by Roland Oliphant, SENIOR FOREIGN CORRESPONDENT via telegraph

Lord Robertson of Port Ellen, a former secretary General of Nato, has seen his fair share of international crises CREDIT: Julian Simmonds

[ . . . ]

Lord Robertson of Port Ellen has seen his fair share of international crises. As Tony Blair’s Secretary of State for Defence and later the Secretary General of Nato between 1999 and 2003, he presided Nato’s intervention in Kosovo in 1999, the alliance’s enlargement to include former Warsaw Pact members in eastern Europe, and its only ever invocation of Article Five, the North Atlantic Treaty’s self-defence clause, in the aftermath of the Sept 11 attacks.

Unlike many retired politicians and generals, he is still viewed by serving defence officials and thinkers as a credible elder statesman. Now, he has a warning: we are living through a period of global volatility “unlike anything in history, and we are not rising to the occasion”.

“If they [Ukraine] lose, we lose…because otherwise the world order will be written by the Chinese and the Russians and the Iranians and the North Koreans. And that will make a very, very uncomfortable world for my grandkids.”

It is not a reassuring prediction. The war in Ukraine is about to enter its third year, the Middle East is aflame, and Western nerves jangle over Xi Jinping’s plans for Chinese “unification” with Taiwan.

Ukrainian servicemen fire a M777 howitzer toward Russian troops at a position near a front line in the Zaporizhzhia region CREDIT: Reuters/Stringer

And by the end of the year, Donald Trump, who is on record telling European officials that “Nato is dead,” may once again be president-elect of the United States.

Some officials are openly warning that Britain may be involved in a peer-to-peer conflict within a decade. Some people say the world has never been so dangerous as it is in 2024. Can Lord Robertson reassure us it isn’t?

“Oh, it’s bad,” he says. “People say it’s an incredibly dangerous time. Well, it is. We have never had such a volatility of events, so many things simultaneously happening in politics of both democracies and autocracies. Is it the most dangerous period? No.”

Lord Robertson left Nato in 2003, but never really retired. At the age of 77 he is a frantically busy peer, commuting weekly between Westminster and his home in Dunblane where he lives with his wife Sandra (he also has three grown-up children).

[ . . . ]

“It’s unlike anything in history this period we’re living through,” he says. “It is almost a battle of alliances. The Global South is taking sides and they don’t seem to recognise that they’ve got a dog in the fight – that if you can change borders by the use of force then anarchy is the eventual outcome. The Western alliance is there, but maybe endangered by Donald Trump coming in. We cannot afford to be taken by surprise again.”

It is the vacuum of leadership that bothers him most. Yes, he concedes, the Westerners, including his own generation of leaders, became complacent in the aftermath of the Cold War.

“Even now, when there is a land war in Europe, when we’ve got Ukraine and some other problems – the Prime Minister was reminding us on Monday of how important it was that [Ukraine] gets the equipment. And he still doesn’t say when we will give them a multi-year commitment.”

Lord Robertson talks to troops from the Ukraine and Poland during a joint training exercise in 1998 CREDIT: Adam Butler/PA

This week, Rishi Sunak won a standing ovation in the Rada, Ukraine’s parliament, when he announced a new package of aid. It was a strong speech, and greeted with great relief by Ukrainians who sense a creeping fatigue over the war.

But Lord Robertson fears there is still too large a gap between the bravado of Western rhetoric and the hesitancy of their actions for the Kremlin to take them seriously.

“There is a basic principle in politics: it is not what you say, it is what people hear. We forget that all the time. The only thing that will change Vladimir Putin’s mind – and that’s the mind that dictates what is happening there – is you’ve got to say you are there for the duration. One speech on a Monday afternoon is not enough.

“The money we pay for Ukraine at the moment runs out in a few weeks time in March. The Prime Minister goes out there and makes all the right noises and gets an award and announces £2.5 billion for the next year. What they need is for us to say ‘we’re going to give you £2.5 billion every year.’ Because that’s the only thing that will be heard in the Kremlin.”

He sees a similar problem across the Atlantic. Joe Biden has also shown “timidity” in his response to Ukraine. And Donald Trump has even worse messaging problems.

US President Joe Biden and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky hold a press conference at the White House in December CREDIT: AFP via Getty Images

“I was talking to an American congressional delegation this week who were pointing out that, although he was rhetorical about Nato before, he actually increased the American contribution to Nato. The American Congress has now put in place a law that says he cannot withdraw from Nato,” he explains.

“They were saying, ‘Look what Donald Trump did. We are absolutely on the side of the Ukrainians. We just want this deal done’. I said, ‘But that’s not what is appearing in the Kremlin. And that is all they are listening to’.”

[ . . . ]

“I think the next stage for Putin, if he succeeds here, is that you build up another buffer. He will mop up Moldova, Armenia, Kazakhstan – building that buffer in there. There is a timidity both in the White House and in Downing Street and in other capitals in Europe, that they don’t want to escalate.

“You can’t give them long-range weapons because they might use them into territorial Russia and then we will have World War Three. So that fear of escalation is reducing that objective, that Ukraine has got to win,” Lord Robertson explains.

“In my view, again psychologically, we have got to inculcate into the Russian high command the thought that they could escalate and bring about that conflict. Because a conflict with Nato would lead to Russian defeat.”

