Intelligence
The cognitive decline could reach up to nine points in some cases, scientists have claimed
https://www.rt.com/news/593681-long-covid-iq-decline
March 3, 2024
FILE PHOTO. © Christopher Furlong / Getty Images
The long-term consequences of Covid-19 could include decreased cognitive abilities and memory deficiency, a new large-scale study has found.
According to research published in the New England Journal of Medicine on Thursday, patients who had recovered from coronavirus symptoms had a cognitive deficit equivalent to three IQ points compared with those who had never been diagnosed with it. Meanwhile, study participants with unresolved persistent symptoms had an IQ decline of six points.
The Covid impact was even more pronounced when it came to those who were admitted to the intensive care unit, with the IQ loss reaching nine points compared to the control group. At the same time, the scientists “observed a small cognitive advantage among participants who had received multiple vaccinations,” the research claims.
The study said that there are “multiple underlying factors” that contribute to post-Covid cognitive decline. “Our results confirmed associations of cognitive deficits with mood swings and fatigue but also with a variety of other symptoms,” researchers said.
Largest Covid vaccine study yet finds links to neurological conditions
The Journal’s editorial dedicated to the study called its results concerning, given the scope of the Covid-19 pandemic, noting that “the broader implications require evaluation.”
At the same time, the results indicated that those who suffered cognitive decline due to persistent Covid symptoms could later regain part of their ability, reaching the level of those who managed to recover quickly.
A total of 800,000 people were invited to take part in the study in England, with around 113,000 completing it. The participants were asked to do a number of online tests to evaluate their cognitive abilities. One of the major caveats of the research, however, was the lack of data on participants’ IQ level before they contracted Covid, which meant that their cognition was measured against those who did not have the disease rather than their own abilities.
According to World Health Organization data, there have been a total of 774 million recorded Covid cases globally, with seven million reported deaths. Apart from an apparent cognitive decline, the long-term effects of Covid could include chronic pain, brain fog, shortness of breath, chest pain, and fatigue.
Examination of more recent IQ data indicate that IQ of university students and university graduates dropped to the average of the general population. The decline in students’ IQ is a necessary consequence of increasing educational attainment over the last 80 years. Today, graduating from university is more common than completing high school in the 1940s.
First, universities and professors need to realize that students are no longer extraordinary but merely average
https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2024.1309142/abstract
Bob Uttl1* Victoria Violo2 Lacey Gibson3
- 1Mount Royal University, Canada
- 2University of British Columbia, Okanagan Campus, Canada
- 3Western University, Canada
The final, formatted version of the article will be published soon.Notify me
Background. According to a widespread belief, the average IQ of university students is 115 to 130 IQ points, that is, substantially higher than the average IQ of the general population (M = 100, SD =15). We traced the origin of this belief to obsolete intelligence data collected in 1940s and 1950s when university education was the privilege of a few. Examination of more recent IQ data indicate that IQ of university students and university graduates dropped to the average of the general population. The decline in students’ IQ is a necessary consequence of increasing educational attainment over the last 80 years. Today, graduating from university is more common than completing high school in the 1940s. Method. We conducted a meta-analysis of the mean IQ scores of college and university students samples tested with Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale between 1939 and 2022. Results. The results show that the average IQ of undergraduate students today is a mere 102 IQ points and declined by approximately 0.2 IQ points per year. The students’ IQ also varies substantially across universities and is correlated with the selectivity of universities (measured by average SAT scores of admitted students). Discussion. These findings have wide-ranging implications. First, universities and professors need to realize that students are no longer extraordinary but merely average, and have to adjust curricula and academic standards. Second, employers can no longer rely on applicants with university degrees to be more capable or smarter than those without degrees. Third, students need to realize that acceptance into university is no longer an invitation to join an elite group. Fourth, the myth of brilliant undergraduate students in scientific and popular literature needs to be dispelled. Fifth, estimating premorbid IQ based on educational attainment is vastly inaccurate, obsolete, not evidence based, and mere speculations. Sixth, obsolete IQ data or tests ought not to be used to make high-stakes decisions about individuals, for example, by clinical psychologists to opine about intelligence and cognitive abilities of their clients.
Keywords: Intelligence, IQ, undergraduate students, flynn effect, High-stakes decisions, demographic adjustments, Wechsler Adult Intelligence Test
Received: 07 Oct 2023; Accepted: 04 Jan 2024.
