By launching information warfare and sanctions against undesirable countries and politicians, the United States clearly did not consider that these same weapons could very well punish the US, its American “stability”, as well as knock many politicians of this “empire of lies” off pedestal.

So, once Moscow, in response to the White House’s insinuations, blacklisted 13 US politicians on March 15, including President Joe Biden, his son Hunter Biden, Secretary of State Anthony Blinken, White House Press Secretary Jennifer Psaki, and Hillary Clinton, approval of the move and strident criticism of the current US political establishment swept the US public.

From Breitbart and its readers, Hillary Clinton, the former Secretary of State who is now trying to reserve her place as the future mistress of the White House, got what they call “what she deserved.” After all, it was she who indirectly benefited when her husband, former President Bill Clinton, received a corrupt fee of $500,000 from a Russian investment bank for a lecture he gave in Moscow in 2010, which even the New York Times wrote about at the time. Moreover, Hillary was also recalled for paying her campaign staff to prepare a fake “dossier” of compromising material concerning the then-candidate, Donald Trump. It is therefore not surprising to see very harsh comments on this article from American readers, in particular IdriveAPontiac: “The same list of wanted persons is posted in the offices of sheriffs all over the country. Lol,” or cylde: “Putin is doing the job for our DOJ.”

The satirical website The Babylon Bee also took a swipe at Hillary, describing Putin’s alleged frustration at “her refusal to cooperate” and the Clinton family’s intention to acquire all disinformation and fake news from domestic sources like The Washington Post.

As for the “first person of the US”, it has completely lost its face and its mind after being blacklisted by Moscow. In particular, he has publicly demonstrated this by speaking at a White House event recently where he called Vice-President Kamala Harris’s husband “the first person of state.”

And a week earlier Joe Biden confused Russia and Ukraine altogether, commenting on the Russian military special operation, and said: “How do we get to the place where, you know, Putin decided he is gonna just invade Russia? Nothing like this has happened since World War II.”

So the stormy reaction to this by users of the Internet and the general shame of Americans for such a “leader” is understandable to all…

Already after the inauguration, having become a laughing stock in the US and beyond, Joe Biden became a “talking head” who too often started to talk a lot of gibberish and voice (probably without proper awareness!) the words of “political prompters”. This is clearly illustrated by the events of March 16, when, during a brief meeting with journalists from the White House pool, Biden, when asked by Fox News to describe Putin, first left the room, and then, apparently having been “prompted” on the sidelines, returned and called the Russian president a “war criminal”.

It is notable that exactly one year ago – on March 16, 2021 – Biden made a high-profile statement in an interview with ABC News when he called Putin a “murderer”. Even then, the Chairman of the State Duma, Vyacheslav Volodin, called Joe Biden’s behavior “impotent hysteria” and Russian Ambassador to Washington Anatoly Antonov was invited to Moscow “for consultations” to review Russian-American relations.

And following the referendum on Crimean independence eight years ago (again in March), Hillary Clinton called Russian President Putin “the new Hitler”.

There is no doubt that such labels, which US leading politicians are trying to place in official statements, are unacceptable. Not only for reasons of diplomatic etiquette, but also morality, as it is American politicians themselves who are up to their elbows in blood.  The same applies to Hillary Clinton, who reacted with undisguised enthusiasm to the White House-organized assassination of Muammar Gaddafi in 2011. And to Joseph Biden, who personally came up with the idea of bombing peaceful Belgrade in 1999 and sent American pilots to destroy all the bridges on the Danube. “Biden, US senators and congressmen were the initiators and perpetrators of the current events in Ukraine. They are the ones who committed crimes against humanity and should be brought to justice,” the Chairman of the State Duma, Vyacheslav Volodin said. “US President Joe Biden is beginning to understand that he will have to answer for what is happening in Ukraine, which is causing hysteria in Washington.”

US President Joe Biden’s rating has fallen to 37%, the lowest mark from voters in his career – but even that figure is almost certainly inflated as the country is “going to hell” because of his decisions, Biden’s predecessor Donald Trump told Fox News in a phone interview.

The Daily Wire polled Joe Biden’s supporters on the UCLA campus. In particular, when students were asked what achievements the US president had made over the past year, no one could recall a single specific White House head’s success.

Four dozen people from the US House of Representatives, including the former White House chief doctor, called in February for Joe Biden to undergo a medical test of his mental capacity. They suspect that the head of state is being consumed by “senile dementia”. Their appeal, citing the Alzheimer’s Association, stresses that Biden’s behavior is on a list of ten signs of diminished mental capacity.

Inflation at a 40-year high is dragging both Biden’s and the Democratic Party’s approval ratings down, threatening to have them lose the mid-term election to the Congress next autumn and result in the formation of a parliament opposed to the White House. And there are also sanctions imposed by Moscow on him and his closest “prompters”! Yes, the “talking head” of the White House can’t take this kind of “overheating”, so he “went berserk”.

However, public accusations (not for the first time, either!) against the leader of a world power may result in more than just impeachment!

Vladimir Platov, expert on the Middle East, exclusively for the online magazine “New Eastern Outlook”.

More recently, the topic of Turkey and its use of fighters with Syrian war experience in a number of armed conflict zones has been discussed at length in the pages of NEO. However, the topic of foreign fighters in the current events in Ukraine, as well as the involvement of a number of NATO countries in sending them there, compels us to revisit this topic.

First, regarding foreign fighters “with Syrian experience”, the deputy head of the Russian Center for the Reconciliation of Opposing Sides (CROS) in Syria, Rear Admiral Oleg Zhuravlev, said on March 5 that fighters of Albanian and Caucasian origin were heading to Europe from the US-controlled Syrian province of Idlib. They plan to further “take part in combat operations on the territory of Ukraine”.

On March 1, Syrian Deputy Foreign Minister Bashar Jaafari said that the USA might transfer terrorists of DAESH (a terrorist group banned in Russia) or members of other radical groups to Ukraine. According to the politician, this is being organized by the US special services. He also stressed that the use of mercenaries is a common practice in the US. “They moved terrorists from El-Hol camp (in northeastern Syria) to Al-Tanf area (territory seized by the US army) and from there sent them to Afghanistan and Burkina Faso,” Jaafari stressed.

In this connection, attention was also drawn to information that appeared in a number of media outlets that officers of the Ukrainian Security Service, together with officers of Turkey’s national intelligence organization, had recently visited northern Syria (including the settlements of Afrin and Azaz). In particular, a military diplomatic source told RIA Novosti that they visited the base of armed groups banned in Russia, in particular “Harakat Saurin” (part of the “Syrian National Army”), where they met with commanders of several pro-Turkish formations (“Firkyat Sultan Murad”, “Liwa Al-Muattasim”) as well as camps of the illegal armed groups. There, the possibility of recruiting fighters for Ukraine’s territorial defense was discussed with pro-Turkish formations and an agreement was reached to organize a series of secret meetings with “interested parties”.

Detection of a Turkish flag in one of the workshops for manufacturing homemade drone shells near Mariupol in the village of Sopino by the DPR military on 5 March is definite confirmation of the involvement of pro-Turkish militants in the current events in Ukraine on the side of Kiev-controlled military formations. Troops found large quantities of explosive devices and electronic components for drones there.

Moreover, according to Kosovo media reports, veterans of the so-called Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA), recognized as a terrorist organization in Russia and Serbia, intend to fight on the Ukrainian side. As the Balkanist portal notes, the Croatian nationalists who expelled the Serbs living there in 1995 from Croatia had previously volunteered to participate in Kiev’s military operations.

