After ban on Russian TV news Latvia now will criminalize watching ‘illegal’ cross border channels
RT | February 18, 2021
Tens of thousands of Russian-speaking Latvians will be turning down the volume and listening out for neighborhood snoopers after a new law came into force that will see viewers of unlicensed satellite TV fined just for tuning in.
Earlier this month, local media reported that the Seimas, the Baltic nation’s parliament, had adopted a bill in its final reading that will criminalize people for watching unauthorized broadcasts.
The networks that will be affected are said to include dozens of Russian television channels for which signals can be picked up from across the border. More than one in three Latvians speaks Russian at home, but dozens of broadcasters showing programs in the language have had their licenses revoked and been banned from the country’s airwaves since earlier this month.
Ivars Abolins, the chairman of Latvia’s National Council for Electronic Media (NEPLP), issued a statement backing the ban. “We have protected, are protecting, and will protect our information space,” he said. Regulators claim that talk show guests on the Russian-speaking channels have incited hatred and called for war in Europe.
The Russian Embassy in Riga issued a stern protest in response. In a post to its Facebook page it said that the policy was “in the best traditions of dictatorship.”
Riga’s move has likely been inspired by the fact that “Harmony,” the country’s main opposition party, is led by Russian speakers and has close links to the leftist Russian grouping, “Fair Russia.” Harmony won 23 of the 100 seats in the Seimas in the 2018 election.
“Violation of free speech? That’s just the start of it,” it added. “Apparently, in a free market environment, Latvian television channels cannot compete, even in the information space of their own country.”
However, under the old rules, while the channels themselves were prohibited, plucky viewers intent on getting a fix of their favorite shows in their native language did not fall foul of the law. Now though, consumers themselves are likely to face financial penalties if they are caught watching illicit programming. Lawmakers note that 62,000 households tuned into illegal satellite broadcasts in 2018, the most recent year for which figures were given.
The Reporters Without Borders NGO issued a warning last summer after a number of Baltic nations moved to ban several separate RT channels. The free speech watchdog said that “While it is legitimate to defend and promote independent and reliable news reporting,” it “regards these closures as a misuse of the EU sanctions policy.”
“Rather than banning media outlets on loose grounds and on a flimsy legal basis,” it argued, “countries can require all media to guarantee editorial independence and can then impose legitimate sanctions, subject to judicial control, when it is established that media outlets have not complied with their obligations.”
Ukraine has also recently come under fire from both Russian and European politicians for its decision to block and ban a series of Russian-language outlets, run and produced by Russian-speaking Ukrainians from within the country. One in three Ukrainians speaks Russian at home as a first language, but Kiev has claimed the channels amount to pro-Kremlin propaganda.
Atlantic Council urges Biden to enforce regime change in Belarus
By Paul Antonopoulos | February 18, 2021
A recent online meeting hosted by the Atlantic Council think tank discussed ways to force regime change in Belarus. The think tank detailed a plan with the aim of removing Aleksander Lukashenko, the current president of Belarus, from power by utilizing sanctions and other methods of pressure.
The Washington-based Atlantic Council is affiliated with NATO and receives funding from international billionaires like Adrienne Arsht, global companies like Goldman Sachs, Facebook and Google, as well as the Rockefeller Foundation and the JPMorgan Chase Foundation. These are only a few examples of their extensive funding. Some of the most powerful and influential figures in the world participate in the operations of the think tank, as well as a representative of Svetlana Tikhanovskaya, Belarus’ main opposition figure.
Objectives of the virtual meeting, entitled “Biden and Belarus: A strategy for the new administration,” includes organizing Washington’s control over the Belarussian opposition movement. In addition, they suggest a new position for a senior organizer to administer and maintain sanctions against Minsk, and appoint a senior official to administer assistance to the opposition. Their agenda also emphasized recognizing Tikhanovskaya’s position as the true leader of Belarus and delegitimizing Lukashenko by relocating the newly appointed U.S. ambassador to the Belarussian capital of Minsk, Julie Fisher, to the Lithuanian capital of Vilnius.
The Atlantic Council also suggested that U.S. Congressional funding for Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty must be doubled from its current $117.4 million. The think tank also called for the U.S. to offer more advice to Belarussian opposition leaders. John Herbst, a former U.S. ambassador to Ukraine, suggested in the virtual meeting that Belarussian opposition leaders should reduce public expressions about their aspirations for Minsk to be involved in Western security councils like NATO and economic structures like the European Union so that they do not provoke any response from Moscow.
Economist Anders Åslund, who is a senior fellow at the Atlantic Council’s Eurasia Center, also suggested that sanctions should be applied to companies in Russia and not Belarus. He argued that if sanctions hit Belarus, Minsk would be more dependent on Moscow. He also advised the Biden administration to sanction hundreds of Belarussian officials, saying that the aim of the sanctions is to put enough pressure on Belarus so that Lukashenko has no choice but to relinquish power. Åslund emphasized that this is really a group of regime change sanctions. In addition, the think tank suggested that the U.S. should increase its funding of the Belarussian opposition from $60 million to $200 million, saying that this amount came from Belarussian activists themselves.
