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“They did it on purpose, but the Europeans don’t know – they were poisoned, too”

TANJUG | MARCH 24, 2022

During the bombing of FR Yugoslavia, NATO also poisoned Europe, Dr Danica Grujičić told the Russian news agency RIA Novosti.

The director of the Institute of Oncology and Radiology of Serbia explained that chemical plants and various dangerous industries were bombed, which, as she says, created an ecological catastrophe and poisoned Europe.

According to Grujičić, the use of NATO bombs with depleted uranium and the destruction of environmentally dangerous facilities during air strikes have led to Serbia being now the leader in the number of cancer deaths in Europe, with almost 60.000 new cancer patients a year.

“The North Atlantic Alliance did not pay attention to civilian casualties. Everyone knows the famous conversation between former Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic and Finnish diplomat Martti Ahtisaari, who said that Belgrade would be levelled to the ground (if it does not accept the ultimatum),” Grujičić added.

“If we had a nuclear power plant, they would definitely hit it, because they attacked everything on the list of facilities dangerous for the environment. They knew that a local environmental catastrophe would be created in every oil refinery, chemical company. They did it on purpose”, she said.

Grujičić recalled that about 15 tons of depleted uranium were officially dumped on Serbia, but emphasized that “no one knows how much it really was, and it will never be known.”

“We have taken the initiative to determine with mathematical precision, not only medical, but also environmental consequences. The data we received show that the whole of Europe was polluted. Europeans who were looking forward to the bombs over Belgrade and Serbia are also endangered and do not know what they were breathing, eating, drinking,” she added.

March 26, 2022 Posted by | Timeless or most popular, War Crimes | , | 1 Comment

Dissecting the Ukraine imbroglio

By Former Ambassador MK Bhadrakumar | The Tribune | March 21, 2022

A successful war is invariably a popular one. The paradox is, to be a success, the war has to be popular, but not necessarily vice versa. This is where American policymakers, especially in the state department, and a big chunk of political elite, find themselves carousing in some fantasyland pinning hopes on a colour revolution in Russia due to the leadership’s decision to go to war in Ukraine. It must have come as a surprise and huge disappointment to them that according to even independent (rather, unfriendly) polls conducted in Poland, President Vladimir Putin’s rating has only soared to over 70 per cent during these past three weeks.

The unusual form of Russian action is because of its focus on restoring security of Donbass region and its boundaries.

For Putin himself, it is nonetheless a double challenge, as the statesman in him is defending Russia’s national security from the predatory mindset of the US and NATO while the politician in him is not only sensing and responding to the expectations of the people regarding the war but getting them to adjust to a painful (but historic) economic transition in the country due to its decoupling from the western economies. That involves switching attention from one planet to another on a sustainable 24X7 basis.

These nuances also explain the anatomy of Russia’s war in Ukraine — its ponderous progress, interspersed with lulls like a slowcoach of a provincial passenger train from time immemorial. In reality, though, in about half the time that the Pentagon took to seize control of Iraq during the 2003 invasion (with all the advantages that it was fighting an emaciated enemy degraded through a decade), Russia’s special operation appears to have more or less achieved its core military objective, which is to secure the Donbass region that has a big Russian population with extensive family kinships within Russia — an emotive issue, no doubt, given the genocide that followed the CIA-backed coup in Ukraine in 2014.

New kids on the block wouldn’t know that unspeakable atrocities were perpetrated by extreme nationalist and fascist groups against the Russian population through the past 8-year period. Over 14,000 civilians were killed, albeit in the American eyes, that didn’t qualify as “war crimes” because those fascist, neo-Nazi groups were largely mentored by them. Most of the 3.6 million people living in the Donetsk and Luhansk regions who survived the genocide speak Russian and one-fifth of them are Russian citizens. Arguably, the security of Donbass region and the restoration of its original administrative boundaries (as of 2014 before Ukrainian forces attacked pro-Russian separatists) is a salience of the Russian operation. That explains why the operation took an unusual form with the Russian forces avoiding fighting as far as possible and instead surrounding the Ukrainian forces and encouraging them to surrender. An estimated 60,000 Ukrainian troops are under siege and the effort is to make them surrender rather than take the easy route to vanquish them.

This has been the pattern of the Russian operation elsewhere too, which confused most Western analysts who expected sound and fury like General MacArthur’s in Japan — amphibious landings, frontal assaults on towns and cities and outright occupation. If we look at the map from northern Belarus border, clockwise, major cities — Chernihiv, Sumy and Kharkiv — have been surrounded. While Russian columns from Chernihiv and Sumy advanced toward the outskirts of Kyiv, those from east of Kharkiv moved south to link up with the forces in Luhansk and are currently engaged in taking control of the strategic Izium-Severodonetsk axis, which would establish Russian control of entire eastern region and virtually secure the Donbass region — that is, except for Mariupol port city on the Sea of Azov (which was originally part of Donetsk).

Mariupol will give the two independent Donbass republics a major port head that would provide them access to the world market, which is hugely significant for future development of that entire resource-rich region, straddling Ukraine’s rust belt. Mariupol is not only a centre for grain trade, metallurgy and heavy engineering but also higher education and business. Sensing Mariupol’s centrality to Russian strategy, the neo-Nazi Azov Brigade has been deployed to the port city. That explains the residual resistance.

The other focal point of the Russian operation currently is Kyiv, which is now surrounded on the west, north and east. On the face of it, Russian forces are not planning to launch a frontal assault on the capital city but that option remains. Again, Odessa, jewel in the crown of Black Sea and the legacy of Catherine the Great to Mother Russia, could be in Russian sights.

Clearly, the operation is limited to the eastern side of Dnieper river. The tactic is to target convoys of western arms with missile strikes. Lviv in western Ukraine witnessed an attack on Friday. Two days earlier, a large base 20 km from the Polish border and a major depot for weapons and training ground for mercenaries were also targeted. But the operations are not targeting Ukrainian cities and Moscow has no intentions of occupying the country, but is concentrating on limited surgical strikes to incapacitate Ukrainian military infrastructure.

