Western journalists waited for days at the Kursk border in Ukraine ready to cover the “surprise attack”.
In late June 2024, U.S. media reported that American military contractors would be sent to Ukraine, just weeks before the Kursk attack on August 6, 2024.
After the attack on the Kursk region of the pre-war Russian Federation, the U.S. and its NATO proxies claimed that the incursion was a surprise offensive by Ukraine alone.
The Forward Observation Group, the private U.S. paramilitary company that posted photos of its fighters involved in the Ukrainian Armed Forces’ offensive against the Kursk region, refused to comment on its involvement in the attack on August 6.
“The Biden administration is moving toward lifting a de facto ban on American military contractors deploying to Ukraine,” four U.S. officials familiar with the matter told CNN, “to help the country’s military maintain and repair U.S.-provided weapons systems.”
According to CNN, “The change would mark another significant shift in the Biden administration’s Ukraine policy, as the U.S. looks for ways to give Ukraine’s military an upper hand against Russia.”
CNN and other U.S. and European news outlets reported in late June about the possible deployment of this private military group. The U.S. has a long history of using mercenaries as cover for official American military troops. Think of Blackwater and the mercenaries in Syria and Iraq, the White Helmets (trained in Jordan), and I even go so far as to say that ISIS (Daesh in Arabic) is a private mercenary army, trained by the CIA and Mossad in Camp Bucca, Iraq.
The Foreign Observation Group (ironically, the acronym is FOG) is said to be a private group that claims to have traveled to Ukraine, Iraq and Syria to contact local fighters (jihadists) and take photos and videos of what they and the West call the Russian invasion of Ukraine and the Syrian “civil war”.
All those conflicts are in reality proxy wars incited by the West, which is now resulting in a “hot war” between Russia and the U.S. and its criminal NATO partners.
Even before Russia’s Special Military Operation (SMO) began in February 2022, Western media published photos sourced from the likes of FOG from the Donbass region of then-eastern Ukraine. The images attracted limited criticism for interviewing (extolling) members of the NeoNazi Azov Battalion. The Nazi insignia of the Azov troops were blatantly displayed and their Nazi affiliation was irrefutable. Western media association with the NeoNazi paramilitaries raised questions at the time about whether they were so-called documentary journalists or a party to the conflict.
After the start of the SMO, the Western media whitewashed the NeoNazi image of the Azov Battalion and labeled them as the “good guys” fighting for the liberation of Ukraine.
The FOG group and other NATO private contractors are also active in obtaining medical supplies, equipment and money for Ukrainian fighters and foreign volunteers who have joined the International Legion for the Defense of Ukraine.
To be sure, we heard from the Kremlin that many red lines have been crossed. Think of the recent attack with American ATACMS missiles on the beach in Crimea. The day that the U.S. announced that it would give private contractors a free hand, there was the attack on Crimea. Coincidence? No, I don’t think so!
Since the attack on Kursk, the battlefield has an extra dimension and we can accurately talk about a tangible confrontation or war between America, its NATO proxies and Russia. One could even argue that the proxy war is over and there is a new phase of direct confrontation going on.
The U.S. government has so far gradually increased its military support to Ukraine. The purpose of this approach is to test the Russian red lines, to see how Moscow reacts to the deployment of each new weapons system or each new Western sanction and, most recently, of course, the donation of frozen Russian assets, mainly in Europe, to Ukraine.
The situation has come to a head, in my humble opinion. Regarding Kursk, there has actually been an attack on Russia; Russian people have been killed, and slaughtered whereby civilians have been taken from their homes in trucks and executed. There is even footage of Ukrainian soldiers with SS helmets and with the detachment of Adolf Hitler’s Leibstandarte Regiment on their sleeves, harassing an old man, who was later killed.
The West is trying to push Russia to the limit, knowing that the Second World War is an extremely sensitive subject for Russian society where every family is related to a victim, a fallen soldier, a grandfather, an uncle, a cousin, or aunt who was killed during the Great Patriotic War against Nazi Germany, in which more than 26 million people died. The recent action in the Kursk region, where most Russians perceive that the U.S. and its NATO accomplices are involved, is a brazen provocation. Indeed, more than a provocation, it has violated the Russian soul and there we have landed in a totally different dimension. Perhaps one might say, the “road of no return.”
The Americans and the West continue to play their dirty game knowing that a bloodbath has already taken place in Kursk.
The original Battle of Kursk was a major Eastern Front battle in World War II between the forces of Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union in the summer of 1943, resulting in a Soviet victory. It was the largest in the history of warfare. Perhaps in their deranged mindset, the NATO axis wants to reenact, or think they can, the Battle of Kursk from 81 years ago. They are so radicalized with Russophobia that this could very well be the case.
Not only are there mercenaries in the Kursk region but also Western journalists have illegally crossed the Russian border with mercenaries and/or Ukrainian battalions. We all know about the Italians from the state broadcaster RAI and American journalists. There is also a Belgian journalist, working for the Dutch and Belgian mainstream media newspapers, named Jan Hunin who claims to be one of the first journalists in what he writes as “Ukrainian Kursk”, as the headline says in the Rotterdam-Dutch newspaper Algemeen Dagblad. He claims in his article that Kursk is now Ukrainian territory and no longer Russian and is pleased about the destruction and toppling of statues such as that of Yuri Gagarin. We can therefore conclude from this that the invasion of the Kursk region was a planned action not only by Ukraine, but by the U.S. and its proxies NATO. Western journalists were ready on the other side of the border in Ukraine to accompany the invading forces, as Jan Hunin claims in a podcast on the Dutch radio NPO.
