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Kremlin Spokesman Says Russia Never Deployed Heavy Weapons at Zaporozhye NPP

Samizdat – 13.12.2022

MOSCOW – Russian heavy weapons have never been and are not now deployed at the Zaporozhye nuclear power plant (ZNPP), Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said on Tuesday.

Earlier in the day, French President Emmanuel Macron said that the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) had achieved a “withdrawal of heavy and light weapons” from the ZNPP.

“I would like to remind you remarks by President [of Russia Vladimir] Putin that there have not been any and are no heavy weapons at the power plant itself, and representatives of the IAEA, who are present there day and night, can definitely confirm this,” Peskov told journalists.

Russia highly appreciates and continues talks with the IAEA on the security of the station, he added.

Director General of the IAEA Rafael Grossi said earlier in the day that work on ensuring safety and security of the ZNNP was in progress.

Located on the left bank of the Dnepr River, the ZNPP is the largest nuclear power plant in Europe by number of units and output. During the military operation in Ukraine launched by Russia on February 24, the station and surrounding area went under the control of the Russian forces and have since been shelled multiples times. Russia and Ukraine blame each other for the attacks.

Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova told Sputnik in early December that it was untimely to say that Russia and Ukraine were close to agreeing on the creation of a safety zone around the ZNPP, as it was unclear whether Kiev was ready to stop the shelling of the plant.

December 13, 2022 Posted by | Aletho News | , | Leave a comment

Moscow’s response to oil price cap revealed

RT | December 13, 2022

The Russian authorities have “generally agreed” on a response to a Western coalition’s price cap on the country’s seaborne oil that took effect last week, the newspaper Vedomosti reported on Tuesday.

Moscow will ban oil sales under contracts that specify a price cap, according to the report, which cites government sources. Also, exports will be banned to countries that demand the price cap as a condition in their supply contracts, or if their reference prices are fixed at the cap price level of $60 per barrel.

A decree describing the mechanism is currently being finalized by the president’s administration, sources said. It will take effect immediately upon being issued and will be valid until July 1, 2023, with the possibility of extension. On Monday, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said the decree would be announced “in the next few days.”

The document will also reportedly contain a clause that allows buyers to bypass the restrictions if granted government approval. The measures will not apply to contracts that were concluded prior to December 5, the date when the price cap took effect. One of the sources said the final draft of the decree might include a provision on the marginal discount for Russian oil relative to international grades.

The price cap was introduced by the EU, G7 countries and Australia on December 5. The mechanism prohibits Western companies from providing shipping, insurance, and other services to tankers carrying Russian oil, unless the cargo is bought at or below the price limit.

December 13, 2022 Posted by | Economics | , , , , , | Leave a comment

US anti-Russian war plans limit aid to Kiev

By Lucas Leiroz | December 13, 2022

There is no doubt among military experts that NATO is currently at war with Russia – just using Kiev as a proxy. However, the possibility of something even worse – a direct full-scale war – limits American participation in the current conflict. Internally, Washington’s political scenario is divided between parliamentarian warmongers, interested in taking assistance to Kiev to the ultimate consequences, and experienced, cautious military, interested in keeping the country’s internal stocks ready for any need.

According to a recent Foreign Policy article, US lawmakers are pressuring Pentagon’s officials to send more weapons to Ukraine. The objective would be to allocate the largest possible amount of combat equipment in Kiev, allowing the local forces to continue to face the Russians and possibly “win the war” – since, according to the narrative of the American media, Russia would be frightened and weakened, which obviously does not correspond to the reality of the battlefield.

Pentagon agents, however, act more rationally, avoiding strategic mistakes that could bring problems for national security. Unlike congressmen, whose reasons for supporting Kiev are based on ideological alignment or economic interest, the American military thinking is based on calculations and solid data, so it seems irrational to send Kiev military aid at a level that threatens the US’s defense capability.

The dialogue between the Pentagon and the US Congress for the production, purchase or allocation of weapons and ammunition works through the Department of Defense’s periodic reports on its war plans. These reports are called operational plans (or OPLANs). In theory, the Pentagon has an OPLAN for every situation considered a risk to American security, which includes relations with enemy countries such as Russia, China, and North Korea. After considering the evaluation of its experts, the Pentagon prepares a list of equipment considered necessary to face such countries, submitting the reports to the Congress for approval. If approved, the Pentagon purchases such weapons from private companies affiliated with the “military industrial complex” and eventually allocates them to overseas bases.

