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Nord Stream explosions are a ‘tremendous opportunity’ – US

Samizdat | October 1, 2022

The US views the sabotage of the Nord Stream gas pipelines as a “tremendous opportunity” to wean the continent off of Russian energy, Secretary of State Antony Blinken told reporters on Friday. With winter approaching, Blinken said that the US wants Europe to decrease its fuel use.

Speaking to reporters in Washington, Blinken boasted that the US is now “the leading supplier of [liquefied natural gas] to Europe.” In addition to shipping its own fuel to Europe, Blinken said that the US is working with European leaders to find ways to “decrease demand” and “speed up the transition to renewables.”

“It’s a tremendous opportunity to once and for all remove the dependence on Russian energy and thus to take away from [Russian President] Vladimir Putin the weaponization of energy as a means of advancing his imperial designs,” Blinken declared.

The US likely stands to gain the most from the destruction of the Nord Stream 1 and Nord Stream 2 gas pipelines, which were damaged by a series of explosions off the Danish island of Bornholm earlier this week. Washington has for years been trying to convince European leaders to swap Russian gas for its LNG, and the severity of the damage to the undersea conduits now means that Europe is “indefinitely deprived” of Russian gas via this route, Russian energy operator Gazprom stated on Friday.

In a speech on Friday, President Vladimir Putin blamed the explosions on “the Anglo-Saxons,” a Russian colloquialism for the US-UK transatlantic alliance.

“It’s obvious to everyone who benefits from it,” Putin explained. “Those who benefit are the ones who have done it.”

While the way is now open for the US to sell its more expensive LNG to Europe, the shortfall cannot be covered overnight. US exporters warned throughout the summer that they will not be able to ship enough gas to meet demand on the continent, and many of Europe’s import terminals are still under construction or in planning.

Meanwhile, energy bills are skyrocketing across Europe. In Germany, which faces the prospect of rapid “deindustrialization,” protesters took to the streets to demand the re-opening of Nord Stream 2, just days before the explosions. Food shortages have been predicted in Germany and firewood is in hot demand across the continent as citizens struggle to heat their homes.

“There’s a lot of hard work to do to make sure that countries and partners get through the winter,” Blinken said, suggesting, as EU leaders have also done, that Europe work to “reduce demand” for gas.

October 1, 2022 Posted by | Russophobia | , | Leave a comment

Repressive Legislation in The New Abnormal

Doctors To Be Silenced

By Aaron Kheriaty, MD | Human Flourishing | September 30, 2022

Kim Iverson, a TV journalist formerly at The Hill and now streaming her own show on YouTube, has been one of the most honest and courageous voices during the pandemic. She is the rare journalist today who is willing to follow the evidence wherever it may lead. I sat down with her this morning for an interview about California’s latest attempt to suppress the free speech of physicians and undermine the doctor patient relationship. Assembly Bill 2098, which I have posted about previously—see Punishing Dissident Physicians and The Censorship of Medicine—is set to become law unless the governor vetoes it today.

I also had a wide-ranging two-part conversation with Dr. Drew Pinsky on his podcast recently, where we discussed my new book, The New Abnormal: The Rise of the Biomedical Security State. It’s available on the Apple Podcasts (link to Part 1 and Part 2), or your other favorite podcast app.

You can pre-order the book here and it will ship in one month…

October 1, 2022 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance, Science and Pseudo-Science, Video | , , , , | Leave a comment

Why did the Left Fail the Covid Test So Badly?

BY THOMAS HARRINGTON | BROWNSTONE INSTITUTE | SEPTEMBER 19, 2022

Like every other important social phenomenon, propaganda regimes have historical genealogies. For example, a very strong case could be made that the ongoing, and sad to admit, largely successful Covid propaganda onslaught under which we now live can trace its roots back to the two so-called demonstration wars (the Panama Invasion and the First Gulf Conflict) waged by George Bush Sr.

The American elites were badly stung by the country’s defeat in Vietnam. In it, they rightly saw a considerable curtailment of what they had come to see as their divine right since the end of WWII: the ability to intervene as they so fit in any country not explicitly covered by the Soviet nuclear umbrella.

And in their analysis of that failure, they correctly alighted to the role that the media—by simply bringing the tawdry and ignoble reality of the war into our living rooms—had played in undermining citizen willingness to engage in such fruitless, costly and savage adventures in the future.

With his massive military build-up and heavy support of proxies in Latin America in the eighties, Ronald Reagan took the first steps toward recovering this lost elite prerogative.

But it was not until the administration of George Bush Sr. and the two conflicts mentioned above that, as he himself exultantly put it in the wake of his pitiless slaughter of some 100,000 poorly equipped Iraqis, “We’ve kicked the Vietnam Syndrome once and for all.”

Bush knew what he was talking about, and it wasn’t necessarily, or even primarily, military force or prowess.

What had largely limited Reagan to proxy wars during eight years in office were two things. The first was a citizenry that still had fresh memories of the debacle in Southeast Asia. The second, and arguably more important one was a press corps with on-the-ground familiarity with the reality of these conflicts that continued to challenge him on both their morality and strategic efficacy.

Bush and his team, which as you’ll remember included one Richard Cheney at Defense, made remedying this “problem” of war-hesitancy one of the central aims of his presidency. As Barbara Trent suggests in her remarkable The Panama Deception, experimenting with new media management techniques was not a strategic sideshow of the conflict, but rather its prime goal.

The Panama invasion was followed in quick succession by the Gulf War, where press coverage put heavy emphasis on the opinions of US military figures and their explanations of the technical genius of American-made military technology. In this way, the war was presented to Americans as a sort of exciting video game characterized by flashes of light in the night and precision attacks devoid of any bloodshed and death.

This process of desensitizing of the media, and from there, the American people to the horrendous human effects of war-making culminated in the revolting spectacle, on January 30th, 1991 of reporters chuckling along with General Norman Schwartzkopf as he joked while showing them videos of supposed “smart bombs” killing people like ants from the safety of 30,000 feet.

Having received no coordinated pushback from anyone with power about this degrading treatment of human life and the American people, they tripled down and went full Manichaean after September 11th.

Why not?

With Reagan’s repeal of the fairness Doctrine in 1987 and Bill Clinton’s Telecommunications Act of 1996 never had the media been a) concentrated in so few hands b) so beholden to the government regulation for the continuance of the super-profitability generated through this consolidation c) debilitated by the internet-induced collapse of the newspaper business model and thus d) less obligated to the reflect take into account the concerns and interests of a broad spectrum of the American people.

