As much as it might cause us a fair deal of displeasure and even an upset stomach to consider such ideas as the hold eugenics has on our presently troubled era, I believe that ignoring such a topic really does no one any favors in the long run.

This is especially serious, as leading World Economic Forum darlings like Yuval Harari flaunt such concepts as “the new global useless class” which Artificial intelligence, genetic engineering, automation and the Fourth Industrial Revolution is supposedly ushering in. Other Davos creatures like Klaus Schwab call openly for a microchipped global citizenry capable of interfacing with a global web with a single thought while Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg promote ‘neuralinks’ to “keep humanity relevant” by merging with computers in a new epoch of evolutionary biology.

Leading Darwinian geneticists like Sir James Watson and Sir Richard Dawkins openly defend eugenics while a technocracy consolidates itself in a governing station using a “Great Reset” as an excuse to usher in a new post-nation state era.

If there is something fundamentally evil lurking behind these processes which has any connection to the Anglo-American rise of fascism and eugenics nearly a century ago, then let’s at least have the courage to explore that possibility. It was after all, only by looking at this ugliness 80 years ago, that patriots were able to take appropriate measures to prevent a bankers’ technocratic dictatorship in 1933 and again during WW2.. so perhaps a similar display of courage to think the unthinkable might be worth the effort for those who might find themselves in a similar situation today.

What Didn’t Happen at Nuremburg?

Seventy six years ago, as the allies were consolidating their victory over the Nazi machine and as the “Nuremburg Tribunals” were quickly being arranged, a new strategy was set into motion by the very same forces that had put vast energy, money and resources into the rise of fascism as “the miracle solution” of post-WWI economic chaos that had spread across Europe and the USA.

It is among the greatest scandals of our age that the Wall Street- City of London machine that financed Hitler and Mussolini as battering rams for a new world order were never actually brought to justice. Although Franklin Roosevelt managed to put a leash on Wall Street between 1933-1945, while setting the world stage for a beautiful post-war vision of win-win cooperation, the darker forces of the financier oligarchy who wanted only to establish a global unipolar system of governance not only avoided punishment, but wasted no time to regain their lost hegemony before the war had come to a close.

The Role of Sir Julian Huxley

One of the conceptual grand strategists of this process was a man named Julian Sorrel Huxley (1887-1975). Celebrated as a biologist, and social reformer, Julian was a devout life-long member of the British Eugenics Society serving alongside John Maynard Keynes as secretary and later as its president.

Julian was a busy man, who along with his brother Aldous, worked hard to fill the very large shoes of their grandfather Thomas (aka: Darwin’s bulldog). While simultaneously managing the post-WW2 eugenics movement, Julian found himself setting into motion the modern environmental movement as founder of the International Union for the Conservation of Nature in 1948, co-founding the World Wildlife Fund in 1961, created the term “transhumanism” and also founding an immensely influential United Nations body called UNESCO (abbreviated for the United Nations Education, Science and Cultural Organization) in 1946 which he ran as Director General from 1946-1948.

The mandate for the new organization was set out clearly in Huxley’s 1946 UNESCO: Its Purpose and Its Philosophy:

“The moral for UNESCO is clear. The task laid upon it of promoting peace and security can never be wholly realised through the means assigned to it- education, science and culture. It must envisage some form of world political unity, whether through a single world government or otherwise, as the only certain means of avoiding war… in its educational programme it can stress the ultimate need for a world political unity and familiarize all peoples with the implications of the transfer of full sovereignty from separate nations to a world organization.”

To what end would this “world political unity” be aimed? Several pages later, Huxley’s vision is laid out in all of its twisted detail:

“At the moment, it is probable that the indirect effect of civilization is dysgenic instead of eugenic, and in any case it seems likely that the dead weight of genetic stupidity, physical weakness, mental instability and disease proneness, which already exist in the human species will prove too great a burden for real progress to be achieved. Thus even though it is quite true that any radical eugenic policy will be for many years politically and psychologically impossible, it will be important for UNESCO to see that the eugenic problem is examined with the greatest care and that the public mind is informed of the issues at stake so that much that is now unthinkable may at least become thinkable.”

After the world got the chance to see what a eugenics program looked like under the full support of a fascist social engineer, it would be no exaggeration to say that it lost a good deal of popularity in the eyes of a world population still very much connected to traditional cultural institutions like Christianity, patriotism and respect for sacredness of life.

Even though thirty U.S. States and two Canadian provinces had legalized eugenics policies (including forced sterilization of the unfit) between 1907-1945, the statistical science and political application of eugenics ground to a screeching halt by the end of World War 2 and as Huxley iterated in his manifesto, something new had to be done.

A Word on Tavistock

Huxley also worked very closely with London’s Tavistock Clinic that received funding from both Rockefeller and Macy Foundations throughout the 1930s-1950s. Led by a psychiatrist named Brigadier General John Rawlings Rees, Tavistock can be best understood as the “psychiatric branch of the British Empire” established in 1921 which innovated psychiatric techniques using mixtures of Pavlovian behaviorism and Freudian theories to influence group behavior in a variety of ways.

Early on, the clinic explored the extreme mental conditions of shell shock victims who suffered cases of psychological deconstruction during the terrors of trench warfare recognizing the high degree of malleability in these subjects. As outlined by a brilliant 1996 EIR report by L. Wolfe, the idea behind Tavistock’s was always driven by a goal to figure out how the brain might be “depatterned” and deconstructed in order to be reconstructed anew like a blank slate with the hopes that this insight into individuals might be replicated later among broader social groups, and even whole nations. Many of this research was applied in the form of MK Ultra within the USA and will be the subject of a future report.

G. Brock Chrisholm: Tavistockian Czar of World Health

One prominent psychiatrist who spent years working with Rees at Tavistock was a Canadian named G. Brock Chrisolm.

In 1948, Christolm founded a UN-affiliated body called the World Health Organization (WHO) with the aim of promoting mental and physical health of the world. A noble endeavor carrying much responsibility and power requiring a leader with exceptional insight into the nature of sickness and health. Sadly, based upon his own sick views of the nature of mankind and society, Chrisholm was certainly the wrong man for the job.

Among the greatest causes of war and mental sickness in Chrisholm’s mind were not to be found in imperialism or economic injustice, but rather in society’s belief in right and wrong. Writing in 1946 Chrisholm laid out the purpose of “good” psychotherapy and education saying: “the reinterpretation and eventual eradication of the concept of right and wrong which has been the basis of child training, the substitution of intelligent and rational thinking for faith in the certainties of old people- these are the belated objectives of practically all effective psychotherapy”.

But it wasn’t simply the “concept of right and wrong” or “faith in the certainties of old people” which had to be eradicated, but monotheistic religion, family, and patriotism. Speaking eight years later, Chrisholm said: “To achieve world government, it is necessary to remove from the minds of men their individualism, loyalty to family tradition, national patriotism and religious dogmas”.

The World Goes Mental

Once UNESCO and the WHO were firmly in place, a third organization was created to drive the funding, and the practice of global mental health.

As outlined by historian Anton Chaitkin, funded primarily by the Macy Foundation, the World Federation of Mental Health (WFMH) was created in 1948. The Macy Foundation itself which was created in 1930 under the leadership of General Marlborough Churchill (cousin to Winston) who had been in charge of covert military intelligence from 1919-1929 in the form of the “Black Chamber”. His new foundation was a part of the Rockefeller machine and used as a conduit to pour money into “health sciences” with a focus on eugenics.

The U.S. technical coordinator to the conference that created the WFMH made the new organization’s origins clearly known. Nina Ridnour wrote “the World Federation for Mental Health… had been created upon the recommendation of the United Nations World Health Organization and UNESCO because they needed a non-governmental mental health organization with which they could cooperate.”

And just who would become the first Director General of the WFMH?

While still acting as the head of London’s Tavistock Clinic, Brigadier General John Rawlings Rees was put in charge of the new body by none other than arch-racist Montagu Norman (head of the Bank of England) who had created the operation out of his National Association for Mental Health run out of his London Thorpe Lodge home.

Describing this strategic battle plan to reform society, Rees said:

“If we prepare to come out into the open and to attack the social and national problems of our day, then we must have the shock troops, and these cannot be provided by psychiatry based wholly in institutions. We must have mobile teams of psychiatrists who are free to move around and make contacts with the local area.”