In principle, military assistance to Kiev was supposed to be restricted to an exclusive OPLAN for the Ukrainian conflict, but congressmen want to change that. For politicians, who do not think strategically, this is a “mistake” and more weapons to Kiev are needed. Congressmen consider it appropriate to invest all available resources in Ukraine, as Kiev is the state that is currently actually fighting Russia. For them, betting on sending weapons on a large scale is the right attitude, even if the stock reserved for other OPLANs is running out – which is already happening.

As a response to the stock supply crisis, parliamentarians suggest thinking about measures to speed up production and replenishing. According to them, the problem is not the transfer of weapons to Ukraine, but the fact that there is difficulty in filling stocks quickly, as they are dwindling with assistance to Kiev.

However, this narrative does not seem consistent with reality. As previously reported, the American military industry is entering a vicious cycle, where there is no modernization of its arsenal, only a race by military companies to replace weapons which are wasted by the systematic transfer to Ukraine. In this sense, expanding aid and violating the stocks of other OPLANs would only worsen this critical scenario.

In its decisions, the government oscillates between supporting realism and warmongering. For example, a new aid package was recently announced, valued at 275 million dollars – one of the smallest since February. Warmongers criticize this attitude and say that it is time to increase assistance as much as possible, taking advantage of the opportunities of the supposed “Ukrainian counteroffensive” and “imminent victory”. Apparently, many politicians in the US believe the lies created by the American media itself and actually plan strategies based on these fallacies.

Experts, however, know that this rhetoric is unsubstantiated. Ukraine is suffering significant losses day after day. The great victory of Russian forces in Bakhmut makes this absolutely clear. There is no chance of victory for Kiev and, given the defeat in this proxy conflict, the most rational thing to do would be to reduce support and encourage peace negotiations, while replenishing internal stocks for an eventual situation of direct war.

In fact, the case illustrates the US internal scenario well: the dispute between those who want to prepare for a future war with Russia and those who want to do it now, through Ukraine. To solve this problem, the most appropriate thing would be to avoid any possibility of war, taking the simple attitude of interrupting support for Kiev and talking to Russia about a policy of non-expansion of NATO in Eurasia.

Lucas Leiroz is a researcher in Social Sciences at the Rural Federal University of Rio de Janeiro; geopolitical consultant.

You can follow Lucas on Twitter and Telegram.

December 13, 2022 Posted by | Militarism | , , , | Leave a comment

21 Years Ago Today: US Rips Up ABM Treaty With Russia, Starting Slow Slide Toward Current Crisis

Samizdat – 13.12.2022

Tuesday marks the 21st anniversary of the decision by then-US President George W. Bush to quit the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty, a landmark 1972 agreement which limited the anti-ballistic missile capabilities of the US and the USSR (and later Russia). The move became the canary in the coalmine of trouble in relations between Russia and the US.

“I have concluded the ABM Treaty hinders our government’s ways to protect our people from future terrorist or rogue state missile attack,” President Bush said, speaking to reporters at the White House Rose Garden on December 13, 2001. “Today I have given formal notice to Russia… that the United States of America is withdrawing from this almost thirty year old treaty,” he said. Six months later, on June 13, 2002, the agreement was history.

The ABM Treaty, signed by Soviet leader Leonid Brezhnev and US President Richard Nixon in May 1972, limited Moscow and Washington’s ability to build ballistic missile interceptors, and was designed to slow the expansion of the superpowers’ arsenals of nuclear warheads and delivery systems, and to prevent either country from trying to gain an advantage over the other which would upset the global strategic balance.

What Did Russia Say and Do at the Time?

Vladimir Putin, then just starting his first term as president, told his US counterpart that Moscow was not surprised by the US decision, but considered the move an “erroneous one,” given that the treaty had served as a “cornerstone” of world security and stability.

A month before that, on November 13, 2001, during a state visit to the US, Putin informed his hosts that Russia and the US had “different points of view about the ABM Treaty,” but would “continue dialogue and discussions… to develop a new strategic framework that enables both of us to meet the true threats of the 21st century as partners and friends, not as adversaries.”

Publicly, Washington maintained at the time that terrorists, or so-called “rogue states” like North Korea or Iran (which the Bush administration labeled as members of an ‘Axis of Evil’) might create or obtain missiles to attack America or its allies.

Behind the scenes, Moscow suspected that the US was bluffing, and that the true purpose of new expanded American missile defenses would be to disarm Russia’s nuclear deterrent, which at the time was one of the only remaining factors standing in the way of total US global hegemony and the ‘new world order’ declared by President Bush’s father, George H.W. Bush, in late 1991.

