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PCR Testing for Bird Flu ‘Will Only Serve to Raise False Case Count’ Critics Say

By Brenda Baletti, Ph.D. | The Defender | June 6, 2024

Dr. Deborah Birx, the Trump administration’s coronavirus response coordinator, told CNN’s Kasie Hunt the U.S. is making the “same mistakes” with bird flu that it made with COVID-19, which she said spread because there wasn’t enough testing for asymptomatic infection.

Birx is now calling for every cow to be tested for bird flu weekly and for regular pooled tests for dairy workers. She also said it’s likely that undetected cases are circulating in humans.

“We have the technology,” Birx said. “The great thing about America is we’re incredibly innovative and we have the ability to have these breakthroughs.”

The technology Birx referenced is polymerase chain reaction or PCR testing — the same diagnostic tool that came under fire during the COVID-19 pandemic for producing inaccurate results, including false positives.

Speaking out on X (formerly Twitter), critics like Simon Goddek, Ph.D., pushed back, accusing Birx of “deliberately using the same strategy to fabricate another fake health emergency.”

On Wednesday, the day after Birx’s interview, JAMA published its own article advocating for more widespread bird flu testing.

“No animal or public health expert thinks that we are doing enough surveillance,” Keith Poulsen, DVM, Ph.D., director of the Wisconsin Veterinary Diagnostic Laboratory at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, told JAMA.

Andrew Pekosz, Ph.D., from the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, told JAMA that more testing should be conducted to find asymptomatic and mild infections. Workers at infected farms should be tested twice weekly, he said, and cows should be tested once a week.

Inventor: PCR test never intended for use as diagnostic tool

PCR testing works by starting with tiny fragments of DNA or RNA called nucleotides and replicating them until they become large enough to identify. The nucleotides are replicated in cycles, and each cycle doubles the amount of genetic material in the sample. The number of cycles required to create an identifiable sample is the “cycle threshold” (Ct).

PCR tests became a household name during the COVID-19 pandemic because they were treated as the “gold standard” for identifying positive cases, especially among asymptomatic people.

However, as early as December 2020, the World Health Organization (WHO) warned that using a high-cycle threshold would lead to false-positive results. The agency encouraged healthcare providers to consider the test in concert with other factors — namely the presence of symptoms — when diagnosing patients.

The WHO also cautioned those using the tests to read the instructions carefully to determine whether the cycle threshold ought to be changed to account for any background noise that could lead to a high-cycle threshold being mistaken for a false positive.

“When specimens return a high Ct value,” the press release said, “it means that many cycles were required to detect virus. In some circumstances, the distinction between background noise and actual presence of the target virus is difficult to ascertain.”

Kary Mullis, who won the Nobel Prize for inventing the PCR test, said it was inappropriate to use the test as a diagnostic tool to detect a viral infection.

Even Dr. Anthony Fauci admitted during the pandemic that a high cycle — which was used often — detected only “dead nucleotides,” not a viral infection.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) did not immediately respond to The Defender’s inquiry about which cycle thresholds are used to test animals for bird flu.

Mass testing ‘will only serve to raise a false case count’

As of Tuesday, the latest circulating bird flu virus has reportedly infected 81 herds of dairy cattle in nine states and poultry farms in 48 states. The virus can be fatal for poultry but does not generally cause serious illness in cattle.

Bird flu is rare among humans. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) maintains it poses only a low risk to public health.

In the latest wave of bird flu, only three people in the U.S. have tested positive for the virus after close exposure to an infected cow. All three experienced mild symptoms — two experienced eye irritation and one also had a cough and sore throat. All recovered without incident.

The WHO reported Wednesday that a resident of Mexico died from a bird flu infection, but WHO officials also maintain the virus’ threat to the general population is low.

Bird flu cannot be transmitted among humans, but that hasn’t stopped health officials such as the WHO’s Chief Scientist Jeremy Farrar and U.S. Food and Drug Administration Commissioner Robert Califf from publicly stoking fears that the virus could suddenly mutate, become more infectious and transmissible among humans, and cause a pandemic.

Mainstream media outlets like Scientific American warned that the bird flu isn’t a pandemic “yet,” but it could evolve to become one if people do things like continue to drink raw milk. And The New York Times warned yesterday that the virus “may not be done” adapting.

The CDC reported on Tuesday that it monitors genetic changes in the virus and “few genetic changes of public health concern have been identified.”

Nevertheless, the U.S. government is building up its national stockpile of existing vaccines produced by CSL Seqirus and is nearing contracts with Moderna and possibly Pfizer to fund the development of an mRNA vaccine for the virus.

On Tuesday, Finland announced it will begin offering the vaccine to selected groups of people.

Other public health experts have dismissed the alarmism as “overblown,” with some suggesting the “fearmongering” is motivated by profit.

Dr. David Bell, a public health physician and biotech consultant, told The Defender last month the bird flu scare was “farcical.”

“We did not have a bad outbreak for over a century, and there is every likelihood that we won’t again,” Bell said. “We are using technology to pretend that new threats are occurring because we can now detect them.”

Cardiologist Dr. Peter McCullough said last month that mass testing of healthy animals — as Birx is suggesting — will only serve to “raise a false case count.”

Feds using PCR testing on animals, wastewater, farmworkers, meat and milk

The federal government last month announced a new round of funding to reduce the impact of bird flu. The plan appropriated $93 million for the CDC to do virus genomic sequencing, increase monitoring of farmworkers, and improve and expand testing on a national scale for bird flu in animals, wastewater, farmworkers and meat.

The FDA also appropriated an additional $8 million to surveil and test the commercial milk supply.

Lactating dairy cows must be tested for bird flu before they can cross state lines, per an April 24 Federal Order issued by the USDA.

The USDA’s Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service (APHIS) also encourages farmers to voluntarily test cattle and herds with suspected infection, showing symptoms like reduced milk production or respiratory issues. APHIS covers the cost of the tests if conducted at an approved laboratory and if the farmers agree to have the tested cattle and premises tracked.

The approved laboratories conduct PCR tests for several different flu strains that could be bird flu markers, including “FluA matrix, H5 and optionally H5N1 2.3.4.4b,” to determine whether the cattle are infected.

All laboratories, whether or not on the USDA’s approved list, must report all positive influenza A test results to the USDA weekly by 5 p.m. on Mondays. Farms with positive cases are quarantined.

KFF Health News reported that additional testing of farmworkers would make it possible for researchers to “track infections.” The problem is that “people generally get tested when they seek treatment for illnesses,” but farmworkers don’t tend to go to doctors unless they are very ill.

Farmworkers have been actively monitored for symptoms since the first case was detected but not PCR-tested. In response, federal authorities announced in May they would pay farmworkers to get tested for the virus as part of a program that also offers incentives to farmers to allow their dairy herds to get tested.