It was now truly, as George Bush Jr said, a matter of “You’re either with us or against us,” us of course being the war-making government (including the Deep State) along with its slavishly loyal media mouthpieces. If like Susan Sontag—who whether you like her or not, was a very bright and highly accomplished thinker—you believed the maniacal presumptions of the US response to September 11th were flawed, and said so, you could in this new environment, expect to be the object of well-coordinated attacks on your character.

Never once did the administration call for restraint in such attacks, nor did any administration figures remind people of the importance of the supposedly American value of everyone’s right to be respectfully heard.

Seeing the exhaustion of the Bush brand after the Iraq debacle, the Deep State switched party allegiances in the run-up to the 2008 election. And it has stayed firmly on the side of the so-called “left” ever since, encouraging the use of Bush-Cheney-style government-media mobbing against those who might dare to question the motives of the sainted warmonger Obama, or, say, the “logic” of trying to reduce the problems of racism by promoting it through identity politics.

The efficiency of such mob-style takedown tactics was greatly enhanced by the dramatic expansion of social media platforms in the Obama and Trump years.

It is no exaggeration to say that a person born in 1990 or later has little if any understanding of what it means to disagree in detail and in good faith with someone whose political and/or social ideals are different than their own. Nor what it means to feel obligated to respond to the claims of others with careful factual refutations.

What they do know, because it’s mostly all that they have seen from their “betters,” is that to argue is to seek the destruction of one’s interlocutor, and failing that, to make sure his or her arguments are impeded from circulating freely in our shared civic spaces. The ever-increasing dialectical poverty of those who have been socialized and educated in this environment is evident to anyone who has served as a classroom instructor during the last quarter century.

A sanctuary for the weary 

While most people seemed to want to pretend that nothing new was happening, that the collaboration between media and government had always been this extreme, many of us did not. We had memories. And we knew the “field of thinkable thought” was dramatically smaller in 2005 than in 1978. And we knew it had become much, much smaller in 2018 than it was in 2005. In our search for answers we turned to media critics and scholars of media history. We also turned to the writings of journalist-activists with both interest and insight into these matters.

When it came to this last group, I found myself drawn principally to what might be termed leftist anti-imperialists. Reading them, I widened my understanding of how elites and their chosen “experts” manage information flows, and constantly seek to shrink the parameters of acceptable opinion on foreign policy issues.

Two years ago last March, however, my sense of intellectual kinship with this subset of thinkers suddenly became very strained. We were facing what I immediately recognized as the largest and most aggressive “perception management” campaign in recent times, and perhaps in the history of the world. One, moreover, that was utilizing all the techniques employed during the previous two to three decades to insure citizen allegiance to US war-making.

And yet in the face of it, almost all my go-to people on propaganda analysis had little or nothing to say. And when I sent contributions outlining my doubts about the congruity of the emergent Covid discourse to places that had generally welcomed my analyses of pro-war propaganda, suddenly there was hesitation on the other end.

And the passage of time cured nothing. Indeed, the only things these people said down the road; that is, if they addressed Covid at all, was to underscore the unprecedented severity of the situation (a very questionable assertion) and harp on Trump’s supposedly disastrous handling of it.

There was virtually no daylight between the opinions of these people and the feckless liberals they, as true-blue leftists, always claimed to disdain. And on it went, for the entire two years of the Covid panic.

A week or so ago, John Pilger, arguably one of the brightest and more persistent leftist analysts of establishment propaganda, published “Silencing the lambs: How propaganda works” on his website and then a number of progressive news outlets.

In it, he repeats all sorts of well-known ideas and concepts. There’s a reference to Leni Riefenstahl and how she believed the bourgeoisie are those most amenable to influence campaigns, a reminder of Julian Assange’s horrendous and undeserved fate, much deserved praise for Harold Pinter’s absolutely extraordinary if largely ignored Nobel acceptance speech, an intelligent discussion about how our media studiously refuses to tell us about anything that went on between Russia and the West, and Russia and Ukraine between 1990 and February of this year.

The underlying thesis of the piece is that while emitting and constantly pushing elite-approved messages are key elements of propaganda, so too is the strategic disappearance of essential historical realities and truths.

All good stuff. Indeed, all themes that I have written about with frequency and conviction over the years.

Toward the end piece Pilger asks the following rhetorical question:

When will real journalists stand up?

And a few lines later, after providing us with a list of where to find the few outlets and journalists that do know what they are doing when it comes to the elite’s informational misdirection plays, he adds:

And when will writers stand up, as they did against the rise of fascism in the 1930s? When will film-makers stand up, as they did against the Cold War in the 1940s? When will satirists stand up, as they did a generation ago?

Having soaked for 82 years in a deep bath of righteousness that is the official version of the last world war, isn’t it time those who are meant to keep the record straight declared their independence and decoded the propaganda? The urgency is greater than ever.

Reading this final flourish while remembering the lamb-like silence of John Pilger in the face of the sustained Covidian onslaught of institutionalized lies and Soviet-grade censorship, one doesn’t know whether to laugh or cry.

And when considering that virtually all those he endorses as exemplars of propaganda-savvy journalism—people such as Chris Hedges, Patrick Lawrence, Jonathan Cook, Diana Johnstone, Caitlin Johnstone all of whose work I have frequently and enthusiastically championed over the years—took the same cud-chewing path, the sense of farce only grows.

The same can be said of most all of the outlets (Grayzone, Mint Press News, Media Lens, Declassified UK, Alborada, Electronic Intifada, WSWS, ZNet, ICH, CounterPunch, Independent Australia, Globetrotter ) who portray themselves as being wise to the wiles of elite-sponsored influence operations.

Who, the question thus occurs to me, is actually living in a “a deep bath of righteousness” that impedes the ability to access the truths that lie beyond the “official version” of our past and present?

Who is failing to respond to the presence of fascistic tendencies in our midst?

If I didn’t know better, I’d swear it was John and his merry band of crack propaganda dissectors.

Is it that hard for them to see the shadow of fascism in the now heavily documented collaboration between the US government and Big Tech in censoring opinions that go counter to the government’s and Big Pharma’s desired discourse on Covid?

Is it really difficult for them to see the presence of the same dark forces in the US government’s insouciant abrogation of the Nuremberg principle relating to informed consent and medical experimentation?

Are they not troubled by the fact that the experimental vaccines that were sold to the population on the basis of their ability to stop infection do not do that? Or that this was known to anyone who read the FDA briefing papers published when these injections were unleashed on the public?

Does this count as a major “propaganda problem” worth looking into?

Do they care about the millions of people who lost their jobs over these lies, and of course the government’s abject disdain for the longstanding statutory right to object to medical treatment on religious grounds?

As long-time mavens of foreign policy, have they looked into the mafia-like nature of the vaccine contracts forced upon sovereign countries around the world?

Being the great sleuths of information-hiding that they are, did it raise any suspicions in them when Pfizer sought to keep all clinical information relating to the vaccines under wraps for 75 years?