Copyright: © 2024 Uttl, Violo and Gibson. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence: Prof. Bob Uttl, Mount Royal University, Calgary, Canada
Disclaimer: All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article or claim that may be made by its manufacturer is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.
These four IDF soldiers aren’t the only ones who say their warnings were ignored. Egyptian intelligence officials say they also attempted to alert Tel Aviv. “We have warned them an explosion of the situation is coming, and very soon, and it would be big. But they underestimated such warnings,” an anonymous Egyptian official told the Associated Press.
SATURDAY, OCT 28, 2023
The Oct 7 Hamas military and terrorist attacks on Israel came as shock to many — but not to surveillance soldiers of the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) who say their warnings about their alarming observations along the Gaza border were ignored by higher-ups.
In interviews with Israeli media, soldiers of the IDF’s Combat Intelligence Corps say that, for at least three months before the attacks, they observed Hamas members conducting paramilitary training along the fenceline, digging holes, studying the area with maps, examining the ground surface and even placing and detonating explosives.
Speaking to Kan News on Wednesday, Yael Rotenberg and Maya Desiatnik expressed their anger over the IDF’s failure to heed their repeated reports of the ominous activity. Compounding their rage, the two were the only Combat Intelligence Corps soldiers who survived the Hamas attack on their base near the Nahal Oz kibbutz, less than a half-mile southeast of the Gaza border.
“It’s infuriating. We saw what was happening, we told them about it, and we were the ones who were murdered,” said Desiatnik.
The types of activity they observed at the border was concerning enough, but, even more strikingly, the pace had steadily intensified as Oct 7 approached. Desiatnik said it proceeded from weekly, to daily, to almost nonstop. In addition to her general visual observations, she said she was able to obtain information about the substance of the training, which encompassed driving tanks to bypass the fence via tunnels.
She told Kan News that she’d concluded “it was just a matter of time” until Hamas unleashed an attack on Israel.
Two other IDF intelligence soldiers shared similar experiences with Israel’s Channel 12.
“We sat on shifts and saw the convoy of vans. We saw the training, people shooting and rolling, practicing taking over a tank. The training went from once a week to twice a week, from every day to several times a day,” said Amit Yerushalmi. “We saw patrols along the border, people with cameras and binoculars. It happened 300 meters from the fence. There were a lot of disturbances, people went down to the fence and detonated an outrageous amount of explosives, the amount of explosives was crazy.”
Yerushalmi said she dutifully recorded all her observations, with no apparent impact on the command whatsoever.
These four IDF soldiers aren’t the only ones who say their warnings were ignored. Egyptian intelligence officials say they also attempted to alert Tel Aviv. “We have warned them an explosion of the situation is coming, and very soon, and it would be big. But they underestimated such warnings,” an anonymous Egyptian official told the Associated Press.
Video footage released by Al-Qassam Brigades, the military wing of Hamas, on Sunday shows the moment its fighters breached Gaza’s security fence and stormed the Erez Crossing pic.twitter.com/Ob2OekZRfh— Middle East Eye (@MiddleEastEye) October 8, 2023
According to report by Israel’s Ynet, Egypt’s intelligence minister personally phoned Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu just 10 days before the attack, warning that Hamas was poised to do “something unusual, a terrible operation.”
Ever since the political, militant and terror group’s founding in the late 1970s, right-wing Israeli officials have fostered the rise of Hamas to ensure there is no viable “partner for peace” on the Palestinian side — allowing Israel to forever postpone making territorial concessions while further settling the West Bank and paying diplomatic lip service to a two-state solution.
To an extent unprecedented in Israel’s history, the current Netanyahu government is dominated by ultra-nationalists and religious extremists representing parties such as “Religious Zionism” and “Jewish Power.” In the wake of the Oct 7 atrocities, they won’t have to worry about a negotiated peace with the Palestinians anytime soon.
It’s interesting how last week Israel had no idea what Hamas was up to, and yet this week they know every mosque, school and hospital that Hamas is hiding in.
https://www.caitlinjohnst.one/p/israeli-intelligence-suddenly-knows?
OCT 12, 2023
It’s interesting how last week Israel had no idea what Hamas was up to, and yet this week they know every mosque, school and hospital that Hamas is hiding in.
