or the European Union using Ukraine as a money laundering and white slave trafficking hub. In the increasingly unlikely event that Ireland, Nigeria, Ukraine or anywhere else could, like Syria, produce a leadership cadre capable of challenging NATO, they would still have to contend with the fact that NATO controls its export revenues, its inward investments and its taxes. This can be seen most clearly in Ireland, which has been colonized by Americas Silicon Valley companies, whose employees pay the bulk of Irelands income tax and whose basest needs keep Irelands escort business booming. If America were to pull the plug on Ireland being its EU hub, then the Irish economy would suffer a meltdown. If readers wonder why countries like Ireland, Britain and Ukraine have such inept leaders, it is because they are selected to serve NATOs interests, Silicon Valleys interests, rather than that of their own peoples. Thus, when one today speaks of the permanent government, one must not speak so much about the civil service but of those NATO aligned companies, who call the shots behind the scenes. The politicians and other peoples of interest in those target companies are controlled by massive NATO bribes. Take, for example, NATOs proposed reconstruction of Ukraine, where the Irish regime has promised to rebuild Ukraines Rivne Oblast. Crucially, however, what that means is massive contracts for CRH, Irelands huge builder suppliers company, which has been a byword in massive corruption since almost the foundation of the Irish Free State. If any patriotic Ukrainians with no political connections to the rotten Zelensky junta think there is anything for them in that promise, they are in dreamland as bribery does not work that way. American billionaires Chuck Feeney and former Nazi collaborator George Soros have been major conduits for sending billions in bribe money into Ireland. Feeneys billions were particularly instrumental in buying off for the CIA the leaders of the IRAs Sinn Féin party, whose key leaders have been shown to be on Soros payroll. Because Fine Gael, Irelands major conservative party, was colonized as long ago as the early 1970s with the promotion to international stardom of Goldman Sachs bigwig Peter Sutherland, Irelands corrupt leaders are now fully on board with Team NATO. The Irish Labour Party, founded by the legendary anti imperialist James Connolly, is now headed by trust fund babe and rabid Russophobe Ivana Bacik, whose grandfather ran four massive factories in Czechoslovakia for Hitlers Waffen SS and the Irish Green Party, like Green Parties elsewhere, has never seen an environmental friendly NATO war it did not unconditionally support. The key thing to remember about all such politicians is that, irrespective of what French or Italian tailors they use, they are just NATOs maidservants, just as are the khaki loving Zelensky or the British gangsters who ran India through the East India Company for 200 years and those NATO aligned gangster families who have been raping Kurdish held Iraq since the First Gulf War. Indeed, with regard to Iraq, isnt it incredible that Kurdish held Iraq, which is so rich in oil, is one of the main sources of illegal immigrants to the EU, that NATO, with all its talk of nation building, democracy and trans pride parades, treats its Kurdish killers so brutally? And, if the ordinary Kurds get such a raw deal, can you imagine how Iraqs Mandaeans, Yezidi, Syriacs and Chaldeans are faring as NATO rapes their homeland around the clock? And, can you imagine how Crimea would have fared had it not been reunited with its Russian motherland just when Pussy Riot were desecrating its churches and Shell and ExxonMobil, who are at the heart of the Ukrainian crisis, began drilling for oil there? Bribery, then, has been a most useful tool and not only for the Romans, who famously got their hands on Jesus for a fist full of shekels. NATO has successfully played that Judas card time and again because it knows that most of those in the middle can be bullied, bought or bribed to help undermine those who resist Empire. NATO does, alas, have to deal with the slow learners, those who rule places like Iran, Syria and Russia who dont want to sell their souls for penny rolls and streaks of hairy bacon. And, though NATO fears such folk might be the kindling to start wider fires of resistance, if they can be deprived of oxygen, then NATO can carry on regardless. As long as civilians can be kept on life support with bread and virtual circuses, NATOs pilfering continues. That is where mass propaganda, charities, NGOs and D listers like Greta Thunberg and Zelensky come in for, once the populace can be kept idle, slothful and indifferent, all will be well. It is important to say, in this regard, that folk could not be more wrong when they assert that things would improve if Americans knew what their armies were up to with little Iraqi and little Afghani girls and boys. The fact of the matter is the general public not only do not care but have never cared. American Sniper, Black Hawk Down and Rambo are the pinnacle of their understanding. More Parisians turned out on the streets of Paris after France won the World Cup than when De Gaulle entered it on its 1944 liberation. When the sexually ambivalent Roderic OGorman became Minister for Children in the current Irish government, he immediately declared his top priority was to expedite sex change operations at Englands now totally disgraced and discredited Tavistock Clinic for those Irish children he claimed were born in the wrong sex. OGorman will never be held to account for castrating those hundreds of Irish children because the American pharmaceutical companies, who are at the heart of the Irish economy, will ensure he survives to blight not only the political landscape but thousands of vulnerable children for years to come; their profits depend on it. For any Irish person wishing to defy this very sinister overlord, they will find, just as any Briton trying to defy Tony Blair will find, that there are vast networks of fake NGOs and charities on NATOs payroll supporting him and that these are usually sufficient to see off any challenge that might arise. And, if not, NATO always has as Smedley Butler, the Fighting Quaker, explained in War is a Racket, recourse to brute force and enforcers like Butler to obliterate those who might dare resist. When we look at resistance in Azerbaijan, Nigeria, Saigon, Santiago, Warsaw or Belfast, we must always factor in The Cry of the Morning, NATOs proxies dispatching Assange, Lumumba, King (who had been protesting against Coca Cola the day they executed him), Saro-Wiwa, Darya Dugina,. Daphne Caruana Galizia and so many hundreds of thousands more, the list of NATOs victims never ends. And nor does the diagnosis. Or indeed the prognosis, where we can see, in the broadest of brush strokes, what must be done and what must be undone to unloosen NATOs death grasp. Although the two sided sword of foreign help is needed, NATOs World Economic Forum minions are busily draining the swamp under their Green banner, building their one dimensional New Jerusalem, even as their Eternal Rome disintegrates in front of them. As can be seen with the fascistic crushing of independently minded Canadian truckers and the last of the Dutch, German and Italian farmers, Oliver Goldsmiths truism that “a bold peasantry, their countrys pride,. when once destroyed, can never be supplied”, especially if Klaus Schwabs dystopian Brave New World is to be realized. This is not to abandon all hope but to acknowledge realities, the lie of the land. NATOs leaders and those who serve them are no different from the Famine Queens, the Caesars and the oligarchs of bygone ages, who sent little English children up chimneys and down coal mines. They believe that we exist purely on their sufferance and, to the extent that we buy into their scam, they have a point. But only a point as this dialectic between right and wrong, truth and falsehoods will never end. Good souls like Julian Assange continue to fight the good fight in the direst of circumstances and, in these days of ignorant and ill-informed Russophobia, we might turn to Tolstoys War and Peace, to Austerlitz, Napoleons greatest triumph, where Field Marshal Kutuzov observes how wars turn on a dime, on the actions of solitary individuals and Prince Andrey, staring up into the face of Napoleon, reflects on the nothingness of greatness. And so it is that we meek will indeed inherit the earth when enough of us put our shoulders to the wheel to kick NATO off their pedastal, for this fight can end in no other way but with the predators being vanquished and their victims able to say, in the words of Martin Luther Kings old negro spiritual, free at last, free at last, thank God Almighty, I am free at last., free, like Julian Assange who, though chained in one of NATOs most notorious gaols, is still in heart and conscience free. 

[Category: Security, War and Conflict, Colonialism, Corruption, Ireland, NATO, Ukraine]

— Democrats Are Violent Extremists

 

at 9/2/22 12:31pm

By Caitlin JOHNSTONE Republicans are up in arms over remarks from the White House depicting the Trump-aligned faction of their party as “extremist”, which Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre defended Thursday by saying that MAGA Republicans are extremist because they disagree with the majority of Americans. “When you are not with what majority of Americans are, then you know, that is extreme; that is an extreme way of thinking,” Jean-Pierre said. Every part of this controversy is hilarious, from Republicans thinking they are not extremists, to anyone thinking that MAGA Republicans are meaningfully different from generic brand Republicans, to Democrats thinking they are any less extremist than MAGA Republicans, to Jean-Pierre claiming that you are extremist if you don’t agree with mainstream political consensus in the United States. NOW White House: When you are not with what majority of Americans are, then you know, that is extreme. That is an extreme way of thinking. pic.twitter.com/MpiwE9bRlx — Disclose.tv (@disclosetv) September 1, 2022 If you look at who is inflicting the most violence, terrorism and tyranny upon the largest number of people in our world, it’s clear from the numbers that the worst offender by far is not fringe neo-Nazi groups, nor violent jihadists, nor communists nor anarchists nor environmentalists nor incels, but the bipartisan political consensus of the US-centralized empire. No other power has spent the 21st century killing people by the millions in wars of aggression. No other power is circling the planet with hundreds of military bases and working continuously to destroy any government which disobeys it. No other power is starving entire populations with economic sanctions, military blockades and brazen theft. No other power has been interfering in foreign elections anywhere near as often. No other power is terrorizing populations around the world with wars, covert ops, drone strikes, proxy conflicts, and staged coups and uprisings. No other power is using its military, economic, diplomatic and media dominance to bully the world into serving its interests. The only reason the mainstream views espoused by Democrats and Republicans are mainstream is because massive amounts of narrative management have gone into creating that consensus. The fact that the social engineers of the oligarchic empire have poured vast fortunes into making sure Americans consent to capitalism, corruption, militarism and murder is the only reason those perspectives are so mainstream that they can be labeled “moderate” or “centrist”. When people hear the word “extremist” they tend to think of groups like ISIS or the Ku Klux Klan, but per definition an extremist is just someone whose political or religious beliefs can lead them to do violent or illegal things. The US empire would crumble if it didn’t do violent and illegal things continuously, which is why its body count dwarfs those of any of the extremist ideologies the news media tell us to worry about. And it is fully supported by both Republicans and Democrats. To pick a recent illustration of essentially limitless possible examples, imagine what the response would have been if a prominent MAGA pundit had given an award to neo-Nazis at an event hosted by the US military during the Trump administration. Imagine how Democrats and their aligned media would have responded to such an event. Can you picture it? Can you hear the shrieking in your mind’s ear? Good. Because that’s exactly what happened at the Pentagon’s annual Warrior Games at Disney World a few days ago, only it was a liberal pundit and Ukrainian Nazis during the Biden administration. SCOOP: Multiple Ukrainian Nazis were invited to Disney World by the Pentagon to participate in the 2022 DoD Warrior Games. Liberal comedian Jon Stewart even honored a former hardcore Azov militant for his personal example. New from me in @TheGrayzoneNews https://t.co/NWiqV4GkZS — Alex Rubinstein (@RealAlexRubi) August 31, 2022 In a new report titled “Jon Stewart and the Pentagon honor Ukrainian Nazi at Disney World,” The Grayzone’s Alex Rubinstein shows the former Daily Show star presenting an award to a member of Ukraine’s neo-Nazi Azov Battalion who is wearing a t-shirt and a suspicious-looking red sleeve on one of his arms, with another photo showing the same Azov member a tattoo of a Nazi symbol on that same arm. Rubinstein presents evidence that this wasn’t the only Nazi-affiliated Ukrainian at the event, which was also attended by musician Darius Rucker. I keep thinking I’ve seen the most liberal thing that could possibly happen, but 2022 keeps proving me wrong. I have a hard time imagining how you beat a liberal comedian honoring a Ukrainian Nazi with an award at a Pentagon event in Disney World, but I’m sure they’ll find a way before long. Biden is advancing the interests of the murderous US empire by waging a world-threatening proxy war in Ukraine whose combatants can’t seem to get photographed without Nazi insignia on their person. Trump advanced the interests of the US empire by inflicting death and starvation in nations like Yemen, Venezuela, Iran and Syria, as well as ramping up the brinkmanship with Russia which led to the current proxy war in Ukraine. The Biden administration is the Trump administration with a different soundtrack. The Trump administration was the Obama administration with a different soundtrack. They are all violent extremists. None are superior to the other. They all serve the interests of the most murderous and depraved institution on earth, as does anyone who supports any of them. Democrats calling Republicans extremists is like ISIS calling Al Qaeda extremists, only Democrats and Republicans have a much higher body count. caityjohnstone.medium.com

[Category: Editor's Choice, Democratic Party, Establishment, Joe Biden, United States, White House]

— How Shell and BP Financed Britain’s Cold War Propaganda Machine

 

