No Jab, No Education? Big Pharma’s influence on Irish and British schools
By Gavin O’Reilly | OffGuardian | October 5, 2023
Last Thursday it was announced that the southern Irish state would roll out Flu jabs to all schoolchildren under its jurisdiction, despite the fact that children are an age group at absolute minute risk of becoming seriously ill from seasonal illnesses such as Flu and colds.
This comes less than three months after an effectively identical announcement was made by the British government, regarding the rollout of the Flu jab to upwards of three million children in English schools.
A similar announcement was made by the British government in October 2019, however that plan was scrapped due to lack of supplies.
AstraZeneca, the manufacturer of the nasal-spray that was to be given to schoolchildren in England, blamed this on a hold-up of an analysis of that year’s Flu season by the WHO, which was to be then given to pharmaceutical firms in order to determine how many products were to be developed.
The timing of this announcement in 2019, and the new announcements that Flu jabs would be rolled out to schoolchildren in Ireland and Britain, arouses suspicion.
On the 18th of October 2019, the same day it was announced that plans had been scrapped to provide schoolchildren in England with Flu jabs, Event 201 was held in New York. Organised by John Hopkins University, in conjunction with the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and the World Economic Forum, Event 201 was a simulation exercise which envisaged a coronavirus pandemic sweeping the globe, the effects of which could only be mitigated by even greater integration between the public and private sector worldwide, including giving social media outlets sweeping powers to deal with what the exercise termed ‘disinformation’ amidst the hypothetical pandemic .
In what can only be described as an outstanding coincidence, less than a month later, the world’s first case of the alleged ‘COVID-19’ virus was discovered in Wuhan, the capital city of China’s central Hubei province. In even further coincidence, Wuhan was home to the Wuhan Institute of Virology, where EcoHealth Alliance, a New York-based NGO with links to the Gates Foundation, was conducting research on the transmission of coronaviruses from bats to humans, using funds granted by Anthony Fauci’s National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases.
Several months later in March 2020, the WHO, an organisation with a history of corruption and undisclosed ties to pharmaceutical giants, announced the official beginning of the ‘COVID-19 Pandemic’. What followed next was unprecedented.
Vast swathes of society were closed down across the world, ostensibly to protect the sick and vulnerable from an alleged virus, the mortality rate of which made it no more dangerous than the seasonal illnesses which coincidentally disappeared for two years in all countries following WHO procedures, only to be ‘replaced’ by a ‘virus’ with the exact same symptoms.
In reality, lockdowns would do far more to flatten small businesses than to save lives, with the dependency on corporate outlets created as a result of these measures leading to the upwards transfer of more than $1tn in wealth.
In yet another coincidence, this example of governments and the private sector working in lockstep bore a striking similarity to what was outlined in Event 201, and also aligned perfectly with the WEF’s Great Reset initiative, launched in June 2020, which again reiterated that the only way to mitigate the effects of the ‘Covid Pandemic’ was to give the corporate class even greater sway over public life worldwide.
One of the key facets of the Great Reset is the introduction of a Digital ID, one which would give the government-corporate alliance an authoritarian level of control over its citizens should it be made mandatory, which during the ‘Covid Pandemic’, is effectively what happened.
Following the announcement of the ‘Covid Vaccine’ on the first business day after the 2020 US Presidential election (again, more coincidental timing), 2021 would see multiple countries around the world introduce legislation requiring their citizens to have been jabbed before they could participate in everyday life. To implement this, the standard practice was to place a QR code on their smartphone once they had been jabbed, one which would grant them access to restaurants, bars, gyms and other amenities prohibited to those who had chosen to not take part in a global medical experiment.
Essentially, this was a dry-run for the rollout of a mandatory digital ID, using an alleged ‘Pandemic’ as the pretext.
The introduction of jab passports however, would lead to a worldwide protest movement in defence of human rights. In response, the corporate media would begin a demonization campaign against these protesters, labelling them as ‘far-right’, and WEF-aligned governments would launch a brutal crackdown; perhaps most notably in Canada, where the government of WEF ‘Young Global Leader’ Justin Trudeau would attack demonstrators with teargas and mounted Horses, and freeze their bank accounts using emergency legislation.
The impact of this global protest movement likely played a part in the sudden collapse of the ‘Pandemic’ media narrative in early 2022, shortly after the WEF’s Davos Agenda virtual event. The Russian operation that began in Ukraine shortly after, following almost nine years of western provocations, would serve as a convenient cover story by the mainstream media for the global inflation caused by lockdown measures.
However, with lockstep announcements that Britain, under the rule of WEF member Rishi Sunak, and the southern Irish state, overseen by WEF ‘Young Global Leader’ Leo Varadkar, will be rolling out a product to schoolchildren, for an illness that poses an absolute miniscule risk to their age group, it may only be a matter of time until the ‘Pandemic’ narrative is repeated for schoolchildren in both countries, with it being made mandatory for them to have a Flu jab before they are granted an education.
Gavin O’Reilly is an Irish Republican activist from Dublin, Ireland, with a strong interest in the effects of British and US Imperialism; he was a writer for the American Herald Tribune from January 2018 up until their seizure by the FBI in 2021, with his work also appearing on The Duran, Al-Masdar, MintPress News, Global Research and SouthFront. He can be reached through Twitter and Facebook and supported on Patreon.
Group Behind ‘Disinformation Dozen’ Has Ties to Hollywood, Corporate Dems
By Michael Nevradakis, Ph.D. | The Defender | October 3, 2023
The latest series of revelations by investigative journalist Paul D. Thacker concerning the organization responsible for creating the list of the “Disinformation Dozen” confirm connections to more dark money sources and to key political and Hollywood figures.
In an article published Monday in Tablet Magazine and on his Substack, Thacker also revealed the organization — a nonprofit called Center for Countering Digital Hate (CCDH) — received anonymous donations of upwards of $1 million and hired a lobbying firm.
Prior to coming up with its “Disinformation Dozen” list, Thacker said, CCDH was part of a campaign to silence independent media and prominent political opponents.
CCDH has since turned its attention to attacking X (formerly Twitter) and its owner, Elon Musk, and supporting the recent passage of a sweeping new censorship bill in the U.K.
According to Thacker, the influence of CCDH and its founder and CEO, Imran Ahmed, on the Biden administration, policymaking circles and mainstream and social media is disproportionately large for a small organization founded and managed by a non-American — raising questions about who, or which entities, are backing CCDH.
Those questions led by Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) to subpoena CCDH in late August. Jordan gave CCDH until Sept. 29 “to produce its communications with the executive branch related to content moderation, the accuracy or truth of content, and the deletion or suppression of content.”
CCDH responded to the subpoena on Sept. 29, claiming it “produced all documents and communications” which were requested. Notably, the letter came on the letterhead of a law firm representing CCDH, instead of from the organization directly, while the publicly viewable online version of the letter does not include the accompanying documents.
‘Disinformation Dozen’ list led to censorship of Kennedy, others
In March 2021, CCDH drafted a report and accompanying list of the so-called “Disinformation Dozen,” which included Robert F. Kennedy Jr., chairman on leave of Children’s Health Defense (CHD), Dr. Joseph Mercola, and Ty and Charlene Bollinger, founders of The Truth About Vaccines and The Truth About Cancer websites.
