https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8jVn7Ua1A5k

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By Jeffrey D. Sachs
Common Dreams

Next year will mark the 230th anniversary of Immanuel Kant’s celebrated essay on “Perpetual Peace” (1795). The great German philosopher put forward a set of guiding principles to achieve perpetual peace among the nations of his day. 

As we grapple with a world at war, and indeed at dire risk of nuclear Armageddon, we should build on Kant’s approach for our own time. An updated set of principles should be considered at the United Nations Summit of the Future in September.

Kant was fully aware that his proposals would face the skepticism of “practical” politicians:

“The practical politician assumes the attitude of looking down with great self-satisfaction on the political theorist as a pedant whose empty ideas in no way threaten the security of the state, inasmuch as the state must proceed on empirical principles; so the theorist is allowed to play his game without interference from the worldly-wise statesman.”

Nonetheless, as historian Mark Mazower noted in his magisterial account of global governance, Kant’s was a “text that would intermittently influence generations of thinkers about world government down to our own day,” helping to lay the groundwork for the United Nations and international law on human rights, the conduct of war, and arms control.

Kant’s core proposals centered on three ideas. 

First, he rejected standing armies. Standing armies “incessantly menace other states by their readiness to appear at all times prepared for war.” In this, Kant anticipated by a century and a half the famous warning by U.S. President Dwight D. Eisenhower of the dangers of a military-industrial complex. 

Second, Kant called for non-interference in the internal affairs of other nations. In this, Kant inveighed against the kind of covert operations that the U.S. has used relentlessly to topple foreign governments. 

Third, Kant called for a “federation of free states,” which in our time became the United Nations, a “federation” of 193 states pledged to operate under the U.N. Charter.

Kant put great hopes on republicanism as opposed to one-person rule as a check on war-making. Kant reasoned that a single ruler would readily succumb to the temptation of war:

“…a declaration of war is the easiest thing in the world to decide upon, because war does not require of the ruler, who is the proprietor and not a member of the state, the least sacrifice of the pleasures of his table, the chase, his country houses, his court functions, and the like. He may, therefore, resolve on war as on a pleasure party for the most trivial reasons, and with perfect indifference leave the justification which decency requires to the diplomatic corps who are ever ready to provide it.”

By contrast, according to Kant:

“…if the consent of the citizens is required in order to decide that war should be declared (and in this [republican] constitution it cannot but be the case), nothing is more natural than that they would be very cautious in commencing such a poor game, decreeing for themselves all the calamities of war.”

Kant was far too optimistic about the ability of public opinion to constrain war-making. Both the Athenian and Roman republics were notoriously belligerent. Britain was the 19th century’s leading democracy, but perhaps its most belligerent power. For decades, the U.S. has engaged in non-stop wars of choice and violent overthrows of foreign governments.

Three Reasons Kant Got This Wrong

There are at least three reasons why Kant got this wrong. 

First, even in democracies, the choice to launch wars almost always lies with a small elite group who are in fact largely insulated from public opinion. 

Second, and equally important, public opinion is relatively easy to manipulate through propaganda to stir the public backing for war. 

Third, the public can be insulated in the short term from the high costs of war by financing war through debt rather than taxation, and by relying on contractors, paid recruits, and foreign fighters rather than conscription.

Kant’s core ideas on perpetual peace helped move the world toward international law, human rights, and the decent conduct in war (such as the Geneva Conventions) in the 20th century. 

Yet despite the innovations in global institutions, the world remains dreadfully far from peace. According to the Doomsday Clock of the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists, we are 90 seconds to midnight, closer to nuclear war than at any time since the clock’s introduction in 1947.

The global apparatus of the U.N. and international law has arguably prevented a third world war to date. U.N. Secretary-General U Thant, for example, played a vital role in peacefully resolving the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis. Yet the U.N.-based structures are fragile and in need of an urgent upgrade.

For this reason, I urge that we formulate and adopt a new set of principles based on four key geopolitical realities of our time.

Four Key Geopolitical Realities

First, we are living with the nuclear Sword of Damocles over our heads. President John F. Kennedy put it eloquently 60 years ago in his famous Peace Speech, when he declared:

“I speak of peace because of the new face of war. Total war makes no sense in an age where great powers can maintain large and relatively invulnerable nuclear forces and refuse to surrender without resort to those forces. It makes no sense in an age where a single nuclear weapon contains almost 10 times the explosive force delivered by all the allied air forces in the Second World War.”

