A New Year’s Resolution Worth Keeping
By Ron Paul | January 2, 2024
In the closing days of 2023, the Biden Administration once again announced a large military aid package for Ukraine, this time a “mere” quarter of a billion dollars. Without a new authorization of funds from Congress, it is said to be the last bit of money left over from the more than $100 billion already authorized by Congress for the proxy war with Russia through Ukraine.
President Biden’s request for an additional $100 billion to spread around Ukraine, Israel, and Taiwan was rejected by a Congress eager for its winter break, and with each passing day it looks like it’s going to be harder to push it through. Poll after poll show that Americans are increasingly opposed to more of their money being spent on the neocon’s lost-cause war to overthrow Putin in Russia.
For example, a recent Fox News poll revealed that more than 60 percent of Republican voters do not want any more money sent to Ukraine. As we enter an election year, it’s probably safe to predict that Republican candidates will be wary of crossing the wishes of the clear majority of voters.
That is why the Biden Administration has been desperately trying to re-frame its request for more Ukraine war money as anything but a request for more Ukraine war money. For example, they even brought back the old discredited “domino theory” used to justify US actions in the Vietnam war. If we don’t stop Putin in Ukraine, Biden said in December, then he will keep going into western Europe where we will be forced to fight him there.
On the one hand, supporters of the Ukraine war warn that Russia is about to reconstitute the Soviet empire in Europe, while at the same time the same people tell us Russia is out of missiles and on its last leg. One more infusion of US money will end the “Russian threat” once and for all. Both of these things cannot be true at once. In fact, neither of them is true.
But still the Administration, much of Congress, and an insatiable military-industrial complex keep selling the lies.
Last month Secretary of State Antony Blinken inadvertently revealed what exactly all the spending for war is about when he stated that as much as 90 percent of the aid for Ukraine is actually spent in the United States. The money is used “to the benefit of American business, local communities, and strengthening the US defense industrial base,” he said in an interview. In other words, the money “for Ukraine” is actually a massive welfare program for well-connected military contractors back home.
As we begin the year 2024, we need to home in on the real threat to the United States. It is not Russia or China or Iran. The true threat is closer to home: it is a corrupt system that bleeds the country dry to fight imaginary enemies while enriching the military-industrial complex.
For the New Year, Congress should resolve to end the stranglehold of the military-industrial complex by reining in out-of-control military spending. Members should simply vote “no” on military spending bills until they are drafted to benefit the American people rather than the Beltway elite. I don’t hold out much hope of this happening in the short run, but it only takes a few dedicated Members to make a real difference.
US and South Korea Conduct Training Simulating Assassination of Kim Jong Un
By Kyle Anzalone | The Libertarian Institute | January 3, 2024
A top South Korean defense official said Washington and Seoul have considered assassinating the North Korean leader. The simulations have gone as far as joint special operations training missions.
South Korean Defense Minister Shin Won-sik explained to reporters last month that the deployment of US nuclear weapons or the assassination of North Korean Supreme Leader Kim Jong Un were options being discussed between Washington and Seoul.
“While it is difficult to openly discuss decapitation, the ROK-US special operation forces are… conducting training,” Won-sik said. “This training is for aerial maneuvers, raids on key facilities, and indoor mop-up.”
The Daily Beast first reported the US and South Korea would conduct the decapitation war games in August 2022.
Since President Joe Biden took office, tensions have risen sharply on the Korean Peninsula. The current administration has abandoned the Donald Trump-era diplomacy with Pyongyang. Biden has deployed some of America’s most advanced weapons to the region and ramped up military engagements with South Korea.
Pyongyang has responded to Washington’s provocations by stepping up its military capabilities. North Korea has conducted several missile tests, including with intercontinental ballistic missiles. Pyongyang successfully placed a military satellite into orbit in 2023 and plans three more this year.
Kim and other top North Korean officials warned several times last year that the US and South Korean military activities have put the Peninsula on the brink of a nuclear war. During a major address, Kim explained Pyongyang would further its nuclear weapons program during the coming year.
Why are so Many Californians Dying?
By Thomas Buckley | Brownstone Institute | January 3, 2024
Covid has claimed about 105,000* lives in the state since 2020.
In that same time period, 82,000 more Californians died from everything else than is typical.
Adjusted for the decline in population, that non-Covid “excess death” figure becomes even more concerning as the state has seen its population drop to about the same it was in 2015.
In 2015 – obviously there was no Covid – 260,000 of the then 39 million Californians died. In 2023, not including November and December, 240,000 people died not from Covid (6,000 additional people died of Covid.).
Extrapolating the year-to-date figures for 2023 creates a final year-end figure of 280,000 – 20,000 more people than died in 2015. That’s a non-Covid, population-neutral jump of 8%.
In other words, despite the protestations of certain officials, the state’s death rate has NOT returned to “pre-Covid” levels – in 2019 the year before the pandemic, 270,000 people died with a population at least 400,000 greater than today.
