How is it that The HighWire’s reporting on Covid has been so far ahead? How did we know so much about the public health players, and the games they would play with lockdowns and vaccines? Because, they’ve done it all before. The HighWire presents “Vaxxed: From Cover-Up to Catastrophe,” the movie that exposes one of the biggest public health scandals of all time. They say ‘vaccines don’t cause autism,’ but they never told you this.
Source: Highwire
The Russian president says the “myth of the Western welfare state, of the so-called golden billion, is crumbling”
Russian President Vladimir Putin has opined that the latest rounds of unprecedented sanctions imposed on Russia by the US and its allies over the Kremlin’s military campaign in Ukraine, mark the end of an era. According to Putin, from now on the West will be losing its “global dominance” both politically and economically.
Speaking on Wednesday, the Russian head of state proclaimed that the “myth of the Western welfare state, of the so-called golden billion, is crumbling.” Moreover, it is the “whole planet that is having to pay the price for the West’s ambitions, and its attempts to retain its vanishing dominance at any cost,” Putin said.
The president predicted food shortages across the world as Western sanctions against Russia are adversely affecting the entire global economy.
Touching on the decision by several Western powers to freeze Russia’s central bank assets, Putin claimed that this would only serve to irreparably undermine trust in those nations, and make other countries think twice before placing their reserves in the care of those countries. According to him, nearly half of Moscow’s assets were “simply stolen” by the West.
READ MORE: Russia will respect private ownership unlike the West – Putin
Addressing people in the West, the Russian leader said the massive sanctions imposed on Russia were already backfiring on the US and Europe themselves, with governments there trying hard to convince their citizens that Russia was to blame.
Putin warned ordinary people in the West that attempts to portray Moscow as the primary source of all their woes were lies, with a lot of those issues being the direct result of the Western governments’ “ambitions” and “political short-sightedness.”
The Western elites, according to Putin, have turned their countries into an “empire of lies,” but Russia will keep on presenting its own position to the whole world, no matter what.
Source: Russia Times (RT)
The Russian president told his Turkish counterpart that nationalists use civilians as human shields
Kiev must cease fighting and fulfill all of Moscow’s demands in order for the Russian invasion of Ukraine to stop, President Vladimir Putin told Turkish leader Recep Tayyip Erdogan on Sunday.
Moscow’s ‘special operation’ in the neighboring country “will come to a halt only if Kiev stops its military action and fulfills the demands of Russia, which are well known,” Putin explained during the phone call, according to the Kremlin’s press service.
The president assured Erdogan that Russia is ready for dialogue with the Ukrainian side, as well as with foreign partners, in order to find a peaceful solution to the conflict.
However, he warned that any attempts to drag out the negotiations, which could be used by Ukraine to regroup its forces and assets, will be “self-defeating.
The Russian military does everything possible to protect the lives of civilians, only carrying out surgical strikes on Ukrainian military facilities, Putin added. “In this context, the actions of the nationalists – the neo-Nazi units – look particularly cruel and cynical as they continue intensive shelling of Donbass and use civilians, including foreigners, who are basically taken hostage, as a ‘human shield’ in Ukrainian cities and towns,” he said.
According to Erdogan’s office, he tried to persuade Putin that an urgent general ceasefire is necessary in Ukraine in order to provide humanitarian aid to the population and to create the conditions for a political solution.
“Let’s pave the way for peace together,” the Turkish president urged his Russian counterpart on the phone.
Erdogan reiterated Turkey’s eagerness to contribute to the settlement of the crisis through mediation and other diplomatic means. Ankara has remained in close contact with Kiev and other countries on the issue, he added.
Turkey, which is a Black Sea nation like Russia and Ukraine, enjoys good relations with both Moscow and Kiev. Though a NATO member, Turkey has been trying to maintain a neutral stance since Russia sent its troops into Ukraine last Thursday to “denazify” and “demilitarize” the country, which it blames for “genocide” in the breakaway republics of Donetsk and Lugansk. Kiev and its Western allies claim the attack was completely unprovoked.
Turkey has condemned the Russian invasion and supported Ukrainian territorial integrity, but also opposed the harsh international sanctions, designed to isolate Moscow. The government in Ankara is hoping to stage talks between the Russian and Ukrainian foreign ministers next week in southern Turkey. So far, the idea has been welcomed by Moscow and Kiev.