Internationalization of the Ukrainian war by Kiev has been acknowledged by Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba on the US TV channel CNN, who said, among other things, that more than 20,000 mercenaries from 16 countries were being sent to Ukraine. On February 27, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy announced the creation of a combat unit, into which he has invited citizens of foreign countries to join, and which has already been dubbed Kiev’s “foreign legion”. The Norwegian conflictologist Thomas Hegghammer has already pointed out in an interview with Der Spiegel that Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has made a blatant political mistake in urging foreigners to fight in his country against Russia. Volunteers are also more difficult to control, he says, since they are less pragmatic and less willing to compromise than the local population. They are of little military use, but are often the ones who commit atrocities and violate ceasefires.

Nevertheless, militants from various countries have already started making their way into Ukraine in response to Kiev’s call. A large number of military personnel are now reportedly on Polish territory and are involved in smuggling weapons and fighters into Ukraine.

A number of Western countries have previously officially allowed their citizens to go to Ukraine and join the “foreign legion”. In particular, the United Kingdom, Denmark, Croatia, Poland and Latvia have endorsed the sending of mercenaries at national level. Meanwhile it is already known that the backbone of this “army of mercenaries” will be nationalists and far-rightists of all stripes from Europe and America.

A certain proportion of these mercenaries are Western private military companies, which were present in Ukraine even before the special operation by Russian troops began. They are led by the US, and consist mainly of Eastern European nations, with Poles in particular tending to be the majority. These PMCs were used by Washington in Afghanistan and Iraq, in overthrowing Muammar Gaddafi. PMC services are very expensive, so they will certainly be paid for by “Western sponsors”, as “Zelenskyy’s state” is now bankrupt. It is therefore naive to suggest that Zelenskyy’s call for a “foreign legion” was made by himself. This is clearly Washington’s tactical line to escalate the Ukrainian conflict. The “US leadership” in deepening the armed conflict in Ukraine is also evidenced by a report in the possession of The Washington Post showing that the Pentagon had significantly increased its military aid deliveries to Kiev long before the Russian special operation began. Moreover, according to the declassified document, the US Department of Defense “was equipping Ukrainian fighters with arms and equipment useful for fighting in urban areas.”

Another category of “foreign helpers of Kiev” will be outright Nazis who hate Russia and Orthodoxy fiercely. The most prominent of these are the Croats, about 200 of whose representatives are now based in besieged Mariupol and holding tens of thousands of people hostage. Representatives of such groups are very aggressive and they are not part of the European right-conservative political community, which is largely sympathetic to Russia because of its strong defense of traditional values.

It is frankly surprising that there are Israelis in the ranks of such ultranationalists and Nazis. It would seem that they cannot stand idly by as monuments are being erected in Ukraine to those who were exterminating Jews by the tens of thousands, burning, stabbing, shooting and burying them alive in mass graves. The names of these executioners, whose hands are up to their elbows in Jewish blood, are called streets and schools in the cities. Because of the policies pursued by the Kiev authorities, these murderers are now heroes for Ukraine.  But nevertheless, Israeli mercenaries chose to betray the memory of the Jewish people who suffered under fascism, at the behest of the White House to stand up for the Nazi authorities in Kiev.

The Israeli media reported that Israelis, in particular former fighters of the Golani brigade, are already fighting in the ranks of the Armed Forces of Ukraine and the Territorial Defense Forces. This was reported on the telegraph channel Israeli Working Life, which even published a video showing one of these fighters being interviewed in Hebrew. The Ukrainian newspaper Donpress also reported that the first Israeli special forces veterans had already arrived in Ukraine, quoting Ukrainian MP Oleksiy Honcharenko. Moreover, several Ukrainian media outlets quoted the Israeli portal Ynet as saying that trainees from the Israeli army’s elite units are taking part in the war with Russia on Ukraine’s side.  All this raises a lot of questions for the official current authorities in Israel!

On March 2, Japanese newspapers reported that Tokyo was ready to send 70 Japanese “volunteers” to the Ukrainian front. The Japanese Mainichi Shimbun reported that about 50 of them were former members of the Japan Self-Defense Forces.

Groups of young Danish citizens have already left for Ukraine, Danish news agency Nyheder.TV2 reported on March 1, specifying that the young Danes have only three months of military service as their only military experience. So the likelihood of any of them returning from the Ukrainian battlefield alive is small…

The US publication Vice published on March 2 an interview with a former British military officer who is already in Ukraine. Britain’s retired Royal Marines have already arrived in Ukraine to fight the Russians, said Fox News journalist Lucas Tomlinson. British Foreign Secretary Liz Truss gave permission for Britons to fight on the side of Kiev’s neo-Nazis, but on March 6 she was opposed by the head of the Royal Armed Forces’ General Staff, Admiral Tony Radakin, who said that it was “illegal and useless” for Britons to fight against Russia in Ukraine.

A short while ago, the Senegalese Foreign Ministry summoned the Ukrainian ambassador to protest over the recruitment of its nationals to take part in military operations. The communiqué said it was about a Facebook post by the Ukrainian embassy in Dakar that called for Senegalese volunteers to take part in the armed conflict in Ukraine.

About 60 mercenaries are known to have left Georgia for Ukraine. According to unofficial data, 15 of them have already died…

The mercenaries sent by Western countries to help Kiev will not be entitled to POW status, Russian Defense Ministry spokesman Major-General Igor Konashenkov has said. Their fate is therefore unenviable.

Vladimir Platov, expert on the Middle East, exclusively for the online magazine “New Eastern Outlook”.

Last Thursday evening a senior Republican (US) official issued what must count as one of the most outrageous tweets issued by a senior politician. Lindsey Graham tweeted “is there a Brutus in Russia? Is there a more successful Colonel Stauffenberg in the Russian military? The only way this ends is for somebody in Russia to take this guy out. You would be doing your country – and the world-a great service. Unless you want to live in darkness for the rest of your life, be isolated from the rest of the world in abject poverty, and live in darkness, you need to step up to the plate.”

The only good thing that can be said is that Graham’s remarks were not endorsed by his fellow United States politicians. Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene said: “while we are praying for peace and the people of Ukraine, this is irresponsible, dangerous and unhinged. We need leaders with calm minds and steady wisdom. Not bloodthirsty warmongering politicians trying to tweet tough by demanding assassinations. Americans don’t want war.”

One naturally applauds these voices of reason. But the question has to be asked: where were you during the long decades when the United States military and its lackeys from multiple western countries ran roughshod over international law and invaded, bombed and otherwise undermined more than 70 nations in the post-World War two period alone. The answer from the Western media which has been almost universal in its condemnation of Russia’s actions in Ukraine is a stunning silence.

One can look for example to the United States invasion of South Vietnam. For more than a decade the United States waged war on North Vietnam in a desperate attempt to prevent the unification of that country and its inevitable rule by a Communist government from the North. In that war they were liberally supported by Australia, among other Western nations. What vital Australian interests would be protected by joining that war? A dispassionate observer would be hard pressed to nominate a single vital national interest that was protected by joining that manifestly illegal and aggressive war. Now, with typical hypocrisy, the United States government is striving mightily to enlist Vietnam’s support in its struggle against the rise of China. They should look closely at the recent humiliating visit of the vice president to Vietnam for lessons on how not to behave when visiting that country.