The report claimed, “Just twelve anti-vaxxers are responsible for almost two-thirds of anti-vaccine content circulating on social media platforms,” and concluded social media “platforms must act” against these individuals.
The White House and social media platforms including Twitter and Facebook used the report to censor the individuals on the list.
In one example, White House spokesperson Jen Psaki cited the CCDH report during a July 2021 press briefing to pressure Facebook into censoring the accounts in question. “There’s about 12 people who are producing 65% of anti-vaccine misinformation on social media platforms,” Psaki claimed.
Legacy media outlets such as NPR, The Guardian and others also cited the report, in an attempt to discredit the people on the list.
Thacker, writing for Tablet, said Twitter specifically took action against Kennedy after it received the “Disinformation Dozen” list — and was subjected to White House pressure:
‘“COVID-19 misinfo enforcement team is planning on taking action on a handful of accounts surfaced by the CCDH report,’ a Twitter official wrote on March 31. One account they eventually took action against belonged to Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who is now running against Joe Biden for the Democratic Party’s nomination for president.”
CCDH provides White House with ‘powerful weapon to use against critics’
“What, then, do we know about the CCDH?” Thacker wrote Monday in Tablet. “In effect, it seems, the organization provides the White House with a powerful weapon to use against critics including RFK Jr. and Musk, while also pressuring platforms like Facebook and Twitter to enforce the administration’s policies.”
“While few journalists have bothered to investigate the opaque group, the available evidence paints a picture that is likely different from what many in the public would expect of a ‘public interest’ nonprofit,” Thacker added.
As part of his July investigation leading to the release of the CCDH-related “Twitter Files,” Thacker was unable to discover who funds and supports the organization. He told The Defender in July that he believed CCDH was a “dark money” group.
Kennedy, testifying at a July 20 hearing organized by the House Select Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government, also called CCDH a “dark money” group.
A subsequent investigation by GreenMedInfo’s Sayer Ji was able to trace some of the organizations that financially support CCDH, including several U.K.-based nonprofits affiliated with legacy media organizations, the U.K. government and major philanthropic organizations such as the Open Society Foundations and the Ford Foundation.
Yet, unanswered questions about CCDH and Ahmed remained for Thacker, who wrote on Substack:
“How did some guy from London with no D.C. political experience get noticed by the White House and attract so much media attention? Where does he come from? What’s his background? Where does he get his money? Who is behind this?”
As part of his latest investigation, Thacker wrote that he “lucked into finding a critical, anonymous donor who dropped $1.1 million into CCDH’s coffers.”
A search of the 2021 tax filings of the Schwab Charitable Fund — a donor-advised fund that allows anyone to donate anonymously — revealed a $1.1 million donation to CCDH.
This represented “around 75% of all the funds they took in that year,” Thacker wrote on Substack.
Writing for Tablet, Thacker added, “According to tax records, Ahmed began to run CCDH from D.C. in 2021, and CCDH took in $1.47 million in their very first year operating in the United States.”
‘CCDH functions as an arm of the corporate wing of the Democratic Party’
This was not the only interesting insight into CCDH’s operations. Thacker also discovered CCDH’s chairman is Simon Clark, a former senior fellow at the Center for American Progress (CAP).
According to Thacker, CAP is a “D.C. think tank aligned with the corporate arm of the Democratic Party.” It was founded by John Podesta, who chaired Hillary Clinton’s 2016 campaign against Donald Trump. And yes, CAP has close ties to the Biden administration,” Thacker wrote.
Clark was also a senior fellow at the Atlantic Council’s Digital Forensics Lab, Thacker wrote in Tablet. In a previous “Twitter Files” release, investigative journalist Matt Taibbi reported that the Atlantic Council’s Digital Forensic Research Lab was funded by various U.S. government agencies and defense contractors and “remains a central piece in the ‘censorship-industrial complex.’”
Thacker quoted Mike Benz, a former U.S. State Department official who runs the Foundation for Freedom Online, a free-speech watchdog. Benz told Thacker the Atlantic Council is “one of the premier architects of online censorship” and has, in recent years, “had seven CIA directors on its board of directors or board of advisers.”
“One might conclude that CCDH functions as an arm of the corporate wing of the Democratic Party, to be deployed against the perceived enemies of corporate Democrats, whether they come from the left or the right,” he added.
CCDH spent $50,000 to lobby Congress on COVID ‘misinformation’
Thacker also uncovered ties between CCDH, Ahmed and Hollywood.
“Go a little deeper and you find the other members of the [CCDH] board,” Thacker wrote on Substack, adding, “The one who caught my attention is Aleen Keshishian.”
Keshishian, who is also an adjunct professor at USC’s School of Cinematic Arts, lists clients including actor Mark Ruffalo, who according to Thacker, “tweets support” for CCDH.
Her other clients include Jennifer Aniston, Selena Gomez and Natalie Portman.
“Ahmed’s connections to Hollywood actors could account for some of the money he has raised from anonymous sources, as wealthy celebrities sometimes wish to keep their political donations hidden from fans,” Thacker wrote in Tablet.
Unusual for a nonprofit, CCDH also hired a PR and lobbying firm, Lot Sixteen, to work on its behalf.
“Very few activist groups have the financial means to hire private lobby shops — even those with an established presence on Capitol Hill — but during a few quarters of 2021 and 2022, CCDH paid Lot Sixteen $50,000 to lobby congressional offices on COVID-19 misinformation and ‘preventing the spread of misinformation and hate speech online in social and mainstream media,’” Thacker wrote.
Thacker told The Defender that even large and well-established nonprofit groups such as Greenpeace and Public Citizen have not hired PR firms to work on their behalf.
“None of those groups that I’m aware of, the longest-established groups in D.C., have ever had the money to hire a private lobby shop like CCDH did. It’s just bizarre,” he said, adding that this is because CCDH is “a political campaign designed to look like a grassroots public-interest organization.”
Thacker said he contacted Lot Sixteen and “asked them how they confirmed that Imran Ahmed was compliant with FARA [Foreign Agents Registration Act],” noting that “This guy’s a foreigner. No one knows where his money comes from. How do they know his money’s not coming from overseas and he’s not in violation of foreign lobbying laws?”
“They didn’t get back to me,” Thacker said. “My guess is they didn’t do due diligence.” He also told The Defender that while CCDH “lists only four or five employees” on its website, “if you go on LinkedIn, there’s about 20 other people working for him.
“What nonprofit does not list all their employees? It’s just bizarre,” Thacker said.
CCDH ‘rarely disclose funders’
According to Thacker, CCDH and associated groups have operated in secrecy and under multiple identities for several years.
“Ahmed’s history is hard to track,” he wrote for Tablet. “The two groups he has run — Stop Funding Fake News [SFFN] and CCDH — seem to pop up out of nowhere, switch addresses, rarely disclose funders, omit naming all employees, and feature websites that change names or disappear from the internet.
“While Ahmed eventually acknowledged in 2020 that he helped launch both [groups] … his involvement remained hidden for some years. Stop Funding Fake News started in February 2019 claiming to be a ‘social movement’ too frightened to name its own grassroots activists,” Thacker added.