And being the good progressives they are, did the enormous upward transfer of wealth that took place during the years of the Covid state of exception trouble them?

Did it light any suspicions that all this hullabaloo might not just be about health?

Have they organized support groups and action plans for the billions of children around the world whose lives were thrown into chaos by the useless quarantine and masking that was foisted upon them, and who, in all likelihood will never recover the years of developmental progress lost to this program of senseless cruelty?

I could go on.

As far as I can tell, the answer to all these questions is a resounding “NO!”

I am truly grateful for all that John Pilger and his companions in the leftist propaganda dissection cadres have taught me over the years. But as Ortega y Gasset said, a public intellectual is only as good as his ability to remain at the “height of his times.”

Sadly, this group of otherwise talented individuals has failed this test, badly, over the last two-plus years. As much as it may pain them to hear this, they have shown themselves to be much more like the “clerics” that Julien Benda rightly castigated in 1927 after they lost their moral bearings and their critical acuity before the massive propaganda onslaught used to promote the senseless slaughters of World War I.

Why these professional uncoverers of camouflaged realities of our times suddenly decided to unsee what was happening before their eyes is a job for future historians.

But if I had to hazard a guess today, I’d say that it had a lot to do with all the usual human things like fear of losing friends and prestige or being seen by ideological enforcers on their side as going over to the enemy. All of which is fine and understandable.

But if that is the case, isn’t it too much to publicly admit now that you missed the boat on this important story?

And if you can’t manage that, could you at least have the sense to stop issuing sermons on topics like “how propaganda works” for a good long while?

Thomas Harrington, Senior Scholar at Brownstone Institute, is Professor Emeritus of Hispanic Studies at Trinity College in Hartford, CT, where he taught for 24 years. His research is on Iberian movements of national identity and contemporary Catalan culture. His essays are published at Words in The Pursuit of Light.

September 30, 2022 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance, Progressive Hypocrite, Science and Pseudo-Science, Timeless or most popular | , | Leave a comment

The Democratic Party, Now the Leading Party of War

By John V. Walsh | The Greanville Post | September 27, 2022

Last May a remarkable column by Stephen Kinzer appeared in the Boston Globe. It was headlined: “Republicans Return To Their Roots As The Antiwar Party.”

More significantly, the subheading ran: “Since the Vietnam era, Americans have come to expect antiwar rhetoric from liberal Democrats. Cancel that.” It began:

“With Americans now engulfed in passion for Ukraine, it wasn’t surprising that President Biden proposed sending $33 billion worth of weaponry and other aid to Ukraine’s beleaguered military. Nor was it surprising that Congress raised the number to $40 billion, or that both the Senate and House of Representatives voted overwhelmingly in favor. Hidden within that lopsided vote, though, was a shocker: Every single “no” vote – 11 in the Senate and 57 in the House – came from a Republican.

“Since the Vietnam era, Americans have come to expect antiwar rhetoric from liberal Democrats. Cancel that. This month’s votes in Washington signal a dramatic role reversal. Suddenly it is conservative Republicans who oppose US involvement in foreign wars.”

Strikingly not only did the “conservative” Democrats vote for the $40 billion that included more weapons of death and destruction for Joe Biden’s cruel proxy war against Russia to the last Ukrainian. All the “progressives” did so, including AOC and The Squad, Bernie Sanders, Ro Khanna, Barbara Lee and all the rest. It was a clean sweep.

Second, this was not a one-off event. There is another vote coming up in the next few weeks for another $13.7 billion for Ukraine with over $7 billion for weapons. What is the response of the 100 Democrats to this request by Biden? The answer came during the September 11 Week Of Action called for by Code Pink and the progressive Peace In Ukraine Coalition reported here as follows:

“In the nation’s capital CODEPINK co-founders Medea Benjamin and Jodie Evans, together with Colonel Ann Wright and other activists, kicked off the Week of Action, going door to door to the offices of the House Congressional Progressive Caucus (CPC), …. While some members of the caucus call for much-needed diplomacy and raise concerns about the risk of nuclear war – either through a miscalculation or an intentional first strike – not one member of the nearly 100-member CPC will commit to voting against more weapons for Ukraine.” (Emphasis, jw)

This was also acknowledged in a very dispiriting interview by The GrayZone with prominent activists after the lobbying effort.

The pro-war mentality among the “progressive” Dem pols is not limited to Biden’s cruel proxy war to the last Ukrainian. It extends to a second proxy war now being ginned up in Taiwan. When Nancy Pelosi recently visited the island to stir up secessionist sentiment, not a single progressive Democrat in Congress made so much as a peep of protest. In fact Rep. Ro Khanna, Co-chair of Bernie Sanders’s 2020 Presidential campaign boosted it in rants on CNN and Twitter.

Both of these proxy wars bring the US into conflict with two other major global nuclear powers. If the progressive pols cannot be against military escalation in cases like this, it is hard to see that they have any claim to be for peace. And yet all too many activists in the progressive antiwar movement are loyal to them. In fact some peace organizations have gone so far as to endorse them for election in 2022, even after their vote for the $40 billion to Ukraine for example here!

Moreover this support for the proxy war in Ukraine shows up among rank and file Democrats as well. By every measure in a recent Ipsos poll taken after 6 months of war, support for intervention in Ukraine was higher among Democrats than among Republicans or Independents. IF the roots of this are partisan in nature, that is deeply disturbing because it means that Democrats will follow warhawks simply because they are Dems. Biden may be a case in point for such misplaced loyalty.

Let me end on a personal note. Working in peace organizations and coalitions, I find many activists who labor mightily for the cause of peace also maintain loyalty to the Democratic Party. And that loyalty extends especially to the “progressive” Democratic politicians. This is most disturbing because on the most important issues of war and peace, these peace activists get nothing in return. And since there is no price to pay for their hawkish votes, these politicians will simply ignore such activists. This is an abusive relationship and ought to be terminated forthwith.

The minimal policy of those who work for peace should be quite simple: no votes for politicians who vote to fund war in Ukraine – no matter the Party. Otherwise those who support war and US unipolarity will continue to ignore those who work for peace.

September 30, 2022 Posted by | Militarism, Progressive Hypocrite | | Leave a comment

Putin names orchestrator of Nord Stream blasts

Samizdat | September 30, 2022

The US orchestrated the blasts on the Nord Stream 1 and 2 gas pipelines in the Baltic Sea, which delivered Russian natural gas to Germany, because they “obviously” benefit from it, President Vladimir Putin said on Friday.

Putin accused Washington of trying to pressure the EU into banning Russian supplies to “completely get their hands on the European market.”

