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108 civilians killed by mines and cluster bombs in Yemen since April: Report

The Cradle | September 18, 2022

The Executive Center for Mine Action (YEMAC) in Sanaa has confirmed that 324 civilians have been killed and injured since the truce took effect on 2 April as a result of mines and cluster bombs used by the Saudi-led coalition.

In a statement, the Center said that since the beginning of the UN-brokered truce, 108 civilians had been killed and 216 injured through landmines, cluster bomb explosions, and other remnants of the 8-year-long war.

The YEMAC renewed the call to provide field supplies and equipment to demine the battlefields in Yemen from cluster bombs, unexploded shells, and mines. Despite the agreement to do so, efforts remain constrained by the Saudi-led coalition.

According to the reports, cluster bombs used by the Saudi-led coalition have caused the most damage, killing 18 civilians and wounding 57 others.

Another report published by the Entesaf Organization, which focuses on the rights of women and children, Saudi Arabia’s war in Yemen has killed and injured over 13,000 Yemeni civilians since 2015.

On 29 August, Abdul Karim al-Safiani, deputy director of Yemen’s Water Resource Organization, stated that he discovered high radioactive substances and toxic metals in freshwater resources in Hodeidah province.

According to Yemeni sources, Saudi Arabia and its partners are also responsible for the looting of vast quantities of oil from detained tankers.

Earlier this month, the spokesman for the Yemeni Petroleum Company (YPC) in Sanaa, Issam al-Mutawakel, said the total number of fuel ships seized by the coalition reached 12 ships.

Sanaa accused the Saudi-led coalition on 28 August of destroying 2,995 water facilities since the beginning of the war in 2015, including dams, barriers, pumps, tanks, irrigation channels, and irrigation networks, fueling the humanitarian crisis in the country.

According to the United Nations Refugee Agency (UNHCR), more than 23.4 are in desperate need of humanitarian assistance in Yemen, the worst human-made humanitarian crisis in the world.

Meanwhile, the Saudi-led coalition is blocking the country’s access to assistance and necessary resources by controlling access via sea, air, and land. Half of the country’s health facilities are also out of service and lack energy and supplies for the adequate treatment of its patients.

September 18, 2022 Posted by | War Crimes | , | 1 Comment

Biden claims US forces will defend Taiwan

Samizdat | September 19, 2022

President Joe Biden once again said that Washington is willing to use military force to defend Taiwan from Beijing, if necessary, while insisting that the US still adheres to ‘One China’ policy and is “not encouraging” the island’s independence.

During a ‘60 Minutes’ CBS News interview aired Sunday night, Biden was asked if the US would become directly involved to “defend the island” in a potential conflict between Beijing and Taiwan, including through the use of military force.

“Yes, if in fact there was an unprecedented attack…” Biden replied, before the broadcaster cut away to clarify the controversial statement. A White House official apparently explained to CBS, before the interview was aired, that US policy “has not changed” and that officially the US would still neither confirm nor deny whether American forces would defend Taiwan.

“So unlike Ukraine, to be clear, sir, US forces, US men and women would defend Taiwan in the event of a Chinese invasion?” the interviewer Scott Pelley asked again.

“Yes,” reiterated Biden.

The US leader however also said Washington respects the ‘One China’ policy, by which it recognizes that there is only one China led by Beijing. “We agree with what we signed onto a long time ago. And that there’s One China policy, and Taiwan makes their own judgments about their independence. We are not moving – we’re not encouraging their being independent. That’s their decision.”

Biden previously made a similar statement in May, calling it America’s “commitment” to protect Taiwan. At the time, amid an outcry from Beijing, the White House was also forced to “clarify” the US leader’s words, saying it did not constitute any changes in Washington’s policy towards Taiwan or China.

September 18, 2022 Posted by | Aletho News | , , | 3 Comments

Majority of Slovaks support a Russian military victory over Ukraine

Free West Media | September 16, 2022

More than half of Slovaks would welcome a Russian military victory over Ukraine, according to a new poll published on Wednesday (14 September).

The representative survey, entitled “How are you doing, Slovakia?”, was conducted by the MNFORCE and Seesame agencies and the Slovak Academy of Sciences.

