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The collapse of the concept of a rules-based international order

By  Veniamin Popov – New Eastern Outlook – 18.04.2024

After the collapse of the Soviet Union, the United States believed that a unipolar world would last forever: year after year, day after day, it became increasingly blatant in its disregard for the interests of others and the opinions of the rest of the world.

Then the concept of an international “rules-based order” was born: a group of American scholars, former and future officials, presented a paper at Princeton in 2006 entitled “A World of Freedom Under Law”. They framed this as a response to the weaknesses of international law, suggesting that when international institutions fail to produce the outcomes preferred by the “world of freedom”, there is “an alternative forum for liberal democracies to authorise collective action”. In practice, this forum has most often been the White House.

During the Libyan crisis of 2011, the United States and its allies used Security Council authorisation for a no-fly zone to overthrow Muammar Gaddafi.

American troops have now been operating in eastern Syria for more than eight years – yet there is no justification in international law for their presence.

Even American political scientists describe this concept as a kind of asterisk placed over international law. The “rules-based order” absolves the US and its allies of responsibility and fundamentally undermines the concept of international law. US policymakers use this theory to entrench US advantages as a global power. When the prerogatives and rules of international law coincide with the canons they establish, Washington calls them synonymous. Thus, on the eve of February 2022, i.e. the start of a special military operation in Ukraine, Secretary Blinken warned of a moment of danger for “the foundations of the United Nations Charter and the rules-based international order that preserves stability around the world”, but when US prerogatives diverge from international law, the concept of a “rules-based order” comes into play, which “should ultimately benefit global stability”.

A prime example is the 2003 US invasion of Iraq, which the George W. Bush administration cynically justified as a means of enforcing UN disarmament mandates. Iraq was declared an invader, it survived the military occupation, the death toll of Iraqis is approaching 1 million, and the country is still reeling from America’s brazen attack.

Washington’s military and economic might at the time ensured that America would face few consequences for invading without UN authorisation.

The very concept of a “rules-based order” set America at odds with the rest of the world, which recognised that international relations were becoming multipolar. Many leaders of developing countries, especially Russia, China, India and Brazil, talked about the same thing. Even American allies tried to show the flaws in the concept. Former German Chancellor Gerhard Schröder warned of the “undeniable danger of US unilateralism”, and former French Minister Hubert Védrine once said that “France’s entire foreign policy … is aimed at making tomorrow’s world consist of several poles, not just one”.

According to Harvard University professor Stephen Walt, the US was carried away by a show of force, disregarding the opinions of even its allies and international organisations, and then went off on its own to gain the advantage.

The Gaza war drew a final line under the concept of the “rules-based order”: on 25 March, 14 members of the UN Security Council adopted a resolution demanding an immediate end to the war in Gaza, with the US abstaining. The resolution became a legally enforceable document, but Israel, unwilling to accept UN mandates, continued to bomb the southern town of Rafah and besiege Al-Shifa Hospital in Gaza City. Shortly after the vote, a spokesman for the Biden administration called Resolution No. 2728 “non-binding”, in a clear attempt to deny its status as international law. At a State Department press briefing, the spokesman said the measure would not lead to an immediate ceasefire or affect the complex hostage negotiations.

International law is clearly against what Israel is doing in Gaza. 2 months before Resolution No. 2728 was adopted, the International Court of Justice ruled that Israel’s ongoing campaign could plausibly be considered genocide and called on Israel to take measures to prevent genocide.

On the eve of the passage of Bill 2728, the Canadian Parliament passed a motion to halt new arms transfers to Israel. On the day the Security Council adopted the resolution, the UN Special Rapporteur on the Occupied Palestinian Territories, Francesca Albanese, recommended that member states “immediately” impose an arms embargo on Israel for failing to comply with mandatory measures ordered by the International Court of Justice.

After the above resolution was passed, White House national security spokesman John Kirby clarified that American arms shipments and sales to Israel would not be affected, while the State Department stated, and the White House later confirmed, that “there are no incidents where the Israelis have violated international humanitarian law.

All of this comes after Israel has killed tens of thousands of Palestinians, most of them women and children, and displaced and permanently starved two million people in Gaza. In addition, the Israeli military bombed a convoy of aid workers from the World Central Kitchen.

