On 19 April 2024, the Philippines Supreme Court issued a cease-and-desist order on the commercial propagation of genetically modified (GM) Golden Rice and GM eggplant in the country.
The Stop Golden Rice Network says that the court decision is a victory for farmers and consumers everywhere as the decision goes beyond Golden Rice and insecticidal eggplant and covers “any application for contained use, field testing, direct use as food or feed or processing, commercial propagation, and importation of GMOs.”
The court recognised that government agencies and other proponents of GM Golden Rice and GM eggplant “failed to submit proof of safety and compliance with all legal requirements.” The order remains indefinite until GMO proponents can fulfil all the mandated steps and provide concrete evidence that these GMOs are indeed safe.
A network of farmers, consumers and civil society organisations, Stop Golden Rice emphasises the need to address hunger and malnutrition through securing small farmers’ control over resources such as seed, appropriate technologies, water and land.
The campaign group says:
“We believe that GM crops are primarily pushed by global monopoly capitalists in food and agriculture… there is already irrevocable evidence of the failure of GM crops and how it has contributed to further indebtedness, crop failures, hunger and loss of biodiversity.”
It states that the court’s decision shows that ordinary people can prevail in the face of corporate power.
The Story of Golden Rice
Vitamin A deficiency is a problem in many poor countries in the Global South and leaves millions at high risk of infection, diseases and other maladies, such as blindness.
The agritech industry has long argued that Golden Rice is a practical way to provide poor farmers in remote areas with a subsistence crop capable of adding much-needed vitamin A to local diets. Lobbyists say that Golden Rice, developed with funding from the Rockefeller Foundation, could help save the lives of around 670,000 children who die each year from Vitamin A deficiency and another 350,000 who go blind.
Such claims, however, are based more on spin than reality, and, over the years, the interests behind Golden Rice have wasted no time in attacking anyone who questioned it.
As Britain’s Environment Secretary in 2013, the now disgraced Owen Paterson claimed that opponents of GM were “casting a dark shadow over attempts to feed the world”. He called for the rapid roll-out of vitamin A-enhanced rice to help prevent the cause of up to a third of the world’s child deaths. He claimed:
“It’s just disgusting that little children are allowed to go blind and die because of a hang-up by a small number of people about this technology. I feel really strongly about it. I think what they do is absolutely wicked.”
On Twitter, The Observer’s Nick Cohen chimed in with his support by tweeting:
“There is no greater example of ignorant Western privilege causing needless misery than the campaign against genetically modified golden rice.”
The rhetoric took the well-worn cynically devised PR line that anti-GM activists and environmentalists are little more than privileged, affluent people residing in rich countries and are denying the poor the supposed benefits of GM crops.
Despite these smears and emotional blackmail, in a 2016 article in the journal Agriculture & Human Values Glenn Stone and Dominic Glover found little evidence that activists were to blame for Golden Rice’s unfulfilled promises.
Researchers still had problems developing beta carotene-enriched strains that yield as well as non-GM strains already being grown by farmers. It was questionable whether the beta carotene in Golden Rice could even be converted to vitamin A in the bodies of badly undernourished children. There had also been little research on how well the beta carotene in Golden Rice would hold up when stored for long periods between harvest seasons or when cooked using traditional methods common in remote rural locations.
In the meantime, Glenn Stone noted that that, as the development of Golden Rice crept along, the Philippines had managed to slash the incidence of Vitamin A deficiency by non-GM methods.
So, whose interests were really being served in the push for Golden Rice?
In 2011, Marcia Ishii-Eiteman, a senior scientist with a background in insect ecology and pest management, answered this question:
“An elite, so-called Humanitarian Board where Syngenta sits – along with the inventors of Golden Rice, Rockefeller Foundation, USAID and public relations and marketing experts, among a handful of others. Not a single farmer, indigenous person or even an ecologist or sociologist to assess the huge political, social and ecological implications of this massive experiment. And the leader of IRRI’s Golden Rice project is none other than Gerald Barry, previously Director of Research at Monsanto.”
Sarojeni V Rengam, executive director of Pesticide Action Network Asia and the Pacific, called on the donors and scientists involved to wake up and do the right thing:
“Golden Rice is really a ‘Trojan horse’; a public relations stunt pulled by the agribusiness corporations to garner acceptance of genetically engineered (GE) crops and food… money and efforts would be better spent on restoring natural and agricultural biodiversity rather than destroying it by promoting monoculture plantations and GE food crops.”
To tackle disease, malnutrition and poverty, you have to first understand the underlying causes – or indeed want to understand them.
Renowned academicWalden Bello notes that the complex of policies that pushed the Philippines into an economic quagmire over the past few decades is due to ‘structural adjustment’ that included the restructuring of agriculture and export-oriented production.
And that restructuring of the agrarian economy is something touched on by Claire Robinson of GMWatch who notes that leafy green vegetables used to be grown in backyards as well as in rice (paddy) fields on the banks between the flooded ditches in which the rice grew.
Ditches also contained fish, which ate pests. People thus had access to rice, green leafy veg and fish – a balanced diet that gave them a healthy mix of nutrients, including plenty of beta-carotene.
But indigenous crops and farming systems have been replaced by monocultures dependent on chemical inputs. Green leafy veg were killed off with pesticides, artificial fertilisers were introduced, and the fish could not live in the resulting chemically contaminated water. Moreover, decreased access to land meant that many people no longer had backyards containing leafy green veg.
Blindness in developing countries could have been eradicated years ago if only the money, research and publicity put into Golden Rice over the last 20 years had gone into proven ways of addressing Vitamin A deficiency. However, instead of pursuing genuine solutions, what we have seen is pro-GM spin in an attempt to close down debate.
Technology and Development
If the discussion so far tells us anything, it is that technology is not neutral. It is developed and promoted by people who want to cement their control over a sector and stand to financially gain from its rollout.
All too often, politicians, corporations and the media equate new technology with ‘progress’. And those who question it, as we see with GMOs, are called Luddites or anti-science in order to prevent proper debate over the social, economic and ethical concerns of rolling out a given technology.
Take the Green Revolution, for instance. There was nothing progressive, inevitable or neutral about its seed, chemical and related infrastructure technology.
Despite it being rolled out under the banner of ‘progress’, it underperformed, was exploitative and has had devastating social, ecological and environmental impacts (see the writings of Prof. Glenn Stone, Vandana Shiva and Bhaskar Save). It served US geopolitical, financial and agribusiness interests and prioritised urban-industrial expansion at the expense of rural communities and a more diverse, healthy and nutrient-sufficient agriculture.
But the Green Revolution became integral to the ‘development’ agenda.
In a recent article on the Winter Oak website, Paul Cudenec says that ‘development’:
“… is the destruction of nature, now seen as a mere resource to be used for development or as an empty undeveloped space in which development could, should and, ultimately, must take place. It is the destruction of natural human communities, whose self-sufficiency gets in the way of the advance of development, and of authentic human culture and traditional values, which are incompatible with the dogma and domination of development.”
Cudenec argues that those behind ‘development’ have been destroying everything of real value in our natural world and our human societies in the pursuit of personal wealth and power. Moreover, they have concealed this crime behind all the positive-sounding rhetoric associated with development on every level.
Nowhere is this more apparent than in India.
The World Bank, the World Trade Organization, global agribusiness and financial capital are working to corporatise India’s agriculture sector. This ‘structural adjustment’ policy and process involves displacing the current food production system with contract farming and an industrial model of agriculture and food retail that serves the above interests.
The plan is to displace the peasantry, create a land market and amalgamate landholdings to form larger farms that are more suited to international land investors and export-oriented industrial farming.
The demand is that India sacrifice its farmers and its own food security for the benefit of a handful of billionaires. This is all passed off as ‘development’.
It involves the state facilitating the enrichment of a wealthy elite and privileging a certain model of social and economic development based on urban sprawl, centralised power and dependency on global finance, corporations, markets and supply chains. All legitimised under the banners of innovation, technological progress and ‘development’.
There are other pathways that humanity can take. Anthropologist Felix Padel and researcher Malvika Gupta offer some insights (based on their work with India’s Adivasi communities) into what the solutions or alternatives to ‘development’ might look like:
“Democracy as consensus politics rather than the Western model of liberal democracy that perpetuates division and corruption behind the scenes; exchange labour rather than the ruthless, anti-life logic of ‘the market’; law as reconciliation rather than judgements that depend on exorbitant legal fees and divide people into winners and losers… and learning as something to be shared, not competed over.”
However, we see more ‘development’ being proposed: more rural population displacement and human dislocation, more mining, port and other big infrastructure developments and the further entrenchment of corporate interests and their projects.
While many have a different vision for the future, self-interest and consumerism underpinned by economic neoliberal dogma continue to seduce the masses into accepting the prevailing ‘development’ agenda.
Corporate industrial agriculture is integral to that agenda. A model that took hold half a century ago in the Western nations and which has resulted in nutrient-deficient food, narrower diets, the massive use of agrochemicals, food contaminated by hormones, steroids, antibiotics and a wide range of chemical additives, the eradication of many smallholder farmers, spiralling rates of ill health, degraded soil and contaminated and depleted water supplies.
That’s ‘progress’? Well, agribusiness interests aside, perhaps so for the many private health clinics that have sprung up in India in recent years.
The introduction of GMOs represents a further entrenchment of the prevailing ‘development’ agenda.
The decision by the Philippines Supreme Court called out government agencies and those behind the Golden Rice agenda for key failures. This is important for India, whose Supreme Court is about to decide on whether to sanction the commercial cultivation of GM mustard. It would be India’s first GM food crop (of which there are many more in the pipeline).
Will India’s Supreme Court come down on the side of reason and stop GM mustard on the basis of there being no need for GMOs in Indian agriculture and the well-documented fraud and regulatory delinquency that has surrounded this issue for many years?
Renowned author Colin Todhunter specialises in development, food and agriculture. He is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG).
The spectacle, if it did not say it all, said much of it.
Planes dropping humanitarian aid to a starving, famine-threatened populace of Gaza (the United Nations warns that 576,000 are “one step from famine”), with parachuted packages veering off course, some falling into the sea.
Cargo also coming into Israel, with bullets, weaponry and other ordnance to kill those in Gaza on the inflated premise of self-defence. Be it aid or bullets, Washington is the smorgasbord supplier, ensuring that both victims and oppressors are furnished from its vast commissary.
This jarring picture, discordant and hopelessly at odds, is increasingly running down the low stocks of credibility US diplomats have in either the Israel-Hamas conflict, or much else in Middle Eastern politics. Comments such as these from US Vice President Kamala Harris from March 3, made at Selma in Alabama, illustrate the problem:
“As I have said many times, too many innocent Palestinians have been killed. And just a few days ago, we saw hungry, desperate people approach aid trucks, simply trying to secure food for their families after weeks of nearly no aid reaching Northern Gaza. And they were met with gunfire and chaos.”
Harris goes on to speak of broken hearts for the victims, for the innocents, for those “suffering from what is clearly a humanitarian catastrophe”. A forced, hammed up moral register is struck. “People in Gaza are starving. The conditions are inhumane. And our common humanity compels us to act.”
It was an occasion for the Vice President to mention that the US Department of Defense had “carried out its first airdrop of humanitarian assistance, and the United States will continue with these airdrops.” Further work would also be expended on getting “a new route by sea to deliver aid.”
It is only at this point that Harris introduces the lumbering elephant in the room: “And the Israeli government must do more to significantly increase the flow of aid. No excuses.” They had to “open new border crossings”, “not impose any unnecessary restrictions on the delivery of aid” and “ensure humanitarian personnel, sites, and convoys are not targeted.” Basic services had to be restored, and order promoted in the strip “so more food, water, and fuel can reach those in need.”
In remarks made at Hagerstown Regional Airport in Maryland, President Joe Bidentold reporters that he was “working with them [the Israelis] very hard. We’re going to get more – we must get more aid into Gaza. There’s no excuses. None.”
In a New Yorkerinterview, White House National Security spokesman John Kirby keeps to the same script, claiming that discussions with the Israelis “in private are frank and very forthright. I think they understand our concerns.” Kirby proceeds to fantasise, fudging the almost sneering attitude adopted by Israel towards US demands. “Even though there needs to be more aid, and even though there needs to be fewer civilian casualties, the Israelis have, in many ways, been receptive to our messages.”
The other side of this rusted coin of US policy advocates something less than human. The common humanity there is tethered to aiding the very power that is proving instrumental in creating conditions of catastrophe. The right to self-defence is reiterated as a chant, including the war goals of Israel which have artificially drawn a distinction between Hamas military and political operatives from that of the Palestinian population being eradicated.
Harris is always careful to couple any reproachful remarks about Israel with an acceptance of their stated policy: that Hamas must be eliminated. Hamas, rather than being a protean force running on the fumes of history, resentment and belief, was merely “a brutal terrorist organization that has vowed to repeat October 7th again and again until Israel is annihilated.” It had inflicted suffering on the people of Gaza and continued to hold Israeli hostages.
Whatever note of rebuke directed against the Netanyahu government, it is clear that Israel knows how far it can go. It can continue to rely on the US veto in the UN Security Council. It can dictate the extent of aid and the conditions of its delivery into Gaza, which is merely seen as succour for an enemy it is trying to crush. While alarm about shooting desperate individuals crowding aid convoys will be noted, little will come of the consternation. The very fact that the US Airforce has been brought into the program of aid delivery suggests an ignominious capitulation, a very public impotence.
Jeremy Konyndyk, former chief of the USAID’s Office of Foreign Disaster Assistance during the Obama administration gives his unflattering judgment on this point.
“When the US government has to use tactics that it otherwise used to circumvent the Soviets and Berlin and circumvent ISIS in Syria and Iraq, that should prompt some really hard questions about the state of US policy.”
In his remarks to The Independent, Konyndyk finds the airdrop method “the most expensive and least effective way to get aid to a population. We almost never did it because it is such an in-extremis tool.” Even more disturbing for him was the fact that this woefully imperfect approach was being taken to alleviate the suffering caused by an ally of the United States, one that had made “a policy choice” in not permitting “consistent humanitarian access” and the opening of border crossings.
Even as this in extremis tool is being used, US made military hardware continues to be used at will by the Israel Defence Forces. The point was not missed on Vermont Democratic Senator Peter Welch:
“We have a situation where the US is airdropping aid on day one, and Israel is dropping bombs on day two. And the American taxpayer is paying for the aid and the bombs.”
The chroniclers of history can surely only jot down with grim irony instances where desperate, hunger-crazed Palestinians scrounging for US aid are shot by made-in-USA ammunition.
