The ‘Steal Of The Century’ (Part 1) is a documentary, by Robert Inlakesh, filmed on the ground in occupied Palestine, investigating the peace process, Donald Trump’s proposed ‘Deal of the Century’ and why the Palestinian people have unanimously rejected it. It also seeks to show the occupation faced by the Palestinian people, as well as the a brief look into the history of Palestine-Israel.
This documentary brings you exclusive never before seen footage from Palestine, including interviews with Ahed Tamimi, Jana Jihad, Issa Amro and others.
Researchers about the 1941 attack on Pearl Harbor know that President Franklin Roosevelt had provoked a Japanese attack to justify America’s entry into World War II. Most Americans were against joining the war, but the attack on Pearl Harbor provided the excuse needed to declare war. The best book on this topic is “Day of Deceit” by former World War II Navy officer Robert Stinnett. The topics he covers are controversial because most people refuse to accept that Roosevelt and top military leaders in Washington DC failed to inform the commanders in Hawaii that a Japanese fleet was coming to attack.
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“Do Freedom of Information Act Files Prove FDR Had Foreknowledge of Pearl Harbor?”; Robert Stinnett; Independent.org; March 11, 2002; https://www.independent.org/issues/ar…
“From Shanghai to Corregidor: Marines in the Defense of the Philippines”; J. Michael Miller, National Park Service; https://www.nps.gov/parkhistory/onlin…
“HIGHLIGHTS OF MOBILIZATION, WORLD WAR II, 1938-1942”; Office of the Chief of Military History; Department of the Army; Dr. Stetson Conn; 10 March 1959; https://history.army.mil/documents/WW…
Former president George W. Bush has returned to the spotlight to give moral guidance to America in these troubled times. In a statement released on Tuesday, Bush announced that he was “anguished” by the “brutal suffocation” of George Floyd and declared that “lasting peace in our communities requires truly equal justice. The rule of law ultimately depends on the fairness and legitimacy of the legal system. And achieving justice for all is the duty of all.”
Bush’s declaration was greeted with thunderous applause by the usual suspects who portray him as the virtuous Republican in contrast to Trump. While the media portrays Bush’s pious piffle as a visionary triumph of principle, Americans need to vividly recall the lies and atrocities that permeated his eight years as president.
Most media coverage of Bush nowadays either ignores the falsehoods he used to take America to war in Iraq or portrays him as a good man who received incorrect information. But Bush was lying from the get-go on Iraq and was determined to drag the nation into another Middle East war. From January 2003 onward, Bush constantly portrayed the US as an innocent victim of Saddam Hussein’s imminent aggression and repeatedly claimed that war was being “forced upon us.” That was never the case. As the Center for Public Integrity reported, Bush made “232 false statements about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq and another 28 false statements about Iraq’s links to Al Qaeda.” As the lies by which he sold the Iraq War unraveled, Bush resorted to vilifying critics as traitors in a 2006 speech to the Veterans of Foreign Wars.
Bush’s lies led to the killing of more than four thousand American troops and hundreds of thousands of Iraqi civilians. But since those folks are dead and gone anyhow, the media instead lauds Bush’s selection to be in a Kennedy Center art show displaying his borderline primitive oil paintings.
In that October 2017 New York speech, Bush proclaimed: “No democracy pretends to be a tyranny.” But ravaging the Constitution was apparently part of his job description when he was president. Shortly after 9-11, Bush turned back the clock to before 1215 (when the Magna Carta was signed), formally suspending habeas corpus and claiming a prerogative to imprison indefinitely anyone he labeled a terrorist suspect. In 2002, Justice Department lawyers informed Bush that the president was entitled to violate the law during wartime—and the war on terror was expected to continue indefinitely. In 2004, Bush White House counsel Alberto Gonzales formally asserted a “commander-in-chief override power” entitling presidents to ignore the Bill of Rights.
Under Bush, the US government embraced barbaric practices which did more to destroy America’s moral credibility than all of Trump’s tweets combined. Bush’s “enhanced interrogation” regime included endless high-volume repetition of a Meow Mix cat food commercial at Guantanamo, head slapping, waterboarding, exposure to frigid temperatures, and manacling for many hours in stress positions. After the Supreme Court rebuffed some of Bush’s power grabs in 2006, he pushed through Congress a bill that retroactively legalized torture—one of the worst legislative disgraces since the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850. During his years in the White House, Bush perennially denied that he had approved torture. But in 2010, during an author tour to promote his new memoir, he bragged about approving waterboarding for terrorist suspects.
Is Bush nominating himself to be the nation’s racial healer? When he was president, Bush inflicted more financial ruin on blacks than any president since Woodrow Wilson (who brought Jim Crow barbarities to the federal government). Bush trumpeted his plans to close the gap between black and white homeownership rates and promised in 2002 to “use the mighty muscle of the federal government” to solve the problem. Bush was determined to end the bias against people who wanted to buy a home but had no money. Congress passed Bush’s American Dream Downpayment Act in 2003, authorizing federal handouts to first-time homebuyers of up to $10,000 or 6 percent of the home’s purchase price. Bush also swayed Congress to permit the Federal Housing Administration to make no–down payment loans to low-income Americans. Bush proclaimed: “Core American values of individuality, thrift, responsibility, and self-reliance are embodied in homeownership.” In Bush’s eyes, self-reliance was so wonderful that the government should subsidize it. And it didn’t matter whether recipients were creditworthy, because politicians meant well. Bush’s 2004 reelection campaign trumpeted his down payment giveaways, a shining example of “compassionate conservatism.”
Thanks in large part to his policies, minority households saw the fastest growth in homeownership leading up to the 2007 recession. The housing collapse ravaged the net worth of black and Hispanic households. “The implosion of the subprime lending market has left a scar on the finances of black Americans—one that not only has wiped out a generation of economic progress but could leave them at a financial disadvantage for decades,” the Washington Post reported in 2012. The median net worth for Hispanic households declined by 66 percent between 2005 and 2009. That devastation was aptly described in a 2017 federal appeals court dissenting opinion as “wrecking ball benevolence” (quoting a 2004 Barron’s op-ed I wrote). But almost none of the media coverage of the ex-president reminds people of the economic carnage of this Bush vote-buying binge.
It is possible to condemn police brutality and, even more importantly, the evil laws and judicial doctrines that enable police to tyrannize other Americans without any help from a demagogic ex-president who ravaged our rights, liberties, and peace. As I commented in an August 2003 USA Today op-ed, “Whether Bush and his appointees will be held personally liable for their [Iraq War] falsehoods is a grave test for American democracy.” The revival of Bush’s reputation vivifies how our political media system failed that test. As long as George Bush doesn’t turn himself in for committing war crimes, all of his talk about “achieving justice for all” is rubbish.
James Bovard is the author of ten books, including 2012’s Public Policy Hooligan, and 2006’s Attention Deficit Democracy. He has written for the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Playboy, Washington Post, and many other publications.
US authorities have for decades become increasingly prepared for mass civil disturbances resulting from government and corporate attacks on American society. We can recall that in the early 1980s the Hidden State launched its open war on the middle class by the savage FED-induced recession and the unilateral revocation of the social contract that had existed since 1946. At that time, the US government had already anticipated widespread public unrest, fully expecting mass protests and riots, and had made preparations to deal with them in the form of internment camps. In a real sense, the government had prepared for another civil war.
Like most of the “Great Transformation”, it began during Reagan’s reign with what was called “Rex 84”, an abbreviation for Readiness Exercise 1984, a plan by the US government to detain large numbers of American citizens in case of civil unrest. This master plan involved the FBI, Department of Defense, the Emergency Measures group, the Secret Service, the CIA and altogether 34 government agencies.
It was presented as an exercise to test military assistance in civil defense in times of national emergency, but in fact the plan was anticipating civil disturbances, major demonstrations and labor strikes that would affect continuity of government. The anticipated civil unrest from the FED-induced financial crisis that devastated the middle class was considered “subversive”, REX-84 being an authorisation for the US military to implement government-controlled movements of civilian populations at both state and regional levels, the arrest of many segments of the American population, and the imposition of martial law. (1) (2)
The Rex-84 program was created under the pretense of a possible mass exodus of illegal aliens attempting to cross into the US from Mexico, but when the program accidentally became public during the Iran-Contra Congressional hearings in 1987 it was revealed that it was in fact a secret federal government program
“to suspend the Constitution, declare martial law, assign military commanders to take over state and local governments, and detain large numbers of American citizens determined by the government to be ‘national security threats’.”
This was part of a master contingency plan for which the FBI today has a primary list of more than 100,000 Americans, and a secondary list ten times larger, who are targeted to be rounded up as subversives, including labor leaders, scholars and public figures, the incarceration designed to isolate political dissidents and to contain civil unrest.
And these are prison camps, ringed with fences, barbed wire and armed guards, not places from which escape would be likely, and they were designed to hold Americans, not Mexicans. (3)
There is no question the US government is prepared for the possibility of widespread and uncontrollable domestic disorder. This program in place and building for years was encouraged by fears of a massive public uprising in the wake of the 2008 banking fraud.
US Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia said some years ago that concentration camps were a likely future reality for Americans and that the Supreme Court would not do anything about the tyranny should the executive branch think it necessary. He mentioned the World War II internment of Japanese in the US and said of these camps,
“you are kidding yourself if you think the same thing will not happen again”. (4) (5)
In 2009, as the US financial crisis deepened and concern about public unrest was increasing, the US National Guard was posting job opportunities for “Internment/Resettlement Specialists” to work in “civilian internee camps” within the United States, and Halliburton [former] subsidiary KBR was seeking subcontractors to staff “emergency environment” camps located in five regions of the US. Earlier, in 2006, KBR was contracted by Homeland Security to build detention centers designed to deal with “the rapid development of unspecified “new programs” that would require large numbers of people to be interned.” (6) (7)
The US has for many years been dangerously close to a situation where, if the American people take to the streets in protest, these internments can be easily carried out. By 2004, there were more than 800 of these internment camps in the US, all empty, but all fully operational, staffed, and surrounded by full-time guards, ready to receive prisoners. I have seen photos. As well, many military bases are slated to be closed down and used as extra civilian prisons if the need arises, all intended for the internment of dissidents and others deemed “potentially harmful to the state”. Some camps can each hold 20,000 or more prisoners, a massive effort at civilian population control, and the program is still expanding. The US is very near the point today where political dissidents questioning the actions of their government will risk being rounded up and forced into these prison camps, essentially a government plan to forcibly suppress political dissent under the guise of rooting out domestic “terrorism”.
The US government defines many Americans as having become “pre-revolutionary” from their outrage at the 2008 government-approved housing collapse, with increasing concern that massive civil unrest would emerge from both the poverty-stricken lower classes and the eviscerated middle class, leading to what would become an internal civil war. This is the reason that the FBI and DHS increasingly focus their “anti-terror” apparatus on white middle-class Americans like the Occupy Wall Street protestors who were categorised as “low-level terrorists”.
In 2008, the Washington Post reported government plans to station many tens of thousands of troops inside the country for purposes referred to as “domestic security” in the light of massive civil unrest that would follow an economic collapse or serious financial crisis, perhaps stemming from 2008.
According to the government document,
“Widespread civil violence inside the United States would force the defense establishment to reorient priorities in extremis to defend basic domestic order and human security”,
stating that the military may be needed to quell “purposeful domestic resistance”. To prepare for this quelling of resistance, the US has resorted to demonising its own citizens, a recent study funded by DHS conveniently identifying those Americans who are “suspicious of centralized federal authority” and who exhibit signs of being “reverent of individual liberty”, and re-categorising them as “extreme right-wing” terrorists. (8) (9) (10)
The program is designed to “reduce and eliminate” all domestic resistance to the US government. “Crowd control agents” will be used for this purpose, and government agencies will be involved in “gathering information on dissidents” to identify all those who have either “threatened or are creating disturbances”. The US military produced a manual on what it termed “Civil Disturbance Operations” that outlines how military assets will be used to “help local and state authorities to restore and maintain law and order” in the event of mass riots and civil unrest. Military and other law-enforcement will be tasked with “breaking up unauthorized gatherings” and restoring order by
“presenting a show of force, establishing roadblocks, breaking up crowds, employing crowd control agents, and other operations as required”.
The same government manual describes how prisoners will be processed through these internment camps, and outlines how these internees would be “re-educated” while detained in prison camps inside their own country by their own government. A leaked military document titled ‘FM 3-39.40 Internment and Resettlement Operations’, outlined a program for “re-education camps” in the US which contained plans for “political activists” to be “pacified” by various psychological officers into “sympathising” with the government and into “developing an appreciation of US policies” while detained in prison camps inside the US. The document was restricted to Department of Defense personnel but was been leaked and posted online. It outlined policies for “processing detainees into internment camps” and made clear these operations would be used for domestic civilian situations. (11) (12) The full document is available here: (13)
“Once the detainees have been processed into the internment camp, the manual explains how they will be “indoctrinated”, with a particular focus on coercing political dissidents into expressing support for U.S. policies.”
Part of the stated role of the psychological officers would be to identify political activists, political leaders, ‘malcontents’, and other agitators, and to develop and execute appropriate
“indoctrination programs to reduce or remove antagonistic attitudes”.
However, their first task would be to “pacify and acclimate detainees to accept the internment facility’s authority and regulations”.