Thacker said that by searching archived versions of CCDH’s website on the Internet Wayback Machine, he was able to find out more information about the organization.
“One of the first things I ran across was reports about CCDH incorporating in the U.K. back in 2018,” said Thacker who looked up their filings in England to find their address and who was on their board. “One of CCDH’s first directors is a guy named James Morgan McSweeney,” he wrote on Substack.
According to Thacker, McSweeney “is a power broker in UK politics, and a top staffer to Keir Starmer, who is now the head of the British Labour Party. So CCDH is not really some disinterested, public nonprofit, it’s a political campaign by British Labour.”
Writing for Tablet, Thacker said that CCDH “registered in late 2018 in London, first as Brixton Endeavours Limited” and when it incorporated, its “only director was a staffer for Keir Starmer.” The group also “shared an address with an organization that supported Starmer,” while Damian Collins, a member of the Tory Party, later joined as an officer.”
Thacker wrote on Substack that CCDH, SFFN and Ahmed have often operated as “political operative[s] for conservative members of the British Labour party,” including on behalf of Starmer, to help “destroy the Left in the United Kingdom.”
Starting in 2019, SFFN “claimed some very sizable left-wing scalps in London, mostly by lobbing vague accusations of fake news at political enemies. The group helped to run Jeremy Corbyn out of Labour Party leadership while tanking the lefty news site Canary, after starting a boycott of their advertisers,” Thacker wrote in Tablet.
In one instance, SFFN claimed that they convinced 40 major brands, including Adobe, Chelsea FC, eBay and Manchester United, to stop placing their advertisements on the websites of such news outlets, a tactic SFFN called “demonetizing.” They also claimed that they were “educating” advertising agencies.
“Essentially, SFFN and [CCDH] were front groups created by conservatives in Labour for an internecine battle against leftists in their own party. The Canary reported that CCDH’s address linked the group back to Keir Starmer’s people,” Thacker wrote on Substack. SFFN reports were also cited in the British Parliament.
Having accomplished this, SFFN “became moribund, rarely tweeting from their social media account,” Thacker wrote in Tablet, noting that this did not matter as Ahmed “pivoted his focus” to the U.S., where his list of “‘disinformation’ targets just happened to be critics of the Democratic Party establishment” — including Kennedy.
“Just as he had done for the Labour Party, Ahmed used the CCDH to attack as ‘conspiracy theorists’ and ‘anti-vaxxers’ various critics of the Biden arm of the Democratic Party,” Thacker wrote.
Association with Democrat-affiliated groups helped CCDH’s ‘unusual’ ascent
According to Thacker, CCDH now primarily operates in the U.S., based out of a virtual office that hundreds of D.C. nonprofits list as their residence. This is despite the fact that CCDH is still based in the U.K.
The site lists CCHD as a broad nonprofit devoted to “Civil Rights, Social Action, Advocacy / Research Institutes and/or Public Policy Analysis (NTEE).” It lists Ahmed as CEO with a 2021 base salary of $126,333 and Simon Clark from the Center for American Progress, the think tank of the corporate Democrats, as chair of the board.
According to Thacker, the prominent ascent of CCDH and Ahmed in U.S. policy and media circles is unusual.
“I want to point out how odd it is that a British political operative is now running a partisan campaign in the United States. This rarely happens,” Thacker wrote on Substack. “For a variety of complex reasons, British political operatives don’t come to the United States, Americans go to England [and other countries].”
“It doesn’t happen,” Thacker told The Defender. “That was my question from the beginning. This guy is quoted from the White House podium, has all these Congressmen sending letters on his behalf, who has appeared in front of Congressional hearings run by Democrats when they had the House of Representatives.”
“Probably what it is, is Simon Clark from the Center for American Progress,” Thacker said. “That’s the think tank for the corporate Democrats. That’s probably his entryway.”
Writing for Tablet, Thacker said, “One rumor that came up often in the dozen or so conversations” he had “with people who have observed Ahmed for years, is that he works for British intelligence,” although this has not yet been confirmed.
Thacker told The Defender that Ahmed and CCDH have played “the same game” in the U.S. and U.K., except that “instead of it being directly ‘Republicans are bad, these people are good,’ they find some way that they can say, ‘aha, hate!’ So, it’s taking this idea and rebranding it for political purposes.”
Writing in Tablet, Thacker said that “Ahmed’s story is critical to understanding the new push for censorship under the guise of combating hate.”
‘Obsession’ with Kennedy, Musk, vaccines
Having become fully embroiled in U.S. politics, Thacker said that Ahmed and CCDH have developed an “obsession” with figures such as Kennedy and with issues such as COVID-19 vaccines — receiving broad media coverage in the process.
Writing for Tablet, Thacker said, “After Robert F. Kennedy Jr. announced he was running against Biden for the Democratic nomination and appeared on Joe Rogan, Ahmed told the BBC, “He’s working really hard to keep people from knowing he’s a hardcore anti-vaxxer.”
Thacker told The Defender that “every one of these ‘disinformation experts’ out there — I don’t care if they’re a fact-checker, a think tank, a journalist, an academic, they’ve all done work on elections and on vaccines. So, they’re all election ‘experts’ and vaccine ‘experts.’ How you become an expert in both, I don’t know, but that’s what they are.”
“It’s a complete and total obsession,” Thacker added. “There’s not a single ‘disinformation’ expert out there who I’ve not seen do something on vaccines. They’re obsessed … why, out of all the things that you can target, why do you target vaccines? I can only think that there’s some kind of funding behind it, where that funding comes from, what it’s about. That’s the only reason that makes sense to me.”
Thacker also said “it’s just bizarre” that someone like Ahmed can come in and be obsessed about vaccines and not have a single tweet criticizing Pfizer or Moderna. “He’s not found any problems with the Biden administration’s vaccine policies. Not one … Ahmed appears where the corporate Democrats need expertise.”
Musk recently became a new target for CCDH and Ahmed. Writing in Tablet, Thacker said, “Ahmed is now trying to drive away Elon Musk’s advertisers on X, this time based on dubious claims that the … site is a playground for racists,” including claims made in interviews with The New York Times, the Financial Times and The Guardian.
“Once again, these efforts have been uncritically amplified in the press and in a letter to Musk from House Democrats that reiterates Ahmed’s claims, and cites him and CCDH,” Thacker wrote in Tablet.
These attacks led Musk and X to sue CCDH and Ahmed in July, accusing them of making false and misleading claims about hate speech on the platform, and illegally accessing the computers of Brandwatch, a company that works with Twitter — a potential violation of the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act.
In response, MSNBC published an Aug. 1 op-ed by Ahmed, claiming CCDH “has been at the forefront of cataloging and reporting on the hate proliferating on the platform owned by Elon Musk.”
“All of his targets just happen to be the people who the corporate Democrats don’t get along with, so that’s Elon Musk right now,” Thacker told The Defender, noting that Ahmed and CCDH have not targeted other social media platforms to the same extent.