When you live under an empire of lies you’ll be asked to believe a lot of very stupid things. The dumbest thing we’re being asked to believe this week is that Israel’s intelligence services are simultaneously so incompetent that Saturday’s Hamas attack took them completely by surprise, but also so competent that all the buildings they’re destroying with their relentless bombing campaign on Gaza are directed solely at Hamas.
The phrase “Hamas targets” has been all over the news media the last few days in reference to the ongoing attacks on Gaza, which have as of this writing killed over 1,500 Palestinians, a third of them children.
“Israel conducts large-scale strikes on Hamas targets,” reads a CNN headline.
“Israel conducts ‘large-scale strike’ on Hamas targets,” reads the title of a segment for ABC News.
“Israel says it dropped 6,000 bombs so far against Hamas targets,” reads a report by The Washington Post.
Gosh, Israel must have really great visibility into Gaza to know that each of those 6,000 bombs was aimed at “Hamas targets” and not just civilian buildings.
Where was this 20/20 vision when Hamas was preparing for an attack using motorized paragliders, drones and motorboats in an enclosed strip of land the size of Philadelphia? How did Israeli intelligence fail to detect preparations for this attack even after Egyptian intelligence warned them that it was coming? How did they fail so spectacularly that even Hamas was reportedly surprised by the scale of their operation’s success? Is it really reasonable to believe they were blind as moles to Hamas activity last week but have the eye of the eagle this week?
President Biden made some noises on Wednesday about how important it is that Israel “operate by the rules of war”, which sounded like empty cover-your-ass narrative fluff even before we heard US National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan dismiss any notion of “red lines” that Israel must not cross in Gaza.
Not even mainstream empire apologists are buying it. Politico’s Andrew Ward, in an article sponsored by Lockheed Martin in which he writes that “Israel’s ferocious counterattack is easy to understand” given the severity of the Hamas attack, writes that “The Biden administration wants Israel to abide by the laws of war as it responds to Hamas’ barbaric attack, but Jerusalem doesn’t appear to be listening.”
“A flood of reports challenges Israel’s claims that it’s exercising caution,” Ward writes. “Mosques, hospitals and schools have been hit with airstrikes, as have healthcare facilities and ambulances.”
“Gazans, many of whom don’t support Hamas or its tactics, have nowhere to flee as the strip is under siege,” ads Ward. “Shrapnel has flown into seven hospitals and 10 U.N. emergency shelters. The situation has gotten so bad that the Red Cross said hospitals, already low on electricity, water and supplies, risk turning into morgues.”
Of course, Israel isn’t abiding by the rules of war. They’re not even pretending to. Human Rights Watch has just issued a statement decrying Israel’s “unlawfully indiscriminate” use of white phosphorus in Gaza and in Lebanon, and an Israeli security official told the Israeli press that the IDF’s plan is to turn Gaza into “a city of tents” with “no buildings”.
This is all publicly available information, yet the Western press has the gall to use the phrase “Hamas targets” when describing Israel’s bombing campaign in Gaza? I’m sorry, but that’s demented. The only reason to do something like that would be to administer propaganda.
The claim that Israel is targeting Hamas when it destroys buildings in Gaza is further undermined by the fact that Hamas would be taking shelter underground during this bombing campaign. As journalist Sharmine Narwani explained on Twitter, “Hamas cadres live underground in Gaza, which they have learned to do after countless Israeli bombing campaigns. The ONLY people being massacred in Gaza by Israeli terror planes right now are Palestinian civilians and Israeli POWs.”
In reality, both the claims that Israeli intelligence was taken by surprise by the Hamas attack and that Israel is solely targeting Hamas with its Gaza strikes are highly suspect and worthy of intense scrutiny. Israel has never been averse to killing Palestinian civilians, and there’s no reason to feel confident Israeli intelligence didn’t let the attack through in order to justify longstanding agendas like the elimination of Gaza as a Palestinian territory. Both claims can be false, but from where I’m sitting it looks highly unlikely that they’re both true.
If you want to support Israel’s bombing campaign in Gaza then go ahead, and if you want to uncritically accept the official narrative about Saturday’s attack then you do you. But don’t piss on my leg and tell me it’s raining.
“I am not aware of what you mentioned. It is well known that the US is an expert in chasing shadows and meddling in other countries’ internal affairs. The US is the global champion of hacking and a superpower of surveillance. The US has long illegally occupied Cuba’s Guantánamo Bay for secretive activities and imposed a blockade on Cuba for over 60 years. The US needs to take a hard look at itself, stop interfering in Cuba’s internal affairs under the pretext of freedom, democracy and human rights, immediately lift its economic, commercial and financial blockade on Cuba, and act in ways conducive to improving relations with Cuba and regional peace and stability, not otherwise.”
