Retired child and adolescent psychiatrist and American expatriate in New Zealand. In 2002, I made the difficult decision to close my 25-year Seattle practice after 15 years of covert FBI harassment. I describe the unrelenting phone harassment, illegal break-ins and six attempts on my life in my 2010 book The Most Revolutionary Act: Memoir of an American Refugee.
US Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell repeated his long-running warning about US debt levels being “unsustainable” at a European forum on central banking last month. In February, El Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele warned that the Fed strategy of “printing money out of thin air” amounts to “a bubble that will inevitably burst.”
Central banks’ holdings of dollar-denominated assets have reached a historic low, driven by Washington’s attempts to lock resource-rich Russia out of the dollar-based global financial system, which has led developing countries to seek refuge in gold as an asset whose value and convertibility isn’t tied to the whims of any one nation and therefore cannot be as easily weaponized.
IMF estimates from the spring cited by Japanese financial newspaper Nikkei in a recent report show that dollar and US Treasury-denominated foreign reserves have hit to 58.9 percent in 2024, down from about 70 percent two decades ago.
Reserves denominated in China’s yuan have also dropped, from about three percent of total foreign reserve holdings in early 2022 to roughly 2 percent today, with Ukraine, Norway, Brazil, Switzerland and Israel leading the way in drawing down their yuan holdings.
A World Gold Council survey published in June calculated that central banks’ purchase of the precious metal topped 1,037 tons in 2023 – the second-highest annual buy-up in history after purchases in 2022, which amounted to 1,082 tons.
China has led the bullion buy-up, adding gold to its reserves for 18 consecutive months from November 2022 onward, increasing them by 16.3 percent, to about 2,264 tons total as of June.
India has also rapidly stacked up its gold-denominated assets, which are currently worth $57.6 billion, or 30 percent more than they were during the same period in 2023. Delhi purchased some 19 tons of gold in the first quarter of 2024 alone, for a total of 841 tons. Apparently learning lessons from Venezuela, Russia and Libya’s sour experiences relating to the risks of storing central bank assets in foreign countries, India recently moved about 100 tons of its gold reserves from Britain back home to domestic vaults.
Nikkei cites the ongoing conflicts in Ukraine and the Middle East, which show no signs of stopping anytime soon, and the “geopolitical risk” of a second Trump term as president and a potential escalation of US-China tensions as factors which are likely to drive central banks to continue dumping dollars and other fiat currencies and stacking up their gold holdings instead.
“Not even those high taxes, higher than a lot of places in the world…are really funding the [US] government,” El Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele said at a forum in Washington in February.
“So, who’s financing the government? Government is financed by Treasury bonds, paper. And who buys the Treasury bonds? Mostly the Fed. And how does the Fed buy them? By printing money. But what backing does the Fed have for that money being printed? The Treasury bonds themselves. So basically, you finance the government by printing money out of thin air. Paper backed with paper. A bubble that will inevitably burst. The situation is even worse than it seems because if most Americans and the rest of the world were to become aware of this farce, confidence in your currency would be lost,” Bukele warned.
A Boeing Co. 787-8 passenger aircraft, operated by El Al Israel Airlines, takes off from Ben Gurion International airport in Tel Aviv, Israel, on 30 November, 2021 [Kobi Wolf/Bloomberg via Getty Images]
Middle East Monitor
The number of Israelis who left the country permanently surged 285 per cent following 7 October, according to data published in the Times of Israel. Reports from Channel 12 News, based on data from the Central Bureau of Statistics (CBS), indicate an unprecedented increase in October 2023 compared to the same period in 2022.
Latest reports of the exodus of Israelis confirms data published two months after the 7 October attack which showed that nearly half a million people left Israel. It also showed a significant decline in the number of Jewish immigrants arriving in Israel. A second survey among Israelis living abroad conducted in March by the Hebrew University on the initiative of the World Zionist Organisation revealed that 80 per cent said that they do not intend to return to Israel.
The data from CBS suggests that many Israelis who have the option of a second home abroad choose to relocate during times of heightened conflict, seeking safety and stability elsewhere. This trend stands in stark contrast to the claims made by proponents of Zionism who argue that Israel is the ultimate sanctuary for Jews worldwide.
Instead, the data indicate that it is precisely the existence of Israel and its policies that compel Jews to seek refuge elsewhere, highlighting a paradox in the Zionist narrative.
There was also an increase in Israelis moving abroad in the months before the war, amid mass protests against the government’s judicial overhaul plan, with an increase of 51 per cent in June-September 2023 compared to 2022.
Despite the initial spike in departures, the trend is said to have reversed in the following months. Between November 2023 and March 2024, 30,000 Israelis left the country permanently, marking a 14 per cent decrease from the same period the previous year. Additionally, there was a 21 per cent decrease in Israelis returning from abroad during this time, with 8,898 returning between October 2023 and March 2024 compared to 11,231 the previous year.
Channel 12 points out that the CBS data counts Israelis who left the country, did not return over the subsequent ten months, and established their lives abroad, thus indicating trends rather than immediate causes. It also notes that the decision to emigrate is complex and not necessarily tied to a single event, as such decisions typically involve several months of planning.
Overall, while the initial aftermath of 7 October saw a sharp rise in permanent departures from Israel, the rate has since stabilised.
Critics of Israel argue that Jews radicalised by Zionism often move to Israel as a fulfilment of biblical prophecy but tend to leave during times of conflict, especially those holding a second passport.
Israel is increasingly concerned about the trend of reverse Jewish migration from occupied Palestine, particularly at a time when the demography of the state is a fundamental issue for the Israeli government and Zionist strategists.* The movement of Jews away from Israel threatens the demographic balance Zionist leaders seek to maintain.
