CBS Deletes Documentary Revealing That Just ‘30%’ of West’s ‘Aid’ to Ukraine Reached Frontlines
By Ilya Tsukanov | Samizdat | August 8, 2022
CBS News has curiously deleted a bombshell documentary which uncovered that just “30%” of the military assistance sent to Ukraine by Western countries during the first months of the conflict with Russia actually reached the front lines.
Upon clicking on the link to the documentary, called “Arming Ukraine,” users are greeted with a “The page cannot be found” error.
CBS News announced Monday that it had “removed a tweet promoting” the doc, assuring that since it was filmed, control over deliveries had improved. “Additionally, the US military has confirmed that defense attache Brigadier General Garrick M. Harmon arrived in Kiev in August for arms control and monitoring. We are updating our documentary to reflect this new information and air at a later date,” the network explained.
Ukraine Foreign Minister Dmitry Kuleba nevertheless declared that the US network had “misled a huge audience by sharing unsubstantiated claims and damaging trust in supplies of vital military aid to a nation resisting aggression and genocide.”
“There should be an internal investigation into who enabled this and why.”
In the documentary, Jonas Ohman, CEO of Blue-Yellow, a Lithuania-based group involved in the delivery of military equipment to Ukraine, told CBS News correspondent Adam Yamaguchi that just one third of the tens of billions of dollars’ worth of support sent to Ukraine by the US and its NATO allies was reaching the Ukrainian military.
“You know all this stuff goes to the border, and then kind of like something happens and kind of like, 30 percent maybe reaches its final destinations,” Ohman told CBS News in a preview of the documentary.
Ohman offered hints about what happens to the rest of the equipment, saying that “there are like power lords, oligarchs, political players” operating in the country. “The system itself, it’s like, ‘we are the armed forces of Ukraine. If security forces want it, well, the Americans gave it to us.’ It’s kind of like power games all day long, so eventually people need the stuff, and they go to us.”
The CEO also offered a novel explanation for why the West needs to ensure that Ukraine “wins” in the conflict with Russia. “If we lose the war, if we have this kind of gray zone, semi-failed state scenario or something like that. If you do this – you funnel lots of lethal resources into a place and you lose – then you will have to face the consequences,” he said.
Blue-Yellow has been funneling everything from body armor to night vision equipment and light drones into Ukraine since 2014, when the country was thrust into a civil war sparked by a US- and EU-backed coup in Kiev. The coup led to civil unrest in eastern Ukraine after the new authorities announced a crackdown on the Russian language and began pulling the country into EU and NATO orbit, ultimately culminating in the February 22, 2022 Russian recognition of the Donetsk and Lugansk People’s Republics as independent states and the launching of a special operation to “demilitarize” Ukraine two days later.
The United States has committed over $23 billion in military assistance to Ukraine since February, on top of billions delivered to the country between 2014 and 2021. The UK, Germany, Poland, and other NATO members have committed over $7 billion more.
Andy Milburn, a retired US Marine colonel and founder of the Mozart Group, a US private military company engaged in the training of Ukrainian troops, suggested the problem with supplies not reaching the front was organizational, and that the West should be more involved in putting “people in place” on the ground to “supervise the country” to prevent pilfering.
“If you provide supplies, or a logistics pipeline, there has got to be some organization to it, right? If the ability to which you’re willing to be involved in that stops at the Ukrainian border, the surprise isn’t that, oh, all this stuff isn’t getting to where it needs to go – the surprise is that people actually expected it to,” he said.
Last week, Sputnik Arabic got an inside look into the nitty-gritty details of the arms smuggling operations taking place in Ukraine, contacting a Ukrainian weapons merchant on the dark web who expressed readiness to sell US-made M4S assault rifles, ammunition, and frag grenades hidden in barrels of motor oil to a Sputnik correspondent posing as a Yemeni arms buyer. The weapons dealer referred to middlemen “allies” in Poland and Portugal ready to assist in the shipment.
Russia has spent months warning the US and its allies about the dangers posed by the shipment of weapons to Ukraine and the threat that they could wind up on the international arms black market thanks to the corruption and instability which have wracked the country.
Washington and Brussels have ignored these warnings, with Kiev assuring them that the arms would not be transferred to third parties or countries. Last month, the European Union Agency for Law Enforcement Cooperation (Europol) announced that it was “working closely” with Kiev to prevent weapons smuggling after discovering that there was evidence of firearms and military equipment from Ukraine appearing in EU countries.