Why?
Dr. Bob Wachter, medical chair at UC-SF and ardent supporter of tight pandemic restrictions, did not respond to an email from the Globe (away for work the auto-response said) but he did recently tell the San Jose Mercury News that in “(T)he last three years, not only were there a lot of deaths from Covid, there were a lot of additional deaths from non-Covid causes, which are probably attributable to people not receiving the medical care that they normally would have received’ when ERs were overflowing with Covid patients (note – the truth of that ER assertion has not been verified), Wachter noted.”
In other words, the pandemicist Wachter admitted the pandemic response itself at least contributed to a significant number of excess deaths, a fact that was aggressively and roundly denied and – if mentioned – led to censoring and societal ostracization (and in many cases job losses) by the powers that be during the pandemic.
A second admission along these lines was recently made by former National Institutes of Health Director Dr. Francis Collins – Tony Fauci’s boss.
In this video clip, Collins – who once called for a “devastating takedown” (see above) of those who questioned the hard pandemic response – said his DC and public health blinders, well, blinded him to the problems his pandemic response caused and is still causing:
If you’re a public health person, and you’re trying to make a decision, you have this very narrow view of what the right decision is, and that is something that will save a life. Doesn’t matter what else happens, so you attach infinite value to stopping the disease and saving a life. You attach zero value to whether this actually totally disrupts people’s lives, ruins the economy, and has many kids kept out of school in a way that they never might quite recover from. Collateral damage. This is a public health mindset. And I think a lot of us involved in trying to make those recommendations had that mindset — and that was really unfortunate, it’s another mistake we made.
(You can see Collins for yourself here.)
Needless to say there is not even a half-hearted apology involved. And Collins is/was wrong in the approach to public health he apparently subscribes to, as throughout modern history it has involved a cost/benefit analysis and a weighing of the impact on society.
Public health, practiced properly, does not – and never before has – attached “zero value to whether this actually totally disrupts people’s lives, ruins the economy, and has many kids kept out of school in a way that they never might quite recover from.”
“We had the exact wrong people in charge at the exact wrong time,” said Stanford professor of medicine (and one of the people Collins tried to “take down”) Dr. Jay Bhattacharya. “Their decisions were myopically deadly.”
To remind Collins of the ramifications of his decision beyond the excess deaths:
Massive educational degradation. Economic devastation, by both the lockdowns and now the continuing fiscal nightmare plaguing the nation caused by continuing federal overreaction. The critical damage to the development of children’s social skills through hyper-masking and fear-mongering. The obliteration of the public’s trust in institutions due to their incompetence and deceitfulness during the pandemic. The massive erosion of civil liberties. The direct hardships caused by vaccination mandates, etc. under the false claim of helping one’s neighbor. The explosion of the growth of Wall Street built on the destruction of Main Street.
The clear separation of society into two camps – those who could easily prosper during the pandemic and those whose lives were completely upended. The demonization of anyone daring to ask even basic questions about the efficacy of the response, be it the vaccines themselves, the closure of public schools, the origin of the virus, or the absurdity of the useless public theater that made up much of the program. The fissures created throughout society and the harm caused by guillotined relationships amongst family and friends.
The slanders and career chaos endured by prominent actual experts (see the Great Barrington Declaration, co-authored by Bhattacharya) and just plain reasonable people like Jennifer Sey for daring to offer different approaches; approaches – such as focusing on the most vulnerable – that had been tested and succeeded before.
Nationally, pandemic “all-cause” deaths spiked, for obvious reasons, but they remain stubbornly higher than normal to this day.
There could be mitigating factors to California’s numbers, specifically the issue of drug overdoses. Since 2018, the overdose death rate has doubled. The last overall figures available are from 2021 which showed 10,901 people dying of an overdose. While not specifically broken out for which drug, the vast majority are from opioid overdoses and the vast majority of those involve fentanyl. In 2022, there were 7,385 opioid-related deaths with 6,473 of those involving fentanyl.
But the overdose death increase would account for only about 25% of the total increase in “excess deaths,” meaning it has an impact but cannot explain the whole story.
There is also the issue of homeless deaths. Homeless people die at a far higher rate than the rest of the population and California has had a burgeoning homeless population for the last few years, despite the money being spent on the issue. However, at least a portion of that increase can – as with overdoses – be attributed to fentanyl and is therefore difficult to separate out as discrete numbers.
Those two increases, however, may explain the fact that the “all-cause” excess death rate for those in the 25-to-44 year age bracket (it has comparatively higher overdose death and homelessness figures) have remained – except for two very recent weeks – above the typical historical range.
The increase in overdose (and alcohol-related deaths) has been directly tied to the pandemic response previously. In California, there were about 3,500 more alcohol-related deaths during the pandemic response than before: 5,600 in 2019 (pre-pandemic,) 6,100 in 2020, 7,100 in 2021, 6,600 in 2022, and 2023 is on pace to see about 6,000.