*The future existence of Israel is threatened as millions of Israeli Jews with dual passports seek to emigrate (permanently) as Israel’s economy tanks and shortages increase due to the Yemeni blockade of critical Israeli ports. Poland sent military jets at the end of 2023 to evacuate Israelis holding Polish passports. See https://www.reuters.com/world/poland-evacuate-its-citizens-israel-officials-2023-10-08/
Just as people around the world started to blissfully forget that the wretched failed state formerly known as the Ukraine even exists, it reminded us of its existence by attacking the Kursk region of Russia, which it borders. Over a thousand Ukrainian troops, many of them from battle-tested Nazi formations and many of them pulled off parts of the existing 1000-km-long front, along which the Ukrainian side is currently in broad, methodical retreat, were equipped with remaining tanks and artillery, most of it, at this point, Western-provided, and ordered to attack a weakly defended, previously peaceful part of Russian territory in a terrorist-style attack. Some Polish and French mercenaries and some well-known Georgian cutthroats were also observed.
Numerous theories have been circulated over the past few days, attempting to explain why the Ukrainians would attack Kursk. After all, if you already have a 1000-km active frontline with Russia along which you are retreating steadily while incurring massive losses, the one thing that you definitely wouldn’t want to do is extend it. The rationale offered by Mikhailo Podolyak, Zelensky’s henchman, that the goal is to improve the Ukraine’s negotiating position vis-à-vis Russia, is blatantly ridiculous, for there are no negotiations, nor will there ever be, for a solid set of reasons:
First, Russia does not recognize the Kiev régime as legitimate: the term of its president expired in May; the term of its parliament expires tomorrow (August 11); therefore, nobody in Kiev has the authority to sign any peace agreements. (Articles of capitulation are a different matter: any old loser can be forced to sign those, as his first and last official act.)
Second, Russia has spelled out its terms for the cessation of hostilities. The first of these is the lifting of all anti-Russian sanctions, from the US, the EU and their allies, which Russia considers as illegal under international law. Then there are the guarantees of future Ukrainian neutrality, the withdrawal of all foreign forces and mercenaries, demilitarization, and denazification (the Nazis will have to stand trial à la Nuremberg). Last but not least, Russia’s new regions of Crimea, Lugansk, Donetsk, Zaporozhye and Kherson have to be internationally recognized as sovereign Russian territory.
What does this have to do with the Kiev régime and its putative representatives such as Mikhailo Podolyak? Well, nothing at all, really. This is way over their heads; the Russians are speaking directly to the Washingtonians or they are not speaking at all and just shooting and bombing to their hearts’ content. And so let’s put the “improved negotiating position” theory where it belongs: in the trash.
Some analysts pointed out that perhaps this incursion was an expression of an idiosyncratic Nazi tendency:
• At the end of World War I, Kaiser Wilhelm ordered his remaining troops to march on Paris. They didn’t make it far and the Kaiser capitulated shortly thereafter.
• At the end of World War II, a certain mediocre Austrian painter ordered his remaining troops to march on Northern Italy… and shot himself a short while later.
Former Ukrainian president Zelensky has just the pistol for that occasion: a hand-engraved CZ75 pistol presented to him by President Pavel of Czechia. But I somehow doubt that Zelensky will shoot himself; more likely, he’ll fly to his mansion in Miami and just relax and enjoy life for a bit. You see, the Ukrainian régime is all about money — nothing else. The millions of dead and wounded Ukrainian soldiers, the economic and social devastation — that is all just some collateral damage to them. All that’s important to them, and to their overseas Washingtonian masters, is that it has made them rich.
Then come the superficially technical-seeming analysts. Some surmise that the target of the attack on Kursk was the Kursk Atomic Energy Station (or nuclear power plant). But given that it is some 60km away from the border and can only be reached by driving armored columns on roads (the land is riddled with swamps, gullies and other obstacles), which roads are very easily attacked from the air (given Russia’s complete air superiority) destroying said armored columns, the notion that the Ukrainians could reach the nuke plant is pure fancy.
Some other analysts have theorized that the target of the Ukrainian attack is the town of Sudzha, not far from the border. What sets Sudzha apart is that it is the location of the natural gas pumping and metering station, from where the pipeline goes across the Ukraine and feeds Moldova (through Transnistria), Slovakia, Austria and Hungary. If the Ukraine cut the flow of gas, that would pose quite a problem for these countries. While Moldova and Hungary could get the volumes of Russian gas they need via Turkey, Slovkia and Hungary would be forced to make other, far more expensive arrangements involving liquified natural gas pumped through countries that have LNG ports. As for the Ukraine itself, it was formerly a major user of Russian gas, but now that it has a much smaller population and virtually no industry left, the paltry 20 billion cubic meters per year of its domestic production are quite sufficient for its needs.
But why do the Ukrainians need to invade Sudzha to shut down the pipeline when there are other pumping stations conveniently located directly on Ukrainian-held territory? There is really just one plausible answer: if something nasty (no doubt, Ukraine-related) were to happen to the pumping station at Sudzha, the Kiev régime could claim that to be an inadvertent consequence of military action and therefore a force majeur; furthermore, any responsibility for consequential economic damage would rest with the Russians, not with the Ukrainians, since Sudzha is on Russian territory. Therefore, the Ukrainians could blow up the pumping station and then demand that Russia compensate them for lost transit fees (which Russia wouldn’t do, but that’s still good enough for propaganda purposes).<
But the Kiev régime, and its Washingtonian friends, do not need to blow up the Sudzha pumping station in order to make money — which, as I mentioned before, is their ultimate goal. It’s enough for them to THREATEN to blow up the pumping station to get European gas futures to jump.
CIA or Special Forces officer with Cambodian counterpart during secret raid on Cambodia during the Indochina Wars. Source: pinterest.com.au
Jeremy Kuzmarov
CIA Destabilized the Country by Supporting Invasions from Thailand by Exiled Politician Son Ngoc Thanh That Were Designed to Overthrow Neutralist Prince Norodom Sihanouk Who Allied with Communist China and Supported the Vietcong
Around the time of former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger’s 100th birthday, The Intercept ran a series of articles by investigative journalist Nick Turse emphasizing that the secret bombing campaign over Cambodia carried out by Kissinger in the early 1970s killed even more civilians and caused more devastation than was previously thought.Interviews with more than 75 victims of U.S. bombing attacks gave readers a sense of the terrible trauma experienced by survivors of the attacks, which were particularly horrific because the villages were not just bombed, but also strafed by helicopter gunships and burned and looted by U.S. and allied troops.