To prove it, Putin and Sergei Lavrov (who became Russia’s Foreign Minister in 2004), concocted a diplomatic maneuver to test Washington’s sincerity. In July 2007, on the sidelines of a G8 summit in Germany, Putin threw Bush a curve ball by proposing the deployment of a joint missile defense system in Azerbaijan. The plan outlined the use of an X-band radar in the post-Soviet republic to guide anti-missile interceptors, and, if approved by the US, would confirm that Washington’s missile shield plans really were aimed at so-called “rogue states,” not Russia.

“This will make it impossible – unnecessary – for us to place our offensive complexes along the borders with Europe,” Putin said, referring to US plans at the time to create a series of radar systems in the Czech Republic, along with missile interceptors in Poland.

The Bush White House politely declined the proposal. “This is a serious issue and we want to make sure that we all understand each other’s positions very clearly,” Bush told Putin.

In April 2008, at a meeting in Sochi – their final one before Putin stepped down as president and became Russia’s prime minister, and less than a year before the end of Bush’s presidency, the leaders failed to come to an agreement on missile defenses. “This is an area we’ve got more work to do to convince the Russian side that the system is not aimed at Russia,” Bush said, speaking to reporters. “I want to be understood correctly. Strategically, no change has taken place in our… attitude to US plans,” Putin responded.

(Re)Birth of Russia’s Hypersonics Program

Still recovering from the catastrophic geopolitical and economic fallout of the collapse of the USSR, and watching closely as NATO expanded into Eastern Europe in several waves between 1999 and 2004, Moscow appeared to have gained the vague impression that behind the US rhetoric of friendship and partnership, Washington had not truly given up on its vision of Russia as an adversary after 1991.

In September 2020, during a meeting with Gerbert Efremov, the former director and chief designer at the legendary NPO Mashinostroyenia rocket design bureau – responsible for the creation of some of Russia’s new hypersonic weapons, Putin revealed that the US withdrawal from the ABM Treaty was the singular moment which prompted Moscow to develop these cutting-edge armaments, which the USSR had tinkered with at the twilight of the Cold War.

“America’s withdrawal from the ABM Treaty in 2002 forced Russia to start developing hypersonic weapons. We had to create these weapons in response to the deployment of the US strategic missile defense system, which would have been able to neutralize and render obsolete our entire nuclear potential,” Putin said. Russia’s hypersonic designs, gave Russia, for the first time in its modern history, “the most modern types of weapons, superior in terms of their force, power, speed and, very importantly, in terms of accuracy, compared to all which existed before them and exist today,” Putin said.

Putin returned to the fateful US decision on the ABM Treaty in remarks in October 2021, saying that Washington’s move opened a Pandora’s box of a new global arms race, and demonstrated that America was not looking to defend itself, but trying to “receive strategic superiority, effectively eliminating the nuclear potential of a potential rival.”

“What should we have done in response? I have spoken on this subject many times,” Putin said. “We could have either created a similar system, which would cost immense amounts of money, and it would be unclear in the end if it would work effectively or not. Or we could have created a different system which would definitely overcome missile defenses. I said that we would do this. The response from our American partners was that ‘our missile defenses are not directed against you, do whatever you want, we will proceed from the fact that your projects are not against us.’ We built our systems. What claims do they have against us now? Now they don’t like them,” Putin said.

Russia unveiled a series of new strategic weapons systems in 2018, with the arms, including the Avangard hypersonic glide vehicle, the Kinzhal aero-ballistic air-to-surface missile, the Sarmat ICBM, and the Poseidon nuclear-powered, nuclear-armed autonomous torpedo, designed to assure that even if Washington did successfully build a missile shield, Russia would still be able to retaliate to hypothetical US aggression.

What Other Treaties With Russia Has the US Unilaterally Ripped Up?

The ABM Treaty wasn’t the only security agreement with Moscow that Washington had unilaterally quit in recent years. In 2018, the United States pulled out of the 1987 Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty – an agreement banning the deployment of ground-based strategic missile in the 500-5,500 km range. In 2020, the US left the 1992 Treaty on Open Skies – which allowed 35 partner nations to perform military reconnaissance overflights over one another’s territory using specialized aircraft. Moscow was forced to follow suit in 2021.

What’s Left?

