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US rebuffs Hamas’ response to ceasefire proposal; accuses movement of turning it down

Press TV – June 1,2025

The United States has rejected Hamas’ response to a proposed ceasefire, accusing the Palestinian resistance movement of turning the offer down.

The office of Washington’s regional envoy, Steve Witkoff passed the remarks in a post on X, former Twitter, on Saturday after receiving Hamas’ reaction to the proposal.

“I received the Hamas’ response to the United States proposal. It is totally unacceptable and only takes us backward,” the office claimed.

It alleged that Hamas had turned down the framework, suggesting that the movement was, therefore, preventing realization of the prospect of subsequent “proximity talks.”

“This (the proposal) is the only way we can close a 60-day ceasefire deal in the coming days,” in which half of the Israeli regime’s living captives and half of the deceased ones would be handed over,

Witkoff’s office, meanwhile, purported that the proposal was meant to pave the way for “substantive negotiations” in good faith aimed at achieving a “permanent ceasefire.”

Hamas denies rejection

Contrary to the US’s allegations, senior Hamas’ official Bassem Naim said the group did not reject the proposal, but instead offered a response that met the basic demands of the Palestinian people under the circumstances.

“We did not reject Mr. Witkoff’s proposal,” he explained. “We agreed with him last week on a proposal, which he considered acceptable as a basis for negotiation.”

“However, the response we received from the other side did not align with our agreed-upon terms and failed to meet the minimum demands of our people,” Naim added.

Hamas’ key demands, as stated by Naim, had included ensuring the Israeli enemy’s adherence to a 60-day temporary truce and allowing transfer of sufficient humanitarian aid from United Nations organizations.

The movement had also demanded a guarantee that the negotiations would lead to the end of the Israeli regime’s October 2023-present war on the Gaza Strip and the withdrawal of hostile forces.

‘US always preferring Israel’s interests’

Naim also expressed frustration with the negotiations, saying the Israeli response was often treated as the sole basis for talks, undermining fairness and justice in the mediation process.

He, meanwhile, noted how the American proposal had been crafted so it would ensure provision of the regime’s interests.

According to the resistance official, the proposal featured a 60-day ceasefire without guarantees that the regime would abide by it.

Humanitarian aid would also only enter Gaza under the regime’s proposed plans, which Hamas sees as legitimizing Tel Aviv’s military control, he stated.

The official, meanwhile, noted that negotiations over withdrawal maps were based on the regime’s current military presence, potentially perpetuating control over Gaza.

The American initiative, he concluded, also failed to include any guarantees for an end to the war or the withdrawal of hostile forces, as discussions rather focused on redeployment and security arrangements.

Hamas reaffirms commitment to permanent ceasefire

Also on Saturday, Taher al-Nono, a media advisor for Hamas’ Political Bureau, further clarified the group’s position.

Echoing al-Nono’s remarks, he emphasized that the movement had not rejected the proposal, but instead focused on ensuring a ceasefire with guarantees for the delivery of aid.

“We agreed to the release of 10 captives, but the disagreement lies in the timing of the release,” al-Nono said.

He additionally reaffirmed Hamas’ rejection of any attempts to legitimize the Israeli regime’s atrocities through negotiations and denounced the US for supporting the occupation’s vision. “We have dealt with the US to alleviate the suffering of our people, but the weapon of resistance is non-negotiable,” he added.

The developments came as the war and a simultaneous near-total siege deployed against Gaza by Tel Aviv continues to exact a heavy human and material toll on Gaza.

The warfare has already claimed the lives of around 54,400 Palestinians, mostly women and children, while the siege has seen the regime use starvation as, what human rights experts call, a weapon of war.

May 31, 2025 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism | , , , | Leave a comment

Fyodor Lukyanov: Behind Closed Doors – The US-Russia Diplomatic Games

Glenn Diesen | May 31, 2025

Fyodor Lukyanov is Chairman of the Council on Foreign and Defense Policy, a Research Professor at the Higher School of Economics, Editor in Chief of the Russia in Global Affairs Journal, and the Research Director at the Valdai Discussion Club. Prof. Lukyanov outlines how the US and Russian frameworks for ending the war are coming together. Ukraine is incrementally dragged into the format, and the Europeans are ignored as they are seen to be unrealistic and unreliable.

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May 31, 2025 Posted by | Militarism | , , , | Leave a comment

Want to Understand US Action in the Middle East? Look at the Wolfowitz Doctrine

By Makia Freeman | Freedom Articles | May 2015

The Wolfowitz Doctrine, a document authored by Zionist neo-con Paul Wolfowitz, is the key to understanding the United States’ geopolitical policy and behavior. The Wolfowitz Doctrine is the unofficial name given to the early version of the Defense Strategy for the 1990s: The Regional Defense Strategy report for the 1994–99 fiscal years. It was later released by then Secretary of Defense Dick Cheney in 1993. It brazenly advocates that America do everything in its power to retain its global hegemony and superpower status, including ensuring that Russia, China, Iran and other regional powers – but especially Russia – be prevented from attaining enough power to seriously challenge the US. In short, it’s another US blueprint for total global supremacy.

There are many quotable passages from the Wolfowitz Doctrine. Here’s one which sums up its aims:

“Our first objective is to prevent the re-emergence of a new rival, either on the territory of the former Soviet Union or elsewhere that poses a threat on the order of that posed formerly by the Soviet Union. This is a dominant consideration underlying the new regional defense strategy and requires that we endeavor to prevent any hostile power from dominating a region whose resources would, under consolidated control, be sufficient to generate global power. These regions include Western Europe, East Asia, the territory of the former Soviet Union, and Southwest Asia.”

Following in the Footsteps of the Wolfowitz Doctrine: Trilateralist Brzezinski and His Grand American Chessboard

The Wolfowitz Doctrine was not created in a vacuum, of course. It has a strong history of American arrogance and cockiness behind it, and it inspired numerous works after it. Just look at co-founder of the Trilateral Commission (along with David Rockefeller) and big-time NWO insider Zbigniew Brzezinski (the very same guy who bemoaned that it was easier to kill than control people). Brzezinski is an avowed Russophobe who for decades has been pushing for America to encircle Russia and capture the lion’s share of Eurasia.

Brzezinski has also mentored Obama, was present in the Carter administration and clearly has had a lot of influence on American foreign policy; you can see him in this video organizing the Mujahideen to fight against the former Soviet Union, tricking them by saying that “God is on your side”. How the conspirators love to use religion to control people!

In his book The Grand Chessboard, written in 1997, Brzezinski writes:

“The most immediate task is to make certain that no state or combination of states gains the capacity to expel the United States from Eurasia or even to diminish significantly its decisive arbitrating role.”

” … the expansion of NATO is essential. By the same token, a failure to widen NATO … would shatter the concept of an expanding Europe and de-moralize the Central Europeans. It could even reignite currently dormant or dying Russian geopolitical aspirations in Central Europe.”

Brzezinski and his ilk have been and are still concerned with just one thing: power. It’s presupposed that might is right and that American supremacy is moral. The pervading issue is always: how can America expand or at least maintain its global power?

