Catastrophic Contagion Scenario - Here They Come Again

catastrophiccontagion  |  The Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security, in partnership with WHO and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, conducted Catastrophic Contagion, a pandemic tabletop exercise at the Grand Challenges Annual Meeting in Brussels, Belgium, on October 23, 2022.

The extraordinary group of participants consisted of 10 current and former Health Ministers and senior public health officials from Senegal, Rwanda, Nigeria, Angola, Liberia, Singapore, India, Germany, as well as Bill Gates, co-chair of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.

The exercise simulated a series of WHO emergency health advisory board meetings addressing a fictional pandemic set in the near future. Participants grappled with how to respond to an epidemic located in one part of the world that then spread rapidly, becoming a pandemic with a higher fatality rate than COVID-19 and disproportionately affecting children and young people.

Participants were challenged to make urgent policy decisions with limited information in the face of uncertainty. Each problem and choice had serious health, economic, and social ramifications. 

UAP Hearing: Air Force StrongArming Witnesses And StoneWalling Congressional Oversight

washingtonexaminer |   Burchett and Luna pointed to a meeting they scheduled with the Air Force to examine evidence of UAP sightings earlier this year, during which the lawmakers say they were not given access to whistleblower testimonies or other materials.

“We went down there, we were stonewalled,” Luna said. "They would not give us access to testimony from some of the pilots. They were hiding images and information.”

“We were told there was pictures available, which we still haven't seen,” Burchett added.

Some whistleblowers later came forward to lawmakers to testify before Congress but later canceled after being pressured by the Pentagon, according to Burchett.

The witness testimony and lack of information from U.S. officials has raised concerns among lawmakers not just about national security, but about government transparency and accountability — which members say will be a focal point of next week’s hearing. Lawmakers are also expected to introduce legislation that would require the federal government to provide information about UAPs, building on previous efforts to release any investigative findings to the public.

Burchett sought to include an amendment to the Federal Aviation Administration reauthorization being considered by Congress this week that would require the FAA to report any UAP sightings by commercial pilots to Congress. However, the measure did not make it to the floor for a vote.

“I was told that the intelligence community shut it down,” he said.

The latest effort comes after the Defense Department was directed by Congress to create the All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office in 2022 to investigate reported UAP sightings. Since then, the government has not made its findings public, prompting outcry from lawmakers who say it poses national security risks.

“Are they domestic? Are they foreign? Are they something else? Or do they not exist?” Moskowitz said. “The government needs to have straight answers. The American people deserve to know the truth on this. Unnecessarily censoring things or overclassification is what leads to all of these theories that have been out there.”

The hearing is set to take place on Wednesday and will feature testimony from three witnesses: Ryan Graves, executive director of Americans for Safe Aerospace; retired Cmdr. David Fravor, former commanding officer for the U.S. Navy; and David Grusch, former national reconnaissance office representative of the Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena Task Force at the Department of Defense.

The meeting is expected to be one of several that are focused on UAPs, with lawmakers considering field hearings to take place at the sites of UAP sightings.

“Are we OK with the federal government keeping information from the American people because they're trying to prevent us from having anxiety on all sorts of issues?” Moskowitz said. “The idea that the human brain can't tolerate that there might be life somewhere else — I just don't accept that. At the end of the day, I think the hearing is really about real-life accounts from reliable people.”

Chuck Schumer Knows Something...,

On topic after about 7 minutes of writers strike chatter. A very good discussion about the newest series of events, notably including the Schumer Amendment.

Couple of things I think merit some extra discussion:

Zabel muses that the new apparent urgency strikes him as occurring because there may be some amount of "bad news" coming soon. Coulthart responds carefully, saying he generally knows what the government knows, and there does exist some specific reason(s) for the time constraint. Frankly, I'm not sure what to make of this. Leslie Keane has made similar remarks, but just a few weeks ago Coulthart was relatively pessimistic about the disclosure process at all. I'm not sure how those things jibe, exactly. Did something change in those few weeks?

Coulthart mentions Grusch is prepared to go into detail about the alleged murders in furtherance of the cover up, at the congressional hearing. That has all kinds of potential to be a breakthrough issue if he can back it up.

Coulthart says he's not hearing anything about the "strike team" rumors that would lead him to believe it.

Lastly, Coulthart mentions the now-infamous "big boi" craft that's too large to move, saying he can't reveal the location because of US and Australian national security (hint hint), but that he released the info as a challenge to the executives in charge of this facility and others to behave in good faith because he - and congress - already are aware of these places/programs, and are watching.

Anyway, worth the time to hear their comments in full context, as I'm guessing there will be sound bites and micro-quotes out there soon.

Cognitive Activism (REDUX 5/13/08)

One of my favorite reference sites is Organelle. Hopefully by now, you will have already availed yourself of this extraordinary resource. If not, no time like the present. Enjoy.

Why are you doing this?
Firstly, it is my experience and understanding that we as a species, and Earth as a planet are facing a variety of unprecedented threats for which both are vastly more unprepared than human beings imagine. For the humans, early (current) results include cataclysmic changes in human health and cognition. For the biosphere, the results vastly exceed what can be briefly discussed. Simply stated, the anciently and arduously conserved biocognitive libraries of Earth are being burned, wholesale. Humans believe this has little to do with them, and, as far as action goes, egregiously ignore these matters. No one finds wholesale atrocity surprising anymore. We accept it as a fact of life, whether it is the physical atrocities of war and ‘research’ or the cognitive and relational atrocities bred in the thriving soup of our human cultures.

I do not believe we can give answer to these challenges without some very new and powerful methods of approach and forms of understanding. It is my sincere belief that Cognitive Activism holds forth promises of new and extremely powerful ways of understanding both the genesis of these matters and their resolutions.

If you want to paint me with a label, for some reason or other, the label transhumanist might be relatively accurate, in that I believe we have not yet glimpsed even the tiniest portion of our real cognitive and relational potentials. However, I am an a-mechanical transhumanist in that I do not really believe that machines and our relations with them ‘enhance’ us. It is not enough for there to be an apparent benefit to some dimension of our activity (i.e. relation with machines); the costs of creation, relation, and protection (maintenance) of machines must necessarily be available for evaluation if we are to decide they are ‘beneficial’. But these costs are neither examined, nor available for examination, since many of them exist in terrains we are but poorly equipped to recognize or evaluate.

Simply stated: machines and organisms compete for the same terrain and resources. This has severe cognitive ramifications for human beings, as well as physical ramifications. Humans are almost miraculously cognitively malleable and are prone to biocognitive emulation of various functions and features of their common relationals. In the case of machines, the more we relate with them, the more we become like them. Yet a machine is not even the shadow of an organism. It is the shadow of some function of an organism. This is not something we want the experience of ‘becoming alike with’ cognitively, physically, emotionally, nor in any other way.

