A boat in international waters that is not running a national flag is categorized in international law the same way a pirate is. Such boats have absolutely no national or international protections, and you cannot commit a war crime against them.
A vessel in international waters is required under UNCLOS to sail under the flag of a specific nation. If it does not, it is legally considered a stateless vessel. A stateless vessel has no right to the protections normally afforded to ships under a national flag, including immunity from interference by other states.
UNCLOS Articles 92, 94, 110, and customary maritime law spell out the consequences clearly:
1. Stateless vessels have no sovereign protection. A flagged ship is an extension of its flag-state’s sovereignty. A stateless vessel is not. This matters because “war crimes” presuppose protected persons or protected property. A stateless vessel is legally unprotected.
2. Any state may stop, board, search, seize, or disable, a stateless vessel. UNCLOS Article 110 explicitly authorizes boarding and seizure. The law does not require states to risk their own personnel or assets while doing so. Disabling a vessel that refuses inspection, including firing on it, is legally permitted under both UNCLOS and long-established state practice.
3. War crimes require an armed conflict. You cannot commit a “war crime” outside an armed conflict. War crimes occur only within the context of international humanitarian law (IHL). Enforcing maritime law against a stateless vessel is a law enforcement action, not an IHL situation.
No armed conflict = no war crime possible.
4. Lethal force may be used when a vessel refuses lawful orders. The International Maritime Organization’s “Use of Force” guidance for maritime interdiction recognizes that disabling fire, even lethal force, is lawful when a vessel refuses lawful boarding, attempts to flee, poses a threat, or engages in illicit activities such as piracy or narcotics trafficking.
Once again: law enforcement rules apply, not IHL.
5. Sinking a stateless vessel is not prohibited by UNCLOS. UNCLOS permits seizure of a stateless vessel and leaves the means entirely to the enforcing state so long as necessity and proportionality are respected. If the vessel flees, attacks, or refuses lawful commands, sinking it is legally permissible. Many states routinely do this to drug-smuggling vessels (e.g., semi-submersibles) without it ever being treated as a war crime.
6. No flag = no jurisdictional shield. The entire reason international law requires ships to fly a flag is to prevent this exact situation. Flagless vessels are legally vulnerable by design.
Because a stateless vessel has no protected status, because UNCLOS authorizes interdiction of such vessels, because lethal force may be used in maritime law enforcement when necessary, and because war crimes require an armed conflict that is not present here, sinking an unflagged ship in international waters is not a war crime.
Donald J. Trump, 45th & 47th President of the United States
Donald John Trump (born June 14, 1946) is an American politician, media personality, and businessman who served as the 45th president of the United State from 2017 to 2021. He won the 2024 election as the nominee of the Republican Party and is now the president-elect of the United States. He is scheduled to begin his second term on January 20, 2025, as the nation’s 47th president and will be the second president in American history to serve nonconsecutive terms, with Grover Cleveland being the first.
Russell Thurlow Vought (born March 26, 1976), or Russ Vought is an American former government official who was the director of the Office of Management and Budget from July 2020 to January 2021. He was previously deputy director of the OMB for part of 2018, and acting director from 2019 to 2020.
Sebastian Gorka & Alex Wong, Senior National Security Staff
Doug Collins, Secretary of Veteran’s Administration(VA)
Paul Douglas Collins (born July 28, 1951) is an American basketballexecutive, former player, coach and television analyst in the National Basketball Association (NBA). He played in the NBA from 1973 to 1981 for the Philadelphia 76ers, earning four NBA All-Star selections. He then became an NBA coach in 1986, and had stints coaching the Chicago Bulls, Detroit Pistons, Washington Wizards and Philadelphia 76ers. Collins also served as an analyst for various NBA-related broadcast shows.[1] He is a recipient of the Curt Gowdy Media Award. In April 2024, Collins was elected to the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame class of 2024 by the Contributors Committee.[2]
President Donald Trump announced on July 28, 2019, that he intended to nominate Ratcliffe to replace Dan Coats as director of national intelligence.[8][9] Ratcliffe withdrew after Republican senators raised concerns about him, former intelligence officials said he might politicize intelligence, and media revealed Ratcliffe’s embellishments regarding his prosecutorial experience in terrorism and immigration cases.[10][11][12][13]
Tulsi Gabbard, Director of National Intelligence (DNI)
• Is Bessent Compromised By Association with Soros & Rockefellers? • Scott Bessent, who will lead the Treasury Department, previously worked at George Soros Fund Management from 1991 to 2000, and then again as Chief Investment Officer from 2011 to 2015. During this period, he made a significant bet against the British pound, contributing to Soros’ famous “breaking of the Bank of England” and earning billions for the firm. The London office was led by Peter Soros, George Soros’ nephew, who has been named by Epstein’s former butler, Alfred Rodriguez, as having been involved in Epstein’s s*x trafficking activities. Bessent is also on the Board of Trustees at Rockefeller University, alongside prominent figures in the globalist establishment. ~ Shadow of Era
Howard Lutnick, Secretary of Commerce
Howard William Lutnick (/ˈlʌtnɪk/; born July 14, 1961[1]) is an American businessman, who succeeded Bernard Gerald Cantor as the head of Cantor Fitzgerald. Lutnick is the chairman and CEO of Cantor Fitzgerald and BGC Group. After losing 658 employees, including his brother, in the September 11 attacks, Lutnick also survived the subsequent collapse of the towers on the ground, and has since become known for his charity efforts through the Cantor Fitzgerald Relief Fund, which helps to aid families of victims of the attacks and natural disasters. He was a fundraiser for Donald Trump’s 2020 and 2024 presidential campaigns, as well as a vocal proponent of Trump’s proposal to implement broad tariffs. In November 2024, President-elect Trump announced that he intended to nominate Lutnick as secretary of commerce. He was also co-founder of DOGE.
