Israeli soldiers cry during the funeral of a soldier killed in the Gaza Strip on June 26, 2025. (Photo by AFP)
Press TV
Israel’s military is considering a plan to recruit young Jews from abroad as it grapples with a severe shortage of soldiers amid its ongoing genocidal war on the besieged Gaza Strip.
According to Israel’s Army Radio on Monday, the proposal would target major Jewish communities overseas, particularly in the United States and France, with the aim of enlisting around 700 recruits annually.
The shortage has compounded wider problems for Israel’s armed forces, including equipment deficits and a reserve system strained by months of fighting in Gaza.
Many reservists have also reported psychological issues and exhaustion linked to the genocidal war.
The move comes as the military struggles with a shortfall of 10,000 to 12,000 troops, driven largely by the refusal of ultra-Orthodox Jews, or Haredim, to serve.
For decades, Haredi men who account for about 13 percent of Israel’s population of 10 million have been exempt from Israel’s mandatory military service to pursue full-time religious studies.
However, a 2023 ruling by Israel’s high court ended these broad exemptions, prompting the military to begin enforcing draft orders amid growing troop shortages.
Haredi leaders have accused the Israeli regime of violating their religious beliefs and threatening their way of life.
In July, the Israeli daily Maariv said senior commanders had, for the first time, admitted to the scale of the depletion, estimating a gap of about 7,500 soldiers. Battalion leaders cited crushing workloads, with some signaling plans for early retirement.
The Israeli regime was also reportedly luring around 30,000 asylum seekers from African countries to the army by offering them permanent residency in the occupied territories.
An Israeli military investigation has found a rise in suicides among its soldiers, with the majority of the cases being directly linked to the profound psychological trauma and exposure to extreme conditions experienced during the genocidal war in Gaza.
The findings indicated that most suicides stemmed from prolonged exposure to combat, traumatic battlefield experiences, and the psychological toll of losing comrades.
Despite attempts by the Israeli army to censor reports of suicides and the surrounding circumstances, evidence continues to emerge of a sharp increase in such cases. Media outlets have suggested that the actual number of suicides may be even higher than reported.
The army has reportedly been burying some of these soldiers without military funerals or public announcements, in a desperate effort to conceal the extent of the crisis.
In recent months, a growing manpower shortage has prompted the Israeli army to recall soldiers diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).
The reports have highlighted a deeper mental health crisis within the Israeli army, revealing that thousands of soldiers have sought assistance from military mental health clinics or field psychologists.
With Israel’s war in Gaza entering its 22nd month, soldiers increasingly report experiences of war trauma, family issues, and psychological distress.
Abu Obeida, spokesman for the military wing of Hamas, the Qassam Brigades, recently warned that if Israel chooses to continue with the “war of extermination,” it will face increasing funerals for its soldiers and officers.
Altman ruled out building anime-style sexual chatbots the way xAI has. He said he believes the easiest way for lagging companies to gain AI adoption is through engagement-bait bots, though OpenAI won’t pursue them.
On the AI market, he agreed there is a bubble, with investors overhyping valuations, and predicted both major successes and significant failures.
Financially, he said OpenAI is “close” to profitable on serving its AI in apps like ChatGPT, excluding the high training costs of developing the AI, and COO Brad Lightcap said the company is nearly profitable on its sales of models to developers.
Fair enough, but OpenAI has recently projected it will burn $8 billion this year—about $1 billion more cash burn than it had projected earlier in the year.
This documentary begins with an observation by the late Henry Kissinger that current European leaders lack the vision of former leaders, such as De Gaulle, Willie Brandt, Helmut Kohl, Jack Chirac or Schoeder. It then shows a clip of Putin echoing these sentiments, stating the continent’s current leaders are a “disaster for Europe.”
Host Jelena Norkunaite explores these observations with Aleksey Zubets, director of the Centre for Social Economics Research, and Nikolay Novik, deputy director of the Institute of World Military Economics and Strategy at the National Research University Higher School of Economics. Their dialogue is interspersed with humorous clips of the leaders they discuss. At least three are of Boris Johnson riding his bicycle.
Both agree on the following analysis:
Current European leaders are merely front men – “hand puppets” or “cardboard figures” with limited education. Their main purpose is to push the agenda of the “real leaders” and secure votes for a “shadow state” where the real power lie. Both agree that people in modern society find it hard to vote for someone smarter than they are. Also that the US deep state has significant influence over European appointments.
