By Ahmed Adel | March 30, 2023
The US should bluntly tell Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky that Kiev will eventually have to accept territorial concessions, former CIA Counterterrorism Center chief Robert Grenier said. This comes as Zelensky admitted that his people are becoming weary of conflict.
“The time is fast approaching when a senior representative of the Biden administration will need to begin a similarly tough, realistic — and empathetic — dialogue with Zelensky,” he wrote in The Hill, adding that although the US president is “a great friend” of Kiev, “his ability to deliver on his implicit and explicit promises of support for Ukraine ‘for as long as it takes’ is likely to be curtailed in the near future.”
“Zelensky must be pushed in the direction of a negotiated solution, likely to include territorial concessions on Crimea and the Donbass,” the former CIA official said.
In the expert’s opinion, the Ukrainian conflict does not threaten Washington’s national security, and therefore the total defence of every inch of Ukrainian territory is not on the list of vital interests of the West.
“Now is the time for the administration to engage in some hard critical thinking, followed by tough talk in Kyiv, in NATO capitals, and yes, in Moscow,” Grenier said. He caveated that by saying it is important for NATO to make Ukraine an impregnable fortress to deter Russia in the future, but that the West does not need the whole country for this purpose.
Moscow has repeatedly stressed that the Kherson, Zaporozhye, Donetsk and Lugansk regions, as well as the Crimean Peninsula, are inseparable parts of Russia. At one point in the future, these regions will be completely liberated by Russia and this will be a bitter reality for Kiev and the West to accept.
For his part, US Marine Corps intelligence officer Scott Ritter recently said that the Ukrainian army would eventually lose Artyomovsk (Bakhmut), which will in turn lead to the country’s defeat and the downfall of Zelensky. He argued that Zelensky still has a chance to avoid further catastrophe if he decides to follow the plan proposed by China. The former intelligence officer said if Zelensky followed China’s peace plan, Ukraine would survive as a nation, its army would be preserved, and it keeps the door open for EU membership.
Known for decades as Artyomovsk, and still called that in Russian, the city has recently been the scene of bloody fighting due to its importance for supplying Ukrainian troops in the Donbass region. When the town is captured by Russian forces, large swathes of Donbass will be opened for liberation.
It is for this reason that Zelensky said in an interview with the Associated Press on March 28 that Russia may begin building international support for a peace deal that could require Ukraine to compromise on promises already made, adding that if Russian President Vladimir Putin “will feel some blood – smell that we are weak – he will push, push, push.”
Zelensky also admitted that he is worried that the war could be impacted by shifting political forces in Washington, which is why in desperation he also extended an invitation for Chinese President Xi Jinping to visit Kiev.
“We are ready to see him here. I want to speak with him. I had contact with him before full-scale war. But during all this year, more than one year, I didn’t have,” he said.
Zelensky also begrudgingly acknowledged “our society will feel tired” if the Ukrainian military were defeated in Artyomovsk. “Our society will push me to compromise with them.”
Although he expressed confidence in finally prevailing over Russia, Zelensky is leaving a trail of breadcrumbs to perhaps slowly normalise the idea that a compromise must be made, one that very well could be unpopular for Ukrainians, especially after all the boastful and arrogant comments made by their president about a final victory.
The war in Ukraine will continue to be a difficult grind, in which Russia will ultimately prevail in, but a realistic mindset by Washington and Kiev can avoid a lot of unnecessary bloodshed. Although there are a lot more voices urging for an acceptance of Russia’s terms, there is still little indication from the Biden administration that they will wind back their support for Kiev.
So long as this flow of Western support does not end, the war will drag out longer than necessary but will still reach the same conclusion. Many US experts are pushing for a swift conclusion to the war as they would rather focus on the deteriorating economic situation at home, especially as the next US presidential election is next year.
Although the economic situation in the US is worsening, Biden continues to blindly send billions to Ukraine, something that cannot be sustained as the election comes closer and closer and criticism becomes harsher. Zelensky perhaps senses that not only his own people are tired of the war, but also Westerners, who are feeling the indirect impact of it, which is why now he has placed such great importance on Artyomovsk.
Ahmed Adel is a Cairo-based geopolitics and political economy researcher.
March 30, 2023
Posted by aletho |
Aletho News | Russia, Ukraine |
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So-called ‘smart phones’ — far more accurately described as ‘dumb phones’ — combine a mobile phone with a watch, with a road map, with a tourist atlas of the world, with a digital camera, with a personal stereo system, with a music collection, with a video recorder, with a diary, with a calculator, with a credit card, with a travelcard, with an office key, with a torch, with a newspaper, with a television, with something to read on the train, and probably a lot more.
I don’t know, because I don’t own one.
‘But it’s so convenient!’ cry those who stare unbelieving at my twenty-year-old Nokia.
To which I reply: ‘Convenience breeds compliance.’ But to what?
Since they were first introduced into our lives in 2008, smartphones have become our outsourced memory and brain, replacing both with the convenience of not having to remember anything or think for ourselves. If you don’t believe me, then answer me this without looking at your smart phone. What is 9 x 13? What was the capital of the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia? In what month of which year did the UK invade Iraq at the tail-end of the US-led coalition? Before smart phones, every child in the UK knew the answers to these questions. Now, no adult does.
But they are now even more than this. Smartphones, under the two years of lockdown, were the instrument onto which the COVID-faithful downloaded the software applications (or app) that connected them to the Test and Trace tracking programme that identified and recorded their location, movements, associations and personal contacts.
In the imminent future, smartphones are the instrument onto which, in the guise of the digital verification of our identity — the Government’s ‘consultation’ on which closed this month — the compliant will upload their biometric data (fingerprints, photograph and DNA swab) to a centralised database to which the 32 public authorities presiding over the UK biosecurity state will have access.
Under the Digital Economy Act 2017, these public authorities include the Cabinet Office; the Home Office; the Department for Defence; HM Treasury; the Ministry of Justice; the Department for Education; the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy; the Department for Work and Pensions; the Department for Communities and Local Government; the Department for Culture, Media and Sport; the Department for Transport; the Department for Food, Environment and Rural Affairs; Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs; all county, district and London councils; the Greater London Authority; the Council of the City of London; all fire and rescue authorities; all police authorities; all education authorities; all gas and electricity authorities; HM Land Registry; and, under Section 35, any other public authority, or private agent providing a service for a public authority, designated for a specific purpose justifying access to that data.
Smartphones are the instrument that will monitor whether their owners are up-to-date with what the UK biosecurity state decides is fully ‘vaccinated’ with whatever our Government and its partners in the pharmaceutical industry decide we must inject into our bodies as a condition of access to the rights of citizenship.
Smartphones are the instrument that will monitor and record how many times we leave or enter our 15-minute grazing range currently being implemented by our public authorities to restrict and limit our freedom of movement on the justification of ‘saving the planet’.
Smart phones are the instrument that will track our carbon footprint in order to monitor and control the quantity of meat, dairy products, energy, oil, petrol and other products to which the UK biosecurity state — under the terms of the agreements of Agenda 2030 signed by the UK Government in 2015 — will progressively cut off our access between now and 2030.