To Be Determined, Administrator of the SBA
Image Here…
Wikipedia:
Brendon Carr, Commissioner of the Federal Communications Commission (FCC)
Brendan Thomas Carr (born January 5, 1979) is an American lawyer who has served as a member of the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) since 2017.[7] Appointed to the position by Donald Trump, Carr previously served as the agency’s general counsel and as an aide to FCC commissioner Ajit Pai. In private practice, Carr formerly worked as a telecommunications attorney at Wiley Rein.[8]
Carr supports changes to Section 230 of the Communications Decency Actand opposes net neutrality protections.[9][10] Carr is noted for his support for banning TikTok on national security grounds.[11][12] He is an opponent of content moderation on digital platforms, saying he would seek to “dismantle the censorship cartel and restore free speech rights.”[13][14] He authored a chapter in Mandate for Leadership: The Conservative Promise, the blueprint document of Heritage Foundation‘s Project 2025, which outlines proposed policies for a future Donald Trump administration. In office, Carr has been noted for being unusually vocal about public policy issues for a regulatory appointee, accusing House Intelligence Committee chair Adam Schiff of overseeing a “secret and partisan surveillance machine”.[15]
• Restore Net Neutrality& Equalize the Internet Playing Field
Dr. Jay Bhattacharya, MD, Ph.D., Director of the National Institutes of Health (NIH)
Jayanta “Jay” Bhattacharya (born 1968) is an American professor of medicine, economics, and health research policy at Stanford University. He is the director of Stanford’s Center for Demography and Economics of Health and Aging. His research focuses on the economics of health care.[2][3][4] In 2021, Bhattacharya was opposed to lockdowns and mask mandates as a response to the COVID-19 pandemic.[5][6] With Martin Kulldorff and Sunetra Gupta, he was a co-author in 2020 of the Great Barrington Declaration, which advocated lifting COVID-19restrictions on lower-risk groups to develop herd immunity through widespread infection, while promoting the fringe notion that vulnerable people could be simultaneously protected from the virus.[7][8][9] The declaration was criticized as being unethical and infeasible by Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, the director-general of the World Health Organization.[10]
• Co-Author of The Great Barrington Declaration
Dr. Dave Weldon, Director of the Centers for Disease Control (CDC)
•Mission to Examine the Causes of Chronic Illness • “The greatest perpetrator of misinformation during the COVID pandemic has been the United States government … Public health officials were intellectually dishonest. They lied to the American people.” ~ Marty Makary, MD, MPH • Author of Blind Spots
Dr. Janette Nesheiwat, US Surgeon General
Janette Nesheiwat (born 25 August 1980) is an American physician who is the nominee for United States surgeon general.[2] Nesheiwat has served as an assistant medical director of CityMD[3] and is currently a medical contributor on Fox News.[4]
• Getting Flak for Her Previous Vaccine/COVID Positions. ~ Dr. Simone Gold • Trump’s pick for Surgeon General, Janette Nesheiwat, praised Facebook for censoring anti-vaccine information & accounts like mine and RFK’s specifically, adding that she will “hope and pray” other social media companies do the same. Pick someone else. ~ Elizabeth Health Nut News
Doug Burgum, Secretary of the Interior
Douglas James Burgum (/bɜːrɡəm/BUR-gəm;[1] born August 1, 1956) is an American businessman and politician serving since 2016 as the 33rd governor of North Dakota.[2][3] He is among the richest politicians in the United States and has an estimated net worth of at least $1.1 billion. He is a member of the Republican Party.[4] Burgum was born and raised in Arthur, North Dakota.
When Perdue’s term ended on January 3, 2021, Loeffler ascended to be the senior senator from Georgia, a position she held for just under three weeks until Warnock was sworn in. Loeffler aligned with President Donald Trump in her time in the Senate, touting a “100 percent Trump voting record” during her campaigns.[3][4] After the November 2020 election, Loeffler and Perdue claimed without evidence that there had been unspecified failures in the 2020 U.S. presidential election, and called for the resignation of Georgia secretary of stateBrad Raffensperger, who rejected the accusations.
She later supported a lawsuit by Trump allies seeking to overturn the election results,[5] and also announced her intention to object to the certification of the Electoral College results in Congress.[6] After the attack on the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021, Loeffler announced that she would withdraw her objection to the certification of the electoral votes and later voted to certify. Loeffler was chosen by president-elect Trump to co-chair his inaugural committee in his upcoming second presidency, along with Steve Witkoff.
Linda Marie McMahon (/məkˈmæn/; née Edwards; born October 4, 1948) is an American politician, business executive and retired professional wrestler. She was the 25th administrator of the Small Business Administration from 2017 to 2019. McMahon has been nominated to lead the Department of Education under the second Trump administration.
McMahon, along with her husband, Vince McMahon, founded sports entertainment company Titan Sports, Inc. (later World Wrestling Entertainment, Inc.) where she worked as the president and later CEO from 1980 to 2009. During this time, the company grew from a regional business in the northeast to a large multinational corporation. Among other things, she initiated the company’s civic programs, Get R.E.A.L. and SmackDown! Your Vote. She made occasional on-screen performances, most notably in a feud with her husband that culminated at WrestleMania X-Seven.
On April 15, she was named chairwoman of America First Action, a pro-Trump Super PAC. On November 19, 2024, McMahon was nominated by Donald Trump to serve as Secretary of Education.[2]
Vivek Ramaswamy, Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE)
Musk was born in Pretoria, South Africa, and briefly attended the University of Pretoria before immigrating to Canada at the age of 18, acquiring citizenship through his Canadian-born mother. Two years later, he matriculated at Queen’s University at Kingston in Canada. Musk later transferred to the University of Pennsylvania and received bachelor’s degreesin economics and physics. He moved to California in 1995 to attend Stanford University, but never enrolled in classes, and with his brother Kimbal co-founded the online city guidesoftware company Zip2. The startup was acquired by Compaq for $307 million in 1999. That same year, Musk co-founded X.com, a direct bank. X.com merged with Confinity in 2000 to form PayPal. In 2002, Musk acquired US citizenship, and that October eBay acquired PayPal for $1.5 billion. Using $100 million of the money he made from the sale of PayPal, Musk founded SpaceX, a spaceflight services company, in 2002.
In 2004, Musk was an early investor in electric-vehicle manufacturer Tesla Motors, Inc. (later Tesla, Inc.), providing most of the initial financing and assuming the position of the company’s chairman. He later became the product architect and, in 2008, the CEO. In 2006, Musk helped create SolarCity, a solar energy company that was acquired by Tesla in 2016 and became Tesla Energy. In 2013, he proposed a hyperloop high-speed vactrain transportation system. In 2015, he co-founded OpenAI, a nonprofit artificial intelligenceresearch company. The following year Musk co-founded Neuralink, a neurotechnology company developing brain–computer interfaces, and The Boring Company, a tunnel construction company.
In early 2024, Musk became active in American politics as a vocal and financial supporter of Donald Trump, becoming Trump’s second-largest individual donor in October 2024. In November 2024, Trump announced that he had chosen Musk along with Vivek Ramaswamyto co-lead the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), a new advisory board which aims to improve government efficiency through measures such as slashing “excess regulations” and cutting “wasteful expenditures”.