at 9/2/22 11:23am

Formerly top secret files show how the two oil corporations bankrolled UK covert propaganda operations during the 1950s and 60s. The goal was to secure British access to key oil supplies across the developing world. By John MCEVOY “Handsome” sums were provided by BP and Shell to the Information Research Department (IRD), which was Britain’s Cold War propaganda arm between 1948 and 1977, declassified files show. The IRD used the secret subsidies to fund British covert propaganda operations during the 1950s and 1960s across the Middle East and Africa, where Britain’s oil interests were substantial. Today, the value of the payments would be in the millions of pounds. Such operations involved setting up newspapers and magazines, funding radio and television broadcasts, and organising trade union exchanges. The objective was to promote “stability” in these regions by countering the threat of communism and resource nationalism, while improving the “public image” of Britain’s leading oil companies. Ultimately, the goal was to secure British access to the supply of Middle Eastern and African oil. Oil and propaganda During the 1950s and 1960s, the IRD met annually with Shell and BP representatives to discuss how secret oil subsidies were being used and whether the oil companies were getting value for money. In December 1960, IRD chief Donald Hopson met Shell’s UK executive Brian Trench and senior BP executive Archie Chisholm, alongside a number of other Foreign Office officials. The name of one individual remains classified, suggesting Britain’s intelligence services were also in attendance. At the meeting, it was noted the IRD had spent £75,500 in oil money – valued at over £1.2m today – on covert propaganda operations between April 1959 and March 1960. Over half of this money had been spent on the Arab News Agency (ANA), a long standing British propaganda front which had strong links with MI6. “ANA operated the most comprehensive service in English and Arabic available in the Middle East with branch offices in Damascus, Beirut, Baghdad, Jerusalem and Amman, and representatives in some 15 other cities, including Paris and New York”, wrote journalist Richard Fletcher. Hopson informed the oil companies “that their contributions had made it possible to put the [Arab News] Agency in a very strong competitive position in regard to its communications”. For instance, oil company subsidies allowed ANA to pay for British news agency Reuters’ wire service. During this period, Reuters was pliable to UK government influence, and was seen as a useful propaganda instrument. With this, ANA could supply news organisations across the Middle East with Reuters’ content. The service was described as “very successful in Egypt”, and it “secured the first place for Reuters in competition with the other world agencies”. It is unclear whether Reuters was aware that the UK government was secretly channelling oil money into its accounts. One UK file, dated 1960 and entitled “Information Research Department: renegotiation of contract between Reuters and the Arab News Agency”, remains classified by the Foreign Office. ‘Valuable propaganda instrument’ On top of this, the IRD used £3,000 of oil money to fund Al Aalam (“The Globe”), an ostensibly independent magazine published in Iraq, which was seen by the Foreign Office as “a most valuable propaganda instrument”. Al Aalam supported UK anti-communist efforts and sought to counter anti-British messaging coming from Gamal Abdel Nasser’s Egypt. At this time, Nasserite Arab nationalism posed a significant threat to Britain’s regional interests, and was a central focus of British propaganda activities. The IRD thanked Shell and BP for their “handsome contributions”. The oil companies’ contributions to Al Aalam, which had been ongoing since the early 1950s, “had in fact tipped the scale when the Treasury decision concerning the launching of the periodical was made”, it was noted. In 1960, the magazine achieved a monthly circulation of 85,000. During this period, £15,000 in money from the oil companies was also “expended in Iran” on “emergency operations” which enabled “visits to be arranged, publication and translation work to be undertaken, and training schemes for Persian radio officials to be put in hand”. ‘Handsome contributions’ The IRD thanked Shell and BP for their “handsome contributions”, and requested an additional £138,750 in secret funding for the period April 1960 to December 1961. Indeed, these were “handsome contributions”, amounting to roughly 8 percent of the IRD’s annual official budget, and valued at £2.25m today. “The general pattern of ANA’s activities would continue to be the same though the Agency would concentrate in the forthcoming year on strengthening its news collecting”, an IRD memo noted. To this end, the IRD requested an additional £42,500 for ANA’s running costs, and £26,250 for Reuters’ wire service. On top of its pre-existing operations, the IRD proposed using oil subsidies to fund a number of new ventures. One such project was geared towards building up “sufficient influence with certain selected Libyan Trade Unionists” in order to “encourage a spirit of moderation into industrial demands”. This issue was seen as “of direct interest to the oil companies” such that the IRD could “anticipate their support”. A Foreign Office file shows media outlets in the Middle East received secret funds from British oil firms. (Photo: John McEvoy) ‘Student news service’ In Latin America, the IRD wished to “interest ourselves particularly in the student and trade union fields” by setting up a “student news service” with oil company contributions. On top of this, the IRD requested £5,000 for a “trade union exchange visits scheme”. The scheme had already begun in Latin America, and the IRD was looking for oil money to expand the project into Africa. It was also “hoped to start an examination of the possibilities of setting up a [television] programme agency for the Middle East shortly”. The agency’s core objective was “the preservation of [British] oil interests in the Gulf”. Another project focused on news agency Gulf Times/Al Khalij, an IRD outfit based in Beirut, which was looking to expand and open a new office in Kuwait. According to one IRD document, the agency’s core objective was “the preservation of [British] oil interests in the Gulf”. It was noted that the oil companies may thus “think it suitable to contribute [£30,000] towards the capital cost of the new venture”, which was valued at £110,000. This project, however, was ultimately abandoned by the IRD in April 1961. ‘Handmaid of BBC Arabic’ In 1963, the oil companies funded Huna London (“This is London”), a magazine which was described by one IRD official as “the handmaid of the BBC Arabic service” and “the best means we have of addressing the Arabs as a whole”. Huna London had been the words used to announce the first BBC broadcast in Arabic in 1938, and the magazine would become the Arabic equivalent to the Radio Times, which listed British television and radio programmes alongside “contributions from leading writers and illustrators of the day”. Oil money had “enabled 6,000 extra copies” of Huna London to be printed in 1963, “each requested by an individual Arab, to be sent out from Beirut”. The IRD envisaged that it might soon receive “requests for 100,000 or more copies”, which was described as a “highly desirable” outcome. One proposed project remains redacted in entirety. ‘Contingency money’ Beyond this, the oil companies provided the IRD with tens of thousands of pounds in “contingency money”, which was to be used as “a stimulator of desirable projects”. Norman Reddaway, a seasoned British propagandist based in the British embassy in Beirut, described the contingency fund as “particularly useful for pump-priming and for persuading people that desirable things could be done in advance of agreement by London”. The oil companies felt the IRD was making good use of their money and, by 1960, they wanted to help British propaganda operations expand. For instance, Shell was “widening their field of interest and… thinking in terms of propaganda in distribution areas as well as in producing territories. They are thus concerned with the public image of the oil companies in places like West Africa as well as in the Middle East”. As a result, the IRD “could take it that” the oil companies “had an interest in all production and refining areas and territories adjacent thereto. Thus, for example, Somalia was an area of interest because of its proximity to Aden”. Foreign Office minutes from a top secret meeting with Shell and BP. (Photo: John McEvoy) Pump-priming By late 1963, Shell and BP were beginning to express irritation at the IRD’s continued reliance on oil funds for ongoing projects. Shell and BP had intended to pump-prime British covert propaganda projects so that these ventures could become self-sustaining. The oil companies, it was noted, were happy to help propaganda projects get off the ground but “did not like involving themselves in continuing commitments”. In private correspondence dated 16 December 1963, Chisholm told Foreign Office official Leslie Glass that: “the object originally of the exercise on which we are engaged was to assist you to overcome certain financial restrictions in getting things moving at a critical and difficult time. We have been glad to continue our assistance with certain of these projects to our mutual advantage”. Chisholm continued: “It was always our intention, however, that as projects reached full development and they justified financing from other sources, our contributions to them should tail off”. “Secret oil subsidies, in other words, were seen as central to the success of Britain’s propaganda operations in the region.” Trench agreed, expressing hope that ANA, the Reuters service, and the Ariel Foundation – a British front organisation which facilitated exchanges of trade unionists and academics – “could be entirely financed from other sources by about 1966”. The oil companies also found covert payments an awkward affair. Chisholm, for instance, “asked whether a less complicated method of making subventions was desirable”. The IRD was not satisfied. In a draft response to Trench, one IRD official noted that “we are… faced always with the preliminary difficulty of being able to only approach you regarding projects which have a territorial interest common to you and your friends”. Moreover, the IRD emphasised that “the result of a cessation of your [oil company] support would be that… undertakings would have to be cut down and be less freely available in the areas of common interest”. Secret oil subsidies, in other words, were seen as central to the success of Britain’s propaganda operations in the region. ‘Very grateful’ Meanwhile, the IRD would have to discuss Latin America “bilaterally” with Shell, given the company’s interests in Venezuela outweighed BP’s interests in the region. Despite the oil companies’ reservations, another £60,000 was provided to the IRD in 1964, for which British officials were “very grateful”. At this stage, future oil-funded projects in Algeria and the United Arab Republic were under consideration. Secret oil subsidies to the IRD continued beyond 1964. As historian Athol Yates found, BP agreed in 1968 to fund broadcaster Sawt Al Saahil, a British covert radio station based in Sharjah (an emirate in the Gulf), to the tune of £3,000 for three years. However, the extent to which Shell and BP funded British covert propaganda operations in the late and post-Cold War period remains unclear. Shell and BP did not respond to requests for comment. declassifieduk.org

[Category: Editor's Choice, British Petroleum, Cold War, Energy, Propaganda, Shell, United Kingdom]

— A Death in Moscow

 

at 9/1/22 2:15pm

Was the car bomb intended to send a message or to escalate the conflict? By Philip GIRALDI The horrific car bombing in Moscow that killed twenty-nine year old Darya Dugina last week raises many questions about the motives of the Ukrainian regime and its supporters that sent an assassin to murder a prominent Russian civilian who has no overt role in the government of Prime Minister Vladimir Putin. It should be assumed that the target of the attack was Darya’s father, the philosopher and sociologist Aleksandr Dugin, who has been predictably denigrated by western media outlets like the Washington Post, which refers to Dugin as “Putin’s brain” or “Putin’s Rasputin” while the New York Times lamely calls him a “Russian ultranationalist.” Dugin, to be sure, is a powerful media figure well known in Europe who is a strong supporter of the Kremlin’s military initiative against Ukraine which is currently playing out. It appears that he has never even met Putin, which means that I have met Putin more than he has, let alone advised him, and he is generally viewed as a marginal figure in his own country. To be sure, he is known for his fiery rhetoric and hawkish anti-Western and anti-American stance, envisioning as he does Russia serving “as a serious bulwark against the ubiquitous spread of the Western liberal model on the planet.” President Vladimir Putin’s August 16th speech to foreign dignitaries at the Moscow Conference on International Security would seem to confirm that the Russian leader generally at least shares Dugin’s perspective. Putin said that “The situation in the world is changing dynamically and the outlines of a multipolar world order are taking shape. An increasing number of countries and peoples are choosing a path of free and sovereign development based on their own distinct identity, traditions and values.” Dugin, like Putin, is a genuine conservative in cultural terms and would reasonably be described as a Russian nationalist, believing as he does that Russia and its traditional values should be cherished rather that cast away in pursuit of the currently fashionable globalism. He, also like Putin, is protective of the Russian Orthodox Church, which makes him an anachronism or worse from the viewpoint of the cancel culture currently rampaging in the west. I had the privilege of participating in a conference in 2018 in the Iranian city of Mashhad with Dugin and got to know him somewhat. He is a distinguished intellectual, a prolific writer and speaker, and a true son of Holy Russia. That he looks backwards at Russian history to select the cultural trends and tendencies to inspire him should be a positive example of a possible course to pursue for the many conservatives worldwide who have been appalled at what is being done to western civilization at the hands of the wreckers who are now in control of so many nations. The Russian Federal Security Service (FSB) has used surveillance camera footage and other resources to reconstruct what likely took place in the car bombing. First of all, the Dugins had no special security. Aleksandr Dugin led a life in the open, as did his daughter. They would both go to cultural and folk events and speak, often freely meeting with supporters, which is what they were doing on the day of the bombing as honored guests at a “Tradition” festival near Moscow. Aleksandr had no reason to believe that some government might seriously want to assassinate him, even though it is known that he was on the Ukrainian government’s notorious Myrotvorets Enemies of Ukraine “hit list” for alleged supporters of the Russian intervention, which even includes prominent antiwar “Pink Floyd” musician Roger Waters. The names on the list are blocked on the actual group website, but there are reportedly more than 200,000 entries on it, including many prominent Americans. Curiously, the Myrotvorets site has on the home page upper right-hand corner the addresses of the originators of the site, which are Langley Virginia, home of the CIA, and Warsaw Poland. Dugin was clearly wrong if he assumed the list was all just a bit of political theater. According to the Russian police, a 42-year-old woman named Natalya Vovk, who also uses the surname Shaban, reportedly a member of the Ukrainian National Guard’s Azov Battalion, departed Ukraine on July 23rd in a vehicle with false Donbas plates, the region currently under Russian control. She drove into Russia together with her 12 year-old daughter Sophia Shaban as cover, changed the plates to those of Kremlin ally Kazakhstan, and then proceeded to rent an apartment in the building in Moscow where Darya lived. According to one report, Darya would often drive her father to meetings as he did not like to drive, but in this case, he switched to another car. Vovk, who may have had an accomplice who helped her obtain a fake Kazakh passport and may have aided in constructing the bomb, planted the device under the Dugin car and detonated it by remote control before fleeing to Estonia after again changing her car license plates to Ukrainian. It is to be presumed that Vovk was on a mission planned and authorized by Ukrainian intelligence (SBU). No western government has denounced the assassination. The Ukrainian government has denied being behind the attack, though there have been reported celebrations in Kiev and elsewhere. Dugina was reportedly declared “liquidated” on the Myrotvorets site. The Washington Post has predictably editorialized its view that no one should believe anything that the Russians are reporting about the assassination, though one might more reasonably trust the Kremlin than the US Capital’s leading source of media disinformation. Likewise, the British media quickly jumped into the fray, suggesting that it was the Russians themselves, either a dissident group or agents sent by Putin, who did the foul deed. Even the Pope was on the receiving end after he described Darya Dugina as an “innocent victim.” Andrii Yurash, Ukraine’s ambassador to the Holy See, tweeted that the Pope’s words were “disappointing…how (is it) possible to mention one of ideologists of (Russian) imperialism as innocent victim? She was killed by Russians.” But, to be sure, unless additional information appears, there is nothing in the Russian government reconstruction of events that appears to be a fabrication as it is largely supported by surveillance camera video clips and photos of those involved. There remain, however, two major questions that have not been answered or even addressed at this point. The first is motive and the second relates to which other countries might have been involved in the planning and execution of the bombing. And there is a back story that might contribute to a better understanding of what exactly took place and why. Dugin, for all his brilliant academic credentials and lack of any Russian government position, is regarded as actively hostile to the interests of the United States, possibly because of his support of the attack on Ukraine, and has been both sanctioned and become a person of interest for American law enforcement and intelligence agencies. Darya was also sanctioned. By “person of interest” I mean that the national security agencies have applied their information collection resources to monitor where Dugin goes, whom he is in contact with, and to learn what are the various groups that he is involved with. That information would all by itself be suggestive in terms of the apparent plan to assassinate Dugin by car bomb, but it also fits in neatly with several other connections. First of all, the actual capabilities of the Ukrainian intelligence services are not clearly understood, but it is well known within the US intelligence community that the CIA, MI-6 and Mossad are all in Ukraine actively engaged in training and advising their local counterparts. The bombing in Moscow required considerable sophistication as it used prior intelligence, multiple license plates and presumably also identity documents when borders were crossed, something the Ukrainians acting alone might not have been able to accomplish. So did the United States, Britain, and/or the Israelis know what their Ukrainian counterparts were planning? More than that, did they collude in the operation or provide intelligence that made it possible? NATO member Estonia’s apparent cooperation in aiding the exfiltration of Vovk rather suggests a broadly based intelligence operation. The Israelis in particular are adept at that type of cross border targeted assassination operation, having used similar tactics to kill Iranian scientists and technicians. And they might have also had a secondary motive in targeting Dugin over his criticisms of the Jewish role in the terror that followed the Bolshevik revolution as well as its enormous overrepresentation both in the current Russian oligarchy as well as in the new American and globalist elite. Interestingly, Putin has also angered the Israeli government by his criticism of the recent lethal attacks on the Palestinians and by his closure of the Jewish Agency for Israel which arranges the emigration of Jews from Russia to the Jewish state. If foreign intelligence services were involved, that also would imply that the respective governments might have approved of the assassination attempt, which could suggest a motive beyond just warning Russia that its apologists could be killed even in Moscow at any time. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has pressured his “allies” to get more involved in the fighting in his country, beyond the provision of billions of dollars and weapons. The killing of Dugin might have been seen as a possible provocative move to encourage Moscow to over-react in response, leading to still more western involvement, perhaps to include NATO and other allied troops appearing on the battlefields to confront Putin directly. To be sure, one is not encouraged by statements coming out of the mouths of western leaders and NATO revealing that the real objective of the fighting is to weaken Russia and possibly bring about regime change, which increases the likelihood that Moscow will take a hard line in its reaction. Nor was it exactly encouraging to hear a befuddled President Joe Biden’s calling Putin a “war criminal” and Moscow’s intervention a “genocide” while also committing the US to endure whatever it takes for as long as it takes to make sure that Ukraine “wins” the war, which is a virtual promise to escalate the conflict. It is also ironic that the US Congress is toying with the idea of declaring Russia a “state sponsor of terrorism” when it is Washington-ally Ukraine that is in fact using terror. It might seem inconceivable that anyone would plot to assassinate a prominent Russian in order to further escalate a conflict that is already edging perilously close to a nuclear exchange, but there you have it. If Zelensky and his neocon advisers set the trap to deepen the involvement of Washington in their war, Biden should have recognized the folly and backed completely out of the conflict. But there is little chance of that, unfortunately. When it comes to Russia, the hawks are both bipartisan and firmly in control. unz.com

[Category: Editor's Choice, Conservatism, Ideology, Russia, Society]