Smartphones are the means by which our compliance with lockdowns, masking mandates and programmes of gene therapy dictated by the World Health Organization’s Pandemic Prevention, Preparedness and Response Treaty and enforced by the UK biosecurity state will be monitored, recorded and enforced by, among other recourses, cutting off our access to the electronic and digital grid.
And, within the next few years, smartphones will become the digital wallet through which the Bank of England will have complete control over how much, on what and where we spend its Central Bank Digital Currency.
Smartphones are the first generation of the biotechnology that is already being implanted into our bodies in the form of ingested medicines carrying microchips that record compliance; quantum dot dyes in gene therapies injected as vaccines against the latest civilisation-threatening pandemic declared by the WHO; and microprocessors implanted under our skin for the ease and convenience of contactless payments. Smart phones are the precursor of what Klaus Schwab, the founder of the World Economic Forum, accurately and prophetically boasted will be ‘the fusion of our physical, our digital and our biological identities’ in the rapidly approaching future he has planned for us.
Smartphones, therefore, are the technology of our enslavement, and the fact that, knowing all this as more and more of us do, we still — still — won’t discard them, shows how addicted we are to this technology, how deep it has penetrated into our psychology, and in effect into our biology. Like the prisoners forced to construct the camp in which they are imprisoned, we continue to pay increasing sums for our smartphones, upgrade our prison whenever we’re invited to, and demand that its facilities are regularly increased in efficiency with the latest technology.
The truth is, we don’t programme smartphones and we don’t use them. They programme us, they change how we use them. They use us. With the rise of the car as a widely-available convenience between the 1950s and 60s, someone observed that, if aliens visited earth, they would think cars were the dominant life-form, and that we were merely the energy source that, upon entering them, allows them to move about — a little like food is for us. Seventy years and two industrial revolutions later, we’re now the organic component that operates smartphones, and in doing so allows them to replicate in number and increase in power — above all over us. That, at its most basic, is the function of the human being in the Global Biosecurity State. And if we keep thinking that we use our smartphones — as they have programmed us to think — those who programme them will have complete control over us.
So, let’s say just for a moment — symbolically at least, or better yet in anticipation of a future and definitive parting — throw your smartphone away now, as you’re reading this article. Get up, and throw it in the bin. And if you can’t do even that — and I imagine few if any of you reading this will — I invite you to reflect on this addiction to the technologies of the Fourth Industrial Revolution.
A smartphone is not a tool. It is not a ‘convenience’. It is biotechnology, and the fact that it isn’t yet implanted into our bodies doesn’t mean it hasn’t already become a part of us — and a part of us you have just demonstrated you are ready to sacrifice your freedom to rather than discard. Indeed, what the past three years of cowardice and obedience have demonstrated is that, as obedient subjects of capitalism, we will defend our slavery with far more vehemence than we will defend our freedoms.
In 1944, as the Second World War drew to its end, the Surrealist poet, André Breton, declared: ‘Freedom colour of man!’ No longer. Freedom, as George Orwell predicted five years later, is now slavery. Because slavery is safe. Slavery is convenient. Slavery is the common good. Slavery is now the highest civic virtue. Slavery is our duty. Slavery is our fate — so don’t bother fighting it. Instead, embrace your slavery. Upgrade your smart phone to a new model.
Queue outside the Apple or Google shops for hours. Wrap your chains in a nice leather wallet. Download the newest app of your enslavement. Show it off to your friends and boast about its new and improved speeds. Never, ever, let it leave your side. Place it under your pillow before you go to sleep, so it can tell you how well you slept. Look into its screen the moment you wake up. For it is your best friend, your big brother, the lover who will never betray you and who you always wished you had. It is your single source of truth — just as Jacinda Ardern told us. Trust no other!
André Breton also said that we will never have a political revolution until we have a revolution of the mind. Or as Parliament Funk paraphrased him years later: ‘Free your mind and your arse will follow’. As the last three years of servitude and compliance have shown, our minds are already in prison. And until we free them, talk of resisting, let alone overthrowing, the Global Biosecurity State is — if you’ll pardon my French — merde.
It is an unfortunately purely hypothetical truth that, if a sufficient proportion of the 93 per cent of UK citizens who own a smart phone (51.7% Apple, 47.78% Google and 0.57% Samsung) threw them away, the threats to our freedom we face today would be over. At least for now. Until they invent new chains with which to bind us.
If you are still in doubt, this week the UK Government announced a system of ‘Emergency Alerts’ that will be sent to your smart phone whenever they announce an emergency. They didn’t say what constitutes an emergency requiring such an alert, but based on the past few years of hysteria, they might include hot or cold weather; pollution levels; wild-fires; flooding; a busy beach; demands on the energy grid; food shortages; a cyber-attack; a new virus, social unrest; political demonstrations; the threat of nuclear war; the enforcement of martial law. Any of these ‘emergencies’ and more in the future might activate the alarm on your smart phone; but the response will be the same.
‘When you get an alert’, the Government has instructed us in no uncertain terms, ‘stop what you’re doing and follow the instructions.’ But that’s just a gesture to the illusion that we are still free to choose. Once your smart phone is uploaded with the Government’s Digital Verification app and linked to the system of digital surveillance and control being imposed in the UK in the guise of ‘15-minute cities’, these instructions will be enforced without the need for our willing compliance. Your electric car will be turned off; your allocation of petrol or food or energy will be frozen; your Digital Pound wallet will be locked shut.
Feel like getting rid of your smart phone yet? ‘But what’s the point, when nobody else will get rid of theirs?’ Individual non-compliance is almost always enacted in public, in a social setting, in the presence of other people, who may or may not be complying themselves — usually the former. At the very least, it draws attention to the technologies and regulations enforcing compliance, and with which we are becoming habituated to the point where they have become transparent, invisible. Indeed, the dominance of an ideology can be measured by its transparency. Not using a smart phone makes what is now transparent visible again.
Compliance with the UK programme of gene therapy was not — as was claimed by those who willingly complied — a personal and individual choice to be ‘vaccinated’ against a deadly virus, and therefore none of the business of those who opposed the national programme. It was, and is, an act of collective obedience that created the consensus with which the non-compliant were and are socially ostracised, demonised in the media as murderers, fired from our jobs and treated under newly-made laws as citizens without rights and freedoms, prisoners in our own country and homes.
In the same way, using a smart phone is not an individual choice — whether chosen freely or out of habit or addiction; it is a collective act of compliance that is creating the digital camp in which all of us will one day be imprisoned. Only when millions of us stop using the instruments of our enslavement will we escape this camp — as we must and only can — together; but that individual choice cannot be avoided.
Individual non-compliance is always a demonstration of non-compliance. In Parliament Square in London, opposite the Houses of Parliament, there is a statue of the suffragette, Millicent Fawcett. I’d have preferred one of Sylvia Pankhurst; but she holds a small banner saying: ‘Courage calls to courage everywhere.’ In the West, and in particular in the UK, we’ve been cowards for a long time, and we need to find our courage. That comes from individuals standing up and saying: ‘No, I will not comply.’