Journalists and politicians in the West knew that something was going to happen, otherwise, you wouldn’t send journalists to the Kursk border to cover the invasion. According to the regime in Kiev and the actor-president whose term has long expired, “Ukraine did not disclose preparations for an operation in Russia’s Kursk Oblast to Kiev’s allies, because the world might perceive it as crossing Russia’s “strictest of all red lines”.
This is belied by the fact that Western journalists waited for days at the Kursk border in Ukraine ready to cover the “surprise attack”. Evidently, they were well informed about the impending attack and took action when the green signal was given for the offensive so that they could enter illegally together with the mercenaries and the Ukrainian army.
Not a word is said about the fact that the Ukrainian soldiers and the foreign contractors aided by NATO soldiers or instructors captured Russian citizens and dragged Russian soldiers across the border into Ukraine. Russian citizens were killed, and their homes and possessions destroyed – all for the glory of Ukraine and the “Free West”.
The first thing which was denied to Palestinians was water and food. It was the onslaught of the genocide against the People of Palestine.
Netanyahu ordered a complete blockade of the Gaza Strip starting on October 9, 2023, preventing and obstructing the importation of clean water, food, fuel, and essential commodities to 2.2 Million Palestinians.
“The single case of polio in Gaza triggered a global outcry and an appeal by the UN, which obtained the agreement of the United States and Israel to send 1.2 million doses of vaccine.
But who are we kidding? Why vaccinate children against a disease that can be completely eradicated by drinking water? Clean Water Is Enough to Eradicate Polio”
The first step would be for the self-proclaimed international community to demand the restoration of the import of water and food.
Guess Who are the Architects of Gaza’s Polio Vaccination Program
WHO Director General Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreysus. confirms that his mentor Bill Gates generously offered to come to the rescue of Palestinian children.
“While no cases of polio have been recorded yet [in Gaza], without immediate action, it is just a matter of time before it reaches the thousands of children who have been left unprotected. Children under five are at risk, and especially infants under two because many have not been vaccinated over the nine months of conflict.
The World Health Organization (WHO) is sending more than 1 million polio vaccines to Gaza, which will be administered in the coming weeks to prevent children being struck down by the disease.”
Dr. Tedros also confirmed that the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation –which has played a key role in supporting numerous vaccine projects (including the Covid-19 mRNA vaccine) will be financing the Gaza polio vaccine (under the helm of the WHO).
“Support for the Guardian’s global development journalism [also] comes from the Bill and Melinda Foundation. (How Convenient). Not a single mention of Netanyahu
When was the polio vaccination for Gaza contemplated by the WHO-Gates Foundation.? What is the unspoken objective of the polio vaccine?
Did the WHO, UNICEF and The Gates Foundation take a stance regarding the blockade of food and water which started immediately in October 2024, and which is categorized in international law as a criminal undertaking.
In 2022, the Gates Foundation embarked on a 1.2 Billion dollars polio vaccination program, which in many regards has spelled disaster.
“The United Nations was warned that a major international vaccine initiative is actually causing a deadly outbreak of the very disease it was supposed to wipe-out.
While international organisations like the World Health Organization (WHO) will regularly boast about ‘eradicating polio’ with vaccines—the opposite seems to be the case, with vaccines causing the deaths of scores of young people living in Africa.
Health officials have now admitted that their plan to stop ‘wild’ polio is backfiring, as scores children are being paralyzed by a deadly strain of the pathogen derived from a live vaccine – causing a virulent wave of polio to spread.
This latest pharma-induced pandemic started out in the African countries of Chad and Sudan, with the culprit identified as vaccine-derived polio virus type 2.
…international health bodies have ‘accidentally’ reintroduced the disease in Pakistan, Afghanistan, and also Iran, as the central Asia region was hit by a virulent strain of polio spawned by the a pharmaceutical vaccine. Also, in 2019, the government of Ethiopia ordered the destruction of 57,000 vials of type 2 oral polio vaccine (mOPV2) following a similar outbreak of vaccine-induced polio.
The Gates Foundation’s commitment is to “eradicate polio Worldwide”.
Can the People of Palestine Trust Bill Gates?
“An online petition is calling on the White House to investigate Bill Gates and Melinda Gates for “crimes against humanity” and “medical malpractice”. The petition received more than 500,000 signatures as on 11th May 2020.
The petition accuses the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation of “medical malpractice” for citing an accusation of “intentionally sterilizing Kenyan children through the use of a hidden HCG antigen in tetanus vaccines.” The petition also quoted Bill Gates’ when talking about his interest in “reducing population growth” by means of vaccinations.
Gates, UNICEF & WHO have already been credibly accused of intentionally sterilizing Kenyan children through the use of a hidden HCG antigen in tetanus vaccines.
In Y 2014, the Catholic Bishops Conference of Kenya conducted a study on the 5-injection, 2 yr vaccination project performed on female Kenyans aged 14-49, in a South African laboratory and concluded that “all 6 samples tested positive for the HCG antigen.”
“This proved right our worst fears; that this WHO campaign is not about eradicating neonatal tetanus, but a well-coordinated forceful population control mass sterilization exercise using a proven fertility regulating vaccine,”
Dr. Ngare, spokesman for the Kenya Catholic Doctors Association, said.