From the Wolfowitz Doctrine Came … PNAC, Rebuilding America’s Defenses and a Catalyzing New Pearl Harbor

Wolfowitz is perhaps better known not for writing the Wolfowitz Doctrine but for co-authoring Rebuilding America’s Defenses, a report released in September 2000 by Zionist neocon think tank PNAC (The Project for a New American Century). The PNAC membership list is a “Who’s Who” of American Zionist New World Order conspirators – in addition to Wolfowitz the list includes Dick Cheney Donald Rumsfeld, Robert Kagan, I. Lewis (Scooter) Libby, Richard Perle, Doug Feith and many others. The report contains the now infamous sentence:

“This process of transformation is likely to be a long one, absent some catastrophic and catalyzing event – like a new Pearl Harbor.”

Hence, there is strong evidence that the writers of this document knew exactly what was coming – and therefore had 9/11 foreknowledge. As I covered in the article Who is Jeb Bush, Really? – Part 2 – Jeb’s PNAC & Money Laundering Past, current presidential candidate Jeb Bush was among the signatories of this document.

The Wolfowitz Doctrine Explains the Gross Hypocrisy of the USA

The Wolfowitz Doctrine explicitly and unabashedly pushes for complete US supremacy at the cost of any other value. If it is truly the guiding principle of US foreign policy and geopolitical maneuvering, as it appears to be, it comes as no surprise then that America is such a hypocrite on the world stage. To put on a good face on the world stage, and feed the propaganda that it only promotes democracy and peace, the US is forced to use rhetoric claiming it values the promotion of democracy, the promotion of human rights, the self-determination of people and nations, and the elimination of terrorism. Yet, whenever any of these “values” conflict with the ideals set out in the Wolfowitz Doctrine, the US always chooses its own supremacy over them.

As Michael S. Rozeff writes:

“The U.S. condemns separatism in Ukraine and aids Kiev in attacking its own people with heavy and advanced weapons of all kinds. This is because the superpower agenda is served by steering Ukraine into the Western camp. At the very same time, the U.S. condemns China for indicting a professor who is a vocal separatist and critical of Chinese policy in Xinjiang. Hence, we observe the U.S. against separatism in Ukraine but supporting it in China. This is because the U.S. is applying pressure on China wherever it thinks this will succeed in diminishing China as a power … Numerous other instances of U.S. hypocrisy can be understood in this way. The U.S. will support democracy but then ignore elections and support dictators … It will condemn terrorism and then arm terrorists. This is because the overriding agenda is the Wolfowitz Doctrine.”

The Demonization of Russia and the Smear Campaign Against Putin

In alignment with the Wolfowitz Doctrine, the Western, Zionist MSM (Mainstream Media) is constantly telling us how bad Russia is and how aggressive Putin is, yet the facts reveal otherwise. It’s easy to see the demonization of Russia and the smear campaign against Putin as desperate attempts of the Anglo-American NWO to control the information war and paint themselves as the victim instead of the aggressor. Consider the following facts:

– The US has pumped at least $5 billion into regime change in Ukraine (as admitted by Zionist neo-con Victoria Nuland, wife of Zionist neo-con Robert Kagan), forcibly removing the legitimately elected government of Yanukovich and installing a puppet regime of Neo-Nazis answerable to Washington’s demands. Nuland also got caught saying “Fuck the EU” to US Ambassador to Ukraine Geoff Pyatt in a leaked phone call. After the coup, the Ukraine people all of a sudden found themselves with a Nazi-like government whose first decision was to ban the Russian language!

– Crimea has been a province of Russia since 1758, and only became part of Ukraine when Soviet head Khrushchev handed it over to Ukraine at a time when both Crimea and Ukraine were part of the Soviet Union (the whole thing was purely administrative). Therefore, Russia has had its Black Sea fleet based in Crimea for over 250 years, and a leasing agreement with Ukraine gave them the right to have 25,000 troops there. In a referendum deemed impartial and fair, 96% of Crimeans voted to return to Russia. There was no “annexation of Crimea“.

Putin-led Russia is standing in the way of American supremacy by suggesting we form a multi-polar world, rather than one led by US military might. Swedish analyst Ingemar Wärnström quotes Putin as saying:

“What is a unipolar world? However one might embellish this term, at the end of the day it refers to one type of situation, namely one centre of authority, one centre of force, one centre of decision-making. It is a world in which there is one master, one sovereign. And at the end of the day this is pernicious not only for all those within this system, but also for the sovereign itself because it destroys itself from within. And this certainly has nothing in common with democracy. Because, as you know, democracy is the power of the majority in light of the interests and opinions of the minority.

Incidentally, Russia – we – are constantly being taught about democracy. But for some reason those who teach us do not want to learn themselves. I consider that the unipolar model is not only unacceptable but also impossible in today’s world.”

Conclusion: The Wolfowitz Doctrine is the Guiding Force

To believe the US really cares about anything other than its own global imperial ambitions is foolish. The Wolfowitz Doctrine has laid it all out in black and white – and America’s support for Zionist Israel, the fake War on Terror, the demonization of Russia and Iran, and many other geopolitical events make much more sense when you realize its the driving force behind American diplomatic and military action.

Ultimately, it would be most precise to say that the NWO conspirators are using the military might of America to forge a unipolar One World Government. This really isn’t about America. It’s about using America as a tool to achieve the New World Order, then discarding it, stripping it of power and relegating it to the same level as all other nations, under the heel of the international banksters who yearn to rule the world.

Makia Freeman is the editor of alternative news / independent media site The Freedom Articles and senior researcher at ToolsForFreedom.com, writing on many aspects of truth and freedom, from exposing aspects of the global conspiracy to suggesting solutions for how humanity can create a new system of peace and abundance.

Sources:

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/pdf/naarpr_Defense.pdf
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/pdf/RebuildingAmericasDefenses.pdf
https://thefreedomarticles.com/brzezinski-easier-to-kill-than-control/
http://www.takeoverworld.info/Grand_Chessboard.pdf
*https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A9RCFZnWGE0
https://thefreedomarticles.com/who-is-jeb-bush-really-part-2/
https://www.lewrockwell.com/lrc-blog/u-s-implements-the-wolfowitz-doctrine/
*https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dexrP27MMdU
*https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KIvRljAaNgg
https://www.rt.com/news/international-observers-crimea-referendum-190/
http://newsvoice.se/2015/09/07/swedish-analyst-the-smear-campaign-against-putin-and-the-us-agenda-part-1/

May 31, 2025 Posted by | Militarism, Russophobia, Sinophobia, Timeless or most popular | , | Leave a comment

THE HIDDEN DANGERS OF ANTIDEPRESSANTS DURING PREGNANCY

The HighWire with Del Bigtree | May 29, 2025

Maternal-Fetal Medicine expert Dr. Adam Urato delivers a critical warning about the rising use of SSRIs (antidepressants) during pregnancy—and the serious risks they pose to both mother and child.

Despite mounting scientific concerns, these powerful drugs continue to be promoted by the medical establishment, often without fully informing patients.

This eye-opening segment confronts the failures in prenatal care, the erosion of informed consent, and what every expecting parent deserves to know.

May 30, 2025 Posted by | Timeless or most popular, Video | , | Leave a comment

What Did President Trump Know When President Putin’s Helicopter Came Under Ukrainian Drone Attack in Kursk?

By John Helmer | Dances With Bears | May 30, 2025

The first report came from RIA-Novosti, the Russian state news agency, on May 25 at 13:24.