The experience of the Vietnam war was insufficient to deter the Americans from multiple other foreign misadventures. In this century alone there has been at least four major interventions by the United States and its loyal adherents in the affairs of foreign countries. The century began with the invasion of Afghanistan, falsely blamed for the events of 11 September 2001. Even after they had captured and killed the alleged perpetrator of the 9/11 attacks, Osama bin Laden, years after the New York Times had published his obituary following his 2001 death from natural causes, the United States and its lackeys continued their occupation of Afghanistan for a further decade. They eventually retreated in humiliating circumstances (without informing their “allies”) but that was not the end of their vengeance. The United States has affectively stolen several billions of Afghanistan’s precious foreign reserves, leaving the country in a desperate position with at least 40% of its population facing premature death from being unable to access basic food and health requirements

That misadventure was followed by a similar debacle in Iraq. United States experience in conquering Iraq is always worth keeping in mind when one hears their protestations about alleged atrocities committed by Russian troops in Ukraine. More than 1 million Iraqis were killed in enforcing that occupation. The United States and Australia are still there, 19 years later, despite a demand from the Iraqi Government that they should leave.

In October 2011 the Americans killed Muamar Gaddafi. That country has been a mess ever since with at least two groups claiming power, theft of their oil reserves by the Americans (a repeat of what they did in Iraq) and a generally unstable situation the most important legacy of the murder of the country’s leader.

In 2014 the United States again intervened in a middle eastern country, this time Syria. They are still there, refusing to leave, and still, in a familiar pattern, stealing Syria’s oil. Another familiar pattern in the United States occupation (apart from its utter illegality) is the overt support provided to terrorist groups that share its ambition to overthrow the legitimate government of Assad.

In this case the United States ambitions were thwarted by the 2015 intervention of Russia in the country. The big difference is that the Russians were invited by the Assad Government to intervene. Their presence was a turning point in the war, with the government gradually reclaiming more of their territory. Apart from the Americans and their terrorist allies, Syria has also suffered from an Israeli bombing campaign. Not content with stealing Syrian territory in the Golan Heights the Israelis have continued their aerial attacks on Syria, although, with Russian assistance, they now seem to be reaching an end.

When one looks at this history, and it is far from being a complete chronicle of United States misdeeds around the world, it is astonishing that the Americans and their loyal European allies could have the temerity to criticise Russia’s actions in Ukraine. One of the many items consistently missing from the Western accounts of what is happening to their Ukrainian friends, is the long history of the brutal treatment and attempted genocide of the Russian speaking people of the Donbass region. This is a chronicle that has almost completely disappeared from the Western narrative, as has the major influence of the fascist supporters of the Ukrainian regime.

It is yet another illustration of the selective nature of the Western chronicle of events in Ukraine. The true military picture strongly suggests that the war will be over in a matter of 2–3 weeks. We are unlikely to see a return to the pre-Russian intervention era with normal trade relations resuming. My impression is that the Russians no longer care. They have other ambitions to the East. The West has no one to blame but itself for their rampant hypocrisy.

James O’Neill, an Australian-based former Barrister at Law, exclusively for the online magazine “New Eastern Outlook”.

It is no secret that members of the current US political elite and their closest relatives are fairly quick to gain business shares in all countries invaded by US occupation forces. This has been commonplace since the Iraqi wars and the destruction of Yugoslavia.

Former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, for example, had a business in “independent Kosovo,” and a semi-clandestine one at that.

Many media outlets are still trying to find out how much former US Vice President Dick Cheney and his family managed to embezzle from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. The role in US corruption history of this unscrupulous “businessman politician” who started the war in Iraq is quite truthfully depicted in Adam McKay’s Vice. He is like an octopus, running his tentacles across all key agencies, controlling the situation in the country through his lobbyists and proxies. At his instigation, they undermined unwanted journalists, created one of the world’s cruelest prisons, Guantanamo, tortured prisoners, illegally monitored the emails and phone calls of millions of Americans, falsified intelligence about Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein’s negotiations with terrorists to initiate war, created a myth about the alleged development of nuclear weapons in Iraq…

As for the Biden family, they have long been “in line” for appropriating the benefits of White House aggressive policies for themselves as well, with a particular emphasis on Ukraine, which objectively has many national treasures. Biden has long been one of the key figures in American policy towards Ukraine, dealing with, among other things, major personnel issues within the Ukrainian leadership. It could be said that he has long been the curator of the Ukrainian direction in the American establishment. However, due to his inability to be in Kiev all the time, he had already in 2014 concentrated the keys to the situation in Ukraine in the hands of US Ambassador Geoffrey Pyatt, whom Biden trusted to tackle matters that were not too important.

As for the “family business” in Ukraine, back in 2014 it was entrusted to the son of the current US president, Robert Hunter Biden, who joined the board of directors of Burisma Holdings, the largest private gas producer in Ukraine, immediately after the then Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych was ousted. Given that the company had been operating in Ukraine’s energy market since 2002, and that in 2013 its natural gas production figure of 1.8 million cubic meters per day was an outright tidbit generating good dividends, the Bidens decided to get their hands on the company. Meanwhile, one of Hunter Jr’s business partners was his uncle, James Biden, with many businessmen and investors having long accused his uncle and nephew of unfair play, resulting in several lawsuits filed against them at the time. After Hunter Biden became a board member of Burisma Holdings, numerous human rights organizations in the US and even White House staff claimed that the appointment could indicate a conflict of interest.

According to some reports, the US president’s son received a salary of $50,000 a month, and in just five years, Burisma Holdings transferred $3.1 million to an account he owned at a US bank, Peter Schweitzer, an associate of Donald Trump’s former political adviser, Peter Bannon, wrote in his book.

But the Biden family’s interests in Ukraine are not limited to energy alone. In Ukraine, for example, with Biden’s encouragement, large-scale production of genetically modified products (GMOs), which had previously been banned in the country and in the EU, has begun. Nevertheless, Kiev started to hand over Ukrainian precious fertile soil to Western multinationals that produce genetically modified products. One of these companies was, above all, Monsanto, a multinational corporation that produces GMO seeds for cereals and vegetables. Joe Biden’s son Hunter was already in 2015 chairman of the board of the US World Food Program and represented Monsanto in Ukraine. At the same time, the corporation has a controversial reputation for producing the deadly chemical agent Orange, which was used by the US military during the Vietnam War to drive Viet Cong guerrillas out of the forests, killing thousands of civilians along the way.

However, it should be remembered that the cultivation of GMOs in Ukraine was included, not without “Biden’s patronage,” in the country’s Euro-Association agreement: Article 404 of the agreement, which relates to agriculture, contained relevant information. It includes, among other things, a provision that has gone largely unnoticed by the general press, the gist of which is that “the two sides will cooperate to expand the use of biotechnology.”

As for the Monsanto Corporation, it has stepped up its activities in Ukraine with the construction of its plants, the first of which was planned for Vinnytsia. Although there is no exact data on how much land Monsanto already cultivates in Ukraine, nevertheless, back in 2014, Elena Fomina, head of the Seed Association of Ukraine, said that the corporation was already present in 11 regions of the country where it grows GMO products.  In any case, the corporation, with Bidens’ active “interest,” was intent on flooding Ukraine, and thereafter a number of other Eastern European countries, with dangerous genetically modified products.

Realizing in recent months the damage to the Biden family business that could be inflicted if relations between Moscow and Kiev were to deteriorate, President Biden has stepped up his efforts to deploy all possible US and EU administrative resources to counter Russian policy towards Ukraine, including using the sanctions factor to put pressure on Russia to his advantage. Moreover, the damage to the people of Ukraine from Kiev’s blatant neo-Nazi policies, as well as from the use of GMO products, was blatantly disregarded by Joe Biden, overshadowing his purely personal interest in the sanctity of profits from his family business in that country. And pumping Ukraine full of loans, which Kiev and its people will objectively never be able to repay, leaving it with a foreign debt of over $57 billion, gives Biden confidence that his Ukrainian wealth will increase and can soon be sold off against the country’s debts to foreign buyers. For this reason, Biden’s zeal to “protect Ukraine’s interests” only increases every day, and his price will be known after the corruption investigations conducted by journalists.

