US control over Afghanistan & Eurasia

All about greed over mineral resources...

US Expansionism in Eurasia, Control over Afghanistan
By Shane Quinn
Global Research, August 19, 2021

The ex-Soviet states of the Caucasus and Central Asia have, following the early 1990s, been “all about America’s energy security” according to Bill Richardson, the Clinton era diplomat and former American ambassador to the United Nations.

For seven decades, the Soviet Union’s existence blocked the way to the vast fossil fuel sources of the Caucasus, Central Asia and also the Caspian Sea. This reality had been of ongoing frustration to Western strategic planners, but the Soviet collapse 30 years ago provoked jubilant scenes in Washington and London.

An oil rush ensued for mastery over Eurasia. Among those competing for its riches were America and its junior partner Britain, along with France, Germany and China. The US, as still comfortably the earth’s most powerful country, led the charge. Political scientist Zbigniew Brzezinski, an influential former US National Security Advisor, wrote how “Ever since the continents started interacting politically, some 500 years ago, Eurasia has been the center of world power”. (1)

Brzezinski, whose advice was sought by consecutive US presidents, defined Eurasia as the entirety of the landmass east of Germany and Poland, spanning the thousands of miles of Russian and Chinese terrain to the Pacific Ocean; including the coveted Middle East and south Asia (2). Brzezinski revealed that after the USSR’s disintegration the US looted around $300 billion in Russian assets, severely undermining the rouble, while ensuring the Kremlin would be reliant on the West economically and politically.

The Americans are often concerned with simply having control over oil and gas reserves, rather than extracting it; and so denying the raw materials to their principal rivals, Russia and China, while increasing their own power. On other occasions it is apt to build the necessary infrastructure, such as pipelines and refineries, which are used to dispatch the mineral resources westwards and that are guarded by US and NATO troops.

The Caspian Sea, which is larger in size than Germany, has long been desired by colonial planners and oil men (3). In the late 19th century for example Tsarist Russia, which claimed the Caspian Sea for its own, fought efforts to buy it up from the US Standard Oil Company, owned by John D. Rockefeller, America’s richest man.

Undeniably, the Caspian Sea is a magnificent body of water, stretching across the horizon for hundreds of miles. It is home to endangered animals such as the Caspian seal, and rare sturgeon species like the beluga; this is the largest freshwater fish in the world, reaching a maximum of over 23 feet in length, and the beluga sturgeon may just surpass the great white shark in size, though not in weight. Impressive mammals can occasionally be seen roaming along the Caspian Sea’s shorelines, like the Eurasian lynx, Caspian wolf, wild boar and Caspian red deer. (4)

The Caspian Sea contains the planet’s second largest oil and gas reserves, after the Persian Gulf (5). These raw materials would have a pivotal part in fulfilling humanity’s future energy demands including, most of all, that of the US. Per capita, America is currently the biggest consumer of fossil fuels on earth by far and also historically, an indication of its unrivalled industrial power. In 1960, there were 61 million vehicles in the US for a population of 181 million, equating to 1 car for every 3 Americans; whereas in Britain in 1960, there were under 5 million vehicles for a population of 52 million, amounting to less than 1 car for every 10 Britons (6) (7).

The Caspian Sea was important to America for other reasons. President George W. Bush, and his successor Barack Obama, made extensive efforts to shift the east European state of the Ukraine under NATO’s umbrella; in part, so the Ukraine would act as a spring board to assist America in penetrating much of Eurasia, enabling them to reach the Caspian Sea. Obama’s government had a central role in instituting a pro-Western regime in Kiev, during February 2014. Obama made further steps to expand US influence across eastern Europe, under the pretexts of the Ukraine crisis and humanitarian concerns.

Russia’s incorporation of the Crimean peninsula in March 2014, which was a response to the putsch in Kiev, was a blow to Western power. The Crimea acts as an oil and gas corridor, in which the Caspian Sea natural resources are sent through, thereafter criss-crossing Ukrainian land.

For the Americans, to safeguard their control over crucial areas while protecting the oil and gas pipelines, they started to militarise their transport routes – from the eastern Mediterranean to the edge of China’s western borders. Along these regions, about 100,000 US soldiers were stationed in order “to deter aggression and secure our own interests”. (8)

As planned, it would allow America to win the great game in the heart of Eurasia’s landmass, and consequently to secure their global hegemony. Washington stated that they wanted, “A stable and prosperous Caucasus and Central Asia” which would “facilitate rapid development and transport to international markets of large Caspian oil and gas resources, with substantial US commercial participations”.

Afghanistan in south-central Asia became highly significant to US ambitions. There have been three potential routes that the pipelines can be laid through: across Russian, Iranian or Afghan territory (9). Reliance on Russia is out of the question, while the White House has spent decades trying to isolate and overthrow the Islamic Republic of Iran.

Afghanistan, therefore, ranks as a core pipeline hub. The US-NATO invasion of Afghanistan sanctioned on 7 October 2001, and clearly planned months before the 9/11 attacks, was concerned supposedly with capturing Al Qaeda boss Osama bin Laden, defeating the Taliban, and defending human rights. These were smokescreens to obscure their real goals, like securing the pipeline routes. Two months after the invasion began, a small group of US special forces conducted a half-hearted search for Bin Laden in the Tora Bora caves and mountains of eastern Afghanistan. It was a spectacle put on for the cameras.

By early December 2001, Bin Laden was not in Afghanistan at all but was present in north-western Pakistan. American General Tommy Franks, commanding US military operations in Afghanistan, had already confirmed on 8 November 2001, “We have not said that Osama bin Laden is a target of this effort”. (10)

Regarding the now much lamented Taliban, in the mid-1990s they were welcomed and supported by the US government and sections of the media. One of the largest circulating American newspapers, the Wall Street Journal, announced in May 1997,

“The Taliban are the players most capable of achieving peace. Moreover, they are crucial to secure the country as a prime trans-shipment route for the export of Central Asia’s vast oil, gas, and other natural resources”. (11)

No concern was voiced about the Taliban’s extremism and human rights violations, while they were courted too by the US oil industry. In December 1997, the Taliban leadership was flown over to America and the oil state of Texas, whose governor was the future president Bush (12). Senior Taliban members were invited to the city of Houston, and there they were entertained by top executives of the energy multinational UNOCAL (Union Oil Company of California).

UNOCAL offered to pay the Taliban 15 cents for every 1,000 cubic feet of gas they allowed to be pumped across Afghan land (13). In agreement with the Taliban, UNOCAL signed a “memorandum of understanding” to construct a pipeline from Turkmenistan to Pakistan via Afghanistan. This was in conjunction with other Western fossil fuel corporations like ExxonMobil, Chevron, British Petroleum (BP), Enron and Amoco; the latter firm was formerly the Standard Oil Company of Indiana, established by Rockefeller.

The importance of Afghanistan to Washington and its NATO allies has related to further large-scale initiatives, as the American historian Noam Chomsky writes,

“the projected $7.6 billion TAPI pipeline that would deliver natural gas from Turkmenistan to Pakistan and India, running through Afghanistan’s Kandahar province, where Canadian troops are deployed”. (14)

Enron, mentioned above, was an American energy company founded by disgraced US businessman Kenneth Lay in 1985. Lay had been an old friend of the Bush family, and he was among the largest financial donors to Bush’s 2000 presidential campaign (15). As Enron’s boss, Lay was in the late 1990s one of America’s highest paid chief executives. Enron filed for bankruptcy in December 2001, and in July 2004 Lay was indicted by a Grand Jury in Texas on criminal charges. In May 2006 he was found guilty on 6 counts of conspiracy and fraud, facing up to 45 years in jail. He died of a heart attack in July 2006.

Meanwhile, UNOCAL’s vice-president John J. Maresca had said in February 1998 “we have made it clear that construction of the pipeline we have proposed across Afghanistan could not begin until a recognised government is in place, that has the confidence of governments, leaders and our company [UNOCAL]”. Maresca later became the first US Special Ambassador to Afghanistan. Central in pushing the pipeline deals were prominent US politicians like Dick Cheney, James Baker and Brent Scowcroft. They had all served in the cabinet of president George H. W. Bush (Bush Senior); Cheney and Baker have long-held ties to the oil business.

Bush Senior was a paid consultant to the wealthy Bin Laden family through the Carlyle Group, a Washington-based private equity multinational. It is involved in the fossil fuel and weapons industries. A number of Bin Laden family members invested millions in the Carlyle Group. (16)

Bush Senior was a key adviser to the Carlyle Group, and he met the Bin Laden family on two occasions (17). According to journalist Cindy Rodriguez in the Denver Post, on the very day of the 9/11 attacks “members of the Carlyle Group – including Bush Senior and his former Secretary of State, James Baker – were meeting at the Ritz Carlton Hotel in Washington, D.C., along with Shafiq bin Laden, another one of Osama bin Laden’s brothers” (18). This conference was hosted by the Carlyle Group.

