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Category: Weaponry

  • Erasing Gaza

    In the words of the UN Chief Antonio Guterres, the US-Israel assault has created “a graveyard for children” in Gaza, a tiny sliver of land that is home to several generations of impoverished refugees, half of whom are children. Gazans arguably make up one of the most vulnerable populations globally. They live in the “largest open-air prison” or the “largest concentration camp” in the world. Since 2007, Gazans have been subjected to a cruel siege by Israel, with cooperation from Egypt, and support from the US, which has led to unbearable conditions of life. As early as 2012, the UN warned that Gaza would become “uninhabitable” by the year 2020 with 60% of its households already “either food insecure or vulnerable to food insecurity” in 2012 “even when taking into account the UN  food distributions to almost 1.1 million people.” The UN said Gaza was “kept alive through external funding and the illegal tunnel economy.” Since the siege began, Israel has militarily assaulted Gaza at least six times killing thousands, injuring many thousands more, and destroying homes and critical infrastructure in what it cynically calls “mowing the lawn.”

    As bad as the conditions had been pre-October 7, they are now unimaginably worse. Between 7 October and 23 December, the US-Israeli assault killed 28,091 Palestinians (11,023 of whom are infants and children, 5,683 women, and 25,741 civilians) and injured 54,311. The dead include 95 journalists and 226 healthcare staff. By now 1.9 million Gazans of a total population of 2.2 million have been displaced.

    Human Rights Watch has accused Israel of using the starvation of civilians as a weapon of war. The Israeli forces, it said, are “depriving the civilian population of objects indispensable to their survival.” Israel bombed “Gaza’s last operational wheat mill on November 15” ensuring that “locally produced flour will be unavailable in Gaza for the foreseeable future.” The “decimation of road networks,” the destruction of “Bakeries and grain mills … agriculture, water and sanitation facilities,” and the “sustained bombardment, coupled with fuel and water shortages, alongside the displacement of more than 1.6 million people to southern Gaza, has made farming nearly impossible.”  The report states that “agricultural land, including orchards, greenhouses, and farmland in northern Gaza, has been razed,” and that “livestock in the north are facing starvation due to the shortage of fodder and water, and that crops are increasingly abandoned and damaged due to lack of fuel to pump irrigation water.” Another report by 23 UN and NGOs has found that the entire population of Gaza faces an imminent risk of famine if present genocidal policies continue, with 576,600 persons at catastrophic or starvation levels. “It is a situation where pretty much everybody in Gaza is hungry,” said the World Food Program economist.

    At least 369,000 Gazans are suffering from infectious diseases under rapidly declining health conditions. “We are all sick,” the Times quoted Samah al-Farra “a 46-year-old mother of 10 struggling to care for her family in a camp housing displaced Palestinians in Rafah, in southern Gaza. ‘All of my kids have a high fever and a stomach virus.’” At the time of the gravest healthcare need, according to the World Health Organization, just 9 out of 36 health facilities in Gaza are operating, and only partially. At the same time, there are “no functional hospitals left in the north.”

    The deliberate destruction of Gaza’s health system amounts to a slow and more painful death sentence for the tens of thousands of injured whose minimal urgent care needs cannot be met.

    The US-Israel genocidal assault on Gaza reveals much about the US political system and the ‘rules-based international order” as well. For example, a poll in mid-December showed that 68% of North Americans, three-quarters of Democrats, and half of Republicans support a ceasefire. Contrast those numbers with not only the refusal of the Biden administration to support a truce but the fact that as of 21 December only 62 members of Congress (11.6%) had joined a call for a ceasefire. The persistence of a wide split between the political elites and the public is a clear indication of political dysfunctionality in the US despite ongoing protests including the largest pro-Palestine demonstration in US history on November 4. There remains a slight window of opportunity to influence policy as the 2024 elections approach and polls indicate that the Biden administration is losing public support on this issue. Reportedly “there was some concern in the administration about an unintended consequence of the pause: that it would allow journalists broader access to Gaza and the opportunity to further illuminate the devastation there and turn public opinion on Israel” and against the Biden administration. A growing public opposition may be all we have in constraining Washington from pursuing a wider regional war on behalf of Israel.

    It is important to note that the US as the chief enabler of Israel can stop this genocide. Instead, it continues to give full military, diplomatic, ideological, technological, and economic support to Israel. For example, The Times of Israel reports that “244 US transport planes and 20 ships have delivered more than 10,000 tons of armaments and military equipment to Israel since the start of the war.”

    Furthermore, investigations by several mainstream US news establishments like the New York Times and CNN show that in the first month of its assault on Gaza Israel used mostly US-manufactured 2000-pound bunker-buster bombs. These heavy munitions “can cause high casualty events and can have a lethal fragmentation radius – an area of exposure to injury or death around the target – of up to 365 meters (about 1,198 feet), or the equivalent of 58 soccer fields in area.” According to CNN’s analysis: “Satellite imagery from those early days of the war reveals more than 500 impact craters over 12 meters (40 feet) in diameter, consistent with those left behind by 2,000-pound bombs. Those are four times heavier than the largest bombs the United States dropped on ISIS in Mosul, Iraq, during the war against the extremist group there.” CNN quotes John Chappell, “advocacy and legal fellow at CIVIC, a DC-based group focused on minimizing civilian harm in conflict” stating that “The use of 2,000-pound bombs in an area as densely populated as Gaza means it will take decades for communities to recover.”

    Crucially, the US also shields Israel from global initiatives at the UN Security Council that aim at halting its consistent and gross violations of international humanitarian laws and the UNSC resolutions, including those calling for an immediate ceasefire.

    The most recent example of the latter occurred on 22 December. The US abstained from voting on a UNSC resolution (13-0-2) that called for aid access and temporary pauses in Israel’s bombing of Gaza. For 5 days, the US delayed the vote on an earlier draft, a tactic aimed at giving Israel more time, and vetoed an amendment calling for a complete ceasefire and the establishment of a robust UN inspection mechanism in Gaza. The hollowed-out and meaningless resolution that was passed is another triumph for the US obstructionism in support of Israeli genocide albeit in the form of an abstention; earlier the US twice vetoed resolutions calling for immediate ceasefire and the release of all hostages.

    The last time the US blocked a UNSC resolution calling for a ceasefire and the release of all hostages was on 7 December. The UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres had invoked Article 99 of the UN Charter (a rare Article akin to a global “panic button” to trigger a UNSC vote) and urged the UNSC to act on the war in Gaza. The UN Chief referred to the situation in Gaza as “apocalyptic” and stated that he believes Gaza’s humanitarian system and civil order are at risk of “complete collapse.” The US not only vetoed the resolution but on that same day approved the sale and immediate delivery of 14,000 tank shells to Israel without congressional approval, displaying its dedication to protecting Israeli terror.

    Less mentioned in the news is the US vote on 19 December against a resolution adopted by the UN General Assembly affirming the right of the Palestinian people to self-determination. The vote count was 172-4-10. The other three countries that joined the US to reject the resolution were Israel, Micronesia, and Nauru. Affirming the right of the Palestinian people to self-determination is the very heart of a just resolution of the Question of Palestine. US rejectionism ensures the continuation of Israel’s colonization, ethnic cleansing, apartheid, occupation, siege, and genocide, as well as Palestinian resistance to oppression and rightlessness.

    Of course, the dominant view in the US equates Palestinian resistance with terrorism motivated by hatred of Jews. Such a view can only persist in the absence of historical context. To ensure that absence, corporate media rarely feature Palestinian voices. Propaganda often works not by spin alone; omission is a crucial part of manipulating public opinion. Omitting context has allowed the US and Israel to weaponize the October 7 Hamas attack to mobilize public support for the genocide and ethnic cleansing they are committing in Gaza, ostensibly in response to October 7. This is reminiscent of how the US hijacked the 9/11 attacks to silence dissent and push through its ruinous and criminal post-9/11 wars. Public opposition eventually emerged in the longer term to those 9/11 wars of choice.

    The ongoing genocide in Gaza is no different although the shift in public opinion in the US has been much swifter this time as compared to the post-9/11 period. As mentioned above, by now most people in the US favor a ceasefire. Additionally, polls found that “more people ages 18-29 sympathized with Palestinians than with Israelis in the current conflict … 28 percent expressed more sympathy with Palestinians vs. 20 percent for Israelis.” There have been massive pro-Palestinian protests globally and huge ones in the US, including unprecedented ones by staff at the State Department and the White House. The Israeli Jews on the other hand have taken a super hawkish position on the use of force in Gaza. Polls found that just 1.8% believed Israel was using too much firepower in Gaza. That is a remarkable figure indeed and a sign of the general moral decline of Israeli society.

    We might therefore say that to contextualize is to act radically because the understanding that necessarily accompanies contextualization undermines the dehumanizing and racialized language used to justify atrocities against the Palestinians: such as calling the Palestinians terrorists, human animals, and antisemitic Nazis.

    What, then, is the missing context for understanding what has been taking place in Palestine? To answer, we can begin by asking “What are the Palestinians struggling against?” and “What are the Palestinians fighting for?”

    The Palestinians struggle against a US-backed Zionist colonizing state of Israel itself allied with several reactionary Arab client states of the US. They fight not just against Israeli apartheid, ethnic cleansing, occupation, siege, theft of their lands, and colonization, but against US imperialism. Israel is a component of the US empire and serves its interests in this region by opposing radical Arab nationalism. The Palestinians fight for a free Palestine with equal rights for all its inhabitants, including Muslims, Christians, Jews, Druze, the non-religious, and others. Because they cannot free themselves unless they defeat the forces of imperialism and reaction arrayed against them in the region, their liberation necessarily entails the possibility of liberation for all the peoples in the region.

    In the broadest sense, the struggle for a free Palestine is a struggle for the liberation of all the peoples of that region from imperialism and domination. The proper context to view this is therefore a confrontation between imperialist domination and the people’s movements for liberation. A sub-context of this confrontation is that between the Palestinians and the Zionist colonizing state of Israel. The latter is bent on completing its ethnic cleansing of historical Palestine and uses every opportunity to advance its incomplete project of settler colonialism until it achieves its final goal of conquering what it calls Greater Israel which includes the Occupied Palestinian Territories. The goal of Zionism is to take as much land of historical Palestine with as few Palestinians as possible. The Zionist colonizing state has waged a war on the Palestinians since 1948, not October 7.

    October 7 provided Israel with another opportunity to further its ethnic cleansing objectives in Gaza. On the night that Israel killed 250 Palestinians, mostly women and children, and injured another 500 just in the 24 hours over Christmas eve, Benjamin Netanyahu, the right-wing prime minister of Israel, announced “the three prerequisites for peace between Israel and its Palestinian neighbors in Gaza”: “We must destroy Hamas, demilitarize Gaza and deradicalize the whole of Palestinian society.” These are impossible objectives. Hamas is a resistance group. Even if all its members are killed, its ideology remains as one form of resistance to Israeli genocide, colonization, and oppression. It’s dialectical, stupid! Repression generates resistance. Plus, the ongoing genocide will surely further radicalize the Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank too, making Hamas more popular, not less, regardless of whether Israel can declare victory in Gaza. Even putting the latter point aside, the goal of deradicalizing the Palestinians essentially means turning Palestinians into Zionists. That is even more absurd than the goal of eradicating Hamas. No wonder the Israeli army Chief of Staff said on the same day that “achieving war’s goals ‘will take months.’” By the time Israel is done, there will be no structures left for any Gazans to come back to while many tens of thousands more will have died due to the spread of infectious diseases, hunger, despair, and hardships of disruptions and displacements, if not from US-made bombs.

    The genocidal actions of Israel in Gaza are consistent with a leaked document produced by Israel’s intelligence ministry 6 days after the bombing of Gaza began, titled ‘Options for a policy regarding Gaza’s civilian population’ that recommended the ethnic cleansing of Gaza with its population expelled into “tent cities” in Egypt’s Sinai peninsula before constructing cities in a “resettled area” in the north of Sinai to house them. So far Egypt has refused to cooperate.

    But the Egyptian intransigence may not have stopped Israel from its forced mass displacement plans. According to an Israeli daily newspaper report published in early December, Netanyahu plans in secret to “thin out” the population of Gaza. He has “instructed Ron Dermer, his minister of strategic planning and a close aide, to have a plan for the ‘day after’ in Gaza and, if necessary, one that ‘enables a mass escape [of Palestinians] to European and African countries’ by opening sea routes out of the strip.” The report said that “Netanyahu sees this as a strategic goal.”

    Indeed, the UN expert warned on 22 December that Israel is working to expel the civilian population of Gaza. Paula Gaviria Betancur, Special Rapporteur on the human rights of internally displaced persons (IDPs), said: “As evacuation orders and military operations continue to expand and civilians are subjected to relentless attacks on a daily basis, the only logical conclusion is that Israel’s military operation in Gaza aims to deport the majority of the civilian population en masse.”

    It’s worth noting that Israeli Jews are overwhelmingly supportive of ethnically cleansing Gaza. A Direct Survey poll published on December 21 in Israel included the following question: “To what degree do you support encouraging the voluntary emigration of Gaza Strip residents?” The response was as follows: “68% support it strongly,” “15% are quite supportive,” “8% don’t really support it,” and “9% don’t support it at all.” That is, 83% favor what is euphemistically called “voluntary emigration” but is ethnic cleansing and a war crime.

    The deafening din of Zionist propaganda in the US has drowned two essential truisms about the Question of Palestine:

    1)     The Palestinians are not fighting Israel because they hate Jews. They are fighting against their dispossession, occupation, and erasure and for liberation from oppression, domination, colonization, and imperialism.

    2)     The source of the problem isn’t the Palestinian resistance, in whatever form, but the US imperialist domination of the region in alliance with the racist Zionist colonizing state of Israel and a coterie of reactionary Arab states.

    “The historical contextualization would undermine the dominant dehumanizing Zionist narrative and open pathways for crucial solidarity work towards a free, democratic, equal, and inclusive Palestine from the river to the sea.”

    The post Erasing Gaza first appeared on Dissident Voice.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • Ret. Col. Ann Wright Unmasks the Truth in Arms Transfer Debate


    In a heated session at the United Nations Security Council, diplomats engaged in a vigorous debate over the provision of arms to Ukraine amid the protracted war with Russia. The eleventh meeting on this pressing issue since Russia invaded in February of 2022 drew sharp criticisms from multiple speakers, who accused Moscow of deflecting attention from its own aggression.

    While various briefers and delegates presented conflicting perspectives, CODEPINK member Ann Wright, a retired United States Army colonel and former diplomat, took a different stance. As a civil society representative, she introduced herself as a concerned citizen and taxpayer who resigned from the U.S. Government in 2003 in protest against the Iraq War.

    Wright emphasized her opposition to the continued supply of weapons, asserting that it only serves to prolong conflicts. The United States and its European allies have provided tens of billions of dollars in aid to support Ukraine over the past two years. With the war at an indefinite stalemate with the death toll rising, Wright argued that fueling conflicts with substantial amounts of weapons ultimately profits corporations and politicians, but not the innocent civilians caught in the crossfire. A position that antiwar groups like CODEPINK has held since the beginning of this deadly war.

    Highlighting the lengthy process of conflict resolution, Wright drew parallels with historical conflicts, such as the Korean War, which required 575 meetings before reaching a ceasefire agreement. She underscored the devastating toll on human lives during U.S. funded wars, referencing the significant casualties in the Korean War.

    Drawing attention to not only the lack of diplomacy but also an attempt to stop any form of negotiations from happening, she expressed concern along with the historical fact that the supply of weapons prevents the possibility of peace. Wright referred to the reports that informed Washington, D.C., and London had pressured the Ukrainian Government to avoid peace negotiations with Russia, emphasizing the importance of preserving diplomatic efforts.

    In a powerful conclusion, Mary Ann Wright shared a poem depicting a plea in Gaza for children’s names to be written on their legs as a means of identification in the event of death due to Israeli bombings. While specifically referencing Gaza, she asserted that the sentiment applies universally to children in conflict zones, including Ukraine, Russia, Palestinel, or Yemen.

    As the Security Council debates the “complexities’ ‘ of arms transfers and their impact on international peace and security, Wright’s testimony emphasizes the importance of addressing the root causes of conflicts and fostering meaningful resolutions. She makes the case that this is not, in fact, a complex issue nor should it be a debate. It is quite simple, more weapons only create more war and prohibit lasting peace.

    You can watch her full testimony here.

    The post Ret. Col. Ann Wright Unmasks the Truth in Arms Transfer Debate first appeared on Dissident Voice.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • “A Good Investment”: The Ukraine War and the US Arms Racket

    It all tallies.  War, investments and returns.  The dividends, solid, though the effort expended – at least by others – awful and bloody.  While a certain narrative in US politics continues in the vein of traditional cant and hustling ceremony regarding the Ukraine War – “noble freedom fighters, we salute you!” twinned with “Russian aggressors will be defeated” – there are the inadvertently honest ones let things slip.  A subsidised war pays, especially when it is fought by others.

    The latter narrative has been something of a retort, an attempt to deter a growing wobbling sentiment in the US about continuing support for Ukraine.  In a Brookings study published in April, evidence of wearying was detected. “A plurality of Americans, 46%, said the United States should stay the course in supporting Ukraine for only one to two years, compared with 38% who said the United States should stay the course for as long as it takes.”

    In early August, a CNN survey found that 51% of respondents believed that Washington had done enough to halt Russian military aggression in Ukraine, with 45% approving of additional funding to the war effort.  A breakdown of the figures on ideological grounds revealed that additional funding is supported by 69% of liberals, 44% of moderates and 31% of conservatives.  In Congress, opposition to greater, ongoing spending is growing among the Republicans, reflecting increasing concern among GOP voters that too much is being done to prop up Kyiv.

    Such a mood has been anticipated by number crunching types keen to reduce human life to an adjustable unit on a spreadsheet.  The Centre for European Policy Analysis, for example, suggested that a “cost-benefit analysis” would be useful regarding US support for Ukraine.  “It’s producing wins at almost every level,” came the confident assessment.  In spectacularly vulgar language, the centre notes that, “from numerous perspectives, when viewed from a bang-per-buck perspective, US and Western support for Ukraine is an incredibly cost-effective investment.”

    War-intoxicated Democrats would do well to remind their Republican colleagues about such wins, notably to those great patriots known as the US Arms Industry.  Aid packages to Ukraine, while dressed up as noble, democratic efforts to ameliorate a suffering country’s position vis-à-vis Russia, are much more than that.

    In May 2022, for instance, President Joe Biden signed a bill providing Kyiv $40.1 billion in emergency funding, split between $24.6 for military programs, and $15.5 billion for non-military objects.  Even then, it was clear that one group would prove the greatest beneficiary.  Stephen Semler of the Security Policy Reform Institute was unequivocal: US military contractors.

    Of the package, rich rewards amounting to $17.3 billion would flow to such contractors, comprising goods, be they in terms of weapons and equipment, or services in the form of training, logistics and intelligence.  “It allows the Biden administration,” writes Semler, “to continue escalating the United States’ military involvement in the war as the administration appears increasingly disinterested in bringing it to an end through diplomacy.”

    Broadly speaking, the US military-industrial complex continues to gorge and merely getting larger.  Whatever the outcome of this war – talk of absolute victory or defeat being the stuff of dangerous fantasy –   it remains the true beneficiary, the sole victor fed by new markets and opportunities.  Former Israeli foreign minister Shlomo Ben-Ami, now vice president of the Toledo Center for Peace, had to concede that the  US arms industry was the “one clear winner” in this bloody tangle.

    The addition of new member states to NATO, in this case Finland and Sweden, will, Ben Ami suggests, “open up a big new market for US defence contractors, because the alliance’s interoperability rule would bind them to American-made defence systems.”  The evidence is already there, with Finland’s order of 64 new F-35 strike fighters developed by Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman and BAE Systems.  The Ukraine War has been nothing short of lucrative in that regard.

    Such expansion also comes with another benefit.  The interoperability requirement in the NATO scheme acts as a bar to any alternatives.  “The market for their goods is expanding,” writes Jon Markman for Forbes, “and they will face no competition for the foreseeable future.”

    It should come as little surprise that the US defence contractors have been banging the drum for NATO enlargement from the late 1990s on.  While a good number of those in the US diplomatic stable feared the consequences of an aggressive membership drive, those in the business of making and selling arms would have none of it.  The end of the Cold War necessitated a search for new horizons in selling instruments of death. And with each new NATO member – Hungary, Poland, the Czech Republic – the contracts came.  Washington and the defence contractors, twinned with purpose, pursued the agenda with gusto.

    In 1997, Democratic Senator Tom Harkin was awake to that fact in hearings of the Senate Appropriations Committee on the cost of NATO enlargement.  He was particularly concerned by a fatuous remark by Secretary of State Madeleine Albright comparing NATO’s expansion with the economic Marshall plan implemented in the aftermath of the Second World War.  “My fear is that NATO expansion will not be a Marshall plan to bring stability and democracy to the newly freed European nations but, rather, a Marshall plan for defense contractors who are chomping [sic] at the bit to sell weapons and make profits.”

    The moral here from the US military-industrial complex is: stay the course.  The returns are worth it.  And in such a calculus, concepts such as freedom and democracy can be commodified and budgeted.  As for Ukrainian suffering?  Well, let it continue.

    This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Binoy Kampmark.

  • WAR Is The Crime, Not How It Is Committed!

    While the bluster about cluster bombs covers the subject of murder with liberal prattle about how it’s committed, one of humanity’s oldest but ever more dangerous problems continues as a major profit creator while adding to humanity’s losses. Hairs are split over how skulls are shredded and bodies made unrecognizable as though its all okay if allegedly civilized people just obey “rules based societies” teaching about how to maim, slaughter, destroy, reduce cities to wreckage and bodies to pulp the proper way, in adherence to higher education taught forms of mass murder which can be performed in civilized ways, according to the teachings of creatures who might make lions and tigers vomit while eating their prey.

    Rules of war are drawn up by people taught to think of it as some natural way of resolving difference among people and the righteous way for murderous brute force to be exercised to solve problems. The ruling war makers are people who could not play touch football without their bodies breaking apart but anxious and even seemingly to the point of being sexually gratified by creating and teaching ways to murder other humans, in great numbers, and thereby make a killing at the market. While earlier times assured that warriors faced opponents and frequently murdered them face to face, modern “civilization” allows most to be distant observers of war, except for when they are its direct victims not in long-range terms of paying a price for social breakdown at home but actually dying in warfare.

    The ridiculous notion that only warriors suffer in wars- as though that was some excuse for individual acts of brutality always social in nature but dependent on nearly helpless participants under the ownership and control of ruling minorities – may have been true at least in part until the second world war. That historic slaughter saw the destruction of cities and their un-informed masses in numbers to make strong people weep if they only saw and understood them. But consciousness controllers operate in far more powerful ways than ever and continue to sell the lie that there is a moral, legal, correct way to blast human bodies apart, crush skulls and reduce humans to unrecognizable pulp and that is practiced by humanitarian, democratic degeneracy in contrast to enemies who do the same thing and are thus deemed evil, monstrous “war criminals”. This is like making rape legal as long as rapists wear gloves!

    The deepening mental instability of fading western power has Putin accused of “war crimes” by global assassins who make him look like a pacifist by comparison to their ongoing mass murders all over the world, whether by bloody military, bloody economics or bloody politics, all the result of language murder by something calling itself democracy when practiced by Americans, Europeans and their once faithful servants from Africa, Asia, Latin America and other formerly colonized possessions who are becoming far less inclined to scrape and bow at the behest of fake western capitalists head quartered in the USA.

    As the imperial power that has dominated the world since the end of WW2 diminishes, thus offering humanity a chance at survival with global rather than simply local attempts at democracy – and these usually becoming market products available like all others to those with the most money – the narrow numbers in control of governments and especially humanity destroying weapons become more desperate and dangerous. The present proxy U.S. and its Nato lapdogs war in the Ukraine has seen the forces of mass murder “donate” tens of billions of dollars in weaponry and so far indirect murder while loudly proclaiming the cause of peace, democracy and other meaningless words to cover the reality. Most of the world does not believe that story nor offer cooperation in the global deceit stretching from American TV studios to the killing fields in the Ukraine. Worse is the potential provocation of a nuclear war which will quickly destroy many if not most busily being subjected to fairy tales and myths about reality. Murder is murder and the murder of great numbers of victims simultaneously is called war, but whether we kill one another in fits of local distemper or internationally organized mass murders, the weapons used and techniques employed are secondary to the bloody crimes committed. Whether tens of thousands are stabbed, beaten, bombed, burned, they/we wind up dead. That is the organized political economic problem, not how we are bludgeoned or drowned in blood. War is the crime greater than any other and humanity needs to put a stop to it in a truly democratic action that can create real peace now and assure it for future generations.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • How would Canadians perceive Russian troops on its border?

    The Canadian government’s plan to double its semipermanent military force on Russia’s border ratchets up tensions that should be reduced. It highlights the West’s betrayal of promises made to Soviet officials and Canada’s addiction to stationing troops in Europe.

    On Monday Justin Trudeau announced that Canada will ramp up its military presence in Latvia. The government will add about 1,200 military personnel to the nearly 1,000 Canadians already deployed on Russia’s border. As part of the announcement Trudeau committed $2.6 billion over three years to expand Latvia-focused Operation REASSURANCE. “Canada will also procure and pre-position critical weapon systems, enablers, supplies and support intelligence, cyber, and space activities”, the prime minister said in a statement. Last month Ottawa announced the deployment of 15 Leopard 2 battle tanks to Latvia.

    In 2017 Canada took charge of one of four Eastern European NATO battle groups. In June 2021 Canada opened a $19 million headquarters in Latvia and by the end of the current commitment Canadian Forces will have been stationed there for a decade.

    The semi-permanent stationing of Canadian forces on Russia’s border represents a flagrant violation of the promises made to Mikhail Gorbachev at the end of the Cold War. In 1990 the Soviet/Russian leader agreed not to obstruct German reunification, to withdraw tens of thousands of troops from the east and for the new Germany to be part of NATO in return for assurances that the alliance wouldn’t expand “one inch eastward”. A 1990 Ottawa Citizen wire article quoted West Germany’s foreign minister, Hans-Dietrich Genscher, saying, “the West is agreed that with a unification of Germany, there will not be any eastward extension of NATO”, which was ostensibly a defence arrangement against the Soviet Union.

    As I’ve detailed, Ottawa led the charge for NATO expansion despite the promises made to Gorbachev. Soon after taking office in 1993 Prime Minister Jean Chretien began promoting Poland’s adhesion to NATO and Ottawa has led the push to double the size of the alliance by expanding into eastern and northern Europe. Ottawa has also promoted Ukraine’s adhesion to the alliance and has trained its military to be interoperable with NATO.