Workers are paid $75 for giving the CDC a blood sample and nasal swab.

The federal money also goes to support new wastewater surveillance using PCR tests. The CDC’s National Wastewater Surveillance System, launched in 2020, collects and makes public viruses identified in facilities across the country.

That wastewater testing is done by organizations including WastewaterSCAN, an infectious disease monitoring program based at Stanford University, in partnership with Emory University and funded through philanthropy, including the Sergey Brin Family Foundation created by the founder of Google.

The organization has most recently detected bird flu in San Francisco, although it is unclear whether it comes “from animal waste, milk, people or a combination of sources, according to the Los Angeles Times. WastewaterSCAN on June 3 began publicly reporting H5 data from its 190 sampling sites across the country in its online dashboard.

Other private companies that do PCR-based wastewater surveillance, like Biobot Analytics, are funded by venture capital firms in addition to the CDC.

The USDA Food Safety and Inspection Service is also testing meat from condemned cows. Late last month the agency announced that 95 of 96 culled cows tested negative for viral particles and that none of their meat entered the food supply.

It also reported that ground beef from retail facilities in states with cows that have tested positive for bird flu was all PCR-negative for the virus.

The agency also experimented with inoculating meat with high levels of the virus and then cooking it and testing for the virus. The virus was not detected in the meat patties cooked to medium or well-done, and it was “substantially inactivated” in the rare patties.

The FDA also tested retail dairy products in 17 states. The agency noted that PCR-positive results “do not necessarily represent live virus that may be a risk to consumers,” so when they found PCR-positive samples, they further tested them through a process called “egg inoculation.”

The agency found many samples with positive PCR tests, but none tested positive for the live virus.

This article was originally published by The Defender — Children’s Health Defense’s News & Views Website under Creative Commons license CC BY-NC-ND 4.0. Please consider subscribing to The Defender or donating to Children’s Health Defense.

Brenda Baletti, Ph.D., is a senior reporter for The Defender. She wrote and taught about capitalism and politics for 10 years in the writing program at Duke University. She holds a Ph.D. in human geography from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and a master’s from the University of Texas at Austin.

June 7, 2024 Posted by | Mainstream Media, Warmongering, Science and Pseudo-Science | , | Leave a comment

EU Plans Major Expansion of Mass Surveillance

Indiscriminate Data Collection, Device Monitoring, Encryption Backdoors, and Mandatory Data Sharing

By Didi Rankovic | Reclaim The Net | June 7, 2024

The European Union (EU) is planning to implement a new set of draconian mass surveillance rules shortly after Sunday’s EU Parliament election, a member of the EP has warned after the plans surfaced on the internet.

The conclusion that radical surveillance measures are in the works proceeds from documents detailing the meetings of working groups, dubbed “high level group(s) on access to data for effective law enforcement.”

The documents originate from the EU Commission, and contain a number of recommendations, including reintroducing indiscriminate retention of communications data in the bloc, creation of encryption backdoors, as well as forcing hardware manufacturers to give access to anything from phones to cars to law enforcement through what is known as “access by design.”

MEP Patrick Breyer announced that the plan contains 42 points produced by the EU Commission and governments of member-countries. The purpose of being able to access phones, IoT (such as “smart home”) devices, and cars is to make sure they can be monitored around the clock.

Meanwhile, the return of controversial data retention is planned despite a previous ruling of the EU Court of Justice, and could even be extended to include over-the-top services such as messengers (this is defined as retaining IP information data “at the very least”). That, Breyer explains, means that all internet activities will become trackable.

A favorite target of authorities actively undermining their image as democracies has for a while been end-to-end encryption. Here, the EU intends to ban secure encryption of metadata and subscriber data, as well as force messaging services who implement encryption to allow interception.

The EU further plans to “tackle” the use of encryption devices that it declares are “proven to be used solely” by criminals. In reality, the right to install encryption backdoors in phones and computers can be abused to spy on anyone, dissidents and critics included.

Technology providers will, if so ordered by judicial authorities, have to break encryption in order to “facilitate access to data at rest in user’s devices.” And there will be “mechanisms for robust cooperation with communication and technology providers” – meaning they will have to share data with governments and law enforcement.

If these agencies demand, service providers must activate GPS location tracking, according to these recommended “solutions for effective law enforcement.” Representatives of providers who refuse could end up in jail.

“This extreme surveillance plan must not become a reality, if only because it has been cooked up by a completely one-sided secret group of surveillance fanatics working without any real transparency or democratic legitimacy,” Breyer stated.

June 7, 2024 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Corruption, Full Spectrum Dominance | , | Leave a comment

Maybe We Need a New Government Surveillance Program…

Time To Turn the Cameras Around

Mind Matters and Everything Else with Dr. Joseph Sansone | June 7, 2024

Technology is a tool and a weapon. It may enhance and empower or disempower and enslave. A simple hammer can be a tool to construct a house or a weapon to bludgeon a man’s skull. As technology enhances, optimally, it would enhance the human condition. There is a delicate balancing between technological advancement and the wisdom to manage that advancement without causing destruction. Unfortunately, the wisdom to manage technological advancement often lags behind.

We are continuously told that there needs to be a balance between freedom and security. This of course is a false narrative, as once there is no freedom, there will be no security. If we examine what has been done in the name of security, it is astounding.

Our conversations are listened to and stored in databases, every keystroke on our keyboards is recorded, there are cameras on street corners, and the list goes on. All of this is in the name of security. The post 911 security state is something out of George Orwell’s 1984 where big brother is always watching you. It is clear that if you induce enough fear and hate, coupled with enough drugs and entertainment, people will willingly give up their liberty for a false sense of security. The result, of course, is that they will end up with neither.

So why am I suggesting we need a new government surveillance program?

The answer is simple. We don’t have one. Sure, we can file a FOI request. Maybe if we are lucky, we will get documents months later that is often heavily redacted information, and if we are really lucky, as a result, expose illegal activity. As was reported by Emerald Robinson, this of course recently happened, when it was discovered by Congress, that NIH scientists appeared to deliberately circumvent the law for the purposes of obstructing justice by using private emails, and even miss spelling words to avoid searches. These actions seem to indicate a criminal intent to obstruct justice.

I recently suggested in an interview on the Absolute Truth with Emerald Robinson that FOI requests are obsolete. To elaborate on that discussion, instead of FOI requests, we as civilians should be able to access government employee communications in real time whenever we want to. We should simply be able to look up one of our government employees and track all of their communications while they are working. We should also be able to track their phone conversations in real time and access transcripts of these conversations as they are occurring. This should all equally apply to government contractors.