“This evidence was presented to the Ministry of Health before the third round of immunization, but was ignored.”
The vaccine, which was administered to 2.3-M girls and women by the World Health Organization (WHO) and UNICEF for free, was said to be funded by Global Alliance for Vaccines and Immunization (GAVI), an organization started and funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. “(Muslim Mirror, emphasis added)
We are in Solidarity with the People of Palestine.
Our thoughts are with you. Read the text above on Kenya.
Do not trust Bill Gates and Dr. Tedros. They are fully supportive of the Netanyahu government’s criminal undertakings.
A laboratory examination of the vaccine which is intended for Gaza must be conducted.
Refuse the polio vaccine.
Follow Dr. Gerard Delepine:
“Why vaccinate children against a disease that can be completely eradicated by drinking water?
Demand the Importation of Clean Water and Food.
Michel Chossudovsky
crgeditor@yahoo.com
About the Author
Michel Chossudovsky is an award-winning author, Professor of Economics (emeritus) at the University of Ottawa, Founder and Director of the Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG), Montreal, Editor of Global Research.
He has undertaken field research in Latin America, Asia, the Middle East, sub-Saharan Africa and the Pacific and has written extensively on the economies of developing countries with a focus on poverty and social inequality. He has also undertaken research in Health Economics (UN Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC), UNFPA, CIDA, WHO, Government of Venezuela, John Hopkins International Journal of Health Services (1979, 1983)
He is the author of 13 books including The Globalization of Poverty and The New World Order (2003), America’s “War on Terrorism” (2005), The Globalization of War, America’s Long War against Humanity (2015).
He is a contributor to the Encyclopaedia Britannica. His writings have been published in more than twenty languages. In 2014, he was awarded the Gold Medal for Merit of the Republic of Serbia for his writings on NATO’s war of aggression against Yugoslavia. He can be reached at crgeditor@yahoo.com
The Biden administration has unleashed a frontal assault on free speech, using allegations of Russian interference in US elections as justification to ban Russian media from operating inside the United States, and criminalizing the actions of Americans such as myself who dare provide a platform for Russian voices to heard by a broader American audience.
While I have, to date, not appeared in any of the indictments (nor do I expect to, since I have done nothing illegal), several Russian and Russian-Americans have, along with various Russian organizations. As expected, speculation in the mainstream media as well as social media runs wild regarding the scope and scale of the alleged Russian interference. This has caused me to reflect on how far off-kilter America has found itself, where a politicized judiciary clearly seeking to tip the forthcoming election away from the challenger, and to the hand-picked successor to the incumbent, is ignored while allegations made by this politicized judiciary about paid propaganda are treated at face value.
(A quick reminder that all of the persons and organizations that have been indicted so far on criminal charges are Russians or Russian-Americans who reside in Russia and, as such, are outside the reach of American law enforcement and most likely not going to engage in an adversarial challenge of the charges in a US court of law, allowing the US government and its compliant minions in the mainstream media to treat the allegations as fact.)
Amidst revelations of multi-million dollar deals where influencers were paid $100,000 a week to produce video content, and on-air hosts given million dollar salaries along with other perks, my relationship with Russian state-owned media pales into insignificance, contracted as an outside contributor compensated with what now, by comparison, seems a paltry $250-280 per item published, with the total amount received amounting to less than 7% of my total annual income.
Apparently, my negotiating skills are lacking—rather than insisting that I would not consider any offer under $5 million, I was content with compensation that matched the industry “norm” of between $150-300 per item published. Earlier this year, when RT thought that my interest in contributing had waned, they offered to double the price paid per article; I declined, insisting that we adhere to the letter of our agreement.
The author in the radio studio of Komsomolskaya Pravda
The value of my interaction with Russian media, both in terms of publishing with RT and Sputnik, as well as appearing on programs of a wide range of other Russian media outlets, came from the connections made, and the resulting ability to meet and interact with Russian officials, politicians, diplomats, academics, military officers, analysts, experts, and people on the street. I view my Russian media interaction as part and parcel of my entire Russia experience—a critical aspect of the immersive activities I engaged in when traveling to Russia in 2023 and early 2024. The Russian journalists I encountered were professionals in every sense of the word, and by subjecting myself to their queries, I learned much about the Russian mindset and how it shaped Russian sensibilities and priorities.
I am struck by the intensity of the Department of Justice’s campaign—and by extension, that of the Biden administration—against Russian media. Not only is it a gross politicization of the judiciary, singling out as it does one candidate (Donald Trump) as being the recipient—unwitting or otherwise—of Kremlin efforts to tip the scale of democracy in his favor, but it builds walls between the American people and their Russian counterparts at a time when bridges are desperately needed.
Back during the Cold War, when the US and the Soviet Union were locked in an ideological contest of existential proportions, the strategy of the United States was to encourage the American people to actively learn about the Soviet Union. Then we were confident in who we were as a nation, and unafraid to pit our way of life against any other. We also trusted in the ability of the American people to discern fact from fiction, and to be able to make decisions free from foreign interference.
Encounter Magazine, a CIA-funded literary and cultural challenge to Soviet ideology
The CIA engaged in this culture war using traditional black propaganda. But it also funded and helped direct a center-left literary magazine, Encounter, which sought to win over elements of western society deemed vulnerable to Soviet propaganda by engaging the intellect, not by denying it.
