Saturday, June 22, 2024

Biden Team Ignores Israel’s History of Deceit
and Deception

JUNE 21, 2024

Photograph Source: The White House – Public Domain

Question: How do you know when Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is lying?
Answer: He moves his lips.

Israel’s history over the past 76 years is replete with examples of deceit. This was true from the start, when the Israelis denied their role in expelling hundreds of thousands of Palestinians from their homes during Israel’s War of Independence. The Arab world refers to the expulsion as the “nakba” (the catastrophe), which is largely denied in Israel. The Israeli legacy of denying the “nakba” is no different from those who deny the Holocaust.

The mainstream media bends over backwards to defend Israel’s case, and over the years it has said very little about the history of Israel’s deceit and deception. As recently as last week, for example, the Washington Post carried a bizarre headline that read “Israel is on its honor to comply with U.S. intelligence limits.” The accompanying story was a significant one, detailing the importance of the U.S. intelligence provided to Israel to conduct the rescue of four Israeli hostages, an operation that took the lives of nearly three hundred Palestinians, mostly women and children. By any definition of the requirement for proportionality in wartime, this was indeed a war crime.

The Post article went on to cite National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan, an apologist for Israel since the start of the war on October 7th, who explained that the United States has “provided an intense range of assets and capabilities and expertise to Israel,” and that the provision of intelligence is “not tied or conditioned on anything else. It is not limited. We are not holding anything back. We are providing every asset, every tool, every capability.” These remarks are dispositive of our complicity in Israel’s brutal and unconscionable assault against Palestinian civilians.

At the same time, U.S. officials disingenuously claim that Israeli is prohibited from using U.S. intelligence for targeting in Gaza in any military operations, including airstrikes.” They argue that there are “long-standing formal arrangements that are scrutinized by lawyers in the U.S. intelligence community, as well as directives from the White House following the October 7th attacks.” This is particularly disingenuous because of the long record of deceit and deception from both the U.S. intelligence community regarding U.S. wars in Vietnam, Iraq, and Afghanistan, and the Israeli lies over the years regarding their wars in 1956, 1967, 1973, and 1982. I’ve written extensively about U.S. and Israeli lies in my articles for CounterPunch and my various books and articles. And I will return to this deceit in future articles.

The idea that Israel is “on its honor” not to use U.S. intelligence for proscribed purposes, which is described by current U.S. intelligence officers, is laughable. The Israelis have regularly broken agreements with the United States regarding the use of certain weaponry as well as the supply of U.S. weapons technology to third countries. There is legislation on the books that requires the Director of National Intelligence to notify Congress if U.S. intelligence to any third country leads to civilian casualties, but this law is observed only in the breach. U.S. oversight regarding Israel is virtually nonexistent.

The Israeli pattern of deceit is particularly important because Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is currently engaged in a new round of false accusations in order to embarrass the Biden administration and divide the American public on the Gaza war as well as the U.S. election. At least, the Biden administration has responded to Netanyahu’s outrageous charge by canceling an important meeting of the U.S.-Israeli Strategic Consultative Group regarding policy toward Iran in return for Netanyahu’s “stunt.”

Nevertheless, National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan did not cancel or postpone his meeting with his Israeli counterpart, Tzachi Hanegbi, and the U.S. Ambassador to Israel, Jack Lew, went overboard in stressing to Netanyahu there there haven’t been any delays in providing weaponry. Also, Secretary of State Antony Blinken, who arrived in Israel early in the war and announced that “I’m come before you not only as the U.S. secretary of state, but as a Jew,” assured Netanyahu that U.S. weapons were “moving as it normally would move.” The only exception has been the hold on 2,000-pound bombs, which have killed thousands of women and children and should never have been provided to Israel in the first place.

These mixed signals over Netanyahu’s remarks were reminiscent of the so-called “red line” that Biden proclaimed to lighten an Israeli assault in Rafah, where more than a million refugees were threatened. Israeli Defense Forces stormed Rafah on May 6, and Biden threatened to withhold weapons on May 8. But there was no interruption of U.S. weapons deliveries, and the consequences in Rafah over the past six weeks have been devastating. The assault is still ongoing, but national security adviser Sullivan announced that the “red line” had not been broken.

The fact that the U.S. Congress is rolling out the red carpet for Netanyahu in July is particularly ludicrous in view of his history of manipulating American public and congressional opinion. Have we forgotten his address to the Congress in 2015, designed to embarrass the Obama administration and stop the completion of the Iran nuclear accord? On this occasion, the congressional invitation is shameful because Netanyahu is a war criminal whose policies are killing and starving innocent civilians.

Netanyahu has spoken privately about his ability to manipulate Democratic administrations because he has the power of the Jewish lobby behind him, and Democratic presidents are fearful of antagonizing the Jewish vote and Jewish fund raising on behalf of Democrats. He has insulted American presidents, vice presidents, and secretaries of state over the years, and has never missed an opportunity to demonstrate that he has the upper hand in negotiations with the United States. Netanyahu has always played hard ball with the United States. Now, it’s time for the United States to do the same.

Melvin A. Goodman is a senior fellow at the Center for International Policy and a professor of government at Johns Hopkins University. A former CIA analyst, Goodman is the author of Failure of Intelligence: The Decline and Fall of the CIA and National Insecurity: The Cost of American Militarism. and A Whistleblower at the CIA. His most recent books are “American Carnage: The Wars of Donald Trump” (Opus Publishing, 2019) and “Containing the National Security State” (Opus Publishing, 2021). Goodman is the national security columnist for counterpunch.org.