The official purpose of the bombing—which killed an estimated 150,000 civilians—was to flush out the sanctuaries of South Vietnam’s left-wing National Liberation Front (NLF) guerrillas who were hiding in Cambodia and to fortify a U.S.-installed coup regime that was carrying out a war on Cambodia’s left, the Khmer Rouge, which seized power in 1975.
Chhit Do, a former Khmer Rouge official, noted that “the ordinary people sometimes literally shit in their pants when the big bombs and shells came. Their minds just froze up and they would wander around mute for three or four days. Terrified and half crazy, the people were ready to believe what they were told. It was because of their dissatisfaction with the bombing that they kept on co-operating with the Khmer Rouge, joining up with the Khmer Rouge, sending their children to go off with them.”
Based on such testimony, historians Taylor Owen and Ben Kiernan concluded that “civilian casualties drove an enraged population into the arms of an insurgency that had enjoyed relatively little support until the bombing began, setting in motion…the rapid rise of the Khmer Rouge, and ultimately the Cambodian genocide.”
Popular historical representations, however, such as the 1987 Academy Award-winning film The Killing Fields, helped to obscure the underlying conditions of U.S. bombing in which the Khmer Rouge rose to power and became radicalized. A Finnish commission characterized the 1970s as a “decade of genocide,” with Nixon and Kissinger’s crimes rivaling those of Pol Pot (Saloth Sar), whom the Reagan administration supported after the Vietnamese overthrew him in 1979.[1]
CIA Plays a Central Role in Cambodia’s Destabilization
A new book by historian Matthew Jagel, Khmer Nationalist: Son Ngoc Thanh, the CIA, and the Transformation of Cambodia (Ithaca: Northern Illinois University Press, an imprint of Cornell University Press, 2023) makes clear that Cambodia’s “decade of genocide” was set in motion by the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA).
The CIA along with U.S. Army Special Forces contributed significantly to the destabilization of Cambodia by supporting raids carried out by Cambodian guerrillas known as the Khmer Serei (Free Khmer) based in South Vietnam and Thailand.
The aim was to overthrow the neutralist regime of Prince Norodom Sihanouk, Cambodia’s head of state from 1953 to 1970, who allied with Communist China and gave support to the NLF—aka the Vietcong.
The guerrillas were loyal to Prince Sihanouk’s nemesis, Son Ngoc Thanh, an anti-communist nationalist who had served as Cambodian Foreign Minister after the surrender of Japan at the end of World War II and then became Prime Minister from March until October 1972 after a U.S.-backed coup led to Sihanouk’s ouster in March 1970 and replacement with Lon Nol, his army chief of staff.
The CIA valued Thanh—described by The New York Times as a “short, wiry, intense man”—because he was a right-wing republican nationalist who had served in the maquis fighting against France, which colonized Cambodia from 1863 to 1945 and 1945 to 1953.[2]
From 1945 to 1951, Thanh was exiled in France. Upon his return to Cambodia in October 1951, because of his strong anti-colonial stance, he was greeted by more than 100,000 people holding banners reading “Son Ngoc Thanh, National Hero,” and “Son Ngoc Thanh Our Hope.”[3]
During the 1950s and 1960s, the CIA was recruiting “Third Force” politicians across Southeast Asia who represented an alternative between right-wing authoritarians and communists or those seen as too sympathetic to the latter.
In Cambodia’s case, Sihanouk was a target for regime change because of his close alliance with China and desire to steer a neutralist course for Cambodia and avoid entanglement in the Indochina War, which he recognized would ruin his country.
Thanh initially opposed Sihanouk’s gradualist approach to decolonization with France, taking up arms in the jungles of Cambodia against him right after his triumphalist return in October 1951. Ironically at the time, Sihanouk lumped him in with the communists, though the CIA reported in June 1954 on the existence of non-communist dissidents in Cambodia against Sihanouk’s post- colonial rule who are “followers of the nationalist leader, Son Ngoc Thanh.”[4]
The Eisenhower administration’s support for Thanh increased because of its growing covert involvement in Vietnam and Sihanouk’s refusal to join the Southeast Asia Treaty Organization (SEATO) with Thailand, the Philippines and South Vietnam.
By February 1955, after losing a rigged election, Thanh assembled a force of two thousand men on the Thai-Cambodian border operating with Thai support (Cambodia and Thailand had long been enemies).
In December 1958, several CIA officers on the staff of John Peurifoy, the U.S. ambassador to Thailand who was a central architect of the 1954 Guatemalan coup, held a secret meeting in Bangkok where they plotted a coup against Sihanouk with Thanh along with Field Marshal Sarit Thanarat from Thailand, and Ngo Trong Hieu, a South Vietnamese official who was close to Ngo Dinh Diem (a U.S. client installed in power in 1955).[5]
CIA agent Victor Matsui played a key role with Thanh in coordinating the coup plot, which ultimately failed. When one of the main coup plotters, Dap Chhuon, was captured, he was found with a CIA radio in his possession.[6]
State Department officials acknowledged that, by this point, Thanh had lost much of his appeal among the Cambodian population and that Sihanouk, whatever his flaws, had considerable mass support.
Chiang Kai-shek, the head of state in Taiwan whom the U.S. supported against the communists in the Chinese civil war, said that Sihanouk had “essentially anti-communist, nationalistic motivation[s], which emphasized independent stature for [the] Cambodian nation,” and was “a positive benefit [to the] free world.”[7]
The release years later of a telephone conversation between then President John F. Kennedy and his Assistant Secretary of State for Far Eastern Affairs, Roger Hilsman, proved U.S. involvement in the Dap Chhuon coup plot.
In the conversation, Hilsman informed Kennedy that “there’s a history, during the administration of President Eisenhower, where the agency [CIA] did play footsie with opposition groups.”