The CIA also funded the work of the Foreign Broadcast Information Service, or FBIS, which, from 1967 until it was dissolved in 2005, monitored foreign mass media transmitted by radio, television, and print which was then translated and bound together in unclassified publications which were made available to government and military customers, as well as academic audiences (the material was not freely distributed to the American public due to copyright concerns.)
The FBIS was a CIA open-source intelligence activity that operated from 1967 until 2005
The point is that there was a time when people who were interested in learning fact-based information about the Soviet adversary were encouraged to do so without fear of sanction or hostile legal proceeding. I graduated from college in 1984 and was commissioned into the Marines that same year. During this time, I completed my Russian history degree, which included defending an honors thesis which required me to do a deep dig on Russian and Soviet military theory. I also authored an academic article on Soviet history which required the use of primary research materials. At no time was I hindered, either directly or indirectly, with this work, even though the Soviet Union, in 1984, was carrying out a massive intelligence-driven effort to prevent Ronald Reagan from gaining a second term. The Reagan administration was aware of this Soviet effort and took measures to monitor and counter it. But at no time did they seek to silence the Soviet voice, or deny the American people access to information about the Soviet Union and its people.
Under Ronald Reagan, America was comfortable with what it represented as a nation, warts and all.
One cannot say the same about the present day.
Not only is the Biden administration scared of its own shadow when it comes to trusting the American people to form independent political opinions about the candidates for office, they are concerned that, if allowed to do so, the American people may very well vote in favor of their political opponent(s). As such, the tactics embraced to prevent this outcome combine the age-old concept of yellow journalism to smear their opponents, and a politicized judiciary to silence voices of dissent.
The Ukrainian government views the Author as a “top Western expert” pushing Russian narratives
In the case of myself and other vocal critics of the Biden administration’s Russia policy, the US government has taken to neutering the First Amendment right of free speech by—literally—contracting out the work to foreign powers. The State Department, using taxpayer dollars allocated by Congress for this express purpose, has funded and directed the creation and work of the Center for Countering Disinformation (CCD), a Ukrainian agency which has, as its first order of business, published a so-called “blacklist” of persons, including many Americans (including myself) it describes as Russian propogandists. The CCD, again with funding and organizational support, has moved to label those on the list as “information terrorists” who should be subjected to the same sanctions as actual terrorists, up to and including the use of extrajudicial assassination to silence them.
I feature prominently in the work of the CCD, as well as other Ukrainian “lists,” such as the Miratvoretz (“peacekeepers”) hit list, which literally marks those on it for assassination. It would be curious to see the extent to which the concerns of the CCD and Ukrainian intelligence about my work were transmitted to the State Department, CIA, and FBI, and to what extent the US government acted on these concerns, up to and including whether or not the underlying information contained in the affidavits submitted for establishing probable cause to execute a search warrant on my home originated from Ukraine.
Gerald Celente
On September 28 I will be participating in a peace rally in Kingston, New York, organized by Gerald Celente. I will be joined by other concerned Americans, including Judge Andrew Napolitano, Maz Blumenthal, and Anya Parampil. We will be discussing a number of issues pertinent during this election year, including the threat of nuclear war, the conflict in Gaza, the assault on free speech, and the status of the peace movement in America today. I view this rally as the jumping off point for what I am calling “Operation DAWN,” a campaign to help inject the issue of nuclear war and the necessity for peace into the American political dialogue by encouraging American voters not to give their vote away, but rather make the candidates earn it by holding their feet to the fire on important issues such as these.
The Russian government, or any Russian proxy, is not involved in this effort whatsoever.
However, an important component of this exercise is to breathe life into the words of President John F. Kennedy who, in his commencement address to the students and faculty of American University in June 1963 declared, “No government or social system is so evil that its people must be considered as lacking in virtue…we can still hail the Russian people for their many achievements—in science and space, in economic and industrial growth, in culture and in acts of courage.”
But we can only hail these achievements—and by extension gain insight into the humanity of the people who accomplished them—if we allow ourselves to be open to the concept of free interaction between people.
Today, the Justice Department and the Biden administration seeks to promote rampant Russophobia amongst the American people by keeping them ignorant of the Russian reality. This is done by silencing Russian voices and criminalizing any effort undertaken by Americans to enable these voices to be heard.
This is where things stand today.
I, for one, am very worried about how things will look tomorrow.
The political scrambling is comparable to the chaotic retreat of Ukrainian troops in the Donbass.
Dozens of ministers and senior officials in the NATO-backed Kiev regime have tendered their resignations ahead of a chaotic reshuffle. The political scrambling is comparable to the chaotic retreat of Ukrainian troops in the Donbass.
Among those falling on their own sword is Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba who, after the nominal president Vladimir Zelensky, was the most internationally recognizable face of the regime. Kuleba and Zelensky were something of a double act, trotting around the world peevishly and insatiably begging for more military and financial aid.
The mass resignations are a sure sign that the NATO-backed regime that came to power 10 years ago in a CIA-orchestrated coup knows its days are numbered. Zelensky, for now, is still holding on to the presidential office even though his electoral mandate expired in May. He can be likened to the captain of the doomed Titanic.
All this regime fragmentation comes as the Kursk incursion fizzles as a failed gamble.
Officially, the cross-border attack on the Russian Federation’s Kursk region which began on August 6 was aimed at distracting Russian forces from the Donbass region in former eastern Ukraine. The Kursk breakout appeared to have initial success and Western media were ecstatic in reporting its supposed blow to Russian morale.
