Jeffrey Sachs asks the EU Parliament to open their eyes

Few can match Professor Sachs’ bonafides with regard to academic appointments, advisory roles to the most influential bodies of power and breadth of understanding of geopolitics and economics as it pertains to “sustainable development”. He is (very briefly):

• Former Harvard professor of Economics and director of the Harvard Institute for International Development

• A Columbia University Professor and director of its Center for Sustainable Development

• Recipient of numerous awards including being named among Time’s “100 most influential people” twice, recipient of the Padma Bushan, India’s third highest civilian award

• Author and/or co-author of dozens of books on the topics of economics, global inequality, American foreign policy

Beyond that, Sachs has held advisory roles to foreign governments on all major continents as well as UN Secretaries General, the W.H.O. and the World Bank. He is, in other words, extremely well connected and influential academically, politically and socially.

The question is, should you trust him?

The answer is, no. In this environment of misinformation peddled by sources on all sides of topics, trust in anyone cannot be justified, least of all on the basis of stature granted by institutions which in turn cannot be trusted to defend the interests of the 99%. Sachs himself admitted that “we don't speak the truth about almost anything in this world right now”.

Sachs has been an advocate for the disastrous WHO biosecurity agenda which would have secured a commitment from nation signatories to continue with gain-of-function research, the development of countermeasures (i.e. mRNA “vaccines”) and the implementation of tighter liability shields for damage resulting from their use.

As the chair of The Lancet’s Covid-19 Commission, he was a fierce critic of the lab-leak theory, blaming such notions on right-wing ideologues who sought to push the world into conflict using arguments that were not supported by biology and chronology.

He subsequently altered his position after appointing Peter Daszak, the notorious director of EcoHealth Alliance, to head a task force investigating SARS-COV2 origins, only to learn that his Columbia University colleague was not being transparent for obvious conflicts of interest. He has since publicly opined that lab-leak is a viable hypothesis and, in doing so, impugned the integrity of public health officials like Anthony Fauci.

Has he had a reckoning? Is he playing both sides? Who knows? At the very least he has demonstrated the wisdom of being able to change his mind and admit that he was wrong. That certainly counts for something in today’s world.

As long as we do not seek to place trust in an individual, it doesn’t matter. But we can, however, endeavor to get better at trusting our own discernment as we assess what is being offered without having to guess at the hidden motivations of the person who is doing the offering.

Here is my general approach. I ask myself:

• Is the person’s central message worthwhile and helpful? (Is there a good reason to listen closely in the first place)

• Do they present a cohesive and logical argument?

• Are they demanding that you trust them because they are an appointed authority or are they asking you to use your own logic and sensibility?

• What proof do they offer to support their thesis?

I invite you to approach Sachs’s speech to the EU Parliament on March 3 that way. Here is his commentary, in full. A Warning: If you absolutely cannot live without a “I stand with Ukraine” banner in your front yard, DON’T LISTEN TO IT:

To Summarize:

• The war in Ukraine will come to an end and that is a good thing for the Ukrainians and for Europeans

• The fear that Russia’s incursion into Crimea and the Donbass regions of Ukraine is an indication that Putin has his eyes on Brussels next is an absurd idea promulgated by war-mongering propagandists in America and Europe

• Anyone who concludes that Russia’s move to annex these areas was an act of pure aggression and not a desperate attempt to keep NATO off of her borders has no grasp of the historical events that led to this conflict

• Sachs reminds the audience that he knows all the players on all sides of this issue, but rather than demanding we genuflect to his opinion he encourages us to examine the historical record which clearly demonstrates that NATO, under US direction, has a 30 year history of violating agreements in order to provoke an inevitable Russian response.

• The EU should regard Russia as a vital and natural trading partner, not as an existential threat. Antagonizing their giant neighbor to the East serves only American Imperialism and not anyone else.

So by my standards, Jeffrey Sachs hit it out of the park.

Moreover, Sachs was frank and did not limit his critique of American foreign policy to the Russian issue. Sachs reminded the world that the wars in the Middle East were Netanyahu’s wars, not anyone else’s. He cited NATO Commander General Wesley Clark’s surprise when he learned, on September 20, 2001, that the United States had already committed to starting seven wars in the Middle East, years before any kind of 9/11 investigation had been conducted.

Obviously, these plans were hatched years before the events of 9/11 and can be traced to a white paper, “A Clean Break: A New Strategy for Securing the Realm” written in 1996 by American Neo-cons for then (and present) Israeli PM Netanyahu.

He explained America’s foreign policy to the EU parliament like he was speaking to an auditorium of undergraduate students, because, sadly, that is what was necessary. Here are some of his best eye-openers:

• The American political system is a system of image; it's a system of media manipulation every day

• The U.S. has done the most to extinguish peace under President Joe Biden because he was not compos mentis for at least the last two years of his Presidency

• Being an enemy of the United States is dangerous, but being a friend is fatal (attributed to Henry Kissinger)

• Any place without an American military base is an enemy

• Neutrality is the the dirtiest word in the US political lexicon because “at least if you're an enemy we know you're an enemy. If you are neutral you're subversive because then you're really against us because you're not telling us—you're pretending to be neutral”

• With regard to the Middle East: “US completely handed over foreign policy 30 years ago to Netanyahu. The Israel Lobby dominates American politics. Have no doubt about it. I could explain for hours how it works. It's very dangerous”

• Netanyahu is a war criminal, properly indicted by the ICC (International Criminal Court)

• “By the way if anyone would like to discuss how the US blew up Nordstream,

  I'd be happy to talk about that”

Some will complain that all this has been obvious. I would agree. However it hasn’t been obvious to many who sat among Sachs’ influential audience. And Sachs is not a host of a popular podcast speaking to his subscribers. He is a respected voice on the international stage addressing the European political leadership’s failure to formulate any kind of foreign policy. He was politely chastising the leadership of 400 million people to their faces.

I didn’t know who Jeffrey Sachs was four years ago. I was (and still am) unaware of many things. I was, however, aware of NATO’s inexorable march eastward despite the requests, turned demands, turned ultimatums from Russian leadership to relent. This is why I have been flabbergasted by the left leaning intellectuals in this country who paint anyone who asserts that both sides share the blame around the war in Ukraine as “Putin apologists” or spineless cowards for not coming to the defense of the Ukrainian people.

Why has this been lost on the “well-informed”? Who are they listening to?

With regard to the Middle East, Sachs never directly implicates Israel in the events of 9/11 but clearly has no reservations about acknowledging the plain fact that Israeli leadership under Netanyahu had the most to gain by those horrific events. Stating the obvious has sadly never been so dangerous as it is now.

The overwhelming evidence proves that three skyscrapers could not have been leveled in a matter of seconds by two plane collisions. Those events were planned and executed by unknown entities who not only had open access to the guts of those secure buildings but also to highly energetic explosives and, most importantly, the power to steer all major media outlets towards a single explanation. By doing so they got them to undermine their fundamental mission to use skepticism and rigor to hold authority in check.

Though President Trump has responded to the growing demand for a reinvestigation of the events of 9/11, we must ask, why has it taken so long? On what grounds are we to trust what we are now told two decades later? Who would be against transparency? How powerful would they have to be to be able to suppress a movement that has been demanding it for over two decades?

We may never discover who the real perpetrators were, but it is clear that at least one entity, the Israeli messaging platform Odigo, had foreknowledge of the events of that day. Here is the 2001 article from Haaretz which reported that Odigo themselves admitted that someone on their staff notified at least two of its users to stay away from the World Trade Center Complex that morning.

And then there were the group of five young men working for a moving company called Urban Moving Systems. Sivan Kurzberg, Paul Kurzberg, Oded Ellner, Yaron Shimuel and Omar Marmari were spotted in the parking lot of the Doric Apartment Complex in Union City, New Jersey, just after 8am on 9/11 where they were seen taking pictures and filming the attacks while also celebrating the destruction of the towers.

The so-called “Dancing Israelis” were detained, interrogated and eventually sent back to Israel. Very little can be confirmed about these young men. Did they have foreknowledge of the event as well? Did one have $4,700 dollars stuffed in his sock? Did another fail an FBI polygraph test? Did they all appear on Israeli TV months later claiming to be Mossad intelligence agents? We simply cannot confirm any of these things, however one point cannot be contested. They were celebrating. Why?

Could Professor Sachs be the next advocate for a 9/11 Reinvestigation?

Biotech billionaire Vivek Ramaswamy stirred up a political firestorm not long ago when, in attempting to defend the importation of foreign workers through the H-1B visa program, he criticized America’s native culture as one of “mediocrity” and “normalcy.” Calling for “more math tutoring” and “fewer sleepovers” for America’s youth in order to render them employable, he declared on X that “‘Normalcy’ doesn’t cut it in a hyper-competitive global market for technical talent.” Jumping into the ensuing debate, Elon Musk offered an alternative analogy, portraying America as a global sports franchise that ought to contract the best players no matter their origin. “Thinking of America as a pro sports team that has been winning for a long time and wants to keep winning is the right mental construct” for Americans to hold, he wrote.

Unsurprisingly, neither proposed mental construct landed very well with President Trump’s populist-nationalist base and Ramaswamy was soon duly shuffled off to a term of exile in Ohio. In the one view, “America” is merely a glorified economic zone, just one part of a “competitive global market” in which labor and capital flow freely. In the other, America is a professional franchise whose sole objective is to maximize winnings. In both cases America is viewed as analogous to a corporation. In such a corporation, management’s only responsibility is to profits; it has no inherent responsibility to employees or their wellbeing, something of interest only insofar as it translates into productivity.

The corporate machine views employees merely as interchangeable human resources, to whom it owes no loyalty. Indeed, if it is to effectively devote itself to profit maximization the company can afford no permanent relational bonds with any of those who work for it, as it must be able to fire or replace them based on cold utilitarian calculus. There are thus few experiences employees find as irritating as that common workplace psyop in which management proclaims the corporate office to be a “family.” Employees know implicitly that it is natural affections and iron-clad mutual loyalties, or at least strong relational bonds, that are precisely what distinguish a family. Their corporate employer, in contrast, won’t hesitate to dump them by the wayside the moment they fall into the wrong column of a spreadsheet. For their part, employees are liable to return the sentiment and retain no lasting loyalty to the company – though perhaps plenty of resentment.

What angered people about the two CEOs’ comments was that – like so many of today’s elites – they displayed no sense of loyalty or obligation to Americans as a nation. A nation is not a corporation. A nation is a particular people, with a distinct culture, permanently bound together by shared relationship with place, past, and each other. A house becomes a home through relationship with the family that lives in it, a connection forged out of time and memory between concrete particularity of place and the lives of a specific group of people present, past, and yet unborn. We can say this house is home because it is our home. In much the same way, a country becomes our homeland because it is ours – and the we of that “ours” is the nation, which transcends geography, government, and GDP.

Unlike a corporation, a nation really is much like a family. And, like a family, it is characterized by strong relational bonds that are covenantal, not contractual. It establishes moral obligations of solidarity and subsidiarity that cannot be simply abandoned. Much as we naturally would, and should, put our own children’s lives and wellbeing ahead of others’, a nation is obligated to distinguish its own from others and to put the wellbeing of its own first. If it fails to do so then it can no longer remain a nation any more than a family could remain a family were it to try to extend the fold of its care equally to all humanity. Only once our immediate duties to those closest to us are fulfilled can concern for the good of others be rightly extended further outward. And though we may choose to adopt a child into our family, we cannot as readily toss them aside. We cannot, say, swap out our child for a different one who is more likely to get better grades in math class or is willing to perform chores for a lesser allowance. A nation-state is no more justly able to replace its own people or neglect its unique obligations to them simply because doing so seems more profitable or convenient.

Yet a family is hardly built on obligation alone. A healthy family is founded, ordered, governed, and sustained by love. It is love that binds its members together, forges their sense of responsibility, guides their conduct, and directs their proper care for one another. And it is love that directs us to rightly set our concern for these particular people above others, in the proper ordo amoris, or order of loves.

Love is not, cannot be, universal. It is born in particulars and defined by distinction. Should we say we love our neighbor, yet we do not love him for himself – with, or despite, all his unique eccentricities – but only insofar as we claim to love all people in the abstract, then we do not really love him. We cannot love our wife because she is a woman; we can only really love a particular woman. Thus believers must have faith that even the infinite God loves each of us in particular, numbering the very hairs on our heads; for his love to extend no further than to the mass of humanity as a species, as to a mass of sparrows, would be cold comfort indeed.

We love those people and those good things which are distinct and special to us, and those that are particularly our own all the more, but this hardly implies that we must then automatically hate all others. We do not hate other families’ children just because we love our own. Still, this twisted logic is today widely ascribed to one important expression of love: love for our own nation. For this is indeed what it means to be a nationalist: to love one’s own nation – in much the same way (if not quite as deeply) as one loves one’s own family.

As C.S. Lewis observed, patriotic love for one’s nation grows organically from that which is most local, familiar, and meaningful to us – from our love for our family, our land, and our community. From “this love for the place there goes a love for the way of life” of our nation, in all its many common particularities, all tied up together. In the case of Lewis’ England, “for beer and tea and open fires, trains with compartments in them and an unarmed police force and all the rest of it.” It is from this particular sense of love that he seeks to conserve his country. As Lewis reminds us (paraphrasing G.K. Chesterton), “a man’s reasons for not wanting his country to be ruled by foreigners are very like his reasons for not wanting his house to be burned down; because he could not even begin to enumerate all the things that would be lost.”

None of this implies that we then desire to impose this particular way of life on the rest of the world. But we should not be surprised that men might lay down their lives to defend their own nation as their own, and not for any other reason. They do so for the same reason they would lay down their lives to defend their children, or their friends: because they love them. Common loves are the source of common loyalties, and of common life.

A scene practically indistinguishable from fascism.

Yet, at least among our ruling classes, this natural reciprocal love between citizen and nation, which sustains our countries and our societies, seems to have long since frayed. This is no great shock, given that in our age the very idea of nationhood is itself decried, or outright denied, the nation-state stripped of the nation, the world reduced to a network of special economic zones. A man cannot love a special economic zone. Nor can its administrators possess any special feeling for its temporary inhabitants.

This grim status quo is no accident, however. It is the result of a deliberate, 80 year conspiracy against love, conducted out of fear. As I’ve argued before, after WWII, with the trauma of war and totalitarianism haunting the world, the American and European leadership class resolved that these evils should never again threaten society. And they concluded that the emotional power of nationalism had been the central cause of the 20th century’s catastrophes, leading them to make anti-nationalism the cornerstone of the liberal establishment consensus that came to dominate culture and politics after the war.

The philosopher Karl Popper, in his sweepingly influential 1945 book The Open Society and Its Enemies, denounced the idea of national community writ large, labeling it disastrous “anti-humanitarian propaganda” and smearing anyone who cherished his particular homeland and history as a “racialist.” Theodor Adorno, who set the direction of American psychology and education policy for decades, classified natural loyalties to family and nation as the hallmarks of the “authoritarian personality” that drove the common man inexorably toward fascism.

But the aversions of the post-war elite ran deeper than a philosophical anti-nationalism. As R.R. Reno writes, the visceral imperative became to fully banish all the “strong gods” that fueled conflict, meaning all those “objects of men’s love and devotion, the sources of the passions and loyalties that unite societies.” Strong bonds and strong loves of any kind – of family, nation, truth, God – came to be seen as dangerous, as sources of dogma, oppression, hatred, and violence. The peaceful and prosperous “open society” the post-war establishment set out to instantiate would, as Reno puts it, “require the reign of weak loves and weak truths,” with all dangerous sentiment subordinate to the rule of cool rationality and tepid impartiality.

In this belief post-war leaders embraced the legacy of Thomas Hobbes, who had viewed the wars which upended his own century as a product of the state of nature – the “war of all against all” – that constantly threatened to emerge from the pride and spiritedness (thumos) of mankind’s base natural personality. He saw the solution to this risk as man’s submission, out of fear, to the absolute power of a political leviathan – but also to an anthropological project, a program of metaphysical reeducation to turn man’s eye away from any summum bonum and downward toward only the fearful summum malum of struggle and death. As Matthew Crawford has succinctly explained, Hobbes believed that “any appeal to a higher good threatens to return us to the horrors of civil strife and must be debunked,” all our spirited passions and “vainglorious self-assertion” drained away so that we can consent to rule by Leviathan, “King of the Proud.”

With Hitler having firmly established himself as the summum malum of the post-war order, the liberal establishment embarked on their own version of Hobbes’ political-anthropological project. Seeking to dissolve the traditional “closed society” they feared was a breeding ground for authoritarianism, this “open society consensus” drew on theorists like Adorno and Popper to advance a program of social reforms intended to open minds, disenchant ideals, and weaken bonds. New approaches to education, psychology, and management sought to relativize truths, elevate “critical thinking” over character development, cast doubt on authorities, vilify collective loyalties, break down boundaries and borders, and free individuals from the “repression” of moral and relational bonds. Soon only economic prosperity and a vague universal humanitarianism became the only higher goods that it was morally acceptable to aim for as a society.

As government joined forces with post-war psychoanalysis, this program of subtle social control solidified into the modern therapeutic state – a regime that, as Christopher Lasch noted, successfully “substituted a medical for a political idiom and relegated a broad range of controversial issues to the clinic – to ‘scientific’ study as opposed to philosophical and political debate.” This removal of the political from politics lay at the heart of the post-war project’s aims. Its central desire was to reduce politics to mere administration, to bureaucratic processes, legal judgements, expert committees, and technocratic regulation – anything but fraught contention over such weighty matters as how we ought to live, organize society, or define who “we” are.

Public contention over genuinely political questions was now judged to be too dangerous to permit, even – indeed especially – in a democracy, where the ever-present specter of the mob and the latent emotional power of the masses haunted post-war leaders. They dreamed of governance via scientific management, of reducing the political sphere to the dispassionate processes of a machine – to “a social technology… whose results can be tested by social engineering,” as Popper put it. The operation of such a machine could be limited to a cadre of carefully educated “institutional technologists,” in Popper’s words, or rather to Hegel’s imagined “universal class” of impartial civil servants, able to objectively derive the best decisions for everyone through the principles of universal Reason alone.

The result was the construction of the managerial regimes that dominate the Western world today. These are characterized by vast, soulless administrative states of unaccountable bureaucracies, a litigious ethos of risk-avoidance and “harm-reduction,” and a technocratic elite class accustomed to social engineering and dissimulation. In such states the top priority is the careful management of public opinion through propaganda and censorship, not only in order to constrain democratic outcomes but so as to smooth over or avoid any serious discussion of contentious yet fundamentally political issues, such as migration policy.

Meanwhile the common people of such regimes are practically encouraged to live as distracted consumers rather than citizens, the invisible hand of the free market and the inducements of commercial and hedonistic pursuits serving not only profits but a political function of pacification. It is preferable that the masses simply not care very much – about anything, but especially about the fate of their nation and the common good. That sort of collective consciousness, transcending self-interest and seeking higher order, was after all identified as a foreboding mark of the closed society.

Here, then, can we see the long historical roots of the open, neoliberal state pointed to as an ideal by Ramaswamy and Musk. Innocently or not, these libertarian-leaning businessmen’s conception of the polity is almost indistinguishable from the “post-national state” that devoutly left-wing leaders like Canada’s Justin Trudeau have set out to devolve their countries into. The “globalism” so often decried by populists is neither left nor right but the logical product of the rationalist universalism embraced by the 20th century’s post-war consensus. It is the inevitable result of treating people, and peoples, as interchangeable units in a mechanical system – that is, of regarding them without any distinguishing sense of love.

But, as is increasingly obvious in our turbulent 21st century, these loveless machine-states are deeply unstable. It turns out that attempting to remove all bonds of affection from politics introduces some fundamental problems of political order. Most importantly, it has left us a leadership class essentially incapable of responsible leadership.

The noble classes of the pre-modern world’s closed societies were still capable of displaying a real sense of noblesse oblige: of having a sacred obligation to and responsibility for the people they ruled. Though modern cynics may dismiss this sentiment as a myth, it was often genuine. It is a striking fact, for instance, that the last real generation of Europe’s aristocratic elite was disproportionately savaged in the trenches of WWI, the flower of its youth voluntarily marching off to die leading from the front in defense of their nations at a significantly higher rate than ordinary soldiers. Eton, the nursery of the British aristocracy, lost more than a thousand of its students during the war – a 20% casualty rate compared to the army’s national average of 12%.

Today our elites no longer betray any similar sense of special obligation to their people. But then we can hardly expect them to, given that all the strong bonds of loyalty that once tied them to their countrymen, transcending divides of wealth, education, and class, have been severed. They conceive of themselves as meritocrats, of no special birth and therefore no special responsibility. More importantly, they have been taught from birth that they ought not even conceive of their nation as particularly their own or to love it any more than any other portion of humanity; their self-conceived domain is one without borders, the global empire of the open society.

Whom does government serve? This is perhaps the most pressing question of politics. In theory the leadership class that rules us is supposed to represent and govern on behalf of the common people and their best interests. This is meant to be precisely what distinguishes our regimes from tyranny, “tyranny” in the classical lexicon meaning rule for private gain rather than for the common good. But no one can truly represent or act rightly for the wellbeing of another if they bear no particular concern for them. It is love, and only love, that can really guarantee that anyone acts in the best interest of another when they could do otherwise. Love is the only force capable of genuinely liberating us from selfishness.

It is a modern conceit that those with power are kept restrained, uncorrupted, and ordered to justice and the common good primarily by lifeless structural guardrails, by the abstract checks and balances of constitutions and laws. The ancients would have maintained that it is far more important that a king be virtuous, and that he love his people. And is this not plausible? Fundamentally, a father doesn’t treat his children well, refraining from abusing or neglecting them and raising them rightly, just because he obediently follows the law or some correct set of rules and standard operating procedures. He does so because he loves his family, and from that love flows automatically a spontaneous ordering of all his intentions toward their good. He would do so even in the absence of externally imposed rules. Love is an invisible hand all its own.

It is this invisible hand, not that of the market, that is so glaringly absent from the heart of our nations. If ours seems a cold and callous age in general, our ruling class characterized by its indifference and our societies by division, dissolution, and despair, surely this lack is the real cause. As Reno writes, “the greatest threat to the political health of the West is not fascism or a resurgent Ku Klux Klan but a decline in solidarity and the breakdown of the trust between leaders and the led. Fearful of strong loves and committed to ever-greater openness, the postwar consensus cannot formulate, much less address, these problems.” With today’s elite “unable to identify our shared loves—unable even to formulate the ‘we’ that is the political subject in public life – we cannot identify the common good, the res in the res publica.”

The enlightened man, the conservative Russell Kirk once observed, “does not believe that the end or aim of life is competition; or success…” Nor does he hold any foolish political “intention of converting this human society of ours into an efficient machine for efficient machine-operators, dominated by master mechanics.” What he recognizes instead is that “the object of life is Love.” And so he knows, what’s more, “that the just and ordered society is that in which Love governs us, so far as Love ever can reign in this world of sorrows; and he knows that the anarchical or the tyrannical society is that in which Love lies corrupt.”

If the countries of the West are still capable of renewal, that renewal will come only when our leadership classes recover an uncorrupted love for the particular people – the nation – over which they govern and commit to placing their wellbeing first. We will be fortunate then if, in the hearts of some at least, this recovery may have at last begun.

Substack is great in connecting like-minded people, but I’ve been finding that this close connectivity, while emotionally fulfilling, tends to create isolated bubbles of thought that then begin to evolve separately. Such bubbles risk clashing and canceling each other out when they ultimately collide through a shared reality. I am thinking in particular about the many people concerned about climate change. Even within this community of concerned Earth’s citizens the views on what should be done to help us out of the crisis differ vastly and often radically.

Today I will share a few ideas on how to shape a discourse that recognizes a major role of biospheric and water cycle disturbances in recent climate disruptions but at the same time respects a major role of added carbon dioxide in the observed global warming. In the proposed framework, more people may hopefully get a chance to listen to and hear each other.

Let us first take a look at the familiar narrative.

The familiar, straightforward message is that all our climate problems can be traced to carbon emissions, so to solve them, we must stop emitting. Biodiversity conservation is the poor cousin in the family of dominant narratives about global change. Attempts have been made to link ecosystem preservation to carbon storage, but these have not worked well—either on practical or even logical grounds. If we view ecosystems not as a complex climate-regulating process but merely as a stock or source/sink of carbon, then natural ecosystems are rendered unnecessary and can be replaced with ever-growing carbon sticks to be harvested and buried.

While the biodiversity crisis is often formally attached to climate concerns—for example, as Rob Lewis noted, the tragic story of the mother whale carrying her dead calf, which had starved due to fish shortages caused by dam construction, was reported in the paper’s climate section—our concern for other living beings is readily sidelined when other climate-related interests take precedence. The problem is not just about cutting trees to make place for wind turbines or solar panels but about large-scale resource extraction, including for renewable energy infrastructure and electric-powered devices. These projects require road construction and often lead to widespread decimation of wild nature.

An alternative narrative, which can be characterized as embracing nature’s complexity, can be formulated as follows.

In this more sophisticated framework, it is acknowledged that rising atmospheric CO₂ contributes to planetary warming. It is also recognized that natural ecosystems act as buffers against unfavorable climate fluctuations. While the biosphere cannot prevent an asteroid from striking Earth, it can maintain planetary homeostasis—provided the biosphere itself remains free from structural disruptions, whether internal or external.

This homeostasis can be quantified in various ways, for example by analyzing how temperature fluctuations evolve over time. Without a climate stabilizer, these fluctuations would follow a random walk model, increasing in proportion to the square root of time.

Another way to formulate the idea of natural ecosystems buffering climate disruptions is through the concept of climate sensitivity. Climate sensitivity describes how much our planet warms in response to a given increase in atmospheric carbon dioxide, e.g., its doubling.

For the same amount of added CO₂ we may observer a smaller or larger temperature change, i.e., a lower or higher sensitivity, respectively. The climate sensitivity of the past climates is not very well-known because temperature changes are irregular, and observations are not perfect. For modern climate change, global climate models provide a wide range of climate sensitivities that range by several times, from about two to nearly six kelvins per CO₂ doubling.

If you were a storyteller, how would you visualize and communicate the climate sensitivity concept ? I tried hard and here’s what I came up with.

Imagine the guy in the picture is CO₂, pushing the Earth to the right—toward warming. However, this path is also an uphill climb, which makes it more difficult. The familiar narrative is simple: more CO₂ means more warming.

How do natural ecosystems alter this scheme? The low sensitivity situation means that it is very difficult for the guy to push the planet toward warming, because the slope is very steep. This steep slope is the buffer that natural ecosystems provide.

When we destroy the buffer, climate sensitivity increases. Now, even a small amount of CO₂ is able to push the planet significantly toward dangerous warming. With less natural biota, the same amount of CO₂ leads to more warming. This doesn’t mean that accumulating atmospheric CO₂ is unimportant—I share the concerns of Professor Ugo Bardi, who argues that higher CO₂ levels may even impair our already limited thinking capacity. But by shifting from the left to the right picture, we are quite literally undermining our own existence.

Now, to put some empirical flesh on the bones of our new concepts, we need to address three key questions. First, are there physical mechanisms through which natural ecosystems influence climate sensitivity to CO₂ accumulation? Second, are natural ecosystems in decline? (They are.) And third, is climate sensitivity increasing? (It is.)

We do know that natural ecosystems are powerful regulators of clouds. Clouds are the most complicated element of the climate system because clouds can both warm and cool the planet. They cool by reflecting sunlight, so less solar energy is ultimately converted to heat. They warm because clouds, like CO₂, interact with thermal radiation from the surface and partially redirect it back to the surface, so they are part of the greenhouse effect. As a simple rule of thumb, thick low clouds cool, while thin high clouds warm.

By using these climate levers, it is possible for the biota to regulate surface temperature. Extensive research shows that forests, and not just trees but the whole community of species including fungi and bacteria, emit certain particles that can facilitate cloud formation.

The left graph shows the frequency of shallow convective clouds (those that cool the surface) over different land cover types. These clouds form more often over forests, a pattern observed across all regions of the world. Whether in the Amazon, Eurasia, or North America, forests respond to warmth by producing white cloud shields that help maintain a habitable environment.

The second graph shows that not everything green works right. The blue symbols indicate that cloud cover increases with forest productivity. However, highly productive non-forest ecosystems, such as agricultural lands, generate significantly less low cloud cover, as shown by the purple symbols. The more we extract from an ecosystem—whether through timber harvesting or food production—the fewer resources it has to stabilize itself, the surrounding environment, and climate.

It’s almost hilarious that, in the global change discourse, we still tend to view life merely as a physical-chemical system, even though we know that information governs everything. We’ve embraced artificial intelligence and supercomputers, yet when faced with the ultra-super-hyper computer of life itself, we reduce it to simple chemical reactions—CO₂, carbohydrate production—little more. This perspective is not only flawed but also dangerous.

This outdated view—treating life as a simple physical-chemical process—is also embedded in climate models through oversimplified parameterizations. It comes as an intellectual atavism, a relic of our failure to fully appreciate the complexity of the world.

Returning to the link between natural ecosystem decline and increasing climate sensitivity: The rather dull-looking graph below may not seem engaging, but it encapsulates the drama unfolding on our planet. Over the past century, we have been rapidly losing primary ecosystems—both forests and non-forest landscapes—while simultaneously polluting the atmosphere with CO₂.

The two green curves illustrate a critical reality: we have been dismantling the very system that could have helped mitigate much of the undesired effects of global change. In parallel, the warming has been accelerating. The warming rate has almost doubled in 2010-2023, from 0.18 °C/decade in 1970-2010.

Global surface temperature relative to 1880-1920 is the GISS (Goddard Institute for Space Studies) analysis through October 2024. I am absolutely fascinated by the vast wealth of information that, for the first time in human history, we have about our planet. It’s up to us to ensure this knowledge doesn’t go waste but instead catalizes a phase shift in how we appreciate our living planet._

This increasing climate sensitivity remains unexplained. Moreover, those global climate models that began predicting more warming were downgraded in reliability, as they could not accurately explain the past climate change. We noted as follows:

Global climate models with an improved representation of clouds display a higher sensitivity of the Earth's climate to CO2 doubling than models with a poorer representation of clouds. This implies more dire projections for future climate change, but also poses the problem of how to account for the past temperature changes that are not affected by the model improvements and have been satisfactorily explained assuming a lower climate sensitivity. The concept of the environmental homeostasis and the biotic regulation of the environment provide a possible solution: the climate sensitivity may have been increasing with time—reflecting the decline of natural ecosystems and their global stabilizing impact.

There is another important issue:

Any control system increases its feedback as the perturbation grows. Therefore, as the climate destabilization deepens, the remaining natural ecosystems should be exerting an ever increasing compensatory impact per unit area. In other words, the global climate price of losing a hectare of natural forest grows as the climate situation worsens. We call for an urgent global moratorium on the exploitation of the remaining natural ecosystems and a broad application of the proforestation strategy to allow them to restore to their full ecological and climate-regulating potential.

To stop the destruction of natural ecosystems, we need to cooperate globally. This global cooperation does not have to take the form of a rigid, hierarchical correlation—like the relationship between organs in an animal body. Rather, it can be a loose, interconnected network, like the leaves of a great tree. Each leaf functions independently, consuming light on its own, yet all are sustained by nutrients and water flowing through the shared stem. A shared global understanding of the importance of natural ecosystems could guide us toward realistic local solutions for their preservation. If we just halt their destruction right now, we can prevent further deterioration, which, in itself, would be a significant achievement. And this would buy us time.