“We are not talking about prosaic origins or identities,” Grusch said. “The material includes intact and partially intact vehicles.” Grusch told the Debrief that analysis determined that this material is “of exotic origin” – meaning “non-human intelligence, whether extraterrestrial or unknown origin”. “[This assessment is] based on the vehicle morphologies and material science testing and the possession of unique atomic arrangements and radiological signatures,” Grusch said.
Highly advanced aircraft of unknown origin have been flying around in our skies for a long time, and now a whistleblower has come forward with claims that the U.S. government has actually been able to retrieve “intact and partially intact vehicles”. If what he is alleging turns out to be accurate, it has the potential to change everything. But this whistleblower is also warning that there has been a concerted effort by elements inside the intelligence community to keep this information away from Congress and away from the U.S. population as a whole. They don’t want us to know the truth, and that should greatly alarm all of us.
This week, 36-year-old David Charles Grusch made headlines all over the world when he started telling news outlets what he learned as a member of the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency and National Reconnaissance Office…
David Charles Grusch, a veteran and former member of the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency and National Reconnaissance Office, has blown the whistle on this information, speaking with several news outlets about the crafts.
“These are retrieving non-human origin technical vehicles, call it a spacecraft if you will, non-human exotic origin vehicles that have either landed or crashed,” Mr Grusch told NewsNationNow.
If the U.S. government really has retrieved “non-human exotic origin vehicles that have either landed or crashed”, why can’t we see them?
What are they trying to hide?
According to Grusch, the recoveries that the U.S. government has made over the years include “intact and partially intact vehicles”…
“We are not talking about prosaic origins or identities,” Grusch said. “The material includes intact and partially intact vehicles.”
Grusch told the Debrief that analysis determined that this material is “of exotic origin” – meaning “non-human intelligence, whether extraterrestrial or unknown origin”.
“[This assessment is] based on the vehicle morphologies and material science testing and the possession of unique atomic arrangements and radiological signatures,” Grusch said.
If we have such vehicles, I would like to see them.
I am sure that you would too.
Upgrade to paid
But these days just about everything is “classified”, and Grusch claims that even Congress is being kept in the dark…
An unclassified version of the complaint provided to us states that Grusch has direct knowledge that UAP-related classified information has been withheld and/or concealed from Congress by “elements” of the intelligence community “to purposely and intentionally thwart legitimate Congressional oversight of the UAP Program.” All testimony Grusch provided for the classified complaint was provided under oath.
If I was a member of Congress, hearing this would make me steaming mad.
Grusch also says that a “sophisticated disinformation campaign” has been targeting the general population for years, because they don’t want us to know the truth either…
Grusch told NewsNation the American public has been lied to for decades.
“There is a sophisticated disinformation campaign targeting the U.S. populace which is extremely unethical and immoral,” Grusch said.
This confirms what many of us have suspected for a long time.
At times they will give us a little bit of the truth, but the intelligence community is purposely keeping most of what they have discovered away from us.
Grusch has submitted an official whistleblower complaint, and the Intelligence Community Inspector General has already determined that his whistleblower complaint is “credible”…
The Intelligence Community Inspector General found Mr Grusch’s complaint to be “credible” and “urgent” in July 2022 and a summary was given to the Director of National Intelligence, Senate Select Committee on Intelligence and the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, according to Mr Grusch.
And a colleague that worked very closely with Grusch says that his character is “beyond reproach”…
Karl E. Nell, a recently retired Army Colonel and current aerospace executive who was the Army’s liaison for the UAP Task Force from 2021 to 2022 and worked with Grusch there, characterizes Grusch as “beyond reproach.”
But that doesn’t mean that anything is actually going to happen.
Grusch could be the most credible witness in the history of the world, but that simply is not going to be enough to break the wall of secrecy.
Our officials will deny, deny and deny some more until they are blue in the face.
In fact, the Pentagon has already released a statement that is intended to get us to stop asking any more inconvenient questions…
In response to the recent claims, DOD spokesperson Sue Gough released a statement saying, “To date, AARO (All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office) has not discovered any verifiable information to substantiate claims that any programs regarding the possession or reverse-engineering of any extraterrestrial materials have existed in the past or exist currently. AARO is committed to following the data and it’s investigation wherever it leads.”
