If we are to take the limited definition of terrorist as being a bearded Sunni extremist with an AK47 who is battling to create an Islamic State for himself, from the failed states of Syria, Saudi Arabia, Somalia, Yemen, Iraq and Afghanistan, then we have to assume that Trump’s interventions have achieved very little. Soon after taking office, he quickly took the helm of a military campaign in Iraq and Syria, which was aimed at hitting ISIL head on, which started in Iraq and progressed west until it arrived at the terror group’s epicentre of Raqqa in Northeast Syria. But the disinformation and plain outright lies by journalists who refused stoically to report the nuances of both the policy and the reality on the ground is shocking and has paid its toll to the situation today – which might have contributed to Trump being nominated for an award which recognises efforts made to bring about peace.

The U.S. military campaign in Iraq under Obama, was surreptitiously led by an Iranian commander, Qasem Soleimani, the same one that the U.S. assassinated just a few months back in Baghdad, following Trump’s orders. There are even photographs of Soleimani and U.S. top brass in Baghdad talking amicably among themselves during the peak of the Iranian-led battle against ISIL which preceded the U.S. one.

Makes sense. Both Iran and the U.S. wanted to destroy ISIL. Much of the work in previous years in Syria, in fact, had been carried out by Iran and its proxy Hezbollah. As a courtesy to Obama, in fact, the Iranians pulled back their own hardcore militias in Iraq to allow the U.S. campaign to begin, as a gesture of goodwill, such was the relationship at the time between Tehran and the U.S. in 2015. But nothing Trump did, once he took over, made any sense. And it still doesn’t. So, after taking heavy defeats in Mosul and other Iraqi strongholds, many ISIL operatives moved to Syria, where, eventually they escaped U.S. forces by relocating to the south of Syria, with the aid of Iranian soldiers there who assisted them. There’s just too much irony. Trump begins anti-Iran campaign within months of taking office. He takes all the credit for “destroying” ISIL. And yet, as early as 2019, we see that in fact, the reality is that he has merely moved ISIL around and made it more of an underground movement. It’s regrouping in Iraq and Syria and also taking its campaign against American soldiers where it can in other places, like Somalia and Afghanistan.

And to top all the irony, you have Trump’s anti-Iran policies which not only directly impact the growth of ISIL and other extremist groups, but now we are seeing more and more the emergence of a new campaign against American forces – which didn’t exist in 2017 when Trump kicked off his Middle East campaign by launching missiles into Syria from a U.S. battleship.

One of the reasons why Trump always wanted to get out of Syria is that his policies there against ISIL make him look a buffoon, given that Iranian ally Assad benefits from those extremists being wiped out (as they are also fighting Assad, Hezbollah and Iran in Syria). If any U.S. journalist pointed this out at a press briefing, he would look very, very silly indeed.

U.S. journalists in DC aren’t capable of asking the President even how he can claim credit for a so-called ‘peace deal’ with Palestine (brokered between the UAE and Israel) when the Palestinians weren’t even consulted on it, let alone signed anything.

But the notion that Trump is hitting ISIL is and always was folly. With U.S. sanctions in full swing against Iran and a real groundswell of opinion in Tehran aligning itself with the hardliners’ view (‘no choice but to hit back’), many worry about a new war with the U.S. and its allies which kicks off if Trump wins a second term. A number of analysts have pointed out that Tehran is already preparing for this.

I would argue that this is already happening on a smaller, but effective scale, in Somalia and Afghanistan. The scandal recently that U.S. forces were allegedly a target of Russian incentives via the Taliban might have hurt Trump. But it dwarfed the real story in Afghanistan which is that U.S. forces there are more vulnerable than ever as they might well be facing the wrath of both the Taliban and ISIL-affiliated groups supported by Iran.

This is already happening in Somalia where Iran is directly funding, through its operatives on the ground, Al Shabab terrorist group which is able and willing to go for ‘clean shot’ kills of U.S. soldiers and their Gulf Arab allies. This is as a direct result of U.S. sanctions on Iran, which in itself is an act of war we should not forget. Iran is, in fact, sourcing a number of countries in Africa who have such groups even if their ideology is not aligned to their own. The focus is the U.S.

China, rapidly becoming an enemy of the U.S. under Trump, is also looking to set up a number of military bases in Africa as it is looking for states now to accept their offers of building them.