Linked literature

Arnscheidt, C. W., & Rothman, D. H. (2022). Presence or absence of stabilizing Earth system feedbacks on different time scales. Science Advances, 8(46), eadc9241. https://doi.org/10.1126/sciadv.adc9241

Dror, T., Koren, I., Altaratz, O., & Heiblum, R. H. (2020). On the abundance and common properties of continental, organized shallow (green) clouds. IEEE transactions on geoscience and remote sensing, 59(6), 4570-4578. https://doi.org/10.1109/TGRS.2020.3023085

Hansen, J. E., Kharecha, P., Sato, M., Tselioudis, G., Kelly, J., Bauer, S. E., ... & Pokela, A. (2025). Global Warming Has Accelerated: Are the United Nations and the Public Well-Informed?. Environment: Science and Policy for Sustainable Development, 67(1), 6-44. https://doi.org/10.1080/00139157.2025.2434494

Heiblum, R. H., Koren, I., & Feingold, G. (2014). On the link between Amazonian forest properties and shallow cumulus cloud fields. Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics, 14(12), 6063-6074. https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-14-6063-2014

Makarieva, A. M., Nefiodov, A. V., Rammig, A., & Nobre, A. D. (2023). Re-appraisal of the global climatic role of natural forests for improved climate projections and policies. Frontiers in Forests and Global Change, 6, 1150191. https://doi.org/10.3389/ffgc.2023.1150191

Moomaw, W. R., Masino, S. A., & Faison, E. K. (2019). Intact forests in the United States: Proforestation mitigates climate change and serves the greatest good. Frontiers in Forests and Global Change, 2, 449206. https://doi.org/10.3389/ffgc.2019.00027

Biotic Regulation and Biotic Pump is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

Christoph Heusgen, former permanent representative of Germany to the United Nations and current president of the Munich Security Conference, cries upon discovering the divorce between the United States and the Europeans.

The last two weeks, we have experienced a turning point in History comparable to that of the Battle of Berlin, in April-May 1945, when the Red Army took Berlin and overthrew the Third Reich: this time, it was the Trump administration which definitively put the European Union back on the ropes.

For the moment, the EU, the G7 and the G20 have not yet been dissolved, but these three structures are already dead. The World Bank and the United Nations could follow.

Let’s look back at these events, which happened so quickly that almost none of us followed them and understood their consequences.

WEDNESDAY, FEBRUARY 12

The major European powers (i.e. Germany, Spain, France, Italy, Poland, the United Kingdom and the European Union), who feared what the Trump administration might decide, met in Paris on February 12 to develop a common position on the Ukrainian conflict. In this case, they agreed to continue what they have been doing for three years:
* deny having violated the commitments made during German reunification not to extend NATO to the East,
- deny that Ukraine is in the hands of “integral nationalists” (i.e. the party of Nazi collaborators)
-and continue the Second World War, no longer against the Nazis, but against the Russians.

Meanwhile, in Kiev, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent presented the US aid bill: $500 billion and proposed paying it by exploiting the rare earths of which the country is proud. I have already explained that this proposal was only a response from the shepherd to the shepherdess: Ukraine having falsely claimed to ultimately offer Westerners the opportunity to exploit these riches which do not exist. However, from a European point of view, what was going on was frightening: if the United States seized these so-called riches, they excluded the Europeans from benefiting from the sharing they had agreed upon. Without informing their fellow citizens, they shared Ukraine between them during its reconstruction: to the British, the ports, to the Germans, the mines, etc. They had already done this during the invasions of Iraq and Libya and during the war against Syria.

Above all, while Washington and Moscow were exchanging prisoners, the American presidents, Donald Trump, and Russian presidents, Vladimir Putin, spoke by telephone for an hour and a half. This summit was preceded by a conversation, in the Kremlin, between President Putin and Steve Wilkoff, President Trump’s special envoy who came to organize the prisoner exchange. Wilkoff had given his president a report on his mission that shattered everything NATO claimed to know about Ukraine.

Both bosses now had the same information.

The direct line between the White House and the Kremlin had just been reestablished.

THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 14

On February 14, the Vice President of the United States, JD Vance, addressed the diplomatic and military elite of the EU at the Security Conference in Munich. He drew up an indictment against the autism of European leaders: They refuse to respond to the concerns of their fellow citizens in terms of freedom of expression and immigration. However, if they are afraid of their people, the United States will be able to do nothing for them, he asserted, making the president of the conference, the German ambassador Christoph Heusgen, cry.

MONDAY, FEBRUARY 17

A second meeting was held on February 17, still in Paris, with the same participants, plus Ursula von der Leyen, President of the European Commission, and Mark Rutte, Secretary General of NATO. They agreed to stand together against Donald Trump and not to accept any questioning of Western policy towards Russia.

Olaf Scholz, outgoing German chancellor, declared after the summit: “There must be no

division of security and responsibility between Europe and the United States. NATO is built on the fact that we always act together and share risks […]. This should not be questioned. »

Donald Tusk, Prime Minister of Poland, said: “No matter what everyone may say to each other, sometimes in harsh words […], there is no reason why the Allies cannot find a common language among themselves on the most important issues. [It is] in the interest of Europe and the United States to cooperate as closely as possible. »

Also on February 17, the Ukrainian army attacked US, Israeli and Italian interests in Russia. It bombed facilities partially owned by Chevron (15%), ExxonMobil (7.5%) and ENI (2%). Around twenty drones caused serious damage to the Caspian Pipeline Consortium (CPC), which supplies Israel with Russian oil.

The Europeans reacted no more to this operation than when the CIA sabotaged the Nord Stream gas pipeline (September 26, 2022), although it is owned not only by the Russian Gazprom (50%), but also by the Germans BASF/Wintershall and Uniper, the French Engie, the Austrian OMV and the British Royal Dutch Shell. This sabotage has thrown Germany into an economic recession, which continues to spread to the rest of the EU, not to mention increasing energy prices for all EU households.

In both cases (the Nord Stream sabotage and the CPC attack), the Europeans were unable to defend their interests. They successively let their main ally hurt them, then their allies fight each other.

TUESDAY, FEBRUARY 18

The European powers learned with astonishment that, at their first meeting in Riyadh (Saudi Arabia), on February 18, the US and Russian delegations agreed:
 to denazify and neutralize Ukraine,
 to respect the commitments made during German reunification and to withdraw NATO troops from all countries that joined the Atlantic Alliance after 1990.

President Trump had suddenly abandoned the plan of General Keith Kellogg, his special envoy for Ukraine, as it had been published in April 2024 by the America First Foundation. On the contrary, he had used the plan of his friend Steve Witkoff, special envoy for the Middle East, who had met Vladimir Putin in Moscow through the Saudi Crown Prince Mohamed bin Salman (known as “MBS”), hence the choice of Riyadh for these negotiations. Kellogg reasoned with NATO’s ideas, while Witkoff listened, heard and verified the validity of the Russian position.

The European powers were quickly able to verify that the order to withdraw had been transmitted to certain US troops, in the Baltic countries and in Poland. The security architecture in Europe, that is to say the system ensuring peace, was destroyed. Of course, there is no immediate threat of invasion, Russian or Chinese, but in the long term and given the time required for rearmament, everyone must immediately prepare for the best or the worst.

WEDNESDAY, FEBRUARY 19

On February19, EU ambassadors approved the 16th package of unilateral coercive measures (misleadingly called “sanctions” by Atlantic propaganda) against Russia. It was to be officially approved on 24 February by the Foreign Affairs Council on the occasion of the third anniversary of the Russian special military operation in Ukraine. In addition, the EU decided to disconnect 13 banks from the Swift system and to ban three financial institutions from trading. In addition, 73 ships of the Russian “ghost fleet” were sanctioned, and 11 Russian ports and airports that circumvent the oil price cap were banned from trading. Finally, 8 Russian media outlets also had their broadcasting licenses in the EU suspended.

Meanwhile, on the same day, February 19, President Donald Trump vented his anger at his unelected Ukrainian counterpart, calling him a “modestly successful comedian” and an “unelected dictator,” and then accusing him of provoking the war. Meanwhile, General Kellogg, the White House’s special envoy to Kiev, canceled his press conference with Volodymyr Zelensky. The Trump administration had broken with the Kiev government that the Biden administration had praised to the skies.

THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 20

Libertarian Senator Mike Lee (Utah) introduced a bill in the Senate on February 20 to completely withdraw the United States from the United Nations. Representative Chip Roy (Texas) introduced the same bill in the House of Representatives the following day.

While President Donald Trump is a “Jacksonian” (i.e., a disciple of Andrew Jackson, who wanted to replace war with business), Washington has now embraced “American exceptionalism.” This is a political theology according to which the United States is a chosen people who must bring the light they have received to the rest of the world. As such, they do not have to negotiate anything with others and especially not be accountable to them.

“American exceptionalism” should not be confused with the “isolationism” that led the Senate to refuse to join the League of Nations in 1920. This organization, unlike the UN that succeeded it, had provided for military solidarity between states that recognized international law. Consequently, the United States would have had to maintain troops to maintain peace in Europe and the Europeans could have intervened in Latin America (Washington’s “backyard” according to the “Monroe Doctrine”) to maintain peace there.

SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 22

Without waiting, Polish President Andrzej Duda went to Washington uninvited on February 22. He managed to meet President Donald Trump for ten minutes, not at the White House, but on the sidelines of the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC). He asked him not to withdraw US troops from his country, giving Poland time to complete its military restructuring. Since Warsaw has already initiated a profound internal revolution by reestablishing universal military service and building a very large army, he managed to get him to postpone, not cancel, his order.

Andrzej Duda is Polish President, at least until the May elections. Constitutionally, he does not exercise executive power, but he is nonetheless the head of the armed forces. His Prime Minister, Donald Tusk, had promised in Paris not to negotiate separately with the United States.

So, whatever one might say, the united front of the Europeans was broken. It had only lasted ten days.

MONDAY, FEBRUARY 24

On the third anniversary of the Russian special military operation in Ukraine, on 24 February, Roberta Metsola, President of the European Parliament, António Costa, President of the European Council and Ursula von der Leyen, President of the European Commission, issued a completely out-of-place joint statement. In it, they called for “a comprehensive, just and lasting peace based on the Ukrainian peace formula”, meaning they stuck to the old narrative: there are no Nazis in Ukraine and Russia is the aggressor. In doing so, they contradicted not only the facts, but also the recent statements of their economic and military overlord, the United States.

On the same day, French President Emmanuel Macron travelled to Washington, on behalf of all Atlanticist Europeans. Before receiving him, President Donald Trump had his chief of staff take him to a wing of the White House to participate in a G7 video conference that he was chairing… from another room.

For two hours, the heads of state and government of the G7, plus the Spanish Prime Minister and the unelected Ukrainian president, tried in vain to make their overlord relent. He would not budge: the Ukrainian conflict was not started by Russia, but by the Ukrainian fundamentalist nationalists hiding behind Zelensky alone. In any case, as a matter of principle, it is not possible to defend people who have just attacked US interests, even if they are located in Russia. To make himself clearly understood, Donald Trump refused to sign the final communiqué prepared by the Europeans and announced to them that, if this text were published (it had already been distributed under embargo to journalists), he would deny it and his country would leave the G7.

Only after this scandal did he receive President Emmanuel Macron. The latter chose not to confront him, but to celebrate transatlantic friendship. At the joint press conference, he interrupted his host when the latter repeated that Ukraine, not Russia, had provoked the war, but ultimately did not dare contradict him.

Meanwhile, in New York, the UN General Assembly was debating a resolution proposed by Ukraine. It denounced “the total invasion of Ukraine by the Russian Federation” and demanded that it withdraw “immediately, completely and unconditionally all its military forces from the territory of Ukraine within the internationally recognized borders of the country and that the hostilities conducted by the Russian Federation against Ukraine, in particular all attacks against civilians and civilian objects, cease immediately.”

For the first time in history since World War II, the US delegation voted against a text, along with that of Russia, against those of Canada, the Europeans and Japan who approved it.

Then, the United States presented a second resolution itself so that “the conflict be ended as soon as possible.” This text aimed to align the General Assembly with the position of the US negotiators in Riyadh. But Russia voted against it because the text “advocates for a lasting peace between Ukraine and the Russian Federation” and not for a “lasting peace within Ukraine.” As a result, the United States, considering that it had poorly drafted its proposal, abstained on its own text, while Canada, the Europeans and Japan condemned it.

TUESDAY, FEBRUARY 25

Kaja Kallas, EU High Representative for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy, travelled to Washington to meet with Secretary of State Marco Rubio. The meeting, which had been announced for a long time, was cancelled at the last minute by Mr Rubio’s secretariat, officially due to his overbooked schedule.

Ms Kallas said that instead, she would meet “with senators and (…) members of Congress to discuss Russia’s war against Ukraine and transatlantic relations”.

After EU members voted against the US at the UN, the Secretary of State refused to meet his European counterpart.

WEDNESDAY, FEBRUARY 26

At a press conference in kyiv, Volodymyr Zelensky assured on February 26 that without security guarantees from the United States and NATO, any peace agreement would be unfair and there would be no real ceasefire.

THURSDAY 27 FEBRUARY

Before leaving Washington, Kaja Kallas, High Representative of the EU for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy, gave a lecture at the Hudson Institute on February 27. She said: “We need to put pressure on Russia to also want peace. It is in a position where it does not want peace.”

Keir Starmer, British Prime Minister, went to the White House, carrying an invitation from King Charles III for a second state visit to the United Kingdom. Her Majesty’s diplomats believe that President Trump greatly enjoyed the premiere and that, given his pride, he would be sensitive to the pomp of the Crown.

During the two leaders’ press conference, President Trump claimed not to remember calling Volodymyr Zelensky a “dictator” (“Did I say that? I can’t believe I said it!”). In addition, he expressed openness to the idea of the 25% tariff hike not affecting the United Kingdom and to London returning the Chagos Islands (including the Diego Garcia base) to Mauritius.

On the substance, Keir Starmer managed to renew his country’s "special relationship" with the United States. This includes the "Five Eyes" global interception and espionage system and the delegation of the strike force (remember that the British atomic bomb could not work without the support of US military scientists).

Meanwhile, US and Russian negotiators met for six and a half hours at the US Consulate General in Istanbul for a second round of negotiations, at a "technical level". It was not a question of progress on the substance, but of resolving problems that had been addressed by the ministers in Riyadh. Namely, the operating conditions of the respective embassies in Washington and Moscow, which President Joe Biden had considerably supervised and to which Moscow had responded identically.

FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 28

The unelected Ukrainian President, Volodymyr Zelensky, visited the White House on February 28. President Trump and Vice President Vance received him, not to listen to his version of events, but to sign an agreement on rare earths that Ukraine claims to possess. Of course, he could not have done so, since they do not exist, but it was a way for the Trump administration to show the man who is no longer known whether it considers him a “democrat” or a “dictator” that he no longer had any cards in his hand.

The welcome press briefing will be remembered. The Western press was shocked by the altercation between President Trump and his guest. We must be wary of images here: they do not say the same thing at all if we stick to a selected excerpt or if we listen to the entire exchange. In an excerpt, we remember the arguments that are stated, while overall, we understand why they are stated.

During the fifty minutes of this press briefing, President Donald Trump constantly recalled that he was not aligned with either party, Russian or Ukrainian, but that he was negotiating with Russia to defend the interests of his country and, ultimately, for all of Humanity. As President of the United States, he speaks with everyone, is careful not to insult anyone and recognizes the positive points of each. On the contrary, Volodymyr Zelensky has constantly accused Russia of aggression since 2014, of murders, kidnappings and torture. He even claimed that President Vladimir Putin had violated his own signature 15 times.

Contrary to what the Western press saw, this press briefing did not focus on military aid, rare earths and even less on a division of territories. It escalated when Vice President Vance noted that his host’s narrative was “propaganda,” then returned to the charge, declaring of both versions of the facts: “We know you’re wrong!” Ultimately, President Trump noted that Ukraine was in bad shape and that his guest not only was not grateful for U.S. support, but did not want a ceasefire. Exasperated, he observed that Vladimir Putin had never violated his signature, neither with Barack Obama nor with him, but only with Joe Biden because of what the latter did to him. He then recalled the repeated false accusations made against Russia by President Biden.

SUNDAY, MARCH 2

British Prime Minister Keir Starmer said Europe is “at a crossroads of history” as he welcomed to Downing Street the leaders of Ukraine, France, Germany, Denmark, Italy, the Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Spain, Canada, Finland, Sweden, the Czech Republic and Romania, as well as the Turkish foreign minister, the NATO secretary general and the presidents of the European Commission and European Council.

The UK and France are competing to replace the US and guarantee peace on the European continent. Both countries are said to be prepared to guarantee the security of others with their nuclear weapons. However, no one seriously considers that these would be sufficient to ensure peace in the absence of serious conventional forces, which neither London nor Paris has. At most, Warsaw began reorganising its armies and generalising conscription for its young people more than two years ago, but it still does not have enough weapons.

After the meeting, which aimed to create a “coalition of the willing”, Keir Starmer said on behalf of all participants:

“Today I welcomed to London counterparts from across Europe, including from Türkiye, as well as the Secretary General of NATO and the Presidents of the European Commission, the Council of the EU and Canada, to discuss our support for Ukraine.

Together, we reaffirmed our determination to work towards a permanent peace in Ukraine, in partnership with the United States. Europe’s security is our primary responsibility. We will tackle this historic task and increase our investment in our own defence.

We must not repeat the mistakes of the past when weak agreements allowed President Putin to invade again. We will work with President Trump to secure a strong, just, and lasting peace that ensures Ukraine’s future sovereignty and security. Ukraine must be able to defend itself against future Russian attacks. There must be no talks on Ukraine without Ukraine. We agreed that the United Kingdom, France, and others will work with Ukraine on a plan to end the fighting that we will discuss further with the United States and move forward together (…) In addition, many of us have expressed our readiness to contribute to Ukraine’s security, including through a force of European and other partners, and will intensify our planning. We will continue to work closely together to advance next steps and make decisions in the weeks ahead.”

The participants in this summit have not changed their analysis of the Ukrainian conflict at all. They remain deaf to the United States and, as a result, no longer understand it. They managed to unite not to deploy a peace stabilisation force in Ukraine, but to protect critical infrastructure in western Ukraine or in similar strategic areas. They agreed not to make fragmented national efforts, but to take advantage of the economic power of the European Union (EU) by redirecting its recovery funds. They therefore convened a special European Council on March 6. However, to transform the EU from a common market to a military alliance, they will need not a majority, but the unanimity of the 27 Member States, including Hungary and Slovakia.

And yet, already, Viktor Orbán, the Hungarian Prime Minister, has responded to the draft final declaration of the European Council by stressing that there are “strategic differences” between the EU states. He therefore advocates that there should be no written conclusions, because "any attempt to do so would project the image of a divided European Union."

Thierry Meyssan

Translation
Roger Lagassé

In November 2022, the book The Philosophy of War by the famous philosopher Henri-Paul Hude was published in French by the Economica publishing house in France. Its appearance was an event in the academic life of France and other countries, which resonated with scholars, intellectuals and those interested in the problems of war and peace. This philosophical essay has also been translated and published in English (2023), Spanish (2024) and Russian (2025). The book addresses the fundamental problem of modernity—war and peace.

Philosophy of war as one of the most important areas of political philosophy has a long history. As a direction, the philosophy of war begins to take shape in the 18th century. Spanish nobleman and military man Alvaro Jose de Navia-Osorio y Vigil de la Rua (1684-1732) used this term in one of his works. In its expanded form, the term is found in the English military writer Henry Lloyd (1729-1783) in a fragment from his Political and Military Memoirs, translated into French. The period of the Napoleonic Wars accelerated the process of synthesizing philosophy and military strategy. It is not accidental that in France this direction found fertile ground for development. A participant of the Napoleonic campaign in Russia, later promoted to the rank of general, Marquis Georges de Chambre published a book entitled Philosophy of War, where he substantiated the importance of a philosophical approach in the study of the phenomenon of war. This line of research was continued in the book of French captain R. Henri, published in Paris at the end of the nineteenth century , in the works of Olivier , Lanet, Lagorgette, Lavis, Letourneau, Rambaud and other compatriots of J. de Chambre. At the outbreak of World War II, the French were again reminded of the philosophy of war . A significant contribution to the development of the philosophy of war was made by Ch. de Gaulle in his works devoted to the issues of war, security and construction of the armed forces of France. The post-war period is characterized by an increased interest in the problem of war. Serious philosophical studies appear, to which can be attributed the work of the French author A. Filonenko “Essays on the Philosophy of War.” The book examines the work of various thinkers from Machiavelli, Kant, Fichte, Hegel, St. Just, Clausewitz to Prudon, L. Tolstoy, and Ch. de Gaulle. There he dwells on the problems of the correlation between war and language, logic and strategy. In the 21st century, interest in the problem of war does not disappear. This is facilitated by the trends in the development of international life, indicating that it is too early to forget about war. Thus, in 2003-2004, the Nantes Philosophical Society held lecture-debates on the theme “Philosophy in the Face of War,” which included presentations and debates with the participation of such philosophers as J. Gobert, T. Menissier, J. Ricoeur, B. Benoit, and P. Assner.

In Russia, too, there were and are proponents of a philosophical approach to the study of war. Modern Russian researchers write about them, for example, in the collection “Russian Philosophers on War” . This publication includes works by Russian philosophers on the problems of war, primarily touching on the meaning and nature of war, its spiritual and civilizational origins, Russia’s relations with the East and the West. One of the Russian philosophers and practitioners of war was Andrei Evgenievich Snesarev (1865-1937), who published in 1930 the book A Philosophy of War, which analyzes the social and epistemological foundations of war, its various forms, and reveals the evolution of this social phenomenon.

One should also pay tribute to the representatives of the Russian Abroad, who, far from their homeland, continued not only to empathize with all the events taking place there, but also tried to theoretically analyze all the processes related to the war (past and future). The heyday of their activity fell on the 30s of the last century. In 1995, a collection entitled A Philosophy of War was published , which included the works of famous representatives of military culture abroad: A. A. Kersnovsky, A. L. Mariushkin, N. N. Golovin, P. I. Zaleskii, A. K. Bayov. It is worth mentioning the works of E.E. Messner, which to a large extent anticipated the development of theoretical views on hybrid forms of warfare.

A deep interdisciplinary analysis of the totality of available works on the philosophy of war still awaits its researchers. In this regard, the book A Philosophy of War by French philosopher Henri-Paul Hude seems to be a worthy continuation of the tradition of his predecessors.

Reflecting on Hude’s scholarly contribution to the development of the philosophy of war, we would like to note a number of points.

First, the author addresses war as a social phenomenon in new socio-cultural civilizational conditions, which highlight it in a completely different way compared to previous philosophical and theoretical studies.

Secondly, this work is distinguished by the originality of its approach to the phenomenon of war through the clearly visible image of the Universal Leviathan as a project of total power, and thus war, of the postmodern era.

Thirdly, war is considered in political discourse, ways of forming a culture of peace in modern conditions are pointed out.
Fourthly, the question of the role of religion and philosophy and their synergistic influence on a world without war seems interesting.

When reading the work of the French Professor, the most important aspects in terms of content attract attention.

The main problem that the author poses is related to the concept of the Universal Leviathan (hereinafter referred to as UL), which appears as a rational project and is interpreted as a single, universal, total power. This Leviathan is already in the stage of formation.

The determinants of UL are determined by the development of technologies that increase the amount of totalitarian power.

An important question posed by the author of the book : “Can we, should we make peace with or without the Universal Leviathan (UL).”
The total subjugation of the entire world by the UL implies the imposition and formation of a culture of powerlessness, understood as the total subjugation of everyone and everything to this UL. It “leads to the powerlessness of those who accept it.”

The author formulates a paradoxical thesis that in order to prevent war it is necessary to constantly wage war. And this war will not be between different individual states—not a constitutional war, but a war on the part of a single, universal state, and such a war will be called a constitutive war. This war, whose subjects are guided by the requirements of absolute security, is directed against any kind of political pluralism, against any kind of culture (except for the so-called culture of powerlessness), against freedom, both possible and real.

The UL is endowed with unique rights:

• the right to use the means of armed violence to be created from armed forces transformed into international mobile gendarmerie squadrons;
• the right to view all their opponents as irresponsible madmen, lunatics, rioters, terrorists, criminals;
• the right to suppress any manifestation of the struggle for freedom, any demand to respect natural rights;
• the right to wage war against any manifestation of pluralism;
• the right, at its discretion, to neutralize any threat, even preventively;
• the right to exceptional political, social, economic and cultural stratification in which the majority of the population, under the influence of a culture of powerlessness, would perceive their slavery as an opportunity for a life of security and freedom;
• the right to regulate demographic processes and to impose morality in this regard;
• the right to be controlled by the Authority of all and everyone: access to political, cultural, social, medical and psychiatric data; access to everyone’s body and brain;
• the right to determine who should live and who should die. The pinnacle of humanism could be human murder. New Leviathan humanism will be only for the chosen ones, and the world will be divided into its rulers and the biological mass without the right to vote.

The social class structure of the world Leviathan will include: oligarchs, a useful class of free citizens-people (policemen, soldiers, judges, engineers, etc.), who together form the “totalitarian elite,” the “party of Leviathan.” In addition, a significant part of society will be represented by useless people (as a consequence of technological progress).

“In the end, this is what Leviathan is: it is a universal Empire, a totalitarian political regime that disposes for its elite a culture of power and war, an essentially non-egalitarian, liberal and technocratic economy in various ratios, a culture of powerlessness for society,” the author emphasizes.

This is the picture of the future if we do not strive for profound cultural change.

Reflecting on the underlying causes of war from the perspective of human nature, the author poses a number of questions. In what does belligerence lie? Is it the natural (animal) beginning of man or does it have a social (civilizational, technical, cultural) conditioning?

If we take the biologizing position, war is unnatural by virtue of the fact that: humans wage wars within their own human species, not against other species; wars as a distinctively human phenomenon are waged between social groups.

What is the specificity of man as a spiritual being? The determinants lie both in the metaphysical plane and in the realm of politics, economics, etc., as well.

According to Hude, it is legitimate to appeal to the psychological roots of war. The mechanisms of involvement in war can be: Freud’s concepts of the unconscious – war is born from the frustration of aggressive impulse; in the confrontation between good and evil a person is able not only to fight evil as an absolute enemy, but also to reach for it, to be in love with this evil. As a result—inner psychic crisis leads to violence and cruelty; no less interesting is the interpretation of waging war for the sake of the war process itself—people like to do it.

The above-mentioned mechanisms, burdened with a set of civilizational and cultural factors (technological progress, transformation of humanism, urbanization), only intensify the existentially pathological craving for war.

Ultimately, Hude concludes that war is the “outward manifestation of the absence of inner peace.”

As opposed to psychological explanations of the origins of war, individual-personal (the opportunity to demonstrate one’s superiority, sense of self-worth, overcoming fear against death, etc.) and social (service to the country, struggle for peace, justice, promotion, etc.) motives are given.

At the end of Chapter 1, the author concludes that the threat of war is more than real, and with the rapid development of technology and techniques, it will have the character of the Apocalypse. The universal Leviathan as an anti-war project will impose its will on the whole world and will wage “its War.”

At the beginning of Chapter 2, Hude puts forward the thesis that “Leviathan cannot be the solution to the problem of war.”

The institutionalization of UL requires the formation of an illusion of freedom in the public consciousness. The means will be information control mechanisms, inculcating a culture of powerlessness, deconstructing thinking and all of existence, and creating an atmosphere of constant fear, real or imaginary.

It is difficult for the UL project to come true because of a number of reasons that hinder the stability of its existence and functioning (economic, technical, political). It is hardly possible for it to ensure lasting peace due to a number of contradictions: between the need for a unified, holistic UL and the culture of powerlessness that it forms and that permeates it; between the importance of possessing rationality on the part of UL and the absence of it as such, without which UL itself is impossible.

The manifestation of growing irrationality, the loss of the sense of objectivity of truth and goodness, the fear of war with the simultaneous fear of loss of power, and the UL elite’s propensity for suicide constitute the grounds for the growing threat of probable war.

Hude analyzes the political world without the Universal Leviathan. A justified appeal to world history leads him to the conclusion: all wars were carried out by nations, between nations.

At the beginning of Chapter 3, he articulates the following thesis: If UL does not solve the problem of war through monism of political wills, there must be another way – “consistent pluralism among nations.”

At the same time, each nation can be a factor in war. Guided by the ideal of freedom, it strives for independence, while falling into the temptation to reduce, or better, to deprive other nations of their freedom. Hence the nations’ focus on domination, their competition, makes the potential for their belligerence irreducible. Therefore, modern culture, in which freedom is absolutized, leading to political-ideological fanaticism, is positioned as a culture of war. While the culture of peace is based on the culture of love—philia.

History testifies to wars of empires, for empires and against empires. If in the modern era the creation of a universal empire (read UL) is an unfulfilled, delusional project, then the realization of the imperial function (management of universal goods by each nation) is a legitimate goal and duty of each nation.

A civilized path of peaceful coexistence can be proposed in the direction of a “coherent pluralism of structured nations” based on a culture of peace implicitly funded by philia.

If the absolute moral ideal of modern culture is freedom, the foundation of postmodern culture is greed and aggression. These feelings were fully manifested in the first postmodern culture (before 1945), while in the second postmodern culture the flourishing of greed is accompanied by the condemnation of violence and aggression. Postmodern civilization has unleashed vitality and sensuality by abandoning rationalistic morality. While seemingly striving for pacifism, postmodern culture is not a culture of peace. This type of civilization has nurtured a generation of hedonists, adherents of a culture of powerlessness, bad citizens and soldiers who are not prepared to fight for their freedom.

Meanwhile, within the framework of postmodernity, an anti-nationalism gradually emerged, which is considered by Hude on three levels:

• The ethico-strategic level is characterized by the rejection of nationalism because of the change in the content of war under the influence of superpower means of mass destruction;
• The ideological level is associated with the gradual emergence of neoliberalism, which is characterized by: the strengthening of the oligarchy in liberal states; the creation of unelected international organizations controlled by the liberal oligarchy at the international level; an unelected judiciary; control over the media; the imposition of sexual freedom; and an emphasis on the physical body of man to the detriment of the social body;
• at the level of the anti-national Leviathan there is an interpenetration of neoliberalism and Leviathan ideology, where the deconstruction of cultures leads to the destruction of nations and their identity.

According to Hude, since the late 2010s, postmodern culture has been characterized by a tendency to shift the vector of movement towards “enlightened despotism” on the part of Leviathan, who, under the pretext of fear of war, and actually through war itself, paves the way.

Is there a political solution to the coexistence of nations without Leviathan, and thus without war? Hude asks a rhetorical question. And he answers that there is, he sees it in the unification of nations, in their “ultramodern” alliance against UL, built on the principles of new humanism.

In Chapter 4, the author makes a judgment: a portrait of the political structure of a world without UL must be complemented by the culture of the world and the cultural structure of a world without it.

The culture of peace can be provided by religion, primarily Christian religion as the most humanistic, according to Hude.

In this case, the main principles of the culture of peace are: the principle of social understanding (philia); the principle of correlation of reason with philia; the principle of metaphysicality, which includes a close unity of ontology, theology and their critical reflection.

