The EU is putting additional pressure on Telegram, after one of its member countries, France, arrested the platform’s co-founder and CEO Pavel Durov.
The EU has launched an investigation into the number of users the platform has in the bloc, and whether the number reported by Telegram is correct.
The importance of this is the EU’s ability to censor using the Digital Services Act (DSA), which applies services with over 45 million users.
In February, Telegram said that their number is 41 million, but the EU has chosen precisely this moment to start looking for ways to determine if this reporting was accurate – or, more likely, try to prove that it isn’t.
The EU Commission’s Joint Research Center is tasked with the job, while there are “ongoing talks with the app” regarding the way it arrived at its figure, the Financial Times writes, without expanding on the “ongoing talks” point.
EU Commission spokesperson Thomas Regnier is quoted as saying that the EU “has a way” to determine whether Telegram’s reporting is true, using “our own systems and calculations.”
If the result of the investigation is that Telegram had lied, that is, that the number of users is 45 million or more – the EU will “unilaterally” declare it a very large platform, subject to the sweeping censorship rules contained in the DSA.
Saying that the decision can be made unilaterally and based only on the EU’s own investigation using its own agency to audit these figures means that the bloc is giving itself the right to, in an untransparent way, declare a platform the subject of the DSA.
One of DSA’s key purposes is to enforce the EU’s policy of even more tightly controlling the social media space, and a provision in the law states that those considered to be very large platforms must “disclose” what they are doing to counter “disinformation” and “misinformation.”
The Financial Times says that globally, Telegram has close to 1 billion users, with Asia as the largest market, and that in an interview with the publication earlier in 2024, Durov said the number of users is “roughly proportionate” with the size of different markets or continents.
MOSCOW – The number of civilians wounded in the Ukrainian shelling of the Russian city of Belgorod and the Belgorod Region has risen to 46, Governor Vyacheslav Gladkov said.
On Friday evening, the governor said air defenses worked over Belgorod and the surrounding region, several air targets were shot down near the city. Later, he reported that the shelling had been carried out from the Vampire multiple launch rocket systems (MLRS), five people were killed, 37 were wounded.
“We have again lost civilians as a result of shelling of the city of Belgorod by the Armed Forces of Ukraine. Five civilians were killed… 46 civilians were wounded. There are currently 37 people in hospitals, seven of them are children. One child is in serious condition,” Gladkov said in a video published on Telegram.
Video appearing to be from the attack posted on social media show civilian vehicles being hit and no military targets in the area.
Nothing to see here, just the Ukrainians rocketing a random intersection in Belgorod to kill and terrorize civilians.
If the Russians did this we'd have a week of international condemnation, sob-story news articles and deranged posts on this website.
MOSCOW – The Russian Foreign Ministry called on international organizations on Saturday to condemn the recent shelling of the city of Belgorod and its suburbs by Ukraine, which killed five civilians and injured 46 others.
“We once again urge all responsible governments and relevant international institutions to resolutely condemn this brutal act of terrorism and publicly distance themselves from the Kiev regime and its Western patrons, who commit such crimes,” the statement read.
“Silence in response to the unbridled barbarism of the Ukrainian nationalists and their puppeteers from ‘civilized democracies’ would be tantamount to complicity in their bloody deeds,” the ministry warned.
The Friday shelling was planned in advance and constitutes an act of intimidation of the civilian population, the ministry said. Ukrainian troops fired cluster munitions using Czech-made Vampire multiple launch rocket systems, in what it said was another attempt by the regime in Kiev to “kill as many Russians as possible.”
Ukraine is exerting pressure on staff at the Zaporozhye Nuclear Power Plant in Russia, with threats to kill their family members if they refuse to cooperate with Kiev, senior Russian diplomat Rodion Miroshnik has claimed.
“A lot of families have been separated” during the conflict between Russia and Ukraine, and Kiev is trying to take advantage of this, Miroshnik, who is tasked by the Moscow’s Foreign Ministry with collecting evidence of Ukraine’s war crimes, told RIA Novosti on Saturday.
Kiev’s security agencies are deliberately looking for relatives of staff members at the power plant who remain on Ukrainian territory, Miroshnik said.
They then use threats against family members, “to put pressure [on the nuclear plant employees] or provoke them to commit a terrorist act or to pass on information in the interests of Ukraine,” he claimed.
There have been cases of people “quitting or changing jobs in order to ‘deprive’ themselves of the opportunity to commit a crime and make sure the blackmailers lose interest in them,” the diplomat noted.
“Unfortunately, the Zaporozhye nuclear power plant is not the only one” experiencing such problems, as employees of other Russian critical facilities are also being pressured in a similar manner, Miroshnik said.
According to the diplomat, Russian security agencies are aware of such practices by Kiev and are working to counter them.