Vladimir Odintsov, political observer, exclusively for the online magazine “New Eastern Outlook”.

The development of information systems has led to a dramatic turnaround in information wars, especially between East and West. These wars have long been a war of ideologies, a war for minds, including for political advantage. In this regard, disinformation has been used increasingly actively, especially by the United States and its allies, which is disseminated in accordance with the famous aphorism of the American writer Robert Sheckley: “The saddest fact is that, in an information war, the one who tells the truth always loses. He is limited by truth, while the liar can proclaim whatever he wishes.”

Information wars are widely used by Washington to take over the economies of states. A striking example of this is the recent US-inspired fight in Kazakhstan against 55 Chinese factories, the fight against nuclear power, against the background of which USAID – known worldwide for its actions on behalf of US intelligence agencies – suddenly began to intensively propose green energy programs, the sad results of which could be observed in the US.

The first US official documents on the use and conduct of information warfare are probably the US Department of Defense Directive O-3600.1 dated December 21, 1992, entitled “Information Operations.” In 1993, Committee of Chiefs of Staff Directive No. 30 had already outlined the basic principles of information warfare. Finally, in 1997 the following definition of information warfare was given: “Actions taken to achieve information superiority by affecting adversary information, information-based processes, information systems, and computer-based networks while defending one’s own information, information-based processes, information systems, and computer-based networks.”

At the end of 1998, the Chiefs of Staff of the US Army issued a document Joint Doctrine for Information Operations, which for the first time officially confirmed Washington’s preparations for offensive information operations, not only during war but also during peacetime. Taking this as one of the main areas of foreign warfare, since 1994, the US has held official “scientific” conferences on “information warfare” with prominent representatives of the US military and political leadership. For this purpose, the US has already established the Center for Strategic and International Studies to study the use of information technology in military conflicts in the 21st century, with billions of dollars from the US budget allocated to information warfare. In May 2005, the Pentagon formed a special group tasked with suppressing enemy activity on the Internet and other electronic networks. Millions of dollars are being spent on the program to equip this group with the latest equipment and software.

The existence of the military hacking group project was officially announced at a Senate Armed Services Committee meeting, representatives of the US Department of Defense’s Strategic Command said. This element of the Armed Forces is called the Joint Functional Component Command – Network Warfare (JFCC-NW) and is tasked with, among other things, hacking into enemy computer networks.

A very important stage in the conduct of the United States’ information wars was the 9/11 attack, which, according to many American experts, was an overtly planned provocation. The infamous speech of Secretary of State Colin Powell at the UN Security Council on February 5, 2003 before the invasion of Iraq, which caused thousands of human casualties, chaos in the Middle East region, the Arab “spring”, the war in Syria, etc., is in the same line. Moreover, the western “allies” of Washington never officially rebuked or sanctioned the US in relation to all this White House-induced global damage, nor did the UN, thereby encouraging the US to continue such information wars in the future.

As a result, the US has become consistent and active in the information wars of the 21st century. Thus, in all armed conflicts in which the US has been involved (Desert Storm, the operation in Haiti, the bombing of Yugoslavia, etc.), various types of information weapons have been tested, and positions of officers dealing with information warfare techniques have been introduced in the US army, navy and air force.

After Washington singled out Russia as the main target of information wars, in addition to pushing the Russian Federation and the Russian civilization out of the world community, another important task is being accomplished: depriving the Russian people of a positive historical experience, weakening the connection with Russia and the Russians as much as possible, depriving the Russian population of a real historical foundation, making them uncompetitive and deprived of historical friends and allies by means of historical and social manipulation. Moreover, in such a war, the objective is not to mislead the enemy population, but to reformat the very essence of the people under attack, to change their civilization code and irreversibly transform their identity.

Many foundations and organizations, such as the American Foundation for Peace, the Center for Strategic and International Studies, the American Enterprise Institute, the Heritage Foundation, Freedom House, the Soros Foundation and the NED are among those that in their concrete actions have already demonstrated their focus in waging an information warfare against Russia and its allies. The West has also established several information centers to carry out its information attacks against Russia, most notably the NATO Strategic Communications Center of Excellence in Riga (established in 2015), the European Centre of Excellence for Countering Hybrid Threats in Helsinki (2017) and the Cyberspace Operations Centre in Mons, Belgium (2018).

The problem with fakes and disinformation spread by the United States in the media today is reaching such proportions that, for some audiences, the real picture is being replaced by false information. In particular, the most recent examples are the “war in Ukraine”, the “rebellious people in Kazakhstan” and the anti-Chinese and anti-Russian propaganda of the Western media. The presence of Western players in the media market is abnormally high, unlike that of alternative media. These mouthpieces of Western information warfare often give a distorted picture of events in the country and abroad, creating a positive image of the US, forming a pool of speakers from foreign-agent NGOs who provide comments convenient for the “customer.” It is on their conscience to foment conflict between Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan and to blame the CSTO, even though Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan have officially refused the Organization’s or Russia’s assistance in resolving the conflict.

Today, disinformation, lies and slander are becoming constant attributes of the foreign policy of Washington and many of its allies. Thus, for a number of years the US media have been spreading the fiction of alleged Russian meddling in the election overseas, but the investigation and recent US media coverage has clearly shown that the Democrats and Hillary Clinton are the real culprits behind Russia-gate.

Under these circumstances, it is the duty of every citizen, a matter of patriotism and a sense of responsibility for their country, to defend their homeland from aggression, including information aggression.

Valery Kulikov, political expert, exclusively for the online magazine “New Eastern Outlook”.

Although the associations with racial discrimination in the US are primarily related to the country’s black population, the problem is much deeper and more serious.

Even The Guardian, which is “friendly” to the current government in Washington, stresses that racism is rampant in the United States and that from the very beginning the US was built on the idea of white supremacy. This overt and deliberate racism has been practiced for longer than unconscious or hidden racism. Even though it has been almost 70 years since the Supreme Court of the United States ruled that the US state laws establishing racial segregation in public schools are unconstitutional, the racial lines drawn 400 years ago still divide the nation, proving that the country’s current political elite’s rhetoric about freedom and equality is just empty words.

But alongside the black population, Asians are also targeted for racial discrimination in the US, which is by no means the result of policy in only recent years. After all, since the late 19th century there have been restrictions and special measures against the Chinese in the United States at the state level. Thus, when the gold rush broke out in California in the 1850s and caused increased demand for workers in mining and railroad construction, this dangerous and low-paying niche was filled with Chinese immigrants.However, the media’s portrayal of the typical Chinese grotesquely exaggerated aspects of Chinese identity that Americans found sinister or highly exotic. In such circumstances, conflicts with Chinese immigrants became very common. One of such episodes was the murder of a Chinese immigrant Ling Sing by a white American George Hall, after which in 1854 the decision of the Supreme Court of California in the case of People v. Hall de facto gave carte blanche to anti-Asian violence by virtue of the ruling that the Chinese are “a race of people defined by nature as inferior and who are incapable of progress or intellectual development after a certain moment.”

Two decades later, the infamous “Chinese Massacre” took place in Los Angeles on the night of October 24, 1871, and no one was held responsible. This atrocity rightly became one of the bloodiest pages in the history of the city.