The idea of mobile teams of psychiatric shock troops was an idea advanced by leading grand strategist Lord Bertrand Russell who had written in 1952’s “Impact of Science on Society”:

“I think the subject which will be of most importance politically is mass psychology…. Its importance has been enormously increased by the growth of modern methods of propaganda. Of these the most influential is what is called “education.” Religion plays a part, though a diminishing one; the press, the cinema, and the radio play an increasing part…. It may be hoped that in time anybody will be able to persuade anybody of anything if he can catch the patient young and is provided by the State with money and equipment.”

The Bi-Polar Cold War and a New Global Paradigm

Over the ensuing years, UNESCO, the WHO and WFMH worked in tandem to coordinate hundreds of influential sub organizations, universities, research labs, and covert science including the CIA’s MK Ultra in order to bring about the desired “mentally healthy” society cleansed of its connections to Christianity, faith in truthfulness, national patriotism or family.

By 1971, the world was ripe for a big change.

The baby boomer targets of this vast social engineering experiment had been inundated by a vast arsenal of cultural warfare on every level. While LSD was spread across campuses of America, and assassinations of western leaders who resisted the new age of wars in Southwest Asia became the norm, the baby boomers watched as their loved ones returned from Vietnam in body bags. “Not trusting anyone over 30” became the new wisdom as love of country was suffocated under the unnatural spread of Anglo-American imperialism abroad and COINTEL PRO-style operations at home.

When the CFR and Trilateral Commission unpegged the U.S. dollar from the gold reserve, a new age of deregulation, consumerism and radical materialism was ushered in causing the baby boomer generation to quickly transmogrify into the 1980s hyper-materialist “me” generation.

On an ecological level, a new ethic of “conservationism” had begun to move from the fringes into the mainstream replacing the former pro-industrial ethic of the producer-creator society that had historically governed the best of western civilization.

Chief among the creators of this new conservation ethic which replaced the idea of “protecting humanity from empire” with “protecting nature from mankind”, was none other than Julian Huxley himself. During the same year that he co-founded the World Wildlife Foundation, Huxley drafted the Morges Manifesto (1961) as the organizing manifesto for the modern ecology movement pitting human civilization in stark contrast to the supposedly closed, mathematical equilibrium of nature. Huxley co-founded the WWF with arch Malthusians Prince Philip “I want to be reincarnated as a deadly virus” Mountbatten and Prince Bernhard of the Netherlands.

Holdren’s Planetary Regime

By the mid-1970s, one of the leading neo-Malthusians of that era, Paul Ehrlich mentored a young protégé named John Holdren and together they produced a stomach-turning manual called Ecoscience in 1977 where the pair wrote:

“Perhaps those agencies, combined with UNEP and the United Nations population agencies, might eventually be developed into a Planetary Regime- sort of an international superagency for population, resources, and environment. Such a comprehensive Planetary Regime could control the development, administration, conservation, and distribution of all-natural resources, renewable or non-renewable, at least insofar as international implications exist. Thus, the Regime could have the power to control pollution not only in the atmosphere and oceans, but also in such freshwater bodies as rivers and lakes that cross international boundaries or that discharge into the oceans. The Regime might also be a logical central agency for regulating all international trade, perhaps including assistance from DCs to LDCs, and including all food on the international market. The Planetary Regime might be given responsibility for determining the optimum population for the world and for each region and for arbitrating various countries’ shares within their regional limits. Control of population size might remain the responsibility of each government, but the Regime would have some power to enforce the agreed limits.”

Considering that these words were written just three years after Henry Kissinger’s NSSM-200 report that transformed U.S. foreign policy doctrine from pro-development to pro-population reduction, Holdren’s 1977 words should not be taken lightly.

The Human Genome Project Revives Sleeping Monsters

During the ensuing decades Holdren became close friends with a Harvard-based Rhodes Scholar and mathematician named Eric Lander who led the Human Genome Project from 1995-2002. Lander announced the success of the unveiling of the fully sequenced human genome in 2003 saying: “The Human Genome Project represents one of the remarkable achievements in the history of science. Its culmination this month signals the beginning of a new era in biomedical research. Biology is being transformed into an information science”.

Commenting on the potential for steering human evolution made possible by Lander’s Human Genome Project and the new developments in mRNA CRISPR technology then unfolding, Sir Richard Dawkins wrote in 2006:

“IN THE 1920s and 1930s, scientists from both the political left and right would not have found the idea of designer babies particularly dangerous – though of course they would not have used that phrase. Today, I suspect that the idea is too dangerous for comfortable discussion, and my conjecture is that Adolf Hitler is responsible for the change… I wonder whether, some 60 years after Hitler’s death, we might at least venture to ask what the moral difference is between breeding for musical ability and forcing a child to take music lessons. Or why it is acceptable to train fast runners and high jumpers but not to breed them. I can think of some answers, and they are good ones, which would probably end up persuading me. But hasn’t the time come when we should stop being frightened even to put the question?”

It wasn’t long before Holdren found himself enjoying greater power than he had ever imagined as science czar and architect of Obama’s “evidence-based” program of governance which involved maximizing funding for green tech to decarbonize humanity under new systems of global governance. Lander worked closely with Holdren as the co-chair of Obama’s science council and also with Whitehead Institute President David Baltimore on the creation of the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard.

Together Lander and Baltimore oversaw a major 2015 conference on the “new era of biomedical research” that unveiled a new gene modification technology known as CRISPR involving the use of enzymes and RNA found in ecoli which were discovered to have the ability to target DNA sequences and induce various mutations. While it is obvious that this powerful technology offers potential good to humanity as a tool to eliminate hereditary diseases in humans and in crops, CRISPR’s incredible power to fundamentally alter human DNA forever can do unimaginable harm if put into the wrong hands.

At the “historic” international summit on human gene editing in December 2015, conference chairman David Baltimore echoed the creepy words of Julian Huxley during his keynote speech: “over the years, the unthinkable has become conceivable. We’re on the cusp of a new era in human history.”

In January 2021, John Holdren congratulated Erik Lander for being appointed Joe Biden’s Science Czar (Director of White House Science and Technology Policy)- the position formerly held by Holdren. In this position, Lander has overseen the re-activation of every Obama-era science policy as part of a technocratic overhaul of the U.S. government in conformity with the World Economic Forum’s Great Reset agenda. Using the vast power of the Emergency Authorization Act to bypass the FDA and steamroll gene therapy technologies passing themselves off as “vaccines”, a new social experiment has begun. CRISPR technology is already being hailed as a key to solving the new mutating strains of COVID-19 and is being used as a “vaccine” for certain tropical diseases as of this writing. The obvious connection between eugenics organizations of yesterday and the rise of modern mRNA operations associated with GAVI and Oxford’s Astra Zeneca unveiled by investigative journalist Whitney Webb earlier this year should be kept firmly in mind.

Will this technology be used by modern day heirs of Nazi-sponsoring eugenicists in an effort to pick up where Dr. Mengele left off OR will we see this biotechnology serve the interests of humanity under a multipolar paradigm that cherishes national sovereignty, human life, family, and faith?

Future installments in this series will explore the eugenic roots of Transhumanism, Artificial Intelligence, and the Great Reset. We will also tackle the Frankfurt School, the rise of Wiener’s Cybernetics and the program outlined by Bertrand Russell and David Hilbert in 1900 to stuff the entire universe into a stagnant dead cage.

The author can be reached at matt.ehret@tutamail.com

Birch was a World War II-era fundamentalist Baptist missionary in China who volunteered to become an anti-Communist spy for the Office of Strategic Services (OSS), the predecessor of the Central Intelligence Agency, to jointly cooperate with Chinese Nationalist and Japanese occupation troops to battle against the Communist forces of Mao Zedong. Prior to his time with the OSS, Birch served as an intelligence officer for General Claire Chennault’s pro-Nationalist mercenaries, the Fourteenth Air Force, which had previously been called the Flying Tigers.

On August 25, 1945, while in the company of American, Nationalist Chinese, and Korean troops, Birch was stopped by a People’s Liberation Army patrol. Birch refused to surrender his weapon to the Communist military unit and after he began insulting the Communist rebels, a skirmish resulted, one in which Birch was shot and killed. One witness said that Birch told the young Communist peasants that if they killed him, the United States would “use the atomic bomb to stop their banditry.” The Chinese Communist guerrillas were not impressed with Birch’s “cowboy” bravado.