Dr. Binoy Kampmark was a Commonwealth Scholar at Selwyn College, Cambridge. He currently lectures at RMIT University. He is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG)
On October 7, 2023, Hamas launched “Operation Al-Aqsa Storm.” which wasled by its Military Chief Mohammed Deif. On that same day, Netanyahu confirmed a so-called “State of Readiness For War”. Israel has now (October 7, 2023) officially declared a new stage of its long war against the people of Palestine.
Was “Operation Al-Aqsa Storm” a “surprise attack”? Did Netanyahu and his vast military and intelligence apparatus (Mossad et al) have foreknowledge of the Hamas attack? Was it a false flag?
U.S. intelligence say they weren’t aware of an impending Hamas attack. Nonsense.
The current Netanyahu government is committed to the “Greater Israel” and the “Promised Land”, namely the biblical homeland of the Jews.
Benjamin Netanyahu is pressing ahead to formalize “Israel’s colonial project”, namely the appropriation of all Palestinian Lands.
His position defined below consists in total appropriation as well as the outright exclusion of the Palestinian people from their homeland:
“These are the basic lines of the national government headed by me: The Jewish people have an exclusive and unquestionable right to all areas of the Land of Israel. The government will promote and develop settlement in all parts of the Land of Israel — in the Galilee, the Negev, the Golan, Judea and Samaria.” (January 2023)
The Nakba
Commemoration on May 13, 2023: The Nakba. 75 years ago on May 13, 1948. The Palestinian Catastrophe prevails. In a 2018 report, the United Nations stated that Gaza had become “unliveable”:
With an economy in free fall, 70 per cent youth unemployment, widely contaminated drinking water and a collapsed health care system, Gaza has become “unliveable”,[in 2018] according to the Special Rapporteur on human rights in the Palestinian Territories”
The above UN assessment dates back to 2018. Under Netanyahu, Israel is currently proceeding with the plan to annex large chunks of Palestinian territory “while keeping the Palestinian inhabitants in conditions of severe deprivation and isolation.“
Creating conditions of extreme poverty and economic collapse constitute the means for triggering the expulsion and exodus of Palestinians from their homeland. It is part of the process of annexation.
“If the manoeuvre is successful, Israel will end up with all of the territories it conquered during the 1967 war, including all of the Golan Heights and Jerusalem and most of the Palestinian Territories, including the best sources of water and agricultural land.
The West Bank will find itself in the same situation as the Gaza strip, cut off from the outside world and surrounded by hostile Israeli military forces and Israeli settlements.” (South Front)
Human rights ended at the Palestinian border. The bought and paid for US Congress couldn’t genuflect enough:
“On July 19, 2023 the US Congress convened a special joint session for Israeli President Isaac Herzog. Both Democrats and Republicans bobbed up and down to applaud him 29 times.”
“Watching Palestine Disappear”, Dr. Paul Craig Roberts, September 12, 2023
“Greater Israel would create a number of proxy states. It would include parts of Lebanon, Jordan, Syria, the Sinai, as well as parts of Iraq and Saudi Arabia.”
“Palestine Is Gone! Gone! راحت فلسطين . The Palestinian plight is savagely painful and the pain is compounded by the bafflingly off-hand dismissal and erasure by Western powers of that pain.” Rima Najjar, Global Research, June, 7, 2020
Michel Chossudovsky, June 10, 2021, July 19, 2023, September 19, 2023, October 8, 2023
Introductory Text on “The Greater Israel Project”
by Michel Chossudovsky
The following document pertaining to the formation of “Greater Israel” constitutes the cornerstone of powerful Zionist factions within the current Netanyahu government, the Likud party, as well as within the Israeli military and intelligence establishment.
President Donald Trump had confirmed in January 2017 his support of Israel’s illegal settlements (including his opposition to UN Security Council Resolution 2334, pertaining to the illegality of the Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank). The Trump administration expressed its recognition of Israeli sovereignty over the Golan Heights. And now the entire West Bank is being annexed to Israel.
Under the Biden administration, despite rhetorical shifts in the political narrative, Washington remains supportive of Israel plans to annex the entire Jordan River valley as well the illegal settlements in the West Bank.
Bear in mind: The Greater Israel design is not strictly a Zionist Project for the Middle East, it is an integral part of US foreign policy, its strategic objective is to extend US hegemony as well as fracture and balkanize the Middle East.
In this regard, Washington’s strategy consists in destabilizing and weakening regional economic powers in the Middle East including Turkey and Iran. This policy –which is consistent with the Greater Israel– is accompanied by a process of political fragmentation.
Since the Gulf war (1991), the Pentagon has contemplated the creation of a “Free Kurdistan” which would include the annexation of parts of Iraq, Syria and Iran as well as Turkey
“The New Middle East”: Unofficial US Military Academy Map by Lt. Col. Ralph Peters
According to the founding father of Zionism Theodore Herzl, “the area of the Jewish State stretches: “From the Brook of Egypt to the Euphrates.” According to Rabbi Fischmann, “The Promised Land extends from the River of Egypt up to the Euphrates, it includes parts of Syria and Lebanon.”
When viewed in the current context, including the siege on Gaza, the Zionist Plan for the Middle East bears an intimate relationship to the 2003 invasion of Iraq, the 2006 war on Lebanon, the 2011 war on Libya, the ongoing wars on Syria, Iraq and Yemen, not to mention the political crisis in Saudi Arabia.
The “Greater Israel” project consists in weakening and eventually fracturing neighboring Arab states as part of a US-Israeli expansionist project, with the support of NATO and Saudi Arabia. In this regard, the Saudi-Israeli rapprochement is from Netanyahu’s viewpoint a means to expanding Israel’s spheres of influence in the Middle East as well as confronting Iran. Needless to day, the “Greater Israel” project is consistent with America’s imperial design.
“Greater Israel” consists in an area extending from the Nile Valley to the Euphrates. According to Stephen Lendman,
A near-century ago, the World Zionist Organization’s plan for a Jewish state included:
• historic Palestine;
• South Lebanon up to Sidon and the Litani River;
• Syria’s Golan Heights, Hauran Plain and Deraa; and
• control of the Hijaz Railway from Deraa to Amman, Jordan as well as the Gulf of Aqaba.
Some Zionists wanted more – land from the Nile in the West to the Euphrates in the East, comprising Palestine, Lebanon, Western Syria and Southern Turkey.”
The Zionist project has supported the Jewish settlement movement. More broadly it involves a policy of excluding Palestinians from Palestine leading to the annexation of both the West Bank and Gaza to the State of Israel.
The Project of “Greater Israel” is to create a number of proxy States, which could include parts of Lebanon, Jordan, Syria, the Sinai, as well as parts of Iraq and Saudi Arabia. (See map).
[The Yinon plan] is an Israeli strategic plan to ensure Israeli regional superiority. It insists and stipulates that Israel must reconfigure its geo-political environment through the balkanization of the surrounding Arab states into smaller and weaker states.
Israeli strategists viewed Iraq as their biggest strategic challenge from an Arab state. This is why Iraq was outlined as the centerpiece to the balkanization of the Middle East and the Arab World. In Iraq, on the basis of the concepts of the Yinon Plan, Israeli strategists have called for the division of Iraq into a Kurdish state and two Arab states, one for Shiite Muslims and the other for Sunni Muslims. The first step towards establishing this was a war between Iraq and Iran, which the Yinon Plan discusses.
The Atlantic, in 2008, and the U.S. military’s Armed Forces Journal, in 2006, both published widely circulated maps that closely followed the outline of the Yinon Plan. Aside from a divided Iraq, which the Biden Plan also calls for, the Yinon Plan calls for a divided Lebanon, Egypt, and Syria. The partitioning of Iran, Turkey, Somalia, and Pakistan also all fall into line with these views. The Yinon Plan also calls for dissolution in North Africa and forecasts it as starting from Egypt and then spilling over into Sudan, Libya, and the rest of the region.
“Greater Israel” would require the breaking up of the existing Arab states into small states.
The plan operates on two essential premises. To survive, Israel must
1) become an imperial regional power, and
2) must effect the division of the whole area into small states by the dissolution of all existing Arab states.
Small here will depend on the ethnic or sectarian composition of each state. Consequently, the Zionist hope is that sectarian-based states become Israel’s satellites and, ironically, its source of moral legitimation… This is not a new idea, nor does it surface for the first time in Zionist strategic thinking. Indeed, fragmenting all Arab states into smaller units has been a recurrent theme.” (Yinon Plan, see below)
Viewed in this context, the US-NATO led wars on Syria and Iraq are part of the process of Israeli territorial expansion.
In this regard, the defeat of US sponsored terrorists (ISIS, Al Nusra) by Syrian Forces with the support of Russia, Iran and Hezbollah constitute a significant setback for Israel.
Michel Chossudovsky, Global Research, September 06, 2015, updated September 13, 2019
The Zionist Plan for the Middle East
Translated and edited by Israel Shahak
The Israel of Theodore Herzl (1904) and of Rabbi Fischmann (1947)
In his Complete Diaries, Vol. II. p. 711, Theodore Herzl, the founder of Zionism, says that the area of the Jewish State stretches: “From the Brook of Egypt to the Euphrates.”
Rabbi Fischmann, member of the Jewish Agency for Palestine, declared in his testimony to the U.N. Special Committee of Enquiry on 9 July 1947: “The Promised Land extends from the River of Egypt up to the Euphrates, it includes parts of Syria and Lebanon.”
Oded Yinon’s
“A Strategy for Israel in the Nineteen Eighties”
Published by the
Association of Arab-American University Graduates, Inc.
Belmont, Massachusetts, 1982
Special Document No. 1 (ISBN 0-937694-56-8)
Introductory Note
by Dr. Khalil Nakhleh
The Association of Arab-American University Graduates finds it compelling to inaugurate its new publication series, Special Documents, with Oded Yinon’s article which appeared in Kivunim (Directions), the journal of the Department of Information of the World Zionist Organization. Oded Yinon is an Israeli journalist and was formerly attached to the Foreign Ministry of Israel. To our knowledge, this document is the most explicit, detailed and unambiguous statement to date of the Zionist strategy in the Middle East. Furthermore, it stands as an accurate representation of the “vision” for the entire Middle East of the presently ruling Zionist regime of Begin, Sharon and Eitan. Its importance, hence, lies not in its historical value but in the nightmare which it presents.
The plan operates on two essential premises. To survive, Israel must 1) become an imperial regional power, and 2) must effect the division of the whole area into small states by the dissolution of all existing Arab states. Small here will depend on the ethnic or sectarian composition of each state. Consequently, the Zionist hope is that sectarian-based states become Israel’s satellites and, ironically, its source of moral legitimation.
This is not a new idea, nor does it surface for the first time in Zionist strategic thinking. Indeed, fragmenting all Arab states into smaller units has been a recurrent theme. This theme has been documented on a very modest scale in the AAUG publication, Israel’s Sacred Terrorism (1980), by Livia Rokach. Based on the memoirs of Moshe Sharett, former Prime Minister of Israel, Rokach’s study documents, in convincing detail, the Zionist plan as it applies to Lebanon and as it was prepared in the mid-fifties.
The first massive Israeli invasion of Lebanon in 1978 bore this plan out to the minutest detail. The second and more barbaric and encompassing Israeli invasion of Lebanon on June 6, 1982, aims to effect certain parts of this plan which hopes to see not only Lebanon, but Syria and Jordan as well, in fragments. This ought to make mockery of Israeli public claims regarding their desire for a strong and independent Lebanese central government. More accurately, they want a Lebanese central government that sanctions their regional imperialist designs by signing a peace treaty with them. They also seek acquiescence in their designs by the Syrian, Iraqi, Jordanian and other Arab governments as well as by the Palestinian people. What they want and what they are planning for is not an Arab world, but a world of Arab fragments that is ready to succumb to Israeli hegemony. Hence, Oded Yinon in his essay, “A Strategy for Israel in the 1980’s,” talks about “far-reaching opportunities for the first time since 1967” that are created by the “very stormy situation [that] surrounds Israel.”
The Zionist policy of displacing the Palestinians from Palestine is very much an active policy, but is pursued more forcefully in times of conflict, such as in the 1947-1948 war and in the 1967 war. An appendix entitled “Israel Talks of a New Exodus” is included in this publication to demonstrate past Zionist dispersals of Palestinians from their homeland and to show, besides the main Zionist document we present, other Zionist planning for the de-Palestinization of Palestine.
It is clear from the Kivunim document, published in February, 1982, that the “far-reaching opportunities” of which Zionist strategists have been thinking are the same “opportunities” of which they are trying to convince the world and which they claim were generated by their June, 1982 invasion. It is also clear that the Palestinians were never the sole target of Zionist plans, but the priority target since their viable and independent presence as a people negates the essence of the Zionist state. Every Arab state, however, especially those with cohesive and clear nationalist directions, is a real target sooner or later.
Contrasted with the detailed and unambiguous Zionist strategy elucidated in this document, Arab and Palestinian strategy, unfortunately, suffers from ambiguity and incoherence. There is no indication that Arab strategists have internalized the Zionist plan in its full ramifications. Instead, they react with incredulity and shock whenever a new stage of it unfolds. This is apparent in Arab reaction, albeit muted, to the Israeli siege of Beirut. The sad fact is that as long as the Zionist strategy for the Middle East is not taken seriously Arab reaction to any future siege of other Arab capitals will be the same.
Khalil Nakhleh, July 23, 1982
Foreward
by Israel Shahak
The following essay represents, in my opinion, the accurate and detailed plan of the present Zionist regime (of Sharon and Eitan) for the Middle East which is based on the division of the whole area into small states, and the dissolution of all the existing Arab states. I will comment on the military aspect of this plan in a concluding note. Here I want to draw the attention of the readers to several important points:
1. The idea that all the Arab states should be broken down, by Israel, into small units, occurs again and again in Israeli strategic thinking. For example, Ze’ev Schiff, the military correspondent of Ha’aretz (and probably the most knowledgeable in Israel, on this topic) writes about the “best” that can happen for Israeli interests in Iraq: “The dissolution of Iraq into a Shi’ite state, a Sunni state and the separation of the Kurdish part” (Ha’aretz 6/2/1982). Actually, this aspect of the plan is very old.
2. The strong connection with Neo-Conservative thought in the USA is very prominent, especially in the author’s notes. But, while lip service is paid to the idea of the “defense of the West” from Soviet power, the real aim of the author, and of the present Israeli establishment is clear: To make an Imperial Israel into a world power. In other words, the aim of Sharon is to deceive the Americans after he has deceived all the rest.