The crux of the matter is that Washington is arming a country that has been ordered by the Security Council to cease hostilities. Washington’s actions are at odds with reality: the massacre in Gaza has made many foreign figures and organisations reluctant to listen to American officials on other issues. According to US press reports, Annelle Sheline, a State Department human rights official who recently resigned, said that some activist groups in North Africa have simply stopped meeting with her and her colleagues: “Trying to defend human rights has simply become impossible as long as the US is helping Israel,” she said.

Two years ago, US diplomats seeking support for Ukraine faced “a very clear negative reaction to America’s penchant for defining the global order and forcing countries to take sides”. In this regard, the New York Times concluded on 10 April this year that “Resolution No. 2728, which passed without result, may well be remembered as a watershed moment in the decline of the ‘rules-based international order’ – that is, the world the United States seeks to build and preserve… Gaza is a chilling reminder that in a world of exceptions to international law, it is the least powerful who suffer the most.

All these developments were accurately characterised by China’s Permanent Representative to the UN, who described the US statements and actions as incompatible with the status of a permanent member of the UN Security Council, and said that Washington was undermining the authority of the Security Council.

April 18, 2024 Posted by | War Crimes, Wars for Israel | , , , , | Leave a comment

Could the Russians Seize Congress?

By Patrick Lawrence | Consortium News | April 16, 2024

The Russians are coming — or coming back, better put.

As the November elections draw near, let us brace for another barrage of preposterous propaganda to the effect Russians are poisoning our minds with “disinformation,” “false narratives,” and all the other misnomers deployed when facts contradict liberal authoritarian orthodoxies.

We had a rich taste of this new round of lies and innuendo in late January, when Nancy Pelosi, the California Democrat who served as House speaker for far too long, asserted that the F.B.I. should investigate demonstrators demanding a ceasefire in Gaza for their ties, yes indeedy, to the Kremlin.

Here is Pelosi on CNN’s State of the Union program Jan. 28:

“For them to call for a cease-fire is Mr. Putin’s message. Make no mistake, this is directly connected to what he would like to see. Same thing with Ukraine… I think some financing should be investigated. And I want to ask the F.B.I. to investigate that.”

O.K., we have the template: If you say something that coincides with the Russian position, you will be accused of hiding your “ties to Russia,” as the common phrase has it.

Be careful not to mention some spring day that the sky is pleasantly blue: I am here to warn you—“make no mistake” — this is exactly what “Putin,” now stripped of a first name and a title, “would like to see.”

There is invariably an ulterior point when those in power try on tomfoolery of this kind. In each case they have something they need to explain away.

In 2016, it was Hillary Clinton’s defeat at the polls, so we suffered four years of Russiagate. Pelosi felt called upon to discredit those objecting to the Israeli–U.S. genocide in Gaza.

Protest against Israeli genocide in Freedom Plaza, Washington, D.C., Nov. 4, 2023. (Diane Krauthamer, Flickr, CC BY-NC-SA 2.0)

Now we have a new ruse. Desperate to get Congress to authorize $60.1 billion in new aid to Ukraine, Capitol Hill warmongers charge that those objecting to this bad-money-after-bad allocation are… do I have to finish the sentence?

Two weeks ago Michael McCaul, a Republican representative who wants to see the long-blocked aid bill passed, asserted in an interview with Puck News that Russian propaganda has “infected a good chunk of my party’s base.” Here is the stupid-sounding congressman from Texas, as quoted in The Washington Post,  elaborating on our now-familiar theme:

“There are some more nighttime entertainment shows that seem to spin, like, I see the Russian propaganda in some of it — and it’s almost identical on our airwaves. These people that read various conspiracy-theory outlets that are just not accurate, and they actually model Russian propaganda.”

I read in the Post that McCaul’s staff abruptly cut short the interview when Julia Ioffe, a professional Russophobe who has bounced around from one publication to another for years, asked him to name a few names.

So was this latest ball of baloney set in motion.

A week after McCaul’s Puck News interview, Michael Turner, an Ohio Republican who, as chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, swings a bigger stick, escalated matters when, reacting to McCaul’s statements, reported that this grave Russian penetration was evident in the upper reaches of the American government, as again reported in The Washington Post :

“Oh, it is absolutely true. We see directly coming from Russia attempts to mask communications that are anti–Ukraine and pro–Russia messages, some of which we even hear being uttered on the House floor.”