[ . . . ]

Admiral Rob Bauer, Nato’s current military chief, warned this week that Nato must prepare for all-out war with Russia in the next 20 years. The head of Poland’s national security agency last month gave the alliance’s eastern members just three years to arm themselves.

Defence think tanks are rehearsing a nightmare scenario of Russia launching a surprise attack on the Baltic States, presenting Nato with a fait-accomplis before the alliance can agree on an effective military response.

By exploiting fear of nuclear war, Putin could then seek to persuade European governments to talk rather than fight – avoiding a conventional war (which he would lose), while effectively destroying Nato politically by demonstrating that Article 5 is useless.

Lord Robertson is sceptical. “I don’t think he will cross the Article 5 line. The key thing about nuclear deterrence is you don’t know what we’re going to do. And you can say Trump won’t press the button. But actually you’ve got the French and the British deterrents. And the British deterrent is independent.”

He freely admits he has come a long way from scouting for CND protesters at Holy Loch.

And yet the painting on his office wall is a reminder that there is more continuity than contradiction between the angry young pacifist scouting CND campsites and the peer of the realm putting faith in mutually assured destruction.

It was, after all, a group of former student radicals who resolved to stop Slobodan Milošević’s nascent genocide in Kosovo.

“The French, German, and British foreign and defence ministers around that table were all of that Sixties generation who protested against the Vietnam war,” Lord Robertson recalls. “You had people like Robin Cook, and me, and Joschka Fischer, confronted with something horrible going on, that we can stop.

“We knew what the public didn’t know, about Operation Horseshoe and Milošević expelling an entire population. Are you going to take military action? You have to, when you’re faced with that enormous responsibility.”

In the end, it comes back to the bones beneath the poppies on his office wall.

“We need to look at Ukraine in the same context. Because if they lose – if Putin wins – then we all lose.”

Read the whole article here.

by Emmet Sweeney

When the COVID hoax was sprung upon the world in early 2020, conservative commentator Rush Limbaugh was not fooled: the primary purpose of the hysteria and the lockdowns that went with it, he said, was to prevent the re-election of Donald Trump. The lockdowns, said Limbaugh, were designed primarily to wreck the Trump economy and thereby stymie his attempt to remain in office later in the year. The present writer came to the same conclusion, at basically the same time; about the same day as the lockdowns began. Closing the world down over a coronavirus – a type of virus normally associated with the common cold – was an act of unprecedented irrationality that could only have some ulterior motive, and that motive was very evidently not public health.

There were other motives, in other parts of the world, for locking down, but it soon became obvious that an extremely important one in America was to damage Trump.

As it turned out, the wreckage of the economy, by itself, was insufficient to ruin the Orange Man’s re-election chances, and the Democrat establishment (which, since the advent of Trump, has become the main vehicle of corporate and globalist power), was ultimately compelled to steal the election in the most brazen act of political piracy ever witnessed in a modern democracy. Mail-in ballots, stuffed with fabricated Biden votes, continued to arrive at counting stations up to two weeks after the actual election day. When tallied up, the senile old pervert, who couldn’t attract more than half a dozen people to his pre-election rallies, was said to have garnered 81 million votes – twelve million more than the previous popular vote record held by Barack Obama. The establishment, having rubbed Trump’s nose in it by such a move, might reasonably have expected the latter to retire from politics. After all, if they could take the election from him in such a brazen way – one which he almost certainly won by a landslide – why would he even imagine that he could gain the White House again in a future ballot? But Trump has made a comeback, much to everyone’s astonishment (not least, perhaps, his own). To all intents and purposes he now looks set to win the election this coming November in an even bigger landslide than in November 2020, when he took 71 million votes.

Before moving on, it is perhaps necessary to say something about why the establishment loathes Trump so much.

The Orange Man is above all a performer: He made his name as a television reality show host. He is abrasive and he speaks his mind. But his bark is much worse than his bite. His inaugural speech, in January 2017, said to have been written by Steve Bannon, read like a declaration of war. To the excruciating discomfort of the assembled clutch of high class criminals around him, he had the effrontery to call the elites out on the very crimes they were actually guilty of. Hillary, Barack, and George W., who stood close by, must have wondered whether their day in court was fast approaching. Yet nothing (much to the disgust and fury of his “deplorable” followers) happened. Months, and finally years, went by, and still “the Swamp” remained undrained. On the contrary, Trump permitted most of the Swamp creatures in the FBI, CIA and other powerful institutions to hold onto their jobs, and he even employed a plethora of new Swamp creatures, such and Nikki Haley and John Bolton. In the meantime, radicals such as Steve Bannon were fired. It is said that Trump’s daughter Ivanka and her billionaire husband Jared Kushner were the main architects of his policies at this time, but that is irrelevant. The fact is, these were his policies as President and they defined him.

Meanwhile, the Swamp and its inhabitants were by no means inactive: a series of criminal conspiracies which accused Trump of “colluding” with Vladimir Putin of Russia, among other absurdities, were launched against him. One by one these cases were revealed to be fraudulent and illegal; yet nothing was done to bring the perpetrators to justice. Nor has the ousting of Trump during the 2020 coup d’état drawn a line under the attacks. These have continued unabated, both in the billionaire-owned media and in the billionaire-controlled law courts and regional legislatures, where repeated attempts have been made to criminalize The Donald and strike him off the electoral ballots. Lawyers and detectives have been employed to trawl through every detail of Trump’s business and private life in order to find something to charge him with or to disqualify him from standing in the next election. All of these procedures are unethical, mostly illegal, and entirely without precedent.