I repeat: the digital camp in which they wish to imprison us is — literally — in our hands. Get rid of them. Smash them! We have nothing to lose but our chains. We have a world of freedom to win.
Simon Elmer is the author of two new volumes of articles on the UK biosecurity state, Virtue and Terror and The New Normal, which are available in hardback, paperback and as an ebook. This article is an extract from the text he read at the launch of these books held in London on 11 March, to mark the third anniversary since the World Health Organization declared the ‘pandemic’.
March 30, 2023
Posted by aletho |
Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance, Timeless or most popular | UK |
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There’s an uprising sweeping the United Kingom, but it’s not being led by any of the usual suspects.
Motorists are mad as hell and they’re not gonna take it anymore.
By Ken Macon | Reclaim The Net | March 29, 2023
Londoners have launched a war against the surveillance cameras being installed to monitor Ultra-Low Emission Zone (ULEZ) expansion in the city by covering the cameras with cardboard boxes and shopping bags, and plastic bags.
The aim of the ULEZ scheme is to reduce air pollution in the city but comes with invasive surveillance of vehicles. Drivers with vehicles that do not meet the minimum emission requirements would be charged £12.50 ($15.42) daily just for using ultra-low emission zones.
Critics have argued that the expansion of ULEZ would affect low-income households as it covers most of the neighborhoods within the M25, the highway that circles most of Greater London.
Others have raised privacy concerns after it was revealed that the British Transport Police and the London Metropolitan Police would have access to the cameras.
300 Automatic Number Plate Recognition (ANPR), referred to as Automatic License Plate Reader (ALPR) in America, cameras have recently been installed in the city. 2,750 more will be added before the ULEZ expansion deadline of August 29, 2023.
In some parts of the city, people have protested the expansion of the scheme by cutting wires to the cameras and painting the lenses with black paint. In other parts, the cameras were ripped out and thrown to the ground.
Since February, Londoners have been taking to the streets to call for a halt to the expansion of ULEZ, with some calling for the resignation of Labour Mayor Sadiq Khan.
The mayor has championed other eco-friendly measures like Lower Traffic Neighborhoods (LTNs), which ban vehicles from using backroads. Miles of bicycle lanes have also been added throughout the city.
March 30, 2023
Posted by aletho |
Civil Liberties, Malthusian Ideology, Phony Scarcity, Video | Human rights, UK |
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Recently, my colleague and I completed a systematic review of the serious harms associated with covid-19 vaccines.
My co-author Peter Gøtzsche, is a Danish physician with four decades of research experience, publishing 97 papers in the “big five” (BMJ, Lancet, JAMA, Annals of Internal Medicine, and New England Journal of Medicine) and 19 Cochrane reviews.
My previous report on how serious harms were downplayed or excluded from the covid-19 trials, became the impetus for this review.
Also, concerns have been raised about the reliability of clinical trial data because of the pharmaceutical industry’s long history of falsifying data and deliberately hiding harms.
In the case of covid-19 vaccines, neither the vaccine manufacturers, nor the drug regulators allowed independent researchers to examine the raw trial data, forcing transparency advocates to sue the FDA for access to the documents.
In our review, we focused on serious adverse events (SAEs) associated with covid-19 vaccines, documented in the published literature (search cut-off date was 4 April 2022).
We defined SAEs according to the European Medicines Agency definition:
An adverse reaction that results in death, is life-threatening, requires hospitalisation or prolongation of existing hospitalisation, results in persistent or significant disability or incapacity, or is a birth defect.
Here are the salient points:
- Many of the studies we reviewed were of very poor quality and published in journals that failed to identify fundamental errors.
- To date, the most methodologically rigorous systematic review of SAEs was conducted by Fraiman et al, which re-analysed trial data from two pivotal randomised trials of the mRNA vaccines (Pfizer & Moderna), including SAEs from the websites of the FDA and Health Canada. The risk of an SAE following vaccination exceeded the risk of hospitalisation from covid-19.
- The adenovirus vector vaccines increased the risk of venous thrombosis and thrombocytopenia. (Authorities have responded by suspending the use of AstraZeneca’s vaccine across many European countries, and in the US, regulators have advised restricted use of Janssen’s vaccine).
- The mRNA-based vaccines increased the risk of myocarditis, with a mortality of about 1-2 per 200 cases. It was more common in younger males.
- We found evidence of serious neurological harms, including Bell’s palsy, Guillain-Barré syndrome, myasthenic disorder and stroke, which are likely due to an autoimmune reaction from mRNA and adenoviral vector vaccines.
- Severe harms, i.e. those that prevent daily activities, were underreported in the randomised trials.
- Severe harms were very common in studies of fully vaccinated people receiving boosters (3rd dose), and in a study of vaccination of previously infected people (i.e. those with naturally acquired immunity).
- Drug regulators and other authorities have been very slow in following up signals of serious harms.
- Given the difficulties of accessing regulatory data, obfuscations, and documented underreporting, we find it likely that there are other serious harms of the covid-19 vaccines, than those uncovered so far.
- Population-wide recommendations for covid vaccination and boosters ignore the negative benefit to harm balance in low-risk groups such as children and people who have already recovered from covid-19 (natural immunity).
The full manuscript has been uploaded as a PRE-PRINT.
March 29, 2023
Posted by aletho |
Science and Pseudo-Science, Timeless or most popular | COVID-19 Vaccine |
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Everyday Dr. McCullough and I speak to people who have been injured—or have a family member who has been killed—by one of the COVID-19 vaccines. Almost every day, Dr. McCullough examines one or more vaccine injuries in his clinical practice. Because he has become a go-to doctor for people who are suffering from these injuries, his view of the problem is not statistical, but at the individual human level.
The United States has a census counted population of 332 million. Thus, if even a small percentage of these people are injured or killed from COVID-19 vaccines, it’s still a frightful number.
Consider that 58,000 men were killed in ten years of fighting in Vietnam. This was just a tiny percentage of the 100 million American men counted in the 1968 census, but it was still a huge number of men to die in their early twenties.
Yesterday, former BlackRock portfolio manager Ed Dowd and his analysts at the research firm, Phinance Technologies, published a report on the cost of the COVID-19 vaccine program in the United States for the year 2022.
I know from multiple, probing conversations with Mr. Dowd that he is a conservative analyst. A serious and sober-minded man, he is ruthless in eliminating biases and wild assumptions. He and his team have focused their research on the 148 million Americans (between the ages of 18-64) who are employed. The Bureau of Labor Statistics compiles much data on this cohort, as does the life insurance industry, because many employed people receive policies as part of their compensation packages.
Mr. Dowd’s report is grim. As he encapsulated the results in a tweet:
As a true crime author, I always focus on the human cost. I know that the death of a single young person can devastate a family and even an entire community. 26.6 million injuries; 1.36 million disabilities; 300,000 excess deaths. Note that this death count in one year is 5.2 times the number of men killed in ten years of combat in Vietnam.