Source: RT.com
When the Soviet Union disappeared in 1991, U.S. weapons makers saw their Cold War gravy train grind to a halt. By 1993, the big weaponeers like Boeing, Raytheon, Northrup and Lockheed stemmed the bleeding by gobbling up the smaller players, acquiring new economic muscle in a dwindling domestic market.
To keep profits booming they turned eastward, all the way to the former Soviet republics. Their brilliant scheme was to bring these nations into NATO so they could sell them endless billions in weaponry. Weapons hawkers flooded these new markets while their lobbyists flooded Congress, making defense contractors among the most prominent supporters of NATO expansion. They had plenty of help from NATO expansionists in Congress, the military and the pundit class.
It didn’t matter the US promised Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev that if Russia allowed German reunification, NATO would not move one inch eastward toward Russia. The munition giants weren’t subtle about their plan. Lockheed V.P. Bruce Jackson became president of the US Committee to Expand NATO. Congressman on the hunt for free goodies and campaign cash were an easy mark to forget the US promise to Gorbachev.
Beginning with Poland, Czech Republic and Hungary in 1999, NATO added 14 former Central and Eastern European countries in an alliance right up to Russia’s borders. These countries have now purchased over $16 billion in Western weaponry, with endless more to come.
Overall, defense contractors’ efforts to shut down the peace dividend in 1991 has been a smashing success. For Ukraine, Russia, Europe, the US, indeed the world, it helped provoke an illegal, murderous war that may spiral into a smashing catastrophe for mankind.
Source: Antiwar.com
By Ron Forthofer
The recent appalling Russian invasion of Ukraine must be condemned. It’s yet another atrocious aggression in a long series of violations of international law by several countries including the US, Britain, Russia and Israel. It is terribly disappointing that humanity has failed to advance beyond the use of warfare (military, economic and cyber) to settle problems. Lobbying by the merchants of death, that is, the military-industrial complex, certainly plays a role in this disastrous failure.
Many nations and their media, particularly Western nations, have rightly emphasized this horrific violation of the rule of law by Russia. Ironically, it is the US – arguably the nation that has done the most to undermine international law through its widespread military aggressions, support for coups, illegal use of economic warfare (unilateral sanctions), protection of Israel from sanctions, and non-participation with the International Criminal Court (ICC) – that now proclaims most loudly the sanctity of international law.
The Western media were less critical of other violations of international law by the US, Britain and Israel. For example, the US and Britain lied about the existence of Iraqi weapons of mass destruction. In 2003, they led a coalition of nations in a unspeakable war crime that devastated Iraq, killed hundreds of thousands of Iraqis, and led to the destabilization of the Middle East. Iraqis are still suffering horrendous consequences of this years-long war crime. The US media certainly didn’t emphasize that this unprovoked aggression was a violation of international law. In addition, the corporate-dominated US media didn’t call for then President George W. Bush and other members of his administration to be investigated by the ICC for war crimes. This US media hypocrisy seriously undercuts its credibility and shows that it’s a key component of the US propaganda system. In addition, the US media’s failure along with the cowardice of European nations about pointing out US violations have contributed to the undermining of international law.
Returning to today, the media have failed to provide any context for this shameful Russian war crime. The context doesn’t justify Russia’s use of force, but it’s important to understand how we arrived at this awful situation. Unfortunately, this terrible war crime was the predictable result of lies and actions by the US and NATO and their unwillingness to take Russia’s legitimate security concerns seriously.
Russia, with documentation from numerous investigations by Western sources, has reminded the world of the 1991 US, German, UK and French promise not to expand NATO one inch to the east in exchange for the Soviet Union allowing the reunification of Germany. Given previous devastating invasions by Western European nations, one can understand why the Soviets might want this promise. For example, during WWII, estimates are that the Soviet Union lost over 26 million people, about 13% of its 1939 population.
George Kennan, architect of the U.S. containment policy towards the Soviet Union, was interviewed by Thomas Friedman in 1998 about NATO’s eastward expansion. Kennan said: ”I think it is the beginning of a new cold war. I think the Russians will gradually react quite adversely and it will affect their policies. I think it is a tragic mistake. There was no reason for this whatsoever. No one was threatening anybody else.”
