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NATO's Secretary General, Mr. Jens Stoltenberg, routinely appeals to “Our shared Western Values” when he urges mobilization of financial and military resources in “our conflict” with “evil” Russia and our “unwavering” support for “fledgling democracy” Ukraine. If you are an ordinary citizen and you’re invited to lend your support to this new round of military conflicts that could very well morph into what will be known as World War III, you may feel an urge to brush up on your understanding of what he is referring to and what’s going on around you. You may find yourself coming at it from two different directions: One is where you have no reason to doubt the leaders (usually political elites) that are inviting you to their cause. Another is where you have every reason to doubt the leaders that are inviting you to their cause. If you are like millions of other people around the world, 2020 may have opened your eyes to the notion that there has been much “doublespeak” coming from people in leadership positions and you’re having your guards up. You realize that Jens Stoltenberg is not just talking money and sanctions. He’s talking “military mobilization”, “conscription”, “the draft” and “getting ready for war”. Heady stuff. Your first concern is to brush up on “Our Shared Western Values” and what it really means. “Our Shared Western Values” The idea of “Our Shared Western Values” did not come into being as a mindset, a body of rules, until after the end of World War II, when millions of people around the world and their leaders felt action steps were needed to try and prevent another apocalypse of the kind that had just come to a close. These “Values” embraced two documents, The “Nuremberg Code” addresses fundamental rights of the individual in respect to medical experiments, and The “Universal Declaration of Human Rights” provides a much broader framework of rights for the individual within society at large. In short, it can be said that these two documents committed to writing the idealization for what a good society would look like. Truly innovative in the realm of public policy, the Nuremberg Code was adopted in 1947, and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights was adopted in 1948. “Orwellian Doublespeak” Next, you’re brushing up on your understanding of “Orwellian Doublespeak”. You vaguely remember from high school or freshman class in College, but now the term is coming back into focus: George Orwell’s novel “Nineteen-Eighty-Four” combined two concepts to arrive at what he called “Doublespeak”. One was “doublethink” and the other was “newspeak”. Going well beyond ordinary forms of hypocrisy, according to social critic and author Edward Herman, "doublespeak" is all about the ability to lie and get away with it; the ability to choose and shape facts selectively while blocking out those that don’t fit an agenda or program. It is about linguistic manipulation of communication, seemingly describing one thing, but really referring to the exact opposite. Obfuscation and prevarication; intensifying one aspect of a story and downplaying another are all tricks of a trade called "doublespeak". The origins of doublespeak – it seems to me – go back to the very first chapters in the book of Genesis, but George Orwell’s writing and teachings brought the term into the mainstream of society. With these definitions out of the way, you’re ready for the next step. Where it comes to medical experiments such as COVID-19, “Our Shared Western Values” says this: The voluntary consent of the human subject is absolutely essential. This means that the person involved should have legal capacity to give consent; should be so situated as to be able to exercise free power of choice, without the intervention of any element of force, fraud, deceit, duress, overreaching, or other ulterior form of constraint or coercion; and should have sufficient knowledge and comprehension of the elements of the subject matter involved as to enable him to make an understanding and enlightened decision. Reading this in February of 2024, you may already have come to the conclusion that "COVID-19" was one big, grotesque violation of Article One of the Nuremberg Code. Especially when you consider Article Ten, which says this: During the course of the experiment the scientist in charge must be prepared to terminate the experiment at any stage, if he has probable cause to believe, in the exercise of the good faith, superior skill and careful judgment required of him that a continuation of the experiment is likely to result in injury, disability, or death to the experimental subject. In drips and drabs, you have become aware that the bureaucrats in charge knew very early on that something was amiss with the “novel” vaccine. Did they conduct themselves in accordance with “Our Shared Western Values” when they kept their mouths shut and kept the racket going until 17 million people had died? If you are like millions of other people around the world, you now have your doubts. Outside of COVID-19, you want to know if there are any other observations that might fit the mold, claims of “Our Shared Western Values” that may or may not withstand the test of “Orwellian Doublespeak”. If these additional observations pass the test, you’re more inclined to lend the likes of Jens Stoltenberg a sympathetic ear. If not, you may decide to turn your back. Since it is Jens Stoltenberg who is so enthusiastically referring to “Our Shared Western Values”, pretend you’re a credentialed journalist working for CNN or for the BBC. Pretend you’re attending one of his conferences at NATO headquarters in Brussels; and you raise your hand: Mr. Jens Stoltenberg, the British newspaper The Telegraph and news media the world over reported the other day that Russian dissident Sergei Navalny’s body was found bruised in a morgue, two days after he died in a nearby prison in the Russian Arctic. Let’s assume that he was murdered and let’s assume that it had to do with Putin. In that very same context, what to make of the harrowing fate in a Ukrainian prison, of American Chilean journalist Gonzalo Lira, who had been exposing the Ukraine’s Zelenskyy regime’s human rights violations, especially their disregard for international law and government corruption? He died. In prison. In the Ukraine. The silence coming in from Washington, Brussels, London, Paris and Berlin is so deafening that I’m wondering whether this is an example of “Our Shared Western Values”? Mr. Stoltenberg, staying