“But the sanctions are no longer enough for the Anglo-Saxons,” he said, using Russian shorthand for the US-UK transatlantic alliance. “They have turned to sabotage – it’s unbelievable, but it’s a fact – by organizing the explosions on the Nord Stream international gas pipelines,” the president stated.

“They de facto began the destruction of the common European energy infrastructure. It’s obvious to everyone who benefits from it. Those who benefit are the ones who have done it.”

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken denounced Putin’s statement as part of “outrageous misinformation and disinformation campaigns” coming from Moscow.

“I really have nothing to say to the absurd allegation from President Putin that we are or other partners or allies are somehow responsible for this,” Blinken said, according to AFP.

Putin was speaking at the Kremlin ahead of signing treaties on the inclusion of the two Donbass republics, as well as Kherson and Zaporozhye Regions, which declared independence from Ukraine, into the Russian Federation.

September 30, 2022 Posted by | War Crimes | , , | Leave a comment

Omerta in the Gangster War

By Diana Johnstone | Consortium News | September 28, 2022

Imperialist wars are waged to conquer lands, peoples, territories. Gangster wars are waged to remove competitors. In gangster wars you issue an obscure warning, then you smash the windows or burn the place down.

Gangster war is what you wage when you already are the boss and won’t let any outsider muscle in on your territory. For the dons in Washington, the territory can be just about everywhere, but its core is occupied Europe.

By an uncanny coincidence, Joe Biden just happens to look like a mafia boss, to talk like a mafia boss, to wear a little lopsided half smile like a mafia boss.  Just watch the now famous video:

Pres. Biden: “If Russia invades… then there will be no longer a Nord Stream 2. We will bring an end to it.”

Reporter: “But how will you do that, exactly, since…the project is in Germany’s control?”

Biden: “I promise you, we will be able to do that.”

Able for sure.

It cost billions of dollars to lay the Nord Stream 2 pipeline across the Baltic Sea, from near Saint Petersburg to the port of Greifsfeld in Germany. The idea was to ensure safe natural gas supplies to Germany and other European partners by going around troublesome Ukraine, known for readiness to use its transit rights to siphon off gas for itself or blackmail clients.

Of course, Ukraine was always vehemently hostile to the project. So was the United States. And so were Poland, the three Baltic States, Finland and Sweden, all attentive to what went on in their sea.

The Baltic Sea is a nearly closed body of water, with narrow access to the Atlantic through Danish and Swedish straits. The waters near the Danish island of Bornholm where the Nord Stream pipelines were sabotaged by massive underwater explosions is under constant military surveillance by these neighbors.

“It seems completely impossible that a state actor could carry out a major naval operation in the middle of this densely monitored area without being noticed by the countless active and passive sensors of the littoral states; certainly not directly off the island of Bornholm, where Danes, Swedes and Germans have a rendezvous in monitoring the surface and undersea activities,” writes Jens Berger in the excellent German website Nachdenkseiten.

Last June, Berger reports,

“the annual NATO maneuver Baltops took place in the Baltic Sea. Under the command of the U.S. 6th Fleet, 47 warships participated in the exercise this year, including the U.S. fleet force around the helicopter carrier USS Kearsarge. Of particular significance is one particular maneuver conducted by the 6th Fleet’s Task Force 68 — a special unit for explosive ordnance disposal and underwater operations of the U.S. Marines, the very unit that would be the first address for an act of sabotage on an undersea pipeline.”

In June this year this very unit was engaged in a maneuver off the island of Bornholm, operating with unmanned underwater vehicles.

Berger considers that a major sabotage operation “could not have been carried out directly under the noses of several littoral states without anyone noticing.” But he adds this clever observation: “if you want to hide something, it is best to do so in public.”

In order to be able to attach explosive devices to a gas pipeline halfway unnoticed, one would need a plausible distraction — a reason for diving near Bornholm without immediately being suspected of committing an act of sabotage. It doesn’t even have to be directly related in time to the attacks. Modern explosive devices can, of course, be detonated remotely. So, who has been conducting such operations in the maritime area in recent weeks? As luck would have it, exactly the same task force around the USS Kearsarge was again in the sea area around Bornholm last week.

In short, during NATO maneuvers, some participant could have laid the explosives, to be blown up at a later chosen moment.

By an odd coincidence, only a few hours after the sabotage of Nord Stream 1 and 2, ceremonies began opening the new Baltic Pipe carrying gas from Norway to Denmark and Poland.

The Political Significance of the Sabotage

Due to Western sanctions against Russia, gas was not being delivered through the destroyed pipelines. However, gas inside the pipelines is leaking dangerously. The pipelines remained ready for use whenever an agreement could be reached. And the first, dramatic significance of the sabotage is that henceforth, no agreement can be reached. Nord Stream 2 would have been the key to some sort of settlement between Russia and the Europeans. The sabotage has virtually announced that the war can only intensify with no end in sight.

In Germany, the Czech Republic and some other countries, movements were beginning to grow calling for an end to the sanctions, specifically to solve the energy crisis by putting Nord Stream 2 into operation for the first time. The sabotage has thus invalidated the leading demand of potential peace movements in Germany and Europe.

This act of sabotage is above all a deliberate sabotage of any prospect of a negotiated peace in Europe. The next move from the West has been for NATO governments to call on all their citizens to leave Russia immediately. In preparation of what?

The Russians Did It

In this catastrophic situation, Western mainstream media are all wondering who could be the guilty party, and suspicion automatically fixes on… Russia. Motive? “To raise the price of gas” or “to destabilize Europe” — things that were happening anyway. Any far-fetched notion will do.

European opinion-makers are showing the result of 70 years of Americanization. Especially in Germany, but also in France and elsewhere, for decades the United States has systematically spotted up-and-coming young people, invited them to become “young leaders,” invited them to the United States, indoctrinated them in “our values” and made them feel like members of the great trans-Atlantic family. They are networked into top positions in politics and media. In recent years, great alarm is raised about alleged Russian efforts to exert “influence” in European countries, while Europeans bathe in perpetual American influence: movies, Netflix, pop culture, influence in universities, media, everywhere.

When disaster strikes Europe, it can’t be blamed on America (except for former President Donald Trump, because the American establishment despised and rejected him, so Europeans must do the same).  It has to be the bad guy in the movie, Putin.

The fanatically anti-Russian former Polish Foreign Minister Radek Sikorsky couldn’t restrain himself and joyously greeted the massive natural-gas leaks from the destroyed pipeline with a cheerful tweet, “Thank you, USA.” But Poland was certainly also willing, and perhaps even able. So perhaps were some others in NATO-land. But they all prefer to publicly “suspect” Russia.

Officially, so far, no NATO government knows who dunnit. Or maybe they all know. Maybe this is like the famous Agatha Christie mystery on the Orient Express train, where suspicion falls on all the passengers, and are all guilty. And all united in Omerta.

