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By Dr. Ramzy Baroud

My journey into the realm of people’s history began during my teenage years when I first read Howard Zinn’s A People’s History of the United States. This initial exposure sparked my curiosity about how history is constructed, and it led me to delve deeper into historiography—particularly the evolution of people’s history as an intellectual movement. Over the years, I encountered a wide range of historians, from Michel Foucault and Marc Bloch to Lucien Febvre and Chris Harman, each offering unique perspectives on the study of ordinary people in history.

However, it wasn’t until I immersed myself in the work of Antonio Gramsci that I discovered a more universal, less provincial, and Western-centric approach to history. Although Gramsci did not explicitly position himself as a historian of the people, his ideas on organic intellectuals and cultural hegemony have provided invaluable tools for understanding how ordinary people can shape history. Gramsci’s theories have brought a more relatable and applicable understanding of Marxism, particularly by liberating it from the confines of rigid economic theories.

The Contribution of Linda Tuhiwai Smith

A significant turning point in my intellectual journey came with Linda Tuhiwai Smith’s ‘Decolonizing Methodologies: Research and Indigenous Peoples’. Her work further deepened my understanding of how to approach history from a decolonial perspective. Smith’s methodology allowed me to, once again, revisit and reconsider Palestinian history, challenging the orientalist and elitist perspectives that have long distorted the narrative. It also opened my eyes to a lingering issue within indigenous history: many of us, as indigenous historians, unknowingly replicate the very methodologies used by Western historians to portray us as the ‘other.’

Smith’s work fundamentally challenges the traditional view that history is written by the victor.

“It is the story of the powerful and how they became powerful, and then how they use their power to keep them in positions in which they can continue to dominate others,” she wrote.

Instead, history can be written to empower the oppressed, enabling them to challenge their victimhood. However, for this alternative history to be effective, it must be acknowledged not just by historians but also by those affected by the misreading of history.

Malcolm X’s Empowerment and Global Resonance

One of the most profound aspects of Malcolm X’s message, aside from his courage and intellectual rigor, was his focus on empowering Black communities to challenge their own inferiority and reclaim their power. He did not prioritize confronting white racism; rather, he sought to inspire Black people to assert their identity and strength. This message has resonated globally, especially in the Global South, and continues to thrive today. For a deeper understanding of Malcolm X’s impact, I recommend The Dead Arising: The Life of Malcolm X by Les Payne.

In the Palestinian context, there is a similarly pressing need for a reclamation of the narrative—a reclaiming of both identity and history. While a people’s history of Palestine is beginning to emerge, there are still misunderstandings about what this form of research truly entails.

The Role of Refaat Alareer in Palestinian History

Refaat Alareer, a Gaza-based Palestinian historian, will be remembered for his significant contributions to articulating the Palestinian struggle for freedom. In the years leading up to his assassination by Israel during the Gaza genocide on December 6, 2023, he consistently emphasized the centrality of resistance in Palestinian discourse, gaining recognition for his courage, poetry, and intellectual work. It is also essential to highlight Alareer’s unwavering belief that Palestinians must control what I refer to as “the means of content production.” This control is vital to prevent the Palestinian narrative from being hijacked or manipulated by external forces.

“Gaza writes back because the power of imagination is a creative way to construct a new reality. Gaza writes back because writing is a nationalist obligation, a duty to humanity, and a moral responsibility,” he wrote.

Misunderstandings in People’s History Research

There are several common misunderstandings about people’s history that need to be addressed. These misconceptions often stem from the way this form of research is applied, especially in newer contexts.

People’s History is Not Just Oral History

While oral history and storytelling are essential components in laying the foundation for people’s history, they should not be confused with people’s history itself. Oral history can provide raw material for research, but true people’s history requires a broader, more comprehensive approach that avoids selectivity or bias.

The collective messages of ordinary people should shape the intellectual outcomes, allowing for a more accurate understanding of complex phenomena.

Concepts like sumud (steadfastness), karamah (dignity), and muqawama (resistance) must be seen not just as sentimental values, but as political units of analysis that traditional history often overlooks.

People’s History Cannot Be Used to Validate Pre-Existing Ideas

It is crucial to differentiate people’s history from opportunistic attempts to validate pre-existing ideas. Edward Said’s concept of the “Native Informant” highlights how seemingly indigenous voices have been used to legitimize colonial interventions.

Similarly, political groups or activists might selectively present voices from within oppressed communities to validate their own pre-existing views or agendas.

In the Palestinian context, this often manifests in the portrayal of “moderate” Palestinians as the acceptable face of the Palestinian discourse, while “radical” Palestinians are labeled as extremists. This selective representation not only misrepresents the Palestinian people but also allows Western powers to manipulate the Palestinian narrative without appearing to do so.

People’s History is Not the Annunciation of Pre-Existing Agendas

In traditional academic research, the study typically follows a hypothesis, methodology, and a process of proving or disproving ideas. While people’s history can follow rational research methods, it does not adhere to the traditional structure of validating right or wrong.

It is not about proving a hypothesis, but about uncovering collective sentiments, thoughts, and societal trends. The responsibility of the historian is to reveal the voices of the people without subjecting them to pre-established notions or biases.

People’s History is Not the Study of People

Linda Smith emphasizes the importance of liberating indigenous knowledge from the colonial tools of research. In traditional Western research, the colonized people are often reduced to mere subjects to be studied.

People’s history, on the other hand, recognizes these individuals as political agents whose histories, cultures, and stories are forms of knowledge in themselves. When knowledge is harnessed for the benefit of the people it belongs to, the entire research process changes.

For example, Israel ‘studies’ Palestinian culture as a means to subdue Palestinian resistance. They attempt to manipulate societal faultlines to weaken the resolve of Palestinians.

This is a crude but effective manifestation of colonial research methods. While these methods may not always be violent, their ultimate goal remains the same: to weaken popular movements, exploit resources, and suppress resistance.

Conclusion

People’s history is an urgent necessity, especially in contexts like Palestine, where it is vital to communicate the empowered voices of the people to the rest of the world.

This form of research must be conducted with a deeper understanding of its methodologies to avoid further marginalization and exploitation. By prioritizing the narrative of ordinary people, we can shift the historical discourse towards greater authenticity, justice, and empowerment.

Dr. Ramzy Baroud is a journalist, author and the Editor of The Palestine Chronicle.

24 March 2025

Source: countercurrents.org

By Raymond Lotta

On March 13, the Trump fascists issued an outrageous and unprecedented list of demands that Columbia University must comply with in order to even negotiate with the government for federal funds. This comes five days after the Gestapo-like abduction of Mahmoud Khalil (the Palestine solidarity activist and a movement spokesperson at Columbia) by ICE agents! It comes six days after the federal government cut off $400 million for scientific research conducted at Columbia. Meanwhile, the fascist regime announced a new round of government investigations into 52 universities to crack down on “DEI” (diversity, equity, inclusion) programs in campus curriculum and hiring.

On March 21, Katrina Armstrong, the interim president of Columbia, cravenly capitulated to the Trump administration’s demands.

Fascist Demands, an Accommodating Administration

Let’s look at some of these nine demands that Columbia has now agreed to meet. They require that Columbia:

• Grant “full law enforcement authority, including arrest and removal of agitators,” to public safety officers;
• Abolish the University Judicial Board;
• Complete disciplinary proceedings for students involved in the Gaza protests;
• Enforce a ban on masks [used by protesters to protect their identities and safety];
• Place the Middle East, South Asian, and African Studies department under “academic receivership” [a process that requires an outside chair to run the department for a minimum of five years];
• Implement “a plan for comprehensive admissions reform”’ [read: vet racial-national backgrounds and political views of prospective students].

Never has the U.S. government taken such extreme measures to discipline and compel the university to align its views and practices to the politics and priorities of the government. What is happening now is even more extreme than what happened at the height of McCarthyism of the early 1950s, when left-wing and communist professors were targeted by Congressional committees. These demands to Columbia gut any degree or semblance of university independence. This fascist diktat, or decree, is the spearpoint of the war on the university as it has existed for generations. (A diktat is a punitive decree imposed unilaterally on a country, party, or institution.)