within the same context, what to make of Ukraine’s “Myrotvorets”, a “kill-list” with profiles of people “targeted for extermination! And what to make of “traitors” such as: writers Chris Hedges and Glenn Greenwald, political scientist John Mearsheimer, Pink Floyd singer Roger Waters, Senator Rand Paul (R-KY), former presidential candidate Tulsi Gabbard, military analyst Edward Luttwak - who was placed on the list for simply suggesting that referendums should be held in the Donetsk and Luhansk regions concerning their relations to Ukraine – and . . . Henry Kissinger, who just prior to his passing publicly worried about the prospects of a war between the U.S. and Russia. Actor Steven Seagal and French film star Gerard Depardieu and Tucker Carlson and Elon Musk. Is the very existence of this list a good example of “Our Shared Western Values”? Mr. Stoltenberg, while we’re on the subject of this “Myrotvorets”, what to make of the fact that the domain name appears to be listed at Langley, VA - not Kiev, Ukraine? Langley, VA – as you very well know - is also the headquarters of the CIA. How exactly does this fit in with “Our Shared Western Values”? Mr. Stoltenberg, what to make of Julian Assange rotting in a British jail for many years now, awaiting extradition to the U.S. just for doing his job as a journalist. A good example of “Our Shared Western Values”? Mr. Stoltenberg, what to make of the numerous Wikileaks disclosures of official malfeasance made public between 2010 and 2016 that exposed government actions so flagrantly in violation of the Universal Human Rights Charter, it makes your head spin? Examples, all, of “Our Shared Western Values”? Mr. Stoltenberg, what to make of the Minsk Accords and French and German leaders all admitting they never took the Accords seriously and had no intention of enforcing these agreements? Which is it, Responsible Statecraft? “Our Shared Western Values”? Mr. Stoltenberg, what do make of “Western Civilization’s own Victoria Nuland” pulling subversive strings left right and center in Ukraine during the 2014 color revolution that put “our guy” Petro Poroshenko on the throne? An example of free and fair elections? An example of “Our Shared Western Values? Mr. Stoltenberg, what to make of Boris Johnson flying to Kiev in April of 2022, talking the Ukrainians out of negotiations with Russia, knowing full well that the two sides appeared to have made tenuous progress toward a settlement to end the war! A war that by then was in its second month? Is this sort of meddling in the affairs of countries that aren’t even members of NATO a good example of “Our Shared Western Values”? Mr. Stoltenberg, what to make of the Canadian parliament applauding a 90-year old Ukrainian, Waffen SS man for his "brave soldiering" against Russia during WWII? Do you really think that ordinary citizens in the West are too stupid to realize that this is all wrong? How – prey tell - does this square with “Our Shared Western Values”? Mr. Stoltenberg, what to make of our own Joe Biden’s attack on millions of Americans, while giving a speech outside Independence Hall in Philadelphia in September 2022, calling them semi-fascists, while all they want is to make tomorrow slightly better than today? Was that a shiny example of “Our Shared Western Values”? Mr. Stoltenberg, what to make of Madeleine Albright in an interview with Leslie Stahl on May 12, 1996, claiming that the death of 500,000 Iraqi children was a reasonable price to pay for the pleasure of punishing Sadam Hussein? A shiny example of “Our Shared Western Values? Mr. Stoltenberg, what to make of Hillary Clinton commenting on the totally and completely unprovoked invasion of Libya, “We came, we saw, he died”. The invasion derailed not only the country, but the entire region, with blowback ripple-effects across the world. Another shiny example of “our Shared Western Values”? Mr. Stoltenberg, what to make of former French President Nicolas Sarkozy back in 2007 accepting large amounts of funding from Libya’s Gaddafi government and then using it to bolster his presidential campaign, was this a shiny example of “Our Shared Western Values?” Mr. Stoltenberg, what to make of Hillary Clinton’s DNC bumping her rival Bernie Sanders off of his leading position in the election of 2016, and then proceeding to create a smokescreen called Russia-gate! She defrauded tens of millions of American voters out of their constitutionally guaranteed right to make their voices heard. A shiny example of “Our Shared Western Values”? In review, what do you think: Are these imaginary questions for Jens Stoltenberg fairly testing the presence of “Orwellian Doublespeak” in “Our Shared Western Values”? If so, which questions come closer than others? Are there questions missing from this list that definitely belong there? If so, which ones? Can examples be given of action steps that prove the validity of “Our Shared Western Values” not tainted by Orwellian Doublespeak? If so, which ones? While I am finalizing this very essay, PBS Newshour reports Ukraine’s Zelenskyy signing bilateral security agreements with Germany, France, the UK, the Netherlands, Denmark and possibly Poland. On the surface of it, these agreements appear to be sending a message of long-term solidarity as Ukraine has gone back on the defensive in the war, “hindered” as PBS put it, “by low ammunition supplies and a shortage of personnel.” Forgive me for being blunt, but this sentence seems to be yet another example of “Diabolically Orwellian Doublespeak”. The “shortage of personnel” the PBS program is referring to equates to 500,000 soldiers who have died on a battlefield that should never have happened. The report raises a series of other questions, namely: Why the need for these bilateral agreements if one treaty for all EU/NATO participants would suffice? Is it possible participants sensing the end is near and now it’s “every man for himself”? Are they scrambling to protect their investments as the wheels are coming off the wagon? Solidarity with Ukraine? I doubt it! A colossal pile up instead, of political miscalculation, deception and wildly out-of-control expectations, fueled by greed and arrogance. Self-preservation at its worst. Let the blame game begin. If someone can convince me of the opposite, I’ll be all ears, even at this late stage. Until then, selling the coming military conflict under the rubric of “Our Shared Western Values” comes across as “stale bread”. For as far as I am concerned, “NATO” is “OUT”. “America First” is “IN”. Thomas Schinkel