Diana Johnstone is the author of Fools’ Crusade: Yugoslavia, NATO, and Western Delusions. Her latest book is  Circle in the Darkness: Memoirs of a World Watcher (Clarity Press). The memoirs of Diana Johnstone’s father Paul H. Johnstone, From MAD to Madness, was published by Clarity Press, with her commentary. She can be reached at diana.johnstone@wanadoo.fr .

September 30, 2022 Posted by | False Flag Terrorism, War Crimes | , | Leave a comment

Russian security chief names ‘obvious’ beneficiary of pipeline rupture

Samizdat | September 30, 2022

The US stands to benefit economically from the attack on the Nord Stream gas pipelines and has a record of targeting energy infrastructure with sabotage operations, the head of Russia’s Security Council said.

“Pretty much from the first minutes after the news of the explosions broke … the West launched an active campaign for assigning blame. But it is obvious that the primary beneficiary, first of all in the economic sense, was the US,” Nikolay Patrushev said on Friday.

He compared this week’s incident with the attack on Nicaragua’s oil infrastructure in Puerto Sandino in 1983. Back then CIA officers, based on a ship moored in international waters, coordinated a raid by commandos they had trained to fight against the Sandinista government, US press reported at the time. The US spy agency also provided speed boats for the raid, a CIA source explained, according to Associated Press.

The operation was part of the Reagan administration’s “dirty war” on Nicaragua, which later led to the Iran-Contras scandal. The CIA’s secret sale of weapons to Iran to fund Latin American militants was exposed in 1986.

Patrushev made the remarks at a meeting with fellow security officials from former Soviet nations.

“It appears to be necessary to coordinate our effort to expose the masterminds and executors of this crime, setting a good example for effective cooperation,” he told his counterparts.

He noted that the US goal was “ensuring strategic and economic superiority over alternative centers of power” even though Washington’s ally the EU has been suffering from its policies. The US is replacing Russian natural gas with its more expensive liquified natural gas, as the bloc moves to decouple its economy from Russian energy sources.

The leaks in the two Nord Stream pipelines were first detected on Monday, when pressure in the undersea links connecting Russia directly to Germany drastically dropped. The pipelines were apparently breached with explosives, with the blasts detected by earthquake sensors in Sweden.

Moscow called the incident an international terrorist attack against civilian infrastructure, while some Western officials described it as an act of sabotage.

Some critics of Russia speculated that Moscow decided to blow up its own gas links with Germany to put pressure on the EU.

Polish MEP and former Foreign Minister Radoslaw Sikorski thanked the US for the incident, but later deleted the tweet, calling his implied assertion of Washington’s involvement a personal working theory.

September 30, 2022 Posted by | False Flag Terrorism | , , | Leave a comment

Western economic warfare backfired, new depression likely to come

What awaits Europe with Nord Stream pipelines possibly gone forever?

By Uriel Araujo | September 30, 2022

Now that the Nord Stream pipeline might have been sabotaged by Washington, as promised by US President Joe Biden on January 7, and is possibly gone forever (according to German authorities), it is time to consider the possible impacts. 

The energy crisis in the EU has always been pushed by American interests. Moreover, the US has been engaging in economic warfare and even weaponizing the dollar for too long, but it has been clear for months now that its current economic and financial war against Russia has backfired – and once again, mostly upon Europe. Such economic wars in fact may dangerously spiral out of control, and are considered to be one of the causes of the 1929 crisis in the post-Versailles world.

Philip Pilkington, an Irish economist who works in investment finance, famous for his contributions on the empirical estimate of general equilibrium and other fields, has made quite interesting observations about the possible deindustrialization of Europe as a consequence of economic warfare. He remarks on how in the post-pandemic world debts in the West have been accumulating and, on top of that, the current conflict in Ukraine has brought extra energy costs.

After the conflict ends – or becomes a “frozen conflict” – or after good diplomacy is reestablished, Russia could start to once again supply gas to Europe as usual – this is how many analysts reasoned. However, now that the pipelines are gone, the price of energy in the continent is to remain tremendously high for years to come. With permanent high energy prices making manufacturing not economically viable anymore (thus decreasing European purchasing power), one should expect to see the bloc shutting out exports to revive an uncompetitive industry while increasing energy investments. These are Pilkington’s main points and it might be worth delving into them.

Pilkington argues that high energy costs will make the European industry largely uncompetitive because manufacturers will have no choice but to also raise the price of goods, which in turn, will not be able to compete with cheaper foreign goods. The economist goes on to argue that, in this scenario, with many manufacturers out of business, the result will be the loss of key jobs, with less employed people spending money and a new economic depression. 

Thus, Pilkington reasons, the United States will not be able to “reshore” European manufacturing for too long because there simply won’t be anyone in the continent to buy the products the US ships to European shores. This crisis will thus affect Americans too, because as exports to Europe fall, US workers also lose their jobs. What could EU states do in such a scenario? The Irish economist writes quite convincingly that a tariff solution would be the most obvious one: by raising tariffs, these countries will be able to “render international products as expensive as the domestic products suffering from energy cost inflation.”

The result of that can only be more economic chaos for the West, while Europe “shuts itself off” and becomes a kind of a “black hole”, in a repetition of the 1920 events which resulted in the Great Depression, writes Philip Pilkington.

However, the global situation today has changed much, with the BRICS+ alliance, apparently aimed at “decoupling from the Western economy.” For a while, the rise in commodity prices has been perceived as a result of Western sanction policies, and this has forced the global south to look for parallel mechanisms and alternatives. Therefore, these emerging powers have the potential to build a “separate economic bloc”, which means the West would suffer the most from the economic chaos, as BRICS+ “has a relatively clean bill of economic health”. 

All of this is a quite likely scenario and one should also consider the political implications. The economic crisis will in all likelihood bring back protectionism, and it might come accompanied by a 1930-like political climate. This in turn can only strengthen the populist camp in Europe. Populist and so-called “far-right” tendencies have been growing in the continent for years and the time seems to be just right for speeding up this phenomenon.

One remembers defeated French Presidential candidate Marine Le Pen promised to pull France out of NATO during this years’ elections. Meanwhile, in August, Hungary had once again the lowest energy prices in the EU. Over 8,700 sanctions have been imposed on Moscow, and yet they have hurt Europe more than Russia as Hungary’s Prime Minister Viktor Orban has been a strong critic of such sanctions. In fact, whether one likes the man or not, he has oftentimes been the voice of reason in the bloc. Now, the German eurosceptic Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) political party is heavily focusing on attacking European elites and opposing the German government’s sanctions against Russia. This trend is everywhere across the EU. 

