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Hospital admissions double – and it’s got to be down to the vaccines

By Guy Hatchard | TCW Defending Freedom | March 24, 2023

Data from the New Zealand Ministry of Health has revealed a massive 103 per cent increase in hospitalisations among 12 disease categories measured in 2021 following the mRNA rollout. This calls into serious question the safety of medical interventions such as mRNA vaccines which penetrate the cell wall and re-program activity in the cell cytoplasm.

NZ had very few cases of Covid in 2021 due to draconian restrictions. Therefore the only reasonable cause of the disease increase is mRNA vaccination.

There were 38,178 extra hospitalisations in 2021 across the 12 categories compared with 2019 figures. The Ministry of Health tracks 37 disease categories, and figures for the remaining 25, including cancer, have not yet been released. These figures alone mean that New Zealanders had greater than a 1 in 90 chance of hospitalisation within one year of Covid vaccination. You can read a longer discussion of the figures here.

Similar disastrous figures have surfaced in official data from Western Australia (greater than 1 in 100 chance of serious injury).

Last week in the UK, MP Andrew Bridgen again attempted to capture the attention of the House of Commons about severe injury and death following Covid vaccination, but almost all MPs walked out before he had even started his speech. Undeterred, he gave a brilliant, succinct summary of the dangers and huge costs of Covid vaccination as revealed by the UK Government’s own statistics. In essence he explained how Covid vaccines make roughly a thousand people ill enough to send them to hospital in order to prevent one hospitalisation from Covid. In passing he revealed that the members of the committee approving vaccines in the UK own a billion pounds’ worth of vaccine company shares between them. (Please watch him speak here and share).

YouTube kicked off by deleting the video, but public outrage ensured they had to back down. This underlined the fact that we are not engaged in a rational or fair argument. Hundreds of concerned scientists around the world are analysing data and raising questions about Covid vaccine safety, but like Andrew Bridgen we are all speaking to an empty room.

In contrast, vaccine proponents are still speaking freely to a full house, courtesy of a compliant and well-funded media, who seem not only incapable of sorting truth from falsehood, but woefully ignorant about the fundamentals of genetics.

On Sunday we were subjected to a long piece on NZ’s 1News entitled The Gene Genie. The presenter misinformed the nation that right now we are ending disease in New Zealand with a little snip to our DNA. No doubt this news wowed the audience, but the impression it gave was entirely false and misleading.

The programme did not cover the ending of all disease as the presenter appeared to imply. The real story turned out to be a phase one trial of a novel form of RNA gene therapy designed to tackle amyloidosis, a deadly disease that affects some members of families who inherit a single faulty gene (possibly up to around 60 people in NZ). The trial aims to identify whether a novel approach to amyloidosis gene therapy is safe and effective. It will take years to complete.

Just how monumentally ignorant and naive the programme’s producers were was revealed when the interviewer asked the study’s supervisor, Auckland liver specialist Dr Ed Gane, ‘Should we be able to select for height or intelligence when we do gene editing?’ The interviewer was parroting a false idea, planted in the public imagination by commercial hype, that genetic manipulation could cure all diseases and develop desirable looks and abilities. In fact, more than 300,000 genes play a role in a person’s height, not one, and the idea that there are a few specific genes which could increase intelligence is just fantasy.

To understand just how misleading these ideas are, we need to consider some basic concepts of cellular biology. This will enable us to assess just how much and in how many ways vaccine injury might ultimately affect us.

In 1953, when Watson and Crick unravelled the double helical structure of DNA, the world was dazzled by the discovery. Not only did this promise to solve the mysteries of heredity but it was also heralded as the key to understanding the origin of life itself. The whole focus of biology underwent a seismic shift. Henceforth, work on DNA, its code and its functions, would come to dominate biological research and ultimately medicine. Genetic essentialism had been born – the imaginative idea that just about everything concerning life could be reduced to the operation of genes.

Gradually over the last few years, research on epigenetics began to eat away at the edges of the edifice of genetic essentialism. Traits acquired by parents during their lifetime can be inherited by their offspring. Cellular and physiological factors directly influence how DNA expresses itself. In other words, the wider environment of DNA is intimately involved in its operation.

Genetic code is a part of a cellular system. DNA is not the sole source of life. The popular rush to regard DNA as an almost stand-alone reference point for life misses the established scientific reality.

Cells form the building blocks of life: DNA does not function on its own. By implication the whole cell is the source of heredity, not solely DNA.

Human cells are enormously complex; each contains approximately 100trillion atoms which make up more than 42million proteins.

Cellular functions are protected by a cell wall or membrane. Cells are connected to form a single conscious identity. The mRNA vaccines are designed to pierce the protective cell membrane and co-opt functions in order to redirect cellular activity. As such they are in fact parasitic and ultimately damage the functions of the host cell. They disrupt the whole cell and therefore disrupt multiple characteristics of human life, including physiological stability, adaptability, immunity, and possibly even our mental acuity.

Interventions carrying novel genetic instructions which cross the cell membrane put health and consciousness, body and mind at risk of degradation.

Hospitalisation rates have doubled, all-cause deaths are at record levels, and there is an unexplained total disregard on the part of governments.

The full extent of how much mRNA vaccines will ultimately influence mental and physical health remains unknown.

GLOBE is promoting a campaign for Global Legislation Outlawing Biotechnology Experimentation.

The writer is in New Zealand.

March 24, 2023 Posted by | Deception, Science and Pseudo-Science, Timeless or most popular | , | Leave a comment

Senate Committee Handles Bancel with Kid Gloves

Theater with Moderna Billionaire CEO Stephane Bancel Fails to Ask Key Questions

By Peter A. McCullough, MD, MPH | Courageous Discourse | March 24, 2023

In 2006, Stephane Bancel was a sales director then head of Belgium operations for Eli Lilly, a mid to high level big pharma sales executive. In 2007 he catapulted to become CEO of French diagnostics company BioMérieux and began work with the Chinese to build the biosecurity annex level 4 at the Wuhan Institute of Virology. His company trained the Chinese lab technicians. Bancel then joined startup Moderna in 2011. Moderna has three patents that claim priority to applications filed between 2011 and 2016 covering its foundational intellectual property on mRNA, code to SARS-CoV-2 Spike protein, and related functions. In April 2020, Moderna’s sales and stock price skyrocketed on the promise of a COVID-19 vaccine that was planned for years. Bancel’s stake of the company is about 9% and net worth estimated to be ~$6 billion.

While the countenance Senator Rand Paul was stern and his questions on the surface appeared intimidating, he and the committee failed to drill Bancel on issues that would reveal corruption, racketeering, fraud, conspiracy to commit domestic terrorism, public harm, or mass negligent homicide.