Respondents were asked to answer the survey using a 10-point scale, where 1 means a clear victory for Russia and 10 for Ukraine. About a fifth of respondents said they wanted a clear Russian victory, and more than half said they were inclined towards a Russian victory. The overwhelming majority of voters in former Prime Minister Robert Fico’s social democratic party SMER are on the Russian side.

Fico is a vocal opponent of anti-Russian sanctions and even celebrated the anniversary of the Slovak National Revolt with the Russian ambassador. The SMER is still a member of the Party of European Socialists (PES).

As far as geographical differences are concerned, only the population of Bratislava, the capital, has a majority of people who want a victory for Ukraine. Regarding the whole country, only a third said they were leaning towards Ukraine, while 18 percent expressed no preference.

Slovakia along with Bulgaria, has long been one of the most pro-Russian countries in the EU.

A poll conducted in the summer of 2021 showed that 55 percent of Slovaks had a favourable opinion of the Russian leader. Among Central and Eastern European countries, only Bulgarians had a better opinion of Putin (75 percent).

Moreover, in February 2022, before the military intervention, 44 percent of respondents blamed NATO and the US for the tensions on Ukraine’s borders. As for NATO membership, only 45 percent were in favour in the 2021 poll. Immediately after the invasion, support rose, but has recently fallen again.

September 18, 2022 Posted by | Aletho News | , , | Leave a comment

Swiss leaders shrug off referendum on F-35 deal

Samizdat | September 18, 2022

Swiss legislators have given final approval for the country’s controversial purchase of F-35 fighter jets from the US, ignoring a successful petition drive that was supposed to force a public vote on the issue.

Switzerland’s lower house National Council voted to approve the $6 billion deal with US defense contractor Lockheed Martin on Thursday. The upper house, the Council of States, had previously approved the purchase of 36 F-35s.

The Swiss government, which received voter approval in 2020 to modernize the country’s fleet of fighter jets at a cost of up to $6.3 billion, reached a preliminary agreement with Lockheed Martin last year after choosing the F-35 over France’s Rafale, Boeing’s F/A-18 Super Hornet and the multinational Eurofighter Typhoon.

Opponents have argued that although voters narrowly approved the fleet’s modernization, they didn’t agree to the F-35, which has been branded too expensive and not a good fit for militarily neutral Switzerland’s defense-focused air force.

Last month, the government confirmed that the “Stop F-35” opposition group had gathered the necessary 100,000 valid petition signatures to force a referendum.

The Swiss defense department argued that there wasn’t enough time to hold the vote before Lockheed Martin’s offer expired. The government has a March 2023 deadline to sign the contract or risk higher costs and a longer wait for the jets. Other countries, such as Germany, Finland and Canada, are queuing up to buy F-35s amid the Russia-Ukraine conflict.

September 18, 2022 Posted by | Militarism | , , , | 1 Comment

US investors pull out of ‘dark’ Europe

Free West Media | September 15, 2022

The US investment bank JPMorgan, which wants to move its employees to London because of the imminent danger of a blackout in Germany, is not an isolated case. Other foreign analysts also consider Europe to be increasingly at risk – and are avoiding doing business in Europe. US companies are already focusing on their domestic businesses.

Strategists at Goldman Sachs Group Inc believe a recession in Europe is a certainty. The US economy is safer than betting on Europe, they said. Even though the path of US growth may be “uncertain”, the economic situation in Europe was simply catastrophic.

“Despite investor concerns about the US equity market, we believe it offers greater absolute and risk-adjusted return potential than recession-hit European markets,” the statement said. It has been a tough year for business in Europe “amid a gas crisis, soaring inflation and tightening central-bank policy”.

And the business news service Bloomberg reported that a Goldman Sachs team said that while the path of US growth may be “uncertain,” the economic situation in Europe was “dire”.

“Despite concerns that investors have about the US equity market, we believe it offers greater absolute and risk-adjusted return potential than recession-plagued European markets,” they noted.

The Stoxx Europe 600 lagged the S&P 500, and a Goldman basket of US companies with 100 percent domestic sales has performed better than a basket of companies with high sales in Europe. Barclays Plc strategists expressed similar concern about European prospects.

September 18, 2022 Posted by | Economics, Malthusian Ideology, Phony Scarcity | , | Leave a comment

WHY Is Germany Committing Suicide?