The philosophical foundation of the new culture of peace should be a philia that balances nature—society—man, his freedom and equality.

The culture of peace must be based on the inseparable union of religion and wisdom (philosophy), in which reason is directed to the search for truth. This union will be characterized by friendly and interested dialogue between civilized, intelligent and spiritually developed people.

Turning to religion, Hude emphasizes the idea that it should not be considered a universal factor of war; religious wars are a relic of the past, and modern wars have other reasons related to human benefits. All war has underlying economic, political, cultural grounds, taken in different ratios, in different hierarchies. Religious war in this context appears only as a special case of the war of cultures.

The future of humanity should be sought in the plane of religious and philosophical (wise) humanism, the union of which constitutes the culture of peace.

In fact, belief in the Absolute (in God) does not guarantee whether or not there will be war. On the one hand, in order to achieve the religious goal—the salvation of the human soul—war is possible, which justifies the use of force. But, on the other hand, the freedom of the individual in relation to the Absolute gives hope for the transformation of religion into a factor of peace.

What are the “causes of the world” or, in other words, what does the world depend on?—asks the author of the book. And explains it by the interaction of reason, aimed at understanding the absolute Truth, and faith, aspiring man to the Absolute, which emphasizes the harmonious union of religion and the wisdom of philosophy.

Emphasizing the adherence to laws, Hude argues that divine laws and state laws should be harmonized with each other. At the same time, the law is interpreted extremely broadly and abstractly: as a natural law and, accordingly, the law of the Absolute (since nature is a work of the spirit) and as the laws of reason.

Law must include Nature, Reason and the Absolute taken together, undivided and united through philia.

Recognizing natural law as the dominant principle promotes the peaceful coexistence of different cultures and religions.

But law without force support, without the right to use force (judicial, police, military) can lead to arbitrariness, anarchy. Then Power is justified and “legitimate to the extent that it ensures compliance with the natural law.”

Religion, embedded in the world of culture and civilization, can manifest itself both as a culture of peace (through teaching people the natural law of peace) and as a culture of war (meaning constitutive war).

Any law must be the result of a contract between individuals. Neglect of this postulate leads inevitably to polytheism of the Superman as God and ultimately to war.

The law is the foundation of all religion as well as all wisdom. Love of the law can be interpreted as a manifestation of the law of love. The law is not important in itself, but in its relationship to the people who live in accordance with the provisions of that law.

The natural law of peace, according to T. Hobbes, correlates with religious laws coming from Christ. At the same time, the defense of self and others does not contradict this natural law, which inevitably puts before us again the dilemma of peace-without-war or war-without-peace.

Hude repeatedly emphasizes the determining role of religion and philosophy, which “along with natural families as guardians of the idea of nature and natural law” oppose Man to the newfangled Leviathan.

Interesting is the author’s message about the formation of the culture of courage, connecting and disconnecting the materialistic culture of Leviathan’s power and the culture of powerlessness of his subordinates. In contrast to the courage of those who are ready to risk their lives to protect everyone they love, Leviathan will: promote the ideas of material goods (egoism, hedonism, consumerism); erase social and historical memory; devalue the belief in the immortality of the soul; destroy the family, culture, civilization; parasitize on the fear of ecological crisis; transform the social structure (increase the number of the rich, minimize the number of the poor, replacing them with robots).

Leviathan’s practical activity involves choosing several courses of action:

• First option is to support “passéists” whose thoughts and aspirations turn to the past in favor of UL interests;
• The 2nd option is to bet on “modernists” who have come under the expanding influence of a culture of powerlessness;
• The 3rd option is to seek to split religions and wisdom by cultivating animosity between them;
• Option 4 is the separation of religion and wisdom, forming a relativism of powerlessness.

Are there possibilities to counteract these practical actions of the UL? The survival of nations and humanity is seen in the direction of: preserving the identity of religions and wisdom; their mutual support, respect; preventing ideological polarization within individual religious confessions.

The deep essence of the spiritual conflict between UL and the whole world in all the diversity of its religions and wisdom is Leviathan’s desire to level people and man’s struggle for the right to be Man.

In the conclusion of his book, Hude emphasizes the grave concern that all right-thinking people have that humanity is once again on the brink of a “nuclear abyss.” This “nuclear storm,” as the author calls it, is the most dangerous and prolonged since 1962.

On the one hand, sane people realize that nuclear war would mean the end of humanity; on the other hand, what happens if Leviathan, as a consequence of postmodern culture, does lose its sanity?

What can motivate people to do this? Hude draws several options for answering this question: belief in the immortality of the soul – the possibility of going to heaven themselves with the hope that the enemy will be in hell; fatigue with life and hopelessness, as a consequence – willingness to commit suicide; a shift from rationalism to irrationalism with all its consequences; a game of blackmail, where the supporters of Leviathan do not seem to inspire fear, but, realizing this humiliation, are nevertheless ready to commit suicide.

It seems that the world has never known such a clear threat of nuclear war. That is why the thought of the seventeenth-century Spanish philosopher Balthasar Gracian crowns the end of the book: “To live, let us live. The peace-loving not only live, but also reign.”

Thus, a careful and close analysis of the presented work gives grounds for a conclusion: the work is of undoubted interest, first of all, for those in power, in whose hands is the present and future of human civilization; for the scientific community. To a certain extent, Hude’s work can serve as a theoretical and methodological reference point for military science.

The monograph is attractive because the author creatively uses the rich scientific potential accumulated by mankind on this problem from Antiquity to the present day. Naturally, his monograph reflects the ideas put forward by French politicians, thinkers and philosophers in the course of several centuries. Continuing the solid tradition in France of viewing war through the prism of philosophy, the author of the book raises the problem of the emergence and the possibility of eliminating war from the life of mankind in our time.

Henri-Paul Hude is a worthy successor of the established national tradition. Undoubtedly, his life and creative path played a certain role in the formation of scientific interest, which was reflected in his work A Philosophy of War. The professional interest and moral side of the problem of ethics in military affairs were predetermined by his professional interest and the moral side of the problem when he was the founder and head of the center “Ethics and Legal Environment” at the Military Academy of Saint-Cyr-Coetquidan and his participation as a co-founder and member of the Board of Directors of the International Society of Military Ethics in Europe. The result of fifteen years of reflection in the process of teaching military ethics to senior French officers was his book Philosophy of War. As French readers have noted, his book turned out to be a philosophy of war in the spirit of Sun Tzu and Clausewitz. Of course, this is not enough to characterize the work of Hude, as it is marked by the author’s desire to penetrate into the essential aspects of military activity, relying on the world humanist tradition of high level. In the spirit of the European tradition, his A Philosophy of War differs from the works of his predecessors. The appeal to the figure of Hobbesian Leviathan and its connection with the phenomenon of war seems to be successful. This runs through the entire work of Hude, which is evident from the table of contents.

The reader’s desire to understand the book’s place among other contemporary works on war is understandable. In this regard, Martin van Creveld’s The Transformation of War (2008) and Mary Kaldor’s New and Old Wars (2015) involuntarily come to mind. Without trying to compare them in order to determine the authors’ contribution to the problem of conceptualizing war as a socio-political phenomenon, it is the philosophical orientation of Hude’s work that should be noted. While the above-mentioned authors emphasize the transformations of war, its changing nature, the French author focuses rather on the invariant side of the phenomenon under study. It can be said without any stretch that implicitly the author constantly refers to the problem of freedom and justice in relation to war, the state, and the individual. When trying to define the methodological and conceptual style of the work, the notion of “political theology” in the context of philosophical understanding of the phenomenon of war is suggested. This is confirmed by the impressive list of authors to whom Hude.

In part, the style of the work is reminiscent of J.P. Sartre’s famous play “The Devil and the Lord God.” Of course, there are no direct analogies, but the problem of Good and Evil is clearly present in both works, with the difference that one work is a literary play with philosophical overtones, and the other is a philosophical essay in which the path to peace, freedom and truth is sought. Both there and there we see dialectical transitions of some phenomena into others. The high philosophical level of Hude’s work is evidenced by the absence of ideologization of the problem, but the desire for a philosophical vision of the contradiction between Leviathan and what contextually opposes it. In the epilogue, Prof. Hude draws attention to the relevance of the philosophy of war. The author writes that while he was teaching military ethics to French officer trainees, he emphasized the crucial role of nuclear deterrence in shaping their professional skills. When everything seemed to have been said about deterrence, the philosopher thought it appropriate to try to rethink it. According to Hude, it is the human heart, “so great and unhappy,” that could be the best counselor in this matter.

Undoubtedly, the book ha has a philosophical character. It is felt that the author attaches great importance to the problem of war and the possibility of its elimination. The book is not so large in volume, but deep in its penetration into the causes of wars. There is a strong ethical message to find ways to prevent a nuclear apocalypse threatening modern civilization.

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A commenter wrote:

Requiem is a universal poem that can be written and spoken about all of written human history...when Anna writes of the tyranny of Stalin, of fascism, she writes about thousands of years of repeated tyranny, repeated torture, repeated mass control by not only a political elite, but by the mass themselves. in this poem, she not only writes of Stalinist terror, but crusades, of genocides, inquisitions, holy wars, feudal oppression, and of all the tyranny we see after her time--wars for oil, Vietnam, and all of tyranny of all times. Requiem is the most universal poem of all times. It leaves me with one question, and one question only: when and how will humanity achieve its salvation?

Find out more about her here

Two key points the discussion has mostly missed:

1) It has been a bipartisan Justice Department policy for years to attempt to establish that the First Amendment does not apply to non-US citizens

2) Why has the Trump administration chosen Mahmoud Khalil out of thousands of potential victims; about as problematic a test case as can be imagined?

First Amendment Protection

The outrageous arrest and detention of Mahmoud Khalil by Immigration Control Enforcement is a new front in the widespread attack on free speech on Palestine in the USA. Indeed free speech on Palestine is under severe attack throughout almost the entire western world.

There is no shortage of excellent commentary and analysis on the Khalil case and its multiple ramifications. The characterisation of criticism of Israel as anti-semitism, the fake narrative of a threat to Jewish students, the denial of the right to protest, the attack on academic freedom, these are all aspects of the case which shed a horrifying light on the devastating effect on civil liberties of explicit Zionist control of the political system.

The same can be said of the arbitrary detention, the lack of access to lawyers and the characterisation of dissent as “terrorism”.

But it has not been much discussed that the central legal issue in the case – whether non-US citizens have First Amendment rights or whether free speech only applies to US citizens – is not an innovation by the Trump administration.

That non-US citizens are not protected by the First Amendment was the key issue pursued by Biden’s Justice Department in the extradition hearings of Julian Assange.

Indeed it was the insistence of English Court of Appeal judge Dame Victoria Sharp that the US must confirm that Assange did have First Amendment protection, that led directly to the Biden administration dropping the case and agreeing a plea deal, rather than give the assurance which Sharp requested.

Key paragraphs of the relevant judgment are here

…

…

The British judges took the view that not to apply the First Amendment to non-citizens would breach the principle of non-discrimination (as guaranteed in the European Convention of Human Rights), and I am sure they were right.

This is a very worrying doctrine which the US Executive is attempting to enforce. But Trump did not initiate it – Biden tried it too, on Assange.

Why Mahmoud Khalil?

Thousands of foreign students in the USA have spoken out and demonstrated against the genocide in Gaza. I am sure that amongst them there will be one or two individuals who can plausibly be depicted as jihadist, who may indeed have actual anti-semitic tendencies and who are only in the US on a student visa.

So why pick on Mahmoud Khalil, who is none of these things?

He has a pregnant American wife and is in possession of a Green Card residency. Those factors may conceivably play into the First Amendment argument in his favour, if judges are looking to fudge the issue.

In addition to which, while he undoubtedly was in the leadership group of protestors at Columbia University, he appears to have played a responsible role in liaising with authorities. The cherry on the cake is that he is a former British Government employee, having worked in the British Embassy in Lebanon, on Syrian affairs.

This is where the story starts to become very murky. I was told by Resistance-linked contacts in Lebanon that not only was Khalil not viewed as pro-Resistance to Israel while there, he was believed to be involved in UK government attempts to undermine the Assad regime by promotion of jihadist groups.

Free Palestine TV, which is Lebanon-based, has the same information.

It is important to understand how deeply the UK has been involved in anti-Syrian activity in Lebanon. Training and equipping of al-Nusra/ISIS/HTS units was carried out by British special forces based at Rayak airbase in the Bekaa Valley, who were certainly still there in January after HTS conquered Damascus.

Contrary to some reports, Mahmoud Khalil would not have worked for MI6 in the Embassy. MI6 stations do not employ foreign nationals. He would have worked for the Political and Information Sections, under diplomats who cooperated closely with MI6 or in some instances were active “undeclared” members of MI6.

Middle East Eye describes Khalil’s role in the Embassy as a “programme manager” running Chevening scholarships. I know this programme extremely well. While I have no reason to doubt Khalil did this, it would amount to no more than 10% of anybody’s time and would not require the UK security clearance which the article states that Khalil received.

The simple truth is that anybody working in good faith in the British Embassy in Lebanon can be no friend of the resistance to Israel. Everything the British Embassy do in Lebanon is intrinsically linked to the overriding goal of promoting the interests of Israel, particularly through weakening Hezbollah, and this is especially true when it comes to programmes into Syria running out of Beirut.

So how did Khalil move from British government operative to Palestinian student activist?

And then, why on earth did the Trump regime pick him for its first high-profile deportation?

I can see three plausible explanations for Khalil’s behaviour:

1) He was never pro-British but was infiltrating the Embassy for the Palestinians

2) He was never pro-Palestinian but was infiltrating the protest movement for the British government

3) He was not very political but was moved recently to activism by the genocide in Gaza

Of these, option 3) seems to me the most plausible, though all are certainly possible.

It would be a delicious irony if the Trump regime had arrested a British agent by accident, but this seems to me unlikely. I do not think MI6 would run a Palestinian agent in the USA without informing the CIA – although they may have done if there were a specific concern that the CIA would leak the identity.

If Khalil were a British agent he could have been arrested for protection if there were concerns he had been “made”, or he could have been arrested because the Americans found out and were furious at not being informed. But I do not think these are the likely scenarios.

It seems to me much more probable that a once-complacent Khalil changed his mind and became more – righteously – radical due to the genocide in Gaza.

In which case the motive for choosing him as the target for arrest is very plain. Both the US and UK will be worried about revelations Khalil might make about support to jihadists in Syria from his time working on this in Lebanon. Whisking him into incommunicado detention, whilst maximum pressure is applied to persuade him to keep silent, is then an obvious move.

It is important for freedom of speech and for the rights in general of immigrants in the USA that Mr Khalil is free. It is obviously profoundly important for him and his family. I do not want anything I have written to detract from that.

But the puzzle of why such an extremely complicated target for the test case was chosen, when there exist far lower-hanging fruit, is one that needs to be considered. I hope I have offered some possible lines of thought you find useful.

Former number 2 of Daesh and current self-proclaimed president of Syria Ahmad al-Shareh said on March 9: “We must preserve national unity, civil peace as much as possible, and, God willing, we will be able to live together in this country as much as possible.”

The new regime increased the humiliations of the Alawites (Nuçairïs). They are fired from their jobs without being paid. In the street, the jihadists arrest them, and force them to bray like donkeys, or bark like dogs, before beating them in public. In three days, one to three thousand of them were murdered in pogroms, first on the Mediterranean coast, then throughout the country.

Thousands of Alawites took refuge in the Russian military bases in Tartus and Hmeimim where they were welcomed.

With all the jihadists currently grouped on the coast and in Damascus, the rest of Syria is free of fighters. The Turkish army took advantage of this to attack the cities of the north.

☞ Takfiri groups (i.e. those who seek to designate and kill heretics), which had been expelled in Idlib during the war against the Syrian Arab Republic, have returned to “useful Syria”. They were able to pass the roadblocks of the forces of the new government without any problem until they reached the coast and massacred the “heretics”. The Syrian population gave up its arms when President Bashar al-Assad fell. It is therefore defenseless in front of the army and the current security forces that are made up of former jihadists, generally Turkish-speaking, often Chechens, Uzbeks or Tajiks, supervised by Turkish officers.

Historically, massacres of Alawites have always been followed by massacres of Christians.

☞ The Alawite community was formed in the ninth century around Muḥammad ben Nuṣayr al-Namīrī.

It considers Ali ibn Abi Talib, Muhammad’s son-in-law, to be God, and Jesus and Muhammad to be his prophets. However, according to René Dussaud, who was curator of the Department of Oriental Antiquities at the Louvre Museum and private secretary to Anatole France, this community did not arise from nothing. It is said to have been constituted during antiquity, to have converted to Christianity, then to Islam, without abandoning its previous faith, such as the belief in reincarnation. It is this French theory that Israeli researchers have explored and developed.

The Alawites do not worship in public. They refer to three reference books: their Fatihat al-Kitab (catechism), the Gospels (not the Bible) and the Qur’an. For them, only the principles present in each of these three books should be considered revealed.

They were enslaved over the centuries before they were recognized as Muslims by Ayatollah Khomeini and considered equal.

Today, culturally, it is the religious group closest to Europeans, particularly in terms of women’s rights.

☞ The Assad family is Alawite. Presidents Hafez and Bashar el Assad often chose their advisers from among their close friends, i.e. from this community, but not senior civil servants who were systematically appointed with due respect for a community balance. Alawites enlisted massively in the armies, a poorly paid and dangerous profession, which other communities neglected.

☞ Ahmed el-Shareh, arguing that it was an insurrection orchestrated by General Ghiath Dalla, Maher al-Assad’s former right-hand man (now exiled in Iraq with several thousand of his men), presents these pogroms as political revenge, which makes no sense, as this community has never linked its fate to that of the Assads. This lie makes it possible to hide the resumption of the religious war that has swept across the Middle East since the Anglo-Saxons relied on the political branch of the Muslim Brotherhood to fight the Soviets in Afghanistan (recall that in Germany, the Nazis ransacked Jewish businesses and killed many of them during “Kristallnacht” while claiming to avenge the murder of a diplomat with no connection to their victims).

Last month, General Ghiath Dalla founded Awli el-Bas (Islamic Resistance Front in Syria), a militia close to the Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps. He is in no way the representative of the Alawite community, but of the fallen regime. He managed to mobilize many supporters of a secular and egalitarian state and to successfully attack several police stations and jihadist barracks.

☞ How can we not wonder about the considerable quantity of weapons and ammunition that the takfirists have today? Similarly, how can we ignore the fact that Daesh is reconstituting its forces on the Syrian-Iraqi border?

It was in the kitsch decor of his Mar-a-Lago residence that Donald Trump convinced allied central bankers and finance ministers that he was going to make them pay the United States’ debts

De-dollarization, that is, using the dollar only at the national level of the United States and no longer in international trade, is the sea serpent of finance. However, following the unilateral coercive measures that the United States imposed on its allies, first against Iran, then against Russia (measures wrongly described as "sanctions" by Atlantic propaganda), Russia created a Financial Message Transfer System (SPFS), China the Interbank Payment System (CIPS) and the European Union the European Instrument in Support of Trade Exchanges (INSTEX). As a result, the use of the dollar has declined by about a quarter in international trade.

However, the US public debt has now reached the astronomical sum of 34,000 billion dollars, of which only a third is held by foreign investors, according to Forbes [1]. If some of the US creditors, mainly China and Saudi Arabia, were to ask for repayment, a gigantic economic crisis would occur as in 1929.

Many economists regularly warn of this prospect. However, according to Jon Hartley of the Hoover Institution, central banks have not reduced the share of the dollar in their foreign exchange reserves since the war in Ukraine. However, on February 20, a videoconference by analyst Jim Bianco, taken up by the Bloomberg agency [2], rekindled concerns. According to this analyst, the Trump administration is following a plan, the "Mar-a-Lago Agreement". It intends to radically restructure the US debt burden by reorganizing world trade through tariffs, devaluing the dollar and, ultimately, reducing the cost of borrowing, all with the aim of putting US industry on an equal footing with its competitors in the rest of the world.

The idea of the “Mar-a-Lago Accord” refers to an article by Stephen Miran of the Manhattan Institute [3]; Miran was appointed by President Trump to chair the White House Council of Economic Advisers (CEA) and he himself, Donald Trump, gave a speech at the World Economic Forum in Davos on January 22 that seems to go in this direction.

The expression “Mar-a-Lago Accord” refers to the “Plaza Accord” when, in 1985, the United States implemented a policy of weakening its currency in order to boost its exports. In practice, the financial mechanisms having been poorly controlled, the US economy restarted by causing a very serious recession in Japan.

On January 21 and 22, Donald Trump had gathered the central bankers and finance ministers of the G7 in his Mar-a-Lago residence. He is said to have welcomed them by telling them: "No one will leave this room until we have found an agreement on the dollar." [4]. The agreement in question would therefore have been approved by the allies.

The main idea would be for the US Treasury to issue government bonds that do not pay interest (what are called "zero coupons") and that would not mature for a century (that is, could not be exchanged for cash for 100 years). Washington would therefore have to force its allies to convert their debts into "zero coupons".

If we accept this analysis, we must reinterpret various actions of President Trump, in terms of customs duties or the creation of a sovereign wealth fund. They no longer seem as erratic as the international press describes them, but on the contrary very logical.

We must therefore consider that Donald Trump is trying to manage the possible economic collapse of Joe Biden’s "American empire" as Yuri Andropov, Konstantin Chernenko and Mikhail Gorbachev tried to manage that of Leonid Brezhnev’s "Soviet empire".

I am all the more attentive to this hypothesis because, in my opinion, the coup of September 11, 2001 had no other goal than to postpone the foreseeable collapse of the “American empire”. The last two decades have been only a reprieve that, far from solving the problem, have only made it much more complex.

Let us recall: in 1989, the Russian Mikhail Gorbachev, First Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, decided to reduce state spending. He abruptly stopped aid to the USSR’s allies and gave everyone their freedom. Simultaneously, the East Germans toppled the Berlin Wall, while the Poles elected members of Solidarity to the Diet and the Senate. This is the end of the imperialism of the Ukrainian Leonid Brezhnev who, in 1968, had imposed on all the allies of the USSR to adopt, defend and preserve the economic model of Moscow.

This is probably what we are witnessing today: Donald Trump, President of the United States, is dissolving the “American empire” as he had tried to undo it in 2017 [5]. On July 28, 2017, he had reorganized the National Security Council by liquidating the permanent seats of the director of the CIA and the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. This was followed by three weeks of war in Washington and, ultimately, the resignation of the National Security Advisor, General Michael T. Flynn. The latter, who has disappeared from the radar, is in fact still active today and organizes meetings at Mar-a-Lago for opponents of the allied countries.

This time, cautiously, President Trump is lulling his public opinion to sleep by evoking the annexation of the entire North American continental shelf, from Greenland to the Panama Canal, while liquidating the war in Ukraine and the European Union.

If my hypothesis is correct, we must not believe a word of the threats of annexation of new territories, such as Canada, and not imagine that the United States is withdrawing militarily from Europe to confront China, but admit that it is militarily abandoning its European allies. We see that it is abandoning Germany and relying on Poland to organize Central Europe, even if it means letting Warsaw annex Eastern Galicia (currently Ukrainian). Similarly, we must prepare to see the United States abandon its Middle Eastern allies, with the exception of Israel. Indeed, it has just resumed arms deliveries to Tel Aviv and begun secret talks with Iran via Moscow. They let Saudi Arabia and Turkey divide up the Arab world.

The competition between Paris and London to take the lead in European defense should therefore not be understood as opposition to peace in Ukraine. Neither the French nor the British armies have the possibility of replacing Washington’s military support. It is rather a question of determining the role that the two capitals will subsequently play on the continent. Emmanuel Macron, the French president, hopes to develop his defense concept around the French strike force, while Keir Starmer, the British prime minister, intends to take advantage of the situation. The former is aware that the European Union, around Germany, is disintegrating and that President Trump prefers the "Three Seas Initiative", around Poland. He could therefore reawaken the Weimar Triangle (Germany/France/Poland) to maintain some room for maneuver. While, from the same analysis and taking into account the disappearance of NATO, the second will ensure that Germany is kept as far away from Russia as possible, thus continuing his country’s foreign policy for a century and a half. Note that if the European allies, the Chinese and the Saudis should consider it a scam to exchange their debts for “zero coupons”, Russia should on the contrary support the United States in this maneuver. Indeed, during the dismantling of the Soviet Union, Russia went through a decade of recession and unrest, but today it needs the United States to avoid finding itself face to face with China.

Thierry Meyssan

[1] «Why Trump’s ‘Mar-A-Lago Accord’ Would Financially Matter To You», Erik Sherman, Forbes, February 23, 2025.

[2] «"Mar-a-Lago Accord" chatter is geting Wall Street attention» and «Jim Bianco on What a "Mar-a-Lago Accord" could mean for the economy», Tracy Alloway & Joe Wiesenthal,Bloomberg, February 20 and 25, 2025.

[3] «A User’s Guide to Restructuring the Global Trading System», Stephen Miran, Hudson Bay Capital, November 2025.

[4] «Et Donald Trump fit entrer Mar-a-Lago dans la légende du dollar», Nessim Aït-Kacimi, Les Échos, 25 février 2025.

[5] « Donald Trump dissout l’organisation de l’impérialisme états-unien », par Thierry Meyssan, Réseau Voltaire, 30 janvier 2017.

Story at a Glance:

• Dimethyl sulfoxide (DMSO) effectively treats a broad spectrum of conditions, including strokes, pain, tissue injuries, autoimmune inflammation, and cancer.
• DMSO inhibits cancer growth and consistently reverts cancer cells to their normal state.
• DMSO enhances cancer visibility to immune cells, enabling the body to eliminate tumors previously undetected by the immune system.
• DMSO effectively mitigates major challenges in conventional cancer care, such as radiation damage, chemotherapy toxicity, and pain from "incurable" metastatic cancer.
• DMSO markedly boosts the efficacy of many chemotherapy drugs, allowing safer, lower doses to achieve the same results.
• When paired with certain natural therapies, DMSO often produces highly effective cancer treatments, revolutionizing cancer care.

Cancer is one of the most challenging conditions to deal with in medicine, as two seemingly identical cancers can have very different causes. As a result, any standardized (holistic or conventional) protocol will inevitably fail some of the patients it is meant to treat.

Furthermore, since there is so much fear surrounding cancer (e.g., from what the primal fear brings up inside you, from how your social circle reacts to it and from how the medical system uses all of that to push cancer therapies) it is often very difficult to have a clear head about the ordeal or find the right source of advice.

Likewise, since so much money is involved (e.g. 65% of oncologist’s revenues comes from chemotherapy drugs and cancer drugs are by far the most profitable drug market), there is significant pushback (e.g. from medical boards or unhappy relatives) against anyone who attempts alternative cancer therapies making it very difficult to practice unconventional cancer care—particularly since no alternative treatment works all the time.
Note: in a recent article, I highlighted how urologists initially would not touch Lupron (which is now also used as a the puberty blocker) because of how unsafe and ineffective it was, but once they started being paid a lot of money to prescribe it for prostate cancer, it rapidly became their number one drug.

In contrast, while the conventional cancer therapies often have serious issues that make them far worse than any benefit they offer, some conventional cancer therapies are frequently the only available option which can save someone’s life (which has led to me at different times having fights with close friends or relatives either not to do chemotherapy or to get them to start it in cases where I felt it was absolutely necessary).

Given all of this, I presently believe that no “ideal” cancer treatment exists, but if it can be done (e.g., it’s effective for the cancer and feasible to implement), the most ideal to least ideal treatments are as follows:

• Identifying the root cause of a cancer, removing it, and having it quickly and permanently go away on its own (which is sometimes possible).
• Have enough time to rebalance the body so that its terrain no longer supports the cancer and the cancer can fade away on its own (which is often doable but a fairly involved process many have difficulty carrying out).
• Significantly enhance the function of the immune system so that it will eliminate the cancer.
• Find a treatment that is toxic to the cancer but relatively benign to the rest of the body.
• Find a treatment with an acceptable toxicity level and find ways to mitigate its side effects.
• Accept a moderately toxic treatment with significant side effects.
• Focus on living with the cancer rather than curing it and then finding ways to mitigate the symptoms you experience both from it and any existing treatment protocols.
• Use a costly conventional therapy that is unlikely to work and live with all the side effects until your life ends (which in more extreme treatment regimens can be quite severe).

If we take a step back, what’s truly remarkable about DMSO, depending on how it is used, is that it can effectively provide most of the benefits listed above with the least amount of collateral damage (e.g., side-effects, toxicity, etc.).

Dimethyl Sulfoxide (DMSO)

Exactly six months ago, I used this newsletter to bring the public’s attention to DMSO, a simple naturally occurring compound that has a number of immense therapeutic benefits and virtually no toxicity (detailed here). In turn, when it was discovered in the 1960s, it quickly became America’s most desired drug (as it cured many incurable ailments). A lot of the scientific community promptly got behind it and before long, thousands of papers had been published on every conceivable medical application for it. Consider for example this 1980 program 60 Minutes aired on DMSO:

As such, throughout this series, I’ve presented the wealth of evidence that DMSO effectively treats:

Strokes, paralysis, a wide range of neurological disorders (e.g., Down Syndrome and dementia), and many circulatory disorders (e.g., Raynaud’s, varicose veins, hemorrhoids), which I discussed here.

A wide range of tissue injuries, such as sprains, concussions, burns, surgical incisions, and spinal cord injuries (discussed here).

Chronic pain (e.g., from a bad disc, bursitis, arthritis, or complex regional pain syndrome), which I discussed here.

A wide range of autoimmune, protein, and contractile disorders such as scleroderma, amyloidosis, and interstitial cystitis (discussed here).

A variety of head conditions, such as tinnitus, vision loss, dental problems, and sinusitis (discussed here).

A wide range of internal organ diseases such as pancreatitis, infertility, liver cirrhosis, and endometriosis (discussed here).

A wide range of skin conditions such as burns, varicose veins, acne, hair loss, ulcers, skin cancer, and many autoimmune dermatologic diseases (discussed here).

Many challenging infectious conditions, including chronic bacterial infections, herpes, and shingles (discussed here).

In turn, when I published this series (because of both how effective and easily accessible DMSO is) it caught on like wildfire, this publication went from being the ninth to top ranked newsletter in the genre, there was a nationwide DMSO shortage, and I’ve received almost two thousand testimonials from people who benefitted from DMSO (and often had remarkable results—particularly for chronic pain).

That response was quite surprising and in my eyes, a testament not only to how well DMSO works, but more importantly, how effectively DMSO’s story was erased from history (e.g., many long-time enthusiasts of natural health shared that they were blown away they’d never heard of it). This sadly illustrates how effectively the medical industry can bury anything threatening its bottom line (e.g., the FDA—for rather petty reasons—used everything at their disposal to make sure DMSO was forgotten).

In turn, within the DMSO story, I believe one of the least appreciated (or even known) facets of it are the remarkable contributions DMSO makes to the treatment of cancer—which is even more remarkable given that far more research has been done with DMSO and cancer than all the other topics I just listed. Consequently, for months I’ve wanted to publish an article on this (particularly since one incredible natural cancer therapy utilizes DMSO), but simultaneously, it just wasn’t feasible to as there was so much literature to go through.