For the meantime, Afghanistan and Somalia are the new battlegrounds though which have come about because of the ineptitude of a U.S. president who doesn’t really understand the region at all, doesn’t read reports and is really only obsessed with Obama’s legacy – and of course his own re-election.

And this erroneous policy, which the American people simply cannot understand or care to, is spreading its tentacles into sub-Saharan Africa, with more and more ISIL-affiliated groups now springing up in the Sahel and starting to get the media limelight. Just recently a number of arrests of terror cells were made in Morocco where attacks were planned against civilians and top government officials. Although the culprits were Moroccans, a police chief in Rabat points the finger at Libya and Mali for the source of brainwashing and supply calling the Sahel a “ticking time bomb of terrorism”.

And so to nominate Trump for a Nobel peace prize is a febrile triumph of nonsense, which leaves many of U.S. wondering how satirical magazines like The Onion make a living anymore. Trump has done more to expand ISIL’s reach and capability than anyone else as his Iran policy is literally like pouring gasoline on a fire. His policies, erratic as they may be, have brought together factions which were previously divided by their different interpretations of Islam – Iran and Al Shabab, for example or Hezbollah and Hamas in Palestine – all focused on a common enemy of America and its allies. As Trump prepares to pull out a number – but not all – of U.S. troops in Afghanistan and continue his baptism of lies directed at a very gullible public and a servile press corps along the lines of “see! I told you I would get our boys out of Middle East wars” it’s going to be hard to explain the rise in deaths of U.S. soldiers there. And new numbers of deaths in places like Somalia which a certain generation of Americans associate with a 1993 TIME magazine cover of a body of a dead U.S. soldier being dragged by a vehicle through the streets of Mogadishu.

Presumably this will all happen a few weeks after the election. Not very nobel. Or Noble. Whatever.

In 2015, the Henry Reeves Medical Brigade was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize for its contribution to fighting the Ebola pandemic, in which Cuba’s medical and humanitarian aid stood in sharp contrast to the militarisation employed by the U.S.

The prize carries with it recognition as well as notoriety. Among the winners are Henry Kissinger, who introduced Chile to neoliberalism and dictatorship in a bid to prevent the Cuban revolutionary influence from spreading across Latin America through democratic elections. Other winners include the UN Peace Keeping Forces which have been accused of several human rights violations including sexual abuse, the UN itself, which has abdicated from its responsibility to eradicate colonialism, Barack Obama, under whose rule military interventions ravaged the Arab World under the pretext of the Arab Spring and the EU, which prides itself on peacebuilding yet supports Israeli colonisation and military interventions as determined by the U.S., the UN and NATO.

Contrary to popular opinion, there is nothing noble about the Prize. The spectrum of winners, from individuals who have truly made a positive difference to the world, to war criminals lauded as peace purveyors, indicates dynamics other than altruism at play. The Nobel Peace Prize can also serve a political agenda which is far removed from the revolutionary principles and practices of Fidel, the Cuban Revolution and the Cuban people.

As the first Cuban doctors reached Europe, talk of ending the illegal U.S. blockade on Cuba ignited and later dwindled to less than echoes. As the pandemic shows initial signs of abating in Europe, the political rhetoric followed suit. Cuban internationalism has set an example on its own for the entire world. The international community, on the other hand, refuses the principles which contributed to enhancing the well being of civilians.

There was little chance of world leaders offering more than recognition of Cuba’s exemplary internationalist role. In Europe, additional surveillance and pushbacks were implemented under the guise of preventing a further pandemic spread. Militarising borders and the Mediterranean remained the order of the day.

Cuba has performed both a humanitarian and a political gesture. Saving lives is humanitarian. The internationalist principles which Fidel imparted and consolidated through revolutionary education processes across the island are political. Socialist principles have been proven as a sustainable solution, yet the rhetoric has already shifted from political action to transient recognition of Cuba’s efforts to help curb the coronavirus spread.

If the Nobel Peace Prize recommendation is taken further, the international community will be handed an opportunity to exploit the recognition. For decades, the only concession the UN has given Cuba is regular voting against the U.S.-imposed blockade, but no political action to end the isolation.