Here are five question sets the Senators either didn’t have the foundational understanding, perceptiveness, or courage to ask:

  1. What was Bancel’s involvement with the Chinese in the construction of the lab annex? Was it intended for bioterrorism? How many times did Bancel visit the lab between 2007 and 2020?
  2. Did Moderna collaborate with or rely upon Dr. Ralph Baric’s NIH work on chimeric SARS-CoV-2 as published in 2015 in Nature Medicine and the Proceedings of the National Academy of Science? Is the patented genetic code for Moderna mRNA derived from Baric’s chimeric virus or another one originating from the WIV BSL-4?
  3. Did Bancel know ahead of time his product would cause myocarditis, neurologic injury, blood clotting, and immunologic syndromes (VITT, MIS)?
  4. How many deaths and serious adverse events did Moderna record in its 90 day obligatory post-release safety data? Why has this dossier not been released to the public? When will it be? Assuming Moderna’s dossier has similar numbers of fatalities to Pfizer, why did Moderna fail to pull their product off the market early in 2021 due to excess risk of death?
  5. Has Moderna or FDA or any third party at any time inspected its mRNA–1273 vaccine for quality, purity, and concentration as it is being produced by biodefense contractor National Resilience or other supplier? How does Moderna assure the quantity of mRNA in the final fill and finish of the vials before they are shipped to pharmacies and vaccine centers?

In conclusion, the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions needs to step up its game if America wants to get to the bottom of what is going on with the COVID-19 vaccine debacle. I suggest they call in some doctors with courage, expertise, and clear vision to advise them on questioning. Wednesday March 22, 2023 fell short by a Kentucky mile and Bancel must be skipping away in relief.

Leake JS, McCullough PA. Courage to Face COVID-19: Preventing Hospital Deaths While Battling the Biopharmaceutical Complex

Menachery VD, Yount BL Jr, Debbink K, Agnihothram S, Gralinski LE, Plante JA, Graham RL, Scobey T, Ge XY, Donaldson EF, Randell SH, Lanzavecchia A, Marasco WA, Shi ZL, Baric RS. A SARS-like cluster of circulating bat coronaviruses shows potential for human emergence. Nat Med. 2015 Dec;21(12):1508-13. doi: 10.1038/nm.3985. Epub 2015 Nov 9. Erratum in: Nat Med. 2016 Apr;22(4):446. Erratum in: Nat Med. 2020 Jul;26(7):1146. PMID: 26552008; PMCID: PMC4797993.

Menachery VD, Yount BL Jr, Sims AC, Debbink K, Agnihothram SS, Gralinski LE, Graham RL, Scobey T, Plante JA, Royal SR, Swanstrom J, Sheahan TP, Pickles RJ, Corti D, Randell SH, Lanzavecchia A, Marasco WA, Baric RS. SARS-like WIV1-CoV poised for human emergence. Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. 2016 Mar 15;113(11):3048-53. doi: 10.1073/pnas.1517719113. Epub 2016 Mar 14. PMID: 26976607; PMCID: PMC4801244.

Aquino-Jarquin G. The patent dispute over the breakthrough mRNA technology. Front Bioeng Biotechnol. 2022 Nov 3;10:1049873. doi: 10.3389/fbioe.2022.1049873. PMID: 36406223; PMCID: PMC9669595.

March 24, 2023 Posted by | Corruption, Deception | , | 1 Comment

Covid, imaginary pandemic of the brainwashed

By James Delingpole | TCW Defending Freedom | March 24, 2023

Tell me about your personal experiences of Covid 19. Actually, wait, don’t. I think I may have heard it already, about a million times. You lost all sense of smell or taste – and just how weird was that? It floored you for days. It gave you a funny dry cough, the dryness and ticklishness of which was unprecedented in your entire coughing career. You’ve had flu a couple of times and, boy, when you’ve got real flu do you know it. But this definitely wasn’t flu. It was so completely different from anything you’ve ever known, why you wouldn’t be surprised to learn that it had been bioengineered in a lab with all manner of spike proteins and gain-of-function additives, perhaps even up to and including fragments of the Aids virus . . .

Yeah, right. Forgive me for treading on the sacred, personal domain of your lived experience. But might I cautiously suggest that none of what you went through necessarily validates lab-leak theory. Rather what it may demonstrate is the power of susceptibility, brainwashing and an overactive imagination. You lived – we all did – through a two-year period in which health-suffering anecdotes became valuable currency. Whereas in the years before the ‘pandemic’, no one had been much interested in the gory details of your nasty cold, suddenly everyone wanted to compare notes to see whether they’d had it as bad as you – or, preferably, for the sake of oneupmanship, even worse. This in turn created a self-reinforcing mechanism of Covid panic escalation: the more everyone talked about it, the more inconvertible the ‘pandemic’ became.

Meanwhile, in the real world, hard evidence – as opposed to anecdotal evidence – for this ‘pandemic’ remained stubbornly non-existent. The clincher for me was a landmark article published in January 2021 by Simon Elmer at his website Architects For Social Housing. It was titled ‘Lies, Damned Lies and Statistics: Manufacturing the Crisis’.

In it Elmer asked the question every journalist should have asked but which almost none did: is this ‘pandemic’ really as serious as all the experts, and government ministers and media outlets and medics are telling us it is? The answer was a very obvious No. As the Office for National Statistics data cited by Elmer clearly showed, 2020 – Year Zero for supposedly the biggest public health threat since ‘Spanish Flu’ a century earlier – was one of the milder years for death in the lives of most people.

Let’s be clear about this point, because something you often hear people on the sceptical side of the argument say is, ‘Of course, no one is suggesting that Covid didn’t cause a horrific number of deaths.’ But that’s exactly what they should be suggesting: because it’s true. Elmer was quoting the Age Standardised Mortality statistics for England and Wales dating back to 1941. What these show is that in every year up to and including 2008, more people died per head of population than in the deadly Covid outbreak year of 2020. Of the previous 79 years, 2020 had the 12th lowest mortality rate.

Covid, in other words, was a pandemic of the imagination, of anecdote, of emotion rather than of measured ill-health and death. Yet even now, when I draw someone’s attention to that ONS data, I find that the most common response I get is one of denial. That is, when presented with the clearest, most untainted (this was before ONS got politicised and began cooking the books), impossible-to-refute evidence that there was NO Covid pandemic in 2020, most people, even intelligent ones, still choose to go with their feelings rather with the hard data.