That’s been weighing on me considerably (e.g. many readers have asked me to prioritize this article over everything else), so over the last three months (and particularly the last three weeks), I shifted my responsibilities to focus on the topic thoroughly. While it took a bit of a toll on me, the article is now done. As such, I greatly hope some of what’s in here can benefit you and I likewise thank each of you who has supported this newsletter and made it possible for me to spend so much time delving into these critical forgotten sides of medicine.

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Cancer Differentiation

When life begins, the first cell has the potential to turn into anything. Then as it divides, its range of possibilities becomes more finite until each needed type of cell populates its assigned region of the body. This process is known as differentiation, and is a frequent interest in medicine as undifferentiated cells (e.g., stem cells) can replace lost cells by differentiating into them. Cancer is a disease of dedifferentiation where normal cells adopt an ancient survival program, lose their structure, order, and connection to the whole body, and instead voraciously divide through the body and consume it.

As such, an agent that could induce differentiation of cancer cells so they become normal could be immensely helpful in treating cancer. Unfortunately, only one “effective” agent has entered general medical practice, all-trans retinoic acid (a metabolite of vitamin A) for the treatment of promyelocytic leukemia (a relatively rare cancer).

There are now twelve tumor-cell types in the test tube in which DMSO tends to stimulate the tumor cell toward changing into a more normal cell, Dr. Jacob told me. — Morton Walker 1983

Sadly, to quote a 2023 review paper that compiled many studies where DMSO differentiated cancers:

Recently, DMSO has been included in biological cancer treatment and several FDA approved cancer immune therapeutic modalities such as CarT cell therapy and melanoma drug Mekinist (trametinib DMSO). However, besides its recognized biological role as a pharmaceutical solvent and cryoprotectant, there was no mention of DMSO’s possible ability to potentiate therapeutic activity as a component of these cancer treatments.

Note: while there is a general bias in medicine to avoid researching natural cancer therapies, DMSO has been extensively used in cancer research because it effectively facilitates many aspects of it (which had led to the truly curious scenario described above).

This saga began in 1971 when one of the nations top virologists accidentally discovered that if DMSO was given to leukemic cells (specifically erythroblasts—which cause a relatively rare type of cancer), at a 2% concentration, it caused most of them to differentiate back to normal cells (which took up to 5 days), at 3% it stopped their growth, and at 5% it killed them.

Additionally:

•Mice injected with the DMSO-treated cancer cells lived roughly twice as long as those injected with untreated cancer cells (suggesting DMSO made the cancer less aggressive).

•The cancer cells did not evolve resistance to DMSO (although subsequent research sometimes showed a small portion of cancer cells in a tumor were resistant to DMSO1,2). Additionally, for erythroleukemic cells that were resistant to DMSO inducing differentiation, butyrate did induce it (while butyrate and DMSO each antagonize the inducing action of the other).

Eight months later, she published another study that found that within five days, 2% DMSO caused 95% of erythroleukemic cells to differentiate. This was followed by studies that:
•Explored the mechanisms of differentiation, provided detailed descriptions of it, and showed it occurred in a consistent manner.
•Explored how certain steroids blocked (or supported) DMSO’s ability to induce erythroleukemic differentiation.
•Found increasing concentrations of DMSO caused increasing alterations of cancer DNA (which was an initial step in the differentiation process).
• Found the differentiation continued long after DMSO was no longer present and could be irreversible.
•Found the differentiation did not appear to be synchronized with the cell cycle.1,2

Following this, it became generally accepted that DMSO differentiates erythroleukemic cells, and decades of studies corroborated that.1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24, 25, 26, 27, 28, 29, 30, 31, 32, 33, 34, 35, 36, 37, 38, 39, 40, 41, 42, 43, 44, 45, 46, 47, 48, 49, 50, 51, 52, 53, 54, 55, 56, 57, 58, 59, 60, 61, 62

Note: DMSO’s ability to differentiate erythroleukemic cells was so well recognized that in 1992, it was selected for a microgravity experiment on the international space station.

Since erythroleukemia is closely related to the more common acute lymphoblastic leukemia (AML), decades of studies also showed DMSO differentiated AML.1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24, 25, 26, 27, 28, 29, 30, 31, 32, 33, 34, 35, 36, 37, 38, 39, 40, 41, 42, 43, 44, 45, 46, 47, 48, 49, 50, 51, 52, 53, 54, 55, 56, 57, 58, 59, 60, 61, 62, 63, 64, 65, 66, 67, 68, 69, 70, 71, 72, 73, 74, 75, 76, 77, 78, 79, 80, 81, 82, 83, 84, 85, 86, 87, 88, 89, 90, 91, 92, 93, 94, 95

Additionally, DMSO was also shown to differentiate many other cancers.

Blood Cancers: acute promyelocytic leukemia,1,2 chronic myeloid leukemia,1,2,3 cutaneous erythromyeloleukemia,1 hairy cell leukemia,1 histiocytic lymphoma,1,2,3 non-Hodgkin lymphoma,1 T-cell leukemia,1 T-cell lymphoma1

Organ Cancers: bladder1, brain,1,2,3,4,5,6 breast,1 colon,1 esophageal,1,2 intestinal1,2 kidney,1,2 liver,1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8 lung,1,2,3,4 prostate,1,2 rectal,1 ovarian,1,2 stomach1, thyroid1

Other Cancers: embryonic carcinoma (into heart cells),1,2,3,4,5,6 fibrosarcoma,1,2 melanoma,1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10,11, nasopharyngeal,1 rhabdomyosarcomas1,2 tumors (in potatoes)1

Collectively, these studies showed:

•DMSO normally differentiated the cancer (it was rare for me to find studies where it did not) and did so in a dose-dependent fashion (e.g., 0.5-2% was often used). At higher concentrations (e.g. 1.5%), those changes were often permanent. However, in some cases, a minority of DMSO resistant cells did form, which then required another differentiating agent.

•Cancer growth, proliferation, and survival in tandem frequently decreased. In parallel, tumor suppressing genes (e.g., P21, PTEN, RB) increased, tumor promoting proteins were suppressed, and the cancer cells were weakened (e.g., with transient DNA strand breaks1,2) or induced into programmed cell death. Conversely, cancer triggers (e.g., C-myc1,2,3, C-myb, nucleolar antigen p145) were suppressed.

•Many metabolic pathways (e.g., JAK–STAT, ERK, NF-kB), histone H2A phosphorylation, and key cellular enzymes were increased during differentiation (e.g., Protein Kinase C,1,2,3 PI 3-kinase, TXA2, and TXB2 synthase, COX-21,2, 5-Lipoxygenase, phospholipase, CYP3A4, cytochrome b5 reductase and drug metabolism, acetylcholinesterase, carbonic anhydrase,1,2 disphosphase, and diaphorase).

•Other proteins and receptors were also increased (e.g., GPI-80, angiotensin II, Desmoplakins and Fibronectin) as were a variety of metabolites and signaling molecules (TNF-α, melanin, diacylglycerol inositol). Intercellular calcium was also increased1,2,3 as was the ion flux in and out of cells (except for potassium), the cellular transport of nucleosides. Finally, there were changes in G-protein signaling, and some cells were sensitive to staphylococcal leukocidin.

•Certain aspects of metabolism decreased (e.g., glucose transport, insulin receptor availability, general protein and transferrin synthesis, diacylglycerol synthesis, glycosaminoglycan synthesis and sulfate incorporation, heme oxygenase-1 activity,1,2) along with a decrease in histone expression and the association of Phosphatidylinositol-Transfer protein with the nucleus.

•Some things increased DMSO’s differentiation (e.g., TNF-α1,2,3, sphinganine, alpha-lipoic-acid, PP2, or suppressing PTEN) while others suppressed it (e.g., asbestos1,2, dexamethasone,1,2 hydrocortisone, hyperthermia, diacylglycerols and phospholipase C, blocking protein kinase C, lithium chloride, Mu IFN-Alpha1). Additionally, low frequency EMFs did not affect it.
Note: other agents also exist that can sometimes induce cell differentiation, but in many cases, DMSO works much better (e.g., oxytocin can turn certain cells into heart cells, but does not fully differentiate them if they are initially only one layer, whereas DMSO does).

•Vitamin D has been repeatedly found to synergistically enhance DMSO’s ability to differentiate AML1,2,3,4 (except in this study) and to commit AML to differentiate into macrophages1,2 while it counteracted DMSO differentiating erythroleukemia.1,2

•Retinoic acid (a vitamin A metabolite) has also shown promise for inducing cancer differentiation, works synergistically with DMSO1,2 and uses a different differentiating pathway than DMSO.1,[2

](https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/0014482790901554)In addition to these biochemical changes, some other effects of DMSO have been proposed to explain its differentiating activity (e.g., one study proposed that DMSO’s interactions with free radicals allowed it to induce differentiation).

Note: I have strong ethical objections to animal research and it is my sincere hope that since so much of it has already been done that it will not need to be redone to “prove” DMSO works.

Structural Changes

A recent study (which will be discussed later in the article) found that 1% DMSO significantly altered the cytoskeleton of melanoma cells but not normal cells:

DMSO in turn, has been hypothesized to induce differentiation through changing the abnormal cytoskeleton of cancer cells. Other data has also linked DMSO’s differentiating properties to cytoskeletal changes such as:

• An early study found that over four days, DMSO caused a progressive reorganization to melanoma cytoskeletons, which differentiated them and stopped their growth.
• Cytochalasin B disrupts the cytoskeleton and prevents DMSO from differentiating erythroleukemic cells.
• Tumor cells in culture typically grow chaotically, unlike orderly normal cells. Adding 1%–2% DMSO to the culture was found to dramatically reduce this disarray within 3 days, forming organized monolayers resembling noncancerous fibroblasts—a change which may be due to a normalized cytoskeleton.

Note: this study used raman spectroscopy to analyze DMSO induced AML differentiation

DMSO also changes other structural aspects of cancerous cells:

• DMSO was found to shift the cell membrane transition temperature from 33.0° to 36.8° (making it more likely to be in a gel-like state), and this shift appeared to correlate with the differentiation of leukemic cells. A follow-up study found other AML differentiating agents also shared this property.
• A 1969 study found (via electronmicroscopy) that DMSO transformed the thick (gel) quality throughout its cytoplasm and its structures to a homogenous fluid (sol) state. Likewise, in an early study, he noted that DMSO could melt away this fibrous barrier and that many cancer drugs mixed in DMSO (e.g., vinblastine) then cause the structures of cancerous cells to switch to becoming normal (albeit benignly overgrown).
• When erythroleukemia was exposed to DMSO, its cytoplasm became more 0.18 acidic, and its water volume rapidly shrank (12% after 15 minutes and 23% after nine hours).

•DMSO differentiating AML cells significantly decreased their viscosity1,2 and erythroleukemic cells’ negative surface charge and electrophoreic mobility1,2 (attributed to a loss of saliac acid residues).

• To assess if the differentiating effect of DMSO was mediated through changes in the cell membrane, the lipid content of the membranes of two different cancer cell lines was analyzed before and after DMSO exposure. From this, it was determined that DMSO increased the negatively charged phospholipid content and reduced the neutral lipid content (which increases membrane fluidity). Since more external negative charges improve a cell’s zeta potential, and increased membrane fluidity allows more phospholipids to be exposed to the water surrounding a cell, all of this suggests DMSO may enhance the zeta potential of cancer cells (an effect DMSO also has on regular cells).

Note: this study also analyzed the membrane lipid changes resulting from DMSO differentiation.

Collectively, many of these studies touch upon a longstanding observation that the transition to cancer is in part due to the electrical charges and the state of the water within the cells (e.g., it should be in an energy generating liquid crystalline state—something raising the membrane transition temperature promotes), which is a topic I have written more about here.

Note: these changes and cancer formation are also often associated with a loss of cellular energy (due to mitochondrial dysfunction). A few studies have shown that DMSO increases mitochondrial energy production and allows the mitochondria to continue producing energy after their function has been compromised.1,2,3

Polar Solvents

There is also some evidence that DMSO’s anticancer properties are a result of it being a polar solvent as:
•Several research teams have found that polar solvents inhibit the growth of human tumors being grafted onto mice, and some polar compounds can trigger cancer differentiation.
•Polar solvents such as DMSO caused disordered and tightly packed cancer cells to rearrange them themselves into an ordered parallel orientation like that seen in non-cancerous tissues (which was corroborated by a US government report from Sloan-Kettering that also found DMSO changed the surface proteins of cancer cells and caused them to be less tightly packed together and to have a slower growth rate).
•Other polar solvents have been found to induce differentiation (e.g., see this study and this study)
•DMSO’s ability to increase immune recognition of certain cancers may be due to its changing the exposed antigens or receptors on the cell membrane surface.
•Polar solvents allow chemotherapy drugs to penetrate cells they otherwise cannot enter (and likewise to pass through the blood-brain barrier so that otherwise unreachable brain cancers can be exposed to chemotherapy). This is important because often dangerously high doses of the chemotherapy have to be used in these circumstances to ensure some of it can reach the brain.

Pleomorphism

One of the forgotten schools of medicine is that microorganisms can assume different shapes (morphologies) and that particular morphologies can be highly detrimental to health. For example, previous pioneers of forgotten alternative cancer therapies (e.g., Rife and Naessens) believed these hard to detect organisms caused types of cancers, and as I showed in this article, they are linked to many autoimmune conditions.

A 1967 Russian study tested cancer patients for pleomorphic bacteria. While difficult to culture, pleomorphic bacteria were eventually isolated from the blood of some of them, along with being in the blood of some of those who had been around those who had recently died from a prolonged cancer:

There were 59 bleedings in 53 patients because multiple samples had to be obtained from a few patients.

Likewise, 17 tumors were directly sampled, of which 16 yielded cultural specimens, with the negative coming from a granulomatous nodule. Additionally, one tumor had to be sampled twice as the initial specimen did not produce the bacteria. Finally, in some cases, the organisms were found directly within sampled cells.

Note: the morphology of the bacteria is extensively described in the paper, but essentially matches what many other pleomorphic researchers have found over the years.

They tested three different agents on the bacteria: ethambutol (an antibiotic), lysozyme (an enzyme in many mucosal secretions protecting the body from invading organisms), and DMSO. They found that lysozyme did a bit, but DMSO did much more.

They also provided a series of growth curves that were illustrative of the effects of DMSO (one of which I annotated so you can identify what each symbol represents).

Note: when DMSO was added to fresh leukemic blood samples, it completely inhibited the dancing motion of particles free in the blood or attached to the periphery of the crenated red blood cells (another common pleomorphic observation), but did not damage the red blood cells at all.

Given that these microorganisms may induce cancerous changes, DMSO’s ability to eliminate them (as small bacteria without cell walls are the most sensitive to DMSO) could also potentially explain its dedifferentiating properties. Likewise, its ability to eliminate them may explain why DMSO effectively treats so many autoimmune disorders.

Cancer Growth Inhibition

When DMSO differentiated cancer cells, it also frequently observed to slow their growth in cultures or implanted animals (e.g., by 62.6% in ovarian cancer cells after 5 days). In turn, this phenomenon has been observed in various cancers, including AML,1,2,3, breast cancer1 (doing so more effectively than thalidomide), Burkitt’s lymphoma1,2 CML1 colon cancer,1,2 erythroleukemia,1 intestinal cancer,1,2 liver,1,2,3 lung cancer,1,2,3 melanoma,1,2,3,4,5,6 nasopharyngeal,1 potato tumors,1 rectal cancer,1 ovarian cancer,1,2,3 prostate cancer,1,2,3,4 (and to eliminate its resistance to hormone suppression), sarcomas1.

In addition to the changes identified in the previous section, a few others have also been linked to DMSO’s ability to reduce cancer proliferation such as DMSO:

•Reducing c-myc, and ras1,2 by up to 80-90% (genes which are commonly linked to uncontrolled cancer growth), telomerase activity (which cancers need to divide indefinitely), AP-1 (a protein linked to the spread of cancer and a target of anticancer research.

•Upregulating HLJ1 (a tumor suppressing protein1,2,3), transforming mutated p53 (another important tumor suppressor protein) to one which regains functionality, and causing an immortal cell line to stop and synchronize its uncontrolled growth by making it regain contact inhibition and no longer grow when pressed against another cell)

Note: rapamycin enhanced DMSO’s ability to arrest AML’s growth, while dexamethasone inhibited erythroleukemia.

Additionally, when DMSO differentiates cancer cells, it often induces programmed cell death (apoptosis) in them. In turn, DMSO has also been repeatedly shown to augment apoptosis in:

• In differentiated AML cancer cells.1

• EL-4 lymphoma cells (via caspase-9).1

• Histiocytic lymphoma1,2,3,4 (despite their expression of the anti-apoptotic Bcl-2 protein), which was partially attributed to its enhancing mitochondrial membrane depolarization and the activation of a yet unidentified tyrosine kinase.

• Thymic lymphoma by decreasing c-myc expression which then decreased ornithine decarboxylase (ODC) activity.
  Note: another drug (an FDA-approved cancer therapy) also decreases ODC activity, inhibiting growth but not triggering apoptosis.

• Cancer like macrophages1 (by reducing their CSF-1R receptor levels).

• Human skin cells (keratinocytes) transformed by the cancer causing virus SV-40 (with 2.5% DMSO) but did not do so for normal keratinocytes.1

Note: one study found Caspase 9, (associated with the intrinsic pathway) showed no significant activation following DMSO, indicating that DMSO induces apoptosis via the extrinsic pathway.

Dose-Dependency

Many studies also show DMSO’s cancer inhibiting properties happen in a dose-dependent fashion. For example:

• DMSO differentiated melanoma cells and inhibited their growth in a dose-dependent manner (e.g., 0.5% DMSO reduced it by 31.4%, while 2.0% reduced it by 88.94%) and if at least 1.5% DMSO was used, it permanently differentiated melanoma and slowed its growth
• In a 2014 study, breast cancer cells were implanted into mice, and then once tumors had grown in the mice, DMSO or saline (NS) were injected into the mice, where DMSO alone was shown to inhibit cancer growth in a dose-dependent manner.

• A 2019 study showed that DMSO decreased the viability of breast and lung cancer cells in a dose-dependent fashion.

• In a 2020 study, researchers found DMSO suppressed the proliferation (up to 69%) of erythroleukemia, AML, liver, and breast cancer (e.g., 5% DMSO downregulated CDK2 and cyclin A). This inhibitory effect was first observed at a 2% DMSO concentration and intensified with increasing doses, reaching a maximum at 10%."

• A 2020 study found 2% (but not 1%) DMSO inhibited the growth of human cancer cells, that this effect increased as the dose was raised to 5-6% and that it also damaged the cancer cells and down regulated CDK2 and cyclin A (both of which are needed for cancer growth).
  Note: while DMSO typically causes apoptosis in Burkitt’s lymphoma cells, at a narrow range (1-2%), it suppressed it—something I did not see for any other cancer. Likewise, while a few studies indicated that DMSO increased cancer cells' viability or metastatic potential, almost all of the studies I found showed it had an inhibitory effect.

• A 1967 study repeatedly found that 2% DMSO effectively killed most leukemic white blood cells and that normal (healthy) white blood cells had a much greater tolerance to DMSO, particularly when only exposed to DMSO for a day or less.

• A 2020 study found that DMSO significantly inhibited the proliferation of 4 cancer cell lines and was much more potent than alcohol or methanol.

• Most importantly, a 2021 study found that very low concentrations of DMSO (including the lowest tested, 0.0008%) had significant effects on the biochemical activity of cancer cells, potentially explaining why small doses of DMSO (which spread throughout the body) can affect cancers.

Animal Studies

Many other animal studies also show that DMSO treats cancer in animals:

•A 1989 study of rats with aggressive (implanted) prostate cancers found that 2.5% oral DMSO significantly slowed the cancer’s growth.

•A 1967 study induced breast cancers in mice and found that drinking DMSO caused a small reduction in their rate of occurrence and prevented some of weight loss caused by the cancers.

• A 2008 MRI study evaluated the microvasculature of mice with implanted tumors before and after a week course of DMSO. It found DMSO greatly reduced cancer vascular permeability, which is potentially significant for cancer management as leaky blood vessels can support rapid irregular growth or metastasis and can compress surrounding tissues or cause inflammation and sometimes interfere with the delivery of chemotherapy to those cells.
  Note: many holistic schools of medicine have concluded cancers arise from poor blood flow to a tissue or poor lymphatic drainage from it. Given DMSO’s remarkable ability to improve circulation, it is highly possible that this contributes to its ability to prevent cancer.
• A 2011 study found that in mice with experimentally induced Dalton’s lymphoma, injected DMSO was shown to regress their tumors and upregulate TNFα and p53 in lymphoma cells, which impaired their metabolic pathways and triggered an apoptotic pathway (whereas normal white blood cells were unaffected).

Additionally, in hamsters, DMSO has been shown to prevent 9,10-dimethyl-1,2-benzanthracene and 3-methylcholanthrene from creating cancers, and two other studies1,2 found that DMSO partially prevented methylcholanthrene from causing skin cancer in mice (particularly malignant cancers).

Note: a 1967 rabbit study found that DMSO does not increase the spread or growth rate of tumor cells implanted into the peritoneal cavity (thereby indicating that topical applications of that manner are safe).

Human Studies

Finally, a few studies have also shown that DMSO alone can significantly improve cancer outcomes:

• A 1992 study conducted by an Iraqi researcher (who’d found DMSO cured a variety of challenging gastrointestinal conditions) conducted a controlled trial of 198 patients who’d had surgery for colon cancer (in the sigmoid) that had spread into the local lymph nodes, and found that the long term administration of oral DMSO after the electrosurgery significantly improved their 5 year survival.
• That researcher also conducted a 1992 controlled trial of 228 patients who’d just had an uneventful surgery to remove two-thirds of their stomachs (due to stomach cancer). Daily oral DMSO significantly increased their survival rates in the 160 patients who could be evaluated at 5 years.
• A 1999 trial of 25 patients found intravesical DMSO treated bladder cancer and that if a one biomarker was then negative following therapy, they were much less likely to have a recurrence.

Immune Activation

Since the body relies upon the immune system to eliminate cancers, many natural and conventional approaches to cancer have tried to support that. Fortunately, while DMSO is highly effective at reducing autoimmunity and inflammation within the body, it does not impair the immune system's response to cancer, and if anything enhances it.

A key reason for this is that DMSO achieves what many conventional cancer immunotherapies aim to do—prevent cancer from evading the immune system, thereby allowing it to be targeted and eliminated.

The earliest application of this was from George Moore, a renowned cancer researcher who had investigated treatments for large oral, genital and rectal HPV-related warts, such as condylomata acuminata (which often required repeated, painful interventions like surgical excision, cautery, or cryotherapy to reduce their size) involving topical dinitrochlorobenzene to solicit a local immune response to the warts. In his 1978 JAMA paper “Condyloma A New Epidemic,” he reported he had successfully treated 22 of 23 patients who had podophyllum resistant warts, while in 1975 he reported to the Lancet::

We have been using dinitrochlorobenzene (D.N.C.B.) for the treatment of cutaneous metastases from various malignancies such as breast melanoma. In such instances penetration of the skin by the antigen is important. The addition of dimethylsulphoxide to D.N.C.B., in a water-soluble base, and the use of an occlusive dressing have been helpful. Caution must be used since some local reactions may be severe especially in the axilla or in skin folds. Solid tumour metastasis can be completely destroyed. The search for and evaluation of antigenic agents for topical immunotherapy must be expanded.

Additionally, an author who corresponded with Moore shared that Moore began treating these warts because he disagreed with the "barbaric treatments" used for them, and that his DMSO D.N.C.B. treatment (which he characterized as a cancer vaccine) was so effective he was rapidly deluged with male patients seeking him out (which he described in language that emphasized the point but is no longer appropriate to put into writing).

Note: as I showed here, topical DMSO can be effective for a variety of skin lesions including warts and cancer.

Much later, a pivotal 2016 study proved it was possible to use DMSO to make a “vaccine against cancer.” It exposed liver cancer cells to 2% DMSO, which temporarily slowed their growth and permanently changed their gene expression. These treated cells were then injected into mice and, unlike untreated cancer cells, did not form tumors. Crucially, the DMSO-treated cells induced an anti-tumor immunity that allowed the mice to completely eliminate untreated liver cancer cells. This treatment also conferred a partial immunity to the mice against certain other cancers, specifically B16-F10 melanoma cells. The study found that DMSO treatment increased the activation of cancer-eliminating immune cells (CD4+, CD8+ T cells, and NK cells). Mice lacking a functional immune system did not respond to this therapy, confirming the importance of the immune response.

Note: given the myriad of issues with the vaccines (e.g., many toxic and autoimmune or microstroke provoking substances typically being added in), I hesitate to use the term vaccine here. However, that does characterize what is happening here (and does not require the toxic substances typically found in vaccines).

In turn, numerous studies have shown that DMSO stops cancer cells from being able to evade the immune system as:

• DMSO increased the differentiation of lung cancer cells and increased the surface expression of H-2K and H-2D antigens at least 100-fold (which aids the immune system in being able to target the cancer). In a follow-up study, the authors showed this H-2 change greatly increased their susceptibility to being eliminated by the immune system (via H-2-restricted immune lysis). Another study found that DMSO increased the expression of H-2 antigens in T-cell lymphoma and increased their sensitivity to immune cells.

•DMSO significantly decreased the metastatic potential of mouse lung cancer cells, which the authors attributed to its increasing the expression of class I antigens (which the immune system uses to target cancerous cells). However, the two other agents that increased class I antigen expression did not reduce mice metastasis

• DMSO increased the ability of the spleen (likely its macrophages) to identify and eliminate cancerous cells.
• DMSO induced surface antigen expression in melanoma cells.

Likewise, DMSO was also shown to increase anticancer immune cells. For example, in a 2014 study, DMSO increased the presence of anti-tumor macrophages and decreased pro-tumor macrophages. In a 1975 study, DMSO potentiated the immune response to specific cellular antigens by increasing T-cell MIF production and possibly also by exposing antigens to T-cells.

Finally, when DMSO differentiated AML cancers into immune cells, those cells were able to mount an effective immune response (which could potentially be helpful in leukemia). Specifically, those cells (which often become neutrophils or macrophages):

• Could effectively mount an immune response (whereas other differentiating agents produced immune cells that did not).
• Were better able to bind carbohydrate antigens (which macrophages need to consume foreign invaders).

•Had a high responsiveness to immune receptors (e.g., TLR2 and TLR4) that trigger an immune response to invading pathogens.

Amyloidosis and Multiple Myeloma

Multiple myeloma (MM) is a type of blood cancer characterized by the uncontrolled growth of malignant plasma cells in the bone marrow, which produce abnormal proteins that can overwhelm the body (which sometimes creates enough issues to need to be removed with plasmapheresis blood filtration).

As I showed in this article, there are over 40 studies demonstrating that DMSO prevents amyloid proteins from clumping together and instead eliminates their deposits from the body (e.g., one study found this after testing 125 Bence Jones proteins)—which represents a massive paradigm shift for this (currently incurable) disease. Since amyloids are seen in 10-15% of cases of MM, case reports have gradually emerged of it helping those MM patients:

• A 1981 case report found (with imaging) that DMSO was an effective treatment for soft tissue MM amyloidosis.
• In a 1987 case report, Japanese researchers used plasma exchange to remove harmful proteins from a patient with Bence-Jones type of MM and one with fulminant hepatitis. It found that DMSO significantly increased the filtration of the unwanted proteins, did not damage the filtration membrane, and caused no side effects (e.g., hemolysis, shock, fever, or liver damage)

• In 1984, a patient with Bence-Jones MM treated their carpal tunnel syndrome (caused by amyloidosis) with a topical DMSO ointment.
• In 2009, an MM patient with pulmonary amyloidosis was successfully treated with DMSO.
• Finally, a 2000 case report discussed using DMSO to cure, rather than just mitigate the symptoms of MM amyloidosis. In a patient with previously undiagnosed MM (which had caused significant issues in the rectal submucosal and lips, along with creating a mass in the submandibular region). He was put on long-term combination chemotherapy (vincristine, doxorubicin, and dexamethasone), IFN-alpha and oral DMSO which resulted in a marked improvement of his amyloidosis symptoms as well as a significant improvement of his MM (e.g., a decrease in the levels of plasma cells in bone marrow and of M-protein and immunoglobulin G in serum).

Cancer Pain

In addition to being potentially lethal, cancer (and cancer treatments) are accompanied by many other debilitating symptoms, one of which is pain—something so severe the general restrictions on opioids are typically lifted for it (e.g., fentanyl is often used to treat advanced cancer pain—but 10-20% of patients their pain is severe enough that even potent opioids can’t address it).

Fortunately, since DMSO has a rather unique mechanism of treating pain, it is often able to treat a wide range of challenging pain conditions nothing else works on (e.g., I’ve now had hundreds of readers share life-changing pain improvements with me from topical DMSO nothing else they’d tried had ever worked on). As such, many over the years have found it provided incredible relief for metastatic cancer pain.

One of the most well known examples was Otis Bowen MD (a popular second term Indiana governor) who “illegally” used topical DMSO to treat his wife’s pain from terminal multiple myeloma and then publicly denounced the FDA’s absurd embargo on it at the AMA’s 1981 national meeting. Remarkably, a few years later, Bowen became Reagan’s Secretary of Health and Human Services. Still, even then, with this highly ethical doctor at the helm of the HSS, DMSO was unable to overcome the FDA’s prohibition of it—which helps to highlight the incredible challenge RFK Jr. is now facing (but gradually surmounting).

Likewise, a few studies have shown that DMSO can treat this pain:

• A 1967 study gave two older patients with cancer pain DMSO, one of whom had an excellent response to treatment and one who had a good response.
• A 1967 study found that of 7 patients with metastatic cancer pain, DMSO gave 2 a full remission and 2 a partial remission.
• A 2011 trial gave DMSO and NaHCO₃ to 26 patients with advanced cancers who were experiencing significant pain (even with all the available treatment options). This significantly reduced their pain (to the point that all were able to stop using morphine) and greatly improved their quality of life (e.g., chemotherapy symptoms).

_Note: this paper further discusses DMSO’s ability to treat intractable cancer pain. It highlights that this may be due to DMSO’s ability to address membrane hyper-excitability (e.g., through suppressing NMDA and AMPA induced ion fluxes—which are linked to central pain sensitization and may explain why DMSO effectively treats complex regional pain syndrome)._

Protecting Against Cancer Therapies

One of the primary values of DMSO is its ability to protect cells and tissue from a variety of lethal exposures (e.g., burns, freezing, blood loss, asphyxiation, UV light, and soundwaves) and to greatly accelerate healing from injuries (e.g., sprains or burns).

Since many of the complications from cancer arise from the treatments for it, DMSO hence has value as an adjunctive cancer therapy—particularly since DMSO does not protect cancerous cells from cancer treatments (and rather often makes them more potent). For example:

• One study found that DMSO protected human hematopoietic stem cells from radiation, but did not provide any protection to AML cells.
• Rather than protect them, DMSO triggered cell death in erythroleukemic cells that had been exposed to radiation.

•DMSO caused the AML cells it differentiated to become sensitive to radiation.

Conversely, DMSO has also been shown to protect non-cancerous cells deliberately sensitized to radiation.

_Note: as I showed here, DMSO is also very effective for healing from surgery, and as such can often help the recovery from cancer. For example, in dogs that required a unilateral mastectomy, giving IV DMSO 15 minutes prior to the surgery’s conclusion reduced the post surgical inflammation._

Radiation Therapy

In addition to protecting cells from other sources of injury, as early as 1961, DMSO was also recognized to protect cells and tissues from radiation exposure.