Bush Senior quit his role with Carlyle in October 2003, after five and a half years advising them. The former president resigned from his position at Carlyle because he was “under pressure due to the company’s massive Iraqi war profits”, the American author Deanna Spingola writes, referring to the March 2003 US-led invasion of that country launched by Bush Junior.

The relationship between Carlyle and Bush Senior did not end there, however. Spingola wrote that after the elder Bush’s resignation, “He retained his Carlyle stock, and gave speeches in Carlyle’s behalf, for a $500,000 fee. Carlyle is notorious for buying defense companies and ‘doubling or tripling their value’ due to abundant, frequently no-bid, defense contracts”. (19)

Associated too with the Carlyle Group was Baker, the Secretary of State under Bush Senior from 1989 to 1992. Baker was an adviser to Carlyle for 12 years until 2005, and he had a staff member role in Bush Junior’s administration. John Major, the former Conservative Party leader and British prime minister for over 6 years, was also employed by Carlyle. Major was paid hefty sums by that US investment firm.

Major previously labelled bloated incomes as “distasteful”, and yet he accepted hundreds of thousands of pounds from Carlyle (20). It provides another insight into the world of political elites. Bush Junior had founded an oil company in Texas during the late 1970s, called Arbusto Energy. Bin Laden’s eldest brother, Salem bin Laden, was an investor in the company. (21)

*
Shane Quinn obtained an honors journalism degree. He is interested in writing primarily on foreign affairs, having been inspired by authors like Noam Chomsky. He is a frequent contributor to Global Research.

Notes

1 John Pilger, The New Rulers Of The World (Verso Books, 20 February 2003) p. 116

2 Ibid.

3 Ibid., p. 110

4 Caspian Environment Programme, “Biodiversity, Animals of the Caspian Sea”, 9 September 2010

5 Luiz Alberto Moniz Bandeira, The World Disorder: US Hegemony, Proxy Wars, Terrorism and Humanitarian Catastrophes (Springer; 1st ed. 2019 edition, 4 Feb. 2019) p. 316

6 Mary Gormandy White, “Car Ownership Statistics”, Lovetoknow

7 Retrowow, “Cars in the 60s – UK”

8 Luiz Alberto Moniz Bandeira, The Second Cold War: Geopolitics and the Strategic Dimensions of the USA (Springer 1st ed., 23 June 2017) p. 28

9 Pilger, The New Rulers of the World, p. 111

10 Tom Bowman, Marego Athans, “General says U.S. attacks on track”, The Baltimore Sun, 9 November 2001

11 Peter Dale Scott, The Road to 9/11: Wealth, Empire and the Future of America (University of California Press; 1st edition, 1 September 2007) p. 130

12 BBC News, “Taleban in Texas for talks on gas pipeline”, 4 December 1997

13 George Monbiot, “America’s pipe dream”, The Guardian, 23 October 2001

14 Noam Chomsky, Making the Future: Occupations, Interventions, Empire and Resistance (Hamish Hamilton, 23 February 2012) All Options Are On The Table

15 Vinoth Ramachandra, Subverting Global Myths: Theology and the Public Issues Shaping Our World (Inter-Varsity Press, 1 June 2008) p. 23

16 Cindy Rodriguez, “Bush ties to Bin Laden haunt grim anniversary”, The Denver Post, 11 September 2006

17 Pilger, The New Rulers of the World, p. 113

18 Rodriguez, The Denver Post, 11 September 2006

19 Deanna Spingola, The Ruling Elite: The Zionist Seizure of World Power (Trafford Publishing, 12 June 2012) p. 567

20 Patrick Hosking, “Part-time Major earns £850,000”, thisismoney.co.uk, 14 March 2002

21 Ralph Lopez, “Bush family ties to terror suspects re-opened by 9/11 ’28 pages’”, Digital Journal, 21 February 2015

Six things about Afghanistan & the Taliban

When it comes to Afghanistan, the mainstream media hides the most inconvenient facts for the West. Once you take those into account, you get a completely different story.

Six Things You Need to Know About Afghanistan and the Taliban
By Marc Vandepitte
Global Research, August 18, 2021

1. Monstrous covenant with Jihadis

The story starts in 1979. Afghanistan had a left-wing government, which of course was not to the liking of the US. Zbigniew Brzezinski, President Carter’s adviser, devised the plan to arm and train jihadists – then still called mujahideen – in Afghanistan. The aim was to provoke a Soviet invasion, in order to saddle Moscow with a Vietnam-like scenario.

Carter followed his advice and provided the mujahideen the necessary help. The plan worked. The government in Kabul ran into difficulties and asked the Kremlin for help. The Afghan quagmire forced the Soviet Union to remain in the Central Asian country for ten years.

During that period, the CIA pumped $2 billion in aid, weapons, and logistical support to the mujahideen. They were even supplied with the infamous Stinger missiles with which they could shoot down Soviet planes and helicopters. Sylvester Stallone’s Rambo III is a Hollywood depiction of this collaboration. The movie was dedicated to “the brave Mujahideen fighters”.

As long as the Soviet troops remained in the country, the government in Kabul could hold out. However, in 1989 Gorbachev decided to end their military aid. Once the Soviet troops left the country, civil war broke out. The best organized and most brutal group, the Taliban, eventually prevailed and took power in 1996.

2. Creation of Al Qaeda

The most prominent figure to emerge during that period is Osama bin Laden. In 1988, he founded Al Qaeda, a fundamentalist and ruthless terrorist group. Through the intelligence service of Pakistan [in liaison with the CIA], he could count on a lot of support from the US. In exchange for that aid, Al Qaeda provided a number of services to the US and its Western allies.

During the “civil war” in Yugoslavia (1992-1995), the Pentagon flew thousands of Al Qaeda fighters into Bosnia to support the Muslims there. During the war against Yugoslavia in 1999, Al Qaeda fought side by side with the KLA terrorists (the Kosovo Liberation Army was fighting for the separation of Kosovo from Yugoslavia and for a Greater Albania), covered in the air by NATO. Al Qaeda fighters have also popped up in Chechnya, Xinjiang (where the Uighurs live), Macedonia, and in many other countries in the region and far beyond.[i]

The cooperation between the Bush administration and Osama bin Laden is brought to light in Michael Moore’s documentary Fahrenheit 9/11.

3. It’s the oil stupid!

There are promising oil and gas reserves around the Caspian Sea. But to transport these resources to the West there are only three possibilities: through Russia, through Iran, or through Afghanistan.

The US obviously won’t give it to the Russians and since the fall of the Shah in 1979, Washington has lost its influence in Iran. So, there’s only one option left: Afghanistan. At the end of 1994, in full civil war, the US thought that  the Taliban had the best assets to ‘stabilize’ the country. That was a necessity for the construction of the pipeline. According to the CIA, the Taliban were seen as “a possible tool in yet another replay of the Great Game – the race for energy riches in Central Asia.”

The US became the main sponsor of this new rogue regime. It did not matter that the Taliban at that time were the most virulent violators of human rights in the world. According to an American diplomat, the Taliban would “probably develop like the Saudis did. There will be Aramco [consortium of oil companies controlling Saudi oil], pipelines, an emir, no parliament, and lots of Sharia law. We can live with that.”

4. Taliban fail to deliver

Initially, the Taliban achieved one military success after another, but ultimately failed to conquer the entire country. The hoped-for stabilization – necessary for the pipeline – did not materialize. The US then changed strategy and sought a reconciliation of all warring parties.

Washington demanded that the Taliban enter into talks with the Northern Alliance to form a coalition government. The talks that lasted until the end of July 2001 failed. The US warned it wouldn’t stop there: “Either you accept our offer of a carpet of gold, or we bury you under a carpet of bombs” was the message from US representatives to the Taliban at the end of July.

The Taliban did not give in. The bombing started in October. A little later, it leaked that the plans for this had already been on President Bush’s desk two days before September 11. In the Washington Post of December 19, 2000, Professor Starr wrote that the US “has quietly begun to align itself with those in the Russian government calling for military action against Afghanistan and has toyed with the idea of a new raid to wipe out Osama bin Laden.”

In late June 2001, more than two months before the attacks on the Twin Towers and the Pentagon, Indiareacts.com magazine reported that “India and Iran will ‘facilitate’ US and Russian plans for ‘limited military action’ against the Taliban if the contemplated tough new economic sanctions don’t bend Afghanistan’s fundamentalist regime.”

5. President Pipeline

The attacks on September 11 in any case were the perfect excuse for Washington to invade Afghanistan and oust the Taliban from power. Thus, the plans for the pipeline could be realized for the time being.

Gore Vidal, a leading US columnist, put it very bluntly:

“As it proved, the conquest of Afghanistan had nothing to do with Osama. He was simply a pretext for replacing the Taliban with a relatively stable government that would allow Union Oil of California to lay its pipeline for the profit of, among others, the Cheney-Bush junta.”

The facts on the ground showed us this was true. On December 22, 2021, Hamed Karzai became Afghan Prime Minister. He was a CIA confidant and had previously worked as a counselor at Unocal. Unocal was a very large American petroleum company that long has had plans for a pipeline through Afghanistan.