As Åslund himself says, these measures exist entirely to force regime change against a sovereign nation. The mission of the Atlantic Council is to encourage and embolden the U.S. to control the Belarussian opposition movement with the aim of overthrowing Lukashenko. At the same time, the think tank claims that it respects Belarus’ sovereignty. However, it is evident that the think tank does not respect the sovereignty or self-determination of the Belarussian people and simply wants the Biden administration to install a lackey into power to continue Washington’s campaign of pressure against Russia.
If the Biden administration adopts the recommendations made by the Atlantic Council, this would not only cause significant tensions and further divisions in Belarus, but would also increase tensions between Washington and Moscow, which are already extremely strained.
The Atlantic Council promotes Western hegemony and a U.S.-led unipolar world order. The think tank is ranked seventh in the category of “2020 Top Think Tanks in the United States,” and tenth globally. Along with funding from the world’s richest people and most powerful corporations, the Atlantic Council wields great influence in not only NATO, but also various U.S. power structures like the White House and the Pentagon. For this reason, there is every chance that at some point during Biden’s presidential mandate that he will engage in a significant campaign of pressure against Belarus with the ultimate aim of further isolating Russia in Eastern Europe.
As the Atlantic Council attempts to maintain a U.S.-led unipolar order, Russia is one of its main targets because the Eurasian country inhibits American dominance over large areas of the Caucasus, Central Asia and Eastern Europe. Because Belarus is the sole friendly state in Eastern Europe towards Russia, Lukashenko’s removal from power will open the path for Russia to be completely isolated in the region. Biden also champions a U.S.-led unipolar order, and because of this there is every chance that at some point in the future he will enact the Atlantic Council’s program against Belarus to target Russia.
Paul Antonopoulos is an independent geopolitical analyst.
Hundreds of Scientists Write To Biden To Stop Dirty Biomass Industry
By Paul Homewood | Not A Lot Of People Know That | February 11, 2021
I have been covering the scandal of burning forests for power, only made possible by obscene subsidies and EU rules that class it as “zero carbon”.
I am pleased to see that several hundred scientists have now written to Biden, von der Leyen and others, objecting to the practice on scientific rather than environmental grounds.
Their basic argument is that the new biomass industry is not sustained by offcuttings, as claimed, but by wholly new harvesting. As I have been arguing, it could take decades for the carbon dioxide released from burning to be offset by regrowth. And that assumes that these forests will be replaced, an unlikely scenario.
In the meantime of course, more trees will be chopped down for burning, leaving a permanent “carbon debt”. As they point out, burning wood for power is far more carbon intensive than coal or gas, as it has a lower energy content.
Worse still, more than half of the wood is lost in harvesting and processing, long before it reaches the power station, adding carbon dioxide to the atmosphere without even replacing fossil fuels. (They might also have mentioned the emissions resulting from processing and shipping).
And if that’s not bad enough, there are concerns that palm oil will be used in biomass plants. As we know, carbon dense tropical forests have been cleared already for palm oil plantations. Demand for more palm oil will be a catastrophic consequence of biomass policy.
Unfortunately biomass is now big business, not only in Europe but also in the US and Japan. Companies like Drax will fight tooth and nail to protect their generous subsidies.
Meanwhile governments will continue to turn a blind eye to this dirty industry, as without it they would find it impossible to achieve their climate targets.
For Josep Borrell, Russia will remain a ‘mystery inside an enigma’
By Johanna Ross | February 9, 2021
It’s been a quotation cited repeatedly to describe the difficulties faced by western policy-makers towards Russia. Winston Churchill famously said the country was ‘a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma’. Back in 1939, when he broadcast this speech, just as Britain had declared war on Germany, Churchill said that he thought he had the ‘key’ to unlocking the secret of Russian foreign policy and that was, he said, ‘Russian national interest’.
I assume that Josep Borrell, the EU’s high representative for foreign affairs and security policy, who visited Moscow last Friday, is familiar with this quotation. And it seems that for him, Russia has remained something of a mystery. For upon his return to Brussels, after what his European colleagues have termed a ‘humiliating’ trip (they are now demanding his resignation), Borrell wrote a blog post outlining what was essentially his complete failure to engage with his Russian counterpart. “My meeting with Minister Lavrov highlighted that Europe and Russia are drifting apart”, he wrote in a piece published on Sunday evening. “It seems that Russia is progressively disconnecting itself from Europe.”
What is surprising for the Russians, is the absolute inability of these European policy-makers to read and comprehend the Russian position. Western diplomats in this regard seem to be diplomatically autistic. And far from taking tips from Russian political analysts and think-tanks, they turn to the same pseudo ‘Russia-experts’ and western academics, the majority of whom churn out age-old anti-Russian rhetoric like a broken record. As Professor Stephen Cohen once told me:
‘The idea that we have to fight Russian disinformation is now very profitable in the US; everybody will give you money. And if you don’t have a particularly big brain, it’s a good way to pretend you’re an intellectual and get paid for it.’
As a consequence, we are sadly no further in unravelling the ‘mystery inside the enigma’.
Churchill was close to the truth when he said that ‘Russian national interest’ was a key factor in understanding Russia – but that’s hardly a secret. Every country acts according to its national interest. What is lacking, particularly at the moment from western policy makers, is the ability to treat Russia according to how they themselves expect to be treated. Like a naughty schoolboy, Russia and its leader are constantly being lectured on how to behave. The problem is, the ‘adults’ – in this case the West – are guilty of the same offences that Russia is being accused of. As Vladimir Putin noted during his speech at the Munich security conference in 2007:
‘Incidentally, Russia – we – are constantly being taught about democracy. But for some reason those who teach us do not want to learn themselves.’