True to form, the UN’s latest call to the U.S. to lift the illegal blockade has been articulated within the context of COVID-19. The statement partly reads, “In the pandemic emergency, the lack of will of the U.S. Government to suspend sanctions may lead to a higher risk of such suffering in Cuba and other countries targeted by its sanctions.” Had there been no coronavirus pandemic, the UN would not have felt the urgency to issue a statement calling for the lifting of the illegal blockade. The international community is exploitative, yet Cuba responded with principles, dedication and collective action to save lives. A Nobel Peace Prize is far from satisfactory. Cuba does not need compensation in the form of glorified recognition, but a unified international front against the U.S. blockade based on principles, not on pandemics.

Those against it argue Planet Lockdown not only is not stopping the spread of Covid-19 but also has landed the global economy into a cryogenic state – with unforeseen, dire consequences. Thus quarantine should apply essentially to the population with the greatest risk of death: the elderly.

With Planet Lockdown transfixed by heart-breaking reports from the Covid-19 frontline, there’s no question this is an incendiary assertion.

In parallel, a total corporate media takeover is implying that if the numbers do not substantially go down, Planet Lockdown – an euphemism for house arrest – remains, indefinitely.

Michael Levitt, 2013 Nobel Prize in chemistry and Stanford biophysicist, was spot on when he calculated that China would get through the worst of Covid-19 way before throngs of health experts believed, and that “What we need is to control the panic”.

Let’s cross this over with some facts and dissident opinion, in the interest of fostering an informed debate.

The report Covid-19 – Navigating the Uncharted was co-authored by Dr. Anthony Fauci – the White House face of the fight –, H. Clifford Lane, and CDC director Robert R. Redfield. So it comes from the heart of the U.S. healthcare establishment.

The report explicitly states, “the overall clinical consequences of Covid-19 may ultimately be more akin to those of a severe seasonal influenza (which has a case fatality rate of approximately 0.1%) or a pandemic influenza (similar to those in 1957 and 1968) rather than a disease similar to SARS or MERS, which have had case fatality rates of 9 to 10% and 36%, respectively.”

On March 19, four days before Downing Street ordered the British lockdown, Covid-19 was downgraded from the status of “High Consequence Infectious Disease.”

John Lee, recently retired professor of pathology and former NHS consultant pathologist, has recently argued that, “the world’s 18,944 coronavirus deaths represent 0.14 per cent of the total. These figures might shoot up but they are, right now, lower than other infectious diseases that we live with (such as flu).”

He recommends, “a degree of social distancing should be maintained for a while, especially for the elderly and the immune-suppressed. But when drastic measures are introduced, they should be based on clear evidence. In the case of Covid-19, the evidence is not clear.”

That’s essentially the same point developed by a Russian military intel analyst.

No less than 22 scientists – see here and here – have expanded on their doubts about the Western strategy.

Dr. Sucharit Bhakdi, Professor Emeritus of Medical Microbiology at the Johannes Gutenberg University in Mainz, has provoked immense controversy with his open letter to Chancellor Merkel, stressing the “truly unforeseeable consequences of the drastic containment measures which are currently being applied in large parts of Europe.”

Even New York governor Andrew Cuomo admitted on the record about the error of quarantining elderly people with illnesses alongside the fit young population.

The absolutely key issue is how the West was caught completely unprepared for the spread of Covid-19 – even after being provided a head start of two months by China, and having the time to study different successful strategies applied across Asia.

There are no secrets for the success of the South Korean model.

South Korea was producing test kits already in early January, and by March was testing 100,000 people a day, after establishing strict control of the whole population – to Western cries of “no protection of private life”. That was before the West embarked on Planet Lockdown mode.

South Korea was all about testing early, often and safely – in tandem with quick, thorough contact tracing, isolation and surveillance.

Covid-19 carriers are monitored with the help of video-surveillance cameras, credit card purchases, smartphone records. Add to it SMS sent to everyone when a new case is detected near them or their place of work. Those in self-isolation need an app to be constantly monitored; non-compliance means a fine to the equivalent of $2,800.

Controlled demolition in effect

In early March, the Chinese Journal of Infectious Diseases, hosted by the Shanghai Medical Association, pre-published an Expert Consensus on Comprehensive Treatment of Coronavirus in Shanghai. Treatment recommendations included, “large doses of vitamin C…injected intravenously at a dose of 100 to 200 mg / kg per day. The duration of continuous use is to significantly improve the oxygenation index.”

That’s the reason why 50 tons of Vitamin C was shipped to Hubei province in early February. It’s a stark example of a simple “mitigation” solution capable of minimizing economic catastrophe.