They focus mainly on the example on Ursula van der Leyen. In addition to being president of the EU Commission, van der Leyen is Germany’s defense minister. As she clearly knows nothing about running an army (she’s a gynecologist), her main role is lobbying for for US and German defense contractors.
As president of the EU commission, she plays a major role in setting EU policies and managing the EU budget. She has also issued a decree forbidding Slovakia’s prime minister from meeting with Trump. Prior to Trump’s election in 2024, the EU’s main unifying ideology was the Green movement. At present it’s war with Russia.
The commentators also single out Britain’s last four prime ministers, noting that Covid plunged the UK into a deep recession from which it never recovered. They observe that British industry to continues to abandon Britain for the US and Asia. Also that covert intelligence activities (particularly the ability to start conflicts and arrange provocations) remains Britain’s most successful industry.
Boris Johnson – a cuddly buffoonish character who rode his bicycle everywhere and was forced to resign for “corruption” (mostly the parties he held during the Covid lockdowns).
Liz Truss – apparently unable to grasp or explain basic political, economic or geographical concepts. When Russian foreign minister Sergei Lavrov met with her as UK foreign secretary he described it “like the mute talking with the deaf.”
Rishi Sumak – professional financier who lost interest in fixing the economy when he discovered he was incapable of fixing the British economy.
Keith Starmer – extremely low approval rating.
The panelists also make the interesting assertion that Brexit was “a US project to split up Europe.”
The FDA has lifted a pause on the administration of a vaccine for the chikungunya virus, a mosquito-borne illness currently spreading from China.
The Ixchiq single-dose vaccine was approved for adults 18 and up at risk of exposure to the virus in 2023, when the CDC had recorded 152 travel-associated cases of the virus, the highest rate in four years.
But administrations of the shot to adults aged 60 and older were paused in May of this year, triggered by reports of 17 serious side effects following vaccination, including two deaths.
Most of the reported issues were neurological or cardiac, and all involved people over 60. Six cases were reported in the US, with the remaining cases among the tens of thousands of people vaccinated worldwide.
However, on August 7, the FDA greenlit the vaccine again for adults 60 and up. While the agency did not say whether the lifted pause is related to an uptick in infections, the chikungunya virus is spreading globally.
Cases are currently rising in China, with more than 10,000 recorded, and the virus is spreading to nearby countries, as well as Europe.
As of August 5, the CDC reports 46 cases of chikungunya virus in the US this year, all contracted by travelers returning from high-risk areas. No deaths have been reported.
The CDC recommends Americans traveling to high-risk chikungunya countries receive one of the two FDA-approved vaccines. However, the FDA changed its guidelines from recommending the shot to travelers and scientists at ‘increased risk’ to those at ‘high risk.’
An FDA spokesperson told DailyMail.com: ‘FDA has completed an updated benefit-risk assessment of Ixchiq, including for use in individuals 18 years of age and older.
‘Based on the available data and its benefit-risk assessment, FDA has removed the recommended pause in the use of Ixchiq in individuals 60 years of age and older.’
While there’s no specific number for how many Americans have been vaccinated for chikungunya, it’s known that around 43,000 people have received the vaccine globally.
The reported adverse reactions to the Ixchiq vaccine included severe headaches, dizziness, intense nerve pain, trouble with balance, fainting, extreme muscle aches, and severe joint and back pain.
The virus, meanwhile, causes flu-like symptoms within three to seven days of being bitten by a mosquito. A high fever is typical, as is joint pain in the hands, wrists, ankles and knees.
It also causes muscle pain, fatigue, nausea and vomiting, swollen joints and swollen lymph nodes.
Joint damage can be severe and long-lasting, potentially for years. Deaths are rare, but certain groups can experience life-threatening illness.
Newborns, the elderly, and people with chronic health conditions, including obesity and diabetes, are more susceptible to seizures and brain swelling, heart problems, and kidney or liver damage.
While the vaccine’s labeling has been changed to stipulate that only people at high risk of exposure should get the shot, limitations of use have been added.
A worker is shown spraying insecticide near a residential property in Hong Kong, where the first case of chikungunya was announced last week in a 12-year-old boy
The Ixchiq vaccine has been plagued by reports of severe neurological and cardiac side effects, including two deaths
The labeling now says: ‘Vaccination with Ixchiq is not advisable for most US travelers. For most US travelers, the risk of exposure to CHIKV is low.