It isn’t enough to be able to monitor their communications. We should also be able to watch what they are doing at all times in real time as well. As a civilian employer, you should be able to look up a government employee and watch what they are doing at all times while they are on the clock. For higher up level employees, you should be able to watch them after hours if they are meeting with other employees or government contractors. Body cameras would do the trick.

That’s right. Those cameras need to be turned around. If those cameras were monitoring in real time the employees in the prison where Epstein was held do you really think he would have committed suicide?

Of course, I am not excluding politicians or their interactions with each other or their staff. Politicians, government employees, and government contractors need to sacrifice their freedom for our security. Would the undeclared war on Russia have started, let alone escalated, if we as civilians were able to watch every conversation? Would we have ended up on the precipice of global war?

Imagine if every conversation of a war criminal like Fauci and other conspirators was on video. Global genocide would not be occurring. The people you know and love, would not be getting turbo cancers, strokes, heart attacks, autoimmune diseases, chronic fatigue, and neurological, problems to name a few.

Again, politicians sacrificing their freedom, is not merely for our freedom and security, it is for their security too. If we had constant monitoring of their activities, it is true they would not be able to make as much money in bribes, still, they are less likely to compromise themselves for blackmail purposes. The odds are that the typical politician’s blackmailable behavior will significantly decrease after the first real time escapades are viewed all over the place. I would maintain that physical intimidation will also decrease if there is constant monitoring of the typical politician. So, you see, if they sacrifice their freedom, it is clearly to maintain their safety as well. It is our duty to save the typical politician or government employee from themselves.

The reality is that we have created an upside down world with unfettered government that has become a direct threat to the people. The privacy of individuals and basic private property rights, and human rights in general have been kicked to the curb. Politicians and the government have been captured. A government that has secrets is inherently oppressive and contrary to the concept of a Constitutional Republic. Secret agencies and secret budgets are devastating to humanity.

Individual privacy and even communications are under attack. The idea that your private texts can be monitored, let alone censored from being sent, on its own should cause upheaval. Social media acting under the color of law censored medical information that could have saved countless lives over the past four years. So called hate speech laws are seeking to outlaw common sense. Canada’s laws preventing healthcare professionals from protecting children from gender mutilation are an example.

Maybe we should pass laws restricting the free speech of elected officials and government employees instead of limiting the free speech of us, the civilian employers?

Okay, maybe I am taking it a bit too far… The point is that the government, i.e. deep state, is an uncontrollable monster that must be reined in. Literally, the government is waging war against the people. The tightening noose of oppression will continue until we stop it. The deep state envisions a world, where most of us no longer exist, and for those that do remain, it will be a world transformed into the airport, degrading, humiliating, and exhausting.

June 7, 2024 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance, Timeless or most popular | | 1 Comment

Israel’s use of rape against Palestinian detainees from Gaza exposed

MEMO | June 7, 2024

A shocking three-month investigation by the New York Times has revealed gruesome details of abuse, torture and mistreatment of Palestinians held at Israel’s Sde Teiman detention facility. The exposé, based on interviews with former detainees, Israeli military officers, doctors and soldiers who served at the site, paints a harrowing picture of the conditions endured by the roughly 4,000 Palestinian detainees who have passed through the facility since 7 October.

Sde Teiman, an army base in southern Israel, has become a makeshift interrogation site where most Gazans captured by the occupation army have been brought for initial questioning. Detainees, classified as “unlawful combatants” under Israeli legislation, can be held for up to 75 days without judicial permission and 90 days without access to a lawyer or a trial. Their location is withheld from rights groups and even the International Committee of the Red Cross, in what legal experts say contravenes international law.

Former detainees described a litany of abuses at the hands of their captors, including beatings, electric shocks, humiliating treatment and rape. Eight former detainees, whose detention at the site has been confirmed by the military, reported being punched, kicked, and beaten with batons, rifle butts, and a hand-held metal detector while in custody.

Two detainees said their ribs were broken as a result of the assaults, with one claiming he was kneed in the chest and another stating he was kicked and beaten with a rifle. Seven detainees said they were forced to wear only a diaper during interrogations, and three claimed to have received electric shocks.

The Times’ investigation also uncovered allegations of sexual abuse and torture. Muhammad Al-Hamlawi, a 39-year-old senior nurse, recounted a horrific ordeal in which a female officer ordered two soldiers to lift him up and press his rectum against a metal stick fixed to the ground. The stick penetrated his rectum for roughly five seconds, causing it to bleed and leaving him in “unbearable pain.”

A leaked draft of a report by UNRWA, the main UN agency for Palestinians, cited similar accounts, including one detainee who said interrogators “made me sit on something like a hot metal stick and it felt like fire.” Another detainee according to the UN “died after they put the electric stick up” his anus.

Detainees described the dehumanising conditions they were subjected to, including being blindfolded, handcuffed and stripped naked except for their underwear. They were crammed into military trucks and driven to Sde Teiman, where they were held in open-sided hangars, forced to sit handcuffed in silence on mats for up to 18 hours a day. Exhausted detainees who fell asleep were summoned by officers and beaten as punishment.

The interrogation process itself was a nightmarish ordeal. Detainees were brought to a separate enclosure they dubbed the “disco room,” where extremely loud music was played to prevent them from sleeping – a form of torture that caused one detainee’s ear to bleed. Wearing nothing but a diaper, they were questioned and accused of being members of Hamas, then beaten when they denied any connection to the group.

The Israeli military has denied allegations of “systematic abuse” at Sde Teiman, claiming that any abuse of detainees is strictly prohibited and thoroughly investigated. However, the sheer number of consistent accounts from former detainees, coupled with the testimony of Israeli personnel at the site, suggests a disturbing pattern of mistreatment and torture.

Perhaps most disturbingly, of the 4,000 detainees held at Sde Teiman since October, 35 have died either at the site or after being brought to nearby civilian hospitals.

The revelations of the Sde Teiman detention facility have attracted growing scrutiny from the media. In May, CNN exposed gruesome details of abuse, torture and mistreatment of Palestinians in Sde Teiman. Israel’s Supreme Court has also begun hearing a petition from rights groups to close the site. As a result, Israel has begun moving Palestinians held in Sde Teiman to military-run prisons in the occupied West Bank.

June 7, 2024 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Subjugation - Torture, War Crimes | , , , | Leave a comment

Hezbollah air defenses force Israeli jets to turn tail

The Cradle | June 7, 2024

Hezbollah announced in a statement on 6 June that it targeted Israeli warplanes over the south of Lebanon, forcing them to withdraw to their airspace.

The statement marked the Lebanese resistance group’s first acknowledgment that it possesses the ability to confront Israeli fighter jets, something which observers have speculated about for years.

“In support of our steadfast Palestinian people in the Gaza Strip and in support of their brave and honorable resistance, the Mujahideen of the Islamic Resistance fired air defense missiles at enemy warplanes that were attacking our skies and broke the sound barrier [sonic boom] in an attempt to terrify children, forcing them to retreat to behind the borders,” Hezbollah’s statement read.