Nine days later, another of this company’s advisers, Zalmay Khalilzad, was appointed by Bush as special envoy to Afghanistan. Khalilzad had in the past participated in talks with Taliban officials about the possibility of building gas and oil pipelines. He had urged the Clinton administration to take a softer line on the Taliban.

Both men were fulfilling their duties properly. On 30 May 2002, the BBC reported that Karzai had reached an agreement with his Pakistani and Turkmen counterpart for a pipeline from Turkmenistan to a port in Pakistan, across Afghanistan.

A few weeks earlier, Business Week commented on the evolution in the region as follows:

“American soldiers, oilmen, and diplomats are rapidly getting to know this remote corner of the world, the old underbelly of the Soviet Union and a region that’s been almost untouched by Western armies since the time of Alexander the Great. The game the Americans are playing has some of the highest stakes going. What they are attempting is nothing less than the biggest carve-out of a new U.S. sphere of influence since the U.S. became engaged in the Mideast 50 years ago.”

It didn’t work out as planned. The Taliban were defeated, but not knocked out. They also had a much higher morale than the government army, which could only hold out thanks to NATO air cover and other logistical support. When Biden decided to withdraw that support a few weeks ago, it collapsed like a house of cards.

6. Cost and ‘results’ of the war

The longest war in US history has cost more than $2,000 billion, according to the New York Times. That is 100 billion dollars annually, almost 20 times as much as the entire government budget of the Afghan government.

Despite the huge amounts of aid, the results are staggering. Almost half of the population today lives in poverty. Infant mortality is among the highest in the world and life expectancy among the lowest.

In the period before the war, opium cultivation was almost completely eradicated. Today, Afghanistan supplies 80 percent of the world’s heroin. The war resulted in 5.5 million refugees. That number is now likely to rise sharply.

The cost of human life is high. 47,000 civilians, 66,000 Afghan soldiers and policemen, and 51,000 Taliban and other rebels have been killed in the past 20 years. On the Western side, nearly 4,000 US soldiers and 1,100 soldiers from other NATO countries died. [official figures, do not include the deaths of civilians].

After twenty years of occupation, we are back to square one. A Belgian TV journalist describes it as “a catastrophe, a failure of the Western model to try to change a country like Afghanistan.”

Afghanistan & the American Imperial Project

The cost of wars in the middle east (Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria, Somalia, Iran containment, etc.) are being substituted for by the technology-economic war with China, the cybersecurity war with Russia, plus the need for expected additional commitments for the ‘war with nature’ (climate change costs).

Afghanistan & the American Imperial Project
By Dr. Jack Rasmus
Global Research, August 17, 2021

On August 16, 2021 President Biden addressed the nation to explain why the US military is pulling out of Afghanistan. To a lesser extent, he also tried to explain why the Afghan government and its 300,000 military forces imploded over the past weekend. With the Afghan State’s quick disappearing act, in a puff of smoke up went as well the more than $1 trillion spent by the US in Afghanistan since 2001.

Biden glossed over the real answer to the first point why the US is now pulling out. The second he never really answered.

The real answer to the first point is simple: the USA as global hegemon can no longer afford the financial cost of remaining in that country, so it is pulling out. New projected costs of maintaining US global empire in the decade ahead have risen dramatically since the Afghan war began in fall of 2001. US elites now realize they can longer afford the new rising costs of Empire elsewhere, while simultaneously keep throwing money down the 20 year financial black hole called Afghanistan. The US is pulling out because, for the first time since 1945, it has decided to cut its costs in less strategic areas in order to be able to finance the growing costs of empire elsewhere.

The new areas are:

•  the rapidly rising costs of investing in next generation technologies needed to compete with China, both militarily and economically;
•  the costs of cybersecurity investments needed to deal with Russia, China, and with select lesser cyber challengers;
•  and the investments needed to answer the threat to US security from the new emerging War with Nature (sometimes called Climate Change)

In all three new challenges, the USA is currently behind the curve. Nature’s reaction to capitalist production in the form of climate warming means Nature is winning the early skirmishes and the US thus far has not even been able to mount a serious counter-response. Russia, China and other apparent state-less challengers are also winning the cybersecurity war. The US can’t even protect its basic infrastructure and businesses from hacking and ransomware that has the potential of shutting down wide sectors of its economy. And so far as next generation technologies, like Artificial Intelligence and 5G wireless, is concerned the fight with China—and a lesser extent with Russia over new tech weaponry — has only just begun.

All three areas represent costly strategic challenges to US global hegemony, requiring massive new capital investments by US government and the US State. US imperial interests increasingly realize they cannot continue to throw away trillions of dollars more in wars in Afghanistan, let alone the broader middle east — whether Iraq, Libya, Syria/Isis, Iran containment, or financing Arab states’ war in Yemen.

An Empire Built on Fiscal Sand

How the US financed the wars in Afghanistan and elsewhere in the Middle East as it exercised its global hegemony since 2000 is another obstacle to meeting the new strategic challenges. That method of imperial finance — like the war in Afghanistan itself — is no longer sustainable.

The first two decades of the 21st century is the first time in the entire history of the USA that wars have been financed without raising taxes and, indeed, while the US has simultaneously implemented massive tax cuts.

Up to and including Vietnam, taxes have always been raised to pay for war costs at least in part. But not in the 21st century! Not for the wars for the Middle East. Since 2000 and the USA’s Middle East war adventures, it has spent $ trillions of dollars on wars while cutting taxes by even $ trillions more. This had never happened before. It became a formula for eventual disaster — driven ultimately by US elites’ greed combined with an historic hubris of mistaken military invincibility.

That tax cutting since 2000 has amounted to at least $15 trillion! For the record:

George W. Bush cut taxes, largely on behalf of wealthy investors and businesses, by more than $4 trillion over the first decade, 2001-10. Barack Obama added over a $1 trillion more in his first two years in office 2009-2010 — in the form of $288 billion new tax cuts in 2009 and by continuing the Bush tax cuts another $803 billion for two years, 2011-2012 — after the Bush tax cuts had been set to expire in 2010. Obama then struck a deal with Republicans at the end of 2012 to extend the Bush tax cuts for another 8 years. That cost another $5 trillion. Donald Trump in December 2017 then added yet another layer of tax cuts on the Bush-Obama prior $10 trillion. Trump’s contribution amounted to $4.5 trillion for another decade, 2018 to 2028. Each tax cut layer provided even more of the total to investors, corporations and wealthy households. Trump’s went almost exclusively to investors, wealthy households, and especially to multinational US corporations. In the latest addition, Congress cut taxes another $650 billion in its ‘Cares Act’ passed in March 2020. That’s more than $15 trillion tax cuts in total!

Tax cutting since 2000 contributed in turn to massively annual budget deficits and the consequent explosion of the federal national debt.

But $15 trillion in tax cutting was not the only cause of a deep decline in potential tax revenues, chronic budget deficits and rising national debt, however. A chronically weak US economy, especially after 2008 and continuing throughout the Obama years, has also sharply reduced potential federal tax revenues. The average annual US growth since 2007 has barely reached 1% a year. Tax revenues—from both cutting taxes and inadequate economic growth — account for at least 60% of deficits and thus for the national debt, according to many studies.

Concurrent with the unprecedented drumbeat of constant tax cuts for capitalists large, medium and small has been the equally unprecedented rise in defense/war spending to pay for the wars since 2000—abroad and at home (homeland security costs, war on immigrants costs, militarization of policing, etc.). The wars abroad since 2001 alone cost an estimated $7 trillion.

$15 trillion in tax cuts plus $7 trillion in war spending since 2001 roughly equals the total US national debt by the end of the second decade of the 21st century. As a result of tax cutting and defense spending, the US national debt rose from roughly $4 trillion in 2000 to $9 trillion by end of 2008 (as Bush left office) to $17 trillion by 2016 (as Obama left office) and thereafter to $21 trillion when Trump left office by January 2020. The budget deficit this year, 2021, will rise another $2.5 to $3 trillion!

It is now projected to rise to at least $28 trillion by end of the current decade! For added to the tax cuts and war spending excesses must be as well the costs of the 2008-09 great recession, the chronic slow economic growth that followed under Obama for years after, and most recently the costs of legislation and programs to contain the Covid related 2020-21 crash and second great recession now underway. Should chronic slow growth follow the current second great recession — as it did its predecessor in 2008-09 — the $28 trillion national debt estimate by end of decade will almost certainly be passed.

In this fiscal system built on sand, US imperial interests must somehow find the capital and resources to finance massive investments to wage its growing technological-economic war with China, its cybersecurity war with Russia and others, and its war with Nature.

Empires are seldom conquered from without. They always rot from the inside first. And the rot is well underway in the USA’s.