Each person (and organism) possesses kinds and forms of relational ability (intelligence potentials) that would make the sum of our science, religion, and fiction look like a charred matchstick compared to the Sun. Having had a direct experience of some of these potentials and abilities, I believe it is possible for us to rediscover them together, with the aid of some new ways of relating to identity and knowledge.

In essence, I see the potential for a sudden revolution in human relational intelligence, something more dramatic than anything we can currently imagine. If we can remove the elemental obstructions at the roots of our relational intelligence, we have the chance to radically and positively change what it means to be human.

These Polacks Out'chere Just Really Doing The Most....,

polskieradio |  The war in Ukraine has weakened the Franco-German axis that once defined Europe, with the balance of power now shifting toward the UK and Poland, a British political scientist has claimed. 

In an op-ed featured in the British news magazine The New Statesman, Maurice Glasman, a political scientist from St Mary's University in London, highlights the profound impact of Russia's invasion of Ukraine on the existing order in Europe.

Glasman argues that the invasion has not only disrupted the balance of power across the continent but has also had consequences for the European Union, Poland's wpolityce.pl website reported on Thursday.

Prior to the crisis, the EU functioned under a shared leadership model, with France and Germany at the helm. France assumed a dominant role in military and diplomatic affairs, while Germany focused on economic matters, according to Glasman.

However, he says the legal framework governing the EU was rooted in the primacy of EU law within member states, which ultimately created tensions in both eastern and western Europe.

These tensions were exemplified by Britain's decision to withdraw from the EU, as well as the opposition voiced by Poland and Hungary on social issues.

“The status quo was based on an understanding over the export of gas (as well as oil and coal) from Russia to Germany, most obviously through the Nord Stream pipeline," according to Glasman.

He writes: "Berlin and Moscow held the fate of Central Europe in their hands once more. German economic interests were predominant, partly because the EU did not develop a unified military strategy of its own."

Significant shift in European landscape

Glasman further states: “This is what made the status of Ukraine so explosive. Its integration into either the EU or NATO was not in German interests. It would undermine its economic interests, as the only serious industrial economy within the EU, which were predicated upon cheap energy imports from Russia.”

In his analysis, Glasman highlights the fact that the invasion of Ukraine by Russia has resulted in a significant shift in the European landscape, particularly in the realms of economics and military affairs, wpolityce.pl reported.

Glasman says this shift has exposed Germany's relative weakness and hesitancy in the military sphere, sentiments that are shared by France.

He argues that in the event of a military confrontation with Russia, power and resources within Europe would gravitate towards NATO, subsequently leading to a resurgence of influence from the United States and the United Kingdom.

He writes that “it was widely assumed within academic and elite political discourse that Brexit would lead to the marginalization of Britain within Europe, and to the consolidation of the Franco-German axis within the EU. The opposite has been the case.”

He continues: “Following the invasion of Ukraine, Britain took an unambiguous position of military and political support for the beleaguered Ukrainian state. While the US was offering President Volodymyr Zelensky asylum, Britain immediately transferred weapons and led the western European political response with an unprecedented array of economic sanctions against Russia. It seemed as if Brexit had strengthened its freedom of action at a time of war."

Kirsten Gillibrand And Mark Warner To The Rescue (Amnesty NOT DISCLOSURE)

douglasjohnson  |  The U.S. Senate Select Committee on Intelligence (SSCI) has unanimously approved legislation containing language that appears intended to dig out any UAP-associated technology that is or ever was controlled by the federal government.

The new UAP/UFO provisions are being publicly reported in detail in this article for the first time anywhere.

The new UAP provisions are part of the Fiscal Year 2024 Intelligence Authorization Act (IAA, S. 2103), which was approved unanimously by the Senate Intelligence committee in a closed-door session on June 14.  On June 21 I reported on the committee's action, but the text of the UAP amendment was not yet publicly available at that time. The committee formally filed the bill and it was assigned its number on June 22; it was posted on the Internet early on June 24.

The new UAP language (found in Section 1104 of the bill) would require "any person currently or formerly under contract with the Federal Government that has in their possession material or information provided by or derived from the Federal Government relating to unidentified anomalous phenomena that formerly or currently is protected by any form of special access or restricted access" to notify the director of the All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office (AARO) within 60 days of enactment, and to provide within 180 days (six months) "a comprehensive list of all non-earth origin or exotic unidentified anomalous phenomena material" possessed and to make it available to the AARO director for "assessment, analysis, and inspection."

AARO is the Pentagon office established by Congress to conduct investigations of unidentified anomalous phenomena (UAP), and to collect information on current and past federal government activity pertaining to UAP.

The legislation also would require the AARO director to notify designated congressional committees and leaders within 30 days after receiving any such notifications, information, or exotic materials.

The Intelligence committee legislation also includes what might be called a "safe harbor" provision, providing that if such a person complies with the notification and make-available deadlines, "No criminal or civil action may lie or be maintained in any Federal or State court against any person for receiving [UAP-related] material or information."

The "safe harbor" language might be read to imply that a private entity that obtained non-human technology from the government, and then held on to that material outside of the standard mechanisms for democratic oversight, perhaps profiting from it in some manner, might be in a legally tenuous position. If so, then such an amnesty period might smooth the way for timely and orderly disclosure. This reading of the provision is speculative; the committee has not yet published any explanatory material on the language.

Section 1104 of S. 2103 does not create any new criminal offenses. Neither does it confer any immunity for threats or acts of violence, perjury, or other crimes of the sorts sometimes alleged in stories about purported hidden government UFO programs.

A PDF file of the UAP-related section of the bill (Sec. 1104) is embedded immediately below this paragraph. Images of the seven UAP-related pages are displayed at the bottom of this article.

David Grush Interview: The Big Stuff Summary

 

• The personnel interviewed by Grusch shared extreme detail about the programs they are working on and Grusch found it credible.

• Grusch investigated this topic for 4 years before believing it is credible and 100% factual then submitted a report to DOD Oversight Director which in 2023 determined it as “Credible and urgent”. This has been forwarded to Congress.

• Grusch has known Kirkpatrick for eight years and has discussed the subject with him. Grusch is unsure why Kirkpatrick has not contacted Grusch on this matter or why key evidence has not been presented.

• 1933 craft recovered in Italy by Mussolini's forces was intercepted by the US in "1944 OR 1945" - Grusch was unsure, so this lines up with a historical anachronism. We can assume 1945, aligned with history. Grusch showcased a hand-written memo in Italian that also contained small drawings at the bottom as proof.

• The Vatican informed the US of what the Italian government had in its possession. The Vatican helped suppress this find. This means, The Vatican does indeed know NHI (NON-HUMAN INTELLIGENCE) exist and is actively covering this up.

• NHI may be alien, may be interdimensional or both.

