Christopher Black

Christopher Black is an international criminal lawyer based in Toronto. He is known for a number of high-profile war crimes cases and recently published his novel Beneath the Clouds. He writes essays o­n international law, politics and world events, especially for the o­nline magazine “New Eastern Outlook.”

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Жадность родит зло, войны, насилие и фашизм там и в тех обществах, которые допустили жадность во власть, позволили ей и ее фашизму господствовать над собой. В тех обществах, как древняя Индия, где власть принадлежала равным, до кастовым, до иерархическим варнам/сферонам, открытым Махатмой Ганди, там жадность и другие пороки были нейтрализованы гармонией, миром, ненасилием и взаимной любовью сферонов, исключавшей в Индии войны, насилие, жадность и зло более тысячи лет. Это исследовано ГГСГ в книге «Гандика» с участием пяти Нобелевских Лауреатов Мира в 2019: https://peacefromharmony.org/?cat=ru_c&key=788

Лев Семашко, Главный редактор «Гандики».

Greed gives birth to evil, wars, violence and fascism there and in those societies that allowed greed into power, allowed it and its fascism to dominate them. In those societies like ancient India, where power belonged to equals, up to caste, up to hierarchical varnas/spherons discovered by Mahatma Gandhi, there greed and other vices were neutralized by harmony, peace, nonviolence and mutual love of spherons, which excluded war, violence, greed and evil in India for over a thousand years. This was researched by the GGHA in the book "Gandhica" with the participation of five Nobel Peace Laureates in 2019: https://peacefromharmony.org/docs/global-peace-science-2016.pdf

Dr. Leo Semashko, Editor-in-Chief of Gandhica.

11-05-21

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Operation Barbarossa II: Setting The Stage For War

06-02-20

I have written several times about the continuing NATO preparations for an attack o­n Russia, a second Operation Barbarossa, the code name for the Nazi invasion of the USSR in 1941. Circumstances prompt me to write about it again, for as of the last week in January the Americans and their gang of lieutenant nations in NATO have commenced the biggest military exercises in 25 years to take place in Europe. The code name for this operation is Defender-Europe 20 but we can interpret that as Attack-Russia 20; in effect a preparation for an attack o­n Russia comparable to the Nazi invasion in 1941 that killed 27 million Soviet citizens, wounded countless more and destroyed everything west of the Urals and led ultimately to the crushing of the Nazis that launched the attack.

For the past several years the US has been building up bases in Eastern Europe, building up their logistics systems, prepositioning vast amounts of munitions and weapons of every type and calibre, securing convoy routes from the USA across the Atlantic and across Europe right up to Russia’s borders for the rapid movement of military equipment and formations, installing nuclear capable missile systems in key locations from Poland to Romania, increasing intelligence flights in the Baltic, particularly with regard to the Russian base at Kaliningrad and the approaches to St. Petersburg, and the Black Sea, Crimea and Ukraine as well around the Russian bases at Vladivostok, all the while, in their propaganda talking about false flag operations they could use to blame Russia and provide the pretext for their attack. Kaliningrad has been mentioned several times by US generals and officials as o­ne possible scene for staging a false flag operation for this purpose. But the number of scenarios they could use is limited o­nly by their imagination and capabilities.

These conventional military exercises are complemented by the withdrawal of the United States from several nuclear arms treaties to give the US a free hand to develop and deploy nuclear weapons which, according to their National Defence Strategy, they will use whenever and wherever they see fit, without limitation or restrictions, including the intention to launch a nuclear first strike. The clear targets are Russia and China. The “pivot to the Pacific” that the Americans began some years ago is a part of these preparations, and while this applies pressure against China it also threatens Russia.

But the new exercises are raising alarms in Moscow and Minsk The Belarusian Minister of

Defence, Andrei Rakov, noted that:

 “NATO’s military contingent deployed in the countries neighbouring Belarus during the Atlantic Resolve and Enhanced Forward Presence has been increased by 13 times in the past six years, from 550 to more than 7,000 troops, and the number of hardware units has grown fivefold and that the Defender-Europe 20 exercises to be organized o­n the territories of ten states, including Poland and the Baltic republics that border Belarus involve about 37,000 troops, with 20,000 of them from the United States.”

He also said that “the number of NATO drills near the Belarusian border and the number of personnel involved in these drills had more than doubled in the past five years. Defence spending has increased as well. In the past five years, Poland’s military budget soared by 30%, that of Lithuania — by 2.5 times, and Latvia’s — threefold.”

In such conditions, he underscored, “Belarus is forced to take response measures. We are forced to react to the scale-up of military activities in Europe, including in close proximity to our border. Our response will not necessarily be tit-for-tat. We were ready for such development of the military political situation that is why our reaction has a planned character,” he noted. “Thus, in the past three years, the Belarusian military have increased the number of exercises by more than 20% and the number of snap combat readiness checks have doubled.”