    Alongside ending the stated objective for NATO, the dissolution of the Soviet Union undercut Canada’s rationale for stationing troops in Europe. From the early 1950s to 1990s over one hundred thousand Canadian troops rotated through bases in France and Germany. In the late 1960s the Royal Canadian Air Force had over 250 US atomic bombs at its disposal in Europe.

    Incredibly, the US-led war in Korea was the initial justification for stationing Canadian troops in Europe (and rearming the colonial powers as they suppressed independence movements with Canadian NATO mutual assistance program weaponry). According to defence minister Brooke Claxton, “NATO owes the fact that it was built-up to the Communist aggression in Korea … To meet the challenge of Korea required a buildup of our forces comparable to what was needed to meet our commitments to Europe.” As per the Washington/Ottawa storyline, the North Korean leadership’s effort to unite the country under its direction in mid 1950 was part of a worldwide communist conspiracy. Who controlled the distant, impoverished, country was of limited import to most North Americans so US/Canadian decision makers claimed Moscow stoked the conflict in Korea to divert attention from its plan to invade Western Europe. In response, thousands of Canadian troops were dispatched to France and Germany in 1951. They would remain in Europe until 1993.

    Of course, Canada previously sent large numbers of troops to Europe during World War I and II. Between 1917 and 1920 six thousand Canadian troops invaded Russia. About 600 Canadians fought in Murmansk and Archangel where the British used chemical agent diphenylchloroarsine, which causes uncontrollable coughing and individuals to vomit blood.

    Decades earlier Canadians fought the Russians. Much of the British garrison in Canada left for Crimea during the 1853-56 war and many Canadians also volunteered for British units fighting Russia. In “How the Crimean War of 1853 helped shape the Canada of today” historian C.P. Champion describes how the naval base on Vancouver Island was greatly expanded in response to the war. He also quotes historian John Castell Hopkins explaining that the Militia Act of 1855, which formed the basis for today’s army, was “a result of the feeling aroused by the Crimean War.”

    Canada has a history of belligerence towards Russia. Given that, this country stationing its troops near Russia’s border is perceived as threatening by Moscow. Remember that Russia shipping some missiles to Cuba resulted in an American naval blockade and almost caused a nuclear holocaust in the early 1960s.

    A nation committed to peace must try to understand the viewpoint of potential adversaries. A nation planning war increases tension and prolongs every military standoff. Exactly the way Canada has acted towards Russia for many decades.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • The Fall of the West

    In his bestselling book of 1987, The Rise and Fall of Great Powers, historian Paul Kennedy chronicles the rise of western power and its world dominance from 1500 to the present. He reports that the rise was not due to any particular event, nor even an unusual series of events. It was, in fact, neither foreseen nor even recognized until it was already well under way, although it may be accurately ascribed to multiple factors, which Kennedy discusses. The same may be said of the ongoing fall of western power.

    Although the decline of the West is rapidly becoming more evident to informed observers of current events, the start of that decline is less easy to pinpoint, in part because it seemed less inevitable and more reversible until quite recently. Was the high point the Austro-Hungarian Empire? Victorian England? The U.S. Eisenhower administration? Some might date it from the dissolution of the USSR in 1991, marking the beginning of the truncated “New American Century.”

    That “century” appears to be ending in the manner of so many other powers that fill the pages of Kennedy’s book – through imperial overreach, excessive military spending, lagging economic productivity and competitiveness, and failure to invest in the physical, technical and human resources necessary to remain a dominant power. In short, the West is flagging.

    The signs for this are too evident to ignore. The industrial base of the West is withering. Post-WWII, the U.S. dominated because it was the only major industrial power to survive unscathed, and its investment in western Europe and Japan increased the wealth of all three. Over the last half of the 20th century, however, these economies began to shift much of their industry to countries with cheaper labor and more efficient production, such that by the 21st century much of their manufacturing capability had vanished, and they became mainly consumer societies.

    2023 has become a watershed year for the power shift, due to dramatic western weaknesses exposed by the Ukraine war. The war revealed that a relatively modest economy (Russia) had the capability to outproduce the U.S. and all the NATO countries combined in war materiel. The U.S. “arsenal of democracy” and its European partners proved unable to provide more than a fraction of the weapons and ammunition that Russia’s factories produced. Ukrainian soldiers supplied by NATO countries found themselves vastly outnumbered in tanks, artillery, missiles, unmanned and manned aircraft, and even the latest hypersonic and electronic weapons that were arrayed against them in seemingly limitless supply. The U.S. and European NATO partners could only cobble together small numbers of incompatible weapons from their diminishing inventories, and make promises of future deliveries after months or years.

    But the U.S. and its allies were not counting on physical weapons alone. They weaponized the U.S. dollar, through seizures of Russian accounts in U.S., European and other banks totaling more than $300 billion, and through application of economic sanctions, including expulsion of Russian banks from the SWIFT dollar trading system. This also backfired.

    First, Russia retaliated by seizing U.S. and European assets within Russia, in equal or greater amounts. Second, they “pivoted east,” negotiating new trading partnerships with China, India and other countries. Third, they and their new partners, including other targets of U.S. sanctions, began to develop financial agreements to displace or reduce the use of SWIFT. Even countries that had heretofore not been threatened with asset seizure or economic sanctions, like Brazil, South Africa, and Saudi Arabia, joined these agreements, in order to expand their trading base, and as insurance against use of the USD for financial pressure or threats. The result was that the Russian economy proved astonishingly resilient – moreso even than many of the NATO countries. The Russian GDP fell by less than 2% in 2022 and is expected to rise by up to 2% in 2023, despite the war and sanctions. Russia has opted for a sustainable but inexorable war with less than 1/6 the casualties of Ukraine. Visitors report that it hardly feels like a country at war. The annual St. Petersburg Economic Forum attracted 17,000 participants from 130 countries and concluded 900 deals and contracts worth 3.9 trillion rubles ($46 billion).

    The decline of Europe was further illustrated by the consequences of the US bombing of the Nordstream gas pipelines in September, 2022, and the sanctions on Russian natural gas and petroleum products imposed by NATO. Together, these ended the competitiveness of the European economies, which had hitherto thrived on accessibility to cheap Russian fuel. As predicted by Radek Sikorsky, MEP, this meant

    … double-digit inflation, skyrocketing energy prices, and electricity shortage, … Germany will be deindustrialized, … German industries, scientists and engineers will move to the US, who will generously accept them.

    And Europe will be set back a couple of decades. Already, most European countries — France, Italy, Spain etc. — have had zero growth in GDP-per-capita for more than a decade. Add in inflation, the standard of living will soon be down 30-40%.

    In effect, the U.S. had defeated its NATO “partners” (mainly Germany) and cannibalized their industries for the sake of its own benefit, potentially short-lived.

    But the United States believed that its mighty dollar could offset its faded industry and increasingly toothless military – that it could be printed in unlimited amounts without losing value, and could become its most powerful weapon. The history of this dollar began in 1971, when President Richard Nixon announced that, in effect, the U.S. dollar would no longer be backed by gold, but rather by whatever the dollar could purchase in the U.S., i.e. by the U.S. economy itself. This became widely accepted because a) the U.S. was the world’s largest economy, b) the two great international regulatory financial institutions, the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund, were also based on the dollar, and c) nearly all the world’s countries outside of the Soviet Union and other socialist societies used the dollar as the reserve currency for their own money. In addition, the world shed fixed exchange rates, with their troublesome periodic revaluations, for floating rates, which generally made the changes more gradual and more stable for the major currencies, and especially the dollar.

    The effect of so many dollars circulating so widely was to invest most of the world in protecting its value. The more a country’s non-dollar currency became based on the dollar as its reserve currency, the more the incentive for that country to defend the dollar. Later, as the U.S. began to lose its industry, it came to depend on this value to maintain its economy. It marketed its debt to other countries and “persuaded” other countries to fund U.S. bases on their territories for the purpose of “mutual defense.” This is part of the reason the U.S. now has more than 800 military bases worldwide. Although the U.S. national debt is, at time of writing, more than $33 trillion, the U.S. Treasury and the Federal Reserve Board seem to think that they can continue to unload it without limit onto other countries.

    Decision makers in the U.S. seem to think that they have found the goose that lays the golden egg: when they need more money, they have only to borrow indefinitely and market their IOUs to buyers, many of whom don’t really have the option of saying no. Thus, for example, it used unlimited borrowing to fund without hesitation a very costly Ukraine war by more than $100 billion in 2022 alone, while denying basic services to its own citizens.

    But borrowing is not the only way that the U.S. raises funds. Given the stability of the dollar, many countries store or invest them in the U.S. But when a country has a disagreement with the U.S., or chooses a leadership or policies not approved by the U.S., the U.S. is not above confiscating those funds. In 2011, this is what it did with $32 billion of Libyan funds, the largest but by no means the only such confiscation of another nation’s funds at that time. Since then, similar confiscations have occurred with Iran, Venezuela, Syria, Afghanistan and other nations. Eclipsing Libya, however, was the confiscation of Russia’s $300 billion by the U.S and its mostly NATO allies, an estimated $100 billion of it by the U.S. alone.

    Recently, however, other countries are becoming wary of the U.S. and choosing other options that reduce their participation in what they view as a Mafia-style protection racket as well as their placement of assets in places where they could be confiscated in case of disagreement. As noted earlier, a growing number of countries are opting to either bypass the dollar-based SWIFT system, or to complement it with new agreements where goods are paid in another currency or with multiple currencies. Even Saudi Arabia has begun accepting payment in Chinese Yuan and paying Russia in rubles. In addition, China and other countries have decided to limit or reduce their USD exposure. So far, this has had no appreciable effect on the value of the USD. But if the dollar starts to become less desirable, it may become a questionable investment, in which case the U.S. risks losing its status as a world power – even a modest one. At that point, having demolished German and other European access to cheap fuel, the U.S. will join the rest of the west in its decline, leaving the rising economies of China, India, Brazil, Russia and other countries in Asia, Latin America and possibly Africa to displace them.

    Is the Dollar overvalued? By the laws of supply and demand, one could argue that it is not. But it is a fair question when the supply is enormous and growing, and the demand is artificial and coerced. What will happen when the dollar’s near monopoly as an exchange medium ends? The dollar has not always been the preeminent tool for pricing international transactions. At the turn of the 20th century, the British pound sterling was literally the gold standard. But the British economy was fading, and the pound continued to fall against both gold and the USD. Now, although it is still a major currency, it is a mere shadow of its former self. If or when the many dollars worldwide come home to claim their true value, we may discover that they buy little more than castles of sand.

    When world power has shifted elsewhere, the U.S., Great Britain, Germany, France and the entire West may come to depend for glory upon their historical and cultural treasures, like the ones of other bygone civilizations that western tourists once visited so widely.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • What Happens after Kiev’s Much-touted Counteroffensive Fails?

    It’s hardly breaking news that Russia has been fighting off a crawling invasion by NATO (aided by America’s global vassals and satellite states) for well over a year now. The Neo-Nazi junta would’ve lasted mere days had it only been a Moscow vs. Kiev scenario and this fact is not Russia’s claim, but one by Josep Borrell, the European Union’s top diplomat (although his skills in diplomacy are highly questionable at best).

    It’s precisely this that makes Russia’s ability to withstand Western aggression all the more mind-boggling, particularly when considering the sheer discrepancy in population size, nominal military budgets, size of Russia’s economy in comparison to the combined financial and economic strength of the US-led political West (to say nothing of its geopolitical influence), etc.

    It should be noted that the virtually direct involvement of the political West has resulted in a strategic stalemate with tactical back and forth, as both sides made gains somewhere or were forced to concede areas elsewhere. However, the notable difference is that Russia is doing that for strategic reasons, particularly in order to avoid heavy casualties (both civilian and military), while the complete opposite is true for the Kiev regime (Bakhmut/Artyomovsk being the case in point).

    This is because the Neo-Nazi junta’s main goal is optics and keeping the narrative alive. And the narrative is that Russia is supposedly “weak” and “incapable” of defeating the US/NATO puppets in Kiev. However, the massive casualties suffered by the regime’s forces are a clear indicator of just how much of a reverie this narrative is.

    Perhaps the best proof of this is the ongoing counteroffensive of the Neo-Nazi junta forces. Although experts have already predicted how it would go (and that’s precisely how it’s been going for approximately two weeks now), the Kiev regime is forced to keep up with it, because its puppet masters don’t really care about Ukrainian casualties as long as they can portray Russia as supposedly “weak” and “incapable of winning”.

    The stakes are as high as they could possibly be, so the belligerent thalassocracy needs to ensure that the Neo-Nazi junta at least doesn’t lose the aforementioned narrative, as the prospect of actually defeating the Russian military is all but impossible. To accomplish this, the US-led political West is ready to engage in a sort of nuclear brinkmanship the world has never seen, including during the entirety of the (First) Cold War.

    To this end, Washington DC is already resorting to what some experts call “nuclear blackmail”. To prevent a complete defeat of its favorite puppets after Russia eventually launches its own counteroffensive, the US has placed additional nuclear weapons in Europe in order to increase pressure on Moscow and keep most of its forces on standby in case the ongoing Cold War between Russia and NATO turns hot. Poland, one of Moscow’s archenemies, has been particularly insistent on having American nuclear weapons deployed in its territory.

    Coupled with Warsaw’s ambitions to build probably the largest and most advanced land force in the European part of NATO, as well as station as many other NATO troops as possible, such aggressive actions have pushed Russia to deploy tactical nuclear weapons in Belarus, as well as reinforce its Kaliningrad exclave.

    Specific moves to ensure Russia’s safety include the expansion of its already massive military-industrial capacity, additional deployments of its state-of-the-art hypersonic weapons (which the entire political West lacks altogether) and the overall change in its deterrence policy, which now includes the aforementioned deployment of Russian tactical nuclear weapons in allied territory, specifically Belarus.

    However, Minsk will not merely house such weapons, but will also be able to use them in case the political West escalates its aggression against Belarus itself, which has been under a crawling attack for several years now. Worse yet, the belligerent thalassocracy has never given up on trying to conduct yet another color revolution in Minsk, as it still insists that President Alexander Lukashenko is supposedly “illegitimate” and that the opposition is the “actual government in exile”.

    The Kremlin has correctly anticipated virtually all moves by the US and NATO and has revised its strategic posturing towards them, making it perfectly clear that it’s ready for any “unexpected” developments. And while Russia is certainly not the one that wants to be the first to use a nuclear weapon, the political West is doing everything in its power (short of direct war, for now at least) to push Moscow to do exactly that.

    The latest warning by Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov that Washington DC is pushing the transfer of nuclear-capable F-16s to the Kiev regime illustrates this perfectly. And while the mainstream propaganda machine insists this is “Russian disinformation” and “baseless fearmongering”, Lavrov’s no-nonsense bearing and the sheer magnitude of his credibility in the diplomatic world say otherwise.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • How Does Technology Factor in for US Militarism toward China?


    The United States is about militarism. Its economy is largely based on the military-industrial complex. It has hundreds upon hundreds of military bases in lands around the planet. Yet, despite a bloated military budget, the US fails to care for all its citizens, certainly not the millions of homeless, poor, and those unable to afford medical procedures because they are without medical insurance; however, the US does house and feed its soldiers, marines, and air-force personnel abroad. Yet, when it comes to its veterans there is often a price they must pay. Nonetheless, what must not be forgotten is the far greater price paid by the victims of US aggression.

    The US claims full-spectrum dominance. US politicians make bellicose statements about which country the US will attack next. And when a pretext is required the US will fabricate one. (See AB Abrams’s excellent book Atrocity Fabrications and Its Consequences, 2023. Review)

    I asked Wei Ling Chua, the author of 3 books including Democracy: What the west can learn from China and Tiananmen Square’s “Massacre”? The Power of Words vs Silent Evidence, how aggressive US posturing impacts China.

    Kim Petersen: It is clear that the US is waging an economic war against China. However, based on the bombast of several American military and political figures, the US is also pining for a military confrontation. US Air Force four-star general Mike Minihan said his gut warns of a war with China in 2025.  The Chinese claim to most of the South China Sea has caused the US to assert the right to freedom of navigation by sailing its warships off the Chinese coast. But when has China ever denied any ships the right to freely traverse the South China Sea? And as for the disputed territoriality in the South China Sea, why does the US arrogate to itself a supposed right to meddle in the affairs of other countries even those thousands of kilometers from the US shoreline? The Brookings Institute informs that of potential threats worldwide, “China gets pride of place as security challenge number one — even though China has not employed large-scale military force against an adversary since its 1979 war [what even Wikipedia calls a “brief conflict”] with Vietnam.” Consider that the media organ of British capitalism, The Economist, complains that “People’s Liberation Army (PLA) fighter jets keep staging recklessly close, high-speed passes to intimidate Western military aircraft in international airspace near China.” The magazine doesn’t blink at the risible scenario it has described: foreign fighter planes near China. Isn’t there sufficient airspace for American military jets in the US? Or sufficient coastline to practice freedom of navigation with its warships in US waters?

    The US is so fixated on the economic rise of China that it even scuppered a multibillion-dollar deal its ally France had to sell submarines to Australia and replace it with nuclear submarines to be supplied by itself and the United Kingdom — AUKUS. The obvious target of the nuclear subs: China. China’s foreign minister Qin Gang has called on the US to put the brakes on to avoid confrontation and conflict. What does all the militaristic hoopla directed at China portend?

    Nonetheless, SCMP.com reported on 24 March 2023 that China has developed a coating for its submarines — an “active” tile based on giant magnetostrictive material (GMM) technology — that “could turn the US active sonar technology against itself.”

    Also, the Chinese navy has many more ships than the US (around 340 Chinese navy ships to the 300 US navy ships) and that gap is widening.

    Given that the rise of China is not just economic, but that China has also developed a staunch defensive capability, what do the military experts say about China’s capability of defending itself against an American attack? Such an attack would also be insane because war between two nuclear-armed foes is a scenario in which there are no winners.

    Wei Ling Chua: The US is the most warmongering country on the planet with every inch of its territory looted from others. Like former US President Jimmy Carter told Trump in a (2019) phone conversation: “US has only enjoyed 16 years of peace in its 242-year history.”  The US is also the only nuclear power ever to use such a weapon of mass destruction, which it did on 2 populated civilian cities (Hiroshima and Nagasaki). So, any military threat from the US cannot be taken lightly.

    In addition, one should also note that the Chinese military grouped itself into 5 defense regions (Western defense region, Northern defense region, Central defense region, Southern defense region, and Eastern defense region), they are all within China and defensive in nature; whereas, the US military grouped itself into 6 command centers covering the entire world [Africa Command (AFRICOM), Southern Command (covering Latin America), European Command (covering Europe, part of the Middle East and Eurasia), Central Command (covering the Middle East), Indo-Pacific Command (covering the entire Asia Pacific Region, and half the Indian Ocean), and Northern Command (covering the US, Alaska, Canada, Mexico, and Bahamas)]. The US military is obviously imperialistic in nature.

    However, the good news is that after WW2, the US-led military coalition never won any war in Asia. Their military coalition was badly beaten in the Korean War and Vietnam War (both of which involved China). The latest sudden and messy US withdrawal from Afghanistan after 20 years of brutal occupation demonstrates that the US military is not as powerful as perceived. It appears to be as Mao famously described: “A Paper Tiger.”

    I believe that if the US regime is informed and rational, it will not dare to start a war with China on the Chinese doorstep. The reasons are quite obvious:

    1) After the Korean and Vietnam wars, the US never dared to directly attack any well-armed country such as North Korea, Iran, USSR/Russia, etc. For example, in 2020, Iran fired 22 missiles at 2 US airbases in revenge for the cowardly US assassination of their minister (Qasem Soleimani) while he was on an official diplomatic visit inside Iraq. Despite the Pentagon’s initial playing down of the severity of the Iranian attacks, it was later admitted that 109 US troops had suffered brain injuries. The US did not dare take further military action against Iran.

    My perception from this incident is that the US is too confident — that no one dares to take military action against their military bases across the world.So, they are complacent and failed to invest in underground shelters in those 2 airbases. So, it is reasonable to assume that such weaknesses are likely to be widespread across all the other US military bases across the world.

    2) All the countries the US and NATO attacked after the Korean War and Vietnam War were developing countries. It was only after these countries had been weakened by years of economic sanctions and were without a decent air and sea defense system (e.g., Libya, Syria, Iraq, etc). One should note that the US invasion of Iraq was carried out only after over a decade of UN weapons inspection, disarmament, and economic sanctions. That is after the Iraqi economy and its advanced weaponry were destroyed. As a result, US fighter jets were able to take their own sweet time, flying low, flying slowly to identify targets and bombs. So, the US military weapons have yet to be tested in confrontation with a militarily powerful country, one armed with air and sea defense systems.

    As for the perceived US military might and superior high-tech weaponry, I believe that the following examples will shed some light on whether the US is more militarily powerful or China:

    Firstly, we should thank the United States for its ongoing military actions across the world, and its marketing tactics to promote its image as a superpower, with the intention to sell weapons and to scare the world into submission from its position of strength. Below is a series of US announcements of new weaponry that had frightened the Chinese; as a result, China commissioned her scientists to invent powerful weapons with ideas initiated by the Americans. E.g.,

    Hypersonic Missiles

    • The US is the first country that commissioned a hypersonic bomber program capable of nuking any country worldwide within an hour in the early 2000s. Such an announcement scared the Chinese and Russians. Yet, whereas the US failed miserably and decided to shut down the program in early 2023, we have witnessed that Russia and China successfully developed hypersonic missile technology.  Ironically, given the US failure and China’s success in the technology, the Washington Post published a report titled “American technology boosts China’s hypersonic missile program” to attribute China’s hypersonic missile success to US technology. (When one comes by this type of baseless claim of US technological superiority over China, besides having a good laugh, I am really speechless at the unbelievably shameless nature of the American propaganda machine)

    Laser Guns

    • The US is also the first country which commissioned a laser gun program. In 2014, the US announced that the weapon was installed on USS Ponce for field testing with success. However, in 2023, CBS News reported that the Pentagon spent $1b a year to develop these weapons and stated that  “Whether such weapons are worth the money is an open question, and the answer likely depends on whom you ask. For defense contractors, of course, a new generation of powerful military hardware could provide vast new revenue streams.” The irony is that in 2022, China had already exported its laser guns to Saudi Arabia and that country was reported to have successfully gunned down 13 incoming attack drones.

    One ought to recall what happened to Saudi oil facilities in 2019 when drones attacked. The report at that time was: “US-made Patriot anti-aircraft missiles, the main air defense of Saudi Arabia that was so useless last Saturday, cost $3m apiece.” In addition, there is the recent bad news that the vaunted US Patriot missile system was put out of action by a Russian hypersonic missile in Kiev on the 16th of May 2023. The report’s title was “A Patriot Radar Station and five missile batteries destroyed in Russian hypersonic strikes”. Obviously, the mendacious US military-industrial complex was successfully ripping off a lot of its allies which paid super high prices for their inferior products.

    F-35 “World Most Advanced” stealth fighter

    • The US is a country that loves to boast about its military capability even when the concept is still in an imaginary stage. E.g., introduced in 2006 as the world’s most advanced stealth fighter, the F-35 is also regarded as the US’s most expensive 5th-generation warplane. However, in the past 5 years alone, more than a dozen F-35s crashed across the world despite not operating in a war zone. In 2019, Japan confirmed that an F-35A jet had crashed, causing the remaining F-35s in Japan to be grounded. In 2021, two F-35s were damaged and grounded by a lightning strike in the sky over western Japan. Forbes magazine ran a report titled “Japan is about to waste its F35s shadowing Chinese plane” with this statement: “The stealth fighter is too expensive, too unreliable, and too valuable for other missions to waste it on boring up-and-down flights.” In 2020, The National Interest reported that “The F-35 Stealth Fighter still has hundreds of flaws.” And in 2021, Forbes magazine reported, “The US Air Force just admitted the F35 stealth fighter has failed.” In 2022, the Chinese [People’s Liberation Army] PLA detected an F-35 over the East China Sea and confronted it with their J20 fighter jet, and according to US Airforce General Kenneth Wilbach: “American Lockheed Martin F-35s had had at least one encounter with China’s J-20 stealth fighters recently in the East China Sea and that the US side was ‘impressed’.” These cases demonstrated that the US’s supposedly most advanced “stealth fighter” is visible to Chinese radar technology.

    Space Technology/Rocket Engines

    • Despite the US’s stringent technology bans against China, including even attending international space conferences in the US, China is now the only country to have independently and successfully built its own space station. The International space station (ISS) was created by a number of countries with the Russian contribution being the most crucial part of putting the station and astronauts (with Russian rockets) in space. However, as usual, the American media likes to bullshit to save face. So, in 2020, when the American media reported the news that NASA paid the Russians $90m to send an astronaut to the ISS, the title was: “Despite SpaceX success, NASA will pay Russia $90m to take US astronaut to ISS”. The irony is that in 2022, the US imposed the strictest economic sanctions against Russia including confiscating Russian public and private assets in the West and banning Russia from the SWIFT payment system due to Russia’s military action in Ukraine to prevent NATO expansion. As a counter-US sanction measure, NASA was forced to pay Russia in rubles (2 billion) to take the American astronaut back to Earth. These two incidents should be enough evidence that SpaceX’s space technology is not as advanced as its public relations. The Russians and the Chinese appear more advanced than NASA/Elon Musk’s SpaceX in transporting astronauts to and from a space station.

    Many people may not have noticed that, in 2015, the US ordered 20 rocket engines from Russia. So, in 2022, when Russia counters US-Ukraine war sanctions with a ban on selling their rocket engines to the US, TechCrunch+ reported the situation with an honest title in recognition of the reality: “Russia halts rocket engine sales to US, suggests flying to space on their ‘broomsticks’.”

    GPS Vs Beidou Global Navigation/positioning systems

    • Global positioning technology is a vital part of many advanced weapon systems including land, sea, and air travel: In 1993, the US government falsely accused a Chinese commercial cargo ship with the registered name ‘Yinhe’ of transporting chemical weapon materials to Iran. The US government then cut off Yinhe’s GPS for 24 days to strand them in the Indian Ocean and forced them to allow US officials to board the cargo ship for inspection and nothing was found. Again, in 1996, the PLA conducted a series of missile tests in the Taiwan Strait, and the US again suddenly shut down the GPS used by the PLA. Both incidents led to the Chinese government’s investment in its own Global positioning technology.