Most Ukraine aid is a ‘scam’ – US lawmaker
Samizdat | August 7, 2022
Republican lawmakers are feeling vindicated for opposing a $40 billion Ukraine aid package after a CBS News report showed that only 30% of the Western weapons flooding into the country are actually making it to the front lines in Kiev’s conflict with Russia.
“This [is] one of the reasons I voted ‘no,’” US Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Georgia) said on Twitter in a retweet of the CBS News post. Greene was among 57 House Republicans who voted against the massive aid bill, which passed overwhelmingly in May with the support of all Democrats and most GOP lawmakers. Eleven Republicans opposed the bill in the Senate, where it passed by an 86-11 margin.
The CBS story noted that with nearly $60 billion in US and Western European aid approved for Ukraine since Russia’s military offensive began in February, most of the weaponry has failed to get through to Ukrainian fighters. Getting weapons to the troops involves navigating a complex network of “power lords, oligarchs [and] political players,” the outlet cited Lithuanian aid group founder Jonas Ohman as saying. Amnesty International senior crisis adviser Donatella Rovera told CBS that “there is really no information” on where the weapons are going.
Representative Lauren Boebert (R-Colorado) said such scrutiny had been dismissed prior to the CBS report. “How many people were called Russian bots for saying this exact same thing since March? Now, when CBS says it, it’s perfectly fine. Whatever the case, glad the facts are out now. The majority of the Ukraine aid is a scam.”
US Senator Rand Paul (R-Kentucky) delayed the Senate’s vote on the Ukraine aid bill by insisting on adding a provision appointing an inspector general to monitor how the money was being spent. His colleagues refused to include the oversight requirement and passed the massive package a few days later. A US intelligence official told CNN in April that arms shipments were dropping “into a big black hole” once they reached Ukraine.
Greene, Boebert and other lawmakers who voted against the aid bill were pilloried by critics for failing to support Ukraine. After Greene argued that the US government was focused on sending billions of dollars in aid to Ukraine at a time when American mothers couldn’t even buy formula for their babies, Democrats accused her of standing “with President Putin in the face of Russian aggression.” Representative Jamie Raskin (D-Maryland) said she was “repeating Putin’s propaganda and disinformation” and “appeasing imperialist assaults on sovereign nations.”
The Georgia lawmaker also tussled with a fellow Republican after Representative Dan Crenshaw (R-Texas) defended the Ukraine aid package by saying “investing in the destruction of our adversary’s military, without losing a single American troop, strikes me as a good idea.” Greene replied, “So you think we are funding a proxy war with Russia? You speak as if Ukrainian lives should be thrown away, as if they have no value. Just used and thrown away.”
The BBC’s “Big Oil vs The World” documentary failed to provide any evidence to support its alarmist claims
The Daily Sceptic | August 7, 2022
The BBC recently broadcast a three part series entitled “Big Oil vs The World“.
The theme of the three hour documentary was that the oil and gas industry discovered over forty years ago that their product produced large amounts of carbon dioxide and methane and that the increase in these greenhouse gases would lead to climate change.
The documentary alleges that the oil and gas industry deliberately disseminated misinformation in order to prevent or slow down any legislation that would hurt its profit margins.
Many interviews are shown of former employees of the oil and gas industry that have had damascene conversions and now see that they were part of a huge crime against humanity or at least humanity yet to come.
I watched all three hours of this documentary on BBC iPlayer. It was very well done with many clips of hurricane damage, floods, wildfires and industry pumping out pollution.
The music reinforced the sense of doom and horror that these oil and gas company executives put profit ahead of saving the planet.
The trouble is that even though so many people consider the subject of climate change ‘settled science’ not one shred of evidence was put forward in the whole three hours.
One of the climate change experts was asked what his reaction to his predictions coming true was. He said he was angry, yet his predictions were not offered and subsequently it was not demonstrated how they were true.
Graphs and documents with certain phrases highlighted were flashed up but there was no time to evaluate them.
A ‘methane hunter’ declared that she had provided overwhelming evidence to the U.S. regulators but to no avail. During this segment images from thermal cameras were shown which looked very scary but there was no explanation as to what to look for to determine that methane was present.