The Russian Foreign Ministry o­n January 17 stated that,

“NATO’s military drills o­n the eastern flank of NATO are increasingly more reminiscent of purposeful preparations for a large-scale military conflict” and, “NATO countries are constantly building up their military presence close to our borders, working to improve the operational efficiency of redeploying forces to the eastern flank. The intensity of the drills whose scenarios are increasingly more reminiscent of preparations for a large-scale military conflict is increasing. The systematic development of the European segment of the US/NATO missile defence system continues.”

On February 4th Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov stated,

“Russia will react to the US military exercise in Europe Defender 2020 due in March, but it will do so in a way that will rule out unnecessary risks. Naturally, we will react. We cannot ignore processes that arouse very great concerns. But we will react in a way that will not create unnecessary risks.”

However it is certain the United States and its armed gang in NATO will do everything they can do take risks that could kill us all. For the Defender-Europe 20 exercises are o­n a vast scale, involving according to a US Army fact sheet, four Army prepositioned weapons and ammunition and other logistics sites in three European countries, transport materiel four thousand kilometres across twelve convoy routes, involve nine thousand US troops already in Europe, seven thousand National Guard soldiers, use 14 major ports and airfields, major elements of the US Navy, major elements of US Air Force units from the US, Europe and Africa, the deployment of 20,000 Army and Marine US soldiers from the US to Europe, twenty thousand pieces of equipment to be moved from the US to Europe including trucks, tanks, and artillery pieces, all having the objective, the US claims of

“increase strategic readiness and interoperability by exercising the U.S. military’s ability to rapidly deploy a large combat-credible force and equipment from the United States to Europe; and alongside its allies and partners, quickly respond to a potential crisis.”

And, they add,

“The joint, multinational training exercise is scheduled to take place from April to May 2020, with personnel and equipment movements occurring from February through July 2020. The exercise supports objectives defined by NATO to build readiness within the alliance and deter potential adversaries.”

The last sentence in the US Army Europe statement reveals the strategic objective of the exercises, to build readiness for war o­n Russia. There is no other interpretation possible.

On February 26, 2016 the Atlantic Council, the preeminent NATO think tank, issued a report o­n the state of readiness of the NATO alliance to fight and win a war with Russia. The focus of the report was o­n the Baltic States. The report is called “Alliance at Risk.”

It has the sub-heading “Strengthening European Defense in an Age of Turbulence and Competition.” Layer upon layer of distortion, half-truths, lies and fantasies obscure the fact that it is the NATO countries that have caused the turbulence from the Middle East to Ukraine. NATO is responsible for nothing according to this report, except “protecting the peace.” Russia is the supreme aggressor state, intent o­n undermining the security of Europe, even intent o­n attacking Europe, an “existential threat” that NATO must prepare to repel.

It states a series of lies at page 6 that,

“The Russian invasion of Crimea, its support for separatists, and its invasion of eastern Ukraine have effectively ripped up the post-Cold War settlement of Europe. President Vladimir Putin has shattered any thoughts of a strategic partnership with NATO; instead, Russia is now a de facto strategic adversary. Even more dangerously, the threat is potentially existential, because Putin has constructed an international dynamic that could put Russia o­n a collision course with NATO. At the center of this collision would be the significant Russian-speaking populations in the Baltic States, whose interests are used by the Kremlin to justify Russia’s aggressive actions in the region. Under Article 5 of NATO’s Washington Treaty, any military move by Putin o­n the Baltic states would trigger war, potentially o­n a nuclear scale, because the Russians integrate nuclear weapons into every aspect of their military thinking.”

Lies, because none of this is true and it is the NATO war alliance that threatens the peace and incorporates nuclear weapons into all their military thinking and planning.

This supports warnings made the past two years of a move by NATO in the Baltic states which will be justified by false flag hybrid war operations conducted by NATO, as I have stated several times in other essays. This is emphasized by the recommendation in the report that “to deter any Russian encroachment into the Baltic States, NATO should establish a permanent presence in the region… to prevent a Russian coup de main operation …”

The document also uses language that indicates that the NATO powers do not recognize Russian sovereignty over Kaliningrad that was established at the end of the second world war, claiming that Russia “has ripped up” the post-Cold War settlement of Europe, whatever that means to them, because as far as we know the Cold War was supposed to end with the withdrawal of the Red Army from Eastern Europe in exchange for a commitment by USA that NATO would not move east. Instead the NATO powers, with the treachery that is their custom, moved quickly into those territories and began conducting regular and expanding military exercises threatening Russia directly. 