Masked communications uttered on the House floor: Hold the thought, as I will shortly return to it.

The VOA Rendition 

The taker of the cake — so far, anyway — arrived last week from Voice of America, the Central Intelligence Agency front posing as a radio broadcaster, under the headline, “How Russia’s disinformation campaign seeps into U.S. views.” Same theme: The Rrrrrussians are poisoning America’s otherwise pristine discourse in an effort to block authorization of the assistance bill, which also includes aid to Israel ($14.1 billion) and Taiwan ($4 billion).

To drive home its point, VOA quotes a lobbyist named Scott Cullinane, who works for something called Razom, which means “together” in the Ukrainian language. Razom is a non-governmental organization “formed in 2014 to support Ukrainians in their quest for freedom.” That is, Razom’s founding coincided with the coup in Kiev the U.S. orchestrated in February 2014.

Razom works with a variety of Ukrainian NGOs to advance this cause and sounds to me like a player in the old civil-society-subterfuge game, though one cannot be sure because, on its website and in its annual reports, it does not say, per usual in these sorts of cases, who funds it.

Here is a little of VOA’s report on Cullinane’s recent doings on Capitol Hill:

“On a near daily basis, Scott Cullinane talks with members of Congress about Russia’s war in Ukraine. As a lobbyist for the nonprofit Razom, part of his job is to convince them of Ukraine’s need for greater U.S. support to survive.

But as lawmakers debated a $95 billion package that includes about $60 billion in aid for Ukraine, Cullinane noticed an increase in narratives alleging Ukrainian corruption. What stood out is that these were the same talking points promoted by Russian disinformation.

So, when The Washington Post published an investigation into an extensive and coordinated Russian campaign to influence U.S. public opinion to deny Ukraine the aid, Cullinane says he was not surprised.

‘This problem has been festering and growing for years,’ he told VOA. ‘I believe that Russia’s best chance for victory is not on the battlefield, but through information operations targeted on Western capitals, including Washington.’”

Straight off the top, there has been no Washington Post “investigation.” The Post simply quoted two paranoid congressmen without bothering to question, never mind investigate, the veracity of their assertions.

Beyond this, the question of Ukrainian corruption is another case of the sky being blue. There is no “alleging” the Kiev regime’s corruption: It is thoroughly documented by, among other authorities, Transparency International, which ranks Ukraine among the world’s most corrupt nations.

You see what is going on here? This is an echo chamber, ever treasured by the propagandists.

Puck News, a web publication of no great account, puts out a warmongering reporter’s interview with a warmongering congressman, The Washington Post reports it, another congressman seconds the assertions of the first, the Post reports that, and then VOA joins the proceedings to report that well-established, beyond-dispute facts are Russian disinformation.

And the echoes multiply, like the circles in a pond when a rock is tossed in. Here is how Tagesspiegel, a Berlin daily whose Russophobia dates to its founding during the U.S. occupation after World War II, reported on the assistance bill immediately after the VOA report:

“The controversy about the aid, which has already passed the U.S. Senate, is reflected in numerous posts on social media and articles on news sites. As The Washington Post reports, one actor has played a decisive role in this: the Russian government.”

When propaganda is king, you have to conclude, what goes around keeps going around.

It is well enough to laugh at this silly business, transparently calculated as it is. Except that this kind of chicanery has a long history, and we learn from it that the Russians have been coming, off and on, for seven-plus decades. The consequences of these conjured imaginings, we also learn, are very other than funny.

When I decided to write the book that came out last autumn as Journalists and Their Shadows, exploring the past was essential to the project. If we want to understand our “press mess,” as I call the current crisis in our media, we had better understand how it got this way.

In the course of my researches into the exuberant anti–Communism of the early Cold War years, I came upon a lengthy takeout Look magazine published on Aug. 3, 1948, under the headline, “Could the Reds Seize Detroit?” This piece was exemplary of its time.

“Detroit is the industrial heart of America,” the writer began. “Today, a sickle is being sharpened to plunge into that heart… The Reds are going boldly about their business.”

Before he finishes, James Metcalfe — let this byline be recorded — has Motor City besieged in “an all-out initial blow in the best blitzkrieg fashion.” The presentation featured masked Communists murdering police officers and telephone operators, seizing airports, blowing up bridges, power grids, rail lines, and highways.