In January 2021, the incoming Biden administration agreed to renew the New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (New START), an arms control treaty which obliges the two countries to reduce their nuclear arsenals to between 1,700 and 2,200 operationally deployed warheads. The Trump administration intended to let the clock run out on the agreement, demanding that China’s modest nuclear arsenal be added to any strategic treaties. The Biden administration agreed to extend it to February 2026.

With the collapse of the ABM Treaty, the INF Treaty and the Treaty on Open Skies, New START is now the last major security treaty between Russia and the United States. But there are two other international agreements, the Outer Space Treaty and the Chemical Weapons Convention, to which both Moscow and Washington are parties, whose future has also been threatened by US behavior.

The resolution was merely a political declaration, and no means exist to enforce it. However, in 2008, Russia and China recommended a binding agreement – the Proposed Prevention of an Arms Race in Space (PAROS) Treaty – outlining specific measures to ban the deployment of space-based weaponry, anti-satellite spacecraft and other technologies which could be used for military purposes, in orbit. Successive US administrations have spurned the proposed treaty, and in 2019, the Trump administration formalized the creation of a new branch of the US military called ‘Space Force’, signaling that Washington will has no plans to rein in its space-based military activities.

Space Force, and other US efforts to militarize space (such as the deployment of large networks of dual-use commercial communications and surveillance satellites), may be a violation of the Outer Space Treaty, a 1967 agreement signed by 112 countries, including the United States, which prohibits the deployment of weapons of mass destruction in space, restricts the use of the Moon and other celestial bodies to peaceful purposes, and forbids military bases, weapons testing and military exercises in space.

US scholars of international law have outlined a series of arguments on how the US may be in violation of the Outer Space Treaty, ranging from former President Trump’s statements about the need to assert US “dominance” in space, to Washington’s designation of space as a new “war-fighting domain.”

“These assertions violate major Outer Space Treaty principles, including the prohibition of establishing sovereignty in space and using space only for peaceful purposes. The creation of the US Space Force can also be seen as a ‘threat of force’ based on its history of aggressive and dominant remarks,” explained Rachel Harp, an associate member of the University of Cincinnati Law Review.

Finally, there is the Chemical Weapons Convention, another arms control treaty to which both the United States and Russia are parties, but where question marks remain regarding Washington’s commitment to the agreement. While Russia completed the destruction of the last of its Soviet-era chemical weapons in September 2017, under the watchful eye of the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons, the United States has consistently revised deadlines to destroy its own chemical arms stockpiles.

Washington originally promised to eliminate the last of its deadly chemical agents by 2012, but now promises to do so by late 2023. With nearly 650 tons of chemical agents and munitions remaining in its arsenal, the United States now has the largest declared chemical weapons stockpile in the world.

December 13, 2022 Posted by | Deception, Militarism, Timeless or most popular | , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

STUDY RAISES COVID SHOT CORD BLOOD CONCERNS

The Highwire with Del Bigtree | December 8, 2022

New science, including a study on Covid Shot Cord blood, raises new concerns amid the reported rise in the prevalence of miscarriages, infant mortality, and stillbirth rates.

December 13, 2022 Posted by | Science and Pseudo-Science, Video | | Leave a comment

The Club of Rome at 50 years old

By Dalwhinnie | December 11, 2022

I used to believe the following tenets of the Club of Rome. I did so for about four years (from the age of 22 to 26) until I woke up from ecodoomism. It is apparent that millions have been sucked into this cult and have never found a way out. Yet. Indeed, eco-doomism is the world’s leading cause of depression, suicide, sexual ambiguity,  non-replacement and cultural anomie. It is immediately the cause of policies designed to immiserate the population (viz. Dutch government putting farms out of business to control world atmospheric nitrogen levels).

Here are the doctrines of the Club of Rome, circa 1972. Look familiar?

“The Limits to Growth” contains six main messages:

  1. Firstly, that the environmental impact of human society had become heavier between 1900 and 1972 due to both an increase in the number of humans and the amount of resources consumed and pollution generated per person per year.
  2. That our planet is physically limited, and that humanity cannot continue to use more physical resources and generate more emissions than nature is capable of supplying in a sustainable manner. In addition, it will not be possible to rely on technology alone to solve the problem as this would only delay reaching the carrying capacity of the planet by a few years.
  3. The authors cautioned that it is possible, and even likely, that the human ecological footprint will overshoot the carrying capacity of the planet, further explaining that this would likely occur due to significant delays in global decision making while growth continued, bringing the human footprint into unsustainable territory.
  4. Once humanity has entered this unsustainable territory, we will have to move back into sustainable territory, either through “managed decline” of activity, or we will be forced to move back through “collapse” caused by the brutal inherent processes of nature or the market.
  5. The fifth message is one of hope. The authors state that: “The challenge of overshoot from decision delay is real, but easily solvable if human society decided to “act”, meaning that forward looking policy could prevent humanity from overshooting the aforementioned planetary limits.
  6. Lastly, the authors advocated for an early start – in 1972 that was 1975 – to achieve a smooth transition to a sustainable world without needing to pass through the overshoot and contraction phases.