Perhaps the most extraordinary thing about this state of affairs is that most Americans don’t know it’s happening. Every day, young people are dying from heart attacks, strokes, and seizures caused by COVID-19 vaccines. Most of their families and friends are led to believe that they just died—suddenly and unexpectedly—of acute conditions that were extremely rare in young people prior to 2021.
Click here to read the full Phinance Technologies Report.
Also, be sure to pick up a copy of Mr. Dowd’s magisterial book, “Cause Unknown”: The Epidemic of Sudden Deaths in 2021 & 2022.
March 29, 2023
Posted by aletho |
Timeless or most popular, War Crimes | COVID-19 Vaccine, United States |
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An Australian senator’s motion to hold an inquiry into the World Health Organization‘s (WHO’s) controversial international pandemic treaty was blocked after Labor and Greens voted against it.
The treaty, which will be legally binding under international law, will expand the WHO’s surveillance powers, allow the unelected global health agency to target “misinformation,” and more. The next stage of discussions on the treaty will begin next week.
The motion, which was introduced by Senator Malcolm Roberts, called for the WHO’s international pandemic treaty to be referred to the Foreign Affairs Defense and Trade References Committee for an inquiry.
Numerous lawmakers supported the motion and blasted the pandemic treaty during a debate.
Senator Roberts accused WHO Director-General of “misleading the public about what the WHO is doing with the pandemic treaty.”
Senator Ralph Babet warned about the “ever-encroaching power of the WHO” and blasted those who had dismissed criticism of the pandemic treaty as a “conspiracy theory.”
Senator Geraard Rennick said that Australia risks being influenced by the “vibe” of the WHO if the treaty passes and pointed to the way where Australia would “religiously… follow the orders or the proclamations from the WHO without any questioning” during the Covid-19 pandemic.
Senator Alex Antic highlighted the mass censorship that occurred during the Covid-19 pandemic and criticized the way people were branded “conspiracy theorists” if they went against the establishment’s Covid narrative.
“Anyone who defied the WHO’s supposedly expert advice, including emminent medical professionals, were censored and vilified by the media and Big Tech at the behest of government and these organizations and… the only narrative that was allowed oxygen were those parroting the WHO,” Antic added. “Many Australian Health Care Providers were suspended for contradicting what was ultimately the WHO’s position on Covid-19 vaccines. Their predictions and observations have turned out to be correct and we’ll see how that narrative is slowly changing.”
Senator Matthew Canavan said Australia “should be getting out of the World Health Organization because of their negligent handling of the coronavirus” and pointed to several of the unelected health agency’s missteps during the pandemic.
However, several senators opposed the motion and praised the WHO.
“This is actually a good thing,” Senator Dorinda Cox said in reference to the treaty. “It’s important that we learn from the responses of governments right across the world so that we can do better next time.”
Senator David Shoebridge claimed that criticism of the WHO’s pandemic treaty was “disinformation” being pushed by a “conspiracy club.”
Despite strong support for the motion from several senators, it was ultimately defeated by two votes, with Labor and Greens voting against it.
You can watch the full debate on this motion here.
This is one of several recent efforts to shine a light on the WHO’s far-reaching pandemic treaty. United States (US) Senator Ron Johnson recently introduced an amendment to require Senate ratification for any pandemic agreement with the WHO. However, Johnson’s attempt to scrutinize the treaty was also defeated.
March 29, 2023
Posted by aletho |
Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance, Science and Pseudo-Science | Australia, WHO |
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China urges the United States to stop interfering in other countries’ internal affairs under the pretext of democracy and creating divisions in today’s world, the spokeswoman for the Chinese Foreign Ministry, Mao Ning, said on Tuesday.
“We advise the US to stop pointing fingers at other countries and stop interfering in their internal affairs in the name of promoting democracy,” Mao said at a briefing.
She noted that today’s world does not need creation of divisions in the name of democracy and promote a policy of unilateral action, but to strengthen solidarity and cooperation based on the purposes and principles of the UN Charter, advocating true multilateralism.
“What our world needs today is not to interfere in other countries’ internal affairs under the guise of democracy, but to advocate genuine democracy, reject pseudo-democracy and jointly promote greater democracy in international relations,” the diplomat said.
She added that the world today needs not summits that create confrontation, but solidarity and cooperation that can really solve the problems faced by the international community.
“We have stated our position on the so-called ‘Summit for Democracy’ on multiple occasions. Despite the many problems at home, the US is hosting another ‘Summit for Democracy’ in the name of promoting democracy, an event that blatantly draws an ideological line between countries and creates division in the world. The act violates the spirit of democracy and further reveals the US’ pursuit of primacy behind the façade of democracy,” Mao added.
Earlier in the day, the Russian Foreign Ministry said Moscow regrets the participation of UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres in the Summit for Democracy, an “unworthy show” staged by the United States, adding that it is the second attempt to form a coalition of so-called “democratic states” with Washington in the leading role.
The first Summit for Democracy, also organized by the United States, was held in December 2021. The second summit is scheduled for March 28-30.
March 29, 2023
Posted by aletho |
Progressive Hypocrite | China, United States |
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Russia and China are determined to hold the American perpetrators of the Nord Stream sabotage to account. Uncle Sam’s days – indeed decades – of wanton criminality are over. There’s going to be hell to pay as the imperialist tyranny in Washington hits a wall of reality.
Several weeks have gone by with the United States and its Western lackeys stonewalling at the United Nations Security Council, squirming and resisting calls from Moscow and Beijing for an international criminal investigation into the sabotage of the Baltic Sea pipelines that were blown up in September.
A swathe of independent observers, such as American economics professor Jeffrey Sachs and former CIA analyst Ray McGovern, have concurred with the investigative report published on February 8 by renowned journalist Seymour Hersh which claims that U.S. President Joe Biden and his senior White House staff ordered the Pentagon to take out the natural gas pipeline that runs along the Baltic Sea bed from Russia to Germany.
Russia and China are adamant about not letting this vital subject be ignored. They want a proper investigation, international accountability and criminal prosecution. Moscow and Beijing are right to insist on this. Washington and its Western allies’ presumption of impunity has gone on for too many decades. The buck stops here and both Russia and China are strong enough to ensure that the United States cannot threaten, blackmail, or arm-twist its way out of scrutiny.
The Nord Stream project is a major international civilian infrastructure, costing in excess of $20 billion to construct over more than a decade. At 1,200 kilometres in length under the Baltic Sea, it is an impressive feat of engineering, symbolizing the mutual benefits of good neighborliness and cooperative trading.
For the United States to blow this pipeline up in order to knock Russia out of the European energy market so that it could muscle in with its own more expensive gas supplies is a shocking act of state terrorism and criminality. It is also potentially an act of war against Russia and callous sabotage against supposed European allies whose citizens are now suffering economic misery from soaring energy bills. German workers have this week shut down the entire economy from industrial protests over collapsing businesses and unbearable cost of living.
Of course, the Nord Stream sabotage is an urgent matter of basic justice, accountability for an atrocious crime, as well as massive international financial reparations. It’s almost hilarious how the self-proclaimed American protagonist of “rules-based global order” is desperately procrastinating over a glaring incident of dereliction and chaos.