Note: by 1967, it was well recognized that DMSO (even just applied topically to the skin) strongly protected against lethal x-rays and did so in a manner that was much more effective than many other available radioprotective agents.

Since cancer treatment frequently requires radiation therapy (which frequently causes a variety of complications that lack established treatments) and the evidence is quite strong for DMSO’s ability to address those complications (especially if given prior to radiation but also after radiation), I believe this is one of the areas where DMSO provides greatest benefit in the treatment of cancer.

_Note: I have mixed feelings on radiation therapy as while sometimes necessary (particularly if robust alternative treatments are not available), it frequently creates significant side effects (ie. fibrosis of the tissues) that can cause issues for years. I also believe our focus on radiation therapy ultimately resulted from mining magnate James Douglas devising a way to produce cheap radium and then giving a large donation (along with subsequent donations) to America’s premier cancer institute to create a program for developing radiation therapy that spread across the world._

How DMSO Treats Radiation Injuries

Radiation has a variety of mechanisms through which it damages tissue such as:

•Directly breaking chemical bonds (which damages DNA, RNA and proteins) and damaging mitochondrial membranes (which are particularly sensitive to radiation),
•Indirectly creating reactive oxygen species and free radicals (which damage a variety of cellular components).
•Triggering an immune response (e.g., by releasing IL-1, IL-6, TNF-α, and TGF-β), which often leads to chronic inflammation, fibrosis and adhesions.
•Putting cells into senescence (a state of permanent growth arrest).
•Causing normal cells in the vicinity of the affected ones to die as well (e.g., when only 1% of cells are exposed to radiation, approximately 30% of cells will exhibit similar toxic effects from the radiation), a fascinating phenomenon known as the bystander effect which I believe is mediated through mitogenic radiation emissions.

DMSO in turn, counteracts each of these effects. For example, in previous articles, I highlighted the body of evidence that DMSO:

• Treats (and prevents) fibrosis in many different organs.
• Eliminates adhesions.
• Reduces the key inflammatory cytokines (also discussed here).
• Rescues senescent cells trapped in the cell danger response (also discussed here).
• Neutralize free radicals (e.g., through scavenging charged ions and forming protective DMSO radicals), prevent radiation from creating harmful free radicals (also shown in this study) and prevent free radicals (or reactive oxygen species) from damaging DNA. (also shown in this, this, this, and this study).
  Note: one study found this protection only occurred for cells in the liquid state (but not frozen ones), while another found DMSO could also protect cells if it was given up to 10 days post irradiation.- To prevent the bystander effect from damaging non-irradiated cells (possibly through preventing the formation of free long lasting free radicals).
• Regrow lost hair (a common complication of radiation therapy).
• Reduces chromosome damage from radiation.
• Accelerates the healing of tissues after injuries (e.g. from radiation).

This highlights that DMSO’s protective effect is selective, primarily benefiting healthy tissues while maintaining a reduced impact on cancerous growth.

AML cells differentiated by DMSO were initially more sensitive to radiation, but after 3-5 days (once they had become more differentiated), they became less sensitive to it.

Further studies are warranted to explore this dynamic in greater detail, particularly to determine how DMSO can be strategically applied to balance the protection of healthy tissues and the effective targeting of cancer cells.

Cell Studies

Studies have repeatedly shown that DMSO protects cells (particularly when given prophylactically) from being damaged by (often otherwise fatal) radiation (e.g., DMSO was shown to protect skin cells from dying after exposure to gamma radiation and make hamster cells four times as resistant to radiation).
Note: in one detailed study, when 3% DMSO was given prior to irradiation, the protective effect increased (up to when 15% DMSO was used).

DMSO also:

• Protected the enzymes catalase and lactic acid dehydrogenase from being inactivated by x-rays (with DMSO concentrations as low as 0.28%).
  _Note: the protective effect of DMSO on enzymatic activity has also been observed in some of the earliest studies on radiation therapy (e.g., one where it protected catalyze), making it one of the earliest breakthroughs in understanding how DMSO works on a biochemical level.
• _Protects lymphocytes and macrophages from DNA damage and death (along with protecting chromatin from gamma rays).
• Protects human kidney cells from freezing and radiation damage, and makes warmer cells (e.g., those at body temperature) as resistant to radiation damage as frozen ones.
• Protects certain bacteria from x-ray exposure (also shown in this and this study) while making another species spores’ more sensitive.
• Most recently, a 2024 study found skin cells (modified to become pluripotent stem cells) found giving DMSO prior to irradiation protected the cells from the genetic damage radiation would otherwise cause.
• Lastly, this study (which used deuterated DMSO) discussed the chemical changes DMSO and water undergo when they absorb radiation.

Plant Studies

Pre-treatment (but not post-treatment) DMSO prevented 52% of the radiation induced chromosome breaks. A subsequent study found similar results for barley, wheat, and triticale seeds, along with DMSO also reducing seedling injury and death. Additionally, another plant study found that ultraviolet radiation and DMSO together increased the productivity of an antimalarial compound.

Animal Studies

These animal studies provide clear evidence of the versatility of DMSO in protecting organisms from radiation damage.

• A 1967 study found that while only 9% of mice survived after a lethal radiation exposure, when they were given intraperitoneal DMSO, most survived (54% of those receiving 50% DMSO, 67% of those receiving 75% DMSO, and 63% of those receiving 90% DMSO).
• When DMSO was given to rats within an hour of an otherwise lethal radiation dose, 70% instead survived. Applying DMSO to newborn rat skin protected them from damage from x-ray exposure.
• DMSO was found to protect newts from lethal x-ray and gamma ray exposures (along with preventing organ and skin damage).
• In fruit flies, DMSO significantly reduced x-ray mortality and mutations of their sperm.
• DMSO protected Golden hamster embryos from gamma rays and (by accelerating DNA repair) prevented X-ray damage to hamster ovary cells.
• Dipping mice tails in DMSO prior to irradiation (but not after) significantly reduced their mortality.
• Mice tail bones treated with DMSO continued growing even after exposure to substantial doses of radiation.
• DMSO given 8 minutes before a 1000 R exposure to the head prevented cataract formation in mouse eyes.
• In mice, to prevent radiation-induced oral mucositis (e.g. ulcers) through facilitating DNA repair of the stem cells there.
• In mice, it protects intestinal crypt cells from radiation (which rapidly divide and hence are significantly more sensitive to radiation). Likewise, this study also used DMSO to protect intestinal cells from radiation.
• In rats, it prevents radiation induced damage (from oxidative stress) to the kidneys.
• A rabbit study found that DMSO protected them from Cobalt-60 radiation (and the inflammatory response to it) without causing any negative changes to the structure of the lungs or the capillaries.
  Note: another study showed DMSO also protects cells from other radioactive isotopes.
• A 2022 mouse study found DMSO giving DMSO prior to irradiation protected mice testicles (e.g., testicular weight and hormonal function was preserved) and fertility (e.g., spermatozoa remained alive and did not accumulate DNA damage as DMSO facilitated DNA repair).
• A 2020 mice study found that DMSO to some extent prevented radiation fibrosis.
• A study found that even greater protection from radiation occurred when DMSO was combined with levorin (or methylated levorin or isolevorin).
  _Note: the authors of that study also published a review that further discusses DMSO’s radioprotective and anticancer effects when given with those compounds._
• Inhaling DMSO vapor was also shown to protect mice from radiation exposure (which was also shown in this study).
• In a mice study, 100% DMSO (but not 80% or any concentration lower than that) was found to increase the sensitivity of mice skin to radiation injuries, which led the authors to suspect the increased blood flow created by 100% DMSO was bringing oxygen to the tissues which could then be turned into harmful free radicals.
• Topical application of 30% DMSO to the skin of 16-day-old nestling rats 20 minutes before x-ray exposure protected them against x-ray-induced damage.
• A rat study found that giving them DMSO post-irradiation increased their ATP, ADP, and AMP levels (whereas no change was seen in non-irradiated rats that received DMSO), suggesting DMSO had augmented a post-radiation regenerative process.
• When unpleasant radiation exposures were used to create a conditioned taste aversion to saccharin (a sweetener) in rats, giving DMSO was found to prevent that negative conditioning from occurring.

Note: this avoidance can also be transferred by injecting brain tissue of the irradiated mice into a non-irradiated one. However, if DMSO is given before irradiation, it prevents any transferability.

Human Data

Earlier in this series, I showed that DMSO has a remarkable ability to protect and heal the skin from injury, and in turn, since 1966, numerous Russian German and Japanese studies (including clinical trials) have demonstrated DMSO’s remarkable ability to protect human skin (along with its collagen and mucopolysaccharides1) from radiation.1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10,11,12,13

These include studies where:

• The irradiation was done by radioactive cobalt.
  -Trasylol and epsilon-aminocaproic acid were given in conjunction with DMSO to prevent a subsequent radiation injury or DMSO was used with CoQ10 to modify radiation injuries.
• It treated radiation fibrosis,1,2 radiation dermatitis, radiation injuries or other local radiation complications.

Note: while DMSO can treat radiation injuries after the fact, it works much better when given prior to radiation therapy.

DMSO has also been shown to protect other tissues. For example:

-A 1977 study where 80 patients who had developed late local radiation complications (induration, ulcers) from the treatment of breast or genital cancer (or a non-cancerous disease) received DMSO, resulting in both a high efficacy of treatment and no side effects.

• A 1985 Russian study gave 22 patients with cervical cancer topical DMSO prior to internal radiation therapy done with an older device that delivered gamma rays. It found that compared to 59 controls (who only received radiation therapy), DMSO prevented the normally expected radiation burns and other toxic reactions to the treatment (e.g., in the bladder and rectum). Additionally, while it protected normal tissue, DMSO did not protect the cancerous tissue.
• A 2006 study of 807 patients with cervical uterine cancer gave 10% DMSO into the bladders of 113 patients an hour before receiving weekly intracavitary irradiation therapy and to 473 patients who also received metronidazole dissolved in 100% DMSO. In those who received neither, the radiation damage to the rectum and bladder was 19.0% and 8.8%, in those who received only DMSO it was 9.5% and 7.1%, and in those who received DMSO and metronidazole it was 1.7% and 1.7%. Additionally, the study found that larger DMSO doses offered more protection.
• A 1978 American study that used DMSO to treat a variety of inflammatory conditions of the urinary tract included 12 patients with longstanding radiation cystitis (e.g., from prostate cancer therapy), of whom 50% had a positive response to DMSO (3 “excellent,” 2 “good” and 1 “fair”).
  _Note: a 1979 Russian study also used DMSO to treat radiation cystitis while anecdotes of DMSO producing dramatic results for radiation cystitis can be read here._
  -A Japanese study (by this researcher and summarized here) evaluated 22 breast and cervical cancer patients and found that DMSO protected them against radiation dermatitis (e.g., erosion, blistering, itching, and pain) while also enhancing cancer sensitivity to radiation (as the DMSO treated areas showed skin reddening and exfoliation earlier) and accelerating the regrowth of normal tissues. Additionally, they found that when DMSO was only applied to one side, the non-applied side did worse, that the hyperpigmentation which follows radiation therapy was greater in DMSO treated patients, and that only one of the 22 patients had to stop DMSO (due to having a skin eruption which may have been linked to DMSO).
• This author detailed a case of a patient with lung cancer that was treated with three months of radiation therapy but severely damaged her lungs (making her require oxygen and leaving her unsure if she’d survive—but after topical and oral DMSO, she had a rapid recovery. Likewise, he also shared a case of another woman with lung cancer who was expected to have significant lung complications from the treatment (as she required a borderline lethal dose), but took topical DMSO prior to each treatment and instead had no complications and was fully healthy three years later.

It is thus quite remarkable that all of this remains unknown. To quote the author of one of the above (2022) study:

Currently, there is no approved agent for the prevention or treatment of radiation-induced testicular injury…In summary, our findings demonstrate the radioprotective efficacy of DMSO on the male reproductive system, which warrants further studies for future application in the preservation of male fertility during conventional radiotherapy and nuclear accidents.

Note: in addition to the higher doses experienced from radiation therapy, diagnostic radiation, specifically CT scans (which expose the body to much higher radiation doses than X-rays) also pose a cancer risk—particularly since the dose of radiation with CT scans can have over a 10-fold variation. In turn, a CT scan was found to make you 17-24% more likely to develop cancer, with the risk increasing the younger you were at the time of the scan and being much higher for certain types of cancers1,2,3,4,5. with a 2009 study estimating 29,000 cancers were caused by the CT scans performed in America in 2007. As such, I try to avoid CT scans I do not feel are essential (particularly since a detailed physical exam frequently provides more actionable information) and it is my sincere hope at some point in the future, DMSO will be given in conjunction with CT scans (but unfortunately their use keeps going up and they are viewed as a highly lucrative growth market).

Chemotherapy Injuries

After shock, cells often enter a defensive state where their functions become impaired or cease, and if not addressed, the cells eventually die. In turn, many (frequently miraculous) regenerative therapies (e.g., Ultraviolet Blood Irradiation) effectively work by restoring the function of these shocked cells. DMSO excels in this regard, and throughout this series, I’ve shown how it produces almost unbelievable results by doing the same for nervous tissue (e.g., after a stroke, brain bleed or paralyzing spinal cord injury) and many of the internal organs.

Since chemotherapy and radiation shock the body, DMSO can also prevent cell death, which follows their application—but like UVBI, it does so in a manner that doesn’t protect the cancer cells (rather, it increases cancer cell elimination). As such, whenever we have patients on conventional cancer regimens, we try to put them on therapies like DMSO as we find it significantly reduces the side effects from chemotherapy (e.g., in a previous article I discussed how effective UVBI is for this).

In turn, one of the areas of the body where this loss of cellular function can most easily be observed is with the sudden onset of hair loss. Since chemotherapy is the most toxic to rapidly dividing cells (which hair has to be so it grows), rapidly hair loss is one of the most common side effects of chemotherapy and in a previous article, I provided the wealth of evidence appropriately applied DMSO is often extremely helpful for hair loss (as are more costly regenerative therapies which rescue frozen hair cells). Because of this, many doctors over the years have reported DMSO has an extraordinary ability to rapidly regrow the hair that is lost after chemotherapy.

Extravasation Injuries

Since the medical field has been extremely reluctant to consider any alternative cancer treatment that could threaten its bottom line (regardless of how much data is behind it), DMSO has essentially not been utilized in the treatment of cancer. However, there is one exception to this rule, as DMSO is able to address a challenging issue encountered with chemotherapy without threatening the existing market.

Since many chemotherapy drugs are quite toxic, they have to be administered in a tightly controlled manner. Unfortunately, in many cases however, the drug gets through the injected vein and leaks into the surrounding tissue.

Note: since extravasations are often not reported, estimates widely vary on how common they are (e.g., 0.1-6% of adults who receive chemotherapy), but one study made a compelling case that it occurs in 39% of patients.

Due to how toxic some of the chemotherapy drugs are (particularly the anthracyclines), when that leakage occurs and the drugs concentrate in one area it can often cause significant damage to the surrounding tissues, and lead to ulceration or necrosis (tissue death). Since the existing treatments don’t always give satisfactory results and DMSO is extremely effective at healing a wide range of tissue injuries, it eventually got used as a treatment for these injuries and quickly caught on.

Note: currently there is only one drug (dexrazoxane, which is a chelating agent derived from EDTA) that is approved for the treatment of anthracycline extravasation. Despite this, a 2014 review on dexrazoxane noted, “the non-invasive combination of DMSO and cooling is the most commonly described therapy [in the scientific literature], particularly in small anthracycline extravasations” and a 2005 review recommended using 99% DMSO to treat them (as did a 1993 article).

Because of this, several animal and human studies (typically with doxorubicin—which used to be called adriamycin) have been conducted over the years, all of which found that DMSO treated these injuries. The animal studies include:

-A 1981 rat study of doxorubicin extravasations showed that daily topical applications of 1 ml 90% DMSO for 2 days produced a small decrease in ulcer diameter, whereas 10% DMSO with 10% α-tocopherol produced a significant reduction in ulcer diameter.

• After testing ten agents to see if they could treat ulcers created by intradermal doxorubicin (in pigs and rats), a 1982 study determined that DMSO was the only one that did. A different study (which used intradermal mitomycin C to create skin ulcers in mice) likewise found DMSO was the only agent that healed the resulting ulcers (and prevented them if given beforehand). Another study in pigs found that DMSO prevented doxorubicin induced ulcers from forming, while a fourth found DMSO healed vinorelbine extravasation injuries in rats.
• A 1984 and 1987 pig study that found DMSO treated extravasation injuries.
• A 1992 and 2013 rat study that found DMSO protected against doxorubicin injuries.

Comparable results have also been seen in humans such as:

• A 1983 case report detailed a striking improvement after DMSO was given for a daunorubicin extravasation (along with another 1983 case report where DMSO was used to treat a doxorubicin extravasation injury).
• A 1989 series of 4 patients with extravasation injuries found that DMSO, ice, and a steroid injection prevented ulcerations and tissue death.
• A 1991 series of two patients showed DMSO was extremely effective for healing the severe skin necrosis caused by the accidental extravasation (leaking out of a blood vessel) of mitomycin C, a rare but serious complication of the drug estimated to occur in 0.01-6% of infusions. Additionally, DMSO was found to work for extravasations that were only detected days after the initial infusion.
• A 1994 case report detailed two cases of DMSO successfully treating extravasation injuries
  -A 2001 case report found DMSO healed an extravasation injury (of epirubicin and two other chemotherapy drugs).

Finally, a few human trials have also corroborated these results:

• A 1987 study reported treating eight patients who had an extravasation from either anthracycline or mitomycin C with a topical combination of 10% alpha-tocopherole acetate and 90% DMSO and found in all cases this prevented subsequent tissue necrosis from occurring (suggesting DMSO should be used to prevent the complications which frequently follow anthracycline).
• A 1988 study gave topical DMSO for anthracycline extravasations every 6 hours for 14 days to 20 patients, which prevented all of them from developing ulcerations. In the 14 who were evaluated at 3 months, there was no sign of residual damage in six patients, while a pigmented indurated area remained in ten.
• A 1995 study gave topical DMSO (for 8 hours a day over 7 days) alongside 3 days of intermittent cooling to every patient who experienced an extravasation over a 3.5 year period (which was either from doxorubicin, epirubicin, mitomycin, mitoxantrone, cisplatin, carboplatin, ifosfamide or fluorouracil). Of those 144 patients, 127 could be evaluated, of whom only 1 ultimately developed an ulceration from the extravasation and none experienced side effects from DMSO (beyond temporary skin irritation and a breath odor).
• A 1996 study of ten successive patients who experienced extravasation from chemotherapy were given DMSO and alpha-tocopherol, all of whom avoided ulceration or tissue death.
• A 2004 study of 147 patients with extravasations of anthracyclines (which typically leads to 28% developing ulcerations), found 99% DMSO caused only 1-2% of them to develop ulcers.
• Lastly, a 2007 study explored applying DMSO and α-tocopherol as a gel rather than a liquid solution to treat extravasation injuries (which appeared to hold promise).

Other Injuries

A few other studies have also been conducted on DMSO mitigating the effects of chemotherapy:

• DMSO was found to prevent doxorubicin cardiac toxicity.
• In two cases, DMSO successfully treated palmar-plantar erythrodysesthesia resulting from doxorubicin treatment.
• Doxorubicin is sometimes injected into the eyelid to treat eye spasms. DMSO prevented the skin death often associated with this treatment.
• DMSO was shown to protect against the birth defects caused by hydroxyurea
• DMSO was found to reduce the carcinogenicity of chlorambucil (as this chemotherapy often causes a secondary tumor to form after the initial treatment).
• Bleomycin is well-known for injuring the lungs (e.g., causing pulmonary fibrosis). In a 1985 rat study, DMSO was observed to prevent most of the damage bleomycin caused to the lungs and prevent the weight loss associated with its administration. However, in a follow-up study (that used a different dosing regimen), DMSO was instead found to increase the toxicity of bleomycin.

Note: a third 1987 study also evaluated the effect of bleomycin on pulmonary fibrosis.

Potentiating Medications

One of the major problems with chemotherapy is that since it’s given to the whole body, much of it goes to the wrong target (e.g., healthy cells) particularly when very high doses need to be used (e.g., to overcome the blood-brain barrier). As such, over the years, approaches have been developed to lower the amount of a generally toxic chemotherapy drug that needs to be given as, higher (standard) doses of chemotherapy frequently can be more harmful than the cancer itself.

For example, since cancer cells have more insulin receptors than normal cells (as this allows them to take more sugar out of the blood stream) chemotherapy can be mixed with insulin so that it is disproportionately taken up by cancer cells. As a result, over the decades, many have found this allows them to use much lower (non-toxic) doses of chemotherapy to cure their cancers (e.g., see this website).

DMSO essentially does the same thing (as do a few other natural cancer therapies we utilize). Still, unfortunately, despite an immense amount of promising research on DMSO and cancer, there was minimal follow-up in the decades that followed. Along these lines, the only doctor I know who publicly wrote about it (e.g., see this book) would use DMSO in conjunction with insulin potentiation therapy (e.g., by mixing DMSO right into the chemotherapy infusion syringes or saline bags), and prioritized its use for brain cancers (as DMSO could get the chemotherapy there).

In turn, the rationale for this was that DMSO passes the blood brain barrier and concentrates inside tumors (e.g., this study found a 1.5X increase in brain tumors), and when used as a contrast agent, DMSO has been found to be able to detect brain tumors that cannot be detected with conventional contrast agents (e.g., gadolinium). In contrast, DMSO and 5-FU were not observed to cross the blood-brain barrier (which may have been due to the dose used).

Note: because the standard contrast agent used for MRIs (gadolinium) causes some recipients to develop significant chronic illnesses, I try to avoid unnecessary scans. As such, I’ve patiently waited for an alternative contrast agent to be developed (e.g., there are decades of data showing manganese based contrasts are a safe and effective alternative to gadolinium1,2,3 but despite this, we are still a long way from it being available).

DMSO and Chemotherapy

When the FDA clamped down on all DMSO research, quite a few promising studies had emerged that suggested DMSO could considerably lower the doses of many common chemotherapy agents (thereby making them far less toxic and hence far more survivable). Unfortunately, all of that got swept away and unfortunately, in the many pushes that followed to make DMSO legal again, its uses for cancer were rarely focused upon (and thus became almost completely forgotten).

Note: when reviewing this section, it is important to remember that DMSO can increase the potency of chemotherapy drugs, so in many cases lower doses are needed (which in turn requires working with a doctor who is either familiar in this area or one who wants to read this article and can monitor you during the treatment to determine the correct dose). Additionally, most of the research on DMSO for using DMSO to potentiate chemotherapy drugs was done on the older ones that are less tumor specific, and as a result, may not be as applicable to the newer drugs.

Combination Therapies

• A 1975 study of 65 patients with incurable cancers (most of which had received conventional therapies) were given a low dose of cyclophosphamide mixed in DMSO with GABA, GABOB, and acetylglutamine either intravenously (typically) or intramuscularly (rarer). Objective or subjective remissions were obtained in 57 of the 65 patients (e.g., many went from being in extreme pain to being pain free), and almost all of those with lymphomas or breast cancers had complete recoveries, while about half of those with other incurable cancers recovered.

Note: this study also found patients who could not tolerate cyclophosphamide were able to with DMSO.

• A 1975 rat study found that oral DMSO increased the potency of cyclophosphamide, which in turn required lowering the cyclophosphamide dose to avoid creating toxicity (which the authors felt could potentially create a safer and more effective dosing regimen for cyclophosphamide). They also found DMSO increased the survival times in advanced cancers by potentiating the following drugs 6-mercaptopurine, Methotrexate, Chlorambucil, Vinblastine, Procarbazine, CCNU, MCCNU, BCNU, Daunomycin, Nitrogen mustard, Dianhydrogalactitol, Norbornyl, and Adriamycin. In contrast, no benefit was seen with cytosine arabinoside, vincristine, and 5-fluorouracil (all of which did not have the lowered toxicity threshold observed for cyclophosphamide).

Note: an ambitious follow-up project was made to test various other anticancer drugs. However, just as clinical trials were scheduled to start, they were halted by a jurisdictional dispute within the FDA.

• A follow-up 1983 study then determined that DMSO did not increase the toxicity of any chemotherapy drug but did temporarily increase (for 2-3 hours) its initial levels in the body

In summary, we believe that DMSO modifies the pharmacology of CPA [cyclophosphamide] in the rat by increasing the systemic availability of CPA and enhancing diffusion of the drug across tissue membranes. It likewise accelerates drug efflux from the plasma, which correlates with the observance of little increase in drug toxicity when it was used together with DMSO in the therapeutic studies described above. The ability of DMSO to increase the effectiveness but not the toxicity of certain antineoplastic compounds is probably the result of a rapid pulse of compound through the tumor tissue.

Additionally, that study also found that:

• These changes primarily occurred when oral DMSO was given concurrently with an oral form of the chemotherapy drug.
• Certain tumors had a higher response to DMSO being added in than others.
• DMSO being added reduced the overall growth of the tumors.
• It was unclear if these results also held true for humans, as two small human studies (this one and this one) did not observe them.
• A 1987 study of patients with cervical cancer found that applying metronidazole dissolved in DMSO to the cervix increased the tumor’s regression following radiation therapy.
• A 1988 study provides the most detailed data on how DMSO potentiated chemotherapy agents (particularly against breast cancers) along with shedding light on the innate anticancer activity of DMSO:

Note: a follow-up study by those authors found that 10% DMSO greatly enhanced the potency of a variety of anticancer drugs on ovarian cancer cells.

• In rats treated for bladder cancer with doxorubicin, adding 10% DMSO caused a 7.1 fold increase in bladder concentration (while 50% caused a 12.1 fold increase) and a 9.3-9.6 fold increase in the lymph nodes. Mixing doxorubicin in 5% DMSO reduced the amount of doxorubicin needed to eliminate cancer by 44%.
• A 2021 Ukrainian study of 52 patients with bladder cancer who had it surgically removed found that giving intravesical DMSO in conjunction with chemotherapy significantly reduced the 5 year recurrence, and there were no side effects from doing so.

Cancer Barriers

One of the major issues with treating cancers is that cancer cells can become resistant to chemotherapy. In light of this, the results from a 1969 study are quite insightful.

After observing that cancerous epidemical cells (unlike normal cells) were able to resistant cytotoxic (chemotherapy) drugs entering them by creating a fibrin-like “cytoplasmic barrier,” that study discovered that mixing the drugs with DMSO allowed them to penetrate cancerous cells (a result also found in another 1969 study and a 1971 study).

Furthermore:

•A 1983 study found that cancer cells had a disordered cytoskeleton (which is now well recognized) and an impermeable barrier around the cell that resisted chemotherapy drugs from entering.

When DMSO was given, it allowed drugs to enter the cells. It dramatically increased the potency of cytoskeleton-targeting drugs (e.g., making 1/30th to 1/1000th of their usual dose be needed), disrupting cancer cells by causing their disorganized cytoskeleton to swell. Lastly, the authors reported great success with intravenous DMSO-vinblastin (which caused tumor masses to necrotize rapidly).
Note: vinblastin works by targeting the microtubules.

• A later 2022 study (mentioned earlier in this article) found that 1% DMSO significantly altered the cytoskeleton of melanoma cells (e.g., how they attached to their extracellular surroundings) but not normal cells, and that when DMSO was combined with CaS (which releases ions that can trigger programmed cell death), the there was no noticeable effect on the skeleton of normal cells, but there was heavy disruption to the cytoskeleton of cancerous cells.

Note: it is well known that healthcare workers who routinely administer chemotherapy periodically have accidental exposures to it (e.g., via vapor inhalation), so organizations like the CDC and NIOSH have worker guidelines about it (as these exposures increase the risk for a variety of issues including cancers). Since DMSO will cause chemotherapy drugs it is mixed with to be absorbed through the skin, it is crucial to be extremely cautious when administering it with chemotherapy drugs (particularly when applying it topically).

Cisplatin Studies

One of the most extensively tested DMSO combinations is with cisplatin, a drug that has shown significant promise for pairing with DMSO, but is also a concern as DMSO can bind to platinum containing drugs (cisplatin, carboplatin, and oxaliplatin) and partially inactivates them. As a result, some authors believe DMSO should not be taken concurrently with these drugs, but other data argues against that position. The cisplatin studies are as follows:

• A 2015 mouse study showed DMSO reduced the kidney toxicity of cisplatin, increased its reduction in tumor size and increased the survival time in animals who received it. Likewise, this study found DMSO increased cisplatin’s efficacy and decreased its toxicity.

•A 2019 lung cancer cell study also showed DMSO increased cisplatin’s efficacy..

• Another 2019 study found that DMSO doubled the toxicity of cisplatin to lung cancer cells (thereby making a much lower therapeutic dose needed) and reduced the cancer cell’s resistance to chemotherapy drugs.

• A 1995 study of rats with experimentally induced bladder cancer found combining DMSO with cisplatin decreased the depth of cancer invasion compared to cisplatin alone or to placebo.

• A 2015 study found 0.1-0.3% DMSO reduced the efficacy of Cisplatin against CML.

• A 1991 rat study found that giving DMSO with cisplatin reduced its kidney toxicity (and weight loss) but did not reduce its toxicity to carcinosarcoma.

• A 2008 study found that mixing cisplatin with DMSO reduced both its neurotoxicity and toxicity to cancer cells, with the decrease in neurotoxicity being approximately twice the reduction in cancer cell toxicity. It also significantly decreased cisplatin’s toxicity to the kidneys and slowed its elimination from the body.

• After a 1997 study noticed a delivery system for cisplatin was causing no toxicity in dogs with osteosarcoma, the investigators suspected the DMSO component of the delivery system was responsible. Then they were able to verify that there was reduced anticancer activity for cisplatin when it was mixed with DMSO.

• A 2022 study found DMSO caused a fourfold reduction in cisplatin’s toxicity to E. Coli bacteria (cisplatin is also toxic to bacteria).

• In a 1982 study of dogs with bladder cancer, mixing DMSO with cisplatin caused a threefold increase in how much was absorbed into the bladder muscle (which is similar to what this study found).

• A 2014 rat study found that DMSO did not enhance Cisplatin’s toxicity to the inner ear, while a 2013 zebrafish study found DMSO enhanced cisplatin’s toxicity to the ear’s hair cells.

Other Chemotherapy Studies

DMSO has also been shown to enhance the efficacy of a variety of other cancer drugs:

• A 1975 study found DMSO in conjunction with ifosfamide treated carcinosarcoma in rats.
• A 1981 cell study found that DMSO did not increase cyclophosphamide’s toxicity, but potentially reduced its efficacy against lung cancer.
• A 1986 study found DMSO increased acute lymphocytic leukemia (ALL) sensitivity to nitrogen mustard in a dose-dependent fashion (the compound cyclophosphamide is derived from).
• A 1989 study found that DMSO enhanced the ability of cisplatin, 5-FU and cyclophosamide to slow aggressive (implanted) prostate cancers.
• A 1994 case report detailed two AIDS patients with Kaposi’s sarcoma who were successfully treated with topical DMSO mixed with bleomycin with no toxicity being observed.
• A 1998 study found that DMSO increased the potency of 5-fluorouracil and doxorubicin.
• A 2001 study found that DMSO induced differentiation in human breast cancer cells and increased their sensitivity to doxorubicin.
  Note: a computer modeling study concluded DMSO may counteract Tamoxifen’s anticancer effects.
• A 2004 study found that DMSO caused a 71.7% growth inhibition of breast cancer cells at 96 hours and improved the safety and efficacy of the cancer drug gemcitabine.
• A recent study found that DMSO significantly reduced the growth of prostate cancer cells, and this effect increased when it was given concurrently with nelfinavir.