Joe Biden’s Time Interview Should Set Off Alarms

On May 28, U.S. President Joe Biden gave an interview to Time. His delivery and content were concerning for a number of reasons. Biden, at times, seemed misinformed and detached from reality. Sometimes, he seemed off message; other times, he seemed convinced by his own talking points. But four answers he gave were especially alarming and deserve to be highlighted.

The first was Biden’s assertion that America is “the world power.” The truth of that claim can be debated, but making that claim is deaf to the changes taking place in the world. Much of the world is angry at the United States for substituting leadership in the global community of international law with the imposition of an inconsistent and hypocritical rules-based order.

If the United States is still the world power, then a multipolar world that includes a rapidly growing BRICS+ and the Shanghai Cooperation Organization is closer and closer on its heels. Biden seems not to have noticed what his CIA director has: that the world is in one of “those times of transition that come along a couple of times a century. Today the United States still has a better hand to play than any of our rivals, but it is no longer the only big kid on the geopolitical bloc. And our position at the head of the table isn’t guaranteed.”

In a disturbing defense of his claim, Biden said that “the reason why I cleared the intelligence so we can release the information we knew that [Putin] was going to attack, was to let the world know we were still in charge. We still know what’s going on.”

It is disturbing that Biden says that he released the intelligence, not to alert and protect Ukraine or to prevent war, but “to let the world know we were still in charge.” It is also disturbing that the United States had that intelligence, and knew Ukraine was about to be attacked, but did nothing to prevent it. Hawkishly, they could have massively armed Ukraine prior to the invasion. More rationally and responsibly, they could have seriously engaged Vladimir Putin on Russia’s December 2021 proposal on security guarantees and discussed a promise that Ukraine would not be invited into NATO. Sociologist Volodymyr Ishchenko of Freie University in Berlin remarks that the United States failing to act on that intelligence in either of those ways “looks sort of strange, and of course very tragic for Ukraine.” It is disturbing that the U.S. impotently released the intelligence, not to prevent war and protect Ukraine, but to show the world that they are still “the world power.”

The second is Biden’s insistence that Putin has clearly stated his intention not to stop at Ukraine but to “reestablish the Soviet Union.” He pulled out a copy of Putin’s February 21, 2022 speech, repeatedly mocking his interviewers, “You probably haven’t read it.” But as Biden explains it to them, and summarizes it as saying “Ukraine is not a neighboring country” but “an inalienable part” of Russia, it begins to sound like Biden has not read the speech, which is highly critical of the Soviet Union.

Discussing the “critical” stage “the situation in Donbas has reached,” Putin references the closeness of the people of Donbas not to justify integrating or conquering them but to justify protecting them. If Biden has read the speech, it must have been a heavily redacted version. As Nicolai Petro, author of The Tragedy of Ukraine, pointed out to me, Biden selectively quotes from the speech while leaving much of contextual importance out.

Biden quotes that Putin “has just laid out, straight out. He said, he said, ‘I would like to emphasize again, Ukraine is not a neighboring country of us. It is an inalienable part of our own history, culture and spiritual space.’” But he then omits, “These are our comrades, those dearest to us—not only colleagues, friends and people who once served together, but also relatives, people bound by blood, by family ties.” Biden picks up Putin’s speech with “Since time immemorial, the people living in the south-west of what has historically been Russia, Russian land have called themselves Russians and Orthodox Christians,” but omits the qualifier, “This was the case before the 17th century, when a portion of this territory rejoined the Russian state, and after.”

Nowhere in Biden’s edited quotation, nor elsewhere in the speech, does Putin hint at going beyond Ukraine and reestablishing the Soviet Union.

As Petro pointed out to me, when addressing Biden’s accusation about “restor[ing] the Soviet Union,” Putin said, “the page has been turned. We look to the future based on the realities of today. There is no need to invent anything and form an opinion about Russia based on these ideas, there is no need to form an image of an enemy from Russia.” He called the “thought that Russia wanted to attack NATO” “nonsense.”

The third alarming answer that Biden gave came when the interviewer asked him if a Russian proposal to end the war is the best Ukraine can hope for when the United States finds itself “facing a difficult situation in Ukraine,” when “the war is stalled,” and when so many Ukrainians are being killed or wounded. Biden accused the interviewer of “skipping over all that’s happened in the meantime,” insisting that “[t]he Russian military has been decimated. You don’t write about that. It’s been freaking decimated.”

They don’t write about that because it’s not true. Biden’s answer is disconnected from reality. After a poor beginning, Russia has improved its battlefield strategy and its methods of dealing with Western supplied weapons and has fought effectively. The war seems to have decisively turned in Russia’s favor. Russia is gaining some ground, and Ukraine is losing huge numbers of soldiers to injury or death.

Far from being decimated, General Christopher Cavoli, the commander of United States European Command and Supreme Allied Commander Europe has reported to Congress that “the Russian ground force…is bigger today than it was at the beginning of the conflict.” He added, “Much of the Russian military has not been affected negatively by this conflict… despite all of the efforts they’ve undertaken inside Ukraine.” On April 3, Deputy Secretary of State Kurt Campbell said, “We have assessed over the course of the last couple of months that Russia has almost completely reconstituted militarily.”

On April 11, General Cavoli explained the Russian army is reconstituting “far faster” than initially projected and that “[t]he army is actually now larger – by 15 percent – than it was when it invaded Ukraine” and that it is growing by 30,000 soldiers a month. Rather than being decimated, Cavoli reported that Russia is on track to “command the largest military on the continent.”