Second, we have arrived at true multipolarity. For the first since the 19th century, Asia has overtaken the West in economic output. We are long past the Cold War era in which the U.S. and Soviet Union dominated, or the “unipolar moment” claimed by the U.S. after the demise of the Soviet Union in 1991. 

The U.S. is now one of several superpowers, including Russia, China, and India, with several regional powers as well (including Iran, Pakistan, and North Korea). The U.S. and its allies cannot unilaterally exact their will in Ukraine, the Middle East, or the Indo-Pacific region. The U.S. must learn to cooperate with the other powers.

Third, we now have an extensive and historically unprecedented set of international institutions for formulating and adopting global goals (e.g., regarding climate, sustainable development, and nuclear disarmament), adjudicating international law, and expressing the will of the global community (e.g., in the U.N. General Assembly and U.N. Security Council). Yes, these international institutions are still weak when the great powers choose to ignore them, yet they offer invaluable tools for building a true federation of nations in Kant’s sense.

Fourth, humanity’s fate is more tightly interconnected than ever. Global public goods — sustainable development, nuclear disarmament, protection of the Earth’s biodiversity, prevention of war, pandemic prevention and control — are far more central to our shared fate than at any previous time in human history. Again, we can turn to JFK’s wisdom, which rings as true today as then:

“So let us not be blind to our differences, but let us also direct attention to our common interests and the means by which those differences can be resolved. And if we cannot end now our differences, at least we can help make the world safe for diversity. For in the final analysis, our most basic common link is that we all inhabit this small planet. We all breathe the same air. We all cherish our children’s futures. And we are all mortal.”

Ten Principles, Five From China

What principles should we adopt in our time that could contribute to perpetual peace? I propose 10 Principles for Perpetual Peace in the 21st Century, and invite others to revise, edit, or make their own list.

The first five of my principles are the Principles of Peaceful Coexistence proposed by China 70 years agoand subsequently adopted by the Non-Aligned nations. These are:

1. Mutual respect of all nations for the territorial integrity and sovereignty of other nations;

2. Mutual non-aggression of all nations towards other nations;

3. Mutual non-interference by all nations in the internal affairs of other nations (such as through wars of choice, regime change operations, or unilateral sanctions);

4. Equality and mutual benefits in the interactions among nations; and

5. Peaceful co-existence of all nations.

To implement these five core principles, I recommend five specific principles of action:

6. The closure of overseas military bases, of which the U.S. and U.K. have by far the largest number.

7. The end of covert regime-change operations and unilateral coercive economic measures, which are grave violations of the principle of non-interference in the internal affairs of other nations. (Political scientist Lindsey O’Rourke has carefully documented 64 U.S. covert regime-change operations during 1947-1969, and the pervasive destabilization caused by such operations.)

8. Adherence by all nuclear powers (U.S., Russia, China, U.K., France, India, Pakistan, Israel and North Korea) to Article VI of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty: 

“All Parties must pursue negotiations in good faith on effective measures relating to the cessation of the nuclear arms race and to nuclear disarmament, and on a treaty on general and complete disarmament under strict and effective international control.”

9. The commitment by all countries “not to strengthen their security at the expense of the security of other countries,” (as per the OSCE Charter). States will not enter into military alliances that threaten their neighbors, and commit to resolve disputes through peaceful negotiations and security arrangements backed by the United Nations Security Council. 

10. The commitment by all nations to cooperate in protecting the global commons and providing global public goods, including fulfillment of the Paris climate agreement, the Sustainable Development Goals and reform of U.N. institutions.

Today’s great power confrontations, notably the U.S. conflicts with Russia, China, Iran, and North Korea, are largely due to America’s continued pursuit of unipolarity via regime change operations, wars of choice, unilateral coercive sanctions, and the global network of U.S. military bases and alliances. 

The 10 principles listed above would help to move the world to peaceful multilateralism governed by the U.N. Charter and the international rule of law.

Jeffrey D. Sachs is a university professor and director of the Center for Sustainable Development at Columbia University, where he directed The Earth Institute from 2002 until 2016. He is also president of the U.N. Sustainable Development Solutions Network and a commissioner of the U.N. Broadband Commission for Development.