And speaking of things that are illegal we come, perhaps, to the reason behind the fear and loathing gripping the oligarchy. Over the past few years it has become painfully obvious, to anyone with a modicum of awareness, that there is a two-tier justice system in America: one for the rich and powerful, and another – and far more severe one – for everyone else. The elites, in short, are corrupt, criminal, and unaccountable. Impunity is their middle name. There is no need to go into the financial corruption, which is ubiquitous and brazen. The way in which the Clintons, the Obamas, the Pelosis, and the Bidens have employed their political positions to enrich themselves and their families is common knowledge. Yet it is in their private lives that the most dangerous and personally shameful criminality is perhaps to be found. The Epstein case, sensational and revealing as it is, is almost certainly only the tip of a vast iceberg. A short time ago a list of all those associated with Epstein, which read like a Who’s Who guide to the rich and famous, was released: virtually every celebrity, billionaire, and major political figure in America was revealed to have been an associate of the paedophile pimp. What was not released, however, and what will never be released as long as the elites remain in control, was the mountain of video tapes collected by Epstein showing his celebrity “clients” and friends cavorting with under-age girls. These tapes are allegedly still in the possession of the FBI.

Incriminating as such material might be, it is almost certainly but a small part of what the billionaire class and their friends get up to behind closed doors. Rumours alleging rampant paedophilia in Hollywood have been around for decades, and confirmed by several major Hollywood figures who have dared to break the unspoken code of silence surrounding the topic. And the Democrat Party tapes, released by WikiLeaks, which revealed people like Hillary’s campaign manager John Podesta using enigmatic code terms such as “pizza” and “pasta”, which are recognized by the FBI as cyphers used in paedophile child trafficking, have never been explained either by Podesta or his associates. These reveal a potential level of depravity much greater than anything in the Epstein case.

The release of the Democrat emails by WikiLeaks may, at least in part, explain the unrelenting persecution of Julian Assange, which continues to this day.

The elites, in short, have a lot to hide and a lot to be afraid of; a fact which may help to explain their almost pathological reaction to Trump. The Orange Man talks as if he means business, as if he really intends to clean out the Augean Stables that are the halls of power and privilege in the U.S. He didn’t do it in his first term, that is true; yet the way he has been hounded for eight years now has perhaps convinced the elites that this time round he might carry out his threats. As the Commander in Chief of the armed forces, the President has a huge amount of personal power; and the elites have a huge amount of criminal behaviour to hide.

They will not, therefore, in my opinion, permit him to re-enter the White House. Yet how to stop him? He is clearly, even in the opinion of the biased anti-Trump pollsters, the most popular candidate in the country. The attempt to stop him by legal action will almost certainly fail. The accusation that he planned or encouraged an “insurrection” on January 6 2021 is frankly laughable and will unquestionably be thrown out by the Trump-friendly Supreme Court. Another option, which will certainly be considered, is to once again steal the election. That course of action however carries its own dangers. The Democrats were able to get away with it in no small degree owing to the fact that the pre-election polls in 2020 had consistently put Biden ahead. Almost everyone knows that such polls are typically weighted in favour of the Democrats, yet the fact that such was the official prediction at least helped the Biden team argue that his victory was sort of plausible. This time round, that is not an option, as even the most biased anti-Republican polls put Trump well ahead. Stealing the election in November 2024 might perchance this time trigger the very insurrection they accused Trump of in 2021.

I am not a well-connected journalist with access to insider sources; I am a historian, and the job of the historian is a bit like that of a detective. Clues of every kind, very often providing no more than circumstantial evidence, are how the historian and the detective proceed. When a variety of types of evidence begin to point in the same direction, then the historian or the detective can offer a hypothesis about how events unfolded. And very often, the past repeats itself. As such, I would suggest the following as the route by which the elites will proceed.

Perhaps the safest way to keep Trump out of the White House would be to find a pretext for cancelling the election. This would require an almost unparalleled crisis, such as the appearance of a genuinely deadly and fast-spreading virus, a nuclear terrorism incident, or a world war. And there is very good reason to believe that the elites are planning, if not a world war, then a major regional war in the Middle East which will not be far removed from a world war and may even escalate into one.

There is no question whatsoever that the Hamas incursion into southern Israel on October 7 was permitted by the Israeli government to happen. The border between Gaza and Israel is one of the most secure and surveilled frontiers in the world. A mouse could scarcely cross the frontier without being detected. The Egyptian government warned the Israelis several times that a major attack was imminent. They even, as far as I am aware, told them when it would happen. All warnings were ignored. Furthermore, when the attacks did begin, the Israeli army took several hours to respond. Israel is a tiny country, roughly the size of Connecticut. You can drive across it in a couple of hours. Nonetheless, Hamas had several hours in which to wreak havoc in the southern part of the country. Clearly, the Israeli Government wanted the incursions to go ahead, almost certainly as an excuse to invade Gaza in force and “cleanse” the region of Hamas – and much of the Palestinian population.