Birch, his brand of anti-Communism, and rejection of the U.S. wartime alliance with the Soviet Union and the Chinese Communists immediately became a cause célèbre for the American far-right. The John Birch Society, founded in 1958 in Indianapolis, Indiana by candy company magnate Robert Welch, Jr., believed that John Birch was the first casualty of World War III. Welch believed that the “Communist menace” was a sub-level international conspiracy that was ultimately led by the “Illuminati.” Welch’s conspiratorial delusions continue to find currency with Trump, his family members, and political supporters.

The Birch Society saw “Communists” hiding behind every tree and its rhetoric served as a valued life line to the “anti-Red” movement in the United States, particularly after the disgrace brought to it by Senator Joseph McCarthy and his “witch hunts” against alleged Communist in the federal government, military, and Hollywood. One of the society’s first members was Fred C. Koch, the father of Charles and the late David Koch – the infamous “Koch brothers” – who have funded various right-wing causes in the United States, including the presidential campaigns of Donald Trump. In keeping with their far-right upbringing, the Koch brothers helped fund the “Tea Party” movement, a grassroots effort that helped to lay the underpinnings of the 2016 Trump presidential campaign.

Among the longtime targets of the John Birchers and the Kochs have been the United Nations and its specialized agencies, including the WHO, the UN Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), the International Labor Organization (ILO), and others. In 1975, John Birch-oriented Republicans serving in the Gerald Ford administration – particularly White House chief of staff Dick Cheney and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld – took advantage of the situation to advocate for U.S. disengagement from certain UN specialized agencies. In 1974, one of the first actions of the Ford administration was to serve notice to UNESCO that it would suspend dues payments unless certain anti-Israel resolutions were rescinded. The U.S. ambassador to the UN railed against the WHO for being concerned about public health issues in the Israeli-occupied Palestinian territories. In 1975, informed the ILO that it would formally withdraw from the organization in 1977.

The Jimmy Carter administration reversed the Bircher-influenced decisions on UNESCO and the ILO. The anti-UN fervor by the United States would return with a vengeance in the Ronald Reagan administration. It considered the most anti-U.S., anti-Israeli, and anti-South African apartheid specialized agencies to be – from most politicized to least – UNESCO, the ILO, the WHO, and the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO). To the Reaganites, whose ranks included a number of John Birch sympathizers, the least politicized agencies were those over which the U.S. had a large say in management and direction, namely, the World Bank and International Monetary Fund (IMF).

John Birchers are consistent about one thing and that is their abject racism. Just as they condemned UNESCO and the FAO in the 1970s because they had African and Arab directors-general – Amadou-Mahtar M’Bow of Senegal and Edouard Saouma of Lebanon, respectively – they are now condemning the WHO because it has an Ethiopian director-general, Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, a famed microbiologist from Ethiopia. Trump and his rabid far-right supporters have accused Dr. Tedros of being an agent=of-influence for China as part of the neo-John Birchers overall campaign to assign the cause of the coronavirus pandemic to China. The parents and grandparents of these John Birchers once blamed the “Communists” and the “Soviet Union” for being behind the fluoridation of America’s public water supply.

The Birchers even had a degree of success with the Bill Clinton administration, which withdrew the U.S. from the United Nations Industrial Development Organization (UNIDO) and the U.N. World Tourism Organization (UNWTO). Clinton’s reason for withdrawal was pure Bircher logic: they “lacked purpose” for the United States.

Today, acting under the auspices of front organizations like the Heritage Foundation and the Federalist Society – both bankrolled by the Charles Koch Foundation and the David H. Koch Charitable Foundation – the neo-John Birchers accuse China of being behind the coronavirus pandemic by intentionally or accidentally releasing the virus as a biological weapon. In lashing out at China, the far-right, including senior members of the Trump administration and Republican senators like Tom Cotton of Arkansas and Lindsey Graham of South Carolina have also placed Tedros and the “China-influenced” WHO in their gunsights.

The WHO is not the first UN agency to be singled out by the far-right as an instrument of China. The Heritage Foundation, whose white papers are often transformed into Trump administration policy, criticized the election of Qu Dongyu as director-general of FAO in 2019. Heritage blasted the UN for electing Qu as the fourth Chinese national to head a UN specialized agency. Chinese directors-general also lead the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO), UNIDO, and the International  Telecommunication Union (ITU).

Four months before the first coronavirus case was reported in Wuhan, China, Heritage and its neo-John Bircher allies had convinced Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, a Tea Party founder, to question Chinese influence at the UN. Heritage made several demands to its fellow-travelers in the Trump administration. They included: 1) tasking the U.S. intelligence community to report on Chinese objectives, tactics, and influence in international organizations; 2) Conduct an objective cost-benefit analysis of U.S. participation in each international organization;  3) the U.S. should focus its effort and resources on countering Chinese influence, advancing U.S. policy preferences, and increasing employment of U.S. nationals, particularly in senior positions, in those organizations whose remit affects key U.S. interests; 4) identify and carefully vet highly qualified candidates for leadership positions in international organizations well in advance of elections; 5) Counter Chinese financial and political pressure on foreign governments; 6) Press the UN, the specialized agencies, and UN funds and programs to increase employment of U.S. nationals; and 7) Elevate multilateral affairs and international organizations within the State Department by establishing an Under Secretary for Multilateral Affairs. 8) the U.S. should take all reasonable steps to ensure that an American or national of a like-minded country becomes the next International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) director-general.

As can be seen with Heritage’s bulletized attack on the UN, the current Trump administration attack on UN agency directors like Dr. Tedros was already in the planning stages and was part of the old John Birch playbook of either bending the UN and its specialized agencies to U.S. will or withdraw from them or cut off dues payments. Trump carried out his John Bircher-initiated orders by threatening to put a hold on U.S. payments to the WHO, even as the organization has become cash-strapped over its campaign to curb the coronavirus around the world.

On December 31, 2018, Trump pulled the U.S. out of UNESCO. It was the second U.S. withdrawal from UNESCO, Reagan having done so in 1984 after pressure was exerted on him by his own neo-John Birchers, many of them former Democrats who had been loyal to Democratic anti-Soviet war hawk Senator Henry “Scoop” Jackson of Washington. In Trump’s case, it was UNESCO’s granting of full membership to Palestine in 2011 that incurred the wrath of Trump and his administration’s court Zionists, including his son-in-law Jared Kushner. In 2018, Trump threatened to withdraw the U.S. from one of the oldest international organizations, the Universal Postal Union (UPU), which even predated the League of Nations. Trump’s anger against the UPU was part of his overall aversion to government-run postal systems.

Trump has called the WHO “China-centric” merely because its last director-general, Dr. Margaret Chan, served as health director for the Special Administrative Region of Hong Kong. She left as the WHO director-general in 2017. It matters not to the dullards in the Trump administration and his support team that Dr. Chan is a Fellow of the Faculty of Public Health Medicine of the Royal College of Physicians of the United Kingdom and was also appointed as an Officer of the Order of the British Empire by Queen Elizabeth II, far from being a “Chinese Communist” agent.

The neo-John Birchers in the Trump administration have made common cause with anti-Beijing pressure groups in Washington, including the CIA-linked Falun Gong and its propaganda outlet, the “Epoch Times” newspaper, which enjoys White House press credentials. Taiwan also maintains a formidable lobbying presence in Washington, a legacy of the old “Formosa Lobby” led by Soong Mei-ling, the wife of Nationalist Chinese General Chiang Kai-shek, who maintained the “Republic of China” on Taiwan following the rout of Nationalist forces by Mao Zedong’s Communist forces in 1949. The Taiwan Lobby has been successful in having the Trump administration intercede on its behalf after China objected to Taiwan’s participation in the WHO, ICAO, and other specialized agencies.

Trump has conveniently used the coronavirus as a reason to push his and the Birchers’ far-right agenda with regard to China’s increasing international profile and clout. China will remain a force to be reckoned with on the world stage long after the names Trump, Falun Gong, Formosa Lobby, and the John Birch Society are consigned to the trash heap of history.

Ann WRIGHT

President Donald Trump’s comment about bombing 52 cultural sights of Iran if the Iranians retaliated against the U.S. assassination by killer drone of a top Iranian military officer was walked back the Secretary of Defense Mark Esper. “The U.S. will comply with the Law of Armed conflict” which forbids the destruction of cultural sites, Esper said.

General Qassem Soleimani was killed while reportedly on a diplomatic mission to Iraq to discuss talks with Saudi Arabia.