But more than the essential obligation of justice is the legacy of impunity. For the perpetrators of such a wanton terrorist act not to be held accountable sets a perilous precedent. Otherwise, what is stopping the state terrorists from repeating equally brazen acts of sabotage and warmongering? The very concept of international law and the United Nations Charter is demolished, not simply undermined.
The Nord Stream incident potentially opens an era of rampant lawlessness and state banditry – by a nuclear superpower, the United States, using its Western minions for cover. The Western news media, in their reluctance to investigate, are also exposed as nothing more than propaganda channels in the service of imperial masters.
The present is reminiscent of the 1930s during a time of fascist expansionism by Nazi Germany and other imperialist nations, including the United States, Britain, France, Italy, Spain and Japan, and others. Nazi Germany was not the unique culprit during that earlier time of barbarism, notwithstanding the official Western revisionism of history to absolve itself.
After the Second World War amid the ashes of international destruction and up to 85 million deaths, the United Nations and its Charter were founded to ostensibly enshrine the stricture that there would be no repetition of the 1930s-style lawlessness and state terrorism.
That lofty aspiration was always a pathetic illusion. The decades after WWII saw no halt to the imperialist warmongering and subterfuges carried out primarily by the United States and its Western allies, in particular Britain. What a mockery that the U.S. and Britain were afforded permanent member states of the UN Security Council given that these two rogue powers have been largely responsible for countless wars post-1945. The decades-long wars in Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan are but the most notorious war crimes of the Anglo-American “special relationship”.
During the Cold War decades, the Soviet Union provided a limited check on the worst depredations by Western imperialists. The People’s Republic of China was not strong enough to act as a deterrent force.
For about two decades after the Cold War officially ended in 1991 following the dissolution of the Soviet Union, the United States rulers perceived a license for “full-spectrum dominance”. Washington embarked on a frenzy of endless wars that up till recently have prevailed.
The first reality check on the unbridled violence of the U.S. imperialists and their NATO henchmen was Russia’s military intervention in Syria in late 2015 to put an end to the Western machinations for yet another regime-change operation. Washington and its accomplices failed in their nefarious goals in Syria, albeit the Americans persist in illegally occupying part of the Arab country and stealing its oil resources.
Ukraine is the full manifestation of the end to impunity for the United States.
Russia under Vladimir Putin has recovered the military strength that was lost with the dissolution of the Soviet Union. In some ways, present-day Russia is even more formidable owing to the development of new forms of weapons, such as hypersonic missiles and S-500 air defenses. Also, Russia’s economy is on a sounder footing than the Soviet Union which relied excessively on militarism. Hence, Moscow has been able to withstand the economic assault that Washington and its allies have tried to mount over the Ukraine conflict.
Just as important, too, China has risen to economic and military superpower status. Together, Russia and China now present an invulnerable countervailing force to the United States and its Western allies.
For nearly eight decades after World War Two, the United States was relatively free to run amok, trashing international law and nations’ sovereignty, racking up death tolls by the millions, and terrorizing the planet with its “benign”, narcissistic tyranny.
The conflict in Ukraine, where Russia has said “enough is enough” to years of U.S.-led NATO aggression, is demonstrating that the days of impunity are finally over for the would-be American hegemon.
Washington has recklessly raised the stakes to an unsustainable height in Ukraine. It has bet the house – and farm – on subjugating Russia for its next insatiable imperial move against China. But Moscow and Beijing are calling Uncle Sam’s bluff. The buck stops here.
The edifice of American imperial power has never been challenged at its foundation. It is now.
March 29, 2023
Posted by aletho |
Illegal Occupation, Timeless or most popular, War Crimes | Afghanistan, China, Iraq, Russia, Syria, UK, Ukraine, United States |
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Acting at the behest of its political controllers and paymasters, the racist International Criminal Court [ICC], whose principal activity since its founding in 2003 has been the malicious persecution of black African leaders, now, for a change, targets for judicial abuse a distinguished Eurasian figure.
Observers with an attention span of more than fifteen minutes (which would exclude the vast majority in the bamboozled Western countries) should have noticed immediately several glaring anomalies in ICC’s “arrest warrant.”
The warrant purports to be based on humanitarian concern for the welfare of children allegedly transferred illegally from the Donbas. The court officers’ public rationale, however, omits widely known facts regarding the systematic bombardment of civilians in Donetsk and Lugansk since 2014. It ignores the demonstrated death toll of that crime amounting to at least 14,000 victims, including several thousand children. Neither this manifest offence against humanity nor the desire to call to account its obvious perpetrators, the military and political structures of the Kiev Nazi regime, seem to have played any role in the court’s deliberations.
Why not? How can meticulous adherence to the provisions of the Geneva Convention which requires the evacuation of civilians from areas affected by armed conflict (Article 49) be deemed grounds for the issuance of a criminal warrant, while widespread, systematic, and indiscriminate lethal shelling of civilians is passed over in silence, without triggering any prosecutorial reaction?
For that matter, a further question can also be raised with regard to another anomaly, just as glaring. Why have the alleged atrocities in Bucha and Kramatorsk last year apparently been memory holed, to be replaced now by another that has been obviously contrived? If criminal charges were to be pressed, why have the Bucha and Kramatorsk incidents, which at the time of their alleged occurrence were the subject of extraordinary propaganda campaigns, suddenly disappeared from the radar screen? And precisely when they could have served as the most credible foundation for an arrest warrant, assuming there ever was any evidence to support those allegations? Might the fact that both false flag operations were efficiently exposed in the early stages have anything to do with this strange reticence?
How incompetent – or politically corrupt – must a prosecutor be to forego a supposedly open and shut case in favor of a case, and that is putting it very charitably, that is at best legally ambiguous and highly dubious? This question is addressed to the ICC Prosecutor, colonial lackey and consummate opportunist Karim Khan, of course.
Two additional considerations must also be submitted to the judgment of that part of the public whose brains have not yet been fried by propaganda. If the welfare of children is foremost on the minds of ICC staff, what have they got to say about the tsunami of reports that the Kiev junta, desperate to replenish its supply of cannon fodder, is now detaining and kidnapping underage children and with virtually no military training sending them to war, where they have an estimated life expectancy of about four hours?
Rule 136 0f the Convention on the Rights of the Child holds plainly that “Children must not be recruited into armed forces or armed groups.” Additional Protocols I and II, the Statute of the International Criminal Court itself [Art. 8 (b) (xxvi)] and of the Special Court for Sierra Leone put the minimum age for recruitment in armed forces or armed groups at 15, as does the Convention on the Rights of the Child. Are ICC prosecutors capable of reading their own court’s regulations, or do they even care?
Should credible reports of such odious practices, unquestionably in contravention of international conventions which govern the use of child soldiers, not merit at least a full scale ICC investigation?
An equally grave question should be raised concerning the imminent dispatch of hazardous and banned depleted uranium munitions by Great Britain to the armed forces of the Ukrainian junta.