— China’s BRI Shapes a Multipolar Future for Saudi Arabia

 

at 9/1/22 2:05pm

Xi Jinpings visit to Saudi Arabia is heralding more tectonic changes in the rules of the Great Game in ways that few have begun to realize. Xi Jinpings visit to Saudi Arabia is heralding more tectonic changes in the rules of the Great Game in ways that few have begun to realize. While many people are quick to criticize China for having looked the other way while the atrocious Saudi-led offensive in Yemen has continued to kill hundreds of thousands of civilians since 2015, these same people miss the fact that a higher geopolitical reality is being born which will have a much greater benefit to both the people of Yemen and humanity more generally if it is not sabotaged. Just to be clear: Saudi Arabia has a lot of blood on her hands. However, the monarchy is also not merely the unidimensional player which many often assume whose goal is to simply bask forever in oil profits while spreading wahhabite radicalism across the Arab world while subduing any nation who stands in their way. There is also an emergent robust young generation in Saudi Arabia (half of the 31 million Saudis are under 25) and a renewed embrace of advanced technological progress as a driver for a post-hydrocarbon age. This more healthy dynamic within the Saudi population and governing class was outlined clearly in the Saudi Vision 2030 program of April 2016 and earlier the January 2016 Joint Statement between the People’s Republic of China and the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia which read: In the process of jointly pursuing the Silk Road Economic Belt and the 21st Century Maritime Silk Road initiative, China is willing to coordinate development strategies with Arab states, put into play each other’s advantages and potentials, promote international production capacity cooperation and enhance cooperation in the fields of infrastructure construction, trade and investment facilitation, nuclear power, space satellite, new energy, agriculture and finance, so as to achieve common progress and development and benefit our two peoples. This positive orientation can be seen by an array of common sense transformations of the Saudi foreign policy priorities over recent years made possible by the smooth diplomacy of both China and Russia who are leading in the creation of a new viable security/financial architecture far outside of the control of western unipolarists. Among the chief of these new priorities is a focus on vectoring east towards a pro-China policy, and improving diplomatic relations with historic enemies within the region. Rebuilding Relationships and Stability in the Middle East In November 2020, Saudi Arabia and Iraq re-opened their borders and began restoring cooperative ties 30 years after Saddams invasion of Kuwait saw a near total cutting off of relations. Saudi Arabia and Turkey (both of whom having suffered from overlapping spheres of interest within the Middle East) have also gone far to reset their relations with Erdogan and Crown Prince Bin Salman announcing a new era of cooperation after the latters visit to Ankara. In their joint communique, Saudi Arabia and Turkey wrote of their common determination to enhance cooperation in the bilateral relations between the two countries including in the political, economic, military, security and cultural fields. It wasnt three days after this meeting that Iraqi Prime Minister Mustafa al-Kadhimi met with the Crown Prince in Jeddah where matters of economic, regional stability, bilateral relations and opportunities for joint cooperation” was discussed (followed by the Iraqi PMs meeting with his Iranian counterparts a day later). Iran and Iraq are currently in the final stages of work on the first rail connection between the two states in history with the Shalamcheh-Basra rail line that can easily connect to the existent 1500 km railway across Iraq and could then easily stretch into Syria and Lebanon as part of the Southern corridor of the BRI. Iran and Saudi Arabia have also sped up their efforts to rebuild diplomatic ties after the disastrous execution of Shiite cleric Nimr-al-Nimr caused the total rupture of ties in 2016. Other gulf states who had also cut ties with Iran such as UAE and Kuwait have already restarted relations. It is this authors contention that this breakthrough would have been entirely impossible were it not for the fact that both China and Russia have made it clear that Iran is an integral pillar of the Greater Eurasian Partnership, playing a potential stabilizing role in the middle east, as well as a key node in the functionality of both the International North South Transportation Corridor and also the southern route of the Belt and Road Initiative. This turn towards rationality by Saudi Arabia makes perfect sense. The western overlord of the Middle East who have used Saudi Arabia and other regimes as weapons in their geopolitical arsenal of oil geopolitics and the creation/deployment of terrorism have made it clear that the post-Great Reset rules based international order sees little room for hydrocarbon fuels which have been deemed enemy #1” to be destroyed at all cost in the pursuit of global net zero by 2050. As such, even on a practical level, there will be very little role which Saudi Arabia or any other oil-reliant state will play within this utopic new order. A Sane Energy Policy China, on the other hand, has no such delusional green visions and instead offers a more rational energy vision with its partners outlined in the August 2022 Memorandum of Understanding signed by Saudis Aramco and Chinas Sinopec to vastly expand cooperation on petrochemical integration, engineering, construction, up and downstream technology and hydrogen production. The head of Aramco even said: Ensuring the continuing security of China’s energy needs remains our highest priority – not just for the next five years but for the next 50 and beyond. Ever since Saudi Arabia first floated the idea of selling oil to China in yuan rather than U.S. dollars back in March 2022, it has become increasingly clear that the age of the U.S. dollar as the sole reserve currency is quickly coming to an end. Since 2016 Sino-Saudi trade has expanded massively with China becoming Saudi Arabia’s primary trade partner with bilateral trade hitting $87 billion in 2021. Meanwhile China purchases over 25% of all the oil Saudi Arabia produces. On a deeper level which touches on the substance of long term successful survival (vs mere momentary pragmatic tactical survival), Saudi Arabia has increasingly come to the realization that it needs a new way of doing things. The age of oil geopolitics shaped by speculative spot and futures markets as it was played since 1973 is by all intents and purposes over and anyone wishing to continue playing by those rules will not survive for long. The new reality setting the tone for the Middle East is based upon real, measurable growth with a focus on interconnectivity, rail, and industrial corridors. The prices of oil and other commodities is increasingly being set by the measurable needs of nations and people, instead of the myopic impulses of speculators obsessed with making money and no concern for the real world. As such, it makes perfect sense that China has worked so hard to help Saudi Arabia become the second nuclear powered gulf state (following the UAEs recent leap into the 21st century with 2.7 GW of energy now constructed as of this writing). As early as 2016, China signed an MOU to help Saudi Arabia build 4th generation gas cooled reactors and in 2020 Chinese companies signed an agreement to help Saudi Arabia not only utilize its vast uranium resources but also become proficient in all aspects of the nuclear fuel cycle. This would be vital not only to help Saudi Arabia successfully transition off of its reliance on hydrocarbons, but would also create vast new reservoirs of oil for the global markets now desperately in need of fuel. The vast opportunities for mass desalination is yet another reason why nuclear is the obvious choice for any nation seriously thinking about overcoming water scarcity in sustainable ways. Interconnectivity Grows Besides the $500 billion NEOM megacity on the Red Sea which Xi will be visiting shortly, the Saudi Vision 2030 has also made the construction of several megaprojects a high priority such as the 450 km high speed Haramain Railway completed by China Railway Construction Corporation linking Mecca to Medina. This project provides a solid extension to the 2700 km north-south railway completed in 2015 which connects Riyadh to Al Haditha on Jordan’s border. An additional 460 km of railways connecting various GCC members is also being built. Additionally, the $200 billion Persian Gulf-Red Sea high speed railway (aka: Saudi Land bridge) received full support from all six Gulf Cooperation Council members in 2021 which will see a 2100 km high speed railway stretch across the Arabian Desert with branches that could easily extend north into Egypt where similar projects are already underway and south into Yemen and beyond through the 26 km Bal el-Mandeb Strait across the Red Sea into East Africa. If a successful peace process can endure between Saudi Arabia and Yemen, and if Iran can be brought into a mediating role, it is entirely feasible that this project dubbed The Bridge of the Horn of Africa when it was first unveiled in 2009, may finally see the light of day. During the 14th century, European artists noted that oil and water cannot be mixed without a third element of egg tempura serving as a medium whereby an array of pigments arriving from as far as Arabia and even Asia, could be turned into paint. In this same way, China and to a large extent Russia have become this third medium which has made antagonistic political interests across the Middle East harmonize under a new paradigm of cooperation and trust. A potentially beautiful new future driven by the re-awakening of the spirit of the Silk Road is being painted before our eyes.

[Category: Asia-Pacific, Middle East, World, Belt and Road Initiative, China, New World Order, Saudi Arabia]

— Begum Case Only Highlights the Dirty World of Western Intel Agencies and Their Dirty Job in Syria

 

at 9/1/22 1:54pm

Betrayal is the core of the entire intelligence community and ironically, despite being obsessed with it, it is in fact their domain. Your heart is racing. Sweat is running down the back of your neck. You have been arrested for spying by a foreign government when all along all you thought you were doing was serving your country. The MI6 agents were such decent people. You were on first name terms with them and they even played with your kids when they visited you in your leafy country home. ‘Peter’, the chief agent who asked you to carry out the ‘mission’ gave you his card. The police holding you allow you one phone call anywhere in the world so, holding the card, you call the direct number on the card. To your amazement a young woman answers and tells you that no such person of that name works there and that she doesn’t know of such an individual called Peter. The penny drops. Betrayal is the core of the entire intelligence community and ironically, despite being obsessed with it, it is in fact their domain. Betrayal is the very oxygen of spies who use it to brilliant effect. Perhaps this is why they are so obsessed with it, like a thief who is the most diligent at protecting his own home against theft. The story of the British businessman left in a cell to rot for years when the operation goes wrong is not anything novel. It’s standard practice and there are many example of this, some even being the basis of dramatized documentaries, like that of Peter Bleach a UK based legitimate arms dealer who was arrested in 1995 for illegally trafficking arms which was actually a MI6 operation which went terribly wrong leaving him the fall guy. But is the same story of Shamima Begum, a former British citizen who travelled to join the Islamic State (IS) group in 2015 at the age of 15, whose story continues to intrigue journalists? Begum, it is claimed now by the BBC and a recently published book, was smuggled into Syria by an intelligence agent who was working for Canada. According to the BBC, Britain’s top police agency, Scotland Yard was informed that Begum and her two friends were “trafficked” from their home in East London into Syria by a smuggler who was a double agent working for both ISIS and Canadian intelligence, according to The Secret History of the Five Eyes, an upcoming book written by journalist Richard Kerbaj. Unbeknown to Begum, Canada had recruited Mohammed al-Rashed, a human trafficker, when he applied for asylum at the Canadian embassy in Jordan which might help her case against the UK state which ruled previously that she be stripped of her British citizenship. Not only was she a minor when she travelled to Syria, but she as also duped into the illegal act of becoming a fully signed up member of ISIS by an agent working for an ally of the UK who was collecting data on those joining the group from western countries. Many in the West, in particular, in the UK will be shocked by the revelations. But then again, one must consider the level of ignorance and naivety with the British public. Indeed, many refused to believe that in the heyday of the Syrian war, MI6 recruited and trained ISIS and Al Qaeda operatives in Syria to fight the Assad regime and, when required, to stage chemical attacks with the objective of framing Assad with western press (which was very successful). Indeed, is practically impossible for editors working on newsdesks in London to even believe that in 2014, Obama actually had a ‘dirty dozen’ list of 12 or so extremists groups who were all al Qaeda or ISIS splinter groups (which were hilariously called ‘moderate rebels’) and who were paid handsomely for fighting against ISIS. Western journalists only noticed the operation going slightly array when shipments to the groups specifically of anti-tank weapons were sold onto other ISIS/Qaeda groups who used them specifically against the Syrian army. The West’s agenda in Syria is hardly a noble one though and the Begum case reminds us of that the only common theme which comes from such stories is how devious and nefarious the West is. Passing aside that American troops’ very presence in Syria is entirely illegal under international law we only have to look at the hundreds of oil tankers snaking their way out of northern Syria laden with their stolen booty – a story which hardly made it to the pages of the Washington Post or New York Times in recent days, but one which serves a purpose none the less. Most of what the West does in Syria is illegal and immoral and the Begum story won’t shed any tears for hardened hacks who know the territory well. For the spooks in Canada or in the UK, it hardly registers. Their trade, after all, is their treachery.

[Category: Society, ISIS, Justice, Syria, Terrorism, United Kingdom]

— We’re Being Trained to Worry About ‘Russian Propaganda’ While Drowning in U.S. Propaganda

 

at 9/1/22 1:43pm

By Caitlin JOHNSTONE One of the weirdest, most insane things happening today is the way the entire western world is being trained to freak out about “Russian propaganda” — which barely exists in the west — while ignoring the fact that we are spending every day marinating in billions of dollars worth of US empire propaganda. CNN has an article out titled “Darya Dugina’s death provides a glimpse into Russia’s vast disinformation machine — and the influential women fronting it” on the recently assassinated daughter of Alexander Dugin, a Russian political thinker of wildly exaggerated influence. The article uses Dugina’s assassination to further stoke its audience’s ever-growing panic about Russian disinformation, quickly becoming a commentary on Russia’s entire propaganda network without bothering to articulate how Dugina’s death “provides a glimpse” into its workings. Without the slightest hint of self-reflection or irony, this CNN article about Russian propaganda cites as its two main experts a think tanker from the Atlantic Council’s Digital Forensic Research Lab and a think tanker from the Center for European Policy Analysis (CEPA). The Atlantic Council is a NATO narrative management firm that is funded by NATO, the US government, the UK government, various other US-aligned states, the arms industry, and numerous billionaires. CEPA’s donor list looks similar to the Atlantic Council’s and includes US arms manufacturers and the US government through both the US State Department and the CIA cutout National Endowment for Democracy. Both are used to promote the information interests of the US-centralized power alliance in Europe and North America. As we’ve discussed previously, the way news media cite corrupt warmongering think tanks to discuss foreign policy without ever mentioning their immense conflicts of interests is plainly journalistic malpractice. But this practice is ubiquitous throughout the western news media, the because western news media are propaganda outlets. In which ⁦@CNN⁩ chooses to smear the assassinated Dugina as a “disinformation” purveyor (rather than just someone with a “pro-Kremlin world view”). Note that not only doesn’t the word “terrorism” appear in this long article, not even “assassination”. https://t.co/Fx6WCoDkNH — Left on the News (@leftiblog) August 30, 2022 The article cites RT, the Internet Research Agency, and something called United World International as examples of “Russia’s vast disinformation machine,” despite every one of those institutions having a degree of influence that is the exact opposite of “vast” in the western world. In 2017 RT accounted for all of 0.04 percent of total TV viewership in the UK. A study found that the much-touted US “election interference” campaign by the Internet Research Agency in 2016 consisted mostly of posts that had nothing to do with the election and comprised “approximately 1 out of 23,000 pieces of content” seen on Facebook. I’d be surprised if anyone reading this has ever even heard of United World International, and CNN’s own article acknowledges that before that outlet was banned from western social media its accounts only ever had a few thousand followers. So when I say Russian propaganda barely exists in the west, I mean it is quantifiably a complete non-factor. Compare those paltry numbers to the nonstop barrage of empire propaganda that westerners are fed every day of their lives by every news media outlet of significant influence — whose coverage of the Ukraine war has eclipsed that of all recent wars the US has been directly involved in — and it becomes clear that this message we’re being fed that we all need to panic about Russian propaganda is itself propaganda. The CNN write-up criticizes RT editor-in-chief Margarita Simonyan for saying in 2012 that “When Russia is at war, we are, of course, on the side of Russia.” As though CNN ever sides against the US during US wars. Not only does CNN consistently take the side of the US government in every single war, it conducts brazen propaganda operations to help start new ones, like the time it staged a scripted interview with a small Syrian child calling for US military interventionism in Syria. The only difference between Russian state media and US state media is that Russian state media is honest about what it is. This story disparaging @TheGrayzoneNews approvingly cites Ross Burley, co-founder of the Centre for Information Resilience. Politicos @e_casalicchio doesnt mention that @rwdburley is a UK state propaganda operative who has called for Grayzone to be censored. Why omit that? https://t.co/Qo1L5w4DKp — Aaron Maté (@aaronjmate) August 29, 2022 This wave of nonsensical, artificially created panic about Russian disinformation has been used to dismiss any and all information which comes out that casts the US empire and its lackeys in a negative light as Russian propaganda or the work of Russian agents. We’ve seen this over and over again, from the way Julian Assange has been falsely cast as a Kremlin operative to the way indie media are falsely framed as Russian propaganda operations. The latest example of this deception is the way incriminating leaked emails of prominent British figures published by The Grayzone have been dismissed in a new Politico hit piece as a dishonest representation of emails obtained by Russian hackers per “the Russian playbook”. Grayzone staff hastened to point out that not only does the Politico article fail to grapple with the rather important question of what the leaked emails actually contain, but that it failed to mention that its primary source is a UK Foreign Office veteran and psyops specialist who has a publicly stated vendetta to get The Grayzone censored online. The manufactured hysteria about a nonexistent epidemic of Russian propaganda in the west has people so blinkered and confused that it’s become impossible to criticize the most powerful government in the world for its planet-threatening brinkmanship with a rival nuclear superpower on any online forum without getting accused of being a secret agent for the Kremlin. My own social media notifications are continuously lit up with accusations of Putin loyalty and rubles in my bank account just for criticizing the most dangerous impulses of the most powerful and destructive government on earth, despite never having worked for Russia or any other government. What’s funny about all this is that by constantly warning of the dangers of Russian propaganda, imperial spinmeisters are admitting that they know it’s possible to manipulate public thought at mass scale using media. They’re just lying about who’s doing it to us. In reality, they’re not worried about Russian propaganda. “Russian propaganda” is just a spooky story we are told to keep us from noticing that our civilization is saturated in US propaganda. caityjohnstone.medium.com