“President Vladimir Putin’s helicopter (lead image, top) was in the epicentre of repelling a large-scale attack by Ukrainian Armed Forces drones during a visit to the Kursk region, said Yury Dashkin [Major General in command of the 32nd Air Defence Division , lead image, below) commander of the air defence division in whose area of responsibility the region is located. According to him, during the president’s visit, the Ukrainian military launched an ‘unprecedented attack,’ with 46 drones destroyed by the air defence system. ‘At the same time, we conducted an anti-aircraft battle and ensured the safety of the president’s helicopter flight in the air. [The helicopter was] actually in the epicentre of repelling a massive drone attack,’ Dashkin said.”

The drone attack on Kursk had taken place five days earlier, on May 20. Putin’s visit to the region, his meetings with local officials, the region governor, engineers and scientists at the Kurchatov nuclear power plant, and local medical, rescue and social welfare volunteers was not reported by the Kremlin website until the following morning. The report of the attack on the helicopter was kept secret at the time. The Kremlin has made no comment on the later press reports.

Note Gen Dashkin’s precise wording: he did not claim the President’s helicopter was targeted directly; he did not say Putin was on board at the time (the President also travelled in Kursk by motorcade); he did not reveal whether there was more than one helicopter in the presidential flight to Kursk; he did not say whether the air defence command was spoofing the electronic tracking technology which the US and the Ukrainians have been using for their drone and missile attacks in recent days.

The Kremlin pool reporter for Kommersant, Andrei Kolesnikov, reported on Putin’s movements and meetings after the 24-hour security delay. Kolesnikov noted in passing: “The situation was not cloudless: when the cortege of the president moved around the region, there were drones of the APU in the sky – they cannot be ignored on the video footage, which I saw. However, the region lives in such an environment not for the first year, as you know — so Vladimir Putin should have recognized how the region is working.”

Pick-up of the May 25 report by Newsweek of the US conceded: “This is the first known instance in which the Russian president is reported to have flown through an active drone attack.”

The magazine then adopted the Ukrainian version of what had happened. “Ukrainian officials haven’t comment on the alleged attack on Putin, but Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has said that his country has every right to kill Putin if the opportunity arises, if doing so would protect Ukraine and its people. Zelensky told The Sun in Kyiv in November 2023 that he has lost track of the number of times Moscow has attempted to assassinate him since Putin launched a full-scale invasion of his country. ‘That’s war, and Ukraine has all the rights to defend our land,’ the Ukrainian leader said when asked if Kyiv would take a chance to assassinate Putin if such an opportunity arose.”

“Zelensky is no longer in Kiev,” a Moscow source in a position to know commented this week. “He spends much of his time travelling around the world, and then in a command post in Poland. He simulates his presence in country for PR purposes. He only goes to Kiev when foreign government officials visit.” In March 2022 Putin told former Israeli prime minister Naftali Bennett that he would not order an assassination strike on Zelensky.

Five years later, has Zelensky made an attempt against Putin? what role are the US electronic warfare forces playing in tracking Putin’s movements and targeting his position? When Trump tweeted on May 27 that Putin is “playing with fire!” had Trump fired first – and missed?

Since the Kursk incident, the public White House log records that Trump had received his weekly intelligence briefing at 11 am on May 22, and then again at the same time on May 29. There is no record yet that Trump has responded to a reporter’s question on the incident.

What Trump knew in advance and after the Kursk incident, and what message the Kremlin is sending by revealing the details now, are discussed with Chris Cook in this Gorilla Radio broadcast from Victoria, BC, on May 28. Listen from Minute 31:55.

Source: https://gradio.substack.com/p/gorilla-radio-with-chris-cook-dave-73c — Min 31:55

Chris Cook has hosted Gorilla Radio, broadcast/webcasting since 1999. Click on the archive here; The Gorilla Radio blog is at https://gorillaradioblog.blogspot.com/ and on Telegram at https://t.me/gorillaradio2024

May 30, 2025 Posted by | Aletho News | , , | Leave a comment

US-trained Ukrainians forces use torture techniques on Russian POWs

Al Mayadeen | May 30, 2025

Ukrainian forces have been accused of engaging in systematic torture of Russian prisoners of war (POWs), allegedly using techniques associated with US interrogation practices. The claims were presented by Maxim Grigoriev, chairman of the International Public Tribunal on the Crimes of Ukrainian Neo-Nazis, during a press conference in Moscow on Thursday, TASS reported.

Grigoriev stated that more than 200 recently exchanged Russian POWs gave testimony detailing acts of abuse, which he described as “absolutely Nazi-like”. He emphasized that the methods used bore a strong resemblance to those previously documented in US military detention facilities. “Prisoners were tortured through the simulation of drowning. Their faces were covered with cloth, and water was poured over them, an agonizing method that prevents breathing. This is American-style torture,” he said.

One of the detention rooms where the abuse allegedly took place was named “Baghdad”, a detail Grigoriev said suggests the involvement of foreign, particularly American personnel. He argued that such naming, along with the methods used, indicates “the clear involvement of American ‘specialists’.”

The alleged acts were not confined to waterboarding. According to the tribunal, additional forms of abuse included severe beatings, electrocution, burns, finger-breaking, mock executions, and dog attacks. Victims were also reportedly subjected to salt being rubbed into open wounds, gunshot wounds to the legs, and forced labor.

Graphic testimonies reveal patterns of sadistic torture

Grigoriev stated that the torture was not conducted for interrogation purposes but instead served as “pure sadism and pleasure.” He asserted, “The prisoners weren’t questioned; these acts were carried out purely out of sadism and for pleasure. It’s a systematic effort to kill people. The orders come from the highest levels, and everything is deliberate.”

These testimonies have been categorized as part of a broader, deliberate campaign of abuse that Grigoriev alleges is sanctioned by the Kiev leadership. He said the tribunal’s findings are being forwarded to international and Russian investigative bodies.

Gross violation of Geneva Convention

Grigoriev argued that these acts represent a blatant violation of international law, specifically the 1949 Geneva Convention, which mandates humane treatment of POWs. “The 1949 Geneva Convention mandates humane treatment of prisoners of war, forbidding any illegal acts or omissions that could endanger their health or cause death,” he said. “What the Kiev regime is doing constitutes a gross violation of this convention, systematic torture that is a crime against humanity. Such crimes have no statute of limitations.”

The International Public Tribunal was formed in May 2022 and claims to have collected testimony from over 1,200 individuals who say they were victims or witnesses of crimes committed by Ukrainian forces. According to Grigoriev, the tribunal comprises civil society representatives from more than 30 countries. Its reports, published online, have reportedly amassed over 86 million views.

Grigoriev stated that the tribunal’s mission is to bring global attention to “abuses by the Ukrainian military” and to submit documented evidence to relevant authorities for investigation.

Batches of prisoner exchange 

It is worth noting that Russia and Ukraine last week carried out what officials described as a major prisoner exchange, marking one of the most significant humanitarian gestures between the two sides since the war began in 2022. According to a statement from the Russian Defense Ministry, each country repatriated 270 military personnel and 120 civilians, following an agreement reached during negotiations held in Istanbul on May 16.

This latest exchange is the most extensive since the war’s onset. The previous exchange occurred in August 2024, when each side released 115 prisoners of war, totaling 230 individuals.

May 30, 2025 Posted by | Subjugation - Torture, War Crimes | , | Leave a comment

Trump bracing for a longer Ukraine war

By M. K. BHADRAKUMAR | Indian Punchline | May 30, 2025

One of the mysteries of the Ukraine endgame is that President Donald Trump did not issue an executive order on January 20 withdrawing all support for Ukraine. That would have been the easiest way to end the war. 

