Is the US Funding Anti-Netanyahu Rallies?

Officials traveling with the Israeli prime minister told an Israeli online newspaper that Washington has been suspected of funding mass protests against Benjamin Netanyahu’s judicial reforms that have been rocking the country for over two months.

A senior government official accompanying Netanyahu on his trip to Italy told the daily this week that the protests seemed to be well organized and amply funded with what he estimated to be millions of dollars.

“We are following what is happening. This is a very high-level organization. There is an organized center from which all the demonstrators branch out in an orderly manner,” the unnamed official was quoted as saying.

He said it was “clear to us” who was paying for the transportation of thousands of protesters as well as all the flags and stages, while another member of Netanyahu’s entourage confirmed to the paper that the senior official was referring to the United States.

Separately, Netanyahu’s son Yair shared an article from the right-wing website Breitbart that claimed the US State Department was funding one of the groups involved in the protests.

Half a million protesters reportedly rallied nationwide on Saturday night to demand that Netanyahu’s hard-right government go back on its decision to shake up the judiciary. The reform seeks to curtail the Supreme Court’s power to review and strike down laws that it rules to be unconstitutional.

China, Some Economic Wake Up Statistics


Chart in the Financial Times: China is now as big as the US and the EU
COMBINED (!) in terms of manufacturing value added (a measure of the net-output of all manufacturing activity in a country).

Just 15 years ago it was smaller than either one of these 2. Crazy fast change!

China Steps Up – A New Era Has Dawned in World Politics

by M. K. Bhadrakumar, via Indian Punchline

Under Chinese mediation, Saudi Arabia and Iran have reached an agreement to resume diplomatic relations, Beijing, March 10, 2023

The agreement announced on Friday in Beijing regarding the normalisation of diplomatic relations between Saudi Arabia and Iran and the reopening of their embassies is a historic event. It goes way beyond an issue of Saudi-Iranian relations. China’s mediation signifies that we are witnessing a profound shift of the tectonic plates in the geopolitics of the 21st century.

The joint statement issued on Friday in Beijing begins by saying that the Saudi-Iranian agreement was reached “in response to the noble initiative of President Xi Jinping.” The dramatic beginning goes on to state that Saudi Arabia and Iran have expressed their “appreciation and gratitude” to Xi Jinping and the Chinese government “for hosting and sponsoring the talks, and the efforts it placed towards its success.”

The joint communique also mentioned Iraq and Oman for fostering the Saudi-Iranian dialogue during 2021-2022. But the salience is that the United States, which has been traditionally the dominant power in West Asian politics for close to eight decades, is nowhere in the picture.

Yet, this is about the reconciliation between the two biggest regional powers in the Persian Gulf region. The US retrenchment denotes a colossal breakdown of American diplomacy. It will remain a black mark in President Biden’s foreign policy legacy.

But Biden must take the blame for it. Such a cataclysmic failure is largely to be traced to his fervour to impose his neoconservative dogmas as an adjunct of America’s military might and Biden’s own frequent insistence that the fate of humankind hinges on the outcome of a cosmic struggle between democracy and autocracy.

China has shown that Biden’s hyperbole is delusional and it grates against realities. If Biden’s moralistic, ill-considered rhetoric alienated Saudi Arabia, his attempts to suppress Iran met with stubborn resistance from Tehran. And, in the final analysis, Biden literally drove both Riyadh and Tehran to search for countervailing forces that would help them to push back his oppressive, overbearing attitude.

The US’ humiliating exclusion from the centre stage of West Asian politics constitutes a “Suez moment” for the superpower, comparable to the crisis experienced by the UK in 1956, which obliged the British to sense that their imperial project had reached a dead end and the old way of doing things—whipping weaker nations into line as ostensible obligations of global leadership —was no longer going to work and would only lead to disastrous reckoning.

The stunning part here is the sheer brain power and intellectual resources and ‘soft power’ that China has brought into play to outwit the US. The US has at least 30 military bases in West Asia — five in Saudi Arabia alone — but it has lost the mantle of leadership. Come to think of it, Saudi Arabia, Iran and China made their landmark announcement on the very same day Xi Jinping got elected for a third term as president.

What we are seeing is a new China under the leadership of Xi Jinping trotting over the high knoll. Yet, it is adopting a self-effacing posture claiming no laurels for itself. There is no sign of the ‘Middle Kingdom syndrome,’ which the US propagandists had warned against.

On the contrary, for the world audience — especially countries like India or Vietnam, Turkey, Brazil or South Africa — China has presented a salutary example of how a democratised multipolar world can work in future — how it is possible to anchor big power diplomacy on consensual, conciliatory politics, trade and interdependence and advance a ‘win-win’ outcome.

Implicit in this is another huge message: China as a factor of global balance and stability. It is not only Asia-Pacific and West Asia who are watching. The audience also includes Africa and Latin America — in fact, the entire non-Western world that forms the big majority of world community who are known as the Global South.

What the pandemic and the Ukraine crisis have brought to the surface is the latent geopolitical reality accruing through decades that the Global South rejects the policies of neo-mercantalism pursued by the West in the garb of ‘liberal internationalism.’

The West is pursuing a hierarchical international order. None other than the EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell blurted this out in an unguarded moment recently with a touch of racist overtone when he said from a public platform that ‘Europe Is a garden. The rest of the world Is a jungle, and the jungle could Invade the garden.’

Tomorrow, China could as well be challenging the US hegemony over the Western Hemisphere. The recent paper by the Chinese Foreign Ministry titled ‘US Hegemony and Its Perils’ tells us that Beijing will no longer be on the defensive.

Meanwhile, a realignment of forces on the world stage is taking place with China and Russia on one side and the US on the other. Doesn’t it convey a big message that on the very eve of the historic announcement in Beijing on Friday, the Saudi Arabian foreign minister Prince Faisal bin Farhan Al Saud landed suddenly in Moscow on a ‘working visit’ and went into a huddle with Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov who was visibly delighted? (here, here and here )

Of course, we will never know what role Moscow would have played behind the scenes in coordination with Beijing to build bridges between Riyadh and Tehran. All we know is that Russia and China actively coordinate their foreign policy moves. Interestingly, on March 6, President Putin had a telephone conversation with Iran’s President Ebrahim Raisi.

Audacity of hope

To be sure, the geopolitics of West Asia will never be the same again. Realistically, the first sparrow of spring has appeared but the ice was melted for only three or four rods from the shore. Nonetheless, the sun’s rays give hope, signalling warmer days to come.

Conceivably, Riyadh won’t have any truck further with the diabolical plots hatched in Washington and Tel Aviv to create an anti-Iran alliance in West Asia. Nor is it in the realms of possibility that Saudi Arabia will be party to any US-Israeli attacks on Iran.

This badly isolates Israel in the region and renders the US toothless. In substantive terms, it scatters the Biden administration’s feverish efforts lately to cajole Riyadh to join Abraham Accords.