That still leaves roughly half of the excess deaths unaccounted for, raising questions about the safety of the Covid shot (a shot, not a vaccine) itself. The CDC lists 640 deaths in California directly from the shot and an increase in “adverse effects” from the shot compared to many other actual vaccines. The Covid shot “ adverse” rate was one in a thousand, while, for comparison, it’s about one in a million for the polio vaccine.
That means a person was more than 9 times as likely to die from the Covid shot as any other vaccine and 6.5 times to be injured by it in some fashion.
Still that is – according to state figures – not enough to explain the increase.
There are three other issues to note: first, many of the counting questions around dying “from” Covid versus “with” Covid remain, meaning the Covid death numbers could be elevated if the “withs” are lumped in with the “froms.”
Second, there is the simmering matter of “iatrogenic” deaths – i.e. deaths caused by the treatment. Early on in the pandemic response, a push was made to “ventilate” patients mechanically. From the above article (no caps in the original):
here’s an unsettling comparison: in NYC area, mortality rate for all COV ICU patients was 78%. in stockholm, the SURVIVAL rate was over 80%. this is a staggering variance. the key difference: ventilators. NYC used them on 85% of patients, sweden used them sparingly
Combined with the placing of Covid patients in nursing homes, the number of actual “only” or “natural” (for lack of a better term) Covid deaths, again, may be elevated.
The state Department of Public Health declined to comment on the matter.
Which brings us back to the Wachter and Collins oblique, nearly accidental admissions that the response itself may have caused significant and ongoing damage across numerous personal and public sectors.
Comparing California to other states also shows a concerning trend, specifically when considering the aftermath of the pandemic response. While increasing in population, for example, Florida’s excess death rate increase was/is lower than California’s as was its Covid death rate, a fact Gov. Gavin Newsom has been lying about for years.
During the pandemic itself, the nation saw an “all-cause” – including Covid – death rate increase of about 16% above normal. Using that metric, as it is clear the response itself had knock-on effects – California’s was 19.4% and Florida’s was 16.7%, despite the wildly different pandemic responses.
Imagine, if you will, you own a baseball team and you have two shortstops, one that earns $10 million a year and one that earns $1 million. And it turns out that both are equally talented – errors, batting stats, etc. – and that maybe the cheaper one is actually even a bit more talented it turns out. Which shortstop was the better deal for the team? The less expensive one, of course.
That is an apt analogy for states choosing how to respond to the pandemic – Florida cut the $10 million player while California kept him. In other words, the two states got the same-ish performance but at wildly different societal costs.
This pattern seems to be borne out by many of the figures. Obviously, various states that ended up lower than the national average took very different approaches: North Dakota and New Jersey saw roughly the same all-cause mortality numbers, as did Washington (state) and South Dakota.
This is true on the “high side” as well: California and Montana, Oregon and Arkansas are two pairs that had similar numbers with different approaches.
All of this raises a deeper question in that there appears to be little if any direct causative resultant difference between a draconian pandemic response and a softer touch.
And that should not at all be the case: the lockdowns, the masks, the shots, the social distancing, the closing of schools and stores and churches and parks, and everything else should have produced a clear and distinct difference – if the pandemicists were right.
If they were right, the difference in results should be stark and obvious to the naked eye. Miami should look like Genoa after the plague ships arrived while Los Angeles should seem like a New Eden. If the much-maligned Swedish “soft” model was as dangerous as the pandemicists said, Stockholm should be a ghost town.
But that’s not at all true and that’s why the pandemicists are/were so evidently wrong: the harshest methods had little impact on the end results.
While there were differences between states, they cannot necessarily be directly tied to a specific policy construct (save Hawaii, which can be discounted considering their isolated geography). Hard or soft pandemic response, in the long run it didn’t seem to matter much in the Covid death tolls.
Where it did – and still does – matter is the immediate and long-lasting damage the more tyrannical responses had on society as a whole.
And – if California’s excess death numbers are an indicator – the pandemic response itself is still killing people.
And that, too, definitely shouldn’t be happening – if the pandemicists were right.
It is even more problematic – and even more ethically abhorrent – if the Covid death figures are inflated; the number of Covid deaths of 105,000 is only about 20% higher than the other non-Covid excess death figure of 82,000.
In other words, the net “from Covid” deaths may not be terribly different from the “from the Covid response” death count.
And that possibility is the most terrifying of all.
* All numbers used are rounded for simplicity and come from state and federal sources.
Thomas Buckley is the former mayor of Lake Elsinore, Cal. and a former newspaper reporter. He is currently the operator of a small communications and planning consultancy.
Florida Surgeon General Calls for a Complete Halt on Pfizer and Moderna mRNA Vaccines
FDA, CDC Unable to Handle Dr. Ladapo’s Concerns.
