Odds & Ends

 

 

• Sputnik reports:  United States Secretary of War Lloyd Austin said in his first major speech that the US and its allies should prepare for a new type of military conflict.  “The way we fight the next major war is going to look very different from the way we fought the last ones,” Austin said on Friday at the change of command for US Indo-Pacific Command at Joint Base Pearl Harbor-Hickam.

 

• Ed Mays from Seattle liked my recent presentation called 'Is Russia Truly our Enemy?'. He asked me to record it again for his show on national Free Speech TV. So I did. That should increase dramatically the numbers of people viewing this timely talk.  You can watch it here

 

• Donetsk News Agency reports: The People’ Council has declared rights of Ukrainian banks to credit payment debts of Donetsk People's Republic residents on loans taken before November 14, 2014 null and void. The newly adopted law on Ukrainian banks property stipulates that the rights of Ukrainain banks to due payments on liabilities arising before November 14, 2014 are declared null and void. The date is the day when Ukrainian president signed the 875/2014 presidential decree on banning bank services in Donbass. The document was voted for unanimously by 89 deputies present at the meeting. 

 

• Consortium News reports:  The unfolding pandemic horror in India has many causes. These include the complacency, inaction and irresponsibility of government leaders, even when it was evident for several months that a fresh wave of infections of new mutant variants threatened the population. Continued massive election rallies, many addressed by the prime minister, Narendra Modi, brought large numbers to congested gatherings and lulled many into underplaying the threat of infection.  The incomprehensible decision to allow a major Hindu religious festival — the Mahakumbh Mela, held every 12 years — to be brought forward by a full year, on the advice of some astrologers, brought millions from across India to one small area along the Ganges River and contributed to ‘super-spreading’ the disease.  The exponential explosion of Covid-19 cases — and it is likely much worse than officially reported, because of inadequate testing and undercounting of cases and deaths — has revealed not just official hubris and incompetence but lack of planning and major deficiencies in the public health system. The shortage of medical oxygen, for instance, has effectively become a proximate cause of death for many patients.

 

• Strategic Culture Foundation reports:  “The Western powers are like dogs with an old bone on the subject of alleged use of chemical weapons in Syria. There is no meat on it but they continue to gnaw away,” says former British ambassador to Syria in an interview with Finian Cunningham. The United States, Britain, and other NATO powers failed in their covert military efforts for regime change in Syria, thanks in large part to the principled intervention by Russia to defend its historic Arab ally. However, Peter Ford, the former British ambassador to Syria, contends that regime change is still very much a top priority for Western powers and their criminal agenda of reshaping the Middle East according to their imperial objectives.