At this point we need to call a halt. When we speak of the Israeli government we are really speaking of the power which stands behind it: That power is the globalist establishment or “Deep State” based in the United States. The Israelis are currently bombing Gaza with American bombs, and Israel would collapse in a few days without the continued massive military and economic assistance provided to it by the Unites States. In short, Israel’s planned attack on Gaza had to have been given the go-ahead in Washington. Furthermore, the powers that be in Washington must have had a reason for permitting the carnage to take place. That reason became obvious just a few days into the Israeli invasion of Gaza. The media in America and Europe began claiming that the Iranians were behind the Hamas attack, and that Iran was the primary source of all instability in the region. The same media began to warn that “Iran-backed” Hezbollah, based in Lebanon, would also be drawn into the conflict.

Sure enough, within a short time, Israel and Hezbollah began exchanging fire along the Lebanese-Israeli border. The controlled western media immediately proclaimed this as proof that Iran was behind everything.

All of this was and is perfectly in line with a narrative pushed by the Deep State in Washington for several decades; namely that Iran is the West’s and Israel’s major enemy in the Middle East, and that “regime change” is necessary in the country.

It is fairly easy to see that the slaughter continuing day by day in Gaza is intended by the Western elites to provoke Iran, as well as other Muslims in the region, into a major regional war. The recent expansion of that conflict into Yemen, where the “Iran-backed” Houthis are essentially blocking Red Sea shipping, can be seen as another stage in a pre-planned strategy. The elites want a war against Iran. They know perfectly well it will be a massive and potentially catastrophic conflict; moreover, one which is liable to draw in Russia on the side of the Iranians. If the Iranians blockade the Strait of Hormuz, through which passes about 60% of the world’s oil, then there will be a collapse of the world economy. But even that will be useful for the globalist banking and corporate plutocracy: As well as providing an additional reason to cancel the election in November, the collapsed economy will potentially be used as a smokescreen to hide the massive theft and criminality the rich and powerful have been guilty of for decades. (The COVID “crisis” also had this as one of its goals).

This then is how I see things developing in 2024. I could be wrong: I hope I am.

Emmet Sweeney is the author of several works dealing with a radical reassessment of the chronology of the ancient Near East. His latest book, In the Time of the Pyramid-Builders, was published by Algora in autumn 2023.

“In 2024, there will be no Ukraine, and we’ll have World War III in the Middle East.” — Russian politician Zhirinovsky said in 2019.

Was that just prescience or clairvoyance? Extra sensory communication with the supernatural? Or did he reveal part of a well-prepared plan, already detailed in 2019?

And remember what happened to Zhirinovsky soon after such pronouncements… He died in April 2022 “after suffering from Covid-19”. 

via ZeroHedge

Tucker Carlson sat down with evolutionary biologist Bret Weinstein (brother of Eric Weinstein), where the two dissected the intricate web of narratives surrounding COVID-19, the pharmaceutical industry, and global shifts in governance and public health policy.

According to Weinstein, opposition to the ‘official’ COVID narratives is like taking on Goliath – with competent and courageous experts in various fields being aggressively censored during the pandemic. This led to the formation of a “Dream Team” of dissenters.

“I call the force that we’re up against Goliath. Goliath made a terrible mistake and made it most egregiously during COVID, which is it took all of the competent people, all of the courageous people, and it shoved them out of the institutions where they were hanging on. And it created in so doing, the Dream Team. It created every player you could possibly want on your team to fight some historic battle against a terrible evil,” he said, suggesting that the Dream Team is uniquely qualified to fight against those who botched the pandemic response with deadly consequences.

Weinstein also discussed the demonization of alternative treatments such as hydroxychloroquine and ivermectin, and suggested that there have been 17 million deaths from the COVID-19 vaccine.

“So I’m not a math genius, but one in eight hundred shots times billions is a lot of people…..17 million deaths from the COVID vaccine?” asked Tucker. “Just for perspective. I mean, that’s like the death toll of a global war.”

To which Weinstein replied: “Yes, absolutely. This is a great tragedy of history. So that proportion. And amazingly there is no way in which it’s over. I mean, we are still apparently recommending these things for healthy children.”

Weinstein and Carlson also discussed what they perceive as a global power shift orchestrated through public health policies. They discussed the World Health Organization’s (WHO) proposed pandemic preparedness plan, expressing concerns over potential overreach and infringement on national sovereignty. Weinstein warned of a “turnkey totalitarian planet,” with the WHO positioned to dictate unprecedented controls over nations and their citizens.

Watch the entire segment on the WHO below…

by Finian Cunninghan via Strategic-Culture

It is, in my opinion, a crucial mistake to view United States-Israeli relations in terms of individual politicians in Washington and Tel Aviv purportedly manipulating each other.

A recent article by my colleague Alastair Crooke contended that U.S. President “wily Joe Biden” is being outplayed by “the fox”, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Alastair is a seasoned diplomat and his views merit respectful attention.

However, that view implies that the catastrophe of genocide in Gaza is a result of Netanyahu hoodwinking and maneuvering the White House to support Tel Aviv’s criminal aggression. Ergo, the escalating conflicts and U.S. involvement in the region, Syria, Iraq, Iran, Lebanon and Yemen.

For a start, to attribute the disaster of U.S. support for Israel to the incompetence of one politician – Joe Biden – is not factually correct. Several senior members of the Biden administration have all given their personal, unwavering support for Israel’s military offensive on Gaza. They include Vice President Kamala Harris, Secretary of State Antony Blinken, Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin and National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan.