Yet, Ahmed continues to enjoy a platform in the establishment media. Thacker told The Defender this is “because none of those reporters have bothered to look into his background in the U.K. or to look at where his money’s coming from, or to look at what’s inside the [Musk/X] lawsuit against him. It plays into their weird obsession with Musk.”
In parallel, CCDH board member Damian Collins “led a series of inquiries” in the British parliament “into ‘disinformation’ and ‘fake news’ on social media,” helping promote the “Online Safety Bill,” intended to purge online “disinformation,” Thacker wrote in Tablet.
“When Collins held hearings on the bill — which was passed into law just weeks ago — the first person to give testimony in support of online bans was Imran Ahmed,” Thacker added.
On Substack, Thacker previewed more reports about CCDH and Ahmed he will soon release, including regarding ties “to Peter Hotez, an American physician, an ardent proponent of Anthony Fauci and cheerleader in the national media for vaccines and Biden administration pandemic policies.”
“I hope this helps people understand how to do their own digging into dark money groups,” Thacker wrote on Substack.
In Tablet, he wrote that Ahmed has “been a servant to the power of political parties who deployed him and the CCDH to weaponize the charge of hate speech and misinformation against their enemies.”
Michael Nevradakis, Ph.D., based in Athens, Greece, is a senior reporter for The Defender and part of the rotation of hosts for CHD.TV’s “Good Morning CHD.”
This article was originally published by The Defender — Children’s Health Defense’s News & Views Website under Creative Commons license CC BY-NC-ND 4.0. Please consider subscribing to The Defender or donating to Children’s Health Defense.
UK Police arrest British journalist for posting ‘malinformation’ about Ukraine, Justin Trudeau under Online Safety Act
By David Krayden – Human Events – 10/02/2023
In a story that has virtually been ignored by the global media, UK police arrested an independent journalist for posting “malinformation” and misinformation about Ukraine.
Under the new UK censorship law called the Online Safety Act, the government can order the arrest or detention of anyone said to be “hateful” or judged by fact checkers to be posting “misinformation.”
Warren Thornton was literally in the midst of streaming an edition of his podcast The Real Truth on Sept. 24 when Bristol police officers came to his front door and demanded he speak with them.
The Liberal government of Canada is preparing its own version of this legislation that will target “disinformation” on the internet without even defining what disinformation is.
Thornton is a critic of NATO’s escalation of the war in Ukraine and has posted several videos about Ukrainian attacks on Russian civilians and the secret existence of biolabs in Ukraine. He was also quick to report how a former Waffen-SS Nazi soldier was allowed to sit in the Canadian House of Commons Gallery during a speech by Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy.
Yaroslav Hunka acknowledged plaudits from former House Speaker Anthony Rota and waved as all Members of Parliament rose from their seats and gave the 98-year-old SS veteran a standing ovation.
Thornton had just broadcast news of Canada’s international embarrassment when the police arrived.
Thornton was interviewing guest Fiona Ryan when the host just “vanished” about 20 minutes before the program was expected to end, she told The People’s Voice. Ryan was conversing with Johnee, who hosts the Café Revolution, a YouTube channel that reports from the front of the Russia-Ukraine War in Donetsk.
Ryan discovered in a WhatsApp exchange that Thornton had been arrested by the police.
At the police station, Thornton said the officers became “flustered” during his interrogation because they were unable to say exactly what video posts led to his arrest, according to The People’s Voice. Thornton soon had his lawyer on-scene who ‘ripped them to bits’. He added that his lawyer told them to “charge him or release him.”
Thornton, after spending a night in jail, was released Monday. The police decided not to charge him.
In a post on Rumble, Thornton described his ordeal with police as “jolly interesting” and said he asked if he was being charged with anything except spreading “malinformation.” The police said he was not.
Ukraine’s backers blinded by Russia hate – top analyst
RT | October 5, 2023
Kiev’s globalist and neo-conservative supporters in the West are so driven by their hatred of Russia that they completely disregard the hundreds of thousands of Ukrainians who are dying in a futile effort to defeat Moscow’s forces, US public policy analyst Jeffrey Sachs has argued.
Sachs, an award-winning economist who advised the Russian and Ukrainian governments following the breakup of the Soviet Union, made his comments in an interview posted on Thursday by US podcast host Andrew Napolitano. Asked how the US and its NATO allies can ignore the catastrophic destruction of Ukraine while prolonging the conflict and making false claims of battlefield successes, Sachs said they are “blinded” by their hatred of Russia.
“They are not counting the Ukrainian dead,” the analyst said. “They have lied to the public all along about the military situation . . . . They want so much to fight Russia and have someone else do the fighting and the dying that they want another massive recruitment of the remaining Ukrainian young men that can be grabbed off the streets and be thrown into the killing fields.”
More than 83,000 Ukrainian troops have been killed during a Donbass counteroffensive that began in June, according to an estimate released by the Russian Defense Ministry last month. Despite knowing that the Ukrainians have no chance of making major gains on the battlefield amid Russia’s air superiority and artillery dominance, Kiev’s benefactors have shown a “grotesque” disregard for the heavy casualties, Sachs said. He argued that the UK, in particular, has championed the counteroffensive because of London’s centuries-long and deeply embedded desire to crush Russia.
Sachs, now a UN adviser and director of the Center for Sustainable Development at Columbia University, has argued that NATO’s expansion into Eastern Europe helped trigger the current crisis. He said Washington and its allies missed many opportunities to avoid the current conflict, then kept it going by discouraging Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky from finalizing a peace deal with Russia in March 2022.
Responding to claims by former US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton that critics of Washington’s Ukraine policy are “siding with” Russian President Vladimir Putin, Sachs argued that he’s showing concern for the Ukrainian people. “I don’t want Ukraine to be completely destroyed by these neocons, by their fantasy world, by their desire to throw Ukrainians by the hundreds of thousands to their deaths,” he said. He added, “This isn’t siding with Putin or siding with anybody. This is trying to protect Ukraine from American zealots.”
Sachs claimed that US President Joe Biden must reach out to Putin to negotiate an end to the bloodshed, which would involve ruling out adding Ukraine to NATO, as well as addressing Russia’s legitimate security concerns. “We have stoked so much provocation in this, so much anxiety, overthrowing governments, starting multiple wars, pushing NATO enlargement, abandoning nuclear agreements, and then saying, ‘Oh, he doesn’t want to negotiate,’” the analyst said.
McCarthy’s Ouster Signals US ‘Preparing Populace at Large’ to Defund Ukraine
By Ilya Tsukanov – Sputnik – 05.10.2023
Kevin McCarthy lost the House speakership this week after his GOP colleague Matt Gaetz tabled a motion to remove him over alleged “side deal” talks with President Biden and the Democrats on Ukraine funding. The shock ouster comes amid growing weariness among Americans over the proxy war, and possible preparations to dump Kiev, experts told Sputnik.
The fallout over Kevin McCarthy’s historically unprecedented removal as speaker of the House of Representatives continues to send shockwaves of confusion and dread across the furthest reaches of the American empire, including in Ukraine.
“We are freaking out. For us it is a disaster,” Ivanna Klympush-Tsintsadze, a senior Ukrainian lawmaker responsible for lobbying Kiev’s efforts to join the European Union, told US media, commenting on the threat of Washington cutting off its military and financial support.