The World Economic Forum and Klaus Schwab have followed as night follows day. They key assumptions are that the current population/ resource consumption mix is unsustainable, and the second is that a process of managed decline can smooth the transition to sustainability. I am about to say something at once paradoxical and true:

Humans have more to fear from the managers of population reduction than we do of civilizational collapse.

Because the population reduction is being planned by people who think they are doing good  and the old adage of C. S. Lewis applies, that the robber barons might have their greed satiated, and stop, but the person who tortures for you own good does so with a clean conscience and will not stop. Hence Stalin. Hence Klaus Schwab, and his minions and acolytes.

Collapses are random and bring their own correctives. They are chaotic. If the Roman Empire has to fall, it is better that it occur without central planning, administered by mad tyrants. I realize this is offensive to those who believe that civilizational change can be planned, but it cannot.

The  assumption that needs to be challenged the most is that collapse is somehow inevitable because we have gone beyond limits set by Gaia, that this unsustainability is somehow new, and that we can plan our way out of it.

We went beyond the limits set by Gaia since we domesticated animals, invented agriculture and mined metals. I would not wish to say there are no limits, but I would say that the collective intelligence of mankind has continually found solutions to the problems we have ourselves created. We went into the realm of the “unsustainable” tens of thousands of years ago. We are still in “unsustainablity”. There is no stable state.

The Club of Rome published its manifesto in 1972. It had a tremendous negative effect over time. It resuscitated the idea of a centrally planned economy when the central conceit of Marxism had collapsed: that a planned economy could prevail over the chaotic forces of the market, or of nature.

The close relationship between the idea of sustainability and the tyranny of all-wise central planners needs to be made clear.

The population bomb is diffusing itself anyway…

Regarding solutions that appear without planning, population growth is collapsing through the very process of wealth generation that has come from burning fossil fuels. Women reach a level of prosperity where their kids will survive until adulthood, and – bingo! – they produce at most two children. It is enough to make the most hardened eco-doomist pause and reconsider.

See Bricker and Ibbetson’s Empty Planet: The Shock of Global Population Decline, or more brutal yet, try David Goldman’s (known as Spengler) How Civilizations Die.

About the author

Dalwhinnie

Retired, sometime civil servant, sometime consultant, active intellectual, former lawyer, active property manager, and on rare occasions in the past a political activist. He has recovered from the experience.

December 12, 2022 Posted by | Malthusian Ideology, Phony Scarcity, Timeless or most popular | Leave a comment

UK government asked Twitter and Facebook to “tweak” algorithms during Covid

By Cindy Harper | Reclaim The Net | December 12, 2022

Former United Kingdom Health Secretary Matt Hancock, self-styled as an official who was at the forefront of Britain’s battle against Covid, didn’t seem to feel like he had done enough in 2020 and 2021, so he felt compelled to milk the pandemic cow by writing a book about that “battle.”

But he wasn’t laboring alone, since he had a co-author, Isabel Oakeshott, who reports say is actually opposed to Hancock’s policies and is a lockdown skeptic.

And now, Oakeshott, who had access to official records and Hancock’s notes exchanged with “all the key players in Britain’s Covid-19 story” – as the book’s blurb states – has penned her own “story,” an article based on the collaboration published by the Spectator, whose content draws from the material used for the book.

Oakeshott writes about the “key lessons” that include revelations about the details of UK’s vaccine and mask policies, but also the mechanisms to deal with dissenters, particularly online.

According to the journalist, Hancock genuinely considered those who disagreed with him on how to handle the situation as “mad and dangerous” and more importantly, as persons that “needed to be shut down.”

Judging by the article, his “response” to online skepticism effectively came even before pandemic restrictions themselves. Hancock had no problem revealing that in January 2020, his special adviser was already in conversation with  about the ways to “tweak” the platform’s algorithms.

Another social media giant was co-opted somewhat later, and by Hancock personally, when he got in touch with former British PM and politician Nick Clegg – now president for global affairs at .