3. It is obvious that much of the relevant data, both in the notes and in the text, is garbled or omitted, such as the financial help of the U.S. to Israel. Much of it is pure fantasy. But, the plan is not to be regarded as not influential, or as not capable of realization for a short time. The plan follows faithfully the geopolitical ideas current in Germany of 1890-1933, which were swallowed whole by Hitler and the Nazi movement, and determined their aims for East Europe. Those aims, especially the division of the existing states, were carried out in 1939-1941, and only an alliance on the global scale prevented their consolidation for a period of time.
The notes by the author follow the text under the title.
To avoid confusion, I did not add any notes of my own, but have put the substance of them into this Foreward and the Concluding Observations at the end. I have, however, emphasized some portions of the text.
Israel Shahak, June 13, 1982
A Strategy for Israel in the Nineteen Eighties
by Oded Yinon
This essay originally appeared in Hebrew in KIVUNIM (Directions), A Journal for Judaism and Zionism; Issue No, 14–Winter, 5742, February 1982, Editor: Yoram Beck. Editorial Committee: Eli Eyal, Yoram Beck, Amnon Hadari, Yohanan Manor, Elieser Schweid. Published by the Department ofPublicity/The World Zionist Organization, Jerusalem.
At the outset of the nineteen eighties the State of Israel is in need of a new perspective as to its place, its aims and national targets, at home and abroad. This need has become even more vital due to a number of central processes which the country, the region and the world are undergoing. We are living today in the early stages of a new epoch in human history which is not at all similar to its predecessor, and its characteristics are totally different from what we have hitherto known. That is why we need an understanding of the central processes which typify this historical epoch on the one hand, and on the other hand we need a world outlook and an operational strategy in accordance with the new conditions. The existence, prosperity and steadfastness of the Jewish state will depend upon its ability to adopt a new framework for its domestic and foreign affairs.
This epoch is characterized by several traits which we can already diagnose, and which symbolize a genuine revolution in our present lifestyle. The dominant process is the breakdown of the rationalist, humanist outlook as the major cornerstone supporting the life and achievements of Western civilization since the Renaissance. The political, social and economic views which have emanated from this foundation have been based on several “truths” which are presently disappearing–for example, the view that man as an individual is the center of the universe and everything exists in order to fulfill his basic material needs. This position is being invalidated in the present when it has become clear that the amount of resources in the cosmos does not meet Man’s requirements, his economic needs or his demographic constraints. In a world in which there are four billion human beings and economic and energy resources which do not grow proportionally to meet the needs of mankind, it is unrealistic to expect to fulfill the main requirement of Western Society,1 i.e., the wish and aspiration for boundless consumption. The view that ethics plays no part in determining the direction Man takes, but rather his material needs do–that view is becoming prevalent today as we see a world in which nearly all values are disappearing. We are losing the ability to assess the simplest things, especially when they concern the simple question of what is Good and what is Evil.
The vision of man’s limitless aspirations and abilities shrinks in the face of the sad facts of life, when we witness the break-up of world order around us. The view which promises liberty and freedom to mankind seems absurd in light of the sad fact that three fourths of the human race lives under totalitarian regimes. The views concerning equality and social justice have been transformed by socialism and especially by Communism into a laughing stock. There is no argument as to the truth of these two ideas, but it is clear that they have not been put into practice properly and the majority of mankind has lost the liberty, the freedom and the opportunity for equality and justice. In this nuclear world in which we are (still) living in relative peace for thirty years, the concept of peace and coexistence among nations has no meaning when a superpower like the USSR holds a military and political doctrine of the sort it has: that not only is a nuclear war possible and necessary in order to achieve the ends of Marxism, but that it is possible to survive after it, not to speak of the fact that one can be victorious in it.2
The essential concepts of human society, especially those of the West, are undergoing a change due to political, military and economic transformations. Thus, the nuclear and conventional might of the USSR has transformed the epoch that has just ended into the last respite before the great saga that will demolish a large part of our world in a multi-dimensional global war, in comparison with which the past world wars will have been mere child’s play. The power of nuclear as well as of conventional weapons, their quantity, their precision and quality will turn most of our world upside down within a few years, and we must align ourselves so as to face that in Israel. That is, then, the main threat to our existence and that of the Western world.3 The war over resources in the world, the Arab monopoly on oil, and the need of the West to import most of its raw materials from the Third World, are transforming the world we know, given that one of the major aims of the USSR is to defeat the West by gaining control over the gigantic resources in the Persian Gulf and in the southern part of Africa, in which the majority of world minerals are located. We can imagine the dimensions of the global confrontation which will face us in the future.
The Gorshkov doctrine calls for Soviet control of the oceans and mineral rich areas of the Third World. That together with the present Soviet nuclear doctrine which holds that it is possible to manage, win and survive a nuclear war, in the course of which the West’s military might well be destroyed and its inhabitants made slaves in the service of Marxism-Leninism, is the main danger to world peace and to our own existence. Since 1967, the Soviets have transformed Clausewitz’ dictum into “War is the continuation of policy in nuclear means,” and made it the motto which guides all their policies. Already today they are busy carrying out their aims in our region and throughout the world, and the need to face them becomes the major element in our country’s security policy and of course that of the rest of the Free World. That is our major foreign challenge.4
The Arab Moslem world, therefore, is not the major strategic problem which we shall face in the Eighties, despite the fact that it carries the main threat against Israel, due to its growing military might. This world, with its ethnic minorities, its factions and internal crises, which is astonishingly self-destructive, as we can see in Lebanon, in non-Arab Iran and now also in Syria, is unable to deal successfully with its fundamental problems and does not therefore constitute a real threat against the State of Israel in the long run, but only in the short run where its immediate military power has great import. In the long run, this world will be unable to exist within its present framework in the areas around us without having to go through genuine revolutionary changes. The Moslem Arab World is built like a temporary house of cards put together by foreigners (France and Britain in the Nineteen Twenties), without the wishes and desires of the inhabitants having been taken into account. It was arbitrarily divided into 19 states, all made of combinations of minorites and ethnic groups which are hostile to one another, so that every Arab Moslem state nowadays faces ethnic social destruction from within, and in some a civil war is already raging.5 Most of the Arabs, 118 million out of 170 million, live in Africa, mostly in Egypt (45 million today).
Apart from Egypt, all the Maghreb states are made up of a mixture of Arabs and non-Arab Berbers. In Algeria there is already a civil war raging in the Kabile mountains between the two nations in the country. Morocco and Algeria are at war with each other over Spanish Sahara, in addition to the internal struggle in each of them. Militant Islam endangers the integrity of Tunisia and Qaddafi organizes wars which are destructive from the Arab point of view, from a country which is sparsely populated and which cannot become a powerful nation. That is why he has been attempting unifications in the past with states that are more genuine, like Egypt and Syria. Sudan, the most torn apart state in the Arab Moslem world today is built upon four groups hostile to each other, an Arab Moslem Sunni minority which rules over a majority of non-Arab Africans, Pagans, and Christians. In Egypt there is a Sunni Moslem majority facing a large minority of Christians which is dominant in upper Egypt: some 7 million of them, so that even Sadat, in his speech on May 8, expressed the fear that they will want a state of their own, something like a “second” Christian Lebanon in Egypt.
All the Arab States east of Israel are torn apart, broken up and riddled with inner conflict even more than those of the Maghreb. Syria is fundamentally no different from Lebanon except in the strong military regime which rules it. But the real civil war taking place nowadays between the Sunni majority and the Shi’ite Alawi ruling minority (a mere 12% of the population) testifies to the severity of the domestic trouble.
Iraq is, once again, no different in essence from its neighbors, although its majority is Shi’ite and the ruling minority Sunni. Sixty-five percent of the population has no say in politics, in which an elite of 20 percent holds the power. In addition there is a large Kurdish minority in the north, and if it weren’t for the strength of the ruling regime, the army and the oil revenues, Iraq’s future state would be no different than that of Lebanon in the past or of Syria today. The seeds of inner conflict and civil war are apparent today already, especially after the rise of Khomeini to power in Iran, a leader whom the Shi’ites in Iraq view as their natural leader.
All the Gulf principalities and Saudi Arabia are built upon a delicate house of sand in which there is only oil. In Kuwait, the Kuwaitis constitute only a quarter of the population. In Bahrain, the Shi’ites are the majority but are deprived of power. In the UAE, Shi’ites are once again the majority but the Sunnis are in power. The same is true of Oman and North Yemen. Even in the Marxist South Yemen there is a sizable Shi’ite minority. In Saudi Arabia half the population is foreign, Egyptian and Yemenite, but a Saudi minority holds power.
Jordan is in reality Palestinian, ruled by a Trans-Jordanian Bedouin minority, but most of the army and certainly the bureaucracy is now Palestinian. As a matter of fact Amman is as Palestinian as Nablus. All of these countries have powerful armies, relatively speaking. But there is a problem there too. The Syrian army today is mostly Sunni with an Alawi officer corps, the Iraqi army Shi’ite with Sunni commanders. This has great significance in the long run, and that is why it will not be possible to retain the loyalty of the army for a long time except where it comes to the only common denominator: The hostility towards Israel, and today even that is insufficient.
Alongside the Arabs, split as they are, the other Moslem states share a similar predicament. Half of Iran’s population is comprised of a Persian speaking group and the other half of an ethnically Turkish group. Turkey’s population comprises a Turkish Sunni Moslem majority, some 50%, and two large minorities, 12 million Shi’ite Alawis and 6 million Sunni Kurds. In Afghanistan there are 5 million
Shi’ites who constitute one third of the population. In Sunni Pakistan there are 15 million Shi’ites who endanger the existence of that state.
This national ethnic minority picture extending from Morocco to India and from Somalia to Turkey points to the absence of stability and a rapid degeneration in the entire region. When this picture is added to the economic one, we see how the entire region is built like a house of cards, unable to withstand its severe problems.
In this giant and fractured world there are a few wealthy groups and a huge mass of poor people. Most of the Arabs have an average yearly income of 300 dollars. That is the situation in Egypt, in most of the Maghreb countries except for Libya, and in Iraq. Lebanon is torn apart and its economy is falling to pieces. It is a state in which there is no centralized power, but only 5 de facto sovereign authorities (Christian in the north, supported by the Syrians and under the rule of the Franjieh clan, in the East an area of direct Syrian conquest, in the center a Phalangist controlled Christian enclave, in the south and up to the Litani river a mostly Palestinian region controlled by the PLO and Major Haddad’s state of Christians and half a million Shi’ites). Syria is in an even graver situation and even the assistance she will obtain in the future after the unification with Libya will not be sufficient for dealing with the basic problems of existence and the maintenance of a large army. Egypt is in the worst situation: Millions are on the verge of hunger, half the labor force is unemployed, and housing is scarce in this most densely populated area of the world. Except for the army, there is not a single department operating efficiently and the state is in a permanent state of bankruptcy and depends entirely on American foreign assistance granted since the peace.6
In the Gulf states, Saudi Arabia, Libya and Egypt there is the largest accumulation of money and oil in the world, but those enjoying it are tiny elites who lack a wide base of support and self-confidence, something that no army can guarantee.7 The Saudi army with all its equipment cannot defend the regime from real dangers at home or abroad, and what took place in Mecca in 1980 is only an example. A sad and very stormy situation surrounds Israel and creates challenges for it, problems, risks but also far-reaching opportunities for the first time since 1967. Chances are that opportunities missed at that time will become achievable in the Eighties to an extent and along dimensions which we cannot even imagine today.
The “peace” policy and the return of territories, through a dependence upon the US, precludes the realization of the new option created for us. Since 1967, all the governments of Israel have tied our national aims down to narrow political needs, on the one hand, and on the other to destructive opinions at home which neutralized our capacities both at home and abroad. Failing to take steps towards the Arab population in the new territories, acquired in the course of a war forced upon us, is the major strategic error committed by Israel on the morning after the Six Day War. We could have saved ourselves all the bitter and dangerous conflict since then if we had given Jordan to the Palestinians who live west of the Jordan river. By doing that we would have neutralized the Palestinian problem which we nowadays face, and to which we have found solutions that are really no solutions at all, such as territorial compromise or autonomy which amount, in fact, to the same thing.8 Today, we suddenly face immense opportunities for transforming the situation thoroughly and this we must do in the coming decade, otherwise we shall not survive as a state.
In the course of the Nineteen Eighties, the State of Israel will have to go through far-reaching changes in its political and economic regime domestically, along with radical changes in its foreign policy, in order to stand up to the global and regional challenges of this new epoch. The loss of the Suez Canal oil fields, of the immense potential of the oil, gas and other natural resources in the Sinai peninsula which is geomorphologically identical to the rich oil-producing countries in the region, will result in an energy drain in the near future and will destroy our domestic economy: one quarter of our present GNP as well as one third of the budget is used for the purchase of oil.9 The search for raw materials in the Negev and on the coast will not, in the near future, serve to alter that state of affairs.
(Regaining) the Sinai peninsula with its present and potential resources is therefore a political prioritywhich is obstructed by the Camp David and the peace agreements. The fault for that lies of course with the present Israeli government and the governments which paved the road to the policy of territorial compromise, the Alignment governments since 1967. The Egyptians will not need to keep the peace treaty after the return of the Sinai, and they will do all they can to return to the fold of the Arab world and to the USSR in order to gain support and military assistance. American aid is guaranteed only for a short while, for the terms of the peace and the weakening of the U.S. both at home and abroad will bring about a reduction in aid. Without oil and the income from it, with the present enormous expenditure, we will not be able to get through 1982 under the present conditions and we will have to act in order toreturn the situation to the status quo which existed in Sinai prior to Sadat’s visit and the mistaken peace agreement signed with him in March 1979.10
Israel has two major routes through which to realize this purpose, one direct and the other indirect. The direct option is the less realistic one because of the nature of the regime and government in Israel as well as the wisdom of Sadat who obtained our withdrawal from Sinai, which was, next to the war of 1973, his major achievement since he took power. Israel will not unilaterally break the treaty, neither today, nor in 1982, unless it is very hard pressed economically and politically and Egypt provides Israelwith the excuse to take the Sinai back into our hands for the fourth time in our short history. What is left therefore, is the indirect option. The economic situation in Egypt, the nature of the regime and its pan-
Arab policy, will bring about a situation after April 1982 in which Israel will be forced to act directly or indirectly in order to regain control over Sinai as a strategic, economic and energy reserve for the longrun. Egypt does not constitute a military strategic problem due to its internal conflicts and it could be driven back to the post 1967 war situation in no more than one day.11
The myth of Egypt as the strong leader of the Arab World was demolished back in 1956 and definitely did not survive 1967, but our policy, as in the return of the Sinai, served to turn the myth into “fact.” In reality, however, Egypt’s power in proportion both to Israel alone and to the rest of the Arab World has gone down about 50 percent since 1967. Egypt is no longer the leading political power in the Arab World and is economically on the verge of a crisis. Without foreign assistance the crisis will come tomorrow.12 In the short run, due to the return of the Sinai, Egypt will gain several advantages at our expense, but only in the short run until 1982, and that will not change the balance of power to its benefit, and will possibly bring about its downfall. Egypt, in its present domestic political picture, is already a corpse, all the more so if we take into account the growing Moslem-Christian rift. BreakingEgypt down territorially into distinct geographical regions is the political aim of Israel in the Nineteen Eighties on its Western front.