The fourth answer was, perhaps, the most confused and alarming. When asked what the “endgame” was in Ukraine, Biden seems to have answered that the endgame was a Ukraine that is not in NATO. Biden said peace means making sure Russia never occupies Ukraine. But that, he said, “means we have a relationship with them like we do with other countries, where we supply weapons so they can defend themselves in the future.” But that relationship, he explained, “doesn’t mean NATO.” He then explained that “I was the one when – and you guys did report it at Time – the one that I was saying that I am not prepared to support the NATOization of Ukraine.”

In his confusing and surprising response, Biden seems to say that the American security arrangement with Ukraine will be that of a partner supplying weapons so they can defend themselves and not of an ally in NATO.

That last response was only the most alarming of several alarming responses that either come as a surprise or seem misinformed or disconnected from reality.

Ted Snider is a regular columnist on U.S. foreign policy and history at Antiwar.com and The Libertarian Institute. He is also a frequent contributor to Responsible Statecraft and The American Conservative as well as other outlets. To support his work or for media or virtual presentation requests, contact him at tedsnider@bell.net.

The ‘Missed Opportunities’ Syndrome: US-Russia Relations from 1992-Present

The tragic consequences of Russia’s February 2022 attack on Ukraine are amply documented in our mainstream media: one third of pre-war population lost, through death, displacement or flight; Ukraine’s infrastructural and environmental catastrophes; the grim echo of the trench warfare-like conditions of World War I, with incrementally small advances by either side at costs of thousands more lives. The actual causes of the conflict are more the purview of independent media, this being an inconvenient topic for the Western narrative. Bluntly put, the Ukraine tragedy was born of a series of missed opportunities, mostly willfully so, and mostly attributable to NATO and the West: if ever the words of Clausewitz rang true: War is politics by other means, they do so in the case of the Ukrainian tragedy.

It is clear that Western leaders went out of their way to prevent a negotiated diplomatic solution to the crisis. As such, they share guilt in the onset of war, and also in its prolonged course, through massive arms supplies ot a Ukrainian cause that looks ever more lost. The most immediate precipitating factor was the failure of Kyiv [at the urging of the West] to implement the Minsk agreements of 2015 and 2016 that would have removed the buildup of armed forces on both sides and kept the Donbas republics within Ukraine, with limited autonomy, and with such basic and essential rights as the use of the Russian language in official documents. [One of the architects of Minsk, Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany, subsequently confessed that the Minsk process was merely a playing for time to allow Ukraine to build up its military capacity. ] Subsequent West-dictated avoidance of a diplomatic solution torpedoed the Istanbul explorations in 2022 [remember Boris Johnson’s visit to Kyiv as NATO’s messenger boy?].

One year before Minsk I there was the overthrow of Ukraine’s legally elected President, and the West’s connivance in this, at the Maidan “revolution” in 2014, in which the United States’ woman on the spot, Victoria Nuland, crudely dismissed our ambassador’s concern about the reaction of our European NATO allies to the coup. Since one of the subplots here featured a growing NATO presence in Ukraine, the Russian reaction may only be surmised.

I would argue, however, that while these events are directly causal factors in the 2022 invasion, there is a chain of action – or inaction – that goes back more than thirty years, to the Cold War’s end and fanned the flames of Russian insecurity with regard to developments to its West.

First, beginning with Gorbachev in the last days of the Soviet Union, there were Soviet, then Russian proposals for a new European security architecture “from Lisbon to Vladivostok”. The typical Western reaction was “Interesting idea, let’s think about it”. This having evaporated into thin air, Gorbachev, Yeltsin and Putin all at various times broached the idea of Russia in NATO; the poor consolation prize was the NATO-Russia Council, where Russian concerns basically came to die. Then, of course, we had NATO expansion, beginning in 1999 and finally reaching Russia’s doorstep with the accession of the Baltic states and Poland and, most recently, Finland. Thus perished the “not one inch to the east” verbal promise of James Baker to Gorbachev, which was reinforced by a veritable Hall of Fame of Western leadership: Helmut Kohl, Francois Mitterand, George H.W. Bush, NATO Secretary-General Manfred Woerner, even Margaret Thatcher [the Iron Lady praised Gorbachev as “a man I can do business with”]. The bottom line: this whole sorry train of events represents the missed opportunity to involve a willing Russia in a post-Cold War European security structure,

Russian exclusion from, or even serious engagement with, the West through NATO was exacerbated by U.S.-directed NATO actions that could only heighten Moscow’s angst, and justifiably so. These are familiar: U.S. withdrawal from the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty in 2002; our refusal to respond to Russian concerns over the Conventional Forces in Europe agreement, resulting in Russia’s withdrawal; the bombing of Russia’s ally, Serbia, in1999; US placement of nuclear installations in Poland, Bulgaria and Germany [missile defenses, say we, but readily convertible to offensive purposes]; NATO exercises in Georgia and Ukraine [as one observer wryly noted: “Ukraine may not be in NATO, but NATO is most definitely in Ukraine”.] In sum, the past thirty-odd year history of U.S./NATO- Russia relations is pockmarked with provocative actions by the West; Russia has been reactive, not revanchist, and the invasion of Ukraine is the apogee, a direct response to George W. Bush’s irrational proposal of NATO membership for Ukraine and Georgia at the 2008 Bucharest summit and the relentless increase in NATO’s presence since. Again, a bottom line: the overwhelmingly foolish missed opportunity of the post-Cold War age has been that of concluding a grand [or even good] bargain with Russia. On the contrary, our billions of arms supplied to Ukraine. With increasing signs of approval to use them on targets within Russia, may well lead to Russia’s ultimate. apocalyptic reaction: nuclear war with NATO.