However, significantly, a commentary in Global Times noted somewhat audaciously that the Saudi-Iranian deal “set a positive example for other regional hotspot issues, such as the easing and settlement of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. And in the future, China could play an important role in building a bridge for countries to solve long-standing thorny issues in the Middle East just as what it did this time.”

Indeed, the joint communique issued in Beijing says, “The three countries [Saudi Arabia, Iran and China] expressed their keenness to exert all efforts towards enhancing regional and international peace and security.” Can China pull a rabbit out of the hat? Time will tell.

For the present, though, the Saudi-Iranian rapprochement will certainly have positive fallouts on the efforts toward a negotiated settlement in Yemen and Syria as well as on the political situation in Lebanon.

The joint communique emphasises that Saudi Arabia and Iran intend to revive the 1998 General Agreement for Cooperation in the Fields of Economy, Trade, Investment, Technology, Science, Culture, Sports, and Youth. All in all, the Biden administration’s maximum pressure strategy toward Iran has crashed and the West’s sanctions against Iran are being rendered ineffectual. The US’ policy options on Iran have shrunk. Iran gains strategic depth to negotiate with the US.

The cutting edge of the US sanctions lies in the restrictions on Iran’s oil trade and access to western banks. It is entirely conceivable that a backlash is about to begin as Russia, Iran and Saudi Arabia — three top oil/gas producing countries start accelerating their search for payment mechanisms bypassing the American dollar.

China is already discussing such an arrangement with Saudi Arabia and Iran. China-Russia trade and economic transactions try to shun American dollar for payments. It is well understood that any significant erosion in the status of the dollar as ‘world currency’ will not only spell doom for the American economy but will cripple the US’ capacity to wage ‘forever wars’ abroad and impose its global hegemony.

The bottom line is that the reconciliation between Saudi Arabia and Iran is also a precursor to their induction as BRICS members in a near future. To be sure, there is a Russian-Chinese understanding already on this score. The BRICS membership for Saudi Arabia and Iran will radically reset the power dynamic in the international system.

BRICS Countries Overtake the G7 in Share of World GDP.

Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa (BRICS) now provide 31.5% of global GDP, with further projected growth – while Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, United Kingdom, and United States (G7) provide 30.7%.

Will the leadership of G7 continue to reference themselves as “the global community”, as if no one else makes a difference?

The Zionist Coup Against Kennedy

by Mark H. Gaffney via Unz Review

Barren Summit

Forty years and counting
Since Kennedy was killed
And our vacuum of leadership
Still has not been filled.

Why should those shoes present
Such difficulty filling?
The candidates are weeded out
By those who did the killing.

by David Martin, author of The Assassination of James Forrestal (2019)

The last few years have been a painful time for those of us old enough to remember the 1960s. Over my lifetime I watched my country decline by every measure of greatness. It’s been excruciating, slow and nearly imperceptible from day to day, like water torture. Who would have guessed, even ten years ago, that we would now be on the brink of nuclear war with Russia? Each day, I scour the news and Internet hoping and praying for the peace movement to show up. But where are they? Even as events continue to escalate and momentum builds for a wider war in eastern Europe, I see no placards, no protesters in the streets, and very little evidence that our people understand what is happening. I never thought it would come to this.

World War II concluded ~78 years ago and today almost no one is left alive who remembers. Must we relive the nightmares of history every third or fourth generation simply because humans do not live long enough to preserve the horrific memories of the last war? Something within me resists this explanation, however, as too simplistic. There is another possibility: that our people have been disenfranchised, so dumbed down and demoralized by umpteen years of nonstop propaganda (including Russia-hate) that they are no longer able to think clearly, nor act to restore our country.

In my opinion, the greatest measure of our decline has been the abysmal quality of our leadership, especially at the national level. If this is true, then we must ask: How did it happen? In articles I read and while talking with friends, I often see/hear it repeated that the downward spiral started with the assassination of John F. Kennedy. I agree and take it as self evident that rightful authority has been under assault ever since.

Recently, I was compelled to modify my own views about the JFK murder, after reading an extraordinary book by a French writer Laurent Guyenot, From Yahweh to Zion (2020). The author is an outstanding biblical scholar, and he has written the most penetrating analysis of Zionism I have ever seen. Like many Americans, I once believed that the CIA and Italian mafia were behind the JFK assassination. But I now discount the-CIA-&-mob-did-it narrative as just another limited hangout.

Over the years, I studied the JFK murder spasmodically, returning to the issue again and again. But the truth remained elusive because of false leads, misdirections and conflicting narratives, the purpose of which, we need to understand, is to obfuscate the facts and keep us in the dark. Yet, despite all of the mind control and propaganda, evidence has been mounting that vice president Lyndon Johnson (LBJ) orchestrated the assassination of John F. Kennedy. I will now present some of the most salient points, the gist of what I have learned.

President John F. Kennedy’s plan to drop Lyndon Johnson from the ticket during his upcoming re-election campaign in 1964 has been widely reported. But less well known is the fact that Johnson was not only going to be replaced, he was facing prison time. During his brother’s first term, Attorney General Robert Kennedy learned a great deal about Johnson’s criminal activities. And RFK had begun feeding this evidence to the Senate Rules Committee. Just hours before his brother was gunned down in Dallas, the committee heard testimony that Johnson had received a $100,000 kickback for finagling a contract with a Ft Worth Texas firm, General Dynamics, to build the F-111 fighter plane. (Roger Stone, The Man Who Killed Kennedy, 2013, p. 198)

There was also evidence Johnson received another large kickback from a Texas businessman, Billie Sol Estes. Earlier, Johnson had tipped off Estes that Congress would soon pass a bill to pay farmers not to grow cotton. At the time, the country had a huge cotton surplus and the glut was driving down the price. Estes moved quickly to exploit the inside information by leasing hundreds of thousands of acres of Texas farmland, which ‘entitled’ him to millions in subsidies. Later, he admitted that he personally delivered a suitcase with $200,000 in cash to Johnson as payment for the tip. (James T. Tague, LBJ and the Kennedy Killing, 2013, p. 400)

Life Magazine was also gathering evidence about Johnson’s shady dealings and was set to run an expose in the next issue. Today, few Americans realize that at the time of JFK’s murder Johnson was facing a corruption scandal and the likelihood of prosecution. Had the facts come out, LBJ’s political career would have been over. Vice president Johnson only flipped the situation by removing the man who stood in his path to power. (The Man Who Killed Kennedy, p. 199)

Several of Johnson’s Texas associates, including his secretary Bobby Baker and Billie Sol Estes eventually did go to prison. Years later, Estes told a Texas Grand Jury that Johnson had ordered the murders of at least six other people, these were before Kennedy, including his own loose-lipped sister. Johnson’s sister Josepha apparently drank too much, slept around, and knew far too much about the stolen 1948 election that put Lyndon in the US Senate. In 1951, Johnson’s hit man, Mac Wallace, was convicted of one of these murders in the first degree. It was only Johnson’s skill at perverting the Texas judicial system that got Wallace off with a five-year suspended sentence. If this sounds incredible, that was also my reaction. Nonetheless, it happens to be true. (LBJ and the Kennedy Killing, p 395 – 400)