“We are interested in getting things sorted out so American democracy can function, and so we can restore the bipartisan consensus on supporting their own national interest by supporting Ukraine,” Klympush-Tsintsadze emphasized. Apparently, to the politician, a “functioning” American democracy seems to mean continuing to pump tens of billions of additional dollars into Kiev, which faces a looming debt crisis, and is now dependent on Washington and its allies for some 70 percent of all government expenses, as Western creditors prepare to collect dividends on their “investments.”
“There is nothing good, but, objectively, we have simply become hostages of their internal politics,” Ukrainian parliament finance committee deputy chairman Yaroslav Zheleznyak complained, referring to last week’s budget deal showdown – in which Republicans threatened to force a shutdown if the budget included billions in additional funding for Kiev.
The Zelensky government estimates that Kiev still has access to about $1.6 billion in US defense support and $1.23 billion in budgetary assistance. The Pentagon says some $5.4 billion in cash also remain in Presidential Drawdown Authority funds –allowing for weapons stocks from American armories to be sent to Kiev. However, senior Biden administration officials, including the president himself, have expressed fears that “only weeks remain” before a lack of additional funding will start becoming “a serious battlefield concern” for Kiev.
“It does worry me,’ Joe Biden told reporters Wednesday, when asked about the possibility of funds drying up. “But I know there are a majority of members of the House and Senate in both parties who have said that they would support funding Ukraine,” he added. “I’m going to make the argument that it’s overwhelmingly in the interest of the United States of America that Ukraine succeeds.”
“Obviously, time is of the essence,” an administration official stressed, warning of the risks of Congress sitting on its hands without appropriating additional cash to Kiev before the current short-term spending package runs out in mid-November.
Preparing the Public for Bad News?
“I have difficulty thinking of Ukraine as a primary issue for American politicians,” Dr. Nicolai Petro, an international politics professor at the University of Rhode Island, told Sputnik, commenting on the role played by Ukraine funding in the chaos in Washington over the past week.
“I think it is more of a symbolic issue and that their primary interest is not voting up or down on Ukraine aid,” but “what that symbolizes and how it can play out in the American political process.”
Pointing to the deeply murky nature of US spending on Ukraine and the “hide the ball” approach to appropriations, Petro predicted that the Biden administration will likely be able to squeeze out more cash from already appropriated funding for some time even if additional Congressional funding dries up.
The growing debate in Washington over Ukraine has also rippled across the Atlantic to Britain – the second-staunchest supporter within NATO of continuing the proxy war. Even there, Petro pointed out, a debate seems to be gaining strength over just how much more money can be lifted from taxpayers’ pockets and transferred to Kiev.
“London and Washington seem to be on the same wavelength here. We’re both at the same time ramping up production and are not sure how much we have and how much is even needed. Last month, for example, the new UK defense minister said London would deliver tens of thousands of new artillery shells. Three weeks later, it’s ‘we’ve given away as much as we can afford’. This sort of flip-flop is very convenient when you’re preparing the populace at large for a transition of policy from ‘we’ll do whatever it takes as long as it takes’ to ‘no we really need to be thinking about the cost.’ That’s a very different argument to make,” the academic emphasized.
This shift in rhetoric is related to the fact that the US and some of its allies are approaching crucial elections, with “all the polls and the recent elections [in Europe] suggest[ing] that this NATO proxy war in Ukraine is extremely unpopular. And that in and of itself it is going to at least affect the narrative between now and several key elections,” Petro said.
Dems Shoot Themselves in the Foot
McCarthy was ousted Tuesday by an extremely narrow margin of 216 in favor to 210 opposed, with only eight Republicans – led by rebel Florida Congressman Matt Gaetz, supporting his removal alongside Democrats.
“My biggest question going forward is, is this going to be the right move for Democrats?” independent US journalist Rachel Blevins told Sputnik.
“Because they may have just shot themselves in the foot a little bit by getting rid of someone like Kevin McCarthy, who was trying to work with them, you know, maybe promising a separate vote to ensure funding for Ukraine and all that. Well now it could end up being that the next Republican speaker does not want to work with them whatsoever,” the observer pointed out.
The ouster could have repercussions for Ukraine going forward. While interim House Speaker Patrick McHenry has repeatedly supported Congressional votes on Ukraine funding – apart from last week’s attempt to roll assistance into the government funding bill, several candidates vying for the speakership have expressed opposition to further aid, including Ohio Congressman Jim Jordan, Oklahoma Representative Kevin Hern, and Florida Congressman Byron Donalds.
What a Difference a Year Makes
“I know that Joe Biden is not happy right now,” Blevins emphasized. “He’s probably the most furious with all of this, because he was expecting McCarthy to get that funding through. He was not happy that it was not there in that bill to keep the government open.”
“What was interesting was to see that back and forth” over Ukraine, the observer added. “Because in the Senate, they had at least $6 billion for Ukraine, which is a lot of money to the average person, obviously. But when it comes to Ukraine, that’s just enough to keep it rolling for a few months. So they come up with $6 billion. Then in the House, they basically put Democrats in a position where they said, ok, here’s a funding bill to keep the government open. If you say you’re against it, it’s literally just over Ukraine funding. So that’s on you. And you have to answer to your constituents and saying that you wanted a government shutdown just so that you could fund a country that most Americans can’t find on a map,” the observer said.
“Also notable is the latest polls show that half of the American public doesn’t think Congress should keep continuing to approve funding for Ukraine. And so whenever those members of Congress go in there, they’re going to have to find a better justification for it than now, because it’s something that at least half of Americans don’t say is a priority. And that’s certainly not where Congress was even just one year ago when they were passing unprecedented funding and there was no fight about it whatsoever,” Blevins summed up.
Defense Stocks Fall As Paralyzed House With No Speaker Puts US Ukraine Aid At Risk
By Tyler Durden | Zero Hedge | October 4, 2023
On Tuesday evening, Kevin McCarthy, a Republican, was voted out (216-to-210 vote) as the Speaker of the US House of Representatives. Hardline Republicans were angered by McCarthy’s willingness to fund Ukraine’s war while arguing that the money could have been better spent to protect the southern border and restore law and order in imploding major US cities. The historic ouster of the speaker has weighed on defense stocks as traders anticipate challenges for the new speaker in securing further funding for Ukraine.
“The conservative revolt that ousted McCarthy has left the chamber in a state of paralysis until a new speaker is found. That raises the chances of a US government shutdown next month and a delay in further Ukraine assistance,” Bloomberg said.
In a note to clients, Goldman’s Alec Phillips said:
All other things equal, the leadership change raises the odds of a government shutdown in November, though with several weeks left until the deadline, many outcomes are possible. With many policy disputes remaining and a $120bn difference between the parties on the preferred spending level for FY2024, it is difficult to see how Congress can pass the 12 necessary full-year spending bills before funding expires Nov. 17. The next speaker is likely to be under even more pressure to avoid passing another temporary extension—or additional funding for Ukraine—than former Speaker McCarthy had been.