“Caught in the madness of the moment, emboldened by the darkness, intoxicated by an unbridled license to kill and loot, mobs would swarm the streets.” Communist mobs, naturally.

It is easy to read this now with some combination of derision and contempt. Do we have any grounds to do so? Are we doing things so differently now?

There were dangers implicit in the Look piece. It published Metcalfe’s paranoic fantasy a year and a few months after President Harry Truman gave his famous “scare hell out of the American people” speech to Congress in March 1947. Look was in essence recruiting the public as the Truman administration launched the Cold War crusade.

Representatives McCaul and Turner are on a recruitment drive of the very same kind. They are not lying to one another in any kind of effort to clean up Congress. Do not wait for them to lift a finger on that score. They are lying to you and me in what amounts to a scare-hell operation.

And the danger this time is the same as the danger last time. It is the cultivation of a climate of fear wherein the American public is to acquiesce as the new Cold War proceeds and all manner of laws and constitutional rights are abused.

Last Friday the House reauthorized, for two more years, the law known as Section 702, which allows the intelligence cabal to surveille Americans’ digital communications — without warrants and on U.S. soil — if they claim to be targeting foreigners suspected of subversive activities.

What does this have to do with the way the paranoids on Capitol Hill, reporters at The Washington Post, and professional propagandists at VOA are currently carrying on about assistance to Ukraine?

Nothing. And everything.

Patrick Lawrence, a correspondent abroad for many years, chiefly for The International Herald Tribune, is a columnist, essayist, lecturer and author, most recently of Journalists and Their Shadows, available from Clarity Press or via Amazon.  Other books include Time No Longer: Americans After the American Century. His Twitter account, @thefloutist, has been permanently censored.

April 18, 2024 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Fake News, Mainstream Media, Warmongering, Russophobia | , , | Leave a comment

Insurers claim ‘government’ could have sabotaged Nord Stream – Kommersant

RT | April 18, 2024

Insurance policies for the Nord Stream gas pipelines sabotaged in 2022 do not cover destruction or damage caused during military hostilities, Russian newspaper Kommersant reported on Thursday, citing a claim filed at the High Court in London by two major Western companies.

The reported claim by Lloyd’s of London and Arch Insurance comes in response to a court filing in March by Nord Stream AG, the pipeline’s operator.

The enterprise, which is 51% owned by Russian energy giant Gazprom, alleged at the time that insurers had failed to pay about €400 million ($438 million) for damage caused by the explosions at the pipelines, according to the Financial Times. Nord Stream AG reportedly estimates it would cost over €1.2 billion to fully repair the infrastructure and replace the lost gas inventory.

In response, the two insurers are said to have claimed that “loss or damage directly or indirectly occasioned by, happening through, or in consequence of war” cannot be covered by the policies. They added that Russia-Ukraine conflict, which began in February 2022, “satisfies the terms war, invasion hostilities or military power.” The insurers also argue the damage could have been caused “by or under the order of any government,” according to Kommersant.

Commenting on the report, Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said major concerns have been raised over the credibility of Western insurance giants. Any refusal to pay liabilities adds to a series of hostile acts towards Russia, according to Zakharova, including the seizure of state assets and private property, as well as alleged threats to damage civilian infrastructure.

Built to deliver Russian natural gas directly to Germany via the Baltic Sea, the Nord Stream pipelines were damaged by unknown perpetrators in a series of explosions in September 2022. The blasts left three out of four pipelines inoperable, causing what is believed to be the largest single methane leak ever.

Shortly after the sabotage, Germany, Denmark and Sweden – in whose economic zones the attack took place – launched separate investigations, although no results have been published. Earlier this year, Denmark and Sweden said they had closed their probes.

The Russian authorities have claimed the US had the most to gain from the sabotage, pointing to the opposition to the pipelines repeatedly voiced by the White House. Moscow has also accused the West of stonewalling the investigation.

Last year, award-winning US journalist Seymour Hersh accused Washington of being behind the bombing, although the White House dismissed the allegations. Several Western media outlets later reported that Ukrainian citizens had been involved in the sabotage. Kiev has denied any connection to the attack.