The Zaporozhye nuclear plant, which is the largest in Europe, has been under Russian control since March 2022. Throughout the conflict, Moscow and Kiev have repeatedly accused each other of shelling the facility, and the Russian Defense Ministry has said that several attempts by Ukrainian assault units to retake it have been repelled.
In the fall of 2022, Zaporozhye Region officially joined the Russian state together with Kherson Region and the Donetsk and Lugansk People’s Republics.
On Thursday, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), which has a permanent monitoring mission at the Zaporozhye plant, said that since February the station had been hit by drone strikes, experienced loss of power lines, and had one of its two cooling towers damaged by fire earlier this month. IAEA chief Rafael Grossi, who is expected to visit the facility next week, described the security situation as “extremely challenging.”
UNITED NATIONS – Mali is alarmed that the weapons supplied to Ukraine by the collective West are ultimately fueling terrorism in the Sahel region, Malian Ambassador to the United Nations Oumar Daou said in Friday.
“The government of Mali would like to express its alarm with regard to the supply of weapons to Ukraine, because it’s been clearly established that a good part of the weapons … end up fueling terrorism and crime in the Sahel,” Daou said during a meeting of the UN Security Council.
The Malian ambassador also said that the weapons deliveries carry the risk of further destabilizing countries in Africa and exacerbate the suffering of the Malian people, who have already been “sorely tested by several years of conflict with dramatic consequences.”
French media, citing a Malian military source, reported in early August that terrorists from the Malian armed separatist groups traveled to Ukraine to receive training there.
Novavax is offering parents up to $3,000 to enroll their children in the vaccine maker’s Phase 2/3 COVID-19 vaccine trial for infants and children ages 6 months to 11 years. The offer also includes a stuffed animal for each child.
The “Hummingbird” trial is testing two primary shots and a booster shot of Novavax’s adjuvanted recombinant spike protein nanoparticle vaccine in children. The study, which began in 2022, is enrolling 3,600 children.
The study, which began in the U.S., is expected to run through 2025 and will be conducted in the U.S. and other countries.
The children will receive three injections and visit the clinic eight times. Parents will participate in three phone calls and keep an e-diary of the vaccine’s effects on their child. Some children will receive two additional injections, for a total of five shots.
The study website promises, “You will be compensated for your time and travel regardless of your immigration status. Transportation to the study site may also be provided, as available. No health insurance is required to participate.”
Recruitment materials from Be Well Clinical Studies, which is running one of the U.S. trials, state that compensation can be more than $3,000 over two years.
A 2023 video explaining the study also promises incentives for the children, including “a Covid stuffed animal.”
In the video, a pastor from Louisiana who has four children enrolled in the study said incentives like the stuffed animal made the kids even “more excited than the parents” to participate.
The video features Dr. Jibran Atwi who is running a Hummingbird trial in Lafayette, Louisiana. He encouraged people to participate in the study, because COVID-19 severely affected kids, particularly through lockdowns and lost schooling.
Atwi also said that COVID-19 can be “very disruptive” because if a child has to stay home from school, parents may not be able to go work and the child may have to be isolated from their grandparents.
“Prevention,” he said, “is the best medicine.” He added that there had been an “impressive response” from parents who wanted to participate.
Most of that funding came from Genzyme — a Sanofi subsidiary — and from Sanofi, which shares the co-exclusive licensing agreement with Novavax to commercialize its COVID-19 vaccine.
In 2022, Atwi received over $1 million, largely from AstraZeneca and Genzyme.
Last week, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) granted emergency use authorization to Pfizer and Moderna’s 2024-2025 mRNA COVID-19 shots, but Novavax’s 2024-2025 formula has not yet been authorized.
The FDA has authorized previous versions of the Novavax vaccine, but only for children ages 12 and up.
High payments place children ‘at risk of coercion’
Other pharmaceutical companies that have paid research subjects large sums of money have come under scrutiny. In the United Kingdom (U.K.), Moderna was criticized for initially offering children’s families 1,505 pounds ($1,984 dollars) to participate in its NextCOVE clinical trial, which is testing Moderna’s mRNA vaccine in children ages 12 and up.
The Children’s Covid Vaccine Advisory Council submitted a complaint to the U.K.’s Prescription Medicines Code of Practice Authority (PMCPA) — an industry trade group that regulates ethical practices — raising concerns about “inappropriate financial inducement” offered to children and their parents to participate in the trial.
The council cited concerns raised by the research ethics committee (REC) that approved the clinical study. Regarding the 1,500-pound payment they wrote:
“This amount seems much higher than what would be considered a reasonable reimbursement and therefore would contravene clinical trial regulations. The Medicines for Human Use (Clinical Trials) Regulations (2004) explicitly prohibit the giving of incentives or financial inducements to children… or their parents.”