It did not elaborate further on the air defense weaponry.

The resistance group carried out several more attacks that day, including a Burkan missile attack on Israel’s Al-Baghdadi site.

Throughout the course of this war, Hezbollah has demonstrated its ability to down advanced Israeli drones flying over the south of Lebanon to carry out attacks. Several Hermes drones, made by Israeli weapons manufacturer Elbit Systems and worth several million a piece, have been shot down by Hezbollah in recent months.

“We still do not know much about the air defense missile itself, but it will restrain the ability of Israel to fly freely over Lebanon,” retired Lebanese General Amine Hoteit told The New Arab, referring to Thursday’s Hezbollah statement.

It is likely that Hezbollah has more advanced air defense weaponry than the missile launched towards Israeli warplanes on Thursday, Hoteit added.

US media reports from early November last year claimed that Washington has intelligence that Syria agreed to send Hezbollah a Russian-made missile defense system.

Hezbollah has turned up the heat on its operations against Israeli military sites in recent days, coinciding with the continued indiscriminate bombardment of south Lebanon and increasing Israeli threats of a wide-scale war against the country. A drone attack on Wednesday killed at least one soldier and injured around ten.

It has said that while it does not want a wider war, it is prepared to fight one if it is imposed on Lebanon.

June 7, 2024 Posted by | Militarism | , , , | Leave a comment

Houthis to Try New Hypersonic Missile in Continued Targeting of US Carrier Group

By Ilya Tsukanov – Sputnik – 07.06.2024

The Yemeni militia targeted the USS Dwight D. Eisenhower Nimitz-class supercarrier in the Red Sea last week amid the continued intensification of American and British air and missile strikes inside Yemen, which have killed scores of civilians.

The Houthis will hit the American aircraft carrier parked in Yemen’s backyard harder next time around, militia leader Abdul-Malik al-Houthi has vowed.

“The American aircraft carrier Eisenhower will remain a target for our Armed Forces whenever the opportunity arises,” al-Houthi said in his weekly address on Thursday.

“The facts will become clear no matter how much the Americans try to deny the targeting operations, and the upcoming strikes will be more effective,” al-Houthi added.

Offering new details on last week’s Houthi missile and drone barrage targeting the USS Eisenhower amid American denials that the operation did any damage to the supercarrier or its escorts, the Houthi leader emphasized that the attack was more successful than Washington is letting on.

“The operation targeting the aircraft carrier Eisenhower was successful, and overflights stopped for two days following the attack,” al-Houthi said, referring to American attacks over Yemeni airspace. The official added that while the US warship was situated about 400 km from Yemen before the Houthi attack, it was forced to sail 480 km northwest to safety in its aftermath. The operation was “one of the most notable and important operations to be carried out this week,” al-Houthi said.

“American warships flee and change their source when the operations are successful,” the militia leader said.

US Central Command on Friday vociferously denied Houthi claims that the USS Eisenhower was damaged in the Yemeni militia’s attacks.

“There is no truth to the Houthi claim of striking the USS Eisenhower or any US Navy vessel. This is an ongoing disinformation campaign that the Houthis have been conducting for months. While the Houthis intend to target our vessels, we can confirm that there has never been a successful attack on any US Navy vessel,” CENTCOM told Sputnik.

The Houthi attack on the carrier followed a spate of joint US-UK attacks targeting Yemen in an attempt to degrade the militia’s fighting capabilities, with the militia saying last week that the most recent strikes had killed at least 16 people and wounded 42 others.

The Houthis reported Friday that US and UK forces had carried out four new air strikes targeting the airport in Hodeidah, and launched a separate attack on northwestern Yemeni seaport of Salif.

Houthis Go Hypersonic?

Al-Houthi’s comments Thursday came a day after the Yemeni militia released footage of a new “locally made” hypersonic missile called the Palestine being launched toward the embattled Israeli Red Sea port city of Eilat this week.

Israeli officials confirmed Monday that Eilat had been targeted, but indicated that there was no damage or injuries to report.

In the footage, the new Yemeni solid-fuel missile’s warhead was painted in a checkered pattern reminiscent of a keffiyeh scarf. Western observers spotted outward similarities to the Fattah – an Iranian hypersonic missile unveiled in 2023 which can travel up to 1,400 km at speeds up to Mach 15. The range and speed characteristics of the Houthi missile remain unknown, but the distance between Houthi-controlled areas of Yemen and Eilat is closer to 1,700 km.

Iranian officials have repeatedly rejected claims by the US and its allies that it has provided arms to the Houthis. However, Iranian media recently confirmed that the country does give its anti-US and anti-Israeli Axis of Resistance allies “technical knowhow” enabling the homegrown production of sophisticated missiles. It remains unclear whether this applies to the new Palestine missile or not.

The Houthis have been teasing their fledgling hypersonic capabilities since the spring, with an informed source telling Sputnik in March that the new Houthi missile could accelerate to speeds of up to Mach 8 (nearly 10,000 km per hour) and had a solid fuel engine, which means reduced launch preparation time and improved ease of transport in Yemen’s difficult conditions.

“Yemen intends to begin manufacturing it for use during attacks in the Red and Arabian Seas and the Gulf of Aden, as well as against targets in Israel,” the source, who was not at liberty to speak publicly, said at the time.

Abdul-Malik Al-Houthi warned in March that the militia’s enemies, friends and Yemenis alike would soon “see a level of achievement of strategic importance which will place our country and its capabilities in the ranks of few countries in this world,” promising that Ansar Allah had “surprises” in store for the US and Israel which have yet to be revealed.

Russian military observer Alexei Leonkov told Sputnik in March that if the Yemeni militia really has managed to speed a missile up to Mach 8 or more, “that will mean that the ship-based air defense systems of the American naval group will be powerless.”

“The air defenses of the carrier strike group presently parked off the coast of the Arabian Peninsula and sporadically firing at the Houthis will not be able to intercept these missiles if they approach at Mach 8. And if the Houthis have managed to make them even a little maneuverable, that’s it, they won’t be possible to intercept. If the Houthis learn to accurately hit warships with these missiles, we will see America’s defeat,” Leonkov said.

US Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin signed an order last week to extend the Eisenhower carrier group’s deployment in the Middle East for a second time, holding off the rotation of the supercarrier and its three missile destroyer and cruiser escorts out of the region, where they have been stationed since last October.

June 7, 2024 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Wars for Israel | , , , , | Leave a comment

Biden claims Israel ‘has not invaded Rafah’ as jets, tanks raze city

The Cradle | June 7, 2024

US President Joe Biden told ABC News on 6 June that the Israeli government has listened to his “concerns” about a major military offensive in Gaza’s southernmost city of Rafah.