There is one final aspect of the “missed opportunities” syndrome, and one that hits home in a personal way – indeed, it may be seen rather as an elegiac reflection on “lost opportunities”. For those of us who labored for some twenty-five years in private-sector efforts to see a positive U.S. Russia engagement take root, the loss of connections with Russian interlocutors who were engaged in a similarly constructive way is nothing short of tragic. One thinks of scholars and experts such as Sergey Rogov of the Institute for the Study of the U.S. and Canada [now surely moribund, if not defunct]; Andrey Kortunov, Vyacheslav Nikonov and Dmitri Trenin [the first Russian director of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace’s Moscow Center, an indispensable port of call in a Moscow visit, and now disbanded]. One thinks of governmental officials like the late Yevgeny Primakov [who turned his Washington-bound plane around in mid-Atlantic upon hearing of the bombing of Belgrade], and of brilliant parliamentarians such as Vladimir Lukin and Alexey Arbatov, the latter perhaps the most penetrating mind on arms control issues on either the U.S. or Russian side. What connects these individuals, and what makes the loss of their professional expertise and comradeship all the more lamentable, is that each was absolutely dedicated to the pursuit of a positive relationship. Toward this end, they articulated Russia’s positions and strategic interests, while understanding the view from the other side – a diplomatic art that seems to have been irrevocably been lost in Washington.

David C. Speedie was Senior Fellow and Director of the Program on U.S. Global Engagement at the Carnegie Council for Ethics in International Affairs in New York from 2007 to 2017. He is a founding member of the Board of ACURA.

When US Officials Show You Who They Are, Believe Them

“When someone shows you who they are,” Maya Angelou said, “believe them the first time.”

That should apply to foreign-policy elites who show you who they are, time after time.

Officials running the Pentagon and State Department have been in overdrive for more than 250 days in support of Israel’s ongoing slaughter of Palestinian civilians in Gaza. Supposedly dedicated to defense and diplomacy, those officials have worked to implement and disguise Washington’s war policies, which have taken more lives than any other government in this century.

Among the weapons of war, cluster munitions are especially horrific. That’s why 67 Democrats and an equal number of Republicans in the House of Representatives voted last week to prevent the U.S. government from continuing to send those weapons to armies overseas.

But more than twice as many House members voted the other way. They defeated a Pentagon funding amendment that would have prohibited the transfer of cluster munitions to other countries. The lawmakers ensured that the U.S. can keep supplying those weapons to the military forces of Ukraine and Israel.

As of now, 124 nations have signed onto a treaty banning cluster munitions, which often wreck the bodies of civilians. The “bomblets” from cluster munitions “are particularly attractive to children because they resemble a bell with a loop of ribbon at the end,” the Just Security organization explains.

But no member of Congress need worry that one of their own children might pick up such a bomblet someday, perhaps mistaking it for a toy, only to be instantly killed or maimed with shrapnel.

The Biden administration correctly responded to indications (later proven accurate) that Russia was using cluster munitions in Ukraine. On Feb. 28, 2022, White House spokeswoman Jen Psaki told journalists that if the reports of Russian use of those weapons turned out to be true, “it would potentially be a war crime.”

Back then, the front page of the New York Times described “internationally banned cluster munitions” as “a variety of weapons – rockets, bombs, missiles and artillery projectiles – that disperse lethal bomblets in midair over a wide area, hitting military targets and civilians alike.”

Days later, the Times reported that NATO officials “accused Russia of using cluster bombs in its invasion,” and the newspaper added that “anti-personnel cluster bombs… kill so indiscriminately they are banned under international law.”

But when the Ukrainian military forces ran low on ammunition last year, the U.S. administration decided to start shipping cluster munitions to them.

“All countries should condemn the use of these weapons under any circumstances,” Human Rights Watch has declared.

BBC correspondent John Simpson summed up a quarter-century ago: “Used against human beings, cluster bombs are some of the most savage weapons of modern warfare.”

As the Congressional Research Service reported this spring, cluster munitions “disperse large numbers of submunitions imprecisely over an extended area.” They “frequently fail to detonate and are difficult to detect,” and “can remain explosive hazards for decades.”

The CRS report added: “Civilian casualties are primarily caused by munitions being fired into areas where soldiers and civilians are intermixed, inaccurate cluster munitions landing in populated areas, or civilians traversing areas where cluster munitions have been employed but failed to explode.”

The horrible immediate effects are just the beginning. “It’s been over five decades since the U.S. dropped cluster bombs on Laos, the most bombed country in the world per capita,” Human Rights Watch points out. “The contamination from cluster munitions remnants and other unexploded ordnance is so vast that fewer than 10 percent of affected areas have been cleared. An estimated 80 million submunitions still pose a danger, especially to curious children.”

The members of Congress who just greenlighted more cluster munitions are dodging grisly realities. The basic approach is to proceed as though such human realities don’t matter if an ally is using those weapons (or if the United States uses them, as happened in Southeast Asia, Yugoslavia, Afghanistan, Iraq and Yemen).

Overall, with carnage persisting in Gaza, it’s easy enough to say that Israel’s prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu has shown us who he is. But so has Presidente Biden, and so have the most powerful Republicans and Democrats in Congress.

While the U.S. has been supplying a large majority of the weapons and ammunition imported by Israel, a similar approach from official Washington (with ineffectual grumbling) has enabled Israel to lethally constrict food going into Gaza.

During his State of the Union address in early March, Biden announced plans for the U.S. to build a port on the Gaza coast to bring in food and other vital aid. But his speech didn’t mention the Pentagon’s expectation that such a seaport could take 60 days to become operational.