The REC said the amount, “placed the children at risk of coercion,” and the organization required that Moderna reduce the offer before recruitment could begin. Moderna reduced the amount to 185 pounds ($244 dollars).
Yet, according to the complaint, at least one pediatrician continued to offer the high enrollment compensation.
The PMCPA sanctioned Moderna, and the case report on the issue is currently pending.
If the PMCPA determines a pharmaceutical company has breached the industry code, it can require the company to pay administrative charges or issue a corrective statement. Or, it may request a compulsory audit of the company.
In the U.S., Be Well is also advertising that it will pay parents $2,400 for enrolling their infants and toddlers, ages 5-23 months, in Moderna’s Rhyme Trial for an mRNA RSV and a human metapneumovirus (hMPV) vaccine.
According to the clinicaltrials.gov website, Be Well withdrew from the Moderna RSV study, but the website is still advertising to recruit participants.
Be Well is run by founder and director Dr. Mark Carlson, a geriatrician, who has taken nearly $3 million in research funding from Big Pharma, mostly from Moderna, since 2021.
Moderna did not respond to The Defender’s inquiry about compensation offered to children’s families to participate in these studies.
Five civilians have been killed and 37 wounded, including six children, in a Ukrainian missile attack on Russia’s Belgorod Region, regional governor Vyacheslav Gladkov has said.
Belgorod is north of Kharkov. Russia’s second city. It has endured frequent attacks by long-range Ukrainian artillery, which often fire projectiles supplied by NATO.
“Our air defense system worked over Belgorod and several targets were shot down as they approached the city,” Gladkov said on Telegram on Friday evening. “To our great sorrow, one person died as a result of a direct hit on a passenger car.”
In addition to the vehicle, an apartment building and several commercial buildings were struck, Gladkov said.
The governor later updated the death toll to five.
“One woman and four men died on the spot from their injuries before the ambulances arrived,” he said. Among the injured, seven adults and three children are in serious condition.
According to Gladkov, the attack was carried out with cluster munitions launched by the Vampire multiple-launch rocket system. The same weapon, provided to Ukraine by the Czech Republic, was used in the Christmas market massacre last December, when 25 Russian civilians were killed and 100 more wounded by Ukrainian cluster munitions.
The attack also caused property damage to three apartment buildings in the city, as well as two commercial buildings. Two houses in the nearby village of Dubovoye were set on fire by the incoming missiles, but it was quickly extinguished by emergency services.
The attorney from the Department of Justice who defended the Food & Drug Administration in court admitted on undercover camera that the agency’s actions were an abuse of authority by the government during its public campaign against ivermectin to treat COVID-19.
A trio of doctors recently won a major legal victory in a multi-year lawsuit sparked by the FDA’s viral 2021 public health guidance advising against the use of ivermectin for treating COVID-19. The most notable offending tweet stated, “You are not a horse. You are a not a cow. Seriously, y’all. Stop it.”
Department of Justice trial lawyer, Isaac Belfer, defended the FDA in this suit brought by Drs. Mary Talley Bowden, Robert L. Apter, and Paul E. Marik. On undercover camera, Belfer admits to a Project Veritas journalist that his client’s legal loss was deserved because the agency overstepped its statutory authority when it publicly tweeted medical advice.
Belfer told our journalist, “So, what the agency has done… [is] unquestionably beyond its authority. Making a recommendation of what drugs to take or not to take, that’s the practice of medicine. And FDA can’t practice medicine.”
The FDA’s public relations campaign also failed to inform the public that the award-winning antiparasitic medicine had a decades-long track record of successful medical usage in humans.
During the COVID-19 pandemic, the doctors prescribed ivermectin to tens of thousands of patients and found the drug to be a cheap and effective treatment.
The doctors told Project Veritas that they suspect that the suppression campaign against ivermectin was motivated by the government’s interest in fast-tracking the experimental COVID-19 vaccination. This speedy vaccine roll-out could only be accomplished through the FDA’s emergency use authorization [EUA], and only if no other alternative medications existed to treat COVID-19.
The FDA’s tweets caused a deadly chain reaction. The agency’s pronouncements were swiftly enforced by national medical associations and regulatory agencies, pharmacists refused to fill prescriptions, insurance refused to pay for it, and doctors who prescribed it faced career ruin.
Drs Apter and Bowden told Project Veritas that suppression of ivermectin led to a prolonged pandemic, and potentially millions in excess COVID deaths.
Apter: “It’s not unreasonable to think that there have been a million unnecessary deaths from COVID in the United States because of the public health agency suppression of effective early treatment with repurposed inexpensive medications.”
Bowden: “If more people had access to early treatment in the form of ivermectin, monoclonal antibodies, hydroxychloroquine… we could have nipped the pandemic in the bud.”