Egypt is divided and torn apart into many foci of authority. If Egypt falls apart, countries like Libya, Sudan or even the more distant states will not continue to exist in their present form and will join thedownfall and dissolution of Egypt. The vision of a Christian Coptic State in Upper Egypt alongside a number of weak states with very localized power and without a centralized government as to date, is the key to a historical development which was only set back by the peace agreement but which seems inevitable in the long run.13
The Western front, which on the surface appears more problematic, is in fact less complicated than the Eastern front, in which most of the events that make the headlines have been taking place recently. Lebanon’s total dissolution into five provinces serves as a precendent for the entire Arab worldincluding Egypt, Syria, Iraq and the Arabian peninsula and is already following that track. The dissolution of Syria and Iraq later on into ethnically or religiously unqiue areas such as in Lebanon, is Israel’s primary target on the Eastern front in the long run, while the dissolution of the military power of those states serves as the primary short term target. Syria will fall apart, in accordance with its ethnic and religious structure, into several states such as in present day Lebanon, so that there will be a Shi’ite Alawi state along its coast, a Sunni state in the Aleppo area, another Sunni state in Damascus hostile to its northern neighbor, and the Druzes who will set up a state, maybe even in our Golan, and certainly in the Hauran and in northern Jordan. This state of affairs will be the guarantee for peace and security in the area in the long run, and that aim is already within our reach today.14
Iraq, rich in oil on the one hand and internally torn on the other, is guaranteed as a candidate forIsrael’s targets. Its dissolution is even more important for us than that of Syria. Iraq is stronger than Syria. In the short run it is Iraqi power which constitutes the greatest threat to Israel. An Iraqi-Iranian war will tear Iraq apart and cause its downfall at home even before it is able to organize a struggle on a wide front against us. Every kind of inter-Arab confrontation will assist us in the short run and willshorten the way to the more important aim of breaking up Iraq into denominations as in Syria and in Lebanon. In Iraq, a division into provinces along ethnic/religious lines as in Syria during Ottoman times is possible. So, three (or more) states will exist around the three major cities: Basra, Baghdad and Mosul, and Shi’ite areas in the south will separate from the Sunni and Kurdish north. It is possible that the present Iranian-Iraqi confrontation will deepen this polarization.15
The entire Arabian peninsula is a natural candidate for dissolution due to internal and external pressures, and the matter is inevitable especially in Saudi Arabia. Regardless of whether its economic might based on oil remains intact or whether it is diminished in the long run, the internal rifts and breakdowns are a clear and natural development in light of the present political structure.16
Jordan constitutes an immediate strategic target in the short run but not in the long run, for it does not constitute a real threat in the long run after its dissolution, the termination of the lengthy rule of King Hussein and the transfer of power to the Palestinians in the short run.
There is no chance that Jordan will continue to exist in its present structure for a long time, and Israel’s policy, both in war and in peace, ought to be directed at the liquidation of Jordan under the present regime and the transfer of power to the Palestinian majority. Changing the regime east of the river will also cause the termination of the problem of the territories densely populated with Arabs west of theJordan. Whether in war or under conditions of peace, emigration from the territories and economic demographic freeze in them, are the guarantees for the coming change on both banks of the river, and we ought to be active in order to accelerate this process in the nearest future. The autonomy plan ought also to be rejected, as well as any compromise or division of the territories for, given the plans of the PLO and those of the Israeli Arabs themselves, the Shefa’amr plan of September 1980, it is not possible to go on living in this country in the present situation without separating the two nations, the Arabs to Jordan and the Jews to the areas west of the river. Genuine coexistence and peace will reign over the land only when the Arabs understand that without Jewish rule between the Jordan and the sea they will have neither existence nor security. A nation of their own and security will be theirs only in Jordan.17
Within Israel the distinction between the areas of ’67 and the territories beyond them, those of ’48, has always been meaningless for Arabs and nowadays no longer has any significance for us. The problem should be seen in its entirety without any divisions as of ’67. It should be clear, under any future political situation or military constellation, that the solution of the problem of the indigenous Arabs will come only when they recognize the existence of Israel in secure borders up to the Jordan river andbeyond it, as our existential need in this difficult epoch, the nuclear epoch which we shall soon enter. It is no longer possible to live with three fourths of the Jewish population on the dense shoreline which is so dangerous in a nuclear epoch.
Dispersal of the population is therefore a domestic strategic aim of the highest order; otherwise, we shall cease to exist within any borders. Judea, Samaria and the Galilee are our sole guarantee for national existence, and if we do not become the majority in the mountain areas, we shall not rule in the country and we shall be like the Crusaders, who lost this country which was not theirs anyhow, and in which they were foreigners to begin with. Rebalancing the country demographically, strategically and economically is the highest and most central aim today. Taking hold of the mountain watershed from Beersheba to the Upper Galilee is the national aim generated by the major strategic consideration which is settling the mountainous part of the country that is empty of Jews today.l8
Realizing our aims on the Eastern front depends first on the realization of this internal strategic objective. The transformation of the political and economic structure, so as to enable the realization of these strategic aims, is the key to achieving the entire change. We need to change from a centralized economy in which the government is extensively involved, to an open and free market as well as to switch from depending upon the U.S. taxpayer to developing, with our own hands, of a genuine productive economic infrastructure. If we are not able to make this change freely and voluntarily, we shall be forced into it by world developments, especially in the areas of economics, energy, and politics, and by our own growing isolation.l9
From a military and strategic point of view, the West led by the U.S. is unable to withstand the global pressures of the USSR throughout the world, and Israel must therefore stand alone in the Eighties, without any foreign assistance, military or economic, and this is within our capacities today, with nocompromises.20 Rapid changes in the world will also bring about a change in the condition of world Jewry to which Israel will become not only a last resort but the only existential option. We cannot assume that U.S. Jews, and the communities of Europe and Latin America will continue to exist in the present form in the future.21
Our existence in this country itself is certain, and there is no force that could remove us from here either forcefully or by treachery (Sadat’s method). Despite the difficulties of the mistaken “peace” policy and the problem of the Israeli Arabs and those of the territories, we can effectively deal with these problems in the foreseeable future.
Concluding Observations
by Israel Shahak
Three important points have to be clarified in order to be able to understand the significant possibilities of realization of this Zionist plan for the Middle East, and also why it had to be published.
The Military Background of The Plan
The military conditions of this plan have not been mentioned above, but on the many occasions where something very like it is being “explained” in closed meetings to members of the Israeli Establishment, this point is clarified. It is assumed that the Israeli military forces, in all their branches, are insufficient for the actual work of occupation of such wide territories as discussed above. In fact, even in times of intense Palestinian “unrest” on the West Bank, the forces of the Israeli Army are stretched out too much. The answer to that is the method of ruling by means of “Haddad forces” or of “Village Associations” (also known as “Village Leagues”): local forces under “leaders” completely dissociated from the population, not having even any feudal or party structure (such as the Phalangists have, for example). The “states” proposed by Yinon are “Haddadland” and “Village Associations,” and their armed forces will be, no doubt, quite similar. In addition, Israeli military superiority in such a situation will be much greater than it is even now, so that any movement of revolt will be “punished” either by mass humiliation as in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, or by bombardment and obliteration of cities, as in Lebanon now (June 1982), or by both. In order to ensure this, the plan, as explained orally, calls for the establishment of Israeli garrisons in focal places between the mini states, equipped with the necessary mobile destructive forces. In fact, we have seen something like this in Haddadland and we will almost certainly soon see the first example of this system functioning either in South Lebanon or in all Lebanon.
It is obvious that the above military assumptions, and the whole plan too, depend also on the Arabs continuing to be even more divided than they are now, and on the lack of any truly progressive mass movement among them. It may be that those two conditions will be removed only when the plan will be well advanced, with consequences which can not be foreseen.
Why it is necessary to publish this in Israel?
The reason for publication is the dual nature of the Israeli-Jewish society: A very great measure of freedom and democracy, specially for Jews, combined with expansionism and racist discrimination. In such a situation the Israeli-Jewish elite (for the masses follow the TV and Begin’s speeches) has to be persuaded. The first steps in the process of persuasion are oral, as indicated above, but a time comes in which it becomes inconvenient. Written material must be produced for the benefit of the more stupid “persuaders” and “explainers” (for example medium-rank officers, who are, usually, remarkably stupid). They then “learn it,” more or less, and preach to others. It should be remarked that Israel, and even the Yishuv from the Twenties, has always functioned in this way. I myself well remember how (before I was “in opposition”) the necessity of war with was explained to me and others a year before the 1956 war, and the necessity of conquering “the rest of Western Palestine when we will have the opportunity” was explained in the years 1965-67.
Why is it assumed that there is no special risk from the outside in the publication of such plans?
Such risks can come from two sources, so long as the principled opposition inside Israel is very weak (a situation which may change as a consequence of the war on Lebanon) : The Arab World, including the Palestinians, and the United States. The Arab World has shown itself so far quite incapable of a detailed and rational analysis of Israeli-Jewish society, and the Palestinians have been, on the average, no better than the rest. In such a situation, even those who are shouting about the dangers of Israeli expansionism (which are real enough) are doing this not because of factual and detailed knowledge, but because of belief in myth. A good example is the very persistent belief in the non-existent writing on the wall of the Knesset of the Biblical verse about the Nile and the Euphrates. Another example is the persistent, and completely false declarations, which were made by some of the most important Arab leaders, that the two blue stripes of the Israeli flag symbolize the Nile and the Euphrates, while in fact they are taken from the stripes of the Jewish praying shawl (Talit). The Israeli specialists assume that, on the whole, the Arabs will pay no attention to their serious discussions of the future, and the Lebanon war has proved them right. So why should they not continue with their old methods of persuading other Israelis?
In the United States a very similar situation exists, at least until now. The more or less serious commentators take their information about Israel, and much of their opinions about it, from two sources. The first is from articles in the “liberal” American press, written almost totally by Jewish admirers of Israel who, even if they are critical of some aspects of the Israeli state, practice loyally what Stalin used to call “the constructive criticism.” (In fact those among them who claim also to be “Anti-Stalinist” are in reality more Stalinist than Stalin, with Israel being their god which has not yet failed). In the framework of such critical worship it must be assumed that Israel has always “good intentions” and only “makes mistakes,” and therefore such a plan would not be a matter for discussion–exactly as the Biblical genocides committed by Jews are not mentioned. The other source of information, The Jerusalem Post, has similar policies. So long, therefore, as the situation exists in which Israel is really a “closed society” to the rest of the world, because the world wants to close its eyes, the publication and even the beginning of the realization of such a plan is realistic and feasible.
Israel Shahak, June 17, 1982 Jerusalem
About the Translator
Israel Shahak is a professor of organic chemistly at Hebrew University in Jerusalem and the chairman of the Israeli League for Human and Civil Rights. He published The Shahak Papers, collections of key articles from the Hebrew press, and is the author of numerous articles and books, among them Non-Jew in the Jewish State. His latest book is Israel’s Global Role: Weapons for Repression, published by theAAUG in 1982. Israel Shahak: (1933-2001)
Notes
1. American Universities Field Staff. Report No.33, 1979. According to this research, the population of the world will be 6 billion in the year 2000. Today’s world population can be broken down as follows: China, 958 million; India, 635 million; USSR, 261 million; U.S., 218 million Indonesia, 140 million; Brazil and Japan, 110 million each. According to the figures of the U.N. Population Fund for 1980, there will be, in 2000, 50 cities with a population of over 5 million each. The population ofthp;Third World will then be 80% of the world population. According to Justin Blackwelder, U.S. Census Office chief, the world population will not reach 6 billion because of hunger.
2. Soviet nuclear policy has been well summarized by two American Sovietologists: Joseph D. Douglas and Amoretta M. Hoeber, Soviet Strategy for Nuclear War, (Stanford, Ca., Hoover Inst. Press, 1979). In the Soviet Union tens and hundreds of articles and books are published each year which detail the Soviet doctrine for nuclear war and there is a great deal of documentation translated into English and published by the U.S. Air Force,including USAF: Marxism-Leninism on War and the Army: The Soviet View, Moscow, 1972; USAF: The Armed Forces ofthe Soviet State. Moscow, 1975, by Marshal A. Grechko. The basic Soviet approach to the matter is presented in the book by Marshal Sokolovski published in 1962 in Moscow: Marshal V. D. Sokolovski, Military Strategy, SovietDoctrine and Concepts(New York, Praeger, 1963).
3. A picture of Soviet intentions in various areas of the world can be drawn from the book by Douglas and Hoeber, ibid. For additional material see: Michael Morgan, “USSR’s Minerals as Strategic Weapon in the Future,” Defense and Foreign Affairs, Washington, D.C., Dec. 1979.
4. Admiral of the Fleet Sergei Gorshkov, Sea Power and the State, London, 1979. Morgan, loc. cit. General George S. Brown (USAF) C-JCS, Statement to the Congress on the Defense Posture of the United States For Fiscal Year1979, p. 103; National Security Council, Review of Non-Fuel Mineral Policy, (Washington, D.C. 1979,); Drew Middleton, The New York Times, (9/15/79); Time, 9/21/80.
5. Elie Kedourie, “The End of the Ottoman Empire,” Journal of Contemporary History, Vol. 3, No.4, 1968.
6. Al-Thawra, Syria 12/20/79, Al-Ahram,12/30/79, Al Ba’ath, Syria, 5/6/79. 55% of the Arabs are 20 years old and younger, 70% of the Arabs live in Africa, 55% of the Arabs under 15 are unemployed, 33% live in urban areas, Oded Yinon, “Egypt’s Population Problem,” The Jerusalem Quarterly, No. 15, Spring 1980.