The Attorney General of Massachusetts was interviewed and it was detailed how Exxon Mobile was going to have to answer in court to the allegations. It was detailed exactly what they were going to accuse the company of and footage of the team discussing the wrongdoings was shown.
That segment finished with the fact that the New York State Attorney General had tried the same thing but Exxon Mobil had won that case. Nothing further was said, no reference to the court documents, nothing to suggest that the company had pulled the wool over the court’s eyes. Nothing.
I would imagine that if I had bothered to complain to the BBC I would receive a response along the lines of them not having to provide evidence because the science is settled, but you have to ask the question, why?
If there is so much evidence and they know that the oil and gas giants have had evidence for four decades, why, in a three hour documentary, can they not produce one single piece of evidence?
How many more decades will we have to live with this constant barrage of doom-mongering before they finally see that the climate changes and there isn’t much we can do about it but continue to adapt and mitigate as we have been?
Here’s what government and industry came up with to wiggle out of liability for monkeypox vaccine injuries
By Meryl Nass, MD | August 7, 2022
Although I don’t have the full story yet, I am warning you that the moneypox vaccine Jynneos is a huge scam, in every way, including the supposed shortage. I will disclose more about that soon.
But since it is actually licensed, the moneypox vaccine (like other licensed drugs and vaccines) has liability attached to it. You can currently sue government program planners, the doctor who recommended it, the manufacturer, etc. if anything goes wrong.
To forestall that, some crook came up with the idea of splitting the doses, under the guise of a fake shortage, which provides an excuse to make the lower dose an EUA–in other words, turning it into a product for which you cannot sue anyone if something goes wrong. Pretty clever, eh?
Licensed products are not supposed to receive EUAs unless they are used for something different than what they were licensed for. Splitting the dose does not change the fact it is licensed for monkeypox and being used for moneypox.
Here is another possible but diabolical reason to split (dilute) the dose: it potentially allows the federal government access to the vials–so the vials won’t go straight from the manufacturer to the wholesaler but instead go somewhere else to be diluted. And what is in the diluent?
From the NY Times :
… Federal officials have ordered nearly seven million doses of Jynneos, but the shots will not arrive for months. So far, the Biden administration has shipped about 600,000 doses to states. It said last week that 800,000 additional doses were being allocated to states, but the distribution could take weeks.
Faced with shortages, some cities, including Washington and New York, are restricting second doses to stretch their supplies. Officials at the Food and Drug Administration and the C.D.C. have disagreed with that strategy, noting that Jynneos is approved as a vaccine to be given in two doses spaced 28 days apart.
But as federal health officials declared a public health emergency on Thursday, Dr. Robert Califf, the commissioner of the F.D.A., said the agency was now considering authorizing shots that contain just one-fifth of the regular dose, delivered between layers of the skin instead of under it.
The F.D.A. would need to grant Jynneos an emergency use authorization in order for it to be administered this way.
The dose-sparing approach has been used when supplies of other vaccines are scarce. But giving intradermal shots requires more skill than is needed for more traditional immunizations.
One shot is probably enough to forestall severe symptoms in most people, and the dose-sparing strategy may work just as well. But it’s unclear whether a scaled-back regimen is enough to prevent infection, and if so, how long that immunity may last, federal health officials said…
Biden Regime Calls For Censorship On Energy
BY JOHN HINDERAKER | POWERLINE | AUGUST 4, 2022
This is shocking, or would be in a sane world: Gina McCarthy, the Biden administration’s National Climate Advisor, is openly calling on tech companies like Facebook and Twitter to censor any dissent from the administration’s “green” fantasies. McCarthy says the tech companies “have to stop allowing” people to disagree with Biden. No doubt the people she wants to censor include Steve Hayward and myself, among many others.
In my opinion, Gina McCarthy and the Biden administration disseminate misinformation on climate and energy 24/7. But I think they should be “allowed” to do so. Truth will win out, but only if it is not censored.
We wrote here about the lawsuit that the states of Missouri and Louisiana have brought against the Biden administration, accusing it of coercing, or colluding with, tech companies to violate Americans’ First Amendment rights. Watch for Gina McCarthy’s open call for censorship to be an exhibit in that case.