As a result of the lawsuit, the FDA was forced to delete its social media posts warning against the use of ivermectin for treating COVID-19. Though the FDA removed its public statements, the agency did not change its policy or directives. Because major state and national medical governing authorities look to the FDA as an authoritative source on the appropriate use of drugs, pharmacies still refuse to prescribe ivermectin, and doctors face professional repercussions for prescribing it.
Dr. Talley Bowden was forced to resign her privileges from Houston Methodist Hospital; Apter was referred to the Washington Medical Commission and Arizona Medical Board for disciplinary proceedings; and Marik was forced to resign from his positions at Eastern Virginia Medical School.
Apter: “Because of my prescription of ivermectin for COVID I am still facing persecution by the medical licensing boards in spite of the fact that they have not been able to show a single adverse event in my care.”
Bowden: “I have a medical board coming after me because I tried to help a patient get ivermectin. We all had professional repercussions because of our use of ivermectin.”
Though the doctors continue to face professional consequences for their advocacy of ivermectin use for COVID-19, Belfer admits that the doctors dealt a significant blow to the government with their court victory. He told Project Veritas that the agency will think twice before issuing any misguided health advice in the future.
“I think going forward they’ll [FDA] probably be a bit more careful. They [the doctors] got an opinion that was good for them. That kind of limited FDA’s authority. It’s not okay to… actually tell people, ‘You should not take this drug.’”
Dr. Bowden says the fight against government overreach was worth it, because now doctors are vindicated in their years-long quest to protect the health of their patients.
Bowden: “One thing this case did is set a precedent. I think it permanently tarnished the reputation of the FDA. I think the public will takes the FDA little less seriously now, and it keeps them from making the same bold, reckless move in the future when it comes to telling patients what they can and cannot do. Like Isaac [Belfer] said, and we have all said, the FDA is not your doctor. The FDA has no business telling patients what they can take. And we proved in the court of law that they cannot do that.”
Long covid may or not be a chimera, but the long reach of covid certainly isn’t, as I have learned from an unexpected situation that involved the gratuitous remarks of a covidian doctor here that created difficulties for me. I am hopeful, however, of a positive resolution to this unnecessary development.
This incident merely strengthened my belief that the enemy we are up against, large and small, local and global, is unprincipled, lawless, low, and, given the measures unleashed against the world in the name of protecting us from a danger they created in the first place — dangers heaped upon dangers! — murderous.
If ever I believed in the trustworthy authority of the major media, having grown up on Time, Life, Newsweek, ABC, CBS, NBC in my early youth, and, later, on The New Yorker, The New York Review of Books et al. in my later years, that belief has been smashed into a thousand pieces as I watched all of them drop the veneer and flash the biceps of complete and utter fraudulence in our faces, day in, day out, relentlessly. I now ignore them completely.
If ever I believed in fair play and the rule of law, the inconstant application of justice has shaken some sense into me. What kind of system inveigles a Reiner Fuellmich into an arrest and incarceration, or deceptively seduces the founder of Telegram into an apprehension? Need I mention the numerous illegitimate legal attacks against a former President of the United States, still ongoing? Need I mention the attempt to murder him in the cold light of day? Should I hark back yet again to New Zealand’s use of stormtroopers to invade and disperse the Parliament Protests of 2022?
Should I mention the UK arrests for social media expressions of free speech, or the many and multifarious ways that Big Social Media have censored those whose political inclinations or opinions had been targeted by the governments they had a right to criticize? It has become nearly comic to listen to and watch presenters on YouTube who resort to code words to evade algorithms that would punish their channels?
Dare I refer to the unnecessary wars and the horrific numbers of the dead in the Ukraine and the Middle East, promoted so enthusiastically by the ‘liberal’ so-called democratic Left in the United States, not to mention the openly authoritarian EU?
By the strange contorted logic of our ‘now’, universal inoculation, active armed conflict, and perpetual fear of pandemics mark the road to … to the well-regulated world ordained by some occult globalist racketeers for their own benefit.
Given all of the above, one would think that any vestiges of naivete would be gone as we figure out a way to save ourselves. It’s an interesting word, ‘naive’ — coming as it does from the Latin nativus, and meaning, essentially, being innocent or artless as a newborn babe in the corrupt and devious system devised by humankind to regulate itself. When we use the phrase ‘I wasn’t born yesterday’ we’re saying we’re not naive.
Yet I can’t count how many times so many friends have expressed astonishment at each new depredation and each miscarriage of justice, and how so many still have faith in a legal system that has been commandeered by our enemies. I can’t count how many times people will say, about the latest jab-implicated adverse event, ‘this will turn the tide!’ Or how many game-changers there have been that have only resulted in the game going on with even more ferocity against our cause.
While I believe that it is very important for us to continue to report truth, it is equally important for us to know what we are up against. To know that facts are hardly guaranteed to change the minds of the sleepwalkers around us.