US Costs of Empire Are Rising

The US economic empire is under increasing economic stress because the options to finance it going forward are in decline. Massive new costs loom on the horizon. Next generation technologies will determine both economic and military dominance by 2030. Artificial Intelligence, Cyber Security, and 5G wireless broadband are all necessary for the development of smart, hypersonic weapons, as well as for disrupting an opponent’s domestic communications, power systems infrastructure, and even key production systems. The USA knows this. China knows this. Russia knows this.

(Europeans and Japanese know it too but simply cannot compete and are not even in the game anymore). The above triad of technologies are also key to the development of new industries and thus for economic growth as well in the decade ahead.

The US empire today faces a massive bill of investment over the next decade. In some ways it already lags behind China, as a result of US corporations moving offshore (to China), building R&D and production partnerships in China and elsewhere offshore, and allowing China to penetrate US R&D in the USA, at least until recently. In other ways it is also behind Russia technologically (especially in hypersonic missile and tactical missile defense technologies).

As the US global empire has weakened over the past decade, it has thrown more money into defense/war spending, cumulatively at least $7 trillion. That spending—of which Afghanistan contributed $1 trillion at minimum—US elites know will now have to be redirected to the new ‘wars’: the technology-economic war with China, the cybersecurity war with Russia, and the war with Nature itself in the form of investments directed to climate change mitigation.

Apart from the costs of these new wars of 2020-2030, it is more likely than not that more economic crises will arise. After two consecutive great recessions in roughly a decade (2008-09 and 2020-21) it is likely a third cannot be avoided either. Trillions of dollars more in emergency social program spending to contain the collapse of household consumption and small businesses once again is more likely than not.

It is therefore not at all surprising that Biden, and US empire elites in general, have concluded it’s best to cut losses in Afghanistan and get out now. Ditto for general costs of empire throughout the middle east. There’ll be no more traditional wars there for the USA. Such adventures are no longer affordable. Nor necessary, since the USA is now the largest producer of oil and gas in the war as result of new fracking technology at home, exceeding both Russia and Saudi Arabia. The main strategic reason for US wars in the middle east—i.e. oil—is no longer a consideration

In summary: the cost of wars in the middle east (Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria, Somalia, Iran containment, etc.) are being substituted for by the technology-economic war with China, the cybersecurity war with Russia, plus the need for expected additional commitments for the ‘war with nature’ (climate change costs).

The US empire can simply no longer afford the total bill for all the above. And that is the number one reason why the US is exiting Afghanistan altogether. That’s why Biden’s cutting US losses in Afghanistan and getting out. As he signaled in his TV address to the nation on August 16 that war is no longer in the US global interests. There are more important tasks. Tasks that will take even more funds. US interests have shifted. So must its expenditures of empire. That’s why it’s finally getting out of Afghanistan.

Is US Empire in Rapid Decline?

US elites realize that they can’t have their cake and eat it any longer. They can’t have unprecedented tax cutting, jump into civil wars everywhere around the globe, precipitate excuses for military intervention for domestic political purposes, and deal with the increasingly frequent deep recessions while financing the new ‘wars’ on the horizon with China, Russia, and nature itself. That’s what the US exit from Afghanistan fundamentally represents. It is an early indicator of the future decline of the US global hegemony. However, that decline is still in its very early stages and should not be overestimated.

The US empire and global hegemony rests on its economic power in the global economy. The US empire is not like that of the former British or the older European colonial empires. It wields political power indirectly over indigenous economic elites. It does not directly run the political systems of its client countries. Or at least rarely resorts to that. It wields political power through its economic power. And that economic power resides in its dominance of its global currency, the US dollar; in its control of the (SWIFT) international payments system; in the influence of its central bank, the Federal Reserve, over other countries’ central banks; in the dominance of its banks and financial institutions worldwide; and its ultimate control of global economic institutions like the International Monetary Fund and World Bank.

Until the US dollar is seriously challenged as the world’s reserve and trading currency, until its control of the global payments system is supplanted by an alternative, until the dominance of its banks and financial institutions is broken, and until dual institutions challenging the IMF and World Bank are an effective alternative — the US global economic empire will continue and exercise hegemony.

Afghanistan represents not the end and defeat of the US imperial project. At most, it is a marker for the USA having peaked perhaps as global hegemon. Instead, it represents a fundamental shift at best and the start of a new phase in the history of the US empire.

As noted previously, global empires are rarely conquered from without militarily. Military failures or successes are not evidence of imperial virility. All empires rot internally before decline. And they begin a period of decline only when they cannot any longer afford to finance themselves.

Rome’s collapse in its west after 400 C.E. began when Germanic invaders seized Rome’s agricultural grain surplus base in Spain, Sicily and North Africa as the eastern Roman empire also cut off its grain surplus in Egypt. That agriculture base was the source of its taxation and in turn the funding of its military legions.

The British empire began its decades-long decline when its colonies began to disappear in the 20th century as result of economic war costs after 1918 and 1945. Basically bankrupted by wars, after World War II it no longer had the finances to hold onto its colonies. Some, like India, simply went independent. Others were ceded to the USA de facto as a condition of loans from America to Britain during and immediately after the second World War. Britain’s colonial empire could not be economically sustained any longer.

The Soviet Union’s de facto empire collapsed only after a decade of economic stagnation in the 1980s and after Gorbachov signaled to opportunist Communist Party leaders in charge of the economy it was ok to convert to capitalists as they continued their management of the economy. The apparatchiks virtually overnight became oligarchs, threw out Gorbachov, and brought in US capitalists as partners in exploitation and capitalist restoration. A decade of severe economic depression followed throughout the 1990s. The Soviet Union empire spun apart politically thereafter—first in east Europe, then the Baltics, then the Caucasus, then Belarus-Ukraine. And that was that.

The USA is in the very early stages of something similar. It has not yet lost control of its foreign resources and markets, as did ancient Rome. It has not yet bankrupted itself with wars, as did Britain in the 20th century. Its elites have not yet turned on the system itself, although the splits between the Trump forces and traditional US capitalists has been clearly intensifying. So too are divisions rapidly growing between its populace, at state and local levels. Wide sections of the populace no longer believe in the system, its traditional values and ideology, nor its fundamental institutions. That has all occurred rapidly in just a couple decades. That scenario clearly signals something similar to past imperial systems’ decline is underway within the USA. However, the US political elites and dominant capitalists behind them still wield significant resources, economic and political.

Afghanistan does not represent the beginning of the end but rather, along with US domestic trends, the end of the phase of the shift to Neoliberal empire created in the late 1970s-early 1980s, in response to the economic crises and stagnation of the 1970s. The US is now at another juncture. Neoliberal economic policies no longer suffice to sustain the empire and US global hegemony. What comes next this decade is yet to be determined.

But whatever the current decade portends, it is clear that after 20 years of wasting nearly $30 trillion on wars, tax cuts, and dealing with two great recessions and their economic aftermath, US elites realize they cannot pay for middle east wars and confront the costs of the new challenges to maintain the empire. The focus henceforth will be on the Great Technology War with China, cybersecurity conflicts with Russia, while attempting to up investment as well to deal with the other war the US is now clearly losing: Climate Change. These are the key strategic interests of the American Empire in this decade and beyond — not Afghanistan.

America Initiated the war on Afghanistan 40 Years Ago!

This historic interview with President Carter’s National Security advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski confirms that the so-called “Soviet-Afghan war” was triggered and initiated not by the Soviet Union but by the United States.

It was published on October 15, 2001, in the week following the US-NATO led invasion of Afghanistan on October 7, 2001.

America Initiated the War on Afghanistan 40 Years Ago: U.S. Recruitment of “Islamic Terrorists” Started in 1979. Zbigniew Brzezinski

By Dr. Zbigniew Brzezinski, Le Nouvel Observateur, and Prof Michel Chossudovsky

Global Research, August 22, 2021

Introductory Note by Prof. Michel Chossudovsky

America has been at war with Afghanistan for more than forty Years. It started in July 1979. It is still ongoing. 

America’s War against the people of Afghanistan started on July 3, 1979, when President Carter, on the advice of his National Security advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski  “signed the first directive for secret aid to the opponents of the pro-Soviet regime in Kabul”. 

Confirmed by this 1998 interview with Zbigniew Brzezinski, the CIA’s intervention in Afghanistan preceded the entry of Soviet forces into Afghanistan in the context of a military cooperation agreement with the Kabul government similar in form to that reached between Damascus and Moscow in the context of the ongoing war in Syria. That agreement between Moscow and Kabul was signed on December 24, 1979. 

Confirmed by Zbigniew Brzezinski, Soviet forces (in a cooperation agreement with a secular Afghan government0 were fighting the Al Qaeda mercenaries who had been recruited by the CIA. 

Amply documented, the recruitment, training and indoctrination of the Mujahideen was financed by the drug trade which was supported covertly by the CIA.

The terrorists were recruited starting in July 1979. They were used to undermine and destroy Afghanistan’s secular social structure. The decision of the Carter Administration in early July 1979 to intervene and destabilize Afghanistan’s secular government was conducive to Afghanistan’s destruction as a nation-state.

These are the realities of history. 