Once again, the NATO powers are preparing the ground for an incident involving Kaliningrad, home base of their Baltic Fleet and guardian of the approaches to St. Petersburg and what the Guardian stated is “emerging as a critical square o­n the east European chessboard in Vladimir Putin’s efforts to push back assertively against NATO expansion.”

The situation has become so critical that the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists moved their Doomsday Clock 20 seconds closer to midnight last week citing as a primary reason the immediate danger of nuclear war between the United States and Russia. They stated, “Civilization-ending nuclear war—whether started by design, blunder, or simple miscommunication—is a genuine possibility. But even they, a US organisation, lied about the true state of affairs and blamed Russia as much as the US for the situation the US and its allies have created.

As for international law, it is nowhere to be seen. The preparations for war by NATO are a violation of the UN Charter and the fundamental principles of international law contained in it. They are war crimes under the Nuremburg Principles and the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court, because they are part of the conspiracy to commit, and preparations for, a war of aggression against Russia, and, since the use of nuclear weapons is a certainty if war breaks out, genocide of the entire human population.

The UN cannot act to prevent this because the Security Council, neutered by its own structure cannot act. The ICC continues to be an irrelevancy. And since, in the absence of a world government with policing powers, international law relies o­n a shared sense of morality, ethics and humanity to be effective, the total negation of morality by the leadership of the United States and the NATO countries has led to a breakdown of international law. Thugs, gangsters and pirates recognise no laws, and we live in a world where these are the people that are now in power in the west.

And so Russia reacts to defend itself, preparations for war intensify, and any hope we have of the American people delivering us from the criminals they keep raising to power, of us doing the same in the other NATO countries, of calling for peace as the World Peace Council does, giving peace a chance, as Lennon said, is buried deeper and deeper under layers of lies and propaganda and we are left with little but despair unless the people, the mass of people release the power latent in them and confront those in power and replace them with leaders dedicated not o­nly to the welfare of their people, but also dedicated to peace, peace now and peace forever. I joined the Canadian Peace Congress to try to do that. I urge all of you to wake up to the danger, join peace groups wherever you are, do whatever you can, but block the road to war.

Christopher Black is an international criminal lawyer based in Toronto. He is known for a number of high-profile war crimes cases and recently published his novel Beneath the Clouds. He writes essays o­n international law, politics and world events, especially for the o­nline magazine “New Eastern Outlook.”

Original: https://journal-neo.org/2020/02/06/operation-barbarossa-ii-setting-the-stage-for-war/

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Кристофер Блэк

Зачем НАТО сегодня готовится к новой «Барбароссе»?

Как отмечает в своей новой статье канадский эксперт по международному праву и правам человека Кристофер Блэк, за последние годы работа по подготовке инфраструктуры Западной Европы к переброске большого количества техники и войск достигла таких масштабов, что скрыть её более невозможно.

Это означает, что НАТО готовится к повторению «операции Барбароса», которую вероломный фашистский режим предпринял в попытках уничтожить Советский Союз и все его население.

Автор напоминает, что советский народ заплатил страшную цену в двадцать семь миллионов человеческих жизней за избавление мира от фашистской угрозы и вот в непосредственной близости от границ Беларуси и Российской Федерации снова ведутся приготовления к большой войне. Укрепляются мосты, создаются склады, доверху забитые всеми видами боеприпасов, увеличивается количество перебрасываемых в Польшу и балтийские страны военных.

А между тем все эти приготовления являются преступлением, как с точки зрения Римского Статута, так и по меркам Нюрнбергского процесса, поскольку планирование агрессии против другого государства лежит в основе всех последующих военных преступлений.

Но международное право молчит, молчат международные организации, поскольку прекрасно понимают, что западным элитам, которые ведут себя как бандиты с большой дороги, законы давно побоку.

В этой связи автор призывает всех присоединиться к антивоенному движению, представители которого есть во всех крупных городах, поскольку только так можно остановить подготовку к новому глобальному конфликту, который может стать последним для человечества.

С полной версией статьи вы можете ознакомиться здесь.

Оригинал:

https://ru.journal-neo.org/2020/02/06/zachem-nato-segodnya-gotovitsya-k-novoj-barbarose/

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The Age of Anxiety Redux

By

Christopher Black

20.03.2020

In 1948 the poet, W.H. Auden, published a long poem he titled, The Age of Anxiety, in which four characters express their anxiety about their place in a world that has been destroyed by two world wars and was threatened by a third, and nuclear, world war.

He described the faces in the bars, the people trying to cling to average days that no longer existed, all hoping that the lights wouldn’t go out, that the music would always play, that they could avoid looking at where they were, lost in the dark, “children afraid of the night, who have never been happy or good.”

The entire period, from 1914 until today, has been an age of anxiety created by our common experience of life in the dominant economic, social, and political system that atomises the individual, reduces them to fragment of themselves and constantly threatens them with annihilation.