The conditions were propitious — Candidate Trump didn’t mince words that it was a hopeless war that cost the US dearly in treasure; he thought poorly of President Volodymyr Zelensky as a shameless free rider; he saw the war as impeding his foreign-policy priority of the US’ transition to a multipolar world order; and, he felt no compulsion to inherit ‘Biden’s war’. 

But instead, Trump plunged himself with gusto into the Ukraine question, although Washington lacked the means to leverage Russia to compromise on its core interests in what Russian people regarded as an existential war. 

Quite possibly, some of Trump’s advisors prevailed upon him to undertake the theatrical diplomatic effort on the basis of a flawed reading of the state of play in the war. Trump believed that western sanctions lethally weakened the Russian economy; that Russia’s casualty figures ran into hundreds of thousands and such a high level of attrition was unsustainable; that Zelensky would sign up on the dotted line; that an improvement in Russian-American relationship would be a ‘win-win’ with massive economic benefits accruing to both sides and so on. 

But all these premises turned out to be wrong notions. Putin has steered the economy to a state of permanent western sanctions (which was the Soviet experience, too). Russian entrepreneurs have successfully replaced the fleeing western businesses in the wake of sanctions and will now resist any re-entry by the latter.

Russia’s casualty figures are much lower than the self-serving western estimates put it, as the high level of recruitment to the army suggests. Zelensky is bent on prolonging the war with support from European powers per Biden’s script to ‘Trump-proof’ the war. Europeans not only have a Plan B but have collaborators within the US some of whom may even be in Trump’s team. 

Suffice to say, Trump has been on a learning curve, as he began sensing that the Kremlin is determined to realise the objectives it had set for itself (as outlined in Putin’s historic speech last June at the foreign ministry). According to a Reuters report two days ago, “Putin wants a ‘written’ pledge by major Western powers not to enlarge the US-led NATO alliance eastwards — shorthand for formally ruling out membership to not only Ukraine and Georgia and Moldova and other former Soviet republics as well.”

“Russia also wants Ukraine to be neutral, some Western sanctions lifted, a resolution of the issue of frozen Russian sovereign assets in the West, and protection for Russian speakers in Ukraine” — per Reuters. 

Europeans will scoff at such demands. Therefore, as things stand, a breakthrough at the Russia-Ukraine peace talks in Istanbul on June 2 seems unlikely. Unsurprisingly, Russia is pressing ahead with an offensive campaign in all directions, throwing in all its forces with a culmination planned for summer or early autumn. 

The least bad option

Trump has three options under the circumstances. One is to simply refuse to own responsibility for the war and walk away for good. But then, can Trump deny his own part in it in his first term? While the Trump administration identified its approach to foreign policy as ‘principled realism’, late Joseph Nye’s characterisation of Trump as an “idiosyncratic realist” was perhaps closer to the truth. 

The official administration policy on Ukraine during Trump’s first term was a continuation of the policy pursued by the Obama administration. It recognised Crimea as part of Ukraine, condemned Russia’s occupation and eventual annexation annexation of the peninsula; it underscored Russia’s primary responsibility for the instigation, continuation and conduct of the conflict in eastern Ukraine; it even identified the Russian interference in Ukraine as part of a wider pattern of aggression towards other states and as proof of Moscow’s challenge to the fundamental principles of international order. 

For these reasons, the Trump administration maintained that the US should help Ukraine to defend itself and should penalise Russia both through sanctions and diplomatic isolation (eg., membership of the G7). Curiously, shades of this thought process resurface even today occasionally in Trump’s Truth Social outbursts. Trump seems unaware he’s carrying a can of worms as his Ukraine legacy. 

So, the second option today is to convey Trump’s dissatisfaction over Russia’s perceived intransigence in dictating terms for settlement and its alleged lack of interest in peace talks. Trump even hinted at Russia’s hidden agenda to conquer Ukraine. Trump is hinting at punishing Russia both through sanctions and supplying weapons to Ukraine. German chancellor Friedrich Merz’s provocative announcement of giving long-range weapons to Zelensky was probably green lighted by some people in Trump’s team. After all, Merz is no stranger to Wall Street.  

However, this is a recipe for an extremely dangerous NATO – Russia confrontation. If long range German missiles hit Russia, Russia will retaliate in a way that could potentially cripple NATO’s operational readiness in a hypothetical war. Belarus State Secretary of Security Council Alexander Volfovich has said that the Oreshnik missile system is “planned to be stationed in Belarus by the end of the year. The locations for its deployment have already been determined. Work is under way.” The spectre of World War III may seem a bit of a stretch, but Trump will have to consider the dangers of climbing the escalation ladder, which could destroy his MAGA presidency. 

Washington has no means to intimidate the Kremlin. The bottom line is, Trump is actually left with only a third option, the least bad option — viz., walking away from the Ukraine conflict at this point and return when the war has been lost and won, possibly by the end of the year. This will not damage Trump’s reputation.

Trump may already be displaying his credentials as ‘peacemaker president’ if the US-Iran talks, which seem to be making progress, results in a nuclear deal. Besides, US-Russia normalisation needs more time to gain traction. Senator Lindsey Graham’s hard-hitting sanctions bill against Russia with 81 co-sponsors in the senate signals that Russia is a very toxic subject in the US domestic politics.

Also, Russia-Ukraine talks is only one track. The Russians have sensitised Trump’s team that while Moscow engages with Kiev, the root cause of the war — absence of a European security architecture — still remains to be addressed, which is something that only Russia and the US can work out jointly. The US shouldn’t shirk its responsibility, being both the original instigator of NATO expansion and sponsor of the Ukraine war. 

The reaction by the US special envoy for Ukraine Keith Kellogg has been positive when he told ABC News in an interview that the US understands that it is a matter of national security for Russia that NATO may stop accepting new Eastern European countries into its ranks — ie., not only Ukraine but Moldova and Georgia as well.

Kellogg said he considered the Russian side’s concerns to be justified. He did not rule out the possibility of reaching an agreement during negotiations between the US and Russia. This is a big step forward.  

May 30, 2025 Posted by | Militarism, Russophobia | , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Elite Western universities are a corrupt, parasitic empire

Instead of high-quality education, these institutions are fostering a global neo-feudal system reminiscent of the British Raj

By Dr. Mathew Maavak | RT | May 30, 2025

In a move that has ignited a global uproar, US President Donald Trump banned international students from Harvard University, citing “national security” and ideological infiltration. The decision, which has been widely condemned by academics and foreign governments alike, apparently threatens to undermine America’s “intellectual leadership and soft power.” At stake is not just Harvard’s global appeal, but the very premise of open academic exchange that has long defined elite higher education in the US.

But exactly how ‘open’ is Harvard’s admissions process? Every year, highly qualified students – many with top-tier SAT or GMAT test scores – are rejected, often with little explanation. Critics argue that behind the prestigious Ivy League brand lies an opaque system shaped by legacy preferences, DEI imperatives, geopolitical interests, and outright bribes. George Soros, for instance, once pledged $1 billion to open up elite university admissions to drones who would read from his Open Society script.

China’s swift condemnation of Trump’s policy added a layer of geopolitical irony to the debate. Why would Beijing feign concern for America’s international standing amid a bitter trade war? The international standing of US universities has long been tarnished by a woke psychosis which spread like cancer to all branches of the government.