As a result of the sabotage, gas supplies from Russia to Germany via Nord Stream 1 were halted. Nord Stream 2 had never been put into operation due to EU bureaucratic setbacks.

April 18, 2024 Posted by | Aletho News | , , | Leave a comment

Orban calls on the political leadership in Brussels to resign, cites EU’s endless failures

By Drago Bosnic | April 18, 2024

On April 17, Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban spoke at this year’s National Conservatism (NatCon) conference, a gathering of conservative political parties in the European Union, as the name aptly suggests. Dubbed the “gathering of Europe’s far right” by the mainstream propaganda machine, NatCon is indeed opposed to the ultra-liberal ideology and policies of the unelected bureaucrats in Brussels. Thus, it’s hardly surprising that Orban was quite critical of the troubled bloc’s numerous failures, as he openly urged voters to reject mainstream political parties in the upcoming EU elections. Orban even called on the political leadership in Brussels to resign, pointing out that all of their major projects and policies, such as the so-called “green transition”, sustainable development, migration, military and sanctions, etc. failed.

“The sense of this European election is: change the leadership,” he stated, adding: “If the leadership proves to be bad, it must be replaced. That’s so simple.”

For the Associated Press, this was “too much”, as the major mainstream propaganda machine outlet complained about the applause that Orban, a “right-wing populist leader” according to them, got for those words. He also criticized the EU’s suicidal climate policies and agriculture rules that make it impossible for farmers across the EU to stay in business. In addition, Orban warned that the ongoing migration crisis is getting out of hand and that the possible admission of the Kiev regime to the EU or NATO should not be allowed, primarily for economic and security reasons. He also criticized the European Commission, the bloc’s effectively unelected executive body, for using the COVID-19 pandemic as an excuse to attack his country, slamming the EC for an attempt to “suffocate Hungary financially”.

And indeed, the Brussels bureaucrats illegally denied giving Budapest access to billions of euros in funds over alleged “concerns about democratic backsliding in the country”, as well as the “possible mismanagement of EU money”. In Orban’s view, this is nothing more than an attempt to blackmail the country due to his strong stance on all of the aforementioned policies and ideologies that the political West subscribes to nowadays. He also reiterated that the failures extend to the self-defeating sanctions on Russia. The mainstream propaganda machine usually accuses Orban of being a supposed “staunch ally of Russian President Vladimir Putin” for such a stance, particularly when it comes to his opposition to the change of Ukraine’s status as a potential geopolitical buffer zone between the EU/NATO and Russia.

In addition, Orban called the Neo-Nazi junta “just a protectorate relying on Western money and weapons, not a sovereign state anymore”. Expectedly, this wasn’t met with approval in Brussels, which even tried to prevent this year’s NatCon, citing alleged “security concerns” as the excuse for it. The AP called the conference “a gathering of strident nationalists and fundamentalist Christians”, complaining about the fact that it resumed after winning a legal challenge against Brussels city authorities which tried to prevent it under the pretext that it posed “a threat to public order”. Other prominent EU conservative figures, such as Eric Zemmour from France, were to attend the NatCon. However, Zemmour was held by the police, preventing his address about the EU’s immigration rules that can only be described as suicidal.

And while the mainstream propaganda machine is shrieking at the very idea someone would dare criticize and strongly oppose any (let alone all) of the aforementioned policies, the obvious question arises – is the so-called “far right” in the EU right (no pun intended)? Can anyone really refute Orban’s claim that the political leadership in Brussels is incompetent when they say things like “Russia is losing so badly that its military is forced to take chips out of washing machines“? Such ludicrous propaganda myths clearly indicate that the so-called “EU elites” are far more like flea market salesmen, rather than leaders who could ever be taken seriously. What’s more, Orban is certainly not alone in his criticism, as Prime Minister Robert Fico of the neighboring Slovakia expressed similar concerns, particularly about Ukraine.

As for the extremely controversial EU Asylum and Migration Pact recently approved by the European Parliament, which will effectively force member states to accept their “fair share of new immigrants” or pay a fine for every migrant they reject, the conservative parties are furious, and rightfully so, it should be noted. While the EU, a mere geopolitical pendant of NATO at this point, is allocating hundreds of billions to the deeply corrupt Neo-Nazi junta, farmers across the bloc are faced with a plethora of issues that will soon spill over to other industries and sectors of fledgling European economies. The unelected Brussels bureaucrats believe that encouraging their (neo)colonialist policies through immigration might ameliorate some of those issues by essentially importing more cheap labor force.