Two of Trump’s senior advisers, Esper and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, are West Point colleagues. Pompeo graduating first in their class. They know very well from their cadet days that bombing cultural, religious and medical locations is a war crime. Esper spent 21 years in the U.S. Army and National Guard.  Pompeo spent the minimum military obligation of five years after the free four years at West Point.

Both Esper and Pompeo were taught at West Point that the law of land warfare and the Geneva Conventions (as codified for them in Army Regulation 27-10, the Law of Land Warfare, also called the Law of Armed Conflict) specifically forbid the destruction of these types of buildings and sites.  The unit positions of leadership each of the West Point graduates had in the military required them to train their troops in the Law of Land Warfare.

Esper was a Ranger and Pathfinder serving in the 101st Airborne Division, in the 1990-91 Gulf War with the “Screaming Eagles,” and commanded a Rifle Company in the 3-325 Airborne Battalion Combat Team in Vicenza, Italy.

Following his graduation from West Point in 1986, Pompeo served as an armor officer in West Germany along the border with East Germany from 1986-1991 with the 7^th Cavalry in the 4^th Infantry Division. He also was a tank platoon leader before becoming the cavalry troop executive officer and then a squadron maintenance officer. He left the U.S. Army as a captain. He did not serve in the tank-heavy Gulf War 1, although it was posited by fellow members of Congress that he did.

U.S. Secretary of State Michael Pompeo, left, and U.S. Secretary of Defense Esper in Sydney, August, 2019. (State Department/ Ron Przysucha)

Reagan-Era Contingency Planning   

From 1982-1984, I taught the Law of Land Warfare at the JFK Special Warfare Center’s School of International Studies at Fort Bragg, North Carolina.  From 1985-87 I was the executive officer of the 96^th Civil Affairs Battalion, a part of the U.S. Army’s Special Operations Command.  Other members of this battalion and I were charged with writing the Civil-Military Operations annex to contingency plans that Special Operations Command units and the 18^th Airborne Corps were involved in.  One of those plans was a contingency plan for Iran.

Reviewing history reveals the basis for the contingency plan. In January 1979 the Iran Revolution overthrew the Shah of Iran whom the U.S. installed after the CIA orchestrated coup in 1953 that ousted the elected Prime Minister Mossadegh.  Ten months later, in December 1979, the Soviet Union invaded Iran’s neighbor, Afghanistan. Nine months later and 18 months after the Iranian Revolution, in September 1980, Saddam Hussein and the Iraqi military took advantage of the new revolution next door and began a war on Iran.

For President Jimmy Carter’s administration, 1979 and 1980s were momentous years.  Not only had there been a revolution in Iran with 52 U.S. diplomats taken hostage for 444 days, a Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, but in the Western Hemisphere, in March 1979 the People’s Revolution in Grenada overthrew the repressive Grenadian President Sir Eric Gairy and in July 1979 the Sandinista Revolution in Nicaragua  overthrew the U.S. supported 30-year dictator Anastasio Somoza.

After defeating Carter in the November 1980 U.S. presidential election, Ronald Reagan came into power in January 1981 and ordered planning to begin for a confrontation with the Soviets over their invasion of Afghanistan. This included providing Stinger missiles to the Afghan resistance and to support the Iraqi military’s attack on revolutionary Iran, including furnishing chemical and biological agents to Iraq and giving a green light to Saddam to use nerve gas and chemical weapons on Iran.

Mapping Iran, City by City

Our job for the Civil-Military annex to the contingency plans for Iran was to identify Iranian cultural locations and structures that should be protected by international law by occupying forces as required by the Laws of Armed Conflict. While I don’t remember all of the locations, I know we went city-by-city on a map of Iran and checked encyclopedias and tourist books to find cultural, religious and medical structures and well-known historic sites.

At the time in the 1980s when we were putting together the annex, only three sites in Iran, Persepolis, Meidan Emam (Royal Square) in Esfahan and 1250 BC walls in Tchoghar Zanbil, were identified as UNESCO World Heritage Sites. We definitely put them on the protect list.

Now almost four decades later,  24 locations in Iran are UNESCO World Heritage Sites, 22 of which are cultural sites many of which are thousands of years old, and two are natural sites.  For comparison, the United States has 23 UNESCO World Heritage Sites; 11 cultural sites including the Statue of Liberty, Independence Hall and San Antonio missions, none of which are more than 400 years old; and 13 natural sites, all national parks.

The 24 sites in Iran that must be protected from destruction and the dates they were declared World Heritage sites are:

Cultural (22)

• Armenian Monastic Ensembles of Iran (2008)
• Bam and its Cultural Landscape (2004)
• Bisotun (2006)
• Cultural Landscape of Maymand (2015)
• Golestan Palace (2013)
• Gonbad-e Qabus (2012)
• Historic City of Yazd (2017)
• Masjed-e Jamé of Isfahan (2012)
• Meidan Emam, Esfahan (1979)
• Pasargadae (2004)
• Persepolis (1979)
• Sassanid Archaeological Landscape of Fars Region (2018)
• Shahr-i Sokhta (2014)
• Sheikh Safi al-din Khanegah and Shrine Ensemble in Ardabil (2010)
• Shushtar Historical Hydraulic System (2009)
• Soltaniyeh (2005)
• Susa (2015)
• Tabriz Historic Bazaar Complex (2010)
• Takht-e Soleyman (2003)
• Tchogha Zanbil (1979)
• The Persian Garden (2011)
• The Persian Qanat (2016)

 Natural (2)

• Hyrcanian Forests (2019)
• Lut Desert (2016)

Additionally, current-day military planners must consider many other cultural sites for protection in the major cities of the 81-million-citizen country Iran.

Iran is the world’s 18th largest country by area, and the world’s 17th largest country by population. The largest city, Tehran, has a population of 9.1 million. Iran’s second largest city, Mashed, has over 2 million inhabitants, and four other cities have populations over a million. There are 61 cities with populations of more than 100,000 inhabitants.

In contrast, the United States with 320 million residents has 10 cities with over 1 million population. New York City, the largest city in the U.S. with 8.6 million inhabitants, is smaller than Tehran.

Iran borders Afghanistan, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Iraq, Pakistan, Turkey and Turkmenistan.  It shares maritime borders with Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates.  Iran is almost three times the size of France and a little smaller than Alaska.

Iranians cities are filled with cultural, religious and medical facilities that must be protected. There are 86 museums,  47,291 Shiite mosques and 10,344 Sunni mosques in Iran, 65 synagogues (34 in Tehran alone) and at least 600 churches and 500,000–1,000,000 Christians, including 200 Armenian churches.

There are large medical facilities in each major city in Iran, destruction of which is prohibited by international law. However, another type of medical destruction appears to be authorized by the international community.

The U.S. and other UN-member countries have placed severe sanctions on Iran, which includes freezing financial assets that are used to purchase medical supplies and equipment. This is killing people in Iran.  During a February 2019 citizens’ trip to Iran, we spoke with several persons who, because of the sanctions, cannot receive treatment for certain kinds of tumors because either medicines or spare parts for medical equipment cannot be purchased on the international market due to these brutal sanctions.

consortiumnews.com

Of course, news reports flash daily showcasing the brave young movement of “eco-warriors” led by Sweden’s 16 year old Greta Thunberg or America’s 17 year old Jamie Margolin who have become a force across Europe and America leading such movements as the Extinction Rebellion, This is Zero Hour, the Sunrise Movement and Children’s eco-crusade. The young face of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez daily sells the idea that the only way for outdated capitalist forces that have plagued the world for decades to be replaced is by imposing a sweeping Green New Deal that priorities de-carbonization as a goal for humanity rather than continuing to allow the mindless forces of the markets to determine our destiny.

EU President Ursula von der Leyen has even attacked China’s Belt and Road Initiative (which is ironically representing a true 21^st century New Deal) by saying “some are buying their influence by investing in dependence from ports and roads”… but “we go the European way”. What is the “European way”? Not the development plans of Charles De Gaulle or Konrad Adenauer who envisioned industrial growth and increasing population as positives, but rather a Green New Deal. Von der Leyen said on July 17 that “I want Europe to become the first CO₂ neutral continent in the world by 2050! I will put forward a Green New Deal for Europe in my first 100 days in office…”

Attacking the “mindless forces of the market” and vested power structures of capitalism are not bad things to do… but why must we de-carbonize? Re-regulating the too-big-to-fail banks is long overdue, but why do so many assume that a “Green New Deal” won’t just empower those same forces that have run havoc upon the world for the past half century and just cause more death and starvation than has already been suffered under Globalization?