By Peter A. McCullough, MD, MPH | Courageous Discourse | January 3, 2024
Dr. Joseph A. Ladapo is a Harvard-trained MD, PhD, and arguably one of the top experts on COVID-19 in the world. Prior to the Florida Surgeon General appointment, Dr. Ladapo was in academic practice at UCLA and published with myself, Dr. John McKinnon, and Dr. Harvey Risch on the efficacy of early hydroxychloroquine in acute COVID-19.
On December 6th 2023, State Surgeon General Dr. Joseph A. Ladapo sent a letter to the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) Commissioner Dr. Robert M. Califf and Centre for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) Director Dr. Mandy Cohen regarding questions pertaining to the discovery of DNA process-related impurities found in the the Pfizer and Moderna COVID-19 mRNA vaccines.
Ladapo’s concerns center around lipid nanoparticles laced with Simian Virus 40 (SV40) promoter/enhancer/origin of insertion DNA sequences widely distributed through the body. SV40 is a known promoter of proto-oncogenes.
The 2007, the FDA ‘Guidance for Industry: Considerations for Plasmid DNA Vaccines for Infectious Disease Indications (Guidance for Industry) outlines important considerations for vaccines that use novel methods of delivery regarding DNA integration, specifically:
- DNA integration could theoretically impact a human’s oncogenes – the genes which can transform a healthy cell into a cancerous cell.
- DNA integration may result in chromosomal instability.
- The Guidance for Industry discusses biodistribution of DNA vaccines and how such integration could affect unintended parts of the body including blood, heart, brain, liver, kidney, bone marrow, ovaries/testes, lung, draining lymph nodes, spleen, the site of administration and subcutis at injection site.
The FDA provided a written response on December 14, 2023, indicating the sponsors have NOT addressed risks outlined by the FDA itself in 2007. Because the FDA failed to handle these concerns, Dr. Ladapo has released the following statement:
The FDA’s response does not provide data or evidence that the DNA integration assessments it recommended itself have been performed. Instead, it pointed to genotoxicity studies – which are inadequate assessments for DNA integration risk. In addition, it obfuscated the difference between the SV40 promoter/enhancer and SV40 proteins, two elements that are distinct.
DNA integration poses a unique and elevated risk to human health and to the integrity of the human genome, including the risk that DNA integrated into sperm or egg gametes could be passed onto offspring of mRNA COVID-19 vaccine recipients. If the risks of DNA integration have not been assessed for mRNA COVID-19 vaccines, these vaccines are not appropriate for use in human beings.
Providers concerned about patient health risks associated with COVID-19 should prioritize patient access to non-mRNA COVID-19 vaccines and treatment. It is my hope that, in regard to COVID-19, the FDA will one day seriously consider its regulatory responsibility to protect human health, including the integrity of the human genome.
Ladapo called for a halt in Pfizer and Moderna mRNA COVID-19 vaccination. However, he did not recall the non-genetic, Spike-protein antigen Novavax vaccine. The Bio-Pharmaceutical complex does not promote Novavax largely because Weber Shandwick has a PR contract with the CDC vaccine office to promote only Pfizer and Moderna. Senator Rand Paul has called out this conflict of interest and obvious paid favoritism for mRNA over the safer but equally ineffective Novavax product.
I wonder if Pfizer and Moderna were halted, would our government switch to promotion of Novavax or would they continue to let the smaller company languish?
The Florida State Surgeon General’s announcement today is a milestone as more government officials join a chorus calling for recall of COVID-19 vaccines including myself (US Senate, multiple State Senates, EU Parliament, UK Parliament), 17,000 physicians representing the Global COVID-19 Summit, Australian scientists, the World Council for Health, and the Association of American Physicians and Surgeons.
Russia thwarts Ukrainian attack on border area
RT | January 3, 2024
Russia’s Belgorod Region, which borders Ukraine, has come under fresh attack after Kiev’s forces launched a barrage of a dozen missiles, the Russian Defense Ministry has announced, adding that its air defenses had shot down all incoming projectiles.
The ministry wrote on its Telegram channel on Wednesday that “another attempt to carry out a terrorist attack by the Kiev regime on facilities on the territory of the Russian Federation, using multiple launch rocket system ‘Olkha’ missiles and ‘Tochka-U’ tactical ballistic missiles, was thwarted this morning.”
According to the statement, the shelling involved six rockets of each type.
Local residents reported seeing explosions in the skies early on Wednesday morning.
The Ukrainian military also shelled the region on Tuesday evening, using the same type of rockets, the defense ministry said, adding that all incoming missiles had been intercepted.
Earlier in the day, Kiev’s forces launched 17 ‘Olkha’ missiles toward Belgorod Region in three separate attacks. Governor Vyacheslav Gladkov wrote on his Telegram channel that one civilian had died and two were injured as a result of falling debris as the missiles were shot down.
The Russian Defense Ministry estimated that its air defenses brought down a total of 32 Ukrainian drones over Bryansk, Oryol, Kursk and Moscow regions on Monday night and Tuesday morning.
On Saturday, the city of Belgorod came under attack, with a massive Ukrainian barrage killing 25 people and wounding more than 100 others.