Four weeks on, however, the gamble is proving a wildly losing bet. Russian forces are not diverted and are moving even more rapidly to push aside Ukrainian defenses in Donbass. Even Western military analysts are admitting that the Kursk incursion has backfired badly for the Kiev regime in that it has accelerated much broader Russian advances in Ukraine.
As for the Kursk enclave presently held by Ukrainian forces, the Russian military is bearing down on holdouts with withering firepower. The Ukrainian troops and their NATO mercenaries are cut off from making good on an escape. Russia did not hastily react to the Kursk incursion. It kept its focus on the bigger prize of taking all of the Donbass, which historically was always part of Russia as was Crimea.
In ordering the Kursk offensive, the Kiev regime and its NATO handlers have seriously overplayed their hand. From a strategic military viewpoint, it has been a calamity. So bad are the repercussions for the regime’s viability, that one may wonder if the “official” objective of ostensibly diverting Russian forces was actually the real objective.
The Kursk operation may have had more nefarious motives. First of all, as Russian opposition exile figure Mikhail Khodorkovsky candidly posits, the offensive was aimed at showing the NATO powers that Russian President Vladimir Putin and the Kremlin were bluffing about red lines.
If Russia did not retaliate against NATO nations directly by hitting their territories then this would be a vindication of the Kiev regime and its Western intelligence handlers in their incessant admonitions to Western powers not to be afraid of escalating against Russia.
Zelensky, Kuleba and hawkish NATO backers have continually chided Western governments to supply longer-range weapons and give permission to hit deep inside Russia, including the capital Moscow. U.S. President Joe Biden and European leaders like German Chancellor Olaf Scholz have been wary of approving longer-range missile strikes on Russia for fear of escalation to a nuclear world war.
After all, the Russian nuclear defense doctrine, which is currently being revised in the context of the changing threat environment, states that Russia would use nuclear weapons if its national security comes under an existential threat even from conventional military weapons.
By launching a military assault on the Russian Federation and using terroristic attacks against civilians in Kursk, the objective was to provoke Russia to attack NATO. Significantly, Kiev regime figures seem to relish telling media that NATO intelligence had been involved in implementing the attack. That fingering of Western involvement seems to have also been calculated to incense Moscow into taking retaliation.
The point was to recklessly demonstrate that Russia appears not to have any effective red lines. By appearing to show Putin and the Kremlin as empty vessels spouting red lines, the desired purpose was to galvanize NATO powers to go for a full attack on Russia.
Such is the desperation of the Kiev regime and its Western handlers. They know that they cannot win the ground war against Russia. They know that the Donbass will eventually be fully taken by Russia. They knew that the Kursk outbreak would not alter the course of the war by supposedly diverting Russian troops from taking victory in Donbass.
The real gamble was to try to hurt Russia within its pre-war borders and to secondly goad the NATO powers to escalate further attacks on Russia because the Kursk operation was meant to show Moscow and Putin were weak and that they were bluffing about red lines. And if Moscow did react rashly by hitting NATO directly then Kiev and its Western handlers would also win by triggering an all-out war which is the only way the corrupt cabal in Kiev thinks it can survive.
Russia did not take the bait of diverting from its goal of victory in Donbass, nor of escalating to World War Three.
Nevertheless, Moscow seems to be taking revenge on its own terms: demolishing the NATO regime in Ukraine and hitting NATO assets – hard.
The ballistic missile strike this week in Poltava in central Ukraine on a NATO training academy is believed to have killed hundreds of Ukrainian troops and senior NATO instructors. The severity of the blow can be gleaned from the subdued headlines in the Western media and the cover-up of how devastating the strike was against NATO forces in Ukraine.
The USA, the EU and the UK will continue to be powerful players, but their influence on developing countries and their dominance of the global financial system, seems set to wane as BRICS forges a more multipolar world over the longer term.
With Turkey – a key NATO member – having lodged an application to join, BRICS is set to get bigger, and this can only be a good sign for the collective strength of developing nations in a multipolar world. It’s also a bad sign, longer term, for U.S. political and economic dominance.
Two key moments in the acceleration of BRICS were 2014 when the Ukraine crisis started and 2022, when full blown war broke out. The weaponisation of the global financial system by the west against Russia helped the core focus of BRICS coalesce around the need to create an alternative financial architecture for developing nations. A BRICS bank (now called the New Development Bank was established) to create an alternative to the World Bank. A Contingent Reserve Arrangement was established, providing an alternative to the IMF for countries who need access to a pool of reserves in the face of currency crises. As the Belgium-based Swift interbank communication service has become politicised, so BRICS Pay was created.
Throughout, a core aim is to reduce dependence on the U.S. Dollar for global trade and, therefore foreign exchange reserves. Russia and China’s shift to trading oil in Yuan, Saudi Arabia’s abandonment of the Petrodollar Pact, and the UAE and India’s agreement on trading in rupees are good recent examples of countries choosing to de-dollarize. While the dollar remains the pre-eminent global trading currency, we should expect to see its share of global trade decline slowly over the coming decade. This will pose longer-term systemic risks to the USA’s ability to service its vast federal debt, as the cost of borrowing inexorably rises.