In contrast, it’s as if the brutally fast Chinese “people’s war” counterpunch against Covid-19 had caught Washington totally unprepared. Steady intel rumbles on the Chinese net point to Beijing having already studied all plausible leads towards the origin of the Sars-Cov-2 virus – vital information that will be certainly weaponized, Sun Tzu style, at the right time.

As it stands, the sustainability of the complex Eurasian integration project has not been substantially compromised. As the EU has provided the whole planet with a graphic demonstration of its cluelessness and helplessness, everyday the Russia-China strategic partnership gets stronger – increasingly investing in soft power and advancing a pan-Eurasia dialogue which includes, crucially, medical help.

Facing this process, the EU’s top diplomat, Joseph Borrell, sounds indeed so helpless: “There is a global battle of narratives going on in which timing is a crucial factor. […] China has brought down local new infections to single figures – and it is now sending equipment and doctors to Europe, as others do as well. China is aggressively pushing the message that, unlike the U.S., it is a responsible and reliable partner. In the battle of narratives we have also seen attempts to discredit the EU (…) We must be aware there is a geo-political component including a struggle for influence through spinning and the ‘politics of generosity’. Armed with facts, we need to defend Europe against its detractors.”

That takes us to really explosive territory. A critique of the Planet Lockdown strategy inevitably raises serious questions pointing to a controlled demolition of the global economy. What is already in stark effect are myriad declinations of martial law, severe social media policing in Ministry of Truth mode, and the return of strict border controls.

These are unequivocal markings of a massive social re-engineering project, complete with inbuilt full monitoring, population control and social distancing promoted as the new normal.

That would be taking to the limit Secretary of State Mike “we lie, we cheat, we steal” Pompeo’s assertion, on the record, that Covid-19 is a live military exercise: “This matter is going forward — we are in a live exercise here to get this right.”

All hail BlackRock

So as we face a New Great Depression, steps leading to a Brave New World are already discernable. It goes way beyond a mere Bretton Woods 2.0, in the manner that Pam and Russ Martens superbly deconstruct the recent $2 trillion, Capitol Hill-approved stimulus to the U.S. economy.

Essentially, the Fed will “leverage the bill’s $454 million bailout slush fund into $4.5 trillion”. And no questions are allowed on who gets the money, because the bill simply cancels the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) for the Fed.

The privileged private contractor for the slush fund is none other than BlackRock. Here’s the extremely short version of the whole, astonishing scheme, masterfully detailed here.

Wall Street has turned the Fed into a hedge fund. The Fed is going to own at least two thirds of all U.S. Treasury bills wallowing in the market before the end of the year.

The U.S. Treasury will be buying every security and loan in sight while the Fed will be the banker – financing the whole scheme.

So essentially this is a Fed/ Treasury merger. A behemoth dispensing loads of helicopter money – with BlackRock as the undisputable winner.

BlackRock is widely known as the biggest money manager on the planet. Their tentacles are everywhere. They own 5% of Apple, 5% of Exxon Mobil, 6% of Google, second largest shareholder of AT&T (Turner, HBO, CNN, Warner Brothers) – these are just a few examples.

They will buy all these securities and manage those dodgy special Purpose Vehicles (SPVs) on behalf of the Treasury.

BlackRock not only is the top investor in Goldman Sachs. Better yet: Blackrock is bigger than Goldman Sachs, JP Morgan and Deutsche Bank combined. BlackRock is a serious Trump donor. Now, for all practical purposes, it will be the operating system – the Chrome, Firefox, Safari – of Fed/Treasury.

This represents the definitive Wall Street-ization of the Fed – with no evidence whatsoever it will lead to any improvement in the lives of the average American.

Western corporate media, en masse, have virtually ignored the myriad, devastating economic consequences of Planet Lockdown. Wall to wall coverage barely mentions the astonishing economic human wreckage already in effect – especially for the masses barely surviving, so far, in the informal economy.

For all practical purposes, the Global War on Terror (GWOT) has been replaced by the Global War on Virus (GWOV). But what is not being seriously analyzed is the Perfect Toxic Storm: a totally shattered economy; The Mother of All Financial Crashes – barely masked by the trillions in helicopter money from the Fed and the ECB; the tens of millions of unemployed engendered by the New Great Depression; the millions of small businesses that will simply disappear; a widespread, global mental health crisis. Not to mention the masses of elderly, especially in the U.S., that will be issued an unspoken “drop dead” notice.