    In 2003, the cash-strapped EU invited China to participate in their Galileo navigation satellite project. However, after China transferred €200 million (US$270 million) to the project, in the name of security concerns, China was forced out of major decision-making by the EU in 2007. The irony is that China managed to develop its own Global positioning system (Beidou) faster than the EU’s Galileo project. As a “revenge” perhaps, on a “first-launched, first-served” international wavelength application rule, China successfully registered the use of transmit signals on the wavelength that the EU wanted to use for Galileo’s public regulated service. The New York Times reported the story with a title: ‘Chinese Square off with Europe in Space’.

    One may notice that the US’s aging GPS satellite system has been having a lot of problems in the past years. Just do a web search under GPS breakdown, GPS jamming, GPS outages, GPS error, GPS problems, GPS malfunction, etc., to find out about the reliability of the GPS system.

    Contrariwise, the Chinese Beidou navigation system is a Chinese owned technology with new functions and apparently more precision than the GPS. For example:

    • The Chinese Beidou can be used for text communication between users, while the GPS cannot. So, Huawei became the first company to add satellite texting to their phone device (Mate 50). The significance of such a new communication feature is that, during wartime, the PLA command center or between individual PLA soldiers will be able to communicate with each other with no blind spot. That will enable rapid battlefield intelligence gathering and transmission.
    • In addition, if one ever uses a Beidou navigation device while driving, one should notice that the device’s screen displays the position of the specific car on a specific lane. Should the driver change lanes, the screen will display the changes instantly. That is an indication that Beidou’s navigation system is far more accurate and advanced than the GPS in terms of positioning precision and processing speed. This may imply that the Chinese satellite-guided missiles will be more accurate than the US GPS-guided missiles.
    • A report by Japan Nikkei in 2020 headlined, “Chinese Beidou navigation system has surpassed American GPS in over 165 countries.” That indicates that the Beidou system is a tested, mature navigation technology.
    • A recently published report of a series of computer simulations run by a research team in China revealed that China needs only 24 hypersonic anti-ship missiles to destroy the newest US aircraft carrier and its accompanying warships.

    I consider that China is superior in technology to the US. For example, a recent Australian Strategy Policy Institute report acknowledged, “China leads the world in 37 out of 44 critical technologies.”

    Of course, unless the US regime is crazy enough to start a mutually destructive nuclear war, there is little reason to believe that the US would be able to win a war with non-nuclear weapons on China’s doorstep.

    Winning a war is not just about weaponry: the Korean War, Vietnam War, and Afghanistan War have already demonstrated that a coalition of the most militarily powerful imperialistic nations can be defeated by the people of a lesser-armed nation fighting for their freedom. So, beyond the use of advanced weaponry, the factors that determine who will win a war include:

        • the unity of the citizens,
        • the fighting morale of the soldiers,
        • the logistical support,
        • the military strategies,
        • the ability to manufacture more weapons with speed to sustain a long war;
        • the manufacturing supply chains
        • the energy supply and reserve,
        • the food supply and reserve,
        • the money to sustain a war, and
        • the neighboring countries’ attitude toward the warring parties.

    So, when one goes through the above list, one should easily come to the conclusion that the US is in a  disadvantageous position to travel across the Pacific Ocean to attack China on its doorstep.

    *****
    Upcoming: What does US militarism augur in the context of Taiwan?


    This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Kim Petersen.

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • Diluted Sovereignty: A Very Australian Example

    Australian concepts of sovereignty have always been qualified. First came the British settlers and invaders in 1788. They are pregnant with the sovereignty of the British Crown, bringing convicts, the sadistic screws, and forced labour to a garrison of penal experiments and brutality. The native populations are treated as nothing more than spares, opportunistic chances, and fluff of the land, a legal nonsense. In a land deemed empty, sovereignty is eviscerated.

    Then comes the next stage of Australia’s development. Imperial outpost, dominion, federation, a commonwealth of anxious creation. But through this, there is never a sense of being totally free, aware, cognisant of sovereignty. Eyes remain fastened on Britain. Just as the sovereignty of the First Nations peoples came to be destroyed internally, the concept of Australian sovereignty externally was never realised in any true sense. If it was not stuck in the bosom of the British Empire, then it was focused on the enormity of the United States, its calorific terrors and nuclear protections.

    The testament to Australia’s infantile, and contingent sovereignty, is symbolised by the US Pine Gap facility, which is called, for reasons of domestic courtesy, a joint facility. In truth, Australian politicians can never walk onto its premises and have no say as to its running. The public, to this day, can only have guesses, some admittedly well educated, about what it actually does as an intelligence facility.

    Australia’s Defence Minister, Richard Marles, whose views should never be taken at face value, insists that the facility ensures that “Australia and our Five-Eyes partners maintain an ‘intelligence advantage’” while being “truly joint in nature, integrating both Australian and US operations under shard command and control by Australian and US personnel – which I have had an opportunity to see firsthand.” Hardly.

    Another example is the annual rotation of US Marines in the Northern Territory. To date, there have been twelve such rotations, carefully worded to give the impression that Australia lacks a US military garrison to the country’s north. In March, Marles claimed that such rotations served to “enhance the capabilities, interoperability, and readiness of the ADF and the United States Marine Corps and is a significant part of the United States Force Posture Initiatives, a hallmark of Australia’s Alliance with the US.”

    To therefore have an Australian Prime Minister now talk about sovereign capabilities is irksome, even intellectually belittling. Under Anthony Albanese’s stewardship, and before him Scott Morrison’s, the trilateral security pact known as AUKUS has done more to militarise the Australian continent in favour of US defence interests than any other.

    The logistical and practical implications should trouble the good citizens Down Under, and not just because Australia is fast becoming a forward base for US-led operations in the Pacific.

    Last month, President Joe Biden revealed his desire to press the US Congress on a significant change: adding Australia as a “domestic source” within the meaning of the Defense Production Act, notably pertaining to Title III. The announcement came out in a joint statement from Biden and his Australian counterpart as part of a third-in-person Quad Leaders’ Summit. It also was something of a taster for the G7 Summit held in Hiroshima on May 20.

    Title III of the DPA “provides various financial measures, such as loans, loan guarantees, purchases, and purchase commitments, to improve, expand, and maintain domestic production capabilities needed to support national defense and homeland security procurement requirements.” It makes no mention about the independence of foreign entities or states which might enable this to happen.

    A May 20 joint statement from Biden and Albanese welcomed “the progress being made to provide Australia with a conventionally armed, nuclear-powered submarine capability, and on developing advanced capabilities under the trilateral AUKUS partnership to deter aggression and sustain peace and stability across the Pacific.”

    To add Australia as a domestic source “would streamline technological and industrial base collaboration, accelerate and strengthen AUKUS implementation, and build new opportunities for United States investment in the production and purchase of Australian critical minerals, critical technologies, and other strategic sectors.”

    As a statement of naked, proprietary interest, this does rather well, not least because it will enable the US to access the Australian minerals market. One prized commodity is lithium, seen as essential to such green technology as electric cars. Given that Australia mines 53% of the world’s supply of lithium, most of which is sold to China to be refined, Washington will have a chance to lock out Beijing by encouraging refinement in Australia proper. With Australia designated as a source domestic to the US, this will be an easy affair.

    Washington’s imperial heft over its growingly prized Australian real estate will also be felt in the context of space technology. Australia will become the site of a NASA ground station under the Artemis Accords. Much is made of allowing “the controlled transfer of sensitive US launch technology and data while protecting US technology consistent with US non-proliferation policy, the Missile Technology Control Regime and US export controls.” Congress, however, will have to approve, given the limits imposed on the Technology Safeguards Agreement.

    Australia, as a recipient of such technology, will ever be able to assert anything amounting to a sovereign capability over it. As Paul Gregoire points out, the US International Traffic in Arms Regulations makes it clear that information shared with a foreign entity becomes US property and is subject to export restrictions, though the White House may permit it.

    In addition to the announcement, there are also moves afoot to involve Japan more extensively in “force posture related activities” as part of the Australia-United States Force Posture Cooperation policy. That’s just what Australia needs: another reminder that its already watered down sovereignty can be diluted into oblivion.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • Spent Matters: The AUKUS Nuclear Waste Problem

    When Australia – vassal be thy name – assumed responsibilities for not only throwing money at both US and British shipbuilders, lending up territory and naval facilities for war like a gambling drunk, and essentially asking its officials to commit seppuku for the Imperium, another task was given. While the ditzy and dunderheaded wonders in Canberra would be acquiring submarines with nuclear propulsion technology, there would be that rather problematic issue of what to do with the waste. “Yes,” said the obliging Australians, “we will deal with it.”

    The Australian Defence Department has published a fact sheet on the matter, which, as all such fact sheets go, fudges the facts and sports a degree of misplaced optimism. It promises a “sophisticated security and safety architecture” around the nuclear-powered submarine program, “building on our 70-year unblemished track record of operating nuclear facilities and conducting nuclear science activities.”

    This record, which is rather more blemished than officials would care to admit, does not extend to the specific issues arising from maintaining a nuclear-powered submarine fleet and the high-level waste that would require shielding and cooling. In the context of such a vessel, this would entail pulling out and disposing of the reactor once the submarine is decommissioned.

    Australia’s experience, to date, only extends to the storage of low-level waste and intermediate-level waste arising from nuclear medicine and laboratory research, with the low-level variant being stored at over a hundred sites in the country. That situation has been regarded as unsustainable and politically contentious.

    The department admits that the storage and disposal of such waste and spent fuel will require necessary facilities and trained personnel, appropriate transport, interim and permanent storage facilities and “social license earned and sustained with local and regional communities.” But it also notes that the UK and the US “will assist Australia in developing this capability, leveraging Australia’s decades of safely and securely managing radioactive waste domestically”.

    That’s mighty good of them to do so, given that both countries have failed to move beyond the problem of temporary storage. In the UK, the issue of disposing waste from decommissioned nuclear submarines remains stuck in community consultation. In the US, no option has emerged after the Obama administration killed off a repository program to store waste underneath Nevada’s Yucca Mountain. The reasons for doing so, sulked Republicans at the time, were political rather than technical.

    Where, then, will the facilities to store and dispose of such waste be located? “Defence – working with relevant agencies including the Australian Radioactive Waste Agency – will undertake a review in 2023 to identify locations in the current or future Defence estate that could be suitable to store and dispose of intermediate-level waste and high-level waste, including spent fuel.”

    The various state premiers are already suggesting that finding a site will be problematic. Both Victoria and Western Australia are pointing fingers at South Australia as the logical option, while Queensland has declared that “under no circumstances” would it permit nuclear waste to be stored. “I think the waste can go where all the jobs are going,” remarked Victorian Premier Daniel Andrews. “I don’t think that’s unreasonable, is it?”

    Western Australia’s Mark McGowan, in furious agreement, suggested that a site “somewhere remote, somewhere with very good long-term geological structure that doesn’t change or move and somewhere that is defence lands” narrowed down the options. “[T]hat’s why Woomera springs to mind.”

    South Australia’s Premier, Peter Malinauskas, insists that the waste should go “where it is in the nation’s interest to put it” and not be a matter of “some domestic political tit-for-tat, or some state-based parochial thing.”

    When it comes to storing nuclear waste, parochialism is all but guaranteed. The Australian government is already facing a legal challenge from traditional owners regarding a 2021 decision to locate a nuclear waste site at Kimba in South Australia. The effort to find a site for the National Radioactive Waste Management Facility intended for low and intermediate radioactive waste produced by the Australian Nuclear Science and Technology Organisation at Lucas Heights, New South Wales, took three decades.

    According to members of the First Nations group opposing the decision, the proposed facility risks interfering with a sacred site for women. Dawn Taylor, a Barngarla woman and Kimba resident, told the ABC that, “The Seven Sisters is through that area.” She feared that the waste facility would end up “destroying” the stories associated with the dreaming.

    The federal resources minister, Madeleine King, has stated with little conviction that a cultural heritage management plan “informed by the research of the Barngarla people” is in place. “There are strict protocols around the work that is going on right now to make sure there is no disturbance of cultural heritage.”

    Local farmers, including the consistently vocal Peter Woolford, are also opposed to the project. “We just can’t understand why you would expose this great agricultural industry we have here in grain production to any potential risk at all by having a nuclear waste dump here.”

    The Australian security establishment may well be glorifying in the moment of AUKUS, itself an insensibly parochial gesture of provocation and regional destabilisation, but agitated residents and irate state politicians are promising a good deal of sensible mischief.

    The post Spent Matters: The AUKUS Nuclear Waste Problem first appeared on Dissident Voice.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • Avalon Militarism

    The global pandemic was not completely catastrophic in its effects. It led to the cancellation, and postponement, of wasteful projects and events. It spared public money. But as the pandemic slides into the shadow of policy-making, bad habits have returned. The profligates are here to stay.

    One such habit is the Avalon air show, a celebration of aeronautical militarism in the southern hemisphere best done without. In 2021, the organisers announced with regret that the event would be cancelled due to COVID-19 restrictions and uncertainty. Last October, however, organisers promised a return to form in 2023. Those with tickets “can look forward to a whole new program with jaw-dropping aerial displays, a refreshed food and beverage offering, and live entertainment.”

    Also known as the Australian International Airshow and Aerospace and Defence Exposition, Avalon2023 promises to “showcase” much in the “dynamic world of aviation, aerospace and space, new materials, fuels and ways of flying”.

    The program features both a specialist dimension and complimentary conferences “open to any accredited Trade Visitor”. The specialist aspect will feature presentations from, among others, the Royal Australian Air Force, Australian International Aerospace Congress, Australian Association for Unscrewed Systems (AAUS), Australian Industry Defence Network (AIDN), and the Australian Airports Association.

    With this military bonanza unfolding on February 28, the Australian Defence Minister, Richard “Call me Deputy Prime Minister” Marles, has tooted his justifications for more hardware, more military merchandise and more engagement with the defence industry. His address to the Avalon 2023 Defence and Industry Dinner revealed a boyish credulity typical in so many who lead that portfolio. The boys-with-toys credo becomes all seducing. Air forces, he noted, “are the coolest part of any military.” Trying to amuse, he called Top Gun Maverick “an important and insightful documentary”.

    With that treacly tribute out of the way, Marles could get down to the business of frightening Australians and delighting the military industrial mandarins. Australia faced “the most challenging and complex set of strategic circumstances we’ve seen since the Second World War.” The “global rules-based order” had been placed “under immense pressure”, largely due to the Russian invasion of Ukraine. “The post-Cold War era – a period of democratic expansion and unprecedented integration of global trade and investment – is now over.”

    The scriptwriter had evidently gone to sleep in drafting such words. The post-Cold War era was streaked by brutal invasions and interventions (Iraq and Libya, to name but two instances), supposedly by the rules-abiding types in Washington, London and Canberra. The Russian invasion did feature the imposition of will by a larger state on a smaller neighbour using “power and might”, but the US-led invasion that kicked the hornet’s nest of sectarian violence in 2003 came from the same stable of thought.

    The speech then follows a familiar pattern. First, call out the Russians. Then highlight the Oriental Armed Scourge to the North. “In the Indo-Pacific, China is driving the largest conventional military build-up we’ve seen anywhere in the world since the Second World War. And much of this build-up is opaque.”

    Australia’s security, assured by its remote location and geography, could no longer be taken seriously. “Today we face a range of threats – including longer-range missiles and hypersonics and cyber-attacks – which render our geographic advantages far less relevant.”

    The enemy could do damage from afar, causing harm “without ever having to enter our territorial waters or our air space.” It was therefore important to place Australian defence upon the footing of “being able to hold any potential adversaries at risk much further from our shores.”

    This was a rather devious way of laying the ground for more cash and larger budgets, ignoring the clear point that Australia has no truly mortal enemies, but wishes to make them as Washington’s obedient deputy.

    One particular product is meant to take centre stage. The Australian Defence Force is lagging in the department of murderous drone technology. One promises to be unveiled at Avalon. As reported by the national broadcaster, “The unscrewed air system has been developed by BAE Systems Australia and is designed to be stored in shipping containers.” The device is allegedly capable of carrying a lethal payload in excess of 100 kilograms.

    Australia’s Chief of Air Force, Air Marshal Robert Chipman, has made no secret of his desire for low-cost killer drones. “We’ve seen a proliferation of low-cost drones and loitering munitions delivering both ISR [intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance] and fires to great effect,” he told a Melbourne audience filled with foreign air force chiefs and senior officials, “they don’t replace the roles of contemporary combat aircraft, but they might serve as a useful complement.”

    With that in mind, the RAAF was “considering the potential of low-cost drones that bring mass to our air combat system, and we’re considering what new measures are necessary to defend against them.” Such views thrilled the war mongering offices at The Australian, which expressed satisfaction that Australian military policy was finally “moving in the right direction.”

    Chapman has been particularly busy in the leadup to the Avalon airshow, walking the tightrope of defence propaganda. Self-praise and capability must be balanced against a fear of achievement on the part of an adversary.

    In an interview with the Australian Financial Review last week, the Air Marshal revealed that the RAAF had also joined the hysteria about targeting high altitude surveillance balloons. He also defended the merits of the F-35 fighter jet, praising their pilots as having “retained an edge over drones or other unscrewed platforms despite advances in technology.”

    China, however, was causing jitters in the area of hypersonic missiles, capable of delivering a warhead at five times the speed of sound with extreme manoeuvrability. “I think China is in front when it comes to hypersonics […] and that is something we are actively working to address.” Thank goodness, then, for the Avalon Air Show, even if the organisers were not sagacious enough to invite both Chinese and Russian manufacturers.

    The post Avalon Militarism first appeared on Dissident Voice.

  • Ukraine’s Tank Problem

    It seems to be a case of little provision for so much supposed effect. The debates, the squabbles, the to-and-fro about supplying Ukraine with tanks from Western arsenals has served to confirm one thing: this is an ever-broadening war between the West against Russia with Ukraine an experimental proxy convinced it will win through. Efforts to limit the deepening conflict continue to be seen as the quailing sentiments of appeasers, the wobbly types who find democracy a less than lovable thing.

    So far, promises have been made to ship the US M1A2 Abrams, Germany’s Leopard 2 and the UK’s Challenger. Others have alluded to doing the same thing – including France regarding its Leclerc tanks – but tardiness fills the ranks, and logistics will make the provision of such weapons a long affair. Re-export licenses will have to be issued, notably regarding the Leopard 2; training Ukrainian tank crews will also need to be undertaken.

    All in all, the picture is not as rosy as those in Kyiv think, despite the confident assessment from Ukraine’s Deputy Foreign Minister, Andriy Melnyk that his country’s defence forces would have access to “at least a hundred tanks” within three months.

    The US tanks are, for the most part, still grounded in their country of origin, with their deployment potentially delayed for months, if not years. Pentagon deputy spokesperson Sabrina Singh was frank in admitting that, “We just don’t have these tanks available in excess in our US stocks, which is why it is going to take months to transfer these M1A2 Abrams to Ukraine.” Singh, it should also be remembered, expressed the department’s view earlier this month that the tank was hardly suitable for Ukrainian needs, given how its jet turbine engine hungers for JP-8 jet fuel, unlike the diesel engine used by the Leopard and Challenger counterparts.

    The engine is also rather tricky to maintain for crews, leaving it susceptible to blowing up in the event of error. No less an authority than the Pentagon press secretary US Air Force brigadier general Pat Ryder, admitted that the M-1 “is a complex weapons system that is challenging to maintain, as we’ve talked about. That was true yesterday; it’s true today; it will be true in the future.”

    There is also a backlog of orders for the tank. The Lima facility in Ohio, operated by General Dynamics, is the only facility that assembles the Abrams. It can produce a mere 12 tanks per month and must fulfill orders to supply 250 A2 tanks for Poland starting in 2025 to replace the same number of Soviet-era T-72 tanks Warsaw supplied to Kyiv last year. Taiwan also put in an order for 108 M1A2 tanks in 2019. Even getting to work on the 31 units promised by the Biden administration for Ukraine looks to be ambitious.

    The wrangling over supplying Ukraine with tanks has been an at times acrimonious affair. This is hardly surprising. European states have their own specific readings, however dark or cautious, about how to approach the supply issue. The magic number being sought by Kyiv is 300. After initial resistance, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz gave in to his peers, both in his coalition outside, to send a company of Leopard 2 tanks and permit countries with the same tanks in their inventories to supply them to Kyiv. A fortnight of aggressive chatter at a number of venues, including Ramstein Air Base, pressing the flesh and breathing down various necks, saw a change of heart and, it has to be said, weak will on the part of the Chancellor.

    It is impossible to see how the provision of such weapons, against a larger enemy with no evident sign of capitulation and determined to maintain the fight in the field, however slapdash and ailing, will be a “gamechanger”. That word ought to be scrapped from any credible analysis, but we see it used repeatedly in the tabloid certitude of final victory.

    There is Ed Arnold of the Royal United Services Institute, who is confident that this tank transfer “will make a real difference.” But even Arnold attaches a few caveats, noting that much will depend on how Ukraine uses them. “Do they put them straight into the fight as soon as they’re available? Or do they integrate them into larger formations, train and rehearse those larger formations, and spend a bit more time integrating them into the way that they fight to then potentially use in the summer?”

    Whatever the answer to such questions, this is a war that will yield no victors and will, in guaranteed fashion, make a mockery of victory. And the only cruel reality here, short of needless oblivion through imbecilic error of judgment, is to get the warring parties to the table to reach an agreement that is bound to cause despair as much as relief. It might, as unpalatable as it seems, require Ukraine to surrender a portion of devastated earth in the east. The unthinkable will have to be entertained.

    The post Ukraine’s Tank Problem first appeared on Dissident Voice.

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  • Joining the War Club: Australia’s HIMARS Purchase

    Another needless, fatuous endeavour; another irresponsible drain on the public purse; another expression that the military-industrial complex Down Under is thriving in all its insidious stupidity. But Australia’s purchase of HIMARS (High Mobility Artillery Rocket System) batteries from the United States can be put down to loneliness – or the feeling of being left out. And history shows that loneliness in the context of weapons and harm involves a need to acquire more means to do further harm.

    The timing of the announcement this month seemed curious enough. Could it have been coincidental that it came soon after the Ukrainian strike using the HIMARS system that destroyed a makeshift Russian garrison with lethal consequences? It was certainly wonderfully grotesque timing, even if Australian defence officials had already yearned for the HIMARS system in 2022.

    The HIMARS system is certainly getting its sales, proving to be a bountiful treasure for Lockheed Martin. Its lethal strength lies in accuracy over considerable distances and easy deployment. It is also indicative of a broader missile fetish that has gripped Canberra. To make the point, the Australian government also announced the signing of a contract with Norway-based Kongsberg to purchase Naval Strike Missiles for its naval destroyers and frigates, designed to replace the Harpoon anti-ship missiles from next year. Perceived obsolescence remains the militarist’s nightmare and the weapons manufacturer’s hope.

    The nervousness towards Russian ambitions in Ukraine has done its bit to boost the purchases for countries historically clutched by the old empire and its interests. Last month, the Baltic states secured deals to attain the rocket system. Such purchases serve two purposes: to reassure the anxious and to fill the pockets of the ambitious. Defence ministers will always cue their performance. “It is a big step for our armed forces, this new system, and it will significantly enhance our national and regional capabilities,” stated Lithuanian Defence Minister Arvydas Anusauskas.

    The Australian example, however, is even less comprehensible, unless read through the demands and needs of a foreign power keen on keeping the gunpowder dry for war. Otherwise, there are no threats to speak of, except in the feverish mind of stupefied analysts subsided by foreign powers. Why, then, go for 20 of such systems at the cost of $385 million ($A558 million), which is more likely to be more expensive, given the refusal by government sources to reveal the actual amount?

    James Heading, Director of Programs, Strategic Capabilities Office at Lockheed Martin Australia’s Missiles and Fire Control did little to explain the broader necessity for such a system for Australia, turning it into a logistics fun fair for adult children prone to violent urges. What mattered was how good the killing system was, a toy the entire military family could have. “HIMARS employs a ‘shoot to scoot’ capability which enhances crew and platform survivability in high threat environments.”

    With gushing admiration, Heading spoke of “a generational leap in capability for Australia, taking Defence from cannon artillery to Long-Range Precision Fires that provide a 24/7 persistent, all-weather capability.” Such historical comparisons are flawed to the point of caricature, but they tend to be predictable in weapons sales and the need to find ever more imaginative ways of killing. For all the posturing, Heading did lift the cover on the broader strategic value of supplying Australian forces with such weapons: the US imperium, namely, demands it. “HIMARS offers the Australian Defence Force the ability to use and share common munitions and to integrate into a coalition effort.”

    This poorly-cooked tripe was swallowed by Australian Defence Minister and chief weapon’s fetishist Richard Marles, “The Albanese Government is taking a proactive approach to keeping Australia safe – and the Naval Strike Missile and HIMARS launchers will give our Defence Force the ability to deter conflict and protect our interests.” (No account has ever shown any defence minister authorising purchases against the country’s interests.)

    The Australian Defence Industry Minister Pat Conroy was also seduced by the whole issue of capability in the face of fictional demons, till one realises that the only demon being fantasised upon is located to Australia’s distant north and known historically as the Middle Kingdom. To the ABC, he explained with a toddler’s enthusiasm that Australia would now have “an Army ground-launched missile that can reach targets up to 300 kilometres away.”

    For all his confidence, Conroy’s Washington masters were also speaking in his ear. “We are part of a developmental program with the United States called the Precision Strike Missile that will allow [the] the army to hit targets in excess of 499 kilometres. So, this will give the Australian army a strike capability they have never had before.”

    The US Defense Department was affirmingly clear in its rationale for endorsing the system’s export to Canberra. “The proposed sale will support the foreign policy and national security objectives of the United States,” wrote the Pentagon. “Australia is one of our most important allies in the Western Pacific. The strategic location of this political and economic power contributes significantly to ensuring peace and economic stability in the region.”

    The clods in defence are bound to be revelling in all of this. There are no bounds of accountability, no reason to argue against insensible procurements. It’s all about the toys and using them in the next war.

    The post Joining the War Club: Australia’s HIMARS Purchase first appeared on Dissident Voice.

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  • America’s 2022 Allocations to Ukraine Total $112 Billion

    During this year, the U.S. Government has allocated $112 billion to Ukraine, in order to defeat Russia in the battlefields of Ukraine. Russia allocates normally $60 billion per year for its entire military, but this year has increased that 40% to $84 billion, because of its invasion of Ukraine. Russia invaded Ukraine because, on 17 December 2021, Russia had demanded that the U.S. Government and its NATO anti-Russian military alliance stop trying to place its missiles on and near Russia’s borders (especially in Ukraine, which is the nearest of all bordering nations to Moscow); and, on 7 January 2022 America and NATO said no. Russia then invaded Ukraine on 24 February 2022, in order to prevent Ukraine from becoming a launch-pad for U.S. missiles. That’s what the war in Ukraine is — and always has been — about, from the Russian viewpoint: not being faced with U.S. missiles that are only a five-minute missile-flight-time away from Russia’s central command in Moscow.