[Category: Editor's Choice, Mass Media, Propaganda, Russia, United States]

— Why the United States Has Set Itself Up for Failure in the Semiconductor Race for Military Supremacy

 

at 8/31/22 2:20pm

Doomsday prophesising of how China’s days are numbered and that it is in the midst of an economic collapse could not be any further from reality. Doomsday prophesising of how China’s days are numbered and that it is in the midst of an economic collapse could not be any further from reality. The reasons for the spread of this sort of gossip is to keep up the belief (and thus investment) in the idea that the United States is secure in its alpha dog global status and that the world is better off siding with said alpha in its escalating and reckless, not to mention unnecessary, economic and geopolitical war against Russia and China. It is to intimidate any country foolish enough to throw too many of its eggs into the Russia-China basket with the thought that they will be left hanging in the wind once China collapses from the international stranglehold on its economy, which is touted as inevitable. It is to convince the American people, that the further sacrifices they are about to make in their livelihood and standard of living will be worth it, perhaps to even go so far as to proclaim that this will be the necessary “new normal” all for the cause of world security, of course. The reality of the situation which should be plain for everyone to see at this point, is that the United States’ sanctions and banning of various types of trade with Russia and China, meant to cripple their economies, is doing more damage to the world markets than anything else, including that of Europe and the United States. These sanctions have brought the world into a very predictable energy and food crisis to which European and American citizens are told they must suffer through in the name of western security. A crisis which is gutting essential infrastructure required to sustain developed countries. A crisis from which there is no quick return to a first world living standard for its citizenry. It was thought that such manoeuvres would cripple the Russian economy and cause internal unrest demanding for the removal of President Putin. Instead we see the Russian rouble stronger than it has ever been in large part due to the competent leadership of Sergei Glazyev (see his speech on Sanctions and Sovereignty) who is in the process of organising a “new economic order…[which] will involve a creation of a new digital payment currency founded through an international agreement based on principles of transparency, fairness, goodwill, and efficiency” as he explained in an interview with Pepe Escobar for The Cradle. In other words, the world’s new monetary system, underpinned by a digital currency, will be backed by a basket of new foreign currencies and natural resources. And it will liberate the Global South from both western debt and IMF-induced austerity. What this means is that with this new system, the economic sovereignty of a nation will be protected; that a country rich in resources will finally be in a position to use the profits of these resources to strengthen their currencies and build infrastructure essential for any first world nation rather than be forcefully reduced to an indebted raw resource producer and nothing more as enforced by the policies of the IMF over the past several decades. Russia’s economy did not tank, and the alliance between Russia and China has only grown stronger. And despite attempts to isolate their markets, trade opportunities remain ample and in high demand while the United States and Europe who refuse to participate in these markets are pushing themselves further into a corner. Instead of reassessing its position, the U.S., which clearly did not expect such an outcome, has instead decided to escalate this economic war with China, which will create further hardship for the world markets, in the middle of a very serious semiconductor backlog. Semiconductors/chips are an essential component for any smart device, including automobiles and smart phones. They are essential in the production of AI, quantum computing, and microelectronics. Semiconductors are also essential for advanced weapons systems, including hypersonic missiles. Interestingly, the United States has shot itself in its own kneecap in the middle of a race for military supremacy since the crisis of the semiconductor/chips backlog (triggered by the United States), which has heavily hit the consumer market especially the automobile industry, has also hit the United States’ ability to churn out advanced weapons systems in mass quantity. In December 2020, SMIC along with other Chinese firms were put on a U.S. blacklist for exports called the Entity List. This was an attempt to prevent SMIC, China’s largest and most sophisticated semiconductor producer, from importing the necessary material and equipment to manufacture 14nm and 20nm semiconductors/chips, which also ended up cutting off the world markets from China, the main supplier of these chips. TSMC (Taiwan) and Samsung (South Korea) are the present titans in the cutting-edge semiconductor industry (that is 7nm and 5nm chips), however, China’s SMIC was the largest supplier of 20nm+ chips which are essential for the consumer market. When China was taken out of this market it created a bottleneck since TSMC and Samsung, who do not specialise in bulk manufacturing of lower grade chips, were already way above capacity. This created a massive global bottleneck in semiconductor/chip production. [East Asia is manufacturing about 75% of the chips in the world.] Ironically, the United States would have had an easier time amping up production in their advanced weapons systems if they had left China as the main global supplier of 20nm chips. Over the past month or so the U.S. State Department has been busy setting up weapon sales with countries such as Japan ($293 million deal, principally with Raytheon Technologies for 150 air-to-air missiles that can be loaded on F-35 fighters), Singapore ($630 million deal for laser-guided bombs and other munitions), Australia ($235 million deal with Lockheed Martin for 80 air-to-surface missiles), South Korea ($130 million for 31 lightweight torpedoes to use with MH-60R helicopters for anti-submarine warfare) and Germany (with a potential sale of over 35 F-35 fighters). These are orders that presently are unable to be fulfilled by these companies in the short-term due to the semiconductor backlog of 1-2 years or more. The United States is attempting to increase its onshore manufacturing capabilities so that it can control much more of the supply chain within its domestic market, rather than the present reality, which is that there are several countries dispersed throughout the world who are the specialised leaders of one of the approximately 50 steps, requiring high standard specialisation, in manufacturing cutting edge semiconductors. The specialising process for all the components required for leading chip manufacturing is so costly (in the hundreds of billions) and precise that it is estimated that it would take at least 4-6 years or more to master each area of specialisation. If you want a resilient [self-sufficient] chip supply chain, you not only need chip plants, you also need a whole string of suppliers from critical chemicals and precision components all coming along, said an executive at Japans Daikin, reported by NIKKEI Asia. Building a semiconductor plant takes several years, but building chemical plants will take even longer given the extensive environmental assessments and regulations for handling chemicals. (Refer here for a short video on how semiconductors are made). Presently, no country comes even close to this capability. Later on in this paper I will explain why if any country is to reach resilience, that is self-sufficiency in this market, it will be China not the United States. Is China too far behind to catch up? There has been a lot of persistence, perhaps in the belief that if one repeats something out loud enough times it will come true, that China is too far behind to be a contender in the semiconductor race. Since the U.S. ban on China purchasing certain essential materials for chip manufacturing in December 2020, in just the past year, China has experienced a 33% semiconductor growth output. According to Bloomberg, China’s chip industry is the fastest growing anywhere else in the world, including the world leaders TSMC and Samsung, owning 19 out of the world’s 20 fastest growing chip industry firms over the past four quarters. SMIC and Hua Hong Semiconductor Ltd., the biggest contract chip makers, have kept their Shanghai-based plants operating at almost full capacity even as the worst Covid-19 outbreak since 2020 paralyzed factories and logistics across China, while other leading semiconductor industries, such as TSMC and Samsung, have been operating at 60% capacity or lower (due to the backlog in essential materials). SMIC recently reported a 67% surge in quarterly sales, outpacing far larger rivals GlobalFoundries Inc. and TSMC. Despite the United States having already pushed the Netherlands to ban ASML Holding NV from selling China EUV technology (considered essential for manufacturing cutting edge semiconductors), at the time of writing this, it is now attempting to put further pressure on the Netherlands to ban even DUV systems (which predate EUV and are generations behind cutting edge lithography technology) to China in the U.S.’ desperate attempt to remove or at least contain China as a competitor. The U.S. has also attempted to put pressure on Japan’s Nikon (the only other DUV manufacturer at 5% market share) as well. However, Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte said this past June he is against reconsidering trade relations with China and called for the EU to develop its own policies toward Beijing. China is the Netherlands’ third-biggest trade partner after Germany and Belgium. ASML opposes a ban on sales of DUV lithography equipment to Chinese customers because it is already a mature technology. I suspect this sort of response will become the new normal for the United States if they continue along this line of thinking that everyone, and not just the U.S., should also be ready to shoot themselves in the kneecap or worse, in service of a self-sabotaing idea of U.S. hegemony. You have to admit, it is a hard story to sell when China is increasingly one of the top trading partners of the majority of countries, while the U.S. seems to only ask that countries be willing to do frequent bloodlettings and be the first to poke their heads up from the trenches in reckless military posturing, all in service to the Anglo-American empire, who has consistently shown that they have not a care in the world for the future state of such countries. And it gets much worse for American aspirations for global military supremacy… China’s SMIC has had the capability of manufacturing 7nm chips since 2021, thought to be equivalent to Taiwan’s TSMC’s N7 (7nm chip) in yield optimization. [TSMC is capable of 5nm chip production and is expected to achieve 3nm chip production by the end of this year]. This puts China in the lead of the United States’ Intel, which has yet to achieve manufacturing capability of 7nm chips and hopes to reach capability by the end of 2022 or early 2023. [Note: Presently, TSMC is banned from selling semiconductors to Huawei that have been made with U.S. technology. Huawei up until that point was the biggest client of TSMC.] TSMC had already filed lawsuits in U.S. courts against SMIC for products made with TSMC trade secrets in 2003 and 2006, the latter which ended with a settlement. This was a rather controversial manoeuvre on the part of TSMC since the United States is not neutral ground and stands to benefit greatly by crippling what is now China’s no. 1 semiconductor producer. However, TSMC did decide to make a settlement with SMIC rather than attempting to go for the full jugular. Interestingly one of the terms of settlement was the transfer over of about 10% of SMIC’s stocks to TSMC. There are no signs yet that TSMC is seeking another lawsuit against SMIC, however, even if they were successful, it were likely that China would be prevented from trading with unfriendly countries in 7nm chips but would continue its production and application within China and its trade to friendly countries. The U.S. is increasingly in no position to enforce anything further than this. With the advent of SMIC’s N+1 and N+2 (7nm chips), China is now 4-6 years behind the leaders (TSMC, Samsung) in cutting edge semiconductor capability. HiSilicon and Huawei together will no doubt accomplish much with N+2 and are capable of massive output. This is very big news. Funny how western press seems to be rather silent on this massive breakthrough for China which has propelled it ever close to the front of the race. Instead, we seem to be told, with ever more vigor, that China’s economy is in the midst of a collapse… China has accomplished what almost everyone thought to be actually impossible. Namely, it was thought an extremely difficult if not impossible task to produce 7nm chips with high yield optimization without EUV technology (to which China has been banned from using after the U.S. pressured the government of the Netherlands). China has also been banned from other thought-to-be key components and yet, have either found a way to bypass the requirement of such things or have successfully specialised in their production on their own. In January 2022, legendary TSMC R&D Director Dr. Burn Lin mentioned in an interview that SMIC can even fabricate N5 equivalent chips with only multi-patterning no EUV necessary. (TSMC had also become quite good at making cutting edge semiconductors before the EUV technology had come out). Thus, those simply accusing China of just “copying” TSMC N7 have no comprehension that to actually successfully manufacture TSMC N7 yield optimization level chips is akin to successfully building the Star Trek Enterprise and all its features with 60% of the parts and using technology thought to be about 20 years behind the requirement to build such a thing. You can understand why almost everyone thought this was an impossibility for China. Instead of accusing China of merely copying, her critics should in fact acknowledge this impressive achievement for what it is. China is increasingly finding itself in the lead of the U.S., despite being the only country banned from full participation in this market. How the U.S. was the first to use the “Copy EXACTLY! Technology Transfer Method” Before I go on to discuss where is the U.S. positioned in the semiconductor race, I thought it necessary to review a very important piece of history that everyone, but especially Americans, should know about in relation to their criticism of China. In the 1980s Japan was the kingpin in cutting edge semiconductors production. This was especially the case relating to a specific type of memory chip DRAM. Japan’s product was not only superior to that of what the United States was producing but it was also much cheaper, due to Japan’s investment in automation tools and processes. This resulted in much lower defect rates and higher yields. It was also because Americans were dependent on NMOS for their DRAM technologies, whereas the Japanese had decided to go the more difficult and risky route with CMOS, that is, more expensive and harder to pull off. Rapid advances in lithography technology made the cost of CMOS far lower and became the industry standard. American chipmakers were now the owners of outdated, expensive technology. And Japan became the kingpin of the semiconductor world. In 1985 there was a recession in the computer market, with the microcomputer market seeing an 8% decline. This decline had massive reverberations down the supply chain. Prices collapsed by 60%. Intel, DRAM pioneer, experienced the biggest crash in orders in over ten years, resulting in their exiting of the DRAM industry entirely. Leading U.S. semiconductor industries saw 14-17% decline in revenues. By 1986, the American DRAM industry had dropped from fourteen producers in 1970 to just three. Complaints from certain quarters in the United States began criticizing Japan for “predatory” and “unfair” trade practices despite the recession in 1985 being a demand problem and not a competition problem. These complaints were primarily: That the Japanese were dumping semiconductors into the U.S. market at below fair market value. The Japanese were not providing foreign chip makers sufficient access to its domestic market However, Japan’s semiconductor presence in the U.S. did not harm all American markets, IBM and AT&T greatly benefitted from these lower prices for DRAM. Discussions began about implementing trade barriers, which would in turn make America an even more expensive place to make things, accelerating the electronic assembly off-shoring trend already underway. In June 1985, Micron filed an anti-dumping complaint against Japanese exporters of 64K DRAM. Intel, AMD and National Semiconductor soon followed, doing the same for the EPROM market. The Reagan Administration had filed a complaint of their own over 256K DRAM (64K DRAM was released by Japan in 1982 and 256K DRAM was released by Japan in 1984). President Reagan, who was supposed to be all about free markets, in the spring of 1986 forced the U.S.-Japan Semiconductor Agreement with METI (Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry in Japan). Part of the conditionalities of this agreement were that the American semiconductor share in the Japanese market be increased to a target of 20-30% in five years, that every Japanese firm stop its “dumping” into the American market and the Americans wanted a separate monitoring body to help enforce all of this. Many Japanese companies felt that their government had caved and had betrayed them. They had hoped for a simple fine. It was thought incredible, and rightly so, that their company trade data now needed to be submitted to a third party in order to be reviewed and judged in accordance to the demands of an American market competitor. Not only this, but these Japanese companies were being asked to trade with American companies, regardless of whether the American product was the most superior or best priced from its competitors, to meet this U.S. demand for a 20-30% Japanese market share. No surprise here, the Japanese companies refused to do this and METI had no way of forcing them to do so. President Reagan responded by imposing a 100% tariff on $300 million worth of Japanese goods in April 1987. Combined with the 1985 Plaza Agreement which revalued the Japanese Yen the U.S.