‘The decision to administer Ixchiq should take into consideration an individual’s risk of severe or chronic disease outcomes if infected with CHIKV and risks of serious, severe, or prolonged chikungunya-like illness caused by vaccination with Ixchiq.’
The European vaccine company Valneva developed Ixchiq, the first-ever vaccine to prevent the chikungunya virus, in 2023.
But the shot has been plagued by reports of more than a dozen serious adverse events, including two deaths, in adults 62 to 89.
The European Medicines Agency suspended its use in May and the FDA soon followed.
A second chikungunya vaccine, Vimkunya, was approved by the FDA in February 2025.
The Ixchiq vaccine contains a weakened form of the virus, which may cause symptoms of chikungunya.
Federal officials said some of the severe adverse events reported are similar to severe complications from the disease.
According to Valneva, the FDA has received its petition to expand its availability to teenagers.
Chikungunya spreads through bites from the Aedes mosquito species, typically in countries where the virus is common, primarily those in Africa and Asia.
Twelve Americans were infected within US borders in 2014, while one infection was acquired in 2015. Since then, all US infections have been contracted abroad.
There have been about 220,000 Chikungunya virus cases and 80 related deaths in 14 countries since the beginning of 2025, according to the European Center for Disease Prevention and Control.
While it remains unclear in which countries American patients contracted the virus, the federal government has issued an elevated risk of exposure notice for Brazil, China Colombia, India, Mexico, Nigeria, Pakistan, Philippines and Thailand.
Decisions about digital IDs, also called e-IDs, will be made across the board by all countries (193 UN member-states) within short, or have already been made. In some cases, like Switzerland, people will have a choice, they will be able to vote on the decision, see below.
In other countries, the governments, or those who pull the strings behind their governments, will take the decision without consulting the people.
A digital ID would be your last step to full enslavement – even if it is sold to you as a “benefit,” an “all-in-one” ID, that allows you passage to everything. What it does not say is that this “passage” comes at a high cost of liberty. It is granted only if you comply fully with the conditions of the e-ID and the linked QR code.
It is an infamous QR code that follows you everywhere and controls every move you are making; and what’s worse, it can block you from making any move, from using your money, from traveling, from simply living because it can impose on you a potentially harmful or deadly “vaccination” mandate (remember the covid vaxxes).
In other words, the e-ID requires complete compliance, complete obedience – complete submission. Only then, may it let you pass, buy what you want, and travel where you want.
Complete Submission by e-ID and QR Code
The WHO has now full authority to decide over any country’s health sovereignty, including deciding on pandemics (plandemics, rather), imposing vaccinations, at their will. This applies to any country that has not opted out from accepting the revised IHR by 19 July 2025. Switzerland among many other WHO members (total 194) has not opted out. The new, revised IHR will enter into effect on 19 September 2025.
The United States, Austria, Italy, Serbia – and others – have opted out of the new revised IHR.
Therefore, if you can vote, say NO, a resounding NO, to the digital ID, the e-ID, as it may otherwise be your last chance to express your opinion freely.
Please watch below Michael Yeadon’s, former Vice President of Research, Pfizer Pharmaceuticals, short but concise and compelling statement about e-IDs.
In Switzerland, at its meeting on 21 May 2025, the Swiss Federal Council decided to put the the digital ID to a popular vote on 28 September 2025:
Federal Act of 20 December 2024 on electronic identification and other electronic means of authentication (eID Act, eIDG) (FF 2025 20).
A newly declassified FBI internal timeline reveals that the bureau’s Los Angeles Field Office was investigating 19 Clinton Foundation bank accounts for potential campaign finance fraud in 2016 before the Justice Department ordered the probe closed.
The disclosure, stemming from documents released this week, provides fresh detail on how federal investigators handled matters involving the Clinton Foundation during the 2016 presidential election cycle.
The records show that FBI investigators had been examining multiple bank accounts tied to the foundation as part of a broader campaign finance fraud investigation.
Thanks to Judicial Watch, the American public was made aware of Hillary Clinton’s private email server.
Hillary Clinton conducted official business on a non-government server so she could hide her Clinton Foundation pay-to-play while she was head of the Department of State.