The official justification for the US-NATO War on Afghanistan which started on October 7, 2001 was that an unnamed foreign power attacked America on September 11, 2001, and that consequently “the laws of war” apply, allowing the nation under attack, to strike back in the name of “self-defense”.

NATO’s North Atlantic Council meeting in Brussels on September 12, 2001, adopted the following resolution:

“if it is determined that the [September 11, 2001] attack against the United States was directed from abroad [Afghanistan] against “The North Atlantic area“, it shall be regarded as an action covered by Article 5 of the Washington Treaty”. (emphasis added)

The bombing and invasion of Afghanistan which commenced on October 7, 2001 was described as a “campaign” against “Islamic terrorists”, rather than a war.

And those same Al Qaeda affiliated Islamic terrorists had been recruited by the US starting in July 1979. They were supported and financed by the US.

What was initiated in 1979 is best described as “America’s War With Terrorists” whereby Al Qaeda recruits are used to destroy secular sovereign nations in diabolical covert operation which has now extended its thrust from the Middle East to South East Asia.

Michel Chossudovsky, Global Research Editor, 15 October 2001, August 22, 2021

***

Question: The former director of the CIA, Robert Gates, stated in his memoirs [“From the Shadows”], that American intelligence services began their aid to the Mujahideen in Afghanistan 6 months before the Soviet intervention. In this period you were the national security adviser to President Carter. You therefore played a role in this affair. Is that correct?

Brzezinski: Yes. According to the official version of history, CIA aid to the Mujahideen began during the 1980s, that is to say, after the Soviet army invaded Afghanistan, 24 December 1979. But the reality, secretly guarded until now, is completely otherwise.

Indeed, it was on July 3, 1979 that President Carter signed the first directive for secret aid to the opponents of the pro-Soviet regime in Kabul. And that very day, I wrote a note to the president in which I explained to him that in my opinion this aid was going to induce a Soviet military intervention.

Q: Despite this risk, you were an advocate of this covert action. But perhaps you yourself desired this Soviet entry into war and looked to provoke it?

B: It isn’t quite that. We didn’t push the Russians to intervene, but we knowingly increased the probability that they would.

Q: When the Soviets justified their intervention by asserting that they intended to fight against a secret involvement of the United States in Afghanistan, people didn’t believe them. However, there was a basis of truth. You don’t regret anything today?

B: Regret what? That secret operation was an excellent idea. It had the effect of drawing the Russians into the Afghan trap and you want me to regret it? The day that the Soviets officially crossed the border, I wrote to President Carter. We now have the opportunity of giving to the USSR its Vietnam war. Indeed, for almost 10 years, Moscow had to carry on a war unsupportable by the government, a conflict that brought about the demoralization and finally the breakup of the Soviet empire.

Q: And neither do you regret having supported the Islamic fundamentalism, having given arms and advice to future terrorists?

B: What is most important to the history of the world? The Taliban or the collapse of the Soviet empire? Some stirred-up Moslems or the liberation of Central Europe and the end of the Cold War?

Q: Some stirred-up Moslems? But it has been said and repeated Islamic fundamentalism represents a world menace today.

B: Nonsense! It is said that the West had a global policy in regard to Islam. That is stupid. There isn’t a global Islam. Look at Islam in a rational manner and without demagoguery or emotion. It is the leading religion of the world with 1.5 billion followers. But what is there in common among Saudi Arabian fundamentalism, moderate Morocco, Pakistan militarism, Egyptian pro-Western or Central Asian secularism? Nothing more than what unites the Christian countries.

*

emphasis added

Translated from French by William Blum

Depopulation and the mRNA Vaccine

The New York Times predicts massive population reduction!!!

Depopulation and the mRNA Vaccine
By Peter Koenig
Global Research, June 15, 2021

Amazingly, The New York Times – 22 May 2021 – predicts massive population reduction over the next few decades.

“Fewer babies’ cries.

More abandoned homes.

Toward the middle of this century, as deaths start to exceed births, changes will come that are hard to fathom.”

And –

“All over the world, countries are confronting population stagnation and a fertility bust, a dizzying reversal unmatched in recorded history that will make first-birthday parties a rarer sight than funerals, and empty homes a common eyesore.”

And it continues,

“Maternity wards are already shutting down in Italy. Ghost cities are appearing in northeastern China. Universities in South Korea can’t find enough students, and in Germany, hundreds of thousands of properties have been razed, with the land turned into parks.”

Is it all true? It remains to be verified. Omission?

At no time does the article mention the eugenist nature of deliberate population reduction, in connection with the covid plandemic, the coerced and by many accounts poisonous – vaccination campaign, with a non-vaccine, but instead a novel, totally untested mRNA-type “gene therapy” which the US CDC has allowed to be applied as an “emergency measure” in these dire circumstances of a pandemic, that actually lacks all characteristics of a pandemic, but has to be pumped up to make it appear as a pandemic – with literally almost all deaths appearing from whatever causes – even car accidents – can be – and “must” be categorized as covid deaths.

In the US, hospitals get paid US$ 13,000 for every covid-diagnosed patient and US$ 39,000 for every “covid-patient” put on a ventilator. Earlier this year, doctors in NY have come to the conclusion that more than 80% off ventilator patients do not survive the ventilator. See this.

But, be that as it may – the current “loosening-up” of covid restrictions that the US and many European countries are experiencing, is bringing out happiness, smiles, festive thinking and cheerful feeling by the population – in the firm hope the plandemic is over. This may be just a ruse and prelude to much worse to come. Hopefully this suspicion is wrong.

While there is no concrete evidence, there is this uneasy feeling that with the later northern-hemisphere fall approaching, we will be hit by a “new” lab-made “variant” – much stronger, that requires more and more oppressive, dictatorial government measures, more coerced vaxxing with gene-therapy that could affect mankind’s neurological system. (For further details see Pfizer Vaccine Confirmed to Cause Neurodegenerative Diseases: Study)

The NYT goes through great lengths trying to explain why the world population goes into recess and outright decline, without ever mentioning covid and its nefarious deadly agenda.

“Though some countries continue to see their populations grow, especially in Africa, fertility rates are falling nearly everywhere else. Demographers now predict that by the latter half of the century or possibly earlier, the global population will enter a sustained decline for the first time.”

Why would the fertility rate suddenly go down in “developed” countries? Because people realize that to save the planet, the world needs fewer, much fewer “eaters” and consumers? – Or  rather does it have something to do with the widely coerced false covid “vaccines”? – see Dr. Mercola’s video below.

Isn’t this precisely what the Gates-Rockefellers-Kissinger et al clan has in mind?

Is that why the mRNA-type injections – CDC’s emergency approval as “gene-therapy” – include anti-fertility and sterilization components?

And – can you imagine – CDC has recently recommended giving this unproven, untested “gene-therapy injection to pregnant women, when never before and under no circumstances pregnant women should be administered untested “experimental” medication.

In fact, the abortion rate of pregnant women receiving the mRNA-type inoculation is as high as 30% – probably considerably higher if unreported cases are taken into account. Listen to Dr. Joseph Mercola.

There is the general notion that covid is not about health or immunity, but rather about depopulating the world; an eugenist agenda, if you will. Mike Whitney expresses a clear view in which direction this unnecessary covid vaccination drive is going. It has nothing to do with health protection of the people. To the contrary. It is about depopulation. These two quotes say it all.

“There is absolutely no need for vaccines to extinguish the pandemic…  You do not vaccinate people who aren’t at risk from a disease. You also don’t set about planning to vaccinate millions of fit and healthy people with an [experimental] vaccine that hasn’t been extensively tested on human subjects.” Dr. Mike Yeadon PhD, Pfizer’s former Vice President and Chief Scientist for Allergy & Respiratory Disease.  “What we know about coronavirus from 30 years of experience is that a coronavirus vaccine has a unique peculiarity, which is any attempt at making the vaccine has resulted in the creation of a class of antibodies that actually make vaccinated people sicker when they ultimately suffer exposure to the wild virus.”  Robert F. Kennedy Jr.

The NYT is quoting Frank Swiaczny, a German demographer who was chief of population trends and analysis for the United Nations until last year:

“A paradigm shift is necessary. Countries need to learn to live with and adapt to [a population] decline.”

To enhance this paradigm shift – and to make it appear – and convince you, the reader, that this is a normal unstoppable phenomenon, the NYT predicts, or rather scares you, by speculating / anticipating,

“The ramifications and responses have already begun to appear, especially in East Asia and Europe. From Hungary to China, from Sweden to Japan, governments are struggling to balance the demands of a swelling older cohort with the needs of young people whose most intimate decisions about childbearing are being shaped by factors both positive (more work opportunities for women) and negative (persistent gender inequality and high living costs).”

We know this is a false pretense, and is a totally manufactured argument to make you look the other way, when within two to three years you may see massive dying of people way below the average statistical life expectancy.