• Football-field-sized craft have been sighted. Multiple operational craft have been recovered. It's unclear if the football-field-sized craft is the alleged 30-ft diameter craft that apparently contained a "football field sized interior" that was recently disclosed. Alternatively, it may be this craft is the Indonesian UAP that allegedly was smuggling drugs and weapons that was reported this week. We don't yet know the context of where it was seen. It may have been seen in a US facility or not.

• "Quite a number" of crafts have been recovered by the US. At least 12 according to Grusch. Other sources claim many more than this.

• NHI occupant bodies have been recovered.

• It's somewhat implied that the US government may have an existing formal relationship/agreement with some NHI factions. "Agreements that risk putting our future in jeopardy". It remains unclear if Grusch was making the implication or if Coulthart was jumping to that conclusion and trying to get Grusch to fill in the blanks.

• Not all factions are peaceful - but the extent of why/how is not elaborated on.

• Kirkpatrick is lying by means of omission to Congress. AARO needs to be held to account.

• The US government have killed people to keep this information suppressed.

• Nukes are an ongoing concern to NHI.

• Private enterprise are working with this technology. Aerospace and defence projects.

• The events of Roswell 1947 happened. Subsequent addendums by the US government were part of a disinformation campaign that continues to today.

• An ongoing broad UFO disinformation campaign is being perpetrated by the US government. As part of this campaign, Grusch claims some "true" or factual intel has been presented or pushed, along with false claims or disinformation in an effort to muddy the narrative.

• Grusch has seen/verified the evidence to back these claims. Has seen "photos and documents". His job was essentially to research and corroborate witness testimony, which led him here.

• Grusch stated there were techniques to bring down these UAPs. This implies that there are crafts that the US has brought down forcefully by some means.

• There are also craft that were left or given to us for whatever reason. There were also partially damaged craft (including the 1933 craft recovered in Italy).

• Grusch mentioned people working with these recovered UAPs have gotten sick. He did not elaborate how specifically or what work was being done that might have caused this.

• Grusch highlighted the possibility that private industry could make a breakthrough and sell it back to the government. Give this has been funded by tax payer money, it is unethical and needs oversight. This also implies this technology is/could already be in the hands of private enterprise and there may be advancements sufficient to on-sell the technology.

• Grusch alluded to China's willingness to throw bodies at reverse engineering and finding success. This might also provide a speculative rationale for why we're speeding up disclosure: the need to compete with a foreign power for tech superiority.

• In 1971, the USA and USSR signed a treaty explicitly stating that both nuclear powers would confirm if UFOs or similar breached nuclear facility airspace and/or caused malfunctions that might trigger arming/disarming of nuclear weapons. This was cited as proof of ongoing UFO/UAP interference and knowledge by both superpowers of the situation and reality.

• Grusch alleges that Russia and China are in a Cold War over this technology.

• The DOD determine what specific points David Grusch is cleared to talk about and what breaches national security or classified intel. Who or how they make that distinction (or why) is unclear.

• The videos released by the pentagon in 2020 were “just the tip of the iceberg” and he claims that additional video (or other) evidence exists that are far more extraordinary. This also speaks to the fact that he has seen these pieces of video with his own eyes.

• Coulhart mentioned Grusch is starting his own science foundation. Was not mentioned if this would be a continuation of his current knowledge or expanding into different aspects of the scientific community.

• AARO does not have the adequate security clearance (it has Title 10, needs Title 50) in order to actually investigate some of the operations that the crash retrieval program falls under - This has been also reported by Coulthart independently.

• Grusch says he will "Make myself available to Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin, Director of National Intelligence Avril Haines, who was a recipient of my complaints - I'm happy to further brief elected officials on the specific ecosystem of secrecy down to the fine details."

--------

• Call and/or write your representative! Demand Congressional investigation into Kirkpatrick and AARO's handling of witness data, and a transparent and thorough analysis of Grusch's evidence and testimonies. Here's the link to the .gov website for finding yours and how to contact them.

You can write your Congressperson in 9 minutes using this link here. This link was provided by Lieutenant Ryan Graves. https://www.safeaerospace.org/activism/contact-your-member

The Curious Phenomenon Of Mexican And South Asian Neo-Nazis...,

richardhanania  |  Ron: That’s very interesting, Marius. But I’d like to go back to the strangeness of this group and their complaints. When you’re talking about crime and the destruction of our great cities, aren’t you really talking about, well, since you like the euphemism of “Foundational American,” I’ll call them “1619 Americans”…

Brahmin: In a way, yes, but preserving the Foundational American stock is important. Whenever there is diversity, you see division, chaos, bloodshed. That’s the rule here, that’s the rule everywhere. Have you ever read Precambrian Pederast? He taught us about all that is wrong with this disgusting era. Ethnic homogeneity must be preserved, above all else.

Ron: That certainly doesn’t seem to be the rule here. Today, I live in the Bay Area. California is a majority-minority state. And yet we see very little of the violence you fear. In 1970, California was 76% white. It’s now 35% white. You know what’s happened to the murder rate in that time? It’s been cut by two-thirds! As far as racial strife, you may have seen recent news stories about the California reparations commission and San Francisco wanting to offer blacks ungodly amounts of money to compensate them for past and present racism. The Bay Area is like 8% black, they’re the smallest population of the major American “races.” Yet if you follow racial issues in the state, if you went into a coma in the late 1960s and woke up in 2020, you would be amazed at how little had changed. Well, pronouns and that stuff would be new. But on race, you have income and test score disparities, crime that we can’t be honest about, so-called “police brutality.” Only if anything, California is a lot more peaceful due to the demographic change you all decry so much…

Allison: But they vote, Ron! Who gave us these crazy policies?

Ron: I won’t dispute that Hispanic and Asian immigrants tend to vote Democrat. But look at it another way. Republicans in 2016 nominated the guy whose main message was “Mexicans are rapists.” In 2020, he still won 40% of them. Can you imagine if Republicans could actually pretend to like these people? Italians ended up pretty evenly divided between the two parties, and even Jews are headed in the conservative direction thanks to differential birth rates. I see no reason why there’s some impossible barrier to overcome between Mestizos and white Americans. I mean look at this room…

[In addition to the clearly swarthy Romero and Brahmin, at least a third of the room looks to be of either Hispanic or South Asian descent.]

Ron: You doubt that you can have a multiracial country? You all have built a multiracial movement based on the idea of maintaining racial purity. Don’t check your phones, you might see another alert of a Neo-Nazi Mexican mass shooter, there have been a few of those lately, and a right-wing Indian just tried to kill Biden I believe. Remember not that long ago when there was a mass shooting, and everyone would either hope it was a right-wing white male or a Muslim, depending on their politics? Well, now we have the brown white supremacist, which right-wingers on Twitter tell me can’t possibly exist, even though it’s like half their movement now.