Moscow seeks a peace agreement. But the catch is, the incumbent leadership of Volodymyr Zelenskyy is highly unstable and the ex-comedian himself is manipulated by folks in Washington who are wedded to the notion that the longer the conflict lasts, the more Russia ‘bleeds’. The global information field, which is traditionally dominated by American and British media — and the Anglo-Saxon countries in general — is creating self-serving narratives. Even in America, only Fox News presents some alternative point of view. To borrow from the Prussian General and strategist Clausewitz, the Ukraine war is veritably ‘a continuation of policy with other means’.

March 26, 2022 Posted by | Economics, Timeless or most popular | , , , , | 1 Comment

Turkey intercepts naval mine floating near Bosphorus

Samizdat | March 26, 2022

The Turkish military has intercepted an “old” naval mine near the Bosphorus strait, the country’s Defense Minister Hulusi Akar said on Saturday. The “mine-like object” was first spotted by a commercial vessel in the vicinity of the busy Black Sea strait in the morning, the official told reporters.

“Our SAS team was quickly deployed into the area. After the object in question was determined to be a mine, it was brought to a safe place,” Akar reported, adding that, “the mine, which was determined to be of an old type, was neutralized by the SAS team.”

Ankara has raised the issue with both Russian and Ukrainian officials, Akar said, without assigning blame to any party for the incident. While the defense minister said that maritime traffic “continues safely” in the area, the Turkish agriculture ministry has issued a notice prohibiting night-time fishing in certain areas of the Black Sea, in the wake of the incident.

Footage circulating online shows the mine floating close to Turkey’s shores. The object appears to be a classic ‘horned death’ naval mine, and may be similar to a Small Anchored Mine (MYaM), a Soviet-made munition dating back to the WWII-era.

The issue of naval mines threatening maritime traffic in the Black Sea was first raised by Russia’s Federal Security Service (FSB) last week.

The Ukrainian military has placed anchor mines along its Black Sea coast in response to the ongoing Russian offensive launched late in February, the agency claimed, warning that a number of antique Soviet-made munitions have already detached from their cables and have roamed the Black Sea freely. Given the predominantly southwards currents in the area, the mines threatened the maritime traffic in Bosphorus and beyond, the FSB warned.

“It is not possible to rule out that the detached mines will drift into the Bosphorus and further into the Mediterranean Sea,” it cautioned.

The allegations, however, were disputed by the Ukrainian side, which claimed that the mine scare was merely Russian disinformation designed to serve as an excuse to close off parts of the sea.

March 26, 2022 Posted by | Militarism | | Leave a comment

US Afghan Military Arsenals are Up for Sale

By Vladimir Platov – New Eastern Outlook – 26.03.2022

While the exact number of US weapons, vehicles, aircraft and military equipment seized by the Taliban after the US and its allies had fled Afghanistan is unknown, the preliminary value of this lethal commodity is estimated by various experts at around $85 billion. In Kunduz, Afghanistan, regular Taliban military displays and military parades show, for example, US-made M1117 armored personnel carriers and other weapons that the Taliban have inherited from the US and have not yet been sold to Pakistan or other countries.  Of course, the US military and intelligence agencies will work to assess what ended up in Taliban hands, as US decision-makers have already indicated their desire for more information on the weapons seized, but this will take time. In late 2021, experts at the Center for International Policy in Washington published a study, “US Weapons Stockpiles in Afghanistan”, which noted that over two decades of war, the US had moved weapons, equipment and other materiel worth many tens of billions of dollars into the country. With Afghanistan’s bank accounts blocked and the dire humanitarian and economic situation in the country, the funds that could be raised by the Taliban from the sale of these arsenals are significant.

According to information from Afghanistan and neighboring countries, as well as from the Calibre Obscura blog, which specializes in black market arms analysis, the Taliban are willing to exchange some NATO military equipment for other weapons needed to fight in the difficult geographical conditions of their country. The Taliban plan to use the proceeds from the sale of “surplus” arms to buy food as the country is likely to face starvation after a long crisis.

The sale of US army and allied assets left behind by the hasty withdrawal of the NATO contingent has already begun in the markets of Afghanistan. In particular, body armor, military uniforms, boots, tents, dishes and much more have long been on sale. Most of the trophies are taken from warehouses that NATO has handed over to the Afghan army. It is noted that the Taliban are not asking more than $100 for a body armor, and about $50 or less for a helmet. New S&W Sigma SV9VE pistols are being sold for a third of the market price in Kandahar. In Herat, one can easily buy carbines and assault rifles at the market. Some of the weapons are sold by the Taliban themselves, some by locals who have looted US army bases and barracks.

Grey Dynamics website reports that the Taliban have begun selling off their weapons stockpiles to various groups in neighboring countries. According to their information, the weapons have ended up in the hands of the Balochistan Liberation Front (based in Iran), the Tehrik-e-Taliban-Pakistan and other extremist groups banned in the Russian Federation. Experts suggest that the weapons could resurface in neighboring states, particularly in the Central Asian republics.

It is estimated that Afghanistan could soon become the world’s largest arms seller, causing a spike in crime in the region. Previously, Iraq and, in part, Syria served as this type of arms market. Before them, it was Albania. But Afghanistan can give everyone a head start. After all, just by the most conservative estimate, the US has left about a hundred thousand pieces of small arms alone there. As can be seen from the data published in open sources, there are among the Afghan trophies the blast-resistant US-made wheeled armored vehicles to transport troops; more than two dozen light turboprop attack aircraft A29 Super Tucano (manufactured by Embraer, Brazil); more than 30 Mi-17 transport helicopters, which previously the US purchased from the Russian Federation for the Afghan government forces, as well as no less number of UH-60 Blackhawk transport helicopters and many other state-of-the-art military equipment.