This article is from Common Dreams.

https://consortiumnews.com/2024/07/25/10-principles-for-21st-century-peace/

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Sources told UK media this week that Britain has partnered up with Germany to develop and deploy a new intermediate-range missile designed to target Russia’s nuclear arsenal. Veteran Russian military observer Alexei Leonkov says the plan is inextricably linked to the Pentagon’s highly dangerous Conventional Prompt Strike (CPS) initiative.

UK Defense Secretary John Healey spoke to his German counterpart in Berlin on Wednesday about a plan to jointly develop a new strategic missile with a 3,200 km range, The Times reported on Thursday, citing sources said to be familiar with the idea.

Once developed and fielded, the new missiles would be deployed in Germany, according to the publication, replacing the American ground-based long-range fires that Washington recently announced would be stationed in the Central European country beginning in 2026.

Both the American missiles and the proposed new British-German missile would have been prohibited under the 1988 Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty, which banned the development, production and deployment of ground-based missiles in the 500-5,500 km range. Washington violated the treaty for years, according to Moscow, and unilaterally scrapped the agreement in 2019 and immediately began testing of new long-range weapons after falsely accusing Russia of possessing a ground-based missile system with a range beyond 500 km.

One of the Times’ sources said the US weapons expected to deploy in Europe in two years’ time are meant to “bridge” a gap in European NATO allies’ own capabilities. The source did not clarify what motivated the US to ask its allies to create an entirely new missile instead buying or agreeing to permanently field existing American ones.

A joint declaration from Healey’s talks with his German counterpart, Boris Pistorius, mentioned a commitment to “undertake a long-term, comprehensive cooperation in the field of long-range capabilities” to provide “deep precision strike” potential. The details are reportedly still being worked out, with no additional information made available, besides the new missile’s expected role as a conventional fire designed to destroy enemy tactical nuclear delivery systems.

The Storm Shadow is currently the furthest-reaching conventional missile in Britain’s arsenal. It has a range of about 240 km, and has been deployed extensively by Ukraine in the NATO-Russia proxy war. The Taurus KEPD 350 is Germany’s longest-range missile system, and has a range of up to 500 km. Berlin has refused to send the air-launched weapon to Ukraine, expressing concerns that doing so would make Germany a “party to the war” because German troops would be on the ground training Ukrainians to use the missiles.

A British Defense Ministry spokesperson told The Times that the deepening UK-German defense relationship is currently “in early stages” and that work on “any new programs” has “not yet commenced.”

https://sputnikglobe.com/20240726/uk-plans-to-build-new-missiles-to-target-russia-linked-to-pentagons-mad-conventional-strike-scheme-1119524354.html

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MEANWHILE:

BY RACHEL MARSDEN

“Four soldiers from Ukraine’s popular Third Assault Brigade kicked off their meet-and-greets in the Polish capital on Sunday, home to large numbers of Ukrainian refugees, more than two years into the conflict,” reported Agence France Presse in an article picked up by the French state media’s Radio France Internationale (RFI).

“Popular?” Really? That’s the only defining characteristic that came to mind when describing the Ukrainian Army faction created in 2022 from what was left of the Azov Battalion in the wake of the battle of Mariupol? 

A little digging in the French press itself would have revealed that, when this same Brigade was being trained here in France last year, a leaked report prompted the French investigative outlet, Mediapart, to describe one member as having a Nazi SS logo tattooed on his head, while a photo of the same guy showed him with a swastika flag.

When Mediapart started digging around online for details on some of the other members who were training in central France, at the La Courtine camp, they hit a social media jackpot of 'Heil Hitler' salutes, Hitler art, and a potpourri of various Nazi SS division emblems like they were some kind of Hitlerized stamp collection. 

And those were just the half-dozen or so attendees who were dumb enough to post it all over social media when this rebranded Azov Batallion had gone to all the trouble of hiring a 12-person, full-time media team, including a cameraman, press officers, and editors, according to the European Center for Policy Analysis.

A Ukrainian showman and comedian who was also a member had been doing some vlogging to promote the Third Assault Brigade, according to the think tank. All this industrial-grade whitewashing and here these trainee members were, all over social media, Naziing it up. 