At the time, a Common Dreams headline summed up the hollowness of the gambit: “Biden Aid Port Plan Rebuked as ‘Pathetic’ PR Effort as Israel Starves Gazans.” Even at full tilt, the envisioned port would not come anywhere near compensating for Israel’s methodical blockage of aid trucks – by far the best way to get food to 2.2 million people facing starvation. “We are talking about a population that is starving now,” said Ziad Issa, the head of humanitarian policy for ActionAid. “We have already seen children dying of hunger.”

An official at Save the Children offered a reality check: “Children in Gaza cannot wait to eat. They are already dying from malnutrition, and saving their lives is a matter of hours or days – not weeks.” The Nation described “the tragic absurdity of Biden’s Gaza policies: the U.S. government is making elaborate plans to ameliorate a humanitarian catastrophe that would not exist without its own bombs.”

And this week – more than three months after the ballyhooed drumroll about plans for a port on the Gaza coast – news broke that the whole thing is a colossal failure even on its own terms.

“The $230 million temporary pier that the U.S. military built on short notice to rush humanitarian aid to Gaza has largely failed in its mission, aid organizations say, and will probably end operations weeks earlier than originally expected,” the New York Times reported on June 18. “In the month since it was attached to the shoreline, the pier has been in service only about 10 days. The rest of the time, it was being repaired after rough seas broke it apart, detached to avoid further damage or paused because of security concerns.”

As Israel’s crucial military patron, the U.S. government could insist on an end to the continual massacre of civilians in Gaza and demand a complete halt to interference with aid deliveries. Instead, Israel continues to inflict “unconscionable death and suffering” while mass starvation is closing in.

Maya Angelou’s advice certainly applies. When the president and a big congressional majority show that they are willing accomplices to mass murder, believe them.

It’s fitting that Angelou, a renowned poet and writer, gave her voice to words from Rachel Corrie, who was crushed to death one day in 2003 while standing in front of an Israeli army bulldozer as it moved to demolish a Palestinian family’s home in Gaza.

A few years after Corrie died, Angelou recorded a video while reading from an email that the young activist sent: “We are all born and someday we’ll all die. Most likely to some degree alone. What if our aloneness isn’t a tragedy? What if our aloneness is what allows us to speak the truth without being afraid? What if our aloneness is what allows us to adventure – to experience the world as a dynamic presence – as a changeable, interactive thing?”

Norman Solomon is the national director of RootsAction.org and executive director of the Institute for Public Accuracy. He is the author of many books including War Made Easy. His latest book, War Made Invisible: How America Hides the Human Toll of Its Military Machine, was published in 2023 by The New Press.

At the Edge of Apocalypse

by Robert Hunziker / June 21st, 2024

Biblical flooding, scorching heat, collapsing grid system, animals crumbling, waters rising, crops wilting, economy on the brink, and millions displaced.

Welcome to the future of climate change… Pakistan.

If one could classify a global warming beta test as a success towards an ultimate goal of apocalypse, unfortunately, it has turned Pakistan into a country populated by millions of displaced people in the early chapters of a horror story with no ending in sight because it is likely to get worse. Pakistan has been thrashed back and forth from one year (2022) of biblical flooding to years of record-setting heat. Normality has fled, chased out by an ogre of darkened apocalypse in the making.

Wherefore, Inside Climate News d/d June 8, 2024 has a remarkable series entitled “Living on Earth”, which recently interviewed Rafay Alam, who is an environmental lawyer and a member of Pakistan’s Climate Change Council. The title of the interview: “As Temperatures in Pakistan Top 120 Degrees, There’s Nowhere to Run”. That interview is the basis for this article about a country of 240 million people at the brink of apocalypse.

Based upon Pakistan’s severe climate experience, here is what Rafay Alam concludes, a widely shared viewpoint throughout the Global South:

There is a significant denialism on climate change in places like the United States. And it angers me because I see people affected. I see animals affected. And this is a lived experience for the global majority, the Global South. It’s extremely infuriating to see people who’ve participated in this global warming deny it, deny any accountability, try and move on as if nothing’s happened and try and continue to make money and drive that bottom line.

There’s an adage of the 1950s “Ugly Americans” that lingers to this day outside of America’s borders. It pejoratively references Americans as loud, arrogant, self-absorbed, demeaning, thoughtless, ignorant, with ugly ethnocentric behavior, which also applies to U.S. corporate interests internationally. Regrettably, climate change is reviving this debasing dictum in a very big way, 70 years later. And people who think today’s sociopolitical atmosphere is poisoned, divided, and postured for trouble in the USA should look over their shoulders, as anger foments around the world with America a target. Trouble’s universal.

Rafay Alam resides in Lahore (pop. 13M) known as the “City of Gardens.” It is the cultural heart of Pakistan with exquisite arts, cuisine, and music festivals, known for filmmaking and the recognized home of the intelligentsia. Lahore is a sophisticated metropolis that’s a safe place to live. According to the World Crime Index, the city is safer than living in London, New York, or Melbourne.

Yet, life for millions in Pakistan has changed for the worse seemingly overnight. Today, the country experiences persistent heat waves over 120°F in some cities, and summer is just beginning. Anything approaching the normal rhythm of life of past decades has been overwhelmed by brutal severely damaging climate change. The country is still recovering from the biblical flooding of 2022 when normal rainfall turned voracious 400% to 800% beyond anything ever experienced, a torrential downpouring lasting weeks in regions of the country that do not drain into the Indus Basin. Thus, a 100-kilometer (62-mile) artificial lake formed, displacing 10 million and impacting 30 million, bringing in its wake $35B infrastructure damage, roads swept away, schools swept away, hospitals swept away. It will take a generation to rebuild. This is climate change in full blast mode.