It is about time Europe assert its sovereignty, however such a political stance is largely marginalized in the continent. Thus, although a European populist wave should increase skepticism about NATO and the EU itself, it will also increase political instability and turmoil. To sum it up, in the worst post-Nord Stream scenario, one can then expect a deindustrialized and isolated Europe going through a serious political and economic crisis.

Uriel Araujo is a researcher with a focus on international and ethnic conflicts.

September 30, 2022 Posted by | Economics, Russophobia | , | Leave a comment

Our Op-Ed Rebuttal to California’s Legislative War on Doctors

Ron Johnson, the only Federal politician that has publicly called out the deep corruption behind the failed U.S COVID response, is helping protect doctors.

By Pierre Kory, MD, MPA | September 28, 2022

Senator Ron Johnson and I just published an Op-Ed Monday on the Fox News site, the 3rd most visited news site on the internet, with almost one billion visits per month.

As some are probably aware, California’s Legislature just passed an obscenity of a bill titled “AB 2098” which calls for the state’s medical board to revoke the license of any physician who expresses an opinion “contradicted by contemporary scientific consensus to the standard of care.” I am not even sure what that means but holy cow, they just literally started to outlaw opinions.

Not sure which genius came up with that bill but to pretend there is a “scientific consensus” on a novel disease and a novel gene therapy is absurd. That is not how science works. Medicine is (was?) constantly trying to increase its knowledge base throughout history. In fact, one of the core responsibilities of a physician is not just to care for a patient as their “primary consideration” but also to add knowledge to the discipline and to teach it to others. Here is another responsibility articulated in the Hippocratic Oath written around the 4th century BC: Neither will I administer a poison to anybody when asked to do so, nor will I suggest such a course. Whoa. Hippocrates was warning us 24 centuries ago about the situation of being asked to administer poisons. Wow.

Anyway, what is medical consensus – is it state-wide, national or international? I am sure there are more than a couple of California doctors (or maybe not) whose opinions conflict with the captured Federal health agencies but are instead supported by academies of scientists and health agencies in other countries. Or even states like Tennessee that made ivermectin legally available over the counter to its citizens!

Denmark long ago restricted any person under 30 from getting the Moderna “vaccine.” In the US we now give it to toddlers. I repeat, in the U.S, we now give it to toddlers. If I object to injecting toddlers with Moderna, using the same “science” that Denmarks authorities are using, am I then a misinformationist that should not be allowed to practice medicine? What would happen to me if I go even further and espouse Denmark’s latest guidance which is to not recommend COVID mRNA vaccination to any low risk individual under 50? I guess the California State Department of Health guidance would trump that of Denmark’s. Watch out Denmark, here I come!

The scariest part of that legislation to me is that it reflects a complete ignorance of decades of evidence demonstrating that our Federal Health Agencies are under regulatory capture by the Pharmaceutical Industry. Just look at all the shenanigans the PFDA (the P is not a typo) pulled to sell the most vaccines. The below policies were all written by the Pharmaceutical Industry and issued by the PFDA, yet California doctors who know this and try to warn their patients in order to protect them from the evils of that industry could lose their license. Remember these two brilliant scientific standards?

(I paraphrase from memory)

  1. Testing is no longer indicated for those who have received COVID mRNA vaccination (luckily this one didn’t last very long).
  2. Testing for antibodies to assess prior exposure to COVID is not recommended prior to administering COVID mRNA vaccination.

They literally tried to avoid gathering data that would prove the vaccines were ineffective. Then they literally established that natural immunity should be ignored. With no data to support those “standards.” One of the greatest absurdities in the history of medicine was the fact that the entire health system started vaccinating people right after they recovered from COVID. They didn’t even wait for the variant to change first. But, if you publicly express a difference of opinion with this expert approach to managing an infectious disease, your livelihood could be taken away from you. Seriously? What is happening in America? This is absolutely terrifying stuff. Fantods ripple up and down my spine as I contemplate the very high possibility that such an absurd bill could start spreading across the country, trampling on the very Constitution it is supposedly supported by.

Further, in order to establish a “true” consensus and/or standard of care guideline it has been estimated to require numerous studies over an average of 17 years. So, am I not allowed to voice an opinion until 17 years of studies pass? In a novel pandemic in which insights and data accumulate rapidly? What if I am an expert way ahead of the curve based on research I am doing and/or the ever evolving data and insights I gain from treating patients with this novel disease. Should I be quiet for 17 years until such a time when my insights and expertise are more widely established and accepted?

How will our silence ever get us to that consensus? How will my patients fare during that time? Stay home, wait until your lips turn blue because I am not allowed to have an opinion or practice in treating you if it differs from either non-treatment or giving pathetic Paxlovid, a drug which has one mechanism of action identical to that of just one of ivermectin’s many mechanisms. This is exhausting.

And should I ignore the decades of examples of corruption of the medical sciences via its journals and research funding? The vehicles that have propagated guidelines on any number of fraudulent medications (SSRI’s, statins, Xygris, Oxycontin, Vioxx, Bextra, Avandia and many more). Should I be silent until those frauds are more widely exposed?

Think about all the doctors who saved their patients from those frauds despite being propagated as “medical consensus” at the time? A free and open scientific debate, championing those voices without conflicts of interest is what is needed. Instead this bill will silence those without conflicts while further amplifying the media megaphone of vaccine manufacturer CEO’s. These are dark dark times.

And why are we suddenly displacing the time honored protections of medical malpractice – where the consequences of harming a patient was borne by the physician if they adopted an idea or practice which hurt a patient. That has kept doctors in line for decades. But now, prior to any idea or practice I espouse actually resulting in harm, my opinion would be silenced or else I lose my license to practice. This is an obscenity. This would disappear care practices that would help patients far more frequently than it would care practices that harm patients.

This bill will lead to even more morbidity and mortality, not only in COVID, but in other diseases as well. Pharma already controls the medical journals and Federal Health agencies. But they don’t control independent physician’s opinions and voices. Well, at least they didn’t until now.

Good luck California, I fear for you. No-one from the medical field will be able to warn you of the continued rampages of a documented criminal industry.

Our Op-Ed is here, but I think I already covered most of it. Enjoy, although it ain’t fun.

September 29, 2022 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance, Science and Pseudo-Science, Timeless or most popular | , , | Leave a comment

Should Europeans ‘Thank’ the Americans for Destroying Nord Stream?

By Robert Bridge | Strategic Culture Foundation | September 29, 2022

With an investigation continuing into the destruction of the Nord Stream gas pipeline that provided energy supplies to Europe from Russia, there appears to be just one prime suspect, and that should surprise nobody.

Following the sabotage of the Nord Stream 1 and 2 gas pipelines, former Polish Foreign Minister Radoslaw Sikorski already seemed to know the identity of the perpetrator when he tweeted out: “Thank you, USA.”