Contrary to the rationalisations of the British Government, depleted uranium munitions are provably detrimental to the environment, as well as to human beings and all forms of animate life in the proximity of their impact. That includes children, of course, who are particularly vulnerable and subject to genetic deformations and painful and lethal illnesses. The catastrophic impact of the use of such munitions in Yugoslavia and Iraq has been extensively studied and well documented over the past several decades. Former UN arms control inspector Scott Ritter has exposed the evils of this practice professionally and competently. It is prohibited by international humanitarian law and if allowed it will constitute a grave threat to life and health both of children and adults in the Ukraine. Would not the warning of arrest warrants for the relevant authorities in the United Kingdom be a suitable response by the ICC in the face of a potential disaster of such magnitude?
It is important to note that the International Criminal Court is a linear extension of the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia [ICTY] and that its conduct cannot be fully understood without reference to the pattern of lawless behaviour previously exhibited by its model. Indeed, the word “conduct” is in this case a more appropriate terms than “jurisprudence” because neither court has bothered to develop a body of law and legal interpretation in the conventional sense. It is of no significance that ICTY is a manifestly illegal outfit, set up in contravention of the UN Charter, while ICC arguably was properly constituted by international treaty. In their practical operation they have both served as tools of the arrogance of power of global hegemons. Their joint task has been not to uphold the principles of international law, but to demolish them in order to provide a legalistic veneer for the execution of the hegemons’ criminal undertakings.
It is therefore scarcely surprising that the preposterous grounds cited by the ICC for issuing warrants against Russian officials for an alleged act of gross turpitude consisting of the safe evacuation of children from the war zone in the Donbas had an exact analogue in the past behaviour of ICC’s infamous model, the ICTY.
In a nutshell, Serbian defendants in the ICTY Srebrenica trials were routinely charged with a grave breach of international humanitarian law, forced deportation of the civilian population. In mid-July of 1995, three meetings were held between the commander of the UN Protection Force in Srebrenica, Col. Thom Karremans, and the Serbian Commander Gen. Ratko Mladic to consider the issue of civilian refugees assembled in a nearby village. The Serbian side made complete video recordings of those meetings which leave no doubt as to what had in fact transpired. Although the video evidence unambiguously shows that Col. Karremans came to Mladic to convey the request of the UN Command that the refugees be evacuated to safety onto territory where military operations were not taking place, ICTY Prosecution charged Mladic with ordering the expulsion and ethnic cleansing of the refugees. What actually happened is that Gen. Mladic acceded to UN Command’s request, as he had the duty to do under international law since fighting around Srebrenica was still in progress, and as a result the refugees were properly evacuated, as agreed.
For acting in good faith to protect civilians in a zone of conflict, Gen. Mladic was indicted, among other things, for genocide and crime against humanity, deportation.
The exculpatory video evidence was never presented in court in its totality. Snippets taken out of context and appearing to favor the prosecution case were the only parts allowed to be introduced into the evidence. Live testimony by Col. Karremans, who obviously would have been a key witness, was obstructed at every turn by the prosecution with the connivance of the Chamber. Technically, the judges could not be faulted for not taking into account evidence that had not been put before them. In the end, they washed their hands and calmly drew conclusions that were contrary to the facts, but with grave consequences for the defendant.
The Russian targets of ICC’s warrants will never, of course, be in the position of General Mladic. However, the cowboy style of ICTY´s corrupt proceedings, fully assimilated by its subsequent clone, ICC, gives a foretaste of what awaits anyone unlucky enough to fall in its clutches.
ICC, like its precursor ICTY, is a disgrace to law in all its civilised forms. State parties should be encouraged to withdraw from it while it is still possible for them to avoid embarrassment by association.
March 29, 2023
Posted by aletho |
Progressive Hypocrite | Africa, ICC, Ukraine |
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The end of the last week was shaken by an unreal announcement. The ICC tribunal, which has its headquarters in The Hague, announced that it issued a warrant arrest against the President of Russia, Vladimir Putin.
For those who have not any familiarity with this court, it does not have any jurisdiction in Russia due to the simple fact that Russia never signed the treaty that instituted the ICC.
Moreover, the ICC does not have a good reputation at all. We are talking about the court that was illegally prosecuting, according to several jurists, former Serbian president, Slobodan Milosevic with the charge of genocide.
Milosevic was very close to getting an acquittal because he was demolishing the case against him in court. Unfortunately, he could not get one because he died in never clarified circumstances before the end of his trial.
Some observers hold The Hague accountable for his death because Milosevic could have unmasked years of lies spread by NATO against him.
Nevertheless, the ICC prosecutor, Kharim Khan, showed himself before the world press and claimed that Putin was “guilty” of having trafficked Ukrainian children to Russia.
For those who don’t know much about Ukraine before the current war, the truth is quite simple. Ukraine was a world children supermarket. People from every part of the world ordered organs that were harvested from the bodies of innocent Ukrainian children.
Certainly, we are not talking about ordinary people. We are talking about people who travel in private jets. People who attend the WEF and who preach about pseudo-environmentalism while they’re the first to breach the rules of the insane and dystopian world that they imagine.
Therefore, if there is someone here who is guilty of child trafficking that would be the Ukrainian establishment, which is completely corrupt and handled by the foreign puppeteers who installed it in power.
The Euromaidan coup that was defined by Stratfor (a think tank quite close to the US deep state) as the “most blatant coup in history” is the “best” example of how the Ukrainian establishment is fully dependent upon the Anglosphere.
And the ICC has been silent for years about this horrendous traffic. It has not been saying a word about it. So if the ICC is really seeking who is responsible for the abuses suffered by the Ukrainian children, it should look at itself in the mirror. This trafficking has been taking place on the ICC’s watch, which has never lifted a finger to put an end to it.
However, this grotesque and provocative move has nothing to do with juridical issues. As we will see later, this is a political move that is deeply connected with two other announced arrests: that of Donald Trump and the one of the former Pakistani PM, Imran Khan.
The bogus case against Trump
On Friday 17th, Trump announced on Truth Social that the NY’s DA office was planning to arrest him for the Stormy Daniels case.
Basically, the case is founded upon the quite shaky legal grounds that Trump allegedly paid hush money to a pornstar, Stormy Daniels, in order to keep her quiet about his alleged affair with her.
Firstly, we should give a brief introduction about the US legal system and its developments in the latest years.
As many readers probably already know, the DAs in the US are elective assignments. They usually run for the Democratic or the Republican Party and they receive funds for their campaigns. And in recent years, a magnate who has spent a lot of money for getting elected DAs is George Soros. Soros has a very particular type of DA in mind to fulfill his “open society”.
Soros’ idea of a DA is an official who does not prosecute crimes and who allows the streets of his city to be ruled by criminals. The Open Society is literally allowing the dregs of society to have a free hand in harassing, raping, stealing and killing honest citizens.
The globalist world is where everything is upside down and where good is bad and right is wrong.
Therefore, if you happen to live in one of the cities where Soros DAs were elected and you’re a good citizen, you could be in trouble.
As a law abiding citizen, you’re not part of the open society. And you’re even more in trouble if you have political ideas keen to the principles of loving your country and defending it from foreign and domestic enemies.