Rafay Alam:

We’ve seen temperatures since the middle of May to the first of June currently more than 50 degrees Centigrade, which is well over 120°F. Lahore, where I live is 44°C today, which is about 111°F… I go for a walk in the evenings when the sun sets It’s not unpleasant, but I notice animals and birds collapsed to the ground looking for water, dogs on the side of the road unable to get up… Recently, it was 125°F, the hottest place on Earth, at Mohenjo-Daro, which is home to an ancient civilization.

Accordingly, Pakistan is not just experiencing a scorching heat wave, it is actively experiencing the climate crisis in all its variations on a real time basis. And according to meteorologists: “It’s going to stay hotter for longer.”

Climate change has wrought an economic nightmare, as Pakistan has sought flood relief that came as loans, not grants or aid, which has doubled Pakistan’s external debt in only two years. This is devastating for a country that is trying to regain its footing and rebuild an economy that climate change clobbered.

Nevertheless, the country is learning to live with devastating temperatures by changing life’s normal patterns. Schools are let out by 12:00 noon but shutdown entirely when temperatures rise too far, which is a common experience of late.

Of even more concern, and possibly the most dangerous scenario of all, the monsoon season is coming by the end of June, early July which will convert dry heat to extreme humid heat with deadly wet bulb temperatures. At 95°F and 70% humidity, it’ll impact the human body like 120°F. That’s deadly because at that level the human body cannot release heat by sweating. Rather, it bakes internal organs. Hmm- it’s been triple digits for some time now with daytime forecasts to remain in triple digits to the end of June, and likely beyond into the heart of the summer.

Agriculture is 20% of Pakistan GDP. And according to Alam, a leading English newspaper recently ran a headline about crops decimated in Pakistan by heat, cotton basically sizzling, maize, mangos, and other vegetables and fodder for cattle, expecting a decline of productivity. Nearly one-half of the Pakistani workforce is in agriculture and they’re being hammered down to the poverty line by unforgiving climate change.

This heat wave is a man-made event due to the greenhouse gases consumed and thrown into the atmosphere by the Global North since the industrial revolution These greenhouse gases have to stop. (Alam)

Meanwhile, he claims the country must adapt as soon as possible to an off-the-rails climate system fed by profit-motives outside of Pakistan. He suggests changes to agriculture by working on heat-resistant crops. Currently, no crops can withstand 50-plus Centigrade temperatures. And the water economy must learn to adapt as 90% of water goes to agriculture, which is 20% of GDP employing 40% of the workforce, which is at the poverty line.

Meanwhile, it is currently harvesting season. Agricultural workers are waking up when the sun rises for only a couple of hours of work before it gets too hot to work. When it’s too hot to work any longer, people congregate inside for shelter from the sun. But those who live near fields are warned that snakes and scorpions also seek cooler spaces, entering homes en masse seeking shelter.

Alam’s biggest concern is for most Pakistanis who are middle class, working class and at the poverty line, unable to withstand climate shocks much further. Moreover, there are really not many safe places for them to go to escape global heat, unless they have a rich friend.

Even heading to the Himalaya mountains for cooler terrain could be treacherous. There are over 3,000 glaciers that, due to global warming, form glacial lakes in the mountains. Over time, these blow apart in outburst of devastating unannounced floods bringing down mountainsides as roads and bridges are washed away leaving those seeking cool mountain air stranded. According to the International Centre for Integrated Mountain Development, the Hindu Kush Himalaya is a “hotspot of risk” for outburst floods.

Pakistan, unfortunately, has become a proving ground for what climate change is capable of. And there’s no reason to expect it to remain confined to the borders of Pakistan.

Rafay Alam first became aware of climate change’s potential impact nearly 20 years ago when he saw Al Gore’s An Inconvenient Truth (Paramount Classics, May 2006), which opened a lot of eyes. Yet, the nations of the world have failed to adequately confront the primary cause, burning fossil fuels, that fuels radical climate change that’s whiplashed Pakistan’s environment beyond limits.

Alam believes the basis of the legal systems and the international system can’t cope with an existential crisis such as climate change: “One of the worst ways to deal with something like climate change is to divide the world into 200 different countries and have them argue with each other.” The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change -IPCC- is testament to this, 30 years later and CO2 is still increasing each year without missing a beat, targeting Pakistan. But, for certain, Pakistan is not an isolated case.

According to Alam, in conclusion:

Earth’s ecosystem has been in balance since the last ice age… That civilization is over… the way that we interact with each other- extremely heavy energy use, extremely heavy water use, incredibly consumptive of natural resources producing greenhouse gases for just about everything… It’s this behavior, this civilization, which is at risk. And yes, it is very much an apocalypse.Facebook Twitter

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Robert Hunziker (MA, economic history, DePaul University) is a freelance writer and environmental journalist whose articles have been translated into foreign languages and appeared in over 50 journals, magazines, and sites worldwide. He can be contacted at: rlhunziker@gmail.com. Read other articles by Robert.

Years of Living Deniably

Unbecoming American

by T.P. Wilkinson / June 18th, 2024

The summer of discontent is upon us. Whether we will find ourselves witness to direct exchange of fire or targets of another global counter-insurgency sweep is anyone’s guess. This time in 2020 the most massive abrogation of human and civil rights (temporary privileges granted to selective populations at different levels) in recorded history was accelerating on the highway to Hell, paved by the psychopathic oligarchy and the pharmaments industry. In the first half of 2024, distorted, partial, and self-serving disclosures and omissions have animated what remains of critical faculty in the West.