Protests Erupt in Bangladesh as Government Raises Fuel Prices While Seeking IMF Loans
Samizdat – 07.08.2022
Bangladesh has approached the International Monetary Fund (IMF) for a multibillion-dollar loan, making it the third South Asian country – after Sri Lanka and Pakistan – to have sought financial help from the multi-lateral lender in the past two months.
Sporadic protests erupted in several of Bangladesh’s cities on Saturday in response to a significant rise in oil and gas prices. After the price rise, public transport fares also rocketed up to 35 percent. Several organizations related to transportation have suspended their operations for 24 hours and declared their sales would resume on Monday.
The Bangladesh Tank-Lorry Owners’ Association and the Petrol Pump Owners’ Association staged a 24-hr strike on Sunday. They stopped collecting fuel from the Padma, Meghna, and Jamuna depots – major oil repositories for the country in the Khulna division.
“The strike started at 8am and will continue until 8am on Monday,” Md Farhad Hossain, an official of Bangladesh Tank-Lorry Owners’
The association has been demanding 7.5 percent commission on the present fuel price.
The Sheikh Hasina government on Friday raised the diesel price by 34 Taka ($0.36) to 114 Taka ($1.20) per liter, and the octane price by 46 Taka (0.49 USD) to 135 Taka ($1.42) per liter.
Protesters alleged that instead of lowering fuel prices as the rest of the world was, the government had raised costs to “appease the IMF”, which “is unacceptable and anti-people.”
“We urge the government to return fuel prices to their previous rates immediately,” said Bangladesh Jatri Kalyan Samity, a group working for the welfare of commuters, in a statement.
Bangladesh is reportedly seeking $4.5Bln in loans from the IMF as the country’s forex reserves plummeted below $40Bln.
On 3 August, the US-led lender said it would work with Dhaka to design an IMF-supported reform program that would be required for the loan.
“As part of the policy response, Bangladesh’s request for a Resilience and Sustainability Trust and an accompanying IMF-supported program will provide safeguards in the event of further deterioration of external conditions,” the Fund added.
Bangladesh reported a fall in export earnings because of dwindling consumer demand in the west. European Union registered a 3 percent fall in consumer demand this week.
Bangladesh’s appeal to the IMF comes as Sri Lanka and Pakistan have also been negotiating financial aid. The economic slowdown and inflation has also hit these south Asian economies.
Russia offers monthly donation of 40,000 tons of wheat for Lebanon
Lebanon has been dealing with bread shortages over recent months, in the latest dilemma to hit the crisis-hit nation
The Cradle | August 6, 2022
The Russian Ambassador to Lebanon, Alexander Rudakov, has reportedly obtained initial approval from Moscow to provide Lebanon with a donation of 40,000 tons of wheat per month until the end of the year.
This deal could be extended past December to help the Levantine nation overcome a worsening food crisis, according to information obtained by Al-Akhbar.
Russia’s offer comes just days after Beirut cleared the Syrian-owned Laodicea vessel to depart the port of Tripoli, despite protests from the Ukrainian embassy, which claimed the ship was carrying “stolen grain.”
However, customs officials revealed to The Cradle that the ship’s grain cargo originated in Russia.
Lebanon’s top prosecutor allowed the ship to leave after revealing Kiev failed to present evidence to back their claim of theft against Russia and Syria.
Before the ship’s release, the Ukrainian embassy offered to retract their claim if Beirut paid them for the Russian grain.
Since 2019, Lebanon has been faced with the dire consequences of a severe economic meltdown.
The situation has pushed over 80 percent of the population below the poverty line and all but wiped out the value of the local currency.
Lebanon used to import as much as 80 percent of its wheat from Ukraine, but since the start of the Russian war, it now faces a major food crisis.
Another factor that limits Lebanon’s wheat supply is the destruction of the country’s grain silos during the Beirut Port blast of 2020 — considered to be the largest non-nuclear explosion in history.
As all of this unfolds inside the country, Lebanon is facing a serious threat of war from Israel; the two nations are mired in a dispute for control of an offshore gas field that could provide billions in revenue.
The hidden goal behind Gaza’s assault
By Batool Subeiti | Press TV | August 7, 2022
The Zionist regime’s unprovoked blitz on Gaza since Friday afternoon was, firstly, a direct message to Lebanon, that it is not interested in going into war over the maritime boarders, thereby conceding to line 23 and the Qana fields that Lebanon has demanded full sovereignty over. Secondly, the regime seeks to test the waters through this limited confrontation.