Guess the Azov brand was too tarnished. Too closely associated with neo-Nazism. And with losing to Russia. So here’s the rebranding. They should have to take out an ad in the newspapers announcing a name change like anyone else. Especially since it’s pretty clear that the Western press isn’t going to take the initiative and investigate in the public interest. That would be rather inconvenient for all the Western elites interested in promoting these “heroes” to do the West’s bidding against Russia. Who needs a negotiated peace that could save lives on all sides when the Western elites have an opportunity to stuff the pockets of their special-interest cronies by making and selling more weapons.

Enter the Azov movement’s Third Assault Brigade’s European summer tour, initially intended to encompass nine cities in six countries, but as of now, reduced by almost half. Billed as the “Our People are Everywhere” tour, with admission available for purchase on a European ticketing site alongside gigs like the band Thirty Seconds to Mars’ concert in Istanbul and Lenny Kravitz’s latest tour. Instead of those shows, people can be entertained by “stories from the front,” according to their online promotion.

The spin here in Europe now seems to be that all these guys are “popular” heroes. And if you happen to notice that the group is the successor to Azov, then the spin dictates that they’re not all neo-Nazi bad guys. That’s just Russian propaganda. Which is kind of like someone joining Alcoholics Anonymous and then arguing that they’re strictly there for the free coffee and snacks. 

The Western press used to at least be a bit more honest, prior to the Ukraine conflict going red-hot. “Azov fighters are Ukraine’s greatest weapon and may be its greatest threat,” The Guardian reported in 2014, calling the group’s “far-right volunteers” a “danger to post-conflict stability.” Even in the early days of the conflict’s latest incarnation, on March 5, 2022, an NBC News piece, whose author clearly had no love lost for Russian President Vladimir Putin, nonetheless underscored that “Ukraine’s Nazi problem is real,” and cautioned of the need to “guard against it.”

Fast forward just over two years and the Azov movement has now toured Stanford University as heroes, where a research department has since dropped Azov from its roster of radicalized groups, and Oxford’s Reuben College. They received a warm welcome at the British Parliament’s Westminster Palace for a roundtable discussion, and former Prime Minister Boris Johnson was photographed posing with their flag, whose wolf’s hook symbol was used by various Nazi divisons during the Second World War. And just last month, Washington lifted its ban on directly supplying the Azov movement with weapons.

The US State Department said at the time that Russia had “long tried to conflate Ukraine’s National Guard Unit of 12th Special Forces Brigade Azov with a militia formed to defend Ukraine against Russia’s invasion in 2014, called the Azov Battalion,” which it says was “disbanded in 2015.” Well, that settles it, then. All the neo-Nazis just went home a decade ago, kicked up their feet, cracked open a cold one, and took up gardening and soap carving.

“After a thorough review, Ukraine’s 12th Special Forces Azov Brigade passed vetting,” the State Department added, adding that “no evidence” of violations of the questionable, neo-Nazi kind had been found. That’s not actually that hard to believe when considering that the entirety of the Canadian parliament couldn’t see an original article Nazi when he was plopped right in front of them, clapping and cheering for an actual bona fide World War II-era Ukrainian Nazi invited as a guest of honor to celebrate Vladimir Zelensky’s visit to Ottawa – before learning that a Ukrainian killing Russians was effectively Hitler’s homeboy. Woops. 

Canada also knew exactly who Azov was, even before the current conflict, when military brass worried about its trainees’ Nazi tattoos, but ultimately just decided to keep their mouths shut in the hope that the media would never find out, as the Ottawa Citizen reported. But the State Department said they all retired? Guess those were the ones who got bored with their reconversion to competitive dog grooming?

While the Western establishment treats anti-establishment right-wingers in their own countries as the enemy, they’re celebrating actual neo-Nazi groups as cool and heroic badasses. Perhaps – just maybe – it has everything to do with the masters that each serves.

https://www.rt.com/news/601659-ukraine-neo-nazi-eu-tour/

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By Scott Ritter / Substack

   As America wrestles with the question of who will emerge victorious from the three-ring circus that is the 2024 Presidential election, there is increasing talk about the existential nature of this election and the role played by the two primary candidates—the presumptive nominee of the Democratic Party, Kamala Harris, and her challenger, the Republican Party nominee, Donald Trump—in taking the nation to the brink when it comes to the future of American democracy as an institution. The choices couldn’t be starker—the living embodiment of “DEI establishment politician” (Harris) versus the textbook definition of a “populist political outsider” (Trump).