Some of the most damning testimony against Johnson was given by a prostitute named Madeleine Brown, his mistress of twenty-one years and the mother of one of his three known out-of-wedlock children. In later years, Brown spoke freely to researchers about what she knew. In 1988, she told James T. Tague that on New Year’s Eve, 1964, a very intoxicated Johnson told her the sordid tale about how he arranged Kennedy’s assassination. (LBJ and the Kennedy Killing, p. 321)

Should we believe her? Is the testimony of a prostitute credible? The late author James T. Tague thought so. In his 2013 book, LBJ and the Kennedy Killing Tague stated that although initially he dismissed Brown’s story as outlandish, over the years as he dug deeper he was able to corroborate nearly everything she told him. Tague was himself in Dallas on the day Kennedy died. He was standing near the Dealey Plaza overpass when it happened, and was slightly wounded by a small piece of concrete that flew up in his face when an errant bullet hit the nearby curb. The experience made such a deep impression on Tague that he spent the next forty years investigating Kennedy’s murder. His book makes for essential reading. (LBJ and the Kennedy Killing, p. 353-356)

But on the night before the killing there was also a fateful meeting in Dallas at the sprawling suburban home of oil millionaire Clint Murchison. It was billed as a birthday party with dinner and drinks to honor J. Edgar Hoover, FBI Director whose long-time friendship with Murchison is well documented. Hoover and his partner Clyde Tolson (second in command at the FBI) were frequent guests at Murchison’s famous race track at La Jolla, California. Both men were gamblers and loved horse racing.

That evening, Johnson did not arrive until well after midnight as the guests were thinning out. At which time, a smaller group gathered in a separate room behind closed doors. Brown told Tague she waited in the living room, and when this second meeting finally broke up, Johnson came over, squeezed her hand, and whispered in her ear: “after tomorrow those Kennedys will never embarrass me again.” (LBJ and the Kennedy Killing, p. 356)

Madeleine Brown held an executive position at a commercial advertising firm in Dallas. She told a friend she worked in advertising by day and as a call girl by night. She was a high-class hooker and came to know many powerful and wealthy men in Texas society. She was a familiar face for this reason and because of her relationship with Johnson. Brown knew all of the principals at Murchison’s party and she identified twenty-five individuals who stayed for the subsequent meeting. Her list of names originally appeared in Robert Gaylon Ross’s 2001 book, The Elite serial Killers. Tague acknowledges that Brown had been drinking that night. He concedes that her list needs further vetting. Clarity about who left early and who stayed for the late night meeting is vital because the latter group was complicit in the murder of Kennedy.

Murchison’s cook and the butler corroborated some of the names, as did Robert Gaylon Ross who was Tague’s friend. I am not going to discuss every name on the list, only those that in my view are the most important. Here is the list.

  • H. L. Hunt, billionaire oil man
  • Texas governor John Connally
  • FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover
  • Clyde Tolson, second in command of the FBI
  • Dallas mayor Earle Cabell
  • ex-Dallas mayor R. L. Thornton
  • Dallas County sheriff Bill Decker
  • Jack Ruby
  • Carlos Marcello
  • Texas ranger and US marshal Clint Peoples
  • W. O. Bankston, local car dealer
  • Joe Yarbrough, construction
  • George Brown, of Brown and Root
  • Amon G. Carter Jr.
  • John Currington, advisor to H. L. Hunt
  • John McCloy, chairman of the Council on Foreign Relations
  • B. R. Sheffield, military construction
  • Cliff Carter, executive director of the Democratic National Committee
  • Joe Civello, Dallas mafia
  • Larry Campbell, Jimmy Hoffa representative
  • Don Smith, General manager, Del Mar race track
  • Mac Wallace, assassin

Notice, the list includes Texas Governor John Connally, Dallas mayor Earle Cabell, the ex-mayor R. L. Thornton, and the Dallas County sheriff Bill Decker. Through Cabell and Decker Johnson also controlled Dallas chief of police Jesse Curry and the chief of homicide, Will Fritz.

Governor Connally’s name was on the list, and his role was crucial. It was Connally who originally invited president Kennedy to Texas. A problem arose, however, because the White House advance man, Jerry Bruno, insisted on a different motorcade route that did not include Dealey Plaza, which was the site for the planned hit. When Connally refused to budge about the route the disagreement became so bitter the White House asked Bill Moyers, then deputy director of the Peace Corps, to try to mediate a solution. Moyers was close to both Connally and Johnson. It was only after Connally threatened to cancel the presidential visit altogether that the White House finally relented and agreed to the route through Dealey Plaza. (The Man Who Killed Kennedy, p. 222-223)

Another dust up also involved Connally, though indirectly. Early on the evening of November 21, Kennedy summoned Johnson to his suite at the Rice Hotel in Houston. A fierce argument ensued about who would sit where in the motorcade the next day in Dallas. Johnson wanted Connally to ride with him out of concern for his safety. But Kennedy wanted a show of party unity and insisted that Senator Ralph Yarborough should ride with Johnson. Yarborough was the leader of the liberal wing of the Democratic Party in Texas, while Johnson led the conservative Democrats. This meant Connally would sit with Kennedy in the lead vehicle, exposing him to serious injury or death. Kennedy won the argument. A furious Johnson reportedly stormed out of the room.

Despite the risks, Connally did as he was told. He had been Johnson’s subservient bagman ever since the stolen 1948 election when he served as Johnson’s campaign manager. Johnson once bragged: ‘I can call John Connally at midnight, and if I tell him to come over and clean my shoes, he’ll come running.’ Johnson’s argument with Kennedy in Houston explains why he did not arrive at Murchison’s until after midnight. (Robert A. Caro, Means of Ascent, 1990, p.118)

Also present was Amon G. Carter, Jr., owner of the Ft. Worth Star Telegram, the largest circulation newspaper in Texas. Carter also owned WBAC radio and a TV network, Channel 5 (NBC 5).

As noted, J. Edgar Hoover was also in attendance. He was a long time ally of Johnson’s and his role was vital: Hoover would manage the cover up. The FBI would control the forensic evidence and steer any investigation toward the predetermined narrative of a lone gunman.

Consider that through the aforementioned individuals Johnson controlled state and local government, the site for the planned hit, law enforcement, the media, and the cover up. LBJ had all of the bases covered.