7. E. Kanovsky, “Arab Haves and Have Nots,” The Jerusalem Quarterly, No.1, Fall 1976, Al Ba’ath, Syria, 5/6/79.
8. In his book, former Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin said that the Israeli government is in fact responsible for the design of American policy in the Middle East, after June ’67, because of its own indecisiveness as to the future of the territories and the inconsistency in its positions since it established the background for Resolution 242 and certainly twelve years later for the Camp David agreements and the peace treaty with Egypt. According to Rabin, on June 19, 1967, President Johnson sent a letter to Prime Minister Eshkol in which he did not mention anything about withdrawal from the new territories but exactly on the same day the government resolved to return territories in exchange for peace. After the Arab resolutions in Khartoum (9/1/67) the government altered its position but contrary to its decision of June 19, did not notify the U.S. of the alteration and the U.S. continued to support 242 in the Security Council on the basis of its earlier understanding that Israel is prepared to return territories. At that point it was already too late to change the U.S. position and Israel’s policy. From here the way was opened to peace agreements on the basis of 242 as was later agreed upon in Camp David. See Yitzhak Rabin. Pinkas Sherut, (Ma’ariv 1979) pp. 226-227.
9. Foreign and Defense Committee Chairman Prof. Moshe Arens argued in an interview (Ma ‘ariv,10/3/80) that the Israeli government failed to prepare an economic plan before the Camp David agreements and was itself surprised by the cost of the agreements, although already during the negotiations it was possible to calculate the heavy price and the serious error involved in not having prepared the economic grounds for peace.
The former Minister of Treasury, Mr. Yigal Holwitz, stated that if it were not for the withdrawal from the oil fields, Israel would have a positive balance of payments (9/17/80). That same person said two years earlier that the government of Israel (from which he withdrew) had placed a noose around his neck. He was referring to the Camp David agreements (Ha’aretz, 11/3/78). In the course of the whole peace negotiations neither an expert nor an economics advisor was consulted, and the Prime Minister himself, who lacks knowledge and expertise in economics, in a mistaken initiative, asked the U.S. to give us a loan rather than a grant, due to his wish to maintain our respect and the respect of the U.S. towards us. See Ha’aretz1/5/79. Jerusalem Post, 9/7/79. Prof Asaf Razin, formerly a senior consultant in the Treasury, strongly criticized the conduct of the negotiations; Ha’aretz, 5/5/79. Ma’ariv, 9/7/79. As to matters concerning the oil fields and Israel’s energy crisis, see the interview with Mr. Eitan Eisenberg, a government advisor on these matters, Ma’arive Weekly, 12/12/78. The Energy Minister, who personally signed the Camp David agreements and the evacuation of Sdeh Alma, has since emphasized the seriousness of our condition from the point of view of oil supplies more than once…see Yediot Ahronot, 7/20/79. Energy Minister Modai even admitted that the government did not consult him at all on the subject of oil during the Camp David and Blair House negotiations. Ha’aretz, 8/22/79.
10. Many sources report on the growth of the armaments budget in Egypt and on intentions to give the army preference in a peace epoch budget over domestic needs for which a peace was allegedly obtained. See former Prime Minister Mamduh Salam in an interview 12/18/77, Treasury Minister Abd El Sayeh in an interview 7/25/78, and the paper Al Akhbar, 12/2/78 which clearly stressed that the military budget will receive first priority, despite the peace. This is what former Prime Minister Mustafa Khalil has stated in his cabinet’s programmatic document which was presented to Parliament, 11/25/78. See English translation, ICA, FBIS, Nov. 27. 1978, pp. D 1-10.
According to these sources, Egypt’s military budget increased by 10% between fiscal 1977 and 1978, and the process still goes on. A Saudi source divulged that the Egyptians plan to increase their militmy budget by 100% in the next two years; Ha’aretz, 2/12/79 and Jerusalem Post, 1/14/79.
11. Most of the economic estimates threw doubt on Egypt’s ability to reconstruct its economy by 1982. See Economic Intelligence Unit, 1978 Supplement, “The Arab Republic of Egypt”; E. Kanovsky, “Recent Economic Developments in the Middle East,” Occasional Papers, The Shiloah Institution, June 1977; Kanovsky, “The Egyptian Economy Since the Mid-Sixties, The Micro Sectors,” Occasional Papers, June 1978; Robert McNamara, President of World Bank, as reported in Times, London, 1/24/78.
12. See the comparison made by the researeh of the Institute for Strategic Studies in London, and research camed out in the Center for Strategic Studies of Tel Aviv University, as well as the research by the British scientist, Denis Champlin, Military Review, Nov. 1979, ISS: The Military Balance 1979-1980, CSS; Security Arrangements inSinai…by Brig. Gen. (Res.) A Shalev, No. 3.0 CSS; The Military Balance and the Military Options after the Peace Treaty with Egypt, by Brig. Gen. (Res.) Y. Raviv, No.4, Dec. 1978, as well as many press reports including El Hawadeth, London, 3/7/80; El Watan El Arabi, Paris, 12/14/79.
13. As for religious ferment in Egypt and the relations between Copts and Moslems see the series of articles published in the Kuwaiti paper, El Qabas, 9/15/80. The English author Irene Beeson reports on the rift between Moslems and Copts, see: Irene Beeson, Guardian, London, 6/24/80, and Desmond Stewart, Middle EastInternmational, London 6/6/80. For other reports see Pamela Ann Smith, Guardian, London, 12/24/79; The Christian Science Monitor 12/27/79 as well as Al Dustour, London, 10/15/79; El Kefah El Arabi, 10/15/79.
14. Arab Press Service, Beirut, 8/6-13/80. The New Republic, 8/16/80, Der Spiegel as cited by Ha’aretz, 3/21/80, and 4/30-5/5/80; The Economist, 3/22/80; Robert Fisk, Times, London, 3/26/80; Ellsworth Jones, Sunday Times, 3/30/80.
15. J.P. Peroncell Hugoz, Le Monde, Paris 4/28/80; Dr. Abbas Kelidar, Middle East Review, Summer 1979;
Conflict Studies, ISS, July 1975; Andreas Kolschitter, Der Zeit, (Ha’aretz, 9/21/79) Economist Foreign Report, 10/10/79, Afro-Asian Affairs, London, July 1979.
16. Arnold Hottinger, “The Rich Arab States in Trouble,” The New York Review of Books, 5/15/80; Arab PressService, Beirut, 6/25-7/2/80; U.S. News and World Report, 11/5/79 as well as El Ahram, 11/9/79; El Nahar El Arabi Wal Duwali, Paris 9/7/79; El Hawadeth, 11/9/79; David Hakham, Monthly Review, IDF, Jan.-Feb. 79.
17. As for Jordan’s policies and problems see El Nahar El Arabi Wal Duwali, 4/30/79, 7/2/79; Prof. Elie Kedouri, Ma’ariv 6/8/79; Prof. Tanter, Davar 7/12/79; A. Safdi, Jerusalem Post, 5/31/79; El Watan El Arabi 11/28/79; El Qabas, 11/19/79. As for PLO positions see: The resolutions of the Fatah Fourth Congress, Damascus, August 1980. The Shefa’amr program of the Israeli Arabs was published in Ha’aretz, 9/24/80, and by Arab Press Report 6/18/80. For facts and figures on immigration of Arabs to Jordan, see Amos Ben Vered, Ha’aretz, 2/16/77; Yossef Zuriel, Ma’ariv 1/12/80. As to the PLO’s position towards Israel see Shlomo Gazit, Monthly Review; July 1980; Hani El Hasan in an interview, Al Rai Al’Am, Kuwait 4/15/80; Avi Plaskov, “The Palestinian Problem,” Survival, ISS, London Jan. Feb. 78; David Gutrnann, “The Palestinian Myth,” Commentary, Oct. 75; Bernard Lewis, “The Palestinians and the PLO,” Commentary Jan. 75; Monday Morning, Beirut, 8/18-21/80; Journal of PalestineStudies, Winter 1980.
18. Prof. Yuval Neeman, “Samaria–The Basis for Israel’s Security,” Ma’arakhot 272-273, May/June 1980; Ya’akov Hasdai, “Peace, the Way and the Right to Know,” Dvar Hashavua, 2/23/80. Aharon Yariv, “Strategic Depth–An Israeli Perspective,” Ma’arakhot 270-271, October 1979; Yitzhak Rabin, “Israel’s Defense Problems in the Eighties,” Ma’arakhot October 1979.
19. Ezra Zohar, In the Regime’s Pliers (Shikmona, 1974); Motti Heinrich, Do We have a Chance Israel, TruthVersus Legend (Reshafim, 1981).
20. Henry Kissinger, “The Lessons of the Past,” The Washington Review Vol 1, Jan. 1978; Arthur Ross, “OPEC’s Challenge to the West,” The Washington Quarterly, Winter, 1980; Walter Levy, “Oil and the Decline of the West,” Foreign Affairs, Summer 1980; Special Report–“Our Armed Forees-Ready or Not?” U.S. News and World Report 10/10/77; Stanley Hoffman, “Reflections on the Present Danger,” The New York Review of Books 3/6/80; Time 4/3/80; Leopold Lavedez “The illusions of SALT” Commentary Sept. 79; Norman Podhoretz, “The Present Danger,” Commentary March 1980; Robert Tucker, “Oil and American Power Six Years Later,” Commentary Sept. 1979; Norman Podhoretz, “The Abandonment of Israel,” Commentary July 1976; Elie Kedourie, “Misreading the Middle East,” Commentary July 1979.
21. According to figures published by Ya’akov Karoz, Yediot Ahronot, 10/17/80, the sum total of anti-Semitic incidents recorded in the world in 1979 was double the amount recorded in 1978. In Germany, France, and Britain the number of anti-Semitic incidents was many times greater in that year. In the U.S. as well there has been a sharp increase in anti-Semitic incidents which were reported in that article. For the new anti-Semitism, see L. Talmon, “The New Anti-Semitism,” The New Republic, 9/18/1976; Barbara Tuchman, “They poisoned the Wells,” Newsweek 2/3/75.
The original source of this article is Association of Arab-American University Graduates, Inc.
The evidence is overwhelming. The Kiev regime was behind the plot to blow-up the dam. It’s “a war crime” against the Ukrainian people, instigated by the Zelensky government.
The mainstream media in chorus blames Russia. (See our analysis of the MSM media coverage below).
Ask yourself, why on earth would Russia flood its own positions within the territories under its control?
Our message to MSM journalists: It’s “elementary logic”. Use your common sense. Why would they do it? A “Russian Roulette style ritual Hara-kiri” ordered by the Kremlin?
The impacts on people’s lives are devastating in both Ukraine and Russia.
The blow-up of the dam has had repercussions on the supply of water to Crimea, which visibly is the detriment of Russia. See map below.
Unfortunately Russophobia in combination with maniacal rejection of elementary logic is not curable. These people for years have only one pattern of behavior: #KeepCalmAndBlameRussia no matter what the facts are https://t.co/Eeboe4biNe
🇷🇺envoy to @UN#Nebenzia: In October 2022 Russia drew attention to #Kievregime’s plans to destroy #Kakhovka Hydroelectric Power Plant. 🇷🇺calls were left unheeded. Feeling its total impunity & being encouraged by Western sponsors, 🇺🇦 decided to fulfil the terrorist plot this time. pic.twitter.com/x0jutK450O
— Russian Embassy, UK (@RussianEmbassy) June 7, 2023
Was US-NATO complicit in the conduct of this criminal agenda?
See Moscow’s standpoint in the following text issued by the Russian Embassy in the UK:
“We took note of the fact that the unannounced visit to Kiev by #UK Foreign Secretary @JamesCleverly on 5-6 June occurred at the same time as the sharp increase in military activities by the AFU along with #Kievregime’s attempts to destabilise the situation in bordering Russian regions.
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These circumstances can hardly be considered a coincidence. A personal visit by a high-ranking British emissary and his encouraging public statements cannot be viewed by the Western-controlled Kiev regime as anything other than an endorsement to engage in further military adventures and acts of sabotage against the peaceful citizens of Russia – for instance, the intentional destruction of facilities of the #Kakhovka Hydroelectric Power Station which can lead to dramatic humanitarian consequences for the civilian population of the flooded territory.
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London’s longstanding deliberate efforts to escalate the anti-Russian proxy conflict in #Ukraine, including by supplying Kiev with more lethal and long-range offensive weapons, leave no doubt that words of peace and value of Ukrainian lives mean nothing to London. In this context Mr Cleverly’s enthusiastic musings about the blooming of flowers and leaves in Kiev sound particularly cynical.”
▪️ We took note of the fact that the unannounced visit to Kiev by #UK Foreign Secretary @JamesCleverly on 5-6 June occurred at the same time as the sharp increase in military activities by the AFU along with #Kievregime’s attempts to destabilise the situation in bordering Russian… pic.twitter.com/5orb404uKj
— Russian Embassy, UK (@RussianEmbassy) June 6, 2023
Michel Chossudovsky, Global Research, Update, June 7, 2023
Below is the detailed article published by Global Research on June 6, 2023
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The Western media in chorus is blaming the Russians without acknowledging the fact that the issue of the Hydroelectric Kakhovskaya Dam had been brought to the attention of the United Nations Security Council back on October 21, 2022.
The document was made available to all members of the UN Security Council.
The UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres was fully aware of the letter addressed to him by Russia’s UN Permanent Representative regarding Kiev’s plan to blow up the dam.
What did he do? Nothing.The UNSC had the responsibility to open an investigation.
***
Russian MFA Spox Maria #Zakharova: On October 21, 2022, Russia’s Ambassador to the UN sent a letter to the UN Secretary General regarding the Kiev regime’s plans to destroy the Kakhovskaya hydroelectric dam in Kherson province.
💬 Russian MFA Spox Maria #Zakharova: On October 21, 2022, Russia's Ambassador to the UN sent a letter to the UN Secretary General regarding Kiev regime's plans to destroy the Kakhovskaya hydroelectric dam.
Russia had warned of potential catastrophic flooding and loss of life (see October 21, 2022 advisory to UNSC). In recent months, Russia conducted the evacuation of people on the East side of the Dnieper.
And here is the coverage of the mainstream media, casually blaming Russia, without a shred of evidence:
“Everything is going to die here,’ a man named Serhiy living in Kherson said. ‘All the living creatures, and people will be flooded out.
‘People will suffer. There’s already no water coming out of taps – why not, no one knows.’
Other Kherson residents said the water level in some parts of the city had already reached 9ft high and they could see more water headed their way.
Ukrainian authorities have previously warned that the dam’s failure could unleash 18million cubic meters (4.8billion gallons) of water and flood Kherson and dozens of other towns and settlements, home to hundreds of thousands of people.
The cause of the blasts is not yet clear, although Ukraine warned late last year that Russian forces had mined the dam as they retreated from Kherson and Ukraine’s state hydroelectric company said the Kakhova plant was destroyed by an explosion in the engine room – suggesting it was attacked from within rather than by external strikes.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky on Tuesday told a Vatican peace envoy that the destruction of the Kakhovka dam would have ‘dire consequences’ for people and nature.