This is the playbook of a Nazi-like takeover. As Columbia classics professor Joseph Howley at Columbia put it: “If the federal government can show up and demand a university department be shut down or restructured, then we don’t have universities in this country.”

And what has been the response of Katrina Armstrong, interim president of Columbia? Outcry, rebuke, a call to the academic and broader community to resist and protect the integrity and very survival of intellectual life in the university and society? The demand that ICE agents get off the campus?

On the contrary! In response to the cancellation of federal research funds, Armstrong declared that Columbia is “committed to working with the federal government to address their legitimate demands.”

Note the invocation of “legitimate”—that these fascists somehow have “legitimate” concerns and claims. Truly a “profile in cowardice.” Truly a lesson NOT learned from the rise of Hitler, when most academic institutions either enthusiastically embraced Hitler or thought they could accommodate and squirm their way to survival. Which of course begs the question: survival for what and as what?!

On March 21, the Columbia University administration utterly prostrated itself before the Trump fascist regime, acquiescing to its outrageous assault on the right to protest and academic freedom.

Stepping Back

This fascist assault on the university, including and especially the “elite” schools, took a qualitative leap in response to the courageous student movement to stop the U.S.-Zionist-Israeli genocide in Gaza and the complicity of the university in war crimes and Zionist apartheid. This movement has faced unrelenting repression from the start—from university administrations, Zionist donors and thugs, and local police… up to the highest levels of governance. Now it is facing whole new levels of repression, with the university itself as we know it on the chopping block.

Why is this movement the target of such intense attack and vitriol? Because criticism of and opposition to the state of Israel is a kind of “third rail” of American politics and political life—a “no go” because it touches on the most strategic interests of U.S. imperialist interests. The apartheid state of Israel is financially, militarily, and diplomatically propped up by U.S. imperialism to function as a “watch-dog” and “attack-dog” for the interests of Western, especially U.S., imperialism in a strategic part of the world. (See the series of social media messages from Bob Avakian titled “Palestine, Israel, U.S. Imperialism and Revolution.”)

And here is something that people need to appreciate. The university is one of the few spaces in society where critical thinking and dissent have some initiative, and where radical movements have space to develop, where ideas have space to incubate. This happened in the 1960s.¹ The potential for this kind of dissent to spread and influence society more broadly is threatening to the rulers of society. Last spring in particular, the protest and dissent on the campuses jolted large sections of society to seriously re-examine their views on Israel and the U.S. This protest powerfully included the willingness of students to be arrested and to stand up to violent attack from Zionist thugs. It is this questioning—not the few incidents of anti-Semitism that in no way characterize the movement—that the capitalist-imperialist ruling class finds so threatening and that they are determined to crack down on.

And here is something else to reckon with: If the Trump fascist regime has its way—and it is well on its way—that university as “incubator of ideas” will be no more.

The Trump MAGA fascists in power are aiming to restructure the university: to outlaw protest; to monitor and regulate curriculum: from Black history to the history of the Palestinian people as a people uprooted, oppressed, and subjugated by the apartheid state of Israel. They aim to harass and drive out professors who stand with righteous protest and who fight to teach “inconvenient truths” of empire, history, and the world… who foster critical and creative thinking.

“Nazification” An Apt Description

The phrase “Nazification of the university” describes the process that has taken a dangerous and unprecedented leap in the last few weeks: a) suppression and criminalization of dissent; b) thought control over faculty, curriculum, acceptable discourse; and c) semi-militarization, with agents of repression like ICE and Department of Homeland Security now infiltrated on to campus with license to surveil, intimidate, arrest, and deport.

In examining the larger situation we are facing, the revolutionary leader Bob Avakian has drawn the important parallel to the rise of Hitler in the early 1930s. Hitler came to power through “normal” processes and “trampled on and quickly put an end to the basic norms and principles of that republic, forcibly imposing in its place the open fascist dictatorship by the Nazis. This laid the basis for all the horrific atrocities committed by the Hitler/Nazi regime… what is happening now with Trump fascist rule also involves a terrible momentum that will involve massive monstrous crimes against humanity, in this country and in the world overall.”

Our Historic Responsibility

We, who live in the “belly of the beast,” have a limited time to act. As Bob Avakian goes on to argue,

Before Trump’s fascist rule can become fully consolidated and carry out even far worse horrors than what it is already perpetrating, it must be defeated through powerful mass mobilization— overcoming all “divide and conquer” schemes, uniting all who can be united, from many different viewpoints and perspectives, in actively opposing, defying and resisting this fascism, in continually growing numbers—moving to quickly involve millions, determined to create such a profound political crisis that Trump cannot govern the country and continue to implement his fascist program, with all its terrible consequences.

Columbia-Barnard has been the epicenter of both student-faculty resistance and the repression against it. The fascists want to turn this assault on speech, protest, and academic freedom at Columbia, at this Ivy League university, into a proving ground for restructuring the university. They want to turn this university (and all universities) into a “dead-zone” of compliance with and obedience to fascism—with all of the ominous implications for the political and intellectual life of society overall, and for people’s capacity and willingness to resist, that go with that.

We must draw the line here and now: refusal, defiance, resistance… no business as usual. We must turn this into our proving ground. To make the battle to defeat this fascist onslaught at Columbia—as we unite ever more broadly and draw growing numbers into this fight from all corners of society—into an example and clarion call to others.

This only stops when we dare to stop it, when we dare to stand on principle and humanity—and challenge others to do the same. It only STOPS when we grow to the millions and say, “The Trump Fascist Regime Must Go. NO! In the name of humanity, we refuse to accept a fascist America.”

Free Mahmoud Khalil Now!

Stop the Fascist Assault on Academic Freedom, Protest, and Basic Rights

In the Name of Humanity, We Refuse to Accept a Fascist America

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An earlier version of this article appeared in revcom.us

FOOTNOTE:
1. Bob Avakian discusses this in his social media message Revolution #33, “The powerful positive experience of the 1960s movement—the crucial importance of uniting broadly against injustice and atrocity, with open-minded engagement of different ideas and programs…”

Raymond Lotta is a political economist; spokesperson for Revolution Books, New York City; and an advocate for the new communism developed by the revolutionary leader Bob Avakian.

23 March 2025

Source: countercurrents.org

By Quds News Network

Gaza (Quds News Network)- Israeli warplanes continue to bomb different parts of Gaza, violating the ceasefire agreement. In the past 48 hours, Israeli attacks have killed 130 Palestinians.

Israeli airstrikes targeted homes and farmland in Gaza City. A strike hit an agricultural area near Al-Karama in the western part of the city.

In Al-Tuffah neighborhood, an airstrike on an apartment killed 12 civilians, including six children. Paramedics rushed the victims to Al-Ahli Baptist Hospital.

In Khan Younis, Israeli jets destroyed a four-story home belonging to the Sharrab family. The attack also damaged nearby houses.

Israeli forces also bombed a police facility in Deir Al-Balah, but no casualties were reported.

Meanwhile, Israeli artillery shelled areas near Al-Mughraqa in central Gaza. Another airstrike targeted farmland west of Khan Younis, with no immediate reports of casualties.

Israeli airstrikes in Beit Lahiya and Umm Al-Nasr in northern Gaza killed three civilians and wounded others. A separate attack on Al-Shaymaa neighborhood also caused multiple casualties.

In central Gaza, three Palestinians were injured in an airstrike near the Nuseirat refugee camp. Israeli artillery also shelled farmland east of Al-Fukhari in the south.

Israel resumed its genocide in Gaza early last Tuesday after a two-month pause under a ceasefire agreement that took effect on January 19. However, Israeli forces repeatedly violated the truce throughout this period.

Since the genocide began on October 7, 2023, Israel, with U.S. support, has killed and injured over 160,000 Palestinians, most of them women and children, while the international community remains silent.

23 March 2025

Source: countercurrents.org

By Melissa Garriga

America’s military budget is more than just numbers on a page—it’s a reflection of the priorities that shape our society. Right now, that nearly trillion dollar budget is bloated, inefficient, and far removed from the needs of everyday Americans. We’ve identified six simple yet effective ways to cut at least $100 billion from the Pentagon’s budget—without sacrificing even the most hawkish of war hawk’s sense of national security. Ready to take the scissors to that excess spending? Here’s how we can do it.