The Same Reasons WHY the EU/UK is Being Deindustrialized!

BY DAVID CHU • UNZ REVIEW • SEPTEMBER 17, 2022

Well that’s the real question, isn’t it? Why? The how and the who is just scenery for the public. Oswald, Ruby, Cuba, the Mafia. Keeps ’em guessing like some kind of parlor game, prevents ’em from asking the most important question, why? Why was Kennedy killed? Who benefited? Who has the power to cover it up? Who?

~ Mr. X in JFK movie

Why is Germany committing harakiri (or seppuku)?

Because the Americans ordered them to do so!

Recently, William F. Engdahl wrote a very interesting article titled, “Europe’s Energy Armageddon From Berlin and Brussels, Not Moscow” which was re-worked in Pepe Escobar’s “Germany’s Energy Suicide: An Autopsy”.

Both articles give a fascinating explanation of HOW Germany is committing suicide. Green Agenda 2030. The Great Reset. Etc.

I emailed Engdahl about the following statement that he wrote in his article and asked him, “What is the real reason for the complete deindustrialization of Germany? Besides the Green Energy or Great Reset bullshit.”:

It is not because politicians like Scholz or German Green Economy Minister Robert Habeck, nor EU Commission Green Energy Vice President Frans Timmermans are stupid or clueless. Corrupt and dishonest, maybe yes. They know exactly what they are doing. They are reading a script. It is all part of the EU plan to deindustrialize one of the most energy-efficient industrial concentrations on the planet. This is the UN Green Agenda 2030 otherwise known as Klaus Schwab’s Great Reset. [Bolded emphasis is mine.]

For whatever reasons, Engdahl didn’t reply to my email. But in my email to him, I basically answered my question when I asked the following:

Is it to emasculate Europe completely so as to make Europe completely dependent on the US for both energy and technology? The rest of the world is moving towards BRI and BRICS. The only block left to harvest aka rape and pillage for the Americans is Europe (plus Japan and South Korea).

That was September 5, 2022.

On September 16, 2022, RT (Russia Today) ran an article titled, “Elite US think tank dismisses EU plot report as ‘fake’”:

The story of an alleged US plan to drain EU resources to prop up its economy was reported on Tuesday by Nya Dagbladet, a Swedish news outlet, which describes itself as anti-globalist, humanist, pro-freedom, and independent. An English-language version was released later in the week.

The newspaper claimed that it obtained a classified document signed by the RAND Corporation, titled ‘Weakening Germany, strengthening the US’. The paper, which was allegedly produced in January, outlined a scenario for how the US could help its struggling economy by draining resources from its European allies.

The purported plot involved goading Russia into attacking Ukraine, which would force the EU to impose sanctions on Russia and decouple their economies from Russian energy.

Well, today (September 17, 2022) I contacted the two Swedish authors of Nya Dagbladet and asked them to provide me with the RAND document. Markus Andersson, one of the authors and chief editor, quickly replied and voila here is the “fake” RAND document:

https://nyadagbladet.se/wp-content/uploads/2022/09/rand-corporation-ukraina-energikris.pdf

You better save a copy of this PDF on your hard drive and pass it on to all your friends, especially those sheeple living in Germany, before the RAND people scream bloody murder and disappear this very important “fake” document!

Very soon now, the RAND people will call it a “forgery”.

The RAND report is titled, “Executive Summary: Weakening Germany, strengthening the U.S.”

It is dated January 25, 2022 and is labelled “Confidential”. The distribution list include WHCS (White House Chief of Staff), ANSA (Assistant to the President for National Security Affairs), Dept. of State, CIA (Central Intelligence Agency), NSA (National Security Agency), and the DNC (Democratic National Committee).

Shall we take a little peek into this “fake” document?

The present state of the U.S. economy does not suggest that it can function without financial and material support from external sources [very definition of a parasitic empire!]. The quantitative easing policy, which the Fed has resorted to regularly in recent years,s as well as uncontrolled issue of cash during the 2020 and 2021 Covid lockdowns, have led to a sharp increase in the external debt and an increase in the dollar supply [the very definition of high inflation rates].

The continuing deterioration of the economic situation is highly likely to lead to a loss in the position of the Democratic Party in Congress and the Senate in the forthcoming elections to be held in November 2022. The impeachment of the President cannot be ruled out under these circumstances, which must be avoided at all costs. [Bolded emphasis is mine.]