So, what was behind China’s latest gripe? The answer may lie in the unspoken rules of soft power: Ivy League campuses are battlegrounds for influence. The US deep state has long recruited foreign students to promote its interests abroad – subsidized by American taxpayers no less. China is apparently playing the same game, leveraging elite US universities to co-opt future leaders on its side of the geostrategic fence.

For the time being, a judge has granted Harvard’s request for a temporary restraining order against Trump’s proposed ban. Come what may, there is one commonsense solution that all parties to this saga would like to avoid: Forcing Ivy League institutions to open their admissions process to public scrutiny. The same institutions that champion open borders, open societies, and open everything will, however, not tolerate any suggestion of greater openness to its admissions process. That would open up a Pandora’s Box of global corruption that is systemically ruining nations today.

Speaking of corruption – how is this for irony? A star Harvard professor who built her career researching decision-making and dishonesty was just fired and stripped of tenure for fabricating her own data!

Concentration of wealth and alumni networks

The Ivy League has a vested interest in perpetuating rising wealth and educational inequalities. It is the only way they can remain atop the global rankings list at the expense of less-endowed peers.

Elite universities like Harvard, Stanford, and MIT dominate lists of institutions with the most ultra-wealthy alumni (net worth over $30mn). For example, Harvard alone has 18,000 ultra-high-net-worth (UHNW) alumni, representing 4% of the global UHNW population.

These alumni networks provide major donations, corporate partnerships, and exclusive opportunities, reinforcing institutional wealth. If the alma mater’s admissions process was rigged in their favor, they have no choice but to cough it up, at least for the sake of their offspring who will perpetuate this exclusivist cycle.

The total endowment of Princeton University – $34.1 billion in 2024 – translated to $3.71 million per student, enabling generous financial aid and state-of-the-art facilities. Less prestigious institutions just cannot compete on this scale.

Rankings, graft, and ominous trends

Global university rankings (QS, THE, etc.) heavily favor institutions with large endowments, high spending per student, and wealthy student bodies. For example, 70% of the top 50 US News & World Report Best Colleges overlap with universities boasting the largest endowments and the highest percentage of students from the top 1% of wealthy families.

According to the Social Mobility Index (SMI), climbing rankings requires tens of millions in annual spending, driving tuition hikes and exacerbating inequality. Lower-ranked schools which prioritize affordability and access are often overshadowed in traditional rankings, which reward wealth over social impact. Besides, social mobility these days is predetermined at birth, as the global wealth divide becomes unbridgeable.

Worse, the global ranking system itself thrives on graft, with institutions gaming audits, inflating data, and even bribing reviewers. Take the case of a Southeast Asian diploma mill where some of its initial batch of female students had been arrested for prostitution. Despite its flagrant lack of academic integrity, it grew rapidly to secure an unusually high QS global ranking – ahead of venerable institutions like the University of Pavia, where Leonardo da Vinci studied, and which boasts three Nobel Laureates among its ranks.

Does this grotesque inversion of merit make any sense?

Government policies increasingly favor elite institutions. Recent White House tax cuts and deregulation may further widen gaps by benefiting corporate-aligned universities while reducing public funding for others. This move was generally welcomed by the Ivy League until Trump took on Harvard.

With such ominous trends on the horizon, brace yourselves for an implosion of the global education sector by 2030 – a reckoning mirroring the 2008 financial crisis, but with far graver consequences. And touching on the 2008 crisis, didn’t someone remark that “behind every financial disaster, there’s a Harvard economist?”

Nobody seems to be learning from previous contretemps. In fact, I dare say that ‘learning’ is merely a coincidental output of the Ivy League brand

The credentialism trap

When Lehman Brothers and its lesser peers collapsed in 2008, many Singapore-based corporations eagerly scooped up their laid-off executives. The logic? Fail upward.

If these whizz kids were truly talented, why did they miss the glaring warning signs during the lead up to the greatest economic meltdown since the Great Depression? The answer lies in the cult of credentialism and an entrenched patronage system. Ivy League MBAs and Rolodexes of central banker contacts are all that matters. The consequences are simply disastrous: A runaway global talent shortage will hit $8.452 trillion in unrealized annual revenues by 2030, more than the projected GDP of India for the same year.

Ivy League MBAs often justify their relevance by overcomplicating simple objectives into tedious bureaucratic grinds – all in the name of efficiency, smart systems, and ever-evolving ‘best practices’. The result? Doctors now spend more time on paperwork than treating patients, while teachers are buried under layers of administrative work.

Ultimately, Ivy League technocrats often function as a vast bureaucratic parasite, siphoning public and private wealth into elite hands. What kind of universal socioeconomic model are these institutions bequeathing to the world? I can only think of one historical analogue as a future cue: Colonial India, aka the British Raj. This may be a stretch, but bear with me.

Lessons from the Raj

As Norman Davies pointed out, the Austro-Hungarians had more bureaucrats managing Prague than the British needed to run all of colonial India – a subcontinent that included modern-day Pakistan and Bangladesh. In fact, it took only 1,500-odd white Indian Civil Service (ICS) officials to govern colonial India until WWI.

That is quite staggering to comprehend, unless one grasps how the British and Indian societies are organized along rigid class (and caste) lines. When two corrupt feudal systems mate, their offspring becomes a blueprint for dystopia.

India never recovered from this neo-feudal arrangement. If the reader thinks I am exaggerating, let’s compare the conditions in the British Raj and China from 1850 to 1976 (when the Cultural Revolution officially ended). During this period, China endured numerous societal setbacks – including rebellions, famines, epidemics, lawlessness, and a world war – which collectively resulted in the deaths of nearly 150 million Chinese. The Taiping Rebellion alone – the most destructive civil war in history – resulted in 20 to 30 million dead, representing 5-10% of China’s population at the time.

A broad comparison with India during the same period reveals a death toll of 50-70 million, mainly from epidemics and famines. Furthermore, unlike colonial India, many parts of China also lacked central governance.

Indian nationalists are quick to blame a variety of bogeymen for their society’s lingering failings. Nevertheless, they should ask themselves why US Big Tech-owned news platforms, led by upper-caste Hindu CEOs, no less, showed a decidedly pro-Islamabad bias during the recent Indo-Pakistani military standoff. Maybe, these CEOs are supine apparatchiks, much like their predecessors during the British Raj? Have they been good stewards of the public domain (i.e. internet)? Have they promoted meritocracy in foreign lands? (You can read some stark examples herehere and here).

These Indian Big Tech bros, however, showed a lot of vigor and initiative during the Covid-19 pandemic, forcing their employees to take the vaccine or face the pink slip. They led the charge behind the Global Task Force on Pandemic Response, which included an “unprecedented corporate sector initiative to help India successfully fight COVID-19.” Just check out the credentials of the ‘experts’ involved here. Shouldn’t this task be left to accomplished Indian virologists and medical experts?

A tiny few, in the service of a hegemon, can control the fate of billions. India’s income inequality is now worse than it was under British rule.

A way out?

As global university inequalities widen further, it is perhaps time to rethink novel approaches to level the education field as many brick and mortar institutions may simply fold during the volatile 2025-30 period.

I am optimistic that the use of AI in education will be a great equalizer, but I also fear that Big Tech will force governments into using its proprietary EdTech solutions that are already showing signs of runaway AI hallucinations – simply because the bold new world is all about control and power, not empowerment. Much like the British Raj, I would say.