However, the conservatives are (rightfully) concerned about the demographic and security consequences of such policies. The extremist ultra-liberal ideology that the political West increasingly subscribes to is incompatible with the more traditional values of both the immigrants and indigenous Europeans. This is already causing a plethora of societal and safety problems across the continent, so encouraging immigration will only exacerbate the situation. The ongoing deindustrialization of the EU’s most powerful economies is certainly not making things better, as the largely unskilled labor force that most immigrants belong to will not be able to contribute economically, which opens a lot of questions about potential security risks in the foreseeable future. However, asking about it is usually deemed too “far right”.

Drago Bosnic is an independent geopolitical and military analyst.

April 18, 2024 Posted by | Malthusian Ideology, Phony Scarcity, Russophobia | | Leave a comment

X Says “Anti-Misinformation” Agency Spreading Falsehoods Caused “Incalculable” Damage

By Didi Rankovic | Reclaim The Net | April 18, 2024

DoubleVerify, which says it is in the business of helping brands advertise more effectively while focusing on “transparency and authenticity” has caused X to lose a number of advertisers because it rated the platform’s “brand safety” erroneously.

The factual false information that DoubleVerify published to the world, all the while supposedly working to tackle misinformation, has to do with what the company said was “a graphical error in the display of X’s Brand Safety Rate in DV’s Pinnacle dashboard.”

This error continued to be displayed for four and a half months, showing a false, lower rate, admitted CEO Mark Zegorski.

The DoubleVerify CEO went on to say they took “full responsibility” and apologized, also revealing that the brand safety rate enjoyed by X “across all campaigns” the company measured “exceeded 99.99%.”

The damage done in this way is described by X Corp’s Business Operations chief Joe Benarroch as being “incalculable.”

According to him, dozens of firms justified their decision to pull out of advertising on X referring to DoubleVerify’s rating. This started happening after Elon Musk acquired then Twitter – while previously, those same brands had no problem advertising when the platform had a “politically liberal CEO.”

This was the case even though, according to Benarroch, Twitter had “little to no” brand safety capabilities before the Musk takeover, and that as much as 90% of those capabilities were built afterward.

The context of all this becomes even more interesting considering that the demand for DoubleVerify’s services (and resulting huge revenues) stems from the likes of the controversial Global Alliance for Responsible Media (GARM, currently investigated by the House Judiciary Committee) “normalizing” the notion that companies must not advertise if a platform is found guilty of “misinformation.”

This has spawned a whole industry of third-party “raters” who are often criticized as using their role and influence to push a certain – namely, left-leaning – political agenda, that results in conservative media, but also those that are center-right, as well as “disobedient” social platforms, losing sometimes vital ad revenue.

DoubleVerify in 2020 bragged that it was the first to harmonize its product with the rules pushed not only by GARM (an initiative of the World Federation of Advertisers with links to the World Economic Forum) but also by the 4A’s Advertising Protection Bureau (APB).

April 18, 2024 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance | , | Leave a comment

FBI Wanted to Install Backdoor to Spy on Users, Telegram Founder Tells Tucker Carlson

By Oleg Burunov – Sputnik – 17.04.2024

Speaking with Tucker Carlson, Russian-born IT entrepreneur and co-founder of the Telegram social network Pavel Durov focused on a variety of topics, including his visit to the United States. The 39-year-old revealed that he was closely watched and monitored by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) during his time in the country.

“We got too much attention from the FBI, [and] the security agencies, wherever we came to the US,” Durov said during the interview released on Wednesday.

According to the businessman, one of his top employees once told him that he had been approached by the US government. “There was an attempt to secretly hire my engineer behind my back by [US] cybersecurity officers,” Durov claimed.

He argued that those officers were trying to persuade the engineer to use “certain open-source tools,” which he would then integrate into Telegram’s code that, in Durov’s opinion, “would serve as backdoors” for hacking the platform.

The entrepreneur stressed that he believes what the employee said was true, adding, “There is no reason for my engineer to make up [such] stories.”