According to emails obtained by Judicial Watch, Hillary Clinton gave preferential treatment to Clinton Foundation donors while she was Secretary of State.
Intel’s CEO Lip-Bu Tan at the company’s Annual Manufacturing Technology Conference earlier this year
By Liz Acton-Taylor
The Trump administration has launched their own ‘Manhattan Project’ amid reports one of America’s largest companies is set to be nationalized.
Intel, the largest chip fabricator in the US, has been in talks with Donald Trump over a potential government stake in the company.
While the percentage stake the government is asking for has not been made public, nationalizing a company is typically reserved for emergencies.
The government nationalized a number of banks after the 2008 financial crisis and key logistics companies during World War II.
It comes amid concerns that America relies too heavily on TSCM, a chip manufacturer in Taiwan. China has repeatedly threatened to invade the island nation.
If China were to invade, it would throttle America’s ability to compete in the booming chipmaking industry that is being driven by artificial intelligence.
While Intel’s AI chips are considered inferior to those designed by Nvidia and AMD, the company is unique in that it not only designs its chips but it manufactures them. Trump wants to protect America by onshoring chip manufacturing.
‘This feels like the Manhattan Project – or the run-up to World War II,’ MIT AI computer scientist Dave Blundin said.‘It’s every bit as important as the space race was, as the nuclear arms race was. Actually, it’s more important.’
Beyond Meat appears headed to Chapter 11 bankruptcy after reporting that second-quarter revenue was down by 20% as the veggie patty meat alternative market has had declining sales across the industry. The company is currently holding $1.2 billion in debt, and the stock price has plummeted by 97% of its peak value.
Plant-based protein patties and meat alternatives made by companies like Beyond Meat and Impossible Foods are, by definition, Ultra Processed Foods (UPF). A definition provided by Michael J. Gibney, published in Current Developments in Nature, states that processed foods are “industrial formations typically with five or more and usually many ingredients. Besides salt, sugar, oils, and fats, ingredients of ultra-processed foods include food substances not commonly used in culinary preparations, such as hydrolyzed protein, modified starches, and hydrogenated or interesterified oils, and additives whose purpose is to imitate sensorial qualities of unprocessed or minimally processed foods and their culinary preparations or to disguise undesirable qualities of the final product, such as colorants, flavorings, nonsugar sweeteners, emulsifiers, humectants, sequestrants, and firming, bulking, de-foaming, anticaking, and glazing agents.”
A study published last fall in The Lancet found a positive correlation between ultra-processed food consumption and increased risk of cardiovascular disease (CVD) and coronary heart disease (CHD). The authors wrote “Sulphites, 14 emulsifiers,7thickeners,8and sweeteners 11 are associated with cardiac tissue damage, metabolic syndrome-inducing microbiota alterations, inflammation, and pro-atherogenic apolipoproteins, respectively.” The Beyond Burger contains 2% or less of Methylcellulose, which is a thickener and emulsifier.
The authors wrote that excess calories, added sugars, sodium, and unhealthy fats in UPFs may contribute to CVD. The Beyond Burger has excess sodium with 310mg per serving, a 20% decrease from its previous formulation, and a small amount of fiber compared to whole food alternatives.
A 2025 Purdue University survey found that 30% of consumers consider all UPFs to be unhealthy and should be avoided. 61% of consumers acknowledged the unhealthiness of UPFs, yet they believe some of the foods in this category can be part of a healthy diet. Whole-grain sliced bread and low-fat yogurt are the examples provided by the lead author, Joseph Balagtas.
Last year, Beyond Meat announced a new reformulation that reduced the sodium and saturated fat by removing refined coconut oil in favor of avocado oil. The company was already experiencing declining sales and said the reformulation was an attempt to provide a more nutritious, better product.
Avocado oil has a 12:1 omega-6 to omega-3 ratio when the ideal ratio for the human diet is 1:1. When omega-6 is significantly higher than omega-3 in a person’s diet, this can lead to cardiovascular disease, cancer, and inflammatory and autoimmune diseases.
Impossible Foods CEO Peter McGuinness suggested that his company may create a burger that is 50% beef, as they are struggling to find enough consumers to support the current plant-based offerings.
Beyond Meat agreed to pay a $7.5 million settlement in a class-action suit for overstating the amount of protein in the company’s products and misrepresenting the quality of the ingredients used. One lawsuit accused Beyond Meat of making false “all-natural” claims while including Methylcellulose, a synthetic emulsifier.