1. Halt the F-35 Program (Save $12B+ per year)

The F-35 is the poster child for military mismanagement. It’s a fighter jet that was supposed to revolutionize our military—except it’s plagued by cost overruns, delays, and underperformance. Despite a projected lifetime cost of over $2 trillion, this aircraft only meets mission requirements about 30% of the time. If we ended or paused the F-35 program now, we’d free up $12 billion annually. The military-industrial complex can afford a few less fancy jets that destroy land and lives, especially when they don’t even do their job right.

2. Reassess Long-Range Missile Defense (Save $9.3B+ per year)

For over half a century, we’ve sunk an eye-watering $400 billion into long-range missile defense systems that have never delivered. The cold, hard truth is these systems are ineffective against real-world threats. In fact, no missile defense technology has ever proven capable of neutralizing an intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) attack. Cutting back on these programs would save us $9.3 billion per year—money that could be better spent on diplomacy initiatives that actually work.

3. Cut the Sentinel ICBM Program (Save $3.7B+ per year)

ICBMs were once the crown jewels of our nuclear deterrence strategy, but they’re outdated in today’s geopolitical climate. With more reliable and flexible platforms like submarines, bombers, and emerging hypersonic technologies, maintaining an expensive, high-risk ICBM arsenal makes little sense. Ending the Sentinel ICBM program would save taxpayers $3.7 billion annually, and even more in the long run, with total savings over its lifespan estimated at $310 billion. It’s time to face facts: we don’t need to keep pouring money into a strategy that no longer aligns with modern defense needs. Especially when the best nuclear deterrence system is ending nuclear weapons programs to begin with.

4. Cease Procurement of Aircraft Carriers (Save $2.3B+ per year)

Aircraft carriers are relics of a bygone era, costing billions to build and maintain, while becoming increasingly vulnerable to modern missile technology. These floating cities are no longer the symbols of naval power they once were. By halting new aircraft carrier procurements, we can save $2.3 billion a year—money that could be better allocated to ways that actually keep us safe in the 21st century like housing, healthcare or climate justice.

5. Cut Redundant Contracts by 15% (Save $26B per year)

The Pentagon’s bureaucracy is a cash cow for contractors—more than 500,000 private sector workers are paid to do redundant and often wasteful work. Many contracts overlap or go toward projects that are, frankly, unnecessary. Cutting back just 15% on these contracts would save $26 billion annually. That’s a massive chunk of change that could be reallocated to more efficient and effective defense projects. Want a starting point? Look no further than SpaceX’s lucrative contracts—it’s time we hold these companies accountable.Maybe DOGE knows a guy there?

6. Prioritize Diplomacy (Save $50B+ per year)

The best way to avoid unnecessary military spending is to prevent conflicts from happening in the first place. By focusing on diplomatic solutions instead of military interventions, we can scale back expensive overseas bases, reduce troop deployments, and use reserves and National Guard units more effectively. This shift could save up to $50 billion a year—and possibly as much as $100 billion in the long term. It’s about time we put our resources into creating peaceful solutions rather than preparing for endless wars.

What Could We Do with the $100 Billion in Savings?

The possibilities are endless when we take a more practical approach to national security spending. What could we do with the $100 billion we save? Here’s a snapshot of just some of the incredible investments we could make in American society:

• 787,255 Registered Nurses: Filling critical healthcare gaps nationwide.

• 10.39 million Public Housing Units: Making affordable housing a reality for families across the country.

• 2.29 million Jobs at $15/hour: Providing good jobs with benefits, boosting the economy.

• 1.03 million Elementary School Teachers: Giving our children the education they deserve.

• 579,999 Clean Energy Jobs: Building a sustainable, green future for the next generation.

• 7.81 million Head Start Slots: Giving young children a foundation for lifelong success.

• 5.88 million Military Veterans receiving VA medical care: Ensuring those who served our country receive the care they earned.

The Bottom Line?

Cutting $100 billion from the Pentagon budget isn’t just a pipe dream—it’s a tangible, achievable plan that could deliver real benefits to everyday Americans. While it’s just a starting point, this reduction would allow us to prioritize what truly matters: healthcare, education, infrastructure, and the well-being of our people. If we’re going to spend taxpayer dollars, let’s make sure they go toward initiatives that directly benefit the lives of the citizens who fund them.

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Melissa Garriga is the communications and media relations manager for CODEPINK. She writes about the intersection of militarism and the human cost of war.

25 March 2025

Source: globalresearch.ca

By Steven Sahiounie

The Russian air base at Hmeimin, near Latakia, Syria has rescued over 8,000 Syrian minorities fleeing the recent sectarian massacres.

Kremlin spokesperson, Maria Zakharova, said Russia is shocked by the tragic events in Syria.

“The victims were innocent, peaceful civilians. The use of force against civilians is categorically unacceptable. It can in no way be justified,” she pointed out. “We are certainly concerned about the developments in Syria and strongly condemn the massacres. Of course, we sympathize with the families of the victims,” the diplomat added.

According to testimonies of some of those sheltering at the air base, they have not felt any pressure from the Russian military officials who have welcomed them and have not been forced to leave.

The displaced people, mainly from the Alawite community but also a small number of Christians, are being treated with respect and humanity and are being provided with basic humanitarian supplies. The Russian military provided them with a field kitchen, a medical center, and tents, but the situation remains difficult as the air base is not designed to host such a large number of people.

Residents reported that Russian aircraft carrying humanitarian assistance, such as food, water, blankets, and tents had been provided, and have continued to arrive. A large Russian II-76 transport aircraft landed later at the base carrying medicines, treatments, and food.  Russian sources said that Moscow would intensify its flights to the air base, reaching approximately 3-4 aircraft weekly.

The Mayor of Latakia visited the air base calling on the people to return home, but the people were still very afraid.

“We will not return until we ensure the arrest of these criminals, and with international guarantees that they will not return and repeat their crimes against us,” said one anonymous resident at the base.

Russian officials have assured the displaced people they can remain under their protection until an international solution has been reached regarding their safety.

On March 10, Russia and the US asked the UN Security Council to meet concerning the violence against civilians in Syria.

On March 14, the UN Security Council condemned the widespread violence perpetrated in Syria’s Latakia and Tartus provinces since March 6, including mass killings of civilians among the Alawite community, and called on the interim authorities to protect all Syrians without distinction.

Remnants of the former Assad regime staged an armed insurgency on the coast which is home to minorities such as the Alawite and Christian communities. The security forces responded to the attacks and deaths on their numbers with a brutal crackdown.  According to human rights sources, hundreds of armed insurgents and security forces were killed collectively.

The Abu Amsha and Hamsat divisions of the security forces were called in to respond and innocent unarmed civilians were caught in the cross-fire, as well as house-to-house raids which killed and looted civilian homes in the Latakia, Jeblah, Banias, and Tartus countryside on the coast.

Eyewitnesses have confirmed it was the Abu Amsha and Hamzat groups who carried out the sectarian massacres and lootings. Human rights groups have estimated about 1,000 people were killed.

The interim President Ahmad Sharaa has formed a committee to investigate the massacres and has promised to hold those accountable, even those who may be connected to his administration.

On February 2, the Ministry of Defense in the Sharaa government appointed Mohammed al-Jassem (Abu Amsha) as the commander of the Hama military brigade.

Before his appointment, he led the Sultan Suleiman Shah Brigade in Afrin in northern Aleppo.

On August 17, 2023, the US Treasury Department imposed sanctions “in connection to serious human rights abuses committed in northern Syria, including abduction, severe physical abuse, and rape” on the Sultan Suleiman Shah Brigade, its leader Abu Amsha, his brother Walid al-Jassem, and the Hamza Brigade and its leader Sayf Balud ( Sayf Abu Bakr).

Brigadier General Sayf Balud is commander of the Hamza Brigade, formerly a Syrian rebel group in northwestern Syria affiliated with the Syrian National Army. He was trained and equipped by the United States, the United Kingdom, and Turkey as part of the Syrian Train and Equip Program in 2013.