On Wednesday morning, European defense stocks, such as Rheinmetall, Saab, BAE Systems, and Leonardo, slid in the cash market. Bloomberg said this was because of the oustering of McCarthy.
German arms manufacturer Rheinmetall dropped as much as 4.8%.
Swedish aerospace and defense company Saab fell 3%.
British multinational arms, security, and aerospace company BAE Systems slid 3.5%
And Italian defense contractor Leonardo was down 2%.
In the US, uncertainty over funding will likely weigh on defense stocks. The S&P 500 Aerospace & Defense Index has been running into resistance for much of this year.
Washington’s endless stream of taxpayer funds to Ukraine has benefited the military-industrial complex. Now, it appears that the pipeline of easy money is in question due to the ouster of McCarthy.
Batteries Will Not Solve Renewable Energy Storage Problem, Says Royal Society
BY CHRIS MORRISON | THE DAILY SCEPTIC | OCTOBER 3, 2023
The penny is finally starting to drop. Current batteries cannot possibly store more than a fraction of the energy needed to keep the lights on when the wind stops blowing and the sun doesn’t shine. The learned U.K. Royal Society has recently analysed 37 years of wind patterns across Britain and concluded there is a serious underestimate of the amount of storage required. Around 50 academics and specialists led by Professor Sir Chris Llewellyn Smith of Oxford University state clearly that batteries are not the answer to the vast storage required. But like many learned people, wedded to the idea that it is possible to remove the fossil fuel source supplying 80% of the world needs in less than 30 years, they fall down at the practical level. Having lost batteries, the study goes for hydrogen, an idea only slightly less dumb than digging up the planet to produce vast quantities of limited-life batteries.
The Royal Society report envisages dissolving huge salt caverns capable of storing ‘green’ hydrogen. To keep the electricity grid functioning when renewables go off line, around two to three million tons of hydrogen would need to be stored for decades at a time. Wind not only stops for days during periods of intense cold in winter, but the Royal Society found recent periods when speeds were low for a number of years. Salt caverns are only available in a limited number of places in Britain, so a huge network of specialist pipelines would be needed to move the gas to turbines on constant standby. Over a period of time, hydrogen would leak from porous salt caverns.
The report, lacking a practical answer to wind and solar intermittency, seems to have been ignored by mainstream media. The news that batteries cannot play any significant part in the collectivist Net Zero project is unwelcome to those who have been betting the ranch on this solution for many years. Francis Menton of the Manhattan Contrarian sees the report as an “enormous improvement” on every other effort on the subject of large scale energy storage systems. But in the end, the authors’ “quasi-religious commitment” to a fossil-free future leads them to minimise and divert attention away from critical cost and feasibility issues. “As a result, the report, despite containing much valuable information, is actually useless for any public policy purpose,” he concludes.
What are the problems with hydrogen? Where to start. It is a highly explosive and flammable gas that needs careful handing. Its molecules are small and it has a low density. This means it escapes easily, while three times the volume of hydrogen is required to produce the same energy as natural gas. Kathryn Porter is an energy consultant and an associate member of the All-Party Parliamentary Group. She recently wrote an article in the Daily Telegraph about the gas and its possible role in Net Zero.
Hydrogen is also hard to move around. To get the gas to move through pipes, it has to be compressed and pushed along using compressors. This process requires energy: the losses in moving hydrogen through pipes are ten times greater for hydrogen than for methane; up to 30%. In other words you need to use up almost a third of your gas just moving it from A to B. …
The infrastructure for hydrogen does not exist, neither for the most part do the production facilities and they will cost billions to build. Then the underlying cost of storing hydrogen is probably at least four times that of storing methane. Huge amounts of energy are lost in each stage of the process due to the fundamental properties of hydrogen.
As a solution to storing renewable power, Porter is of the view that “hydrogen is one of the worst substances you could choose for this purpose”. But, she adds, because you can burn it in air without creating carbon dioxide, “it has been hailed as the answer to Net Zero dreams”. Both carbon capture and hydrogen are “square pegs” which people are desperately trying to force into round holes. It might be noted, in the light of this last comment from Porter, that the Royal Society traces its roots back to 1660, and published Sir Isaac Newton’s Principia Mathematica. Its politicised track record on Net Zero has yet to live up to the highlights of its glorious past.
Lead author Sir Chris Llewellyn Smith notes that the need for long-term energy storage in a renewable electricity system has been seriously underestimated, and work on constructing storage caverns needs to be started immediately if the Government is to have any chance of meeting its Net Zero targets. Construction of a large green hydrogen production and storage facility would appear to be a “no-regrets” option, he claims.
Someone regretting the option might be the consumer. Francis Menton observes that the Royal Society’s hydrogen plans suggest a cost “to the grid” of around £120 per MWh, a figure described as high but not stratospheric. But this is the wholesale cost, not the one charged to the consumer. In addition, Menton wants to know how much a nationwide set of new pipes will cost, plus the entire new fleet of standby turbines capable of burning 100% hydrogen and providing all the power to the grid when renewables stop working. In addition, Menton notes a “low” rate of interest for capital costs of 5%.
“The whole thing just cries out for a demonstration project to prove feasibility and cost. I’m betting that will never occur before the whole Net Zero thing falls apart from the disastrous skyrocketing electricity prices,” concludes Menton.
Menton sees some honesty in the Royal Society report. But as regular readers will probably agree, the top award for an honest Net Zero commentary goes to the U.K. Government-funded U.K. FIRES project. In looking at a 2050 Net Zero world, this group of academics ignore as speculative all non-scalable suggestions around carbon capture and hydrogen, along with all the green inventions yet to be made. They point to a future with barely a quarter of our current energy supply. There is nothing more honest than telling people that this will entail no flying or shipping, drastic cuts in home heating, limited transport, no meat, few modern building materials and houses made of “impacted” earth. Worryingly, though, there’s no indication the authors see this as a reason not to go full steam ahead.
Chris Morrison is the Daily Sceptic’s Environment Editor.
We’ll all pay the price of soaring EV insurance
By David Craig | TCW Defending Freedom | October 3, 2023
Something strange happened last week: the Guardian published an article which was worth reading. It concerned the massive insurance costs owners of electric vehicles (EVs) are facing.
Here’s how the article started: ‘Driving an electric car should be a win-win, saving money and the planet. So David was shocked when the insurance on his Tesla Model Y came up for renewal, and Aviva refused to cover him again, while several other brands turned him away. When David did secure a new deal, the annual cost rocketed from £1,200 to more than £5,000.’
It went on: ‘A recent cost of living bulletin from the Office for National Statistics revealed that the price of car insurance – which for many Britons is one of their biggest household bills – is up by 52.9 per cent in the last 12 months. However, this average masks bigger increases for electric car owners, according to Confused.com. Its figures, derived from quotes, show that insurance premiums for electric vehicles are 72 per cent – or £402 – higher than this time last year, at a typical £959. Meanwhile, for petrol and diesel car drivers, the increase is 29 per cent, or £192, taking the figure to £848.’
Moreover, several insurance companies are simply refusing to insure EVs.