Beyond any rhetoric about “decoupling”, the global economy is already, de facto, split in two. On one side, we have Eurasia, Africa and swathes of Latin America – what China will be painstakingly connecting and reconnecting via the New Silk Roads. On the other side, we have North America and selected Western vassals. A puzzled Europe lies in the middle.

A cryogenically induced global economy certainly facilitates a reboot. Trumpism is the New Exceptionalism – so that means an isolationist MAGA on steroids. In contrast, China will painstakingly reboot its market base along the New Silk Roads – Africa and Latin America included – to replace the 20% of trade/exports to be lost with the U.S.

The meager $1,200 checks promised to Americans are a de facto precursor of the much touted Universal Basic Income (UBI). They may become permanent as tens of millions of people will be permanently unemployed. That will facilitate the transition towards a totally automated, 24/7 economy run by AI – thus the importance of 5G.

And that’s where ID2020 comes in.

AI and ID2020

The European Commission is involved in a crucial but virtually unknown project, CREMA (Cloud Based Rapid Elastic Manufacturing) which aims to facilitate the widest possible implementation of AI in conjunction to the advent of a cashless One-World system.

The end of cash necessarily implies a One-World government capable of dispensing – and controlling – UBI; a de facto full accomplishment of Foucault’s studies on biopolitics. Anyone is liable to be erased from the system if an algorithm equals this individual with dissent.

It gets even sexier when absolute social control is promoted as an innocent vaccine.

ID2020 is self-described as a benign alliance of “public-private partners”. Essentially, it is an electronic ID platform based on generalized vaccination. And its starts at birth; newborns will be provided with a “portable and persistent biometrically-linked digital identity.”

GAVI, the Global Alliance for Vaccines and Immunization, pledges to “protect people’s health “ and provide “immunization for all”. Top partners and sponsors, apart from the WHO, include, predictably, Big Pharma.

At the ID2020 Alliance summit last September in New York, it was decided that the “Rising to the Good ID Challenge” program would be launched in 2020. That was confirmed by the World Economic Forum (WEF) this past January in Davos. The digital identity will be tested with the government of Bangladesh.

That poses a serious question: was ID2020 timed to coincide with what a crucial sponsor, the WHO, qualified as a pandemic? Or was a pandemic absolutely crucial to justify the launch of ID2020?

As game-changing trial runs go, nothing of course beats Event 201, which took place less than a month after ID2020.

The Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security in partnership with, once again, the WEF, as well as the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, described Event 201 as “a high-level pandemic exercise”. The exercise “illustrated areas where public/private partnerships will be necessary during the response to a severe pandemic in order to diminish large-scale economic and societal consequences.”

With Covid-19 in effect as a pandemic, the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health was forced to issue a statement basically saying they just “modeled a fictional coronavirus pandemic, but we explicitly stated that it was not a prediction”.

There’s no question “a severe pandemic, which becomes ‘Event 201’ would require reliable cooperation among several industries, national governments, and key international institutions”, as spun by the sponsors. Covid-19 is eliciting exactly this kind of “cooperation”. Whether it’s “reliable” is open to endless debate.

The fact is that, all over Planet Lockdown, a groundswell of public opinion is leaning towards defining the current state of affairs as a global psyop: a deliberate global meltdown – the New Great Depression – imposed on unsuspecting citizens by design.

The powers that be, taking their cue from the tried and tested, decades-old CIA playbook, of course are breathlessly calling it a “conspiracy theory”. Yet what vast swathes of global public opinion observe is a – dangerous – virus being used as cover for the advent of a new, digital financial system, complete with a forced vaccine cum nanochip creating a full, individual, digital identity.

The most plausible scenario for our immediate future reads like clusters of smart cities linked by AI, with people monitored full time and duly micro-chipped doing what they need with a unified digital currency, in an atmosphere of Bentham’s and Foucault’s Panopticum on overdrive.

So if this is really our future, the existing world-system has to go. This is a test, this is only a test.