Of course, most of the large corporate news outlets here in the United States are either completely ignoring this story or treating it as an oddity.
Fortunately, there are a few real journalists that are taking this story very seriously. One of them is Tucker Carlson…
He continued: ‘In a normal country, this news would qualify as a bombshell: the news of the millennium. But in this country, it doesn’t count.’
Carlson accused The Washington Post and New York Times of ignoring the story.
‘There was nothing at all about how an alien species is flying hypersonic aircraft above our cities. Not one word.’
He said: ‘So if you are wondering why our country seems so dysfunctional, this is a big part of the reason. Nobody knows what’s happening.
He is right.
This story is a massive bombshell, and it should be front-page news for both the Washington Post and the New York Times.
But there are certain things that they simply do not want to talk about, and that is because they are directed not to talk about them.
So it is left to independent journalists such as myself to write about these things, and that is one of the reasons why I devoted an entire chapter in my latest book to this topic.
Personally, I am entirely convinced that the stage is being set for a deception of epic proportions.
This really is one of the biggest stories of this century so far, and I believe that this story is going to get a whole lot weirder in the months and years ahead.
America the Fluoridated (Part 5)
https://www.presstv.ir/Detail/2023/04/13/701472/-Intelligence-leak-shows-US-spying-on-UN-chief
The United States has reportedly been spying on UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres, according to fresh revelations in classified intelligence documents that ended up on the internet.
Thursday, 13 April 2023
UN secretary general Antonio Guterres speaks at a press conference in Mogadishu on April 11, 2023. (Photo by AFP)
The United States has reportedly been spying on UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres, according to fresh revelations in classified intelligence documents that ended up on the internet.
The documents, which appear to have come at least in part from the Pentagon and are marked as highly classified, began circulating widely on Russian social media channels last week.
The files that contain candid observations from Guterres about the war in Ukraine suggest that Washington has closely been monitoring the top UN official.
One leaked document focuses on the Black Sea grain deal, brokered by the UN and Turkey in July following fears of a global food crisis.
The UN chief, according to the assessment, was so keen to preserve the deal that he was willing to accommodate Russia’s interests.
“Guterres emphasized his efforts to improve Russia’s ability to export,” one document said, “even if that involves sanctioned Russian entities or individuals.”
His actions, according to the file, were “undermining broader efforts to hold Moscow accountable for its actions in Ukraine,” the files show.
Another document from February contains a frank conversation between Guterres and his deputy, Amina Mohamed in which the UN chief expressed “dismay” at a call by the EU Commission president, Ursula von der Leyen, for Europe to produce more weapons and ammunition due to the war in Ukraine.
Other documents include analysis from US intelligence agencies about Russia and several other countries, all based on information gleaned from classified sources.
The US and its EU allies are now struggling to understand how dozens of top-secret intelligence documents had been exposed.
Info posted online ranged from Ukraine’s air defences to Israel’s Mossad spy agency
https://www.cbc.ca/news/world/us-intelligence-leak-1.6805909
Thomson Reuters · Posted: Apr 09, 2023
Highly classified military and intelligence documents that appeared online, with details ranging from Ukraine’s air defences to Israel’s Mossad spy agency, have U.S. officials scrambling to identify the leak’s source, with some Western security experts and U.S. officials saying they suspect it could be someone from the United States.
Officials say the breadth of topics addressed in the documents, which touch on the war in Ukraine, China, the Middle East and Africa, suggest they may have been leaked by an American rather than an ally.
“The focus now is on this being a U.S. leak, as many of the documents were only in U.S. hands,” Michael Mulroy, a former senior Pentagon official, told Reuters in an interview.
U.S. officials said the investigation is in its early stages and those running it have not ruled out the possibility that pro-Russian elements were behind the leak, which is seen as one of the most serious security breaches since more than 700,000 documents, videos and diplomatic cables appeared on the WikiLeaks website in 2013.
The Russian embassy in Washington and the Kremlin did not respond to requests for comment.
WATCH | Leak of secret Pentagon documents on Ukraine sparks probe
Following the disclosure of the leak, Reuters has reviewed more than 50 documents labelled “Secret” and “Top Secret” that first appeared last month on social media websites, beginning with Discord and 4Chan. While some of the documents were posted weeks ago, their existence was first reported Friday by the New York Times.