BRICS is gathering momentum as the potential benefits of membership become clearer in the eyes of developing nations, and Turkey’s bold decision to apply for membership is a sign of that. While I was the economic counsellor at the British Embassy in Moscow, I watched in slow motion as dissatisfaction in developing countries grew about western domination of the international financial system. Take the International Monetary Fund. Today, 59.1% of the Fund’s voting shares are accounted for by countries with accounting for 13.7% of the World’s population. 57.7% of the bumper distribution of Special Drawing Rights during the COVID Pandemic went to the world’s wealthiest countries.
It’s not only that developing countries see that the western dominated financial bodies don’t represent their interests. They have also became increasingly politicised; for example, under pressure from the U.S. in 2015, the IMF changed its rules on debt servicing to allow Ukraine to avoid default, even though it was at that time refusing ever to service its debt obligations to Russia. While IMF conditionality on its programmes is rigid, the rules can be changed quickly if the political imperative from Washington demands it.
Take the G7, which was the preeminent grouping of the world’s most affluent nations before BRICS found its feet. Following the outbreak of war in Ukraine, G7 countries coordinated over 20,000 economic sanctions against Russia. There is no plan in place for sanctions relief as and when an inevitable ceasefire in Ukraine starts and a peace process begins. The G7 froze $300bn in Russian foreign exchange reserves; they have more recently established a funding vehicle in which the proceeds of those Russian assets held in Europe are used to fund weapons supplies to Ukraine. Bodies like the IMF, SWIFT and Euroclear have been decisively subjugated by the political interests of the G7.
The G20, was intended to be a more inclusive global grouping of the world’s leading 20 economies when it was set up to focus on international financial stability. But it has also become increasingly dysfunctional as powerful G7 nations try repeatedly to politicise its agenda.
So, BRICS has emerged as a more appealing meeting point for developing countries. Its values of non-interference, equality and mutual benefit mean countries with troubled relationships can come together to strengthen relations through mutually-beneficial economic ties. Hence the China, Russia, India triangle, which over history time has been beset by tension and conflict. Iran and Saudi Arabia joined BRICS in 2024, almost unthinkable a few short years ago, but made possible by a gradual thawing in their relations brokered by China in 2023. Pakistan is now looking to join BRICS, despite India’s prominent founding role in the group. This gradual rapprochement through trade should be applauded.
When it was first convened in 2009, BRICS was seen as a developing nations’ counterbalance to the rich countries’ club of the G8 (now G7). Today, three of the BRICS founding members rank among the world’s top ten economies. Six are members of the G20 group. The group accounts for 45% of the global population and 28% of its economic output now. Set free from the need to fit within a west-leaning normative set of rules and values, BRICS collaboration has been unleashed by putting the economics first, and letting the politics follow. It’s therefore no surprise that Turkey – which is also a G20 member – has turned to BRICS. After decades of trying to join the European Union, it’s clear that road is permanently blocked.
I don’t see Turkey’s future membership of BRICS and its NATO membership as mutually exclusive. Indeed, straddling Europe and Asia, I think it’s very much to be encouraged that a prominent NATO member state should enjoy a less antagonistic relationship with the developing world. The very point of BRICS is that countries aren’t required to choose one side against another. There is a long list of other countries who wish to join BRICS, including Mexico, Nigeria, Bahrain, Pakistan, Thailand and Vietnam. Before the end of this decade, BRICS will represent a majority of the global population.
The USA, the EU and the UK will continue to be powerful players, but their influence on developing countries and their dominance of the global financial system, seems set to wane as BRICS forges a more multipolar world over the longer term.
Fascist Italy is a much more appropriate metric by which to gauge today’s creaking NATO empire than were either Germany or Japan.
As Stephen Karganovic et al analyse Pavel Durov’s arrest, they could do worse than look back at fascist Italy, where Mussolini was always right. Even though half of Italy’s 44 million citizens were nominal Fascist Party members, they had no say in running their country, which was the job of the country’s vast bureaucracy, whose orders came down to them from Mussolini on high. Durov, Assange, Kim Dotcom, Peter Thiel, John McAfee, and others we will presently come to, would not have done well in Mussolini’s Italy, as they were not the sort of brain-dead team players fascist countries like Mussolini’s Italy or Macron’s France need to keep the cult of their tin god duces ticking over.
Fascist Italy is, in fact, a much more appropriate metric by which to gauge today’s creaking NATO empire than were either Germany or Japan, the other two members of the Tripartite Pact. Not only was Italy the initial aggressor in North Africa, Albania and Greece, but she also committed war crimes with gay abandon. And, just like today’s NATO crew, she got away with all of that, with not even one Italian ever facing prison time, never mind the rope, for war crimes.
Not that you would ever imagine that Italy could ever have been the baddy from watching Captain Corelli’s Mandolin, which whitewashes Italy’s Greek Occupation. The idea that the Italians were the good guys has been so pervasive since 13 October 1943, when Italy declared war on its former Axis allies, that the Italians are almost on a par with the Yanks who, if Hollywood is to be believed, stole the War and very much more besides all on their own.
The comparative ease with which King Victor Emanuel and General Pietro Badoglio, Mussolini’s former chief of staff, could switch sides, and the manner in which Mussolini met his grisly end, suggest that il Duce was not the great leader his endless propaganda had made him out to be, but that he was just one more bureaucratic buffoon straddled atop other bureaucratic buffoons.
Applying this template to our own times and reverting to our earlier argument that NATO’s game is to muzzle and marginalise its political enemies, Durov’s arrest makes sense in a sequence of such demonisations and arrests past, present and future that include Manning, Assange, Durov, Rumble’s Chris Pavlovski and, perhaps, RFK, Elon Musk and POTUS Trump as well.