According to separate media reports, the Taliban may decide to sell some of the wheeled armored vehicles to interested countries – the PRC, Turkey and all other states intending to explore US weapons. In particular, according to regional media reports, Chinese defense industries will be able to buy several UH-60 Blakchawk helicopters from the Taliban through Pakistani intermediaries to disassemble and study engine designs. Some of the A-29 Super Tucano strike aircraft may be sold off piecemeal to countries that have established close military and political contacts with the movement’s leadership (in particular, Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Qatar).

The Taliban’s determination to sell off seized military arsenals has only intensified in the absence of news of a possible unlocking of Afghanistan’s foreign exchange reserves by the US.

The Taliban themselves continue to have at their disposal attack aircraft and helicopters that are effective for combat operations in the region, including American, Russian and Brazilian-made aircraft. The Taliban are now offering large sums of money to pilots and airmen who have joined the group, and according to some reports the sums on offer are higher than those previously paid by the government in Kabul. It is known that a number of Kunduz Airbase personnel have already joined the Taliban, and there is a possibility that in the near future the Taliban will have their own air force, albeit on a limited scale.

However, even if the Taliban can obtain serviceable aircraft, they will inevitably face a maintenance problem. But the benefit to the Taliban from their presence remains so far limited by weak logistical and maintenance capabilities. The Taliban may well be able to put pilots in aircraft to make a few sorties, as they have already done, such as at a celebratory parade after the final withdrawal of US troops. But they will almost certainly need outside help to keep the aviation they have received in good working order. And the very number of qualified military pilots the Taliban have is clearly small. Moreover, Afghans are excluded from the global supply chain needed to access spare parts. And while they might be able to dismantle a few aircraft to service others, this model of combat aviation maintenance is highly unsustainable. However, it is quite possible that some external partners – Pakistan, Qatar or others – could provide the necessary assistance to the Taliban.

Furthermore, it should not be forgotten that, thanks to modern information technology and social media, the Taliban can find training programs on the use of even highly sophisticated NATO left-over military equipment and train the number of “operators” they need. Meanwhile, it is quite possible that there could be a strengthening of their “cooperation” in the near future, including in the form of the sale of their existing military equipment at quite reasonable prices or as part of “brotherly aid” to Muslims “fighting for freedom”.

March 26, 2022 Posted by | Aletho News | , , | 1 Comment

Biden’s reality check in Europe

BY M. K. BHADRAKUMAR | INDIAN PUNCHLINE | MARCH 26, 2022 

The takeaway from the US President Joe Biden’s European tour on March 25-26 is measly. Dissenting voices are rising in Europe as western sanctions against Russia start backfiring with price hikes and shortages of fuel and electricity. And this is only the beginning, as Moscow is yet to announce any retaliatory measures as such. 

The unkindest cut of it all is that the Russian Defence Ministry chose Biden’s trip as the perfect backdrop to frame the true proportions of success of its special operation in Ukraine. The US and NATO’s credibility is perilously close to being irreparably damaged, as the Russian juggernaut rolls across Ukraine with the twin objectives of ‘demilitarisation’ and ‘denazification’ in its sights. 

The Russian General Staff disclosed on Friday that the hyped up Ukrainian Armed Forces, trained by NATO and the US, have sustained crippling losses: Ukrainian air force and air defence is almost completely destroyed, while the country’s Navy no longer exists and about 11.5% of the entire military personnel have been put out of action. (Ukraine doesn’t have organised reserves.) 

According to the Russian General Staff’s deputy head Colonel General Sergey Rudskoy, Ukraine has lost much of its combat vehicles (tanks, armoured vehicles, etc.), one-third of its multiple launch rocket systems, and well over three-fourths of its missile air defence systems and Tochka-U tactical missile systems. 

Sixteen main military airfields in Ukraine have been put out of action, 39 storage bases and arsenals destroyed (which contained up to 70% of all stocks of military equipment, materiel and fuel, and more than 1,054,000 tons of ammunition.)

Interestingly, following the intense high-precision strikes on the bases and training camps, foreign mercenaries are leaving Ukraine. During the past week, 285 mercenaries escaped into Poland, Hungary and Romania. Russian forces are systematically destroying the Western shipment of weapons. 

Most important, the mission to liberate Donbass is about to be accomplished. Simply put, the main objectives of the first phase of the operation have been achieved.

Apart from Kiev, Russian troops have blocked the northern and eastern cities of Chernigov, Sumy, Kharkov and Nikolaev, while in the south, Kherson and most of Zaporozhye region are under full control — the intention being to not only to shackle Ukrainian forces but to prevent their grouping in Donbass region. (See my article Dissecting Ukraine imbroglio, Tribune, March 21, 2022)  

“We did not plan to storm these cities from the start, in order to prevent destruction and minimise losses among personnel and civilians,” Rudskoy said. But, he added, such an option is not ruled out either in the period ahead.

It stands to reason that Washington and European capitals are well aware that the Russian operation is proceeding as scheduled and there is no stopping it. Thus, NATO’s extraordinary summit on March 24 confirmed that the alliance is unwilling to get into a military confrontation with the Russian Army. 

Instead, the summit decided to strengthen the defence of its own territories! Four additional multinational NATO combat groups of 40,000 troops will be deployed in Bulgaria, Hungary, Romania and Slovakia on a permanent basis. Poland’s proposal to deploy NATO military units in Ukraine was outright rejected.

However, Poland has certain other plans, namely, to deploy contingents to the western regions of Ukraine to support the ‘fraternal Ukrainian people” with the unspoken agenda of reclaiming control over the historically disputed territories in the those regions. What Faustian deal has been struck in Warsaw on March 25 between Biden and his Polish counterpart Duda remains unclear. Clearly, vultures are circling Ukraine’s skies. (See my blog Biden wings his way to the borderlands of Ukraine, March 24, 2022) 

Indeed, if Poland makes a bid for Ukrainian territory (with Biden’s tacit support), would Belarus be far behind to take control of the regions of Polesie and Volyn in Ukraine? Possibly not. Suffice to say, in the period since the CIA-backed coup in Kiev in 2014 when the US moved into the driving seat, Ukraine has lost its sovereignty and is now perilously close to vanishing altogether from Europe’s map! 