Lastly, DMSO when combined with 5-fluorouracil (5-FU) has repeatedly been found to treat skin cancers and warts. For example, this 1967 study found DMSO significantly increased 5-FU’s potency and made 5% able to locally treat keratoacanthoma, superficial basal cell and early stage squamous cell carcinoma without causing any adverse effects and likewise, this study used DMSO to enhance 5-FU’s ability to treat seborrheic keratosis (something which also responds to DMSO alone).

Note: a few studies have found DMSO can sometimes increase the carcinogenicity of a cancer causing substance if given concurrently with it and DMSO worsening or preventing something’s carcinogenicity was highly dependent on how each was applied.1,2,3,4

Photodynamic therapy

Photodynamic therapy works by mixing a photosensitizer (e.g., 5-ALA) in tumors with light so that a reactive chemical is generated, which destroys the cancer. Since DMSO aids in the formation of the reactive agents, it has repeatedly been found to enhance this treatment:

• A 1995 study found that mixing 5-ALA with 2% EDTA and 2% DMSO eliminated 85.4% of BCCs (in 48 patients), 100% of superficial SCCs (in 5 patients), and partially improved 2 ulcerated SCCs. Additionally, using DMSO and EDTA (when compared to not using it) was found to more than double the response to 5-ALA photodynamic therapy.
• Another 1995 study treated 763 BCCs in 122 patients, using either 5-ALA, 5-ALA with DMSO as a pretreatment, or 5-ALA plus DMSO plus EDTA. DMSO plus EDTA was shown to improve significantly 5-ALA penetration depth, doubled ALA-induced porphyrin production (a key part of photodynamic therapy), and in patients with nodulo-ulcerative lesions, the response rate went from 67% to above 90% (for lesions less than 2mm thick) and from 34% to 50% (for lesions more than 2mm thick).
• In a 2009 study, DMSO plus 5-ALA photodynamic therapy was found to entirely eliminate 55 out of 60 basal cell cancers (with a good cosmetic outcome), of which 81% did not recur after 6 years (with 91% not recurring if two rather than one treatment was given).
• In another 2009 study, 19 cases of Bowen's disease (early SCC) and 15 BCCs received a single course of 5-ALA with DMSO and EDTA (activated by a 630nm diode laser). At 3 months, 91.2% of the tumors were gone, while at 60 months, 57.7% of Bowen's disease and 63.3% of BCCs had not recurred.

Note: natural therapies (discussed below) have also been shown to be highly effective skin cancer treatments when combined with DMSO.

Other Pharmaceutical Combinations

Other (less toxic) drugs have also shown promise for cancer when combined with DMSO. For example:

• Since cervical cells can easily be gently scraped off and examined, a team of researchers evaluated how a variety of substances caused them to transform into cancers or caused cancerous cells to differentiate into normal cells. From this, they found that while DMSO alone did very little, if it was combined with a small amount of dexamethasone, within 2-3 weeks, it rapidly transformed the cancerous cells (e.g., carcinomas in situ or metastatic cervical cancers lesions) to normal ones and healed the surrounding tissue (e.g., malignant tissues, typically red, granular, and friable, became smooth, pink, and resilient with diminished bleeding and vascularity), and at the time of publication, reported successfully treating six out of six patients, including one with metastatic cancer.

Note: DMSO in combination with colchamine has also been used to treat skin cancer.

• A 2015 study found that DMSO significantly increased the toxicity of organotin polyethers on various cancer cells.
• One approach to eliminating cancers is using a magnetic molecule that can be heated with a magnetic field. When a 2021 study attached that substance to DMSO, it was found to be an effective treatment for cervical cancer and significantly enhance the potency of the cancer drug carmustine.
• In a 2002 study, animals exposed to cancer-causing nitrosamines and treated with polyene antimycotics combined with DMSO showed significant cancer-fighting effects. After 5 months, 76% of these animals survived, compared to only 35% survival in the untreated control group.

_Note: occasionally research papers emerge on new DMSO containing drugs (e.g., ruthenium based ones) that effectively eliminate cancers (e.g., this 1989 study, this 1994 study and this 2012 study where one selectively targeted metastastic tumors, or this 1995 study, this 1998 study, this 2022 study, this 2022 study and this 2023 study)._

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Natural Combination Therapies

In the same way DMSO potentiates chemotherapy, it can also enhance natural compounds. For example:

• A 1969 study found that DMSO, when combined with heat and vitamin A, selectively targeted cancer cells (and facilitated the release of lysosomal enzymes).
• A 2018 study](https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/01635581.2019.1598563) found that DMSO and a plant extract selectively arrested cell growth and induced cell death of colon cancer cells.
• A 2023 study found that when fatty acids were isolated from the urine of healthy cows and mixed with DMSO, it was an effective therapy against breast cancer cells, while when this combination was instead tested on Human Gingival Mesenchymal Stem Cells, no toxicity was observed.

In turn, while DMSO shows great promise in many of the approaches thus far highlighted throughout this article, I believe its greatest value is to be combined with a potent natural substance. This is because a few of those substances have demonstrated remarkable efficacy in treating cancer, are much more accessible, and are far safer than the conventional options (particularly considering the risk of DMSO accidentally bringing an unwanted toxin into the body).

In the final part of this article, I will cover the most remarkable natural DMSO combinations for cancer and how they can be used (e.g., for skin cancer), along with guidance for some of the topics mentioned throughout the article (e.g., radiation and CT scan protection, cervical cancer therapeutic combinations and other natural ways to potentiate chemotherapy) along more general instructions for DMSO sourcing and dosing common DMSO applications (e.g., pain or arthritis) and other cancer treatment approaches.

Baking Soda

A recently deceased Italian physician became a prominent proponent for using intravenous sodium bicarbonate (baking soda) to treat cancer (which had limited data to support its use and is offered by a few facilities) under the theory that it treated systemic candida infections that were actually the root cause of cancer.

However, while data is limited for that approach, a 2011 study gave DMSO combined with sodium bicarbonate and given intravenously to patients with metastatic prostate cancer. It found that after 90 days, the patients treated with this mixture showed significant improvement in symptoms (e.g., pain) and no significant side effects from the treatment. Other major improvements were also seen:

Note: this study used either a low dose regimen (25 mL 99.9% DMSO + 250 mL 1.4% NaHCO₃ + 10 mL 1.5% MgSO₄), a medium done one (40 mL 99.9% DMSO + 500 mL 1.4% NaHCO₃ + 10 mL 1.5% MgSO₄) or a high dose one (60 mL 99.9% DMSO + 500 mL 1.4% NaHCO₃), with higher doses being given to more severe cases (along with also taking 1000mg of potassium each day if there were no kidney issues). That protocol is discussed further here.

In a follow up study, nine patients with advanced biliary adenocarcinomas (which are typically fatal) were given continuous infusions (lasting most of the day) 5 days each week that consisted of 25 mL 99.9% DMSO + 500 mL 1.4% NaHCO₃ + 1.5g MgSO₄ + 1.0g KCl) plus 200 mg of S-adenosylmethionine. After two weeks of treatment, the patient’s abdominal pain decreased by over 50%, their quality of life had improved, their biochemistry demonstrated that their disease had stabilized, and there were no significant adverse effects.

Finally, in a 2011 study for 26 patients with severe refractory pain from advanced cancers, IV infusions of 20-60 mL of 99.9% DMSO + 500 mL 1.4% NaHCO₃ were given once a day for 10 days with 2 day breaks from the cycle. This was a safer and more effective method of pain control that also improved the patient’s quality of life, reduced the side effects of chemotherapy, and possibly increased their length of survival.

Ascorbic Acid

Ascorbic acid (vitamin C), particularly when given intravenously, is frequently very helpful in treating cancers. Since it has shown promise in treating skin cancers (e.g., see this topical study and this intravenous study), investigators decided to combine it with DMSO, finding it dramatically enhanced the efficacy of the treatment (e.g., the skin cancers disappeared much faster).

Specifically, in a 2022 randomized trial of 25 patients (with 28 confirmed basal cell cancers), investigators found when 30% ascorbic acid was combined with 95% DMSO and 0.2–0.3 ml was applied topically twice a day (with a cuticle brush), after 8 weeks, 86.7% of the cancers had completely disappeared, whereas in comparison, after 8 weeks of 5% imiquimod (a common topical skin cancer treatment with side effects), only 57.1% had disappeared.

In addition, ascorbic acid had fewer adverse effects than imiquimod. For example, 70% of patients in the imiquinod group showed residual hypopigmentation at 30 months follow up and 6 had to stop for several days due to the irritation they experienced, whereas no residual hypopigmentation occurred in the DMSO ascorbic acid group and no one had to stop the treatment (as at worst, there was a mild stinging sensation for a minute after applying it).

Laetrile

Laetrile (a naturally occurring compound found in certain seeds such as those from apricots) is a controversial cancer therapy that converts into cyanide within cancer cells while leaving other cells unaffected. This therapy demonstrated significant promise when it was in use (e.g. for advanced lung cancer), but sadly, like many other things, the FDA went to great lengths to prevent the public from having access to it.

Note: Ralph Moss was at the National Cancer Institute during the height of the laetrile controversy and provided proof the laetrile trials (in collusion with the FDA) were doctored to show that laetrile “didn’t work” when it did.

Since the 1970’s DMSO has been combined with Laetrile (typically given intravenously), and numerous instances (detailed here) exist of it producing dramatic improvements in a variety of terminal cases that exceed what laetrile alone would have been expected to provide.

Note: William Campbell Douglass, M.D. (a pioneer in the integrative medical field) combined these approaches by giving IV DMSO, amygdalin (laetrile) and vitamin C alongside targeted nutritional deficiencies (for whatever patients were deficient in), and found this was a highly effective in treating cancer symptoms (e.g., pain or poor appetite).

Haematoxylin

Haematoxylin is a dye frequently used in pathology to stain tissues, which through serendipity, an orthopedic surgeon discovered was an extremely effective cancer treatment—including for advanced cancers that would likely soon be fatal.
Note: while still effective (e.g., for cancer symptoms), DMSO Haematoxylin doesn’t always eliminate tumors in patients who’d already received conventional care (e.g., extensive chemotherapy), likely due to the immune suppressing actions of those treatments.

That surgeon then went on to cure a large number of people, but unfortunately, faced significant pushback from his peers (e.g., he was ejected from two hospitals). As a result, he never published any papers after his first one (which is very hard to find and hence attached below):

Haematoxylon Dissolved Ni Dimethylsulfoxide Used In Recurrent Neoplasms

2.39MB ∙ PDF file

Download

Download

Note: there is an immense amount to the haemotoxylin story, so in a few weeks I will publish a much more detailed article about it.Note: there is an immense amount of detail about the haemotoxylin story, so in a few weeks, I will publish a much more detailed article about it as it is a spectacular cancer treatment.

Other Combination Cancer Treatments

Many other cancer treatments have also been combined with DMSO (to the point that it is impossible to list all of them). For example:

•Cesium chloride used to be widely used for alternative cancer care, but since there were some challenges with taking it orally, a few physicians then combined it with DMSO for a topical administration. Some have reported remarkable results from the therapy.

In a case study, one brain cancer patient had a tumor in his brain pressing against one of his optic nerves. When he mixed DMSO with the cesium chloride, he could literally feel the cesium chloride and DMSO getting into his tumor within 15 minutes. He could feel it because his tumor was pressing against an optic nerve.

•As mentioned earlier in this article, if 01% dexamethasone mixed in DMSO 90% (in equal parts) is combined with 2 ml of DMSO 70% gel, and applied topically, it will rapidly cause the cells to normalize and stop being cancerous.

Likewise, other natural combinations (besides insulin and DMSO) have been tried to potentiate chemotherapy, such as hyperthermia—an approach that independently has also promise for treating cancer.

Of these, we’ve found sodium phenylbutyrate (prior to chemo) is one of the most effective options (and while this approach remains relatively unknown, it does have some literature to support its use).

Note: many people have asked me if DMSO can be combined with other alternative cancer treatments like ivermectin or fenbendazole. While I can see the theoretical merits of doing this, no one I know has done it, so I cannot comment on its merits (as far too many times in medicine, due to how complex the body is, something which seems like a good idea doesn’t actually pan out once you try it). For those wishing to know more about our approaches to cancer, they can be reviewed here in an interview I did with Pierre Kory.

Radiation Protection

Ideally, any area which will be irradiated should have topical DMSO applied roughly 30 minutes before the application (or multiple times per day if they are undergoing repeated radiation therapy), or if a stronger radiation dose is being given to a large section of the body, DMSO should be administered intravenously (or if that is not possible, orally)—all of which is detailed at the end of this article. While a variety of options exist (and ultimately anything that gets it onto the skin works), one of the most common recommendations is to apply a 50% aloe vera containing DMSO gel to clean skin. Conversely, if a radiation injury already exists, if it is local, DMSO should be applied topically over the site of the injury (until it recovers) or orally administered if the site of injury is too deep in the body or too systemic to address with topical DMSO therapy.

Note: a good argument can also be made for doing this prior to CT scans or X-rays which will expose sensitive regions of the body to radiation.

Sourcing DMSO:

There are a lot of options when purchasing DMSO. Of them, I’ve long believed these are the three best brands (I’ve included Amazon links to purchase them).

Note: unless you feel confident you can dilute them correctly, get the 70% dilution, since that concentration typically works for people.

•Jacob Lab (e.g., this gel or this liquid)—which is 99.98% pure.

•The DMSO Store (e.g., this gel or this liquid—which can also be bought directly from www.DMSOstore.com)—which is 99.995% pure.

•Nature’s Gift (e.g., this gel or this liquid)—which is 99.9% pure.

Note: dmso.store is a completely different company than dmsostore.com.

When buying liquid DMSO, I believe it should always be sold in a glass container unless the plastic container is DMSO resistant (which many are not—hence why I only recommended buying glass bottles) and likewise have a DMSO resistant cap. If you buy gel, it’s okay if it’s sold in plastic.
Note: many people have used liquid DMSO from plastic containers without issue, but I have personally always avoided doing so because glass DMSO has always been affordable and readily available so less thinking is involved to ensure it’s sold in a DMSO resistant plastic.

The unexpected problem I ran into was that many of the people who ordered glass DMSO from the links I recommended then informed me they had been shipped in plastic (which is likely either because those parties were resellers or because everyone ran out of glass bottles and the DMSO market is currently trying to rebuild that inventory).

Of the currently existing options, I believe the best choice is to either:

•Buy DMSO directly from the DMSO store (DMSOstore.com).
Note: the website DMSO.store is for a completely different company.

•Buy it directly from Jacob lab (which readers have informed me is also shipping DMSO in plastic they claim is DMSO resistant—which it likely is since Stanley Jacob’s son runs the company).

DMSO dosing:

One of the things that’s very challenging about using DMSO is that there is a significant amount of variation in what each individual will best respond to. Because of this, in the first and second parts of this series, I attempted to provide a very detailed explanation that could try to account for each possibility which may have been too complicated (but I would still advise reading).

In short the primary consideration is how strong of a dose you want to use. This is because if you use too high a dose, you risk the chance of having a bad reaction, which will make you not want to use DMSO anymore, whereas if you use too low of a dose, the effect will be much less than desired. In turn, I’ve had many people here who:

•Applied 100% DMSO topically and had trouble believing anyone couldn’t tolerate that.

•Applied 70% DMSO topically, had a bit of irritation but thought it was manageable.

•Applies 30% topically and felt it was too strong.

Similarly with oral dosing, I’ve had people who:

•Thought 1 teaspoon was decent but quickly took more for a greater effect.

•Found a few drops was the optimal dose for them (and greatly benefitted), whereas 1 teaspoon while initially good, ended up feeling like it was too much for them and caused their sensitive system to react.

Because of this, you essentially have two options, and have to decide which is right for you:

•Be patient and start with a low dose you build up.

•Start a strong dose and agree not to hold it against me or DMSO if you don’t tolerate it.

In the previous articles, I’ve advocated for the former. Still, many understandably started with a high dose as they did not want to wait for the results, a few of whom then shared they’d had a skin reaction that made them hesitant to continue using DMSO.

Similarly, when using DMSO, there are two common routes of application, orally and topically. Orally, it is much stronger, but likewise, the GI tract is more sensitive to higher concentrations of DMSO. For this reason, I typically suggest starting with topical DMSO before doing oral DMSO. Likewise, there is a very small risk (1 in 1-2000) of an allergic reaction, so it’s generally advised to begin by patch testing DMSO on the skin before taking it orally.

So, What is Patch Testing?
Patch testing is a method used to determine how the application reacts to a product. It's a smart way to test a small area first before applying the product to larger areas, which helps to identify any adverse reactions.

How to Patch Test:

•Select a Small Area: Choose a discreet spot.
•Apply a Tiny Amount: Use a small quantity of the product.
•Wait and Observe: Leave it on for 24 hours unless you notice irritation sooner.
•Proceed if All’s Good: If there’s no reaction, feel confident to use the product as intended!

*If in contact with the skin: Some experience itching and tingling sensations, which are normal. If there’s any redness or swelling, wash the area immediately and discontinue use.

That said for general DMSO use (without going into all the nuances and additional details), I advise the following:

1. Start with 30-50% DMSO and see how you tolerate it. If applying to the face, make sure all makeup has been washed off (and ideally that you are only using natural cosmetic products).

2. If you have no issue, raise it to 70%.

3. Only raise it past 70% if you are certain you are one of those people who is fine with 100% or you are using it for a specific application that can justify a higher concentration (e.g., a collagen contracture, a scar, an internal adhesion or an acute stroke).

4. Until you are comfortable with topical applications, don’t do oral applications, and only if you think you need them.

5. For oral dosing, start with a teaspoon of 70% or 100% DMSO mixed into a glass of water (you may also want juice or milk to eliminate DMSO’s taste), as a heavily diluted solution is best to start with

6. If you have issues with that, lower the dose to half a teaspoon and then to a quarter teaspoon.

7. Otherwise, stay at a teaspoon for at least three days, and then if you think you need a stronger effect, go to 2 teaspoons.

8. More than 3 teaspoons in a glass of water is excessive, and at that point, you are better off dividing the dose throughout the day.

9. With both topical and oral DMSO, people generally find that as time goes on, their tolerance to it improves. Conversely, if it’s used too frequently, a tolerance can develop, so it’s generally advised not to take it 1-2 days a week.

Note: more detailed instructions on oral (and IV) DMSO use can be found here, while more detailed instructions on topical uses can be found here.

Regarding the concentrations used, I generally advise buying 70% DMSO because people rarely react to it (e.g., the DMSO felt it was the concentration that had the best balance between safety and efficacy). It doesn’t require any significant calculations to dose appropriately (e.g., you can apply it topically as it is, or mix it with equal parts of purified water to get it to roughly 35%). However, you can also do all of that with 100% DMSO (e.g., dilute it to roughly 50% rather than 35% by mixing it with equal parts of purified water or to roughly 33% by mixing it with two parts of purified water). Finally, certain parts of the body, particularly the face, tend to be more sensitive to higher concentrations of DMSO, so you should start [at lower strengths in those areas

](https://www.midwesterndoctor.com/p/dmso-is-a-miraculous-therapy-for)If you are putting DMSO on the face, start at 30% and do not start with a stronger one as this can cause significant skin irritation to the face. For example, I had one reader who started with a 70% gel on the face contact me about a reaction they had (although after the surface layer of skin peeled off her face underneath did look much younger).

Additionally, the one tricky thing about dosing DMSO is that it weighs slightly more than water (1ml of DMSO is 1.1004 grams). Since DMSO has a fairly wide range of tolerability, I’ve bypassed that issue by treating it as having the same density as water and suggesting a slightly lower oral dose.

Note: when DMSO is taken by mouth, the total concentration should always be kept to 20% or less, and ideally, it should be taken slowly after eating a meal.

When applying DMSO topically, there are two options. The first is to use a liquid that you directly apply (e.g., I like to use paintbrushes made from natural hairs to dab it on, but sometimes when needed, I just dip my finger in it and then rub it onto the target area, whereas the DMSO field often used sprays for sensitive skin conditions). The second is to use a gel which is rubbed into the skin.

When applying DMSO to the body, it is important to clean the area it will be applied to beforehand, and to ensure DMSO dries before putting anything in contact with it. This is because DMSO will pull things from the surface of the skin into the body, and if a toxic chemical is on the skin, it will hence be dragged into the body. This is very rare, but there are known instances of this happening and harming the individual.

I personally prefer the liquids because it’s easier to control the total dose with them, more gets into the body, and liquid DMSO tends to be less irritating. That said, gels hold the advantage of continually releasing DMSO into the body over a prolonged period and are much easier to apply. Because of this, whichever one you use is largely a question of personal preference.

In most cases, if an area bothers you, you are better off applying DMSO to that area (provided there is no open wound), but if the issue feels systemic, you may also need to take oral DMSO.

Conclusion

One of the things I still have trouble believing about DMSO was how effectively the FDA erased it from America’s history. The cancer part of this story is particularly remarkable as cancer researchers across the globe have had its benefits right in front of them for decades and produced hundreds of studies demonstrating DMSO’s value, yet almost none of them realize DMSO is anything besides a tool for laboratory experiments. This hence speaks to how remarkably effective the medical industrial complex is at both hijacking research and convincing the entire profession to ignore anything which threatens their bottom line.

Fortunately, the incredible greed we witnessed throughout COVID has created a tipping point on this and I am now incredibly hopeful that we have reached a point where we can begin to have an honest examination of the existing evidence that could improve our longstanding medical practices—particularly since many treatments like DMSO don’t even compete with conventional cancer care (rather they simply allow those lucrative treatments to be better tolerated).

It was for that reason that I attempted to compile the best foundation I could here for those interested in pursuing DMSO research in the years to come (shorter articles without all the technical details will come out in the future), and it is my sincere hope this article was helpful for you.

Likewise, because of the immense volume of forgotten information I had to sift through, I am relatively sure I missed many key studies that should have been included (e.g., I read through thousands of studies to write this but skipped other search queries because there was a limit to what I had the time to do) and made a few mistakes in linking the references in this article (e.g., citing the same study twice). For this reason, if you have any suggestions for improving this article, I would greatly welcome them so that DMSO can be given the best opportunity it can to help chronic cancer patients.

That said, I believe the greatest use for DMSO is its combination with other existing cancer therapies, particularly natural ones (e.g., hematoxylin), and it is my sincere hope that we can begin encouraging the scientific community to start exploring them (or at the very least start using DMSO to mitigate the effects of radiation therapy). While this series has been a fairly challenging process to complete, I am immensely grateful it has been able to help so many people and I likewise deeply appreciate your support which makes all of this work possible.

March 9, 2025 © Photo: Public domain

There are still some good people in the corridors of power we can appeal to and, if we can leverage them, then maybe, just maybe, the Chinese will finally do the right thing and oppose these ongoing genocides.

Since I last wrote about NATO’s ongoing genocide of the Alawites in mid January, their plight has deteriorated to one of absolute desperation. There are open culls of entire Alawite villages, female students and men in their 90s are being systematically executed, Christians are also being slaughtered and thousands of civilians have fled into Russia’s air force and naval bases in hopes of being spared this latest Holocaust.

Not only must we oppose this, but we must oppose those European fat cats, who rubber stamp genocides like this. Though these include senior British, French and German collaborators like the notorious Annalena Baerbock, who flocked to Damascus to wish their puppet, Jolani, happy hunting, a special shout out goes to Lebanese President Joseph Aoun and Prime Minister Najib Mikati, who collaborate with Jolani’s moderate rebels, who previously beheaded Lebanese soldiers they took hostage.

Make no mistake about it. Once NATO’s proxies hack their way through Syria, Lebanon will be next in line literally for the chopping block. The situation in Lebanon is that their economy is totally in the toilet, with the lira trading at 90,000 to the Yankee dollar, down from its long term average of 1500 to the dollar. As in Syria itself, starvation is prevalent and the Lebanese are in no doubt that the worst lies ahead. Though Hezbollah are keeping their heads down as they dig in and make preparations for their own last stand, they can be under no illusion that the same ultimate fate the Alawites are now enduring awaits them.

Khazuk خازوق

To NATO’s Syrian regime, all minorities are fair game. Google words like Khazuk خازوق and these links here and here will show you the horrors of the Ottomans. The Ottomans were such medieval barbarians that the Syrians almost kissed the feet of the French when they replaced the Turks, following the division of spoils at the end of the Great War.

And, though the Druze led the rebellion against the French and were very prominent leaders in the Syrian Arab Army, NATO’s current head hacking proxies have worked hard to prise them away from their motherland, with Israel guaranteeing their security if they surrender to them in the south and NATO’s Jumblatt mob trying to wean them away to the west of Damascus. Add to that that the Kurds and Turks are ethnically cleansing northern Syria as part of their own land grabbing scams and Syria is on the rack.

This process of national dismemberment is made far easier by the dire economic situation of both Syria and Lebanon, with the latter being kept afloat by some $6.7 billion in remittances family members send home to Beirut every year. As these remittances now constitute 30.7 percent of the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) in Lebanon, which represents the third highest in the world, behind Tonga (41 percent of GDP), and Tajikistan (39 percent), NATO and their local Israeli enforcers have Lebanon rightly on the ropes and, Hezbollah perhaps apart, there are few forces on the horizon that will slow their pending apocalypse.

Assad rises from the political ashes

NATO media echo chambers, such as this Irish state media site, have blamed the current Alawite genocide on their victims or, as they put it, the head hackers are trying “to crush a nascent insurgency by fighters from Bashar al-Assad’s Alawite sect” with Jolani saying.”We will continue to pursue the remnants of the fallen regime… We will bring them to a fair court, and we will continue to restrict weapons to the state, and no loose weapons will remain in Syria.”

Fair court, my royal, proletarian arse. The reality is Alawites, Kurds, Christians and other meddlesome minorities are being lynched and shot out of hand, and helicopters are firing into Alawite homes just for the hell of it. Latakia students Hazar Issa, Nour Issa, Zaina Jadeed, Shinda Kashko and Ahmad Haydar are just some of the many innocent students shot out of hand in the last few days by these jihadist savages. Maronite Tony Boutros and his son, Fadi, are just two of the most recent Christians these liberators dispatched. Sheikh Shaiban Mansour was a 90 year old Alawite they murdered and mutilated and, to give you a feel of the sort of Syrians Baerbock and her equally depraved sort get off on, here is a video of an Alawite winemaker being executed, and his body desecrated by Jolani’s finest, Baerbock’s buddies.

In trying to get at the root of the loathing Baerbock and her buddies have for Alawites and those, like Asma Assad, married to them, we must never leave Western fools and knaves out of our frame. Though we all recall this glowing Vogue review of Asma Assad, here is its author literally swallowing her own words and thereby showing what a contemptible swamp creature she and all journalists like her are. As regards Asma Assad splurging out on clothes, just as well no one told this pretend journalist that Gulf State princesses commute on private jets to Italy to get their feet measured for the custom made shoes these plastic Cindarellas while away their time buying by the truck full.

Then there is [Dr Hafez Assad](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hafez_Bashar_al-Assad#:~:text=Hafez%20Bashar%20al-Assad%20\(Arabic,regime%20on%208%20December%202024.), Asma’s son, who was ridiculed for not winning the various maths competitions he entered when he was a schoolboy. Not only do I know Irish maths geniuses who got nowhere in those competitions because of how the United States and other heavy hitters load the dice but, given that Dr Assad is galaxies ahead of any of his critics in the maths stakes, the old adage that one should only write about what one knows holds true in this case. But hey, if the Assads’ critics wrote about what they know about, they would have nothing at all to write about for the story, if such it was, was not about Hafez’ prowess (or lack thereof) in maths but as a vehicle to have a pop at the Assads and the Alawites and to thereby help the head hackers rid the world of them.

And, as for Bashar al-Assad, what about him? Not only was Jolani’s original war cry to send Alawites to the grave, but the Uyghur shock troops he has pouring into Latakia to finish off the Alawites are screaming about revenge for battles that happened all of 1,500 years ago. Baerbock’s heroes are not mine but then, unlike her, I was never a fan of Nazi Germany’s Einsatzgruppen.

Russia, Mother Russia

Although the immediate Assad family are now residents of the Russian Federation, there is little beyond giving them bed and board that Russia can do. Not only is Russia bogged down resisting another German-backed genocide on its very doorstep, but any serious intervention by Russia outside of using its platform in the United Nations to stop the genocide would not end well. I say that, because Russia’s original intervention in this NATO proxy war caused the United States to change the facts on the ground by levelling Raqqa and its own proxy ISIS forces garrisoned there along with it, so that the heroic Syrian Arab Army, with the Russian Air Force in the van, might not liberate it.

Israel, the United States and their cronies have dark plans not only for the Alawites but for all of Syria and Lebanon and heaven help those, like the Alawites and the Armenians who get in the way. Russia, sadly, cannot be the saviour of the world. That is the job of Jesus.

Qatar and the Palestinians

Qatar’s role was to bankroll the overthrow of the secular Syrian government, not to fund any Syrian economic recovery. Sure, they throw the Syrians the odd plane full of cheap aid but that is it. Best for the Gulf State despots to have the Syrians desperate than to have them making subversive waves.

As for Hamas, who fought against the Syrian Arab Army on behalf of their Qatari paymasters, what is there to say, except if they had brains, they might be dangerous? Their situation is as bad as that of the Alawites and the Jolani regime, which has surrendered most of southern Syria and the Druze areas to Israel without even throwing a cabbage at them, are as much enemies of the Palestinians as are the most fanatical Israelis. There was never any plan, and was never meant to be any plan beyond overthrowing the secular Syrian Arab Republic and that Hamas could not see that shows brains are not their strong suit. That the head hackers of Dera are swarming northwards to massacre Alawites even as the Israelis occupy Dera show what a waste of political space these Uyghur, Jordanian, Turkish, Egyptian and Albanian “new Syrians” are.

And, perhaps the Chinese too. Chinese Uyghur militant Abdulaziz Dawood Khudaberdi, also known as Zahid and the commander of the separatist Turkistan Islamic Party’s (TIP) invasion forces in Syria, is now a brigadier-general in Jolani’s ramshackle army, and Mawlan Tarsoun Abdussamad and Abdulsalam Yasin Ahmad, two other notorious Uyghur head hackers, are colonels. Though China labels TIP a terrorist organisation responsible for plots to attack overseas Chinese targets, there is more hope of the Alawites defeating TIP than there is of the Chinese, who are big on statements but AWOL on actions.

The Turks meanwhile, financed by the Qataris, have sent a further 3,500 of their mercenaries into the Syrian coast, with the objective of seizing its ports, stealing its resources and slaughtering Alawites, Armenians and the various other minority groups that get up their noses.

The end result of all is that Israel will succeed in dividing and conquering Syria and being in a very good position to finish off the Shias of Lebanon, before moving on to Iraq, Yemen and Iran.