But Johnson also had unlimited financial backing from the oil patch. Oil tycoon H. L. Hunt was present and no doubt shared his friend Clint Murchison’s antipathy for president Kennedy. Both men stood to lose millions if Kennedy went ahead with his announced plan to reduce or eliminate the oil depletion allowance. Caroline Kennedy Schlossberg once stated that her mother Jackie Kennedy Onassis believed that Texas oil men were behind the murder of her husband. (LBJ and the Kennedy Killing, p. 353)

At least one of the shooters was present, Mac Wallace who was a convicted murderer, as noted. Years later, a previously unidentified fingerprint that police lifted from a cardboard box on the sixth floor of the Texas Book Depository would be found to match Wallace’s prints taken at the time of his 1951 murder trial. (Jesse E. Curry, JFK Assassination File, 1969, p. 53; also see Barr McClellan, Blood. Money & Power: How LBJ Killed JFK, 2003; also see LBJ and the Kennedy Killing, p. 392)

Also present was the man who shot Lee Harvey Oswald: Jack Ruby. It is common knowledge that Ruby was a mobster and I had always assumed this meant the Italian variety. But I was wrong. Ruby’s actual name was Jacob Leon Rubenstein and he was the son of Jewish Polish immigrants. Ruby’s connections were with the Jewish underworld. According to former Los Angeles Police Department detective Gary Wean, Ruby was friendly with Los Angeles gangster Mickey Cohen who had replaced Benjamin “Bugsy Siegel” Siegelbaum as Jewish crime boss on the West coast. Detective Wean accumulated a large file on Cohen, and he claims that in 1946 when he first encountered Ruby in Los Angeles, Ruby was riding with Cohen in a large black limousine. A year later, Wean was introduced to Ruby at an LA nightclub known as Harry’s Place. (Gary Wean, There’s a Fish in the Courthouse, 1987, p. 681)

In his autobiography Mickey Cohen describes how he became infatuated with Zionism. He also explains how, after World War II, he started shipping army contraband and surplus weapons to the Irgun. (Mickey Cohen, In My Own Words, 1975, p. 91-92)

Cohen was personally acquainted with Irgun chief Menachem Begin whom he met while the terrorist was ‘on the lam’ sojourning in California. At the time, Begin was still wanted in Israel/Palestine for blowing up the King David Hotel in 1946. He would remain in the political wilderness until the 1967 Six Day War when prime minister Levi Eshkol invited him to join a ‘government of national unity.’ That signaled Begin’s ‘rehabilitation.’ Later, he would stage a political comeback and even become Israeli prime minister.

But Ruby was also associated with the ‘chairman of the board,’ Meyer Lansky, godfather of the Jewish underworld. Ruby owned a stake in Lansky’s gambling casino, the Colonial Inn, located north of Miami Beach. (Jim Marrs, Crossfire, 1989, p. 392)

Lanksy was also a Zionist with strong Israel connections. Lansky was a major donor to Israel and to the Anti-Defamation League (ADL). His daughter Mira Lansky Boland later became an ADL official. (Steven Fox, Blood and Power: Organized Crime in Twentieth Century America, 1989, p. 314.)

I wish I had space here to adequately cover Meyer Lansky. But to do him ‘justice’ would fill a book. Lansky was the long-time accomplice and partner in crime of the notorious ‘Lucky’ Luciano. He was instrumental in arranging the historic meetings in 1943 between Luciano and the US Office of Naval Intelligence (ONI). At the time Luciano was serving a 30 – 50 year prison sentence in New York for running a prostitution racket. The US Navy needed the assistance of Luciano’s syndicate to protect US harbors and shipping from German sabotage and attacks that had become a serious problem. The deal crafted in the meetings with Luciano, mediated by Lansky, achieved the desired objective.

Later, Luciano’s mafia connections assured the success of the US invasion of Sicily and the roll back of Benito Mussolini. After the war, the US commuted Luciano’s sentence for services rendered and deported him back to Italy. Mussolini hated the mafia and by the 1930s had nearly eradicated it. But the fateful US government compromise with Luciano enabled the mafia to recover. Within two years, Luciano had rebuilt his heroin trafficking operation in Sicily on a bigger scale than ever. Meanwhile, Lansky managed Luciano’s financial affairs in the US. (Alfred W. McCoy, The Politics of Heroin, 1972, p. 28 – 45)

In 1949-1950, Lansky also helped Luciano set up the notorious French Connection that handled the processing and transport of Turkish opium to Marseilles where it was processed into heroin, then sent on to the US. The network was not solely Jewish and involved elements of Luciano’s Sicilian/Italian mafia and even Corsicans. But Lansky handled the finances and arranged the laundering of the profits. The Lansky-Luciano network ‘prospered’ for many years and resulted in a huge explosion of drug addiction in American cities. Much of the heroin entered the US through Cuba and Florida. Transport was handled by another Lansky ally, the Trafficante family based in Tampa. (The Politics of Heroin, p. 44-45)

A large portion of the profits returned to Europe where it was laundered through Swiss banks. After washing, the money came back to the US or went elsewhere for investment. Lansky, a wizard at laundering illicit money, used a number of Swiss banks including one he personally owned, the Exchange and Investment Bank of Geneva. Another was the brainchild of an orthodox rabbi, Tibor Pinchas Rosenbaum: the International Credit Bank (ICB) of Geneva. (The Politics of Heroin, p. 45; also see Michael Collins Piper, Final Judgement, 2004, chapters 7, 11 and 12))

ICB was a Jewish bank. Rosenbaum had also co-founded the World Zionist Congress and was a director (and treasurer) of the Jewish Agency. ICB had a reputation for accepting deposits from anywhere, no questions asked. Various ministries of the Israeli government held accounts at the bank, including the Mossad, the Defense Ministry, and the Histadrut, Israel’s labor federation. Another account was held by the Israel Corporation, a government supported development company. According to a report in the New York Times, ICB was used by the Israeli government for arms purchases and to ‘help channel funds from the international Jewish community into Israel.’ (Clyde H. Farnsworth, ‘A Global Bank Tangle and its Lost Millions’, The New York Times, April 9, 1975)

Did Israel use laundered drug money to finance arms deals, or even to finance Israel’s ultra-secret nuclear weapons program? It is possible. On one occasion Shimon Peres reportedly called up Rosenbaum and demanded $7 million dollars within 24 hours ‘for Israel’s national security.’ Rosenbaum complied and delivered the funds overnight. Given this kind of activity it is not surprising that ICB collapsed in 1974-1976 amidst claims of skimming and looted assets. The story is so tangled it resembles a trip down Alice’s rabbit hole or through the looking glass. (‘A Global Bank Tangle and its Lost Millions’)

With very few exceptions, students of the JFK assassination have typically passed over in silence the almost certain involvement of the Jewish underworld in the crime of the century. This needs to change for a reason that ought to be self-evident. In the early 1960s, Attorney General Robert Kennedy’s legal crusade against organized crime posed a serious and immediate threat to Meyer Lansky’s crime network in the US. In 1961, Kennedy’s justice department incarcerated Mickey Cohen, Lansky’s west coast boss, and charged him with tax evasion. (Wyatt Reid, Inside Mob Boss Mickey Cohen’s flashy Reign as the King of Los Angeles, August 6, 2022, posted at https://allthatsinteresting.com/mickey-cohen )

By 1963, RFK’s justice department was also targeting another Lansky figure, Carlos Marcello, who managed Lansky’s holdings in New Orleans. They had already deported Marcello once and in 1963 were attempting to do so again. The Jewish mob certainly had a motive to get rid of Kennedy. It is called self preservation. So, I was not surprised to learn that Marcello’s name is on the list, and that he was present that night at Murchison’s. (Hank Messick, Lansky, 1971, p. 86 – 87)

They say a sign hung above the door at Marcello’s Town and Country motel in New Orleans. The sign read: THREE CAN KEEP A SECRET IF TWO ARE DEAD. Although Marcello’s actual role in the JFK assassination remains unclear, one likely reason for his attendance in Dallas would have been to represent Lansky.