It is destructively naive to believe that simply by being virtuous we will win the day, or that the courts will come to our rescue because of our well-prepared evidence, or that martyrdom will be glorious.
General Patton is reputed to have said that ‘no dumb bastard ever won a war by going out and dying for his country.’
As Irregulars against Established Power we must fight smart, and fight to live, and we by no means can count on the System to assist us. We must recognize the murderous intensity of our enemy, the rigged judicial system, the coopted media, and adjust our strategies.
Member of Loyalty to Resistance parliamentary bloc, Dr. Hasan Fadlallah, affirmed that Operation Arbaeen Day is historical because it challenged all the threats made by the Israeli officials and the foreign envoys who had visited Lebanon to convey them.
Addressing a ceremony held to commemorate the two Islamic martyrs all the way to Al-Quds Khodr Moussa Sweid and Hamza Mohammad Zalghout in the southern town of Harees, MP Fadlallah wondered how the Zionist enemy claimed that he frustrated Hezbollah attack although it was carried out.
Hezbollah lawmaker indicated that the Islamic Resistance misled the enemy by making it think that it bombed sophisticated weaponry and carrying out the attack in response to the Zionist aggression on Beirut’s Dahiyeh on July 30, 2024.
The enemy’s premier Netanyahu then acknowledged that the Israeli airstrikes had targeted only short-range missiles, according MP Fadlallah, who pointed out that the Israelis always resort to media coverage in order to refute reports.
“Why has not Israel allow media to inspect Glilot Intelligence Base since Hezbollah Strike?”
MP Fadlallah stressed that the Israeli enemy is hiding its losses because it is unable to carry out its threats in response.
Six Hezbollah drones reached their targets in the Israeli Military Intelligence headquarters in Glilot near Tel Aviv, Lebanese daily Al-Akhbar reported on Friday, citing reliable sources in occupied Palestine.
Meanwhile, Israeli media outlets started unveiling certain aspects of the Hezbollah attack on Glilot, describing it as unprecedented.
MP Fadlallah maintained that the Israeli enemy cannot impose its terms on Lebanon and will fail to gain in politics what it has lost in the battlefield, reiterating that the main goal of Hezbollah border battle is supporting Gaza till the end of the Israeli war.
“The successful thwarting of Hizbullah’s attack on Sunday, symbolized Israel’s intelligence and operational edge”: According to the IDF spokesman, the Hezbollah attack was thwarted for the most part – thanks to 100 Israel aircraft carrying out around the clock – pre-emptive strikes that destroyed “thousands of missile launchers”.
“The group [Hizbullah], did manage to fire hundreds of rockets at northern Israel, but the damage they caused was quite limited”, the Israeli spokespersons disdainfully suggested (amidst a complete blackout on publication, under full censorship, in Israel of any reporting on damage caused to strategic Israeli infrastructure or to military sites).
In effect, it was ‘theatre’ mounted by both sides: By limiting their 20 minute strike to within 5 kms of the border – and by Hizbullah staying within the ‘equations’ of war – both sides signalled plainly to each other they were not looking for all-out war.
The ‘winner narrative’ from Israel was to be expected in today’s psy-war atmosphere. Yet it comes at a cost: Amos Harel in Haaretz suggests that “there’s a tendency in Israel [as a result] to view the success in foiling Sunday’s attack as renewed evidence of the consolidation of regional deterrence and [of western] strategic supremacy. But such an assessment” he concedes, “appears to be far from accurate”.
Indeed it is (far from accurate). The Sunday theatre concluded with no change to the strategic situation in the north of Israel: Daily attrition continues from across the frontier of Lebanon, down to the new 40 km border defining the extent of Israel’s loss of territory to the Hizbullah no-go zone.
The strategic point is not that this narrative of a successful thwarting of Hizbullah’s capabilities is highly misleading. Rather, it sets up expectations of available military success from which wrong conclusions will be drawn. We have been here before. It didn’t go well …
Seymour Hersh, doyen of U.S. investigative journalism, this week re-posted a piece that he wrote in August 2006 about U.S. thinking in the context of an Israeli war on Hizbullah – and on its intended role as a pathfinder-project for a subsequent U.S. strike on Iran.
What Hersh wrote then represents a striking déjà vu of today’s situation. It remains to the point because U.S. neocon thinking rarely evolves, but remains constant.
“The big question for our [U.S.] Air Force”, Hersh noted in 2006, “was how to hit a series of hard targets in Iran successfully”, the former senior intelligence official said. “Who is the closest ally of the U.S. Air Force in its planning? It’s not Congo—it’s Israel”. The official continued:
“Everybody knows that Iranian engineers have been advising Hezbollah on tunnels and underground missile emplacements. And so the USAF went to the Israelis with some new tactics and said to them: ‘Let’s concentrate on the bombing and share what we have on Iran – and what you have on Lebanon.’”.