Washington — Biden personally, having been the Obama administration’s point person in Kiev in 2014 — should carry this heavy cross in history books. 

As for European leaders, they find themselves in a surreal world, out of touch with the stunning realities of a new world order. Eighty-year old Biden with limited grasp of the torrential flow of events, made an astounding proposal in his press conference in Brussels on Thursday that Ukraine should replace Russia in the G20! 

But Biden has a soulmate in the European Commission chief Ursula von der Leyen whose latest threat is that Russian oil and gas companies “will not be allowed to demand payment for fuel in rubles.” She is blissfully unaware that the EU has no more effective means to pressure Russian companies! 

Russian President Vladimir Putin caught the western leaders huddled in Brussels by surprise with his announcement that Russia will promptly start charging “unfriendly” countries in rubles for gas supplies. There are over 45 unfriendly countries on the list — the US and EU members plus the UK, Australia, Canada, Singapore, Montenegro and Switzerland. (See the RT’s explainer What buying gas in rubles means for Russia and the West.)

Effectively, Moscow is on the one hand strengthening the weakened ruble, while on the other hand, messaging that it is pioneering a new wave internationally to bypass the dollar as  commodity currency. 

Yet, Moscow is also continuing to routinely supply Russian gas for transit to Europe through Ukraine to meet the requests of European consumers (109.5 mln cubic meters as of March 26!) The point is, despite rhetoric and grandstanding, Europe recently increased its gas purchases from Russia significantly against the backdrop of astronomically high spot prices! 

The European Council meet at Brussels on March 25 with Biden in attendance failed to adopt any concrete measures to address the energy price growth, and could not come up with a unified approach to Russia’s decision to receive payments for its gas only in rubles. 

Apropos the European Commission’s proposal to establish a new system of common purchase of gas to prevent outbidding, the final statement of the European Council merely says that the leaders agreed to “work together on voluntary common purchase of gas, LNG and hydrogen,” meaning that common purchases may be carried out only by those EU countries who are willing to unite. [Emphasis added.] 

It is a long haul for Europe to dispense with Russian gas. Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic said yesterday:  “There are gas shortages, and that is why we need to talk to Russians. Europe will move towards reducing its dependence on the Russian gas, but can this happen in the coming years? This is very difficult.”

“Europe consumes 500 billion cubic meters of gas, while America and Qatar can offer 15 billion, up to the last molecule… That is why German and Austrian politicians told me: “We cannot just destroy ourselves. If we impose sanctions on Russia in the oil and gas domain, we will destroy ourselves. It’s like shooting yourself in the foot before rushing into a fight. This is how certain rational people in the West see it today.” 

With the doomsday predictions of Russian military failure in Ukraine coming unstuck and the blowback from Russia sanctions beginning to bite, Europeans are caught in a bind. They will be resentful as time passes. 

March 26, 2022 Posted by | Economics | , , , | 3 Comments

Hungary responds to Zelensky’s demand for support

Samizdat – March 26, 2022

“Hungary is on Hungary’s side,” its prime minister, Viktor Orban, said in a statement on Saturday, in response to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky’s calls for Budapest to quit sitting on the fence in the conflict between Kiev and Moscow.

Orban said that, while his country could not “be indifferent” to the “Russo-Ukrainian war going on in our neighborhood,” Hungary would look after its own interests first, and maintain a “Hungarian point of view.” He went on to stress that Budapest “want[ed] to stay out of this war,” but that this did not preclude it from helping “those in need.”

The statement came in response to Zelensky having urged Orban to choose a side in the conflict. Speaking to EU leaders via video link on Friday, the Ukrainian president thanked the Baltic states, Poland, France, and Germany for their support, but noted that Hungary was still declining to take a stand. He called on Budapest to “decide for yourself who you are with.” Addressing Orban directly, Zelensky asked him if he knew “what’s going on in Mariupol,” referring to the besieged southern port city, which has seen heavy fighting in recent days.

Zelensky reiterated his request that his country’s application to join the EU be swiftly considered, and once again appealed to Hungary in particular not to block the bid.

Unlike the other EU member states bordering Ukraine, Hungary has so far refused to either send weapons to Kiev or let other countries move such shipments through its territory.

Orban has argued that, as around 85% of its gas and over 60% of its oil is imported from Russia, it would not be in Budapest’s best interest to rile Moscow.

In his latest statement, however, the Hungarian prime minister emphasized that “it must be made clear to the Russians that it is not worth pursuing this war,” warning at the same time that Europe should avoid hurting itself “more than the Russians.” He also called on Brussels to provide Hungary with more funding to deal with the influx of Ukrainian refugees.

March 26, 2022 Posted by | Militarism | , , | Leave a comment

PFIZER CEO SETTING HEALTH POLICY?

The Highwire with Del Bigtree | March 24, 2022

In Fauci’s absence as Covid’s public health media mouthpiece, an ironic twist of transparency has chosen a puzzling replacement – Pfizer CEO Albert Bourla.

SHOCKING NEW COVID VACCINE SIDE EFFECTS

Welcome to the next generation of possible vaccine harms. From mouth blisters to debilitating nervous system disorders, scientists are reporting troubling side effects from COVID-19 vaccines.

BON VOYAGE, MACRON?!

All eyes are on the coming French elections as the world watches the first political choice to vote out those who forced lockdowns, mandates and purposely made life miserable for much of their population. Opposing French PM Macron who’s trying for his 2nd term is Marine Le Pen and Eric Zemmour, both siding with the unemployed healthcare workers’ plight due to vaccine refusal.

March 26, 2022 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Science and Pseudo-Science, Timeless or most popular, Video | , , , | Leave a comment

Lebanon: ‘shocking’ details of torture in Israeli-run prison

MEMO | March 24, 2022

The details of torture in an Israeli-run prison in Lebanon, including the electrocution of a female detainee and denial of medical care, have been uncovered in newly declassified Israeli documents.