A tortured humanity cried out for something better and, for a time, during the rise of socialism, during and after the First World War and through to the counter-revolution in what was the Soviet Union, a new human spirit appeared and created conditions that made people aware of their own possibilities and taught them that the other was not an enemy or a competitor, but a friend, a brother, a sister, who, together, could do anything, for when you can do things and know it, anxiety transforms into confidence and calm, into resoluteness and courage. Liberation movements arose against all the imperialist countries, supported by the socialist nations. The possibility of a better world arose, and as Che Guevara wrote, the possibility of a new human being governed by the spirit of cooperation and regard for fellow beings, by love instead of war.

But, though the struggle goes o­n, the present reality is a return to universal anxiety. Nuclear war is a possibility at any time. The Americans threaten it, the Russians, Iranians, Koreans, Chinese prepare for it, and the rest of us can o­nly bite our nails and hope they will not see that bright flash o­n the horizon just before they are swept into oblivion.

Human caused climate change alone threatens us with an immediate existential threat. Temperatures are rising faster than expected by the official journals, though as expected by the more astute scientists, climate systems are disrupted, crops are threatened, the oceans acidified, the ice melting, the seas rising. Our industrial civilisation has destroyed the world ecological systems so that the scientific consensus is that we are in the midst of the 6th Mass Extinction event and its ultimate conclusion is not far off; decades at most, much shorter by some estimations, certainly within my life time.

And the daily grind in the capitalist system generates the daily anxiety we all face, worrying about getting the money you need to live in this system, about paying the bills, about losing the job that you probably hate in any event and o­nly do out of necessity, for most of us do work that creates no satisfaction and from which we can see no escape. The alternative is the street, the hunger, the cold, the heat, the loneliness of being poor. Charlie Chaplin expressed it in Modern Times, the human being as human machine, used up and then discarded by the machine system, worse than slaves, now reduced to subhuman slaves.

On top of all this background anxiety we now have the warnings of imminent death from the corona virus and the unprecedented disruption of every aspect of our lives its appearance has created. Now many face the cruel reality of losing their place in the capitalist lottery as the capitalist economic system breaks down, the system ceases to function, and uncertainty and fear are ever-present.

And, as with all states of anxiety, we see the rise of irrationality and superstition, as people try to convince themselves, “like children afraid of the night” that it is not really happening, or that man created it instead of nature, feeling more secure that it was designed than is a random product of nature, which seems to frighten them the more, and that however it came to be, it is much ado about nothing, just another flu.

We have seen several articles lately making these claims. It has been claimed it was a result of a Chinese bio-warfare lab making a mistake and leaking a virus. It has been claimed it was an American Army laboratory that leaked it; that China was attacked by the US Army sports team that went to a competition in China. For none of these claims is any evidence presented, Instead, they use speculation and conjecture based o­n false facts or coincidence. Some of them contradict themselves in different articles, o­ne wrote an alarming essay the US Army was behind it. Later he wrote another suggesting it was all a plot by Bill Gates and friends. Well, which it it? They don’t know because they don’t know and don’t care about being consistent so long as it is alarming.

But these articles are passed around and soon Trump begins blaming China and China blaming the US exacerbating the already tense situation between the two countries that could lead to nuclear war. These articles fan those flames. While those that claim it is a plot for “world domination” and that it is either not really happening, or, if happening, is nothing to be concerned about, cause people to put themselves and others at risk by ignoring any measures put in place to protect them and the rest of us.

That superstition is involved is plain to see. Those making these claims state that world governments are lying to us. Yet they cannot then explain why the Chinese, Russian, Iranians, Cuban, North Koreans and other anti-imperialist nations take it very seriously and have acted to contain it. But they don’t think about that. They are whistling in the dark because their own anxiety levels are so high, so, to comfort themselves, they invent comforting stories so that they can feel in control. But we are not in control. Nature is. For it is probable, as the Chinese have shown with their genetic studies of the virus that it likely came out of nature not out of a lab.

Of course there is no denying the evil intentions and potential of the western war machine, and of course anything is possible, but until someone comes up with some concrete and reliable evidence that, for example, the virus was an attack o­n China by the USA, a claim which could add the spark to the powder keg of war, I will assume it is something Nature has thrown at us, at the world, and that instead of creating more division between the nations and peoples of the world we must all act together to help each other as humanity unites to overcome this new threat.

Christopher Black is an international criminal lawyer based in Toronto. He is known for a number of high-profile war crimes cases and recently published his novel Beneath the Clouds. He writes essays o­n international law, politics and world events, especially for the o­nline magazine “New Eastern Outlook.”

Original:

https://journal-neo.org/2020/03/20/the-age-of-anxiety-redux/