The limited scope of the confrontation between Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ) and the Zionist regime implies the objective is not aimed at weakening the resistance, rather it is to measure the reactions of this confrontation on many levels and to send underlying messages in the process.
The Zionist regime considers the Palestinian resistance to be the easiest target within the resistance axis and has therefore sought calculated confrontation with this entity. Through its assaults on Gaza, the regime is interested in testing the extent of unification of the regional resistance factions in decision making, logistical support, the readiness of factions to get involved if the battle escalates, how willing they are to expand the war in addition to their stock of weapons, their capabilities, and capacities.
This is also happening at a time when the Zionist regime will hold its fifth election in four years this November, thereby seeking to rally the settler population over a point of unity – that is usually attacks on Gaza. The regime seeks to paint the image that it is unafraid to attack in any circumstance to ensure their ‘security’, with Israeli Prime Minister Yair Lapid stating on Friday that, “the country has ‘zero tolerance’ for attacks from Gaza”. However, he also made it clear in the same press conference that there is no interest in a ‘broader battle’.
More importantly, the Zionist regime is approaching a due position and that is drawing the maritime boarders with Lebanon, which if it does not end up playing in the interests of Lebanon, poses an imminent danger, and calls for an imminent war, as made clear by the Secretary General of the Islamic resistance party in Lebanon. The Zionist regime wishes to prevent a war at all costs and that means it has no choice but to compromise, which appears as a point of weakness for the settler population in the context of the elections, as they wish for a candidate that takes a strong stance on such issues. This smaller scale attack was therefore launched in order to avoid a larger war, and for the regime to grant itself some credit as well.
It is also important for the Zionist regime to reinforce the phobia of war within the minds of the settler population, such that the mass general opinion formed is one that aligns with the Zionist government’s decision to compromise on the maritime boarders, in order to prevent a wider scale war where the battle front is opened beyond one Palestinian resistance faction, the PIJ, and in the worst case extends to the Lebanese resistance that has over 100,000 rockets.
The reason that the Zionist regime seeks to compromise on the boarders are because it knows the resistance capabilities are very strong, such as when they sent three unmanned aircraft (UAV) targeting the gas rigs in July. The regime however also seeks to paint the image that they are strong through launching an offensive attack on the resistance, however the reality is that they don’t wish for a war and in fact know that other Palestinian resistance organizations such as Hamas, the Popular Front do not intend to get involved and the operation is of a limited nature. The head of Shin Bet reportedly told cabinet ministers overnight on Saturday that Tel Aviv, “met most of the objectives it set at the outset of the operation in Gaza.”
In this process, the Zionist regime has sought to send a message to the internal resistance in Palestine that the head of PIJ, Ziad Nakhala is in Tehran whilst key commanders of the group are being assassinated, thereby seeking a show of display for their supposed lack of fear and strength. However, the unmasked reality is that since the regime are seeking compromise, they want to grant themselves false credit regarding their strategic strength and seek to gain publicity without it affecting their elections. The reality is that the regime is deceiving its own population through putting forth titles that sound big but are empty, as they know the resistance won’t be dragged into the square they want, and their aim is to appeal to the public opinion of the Zionist settlers through deception.
Batool Subeiti is an Energy Engineer and political analyst based in London, UK.
Why the Gulf states’ SCO membership is a big deal
BY M. K. BHADRAKUMAR | INDIAN PUNCHLINE | AUGUST 7, 2022
Washington has backtracked from the dissimulation by US National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan that Washington had intelligence suggesting Iran was preparing to provide Russia with “several hundred” drones to use in Ukraine, with training sessions set to begin in July.
On July 26, NSC spokesman John Kirby, clarified his boss’ remark by admitting to Al Arabiya, “We’ve seen no indications of any sort of actual delivery and/or purchase of Iranian drones by the Russian Ministry of Defence.”
Interestingly, Al Arabiya buttonholed Kirby at all. For, Sullivan’s fake news (probably based on Israeli disinformation) came at his special briefing on President Biden’s visit to Jeddah. Al Arabiya’s dogged downstream pursuit of the “fake news” suggests that Riyadh knew Sullivan making a crude attempt to to hustle the Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman in directions that would have made Biden’s trip a roaring success.