    The war in Ukraine started in February 2014, by America’s coup there that overthrew Ukraine’s democratically elected neutralist Government and replaced it by a rabidly anti-Russian and pro-American one on Russia’s border, in order ultimately to become able to place just 317 miles away from the Kremlin U.S. missiles which would be only a five-minute flight-time away from nuking Russia’s central command — far too little time in order for Russia’s central command to be able to verify that launch and then to launch its own retaliatory missiles. It would be nuclear checkmate of Russia, by the U.S. (with the assistance of its NATO allies, which then would include Ukraine).

    Whereas Russia’s objective is to not become nuclear checkmated by America placing its missiles that close to Moscow, America’s objective is to nuclear checkmate Russia in order to capture the world’s largest and most resource-rich country — to force Russia to capitulate and become another U.S. ‘ally’ (that is, vassal-nation).

    President Biden had requested Congress to add $38 billion more this year for Ukraine than the $67 billion that was funded earlier in the year, but Congress decided to increase his requested amount by $7 billion (almost a 20% increase in his suggested increase), so that there will be a total of $45 billion added to the $67 billion previously allocated, for a total U.S. allocation to Ukraine this year of $112 billion. That amount is $28 billion more than Russia will have spent this year for all of its military — the vast majority of which Russian military expenditure isn’t being allocated to the war in Ukraine, but instead to other aspects of Russia’s defense against the threat to its national security from America and its allies. America alone has been spending annually  on its military around 20 times what Russia has been spending on its; and, in order to make America’s expenditure appear not to be so gargantuan as it actually is, large portions of it are being paid out from other federal Departments than the Defense (or Aggression) Department, but the total annual U.S. military expenditures have, for over a decade, been over a trillion dollars per year.

    On November 16, I headlined “U.S. Will Have Spent $100B on Ukraine This Year,” and now it’s clear that my prediction was on the conservative side, by $12 billion.

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  • U.S. Asks More Nations to Become Targets of Russian and Chinese Missiles

    According to a December 6th report by the Congressional Research Service, the United States Government is, and since May has been, offering inducements to foreign countries that are not yet bases from which the U.S. is being allowed to position and launch missiles against Russia and/or China, to become such bases, which would make those nations become additional targets for Russian and/or Chinese missiles. The U.S. is seeking to spread Russia’s and China’s military targets to countries that aren’t yet such targets. Doing this would increase the amounts of weaponry that are being sold, and that would especially benefit American weapons-manufacturers because America is the world’s largest manufacturer of military weapons, and also because the second and third largest such manufacturers, Russia and China, have weapons-producers that are majority-owned by their Government itself, and therefore the weapons-makers there don’t respond primarily to investors, but instead to the nation’s actual and authentic national-defense needs (the Government’s needs). America’s ‘Defense’ firms, such as Lockheed Martin, fund the careers of and thereby control its politicians and Government and its ‘defense’-policies, in order to be able to control their own markets, which are mainly the U.S. Government but also the U.S.-allied Governments (which likewise are controlled largely by such private investors in military-related firms), but in both Russia and China, which still retain socialism regarding their military manufacturers, the Government controls its “Defense” firms; and, so, their defense-policies are strictly for defense (that national, instead of private, purpose), whereas in America and its allied countries, the ‘defense’-firms are for aggression (because producing wars is what benefits the investors in those firms, which control their own Government and its ‘allies’ or vassal-Governments).

    Here is the passage from the Congressional Research Service report:

    Reportedly, in May 2022, the Secretary of the Army stated the Army did not yet have basing agreements for longrange systems but “discussions were ongoing” with a number of countries in the Indo-Pacific region. Given the importance of basing, Congress might examine ongoing efforts to secure Army long-range precision fires unit basing in both Europe and the Indo-Pacific region.

    These Governments “in both Europe and the Indo-Pacific region” are close enough to Russia, and to China, so that if the United States goes to war against Russia and/or China directly (instead of, as now, indirectly — such as it does in both Ukraine on Russia’s border, and Taiwan on China’s border) to conquer Russia and/or China, then those missiles, which will be targeted against one or both of those two countries, will be within range of either Moscow or else Beijing, and will, therefore, become assets adding to America’s likelihood of entirely controlling a post-WW-III world. Largely because military weapons are, in the U.S. and its ‘allied’ countries, controlled by private investors (basically by U.S.-and-allied billionaires), the U.S. Government’s main objective is to control a post-WW-III world. In other words: that Government’s main objective is aggression (defense is actually only secondary). By contrast, in both Russia and China, the entire militaries are designed and function solely for the purpose of national defense, which means preventing, instead of winning, a WW III. In both Russia and China, the ONLY objective of the military, and the MAIN objective of all OTHER policies, is, in fact, defense of the nation. In the U.S. and its ‘allied’ nations, the MAIN objective of the entire Government is expansion of the U.S. empire for it to control ultimately every nation — which means the conquest of every nation that isn’t already part of it. Whereas the top objective of the U.S. Government is imperial — not to prevent but to win a WW III — the top objective of its targeted nations (or ‘enemies’) is instead national (actually to prevent a WW III). And this explains the respective foreign (including military and diplomatic) policies, on each of the two sides: imperialistic versus anti-imperialistic. That is how to interpret and understand each side: it is the difference in perspective — that of the predator (on America’s side), versus that of its prey (on the side of the predator’s intended victims).

    A commonly expressed view by proponents of the predator’s side in international relations is that if its side becomes defeated or fades, then there will be no basic change except the identity of the predator. That viewpoint (everyone’s being psychopathic) might be universally true in the state of nature, but not necessarily in the state of civilization. Both Russia and China have repeatedly condemned, on a moral basis — an anti-imperialistic basis — the predatory perspective in international relations, the win-lose or “zero-sum-game” view, and have — at least verbally — promised that if and when the U.S. becomes defeated or simply fades-out, both Russia and China will move forward ONLY on a win-win (i.e., anti-imperialistic) basis regarding all other nations. America’s President Franklin Delano Roosevelt passionately expressed, repeatedly, both in private and in public, the same commitment, to an only win-win future, that Russia and China now express: a repugnance and rejection of any and all imperialism. However, his immediate two successors, Truman and Eisenhower, despised FDR and promptly committed the U.S., on 25 July 1945, to America’s ultimately conquering the entire world. America has been on that path ever since (to win WW III), and the Biden Administration is especially obsessively so. (Perhaps Biden fears he’ll die soon and wants to be around to see America controlling the entire world, so is rushing things along; but, in any case, he is turning out to be a terrific performer for the people who invested in him, among the mega-donors, including, for example, a former Vice Chairman and top investor in Lockheed Martin who helped organize Biden’s billionaires, and — as a Democrat, which means hypocrite — had said publicly that “I frankly believe that both Democrats and Republicans [referring only to members of Congress — the people whom people such as he himself buy] … are overly influenced by the defense industry in this country.” Biden keeps his secret promises to his mega-donors, but ignores his public promises to his voters. That’s the way America’s ‘democracy’ works.)

    In the imperial world of government-by-corruption, government is for sale always to the highest bidders, and in the vassal-nations it means that “ongoing efforts to secure Army long-range precision fires unit basing in both Europe and the Indo-Pacific region” will — since that will necessarily mean their own nation’s becoming targeted by the missiles of Russia and/or China — a “public/private partnership” or legal bribe being paid to the vassal-nation’s leaders in order for the U.S. Government to be able to win that ultimate sacrifice of the given vassal-nation. Of course, such bribes are private, not public, since those are vassal-nations and their ‘democracy’ is only a mockery of the real thing.

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  • Food and Toilets: The Collective West’s Weapons

    One of several multiple million criminals, but he keeps on ticking like that Times watch:

    My previous post, “Incredible, Unbearable, Incomprehensible Lightness of Wanting to Be Human . . . That Way!” was much more holistically positive, but we need to talk straight sometimes. Is this even on a scale of what is inhumane, or is this way beyond that, combined with a god complex, and, really, who would Allah-Moses-Jesus-Buddha starve?

    Ah, “Food as a weapon: Bucharest, Rome and the politics of starvation,” that’s 1974, and old Kissinger was at it, as were those US eugenics lovers:

    U.S. Secretary of State Henry Kissinger hoped to use the conference as a forum to link food shortages to overpopulation. Kissinger tried to put the blame for the food crisis on the oil producing nations and the “energy crisis” they brought about and made it clear that the U.S. no longer plans to provide most of the world’s food aid. The underdeveloped nations did not accept this. They still blame the crisis on the U.S., which they say controls more food than the fuel the oil producing nations control. The U.S. has historically used food as a tool of foreign policy, and with the increasing dependency of the U.S. on the raw supplies of the underdeveloped world, there is growing talk of using food to blackmail nations into adopting population control programs. One such proposal came in Rome by former U.S. government official Richard Gardner, who suggested a “global survival pact” under which rich nations would conserve food, energy, and raw materials in return for commitments by Third World nations to change their suicidal demographic, agricultural and environmental practices. Another proposal was made by Congressman Jerry Litton who said he would introduce legislation banning food aid to any country with above average population growth and which was not doing anything to reduce it. (source)

    And, what was the Agent Orange’s gift that keeps on giving?

    From 1962 to 1971, the U.S. Air Force sprayed nearly 19 million gallons of herbicides in Vietnam, of which at least 11 million gallons was Agent Orange, in a military project called Operation Ranch Hand. An additional quantity (1.6 million gallons has been documented) of herbicides was applied to base perimeters, roadways, and communication lines by helicopter and surface sprayings from riverboats, trucks, or backpacks. Herbicide operations in Vietnam had two primary military objectives: (1) defoliation of trees and plants to improve observation, and (2) destruction of enemy crops. (Veterans and Agent Orange: Health Effects of Herbicides Used in Vietnam)

    Check out the Dissident Voice piece I did on that issue: “Eternal Impunity of Capitalism’s Crimes/ Agent Orange, a fifty-fifty mix of the n-butyl esters 2,4-dichlorophenoxyacetic acid (2,4-D) and 2,4,5-trichlorophenoxyacetic acid (2,4,5-T)”

    Opinion | The Forgotten Victims of Agent Orange - The New York Times

    Then, before Indochina, we have old ideas from the 20th century (1948) from the apartheid terrorist state, Israel:

    The Israeli army used chemical and biological weapons during the 1948 war, including poisoning water wells in several Palestinian towns, original documents stored in the Israel State Archive, as well as other archives revealed.

    The documents showed that Israeli political and military leaders and some scholars were partners in the decision, and had even planned to poison the waters in Cairo and Beirut, but changed their mind at the last minute. (source)

    [Nakba]

    More, though, recently, with AI machine guns pointed on Palestinians:

    Palestinians argue the remote-controlled gun has a more sinister intention than the army is letting on. “Israeli security companies use Palestinians as training objects,” Amro said. “The Israeli army practices their new technology [on Palestinians] to check if it’s working or not, then they sell it to other countries.” (Mint Press News)

    Then those Skunk weapons, using stink chemicals:

    Israeli army using the 'skunk' during an exercise, 2011.

    Israeli security forces have been using the stink bomb — named Skunk – on Palestinian protesters since 2008 and sell the material to armies and law implementation organizations around the globe.

    Skunk is mixed with water and fired through water cannons for crowd control. While the bomb is harmless, it has a smell that can remain for days, even after rainfalls.

    A Reuters reporter described the smell as follows: “Imagine taking a lump of rotten carcass from the sewer, placing it in a blender and spraying the filthy liquid on your face. Your gag reflex goes off the charts and you can’t escape, because the nauseating stench persists for days.” (source)

    One man’s stink is another country’s crapper issues, so shall we send in the clowns, and ask: What Toilet Would ZioLensky Beg For?

    San Francisco’s local government expects to spend up to $1.7 million to build just one public toilet – hardly a drop in the bucket for a city that gets thousands of complaints annually of feces on its sidewalks – and the project will take an estimated three years to complete.

    Imagine how the Zionists in Israel must feel about this fact: “After a three-and-a-half-year legal battle waged by the Gisha human rights organization, the Coordinator of Government Activities in the Territories has finally released a 2008 document that detailed its “red lines” for “food consumption in the Gaza Strip.”

    The document calculates the minimum number of calories necessary, in COGAT’s view, to keep Gaza residents from malnutrition at a time when Israel was tightening its restrictions on the movement of people and goods in and out of the Strip, including food products and raw materials. The document states that Health Ministry officials were involved in drafting it, and the calculations were based on “a model formulated by the Ministry of Health … according to average Israeli consumption,” though the figures were then “adjusted to culture and experience” in Gaza.” (source)

    Oh, the horror, the heart of darkness, those ZioLensky followers and facilitators. How’s that food going to taste when another Chernobyl is unleashed by these crazy, insane, misanthrope Ukrainians? Sick.

    The Zaporozhye Nuclear Power Plant, the largest facility of its kind in Europe, is located on the shore of the Dnepr just outside the city. Ukraine wants it bombed.

    These monsters in the Collective West, man, will do anything, just anything: The Pentagon has modelled a situation in which the Kakhovka dam would be blown up and what consequences it would have for the region.

    “Bankova took these calculations into account and agreed to missile attacks on it (the dam),” write Ukro experts who have access to the political backstage of the Ukrainian authorities.

    In 1985, specialists of the All-Union Design and Research Institute “Gidroproekt” analyzed the consequences of a hypothetical failure of the Kakhovka reservoir dam. Naturally, in Soviet times these data were kept behind seven seals.

    In 2004, the Kherson newspaper “Hryvna” published an article “We are not ready for local apocalypse”, which revealed details of the secret report of the Hydro project. If the dam explodes, millions of tons of water will hit Kherson with a speed of 24.4 kilometers hour and a wave height of 1 meter. In as little as 2.5 hours, a fairly sharp rise in level to 4.8 meters would follow. The flooding will last for three days and will completely destroy the regional center.

    The U.S. Bombed a Dam in Syria That Was on a 'No-Strike' List - The New York Times

    [A Dam in Syria Was on a ‘No-Strike’ List. The U.S. Bombed It Anyway]

    Stop/blow up/shoot at the clean drinking water, as was always Israel’s plan:

    Gaza: Israel bombs water and sewage systems

    [Gaza: Israel bombs water and sewage systems]

    How about a poetry interlude here, folks?

    There Will Be Blood, Guts, Shit

    there are birds

    dropping from the sky

    black birds and cranes

    no more storks

    the bees and moths died

    years ago

    +–+

    but men with guns

    short actors like Zelensky

    barrel chested Azov Nazis

    they will photo shop

    birds in the air

    holograms of themselves

    fighting with hunting

    rifles scary Russian soldiers

    +–+

    those Ukrainians kill brothers,

    sisters, children who eat

    the handouts of war

    with Russian labels

    this is the new abnormal

    in the 21st Century

    +–+

    as if the Declaration of Human

    rights were burned with books

    now, murdering civilians

    placing them in a C.I.S.

    TV production, film at 10

    ZioLensky, thespian general

    +–+

    begging for more murder

    he will appear on the cover of Time

    inside Vogue, will write his memoir

    when he sends Ukrainians, Goyim

    one and all, to the meat grinder

    +–+

    there are no shitters working

    in Ukraine, and food is measly

    since planting is circumvented

    by the dark art of

    propaganda, and war

    +–+

    no birds to peck out eyes

    just the Ukrainian sky

    that shitty flag, blue

    on top of yellow

    flying in my neighborhood

    tattered, ridiculous

    even the Jews in Oregon

    root for the Nazis

    +–+

    no more sparrows

    no more ducks

    all avian species of note

    grabbed up by dirty

    Ukrainian soldiers

    cooked over diesel fires

    the sky sooty

    like the minds of ZioLensky

    and his Western handlers

    #–#

    Back to the shit: Weapons of diarrhea:

    “This conflict will have more people dying from water treatment plants going down than from the war itself,” says Geoff Keele, a spokesman for UNICEF, in a telephone interview from Amman, Jordan. He was based in Baghdad until the start of the war. (source)

    Mission Accomplished" Banner Could Go on Display at Bush Library - CBS News

    And, alas, Mission Accomplished in Iraq? The gift that keeps on giving,

    In the event of war, the breakdown of power supplies to hospitals, together with the shortage of medical equipment, medicines and drugs resulting from sanctions, would make it impossible for Iraq to treat, let alone contain, cholera, typhoid, dysentery and other diseases associated with contaminated water and untreated sewage.

    According to one veteran UN aid official in Baghdad, 11 years of deprivation caused by the 1991 war and UN sanctions have seriously undermined the general health of people and their ability to ward off sickness. “People will be far more vulnerable to future attack than before; they are weaker, and they have little resistance,” he said. “It (war) is going to be horrendous for lots and lots of people.” (source)

    The other gifts of USA?

    More than a decade and a half after the 2003 U.S. invasion of Iraq, a new study found that babies are being born today with gruesome birth defects connected to the ongoing American military presence there. The report, issued by a team of independent medical researchers and published in the journal Environmental Pollution, examined congenital anomalies recorded in Iraqi babies born near Tallil Air Base, a base operated by the U.S.-led foreign military coalition. According to the study, babies showing severe birth defects — including neurological problems, congenital heart disease, and paralyzed or missing limbs — also had corresponding elevated levels of a radioactive compound known as thorium in their bodies.

    Ten Years Later, U.S. Has Left Iraq With Mass Displacement & Epidemic of Birth Defects, Cancers - YouTube

    This is just the tip of the deadly iceberg of America’s wars, and it’s going to get ugly in Ukraine with dams bursting in air and nuclear plants going boom boom boom.

    In 1991, during the first Gulf War, the breaking began. U.S. planes and artillery delivered more than 300 tons of uranium tipped bombs and shells to targets in southern Iraq alone. Residue from these weapons turned into particles that people – including U.S. troops – inhaled. In 2003, more U.S. toxic material rained down on the Iraqi environment.

    In September 2002, I saw dying kids in the Baghdad Children’s Hospital. Iraqi doctors had already surmised that only the presence of depleted uranium could have caused such a profound spike in the cancer rates among children.

    In June 2005, Dr. Thomas Fasy of the Mt. Sinai School of Medicine concluded that data from Iraqi hospitals indicated that depleted uranium’s effect had shown up dramatically in a more than 400% rise in children’s cancer in just over a decade. Uranium ions bond with DNA and this, he said, has also caused a notable leap in children’s leukemia rates along with sharply elevated incidences of congenital birth defects. The United States literally released cancer-causing material into Iraqi air, soil and water. (Mission Accomplished: Iraq is Broken, Saul Landau)

    What more can they say, Blinken, Nuland, Kagan, Biden, Bush, Obama, Lloyd Austin, Colin Powell, even Scott Ritter, that ex-Marine who just loves to talk about war, say about weapons and buildings and dams and toxins? Alas, Ritter loves to talk about what is, and what isn’t off limits in war time, and from Ritter’s interpretation, pretty much everything is ON-Limits for a war: hospitals, news outlets, dams, bridges, warehouses, electric transformers, anything, man, grocery stores and pharmacies.

     

    The post Food and Toilets: The Collective West’s Weapons first appeared on Dissident Voice.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • Humanity Will Eat Itself Through Violence, War, Hatred and Neglect

    Mutilation & Burning at the Stake: United States 1899 in the US State of Georgia:

    Sam Hose was brought to a patch of land known as the old Troutman field. Newspapers reported that members of the mob used knives to sever Hose’s ears, fingers and genitals while others plunged knives repeatedly into his body, to cheers from the mob. Men and boys gathered kindling from the nearby woods to create a pyre. The skin from Hose’s face was removed, and he was doused with kerosene. He was then chained to a pine tree. Several matches were thrown onto the pyre by members of the mob, lighting it on fire and burning Hose alive. The heat from the fire caused Hose’s veins to rupture while his eyes nearly burst from their sockets. One journalist present noted the crowd watched “with unfeigned satisfaction” at contortions of Hose’s body. As the flames consumed his body, Hose screamed out, “Oh my God! Oh Jesus!”. From the time of Hose’s first injuries to his death, almost 30 minutes passed. One woman thanked God for the actions of the mob. Some members of the mob cut off pieces of his dead body as souvenirs. Pieces of Hose’s bones were sold for 25 cents, while his heart and liver were cut out to be sold. — Wikipedia

    Scaphism in ancient Persia:

    In order for the method to work, it had to take place in a swamp or somewhere where the boats could lie exposed to the sun. The victim would be tied inside the space between the boats in a way that left their head, hands, and feet outside. Then, the person in charge of the process would feed the victim a mixture of milk and honey, forcing them to swallow against their will, so the mixture dripped everywhere, covering their eyes, face, and neck. This same mixture was then spread all over the exposed body parts, and the idea was that it would attract every insect, vermin, and wild animal in the area. Very soon afterwards, flies and rats, for instance, would show up and start attacking the victim, eating the mixture of milk and honey, but also eating the person alive along the process. Now, as if the bugs eating them alive weren’t enough, there was also the severe diarrhea that left them feeling weak and dehydrated. This horrifying symptom was the intended consequence of their enforced milk-and-honey diet. The more they were fed this mixture, the more they would defecate inside the boats, but also, the longer they stayed alive. This point, precisely, was the cruelest yet most effective aspect of scaphism: the victims couldn’t die from the diarrhea-induced dehydration because they were fed milk and honey every day. As a result, the victims could survive for days and even weeks in a small hell of bugs, feces, milk, and honey. — culturacolectiva.com

    United States in the 21st Century:

    Afghan national Alif Khan told Amnesty International that he was held in US custody in Bagram Air Base in Afghanistan for five days in May 2002. He said that he was held in handcuffs, waist chains, and leg shackles for the whole time, subjected to sleep deprivation,denied water for prayer or washing, and was kept in a cage-like structure with eight people. — Amnesty International

    Myers Enterprises located in the US State of Denver, Colorado, produces the “stun cuff” that shocks unruly prisoners back to order. It takes international orders. Axon Enterprise made $863 million in revenue in 2021 with one of its core product being the Taser, according to its Investor Slide Deck. There are 960 thousand Tasers floating around the United States and in Europe. Axon sells a number of other products particularly integrated computing observation and reporting systems. While there are complaints about deaths involving Taser’s, or what are known as Conducting Electricity Devices (CED’s), in June 2022 the Office of Justice Programs found that “law enforcement need not refrain from deploying CEDs, provided the devices are used in accordance with accepted national guidelines.” Meanwhile, Amnesty International in a December 2020 report seeks strict controls on CED’s (good luck with that). Since a Taser is a form of gun, it falls, arguably, under the protection of the Second Amendment to the US Constitution (the right to keep and bear arms).

    General Mike Minihan, the US Air Mobility Commander opined recently: “Lethality matters most. When you can kill your enemy, every part of your life is better. Your food tastes better. Your marriage is stronger. This is who we are. We are lethal. Do not apologize for it, after listing distinguished Air Force commanders like Gen. Curtis LeMay and Brig. Gen. Robin Olds, who had no scruples against killing the enemy. The pile of our nation’s enemy dead, the pile that is the biggest, is in front of the United States Air Force,” he said. — Task & Purpose, September 2022

    Imagine a world where roughly 5 billion of the Earth’s 7 billion people has access to a World Wide Web of knowledge that would allow them to search studies on anatomy, chemical engineering, genetics, geography, anthropology, quantum mechanics, artificial intelligence and military science, Shannon’s theory of information, crops and farming, and more. Much more, it turns out. There are free online courses which allow you to learn Algebra or just about any technical or non-technical subject matter on the planet. Want to refute of confirm what “a leader” just told you, look it up online. And collaboration, the Web was designed just for that.

    Instead the Web has become more polluted, if that is possible, with cognitive/attention span killing programs like Tik Tok, Twitter, Facebook, and thousands of reality bending nuanced disinformation sites that plague the Web. What was supposed to have been a liberating force for humanity’s knowledge is now a crass advertising and propaganda monster. But, perhaps the saddest thought is that it doesn’t take much to tunnel through all the bull&^%$ and find the data buried behind the cognitive/attention span killing cotton candy. Information sources such as the National Institutes of Health, New England Medical Journal, Defense Technology Information Center and a plethora of other sites on the Web like them are credible, reliable sources. Prominent universities in the USA typically publish their rigorous research findings (MIT, Harvard, CALTECH, Stanford). Do you want to find one place that gives the Russian military campaign in Ukraine its props on maneuver warfare? Look no further than the US Marine Corps Gazette, August 2022, paper 22, authored by Marinus.

    The Web has become a partisan wasteland with users looking to bounce their left, right and center world views right back into their brains after some sort of affirmation by the left, right and center triad. Rarely, if ever, do they cross over into the realm of the other.

    I suppose that the Web imitates life in meatspace and there it is arguably worse: global economic woes, USA challenging China and Russia directly, elections of significance in Brazil and the United States, an increase in violence in America’s cities, a pandemic that is not over, climate change, shifting international alliances, America’s global sanctions regime, Russia vs Ukraine conflict, exploding healthcare costs, food shortages, finance capital, ad nauseam.

    Serbia’s president, Aleksandar Vucic, summed it all up in a recent speech to the United Nations in August 2022, “The seriousness of the present moment obliges me to share difficult but true words with you. Everything that we are doing today seems impotent and vague. Our words make a hollow and empty echo compared to the reality that we are facing. The reality is that no one listens to anyone, no one strives for real agreements and problem solving, and almost everyone cares only about their own interests.”

    Solutions?

    Why prolong the inevitable end?

    The post Humanity Will Eat Itself Through Violence, War, Hatred and Neglect first appeared on Dissident Voice.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • Vicarious Zeal: Fighting to the Last Ukrainian

    As the bloody conflict in Ukraine continues, the rhetoric from the imperial spear-holders in Washington and some allies is becoming increasingly fixated with one object: victory against Russia.  Such words should be used sparingly, especially given their binding, and blinding tendencies.  When the term “unconditional surrender” was first used by US President Franklin D. Roosevelt at the January 1943 Casablanca conference in the context of defeating Nazi Germany, not all cheered.  It meant a fight to the finish, climbing the summit and dictating terms from a blood-soaked peak.

    With such language crowning the efforts of the Allies, the Axis powers – certainly Germany and Japan – could continue fighting the war of extermination, aware that no terms they could submit would be taken seriously.  There would be no compromise in this existential confrontation.  It made the Allied advance in Western Europe slower and enabled the Soviet Union to expel German forces and duly occupy most of Eastern Europe.  It made negotiations about whether Japan would retain its emperor on surrendering nigh impossible, leaving the route open for the use of atomic weapons against Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

    The supply of weapons to Ukraine in its efforts against Russia has become a zealous mission that will supposedly achieve victory. Messianic impulses tingle and move through the Washington and London establishment, with some echo in Warsaw and the capitals of the Baltic states.  An air of unreality – be it in terms of negotiating the future of Ukrainian territory under Russian occupation – fills such corridors of power.