There are also disturbing insights into the government’s intention to use brutal force to violently quell any civil political unrest. The manual includes a long list of weapons meant to be used against protesting American civilians, including anti-riot grenades. Page 20 of the manual authorises the use of “deadly force” in confronting these peaceful political “dissidents”, the murderous intent made disturbingly clear with the directive that “Warning shots will not be fired” first. Northcom itself, in a September 8, 2008 Army Times article, said the first wave of the deployment, which was put in place on October 1st at Fort Stewart and at Peterson Air Force Base in Colorado Springs, would be aimed at tackling “civil unrest and crowd control”.
In November of 2013, Forbes Magazine ran an article based on the AP newswire, detailing that DHS had been assembling a massive weapons arsenal since 2011 or 2012. (14) The AP reported that Homeland Security had been stockpiling ammunition by buying more than 1.6 billion rounds of ammunition in addition to a prior purchase of 1.5 billion rounds, for a staggering total of more than three billion rounds. This is more ammunition than the US military used collectively in all its wars in the last decade, and represents about ten shots for every man, woman and child in America. There were also confirmed purchases by various government agencies, of hundreds of millions of hollow-point rounds to be delivered to dozens of locations around the US. These bullets are so lethal they are banned for battlefield use during wars because they mushroom and fragment on impact, their only purpose being to cause the maximum possible damage to internal organs. Also purchased were large numbers of magnum rounds with the power to penetrate walls, and a frightening hundreds of millions more rounds of specialty sniper ammunition.
Even more, it was reported in early 2015 that DHS had placed orders for massive amounts of other kinds of anti-civilian weaponry termed “Less Lethal Specialty Munitions”, which were described as “an arsenal of specialized weaponry for training and deployment against crowds”. These included flash grenades, light bursts, gas and chemical grenades, riot rounds, rubber bullets, and much more. These are all heavy-duty crowd control and civilian intimidation weapons. They have no other purpose and, in the volume in which they are being purchased, it is clear the US government is expecting some very serious civil disturbances, possibly a revolution, and soon.
As recently as 2018, Forbes was reporting more of the same, that these purchases have reached an astonishing ubiquity. It isn’t only Homeland Security who is arming to the teeth. Thousands of agents at the IRS now have tactical assault rifles and heavy weaponry.
Screenshot Forbes, October 20, 2017
The Small Business Administration and the Department of Veterans Affairs have purchased thousands of Glock handguns. The Health Services agencies purchased millions of dollars worth of Glock handguns – equipped with silencers. The US Geological Survey, which is a weather bureau, purchased millions of dollars worth of Winchester Black Shadow shotguns with large bulk ammunition orders in addition to Glock handguns. Even the Department of Education purchased millions of dollars worth of Glock handguns, shotguns and body armor. I am unaware of any nation in the world where the income tax department or the departments of education and health care require huge amounts of military-grade weapons, much less body armor and gun silencers.
In June of 2016, RT reported that non-military federal agencies had more firepower than the entire US Marine Corps, this including agencies like education, health and income tax. (15) RT documented, a new report where 67 non-military federal US agencies spent $1.50 billion purchasing guns, ammunition and military-style equipment. The details came from the Militarization of America: non-military federal agencies purchases of guns, ammo, and military-style equipment, published by the non-profit good government group OpentheBooks.com. (16) (17)
In addition to the massive purchase of ammunition, DHS was showing off its acquisition of heavily armored and mine-resistant personnel carriers which have been seen on streets all across America and verified with photos and video. Forbes noted that these vehicles are equipped with gun ports and are “designed to withstand IEDs, mine blasts and 50 caliber hits to bullet-proof glass”, and asked why they would be necessary on American streets. The DHS also purchased large amounts of riot gear and bullet-proof checkpoint booths, as well as a purchase of 7000 automatic rifles, and 2700 armored vehicles, and the deployment of drones with allowance for their use on US citizens.
The DHS is becoming a massive domestic army to handle domestic conflict. In the words of Ellen Brown,
“somebody in government is expecting some serious civil unrest …”
DHS chief Janet Napolitano claimed this was to prepare for a mass influx of immigrants into the United States that would require the “shelter and processing” of large numbers of people, but this is nonsense. By whom will the US be attacked that Homeland Security would be responsible for defense, and from where would arise a mass of peaceful immigrants so large as to require more than three billion bullets to repel them?
This is the same government that recently shut down many of its operations including most of the National Parks, for lack of funds, yet had sufficient money to purchase billions of bullets for a non-existent civilian army. A spokesperson was quoted as justifying this massive purchase to “help the government get a low price for a big purchase”, and claimed DHS used “as many as 15 million rounds every year in training exercises”. Someone should ask DHS to divide 3 billion by 15 million, which tells us the ammunition purchase will supply DHS needs for the next 200 years. The authorities naturally attribute criticism and hard questions to mentally-unbalanced ‘conspiracy theorists’, but this is one more instance where actions appear irrational and the official story is so full of holes that it makes no sense.
Another DHS purchase that produced a firestorm of anger when its news went viral, was the supply of what we might call ‘unconventional’ paper targets which were used as practice shooting targets in ‘training exercises’. These targets consisted of figures of American civilians in residential settings. They included small children, a young pregnant mother, old women in robes, grandmothers and grandfathers in their kitchens and front yards, teenagers in parks, little girls and more, perhaps the most frightening part being that all these were termed “no hesitation targets”, meaning to fire without hesitation at the sight of these enemies. What could possibly justify the supply of such targets to a military force, with such an instruction? The US fedbiz.op website took down the solicitation after Infowars broke the story, and eventually apologized publicly for creating these targets of small children.
In early 2014 it was reported that the US military had built a $100 million fake city of about 300 acres in Virginia, for use in training troops for the occupation of cities, complete with a sports stadium, bank, school, and an underground subway in order to train for future combat scenarios in American urban areas. The subway carriages even carry the same logo as those in Washington DC. More disturbingly, it was reported that
“soldiers are being taught that Christians, Tea Party supporters and anti-abortion activists represent a radical terror threat, mirroring rhetoric backed by the Department of Homeland Security which frames “liberty lovers” as domestic extremists.”
The DHS is also building a 176-acre secure compound in the lowest-income area of Washington, DC, which seems almost certainly a preparation for civil war. (18) (19)
The trigger could be an economic collapse that causes angry Americans to flood the streets similar to the Occupy Wall Street and other scenes witnessed across both the US and Europe during the last FED-induced economic crisis. It is worth noting that the Occupy Wall Street protest had the right idea but the wrong target. Wall Street is just an idea, and a bit player. The ultimate cause is the FED, and that should have been their focus. But the FED, the bankers and the FBI saw this coming and infiltrated and financed the protest groups as a way to take control and deflect them from any useful action or focus.
In the middle of 2013 several US local media reported the DHS was conducting widely public but still “top secret” exercises categorised as “full scale terrorism drills” across the entire nation with the stated purpose of making citizens “feel safe”, but which resulted in thousands of terrified people not knowing how to respond to what appeared as a domestic invasion by the US military. People were capriciously apprehended and released after having their belongings searched, but nevertheless urged to celebrate their “independence” from tyranny. These drills were presented as readiness training for potential terrorist incursions, though DHS failed to mention the New York Times observation that all the domestic terror plots in the United States over the last decade were “hatched by the FBI”.
One other worrying development was the appearance of US military C-130 cargo planes apparently spraying mosquitoes over various Florida cities at an altitude of less than 50 meters. Pest control is hardly a military duty, these events immediately reminding me of the US military spraying bacterial and other pathogens over many parts of the US in various CIA-related experiments on the domestic population. These low-altitude overflights are almost certainly practice runs for potential crowd control in the future, for dispensing tear gas or other non-lethal (or lethal) material that would disperse or disorient protestors. I cannot imagine all the possibilities, but the US military most certainly is not going into the mosquito-spraying business. (19) (20)
US Major General Curry was quoted as stating,
“We have local police, backed up by each state’s National Guard, backed up by the Department of Defense. So in addition to all these forces why does Homeland Security need its own private army? Why do the SSA, NOAA and other government agencies need to create their own civilian security forces armed with hollow nose bullets?”
Some may want to dismiss this as just another conspiracy theory, but we might recall the words of Senator Daniel Inouye in 1987,
“There exists a shadowy Government with its own Air Force, its own Navy, its own fundraising mechanism, and the ability to pursue its own ideas of national interest, free from all checks and balances, and free from the law itself.”
The threats to civil liberties go much farther and are much more ominous than I’ve related so far. Another factor is the spate of secret Executive Orders that Obama signed without Congressional approval, observers claiming those orders violated existing laws and were therefore illegal but that the powers behind the White House considered themselves above all law. One of the most sinister was Executive Order 13603 which granted authorization to seize possession of every possible resource, including property and “all food storage facilities”. One author wrote that “This extremist, maniacal edict is designed to enforce our submission, rendering us totally dependent on Big Brother government or face the obvious – starvation and extermination.”
What could possibly have instigated such an order, unless the government is preparing for an all-out war against the American people? What possible excuse, during peace-time, would a “democratic” government have, for the initiation of a program to seize all the “food, water and food storage facilities” of a nation? If we add these to the internment camps and the bullets, what conclusions are possible?
Another ominous threat is that much of the NSA’s illegal intelligence-gathering activities were transferred to the Department of Homeland Security, the same people with the 800 internment camps and the 3 billion bullets. The apparent reason is that the NSA can collect information on domestic political dissidents but has no police powers to act on them, whereas DHS has legislative authority to gather, arrest and incarcerate anyone on their watch lists. DHS is apparently creating a “graded list” of these targeted so-called “security threats”, with those at the top of this list assessed according to how widely disseminated are their anti-establishment views, the followers they appear to have, and these will be the first to disappear into the internment maze. This new policy gives Homeland Security full authority to effectively terrorise the American people under a pretense of controlling domestic terrorism. When we consider these two items, Executive Order 13603 and the new powers granted to DHS, the only possible response can be fear.
If all this isn’t enough, DHS was revealed to have a secret procedure for the instant shutting down of all private communications in America, including mobile phone networks, a program accidentally revealed when government officials in San Francisco disabled all mobile phone calls during a peaceful protest against yet another man shot dead by the police. The administration insisted it had the legal authority to control these communications “during times of national crisis”, “for the purpose of ensuring public safety”, but it has also given DHS the power to actually “seize” all privately-owned communications facilities in order to prevent any civilian communications occurring. Some individuals applied to the courts for further information on these new procedures and policies, but DHS claimed it was “unable to locate or identify any records” in relation to the matter. Nothing more to be said, but it’s difficult to avoid the conclusion that the US government is quickly becoming fully prepared for war against its civilian population.
With the NSA revelations by Edward Snowdon, there is no longer any question that many US government agencies have been monitoring and gathering information on large numbers of known American political dissidents, these agencies including the NSA, FBI, CIA, DHS, various military groups and another 70 or 80 so-called “public-private fusion centers” scattered around the US. Former NSA Technical Director William Binney claimed in an interview that the NSA had a list of 500,000 to one million people in the US who were closely watched and whose every communication and bit of personal data were recorded. These are not terrorists in any sense, but potential leaders of political dissension and therefore potential suspects in the event of civil disturbances.
There also exists a database known as “Main Core”, containing names of Americans who might be considered troublesome, and which knowledgeable sources claim contains the names and communication information of more than eight million Americans who would be potential suspects of political activism, which would include “national opposition to US military invasion abroad”. It includes political dissidents, environmental and other activists, political and tax protesters, lawyers and professors, publishers and journalists, and many more who are most likely harmless, average people.
The database apparently contains all to and from email addresses, all email content, all in and out phone numbers plus duration of calls, the amounts and locations of ATM withdrawals, all credit card purchases and much more. It appears that this dissident surveillance program dates back to the early 1980s, the time of our Great Transformation, when it was revealed that Oliver North, operating from a secure White House site, had been using a database called PROMIS which was part of the REX-84 plan, to track dissidents and potential troublemakers within the United States. This database was meant to identify and immediately locate perceived “enemies of the state” if mass civil disturbances were to break out. (21) (22)
The Middle-Class Revolt
In late 2008 a leaked internal memo from Tom Fitzpatrick, Citibank’s chief technical strategist, contained ominous predictions for American civil society after the vicious financial crisis. He wrote,
“The world is not going back to normal ‘after the magnitude of what they have done’”.
Fitzpatrick claimed that the massive destruction of the middle class, the draining of all the wealth from the population, and the QE money creation by the FED would either bring about a resurgence of inflation or that the US would fall into “depression, civil disorder and possibly war”. He claimed that with the passing of each week and month there was a growing danger that could lead to political instability, a risk of domestic unrest because people were becoming increasingly disenfranchised and impoverished.
Lest we succumb to the temptation of accepting the 2008 financial crisis and the resulting loss of homes as an accident of fate, it would be wise to consider these quotes by Montagu Norman, Governor of The Bank of England prior to the crash of 1929, addressing the United States Bankers’ Association, New York, Idaho Leader, 26 August 1924.
“Capital must protect itself in every possible way, both by combination and legislation. Debts must be collected, mortgages foreclosed as rapidly as possible. When, through process of law, the common people lose their homes, they will become more docile and more easily governed through the strong arm of the government applied by a central power of wealth under leading financiers. These truths are well known among our principal men, who are now engaged in forming an imperialism to govern the world.”