Beyond Meat has a blog post explaining that the label of “ultra-processed food” is misleading and not a fair way to gauge how healthy or unhealthy a product is for consumers. Dr. Nicola Guess says it is not reasonable to lump Beyond Burgers in with sweets and pastries in terms of detrimental health effects.
Earlier this year, Beyond Meat CEO Ethan Brown said, “the Beyond value proposition remains obscured in doubt and misinformation.” He added that Beyond Meat is “a very clean source of protein” and that the company’s priority is dispelling misinformation about its products.
Bill Gates invested initially in both Beyond Meat and Impossible Foods as an alternative to animal-based agriculture. Gates sold all of his Beyond Meat stock in 2019 before it crashed.
Jeffery Jaxen reported on the decline of the plant-based meat alternatives in a segment last year, including several lawsuits that were pending against the company. The HighWire has reported on other initiatives that local and state governments have enacted to encourage less meat consumption in an attempt to reduce the effects of animal agriculture on the climate.
Lab-grown meat is being slowly rolled out in local markets, but has also been banned in several states. Texas banned lab-grown meat earlier this summer and became the seventh state to do so. In addition, a company named Moolec inserted genes into plants to create GMO hybrid Piggy Sooy, which received USDA approval last year.
A new book by Gabriela Gavrilov,[1]U.S.-Russian Commercial Relations 1763-1933: Origins of Russophobia shows that the Cold War was largely a phony war, rooted in political theater, that inspired the growth of the military-industrial complex in both the U.S. and Russia.
The reason the Cold War was phony is that the U.S. and Soviet Russia enjoyed close commercial relations, with the Soviet Union in no way threatening the U.S. militarily—despite vast propaganda to the contrary.
The U.S. could have easily established friendly diplomatic relations with the Soviets—as visionary leaders such as Henry Wallace advocated for—without major cost to the U.S. economy. However, the illusion of a Soviet threat was necessary to sustain the military-industrial complex and to rationalize U.S. covert and military operations around the globe.
The Cold War really started in 1918 when the Woodrow Wilson administration illegally invaded Russia without congressional consent in an attempt to overturn the Bolshevik revolution that established the Soviet Union.[2]
Wilson and his financial supporters opposed the Bolsheviks because they made alliance with Germany and ended Russian involvement in World War I, and took measures to nationalize private industries so the revenues could be used to develop the Russian economy.
In 1917, American profits from trade with Russia were about $700 million, one-fifth of Americans’ entire overseas earnings and seven percent of all corporate profits, which the Russian Revolution jeopardized.[3]
The official reason the Bolsheviks gave for forced nationalization and unprecedented centralization of the economy was to prevent Russia’s exploitation by foreign firms.
The new command economy indeed helped achieve these ends and bolstered state revenues, allowing the bolsheviks to eradicate unemployment, homelessness and poverty and to build the Red Army into a formidable force that defeated the Nazis.
However, after the triumph of the bolshevik revolution Gavrilov writes that “it was th[e] grandest foreign firms who quickly stepped into the Soviet economy—of the top 50 U.S. firms in 1917, at least 27 of them quietly began participating in the direction of Soviet industrial trusts between 1920 and 1928. Some, such as International Harvester [which supplied Russia with 20% of its agricultural machinery], Westinghouse, General Electric and Singer Sewing machine, already had enterprises in Imperial Russia and continued to do business with the Soviets.”[5]
Following the overthrow of Czar Nicholas II in February 1917, the Wilson administration supported the ascension of Alexander Kerensky, whose rule proved to be short-lived because he kept Russian troops in World War I and refused to support land reform or wealth redistribution measures that the Russian population clamored for.
J.P. Morgan and John D. Rockefeller provided direct financing to counter-revoltuionary Admiral Alexander Kolchak, who tried to make himself dictator in Omsk, Siberia, during the Russian civil war.[6]
When it became clear that the U.S. invasion of Russia was not succeeding, the Wilson administration began back-channel negotiations with Vladimir Lenin, the founding head of the Soviet Union.[7] The negotiations were carried out by William C. Bullitt, son of an elite Philadelphia family whose grandfather oversaw a corporate merger that helped establish J.P. Morgan & Co., and Raymond Robins, a copper magnate and self-fashioned progressive with ownership stakes in Anaconda Copper who had made a fortune in the Klondike gold rush.[8]
Bullitt and Robins negotiated a deal with Lenin exempting U.S. corporations from Soviet nationalization decrees in exchange for the U.S. government providing foreign capital and U.S. technical expertise to the Soviets, which they urgently needed.