• Mission to Dismantle the Regulatory State & Cut Wasteful Spending
AMERICA FIRST AGENDA BY EXECUTIVE ORDER
Restore Border Security & Immigration Including Mass Deportation of Illegal Aliens
Declare War on Drug Cartels (Including Big Pharma & Global Actors)
Declare War on Child Trafficking & Establish Death Penalty for Convicted Human Traffickers
Halt Federal Funds for Any State or Local Government Defying Federal Immigration Law (End Sanctuary Cities)
Halt Federal Funds for Inappropriate Curricula Including Critical Race Theory, DEI, Transgender & Anti-American Political Content Taught in Schools
End Mutilation of Youth Through Gender Transitions; Cease Funding Any Sex & Gender Transition
Halt Federal Funding for Any Abortion Procedure or Organ Harvesting of New-Born Infants
Private Right of Action for Victims to Sue Doctors; Civil Rights Violations; Cease Funding to School Districts
End Electric Vehicle Mandates; Making Them Voluntary Not Mandatory
Restore Fundamental Protection of Free Speech & All Constitutional Rights; Prohibit Any Future Collusion Between Government & Private Sector to Deprive Citizens of Rights
Dismantle Needless Bureaucracy & Regulations
Dismantle or Overhaul All Weaponized Government Agencies Via Schedule F (Firing Incompetent or Corrupt Staff By Executive Order)
Clean Out All Corrupt Actors in National Security, Defense & Intelligence Apparatus
ESTABLISHING NEW GOVERNMENT PROGRAMS& LEGISLATION
Founding Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE)with Mission to Dismantle the Regulatory State & Cut Wasteful Spending)
Restore Economic Prosperity for All
Restore Energy Independence By All Means Necessary Including Fracking, Drilling & Green Energy
Restore Tax Incentives for Small Businesses
Cap Credit Card Rates at 10%
Founding The American Academy (Full Spectrum of Human Knowledge for Free Online; Bachelor’s Degree Available)
Department of Education Appoints New Accreditors for All Colleges/Universities to Qualify for Federal Funding (Restore Meritocracy in Our Educational Institutions)
Eliminate the Federal Income Tax & Replace with Tariffs On Imports
Allow IRS Deduction Up to $10k Towards Homeschooling Per Child
Become #1 Energy Producer in the World & Restore Energy Independence
Repeal of the 1986 Vaccine Injury Act
Restore FAIR Act for Equal Time in Broadcasting
Revoke Licenses & Funding for Propaganda Media (Including NPR)
Reintroduce 28th Amendment with Required That All Laws Applied Equally to Citizens & Congress
Propose ? Amendment for Term-Limits on Elected Officials in Congress
Restore Net Neutrality To Equalize the Internet Playing Field Once Again
A controversial forecast by Deagel, a global intelligence and consulting firm, recently gained attention for its startling prediction of a significant depopulation event by 2025. While initially dismissed as a speculative estimation, current events and emerging trends have led many to question whether there may be more to Deagel’s forecast than meets the eye.
Recent reports from the Governments of the USA, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, the UK, and various European countries have brought forth troubling revelations, among which is confirmation of a staggering number of excess deaths, reaching over two million since the mass roll-out of Covid-19 injections.
A troubling 120,000 excess deaths have also been recorded among the USA’s infants, children and young adults as of week 40 of 2022, and a curious rise in excess deaths among children across Europe has been recorded ever since the European Medicines Agency (EMA) extended the Emergency Use Authorization (EUA) of the Pfizer Covid-19 injection to children in the middle of 2021.
With further Government figures confirming mortality rates are highest among the vaccinated in every single age group per 100,000 population, serious questions are now being raised about the accuracy and potential truth behind Deagel’s apocalyptic depopulation predictions.
What is Deagel? The Deagel corporation is a minor branch of US military intelligence, one of the many secretive organizations which collect data for high-level decision-making purposes and prepares confidential briefing documents for agencies like the National Security Agency, the United Nations, and the World Bank.
It is known to have contributed to a Stratfor report on North Korea. With this kind of pedigree, Deagel should be seen as a legitimate player in the intelligence community and not merely a disinformation asset.
This means its population predictions for 2025, as well as its industrial output predictions on a nation-by-nation basis, are not mere fantasy but instead based on strategic assumptions which are shared and well understood by other players in the intelligence community.
What has Deagel Predicted? Deagel.com’s [infamous] 2025 forecast was removed from their website sometime in 2020. However, thanks to the Wayback Machine / Internet Archive, we are able to view the original predictions before discovered by critical thinkers.
Deagel predicted in 2020 that the United Kingdom would see its population decline by 77.1% by the year 2025. Deagel predicted in 2020 that the United States would see its population decline by 68.5 % by the year 2025. Read more…
If the Russian army has won the war against the Banderites in Ukraine, NATO has won the cognitive war against its own citizens in the West. The Atlantic Alliance has developed a new form of propaganda based on what it denounced a short time ago: Fake News, that is to say not false information, but biased information. The question is, how to protect yourself from it?
THE NATO DEVICE
“Subduing the enemy by force is not the highest art of war, the highest art of war is to subdue the enemy without shedding a single drop of blood. ~ Sun Tzu, The Art of War.
French General Philippe Lavigne of NATO’s Allied Command Transformation (ACT) oversees research on new propaganda methods.
His command has 21 centers of excellence, including one for propaganda, the Strategic Communications Center of Excellence (STRATCOM) in Riga, Latvia. It has created the NATO Innovation Hub (iHub) under the direction of Frenchman Francois du Cluzel, a former professor at the Collège militaire interarmes de Coëtquidan. It funds research at John Hopkins University and Imperial College of London on cognitive abilities (similar cohorts who engineered the COVID-19 propaganda machine). This research covers the entire cognitive domain with various applications ranging from bionic soldiers to war propaganda.
NATO’s general idea is to add to the five usual domains of intervention (air, land, sea, space and cyber), a sixth: the human brain. “While actions in the five domains are carried out in order to have an effect on the human domain, the objective of cognitive warfare is to make each one a weapon,” writes François du Cluzel.
If war propaganda was based, during the First World War, on false information popularized by great writers; then on the repetition of selected messages during the Second World War; today it is conceived as an illusionist’s act. It is about moving people to distract their attention and hide from them what they should not see. They judge what they see with the uninteresting information they are fed. In this way, we manage, without lying to them, to make them take bladders for lanterns.
We are living the first application of this technique, on the occasion of the war (or Russian police action) in Ukraine.
To make myself understood, I will first present some information to be ignored, then come back on the treatment of the war by French State television. I would have obtained the same result if I had used a German, British or American example.