The Syrian leadership has sought cooperation with the Russian Federation.  Sharaa has said the future of the Russian air base at Hmeimin and the Naval base at Tartus is open for discussion and has recognized the long history of Russian-Syrian cooperation.

Recently, the Sharaa signed an agreement with General Mazloum Abdi of the Syrian Defense Forces (SDF). The agreement calls for the eventual integration of the mainly Kurdish militia into the new Syrian national army as it is developed.  The SDF has been supported by the illegally occupying US troops in Syria, and this agreement foreshadows the eventual withdrawal of the US military from Syria.

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Steven Sahiounie is a two-time award-winning journalist. He is a regular contributor to Global Research.

25 March 2025

Source: globalresearch.ca

By Serbian Times and Prof Michel Chossudovsky

Professor Emeritus of Economics at the University of Ottawa and founder of the Centre for Research on Globalization, Michel Chossudovsky, on the occasion of the 26th anniversary of the beginning of NATO’s aggression against the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, reminds that it was NATO’s first official war against a sovereign country—but not the last—as this war agenda was later used in various conflicts, with media propaganda playing a significant role, which is still evident today in the case of Ukraine.

He also believes that now is the opportunity, especially with Donald Trump at the helm of the United States, to raise the issue of closing the American Bondsteel base in the Autonomous Province of Kosovo and Metohija.

“This is essentially a U.S. base. Trump wants to reduce military costs, and this is a large military base, expensive to maintain,” said Chossudovsky, author of numerous books, including The U.S. and NATO Aggression Against Yugoslavia and The Globalization of Poverty, which have been translated into Serbian.

Regarding negotiations on Ukraine, Chossudovsky believes it would have been better if they had taken place in Belgrade, given that Serbia is a militarily neutral country. President Aleksandar Vučić could have played a mediating role since he maintains dialogue with the EU, Washington, and Moscow.

Chossudovsky emphasized to Tanjug that, in the case of the bombing of the FRY, the propaganda machine was well-organized, but that war was—brutal and ruthless—planned many years in advance, “which is confirmed, among other things, by the construction of the American Bondsteel military base on occupied Kosovo,” which, in his view, many see as a strategic pillar of the U.S. presence in this region.

He added that he believes the world is “in an era of insane politics,” but at least not Serbia.

“When you have U.S. President Donald Trump making certain statements about wanting to cut military spending by billions and billions of dollars, while also being reserved about NATO’s role in American military bases—as is the case with Bondsteel—I think it would be appropriate for the Serbian government to politely send a note to Washington, citing Trump’s concerns about military expenses,” said Chossudovsky.

According to him, the note should state that Bondsteel is a burden for Serbia, a burden for so-called Kosovo, and for Washington, and that “we want to cooperate” and “we would like to see that base closed.”

He added that this would be a position aligned with the rhetoric of the U.S. president, who has even stated that he would close military bases in Europe.

“And here you have an opportunity,” said Chossudovsky, noting that the relationship between the U.S. and NATO is complex, but that NATO does not actually decide anything, as all major decisions go through the Pentagon and highly complex command structures.

Serbia, he stressed, must regain control over Kosovo.

Chossudovsky stated that, first and foremost, that the Kosovo territory is not a state but a province of Serbia, which was taken over by General Michael Jackson—who had a criminal record in the United Kingdom—and Hashim Thaçi, a man involved in drug trafficking, who was only sent to The Hague 20 years later.

According to him, by remaining neutral in relations with both Russia and the U.S., Serbia has the potential to play a role in creating peace.

That is why, he says, it would have been better if negotiations between Putin and Trump had taken place in Belgrade rather than in Saudi Arabia.

“This is neutral territory, not in the way Switzerland is. They are very biased. Your president (Aleksandar Vučić) is very perceptive in understanding geopolitics. We watched one of his earlier speeches, where he says that if we do not make certain decisions, it will lead to catastrophe. I think he is a powerful voice and perhaps should also play a role in peace operations, as he has dialogue with the EU, Washington, and Moscow,” Chossudovsky assessed. He reminded that Serbia has always declared itself neutral, which, he adds, it inherited from the SFRY, which was non-aligned, making it “strategically important for those seeking to build empires.”

Recalling March 24, 1999, Chossudovsky states that it was a war against truth, carried out in coordination with the criminal elements of the so-called Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA), which collaborated with American and German intelligence services.

“This was NATO’s first war, but not its last, because all the elements of that war were stored in databases for future conquest plans in various countries. The war agenda from 1999 was used in different wars, adapted to different contexts and cultures, but ultimately, it always involved the coordination of military action with economic activities, regime change, and propaganda,” said Chossudovsky, one of the first people to stand by Serbia during NATO’s aggression.

Chossudovsky, who was awarded the Medal for Merit of the Republic of Serbia in 2014, considers the bombing of the FRY to have been an illegal and criminal act in which the media played a crucial role. He also noted that the situation is similar in Ukraine, “because there are no newspapers in the Western world that would write that the Ukrainian government is neo-Nazi.”

Western media, he added, are complicit, covering up crimes. He recalled the 1998 film The Valley, sponsored by NATO, which served as justification for the horrors of war in Kosovo and Metohija.

“There were fake images… They showed that Serbs were killing Albanians, and it was sponsored with KLA support. That documentary film was distributed mainly in Western countries. It was a way to show that Serbs were killing people… and so, the fabricated notion that the KLA was there to ‘save’ everyone from the Serbs gained legitimacy, despite the fact that they themselves were linked to organized crime and Al-Qaeda, with media support,” Chossudovsky said.

That film must be carefully analyzed, assessed Chossudovsky, who at the time wrote for Le Monde Diplomatique but ended his collaboration when the editorial board refused to publish an article presenting evidence that one of the key figures in Kosovo, Hashim Thaçi, had a criminal record.

“They attacked Serbia, or rather, the FRY, under the pretext of a humanitarian intervention, with strong condemnation and demonization of President Slobodan Milošević, as well as the entire Serbian people,” said Chossudovsky, who claimed that he spoke with Milošević in The Hague and “knew they were poisoning him in the Tribunal.”

“People in Serbia need to understand that Milošević died for his people,” said Chossudovsky, who began researching Yugoslavia within the broader economic events of the 1980s.

He recalled that the peak of the economic crisis in Yugoslavia was in January 1990, which led to what was called a civil war, although, as he argues, it was not a civil war.

“There were two key elements—the Western media and how they lied and covered up crimes committed by NATO forces. The second element was the so-called left, the ‘progressive’ parties in the U.S. and Western Europe. They even portrayed KLA members as ‘freedom fighters’ and went so far as to cite Marx and Lenin in that context. They even acknowledged that the KLA was linked to organized crime but justified it as necessary for the revolution,” he said.

He emphasized that Milošević’s legacy is very important because, first and foremost,

“he did not play their game, acted on behalf of the Serbian people and his country, and understood the situation—his actions also saved lives when they came to arrest him.”

“It was clear where the crime originated from, and Milošević analyzed it and understood the role of Al-Qaeda. I reviewed one of his speeches in The Hague, which was very concrete,” he stated, adding that “everyone knows that the CIA financed Al-Qaeda,” which was also linked to the KLA.

According to Chossudovsky, it was crucial for Milošević, but for the West, it was essential to discredit him.

25 March 2025

Source: globalresearch.ca

By Edward Curtin

We live in a 24/7 media society of the spectacle where brainwashing is cunning and relentless, and the consuming public is consumed with thoughts and perceptions filtered through electronic media according to the needs and lies of corporate state power.

This propaganda comes in two forms: covert and overt. The latter, and most effective form, comes with a large dose of truth offered rapid-fire by celebrated, authoritative voices via prominent media. The truth is sprinkled with subtle messages that render it sterile. This has long been the case, but it is even more so in the age of images on screens and digital media where words and images flow away like water in a rapidly moving stream. The late sociologist, Zygmunt Bauman, updating Marx’s famous quote “all that is solid melts into thin air,” called this “liquid modernity.”