Four more years later, in 1875, the Page Act, the first restrictive federal immigration law in the United States, was enacted and applied mainly against the Chinese, aiming to limit Asian immigration.The Page Act marked the beginning of legal discrimination against the Chinese: in 1882, an overwhelming majority in Congress voted for the adoption of the Chinese Exclusion Act, which banned the Chinese immigration for 20 years.

Then on September 2, 1885, in Rock Springs, Wyoming, 150 white miners attacked their Chinese counterparts, which led to the death of 28 Chinese workers, 15 injured and several hundred more driven out of the town.

Nowadays, the Asian-American community is a diverse and rapidly growing racial group in the United States. The data released in 2019 showed that 23.2 million people in the United States identify themselves as Asian Americans. They represent 19 different groups of Asian origin, with Chinese Americans being the largest of them, followed by Indian Americans and Filipino Americans.

The US RAND Corporation recently presented a report on this problem, where anti-Asian racism is defined as discriminatory acts committed against people who are considered Asians living in the United States. These manifestations of anti-Asian racism have noticeably intensified with the outbreak of the coronavirus pandemic. First, the White House initiated the trade war with China, followed by the coronavirus conflict, and then Beijing was officially accused of bearing responsibility for the terrible consequences of the spread of the Covid-19 pandemic and the deaths of more than 100 thousand Americans from Covid-19. As these events unfolded over recent years, the United States has seen a resurgence in Sinophobia.

According to experts, in recent years a surge in hate attacks against Asian Americans and people from the Pacific region has been recorded almost throughout the United States, and could to some extent be provoked by negative statements by former President Donald Trump who accused China of spreading Covid-19. It is also reported that during the period from March 2020 to September 2021, there were more than 10,000 such incidents in the US.

However, the anti-Chinese racial wave about the alleged “Chinese virus” initiated by 45th US President Donald Trump’s remarks is also rooted in history. In 1900, a bubonic plague outbreak struck San Francisco, and the first victim was a Chinese immigrant, after which the accusation of allegedly bringing the virus was quickly brought against the Chinese community.

As for the manifestations of anti-Chinese racism in the United States, the statistics for 2021 showed that the number of attacks in San Francisco alone, directed against people of Asian origin and committed with racial motives due to the outbreak of Covid-19, increased several times, Insider reports. This was announced by the city authorities at a special press conference on January 25 with the participation of police representatives. The information at the conference clearly illustrates that the animosity toward people of Asian appearance in the United States is growing against the background of the Covid-19 pandemic. At the same time, in 2021 the number of attacks and other crimes committed against them on the racism and ethnic hostility grounds increased more than sixfold in San Francisco alone. The city officials have pledged to strengthen security to ensure the protection of all Asian Americans.

In an attempt to contribute to countering racial manifestations against Asians, ballet companies in the United States suddenly began to revise the image of Asians in The Nutcracker, trying to fight old stereotypes about Chinese culture, writes The New York Times. Some famous groups, inter alia, the New York Ballet, have adjusted Chinese dance, abandoning the thin hanging moustaches of male dancers, which were previously used as a traditional element of Asian culture. The scene “Confiturenburg, the Palace of Sweets” of this ballet was updated with a new character – an energetic and superhero-like cricket named Green Tea, whose mission is “countering stereotypes about Chinese culture.”

Some troupes have almost completely reworked Chinese dance, believing that this way it will find a greater response from a modern audience. So, the Tulsa Ballet company, in their quest to abandon the “outdated image” of Asians, filled its production with elements of martial arts, guided by a choreographer from China, and classical Chinese dance. And Colorado Ballet presented “The Nutcracker” with new costumes that were also present in the Chinese dance.

Teachers and students of Butler University in Indianapolis this year made a decision to rename the famous “Tea” stage into “Dragon Beard” in honor of popular Chinese sweets. And the mythical figure of the Monkey King from classical Chinese literature became the basis for the choreography in this updated scene. The Boston Ballet added a new pas de deux scene based on a traditional Chinese ribbon dance.

But all these demonstrations against old stereotypes about Chinese culture cannot yet solve the main problem of the racism spreading in the United States. Therefore, the Asian community in the United States continues to protest against racial manifestations and hatred. Some famous personalities have joined the struggle. Philip Lim, a successful fashion designer, Daniel Day Kim, a Hollywood actor, and other Asian American celebrities in their interviews and online videos are calling for a stop to hatred. The anti-hate campaign is a real hit. #StopAsianHate gave a rise to a social movement

But according to the American media it is clear to everyone that much remains to be done to eradicate racism from the political ideology of the United States.

Vladimir Odintsov, political observer, exclusively for the online magazine “New Eastern Outlook”.

What I am writing here I have been warned against. As we move toward the last full week of February 2020, we are told that the world is at the brink of a war. But who believes this?

Certainly, anyone reading the Western media, you know the ones, CNN, the BBC, the Guardian, all but Fox News, keep getting the same story. If we listened, and by “we,” I mean the people of the world, we would be cowering in shelters digging holes in our backyards. No one is doing this. Thus, we can assume that no one believes there is going to be a war.

What those who do know, the few real “insiders,” is that war as we know it, or knew it, simply can’t exist.

Much of America’s strength is in its navy, carrier battle groups. Today they are totally vulnerable to land-based missiles that exist “on the cheap” covering not only the Persian Gulf but the Indian Ocean as well, so far from shore that attacks on Iran are incomprehensible, well out of range for carrier-based planes.

Similarly, the Mediterranean is being patrolled by nation upon nation, but the naval balance belongs to Russia with its newly arrive Kinzhal hypersonic missiles ranging easily past Gibraltar and beyond.

These are the last days for armored attacks, for aircraft carriers or for blitzkrieg, for anyone. Modern drones, loiter munitions and area denial weapons make what we knew of war to be pipe dreams. Today’s battlefield, with “theatre level players” is unsurvivable, except for submarines, space weapons and stealth aircraft that land on airfields that can be destroyed in moments.

No American government could survive losing an aircraft carrier, particularly to Iran.

War, as it is described to us by the cheerleaders of the military industrial complex of the West and its media whores, is a con.

So, what is the game here?

Simply put, no one seems to know though some can guess. Those whose guesses are closest to the truth are considered conspiracy theorists and cranks though the worst and most childish tales are being peddled by mainstream media, not from Qanon or the endless app based fake news networks.

There are no “respected” experts writing for the mainstream media. They don’t exist. They may never have existed as men like Cronkite or Murrow may only have been better actors than we see today.

Let’s look at some examples.

Most recently I reviewed an article by the BBC on “false flags.” They had serious trouble coming up with examples as, and I say this well armed with specific knowledge, as it is hard to find references to false flag attacks that don’t involve Britain and/or the United States. They did, however, land on the Tonkin Gulf incident. This must have made them cry.

Back in 1964, the US staged a fake attack by North Vietnam on US naval forces in the South China Sea. This led to a congressional resolution that allowed the US to go to war in South Vietnam to prevent enactment of the Geneva Accords that specified reunification of Vietnam.

From here we could go into a subcategory of false flag events tied to broken promises and treaties.

Today, the better experts, such as they are, look to the West to either fake an invasion of Ukraine, far more likely, stage a gas attack killing thousands of civilians.

Current black ops capabilities of the West, control of media, control of UN chemical weapons investigators and a long history of faking gas attacks using the White Helmets, makes this the “go to” strategy for the US.

The parallel with Vietnam? Vietnam was promised a plebiscite and reunification. Instead, they got a decade and a half of carpet bombing and a country soaked with dioxin, which has been killing now for generations.

With Ukraine, of course, we have the promise of no NATO expansion eastward. Excuse my use of a cheap press tactic but I can’t resist. Everyone knows the US promised the Soviets/Russians, so long ago, that no Eastern Bloc nation part of the former Soviet Union would either join NATO or host American forces.