Dr. Mathew Maavak researches systems science, global risks, geopolitics, strategic foresight, governance and Artificial Intelligence.

May 30, 2025 Posted by | Corruption, Progressive Hypocrite | | Leave a comment

U.S. Cancels Contracts Worth $766 Million for Moderna Bird Flu Vaccine After ‘Rigorous Review’

By Michael Nevradakis, Ph.D. | The Defender | May 29, 2025

The Trump administration cancelled two contracts totaling $766 million with Moderna for the development of its mRNA-1018 vaccine for the H5N1 strain of bird flu, citing safety and efficacy concerns identified during its clinical trials, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) has confirmed.

“After a rigorous review, we concluded that continued investment in Moderna’s H5N1 mRNA vaccine was not scientifically or ethically justifiable,” HHS Communications Director Andrew Nixon told The Defender.

“This is not simply about efficacy — it’s about safety, integrity and trust. The reality is that mRNA technology remains under-tested, and we are not going to spend taxpayer dollars repeating the mistakes of the last administration, which concealed legitimate safety concerns from the public,” Nixon said.

Moderna first revealed the cancellation of the two awards in a statement published Wednesday. Moderna also announced “positive interim data” from its Phase 1 and 2 clinical trials for mRNA-1018.

“While the termination of funding from HHS adds uncertainty, we are pleased by the robust immune response and safety profile observed in this interim analysis,” Moderna said in its statement.

Last year, HHS awarded Moderna $176 million for the late-stage development of the mRNA-1018 vaccine. In the final days of the Biden administration in January, HHS granted Moderna $590 million to accelerate the development of its bird flu vaccine and expand clinical studies for vaccines targeting five other flu virus subtypes.

‘A major policy shift away from dangerous mRNA injection programs’

Some scientists criticized the cancellation of the awards. Dr. Ashish Jha, dean of the Brown University School of Public Health and the Biden administration’s COVID-19 response coordinator, told CNN, “The attack on mRNA vaccines is beyond absurd” and that “we will come to regret this” if bird flu starts spreading between humans.

However, epidemiologist Nicolas Hulscher called the news “a very positive development” that “marks a major policy shift away from dangerous mRNA injection programs.”

Vermont-based lawyer and farmer John Klar called it a “sensible decision,” noting the seasonal nature of the virus and its waning virulence.

Dr. Clayton Baker, an internal medicine physician, called the contract cancellation “absolutely the right decision.”

“The mRNA gene therapy platform, as demonstrated by the multiple toxicities of the COVID-19 shots, is fundamentally unsafe and should be removed from use altogether,” Baker said.

Baker suggested that the timing of the January 2025 grant, just days before the start of President Donald Trump’s second term, was likely intended to “promote the bird flu panic that was perpetrated by the outgoing administration, in order to derail the new administration.”

HHS told Reuters earlier this year that it would review agreements the Biden administration made for vaccine production. In March, HHS denied rumors that it was considering cancelling funding for mRNA vaccine research.

In February, the U.S. Department of Agriculture announced a $1 billion plan to combat the spread of bird flu among chickens. The plan included a strategy to develop vaccines for chickens, but not for humans.

According to Reuters, Moderna “has been banking on revenue from newer mRNA shots, including its bird flu vaccine and experimental COVID-flu combination vaccine, to make up for waning post-pandemic demand for its COVID vaccine.” The company “plans to explore alternatives for late-stage development and manufacturing” of its bird flu vaccine.

News of the canceled contracts came just days after Moderna withdrew its application for U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approval of its mRNA-1083 combination flu and COVID-19 vaccine.

Last week, Reuters reported that Moderna’s decision to withdraw its application came amid “increased regulatory scrutiny of the vaccine approval process since Robert F. Kennedy Jr. took the top U.S. health job earlier this year.”

Markets did not immediately react to news of the grants’ cancellation. Moderna shares remained flat during after-hours trading Wednesday, but were up by over 2.6% by press time Thursday.

No human bird flu cases reported in three months

According to Reuters, bird flu has infected 70 people in the past year, mostly farm workers, but “has spread aggressively among cattle herds and poultry flocks.”

In January, a Louisiana man who was hospitalized with the first severe case of bird flu in the U.S. died — the first bird flu-related death in the U.S. and all of North America. However, the man, who was older than 65, had underlying medical conditions, and it remains unclear whether bird flu directly caused his death.

There have been no new human bird flu cases in three months, The Associated Press (AP) reported May 19.

Dr. Meryl Nass, an expert on biological warfare and founder of Door to Freedom, said, “H5N1 was a dangerous virus if you caught it from a chicken years ago.” But it has never spread person-to-person, and has “mutated to cause extremely mild disease in almost all humans that have caught it over the past five to 10 years.”

Nass said this makes a new bird flu vaccine for humans unnecessary. “There is absolutely no reason why the United States needs another bird flu vaccine, and there is even less reason to develop an mRNA vaccine because the platform itself is dangerous.”

Bird flu scare a ‘propaganda campaign’

Mainstream media outlets and many scientists continue to suggest that bird flu poses an imminent threat to humans, in what Dr. Richard Bartlett, an emergency room director, former Texas Department of Health and Human Services advisory council member, and expert on bird flu, called a “propaganda campaign.”

“The messaging has been that bird flu spread from penguins to sea lions, to a western Minnesota goat, to Texas dairy cattle and finally to a dairy farmer with red eyes. It’s been a two-year marketing campaign,” Bartlett said.

Bartlett said the messaging is intended to “manufacture the perception of a need for new mRNA products — despite the absence of long-term safety data.”

Last year, former FDA Commissioner Robert Califf warned that a potential bird flu pandemic could have a 25% mortality rate. Jeremy Farrar, Ph.D., then the World Health Organization’s chief scientist, warned that bird flu has an “extremely high” mortality rate for humans and could mutate to pass between humans.

In December 2024, Dr. Leana Wen, the former commissioner of the Baltimore City Health Department and a professor of public health at George Washington University, said the outgoing Biden administration had not done enough to address bird flu and criticized the lack of availability of a bird flu vaccine.

After the start of Trump’s second term and the implementation of funding cuts to government health agencies, mainstream media reports suggested the cuts were placing the public at risk of a worsening bird flu outbreak.

In February, Reuters reported the cuts “disrupted the U.S. response to bird flu as the outbreak worsens,” resulting in “anxiety among federal health staff that critical information about bird flu will not be disseminated in a timely manner or at all.”

In April, USA Today reported that cuts affecting the FDA’s Center for Veterinary Medicine “will hamper the FDA’s ability to respond to animal disease outbreaks, including bird flu, and protect public health.”

Also that month, virologists from 40 countries published a report in The Lancet urging the Trump administration to prepare for a bird flu pandemic, according to Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance.

The report was funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, which in 1999 established Gavi. The Gates Foundation holds one of the four permanent seats on Gavi’s board and continues to heavily fund the organization.

According to the AP, “experts are puzzling over why reports of new human cases have stopped” in the last three months. The report suggests that infections potentially aren’t being detected, that immigrant farm workers may be afraid to be tested, and that efforts to find bird flu cases were “weakened by government cuts.”

Baker said such scenarios are unlikely to account for the lack of recent bird flu cases. “What does this say about the severity of the illness in humans? It says that the illness is either mild or entirely asymptomatic and that there’s no need for a vaccine for an asymptomatic condition.”