Welcome to Operation Pandemonium

See, these experts purport to say: What we tell you is true, but it is impossible to draw definitive conclusions. You must drink the waters of uncertainty forever lest you become a conspiracy nut. But if you don’t want to be so labelled, accept the simplest explanation for matters that disturb you – Occam’s razor, that the truest answer is the simplest – which is always the official explanation.  If this sounds contradictory, that is because it is. It is meant to be. We induce schizophrenia.

And it is, these experts suggest, because we live in a world where all knowledge is relative, and you, the individual, like Kafka’s country bumpkin, who in his parable “Before the Law,” tries to get past the doorkeeper to enter the inner sanctum of the Law but is never allowed to pass; you, the individual, must accept the futility of your efforts and accede to this dictum that declares that all knowledge is relative, which is ironically an absolute dictum. It is the Law. The Law of contradictions declared from on high.

Many writers, journalists, and filmmakers, while allegedly revealing truths about the U.S. and its allies’ criminal operations at home and abroad, have for decades slyly conveyed the message that in the end “we will never know the truth,” the real facts – that convincing evidence is lacking.

This refusal to come to conclusions is a sly tactic that keeps many careers safe while besmirching, intentionally or not, the names of serious researchers who reach conclusions based on overwhelming circumstantial evidence (the basis for most murder convictions) and detailed, sourced facts, often using the words of the guilty parties themselves, but are dismissed with the CIA weaponized term “conspiracy theorists.”

This often escapes the average person who does not read footnotes and sources, if they even read books. They read screens and the mainstream media, which should now be understood to include much of the “alternative” media. And they watch all sorts of films.

But this “we will never know” meme, this false mystery, is shrewdly and often implicitly joined to another: That we do know because the official explanation of events is true and only nut cases would believe otherwise. Propaganda by paradox.  Operation chaos.

The JFK Assassination and the Release of Files

Image: Picture of President Kennedy in the limousine in Dallas, Texas, on Main Street, minutes before the assassination. Also in the presidential limousine are Jackie Kennedy, Texas Governor John Connally, and his wife, Nellie. (Source: Wikimedia Commons)

There are so many examples of this, with that of President Kennedy’s assassination being a foundational one. In this case, as with the current phony Trump release of more JFK assassination files, the ongoing “mystery” is always reinforced with the implicit or explicit presupposition that Lee Harvey Oswald killed Kennedy, but yet implying that there are more mysteries to explore forever because “people” are paranoid. (Trump’s position, as he recently told interviewer Clay Travis, is that he has always believed Oswald assassinated Kennedy, but he wonders if he may have had help.) They are paranoid not because of government and media lies, but because “popular culture” (not highbrow) has created paranoia. To spice this up, there is often the suggestion that President Kennedy was assassinated on the orders of the Mob, LBJ, Cuba, or Israel, when the facts overwhelmingly confirm it was organized and carried out by the CIA. A. O. Scott’s recent front page article in The New York Times in response to the JFK files release – “J. F. K., Blown Away, What Else Do I Have to Say?” (the title appropriately taken from a very fast-paced Billy Joel song and video) – is a perfect example of such legerdemain.

Thus the ruse to keep debating the assassination, get the latest documents, etc. to satisfy “people’s” insatiable paranoia. To pull out CIA fallback stories 2, 3, or even 4 when all else fails. Dr. Martin Schotz, the JFK researcher, rightly compares this to George Orwell’s definition of Crimestop:

‘Crimestop’ means the faculty of stopping short, as though by instinct, at the threshold of any dangerous thought. It includes the power of not grasping analogies, of failing to perceive logical errors, or misunderstanding the simplest arguments if they are inimical to [the powers that be]… and of being bored or repelled by any train of thought which is capable of leading in a heretical direction. ‘Crimestop’, in short, means protective stupidity.

It’s the crazy people’s fault, not Scott’s or those who back him up at The Times, a newspaper that has been lying about the JFK assassination from day one. The same goes for the assassinations of Malcolm X, Martin Luther King, Jr., Robert F. Kennedy, et al., and so many key events in U.S. history. It is a game of creating mental chaos by claiming we do know because the official explanation is correct but we don’t know because people have been infected with paranoia. If only people were not so paranoid! Unlike us at The Times, goes the implicit message.

The Epistemological Games of Certain Filmmakers

It is well known that people today are watching far more streaming film series and movies than they are reading books. That someone would lucubrate with pen in hand over a footnoted book on an important issue is now as rare as someone without a cell phone. The optical-electronic eye-ear screen connection rules most lives, mental and sensory. Marshall McLuhan, if a bit premature while referring in 1962 to Pierre Teilhard de Chardin – the French philosopher, paleontologist, and Jesuit priest – wrote sixty-three years ago in The Gutenberg Galaxy:

Instead of tending towards a vast Alexandrian library the world has become a computer, an electronic brain, exactly as an infantile piece of science fiction. And as our senses have gone outside us, Big Brother goes inside. [my emphasis] So, unless aware of this dynamic, we shall at once move into a phase of panic terrors, exactly befitting a small world of tribal drums, total interdependence, and superimposed co-existence.… Terror is the normal state of any oral society, for in it everything affects everything all the time.

Four years ago this month, I wrote an article – “You Know We’ll Never Know, Don’t You?” – about a new BBC documentary film series by the acclaimed British filmmaker, Adam Curtis, “Can’t Get You Out of My Head: An Emotional History of the Modern World.”

The series is a pastiche film filled with seven plus hours of fleeting, fragmented, and fascinating archived video images from the BBC archives where Curtis has worked for decades, accompanied by Curtis’s skeptical commentary about “a world where anything could be anything because there was no meaning anywhere.” These historical images jump from one seemingly disconnected subject to another to reinforce his point. He says it is “pointless to try to understand the meaning of why things happen.” He claims that we are all living as if we are “on an acid trip.”

While not on an acid trip which I have never taken, I was reminded of this recently as I watched a new documentary – Chaos: The Manson Murders (2025) – by the equally famous U.S. documentary filmmaker, Erroll Morris, a film about the CIA’s mind control operation, MKULTRA, and its use of LSD. As everyone knows, the CIA is that way-out hippie organization from Virginia that is always intent on spreading peace, love, and good vibes.

While the content of their films differs, Curtis’s wide-ranging and Morris focused on Manson and the book by Tom O’Neil, Chaos: Charles Manson, the CIA, and the Secret History of the Sixties, I was struck by both filmmakers tendency to obfuscate while titillating their audience with footage and information that belies their conclusions about not knowing. In this regard, Curtis is the most overt and extreme.

Morris does not use Curtis’s language, but he makes it explicit at Chaos’s end that he doesn’t believe Tom O’Neil’s argument in his well-researched book that Charles Manson was part of a CIA mind-control experiment led by the psychiatrist, Dr. Lewis Jolyon “Jolly” West. West worked in 1967 for the CIA on MKULTRA brainwashing projects in a Haight Ashbury clinic during the summer of love, using LSD and hypnosis, when Manson lived there and was often in the clinic with his followers.

On April 26, 1964, West also just “happened” to visit the imprisoned Jack Ruby, the man who killed Lee Harvey Oswald in the Dallas Police Department, and when West emerged fro the meeting, he immediately declared that in the preceding 48 hours Ruby had become “positively insane” with no chance that this “unshakeable” and “fixed” lunacy could be reversed. What happened between the two men we do not know – for there were no witnesses – but one might assume West used his hypnotic skills and armamentarium of drugs that were integral to MKULTRA’s methods.

MKULTRA

MKULTRA was a sinister and secret CIA mind-control project, officially started in 1953 but preceded by Operation Bluebird, which was renamed Operation Artichoke. These operations started right after WW II when U.S. intelligence worked with Nazi doctors to torture Russians and others to reveal secrets. They were brutal. MKULTRA was run by Dr. Sidney Gottlieb and was even worse. He was known as the “Black Sorcerer.” With the formula for LSD, the CIA had an unlimited amount of the drug to use widely, which it did. It figured prominently in MKULTRA mind control experiments along with hypnosis. Tom O’Neil sums it up thus:

The agency hoped to produce couriers who could imbed hidden messages in their brains, to implant false memories and remove true ones in people without their awareness, to convert groups to opposing ideologies, and more. The loftiest objective was the creation of hypno-programmed assassins. . . . MKULTRA scientists flouted this code [the Nuremberg Code that emerged from the Nuremberg trials of Nazis] constantly, remorselessly – and in ways that stupefy the imagination. Their work encompassed everything from electronic brain stimulation to sensory deprivation to ‘induced pain’ and ‘psychosis.’ They sought ways to cause heart attacks, severe twitching, and intense cluster headaches. If drugs didn’t do the trick, they’d try master ESP, ultrasonic vibrations, and radiation poisoning. One project tried to harness the power of magnetic fields.