    On May 1, after travelling to Kyiv, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi raised the colours.  “America,” she declared with earnestness, “stands with Ukraine until victory is won.”  She made little effort to expound on what this would entail, be it the expulsion of Russian forces from all Ukrainian territory, including Crimea, or the “meat grinder” solution, leaving Kyiv and Moscow to bleed, weakening the latter and strengthening NATO security over a dead generation.

    Her remarks did enough to worry Michael T. Klare, defence correspondent for The Nation.  “Nowhere, in her comments or those of other high-ranking officials, is there any talk of a negotiated settlement in Ukraine, only of scenarios leading to Russia’s defeat, at whatever cost in human lives.”

    The vagueness of the term has led to grand, sanguinary calls to battle unenlightened Russian barbarism, with the UK and US governments repeatedly calling this a conflict that involves the whole west, even the world.  Peering more closely at the rhetoric, and another sentiment comes to the fore: the desire to bloody Russia vicariously while arms manufacturers take stock.

    For over a decade, Ukraine has been something of a plaything in branches of the US State Department, and US Deputy Secretary of State Wendy R. Sherman can be found telling the BBC’s Newshour that Russia had to “suffer a strategic failure” in Ukraine.

    The checklist for doing so, as outlined by US President Joe Biden, is lengthy.  “We will continue providing Ukraine with advanced weaponry, including Javelin anti-tank missiles, Stinger antiaircraft missiles, powerful artillery and precision rocket systems, radars, unmanned aerial vehicles, Mi-17 helicopters and ammunition.”

    On this score, the hawks are in the ascendancy.  Anyone uttering the view that a Ukrainian victory would hardly be total, let alone likely, have been reviled, as British military historian and journalist Max Hastings writes.  They are tarred and feathered as either “ultra-realists” or appeasers.

    Hard-headed peace talks, let alone anything approximating to negotiations have, as a result, also become taboo.  The early June suggestion by French President Emmanuel Macron that, “We must not humiliate Russia, so that the day the fighting stops, we can build a way out through diplomatic channels” was met with disdain and fury in Kyiv.

    The previous month, the world’s oldest Machiavellian devotee, former US Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, dared mention the need for the warring parties to commence talks.  Unconvicted war criminal he may be, his view that “negotiations need to begin in the next two months before it creates upheavals and tensions that will not be easily overcome” was hardly controversial.  But the Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy responded by foraging in the dustbin of history.  “It seems that Mr Kissinger’s calendar is not 2022, but 1938.”

    In Kyiv, the very idea of making a deal with Moscow is being met with revulsion.  “They have killed too many people,” opines Oleksii Movchan of the Ukrainian Parliament representing Zelenskyy’s Servant of the People Party. “They have destroyed too many cities.  They have raped too many women.  If the war stops now and the world tries to accommodate Putin, then international law will have no meaning.”

    For the moment, support from the US is taking the form of logistical and material assistance in what has already been called by Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov a proxy war against Moscow.  With each ghoulish weapons update, we can read about the types of murderous devices used, and how effective they were.  The latest featured an attack on Nova Kakhovka in the Kherson region by Ukrainian forces using US-supplied Himars missiles.  Kyiv’s line: the attack was a success, destroying a Russian ammunition depot, killing dozens of Russian military personnel.  The Russian angle: homes and warehouses storing fertiliser had been pulverised, killing five and wounding 80.

    Ukrainians have become surrogate democrats and freedom fighters (these terms are not necessarily identical) and Washington is willing to ensure, at least for the moment, that they have the weapons.  Other countries in Europe are willing to keep the borders open to Ukraine’s refugees.  But how long will this last?  Hearts can, in time, harden, leaving way for national self-interest to take hold.  At some point, the weapons will have to be put down, the war making way for the jaw.  Till then, the unofficial policy of fighting to the last Ukrainian will be in vogue.

    The post Vicarious Zeal: Fighting to the Last Ukrainian first appeared on Dissident Voice.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • Handling International Crises: From JFK to Biden 

    There are significant parallels between the international crises in Cuba in 1962 and Ukraine today.  Both involved intense confrontations between the USA and the Soviet Union or Russia. Both involved third party countries on the doorstep of a major power.  The Cuban Missile Crisis threatened to lead  to WW3,  just as the Ukraine crisis does today.

    Cuban  Missile crisis and  the current crisis in Ukraine 

    In 1961, the US supported an invasion of Cuba at the “Bay of Pigs”. Although it failed, Washington’s hostile rhetoric and threats against Cuba continued,  the CIA conducted many assassination attempts against Cuban leader Fidel Castro.

    Cuba, seeking to defend itself, or at least have a means of retaliating in case of another attack, sought missiles from the Soviet Union. The Soviets agreed and began secretly installing the missiles. As a sovereign nation having been attacked and under continuing threat,  Cuba had the right to obtain these missiles.

    US President JF Kennedy thought otherwise. Invoking the Monroe Doctrine, he said the missiles endangered the US and must be removed. He imposed an air and sea quarantine on Cuba and threatened to destroy a Soviet ship traveling in the high seas to Cuba. The world was on edge and there was global fear that World War 3 was about to erupt. In my homeland Canada, we went to bed seriously worried that nuclear war would break out overnight.

    Fortunately for humanity, cooler heads prevailed, and there were negotiations. The Soviets agreed to withdraw the missiles in Cuba.  In return, JFK agreed to withdraw US  missiles in Turkey aimed at the Soviet Union. The Cubans were furious, thinking they had been betrayed and lost their means of defense. But the Soviets had the bigger picture in mind, along with a US commitment to not invade Cuba.

    The situation now in Ukraine has similarities. Instead of missiles in Cuba being a threat to the US, NATO in Ukraine is seen as a threat to Russia.  NATO has steadily expanded east and installed missiles in Poland and Romania.  Since 2008, Russia has explicitly said that Ukrainian militarization by NATO was a red line for them.  Kyiv is much closer to Moscow than Havana is to Washington.  If it were justifiable for JFK to give the ultimatum regarding missiles in Cuba, is it not justifiable that Russia would object to Ukraine being a part of a hostile military alliance?

    Different Responses

    In 1962 the US and Soviet Union realized that escalating tensions and hostilities must be avoided, and they turned to negotiations.   They found a mutually acceptable compromise.

    The situation seems more dangerous today. Instead of seeking an end to the war, the US and NATO are pouring in weapons and encouraging more bloodshed.  It appears to be a proxy war with the US prepared to fight to the last Ukrainian.  There are calls to escalate the conflict.

    Ukraine Background

    Knowing the background to the current crisis is essential to understanding Putin’s actions.  Unknown to most Americans, a  crucial event came in  2014 when a violent US supported coup overthrew the democratically elected Ukraine government. US State Department official Victoria Nuland handed out cookies as Senator John McCain encouraged the anti-government protesters. In a secretly captured conversation with the US Ambassador to Ukraine,  Nuland selected who would run the government after the pending coup. In the final days, opposition snipers killed 100 people on both sides to inflame the situation and “midwife” the coup.  Oliver Stone’s video “Ukraine on Fire” describes the background and events.

    On the first day in power, the coup government  issued a decree that removed Russian as a state language.

    Within weeks Crimea organized a referendum. With 85% participation, 96% voted to leave Ukraine and  re-unite with Russia.  Why did they do this?  Because most Crimeans speak Russian as their first language and Crimea had been part of Russia since 1783.  When Soviet premier Khrushchev  transferred Crimea from the Russian republic to the Ukrainian republic in 1954, they were all within the Soviet Union.

    In Odessa,  anti-coup protesters were attacked by ultra-nationalist  thugs with 48 killed including many burned alive as they sought escape in the Trade Unions Hall. In eastern Ukraine, known as the Donbass, the majority of the population also opposed the ultra-nationalist coup government. Civil war broke out, with thousands killed.

    With the participation of France, Germany, the Kiev government, and eastern Ukraine rebels, an  agreement was reached and approved by the United Nations Security Council. It was called the Minsk Agreement. Russia has repeatedly encouraged the implementation of this agreement. Instead of negotiations and peace, the Kyiv government and NATO have done the opposite. Since 2015, there have been more weapons, more threats, more NATO training, more encouragement of ultra-nationalism plus NATO military exercises explicitly designed to threaten and antagonize Russia. This is not speculation; it is described in a 2019 Rand report about “Overextending and Unbalancing Russia”.

    Endangering the world

    The Biden administration appears to want to prolong the conflict in Ukraine. President Biden declared in a “gaffe” that Putin must be replaced.  Defense Secretary Austin has said the US goal is to “weaken Russia”. Former  Secretary of State Hillary Clinton thinks Afghanistan in the 1980’s is a “model” to follow in Ukraine by bogging Russia down in a protracted war. Republican and Democratic senators Graham and Blumenthal visited Kyiv on July 7  and called for sending even more weapons. There is evidence that the US and UK have been advising Ukrainian president Zelensky to NOT negotiate.

    The Need for Courage and Compromise

    With war and  bloodshed happening now, we need cooler heads to prevail as in 1962. We can have a LOSE – LOSE situation, endangering the whole world,  or a compromise which guarantees Ukrainian independence while providing security assurances to Russia.

    JFK had the courage and wisdom to resist the CIA and military generals who wanted to escalate the crisis.  Does Joe Biden? There is a huge difference between the two presidents. JFK knew war first hand. He was injured and his brother died in WW2. He became an advocate for peace.  It may have cost him his life, but millions of people were saved. In contrast, Joe Biden has been a proponent for every US war of the past three decades.  Not only that, he was a major player in the 2014 Ukraine coup and aftermath.

    Since Biden appointed the chief architect of the Ukraine coup, Victoria Nuland,  to be the third top official at the State Department, one cannot realistically expect a change in policy from this administration. Neo-cons are in charge.

    If we are to avoid disaster, others must speak up and demand negotiations and settlement before the situation spirals out of control.

    The post Handling International Crises: From JFK to Biden  first appeared on Dissident Voice.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • Exorbitant Military Spending Sacrifices Public Well-being

    President Dwight Eisenhower gave his first major presidential speech, The Cross of Iron, on April 16, 1953. He laid out several important precepts guiding US conduct in world affairs as well pointing out the cost of military spending in very concrete terms. Eisenhower stated:

    Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed.

    This world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children. The cost of one modern heavy bomber is this: a modern brick school in more than 30 cities. It is two electric power plants, each serving a town of 60,000 population. It is two fine, fully equipped hospitals. It is some fifty miles of concrete pavement. We pay for a single fighter plane with a half million bushels of wheat. We pay for a single destroyer with new homes that could have housed more than 8,000 people.

    In 1957, General Douglas MacArthur also warned about military spending when he said:

    Our swollen budgets constantly have been misrepresented to the public Our government has kept us in a perpetual state of fear — kept us in a continuous stampede of patriotic fervor — with the cry of grave national emergency. Always there has been some terrible evil at home or some monstrous foreign power that was going to gobble us up if we did not blindly rally behind it by furnishing the exorbitant funds demanded. Yet, in retrospect, these disasters seem never to have happened, seem never to have been quite real.

    Eisenhower’s 1961 farewell address warned about the military-industrial complex He said:

    “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.”

    The military-industrial complex Eisenhower warned about has certainly gained unwarranted influence. For many years, the military has received about half the discretionary budget at the expense of domestic programs and public well-being. The latest budget proposal shows Congress allocating about $840 billion for the military, an increase of around $40 billion over President Biden’s already huge increase. Note that the recent US military spending of $738 billion is more than the next nine leading military-spending nations combined, most of whom are US allies. A competitor, China, spends slightly more than 1/3 of the US $738 billion amount and Russia spends less than 9% of the US total.

    A legitimate question is what have these huge expenditures done for our safety and well-being. Has the world become a safer place? Given the current situation with Russia over Ukraine and the possibility of a nuclear exchange being all too real, I’d answer no. Was this reality preventable? Certainly! The Minsk II Agreement was a path towards a diplomatic settlement brokered by Germany and France, and signed by Ukraine, the Ukrainian separatists and Russia. This agreement was also supported unanimously by the UN Security Council in 2015. However, the US did not push Ukraine to implement the terms of the agreement. Instead, the US provided weapons and more military training, and fighting continued for 8 years before Russia invaded.

    Was this spending for our defense and security or for some other purpose? It is hard to accept the idea that, for example, Vietnam, Grenada, Panama and Iraq were such threats to our national security that they warranted our criminal attacks on them. In addition, how did the US-aided coups against democratically-elected governments in, for example, Iran, Guatemala, Chile and Ukraine make us more secure?

    Unfortunately, it appears as if little has changed regarding the US approach to foreign policy and selling wars to the US public since Major General Smedley Butler explained things in his excellent 1935 book War is a Racket. This most highly decorated US Marine said:

    I spent 33 years and four months in active military service and during that period I spent most of my time as a high class muscle man for Big Business, for Wall Street and the bankers In short, I was a racketeer, a gangster for capitalism.

    Butler added: “Beautiful ideals were painted for our boys who were sent out to die. This was the “war to end all wars.” This was the “war to make the world safe for democracy.” No one mentioned to them, as they marched away, that their going and their dying would mean huge war profits.”

    Has the US public been shortchanged by all this spending for making war? Our crumbling physical and social infrastructure, the lack of affordable housing, homelessness, the lack of mental health support for many, unaffordable health care for tens of millions, the high cost of college education and the lack of training support for skilled trade workers are examples that together indicate the sacrifice of public well-being and our real security for unnecessary and criminal war making. People in many other highly developed nations enjoy the rights specified in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, whereas many of these rights are not provided in the US. In addition, people of these other nations don’t worry about going bankrupt due to, for example, medical bills or the cost of education.

    As the words of Eisenhower, MacArthur and Butler suggest, it’s past time to reconsider our nation’s priorities. It is time to focus on constructive projects instead of destructive ones. It is time to benefit public well-being instead of enriching the few. It is time to focus on cooperation instead of competition between nations if we are to ameliorate the impacts of climate change and other global problems. The National Priorities Project provides material useful for this reconsideration of priorities.

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  • Youth Working in the Countryside | News on China No. 104

    This week’s News on China in 2 minutes.

    • US law banning Xinjiang imports

    • China’s first super aircraft carrier

    • Legendary composer Qiao Yu passes away

    • Youth working in the countryside

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  • Everything Is a Weapon

    Have you ever wondered who’s pulling the strings? … Anything we touch is a weapon. We can deceive, persuade, change, influence, inspire. We come in many forms. We are everywhere.
    — U.S. Army Psychological Operations recruitment video

    The U.S. government is waging psychological warfare on the American people.

    No, this is not a conspiracy theory.

    Psychological warfare, according to the Rand Corporation, “involves the planned use of propaganda and other psychological operations to influence the opinions, emotions, attitudes, and behavior of opposition groups.”

    For years now, the government has been bombarding the citizenry with propaganda campaigns and psychological operations aimed at keeping us compliant, easily controlled and supportive of the police state’s various efforts abroad and domestically.

    The government is so confident in its Orwellian powers of manipulation that it’s taken to bragging about them. Just recently, for example, the U.S. Army’s 4th Psychological Operations Group, the branch of the military responsible for psychological warfare, released a recruiting video that touts its efforts to pull the strings, turn everything they touch into a weapon, be everywhere, deceive, persuade, change, influence, and inspire.

    This is the danger that lurks in plain sight.

    Of the many weapons in the government’s vast arsenal, psychological warfare may be the most devastating in terms of the long-term consequences.

    As the military journal Task and Purpose explains, “Psychological warfare is all about influencing governments, people of power, and everyday citizens… PSYOP soldiers’ key missions are to influence ‘emotions, notices, reasoning, and behavior of foreign governments and citizens,’ ‘deliberately deceive’ enemy forces, advise governments, and provide communications for disaster relief and rescue efforts.”

    Yet don’t be fooled into thinking these psyops (psychological operations) campaigns are only aimed at foreign enemies. The government has made clear in word and deed that “we the people” are domestic enemies to be targeted, tracked, manipulated, micromanaged, surveilled, viewed as suspects, and treated as if our fundamental rights are mere privileges that can be easily discarded.

    Aided and abetted by technological advances and scientific experimentation, the government has been subjecting the American people to “apple-pie propaganda” for the better part of the last century.

    Consider some of the ways in which the government continues to wage psychological warfare on a largely unsuspecting citizenry.

    Weaponizing violence. With alarming regularity, the nation continues to be subjected to spates of violence that terrorizes the public, destabilizes the country’s ecosystem, and gives the government greater justifications to crack down, lock down, and institute even more authoritarian policies for the so-called sake of national security without many objections from the citizenry.

    Weaponizing surveillance, pre-crime and pre-thought campaigns. Surveillance, digital stalking and the data mining of the American people add up to a society in which there’s little room for indiscretions, imperfections, or acts of independence. When the government sees all and knows all and has an abundance of laws to render even the most seemingly upstanding citizen a criminal and lawbreaker, then the old adage that you’ve got nothing to worry about if you’ve got nothing to hide no longer applies. Add pre-crime programs into the mix with government agencies and corporations working in tandem to determine who is a potential danger and spin a sticky spider-web of threat assessments, behavioral sensing warnings, flagged “words,” and “suspicious” activity reports using automated eyes and ears, social media, behavior sensing software, and citizen spies, and you having the makings for a perfect dystopian nightmare. The government’s war on crime has now veered into the realm of social media and technological entrapment, with government agents adopting fake social media identities and AI-created profile pictures in order to surveil, target and capture potential suspects.

    Weaponizing digital currencies, social media scores and censorship. Tech giants, working with the government, have been meting out their own version of social justice by way of digital tyranny and corporate censorship, muzzling whomever they want, whenever they want, on whatever pretext they want in the absence of any real due process, review or appeal. Unfortunately, digital censorship is just the beginning. Digital currencies (which can be used as “a tool for government surveillance of citizens and control over their financial transactions”), combined with social media scores and surveillance capitalism create a litmus test to determine who is worthy enough to be part of society and punish individuals for moral lapses and social transgressions (and reward them for adhering to government-sanctioned behavior). In China, millions of individuals and businesses, blacklisted as “unworthy” based on social media credit scores that grade them based on whether they are “good” citizens, have been banned from accessing financial markets, buying real estate or travelling by air or train.

    Weaponizing compliance. Even the most well-intentioned government law or program can be—and has been—perverted, corrupted and used to advance illegitimate purposes once profit and power are added to the equation. The war on terror, the war on drugs, the war on COVID-19, the war on illegal immigration, asset forfeiture schemes, road safety schemes, school safety schemes, eminent domain: all of these programs started out as legitimate responses to pressing concerns and have since become weapons of compliance and control in the police state’s hands.

    Weaponizing entertainment. For the past century, the Department of Defense’s Entertainment Media Office has provided Hollywood with equipment, personnel and technical expertise at taxpayer expense. In exchange, the military industrial complex has gotten a starring role in such blockbusters as Top Gun and its rebooted sequel Top Gun: Maverick, which translates to free advertising for the war hawks, recruitment of foot soldiers for the military empire, patriotic fervor by the taxpayers who have to foot the bill for the nation’s endless wars, and Hollywood visionaries working to churn out dystopian thrillers that make the war machine appear relevant, heroic and necessary. As Elmer Davis, a CBS broadcaster who was appointed the head of the Office of War Information, observed, “The easiest way to inject a propaganda idea into most people’s minds is to let it go through the medium of an entertainment picture when they do not realize that they are being propagandized.”

    Weaponizing behavioral science and nudging. Apart from the overt dangers posed by a government that feels justified and empowered to spy on its people and use its ever-expanding arsenal of weapons and technology to monitor and control them, there’s also the covert dangers associated with a government empowered to use these same technologies to influence behaviors en masse and control the populace. In fact, it was President Obama who issued an executive order directing federal agencies to use “behavioral science” methods to minimize bureaucracy and influence the way people respond to government programs. It’s a short hop, skip and a jump from a behavioral program that tries to influence how people respond to paperwork to a government program that tries to shape the public’s views about other, more consequential matters. Thus, increasingly, governments around the world—including in the United States—are relying on “nudge units” to steer citizens in the direction the powers-that-be want them to go, while preserving the appearance of free will.

    Weaponizing desensitization campaigns aimed at lulling us into a false sense of security. The events of recent years—the invasive surveillance, the extremism reports, the civil unrest, the protests, the shootings, the bombings, the military exercises and active shooter drills, the lockdowns, the color-coded alerts and threat assessments, the fusion centers, the transformation of local police into extensions of the military, the distribution of military equipment and weapons to local police forces, the government databases containing the names of dissidents and potential troublemakers—have conspired to acclimate the populace to accept a police state willingly, even gratefully.

    Weaponizing fear and paranoia. The language of fear is spoken effectively by politicians on both sides of the aisle, shouted by media pundits from their cable TV pulpits, marketed by corporations, and codified into bureaucratic laws that do little to make our lives safer or more secure. Fear, as history shows, is the method most often used by politicians to increase the power of government and control a populace, dividing the people into factions, and persuading them to see each other as the enemy. This Machiavellian scheme has so ensnared the nation that few Americans even realize they are being manipulated into adopting an “us” against “them” mindset. Instead, fueled with fear and loathing for phantom opponents, they agree to pour millions of dollars and resources into political elections, militarized police, spy technology and endless wars, hoping for a guarantee of safety that never comes. All the while, those in power—bought and paid for by lobbyists and corporations—move their costly agendas forward, and “we the suckers” get saddled with the tax bills and subjected to pat downs, police raids and round-the-clock surveillance.

    Weaponizing genetics. Not only does fear grease the wheels of the transition to fascism by cultivating fearful, controlled, pacified, cowed citizens, but it also embeds itself in our very DNA so that we pass on our fear and compliance to our offspring. It’s called epigenetic inheritance, the transmission through DNA of traumatic experiences. For example, neuroscientists observed that fear can travel through generations of mice DNA. As the Washington Post reports, “Studies on humans suggest that children and grandchildren may have felt the epigenetic impact of such traumatic events such as famine, the Holocaust and the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.”

    Weaponizing the future. With greater frequency, the government has been issuing warnings about the dire need to prepare for the dystopian future that awaits us. For instance, the Pentagon training video, “Megacities: Urban Future, the Emerging Complexity,” predicts that by 2030 (coincidentally, the same year that society begins to achieve singularity with the metaverse) the military would be called on to use armed forces to solve future domestic political and social problems. What they’re really talking about is martial law, packaged as a well-meaning and overriding concern for the nation’s security. The chilling five-minute training video paints an ominous picture of the future bedeviled by “criminal networks,” “substandard infrastructure,” “religious and ethnic tensions,” “impoverishment, slums,” “open landfills, over-burdened sewers,” a “growing mass of unemployed,” and an urban landscape in which the prosperous economic elite must be protected from the impoverishment of the have nots. “We the people” are the have-nots.

    The end goal of these mind control campaigns—packaged in the guise of the greater good—is to see how far the American people will allow the government to go in re-shaping the country in the image of a totalitarian police state.

    The facts speak for themselves.

    Whatever else it may be—a danger, a menace, a threat—the U.S. government is certainly not looking out for our best interests, nor is it in any way a friend to freedom.

    When the government views itself as superior to the citizenry, when it no longer operates for the benefit of the people, when the people are no longer able to peacefully reform their government, when government officials cease to act like public servants, when elected officials no longer represent the will of the people, when the government routinely violates the rights of the people and perpetrates more violence against the citizenry than the criminal class, when government spending is unaccountable and unaccounted for, when the judiciary act as courts of order rather than justice, and when the government is no longer bound by the laws of the Constitution, then you no longer have a government “of the people, by the people and for the people.”

    What we have is a government of wolves.

    Our backs are against the proverbial wall.

    “We the people”—who think, who reason, who take a stand, who resist, who demand to be treated with dignity and care, who believe in freedom and justice for all—have become undervalued citizens of a totalitarian state that views people as expendable once they have outgrown their usefulness to the State.

    Brace yourselves.

    As I make clear in my book Battlefield America: The War on the American People and in its fictional counterpart The Erik Blair Diaries, “we the people” have become enemies of the Deep State.

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  • How the US Government Steals from Other Countries

    The American Government explains its thefts from other countries as being justifiable because the U.S. Government has slapped sanctions upon those countries, and because these sanctions authorize the U.S. Government to steal whatever it wants to steal, from them, that it can grab. Here are just a few such examples:

    On May 26, Reuters headlined “U.S. seizes Iranian oil cargo near Greek island,” and reported:

    The United States has confiscated an Iranian oil cargo held on a Russian-operated ship near Greece and will send the cargo to the United States. …
    “The cargo has been transferred to another ship that was hired by the U.S.,” the source added, without providing further details.
    The development comes after the United States on Wednesday imposed sanctions on what it described as a Russian-backed oil smuggling and money laundering network for Iran’s Revolutionary Guards’ Quds Force. …
    U.S. advocacy group United Against Nuclear Iran (UANI), which monitors Iran-related tanker traffic, said the Pegas had loaded around 700,000 barrels of crude oil from Iran’s Sirri Island on Aug. 19, 2021.
    Prior to this load, the Pegas transported over 3 million barrels of Iranian oil in 2021, with over 2.6 million of those barrels ending up in China, according to UANI analysis.
    In 2020, Washington confiscated four cargoes of Iranian fuel that were bound for Venezuela and transferred them with the help of undisclosed foreign partners onto two other ships which then sailed to the United States. …

    On 24 October 2019, USA Today bannered “Pentagon planning to send tanks, armored vehicles to Syrian oil fields” and pretended that if (Syria’s actual invader) America wouldn’t be stealing Syria’s oil, then (Syria’s actual defender, invited into the country in order to help defeat the U.S.-led invasion of it) Russia would be stealing it. Their article closed by saying that: “Nicholas Heras, an expert on Syria with the Center for a New American Security [CNAS], … said, ‘the Pentagon is making contingencies for a big fight with Russia for Syria’s oil.’” Perhaps the intention of that article was to help build Americans’ support for stealing Syria’s oil. (The CNAS is a Democratic Party think tank, and was there endorsing the Republican President Trump’s operation to steal Syria’s oil — it’s a bipartisan goal of the U.S. Government.) By contrast, two days later, Russia’s Sputnik News headlined about America’s thefts of oil from Syria, “The Russian military described the US scheme as nothing less than ‘international state banditism.’” (Russia had no need to deceive anyone about that.)