And his thoughts on democracy:
“By dividing the voters through the political party system, we can get them to expend their energies in fighting for questions of no importance.” “It is thus, by discrete action, we can secure for ourselves that which has been so well planned and so successfully accomplished.”
The US government has developed an increasing fear of its own middle class, wide awake to the protests and uprisings in other nations where governments have colluded with the international bankers and large multi-nationals to gut their middle classes and effect the same transfer of wealth to the top 1% as occurred in America. People in many Western societies have become disgruntled and bitter at the increasing evidence that their vaunted democracies have been usurped by the unrestrained capitalists, creating intolerable situations where the people are sacrificed for the increasing wealth of that same top 1%.
At first, the US government exhibited a grim and rather reprehensible kind of satisfaction at watching the misery in other nations where the FED and IMF and the International Bankers had succeeded in their aims of wealth transference, but it also realised that the same boiling rage existed in America and perhaps much less controllable.
US citizens were protesting against a government that was no longer democratic in any sense, and was both unwilling and unable to repair a hopelessly corrupt and inefficient system. They finally awoke en masse and objected to ingrained corruption, shoddy public services, high taxes, homelessness, unemployment, rising inflation, the development of a police state, and more. It is public rage at the realisation of having been betrayed by a “democratic” government that converts civil unrest into political activism and revolution, and it is this that lies at the heart of the FBI’s categorisation of US political dissent as “domestic terrorism”. This terminology is important because the US, in all its hypocrisy for democracy, free speech and freedom of assembly, cannot face the world with open and apparent suppression of political dissent. Therefore, US citizens protesting against their own government cannot be exercising free speech but rather anarchy and terrorism, thereby justifying the use of deadly force to control dissension. The powers that control America have no interest in fairy-tales of freedom. They are interested in wealth and control, and the people in any country are irrelevant – including those in the US.
Americans have experienced first-hand the destruction of their quality of life; they see clearly the disappearance of future opportunity for their children, and they recognise better than most the loss of their freedom of expression which they have so valued. And they know it is precisely the retraction of that expression that is necessary for their no-longer-democratic government to maintain control. This is where their economic and social dissatisfaction mutates into political activism – revolution, in fact – and it is this realisation among the authorities that has spawned the internship camps, the billions of bullets purchased, and the “shoot to kill” orders.
Revolution – The Struggle for Class Power
Buried in the litany of troubles the US is facing today is the primary fact that the nation is engaged in a brutal class war, a struggle for class power that the bottom 99% are losing. This war was declared in the late 1970s, gained great momentum in the 1980s and 1990s, and is still accelerating toward its final desperate conclusion. There are few signs on the horizon that cause hope for a change in direction, and I fear it may be too late.
There is still power with the people themselves, and indeed without the both active cooperation and silent complicity of the people, none of the pathological descent into despair would have been possible. Probably the only force in America that can change what is happening is the combined force of labor. This isn’t so easy today, since the government killed most labor organisations and there is now little if any leadership. A total withdrawal of labor succeeded in forcing a new social contract in 1946 and may be the only power remaining today, but times have changed and tactics must change too. If all unions withdrew their services with the full cooperation of unorganised labor, change might be possible.
But realistically, there is no hope that such a mass protest could be organised even though it is the only possible way to get the attention of whatever remains of a conscientious government and force through a reversal of the tide. In any case, taking to the streets is unlikely to produce pleasant results. If the police don’t have enough bodies to beat up and arrest everyone, DHS has its internment camps, its 3 billion bullets, its years of practice with “no-hesitation” human targets, and it will use all of them.
The only safe way for Americans to go on strike today is to stay at home. On this topic, one internet commenter wrote,
“Just don’t go to work. There is no need to picket in the streets to be on strike, and the factories and offices will be just as quiet and empty, and the profits just as non-existent. The police cannot possibly conduct home-by-home visits to beat up strikers one by one, and no military, even the DHS, is efficient when trying to blow up houses scattered all over the county, one by one. Strikers are probably safe if they stay at home and lock their door.”
Another wrote,
“Another tactic is for Americans to simply quit shopping. They don’t have the money anyway, and don’t need all that useless junk. Don’t buy anything you don’t actually need, and delay even those purchases as long as possible, especially the big-ticket items like cars and furniture. If at all possible, delay every purchase for at least one year. As much as is practicable, stop driving your car. Cancel your cable TV and read a book.” Your grandmother gave you advice 100 years ago that is still valid today: “Use it up, wear it out. Make it do. Do without.”
A third commenter gave this advice:
“One thing you can do to get their attention is to stop paying your bills. VISA and MasterCard can’t cancel 800 million credit cards at the same time, and no bank can process 100 million mortgage defaults. No system can cope with massive non-payment of debt. You are their only source of money and you can ensure they don’t get any of it. That will wake them up. Tell them you’ll begin paying when the overseas corporate tax holiday is over, when high income taxes are reinstated for the rich, when the individual bankers are in prison and when the lost jobs begin returning. This isn’t foolproof, but it’s the best I can do.”
And finally, a more ambitious poster offered these comments:
“Today, the US State Department, the CIA and the FBI pride themselves on their ability to use Twitter and Facebook to cause civil unrest, chaos, violence, and even revolutions, in other countries. It may not have occurred to them that the same tools they use against everyone else can be just as easily used against them. The CIA used Gene Sharp and his Einstein Institute to prepare the Otpor civil disobedience manuals that our government used as the gunpowder to destroy Jugoslavia, and as the template for a dozen other “color revolutions” of which it was so proud. Copies are freely available on the internet.”
William Blum again:
“As I’ve said before: Inasmuch as I can’t see violent revolution succeeding in the United States (something deep inside tells me that we couldn’t quite match the government’s firepower, not to mention its viciousness), I can offer no solution to stopping the imperial beast other than this: Educate yourself and as many others as you can, raising their political and ideological consciousness, providing them with the factual ammunition and arguments needed to sway others, increasing the number of those in the opposition until it raises the political price for those in power, until it reaches a critical mass, at which point … I can’t predict the form the explosion will take or what might be the trigger … But you have to have faith. And courage.”
Rebuilding America
This is an amended list of actions Americans must take if they want to bring their country into the community of nations as a civilised member instead of its present status as a genocidal bully, and to begin healing the nation itself. It is compiled from my own notes with the inclusion of excerpts from a speech made by Chris Hedges at Northeastern University. (23)
Discard the existing two-party political system as diseased and useless, and form one new party with a totally new slate of legislators not formerly involved in government. Their first tasks would be to:
1. Arrest all war criminals on American soil. Begin with both Bushes, Cheney and Rumsfeld, Powell and Rice, both Clintons, Kissinger, Albright, and a long list of other White House and Congressional staff, on charges of treason, war crimes and crimes against humanity.
2. Disband the Federal Reserve Banking System and repudiate all outstanding debt to the FED. The government would, according to the law and constitution, issue its own currency from this point forward.
3. Force the break-up of all the big banks and eliminate interstate banking. Nationalise the so-called investment banks like Goldman Sachs, confiscate their assets and shut them all down. Reintroduce banking sector regulations as was done after the 1930s, to ensure a catastrophe cannot recur, with violations punished by mandatory prison sentences. Outlaw program stock trading by the banks. Force the banks to revert to simple banking functions to serve the economy.
4. Disband the CIA and all its clandestine projects by cutting off all funding. Confiscate all CIA records, files, computers, data, and make the details public. Emasculate the FBI and all its executives and officers. Arrest the planners and perpetrators of all false-flag ops. Kill the NSA. Immediately cease all domestic espionage on US citizens. Cut off all funding, seize all bank accounts and confiscate all records and documents. Bomb the Arizona data storage facility to rubble. Kill the Department of Homeland Security and dismantle and close all internment camps within the continental US.
5. Disband the NED, USAID, the VOA and the 100+ other subversive NGOs that are used today to destabilise the governments and societies of other nations. Recall all CIA espionage agents from foreign embassies and consulates, who constitute about 80% of all US foreign “diplomatic” staff. Designate all Foundations and Think Tanks as enemy aliens, and shut them down.
6. Reduce the military budget by 85% and close all foreign military bases. Bring home all foreign-based military personnel and give them jobs guarding the bankers.
7. Totally eliminate the private sector from infrastructure and social services and confine it to commerce where it belongs. Roll back deregulation and privatisation, reclaiming all public infrastructure to be operated by the government for the common good. Especially kill the despicable private prison system, and free the more than one million who should never have been in prison at all. Kill the movements to debtor’s prisons and civil forfeiture before they gain any more momentum, and pass harsh legislation that holds policemen individually responsible for their crimes.
8. Begin immediate construction of a system of publicly-owned and operated hospitals and medical clinics, and guarantee that all citizens have access to free or easily-affordable health care. Eliminate all insurance companies from the health-care process. Restore funding for universal education.
9. Make all lobbying illegal, with automatic prison sentences for influence-peddling. Designate lobby groups like AIPAC as criminal organisations and hostile enemy aliens, and treat them accordingly. Kill the SuperPacs and corporate donations. Eliminate all corporate contributions to election campaigns, and limit individual contributions to $1,000 maximum. Break the corrupt Zionist control of Congress, Wall Street, the media, the World Bank and the IMF. Terminate their globalism and any reference to a New World Order. Eliminate immediately all funding and financial support for Israel.
10. Eliminate legal immunity for the elites. Make illegal the payment of corporate fines for personal crimes. Put the people in prison. Levy an 85% income tax on all corporate profits being held outside the country by US-based multinationals. Reinstate the taxes on the rich and very rich. Eliminate personal tax breaks on capital gains and institute an 85% tax on all income over $500,000 per year.
11. The media monopoly must be broken by forcing de-centralisation and pushing the ownership once again into thousands of individual companies owned by totally unrelated parties. The current control of the media must be dismantled because of the Zionists’ propaganda and the Hidden State’s political agenda. Force the disintegration of all media holding groups and wide dispersion of all media, restricting ownership to only one newspaper or TV station per market. Outlaw opinion-based journalism and make untruthful news reports punishable by public flogging.
12. Eliminate GM food, or at least legislate full disclosure on food labels. Eliminate factory farms; institute extensive monitoring and harsh penalties for food chemical violations.
13. Use the money collected from the rich, the bankers and the FED to begin repairing America’s dilapidated infrastructure before any more dams and bridges collapse.
14. Close all the torture prisons. Close Guantanamo, Diego Garcia, Abu Ghraib, and the other torture prisons and demand an accounting of all prison ships and their human cargo. Close the School of the Americas and destroy all the torture manuals.
15. Emasculate the US President, the Presidency, and the White House, and return all power to Congress because it is the concentration of power in the office of the President that has permitted the total alien control of all vital parts of the US government.
16. Eliminate all US-sponsored sanctions against other nations, especially China, Russia, Syria and Iran. End the illegal occupation of Hawaii, Puerto Rico, Afghanistan, Iraq and Libya. Get out of the Ukraine. Dismantle immediately all organised interference in the internal affairs and elections of other nations. Refund the $100 billion of Iraqi gold and cash seized, and the similar amount from Libya.
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Larry Romanoff is a retired management consultant and businessman. He has held executive positions in international consulting firms, and owned an international import-export business. He lives in Shanghai and is currently writing a series of ten books generally related to China and the West. He can be contacted at: 2186604556@qq.com
A common response in the Anglo-American media to Russia’s counter-sanctions against agricultural imports from the United States and EU in 2014 was that Russians would go hungry and were, therefore, shooting themselves in the foot. Within a matter of days of the announcement, however, numerous Latin American countries, namely Argentina and Brazil, got in line to fill the gap, as well as China, which started selling produce directly to Russia.
More importantly, according to the Food and Agriculture Organization, Russia ranked as one of the top three producers in the world for a range of agricultural products at the time, from various fruits and vegetables to grains, potatoes and poultry. As of 2018, it was the world’s top exporter of wheat. The government has also had plans in place since 2013 to significantly boost the country’s already respectable production of organic produce from small farms and gardens.
Natural Societyreported in May 2014 that 35 million Russian families are growing an impressive percentage of Russia’s fruits and vegetables on 20 million acres:
According to some statistics, they grow 92% of the entire countries’ potatoes, 77% of its vegetables, 87% of its fruit, and feed 71% of the entire population from privately owned organic farms or house gardens all across the country. These aren’t huge Agro-farms run by pharmaceutical companies; these are small family farms and less-than-an-acre gardens.
By autumn 2017, Vladimir Putin had publicly set a goal for Russia to become the world’s top producer and exporter of organic agriculture. In the summer of 2018, the Russian president signed legislation creating official standards, labeling and certification procedures for organic products produced for commercial sale in Russia that went into effect in 2020. Government support will be available to organic farmers, and a public registry will be created listing certified producers.
The agricultural sanctions created some immediate problems, mainly temporary shortages of some meat products and price increases due to the need to work out infrastructure issues to accommodate imports from countries at greater distances.
But Russians did not go hungry, as I witnessed plenty of food in markets, from street vendors, and in restaurants in all cities I visited during my trips in 2015 and 2017. There was, however, concern over price increases.