Reuters has not independently verified the authenticity of the documents. Some giving battlefield casualty estimates from Ukraine appeared to have been altered to minimize Russian losses. It is not clear why at least one is marked unclassified but includes top secret information. Some documents are marked “NOFORN,” meaning they cannot be released to foreign nationals.
Two U.S. officials told Reuters on Sunday they have not ruled out that the documents may have been doctored to mislead investigators about their origin or to disseminate false information that may harm U.S. security interests.
The White House referred questions to the Pentagon.
In a statement on Sunday, the Pentagon said it was reviewing the validity of the photographed documents that “appear to contain sensitive and highly classified material.”
The Pentagon has referred the issue to the Department of Justice, which has opened a criminal investigation.
One of the documents, dated Feb. 23 and marked “Secret,” outlines in detail how Ukraine’s S-300 air defence systems would be depleted by May 2 at the current usage rate.
Such closely-guarded information could be of great use to Russian forces, and Ukraine said its president and top security officials met on Friday to discuss ways to prevent leaks.
Watching allies
Another document, marked “Top Secret” from a CIA Intel update from March 1, says the Mossad intelligence agency was encouraging protests against Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s plans to tighten controls on the Supreme Court.
The document said the U.S. learned this through signals intelligence, suggesting the United States had been spying on one of its most important allies in the Middle East.
In a statement on Sunday, Netanyahu’s office described the assertion as “mendacious and without any foundation whatsoever.”
Another document gave details of internal discussions among senior South Korean officials about U.S. pressure on Seoul to help supply weapons to Ukraine, and its policy of not doing so.
A South Korean presidential official said on Sunday the country was aware of news reports about the leaked documents and it plans to discuss “issues raised” with Washington.
The Pentagon has not addressed the contents of any specific documents, including the apparent surveillance of allies.
Two U.S. officials, speaking on condition of anonymity, said that while there is concern about the leak at the Pentagon and intelligence agencies, the documents showed a snapshot in time from more than a month ago, rather than more recent assessments.
The two officials said the military and intelligence agencies are looking at their processes to determine how widely some of the intelligence is shared internally.
Officials are looking at what motivations a U.S. official or a group of officials would have in leaking such sensitive information, said one of the officials who spoke to Reuters.
The official said investigators are looking at four or five theories, from a disgruntled employee to an insider threat who actively wanted to undermine U.S. national security interests.
Fox News host Tucker Carlson questions why former intelligence officials were working as top executives for Twitter on ‘Tucker Carlson Tonight.
14 Nov 2022
14 Nov 2022
This is the biggest moment of the Emergency Measures commission so far. Brandon Miller gets it on record that CSIS Canada says NONE of the measures have been made to enact the Emergency Measures Act. They actually told him the days before he did it to not do it and they admit it. They said it will escalate violence so he did it anyway.
Intelligence services worry about American economic warfare more than terrorism or the prospect of confrontation with Russia or China
It was clearly not for nothing that veteran US grand strategist and former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger once remarked, “to be an enemy of America can be dangerous, but to be a friend is fatal.”
https://www.rt.com/news/566392-good-friends-better-enemies/
By Felix Livshitz
Nov 15, 2022
FILE PHOTO. French President Emmanuel Macron (R) and US President Joe Biden (L) meet at the French Embassy to the Vatican in Rome. © Ludovic MARIN / AFP
New research published by France’s Ecole de Guerre Economique has revealed some extraordinary findings about who and what the French intelligence services fear most when it comes to threats to the country’s economy.
The findings are based on extensive research and interviews with French intelligence experts, including representatives of spy agencies, and so reflect the positions and thinking of specialists in the under-researched field of economic warfare. Their collective view is very clear – 97 percent consider the US to be the foreign power that “most threatens” the “economic interests” of Paris.
Who is your true enemy?
The research was conducted to answer the question, “what will become of France in an increasingly exacerbated context of economic war?”. This query has become increasingly urgent for the EU as Western sanctions on Moscow’s exports, in particular energy, have had a catastrophic effect on European countries, but have not had the predicted effect Russia. Nor have they hurt the US, the country pushing most aggressively for these measures.
Yet, the question is not being asked in other EU capitals. It is precisely the continent-wide failure, or unwillingness at least, to consider the “negative repercussions on the daily lives” of European citizens that inspired the Ecole de Guerre Economique report.