And this is certainly the case of Donald Trump, who’s the target of never-ending political witch hunts.
In this case, the Soros DA who’s persecuting Trump is Alvin Bragg. Bragg would like to indict Trump for the 130,000 $ of hush money allegedly paid to Daniels. Money that was allegedly transferred to former Trump attorney, Michael Cohen, who, in turn, gave it to Stormy Daniels.
This round of transactions would constitute a falsification of Trump’s business records, according to the NY’s DA. But there’s a problem with all this theory. It is crumbling under the proofs to the contrary that are emerging in these days.
We are talking about crucial exculpatory evidence here like the letter signed by Cohen in which he clearly states that Trump never paid or reimbursed him for the money that he had given to Stormy Daniels in the first place.
In a normal world, the case would have been closed but in Soros’ world, it is not. Bragg’s probe seems to be falling under the blows of this evidence and the Grand Jury that should decide to proceed or not with Trump’s indictment keeps being postponed.
And this is happening because everyone in the legal arena, including Trump’s enemies, knows that Bragg does not have a case, and if he keeps overplaying his hand, he could be the one ending up indicted for abuse of power and for hiding crucial evidence who would immediately exonerate Trump from this bogus probe.
Therefore, Trump’s arrest seems to be less likely as the days go by. Never in the history of the United States, have we seen a President persecuted like Donald Trump.
From the very first moment when he went down the escalator of Trump Tower, he became enemy number one for the deep state.
Immediately, those powers who ruled Washington for decades tried to bar his way to the White House.
They started with the Russiagate hoax, also known as Spygate, which is an international plot that sees involved also British and Italian secret services in order to frame Trump by falsely accusing him of being a “Russian agent”.
They did not stop there. They even tried to physically remove him from the White House with at least two assassination attempts in August 2020 and with another at Mar-a-Lago in January 2021.
They even tried to oust him with the 2020 election fraud, which could be defined as the most blatant electoral fraud in history. Not to mention two attempted and failed impeachments against him, which were both based on preposterous and false accusations.
A war machine was clearly put in motion. It is the machine of those secret powers that have ruled the United States for far too long. Powers that hijacked the history of this country in order to subvert foreign leaders who were not obeying the orders of NATO and of the Israeli lobby. Powers that harmed and killed so many Americans and many other people all around the world.
The American people elected Trump to halt the exploitation of the United States. American people were fed up with seeing their country used to fulfill a global agenda whose only purpose is to establish a world totalitarian government.
And Trump is the political leader who has incarnated that spirit – the spirit of making America great again and of freeing this nation from the chains of her enemies.
The Bragg probe is just the latest attempt of this war against Trump and the American people. Trump is just inches away from officially returning to the White House and, as a result, the deep state launched this bogus investigation. It is an investigation that remains unclear if it will lead to an indictment and an eventual arrest.
The system has a very weak hand and Trump knows it. Most likely, his announcement aimed to expose this plot even if its probabilities of success are very low.
Imran Khan: the man who the deep state wants dead
Someone who is also running the risk of being arrested is former Pakistani PM, Imran Khan. Khan denounced last year a plot that was hatched by NATO’s circles to oust him from power.
Khan was and still is a very dangerous threat for the US deep state powers. The Pakistani leader aimed to establish relations with BRICS and, by doing so, Pakistan would have left the Anglosphere.
If this would come to fruition, NATO would lose another key strategic country in Asia.
That’s why he was removed with a confidence vote that was heavily swayed by foreign influences. But Khan didn’t throw in the towel.
He kept fighting for Pakistan. He keeps gathering massive crowds at his rallies. For the deep state, the risk was too high. They tried to kill him and if Khan is alive today, it is only for the result of miraculous circumstances.
On Saturday 18th, the police stormed his residence. Khan is facing a trial in Islamabad where the charge is of having sold watches that he received as gifts when he was still in charge. It’s not known what is the evidence of this “crime” but this case seems to be quite weak as the one against President Trump.
Therefore, the Pakistani leader could have the opportunity to run at the next election scheduled for this coming October. It’s a nightmarish scenario for the Anglozionist powers because Pakistan would definitely shift towards the multipolar world.
However, there are still some traps set on the way and Khan knows it. This is why he urged his supporters not to engage in any kind of violence because he knows that Sharif, the current PM, is seeking a way to frame him.
So we can see how all these three attempted arrests are connected to each other. Trump, Putin and Khan belong to the international patriotic alliance that is fighting against the globalist side.
On the one hand, we have a side of leaders who are fighting to preserve the sovereignity of their countries. On the other, we have unelected powerful banking families like the Rothschilds who have been trying to destroy the independence and prosperity of every country in the world.
What we saw in the last 14 days is just the latest chapter of this current war between these two sides.
And the globalist side is being inflicted tremendous blows.
Only in this week, Putin received more than 40 African leaders in a conference about the multipolar world. And why he was attending this event, he also received the Chinese president, Xi Jinping.
The BRICS are changing the lines of international politics. The world is shifting from the rule of the Anglosphere empire towards the restoration of the national States.
When Xi Jinping states that the changes that Russia and China are driving are unprecedented in the last 100 years, he’s quite right.
Even Saudi Arabia, a country forged by British and Zionist powers, understood that things went south and restored diplomatic relationships with Iran.
The world is changing at a tremendous speed. We are moving from the old globalized and centralized world towards one when there are no ruling powers. The age of the empires has died. The age of the nations has begun again.
After the defeat of NATO in Ukraine, which is running out of ammunitions, we will have passed the point of no return. NATO’s crisis will be so deep to the point that it could dissolve itself.
At that point, the EU, the last frail bulwark of globalism will be encircled. The crisis of the European establishment will aggravate and people in the EU countries will demand the end of neoliberal austerity and the normalization of relations with Russia.
Italy still seems to be the ideal candidate to run this process considering the fact that she has the most euro skeptical and most pro-Russia people in Europe.
And this is a perspective that scares a lot of members of both the Italian and EU deep state.
The old world of despotism is dying. The new world of free nations is being created.
We are certainly living in one of the most exciting and important times in history.
March 29, 2023
Posted by aletho |
Civil Liberties, Corruption, Deception | European Union, ICC, NATO, Pakistan, Ukraine, United States |
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After Austria and Hungary, Bulgaria has also joined the minority group of European Union countries that refuse to send weapons to Ukraine, news and opinion portal Mandiner reports.
Bulgaria has declared that it will not take part in the EU’s joint ammunition purchase program, nor will it supply fighter jets or tanks to Ukraine, Euronews reports. Bulgarian President Rumen Radev is under enormous pressure from opposition parties, but he has said he stands by his position.
“Bulgaria does not support and is not involved in the joint procurement of ammunition for Ukraine. However, we will support efforts to restore peace. As long as the interim government is in power, Bulgaria will not make its fighter aircraft, anti-aircraft missile systems, tanks and other equipment available to Ukraine,” said Radev.