‘This crime carries enormous threats and will have dire consequences for people’s lives and the environment,’ he told Italian cardinal Matteo Zuppi as the two met in Kyiv, according to a presidency statement.
As tens of thousands of Ukrainians flee their homes…
Ukraine’s state hydroelectric company said the Kakhovka plant was totally destroyed by an engine room blast
Ukrainian prime minister Denys Shmyhal said that up to 80 settlements are at risk of flooding
Kyiv officials alleged that Moscow destroyed the dam in order to slow down its long-awaited counteroffensive
Zelensky said that Russian forces must be ‘expelled from every corner’ of his nation for their ‘terrorist actions’
Moscow has blamed Kyiv’s forces for the strikes on the dam which is in Russian-held territory (Daily Mail, June 6, 2023)
According the NBC (June 6,2023) quoting “authoritative” sources as well as US “intelligence” which need to be “declassified”:
“The United States government has intelligence that is leaning toward Russia as the culprit of the attack on the dam in Ukraine, according to two U.S. officials and one Western official.
President Joe Biden’s administration was working to declassify some of the intelligence and share it as early as Tuesday afternoon.
The motive behind the explosion was still being assessed, but the collapse appears likely to make it more difficult for Ukrainian forces to conduct a river crossing and also presents a difficult humanitarian challenge, the Western official said. (NBC, June 6, 2023, emphasis added)
Why on earth would they blow up the Kakhovka dam, which was in territory under Russian control.
“The Russian Ministry of defense has been warning for over a year now that the Kiev regime is likely to collapse the dam up river from Kherson and cause a catastrophe.
Well, sure enough, today [June 6, 2023] they did just that and the West is stupidly buying into the propaganda that the Russians are to blame.
Of course the Russians wouldn’t destroy their own dam, [In territory they control] but if the combined West admits that the Russians were right all along and that their “Nazi pals” burst the dam, that would be bad publicity for Washington.
In the case of the Nord Stream sabotage, they pretended to start an “investigation” that went nowhere, but this time, the unbiased UN chief just skipped that step and laid it right on Putin, exonerating the Nazis from the outset.”
Informed and officially advised on October 21, 2022 (with distribution to all members of the UNSC) here is UNSG’s Antonio Guterres’ response regarding the destruction of the dam.
BREAKING: UN chief @antonioguterres said the tragic destruction of #Ukraine dam was another devastating consequence of the #Russian invasion, calling for all attacks on civilians & civilian infrastructure to stophttps://t.co/o2L5tU0Cvl
UN Secretary-General António Guterres pleaded ignorance: “he told reporters in New York outside the Security Council that the UN had no access to independent information to verify how the catastrophe had occurred.” That’s an outright lie.
“It is high time that We, the People, around the world gain consciousness and become aware of the dictatorial measures waiting just a short stretch down road to be implemented. Then, the bulk of The Great Reset / Agenda 2030 would have been achieved. Once that happens, it will be difficult to escape.”
Two kinds of absolute controls are being prepared to implement The Great Reset, alias UN Agenda 2030. A potentially straitjacket and total control by programmable Central Bank Digital Currency (CBDC), and an all-oppressive health tyranny by WHO, overriding national Constitutional rights and national sovereignty as far as health measures are concerned.
The former will be “managed”, coordinated and supervised for faultless implementation, by the so-called Central Bank of Central Banks, the Bank for International Settlement (BIS); the latter by the 1948 Rockefeller-created, falsely called UN-agency WHO. The emerging tyrant’s budget is to 80% pharma, Gates and otherwise privately funded. Both are criminal organizations.
These are plans, not yet implemented. But the world better be aware, so We, the People, may stop this terrifying assault on humanity in its tracks.
CBDC may be upon us, humanity, rather sooner than later. Programmable CBDC is a weapon of mass destruction. The weapon has been in the planning for decades – and it fits right into the Bigger Picture of the Great Reset / Agenda 2030.
Programmable – means the money can be programmed on how it is to be spent by an individual, or blocked, or made to expire, or made to be used for certain goods or services – or it can be totally withheld, wiped out, depending on how well you behave, according to the standards of the all-commandeering death cult elite.
CBDC is a master control element, a stranglehold on the population.
Simultaneously, an all controlling health tyranny is being prepared by WHO. The plan is that the new totalitarian rules – Biden Administration initiated revised International Health Regulations (IHR), including a new Pandemic Treaty – are to be ratified by the World Health Assembly, presumably by the end of May 2023. If approved, by a two-thirds majority, the new rules will become effective in 2024.
Health Tyranny and Control by WHO
The elite who pretends to rule over humanity acts most silently from the shadows. It includes the financial giants, the largest funders of the World Economic Forum (WEF), the Davos Boys. The financial elite calls the shots on integrated and willing Klaus Schwab, WEF’s CEO.
In turn, Mr. Schwab passes on instructions to the World Health Organization (WHO), for example, to redesign and implement the revision of the IHR which now also includes a Pandemic Treaty.
First, Bill Gates, also one of the key sponsors of WHO, puts a shady Ethiopian politician, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, at the helm of WHO. Tedros, a buddy of Bill Gates, is former DG of the GAVI Vaxx-Alliance, also created and funded by the Gates Foundation. – So much for WHO being a UN Agency.
If these new IHR / Pandemic Treaty are approved by the World Health Assembly at the end of May 2023, the world (currently 194 WHO members) will be living under a “health tyranny”.
WHO would have overreaching powers over otherwise autonomous countries, being able to overrule national Constitutions and decide whether a disease must be treated as a pandemic, i.e., with massive vaccination.
For example, WHO could decide that henceforth the common flue must be treated as a pandemic. Since “covid”, any “vaccination” will be the gene-modifying mRNA type. The same viral-technology that has, with covid inoculations, caused already tens of millions of deaths around the world. Of course, not openly recognized, but over-mortality statistics, especially in the western world, alias, Global North, speak for themselves. They are congruent with the countries’ vaxx-injection rates.
People have no clue that when they next take their kid for a polio, or measles vaccination, their child will be injected with a potentially deadly mRNA-type toxic solution, producing immune-averse spike proteins. See this by Dr. Mike Yeadon, former VP and Chief Science Officer of Pfizer.
Total Obedience
To assure utmost obedience of countries, Klaus Schwab has on several occasions boasted that the WEF was infiltrating scholars of the WEF “Academy” for Young Global Leaders (YGL) into governments around the world. They often are placed in Prime Minister’s or President’s positions. To name just a few of the more prominent ones – Justin Trudeau, Canada; Emmanuel Macron, France; Mark Rutte, Netherlands; former German Chancellor Angela Merkel; as well as Olaf Scholz, current Chancellor of Germany.
Central Bank Digital Currency (CBDC) – Welcome to the New Money Prison
The decision to introduce CBDC so-to-speak at warp speed was made at a Jackson Hole, WY, meeting in August 2019 by the Central Bankers of the G7 nations. They voted on a financial coup which was “Going Direct Reset”.
This was planned way ahead for at least the last 20 years, and now needed to be consolidated for the final stage of total and absolute financial control – the end game of the coming world tyranny. First applied by the Global North, where the impact will be greatest. See brief 1 min. video by Katherine Austin Fitts, it says it all.
It is weaponizing money into programmable and controllable CBDC – a Weapon of Mass Destruction.
The rest of the world will follow suit. That’s what they think. Destruction of the industrialized world is first. Germany is supposed to lead deindustrialization of Europe, prompted by artificially caused energy shortages. Then comes the absolute control of the world’s natural resources – so that reconstruction of the system, with a drastically reduced world population, may progress rather fast.
The US / NATO Ukraine proxy-war against Russia is a forerunner aiming at dominating Russia and her wealth of natural resources.
Governments and banksters are the people’s biggest, most nefarious, but least recognized enemies. How much longer does it take until a majority of people will wake up and stop this crime on humanity?
According to Katherine Austin Fitts, the introduction of CBDC, may put half a billion people out of work. That is just one part of the warfare. It is intimately connected to the plandemic. People did not die of covid, most perished from toxic vaxxes and from “covid” caused misery.
Dr. Michael Yeadon, former VP and Chief Scientist of Pfizer repeatedly said in his interviews and special addresses, the real, potentially massive dying, of the coerced vaxx-campaign – will take place after three and up to about ten years from the beginning of the vaxx-drive. Injections of mRNA material into people’s bodies began in December 2020. We are now entering year three. And hundreds of thousands, if not millions, around the world have already died due to the “vaxxes”, NOT covid.
Today, truth-seeking scientists and medical doctors warn – “don’t get vaxxed, it is dangerous for your health, the jabs may kill you.” If not, they may maim you for life, or reduce massively women’s and men’s fertility. The latter shows already up in statistics – in Europe from 20% to 40% reduced fertility in 2022. Yet, worldwide vaxx-drives go on – a bulldozer stopping from nothing.
How to weaponize money?
A threesome tyranny – a “trinity”, is at it. The WEF and it’s behind the scene giant financiers; the Governments, and the banksters, through a network of national central banks, all controlled by the Bank for International Settlement (BIS), in Basel, Switzerland. The “health industry” – Big Pharma, health- and hospital facilities and insurances are following the line with digitized health records and digitized health services.
The 2019 G7 Jackson Hole decision on massive bank failures to bring about CBDC, started in early March 2023 on a relatively light note in the United States. The opening was the apparent collapse of California’s Silicon Valley Bank (SVB), California’s Silvergate Capital and NYC’s Signature Bank. None of them really needed to go into bankruptcy. They were “bailed out” by the Biden Administration, put in control of the “Regulator”, before rumors of failure could trigger a run on the bank.
We know how “rumors” can be fabricated or enhanced and how they may mobilize people.
On the other side of the Atlantic, Credit Suisse, second largest Swiss bank, had been plagued for the last two decades by scandals and “financial irregularities” one after the other, including drug money laundering, and helping Russian oligarch escape western sanctions by “disappearing “ documents linking them to their luxury yachts which were supposed to be confiscated.
Since earlier this year, the bank’s share value plummeted, first by the week, then by the day. For a complete list of financial scandals and more, see this.
Much of the loss of confidence was, again, based on rumors – and rumors can be spread – true or false.
There was never a need to put CS into receivership. The bank, according to many analysts, also FINMA (the Swiss banking “regulator”) was solvent, especially after CS supposedly received on Friday, 17 March, a 50 billion franc “bail-out” loan from the Swiss Central Bank.
According to insiders (CS analysts)- and outsiders, this amount of cash would have been enough to restructure the bank, including quietly getting rid of undesirable skeletons – regaining trust of people and shareholders – and be functional again within less than a year.
However, there may be another agenda for the sudden change in direction, during the weekend, 18/19 March. Janet Yellen, US Secretary of Treasury, UK and German senior Ministry of Finance officials were in “consultation” with the Swiss Minister of Finance.
Outside pressure again cut into Swiss sovereignty politically and in terms of Swiss reputed private banking services.
What happened then, is the complete opposite to what the 50 billion “bail-out” should have achieved. One may ask, was the CHF 50 billion government “bail-out” just a disguise?
In an apparent sudden change of direction, the Swiss Government, without any consultation of shareholders and holders of some CHF 16 billion worth of bonds, forced UBS, the largest Swiss bank, to take over its slightly smaller sister, CS. Even stranger, this happened by applying a shady emergency decree. CS was never in an emergency of insolvency.
CS shareholders had to accept a take-over price of CHF 3 billion, about CHF 0.76 / share, less than half its last quoted share value. The bank’s infrastructure alone is worth a multiple of the take-over price.
On Sunday, March 19, the Swiss regulator FINMA announced that the so-called additional tier-one bonds (AT1) of about CHF 16 billion will be written to zero as part of the deal. Neither the shareholders or the bondholders were warned.
This precipitous coerced deal has not gone down well in Europe. A famous law Professor at the Swiss Fribourg law-specialized university, called Switzerland a “Banana Republic”.
The conservative Swiss newspaper NZZ reported on 19 March 2023 that a few months ago nobody would have believed the downfall of CS was possible. In 2007, CS had a stock value of over CHF 100 billion. It was gradually reduced to CHF 7 billion, less than a week before the decreed take-over. The paper concludes that Switzerland got rid of a Zombie-bank, but acquired instead a Monster-bank. After the merger, UBS will have about 5 trillion worth of managed assets. Compare this with about 10 trillion of BlackRock.
Instead of a 50 billion bailout credit – which would have been paid back, the new deal costs Switzerland about 230 billion – a 200 billion Central Bank line of credit, of which hundred billion are fully guaranteed by the Swiss Government (taxpayers), plus a 9 billion guarantee (taxpayer) for UBS losses, plus other guarantees in case of defaults.
As a sideline, the Swiss Central Bank, on 5 March declared one of the biggest losses in its recent history, of CHF132.5 billion. You add to this a potential loss position of another some CHF 100 to 200 billion – that makes you think – what else is planned to wipe out this debt?
The major CS shareholders may launch a massive law suit against the Swiss Government. Saudi National Bank (10%), Saudi Olayan Group (5%), plus Qatar Holding (5%), hold together about 20%. For these oil-producing countries legal fees may not be an issue, but creating a precedent will be important. BlackRock with about 4.1% CS shares stays for now on the sidelines.
Looks and smells like all of this has been planned by a long hand. Remember the G7 Central Bankers meeting at Jackson Hole, Wy in 2019?
Financial Times and Forbes report that there are about 200 small-to medium size US banks “at the brink” of collapse. The Credit Suisse collapse, one of the world’s 30 systemically most important banks, also one of the “Too Big to Fail” banks, rescued by the Swiss Government, may just set the beginning of a massive domino of bank failures in the US and Europe. See this.
BlackRock’s Vice Chairman, responsible for Investments, Philipp Hildebrand, is the former President of the Swiss National Bank (forced out in 2016, because of a personal scandal), then joined BlackRock. He knows how the wheels turn in Switzerland.
The Biden Administration’s rule of order, ignores the 2010 Dodd-Frank Act that eliminates government bail-outs and opened the door for bail-ins, allowing banks to confiscating creditors’ money and converting it into equity. If this government bail-out policy continues, a never-seen before government debt will accrue. The same may apply in Europe, amassing potentially hundreds of trillions of national debts, on both sides of the Atlantic.
This would be the ideal moment to introduce at once in the western world – US, UK, Canada, Europe, but also Japan and Australia – programmable Central Bank Digital Currency (CBDC).
These countries’ combined 2022 GDP amounts to about US$ 50 trillion equivalent, almost half of the 2022 world GDP (US$ 103.86 trillion). See this (World Bank data).