Kiev described the strike as retaliation for a previous Russian attack on major Ukrainian cities, including Kiev.
According to an anonymous Russian security source, Saturday’s shelling was personally ordered by Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky. Moscow has also claimed that the UK and the US also bear responsibility for the death of Russian civilians in Belgorod.
Ukraine and Russia have since engaged in daily tit-for-tat bombardments.
The Russian Defense Ministry reported on Tuesday that its missile strikes had obliterated a number of military industry facilities, repair shops, and ammunition warehouses in the neighboring country. Ukrainian authorities claimed that most of the projectiles ended up hitting civilian infrastructure and apartment blocks, killing multiple civilians.
The enabler of our two concurrent world wars: Washington
By Gilbert Doctorow | January 2, 2024
It is only the second day of the New Year, but you turn on the morning news with a feeling of trepidation. Here in Western Europe, the lead stories are death and destruction reported from the front lines of the two conflagrations that some commentators have identified as ‘world wars,’ given the way countries across the globe have aligned themselves with or against the protagonists in each conflict. The outstanding commonality between these two world wars is the position of the United States as their enabler in terms of delivery of essential military and financial support to one side, as well as real-time military intelligence, tactical and strategic counseling by high level officers positioned on the ground and in nearby seas. From the perspective of Washington, these are proxy wars which put at risk very few of its own men at arms, though some do come home in body bags without word to the press, while preparations proceed apace for the launch of a third proxy war in the South China Sea. The Philippines are the latest recruits to the prospective encirclement and assault on China.
On their talk shows, the Russians speculate on when a mutual defense pact with Iran, China and North Korea will be announced. This will not be a bloc, like NATO, but will enshrine the key principle of ‘one for all and all for one’ in case of attack by outside forces. To its backers in Moscow, this formulation would ensure that NATO generals understand they are up against an enemy of over two billion if we include a few other fellow travelers, not just the 145 million Russians whom they see across the border.
But that is what they say on talk shows. It is not the official voice of the Kremlin, which we find on Vesti television. Vesti maintains a near blackout of news on the Israel-Hamas war in broadcasts to its home audience. Why? Because Russia does not want to get embroiled in that war when it needs all its human and materiel resources to defeat the Ukrainians and their NATO backers. Moreover, Russia can be satisfied that the Iranians and their Houthi proxies have the situation in the Middle East under control, restraining the United States from region-wide escalation by engaging directly on Israeli’s side.
For that matter, Iran is doing just fine in shoring up Russia’s southern borders in the Caucasus. For more than a year, Armenia’s prime minister Nikol Pashinyan has been sitting on two stools: holding consultations with the French and intermittently attending gatherings of the Former Soviet Union republics called by Moscow. A week ago, Iranian leaders issued a direct warning to Armenia not to even think about pursuing the military and political rapprochement that France’s president Macron has been proposing. Said President Raisi: ‘No powers from outside the region are welcome in the Caucasus.’ This warning serves Russian security very well, though it is surely motivated by self-interest in Teheran, because any future French military presence in Armenia could also threaten them.
In Russian news, all attention is on the one conflict in which the Russians are themselves deeply engaged, and there news from the line of contact, news from the home front which a day ago experienced a murderous attack on the border town of Belgorod that killed 25 civilians and gravely injured another fifty or so, news from the United Nations Security Council deliberations of the same, more than fill the time allotted to 14.00 o’clock and 20.00 o’clock wrap-ups.
Anyone following developments of the Ukrainian war these past few days will note the tit for tat nature of the strikes dealt out by the warring parties day after day. The chain of events began early on the morning of Wednesday, 26 December, when the Ukrainians deployed air-launched Storm Shadow cruise missiles to destroy the Novocherkassk, a large landing ship of Russia’s Black Sea Fleet parked in the harbor of Feodosia, on the eastern shores of the Crimea. The ship was said to be loaded with drones and the missile strike set off a fire and explosions that may have killed as many as 74, both on the ship and in the port.
However, the outstanding feature of the attack was not the numbers of the dead or the loss of the ship itself: it was the demonstration that Kiev had now been given a Storm Shadow variant with much greater flight range than the initial shipments from the U.K. and France.
From the perspective of the Russian high command, this new ability of the Ukrainians to strike far deeper into Russian territory represented a serious escalation of the conflict which required mirror-image escalation from Russia. The Russian response was not long in coming: on the 27th, Russia launched the largest missile attack on Ukraine since the start of the Special Military Operation, more than 150 ballistic missiles, cruise missiles and armed drones, directed at cities across the Ukraine, including Kiev. Some of these were shot down by Ukrainian air defense, but the Zelensky regime admitted that all 20 Russian ballistic missiles evaded their fire and hit their targets.
From the partial information released by the Russian military, it would appear that their main interest was to destroy caches of the Storm Shadow and also the most advanced Western ground to air missiles. They claim to have destroyed a Patriot complex in the Lvov region, killing a substantial number of French military who were in charge of the installation. This is the sort of information which flits by in a second and is not repeated, so I can say no more.