Author Sharon Tennison, who has traveled throughout Russia extensively since 1983, reported the general attitude of most Russians toward Western sanctions during her trip to Moscow and St. Petersburg in September 2014:
The general outlook of Russians I spoke with is one of quiet confidence, saying that sanctions will turn out good for Russia in the long run––that Russia must become self-sufficient––remarking that Russia became infatuated with foreign products in the 1990s. At that time they felt Russia didn’t need to manufacture high-end products that they could purchase them from other countries. However, the situation has changed. Today production has become the “in” discussion wherever one goes. The sanctions have helped bring this about. Several Russians remarked that they hoped the sanctions lasted for three years or more, since that would give Russians sufficient time to learn to manufacture formerly imported items themselves. The Russian government is offering financial support to entrepreneurs who are ready to move into consumer production.
Sanctions Imposed
In March of 2014, the U.S. and the European Union (EU) began imposing sanctions on Russia in retaliation for its “annexation” of Crimea. These initial sanctions were largely comprised of asset freezes and visa restrictions on certain Russian officials. As the situation in Eastern Ukraine escalated, with rebels taking over local government buildings and demanding autonomy from what they perceived as a coup government in Kiev, the list of individuals targeted for sanctions grew.
After the downing of the Malaysia Airlines flight MH-17 in July 2014, the west imposed more wide-ranging sanctions, which included several Russian banks as well as the defense and energy sectors. In March of 2018, there were diplomatic “sanctions” (expulsions) for the alleged Skirpal poisoning, which Russia responded to with its own expulsions. That same month, there were business/personal sanctions against a number of Russians for their alleged interference in the 2016 elections.
In order to provide the most accurate and comprehensive assessment of the effect of Western sanctions on Russia over the past five years, University of Birmingham professor Richard Connolly, in his 2018 book, “Russia’s Response to Sanctions: How Western Economic Statecraft is Reshaping Political Economy in Russia,” describes how Russia’s economy actually works in order to provide a contextual framework for understanding the success or failure of the West’s policy. He concluded that the ultimate effect of the sanctions is likely not what was intended by Washington policymakers.
Economy with Four Sectors
Connolly explains that the Russian economy can be divided up into roughly four sectors.
Sector A generates revenue, or “rents,” in the form of taxes, fees and other benefits that support Sector B. Sector A is comprised largely of fossil fuel and mineral extraction industries but also includes large “agricultural conglomerates,” manufacturers of nuclear power generation equipment, and some defense industry manufacturers. Economic actors in Sector A are highly profitable and competitive in the global market, into which they are successfully integrated. The state also plays a strong role in Sector A industries either through significant ownership stakes, as is the case with Gazprom, Rosneft, and Rosatom, or through strong personal ties among private owners and the political class, as is the case with Lukoil and Novatek.
Sector B is comprised of economic actors that are dependent upon the rents generated by Sector A. This includes companies that are generally not competitive globally and provide goods and services to the domestic market rather than for export. Despite state assistance, they do not always generate consistent profits. Examples include automotive manufacturing, shipbuilding, fossil fuel equipment and some defense manufacturing. Other beneficiaries of Sector A include state bureaucracy workers and pensioners. It is estimated that Sectors A and B together comprise around 70 percent of the Russian economy.
Sector C is independent of Sectors A and B and includes large construction companies, retail and business services, and various small- to medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) in retail, transportation, business support and communications technology. Because these businesses are outside of the Sector A and B relationship, they’re dependent upon successful profit-making and tend to encourage more competition, innovation and productivity, though they are vulnerable to various forms of outside corruption and unfair takeovers.One successful example of a Sector C industry that enjoys significant and growing export rates is computer software.
The last sector is the financial sector, which, as Connolly points out, developed virtually out of nothing over the past three decades into a system of numerous, largely state-owned or state-influenced banks that provide a wide range of services. However, Russia’s overall financial sector is small in comparison with other middle-income countries, with Sector A and B entities getting preferential treatment in receipt of the limited credit that is available. There are few small banks or other financial institutions that can provide SMEs with credit, as is reflected in the fact that, as of 2016, two-thirds of assets and liabilities were owned by large state-controlled banks.
As Connolly notes, the obvious disadvantages of this system of political economy are hobbled competition, innovation and productivity. It also limits the development of SMEs.
The advantages, however, include support of domestic employment and the funding of social programs. Perhaps most importantly, this system has also enabled the Russian state to cushion the country from the worst potential effects of Western sanctions and even encourage the stimulation of alternative economic investment, which has strengthened agriculture and some industry and finance.
In terms of how Russia responded to Western sanctions, Connolly provides the following summary:
The Russian response was multifaceted and included the securitization of strategic areas of economic policy, a concerted effort to support import substitution in strategic sectors of the economy, and vigorous efforts to cultivate economic relations with non-Western countries, especially in Asia.
Policy of Diversification
Securitization officially justified certain policies using national security and subordinating certain other objectives in the economic realm that might be prioritized under “normal” circumstances. In order to increase Russia’s economic independence or sovereignty, policies of import substitution and “diversifying” its range of foreign economic partners and the extent of those relations were implemented.
Import substitution involved increasing the proportion of goods and services in Russia that were produced domestically. As an official policy, it was begun in earnest after the imposition of Western sanctions. By 2015, the government was providing federal budget funding, facilitation of loans and access to state procurement funds as well as institutional support to specific sectors of the economy, which included the provision of legal and regulatory frameworks for such policies. In 2016, a plan was presented by Russia’s minister for industry and trade that encompassed “2,000 projects across nineteen branches of the economy. These projects were to be carried out between 2016 and 2020.”
By early 2018, there were 2,500 projects worth $38 billion that were to be completed by 2020. The areas of priority for industrial manufacturing included power equipment, oil and gas equipment, machine tool and civil aviation manufacturing, and agricultural machinery, all of which had import levels between 50 percent and 90 percent.
Gains in domestic food production were seen quickly as Russia became the world’s No. 1 supplier of wheat in early 2018, subsequently capturing over half of the world’s market. Wheat exports continue to increase; sales to other nations increased by 80 percent during the first half of 2018 over the same period in 2017.
Diversifying foreign economic relations is pretty self-explanatory, and in this case it focused heavily on countries in Asia such as China, India, Vietnam and South Korea, as well as Turkey and Latin America. Connolly points out that Russia did not present this as a “zero-sum” action and still conducts most of its trade with various European countries (46 percent of exports and 38 percent of imports). This fact should be considered when assessing the credibility of accusations against Putin that he wants to destroy the EU.
President Vladimir Putin meeting with German business executives, Nov. 1, 2018. (The Kremlin)
China, however, has now become Russia’s single largest trading partner, accounting for 10 percent of Russia’s exports and 22 percent of its imports. But this figure alone does not begin to provide the full picture of Russia’s increasing partnership with Eurasia in general and China in particular.
According to Asia Times correspondent Pepe Escobar, who has been closely following the trend of Eurasian economic integration for several years, what’s known in Russia as the “Greater Eurasia” project was recently presented to the Council of Ministers in Moscow and is now largely accepted as an entrenched foreign policy guide for Russia’s future.
After interviewing three top Russian academics and policymakers who have been championing the Greater Eurasia project for years, Escobar explained that the policy would not preclude continuing a relationship with Europe, recognizing that the Russian elite has been intimately influenced by European culture and trade and technology since the time of Peter the Great, but is meant to be a rebalancing toward the inevitable economic center that will soon be led by Asia and to serve as a “civilizational bridge” between east and west.
The New Silk Road
Situated as it is geographically, Russia is in a perfect position to play this role, serving as a cultural connector between the Enlightenment and the Mongols and as a physical connector between Europe and Asia. In terms of the latter, Russia will play a pivotal role in connecting China’s New Silk Road (aka Belt and Road Initiative, or BRI) through Russia and Central Asia and into Europe.
Escobar writes:
Greater Eurasia and the Belt and Road Initiative are bound to merge. Eurasia is crisscrossed by mighty mountain ranges such as the Pamirs and deserts like the Taklamakan and the Karakum. The best land route runs via Russia or via Kazakhstan to Russia. In crucial soft power terms, Russia remains the lingua franca of Mongolia, Central Asia and the Caucasus.
And that leads us to the utmost importance of an upgraded Trans-Siberian railway—Eurasia’s current connectivity core. In parallel, the transportation systems of the Central Asia “stans” are closely integrated with the Russian network of roads; all that is bound to be enhanced in the near future by Chinese-built high-speed rail.
. . . And all across the spectrum, Moscow aims at maximizing return[s] on the crown jewels of the Russian Far East: agriculture, water resources, minerals, lumber, oil and gas. Construction of liquefied natural gas (LNG) plants in Yamal vastly benefits China, Japan and South Korea.
Iran, Turkey, and India are all pivoting toward Eurasia as well, with a free trade agreement between Iran and the Russian-led Eurasian Economic Union having been recently approved. Iran is also playing a role in the International North-South Transport Corridor (INSTC) to facilitate closer economic cooperation between Russia and India, who have enjoyed cordial relations and strong trade in defense for decades.
But Russia and China’s “comprehensive strategic partnership” — as it is referred to officially by both countries — is much more than economic. In an unprecedented move, China sent 3,000 troops to join Russia in a 2018 military exercise to practice countering NATO in Eastern Europe. In July of 2019, “Russian and Chinese bombers conducted their first long-range joint air patrol in the Asia-Pacific.” To reinforce the strategic importance of Russian-Chinese relations, the day after these maneuvers, the Chinese government published a “white paper” in which it promised to further increase military cooperation between the two countries, partly as a result of the United States’s “undermining” of regional stability.
A former senior national security official in Russia described the relationship to National Interest correspondent Graham Allison as a “functional military alliance.” Allison elaborated that “Russian and Chinese generals’ staffs now have candid, detailed discussions about the threat US nuclear modernization and missile defense pose to each of their strategic deterrents.”
S-400 surface-to-air missile systems during the Victory parade 2010. (Wikimedia)
Allison also reiterated that Russia has lifted its decades-long withholding of advanced military technologies to its eastern neighbor, selling China the S-400 air defense system and partnering in research and development on rocket engines and drones. Furthermore, Russia and China vote the same on the UN Security Council 98 percent of the time, and Russia has supported all Chinese vetoes since 2007.
As evidence that the Russian public will likely support the Greater Eurasia project and Russia’s diversifying of economic partnerships in an eastern direction, recent polling reveals that 69 percent of Russians hold a positive view of China — the exact same percentage that hold a negative view of the United States. Two-thirds of Russians identify the United States as their nemesis, while only 2 percent identify China that way.
Now that we’ve explored how Russia has actually responded to Western sanctions, we can turn to the question of how effective those sanctions have been in terms of what their presumed intent was. As Connolly enumerates, in addition to sending a symbolic message of disapproval of Russia’s actions and to show a united front among Western allies, the intent among some policymakers was to cause significant economic harm to Russia—not just as a deterrent to further “bad behavior,” but with the idea that this would encourage political revolt among targeted Russian elites that would endanger Putin’s government and result in regime change with the installment of a new Russian leader that would be more amenable to Washington’s desires.
The answer is that Washington has once again — in its hubris and ignorance — been hoist with its own petard. As British scholar on Russia Paul Robinson sums up in his review of Connolly’s book:
First, it [sanctions] has created a system that “is less vulnerable to external pressure” than that which existed before, in that it is more independent from the West. Second, it has accelerated a shift in Russia’s place in the global economy towards the East. This obviously has political ramifications which Connolly does not explore. Somewhat perversely, Western sanctions have reduced, not increased, Western leverage over Russia. This is probably permanent.
Moreover, since Russia has weathered the sanctions reasonably well, even using them to strengthen certain sectors of its economy in the long term, the sanctions have likely failed as a tool of deterrence. As Connolly states:
How can policymakers expect sanctions to act as a credible deterrent to third countries when the target country in any given instance might appear to be coping or even flourishing under sanctions? In short, a significant and negative impact on the target economy is a necessary, although not sufficient, condition of sanctions to be effective.
For the policymakers implementing sanctions, it might have been worthwhile to have been briefed by real experts on what Russia’s economy is actually like. If they’d done so, they might have realized that sanctions were likely to have a limited effect on a country that, as analyst Patrick Armstrong has pointed out, has a “full-service economy.” In other words, Russia has demonstrated that it has both the natural and human resources to build sophisticated infrastructure, weapons and defense capabilities, a space station, military and commercial aircraft, heavy trucks and passenger cars, to provide energy and the attendant infrastructure, and to feed its people.
Instead, beliefs that Russia is a “gas station posing as a country,” or that it was still somehow frozen in the 1990s, underpinned policy decisions that ultimately failed.
Natylie Baldwin is author of “The View from Moscow: Understanding Russia and U.S.-Russia Relations,” from which this article is excerpted. “The View from Moscow” is available in e-book and print. She is co-author of “Ukraine: Zbig’s Grand Chessboard & How the West Was Checkmated.” She has traveled throughout western Russia since 2015 and has written several articles based on her conversations and interviews with a cross-section of Russians. She blogs at Natyliesbaldwin.com .
Nothing sends chills down the spine of Israel more than the mere mention of the name ‘Hezbollah’. Nothing, no superpower nor hurtling supernova petrifies Israel more than the existence of Hezbollah’s muscle and missile at its doorstep. Israel does not fear Egypt; it does not fear Jordan or Syria or even faraway Iran, but, it is indeed absolutely and positively petrified of little Lebanon with its uncontested resistance army: the Hezbollah. And this deep-seated pathological fear has found much gory and exuberant expression since the Israeli military was soundly defeated by Hezbollah back in 2006. Every single Israeli military project right across the Middle East since 2006 has been about defeating Hezbollah and stopping the spread of its popular resistor-culture. And evidently, every Israeli attempt to achieve this for the past decade and a half has flatly failed.