In 1973 during the Watergate scandal, CIA Director William Helms ordered all MKULTRA documents destroyed. Most were, but some were forgotten, and in the next few years, Seymour Hersh reported about it and the Senate Church Committee went further. They discovered records that implicated forty-four universities and colleges in the experiments, eighty institutions, and 185 researchers, Louis West among them. The evil cat and its large litter were out of the bag.

MKULTRA allegedly ended in 1973. But only the most naïve would think it did not continue under a different form. In 1964, McLuhan wrote that “the medium is the message.” The new medium that was developed in the decades since has been effectively pointed straight at the brain as you watch the screens. And the message?

Tom O’Neil’s Powerful Case

While admitting that he has not conclusively proven his thesis because he has never been able to confirm Manson and West being together, O’Neil amasses a tremendous amount of convincing circumstantial evidence in his book that makes his case very strong that they were, and that Manson’s ability to get his followers to kill for him was the result of MKULTRA mind control and the use of LSD, which he used extensively and which was introduced by the CIA and used by West. Both men had an inexhaustible amount of the mind-altering drug to use on their victims.

This is the subject of Morris’s film, wherein he interviews O’Neil on camera, who explains the extraordinary fact that Manson was able to mesmerize his followers to kill for him without remorse or shame. They “couldn’t get him out of their heads,” even many years later. This was, of course, the goal of MKULTRA – through the use of brainwashing and drugs – to create “Manchurian Candidates.” This case has much wider ramifications than the sensational 1969 Hollywood murders for which Manson and his followers were convicted; for clearly Mansion’s “family” that carried out the murders on his orders appeared in every way to be under hypnotic control. How did a two-bit, ex-con, pipsqueak, minor hanger-on musician learn to accomplish exactly what MKULTRA spent so many years working on?

Yet at the end of his film, Morris makes a concluding comment without even a nod to the possibility that O’Neil is correct. He says he doesn’t believe O’Neil. I found it very odd, jarring, as though O’Neil had been set up for this denouement, which I think he had. But at the same time I recognized it as Morris’s method of setting up and then undermining the narrative protagonists in his films that are ostensibly about getting to factual truths but never do; they are stories about how all we ever have are endless interpretations and the unknowable, confounded by human fallibility. Everything is lost in the fog of Morris’s method, which is no accident.

Frank Olson

I then found an interview that O’Neil did in 2021 in which he said he pulled out of Morris’s film proposal because Morris wanted to make a film that combined the Frank Olson story (a CIA biologist) with his about Manson. In the interview, O’Neil said he knew Eric Olson, Frank Olson’s son, who has spent a lifetime proving that the CIA murdered his father in 1953, but he didn’t explain why he pulled out of the project. However, he appears extensively throughout Chaos, being interviewed on camera by Morris, only to be undermined at the end. Why he eventually agreed to be part of the project I do not know.

I am certain he has seen Wormwood (2017), Morris’s acclaimed (they are all acclaimed) Netflix film series about the biologist/ CIA agent Frank Olson and his son, Eric Olson’s heroic lifelong quest to prove that the CIA murdered his father because he had a crisis of conscience about the agency’s use of torture, brainwashing, LSD, and U.S. biological weapons use in Korea, much of it in association with Nazis. The evidence is overwhelming that Frank Olson did not jump from a NYC hotel window in 1953 but was drugged with LSD to induce hallucinations and paranoia, smashed in the head, and thrown out by the CIA. [Read this and view this] Despite such powerful evidence available to him before making Wormwood, in another example of Morris’s method, he disagrees with Eric Olson’s decades of conclusive research that his father was murdered.

Conclusion

Filmmakers like Adam Curtis and Erroll Morris are examples of a much larger and dangerous phenomenon. Their emphases on the impossibility of knowing – this seeming void in the human mind, an endless acid trip down a road of kaleidoscopic interpretations – is much larger than them. It is deeply imbedded in today’s society. One of the few areas in which we are said to be able to know anything for certain is in the area of partisan politics. Here knowingness is the rule and the other side is always wrong. Fight, fight, fight for the home team! Here the nostalgia for “knowledge” is encouraged, as if we don’t live in a 24/7 media society of the spectacle where brainwashing is cunning and relentless, and the consuming public is consumed with thoughts and perceptions filtered through electronic media according to the needs and lies of corporate state power.

With the arrival of the electronic digital life, “knowledge” is now screening. If you don’t want to confirm McLuhan’s prediction – “as our senses have gone outside us, Big Brother goes inside” – it behooves everyone to step back into the lamplight to read and study books. And take a walk in nature without your machine. You might hear a little bird call to you.

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Edward Curtin is a prominent author, researcher and sociologist based in Western Massachusetts.

25 March 2025

Source: globalresearch.ca

By Timothy Alexander Guzman

Despite the Greenlandic people voting in favor of independence and rejecting Trump’s agenda to control the island-nation, National Security Advisor, Mike Waltz, US energy secretary, Chris Wright and J.D. Vance’s wife, Usha are set to visit Greenland and the locals are outraged. The Guardian ‘Anger in Greenland over Usha Vance and Mike Waltz’s planned visit this week’ reported that

“Greenland’s prime minister, Múte B Egede, has called for the international community to step in after it was announced that Donald Trump’s national security adviser and the US second lady will visit the Arctic Island, accusing Washington of “foreign interference”.

One media network that has not been honest in its reporting on how the Greenlandic people feel about Trump’s agenda to control their territory as a colony.  So, in this case, it is Fox News, a cheerleader for Trump, has published a report based on Greenland’s latest parliamentary election results, ‘Greenland’s center-right party pulls off upset victory as Trump seeks control’ said the following:

Greenland’s center-right Demokraatit party pulled off a surprise victory in the country’s parliamentary elections, taking Greenlandic Prime Minister Múte Egede’s party, Inuit Ataqatigiit, out of power. Independence from Denmark became a focal point of the election amid President Donald Trump’s repeated talk of the U.S. taking control.

“People want change… We want more business to finance our welfare,” said Jens-Frederik Nielsen, Demokraatit’s leader, according to Reuters. The outlet added that Nielsen said Greenland does not “want independence tomorrow” and would prefer separation from Denmark be based on a “good foundation”

Greenland did vote for a party who eventually wants Independence from Denmark, granted, that part of their article was correct, but Fox News failed to mention that the Demokraatit party is also strongly opposed to Trump’s agenda by turning it into a de facto colony.

The article that Fox News referenced from Reuters, ‘Greenland’s independence gradualists win election amid Trump control pledge’ said that:

Trump’s vocal interest has shaken up the status quo, and coupled with the growing pride of the Indigenous people in their Inuit culture, put independence front and centre in the election.

In the final debate on Greenland’s state broadcaster KNR late on Monday, leaders of the five parties currently in parliament unanimously said they did not trust Trump. “He is trying to influence us. I can understand if citizens feel insecure,” said Erik Jensen, leader of government coalition partner Siumut

Notice how Fox News failed to mention that one important part from the Reuters article where it clearly says that the “leaders of the five parties currently in parliament unanimously said they did not trust Trump.”

In the last joint session of congress, Trump said that he has “a message tonight for the incredible people of Greenland” he continued,

“We strongly support your right to determine your own future, and if you choose, we welcome you into the United States of America.”

But here is where it gets interesting, he said that the US would “keep you safe, we will make you rich, and together, we will take Greenland to heights like you have never thought possible before.” 