This natural tendency many of us have to choose emotive narratives over cool evidence makes us ripe for exploitation by the cynical and unscrupulous. We saw this during the pandemic when the majority fell for the exciting but mendacious story that they were living through a new Great Plague, and that only by observing bizarre rituals – putting strips of cloth over one’s face, dancing round one another in supermarkets, injecting unknown substances into one’s body – could one hope to save oneself and granny. And we’re seeing it now, in a slightly different variant, in which lots of people – even many who ought to know better – are falling for some similarly thrilling but erroneous nonsense about lab-leaked viruses.

It’s such a sexy story that I fell for it myself. In those early days when all the papers were still dutifully trotting out World Health Organisation-approved propaganda about pangolins and bats and the apparently notorious wet market (whatever the hell that is) in Wuhan, I was already well ahead of the game. I knew, I just knew, as all the edgy, fearless seekers of truth did that it was a lab leak wot done it. If you knew where to dig, there was a clear evidence trail to support it.

We edgy, fearless truth seekers knew all the names and facts. Dodgy Peter Daszak of the EcoHealth Alliance was in it up to the neck; so too, obviously, was the loathsomely chipper and smugly deceitful Anthony Fauci. We knew that all this crazy, Frankenvirus research had initially been conducted in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, but had been outsourced to China after President Obama changed the regulations and it became too much of a hot potato for US-based labs. And let’s not forget Ukraine – all those secret bio-research labs run on behalf of the US Deep State, but then exposed as the Russians unhelpfully overran territory such as Mariupol.

And it all made perfect sense because it accorded with everything else we knew about the ‘pandemic’: that it was planned, orchestrated and manipulated at a high level by some of the most devious and evil people on the planet. Also, lots of our fellow sceptics and anti-lockdown, anti-vaccine crusaders in the fields of vaccinology and epidemiology confirmed that this was so, with all manner of abstruse technical detail which we absorbed and became almost-expert on. We learned such terms as ‘gain of function’, ‘cytokine storm’, ‘spike protein’, ‘viral load’ and ‘shedding’. Why, we almost became virologists ourselves!

So why do I no longer believe in lab leak theory? Why do I now share the suspicions of Mike Yeadon that there never was a Covid virus? Well, for me the most obvious clue is that the lab-leak theory is currently being pushed heavily by the very same mainstream media which has been lying to us relentlessly about mask efficacy, vaccine safety, Net Zero, climate change, Ukraine, CBDCs, 15 Minute Cities and the now very obvious threat posed by the New World Order. Sure, it’s theoretically possible that they might suddenly have alighted on a topic where they are not going to push the nefarious agenda of their sinister paymasters. But if they did it would be a first.

Like Patrick Henningsen – more details on our recent podcast – I take the view that if lab-leak is now the officially endorsed conspiracy theory of the US government then we should all be suspicious that there is an underlying agenda. Promoting lab-leak serves a number of purposes: it distracts from the more pressing issue of vaccine injury; it promotes the notion that the world is potentially swarming with rogue, bio-engineered viruses which require urgent defensive measures by supranational bodies such as the World Health Organisation, including compulsory vaccination against new viral strains; it fingers China as an even bigger enemy than it really is, justifying higher defence spending, escalated economic warfare and potential military action, and it creates further division within the sceptical community.

I notice plenty of evidence of the latter in the comments section below Mike Yeadon’s latest piece at TCW, headlined ‘Why I don’t believe there ever was a Covid virus’. Commenters who were previously united in the – correct – view that the ‘pandemic’ was a massive scam and that the ‘vaccines’ are a monstrous and unnecessary assault on public health are now bickering furiously over whether or not they believe in the Covid virus or in viruses generally.

Most of those defending the existence of the Covid virus do so on the basis of the personal health experiences I invoked at the beginning. I’m not disputing that they may have felt all the exotic and unpleasant symptoms they describe, nor even that these were quite unlike any they had had before. What I am questioning is the logical leap which leads them all to infer that these were definitely the result of a novel virus. How could they possibly know? There are any number of other potential causes for these symptoms: radiation or chemical poisoning; the effects of 5G; a fairly routine brand of flu rebadged as Covid – and escalated in their imagination through groupthink into something much worse; terrain theory . . .

I remain open-minded on the cause of those symptoms, as I do on ‘virus theory’ versus ‘terrain theory’, or whether maybe it’s a mixture of both. But it seems evident to me that certain facts about the supposed pandemic of 2020 are now beyond dispute: it was a ‘pandemic’ only because the WHO changed its definition of the word; mortality rates were not above normal; the PCR tests were fraudulent; SARS-CoV-2 has never been isolated; the pandemic was wargamed in 2019 at Event 201, and heavily promoted by vested interests (most funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation) in the media, academe, the bio-medical establishment and client governments. Given the scale of the dishonesty surrounding this fake crisis, it would hardly constitute an extravagant leap to infer that the ‘virus’, like everything else, was just another fabricated part of the psyop.

And you don’t need to plump fully for terrain theory for this to be the case. Nor are you required to believe that China is a force for integrity and goodness, nor that Fauci and Daszak are stand-up guys, nor that there aren’t lots of black-budget-funded labs experimenting with pathogens. All you need to do is accept that the weight of evidence thus far shows that Mike Yeadon, and brave souls like him, are justified in their scepticism about the existence of a novel, possibly man-made virus called SARS-CoV-2. And the fact that in 2020 you had a nasty dose of flu-like symptoms is really neither here nor there.

March 24, 2023 Posted by | Deception, Science and Pseudo-Science, Timeless or most popular | , | 1 Comment

US asks Serbs to ‘set aside’ grievances over bombings

Serbs protesting the EU plan for independence of the breakaway province of Kosovo carry a sign that says ‘Never NATO,’ March 2023. © Sputnik / Aleksandar Jorovich
RT | March 24, 2023

In a carefully worded statement to the public on Friday, US ambassador in Belgrade Christopher Hill commented on the 78-day bombing campaign against Yugoslavia by calling on the Serbs to build a “better future” together with Washington.

“I offer my personal condolences to the families of those who lost their lives during the wars of the 1990s, including as a result of the NATO air campaign,” Hill said in a series of tweets.

“I know that the Serbian people will never forget that terrible time, nor should they,” he added. “The Serbian people will never set aside their grief, but I believe they are strong enough to set aside their grievances.”

The US has an “unwavering” commitment to diplomacy and “partnership” with Serbia, Hill claimed. “Together, we can build the better future the Serbian people deserve and want for future generations.”

His comments came on the anniversary of ‘Operation Allied Force’, the air war launched by the US-led bloc on behalf of ethnic Albanian insurgents in Kosovo. Against the UN Security Council Resolution 1244 that ended the war, the US-backed Kosovo provisional government declared independence in 2008.