Predictably, at least for those few who learned no later than 2001 to trust nothing governments and corporations say or do, the schedule of lies—both by commission and omission—has been released for public assessment. Almost without exception, the assertions made by those who opposed both the state of siege and the subsequent mass poisoning of approximately a billion people have been verified in fragmentary form. The arbitrary nature and futility of the measures even for their ostensible purpose have been admitted. The genetic engineering origins of the alleged pathogen have also been licensed for public chatter. A recent report attributed to Establishment mouthpiece, Reuters, claims that covert US military operations included an Internet campaign to discredit China’s Sinovac injections, presumably to protect Pfizer market share. An “anti-vax” attack on the Philippine government was supposedly launched to discourage Filipinos from taking the Chinese prophylaxis. Such an “anti-vax” operation in the former US colony persisted while in the rest of the West those critical of the de facto mandatory injections were actively suppressed. Perhaps one should not rush to attribute so much value to this revelation.

The concern about the competition in the injection market, also known as vaccines or biologics (a term used to evade certain legacy regulatory conditions that survived the gutting of public institutions for assuring safe food and drugs) belies a confidence in the underlying official myth upon which the so-called COVID-19 pandemic is based. Hence one can see how these disclosures trigger gossip habits among critics, diverting their attention from the core issues.

Starting with the basic deception at the end of November 2019, there were early analysts like Larry Romanoff in Shanghai (aka Moon of Alabama I believe) who provided a clear breakdown of the alleged spread of whatever pathogen(s) were attributed to the first December days in Wuhan, Hubei province. Numerous other, meanwhile forgotten or ignored observers pointed to the coincidence of the World Military Games and a strangely ill US contingent. The suppression of reports by a medical practitioner in Washington State, early in the run-up to the all out war, has also been forgotten for all intents and purposes. Other observers pointed to the peculiar and not entirely explained role of a US agent, ostensibly on behalf of the paramilitary Centers for Disease Control, who had been seconded to China until shortly after the alleged outbreak when she suddenly returned to the US. Here it should be noted that the general ignorance of the standard literature on covert action became apparent. Aside from a few early commentators, there were hardly any reactions to these reports. All focus turned to pseudo-medical debates about transmissibility of animal viruses to humans and security conditions in biological experimentation laboratories. The obvious signals of covert action were scrupulously ignored or merely overlooked. David Martin remained one of the diligent open source researchers who refused to ignore the accumulated twenty years of overt-covert action. None of the mainstream and much of the conformist alternative media perpetuated the navel contemplation by which every event in the world is measured.

For example, while attention was focussed on the Japanese cruise ship in quarantine almost no questions were raised as to how a Wuhan “infection” became lethal for several high-ranking Iranian officials. Despite the well-known assassination campaign by the settler-colonial regime in Palestine and its principal patron on the Potomac, virtually no one discussed the possibility of a complex synchronisation of belligerence. The repeated occurrence of extraordinary livestock infections in China have yet to reach common consciousness in the overall story. Meanwhile the role of the Italian NATO Gladio squads in bombing the Bologna railway station (2 August 1980, killing 85 and wounding over 200) is public record. Aside from the fact that the OSS/CIA and Italian organised crime (aka the Mafia) have been running Italian politics since 1944, one needs no imagination to contemplate a scheme by which the Bergamo “covid” deaths in old-age facilities could have been perpetrated. The COVID-19 “pandemic” is entirely consistent with the NATO “strategy of tension” executed by Gladio units throughout Europe in the 1970s and early 1980s.

In short, before launching a dilettante debate about healthcare policy and pandemic preparedness, the facts on the ground already discredit any such starting point. On the contrary, while there continues to be speculation about “lab leaks” and “blow back”, there is little consistent discussion about the actual events in sequence and their political context.

What can be called the COVID counter-insurgency is really a sequel to the 2001 Global War on Terror triggered by relatively minor state terrorism using US military grade anthrax and followed by the highly profitable demolition of the World Trade Center towers in New York City. As has been argued elsewhere, we are in the midst of a world war, and it is against us. The euphemism “hybrid warfare” actually designates the systems approach to global counter-insurgency. The so-called “Great Reset” is better named “Phoenix 8.0”—the “infrastructure” to be neutralized is the bulk of humanity itself. While the weblogs surge with daily fear reports and reminders of what our psychopathic 1% “could do” little attention is directed to what they have done and are doing.

Admittedly there has to be some reason to wake every morning and not reach for some means of self-destruction. Yet in the midst of a crusade, the “infidels” have to know that they are dealing with religion and religious fanaticism and not misguided or mistaken neighbours whose only vice is too much money or power. That said, the ultimately political nature of the present struggle should not be forgotten. A political struggle is always collective even if not uniform. The hybrid quality of the offensive can be seen in the way overt military action, e.g. the war in Ukraine (as well as a hundred others with no exposure) and the mass murder of indigenous inhabitants in the reservations established by European settler-colonialists in Palestine are part of the same action that was launched in 2020—although demonstrably in the active planning and rehearsal phase since 2001!