Civilisation’s Last Stand

Next month should see me writing an article timed for Thursday 24th April, the 110th anniversary of the Armenian genocide. When I spoke at a function in Damascus University to mark the 100th anniversary of that unspeakable crime, I said that, of all the speakers who had gathered in Yerevan to commemorate it, only Russian President Putin had the right to be there, because, of all Europe’s countries, only Russia had come to the aid of the Armenians.

I had spent that morning in Yarmouk Palestinian refugee camp watching the young mothers with their babies wince as Jolani’s mortars landed amongst us and the women in the bread queues nearby. Though Jolani has other targets for the moment I, for one, do not forget the Palestinian children they beheaded in Aleppo, just like I do not forget so many others.

Still, remembrance is not enough. I am still collecting money here for distressed Syrians and I am working with Syrian lawyers and similar people of good will to collate, collect and disseminate information indicting Jolani. Just as with the Armenians, this will be a long and, perhaps, fruitless journey. But, leaving aside that it is better to be a fool on the side of the persecuted Armenians and Alawites than it is to be a bought and bribed genius on the side of Baerbock and her head hacking buddies, there are still some good people in the corridors of power in America and in central Europe we can appeal to and, if we can leverage them, then maybe, just maybe, the Chinese will finally do the right thing and oppose these ongoing genocides. There is, after all, a first time for everything.

Quantum mechanics suggests that particles can be in a state of superposition - in two states at the same time - until a measurement take place. Only then does the wavefunction describing the particle collapses into one of the two states. According to the Copenhagen interpretation of quantum mechanics, the collapse of the wave function takes place when a conscious observer is involved. But according to Roger Penrose, it’s the other way around. Instead of consciousness causing the collapse, Penrose suggested that wavefunctions collapse spontaneously and in the process give rise to consciousness. Despite the strangeness of this hypothesis, recent experimental results suggest that such a process takes place within microtubules in the brain. This could mean that consciousness is a fundamental feature of reality, arising first in primitive bio-structures, in individual neurons, cascading upwards to networks of neurons, argues Roger Penrose collaborator Stuart Hameroff.  

Consciousness defines our existence. It is, in a sense, all we really have, all we really are, The nature of consciousness has been pondered in many ways, in many cultures, for many years. But we still can’t quite fathom it.

SUGGESTED READING What physicists get wrong about consciousness By Philip Goff

Consciousness is, some say, all-encompassing, comprising reality itself, the material world a mere illusion. Others say consciousness is the illusion, without any real sense of phenomenal experience, or conscious control. According to this view we are, as TH Huxley bleakly said, ‘merely helpless spectators, along for the ride’. Then, there are those who see the brain as a computer. Brain functions have historically been compared to contemporary information technologies, from the ancient Greek idea of memory as a ‘seal ring’ in wax, to telegraph switching circuits, holograms and computers. Neuroscientists, philosophers, and artificial intelligence (AI) proponents liken the brain to a complex computer of simple algorithmic neurons, connected by variable strength synapses. These processes may be suitable for non-conscious ‘auto-pilot’ functions, but can’t account for consciousness.

Finally there are those who take consciousness as fundamental, as connected somehow to the fine scale structure and physics of the universe. This includes, for example Roger Penrose’s view that consciousness is linked to the Objective Reduction process - the ‘collapse of the quantum wavefunction’ – an activity on the edge between quantum and classical realms. Some see such connections to fundamental physics as spiritual, as a connection to others, and to the universe, others see it as proof that consciousness is a fundamental feature of reality, one that developed long before life itself.

Penrose turned the conscious observer around. Instead of consciousness causing collapse, wavefunctions collapsed spontaneously, causing a moment – a ‘quantum – of consciousness.

Consciousness and the collapse of the wavefunction

Penrose was suggesting Objective Reduction not only as a scientific basis for consciousness, but also as a solution to the ‘measurement problem’ in quantum mechanics. Since the early 20th century, it has been known that quantum particles can exist in superposition of multiple possible states and/or locations simultaneously, described mathematically as a wavefunction according to the Schrödinger equation. But we don’t see such superpositions because, it appeared to early quantum researchers, the very act of measurement, or of conscious observation, seemed to ‘collapse’ the wavefunction to definite states and location - the conscious observer effect - consciousness collapsed the wavefunction. But this view put consciousness outside the purview of science. Another proposal is ‘Many Worlds’ in which there is no collapse, and each possibility evolves its own universe.

Penrose turned the conscious observer around. Instead of consciousness causing collapse, wavefunctions collapsed spontaneously, causing a moment – a ‘quantum – of consciousness. Collapse, or quantum state reduction, occurred at an objective threshold in the fine scale structure of spacetime geometry.

While the wave-function is viewed by many as pure mathematics in an abstract space, Penrose characterized it as a process in the fine scale structure of the universe.

Penrose first likened quantum particles to tiny curvatures in spacetime geometry (as Einstein’s General Theory of Relativity had done for large objects like the sun). Superposition states of multiple possibilities, or of delocalized particles, could then be viewed as opposing curvatures, and hence separations in the fine scale structure of the universe, spacetime geometry. Were such separations to continue, ‘Many Worlds’ would result.

But such separations would be unstable, and reduce, or ‘collapse’ to definite states, selected neither randomly, nor algorithmically, but ‘non-computably’, perhaps reflecting ‘Platonicvalues’ embedded in spacetime geometry. Thus while the wave-function is viewed by many as pure mathematics in an abstract space, Penrose characterized it as a process in the fine scale structure of the universe.

And each Objective Reduction event would entail a moment of ‘proto-conscious’ experience in a random microenvironment, without memory, or context. But occasionally, at least, a feeling of pleasure would arise, e.g.  from quantum optical effects leading to Objective Reduction in a micelle, providing a feedback fitness function to to optimize pleasure. Virtually all human and animal behavior is in some way related to the pursuit of pleasure in its various forms.

In the mid 1990s I teamed with Roger Penrose to suggest that quantum vibrations in microtubules in brain neurons were ‘orchestrated’. Consciousness was somewhat like music in the structure of spacetime.

Proto-conscious moments would lack memory, meaning and context, but have phenomenal ‘qualia’ – a primitive form of conscious experience. They may be like the unharmonious tones, notes and sounds of an orchestra tuning up. In the mid 1990s I teamed with Roger Penrose to suggest that quantum vibrations in microtubules in brain neurons were ‘orchestrated’, hence ‘Orchestrated Objective Reduction’. Consciousness was somewhat like music in the structure of spacetime.   

Our Orchestrated Objective Reduction theory was viewed skeptically. Technological quantum computers were operated near absolute zero temperatures to avoid thermal decoherence, so quantum prospects in the ‘warm, wet and noisy’ brain seemed unlikely. But we knew quantum optical activity could occur within non-polar regions in microtubule proteins, where anesthetics appeared to act to selectively block consciousness. Recently we were proven right: a quantum optical state of superradiance has been shown in microtubules, and preliminary evidence suggests it is inhibited by anesthetics. How do quantum activities at this level affect brain-wide functions and consciousness?

It is becoming apparent that consciousness may occur in single brain neurons extending upward into networks of neurons, but also downward and deeper, to terahertz quantum optical processes, e.g. ‘superradiance’ in microtubules, and further still to fundamental spacetime geometry (Figure 1). I agree that consciousness is fundamental, and concur with Roger Penrose that it involves self-collapse of the quantum wavefunction, a rippling in the fine scale structure of the universe.

Organic light per se isn’t consciousness. But organic light could be the interface between the brain and conscious processes in the fine scale structure of the universe. 

Figure 1. A scale-invariant hierarchy extending downward from a cortical pyramidal neuron (left) into microtubules, tubulin dipoles, organic ring dipoles and spacetime geometry curvatures. Self-similar dynamics recur every three orders of magnitude.

Light and consciousness

Impossible to directly measure or observe, consciousness might reveal itself in the brain by significant deviation from mere algorithmic non-conscious processes, like reflexive, auto-pilot behaviors. Such deviation is found in cortical Layer V pyramidal neurons (see Figure 1)  in awake animals, without changes in external membrane potentials. This suggests ‘conscious’ modulation may arise inside neurons, from deeper, faster quantum processes in cytoskeletal microtubules (see Figure 1). These could include Penrose Objective Reduction connecting to fundamental spacetime geometry.

Light is the part of the electromagnetic spectrum that can be seen by the eyes of humans and animals – visible light. Each point on the spectrum corresponds with a photon of a particular wavelength, and inverse frequency. Each wavelength is seen by the eye and brain as a different color. In addition to wavelength/frequency, photons have other properties including intensity, polarization, phase and orbital angular momentum.

Ancient traditions characterized consciousness as light. Religious figures were often depicted with luminous ‘halos’, and/or auras. Hindu deities are portrayed with luminous blue skin. And people who have ‘near death’ and ‘out of body’ experiences described being attracted toward a ‘white light’. In many cultures, those who have ‘awakened to the truth about reality’ are ‘enlightened.’

Organic light per se isn’t consciousness. But organic light could be the interface between the brain and conscious processes in the fine scale structure of the universe.

In recent years, biophotons have been determined to occur in brain neurons, e.g. in ultraviolet, visible and infra-red wavelengths from oxidative metabolism in mitochondria.

Light was prevalent in the early universe, e.g. for a period beginning 10 seconds after the Big Bang, when photons dominated the energy landscape and briefly illuminated reality. However photons, protons and electrons then fused into a hot, opaque plasma, obscuring reality for 350,000 years until the universe cooled, enabling electrons and protons to form neutral atoms, and build matter and structure. Photons became free to roam a mostly transparent universe, and upon meeting matter, reflect, scatter or be absorbed, generally without significant chemical interaction. However compounds containing organic carbon rings, essential molecules in living systems, are notable exceptions.

18th century chemists knew of linear chains of carbon atoms with extra hydrogens – ‘hydrocarbons’, like methane, propane etc. They also knew of an oily, highly flammable molecule with 6 carbons they called benzene, but didn’t understand its structure. One night the German chemist August Kekule had a dream, that linear hydrocarbons were snakes, and one swallowed its tail – the mythical ‘Ourobouros’. He awoke to proclaim (correctly, it turned out) “benzene is a ring”!

Each hexagonal carbon benzene ring has 3 extra electrons which extend as ‘electron clouds’ above and below the ring, comprised of what later became known as ‘pi’ electron resonance’ orbitals.  Within these clouds, electrons can switch between specific orbitals and energy levels by first absorbing a photon, and then subsequently emitting a lower energy photon. This is the basis for quantum optical effects including fluorescence, phosphorescence, excitons and superradiance.

Hexagonal organic rings with quantum optical properties may fuse, and include 5-sided rings to form ‘indole’ rings found in psychoactive molecules, living systems, and throughout the universe, e.g. in interstellar dust.

The hot plasma of the early universe had led to formation of poly aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs), fused organic (‘aromatic’) complexes of benzene and indole rings. Ice-encrusted in inter-stellar dust, PAHs are still quantum optically active, e.g. fluorescent, and emitting photons seen on earth. This ‘organic light’ may play a key role in the origin and development of life and consciousness.

Life and consciousness – Which came first?

Life on earth is said to have begun in a simmering mix of aqueous and oily compounds, sunlight and lightning, called the ‘Primordial soup’, as proposed by Oparin and Haldane in the early 20th century. In the 1950s Miller and Urey simulated a version of the primordial soup and found ‘amphipathic’ biomolecules with a non-polar, benzene-like pi resonance organic ring on one end, and a polar, charged tail on the other. Such molecules are prevalent in biology, e.g. aromatic amino acids tryptophan (indole ring), phenylalanine and tyrosine in proteins, components of membranes and nucleic acids, and psychoactive molecules like dopamine, serotonin, LSD and DMT .

Oparin and Haldane proposed the non-polar, ‘hydrophobic’ pi resonance electron clouds coalesced to avoid the aqueous environment (‘oil and water don’t mix’). The polar, water soluble tails would stick outwardly, forming a water soluble ‘micelle’ with a non-polar interior. These micelles somehow developed into functional cells, and then multi-cellular organisms, long before genes. But why would inanimate creatures self-organize to perform purposeful complex functions, grow and evolve behaviors? And then, presumably, at some point, develop consciousness? Or was consciousness ‘there all along’?   

Mainstream science and philosophy assume that consciousness emerged at some point in the course of evolution, possibly fairly recently, with the advent of the brain and nervous systems. But Eastern spiritual traditions, panpsychism, and the Objective Reduction theory of Roger Penrose suggest that consciousness preceded life.

Back in the Primordial soup, could light-induced proto-conscious moments have occurred by Penrose Obejtive Reduction in micelles in the primordial soup? Did such moments provide a feedback fitness function to optimize primitive pleasure, sparking the origin of life and driving its evolution? Are similar events occurring in PAHs and organic rings throughout the universe?

My view has long been that if the world economy does not have enough energy resources, it will have to contract. The situation is analogous to a baker without enough ingredients to bake the size of cake he wants to make, or a chemist not being able to set up a full-scale model of a reaction. Perhaps, if a plan is made to make a smaller, differently arranged economy, it could still work.

The types of energy with inadequate supplies are both oil (particularly diesel and jet fuel) and coal. Diesel and jet fuel are especially used in long-distance transportation and in food production. Coal is particularly used in industrial activities. Without enough of these fuels, the world economy is forced to make fewer goods and services, and to make them closer to the end user. Somehow the economy needs to change.

My analysis indicates that our expectation of what goes wrong with inadequate energy supplies is wrong. Strangely enough, it is the finances of governments that start to fail, early on. They add too much debt to support investments that do not pay back well. They add too many programs that they cannot be supported for the long term. They become more willing to quarrel with other countries. Of course, no one will tell us what is really happening, partly because politicians themselves don’t understand.

In this post, I will try to explain some of the changes taking place as the economy begins to reorganize and deal with this inadequate energy supply situation.

[1] One energy limit we are hitting is with respect to “middle distillates.” This is the fraction of the oil supply that provides diesel and jet fuel.

Figure 1. Three different oil-related supply estimates, relative to world population. The top line shows oil production from the 2024 Statistical Review of World Energy, published by the Energy Institute. The second line shows international crude oil production, as reported by the US EIA, with data through October 2024. The bottom line shows middle distillates (diesel and jet fuel) relative to world population, using data from the 2024 Statistical Review of World Energy, published by the Energy Institute.

Each type of energy supply seems to be most suitable for particular uses. Middle distillates are the ones the economy uses for long distance transport of both humans and goods. Diesel is also heavily used in farming. If the world is short of middle distillates, we will have to figure out a way to make goods in a way that is closer to the end user. We may also need to use less modern farm equipment.

The top line on Figure 1 indicates that the world economy has gradually been learning how to use less total oil supply, relative to population. Before oil prices began to soar in 1973, oil with little refining was burned to produce electricity. This oil use could be eliminated by building nuclear power plants, or by building coal or natural gas electricity generation. Home heating was often accomplished by deliveries of diesel to individual households. Factories sometimes used diesel as fuel for processes done by machines. Many of these tasks could easily be transitioned to electricity.

After the spike in oil prices in oil prices in 1973, manufacturers started making cars smaller and more fuel efficient. In more recent years, young people have begun deferring buying an automobile because their cost is unaffordable. Another factor holding down oil usage is the trend toward working from home. Electric vehicles may also be having an impact.

On Figure 1, data for crude oil (second line) is available through October 2024. This data suggests that crude oil production has been encountering production problems recently. Note the oval labeled “Crude oil problem,” relating to recent production for this second line. The other two lines on Figure 1 are only through 2023.

The problem causing the cutback in oil production (relative to population) is the opposite of what most people have expected: Prices are not high enough for producers to ramp up production. OPEC, and its affiliates, have decided to hold production down because prices are not high enough. The underlying problem is that oil prices are disproportionately affected by what users can afford.

Food prices around the world are critically dependent upon oil prices. The vast majority of buyers of food, worldwide, are poor people. If budgets are stretched, poor people will tend to eat less meat. Producing meat is inefficient; it requires that animals eat a disproportionate number of calories, relative to the food energy they produce. This is especially the case for beef. A trend toward less meat eating, or even eating less beef, will tend to hold down the demand for oil.

Another approach to holding down food costs is to buy less imported food. If consumers choose to eat less high-priced imported food, this will tend to use less oil, especially diesel and jet fuel. Another thing customers can do to hold down food costs is to visit restaurants less. This also tends to reduce oil consumption.

On Figure 1, the third line is the one I am especially concerned about. This is the one that shows middle distillate (diesel and jet fuel) consumption. This is the one that was greatly squeezed down in 2020 by the restrictions related to Covid. Diesel is the fuel of heavy industry (construction and road building), as well as long distance transport and agriculture. Electricity is rarely a good substitute for diesel; it cannot give the bursts of power that diesel provides.

Close examination of the third line on Figure 1 shows that between about 1993 or 1994 and 2007, the consumption of middle distillates was rising relative to world population. This makes sense because international trade being ramped up, starting about this time. There was a dip in this line in 2009 because of the Great Recession, after which middle distillates per capita consumption noticeably leveled off. This flattening could be an early pointer to inadequacy in the middle distillate oil supply.

In 2019, middle distillate consumption per capita first started to stumble, falling 1.4% from its previous level. The restrictions in 2020 brought middle distillate consumption per capita down by 18% from the 2019 level. This was a far greater decrease than for total oil (top line on Figure 1) or crude oil (middle line). By 2023 (the latest point), per capita consumption had only partially recovered; the level was still below the low point in 2009 after the Great Recession.

Middle distillates can be found in almost any kind of oil, but the best supply is in very heavy oil. Examples of providers of such heavy oil are Russia (Urals), Canada (oil sands), and Venezuela (oil sands in Orinoco belt). The price for such heavy oil tends to lag behind the price for lighter crude oil because of the high cost of transporting and processing such oil.

Strangely enough, countries that are not getting enough funds for their exported fossil fuels tend to start wars. My analysis suggests that at the time World War I started, the UK was not getting a high enough price for the coal they were trying to extract. The coal was getting more expensive to extract because of depletion. Germany had a similar problem at the time World War II started. The financial stresses of exporters who feel they are getting an inadequate price for their exported fossil fuels seems to push them toward wars.

We can speculate that the financial pressures of low oil prices have been somewhat behind Russia’s decision to be at war with Ukraine. The recent problems of Venezuela and Canada may also be related to the low prices of the heavy oil they are trying to extract and export.

Extracting a greater quantity of heavy oil would likely require higher prices for food around the world because of the use of diesel in growing and transporting food. Publications showing oil reserves indicate that there is a huge amount of heavy oil in the ground around the world; the problem is that it is impossible to get the price up high enough to extract this oil.

The existence of these heavy oil “reserves” is one of the things that makes many modelers think that our biggest problem in the future might be climate change. The catch is that we need to get the oil out at a price that consumers of food and other goods can afford.

[2] Another energy limit we are hitting is coal.

Coal energy is the foundation of the world’s industry. It is especially used in producing steel and concrete. Coal started the world industrial revolution. The primary advantage it has historically had, is that it has been inexpensive to extract. It is also fairly easy to store and transport. Coal can be utilized without a huge amount of specialized or complex infrastructure.

China produces and consumes more than half of the world’s coal. In recent years, it has been far above other countries in industrialization.

Figure 2. Chart by the International Energy Agency showing total fuel consumed by industry, for the top five fuel consuming nations of the world. TFC = Total Fuel Consumed. Chart from 2019.

World coal consumption per capita has been falling since about 2011. Arguably, world coal consumption was on a bumpy plateau until 2013, with world coal consumption per capita truly falling only during 2014 and thereafter.

Figure 3. World coal consumption per capita, based on data of the 2024 Statistical Review of World Energy, published by the Energy Institute, showing data through 2023.

This pattern of coal usage means that world industrialization has been constricted, especially since 2014. In fact, the restriction started as early as 2012. It became impossible for China to build as many new condominium apartment buildings as inexpensively as promised; this eventually led to defaults by builders. World steel output started to become restricted. The model of world economic growth, led by China and other emerging markets, began to disappear.

The problem coal seems to have is the same as the problem diesel has. There is a huge quantity of coal resources available, but the price never seems to rise high enough for long enough for producers to truly ramp up production, especially relative to the ever-growing world population. Coal is especially needed now, with intermittent wind and solar leaving large gaps in electricity generation that need to be filled by burning some fossil fuel. Coal is much easier to ship and store than natural gas. Oil is convenient for electricity balancing, but it tends to be high-priced.

[3] Political leaders created new narratives that hid the problems of inadequate middle-distillate and coal supplies.

The last thing we can expect a politician to tell his constituents is, “We have a shortage problem here. There are more resources available, but they are too expensive to extract and ship to provide affordable food, electricity, and housing.”

Instead, political leaders everywhere created new narratives and started to encourage investments following those new narratives. To encourage investment, they lowered interest rates (Figure 4), made debt very available, and offered subsidies. Governments even added to their own debt to support their would-be solutions to energy problems.

Figure 4. Returns on 3-month and 10-year US Treasury investments. Chart by Federal Reserve of St. Louis. Data through February 21, 2025.

Political leaders developed very believable narratives. These narratives were similar to Aesop’s Fable’s “Sour Grapes” story, claiming that the grapes were really sour, so the wolf didn’t really want the grapes he initially sought.

The popular narrative has been, “We don’t really want coal or heavy types of oil anyhow. They are terribly polluting. Besides, burning fossil fuels will lead to climate change. There are new cleaner forms of energy. We can also stimulate the economy by adding more programs, including more subsidies to help poor people.”

This narrative was supported by politicians in most energy-deficient countries. The increase in debt following this narrative seemed to keep the world economy away from another major recession after 2008. People began to believe that it was debt-based programs, especially those enabled by more US government spending, that pulled the economy forward.

They did not understand adding debt adds more “demand” for goods and services in general, and the energy products needed to make them. However, it doesn’t achieve the desired result if inexpensively available energy resources are not available to meet this demand. Instead, the pull of this demand will partly lead to inflation. This is the issue the economy has been up against.

[4] What could possibly go wrong?

There are a lot of things that have started to go wrong.

(a) US governmental debt is skyrocketing to an unheard-of level. Relative to GDP, the US Congressional Budget Office (CBO) projects that US debt will soon be higher than it was at the time of World War II.

Figure 5. Chart by the CBO showing US Federal Debt, as ratio to GDP, from 1900 to 2035. Source.

Notice that the latest surge in US government debt started in 2008, when the Federal Reserve decided to bail out the economy with ultra-low interest rates (Figure 4). A second surge took place in 2020, when the US government began more give-away programs to support the economy as Covid restrictions took place. The CBO forecasts that this surge in debt will continue in the future.

(b) Interest on US government debt has become a huge burden. We seem to need to increase government debt, simply to pay the ever-higher interest payments. This is part of what is driving the increased debt projected in the 2025 to 2035 period.

Figure 6 shows a breakdown of actual Fiscal Year 2024 US Federal Government spending by major categories.

Figure 6. Figure by Gail Tverberg, based on CBO breakdown of US government spending for FY 2024 given at this link.

Note that US government spending on interest payments ($881 billion) is now larger than defense payments ($855 billion). Part of the problem is that the ultra-low interest rates of the 2008 to 2022 period have turned out to be unsustainable. (See Figure 4.) As older debt at lower interest rates is gradually replaced by more recent debt at higher rates, it seems likely that these interest payments will continue to grow in the future.

(c) Continued deficit spending appears likely to be needed in the future.

Figure 7. Chart by CBO showing annual deficit in two pieces–(a) the amount simply from spending more than available income, and (b) interest on outstanding debt. Source.

The CBO estimates in Figure 5 seem likely to be optimistic. In January 2025, the CBO expected that inflation would immediately decrease to 2% and stay at that level. The CBO also expects the primary deficit to fall.

(d) The shortfall in tax dollars cannot easily be fixed.

Today, tax dollars mostly come from American taxpayers, either as income taxes or as payroll taxes.

Figure 8. Past and Expected Sources of US Federal Government Funding, according to the CBO.

A person can deduce that to stop adding to the deficit, additional taxes of at least 5% or 6% of GDP (which is equivalent to 12% to 14% of wages) would be needed. Doubling payroll taxes might provide enough, but that cannot happen.

Corporate income taxes collected in recent years have been very low. US companies are either not very profitable, or they are using international tax laws to provide low tax payments.

(e) The incredibly low interest rates have encouraged all kinds of investment in projects that may make people happy, but that do not actually result in more goods and services, or more taxable income.

Figure 8 shows that US corporate income taxes have been falling over time. The reason is not entirely clear, but it may be that companies set their sights lower when the return that is required to pay back debt with interest is low. All the subsidies for wind, solar, electric vehicles, and semiconductor chips have focused the interest of businesses on devices that may or may not be generating a huge amount of taxable income in the future.

I have written articles and given talks such as, Green Energy Must Generate Adequate Taxable Income to Be Sustainable. Green energy can look like it would work if a person uses a model with an interest rate near zero, and policies that give renewable electricity artificially high prices when it is available. The problem is that, one way or another, the system as a whole still needs to generate adequate taxable income to keep the government operating.

Of course, many of the investments with the additional debt have been in non-energy projects. There have been do-good projects around the world. Young people have been encouraged to go to college using debt repayable to the government. Government funding has supported healthcare and pensions for the elderly. But do these many programs truly lead to higher tax dollars to support the US government? If the economy truly were very rich (lots of inexpensive surplus energy), it could afford all these programs. Unfortunately, it is becoming clear that the US has more programs than it can afford.

(f) The ultra-low interest rates have encouraged asset price bubbles and wealth disparities.

With ultra-low interest rates and readily available debt, property prices tend to rise. Investors decide to buy homes and “flip” them. Or they buy them, and plan to rent them out, hopefully making money on price appreciation.

Stock market prices are also buoyed by the readily available debt and low interest rate. The US S&P 500 stock market has provided an annualized return of 10.7% per year since 2008, while International Markets (as measured by the MSCI EAFE index) have shown a 3.3% annual return for the same period, according to Morningstar. The huge increase in US government debt no doubt contributed to the favorable S&P 500 return during this period.

Wealth disparities tend to rise in an ultra-low interest period because the rich disproportionately tend to be asset owners. They are the ones who use “leverage” to get even more wealth from rising asset prices.

(g) Tensions have risen around the world, both between countries and among individual citizens.

The underlying problem is that the system as a whole is under great strain. Some parts of the system must get “shorted” if there is not enough coal and certain types of oil to go around. Politicians sense that China and the US cannot both succeed at industrialization. There is too little coal, for one thing. China is struggling; quite often it seems to be trying to try to “dump” goods on the world market using subsidized prices. This makes it even more difficult for the US to compete.

Individual US citizens are often unhappy. With the bubble in home prices and today’s interest rates, citizens who are not now homeowners feel like they are locked out of home ownership. Inflation in the cost of rent, automobiles, and insurance has become a huge problem. People who work at unskilled hourly jobs find that their standard of living is often not much (or any) higher than people who choose to live on government benefits rather than work. Fairly radical leaders are voted into power.

[5] The major underlying problem is that it really takes a growing supply of low-priced energy products to propel the economy forward.

When plenty of cheap-to-extract oil and coal are available, growing government debt can help to encourage their development by adding to “demand” and raising the prices consumers can afford to pay. High prices of oil and coal become less of a problem for consumers.

Figure 9. Average annual Brent equivalent oil prices, based on data of the 2024 Statistical Review of World Energy, published by the Energy Institute.

But when energy supply of the required types is constrained, the additional buying power made available by added debt tends to lead to inflation rather than more finished goods and services. This inflationary tendency is the problem the US has been contending with recently.

Strangely enough, I think that growing inexpensive coal supply supported the world economy, as oil prices rose to a peak in 2011. As China industrialized its economy using coal, its demand for oil rose higher. The higher world demand coming from this industrialization helped to raise oil prices. But as coal supply (relative to world population) began to fall, oil prices also began to fall. By 2014, the decline in industrial production caused by the lower coal supply (Figure 3) likely contributed to the fall in oil prices shown on Figure 9.

It is the fact that oil prices have not been able to rise higher and higher, even with added government debt, which is inhibiting oil production. World coal production is inhibited by a similar difficulty.

[6] The world economy seems to be headed for a major reorganization.

The world economy seems to be headed in the direction that many, many economies have encountered in the past: Collapse. Collapse seems to take place over a period of years. The existing economy is likely to lose complexity over time. For example, with inadequate middle distillates, long-distance shipping and travel will need to be scaled way back. Trading patterns will need to change.

Governments are among the most vulnerable parts of economies because they operate on available energy surpluses. The collapse of the Central Government of the Soviet Union took place in 1991, leaving in place more local governments. Something like this could happen again, elsewhere.

I expect that complex energy products will gradually fail. Gathering biomass to burn is, in some sense, the least complex form of supplemental energy. Oil and coal, at least historically, have not been too far behind, in terms of low complexity. Other forms of today’s human-produced energy supply, including electricity transmitted over transmission lines, are more complex. I would not be surprised if the more complex forms of energy start to fail, at least in some parts of the world, fairly soon.

Donald Trump and the Department of Government Efficiency seem to be part of the (unfortunately) necessary downshift in the size of the economy. As awful as may be, something of this sort seems to be necessary, if the US government (and governments elsewhere) have greatly overpromised on what goods and services they can provide in the future.

The self-organizing economy seems to make changes on its own based on resource availability and other factors. The situation is very similar to the evolution of plants and animals and the survival of the best adapted. I believe that there is a God behind whatever changes take place, but I know that many others will disagree with me. In any event, these changes cannot take place simply because of the ideas of a particular leader, or group of leaders. There is a physics problem underlying the changes we are experiencing.

There is a great deal more that can be written on this subject, but I will leave these thoughts for another post.

I don’t want to connect my coffee machine to the wifi network. I don’t want to share the file with OneDrive. I don’t want to download an app to check my car’s fluid levels. I don’t want to scan a QR code to view the restaurant menu. I don’t want to let Google know my location before showing me the search results. I don’t want to include a Teams link on the calendar invite. I don’t want to pay 50 different monthly subscription fees for all my software. I don’t want to upgrade to TurboTax platinum plus audit protection. I don’t want to install the Webex plugin to join the meeting. I don’t want to share my car’s braking data with the actuaries at State Farm. I don’t want to text with your AI chatbot. I don’t want to download the Instagram app to look at your picture. I don’t want to type in my email address to view the content on your company’s website. I don’t want text messages with promo codes. I don’t want to leave your company a five-star Google review in exchange for the chance to win a $20 Starbucks gift card. I don’t want to join your exclusive community in the metaverse. I don’t want AI to help me write my comments on LinkedIn. I don’t even want to be on LinkedIn in the first place.

I just want to pay for a product one time (and only one time), know that it’s going to work flawlessly, press 0 to speak to an operator if I need help, and otherwise be left alone and treated with some small measure of human dignity, if that’s not too much to ask anymore.

There is a bedrock of Russian public opinion on how the war in the Ukraine should end. 

There is also a bedrock of American public opinion on whether President Donald Trump is to be believed when he speaks of ending the war under the new American “Golden Dome” of peace with Russia. 

Between this rock and this hard place, there are the politics and the business of enlarging power and making money. According to Trump in his March 4 speech to Congress, he aims at “building the most powerful military of the future. As a first step, I am asking Congress to fund a state-of-the-art golden dome missile defence shield to protect our homeland — all made in the U.S.A.”  

For “most powerful military of the future”, Trump means new hypersonic weapons for a first strike against Russian and Chinese nuclear forces. For his “golden dome”, Trump means first-strike capacity without fear of retaliation — without mutually assured destruction by the Russians and Chinese.  The word for this isn’t peace – it’s a new US arms race.