As the report’s lead author Christian Harbulot explains, ever since the end of World War II, France has “lived in a state of the unspoken,” as have other European countries.
At the conclusion of that conflict, “manifest fear” among French elites of the Communist Party taking power in France “strongly incited a part of the political class to place our security in the hands of the US, in particular by calling for the establishment of permanent military bases in France.”
“It goes without saying that everything has its price. The compensation for this aid from across the Atlantic was to make us enter into a state of global dependence – monetary, financial, technological – with regard to the US,” Harbulot says. And aside from 1958 – 1965 when General Charles de Gaulle attempted to increase the autonomy of Paris from Washington and NATO, French leaders have “fallen into line.”
FILE PHOTO. Meeting of US President Richard Nixon and French President Charles de Gaulle in Paris, France, March 1969. © REPORTERS ASSOCIES/Gamma-Rapho via Getty Images
This acceptance means aside from rare public scandals such as the sale of French assets to US companies, or Australia cancelling its purchase of French-made submarines in favor of a controversial deal with the US and UK (AUKUS), there is little recognition – let alone discussion – in the mainstream as to how Washington exerts a significant degree of control over France’s economy, and therefore politics.
As a result, politicians and the public alike struggle to identify “who their enemy” truly is. “In spheres of power” across Europe, Harbulot says, “it is customary to keep this kind of problem silent,” and economic warfare remains an “underground confrontation which precedes, accompanies and then takes over from classic military conflicts.”
This in turn means any debate about “hostility or harmfulness” in Europe’s relations with Washington misses the underlying point that “the US seeks to ensure its supremacy over the world, without displaying itself as a traditional empire.”
The EU might have a trade surplus of 150 billion euros with the US, but the latter would never willingly allow this economic advantage to translate to “strategic autonomy” from it. And this gain is achieved against the constant backdrop of – and more than offset by – “strong geopolitical and military pressure” from the US at all times.
I spy with my Five Eyes
Harbulot believes the “state of the unspoken” to be even more pronounced in Germany, as Berlin “seeks to establish a new form of supremacy within Europe” based on its dependency on the US.
As France “is not in a phase of power building but rather in a search to preserve its power” – a “very different” state of affairs – this should mean the French can more easily recognize and admit to toxic dependency on Washington and see it as a problem that must be resolved.
It is certainly hard to imagine such an illuminating and honest report being produced by a Berlin-based academic institute, despite the country being the most badly affected by anti-Russian sanctions. Some analysts have spoken of a possible deindustrialization of Germany, as its inability to power energy-intensive economic sectors has destroyed its 30-year-long trade surplus – maybe forever.
But aside from France’s “dependency” on Washington being different to that of Germany, Paris has other reasons for cultivating a “culture of economic combat,” and keeping very close track of the “foreign interests” that are harming the country’s economy and companies.
The Elysee palace. © Eric Feferberg / AFP
A US National Security Agency spying order sent to other members of the Five Eyes global spying network – Australia, Canada, New Zealand, and the UK – released by WikiLeaks, shows that since at least 2002 Washington has issued its English-speaking allies annual “information need” requests, seeking any and all information they can dig up on the economic activities of French companies, the economic and trade policies of France’s government, and the views of Paris on the yearly G8 and G20 summits.
Whatever is unearthed is shared with key US economic decision-makers and departments, including the Federal Reserve and Treasury, as well as intelligence agencies, such as the CIA. Another classified WikiLeaks release shows that the latter – between November 2011 and July 2012 – employed spies from across the Five Eyes (OREA) to infiltrate and monitor the campaigns of parties and candidates in France’s presidential election.
Washington was particularly worried about a Socialist Party victory, and so sought information on a variety of topics, “to prepare key US policymakers for the post-election French political landscape and the potential impact on US-France relations.” Of particular interest was “the presidential candidates’ views on the French economy, what current economic policies…they see as not working, and what policies…they promote to help boost France’s economic growth prospects[.]”
The CIA was also very interested in the “views and characterization” of the US on the part of presidential candidates, and any efforts by them and the parties they represented to “reach out to leaders of other countries,” including some of the states that form the Five Eyes network itself.
Naturally, those members would be unaware that their friends in Washington, and other Five Eyes capitals, would be spying on them while they spied on France.
It was clearly not for nothing that veteran US grand strategist and former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger once remarked, “to be an enemy of America can be dangerous, but to be a friend is fatal.”