The exemptions were mostly for firms affiliated with the House of Morgan, whose partner, Henry P. Davidson, had directed an American Red Cross Mission Robins was part of that provided a cover for Wall Street’s attempted economic penetration of Russia.[9]
According to 1919 Senate hearings on Bolshevik propaganda, Bullitt and Robins negotiated with Lenin for the exemption from nationalization of International Harvester’s Lubertzy plant, National City Bank, First National Bank, Guaranty Trust Co., New York Life Insurance Company, J.M Coats (textiles), the Morgan-affiliated Westchester Brake Company and Morgan-affiliated Singer Manufacturing Company, which was allowed to operate its factory in Podolsk, even switching over from sewing machines to explosive shells.[10]
The Rockefeller-owned Standard Oil was able to arrange concessions in the Baku oil fields, which it took over in July 1920 from the Swedish-based Nobel Brothers’ oil company that the Bolsheviks had nationalized.[11]
The Nobels’ were Rockefeller’s major competitor in Europe, so the Russian Revolution proved to be a boon to them—although politically influential members of the family, like Nelson and David Rockefeller, became zealous cold warriors.
The man considered to be one of the fathers of the Cold War, W. Averell Harriman, political mentor of Joe Biden in the U.S. Senate, signed a concession in 1925 for a manganese mine in southern Russia with Soviet secret police head Felix Dzerzhinsky and invested in logging and gold-mining ventures that used Gulag labor.[12]
Son of a famous Gilded Age railroad tycoon, Harriman founded the investment bank Brown Brothers Harriman, that helped bankroll Nazi financiers in the 1930s. He went on to become U.S. ambassador to the Soviet Union during World War II, governor of New York, and a high-level State Department official in the Truman, Kennedy, and Johnson administrations.[13]
The story told by Gavrilov makes clear that the financial interests of Harriman and others like him were not set back too seriously by the Russian Revolution—quite the contrary.
Their advancement of an aggressive anti-communist foreign policy was driven predominantly by the fear that governments around the world inspired by the Bolshevik ideology would not make the same concessions to wealthy capitalists that Lenin had.
Furthermore, the Soviet “threat” could be invoked to rationalize interventions around the world that were really designed to open up U.S. corporate investment opportunities and allow for the extraction of natural resources. The same “threat” was used to legitimize gargantuan military budgets that enriched military contractors that Wall Street firms either owned or were invested in.
Power of U.S. Monopoly Capitalism—and a Regime of Judases
The greatest irony detailed in Gavrilov’s book is that, while Lenin was a great theorist of the evils of monopoly capitalism and championed its destruction, according to her, he wound up fortifying it in a betrayal of the Russian Revolution.
Under the Soviet five-year plans, all or parts of 500 industrial projects were built in total or in part by Western firms. They were given contracts by the Soviet state, which functioned as a vast monopoly cartel operating without any democratic accountability.
Gavrilov writes that, “since the Soviet market had been eviscerated of domestic competition and organized into national industrial trusts, once foreign firms became part of a Soviet industrial trust they enjoyed the monopoly held by that trust.”[14]
According to Gavrilov, much like fascist states, the Soviet Union offered an ideal business climate for multinational corporations because independent labor organizing was outlawed and strikes, when they emerged, were violently crushed.
The ideal of worker-run industry that Bolshevik revolutionaries had fought for never came to pass, and dissidents, whether leftists, anarchists, or rightists, were sent to the Siberian Gulag.[15]
The harsh nature of the Soviet regime did not bother the U.S. corporate titans who made vast profits there, in some cases based on reliance on Gulag slave labor.