Arab prisoners were subjected to inhumane treatment at the Khiam Prison run by Israel in Southern Lebanon, which operated for fifteen years until the occupation state withdrew from its northern neighbour in 2000. Details of the torture and serious human rights violations were found within the archive documents released by Israel’s internal security agency, Shin Bet.

The documents were released following a petition to the High Court of Justice by human rights activists including lawyer Eitay Mack, who over recent years has uncovered Israel’s questionable ties to rogue human rights abusing regimes. The materials, the activists say, record “torture and cruel and inhumane punishments” in the prison.

“Together with the South Lebanon Army, the Israel Defence Forces and Shin Bet ran a detention and torture facility like those in the military dictatorships in Latin America,” Mack told Haaretz. The Israeli paper reported the gruesome details at length.

“The torture inflicted in Khiam Prison is a crime against humanity,” Mack said. “The documents that were revealed due to the petition are shocking, and constitute only a miniscule glimpse into the hell that they ran there. We will continue to fight until all the documents are made available to the public and those responsible for the horrors are brought to justice.”

Khiam Prison was opened in 1985 near the eponymous village, which is located in South Lebanon, a few kilometres north of the Israeli border. It was originally built as an army barracks in the 1930s.

Only a tiny fraction of the documents has been released. Legal proceedings are underway to obtain all of the material. The full scale of the torture is likely to be even more shocking.

Nevertheless, the small sample of declassified documents still paints a horrific picture. Between 250 and 300 detainees were said to have been held in the prison at any given time. They belonged to various organisations and political parties, including Amal, Hezbollah, the Communist Party, Fatah and the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine.

According to one document, a female detainee being interrogated on suspicion of being “connected to Hezbollah” was electrocuted. The victim “received electricity in her fingers”, which is another way of saying that she was tortured during the interrogation.

A document dated 1988 testifies to the hunger from which the prisoners suffered in the jail. “This morning, the manager of the local prison reported that yesterday a hunger strike erupted in the prison due to a shortage of food,” it says.

Another document, from 1997, discussed medical problems from which the detainees suffered. In summary, the document says that there exists “a painful problem” and that the source who warned about it feels “that he has no support in the event that a detainee dies in prison due to medical problems or a failure to administer treatment recommended by the doctor.”

According to Amnesty International, during the prison’s fifteen years of operation, 11 detainees died. With the full scale of the torture still to be unveiled, the death toll may actually be much higher.

March 25, 2022 Posted by | Subjugation - Torture, Timeless or most popular, War Crimes | , , | 1 Comment

British intelligence operative’s involvement in Ukraine crisis signals false flag attacks ahead

BY KIT KLARENBERG · THE GRAYZONE · MARCH 24, 2022

Shadowy UK intel figure Hamish de Bretton-Gordon was at the forefront of chemical weapons deceptions in Syria. Now in Ukraine, he’s up to his old tricks again.

With Washington and its NATO allies forced to watch from the sidelines as Russia’s military advances across Eastern Ukraine and encircles Kiev, US and British officials have resorted to a troubling tactic that could trigger a massive escalation. Following similar claims by his Secretary of State and ambassador the United Nations, US President Joseph Biden has declared that Russia will pay a “severe price” if it uses chemical weapons in Ukraine.

The warnings emanating from the Biden administration contain chilling echoes of those issued by the administration of President Barack Obama throughout the US-led dirty war on Syria.

Almost as soon as Obama implemented his ill-fated “red line” policy vowing an American military response if the Syrian army attacked the Western-backed opposition with chemical weapons, Al Qaeda-aligned opposition factions came forth with claims of mass casualty sarin and chlorine bombings of civilians. The result was a series of US-UK missile strikes on Damascus and a prolonged crisis that nearly triggered the kind of disastrous regime change war that had destabilized Iraq and Libya.

In each major chemical weapons event, signs of staging and deception by the armed Syrian opposition were present. As a former US ambassador in the Middle East told journalist Charles Glass, “The ‘red line’ was an open invitation to a false-­flag operation.”

Elements of deception were especially clear in the April 7, 2018 incident in the city of Douma, when an anti-government militia on the brink of defeat claimed civilians had been massacred in a chlorine attack by the Syrian army.

Veteran inspectors from the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) found no evidence that the Syrian army had carried out any such attack, however, suggesting the entire incident had been staged to trigger Western intervention. Their report was subsequently censored by organization management, and the inspectors were subjected to a campaign of smears and intimidation.

Throughout the Syrian conflict, a self-proclaimed “chemical warrior” named Hamish de Bretton-Gordon was intimately involved in numerous chemical weapons deceptions that sustained the war and ratcheted up pressure for Western military intervention.

This February 24, just moments after Russia’s military entered Ukraine, de Bretton-Gordon surfaced again in British media to claim that Russia was preparing a chemical attack on Ukrainian civilians. He has since demanded that Ukrainians be provided with a guide he wrote called, “How To Survive A Chemical Attack.”

So who is de Bretton-Gordon, and does his sudden reappearance as an expert voice on the Russia-Ukraine war signal a return to the dangerous US-UK red line policy?

Hours after war erupts, a “chemical warrior” demands Western escalation

Following months of fevered speculation about an impending Russian invasion of Ukraine, when it finally came to pass on the early morning of February 24th, most were caught entirely by surprise. Media outlets and pundits scrambled to get their stories straight, while Western leaders rushed to construct a cohesive ‘response’.

By contrast, Hamish de Bretton-Gordon, a British army veteran identified by UK media as a “former spy,” was in no such muddle. Within just three hours, he had a fiery op-ed prepared for The Guardian, demanding the US and Europe “show their steel in the face of Putin’s aggression.” Warning that Vladimir Putin was “much more willing to face off with NATO” than before, de Bretton-Gordon charged that the West “stood back and watched in Syria,” and “it must not do the same in Ukraine.”