Yet American marines sit there in Latvia, an AEGIS radar is in Romania and Poland has become a center for training right wing terrorists in facilities that, during the War on Terror, housed thousands of innocent civilians who spent years being tortured to support false flag narratives.

Oh that.

When “they” got away with 9/11, it became clear that no lie was too big, no assault of decency or even reality itself was too big.

Having debriefed several of the silenced investigators of 9/11, some things became clear that are important to understand when looking at what is playing out today.

First of all, the perpetrators weren’t nation states at all.

According to investigators, 9/11 was planned and executed by a cabal of American billionaires, almost all of whom have backed Donald Trump as well, working hand in hand with Israeli Likudists, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, Ukraine, the Republic of Georgia and key members of the former South African government.

Stolen nuclear weapons from a virtually unguarded depot in Texas were passed on to international arms dealers and transported to Mali where Israeli scientists reconfigured them for use against the United States.

They were then flown by private plane to Teterboro Airport, allegedly on a plane lent to the Mossad by Jeffrey Epstein and transported to the 3 towers.

The plane attacks were a decoy. It is impossible to hijack a modern “fly by wire” aircraft as there are full control overrides that can be remotely activated by the CIA as part of the engine management system. Any more on this violates security protocols.

A Reagan era presidential order specified that any domestic aircraft that was over a populated area of the United States would be shot down. The reason Reagan gave, and I have interviewed those in the room, is that the plane would be assumed to be a weapon of mass destruction and that a school, sporting event or such would be the likely target.

This is simply an inexorable fact, one that many new, certainly congress, the Pentagon and the security services. All knew 9/11 was a false flag long before the fake “yellowcake uranium” or the underground fortresses of Afghanistan that still can’t be located.

No, Osama bin Laden (AKA Colonel Timothy Osman) was in no way involved. I reviewed this with bin Laden’s handler who talked about meeting with Oxford educated Osama bin Laden on many occasions related to the secret war on Russia that played out in Afghanistan.

There is so much more to tell but this is not the time or place. It is sufficient to establish that the entirety of the Global War on Terror was and is a false flag and that events that play out today are a continuation.

Thus, when the BBC relegates the Tonkin Gulf false flag as simple innocent fun, millions dead, endless lives destroyed, they ignore what goes on day after day.

What about COVID? Is it a false flag as well?

One could easily establish that “gain of function” research with dangerous diseases has risks that outweigh gains.

In fact, there are no potential gains at all unless one were to “repackage” germ warfare programs behind thinly veiled lies.

This seems to be where COVID originated.

Based on what has played out, a new chess board opened based on disease driven chaos theory vectors. Nearly all events, be it gas shortages, fuel costs, right wing extremism and the spread of terrorism across Africa at an unprecedented level, tie orchestrated COVID responses to a larger plan of realigning the world.

That realignment is far from for the better. It serves militarism, extremism and those of wealth and power. Those who have died are victims of terrorism.

Conclusion

War is a thing of the past. Or is it? Why fight a war when you can have oil rich sheikhs recruit the poverty stricken young from around the world, ferry them magically thousands of miles and unleash a campaign of terror not seen since the Middle Ages.

What if it fails? Simple, like it says on the shampoo bottle, “rinse and repeat.”

It means the United States will see another 9/11. Britain will see another 7/7 as well, the test of terror defense capabilities of the London Underground that, almost magically, turned into a real terror attack.

Who would have guessed that the agencies used by MI 5 and Special Branch to hire actors for a terrorism simulation would have hired real terrorists instead?

You don’t believe this?

Britain extradited John Anthony Hill from Ireland and put him on trial for saying exactly what I am here. A British jury found him “not guilty” and in doing so found that the British government had lied about every aspect of 7/7.

Google has buried this truth as it does nearly all others, but this is why Google exists, isn’t it?

That’s ok, the British government destroyed the file on the trial anyway:

Dear P Newton Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) Request – 201117003 Thank you for your request received on 17 November 2020 in which you asked for the following information from the Ministry of Justice (MoJ):

“It is reported that at 4pm (16:00) on Thursday 12 May 2011 at Southwark Crown Court, a jury returned and declared Muad’Dib (Anthony John Hill) innocent of attempting to ‘pervert the course of justice’.

1. Please disclose the whole case file, redacted where necessary. 2. If the disclosure of the whole case file is prohibitory, please disclose the Judges Order, Judgment or Summary and comments on the date in reference.”

Your request has been handled under the FOIA. The MoJ does not hold any information in the scope of your request. This is because there is no legal or business requirement for MoJ to do so due to the Crown Courts retention policy of 7 years the file has been destroyed. The FOIA does not oblige a public authority to create information to answer a request if the requested information is not held. The duty is to only provide the recorded information held.

Thus, we are driven to ask, is there a “cohesion” or “mosaic” behind the events that seem to spiral hellishly as though they have a life of their own?

Can a pandemic like COVID be tied to color revolutions, to false flag terrorism, to global cabals that market oil, minerals or human beings with the same malignant enthusiasm?

Gordon Duff is a Marine combat veteran of the Vietnam War that has worked on veterans and POW issues for decades and consulted with governments challenged by security issues. He’s a senior editor and chairman of the board of Veterans Today, especially for the online magazine “New Eastern Outlook”.

Drug addicts are commonly seen as marginalized people with a tourniquet around their arm who get hooked on drugs because of social and economic dislocation, personal problems, and an inability to fulfil themselves. But today, America is also suffering from a massive opioid crisis, which has already been declared an “emergency situation” by the authorities.

As a result of the failed policies of the current US authorities, focused solely on spinning the profit flywheel of the country’s military and industrial circles and neglecting the social problems of people, the country is facing one of the worst drug crises in its history. And this is evidenced by the highest annual drug overdose death rate in the US, CNN reports, citing data from the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).

According to the CDC, overdose deaths have increased by 28.5% over the previous year and have almost doubled in the past five years. In the last year alone, more than 100,000 US residents died from this cause. The biggest increase in overdose deaths, according to US media reports, has been in West Virginia, Kentucky and Tennessee.

Opioids continue to be cited as the leading cause of drug-related deaths. The opioid crisis in the US, which can be considered one of the two most important health issues in the world along with health insurance reform, dates back to the 1990s, but there is no coherent strategy to address the situation. At the time, doctors in the US were faced with a growing number of patient complaints about chronic pain, which the pharmaceutical companies almost immediately took advantage of. They began to “promote” opioid-based drugs in any way they could, and to convince doctors that it was safe to prescribe this type of drug and that it was highly efficient. Health workers at the time were overwrought with the large number of patients with chronic pain of various origins, including fears due to social dislocation, so they heeded the call of corporations and began prescribing such medicines to patients in order to relieve people’s suffering more quickly and easily. Thus, prescription opioid medicines are widely available throughout the United States.

Meanwhile, STAT, a profile publication, estimates that if no action is taken over the next ten years, some 500,000 people could die of opioid overdoses in the United States. For comparison, about the same number have died in the country from HIV/AIDS since 1980 to date.

In recent years, people have increasingly turned to synthetic opioids such as fentanyl, which the US Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) claims is “primarily responsible for fueling the ongoing opioid crisis.” Synthetic opioids, and especially fentanyl, have caused 64% of all overdose deaths in the past 12 months. Some law enforcement officials have called the drug “manufactured death” since it is cheaper and fifty times more efficient than heroin.