Clegg, who was at the time  VP of global affairs and communications, was reportedly “happy to oblige.”

And according to Oakeshott, Hancock’s department together with the Cabinet Office (PM and government), “harnessed the full power of the state to crush individuals and groups whose views were seen as a threat to public acceptance of official messages and policy.”

The Cabinet Office enlisted the help of a unit that previously worked on stifling the influence of Islamic State (ISIS) to now deal with “anti-vaxxers,” she writes, and notes that the policy of zero tolerance did not spare doctors, scientists, and academics, such as those behind the Great Barrington Declaration.

Even then PM Boris Johnson was not as ardent a “dissent suppressor” as Hancock, Oakeshott’s writing suggests.

December 12, 2022 Posted by | Book Review, Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance, Science and Pseudo-Science | , , | Leave a comment

Junior ROTC Fits Perfectly within Public Schools

By Jacob G. Hornberger | FFF | December 12, 2022

The U.S. military is having a tough time meeting recruiting targets, possibly because young people are figuring out that they don’t want to come back from some stupid foreign war without legs or arms or with some brain injury or, even worse, dead. To encourage young people to join up and be all that they can be, public-school officials across the country are forcing high-school freshmen to take Junior Reserve Officer Training Corps (JROTC) class, where students are “encouraged” to later join the military. 

An article about the controversy in yesterday’s New York Times points out that the JROTC program is funded by the U.S. military and is designed to produce “leadership skills, discipline and civic values — and open students’ eyes to the idea of a military career.”

The JROTC students are required to wear uniforms and are taught the importance of obeying orders. At Pershing High School in Detroit, several students asked to drop the class. They were told that the class was mandatory. The article states: “A review of J.R.O.T.C. enrollment data collected from more than 200 public records requests showed that dozens of schools have made the program mandatory or steered more than 75 percent of students in a single grade into the classes, including schools in Detroit, Los Angeles, Philadelphia, Oklahoma City and Mobile, Ala.”

Why would public-school officials act as tools for the military? According to the article, “The military subsidizes instructors’ salaries while requiring schools to maintain a certain level of enrollment in order to keep the program. In states that have allowed J.R.O.T.C. to be used as an alternative graduation credit, some schools appear to have saved money by using the course as an alternative to hiring more teachers in subjects such as physical education or wellness.”

Oh, and guess which students they are mainly targeting as potential future cannon fodder. According to the Times’s article, “A vast majority of the schools with those high enrollment numbers were attended by a large proportion of nonwhite students and those from low-income households.”

Julio Mejia, a Fort Mayers, Florida, parent whose daughter tried to get out of the JROTC class, pointedly observed, “The only word I can think of is ‘indoctrination.’” The Times points out, “But critics have long contended that the program’s militaristic discipline emphasizes obedience over independence and critical thinking.” Jesús Palafox, a former student, calls the process “brainwashing.”

Not so, claims Cmdr. Nicole Schwegman, a Pentagon spokesman and herself a former JROTC student. “It’s really about teaching kids about service, teaching them teamwork.” It sounds more like she might be a perfect example of the program’s success at indoctrination and brainwashing. 

While parents can see how JROTC creates mindsets of conformity, blind obedience, and regimentation, unfortunately they are not able to see that that’s precisely what public (i.e., government) schooling itself does. In fact, public schooling could easily be described as “army-lite,” which is why the JROTC program fits perfectly within the public (i.e., government) schooling system. 

Just as students are being forced into JROTC, young people are forced into the state’s educational maw, where they are indoctrinated and brainwashed into becoming “good little citizens,” ones who are inculcated with mindsets of regimentation, obedience to orders, and deference to authority, all of which, they are taught, constitutes “patriotism.” As with the JROTC classes, public-school students have any ability to engage in critical thinking smashed out of them, and they are taught instead to memorize and regurgitate. 

In fact, one cannot help but wonder if the reason that so many parents can easily see the downside of JROTC but not the downside of public (i.e., government) schooling is because they themselves are products of the public-school system and its very successful system of indoctrination and brainwashing. After all, what better success story than indoctrinated and brainwashed people who have no idea they’ve been indoctrinated and brainwashed and recoil at any suggestion that they are victims of indoctrination and brainwashing?

December 12, 2022 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Militarism | | Leave a comment

Israeli sniper kills 16-year old Palestinian girl in West Bank raid

Jana Zakarneh, 16, was killed by Israeli forces in Jenin. (Photo: via WAFA)
MEMO | December 12, 2022

The Palestinian Health Ministry said a girl child was killed by an Israeli sniper last night in Jenin City, north of the Occupied West Bank, The Palestinian Information Centre reports.