When asked if infiltrating Telegram’s systems would allow the US government to spy on its users, Durov stated that he did not dismiss the possibility, acknowledging that any government could potentially carry out such an action. “A backdoor is a backdoor, regardless of who uses it,” he underscored.

The 39-year-old tech tycoon noted that he had “personally experienced similar pressure” in the US, where law enforcement officials approached him on many occasions.

“Whenever I would go to the US, I would have two FBI agents greeting me at the airport, asking questions. One time, I was having breakfast at 9 am and the FBI showed up at the house that I was renting,” the businessman asserted. According to him, FBI agents knew what he and his team were doing, but the agents wanted the details.

“My understanding is that they [also] wanted to establish a relationship to in a way control Telegram better. I understand that they were doing their job. [But] for us running a privacy-focused social media platform, that probably wasn’t the best environment to be in. We want to be focused on what we do, not on government relations of that sort,” Durov pointed out.

The interview comes just a day after Carlson published the first post on his newly-created Telegram page, the Tucker Carlson Network, where users will “get all the latest updates, behind-the-scenes insights, and exclusive content.”

There are already more than 150,000 subscribers for the channel, and their number is growing with every passing second.

April 17, 2024 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance | , , | Leave a comment

The Queen of Climate Crackpottery

By Tony Thomas | Quadrant | April 15, 2024

Trigger warning: if your household companions include a cat, dog, canary, goldfish or turtle, this article is not a safe space. I’m writing about Harvard’s distinguished agnatologist Professor Naomi Oreskes (above) and her 2014 warning that global warming would kill your pets in 2023. The warning is in her acclaimed but glum book The Collapse of Western Civilization: A View from the Future. Given margins of error in climate science, the pet die-off might be this year instead. Oreskes wrote,

The loss of pet cats and dogs garnered particular attention among wealthy Westerners, but what was anomalous in 2023 soon became the new normal . … A shadow of ignorance and denial had fallen over people who considered themselves children of the Enlightenment (p9).

Smarter climate alarmists don’t make short-term predictions. They choose a date like 2050 for when the oceans will boil. They’ll be senile or dead by then and can’t be humiliated if the oceans stay chilly.

Top environmentalist Paul Ehrlich forecast in 1971 that by 2000 the UK “will be simply a small group of impoverished islands, inhabited by some 70 million hungry people … If I were a gambler, I would take even money that England will not exist in the year 2000.”[1] His 1968 book, Population Bomb, predicted starvation would shrink the US population to 23 million by 1999. Strangely, Oreskes in her book hails Ehrlich as a vindicated futurist. (p3-4 and 56).

The only good news from Naomi is that the IPCC becomes [more] discredited and is disbanded. She replaces it with such alphabet soups as the UNCCEP’s ICCEP which launches IAICEP, which she says is pronounced “ay-yi-yi-sep” (p27).The mission of ay-yi-yi-sep is to sprinkle enough fairy dust aka sulphates in the air to make an anti-sun umbrella and save the planet by 2079.

In September 2014 she was interviewed on the ABC’s Science Show by Dr (honoris causa) Robyn Williams, a Fellow of the Australian Academy of Science, about the pet-deaths. One reader, she explained,

… started crying when the pets die, so I didn’t mean to upset people too much … I was just trying to come up with something that I thought people wouldn’t forget about, and I thought, ‘Well, Americans spend billions of dollars every year taking care of their pets’, and I thought if people’s dogs started dying, maybe then they would sit up and take notice.

Interviewer Dr Williams[2] was delighted with Oreskes’ pet-panic strategy. He chimed in,

Yes, not only because it’s an animal but it’s local. You see, one criticism of the scientists is they’re always talking about global things…And so if you are looking at your village, your animals, your fields, your park, your kids, and the scientists are talking about a small world that you know, then it makes a greater impact, doesn’t it.

Oreskes: Well, exactly. It was about bringing it literally home, literally into your home, your family, your pet, the dog or cat that you love who is your faithful and trusted companion.

As I type this, I look down fondly at Natasha, our doomed spaniel, although she is neither faithful nor trustworthy.

Oreskes began her Science Show appearance by reading from her book in sepulchrul tones:

Then, in the northern hemisphere summer of 2041, unprecedented heatwaves scorched the planet [and] led to widespread outbreaks of typhus, cholera, dengue fever, yellow fever, and viral and retroviral agents never seen before.