We all know, gender inequality has been persisting in the west for the last at least 2000 years. And, while the cost of living has been rising steadily in the first 50 years after WWII in industrialized countries, it has been rather stagnant over the last couple of decades. To the contrary, in some cases – US, Europe – a rather deflationary trend has appeared. A clear sign for it, is negative interest rates in many industrialized countries. So, the NYT is trying to make you believe what isn’t – all to justify their “prediction” of a massive population reduction; to make you get used to the diabolical covid-plan – and perhaps to sow just a little bit of fear.

Since the mRNA “vaxxes” are experimental, there is no history on whether or not the body will be able to clean itself from disastrous side effects, like blood clotting, leading to thrombosis, potential paralysis and death.

Scientific predictions are that mRNA-type injections affect the human genome, and the body most likely will never detox from anything affecting the DNA.

If this assumption is correct, it means, in short, you will never be the same again, and your health may be negatively impacted for the rest of your life. This is, without question, a crime of mass genocide against humanity. It coincides with Dr. Joseph Mercola’s views – see above, as well as Dr. Sucharit Bhakdi on blood clotting, and the disastrous health consequences, i.e. leading to brain strokes, paralyses and death.

In the same vein Vaccine Impact of 23 May 2021 refers to five reputed doctors, who discuss transmission from those injected by the mRNA vaccine to those who have not been vaxxed.  These scientists all agree that unless one realizes that these shots are designed as bioweapons for the purpose of reducing the world’s population, you will never fully understand what these shots and Big Pharma are capable of doing and how to take measures to protect yourself.

The NYT gently prepares us for this crime, calling this coming “depopulation” a natural phenomenon, due to a turn in demographics – which is to be expected due to our western “abundant lifestyle”, and due to man-made climate change (mea-culpa, mea-culpa), resulting in reduced harvests – famine – in the developing world, or Global South.

“This is an intentional world war on human blood,” according to Dr. Sherri Tenpenny and Nobel Laureate, Dr. Luc Montagnier, as well as Dr. Mike Yeadon, ex-Pfizer VP and Chief of Pfizer Science – and others.

“The injections will kill and will never stop killing.”

Dr. Montagnier, among the world’s top virologists, projects a drastically reduced life expectancy of many who have taken the “kill shot injection”.

See latest official data of Vaccine deaths and injuries for the EU (from late December 2020 to May 22, 2021)

There are both medical and economic reasons and causes for a drastic world population to which the NYT alerts us.

Why would they do that?

To Prepare us for one of the most horrendous crimes in recent human history: Inventing (meaning man-made) an invincible corona virus.

After a decision of the World Economic Forum (WEF), in January 2020, WHO called the virus in January 2020 first SARS-CoV-2 – named after the SARS virus that hit China from 2002-2003, then, a few weeks later, WHO renamed this invisible “beast” – instrument of manufacturing fear – Covid-19.

The sudden shock of being exposed to a worldwide epidemic cum pandemic (according to WHO’s sudden new criteria), created a fear-pandemic under which people are vulnerable and accept everything – almost in the hope the deadly danger would go away.

So, also a WEF decision, WHO declared this actually minor disease on 11 March 2020 as a pandemic, when there where worldwide, according to WHO statistics only 44,279 positive cases and 1440 deaths outside China. The fear increased, and the “Shock Doctrine” worked. All 193 UN member countries accepted the mid-March 2020 total lockdown – and this without a medical justification.

“The Shock Doctrine” (2007), by Naomi Klein, describing how disaster capitalism takes advantage of shock situations, natural or mand-made, to implement new rules and regulation, that otherwise would have not been readily accepted.

Another example is the US Patriot Act that was for years under preparation, way before 9/11; just waiting for a catastrophe – i.e., 9/11 – to be rushed through and accepted by the US Congress. It took away some 80% of people’s freedoms and converted the laws of the land quasi into a permanent Martial Law – and it is still applicable today, even with some convenient additions for the reigning financial elite.

Imagine! All 193 UN member countries at once – an epidemiological impossibility. Yet, people around the globe accepted the new rule – which eventually destroyed the world economy, decimated it to the point where small and medium size corporations were literally wiped out, putting people jobless in the street, fending for means of survival, increasing poverty rates worldwide exponentially. Unemployment and famine skyrocketed.

The consequence, especially in the Global South, despair, suffering from being without shelter, no food – often leading to suicide and if not to death by famine. However, those few billionaires on top, who pretend soon be ruling the One World Order, increased their combined fortune in just a few months by some 200 billion dollars.

The World Food Program – WFP estimated total population suffering from acute famine at more than a quarter of a billion (265 million) by end 2020, about half of them are covid-related – and steadily raising. “These new numbers show the scale of the catastrophe we are facing,’ says the WFP. Many of them will not survive, but precise figures are not known. As time goes on, they will become catastrophic, resulting in hundreds of thousands of deaths. This is the high-crime result of the diabolical supra-cabal that invented Agenda ID2020, UN Agenda 2030, the Great Reset – a criminal worldwide suffering particularly for the already poor and vulnerable.

According to Dr. Sucharit Bhakdi, German microbiologist, and as reported in The New American on 16 April 2021 in an article entitled “Covid shots to Decimate the World Population”.

Dr. Bhakdi warns that the COVID hysteria is based on lies and that the COVID “vaccines”, especially the mRNA type, are set to cause a global catastrophe and a possible decimation of the human population.

Starting off, Dr. Bhakdi explains that the PCR test has been abused to produce fear in a way that is unscientific.

Next, he explains what the mRNA vaccines are going to do to the human body.

Among other concerns, he expects massive deadly blood clotting [already occurring] as well as immune system responses that will destroy the human body.

Finally, Bhakdi, who warned of impending “doom” during a Fox News interview that went viral, calls for criminal prosecutions of the people responsible and an immediate halt to this global experiment. See this.

This provides some background for the NYT article – background which of course, the New York Times does not mention. It appears that the Times’ concern is foremost warning and preparing people on what might come, but also, spreading more fear, make people more vulnerable, weaker, further breaking down the human auto-defense system. The kind of language applied by the NYT piece, leaves an innocent reader defenseless, in fear “caving in to whatever may come”. Precisely what they want

A Positive Outlook

However, there is hope. The NYT article doesn’t mention ‘Hope’. The best way for humanity to respond to the Covid Planetary Predicament is to collectively resist by all means vaccination and actively object the digitization of your personal data as well as of money.

You thereby resist being taken over by Artificial Intelligence – being enslaved by a a super financial elite.

We clearly have the power in us to overcome this diabolical tyranny that hovers over us – almost across the globe without fault. It is a matter of believing in ourselves, the strength of collective positive and loving thinking – and in the power of solidarity.

*
Peter Koenig is a geopolitical analyst and a former Senior Economist at the World Bank and the World Health Organization (WHO), where he has worked for over 30 years on water and environment around the world. He lectures at universities in the US, Europe and South America. He writes regularly for online journals and is the author of Implosion – An Economic Thriller about War, Environmental Destruction and Corporate Greed; and  co-author of Cynthia McKinney’s book “When China Sneezes: From the Coronavirus Lockdown to the Global Politico-Economic Crisis” (Clarity Press – November 1, 2020)

DNA/RNA vaccines can alter genetic codes!

Ken Biegeleisen, M.D., Ph.D., explains why he believes Johnson & Johnson cannot guarantee its COVID vaccine won’t alter your genetic code.

DNA/RNA Vaccines: “Can They Alter Our Own Genetic Codes”
By Dr. Ken Biegeleisen
Children's Health Defense, 12 April 2021

Everyone is talking about DNA/RNA vaccines. Can they alter our own genetic codes?

The vaccine lobby says “Never!” I, however — laboring beneath the weight of a Ph.D. in virology — would instead quote Gilbert and Sullivan: “Well, hardly ever.”

Most people don’t know very much about DNA or RNA, so I’ll start with a 30-second chemistry discussion. DNA and RNA are both polymers, long strings (in this case, very long strings) composed of seemingly endless repetitions of a single basic chemical building block, called a nucleotide.

The resulting structure is often likened to a string of pearls, or to the rungs of a very, very long ladder. A single human cell contains some 6 billion nucleotide building blocks in its chromosomes.

In the picture below, the DNA basic building block is on the left, and the RNA building block is on the right. Take a look and see whether or not you can discern the difference:

DNA RNA Building Blocks

Don’t see much difference? That’s because there isn’t much. The red asterisk (*) shows the primary difference. RNA has an extra “O” (the abbreviation for an Oxygen atom). That’s about it.

Viruses have no lives of their own. They can grow only in host cells, such as, for example, your cells. In order for a virus to infect you, it needs to recognize a “receptor” on your cell surfaces. If — and only if — the virus can recognize such a receptor, then it has its own clever way of attaching itself to that receptor and sneaking its DNA (or RNA — viruses can have either one) into your cells.

Once inside, the DNA (or RNA) virus chromosome proceeds to reproduce itself, giving rise to hundreds or thousands of exact copies. These are then turned into complete virus particles by being covered with a protective protein coat.