When was the last time you even heard of Muslim terrorism? Is a brown mass shooter these days more likely to be a Muslim extremist or someone whose brain has been melted by the online right? This question would’ve been laughable a few years ago, and I guess it’s still laughable now, but for a different reason.

And the funniest part is that I suspect that all of this results from a fear of talking about what is arguably the main issue at the heart of the American experiment. That’s right, it’s the weird, sadomasochistic relationship between whites and blacks that was so well dramatized by Tom Wolfe when he was alive. Oh sure, you guys talk about race and crime. But it seems like you need your “racism” to be more inclusive. You need to pretend to exclude everyone, because it seems more consistent with universalist principles. “We just want to preserve the demographic majority, the same right that anyone else has. Oh, it’s not any particular group that’s the problem, it’s the principle of diversity. Can’t we just have a world where every nation is homogenous to the greatest extent possible and then we can all get along?”

[At this point I burst out laughing]

Me: Ron, so wait, what you’re saying is that when we see a Klansman walking around in a hood and screaming about defending the white race, we should pity him for how much his mind has been captured by political correctness? That’s quite a funny image, in fact, it alone has made my night here worthwhile.

Ron: Indeed, Richard, that is what I’m saying. And these poor kids worried about the future of the American right, are digging their own grave, because, guess what? The die has been cast, and we’re headed to a non-white majority. And so conservatism is shaping up to be a movement that represents a coalition of overweight rural whites from left behind areas of the country and short Mestizos, all crying about the passing of whiteness and also about how much the country sucks because everyone is so fat. This probably isn’t a winning message. Of course, there’s overwhelming public support for clamping down on crime and making institutions color-blind, or, as you would put it, going after civil rights law. This is what turned whites towards the Republican Party in the first place, or the disgusting ways in which white elites have let our cities be destroyed and gone to war with every American principle — merit, freedom of speech, rule of law, you name it — in the name of anti-racism.

But instead of focusing on those things and fixing the country, the American right has decided to get distracted by doubling down on becoming a movement of brown white nationalists, in a country where the majority of children born are already non-white.

[At this point, I can feel the energy go out of the room. A few of the attendees pick at one or another of Ron’s points, but they’re clearly deflated and realize that he has given them a lot to think about. An hour and a half later, he is driving me home.]

Me: Wow, Ron, that was something else. I really wish you would’ve elaborated on the vaccine thing a little bit more. Their desire to “own the libs” has really swallowed every other part of their brain, even though they like to think they’re more sophisticated than regular conservatives, and I appreciated you recently taking apart some of the most ridiculous claims of the anti-vaxxers.

Ron: Thank you, Richard. We’ll have to do this again some time.

Me: Oh yeah, I had a lot of fun. What do you think you should try to convince people of next time?

Ron: I believe that covid-19 has a non-zoonotic origin.

Me: So lab leak? That’s it? That’s very mainstream at this point, it’s impossible to find a right-winger who doesn’t believe that this was all the fault of the Chinese.

Ron: Who said anything about the Chinese?

Me: Wait, is this another one of your anti-American conspiracy theories? You’re now going to tell me that the US government accidentally inflicted covid on the world?

Ron: Who said anything about it being an accident?

Me: Please stop Ron, there are only so many mind-blowing ideas I can digest in one night. Let’s talk about the pleasant California weather for the rest of our trip, and how nice it is to live in a state with such natural beauty and low levels of violent crime.

Having Lost BOTH Narrative Control AND The War In Ukraine - What Were The Bilderbergers Talm'bout?

theautomaticearth  |  In Bakhmut/Artyomovsk, all of NATO, all 31 member nations, were defeated by a restaurant owner and a bunch of convicts, is how I saw someone describe it. That of course caricatures the situation somewhat (Wagner is well-organized), but it’s not that far off. And that spells a serious problem for NATO. All of those 31 members may have lots of control over their media, but in the end you can’t endlessly deny being defeated.

So what will NATO do now? They will double down, and then again. And at the end of the “doubling down road” lie nuclear weapons. Not Russian nukes, because as my friend Wayne wrote the other day, their high-precision hypersonic missiles make nukes look crude and primitive, Middle Ages territory. But NATO/US never developed such weapons. They spent 10+ times as much money on weapons, still do, and -comparatively – ended up with bows and arrows.

Nuclear bombs are good only to create widespread panic and destruction. But that includes your own destruction, because of Mutually Assured Destruction protocols. Which also go back almost as far as the bow and arrow. If you fire a nuclear missile, one very much like it will land on your head a few minutes later. End of story, end of you.

US/NATO, the “collective west”, the hegemon, has lost. And has missed the moment when that occurred. Because hegemon equals hubris. Look at what they’ve all still been saying, and you notice they can’t see, and can’t acknowledge, that -and how- the world has changed. Not just this weekend, and the 9 months before, in Artyomovsk. It’s the entire story of Ukraine: it illustrates how the West “lost it”.

The US plotted a coup and moved NATO’s borders east, and Russia reacted exactly how they said they would. No nukes, no nazis, no NATO. They got the last two, and know they can expect the first too. But still the west maintains Russia’s special operation was entirely unprovoked. Look, they’re not even listening anymore. They would like to negotiate and end all this, but negotiate about what? Putting AZOV back on the borders of the Donbass, so they can kill more Russians there? Not going to happen.

It’s not only about weaponry, though that plays a major role: the hegemon can no longer make its demands based on military might. It’s been surpassed. Nor can it make demands based on the dollar’s reserve currency status, and it caused that itself. Weaponization of the currency has backfired to the extent that de-dollarization has become a process that can no longer be halted.

The moment that Saudi prince MbS turned his back on “Joe Biden” is a milestone. Because once he did that, it was obvious many would follow. In central Asia, if you are Kazachstan or Uzbekistan, why on earth would you opt to go with G7/US/NATO instead of BRICS? Why go with the power that is waning, and not the one in ascendancy? Russia is your biggest neighbor, strongly connected to China which is building its BRI network in your region, and the nearby Arab states are about to join that network. Why would you link yourself to the G7? When you know all your neighbors do not?

Then there are the voices that say the US will push for a bigger and wider war, perhaps including American troops. First, because NATO is losing, and second, because it could mean American boots on the ground, and presidents don’t lose elections in wartime. I’ve said before, I would expect them to go with Polish troops first, possibly on Polish territory too. But the Polish don’t appear all that eager anymore. And neither would any other European NATO country. German and French and Dutch troops are in no shape for war, and in the US over 70% of potential troops are grossly overweight and/or handicapped in some other way.

Ukraine had perhaps the best boots on the ground force in Europe, financed and trained since 2014 by NATO, and they lost to a caterer and a loose group of hired hands. You’re not going to win that. Your only option is long distance weapons, missiles, planes, you name it. But NATO has no advantage in that over Russia. To put it mildly.