One might only think to even ask such questions by first confronting the uncomfortable fact that behind such young cardboard cut outs as Thunberg, Margolin, Cortez or the Green New Deal are figures whom one would not associate with humanitarianism by any measure.

Green Bonds and Oligarchs

When we begin to pull back the curtain we quickly run into figures like Prince Charles, who recently met with the heads of 18 Commonwealth countries to consolidate climate emergency legislation which was promptly passed in the UK and Canadian Parliaments. At the end of the meeting Charles said that we “have 18 months to save the world from climate change” and called for “increasing the amount of private sector finance flowing towards the supporting sustainable development throughout the commonwealth”.

Following the royal decree, the Bank of England and some of the dirtiest banks in the Rothschild-City of London web of finance have promoted “green financial instruments” led by Green Bonds to redirect pension plans and mutual funds towards green projects that no one in their right minds would ever invest in willfully. The Ecological, Social, Governance Index (ESGI) has now been set up across 51% of Germany’s banks including the derivatives-bomb waiting to blow named Deutschebank. Leading bankers supporting the ESGI like Mark Carney of the Bank of England have said that over 6.5 trillion Euros could be mobilized under this new index (which currently accounts for about $160 billion). The creation of these “green bonds” run hand-in-hand with the Bail-in mechanisms which have now been implemented across the trans-Atlantic nations in order to steal trillions of dollars of from pension funds, RRSPs and Mutual funds the next time a bail out is needed to prop up the “too big to fails” which currently sit atop a $1.2 trillion derivatives bubble waiting to blow.

On top of heading the Bank of England, former Goldman Sachs-man Carney has also endorsed the Financial Stability Board’s Task Force on Climate Related Financial Disclosures which was created in 2015 and was used as a guideline for the UK government’s July 2019 White Paper “Green Finance Strategy: Transforming Finance for a Greener Future”. The White Paper proposed to “consolidate the UK’s position as a global hub for green finance and positioning the UK at the head of green financial innovation and data and analytics… endorsed by institutions representing $118 trillion of assets globally”. The Carney-led Task Force also spawned the Green Finance Initiative in 2016 which is now a primary vehicle designed to divert international capital flows into green tech.

Carney’s former employer at Goldman Sachs has also created a “Green Index for ‘virtuous investing” including two new sustainability indices to promote heavy investment in to green infrastructure called CDP Environment EW and CDP Eurozone EW. The acronym CDP originates from the Climate Disclosure Project – a London-based think tank that generated Goldman Sachs’ program. Goldman Sachs’ Marine Abiad promoted the CDP index saying on July 10 “we are convinced that sustainable finance enables financial markets to play a virtuous role in the economy.”

Just in case you thought the Extinction Rebellion was somehow untouched by the hand of social engineers, a leading figure behind the movement named Alex Evans was a former consultant on the Prince’s International Sustainability Unit, and co-author of the US National Intelligence Council’s Global Trends 2025: A Transformed World which became an environmental/foreign policy blueprint for the Obama Administration in 2008. Currently Evans also runs the Collective Psychology Project “where psychology meets politics”.

Other leading British intelligence figures managing the Extinction Rebellion movement included Farhana Yamin and Sam Gaell of Chatham House (the controlling institution behind the New York Council on Foreign Relations).

Could a ‘Benevolent’ Green Dictatorship be a Good Thing?

The devil’s advocate speaks: Can’t we presume that these central banks, oligarchs and hedge fund managers just care about the environment? So what if they are trying to modify humanity’s behaviour in order to save the environment? After all, humanity itself is a selfish, gluttonous pollution-making machine and isn’t better for everyone if those enlightened elite just transform the world economy so that we consume less, and think more about the future?

If this line of thinking approximates something you’ve felt inside yourself then you’ve been brainwashed.

Of course, the world has turned into a consumerist cult over the past few decades which has sacrificed long term thinking for short term gain and of course we need a re-organization of the system. Thunberg and the Green New Dealers aren’t wrong about that stuff. That’s all fine and dandy.

But if you think that going along with the types of reform that aspires to put dollar values on reducing carbon footprints or spreading low quality (and very expensive) windmills and solar panels across the globe with the expectation that somehow these sources of energy will not cause a vast collapse of industrial capacity of civilization (and an associated loss of capacity to sustain human life), then you are fooling yourself. One kilowatt of windmill energy is only the same as one kilowatt of nuclear power when applied to a mathematical equation but not in real life. When applied to capital-intensive work functions needed to melt industrial steel, run machine tools, power a vast agro-industrial complex, high speed rail system or construct things like Belt and Road Initiative, “green” energy sources do not come even close to cutting the iron.

The issue has always been population control

The oligarchs running the “grand green design” since the Club of Rome’s Sir Alexander King began the Limits to Growth study in 1970 knew that green “low energy flux density” sources of energy would constrict global population and that is exactly what they wanted. Sir King said so much in 1990 when he wrote “In searching for a new enemy to unite us, we came up with the idea that pollution, the threat of global warming, water shortages, famine and the like would fit the bill….All these dangers are caused by human intervention, and it is only through changed attitudes and behavior that they can be overcome. The real enemy then, is humanity itself.”

Sir King was, after all just following the lead of UNESCO founder (and Eugenics president) Sir Julian Huxley who wrote in 1946 “Political unification in some sort of world government will be required… Even though… any radical eugenic policy will be for many years politically and psychologically impossible, it will be important for UNESCO to see that the eugenic problem is examined with the greatest care, and that the public mind is informed of the issues at stake so that much that now is unthinkable may at least become thinkable.”

It was only a few years later that Huxley would co-found the World Wildlife Fund alongside Prince Philip Mountbatten and Prince Bernhardt of the Netherlands. All three were present at Bernhardt’s founding meeting of the Bilderberg group to advance this grand conversion of society into a willful self-extermination in 1954 and while Huxley wasn’t present in 1970, the other two oligarchs co-founded the 1001 Nature Trust alongside 999 other wealthy misanthropes to fund the blossoming environmental movement. These forces were also behind the coup d’état in America which put the Trilateral Commission in power under Jimmy Carter and unleashed the “controlled disintegration of the US economy” from 1978-1982 (this will be the topic of another study). This grouping, led by Zbigniew Brzezinski not only played the radical Islam card against the Soviet Union, but also established a program of population reduction through the promotion of green energy sources long before it was popular.

The oligarchs that are currently trying to reform humanity today don’t care about the environment. Prince Philip and Bernhardt have been recorded to have killed more endangered species on safari than most people have killed mosquitos. They just don’t like people. Especially thinking people. Thinking people who question how and why arbitrary rules are applied to justify wars, poverty and oligarchism which destroys lives both now and in the future.

The Belt and Road Initiative and the tendency to grow the human population both quantitatively and qualitatively which such great projects entail is the target of the Green New Deal.

The legacy of scientific and technological progress that launched western civilization out of a dark age and into a renaissance in the 15^th century is under attack because it is that lost ethic which the oligarchy KNOWS may yet be awoken and which would bring the west into harmony with the Russia-China program for growth and development under a philosophy of “win-win cooperation” both on Earth and also in space.

The effects of the ideas of the renaissance coincided with the greatest rate of discoveries of universal principles as mankind sought to come to know the mind of god by studying the book of nature with a heart of love and attitude of humility exemplified in the figure of Leonardo Da Vinci. The explosion of new technologies that arose not only revolutionized astronomy, medicine and engineering but gave birth to the modern industrial economy which coincided with the greatest rise of population in history. This exponential rise has been used by Malthusians for centuries as the proof that mankind is “just another cancerous growth” on the “purity of mother Gaia”.

So if you don’t agree with humans=cancer philosophy and want something a bit more optimistic in your life, then support a real New Deal today.

As the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs emphasized when reporting the results of the ballot, «the UNESCO General Conference has upheld its commitment to the principles of international law, as documented in Security Council Resolution 1244, which remains in force in its entirety». The Foreign Ministry continued, «Kosovo is administered by the United Nations. It cannot be considered a state with a juridical personality, and thus cannot qualify for membership in an international organization».