According to local sources, 16-year-old Jana Zakarnah was found dead on the roof of her home after an Israeli sniper targeted her and fatally injured her in the head.

The incident happened after Israeli soldiers from a special unit stormed the eastern neighbourhood of Jenin City on Sunday night.

Fierce armed clashes reportedly took place in the area between the soldiers and resistance fighters.

The Health Ministry said that one citizen was moderately injured during the protests, while the Red Crescent said that its ambulance crews provided assistance to three citizens after they suffered bullet injuries in their lower extremities.

In a statement, Al-Qassam Brigades of Hamas affirmed that a group of its fighters and others exchanged fire with undercover soldiers from the Duvdevan unit in Al-Bayader area in Jenin City and targeted them with explosive devices.

Meanwhile, local sources reported that the Israeli Occupation Forces kidnapped three young men, including two brothers, from Jenin City during the same raid.

The Hebrew media claimed that one of the detainees was intending to carry out operations against Israeli targets.

December 12, 2022 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Subjugation - Torture, War Crimes | , , , , | Leave a comment

No evidence of Russia using Iranian drones – Tehran

RT | December 12, 2022

Ukrainian officials have failed to present any evidence suggesting Iranian drones have been used by Russia in the ongoing conflict between Kiev and Moscow, Iranian Defense Minister, Brigadier General Mohammad Reza Ashtiani said on Monday. His words came following a meeting between Ukrainian and Iranian specialists.

“The Ukrainian side did not present any evidence of Russia’s use of Iranian drones in the war with this nation at the technical meeting,” the minister told several Iranian news agencies. According to Ashtiani, the Ukrainian officials then vowed to present such evidence at the next meeting.

According to the general, claims about Russian forces supposedly employing Iranian-made unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) in their campaign in Ukraine are based on “baseless statements and rumors.” Ashtiani admitted that Moscow and Tehran had a long history of military cooperation but it was in no way linked to the alleged use of Iranian drones in the conflict.

His words came as the EU was considering a fresh sanctions batch against Tehran, both over its response to mass protests inside Iran and over alleged weapons supplies to Russia.

Speculation that Tehran has been supplying UAVs to Moscow surfaced in recent months after Russia started to actively use kamikaze drones during its military offensive in Ukraine. Kiev and the Western media outlets have claimed that Russia’s Geran-2 drones are actually Iranian-made Shahed-136 UAVs.

Both Moscow and Tehran repeatedly denied that Iranian drones are used in the conflict in Ukraine. Iranian Foreign Minister Hossein Amirabdollahian has confirmed, though, that Tehran did supply a “small number of drones” to Moscow months before the conflict in Ukraine broke out.

December 12, 2022 Posted by | Fake News, Mainstream Media, Warmongering | , , , | Leave a comment

Kiev Seizes Assets of Russian Orthodox Clerics

By Kyle Anzalone | The Libertarian Institute | December 12, 2022

Ukraine ratcheted up its campaign against a branch of the Eastern Orthodox church with ties to Russia. By the orders of President Volodymyr Zelensky, seven senior clerics from the Russian Orthodox church will have their assets seized and are subject to a ban on economic and legal activities.

During his nightly video address on Sunday, the Ukrainian president said, “by decision of the National Security and Defense Council of Ukraine, sanctions were applied against seven people.” Zelensky added, “we are doing everything to ensure that the aggressor state does not have a single string of Ukrainian society to pull.”

According to Reuters, the sanctions led to seven clerics having “their assets seized and are subject to a ban on a range of economic and legal activities as well as a de facto travel ban.”

The vast majority of Ukrainians belong to Eastern Orthodox churches. Many Ukrainians worship in parishes that take direction from the Moscow Patriarchate. On December 1, Zelensky announced Kiev would attempt to push all religions with ties to Russia out of Ukraine. He said this will make “it impossible for religious organizations affiliated with centers of influence in the Russian Federation to operate in Ukraine.”

He went on the claim that the Russian Orthodox Church was a threat to Ukrainian culture, saying “[w]e will never allow anyone to build an empire inside the Ukrainian soul.” Zelensky additionally denounced Ukrainians continuing to attend the parishes as failing to overcome “the temptation of evil.”

Kiev has conducted a series of raids on Russian Orthodox parishes and claims to have uncovered clerics attempting to subvert the Ukrainian government. Last week, Kiev sanctioned ten top clerics of the church.