(Number of explosions recorded in Donbass (February 14-22, 2022)
THE RESPONSIBILITY OF WESTERN LEADERS FOR THE WAR IN UKRAINE
In the West, the narrative of the war in Ukraine places all the blame solely on the Russian president, Vladimir Putin, and secondarily on the political and financial figures of his regime. However, this version is clearly false if one considers the daily reports of the observers of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE).
They testified that they heard an attack from the Donbass (still Ukrainian) by Kiev forces on the afternoon of February 17. All news agencies reported that at least 100,000 civilians had fled into the Donbass or to Russia. In addition, the main political leaders of NATO heard Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy tell them at the Munich Security Conference that he intended to acquire nuclear weapons against Russia. It is clear that it was not Moscow, but Kiev, that triggered the hostilities.
No one can imagine that Kiev has unleashed this war against a far superior enemy without having received prior assurances from allies apparently capable of defending the country against Russia. This can only be NATO or the United States and possibly the other two nuclear powers, France and the United Kingdom.
The first meeting where this war was presented as desirable was held to our knowledge in the House of Representatives on September 5, 2019. It was organized by the Rand Corporation, the think tank of the US military-industrial lobby. The purpose was to present two reports, “Overextending and Unbalancing Russia” and “Extending Russia: Competing from Advantageous Ground” to the congressmen/women. The main idea is to use against it the particularity on which Russia bases its defense. Since it is a huge territory that the Russians defend by moving around and practicing the “scorched earth strategy”, it is enough to force them to move abroad to exhaust them.
The importance of this event is shown to us by the incident that affected our collaborator, the Italian geographer Manlio Dinucci. His article on the subject was censored by his newspaper, Il Manifesto, which he had to leave.
Three events attest to the involvement of the United States, the United Kingdom and France in the secret preparation of the war.
On March 24, 2022, a video of a 22-minute telephone conversation between the British Minister of Defense, Ben Wallace, and two Russian comedians Vladimir (Vovan) Kuznetsov and Alexei (Lexus) Stolyarov was published. One of the Russians was posing as the Ukrainian Prime Minister, Denys Shmyhal, whom Wallace never met.
1) Asked whether the UK would help Kiev to acquire nuclear weapons, the Rt. Hon. Wallace replied that he had to consult with Prime Minister Boris Johnson and that “The principle is that we will support Ukraine as a friend in whatever choice you make.”. In one sentence, he swept aside the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NNPT). 2) On the subject of the Next generation Light Anti-tank Weapon (NLAW) missiles that the United Kingdom has just sent to the Ukrainian army, Ben Wallace admitted that they were not working properly and that spare parts had also been sent. 3) But it is especially on the subject of NATO that Ben Wallace’s language has been too prolix. The British minister once again invited Ukraine to join the Atlantic Alliance. In passing, he unwittingly revealed that the United Kingdom had been sending military instructors to prepare the Ukrainian army for several years.
Boris Johnson’s government used every means at its disposal to conceal, or rather minimize, these statements. It claimed that the interview lasted only 10 minutes and forbade YouTube/Google to broadcast the entire sketch. The Western media was asked to talk about his blunder on the atomic bomb and to cover up the other two points. This is how the British always do it: not to deny everything, but to make the most dangerous points disappear.
On March 25, 2022, President Joe Biden visited the Congress Palace in Rzeszów, Poland. He was accompanied by the director of USAID, Samantha Power (former ambassador to the UN), and the Polish president, Andrej Duda. It is worth noting that Andrej Duda had his parliament passed a law denying the role of the Polish state in Nazi crimes and authorizing legal action against anyone who mentions them.
Joe Biden spoke with various NGOs to praise their assistance to Ukrainian refugees. Afterwards, he gave a speech to his soldiers of the 82nd Airborne Division, stationed there. He also visited them in the dining hall and spoke to them without a teleprompter or cameras. As always at such times, the old man (79 years old) revealed state secrets. According to the witnesses, he thanked them for their commitment in Ukraine for a long time, even though officially there have never been any US soldiers in that country.
On March 29, 2022, General Eric Vidaud, director of French military intelligence, was dismissed. No official explanation was given. It seems that in reality, General Viaud had deployed men on the direct instruction of President Macron’s private staff, in 2021 when he was commander of special operations, to supervise the Azov Banderites regiment. Immediately, five Ukrainian helicopters tried to flee Mariupol, the stronghold of the Azov regiment. Two were shot down on March 30. The survivors were taken prisoner by the Russian army. They spoke immediately. The soldiers of the Special Operations Command are placed for all logistical matters under the orders of the Chief of Staff of the Armed Forces, General Thierry Burkhard, but they take their orders directly from the head of the armed forces, President Emmanuel Macron.
Afterwards, relations between Presidents Macron and Putin cooled sharply.
HOW WAR PROPAGANDA MASKS REALITY
In France the state has France-Télévision for its own population, with France-2 being the most watched channel, and France Médias Monde for abroad. The latter group depends directly on the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and broadcasts France-24 in several languages.
To begin with, France 2 proposed a live newscast from Lviv (Ukraine) presented by its star, Anne-Sophie Lapix, on March 14, 2022 [6]. This newscast gathers every day a little more than 20% of the public. The young woman showed a lot of destruction and traumatized refugees. She walked through the city, but did not notice the imposing monument to Stepan Bandera, the leader of the Ukrainian Nazi collaborators. She also questioned the mayor of Lviv, Andriy Sadovy, without explaining that he is one of the country’s leading oligarchs. She did not ask him about his media group, of which his wife is the director. So she did not ask him about the remarks made the previous day on his channel, 24 Канал, calling for the killing of all Russians, women and children included, according to the method advocated by SS Adolf Eichman. At no time was it specified that this program was an initiative of the Banderite oligarch Andriy Sadovy and his wife, both former clients of the Publicis agency of Arthur Sadoun, the husband of Anne-Sophie Lapix.
The viewer who ignores Ukrainian tributes to the Nazis and exhortations to follow their example can only weep at the accumulation of suffering that was shown to him. He cannot doubt that the Russians are liars and criminals and that Ukrainians in general are innocent victims.
On March 25, France 24 in English, in its column Truth or Fake, reported on the interview of British Defense Minister Ben Wallace by Russian comedians. Following the instructions of Boris Johnson’s cabinet, the French Foreign Ministry’s television channel mocked his statements on the atomic bomb in order to better conceal those on the inefficiency of his anti-tank weapons and especially those on the presence of British military instructors in Ukraine for several years. The journalist presented the comedians as youtubers, whereas they work for the NTV channel, which allowed her not to mention that they are censored on YouTube in the country of the 1st amendment and freedom of expression. The column was produced by journalist Catalina Marchant de Abreu, a specialist in debunking fake news (sic)
The peak was reached on March 31 with France 2 news. France-Television, which until now denied the ideological character of the Azov regiment, broadcast a report on this formation. The public television admitted that it had, in 2014, been infiltrated by neo-Nazi elements, citing one of its founders, Andriy Biletsky, but assured that it had since changed into a respectable Defense force. France-2 did not mention one of its other founders, Dmytro Yarosh, a NATO agent and former coordinator of European neo-Nazis and Middle Eastern jihadists against Russia, who has become a special advisor to the commander-in-chief of the Ukrainian armies.