When Kennedy asked: “Was that a true story about ’59 or something?” Hilsman responded: “yes sir, it is true.” “CIA did do it?” inquired the President. “Sure,” Hilsman responded, “they supplied some money and, uh, they were involved in a plot against Sihanouk back before this administration. The Agency in those days wasn’t responsible to the State Department. They did things they probably didn’t know about.”[8]
Mike Force and Secret Teams
In 1958, Thanh reported that his anti-communist guerrilla forces began to receive military training from the United States to overthrow Sihanouk at its headquarters in the Prachin Buri province in Thailand.[9]
Many Khmer Serei were recruited into “Mike Force,” or mobile strike forces, that were organized by General Paul D. Harkins, a former Deputy Chief of Staff to General George S. Patton at the end of World War II and the first commander of the American Military Assistance Command, Vietnam (MACV) from 1962 to 1964.
According to Thanh, the Khmer Serei received financial backing as well as all of its weapons from the Americans from the late 1950s to the early 1960s.[10]
The total was millions of dollars in assistance, which enabled the Khmer Serei to develop eight battalions of mainly Khmer Khrom (ethnic Cambodians born in South Vietnam who supported Thanh) anti-Sihanouk forces and to establish a clandestine radio station run from a truck inside Thailand.[11]
Chinese Guomindang guerrillas based out of Taiwan actively supported the Khmer Serei along with the South Vietnamese and Thai governments, which supplied ammunition, bombs and explosives as Thanh’s men were sent as infiltrators into Cambodia to conduct sabotage and political warfare operations.[12]
Sihanouk was accused of harboring Vietcong agents, though the U.S. ambassador to Cambodia, Philip D. Sprouse (1962-1964), admitted there was no proof to the charge.
John F. Kennedy wrote to Sihanouk denying U.S. support for the Khmer Serei, but crossed out a sentence suggesting CIA support for them. Sihanouk subsequently gave a fiery speech in which he said that the Americans were noted for “their habit of buying the conscience of [people]. They have bought such running dogs as…Son Ngoc Thanh, and the Khmer Serei, the Vietnamese and the new Vietnamese government.”[13]
As the Vietnam War expanded, the Khmer Serei were recruited into the Civilian Irregular Defense Group (CIDG) run by the CIA, which ran cross-border infiltration, unconventional warfare and espionage missions and became part of the Phoenix Program, whereby suspected Vietcong on blacklists were kidnapped and then often tortured and executed.[14]
The CIA’s operations exemplified the exploitation of political divisions and minority grievances by the U.S. in the service of larger imperial ends.
Thanh played an active role in the Khmer Serei operations and was ferried to various CIDG camps by a U.S. helicopter. He said that there was always a CIA agent attached to his staff whom he identified only as “Fred.”[15]
The 1967 Operation Daniel Boone, involving the use of Khmer Serei forces skilled in jungle warfare who operated as guides for U.S. Special Forces, was created without the knowledge of Congress.
The British embassy characterized the Khmer Serei’s chief methods as being “subversion and terrorism.”[16] They were known for blowing up railways and committed heinous atrocities for which they tried to frame the Vietcong.[17]
When CIDG officer Randolph Harrison was shown a photo of what appeared to be Khmer Serei forces next to mutilated and beheaded Cambodian communists, he said: “I know these guys. They’d been in my Special Forces unit.”[18]
Son Ngoc Thanh and Cambodia’s Descent into the Abyss
CIDG operations laid the groundwork for the 1970 CIA-backed coup, which resulted in the ouster of Sihanouk and empowerment of Lon Nol, who had been known for carrying out brutal operations against Cambodia’s communists—the Khmer Rouge—in the mid-1960s.
Paid through U.S. aid money and continuously outfitted with U.S. weapons, the Khmer Serei played a key role in the coup by serving as a conduit for CIA infiltration of the Cambodian government, and then by helping the new post-coup government to flush out its enemies as it became integrated into the Cambodian Army.
As a reward, Thanh was appointed Prime Minister in 1972. Americans saw him as a potential check on Lon Nol’s drift toward authoritarianism and also liked him because he hoped to lead his Khmer guerrillas against the North Vietnamese in the Cambodian jungle.
Thanh’s support within Cambodia, however, was not what it once was: Judith Coburn reported in the Far Eastern Economic Review that “he labors under the cloud of decades long collaboration with the American CIA.”[19]
That collaboration became more and more unpopular as Cambodia was turned into a wasteland by Nixon and Kissinger’s savage bombing campaign, which combined with prior CIA-backed destabilization efforts, helped turn the population against the U.S. and its proxies like Thanh.
When the Khmer Rouge came to power in 1975, they liquidated Cambodia’s cities and systematically massacred U.S. collaborators, including many former Khmer Serei fighters who were considered to be foreign invaders.
Those Khmer Serei who escaped took up resistance along the Thai-Cambodian border, though, according to Jagel, were little more at this point than black marketeers or bands of extortionists who preyed on the defenseless border refugee camps.[20]
Here’s how everything unfolded from the start of this summer’s initially peaceful student-led protests against the judiciary’s reimposition of a contentious government job quota system to the spree of urban terrorism that ultimately forced the country’s long-serving leader to flee for her life to India.
Casual news consumers don’t know much about Bangladesh apart from it being a South Asian country that just experienced a regime change, but it’s also the eighth-most-populous country with one of the world’s largest textile industries and a highly geostrategic position. Bangladesh borders India’s Northeast States that are connected to the “mainland” by the “Chicken’s Neck”, which is only 12-14 miles wide at its narrowest, and some of these same states have been troubled by ethno-separatist unrest for years.
Former long-serving Bangladeshi Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina was a de facto Indian ally despite cultivating close ties with China and the US.
She shared Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s vision of regional development and thus allowed his country transit rights across hers for facilitating trade with its Northeast States. Moreover, Hasina prevented her country from being used by related militant groups that are designated by Delhi as terrorists, and she also cracked down on religious radicals too.
Although the Bangladeshi economy rapidly grew under her leadership, she resorted to a heavy hand to maintain domestic stability, which upset the increasingly large number of Islamist-inclined youth who considered her government’s legal cases against the opposition to be “anti-democratic lawfare”. Controversial tactics by the security services inadvertently worsened domestic dissent and ultimately led to targeted sanctions by the US, which was already becoming unhappy with her multipolar balancing act.
The past 14 months saw the worsening of her ties with America after she accused it of fomenting regime change against her in April 2023, followed by Russia expressing concerned in November that it might orchestrate a Color Revolution during January 2024’s elections that the opposition boycotted. Less than three months ago, Hasina strongly implied that the US was the Western country that she accused of plotting to carve out a Christian proxy state in the region after she rejected its demand for a naval base.