Jack Ruby’s role, on the other hand, was highly visible. Later, Ruby told his defense attorney William Kunstler that he killed Oswald “for the Jews.” The admission is so shocking that I obtained a copy of Kunstler’s autobiography just to confirm that Ruby said it. No mistake, the quote can be found in Kunstler’s book in black-and-white, verbatim. But no less shocking was Kunstler’s verbal hocus-pocus as he attempted to spin the comment and explain it away. (William Kunstler, My Life as a Radical Lawyer, 1996, p. 158-160)

Kunstler described Ruby as ‘as one of the most confused and confusing people I ever met.’ But Ruby seems perfectly clear to me in a 1965 interview. (https://youtu.be/pooxqYBIlEw ) Notice, at the end Ruby mentions that if Adlai Stevenson had been vice president the JFK assassination would never have happened. His meaning could not be more clear. Stevenson was Kennedy’s preferred choice for VP in 1960. Ruby is fingering Johnson for Kennedy’s murder.

According to Peter Dale Scott, one of the first phone calls Ruby made after Oswald’s arrest was to Al Gruber, an associate of Mickey Cohen. (Peter Dale Scott, Deep Politics and the Death of JFK, 1993, p. 143)

My own view is that Ruby was under orders from LBJ to make the hit on Oswald. But it is also possible, even likely, that Ruby needed some additional ‘persuasion’ to stiffen his nerve. Any mob decision to cover up the assassination of a US president would have had to come from the very top. That might have been Luciano but for the fact Luciano passed away the previous year. In November 1963, that left Meyer Lansky as the boss of bosses. But Lansky would never have delivered such a message in person. He would have delegated the chore to someone close to Ruby. But not Cohen who was still behind bars.

As Gail Raven, a former girl friend and exotic dancer at Ruby’s Carousal Club put it: ‘He had no choice….Jack had bosses, just like everyone else.’ Notice that Raven refers to ‘bosses,’ not boss. (Arnaldo M. Fernandez, “The Hit Man And The Mobster: Jack Ruby And Santos Trafficante,” posted at https://jfkfacts.org/the-man-and-the-mobster-jack-ruby-and-santos-trafficante/ )

Dorothy Kilgallen nearly busts open the case

Dorothy Kilgallen was one of the most intelligent journalists who wrote about the Kennedy assassination. She was also one of the bravest. For many years, Kilgallen was a regular on the popular TV quiz show, What’s My Line? where she displayed an ability to think on her feet. Kilgallen had a knack for discovering the true identity of the featured guests. She also wrote a weekly news/gossip column that was carried by 200 papers. Kilgallen’s specialty was juicy tid-bits from Hollywood, high profile court cases and unsolved murders. By the 1950s, Kilgallen enjoyed a celebrity status unmatched in her day.

She was also a dogged investigator with the instincts of a blood hound. After the Kennedy assassination, Kilgallen was first journalist to question the official narrative of a lone gunman. Indeed, she did so in her very next column posted one week after the assassination. On November 29, 1963, she wrote: “The case is closed is it? Well I’d like to know how in a big smart town like Dallas, a man like Jack Ruby, operator of a striptease honky tonk, could stroll in and out of police headquarters as if it were a health club at a time when a small army of law enforcers was keeping a ‘tight security guard’ on Oswald….That is why so many people are saying there is ‘something queer’ about the killing of Oswald, something strange about the way his case was handled, a great deal missing in the official account…”

Later, when Kilgallen attended the trial in Dallas of Jack Ruby she was the only journalist to be granted a private interview with the accused (on two occasions). This was at Ruby’s request. Apparently ‘What’s My Line?’ was one of Jack’s favorite TV shows. Kilgallen wrote that she stayed behind at the trial because she had been told Ruby wanted to talk. When Ruby’s co-counsel Joe Tonahill beckoned to her she went up to the defense table. Ruby rose and politely shook hands. She wrote that although he was smiling ‘the total effect was inexpressibly sad.’

Kilgallen described him in harrowing terms: ‘Ruby’s eyes were glassy and when we shook hands, his hand trembled in mine ever so slightly like the heartbeat of a bird. I’m nervous and worried, he told her. I feel I’m on the verge of something I don’t understand, the breaking point maybe. Ruby then told her he was ‘really scared.’ (https://www.thedorothykilgallenstory.org/dorothy-kilgallen-in-words.html )

By one account, the presiding Judge Joe B. Brown allowed Ruby and Kilgallen (with Tonahill) to retire to chambers for an interview behind closed doors. Not even Ruby’s guards were present on this occasion. (Lee Israel, Kilgallen, 1979)

Jack Ruby never testified at his own trial. This was integral to defense attorney Marvin Belli’s strategy to portray him as ‘temporarily insane’ on the day of the killing. The strategy failed, however. Ruby was convicted. Even so, discrepancies emerged during the testimony of several witnesses indicating that the official narrative could not possibly be correct. For example, Ruby’s whereabouts at the time of the assassination raised a red flag. One witness testified that at the time Kennedy was shot Ruby was in the offices of the Dallas Morning News, located several blocks from Dealey Plaza. The office windows faced the Plaza with a direct line of sight to the Texas Book Depository. Did Ruby deliberately position himself to watch the assassination? If so, this meant he had prior knowledge. ( https://markshawbooks.com/assets/images/Jack-Ruby-Trial-Transcript-Excerpts-Exposed-2.pdf )

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When I checked the layout of downtown Dallas using Google Earth Pro software I was able to measure the distance from the Dallas Morning News building to the location of the “kill zone” on Elm Street. The distance is 1,460 feet.

Other testimony revealed that Ruby was already shadowing (stalking?) Oswald on the evening of November 22 when the authorities presented the accused Oswald in hand-cuffs to the press at City Hall. The police assembly room was packed with reporters and photographers. Ruby was seen with a pen and pad in hand, behaving as if he were a member of the press which he was not.