Gavrilov quotes Antony Sutton, author of a study on Wall Street and the Soviets, who noted that it “has been almost universally accepted that the foreign concession policy of the 1920s and 1930s did not aid the industrial development policy of the USSR.”[16]
Gavrilov goes one step further in suggesting that the Soviet government was “nothing more than a neo-colonial regime installed to reorganize Russia’s economy for exploitation by foreign firms.”[17]
A considerable number of these firms were German, and Gavrilov presents evidence that Lenin’s Bolshevik faction was financially supported by Israel Lazarevich Gelfand (aka Alexander Helphand Parvus), a wealthy Balkan arms dealer and socialist with ties to the German High Command and Wilhelmstrasse who participated in the failed 1905 Russian Revolution alongside Lenin and Trotsky.[18]
Starting in September 1914, Gelfand was entrusted with the supervision of revolutionary fifth-column groups inside Russia being supported by the German and Austrian governments.
Gavrilov writes that, after the Bolsheviks seized power, Gelfand “developed the Soviet program for the transformation of the Russian economy from open market competition (rigged in part in favor of the Tsar) with protection for indigenous businesses against powerful foreign firms to a closed government sponsored monopoly dominated by foreign corporations. He called it socialist but a more accurate name would be ‘corporatocracy.’”[19]
According to Gavrilov “none of Lenin’s ‘revolutionaries’ pointed out that by destroying indigenous businesses, they were destroying all competition in foreign commercial encroachment and laying the Russian economy open to monopoly domination by the very foreign firms they publicly vilified.”[20]
Lenin himself is depicted by Gavrilov as the ultimate sell-out and fraud. Preaching a rhetoric of class conflict, he was chauffeured through Moscow in a Rolls-Royce “Silver Ghost” and established residence in the palatial Gorki estate whose former owner he had arrested as an “enemy of the people.”[21]
Gavrilov asks: “If Lenin was truly such a patriot and advocate of the Russian proletariat, why wasn’t he promoting Russia’s own businesses instead of making deals with one of the West’s foremost industrialists Henry Ford?”[22]
Deceptively presented as a recipe to decolonize Russia, Lenin’s brand of socialism was utilized to “reorganize Russia’s economy and resources into monopolistic packages which were then handed over to the largest Western firms for exploitation.”[23]
According to Gavrilov, “by claiming to be battling the small minority and well-to-do industrialists, who controlled Russia’s industries, Lenin convinced the Russian public to destroy their own indigenous entrepreneurs, place their business and the vast resources of the country in his hands while he was offering the West monopoly control of Russia’s economy in exchange for royalties to keep his regime of Judases in privilege and power.”[24]
Gavrilov’s assessment turns the way most Americans view the history of the Soviet Union and Cold War—whether on the left or right—on its head.
Rather than being an enemy of capitalist development, Soviet leaders in her presentation empowered the very corporate interests in control of the U.S. government that were behind the Red Scare propaganda and pushed the world to the brink of nuclear war.
These interests were extremely clever in manipulating public opinion while advancing public policies that served clearly demarcated class interests.
The incredible global reach of U.S. corporations is evident in their ability to penetrate countries like Russia regardless of their governing ideology. They are able to effectively coopt independent political and revolutionary movements, and will shrewdly support different sides in political conflicts to extend their domination worldwide.
As Cold War 2.0 enters its second decade, we see the continued desire of U.S. corporate interests to seize control over and exploit Russia’s natural resources—a goal they were close to achieving when Boris Yeltsin ruled Russia in the 1990s.
The fact that Russia’s current leader Vladimir Putin is more of an authentic nationalist than Lenin, according to Gavrilov, may help account for the vicious demonization of him by political elites and in the U.S. media, which remains under the control of the 1% that drives U.S. foreign policy.
Putin has adapted to U.S. sanctions by establishing more of a self-reliant Russian economy that draws on indigenous entrepreneurship and technological development. He has also formed alliance with China in an anti-American bloc that Lenin and his successors could never effectively establish (recall the Sino-Soviet split).
On January 27, US President Donald Trump announced that the construction of the “state-of-the-art ‘Iron Dome’ missile defense shield” will begin “immediately” and will be made “right here in the USA 100%”. Since then, apart from a name change to avoid confusion with a homonymous Israeli system, there’s been little concrete information on the project. However, last week, the Pentagon presented more details about the upcoming “Golden Dome”, revealing that it will be a four-layer missile defense system and that it will also include a space-based component (the other three are ground-based, including eleven short-range batteries planned for deployment in the continental US, Alaska and Hawaii). Reuters cited a presentation of the project, titled “Go Fast, Think Big!”, shown in Huntsville, Alabama, last week to around 3,000 representatives of the American Military Industrial Complex (MIC).