As the immediate pretext for the bombing, NATO had cited Belgrade’s rejection of the ultimatum presented by then-US Secretary of State Madeleine Albright at Rambouillet, including a deployment of NATO troops in Kosovo and independence of the breakaway province within three years. Annex B of the proposal also demanded unrestricted access of NATO forces to all of Yugoslavia – present-day Serbia and Montenegro – which the government in Belgrade could not accept.

Hill was present in Rambouillet, and in what seemed to be a nod to that episode, he claimed in his statement that he had learned during his long career that “sometimes diplomacy fails. When it does, the results can be tragic.”

According to official casualty figures by the Serbian government, the 1999 war resulted in the deaths of 1,031 soldiers and police officers, as well as 2,500 civilians – including 89 children. On Friday, Russian Ambassador Aleksandr Botsan-Kharchenko laid a wreath at the children’s memorial in Belgrade.

March 24, 2023 Posted by | Aletho News | , | 3 Comments

No Guilt, No Shame: Western Leaders’ Excuses for NATO Bombing of Yugoslavia

Sputnik – March 24, 2023

Air attacks by NATO forces on Yugoslavia began this day 24 years ago. Between 1,200 and 2,500 people died within two months, and many more saw their lives crumbling into pieces when the US-led coalition unleashed war and destruction in the midst of Europe.

The decision to bomb Yugoslavia was made without the approval of the UN Security Council, and the order was issued to the commander of the allied forces, US General Wesley Clark, by NATO Secretary General Javier Solana.

Politicians, generals, and journalists from Europe and America engaged in an abominable competition, trying to justify the massacre and sugar-coat the violation of international laws.

The claims of the then-leaders of Western countries are displayed in this Sputnik gallery – alongside the results of the alliance’s brutal operation.

March 24, 2023 Posted by | Militarism, Timeless or most popular, War Crimes | , | 1 Comment

Tyranny on the waters: The UAE-Israeli occupation of Yemen’s Socotra Island

By Karim Shami | The Cradle | March 24, 2023

Located off the southern coast of Yemen in the Arabian Sea, the Socotra archipelago has become a focal point of regional and international interest because of its strategic proximity to one of the world’s busiest shipping lanes.

On 21 June, 2020, the Yemeni island was militarily occupied by Saudi Arabia’s Emirati coalition partner, which has aggressively pursued a policy of establishing and controlling ports throughout West Asia and the Horn of Africa since 1999.

The archipelago consists of four large islands: Socotra (3,796km2), Abd al-Kuri (130.2km2), Samhah (39.6km2), and Darsah (7.5km2), as well as three small islets.

Socotra, the biggest of the islands, lies 350 km south of the Arabian Peninsula and 95 km from Somalia. It is surrounded by the Gulf of Aden, the Indian Ocean, and the Arabian Sea, and faces the Horn of Africa from the west. Around 20,000 shipping vessels pass around Socotra each year, including 9 percent of the world’s annual global petroleum supply.

The War on Yemen

The assault on Yemen was launched on 26 March, 2015, in an announcement by Saudi Ambassador Adel al-Jubeir from Washington DC, in which he stated that a coalition of ten countries, led by Saudi Arabia and the UAE, would take military action to reinstate the government of Yemeni President Abdrabbuh Mansour Hadi.

Hadi had been ousted in popular protests in 2014, after losing the capital city, Sanaa, to the joint forces of the Ansarallah movement and their allies in the country’s armed forces. Based in northern Yemen, the Ansarallah movement had been advocating for fair representation in the government for a long time.

With US-backing, Saudi Arabia launched “Operation Decisive Storm,” and the air strikes began. Initially expected to last only a few weeks or months – and according to MbS himself, just “a few days” – the Yemeni war has now entered its eighth year and taken on a markedly different shape than the coalition initially contended.

Two years into the war, the Emiratis began pursuing their own hidden agenda of establishing a “self-styled maritime empire” in Yemen, which veered sharply from Riyadh’s objectives. To achieve this goal, Abu Dhabi sought to control the country’s southern coastline and its ports and enlisted the help of a local Yemeni proxy called the Southern Movement.

The Southern Movement was formed by secessionist tribes and groups seeking to divide Yemen along the old partition lines of 1967–1990. However, the movement had to be restructured to match the UAE’s aspirations, and in 2017 it was transformed into the Southern Transitional Council (STC).

Map of the Emirati-controlled areas and ports in southern Yemen

The significance of Socotra

Socotra Island falls under the territorial jurisdiction of the exiled Hadi government, which to this day – despite his physical absence and the replacement of the “presidency” with an 8-member, Saudi-sponsored Presidential Leadership Council (PLC) – remains Yemen’s internationally-recognized government.

However, on 30 April, 2018, the UAE deployed hundreds of troops with artillery and armored vehicles on the island, which is located 350 km away from the mainland conflict, without any prior coordination with Yemeni authorities.

The Riyadh-backed Yemeni government condemned the Emirati aggression, backed by local islanders protesting against the occupation of their territory. The Saudis were forced to intervene by sending troops and training locals to deter the UAE from seizing the island.

But later that year, UAE General Khalfan al-Mazrouei arrived on Socotra Island and has since been considered its de facto ruler. Under his leadership, the Emiratis gained the loyalty of local tribes by using bribery under the guise of “humanitarian aid.” They offered Socotra residents UAE passports and promised them an improved quality of life.

The STC seizes Socotra

On the morning of 21 June, 2020, the UAE-backed STC separatists forcibly seized control of Socotra and ousted the Saudi-backed, pro-Hadi forces.

The UAE had been planning and preparing for this operation for two years, using its Yemeni proxies to gain full control over the Socotra archipelago. The Emirati flag was raised across the territory, and UAE telecommunication companies replaced Yemeni ones. Consequently, all phone calls from Socotra now register Emirati phone networks.

UAE-Israel normalization

Three months after the seizure of Socotra, the highly-controversial Abraham Accords was signed in Washington DC between Israel and the UAE, along with Bahrain, Morocco, and Sudan. On the Arab side, the normalization thrust was led by Abu Dhabi, which quickly moved to expand its diplomatic, military, and economic ties with Tel Aviv.

Shortly after the signing of the Abraham Accords, reports and images of Israeli “tourists” visiting Socotra began to emerge. According to an Al-Mayadeen report, however, the Israeli visitors were not tourists, but rather, military experts.

Abd al-Kuri Island

In February 2023, Ansarallah released a statement condemning the UAE’s eviction of residents from Abd al-Kuri, the archipelago’s second-largest island. The resistance movement accused Abu Dhabi of carrying out a long-planned operation to transform Socotra into an Israeli-Emirati military and intelligence hub.