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Within the shortest period of time, the western US-dollar-based economy’s debt could be wiped out with one stroke – with a new kind of money, the CBDC. With another stroke, the entire ignorant western population could be doubly straitjacketed – by WHO’s Health Tyranny, as well as by programmable CBDC.
It is high time that We, the People, around the world gain consciousness and become aware of the dictatorial measures waiting just a short stretch down road to be implemented. Then, the bulk of The Great Reset / Agenda 2030 would have been achieved. Once that happens, it will be difficult to escape.
It is time that We the People, request our governments to exit WHO – in Switzerland a referendum to this effect has already been initiated – and that we are prepared for setting up parallel governments with local money, totally delinked from existing banking and central banks.
Peter Koenig is a geopolitical analyst and a former Senior Economist at the World Bank and the World Health Organization (WHO), where he worked for over 30 years around the world. He lectures at universities in the US, Europe and South America. He writes regularly for online journals and is the author of Implosion – An Economic Thriller about War, Environmental Destruction and Corporate Greed; and co-author of Cynthia McKinney’s book “When China Sneezes: From the Coronavirus Lockdown to the Global Politico-Economic Crisis” (Clarity Press – November 1, 2020).
Peter is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG). He is also a non-resident Senior Fellow of the Chongyang Institute of Renmin University, Beijing.
The topic of geoengineering and geowarfare always becomes “hot” after major “natural” disasters that hit the world from time to time. Romanian senator Diana Iovanović Sošaka is the first politician in Europe to warn of a series of strange coincidences that followed devastating earthquakes in Turkey and Syria in which tens of thousands of people died.
Speaking about the suspicions that geo-weapons were used in the Middle East, Iovanović Šošaka mentioned the name of Romanian reserve general Emil Strainu as one of the few experts who openly discusses this topic. General Strainu agreed to speak to the media in Serbia with one condition: Before answering I would like to mention that what I will state below does not imply any state or private institution.
Dragan Vujicic (DV): What are geoweapons and geoengineering?
General Emil Strainu (GES): Geo-weapons or environmental weapons are means of combat used to neutralize or destroy the enemy. At the basis of their use are techniques and technologies to modify the environment (lithosphere, hydrosphere and atmosphere) for military purposes.
Geoengineering refers to a range of emerging technologies for intervention, that can manipulate the atmosphere, lithosphere and hydrosphere to mitigate the effects of climate change or for military purposes.
There are currently three main directions in geoengineering, as follows: Carbon geoengineering which aims to remove carbon dioxide/bioxide from the atmosphere, solar geoengineering which aims to modify the amount of solar radiation absorbed and released into the Earth’s atmosphere, and geoengineering which uses environmental modification technologies for military purposes in all three environments – terrestrial (lithosphere), oceanic (hydrosphere) and the Earth’s atmosphere and ionosphere. There are expert opinions that say that current climate change has among its causes some military geoengineering projects (e.g. HAARP Project), some of them carried out for decades in secret.
Geoengineering can save but also destroy the planet depending on how we use it.There are international treaties prohibiting the use of outer space for military purposes and prohibiting active action in the atmosphere and the use of environmental modification technologies for military purposes, but they are not currently respected
DV: What are all the powerful countries trying to do with our climate and atmosphere and how dangerous are these experiments?
GES: There are currently at least ten countries in the world with HAARP-type installations. The most powerful is in the US, in Alaska at Gakona [officially transferred to University of Fairbanks, Alaska in 2016]. The most dangerous for our country’s area is the HAARP installation in Norway in the Tromso area, which belongs to the European Union.
While we have no evidence, HAARP installations could potentially be used for economic warfare, climate change and population control.
DV: You were in Alaska at the headquarters of HAARP, when, what is done there, what can and cannot be mentioned?
GES: I was in Alaska at the University of Fairbanks which is used as a cover by the U.S. Army and CIA for the activity taking place in the town of Gakona where the HAARP installations are spread over hundreds of acres.
The HAARP weapon can be used for the following purposes:
Directed energy weapon;
Communication system for submarines;
System used to fight against satellites by blinding or shooting them down;
Improved communication with own satellites under conditions of electronic warfare and solar flares;
X-ray emitter;
Means of voluntarily creating local, zonal or continental electrical blackouts;
Electronic weapon of warfare;
High-power wireless power transmission by the Nicola Tesla method;
Means of detecting alien objects and craft in space;
Means of countering an alien attack from space;
A device capable of causing explosions comparable to nuclear explosions;
Weapon capable of modifying the environment already used in Geoclimate Warfare;
Creation of hurricanes, tornadoes, waterspouts and tsunamis in areas not specific to these types of natural phenomena;
Creation of earthquakes by stimulating areas prone to such phenomena and activating volcanoes;
Weapons used in psychotronic warfare that can alter brainwaves and control people’s thinking and reactivity (e.g. Havana syndrome).
The study and evaluation of underground oil, gas and mineral deposits thousands of kilometres away;
Remote survey and destruction of bunkers, depots and any other underground bases;
I would like to mention that these actions listed above are closely related to the emission power and operating regime of HAARP-type installations.
HAARP is also called the Ultimate Weapon or the Weapon of the Apocalypse.
DV: Americans say that HAARP is stopped and not working?
GES: The HAARP system has been in operation since 1993 and not only has it never been shut down, but it has been continuously upgraded and improved, increasing its power and the scope of missions it can perform. The number of antennas and transmitters has increased year by year, with more than 180 antennas and main generators in use. Today HAARP has the highest power in its history and can carry out remote missions anywhere in the world.
DV: Three assassination attempts were made against you in just one year. Who are these people?
GES: I was the president of a genuine nationalist party in Romania, the Great Romania Party after the untimely death of the former founding president Cornelui Vadim Tudor. At present I do not belong to any political party. I participated in rallies and protests against the aberrant measures taken during the so-called Covid-19 Pandemic and I took a stand in the press and on TV against the aberrations promoted by the neo-progressive current, and globalism, being considered a dangerous opinion leader for the Deepstate. So I was shut down and subsequently put under great pressure to stop expressing my views and opinions in public. Following very harsh threats against me and my family, I had to withdraw from political life, and a subsequent public programme of discrediting and defaming me was carried out. The most serious actions taken against me were dictated by the forces of the neo-progressive world cult.
DV: What should an ordinary person not know today because he will be punished by the powerful?
GES: There is currently a fierce battle going on in the world between the group of Sovereignist States and the group of States promoting Neo-progressivism, so-called Globalization or in other words Internationalist Corporatism which does not take into account nations and sovereignty of States. Knowledge as a phenomenon, the storage and use of information is not dangerous until you go beyond the level you are assigned in this field and social hierarchy. There are secret and discreet groups and movements that rule the world.
DV: How do you view the Serbian struggle from 1991 to today’s attempts by the West to seize Kosovo from the Serbs? What is your opinion on that.
GES: The West wants to monopolize the Eastern European states, especially the former socialist ones, and create small statelets on ethnically imposed principles in order to control and exploit them more easily. This is what happened to the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, which was broken up into small statelets which, with the exception of Serbia, are all controlled by the West. Another example is the break-up of the Czechoslovak Socialist Republic into two small states easily manipulated by the West, especially Germany.
At present, the process of the farimitarization of the national states continues by imposing the so-called Euro-Regions which are in fact the nuclei of the future small states that will appear with the blessing of the West, exacerbating certain problems and internal fractions in some national states until their secession.
The West is the main secessionist motor in Eastern Europe.
Since 1991, the Republic of Serbia has been waging a straight fight for statehood and the preservation of the national identity of the Serbian people. The former Autonomous Region of Kosovo in the former Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia is an integral part of the Republic of Serbia, the cradle of the Serbian nation. Kosovo must be an integral part of the territory and administration of Serbia and in the spirit of international law local ethical issues must be resolved without any foreign interference.
The West judges peoples with double standards: The West wants the independence of Serbian Kosovo but does not want the independence of Donbas. Kosovo is a historical territory of Serbia and the cradle of the Sirbian nation!
Romanian reserve general Emil Strainu is a physicist specialized in radiolocation. He published over 50 books, thousands of books, articles and studies in the field of airspace research on radar methods, geophysical weapons, climatology, UFO phenomenon. In his biography it is stated that he crossed the Arctic Circle five times (Alaska, Greenland, the Svalbard Islands, north of Murmansk and Kamchatka) and the southern polar circle.
He participated in expeditions and travels in areas such as: Alaska, Siberia, Tibet, Easter Island, Greenland, Iceland, Svalbard, Himalayas, Lake Baikal, Kamchatka, Bering Strait (Vladivostok-Russia, Elena Kozebuse-USA). a general who enters restricted areas, such as Area 51, Gakom – HAARP or dangerous areas such as the deserts of Nevada, Atacama, New Mexico, Arizona, Mojave.
The original source of this article is Global Research
Destruction, social devastation and the loss of life. Our thoughts are with the people of Turkey and Syria.
Introduction
The latest reports point to a death toll in Turkey and Syria well in excess of 50,000, more than half a million injured, tens of thousands of people missing. The social devastation and destruction is beyond description. The first and second earthquakes on February 6, 2023 in Kahramanmaras province in Southern Turkey were respectively of the magnitude of 7.6 and 7.8 (Richter scale).
A third earthquake of a magnitude of 6.3 was recorded on February 20th.
In Turkey, some 530,000 people have been evacuated from the disaster area. Ankara confirms that “173,000 buildings have so far been recorded as collapsed or severely damaged, with more than 1.9 million people taking refuge in temporary shelters or hotels and public facilities.”
In the words of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan: ““We are living through the most painful days in our history”.
In Syria, the earthquakes have largely affected the cities of Aleppo, Lattakia and Hama which are within proximity of Syria’s Northwestern border with Turkey. The latest announced death toll in Syria was 5,914, with 8.8 million people affected.
President Bachar Al Assad underscored that US-NATO has been at war with Syria for almost 12 years, while emphasizing that “Syria has not been an earthquake area for about two and a half centuries”.
In this article, Part I will focus on the History of Earthquake Activity in Turkey, while underscoring the fact that prior to the February 6, 2023 earthquake, there was no recent evidence or historical record of “major earthquake” activity in Southern Anatolia.
Part II will provide a Review ofEnvironmental Modification Techniques (ENMOD).
What is significant in regards to the Turkey-Syria earthquake disaster is that the 1977 UN Convention (cited above) contains provisions for the conduct of an investigation in regards to “destruction, damage or injury” incurred by the “State Parties”, under the auspices of a UN “Consultative Committee of Experts”.
There are also provisions in the Convention for referral to the United Nations Security Council on behalf of the “State Parties”. These issues are outlined in Part IV.
I — History of Earthquake Activity in Turkey
In regards to Turkey, geological analysis suggests the following:
“earthquake activities mainly occur “on the Anatolian plate, a small wedge-shaped tectonic plate that is being squeezed westwards as the Arabian plate to the east slams into the Eurasian plate“. (emphasis added).
What characterizes Turkey’s earthquake activity is:
The February 6, 2023 earthquakes with epicentres in Pazarcik (7.8) and Ekinozu (7.5) respectively in proximity of Gaziantep and Kahramanmaraş are the largest “major earthquakes” in recent history. (See Table in Annex, Graph below).
Historically, the largest earthquakes in Turkey have epicentres in North Western Anatolia, in proximity of Istanbul, Western Anatolia as well as in the Northeastern region.
The North Anatolian Fault
Seven large (MS) 7.0 earthquakes in the period from 1939 through 1999 along the North Anatolian Fault. See map above
These earthquakes have ruptured the fault progressively from east to west. Following are data for the seven large earthquakes that have progressively ruptured the North Anatolian fault:
1939 December 26. Magnitude (MS) 7.9 – 8.0. 30,000 deaths. Fault length about 360 km. Initiated the eastward migration of significant earthquakes on the North Anatolian fault. (Termed the 1939 Erzincan earthquake, North Anatolia)
1942 December 20. Magnitude (MS) 7.1. Fault length about 50 km. (Termed the 1942 Erbaa earthquake, North Anatolia)
1943 November 26. Magnitude (MS) 7.6. Fault length about 280 km. (Termed the 1943 Tosya earthquake, Northern Anatolia)
1944 February 01. Magnitude (MS) 7.3. Fault length about 165 km. (Termed the 1944 Bolu-Gerede earthquake, Northern Anatolia)
1957 May 26. Magnitude (MS) about 7. Fault length about 30 km. (Termed the 1957 Abant earthquake, Northern Anatolia)
1967 July 22. Magnitude (MS) 7.1. Fault length about 80 km. (Termed the 1967 Mudurnu Valley earthquake, Northern Anatolia)
1999 August 17. Ismit. Magnitude (MS) 7.8; MW 7.4-7.5) North Western Anatolia
Bingol: a magnitude 6.9 and occurred in the eastern city of Turkey on May 22, 1971.
City of Izmit: August 17, 1999, 90 km southeast of Istanbul, 7.6 magnitude. The earthquake occurred in the industrialized and most densely populated urban areas of Istanbul, Sakarya, Golcuk, Darica, and Derince.
Düzce Quake, 12 November 1999, A major earthquake occurred 70 kilometers (45 miles) east of Adapazari or 170 km (105 mi) northwest of Ankara, A magnitude of 7.2.
The city of Van. 23 October 2011. A magnitude 7.1 earthquake, northeastern city close to border with Iran.
Izmir: of 30 October 2020, a magnitude 7.0 with an epicentre about 14 km northeast of the Greek island of Samos.
epicentre of Izmit-Golcuk earthquake in Northwestern Anatolia
Nota Bene: None of these major earthquakes (1939-1999) are in Southern Anatolia.
Long-Term History of Earthquakes in Turkey (342 AD -1999)
In the 13th Century, a “major earthquake” (60,000 deaths) was recorded in Adana in 1268 (Southern Anatolia). Moreover, since the 15th Century, all “major earthquakes” have occurred in Northwestern, Western and Northeastern Anatolia. (See Annex)
Southern Turkey Earthquakes
Reuters has categorized the initial major earthquake (February 6, 2023) “as the most powerful in the region in at least a century”. That is an understatement. In regards to Southern Anatolia, it is the largest earthquake in more than seven centuries. (Adana in 1268, see Table in Annex)
On record in Southern Turkey, is the Ceyhan-Adana earthquakeon 27 June 1998, with magnitude of 6.3, affecting the cities of Ceyhan and Adana, 146 deaths. The Ceyan earthquake, however, is not categorized as “a major earthquake”.
As outlined above, the major earthquakes in Turkey are along the North Anatolia Fault.