The revelation didn’t really show much more than what was already known about the US strategic missile defenses. The slides revealed there would be early warning satellites for detecting missile launches, tracking and “boost-phase interception”. The “upper layer” would be composed of the Next Generation Interceptors (NGI), Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) and “Aegis” systems, with a new missile field “likely in the Midwest”. This would be followed by the “under layer” composed of “Patriot” systems, new radars and a “common launcher for current and future interceptors”. The space-based “boost-phase interception” capability is particularly curious. Although the slides didn’t really reveal how this would be accomplished, common sense implies that this is either deliberate disinformation (like the SDI was) or the Pentagon is actively pursuing space-based weapons.
Reuters noted that “one surprise was a new large missile field – seemingly in the Midwest according to a map contained in the presentation – for Next Generation Interceptors (NGI) which are made by Lockheed Martin” and “would be a part of the ‘upper layer’ alongside Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) and ‘Aegis’ systems which Lockheed also makes”. The NGI is supposed to be the next iteration of GBI (Ground-Based Interceptors), which is part of the Ground-Based Midcourse Defense (GMD). This system is a nationwide network of radars, interceptors and other assets that the US planned for decades, even unilaterally withdrawing from the 1972 ABM (Anti-Ballistic Missile) Treaty back in 2002, so it could pursue the project. This arms control agreement served to prevent the US and USSR/Russia from being incentivized to endlessly enlarge their thermonuclear arsenals by limiting the number of deployed ABM systems.
The logic was that, whoever acquired better missile defenses, this would only force the other side to increase their offensive potential to enable saturation attacks that would inevitably overcome all ABM systems. Although the treaty was by no means perfect, it still slowed down the growth in the number of warheads and delivery systems. However, after the unfortunate dismantling of the Soviet Union, the US thought that Russia would be unable to revive its massive military-industrial potential, meaning that the aforementioned ABM Treaty was now “holding America back” in its quest for total global dominance. And yet, the opposite happened. Moscow not only reactivated much (if not most) of its military-industrial might, but actually restarted a number of highly advanced military programs that eventually resulted in a decades-long lead in a plethora of various high-tech hypersonic weapons.
Now that this backfired, Washington DC is faced with a far more complex and challenging task of intercepting weapons that work on very different principles, eliminating the predictability of regular ballistic missiles. The cumulative effects of these factors have increased costs and made maintenance and logistics a true nightmare. Not to mention that the (First) Cold War was far simpler due to the fact that America had only the Soviet Union to worry about, while its aggression against the entire world forced several more countries to build up their arsenals (notably China and North Korea). Unfortunately, there’s no other way to ensure viable deterrence. However, instead of easing tensions, the US is doubling down on its belligerence. Despite formally being a defense system, Washington DC sees the “Golden Dome’s” actual purpose as a way to facilitate its global dominance by undermining other arsenals.
The Pentagon’s presentation last week suggests that the “Golden Dome” will effectively be both an expansion and integration of existing missile defenses, with the third site in the Midwest serving to augment the current GMD launch sites in California and Alaska. The US military will have to deal with challenges such as “communication latency across the kill chain (a step-by-step sequence of actions needed to find, target and destroy a threat)”, so the most prominent corporations of the American MIC (Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman, RTX/Raytheon, Boeing, etc.) will be included in the program. However, the very idea that the “Golden Dome” will be able to shoot down hypersonic weapons is highly questionable, given the horrible performance of the GMD even against regular ballistic missiles. On the other hand, the MIC is exhilarated with such a windfall (considering the system’s costs).
And yet, while the project has a lot of similarities with the (First) Cold War-era SDI (Strategic Defense Initiative, but better known as the so-called “Star Wars”), the idea of space-based weapons is still a highly disturbing development that would lead to an inevitable militarization of space. US Space Force Gen Michael Guetlein, who serves as the head of the “Golden Dome” program, is required to “deliver the first designs within 60 days and a complete roadmap of the project within 120 days”. The new missile defense system is expected to be able to “intercept targets in their boost phase” and “deploy relocatable defenses capable of rapid global deployment”. This is a clear violation of the 1967 Outer Space Treaty (OST). There’s also a lot of symbolism in Trump’s first announcement of the “Golden Dome”. As previously mentioned, he unveiled it on January 27, which was when the OST was signed by the US and USSR.