Next, the cell is broken open and the new progeny viruses disperse, infecting hundreds or thousands of other cells.

It’s easy to see how a viral infection can spread like wildfire in your body.

Even though the chemical differences between DNA and RNA are relatively small, the cell is smart enough to instantly recognize those small differences and act accordingly.

DNA is replicated in our cells by means of an enzyme called “DNA polymerase.”

RNA, however, will not ordinarily be replicated by our cells because that’s simply not the way things work. So how does the RNA virus reproduce?

Some RNA viruses have an enzyme called “reverse transcriptase,” which begins each new viral life cycle by converting the virus’ RNA chromosome into DNA. This DNA copy can then be replicated by the cell’s own DNA polymerase-based system.

But other RNA viruses, including the COVID-19 strain of coronavirus, bring in their own special reproductive enzyme called “RNA polymerase,” which has the ability to directly produce numerous copies of the virus’ own RNA chromosome without any help from the cell’s native DNA polymerase system.

Now let’s speak for a moment about alteration of our genetic code. The interaction between a virus and the host cell is generally classified as being one of two distinct types of interaction.

Historically, the first type of interaction (discovered in the late 19th and early 20th centuries) was what we now call, in retrospect, a “productive infection.” Here the virus reproduces and kills the cell, releasing the many progeny as described above.

It was only in the later years of the 20th century that it became clear that there is a second sort of interaction, very different in nature, known as a “transforming” interaction (also called a “latent” infection). In a transforming interaction there is no virus growth at all. Instead, the single chromosome of the virus uses its bag of genetic tricks to insert itself into one of the 46 chromosomes of the host cell. There the viral DNA remains, sometimes forever.

In some species, such as herpesviruses, the virus’ chromosome just sits there, inside the host chromosome, apparently doing nothing — unless and until some sort of stimulus causes it to “pop out” again and begin growing. This produces a “cold sore” of the lips (herpesvirus type 1) or genitalia (herpesvirus type 2).

A large number of publications have documented that many — perhaps most — human beings have, within their nervous systems, cells which quietly harbor latent herpesvirus infections, even though the majority of humans will never get a cold sore. It is a known fact that herpes type I, in the latent state, resides in the trigeminal ganglion, inside the skull near the spinal cord. It is believed to be perfectly harmless in this latent state.

Other viruses, however, are not harmless in the latent state. A good example is SV-40, a DNA virus which is known to be capable of causing cancer in many mammalian species. SV-40 infects cells, but it usually doesn’t grow. Instead, it inserts its own chromosome into one of the cell’s chromosomes (a process called “integration”), and from that new base of operations it converts the cell from a normal cell, which is subject to normal forms of growth control, to a malignant cell which respects none of the host organism’s growth controls, and thereby causes cancer. This alteration, from normal to cancerous, is referred to as a “malignant transformation.”

But the term “transformation” does not automatically connote malignancy. Although a “transformation” may be harmful in any number of ways (and not solely limited to cancer), it might in other cases be entirely inconsequential (as far as the eye can see). In special cases, it might even be beneficial.

Curiously, however, even now — 68 years after the publication of the “Watson-Crick double-helix” structure for DNA — the dream of curing disease via human genetic re-engineering, employing custom-made viruses, remains in its infancy.

On the other hand, certain questionable forms of hastily-contrived human genetic experimentation, empowered by “executive orders,” and facilitated by “fast-track” bypassing of safety protocols, have become alarmingly commonplace.

Can a DNA-based vaccine ‘transform’ a human cell into something genetically different?

With all this in mind, we can now ask the question of whether or not a DNA-based vaccine might “transform” a human cell into something genetically different.

This is no small question, because if the answer is “yes,” and if the transformation proves to be harmful, then that harm may be passed to every subsequent generation — forever.

From 1972-1978, I was an M.D. – Ph.D. student at the New York University School of Medicine. Our lab addressed a question which was current at that time: In “productive infections,” where a virus replicates in cells and ultimately destroys them, might there nevertheless be integration of viral DNA into the host cell chromosomes?

We asked that question because, at that time in virological history, it had become abundantly clear that many different types of viruses could transform many different types of cells into malignant cancer cells. Those cells, if transplanted into animal hosts, would then form cancerous growths which would quickly kill the animal.

This sort of virus-mediated malignant transformation always began with the insertion (i.e., integration) of viral DNA into the chromosomes of the host cells. (Yes, I’m talking about that which the vaccine companies “assure” us will not follow vaccination with their “fast-tracked” new products).

Once these viral genes take up residence in host cell chromosomes, they are thereby empowered to seize control of the cell’s metabolism, perverting it to their own purposes.

So the question virologists were asking in the 1970s was this: Is the insertion of viral genes into host cell chromosomes a process uniquely associated with cancerous transformations? Or might the insertion of viral genes into host cell chromosomes take place in any and every sort of viral infection, whether it was a “productive” infection leading to virus multiplication and cell death, or whether it was a “transforming” infection where there was no virus multiplication at all?

We looked into this question by studying the infection of mammalian cells by herpesviruses. In the end, we published three papers, all in leading virology journals. These papers, listed below, are very difficult reading for anyone not familiar with the peculiar jargon of the field. But for those who are interested, here are the three references:

• Rush MJ & Biegeleisen K.  Association of Herpes simplex virus DNA with host chromosomal DNA during productive infection. Virology, 69:246-257 (1976).  https://doi.org/10.1016/0042-6822(76)90211-7.
• Rush MJ, Yanagi K & Biegeleisen K.  Further studies on the association of Herpes simplex virus DNA and host DNA during productive infection.  Virology, 83:221-225 (1977).  DOI:  10.1016/0042-6822(77)90227-6.
• Yanagi K; Rush MG; Biegeleisen K.  Integration of herpes simplex virus type 1 DNA into the DNA of growth-arrested BHK-21 cells. Journal Of General Virology, 44(3):657-667 (1979).  DOI: 10.1099/0022-1317-44-3-657.

The first paper proved that herpesvirus genes are integrated into host cell chromosomes, but left some important questions unanswered concerning the physico-chemical nature of the linkage between viral and host DNA.

By the third paper, however, all reasonable doubt about the integration of viral DNA into host chromosomes had been laid to rest.

Another line of investigation going on at about the same time, in the laboratory of W. Munyon, led to the same conclusion. Munyon and his associates studied an enzyme called “thymidine kinase.” What that enzyme does is extraneous to this discussion. What matters is that the gene for the enzyme is normally found in human chromosomes, and also in herpesvirus chromosomes.

Munyon and his team had a mutant strain of cells that lacked the thymidine kinase gene. They infected those cells with herpesvirus that had been irradiated, and thereby rendered incapable of multiplying in and killing the cells.

But the virus did, nevertheless, carry in its own thymidine kinase gene. Upon infection, the cells were shown to suddenly have acquired that enzyme, even though they were mutants who had none of their own. Because the virus had been irradiated, it did not kill the cells, which continued growing in the laboratory.

Eight months — which is hundreds of generations — later, the progeny of those cells were still producing thymidine kinase!

So if a DNA vaccine company alleges that their vaccine will cause my cells to temporarily manufacture corona spike protein, but will not permanently “transform” my cells in any other way, what am I to think?

Or, perhaps I’m not supposed to think?

So far we’ve talked only about herpesvirus. The new Johnson & Johnson vaccine uses “reproductively incompetent” genetically engineered adenovirus as the carrier for the corona spike protein gene.

Should we worry? After all, unexpected integration of viral genes may be peculiar only to herpesvirus, and not adenovirus, right?

Unfortunately, that’s not the case. What I did not realize, at the time I was doing my own Ph.D. research on herpesvirus, was that other labs were conducting the same type of research on the adenovirus. Here’s an example of that work:

Schick J, Baczko K, Fanning E, Groneberg J, Burgert H, & Doerfler W (1975).  Intracellular forms of adenovirus DNA: Integrated form of Adenovirus DNA appears early in productive infection.  Proc Nat Acad Sci USA, 73(4):1043-1047.  DOI: 10.1073/pnas.73.4.1043.  PMID: 1063388.  PMCID: PMC430196.

Like coronavirus, there are dozens of known adenovirus types, most of which are classified as “cold viruses.” But some adenoviruses cause much more serious disease, including cancer.

In the 1970s, the adenovirus researchers were asking the same questions that the herpesvirus workers were asking. And they were coming up with the same answers: In “productive infection,” where adenovirus was supposed to only replicate and destroy the cell, there was indeed extensive integration of viral genes into the host cell chromosomes — even though there was no obvious biological reason for the virus to do that.

No guarantees, despite what vaccine makers say

It seems that in many, perhaps most viral infections, integration of viral DNA into the host cells is a very real possibility. When this occurs, there is absolutely no way to “guarantee” that the genetic code of the host cell will not be re-written.

The question then arises: If this is the case, why do vaccine manufacturers “assure” us that their marginally tested products are genetically “safe?”