The sole thing that’s in your favor is that Russia doesn’t seek to destroy you. They want to live in peace and trade with you. Same thing for China. NATO equals unipolar. But the world has moved towards multipolar. Ergo, NATO is obsolete. Ukraine will never reconquer its “lost” territories, and Zelensky will move to some property in Italy or Florida, never to be heard from again, unless perhaps in his obituary. The deaths of some 300,000 of his countrymen will be on his conscience.

But also on that of all the “leaders” who have sent their second-hand armory to Kiev. They are just as responsible for all those deaths. The world has changed a lot in the past few years, and ignorance is no excuse if you are a “leader”, or a “Joe Biden”. Not even if you’re “just” a voter or reader. Those deaths will be on your head when you go see St. Peter at the gate.

PS: Don’t be surprised if “Joe Biden” sends US boots on the ground anyway. No hegemon has ever given up power lightly. That part of the road is yours, US and EU voters. You may have to fill up the streets like you’ve never seen. The rest, the majority, of the world will be waiting to see if you do or not. They’re prepared for either of the two options.

Gen. Mark Milley Spouts Absurdities While Col. Douglas MacGregor Tells It Like It T.I.Is...,

AmericanConservative |  Until the fighting begins, national military strategy developed in peacetime shapes thinking about warfare and its objectives. Then the fighting creates a new logic of its own. Strategy is adjusted. Objectives change. The battle for Bakhmut illustrates this point very well. 

When General Sergey Vladimirovich Surovikin, commander of Russian aerospace forces, assumed command of the Russian military in the Ukrainian theater last year, President Vladimir Putin and his senior military advisors concluded that their original assumptions about the war were wrong. Washington had proved incurably hostile to Moscow’s offers to negotiate, and the ground force Moscow had committed to compel Kiev to negotiate had proved too small.

Surovikin was given wide latitude to streamline command relationships and reorganize the theater. Most importantly, Surovikin was also given the freedom of action to implement a defensive strategy that maximized the use of stand-off attack or strike systems while Russian ground forces expanded in size and striking power. The Bakhmut “Meatgrinder” was the result. 

When it became clear that Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky and his government regarded Bakhmut as a symbol of Ukrainian resistance to Russian military power, Surovikin turned Bakhmut into the graveyard of Ukrainian military power. From the fall of 2022 onward, Surovikin exploited Zalenskiy’s obsession with Bakhmut to engage in a bloody tug-of-war for control of the city. As a result, thousands of Ukrainian soldiers died in Bakhmut and many more were wounded. 

Surovkin’s performance is reminiscent of another Russian military officer: General Aleksei Antonov. As the first deputy chief of the Soviet general staff, Surovikin was, in Western parlance, the director of strategic planning. When Stalin demanded a new summer offensive in a May 1943 meeting, Antonov, the son and grandson of imperial Russian army officers, argued for a defensive strategy. Antonov insisted that Hitler, if allowed, would inevitably attack the Soviet defenses in the Kursk salient and waste German resources doing so.

Stalin, like Hitler, believed that wars were won with offensive action, not defensive operations.

Stalin was unmoved by Soviet losses. Antonov presented his arguments for the defensive strategy in a climate of fear, knowing that contradicting Stalin could cost him his life. To the surprise of Marshals Aleksandr Vasilevsky and Georgy Zhukov, who were present at the meeting, Stalin relented and approved Antonov’s operational concept. The rest, as historians say, is history.

If President Putin and his senior military leaders wanted outside evidence for Surovikin’s strategic success in Bakhmut, a Western admission appears to provide it: Washington and her European allies seem to think that a frozen conflict—in which fighting pauses but neither side is victorious, nor does either side agree that the war is officially over—could be the most politically palatable long-term outcome for NATO. In other words, Zelensky’s supporters no longer believe in the myth of Ukrainian victory.

The question on everyone’s mind is, what’s next? 

In Washington, conventional wisdom dictates that Ukrainian forces launch a counteroffensive to retake Southern Ukraine. Of course, conventional wisdom is frequently high on convention and low on wisdom. On the assumption that Ukraine’s black earth will dry sufficiently to support ground maneuver forces before mid-June, Ukrainian forces will strike Russian defenses on multiple axes and win back control of Southern Ukraine in late May or June. Roughly 30,000 Ukrainian soldiers training in Great Britain, Germany, and other NATO member states are expected to return to Ukraine and provide the foundation for the Ukrainian counterattack force.

General Valery Gerasimov, who now commands the Russian forces in the Ukrainian theater, knows what to expect, and he is undoubtedly preparing for the Ukrainian offensive. The partial mobilization of Russian forces means that Russian ground forces are now much larger than they have been since the mid-1980s. 

Given the paucity of ammunition available to adequately supply one operational axis, it seems unlikely that a Ukrainian offensive involving two or more axes could succeed in penetrating Russian defenses. Persistent overhead surveillance makes it nearly impossible for Ukrainian forces to move through the twenty- to twenty-five-kilometer security zone and close with Russian forces before Ukrainian formations take significant losses. 

Once Ukraine’s offensive resources are exhausted Russia will likely take the offense. There is no incentive to delay Russian offensive operations. As Ukrainian forces repeatedly demonstrate, paralysis is always temporary. Infrastructure and equipment are repaired. Manpower is conscripted to rebuild destroyed formations. If Russia is to achieve its aim of demilitarizing Ukraine, Gerasimov surely knows he must still close with and complete the destruction of the Ukrainian ground forces that remain. 

Why not spare the people of Ukraine further bloodletting and negotiate with Moscow for peace while Ukraine still possesses an army? Unfortunately, to be effective, diplomacy requires mutual respect, and Washington’s effusive hatred for Russia makes diplomacy impossible. That hatred is rivaled only by the arrogance of much of the ruling class, who denigrate Russian military power largely because U.S. forces have been lucky enough to avoid conflict with a major power since the Korean War. More sober-minded leaders in Washington, Paris, Berlin, and other NATO capitols should urge a different course of action.

$10 Million Kinzhal Missile Destroyed On Impact With $1.1 Billion Patriot Missile Defense System

simplicious  |  Kinzhal destroyed on contact with Patriot Launcher. Ukraine to request more Launchers.

https://simplicius76.substack.com/p/anatomy-of-mim-104-patriot-destruction?utm_source=substack&utm_medium=email

1. Russia launches drones towards Patriot system in kiev

2. Patriot radar picks up swarm of drones approaching kiev

3. Patriot is activated and launches its full set of missiles (32)

4. Patriot radar activation gives away its exact location to Russian receptors

5. Russia launches Khinzal missile at the now exposed Patriot system

6. Boom!

The total cost of the Kinzhal strike on the Patriot system. About $158,000,000 for the missiles. A radar was clearly hit. And a launcher. That is not the entire system, of course. The cost of a Patriot system is 1.1 billion. 400,000,000 for the system. 690,000,000 for the missiles. How much damage did the Kinzhals do to the "system'. Probably $200,000,000 worth (conservative guess). So... total cost close to $400,000,000 -- IN JUST 2 MINUTES. A lot of money and the US is heading for a debt crisis. As I have argued, Putin calls the war with Ukraine an SMO because he reckons that the real war is beyond -- WWIII--hybrid military, economic, cultural. The longer Ukraine keeps on fighting in America's loincloth as we say here in Japan, the weaker America becomes with its balls in the wind.