At first glance, it seemed that Sikorski was speaking sarcastically, berating Washington for carrying out an attack that will have severe repercussions for the people of Europe. After all, how could anyone see any good coming from the termination of Europe’s primary source of gas reserves with winter just around the corner? It was Sikorski’s homeland of Poland, after all, that urged its citizens to collect firewood in the face of dwindling gas reserves.

In fact, the Polish diplomat was speaking one-hundred percent literally, thanking the United States for plunging the continent deeper into the abyss. This has been the attitude of European leaders from the start of Russia’s special military operation in Ukraine: ‘we will accept our self-destruction as scripted by Washington policymakers so long as the baddies in Moscow hear our virtue-signaling whimpers and screams.’ European capitals are about to learn the hard way that virtue signaling does not put food on the table or heat homes.

Judging by the rising temperature in Europe, however, last seen in Italy where a far-right leader has come to power on the wave of voters fed up with high electricity bills and loose immigration, the phrase ‘Thank you, USA’ may eventually be chiseled into Europe’s tombstone.

But first, the big question: was the United States really responsible for the destruction of Nord Stream, as Sikorski seems to believe? Well, if we were are to take bumbling Joe Biden at his word, then the answer would seem to be yes.

“If Russia invades, that means tanks or troops crossing the border of Ukraine, again, then there will be — there will be no longer a Nord Stream 2,” the U.S. leader told reporters two weeks before Russia began its Ukrainian mission. “We will bring an end to it.”

When asked to specify, Biden responded, “I promise you, we’ll be able to do it.”

There are other clues that point to American complicity.

On September 2, an American helicopter with the call sign FFAB123 was observed maneuvering in the area of the Nord Stream pipelines. According to the site ads-b.nl, six aircraft used this call sign that day, of which the tail numbers of three were established. All of them were Sikorsky MH-60S. By overlaying the FFAB123 route on the scheme marking the areas of the explosions, it is observable that the helicopter either flew along the Nord Stream-2 route, or exactly between the points where the ‘accident’ occurred.

Meanwhile, on Twitter, there are screenshots of other American aircraft flights as of September 13th in exactly the same area. In June there was an article in Sea Power magazine where the Americans boast of experiments in the field of underwater drones that they set up at the BALTOPS 22 exercises – in the area of Bornholm Island, the Danish island where the explosions were reported to have occurred.

“Experimentation was conducted off the coast of Bornholm, Denmark, with participants from Naval Information Warfare Center Pacific, Naval Undersea Warfare Center Newport, and Mine Warfare Readiness and Effectiveness Measuring all under the direction of U.S. 6th Fleet Task Force 68,” Sea Power reports.

Such an “experiment” would have required the deep-sea equipment needed for reaching the depths where the Nord Stream pipelines are located.

Finally, here’s one last tantalizing piece of information for all of the ‘coincidence theorists’ out there. On the day after Nord Stream 1 and 2 went offline, Poland, Norway and Denmark’s leaders attended the opening ceremony of the new Baltic Pipe, which will transport natural gas from Norway via Denmark and through the Baltic Sea to, yes, Sikorski’s ferociously Russophobic homeland of Poland. Yes, just a coincidence.

However, the main motivating factor for Washington having a hand in destroying Nord Stream is the awesome powers – both financial and political – that it will reap. The economic crisis in Europe is already forcing companies and corporations to consider relocating to the U.S., which is providing a better business environment and more or less affordable electricity bills.

And after the destruction of Nord Stream, the economic situation on the continent will deteriorate significantly. Even though the NS-II was not launched, there was the chance of its launch, and this “chance” had a considerable effect on the market. Now, without its main energy supplier, Europe is doomed while America will soar.

The economic destruction of Europe makes it totally dependent on the U.S. economically, politically, and militarily, turning it into a toothless tiger with no political will and independence. At the same time, Europe will become almost completely dependent on the U.S. for its (prohibitive) gas. The United States plans to supply at least 15 billion cubic metres (bcm) of liquefied natural gas (LNG) to European Union markets this year as Europe seeks to wean itself off Russian gas supplies.

In other words, the transformation of the EU into a banana republic – albeit it one in the northern hemisphere with winter quickly approaching – has already begun.

Europe, you really should have heeded the advice of Henry Kissinger, who understands the nature of the U.S. better than anyone: “To be an enemy of the U.S. is dangerous, but to be a friend is fatal.”

September 29, 2022 Posted by | Economics, War Crimes | , | Leave a comment

Who wins from demolishing the EU’s gas lifelines?

By Rachel Marsden | Samizdat | September 29, 2022

Speculation abounds since both Nord Stream 1 and 2 pipelines, designed to carry cheap Russian gas to Europe, were damaged this week in what officials widely describe as deliberate acts of sabotage. Who could be responsible? Incidents buried in the past may provide a clue.

Speculation abounds, and typically in a direction colored by the preexisting biases of the person speculating – which is hardly helpful.

Let’s start with the end result and work backwards. The outcome ultimately means that Europe’s economic impetus for ever seeking peace with Russia has been seriously undermined, if not literally destroyed. Someone has taken it upon themselves to demolish the remaining bridges between the two. Until now, there was always a chance of reconciliation. Russian President Vladimir Putin said himself recently that all the EU needed to do to pull itself out of its self-imposed energy crisis was to push the button on its gas supply from Russia and drop the anti-Russian sanctions that prevent it from doing so.

People in the streets of German cities protesting against Berlin’s blind following of Brussels’ anti-Russia sanctions also knew that was the answer. But now that option has been taken off the table. The EU is now adrift amid a deepening energy crisis and someone burned its last sails. It’s clear that Europe itself wouldn’t benefit from that. Nor does it benefit at all from any of its own anti-Russian sanctions. But who gave Brussels that idea, to harm its own economy in the first place?

At the onset of the Ukrainian conflict, it was Washington that egged on the EU to mirror measures that Washington itself had adopted in an effort to deprive Moscow of revenues to fuel its interests and objectives in Ukraine. The problem is that the EU’s economy was far more entwined with Russia’s than America’s. Any sense that US President Joe Biden and his administration may have given EU leaders, that they’d be there to help the bloc soften the blow of its self-sacrificial sanctions, has since been replaced by a harsh, pragmatic reality. US shale executives have explained to Western media that they simply lack the capacity to ramp up production for Europe’s winter crunch, even amid the growing rationing, deindustrialization, and risk of blackouts.

So, pressure has recently been increasing on EU member states to achieve a rapid diplomatic, peaceful resolution. But any reconnection of Nord Stream gas would have been a blow to US economic ambitions, which eventually include turning the EU into a dependent liquefied natural gas client. To that end, US officials have even tried to market their natural gas in the past as “freedom molecules,” in contrast to the “authoritarian” Russian gas.