Unable to best Hezbollah’s spectacular performance on the battlefield, unable to also access any consequential Intel on Hezbollah’s brains and brawn, and moreover, unable to ignite a sectarian civil war in Lebanon after numerous attempts over the years, a humiliated Israel resorted to engineering, through American hands and influence, the unleashing of an army of terrorist Takfiris on Syria: Damascus being the main artery of support from Tehran to Hezbollah in Lebanon. One could say that Syria was attacked by an army of head-choppers because Hezbophobic Israel could not directly retaliate against a victorious Hezbollah in Lebanon. The Israeli master plan here was to cut off Hezbollah from Syria, thereby from its Iranian sponsor, and to flood both Levantean nations with Takfiri terrorists, thus specifically busying Hezbollah’s hands while the Israeli military “attacked it from the back”. Yet, alas for the Israelis, this diabolical plan to defeat or weaken the Hezbollah has only produced the opposite results for Tel Aviv. Syria, though severely damaged, still stands and remains a main artery of Iranian support to Hezbollah, and Hezbollah itself has increased its wholesale military and geopolitical powers even further. Now Hezbollah possesses an even larger stockpile of sophisticated missiles pointing at Tel Aviv and at everywhere else of vital value in Israel proper. Presently, there is not a single inch of Israel that’s not in Hezbollah’s cross-hairs. The Israeli military’s top brass know only too well that Hezbollah will most certainly use these missiles on Israel if provoked, or, indeed when a wider regional war is ignited. And this is precisely what is causing an incurable insomnia to both Israel’s military architects, as well as to all its Judeo-centric allies in the West: all flaccidly scrambling to find ways to assist a geopolitically cornered Israel.
But, dear reader, there is also another issue that Israel equally fears and loses much sleep over. A fear that has rattled Israel’s shadowy bones since the Palestinian Nakba back in 1948. An old, old fear. A terrorizing fear that Tel Aviv has somewhat succeeded at camouflaging and suppressing from the public eye and ear with the help of its propaganda arm in Western media.
This primordial Israeli fear, this mortifying bugaboo is known as the Palestinian ‘Right of Return’.
If Israel were to describe its perpetual nightmare, it would be one where Palestinian refugees are at the three land borders of the Holy land and pouring back into their ancestral territory in their millions.
This is your standard Israeli tableau of horror.
This is the very scenario that Israel fears the most. This, and of course, Hezbollah’s missiles raining on Tel Aviv and Haifa and Eilat and Dimona and every single illegal Israeli settlement and post.
Realistically, it is impossible to imagine Palestinian refugees returning to their homelands without Resistance missiles first clearing the path for them. And this, dear reader, this very combination of missiles raining and refugees returning is THE absolute and ultimate Israeli tableau of horror.
Presently finding itself in an intractable geopolitical pit of despair, and with all its plans against its Resistor enemies having thus failed since 2006, all that Israel can now achieve is easy land-grabs and annexations inside of occupied Palestinian neighborhoods in Jerusalem, in the West Bank and in the Jordan Valley: all areas already under Israeli control. Considered criminal and illegal by International Law, these imminent annexation maneuvers are justified by Tel Aviv as part and parcel of the dictates and content of the Deal of the Century: a unilateral Israeli-centric deal that not a single Palestinian the world over has accepted – not one! In fact, it appears to be the case that the rejection of the Deal of the Century is the only issue that all Palestinians agree on. This is because fundamentally, the Deal demands the total cancellation of the Right of Return of Palestinian war refugees back to their ancestral villages and lands. No Palestinian would ever accept this condition.
Moreover, the Palestinians see an existential threat that’s writ in invisible ink between the lines of the Deal. They see Tel Aviv’s nefarious second stage of the Deal: they see the illegal mass transfer of all Palestinians out of Historic Palestine, including the eviction of the Palestinian ’48-ers who hold Israeli passports, should the Palestinians break out into a Third Intifada and physically rebel against the Deal when it’s actually being implemented on the ground. Presently, the visible parts of the Deal of the Century are being promoted by Israel and her global media agents and politicians. The invisible part of the Deal will undoubtedly follow because the Israelis already know that the Deal will be rejected by the Palestinians and they have already prepared for this rebellion: mass and total ethnic cleansing of Palestinians from Historic Palestine. The big move. The breathtaking move. The wettest dream for the terrorist invader Jews currently occupying Historic Palestine. The ruling Ashkenazim Jews of Europe have long been dreaming of this – nay they have orchestrated numerous wars including WWI, WWII, the Bolshevik Revolution and numerous wars against the Arabs just to realize this blood-splattered Jewish dream. Engineered the mass murder of some 170 million non-Jews just to enable them entrance into Historic Palestine, which they achieved in 1948. And since then, Israel’s Jews have been on the final leg of their grand mission of taking over the whole of Historic Palestine: using inhumane and incessant brutality, periodical mass murder and expulsion of the native Palestinians. In effect, a full-on genocide committed sneakily and incrementally for some 72 years now.
In other words, the Deal of the Century is but a massive land-grab facilitator and the prelude to Israel’s ‘Final Solution’ to their Palestinian problem: atrocious mass murders and absolute ethnic cleansing right across the board.
We all already know that Palestinians are not waiting on Abbas to rescue them from the lethal Deal, despite him recently cancelling Oslo as well as all security cooperation with the Jewish state. Palestinians are not waiting on any specific Arab state either, or on the international community to rescue them and their rich heritage and history. But Palestinians presently are indeed en mass looking to the Axis of Resistance for salvage and liberation.
So what can the Axis of Resistance do for them? How will it react to the Deal? What does it have planned to counter the implementation of the Deal that Netanyahu has promised to begin applying on July 1st, 2020?
The answer to this must be the closest held secret in the universe. But, let us, however, look at their options – and they do have several options, bar one: surrender. There will be no surrender to the Deal of the Century.
Obviously, non-surrender implies war. And so it is. The only question remaining therefore is ‘when’. Who controls the timing of an imminent war? Here, consider if you may, that the side that’s positively ready for war and sacrifice is not concerned with who fires the first bullet and at what hour of day, but how to go to war and win it with least casualties to their side. With this firmly in mind, let us then look at the options available to the Axis of Resistance and their assured response to Israel’s imminent annexation plans.
Option one: Upon Israel’s implementation of the first stage of annexation, the Resistance could conceivably go into immediate war with the state of Israel and its allies. A war where Israel will have to simultaneously defend itself on multiple fronts. Defend itself within against Palestinians in Gaza AND the West Bank: both sectors now fully armed by Iran and trained by Hezbollah. And defend itself without against its closest neighbors of Syria and Lebanon – and very plausibly against an incensed-by-Israel Jordan and Egypt too – as well as with Israel’s faraway regional enemies of Iran, Iraq and Yemen (including hundreds of thousands of trained volunteer fighters from Pakistan, Afghanistan and Malaysia). This means a regional war which the USA, UK and France (possibly other NATO nations too) will all jump into, either directly or indirectly, thus dragging Russia and China, either directly or indirectly, into a massive Mideastern power-grab confrontation: the eastern rising giants of China and Russia here geostrategically compelled and obliged to assist their mega assets-hosting nations of Syria and Iran. This option is a turbulent and bloody one that would lead to untold human and material losses, as well as needing much time and conferencing to negotiate a post-war disentanglement between a multitude of nations, all gridlocked in a foreign territory. Yet, despite the hectic burdens of this option, the Axis of Resistance’s sacrifices will still lead to victory for the Resistance as they have all the needed weapons to completely destroy a tiny Israel in a handful of days, and this despite the destructive hits they may suffer from Tel Aviv and its powerful allies. It’s a brutal ‘sooner than later’ liberation of Palestine and the eviction of Israeli and Western colonialists projects in the region. In this regard, we could say that the price for ‘instant liberation’ is the highest.
Option two: Wait for the Israelis to commit their usual and predictable atrocities against the rebelling Palestinian civilians – wait for massive global outrage then enter into warfare while riding the moral high ground and the coattails of massive global support for justice for the Palestinians. This option probably has the best optics: a war to save six million long-suffering Palestinian civilians from a rabidly racist, sadistic and genocidal occupier. A righteous war that aims to bring justice and freedom to the archetypal victim. The global masses will resonate with such an emotive narrative, and Western nations under the spell of Zionism would be hindered here from giving full or prolonged support to Israel on account of public opinion at home being massively against it. This option is costly on both civilian and armed Resistor, but not as costly as the first one.
Option three: Knowing that Israel is a coward who tiptoes hunchbacked in the shadows; knowing too that Israel would not dare implement ALL its annexation plans at once and overnight, but instead, it will implement them incrementally and with unsteady hands: knowing all this, the Axis of Resistance may very well decide to hold back on any immediate explosive reaction to the annexation; let time pass and remain coiled and ready: hold back and just wait for the US Empire to weaken even further before entering into a direct liberation war with Israel. The equation here being a weakened US equals a severely, nay fatally handicapped Israel. And let us all be very clear here that it is the United States’ military protection of Israel that puts oxygen into Israel’s lungs. Without America’s military support to Israel, the Resistance could easily take on the Israeli army and defeat it and liberate the whole of Palestine today: right this very second, in fact. This is not bravado, but sourced information. It is only American military power and this alone that stands in the way of liberating Palestine. Simply, Israel is currently incapable of defending itself against the Axis of Resistance, despite its stockpile of illegal nukes and its hi-tech American defensive weaponry, gifted to Tel Aviv through the corrupt fleecing of the American taxpayer by DC politicians. This option will cost less lives than the two above.
Option four: Post-annexation, allow for Jewish Apartheid to massively flourish for several years, thus allowing for Israeli society itself to further disintegrate its democracy internally and become an abhorrent and much hated racist, rogue nation in the eyes of the globe, with barely any support for it possible even by its traditional European allies. This method is known as ‘forcing the snake to eat its own tail’, thus eventually, through a self-defeating Apartheid system, swallowing up its own deflated shekel and body politik: eventually strangling itself with its own masticating mouth; leading thus to its political disintegration a-la the South African model in the 1980’s – a model that saw the natives overnight reclaiming their rightful territories without having to resort to mass bloodshed and all out war with the tyrannical ruling colonialists. This option will cost less lives for Resistance fighters but needs much civilian sacrifice, as indeed, the punitive Jewish occupiers will in the meantime unleash horrendous levels of violence against the increasingly restless native civilians.
Option five: Now, this here is an interesting option, an option that Hassan Nasrallah spoke of only last week. In a two and a half hour interview he gave to Al-Nour Radio, Nasrallah parsed various war issues and suggested for the first time ever the plausibility that Israelis, upon realizing in the near future that their American Empire protector is too weakened internally and externally and therefore unable to war any further on their behalf, and Tel Aviv also already knowing that an existential war with the Axis of Resistance would lead to a mass death of Jews and the utter destruction of Tel Aviv: these two sobering realizations will force it into radical withdrawal from the holy land altogether. In other words, facing sure material devastation and mass loss of Jewish life in the coming war, Israeli state architects would have no other smart option but to pack up suitcases and simply leave the holy land in peace before a lethal war is imposed on them by the Resistance. Indeed, the Axis of Resistance would most certainly take full advantage of America’s incapacitation and inability to protect Tel Aviv and activate thus their Liberation War. Just up and leave sans war is what Nasrallah is suggesting here. An astonishing yet plausible scenario. A scenario that is suddenly made more plausible by the rapid and palpable decline of American hegemony around the world, as well as the current disintegration of America’s society that we’ve all recently witnessed on the streets of half the existing American states: violent protests that the belligerent American security apparatus will find impossible to contain and control 100% and indefinitely, regardless of who is president. Protests that will keep waxing and waning till either the corrupt bi-partisan Status Quo itself surrenders and a new and more humane and equitable one takes its place, or, all out civil war breaks out in the United States of America: thus bringing with it proof positive that the American Empire has indeed fallen and its Republic now drowns in blood and chaos. That aside, the devastating affects of COVID-19 on the American military cannot be understated here either. Many of its bases are under COVID-19 restraints and presently, the US Navy has 26 of its navy warships under Covid-19 quarantine, thus leaving only two war-ready ships in the Middle East. And this, dear reader, is the major reason why the US did not, in fact could not challenge the Iranian vessels transporting fuel to Venezuela, despite an aggressive naval blockade against Caracas. This ‘suitcase’ option that Nasrallah spoke of is, of course, the most desired by the Axis of Resistance as it will be the least costly to its civilians and fighters. Of course, the death of an Empire does not occur overnight and this option requires extreme vigilance and exceptional patience on behalf of the Axis of Resistance. Two attributes that fortunately the Axis of Resistance is well-practiced in. And by the gauge of recent headlines on America’s speedy decline internally and externally, it would seem to be the case that the Empire’s fall will not occur in faraway decades, but in the near to medium future, meaning: inside of half a decade.