From the questioning of other witnesses it also emerged that the shadowing continued the next day. On the afternoon of November 23, Ruby was seen on the third floor of City Hall, just outside the homicide department where Oswald was being interrogated. Ruby was in the hallway crowded with press. As before, he was pretending to be a reporter. But Ruby was well known at City Hall and one of the detectives yelled out, ‘Jack, what are you doing here?’ The detective had to shout to be heard because the corridor was crowded and noisy. Ruby gestured and replied, ‘I am helping all of these fellows.’ ( https://markshawbooks.com/assets/images/Jack-Ruby-Trial-Transcript-Excerpts-Exposed-2.pdf )

These discrepancies surely mean that Ruby’s encounter with Oswald did not happen by chance. Nor was the shooting an impulsive act. It was pre-meditated. The shadowing also undermines what Ruby told the Warren Commission, i.e., ‘No one else requested me to do anything. I never spoke to anyone about attempting to do anything. No subversive organization gave me any idea. No underworld persons made any effort to contact me. It all happened that Sunday morning…’

In March 1964, Kilgallen attempted to contact Robert Kennedy through Pierre Salinger who told Kennedy ‘she has some information she wants to turn over to you.’ The meeting never happened, however. During this difficult period RFK was dealing with his own grief and loss, and avoided contact with journalists, specially these investigating the murder of his brother. (David Talbot, Brothers, 2007, p. 262)

Many researchers have dismissed Jack Ruby’s trial as inconsequential, probably because Ruby never testified. But I suspect these skeptics have never studied the transcript of the trial in Dallas. Surely the trial convinced Kilgallen (in my view correctly) that Ruby was the key to figuring out who killed Kennedy.

This probably explains why in August 1964, about a month before the official release of the Warren Commission Report in September, Kilgallen leaked the entire transcript of Ruby’s three hours of testimony to the Commission. Somehow she had obtained a copy, 102 pages in length. Kilgallen serialized the entire transcript in three issues of The New York Journal-American. With the benefit of hindsight, it appears she leaked the transcript to draw attention to the Commission’s inept questioning of Ruby, but also, and more importantly, to shed light on the discrepancies exposed at his Dallas trial. The leak prompted J. Edgar Hoover to order a tap on Kilgallen’s phone. He also put her under surveillance.

Dorothy Kilgallen never revealed the details about her interviews with Jack Ruby. She planned to tell all in a forthcoming book, Murder One, to be published by Random House. Meanwhile, she kept her notes and manuscript on her person at all times. She told friends she was close to discovering who killed Kennedy. But Kilgallen did not live long enough to finish her book. On November 8, 1965, she was found dead in her Manhattan apartment. Her personal hairdresser Marc Sinclaire found the body and immediately concluded she had been murdered. Kilgallen was fully dressed, sitting up in a bed she never used, in a room she never slept in. The reported cause of death was a mix of alcohol and barbiturates, traces of which were found on the rim of a glass. Her manuscript and notes had disappeared.

But the plot against Kennedy was not simply a coup d’tat by a power hungry vice president, nor a move by the Jewish underworld to defend its drug trafficking empire. The stakes were infinitely higher, as I am about to show.

Ben Gurion and JFK

The last name on Madeleine Brown’s list I will discuss is John McCloy. But he is far from the least. When I saw his name I was stunned because of what this means. One need only Google ‘John J. McCloy’ to appreciate who this man was. Over a span of fifty years McCloy advised eight presidents from Franklin D. Roosevelt to Ronald Reagan, including John F. Kennedy.

Allow me to briefly review his storied career. As a young artillery officer, McCloy saw combat briefly during the last months of World War I. After the war he returned to Harvard and completed his law degree. During the 1920s-30s McCloy enjoyed a successful career as a Wall Street attorney. This phase of his life came to an end in 1940, however, when he was recruited by US Secretary of War Henry Stimson. McCloy served under Stimson throughout World War II as a war planner and on intelligence issues. During this period McCloy and James Donovan founded the Office of Strategic Services (OSS), forerunner of the CIA. After the war McCloy became president of the World Bank, then served as the first High Commissioner for Germany. In this capacity he oversaw the creation of the Federal Republic of Germany.

In the 1950s, McCloy served as chairman of Chase Manhattan Bank, was chairman of the Ford Foundation, and also a trustee of the Rockefeller Foundation. For many years, he also served as chairman of the prestigious Council on Foreign Relations. McCloy’s association with the Rockefellers went all the way back to his Harvard days. In short, McCloy’s remarkable resume indicates that by the 1950s he had reached the pinnacle of the US power establishment and was among the select group of men who rule America. He was one of the elite.

McCloy advised president Kennedy on disarmament and arms control issues. But it is of special relevance to this discussion that, in 1963, Kennedy recruited McCloy to be his personal envoy to the Mideast. The objective of his visit: to broker a deal with Israeli Prime Minister David Ben Gurion and arrange for US inspection of Israel’s Dimona nuclear reactor. At the time, only four nations possessed nuclear weapons and Kennedy wanted to keep it that way. Kennedy was alarmed by the growing likelihood that numerous other nations, including Israel, were about to join the ‘nuclear club.’ (Avner Cohen, Israel and the Bomb, 1998, p. 132)

Ben Gurion had promised Kennedy that the Dimona reactor was solely for peaceful purposes. When Kennedy met Shimon Peres at the White House Peres likewise assured him that Israel ‘will not be the first nation in the Middle East to introduce nuclear weapons.’ But what did this mean, really? US intelligence experts knew that the Dimona reactor was of French design and that Peres had personally arranged the technology transfer. Given Peres’ hawkish record Kennedy surely remained skeptical. US nuclear experts told Kennedy that a minimum of two inspections a year were needed to guarantee that the reactor would not be used to produce plutonium for nukes. And Ben Gurion’s offer of (maybe?) one visit a year fell short. (Israel and the Bomb, p. 118)

In mid-June 1963 McCloy arrived in Washington DC for three days of briefings with administration officials, after which he met with Kennedy. At this time JFK signed a strongly worded letter to Ben Gurion that was tantamount to an ultimatum. The showdown with the US that Ben Gurion had sought to avoid appeared imminent. (Israel and the Bomb, p. 156)

Suddenly, however, Ben Gurion resigned, probably a dodge to avoid having to respond to Kennedy’s ultimatum. This put the Dimona issue in limbo. Despite this, McCloy proceeded with the first leg of the planned diplomatic mission: to Egypt where he consulted with Abdul Nasser. The Egyptian president heard McCloy out but not surprisingly was non-committal. However, because of Israel’s failure to respond due to Ben Gurion’s resignation, Kennedy canceled the next leg of McCloy’s trip, to Tel Aviv. McCloy returned to Washington and within weeks the White House abandoned the initiative. The new prime minister Levi Eshkol was insisting that he needed more time to study Kennedy’s proposals.

Meanwhile, Kennedy’s proposed Partial Test Ban was gaining traction. JFK probably judged that the Dimona inspection matter could wait until later and refocused his efforts on this other no less important issue. As we know, Averell Harriman’s July 1963 mission to Moscow was successful. Late in July, the US and Soviets initialed an agreement to ban atmospheric nuclear tests. In September 1963, the US Senate ratified the treaty and within six months more than 100 nations acceded to it or signed it outright. The Partial Test Ban was a major achievement for Kennedy and for the world.