These actions by the UAE are not isolated incidents. In another 2022 episode, Ansarallah accused Abu Dhabi of transferring fishermen from the small island of Perim (13 km2) to other parts of the Taiz Governorate. Several months later, satellite imagery revealed the construction of a military base runway on the volcanic Island. Perim is now empty of its original inhabitants, according to media reports.

An Emirati military base on Perim Island (Mayyun in Arabic) on the Bab al-Mandab Strait

Perim Island has historically divided the Bab al-Mandab Strait into two waterways – whoever controls the island holds strategic influence over the strait. While Ansarallah’s statement about Emirati designs on Socotra was not entirely new, it raised hackles throughout the Arab world by confirming Israel’s military and intelligence presence on this key Yemeni island.

The UAE’s maritime ambitions

Many have questioned Abu Dhabi’s motivation for seizing Socotra and risking its relationships with Saudi Arabia and neighboring Oman (virtually overnight surrounded by UAE ports and bases). The UAE’s actions may be entirely attributed to the strategic vision of its President Mohammed bin Zayed (MbZ) and his no-longer secret desire to establish an Emirati maritime empire –from the Persian Gulf to the Red Sea – by controlling the region’s key waterways.

The UAE’s economic reliance on these waterways is a clear driver of MbZ’s plans: non-petroleum commodity re-exports make up almost half of Abu Dhabi’s total exports. As such, maritime security is a top priority in the country’s foreign policy calculations.

The UAE currently controls 12 ports off the coast of Yemen, including Aden, Makha, Mukalla, Al-Dabba, Bir Ali, Belhaf, Rudum, Zoubab, Al-Khawkhah, Al-Khouba, Qena, and Al-Nashima. The country is also building a new port in Al-Mahra that will cost an estimated $100 million.

By controlling these ports and the Bab al-Mandab Strait, the UAE can dominate one of the busiest shipping lanes in the world, elevating its position in global and regional trade to a strategic player.

In addition to its aggressive accumulation of Yemeni ports, the UAE also has a significant presence in the Horn of Africa, where it currently controls two ports in Eritrea and one in Somalia. It previously owned a port in Djibouti, but this became a point of territorial friction between the two countries. The UAE’s control over these ports and their strategic location in the region allow it to project its power and expand its influence in East Africa.

Why is Socotra important to Israel?

The UAE and Israel share mutual security concerns over Iran’s regional ascension over the past decade. The Islamic Republic’s naval presence is expanding into many new waterways, and its seaborne activities from the Persian Gulf to the Red Sea alarm both nations. Given Washington’s growing reluctance to engage its armed forces in West Asia, MbZ turned to the region’s military behemoth and main Iranian rival to help him execute his vision. Unlike Israel, no other regional state has the ability to garner unconditional US support – nor the willingness to cavalierly defy international law and territorial integrity.

Abu Dhabi has calculated that it stands to benefit from Israel’s intelligence network and early warning systems, particularly after its cities were subject to unprecedented Ansarallah missile and drone strikes in January 2022.

For Tel Aviv, its physical presence in any Arab state is perceived as a victory, which aligns with its ambitions for regional expansion. By establishing a base on Abd al-Kuri Island, Israel can reinforce its maritime security – around 25 percent of its trade passes through the Bab al-Mandab Strait. Another objective of the Israeli-Emirati military and intelligence hub could be to gather data or engage in espionage activities in the southern Arabian Peninsula and the Horn of Africa.

During the 1973 Arab-Israeli war, Yemen – in partnership with Egypt – blocked the passage of Israeli ships and tankers from accessing the strategic strait, leading to disastrous consequences for Israel.

The tactic could be replicated under Ansarallah Chief Abdel Malak al-Houthi’s leadership, since the movement considers Israel one of its main regional adversaries. While it may seem like a distant possibility, if the war concludes under current Riyadh-Sanaa peace efforts and Ansarallah gains control of Yemen’s south, the movement will enjoy unusual leverage to obstruct Israeli shipments whenever Tel Aviv launches regional aggressions. It should be noted that Ansarallah has already publicly threatened, on several occasions, to strike sensitive Israeli sites with its new missile capabilities.

Moreover, there has been an ongoing “ghost ship war” between Israel and Iran for several years, with occasional reports of Iranian or Israeli ships being attacked in these waterways. Israel’s presence on Socotra Island could provide it with leverage over Iran in their waterway stand-off and enable Tel Aviv to counter Ansarallah inside Yemeni territory.

NATO’s Combined Maritime Forces

It is important to note that the involvement of the US in the Israeli-Emirati collaboration and actions in Yemeni waters is not confirmed. However, it is true that the US has been a maritime security provider for the Persian Gulf monarchies for decades, and its NATO-led Combined Maritime Forces (CMF) have been present in West Asian waters since 1983 – including leading hostile actions against Iraq and Somalia.

The CMF alliance has assumed responsibility for the security of four bodies of water: The Red Sea, Persian Gulf, Arabian Sea, and the Gulf of Aden.

But with China’s rapid rise as a global economic competitor, US policy pivoted further eastward, and Washington has sought to subcontract out its West Asian security policies to its regional allies.

As such, last December, the CMF assigned command of its Red Sea task force to the Egyptian Navy, who took over from US naval forces. In this regard, the UAE, backed by Israel, may be another candidate to lead a NATO-backed naval security operation in the region.

Map of the NATO-led Combined Maritime Forces (CMF) areas of operation in West Asian waterways

Implications for Iran and Saudi Arabia

Any Israeli expansion is likely to alarm Iran and vice versa, potentially leading to direct or proxy clashes in various regional theaters. However, the presence of the UAE – Iran’s second-largest trading partner – in southern Yemen may limit Tehran’s options. Unless Iran perceives a serious security threat from the new “Arab-Israeli alliance,” it is unlikely to take any significant actions that could harm its trade relations with Abu Dhabi.

The war against Yemen has severely damaged Saudi Arabia’s image as a regional powerhouse. During the last few years, all major Saudi cities have been the subject of Ansarallah missile and drone strikes – including the country’s key oil infrastructure.

It has been humiliating for the Persian Gulf’s wealthiest and most heavily militarized state to have its vulnerabilities so completely exposed by West Asia’s poorest nation. In contrast, the UAE has thus far only benefited from the Yemen war and expanded its influence in the region.

Recently, there have been reports of a possible breakthrough in negotiations between Riyadh and Ansarallah, and observers are hoping for an early roadmap to end the conflict during the holy month of Ramadan. Obstacles are aplenty: The UAE is notably absent from the discussions, the Emirati-backed Yemeni separatists – the STC – reject any solution that doesn’t leave them in control of the south, and the US has sought to scuttle any final solution that undermines Washington’s regional leverage.