Dear reader, any of the above options will work to liberate Palestine and the region from all foreign control and abuse. There is not even the slightest glimmer of doubt about this in the minds of the Resistance strategists whatsoever. It is the cost of various options and paths to liberation that the leaders of the Resistance currently pontificate upon, not their military readiness or capability. This is the current status of the Axis of Resistance. And the option that will eventually be chosen will be dependent on the challenges that the US and Israel will throw at it in the meantime. Not forgetting here of course that the Masada-ists in Israel may very well panic in the meantime and reflexively and foolishly play a wild card out of dire, pathological fright: out of profound morbid fear of Resistance missiles clearing the way for the Right of Return. Their desperate fear and terror may very well drive them to miscalculate and choose a fight-to-death ‘today instead of tomorrow’, knowing that tomorrow Israel will be weaker than today. This would be the worst option for Israel as this will guarantee massive loss of life for them.
Whichever way the future wind blows in the Levant, all options and wild cards will lead to the liberation of Palestine. This we can be certain of: the death of Israel. Death at the heels of the fall of the American Empire.
The world will be forever changed with the coming momentous victory for the Axis of Resistance. And the countdown to victory begins… with Israel’s intended annexation on the 1st July, 2020.
This story has all the requirements to qualify for a conspiracy theory, and may not make sense to you without some background for context.
Prior to the US entering WWI, an enormous years-long anti-German propaganda campaign was unleashed by the Creel Commission, headed by Walter Lippman and Edward Bernays, the latter being a nephew of Sigmund Freud. (1) (2) Public literature attacked everything German in America, including schools and churches. In many schools the German language was forbidden to be taught to “pure Americans”, and administrators were urged to fire “all disloyal teachers”, meaning any Germans. The names of countless towns and cities were changed to eliminate their German origin: Berlin, Iowa became Lincoln, Iowa. German foods and food names were purged from restaurants; sauerkraut became ‘liberty cabbage’; dachshunds became ‘liberty dogs’ and German Shepherds became ‘Alsatians’.
All American orchestras were ordered to eliminate from their performances any music by classic German composers like Beethoven, Bach and Mozart. Public libraries removed and (most often) burned all books by German authors, philosophers and historians. In some states, the use of the German language was prohibited in public and on the telephone. German professors were fired from their universities, German-language or German-owned local newspapers were denied advertising revenue, constantly harassed, and often forced out of business. The patriotic Boy Scouts of America contributed to the effort by regularly burning bundles of German newspapers that were on sale, and Germans were regularly insulted and spat upon by other citizens. Germans were forced to gather in public meetings and denounce Germany and its leaders, forced to purchase war bonds and publicly declare their allegiance to the US flag.
As the rhetoric reached dangerous levels, the anti-German hysteria and violence increased proportionately. Many Germans were forcibly removed from their homes, often torn from their beds during the night, taken out into the street and stripped naked, beaten and whipped, then forced to kneel and kiss the American flag. Many were tarred and feathered, then forced to leave their cities or towns. Some were lynched from trees. Priests and pastors were dragged out of their churches and beaten for giving sermons in German.
Newspaper editors were screaming that all Germans were spies poisoning American water supplies or infecting hospital medical shipments, and that most “ought to be taken out at sunrise and shot for treason”. Congressmen recommended hanging or otherwise executing all Germans in America, State Governors urging the use of firing squads to eliminate “the disloyal element” from the entire state. The US Secretary of the Navy Josephus Daniels stated that Americans would “put the fear of God into the hearts” of these people. Most Americans are aware that during the national hysteria of the Second World War the US government forced more than 100,000 US-born Japanese into concentration camps, but history has deleted the fact that many more Germans were interned in concentration camps in the US prior to and during the First War, and in all cases had all their assets seized.
With all of this and much more, America was a hotbed of hatred for the entire German population. After the Second World War, Germany was widely accused of using propaganda against the Jews, while our history books have airbrushed out the massive and unspeakably evil storm of hate propaganda in America against Germans prior to and during WWII. There were thousands of posters and articles containing lurid descriptions of fake atrocities, newspaper articles, cartoons and so much more, but the historical record of this years-long tapestry of lies and hate has been quite well buried. It is possible to find copies on the internet of many wartime posters, but this collection has been well sanitised with virtually all of the genuinely evil and dirty productions apparently lost to history. The narrative today in the history books casually dismisses all of this as “an innovative use of graphic arts to stir patriotism”, but it was hatred rather than patriotism that was being stirred.
The propaganda incited an intense hatred for everything German, to ease US entry into the First World War. It was not different during the Second World War, and the propaganda/hate campaign was not limited to the US. In 1940, the UK government initiated what it called an “anger campaign” with the stated cause of “instilling personal hatred against the German people and Germany”, the authorities pleased that the original 6% of the British population that ‘hated Germany’ increased to over 50% by the end of the campaign. The radio waves were full of descriptions of the “cruelty and blackness of the German soul”. There were articles in the British newspapers advocating the “systematic extermination of the entire German nation” to be carried out after the war ended. Thus, after victory over Germany, every person of German extraction was to be executed and the nation of Germany itself to disappear forever. (3)
It wasn’t only the US and UK where this hatred of Germans was being propagated. Germans in every nation were vehemently portrayed as evil incarnate, this nature stemming simply from the fact of their being of German origin. In countries all around the world, the media spread the same message of hatred against Germany and the Germans. In Brazil, anti-German demonstrations and riots consumed the country, with German businesses being destroyed and Germans being assaulted and killed. In almost every nation, the German-language press and use of the German language completely disappeared during the war from fear of reprisal, as did all German schools and most businesses. None re-opened.
Throughout the world, as in the US, false wartime propaganda was used as during both World Wars to incite entire populations into an irrational hatred of everything German, even to the extent of powerful media recommendations that the entire German race be exterminated after the war. The American public in particular was as full of hatred for things German during the Second World War as they were during the First World War; on both occasions to the extent there was a significant movement to exterminate all those of German descent in the US.
It was in this context that Eisenhower so famously said, “God, how I hate Germans”, and it was in this context that 12 million Germans died in American concentration camps in Germany AFTER the war. As James Bacque discovered, the Americans killed between 8 million and 12 million Germans in American concentration camps in Germany. Perhaps two million were executed, and the rest died by starvation, it being a capital offense to even attempt to bring food to the prisoners. (4) (5) (6)
The US was a hotbed of hatred for everything German during the Second World War as well as during the first. Germany and Germans had been so reviled in the US for decades that most Americans possessed an instinctive fear and hatred of them. Those memories so fervently instilled by the propaganda machine, did not dissipate quickly but lingered for many years, so much so that even after the war it was actually dangerous for an American to say anything positive or complimentary toward either Germany or German people. Anyone expressing even tolerance or sympathy for Germans was very liable to find himself in prison. The above forms the context for what follows. We can now fast-forward to the end of World War II and the American concentration camps in Germany.
Concentration Camps in America
It was in this context that the US military established around 700 concentration camps for Germans in the US, prisons which housed nearly 500,000 German so-called “Prisoners Of War” who were forcibly shipped from the concentration camps in Germany to the US during the later stages and also after the war ended. The official reasons given for this enterprise were varied and conflicting. The original government claim stated an insufficiency of food in Germany so the US military shipped these prisoners to America to better feed them. A later claim was of insufficient space remaining in Germany for more American concentration camps, so these civilians were relocated to the US. Another was that the prisoners filled the country’s need for extra farm labor. (7) (8)
This topic has understandably received little attention from the US media, and the pages in the history book are mostly blank. My first impression on reading the few articles that exist was, given the more or less uniform commentary and context, that an official template had been followed, though I have been unable to locate it. Wikipedia claims that “Newspaper coverage of the camps and public knowledge [of them] were intentionally limited until the end of the war, in part to comply with the Geneva Convention.” Maybe, but I am aware of no stipulation in any convention, Geneva or otherwise, prohibiting public knowledge of concentration camps. Let’s begin by taking a brief look at the lives of these German prisoners while encamped in the USA.
Several of the published articles present what is purported to be quotations from letters written by German prisoners to their families, letters apparently mailed to Germany. From the September 2009 issue of the Atlantic magazine, (from a letter purportedly mailed to Germany in 1944): “All in all, our life here is very orderly. We sleep in beds which have white covers and we eat with knives and forks. Up till now, we were treated excellently.” Another quoted in the Atlantic : “I am really in a golden cage.” And another: “When I was taken prisoner, I visualized a life of horror but it is quite different.”
The Atlantic article tells us: “The POWs were overwhelmed by the excellent conditions in the camps and the abundance of food and other articles”, further claiming the existence of “countless letters” from Americans resenting the fact that “there are German prisoners here and they live better than we do.” Texas A&M history professor Arnold Krammer tells us “German POWs were treated very well. … they were given wine and beer with every meal.” Wikipedia tells us, “Many prisoners found that their living conditions as prisoners were better than as civilians in Germany”, and that some prisoners were sent to a camp, where “each had his own bungalow with garden.” Also according to Wikipedia, they received wine with all their meals, had special meals for Thanksgiving and Christmas Day, and in fact received too much food: “Unable to eat all their food, prisoners at first burned leftover food fearing that their rations would be reduced.” (9)
Loren Horton confirms that the German prisoners “got more rationed items – like cigarettes – than the civilians in the area could get”, and that many Americans believed “the prisoners had more luxuries than the average citizen”. Wikipedia claims further that “Groups of prisoners pooled their daily beer coupons to take turns drinking several at a time. They also received two packs of cigarettes a day and frequently meat”, noting as have others that meat and cigarettes were strongly rationed at the time, and unavailable to most American civilians. Wikipedia further tells us that for these German prisoners, “their good treatment began with the substantial meals served aboard (the ships carrying them to the US)”, and that upon arriving in America they were amazed to travel in unusual comfort on “sleek, comfortable passenger trains” that carried them to their prison camps.
Someone named John Ray Skates wrote an article claiming “The high ranking generals had special housing [while] lower ranking officers had to content themselves with small apartments”, some officers having not only a private home but furnished also with a car and driver. He also tells us that at least some officers often went to movie theaters because they were “the only air-conditioned place in town”. Skates tells us further that these prison camps “had most of the facilities and services that could be found in a small town – dentists, doctors, libraries, movies, educational facilities”. And not only educational facilities. Horton tells us “the prisoners formed their own orchestras”, and that “a massive nativity scene was constructed at Christmas time” by the prisoners who “paid for the materials from their 80 cents per day credits. They had more than $8,000!” They even had sports teams, and printed their own newspapers. Wikipedia tells us that “nobody could become bored” as a prisoner since these German prisoners “held frequent theatrical and musical performances attended by hundreds and even thousands” of people, including the entire local citizenry and all their American guards, and that movies were shown four times each week. (10)
According to the Smithsonian magazine, the prisoners to a man claimed such excellent treatment that their only complaint was the lack of sufficient girl friends. (11) But then the men in many camps held “social receptions” with local American girls, this “unauthorized fraternization between American women and German prisoners” being so common as to often be a problem. Apparently this wasn’t all bad because in this way many German soldiers met their future wives. Part of the problem appears to have been the natural attractiveness of German men, at least to American women. The Atlantic magazine article claimed these men were often described as “magnificent physical specimens, physically supreme, muscular types”, and “fine specimens of physical manhood.”
As well, “typical Americans” described these German prisoners as “just the best bunch of boys you ever saw”, “uniformly neat, excessively polite, splendidly disciplined, these young men are – frankly – hard to dislike.” The Atlantic also tells us that “grateful Americans” (no idea why they were grateful) “often showed their appreciation by inviting the German prisoners to restaurants and even their homes for dinner.” These warm feelings apparently prevailed to such an extent the Inspector General wrote that Americans were too “apt to become overly friendly and solicitous of the prisoner’s welfare.” All articles claim the prisoners were more or less free to come and go as they pleased and, while a few tried to escape, this was never a concern, the prison camps having little to no security so as to permit the Germans to leave the camp for their day jobs.
A Ronald H. Bailey informs us that the Germans adjusted wonderfully to prison life, where the “guards marveled at the changes” in the men, keeping their compounds so neat, and where “The prisoners appeared in high spirits. They spent hours creating large and well-tended flower beds.” Wikipedia tells us that the Germans were “pleased to be captured” by the Americans, and stated Krammer as reporting that “I’ve yet to meet a German prisoner who doesn’t tell me that it was the time of their lives”. Krammer claims the Germans left the US “with positive feelings about the country”, the men stating, “We all were positively impressed by the USA … We all had been won over to friendly relations with the USA.”
It seems that the wonderful treatment by the Americans “inadvertently defanged” any Nazi sentiment and created half a million “Little Ambassadors” for America. This was true in part because the Germans realised that the “rabid, anti-American propaganda” they had received, “didn’t fit what they saw in America”. But, and much more importantly, “all German POWs learned by example what democracy looked like on a daily, personal basis.” Krammer tells us further that due to these and other factors, “thousands returned to Germany fluent in English and “having a new love and respect for the United States”, having formed “decades long friendships with the enemy”.” Skates tells us that over the years since the war, many German prisoners have returned to the US for the purpose of seeing the camps they lived in as young men, and were uniformly “sad” to learn the camps had all been torn down after the war. He tells us these men are now “very old” but they still return to the US “to remember their experience” as prisoners. (12)
We even apparently have documented evidence of all this. In 2001 and 2002, a research team from a group named TRACES claims to have filmed over 75 hours of interviews with former German prisoners or their family members, and have apparently seen copies of cheques issued by the US Military and payable to German prisoners returning home, and Krammer has apparently written several books on the matter. Not only that, but the US government held a kind of memorial celebration in 2004, to “salute the hundreds of thousands of German prisoners of war taken to camps in the United States during World War II.”