The latter observation is, unfortunately, appropriate, particularly in light of recent history in awarding the once undoubtedly prestigious prize. Over the last several decades, for reasons that can only be conjectured, the Nobel literature committee did not impress anyone with the wisdom of its choices. The international intellectual community was bewildered by the awkwardness of many of the Committee’s decisions, which greatly devalued the literature prize. It suffices to mention a few of the more recent obviously politically dictated literature prize winners, such as Svetlana Aleksievich, Herta Miller, and Bob Dylan to make the point. (Bob Dylan should be given credit for saying a few kind things about the Serbs when that was most unpopular, but that hardly qualifies him for what is considered the world’s most prestigious literature prize, never mind the fact that Dylan is a pop artist, not a writer.) Handke’s future behavior will be a clue to solving the interesting puzzle of how and why malgré tout the Committee settled upon him as this year’s winner, but the proposition that after numerous failures of judgment it was motivated this time by purely aesthetic considerations must at first glimpse appear rather dubious. Looking at it in the most favorable light, however, we may have a situation analogous to 1958, when Pasternak won the Literature Prize. In contrast to the series of politically suitable but utterly forgettable literary non-entities over the last several decades who were adorned with the prize, the winner Handke – just as Pasternak in his day – has undoubtedly earned the honor, but prudence requires that we also keep an eye on the political context. Of course, in Handke’s case we still lack sufficient facts to make sober judgments on this subject.

Anyway, the gist of the enraged high priests’ objection is that Handle simply is not a ball player. They denounce him for crossing important red lines while obstinately ignoring some of the obligatory propaganda axioms of their public ideology. Chief among these is his headstrong refusal to express solidarity with the moral lynching of the Serbian nation (which has today been assigned the World War II role of the Jews, a fact that the heretic Handke has publicly pointed out). Further, Handke is excoriated for disbelieving that genocide was committed in Srebrenica, although it is not at all clear why a writer, whether good or bad at his craft, should be required to assent to that discredited propaganda claim in order to prove his literary worth. (Handke’s eulogy at the funeral of Slobodan Milosevic has also been included in the charge sheet, but it is an item simply too preposterous for serious comment.) Finally, they are infinitely enraged by a man who declined their ticket to the celebrity pantheon of the New World Order and insists on identifying with its victims, instead of opting for the glory, tributes, and benefits that accrue from opportunistically identifying with the oppressors.

All men of good will and sound moral character who care about world class literature and intellectual honesty welcome the honor that was bestowed on Peter Handke, not because of “pro-Serbian” views maliciously and irrelevantly attributed to the author but because of the genuine positions he takes vis-à-vis the key issues of our time. Handke is a personification of unshakable commitment to justice and truth, and if such a stance has on occasion resulted in expressions of support for one of the most maligned nations of our time, so much the worse for the slanderers. The excerpt from Albert Camus’ Nobel acceptance speech in 1957, seized upon and twisted in a furious comment by the journalistic hack Ed Vulliamy (of indecent memory from the 1990s) is in fact entirely applicable to this year’s laureate Peter Handke and encapsulates his admirable human profile: “The duty of the writer,” Vulliamy misquotes Camus in his hit piece, “is to do more than write, but also testify to truth.” (What Camus actually said on that occasion was “It obliges the artist not to keep himself apart; it subjects him to the most humble and the most universal truth,” but never mind, that still makes the same essential point even if the fraudster Vulliamy altered the remark to give it his personal imprint.)

Exactly right. Except that the sold out scoundrel and false reporter from the Bosnian war theater, undeserving Pulitzer Prize winner Vulliamy does not know the first thing about truth. That is precisely why he made this ridiculous slip, falsely invoking Camus in a servile attempt to smear Handke. Just another brilliant example, isn’t it, of the generous tribute that, without intending it, vice regularly pays to virtue?

In truth, Obama, casually and with evident self-satisfaction, unleashed series of catastrophic foreign national security policies that sent the world careening to the brink of nuclear war and inflicted needless suffering on scores of millions of people. No Game of Thrones villain ever did anything like that damage.

I have no doubt that the ludicrous award of the 2009 Nobel Peace Prize to Obama will go down in history as the most ridiculous such award in the entire history of the institution.

What in reality was Obama’s record as President of the United States?

He authorized a totally unnecessary and strategically meaningless $1 trillion nuclear build up over the coming generation that will play a major role in bankrupting the United States. It was also a move guaranteed to set off a ruinous global thermonuclear arms race with Russia, China and other powers who understandably fear being made defenseless before a succession of ever more unilateral and unpredictable US leaders.

Obama claimed to be deeply concerned about nuclear nonproliferation and hosted a Nuclear Safety Summit in Washington whose only real achievement was to feed his already enormous and delusional appreciation of his own self-worth.