However, the significance of this vote extends far beyond the issue of Kosovo itself. The breakdown of the voting pattern shows serious disagreement among almost all of the current leading international organizations and institutions, with one key exception being the BRICS countries. That group, which is led by Russia, formed a wall of opposition to the attempts by the supporters of Kosovo’s Albanian separatists to use UNESCO as a platform for Pristina’s gradual infiltration of UN bodies. Serious internal contradictions and substantial opposition to Western pressure are quite visible in organizations such as NATO, the European Union, and the Organization of Islamic Cooperation.

Consequently, it is symptomatic that the idea of Kosovo joining UNESCO failed to win the support of not only the EU member states that do not recognize the self-proclaimed republic’s independence, but also, for example, Poland, which has never before been noted for its anti-American démarches (it is no secret that it was Washington that actively lobbied in favor of Kosovo’s bid). Even the heavily pro-Western governments of Moldova and Georgia refused to follow the lead of the Euro-Atlantic faction.

And the voting pattern among the countries of the Muslim world was even more revealing, because their support was simply assumed when Albania submitted Kosovo’s application.  But it seems that Tirana and Pristina’s presumptions were inaccurate, particularly in the case of Morocco, Bahrain (a member of the Gulf Cooperation Council led by Saudi Arabia!), and Indonesia, the world’s largest Muslim country.  One of the world’s leading financial centers, Singapore, abstained from voting.  And even a recognized Latin American ally of Washington such as Colombia declined to support Kosovo’s reckless bid.

This was a shattering disappointment for the United States and its accomplices, which was evident by the fact that even half an hour after the vote, Britain’s BBC and America’s CNN newscasters apparently could not bring themselves to believe what had happened and had still not published the summary report from Paris either on their live broadcast or their websites. The commentary from the Associated Press declared Kosovo’s defeat «a victory for Russia».

Serbian President Tomislav Nikolić called UNESCO’s refusal to extend membership to Kosovo «a great victory» and noted that the vote at the General Conference was proof that Serbia had a lot of friends in the world. But this is more than friendship. There is a growing list of countries in the world that are generally dissatisfied with the current world order that is being imposed on countries and regions by the US and its allies in the Euro-Atlantic bloc. Under that world order, international law is sacrificed for the sake of political expediency, and international organizations (including the UN) are used to legitimize dubious experiments that are often directly at odds with not only common sense, but also the norms of moral and humane behavior.  

The fact is that a number of UNESCO World Heritage Sites are located in Kosovo, including the Serbian Orthodox Dečani Monastery, Gračanica Monastery, Patriarchate of Peć Monastery, and the Church of Our Lady of Ljeviš. If Kosovo joined UNESCO, these sites would then fall under the protection of the government in Pristina – an organization that has been directly implicated in the destruction of hundreds of monuments to Serbia’s cultural heritage in Kosovo.

Following his meeting with UNESCO Director-General Irina Bokova, but prior to the vote, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov stated, «Today we discussed the fact that given all the complexities of international life, it’s important to avoid politicizing UNESCO’s work, which is what we’re seeing now in the attempts to allow Kosovo membership in UNESCO, in violation of UN Security Council Resolution 1244. We spoke about the need to thoroughly support the spirit of compromise as well as consensus-based solutions». And, as was seen in the subsequent debates, his position won the support it needed within that international organization.

The armed conflict in Libya and the following intervention of NATO in March-October 2011 against the Great Socialist People's Libyan Arab Jamahiriya, the same way as the armed conflict in Syria, made move to the fore a string of important legal aspects related to the very essence of contemporary international law… 

Among the issues to be touched upon are the legal substantiation for adoption of United Nations Security Council’s resolution N1973 and the following implications, the legal justification and consequences of referring Libya to the International Criminal Court and the  legal justification for rendering aid to the so-called “opposition” during the armed conflict. Let’s have a closer look at these matters.

1. Legal justification for adopting United Nations Security Council’s resolutions N1970 and N1973   

Normally it is the legal implications of United Nations Security Council resolutions that are analyzed. But it’s worth to have a look at the justification for the resolutions’ adoption. The cases when United Nations Security Council goes beyond its authority while taking important decisions are more frequent (for example, the resolutions on establishing international criminal tribunals on former Yugoslavia, Rwanda and  the special tribunal for Lebanon).The Council grossly exceeded its authority adopting the resolutions 1970 and 1973.  

First.Looking at the actual substantiation for taking the measures envisioned by the United Nations Security Council’s resolution 1970, it becomes clear that there was no actual justification for taking decisions on the basis of chapter VII of the United Nations Charter at the moment of adopting the document. On February 22 and 25, 2011 two United Nations Security Council’s sessions took place under a rather undistinguished name “Peace and Security in Africa.”   

 At the first session UN Under Secretary–General for Political Affairs Lynn Pascoe (USA) told the Council about “violence and indiscriminate use of force” (the meeting was open, the official report contained no concrete information on the issue. What Pescoe was talking about became known only a week after when US UN Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon made it public).  At the second session Libyan representative Shalgam said, “What is taking place in the Libyan Arab Jamahiriya is indeed very dangerous. On 15 February, a group of peaceful civilians protested, calling for the release of a lawyer named Tarbel who was representing the families of 2,000 prisoners who were killed in the Abu Salim prison in 1996. This group faced gunfire aimed at their heads and chests, as if the soldiers who opened fire did not know that human beings have heads, hearts and legs, or that there are other parts than can be shot at, that there are such things as tear gas bombs or roadblocks that can contain demonstrations”. He also said that at the moment the words Muammar Al-Qaddafi and his sons were telling Libyans, “Either I rule you or I kill you”. The final words of his report were, “Please, United Nations, save Libya. No to bloodshed. No to the killing of innocents. We want a swift, decisive and courageous resolution.”   At the very same session UN Secretary General Ban KI-Moon said there over a thousand people killed.  Unlike the previous cases, this time there was no whatsoever proof produced for the world community.  Moreover, there were attempts to use media for presenting the “proof”, something that gave rise to serious suspicions it was fake, or, in other words, an outright falsification.

On March 25 (just before the resolution 1970 was adopted) the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs reported that, according to estimates, the death toll resulting from the clashes between the opposition and forces loyal to the government was around 1 – 2 thousand.  It gives rise to the question: if that’s what the estimates showed, then how come the United Nations Security Council could take a resolute decision in favor of one side? The difference between a one thousand and two thousand is the same as in the case of zero and a thousand. The Ministry of Foreign Affairs’ statement formally allows for such difference. Then it becomes unclear who exactly died? Was it the “opposition” or those who were loyal to the government? If it were the citizens loyal to the government then why the Security Council did not protect them?

There are questions related to the sources of information, including the ones used by the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs.  For instance, it reported on February 22 that according to witnesses, public processions on the streets  were subject to air attacks  (please note, only some processions, not attacks by armed gangs going on a rampage). The question pops up why it mentioned some “witnesses” but  not the Russian embassy in Tripoli as a source? It’s natural to suggest that the embassy inevitably did provide such information. The supposition was confirmed by the fact that the Russian ambassador was soon removed from his post just before the vote on the United Nations Security Council resolution N1973 took place.  

There are serious questions to the United Nations Fact-Finding Mission to Libya which was created upon the decision of United Nations Secretary General.   The Mission never started to do its job because on the day of its estimated arrival in Tripoli NATO aviation started to bomb Libya. Then what was the Mission created for?  The circumstances under which the Mission was established give rise to serious allegations the purpose was to make believe there was any fact finding at all. The appointment of Canadian judge Phillip Kirsch as a member of the mission was a flagrant violation of the principle of impartiality, because he represented a NATO member-state. How could he be considered to be impartial at the time NATO was preparing and then launching the aggression against Libya?

Thus, it all leads to the conclusion that neither international community, nor the Russian Federation had any hard evidence justifying the measures to be taken according to the resolution N1970. At least no proof was produced. The adoption of resolutions N1970 and N1973 and transferring Libya to International Criminal Court against the background of established facts and outright unwillingness to conduct real fact finding activities (big companies were involved in producing mass video fakes) give ground to doubt the legality of resolutions and their content.  The very reluctance to establish facts has fundamental significance for tackling all other issues.

Second,to what extent was it justified to qualify the situation in Libya using the term “armed conflict”?  The United Nations Security Council’s resolution N 1970 demanded that Libyan authorities “comply with their obligations under international humanitarian law”. It means the UN Security Council decided a priori that the Libyan situation at the time was an “armed conflict.” Was it legally justified? No, there was nothing produced for justification. The absence of real information gives ground to interpretation of all sorts. For instance, there was ground to conjecture that from legal point of view there was no “armed conflict” in Libya before the start of NATO aggression.  Before March 2011 there had been an armed insurgency – a pure criminal offence to be dealt with on the basis of internal, not international, law and it was to be stopped by national authorities without any interference from outside.  