“The Israelis told us [that Hesballah] would be a cheap war with many benefits,” a U.S. government consultant with close ties to Israel said: “Why oppose it? We’ll be able to hunt down and bomb missiles, tunnels, and bunkers from the air. It would be a demo for Iran”.
“I was told by the consultant that the Israelis repeatedly pointed to the war in Kosovo as an example of what Israel would try to achieve. “The NATO forces … methodically bombed and strafed not only military targets but tunnels, bridges, and roads, in Kosovo and elsewhere in Serbia, for seventy-eight days …“Israel studied the Kosovo war as its role model … The Israelis told Condi Rice: You did it in about seventy days, but we need half of that—thirty-five days’ [to finish off Hizbullah]””.
“The Bush White House”, a Pentagon consultant said, “has been agitating for some time to find a reason for a preëmptive blow against Hizbullah”; adding, “It was our intent to have Hezbollah diminished, and now we have someone else doing it … According to a Middle East expert, with knowledge of the current thinking of both the Israeli and the U.S. governments: Israel had devised a plan for attacking Hezbollah—and shared it with Bush Administration officials—well before the July 12th [2006] kidnappings: “It’s not that the Israelis had a trap that Hezbollah walked into,” he said, “but there was a strong feeling in the White House that sooner or later the Israelis were going to do it”, Hersh wrote.
“The White House was more focussed on stripping Hezbollah of its missiles, because – if there were to be a military option against Iran’s nuclear facilities – it had to get rid of the weapons that Hezbollah could use in a potential retaliation at Israel. Bush wanted both”, Hersh was told”.
“The Bush Administration was closely involved in the planning of Israel’s retaliatory attacks. President Bush and Vice-President Dick Cheney were convinced … that a successful Israeli Air Force bombing campaign against Hezbollah’s heavily fortified underground-missile and command-and-control complexes in Lebanon could ease Israel’s security concerns and also serve as a prelude to a potential American preëmptive attack to destroy Iran’s nuclear installations – some of which are also buried deep underground”. (Emphasis added.)
A former intelligence officer said, “We told Israel, ‘Look, if you guys have to go, we’re behind you all the way”.
“Nonetheless, some officers serving with the Joint Chiefs of Staff were deeply concerned that the Administration will have a far more positive assessment of the air campaign than they should – the former senior intelligence official said. “There is no way that Rumsfeld and Cheney will draw the right conclusion about this,” he said. “When the smoke clears, they’ll say it was a success, and they’ll draw reinforcement for their plan to attack Iran”.
(This is where we are today: When the smoke clears from Sunday’s ‘exemplary pre-emptive attack in Lebanon’, Netanyahu will be using it with Washington to draw reinforcement for his aspiration to engage the U.S. for a strike on Iran.)
“Strategic bombing has been a failed military concept for ninety years, and yet air forces all over the world keep on doing it,” John Arquilla, a defense analyst at the Naval Postgraduate School, told [Hersh] … Rumsfeld [too, shared this expert’s jaded view]: “Air power and the use of a few Special Forces had worked in Afghanistan, and he [Rumsfeld] had tried to do it again in Iraq. It was the same idea, but it didn’t work. He thought that Hezbollah was too dug in – and the Israeli attack plan would not work, and the last thing he wanted was another war on his shift that would put the American forces in Iraq in greater jeopardy”.
“The 2006 Israeli plan, according to the former senior intelligence official, was “the mirror image of what the United States had been planning for Iran””. (The initial U.S. Air Force proposals for an air attack to destroy Iran’s nuclear capacity, which included the option of intense bombing of civilian infrastructure targets inside Iran) were being resisted by the top leadership of the Army, the Navy, and the Marine Corps – according to current and former officials. They argued that the Air Force plan will not work and will inevitably lead, as in the Israeli war with Hezbollah, to the insertion of troops on the ground.
David Siegel, the then Israeli spokesman, said that his country’s leadership believed, as of early August 2006, that the air war had been successful, and had destroyed more than seventy per cent of Hizbullah’s medium-and long-range-missile launching capacity.
Israel however had not destroyed 70% of Hizbullah’s missile inventory in 2006. It was deceived by Hizbullah’s intelligence decoy operation. The Israelis bombed empty sites.
Today, we hear the same exultatory narrative coming from IDF Spokesman Rear Admiral Hagari – parading how successful Israel’s strikes on Sunday had been.
Likely some in Israel and U.S. again will be deeply concerned that the Biden team may fall for a far more positive assessment of the Israeli air campaign than they should.
Many commentators across the West are making the same mistake. As Haaretz’ military correspondent noted in respect to this Sunday’s air strikes: “there’s a tendency in Israel to view the success in foiling Sunday’s attack as renewed evidence for the consolidation of regional deterrence – and strategic supremacy”.