I would suggest three possible explanations, all equally reprehensible:

1. It may be that the scientists in these companies simply do not know the history of this field. What can one say? “Those that fail to learn from history are doomed to repeat it.”
2. It may be that anything in industry which does not improve the quarterly profit report is at great risk of being ignored.
3. It may be that calling a new vaccine “safe,” in the pharmaceutical world, means little more than that the company has the legal resources to deal with any liability claims that arise.

Which of these three possible explanations is the correct one? Or is it all three?

In any event, you now know why I shall not take the Johnson & Johnson vaccine.

What about RNA vaccines?

We’ve been discussing DNA vaccines. What about RNA vaccines, such as Pfizer and Moderna?

Although I have no personal experience working in the lab on genetic transformation of human cells by RNA viruses, it is appropriate to comment briefly on that subject before closing.

The RNA vaccines are alleged by their promoters to be genetically “safe” because RNA cannot be directly incorporated into human chromosomes.

Is that true? Yes. But does that make them “safe?” Perhaps not.

What the vaccine companies forgot to tell you is that our cells have several types of “reverse transcriptase” of their own, which can potentially convert the vaccine RNA into DNA.

In December 2020, a team of researchers from Harvard and MIT (Zhang et al) posted an article at the Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory-hosted bioRxiv preprint server showing that, in all probability, incorporation of coronavirus spike protein genes, into the chromosomes of infected cells, does indeed take place, and is mediated by the so-called “LINE-1” type of human reverse transcriptase. (For more on the Harvard-MIT study and its implications, read this article previously published by The Defender).

To be clear, this was not a vaccine study, but a study in which cells were deliberately infected with whole, non-inactivated virus, as happens in nature, and which apparently can result in genetic transformation of the cells after all.

This, suggested the authors, may account for the now-frequent observation of COVID-19 test “positivity” in people who are clearly not sick. That is, the bodies of such people are continually manufacturing corona spike protein, from the viral genes which have been permanently incorporated into their genetic codes.

It could be said, in defense of the genetics-based-vaccine lobby, that since infection with whole, functional coronavirus clearly appears capable of transforming the human genetic code, causing our cells to forever manufacture the viral spike protein, there may therefore be some justification in mimicking this natural transformation via an unnatural RNA vaccine.

In condemnation of that lobby, however, we cannot overlook the obviously unwarranted assurances of vaccine manufacturers that alteration of our genetic code “will not happen.” Such a statement casts doubt on (a) their competence in their own field, and (b) their willingness to accept the consequences of their own actions.

Moreover, reverse transcription is a known means of normal human chromosome-to-chromosome gene mobility, a fascinating process whose study goes back to the pioneering work of Barbara McClintock in the 1930s. It has thus been well-known, for the better part of a century, that the effects of moving genes around will very much depend on where they are moved, and on exactly and precisely what is moved.

In the case of the current vaccine-borne corona spike protein gene, no one has any clue as to where in our genomes it will wind up, or what it will do when it gets there.

There is a corona vaccine, Novavax, which contains no genetic material at all (i.e., no DNA or RNA), but rather consists solely of the corona spike protein. Of all the available vaccines, this is the one least likely to cause human genetic harm. But almost no one gets it, because it’s not available in most countries. Why not?

There are also at least two corona vaccines (Sinopharm, Sinovac) which are made from whole inactivated virus, analogous to the polio vaccines of the 20th century. This is a tried and tested form of technology, but very few people get those vaccines either.

Instead, we’re all being pressured into taking hastily prepared genetic vaccines, which are likely to transform our heredity, permanently. Is there any reason for this, other than countless billions of dollars in windfall profits?

It is my view that the massive and barely studied global human genetic experiment going on right now is the biological equivalent of a drunk driver, speeding down the highway with impunity at 60 mph — at night without headlights — because he says that “he knows the road.”

Most sensible people are wary about “GMO,” even in food. Now we’re going to genetically modify ourselves? Why? What madness is this?

*
Ken Biegeleisen, M.D., Ph.D., has studied virology and is the author of multiple studies on virology and DNA/protein structure.

Babylonian land surveyors developed trigonometry

How ancient Babylonian land surveyors developed a unique form of trigonometry — 1,000 years before the Greeks
Daniel Mansfield
Senior lecturer, UNSW
The Conversation, Aug 5, 2021

Our modern understanding of trigonometry harks back to ancient Greek astronomers studying the movement of celestial bodies through the night sky.

But in 2017, I showed the ancient Babylonians likely developed their own kind of “proto-trigonometry” more than 1,000 years before the Greeks. So why were the Babylonians interested in right-angled triangles? What did they use them for?

I have spent the past few years trying to find out. My research, published today in Foundations of Science, shows the answer was hiding in plain sight.

Si.427

Many thousands of clay tablets have been retrieved from the lost cities of ancient Babylon, in present-day Iraq. These documents were preserved beneath the desert through millennia. Once uncovered they found their way into museums, libraries and private collections.

One example is the approximately 3,700-year-old cadastral survey Si.427, which depicts a surveyor’s plan of a field. It was excavated by Father Jean-Vincent Scheil during an 1894 French archaeological expedition at Sippar, southwest of Baghdad. But its significance was not understood at the time.

It turns out that Si.427 — which has been in Turkey’s Istanbul Arkeoloji Müzeleri (Istanbul Archaeological Museums) for several decades and is currently on display — is in fact one of the oldest examples of applied geometry from the ancient world. Let’s look at what makes it so special.

A brief history of Babylonian surveying

The ancient Babylonians valued land, much as we do today. Early on, large swathes of agricultural land were owned by institutions such as temples or palaces.

Professional surveyors would measure these fields to estimate the size of the harvest. But they did not establish field boundaries. It seems those powerful institutions did not need a surveyor, or anyone else, to tell them what they owned.

The nature of land ownership changed during the Old Babylonian period, between 1900 and 1600 BCE. Rather than large institutional fields, smaller fields could now be owned by regular people.

This change had an impact on the way land was measured. Unlike institutions, private landowners needed surveyors to establish boundaries and resolve disputes.

The need for accurate surveying is apparent from an Old Babylonian poem about quarrelling students learning to become surveyors. The older student admonishes the younger student, saying:

Go to divide a plot, and you are not able to divide the plot; go to apportion a field, and you cannot even hold the tape and rod properly. The field pegs you are unable to place; you cannot figure out its shape, so that when wronged men have a quarrel you are not able to bring peace, but you allow brother to attack brother. Among the scribes, you (alone) are unfit for the clay.

This poem mentions the tape and rod, which are references to the standard Babylonian surveying tools: the measuring rope and unit rod. These were revered symbols of fairness and justice in ancient Babylon and were often seen in the hands of goddesses and kings.

Babylonian surveyors would use these tools to divide land into manageable shapes: rectangles, right-angled triangles and right trapezoids.

Earlier on, before surveyors needed to establish boundaries, they would simply make agricultural estimates. So 90° angles back then were good approximations, but they were never quite right.

Right angles done right

The Old Babylonian cadastral survey Si.427 shows the boundaries of a small parcel of land purchased from an individual known as Sîn-bêl-apli.

There are some marshy regions which must have been important since they are measured very carefully. Sounds like a normal day at work for a Babylonian surveyor, right? But there is something very distinct about Si.427.

In earlier surveys, the 90° angles are just approximations, but in Si.427 the corners are exactly 90°. How could someone with just a measuring rope and unit rod make such accurate right angles? Well, by making a Pythagorean triple.

A Pythagorean triple is a special kind of right-angled triangle (or rectangle) with simple measurements that satisfy Pythagoras’s theorem. They are easy to consturct and have theoretically perfect right angles.

Pythagorean triples were used in ancient India to make rectangular fire altars, potentially as far back as 800 BCE. Through Si.427, we now know ancient Babylonians used them to make accurate land measurements as far back as 1900 BCE.

Si.427 contains not one, but three Pythagorean triples.

Crib notes for surveyors

Si.427 has also helped us understand other tablets from the Old Babylonian era.

Not all Pythagorean triples were useful to Babylonian surveyors. What makes a Pythagorean triple useful are its sides. Specifically, the sides have to be “regular”, which means they can be scaled up or down to any length. Regular numbers have no prime factors apart from 2, 3 and 5.

Plimpton 322 is another ancient Babylonian tablet, with a list of Pythagorean triples that look similar to a modern trigonometric table. Modern trigonometric tables list the ratios of sides (sin, cos and tan anyone?).

But instead of these ratios, Plimpton 322 tells us which sides of a Pythagorean triple are regular and therefore useful in surveying. It is easy to imagine it was made by a pure mathematician who wanted to know why some Pythagorean triples were usable while others were not.

Alternatively, Plimpton 322 could have been made to solve some specific practical problem. While we will never know the author’s true intentions, it is probably somewhere between these two possibilities. What we do know is the Babylonians developed their own unique understanding of Pythagorean triples.

This “proto-trigonometry” is equivalent to the trigonometry developed by ancient Greek astronomers. Yet it is different because it was developed in response to the problems faced by Babylonian surveyors looking not at the night sky — but at the land.