That’s a good story, but there are a few chinks in the armor.
None of the official statements establish a reason for incarcerating German civilians in the US for years after the end of the war. To suggest that Germany had no space for more prisons is ridiculous nonsense since the US military simply established them in fenced open fields without shelter or protection of any kind. The claim about the shortage of food is true, but that was because the Americans refused to permit food imports to postwar Germany, the stated aim being to starve Germany to death, and Eisenhower ordered the immediate execution of anyone attempting to smuggle food to the prisoners. If Eisenhower was deliberately starving millions to death in Germany, and it is beyond dispute that he was, why would he want to bring them to the US so as “to better feed them”?
What reason could the US government have, to incur the expense of transporting half a million Germans across the Atlantic, then feeding and housing them for years? Why not simply let them die with the others? General Eisenhower, the same man who had made no secret in telling the country, “God, how I hate Germans”, and who had organised and supervised the extermination of more than 12 million of them, had now moved from the battlefields into the White House and built 700 “Golden cages” for these same people, with rations, privileges, and girlfriends that apparently far exceeded those available to ordinary Americans. In what way does this story make sense?
The official narrative is that the last shipment of German prisoners left the US on July 22, 1946, that the men were returned to Germany, but I have been unable to locate any confirmation of these prisoners actually having left the US. Certainly it is possible that official and public records exist which I have not discovered, but the export of half a million prisoners in a short space of time from only two or three possible locations on the US Eastern seaboard is more than nothing in terms of public events since it would have required at least 100 to 150 ships, yet I have been unable to locate any media or other public evidence of this. The only real facts I could uncover were brief stories about camps being emptied in the middle of the night, the locals being told the prisoners had been ‘transferred’, and to not ask questions.
Recognising the difficulty in proving that something didn’t happen, I turned my attention to a search for evidence that the Germans did indeed arrive in Germany as the US narrative claims, but I could find not a shred of evidence that such a transfer occurred. Neither Germany nor the Red Cross (who would have been involved in all such transfers) appear to have any record of any transfer of personnel from the US after the war. And as James Bacque pointed out, the German ports had all been bombed to rubble and would have been unable to accept such transfers. As well, in my conversations with Bacque, he claimed an examination of all military records and troop movements and had seen no transfers of Germans from the US to anywhere.
The Atlantic magazine contradicted the official version and claimed they were instead turned over to the UK and France for what would have been years of punishing forced labor almost certainly ending in death, claiming that for the prisoners, this was a “modern slave trade on the grandest scale” (not a nice way to treat “the best bunch of boys you ever saw”). But from the detailed research by James Bacque and other sources of information, there appears no record of prisoners arriving from the US anywhere in either the UK or Europe after the war. Further, of all my media, historical, university, and other contacts in Germany, only one person was even aware of the existence of German concentration camps in the USA. I was unable to find anyone with any knowledge of half a million Germans arriving from the US after the war, and absolutely no record or evidence of such a transfer.
Epilogue
The US military, led by General Eisenhower, established enormous concentration camps throughout Germany, some containing more than one million soldiers and civilians each, and executed or starved to death around 12 million, most deaths occurring long after the war had ended. Eisenhower had forbidden food to be delivered to the camps, issuing orders to shoot and kill anyone attempting to smuggle food to the prisoners. Coincidentally, the US military transported to the US some 500,000 German soldiers (from these same camps) to be interned in concentration camps where they would join large numbers of German-Americans and their families who were imprisoned and had their assets confiscated, also for the sin of being German. All this done under the command of Eisenhower who, as noted above, had now transferred to the White House.
But now something strange happens. These same Germans living under the same watchful eye of Eisenhower and still in the atmosphere of seemingly limitless hatred for Germans, were now suddenly living “in a golden cage”, in private bungalows, with cars and drivers, “social receptions” with local American girls, all the beer they could drink and movies at least four days a week. Instead of being worked and starved to death, they had so much food they would burn it for fear of having their rations reduced. And rather than being treated poorly, they had “more luxuries than the average American citizen”, especially for items that were heavily rationed. These wonderful “physical specimens” were cavorting with American girls and meeting their future wives, beloved by all Americans while discovering the blessings of democracy. They had their own orchestras and put on performances attended by “thousands of people”, this while all German music, composers and authors were banned by the US government in all other parts of the country. And they printed their own newspapers in German while German books and newspapers were also banned in the entire US.
Every part of the official narrative begs to be disbelieved. I do not have all the facts, but a hatred stoked continuously among the American population from at least 1914, and shared by the President and military, would not be expected to lend itself to keeping Germans in a golden cage. Roughly 500,000 Germans were indeed shipped to the US but I can find no record of them having left and there is no record of them arriving anywhere else. German Americans had their assets confiscated and were imprisoned in these same camps with their families and none permitted to leave, yet our German physical specimens were apparently free to come and go as they pleased, often to have dinner at the homes of loving Americans, and accumulating substantial assets in the interim.
I would point out that the “one small group” of prisoners who accumulated “$8,000” in cash would have to be fictitious since the median annual income for Americans at the time was only about $1,400. Moreover, the German-Americans interned in these camps were not being paid while their assets were being confiscated, and those in the concentration camps in Germany certainly weren’t being paid, so why were these men given daily prisoner stipends? As well, why would the Atlantic contradict the official narrative of a return to Germany, claiming instead they were sent to France to be worked to death as slaves and, if that were the case, how could they return to the US to be filled with joy at seeing their former prisons?
As documented by several sources, in 1943, the US military initiated a “formal reeducation program” for German prisoners, led by university professors, psychologists and psychiatrists, as well as those who would later form the CIA. Wikipedia tells us “the program was kept secret because it probably violated the Geneva Convention’s ban on exposing prisoners to propaganda”, but the prisoners may have been exposed to more than propaganda. You will need to study the CIA’s Project MK-ULTRA to have a proper appreciation of this. It would seem reasonable to conclude these re-educated Germans did not consider their time in America to be “the best time of their lives”, and also likely that these “fine specimens of physical manhood” were introduced to more than the wonders of democracy.
I can only speculate at this point but without substantial – and credible – official documentation, as well as media coverage, of the shipment of nearly 500,000 men from an American port, I am reluctant to accept claims that these men actually left the US. And with the lack of any evidence from official military records and the International Red Cross, it is pointless to assume they arrived anywhere else.
There are two other items which appear a necessary part of this puzzle. First, the events described above coincide perfectly in time with the US military’s explosive interest in human experimentation. Readers may be aware of Shiro Ishii and his Unit 731 in Harbin, China, where his group performed the most hideous human experiments imaginable, including live vivisections. (13) (14) Few seem to know that the reason there were no war crimes trials for the Japanese is that General Douglas MacArthur made a deal with Ishii that they would all be immune from prosecution if all documents and records on human experimentation were turned over to the US and Ishii and his entire troop of thousands would be relocated to America. This is what transpired, with the Japanese given new identities and housed on US military bases, Ishii himself being a professor and a supervisor of biological research at the University of Maryland until his death decades later. Second, these activities coincide perfectly with the creation of the CIA’s horrendous MK-ULTRA program which was nothing if not “human experimentation” of the worst kind imaginable. (15) There isn’t room to dwell further on these two aspects here.
When we add together the killing of about 12 million Germans in American concentration camps after the war, then Shiro Ishii and his Unit 731 troop, the US military’s sudden and vast interest in human experimentation, and the CIA MK-ULTRA project, and add in the intense hatred of Germans throughout America, stoked almost continuously for more than 30 years, with prominent politicians calling for the execution of all Germans in the US, this is the atmosphere and environment into which the 500,000 German prisoners were forcibly transferred to the US, and it is their “Golden cages” which were so often mysteriously emptied during a night. There is also the question of the German-Americans interned in the same camps. Their internment is documented, and the natural assumption has been made that they were all released at some point, but I have seen no evidence to substantiate this assumption and, given the existing sentiment that all those of German extract in the country should be executed, we may be forgiven for wondering about their well-being.
I find myself coming away from this story with an unshakable feeling that this is a very black chapter in American history which has been fearfully buried and whose interment is being protected by powerful people and fabricated mythology. To date, I cannot conclusively prove or disprove the thesis that the 500,000 German prisoners incarcerated in the US were used as subjects in the vast array of human experiments being performed at that time. However, from everything I know, negating all the circumstantial evidence would be a daunting task. And, at the risk of sounding foolishly trite, if it looks like a duck and it walks like a duck and it makes noises like a duck, it’s probably a duck.
Discussions about why the United States lost the Vietnam war focus on actions taken after American ground troops arrived in 1965. They could never succeed because the war had already been lost. Ho Chi Mihn was the most popular man in all of Vietnam and his soldiers were respected fighters for independence. They had defeated the French and later the Army of South Vietnam created by the American CIA. American soldiers fought for a nation that didn’t exist.
“CIA and the Wars in Southeast Asia 1947-1975”; Signals Intelligence; has interesting information recently declassified. https://www.cia.gov/library/center-fo…
By the time US military ground troops arrived in Vietnam, “They all hated us!” as this Marine Corps veteran explains: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tixOy…
This is not medical advice. This is a petition to federal and state governments to urgently publish recommendations for vitamin C intake as a prevention measure against COVID-19.
Introduction
Can vitamin C prevent or alleviate symptoms of acute respiratory tract infections, including COVID-19? (Gorton & Jarvis, 1999) reported 85% decrease of cold and flu symptoms in the test group taking vitamin C, compared with the control group, not taking vitamin C. The test group took vitamin C prophylactically and over the course of disease at 3,000 mg per day (1,000 mg x 3), and an increased dose of 6,000 mg (1,000 mg x 6, hourly) on the first day of symptoms onset. This specific regimen is important: taking a moderate amount of vitamin C prophylactically and during illness, and a larger dose on the first day of symptoms onset.
There is a caveat. The dosage in this study is 1.5-2 times higher than what doctors feel comfortable recommending to the public, as far as I see. Nevertheless, the research reviewed below supports the conclusion that 1.5-2 times lower doses help against broad class of ARTI, including colds and flu, although expectably less. COVID-19 is an acute respiratory tract infection (ARTI). The reasonable assumption is that what helps against multiple prior viral ARTI would help against COVID-19.
Vitamin C Role in the Immune System
Vitamin C does not prevent infection, but it helps the immune system combat it. It has been shown to alleviate symptoms, sometimes to the point where symptoms are not detectable. Thus, a person can feel as if s/he never got sick, since no symptoms ever presented, and may count this as having prevented the illness.
Vitamin C, at its normal level 70 μmol/L, is a necessary part of the immune system. Excess vitamin C intake (over 200 mg/day) is normally excreted in urine. But when a body experiences physiological stress, it consumes the vitamin C present in the blood and thus, needs an increased intake (Hemilä, Vitamin C and Infections, 2017). All existing studies agree on this point. Observations have shown that in such conditions even many grams of vitamin C per day are neither excreted nor accumulate in blood.
(Hemilä & Chalker, 2019) listed several studies, showing that vitamin C levels drop in patients hospitalized with acute respiratory infections to less than 10-35% of the normal level. (Carr, 2017) found that all ICU patients in one hospital had less than on third of the normal vitamin C level.
The rationale behind discovered Vitamin C supplementation
When a person gets a viral respiratory infection, the body starts fighting it using the vitamin C present in the blood. That decreases vitamin C levels in the blood, impairing the immune system, even before the symptoms appear. But if it regularly receives extra vitamin C, it stops excreting it, but consumes in fighting the infection. In the most successful regimens (Ran, 2018), symptoms are used as a signal that the body requires even more vitamin C in order to maintain normal vitamin C blood levels while consuming more of it in fighting the infection. That justifies increased intake of it on the first symptomatic day and until the body overcomes the virus. This time might be shorter than the period for which symptoms exist. The first symptomatic day might have a special significance, possibly because it is when the body has not produced enough antibodies specific to the virus.
Safety
The human body has natural safety valves for vitamin C. First, excess of it is removed in urine. Second, it typically causes diarrhea before getting close to potentially dangerous levels.
Vitamin C has low toxicity and is not believed to cause serious adverse effects at high intakes. The most common complaints are diarrhea, nausea, abdominal cramps, and other gastrointestinal disturbances due to the osmotic effect of unabsorbed vitamin C in the gastrointestinal tract.
Possible Vitamin C Regimen
This is a possible Vitamin C regimen against COVID-19, for adults.
Some doctors recommend taking the higher dose only on the first day of symptoms onset. The dose is for an average 70 kg person. Those weighing much more or less should adjust proportionately. Older and non-healthy persons (i.e., the most at-risk group) should consult their physicians
Possible contra-indications: some kidney diseases, chemotherapy and radiation treatments, cholesterol lowering drugs, diabetes in postmenopausal women (National Institute of Health, 2020). For other people, diarrhea is a sign to decrease or stop taking vitamin C.
It is not expected to completely protect against the Wuhan coronavirus or to approach the effectiveness of HCQ + Zn prophylaxis.
I remind that this is not medical advice, but a starting point for CDC/NIH/FDA and state governments to develop the medical advice. Follow your doctor’s recommendations.
Vitamin C Controversies and Misconceptions
Some confusion surrounds the use of vitamin C because different amounts are used for different purposes and produce different results. The officially recommended minimum intake of vitamin C 75-90 mg per day is just that – the minimum, established long ago to prevent scurvy. Many people exceed this amount simply by eating ordinary food; a medium orange contains 70 mg of vitamin C.