France-2 referred to an old UN report on torture, but not to the discovery of his special prisons by the Russian army, nor to recent UN statements on the subject. The report also failed to explain what Banderites are in Ukrainian history and reduced the importance of neo-Nazis to the wearing of the swastika. Having thus glossed over the problem, the channel estimated the danger to be between 3,000 and 5,000 men, while Reuters assures us that the Banderite paramilitaries today represent 102,000 men divided into numerous militias incorporated into the Territorial Defense.
Independent journalist and US Navy veteran Patrick Lancaster is in Mariupol, Ukraine to provide on-the-ground coverage of the brutal conflict taking place.
Lancaster is one of the few English-speaking reporters covering the war while traveling with the DPR and LPR rebels and Russian troops, but he encourages people to follow journalists on both sides.
A report uploaded Tuesday shows citizens of Mariupol describing a nearby factory said to be occupied by the infamous Azov Brigade, a neo-Nazi outfit fighting with the Ukrainian military.
One man said he was almost hit twice by a sniper, and declared, “Azov”, when asked who the sniper was fighting for.
After Lancaster suggested the sniper may have thought he was in the military, the man explained he was wearing the clothes seen in the video and that “they shoot at civilians.”
“They don’t shoot military, only civilians,” the man added. “They eliminate civilians. They are actual fascists.”
Another man interviewed by Lancaster echoed the theory that the snipers in the neighborhood are “Nazi guys”, saying, “Ukrainian Nazis are shooting, they just kill people. They kill civilians, women, men, everybody.”
Asked to explain for the camera who the Azov fighters are, the man said, “They collected all the nationalists, some are even from prison. They pay good money to them, and they kill people just for no reason.”
When Lancaster told the locals US and European media claim Russia is destroying cities and killing people, the man said in his experience, “Russia doesn’t shoot at people at all.”
At this point, a crying woman walked up to the camera and told the journalist that if not for Russian assistance, they would be hungry and thirsty along with most of the children in the city.
The woman and a man, possibly her husband, said their apartment was destroyed by “Ukrainian” tanks.
Lancaster documented as a volunteer passed out food to some of the citizens, and an elderly woman raised a loaf of bread to the sky in appreciation to God for the gift.
As he frequently does, Lancaster allowed several citizens to deliver on-camera messages to their loved ones around the world who may see the video.
This side of the ugly war is not being covered by mainstream media in what is becoming a disturbing cover-up.
By Alexandra Kovalskaya, Orientalist scholar and Freelance Journalist based in Kabul.
A report from the Afghan capital, where life under new rule only appears normal
“Zendegi megozara” (Life goes on), an Afghan proverb says – and Kabul, dubbed by the Western media as the city of hope and despair, could be a physical illustration of the saying. Weeks of fear and uncertainty under Taliban rule followed the withdrawal of NATO troops, the mass evacuations and the flight of the country’s leaders. Despite a humanitarian crisis unfolding and the future seeming murky, however, the Afghan capital looks just as it did back in the republican days – on the surface, at least.
The airport in Kabul still isn’t working at full capacity. After the Taliban took over the city on August 15 last year, most international carriers ceased flights to Afghanistan until the situation stabilizes – except for low-cost airline Fly Dubai, Mahan Air of Iran, and few more regional companies.
Negotiations regarding the operation of Kabul Airport, which Turkey and Qatar are said to have commenced with the Taliban, are still believed to be underway as security demands remain unmet. As a shuttle takes passengers from the plane to the international terminal, a dozen of aircraft can be seen on the tarmac. They belong to either Kam Air or Ariana Airlines, the two Afghan companies currently conducting domestic and international flights.
Pictures have been removed from the airport’s outer walls of then-President Ashraf Ghani, Tajik mujahideen leader Ahmad Shah Masoud, and former president Hamid Karzai, after whom the airport was named. Instead, freshly painted graffiti states in English that the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan wants peaceful and positive relations with the world. The sun-weathered airport compound does look peaceful, even with dozens of Taliban fighters dressed in fatigues, or, more casually, in traditional Afghan outfits, keeping their fingers on triggers. It is hard to believe that this very place witnessed a rapid, fall-of-Saigon-like evacuation and a number of human tragedies just over seven months ago.
According to a new rule, foreigners must register on arrival and fill out a form stating the purpose of their visit, the duration of their stay, and their marital status. As often occurs in Central Asia, a strict law is balanced by the reluctance of those who are to ensure its enforcement.
“You don’t know your complete address in Kabul, madam? It’s alright. You don’t have a picture? No problem,” says an immigration officer as he takes the form and starts pushing his way through the crowd of passengers arrived from Tashkent.
Despite rumors about the new regime prohibiting women from having jobs, the crew on my flight were female, and so were some of the airport employees. One of them, who has her hair covered with a black scarf and her face hidden under a mask, apologizes for her limited English and starts talking about the “good old days.” She mentions a women’s empowerment project she used to participate in, and her Western colleagues. I ask how she feels about the new government. She shrugs.
“How are the Talibs treating you?” I ask.
“It’s OK,” she replies in a local language. “But, you know, a Talib is a Talib. The word says it all. And I think there is no future now. Nothing to hope for, really. But God is great, let’s see.”
Security, new jobs, revenge
The windshield of the taxi is decorated by plastic flowers and a sticker reading “Allah.” A set of prayer beads hangs down from the rear-view mirror. The bearded driver wears a black turban and resembles a religious scholar, but in the parking lot he told me he had worked for airport security. After the Taliban took over Kabul, he spent some time in hiding, frightened that he would be detained for his “ties with the government.” However, a couple of weeks ago, the new airport security chief called him and asked him to come back to work. He was not given his former position, however, and drives a yellow taxi instead. This is a “state taxi,” he explains, with a license from the Ministry of Interior Affairs. This is much safer, especially for the foreigners, he adds.
As we exit the airport, I ask him how the situation in Kabul has changed over the past three months.
“There is security, but no job,” he replies. “I was lucky to receive this car.”