“They were going to go into Russia – into Rafah – full bore, invade all of Rafah, go into the city, take it out, move, move with full force. They haven’t done that. And what they’ve done is they’ve agreed to a significant agreement,” the US president said as Israeli warplanes continued their months-long blitz of residential areas and displacement camps in the city.

Residents of Rafah who spoke with Reuters on Friday morning described the latest raids as “one of the worst nights,” adding that “some people were wounded inside their homes before being evacuated this morning.”

Residents also said that Israeli tanks that have taken control along the border with Egypt made several raids towards the west and the center of the southern city.

“I think he’s listening to me,” Biden added when asked by ABC News if Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu heeded his warnings.

Elsewhere in the interview, Biden claimed Netanyahu will stick by his own ceasefire proposal. “He’s publicly said he is. Our European friends are in on it. We have to get a ceasefire.”

“What [Israel has] done is they’ve agreed to a significant agreement that if in fact Hamas accepts it,” the US president said before adding that the offer is backed by much of the Arab world.

“We’ll see. This is a very difficult time,” Biden said.

On Thursday, senior Hamas officials revealed that the Israeli ceasefire proposal “does not mention stopping the aggression or the withdrawal [of troops from Gaza].”

“The Israeli documents speak of open-ended negotiation with no deadline, and it speaks of a stage during which the occupation regains its captives and resumes the war. We had told the mediators that this proposal is unacceptable,” Hamas official Sami Abu Zuhri told Reuters on Thursday.

The Cradle columnist Khalil Harb earlier this week described the proposal presented by Biden as a “repackaging of last month’s Hamas-approved agreement, which he is now repositioning as an Israeli-sanctioned deal.

June 7, 2024 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, War Crimes | , , , , , | 1 Comment

The Shameful Journey from “Prelude to Genocide” to “Slow-motion Genocide” to “Rampant Genocide”

And the international community won’t intervene

By Stuart Littlewood | Dissident Voice | June 6, 2024

Israel’s illegal control over the West Bank (including East Jerusalem) and Gaza has for decades prevented the Palestinian people from exercising their right of self-determination and full and effective self-governance. UN Resolution 3246 calls for all States to recognise that that right applies to all peoples subjected to colonial and foreign domination, including the Palestinians.

The warning signs of genocide in Gaza had been there for all to see. But the lack of will on the part of UN members to implement 3246 not only let it happen but then failed to stop it even when its ferocity passed all comprehension.

When October 7 erupted the West attempted to airbrush the pre-existing conditions Israel had imposed on Gaza and pretended Hamas started the ‘war’. But 1,000 lawyers, scholars, and practitioners immediately sounded the alarm about “the possibility of the crime of genocide being perpetrated by Israeli forces against Palestinians in the Gaza Strip” and issued an open letter as early as 15 October.

For a start they reminded everyone that in 1982 the UN General Assembly condemned the massacre of Palestinian civilians in the Sabra and Shatila refugee camps as “an act of genocide”.

Pre-existing conditions in the Gaza Strip had prompted discussion on genocide before, with warnings given over the years that the siege of Gaza (from 2006 onwards) might amount to a “prelude to genocide” or a “slow-motion genocide”.

And since 2007, shortly after Hamas won the Palestinian elections, Israel had defined the Gaza Strip as an “enemy entity”.

Earlier in 2023 Israeli Minister of Finance Bezalel Smotrich called Palestinians “repugnant”, and “disgusting” and proposed “wiping out” the entire Palestinian village of Huwwara in the West Bank.

Here’s a timely reminder of what else the open letter said.

• In the short space of time between 7 October and 15 October (when the open letter was written), 2,329 Palestinians were killed and 9,042 Palestinians injured in Israeli attacks on Gaza, including over 724 children, huge swathes of neighborhoods, and entire families across Gaza were obliterated.

• Israel’s Defence Minister ordered a “complete siege” of the Gaza Strip prohibiting the supply of fuel, electricity, water, and other necessities. This intensifies an already illegal and potentially genocidal siege turning it into an outright destructive assault.

• The ICRC (International Committee of the Red Cross) stated that orders to evacuate, coupled with the complete siege, are incompatible with international humanitarian law. Almost half a million Palestinians have already been displaced and Israeli forces have bombed the only possible exit route that Israel does not control (the Rafah crossing to Egypt) multiple times.

• The World Health Organisation published a warning that “forcing more than 2000 patients to relocate to southern Gaza, where health facilities are already running at maximum capacity and unable to absorb a dramatic rise in the number of patients, could be tantamount to a death sentence”.

• In the occupied West Bank and Jerusalem, since 7 October, Israeli settlers backed by the IDF and police, have attacked and shot Palestinian civilians at point-blank range (as documented in the villages of a-Tuwani and Qusra), invaded their homes, and assaulted residents. Several Palestinian communities have already been forced to abandon their homes, after which settlers arrived and destroyed their property.

• Between 7 and 15 October, Al-Haq documented the killing by the Israeli military and settlers of 55 Palestinians in the West Bank with 1,200 injured there.

• Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant declared on 9 October: “We are fighting human animals and we act accordingly”, and afterward announced that Israel was moving to “a full-scale response” and he had “removed every restriction” on Israeli forces, also stating: “Gaza won’t return to what it was before. We will eliminate everything.”

• On 10 October, the head of the Israeli Army’s Coordinator of Government Activities in the Territories (COGAT), Maj. Gen. Ghassan Alian, addressed a message directly to Gaza residents: “Human animals must be treated as such. There will be no electricity and no water, there will only be destruction. You wanted hell, you will get hell”.

• Israeli army spokesperson Daniel Hagari acknowledged the wanton and intentionally destructive nature of Israel’s bombing campaign in Gaza: “The emphasis is on damage and not on accuracy.”

• On 7 October, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said that Gazans would pay an “immense price” for the actions of Hamas fighters and asserted that Israel will wage a prolonged offensive that will turn parts of Gaza’s densely populated urban centers “into rubble”.

• Israel’s President emphasized that the Israeli authorities view the entire Palestinian population of Gaza as responsible for the actions of militant groups, and subject accordingly to collective punishment and unrestricted use of force: “It is an entire nation out there that is responsible.”

• Israeli Minister of Energy and Infrastructure Israel Katz added: “All the civilian population in Gaza is ordered to leave immediately. We will win. They will not receive a drop of water or a single battery until they leave the world.”

• On 12 October UN Special Rapporteurs condemned “Israel’s indiscriminate military attacks against the already exhausted Palestinian people of Gaza, comprising over 2.3 million people, nearly half of whom are children. They have lived under unlawful blockade for 16 years, and already gone through five major brutal wars, which remain unaccounted for”.