Unfortunately, nothing has changed, and the hypocrisy still stinks.
Borrell’s visit is also a classic example of Europeans saying one thing to Russia’s face and another behind its back. For the statements Borrell made after his return to Brussels, as Russian Foreign spokesperson Maria Zakharova remarked on Monday, do not correspond with comments he made when in Moscow. Zakharova expressed surprise at the diplomat’s negative summary of the trip and suggested that his colleagues had influenced him on arrival. But I would add that it is a regular occurrence that western politicians are two-faced when it comes to dialogue with Russia, and that they often place less emphasis on the value of verbal agreements. Take for example the promise of US Secretary of State James Baker to Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev back in the 1980s that NATO would not expand eastward. For the Russians that assurance meant something, as it is frequently quoted by them to this day; for the Americans it clearly didn’t. Since then NATO has proceeded to encircle Russia to the east.
The reality is that Russia is not going to be dictated to on human rights and freedoms when they are currently being curtailed in the West. It’s not going to be told that opposition protesters are being mal-treated when demonstrators in the US and Europe are regularly manhandled by police. It’s not going to be bullied into releasing Alexei Navalny – a politician with a criminal conviction – when the US and Europe have their own political prisoners, the most famous being Julian Assange. And it’s not going to be harassed about press freedoms when the majority of the western mainstream corporate media play the role of government mouthpieces. Russia is a sovereign nation and won’t be told what to do.
For Borrell et al. this is a problem. Therefore a stalemate has been reached in EU-Russian relations. Borrell seems resigned to the fact that there will be little improvement in relations in the near future. This is unfortunate, because it is not something that Russia has wanted. Even as recently as last month, when speaking at the Davos Economic Forum, Vladimir Putin said that Europe and Russia were ‘practically one civilisation’. And yet there is a fundamental difference in mentality which proves impossible to overcome.
It is in Europe’s and the West’s interest, however, to try better to engage with Russia on a level playing field, without taking the moral high ground. Global security and stability are at stake. In addition, Europe currently depends on Russian gas, and will likely always be reliant to some degree on Russia’s vast expanse of natural resources. As renowned academic Andrei Tsygankov has aptly summarised in his book ‘Russia’s Foreign Policy’:
‘Russia is sufficiently big and powerful, and that limits Western ability to influence its developments. Vast territory, enormous natural resources and military capabilities, and a significant political and diplomatic weight in the world have allowed and will continue to allow Russians considerable room for foreign policy maneuvering. It is hard to believe that the West will ever possess enough power to fully determine the shape and direction of Russia’s developments.’
If only Josep Borrell had read this book before he went to Moscow…
Johanna Ross is a journalist based in Edinburgh, Scotland.
Denmark to pioneer digital vaccine passports
RT | February 3, 2021
Denmark’s government has said digital vaccine passports will be used “in three, four months” to restart life in the country. And by the end of February, Danes can check their status online and print off their vaccination certs.
Speaking in Copenhagen on Wednesday, Finance Minister Morten Bodskov said Danish companies needed to get back on track to kickstart the nation’s economy – and a digital vaccine passport was a key part of that.
“It will be the extra passport that you will be able to have on your mobile phone that documents that you have been vaccinated,” Bodskov said. “We can be among the first in the world to have it and can show it to the rest of the world.”
The government plans to work with business bodies like the Confederation of Danish Industries, which represents Denmark’s major companies, and the Danish Chamber of Commerce to get the new system into place.
Bodskov said society needed to “move on” once people had been vaccinated.
“It’s about finding the right technological solution so that we can get opportunities in cultural life and Danish society, and so that those who have to travel, for example on business, will also have a chance to do so,” he said.
The finance minister stressed, however, that other requirements such as social distancing and mask wearing would not be replaced by the digital passports.
Similar digital passport schemes are being planned to help travelers avoid quarantine imposed to help prevent the spread of Covid-19. The European Commission is looking at issuing vaccination certificates while Belgium, Cyprus, Greece and Spain have expressed interest in similar passport plans. On Tuesday, Estonia said it would permit travelers arriving into the country who showed proof of vaccination to avoid its quarantine requirements.
The World Health Organization (WHO) said in January it was opposed “for the time being” to the introduction of certificates of vaccine passports as there were “too many fundamental unknowns” about the effectiveness of jabs.
Opponents say vaccine passports endanger the rights of Europeans by dividing people into categories based on health status, denying access to public services to the non-vaccinated and opening the door to health tracking that violates individuals’ privacy rights.
Russia’s Ombudswoman Gets Requests to Protect Baltnews, Sputnik Latvia Reporters
Sputnik – 28.01.2021
Russian Human Rights Commissioner Tatyana Moskalkova has received requests from journalists who work with Baltnews and Sputnik Latvia media outlets, asking to protect their rights to freedom of speech, Moskalkova’s office told Sputnik on Thursday, adding that work on the requests is already underway.
“There are such [requests]. We are already working on them”, the office said.
In December, several Russian-speaking journalists working in Latvia, including those who wrote articles for the Baltnews and Sputnik Latvia outlets, have been accused of violating EU sanctions.