At the end of January, Hungarian Defense Minister Kristóf Szalay-Bobrovniczky and his Austrian counterpart, Klaudia Tanner, said in Budapest that neither country will offer any kind of military assistance to Ukraine in order to “prevent further escalation.”
Although many of its Western allies accuse Hungary of siding with Russia in the war based on its firm stance of not sending weapons to Ukraine, last December Prime Minister Viktor Orbán said that his government is simply on the side of the Hungarians.
“We are pro-Hungarian,” Orbán told daily Magyar Nemzet in an interview. “We are on the side of the Hungarians in the Russian-Ukrainian war.”
Orbán argued that while it is important to his government that Russia poses no security threat, continued economic relations are essential for not only Hungary but also the entire European economy.
“The answer to the question of whether we are on the right or wrong side of history is that we are on the Hungarian side of history. We support and help Ukraine, it is in our interest to preserve a sovereign Ukraine, and it is in our interest that Russia does not pose a security threat to Europe, but it is not in our interest to give up all economic relations with Russia. We are looking at these issues through Hungarian glasses, not through anyone else’s,” Orbán said.
March 29, 2023
Posted by aletho |
Militarism | Austria, Bulgaria, Hungary |
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The failure of a Russian-Chinese Security Council resolution to set up an international probe into the Nord Stream attacks is not the end of the road, and Moscow has over half a dozen avenues to pursue the matter, both at the UN and at other venues, says Dr. Alfred de Zayas, a former UN rapporteur and veteran expert on international law.
Moscow expressed confidence Tuesday that the truth about the Nord Stream explosions would eventually “break through” in spite of the United Nations Security Council’s failure to adopt a Russian-Chinese resolution demanding a formal international investigation into the sabotage.
“Any tribunal would convict the US on the basis of the available information today, a fortiori in the absence of any credible evidence to the contrary. In the United States, any grand jury would find that the evidence already in the public domain suffices to indict the suspect for the crime and open formal criminal proceedings,” de Zayas told Sputnik.
The resolution received support from Russia, China, and Brazil. The US, the UK, France, and rotating Security Council members Albania, Gabon, Ghana, Malta, Mozambique, the UAE, Switzerland, Ecuador, and Japan abstained. Russian Deputy Permanent representative to the UN Dmitry Polyanskiy told Sputnik the resolution failed thanks to “big pressure” on the part of the West.
Seymour Hersh, the Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist whose bombshell reporting revealed that US Navy divers assisted by the Norwegian military were responsible for the pipelines’ destruction, said he was not at all surprised the resolution failed. “What else did you think they would do? If they did do anything else that would be news,” Hersh told Sputnik.
De Zayas characterized Hersh’s reporting as “thorough, coherent and prima facie credible,” and said his investigations “constitute a solid basis to commence an independent international investigation, which would require the consent of those countries whose territorial sovereignty extends over the area where the explosions took place, namely Sweden and Denmark.”
Unfortunately, the legal expert said, Sweden has so far stonewalled on the issue and hasn’t shared its own probe’s findings with the UN. “Sweden’s silence can only be interpreted as a cover-up, because the consequences of revealing proof of US violation of Swedish and Danish sovereignty, and the colossal violation of international law and the laws of war, would have exploded NATO in the same way as the US exploded the pipelines,” he suspects.
The international legal expert emphasized that to be credible, any probe by the Nordics into the Nord Stream attacks will have to be open to all interested parties, including Russia. Otherwise, “bearing in mind that all three countries have ganged up against Russia, the great danger is that their investigations might be a cover-up or a white-wash operation.”
8 Tools at Russia’s Disposal
Luckily, de Zayas says, there are a number of avenues Russia and other countries can pursue at the international level. These include:
- For starters, countries could turn to Article 19 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, which gives all persons the right to access information, and to seek and impart information of all kinds, particularly when the information withheld concerns criminal acts such as terrorism.
- Secondly, de Zayas notes, because the Security Council has failed to establish an international Commission of Inquiry, or Fact-finding Mission – tools for examining potential serious violations of international humanitarian and human rights law, the General Assembly may do so. “The General Assembly should go beyond the mere condemnation of the Nord Stream sabotage and adopt a resolution under Article 96 of the UN Charter requesting an advisory opinion from the International Court of Justice on the question of the legal consequences of the blowing up of the pipelines, in particular the civil and penal liabilities involved,” the lawyer explained.
- Third, the legal expert says, since the Nord Stream explosions fall under the definition of international terrorism, they are under the remit of the UN’s Vienna Office on Drugs and Crime, which should conduct its own investigation.
- Fourth, de Zayas argues, an investigation could be started by the UN’s Environmental Program office in Nairobi, given that its purview extends to investigating the adverse ecological impacts the blasts may have had on fisheries in the Baltic Sea.
- Fifth, de Zayas proposes filing a so-called “inter-state complaint” under Article 41 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, saying violations of Articles 1, 2, 6, 19, and 26 of the document could be argued.
- Sixth, the lawyer says the UN’s Human Rights Council could set up a Fact Finding Mission to investigate “the adverse human rights impacts in the region and the world” of the Nord Stream blasts, “as indeed, the attack on energy supplies has widespread consequences, especially for the enjoyment of economic and social rights.”
- Seventh, there are the Special Procedures of the Human Rights Council – independent human rights experts with mandates to report and advise on human rights matters, which have their own avenues for investigating the Nord Stream attacks. “Surely it is within the remit of three Rapporteurs – the Rapporteur on Terrorism, the Rapporteur on the Right to Truth, Justice, and Reparation, and the Rapporteur on Freedom of Opinion and Expression” to investigate, de Zayas suggested.
- Finally, the expert suggests that Russia and other countries could argue the Nord Stream attacks constitute a violation of the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea. “And even if the US never ratified [the treaty], nothing stops the UNCLOS Secretariat from establishing a working group to study the implications of the sabotage of undersea pipelines,” he explained.
‘Double Standards’
De Zayas stressed that the failure of the UNSC to condemn the terrorist sabotage of Nord Stream in the same way it condemned the 9/11 terror attacks in 2001 signals “the application of double-standards.”
“The silence of the UN with regard to the terrorist sabotage of Nord Stream is as deafening as its silence with regard to the 40 US biolabs in Ukraine,” the lawyer said.
Fortunately, de Zayas argues, pressure on the US is building, not least because of US officials’ proven hostility to Russian pipeline infrastructure long before it was destroyed.
“It was certainly careless of Joe Biden to have threatened that if Russia invaded Ukraine, Nord Stream would be no more. This was repeated by officials of the State Department.
Moreover, the US had already done everything in its power to frustrate the completion of Nord Stream II, as evidenced by the illegal unilateral coercive measures imposed on businesses throughout the world to intimidate enterprises such as the Dutch-Swiss Allseas and a Swiss insurance company with colossal penalties. Such actions were illegal, constituted interference in the internal affairs of states and illegal extraterritorial application of US laws, but the world somehow tolerated them. Still they contribute to the growing legal dossier against the US,” de Zayas concluded.
March 29, 2023
Posted by aletho |
Timeless or most popular, War Crimes | NATO, Sweden, United States |
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