Whether or not there was a novel virus and whether or not it leaked (deliberately) or was deployed ought not to be ignored but relegated to the details bin. “The virus” did not do anything—people did. More attention ought to be given to some hundred biological weapons laboratories operated by the US under contract in every country bordering Russia or China where foothold can be obtained. Jeffrey Sachs can be taken at his word when he confirms publicly what the record has long shown– that NIH (and CDC) are the cover for the massive US pharmaments industry, developing weapons against enemies both foreign and domestic. Global health threats are just the next stage in the jargon of hybrid warfare that started in 1913. The purpose of hybrid warfare or counter-insurgency is population control. Territorial control follows naturally. Population control means the exercise of force, physical, psychological, personal and environmental to manipulate the target humans at whatever scale is deemed necessary to achieve strategic objectives, e.g. power over natural resources, space, energy, “elimination of useless eaters”, etc. The crucial innovative success of the past four years has been enhanced scalability. Moreover through years of highly selective hyper-indoctrination, the COVID counter-insurgency could be launched without B-52 bombing strikes. However assassinations were and remain an essential part of mission tactics.

A series of articles posted in Dissident Voice and Global Research in 2020, 2021 and 2022 describe these operations in conceptual detail. Repeating them here would add only length.

The principal barrier to political analysis and after-action deliberation lies in the trauma of mass deaths. That is also part of the overall strategy. The oligarchy that waged saturation bombing against Germany, Japan, Korea and Vietnam, just to name the most egregious cases, learned that this does not break civilian morale. Instead they adopted the lesson of concentration camp management, namely that senseless death from disease, malnutrition, and other quasi-natural phenomena, even though induced by an aggressive external force, is far more traumatic. The trauma is compounded by the psychological torture of incarceration itself, especially irrational and arbitrary discipline imposed in prison-type conditions.

Failure to understand the degree to which the healthcare system has been integrated into the military-industrial (pharmaments) complex over the course of a century, i.e., Rockefeller control over medical education and certification finally established by the end of WW2 (when the WHO was established to internationalise it), prevents many serious critics from distinguishing between healthcare and state-ordered euthanasia. Trust in the Marcus Welby, Ben Casey, or Doctor House versions of in and out patient medicine has sustained a Disneyland view of the hospital and the virtually extinct GP. Here Lars von Trier’s 1994/1997 mini-series The Kingdom would be a far more instructive story.

Morticians and whistleblowing staff along with less naive medical experts repeatedly pointed to systematic malpractice perpetrated by hospital administrations for pay. Physicians in private practice have long been discouraged from practicing proper diagnosis and preventive care by state and private health insurers who only pay for treatments and expensive technology. The amount of money – bribery – paid throughout the North American and European hospital and outpatient “healthcare” apparatus to sustain the illusion of a pandemic—which was only so defined by a deliberate alteration of the international health regulations to accommodate the scheme—has yet to be measured. Add to this the amounts of bribery paid to obtain exclusive, mandatory deployment of the definite biological weapon: the genetic engineering injection euphemistically called a “covid vaccine”.

So far what we have is the fundamental collapse of anything resembling a popularly accountable government at any level and its entire appropriation by financial interests (hedge funds, private equity, banks etc.) armed to the teeth with the world’s most powerful propaganda apparatus and legions of brainwashed terrorists.

This war is far from over. One of the few Germans conspicuous for his attempts to integrate all these levels of hybrid warfare, eschewing distractions but collecting all details that might help explain the incoherent and contradictory aspects of this war, Reiner Füllmich, has been held in German maximum security prison for the past six months after he was kidnapped in Mexico by secret police assets. Having established in open court (Göttingen regional court) that the charges of embezzlement and dereliction of fiduciary duty upon which he has been held were not only fraudulent but baseless on their face, the presiding judge simply amended the charges and insisted that he would be found guilty of something else. Documents disclosed establish that Füllmich was kidnapped, charged and incarcerated by conspiracy of the German secret police. Others have already been silenced, bankrupted or driven into exile. During the active phase of the counter-insurgency fatal “accidents” neutralized several of the more prominent opposition, just in Germany. There has been no tally of the political assassinations in other countries. However, it is reasonable to say that large numbers of those in hospital did not die from a “virus” but from institutional violence, to paraphrase Johan Galtung.

The most well-trained response to the above is to deny that there is sufficient proof. Denial is also derived from the apparent absence of some “plan” that could have produced this result. Was it all just for money? Could these folks really have planned to cull a billion or so people from the herd? Not everybody was injured or died from the injections. It was an unprecedented emergency, hence mistakes could be expected. Certainly all these well-meaning medical professionals did not go to work to kill the old and infirm isolated in their factories. Some of our best friends are doctors.

These objections miss the point of counter-insurgency, covert warfare and hybrid operations. The psychological control which is the ultimate aim of hybrid/ counter-insurgency operations derives from what must be called a “conversion”. Conversion is different from conquest. Conquest seizes the land but leaves the people. Conversion seizes the people, the land follows. Conversion is accomplished through trauma, destruction of the knowledge base of the target, and injection of a new structure to replace the knowledge base destroyed. That is the technology of Christendom, Christian mission.

Moreover the trauma not only destroys the knowledge base it undermines the target’s capacity to distinguish internal and external phenomena. No deception is ever perfect. Therefore it is necessary to create and maintain sufficient doubt and uncertainty in the target so that he or she is unable to stabilise any explanation for events and circumstances to which he or she has been subjected. This is what torture aims to do. Helplessness, although also an illusion, is a powerful means of self-control. Conviction replaces empirical experience and all facts become deniable. William Colby, while Director of Central Intelligence, explained to the US Congress the meaning of plausible deniability. Then he was only referring to the actions of the Agency. Since 2020, Western society has been restructured entirely along those lines. So began the years of living deniably.

Dr T.P. Wilkinson writes, teaches History and English, directs theatre and coaches cricket between the cradles of Heine and Saramago. He is author of Unbecoming American: A War Memoir and also Church Clothes, Land, Mission and the End of Apartheid in South Africa. Read other articles by T.P..

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