Balkanization And Neofeudalism In Competition With Globalism

unherd  |  When people think about the direction of global capitalism over the last century, they usually look upwards and outwards: to the supranational and the international level. After the Second World War, America assumed the role of conductor in the world financial orchestra it had declined after the First World War. National economies were layered over with private circuits of trade and inter-state agreements in the form of treaties, regional compacts, and shared membership in international organisations. After the Seventies, when the term “globalisation” was coined, the volume of cross-border flows of goods and money increased steadily before being turbocharged in the Nineties. The graph of global exports shows a steep climb up to the eventual slump of the Global Financial Crisis of 2008, and later the Coronavirus Crisis of 2020.

The term people often use for the period from the late Seventies to the early 21st century is “neoliberalism”. Conservative leaders such as Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher in the Eighties were followed by centre-Left leaders such as Bill Clinton, Tony Blair, and Gerhard Schröder in the Nineties, who consecrated free trade and deindustrialisation as natural, inevitable, and, despite increasing inequality, ultimately a net win for all. Today, it is common to hear all the policies of the Nineties and 2000s — from the transformation of welfare benefits and the move to precarious employment to the privatisation of state-owned assets and the enforcement of austerity — as “neoliberal”.

To some, neoliberalism means a kind of hyper-capitalism and the commodification of every last aspect of existence. To others, it is a package of policies that involves deep scepticism of states but is still committed to using states to safeguard capitalism against threats — often from democracy itself.

The term neoliberalism itself was coined as self-description by a group of intellectuals in the Thirties who reconvened after the Second World War in the Mont Pelerin Society established by Friedrich Hayek, Milton Friedman, and others. “A voluntary community of individuals who share a dedication to the principles of a free society,” according to the Encyclopaedia of Libertarianism, the MPS meets regularly for the exchange of papers-in-progress and response to current events. Its membership includes eight winners of the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economics including Hayek and Friedman alongside George Stigler, Gary Becker, James M. Buchanan, Maurice Allais, Ronald Coase, and Vernon Smith.

What is fascinating to observe is that even as many commentators saw neoliberalism as triumphant, neoliberals themselves sang a different tune. On paper, it appeared that battles had been won. At first, free-market intellectuals responded to the fall of the Berlin Wall by putting up busts of Mises and Hayek in libraries and public squares across Eastern Europe, as the region bathed in what the National Review called a “neoliberal zeitgeist” in 1990. But victory proved illusory.

Very quickly, neoliberals concluded that the supranational institutions which had once looked promising were socialist Trojan Horses. “Socialism was dead but Leviathan lived on,” as MPS president James Buchanan put it in 1990. Communism had changed shades from red to green. “It is fitting that the MPS, the world’s leading group of free market scholars, was meeting the week that communism collapsed in the Soviet Union,” the Wall Street Journal reported in 1991. But those gathered saw that as “Communism exits history’s stage, the main threat to liberty may come from a utopian environmental movement that, like socialism, views the welfare of human beings as subordinate to ‘higher’ values”.

Interviewed by Peter Brimelow in 1992, Milton Friedman expressed a similar sentiment. Asked about the Cold War’s end, he responded:

“Look at the reaction in the US to the collapse of the Berlin Wall… There weren’t any summit meetings in Washington about how to cut down the size of government. What was there a summit meeting about? How to increase government spending. What was the supposedly Right-wing President, Mr Bush, doing? Presiding over enormous increases in paternalism — the Clean Air Act and the Americans with Disabilities Act, the so-called Civil Rights quota bill.”

At the first meeting of the Mont Pelerin Society after the wall’s fall, the president, Italian economist Antonio Martino, hit similar notes when he announced: “While socialism is dead, statism is not.” The three biggest threats he saw were environmentalism, continued demands for state spending, and the European Community. The comedown was intense. At a meeting of the Cato Institute in Moscow in 1990, ice sculptures of hammers and sickles dissolved into puddles as Paul Craig Roberts, the author of a book on the end of communism called Meltdown, beamed for the camera. Just a few years later, Roberts warned of an “alien future” in which “whites are turning over their country to Third World immigrants” and will soon have to worry about being targets of “ethnic genocide”. Crack-up capitalists fed on fear of what they saw as the “mutated” socialism of environmentalism and “alienism”.

In the Nineties and beyond, neoliberals began to focus ever more on the vision of decentralisation, dissolution, and even disintegration. Polities must become smaller. Fragmentation was the new frontier of liberty. When the map shattered with the end of the Soviet Union and Yugoslavia, they thought: let it shatter more. In 1990, MPS president Becker wrote that “small fry nations” were entirely viable and perhaps even preferable as they were more dependent on the world market and thus driven to more adjustment. The immediate context he was responding to was campaigns for secession in Quebec from Canada, provinces from Spain and Ethiopia and Lithuania from the Soviet Union.

 

 

You Already Know Three Times All The Oceans Are Locked In The Mantle...,

earth  |  Scientists from the University of Alabama have discovered a dense layer of ocean floor material that covers the boundary between the Earth’s core and mantle, according to a study published in the journal Science Advances. 

This layer of ancient ocean floor was likely subducted underground as the Earth’s plates shifted, making it denser than the rest of the deep mantle, and it slows seismic waves reverberating beneath the surface. This ultra-low velocity zone (ULVZ) was previously seen only in isolated patches but has now been found to exist across a large region.

“Seismic investigations, such as ours, provide the highest resolution imaging of the interior structure of our planet, and we are finding that this structure is vastly more complicated than once thought,” said study lead author Dr. Samantha Hansen. “Our research provides important connections between shallow and deep Earth structure and the overall processes driving our planet.”

The layer is only tens of kilometers thick, compared to the thickness of the Earth’s dominant layers. This thin layer was detected through high-resolution imaging of seismic signals, which were used to map a variable layer of material across the study region. The properties of the anomalous core-mantle boundary coating include strong wave speed reductions, leading to the name of ultra-low velocity zone.

“Analyzing 1000’s of seismic recordings from Antarctica, our high-definition imaging method found thin anomalous zones of material at the CMB everywhere we probed.” said study co-author Dr. Edward Garnero, a geophysicist at Arizona State University who co-led the research. “The material’s thickness varies from a few kilometers to 10’s of kilometers. This suggests we are seeing mountains on the core, in some places up to 5 times taller than Mt. Everest.”