According to the Council on Foreign Relations, more than 1,300 people die every week in the US from opioid-related overdoses, a number that has risen across the country amid the COVID-19 pandemic. The crisis has reached such a scale that it is now a brake on the economy and a threat to national security. Opioid overdose deaths have risen more than sixfold since 1999, killing more than 60,000 people each year, seven times the number of US troops killed in Iraq and Afghanistan (the CDC estimates that it has already increased to 69,710 deaths from opioid overdoses in 2020).

Opioid drugs, including oxycodone, hydrocodone and morphine, are commonly prescribed for the treatment of pain. In the last fifteen years, doctors have increasingly prescribed them for chronic conditions such as back or joint pain, despite risks regarding their safety and efficiency. According to New York’s Special Narcotics Prosecutor Bridget Brennan, the opioid epidemic did not start until there was a huge surplus of opioids in the form of pharmaceuticals.

Many health experts attribute the high number of deaths to what they say has been an over-prescription of these drugs by doctors. Doctors have started prescribing more opioids because pharmaceutical companies have become more aggressive in marketing the drugs, claiming they carry little risk. As a result, the pharmaceutical companies have hooked the whole country on powerful painkillers. US authorities estimate that the consequences of aggressive marketing by pharmaceutical companies leading to uncontrolled opioid use will cost the state $12.7-17.5bn.

In order to stem the tide of over-prescribing of opioids by doctors, such doctors are periodically jailed in America today. One recent case is the life sentence for Stephen Hanson in Kansas, who prescribed without medical justification. Doctors of Courage, an organization that defends the right of doctors to decide for themselves whether there is a reason to relieve people of pain, has tried unsuccessfully to stand up for him. The movement’s website lists 1,199 names of doctors who have already been sentenced to various terms.

While doctors are going to jail, opioid manufacturers (notably Purdue Pharma, which makes OxyContin) are getting away with paying out millions in lawsuits while taking billions in profits from the sale of such drugs. In July 2019, the US Drug Enforcement Administration released a database showing that 76 billion prescription painkillers have been sold in the US over six years. This is enough to provide pills for every adult and child in the country for 36 years to come. Across the country, multi-billion dollar lawsuits are being filed against pharmaceutical companies. US analysts compare the current lawsuit against the pharmaceutical companies to litigation in the tobacco industry in the 1990s (back then Philip Morris and other major players paid a whopping $206bn at the time for the consequences of tobacco smoking).

It is no surprise that the super-profit US pharmaceutical market does not want this history to reoccur, as there are already more than two thousand complaints worth tens of billions of dollars. Pharmaceutical companies want peace and several US drug distributors — Johnson & Johnson (J&J), McKesson, AmerisourceBergen and Cardinal Health — are already negotiating an $18bn payout in exchange for withdrawal of the lawsuit, which, under US law, would allow the companies to effectively avoid being found guilty of the “opioid crisis”. Israeli pharmaceutical company Teva, the world’s largest generic drug maker, will pay $85mln to the state of Oklahoma for stopping prosecutions over allegations that together with other painkiller makers it was driving an opioid epidemic. Similar charges await Teva in Cleveland.

Under the terms of the agreement, the companies will pay settlements to the Native Americans over seven years, and about 15% of the total amount will go towards legal fees and other legal costs, but the bulk will go towardsdrug treatment and prevention programs.

Meanwhile, according to the US Senate, the pharmaceutical lobby continues to thrive as virtually one of the most powerful in the country. In 2018 alone, pharmaceutical lobbyists spent $277mln: more than the military.

Valery Kulikov, political expert, exclusively for the online magazine “New Eastern Outlook”.

Following the opening, on February 8, of the eighth round of talks on restarting the Iran nuclear deal (formally known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, or JCPOA), and with a 20-page draft document on the revival of the “deal of the century” now on the table, there are grounds for hoping that the negotiations are drawing to an end. But some recent moves by the Biden administration suggest that it is still too early to celebrate.

The participants in the Vienna talks are certainly trying to demonstrate that they share a common goal, and are working together to achieve success. And, despite the barrage of propaganda from opponents of the nuclear deal, and the protests being aired in the media, progress is clearly being made.

The goal of the talks in Vienna is to revive the JCPOA on the terms and in the form agreed in 2015, not to agree on a “Plan B” which would come into effect should the efforts to revive the deal be unsuccessful. “Globally, the general consensus is that there is no reasonable alternative to the JCPOA, and that the last US administration’s serious mistakes and violations of UNSC Resolution No. 2231 need to be put right. This will allow Iran to continue complying with its voluntary commitments under the deal – a process which was put on hold in response to Washington’s withdrawal from the deal,” said Vladimir Yermakov,  Director of the Non-Proliferation and Arms Control Department at the Russian Foreign Ministry.

However, as previous experience in these negotiations has proved, it is still too early to speculate on the results of the talks or make any predictions about deadlines.

Currently, the assumption is that the JCPOA will be revived in its entirety, with nothing added, and nothing taken away. Since the situation has changed considerably over the last four years, it is possible that some new issues may arise, but these should be discussed separately at the end of the process. A great deal has already been achieved. A draft of the final document has been drawn up. It does contain a number of points requiring further elaboration, and a considerable number of questions, some of which are fairly fundamental, still need to be resolved. The document deals with the lifting of the US sanctions, Iran’s future actions in relation to its nuclear program, and, finally, a road map for implementing the measures agreed on. Once a final agreement has been reached, the preparations for its implementation will begin. This may take one or two months. And then, we may see the long-awaited JCPOA coming into effect, more or less in the form that was agreed back in 2015.

During the Vienna talks, the international community – which reflects all views, not only those of Washington and Tel Aviv – has shown itself sympathetic to Iran’s wishes. After all, in this case Iran is the injured party – it was the USA, not Tehran, that withdrew from the JCPOA in breach of international rules and accepted negotiating practice. And it was not Iran’s idea to renege on its obligations, the decision was forced on it by the US’s “maximum pressure” campaign.

As readers will remember, Iran signed the JCPOA with the five permanent members of the UN Security Council, plus Germany, in July 2015. But in 2018 the USA unilaterally withdrew from the agreement and imposed sanctions on Iran, and the following year Iran, in response, began its staged withdrawal from its obligations under the JCPOA. But following the inauguration of Joe Biden as US President Washington decided to renew the dialog with Iran, and considerable progress was made in six rounds of indirect talks, held in Vienna. But last June’s presidential elections in Iran brought a new team to power in Tehran, and the talks were paused until November, and when they were renewed, at the end of the year, they ran into difficulties.

And in recent months Israel has also been raising objections to the revival of the JCPOA. Thus on November 28 Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett stated that Tel Aviv was becoming increasingly concerned about the leading world powers’ willingness to lift the sanctions in exchange for “insufficient” restrictions on Iran’s nuclear program. Bennett had earlier declared that his government would not comply with the terms of the nuclear deal, even if it was revived with the support of Washington, as Israel was not a party to it. The possibility of the renewal of the nuclear deal concluded between the USA and Iran clearly frightens Israel – and not just because it would help to boost Iran’s status within the international community. Israel is also concerned that the JCPOA may deal a lethal blow to the anti-Iranian coalition between the US, Israel and the Persian Gulf nations, that came into being with the signing of the Abraham Accords.

On February 6 Naftali Bennet had the latest in a series of telephone conversations with Joe Biden to discuss the “growing Iranian aggression, and the steps to block the Iranian nuclear program”. Moreover, the news site Axios, citing an unnamed Israeli civil servant, reports that Naftali Bennet had urged the US not to revive the Iran nuclear deal. According to the site’s source, during the telephone conversation the Israeli premier assured his US counterpart that “nothing will happen if you don’t sign it”.