Let’s look at the status of Puerto Rico and Guam, both colonies of the US government. Puerto Rico has high rates of poverty and crime than the majority of US states including the poorest state of the union, Mississippi. Guam considered an “unincorporated territory” meaning another colony of the US, also has high rates of poverty and health issues like heart disease, cancer and diabetes compared to most US states, so how does being “part of the US” benefit any of these territories?

“We need Greenland for national security and even international security, and we’re working with everybody involved to try and get it” Trump said, “But we need it really for international, for world security, and I think we’re going to get it. One way or the other, we’re going to get it.”

Trump also said something that should ring alarm bells,

“It’s a very small population, but a very, very large piece of land. And very, very important for military security.”

Trump is not the first US president to make such statements concerning Greenland, US Presidents Andrew Johnson in 1867, William Taft in 1910 to Harry Truman in 1946 all wanted to purchase or annex Greenland during their time in office.

When Trump first announced his plans to take Greenland and make it a US territory, many thought that it had to be a joke, but obviously, it’s not. Reuters ‘Trump interest in buying Greenland ‘not a joke’, Rubio says’ which reported what Trump is willing to do to get Greenland,

“Trump has expressed interest in making Greenland, an autonomous territory of Denmark, a part of the U.S. since his reelection in November. He hasn’t ruled out using military or economic power to persuade Denmark to hand it over.”

The Secretary of State spoke on behalf of what Trump really meant about acquiring Greenland,

“This is not a joke,” Rubio said, “This is not about acquiring land for the purpose of acquiring land. This is in our national interest, and it needs to be solved.”

The Local Denmark reported what Denmark’s foreign minister, Lars Løkke Rasmussen, had said about Trump’s plan to buy Greenland,

“Trump will not have Greenland. Greenland is Greenland. And the Greenlandic people are a people, also in the sense of international law,” Rasmussen told reporters, adding that “this is also why we have said time and again that it is ultimately Greenland that decides Greenland’s situation.”

Reuters ‘Greenlanders overwhelmingly oppose becoming part of the United States, poll shows’ said that

“The survey by pollster Verian, commissioned by the Danish newspaper Berlingske and Greenlandic daily Sermitsiaq, showed only 6% of Greenlanders are in favour of their island becoming part of the U.S., with 9% undecided.”

The report went on to say that

“The poll showed that 45% viewed Trump’s interest in Greenland as a threat, with 43% saying they see it as an opportunity, leaving 13% undecided.” In its conclusion, “Only 8% of those polled said they would be willing to change their Danish citizenship to American, 55% said they would prefer to be Danish citizens, and 37% were undecided.”

This shows that if Greenland held a vote today, they would flatly reject Trump’s offer whatever it may be. The question is what will Trump do to get Greenland? Would he try to forcibly annex Greenland through a military invasion?

As I mentioned earlier, in the last joint session of Congress, Trump spoke to Greenland and said that “We strongly support your right to determine your own future” but why is Mike Waltz, Chris Wright and Usha Vance set to visit Greenland? It looks like the Trump regime is trying to intimidate Greenland who the majority are called the Greenlandic people also known as the Inuit, an indigenous tribe who makes up close to 89 percent of the population followed by 7.5% of Danish origin and other ethnic groups make up the remaining 3 percent.

It is certain that the people of Greenland will have the full support of the international community to stop the US government from occupying their land.  There will be mass protests in Greenland for starters and that would lead to a global condemnation against US imperial policies.

*

Timothy Alexander Guzman writes on his own blog site, Silent Crow News, where this article was originally published.

25 March 2025

Source: globalresearch.ca

By Uriel Araujo

Since President Donald Trump’s administration froze and subsequently slashed funding for the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) this year, Moldova—a small, geopolitically vulnerable nation—has been reportedly thrust into a maelstrom of uncertainty. The Elon Musk-led decision, part of Trump’s “America First” agenda, gutted over 80% of USAID programs globally, including those in Moldova, where the agency had long championed itself as a linchpin for civil society and democratic development—supposedly.

For Moldovan NGOs, once buoyed by American dollars, the fallout has been immediate and quite severe. This disruption offers a chance to actually peel back the veneer of USAID’s benevolence and NATO’s looming influence, thereby revealing a more troubling reality—one of dependency, manipulation, and geopolitical overreach.

The American move is actually part of a larger development, which includes Washington partially withdrawing from Eastern Europe while pivoting to the Pacific, and shifting the burden (of Ukraine, for one thing) onto its European “partners”. To make sense of this logic and understand how the US benefits from it, one just needs to connect these two pieces of news together: a) “European military powers work on 5-10 year plan to replace US in Nato” (Financial Times); and b) the U.S. is responsible for 43% of global arms sales, according to Statista’s Anna Fleck.

Back to Moldova, its NGOs, particularly those focused on allegedly promoting democracy, fighting corruption, and aiding media, have historically relied heavily on USAID funding. In 2024 alone, USAID poured $310 million into Moldova—a staggering enough sum for a nation of 2.6 million people. Over the last three decades, the Romanian speaking country has received around 2.5 billion dollars. Such funds, ostensibly for infrastructure and economic growth, often get funneled into the hands of a select elite of pro-Western activists and journalists.

When Trump’s cuts came into being organizations like Promo-LEX, which depended on USAID for 75-80% of its budget, saw projects grind to a halt. Salaries were slashed, staff laid off, and programs monitoring elections and political financing stalled. The Moldovan government, alongside these NGOs, has scrambled to secure European Union funds, but it turns out the EU’s bureaucratic inertia has left a gaping void.

On the surface, this looks like a disaster, and this is how many see the whole affair—a crippling blow to civil society in a nation already grappling with corruption. Such is the Western narrative and this is how Western propaganda would have us believe. But one just needs to dig deeper, and then the picture changes. Setting aside such wishful descriptions, it turns out USAID’s largesse wasn’t necessarily the altruistic lifeline it claims to be.

Much of its funding in fact propped up a narrow cadre of Western loyalists (I call them “westernalists”) who served as mouthpieces for the agenda of Moldova’s pro-Western President Maia Sandu while sidelining dissenting voices. Reports suggest $110 million went to “court journalists” and investigators tasked with smearing Sandu’s political rivals—hardly a democratic ideal.

A Reuter’s news report (February, 2) highlights USAID’s role in funding so-called independent media across Eastern Europe, including countries like Moldova. It notes that the funding freeze under Trump has indeed caused “chaos in the media ecosystem” in over 30 countries, which illustrates USAID’s significant financial support for media outlets.

According to The Independent, a $135 million USAID pledge was made in 2024 for “energy security” and to counter “Russian disinformation.” The short story is that USAID has invested heavily in Moldova’s media and civil society—hundreds of millions since 2020—to promote “democracy”, counter “disinformation”, and support “Western integration”.

This is similar enough to the script seen in Ukraine. In his 2022 article, University of Chicago political science John Mearsheimer (an eminent member of the so-called “realist” school of foreign policy) recalled that “the EU’s expansion eastward and the West’s backing of the pro-democracy movement in Ukraine—beginning with the Orange Revolution in 2004” were critical elements in bringing upon the ongoing crisis in the region.

What Mearsheimer described as the “West’s triple package of policies—NATO enlargement, EU expansion, and democracy promotion” were key factors. In writing candidly that endeavors to disseminate Western values and to “promote democracy” often involve “funding pro-Western individuals and organizations,” the academic reminds us that there is nothing “neutral” about such idealist initiatives.

Moreover, the October 2024 referendum, when Moldovans narrowly voted to enshrine EU membership in their constitution (the country currently has candidate status) was largely hailed as a triumph of Western alignment—because this is largely what it was all about. USAID and NATO cheerleaders framed it as a bulwark against “Russian meddling”, especially amid the ongoing conflict in Ukraine.

Trump’s funding cuts (and his policy foreign changes) however cast a troubling shadow over this narrative. USAID, as mentioned, had been a key player in shaping Moldova’s pro-EU trajectory, bankrolling civic education and media campaigns to sway public opinion. Without this machinery, the referendum’s momentum feels fragile—it seems less a grassroots victory than a somewhat manufactured outcome now teetering on shaky ground.