The Ukrainian response the next day was a concentrated attack on the Russian border city of Belgorod, capital of an oblast of the same name. Belgorod is not more than 20 km from Ukraine’s second largest city, Kharkiv, and it first made international news about six months ago when a Ukrainian team of saboteurs claiming to be anti-Putin Russians crossed into the oblast and attacked residential neighborhoods. This time missiles were sent into apartment blocks and other civilian structures, killing some 25 Russians and gravely wounding perhaps 50 more, some of whom were evacuated to Moscow by plane on life support.
Yesterday and today the Russians avenged this serious loss by renewed missile attacks, now concentrated on Kharkiv, whence the attack on Belgorod had come. They demolished the headquarters of military intelligence in the city, claiming to have killed many foreign advisers, probably British and Americans, who were guiding the attacks. They also struck air fields across Ukraine which could be used to service planes carrying the Storm Shadow.
I end this overview with the remark that American-British escalation of the weaponry deployed against Russia was at the start of what we have witnessed these past six days. And that can be no accident. It follows from the news of the war in the immediately preceding period, which unequivocally demonstrated that on the ground, along the line of contact, the Russian forces were moving steadily to overrun Ukrainian positions and force a retreat. The storming of Mariinka was emblematic in this sense. The overall impression was depressing for the Ukrainian cause at the very time that Congress was in recess after rejecting efforts by the Administration to pass legislation ensuring continued financial and military aid to Kiev. Now these Ukrainian missile attacks on the Black Sea fleet in the Feodosia harbor and the attack on civilians in what is properly speaking Russian Federation territory of Belgorod oblast would give luster to the Ukrainian cause while prodding the Russians to escalate and perform what Washington would showcase as war crimes.
Escalation is the game Washington is playing. In Ukraine. In the Red Sea. In the Eastern Mediterranean off the coast of Lebanon. Washington seems oblivious to the possibility that the proxy wars it is fanning may yet invite a Russian, or Iranian, or North Korean strike directly on U.S. assets, whether overseas or on the Continental United States.
Ukraine to decide how to use US missiles – ambassador
RT | January 2, 2024
The decision on how to use the American-supplied missiles for HIMARS launchers will be up to the Ukrainian military command, US Ambassador to Kiev Bridget Brink said on Tuesday, according to the Ukrainian outlet Strana.
The US has sent Ukraine around 30 high-mobility artillery rocket systems since mid-2022. The projectiles Washington officially supplied to Kiev have a range of up to 160 kilometers (100 miles). Ukraine has repeatedly demanded longer-range missiles.
The Ukrainian Armed Forces command will “independently decide on the range of strikes delivered” using the HIMARS projectiles the US plans to deliver “in the near future,” Strana reported Brink as saying on Tuesday afternoon.
Brink made the identical announcement in June 2022. It was reiterated by the Pentagon in February 2023, when the US announced it would send Ukraine Ground Launched Small Diameter Bombs (GLSDB) munitions.
According to a Washington Post article at the time, Ukraine carries out HIMARS launches using “specific coordinates provided by US military personnel,” but chooses the targets itself. The US provides coordinates and targeting information “solely in an advisory role,” an anonymous American official insisted.
Russia has said that this is a distinction without a difference, and repeatedly warned that US and British officials involved in Ukrainian attacks on civilians will be brought to justice.
In October, Kiev boasted about using longer-ranged ATACMS missiles “secretly” supplied by the US. As it turned out, the White House sent over a small number of the rockets armed with the controversial cluster munitions.
On Saturday, Ukrainian long-range rocket artillery struck the main town square of Belgorod city with cluster bombs, killing 25 civilians – including children – and injuring 100 more. Czech-supplied weapons were reportedly used in the attack. Russia has retaliated by targeting Ukrainian command posts, weapons warehouses and military factories in a wave of missile and drone strikes.
Ukraine and Palestine: A double threat to US hegemony
The outcome of US-led conflicts in Ukraine and West Asia will have a profound impact on the developing world order
By MK Bhadrakumar | The Cradle | January 2, 2024
Geopolitical analysts broadly agree that the war in Ukraine and the West Asian crisis will dictate the trajectory of world politics in 2024. But a reductionist thesis appears alongside that views the Israel-Palestine conflict narrowly in terms of what it entails for the resilience of the US proxy war in Ukraine – the assumption being that the locus of world politics lies in Eurasia.
The reality is more complex. Each of these two conflicts has a raison d’être and dynamics of its own, while at the same time also being intertwined.
Washington’s neck-deep involvement in the current phase of the West Asian crisis can turn into a quagmire, since it is also tangled up with domestic politics in a way that the Ukraine war never has been. But then, the outcome of the Ukraine war is already a foregone conclusion, and the US and its allies have realized that Russia cannot be defeated militarily; the endgame narrows down to an agreement to end the conflict on Russia’s terms.