December 12, 2022 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism | , | Leave a comment

Washington wants Europe’s total Dependence on the US

By Salman Rafi Sheikh – New Eastern Outlook – 12.12.2022

In March 2022, the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) reported that “Europe is the new hotspot” of global arms import. While this development is attributed to the ongoing military conflict between Russia and Ukraine (US/EU/NATO), what’s equally, or even more, important to understand is how most of this European purchase is coming from the US and how the latter has turned the conflict into a money-making machine. The US is responsible for the so-called ‘energy crisis’ in Europe and, by selling expensive US gas to Europe, is making a lot of money. Of course, the US told the Europeans that doing so was necessary to reduce their critical dependence on Moscow. The Europeans, in their bid to ‘punish’ Russia, decided to increase their dependence on the US. This is now turning into an ugly issue, as European powers, as reports in the western mainstream media show, are now directly accusing the US of profiteering from war.

This criticism is based not just on the fact that Europe is buying expensive US gas and the latter is profiting from it. In fact, it is based upon the fact that Europe is now too dependent on the US to prevent its economic collapse. If Europe’s dependency on the US continues to increase, it will only come at the cost of its strategic autonomy.

Secondly, this is not just about gas. If gas is linked to economy, Europe’s increasing military purchase from the US is directly linked to its defence and security, or at least this is how it is being projected. This dependence in the defence field is most easily evident from the German purchase of F-35 fighter jets from the US. While the US is going to make a whole lot of money out of this multi-billion dollar deal, strings attached to this deal show how this deal is a direct reinforcement of European dependency on the US.

Martin Kroell, the President of the Federal Association of the German Aerospace Industry (BDLI), was quoted to have said that Germany, even after purchasing these jets, would not have the rights to maintain and repair these jets in Germany. They will be maintained “in other European countries in the network of the US Armed Forces, or by the US companies Lockheed … this creates a dangerous dependency.”

Let’s not forget that this sale happened, first and foremost, when the US started putting pressure in early 2021, when the Russia-Ukraine conflict began, on European nations to increase their defence capacity. But, using the pressure of this conflict, the US authorities managed to make a deal that did not give much leeway to the German authorities to really protect their interests. As another report confirms, the Germans made an ‘error’ in not demanding the involvement of their own “arms industry in the maintenance, repair, and support of these expensive aircraft.”

This is not Germany alone. Finland, for instance, is another country entering the phase of dangerous dependency on the US. It has already decided to buy 64 Block 4 F-35s for US$9.4 billion. Since the start of the Russia-Ukraine conflict, Finland has upped its weapon purchase, with, unsurprisingly, most of this purchase coming from the US.

While the conflict in Ukraine has led to many deals worth billions of USD, there is a growing fear in the continent that the US is now trying to start a new crisis with China. Such a conflict would create additional problems for Europe.

But the rhetoric being produced – and effectively used – by the US for Europe is to reduce dependence on China. Europe of course is concerned about this form of geopolitics. As Charles Michael, President of the European Council who recently met Xi, said in a tweet: “The EU promotes its interests and values in the world. With China, engaging openly on all aspects of our relationship is the only way forward.”

China, too, understands that Europe is far from being in agreement with the US over a joint China policy. Therefore, Xi was candid enough to tell the EU last week that the bloc should keep up its investment in China, adding that China and the EU must jointly “oppose de-coupling.”

But while the EU is fighting the US over forcing a policy on the EU vis-à-vis the China question and the economic consequences it could have for Europe in the long term, the US continues to make policies that directly impact the EU economy. The latest irritant is certainly the US Inflation Reduction Act (IRA), which gives tax breaks for components used in electric cars provided they are made in (North) America.

While the EU-based companies could set up factories in the US, this would effectively mean that these companies will add to the US economy more than the EU’s economy. In other words, the EU’s capital will be used to add to the US capital at the expense of the EU’s own economic health.

This pattern is similar to the way the EU capital is being used via expensive gas sales and weapon systems to help the US economy. This is precisely how the conflict in Ukraine has turned out to be a major source of profit for the US state.

What can the EU do? The Europeans are unlikely to be able to break out of this dependency relationship without first developing an independent global outlook. Imagine the economic scenario in the EU if, instead of supporting the US bid to expand NATO, it had taken an independent line. The EU did not take that line. Now, the EU accuses the US of its energy crisis. The question is: can it translate this anger into a concrete policy?

December 12, 2022 Posted by | Economics | , , , | Leave a comment

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