-Japan Semiconductor Agreement gave the U.S. memory market the extra boost it needed. Of course, that boost was akin to pushing Japan’s head underwater for several minutes while a race was underway, however, rather embarrassingly, Japan would still maintain a lead. The U.S. was in no position to beat the Japanese in its domination of the semiconductor industry. There was no choice but to…copy Japanese technology, in the name of American supremacy that is. It appears no country has the right to earn its way to the top other than the U.S. in a world we are told benefits the smartest, most innovative and fastest growing industries. Apparently everyone at the end of the day works for a global boss, who reserves the right to determine your company’s fate and the rules are changed accordingly to what suits this global boss’ needs case by case, the world markets be damned. Intel would be the first to implement vast copying of Japanese semiconductor technology in order to stay in the competition. Craig Barrett CEO (1998-2005) and Chairman (1968-2009) of Intel was the first to implement “Copy EXACTLY! Technology Transfer Method.” I think the title gives you a good enough idea of what that entails. Again, if we have learned anything from the generous lessons bestowed on us by the great arbiter, the United States, it is to “Do as I Say, Not as I Do.” Apparently copying is only an infringement on patents when other countries do it. I guess this is sort of similar to the American lesson that biological research facilities only turn into dangerous bio labs threatening world security when in the possession of the Russians, when in the possession of the Americans it is simply called biological research and entomology (the study of insects). Yields at American fabs (semiconductor fabrication plant, also know as foundry), improved by 60% in 1986 to 84% in 1991. Over the same time the Japanese had gone from 75% in 1986 to 93% in 1991, decreasing the gap by 6% in the span of five years between the two competitors. In 1984 the U.S. passed the National Cooperative Research Act, which among other things allowed for the revising of laws to permit partnerships between national research institutes and private companies and that these private companies could attain the exclusive rights of the generated research for five years or even longer. This initiative was to partially mimic what the Japanese had done in terms of collaboration between companies and R&D, however, whatever came out of such partnerships were owned by the Japanese government. In the case of the United States, publicly funded research was to be the property of private companies who could choose to use whatever they learned from such research for their sole benefit or to even bury it if it was thought to be not “profitable” in accordance with their aims, whatever that might be. In 1987, fourteen American semiconductor companies along with DARPA joined together to found SEMATECH. SEMATECH became the facilitator of relationships within the American semiconductor industry. DARPA stands for Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency. DARPA is a research and development agency of the United States Department of Defense responsible for the development of emerging technologies for use by the military. Notice in the above graphic that SEMATECH also has influence over TSMC and Samsung. Source: SEMATECH. In case the chilling reality of this has not fully sunk in, what the formation of SEMATECH along with the National Cooperative Research Act meant, was that the U.S. Department of Defense was the sole proprietor of R&D research in practically ALL fields of science and engineering. In other words, the U.S. Department of Defense would be the sole conduit at the core deciding where funding goes, which projects should be prioritised and downgraded, and which projects should be killed in their cradle never to be talked about again with threat on your life. For those who take issue in all advancement of technology because they are fearful that we are heading towards such dystopic visions as Terminator, the Matrix, or Bladerunner, this is not because this is what humans “naturally” do, it is not even fair nor accurate to say that this is what all countries will inevitably do. It is namely what a country will do if the military industrial complex is its sole reason for existing on this Earth. And it will feed this monster at the cost of the welfare and livelihood of its actual people, as we see so clearly occurring specifically within the United States. And yes, this is specifically striking in the United States, especially since the 2007-2008 financial crisis, to which the U.S. has yet to do anything differently in terms of how it runs its finances, despite countless Americans losing their homes and more while the big banks have been repeatedly bailed out with taxpayer money. Today, the U.S. continues to spend hundreds of billions of dollars on its military industrial complex and leaves the ever-growing poverty, suicide and drug abuse unaddressed while it loudly blares its woke priorities as to how to speak in such a way that no person could possibly be emotionally offended and in the process render anything you have to say entirely irrelevant. People should wake up and realise that they are not mad because of this or that label, it is because your future was stolen from you, and it was done by the hand of your very own government. Your oppression in situated in your lack of opportunity, in your lack of real choice for a better future. In today’s western world you are free to choose whatever avatar you like but you are not free to make any changes to the status quo that is governed by the military industrial complex, which keeps the American people in ever-increasing poverty and destroys entire nations. What sort of freedom is that? This is the reason why no decent scientist can hope to accomplish great benefits for their society with any research they conduct in the United States. It is all about business at the end of the day, and there is no bigger business than the military business in the United States, except perhaps “biological research” which is drawing a close second, and technically speaking figures into the military business Note that in the case of China in the above graph, this is an estimate. In the case of China what we see is the very opposite to what is occurring in the United States. As the World Bank and BBC attest, surprise surprise, China is doing what they say they are doing in addressing poverty levels, you can read about it on the BBC news site. According to the World Bank, which draws a higher poverty line for upper-middle income countries, to reflect the economic conditions, China is now considered an upper-middle-income country according to the World Bank. Therefore, China is able to not only compete with the American arms race (in self-defence to the clear war escalation), but it is also able to compete in other areas of more useful endeavours as well as raising its own people out of poverty. China is not subservient to a military industrial complex and using the lazy logic that if it happened to the U.S. it will happen to China, is to not only disregard what is actually going on in China today but it is also to disregard the cultural orientation of its country and its people. Now back to our story. Intel, which would exit out of DRAM in 1985 would turn their focus on logic chips, which they are now a world leader in. In 1991, the Japanese real estate bubble burst. The real estate bubble had inflated due to the Yen’s appreciation, triggered by the 1985 Plaza Accord. In 1983 Samsung received a technology transfer from Micron (the company that launched the complaint suit against Japan that started this whole thing off) for 64K DRAM. To the credit of Samsung, they utilised this technology transfer to maximum use and along with LG and Hyundai were able to produce the 4M DRAM, with their product hitting the market just 6 months after the Japanese. Micron was one of the few American DRAM producers to have survived the 80s and had made adjustments making production very cheap for their lower-end DRAM chips. While Samsung was beginning to compete for the lead in cutting edge DRAM technology with the Japanese, Micron in a pincer move flooded the Japanese markets with half-a-generation behind DRAM chips at a cost of $4 when Japan was selling them at $6. Japan’s semiconductor market was hit from the top by Samsung with their high-end products and at the bottom by Micron with their low-end products, known as the Micron Shock. The Micron Shock set into motion the fall of the Japanese semiconductor manufacturing industry. 128M DRAM prices collapsed by 50% in a single year. Fujitsu exited the DRAM market in 1998. Japanese companies Hitachi and NEC merged their operations together to create Elpida in 1999. They later took over Mitsubishi’s DRAM division in 2002. Elpida was later acquired by none other than….Micron Technology. Japan’s semiconductor industry is still strong but they are much smaller players in the world market and no longer have a capability of developing cutting edge semiconductors. Companies such as TSMC, Samsung, SMIC, and Intel are much further in the lead. (for more on this story to which I largely drew from refer to Asianometry). Today, the United States has reopened its arms to Japan in what is promised to be a loving embrace this time around, Japan will open an R&D center for next-generation 2nm chips by year-end under a partnership with the U.S., part of their efforts to establish secure chip supply chains amid tensions around industry leader Taiwan. Perhaps Japan truly believes it will really be different this time around. Is the U.S. too far behind to catch up? Intel was scheduled to have its 7nm chips in production by 2021, instead one year later, Intel has yet to develop the capability of 7nm chip production which they hope to achieve by the end of 2022 or early 2023. However, despite China having figured this all out in 2021, we are still supposed to believe that China is hopelessly behind the U.S. in the semiconductor race. Back in July 2021, Intel is still making big announcements of their comeback, now moved back to the year 2025… 2025 is something that is almost lightyears away in the semiconductor R&D. Who knows what TSMC, Samsung and SMIC will have achieved by then, there may even be a new form of technology to replace the entire present way of doing things. Perhaps the U.S. is used to making these predictions assuming everyone else will remain stationary? Someone should tell them and their investors that this is no longer 1985. With this set back in mind that things tend not to run on schedule in the semiconductor business, is it a feasible prospect of the United States to increase its onshore manufacturing capabilities so that it can control much more of the supply chain within its domestic market? The short answer is no. But don’t take it from me, take it from Morris Chang, an elder statesman of the semiconductor industry who founded and formerly chaired TSMC, who put this smack of reality most bluntly in remarks addressed to the U.S. as reported by NIKKEI Asia: If you want to re-establish a complete semiconductor supply chain in the U.S., you will not find it as a possible task, he said at an industry forum last year. Even after you spend hundreds of billions of dollars, you will still find the supply chain to be incomplete, and you will find that it will be very high cost, much higher cost than what you currently have. Despite these words of advice, amidst what I think can be fairly called an economic recession if not depression, the United States has just recently passed the $52 billion CHIPS Act, with $39 billion planned to be spent domestically, to namely benefit, you guessed it, the military industrial complex. U.S. Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo warned in a recent interview with CNBC while the CHIPS Act was being considered by Congress: If you allow yourself to think about a scenario where the United States no longer had access to the chips currently being made in Taiwan, its a scary scenario…Its a deep and immediate recession. Its an inability to protect ourselves by making military equipment. We need to make this in America. Notice the only concern she names by name? The military industrial complex. At some point Americans need to ask themselves, what is the point of all of this military equipment if the American people’s livelihood is not economically secure, in violation to the promise of freedom from want as one of the four core American freedoms. How is the American government providing the American people security if they do not even have enough food to eat and have no homes to live in but increasingly ghettofied communities living like an ant colony. Or Elon Musk’s ridiculous house box. They are literally selling boxes for homes as if this is some sort of luxury product. Why is it ok for Americans to increasingly have no access to the most basic of basic needs while hundreds of billions of dollars are poured into Department of Defense Frankenstein projects? In case you haven’t noticed, the Cold War has been going on for 76 years now. When has the military industrial complex ever been justified and not in fact based on conscious lies? President Eisenhower departed his office actually acknowledging that he left a monster growing in the basement and had no idea how to get rid of it in his farewell address: “In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex… The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists, and will persist.” Honestly, he might as well have gotten into a helicopter and left the country waving like Nixon did while the Americans all stared dumbstruck. But somehow we largely regard that speech as if it were something respectable. Let us call a spade for what it is. And what happened to the next President who was elected to address the matter? His brains were splattered onto the pavement in broad daylight on live television. Anyway, I digress, back to the matter of American supremacy… The U.S. is confident that it can once again unleash its jungle roar of supremacy with the help of TSMC. TSMC is scheduled to building fabs (semiconductor fabrication plants) in the U.S. and Japan. Intel doesnt expect its new fabs in Ohio to begin production until 2025. Intel is also building two new factories in Arizona expected to go online in 2024. Thats when TSMC and Samsung also plan to open new fabs in Texas and Arizona, respectively. What this means is essentially that they have agreed to share some of their trade secrets with the U.S. This is likely not being done voluntarily, without some very scary threats. As NIKKEI Asia reported Taiwans government is keenly aware that if TSMC were to move production sites it could weaken the islands security position, analysts say. For many analysts, those factories and their role in the global economy act as an insurance policy for the island. The Taiwanese government will definitely hope TSMC keeps its most cutting-edge factories all in Taiwan, said Su Tzu-yun, director of the Institute for National Defense Security Research in Taipei. That could make Taiwan a safer place. No one would want to damage TSMCs advanced chip production capacities, which are the hearts of many electronic devices…We dont think the tension and competition between the U.S. and China will end any time soon…As a crucial supplier, TSMC may still face a tough issue later – choosing sides. TSMC is thus stuck in a very tight spot right now. What Taipei should also understand is that Taiwan is expendable to the United States, but it is not expendable to China. Rather, Taiwan is actually essential for China’s security. Taiwan needs to realise that words are words but actions are another thing. Independence for Taiwan is not a reality. It is not an economic reality. And it is not a political reality (not to mention cultural reality). The United States will not stop until Taiwan becomes its own military base (added to the list of South Korea and Japan) and becomes an upholder to U.S. hegemony in the area, which pretty much runs counter to every country’s interest in South-East Asia. Or Taiwan can return to China and receive protection from America’s war mongering. China will do this one way or another, that is, defend their land against a U.S. invasion, but it would be nice if Taiwan had its head together if such a stand-off were to occur. In case you have not been informed, Taiwan is internationally recognised, including by the United States as part of China. China has enough missiles to defend Taiwan without any issue. For more on China’s military capability refer to ex-Marine Brian Berletic’s New Atlas. Thus, though Intel has high ambitions to somehow be in the lead in 2025 despite only being thrown scraps from the alley presently, the elephant in the room here is that the U.S. seems to have lost any ability to actually be an innovator in the field. The only thing keeping them in the game right now as a leading cutting edge semiconductor manufacturer is their use of intimidation and threat of force. The writing is on the wall, as Russia and China gain in economic and military supremacy, South Korea and Taiwan will be free to conduct their business as they choose and not be obligated to constantly give the U.S. favors under uncomfortably tense situations threatening the very sovereignty of these companies let alone countries. Another rather large factor to the U.S.’ miscalculation in their strive for supremacy is the matter of a little mineral called Fluorite. Fluoropolymers are a key material for semiconductor production. Fluoropolymers are processed from fluorspar, also known as fluorite, a mineral of which China controls nearly 60% of the global production output, according to data from market research company IndexBox. China has long identified fluorspar as a strategic resource and back in the late 1990s limited exports due to its importance to industries from agriculture, electronics and pharmaceuticals to aviation, space and defense. In a supply chain review paper published by the White House in 2021, the U.S. flagged the risks of critical materials subject to foreign domination and identified fluorspar as one in a list of shortfall strategic and critical materials. Source: NIKKEI Asia An independent commission established by Congress recently concluded: “If a potential adversary bests the United States in semiconductors over the long term or suddenly cuts off U.S. access to cutting-edge chips entirely, it could gain the upper hand in every domain of warfare.” The Centre for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) reports “China’s leaders have set a goal to build a ‘fully modern’ military by 2027 based on ‘informatization,’ ‘intelligentization,’ and ‘mechanization,’ investing heavily in technical areas which support such an approach, such as AI, quantum computing, hypersonics, and microelectronics.” As the chair and vice chair of the National Security Commission on Artificial Intelligence (NSCAI) put it in 2021, “We do not want to overstate the precariousness of our position, but given that the vast majority of cutting-edge chips are produced at a single plant separated by just 110 miles of water from our principal strategic competitor, we must re-evaluate the meaning of supply chain resilience and security.” U.S. dependency on Taiwanese production of chips for defense systems extends beyond AI. TSMC makes semiconductors used in F-35 fighters and a wide range of “military-grade” devices used by the U.S. Department of Defense (DOD). Interestingly, the CSIS report acknowledges that advances in semiconductor technology are primarily driven by the development of devices for commercial use. Which is what China is exactly focusing on right now. Recall China was the number one world supplier of semiconductors for commercial use with 75% of all semiconductor production coming out of East Asia. What China has done in fact is, to quote Pascal Coppens, set up an ecosystem in Shenzhen that will allow for top industrial focus on all levels of the semiconductor production line for commercial use, while SMIC, HUAWEI, and HiSilicon focus on the cutting edge semiconductor technology. As Pascal Coppens makes the point, China’s semiconductor ecosystem is in fact a form of decentralization, while the United States is approaching the semiconductor race from an approach of centralization (around the military industrial complex). TSMC is bottlenecked due to the reasons already discussed above. TSMC is operating at around 60% capacity and to achieve 80% capacity would be considered an incredible achievement. China has the ability to correct the semiconductor shortage that is bankrupting western companies right now, including the automobile industry. And 90% of the chips needed to make the smart world will have to come from China. Recall, TSMC owns 10% of SMIC stocks, if SMIC is able to meet these demands, TSMC stands to benefit greatly, much above what they are capable of producing as output. And everyone knows, there is no greater romance than a forbidden romance. The author can be reached at cynthiachung.substack.com