To be sure, the outcome of the Ukraine war and the denouement of the Israel-Palestine conflict, which is at the root of the West Asian crisis, will have a profound impact on the new world order, and the two processes reinforce each other.
Russia realizes this fully. President Vladimir Putin’s stunning ‘year-enders’ in the run-up to the New Year speak for themselves: daylong visits to Abu Dhabi and Riyadh (watched by a shell-shocked US President Joe Biden), followed by talks with Iran’s president and rounded off with a telephone conversation with the Egyptian president.
In the space of 48 hours or so, Putin touched base with his Emirati, Saudi, Iranian, and Egyptian colleagues who officially entered the portals of the BRICS on 1 January.
The evolving US intervention in the West Asian crisis can be understood from a geopolitical perspective only by factoring in Biden’s visceral hostility toward Russia. BRICS is in Washington’s crosshairs. The US understands perfectly well that the extra large presence of West Asian and Arab nations in BRICS — four out of ten member states — is central to Putin’s grand project to re-structure the world order and bury US exceptionalism and hegemony.
Saudi Arabia, the UAE, and Iran are major oil producing countries. Russia has been rather explicit that during its 2024 chairmanship of BRICS, it will push for the creation of a currency to challenge the petrodollar. Without doubt, the BRICS currency will be at the center stage of the grouping’s summit due to be hosted by Putin in Kazan, Russia in October.
In a special address on 1 January, marking the start of Russia’s BRICS Chairmanship, Putin stated his commitment to “enhancing the role of BRICS in the international monetary system, expanding both interbank cooperation and the use of national currencies in mutual trade.”
If a BRICS currency is used instead of the dollar, there could be significant impact on several financial sectors of the US economy, such as energy and commodity markets, international trade and investment, capital markets, technology and fintech, consumer goods and retail, travel and tourism, and so on.
The banking sector could take the first hit that might eventually spill over to the markets. And if Washington fails to fund its mammoth deficit, prices of all commodities could skyrocket or even reach hyperinflation triggering a crash of the US economy.
Meanwhile, the eruption of the Israel-Palestine conflict has given the US an alibi — ‘Israel’s self-defense’ — to claw its way back on the greasy pole of West Asian politics. Washington has multiple concerns, but at its core are the twin objectives of resuscitating the Abraham Accords (anchored on Saudi-Israeli proximity) and the concurrent sabotage of the Beijing-mediated Saudi-Iranian rapprochement.
The Biden administration was counting on the fact that an Israeli-Saudi deal would provide legitimacy to Tel Aviv and proclaim to the Islamic world that there was no religious justification for hostility towards Israel. But Washington senses that post-7 October it would not be able to secure a Saudi-Israel deal during this Biden term, and all that could be coaxed out of Riyadh is a door left ajar for future discussion on the topic. No doubt, it is a major blow to the US strategy to liquidate the Palestinian question.
In a medium term perspective, if the Russian-Saudi mechanism known as OPEC+ liberates the world oil market from US control, BRICS drives a dagger into the heart of US hegemony which is anchored on the dollar being the ‘world currency.’
Saudi Arabia recently signed a currency swap deal worth $7 billion with China in an attempt to shift more of their trade away from the dollar. The People’s Bank of China said in a statement that the swap arrangement will “help strengthen financial cooperation” and “facilitate more convenient trade and investment” between the countries.
Going forward, sensitive Saudi-Chinese transactions in strategic areas such as defense, nuclear technology, among others, will henceforth take place below the US radar. From a Chinese perspective, if its strategic trade is sufficiently insulated from any US-led program of anti-China sanctions, Beijing can position itself confidently to confront US power in the Indo-Pacific. This is a telling example of how the US strategy for the Indo-Pacific will lose traction as a result of its waning influence in West Asia.
The conventional wisdom is that preoccupation in volatile West Asia distracts Washington from paying attention to the Indo-Pacific and China. In reality, though, the waning influence in West Asia is complicating the capacity of the US to counter China both in the region as well as in the Indo-Pacific. The developments are moving in a direction where the credentials of the US as a great power are at an inflection point in West Asia – and that realization has leaked into other geographic regions around the world.
Way back in 2007, the distinguished political scientists John Mearsheimer of the University of Chicago and Stephen Walt of the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard, wrote with great prescience in their famous 34,000-word essay entitled The Israel Lobby and US Foreign Policy that Israel has become a ‘strategic liability’ for the United States, but retains its strong support because of a wealthy, well-organized, and bewitching lobby that has a ‘stranglehold’ on Congress and US elites.
The authors warned that Israel and its lobby bear outsized their responsibility for persuading the Bush Administration to invade Iraq and, perhaps one day soon, to attack the nuclear facilities of Iran.
Interestingly, on New Year’s Eve, in a special report based on extensive briefing by top US officials, the New York Times highlighted that “No other episode [as the war in Gaza] in the past half-century has tested the ties between the United States and Israel in such an intense and consequential way.”