Shortly thereafter, the High Court reinstated the contentious government job quota system in late June that had been declared illegal in 2018, which served as the trigger event for mobilizing a large segment of the population to take to the streets against that decision. This movement was initially driven by students but was quickly co-opted by opportunistic members of the opposition, Western-cultivated elements of civil society, and religious radicals, which culminated in her resignation and flight this week:
The preceding analyses document the regime change sequence that took place, which continued after the quota system was scaled back and succeeded due to the rioters gambling that the armed forces wouldn’t resort to lethal force to prevent large numbers of them from storming the parliament and her palace. Average Bangladeshis unconnected to the opposition, religious radicals, and foreign forces also participated in them after being enraged at decontextualized footage of state-on-“protester” violence.
This tactic is characteristic of Color Revolutions and was employed by violent rioters, who many suspect to be the opposition Bangladesh Nationalist Party’s (BNP) banned Jamaat-e-Islami allies, provoking the security services into using lethal force as a last resort to restore safety to the streets. Those individuals were joined the unrest after seeing this footage became unwitting “human shields” for deterring the security services from replicating the aforementioned means out of fear of killing peaceful protesters.
Although social media was banned and a curfew imposed, many still came across that footage and an uncontrollable number of angry citizens then spilled into the streets, thus forcing the security services into the dilemma that was just described and leading to them standing down. Hasina fled once it became clear that she couldn’t count on the security services to protect her and uphold the government that she led. Retributive political violence and attacks against the Hindu minority then followed.
India is concerned about the possibility of Bangladesh reverting to the unfriendly country that it used to be under the BNP, which could see it once again host Delhi-designated terrorist groups as part of a major proxy war against this emerging Great Power. Pakistan’s hatred of India is well known, China is embroiled in a bitter border dispute with India, and the US is furious that India won’t submit to being a vassal by dumping Russia and fighting China on its behalf, so all three have reasons to punish it in this way.
Their interests could therefore converge in Bangladesh to pose serious threats to India’s domestic security and territorial integrity. In that worst-case scenario, the combined effect of their policies – whether coordinated or independently promulgated – would be to sabotage India’s rise as a Great Power, thus representing a major power play in the New Cold War. It’s too early to say whether that’ll happen, but it also can’t be ruled out by India either, which is closely monitoring this neighboring crisis.
Much is talked about the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), part of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, which was adopted by all United Nations (UN) members in 2015, integrating environmental, social and governance topics. Sustainability is a core concept here – and such is increasingly becoming a controversial topic, sometimes associated with “climate colonialism”. One could even talk about a “sustainability fatigue”. Even Brazil’s president Lula da Silva has famously accused the European Union (EU) of disguising protectionist initiatives under an environmental agenda. Within the nationalist and state-developmentalist camp (especially in the Global South, formerly known as the Third World), there often is a perception that all environmental discourse and topics amount to merely a veil over neo-colonialist interests.
It has always been a great challenge to reconcile, on the one hand, national industrial and developmental needs and, on the other hand, environmental concerns. Such is a complex balancing, involving intricate technical issues. The environmental problems in any case are matters of greatest importance to the future (and present) of mankind. There is no denying that the rising levels of pollution and deforestation, among other concerns, need to be dealt with in an efficient manner. It is also true, however, that at the same time the so-called environmental agenda is weaponized by great powers. There really is a false dilemma at play here: true facts can also be used for propaganda. The burning forests and poisoned rivers (and their effects) are real and so is the weaponization of environmentalism and sustainability and the double standard about it.
The logic of it is quite similar to that behind the weaponization of human rights (or of diversity and wokeism, for that matter). For example, there may indeed be concerns about the way China deals with political-religious extremism and the related domestic security issues (an Eurasian transnational problem). Some Chinese initiatives to fight Islamic extremism are indeed controversial: the “Vocational Education and Training Centers” have been described by critics as “concentration camps”. In any case, Washington highlights the matter (often in a hyperbolic and distorted manner) while aiming to engage Muslim-majority nations and their civil societies to urge their leaders to cut down on trade with Beijing, thereby reducing the flow of oil to the Asian superpower – the goal being, among other things, to have South Asian countries block Chinese low-interest infrastructure projects. These very projects, ironically, can contribute to achieving SDGs in the region.
The American humanitarian concern can only be described as hypocrisy if one is aware of the fact that the United States, as the Human Rights Watch (HRW) reports, for more than two decades has made use of the so-called “indefinite detention”, and has been imprisoning (without due process of law) and torturing thousands of adults and minors (mostly Muslims), who are kept in places like Guantanamo Bay or in CIA “black sites” and secret prisons in more than 50 countries worldwide.
Back to the environmental issue, one can see, time and time again, the same kind of hypocrisy and double-standard. Various African energy projects, as I wrote a couple of years ago, have been repeatedly opposed by the US-led West. In September 2022, for instance, the EU Parliament passed a resolution stating that the Tanzania’s and Uganda’s East African Crude Oil Pipeline (EACOP) project poses “social and environmental risks.” The European Parliament thereby advised its member states not to support (either diplomatically or financially) Uganda’s oil and gas projects. Uganda’s Deputy Speaker of Parliament Thomas Tayebwa reacted to that by describing the European resolution as the “highest level of neocolonialism and imperialism” against Uganda’s and Tanzania’s sovereignty. Bear in mind that the whole continent of Africa in 2020 accounted for merely 3.8% of the world CO2 emissions from industry and fossil fuels.
Proposed route of 1,410km Hoima-Tanga Oil Pipeline (Licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0)
The most blatant instance of the US weaponizing environmental agendas lies, as I wrote before, in the very way it seeks water hegemony through a number of initiatives framed in the language of climate concerns. Biden’s Washington exerts pressure on Brazil on the matter of the Amazon while endorsing Ford F-150, an electric truck that damages the Amazon river (the aluminum used poisons the waters).