The key commonality that bunch share is a bent towards libertarianism, old fashioned civil rights concerns and/or small c conservatism, which lead them all to be averse to today’s insidious technological dictatorship that, inter alia, helped mask NATO’s Epstein and Hunter Biden cover ups, and that is so beloved of the European Union’s top brass and their friends in Langley on that account.
RFK, to take but one example, has written a best selling book exposing Anthony Fauci, Bill Gates and their Big Pharma racket and, though his critics in the mainstream media have been quick to point out he is unqualified to criticise tin gods like Fauci and Gates, it is worth noting that they too are equally unqualified to defend them, and that Kennedy did get some heavily qualified heavy hitters to endorse his reader-friendly book.
This is, in no way, to endorse Trump, Musk or RFK on anything, but it is to say that, while there may be an outside chance of negotiating on some things with them, there is as much chance of negotiating with their Democratic opponents as there was of negotiating for better wages or anything else in fascist Italy. And, as for their support for Israel, well we too are not going to dwell on the fate of the Abyssinians and Libyans at the hands of General Badoglio and his fellow war criminals, who got a pass on all of that.
Although a comparison with Mussolini might bring ancient Rome’s bread and circuses to mind, it is worth noting that Italy were World Cup football winners in 1934 and 1938, and Mussolini milked that to the max, just as the Caesars of old did, and just as NATO’s own tin god Caesars milk comparable circuses today. Mussolini, by this metric, was ahead of NATO’s game in how he marginalised his enemies, and placated his people, as he dreamed of recreating the Roman Empire, albeit without the military or civil means to do so.
Even as NATO arrests Durov and cracks down on China’s 5G shenanigans, China has launched a 6G satellite, thus making NATO’s repression of their soon to be obsolete systems both obsolete and ridiculous. Although NATO is always right in a NATO dominated world, just as Mussolini was always right in his stultified world, and just as Newtonian physics is always right within its own special domain, that does not mean their rules, their censorship and their arrogance can be applied beyond their own well-defined boundaries.
We are not the only ones to spot France’s gross hypocrisy in this Durov affair. Belarusian peace activist Alexander Lukashenko had some wise words to say on the matter, but then so had the Trotskyites and, I am sure, most others NATO have banished to the margins of their decaying realm. Although NATO would dismiss all of them for one spurious reason or another, they are indicative of the ongoing libertarian, conservative and human rights’ murmurs that make NATO’s despots so uneasy.
Pavel Durov may well be a genius, just as Julian Assange, Kim Dotcom, Beethoven, Prokofiev, Shostakovich, Stravinsky, Rachmaninoff and Rimsky-Korsakov are geniuses. Who is to know and who is to care? What we do know is this: technological evolution and technological decentralisation have opened the door in Russia, China, India, Iran and God knows where else for tens of millions of potential entrepreneurs to follow in the footsteps of Assange, Durov, Pavlovski and McAfree. And, though we should wish NATO all the best in trying to censor and imprison all of them, we should take heart in that NATO and its EU and sundry other flunkeys have as much hope of stifling all of them, and thereby stifling freedom itself, as King Canute of old had in stopping the tide. And if, in the march of time, Assange, Durov, Pavlovski and McAfree are to stand for anything, it is to wrong foot NATO’s jailers, and to affirm alongside MLK that the arc of the moral universe is indeed long, but it bends toward justice and freedom of thought and of association and, all things considered, there could be no finer eternal testimony to them than that.
Still, what do I know when compared to Macron who, like Mussolini, is always right, even when he is wrong by losing a $20 bn UAE contract to purchase 80 fighter jets from France as a direct consequence of Pavel’s arrest? Although it is a sign of our changing times when the UAE is more interested in free speech and fairness than pathetic France, there is another dimension to this that King Canute’s troops would have been familiar with, when they waded into the waves with their swords.
Not only do the UAE’s actions show it is inching away from France and all of NATO, but so too is the evolving technology the UAE and its sister Gulf State countries want to be a part of. Durov’s arrest is not only an attack on free speech, but it is also to put a spanner in the combined efforts of Telegram and Toncoin, the world’s 8th largest crypto, to make a potentially immensely powerful Fintech emitting money at interest. Although Toncoin suffered a 20% drop after Durov’s arrest, that is only a blip and we should buy for the rebound, right? Of course we should, but we should also follow the money and not just that of Telegram, Toncoin, the UAE and Durov. Much of that money will be headed to Kazan in October, where Putin (no Punch without Judy) has some big jamboree planned regarding launching a BRICS related currency.
Because Putin and Xi are cautious men, talk about a gold-backed currency would be just so much Macron guff, all bluster, no meat and much too inflexible to work in today’s highly leveraged world. Much better for Putin and Xi would be to take a leaf, not out of the Macron/Mussolini book, but out of Chairman Mao’s and let a million crypto currencies bloom, and to give, at Kazan, outfits like Telegram and Toncoin the potential to grow even further. The more such outfits grow, the nearer the day of reckoning arrives for Macron and his fellow control freaks, who do not even have the collective wisdom of a stopped clock, which can claim to be right twice a day which, as Durov’s arrest exemplifies, is two times more than any of NATO’s King Canutes can currently manage to do.
What we should be asking ourselves is whether these ministers will be allowed to flee the country or not.