The White House, apparently prompted by Tel Aviv, then found a highly original way to retreat from its position without losing face. The Biden administration appointed Sam Brinton to a high-ranking post in the Department of Energy’s Office of Nuclear Energy, a position that involves liaising with counterparts in China, Russia and Iran on nuclear-related issues including the JCPOA.

In certain respects the appointment appears entirely reasonable: Sam Brinton has a dual Master’s degree in engineering systems and nuclear sciences from the globally renowned Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Brinton has extensive professional experience and is no stranger to the workings of government, having advised the Obama administration and worked with the US Congress on its nuclear policy.

However, Brinton’s public image is strikingly different from what would be expected of a senior functionary in most countries, especially in Asia – and particularly in Iran. Sam Brinton is a LGBTQ activist whose highly individual appearance and openly queer lifestyle have provoked a storm of comment on social media. Brinton is an out-and-proud drag queen and “pup handler” – a gay sub-culture in which men dressed in fetish gear “train” other men, who play the role of dogs, as a prelude to sexual activity. Sam Brinton has also given talks on the kink lifestyle in many university campuses and is the author, apparently, of Instagram posts containing graphic “live demonstrations” of various sexual perversions.

As for Iran, a fundamentalist Muslim country with nuclear ambitions, the involvement of an openly queer drag queen in the negotiations will certainly put a strain on the relations between the two countries, and Brinton’s sexual orientation may even put the newly appointed expert at risk of prosecution in the Islamic Republic. That is a very real risk – as number of media outlets have reported, the latest in a series of executions of gay men took place in Tehran on January 30. And in June last year two other men were executed for the same offense, according to Human Rights Activists.

The Biden administration’s decision to appoint Sam Brinton is an symbolizes the US’s social decadence and, better than anything else, illustrates the mentality of the country’s current government. As reported by the Daily Mail, recently more than thirty Republican delegates, headed by former Presidential Doctor Ronny Jackson, called for Joe Biden to undergo a cognitive skills test to prove that he is still fit for office. In their letter they refer to a number of recent gaffes made by the President and cite the precedent of Donald Trump, who took such a test in 2018. Maybe the lawmakers are onto something, and there really are grounds for concern.

Vladimir Danilov, political observer, exclusively for the online magazine “New Eastern Outlook”.

The Joe Biden administration’s ‘new’ Indo-Pacific strategy document contains nothing ‘new’ insofar as the cardinal objective of this strategy is concerned i.e., ‘encircling China.’ Interestingly enough, the strategy has been revealed despite the Biden administration’s various rhetorical claims that the administration is not seeking to build up a global coalition against China, or that they do not want countries to choose between Washington and Beijing.  Yet, the core motivation of this ‘new’ strategy is to contest China. As the document highlights, China is “combining its economic, diplomatic, military, and technological might as it pursues a sphere of influence in the Indo-Pacific and seeks to become the world’s most influential power.” Therefore, the Biden administration seeks to build a strategic environment “that is maximally favorable to the United States.”The Biden administration aims to do this not just in some specific countries, but in “every corner of the of the region, from northeast Asia and southeast Asia to south Asia and Oceania, including the pacific islands.” Therefore, if there is anything really new in the 2022 Indo-Pacific Strategy, it is a more astute resolve to expand the scope of the US’ ‘China encirclement plan.’

This is an expansion that comes at a time when the US has, in the past few years, failed extremely badly to build an effective strategy or narrative against China, let alone consolidating a coalition like the QUAD, involving India, Australia, Japan and the US itself. On the contrary, there is an immensely high level of resilience in Beijing, which very largely surpasses desperate US efforts to defeat it. As China’s Xi stressed at the welcome Banquet for the Winter Olympics, China has just entered the Year of the Tiger according to the lunar calendar. Tiger is a symbol of strength, courage and fearlessness.” Xi’s words unmistakably reflect a strong Chinese defiance against US efforts to create controversies around the games as part of its larger propaganda aimed at demonizing China. The Indo-Pacific strategy does the same at the highest possible level of policy making. The document’s charge-sheet against China reads like this:

“The PRC’s coercion and aggression spans the globe, but it is most acute in the Indo-Pacific. From the economic coercion of Australia to the conflict along the Line of Actual Control with India to the growing pressure on Taiwan and bullying of neighbors in the East and South China Seas, our allies and partners in the region bear much of the cost of the PRC’s harmful behavior. In the process, the PRC is also undermining human rights and international law, including freedom of navigation, as well as other principles that have brought stability and prosperity to the Indo-Pacific.”

Consistent demonization of China – and an identical escalation of conflict around Russia – is a part and parcel of the Biden administration’s plan to materialize what Biden hailed as “America is back” only a year ago in his first address as the POTUS to global audience i.e., the US allies. By “America is back” Biden clearly implied that the US will be devoting more and more resources to roll-back, encircle and contain its strategic peers, especially China which it describes as the most serious challenge to the US led international political – and financial – system.

But the Biden administration’s challenge to China in the Indo-Pacific region is highly unlikely to make any meaningful impact. As the said policy document highlights, the major focus of the US policy is containing China in the security issues. The Indo-Pacific strategy is flawed insomuch as it lacks a comprehensive plan of a deep and broad economic partnership plan with the relevant countries. The key question, therefore, is: are countries in the Indo-Pacific region – in particular, the Southeast Asian nations – really interested in building a military alliance with China to tackle any direct military threat from China?

While there are small-scale territorial issues in the South and East China seas, no country in Southeast Asia has ever faced, or is facing, threats of a direct Chinese military attack on their mainland. If this was the case at all, these countries would neither have approved China’s membership of Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership , nor would they have decided to deepen their economic ties with Beijing. Therefore, in a region characterized by a very high degree of mutual economic interdependence with China, it is inconceivable why any of these countries would want to make a military alliance with the US – an alliance that could directly undermine treaties like the RCEP.

Although the Biden administration has plans to host the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation forum in 2023 and  hold a special summit with Southeast Asian leaders in Washington in the coming months, there is no comprehensive economic and trade strategy, let alone being conceived at the White House.

The shortcoming is strikingly evident to people like Kurt Campbell, the White House Indo-Pacific coordinator, who recently said, while lamenting the absence of economic plan, that “We’ve got to make clear that not only are we deeply engaged diplomatically, militarily, comprehensively, strategically – that we have an open, engaged, optimistic approach to commercial interactions, investment in the Indo Pacific.”

But, the question is: even though there is a realisation about the necessity of offering a comprehensive plan involving a deep and broad economic engagement with the region, why has the US not offered a real economic incentive to countries in the Indo-Pacific to wean them away from China? The answer perhaps lies in the US’ current state of economy, which is facing an almost 10 per cent inflation rate with prospects of worst to yet come in the 40 years. High inflation rate, as reports in the US mainstream media have highlighted, is quite likely to become a major hurdle for the Biden administration to realise – and revive – its US$2 trillion tax and spending package. The US economy is expected to grow at a mediocre level of 3 to 3.5 per cent only, which means the Biden administration’s overall China strategy will continue to lack a comprehensive economic plan and that it will continue to lack any meaningful and attractive option for the Indo-Pacific countries.

Comparing the US’ inflation rate and low economic growth prospects with China’s growth rate – which is projected to between 6 to 8 per cent in 2022 – there is an easy choice for the Southeast Asian nations to make with regards to developing an economic partnership with China than opting a meaningless security alliance with the US.

Salman Rafi Sheikh, research-analyst of International Relations and Pakistan’s foreign and domestic affairs, exclusively for the online magazine “New Eastern Outlook”.