Their apartments were searched, with them being put under the condition to not leave the country. Sputnik Latvia and Baltnews are part of the Rossiya Segodnya International Information Agency, whose director-general, Dmitry Kiselev, is on the EU sanctions list.
The Russian Foreign Ministry says that the EU sanctions are individual and concern only Kiselev and thus could not apply to all individuals and entities that work with the agency, especially those who work as freelance journalists. According to Moscow, Latvia uses EU sanctions as an excuse to justify its “punitive campaign” against Russian media.
In non-binding resolution, EU parliament calls for new anti-Russia sanctions to stop Nord Stream 2 over Navalny’s arrest
RT | January 21, 2021
An EU parliament resolution, backed by 581 MEPs out of 675 present, directs members to ramp up sanctions against Russia to stop the Nord Stream 2 project “once and for all,” linking it to opposition figure Alexey Navalny’s arrest.
The EU member states should take “an active stance” on Navalny’s 30-day arrest in Russia. This is according to a non-binding resolution adopted on Thursday, with 581 votes in favor, 50 against and 44 abstentions.
The list of “significantly tighter” restrictions the European nations are encouraged to impose against Moscow includes personal sanctions against anyone involved “in the decision to arrest and imprison” the opposition figure, who returned to Russia on January 17 following an almost six-month-long treatment in Germany after an apparent poisoning during a trip to Siberia.
The resolution went further, suggesting EU states should target Russian “oligarchs,” members of President Vladimir Putin’s “inner circle” and “Russian media propagandists” as well. “Additional restrictive measures could also be taken under the new EU Global Human Rights Sanctions Regime,” a statement published by the EU parliament says.
Another step suggested by the MEPs is putting a stop to the Russian gas pipeline project Nord Stream 2 “once and for all.” The multinational project, which would deliver Russian gas to Europe and particularly to Germany, is currently under construction despite fierce opposition from Washington, which calls it a threat to America’s and Europe’s security interests.
Now, a day after new US President Joe Biden has been sworn into office, the EU parliament resolution calls on the bloc’s member states to “immediately stop the completion of the controversial pipeline.” It would be an ideal moment to “strengthen transatlantic unity in protecting democracy and fundamental values against authoritarian regimes,” the text asserts.
Several European leaders, including German Chancellor Angela Merkel, have repeatedly criticized the US pressure, arguing that Washington is interfering in Europe’s internal affairs to advance its own interests, namely to sell its own liquefied natural gas.
Earlier this week, Russian energy giant Gazprom informed Nord Stream 2 investors that the project could be suspended, even cancelled, after the US told Germany it was imposing new measures based on the CAATSA law (Countering America’s Adversaries Through Sanctions Act).
Berlin said it could tax American gas imports in response to Washington’s move.
As for the “immediate release” of Navalny – another demand put forward by the EU parliament – it is unlikely to have any effect, since Moscow has already said it would not heed outside calls for the opposition figure’s release.
Navalny is currently accused of violating the terms of a suspended sentence. The opposition figure is facing charges over violation of probation terms related to a previous criminal case. In 2014, he received a three-and-a-half-year sentence, suspended for five years, for embezzling 30 million rubles ($400,000) from two companies, including French cosmetics brand Yves Rocher.
His sentence was then extended for another year and was due to expire in late December 2020 but he missed a scheduled check-in with a probation office in Russia while he was in Germany earlier the same month. The Russian penal service then demanded his arrest, arguing the move was deliberate as Navalny’s medical papers from Germany showed he had already recovered by that time.
Dmitry Peskov, President Vladimir Putin’s official spokesman, said earlier that the case is a matter for the Russian prison service and does not require any special intervention from the government.
Meeting between Moldovan and Ukrainian leaders was to coordinate actions against Russia
Paul Antonopoulos | January 18, 2021
The visit of Moldovan President Maia Sandu to Ukraine last week is the first interaction between the two neighboring countries at the highest level in recent years. For Sandu, this trip became her foreign policy premiere since she became president on December 24, 2020. We could observe in her meeting with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky that there is a good level of personal interaction between the two leaders.
The Three Seas Initiative project was discussed in relation to the implementation of a partnership with the EU. The Three Seas Initiative is a forum comprising of twelve European Union members located between the Baltic, Adriatic and Black Seas and has the aim of fostering closer cooperation. Both Moldova and Ukraine want to be involved in the Three Seas Initiative despite not being European Union member states.
Both Sandu and Zelensky are radically opposed to Russia in the belief that it will help their country’s prospects of becoming European Union and NATO members. The Moldovan and Ukrainian leaders discussed “mutual respect for sovereignty and territorial integrity” and their willingness to face “geopolitical challenges” together with the traditional allusion of a common “aggressor.” They never directly named Russia, but given their known position against Moscow, it is obvious who their statement was directed towards.
Sandu and Zelensky are oriented towards the same circles in the West. Both aim to integrate their countries into Euro-Atlantic structures, despite the unlikeliness that Moldova or Ukraine will become member states of the European Union or NATO in the foreseeable future. As a result of their willingness to appease Western interests in Eastern Europe, Russian influence in the post-Soviet space is being challenged. But now that the political situation in the United States is showing signs of instability, it is not convenient for them to make openly direct statements against Russia.