Credit where credit’s due – the radicals try to provide security as they interpret it. There is a checkpoint at the exit, the next one about a kilometer away, and sometimes there are two or three of them on a single street. The security check itself is nothing much. Talibs assess passengers through the window as though they are trying to measure how dangerous they are just by looking at them. They occasionally open the trunk or ask for documents, even though some of the sentries are obviously illiterate. Those who listen to music in the car turn it off, and then resume listening as the Talibs let them go. If there is a female in the car, especially in the front seat, the checks are more thorough just for show.
Unlike during the times of the republic, when they had fixed locations and were primarily concentrated in the city center next to strategic sites like ministries and embassies, Taliban checkpoints are scattered around the city and rotate. You never know where you will find them the next day. Moreover, there are numerous patrols riding in former ANA (Afghan National Army) Humvees. Some of them still carry a republican flag painted on the door or chassis.
“They are using our cars now,” says Rahim (not his real name), a former soldier. He looks embittered as his eyes follow a passing Humvee. “They are using our weapons; they live our lives. And what happened to my life?”
Seven months ago, Rahim was part of ANA’s Commando Corps. After mid-August 2021, he disguised himself as a civilian and grew a beard to avoid the revenge of the Taliban. He said he killed many of them on combat missions in Helmand and Logar provinces. Unlike many of his former fellow soldiers, he refused to be evacuated and stayed in Kabul to support his family. Now he works a doorkeeper, making around $150 a month.
“I am sure they will kill me if they understand who I am,” he says.
I try to disagree. From what I know, if the Talibs find someone who served in the police or the military, the worst they do is beat them up or arrest them for a few days. But Rahim shakes his head. “It depends on what unit you were in. They knew we were hunting them, and several friends of mine from the same squad went missing already. They disappeared in Kabul, and nobody knows if they are still alive.”
If we find a single bullet
Aside from the network of checkpoints, the Afghan radicals have taken more serious steps to secure Kabul. Last month, there was a wave of extensive house-to-house searches in different areas of the city, mainly at nighttime. According to the Taliban authorities, the raids aimed “to detect criminal activity” and seize weapons.
“Four of them came to my apartment, three foot soldiers and an officer,” says Kawoos, currently an American NGO employee. They said, “If we find a single bullet, you will regret it,” and I asked, “What if you don’t find a single bullet?” I spoke Pashto and looked confident, so the officer commanded them to leave. All of them were polite enough, even taking off their shoes to enter the home and apologized for disturbing us as they came in.
As locals explained, the real goal was to find Northern Alliance sympathizers. Originally, there was supposed to be a door-to-door check in Khair Khana, a predominantly Tajik-populated enclave, but later the Taliban changed its mind to avoid triggering ethnic strife. Or was the real goal to stop those wanting to emigrate from leaving? Or was it targeting people like Rahim? There is an abundance of suggestions but a lack of facts. Moreover, there is a possibility that the searches will continue.
The outcomes of the search seem debatable – in a country like Afghanistan, I was told, one must have at least one gun in the house to protect his property from robbers. Now, with the weapons taken, many houses are defenseless. Weapons can become a necessity for Kabulians amid never-ending rumors of smoldering enmity within the ranks of the Taliban that might flare into open clashes at any time, with the Haqqani network and hardline militants from the east on one side and supporters of the new government’s Deputy Prime Minister Mullah Baradar on the other.
At the same time, Taliban fighters keep roaming around with their weapons, whether they go to the zoo or dine at a restaurant. Lift doors in local shopping malls are often decorated with a sign, “Entry is not allowed with guns” – or just a picture of a crossed-out Kalashnikov.
Apparently, the only area in the city that was not subjected to searches was Wazir Akbar Khan – the so-called green zone that contains a number of embassies, most of нуwhich are currently closed. Ironically, it still has a sort of diplomatic immunity, an unspoken law giving the area a strange kind of freedom. If there is a party in a house, the Taliban commander living next door turns a blind eye and a deaf ear if you decrease the volume of the music playing to the reasonable level.
The media say that the range of prohibitions that the Taliban has introduced is shrinking. On the ground, the restrictions don’t feel so tangible. This is more or less what Kabul is like today – there are intimidating humors, but nothing happens; there are numerous restrictions, but you never know which of them you can bypass. Barber shops are open, just like cafes, men wearing Western clothes and women wearing makeup and high heels are still seen in the streets. In addition, a portrait of Mullah Omar, a co-founder of the Taliban, looks at the capital from a wall of a guardhouse up on the hill – drawings are not a sin this time.
High above his head, a gigantic white Taliban flag flaps in the wind. The official flag-raising ceremony on 31 March emphasized, in a way, that the radicals do plan to hold the power they seized on 16 August – a bitter realization for many supporters of the Afghan republic both in the country and abroad.
In a cage with a tiger
In my experience, the most popular attitude the Afghans express towards the Taliban these days, just like a few months ago, could be summarized by saying, “They are not doing anything really wrong right now, but we don’t trust them.”
So it was, for instance, with Nowruz, which is also known as the Persian New Year and celebrated on the day of spring equinox. Taliban leaders decided to exercise tolerance to what they used to see as a “pagan holiday” back in the 1990s. This time, they decided to deprive Nowruz of the status of a national holiday, but allowed people to celebrate. Not many decided to do so, but goldfish and other traditional decorations for the New Year’s table were still sold in local markets.
“Kabul was quite different last year,” says Farid, a friend of mine. “Music everywhere, people dancing and hugging in the streets… Right, the Talibs did not prohibit the holiday. But guess why people decided to be quiet? It is like being in a cage with a tiger. He says he is not going to bite you, but you never know.”
Farid and his family invited me to the Paghman valley – a picturesque green place located an hour’s drive from Kabul. The Afghans come there to have a picnic by the river, do some hiking, and fly a kite. Some 30 years ago, this activity was labeled anti-Islamic and banned. Today, young fighters watch boys playing and ask to hold a kite coil for a while as a group of girls in bright traditional Afghan clothes are taking selfies on a mountain slope in the background. The scene looks almost pastoral – nothing like the Taliban era of the 1990s, as described by Khaled Hosseini in ‘The Kite Runner’.
“Some people think the Talibs are monsters,” says one of Farid’s teenage nieces, who is painting my hands with henna. “But I don’t think they are. They are normal, I think.”
This episode came a couple of days before the Ministry of Education restricted girls above the sixth grade from study – after all the promises given before, and the Ministry for the Propagation of Virtue and the Prevention of Vice restricted unaccompanied women from boarding flights.
In late March 2022, in Kabul, late at night, with darkness outside, a police siren is wailing in the distance. I send a message to another friend of mine. “Hey, how has Kabul changed since I saw it last time in December? Maybe there is much more than meets my foreign eye?” I write.