In many ways, the rhetoric about the critical nature of the 2024 Presidential race isn’t exaggerated—in terms of sustained political viability, the stakes couldn’t get any higher. A Harris victory would effectively end the MAGA movement, since it is largely a populist exercise built around the cult of personality that has surrounded Donald Trump, whom most people agree is running his last political race. A Trump victory, however, would project into the political mainstream his running mate, J.D. Vance, who would be given the opportunity to claim the MAGA throne in 2028, setting up the potential for a 12-year MAGA run which could very well spell the end of establishment politics in America as we know it.

America has gone through numerous presidential contests in its 248-year history in which the essence of the nation could be said to be at stake. The first of these took place in 1800, when Thomas Jefferson defeated John Adams in a race that literally decided the future of the United States by ending the conservative Federalist hold on political power and replacing it with the more progressive Democrat-Republican party. Andrew Jackson’s 1828 victory over John Quincy Adams saw the reemergence of the Federalist ideology in the form of the new Democratic Party prevail over Adams and the Republicans in an election that served as the foundation for the emergence of the two-party system that dominates American politics until today. And the 1860 election, won by Abraham Lincoln, literally carried with it life or death decisions which propelled America into a Civil War. It is the only American election which can genuinely be described as existential in terms of its consequences.

The point to be made here is that no matter what anyone says about 2024, while the future direction of American politics, and the societal issues thus manifested, will be decided in November, the existential fate of the United States is not on the line.

Neither is the fate of “American democracy.”

The 2024 Presidential race, however, does directly impact the existential survival of the United States, the American people, and indeed the entire world, but not because of its outcome. The harsh reality is that regardless of who among the two major candidates wins in November, American policy vis-à-vis Russia, especially when it comes to nuclear posture and arms control, is hard-wired to achieve the same result. And it is this result that seals the fate of all humanity unless a way can be found to prompt a critical re-think of the underlying policies that produce the anticipated outcome.

A future Harris administration is on track to continue a policy which commits to the strategic defeat of Russia, the lowering of the threshold for the use of nuclear weapons in Europe, the termination of the last remaining arms control treaty (New START) in February 2026, and the re-deployment of intermediate-range missiles into Europe, also in 2026.

Donald Trump, meanwhile, has proffered rhetoric which has led many to believe he would end the conflict in Ukraine, and thereby open the door for better relations with Russia. But this policy is predicated on the concept of the “perfect phone call” between Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin where the Russian leader accedes to American-dictated terms regarding Ukraine which would fall far short of Russia’s stated goals. Trump has made it clear that if Putin fails to bend the knee on Ukraine, he will then flood Ukraine with weapons—basically the Biden policy of strategically defeating the Russians on steroids. It was Trump who pulled out of the INF treaty in 2019, and as such put in motion the policy direction which has US INF weapons returning to Europe in 2026. And Trump is not a fan of arms control treaties, so the notion that he would save New START or replace it with a new treaty vehicle is mooted by reality.

No matter who wins among the two major candidates in November, the United States is on track for a major existential crisis with Russia in Europe sometime in 2026. The re-introduction of INF-capable systems by the US will trigger a similar deployment by Russia of nuclear-capable INF systems targeting Europe. Back in the 1980’s, the deployment of INF systems by the US and Russia had created an inherently destabilizing situation where one mistake could have set off a nuclear war. The experience of Able Archer ’83, a NATO command and control exercise that took place in the fall of 1983, bears witness to this reality. The Soviets interpreted the exercise as being a cover for a nuclear first-strike by NATO and put its nuclear forces on high alert. There was no room for error—one miscalculation or misjudgment could have led to a Soviet decision to pre-empt what it believed to be an imminent NATO nuclear attack, thereby triggering a full-scale nuclear war between the US and the Soviet Union.

The INF treaty, signed in 1987, removed these destabilizing weapons from Europe. But now that treaty is no more, and the weapons that brought Europe and the world to the brink of destruction in the 1980’s are returning to a European continent where notions of peaceful coexistence with Russia have been replaced with rhetoric promoting the inevitability of conflict.