Such game goes even beyond the scope of the “Global South”, sometimes being weaponized by the United States against transatlantic allies (who, mind you, are also the target of a subsidy war): for instance, in 2022, John Kerry, who then was the American “Climate Czar”, that is Biden’s special presidential envoy for climate, warned investors against funding a Nigeria-Morocco gas pipeline project which could benefit Africa and also Europe. The way Washington has played the European energy crisis in the last years, by the way, is key to understanding the current conflict in Ukraine. In fact, American geoeconomic and private and even shady interests about gas, energy and resources play an important role in the ongoing Ukrainian crisis – in addition to Washington-led NATO geopolitical goals pertaining to encircling Russia. But that is another topic.
Managing natural resources and water access is one of the great challenges of the 21st century, and various disputes and conflicts can be expected to emerge over such issues, both on the intra-national and international level. Unfortunately, one can also expect environmental rhetoric to be increasingly used as a tool by a superpower such as the United States.
But the SDG are not necessarily “the enemy”, even from the perspective of the East or the Global South. Hannah McNicol, a University of Melbourne doctoral researcher, argues that China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) in fact largely converges with the SDGs, with the former adopting the latter’s framework. Thus, according to McNicol, “the SDGs are materially achieved via BRI economic and infrastructure policies.”
China in Red, the members of the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank in orange. The proposed corridors and in black (Land Silk Road), and blue (Maritime Silk Road). (Licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0)
Discussions about the SDGs usually emphasize the environmental angle (clean water, clean energy) or sometimes the gender angle, however the SDGs encompass industry and infrastructure as well as the fight against poverty. There is no way to achieve any of that without responsible and consistent re-industrialization – no matter how much is talked about the supposed “post-industrial” world today. No developing or emerging nation should be shy about seeking industrial power while even the West struggles to overcome deindustrialization. It is precisely because manufacturing/industrialization matters so much that it has become the target of economic warfare – which is often framed in the language of sustainability and environmental concerns. It is just part of the game.
The Tennessee Star learned the controversial and allegedly politicized FBI on Friday executed a search warrant at the Maury County, Tennessee, home of Representative Andy Ogles (R-TN-05).
Ogles confirmed in a statement provided to The Star that the FBI executed a search warrant for his personal cell phone in an apparent investigation of his campaign filings.
“It has been widely reported for months that my campaign made mistakes in our initial financial filings. We have worked diligently with attorneys and reporting experts to correct the errors and ensure compliance going forward,” stated Ogles, referencing amendments submitted over the course of this year to his earlier Federal Elections Commission (FEC) reports.
“Last Friday, the FBI took possession of my cell phone,” Ogles confirmed. “It is my understanding that they are investigating the same well-known facts surrounding these filings. I will of course fully cooperate with them, just as I have with the Federal Election Commission. I am confident all involved will conclude that the reporting discrepancies were based on honest mistakes, and nothing more.”
Ogles later posted the statement on the social media platform X.
It has been widely reported for months that my campaign made mistakes in our initial financial filings. We have worked diligently with attorneys and reporting experts to correct the errors and ensure compliance going forward. Last Friday, the FBI took possession of my cell phone.…
When The Star reached the FBI’s national press office, it declined to confirm that it executed the search warrant. A spokesman suggested that the U.S. District Attorney for Middle Tennessee could provide more information, but Assistant District Attorney Mark Wildasin told The Star that he could not comment due to policy.
A separate inquiry from The Star to the FBI, which sought a copy of the search warrant, was not answered.
It is unclear who the FBI informed of the search warrant before its execution, as Maury County Sheriff Bucky Rowland told The Star, “I was not aware of any search warrant regarding Rep. Andy Ogles.”
Similarly, a Tennessee Bureau of Investigations (TBI) spokesman told The Star, “Our agency is not involved in an investigation into Representative Andy Ogles.”
The police department in Columbia, where Ogles’ congressional office is located, did not immediately reply to The Star’s inquiry.
Ogles carried every county in the 5th Congressional District except Davidson County, where Nashville is located, which was one of just three Tennessee counties won by Biden in 2020.
It also came less than two weeks after Ogles introduced new articles of impeachment against Vice President Kamala Harris, alleging the Democratic presidential candidate committed “high crimes and misdemeanors” through her neglect of the southern border.
Due to her alleged systematic refusal “to uphold Federal immigration laws,” Ogles argued, “In her conduct of the Office of Vice President of the United States, Kamala Devi Harris… has willfully prevented, obstructed, and impeded the administration of justice.”
Ogles included a new article of impeachment in his June 2024 filing: Vice President Harris’s failure to lead a 25th Amendment removal of President Biden, whom Ogles argued was not cognitively capable of handling his duties, which Harris is keenly aware of.
Ogles first introduced articles of impeachment against Harris and President Joe Biden in June of last year and was among the Republicans who voted last month to condemn Harris for her failure to perform as the Biden administration’s border czar.
Episode 11 Dividing the Empire: A Tale of Four Brothers
The Mongol Empire
Dr Craig Benjamin (2020)
Film Review
By the time Chenggis Khan’s grandson Mongke became Great Khan in 1251, the empire built by Ogedei (see Ogedei Khan’s Western Campaigns) had disintegrated into independent warring khanates.
Mongke tried to unify them by appointing two extremely skilled central administrators Menggesser and Aqaa Bulgai. After ordering a census, he created four official administrative regions for tax purposes, as well as four secretariats directly responsible to the central Menggesser and Bulgai:
the principalities of (ruled by the Jochi’s descendants, aka the Golden Horde)
Turkestan/Chagatai Khanate (ruled by Mongke Khan)
the Ilkhanate (ruled by Mongke’s younger brother Hulagu)
the Yuan Dynasty (ruled by Mongke’s younger brother Qubilai Khan)
In 1252, Mongke ordered a second kuritai to receive approval and support to continue the wars of Ogedei. He allotted 20% of the army to Qubilai in his conquest of the Song empire, 20% to Hulagu in his consolidation of Ogedei’s victories in Persia. He allotted an estimated 600,000 warriors and untold millions of non-nomads to himself he joined Qubilai in attacking the Song Dynasty.