However, as analyst Rebecca Heinrichs of the conservative Hudson Institute in Washington concluded, “If one actually looks at the risks of nuclear war as well as the likelihood of proliferation at the start of the President’s term compared to now, the Obama’s nonproliferation record earns a failing grade.”

In 2011, Obama a fecklessly allowed his warmongering, hyper-aggressive secretary of state Hillary Clinton to arrange with Britain and France the use of NATO air power to destroy the state of Libya by giving tactical support and protection to rebels against veteran leader Muammar Gaddafi.

Gaddafi’s previous decade of consistent cooperation with the US and its allies in the struggle against extreme Islamist terror and his monitored compliance with demands to scrap Libya’s nascent nuclear were all for naught. Obama and Clinton’s reckless and even clownish policies ensured the complete disintegration of Libya, creating an infernal anarchy in which Islamist terror groups could thrive and metastasize throughout sub-Saharan Africa.

Far from encouraging nations to scrap their nuclear programs as Gaddafi in fact had done, Obama’s childish approval of the destruction of Libya sent precisely the opposite message to nations around the world: “Scrap your nuclear deterrents and there will be nothing to stop the United States from destroying you in whenever its leaders feel like it.”

It was the same story in Syria where Obama and Clinton eagerly approved the flow of half a billion dollars a year to such groups including, incredibly the Nusrah Front, the Syrian franchise of al-Qaeda, heirs to the conspirators who killed nearly 3,000 Americans on September 11, 2001.  

Obama’s utter ignorance and his clueless ignorance of diplomacy and the conduct of international relations was memorably exposed in his casual approval of the absurd and clownish Michael McFaul as US ambassador to Moscow.

The idea that an accredited ambassador could pass his days in sending out public abusive Twitter messages insulting the head of the state to which he was accredited was ludicrous even if that state was Mauritius, Lichtenstein or Tahiti let alone one of the world’s two thermonuclear superpowers.

McFaul openly worked overtime to give aid and encourage to domestic opposition to the undermine the legitimate government of Russia: His activities would have provoked calls for full-scale war from the US Congress had any Russian envoy to Washington, DC presumed to act in such a way. None of this bothered Obama for a second.

Even worse was to follow: In 2014, US Assistant Secretary of State Victoria Nuland, the wife of leading neocon ideologue Robert Kagan and also the favored subordinate of Hillary Clinton when she was secretary of state openly paraded in the streets of Kiev, handing out cookies to violent protestors as they overthrew with mob riots and terror the constitutionally democratically elected government of a European nation of 45 million people. Obama fully – albeit, as usual, passively approved.

East-West relations were reduced to a state of chaos and distrust unseen in 52 years since the Cuban Missile Crisis. Obama does not appear to have noticed or even been concerned.

Obama was not totally ignorant and uninterested in international relations. During his casual and ill-attended, poorly documented student years at Columbia University in New York City, he attended only one course in international relations. It was given by none other than Zbigniew Brzezinski, former National Security Adviser to President Jimmy Carter.

Brzezinski was a descendant of the displaced minor Polish aristocracy who through his long career consistently fought to lock the United States into a set policies designed to weaken, disintegrate and encircle Russia with hostile powers and alliances. He was a major foreign policy influence on US Presidents Ronald Reagan, Bill Clinton and George W. Bush.

Brzezinski was Obama’s personal guide and guru to what little the 44th US president dimly grasped of strategic orientation and world affairs. Obama’s near-total ignorance of non-American history and diplomacy gave Brzezinski full scope to manipulate him into accepting all his own most virulent anti-Russian prejudices.

Thanks to Obama, superpower diplomatic relations collapsed to their most parlous state in the entire Nuclear Age. When Obama took office in January 2009, the Doomsday Clock of The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists journal was set at five minutes to midnight and the journal soberly warned: “The world stands at the brink of a second nuclear age.” 

Yet after eight years in power, when Obama left the White House in January 2017, as ignorant, complacent and filled with unearned self-regard as when he came to Washington, the Doomsday Clock stood at three minutes to midnight. – two minutes closer than when he had taken office.

We do not need to wait to know the Verdict of History on Barack Obama’s eight years as a global statesman. That verdict is in and it is damning: The Nobel committee should rescind his 2009 Peace Prize. Perhaps it can be given instead to a harmless fantasy TV show like Game of Thrones.