[Category: Business, Big Tech, China, DARPA, Economy, Taiwan, TSMC]

— The Death List

 

at 8/31/22 12:35pm

The odious legacy of Stepan Bandera drives the suppression of those who dare challenge the narrative of the Russian-Ukrainian conflict promulgated by the Ukrainian government, its Western allies and a compliant mainstream media. By Scott RITTER In May 1986 I received orders to attend a counterterrorism awareness course at the John F. Kennedy Special Warfare School, in Fort Bragg, North Carolina. For the next two weeks I learned about the various terrorist threats facing the United States military, and was taught various skills to overcome them, such as high-speed evasive driving, counter-surveillance methodology and reactive shooting techniques. Upon my return to Twenty-Nine Palms, where I was stationed as a Marine Corps intelligence officer, I was given the task of putting my newly learned skills to work by carrying out a base-wide counterterrorism exercise. I borrowed a scout-sniper team from the infantry battalion on base, and set them up in an apartment off base, where I turned them into a terrorist cell tasked with collecting intelligence on the senior officers who lived and worked on the base. The only rule was that the terrorists could not engage with civilians — no families were to be impacted by the drill. Over the course of the next 30 days, my terrorist team was able to “assassinate” every battalion commander, the regimental commander and the base commander, using improvised explosive devices and sniper fire — and had the photographs to prove it. The takeaway from this exercise was that if someone wanted you dead, you were probably going to die. Vigilance was your only real defense — to be alert for anything suspicious. In short, to live a life governed by paranoia. In the age of terrorism, if you feel like someone is seeking to do you harm, it is probably because someone is seeking to do you harm. Using Those Skills Throughout my professional life, I have had occasion to use the skills I learned at Fort Bragg on several occasions — I was targeted for assassination while working as a U.N. weapons inspector in Iraq and I was informed that I was the subject of a “hit” put out by the Russian mafia for my role in breaking up an illicit missile component smuggling ring. I would conduct a 360-degree inspection of my vehicle before entering it, looking for signs of tampering. And I would conduct counter-surveillance drills while driving, accelerating at odd intervals to see if anyone kept pace, or rapidly exiting a highway to see if anyone followed. Today, I’m a 61-year-old writer living in the suburbs of Albany, New York. It’s a quiet neighborhood, where everyone knows everyone. And yet, due to recent circumstances, I once again find myself inspecting my vehicle before getting inside, keeping a watchful eye out for strange vehicles driving down my street and conducting counter-surveillance maneuvers while driving. Why the paranoia? Simply put, my name has been added to a Ukrainian “kill list.” Think I’m getting too wound up? Ask the family of Daria Dugina, the 29-year-old daughter of the Russian philosopher Alexander Dugin. Both she and her father were on the same list. Both were targeted for death by an assassin dispatched by the Ukrainian security services. Only a last-second change of plans, which put Alexander Dugin behind the wheel of a different car, kept him from being killed in the blast that took the life of his daughter. Daria Dugina. (1RNK, CC BY 3.0, Wikimedia Commons) I’ve been writing for some time now about the Ukrainian Center for Countering Disinformation and their publication in mid-July of a “blacklist” containing the names of 72 intellectuals, journalists, activists and politicians from several countries who were labeled “Russian propagandists” by the Ukrainian government for having the audacity to speak critically, yet factually, about the ongoing Russian-Ukrainian conflict. I took umbrage over this list for several reasons, first and foremost that the salaries of the Ukrainians who compiled this list appeared to be paid by the U.S. taxpayer using funds appropriated by Congress for that very purpose. The idea of Congress passing a law which empowered the Ukrainian government to do something — suppress the First Amendment guarantees of free speech and a free press — that Congress was Constitutionally prohibited from doing angered me. So, too, did the fact that the Center for Countering Disinformation announced the existence of this “blacklist” at a function organized by a U.S.-funded NGO and attended by State Department officials who sat mute while their Ukrainian colleagues labeled the persons on this list “information terrorists” who deserved to be arrested and prosecuted as “war criminals.” At the time, I cautioned that the use of such inflammatory language meant that the “blacklist” could be turned into a “kill list” simply by having a fanatic decide to take justice into his or her own hands. Given that the U.S. government funded the creation of this list, organized the meeting where it was presented to the world and gave an implicit stamp of approval to the list and its accompanying labeling through the attendance of U.S. government officials, these fanatics don’t have to be foreign sourced. Plenty of people in the U.S. adhere to the same hate-filled ideology that exists in Ukraine today and which gave birth to the “blacklist.” Some of them are my neighbors. In June I drove down to Bethel, New York (the site of the original Woodstock music festival), to participate in a Spartan Obstacle Course Race. To get there, I had to drive past Ellenville, a sleepy little town that is home to a camp belonging to the Ukrainian American Youth Association which, every summer, coordinates with the Organization for the Defense of Four Freedoms of Ukraine to hold a “Heroes’ Holiday” honoring veteran of the Ukrainian People’s Army and the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists. I just realized the principal CYM-A camp is in Ellenville, NY, the same Ulster county I live in. CYM-A [aka SUMA]s Ellenville camp (Oselia) pictured below: the year it opened (1955), on the 25th anniversary of the UPA leaders death (1975), and its Heroes Monument today. pic.twitter.com/1AHa9sDKL1 — Bandera Lobby Blog (@mossrobeson__) May 17, 2019 The camp boasts a “Heroes’ Monument”, consists of a 42-foot-tall structure with a Ukrainian trident at the top flanked by the busts of Yevhen Konovalets, Symon Petliura, Roman Shukhevych and Stepan Bandera —four leading figures in the history of Ukrainian nationalism, all of whom were involved in the murders, collectively, of hundreds of thousands of Jews, Poles and Russians. Bandera has been elevated to the status of a national hero in Ukraine, and his birthday is considered a national holiday. That a monument to men responsible for genocidal mass murder and who, in the case of two of them (Shukhevych and Bandera) openly collaborated with Nazi Germany, could be erected in the United States is disturbing. That every year Ukrainian-American adherents of the odious ideology of Stepan Bandera gather to celebrate his legacy at a “children’s camp” where the youth are arrayed in brown uniforms that make them look like what they, in fact, are — ideological storm troopers for a hateful neo-Nazi ideology that promotes the racial superiority of the Ukrainian people, is an national abomination. Here is another, newer CYM-A camp (Beskyd) which can be found in Baraboo, Wisconsin, featuring its fascist Heroes Monument, including a bust of the wanna-be Hitler of Ukraine, Stepan Bandera. pic.twitter.com/RYTqcTQTaD — Bandera Lobby Blog (@mossrobeson__) May 17, 2019 From Ellenville to Bethel, I saw evidence of this hateful reality in every blue-and-yellow Ukrainian flag fluttering in the wind — and every red-and-black banner of the Bandera-worshipping Ukrainian neo-Nazi fanatics that fluttered next to them. Stepan Bandera Legacy The legacy of Stepan Bandera is at the very heart of what passes for Ukrainian nationalism today. It dominates the political arena inside Ukraine, where all competing political ideology and affiliations have been outlawed by President Volodymyr Zelensky. It is behind the suppression of all dissenting voices — foreign and domestic — that dare challenge the narrative about the Russian-Ukrainian conflict being promulgated by the Ukrainian government, its Western allies, and a compliant mainstream media. After Consortium News published my letter to my New York congressional delegation (Sens. Chuck Schumer and Kirsten Gillibrand and Rep. Paul Tonko), in which I called them out for voting for Public Law 117-128 appropriating $40 billion in U.S. taxpayer money to underwrite the Ukrainian government and military, there was concerted action by others impacted by the Ukrainian “blacklist,” which the legislation had funded.  This was led by Diane Sare, the LaRouche Party candidate challenging Schumer for his Senate seat. The publicity about congressionally-funded suppression of free speech appeared to be too much for those who are complicit in a frontal assault on the U.S. Constitution. The Center for Countering Disinformation’s “blacklist” was removed from the internet. Victory, however, was short lived. Within days of the Center for Countering Disinformation’s “blacklist” being taken down, a list published by the Ukrainian “Myrotvorets” (Peacemaker’s) Center incorporated names that had been on the Center for Countering Disinformation “blacklist.” Coat of Myrotvorets staff member with field version of their emblem on sleeve. (Shao, CC BY-SA 4.0, Wikimedia Commons) The Myrotvorets list has been in existence since 2014 and has been described as “effectively a death list for politicians, journalists, entrepreneurs and other public figures who have been ‘cleared for firing’” by the list’s creators. Daria Dugina’s name was on that list. And now so is mine, along with several other Westerners, such as Canadian journalist Eva Bartlett and British rock musician Roger Waters. Scott Ritter on the death list. (Click to enlarge) The Biden administration is silent about this abomination. So is Congress. According to 6 USCS § 101, the term terrorism is “any activity that involves an act that is dangerous to human life or potentially destructive of critical infrastructure or key resources; and is a violation of the criminal laws of the United States or of any State or other subdivision of the United States; and appears to be intended to intimidate or coerce a civilian population, to influence the policy of a government by intimidation or coercion, or to affect the conduct of a government by mass destruction, assassination, or kidnapping.” There is little doubt that the murder of Daria Dugina was an act of terrorism perpetrated on behalf of the Ukrainian government. (Her photo on the list now has the word “liquidated” written diagonally across it in red.) While the Ukrainians deny any such allegations, Russian authorities have assembled a convincing factual case to the contrary. The existence of the Myrotvorets “death list” is an instrument of terror and should be taken down at the insistence of the U.S. Government. The failure of the Ukrainian government to shut down the Myrotvorets Center and condemn its activities would constitute material support of terrorism. The U.S. should also recognize any organizations which embrace the ideology of Stepan Bandera as terrorist entities — including those responsible for raising a new generation of brown-shirted neo-Nazis in the heartland of America. The “Hero’s Monument” in Ellenville must be closed, and the statues of Bandera and the other three Ukrainian nationalists removed from public view. It is a national disgrace that U.S. citizens are subjected to death threats from an erstwhile ally of the United States for simply exercising their Constitutional right of free speech. The adherents to the ideology of Stepan Bandera, in Ukraine and in the United States, must be treated as terrorists, and prosecuted with the same level of intensity and purpose as were the followers of al-Qaeda and the Islamic State. Until this is done, I will have no choice but to take the appropriate precautions to make sure that neither my family nor I suffer the fate of Daria Dugina. consortiumnews.com

[Category: Editor's Choice, Ideology, Russia, Terrorism, Ukraine, War]

— Baghdad is in Chaos After Almost 20 Years Since the U.S. Invasion

 

at 8/31/22 11:21am

The latest death toll has risen to 30 Iraqis as Baghdad descends into chaos and violence, with another 390 protesters wounded from bullets and tear gas inhalation. In March 2023, it will mark the 20th anniversary of the US invasion of Iraq, and yet the country has never recovered and still has no stable democracy. By Steven SAHIOUNIE The Green Zone is a high-security area in Baghdad housing the Iraqi government as well as some foreign embassies.  Security forces reported at least seven rockets fell in the zone yesterday. Muqtada Al-Sadr gave a speech today asking his supporters to leave the area and go home, and he wouldn’t consider them as supporters if they stay.  Reports on the ground say there is a movement to withdraw from the zone of conflict.  Al-Sadr stated further that the Hashed al-Shabi was not involved in the clashes yesterday, and urged a return to calm.  He said a revolution that includes violence is not a true revolution, and he criticized his supporters who may have participated in yesterday’s clashes. The combatants are rival militias.  On the one side are the supporters of al-Sadr, and on the other side are the Popular Mobilization group, as well as Iraqi security forces. Civilians took cover in their homes as gunmen in pickups cruised Baghdad while gun and rockets fire was heard across the city last night. The Iraqi oil sector provides about 85% of the government revenues, and in the aftermath of the war in Ukraine, Iraq has become a major supplier, but the increase in revenues has not been felt by the average Iraqi, and poverty and unemployment have been featured in the current unrest.  The 2021 estimate was 4,161,500 barrels per day, but the country still doesn’t have full electricity and even basic services are not fully met. Yesterday, Al-Sadr announced he was leaving politics, closing offices, and today in his speech he reaffirmed his decision to remain out of political life.  It was his announcement that prompted his supporters to breach the cement walls of the Green Zone and storm the government offices. A source speaking for Al-Sadr said later yesterday the cleric was on a hunger strike to stop the violence and use of weapons. Iraq’s military announced a nationwide curfew yesterday, and the caretaker premier suspended Cabinet sessions in response to the violence. US Embassy evacuated staff, and the Dutch Embassy staff moved to the German Embassy which is far outside the Green Zone. Iran closed its land borders with Iraq yesterday and announced flights would stop as of today. Iranian state television urged its citizens to avoid traveling to Iraq, and those already there not to travel between cities. Kuwait has urged its citizens to leave the country, while Dubai’s long-haul carrier Emirates stopped flights to Baghdad. The Egyptian president, Abdel Fattah El Sisi, spoke last night in separate telephone calls with his Iraqi counterpart, Barham Salih, and the prime minister, Mustafa Al Kadhimi, the president’s spokesman, Bassam Rady, said in a statement.  Al Kadhimi was on a visit to Egypt when the violence interrupted his stay.  El Sisi assured Al Kadhimi that Egypt was ready to do everything possible to safeguard Iraq’s security and open a path for dialogue to end the current escalation. Iraq has been in a deep political stalemate since legislative elections in October last year due to disagreement between political factions over the formation of a governing coalition, which has left the country without a new government, prime minister, or president for 10 months. Iraq’s political system suffers from rampant corruption, outdated infrastructure, insufficient essential services, skilled labor shortages, and antiquated commercial laws that stifle investment. There is almost no private sector. In October 2021, 329 legislators were elected to the Parliament. The acting Iraqi National Intelligence Service Director General Mustafa al-Kadami became prime minister in May 2020 after the previous prime minister resigned in late 2019 because of widespread protests demanding more employment opportunities and an end to corruption. The 2021 election results were: Sadrist Bloc 73, National Progress Alliance 37, State of Law Coalition 33, Kurdish Democratic Party 31, Al Fatah Alliance 17, Kurdistan Alliance 17, Al Iraq Alliance 14, New Generation Movement 14, Ishraqet Konoon 6, Tasmin Alliance 5, Babylon Movement 4, National Contract Alliance 4, National State Forces Alliance 4, other 22, and independent 43.  On 13 June 2022, 73 MPs from al-Sadr’s bloc resigned from parliament. Al-Sadr is a prominent cleric, but also an Iraqi politician and militia leader, and led the Sadrist Movement. He had asked for all foreign troops to leave Iraq, both the US and its allies, and those from Iran.  His militia has thousands of fighters, and millions of Iraqis support him. Many Iraqis see him as a symbol of resistance to foreign occupation. After the assassination of Qasem Soleimani in January 2020 and the Iraqi parliament’s resolution demanding ‘Yankee Go Home’, Al-Sadr called for “the immediate cancellation of the security agreement with the US, the closure of the US embassy, the expulsion of US troops.” The pro-Iran Coordination Framework, or Popular Mobilization Units (al-Hashd al-Sha’abi in Arabic), are militia units that have fought alongside the Iraqi military against ISIS since 2014. Saddam Hussein was ousted from power in Iraq in March 2003 by the US invasion of Iraq, which killed hundreds of thousands, and destroyed the country’s infrastructure.  He had been President since 1979 and was hung on December 30, 2006. In October 2005, Iraqis approved a constitution that had been designed by the US occupation.  The largest secular democracy on earth, the US, designed a government for Iraq which was not secular but depended on sectarianism.  Iraq was a Shiite majority, as is Iran, and the US was determined that the Shiites would have a political advantage, and the US insisted that religious sects be the basis for the parliament’s representation. The issue of Middle Eastern Christians was presented in a PBS report in 2011, “Why Did Assad, Saddam, and Mubarak Protect Christians?” The report covered strong authoritarian leaders who ruled in a secular fashion, especially Saddam Hussein and Bashar al-Assad, who both ruled from the Ba’ath Party, which is a Socialist and secular political party. Syrian, Iraqi, and Egyptian Christians were all afraid of Radical Islam taking over the country, after a revolution, or US invasion, and the result would be devastating for the Christian community. In the case of Egypt and Iraq, after their strong leaders were deposed, both by US intervention, Christians suffered, and continue to suffer.  Iraq’s Christian community has migrated abroad out of fear and oppression.  Egypt’s Christian community has suffered attacks on churches by Islamic militants following the Muslim Brotherhood, who were supported by President Obama in the rigged election of Muhammed Morsi. Only in Syria has the US invasion and regime change been resisted and thwarted.  President Assad still leads the only secular government in the Middle East, where all religions are freely worshipped, and the constitution prohibits any political party from having a religious platform. Mideast Discourse