Furthermore, there is overwhelming bipartisan support in Congress from Republicans and Democrats for the continuing massacre by Israeli forces in Gaza, having been conducted for nearly 80 days with up to 28,000 deaths, mainly among women and children, according to Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor.

The U.S. has supplied over 10,000 tonnes in munitions to Israel since October 7. The Pentagon and State Department have both candidly admitted there is no prohibitions or restrictions on how Israel deploys these explosives in densely crowded areas, which include 1-tonne bunker-buster bombs that have been dropped on refugee camps in Gaza.

Also bear in mind the Washington foreign policy establishment stands full square behind Israel’s de facto Final Solution to ethnically cleanse two million Palestinians from Gaza and forcibly expel them to the Sinai Peninsula. Only, last week the Israeli President Isaac Herzog was applauded by the deep state think-tank, the Atlantic Council, when he outlined plans for erasing Gaza.

What we are dealing with here is a systematic and structural issue of U.S. imperialist power. It is a fundamentally flawed premise to view this unprecedented slaughter in Gaza as somehow the result of Biden being taken for a ride by Netanyahu.

It may be tempting to portray it that way. The Republicans want to use every opportunity to assail Biden. The Democratic president is a contemptible and corrupt individual with an unerring ability to bungle every speech and every step he makes. But to blame what is going on in the Middle East entirely on Biden being outsmarted and outplayed is a grave misconception.

American liberals, on the other hand, may be tempted to blame the Gaza horror on Biden because to do so is a handy scapegoat for what is U.S. imperial policy. Liberals no doubt find it unfathomable and shameful that U.S. power is sponsoring genocide. That upsets their sense of vanity and belief in America as being a virtuous “exceptional nation”.

The truth is that American power has relied on fascist regimes the world over ever since it emerged as the top Western hegemon after the Second World War. During the early Cold War decades, Washington sponsored the most brutal and fanatical dictatorships in Latin America, Africa and Asia to annihilate worker-led liberation movements.

The Israeli regime fits into that historical category. Since it was formed as a state in 1948 through Washington’s sleight of hand at the newly established United Nations, the Zionist entity served as a garrison for the United States in the Middle East. It still functions as Washington’s regional cat’s paw. For 75 years, the oil-rich Arab and Persian region has been divided and conquered by U.S. power for which Israel plays a vital enabling role. Hence, the U.S. bankrolls Israel with $3.8 billion in weapons every year, a total of $263 billion since 1948.

As Biden repeatedly remarks – trying to sound smart and without a hint of self-awareness of how damning his words are – “if the Israeli state did not exist, the United States would have to create it”.

This is why it doesn’t matter who sits the White House. Donald Trump during his Republican presidency was just as obsequious towards Tel Aviv as Biden is. Part of the job means that American presidents have to pander to and appease nasty politicians in Tel Aviv, whose arrogance may at times seem as if they are calling the shots.

Now, this does not in anyway suggest that the Israelis do not manipulate U.S. politics. Of course, they do. Their vast lobbying and sympathetic corporate-owned media are self-evident.

But we should never forget the order of things, that the Zionist regime is an attack dog for U.S. imperialism.

Are the politicians in Washington so pathetic and lame as to not be able to simply pick up the phone to Tel Aviv and inform them that the supply of weapons is to cease henceforth and calling a ceasefire is imperative?

There can be only one explanation for such an appalling incongruity. The United States is fully complicit in Israel’s genocide against Palestinians. We are talking about systematic involvement, not the manipulation of hapless American politicians.

What the American people and the rest of the world need to realize is that the U.S. imperial power is – like all imperial powers – intrinsically genocidal. Conquest and war are the essential functions. Israel and Ukraine are not tails wagging the U.S. dog. They are manifestations of the criminal U.S. global power.

The problem is not individual politicians. The problem is the U.S. system.

“Stand behind the yellow line, please. The next train will be here soon. Could the passenger with the juicy melons please step away from the yellow line? Passenger with juicy melons, please step away from the yellow line”: A fruit and vegetable incident on the London Underground.

It’s such a form of British real-life humor, yes.

 

 

 

Algora Analysis:

Having failed to persuade the Biden neocon team of the disastrous consequences of the policy of confrontation, President Xi returns to China and reaffirms his commitment to stand firmly by President Putin in the unfolding confrontation with the West. In response, Putin welcomes Xi, in a way reminding him: “I told you so”.

This set of unexpected events, Xi’s sudden visit to the US and his big effort to overcome the breakdown of the relationship with the US appears to be a last ditch effort to convince the US’s political leadership of their wrong path of enmity and invite the American business leaders to share in the fruits of cooperation, rather than confrontation. He resolutely failed. His last meeting with President Biden ended on a deeply negative note given that at a wrap-up press conference Biden called Xi a “dictator” in response to a reporter’s question.

Most likely however was the demand from the US that China accepts American rule and follows the sanctions imposed on Russia and Iran, defers to Israel genocide in Gaza and in general toes the US line as events develop. However, it could be inferred that Xi demurred to subscribe to American demands and was left with some unfriendly words of advice in the sense that China is now in uncharted waters at its own peril. What followed was a public kabuki theater when Biden answered a prearranged question, while cameras were focusing on the facial expression of Blinken. – Should Xi reconsider his refusal, it was an easy way out, as Biden’s gaffe could be explained as the old man’s dementia and not the US policy.

Some of Xi’s words given before US CEOs on foreign investment in China certainly suggested that Beijing is ready for a reset. Below is a section of Xi’s speech.