The issue of Crimea and the Crimean Platform was deliberately avoided by both presidents in the part of the meeting that was revealed to the public. This is likely because such maneuvers require consultation with the incoming Joe Biden administration. Sandu and Zelensky most likely considered it premature to make such statements regarding Crimea. This decision is despite Ukraine launching the Crimean Platform just a mere few months earlier as part of their strategy to “de-occupy” the peninsula after it reunited with Russia in 2014 in a referendum that adhered to all international norms and standards.
When the new administration in Washington stabilizes, it will become clearer whether Moldova’s and Ukraine’s Western partners are ready to use them against Russia. Although they will likely find support from Biden if they continue their opposition to Russia, there will be elections for a new German Chancellor on September 26 and Angela Merkel will not be running. The victor could determine whether Berlin, the de facto leader of the European Union, will continue to loyally follow Washington’s foreign policy or pursue an independent one.
Away from the public eye and ear, it is likely that Sandu and Zelensky privately discussed possibilities of joint pressure against Russia in Transnistria and Donbass. Although Donbass is well known to Westerners, Transnistria is almost unheard of. The small territory is wedged between Ukraine and Moldova. It has a de facto independence but is internationally recognized as a part of Moldova despite the majority of the population being either Russian or Ukrainian.
It should be remembered that during last year’s election campaign, Sandu announced that she will focus on “eliminating the Russian military presence” without mentioning a political settlement in the Transnistrian dispute, thus threatening to warm up a frozen conflict. Given the geography, Ukraine and Moldova are able to blockade Transnistria. This would sever transport links and economic flows.
During the meeting between Sandu and Zelensky, only two public initiatives came to be known – the creation of a certain transportation corridor between the capitals of Ukraine and Moldova, and the organization of a presidential council of the two countries. However, regarding the first initiative, it must have a strong economic justification to be attractive to potential investors. Given the current state of low economic interaction between Ukraine and Moldova, as well as their economic crises, such a justification will be very difficult to find.
The Presidential Council is a more realistic initiative, although the idea itself is not new. The statement about it is a sign that Moldova and Ukraine have agreed to pursue certain policies together. Even if those policies are not clear yet, it will undoubtedly include how they can collectively counter Russian influence in Transnistria and Donbass.
Without Democracy in the U.S., Can the Simulacra of Democracy Survive Elsewhere?
By Alastair Crooke | Strategic Culture Foundation | January 17, 2021
The ‘Ides of March’, they came early this year – on 6 January, at least for one current U.S. ‘Caesar’. What happened; how it happened; who concocted the Capitol events, will be long debated. However, the daggers had long been sharpened for Caesar, well before the invasion of the Capitol. In a sense, the stage was already set – Trump walked into the DC ‘Forum’, and ended ‘stabbed to death’, as had Julius. It has been truly Shakespearean.
It was well-known that Trump might well reject the election results, because of postal ballot potential fraud (as postal ballots assumed their disproportionate 2020 electoral predominance). The Transition Integrity Project (TIP) precisely (purposefully?) had taunted Trump last June with its forecast of a contested election in which Trump would lose – after “all of the mail-in ballots had been tallied”. The TIP then had turned to the prospective tactics and tasks for forcefully ousting a President-in-denial from the White House. (The media and ‘platforms’ had been participants in this early war-gaming of how to deal with a Trump, who contested the election result, and questioned the legality and authenticity of postal ballots).
It needn’t have been this way – but no compromise on rules on postal balloting was attempted (rather, the reverse). In any event, the Capitol invasion now stands as a major psychic event (the “Insurrection”) searing the American consciousness. Apart from unnerving the legislators, unused to experiencing a sudden loss of security, the invasion has become the sacrilege to a ‘sacred space’ (with all the additional connotations of America’s exceptional, divine mission). The daggers were gleefully plunged in – Trump is impeached again; he is to be tried in the Senate after the Biden inauguration; and he and his family, may expect the legal dismemberment that will follow.
The ‘Blue State’ has – from Trump’s first election – been determined to crush him. That is underway. And somehow sychronistically, we now have the Tech digital deletion of Red America from social platforms, with talk of a ‘purge’ and cultural ‘re-education’ for his supporters (and their children), as well. Biden is already speaking like a War President (and the Capitol now has taken the air of a theatre of war, with troops and weapons strewn about its corridors): “Trump”, said Biden, “has unleashed an all-out assault on our institutions of democracy, from the outset, and yesterday was but the culmination of that unrelenting attack”.
Here is the key first implication to that ‘psychic event’ – not just for Americans, but for the world spectating the unfolding events: Biden has called for measures against “domestic terrorism”, and used language that is usually reserved for combat with an external enemy state – language such as accompanies major wars. This is ‘revenge cycle’ material. In the case of two nations, literally at war, they do do this. This is a part of it. They hope to resolve their conflict through humiliation, repression and the forced submission of the other (i.e. Japan after WW2). But America is, at least nominally, one nation. What happens when a single nation splits, with one turning the ‘seditious’ elements into an ‘alien other’?
We do not know. But hatred is intense, both toward Trump and the ‘deplorables’. And now, these sentiments are reciprocated in the wake of the President’s humiliation, at a contents-free impeachment, reached in few hours. What seems certain is that the course of events likely will lead to a self-reinforcing cycle of ever greater polarisation.