Liberating the island

Of all the stakeholders with interest in Socotra Island, none are ultimately as important as the Yemeni ones, primarily the UAE-backed STC, the Saudi-backed PLC, and Iran-backed Ansarallah.

In his most recent televised appearance, Ansarallah’s Abdel Malik al-Houthi stated: “We seek to defeat the aggression, whether on the islands, on land or at sea, and from anyone who violates our independence and the sovereignty of our country.” Unlike other leaders, al-Houthi’s threats are usually translated into action and Ansarallah will not hesitate to strike the Israeli-Emirati bases or seize their ships if the aggression continues.

Ansarallah is currently the strongest player in Yemen, controlling more than 80 percent of the country in terms of population density. On the other hand, the PLC is the most vulnerable of the three main Yemeni players, and Riyadh’s recent rapprochement agreement with Tehran has further weakened the group. If an agreement is reached between Riyadh and Sanaa, the PLC will have one of two options: to hand over their weapons or merge into Ansarallah’s armed forces.

On the other side of the spectrum, the UAE-backed STC is worried about ongoing peace talks and fears being left alone to fight head-to-head with Ansarallah-aligned armed forces.

The question now is whether there will be a peace deal between Saudi Arabia and Ansarallah that excludes the UAE and its Yemeni proxies. If that happens, Sanaa’s armed forces will almost certainly turn their big guns on the Emiratis and their Yemeni interests. The Saudis will have already calculated this outcome as they seek to advance a deal with Ansarallah. In this event, it is unlikely that Riyadh will come to Abu Dhabi’s assistance. Their common goals in Yemen ended years ago.

March 24, 2023 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Illegal Occupation, Timeless or most popular | , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Washington used 300 tons of depleted uranium in Iraq: Moscow

Children who were born with birth defects in Fallujah. (Photo Credit: Getty Images)
The Cradle | March 24, 2023

The Commander of the Russian army’s Radiological, Chemical, and Biological Protection Forces, Igor Kirillov, on 24 March accused the US of using “no less than 300 tons of depleted uranium” during the early years of the Iraq war.

“In 2003-2004, the USA extensively used such munitions in strikes on targets in Iraqi cities: Amarah, Baghdad, Basra, Karbala, Fallujah. According to the UN, the US used no less than 300 tons of depleted uranium in Iraq,” Kirillov told reporters on 24 March.

He added that the resulting radioactive fallout in Fallujah alone was “worse than what happened in Hiroshima and Nagasaki.”

“This city is still called the second Chernobyl,” the Russian official stressed.

A 2018 investigation by Al Araby shows Iraq recorded the highest rate of congenital malformations in the world over the previous decade. These rates were worse in Fallujah, which was showered in depleted uranium and white phosphorus by US coalition forces.

“According to the Iraqi government, in 2005, the incidence of cancer in the country due to the use of depleted uranium munitions increased from 40 to 1,600 cases per 100,000 citizens. In this regard, Baghdad filed an official lawsuit with the International Court of Arbitration in Stockholm on December 26, 2020, against Washington, claiming compensation for the damages sustained,” Kirillov added.

In 2014,  the Dutch peace group Pax revealed that US jets and tanks fired nearly 10,000 depleted uranium rounds in Iraq, many of which were fired in or near populated areas.

The Kremlin official made his statement on Friday in response to the UK government saying earlier this week they will provide Ukraine with armor-piercing rounds containing depleted uranium.

Depleted uranium is a byproduct of creating enriched uranium used in nuclear fuel and weapons. Although it can not generate a nuclear reaction, depleted uranium is higher in density than lead, making it highly attractive as a projectile.

“It’s so dense, and it’s got so much momentum that it just keeps going through the armor – and it heats it up so much that it catches on fire,” Edward Geist, a nuclear expert at research organization RAND, told Al Jazeera on Thursday.

US officials backed London’s decision, claiming the ammunition is “not anywhere close to going into” the sphere of nuclear weaponry.

“This is a commonplace type of munition … If Russia is particularly concerned about the welfare of their tanks and their tank soldiers … they could just take them across the border back into Russia,” White House National Security Council spokesman John Kirby said.

The UN Environment Program described depleted uranium ammunition as “chemically and radiologically toxic heavy metal.” A 2001 World Health Organization (WHO) report concluded that depleted uranium could accumulate at the ground surface and enter the food chain, while uranium dust can be inhaled and retained in the lungs.

London’s plan to send the radioactive arms to Ukraine came to light as the twentieth anniversary of the Iraq invasion passed. Last December, the US navy named a next-generation warship the ‘USS Fallujah.’

March 24, 2023 Posted by | Timeless or most popular, War Crimes | , | Leave a comment

US attack on Syrian army leaves several dead, occupation base bombed in response

The Cradle | March 24, 2023

The US occupation base in northeastern Syria’s Al-Omar oilfield was attacked with rockets on 24 March, just hours after the US army bombed several locations in the eastern city of Deir Ezzor on Thursday night.

The US bombing was in response to a drone strike on its base in northeastern Hasakah’s Kharab al-Jir military airport, which killed a US contractor and injured several others, CENTCOM said in a statement on Friday.

“This evening, we responded to an attack on our forces that killed an American contractor and wounded our troops and another American contractor by striking facilities used by groups affiliated with Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps,” CENTCOM said.

“We will always take all necessary measures to defend our people and always respond … We are postured for scalable options in the face of any additional Iranian attacks,” it added.

According to the London-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR), eleven ‘Iranian-backed militiamen’ were killed in the US strikes. SOHR claims that six were killed in strikes on a weapons depot in Deir Ezzor’s Harabish neighborhood, three were killed in strikes on the Al-Bukamal desert, while two were killed by strikes on the southern outskirts of Al-Mayadin town.

SOHR adds that among the wounded are serious injuries, and the death toll is expected to rise.

“Among the dead are two of Syrian nationality,” SOHR says. However, Iranian news outlet Press TV alleged that no Iranians were killed in the strike. Press TV cited local sources as saying that the strike on the Harabish neighborhood was against a rural development and grain center, not a weapons depot, adding that those who were killed were Syrian military forces.

US strikes have targeted and killed Syrian Arab Army (SAA) soldiers several times in the past, including in April 2018 after an alleged chemical attack in Douma that was attributed to the Syrian government.

The last US strike on alleged Iranian targets in Syria took place in 2022 and left a number of Syrian soldiers dead.

The US military occupation in Syria is illegal under international law and constitutes a clear violation of the country’s sovereignty.

As a result of this occupation, as well as the US army’s continuous looting of Syrian natural resources, attacks against Washington’s military bases in Syria have become regular occurrences.