U.S. ‘poured a king’s ransom’ into bird flu vaccine development

Nass said that the FDA has already licensed three vaccines for H5N1 and that “there have been dozens of experimental bird flu vaccines that were never taken to licensure. The U.S. government “has already poured a king’s ransom” into funding these vaccines, even though bird flu has never spread between humans.

Baker said that instead of funding new bird flu vaccines, the U.S. government should “stop the gain-of-function style manipulation of bird flu into a bioweapon, which takes place at the Kawaoka lab at the University of Wisconsin and the Southeast Poultry Research Laboratory in Athens, Georgia, as well as at other labs.”

Gain-of-function research increases the transmissibility or virulence of viruses and is often used in vaccine development. Earlier this month, Trump issued an executive order pausing gain-of-function research in the U.S. for 120 days while a new regulatory framework is developed. The order also ended U.S. funding for such research in some countries.

“Gain-of-function research produces human pathogens, the process is driven by fear in the media, and then proprietary vaccines are presented as the solution,” Baker said. “It needs to end.”

Recently, there have been growing calls among scientists for a moratorium or ban on mRNA vaccines, including a petition pending before the FDA.

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.

May 29, 2025 Posted by | Aletho News | , , | Leave a comment

Report: Biden May Not Have Even Known About Detrimental Climate Policies of his Own Administration

Power The Future | May 28, 2025

While the Biden administration was quick to tout and implement its aggressive climate agenda, a closer look raises a more troubling question: did President Joe Biden ever even know about some of the sweeping actions taken in his name?

We reviewed eight major executive actions that fundamentally reshaped American energy policy, from banning offshore drilling to invoking emergency powers to boost solar manufacturing, and found no evidence that President Biden ever personally spoke about any of them. Not in a press conference. Not in a speech. Not even a video statement.

These aren’t minor procedural documents, memos, or messaging documents. They include:

  • Clean AI Data Centers EO (Jan. 14, 2025): Gave the Departments of Defense and Energy the green light to lease public land for AI data centers, provided they’re powered by “clean energy,” of course.
  • Offshore Drilling Ban (Jan. 6 2025): Pulled over 625 million acres of the Outer Continental Shelf out of future oil and gas leasing. Biden never mentioned it on camera.
  • EO 14143 (Jan. 16 2025): A last-days-of-the-administration decree making AmeriCorps alumni eligible for preferential federal hiring, potentially reshaping the makeup of the federal workforce without public debate and allowing eco-left to insert themselves in the administration.
  • Arctic Drilling Ban (March 13, 2023): Prohibited oil and gas leasing in sensitive areas of the Arctic. Notably timed just after approval of the Willow Project, this was a political fig leaf, not a presidential priority.
  • Defense Production Act Invocation (June 6, 2022): Used Cold War-era emergency powers to push solar panels and heat pumps without a peep from Biden himself.
  • EO 14027 (May 7, 2021): Created a “Climate Change Support Office” buried in bureaucracy, giving climate staffers yet another taxpayer-funded silo of influence.
  • EO 14030 (May 20, 2021): Ordered all federal agencies to assess “climate-related financial risk,” laying the groundwork for ESG-style investing mandates across the government.
  • EO 14057 (Dec. 8, 2021): Committed the entire federal government to net-zero emissions by 2050 and required 100% carbon-free electricity by 2030—one of the most expansive decarbonization orders in history.

After uncovering this slew of major executive actions reshaping America’s energy landscape that were never publicly addressed by President Biden, Power The Future Executive Director stated: “Americans deserve to know which unelected staffers or radical unnamed activists implemented sweeping change through an autopen. The Biden energy agenda destroyed livelihoods of energy workers and fueled the record-high inflation that broke the budgets of millions of Americans. The question is simple, and deserves an immediate answer: what did Joe Biden know, and when did he know it?”

Despite their massive consequences for American energy producers, workers, and consumers, President Biden made no public comment, on camera or to press, about any of these actions.

This lack of public acknowledgment begs the question of whether these orders were auto-penned by eco-left policy by ghostwriters?

Americans deserve to know whether their president is making energy policy or whether it’s being run by anonymous staffers in federal agencies and activist NGOs behind closed doors.

When executive power is used to shut down energy production, rewire the economy, and restructure the federal workforce, the American people should at least expect their elected leader to own it.

Instead, we’re left with a pile of signed orders and zero accountability. Power The Future will continue investigating the true origins of these impactful policies.

May 29, 2025 Posted by | Corruption, Deception, Economics, Malthusian Ideology, Phony Scarcity | , | Leave a comment

A short guide on how to starve a population to death

By Jonathan Cook | May 28, 2025

A short guide on how to engineer a genocide by starvation and ethnic cleansing:

1. Choose your moment. Ok, you’ve been ethnically cleansing, occupying, oppressing and killing your neighbours for decades. The international courts have ruled your actions illegal. But none of that will matter the moment your neighbours retaliate by attacking you. Don’t worry. The western media can be relied on to help out here. They will be only too ready to pretend that history began on the day you were attacked.

2. Declare, in response, your intention to starve your neighbours, treating them as “human animals”, by blocking all food, water and power. You will be surprised by how many western politicians are ready to support this as your “right to defend yourself”. The media will echo them. Important not to just talk about blocking aid. You must actually do it. There will be no serious pushback for many, many months.

3. Start relatively slowly. Time is on your side. Let a little bit of aid in. But make sure to relentlessly smear the well functioning, decades-old aid distribution system run by the international community – one that is transparent, accountable and widely integrated into the community it serves. Say it is infiltrated by “terrorists”.

4. Use that claim – evidence isn’t really necessary, the western media never ask for it – as the pretext to bomb the aid system’s warehouses, distribution centres and community kitchens. Oh, and don’t forget to bomb all the private bakeries, destroy all the farmland, shoot all the animals and kill anyone who tries to use a fishing boat, so that there are no other sources of food. You are now in control of the trickle of aid reaching what is rapidly becoming a severely malnourished population.

5. Time to move into higher gear. Stop the international community’s aid getting in all together. You will need a humanitarian cover story for this bit. The danger, particularly in an age of social media, is that images of starving babies will make you look very bad. Hold firm. You can get through this. Claim – again evidence isn’t really necessary, the western media won’t ask for it – that the “terrorists” are stealing the aid. You will be surprised how willing the media is to talk about babies going “hungry”, ignoring the fact that you are starving them to death, or speak of a “famine”, as though from drought and crop failure, not from your carefully laid plans.

6. Don’t lose sight of the bigger story. You are blocking aid to “eradicate the terrorists”. After all, what is the worth of a baby, of a child – all 1 million of them – in the fight to eliminate a rag-tag army of lightly armed “terrorists” who have never waged their struggle outside of their historic homeland.

7. Now that the population are entirely at your disposal, you can roll out a “humanitarian” alternative to the existing system you have been vilifying and wrecking. Probably best to have been working on this part of the plan behind the scenes from early on, and to have regularly consulted with the Americans on how to develop it. You may even find they are willing to fund it. They usually are. You can obscure their role by using the term “private contractors”.

8. It’s time for implementation. Obviously, the point is not to really distribute aid. It is all about providing a cover story so that the starvation and ethnic cleansing can continue. Make sure you provide only a tiny amount of aid and make it available only at a few distribution points you have set up with these “private contractors”. This has two advantages.