Prior to February 6, 2023
Not a single “major earthquake” in Southern Anatolia in the course of more than 700 years: Does that not “tell us something” regarding the “probability” or “likelihood” of a “major earthquake” occurring in Southern Turkey?
Earthquake “Forecasting”
Earthquake forecasting is routine. An earthquake can be forecasted up to months ahead. “Forecasting” however must not be confused with “seismological prediction”:
Dutch seismologist Frank Hoogerbeets, who works for the Solar System Geometry Survey (SSGS) in the Netherlands, predicted the earthquake in Turkey on February 3, 2023, three days before its occurrence.
No Firm Evidence of a Terrorist Attack
While there may be doubts at a political level, there is at this stage no firm evidence that this was a terrorist attack. Based on information in the public domaine (as opposed to classified information), there is no tangible evidence that “environmental modifications techniques” were used against Turkey and Syria.
You know those power poles on the streets. They are similar to these pillars, about 8-10 meters high. Metal rods.
There is nothing inside the rod, no explosives, nothing, but it’s a metal rod made of a hard titanium alloy material.
They put them in a satellite. And then they aim and launch them to Earth. It’s like a stick with a sharp point. For example, God forbid, it falls somewhere, we will not name the disaster scenario now, but as soon as it falls to the ground, it penetrates up to 5 km deep into the earth.
This happens very quickly and creates an earthquake of magnitude 7-8.
As a result of the impact, everything that is there will be destroyed. Look, there are no weapons here, no explosives, no bombs, nothing like that. Simple sticks [rods]. But there is such a force that comes from outer space, and you have no chance to see it, stop it, or defend yourself.” (emphasis added)
There is a vast literature on weather modification techniques for military use much of which is classified. The US and Russia are on record. They possess advanced ENMOD technologies.
The late World renowned scientist Dr. Rosalie Bertell confirmed that “US military scientists … are working on weather systems as a potential weapon. Already in the 1970s, former National Security advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski had foreseen in his book “Between Two Ages” that:
“Technology will make available, to the leaders of major nations, techniques for conducting secret warfare, of which only a bare minimum of the security forces need be appraised…”
Scientist Dr. Nicholas Begich who was actively involved in the public campaign against HAARP– described HAARP as:
“A super-powerful radiowave-beaming technology that lifts areas of the ionosphere [upper layer of the atmosphere] by focusing a beam and heating those areas. Electromagnetic waves then bounce back onto earth and penetrate everything — living and dead.”
Marc Filterman, a former French military officer, outlines several types of “unconventional weapons” using radio frequencies. He refers to “weather war,” indicating that the U.S. and the Soviet Union had already
“mastered the know-how needed to unleash sudden climate changes (hurricanes, drought) in the early 1980s.”
My article entitled Weather Warfare first published by The Ecologist on May 22 2008 provides a summary of several in-depth and detailed articles I wrote at an earlier period on environmental modification (ENMOD) techniques for military use:
“Rarely acknowledged in the debate on global climate change, the world’s weather can now be modified as part of a new generation of sophisticated electromagnetic weapons. Both the US and Russia have developed capabilities to manipulate the climate for military use.
Environmental modification techniques have been applied by the US military for more than half a century. US mathematician John von Neumann, in liaison with the US Department of Defense, started his research on weather modification in the late 1940s at the height of the Cold War and foresaw ‘forms of climatic warfare as yet unimagined’.
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During the Vietnam war, cloud-seeding techniques were used, starting in 1967 under Project Popeye, the objective of which was to prolong the monsoon season and block enemy supply routes along the Ho Chi Minh Trail.
The US military has developed advanced capabilities that enable it selectively to alter weather patterns. The technology, which is being perfected under the High-frequency Active Auroral Research Program (HAARP) [closed down in 2014, officially transferred to the University of Alaska] is an appendage of the Strategic Defense Initiative – ‘Star Wars’. From a military standpoint, HAARP is a weapon of mass destruction, operating from the outer atmosphere and capable of destabilising agricultural and ecological systems around the world.
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Established in 1992, HAARP, based in Gokona, Alaska, is an array of high-powered antennas that transmit, through high-frequency radio waves, massive amounts of energy into the ionosphere (the upper layer of the atmosphere). Their construction was funded by the US Air Force, the US Navy and the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA).
Operated jointly by the Air Force Research Laboratory and the Office of Naval Research, HAARP constitutes a system of powerful antennas capable of creating ‘controlled local modifications of the ionosphere’.
“Rosalie Bertell, president of the International Institute of Concern for Public Health, says HAARP operates as ‘a gigantic heater that can cause major disruptions in the ionosphere, creating not just holes, but long incisions in the protective layer that keeps deadly radiation from bombarding the planet’.
Physicist Dr Bernard Eastlund called it ‘the largest ionospheric heater ever built’.
HAARP is presented by the US Air Force as a research programme, but military documents confirm its main objective is to ‘induce ionospheric modifications’ with a view to altering weather patterns and disrupting communications and radar.
Of significance, a CBC TV report (1996) acknowledged that the HAARP facility in Alaska under the auspices of the US Air Force had the ability of triggering typhoons, earthquakes, floods and droughts:
“Directed energy is such a powerful technology it could be used to heat the ionosphere to turn weather into a weapon of war. Imagine using a flood to destroy a city or tornadoes to decimate an approaching army in the desert. The military has spent a huge amount of time on weather modification as a concept for battle environments. If an electromagnetic pulse went off over a city, basically all the electronic things in your home would wink and go out, and they would be permanently destroyed.”
CBC TV Report (1996)
It should be noted that while the HAARP program based in Gakona, Alaska was closed down in 2014 (transferred to the University of Alaska), the US Air Force which managed the HAARP project, nonetheless confirmed that ENMOD techniques for military use were slated to continue:
“We’re moving on to other ways of managing the ionosphere, which the HAARP was really designed to do,” he said.
“To inject energy into the ionosphere to be able to actually control it. But that work has been completed.”
“Weather as a Force Multiplier: Owning the Weather”
The underlying objective from a military standpoint is “Owning the Weather”. At the time this US Air Force study was commissioned in 1996, the HAARP program was already fully operational as documented by the CBC.
The stated purpose of the Report is described below:
In this paper we show that appropriate application of weather-modification can provide battlespace dominance to a degree never before imagined. In the future, such operations will enhance air and space superiority and provide new options for battlespace shaping and battlespace awareness there, waiting for us to pull it all together;” in 2025 we can “Own the Weather.”(Commissioned by US Air Force document AF 2025 Final Report,public document)
Weather-modification, according to the US Air Force Report “offers the war fighter a wide range of possible options to defeat or coerce an adversary”, capabilities, it says, extend to the triggering of floods, hurricanes, droughts and earthquakes:
‘Weather modification will become a part of domestic and international security and could be done unilaterally… It could have offensive and defensive applications and even be used for deterrence purposes. The ability to generate precipitation, fog and storms on earth or to modify space weather… and the production of artificial weather all are a part of an integrated set of [military] technologies.”
….From enhancing friendly operations or disrupting those of the enemy via small-scale tailoring of natural weather patterns to complete dominance of global communications and counterspace control, weather-modification offers the war fighter a wide-range of possible options to defeat or coerce an adversary. Some of the potential capabilities a weather-modification system could provide to a war-fighting commander in chief (CINC) are listed in table 1. (emphasis added)
While the triggering of earthquakes is an integral part of the HAARP technology, the term earthquakes does not appear explicitly in the above version of US Air Force document. Appendices A and B of the report point to role of the Ionosphere pertaining to maximum usable frequency (MUF).
The Involvement of the CIA in ENMOD Technologies
Back in July 2013, MSN news reported that the CIA was involved in helping to fund a project by the National Academy of Sciences (NAS) focusing on geo-engineering and climate manipulation. The report not only acknowledged these technologies, it confirmed that US intelligence has been routinely involved in addressing the issue of climatic manipulation:
“The goal of the CIA-backed NAS study is to conduct a “technical evaluation of a limited number of proposed geoengineering techniques,” according to the NAS website. Scientists will attempt to determine which geoengineering techniques are feasible and try to evaluate the impacts and risks of each (including “national security concerns”).” (See Slate, July 2013)
“The CIA is helping fund the research because the NAS also plans to evaluate “the national security concerns (that could be) related to geoengineering technologies being deployed somewhere in the world,” Kearney said.
III — The 1977 U.N. Convention on the Use of Environmental Modification Techniques
In 1977, an international Convention was ratified by the UN General Assembly which banned “military or other hostile use of environmental modification techniques having widespread, long-lasting or severe effects”.
ENMOD techniques also apply to earthquakes:
“It defined ‘environmental modification techniques’ as ‘any technique for changing – through the deliberate manipulation of natural processes – the dynamics, composition or structure of the earth, including its biota, lithosphere, hydrosphere and atmosphere, or of outer space.” (emphasis added)
The historic 1977 Convention ratified by the UN General Assembly banning “military or other hostile use of environmental modification techniques having widespread, long-lasting or severe effects.”
…Each State Party to this Convention undertakes not to engage in military … use of environmental modification techniques having widespread, long-lasting or severe effects as the means of destruction, damage or injury to any other State Party. (Convention on the Prohibition of Military or Any Other Hostile Use of Environmental Modification Techniques, United Nations, Geneva, May 18, 1977. Entered into force: 5 October 1978, see full text of Convention in Annex)
As of 2022, 78 countries have ratified or acceded to the treaty including Syria, Turkey, Iraq, Iran, the U.S. and the Russian Federation. Israel has not ratified the Treaty.
European Parliament Committee’s Motion for Resolution
It is also worth noting that in February 1998, the European Parliament’s Committee on Foreign Affairs, Security and Defense Policy held public hearings in Brussels on the HAARP program. The Committee’s “Motion for Resolution” submitted to the European Parliament:
“Considers HAARP… by virtue of its far-reaching impact on the environment to be a global concern and calls for its legal, ecological and ethical implications to be examined by an international independent body…; [the Committee] regrets the repeated refusal of the United States Administration… to give evidence to the public hearing …into the environmental and public risks [of] the HAARP program.” (emphasis added)
IV — “An Expert Investigation” into “Hostile Use of ENMOD”
In view of the gravity of the Turkey-Syria earthquake, the loss of life, the devastating social and economic impacts, an “expert investigation” should be conducted predicated on the 1977 International Convention banning “military or other hostile use of environmental modification techniques”.
I should mention that since the ratification of the 1977 UN Convention cited above, ENMOD techniques for military use have become increasingly sophisticated.
Can we trust the United Nations? The two “State Parties”, namely Turkey and Syria should collaborate and conduct their own internal investigation prior to the conduct of an expert investigation under UN auspices.
The Terms of Reference of this Investigation are contained in the Articles of Agreement of the UN Treaty.
Each State Party to this Convention undertakes not to engage in military or any other hostile use of environmental modification techniques having widespread, long-lasting or severe effects as the means of destruction, damage or injury to any other State Party.
Article II refers to ENMOD techniques including earthquakes:
Article II
As used in article 1, the term “environmental modification techniques” refers to any technique for changing – through the deliberate manipulation of natural processes – the dynamics, composition or structure of the Earth, including its biota, lithosphere, hydrosphere and atmosphere, or of outer space.
Article V
1. The States Parties to this Convention undertake to consult one another and to co-operate in solving any problems which may arise in relation to the objectives of, or in the application of the provisions of, the Convention. Consultation and co-operation pursuant to this article may also be undertaken through appropriate international procedures within the framework of the United Nations and in accordance with its Charter. These international procedures may include the services of appropriate international organizations, as well as of a Consultative Committee of Experts as provided for in paragraph 2 of this article.
2. For the purposes set forth in paragraph 1 of this article, the Depositary shall within one month of the receipt of a request from any State Party to this Convention, convene a Consultative Committee of Experts. …
3. Any State Party to this Convention which has reason to believe that any other State Party is acting in breach of obligations deriving from the provisions of the Convention may lodge a complaint with the Security Council of the United Nations. Such a complaint should include all relevant information as well as all possible evidence supporting ItS validity.
4. Each State Party to this Convention undertakes to cooperate in carrying out any investigation which the Security Council may initiate, in accordance with the provisions of the Charter of the United Nations, on the basis of the complaint received by the Council. The Security Council shall inform the States Parties of the results of the investigation.
In Annex to the Text of the Convention is the Following:
1. The Consultative Committee of Experts shall undertake to make appropriate findings of fact and provide expert views relevant to any problem raised pursuant to paragraph 1 of article V of this Convention by the State Party requesting the convening of the Committee.
emphasis added
Concluding Remarks
We are in solidarity with the people of Turkey and Syria.
At this stage, it would be unwise and premature to draw simplistic conclusions.
There is a forbidden truth. I have attempted to provide a framework of analysis and understanding.
The damage and loss of life is beyond description: The issue should be the object of analysis, dialogue and debate, with reference to the 1977 International Convention banning “military or other hostile use of environmental modification techniques”.
Turkey and Syria as “State Parties” must, as a first step, conduct their own internal investigation before referring it to the UN Consultative Committee of Experts and/or to the United Nations Security Council.
Annex
Source: This Information was provided by USGS – National Earthquake Information Center
ISK: Earthquake catalog of Kandilli Observatory, Bogazici University, Istanbul, supplied by NOAA/NGDC (Meyers and Von Hake), Boulder CO, 1985.
ITU: K. Ergin, U. Guclu and Z. Uz, A Catalog of Earthquakes for Turkey and Surrounding Area (11 AD to 1964 AD), Technical University of Istanbul, Faculty of Mining Engineering, 1967.
AFAD: Earthquake Risk Map by AFAD, Department of Disasters and Emergency Management, 2018.
NG(n): R. Ganse and J. Nelson, Catalog of Significant Earthquakes 2000 BC – 1979 Including Quantitative Casualties and Damage, NOAA/NGDC Report SE-27, Boulder CO, 1981. The number in parentheses is from their references table, as listed below:
2: Lomnitz, Global Tectonics and Earthquake Risk, 1974.
3: Bath, Introduction to Seismology, 1978.
5b: (there is no source 5b — probably should be 55?).
7: Meyers and von Hake, Earthquake data file summary, 1976.
51: Munchener Ruckversicherungs-Gesellschaft, World Map of Natural Hazards, 1978.
55: Milne, Catalogue of Destructive Earthquakes, 1911.
73: U.S. Congress, Great Earthquakes, 1888.
99: Karnik, Seismicity of the European Area, 1971.
120: Alsinawi and Galih, Historical Seismicity of Iraq, 1978.
138: Ambraseys, Middle East A Reappraisal of Seismicity, 1978.
The original source of this article is Global Research