Biden had three overlapping objectives: one, to rally Saudi leadership behind his containment strategy against Russia and China; two, to break up the OPEC+ alliance between Saudi Arabia and Russia so that a coordinated counterpoint ceases to be in the world oil market that is beyond American control; and, three, to assemble an anti-Iran military military alliance of Gulf states and Israel to give verve to Abraham Accords which has patently lost its fizz.
Biden drew blank on all three counts: Saudis will pursue their friendly relations with Russia and China and its normalisation with Tehran. Prince Mohammed spoke with President Putin within the week of Biden’s visit where they discussed further expansion of trade and economic cooperation and significantly, also underscored “the importance of further coordination within OPEC+”.
Traditionally, Saudi actions speak far better than words. So, when the OPEC+ held a virtual meeting last Wednesday, it concluded that:
- There is “severely limited availability of excess capacity” among oil producing countries resulting from “chronic underinvestment in the oil sector”;
- It is a matter of “particular concern… (that) insufficient investment into the upstream sector will impact the availability of adequate supply in a timely manner to meet growing demand beyond 2023.”
- The importance of maintaining consensus and the “cohesion” of OPEC and OPEC+ (that is, OPEC plus Russia principally) cannot be overstated.
Plainly put, it rejects the July 3 G7 Foreign Ministers’ Statement on Energy Security, which envisages imposing comprehensive embargo on all services for “transportation of Russian seaborne crude oil and petroleum products globally” unless Moscow sells oil at a price to be agreed in consultation with the West.
Simply, the West is once again contemplating a crackdown on a major oil producing country for geopolitical reasons, which would have profound impact on the world oil market. The paradox here is that, unlike in the case of Iran or Venezuela, the West desperately needs Russian oil’s continued flow into the world oil market but is capping the price at which Moscow can sell so that its income from oil exports cannot sustain the special military operations in Ukraine.
Indeed, the West is acting in the spirit of George Kennan’s famous dictum in the early 1950s that oil “belongs to us” because it lubricated the West’s prosperity. The G7 statement is no doubt precedent-setting. As the pressure on world’s resources becomes more acute, this predatory approach harkens back to the colonial era (when India was frog-marched by Imperial Britain to supply cotton to the textile mills in Britain and buy back textiles at prices determined by the colonial master.)
It can extend to resources other than oil as well. China, for example, produces roughly two-thirds of the world’s lithium-ion batteries, whereas, the US only produces 1% of global lithium supply and 7% of refined lithium chemicals — versus China’s 51% — and is about 70% dependent on imported lithium (which has such critical uses in industries ranging from mobile phones, laptops, digital cameras and electric vehicles to aircraft, high-speed trains and satellites.
To be sure, the G7 move to seize control of Russia’s oil exports rings alarm bells all across the oil-producing countries of the Gulf region. The geopolitical message is: ‘Fall in line, or else.’ Now, this comes at a time when the EU is desperately eyeing access to cheap and reliable supply of oil. (Japan just announced that its “sanctions from hell” against Russia will not apply to the Sakhalin 2 gas and oil project!)
Against such a tumultuous backdrop with the industrial powers inclining toward brandishing their latent colonial instincts of a bygone era, the Gulf states become highly vulnerable. The Gulf states already are shell-shocked about the banditry that the EU and US resorted to against Russia by confiscating its reserves in the Western banking system and appropriating the private assets of wealthy Russians.
There is also an added dimension. Tomorrow, what prevents the “Collective West” from resorting to such pressure tactics to enforce “regime change” in the Gulf region on the pretext of advancing democracy and human rights? After all, it is no secret that the former Crown Prince Muhammad bin Nayef was Washington’s preferred choice to succeed King Salman. Make no mistake, Biden’s fist bump with Prince Mohammed is not the last word on Saudi succession.
Indeed, Prince Mohammed’s suggestion (while Biden was still in Jeddah) that Saudi Arabia and Iran should now step up their contacts to the political level becomes highly significant. Even more so, Saudi Arabia’s interest in SCO membership (so soon after Iran’s admission to the grouping.)
Along with Saudi Arabia, a host of other West Asian countries have approached the SCO for membership. The Russian daily Izvestia reported on Thursday that the SCO plans to sign memoranda on granting dialogue partnership to Egypt, Syria, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and Bahrain at the forthcoming summit in Samarkand. Interestingly, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman has been invited to the event.