Despite this, the US has shown no intent to end its presence in the country. At the start of the month, a US general illegally visiting Syria referred to the occupation as ‘worth the risk.’

March 24, 2023 Posted by | Illegal Occupation | , | 4 Comments

Uranium Shells to Cause Irreversible Harm to Health of Ukrainians, Russian MoD Says

Sputnik – 24.03.2023

MOSCOW – The use of uranium ammunition will cause irreversible harm to the health of the military and civilian population of Ukraine, but NATO is ready to supply them to Kiev, Lt. Gen. Igor Kirillov, the head of the radiation, chemical and biological defense troops of the Russian armed forces, said on Friday.

“Despite the fact that the use of such ammunition [with depleted uranium] will cause irreparable harm to the health of the Armed Forces of Ukraine and the civilian population, NATO countries, in particular the UK, express their readiness to supply this type of weapon to the Kiev regime,” Kirillov told a briefing.

Depleted uranium compounds, remaining in the soil after its use as part of projectiles, may be dangerous for people, animals and the environment for a long time, the official added.

After the use of shells with depleted uranium on the territory of Ukraine, significant cultivation areas will be contaminated — through vehicles, radioactive substances will be carried to the territory outside the combat zone, he said.

Lt. Gen. added that use of depleted uranium shells can provoke serious diseases, and the ingestion of dust into the body is a radiation hazard.

“As a result of the impact of a depleted uranium munition, a mobile hot cloud of a finely dispersed aerosol of uranium-238 and its oxides is formed, which, when exposed to the body in the future, can provoke the development of serious diseases,” Kirillov said.

The main radiation hazard from depleted uranium occurs if it enters the body in the form of dust, the official added.

“The flux of alpha-radiation from small uranium particles deposited in the upper and lower respiratory tract, lungs and esophagus cause the development of malignant tumors. Uranium dust accumulating in the kidneys, bone tissue and liver leads to changes in internal organs,” Lt. Gen. explained.

NATO fired about 40,000 shells with more than 15 tons of depleted uranium during the 1999 bombing of Yugoslavia, Kirillov recalled.

“It is necessary to recall that depleted uranium aircraft munitions were used by NATO forces during the bombing of Yugoslavia in 1999. In total, about 40,000 armor-piercing air shells with a total amount of depleted uranium of more than 15 tons were used on the territory of this country,” Kirillov told reporters.

The level of uranium contamination of soil and groundwater in Serbia still requires constant monitoring to assess potential risks, the official added.

NATO soldiers have become victims of the use of depleted uranium ammunition in Iraq and Yugoslavia, he stressed.

“The victims of the irresponsible policy of their own leadership were NATO servicemen who took part in military campaigns in Iraq and Yugoslavia,” Kirillov told a briefing.

According to a 2016 report by the Chief Military Medical Inspector of Italy, it is reported that more than 4,000 servicemen of the national armed forces had malignant tumors of various types. These soldiers were deployed in the Balkans in 1994-1999 and in Iraq in 2003 in areas where the alliance forces used depleted uranium ammunition. At the same time, 330 people — 8% of cases — died as a result of the disease, official concluded.

Meanwhile, Kirillov stressed the fact that depleted uranium shells do not have significant advantage over tungsten shells in conditions of modern military operations.
“The use of ammunition containing depleted uranium has no significant advantage over tungsten in the conditions of modern military operations,” he told.

The term depleted uranium is a trivial name for a metal based on over 90% of the isotopes of uranium-238 and less than 1% of uranium-235, the official said.

“The use of depleted uranium in such ammunition is associated with its high density, which ensures a high armor-piercing effect. This effect is achieved by using the kinetic energy of the core itself, as well as its shell. Upon impact with the armor, the shell made of soft steel is destroyed and transfers its energy to the core, which penetrates into the armor,” Kirillov explained.

According to the military, tungsten alloys have similar characteristics, but ammunition based on them is much more expensive to manufacture. Therefore, depleted uranium ammunition is much more often used in those countries where there are uranium reserves, its processing technology, and their use is planned on foreign territory when there is no need to think about environmental consequences.

March 24, 2023 Posted by | Timeless or most popular, War Crimes | , , , , | Leave a comment

US to relocate its warplanes to intimidate Moscow and Beijing

By Lucas Leiroz | March 24, 2023

US weapons abroad are being relocated in line with Washington’s new strategic priorities. According to recent reports, the US will send old and outdated attack aircraft to the Middle East, replacing the modern and advanced aircraft that are currently stationed in the region. The goal is to transfer the most efficient military equipment to Europe and the Pacific, where it can eventually be used against Russian and Chinese forces – which are currently the main concerns for the US government.

The data was shared in an article published by the Wall Street Journal (WSJ) on March 21. According to information obtained by the authors, there is a plan to redistribute the planes in April. It is planned that aircraft of the type A-10, an older and less efficient model, will be sent to American bases in the Middle East. WSJ sources inform that the Pentagon considers such planes to be strong enough to protect US interests in the Middle East, therefore there is no need for more modern and equipped jets.

“The imperative is to get the most suitable aircraft to the Pacific for the higher threat challenges (…) The A-10 is still relevant to the mission CENTCOM (United States Central Command) flies over the Middle East”, Larry Stutzriem, a retired Air Force major general, told WSJ.

There is still a lack of official and more concrete information on the subject, but, in fact, this move was already expected. The Middle East is no longer part of the focus of attention in American foreign policy today. In the midst of a proxy war with Russia and the imminent emergence of a conflict with China in Taiwan, it is expected that more and more modern war equipment will be transported to regions close to Russian and Chinese territories.

According to the most recent issue of the National Defense Review, published by the Pentagon last year, China would be a kind of “pacing threat.” This means that the US sees China as a danger, but at the same time considers the threat “under control” – suggesting that Beijing is being closely “monitored”. Also, in recent speeches, US Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin repeatedly corroborated this thesis, emphasizing the “Chinese threat”.

Regarding Russia, a country that is already the victim of American aggression – through the Ukrainian neo-Nazi proxies -, the same document states that Moscow would be an “acute threat”. This means that the rivalry between the countries would be something far beyond the mere collision of strategic interests, being also related to an antagonism of values. This would “justify” exceptional measures in search of increasing American military capacity against Russia.

For these reasons, it is likely that the next few months will see a wide redeployment of forces by the Pentagon. All sorts of modern, sophisticated, and efficient weapons may be located as close as possible to Russian and Chinese borders. Some sources claim that F-35 fighters are about to be sent on a large scale to Europe and the Pacific. This happens, of course, in addition to the official and regular arms supply that already takes place with the enemy states of Russia and China. So, a new wave of militarization is starting, and certainly will not end anytime soon.