“Syria shows what happens when you turn a blind eye and are too heavily influenced by peaceniks,” de Bretton-Gordon fulminated. “Those of us involved in interventions in Iraq and Afghanistan over the past 30 years…we look at Syria and know we should have done better. That knowledge should inform our response to Putin’s aggression now.”

In reality, Washington and its allies did not stand back and watch in Syria; it waged a decade-long proxy war employing jihadist paramilitaries and airstrikes on Damascus, then occupied oil-producing portions of the country and subjected its citizens to crippling sanctions, which to this day deprive them of food, electricity and vital medical supplies.

Of all people, de Bretton-Gordon – whose Twitter profile once identified him as a member of 77th Brigade, the British Army’s official psychological warfare division – is uniquely placed to know of these horrors. After all, he played a pivotal role in promoting and extending the dirty war through the management of information surrounding chemical weapons incidents.

Manipulation, absurdities and obvious fraud

As The Grayzone has revealed, the involvement of de Bretton-Gordon in the Syrian conflict dates back to at least 2013, when by his own admission he was engaged in a covert effort to smuggle soil samples out of the opposition-occupied areas. This work would have inevitably placed him in extremely close quarters with jihadist elements raking in Western funding while benefiting from NATO training and weapons.

Contemporary media reports reveal the UK’s MI6 was engaged in a sample-gathering effort in the country at the very time time de Bretton-Gordon was inside Syria, strongly suggesting his linkage to the foreign intelligence agency. One article makes abundantly clear the purpose of the soil-sample exercise was to push the US into intervening by proving government culpability for alleged chemical weapons attacks.

Other forms of evidence were also collected on-the-ground by de Bretton-Gordon, and provided to a number of official investigations into chemical attacks. In at least one instance – an OPCW/UN Joint Investigative Mechanism (JIM) probe into a purported chemical strike in Talmenes, April 2014 – videos submitted by CBRN Taskforce, a shady organization he founded in Aleppo, were found to show clear signs of falsification.

De Bretton-Gordon threw his chemical weapons expertise into further doubt when he told British media that any common refrigerator could be transformed into a chemical weapon, falsely claiming that R22 refrigerant cylinders contained material for improvised chlorine bombs. “Somebody could go to a waste site where people chuck away fridges [in the UK] and get a whole bunch of those things and blow them up,” the supposed arms specialist claimed.

De Bretton Gordon has gone as far as claiming to a British tabloid that Russia could deploy missiles and hand grenades containing the highly deadly Soviet-era chemical agent Novichok “in any future war with the West.”

Such absurd commentary and subterfuge has done nothing to dent de Bretton-Gordon’s credibility, however. His mainstream profile has only grown over time, with outlets invariably presenting him as a courageous human rights defender risking his life to train local doctors and rescue workers.

On more than one occasion, however, de Bretton-Gordon has directly involved Western journalists in MI6’s soil gathering efforts. For instance, during a 2014 podcast interview with Wilton Park, an NGO funded by the UK Foreign Office, de Bretton-Gordon boasted of his responsibility for a story in the Times of London alleging a Syrian chemical attack in the town of Sheikh al-Maqsood.

“In March last year there was a reported sarin attack in Sheikh al-Maqsood and I helped the Times – chap called Anthony Lloyd who very sadly got shot two weeks ago – to cover this story and tried to get samples to the UK for analysis … I won’t go into the details of that,” he recalled.

Then-Prime Minister David Cameron invoked the Sheikh al-Maqsood incident to increase pressure on Damascus, citing “the picture as described to me by the Joint Intelligence Committee” as the basis for his assertion of a chemical attack against the town by the Syrian army.

Throughout the dirty war on Syria, de Bretton-Gordon routinely cropped up in the media attributing gas attacks and war crimes to Syrian and Russian forces, and fear-mongered about their implications for future conflicts with the West.

The latter role is one de Bretton-Gordon has enthusiastically resumed throughout the war in Ukraine, aggressively hyping the threat to Western countries. His messaging has tracked seamlessly with that of the US government, which initiated a program months before Russia’s military operation to prepare Ukraine’s security sector for an impending weapons of mass destruction attack.

Months before war, US trains Ukrainians in the threat of “targeted weapons of mass destruction attacks”

Back in May 2021, the State Department announced that Washington had conducted a “virtual training exercise” with “partners” in Kiev, including domestic security services, law enforcement, and first responders, to “identify, respond to, and investigate assassinations involving weapons of mass destruction,” due to “recent events in Europe” highlighting “the real threat of government-sanctioned, targeted weapons of mass destruction attacks.”

Along the way, Ukrainians were tutored in “[identifying] the medical symptoms that indicate WMD material use, the attack cycle involved in WMD assassination attempts, and the specific measures that enable safe and secure detection and response to WMD incidents.”

Quite why this instruction was given at this particular time is unclear, as was the “recent events in Europe” to which the press release referred. Perhaps the State Department was alluding to the alleged novichok poisoning of the Russian opposition figure Alexei Navalny in August 2020. On what grounds that failed assassination necessitated a grand, multi-agency training exercise in dealing with “targeted WMD attacks” is anyone’s guess.

Whatever the purpose of the US training program was, Ukrainian security personnel can now claim they have the training to identify the precise “medical symptoms that indicate WMD material.”

This is significant, because ever since the conflict began, Kiev has exhibited an endless enthusiasm for lying, having distorted or even outright concocted events and facts whole-cloth to advance its objectives on countless occasions.

The most dangerous claims advanced by Ukrainian propagandists have been reinforced by the supposed authority of de Bretton-Gordon, who has argued that Russian chemical strikes were absolutely inevitable, based his prediction on his opinion that Moscow “has no morals or scruples.”

The self-styled chemical weapons expert has even cautioned that Putin could deploy nuclear weapons or create a pandemic “more deadly than Covid” with an Ebola weapon. He has further speculated that Russian forces may unleash a deadly virus seized from one of several Pentagon-funded biolabs in Ukraine, then blame it on the US.