The rise of Trumpism has created a new radical Manicheanism amongst the liberal élite. Tech, with its algos feeding like-minded material to the like-minded, has a lot to do with this digital and ideological divide. But the bottom line is that this divide is (falsely) cast as a death-struggle now underway between a monolithic liberalism and a monolithic illiberalism.
This carries a huge message for Russia, Iran and China (and others) – the U.S. is deeply divided, but its ‘new mission’ will be a ‘moral high-ground’ war against illiberalism – at home, firstly – and then overseas.
Yet of greater – and wider – significance is that the ‘noble lie’ – the mask concealing the cynical arrangement that is American ‘democracy’ – has been stripped away. The crucial import was underlined by the German FM, Heiko Maas, when he observed: “Without democracy in the U.S., [there is] no democracy in Europe”.
What might have Maas meant? Possibly, he was referring to the angry 75 millions of Red America that have now grasped the shocking magnitude of the fraud played on them. By fraud here is not a reference to the particular claims about 3 November, but to the much bigger fraud of a system rigged in the interests of the Establishment. This has been one of the basic props to the engineered consent upon which public order and social stability in America and Europe has rested for decades: the naïve belief in the democratic essence of the system.
This prop is being overturned by the ‘Blue State’ precisely in order to savour a sweet revenge on Trump for pulling aside the mask on so much else of ‘Establishment America’. Trump laid bare how corrupt the ‘swamp’ had become, and he articulated Red America’s deepest concerns and frustrations about off-shored jobs, economic precarity and ‘forever wars’. They, in turn, had projected their exasperation, bitterness, and illusions back onto him, turning him, by default, into their standard-bearer.
Yet – astonishingly – this toppling of the pillar of an engineered ‘noble lie’ is being done precisely by those (the Establishment), who one might have thought, had the most interest in keeping it intact. But they cannot resist it. They just cannot forgive ‘outsider’ Trump’s intrusion into their neatly constructed illusions: trashing their elaborate ‘construct’ of reality, simply by magicking up new ‘facts’ to contest their ‘science’.
Isn’t this what is so frightening for Merkel and Maas? The EU has its own, more fragile, ‘noble lie’. It is this: States – by relinquishing a portion of their sovereignty – might hope to participate in a ‘greater sovereignty’ (i.e. the European Project), and still believe that it is ‘democratic’.
This cynical European arrangement only stands if Merkel and Macron can hold up American ‘democracy’ as the guiding principle to the European Project (however misleading that may be). But now, with the ‘lights going out’ in the ‘City on the Hill’, and with only a broken democracy ideal under which EU leaders may shelter, how will the dreary formula of a diluted sovereignty, with no real democracy; with no roots in the ground below; with the EU moving to ever closer oligarchy, and led by an unaccountable, and secretive ‘politburo’, survive?
The point is that European ‘democracy’ is also rigged towards Germany and the élites. And ordinary Europeans have noticed, (especially when only one part of the community bears a disproportionate burden of the Covid economic pain). The élites fear Trump: he may lay it all bare, for all to see.
Some EU leaders may hope that Trumpism will be so completely crushed, and its voice silenced, that Europe’s own fracturing engineered public consent can be contained. Yet they must know, in their hearts, that recourse to identity and gender ideology (as pretext for greater state-ism), will only armour-plate the bubbles and divisions because they prevent people from hearing each other. It is the post-persuasion, post-argument politics of polarisation.
For sure, the rest of the world are taking close note. They will not be accepting moral lectures from Europe in the future (though undoubtedly, they will still get them), and states will look to build ‘public consent’ around quite different ‘poles’ – loose concerts of states, traditional culture and the historic narratives of their communities.
EC’s von der Leyen dares European nations to call her bluff with announcement of (mandatory?) vaccine certificates
(Alessandro della Valle/Keystone via AP)
RT | January 15, 2021
Europeans must carry certificates proving they’ve been vaccinated against Covid-19 to travel, EC president Ursula von der Leyen told Portuguese media – likely shocking Europeans who’d never heard of such a rule.
Von der Leyen sprung the idea of a “mutually recognized vaccination certificate” as a “medical requirement” for travel on Thursday in the course of praising a similar plan outlined to her in a letter from Greek PM Kyriakos Mitsotakis.
“It is a medical requirement to have a certificate proving that you have been vaccinated,” von der Leyen told Portuguese reporters.
While Mitsotakis’ plan was not meant to be “compulsory or a prerequisite for travel,” von der Leyen seemed to be leaning in that direction, repeating that “we have to have a medical requirement that proves that people have been vaccinated.” The idea of an EU-wide vaccine certificate “is a political and legal decision that should be discussed at a European level,” she continued emphatically.
This was no doubt news to Europeans unfamiliar with the contents of Mitsotakis’ letter. The Greek leader wrote that it was “urgent to adopt a common understanding on how a vaccination certificate should be structured so as to be accepted in all member states,” and an EU-wide meeting is scheduled for Thursday, at which point Mitsotakis is expected to make the case for certificates “facilitating the freedom of movement of persons who have been vaccinated against Covid-19.”
“It is urgent to adopt a common understanding on how a vaccination certificate should be structured so as to be accepted in all member states,” he wrote. Greece plans to issue digital vaccine certificates to every resident who receives the jab.