When one combines the existence of a policy objective (the strategic defeat of Russia) which, when coupled with a policy of supporting a Ukrainian victory over Russia predicated on Ukraine regaining physical control over Crimea and the four territories of New Russia (Kherson, Zaporizhia, Donetsk, and Lugansk), one already has a recipe for disaster, since this policy, if successful, would automatically trigger a Russian nuclear response, since doctrinally nuclear weapons would be used to respond to any non-nuclear scenario where the existential survival of Russia is at stake. (The loss of Crimea and the New Territories is like the United States losing Texas, California, or New York—a literal existential situation.)

Add to this the end of arms control as we know it come February 2026, when the New START treaty expires. The Biden administration has declared that it will seek to add new nuclear weapons “without limitation” once the New START caps on deployed weapons expires—the literal definition of an arms race out of control. One can only imagine that Russia would be compelled to match this rearmament activity.

And finally, the recent agreement by the US and Germany to redeploy intermediate-range missiles on European soil in 2026, and Russia’s decision to match this action by building and deploying its own intermediate-range missiles, recreates the very situational instability which threatened regional and world security back in the 1980’s.

When one examines these factors in their aggregate, the inescapable conclusion is that Europe will be faced with an existential crisis which could come to a head as early as the summer of 2026. The potential for the use of nuclear weapons, either by design or accident, is real, creating a situation that exceeds the Cuban Missile Crisis in terms of the risk of a nuclear war by an order of magnitude or more.

While a future nuclear conflict would very likely start in Europe, it will be virtually impossible to contain the use of nuclear weapons on the European continent. Any use of nuclear weapons against Russian soil, or the territory of its ally, Belarus, would trigger a general Russian nuclear response which would lead to a general, global-killing nuclear war.

The question Americans confront today is what to do about this existential threat to their very survival.

The answer put forward here is to empower your vote in the coming presidential election by tying it not to a person or party, but rather a policy.

In short, empower your vote by pledging it to the candidate who will commit to prioritizing peace over war, and who pledges to make the prevention of nuclear war, not the promotion of nuclear weapons, the cornerstone of his or her national security policy.

Don’t give your vote away by committing to a candidate at this early stage—when you do this, you no longer matter, as the candidates will simply turn their attention to those uncommitted voters in an effort to win them over.

Make the candidates earn your vote by linking it to a policy posture that reflects your core values.

And this election, your core value should be exclusively centered on promoting peace and preventing nuclear war.

Such a policy posture would be built upon for basic pillars.

1. Immediately end the current declaratory policy of the United States which articulates the strategic defeat of Russia as a primary US objective and replace it with a policy statement which makes peaceful coexistence with Russia the strategic goal of US foreign and national security policy. Such a policy redirection would include, by necessity, the goal of rethinking European security frameworks which respect the legitimate national security concerns of Russia and Europe, and would incorporate the necessity of a neutral Ukraine.

2. A freeze on the re-deployment of INF-capable weapons systems into Europe, matched by a Russian agreement not to re-introduce INF-capable weapons into its arsenal, with the goal of turning this freeze into a formal agreement that would be finalized in treaty form.

3. A commitment to engage with Russia on the negotiation and implementation of a new strategic arms control treaty which seeks equitable cuts in the strategic nuclear arsenals of both nations, a reduction in the number of nuclear weapons each side can retain in storage, and which incorporates limits on ballistic missile defense.

4. A general commitment to work with Russia to pursue verifiable and sustainable nuclear arms reduction globally using multi-lateral negotiations.

I will be working with Gerald Celente, Judge Andrew Napolitano, Garland Nixon, Wilmur Leon, Max Blumenthal, Anya Parampil, Jeff Norman, Danny Haiphong, and many others to put together an event, Operation DAWN, on September 28, 2024. The goal of this event will be to get as many American citizens as possible to tie their vote to the policy posture spelled out above, and then to leverage these commitments in a way that compels all candidates for the presidency to articulate policies that meet this criterion.

In doing so, the voter would be fighting for a chance to save democracy by making his or her vote count, save America and the world by creating the possibility to avert nuclear conflict, all by making the candidates for presidency earn their vote, as opposed to simply giving it away.

Operation DAWN is still in the preliminary planning stages. More details will be published here as the planning progresses.

https://scheerpost.com/2024/07/29/scott-ritter-voting-against-nuclear-war/

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Federal agents and state police have searched the house of former US Marine and UN weapons inspector Scott Ritter in New York state on Wednesday.