• UN experts warned against “the withholding of essential supplies such as food, water, electricity and medicines. Such actions will precipitate a severe humanitarian crisis in Gaza, where its population is now at an inescapable risk of starvation. Intentional starvation is a crime against humanity”.

• On 14 October the UN Special Rapporteur, on the situation of human rights in the occupied Palestinian territory, warned against “a repeat of the 1948 Nakba, and the 1967 Naksa, yet on a larger scale” as Israel is carrying out “mass ethnic cleansing of Palestinians under the fog of war”.

• The Palestinian population of Gaza appears to be presently subjected by the Israeli forces and authorities to widespread killing, bodily and mental harm, and unviable conditions of life – against a backdrop of Israeli statements that evidence signs of intent to physically destroy the population.

• Article II of the Genocide Convention provides that “genocide means any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, such as # Killing members of the group; # Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group; # Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part; # Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group; # Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.”

• The Convention provides that individuals who attempt genocide or who incite genocide “shall be punished, whether they are constitutionally responsible rulers, public officials or private individuals”.

• The International Court of Justice has clarified that “a State’s obligation to prevent, and the corresponding duty to act, arise at the instant that the State learns of, or should normally have learned of, the existence of a serious risk that genocide will be committed. From that moment onwards, if the State has available means likely to have a deterrent effect on those suspected of preparing genocide, or reasonably suspected of harboring specific intent (dolus specialist), it is under a duty to make such use of these means as the circumstances permit”. (The many means available to the British Government include sanctions – readily applied to other delinquent nations – and withdrawal of favored-nation privileges, trade deals, and scientific collaboration).

• Competent elements of the United Nations, particularly the UN General Assembly, are required to take urgent action under the Charter of the United Nations appropriate for the prevention and suppression of acts of genocide. Emphasis is on the General Assembly given that the Security Council is compromised by the US and UK (both permanent veto-holding members) sending military forces to the eastern Mediterranean in support of Israel.

• All relevant UN bodies, including the Office on Genocide Prevention and the Responsibility to Protect, as well as the Office of the Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court, are called on to immediately intervene, carry out necessary investigations, and invoke the necessary warning procedures to protect the Palestinian population from genocide.

Chock-full of hate

All this was quickly followed by the UK Lawyers’ Open Letter Concerning Gaza of 26 October 2023, which contained important warnings regarding international law — for example:

⦁ The UK is duty-bound to “respect and ensure respect” for international humanitarian law as set out in the Four Geneva Conventions in all circumstances (1949 Geneva Conventions, Common Art 1). That means the UK must not itself assist violations by others.

⦁ The UK Government must immediately halt the export of weapons from the UK to Israel, given the clear risk that they might be used in serious violations of international humanitarian law and in breach of the UK’s domestic Strategic Export Licensing Criteria, including its obligations under the Arms Trade Treaty.

So, within 3 weeks it was clear to everyone paying attention that the Israeli leadership, chock-full of hate, were set on a course of vicious and brutal genocide. Yet the following month John Kirby, the White House National Security Communications Advisor, dismissed claims that Israel was committing genocide and told everybody that “Israel is not trying to wipe the Palestinian people off the map. Israel is not trying to wipe Gaza off the map. Israel is trying to defend itself against a genocidal terrorist threat. So if we’re going to start using that word, fine. Let’s use it appropriately.”

Yes, and let’s use the term “right of self-defence” appropriately. In Gaza and the West Bank it only applies to the Palestinian resistance, not the belligerent illegal occupier.

Incredibly, we’re now entering the 9th month of the genocide in Gaza and it has gone from bad to much, much worse. And there is still no let-up. People worldwide have been watching day after day mainstream and alternative media reports, seeing for themselves the horrors endured even by children, and aghast at the wholesale and wanton destruction of the Palestinians’ homeland. They cannot believe how depraved, immoral and spineless the international community has become, and how paralysed the UN in allowing the slaughter to continue. They are especially sickened by the conduct of the so-called ‘major powers’ and by the lunatic Netanyahu whom their own politicians call ‘friend and ally’ who thinks he can still dictate what happens in Gaza after he eventually condescends to end the butchery.

If he thinks Israel can now grab Gaza by conquest he may be disappointed. Article 2(4) of the UN Charter expressly prohibits aggressive war and Article 5(3) of General Assembly Resolution 3314 (XXIX) of 1975 (which includes the definition of Acts of Aggression) nullifies any legal title acquired in this way. And 5(3) says “All Members shall refrain in their international relations from the threat or use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of any state, or in any other manner inconsistent with the Purposes of the United Nations“.

In carrying through its genocidal assault on Gaza’s civilians and their homes, infrastructure and livelihoods Israel cannot possibly claim to abide by international law or honour their obligations under the Charter. And by encouraging Israel — and supplying the weaponry — neither can the US and UK.

And now we have Biden, Israel’s loony protector, setting ‘red lines’ which Israel must not cross while merrily carrying on with their genocide. But they are so elastic that, with US permission, the hateful maniacs can almost do as they please to satisfy their genocidal lust. Biden arrogantly overrules the red lines on war crimes and crimes against humanity that are already set out by international law.

June 7, 2024 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Timeless or most popular, War Crimes | , , , , | Leave a comment

Pipeline v genocide: How Turkiye can legally block oil exports to Israel

By Suat Delgen | The Cradle | June 7, 2024

Israel receives 40 percent of its oil through the Baku–Tbilisi–Ceyhan (BTC) pipeline, a critical energy route running from the Caspian Sea through Azerbaijan, Georgia, and Turkiye to the Turkish port of Ceyhan and onward, via tanker, to Israeli ports.

The pipeline primarily transports oil from Azerbaijan’s Azeri–Chirag–Deepwater Gunashli (ACG) field and condensate from the Shah Deniz field. British Petroleum (BP) operates the ACG field on behalf of the Azerbaijan International Operating Company (AIOC), a consortium of international oil companies.

Another consortium, including BP, SOCAR, MOL, Equinor, TPAO, Eni, TotalEnergies, ITOCHU, INPEX, ExxonMobil, and ONGC Videsh, operates the BTC pipeline and markets the oil globally. On 10 May, BP announced this consortium’s involvement in the pipeline’s management.

Way back in 1999, a Transit State Agreement and an Intergovernmental Agreement were signed between the consortium and Turkiye, Azerbaijan, and Georgia, ratified by the Turkish Grand National Assembly, and officially came into effect on 10 September 2000.

Pressure to halve the oil flow to Israel 

On 2 May, in the face of growing domestic pressure to sever ties with Israel over its brutal war on Gaza, Turkiye announced a complete suspension of all import and export transactions to the occupation state until uninterrupted humanitarian aid was allowed into Gaza.

But what about the oil? With so many other states and global multinationals involved, can and has Turkiye stopped the oil being transported from Ceyhan to Israel?