Seemingly brainstorming ways to incentivize the uptake of such certificates without imposing an explicit mandate, von der Leyen suggested on Friday that they be combined with Covid-19 tests for those unable to access the vaccine in a timely fashion. Such a package would allow for greater travel to warm-weather destinations – a must for EU member states with tourism-dependent economies concerned that a second year in a row without pleasure travel will destroy them.
Brussels insists it has obtained enough of the Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna vaccines to inoculate every European , and von der Leyen has forbidden member states from making their own side deals. However, defiant Hungary has already reached a deal to buy China’s Sinopharm vaccine, with Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban saying on Friday that the local regulators must act“responsibly,” but “quickly” to approve the Chinese-made jab. Budapest has been negotiating with Russia for a supply of Sputnik V as well, complaining that the sluggish speed of the EU program will require Covid-19 restrictions to remain in place for “several more months” of unnecessary economic suffering. Nor is it the only member nation that has complained about the pace of the EU’s vaccination rollout.
There’s also confusion about recently-Brexited British citizens’ compatibility with an EU-wide vaccine passport program – or whether the UK is planning to issue the certificates at all. Conservative MP Michael Gove claimed vaccine passports were “not the plan,” a statement echoed by PM Boris Johnson’s vaccine czar Nadhim Zahawi – but not until after Zahawi had already admitted London was “looking at the technology.”
Privacy advocates have warned that vaccination certificates could easily snowball into intrusive global digital IDs, complete with discrimination based on medical conditions, rationing of benefits, and thorny human rights issues stemming from requiring people to be injected with what remain largely-untested pharmaceutical compounds. Thousands of recipients of the Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna jabs have experienced incapacitating side effects.
Norway is currently investigating the death of 23 nursing home residents who passed away shortly after receiving Pfizer jabs, with 13 of the cases being linked to the side effects of the vaccine.
Meanwhile, Spain plans to keep a database of vaccine refusers which it will share with other “European partners,” effectively relegating vaccine skeptics to second-class citizens.
The Sheep Syndrome
By Peter Koenig for the Saker Blog | January 15, 2021
Today and during the last few days new “measures” – restrictions of freedom imposed by governments for reasons of “public health security”, i. e. preventing the spread of covid infections – have been tightened throughout Europe. Literally, these treacherous governments say, “we have to tighten the screws”. Seriously. WTF – who do they think they are? Servant of the people who elected them and who pay them. This is high treason. But people take it without asking too many questions, some complaints but not strong enough… we are living in the midst of the Sheep Syndrome.
They – these supposedly people friendly governments – call them “measures”, a euphemism for lockdown – sounds better in the ears of a public tired of continuous and more and more repressions. This second, in some countries even third lockdown, includes further business closing, more severe control on home-office work, police-enhanced social distancing, mask wearing, no indoor group activities, only 5 people may meet in an apartment… and, and, and.
For example, there are about 75 studies – give or take a couple – about the uselessness and even dangers of mask wearing. They especially address the danger for children and young adults… but nobody, nobody in the bought-compromised and coerced, bribed – western governments pays any attention to them, nor does, of course, the presstitute mainstream media. They keep to the narrative – MUST wear a mask – MUST keep the safe 6ft. distance – police enforced.
They also impose homeoffice, knowing damn well that any serious psychologist and sociologist tells you how devastating this is for the individual – loneliness, lack of physical contact, encounter and interaction with colleagues – as well as for society as a whole. Without physical contact it breaks apart. This is of course all merciless – thus, all restaurant closings, all events where people gather and interchange, is forbidden.
People are unhappy. Yes, but not enough to stop this tyranny! – Well, I better behave otherwise I’m going to be punished. – FEAR! – Fear leads to the sheep syndrome – that deep-deep social disease which besets us today – and has done so for a while. People, we got to get out of it.
—
But, it seems, people are not yet tired enough to stand up in unison, screaming “enough is enough”, we do not continue this is government tyranny, we stop obeying.
And yes, to give the tyranny more weight, more credibility, it is enhanced by a so-called Task Force (TF), a group of coopted “scientists”, especially established by the Powers that Be, to inform them what to do. It is an old method of a decision-making duality, when governments have to, or want to, take decisions that are not popular, they ask the Task Force for advice. However, the TF has been told and knows exactly what they have to advise. That’s a premeditated lie.
—
In the UK and France new lockdown measures have been imposed already for days, Austria and Switzerland announced them a couple of days ago – the EU as an entity – says nothing, does not coordinate, does not want see that these lockdowns are not only destroying the individual nations’ economy, but they bring the entire EU to economic suicide. The EU is hamstrung by Washington and by NATO.
The new lockdowns – and possibly more are planned as more waves of covid are in the making – until everybody is vaxxed – and has his / her electromagnetic gel injected in their bodies with an DNA-altering substance. So now, they are totally controllable over time. And the time horizon set for total digitization of everything is 2030. AI and robot control of humans – making them into transhumans that’s the goal for the UN Agenda 21-30. And the instrument to achieve it is the Bill Gates created Agenda ID2020.
More lockdowns are killing more small businesses, shops, and restaurants. Creating more hardship for small business owners, more bankruptcies, more misery for the people and their families, losing their jobs.
Just imagine – home-teaching, a family of 4, both parents work, the kids have to have each one a reasonably powerful computer to be able to connect to the school teacher – the kids have to have reasonable computer skills to manage home-learning, and the parents, even if they have time, do they all have the reasonable computer skills to help their kids? – Does every family in the already much covid-hardship affected society have the resources to spare for buying the needed electronic gear for the kids?