There is an urgent need for resources to flow into the national economy, especially the banking system. Only European countries bound by the EU and NATO commitments will be able to provide them without significant military and political costs for us. [The USA has ran out of third-world and developing nations to rape and pillage.]

The major obstacle to it is growing independence of Germany. Although it still is a country with limited sovereignty, for decades it has been consistently moving toward lifting these limitations and becoming a fully independent state. This movement is slow and cautious, but steady. Extrapolation shows that the ultimate goal can be reached only in several decades. However if social and economic problems in the United States escalate, the pace could accelerate significantly. . . .

Vulnerabilities in German and EU Economy

An increase in the flow of resources from Europe to U.S. can be expected if Germany begins to experience a controlled economic crisis [bolded emphasis is mine]. The pace of economic development in the EU depends almost without alternative on the state of the German economy. It is Germany that bears the brunt of the expenditure directed towards the poorer EU members.

The current German economic model is based on two pillars. These are unlimited access to cheap Russian energy resources and to cheap French electric power, thanks to the operation of nuclear power plants. The importance of the first factor is considerably higher. Halting Russian supplies can well create a systemic crisis that would be devastating for the German economy and, indirectly, for the entire European Union. . . . [Bolded emphasis is mine.]

A Controlled Crisis

Due to coalition constraints, the German leadership is not in full control of the situation in the country. Thanks to our precise actions, it has been possible to block the commissioning of the Nord Stream 2 pipeline, despite the opposition of lobbyists from the steel and chemical industries. However, the dramatic deterioration of the living standards may encourage the leadership to reconsider its policy and return to the idea of European sovereignty and strategic autonomy.

The only feasible way to guarantee Germany’s rejection of Russian energy supplies is to involve both sides in the military conflict in Ukraine. Our further actions in this country will inevitably lead to a military response from Russia. Russians will obviously not be able to leave unanswered the massive Ukrainian army pressure on the unrecognized Donbas republics. That would make possible to declare Russia an aggressor and apply to it the entire package of sanctions prepared beforehand. . . .[Bolded emphasis is mine.]

The RAND Executive Summary then goes on to detail the “Expected Consequences” with projections of financial and economic loses for Germany.

The rest as they say is . . . (almost) Mission Accomplished!

P.S. Adolf must be rolling in his Argentina grave now that Sergeant “I Know Nothing!” Scholz is in full command of the Fatherland . . . .

September 18, 2022 Posted by | Deception, Economics, Malthusian Ideology, Phony Scarcity | , , , , | 1 Comment

In This House . . .

“Joint Base Cape Cod” contaminated groundwater plumes

By Richard Hugus | September 18, 2022

As reported by national news in the US, on September 16, 2022, 50 illegal immigrants from Venezuela were flown from Florida to Martha’s Vineyard, Massachusetts. Officials on the island said they did not have the resources to take care of the immigrants, so they were transported by the Massachusetts National Guard to a military base on Cape Cod. The immigrants were tolerated on Martha’s Vineyard for exactly two days.

The military base they were taken to, with the purposely non-descriptive name, “Joint Base Cape Cod,” is about 30 miles north of the church in Edgartown where the immigrants stayed. The base was formerly known as the Massachusetts Military Reservation, or Otis/Camp Edwards. The base is notorious for being a dump site for the federal government, so it probably seemed to the authorities a logical place to get rid of the immigrants. The 22,000 acre base was designated a Superfund site in 1989 due to massive amounts of fuels and solvents dumped at Otis Air Base into the sandy soil above Upper Cape Cod’s sole-source aquifer. As more and more contaminated groundwater was being discovered on the Air Force side, yet more was discovered from the past dumping of propellants and explosives by the Army at Camp Edwards. At one site on the base in the 1960s, the Air Force dumped up to 6 million gallons of aviation fuel on the ground just to test aircraft emergency release valves. Enough fuel from here and elsewhere got into water supplies in nearby Forestdale to the point that tap water at a kitchen sink could be lit on fire. Meanwhile, the Army was accustomed for years to firing Howitzer and mortar rounds into the base “impact area” whose explosions would shake windows in residential areas all over the Upper Cape. Nearby residents also lived with the frequent sound of machine gun fire from one of many gun ranges. Indeed, the Army National Guard has lately insisted it needs 200 acres of forest clearcut for a new machine gun range, with 5,000 acres reserved for strays and overshoots. For those feigning such concern, this was some place to send a group of helpless refugees. The public has no access to and very little knowledge of this huge area of sunny Cape Cod.