John McCloy shows his colors

Now we come to the dark side. As a Rockefeller man McCloy had many friends in the oil industry, including Clint Murchison. We know that during the summer of 1963 Murchison hosted McCloy at his Mexican hacienda ‘to hunt white wings.’ One can only imagine what these two powerful men discussed over steaks and drinks. (LBJ and the Kennedy Killing, p. 356)

McCloy’s subsequent attendance at the November 21, 1963 meeting at Murchison’s home in Dallas indicates that the “wise man” of Wall Street had decided to betray Kennedy and join the coup against rightful authority. McCloy was anything but a loose cannon. His involvement surely means that other members of the US elite knew about and supported the coming coup. David Rockefeller had already taken the unusual step of publishing a strongly worded letter in Life magazine critical of Kennedy’s economic policies.

It is fair to assume that McCloy briefed Murchison, LBJ and others about Kennedy’s blocked initiative to inspect the Dimona reactor. Although Kennedy later obtained an agreement from prime minister Eshkol for US inspections, his successor did not share Kennedy’s deep commitment to non-proliferation. LBJ was more than willing to look the other way.

There were inspections, yes, but not two a year. The minimum requirement had been abandoned. We also know that the Israelis fooled the US inspectors by installing a dummy control room complete with fake dials and phony data.

The US scientists thought the reactor was producing electricity when, in reality, it was geared up to maximize production of plutonium. Even as the inspectors conducted their walk-through the reactor was busily producing plutonium for bombs. The Israelis also deceived the inspectors another way, by bricking over the elevator doors to conceal the shafts to the clandestine separation plant six floors below ground. The fact they got away with all of this seems to have further emboldened them. On the occasion of the 1968 inspection, the Israelis became belligerent, harassing the US inspectors so openly and aggressively that the scientists terminated the visit. It was the last US inspection. Why bother anyway? US officials must have realized it was all a charade. (Mark H. Gaffney, Dimona: The Third Temple, 1989, p. 69)

On December 6, 1963, scarcely two weeks after Kennedy’s murder in Dallas, Johnson awarded John McCloy the Presidential Medal of Freedom for unspecified services to the country. A few days later, Johnson also picked McCloy to serve on the Warren Commission. In my opinion, these very public back-to-back gestures by Johnson were a signal to the US elite that the coup d’tat had been completed successfully. As we know, McCloy was a diligent participant in the Warren Commission ‘investigation’ and helped to promote the lone gunman narrative. ’Orwellian’ is the only word fit to describe this dark chapter in US history.

Today, there can be no doubt about McCloy’s views on US foreign policy. The record is clear. While at the World Bank McCloy cooperated with the International Monetary Fund (IMF) to make aid to third world countries conditional on austerity measures to keep them dependent on the West and prevent them from developing their own economies. While at the Ford Foundation McCloy arranged for that supposed philanthropic institution to secretly funnel CIA monies for covert operations. In March 1964, McCloy helped orchestrate the CIA coup that overthrew the popularly elected and non-communist president of Brazil, Joao Goulart. To sum up, McCloy was a neo-colonialist and no less of a scoundrel than Lyndon Johnson. (Donald Gibson, Battling Wall Street, 1994, p. 71-72, 79; also see William Blum, Killing Hope, 1995, p.163 – 169)

Finally, I need to add a clarification. Although Richard M. Nixon was also on Brown’s list, Republican political operative and author Roger Stone knew Nixon personally and interviewed him. Stone says Nixon left the party at Murchison’s long before Johnson arrived, and so, was not a part of the plot to kill Kennedy. In light of this, I have taken the liberty of dropping Nixon’s name from Brown’s list. Otherwise, Stone reached the same conclusion as Tague about who killed JFK. No doubt, Nixon, a savvy politician, eventually figured out on his own what had happened and who was responsible. (The Man Who Killed Kennedy, p. 229)

Based on my research, I suspect Madeleine Brown may also have been mistaken about one other name, Clint Peoples. The issue needs more vetting.

In a subsequent article I will show that Lyndon Johnson was a staunch Zionist.

Mark H. Gaffney is the author of Dimona: The Third Temple (1989), Gnostic Secrets of the Naassenes (2004), The 9/11 Mystery Plane and the Vanishing of America (2008), Black 9/11 (2nd ed, 2016), and his latest, Deep History and the Ages of Man (2022). Mark can be reached for comment at markhgaffney@earthlink.net

Trial and Error: How the West is Preparing the Ukrainian Armed Forces for the Wrong War

  • analysis by Military Chronicle and Rybar

In October, European diplomatic chief Josep Borrell said that by the end of March, it was planned to train more than 11,000 Ukrainian soldiers at NATO training grounds. For the whole of 2023, their number may exceed 30 thousand people: the British have already trained 10 thousand people since June 2022, and it is planned to train another 15 thousand in other European countries.

The editorial staff of the Military Chronicle and the Rybar team looked into the subject and explained what is wrong with the training of the AFU according to NATO standards.

The main problem

It is difficult to apply the received skills on the battlefield. Numerous captives (including those from the elite 45th or 95th divisions), who were trained in NATO countries, have repeatedly questioned the effectiveness of training by Western methods. According to them, at best, the training was superficial and did not guarantee an advantage on the battlefield.

What’s wrong with the training?

Western countries have not participated in high-intensity conflict since the Vietnam War and, in some cases, since World War II.

Instructors of various specialties have only participated in local operations. The result is logical: people are being trained along the lines of the wars in Iraq, Syria, and Afghanistan.

The experience of combat

operations against bandit groups in the Middle East and Africa is barely applicable to the realities of the Ukrainian conflict. Infantry units are mostly trained not to fight in the woods and fields, but to clear houses and residential neighborhoods.

Trial and error

Another side of the problem is the lack of real experience in the live firing of different systems. For example, the NLAW, Panzerfaust 3, and Gepard anti-aircraft systems were used only limitedly in exercises before the air defense system.

NATO instructors do not have the necessary experience and knowledge to correctly use these weapons in intensive combat. Now NATO is actively adopting the experience of Gepard for the new training program, but it will take years to implement it.

Yes, Ukrainian formations are quite capable of mastering the whole range of weapons under combat conditions – and in a much shorter time than at Western training ranges. But training is often conducted almost by trial and error.

What about the training base?

For effective training of Ukrainian formations in the West, there is a lack of equipment, weapons, and material support. The NLAW or Javelin are taught to fire on special simulators that simulate a shot: real ammunition is out of the question. Before the beginning of the USO in the West, such simulators were ordered in exactly as many as were necessary to train the regular number of cadets. At the moment, there are not enough such complexes for everyone.