Facing formidable iron fortifications on the northern Song border, he dispatched Qubilai to invade the Dali empire to the west of the Song empire. Assuming control of the Dali empire in 1254, Qubilai attached the Song from the west while Mongke approached from the north. Facing hundreds of thousands of skilled former Jin dynasty warriors, four years of bitter battle, the Song Empire finally surrendered.
Meanwhile Hulagu’s army in Persia captured the fortresses of Nizari assassins west of Persia and in 1258 sacked Bagdad, capitol of the Abbasid Caliphate. After opening dams to drown 20,000 of the caliphate’s cavalry, the Mongol armies used pontoon bridges to cross the Tigris and Euphrates rivers and Chinese engineers to crush the city walls with siege engines that pummeled it with massive boulders.
Pausing three days to collect the massive treasure of precious metals and jewels amassed by the Caliph, Hulagu unleashed his warriors to pillage Baghdad homes and rape and slaughter at least 90,000 civilians. They destroyed all the books in Baghdad’s phenomenal House of Wisdom, using the book covers to make shoes.
Once the Mongols moved on, Hulagu appointed Ata Mada Jervaine the new governor of Baghdad and offered the Nistorian Christian patriarch the former Caliph’s palace as a residence. The city would become an important center of Mongol administration, trade and religious affairs.
Continuing to march west the Mongols defeated Aleppo in five day with their siege engines. Opening its gates to them, Damascus was spared looting.
General Ket Buq now led a sizeable Mongol force north, while a third force marched to Gaza, where they briefly skirmished with European Crusaders.
The Mamaluks (former slave solders who now controlled Egypt – see Mongol Queens and the Contest for Empire) put an end to the Mongol’s westward advance at the battle of An Jalut.
All Mongol military campaigns ceased with Mongke’s death in 1265. Batu’s youngest son Arique Boke called a kuritai, which none of Mongke’s brothers attended, resulting in Boke being appointed Great Khan. When Quibilai called his own kuritai, he too and was declared Great Khan. Boke ceded to Quibilai when the led led his army north against him in 1274.
With Qubilai’s failure to demand loyalty from the other Mongol rulers and the four khanates established under Mongke became totally independent.
*For almost two centuries, from 1090 until 1273, the Order of Assassins played a singular and sinister role in the Middle East. A small Shiite sect more properly known as the Nizari Ismailis, the Assassins were relatively few, geographically dispersed, and despised as heretics by both the Sunni Muslim majority and even by most other Shiites. See Holy Terror: The Rise of the Order of Assassins
Film can be viewed free with a library card on Kanopy.
Dutch attorney Meike Terhorst joined “The Defender In-Depth” this week to discuss the European Union’s (EU) plans for a European Vaccination Card (EVC), the plan’s similarities to the EU’s Digital COVID Certificate, the global push toward digital ID and implications for health and medical freedom.
The EU, which pioneered the development of digital “vaccine passports,” will next month launch a test run of its new EVC in five countries — Belgium, Germany, Greece, Latvia and Portugal.
The card purports to “foster informed decision-making on vaccination, and improve continuity of care across the EU” and “aims to empower individuals by consolidating all their vaccination data in one easily accessible location.”
While the objectives of the program, set to be implemented throughout the EU by 2026, appear benign, critics argue the EVC is a stepping stone for mandatory vaccinations in the future.
Some also argue the EVC is connected to large financial interests and plans to limit personal and national sovereignty.
‘The plan is to get everybody vaccinated’
For Terhorst, efforts to launch the EVC are, at their root, “about digital ID.”
“You get a digital ID where all your vaccination records are stored … All your personal details are stored in one place, and you can move it easily from one country to another without having to redo or reapply … So basically, it’s about a digital ID, and then a link from your personal ID to your medical records on vaccination,” she said.
Terhorst said that while the idea of having one’s medical records easily accessible and transferrable sounds benign, “The plan is to get everybody vaccinated and to kind of overrule constitutional rights.”
“It was very clear that the object was that anybody within the EU could not say no to … vaccination,” Terhorst said.
This includes a requirement for “the free and informed consent of the person concerned” in relation to medical procedures, and “the prohibition on making the human body and its parts as such a source of financial gain.”
EVC a continuation of EU ‘vaccine passport’
Terhorst said that the EVC and the EU’s digital vaccination certificate are “presented as different programs,” with the EVC being “rebranded as something completely different and completely new” — even though they are both based on “the same software,” she said.
“They’ve been working on it for years and years and years. And it works perfect, and it’s all linked together like the banking infrastructure, the personal medical records, insurance, everything links into each other,” Terhorst said.
Noting that plans for the EVC were launched in 2018, before the COVID-19 pandemic, Terhorst said, “This plan is not new. It has been in the making for a very long time.”
Terhorst said the EVC threatens to usurp personal and national sovereignty.
“There was a digital roadmap for a digital passport. So basically, the EU is trying to become a kind of country or federal state that has the capacity to issue a passport to all the EU citizens,” she said.
Terhorst also connected the plans to launch the EVC with the amendments to the WHO’s International Health Regulations, passed in June at the World Health Assembly.
The amendments contain articles that “allow states to enforce medication on anybody during a crisis or emergency or pandemic,” she said. “It doesn’t say that it has to be done, but it gives this permission.”
Terhorst also connected plans for the EVC with efforts in other countries to enact new pandemic preparedness plans. She cited the example of New Zealand, which last month published an interim update to its national Pandemic Plan and which was expanded to cover “respiratory-type pathogens of pandemic potential.”
Digital ID “is very necessary for financial services, but not only. It is also good for school enrollment, it is also good for health — who actually got a vaccination or not,” Queen Máxima said.
“There was very intense pressure put on us to get vaccinated,” Terhorst said, referring to her experience in the Netherlands. “And then knowing that it didn’t stop transmission, why was it so important? I think still we don’t know everything, but we have to keep on digging and fighting for the truth to come out to really know why it was so important.”
Will vaccines be mandated in Europe?
Terhorst cited as one example the recent release of the “RKI Files” in Germany, named after the country’s Robert Koch Institute — the German equivalent of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The files indicated that political objectives — not science — guided pandemic decision-making in Germany.