Geopolitical importance of the BTC Pipeline 

The BTC pipeline emerged from the geopolitical shifts that followed the collapse of the Soviet Union in the early 1990s. As newly independent states in the Caspian region, particularly Azerbaijan, sought to develop their vast oil and gas reserves, they sought to export these resources to western markets without relying on Russian transit routes. Washington explicitly backed the BTC pipeline to reduce Moscow’s influence and create an alternative export route for Caspian energy.

For its part, Turkiye viewed the BTC project as a strategic opportunity to boost its significance as a key energy corridor. Despite initial doubts about the pipeline’s feasibility, political commitment from the US, Turkiye, and regional states, along with investment from major international oil companies like BP, gradually propelled the project forward.

This collaboration led to the creation of the BTC pipeline, marking a major shift in the region’s energy dynamics and geopolitics.

Today, the pipeline is a crucial route connecting the Caspian Sea to the Mediterranean and can shift 1.2 million barrels per day (bpd). According to recent data from the State Statistical Committee of Azerbaijan, the volume of oil transported through the BTC pipeline increased by 1.6 percent in 2023, reaching 30.2 million tons.

Operated by BP, the BTC pipeline is the primary conduit for oil exports from the Azeri, Chirag, and Gunashli oil fields. Last year, Azerbaijan’s total oil transportation amounted to 39.7 million tons, with the pipeline accounting for 76 percent of this volume.

The pipeline also serves as a transit route for oil from Turkmenistan and Kazakhstan, with transit oil volumes rising from 5.1 million tons in 2022 to 5.2 million tons in 2023. Given the significant share of Kazakh and Azerbaijani oil in Israel’s crude oil supply, the BTC pipeline is pivotal in facilitating this energy trade.

A Bloomberg report from October 2023 highlights Tel Aviv’s heavy reliance on this pipeline for its oil supply, from which it received approximately 220,000 bpd of oil since mid-May 2023. Kazakhstan was the largest source, providing 92,500 bpd, followed by Azerbaijan with 44,000 bpd.

Data from the State Customs Committee of Azerbaijan showed that Azerbaijan exported around 1,021,917 tons of crude oil and products to Israel in the first three months of 2024 – a value of $621 million. These figures underscore the critical role of the BTC pipeline in maintaining Israel’s energy security and the potential impact of any disruption to this supply route.

Legal constraints on halting oil flow

Despite Israel’s dependence on oil from the Port of Ceyhan, Turkiye lacks the authority to stop the oil flow except under force majeure conditions, according to the agreement signed with the BP-led consortium. The “Host Government Agreement” (HGA) and the “Intergovernmental Agreement” (IGA) that underpin the BTC Pipeline Project legally bind Ankara to ensure uninterrupted oil flow.

These agreements contain provisions that commit signatory states, including Turkiye, to obligations beyond typical international treaty law. Specifically, the agreements make signatory states unconditionally liable for any construction or oil transport delays, irrespective of the cause.

This gives the international consortium a privileged legal position over national states and requires states to relinquish some sovereign powers, such as legislation and adjudication rights. Thus, even if Turkiye wanted to suspend oil flow to Israel for political reasons, the strict liability clauses and other provisions in the BTC agreements would likely prevent it legally.

Thus, Turkiye is contractually obligated to ensure uninterrupted oil flow or face legal consequences, even for foreign policy reasons. While the BTC pipeline’s strategic importance justifies accepting restrictive terms, the agreements reflect an imbalance favoring corporate interests over state interests.

Potential legal justifications using ICJ measures

However, it is worth noting that South Africa’s proceedings against Israel at the International Court of Justice (ICJ) last December – alleging its actions in Gaza constitute genocide – may have an impact on multiple business and state legal arrangements everywhere.

Officially known as “Application of the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide in the Gaza Strip (South Africa v Israel),” the ICJ has already issued several provisional measures that Israel must undertake to prevent further harm to civilians while the case is being adjudicated.

The ICJ measures are legally binding, and Israel has thus far largely ignored the court’s demands.

It is, therefore, possible for Turkiye to use these ICJ provisional measures as a legal justification to prevent tankers from transporting oil to Israel until a ceasefire in Gaza is achieved.

Ankara could make the legal argument that, in line with the ICJ measures, the oil transported from Ceyhan is being used to continue military operations in Gaza and that, seeking to avoid complicity in a crime against humanity and assisting in implementing ICJ decisions, Turkiye cannot permit the use of its ports for this purpose.

Such a declaration by Turkiye could exert significant pressure on Israel and place the oil consortium on notice that genocide does trump business-as-usual.

While the complex and multifaceted nature of diplomatic and economic ties between Ankara and Tel Aviv make a complete severance of relations unlikely, Turkiye may now hold in its hand a unique legal opportunity to call the shots on oil supply to the occupation state.

June 7, 2024 Posted by | War Crimes | , , | Leave a comment

American mainstream expert calls for global war in three continents

By Uriel Araujo | June 7, 2024

Is a “Three-Theater” war scenario both feasible and desirable for the US? Some think so. American analysts within the Establishment are in fact calling for war “in Asia, Europe, and the Middle East.” This is what Thomas G. Mahnken (both a Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies professor and the CEO of  the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments) is urging Washington to do, in his most recent Foreign Affairs piece.

For Mahnken, Washington is “currently involved in two wars—Ukraine’s in Europe and Israel’s in the Middle East”, while also “facing the prospect of a third over Taiwan or South Korea in East Asia.” Moreover, “all three theaters are vital to US interests, and they are all intertwined.” Deprioritizing Europe and disengaging from the Middle East can only weaken American security, he argues: “The U.S. military drawdown in the Middle East, for instance, has created a vacuum that Tehran has filled eagerly.” Of course, such reasoning can only make sense if American “security” is equated with Washington’s unipolarity.

US Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin, during his recent speech at Shangri-la Dialogue (in Singapore), made it a point to stress that “despite historic clashes in Europe and the Middle East… the Indo-Pacific has remained our priority theater of operations.” According to Austin, the US is a Pacific nation (with a capital P, and with no pun intended, presumably), and added that “the US can be secure only if Asia is secure. That’s why… [we have] long maintained our presence in this region. And that’s why we continue to make the investments necessary to meet our commitments to our allies and partners.” As for the relationship with China, the Secretary was more ambiguous, claiming that “a fight with China is neither imminent nor unavoidable.”

While Lloyd Austin seems to differ from Mahnken (on emphasis), there is not necessarily a dilemma there. I’ve often described Washington’s ambitions as being all about having the cake and eating it too. Jerry Hendrix (retired Navy captain, formerly an adviser to Pentagon senior officials, and currently a senior fellow with the Sagamore Institute) has written that, in Mackinder terms (classic Geopolitics), the US has embarked on a quest for the “Heartland”, and this contradicts its true “sea power” nature. This is so because Washington, in recent times, has been “burdened” by mostly “land-based actions in Iraq and Afghanistan fought primarily by a large standing army operating far from home”.