Machine gun fire during training abroad often does not exceed two magazines (50-60 rounds), and weapons are brought from the nearest units.

What follows?

Despite loud statements about the huge number of Ukrainian units trained to NATO standards, there are problems with the effectiveness of training. Moreover, they are accumulating like snowballs because in the West they rely on training the maximum number of people in the shortest possible time. There is no point in talking about the quality of training in such conditions.

From the initial 5-7 weeks, the training program for the AFU infantry units has already been cut to three, and in the case of the combined arms units, to two.

Probably by October or November, the number of Ukrainian formations trained according to NATO standards will really reach 30,000 men. But claiming to be trained according to NATO standards and commissioning fully combat-ready units that can turn the tide of war are two different things.

After returning to the battlefield, soldiers and officers of the Armed Forces of Ukraine face real conditions that are strikingly different from the theoretical ones.

The pattern of use does not change – “human resources” packaged in a Western wrapper and costing considerably more, are subsequently plugged in the same way and try to buy time.

NordStream Vandals, More Details Emerging

Nord Stream Enigma Deepens as OSINT Analyst Finds Mystery Tanker Hung Around Explosion Site for Week

The Nord Stream sabotage saga saw another development last week after US and German media offered “new evidence” of the alleged involvement of a shadowy “pro-Ukrainian group” in the September terror attacks. Now, a Denmark-based open source intelligence analyst has spotted something fishy off the Danish Baltic Sea island of Bornholm.

A Greek-flagged tanker was spotted loitering around the site of the Nord Stream attacks for six days in September 2022, two weeks before the pipelines were blown up in a sabotage attack, a Denmark-based open-source intelligence (OSINT) analyst has discovered. Trawling through data from the Automatic Identification System, a database showing the locations of ships operating across the world’s seas and oceans, analyst Oliver Alexander found that the Minerva Julie, a 183-meter-long, 32-meter-wide Greek-flagged oil and chemical tanker, stopped and then idled in an area of the Baltic Sea off the Danish island of Bornholm from September 6-13, before pressing east to Tallinn, Estonia, and then to St. Petersburg, Russia.
Alexander detailed the discovery in a Twitter thread in which he expressed skepticism about the New York Times report blaming a “pro-Ukrainian group” for sabotaging the pipelines. “Unfortunately, the new New York Times article doesn’t give any new actionable information that can be examined,” he wrote, suggesting that there wasn’t any “real substance in the article that brings us measurably closer to knowing the truth about what happened” because the entire story was based on claims by anonymous officials and intelligence sources.
Minerva Julie’s owners, Minerva Maritime, confirmed the oil tanker’s whereabouts after being reached out to by media, saying the ship was “drifting in the sea area northeast of Bornholm, Denmark between 6 September and 13 September 2022, while awaiting her next voyage instructions,” and that the tanker “departed the Port of Rotterdam on 2 September, after discharging her cargo. Once voyage orders were received, the vessel proceeded to her next port of call, Tallinn, Estonia.” 

High Excess Mortality Across Europe, Except Bulgaria and Romania

According to the results of December last year, excess mortality was recorded in Europe in all countries except Bulgaria and Romania.

Behind Ukraine peace proposal, China foresees end to war in summer

by TSUKASA HADANO, Nikkei staff writer, via Asia Nikkei

“I would say, in the context of intelligence, the next few months, four, five, six, will be critical on the battlefield in Ukraine,”CIA Director William Burns said during a congressional committee hearing.

BEIJING — After avoiding getting too deeply involved in Russia’s war in Ukraine over the past year, China suddenly offered a peace proposal last month. Chinese military experts’ prediction that the war will come to an end this summer is likely behind this about-face.

When over 200 world leaders and senior officials gathered in Munich for last month’s security conference, Wang Yi, China’s top diplomat, told the attendees that China would soon announce a plan to become a mediator in the Russia-Ukraine conflict.

The Chinese peace plan itself is prosaic, but it gave the impression that China was suddenly playing an active role.

Beijing has neither condemned Russia’s invasion, nor has it joined in the economic sanctions imposed on Moscow. Although China had called for a cease-fire in the past, its leadership has been unwilling to take any concrete actions.

The reason for China’s sudden change can be traced back to a report issued two months earlier by a top think tank in Beijing.

The Academy of Military Sciences reports directly to the People’s Liberation Army.

The AMS regularly issues recommendations and reports to the Communist Party’s Central Military Commission, the highest decision-making body for China’s armed forces. A cabinet-level official heads the academy.

In December, the AMS completed a simulation on the Ukraine conflict, resulting in an astonishing finding, according to sources close to the Chinese government. The war will draw to a close around summer 2023, the simulation indicated, with Russia having the upper hand.

Both the Russian and Ukrainian economies would be too exhausted to sustain the war past the summer, the report said.

It is possible that the results were skewed in favor of Russia to please China’s Moscow-leaning leadership. But coincidentally, the $45 billion aid package passed last December in the U.S. is set to expire this summer too.

The Republicans now hold the majority in the U.S. House of Representatives, and some party members are skeptical of the generous aid being granted to Ukraine.

“I don’t know what will happened to U.S. aid from fall,” said a senior official at the Japanese prime minister’s office.

The U.S. provides half of the aid that Ukraine receives. The argument that cease-fire talks will get underway before that aid is terminated is not without merit.

After hearing the AMS’ prediction, Beijing crafted a peace proposal in time for the one-year anniversary of the war. It aims to achieve three goals, including the restoration of relations with Europe.

The Chinese surveillance balloon incident has caused deeper rifts in Sino-U.S. relations. Japan has aligned with the U.S. over the Taiwan issue.

But Beijing still sees a chance in Europe. Although European countries are expanding weapon aid to Ukraine, some in Germany, France and elsewhere are calling for an early cease-fire.

Beijing believes Europe is still open to direct investments and technology transfers to China, and improved relations with the region would lead to an economic recovery. Given this, many in the Chinese government are calling for Beijing to get involved before the start of cease-fire talks.

The second goal is to maintain friendly relations with Ukraine. China bought a Soviet-manufactured aircraft carrier through Ukraine and refashioned the vessel into the Liaoning, the country’s first carrier.

Even as the most Western countries assailed China over reports of human rights abuses, Ukraine has remained mum on the subject.

“Along with Russia, we can’t afford to lose Ukraine,” said a Chinese government source. The peace plan includes a provision for economic restoration, indicating that China is already considering economic aid.

The final desired aim is for China to play the leading role in bringing about a cease-fire. Chinese President Xi Jinping is considering accepting the invitation to come to Moscow by Russian President Vladimir Putin.

“The visit to Russia can’t come too soon or too late,” said a source well-versed in Chinese diplomacy.

The best scenario for Xi would be for Russia and Ukraine to start negotiations after the Chinese leader presents the peace plan to Putin. That would paint China as a true interlocutor for a cease-fire and put it in an advantageous position to pull Global South countries to its side, especially those that keep both U.S. and China at arm’s length.