According to Terhorst, the files made it “very clear that it was a scam — the whole COVID-19 lockdown, all the measures, closing schools, etc., didn’t have a scientific basis. And so, all the measures were based on political decisions and not on science, although the public was told that it was all based on science.”
The release of the files was significant, Terhorst said, because Germany is not just one of the five countries set to trial the EVC, but is also Europe’s economic leader and the home country of scandal-ridden European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen. The European Commission is the EU’s executive branch.
“Germany has played a very important role in the COVID-19 period,” Terhors said. “And of course, von der Leyen is German, and she is the head of the European Commission … She is very much in favor of vaccination, and so, she will push as much as she can to let this digital vaccination passport be a success, and even, I think, to try to force people to get vaccinated.”
Terhorst said prominent financial interests are behind the public health rhetoric promoting initiatives such as the EVC.
She referenced recent remarks by Catherine Austin Fitts, founder and publisher of the Solari Report and former U.S. assistant secretary of Housing and Urban Development, who told The Defender the EVC represents “another step toward asserting control of labor and travel, with a goal to controlling resources and assets.”
“The goal is financial control,” Fitts said. “There is no legitimate public health purpose. The central bankers are hiding behind a health narrative — policies like lockdown are a way to manage inflation and resource demand when monetary policy is highly inflationary.”
“It’s one big conglomerate which is ruling the world, and it’s this conglomerate which wants a change of the financial system,” Terhorst said. “And the change they want to have is that they can decide how much money you have in your own bank account with the CBDC,” central bank digital currency.
“So basically, and this is I think very important for everybody to realize, it’s not about health, it’s about your money,” Terhorst said. “They want to make you into a kind of minion as somebody who’s not having real rights.”
“What the politic is moving towards — it’s much more towards a government or a political system where you have no rights and also you have no ownership and you have no right to say no,” Terhorst added.
Noting that influential organizations such as the WEF and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation have supported efforts to develop digital ID and digital vaccine passports, Terhorst said “Such an accumulation of power … is just incredible and it’s a direct threat for every citizen.”
“The threat is that anybody objecting to vaccination, especially when there will be a new crisis [like] we’ve seen with COVID-19, then … perhaps your bank could say, well, then you cannot have access to your bank account,” Terhorst said, citing Canadian banks who froze the accounts of participants in the 2022 Freedom Convoy.
The US government continues its violent persecution of all citizens who express opinions contrary to the foreign policy of the White House. Once again, the country’s authorities unjustifiably harassed military analyst Scott Ritter, raiding his house under the allegation that Ritter is a “foreign agent.” Apparently, any American citizen who disagrees with the policy of war with Russia is considered a “spy” by the government, which shows how Washington is becoming an antidemocratic police state.
The FBI and the New York State Police raided Ritter’s house in Ethlehem Township, south of Albany. The agents remained inside Scott’s house for about five hours, collecting materials they considered suspicious. More than two dozen boxes were removed from the place by the police containing various items meant for investigation, including several electronic devices.
The police presented a search and seizure warrant based on the Foreign Agents Restriction Act. In practice, this means that for the American police, Scott Ritter is officially a “Russian asset.” The investigations are certainly intended to find some kind of incriminating content that would allow a formal charge of espionage and conspiracy against the American state.
This is not the first time that Scott Ritter has been attacked by the authorities of his own country. The analyst has already lost his passport and the right to leave the US after the American police forcibly escorted him off a plane when he was about to go to the Russian Federation in June. Ritter had been invited to participate in the St. Petersburg Economic Forum, where he was expected to give a talk on a panel about multipolarity and geopolitics. However, shortly after boarding the plane, American guards confiscated his passport without providing any explanation, which is a serious violation of basic individual rights.
Now, with the FBI’s harassment, Scott’s situation is even more complicated. Without a passport, he is unable to leave the country to seek political asylum in another state. Having to remain on American soil, he is likely to be increasingly targeted by the Washington’s authorities, who have become well-known for implementing a method similar to psychological torture to coerce citizens who disobey the country’s tacit “rule” of supporting the White House’s aggressive foreign policy.
Ritter is a former officer of the US Marine Corps, having served as an intelligence agent specializing in missiles during the Gulf War. He became known for his work as a UN weapons inspector in Iraq, having been an opponent of the US invasion of the country. At the time, Ritter repeatedly stated that Iraq did not have weapons of mass destruction, and therefore the US military action was unjustified. The judicial and police harassment against him began in the early 2000s precisely in retaliation for his pro-peace stance.
In the same vein, having studied Russian affairs academically, Ritter is deeply familiar with the history of the Russian-Ukrainian crisis and has been a vocal critic of the US policy of arming Kiev since 2022. He advocates a peaceful policy between the US and Russia and the establishment of mutually favorable conditions for coexistence. In the same vein, Ritter has used his military expertise to debunk some fallacious Western narratives about the situation on the battlefield.
Since 2022, he has been pointing out how Russian troops maintain complete control over the military situation, with Ukraine having no chance of reversing this scenario. Ritter’s work is seen as a threat by the Western propaganda machine, which constantly needs to spread lies to convince public opinion to continue supporting Ukraine. Ritter’s situation has become even worse since October 2023, when he spoke out against Israel’s violent incursions into Gaza and has become a critic of US support for Netanyahu. The persecution of Ritter has escalated since then, with both the pro-Ukraine and pro-Israel lobbies now targeting him.
In fact, what is happening to Ritter is just one example of how the US is becoming a police state. Democracy and freedom of speech are no longer part of American political principles – at least not on a practical level, being just pointless rhetoric. Unfortunately, Ritter is likely to face even more police and judicial abuse, since without a passport he has no way of leaving the country to escape persecution. The same fate awaits any American citizen who dares to publicly criticize the international crimes committed by Washington.
![A Boeing Co. 787-8 passenger aircraft, operated by El Al Israel Airlines, takes off from Ben Gurion International airport in Tel Aviv, Israel, on 30 November, 2021 [Kobi Wolf/Bloomberg via Getty Images]](https://i0.wp.com/www.middleeastmonitor.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/GettyImages-1236912999-scaled-e1714746144407.jpg?fit=1200%2C800&ssl=1)
The Most Revolutionary Act 