It is a disaster. Again, a wanton disaster. Because it will result in less or non-educated children in the west – non-educated kids will become easier to manipulate adults – well, they are expected to fall – in lockstep – into their parents Sheep Syndrome. – Or will they? – That’s where dynamics may not meet linear elite thinking and expectations.
Now, this is happening in the Global North. Imagine how it is in the Global South, where increasing poverty, misery and famine is ravaging entire societies, in some cases more than two thirds of a country’s population. How will these kids be distance-taught? – They simply won’t. So, we have a situation where the Global South produces uneducated kids, because they simply don’t go to school. Most of them will remain poor, they will be the perfect laborers for the elite – or cannon fodder for the wars the rich nations have to (or want to) fight to satisfy their greed. Never forget, wars are profitable. But foremost because of their sociopathic thirst for more and more power and money.
—
Listening and talking to people in the street and to small business owners, they are all upset, and many of them say they may not survive, may never reopen, despite the subsidy they receive form governments. In Switzerland, the head of “Gastronomie Suisse” said with another lockdown, up to 50% of restaurants may not survive. A similar figure had been mentioned in Germany and Austria – and surely the situation is likewise devastating elsewhere too.
We are talking predominantly for the west. The situation in the East, Russia and China and their allies in the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) is different, in as much as they have a people-friendlier approach to covid-eradication.
In the west, in some cases, people’s entire lifesaving, their life achievements, their family businesses, are killed for the sake of a useless and purely oppressive rule. The purpose of this rule is not to stamp out a disease, but covid is a means to instill fear and make us compliant, for worse times to come. Because, let me tell you, whatever you may think that in the summer of 2021, or next year, 2022, we will get back to normal – we will not. Never. If we let them do what they are doing now.
This small Globalist Cabal, via its ultra-rich handlers – billionaires with two and three digits of Silicon Valley – does not only have the power to censor whoever is against the Matrix, but they are all censuring in unison the President of the United States. What does that say about a country, or about the society we live in, a society that calls itself “democratic”?
No matter how much you like or dislike your President, doesn’t it occur to you that this is the embodiment of freedom of speech that is taken away from you? – But again, we do nothing. We watch and complain, but we do nothing. We let it happen. Wouldn’t this be a golden opportunity to block and boycott all social media platforms? Period. – Live without them, for Christ’s sake, some 20, 30 years ago we didn’t even know that they existed, or to what extent we will be hooked on them.
If we can still think independently, it’s now the time to cut yourself loose from Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and what all their names are — don’t use them. Get back to regular human-to-human communications, dialogues, meeting each other, calling on the phone, landline if possible. Yes, I’m serious.
Think about the consequences of following this trend of no free speech, but a steady increase in AI-ization by algorithms that are precisely using the data you give them on the social platform to further enslave you; by ever more robotization and digitization – to the point when we don’t even realize that our brains have been wired and “hacked” by DARPA-developed super-computers, and we will believe and follow orders we are directly implanted by such super-computers, managed, guess by whom – by the Globalist Cabal – at which point we have irreversibly become the embodiment of the Sheep Syndrome. DARPA (Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency) is an advanced research and technology branch of the Pentagon.
Does anyone want that?
I doubt it.
We have to find a way to act now. I don’t have the solution. But maybe collectively connecting with each other spiritually, we will find a solution – or we will make a solution emerge.
That would be the noble way – changing an utterly abusive environment with conscientiousness and with spiritual thinking; emitting high-vibrating vibes that influence our collective destiny. But we have to believe in it and in ourselves as a solid collective with solidarity.
If we fail as humans to claim back our human and civil rights and preserve them, eventually Mother Earth will clean herself. She will clean out the inhuman swamp. Maybe it needs one or two huge and lasting cataclysms; a massive earthquake with a disastrous tsunami, a gigantic eruption of one or several volcanos, darkening the sky for weeks, or a monster hurricane or ice storm that destroys and paralyzes parts of civilization, or a huge solar explosion, knocking out the world’s electric and electronic grid – ending digitization of everything on the spot. – All this might be much worse than what covid, or its inventors, ever did.
After such a cataclysm, much of humanity might have to start from scratch – from near-to-zero, and certainly without digitization – but with the now lost freedom, to start afresh and develop freely and sovereignly according to our needs.
For decades the Global Cabal has showered us with self-aggrandizing lies, with promises of comfort, of well-being, but with the notion that competition rather than cooperation will be the salvation. These well-thought-out lies led to a society of egocentric psychopaths – not only, but enough to influence the trend of society, of our dystopian lives. We have gradually acquiesced in LOCKSTEP to a move of societal, even civilizational destruction, from where there is no return.
Let’s work ourselves out of the Sheep Syndrome – NOW.
Peter Koenig is a geopolitical analyst and a former Senior Economist at the World Bank and the World Health Organization (WHO), where he has worked for over 30 years on water and environment around the world. He lectures at universities in the US, Europe and South America. He writes regularly for online journals and is the author of Implosion – An Economic Thriller about War, Environmental Destruction and Corporate Greed; and co-author of Cynthia McKinney’s book “When China Sneezes: From the Coronavirus Lockdown to the Global Politico-Economic Crisis” (Clarity Press – November 1, 2020).
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