This part of Xi’s speech to US CEOs (full speech here) is interesting and worth reflecting on: “The number one question for us is: are we adversaries, or partners? This is the fundamental and overarching issue. The logic is quite simple. If one sees the other side as a primary competitor, the most consequential geopolitical challenge and a pacing threat, it will only lead to misinformed policy making, misguided actions, and unwanted results. China is ready to be a partner and friend of the United States,” President Xi began, and continued…

“The fundamental principles that we follow in handling China-U.S. relations are mutual respect, peaceful coexistence and win-win cooperation. Just as mutual respect is a basic code of behavior for individuals, it is fundamental for China-U.S. relations. The United States is unique in its history, culture and geographical position, which have shaped its distinct development path and social system. We fully respect all this.”
“The path of socialism with Chinese characteristics has been found under the guidance of the theory of scientific socialism, and is rooted in the tradition of the Chinese civilization with an uninterrupted history of more than 5,000 years. We are proud of our choice, just as you are proud of yours. Our paths are different, but both are the choice by our peoples, and both lead to the realization of the common values of humanity. They should be both respected.”
“Peaceful coexistence is a basic norm for international relations, and is even more of a baseline that China and the United States should hold on to as two major countries. It is wrong to view China, which is committed to peaceful development, as a threat and thus play a zero-sum game against it. China never bets against the United States, and never interferes in its internal affairs. China has no intention to challenge the United States or to unseat it. Instead, we will be glad to see a confident, open, ever-growing and prosperous United States.
“Likewise, the United States should not bet against China, or interfere in China’s internal affairs. It should instead welcome a peaceful, stable and prosperous China.”

In short, he essentially argued against self-fulfilling prophecies, making the point that one’s view on the other defines the actions towards them, which in turn often validates the biased view even though it might have been wrong. As such the question “are we adversaries, or partners?” has no correct answer: if the US views China as an adversary it will lead them to “misinformed policy making [and] misguided actions”, which in turn will produce “unwanted results”, i.e. turning China INTO an adversary when it needn’t be.

[ . . . ]

Having failed in the US, now the Chinese President Xi Jinping has hailed “firm” ties between China and Russia just days after his trip to San Francisco.

Xi said that positive Russia ties will “inject more stability into the world,” according to China Central Television. He affirmed that Beijing stands ready to work with Moscow “resolutely” on bilateral relations and building a permanent friendship.

In response, President Putin sent Xi a congratulatory letter marking the 10th meeting of the dialogue mechanism between the ruling parties of China and Russia, per Bloomberg.

Xinhua summarized Putin’s letter as follows:

Putin said in his congratulatory letter that the Russia-China comprehensive strategic partnership of coordination is at the highest level in history, and the two countries are working together to advance a number of large-scale cooperation projects in the fields of economy, transportation, energy and culture, among others.
 
The two countries are coordinating positions through bilateral channels and multilateral mechanisms such as the Shanghai Cooperation Organization and BRICS to resolve major international issues and promote the building of a more just and democratic international order.

Are we now going to see a more concerted action by Russia and China concerning the Middle East? Is this the moment of the direct cofruntation between the emerging axes of rivalry, the Western Axis lead by the US, Europe and Israel on the one hand and Russia, China, Iran and the Global South, on the other hand? Quite possible.

by Dr. Joseph Mercola

I originally wrote this article 12 years ago. But the topic is so important that I wanted to publish an update spreading the word that, in most cases, there’s no reason to fear a fever. Reaching for fever-reducing medications right away is also typically counterproductive and may make it take longer for you to get better.1,2

Fever is a sign that your, or your child’s, immune system is working at its best. Virtually all animals – and even fish3 – naturally develop a fever when they’re fighting a bacterial or viral illness. This response occurs because it improves your body’s ability to get rid of infection.

Fever Benefits Your Body

When an organism invades your body, it triggers the release of pyrogen, a substance that signals your brain’s hypothalamus to raise your body’s temperature. This is done through a number of different mechanisms, including:

• Shivering
• Release of the hormone TRH
• Increasing your metabolic rate
• Restricting blood flow to the skin to minimise heat loss
• Piloerection (raising the small hairs), which suppresses sweating, a cooling mechanism

The fever, in turn, launches a number of beneficial body processes, including immune-protective mechanisms, that either directly or indirectly help ward off the invading bacteria or virus. For instance, temperatures from 104 to 105.8 degrees Fahrenheit (40 to 41 degrees Celsius) reduce the replication rate of poliovirus in cells by 200-fold, while increasing the susceptibility of Gram-negative bacteria to antibody destruction.4

“Given the complexity of these immune mechanisms, it is remarkable that fever-range temperatures stimulate almost every step involved in this process, promoting both innate and adaptive immunity,” researchers wrote in Nature Reviews Immunology.5

“Febrile temperatures serve as a systemic alert system that broadly promotes immune surveillance during challenge by invading pathogens.”6 Some of these wide-reaching benefits include:

Increase in antibodies – cells trained to attack the exact type of invader that your body is suffering from	More white blood cells are produced to help fight off the invading bugs
More interferon, a natural antiviral and anticancer substance, is produced, which helps block the spread of viruses to healthy cells	Walling off of iron, which bacteria feed on
Increased temperature, which directly kills microbes (most bacteria and viruses grow better at temperatures lower than the human body)	Improved ability of certain white blood cells to destroy bacteria and infected cells
Fever also impairs the replication of many bacteria and viruses

Fever? Let It Ride

“The fever response is a hallmark of infection and inflammatory disease and has been shaped through hundreds of millions of years of natural selection,”7 yet many health care providers still consider it dangerous and worthy of treating because it causes discomfort.