It must be admitted that Russia’s vote for the United Nations Security Council resolution N 1970 was a serious mistake. One of the reasons for saying so is the fact that it may have legal repercussions for the situation in the Russia’s North Caucasus. Besides, the stance undermines the right of sovereign states to conduct counter-terrorist operations according to their national laws by transferring the situations into the category of’ ”armed conflicts” – that is into the sphere of international law! There is the risk that the national law would be eroded; there will nowhere to apply it while tackling the vital issues of individual states.   

Third. Is there any legal justification for the United Nations Security Council’s decision to apply the norms not envisioned by UN Charter? The resolution N 1973 declared the establishment of so-called “no-fly” zone over Libya.  Is there any legal justification for that? The document says nothing about it. It’s clear why. The matter is the UN Charter contains no provisions related to the establishment of “no-fly zones” in the airspace of a UN member-state.

Not a single time (considering the cases of establishing ad hoc tribunals for former Yugoslavia, Ruanda and Lebanon) we have emphasized there was a catch in the United Nations Security Council resolutions “adopted to be implemented on the basis of chapter VII of UN  Charter”.

 Coercive measures, especially of such scope and importance, cannot be implemented on the basis of achapter of UN Charter. They can be applied on the basis of a concrete article and a clause of an article. We cannot see it neither in the cases of ad hoc tribunals nor “deny access” areas. Why? Is it an occasion?  We don’t think so. Simply the United Nations Security Council has nothing to refer to. No such articles exist. It’s the Council’s own invention. It has no relation to international law. It means the measures envisioned strictly violate the principle of UN member-state self-sovereignty because airspace is the individual state’s sovereign territory. Thus, the clause of the United Nations Security Council’s resolution N 1973 violates article 2 of UN Charter (the principle of member-state’s sovereignty; ban on using force against territorial integrity and political independence) as well as the norms of international air law on the use of air space. Paragraph 6 of the United Nations resolution N 1973 banned all flights in the Libyan air space.  Paragraph 7 allowed all the states the use of necessary means to enforce the ban.  That is the United Nations Security Council gave permission to hit Libyan aircraft in their own national air space. Paragraph 17 of the resolution looks no less ambiguous; it banned the UN members from giving Libyan aircraft permission to land on their territories.  It contradicted a range of international agreements related to the use of air space. A member state was obliged to refuse the landing of a Libyan aircraft even if it was in distress, no matter if it had enough fuel to fly back or not. Actually the aircraft were to be destroyed.

                                    (To be concluded)

However, the 21-member UNESCO world heritage body voted 13 to 6 with two abstentions to approve Palestine’s first request to the international organization as a full member. The Church of the Nativity was declared a UNESCO World Heritage site. The criticism of the vote was intense from the United States and Israel.

The inseparable duo of Israel and the United States cut off funding to UNESCO after the Paris-based UNESCO voted to admit Palestine as a full member state last October. UNESCO lost more than one-fifth of its financial support as a result of Washington’s and Tel Aviv’s action.

Although the St. Petersburg vote was secret, some nations later showed their hands. France admitted that it voted in favor of declaring the Bethlehem church endangered, resulting in the standard charges from Israel’s worldwide lobby that France is historically anti-Semitic with the familiar refrain of Alfred Dreyfus’s name being chanted by the lobby. Dreyfus, a French Jewish army officer, was tried for treason in 1895 and imprisoned on Devil’s Island on the charge that he was a spy for the Germans. Dreyfus’s case became a rallying cause for leading Zionists of the time and he was later exonerated and restored to his military rank.

Joining France to vote for the Palestinian request were Algeria, France, India, Iraq, Malaysia, Mali, Mexico, Qatar, Russia, Senegal, Serbia, South Africa and the United Arab Emirates.

The six nations voting for the Israeli position were Colombia, Ethiopia, Estonia, Germany, Japan, and Switzerland. The two abstentions came from Cambodia and Thailand.

It is well-known that the Vatican and the Greek and Armenian Orthodox churches, which have shared responsibility for Jesus’s birthplace, have long protested against Israel’s land grab of church property in Jerusalem, the West Bank, and in Israel proper. Ironically, it was the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) that rallied its members to support the Palestinian request to protect the Church of the Nativity as an endangered World Heritage site. 

The following press release was sent out by the following the UNESCO vote:

The Secretary General of the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) Professor Ekmeleddin Ihsanoglu has welcomed the inclusion of the Church of Nativity in Bethlehem among World Heritage Sites during the meeting of the UNESCO’s World Heritage Committee in St Petersburg, Russia. He described this move as an important achievement for the preservation of heritage and historical sites in Palestine and for their protection against instruments of destruction, which the Israeli occupation practices constitute. The Secretary General extended gratitude to all Member States that voted in favour of the resolution and commended the efforts deployed by OIC Member States in this regard.

The OIC member states that carried the day for Jesus’s birthplace were Algeria, Iraq, Malaysia, Mali, Qatar, Senegal, and the United Arab Emirates. Palestine is a full member state of the OIC.

The UNESCO decision recognized that the birthplace of Jesus was threatened by the presence of Israeli troops, something that the Israelis and their American backers vehemently rejected. Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu has, over the past several years, forged an alliance with Christian evangelicals in the United States, sometimes resulting in heated arguments with orthodox Jewish members of his own Cabinet who are suspicious of the proselytizing engaged in by evangelical Christian missionaries in Israel, particularly among Russian Jewish immigrants. However, Netanyahu has rejected the orthodox rabbis protests. At one point in time during the George W. Bush administration, Netanyahu explicitly told the rabbis that Christian evangelicals represented Bush’s political base and that Bush was a total backer of Israel on all major issues. Therefore, Netanyahu reasoned that he would do nothing to alienate the evangelicals, especially those who are known as “Christian Zionists.”

However, Netanyahu and his Likud Party backers made an explosive pact. On one hand, the Likudniks have curried favor with Christian fundamentalists whose interpretation of the Bible varies greatly from Catholicism, Christian Orthodoxy and Coptic Christianity, Anglicanism, Lutheranism, Calvinism, and other faiths borne from the Protestant Reformation. On the other hand, Likud, which enjoys the support of orthodox Jewish parties like Shas, whose rabbinical leaders mock Jesus as the son of a prostitute and a heretic who was Satan’s spawn, regards Christian holy sites under Israeli occupation as Israel’s business. The anti-Christian rhetoric that emanates from Netanyahu’s political allies has incurred the wrath of established Christian religions that realize that by claiming the final say over the administration of Christian holy places like the Church of the Nativity and other Christian shrines, disregarding Palestine’s role entirely, these sites are in as much danger as Sufi Muslim sites in Timbuktu and Gao in Mali are from Saudi-funded Wahhabist Muslims.

Archbishop Pietro Sambi, the Apostolic Nuncio to the United States and the former Vatican envoy to both Israel and Palestine, who died in the United States from complications resulting from surgery, was known to be a harsh critic of Israel’s grabs at church property in the Holy Land. The Franciscan Order of the Catholic Church also raises funds for churches in the Holy Land every Good Friday, reminding Catholic congregations around the world that the church is under extreme pressure in Palestine and Israel. It is quite clear that, for the Franciscans, the threat to the church is from Israel.

Therefore, it made sense for Palestine to raise the issue of the protection of the Church of the Nativity before UNESCO. Israel now fears that Palestine, acting on behalf of the mainstream Christian faiths, will raise protection issues for other Christian holy sites on the West Bank and in east Jerusalem, as well as for Muslim holy sites, including the Dome of the Rock in east Jerusalem, which sits atop the destroyed Second Jewish Temple, which a number of Zionists and their Christian Zionist allies hope to rebuild as the Third Jewish Temple. The rebuilding of the temple would place the Dome of the Rock and the nearby Al Aqsa mosque, Islam’s third holiest site, in jeopardy.

As for the United States, it was quite instructive that the U.S. ambassador to UNESCO, David Killion, was the point man to strong-arm member delegations to vote against the Palestinian resolution and support Israel. Killion is a former chief aide to two rabidly Zionist chairmen of the U.S. House of Representatives Foreign Affairs Committee, Tom Lantos and Howard Berman. 