Even before there was any expansion, Russia made clear its concern over the expansion to no avail. NATO has since expanded eastward from 16 members to 30 members today. NATO weapons are not far from Russia’s borders, in some areas approximately the same distance as Soviet weapons in Cuba were from the US. The US risked nuclear war to deny Cuba’s sovereignty over having Soviet weapons. Hence Russia’s demands about keeping NATO weapons away from its borders shouldn’t be a surprise
In 2008, then US Ambassador to Russia William Burns, now director of the CIA, warned US officials about the danger of holding out the prospect of NATO membership to Ukraine. He warned that it could lead to civil war and present Russia with a crisis on its border in which it could be forced to intervene. Instead of trying to prevent this situation from happening, the US acted in ways that resulted in this predicted crisis occurring.
For example, in 2014 the US played a major role in a coup against the democratically elected Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych who was viewed as pro-Russian. The US was then influential in the selection of the new Ukrainian leaders. Most Ukrainians in western Ukraine were ecstatic whereas many Ukrainians in eastern Ukraine, particularly in the Donbas area and Crimea, viewed the new government as being illegitimate.
The predicted civil war then happened in the Donbas area when the new Ukrainian government almost immediately targeted the use of the Russian language. This language policy was quickly overturned, but the damage had already been done. Additional violent acts by neo-Nazi forces led to protests by people in Donbas. In addition, Russia took control of Crimea and the residents of Crimea subsequently overwhelmingly voted to join Russia.
The coup government militarily moved to stop the protests in the Donbas area causing the predicted Russian intervention there. Fighting has been going on in this area at a low level for much of the past 8 years despite the Minsk II accords that were agreed to in 2015 but not implemented.
Unfortunately, this totally unnecessary conflict between Russia and the US turned into a full-scale war between Russia and Ukraine when Russia invaded. The people of Ukraine are paying a terribly high price serving as an (unwitting?) proxy for the US. Ordinary Russians, who had no say about the criminal attack, are also facing a much harsher life as a result of this war crime against Ukraine. In order to avoid an escalation into a much broader and more deadly conflict, both sides must quickly make some uncomfortable compromises. Otherwise …
Ron Forthofer is a retired professor of biostatistics, having taught at the University of Texas School of Public Health in Houston. Since retirement in 1991, has been an activist for peace and social justice. He ran for Congress and for governor of Colorado for the Green Party.
Source: Anti-War.com
Editor’s Note: For people who love freedom and wish to update their understanding of European history with respect to the Russian-Ukrainian conflict, watch the following video: https://www.facebook.com/watch/?v=1088681511975159
Source: Facebook
Editor’s Note: Before we all get on our high horse of American exceptionalism and start throwing accusations around about Russian involvement in Ukraine, the United States might take a good hard look at the hundreds of wars of aggression over the last century or so we have initiated, the countries we have invaded, the governments we have toppled and the casualties of innocent civilians caught in the crossfire of regime change.
Here’s a perspective on the Russia-Ukraine conflict that may illuminate the situation. First, the CIA, US & NATO were involved in “regime change” in Ukraine in 2014 and installed a ruthless puppet government creating insecurity along Russia’s western border. It won’t be the first time. Now, perhaps the CIA, US & NATO with all their hubris and a false sense of invincibility are attempting either leadership or “regime change” in Russia (who is a strong nuclear nation with the full capacity to defend itself and secure its borders unlike other weaker nations over the last two decades who could not).
Since the 19th century, United States government has participated and interfered, both overtly and covertly, in the replacement of several foreign governments. In the latter half of the 19th century, the U.S. government initiated actions for regime change mainly in Latin America and the southwest Pacific, including the Spanish–American and Philippine–American wars. At the onset of the 20th century, the United States shaped or installed governments in many countries around the world, including neighbors Panama, Honduras, Nicaragua, Mexico, Haiti, and the Dominican Republic.
During World War II, the United States helped overthrow many Nazi German or Imperial Japanese puppet regimes. Examples include regimes in the Philippines, Korea, the Eastern portion of China, and much of Europe. United States forces were also instrumental in ending the rule of Adolf Hitler over Germany and of Benito Mussolini over Italy.