The problem seems to be the fragility of EV batteries and the enormous cost of replacing them if you have even just a small bump. As one reader explained:‘If I kerb bump my £4,000 diesel Renault Megane at 4mph it’s a £50 wheel re-alignment at the next service. If a £50,000 EV does the same, it’s potentially a slightly damaged battery and 100 per cent write off. They’re rubbish’.
You might think: ‘Why should I care since I don’t drive an EV?’ Well, when the politicians see that high insurance costs are putting people off buying the EV which they are determined to push on us, they’ll yet again attack petrol and diesel car owners.
A few years ago the EU insisted that young male drivers could not be charged higher car insurance premiums than young female drivers, notwithstanding the major difference in risk. The European Court of Justice ruled that taking gender into account when calculating car insurance premiums violated EU gender equality legislation. Regulations banning the practice came into effect in December 2012 and remain in force in the UK although we’ve since left the EU.
I predict that charging EV drivers more than ICE (Internal Combustion Engine) drivers, will also be outlawed. So there will be a massive rise in motor insurance costs for drivers of ICE cars. Maybe our rulers will even decide that, as EV drivers are dutifully (and expensively) saving the planet while ICE drivers are supposedly intent on destroying it, perhaps EV drivers may be relieved of paying more than a small nominal charge for insurance and therefore must be subsidised almost entirely by ICE drivers. I’m not betting against it.
Foisting green levies onto gas bills will cause public health crisis, Sunak warned
Net Zero Watch | October 4, 2023
Campaign group Net Zero Watch has condemned Government plans to move renewables levies onto gas users.
Speaking at the Conservative Party conference in Manchester, energy minister Lord Callanan announced a consultation on what he euphemistically called ‘rebalancing’, forcing gas users to pay part of the cost of the UK’s grossly inefficient renewables. The Government hopes that this will make heat pumps and other electric technologies more viable.
Net Zero Watch director Andrew Montford said:
“Trying to force up gas bills at a time when people are already struggling to heat their homes is shameful. It will cause a public health crisis. Callanan is utterly callous, but climate extremists only care about their targets, and not whether Granny is going to freeze to death in winter.”
Mr Montford says that it is not clear that moving the levies, running at around £7 billion per year, will be enough to make heat pumps viable, and secondly because if it is, it can only temporarily hide the costs: if gas boilers become a thing of the past, the cost of the levies will have to return to electricity users.
Net Zero Watch energy director Dr John Constable said:
“Using heat pumps in a wind and solar powered grid is going to be expensive; putting a surcharge on gas to deny people a cheaper and reasonably clean alternative is cruel.”
And Mr Montford warned:
“Rishi Sunak has said that successive Governments have deceived people over the cost of Net Zero, but here is the Green Blob in his own party – one of his own ministers no less – launching a shameless confidence trick on the public at large. How can the Prime Minister let them get away with it?”
The plan has been on the agenda since Boris Johnson’s time in Number 10. Net Zero Watch has repeatedly warned of the disastrous impact of moving green levies to gas bills.
Deaths from cold in winter far outnumber deaths from heat in summer, and fuel poverty is a significant contributory factor. Moving green levies to gas bills will therefore exacerbate a problem that is already serious.
NATO-trained Ukrainian conscripts surrendering en masse
By Drago Bosnic | October 3, 2023
One of the many peculiarities of the special military operation (SMO) has been the rather small number of POWs (prisoners of war) on both sides (relative to the number of overall casualties). Reasons for this are manifold and include the way the conflict is being waged (the vast majority of casualties are the result of long-range strikes, primarily artillery and drones), widespread use of combat drugs, as well as the rabidly Russophobic propaganda that is being disseminated among the Kiev regime forces. This often results in instances of summary executions of Russian POWs by the Neo-Nazi junta troops or their unwillingness to surrender to the Russian military, as they are being fed propaganda that the Russians will treat them the same, even though evidence suggests otherwise.
However, it seems such trends are changing rapidly, particularly as the number of ideologically charged soldiers among the Kiev regime forces is going down due to the number of KIA/WIA/MIA (killed/wounded/missing in action). They have been increasingly replaced by forcibly conscripted regular Ukrainians who simply don’t see the conflict as their own. The fact that the commanding officers (COs) are effectively treating the soldiers as literal cannon fodder is also contributing to this, further resulting in low morale and even widespread insubordination. There were instances of Ukrainian soldiers even shooting their COs in order to avoid being sent into the meat grinder. Others are simply doing anything they can to leave the country and escape being sent to the frontlines.
In order to reduce the number of casualties on both sides, the Russian military has even set up special communication channels for Ukrainians willing to surrender. This has been giving results for several months already, particularly since the start of the much-touted counteroffensive of the Neo-Nazi junta troops. On October 2, the elite 1st Guards Tank Army of the Russian Battlegroup West captured two units composed of Ukrainian conscripts in the vicinity of Artyomovsk (previously known as Bakhmut) in the Donetsk People’s Republic (DPR). The units in question are the 77th Airmobile Brigade and the 56th Separate Motorized Brigade. Surprisingly, reports about the mass surrender of Ukrainian conscripts are also becoming more common in Western media, too.
Retired United States Army Colonel and former senior adviser at the Pentagon Douglas MacGregor has repeatedly reiterated that the number of surrendering Ukrainian conscripts keeps growing, particularly as the embattled Kiev regime is having trouble hiding the catastrophic losses in both manpower and equipment. According to both American and Ukrainian combat veterans, the NATO training they’ve been provided all these years has been proven detrimental to their fighting capabilities, resulting in higher casualties and lesser combat effectiveness. In fact, many Ukrainian soldiers have stated they’d be dead if they followed the much-touted NATO standards. Instead, they’re still largely relying on Soviet-era training, equipment and weapons, as these have been proven as much more effective.
Another reason for the high casualty ratio among the Neo-Nazi junta troops is the very limited training that Ukrainian conscripts have been given before being sent to the frontlines. The primary reason for this is the urgency of replacing previous losses, resulting in a vicious cycle that even the mainstream propaganda machine couldn’t ignore. Back in May, the Wall Street Journal reported that poor men from villages and small towns were sent to the frontlines after just two nights at a base. The report effectively admitted that the COs insisted that “conscripts learned on the battlefield to compensate for the almost total lack of training”. The overall result of this has been that conscript units now have up to 90% KIA/WIA/MIA, as reported by various local and global military sources.
Russian intelligence reports also indicate that Ukrainian conscript units are increasingly “trained” by the much-touted British Special Air Service (SAS), highly popularized in various shooter video games, particularly the Call of Duty series, a major NATO propaganda tool in recent years. The United Kingdom keeps insisting that their forces are supposedly not present in Ukraine, with Prime Minister Rishi Sunak even denying the claims of his own cabinet’s Defense Secretary Grant Shapps that British advisors will officially be sent to train the Neo-Nazi junta troops. It’s important to note that high-ranking Russian military intelligence officials (both retired and active) have pointed out the high frequency of the usage of English among military personnel embedded within the Kiev regime forces.