“Pretty much everything is how you saw it,” reads the reply on the screen. “[The Taliban] are trying their best where they can.”
“Seems like all the negative changes are related to women’s rights. Then why [do] people mistrust them?”
“What they do has nothing to do with Islam. For example, does Islam say girls are not allowed to study? No. Then why? You know what they say? We fought jihad for 30 years, do not teach us Islam.”
The night lights still glowed from the hilltops of Kabul but how long until the lights go out and Afghanistan is a forgotten place of dreams and hopes?
By Nebojsa Malic, a Serbian-American journalist, blogger and translator, who wrote a regular column for Antiwar.com from 2000 to 2015, and is now a senior writer at RT.
Supporters of NATO’s war on Yugoslavia have no right to talk about law, sovereignty or borders
Pretty much everyone who has spent the past month moralizing about the sanctity of borders, sovereignty of countries, and how unacceptable it was for great powers to “bully” smaller neighbors – thinking of Russia and Ukraine – paused on Thursday to sing praises to a woman that championed all of those things back in 1999. Except since it was NATO doing them to Yugoslavia, Madeleine Albright was a hero and an icon, obviously.
On March 24, 1999, NATO launched an air war against Serbia and Montenegro, then known as the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia. The publicly stated aim of Operation Allied Force was to compel Belgrade to accept the ultimatum given at the French chateau of Rambouillet the month before: Hand the province of Kosovo over to NATO “peacekeepers” and allow ethnic Albanian separatists to declare independence.
When the bombers failed to achieve that within a couple of weeks, the narrative changed to NATO acting to stop a “genocide” of Albanians its cheerleader press claimed was taking place. That narrative also credited the first-ever female US secretary of state for the “humanitarian” bombing, calling it“Madeleine’s War.”
In the end, it took 78 days and a negotiated armistice for NATO troops to enter Kosovo wearing the fig leaf of a UN peacekeeping mission. They promptly turned the province over to the “Kosovo Liberation Army” terrorists, who proceeded to burn, loot, murder and expel over 200,000 non-Albanians. A real campaign of terror, intimidation, ethnic cleansing and pogroms began – and the very same media that covered for NATO by making up atrocities during the bombing now turned a blind eye, for the same reason.
Whatever its outcome, however, it was an evil little war, launched because the US felt it could. Because Washington wanted to get rid of the restraints posed by the UN to its new global hegemony, articulated just a few years earlier by Bill Kristol and Victoria Nuland’s husband Robert Kagan. Because the rising American Empire wanted to send a message to Eastern Europe that no dissent would be tolerated, and to Russia that it was no longer a great power worth respecting.
A legalistic mind might point out that the attack violated Articles 2, 53 and 103 of the UN Charter, NATO’s own charter – the North Atlantic Treaty of 1949 (articles 1 and 7) – as well as the Helsinki Final Act of 1975 (violating the territorial integrity of a signatory state) and the 1980 Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties, for using coercion to compel a state to sign a treaty.
Ah, but being a world empire means making its own “rules-based order” to supplant inconvenient laws. So an “independent commission” of cheerleaders was put together to declare the operation “illegal but legitimate,” arguing it was justified because it “liberated” the Kosovo Albanians from Serb “oppression.”
The actual oppression of non-Albanians as NATO troops stood idly by – including during the vicious pogrom of March 2004 – doesn’t count, obviously. The important thing is that Bill and Hillary Clinton, Madeleine Albright, and British PM Tony Blair got monuments, streets, and even children named after them.
The “independent” Kosovo – proclaimed in 2008, in a move about as legal as the 1999 war – can’t actually do anything without the permission of the US ambassador. A great triumph of human rights, law and order, and democracy, everyone!
NATO never cared about saving Albanian lives. If it did, it wouldn’t have partnered with the KLA, which made a point of murdering ethnic Albanians who wanted peace with the Serbs. It wouldn’t have repeatedly bombed refugee columns, then declaring it was really the Serbs’ fault somehow and that pilots dropped their bombs “in good faith” – literally something NATO spokesman Jamie Shea said on one occasion.
Twenty years on and nothing has changed. Having obliterated a family in Kabul by a drone strike last August, the US offered blood money, but refused to so much as reprimand anyone involved. Being an empire means never having to say you’re sorry. This mindset propelled the invasion of Iraq in 2003.
Meanwhile, failure to overthrow the government in Belgrade through war led to a “color revolution”in Serbia instead. It was then exported to other places – including Ukraine, twice. That 2014 coup in Kiev literally started the conflict in eastern Ukraine, of which the current events are but the latest phase.
In March 1999, I was a student in the American Midwest, and had been (almost) successfully brainwashed into believing the platitudes about freedom, democracy, tolerance, objectivity, rules and laws, and how the US was a “force for good” in the world. Then, overnight, people I thought had been my friends called me a monster and believed every single bit of propaganda that came off the TV screens and newspaper pages.
I’ve made justice and remembrance something of my life mission since then, seeking to explain that rather than a good, noble and humanitarian war, Kosovo represented everything wrong about the modern world: “A monument to the power of lies, the successful murder of law, and the triumph of might over justice,” as I wrote in 2005, and repeated every year since.
The twist this year is that the people shrieking about human rights, international law and the sanctity of borders – when it comes to their client regime in Ukraine, that is – were all cheering for NATO back in 1999. Even now, they won’t apologize for it, much less disavow. So it seems it’s not really about what is being done, only who is doing it to whom. While I understand their anger as the world their lies propped up comes crashing down, they hardly have standing to complain.
Native-American nation’s land was turned into a nuclear test site. Now, they suffer from illnesses.
‘The most nuclear bombed nation on the planet’ is the unwanted accolade claimed by the Shoshone Native American tribe. This has had devastating effects for the community, and RT spoke with one campaigner fighting for justice.
“They are occupying our country, they are stealing our opportunities and we are expected to die because of that. We are still trying to grapple with and understand what happened to us, and find ways to stop it, correct it and prevent it happening in the future.”
Ian Zabarte’s voice is angry but does not falter as he describes the stark fate of his people, Native Americans who for decades have been – by any measure – subjected to the most unimaginable horrors, all perpetrated by their government in Washington.
Zabarte, 57, is the Principal Man of the Western Bands of the Shoshone Nation and he is spearheading a campaign to expose what he describes as the “ethnic cleansing” of his tribe.
Shoshone land stretches from Death Valley in the Mojave Desert in eastern California to Yellowstone Park in Wyoming. But in 1951 the US started nuclear weapons testing on Western Shoshone territory, at the Nevada Proving Grounds (now known as the Nevada National Security Site). The Shoshone can now lay claim to be the most nuclear-bombed nation on the planet.