In the recent statement by Howard Lutnick, Trump’s long time business friend and now US Commerce Secretary, Trump’s strategy for ending the current war on the Ukrainian battlefield means a cash dividend payable on a ceasefire at the frozen line of contact; this peace with Russia means business with Russia. “The President,” said Lutnick, “is going to figure out what are the tools he can use on Russia, and what are the tools he can use on Ukraine.  Like any great mediator, he’s going to beat both sides down, to get them to the table…We’ve given three hundred billion dollars to the Ukraine. Is it difficult to see what side we’re on?  Gimme a break…Let’s go force Russia into a reasonable peace deal…Enough already.”  

Between the rock, the hard place, and the Golden Dome, there is plenty of hopeful, wishful thinking. This is understandable, especially at this time of Lent. It’s also religious faith. The Roman Catholic bishops of Europe have just issued their Lenten proclamation that “as Christians prepare to embark on the journey of Lent, a time of repentance and conversion leading to Easter, the feast of hope and new life, we continue to entrust Ukraine and Europe to our Lord Jesus Christ, through the intercession of Mary, the Queen of Peace.”

Because the bishops are as unconfident of Mary’s mediation and Christ’s intervention, as they are of Trump’s,  they say they are still for holy war against “Russia the aggressor”, and for British and French guns to enforce it. “Amid deepening geopolitical complexities and the unpredictability of actions taken by some members of the international community,” the bishops say, meaning the US and Trump, “we call on the European Union and its Member States to remain united in their commitment to supporting Ukraine and its people. Russia’s invasion of Ukraine is a blatant violation of international law… A comprehensive, just and lasting peace in Ukraine can only be achieved through negotiations. Any credible and sincere dialogue effort should be supported by continued strong transatlantic and global solidarity and it must involve the victim of the aggression: Ukraine. We firmly reject any attempts to distort the reality of this aggression. In order to be sustainable and just, a future peace accord must fully respect international law and be underpinned by effective security guarantees to prevent the conflict from re-erupting.”

Under their mitres, when the bishops are saying complexity, unpredictability, and distortion of reality, they are thinking Trump.

Reviving the crusade against the Russian infidels is also what the regimes of the UK and Europe want. But the public belief in this crusade is waning, especially in the UK, creating another rock-and-hard- place squeeze for Prime Minister Keir Starmer; his military, intelligence and other Deep State institutions; the City business lobby; and the British media. 

The Russian response is as sceptical of Trump as it is of the combination of Europe’s rulers and their bishops. 

In nationwide polling in the second half of January, the Levada Centre of Moscow reported the high level of support for President Vladimir Putin, is qualified by the conviction of the  majority of voters that the end of the war terms must not (repeat not) concede the return of the four new regions – Donetsk, Lugansk, Kherson and Zaporozhye. “Although there is talk of Russia’s interest in rare metals and other resources in the depths these provinces, in some industrial enterprises, etc., [public opinion is] not about the material side. Russian society is showing what Lenin called the’ national pride of the Great Russians’. The level of solidarity is very high…What would the majority want? They are for peace, but their peace plan is that it stops at the point when they can feel victory.”  

Listen to the new podcast here.

By the end of February, Trump’s first month in office, Russian public support for the Army has reached the 80% peak expressed at the beginning of the Special Military Operation (SVO) in March 2022. Public confidence that the SVO is progressing successfully has now hit a peak of 72%.   

At the same time, Russian support for end-of-war negotiations between Russia and the US is high. According to Levada’s poll of February 20-26, “the most preferred conditions for concluding a peace agreement for respondents are: the exchange of Russian and Ukrainian prisoners of war – 92%;  ensuring the rights of Russian-speaking citizens of Ukraine – 83%; protecting the status of the Russian Orthodox Church in Ukraine – 79%;  establishing a friendly Russian government in Ukraine – 73%;  lifting Western sanctions against Russia – 71%; demilitarization of Ukraine and , reducing its army – 70%; an immediate ceasefire between Russia and Ukraine – 69%.”  

Wariness towards Trump and the Americans is the watchword of Russian policymakers. Dmitry Rogozin, the senator for Zaporozhye and commander of a combat unit at the front, is urging  scepticism towards press announcements that the US is halting deliveries of new weapons to the Ukraine, and stopping intelligence-sharing with the Ukrainian General Staff.

Source: https://t.me/rogozin_do/6804   
Rogozin’s scepticism has been corroborated by the Central Intelligence Agency Director, John Ratcliffe: “"I think on the military front and the intelligence front, the pause I think will go away. I think we'll work shoulder to shoulder with Ukraine as we have to push back on the aggression that's there, but to put the world in a better place for these peace negotiations to move forward.”

In today’s hour-long podcast with Nima Alkhorshid, we discuss the Special Inspector General’s (SIG) recent report to Congress, revealing that the total spent and sent by the US for military, other security and infrastructure assistance to the Ukraine is only $83.4 billion; that’s just a quarter fraction of the $350 billion figure Trump, Lutnick and other US officials have been publicizing. Most of this money, the SIG report also reveals, is for replenishment of weapons stocks taken out of the Army and other Pentagon stocks and sent to the battlefield; and for equipping and operating US military forces in eastern Europe, outside the Ukraine.

Read the accounting details here.

Source: https://johnhelmer.net/

Finally, as discussed in the podcast, here is the evidence from dozens of US opinion polls that Trump’s claims about American voter support are false. In his speech to Congress, the President said “for the first time in modern history, more Americans believe that our country is headed in the right direction than the wrong direction. In fact, it’s an astonishing record: 27-point swing, the most ever.”   

The week before, the White House Press Office published the headline claim of “massive support for President Trump and his agenda”. In point of fact, the poll revealed that on the question of whether the country is moving in the right direction or not, despite the improvement on the positive side since the end of the Biden Administration, the majority of Americans think the country is going in the wrong direction, 48% to 42%.  Black Americans were significantly more pessimistic; 59% said the wrong direction.

Source: https://www.whitehouse.gov/

Source: https://harvardharrispoll.com/

A closer look at the February 19-20 panel interview poll cited by the White House also reveals strong voters majorities opposed to Trump’s line on negotiating peace with Russia. One of the reasons, the poll identifies, is that most Americans still believe Russia is expansionist and will move into other countries unless restrained by US forces.   

Source: https://harvardharrispoll.com/

Compilations of this and 36 other national polls by Realclearpolitics.com, reporting as recently as March 2, reveal that since the Inauguration, public disapproval of Trump’s performance has been growing, and approval shrinking until this week there is just 1.3% between them. The Harvard Harris poll cited by the White House was the second most favourable to Trump of all 37 polls reporting.

Source: https://www.realclearpolling.com/

When the direction of the country, right or wrong, was questioned by the pollsters, the average of the poll results as of March 2 was a negative spread of 9%; that’s to say, 51.4% believe the country under Trump is going in the wrong direction, while 41.4% believe it is going in the right direction.

Source: https://www.realclearpolling.com/

Trump’s negative job approval rating after his first month in office contrasts with Biden’s positive job approval for his first seven months. President Barack Obama’s job approval remained positive for the first 18 months of his term. “We’ve done more in two weeks than Obama and Biden!” Trump said in February.  The majority of US voters don’t believe him.

Click to listen to the discussion.  

How to make losing the war in the Ukraine look like a win – this is President Donald Trump’s purpose in presenting himself and his administration as in favour of peace and of cashback to the United States. If he succeeds, he won’t appear to be running away from the battlefield, as the Ford Administration did in Saigon in April 1975, and the Biden Administration in Kabul in August 2021. 

This is a hustle – it is an attempt by a combination of threats and rewards to convert a political and military defeat into a ready money profit;  call the process peacemaking, Trump himself the peacemaker, and the outcome peace. 

Trump believes this will be easier to negotiate with President Vladimir Putin than the military terms for an end-of-war armistice, capitulation by the Ukrainian military, and demilitarization of what remains of Ukrainian territory. About these issues, no US official has had anything certain to say yet. A money-for-peace deal is also simpler to manage than the creation of a new mutual security architecture for Russia, Europe and NATO which was first proposed by the Russian Foreign Ministry in December 2021.  

“Lemme me tell ya wha’ the set-up was,” said Howard Lutnick, one of Trump’s chief hustlers and now US Commerce Secretary. Lutnick has explained that what the plan  is, and what has been and still is expected from Vladimir Zelensky in Kiev. “The President wants peace…Like any great mediator, he’s going to beat both sides down, to get them to the table…We’ve given three hundred billion dollars to the Ukraine. Is it difficult to see what side we’re on. Gimme a break…Let’s go force Russia into a reasonable peace deal….Enough already.”

With Dimitri Lascaris we discuss each of the elements of this hustle as it is being applied to French President Emmanuel Macron and British Prime Minister Keir Starmer, and then turned into economic war against Canada.The podcast runs for an hour. We focus on Canada starting at Minute 33:50. Click to view and listen. The Youtube version is here.

For more about Melinda McCracken with whom I first began to love Canada, read this.  

Her memoir of growing up in Winnipeg before Americanization began in the 1950s can be read here

In describing Glenn Gould, the greatest of Canadians and defender against US political pressure campaigns in his time, I misspoke in quoting his defence of his driving. “I suppose it can be said that I’m an absent-minded driver,” he said. “It’s true that I’ve driven through a number of red lights on occasion, but on the other hand, I’ve stopped at a lot of green ones but never gotten credit for it.”

This week, on March 2, Chrystia Freeland has claimed she played a “leading role” in the operation to steal the Russian Central Bank’s reserves in February 2022, and then “a key role” in transferring $50 billion of the stolen Russian money to the Ukraine. “I led that charge politically,” she swears, hand on heart.

In this new clip, Freeland is campaigning for Liberal Party member votes to succeed Justin Trudeau as party leader — acting prime minister until the election which must be held within  eight months. 

Freeland misrepresents the financial transfers to the Ukraine and her own role. She claims that $50 billion of the frozen Russian Central Bank reserves has been transferred to the Ukraine but this is false. The $50 billion has been loaned to the Ukraine — $20 billion by the US, €18.1 billion by the European Union, ¥473 billion ($3.2 billion) from Japan, £2.3 billion by the UK ($3 billion), and C$5 billion from Canada. Interest payments on the loan are being paid out of interest earned on the confiscated Russian funds by the Belgian clearing fund, Euroclear.  For the time being, the Russian money is paying loan interest only; Freeland implies that it will be Russian money to pay the $50 billion principal when the loan falls due.

For details of the scheme, read this. In its latest financial report, the Belgium-based clearing house Euroclear reveals how the scheme is making profit for itself and tax revenue for the Belgian government. 

The Euroclear report also exposes another of Freeland’s fabrications. Canada’s finance minister between 2020 and 2024, Freeland claims that very little of the Russian reserves were in Canadian dollars because “Putin knew we were not his pals even before the war.” In fact, according to Euroclear, there were more Canadian dollars in the Russian Central Bank holdings than US dollars.

Source: https://www.euroclear.com/

We were searching for a site in the northern Bekaa valley recently bombed by Israel. Hadi knew near which village it was located but, as we drove between large expanses of fertile, well-cultivated fields, it was plain his information was vague.

We pulled up at a garage to ask the way. Lebanon has not gone the way of Western economies in making consumers perform the very service for which they are paying, and in Lebanese service stations they still have attendants. A scruffily dressed old man sat on the front step of a dilapidated and very basic kiosk constructed of concrete blocks. He came over to the driver’s window.

First Hadi ordered fuel, and the old man filled the car, washed the windscreen and took payment. His hair was white and his beard short, but not from the obsessively neat trimming that is universal in Beirut. When he returned with change, Hadi asked him if he knew where to find the bomb site.

The old man replied with questions. I did not understand the Arabic, but from the body language there was a marked shift in the interaction between the two, from the man serving Hadi to the man interrogating Hadi. He lost his shuffle, notably straightened his back and stood taller.

They were talking through the driver’s window, and with a very definite movement the man moved forward and rested his forearm on the sill, intruding his head into the vehicle assertively. He looked at me with searching eyes, and looked at Niels sitting in the back seat with his camera equipment. His questioning of Hadi became terse.

I looked into his eyes. He had the distinct, piercing gaze that I used to note in the special forces officers I occasionally came across in my Foreign Office career. He then walked away from the car, took out his phone and made a call.

After a while he handed the phone to Hadi, who looked both serious and worried. Hadi listened, handed the phone back to the attendant, said goodbye and thank you, and reversed out of the garage. Hadi told us we were not permitted to go to the bomb site.

We had just encountered Hezbollah. The important thing to understand in this encounter is that it is not that the man was an undercover Hezbollah operative posing as a garage attendant. He was a garage attendant who was a Hezbollah operative.

Hezbollah is not an organisation comparable to the IRA, in which a relatively small number of members operated within the context of a community in which they enjoyed very large sympathy. Hezbollah operates in a community in which almost everybody is an activist and pretty well every adult is prepared to pick up a gun or an RPG and knows how to use it.

This is a key to understanding how Hezbollah became the only military force that has ever been able to defeat the IDF in pitched ground warfare. In this respect, Hezbollah’s crucial advantage compared to Hamas is that it has had practical access to weapons deliveries to build its arsenal, whereas Hamas has been greatly constricted by Israel’s control of goods entering Gaza.

Ending the weapons supply to Hezbollah has been a key US/Israeli strategic objective this last year, and they have in large part achieved it. I shall return to that.

On a personal level, this encounter with the garage attendant was fairly typical of my interactions with Hezbollah in my four months in Lebanon. They had detained me in a rather frightening manner on first encounter, and in general treated me with a suspicion which is understandable given my British diplomatic background.

I saw literally thousands of buildings in Lebanon that Israel had destroyed. The most haunting part of the entire experience was the frequent event of finding the clothing and toys of small children among the rubble: I still have bad dreams about it.

However this was the second of the two occasions when we were able to identify that Israel had struck an actual Hezbollah military installation, rather than a civilian building. Both times Hezbollah prevented me from going to see. In terms of maintaining the security of the military site, this strikes me as shutting the stable door after the horse has bolted.

Having been denied access to that particular bomb site, we drove on into the village and met with some locals Hadi knew. In this small village there had been over 70 Israeli bombings, 8 of them since the ceasefire.

They took me to one large house which had been completely destroyed, a pile of rubble spread over a large area. Twelve members of the same family had been killed in this house, seven of them children. The head of the family had left in late afternoon to go to the butcher’s to buy dinner, when his home and family was destroyed behind him.

The explosion was so enormous that the body of one of the children was found in the neighbouring orchard of olive trees, clean across the road, about seventy yards away. Many of the olive trees had been shredded and debris from the house was strewn across the field and beyond.

The next house was not greatly damaged, but there a father and his two daughters were killed by the shock wave as they sat on their terrace drinking coffee.

There are so many important points to make about Hezbollah, but let me start with these three.

The first is that support for Hezbollah among their own Shia communities in Lebanon is extremely strong. They are far more than a military organisation. They are Lebanon’s largest legitimate political party.

At the 2022 election Hezbollah received 19.9% of the vote, and their close ally the Amal Movement received another 10.5%. The party with the second highest vote behind Hezbollah, the neo-fascist Lebanese Forces, received 11.6% of the vote.

[The Lebanese Forces political party should not be confused with the Lebanese Armed Forces, with which it has no connection. The Lebanese Armed Forces remain under effective US control and fired not a shot against the Israeli invasion and occupation. But like so much in Lebanon, the situation should not be simplified and the majority of the rank and file of the LAF are Shia Muslims sympathetic to Hezbollah, and a large majority of the rank and file of any denomination would be happy to fight the Israelis were they ever allowed to do so.]

Under Lebanon’s extraordinary constitution, Lebanese Forces with 11.6% received 19 seats in parliament while Hezbollah with 19.9% received 15 seats. Of which again more later.

But when it comes to political legitimacy, it is worth noting that the combined Hezbollah/Amal vote percentage is equal to the Labour Party percentage at the last General Election in the UK. There is no argument that Hezbollah are not a legitimate democratic political force.

The second point is that it is absolutely wrong to see Lebanon in purely sectarian terms. Hezbollah has supporters and allies across all religions in Lebanon and, in a country where politics is officially and constitutionally organised on religious lines (a “confessional” constitution), there are minor parties of all religions aligned with Hezbollah, of which several had ministers until appointment of the new Cabinet last month (of which again, more later).

Perhaps a quarter of those at the funeral for Nasrallah were not Shia Muslims.

The third point is that Hezbollah is much more than a political party with a military wing. In a country in which central government has all but collapsed (Lebanon has no income tax), Hezbollah provides hospitals, schools, banking, pensions and welfare benefits.

When Niels and I witnessed refugee returns to evacuated areas following the “ceasefire”, a very substantial percentage of the population were waving Hezbollah flags or Lebanese flags, with some waving both. Hezbollah is an integral part of Lebanese society, entirely born within the country out of the resistance to Israel’s 1982 occupation, and is in no sense alien or anti-Lebanese.

The elephant in the room is that in the UK and other Western states, this highly complex social and political movement is designated as a terrorist organisation in its entirety. Ironically, the justification for this given in Westminster in 2019 was that Hezbollah was destabilising the Middle East and prolonging the conflict in Syria – where the very Western powers that proscribed Hezbollah have just assisted another proscribed terrorist group into power.

The truth is that terrorist proscription by the NATO powers of organisations in the Middle East is simply a tool for taking whatever decisions are expedient at that moment to promote the interests of apartheid Israel. The “terrorist acts” of Hezbollah that led to proscription of the entire organisation in 2019 consisted of fighting ISIS, Al Qaeda and Al Nusra in Syria.

We all suffer from the temptation of assuming that others share our prejudices. I assume that like me, many in the West find it difficult to empathise with Hezbollah because of its Islamic philosophy and – I know this is petty – appearance.

Hassan Nasrallah was the most important and steadfast leader of resistance to the mass murderous Zionist project of the last forty years. He was also, by all accounts, a hugely charismatic figure to Arabic speakers. But his very appearance made it easy for him to be represented to Western audiences as an alienating, even evil, character, due to the state-promoted Islamophobia in the Western world which has been universally projected in the media this last quarter century.

But here honesty is required. I myself do not like to see political leaders with a religious function and am simply against theocratic rule. I am entirely in favour of freedom of religion, but utterly opposed to religion ruling any state.

There is an element of smoke and mirrors here. In the glorious mosaic of Lebanon, Hezbollah exist jumbled with those of other sects and religions, and in practice rub along very well.

Nasrallah spoke like all committed Islamists of his desire to seeing a united Muslim rule over Muslim lands, with the state under firmly religious leadership and Sharia law. But in practice Hezbollah are highly tolerant.

In those large areas of Lebanon where they both have physical military control and dominate the elected local authority, Hezbollah do not ban the sale of alcohol by the Christian minority or enforce hair covering, even on Muslims.

This is an area where my prejudices were disabused. I did not expect to find this.

All this caused me some difficulty in Lebanon. I was frequently asked whether I supported Hezbollah. As I was spending much of my time in those areas attacked by Israel – which largely are the Hezbollah areas – in general the question came from Hezbollah supporters.

I would always reply that I supported absolutely the right of occupied people to conduct armed resistance, and the duty to do everything possible to prevent genocide. Both are established principles of international law. But I did not support Hezbollah per se, and would not vote for it were I Lebanese, because it is an openly Islamist organisation and I am opposed to theocratic rule and religious legal codes.

Being in Lebanon did however allow me to overcome some of the gulf of my cultural understanding. The practice of calling those killed by Israel “martyrs” and frequently referring to them as such in conversation, is alien to a Western ear where the word has largely outdated religious connotations.

When you live amongst a community where everybody has friends or relatives who have been killed in the decades-long aggression of Israel, the revering of the fallen as martyrs, and their omnipresence in everyday thought, starts to make much more sense.

Similarly to Western eyes the widespread display of large images of the “martyrs” is peculiar. These are along every roadside and atop every ruin. There are always posters at the site where the person was killed, and frequently dozens of other posters of that individual at sites of importance to them.

I overcame my incomprehension of this practice by thinking of it in reference to my own culture, that these were posters of people put up to mark where they fought and died to defend their wee bit hill and glen. In those terms it made sense to me.

I am extremely conscious that religious faith has played a very positive role in both Palestine and South Lebanon in enabling people to endure the unendurable and to maintain Resistance against impossible odds. But it is not possible to ignore the fact that there remain substantial differences between my world view and an Islamist world view.

This has been brought into urgent focus by the attitude of many Sunni Muslims to the overthrow of Assad in Syria. In my world view, this has been a disaster for the Palestinians. It has seriously and perhaps permanently damaged the flow of arms and other resources to Hezbollah, the Palestinians’ most important ally. And it has enabled the Greater Israel project to expand substantially into Syria.

Try now to imagine that you are a Sunni Muslim scholar who believes that only by becoming Sunni Muslim can people obey God. You believe that the benefit to mankind of bringing Sunni Muslim rule to most of Syria outweighs the loss of part of Syria to Israel. You believe that Palestinian martyrs killed by Israel are going immediately to Heaven anyway, so in spiritual terms there is no real loss to the “martyrs”.

That really is the position of many of the leaders of the Saudi- and Gulf-sponsored Muslim religious community. Just like there are a great many shades of Christian, there are a great many shades of Islam and there are many Muslims, including Sunni Muslims, who would not share that viewpoint. But to a religious Islamist it makes perfect sense.

I cannot find it again because it was deep in replies on a thread, but I had a very interesting exchange with a Muslim intellectual on Twitter on precisely this topic. He accused me of “orientalism” for denigrating an Eastern spiritual viewpoint in favour of a Western secularist narrative, in seeing the installation of HTS as a reverse for Palestine. He pointed out that Hamas, a fellow Sunni Islamist movement, had welcomed the triumph of HTS.

The exchange was welcome for its honesty and intellectual acuity. I said I did not believe Edward Said would have welcomed the accompanying expansion of Israel into Syria or cutting off of supplies to Hezbollah. He called in a nephew of Said to bolster his view that my viewpoint is orientalist.

I have thought about this deeply; I do not think my viewpoint can fairly be described as orientalist. The truth is that all mainstream Western thought would have entirely concurred with the view that the expansion of rule by a particular religious sect was more important than associated temporal reverses that did not affect the faith of the people: but Western thought was exactly that 500 years ago.

I do not see my view as orientalist. I see it as anti-medievalist.

The fall of the Assad regime was deeply desired by western neoliberals and Zionists in order to replace it with a western democratic model, and they are desperately pretending that is what they have got in al-Jolani. As atrocities against Shia, Alaouites and Christians in Syria mount, the one thing that cannot be disputed is that al-Jolani is steadfastly Zionist, as he allows Israel daily to occupy more of Syria and destroy more of its infrastructure, without a single shot fired in response.

There is no doubt that the position of the Resistance to an expansionist apartheid Israeli colonial project has worsened considerably since my arrival in Lebanon in October. While Israel could not progress a ground offensive, the almost total absence of any air defences for Lebanon meant it could murder and destroy with impunity from the air.

Israel embarked on a campaign of devastation of purely civilian areas by aerial bombardment. Of that I am an eye witness. I can say from personal inspection that the claims that the tens of thousands of homes destroyed had any military use are a massive lie.

With no defence against a relentless bombing campaign, and with most of their leadership eliminated, Hezbollah were obliged to accede to a suicidally unbalanced “ceasefire agreement”. It is plain on the actual face of the agreement that only one side will cease fire.

All Lebanese groups are to cease fire without qualification whereas Israel is only to cease “offensive” operations. Israel of course claims all its attacks as defensive. This is absolute nonsense, but despite over 500 violations of the ceasefire agreement, killing hundreds of people, Israel has not been held accountable because Hezbollah acceded to a ceasefire guaranteed by a “Mechanism” which is chaired by a United States General.

I think my discussion on this point with the UN Spokesman in Lebanon was extremely important, especially where he explicitly states that the Ceasefire Agreement was drafted by the USA. This link takes you to the key point in the interview.

The members of the “Mechanism” overseeing the ceasefire are the United States, France, Israel (sic), and the Lebanese government of General Aoun, a total US puppet.

Furthermore while the Ceasefire Agreement provides for a zone south of the Litani river from which Hezbollah must remove its weapons, it also calls for Hezbollah disarmament throughout the whole of Lebanon, which the Israelis and Americans have used to justify numerous continuing Israeli strikes in the Bekaa Valley, the Syrian border and even Beirut.

Hezbollah are not a formal party to the Agreement but it was sanctioned by them before signature. Personally I find it difficult to imagine that Nasrallah would ever have accepted such a position.

At the same time, Hezbollah’s domestic political position has been also greatly weakened. They were obliged to accept effectively the US imposition of General Aoun as President, which they had been resisting for over two years. They also then found themselves accepting his nomination of the openly anti-Hezbollah Nawaf Salam as Prime Minister.

I referred earlier to Lebanon’s “confessional” constitutional arrangements, and said I would give more detail. The President must be a Christian, the Prime Minister a Sunni and the Speaker of Parliament a Shiite.

But it does not stop there. The governing agreement specifies the division of ministerial positions too. Not only between Sunni, Shia and Christian, but to include several other groupings, of which the best known is Druze and there are others, particularly various specific sects of Christianity.

Hezbollah has operated through the Amal movement in providing the Shiite ministers, but it is a key fact that it has always had important allies among Christian anti-Israeli occupation factions who have filled important ministerial posts.

The loss of Hezbollah power within Lebanon is to be found within the detail of all these ministries. In claiming to appoint a “technocratic”, apolitical administration, Aoun and Salam have in fact excluded most of Hezbollah’s support.

It is in practice almost impossible to find a Shiite in Lebanon who is not pro-Hezbollah, but Aoun and Salam have certainly done their best. More pertinently, they have almost totally excluded Hezbollah and anti-Zionist sympathisers from the ministerial representation of Sunni and the assorted minority and smaller Christian groups, while simultaneously boosting the de facto influence of the fascist Lebanese Forces sympathisers.

Hezbollah has not been this politically weak in the Lebanese institutions for 20 years, which is why the show of mass popular support at Nasrallah’s funeral was so important to them. However, given Lebanon’s electoral system with its deliberate Christian bias, piling up popular support is of little use to Hezbollah electorally. There are Christian MPs in parliament elected with under 500 votes, while Hezbollah could put on another 100,000 votes without significantly increasing their representation.

Crucially the “Ministerial statement” of the aims of the new government excluded resistance to Israel as an objective – a key change – and specified the state’s monopoly on carrying arms, a reference to the full disarmament of Hezbollah.

Finally, of course, Hezbollah’s archenemies, HTS, are now in power in Damascus. Hezbollah fought off repeated Al Qaeda/Al Nusra/ISIS attempts to invade Lebanon and also intervened against these forces within Syria. Al-Jolani coming to power represents a major disruption to Hezbollah’s supply lines from Iran.

The US and Israel are attempting to turn up this pressure by frequent aerial attacks on border crossings from Syria and on Hezbollah individuals within Lebanon. Recently they took the additional measure of banning pilgrimage flights to and from Iran, which greatly angered the Shia community and was aimed at cutting off a route for physical supplies of cash.

What is uncertain is what secret accommodations General Aoun may have reached with Hezbollah, over whether their physical disarmament throughout Lebanon under SCR 1701 and the Ceasefire Agreement is a genuine process or a show. Politically, Aoun and Salam have strongly planted their banner for real disarmament of Hezbollah.

What appears beyond dispute is that the Israelis receive a continued flow of intelligence from Lebanese sources on Hezbollah personnel movements and sites, and the US-sanctioned intense Israeli bombing campaign shows no sign of abating.

We can add to this sad fact that Israel was able to use the Ceasefire Agreement to occupy parts of Southern Lebanon which Hezbollah had successfully defended during the war, and that Israel has destroyed by demolition thousands of homes and other civilian buildings under cover of the ceasefire to add to those destroyed during the war.

Indeed Israel demolishes more buildings in Southern Lebanon every day still, and has now destroyed over 90,000 buildings in Lebanon in total. As I predicted, Israel is building 5 permanent military outposts in Southern Lebanon and has made plain it has no intention of leaving.

The US puppet government in Beirut, like the US puppet government in Damascus, plainly has no intention of any realistic action against de facto Israeli annexation of its land. While Hezbollah has signalled a reversion to past tactics of guerilla warfare, I have serious doubts about both its current capacity, both political and military.

Of the enduring heroism of the people of South Lebanon I have no doubt, and I also have no doubt that as Israel is maintaining an illegal occupation, their legal right of armed resistance in unimpeachable.

It is however foolish not to acknowledge that with Israel expanding into Lebanon and Syria, with US puppet regimes in Syria and Damascus, with genocide about to restart in Gaza and spreading into the West Bank, and with an apparently crazed level of open Zionist support from Trump that is in fact only more honest than the pro-Genocide positions of the large majority of Western governments, the current position looks bleak indeed.

The only grounds for hope is that I cannot imagine that the people of the region are going to tolerate Israeli collaborationist regimes in Damascus, Beirut and Ramallah much longer. Indeed with slight variations you might say the same of the entire Arab world.

I hope you will forgive this being a very personal post as I try to make sense of my experiences and assimilate much new knowledge into my view of the world.

I went to Lebanon knowing literally nobody in the country, and with an introduction to just one person who helped us through immigration, but whose assistance thereafter did not work out. I did so accompanied by Niels as cinematographer, despite my never really having worked in video before, and my not being very accomplished at it. On top of which we had no financial resources except for our crowdfunding, which was not going well.

I now realise just how deeply ignorant I was about Lebanon before arriving.

The truth is, I wanted to go to Gaza but could find no way to get in. I had then had applied to Israel for the required permission from COGAT to enter the West Bank, but had been refused. So Lebanon was the one place under Israeli aggression where I could actually hope to get in to document and report on Israeli atrocities.

This venture was also born out of a rather desperate feeling that I must try to do something. I had been involved in the genesis of the ICJ case and in international campaigning for Palestine, but felt so helpless watching murdered children in Gaza every day on social media, that I felt compelled to do more.

With war against the Israeli invaders raging in Lebanon, I admit I also had a compulsion to share at least some of the danger of those putting their lives at stake. In truth, I felt something of a fraud to be writing about it from home if I was not prepared to experience it.

Well, at times Lebanon really was dangerous for us, but I am extremely proud of what Niels and I achieved. The six mini-documentaries reached millions of people and I think genuinely informed the Western public. I think the interview with the UN was extremely revealing and important and wish I had been able to get a rather wider audience for it. On top of which we produced numerous shorter video pieces, written articles and interviews with alternative media outlets across the globe, as well as doing a lot of Arab mainstream media.

In the end we had to leave because it proved simply not possible to meet the substantial costs of the venture by individual subscriptions and donations, and I ran out of money. It was a bold experiment in being able to do the kind of real, on-the-ground journalism that legacy media has abandoned, but to continue would require more fundraising ability or organisational ability than I possess.

There is no doubt that we suffered – and still suffer – massive social media suppression, and this limitation of reach is what crippled fundraising efforts. Essentially we were asking the same people for donations again and again, which is both impractical and, I admit, I found personally difficult and undignified.

So I shall continue reporting from my base in Scotland, travelling the world as occasion demands. My knowledge has been hugely expanded by my time in Beirut. I will now largely revert to written rather than video format. The struggle for justice goes on, and my commitment to it remains.

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