Clearly, even as Israel’s barbaric actions in Gaza and its colonial project in the occupied West Bank are exposed and laid bare, and the Israeli state’s campaign to force Palestinian population migration are in full view, two of the US strategic objectives in the region are unravelling: first, the restoration of Israel’s military superiority in the balance of forces regionally and vis-a-vis the Axis of Resistance, in particular; and second, the resuscitation of the Abraham Accords where the crown jewels would have been a Saudi-Israeli treaty.
Viewed from another angle, the directions in which West Asia’s crisis unfolds are being keenly watched by the world community, especially those in the Asia-Pacific region. Most notable here is that Russia and China have given the US a free hand to navigate its military moves – unchallenged, so far, in the Red Sea. This means that any conflagration in the region will be synonymous with a catastrophic breakdown of US strategy.
Soon after the US defeat in Afghanistan in Central Asia, and coinciding with an ignominious ending of the US-led proxy war by NATO against Russia in Eurasia, a violent, grotesque setback in West Asia will send a resounding message across all of Asia that the US-led bandwagon has run out of steam. Among the end users of this startling message, the countries of ASEAN stand at the forefront. The bottom line is that the overlapping tumultuous events in Eurasia and West Asia are poised to coalesce into a climactic moment for world politics.
US Pressured Dutch Chipmaker ASML to Halt Sales to China
By Chimauchem Nwosu – Sputnik – 02.01.2024
A Netherland-based multinational microchip maker ASML Holding NV has halted scheduled shipments of production equipment to China at the behest of the United States.
That came days before the implementation of export controls on advanced ultraviolet lithography machines, sources familiar with the matter revealed to the press.
ASML is the sole producer of deep ultraviolet (DUV) lithography machines vital for the semiconductor industry, which is booming in China — much to the chagrin of politicians in Washington.
Under Biden’s government the US is stepping up attempts to hold back Beijing’s rapid development in the advanced semiconductor sector, with its allies also constraining chip tech exports.
Last year, Huawei Technologies debuted the Mate 60 Pro smartphone, featuring the indigenously-produced Kirin 9000S chip. The development was seen by the US as a challenge to Apple’s iPhone 15, which is powered by next-generation chips produced using ASML’s immersion lithography and was launched in 2023.
ASML confirmed that the Dutch authorities had restricted the export of specific lithography systems to China. Addressing media reports, the Dutch chipmaker mentioned ongoing talks with the US regarding export restrictions, offering no more details.
As the news broke, the stock values of Chinese chipmakers saw dips in their stock values. Semiconductor Manufacturing International (SMIC), a key supplier of Huawei’s 7-nanometer processors, saw its stock fall by three percent in Hong Kong on Tuesday. Hua Hong Semiconductor suffered a similar slump, dropping by 2.8 percent.
ASML, Europe’s most valuable technology firm, remained relatively stable at €679.80 at 9:32 a.m. in Amsterdam trading after falling by as much as 1.8 percent earlier.
US National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan contacted the Dutch government late last year about the ASML’s supply of the immersion deep ultraviolet lithography machines to China. Dutch officials told the White House to speak directly to the European chip giant.
Deliveries of some Chinese orders of the machines, each priced in the tens of millions of dollars, were reportedly canceled although the precise number remains undisclosed.
A representative from the Chinese Foreign Ministry denounced the US for meddling in China’s affairs, labeling it as a demonstration of American “hegemony” imposing artificial restrictions on other nations.
The official also called upon the Dutch authorities to “respect the spirit of the contract and world order, to safeguard the mutual benefits of the two countries.”
Under former president Donald Trump in 2019 the US pressured the Dutch government to block ASML, the sole producer of deep ultraviolet lithography machines vital for semiconductor production, from selling to China.
The Biden administration followed suit by pressuring the Netherlands to tighten export controls on ASML’s second-tier DUV machines to China from January 1 this year. In response, Beijing increased its imports of the restricted machines.
Chinese customs figues show imports of lithography machines into the country surged fivefold to $3.7 billion from July to November 2023.
In Q3 2023, China accounted for nearly half of ASML’s sales, representing 46 percent, which marked a significant increase from 24 percent in Q2 and just 8 percent in Q1 ending in March. This surge came as regional companies hastened their machine imports in anticipation of forthcoming export controls.
In October, ASML’s departing CEO, Peter Wennink, alerted shareholders that the imposed constraints might affect around 15 percent of their sales in China. He has voiced opposition, fearing these actions might prompt China to forge its own technological solutions.
“The more you put them under pressure, the more likely it is that they will double up their efforts,” Wennink told a news outlet.
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The toxic legacy of nuclear weapons testing serves as a stark warning of the danger these weapons pose
By Scott Ritter | RT | March 11, 2021
Millions of people suffer and die from the effects of radiation exposure from decades of nuclear weapons testing. Their experience should give serious pause to those who continue to embrace the viability of a nuclear deterrent. … continue
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