Over a period of just over 40 years, there were 928 tests conducted there – around 100 in the atmosphere and more than 800 underground – resulting in nuclear fallout of around 620 kilotons, according to a 2009 study. In comparison, there were 13 kilotons of fallout when Hiroshima was bombed in 1945.
This is obviously a massive health risk and Zabarte, who lives in Las Vegas but runs a healing center at Death Valley, is understandably angry. Although he’s engaging and friendly, a sense of rage regularly creeps into his voice as he becomes more animated about the injustices his people have endured. But he never lapses into self-pity; there’s always a steely aura of defiance.
The Shoshone signed the Treaty of Ruby Valley in 1863, which handed certain rights to the United States. But they did not give up their land. “We wouldn’t have signed a treaty that would end in our ultimate destruction,” Zabarte told RT.
According to the tribe, Washington’s testing programme has killed thousands of people, with many since developing a range of cancers and illnesses.
Zabarte’s grandfather’s skin fell off due to an autoimmune deficiency, and he died soon after from a heart attack. Other family members have had pacemakers fitted at very young ages, while his cousin’s twins died aged 11.
“My family have a high incidence of thyroid cancer, but we’re not following those individuals – we don’t have the capacity,” he explained.
“The United States doesn’t want to study our own adverse health consequences. [It] would be no different to Nazi Germany studying the health consequences of their testing on Jewish people. That is so far from right. We have to do it ourselves and we need help.”
The Shoshone have no medical equipment or computer databases to track their people. So deaths from suspicious conditions are generally not recorded. In addition, the Shoshone are, by tradition, proud people, so not all of them speak out about their health issues.
As Zabarte explained, “Even though it went underground, venting took place and we don’t know where that fallout went.”
That’s borne out by the Mighty Oak incident, a botched test that destroyed $32-million-worth of equipment in April 1986. It was weeks before Chernobyl and experts claim the US government vented the radiation under the cover that everyone would assume it was from the Soviet catastrophe.
“The Department of Energy doesn’t consider that an accident because they manually released the gas inside the underground chamber where the weapon detonated. It went around the world and beat the Chernobyl radiation back to the United States,” Zabarte claimed.
Of course, the US is not the only country to have conducted nuclear testing. The United Kingdom also used Western Shoshone land, in 24 tests that were joint operations with the US.France completed 210 nuclear tests in Algeria and the South Pacific from 1960 to 1996. And the Soviet Union used the Semipalatinsk site in Kazakhstan until 1989 to perform its testing.
But, even to this day, lots of secret activities continue on Shoshone land, as proven by JANET flights regularly flying from Las Vegas to the classified Area 51. (The call sign stands for Just Another Non-Existent Terminal).
There’s also the contentious issue of the Yucca Mountain Nuclear Waste Repository, first planned in 1987 and later approved by the Obama administration, which the Shoshone have stalled. It’s intended to store high-level radioactive waste.
Zabarte has a US Department of Energy study for the project which he says refers to “cultural triage”defined as “a forced choice situation in which an ethnic group is faced with the decision to rank in importance equally valued cultural resources that could be affected by a proposed development project.”
It goes on to state that this triage could be “emotionally taxing for the Indian person.” The United Nationsbacked these claims in a 2006 report, and Zabarte believes they perfectly encapsulate the problems faced by his people.
“We have a deliberate act by the United States government to dismantle the living life ways of my people, my family, in relation to our property, our sacred land.
“The United States has developed a systematic process to ethnically cleanse us from that land, so that they take all the profits and give them to other Americans,” he said. “In order to prove genocide we need to consider, what is the intent? It is the culture of secrecy, that is the intent.”
A prime example of how the Shoshone’s life has been eradicated came in 1971 with the Wild Free-Roaming Horses Act. As Zabarte explained: “Politicians in Washington DC defined our Indian horses as wild and started coming after our ranchers, who have a guaranteed right as hunters or herdsmen under the treaty to have livestock.
There is no economy or sustainable lifestyle, and the nearest town is 80 miles away. “I have nothing on my reservation to go back to,” said Zabarte, who can trace his direct descendants to the Kawich region, which houses Area 51. “They stole my horses, they stole my livelihood. There are no jobs, there are no opportunities; the United States has stolen our economy, our hunting, our fishing… and made us trespassers in our own country.”
But the reservation only makes up a tiny part of the entire Shoshone land. The rest is used by the American government and population, sometimes unwittingly. People are buying houses and living on land that the Shoshone feel they should control – but all tax from economic activity goes to the US. The Shoshone have no claim over it.
“The United States cannot prove ownership to it but they come into our country and they provide tax money to the state of Nevada, and the state of Nevada takes that money and provides it to every other non-Shoshone unit of local government, and we get nothing. That is taxation without representation,”Zabarte said.
Despite the obvious sense of injustice, he feels an obligation to warn Americans who live in or go through the Shoshone nation of the danger it presents.
“My grandfather always said, ‘don’t kick up dust’ because of the radioactive fallout. I care for these people because of that treaty of peace and friendship, and have an obligation to provide aid and comfort to other Americans passing through. But I watch them kick up dust in their off-road vehicles and they are quite likely exposing themselves. There is plutonium in a lot of the roofs of their houses, too.”
The key for Zabarte is awareness. The more people know the history of the land and understand the issue, there greater the chance of meaningful action. That could involve providing medical surveillance and advising the next generation how to protect themselves.
Zabarte is also keen to build momentum so the Shoshone, including his own son, can have access to all of their land and create a functioning economy that fits with their traditions.
“We need to continue to make our people aware the next generation don’t have a safe place to live; we have these tiny reservations and they are colonies created by the United States. They exist only to the extent that the United States provides the funding. We don’t have ways to survive on our own land.”
He is a man on a mission and has sacrificed his life to shoulder this burden. “I have dignity and my family has dignity and that’s what I’m fighting for. These a**holes aren’t going to get away with it.”
After watching the film “THRIVE II: This Is What It Takes” twice and taking copious notes throughout, Happy and I have concluded that this is one of the most profound and important documentaries for ushering in a truly sustainable future for life on Earth.
Besides claiming individual sovereignty as the context for taking back ones power from external authority, an enlightened and technologically advanced civilization based on connected resonance with the unified field is not only possible, but absolutely essential for continuing the diversity and health of all life on Earth.
Kudos to Foster and Kimberly Gamble for having the courage and foresight to bring these discoveries to light and sharing them with the rest of us. This film is a must watch for every conscious human being.
Liberty International News 