Martha’s Vineyard has had its own episode of Pentagon abuse. A small island called Nomans, just south of the Vineyard, was used as an aerial bombing range for many years, leaving the land littered with unexploded ordnance and contaminated soil. Rather than remediate, the US Navy conveniently handed the land over the Department of Fisheries and Wildlife who simply called it a conservation area, posted No Trespassing signs, and called it a day. The small island, a beautiful gem once inhabited by Wampanoag Indians and early settlers, it is now just a sacrifice zone, like a closed landfill. No one is allowed to set foot on it.

Both Cape Cod and Martha’s Vineyard have a service and tourist economy. Most people who live and work there are not wealthy, but have jobs serving the wealthy in one way or another. They build and repair the homes of the rich, they entertain them, run the restaurants, cook the food, clean the houses, and maintain their boats and cars. Low wage workers and immigrant labor are brought in every year for the summer season as there is evidently not enough money to pay local workers asking for a decent wage. Nor can working people afford houses on local wages. It’s a rentier economy. Poverty is real on both Martha’s Vineyard and the Cape because so many among the rich know very well how to spend as little of their money as possible for the services they receive. While working people there might not be happy about immigrant labor lowering wages and taking jobs, they would not have called the National Guard to come in and remove the strangers from Venezuela. And of course they would not have had the power to do so even if they wanted to. That call had to have come from new world order hopeful Governor Charlie Baker, on orders from Vineyard residents like Barack Obama who don’t want to see the results of the unrestricted immigration that they initiated actually becoming visible in their own neighborhoods. This is why the 50 Venezuelans were brought to eastern Massachusetts’ go-to military dump site, incidentally also home to the Barnstable County Jail — another thing no one wanted to see or hear anywhere else on the Cape.

We might ask why people in Venezuela got to the point of leaving family, home, culture, and country to emigrate in the first place. Obviously, two decades of coup attempts from the Chavez era on, relentless sanctions, and the theft of assets by the US has made life in Venezuela hard for many people. The US government created this problem. The further abuse of Venezuelans in a program of engineered destruction of sovereign countries and cultures, which is what the immigration crisis amounts to worldwide, is the same attack multiplied. Democrats are accusing Republicans of using the 50 immigrants as pawns. Higher powers still are using the Democrats and Republicans as pawns. This is a play inside a play and involves a level of manipulation that is not just cynical, but diabolical.

We’ve all seen the “In This House, We Believe” signs. The signs are displayed by some of the people on Martha’s Vineyard who this past week didn’t mind seeing 50 of the world’s poor carted off to a restricted military base. Between the lines on these cute little emblems of virtue we now read the ugly truth:

In this house, we believe . . .

In complete, shameless hypocrisy

In full totalitarianism, as long as it’s nicely wrapped in self-righteous liberal jargon

Virtue-signaling is better by far (and much easier) than actual virtue

Immigrants are welcome (to mow our lawns and wash our dishes)

Climate change is real (how else do we explain it being sunny one day and cloudy the next?)

All orientations are preferable to heterosexuality — the human race has gone on long enough

We hate humanity

A woman’s rights are human rights (but there is no such thing as a woman, so there is no such thing as “women’s rights”)

Black lives matter (especially when they can be used to create disruption and chaos while we do nothing to actually improve the lives of black people)

No human is illegal (unless he’s too close to my $12 million oceanfront property)

There is no place for hate (unless you’re a white hetero male, a Palestinian, a Muslim, a Christian, a Russian, a ‘right wing extremist’, an anti-vaxxer, a climate ‘denier’, or anyone else on our list)

Science is real (so long as it serves pharmaceutical company profits and ‘great reset’ eugenics)

Love is love, and all other nice-sounding, mystifying, empty tautologies

Kindness is everything (after money, power, and control)

September 18, 2022 Posted by | Environmentalism, Militarism, Progressive Hypocrite | , , | Leave a comment