Russian air strikes in Aleppo have killed some 1,207 civilians, 380 of them children, the Syrian White Helmets civil defense group has recently told United Nations war crimes investigators in a letter. A 39-page document outlining the accusations against Russia was submitted to the UN Commission of Inquiry on Syria. It lists some 304 alleged attacks carried out primarily between July and December in the Aleppo region, in which the authors say there is a «high likelihood» of Russia’s responsibility. «Evidence clearly indicates that Russia has committed or been complicit in war crimes in Syria», the White Helmets letter to the UN inquiry said.

The question is who exactly are the White Helmets, the group able to get such precise data about what is happening on spot amid the battles raging in the country hit by devastating war?

Formally, the White Helmets (Syria Civil Defence-SCD) is a volunteer civil defense non-governmental organization was started by James Le Mesurier, a former military intelligence officer and private security consultant, in 2013, to operate in rebel-controlled Syria.

Its mission is to «to save the greatest number of lives in the shortest possible time and to minimize further injury to people and damage to property». The SCD claims to be a neutral and impartial humanitarian NGO, with no official affiliation to any political or military actor and a commitment to render services to any in need regardless of sect or political affiliation. It has grown to be an organization of over 2,850 volunteers operating from 114 local civil defense centers across 8 provincial directorates. It has been even nominated for the Nobel Prize Peace Award.

Initially, the United Kingdom Foreign and Commonwealth Office was the largest single source of funding. Today the SCD gets money from the US, the UK, and Canadian, Danish, German and Japanese governments.

The USAID now appears to be the largest donor, having contributed at least $23 million from 2013 to March 2016. The fact that the funds have been transferred from State Department via USAID has been confirmed by Deputy State Department Spokesman Mark Toner. The agency is widely known for being used as a cover for covert CIA activities.

According to an official report, the British government had provided £15 million of funding between 2012 and November 2015, increased to £32 million by October 2016. Actually, this is a very interesting paper. For instance, it mentions £5.3m given to some mysterious «media activists». It is logical to surmise that the money transferred to those who fabricate concocted stories to be picked up by media.

No wonder the organization have been publicly calling for Western intervention in Syria, particularly a no-fly zone, since their creation. He who pays the piper calls the tune.

It is easy to understand why Germany and France – the group’s donors – were so persistent while demanding an exit for the White Helmets in Aleppo.

If the White Helmets are really «neutral, impartial and humanitarian» and do «serve all the people of Syria», then why should they work only in areas controlled by the violent opposition and nowhere else? Why don’t they help Syrians who suffered from terrorists’ attacks in the government – controlled areas? The White Helmets claim to be unarmed but there are photos which show their members carrying arms and celebrating terrorist group’s military successes.

The Ron Paul Institute for Peace and Prosperity stated that that a major objective of SCD was to produce anti-President Assad commentary, on social media and elsewhere.

The organization has been accused by critics of fabricating reports and rescues. On 15 December, Russia Today (RT) interviewed residents, who had just left eastern Aleppo after it fell to government forces, claiming SCD operatives had stolen jewelry and only helped when cameras were present. Vanessa Beeley has published her investigative stories to rip off the mask of the White Helmets, exposing it as a terrorist group. The journalist also exposed Mosab Obeidat, one of the SCD leaders, as an arms trader personally involved in the transactions to supply terrorists with arms and ammunition.

The White Helmets have posted fraudulent photos so as to blame the Syrian military for civilian casualties and intentional targeting of civilians. On November 30, Russia’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs made a detailed statement about the fake pictures provided by the group for press. In late October, the Russian Defense Ministry said the group had produced fabricated photos to blame the Russian military for what it had not done.

The organization had spread around the stories about the horrors of Russian air strikes before Russia’s parliament even granted President Putin the authority to use the Air Space Forces in Syria.

The UN conference Against Propaganda and Regime Change, for Peace and National Sovereignty took place in early December. Eva Bartlett, an independent Canadian journalist, said no international organizations operated in Syria to make media use such dubious sources of information as the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights which is represented by only one person!

Hailed as heroic rescuers rushing to the aid of injured civilians in terrorists-controlled parts of Syria, the White Helmets are nothing else but an elaborate deception. The group is nothing else but a tool used by Western spy agencies to denigrate Russia and everyone who does not support the terrorists in their effort to overthrow the Syria’s legitimate government. The organization is a good example of the fact that all is fair in propaganda wars waged by the Western intelligence agencies against Russia.