Obviously, this wave will not end US military campaigns in the Middle East – nor in other regions where Washington maintains troops. There is a concern on the part of the US to avoid the loss of territories that are already under its military domain. After victory of the Taliban in Kabul, the image of the American Army among global public opinion was strongly shaken. And given the imminent defeat of pro-NATO forces in Ukraine, there is concern on the part of the Pentagon that anti-US rebellions will arise around the world, demanding an end to territorial occupation or the handover of military bases to local governments. For this reason, certainly these moves are calculated in a very careful way. It means that, in the face of the emergence of possible new conflict situations, more redistributions of weapons may be made, always in accordance with the updates of American strategic interests.

On the other hand, with these mobilizations becoming clear, the tendency is for Russia and China to prepare themselves for an eventual situation of open conflict. More than that, the greater the American pressure, the more the two countries tend to deepen their bilateral cooperation, which may adopt clearer military contours soon. And given the many reports of problems with the US defense industry and cases of corruption and financial speculation in the military-industrial complex, there are many doubts about the US capacity to face the integrated Russian-Chinese alliance.

Lucas Leiroz is a journalist, researcher at the Center for Geostrategic Studies, geopolitical consultant.

You can follow Lucas on Twitter and Telegram.

March 24, 2023 Posted by | Militarism, Russophobia | | 2 Comments

Seymour Hersh makes claim over reasons for Nord Stream sabotage

RT | March 24, 2023

US President Joe Biden ordered the sabotage of the Nord Stream pipelines because he was unhappy with the level of support provided by German Chancellor Olaf Scholz to Ukraine in its conflict with Russia, veteran investigative journalist Seymour Hersh has claimed.

Hersh first accused Washington of destroying the key European energy route in an article released in February, and made more allegations in an interview with the China Daily newspaper published on Friday.

“The [US] president was afraid of Chancellor Scholz not wanting to put more guns and more arms [forward for Kiev]. That’s all. I don’t know whether that it was anger or punishment, but the net effect is that it cut off a major power source through Western Europe,” Hersh claimed.

Despite attempts by the US to deny its involvement in the Nord Stream attack, “Europe is in crisis now” and Biden will receive “a lot of criticism for what he did” in the coming months, the journalist argued.

The Pulitzer Prize winner alleged that “the people that were initially asked to do the job” of destroying the pipelines were contacted by US National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan towards the end of 2021.

The initial purpose of mining Nord Stream 1 and 2, built to deliver Russian gas to Europe through Germany, was “to give the [US] president an option to say to [Russian] President Putin, ‘If you go to war [in Ukraine], we’re going to destroy the pipelines,’” Hersh claimed.

Biden himself publicly confirmed that stance but “unfortunately, those people in the Western press seemed to have forgotten,” the journalist stated.

Just under three weeks before the launch of Moscow’s military operation in Ukraine, Biden warned during a press conference on February 7 that “if Russia invades… there will no longer be a Nord Stream 2. We will bring an end to it.”

According to Hersh, the US leader decided to order the detonation of mines at the bottom of the Baltic Sea last September because the conflict “wasn’t going great in Ukraine” from a US perspective. There was “at best a stalemate” during that period, in what Hersh described as “the American war that President Biden was so eager to support.”

March 24, 2023 Posted by | Timeless or most popular, War Crimes | , , | 2 Comments

The US’ Rejection Of China’s Peace Plan For Ukraine Exposes Its Warmongering Intentions

By Andrew Korybko | March 24, 2023

Bloomberg cited an unnamed Biden Administration official on Thursday to report that “the US is worried about being backed into a corner over the Chinese proposal. Regardless of the US reservations, dismissing it outright could let China argue to other nations that are weary of the war — and of the economic damage it’s wreaking — that Washington isn’t interested in peace.” Alas, that’s precisely what America has done by acting as if China isn’t a serious mediator and that its peace plan is unrealistic.

By rejecting Beijing’s 12-step proposal, Washington exposed its warmongering intentions for the rest of the world to see and vindicated Moscow’s criticism that it wants to fight this proxy war “to the last Ukrainian”. The majority of the international community that resides in the Global South and which is most adversely affected by the systemic consequences of this conflict, particularly the food and fuel crises catalyzed by Western sanctions, had their perceptions of US soft power shattered once and for all.

Prior to the onset of Russia’s special operation last year that it was forced to commence in defense of its national security red lines in Ukraine after NATO clandestinely crossed them there, a significant share of folks in developing countries still generally had a favorable view of that declining unipolar hegemon. They might not have endorsed every one of its foreign policy moves, but these people still thought that its worldview had some redeeming factors that made it worthy of being listened to at the very least.

The allure of its soft power, particularly in the socio-cultural sphere as propagated by the mass media over the decades, still had a powerful hold over their hearts and minds. Now, however, these same people are directly suffering from the food and fuel crises catalyzed by the West’s unilateral sanctions. To make matters worse, the US signaled through its rejection of China’s peace plan for Ukraine that relief won’t be forthcoming, thus indefinitely perpetuating and thus exacerbating these problems.

It’s one thing for US-inclined folks in the Global South who’ve fallen under the sway of its soft power to oppose some part of its foreign policy regarding a faraway country and another entirely for that same foreign policy to directly affect them and their family. They might still enjoy consuming some of its socio-cultural products and perhaps still cling to believing in the so-called “American Dream” despite the odds of them ever benefiting from it, but their views of the US as a whole will certainly change.

This rapidly emerging outcome represents a latent crisis of the highest importance for the US’ grand strategic interests since the loss of such a critical mass of supporters will hamstring its goals across the Global South. These same people will be less susceptible to its information warfare products against their multipolar governments, thus reducing the chances that forthcoming Color Revolution plots will succeed, to say nothing of them tuning out the US’ fake news about the Sino-Russo Entente.

The combination of hunger pains and rising costs, which are the direct result of the food and fuel crises respectively that the US’ unilateral sanctions are responsible for, can turn anyone against anything even if they were previously the most fervent of believers. This is especially so when it worsens the living conditions of one’s own family, including their children. The arrogance of American policymakers, deluded by the supremacist belief in their system’s supposed “exceptionalism”, blinds them to this.

The aforesaid oversight, which could easily have been foreseen and thus avoided had groupthink not been in effect, is the proverbial straw that broke the camel’s back and turned the Global South against the US en masse. There’s now no credible possibility of America advancing its interests there by information warfare-driven attraction ever again, thus leading to it doubling down on subversion and force out of desperation instead of accepting the loss of its influence in those countries.

March 24, 2023 Posted by | Economics | , , , | Leave a comment

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