    On 14 December 2019, Syria Times headlined “A huge convoy for US occupation forces enters Syria’s Qameshli city,” and reported that:

    In a new breach of international laws, the US occupation forces sent today to Qameshli city in Hasaka province a new convoy composed of tanks, ambulances and dozens of vehicles and cars loading military and logistic materials. According to local sources, the convoy illegally entered this morning from Iraq in order to fortify the US occupation forces’ positions in the Syrian Jazeera.
    This convoy is the biggest one that entered the Syrian territories since several months.
    Over the few past months, the US occupation forces sent through illegal crossing points thousands of vehicles loaded with weapons, military equipment and logistic materials to reinforce their existence in the Syrian Jazeera region and to steal Syrian oil and wealth.

    On 2 August 2020, Reuters bannered “Syria says U.S. oil firm signed deal with Kurdish-led rebels” and reported that,

    Damascus “condemns in the strongest terms the agreement signed between al-Qasd militia (SDF) and an American oil company to steal Syria’s oil under the sponsorship and support of the American administration”, the Syrian statement said. “This agreement is null and void and has no legal basis.”

    Furthermore: “There was no immediate response from SDF officials to a Reuters’ request for comment. There was no immediate comment from U.S. officials.”

    The U.S. Government has done this also to Venezuela and other countries that it likewise wants to take over.

    On 13 March 2022, Reuters headlined “Sanctions have frozen around $300 bln of Russian reserves, FinMin says,” and reported that “Foreign sanctions have frozen around $300 billion out of $640 billion that Russia had in its gold and forex reserves, Finance Minister Anton Siluanov said in an interview with state TV.”

    The lawyer and geostrategic analyst Alexander Mercouris explains how and why America’s blocking Russia’s international payments of Russia’s sovereign debt, and Germany’s seizure of some of Gazprom’s German assets, “violate the [international-law] principle of sovereign immunity; both the central bank and Gazprom are, after all, owned by the Russian Government. … These were the sort of acts that, once upon a time, governments could legally make only in time of war. But of course Germany and the United States are not formally at war with Russia. So we see how another extraordinary step has been taken, towards … ever-greater illegality.” He wonders “what damage” will be done “to the international legal system and to the international financial system.”

    Many of these actions, by America and its allies, are alleged to be done not in order to reinforce existing international laws (which, of course, they instead violate), but the opposite: to advance “the international rules-based order,” which “rules,” that will be made by the U.S. Government, will be introduced as constituting new legal precedents in order to replace the current source of international laws, which is the U.N. and its authorized agencies. The U.S. Government would gradually replace the U.N., except as the U.N.’s being a sump for unprofitable expeditions that the ‘humanitarian’ and ‘democratic’ U.S. Government can endorse. There would be a further weakening of the U.N., which is already so weak so that, even now, anything which is done by the U.S. and its allies is, practically speaking, not possible to be prosecuted in international courts such as the International Criminal Court, which body is allowed to prosecute alleged crimes only by leaders of “third world” nations. America’s “rules-based international order” would replace that toothless U.N.-based system, and would be backed up by America’s over-800 military bases around the world. Unlike the existing U.N., which has no military, this “rules-based international order” would be enforced at gunpoint, everywhere.

    However, even America’s allied nations are getting fleeced, though in different ways, by the U.S. Government. This is being done via international corruption. For example: America’s F-35 warplanes from Lockheed Martin Corporation and its sub-contractors (Northrop-Grumman, Pratt & Whitney, and BAE Systems), are so bad and so very expensive that the U.S. Government wants to cut its losses on the plane without cutting the profits by Lockheed Martin and other ‘defense’-contractors’ on it, and therefore needs to increase its allies’ purchases of these warplanes. NATO is the main marketing organization for U.S. ‘defense’ contractors; and, so, on 15 April 2022, Russia’s RT news headlined “US nuclear bombs ‘shared’ with European allies will be deployed on Lockheed Martin jets, NATO explains,”and reported that,

    Jessica Cox, director of the NATO nuclear policy directorate in Brussels, said … that “By the end of the decade, most if not all of our allies will have transitioned” to the F-35. …
    Germany would replace its aging Tornado jets with F-35s, committing to buy up to three dozen and specifically citing the nuclear sharing mission as factoring in the decision. …
    Finland and Sweden have recently voiced a desire to join NATO, and Helsinki already announced it would buy some 60 F-35s in early February [notably, BEFORE Russia invaded Ukraine on February 24th]. …
    The F-35 was originally proposed as a cost-effective modular design that could replace multiple older models in service with the US Air Force, Navy, and the Marines. In reality, it turned into three distinct designs with a lifetime project cost of over $1.7 trillion, the most expensive weapons program in US [and in all of global] history.
    In addition to the price tag, the fifth-generation stealth fighter has also been plagued with performance issues, to the point where the new USAF chief of staff requested a study into a different aircraft in February 2021.
    General Charles Q. Brown Jr. compared the F-35 to a “high end” sports car, a Ferrari one drives on Sundays only, and sought proposals for a “clean sheet design” of a “5th-gen minus” workhorse jet instead. Multiple US outlets characterized his proposal as a “tacit admission” that the F-35 program had failed.

    That word “characterized” was there linked through to a number of informative articles, such as these, about the F-35:

    Forbes: “The U.S. Air Force Just Admitted The F-35 Stealth Fighter Has Failed”
    Defense News: “The Hidden Troubles of the F-35: The Pentagon will have to live with limits on F-35’s supersonic flights”

    That Defense News report said that the basic design-requirements for the F-35 prohibit any speed higher than the speed of sound (Mach 1), because the air-friction above that speed would instantly melt the stealth coating, and,

    The potential damage from sustained high speeds would influence not only the F-35’s airframe and the low-observable coating that keeps it stealthy, but also the myriad antennas located on the back of the plane that are currently vulnerable to damage, according to documents exclusively obtained by Defense News.

    Though that publication — which could not exist apart from the funding that is provided directly or indirectly from America’s ‘defense’ contractors — used euphemisms to describe this problem, such as “potential damage” and that there would need to be imposed “a time limit on high-speed flight” and that “the F-35 jet can only fly at supersonic speeds for short bursts of time before there is a risk of structural damage and loss of stealth capability,” the actual facts are: those “short bursts” would, in the practical world, be virtually instantaneous, approximating zero seconds, and the phrase “a risk” would be referring to 100% — a certainty. That’s virtually the opposite of the ‘news’-report’s allegation that the F-35 would need to avoid “sustained high speeds,” because the plane would instead need to avoid ANY supersonic speed. In other words: the plane’s stealth capability would need to be virtually 100% effective and at speeds only below the speed of sound, in order for the plane to be, at all, effective, and deserving to be called a “stealth” warplane. The only exception to that would be the F-35A, for the Air Force (not usable by the Navy — from aircraft carriers — nor by the Army).

    As regards the F-35A (Air Force F-35 version), Wikipedia says about the F-35 that its maximum speed is Mach 1.6 (1.6 times the speed of sound). By contrast, Russia’s Su-57 (which is less expensive), has a maximum speed of Mach 2.0. The reason why Russia’s is both a better plane and far less costly is that Russia’s military-industrial complex is controlled ONLY by the Government, whereas America’s Government is instead controlled mainly by its ‘defense’-contractors, and is, therefore, overwhelmingly corrupt, which is also the reason why America is the permanent and unceasing warfare-state, ever since 25 July 1945, when its “Cold War” started, and has never ceased.

    One of the few honest statements that the world-champion liar and the world’s most respected living person, U.S. President Barack Obama, made about his goals as President, was his 28 May 2014 statement to the graduating class at the West Point Military Academy, that,

    The United States is and remains the one indispensable nation. That has been true for the century passed and it will be true for the century to come. … Russia’s aggression toward former Soviet states unnerves capitals in Europe, while China’s economic rise and military reach worries its neighbors. From Brazil to India, rising middle classes compete with us, and governments seek a greater say in global forums. … It will be your generation’s task to respond to this new world.

    He was saying there that all other nations — including U.S. ‘allies’ — are “dispensable.” Consequently, of course, in that view: stealing by the U.S. Government, from any other Government, is acceptable. It’s the U.S. Government’s viewpoint, and is politically bipartisan in America. At least until now, it is an acceptable viewpoint, to most people. Perhaps truths have been hidden from them. Who has been doing this, and why, would then be the natural question on any intelligent individuals’ minds. But certainly there can be no reasonable doubt that the U.S. Government does — and rather routinely — steal from other countries. That’s a fact, if anything is.

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  • With Clenched Fists, They Spend Money on Weapons as the Planet Burns

    Dia Al-Azzawi (Iraq), Sabra and Shatila Massacre, 1982–⁠83.

    Dia Al-Azzawi (Iraq), Sabra and Shatila Massacre, 1982–⁠83.

    Two important reports were released last month, neither getting the kind of attention they deserve. On 4 April, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s Working Group III report was published, evoking a strong reaction from the United Nations’ Secretary General António Guterres. The report, he said, ‘is a litany of broken climate promises. It is a file of shame, cataloguing the empty pledges that put us firmly on track towards an unliveable world’. At COP26, the developed countries pledged to spend a modest $100 billion for the Adaptation Fund to assist developing countries adapt to climate change. Meanwhile, on 25 April, the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) issued its annual report, finding that the world military spending surpassed $2 trillion in 2021, the first time it has exceeded the $2 trillion mark. The five largest spenders – the United States, China, India, the United Kingdom, and Russia – accounted for 62 percent of this amount; the United States, by itself, accounts for 40 percent of total arms expenditure.

    There is an endless flow of money for weapons but less than a pittance to avert planetary disaster.

    Shahidul Alam/Drik/Majority World (Bangladesh), The resilience of the average Bangladeshi is remarkable. As this woman waded through the flood waters in Kamalapur to get to work, there was a photographic studio ‘Dreamland Photographers’, which was open for business, 1988.

    That word ‘disaster’ is not an exaggeration. UN Secretary General Guterres has warned that ‘we are on a fast track to climate disaster… It is time to stop burning our planet’. These words are based on the facts contained in the Working Group III report. It is now firmly established in the scientific record that the historical responsibility for the devastation done to our environment and our climate rests with the most powerful states, led by the United States. There is little debate about this responsibility in the distant past, a consequence of the ruthless war against nature carried out by the forces of capitalism and colonialism.

    But this responsibility also extends to our present period. On 1 April, a new study was published in The Lancet Planetary Health demonstrating that from 1970 to 2017 ‘high-income nations are responsible for 74 percent of global excess material use, driven primarily by the USA (27 percent) and the EU-28 high-income countries (25 percent)’. The excess material use in the North Atlantic countries is due to use of abiotic resources (fossil fuels, metals, and non-metallic minerals). China is responsible for 15 percent of global excess material use and the rest of the Global South is responsible for only 8 percent. The excess use in these lower-income countries is driven largely using biotic resources (biomass). This distinction between abiotic and biotic resources shows us that the excess resources use from the Global South is largely renewable, whereas that of the North Atlantic states is non-renewable.

    Such an intervention should have been on the front pages of the newspapers of the world, particularly in Global South, and its findings debated widely on television channels. But it was barely remarked upon. It proves decisively that the high-income countries of the North Atlantic are destroying the planet, that they need to change their ways, and that they need to pay into the various adaptation and mitigation funds to assist countries that are not creating the problem but that are suffering from its impact.

    Having presented the data, the scholars who wrote this paper note that ‘high-income nations bear the overwhelming responsibility for global ecological breakdown, and therefore owe an ecological debt to the rest of the world. These nations need to take the lead in making radical reductions in their resource use to avoid further degradation, which will likely require transformative post-growth and degrowth approaches’. These are interesting thoughts: ‘radical reductions in resource use’ and then ‘post-growth and degrowth approaches’.

    Simon Gende (Papua New Guinea), The US Army Find Osama bin Laden Hiding in a House and Kill Him, 2013.

    The North Atlantic states – led by the United States – are the largest spenders of social wealth on arms. The Pentagon – the US armed forces – ‘remains the single largest consumers of oil’, says a Brown University study, ‘and as a result, one of the world’s top greenhouse gas emitters’. To get the United States and its allies to sign the Kyoto Protocol in 1997, the UN member states had to allow greenhouse gas emissions by the military to be excluded from the national reporting on emissions.

    The vulgarity of these matters can be put plainly by comparison of two money values. First, in 2019, the United Nations calculated that the annual funding gap to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) amounted to $2.5 trillion. Turning over the annual $2 trillion in global military expenditure to the SDGs would go a long way toward dealing with the major assaults on human dignity: hunger, illiteracy, houselessness, lack of medical care, and so on. It is important to note here, that the $2 trillion figure from SIPRI does not include the lifetime waste of social wealth given to private arms manufacturers for weapons systems. For example, the Lockheed Martin F-35 weapons system is projected to cost nearly $2 trillion.

    In 2021, the world spent over $2 trillion on war, but only invested – and this is a generous calculation – $750 billion in clean energy and energy efficiency. Total investment in energy infrastructure in 2021 was $1.9 trillion, but the bulk of that investment went to fossil fuels (oil, natural gas, and coal). So, investments in fossil fuels continue and investments in arms rise, while investments to transition to new forms of cleaner energy remain insufficient.

    Aline Amaru (Tahiti), La Famille Pomare (‘The Pomare Family’), 1991.

    Aline Amaru (Tahiti), La Famille Pomare (‘The Pomare Family’), 1991.

    On 28 April, US President Joe Biden asked the US Congress to provide $33 billion for weapons systems to be sent to Ukraine. The call for these funds comes alongside incendiary statements made by the US Defence Secretary Lloyd Austin, who said that the US is not trying to remove Russian forces from Ukraine but to ‘see Russia weakened’. Austin’s comment should not come as a surprise. It mirrors US policy since 2018, which has been to prevent China and Russia from becoming ‘near-peer rivals’. Human rights are not the concern; the focus is preventing any challenge to US hegemony. For that reason, social wealth is wasted on weapons and not used to address the dilemmas of humanity.

    Shot Baker atomic test under Operation Crossroads, Bikini Atoll (Marshall Islands), 1946.

    Consider the way the United States has reacted to a deal between Solomon Islands and China, two neighbours. Solomon Islands Prime Minister Manasseh Sogavare said that this deal sought to promote trade and humanitarian cooperation, not the militarisation of the Pacific Ocean. On that same day of Prime Minister Sogavare’s address, a high-level US delegation arrived in the nation’s capital Honiara. They told Prime Minister Sogavare that if the Chinese establish any kind of ‘military installation’, the United States would ‘then have significant concerns and respond accordingly’. These were plain threats. A few days later, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Wang Wenbin said, ‘Island countries in the South Pacific are independent and sovereign states, not a backyard of the US or Australia. Their attempt to revive the Monroe Doctrine in the South Pacific region will get no support and lead to nowhere’.

    The Solomon Islands has a long memory of the history of Australian-British colonialism and the scars of the atom bomb tests. The practice of ‘blackbirding’ abducted thousands of Solomon Islanders to work the sugarcane fields in Queensland, Australia in the 19th century, eventually leading to the Kwaio Rebellion of 1927 in Malaita. The Solomon Islands has fought hard against being militarised, voting in 2016 with the world to prohibit nuclear weapons. The appetite to be the ‘backyard’ of the United States or Australia is not there. That was clear in the luminous poem ‘Peace Signs’ (1974) by Solomon Islands writer Celestine Kulagoe:

    A mushroom sprouts from
    an arid pacific atoll
    Disintegrates into space
    Leaving only a residue of might
    to which for an illusory
    peace and security
    man clings.

    In the calm of the early morning
    the third day after
    love found joy
    in the empty tomb
    the wooden cross of disgrace
    transformed into a symbol
    of love service
    peace.

    In the heat of the afternoon lull
    the UN flag flutters
    hidden from sight by
    national banners
    under which
    sit men with clenched fists
    signing peace
    treaties.

    The post With Clenched Fists, They Spend Money on Weapons as the Planet Burns first appeared on Dissident Voice.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • How Could the U.S. Help to Bring Peace to Ukraine?

    Photo credit: cdn.zeebiz.com

    On April 21st, President Biden announced new shipments of weapons to Ukraine, at a cost of $800 million to U.S. taxpayers. On April 25th, Secretaries Blinken and Austin announced over $300 million more military aid. The United States has now spent $3.7 billion on weapons for Ukraine since the Russian invasion, bringing total U.S. military aid to Ukraine since 2014 to about $6.4 billion.

    The top priority of Russian airstrikes in Ukraine has been to destroy as many of these weapons as possible before they reach the front lines of the war, so it is not clear how militarily effective these massive arms shipments really are. The other leg of U.S. “support” for Ukraine is its economic and financial sanctions against Russia, whose effectiveness is also highly uncertain.

    UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres is visiting Moscow and Kyiv to try to kick start negotiations for a ceasefire and a peace agreement. Since hopes for earlier peace negotiations in Belarus and Turkey have been washed away in a tide of military escalation, hostile rhetoric and politicized war crimes accusations, Secretary General Guterres’ mission may now be the best hope for peace in Ukraine.

    This pattern of early hopes for a diplomatic resolution that are quickly dashed by a war psychosis is not unusual. Data on how wars end from the Uppsala Conflict Data Program (UCDP) make it clear that the first month of a war offers the best chance for a negotiated peace agreement. That window has now passed for Ukraine.

    An analysis of the UCDP data by the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) found that 44% of wars that end within a month end in a ceasefire and peace agreement rather than the decisive defeat of either side, while that decreases to 24% in wars that last between a month and a year. Once wars rage on into a second year, they become even more intractable and usually last more than ten years.

    CSIS fellow Benjamin Jensen, who analyzed the UCDP data, concluded:

    The time for diplomacy is now. The longer a war lasts absent concessions by both parties, the more likely it is to escalate into a protracted conflict… In addition to punishment, Russian officials need a viable diplomatic off-ramp that addresses the concerns of all parties.

    To be successful, diplomacy leading to a peace agreement must meet five basic conditions:

    First, all sides must gain benefits from the peace agreement that outweigh what they think they can gain by war.

    U.S. and allied officials are waging an information war to promote the idea that Russia is losing the war and that Ukraine can militarily defeat Russia, even as some officials admit that that could take several years.

    In reality, neither side will benefit from a protracted war that lasts for many months or years. The lives of millions of Ukrainians will be lost and ruined, while Russia will be mired in the kind of military quagmire that both the U.S.S.R. and the United States already experienced in Afghanistan, and that most recent U.S. wars have turned into.

    In Ukraine, the basic outlines of a peace agreement already exist. They are: withdrawal of Russian forces; Ukrainian neutrality between NATO and Russia; self-determination for all Ukrainians (including in Crimea and Donbas); and a regional security agreement that protects everyone and prevents new wars.

    Both sides are essentially fighting to strengthen their hand in an eventual agreement along those lines. So how many people must die before the details can be worked out across a negotiating table instead of over the rubble of Ukrainian towns and cities?

    Second, mediators must be impartial and trusted by both sides.

    The United States has monopolized the role of mediator in the Israeli-Palestinian crisis for decades, even as it openly backs and arms one side and abuses its UN veto to prevent international action. This has been a transparent model for endless war.

    Turkey has so far acted as the principal mediator between Russia and Ukraine, but it is a NATO member that has supplied drones, weapons and military training to Ukraine. Both sides have accepted Turkey’s mediation, but can Turkey really be an honest broker?

    The UN could play a legitimate role, as it is doing in Yemen, where the two sides are finally observing a two-month ceasefire. But even with the UN’s best efforts, it has taken years to negotiate this fragile pause in the war.

    Third, the agreement must address the main concerns of all parties to the war.

    In 2014, the U.S.-backed coup and the massacre of anti-coup protesters in Odessa led to declarations of independence by the Donetsk and Luhansk People’s Republics. The first Minsk Protocol agreement in September 2014 failed to end the ensuing civil war in Eastern Ukraine. A critical difference in the Minsk II agreement in February 2015 was that DPR and LPR representatives were included in the negotiations, and it succeeded in ending the worst fighting and preventing a major new outbreak of war for 7 years.

    There is another party that was largely absent from the negotiations in Belarus and Turkey, people who make up half the population of Russia and Ukraine: the women of both countries. While some of them are fighting, many more can speak as victims, civilian casualties and refugees from a war unleashed mainly by men. The voices of women at the table would be a constant reminder of the human costs of war and the lives of women and children that are at stake.

    Even when one side militarily wins a war, the grievances of the losers and unresolved political and strategic issues often sow the seeds of new outbreaks of war in the future. As Benjamin Jensen of CSIS suggested, the desires of U.S. and Western politicians to punish and gain strategic advantage over Russia must not be allowed to prevent a comprehensive resolution that addresses the concerns of all sides and ensures a lasting peace.

    Fourth, there must be a step-by-step roadmap to a stable and lasting peace that all sides are committed to.

    The Minsk II agreement led to a fragile ceasefire and established a roadmap to a political solution. But the Ukrainian government and parliament, under Presidents Poroshenko and then Zelensky, failed to take the next steps that Poroshenko agreed to in Minsk in 2015: to pass laws and constitutional changes to permit independent, internationally-supervised elections in the DPR and LPR, and to grant them autonomy within a federalized Ukrainian state.

    Now that these failures have led to Russian recognition of the DPR and LPR’s independence, a new peace agreement must revisit and resolve their status, and that of Crimea, in ways that all sides will be committed to, whether that is through the autonomy promised in Minsk II or formal, recognized independence from Ukraine.

    A sticking point in the peace negotiations in Turkey was Ukraine’s need for solid security guarantees to ensure that Russia won’t invade it again. The UN Charter formally protects all countries from international aggression, but it has repeatedly failed to do so when the aggressor, usually the United States, wields a Security Council veto. So how can a neutral Ukraine be reassured that it will be safe from attack in the future? And how can all parties be sure that the others will stick to the agreement this time?

    Fifth, outside powers must not undermine the negotiation or implementation of a peace agreement.

    Although the United States and its NATO allies are not active warring parties in Ukraine, their role in provoking this crisis through NATO expansion and the 2014 coup, then supporting Kyiv’s abandonment of the Minsk II agreement and flooding Ukraine with weapons, make them an “elephant in the room” that will cast a long shadow over the negotiating table, wherever that is.

    In April 2012, former UN Secretary General Kofi Annan drew up a six-point plan for a UN-monitored ceasefire and political transition in Syria. But at the very moment that the Annan plan took effect and UN ceasefire monitors were in place, the United States, NATO and their Arab monarchist allies held three “Friends of Syria” conferences, where they pledged virtually unlimited financial and military aid to the Al Qaeda-linked rebels they were backing to overthrow the Syrian government. This encouraged the rebels to ignore the ceasefire, and led to another decade of war for the people of Syria.

    The fragile nature of peace negotiations over Ukraine make success highly vulnerable to such powerful external influences. The United States backed Ukraine in a confrontational approach to the civil war in Donbas instead of supporting the terms of the Minsk II agreement, and this has led to war with Russia. Now Turkey’s Foreign Minister, Mevlut Cavosoglu, has told CNN Turk that unnamed NATO members “want the war to continue,” in order to keep weakening Russia.

    Conclusion

    How the United States and its NATO allies act now and in the coming months will be crucial in determining whether Ukraine is destroyed by years of war, like Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Somalia, Syria and Yemen, or whether this war ends quickly through a diplomatic process that brings peace, security and stability to the people of Russia, Ukraine and their neighbors.

    If the United States wants to help restore peace in Ukraine, it must diplomatically support peace negotiations, and make it clear to its ally, Ukraine, that it will support any concessions that Ukrainian negotiators believe are necessary to clinch a peace agreement with Russia.

    Whatever mediator Russia and Ukraine agree to work with to try to resolve this crisis, the United States must give the diplomatic process its full, unreserved support, both in public and behind closed doors. It must also ensure that its own actions do not undermine the peace process in Ukraine as they did the Annan plan in Syria in 2012.

    One of the most critical steps that U.S. and NATO leaders can take to provide an incentive for Russia to agree to a negotiated peace is to commit to lifting their sanctions if and when Russia complies with a withdrawal agreement. Without such a commitment, the sanctions will quickly lose any moral or practical value as leverage over Russia, and will be only an arbitrary form of collective punishment against its people, and against poor people everywhere who can no longer afford food to feed their families. As the de facto leader of the NATO military alliance, the U.S. position on this question will be crucial.

    So policy decisions by the United States will have a critical impact on whether there will soon be peace in Ukraine, or only a much longer and bloodier war. The test for U.S. policymakers, and for Americans who care about the people of Ukraine, must be to ask which of these outcomes U.S. policy choices are likely to lead to.

    The post How Could the U.S. Help to Bring Peace to Ukraine? first appeared on Dissident Voice.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • The Tao of Vladimir Putin

    Since power equals force times speed… Thus, a smaller man who can swing faster may hit as hard or as far as the heavier man who swings slowly.
    — Bruce Lee, The Tao of Jeet Kune Do

    Vladimir Putin has won one of the amazing strategic military victories in history.

    The Ukrainians had an army of over 300,000, led by 50,000 to 100,000 fascist fanatics, with hi-tech weapons provided by NATO and with training by the best American, British and Canadian military advisors. They were confident that they could blitz what was left of the Donetsk People’s Republic (DPR) and Luhansk People’s Republic (LPR) and finish their campaign of ethnic cleansing.

    But the lightning attack they planned for this Spring was not to happen.

    The Russians struck first — fielding a must smaller force, perhaps just 100,000 strong, punching through Ukrainian Armed Forces (UAF) defenses and cutting them off from support — kettling them in Eastern Ukraine where they were vulnerable to artillery and airstrikes. Bruce Lee would have been proud.

    Fencing Without A Sword

    Lee described Jeet Kune Do as “fencing without a sword”, hence his characteristic stance and use of distance, quite unlike the Wing Chun he learned from Yip Man. Feint, thrust, riposte — these are basics — which in Jeet are done almost simultaneously.

    These are also what Putin did — feint, thrust, and riposte. Like Lee, he is a learner.

    By contrast, Americans rely on brute force, usually in gangs — umm… “alliances”.

    The tactics of the NATO gang inevitably involves “shock and awe”, indiscriminate bombing with B52s, the use of uranium munitions, — with the attempt to preserve the lives of one’s own soldiers at expense of women and children in the communities under attack. For every combatant killed about 9 or 10 women and children die.

    Indiscriminate bombing with B52s flatten infrastructure and deprive people of the necessities of life. The use of uranium munitions poisons the environment leading to massive increases in cancer later. The result is both social and environmental disaster. “Shock and awe” is “scorched earth” rebranded Hollywood style. Check out the video game.

    But shock and awe is usually preceded by or accompanies by economic warfare that end up condemning millions to death through starvation and disease. Think: Iraq. Think: Afghanistan.