These underground “mountains” are thought to be former oceanic seafloors that have sunk to the core-mantle boundary. They may play an important role in how heat escapes from the core, which powers the magnetic field. Additionally, material from the ancient ocean floors can also become entrained in mantle plumes or hot spots, which travel back to the surface through volcanic eruptions.

The discovery of this layer provides important insights into the structure and processes of our planet, and it underscores the importance of continued exploration and study of the Earth’s interior. 

“This is a really exciting result, and it provides a critical piece of information for understanding how the Earth works,” said Dr. Garnero. “It’s fascinating to think that we can learn so much about our planet just by listening to the echoes of earthquakes.”

The core-mantle boundary, located approximately 2,000 miles below Earth’s surface, is coated with an ultra-low velocity zone (ULVZ) that ranges from a few kilometers to tens of kilometers thick. This coating was discovered through a seismic network that collected data over three years during four trips to Antarctica.

The team, which included students and researchers from various countries, used 15 stations in the network buried in Antarctica that used seismic waves created by earthquakes from around the world to create an image of the Earth’s interior. The technique is similar to a medical scan of the body. The team was able to probe a large portion of the southern hemisphere in high resolution for the first time using this method.

“We found thin anomalous zones of material at the CMB (core-mantle boundary) everywhere we probed,” said Dr. Garnero. “The material’s thickness varies from a few kilometers to tens of kilometers. This suggests we are seeing mountains on the core, in some places up to 5 times taller than Mt. Everest.”

The ULVZs are thought to be former oceanic seafloors that sank to the core-mantle boundary. Oceanic material is carried into the interior of the planet where two tectonic plates meet and one dives beneath the other, known as subduction zones. 

Accumulations of subducted oceanic material collect along the core-mantle boundary and are pushed by the slowly flowing rock in the mantle over geologic time. The distribution and variability of such material explains the range of observed ULVZ properties.

The ULVZs are comparable to mountains along the core-mantle boundary, with heights ranging from less than about 3 miles to more than 25 miles. The team believes that these underground “mountains” may play an important role in how heat escapes from the core, the portion of the planet that powers the magnetic field. Material from the ancient ocean floors can also become entrained in mantle plumes, or hot spots, that travel back to the surface through volcanic eruptions.

The discovery of the ULVZs and their potential implications for Earth’s heat and magnetic fields provides new insights into the planet’s inner workings, and underscores the importance of continued research in this field.

 

Disney And The 1964 New York World's Fair

medium  |  Amidst the Cold War, the United States of America continued to thrive off industrial capitalism and consumerism as a way of embodying what America represented — freedom, power, pride and identity. It was during this era that universal exhibitions in the U.S. were used to showcase such themes and continue showing the world how dominate they were, and how much they had achieved thus far in the twentieth century. Corporate companies were the main powerhouses at the world’s fairs and none other shined than WED Enterprises, formed by Walt Disney during the 1964 New York World’s Fair. Influenced by the ideals and values of world’s fairs, Walt visualized a concept ahead of its time — EPCOT.

World’s fairs have always been a site designed to showcase the achievements and technological advancements of nations. The 1964 World’s Fair held at Flushing Meadows Park in Queens, New York focused on showcasing mid-twentieth century American culture and technology, to promote “Peace through Understanding” during the Cold War and Space Age. With the help of over forty-five companies to create exhibitions and attractions, the fair acted as a grand consumer show featuring numerous of products produced in America for uses of transportation, living and consumer electronic needs that would never be repeated at future world’s fairs in America. Among these products and inventions included videoconferencing, the Ford Mustang, push-button telephones and most importantly Disney audio-animatronics — a brand-new state of the art technology that was tested by Walt and later incorporated into his theme parks. Walt’s involvement with the fair began when city planner and fair organizer Robert Moses enlisted him, architect Philip Johnson, artist Donald De Lue and engineers from around the world to mastermind the world’s fair — resulting in a museum-theme-park-carnival monstrosity that rivaled any attraction on the planet. Shortly before the opening of the fair, Walt analyzed the history of fairs through animated depictions. He believed that the fairs originated as “sites of trade and commerce” and would later develop as stages of “talent and art”, before ultimately becoming a “cultured and industrialized monolith of growth and progress.”

“Disney had a huge footprint at the world’s fair, which sprawled over the same square mile in Flushing Meadows as its 1939–1940 predecessor, which also tried to predict the future,” says journalist Lou Lumenick in his New York Post article Tomorrowland’, Disney and their links to the 1964–65 World’s Fair. At the 1939 New York World’s Fair, General Motors sponsored an exhibition entitled Futurama, in which guests would ride a vehicle on a conveyour system to view a scale model of what roadways and cities would look like twenty years into the future. Inspired by the attraction, Walt created two pavilions at the 1965 fair — Progressland and the Ford Pavilion. Sponsored by the General Electric Company, the Progressland Pavilion housed the exhibition The Carousel of Progress in a rotating theater with four stages that showed the lifestyle of an American family household during the 1890s, 1920s, 1950s and sometime in the distant future. The Ford Motors Pavilion housed the exhibition Ford’s Magic Skyway in which guests rode fifty actual Ford vehicles, including the brand-new Ford Mustang, that would pass slowly along an upper level track. The ride moved the audience through scenes featuring life-sized audio-animatronic dinosaurs, before passing through a futuristic city and finally arriving back in the present.

While his role was mainly to create exhibitions and attractions through corporation sponsorships, Walt took matters into his own hands to utilize the fair as an experiment to test new technology for the already existing Disneyland in Anaheim, California, as well as drawing up a prototype of his vision for the city of tomorrow — EPCOT (Experimental Prototype Community of Tomorrow). Walt intended to create a utopian city of the future based upon the ideals and values of technology, transportation and community. In a twenty-five minute film shot shortly before his death, he described EPCOT as a city “taking its cues from the new ideas and new technologies that are now emerging from the creative centers of American industry.” Walt hoped that EPCOT would become a “community of tomorrow that will never be completed but will always be introducing and testing, and demonstrating new materials and new systems.” He concluded by saying, “EPCOT will always be a showcase to the world of the ingenuity and imagination of American free enterprise.” His original vision for EPCOT included a model community that would be home to twenty thousand residents and would be shaped in the form of a circle, with different businesses and commercial areas in the center. Around it would be community buildings, schools and recreational complexes, while residential neighborhoods would be on the outskirts of the perimeter. At the time, Walt was fueled by his fascination for transportation and spent countless of time and energy figuring out how to move people from place to place. After unveiling the first monorail on the Western Hemisphere at Disneyland in 1959, Walt utilized the technology from Fords Magic Skyway for the future PeopleMover that opened at Disneyland in 1967. But why was Disney so keen on bringing the concept of EPCOT to life and why did the world’s fair have such an impact?