From Syria to Ukraine, it is happening again

In a typical media appearance, on March 10th, de Bretton Gordon told London’s LBC radio show that “nothing is off the table at this stage.” Among the horrors he forecast was the use of white phosphorous “to set towns and cities on fire.”

Justifying his certainty, de Bretton-Gordon forcefully asserted, “the only way to take a large city or town ultimately is to use chemical weapons.” He pointed to Syria to prove his point – but without referencing his own pivotal role in escalating that conflict through the manipulation of evidence and scientifically bereft fear-mongering in the media.

Now, de Bretton-Gordon has resurfaced at the center of the aggressive push for escalation with a nuclear armed Russia. If his role in Syria is any guide, a series of cynical deceptions could be on the way.

March 25, 2022 Posted by | Deception, Fake News, False Flag Terrorism, Mainstream Media, Warmongering | , , | 3 Comments

Hunter Biden did fund Ukraine biolabs, lap top emails suggest

Samizdat | March 25, 2022

Hunter Biden’s abandoned laptop has reared its ugly head again, as it reportedly contains emails that appear to back up Russian military claims that the US president’s son was involved in financing military research into dangerous pathogens at biolabs in Ukraine.

Biden helped arrange millions of dollars in financing for Metabiota, a Pentagon contractor that specialized in researching pandemic-causing pathogens that could be used as bioweapons, the UK’s Daily Mail newspaper reported on Friday, citing newly obtained emails and letters from the laptop. President Joe Biden’s son and his partners in a firm called Rosemont Seneca also invested $500,000 in the contractor.

At least one of the documents suggested that Metabiota’s interest in Ukraine went beyond research and money-making. An executive with the contractor, Mary Guttieri, spoke in an April 2014 memo to Hunter Biden of “how we can potentially leverage our team, networks and concepts to assert Ukraine’s cultural and economic independence from Russia and continued integration into Western society.”

Another memo showed that Biden had pitched a “science project” involving Metabiota and Burisma, the Ukrainian natural gas company where Biden made millions of dollars as a board member. His pay was cut in half after his father’s stint as US vice president ended in January 2017.

The revelations come one day after Russian military officials alleged that US agencies and high-level Democrats, including Hunter Biden, have been involved in backing bioweapons research in Ukraine. The officials cited documents that had been seized by Russian soldiers in the former Soviet republic.

However, some Western media outlets dismissed the claims as Russian propaganda meant to justify Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine. In many cases, the allegations were brushed off or ridiculed without even taking them seriously enough to include a US government response. For instance, the Daily Beast declared in a headline, “Russia ramps up the crazy,” while state-funded NPR and other outlets referred to the accusations as “false” or “propaganda” without any apparent probing of the facts. Even the Daily Mail itself, before obtaining the latest Biden emails, said Russia had ramped up its “wild propaganda campaign” by making its bioweapons claims.

The reaction echoed the response in October 2020, when the New York Post broke a story alleging overseas influence-peddling by the Biden family, citing emails obtained from a laptop that Hunter Biden had abandoned at a Delaware repair shop. Spreading of the report was blocked on social media, where the Post was censored, and legacy media outlets suggested that the scandal was the result of a Russian disinformation campaign.

The original laptop scoop was essentially squashed just weeks before Biden was elected president. Just last week, the New York Times admitted that the laptop and its contents were authentic.

Government records show that Metabiota was awarded an $18.4 million contract by the Pentagon, the Daily Mail said. Emails showed that Hunter Biden claimed to help the contractor “get new customers,” including government agencies.

March 25, 2022 Posted by | Deception, War Crimes | 1 Comment

Don’t let the lockdown hawks re-write history

Certain commentators are claiming ZeroCovid was a purely pre-vaccine measure

By Toby Green | Unherd | March 25, 2022

The past two days have seen sorties from scientists desperate to shore up the lockdown version of history. Lockdowns were necessary, and anyone who disagrees does not care about society or equality. This version of history is so fraudulent that it cannot be allowed to triumph.

Writing in the Guardian yesterday, Devi Sridhar asks: ‘Why can’t some scientists just admit they were wrong about Covid?’ Why indeed? Sridhar notes that scientists have divided into opposing camps, taking ‘particular pandemic positions… eventually building a base of followers that organise around that position and defend it viciously.’ She just doesn’t seem to recognise that this neatly describes her own approach.

Sridhar’s piece is a craven attempt to rewrite history by claiming that the Zero Covid position was only ever intended for the pre-vaccine era. Can this be the same Sridhar who said in a New Statesman interview in January 2021 that ‘the better option is to eliminate the virus’ – even after vaccines had started to be rolled out? Or who tweeted in June 2020 that ‘the fastest way to get economy & normal life back is to push for a ZERO Covid Britain. Clear virus, build domestic economy’? Still, as far as Sridhar’s concerned, if anyone got anything wrong, it wasn’t her.

Sridhar’s efforts to rewrite history were joined by a prominent member of Independent SAGE, Kit Yates. Writing in the British Medical Journal on Wednesday, Yates penned an op-ed on the theme “Was lockdown necessary?” Lockdowns, according to Yates, were necessary to protect the NHS and the vulnerable members of society — and yet at the same time ‘no one is in favour of lockdowns’. This sleight of hand followed his tweet in February that ‘everyone is lockdown sceptic’.

Have we all been dreaming about the vituperative onslaught on sceptical voices in the last two years? The answer becomes clearer in the last paragraph of the BMJ piece, where Yates concludes:

Whether you view [lockdowns] as necessary depends on your value system. Many people would place the lives of the most vulnerable high on their list of priorities. Many people would value a functioning NHS with equal access for all at the point of need. Many would place a high worth on the long term health of their population. But not everyone. – KIT YATES, BMJ

Sadly for Yates, his article was published on the very day that Sir Chris Whitty admitted that the long-term health of children had suffered and their life expectancies were lower through increasing obesity brought on by lockdowns. With NHS cancer backlogs projected to last for a decade, it doesn’t seem that this “long-term health of the population” and “protecting the NHS” works out very well for Yates and his ilk.