Studies with vitamin C supplementation of less than 1 g/day have shown little or no effect on respiratory infections. This was a cause of the confusion among medical professions. At such amounts, “control” group’s vitamin C intake was not controlled and might have exceeded the amounts taken by the intervention group. Also, low level vitamin C supplementation might provide benefits too low to detect. That might have caused confusion among medical professionals. Further, most studies gave vitamin C either prophylactically or during illness, but not both (Hemilä, Vitamin C and Infections, 2017).
On the high end, mega-doses of vitamin C (like tens of grams per day), delivered intravenously in hospital settings, is successfully used in treatment of many serious diseases and conditions, including late stages of severe cases of COVID-19. They are used for patients with sepsis (Kashiouris, 2020) and acute respiratory distress syndrome. Such doses and associated treatments are beyond the scope of this article.
Thus, this review is only concerned with vitamin C doses of 1 – 3 g/day prophylactically, and 3 – 6 g/day during ARTI. Such doses have been shown helpful in easing ARTI, and safe for almost all people.
Studies Review
Peer Reviewed Papers
(Hemilä, 2017) is a meta-analysis of multiple studies. It concludes that vitamin C is helpful against many infections, especially the common cold. The study suggests a linear dose – effect function up to 6-8 g/day.
(Hemilä & Chalker, 2019) is another meta-analysis. In 12 trials, totaling 1766 patients , vitamin C, given during the time of treatment, reduced ICU stays by an average of 7.8%. The vitamin C doses were relatively small, 1-3 g/day. (In four studies, higher doses were used, but those studies were either excluded from the meta-analysis (Dingchao 1994) or given very low weight in the calculations (Tanako 2000, Fowler 2014, Zabet 2016)). In this study vitamin C was given too little too late.
(Marik & Hooper, 2017) explains that vitamin C acts like a “stress hormone”. Most vertebrates synthesize their vitamin C and increase its production during physiological stress. Humans, as well as primates and guinea pigs, are exceptions to this rule. Therefore, we need to obtain vitamin C from food or supplements, and we may need to increase our intake in times of physiological stress.
(Colunga Biancatelli, Berill, & Marik, 2019) explains concepts behind vitamin C antiviral benefits. Unfortunately, they cite a 2013 review by Hemilä et al., which did not find benefits of vitamin C supplementation, as explained above. The more recent meta-analysis (Hemilä, Vitamin C and Infections, 2017) has firmly established evidence of such benefits.
(Ran, 2018) is a review, showing benefits of taking daily vitamin C supplements before and increasing the dosage when common cold occurs. It proposes a regimen of taking 1 g/day prophylactically while healthy and 3-4 g/day while having a cold.
Beneficial effects of vitamin C supplementation have been reported for
Elderly people with acute respiratory infections
Recurrent acute respiratory distress syndrome
Reducing the severity and duration of the common cold
Reducing the length of hospital stay and symptoms in elderly patients with pneumonia
Reducing the duration of mechanical ventilation in people in ICU
Preventing the common cold in people who are vitamin C deficient
Preventing the incidence of pneumonia in people who are vitamin C deficient.
Studies have shown that excretion of vitamin C is decreased during infections, such as the common cold, suggesting that more is utilized during times of need.
If you choose to supplement with vitamin C as a preventive, you might want to start with 2 grams a day administered orally
To use vitamin C supplementation as a treatment for colds or flus (remember we still have the flu going around), the best results have been obtained by administering 6-8 g (6,000-8,000 mg) immediately upon appearance of the first symptoms, then continuing that dose daily until the symptoms subside.
8 g/day is likely to cause diarrhea.
Remarks
The effect of prophylactic doses of vitamin C in COVID-19 infection have not been quantified. But even if the effect were small (and there is no reason to think that it is small), when the infection spreads exponentially, it decreases the exponential coefficient. It is a possibly large impact, at a miniscule cost, with almost no risk. Further, vitamin C seems to help the immune system to decrease the viral load even if it does not alleviate the symptoms.
Taking vitamin C is not the only helpful prophylactic measure receiving less attention than it deserves. Another research piece shows similar benefits of cod liver oil, used in this country for hundreds of years, or its equivalent – a diet rich in wild caught salmon or mackerel.
Physiological stress is not the same as psychological stress. I do not know whether lockdowns and forced social isolation cause physiological stress.
While it is not the role of the federal government to recommend diets and vitamin supplements, Google and Facebook delete and hide information about potentially effective COVID-19 prophylactics and treatment, if it does not come from WHO or a government. Thus, to allow such information to reach the public, the federal government should either rein in Google and Facebook, or itself make the recommendations.
I prefer the name Wuhan coronavirus the COVID-19 pathogen. This is where the virus was detected first. The name SARS-CoV-2 is associated with SARS of 2003, which had a much higher mortality ratio. This association is misleading and causes unnecessary panic.
To avoid the appearance of bias, I excluded from this review most known enthusiasts of the vitamin C. I also did not rely upon the peer-reviewed Journal of Orthomolecular Medicine, although it is a recognized medical journal, and included in multiple indexes.
It is impossible not to mention Linus Pauling in this article. I do not know whether he was right or wrong about vitamin C. It might be that some of his ideas were correct, but explanation and/or clinical recommendations were not.
A medical group of Eastern Virginia Medical School, headed by Dr. Paul Marik, has developed and published its own COVID-19 prophylactic regimen, including vitamin C, Zinc, and Quercetin. It is occasionally mentioned in comments on this site.
Gorton, H., & Jarvis, K. (1999). The effectiveness of vitamin C in preventing and relieving the symptoms of virus-induced respiratory infections. Journal of Manipulative and Physiological Therapeutics. Retrieved from https://doi.org/10.1016/S0161-4754(99)70005-9
Hemilä, H., & Chalker, E. (2019). Vitamin C Can Shorten the Length of Stay in the ICU: A Meta-Analysis. Nutrients. Retrieved from https://www.mdpi.com/2072-6643/11/4/708
Ran, L. (2018). Extra Dose of Vitamin C Based on a Daily Supplementation Shortens the Common Cold: A Meta-Analysis of 9 Randomized Controlled Trials. BioMed Research International. Retrieved from https://doi.org/10.1155/2018/1837634
The Republic of Georgia is a small undeveloped Asian nation that was once part of the Soviet Union. It plays no role in the American economy or security yet was conquered by the American empire in 2003 when the CIA covertly organized a coup to establish a puppet government. Billions of dollars in American military aid, hundreds of military trainers, and thousands of American troops arrived. Russia protested this invasion, but objections were used to proclaim a return of the Cold war and the need for large increases in military spending.
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“The Puppet Masters Behind Georgia President Saakashvili”; F. William Engdahl; Geopolitics-Geoeconomics; Aug 12, 2008; http://www.oilgeopolitics.net/Geopoli…
“Panama Papers Show How Former Georgian Defence Minister Kezerashvili Became an Oligarch”; The Financial; April 12, 2016; https://www.finchannel.com/world/geor…
One of the most tiresome clichés uttered by the western nations, including Australia, is their alleged commitment to the “rules based international order”. By this they generally mean a set of rules of supposed international authority, to which all developed nations are expected to adhere.
Those who allegedly failed to do so are labelled as rogue states, or deviant states, and in some way a threat to good government and a peaceful world. The myth has always had trouble confronting the reality. Australia has been one of the most assiduous articulators of the myth. As recently as this week it was accusing China of breaching the said rules by China asserting its authority over Hong Kong.
When one reads the mainstream media of all the events in Hong Kong what is immediately striking is that Hong Kong’s history seems to go back no further than the 1990s when the United Kingdom and China signed an agreement whereby the United Kingdom would release its rule of Hong Kong.
Conveniently overlooked in these accounts is the slightest hint of real history. Hong Kong had been part of China for more than 2000 years until the 1860s. We will leave to one side what sort of history the United Kingdom could boast of that goes back two thousand years.
The United Kingdom acquired Hong Kong by conquest during the first of the two opium wars, another feature of British colonial history that the mainstream media glides over as though it did not exist. The British invaded Afghanistan three times during the 19th century. They were not bringing the dubious benefits of British civilisation to the Afghanis. They wanted to control the opium production source, then as now, producing the bulk of the world’s heroin production.
China unsurprisingly did not appreciate Hong Kong being used as the entry point for Afghan heroin under British control. They fought back, but lost. Hence the ceding of Hong Kong to British rule. The heroin was therefore able to be imported freely by the British to the extent that by 1900 one in seven adult Chinese males was a heroin addict.
The 1949 revolution changed the government of China but it was several decades before they began to assert their wish that Hong Kong be returned to the mainland. By 1998, when the handover agreement was finally signed, China was still not strong enough to refuse to accept what was a manifestly unequal bargain.
There is no other historical precedent that I am aware of that land colonised by an imperial power and eventually returned to its rightful owner is done so conditionally.
The Chinese are now accused by the British, the Americans, and the Australian governments of not complying with the terms of the handover. That allegation is made by people who have never bothered to read the terms of the agreement.
Even more critically, those same governments are alleging that the people of Hong Kong are being deprived of their “democratic rights” to self-government. This was an argument that was never heard during the entire century plus of British rule.
Among the various benefits that the Hong Kong people have enjoyed since liberation from British rule is that they now have the right to vote. That the people of Hong Kong had no democratic means of determining how and by whom they were governed during British rule, not even having the right to vote, is another inconvenient fact glided over by the present erstwhile defenders of so-called Hong Kong democracy.
It is a fundamental principle of international law that countries are entitled to govern their own affairs. It is also a fundamental principle that the British, and particularly the Americans since 1945, have simply ignored the principle when it suited them.
Where was the West’s “respect for international law” when the United States and its allies (including Australia) sanctioned, bombed, invaded, occupied and otherwise destroyed to a greater or lesser extent at least 70 countries over the past 70 years? The death toll from those illegal activities has been variously estimated at between 50 and 70 million people.
Current illustrations of that point, all of them involving the willing compliance and assistance of Australia, include Afghanistan (invaded 2001 and still there); Iraq, invaded 2003 and still there despite the clearly expressed view of the Iraqi parliament that all uninvited foreign troops should leave; and Syria, invaded in 2015 after years of supporting terrorist proxies in that country by their invaders. The United States currently occupies Syria’s oil region, stealing its oil and keeping the proceeds of sale. Not a word of dissent from its Australian ally who clearly has a flexible definition of what the “rules based international order” actually means.
In the case of China, Australian adherence to the United States line goes far beyond the current situation in Hong Kong. Australia was being the loyal United States proxy when it alleged that China was the source of the coronavirus currently causing economic havoc around the world.
On instructions from Washington, Australia proposed a motion for international consideration that the origins of the virus should be investigated in China. Had the proposal beeg neutrally worded, for example suggesting an investigation of all countries that might have been the source, the proposal might not have been ignored as it was.
All countries obviously include the United States, where a growing body of evidence suggests it is the real source of the pandemic. That, however, would not suit the current suicidal Australian campaign to attack China on various fronts on behalf of its American masters.
Why Australia would want to attack such a vitally important nation, whose importance to the Australian economy extends far beyond being a market for Australian goods, defies rational explanation. The Chinese, unsurprisingly, and in my view completely justifiably, have begun to take measures in response, the result of which will be extraordinary pain to the Australian economy.
The current pandemic should be seen as an opportunity for Australia to discard its colonial status and actually take decisions that enhance rather than hinder Australia’s vital interests. The history of the past 70 years however, suggests that is a vain hope.
James O’Neill is a Barrister at Law and geopolitical analyst. He can be contacted at joneill@qldbar.asn.au.
By Patrick Pillow | The Libertarian Institute | June 8, 2026
By the summer of 2000, Yugoslav President Slobodan Milošević appeared firmly entrenched in power.
A decade earlier, he had risen to prominence by harnessing Serbian nationalism as Yugoslavia began to fracture. Over time, he consolidated control over political institutions and much of the media while leading Serbia through wars, sanctions, and NATO’s 1999 bombing campaign. Yet beneath the surface, public frustration was growing. The economy was struggling, unemployment remained high, and many Serbians had grown weary of international isolation and authoritarian rule.
When Milošević changed election rules in July 2000 to allow the presidency to be decided by popular vote, he likely expected another victory. Instead, the move created an opportunity for a united opposition.
On September 24, voters went to the polls. Milošević faced Vojislav Koštunica, the candidate of the Democratic Opposition of Serbia (DOS). Election observers from the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe later described the vote as fundamentally flawed, citing irregularities, restricted monitoring, and unequal media access. State television overwhelmingly favored Milošević while opposition voices received little coverage.
When results were announced, the opposition claimed Koštunica had won outright. The government election commission insisted that no candidate had received a majority and ordered a runoff election. The opposition rejected the decision and called for nationwide resistance. … continue
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The last sector is the financial sector, which, as Connolly points out, developed virtually out of nothing over the past three decades into a system of numerous, largely state-owned or state-influenced banks that provide a wide range of services. However, Russia’s overall financial sector is small in comparison with other middle-income countries, with Sector A and B entities getting preferential treatment in receipt of the limited credit that is available. There are few small banks or other financial institutions that can provide SMEs with credit, as is reflected in the fact that, as of 2016, two-thirds of assets and liabilities were owned by large state-controlled banks.
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