 

Social Network Analysis And Soft Deterrence Worked In Kansas City

UMKC  |  The approach calls for conducting an audit of violent criminals, mapping their connections and using those connections to encourage criminals to police themselves. If a crime is committed, the police can then go after the perpetrator’s entire group – nabbing members for even petty offenses.

“The fact of the matter is, the group members we’re talking about aren’t afraid of police – and they’re not too scared of the prospect of getting arrested. Going to jail is just part of doing business,” Novak said. “But they’re scared to death of people in their social network, like friends, cousins, etc. People in their social network are more effective at regulating their behavior than the criminal justice system.”

In 2013 Fox began helping police conduct social network audits of the area’s criminals. Forty groups or gangs were identified and mapped so the nuances of their leaders and connections to each other could be easily understood.

“Violence spreads much like disease in the network,” Fox said.

As part of focused deterrence, law enforcement reach out to key people in criminal groups through quarterly meetings to get out the message that violence will not be tolerated. If one person in the group missteps, they are told, everyone in the group will be targeted for everything from parole violations to parking tickets to unpaid child support.

“The law enforcement representatives will say, ‘The next group to commit a homicide, we’re going to focus all our law enforcement on all of your group,’ ” Novak said.

The effort also involves offering group members access to social services to help them escape a life of crime.

Novak and Fox are embedded researchers in the project, which is very different from the neutral, observe-only role academics usually take. In this case, they are purposely involved in policy and decision making, such as participating in planning meetings and conducting training with criminal justice officials. This model of “action research” is endorsed and recommended by the US Department of Justice.

The result for the researchers is a first-hand grasp of the process as it unfolds, which they hope provides insight for their research.

“It may be the wave of the future for criminologists,” Novak said.

Focused deterrence has helped reduce crime in Boston, Cincinnati, Indianapolis and High Point, N.C. Novak and Fox say it’s too early to tell whether declining violent crime numbers in Kansas City so far this year can be credited with its implementation here.

But Joseph McHale, a captain in the Kansas City Police Department who manages the NoVA program in that department, said he’s certain a 37 percent reduction in homicides is directly connected to NoVA’s efforts and its work with UMKC.

“We are getting ahead of violence and using intelligence in a way that we never have before,” McHale said.

In the past, a lot of crime fighting has been based on tradition or gut. But through this project, the UMKC professors are helping the area’s top crime fighters – along with the street-level cops – understand the importance of valid and reliable data in making decisions.

Mike Mansur, a spokesman for the Jackson County Prosecutor’s office, said the result will be a long-term change.

“We don’t look at it as a project or a specific effort,” he said. “It’s more a shift in the way law enforcement is approaching the problem of violence.”

Why Are The Feds Coming After The Harmless Ururu LARPs?

thenation  |  Last week, nine months after the raid, the Department of Justice unsealed new grand jury indictments against Yeshitela, as well as Jesse Nevel, Penny Hess, and Gazi Kodzo—national chair of the Uhuru Solidarity Movement, chair of the African People’s Solidarity Committee, and cofounder of the Black Hammer Party, respectively—naming them as co-conspirators in an alleged plot to promote the political interests of Russia within the United States.

The FBI surveilled these Black liberation activists and their organizations for years before finally securing a search warrant for their personal residences and other locations connected to the African People’s Socialist Party and the International People’s Democratic Uhuru Movement. The FBI’s search warrants were based on a federal grand jury indictment, which charged an unrelated individual—Aleksandr Viktorovich Ionov—with violations relating to a little-known statute called the Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA).

The superseding indictment charges Yeshitela, Nevel, and Hess with conspiring to commit an offense against the United States—specifically, “to act as an agent of a foreign government and foreign officials…without prior notification to the Attorney General” as required by law under FARA. The specific acts they are accused of committing include attending an international conference in Russia, publishing a “Petition to the United Nations on the Crime of Genocide Against African People in the United States of America” after encouragement from Ionov, accepting financial support from Ionov for a speaking tour in the United States to discuss reparations, permitting Ionov to speak during an African People’s Socialist Party event, and publishing and speaking in support of the Russian government. It is worth remembering that African American activists have charged the United States with genocide since at least 1951, when the Civil Rights Congress submitted a similar petition to the United Nations, titled “We Charge Genocide: The Crime of Government Against the Negro People.”

Despite the sensational nature of the charges and the Department of Justice’s presentation of the case, we should be clear: The indictments against the defendants do not allege any intent to commit violent acts, nor espionage, fraud, nor even election interference. Because of FARA’s extraordinary reach, the Department of Justice has been able to selectively invoke foreign agent accusations as a way to silence criticisms of the United States’ role in international politics.

A Dangerous Smokescreen for Political Repression

The Department of Justice is likely to invoke FARA and foreign agent regulations more and more often in the next few years, especially to target anti-war activists and movements critical of United States foreign policy. Already in 2022, the DOJ signaled its intention to broaden the scope of FARA to cover a wider range of activities and less direct agent-principal relationships. It is now more imperative than ever that progressive activists develop a nuanced understanding of the cynical ways that FARA can been deployed to undermine international solidarity and grassroots organizing.

The federal charges against Yeshitela, Hess, and Nevel also come on the heels of a drastic increase in FBI attention to Black organizers. Since 2017, the FBI has specifically targeted Black organizers against police brutality—whom it has labeled “Black Identity Extremists” or, more recently, “Racially Motivated Violent Extremists”—under Operation “Iron Fist.”

Indeed, FBI Director Christopher Wray stated in August 2022 that “the top domestic terrorism threat we face continues to be from [domestic violent extremists] we characterize as racially or ethnically motivated violent extremists.” As of 2020, this category of alleged “extremists” included “actors who use retaliation and retribution for wrongdoings against African Americans by those they view as oppressors, including law enforcement of all races, whites, government personnel, and others they view as participants in an unjust institutionalized system,” according to the FBI’s threat guidance document.

Given this political context of increased attention to Black liberation organizers, it is safe to predict that foreign agent accusations will also be used more frequently in the coming years as a tool for spying on, intimidating, and criminalizing Black social justice organizations and Black internationalism, as well as other social movements that critique the United States’ actions abroad.

In the face of this targeted political repression, progressive forces should resist the cynical, politicized use of “foreign agent” accusations as a dog whistle to chill and criminalize international solidarity, and should directly oppose the attendant FBI raids and prosecutions when and where they occur. The chilling effect caused by foreign agent accusations is an incredibly powerful deterrent against protected First Amendment activity, and such accusations could lead to financial ruin, as was the case for Du Bois.

We must demand that the FBI immediately cease targeting the Black liberation struggle and other struggles for social justice before its intimidation tactics cause even further damage.