According to Izvestia, as an exception, the UAE has sought SCO membership on an expeditious basis, although the grouping’s established practice so far has been to start with a “dialogue partner”. Izvestia quoted a source close to the SCO organising committee that the SCO has had consultations internally and “the main understanding that dominates is that the SCO is interesting, the SCO attracts, and therefore the most important thing for us is not to wallow in bureaucracy, but to find solutions that will allow us to respond adequately… And react by adapting the rules to new conditions.”
Clearly, Biden’s offer of a military alliance not only had no takers in the Arab world but they seem petrified. If as the Bible says, there are three brands of deception — vanity, flattery, and blasphemy — and Satan uses all three, Biden’s offer contains elements of all three. And if the SCO offers an antidote to the poisoned chalice, why not?
The West is silent as Ukraine targets civilians in Donetsk using banned ‘butterfly’ mines
The use of PFM-1 explosives against civilians is prohibited by the Geneva Conventions – but this evidently isn’t stopping Ukraine
By Eva Batlett | Samizdat | August 7, 2022
On Saturday night, just after 9 pm, thunderous explosions rocked central Donetsk. Shortly after, there were announcements that air defense had shot down Ukrainian-fired missiles containing “Butterfly” (or “Petal”) mines. Given that over 300 of these explosives. are packed into each of the Ukrainian-fired rockets, central Donetsk could literally become a minefield if they successfully landed.
Social media and Telegram warnings urged residents to stay inside, to wait for Emergency Services to clear the streets and sidewalks – which they began doing during the night. But come daylight, untold numbers of these tiny devices still remained. More warnings were issued to stay at home – better to be late for work than lose a leg. Residents that absolutely have to go out are advised to keep their eyes down to watch where they step, avoid grassy areas, and walk extremely carefully.
© Eva Batlett
While Ukraine has been using these mines on Donbass for many months, in recent days, they have intensely bombarded neighbourhoods with them. Initially targeted were the hard-hit districts of Kievskiy in the north, Kirovsky in the southwest, and Kuibyshevkiy in the west. But as of Saturday night, Ukraine hammered central Donetsk with them.
And now, walking in the city center is a nightmare, one I had to endure to document how widespread these mines are here: in central streets and walkways, near apartments, in parks.
Difficult to spot, easy to trigger
As it turns out, the ‘petals’ are not only widespread but often very difficult to spot – even if warning signs have been placed right next to them. Their small shape and dull color blends in with the surroundings and if you aren’t actively looking at the spot they’re in, you could easily miss them.
When walking, you learn to avoid any objects that could be covering a mine, and tread only on bare streets or sidewalks.
The first bunch of mines I saw were circled in chalk, a warning sign placed in front to keep cars from driving over them, and people from stepping on them. This was on a central Donetsk street, a residential area with shops and a park nearby. The entire area was littered with the ‘petals’. DPR sappers worked methodically, clearing area by area. But, given that hundreds of the mines were dropped all over the city, this is painstaking work.
Near some apartment blocks, numerous mines had been found and warning signs put out: “danger, mines,” it said by the tiny explosive circled with chalk or a tire or whatever was available to draw the eye to its presence.
Warning sign saying “Caution, mines!” placed next to some “butterfly” mines in Donetsk © Eva Batlett
But, on many occasions, looking at the area designated as containing a mine, it took me a good while to actually see it. Now imagine if there were no signs at all … a bloodbath for civilians, and animals too, since it doesn’t take significant weight to set them off.
Butterfly mine basics
Around the size of an average lighter, the ‘petals’ are tiny but still very powerful. A clip shared on Telegram illustrates this: A soldier chucks a tire at one of the mines, and the tire is flung high in the air from the blast. It doesn’t take a powerful imagination to estimate what would happen if a person stepped foot on one of them. The explosives are placed via remote delivery methods – meaning they can be spread by mortar, missile, or artillery, dropped by helicopters and planes.
According to DPR Emergency services, Ukraine is using Hurricane MLRS-fired rockets to spread the mines. Each contains 12 cluster munitions, each cluster has 26 mines inside. So each bomb has 312. The cluster explodes in the air, disseminating them widely, scattering in different directions. Their butterfly-like design enables them to glide and land without exploding, usually. Then they lie in wait for someone with bad luck to step on them.