Critics of USAID have long argued its role was less about empowering Eastern Europeans and more about pulling them into NATO’s orbit—to counter Russia militarily and “encircle” it rather than a tool to foster genuine European integration. NATO’s fingerprints are subtle but unmistakable: energy security projects, cybersecurity training, and even the CyberCor Institute launched with U.S. backing smack of strategic positioning. Considering all that, the referendum, sold as a democratic choice, begins to increasingly look like a geopolitical chess move, with Moldova as a sort of pawn, from a US-led Western perspective.

While any prognosis of the overall situation screams chaos, there is also a window of opportunity, from a Moldovan point of view. Looking ahead, it is a mixed bag. In the near-term, NGOs face a brutal squeeze. Economically, Moldova’s reliance on foreign aid—exacerbated by USAID’s past privatization schemes like the 1998 Pămînt program—leaves it vulnerable to collapse, with abandoned fields and unemployed workers. Yet there’s a silver lining. The funding halt could break Moldova’s cycle of dependency, pushing NGOs and other actors to innovate and the government to prioritize domestic revenue over foreign largesse. The referendum’s pro-EU mandate might hold if Moldova pivots to authentic self-reliance rather than staying under NATO’s militarized shadow—otherwise Moldova’s political actors, now in a changed political landscape, might rethink the whole affair.

While so much is talked about an alleged “Russian threat”, NATO remains the elephant in the room. Of course any regional great power will attempt to exploit a vacuum, but the truth is that a more independent Moldova is better positioned than one tethered to USAID’s puppet strings.

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Uriel Araujo, PhD, is an anthropology researcher with a focus on international and ethnic conflicts. He is a regular contributor to Global Research.

25 March 2025

Source: globalresearch.ca

By Barbara Nimri Aziz

It was costly for British actor Vanessa Redgrave beginning in the 1970s, pilloried for her crime of speaking out on an unspeakable subject. She refused to back down, calling her adversaries ‘Zionist hooligans’. Yes, really! Forty years later, resolute in the face of a tenacious enmity, she retorted “I had to do my bit”, at the age of 81, still blacklisted by the entertainment industry, still under attack. 

In 1978, at the height of a distinguished career, Redgrave – a microphone in one hand, her Oscar in the other (for her role as the anti-Nazi crusader in Julia) – dared affirm her political principles while addressing the doggedly ‘apolitical’ Academy Awards audience. 

And what had Redgrave dared to do? Advocate sovereignty and justice for Palestine. Standing alone before fellow film stars and international viewers 47 years ago was far more daring than it is today. Did she realize the high price she would pay? Banishment from the profession and decades of relentless scorn followed that moment of moral probity. The bilious attacks on her stemmed from Palestine a documentary she produced the year before, in 1977. (Even its showing in 2023 was met by violent threats.) It was about the PLO. Remember the PLO? 

Today the blasphemous, unutterable word is ‘hamas’. As I expected, the outlawed term never crossed the lips of No Other Land’s happy Oscar holders at this year’s award ceremony. The Israeli director’s statement seemed well measured, considering the pitiful, helpless images of Gaza burned into the minds of tens of millions worldwide during the past 17 months. He called for parity between his people and the Palestinians, unfailingly adding an appeal for the release of Israeli hostages. As I recall, the words ‘Gaza’ and ‘genocide’ were totally absent in his statement and in brief, shy remarks by his Palestinian partner. 

The cost of this 2025 Oscar was surely paid (and continues to be extracted) in the saddest, most horrifying and highest human price – the massive number of martyred Gazans and uncounted wounded among the hundreds of thousands made homeless and starving. To this day. 

Perhaps the award is a sorry acknowledgement of Gazans’ sufferings and losses. Perhaps a substitute for the utter helplessness of millions of caring people worldwide marching in city-after-city in support of Palestinian rights and ending the genocide. Perhaps an alternate for failed legal actions to hold Israel accountable. Perhaps for the countless moral appeals that dissipated into a vacuum. Perhaps it is to compensate for earlier Palestine film nominees who never made the cut. (Like a life-achievement award to a veteran actor repeatedly passed over.) 

No Other Land is not the first film to gain Oscar attention. In 2013 Five Broken Cameras was nominated in the same category. An Israeli production, it chronicled a Palestinian family’s thwarted attempts to film the willful destruction of their home. In 2001, yet another Israeli production, Promises, reached the Academy’s list of nominees. It featured 7 boys– 4 Jews, and 3 Palestinians – residing in Jerusalem and The West Bank. At that time, it may have seemed prescient, a ‘promise’ of peaceful co-existence. Long forgotten. 

Significantly, like No Other Land, Promises and Five Broken Cameras, all depict Palestinian life – strained, tormented, or reflective; always fraught, forever uncertain – in the Occupied West Bank. Not Gaza. Not where hardships have always been so much more severe. (The Occupied West Bank had been conveniently accessible to outsiders, especially for an Israeli participant.)

Filmmaker Cherien Dabis, a rising figure in the industry, had hoped to break that pattern when she undertook production of All That’s Left of You inside Gaza. Dabis, the film’s Palestinian writer and director, began filming in Gaza in 2022. After the war erupted in October 2023, she was forced to shift production to Jordan and elsewhere, becoming a multi-national production. Premiering at this year’s Sundance Film Festival, it stands above the others as an exclusive all-Palestinian work and features the well-known actors Maria Zreik, Mohammed Bakri and Ramzi Maqdisi. All That’s Left of You is an epic drama that traces the fortune of three generations of Palestinians beginning with the Nakba, the 1948 expulsion of Palestinians from their homeland. 

That momentous calamity is the focus of Farha, another new and powerful production. Told through the eyes of a teenage girl, Farha is by Jordanian-based director Darin Salaam in collaboration with Watermelon Films. Watermelon Films also produced From Ground Zero, a collection of 22 short films assembled from war footage sent from inside Gaza. (If our 17 months of live feeds via TikTok and on television have not shown us the story.)

Up to 30 years ago, most commentaries about Israel’s brutal occupation in Palestine were one-dimensional expositions from political scientists and an occasional journalist. (Among them Robert Fisk was an exception). They have now been eclipsed, perhaps unsurprisingly, by a generation of artists. Palestinian creative writers are in the forefront of interpreting for our distracted, distant world, the trauma and determination of compatriots in Occupied Gaza and the West Bank. Paralleling them are Palestinian-made films documenting their pasts and present. Currently showing in film festivals is A State of Passion and Where Olive Trees Weep. 

A State of Passion, by director Carol Mansour and producer Muna Khalidi, follows a British Palestinian surgeon’s valiant efforts during ongoing Israeli bombardment. It stands alone as the only Gaza-based production. Where Olive Trees Weep records Palestinian journalist and therapist Ashira Darwish’s 2022 journey in the West Bank. Salt of This Sea by Annemarie Jacir and Bye Bye Tiberias 2023 by Lina Soualem are also directed by Palestinian women.

Film festivals in Toronto and Chicago are exclusively devoted to the Palestinian experience. Showcases like these serve to draw attention to the sometimes-overlooked contributions of Arab filmmakers – many Palestinian. 2025 marks the 29^th year of AFMI, Arab Film and Media Institute in San Francisco, paralleling 25 years of Aflamuna in Beirut. A major US venue for Arab cinema talent, AFMI screens Arab films from across the globe. An established tradition in the Arab homelands, filmmaking in the diaspora is now flourishing. Early productions are less easy to find. But anyone who cares about Palestinian history can find work by veteran filmmakers Nazareth-born Elia Suleiman and the Lebanon-based team Mai Masri and Jean Chamoun whose first production was Under the Rubble (1983). The director of Omar and Rana’s Wedding is Palestinian-Dutch filmmaker Hany Abu-Assad . His Paradise Now was a 2006 Oscar nominee.

Repeated wars and upsets, inexorable hope, the arrival of new talent and the compulsion to not allow their rights and their struggle to die is affirmed in every one of these productions. Every personal story and recalled historical moment underlie the awful images of Gaza relentlessly piercing our consciousness. 

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Barbara Nimri Aziz whose anthropological research has focused on the peoples of the Himalayas is the author of the newly published “Yogmaya and Durga Devi: Rebel Women of Nepal”, available on Amazon.

24 March 2025

Source: globalresearch.ca