Rather than doing that, Hendrix urges the Atlantic superpower to, once again, “think and act like a seapower state”, that is, with a focus on deriving its might from “seaborne trade”, employing “instruments of sea power” to advance its interests. The expert describes the post-World War II period as an exceptional “free sea” period, marked by a “secure environment” which has supposedly allowed free trade to flourish in a globalized planet – this being the rather gleeful manner in which he describes the US-led world order, in spite of the fact that Washington has always weaponized protectionism.

In any case, as Hendrix notes, the American superpower acts both as a “continental power” and as a “sea power”. I’ve described its foreign policy as resembling  the swing of a pendulum. Give or take, all Great Powers engage to some extent in proxy conflicts amid their geoeconomic and geopolitical disputes with other powers. In terms of regional disputes, whether one likes or not Moscow’s foreign policy today, one can at least concede that historically Russia and neighboring Ukraine have an intertwined and complicated shared history, and the same applies to China-Taiwan relations. But America is something quite different. To keep things in perspective, one should keep in mind, for example, that, amazingly, the only place in the entire world China has an overseas military base is Djibouti, in the Horn of Africa. In contrast, depending on how one counts it, Washington, in 2015, had about 800 military bases in over 70 countries.

Moreover, the US has in fact invaded 84 out of the 194 nation-states recognized by the United Nations, and has been militarily involved with no less than 191 of those, according to  Christopher Kelly and Stuart Laycock, the authors of “America Invades: How We’ve Invaded or been Militarily Involved with almost Every Country on Earth”. The hard truth is that the United States of America is the only nation today (and arguably ever) to potentially engage in warfare across three continents – a scenario, keep in mind, that is cheered by prominent mainstream American commentators and scholars.

Other analysts, such as Andrea Rizzi, writing for El Pais, have described the possibility of war fronts in the Middle East, Europe and the Asia-Pacific becoming connected as a “nightmare” scenario – although not so convincingly, in Rizzi’s case, who seems to believe the political West has necessarily something to do with “democracy”, a historically controversial premise to say the least. Rizzi, however, makes the very valid point that “in geopolitics — and in life — high-stress situations lead to a greater margin for unforeseen events, errors in calculation and communication, uncontrolled actions by minority factions and escalations that are unintended, at least by the key players.” Even the main actors have an interest in keeping stability, at some point someone (or one’s proxies) may indeed make “a daring movie”, in Rizzi’s words, and thus bring about an escalation and unpredictable outcomes.

A series of Ukrainian and Western actions arguably represented precisely such a red-line crossing, in Moscow’s perspective. While some worry about the same thing happening in the Pacific, thus inadvertently igniting yet another war, others call for and crave for precisely such a war – not just in the Indo-Pacific region, but also in Europe and the Middle East, simultaneously. It is hard to describe such a call in any way other than as a will to set the world on fire – after all, one cannot literally desire war between Great Powers in three continents and not expect everything else that often comes with it (call it apocalypse in disguise, if you will).

Unbelievably, such bellicose calls, rather than being confined to the hate speech of extreme and fringe individuals and organizations, pass as reasonable and mainstream discourse, produced as it is, by respectable experts with impeccable credentials. And, mind you, Foreign Affairs will even publish it. It is no wonder: Washington foreign policy itself is, after all, largely built on the premise of American unipolarity and global war if need be.

June 7, 2024 Posted by | Militarism | , , , | Leave a comment

Germany approves plan for war

RT | June 7, 2024

The German government has finalized new plans for a potential war, including reinstatement of compulsory military service and deployment of NATO troops on its eastern flank, citing rising concerns over perceived threats from Russia.

The country’s new defense framework was approved by Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s cabinet on Wednesday, replacing guidelines that dated back to 1989. “As a result of Russian aggression, we have a completely changed security situation in Europe,” Interior Minister Nancy Faeser said in a statement.

The new defense plan spells out such details as mandatory conscription and forcing manufacturers to produce only war goods. Parts of the country could be evacuated, and subway stations, underground parking lots and other subterranean facilities would be used as temporary shelters.

Revisions to the framework also reflect NATO’s eastward expansion, which could mean coming to the aid of allies in the Baltic States. “Germany is no longer a frontline state, but serves the allied armed forces as a hub for the alliance in the heart of Europe,” the cabinet said.

The government reportedly has plans to control food distribution to deal with possible shortages in the event of a war. Those contingencies include stockpiling wheat and other grains in secret locations and creating an emergency reserve of rice and beans. The reserves would provide the German population with one hot meal a day, German media outlet Bild reported.

Beyond the military draft, citizens could be forced to work in certain civilian jobs, such as nursing or baking bread. Hospitals would have to be prepared for large influxes of patients.

Defense Minister Boris Pistorius said the new plans reflect increased security threats. “The overall defense of Germany is a task to which we all have to make our contribution, state and civil institutions, as well as each and every one of us,” he insisted. “We need a resilient society that can deal with the challenges.”

Pistorius warned German lawmakers on Wednesday that the country must be “ready for war” by 2029. He suggested that the Bundeswehr needs to be expanded, ideally by requiring military service that “cannot be completely free of obligations.”

Berlin abolished its draft in 2011, and the country’s military has faced equipment shortfalls. A parliamentary report last year said that at the current pace of military revitalization, it could take half a century to shore up German forces.

Germany and other NATO members have claimed that the bloc faces the threat of a Russian invasion if Moscow prevails in its conflict with Ukraine. Speaking at a briefing with foreign media outlets on Wednesday in St. Petersburg, Russian President Vladimir Putin said Western governments are stoking absurd fears to help maintain their global hegemony. “Someone has imagined that Russia wants to attack NATO,” he added. “Have you gone completely insane? Are you as thick as a plank? Who came up with this nonsense, this bulls**t?”

June 7, 2024 Posted by | Militarism | | 1 Comment

Politics About the War in Ukraine – Part Sixteen of The Anglo-American War on Russia

Tales of the American Empire | June 6, 2024

This series began two years ago as the war in Ukraine progressed. Over time, interesting video clips surfaced that were ignored by our corporate media but posted at small, independent sites like “December1991”, which is linked below. These appeared after relevant episodes in this series were posted so I’ve grouped them in this episode.

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“December1991”; hundreds of video clips about the war in Ukraine; Bitchute; https://www.bitchute.com/channel/nnwl…

Related Tales: “The Anglo-American War on Russia”; https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list…

June 7, 2024 Posted by | Timeless or most popular, Video | , , , | Leave a comment