The nightmare for Netanyahu and his allies are that Palestine will replace Israel as the guarantor of the sanctity and security of the Christian holy places and the knowledge that Israel threatens Christian holy places will gain currency among Christian evangelical sects. Such an eventuality could drive a wedge between sects like the Southern Baptists, Pentecostalists, and other fundamentalist faiths and Israel’s powerful lobby in the United States. Such a development could cost Israel much needed political support in southern and western states. Therefore, Israel and pro-Israelis in the Obama administration, including Killion, Deputy Secretary of State James Steinberg, and Assistant Secretary of State for Near Eastern Affairs Jeffrey Feltman will stop at nothing to prevent UNESCO from being used as a platform from which Palestine and the Vatican can announce that it is Israel that poses the greatest threat to Christian holy places in the West Bank and east Jerusalem.

Recent votes in the United Nations and United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) provide evidence that the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) and its affiliates not only own and operate most of the members of the U.S. Congress but also many of the UN delegations of its member states.

Israel, known for its aggressive stance toward U.S. senators and representatives who fail to adhere to its line, has also managed to intimidate, with the help of its U.S., Canadian, British, Australian, and New Zealand lobbies, a number of small nations to support Israel against the statehood and UN membership aspirations of Palestine. In the U.S. House of Representatives, over 400 members are owned by the Israel Lobby while in the Senate, Israel’s control is practically 100 percent. Sizeable Israel lobbies also exist in the British and Canadian Houses of Commons and the Australian parliament.

Clearly, the Israelis and their lobbies have created a small bloc of nations that back Israel on every issue concerning Palestine. This bloc has been created by political pressure brought by mainly wealthy Jewish contributors to the major political parties of the United States, Canada, Australia, United Kingdom, and New Zealand, nations that also make up the English-speaking alliance of intelligence agencies. 

In recent UN General Assembly votes on Palestinian rights, it has been Israel, the United States, Canada, and four small Pacific island states, whose votes are bought by the United States – Micronesia, Marshall Islands, Nauru, and Palau – that uniformly voted against such issues as applicability of the Geneva Convention on the occupied Palestinian territories, cessation of all Israeli settlement activities in the territories, Israeli human rights violations committed against Palestinians, return of displaced Palestinian refugees, and destruction and confiscation of Palestinian properties. Australia joined the “Solid Seven” in voting against some of the UN resolutions on Palestine.

Israel’s control of the votes of three Pacific nations that have “compacts of free association” with the United States arises from the fact that the United States effectively controls the foreign affairs and UN votes of Micronesia, Marshall Islands, and Palau as much as the former Soviet Union controlled the UN votes of the Byelorussian and Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republics, which had separate UN membership from that of the USSR.

Palau votes with Israel in the United Nations more than any other country, including the United States. Micronesia is not far behind in its support for Israel. The Marshall Islands and the former UN trusteeship of Nauru also count among nations that support Israel in the UN almost 100 percent of the time. In January 2010, Nauruan President Marcus Stephen, Micronesian President Emanuel Mora, the Nauruan First Lady, and the Micronesian and Nauruan foreign ministers and UN ambassadors visited Israel in a trip partly arranged by the American Jewish Committee in New York. The delegations made the obligatory psychological warfare visit to the Yad Vashem and received Israeli security briefings on the threats of Hamas and Lebanese Hezbollah.

The U.S. Jewish and Israeli lobbies have carefully nurtured their influence in the small Pacific island states. The lobbies have arranged for Orthodox Jewish Yeshiva University students to visit Palau, where they met President Tommy Remengesau and members of the Palau Senate. Yeshiva has even provided interns for the Micronesian mission to the UN in New York. Since the first Yeshiva visit to Palau in 2005, the orthodox Riverdale Jewish Center in The Bronx has maintained a strong religious connection to Palau, indoctrinating the Palauan people, who are half Catholic with significant Protestant and Mormon minorities, on Judaism. In 2005, Marshall Islands President Kessai Note also paid a state visit to Israel with all the obligatory propagandizing by the Israeli government as part of the itinerary.

The UNESCO vote in Paris on Palestine’s admission also pointed to Israel’s control over the Pacific vote. Although Micronesia and the Marshall Islands were absent from the Paris vote, Palau, as well as three other Pacific states – Samoa, Solomon Islands, and Vanuatu – voted no on Palestine’s admission to UNESCO as a full member. Nauru abstained, as did Kiribati, Cook Islands, Fiji, Tuvalu, Tonga, and Papua New Guinea. Niue, which, like the Cook Islands, is a self-governing territory of New Zealand, whose Prime Minister John Key is of Jewish descent, was absent. 

In April, an Israeli delegation headed by Knesset speaker Reuven Rivlin visited Tonga in what was billed as a “re-kindling” of Israeli relations with the Pacific. In 2010, the Arab League held its first summit with Pacific island leaders in Tonga, causing alarm in west Jerusalem. Rivlin also visited New Zealand, which has tremendous influence over the foreign relations of the Pacific states. The success of the Israeli and New Zealand campaign is reflected in the UNESCO vote on Palestine and in the recent UN General Assembly votes on Palestinian rights in which Vanuatu abstained.

The Solomon Islands came under strong Israeli pressure in 2009 after the nation held the distinction of the only Pacific nation to have voted in the UN General Assembly to approve the Goldstone Report, which condemned Israeli human rights abuses in its Operation Cast Lead invasion of Gaza in December 2008 and January 2009. The Solomon Islands had already come in to the Israeli radar screens in 2008 when Solomons Foreign Minister William Haomare paid a visit to Tehran after meeting Iranian Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki at the UN to discuss establishing diplomatic relations. Also at the UN in 2008, Solomons President Derek Sikua met with Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Israel’s regional lobbyists, including influential groups like the Australia/Israel & Jewish Affairs Council (AIJAC) and the New Zealand Jewish Council, went to work in Canberra, Wellington, and Honiara, the Solomons capital, to change the course of Solomon Islands foreign policy. Sikua lost the August 2010 general election and was replaced by Danny Philip who altered course and ensured that his nation was back in lockstep with Israel. Israeli MASHAV international aid workers have descended on the Solomon Islands this year and are active in “training” missions, especially in Malaita province, which has a history of secessionism.

Israel also had its regional interlocutors move on Vanuatu, especially after that nation recognized the independence of Abkhazia, a breakaway region of Israel’s close ally Georgia. Israel’s non-resident ambassador to Vanuatu, Michael Ronen, began to arrange for Israeli aid workers to arrive in Vanuatu, as they had done in the Solomon Islands. Israeli pressure has also been applied to Tuvalu and Nauru after they, like Vanuatu, recognized Abkhazia. Israelis are obviously concerned that if the small Pacific states can be swayed into support for Abkhazia and other countries like Taiwan, in return for economic aid, they could also line up behind Palestine if the aid packages from wealthy Arab nations were lucrative. 

In May, non-resident Israeli ambassador to Samoa Shemi Tzur presented his credentials to Samoan head of state Tupua Tamasese Efi and spoke of Israeli aid workers possibly arriving in the future. In Samoa, as in other Pacific states, Israelis play on the fact that many Pacific islanders are Christians, including evangelicals, so the Israeli envoys and aid workers emphasize that Israel is synonymous with the “Holy Land.” In fact, the same propagandizing has worked for the evangelical communities in the United States and Canada, with many of Israel’s strongest support coming from Tea Party conservative Christians in the United States and their ideological counterparts in Canada.

Israel is using its success in the Pacific to build up similar regional blocs in other regions, such as the Caribbean, Africa, and Central America. Based on the UNESCO and UN General Assembly votes on Palestine, pro-Israel votes, including critical abstentions, can now be expected from Haiti, Panama, Cote d’Ivoire, and Cameroon. Others small and poor countries that have succumbed to Israeli pressure and bribes are Barbados, Bahamas, Trinidad and Tobago, Jamaica, Cape Verde, St. Kitts and Nevis, Togo, Burundi, Rwanda, Dominica, Madagascar, Central African Republic, Liberia, Sierra Leone, Swaziland, Guinea-Bissau, Antigua and Barbuda, Comoros, Maldives, Sao Tome and Principe, Uganda, Guyana, and South Sudan.

After all, if almost 100 U.S. senators and over 90 percent of members of the House of Representatives can be cajoled and bribed by Israel, nations smaller and poorer than Israel are easy marks for Israeli pressure…