Namely, this is particularly true when it comes to the areas where the abortive counteroffensive is (still) being conducted. Apart from American special forces, this reportedly also includes SAS operatives. And while the mainstream propaganda machine keeps ridiculing Moscow’s claims about the presence of NATO personnel in Ukraine (either as mercenaries or under the direct command of the belligerent alliance) and decrying them as supposed “conspiracy theories” and “Russian disinformation”, battlefield information suggests otherwise. This is also further reinforced by NATO’s standard counterintelligence practice of denying that certain weapons will be delivered and then stating they “might be” delivered only to then announce they will be sent to the Neo-Nazi junta when the process has already been completed.
Drago Bosnic is an independent geopolitical and military analyst.
UK’s former Defense Secretary wants more young Ukrainians on the battlefield
By Lucas Leiroz | October 3, 2023
Apparently, former British Defense Secretary Ben Wallace is convinced that Ukraine is “winning”. In an opinion article published in The Telegraph, Wallace endorsed the “need” for Ukraine to mobilize even more young people to participate in hostilities, stating that this is the only way to “finish the job”, leading the country to definitively defeat Russian troops.
More than 83,000 Ukrainians died during Kiev’s efforts to launch a “counteroffensive,” but Ben Wallace is still certain that Ukraine is winning, albeit slowly. Wallace highly values the few meters gained by Kiev’s forces close to the Russian defense lines, saying this is a clear example of how the Ukrainians are surprising the West. For Ben, the “victory” of the counteroffensive is a proof that NATO “underestimated” Ukraine’s power.
“Slowly but surely, the Ukrainian armed forces are breaking through the Russian lines. Sometimes yard by yard, sometimes village by village, Ukraine has the momentum and is pressing forward. The men and women of the Ukrainian army are, once again, proving to us in Nato how much we have underestimated them. First, the Establishment doubted their ability to defend their nation from the initial Russian invasion (…) They failed to spot in the Ukrainians the same spirit we possessed in 1939. ” Wallace said.
Obviously, from a strategic point of view, Ben’s assessment is absolutely wrong. Ukraine is making a big mistake by exchanging soldiers’ lives for some small territorial gains. According to the elementary principles of military science, the lives of soldiers must be preserved first, because lost territories can be recovered later if there are troops to continue fighting – while, on the other hand, conquered territories cannot be controlled in the long term if there are no more soldiers to protect them.
With their forces devastated, more than 400 thousand dead and even mobilizing teenagers, women, sick people and the elderly, the Ukrainians do not seem to be acting correctly in trying to make their counteroffensive a “victorious” move. Given the tens of thousands of casualties suffered in recent months, the most correct thing to do would be to retreat, reduce the intensity of the hostilities and try to regain strength to, if possible, launch new offensives in the future – or simply surrender, since it is difficult for Ukraine to recover from its losses. However, Kiev is incapable of thinking about its own strategies, being just a proxy state that obeys orders from the West.
With his words, Ben only emphasizes that the West is really interested in forcing Ukraine to fight until the ultimate consequences. As a “solution” to the enormous human costs of the counteroffensive, the former secretary suggests that Kiev simply recruit even more young people, stopping any government’s concern (if there is any) with the survival of the population and focusing entirely on the war efforts to “win the war” against the Russians.
“Ukraine can also play its part. The average age of the soldiers at the front is over 40. I understand President Zelensky’s desire to preserve the young for the future, but the fact is that Russia is mobilising the whole country by stealth. Putin knows a pause will hand him time to build a new army. So just as Britain did in 1939 and 1941, perhaps it is time to reassess the scale of Ukraine’s mobilisation”, Ben said.
Another “argument” used by Wallace is that young soldiers tend to be more focused on improving their skills and achieving better results on the battlefield. As an example, he mentions, without citing any evidence to prove the allegations, the case of a supposed young Ukrainian who had shot down two Russian helicopters:
“They take UK equipment and achieve success rates far beyond expectations. I remember visiting a secret location abroad, but outside Ukraine, as we prepared Ukrainian soldiers on how to use StarStreak air-defence missiles. They had a week to train on a system we take months to master. A British sergeant pointed to a young Ukrainian, barely out of his teens. ‘He won’t let go of the simulator, and he won’t stop training until he never misses,’ he said. That young man went on to down two Russian attack helicopters.”
As can be seen, Wallace’s rhetoric is fallacious. Russia is not “mobilizing the entire country by stealth”. On the contrary, only a small percentage of the Russian military potential is being used to conduct the special operation in Ukraine, with virtually no effects of the conflict on the country – as can be seen from the fact that the Russian economy is growing significantly. In fact, Ukraine is the only side that is using total mobilization methods, destructively affecting its own population, in addition to facing an unprecedented social, economic and institutional crisis. Ben deliberately reverses the logic of the conflict analysis to mislead his readers.
Furthermore, the argument that young people “train more” and “learn more” is similarly fallacious and unfounded. In practice, young people are the ones who die most on the battlefield, as they are the most inexperienced and incapable of facing high-risk situations. Increasing the mobilization of young people will not bring any advantage to Kiev – it will only result in the extermination of Ukrainian citizens in a new “meat grinder”.
However, Ben Wallace certainly does not believe in his own words. He is known for being a NATO “hardliner” and it was under his administration that the UK took escalatory measures such as sending radioactive weapons and long-range missiles to the neo-Nazi regime. What Ben Wallace wants is simply to see the conflict reach its ultimate consequences – even if that means exterminating all Ukrainian youth.
Lucas Leiroz, journalist, researcher at the Center for Geostrategic Studies, geopolitical consultant.
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From the Archives
Remembering Fallujah: The War Crimes Committed under Command of Jim Molan and Jim Mattis
Defending Australian Values in Iraq
By David Macilwain | American Herald tribune | February 8, 2018
Ross Caputi, a former Marine who was “witness and accomplice to the atrocities” committed in Fallujah in November 2004 during “Operation Phantom Fury”, wrote this about his unit’s entry into the city:
Perhaps it was just too painful of a realization for many of us to make, because we saw ourselves as the liberators, the good guys, and to admit that we were hurting innocent people would have contradicted everything that we claimed to stand for. I can only speculate about what the motives were for the people who dreamed up that mission and decided to make the people of Fallujah flee into the desert. Was it also too painful for the decision makers to admit to themselves that we were hurting innocent people? Or were they so evil that they just did not care who we were hurting? Whatever their reasons for doing it were, the fact of the matter is that our entire command was aware that we had forced the majority of the city’s population, about 200,000 people, into refugee status, but nobody took responsibility for their wellbeing, as international law required of us.
Central to that command was Major General Andrew “Jim” Molan, an Australian who was seconded to the US military in 2004 and took overall command of US coalition forces in Iraq, alongside the current US defence secretary Jim Mattis.
What happened in the so-called “second battle of Falluja” however, went far beyond a failure to attend to the needs of the civilian population who were able to flee the city before the US assault. Those who remained found themselves imprisoned in a “free-fire zone” for 10,500 US troops and 850 UK special forces, along with 2000 Iraqis loyal to the Occupation government in Baghdad.
While the “Battle for Falluja” has been glorified and celebrated as the most destructive and significant US battle since Vietnam, intended to be a final stand against insurgents who had become concentrated there, it has also been recognised as one of the worst war crimes committed by US coalition forces during the whole occupation of Iraq. … continue
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