Scientists also continue to debate fevers’ merits. One side favours the idea that fever should be suppressed because of its high metabolic costs. Every 1.8oF rise in body temperature requires a 10% to 12.5% increase in metabolic rate,8 which is significant.

This is one of the reasons why you frequently lose weight when you have a fever. However, increasing research supports the “let it ride” philosophy, which contends that fever is protective.9 Writing in the Journal of Thoracic Disease, researchers with the University of Miami Miller School of Medicine described a classic 1975 study10 on fever and survival in iguanas infected with bacteria:11

He gave them the opportunity to seek heat via sunlamps and all but one sought the warmth to raise their temperature. The one who did not was the only one who died. Next, he injected the iguanas with bacteria and gave them antipyretics [fever-reducing drugs]. The iguanas that were able to mount a fever despite the antipyretic were the only ones that survived.

A 1987 study on rabbits also found that administering fever-reducing drugs caused more harm than good. The team found fever suppression in the animals “had a markedly deleterious effect on the course of infection, resulting in an increased content of infectious virus in the mesenteric lymph nodes, increased mortality, and retarded recovery in animals that survived the infection.”12

Similar striking findings have been found in people, specifically critically ill patients in the intensive care unit. One group of patients was treated aggressively for fever, receiving acetaminophen every six hours if their temperature rose above 101.3oF (38.5oC).

The other group only received treatment if their fever reached 104oF (40oC), which consisted of acetaminophen and cooling blankets until their temperature went below 104oF.

The study had to be stopped early because so many people in the aggressive treatment group died compared to the other group – seven deaths versus one, respectively. “Aggressively treating fever in critically ill patients may lead to a higher mortality rate,” the team concluded.13

Another study, this time on fish, showed that allowing a fever to run its course cleared the infection in about half the time it took for animals without a fever to heal.14,15 In addition to rapidly clearing infection, fever helped control inflammation and repair tissue damage.

“We let nature do what nature does, and in this case, it was very much a positive thing,” study author and immunologist Daniel Barreda, with the University of Alberta, said in a news release.16 “Every animal examined has this biological response to infection,” she says, suggesting that fever provides a strong evolutionary survival advantage.

Moderate Fever Is Protective Against Covid-19

Acute respiratory distress syndrome (“ARDS”), which involves programmed cell death in the lungs’ alveolar cells, is a primary cause of death in covid-19 patients. The natural rise in body temperature that occurs during mild or moderate fever, however, may raise cellular levels of beneficial heat shock protein 70 (HSP70), which is protective in cases of sepsis-induced ARDS.

Writing in Frontiers in Medicine, researchers suggested that several hours of mild fever, defined as less than 101.8oF (38.8oC), is advantageous for covid-19 patients, “allowing lung cells to accumulate protective HSP70 against damages from the inflammatory response to the virus SARS-CoV-2.”17 Again, simply allowing a mild or moderate fever to take its course helps increase HSP70, offering you a survival advantage:18

HSP70s can use the energy from ATP hydrolysis to forcefully unfold and dismantle different types of aggregated and functional protein oligomers in the cell. Hence, it can drive conformational changes in various large cytotoxic protein aggregates and convert them into soluble, harmless, functional proteins.

… Conversely, degenerative neuronal and muscular tissues in ageing nematodes and humans that systematically express lower cellular levels of HSP70s than young individuals are particularly fragile and stress-sensitive. Cells with low HSP70 levels tend to spontaneously undergo apoptosis, and consequent tissue losses in ageing humans lead to progressive degenerative diseases.

Because the ability to develop fever and accumulate HSP70 decreases with age, the team even suggested using thermotherapies or physical training to raise body temperature in these cases. Scientists writing in Evolution, Medicine, and Public Health also suggested letting fever do its job, particularly in the pandemic era:19

For covid-19, many public health organisations have advised treating fever with medicines such as acetaminophen or ibuprofen. Even though this is a common practice, lowering body temperature has not improved survival in laboratory animals or in patients with infections.

Blocking fever can be harmful because fever, along with other sickness symptoms, evolved as a defence against infection. Fever works by causing more damage to pathogens and infected cells than it does to healthy cells in the body. During pandemic covid-19, the benefits of allowing fever to occur probably outweigh its harms, for individuals and for the public at large.

Fever-Reducing Drugs May Backfire

In most cases, fever-reducing medications should be avoided, as they typically only suppress the natural healing mechanisms of the fever and prolong the illness. For example, in people with influenza, using fever-reducing drugs is linked to a 5% increase in mortality.20 Even the American Academy of Paediatrics (“AAP”) warned against “fever phobia” and overuse of fever-reducing drugs:21

Appropriate counselling on the management of fever begins by helping parents understand that fever, in and of itself, is not known to endanger a generally healthy child. In contrast, fever may actually be of benefit …

When counselling a family on the management of fever in a child, paediatricians and other health care providers should minimise fever phobia and emphasise that antipyretic use does not prevent febrile seizures.