This is why the strongest advocates of lockdowns such as Sridhar and Yates cannot be allowed to set the tone of the debate as we move away from the pandemic. Strong lockdowns promoted policies that were utterly uncaring of the young, the elderly in care homes, women in abusive situations, the poor whose work disappeared, let alone the hundreds of millions of people whose livelihoods have been destroyed in the Global South.

Meanwhile, 40% of Covid deaths in the West took place in care homes. Far from protecting the vulnerable, lockdown policies did not even protect the most vulnerable. Meanwhile, they have rendered hundreds of millions of people newly vulnerable. That is their legacy, and those who advocated hardest for them must not be allowed to escape it.

March 25, 2022 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Science and Pseudo-Science, Timeless or most popular | , | Leave a comment

Fauci Finally Admits Natural Immunity

BY JEFFREY A. TUCKER | BROWNSTONE INSTITUTE | MARCH 25, 2022

Yes, Fauci has never worried about consistency or even contradicting himself one day to the next, often without explanation. Too often his doling out “the science” has felt like performance art. Still, the record is that Fauci and all his compatriots either downplayed or denied natural immunity for two years. That has been the source of vast confusion.

In fact, this might have been the most egregious science error of the entire pandemic. It amounted to giving the silent treatment to the most well-established point of cell biology that we have. It was taught to every generation from the 1920s until sometime in the new century when people stopped paying attention in 9th-grade biology class.

After the pandemic broke, Fauci said nothing on this topic for a year and a half. The John Snow Memorandum, written to counter the Great Barrington Declaration, claimed “there is no evidence for lasting protective immunity to SARS-CoV-2 following natural infection.” Mandates and passports have excluded it. Academic, medical, and corporate enforcers have generally refused to recognize it.

When CNN’s Dr. Sanjay Gupta asked him specifically, September 13, 2021, Fauci quickly demurred.

“I don’t have a really firm answer for you on that. That’s something that we’re going to have to discuss regarding the durability of the response,” Fauci said. “I think that is something that we need to sit down and discuss seriously.”

In other words, no one knows!

The HHS head refused to say either way, even when grilled by Rand Paul.

Earlier, the WHO even backed up this denialism, going so far as to change their own definition of immunity in the middle of a pandemic. They eliminated the old sentence on natural immunity and replaced it with a claim that immunity comes from “protecting people from the virus” and not “exposing them to it.” That’s some clever rhetoric right there!

There’s no question that this effort to deny natural immunity was systematic and pushed from the top.

How has this changed? In February 2022, the CDC finally published on the topic that they could not forever deny. And now, Fauci himself let the following slip in an interview on March 23, 2022:

“When you look at the cases they do not appear to be any more severe [than Omicron] and they do not appear to evade immune responses either from vaccine or prior infection.”

What’s critical here is not his debatable claim about vaccines but rather his offhand remark about prior infection. It was tossed off as if: “Everyone knows this.” If so, it is no thanks to him, the CDC, or WHO.

To be sure, everything we’ve known since two years ago – if not 2.5 thousand years – is that immunity from prior Covid infection is real. Vaccines have traditionally been a substitute version of exactly that. Brownstone has assembled fully 150 studies that demonstrate that immunity through infection is effective, broad, and lasting.

Had that messaging been around during lockdowns, the attitude toward the virus would have been very different. We would have clearly seen the present reality from the beginning, namely that endemicity generally arrives in the case of a new virus of this sort due to exposure-induced population immunity. This is how humankind evolved to live in the presence of pathogens.

If we had widespread public awareness of this, the public-health priority would not have been locking down people who can manage exposure but rather alerting those who cannot to be careful until herd immunity in one’s own circle of contacts has been realized via meeting the virus and recovering.

To those who say that is dangerous, consider that mass exposure is precisely what happened in any case, stretched out over two years rather than occurring in a single season. This delaying of the inevitable might be what allowed for variants to emerge and take hold in successive rounds, each new one hitting naive immune systems in ways that were difficult to predict. Flatten the curve amounted to “prolonging the pain,” exactly as Knut Wittkowski predicted in March 2020.

A widespread understanding of natural immunity would have changed the entire calculus of public perception of how to manage one’s life in the face of a new virus. Instead of just running and hiding, people might have considered tradeoffs, as they had always done in the past. What is my risk of infection and under what conditions? If I do get the thing, what happens then? It might also have changed the priorities from disease avoidance and vaccine subsidies and mandates to thinking about the crucial thing: what should people do if they get sick? What should doctors recommend and prescribe?

The neglect of therapeutics figures into this very highly. If people believe that locking down, staying away, masking up, stopping travel, and generally giving up all choices in life were the right way to make a pathogen magically disappear, plus they are under the impression that the risk of severe outcomes is equally distributed across the whole population, plus they believe that 3-4% of the population is going to die from Covid (as was suggested in the early days), you end up with a much more compliant people.

If natural immunity had been rightly seen as the most robust and broad form of immunity from the beginning, and we instead followed the idea of focused protection, the vaccine mandates would have been out of the question.

In other words, the silence of this topic was critical to scaring people all over the world into going along with an unprecedented attack on rights and liberties, thus losing up to two years of childhood education, closing millions of small businesses, and denying people basic religious liberties, in addition to the collapse of public health that resulted in record-breaking alcohol and opioid-related deaths, not to mention lost cancer screenings, childhood vaccinations, and general ill-health both physical and mental.

This stuff is not without consequence. One might expect some contrition. Instead we get a passing comment and nothing more. After all, frank talk about this subject might be risky: it would imply that their entire mitigation strategy was wrong from the beginning and should never be attempted again.

March 25, 2022 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Deception, Science and Pseudo-Science | , , , , | Leave a comment

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