Or, in other words, Iran has been deterred from carrying out its ‘commitment’ to retaliate for Ismail Haniyah’s assassination in Tehran by the amassing of fire-power by the U.S. in the waters of the Mediterranean and the Persian Gulf and the fear of overwhelming U.S. firepower.
Anyone seeing the video glimpses of Iran’s automated and deep ‘missile cities’ deployed throughout the depth of Iran (and which it has allowed to be exposed to momentary view), should understand that carpet bombing Iranian civilian structure will not prevent the Iranian ability to respond lethally. Iran could unleash Regional Armageddon, nothing less.
So, for clarity’s sake: Who exactly is it that is deterred and backing down? Is it Iran or Washington?
Yet, “If it’s true that the Israeli campaign is based on the American approach in Kosovo, then it missed the point”, General Wesley Clark, the U.S. commander told Hersh. Killing civilians was not the objective: “In my experience, air campaigns have to be backed, ultimately, by the will and capability to finish the job on the ground”.
And that – simply – for the U.S. to contemplate for Iran is impossible.
“We face a dilemma”, an Israeli official told Hersh in 2006. Effectively, to decide whether to go for a local response (which is ineffective), or go for a comprehensive response—to really take on Hezbollah [and Iran] once and for all”.
Plus ça change: The dilemma may not have changed, but Israel has altered radically. A majority in Israel today is messianic in its support for Jabotinsky’s followers to do what they had always wanted and promised to do: To expel the Palestinians from the Land of Israel.
It is understood by many in Washington that the Revisionist Zionists (who represent maybe about 2 million Israelis) intend cynically to impose their will on the ‘Anglo-Saxons’, by plunging the U.S. into a wide regional war, should the White House try to undercut their neo-Nakba project of Palestinian forcible expulsion.
Benjamin Netanyahu has provoked Iran once (with the assassination in the Damascus Consulate of a top IRGC general); twice with killing of Haniyeh in Tehran; and a possible third would be were Israel to launch a so-called ‘pre-emptive’ strike against Iran, believing that the U.S. would be trapped and politically unable to stand aloof as Iran retaliated against Israel.
However, should the U.S. veto a strike on Iran before the U.S. elections (and Iran not retaliate for the death of Haniyeh before then), the Naqba ‘project’ can be moved forward via extending the existing Gaza military offensive to the West Bank, or through a grave provocation on the Haram al-Sharif (such as a fire at the al-Aqsa Mosque).
The Revisionist Zionists have been clear over recent years that some crisis or the confusion of war would be required to implement their neo-Naqba project fully.
America particularly is trapped by its ‘ironclad’, unqualified military support for Israel – which offers Netanyahu ample room for manoeuvre.
Manoeuvre, that is, towards the conflict that is Netanyahu’s only escape hatch ‘upwards’ as the ‘walls of attrition’ close-in on Israel. Iran and Hizbullah seem to have chosen too, for now, to preserve their escalatory dominance through a return to imposed calibrated attrition on Israel.
The U.S. will not be able to keep such a huge deployment of naval vessels in the region for long; but equally, Netanyahu will not be able to politically prevaricate at home for long, either.
When Yemen’s Ansar Allah declared the Red Sea as part of the support fronts backing the Palestinian people and their Resistance, the United States announced that it would try to subvert its operations to protect Israeli ships and shipments, trapping itself in an indefinite and congressionally uncertified military conflict in the region.
Coined “the most intense running sea battle” the US has seen since World War II, Washington’s decision to enter the Red Sea rapidly transpired into “the epitome of strategic malpractice“, an op-ed published by Responsible Statecraft said.
According to authors Jonathan Hoffman and Benjamin Giltner, the US military conquest in the Red Sea is not only failing but also exposing US military personnel in the region to extreme danger to protect foreign vessels, as well as risking escalation and the destabilization of not only Yemen but the entire region.
Hoffman and Giltner expand on the reasons for the US failure in the Red Sea and explain that they stem primarily from Washington’s willful ignorance and refusal to acknowledge the main motive behind Ansar Allah’s operations [that being the Israeli genocide in Gaza], clearing all hopes it has for triumphing in the region.
A vain costly conquest
The United States deployed its forces in the Red Sea, firstly to counter the Yemeni ban on Israeli-affiliated or Israeli ships under Operation Prosperity Guardian, and secondly to launch its joint aggression with the United Kingdom against Yemen under Operation Poseidon Archer. The goal, allegedly, is to restore its deterrence in the region.
However, the US has now spent millions in American taxpayer funds and over a billion dollars to shoot down homegrown Yemeni drones, only to fail in deterring the Yemenis. In detail, the US has claimed that its forces shot down 150 Yemeni drones, each costing $2,000 at most, using missiles and weapon systems that cost more than one billion dollars.