9. It forces the population to come to the areas you want them in. Like luring mice into a trap. Get them to the very edge of the territory, because from there you will be best positioned at some point to drive them over the border and get rid of them for good.

10. Your system will lead to chaos, as desperate, starving people fight for food. That’s great for you. It makes them look like a swarming mass of those “human animals” you were talking about from the start. Don’t they deserve their fate? And it means that young, fit men – especially those from large, often armed, criminal families – will end up with most of the food. The stuff they can’t grab at the distribution points, they will ambush later as people try to return home laden with their heavy aid packages. That may seem counter-productive, given that you’re claiming to want to eliminate the “terrorists”. Won’t these fit, young men, as conditions degenerate further, provide a future source of recruits to the “terrorists”. But remember, the real goal here is to starve the population as quickly as possible. The young, the elderly, the sick and the vulnerable are the ones who will die first. The more of them who start dying, the faster the pressure builds on everyone else to flee the territory to save themselves.

You are nearly there. True, faced with the emaciated bodies of your victims, western politicians will start making harsh pronouncements. But they have already given you a massive head start of 20 months. Be grateful for that. You don’t need much longer. While they dither, you can get on with the job of extermination. Leave it to the history books to judge what really happened.

May 28, 2025 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Mainstream Media, Warmongering | , , , | Leave a comment

Sanctions as Self-Harm: The West’s Strategic Blind Spot in Confronting Russia

By Ricardo Martins – New Eastern Outlook – May 28, 2025

This article critically analyzes the latest EU sanctions on Russia, arguing they are strategically flawed and economically self-destructive. Drawing from past failures, it shows how the West’s punitive measures are backfiring, hurting Europe and the U.S. more than isolating Russia.

What is the New Sanctions Package About?

The EU has unveiled a new sanction package targeting Russia, predominantly focusing on the energy sector, specifically oil and diesel exports. This builds upon earlier restrictions intended to cripple Russia’s economic capacity to sustain its military operations in Ukraine. The new sanctions include tighter enforcement mechanisms on the oil price cap, restrictions on ship-to-ship transfers in international waters, and efforts to curtail Russia’s access to Western insurance and logistics networks. But like the previous measures, they raise a fundamental question: Will they work?

The Status of Past Sanctions: Buying While Punishing

Historically, sanctions against Russia have been inconsistent and riddled with loopholes. Despite strong rhetoric, Europe has continued purchasing Russian commodities under various exemptions. The EU still imports significant quantities of Russian diesel, liquefied natural gas (LNG), coal, uranium, and even agricultural products like grain and fertilizer. The result is a paradox: while aiming to isolate Russia, the West remains economically entangled with it. This undermines the moral and strategic coherence of sanctions and allows Russia to adapt and thrive despite Western pressure.

Sanctions Hit Europe More Than Russia

While sanctions are theoretically aimed at weakening Russia’s economy, the practical consequences have disproportionately hit European industries and households. Russian exports are fungible: oil, coal, and fertilizers find alternate markets in Asia, Africa, and Latin America. Meanwhile, Europe has struggled with soaring energy prices, industrial shutdowns, and declining competitiveness. Diesel shortages, energy rationing, and inflation have become the new norm, particularly in Germany, which once depended heavily on Russian inputs for its industrial base.

Russia, by contrast, has localized production, developed new markets, and implemented mercantilist strategies to reduce dependence on Western technology and finance. As one Russian analyst put it, sanctions have become “psychological warfare,” increasingly irrelevant to daily life in Russia.

Oil and Diesel: The Inflation Time Bomb

The crux of the new sanctions is oil and diesel. But can the U.S. and EU afford to forgo Russian, Venezuelan, and Iranian crude without catastrophic inflation? The answer appears to be no.

Russia exports about 7.5 million barrels of oil per day, or nearly 10% of global supply. Taking that offline—especially in conjunction with sanctioned Venezuelan and Iranian oil—would create a massive global shortfall. Western refineries, particularly in the U.S. Gulf Coast, are calibrated to process heavy sour crude like Russia’s Urals blend. Without it, refineries operate suboptimally, and gasoline prices spike.

In the U.S., diesel drives nearly all logistics trucks, trains, and ships. Removing a major global supplier like Russia tightens global supply, causing diesel prices to surge and supply chains to buckle. Already, diesel refills for trucks cost over $2,000, with potential spikes threatening food prices and consumer goods. Inflation will soar again, just as it had started to cool.

Baltic Sea Escalation: Tankers and Arrests

The geopolitical tension is intensifying. Russian oil tankers, often flagged under third countries, are now escorted by Russian naval vessels in the Baltic Sea. An incident involving an Estonian ship attempting to halt a tanker, which ended up detained in Russian waters, demonstrates the volatility of the situation. This marks a dangerous escalation, with the potential for military clashes over enforcement of maritime sanctions—an area traditionally governed by international law, not unilateral action.

Western Industrial Decline: No Shipyards, No Leverage

Sanctions enforcement is further complicated by Western logistical decline. The U.S., Britain, and France have largely lost their shipbuilding industries. Insurance and shipping markets have globalized, and London no longer dominates maritime underwriting. Russian entities are increasingly self-insuring their fleet, rendering sanctions on Western insurers irrelevant.

Furthermore, without a domestic merchant marine, the U.S. relies on foreign ships even for military logistics—a vulnerability in any prolonged conflict. Meanwhile, China and Russia continue expanding their shipping capabilities and influence over global supply routes.

The Legal Quandary: Sanctions and Sovereignty

From a legal standpoint, unilateral sanctions that attempt to compel third-party countries to comply (so-called secondary sanctions) strain the legitimacy of the “rules-based international order.” It is lawful for the West to impose its own sanctions, but not to mandate their enforcement by sovereign nations like India or Brazil. Such overreach risks global backlash and accelerates moves toward de-dollarization and alternative trade systems, such as the BRICS currency initiative.

Is the EU Addicted to Sanctions?

The EU appears increasingly reliant on sanctions as a primary foreign policy tool. Yet, their efficacy is questionable. Past sanctions have not altered Russian behavior, destabilized its economy, or improved Western leverage. Instead, they’ve fostered economic nationalism in Russia, weakened EU industries, and exposed the strategic shallowness of Brussels and Washington’s policies.

Sanctions are not a strategy; they are a tactic. And overuse risks turning them from a deterrent into a diplomatic crutch—one that Europe may not survive intact if economic pain continues to mount.

Conclusion: A Strategy of Self-Harm

Sanctions as Self-Harm: The West’s Strategic Blind Spot in Confronting Russia

In sum, the latest sanctions package is more of the same: punitive in intent, performative in practice, and counterproductive in outcome. The West, particularly Europe, will likely bear the brunt of energy shortages, inflation, and industrial decline. Meanwhile, Russia’s diversified exports, strategic alliances with China and India, and robust internal adaptation mechanisms render sanctions increasingly futile.

History has shown that attempts to isolate Russia through economic pressure are not only ineffective—they risk reinforcing the very state structures they aim to dismantle. Unless sanctions are part of a broader diplomatic and economic strategy, they will continue to hurt the sanctioning powers more than their target.

Ricardo Martins PhD in Sociology, specializing in policies, European and world politics and geopolitics

May 28, 2025 Posted by | Economics, Russophobia | , , | Leave a comment