[Category: Editor's Choice, Iraq, Middle East, Protests]

— Which Crime Syndicate Murdered Darya Dugina?

 

at 8/31/22 11:09am

The vile assassination of Darya Dugina, or terror at the gates of Moscow, is not really solved, Pepe Escobar writes. The vile assassination of Darya Dugina, or terror at the gates of Moscow, is not really solved – as much as the FSB seems to have cracked the case in a little over 24 hours. Its now established that the main perpetrator, Azov batallion asset Natalia Vovk, did not act alone but had an Ukrainian sidekick, one Bogdan Tsyganenko, who provided false license plates for the Mini Cooper she was driving and helped to assemble a crude car bomb inside a rented garage in the southwest of Moscow. According to the FSB, Vovk followed the Dugin family to the Tradition festival, and detonated the car bomb by remote control. The only missing pieces seem to be when the bomb was placed under Dugin’s SUV, and by whom; and whether such a sophisticated cross-border targeted assassination was aimed at both father and daughter. As recalled by geopolitical analyst Manlio Dinucci, even the Los Angeles Times had made it public that “since 2015, the CIA has been training Ukrainian intelligence agents in a secret facility in the United States”. Russian intel was more than aware of it. In fact, in an interview to Italian media in December 2021, Darya Dugina herself, based on FSB information, revealed, “they had identified 106 Ukrainian agents who were preparing attacks and massacres in 37 regions of Russia.” Yet now a high-ranking member of Russian intel – who for obvious reasons must remain anonymous – has shed some information that, in his words, “will add the whole picture to this incident.” It goes without saying that this is as much as he’s been allowed to reveal by his superiors. According to his analysis, “the tragedy was in the evening. In the next two days the FSB shared the whole data about SBU people who were involved with the incident. The majority of people think that it was a political kill. There are a lot of political kills in Ukraine but this tragedy has no political root. It is actually connected to organized crime money flow.” The source asserts, “Darya was inside the patriotic movement and had connections in Moscow and Donetsk area. As you know there is a large money flow to the Donbas to restore the economy. This huge money flow provides an extreme incentive for criminal activity. Donetsk crime organizations are more dangerous than others because they operate in the war territory. Thus, someone was afraid that Darya was going to compromise money flow schemes by making this public.” The source makes the important point that “Boris Nemtsov [a key actor in the liberal reforms imposed on post-Soviet Russia] was also killed by an organized crime group who was afraid that he might compromise some money flow schemes by making them public despite the fact that he was a quite powerful politician. Also [journalist] Anna Politkovkaya. She was given $900,000.00 in cash at Chubais election office during the election days for a political purpose. But some other guys knew it and grabbed the bag. She was slain.” Cui bono? Disclosure: I prize my friendship with Alexander Dugin – we met in person in Iran, Lebanon and Russia: a towering intellectual and extremely sensitive spirit, eons away from the crude stereotype of “Putin’s brain” or worse, “Putin’s Rasputin” slapped on him by Western media sub-zoology specimens. His vision of Eurasianism should be granted the merit of an ample intellectual discussion, a real dialogue of civilizations. But obviously the current woke incarnation of the collective West lacks the sophistication to engage in real debate. So he’s been demonized to Kingdom Come. Darya, who I had the honor to meet in Moscow, was a young, shining star with an ebullient personality who graduated in History of Philosophy at Moscow University: her main research was on the political philosophy of late Neoplatonism. Obviously that had nothing to do with the profile of a ruthless operative capable of “compromising” money flows. She did not seem to understand finance, much less “dark” financial ops. What she did understand is how the Ukrainian battlefield mirrored a larger than life clash of civilizations: globalism against Eurasianism. Back to the assertions by the Russian intel agent, they cannot be simply dismissed. For instance, at the time he came up with the definitive version of the hit on the Moskva – the flagship of the Russian Black Sea fleet. As he emailed to a select audience, “the destruction of the flagship of the fleet was planned as a strategic task. Therefore, the operation of delivering the PKR [anti-ship missile] to Odessa took place in strict secrecy and under the cover of electronic warfare. As the ‘killer’ of the cruiser, they chose the PKR, but not the Neptune, as spread by Ukrainian propaganda, but the fifth-generation NSM PKR (Naval Strike Missile, range of destruction 185 km, developed by Norway-USA). The NSM is able to reach the target along a programmed route thanks to the GPS-adjusted INS, independently find the target by flying up to it at an altitude of 3-5 meters. When reaching the target, the NSM maneuvers and puts electronic interference. A highly sensitive thermal imager is used as a homing system, which independently determines the most vulnerable places of the target ship. A stationary container installation secretly delivered to Ukraine was used as a launcher. Thus, after the damage to the cruiser Moskva, which led to its flooding (…) the Black Sea Fleet, unfortunately, no longer has a single ship with a long-range anti-aircraft missile system. But not everything is so bad. A three-band radar ‘Sky-M’ is located in Crimea, which is capable of tracking all air targets at a range of up to 600 km.” So there you go. The hit on the Moskva was a NATO operation, ordered by the U.S. The Russian Ministry of Defense knows – and the Americans know they know. Retaliation will come – in the time and place of Moscow’s choosing. The same will apply to the response for Darya Dugina’s assassination. As it stands, we may have 3 hypotheses. The FSB official story, pointing to the SBU in Kiev. The FSB is obviously revealing only a fraction of what they know. The high-level Russian intel agent pointing towards organized crime. The usual Zionist suspects – who loathe Dugin for his fierce anti-globalism: and that would point to a Mossad operation, who in many aspects enjoys way more qualified local intel in Russia than the CIA and MI6. A fourth hypothesis would point to a perfect storm: a confluence of interests of all the above organized crime syndicates. Once again, resorting to hegemonic American pop culture, and to borrow from Twin Peaks; “The owls are not what they seem”. Black ops can also reveal themselves as much darker than what they seem.

[Category: Society, Ideology, Russia, Terrorism, War Crimes]

— Ukrainian Refugees: Top 10 Receiving Countries

 

at 8/30/22 2:28pm

After the start of Russia’s military operation in Ukraine, more than 6 million refugees have fled the country. More than 1.6 million of them have chosen to move to Russia. (Click on the image to enlarge)

[Category: INFOGRAPHICS, European Union, Germany, Migration, Poland, Russia, Ukraine]

— NATO’s Xinjiang and Related Problems

 

at 8/30/22 1:23pm

Because China is bigger game, a bison rather than a hare, she needs much more firepower, many poison-tipped arrows to bring her and her Russian pal down to be bear rugs under Americas feet. Way back in 2003, when NATO began laying waste to Iraq, and MI5 and Mossad were installing the loathsome Rev Andrew White as the Anglican Vicar of Baghdad even as they exterminated the Chaldeans, Mandaeans and Syriacs who had lived Gods Word there since the time of St John the Baptist and the Apostles, CIA agents Frederick Starr and Graham Fuller were publishing The Xinjiang Problem to justify NATO doing an Iraq on China. All of those familiar with Gene Sharpe s From Dictatorship to Democracy will know the drill that began 80 years ago with Ruth Benedicts The Chrysanthemum and the Sword which the U.S. Marine Corps used in their Pacific War extermination campaign against the Japanese who, the racists in Time Magazine helpfully told us, could be easily differentiated from our friends, the Chinese, who are now no longer our friends. The Chinese, many of whom were burned alive in Hong Kong by Gene Sharpes NGO storm troopers are, it seems, being nasty to Muslims in their Xinjiang province and the Americans who, the long incarcerated Julian Assange informed us, systematically tortured Muslims in Iraq and incinerated them in Afghanistan, Syria, Somalia and Yemen, are upset at that. And, of course, at the rise to economic power of the Peoples Republic of China but that, of course is another matter that does not concern us, just as it did not, of course, concern Starr, Fuller and their cloven footed CIA paymasters. The issue is how can Uncle Sam undermine China and send them, along with Iraq, Syria, Yemen and Ukraine on a one way ticket back to the stone age, a term Americas General Curtis Le May, he who repeatedly fire bombed a defenseless Tokyo, first used with respect to the USAFs repeated terrorist attacks on Hanoi. Because China is bigger game, a bison rather than a hare, she needs much more firepower, many poison-tipped arrows to bring her and her Russian pal down to be bear rugs under Americas feet. Tibet, Taiwan and Hong Kong are not enough. Luckily, Hitlers Abwehr gave us the formula A Mosque in Munich: Nazis, the CIA, and the Rise of the Muslim Brotherhood in the West outlines. The formula, not unlike that MI5 used in Baghdad with that Andrew White creep and which was very successfully used by MI5s Muslim Brotherhood enforcers in Syria, was out with the old, in with the new, for the Muslim Brotherhood and their MI5 handlers to kill off the old Muslim imams and to replace them with their newer, semi-literate thugs who would preach jihad against Damascus, Tehran, Beijing, Moscow or whomsoever was in the cross hairs of MI5 and their CIA chums. As MI5s campaigns in Iraq, Syria, Afghanistan and the Southern Caucasus rumbled on, MI5 brought tens of thousands of Uighur activists from Xinjiang to get practical experience spreading the Word of God and of the Pentagon with bullets and bombs against Christians, Druze, Yezidi, Twelvers and Syrias secular minded Sunnis who refused to betray their homeland. On the positive side, the CIA now has, at its disposal, hundreds of thousands of Uighur fanatics with prior ISIS experience in Iraq and Syria, and dreams of cashing in on a CIA aligned Caliphate, modeled on that the CIA inaugurated in Mosul and Raqqa. On the negative side, there is China, which has not yet learned the lessons Japan has learned from two atomic bombs, multiple fire bombings and countless gang rapes. Plus, China is using all the financial tactics Japan tried in the 1990s when their economy was booming. The objective, as ever, has to be to divide and conquer, to isolate both Russia and China and to blame all the worlds ills on Xi and that Putin fellow. If that can be done, then all the ills that are now befalling the Global South, as part of Klaus Schwabs Great Reset, can be laid at their door. The CIA will come up with a catch phrase like Putins Price Hike and another young cretin like Greta Thunberg, Bana or that young whore who lied about Iraqi war crimes in Bahrain to get the bread and circuses set onboard. Because China will have all of this and more visited upon her, she has to reduce NATOs vectors so that she, rather than MI5, will call the shots. One important trick NATO can teach them is to put the squeeze on spreaders of mis-information, on MI5 mis information hubs like the BBC, the Times and Andrew Whites Anglican cult. If China were, at the most opportune time, to make a sweep of key BBC and Anglican cult operatives and to give them appropriate custodial sentences, that would certainly send MI5s leaders an even more salutary opening message than the torture of Julian Assange sends to truth tellers, who dont relish 24/7 torture in a NATO dungeon. Compare and contrast the youtube channel of The Times with similar offerings from Ukraine and India. The Times, with its unkempt contributors from The Economist and similarly vile sources, is streets ahead in terms of top shelf venom and distilled bile. The Ukrainians are much too vulgar for polite society and MI5s Indian shills are too clumsy in throwing their punches at Russia, China and Pakistan. When the CIA wants someone to spread their manure, they need never look further than Ye Olde Englande, where the BBCs website resembles nothing more than an outlet for Zelenskys 420 Kiev Brigades. Nor did all these BBC chaps spend their youth with Jimmy Savile drinking warm beer, reading Harry Potter and chasing foxes around Englands green and pleasant lands. Paul Conroy, whose special needs heavies squander their time tracking me in Dublin, grew up on a crack ridden council estate before joining the SAS, where he got the chance to teach uppity Irish Catholics about the business end of sawn off shotguns and the other irregular weapons the SAS use in their various murder campaigns. Tiring of stomping on uppity Irish Micks, Conroy scored a camera job with the BBC, where he ended up with CIA asset Marie Colvin directing the defense of the Muslim Brotherhood Caliphate in Homs before Syrian artillery sent Colvin on a one way ticket to Hell and Conroy scurrying like the human rat that he is through the escape holes Conroys Muslim Brotherhood mates made their Syrian slaves build. Conroys book, which these leading international terrorists photographed here with him all endorse, about his exploits promoting the Caliphate and his psychoses, may be bought here and Robert Stuarts site gives information on Dr Rola Hallam, Dr Saleyha Ahsan, Ian Pannell, Darren Conway and other BBC stalwarts who likewise enabled the Muslim Brotherhoods Caliphates in Libya and Syria. If one looks at the last days of Gaddafi, one recalls BBC journalists stopping Libyan security officers doing their job and one only has to recall Andrew Marr gloating with smiles like spit water melons outside Tony Blairs house when the RAF flattened Baghdad to see MI5s BBC operatives have never been kosher in Tripoli, Damascus or Bagdad and are not kosher in China. If the BBC, the Times and the Anglican cult are so proud when their SAS killers visit big boys boys rules on Darya Dugina, Julian Assange and hundreds of Syrian, Iraqi and Palestinian journalists, cant one argue its time they got at least a taste of their own medicine? Thoughts to chew on there for the Chinese and those others MI5 wish to again subjugate. This is not to argue for violence against English innocents but to say that, if Xinjiang is to be a problem for China, then China should be a problem for all those responsible for making Xinjiang a problem.