The authors also note that Yemen escalated its operations only after the US and its partners launched their aggression to “restore deterrence”, further proving that their mission in the Red Sea failed.
This is due to the Yemeni military niche as a result of a decade-long conflict with Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, which enabled the country to develop its “shoot and scoot” guerrilla tactic. The Yemenis have proven to be skilled in producing highly versatile drones that carry out their attacks and retreat rapidly, at relatively extremely low costs.
Ironically, the US acknowledges the detachment between the US military campaign and its goals in the Red Sea, as well as its ineffectiveness in either deterring Yemen or restoring the maritime supply chain, but still expresses its determination to maintain its presence in the region and prolong the conflict further.
Resistance groups in the #MiddleEast have taught imperial powers how homegrown weapons can go head to head with their fancy and expensive arsenal, and in some cases beat it, despite the much lower cost. pic.twitter.com/Tu28mb4e4A
— Al Mayadeen English (@MayadeenEnglish) June 14, 2024
US presence could destabilize Yemen
The second reason why the American strategy continues failing is because it risks destabilizing a war-torn Yemen following a decade of war against the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.
The Saudi war against Yemen has not only left almost 400,000 casualties, but also created one of the worst modern-day humanitarian crises the world has seen. Despite the disastrous consequences of the war, Yemen’s Ansar Allah still emerged victorious.
The UN was able to mediate and establish a two-month ceasefire back in April 2022, which has extended to the current day. Saudi Arabia has been trying to pull out from the war it lost, while Ansar Allah maintained and fortified their positions in Yemen.
In the aftermath of October 7, Yemen emerged as a support front to back the Palestinian Resistance and the people of Gaza, further synthesizing Ansar Allah’s resistive front with the Yemeni government, in the face of any aggression that targets the country or its affiliations.
However, the escalating US-led aggression risks fracturing the UN-established ceasefire, further risking the destabilization of Yemen.
Risk of regional war
Lastly, the ongoing conflict between the United States and Ansar Allah risks escalating already mounting regional tensions, potentially pushing the Middle East closer to an all-out war. In the nearly 11 months since “Israel’s” war in Gaza began, military escalations have increased throughout the region, with the current clashes between Ansar Allah and the US military emerging as a result.
In a sequence of successes for the Axis of Resistance, the “deterrence” the US sought to impose against Yemen was further asserted as a failure when Ansar Allah successfully struck a site located near the US embassy in Tel Aviv.
“Israel”, backed by the United States, then bombed Hodeidah, killing six civilians and injuring dozens more.
With no resolution in sight for the war in Gaza and increasing concerns of a regional conflict, Yemen could become a key flashpoint, the authors wrote. If the US aims to prevent further Yemeni attacks and avoid being drawn into a larger regional war, military force is unlikely to accomplish these goals.
There are no critical US national interests in Yemen that warrant the current level of American military involvement or the waste of billions in taxpayer dollars. Rather than continuing its tit-for-tat conflict with Ansar Allah, Washington should acknowledge that its unwavering support for “Israel’s” war in Gaza is destabilizing the region and harming US interests.
The authors called for a ceasefire in Gaza, which would offer the most promising opportunity to halt, or at least significantly reduce Yemeni attacks, and ease growing tensions across the Middle East.
Iran’s ambassador and permanent representative to the United Nations Office in Geneva has called on the international community to work towards ending nuclear tests and eliminating atomic weapons.
Ali Bahreini made the remarks in an X post on Thursday, on the occasion of the International Day against Nuclear Tests.
“Nuclear testing is a threat to our planet and future generations,” he said.
“On the International Day against Nuclear Tests, let’s pledge to protect our world by advocating for a complete end to nuclear tests and total elimination of NWs,” he added, referring to nuclear weapons.
“Each nuclear explosion is a step backward in the journey towards a world free of nuclear weapons. Today, more than ever, we need a global commitment to the complete elimination of nuclear weapons,” Bahreini wrote in a separate post on X in Persian.
In 2009, the UN General Assembly declared August 29 the International Day against Nuclear Tests by unanimously adopting Resolution 64/35.
The document calls for increasing awareness and education “about the effects of nuclear weapon test explosions or any other nuclear explosions and the need for their cessation as one of the means of achieving the goal of a nuclear-weapon-free world.”
The United States is the only country on Earth that has used nuclear weapons in wartime.
On August 6, 1945, the US dropped the world’s first atomic bomb on the Japanese city of Hiroshima, killing thousands instantly and about 140,000 by the end of the year. Three days later, it dropped a second bomb on Nagasaki, killing another 70,000.
Reknowned economist M. Shahid Alamoffers this excellent critique of Noam Chomsky’s defective analysis of the relative influence of Oil versus the Israel lobby over US foreign policy: … continue
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