    Putin’s Psychology

    Way back when, before Joe Biden and his corrupt son Hunter, had probably ever heard of Kiev, Putin had planned to retire in favor of Medvedev. He never really wanted to be a politician. Then Medvedev showed his colors as an Atlanticist, by not opposing the Libya War of 2011. Putin changed his mind. He was, according to all reports, genuinely shocked at the manner of Gaddafi’s death , sodomized with a bayonet. He had done a lot for Russia but if he left the country in the hands of the Atlanticists, it was as doomed as Libya.

    The Internet is full of psychologizing about Putin. He is supposedly a narcissist, a psychopath, and various other things, totally lacking in empathy due to early childhood adversity, living in a single apartment with two other families. What is not mentioned is that those two other families — both Jewish — and his Jewish mother gave him a lot of love, and people throughout his life stepped in to mentor and help him. Putin has a lot to give back, or “pay forward”.

    “He took us to a very famous museum in St. Petersburg,” Rourke said of meeting Putin. “And then later he took me to a children’s cancer hospital. And we went in there and visited the really, really sick, little, tiny, tiny kids. I looked over at him and I saw him and, nobody’s going to want to hear this, but I saw a man with empathy and who was really moved by what these children are going through.“

    Contrast that with Hillary Clinton cackling like the Wicked Witch which she is about Gaddafi’s death — or Obama boasting about how good he was at killing by drone — 90% women and children of course.

    OK but CNN will tell you that Putin is a psychopath. Madeline Albright, who didn’t blink an eye at murdering half a million children describes him as “reptilian”.

    If this is a psychpath, we need more like him.

    The Tao of Russian Strategy

    In Jeet Kune Do, unlike Wing Chun, distance and positioning are very important. This is because Jeet is both offensive and defensive, whereas Wing chun emphasizes close-in defense in confined quarters.

    As with Musashi Miyamoto, Bruce Lee always emphasized pre-knowledge of what an opponent may do, to attack pre-emptively — which, of course, what Putin did.

    In 2014, however, the situation was murky to say the least.

    “When you know yourself and your opponent, you will win every time. When you know yourself but not your opponent, you will win one and lose one.”
    — Sun Tzu, “III. Attack by Stratagem” in The Art of War

    Putin knew that he did not know.

    He who knows not, knows not, he knows not, he is a fool shun him.
    He who knows not and he knows not, he is simple teach him.
    He who knows and knows not that he knows, he is asleep, awaken him.
    He who knows and knows that he knows, he is wise, follow him.
    ― Bruce Lee, Tao of Jeet Kune

    I would add this: He who knows he knows not, knows to know.

    Russia had to learn. I had to know.

    Certainly, Russia was not strong enough in 2014 to take on the Ukraine AND NATO — not without using tactical nukes. But what were the West’s real intentions? Could they be persuaded to adopt a different path? Putin couldn’t know.

    But he soon found out.

    Failure to implement the Minsk accords, the MH117 and Skripal false flags, CIA sponsored chemical false flag attacks in Syria and the like — and especially sanctions on both Russia and China — showed him that this new version of “the Great Game” was no game at all. More like the Hunger Games.

    If you grow up on the streets, as Putin did, you learn to avoid gangs and fights — except when there is no choice — but to be vigilant and plan countermeasures in advance. So Putin continued to develop military technologies, notably hypersonic missiles, the kalibr missile and supersonic torpedoes that gave Russia the edge.

    Subduing the whale

    It is clear that in 2022, the Ukrainians thought they could rely on the support of NATO, if not NATO intervention, as they had after the CIA coup in 2014. As fascists, they saw Russia’s consistent efforts to resolve the issues diplomatically as weakness.

    War was coming one way or the other. And, as both Bruce Lee and Musashi Miyamoto would advise, it is best to attack first in such a case.

    The Russians had done what it could to resolve the crisis diplomatically despite the Ukrainian fascists occupying more than half of Eastern Ukraine and killing about 15,000 people, mostly civilians. But now it was going to full-on ethnic cleansing, with maximum loss of life— aka genocide.

    Russian intelligence gave prior warning of the Ukraine’s nuclear intentions as well as the existence of biolabs possibly developing pathogens tuned to specific DNA sets, which could, in theory, result in bioweapons targeting certain ethnic groups. The punitive sanctions against both Russia and China amounting to economic war and increasing bellicosity signified that the US wanted to takeover where Hitler and Japan had left off, the domination of Eurasia, even without slave camps and mass murder.

    By this time, Putin had reformed and developed the Russian military, explored new tactics and weapons in Syria, and re-imagined the FSB as something that KGB people in his day could only dream about and that the CIA might aspire to, if it could move beyond bias confirmation.

    American Advantages as Disadvantages

    Ah…, but what about the US’s huge array of hi-tech weapons?

    I fear not the man who has practiced 10,000 kicks once, but I fear the man who has practiced one kick 10,000 times.
    — Bruce Lee, The Tao of Jeet Kune Do

    Putin focused Russia’s efforts on developing just a few, really effective kicks (as it were). The Kalibr missile system, hypersonic weapons, the S500 and advanced S200 systems. UAVs. The old SU27 family became the advanced SU30 and SU34 systems. Most of these weapons were tested in Syria. The focus was on practicality.

    “Do not collect weapons or practice with weapons beyond what is useful.”
    — Miyamoto Musashi, precept of the Dokkodo

    While in Russia, weapons companies serve the State, in the US the State serves the weapons companies — so enormous amounts of money go to developing ever more expensive and technologically complex weapons systems such as the F35, the most expensive fighter program in history that is in most respects is already obsolete. Aircraft carriers cost billions of dollars and are, like Japan’s Yamamoto battleship, just large, vulnerable, and now indefensible targets.

    Musashi subduing the whale

    Yes, the US is the whale. And Putin therefore is Musashi.

    And how much of American weapons tech works?

    The Americans have recently claimed that Russia suffers a 60% misfire rate. But where do they get these numbers — the Russians obviously don’t say!

    Those statistics come from the Ukrainians who use obsolete Soviet missiles, which indeed frequently blow up, and from the American Tomahawk missiles, not to mention from the US’s many failed attempts at hypersonic weapons.

    With sanctions, Russia doesn’t have the money to waste and it puts the needs of its people first.

    The US puts the needs of the Military Industrial Complex first — by beggaring healthcare, education and infrastructure.

    Feint, Thrust, Riposte

    Putin was able to leverage good intelligence of his enemies’ intentions with highly trained mobile forces that could be literally everywhere from Donbass in the south to Chernobyl in the north.

    Aware that the genocidal lunatic fringe running the Ukraine cared nothing about the country’s people, only their own ethnic kin — having already made the Ukraine one of the world’s greatest economic disasters and prompting an huge exodus of economic refugees — Putin immediately secured nuclear facilities and biolabs to prevent the “neo-Nazi” lunatic fanatic fringe running from creating dirty bombs or releasing pathogens.

    The war was really won in the first week.

    Of course, Russia lost men and about 200 tanks that first week but saved lives in subsequent weeks. Since that devastating first punch, Russia has lost very few tanks, moving more slowly, using laser detectors, UAVS, satellite imagery and human intelligence to prevent sneak attacks. The UAF has not been able to mount a single successful counterattack and the government will likely soon abandon Kiev.

    The Russians are not afraid to take casualties — they are fighting an existential war and every Russian has a relative who died in the Great Patriotic War. Putin, therefore, has enormous support, except among the Atlanticists, the elitist carpetbaggers left over from the Yeltsin kleptocracy.

    Americans haven’t fought an existential war — since the Civil War. They don’t like casualties, even the paltry 55,000 or so that ended the Vietnam War. For them, war is a video game.

    Let us remember that the US has not won a war against a more or less equal opponent since the Pacific War. In fact, it has lost almost every war since against less capable opponents — notably Vietnam and Afghanistan.

    They will lose this one too.

    Note:

    For the record, I have studied judo, jiu jitsu, karate, shorinji (Japanese Shaolin), and aikido, with some knowledge of ninjutsu. Not that I am good at any of them — but I know something of the zen and tao principles that apply. Putin studied combat Sambo when he was young to deal with bullies. Combat Sambo (as distinct from Sport Sambo) is similar to jiu jutsu — from which judo evolved, and it is, in some respects, similar to Lee’s Jeet. Putin went on to study judo, which is not really useful for combat but whose training inculcates oriental world views. More recently, Putin became interested in Kung Fu and took an exhausting trip to the Shaolin Monastery, with which he has maintained ties ever since, with both his daughters trained in Shaolin. Shaolin is also a “way”, as all Chinese martial arts are and reflects the teachings of Taoist masters.

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  • The West Has Fallen Into Darkness

    When reason hath to deal with force, yet so
    Most reason is that reason overcome.

    — Paradise Lost (6.125-126)

    As the Western elites continue to pour weapons into Ukraine to the delight of the armaments industry and the closet Nazis of Natostan, the cult of neoliberalism, which put the Banderite regime in power during the Obama years, reaches new depths of degradation with each passing day. Both at home and abroad, the schizophrenic rift between the language of neoliberalism and the actual policies that these creatures support continues to widen. The increasingly delusional trajectory of the queen of cults is propelling us into a new dark age where literacy, reason, the rule of law, and even the survival of our species are in danger.

    Subconsciously, neoliberals believe that they are carrying on in the tradition of the Enlightenment, the abolitionists, the New Dealers, the civil rights activists, and the anti-war activists that marched against the Vietnam War and the bombings of Laos and Cambodia. In actuality, what they offer today is lawlessness, unfettered capitalism, biofascism, deunionization, war, sectarianism; and the multicultural curriculum, a cousin of Banderite education, as both are predicated on the anti-humanities. It is this sophomoric hubris of neoliberals, the macabre fantasy that they are sensible, rational, and moral beings while the heathens represent intolerance, ignorance, and bigotry, which blinds them to the barbarism of their deeds. Like the lost souls in Plato’s Allegory of the Cave, neoliberals believe they are firmly grounded in reality, when they are enslaved to venal public health agencies and a mass media brainwashing apparatus which have entrapped them in a world of deception and lies — a world of shadows.

    While Ukrainian civilization is inextricably linked with Russian history and culture, Banderite education is anchored in Russophobia, its antithesis. Having extirpated all things Russian from their lives, Ukrainian state ideology has become synonymous with hating Russians. No less rooted in self-cannibalization, the multicultural society has become synonymous with a hostility towards the American canon and all things Western. Both are depraved, totalitarian, anti-intellectual and anti-democratic dogmas. As Orwell wrote in 1984, “The past was erased, the erasure was forgotten, the lie became the truth.” Beware the anti-humanities, for they are the handmaidens of totalitarianism.

    Indeed, identity politics and Banderite indoctrination have spawned tens of millions of illiterate, nihilistic, and atomized individuals that are devoid of a legitimate culture, cannot place current events in their appropriate historical context, are inculcated with loathing for an imaginary enemy, and can easily be manipulated by oligarchic forces. Nazi and Zionist indoctrination achieved similar results. Notably, the Russophobia in the West increasingly resembles the Russophobia in Ukraine prior to the Maidan putsch (see here and here).

    The idea that neoliberalism is anchored in “anti-racism” is nonsensical, as not a day goes by without more dumbing down of children of color, mindless hate-filled rants against Russians and white people (excluding Nazis in Eastern Europe and the ones with lots of money); while the anti-white jihad ideology imbues the younger generation with a desire to launch a crusade against all things “racist.” This encompasses everything from Shakespeare to Mozart, to the principle of bodily autonomy, to the Constitution and the Bill of Rights, to disposable white workers themselves. This is the most dangerous form of bigotry – sectarian hatreds that are knowingly and willfully cultivated in an education system charged with the task of molding impressionable young minds.

    When not smashing unions to the wall, burning books, dismantling informed consent, and fomenting ghettoization, neoliberals can be found spending trillions of dollars dropping bombs on people and supporting death squads. Indeed, the sociopathy of American humanitarian interventionism is glaringly on display with regards to the Biden administration’s support for the Banderite regime.

    Like Pavlov’s dogs, neocons and neolibs alike clamor for hellfire to be unleashed on whoever is the latest to be vilified: anti-vaxxers, conspiracy theorists, Serbs, Russians, the Taliban, the Iraqis. Entire societies are deemed to be somehow synonymous with their alleged dictators. While faux leftists have imaginary conversations about Russiagate, children in Mariupol are acquiring a real-world understanding of the horrors that have been inflicted on their society as a result of the US-backed Maidan coup. Yet we must follow these virtuous crusaders, who applaud their government for giving billions of dollars in weapons (or complain that it is insufficient, for the most fanatical) to a Banderite regime which permits fascists to get on television and openly call for genocide in the Donbass. Meanwhile, a vast swath of American society lacks adequate health insurance, adequate employment, education, the rule of law; and increasingly, even a society. As many a wise babushka can explain, before the specter of Ukrainian nationalism once more reared its ugly visage, western and eastern Ukrainians lived in peace with one another. Undoubtedly they would still, were it not for Washington providing the Banderite entity with enormous amounts of diplomatic aid, arms, military training, and assistance in executing psyops.

    The idea currently being bandied about by a number of presstitutes and congressmen, that we could nonchalantly waltz into a third world war, as it would likely be confined to the use of conventional weapons, is indicative of a society that has lost the ability to engage in rational fact-based discussions. If there is a third world war, it will be nuclear. The Kremlin is not going to allow a repeat of Operation Barbarossa, and senior Kremlin officials have explicitly stated that they are not going to permit another war to be fought on Russian soil. This deranged thinking is yet further evidence of a society that has, over the past thirty years, been transformed into a diabolical cesspit of lies, propaganda, and deceit.

    Some have speculated that there is a cabal in Washington pushing for a third world war, wagering that Europe and Russia would be destroyed, but that the US would somehow escape the carnage unscathed as transpired after the first two world wars, and that the American ruling establishment would then be able to create a new financial system which would cancel American debt and reverse the looming threat of de-dollarization. Should things degenerate to the point where the Russian military is targeting London, Paris, and Brussels is it not likely that major American cities would also be targeted?

    While neoliberals wallow in the pathologies of cult dogma, the Russians are acutely aware of the following facts: the Banderite coup was orchestrated by Washington; battalions and death squads comprised of neo-Nazis and ultranationalists have been armed, funded, and trained by the West; and that Western presstitutes have fallen head over heels in love with Russophobia and are providing the Banderite regime with assistance in carrying out false flag operations. Furthermore, they are aware of the fact that Washington is providing the Banderite entity with information regarding Russian troop movements, a very delicate and dangerous tightrope indeed. In “Russia Formally Warns US to Stop Arming Ukraine,” Dave DeCamp comments on this ominous line that NATO is walking:

    On top of arming the Ukrainians, the US is also providing them with intelligence for attacks on Russian forces. The huge amount of support raises questions about at what point Russia would consider the US a co-belligerent in the war.

    Principles which were once deemed inviolable such as freedom of speech, the presumption of innocence, habeas corpus, the informed consent ethic, privacy, a healthy fear of nuclear war, integration, and even the notion that a democratic society must have an informed and educated population, are being swept away. The result is lawlessness, despotism, and savagery. Uncontrolled immigration, the anti-humanities, and offshoring, which together with medical mandates neoliberals look to as magical elixirs with which to solve every domestic problem, have commodified human beings and turned workers into interchangeable parts that lack any sense of ethics, class consciousness, a shared history, and can easily be manipulated and controlled. The Weimarization of America is well underway, and all things sacred are in danger of being lost.

    The neoliberal notion of “tolerance” has become a euphemism for extremism, biofascism, book burning, and illegal wars of aggression. Witch hunts against heretics have become normalized, and it is becoming increasingly difficult to have rational discussions about incredibly serious political and socio-economic problems. The idea that the multicultural curriculum and identity studies “fight racism” when they constitute its quintessence is no less divorced from reality than the notion that a democracy can survive without the First Amendment, the Nuremberg Code, or any respect for international law. The lack of any empathy or remorse in the face of countless lives destroyed as a result of “humanitarian interventions” in Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, Syria, Yemen, Ukraine, and Yugoslavia is coming home to roost.

    “Education” has become a euphemism for fomenting sectarian hatreds and increasingly specialized job training. Revealingly, Americans with the most advanced degrees are often the most inclined to believe in the infallibility of the legacy media and the public health agencies. With a diseased society that teaches young people to kowtow at the altar of materialism and careerism while blindly following “the experts,” self-imposed ignorance is increasingly necessary to “get ahead.” Except in unusual circumstances, physicians speaking out against the Branch Covidian coup d’état will lose their jobs. The same fate would undoubtedly befall a mainstream journalist attempting to educate their readers about the gruesome realities of US foreign policy, or a professor criticizing identity politics and the scourge of tribalism.

    The Guardian’s squeamishness over London cyclists being too white and male coupled with their fondness for Ukrainian nationalists – real racists – who have wiped entire Donbass villages off the face of the earth and committed crimes against humanity, is emblematic of the unhinged, devious, and wicked nature of neoliberal cult ideology.

    American universities – automaton training facilities which churn out millions of aspiring Karl Brandts, Adolf Eichmanns, and Albert Speers each year – have created a conscienceless technocratic class on the carcass of what was once a sound middle class. As any number of reporters that covered the Nuremberg trials undoubtedly discerned, hyper-careerism and hyper-specialization foment amorality, and like vultures hover menacingly whereon the anti-humanities feed. Even the original Nazi doctors would have dismissed the idea of giving an experimental vaccine series to every German in Europe as utter lunacy. Yet to millions of shameless faux leftists these policies are necessary for “the greater good,” and predicated on “the science.”

    That talking heads are permitted (or perhaps even encouraged by shadowy intelligence agencies) to call for people like Tucker Carlson and Tulsi Gabbard to be arrested for questioning the official Ukraine narrative is inextricably linked with the growing illiteratization and the fact that classes in civics have been expunged from the curriculum. This growing pathologization of dissent poses extremely serious risks to the First Amendment, as liberals are increasingly slandering their critics as mentally ill, evidence that biofascism’s war on informed consent poses a grave threat to our survival as a rule of law state. Should Democratic Party devotees attempt to commit (or section, as the British say) people such as Carlson and Gabbard, what legal mechanisms will prevent this from happening now that the informed consent ethic has been all but totally destroyed?

    The authoritarianism of neoliberals is directly proportional to their growing disconnection from reality; and the more delirious the faithful become, the more they believe they are the paragon of reason.

    James Howard Kunstler correctly points out on his blog that, in addition to the mass media, social media has played a significant role in fomenting this epidemic of demented ideation:

    All this coerced insanity has been nurtured by social media’s sly mechanisms for bending narrative into propaganda: their beloved algorithms, all fine-tuned to destroy anything that touches on truth. The result is a country so marinated in falsehood that it can’t construct a coherent consensus of reality, and can’t take coherent actions to avert its own collapse.

    It is remarkable that the New Deal, the public education system, the Constitution, the Bill of Rights, any semblance of integration, a free press, the Nuremberg Code, and efforts to demilitarize and establish a single-payer health care system were obliterated in the name of “fighting racism,” “fighting sexism,” “fighting white supremacy,” and “fighting misogyny.” These words have become akin to dog commands, except unlike humans canines do not burn books, exploit slave labor, give weapons and military training to death squads, torture, or drop bombs on people.

    Indie conservatives typically understand the dangers of identity politics and the Branch Covidians, yet often lack an adequate understanding of US foreign policy and the threat to democracy posed by unfettered capitalism. Before most leftists were enveloped by a pall of madness, that was their job.

    Assuming we aren’t incinerated in a nuclear conflagration, how will reason and checks and balances be restored in a country run by toddlers, book burners, unscrupulous careerists, and homicidal maniacs? Irregardless of whether we witness the triumph of anti-white jihad, a Confederate white supremacist revival, or a takeover by the Christian Right (unlikely in this environment, as they are no fan of forced vaccination) the left’s self-evisceration threatens our existence as a civilized society and is slowly opening the harrowing portal of perdition.

    Should the pendulum swing back to the traditional far-right and neoliberals dethroned, what laws will be in place to protect those who have been deposed and dispossessed? As neoliberal cultists are no longer living in the reality-based world, and are seemingly incapable of acknowledging the consequences of their actions, the path towards the spires of reason and solidarity will be difficult to forge in the long and arduous days that lie ahead.

    The post The West Has Fallen Into Darkness first appeared on Dissident Voice.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • US/NATO Wants War With Russia

    Here is a speech Vladimir Putin DID NOT make — at least in this specific language — to the Russian people just before initiating the special military operations in Ukraine:

    “It is my responsibility as the president to warn our citizens of secret, swift, and extraordinary buildup of US/NATO missiles — in an area well known to have a special and historical relationship to Russia and the nations of our hemisphere, in violation of American assurances, and in defiance of treaties and our own policies — this sudden, clandestine decision to station strategic weapons on our borders — is a deliberately provocative and unjustified change in the status quo which cannot be accepted by this country.”

    Does this have a familiar feel to it?

    Here is the speech which President John F. Kennedy DID MAKE to the American people on October 22, 1962, when he warned of:

    … a secret, swift, and extraordinary buildup of Communist missiles — in an area well known to have a special and historical relationship to the United States and the nations of the Western Hemisphere, in violation of Soviet assurances, and in defiance of American and hemispheric policy — this sudden, clandestine decision to station strategic weapons for the first time outside of Soviet soil — is a deliberately provocative and unjustified change in the status quo which cannot be accepted by this country.

    The Cuban Missile Crisis which resulted from the discovery of this military escalation by the Soviets, almost resulted in a world war and nuclear annihilation.

    The tables have rotated 180º. Now it is the US which is putting the survival of humankind at risk, escalating the conflict in Ukraine by dumping more and more weapons into the conflict zone, demonizing Putin and everything Russian, apparently urging the Ukrainians to avoid a negotiated peace and to fight to the bitter end.

    Do not for a moment forget . . .

    There were solutions in place to prevent the entire Ukrainian situation from evolving into the terrifying mess we now see. First, there was the Minsk II Agreement of February 12, 2015, signed by Ukraine, guaranteed by France, Germany and Russia. It was ignored by Ukraine, never implemented. There is speculation that it was the US which prompted the stonewalling. Then, December of 2020, Russia itself proposed very concrete steps, as draft treaties, that could be taken to defuse the tensions and guarantee greater security for all of Europe and the world. These were formally submitted to both the US and NATO in writing. They were dismissed. Now with the conflict in full swing, Russia has repeatedly made clear its current position on ending this. What the Russians is demand is no different than what Kennedy demanded of the USSR. This has also been flatly rejected.

    From the outset of the crisis, Russia has been maligned, vilified, rejected, canceled, viciously attacked at every opportunity for merely wanting the assurances and concrete reductions to the threat posed by NATO and the US on its borders, just as JFK laid out subsequent to his announcement of Soviet missiles in Cuba.

    (As a revealing aside, the comprehensive scale of the vilification and attempted isolation of Russia across the planet, even in spheres completely unrelated to politics — dance, sports, art, music, cultural exchange programs, space exploration, pet shows — could not have been spontaneous. Any multi-layered attack of this scale had to have been in the works for some time. At least, that’s how I see it.)

    So . . .

    What conclusion can we draw from all of this? What message are we actually hearing from Biden, Blinken, Stoltenberg, Johnson, Scholz, Macron, and the rest of the US puppets around the world?

    I can see only one: US/NATO wants war with Russia. Which frankly, hardly comes as a surprise. From documents, white papers, policy statements, speeches by officials in the State Department and various administrations along the way, all easily accessed by just looking, the dismemberment of Russia and looting its vast and varied natural resources has been on the agenda for at least three decades.

    Yes, folks . . .

    It’s war. Not liberation. Not freedom and democracy. It’s war.

    Please correct me if I’m wrong.

    The post US/NATO Wants War With Russia first appeared on Dissident Voice.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • Russia, Ukraine, and the USA: Trapped in a Cultural Script

    Compassion for Ukrainians victimized by Russia’s violence demonstrates that human hearts care. However, beneath the visible current of compassion there’s an alarming, dangerous dynamic at play.

    What’s hair-raising about this crisis is not only the violence but the fact that US political leaders and media makers are not recognizing positive and negative motivations on both sides of conflict. Instead, they’re deliberately creating an inaccurate good vs. evil storyline, a storyline that ignites unwarranted, dangerous feelings of self-righteous hatred against Russia.

    The US perpetually perceives its role in conflict as that of a heroic rescuer or innocent victim upholding humanity and freedom against evil persecutors. However, 245 years of US history reveal that this perception is fiction, a psychological construct. Psychological analysts Muriel James and Dorothy Jongeward called the persecutor, victim, and rescuer scenario a “cultural script.”

    Examination of 245 years of US history reveals that the perception of always being a good guy fighting evil is fiction, a psychological construct. In fact, good and bad, truths and lies invariably exist on both sides of conflict.

    Nonetheless, to deceive others and perhaps themselves, US policymakers’ pattern of relentlessly legitimating their violence, deadly sanctions, and foreign coups by denying the validity of enemy grievances, hiding their own greed and aggressive motives, refusing to cooperatively negotiate, concealing enemy negotiation offers, fabricating lies, omitting significant facts, using false pretexts, and overlooking the disastrous results of a pseudo-religious faith in the problem-solving magic of weapons is so predictable that it’s hard to decide whether it’s more enraging, pathetic, boring, or nauseating.

    Consider one persecutor-victim-hero drama that began in 1979. President Jimmy Carter, livid over the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, claimed it was “the greatest threat to peace since the Second World War.” Actually, Afghanistan’s Marxist government, which had been trying to reform the extreme, unjust inequalities of wealth and land ownership in Afghanistan, had requested Soviet assistance against insurgents, but the USSR, the “evil persecutor,” didn’t want to send troops. When the Soviets finally complied, they explained it was because of secret US involvement in Afghanistan. The world called the Soviets liars.

    Two decades later US National Security Adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski admitted that Carter had begun aiding the insurgent mujahideen—the “heroes”—six months prior to the entry of the persecutors, the Soviets. A delighted Brzezinski knew this could provoke the Soviets to invade and get mired in their own “Vietnam.” Convinced of Soviet evil and mujahideen goodness, US policymakers ignored that the mujahideen skinned Soviet POWs alive.

    And now we’re to believe that weapon shipments and sanctions are needed for the US to help rescue Ukraine from “evil” Russia.

    The first step in convincing the world to believe the script’s good vs. evil dynamics is to depict Russia as the persecutor who’s motivated, not by fear, but by evil. No problem! Simply label Putin as paranoid and discount Russian fears as ludicrous: NATO’s expansion into Slavic lands, NATO—Ukraine military collaboration, US missile bases in eastern Europe, anti-Russian policies and prejudice in Ukraine, neo-Nazi violence in Ukraine, neo-Nazis and ultranationalists in Ukraine’s police, military, and government, the manipulation of Ukraine by Western profit-seekers, and Western economic and political conquest—likely of Russia itself.