[Category: Asia-Pacific, World, China, Indo-Pacific, MI5, Nationalism, NATO, Xinjiang]

— Ukraine and the Politics of Permanent War

 

at 8/30/22 1:13pm

By Chris HEDGES No one, including the most bullish supporters of Ukraine, expect the nation’s war with Russia to end soon. The fighting has been reduced to artillery duels across hundreds of miles of front lines and creeping advances and retreats. Ukraine, like Afghanistan, will bleed for a very long time. This is by design. On August 24, the Biden administration announced yet another massive military aid package to Ukraine worth nearly $3 billion. It will take months, and in some cases years, for this military equipment to reach Ukraine. In another sign that Washington assumes the conflict will be a long war of attrition it will give a name to the U.S. military assistance mission in Ukraine and make it a separate command overseen by a two- or three-star general. Since August 2021, Biden has approved more than $8 billion in weapons transfers from existing stockpiles, known as drawdowns, to be shipped to Ukraine, which do not require Congressional approval. Including humanitarian assistance, replenishing depleting U.S. weapons stocks and expanding U.S. troop presence in Europe, Congress has approved over $53.6 billion ($13.6 billion in March and a further $40.1 billion in May) since Russia’s February 24 invasion. War takes precedence over the most serious existential threats we face. The proposed budget for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) in fiscal year 2023 is $10.675 billion while the proposed budget for the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is $11.881 billion. Our approved assistance to Ukraine is more than twice these amounts. The militarists who have waged permanent war costing trillions of dollars over the past two decades have invested heavily in controlling the public narrative. The enemy, whether Saddam Hussein or Vladimir Putin, is always the epitome of evil, the new Hitler. Those we support are always heroic defenders of liberty and democracy. Anyone who questions the righteousness of the cause is accused of being an agent of a foreign power and a traitor. The mass media cravenly disseminates these binary absurdities in 24-hour news cycles. Its news celebrities and experts, universally drawn from the intelligence community and military, rarely deviate from the approved script. Day and night, the drums of war never stop beating. Its goal: to keep billions of dollars flowing into the hands of the war industry and prevent the public from asking inconvenient questions. In the face of this barrage, no dissent is permitted. CBS News caved to pressure and retracted its documentary which charged that only 30 percent of arms shipped to Ukraine were making it to the front lines, with the rest siphoned off to the black market, a finding that was separately reported upon by U.S. journalist Lindsey Snell. CNN has acknowledged there is no oversight of weapons once they arrive in Ukraine, long considered the most corrupt country in Europe. According to a poll of executives responsible for tackling fraud, completed by Ernst & Young in 2018, Ukraine was ranked the ninth-most corrupt nation from 53 surveyed. There is little ostensible reason for censoring critics of the war in Ukraine. The U.S. is not at war with Russia. No U.S. troops are fighting in Ukraine. Criticism of the war in Ukraine does not jeopardize our national security. There are no long-standing cultural and historical ties to Ukraine, as there are to Great Britain. But if permanent war, with potentially tenuous public support, is the primary objective, censorship makes sense. War is the primary business of the U.S. empire and the bedrock of the U.S. economy. The two ruling political parties slavishly perpetuate permanent war, as they do austerity programs, trade deals, the virtual tax boycott for corporations and the rich, wholesale government surveillance, the militarization of the police and the maintenance of the largest prison system in the world. They bow before the dictates of the militarists, who have created a state within a state. This militarism, as Seymour Melman writes in The Permanent War Economy: American Capitalism in Decline, “is fundamentally contradictory to the formation of a new political economy based upon democracy, instead of hierarchy, in the workplace and the rest of society.” “The idea that war economy brings prosperity has become more than an American illusion,” Melman writes. “When converted, as it has been, into ideology that justifies the militarization of society and moral debasement, as in Vietnam, then critical reassessment of that illusion is a matter of urgency. It is a primary responsibility of thoughtful people who are committed to humane values to confront and respond to the prospect that deterioration of American economy and society, owing to the ravages of war economy, can become irreversible.” If permanent war is to be halted, as Melman writes, the ideological control of the war industry must be shattered. The war industry’s funding of  politicians, research centers and think tanks, as well as its domination of the media monopolies, must end. The public must be made aware, Melman writes, of how the federal government “sustains itself as the directorate of the largest industrial corporate empire in the world; how the war economy is organized and operated in parallel with centralized political power — often contradicting the laws of Congress and the Constitution itself; how the directorate of the war economy converts pro-peace sentiment in the population into pro-militarist majorities in the  Congress; how ideology and fears of job losses are manipulated to marshal support in Congress and the general public for war economy; how the directorate of the war economy uses its power to prevent planning for orderly conversion to an economy of peace.” Rampant, unchecked militarism, as historian Arnold Toynbee notes, “has been by far the commonest cause of the breakdown of civilizations.” This breakdown is accelerated by the rigid standardization and uniformity of public discourse. The manipulation of public opinion, what Walter Lippman calls “the manufacture of consent,” is imperative as the militarists gut social programs; let the nation’s crumbling infrastructure decay; refuse to raise the minimum wage; sustain an inept, mercenary for-profit health care system that resulted in 25 percent of global Covid deaths — although we are less than 5 percent of the world’s population — to gouge the public; carries out deindustrialization; do nothing to curb the predatory behavior of banks and corporations or invest in substantial programs to combat the climate crisis. Critics, already shut out from the corporate media, are relentlessly attacked, discredited and silenced for speaking a truth that threatens the public’s quiescence while the U.S. Treasury is pillaged by the war industry and the nation disemboweled. You can watch my discussion with Matt Taibbi about the rot that infects journalism here and here. The war industry, deified by the mass media, including the entertainment industry, is never held accountable for the military fiascos, cost overruns, dud weapons systems and profligate waste. No matter how many disasters — from Vietnam to Afghanistan — it orchestrates, it is showered with larger and larger amounts of federal funds, nearly half of all the government’s discretionary spending. The monopolization of capital by the military has driven the U.S. debt to over $30 trillion, $6 trillion more than the U.S. GDP of $24 trillion. Servicing this debt costs $300 billion a year. We spend more on the military, $813 billion for fiscal year 2023, than the next nine countries, including China and Russia, combined. An organization like NewsGuard, which has been rating what it says are trustworthy and untrustworthy sites based on their reporting on Ukraine, is one of the many indoctrination tools of the war industry. Sites that raise what are deemed “false” assertions about Ukraine, including that there was a U.S.-backed coup in 2014 and neo-Nazi forces are part of Ukraine’s military and power structure, are tagged as unreliable. Consortium News, Daily Kos, Mint Press and Grayzone have been given a red warning label. Sites that do not raise these issues, such as CNN, receive the “green” rating” for truth and credibility.  (NewsGuard, after being heavily criticized for giving Fox News a green rating of approval in July revised its rating for Fox News and MSNBC, giving them red labels.) The ratings are arbitrary. The Daily Caller, which published fake naked pictures of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, was given a green rating, along with a media outlet owned and operated by The Heritage Foundation. NewsGuard gives WikiLeaks a red label for “failing” to publish retractions despite admitting that all of the information WikiLeaks has published thus far is accurate. What WikiLeaks was supposed to retract remains a mystery. The New York Times and The Washington Post, which shared a Pulitzer in 2018 for reporting that Donald Trump colluded with Vladimir Putin to help sway the 2016 election, a conspiracy theory the Mueller investigation imploded, are awarded perfect scores. These ratings are not about vetting journalism. They are about enforcing conformity. NewsGuard, established in 2018, “partners” with the State Department and the Pentagon, as well as corporations such as Microsoft. Its advisory board includes the former Director of the CIA and NSA, Gen. Michael Hayden; the first U.S. Homeland Security director Tom Ridge and Anders Fogh Rasmussen, a former secretary general of NATO. Readers who regularly go to targeted sites could probably care less if they are tagged with a red label. But that is not the point. The point is to rate these sites so that anyone who has a NewsGuard extension installed on their devices will be warned away from visiting them. NewsGuard is being installed in libraries and schools and on the computers of active-duty troops. A warning pops up on targeted sites that reads: “Proceed with caution: This website generally fails to maintain basic standards of accuracy and accountability.” Negative ratings will drive away advertisers, which is the intent. It is also a very short step from blacklisting these sites to censoring them, as happened when YouTube erased six years of my show On Contact that was broadcast on RT America and RT International. Not one show was about Russia. And not one violated the guidelines for content imposed by YouTube. But many did examine the evils of U.S. militarism. In an exhaustive rebuttal to NewsGuard, which is worth reading, Joe Lauria, the editor-in-chief of Consortium News, ends with this observation: NewsGuard’s accusations against Consortium News that could potentially limit its readership and financial support must be seen in the context of the West’s war mania over Ukraine, about which dissenting voices are being suppressed. Three CN writers have  been kicked off Twitter. PayPal’s cancellation of Consortium News’ account is an evident attempt to defund it for what is almost certainly the company’s view that CN violated its restrictions on “providing false or misleading information.” It cannot be known with 100 percent certainty because PayPal is hiding behind its reasons, but CN trades in information and nothing else. CN supports no side in the Ukraine war but seeks to examine the causes of the conflict within its recent historical context, all of which are being whitewashed from mainstream Western media. Those causes are: NATO’s expansion eastward despite its promise not to do so; the coup and eight-year war on Donbass against coup resisters; the lack of implementation of the Minsk Accords to end that conflict; and the outright rejection of treaty proposals by Moscow to create a new security architecture in Europe taking Russia’s security concerns into account. Historians who point out the onerous Versailles conditions imposed on Germany after World War I as a cause of Nazism and World War II are neither excusing Nazi Germany nor are they smeared as its defenders. The frantic effort to corral viewers and readers into the embrace of the establishment media — only 16 percent of Americans have a great deal/quite a lot of confidence in newspapers and only 11 percent have some degree of confidence in television news — is a sign of desperation. As the persecution of Julian Assange illustrates, the throttling of press freedom is bipartisan. This assault on truth leaves a population unmoored. It feeds wild conspiracy theories. It shreds the credibility of the ruling class. It empowers demagogues. It creates an information desert, one where truth and lies are indistinguishable. It frog-marches us towards tyranny. This censorship only serves the interests of the militarists who, as Karl Liebknecht reminded his fellow Germans in World War I, are the enemy within. scheerpost.com

[Category: Editor's Choice, Censorship, Mass Media, Russia, Ukraine, War]

— It’s Gross to Live Under the U.S. Empire and Spend Your Time Criticizing Russia and China

 

at 8/30/22 1:05pm

By Caitlin JOHNSTONE The other day an Australian journalist was giving me a hard time for not criticizing Russia and China the way I go after the US empire, calling me “morally bankrupt” for not criticizing all governments equally. He said the ethical thing to do would be to criticize the US, but also criticize the governments the US doesn’t like for balance. I had a look at this fellow’s work online and did indeed see articles sharply criticizing China and Russia, as well as much weaker governments like Sri Lanka, the Philippines, and the Taliban. But guess what government I didn’t see in his crosshairs? This to me is the worst kind of moral cowardice. To live in Australia (effectively a member state of the US empire) and yet spend all your time criticizing far weaker and far less destructive governments than the US is like living in a Nazi-occupied territory during World War Two and spending your time shaking your fist at Brazil. It’s like tut-tutting judgmentally when you hear your neighbor raise her voice at her kids even as you yourself are busy murdering your entire family with an axe. As I learn more and more about global power dynamics and interact with more and more people around the world responding to the things I have to say, I find myself growing more and more disdainful of those who live directly under the thumb of the US empire and yet spend their time criticizing unabsorbed governments like Russia and China. It’s literally the most pathetic, snivelling, power-serving position anyone can possibly take at this point in history. The US empire is indisputably the most murderous and destructive power structure on the world stage today. No other power has spent the 21st century killing people by the millions in wars of aggression. No other power is circling the planet with hundreds of military bases and working continuously to destroy any government which disobeys it. No other power is starving entire populations with economic sanctions, military blockades and brazen theft. No other power has been interfering in foreign elections anywhere near as often. No other power is terrorizing populations around the world with wars, covert ops, drone strikes, proxy conflicts, and staged coups and uprisings. No other power is using its military, economic, diplomatic and media dominance to bully the world into serving its interests. The US exports most of its tyranny outside its own borders (though certainly not all of it), but it is nevertheless plainly the most tyrannical regime on earth. Everyone in the world should focus their scrutiny and criticism on the most powerful and destructive power structure in the world, because that is the sane and normal thing to do. But those who live in the US or its imperial member states have a special obligation to do so, because focusing on far less powerful and far less evil governments when you live under the umbrella of the US-centralized empire is gross. Even if you don’t buy the argument that those who live under the US empire have a special obligation to focus their criticisms on that power structure, at the very least you should make your criticisms proportionate to the destructiveness. And because the US is by far the most destructive power on earth, you should be criticizing it far more often than you criticize other powers. EXCLUSIVE: Twenty years after 9/11, compelling statistical data suggests that the true death toll of the War on Terror is a staggering *6 million people*: which is likely a conservative estimate. I breakdown the data for @BylineTimes https://t.co/YTV6IoZ3ic — Dr Nafeez Ahmed FRSA (@NafeezAhmed) September 15, 2021 But it’s worth taking time to do some honest self-examination on why you feel the need to even give proportionate criticism to empire-targeted governments like Russia and China, in a society where every single one of the most powerful media and government institutions already criticize those governments constantly while ignoring the crimes of the empire. It’s worth examining why you feel the need to lend your voice to a message that is already being amplified as loudly as any message could possibly be amplified when criticisms of the empire are so profoundly neglected in the English-speaking world, and questioning whether lending your energy to those propaganda campaigns would have any desirable effect at all. What usually happens after we start hating a government the US empire is urgently telling us we must hate? If you do examine your urge to join the mainstream shrieking about US-targeted governments, what you will probably find (if you are honest with yourself) is that you’ve been marinating in pro-US propaganda your entire life, and that has warped your expectations of normal criticism. We’re so accustomed to seeing the misdeeds of US-targeted governments grossly over-emphasized and exaggerated, while seeing US misdeeds grossly under-emphasized and ignored, that it sets the bar for our expectations of what normal criticism should look like. This distortion effect makes an appropriate level of aggressive criticism of the US empire look inappropriate and disproportionate; we’ve been trained in such a way that a normal amount of emphasis on the evils of US imperialism looks freakish and suspicious. In reality, it is not freakish and suspicious when someone focuses their criticisms on the world’s most powerful and destructive government. It’s freakish and suspicious that that isn’t the norm. It’s a lot easier to criticize empire-targeted governments than the empire itself, because everyone we’re surrounded by has been consuming empire propaganda all their lives and we’ll receive pushback from them when what we say causes them to experience cognitive dissonance. And this is a major reason so many westerners opt for the path of least resistance rather than shining the spotlight of truth where the real monsters are. But that’s cowardice. It’s bootlicking. It’s pathetic. Don’t facilitate the propaganda campaigns of your rulers while failing to criticize the crimes of those rulers just because it’s easier than putting your energy where it belongs. You’re not being a big brave truth teller when you criticize far away governments who have no power over you; you’re being a coward. Don’t serve power while pretending to oppose power. It’s gross. caityjohnstone.medium.com

[Category: Editor's Choice, Imperialism, Journalism, Propaganda, United States]

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