In the aftermath of World War II, the U.S. government struggled with the Soviet Union for global leadership, influence and security within the context of the Cold War. Under the Eisenhower administration, the U.S. government feared that national security would be compromised by governments propped by the Soviet Union’s own involvement in regime change and promoted the domino theory, with later presidents following Eisenhower’s precedent.[1] Subsequently, the United States expanded the geographic scope of its actions beyond traditional area of operations, Central America and the Caribbean. Significant operations included the United States and United Kingdom-orchestrated 1953 Iranian coup d’état, the 1961 Bay of Pigs Invasion targeting Cuba, and support for the overthrow of Sukarno by General Suharto in Indonesia. In addition, the U.S. has interfered in the national elections of countries, including Italy in 1948,[2] the Philippines in 1953, and Japan in the 1950s and 1960s[3][4] as well as Lebanon in 1957.[5] According to one study, the U.S. performed at least 81 overt and covert known interventions in foreign elections during the period 1946–2000.[6] Another study found that the U.S. engaged in 64 covert and six overt attempts at regime change during the Cold War.[1]
Following the dissolution of the Soviet Union, the United States has led or supported wars to determine the governance of a number of countries. Stated U.S. aims in these conflicts have included fighting the War on Terror, as in the Afghan War, or removing dictatorial and hostile regimes, as in the Iraq War.
Source: Wikipedia
By Ray Dalio
The world is changing in big ways that haven’t happened before in our lifetimes but have many times in history, so I knew I needed to study past changes to understand what is happening now and help me to anticipate what is likely to happen.
I shared what I learned in my book, Principles for Dealing with the Changing World Order, and my hope is that this animation gives people an easy way to understand the key ideas from the book in a simple and entertaining way. In the first 18 minutes, you’ll get the gist of what drives the “Big Cycle” of rise and decline of nations through time and where we now are in that cycle.
If you give me 20 minutes more to watch the whole thing, and I will show you how the big cycle worked across the last 500 years of history—and what the current world leading power, the United States, need to do to remain strong. I hope you find it valuable and look forward to hearing your thoughts.
Source: YouTube
Editor’s Note: Before we jump to conclusions about the Russia-Ukraine conflict and its origins, we might wish to learn about Russia and get to know Putin from a different perspective. These informative interviews will illuminate the serious seeker of truth with regards to how this present conflict arose, not in a vacuum, but in relationship to the West’s aggressive regime building in Eastern Europe, the Middle East and Asia.
Oscar® winning writer-director Oliver Stone conducts a revealing series of interviews with Vladimir Putin, the enigmatic Russian president who has never before spoken at length or in detail to a Western interviewer. Prodded by Stone over the course of two years, Putin confronts a host of critical topics in candid detail, including his long-term grip on power, his personal relationships with Clinton, Bush, Obama and Trump, Edward Snowden’s asylum in Moscow, as well as allegations of election meddling and fostering turmoil in Syria. (Part 1 of 4)
Oscar® winning writer-director Oliver Stone conducts a revealing series of interviews with Vladimir Putin, the enigmatic Russian president who has never before spoken at length or in detail to a Western interviewer. Prodded by Stone over the course of two years, Putin confronts a host of critical topics in candid detail, including his long-term grip on power, his personal relationships with Clinton, Bush, Obama and Trump, Edward Snowden’s asylum in Moscow, as well as allegations of election meddling and fostering turmoil in Syria. (Part 2 of 4)
Oscar winning writer-director Oliver Stone conducts a revealing series of interviews with Vladimir Putin, the enigmatic Russian president who has never before spoken at length or in detail to a Western interviewer. Prodded by Stone over the course of two years, Putin confronts a host of critical topics in candid detail, including his long-term grip on power, his personal relationships with Clinton, Bush, Obama and Trump, Edward Snowden’s asylum in Moscow, as well as allegations of election meddling and fostering turmoil in Syria. (Part 3 of 4)
Oscar winning writer-director Oliver Stone conducts a revealing series of interviews with Vladimir Putin, the enigmatic Russian president who has never before spoken at length or in detail to a Western interviewer. Prodded by Stone over the course of two years, Putin confronts a host of critical topics in candid detail, including his long-term grip on power, his personal relationships with Clinton, Bush, Obama and Trump, Edward Snowden’s asylum in Moscow, as well as allegations of election meddling and fostering turmoil in Syria. (Part 4 of 4)
By Edward Curtin
Not wanting to sound hyperbolic, but I am starting to conclude that the nuclear madmen running the U.S./NATO New Cold War they started decades ago are itching to start a nuclear war with Russia.
Their hypocrisy and nihilistic thirst for death and destruction are so extreme that it boggles my mind. They accuse Russia of starting a New Cold War when they did so decades ago and have been pushing the envelope ever since. Now they act shocked that Russia, after many years of patience, has struck back in Ukraine.