It was always going to be hard to put your finger on the exact so-called ‘tipping point’ of any regime whose leader is clinging onto power with an ever decreasing cabal of cronies and military advisors. But in the case of Zelensky the news in August that a number of credit rating agencies had downgraded Ukraine to the last rating before ‘junk’ might have been the starter’s pistol.
Some will argue that replacing his armed forces chief Valeriy Zaluzhny earlier in February was also a turning point as a number of other top military aides were culled. It was certainly a milestone in Zelensky’s desperation to create some new ideas about how to make a difference on the battlefield.
But for those close to him taking their share of the money coming in, the downgrade was probably a final straw given that the new near junk rating makes it much harder for the Ukrainian government to borrow money around the world on normal interest rates.
Two critical events followed which could explain why these six ministers and advisors all were given their marching orders en masse on September 4th:
Minister of Foreign Affairs Dmytro Kuleba Minister of Justice Denis Maliuska; Minister for Strategic Industries Alexander Kamyshin Minister of Environmental Protection and Natural Resources Ruslan Strelets Deputy Prime Minister for European and Euro-Atlantic Integration Olga Stefanishyna Deputy Prime Minister – Minister for Reintegration of Uncontrolled Territories of Ukraine Iryna Vereshchuk Deputy head of Zelensky’s office Rostislav Shurma.
Firstly, the Kursk operation has failed in its overall objective and Ukrainian forces have faced heavy casualties as Russia, which took its time to respond, finally pounded them both on the ground and from the air. For these ministers, we have to assume that they were not behind the bold plan but had to go along with it regardless. Secondly, the reality of Donald Trump becoming president as Kamala Harris looks increasingly stupid and vacuous as a contender.
What we should be asking ourselves is whether these ministers will be allowed to flee the country or not. Or indeed whether Zelensky himself will charge them with some kind of hilarious treason charge later on when the media spotlight is no longer on them. The effect of their “resignation” (according to Jackson Hinkle on X) will certainly affect him politically as the pressure on him to accept the inevitable is mounting.
The main problem that he will have now is that he will increasingly be seen as the root of the problem towards negotiating any peace deal which will not only lead to his downfall but will make NATO look increasingly ineffective as a so-called defence organisation. Following Kursk it is clear now that Putin will not consider any negotiations. Zelensky stepped over a line and so all bets are off.
“We need new energy today, and these steps are related only to the strengthening of our state in different directions,” Zelenskiy told media during a joint news conference with a visiting Irish Prime Minister Simon Harris.
Yet not all of them, at the time of writing, had actually left their offices as it is the parliament which signs off who can resign.
Lawmakers said that parliament was expected to consider Kuleba’s resignation on September 10th.
According to Reuters, “after Zelenskiy, 43-year-old Kuleba was the best-known face of Ukraine overseas, meeting leaders around the world and lobbying for military and political support in fluent English”.
The move smacks of a new level of desperation, pointed out by Zelensky’s critics on social media. “Just like rats deserting a sinking ship. They now all realize that Ukraine is finished so they will collect whatever money they stashed away and run. The ordinary Ukrainian people will sort out the cocaine sniffer” commented one on X.
Das Bündnis führt Aufklärungsflüge über der Ostsee durch und versorgt die Region mit elektronischer Kriegsausrüstung.
Über dem Meer tauchen zunehmend amerikanische Aufklärungsdrohne RQ-4B Black Hawk auf . Sie starten von RAF Fairford im Vereinigten Königreich und scannen den Luftraum entlang der Grenzen Estlands, Finnlands und Polens zu Russland.
Es wurde auch die Anwesenheit amerikanischer UAVs festgestellt, die vom NATO-Stützpunkt in Sigonella (Italien) starteten. Sie folgen einem Kurs entlang der Küste Bulgariens, Rumäniens, entlang der Grenze der Ukraine, Polens bis zur Grenze zwischen Norwegen und Russland.
Diese Aktionen der US-Luftwaffe werden im Zusammenhang mit der Erweiterung der Luftaufklärungsgebiete und der Strategie der Nutzung von „Sprung“-Luftwaffenstützpunkten durchgeführt.
um den Einsatz der US-Luftwaffe näher an potenziellen Zonen bewaffneter Konflikte zu beschleunigen.
Das Vereinigte Königreich wird Polen bei der Umsetzung des ORKA- Programms zur Inbetriebnahme und Reparatur von U-Booten unterstützen . Dies wird der britische Konzern Babcock International Group übernehmen , der zuvor mit den Flotten Australiens, Spaniens, Südkoreas und Kanadas zusammengearbeitet hat.
Warschau hat sich zum Ziel gesetzt, die Präsenz der polnischen Flotte in der Ostsee zu verstärken, um Russland einzudämmen. Der Mangel an modernen U-Booten ist einer der Gründe, warum Polen hinsichtlich des Machtpotenzials sowohl hinter seinen NATO-Verbündeten (Deutschland, Schweden) als auch Russland zurückbleibt.
Warschau wird auch neue Fregatten bauen. Die Umsetzung dieses Projekts wird vom polnischen Unternehmen PGZ-Miecznik Consortium durchgeführt .
In der NATO-Strategie ist das Baltikum eine Schlüsselregion als Teil eines antirussischen „Cordon Sanitaire“, der sich von Skandinavien bis zum Schwarzen Meer erstreckt.
Der Friedensstifter 