State Police and FBI agents descended on the street of Bethlehem township, south of Albany, around noon, according to the local outlet Times-Union. They carried “more than two dozen boxes” out of the house just before 5pm local time.

The law enforcement executed a search warrant “related to concerns apparently the US government has about violations of the Foreign Agent Restriction Act (FARA)” Ritter told reporters gathered outside the house after the agents left.

He denied any allegations of wrongdoing and said the federal government was trying to intimidate him.

An FBI spokesperson confirmed “law enforcement activity in connection with an ongoing federal investigation,” but would say nothing further.

Ritter is a former US Marine Corps major who served as a UN weapons inspector in Iraq during the 1990s. He opposed the 2003 US invasion, insisting that Saddam Hussein’s government did not have weapons of mass destruction, as Washington claimed at the time. 

He has also been an RT contributor and saw his passport seized by the US government when he tried to attend the St Petersburg International Economic Forum in June.

Jim Hoffman, Ritter’s neighbor across the street for two decades, told the Times-Union that the former inspector has kept a low profile.

“When he came out against the Iraq War back in early 2000s, he was vilified everywhere,” Hoffman said. “Honestly, he was right. He said there were no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.” 

Ritter himself has not posted anything about the raid on social media. His most recent post on X was from Tuesday’s meeting with independent presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. 

The administrators of his Telegram channel posted photos of the raid and said they have not heard from him either.

https://www.rt.com/news/602301-scott-ritter-fbi-raid/

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YOURDEMOCRACY.NET RECORDS HISTORY AS IT SHOULD BE — NOT AS THE WESTERN MEDIA WRONGLY REPORTS IT.

The US government has put former Hawaii Representative Tulsi Gabbard on a special air traffic surveillance list, according to a group of Air Marshal whistleblowers.

Gabbard served in Congress for eight years (2013-2021) and ran for the Democratic presidential nomination in 2020, but left the party in 2022 over ideological differences. She is also a lieutenant-colonel in the US Army reserve.

For the Transportation Security Administration (TSA), however, Gabbard appears to be a security risk. Last month, she was placed into the ‘Quiet Skies’ program and monitored wherever she flies, according to the Air Marshal National Council (AMNC).

The outlet UncoverDC reported this week that Gabbard has “two Explosive Detection Canine Teams, one Transportation Security Specialist (explosives), one plainclothes TSA Supervisor, and three Federal Air Marshals [FAMs] on every flight she boards,” citing AMNC director Sonya LaBosco. 

AMNC posted on X (formerly Twitter) that the claim came from their whistleblowers, who are ready to go on the record with the appropriate documentation.

The group has also claimed that the TSA and FAMS have “initiated armed government surveillance on high level conservative politicians,” and that the information they intend to reveal will “horrify and sicken you as Americans.” 

LaBosco has accused the TSA and its parent department, Homeland Security, of engaging in a “big domestic surveillance grab” that seems to be targeting conservatives. According to the group, Quiet Skies has been used against several people who attended the January 6, 2021 protest at the US Capitol – and their family members, including infants.

According to LaBosco, Gabbard was placed on the list on July 23, a day after she criticized President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris in a Fox News interview. FAMs were mobilized the very next day and followed her on a July 25 flight, LaBosco said.

Gabbard famously rattled Harris during the 2020 Democratic primary debates, bringing up her prosecutorial record. She also denounced Hillary Clinton as “the queen of warmongers,” after the former presidential candidate accused her of being a “Russian asset.” 

Most recently, Gabbard told podcaster Lex Fridman that “all the statements and comments that the [Biden-Harris White House] has made from the beginning of this war essentially point to their objective being to basically destroy Russia.”

Gabbard has not yet commented on the whistleblower revelations. She has just returned from Oklahoma, where she took command of a drill sergeant battalion that runs the US Army basic training program.

According to the TSA, ‘Quiet Skies’ is a tool that allows the FAMS to “focus on travelers who may present an elevated risk to aviation security.” The agency claims to have developed “a set of risk-based, intelligence-driven scenario rules,” under strict DHS oversight and respect for privacy and civil rights.

https://www.rt.com/news/602297-tulsi-gabbard-tsa-spying/

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SEE ALSO: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g1rkzwp4kzU

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