In 2017, Oliver Stone released his four-part interviews with Russian President Vladimir Putin. The Putin Interviews were conducted between 2015, the year after the US engineered the coup d’état in Ukraine installing Nazis to power in that country bordering Russia, and 2017.
Stone was of course bashed for daring to respectfully ask questions and receive answers from the Russian leader who the American media has always cast, like all the mythic bogeymen, as the new Hitler intent on conquering the world, when it is the United States, not Russia, that has over 750 military bases throughout the world and has attacked Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Syria – the list is endless.
In his Putin interviews, Oliver Stone, a man of truth and honor, lets viewers catch a glimpse of the real Vladimir Putin and the matters that concern him as the leader of Russia. In 2018, I wrote of those interviews:
…he [Putin] makes factual points that should ring loud and clear to anyone conversant with facts.
This is a factual and true statement that should make any fair-minded person stand up in horror. If Russia had such missiles encircling the United States from Cuba, Mexico, and Canada, what American would find it tolerable? What would CNN and The New York Times have to say?
Yet these same people readily find it impossible to see the legitimacy in Russia’s position, resorting to name calling and illogical rhetoric. Russia is surrounded with U.S/NATO troops and missiles and yet Russia is the aggressor.
In the years since those interviews, U.S./NATO has consistently tightened the noose around Russia, including fueling the Ukrainian attacks on the Donbass, killing thousands, all the while pleading innocent and expecting no reply. Now the reply has come.
Although I have no inside information, I get the sense that the Western Empire is planning/initiating counter-measures far more extreme than the highly publicized economic sanctions.
While it is true, as many commentators such as Ray McGovern and Pepe Escobar have pointed out, that a paradigm shift is underway and the once dominant US/NATO bully boys must now contend with the Sino-Russian alliance that has ushered in a dramatic change, nevertheless, as in the past decades, the so-called leaders of the US are a dumb bunch driven by unquenchable demons.
As McGovern says:
Yet, there remain unsettling indications coming from Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs Victoria Nuland, Antony Blinken, and Jake Sullivan that senior administration ‘dolts’ (copyright North Korean leader Kim Jong Un) in the Washington Swamp still don’t get it.
I’m afraid they don’t and never will. That is what frightens me. While it seems counterintuitive and totally irrational that these people would be planning to use some type of nuclear weapon in this current situation, I am not so sure.
They obviously pushed Russia to have no alternative but to attack Ukraine, and now that they have accomplished that goal, it seems to me that they will up the ante. Diplomacy is not their way; violence is.
Pepe Escobar has just written:
This is what happens when a bunch of ragged hyenas, jackals and tiny rodents poke The Bear: a new geopolitical order is born at breathtaking speed.
From a dramatic meeting of the Russian Security Council to a UN history lesson delivered by Russian President Vladimir Putin and the subsequent birth of the Baby Twins – the People’s Republics of Donetsk and Luhansk – all the way to the breakaway republics’ appeal to Putin to intervene militarily to expel the NATO-backed Ukrainian bombing-and-shelling forces from Donbass, it was a seamless process, executed at warp speed.
The (nuclear) straw that (nearly) broke the Bear’s back – and forced it to pounce – was Comedian/Ukrainian President Volodymy Zelensky, back from the Russophobia-drenched Munich Security Conference where he was hailed like a Messiah, saying that the 1994 Budapest memorandum should be revised and Ukraine should be nuclear-rearmed.
As usual, his analysis is correct, but it may fail to grasp the unspeakable nature of the madness that drives desperadoes.
If those running US foreign policy feel that a new geo-political order is being born “at breathtaking speed” as a result of Russia’s move into Ukraine, then they are capable of extreme acts. And they have all the mainstream western media behind them, barking out their non-stop propaganda.
We are inexorably moving toward a global war that will become nuclear if an international movement doesn’t quickly arise to stop it. Most people bemoan the thought of such a war to end all wars, but refuse to analyze the factors leading to it.
It seems so unimaginable, but It happens step-by-step, and many steps have already been taken with more coming soon. It’s so obvious that most can’t see it, or don’t want to.
The corporate mainstream media are clearly part of the continuation of the CIA’s Operation Mockingbird, and those who still rely on them for the truth are beyond reach. We need to use all alternative means to raise the alarm and make sure the ultimate nightmare never occurs.
Perhaps hyperbole is the only way to do so, for it may be closer to the truth than we want to believe.
Source: Off-Guardian
Liberty International News 