Some of these anti-personnel mines have a self-destruct timer. Others, including the ones Ukraine is firing, have a years-long shelf life. They do pretty much no damage to military vehicles, and as such their use in Donbass is insidious – deliberately targeting civilians, to leave them maimed.
On July 30, in a densely-inhabited working-class district of western Donetsk, in a field with garden plots for nearby apartment residents, I saw the same nefarious mines. Originally scattered, they had been collected and awaited destruction by DPR Emergency Services.
In the large courtyard of an apartment complex, I watched from a safe distance as Emergency Services timer-detonated eight mines they had found around the grounds. The day prior, they destroyed 26. Another 150 were located and destroyed using a radio-controlled minesweeper. But there remains much to be done to restore the streets and courtyards to safety.
Since the mines were scattered on Saturday evening, the DPR Representative Office at the JCCC has created an interactive map showing the areas most contaminated by the mines, giving residents a general warning of which areas to avoid while walking or driving in. While some cars have been lucky enough to only have a tire blown out, were the mine to detonate near the gas tank, the entire vehicle could explode.
Multiple civilians have been killed by the mines since they were scattered over Donetsk, and, even now, wounded civilians are still coming to the city’s hospitals. According to Vadim Onoprienko, the deputy director of a trauma surgery center, ten amputations have been performed over the last week – victims of Saturday’s mines and ones that had been dropped earlier, one of whom was an 83-year-old man.
All evidence points to Ukraine
Pro-Ukrainian commentators are, unsurprisingly, blaming Russia. Journalists claiming to care about civilians are perpetuating Ukrainian propaganda saying that Moscow’s forces are scattering the mines over civilian areas, nevermind the fact that these territories are controlled by Russia’s allies. Among them is the would-be war hero Malcolm Nance, who temporarily abandoned his job as a notoriously anti-Russian MSNBC analyst to apparently actually fight the Russians in Ukraine.
This is the kind of projection I have seen ad nauseam when reporting from Syria and dealing with the Western propaganda there. Ukrainian nationalists openly admit they do not see the Donbass people as human and encourage their murder. Ukraine has been killing and maiming civilians in the Donetsk and Lugansk People’s Republic for over eight years, including firing cluster munitions into the heart of cities, targeting hospitals, markets, schools and busy streets. Given all of this, scattering butterfly mines over Donetsk is hardly surprising. It’s criminal, but not surprising.
One argument used by pro-Ukrainian commentators is that Kiev has been destroying these mines under the Anti-Personnel Mine Ban Convention, which it signed in 1999. However, out of the six million such mines Ukraine initially declared in its possession, only two million have reportedly been destroyed as of 2018.
Ukraine has good reason to believe it will not be held accountable for using them against civilians, given its Western backers’ and their allies’ penchant for using prohibited weapons on civilians without repercussions – including Agent Orange in Vietnam, depleted uranium in Iraq and Syria, and white phosphorous and dart bombs in Gaza.
The fact the Western media turns a blind eye is also a boon to Kiev.
Eva Bartlett is a Canadian independent journalist. She has spent years on the ground covering conflict zones in the Middle East, especially in Syria and Palestine (where she lived for nearly four years).
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China names world’s ‘hacking empire’
RT | March 15, 2022
Calling the US a “hacking empire” of the world, the Chinese Foreign Ministry urged Washington to stop “malicious” cyber activities following reports that American hackers subverted a network in China to launch attacks on Russia and Belarus.
“China is gravely concerned about cyberattacks against other countries that originate from the US and use China as a springboard,” Foreign Ministry spokesperson Zhao Lijian told reporters at a press briefing on Monday.
Zhao was commenting on recent Chinese media reports that hackers, mainly from the US but also from NATO allies Germany and the Netherlands, recently hijacked a Chinese computer network for cyberattacks, 87% of which targeted Russia.
“Against the background of the Ukraine situation, such a move may produce the negative effect of misleading the international community and spreading disinformation,” Zhao said, pointing out that “a former US senior official called publicly for launching cyberattacks on Russia not long ago.”
This appeared to be a reference to Hillary Clinton, former US secretary of state and presidential candidate, who made the calls in an MSNBC interview at the end of February. … continue
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