Biden himself said of Nord Stream 2 during a press conference on February 7, before the Ukraine conflict had even popped off, that “we will bring an end to it,” despite it being out of American control. But even long before that, the US was sanctioning and bullying European companies into halting construction on Nord Stream 2 under the pretext of saving Europe from Russia. It’s worth noting that Europe didn’t really have problems with Russia this century until the US decided to make Ukraine an outpost for the State Department.

Not only did Gazprom, Russia’s state-owned operator of the pipeline, persist against all odds to finish it, but it’s really the only leverage that Moscow has in Europe. Attributing to Moscow the recent sabotage of their own economic interests in Europe seems absurd. The damage done to the pipelines now means that to prevent them from being completely filled with sea water and destroyed, Russia is forced to keep pumping gas through them and into the sea at their own expense. What exactly does Moscow gain from any of this? Conversely, what does Washington gain? Nothing less than Brussels’ full dependence, which proved elusive when Europe could split its interests between the east and west.

As for who possesses the technical ability to execute underwater pipeline sabotage, both Russia and the US do. Much has been made in the past of the potential for cutting undersea cables – defined as an act of war by UK defense chief Admiral Sir Tony Radakin. The US actually has a history in such operations, having tapped into undersea cables to spy on the Soviet Union in the 1970s Operation Ivy Bells, according to public records about Operation Ivy Bells. Washington also has sabotaged Soviet gas pipelines before, albeit indirectly – according to Thomas C. Reed, a former Air Force secretary who served on the National Security Council in 1982, when then-US President Ronald Reagan allegedly approved a plan for the CIA to sabotage components of a pipeline operated by the Soviet Union. The objective was to prevent Western Europe from importing natural gas from the Soviets. Sound familiar?

Time and inquiry will uncover the culprit eventually – if we’re lucky. EU officials are vowing to get to the bottom of it. “All available information indicates leaks are the result of a deliberate act. Deliberate disruption of European energy infrastructure is utterly unacceptable and will be met with a robust and united response,” Tweeted the bloc’s chief diplomat, Josep Borrell. Perhaps investigators could pay a visit to Radoslaw Sikorski, European Parliament member and former Polish foreign minister, who tweeted a photo of the disaster aftermath along with the note, “Thank you, USA.”

But if it indeed turns out that Washington committed what some consider to be an act of war against Europe’s economy, will Brussels have the heart to really confront it? Or will Brussels continue to find justifications to remain complicit in its own demise?

Rachel Marsden is a columnist, political strategist, and host of independently produced talk-shows in French and English. rachelmarsden.com

September 29, 2022 Posted by | Economics, Russophobia, War Crimes | , , , | Leave a comment

Kamala Harris’ visit to Tokyo aims to destroy Sino-Japanese relations

By Ahmed Adel | September 29, 2022

US Vice President Kamala Harris is on a trip to Japan and South Korea, her first visit to Japan and her second to Asia since taking office early last year. Ahead of the US midterm elections in November, Harris has increased her attacks on China, something she has not stopped doing since arriving in Japan on September 26 for the state funeral of assassinated former leader Shinzo Abe.

During a meeting in Tokyo on September 26, the American Vice President and Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida condemned China’s actions in the Taiwan Strait. A White House statement described Beijing’s actions in the Taiwan Strait as “aggressive and irresponsible provocations.” 

Meanwhile, a series of visits to Taiwan by senior US officials and the increased US supply of weapons to the island have heightened tension in the region. It is evident that China’s actions are only a response against US-instigated provocations.

With these statements, the US has increased propaganda and support for actions against China. There is growing Western desire to erode the “One China” principle and Japan is increasingly participating in these actions. For Beijing, it is not just a matter of military exercises, warships passing through the Taiwan Strait and arms shipments to Taiwan, but an intensification of Western propaganda to put psychological pressure on China and normalise the idea of an independent Taiwan. 

The gradual erosion of the “One China” principle is evident. Most of Asia is well aware of the American falsehoods, but this is influencing its partners in the West and Japan to the idea of an independent Taiwan. 

At the meeting with the Japanese Prime Minister, Kamala Harris reaffirmed the US commitment to Japan’s security, but in return, Washington wants Tokyo to be more active in containing China. Washington’s main aim is to disrupt the process of improving Sino-Japanese relations. The US is counting on Japan’s help to incite tensions with China.

It is recalled that the provocative actions against China by former US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, who visited Taiwan for the second time this year on September 26, also failed to bring the desired results, according to Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Wang Wenbin. On his first trip in early March, Pompeo was awarded Taiwan’s highest award for his contributions in promoting Taiwan-US relations. To express his “deep gratitude”, the American politician described Taiwan as a “great nation” with a developed democracy.

However, his second visit was even more provocative as he announced that Taiwan “doesn’t need to declare independence because it already is an independent country.” This statement prompted the Chinese Foreign Ministry to say in a statement that Pompeo’s calculations will not materialise, describing him as “a former politician of diminished credibility who staged these stunts for personal political gains.”

Adding to insult, Pompeo said in Taiwan: “China’s aggressive conduct, diplomatically, militarily, economically … have changed this region. And it brought those who prefer peace and commerce even more closely together. If we want a free 21st century, and not the Chinese century, the century which Xi Jinping dreams of, the old paradigm of blind engagement must end.”

It has not been unnoticed that the 50th anniversary of Sino-Japanese relations, marked on September 29, has been darkened due to differences over Taiwan. Beijing is becoming increasingly wary of Tokyo as it forges closer ties with Taiwan amid growing tensions, which Harris’ visit only provokes further.

According to Japan Times, an official from a Chinese group for bilateral friendship, who was also involved in commemorative events in 2012 for the 40th anniversary of bilateral relations, pointed to the absence of momentum in celebrating the 50th anniversary. The official said that Chinese people feel betrayed by Japan over Taiwan.

When Beijing and Tokyo normalised ties in 1972, Japan said that it understood and respected the notion that Taiwan is an integral part of Chinese territory. The Global Times, the English mouthpiece of the Chinese government, said this month that Japan “tends to turn its back” on the promise it made 50 years ago.

Japan will be “able to create favourable conditions for the bilateral relations” only by keeping its promise, the Global Times also said.

However, there is little indication that Tokyo wants to deescalate tense relations with Beijing, and rather, it is more likely that things will become worse before they become better, especially following Harris’ visit to Japan and Pompeo emboldening Taiwan towards independence rather than unification with mainland China.

Ahmed Adel is a Cairo-based geopolitics and political economy researcher.

September 29, 2022 Posted by | Aletho News | , , | Leave a comment

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