    The next step is to paint the US as a heroic rescuer motivated purely by integrity and compassion. Simple! Muffle up all greed-related motives for antagonizing Russia: US weapon industry profits, NATO’s agenda for bases on the Black Sea, IMF goals, ExxonMobil’s coveting Black Sea fossil fuel deposits, and Biden’s connections with Ukraine’s largest natural gas corporation. Then, conceal US hopes to dominate the global energy trade, maintain the dollar as the international energy trade currency, displace Russia from Europe’s gas market, shut down Nord Stream 2, and export fracked liquefied natural gas to Europe via Ukraine.

    Also ignored are the biases and aims of those social and business circles who are forever dictating US foreign policy according to their pecuniary priorities and uncooperative, control-oriented habits of international relations. President Biden’s administration, for example, includes many members of the Alliance for Securing Democracy—with an advisory board that combines neoconservatives with liberal hawks, Albright Stonebridge Group—with its interest in Russian business acquisitions, and the Center for a New American Security (CNAS).

    CNAS, whose donors include multiple weapon corporations, the European Union, US Department of Defense, Finland’s Defense Ministry, Amazon, Google, and ExxonMobil, was formerly led by President Biden’s current Undersecretary of State Victoria Nuland, whose husband, Robert Kagan, co-founded the conquest-seeking neoconservative Project for the New American Century. Yet we’re to assume that donors’ priorities aren’t skewing foreign policy in dysfunctional ways.

    With Russia’s fears dismissed and US greed disguised, the good vs. evil script is further strengthened by permitting only shallow public analysis. For example, how do we know that Russia wasn’t deliberately provoked so that the ulterior goals of certain American social circles could be advanced under the guise of nobly responding to Russia’s aggression? The topic isn’t permitted into discussion.

    Another topic given quarter-inch deep analysis is Biden’s seemingly fair-minded declaration that each nation has the right to choose alliances. It’s an unusual statement coming from a “you’re with us or against us” nation that has punished or ousted national leaders who refused to sever alliances with the USSR or Cuba.

    Nuland’s leaked tapes from 2014 (which mention Biden and National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan) and a US record of instigating coups indicate that Americans were likely involved in promoting the bloody 2014 coup of Ukraine’s pro-Russian President Yanukovich to install anti-Russian leadership agreeable to European Union and NATO ties. So does Biden’s “right to choose alliances” proclamation apply to nations before a US-approved coup or only afterwards?

    Another enraging example of shallow analysis is the opinion falsely parroted by US “experts” that Putin’s 2021 essay, “On the Historical Unity of Russia and Ukraine,” lays bare Putin’s imperialist vision for Ukraine and his lack of recognition of Ukraine’s sovereignty and borders. Whether the experts are deliberately lying or lack reading comprehension skills, their claim is false and, given the self-righteous hatred their claim generates, utterly irresponsible.

    Nowhere in the essay does Putin speak of conquering Ukraine or refusing to recognize Ukraine’s sovereignty. Putin specifically describes the relationship between the US and Canada as the type of relationship Russia seeks with Ukraine. When he speaks of “unity,” he’s not speaking of dissolving Ukraine’s political sovereignty. He’s speaking of cultural and historical ties between the two nations.

    Putin’s description of the Bolsheviks’ creation of borders never suggests that he’s doing away with them. It’s possible he’s implying that Donetsk, Lugansk, and certainly Crimea have large Russian populations and do not necessarily belong in Ukraine, especially if Ukraine’s post-coup government is harboring neo-Nazism and installing language and indigenous people policies of a deliberate anti-Russian nature. Note that Ukraine and the US are the only two nations in the UN to vote against the recent resolution to condemn the glorification of Nazism.

    Of course, US policymakers are not uncomfortable with Nazism and, following WWII, employed one thousand Nazis to spy on Russia. And it was US banks and companies such as Ford, General Motors, and du Pont that opportunistically helped fund Hitler’s war arsenal. Even in 1973, the US worked with pro-Nazi collaborators and US corporate funds to plant protests, propaganda, economic sabotage, and violence that climaxed in the CIA’ s horrific 9/11/73 coup of Chile’s Salvador Allende. It’s not surprising that in 2014, Russian news sources claimed that US private military contractors were training right-wing Ukrainian extremists.

    In his essay, Putin clearly states his wish to negotiate with Ukraine, but not with Ukrainian leaders who are mere representatives of Western profiteers eager to use Ukraine’s land and resources for their own benefit. But, of course, US commentators either ignore the statement or, forgetting US history, discount Putin’s fears of Western profiteering as conspiracy theory.

    Double standards also fortify the script. Russia’s invasions are motivated by belligerence, never legitimate fears, while US invasions are motivated by legitimate fears, never belligerence. Same behavior, different judgment.

    Headlines scream of savage Russian war crimes. TV reporters interview sobbing Ukrainians. Yet US, NATO, and Ukrainian war crimes are barely publicized, their victims ignored. Same actions, different judgment. To learn about US war crimes and Afghan and Iraqi suffering, you’ve got to read investigative reporters’ books.

    American groupthink, inflated by its self-righteous role in the script, and seeming to borrow from middle-school social dynamics, jeers and smears President Putin’s every word as absurd and staged. But we’re to trust Biden as honest, unstaged, unconcealing. No proof is needed. Just faith in the script.

    Putin’s wish to protect Donetsk and Lugansk, self-declared republics since 2014, and end Kiev’s 8-year war that has killed 14,000 is automatically mocked as false pretext for conquest. Yet US wishes to protect Ukraine from Russia are trusted as caring, without ulterior design. The role of private military contractors, NATO, and the US in escalating civil war and provoking Russia by arming Ukraine with billions in weapons since 2014 rather than committing to non-violently resolve Ukraine’s internal conflict remains shamefully unassessed.

    The consequences of belief in this drama? The US habitually uses exaggerated fears of evil enemies as false justification for colossal military budgets, NATO expansion, more military bases, troops, weapons, and nukes—all of which pour gasoline on the world tinderbox of tension, drain desperately-needed funding, and fail to resolve conflict.

    If evil is equated with enemies, it becomes deceptively simple for “heroes” to champion goodness: bomb enemies into submission, impose deadly sanctions, strangulate funding, send weapons, engineer coups. But none of these methods nurture goodness. The truth is, those convinced they’re fighting evil are frequently blinded to the immorality and injustice of their own actions against people who aren’t so evil after all.

    The good vs. evil script is also unjust because it enables the “innocent” to get away with all they’ve done to exacerbate conflict. The script can even enable the “innocent,” including Biden administration neoconservatives and liberal hawks, to slickly seize power, resources, and markets from those deemed evil.

    US leaders’ promotion of this good vs. evil storyline appears compassionate, but it isn’t against killing. It isn’t about justice. It’s about pushing a script that provides pretext on the part of those proclaiming their own goodness to inflict injustice and violence against Russia and Putin, already verbally crucified by a mob of liars. It’s about solidifying our allegiance to US policymakers’ decisions about whom we should kill and whom we should cry for. Yet policymakers step beyond Constitutional grounds when they use their power to turn our hearts on and off, to bait us to hate some and love others to serve their greed for Mid-Eastern, Ukrainian, and Russian wealth.

    We’ve got to scrap the script and view conflict impartially. We deserve accurate, sophisticated information about conflict, not propaganda that teaches us to hate. We need full truth to help us ground irrational fears of bad guys, cure the sickness of greed, and offer caring and friendship, not just for those falsely deemed innocent and heroic, but for all of us, with 360◦ of empathy, all the way around the world.

    • View all six videos here:  https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCuNEw9-1OIk-CwU-5vAElcg

    • Read the entire essay at Countercurrents

    • This article was first published at TRANSCEND Media Service

    The post Russia, Ukraine, and the USA: Trapped in a Cultural Script first appeared on Dissident Voice.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • The Impunity of War Lords, Financial Thieves, Israel, Mercenaries, Mindlessness

    These are not good people, those in charge of the military blast-them-all-away-but charge-citizens-hard-on-the-back-end complexes. Here, below, and I have seen a lot, but I shudder just looking at these, well, misanthropes: Biden, Blinken and Austin, a trio of despicable fellows. All the years Austin worked as a mercenary in uniform, and then the offensive weapons companies he protected in that racket. Biden? Over fifty years of destroying Democracy. Blinken? The 71st United States secretary of state since January 26, 2021. He was deputy national security advisor from 2013 to 2015 and deputy secretary of state from 2015 to 2017 under Obama.

    Senior US official may soon visit Kiev – media

    US apologizes to ruler of Gulf monarchy - media

    More space junk, leaks, and the moon shot of Artemis. Think about that — billions for that endeavor and it is not one step for man, but rather one giant leap for Lords of War 3.0, and the war merchants and the FIRE branding thugs of billions. And we have teacher shortages, teacher burnout, prescriptions (necessary) for anyone’s serious diseases out the roof. All of that crisis after crisis, and the inflation, and the housing market on steroids/lack of affordable housing rising, and the suicide rates, and the lost and lost generations, now, and those unborn. All that infrastructure collapsing, all those homes leaking, all those fields and crops dessicating, all the wind and rain and heat, all the lack of decent living conditions. All of the decay and the rising number of aging people who do/barely live without . . . WITHOUT  decent food, health care, denistry, safe and creative activities of daily living. We do without, man, while we arm Nazis and a billionaire boy Being There schmuk. This is the West, the USA under these felons’ leadership (sic) . . .  these thieves, these elites and these Ivy Leaguers. Mainstream Media doesn’t just fawn over them; the MSM pimps for them. But pimps in MSM are, well, a dual-use sort of profession — pimping and prostituting. We the people, we the youth, we the students, we the uninformed, are being screwed, blued and tattooed.**

    **(The phrase has always had a very definite negative connotation, and means to be supremely screwed, screwed beyond all comprehension. The original phrase was “screwed, blewed and tattooed”.

    1. “Screwed” essentially means “cheated” here, much as it does today.
    2. “Blewed” meant “lost or been robbed of”. The word’s origin is from the German “blauen” so it’s actually related to “blue”, not “blew”, and meant that something had vanished (into the blue). (According to “A Dictionary of Slang, Jargon & Cant” by Charles Godfrey Leland, published in 1889.)
    3. “Tattooed” refers here to a beating with very rapid blows, in the same sense as a military tattoo, which is a rapid pattern on a drum.

    So, the phrase literally meant “cheated, robbed and beaten.”)

    Being All Things by Being Nothing: The Enigma of 'Being There' | PopMatters

    Channel 4 to screen comedy that shot Volodymyr Zelensky to fame | News | The Times

    The dance with the devil is us, we the people, The Eighty Percent, dancing to our graves while paying for the sins of the rich, the millionaires and the billionaires.

    Gouging, and shortages, death in a corner of an unheated home: the new Cormac McCarthy script (The Road).

    See the source image

    Entire regions of the country where homes are unaffordable to most, but where the house flippers get to bid on anything to drive up the cost of a roof over the poorhouse’s head. Meth heads and booze drinkers. So many people guzzling drugs and insane ideas to stave off the pain, the suicidal ideation, the drip-drip-drip of death by a thousand neocon/neoliberal/celebrity culture cuts.

    Death By A Thousand Cuts - Death By A Thousand Cuts - Sticker | TeePublic

    Rural hospitals short-staffed/not staffed. Urban hospitals short staffed/not staffed. Massive quits for many professions. Then, the doom of Zoom, all those students in college demanding teachers turn their world in hybrid worlds of students sitting at home, sipping drinks, playing Nerf ball, while getting the classes delivered via internet connection. More of the same nothingness, dead-head dumb thinking, and no conversing.

    - Sputnik International, 1920, 15.04.2022

    [Artemis shut down for leaking — more misappropriated junk voted on by NOT you and I!]

    Truly, the blashpemy of the media is their collusion with the ZioLensky thief, the Thiefs of Israel, and their collusion with the orgasmic military murdering machine, all the hardware and equipment produced, hawked, sold, used. Imagine, EU throwing weapons at Ukraine, while that perversion of a human, ZioLensky hides in Poland. Imagine all the surrendering of Ukrainian Military to the Russians. Imagine his home in Florida, a cool $28 million worth, the Panama Papers reported.

    For Ukrainian Jews, having a Jewish president is a source of pride — and fear | The Times of Israel

    Imagine Blinken, Biden and Austin in Ukraine. Legitimate targets in my mind. Of course, Ukraine has so much to do with You and I, USA. You know, the ZioLensky amassing $billion$, as the Panama Papers revealed. Well, Pandora Papers, that is! (Panama Papers reveals other thieves and money laundering whores)  Imagine, all the things this society, USA, goes without, and all the sliding systems decaying, and the fraying of social safety nets, all of that, yet, we have Save a ZioLensky Day (daily) at the grocery store, and at the military hardware bargain basement. Easter rotten eggs for the Nazis of Ukraine.

    Volodymyr Zelenskiy

    • Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and his partners in comedy production owned a network of offshore companies related to their business based in the British Virgin Islands, Cyprus, and Belize.
    • Zelensky’s current chief aide, Serhiy Shefir, as well as the head of the country’s Security Service, were part of the offshore network.
    • Offshore companies were used by Shefir and another business partner to buy pricey London real estate.
    • Around the time of his 2019 election, Zelensky handed his shares in a key offshore company over to Shefir, but the two appear to have made an arrangement for Zelensky’s family to continue receiving money from the offshore. (Source)

    Billions while the heart medicines and diabetes drugs are unaffordable for many. Then, think of Blinken, Biden and Austin. Think of all the fools in the media who make millions a year. All those in the offensive weapons industries. All the governmental workers and all the politicos. Those tanks and “war things” from EU, Germany, hell, ZioLensky is making out like a true war bandit, but in skinny jeans and Gucci shoes).

    Germany explains limits to Ukraine weapons supply

    Look at this fool, this Brit, captured by Russia and then his family pleads for “fair” treatment of this guy. He’s a soldier for hire, a mercenary, and the British Family wants their son to be treated like what? A criminal, which he is. I can’t image this fellow making it on a 20 click hike with a 60 pound rucksack and thrity pounds of weaponry. But this is it for the Western mind and body!

    Then these headlines surround this illegality. “Israel has dropped repeated hints at a major strike on Iranian nuclear facilities in the near future”. This is kosher? Under world order? Hmm. So, dropping bombs on nuclear facilities is fair game? All over the world? This is why the Jewish Project is a Jaded Project, one geared toward murder and theft. Impunity. Killing Iranians. Blasting nuclear plants? So, how is it Russia doesn’t just ka-boom those bioweapons labs in Ukraine? (Do a Google Gulag search on, “Ukraine biolabs” and you get a thousand hits on why that story is fake!)  This is the new abnormal — quash any story that goes outside the neoliberal-rah-rah USA bold coloring lines!

    Israel has dropped repeated hints at a major strike on Iranian nuclear facilities in the near future

    War in Ukraine turns people’s lives and affairs upside down. Dirty laundry, previously hidden, is on display. A Russian communication on March 6 mentions “evidence of an emergency clean-up performed by the Kyiv regime was found—aimed at eradicating traces of the military-biological program in Ukraine, financed by @DeptofDefense.”

    A Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson two days later spoke of “26 [U.S.] bio-labs and other related facilities in Ukraine.” (Source)

    Found 30 biological labs in Ukraine, possibly for bioweapons, claim Russian forces, World News | wionews.com

    “Germany involved in ‘military biological activities’ in Ukraine – Russia” (Source)

    Bernie’s F-35’s, man, the Bernie Bro Most Expensive Offensive Weapon

    NATO pins nuclear plans on F-35

    NATO planners are updating the US “nuclear sharing” program to account for most European allies planning to buy F-35 joint strike fighter jets, the alliance’s director of nuclear policy said this week. Lockheed Martin’s fifth-generation fighter has been embraced by multiple US allies, including most recently Germany, despite the Pentagon’s own misgivings about the program.

    “We’re moving fast and furiously towards F-35 modernization and incorporating those into our planning and into our exercising and things like that as those capabilities come online,” Jessica Cox, director of the NATO nuclear policy directorate in Brussels, said on Wednesday, adding that “By the end of the decade, most if not all of our allies will have transitioned” to the F-35. (Source)

    Bernie Sanders supports the basing of the F-35s in Vermont. He said, in an interview with the Wall Street Journal, that it would be a “major blow” if the weapons program did not come to Vermont. Referring to the Vermont National Guard, Sen. Sanders stated, “If they don’t have planes to fly, there ain’t going to be too much for them to do.”

    Bernie Sanders Loves This $1 Trillion War Machine

    If they don’t have nukes to fire, then what are they going to do with themselves? If they don’t have frigates to sail, what will they do on the water? If they don’t have missiles to launch, then what will they do in the air?

    And this guy was what? An alternative? What? He’s as insane as Trump as Bush as Obama. As Elizabeth Warren reiterated, she is a capitalist . . . “capitalist to my bones…” Sanders is one too.

    But we have the beasts of this nation, Israel, all those in Europe, Australia, everywhere the US not only wags the tail but bites with rabid glee. Yet, we have pundits and great intellectuals covering up the tracks of history. All the hatefulness of the Anglo Saxons, the British Isle, all the Euro-Trash, so much, that speaks to that hatred of Slavs, Russians, the Chinese Peril, all those “Orientals,” and, alas, the Muslims, we have that elephant in the room of these traitors of humankind. And, yet, Russia, and Syria, and, well, USSR did support many movements, many revolutions, and those in countries considered black and brown. To be honest, the Russians were asked (USSR) to get involved with Afghanistan by the Afghans.

    As is the case with the Anglo-American-Canadian-New Zealand-Australia-UK world, there will be blood, in every imaginable way. From birth to death, from the village, to the great cities, the Anglo-American-Canadian-New Zealand-Australia-UK is like a termite of galactic proportions, drilling into all cultures, all tribes, all people of the land, people of seas and mountains and forests. The munching mandibles of that “race” of people. Imagine, calling Russians orcs, subhuman.

    The reality is the full force of these demonic masters of slavery — EU, Nato, USA-Israel-UK-ETC. will make Ukraine the killing fields.

    They are hoping for a nuclear strike.

    And, alas, this is the reality the leftists who support Russia’s goals in de-Nazification. The end goal has been shifted. With the full force of the military industrial complex.

    Day 50 of the SMO – are things becoming clear(er)? (UPDATED 2x)

    While the armies of Ukraine and Russia are preparing for the upcoming battle for Donbass, Kiev’s allies are increasing arms supply shipments to Ukraine. The United States, mainly by European forces, is implementing a large-scale rearmament project for Ukraine.

    Heavy offensive systems are being transferred to the disposal of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, which will open a new stage of military confrontation.

    The delivery of about three hundred modernized Soviet-made tanks to Ukraine was confirmed. According to various reports, Poland transfers the upgraded T-72M1R as the Czech Republic removes its T-72s from storage. The AFU also has 170 Polish BMP-1s at its disposal. Echelons with M109 howitzers and M113 armored personnel carriers are already on the Ukrainian border.

    High-precision ammunition is also being transferred to Ukraine, including the M982 Excalibur with GPS guidance and anti-tank SMArt 155 munitions. Ukraine has also been provided with Switchblade mobile barrage ammunition.

    Ukrainian troops are being saturated with modern air defense systems including British Starstreak MANPADS and American Stingers.

    During a recent briefing, the Pentagon said that a batch of 1,000 ATGMs has already been delivered to Ukraine.

    It is reported that Norwegian Naval Strike Missiles are planned to be transferred to Ukraine. According to some reports, the MGM-140 Army Tactical Missile System will be also transferred from Europe. The range of these complexes reaches 300 km, which makes it possible to strike deep into the territory of Russia.

    At the same time, mercenaries and military personnel of NATO countries are deployed along with the AFU in Ukraine under the guise of foreign volunteers. The foreign fighters in Ukraine are led by US officers. It has become obvious that the whole command of the AFU is concentrated mainly in the hands of the United States.

    On April 14, Russian missile forces eliminated another detachment of foreign mercenaries in Ukraine. As a result of the strike, up to 30 mercenaries of the Polish private military campaign were killed in the settlement of Izyumskoye in the Kharkiv region.

    According to unconfirmed reports from local sources, about 2,000 foreign mercenaries, including fighters from Turkey and Azerbaijan, arrived on the territory of the Zaporozhye region. Most likely, foreigners will be deployed on the Avdiivka front lines, since the Russian forces have already begun assault and offensive operations in the area.

    In the political arena, the United States openly issues an ultimatum to all countries that are not ready to sacrifice their own interests and stop cooperation with Russia.

    US Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen has issued threats to those countries that see an opportunity to benefit by maintaining their relations with Russia and filling the void left by others.

    “Let’s be clear, the united coalition will not be indifferent to actions that undermine the sanctions we have imposed.” – she claimed. (Source)

    Monsters.

    See the source image

    No highly trained and experienced special forces Russian brigade has anything on this whiz woman, Yellen. These are natural born killers, of the massive variety.

    https://pictures.reuters.com/archive/RUSSIA-SECURITY-DRILLS-RC21LD9YZWSD.html

    The chosen few, those Star Chamber Elite, the veritable unholiest criminals of FIRE — finance insurance real estate — with their weapons of mass destruction — algorithms, Wall Street, Deep State, Shallow State, Sanctions, and, well, we now know, DARPA Bat Virus, et al — they are unbeatable!

    Finally, the ZioLensky is looking for his own Ten Year War. Talk about the obscene oligarch:

    Ukraine is not prepared to give up its territories and is ready, if needed, to fight with Russia “for ten years,” the country’s President Volodymyr Zelensky has said.

    In an interview with CNN, Zelensky said that for Ukraine “the battle for Donbass is very important” for a number of reasons. He explained that this battle might influence “the course of the whole war.” However, the president stressed that the preferable solution of the conflict is the diplomatic one.

    “We cannot give up our territory, but we must find some kind of dialogue with Russia,” Zelensky said, underlining that no talks could be conducted “on the basis of the Russian ultimatum.”

    He stressed that a dialogue is needed to prevent more deaths but he hasn’t ruled out another option.

    “We can fight the Russian Federation for 10 years,” Zelensky said.

    Those mighty billionaires and multimillionaires will be laughing all the way to the bank, or gold markets.

    Shift!!!!

    A little poem for Russia, still, National Poetry Month:

    Tears of Rage Captured in a Poem and Harmonica Riff

    You think dark is just one color, but it ain’t. There’re five or six kinds of black. Some silky, some woolly. Some just empty. Some like fingers. And it don’t stay still. It moves and changes from one kind of black to another. Saying something is pitch black is like saying something is green.

    — Toni Morrison, Song of Solomon, Chapter 2, Page 40

    ‘A thoroughfare for freedom beat
    Across the wilderness.’

    we (they) came, we (USA) laughed
    they (Libyans) died, then Yemeni babies
    those children of Venezuela
    collateral damage, Libya
    immolated by Democrat with an H
    Clinton laughs when leaders are raped
    with blade, but we are the voice
    of hypocrisy, Iran, and Brown places
    or Black haunts, those Congo tykes pulling up
    coltan/iPhones/ Chrome books for all
    we dance in our cancel culture….

    ‘And crown thy good with brotherhood
    From sea to shining sea.’

    talking heads paid for stupidity
    millionaires chant to teens and grannies–
    ‘Russia is an enemy, we are at war’
    even those puttering PhD fools
    learn to forget Yankee damage
    to Cuban babies, the kindness
    of Norte Americanos holding
    death court on Afghanis,
    millions will suffer Goldman
    JP Morgan Sachs lords of financial war….

    ‘Thine alabaster cities gleam
    Undimmed by human tears.’

    yet Safeway plies me when I
    buy tofu and butter leaf lettuce
    ‘give money for Ukraine’
    that fascist Comic ZioLenskyy
    trickster of thespian rouse
    he dances with billionaires….

    ‘Who more than self their country loved,
    And mercy more than life.’

    I have friends who dig deep,
    journalists where truth is core
    principle, where all sides are facets
    of complicated stories, now, tomorrow
    history redefined is scooped up
    pulled apart, a place of discovery
    but Americanos can’t take nuance
    the white is against black
    pro versus con, enemy or foe….

    ‘For purple mountain majesties.’

    we’ve been Wobblies for
    one century, THEY/USA jailing speakers
    we, organizers against capital
    shot down by Pinkerton and Police….

    ‘O beautiful for pilgrim feet.’…

    today mainstream is extreme
    squashing out common sense
    old retirees chanting, ‘treason . . .
    never pro-Russia . . . block anyone shouting Donbas crimes
    Crimea crimes . . . ‘
    these old mothball ideas are tools
    of CIA, tools of VOA, tools of withering
    politicos, plagiarist-rapist VP now POTUS

    the digital demigods have it
    shutting down free speech zones
    closing minds, corralling those of us
    called fringe, in their minds
    fanatical, gleeful donating
    one dollar to a Nazi regime
    the optics of Jew with Azov
    oh the Congressional dimwits zoomed
    comic boy caught money
    hiding in Panama Papers…

    ‘Till all success be nobleness,
    And ev’ry gain divine.’

    how many Safeway campaigns
    ask money for Afghanistan
    billions stolen from treasury
    how many pleas by Walgreens
    beg for dollars to stave off
    Yemen famine . . . how many
    d’s with Democrat shouting
    ‘bomb apartheid Israel
    fabricated stolen land
    of a military industrial complex
    stamped with Star of David’?….

    ‘For amber waves of grain.’

    those star spangled sycophants
    they draw cartoons of their hero
    as Europeans shut down
    stars and stripes infirm
    old men, young Ivy League
    demons, telling world–
    tighten belts, shower less
    yet Safeway and Walgreens
    want my shekels for bombs
    bullets brigades of mercenaries
    yet we hear in all circles
    of Dante’s hell, screams of
    ‘hate 139 million Russians . . .
    death to Slavs . . . sanction
    heroes of world war two . . .
    eviscerate good people
    who plowed over Nazi’s . . .
    donate to Ukraine.’

    old and young
    tongues tied to propagandists
    chanting homilies from mainstream
    media, minds blended into mush
    the hubris and greed and power
    Yankee Doodle Dandy eyeing
    China, wanting every dead
    Taiwanese as the price of
    red white and blue
    sanctions –unilateral murder
    until Safeway and Walgreens
    plead for dollars for Taiwan-
    Ukraine as USA/RoboCop
    stuffs trillions
    into war machine
    oil machine
    retail machine….

    ‘O beautiful for spacious skies.’

    Brother, sister will you spare
    a billion for big bad bombs?

    Behold, you are beautiful, my love;
    behold, you are beautiful;
    your eyes are doves.

    –“Song of Solomon,”1:15

    The post The Impunity of War Lords, Financial Thieves, Israel, Mercenaries, Mindlessness first appeared on Dissident Voice.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.