Further, in their advice for parents wondering if they should treat their child’s fever, AAP states, “The key is to watch your child’s behaviour. If they are drinking, eating, sleeping normally, and are able to play, you do not need to treat the fever. Instead, you should wait to see if the fever improves by itself.”22

Remember, the point of the fever is to stimulate the immune system and create an inhospitable environment for invading organisms, essentially turning up the heat high enough that the invading microbes cannot live. So, anytime you lower a fever artificially you’re making your body more hospitable to the invading pathogens.

Lowering a fever with medications also masks your symptoms, which may lead you to return to your normal activities too soon, when your body could still benefit from extra rest. The drugs may also prolong illness. In a study of acetaminophen for children with chickenpox, the drug led to prolonged itching and time to scabbing compared to placebo treatment.23

Further, a study of adults with colds found that aspirin and acetaminophen suppressed production of antibodies and increased cold symptoms, with a trend toward longer infectiousness.24

These medications also carry risks of side effects, including liver damage with acetaminophen, stomach upset with Ibuprofen and Reye’s syndrome with aspirin. It’s recommended that children under 19 not be given aspirin when they have a fever, due to the link to Reye’s syndrome.

When Is a Fever Dangerous?

It’s rare for a fever to rise higher than 104oF or 105oF (40oC), and as long as your child isn’t distressed, there is no harm in letting a fever run its course. Keep in mind also that fevers tend to spike in the late afternoon and evening, so a slight increase in fever during this time is not necessarily cause for alarm.

In most cases, rest and plenty of fluids is all that’s needed when a fever strikes. Fever does increase fluid loss, so it’s important to give your child plenty of fluids, even if they don’t feel thirsty, to prevent dehydration. There are some instances, however, when a fever does require medical attention. This includes:

• Fever in an infant younger than 3 months (at any temperature)
• Fever above 102.2oF (39oC) in children between 3 months and 36 months, if they appear ill
• Anytime a fever rises over 104.5oF (40oC)
• In some cases of sepsis or neurological injuries, uncontrolled fever may lead to worse outcomes25

In children 5 years and under, fever can also lead to a seizure, known as a febrile seizure. Though this can be frightening, it typically will cause no lasting effects. During a febrile seizure, lay your child on his side or stomach on the ground, loosen any tight clothing and support the child to prevent injury.

When the seizure stops, you should seek medical attention right away to be sure the seizure was not caused by something other than the fever, such as meningitis or bacteria in the blood.

However, remember that letting a fever run its course is typically the best choice to fight off a viral or bacterial infection. You can further bolster your immune system’s ability to ward off pathogens and reduce the likelihood of developing a fever in the first place, by eating right, getting plenty of daily movement, using sound methods for stress relief and sleeping well.

Sources and References

• 1, 14, 16 Science Daily March 15, 2023
• 2, 3, 15 Immunology and Inflammation March 14, 2023
• 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 20, 25 Nat Rev Immunol. 2015 Jun; 15(6): 335–349
• 9, 11 J Thorac Dis. 2015 Dec; 7(12): E633–E636
• 10 Science. 1975 Apr 11;188(4184):166-8
• 12 J Infect Dis. 1987 May;155(5):991-7. doi: 10.1093/infdis/155.5.991
• 13 Surg Infect (Larchmt). 2005 Winter;6(4):369-75. doi: 10.1089/sur.2005.6.369
• 17, 18 Front Med (Lausanne). 2020; 7: 564170
• 19 Evol Med Public Health. 2021; 9(1): 26–35
• 21 American Academy of Pediatrics March 2011, Volume 127, Issue 3
• 22 AAP, Healthychildren.org, Treating Your Child’s Fever
• 23 J Pediatr. 1989 Jun;114(6):1045-8. doi: 10.1016/s0022-3476(89)80461-5
• 24 The Journal of Infectious Diseases December 1, 1990

About the Author

Dr. Joseph Mercola is the founder and owner of Mercola.com, a Board-Certified Family Medicine Osteopathic Physician, a Fellow of the American College of Nutrition and a New York Times bestselling author. He publishes multiple articles a day covering a wide range of topics on his website Mercola.com.

The second one has begun – following Fitch, Moody’s is now preparing to downgrade the US credit rating . Fitch already dropped from AAA to AA+ in August. Moody’s still gives a negative outlook – but it could also arrange a downgrade, especially if there is a US government shutdown.

The reasons for the decline are a huge budget deficit of $2 trillion and a sharp increase in public debt . This is also due to the fall in tax revenues against the backdrop of stagnation in many areas of the economy. And with soaring costs due to high inflation and military spending. It is becoming increasingly difficult to service the national debt – interest rates are rising, and other countries are reducing investments in US bonds.

A credit rating downgrade is long overdue – but it will only worsen the US budget crisis . For example, convincing China or Saudi Arabia to resume purchases of US treasury securities will become even more difficult. Demand for them is already falling quickly.

The White House immediately blamed this on Republican “extremists” in Congress . Although they are just demanding to cut costs. The Democrats don’t want to cut social services or the military, which is why the split in Washington is growing. And at one moment it can lead to a radical scenario – like a technical default in the United States.

In the meantime, Washington is mentally preparing for a possible shutdown on November 18 – if it is not possible to quickly approve the next short-term budget and prolong the agony for another couple of months. The split is so strong that there is no talk of adopting a full budget for the year ahead. The current budget crisis against the background of two wars threatens the most serious consequences for the United States.