Naomi’s actually playing down her future horrors, she omits to tell him about the arrival of the Black Death:

Dislocation contributed to the Second Black Death, as a new strain of the bacterium Yersinia pestis emerged in Europe and spread to Asia and North America. In the Middle Ages, the Black Death killed as much as half the population of some parts of Europe; this second Black Death had similar effects. (p30).

Australians will wonder: does Medicare charge extra premiums to cover bubonic plague?

Williams, instead of asking Oreskes what she’s smoking, merely observed that all of the above is “fairly shocking”. He further wondered why it is only Western civilization that collapses, leaving the Chinese in charge. One reason, says Oreskes, is that Chinese civilisation is more durable, and two, that authoritarian regimes are better able to deal with hypothesised climate apocalypses.

Looking back from the future, Oreskes viewed China in the early 2000s as a beacon of carbon enlightenment. China, she said,

… took steps to control its population and convert its economy to non – carbon – based energy sources. These efforts were little noticed and less emulated in the West, in part because Westerners viewed Chinese population control efforts as immoral, and in part because the country’s exceptionally fast economic expansion led to a dramatic increase in greenhouse gas emissions, masking the impact of renewable energy. By 2050 , this impact became clear as China’s emissions began to fall rapidly. Had other nations followed China’s lead, the [grim future] history recounted here might have been very different. (p6).[3]

Another interviewer — a friendly one, actually — played the devil’s advocate:

Interviewer: Just how much do you hate the American way of life? What gives you the intellectual chutzpah to make these kinds of projections?

Oreskes: Our story is a call to protect the American way of life before it’s too late.

I identify with Oreskes, who grew up in New York, because as a lass she was a geologist working on Western Mining Corp’s Olympic project in central Australia. I phoned WMC’s retired boss Hugh Morgan but he couldn’t give me any piquant anecdotes about young Naomi.

Her sojourn Down Under must have been unhappy because she’s forecast that the climate emergency will kill off every Australian man woman and child (all 26 million of us). “The human populations of Australia and Africa, of course, were wiped out.” (p33). As a resident of Australia’s pagan state of Victoria, I don’t believe in the afterlife, although I am bringing a change of underwear. (Witticism courtesy Woody Allen).

Oreskes dropped geology to co-write that Merchants of Doubt book, painting “climate deniers” as the evil twins of those denying that smoking causes cancer. The book in 2021 was set to music by composer Yvette Jackson, who sees climate doubt as having the

… low, somber insistence of the bass clarinet, skittering flute that cranks up anxiety, sonorous cello to hold things together, and the deep, doubting rumble of double bass.

Listen to that anxious, sonorous cello and more here (fourth video down).

At 65, Naomi’s job title is Harvard Professor of the History of Science — but don’t call, she’s on leave. She co-wrote her civilisational-collapse book with fellow alarmist Erik Conway. Her other collaborators include Pope Francis: she did the intro for his Laudato si’ encyclical in 2015.

Wikipedia lists only 30 of her honours, including the Stephen H. Schneider Award in 2016 for communicating “extraordinary scientific contributions” to a broad public in a clear and compelling fashion. Schneider (1945-2010) was a top IPCC climate scientist. He urged colleagues there to strike a balance between scaring the pants off the public and being honest about how weak the CO2 evidence really is. Oreskes also scored the 2019 Mary Rabbit Award from the US Geological Society. Her lifetime of bashing denialists is surely worth a million-dollar Nobel.

The Collapse book is about Western civilisation’s ruin while China saves the planet with its enlightened anti-CO2 measures. She is writing from the future in 2393 when she will be aged 435. Oreskes (as at 2393) is cross because we have refused to build enough windmills to stop at 11degC warming (p32) and eight-metre sea rises (p30). We should not have eaten so many fillet steaks[4] and, personally, I should not have tooled around in my reasonably priced, petrol-powered Hyundai i30 when Teslas were available at $80,000.

Oreskes was talking about Collapse at a Sydney Writers’ Festival when someone in the audience piped up, “Will you write fiction next?” She doesn’t of course view Collapse as fiction: “Speculative? Of course, but the book is extremely fact-based” (p79). And she elaborated to the ABC’s Dr Williams, “Well, it’s all based on solid science. Everything in this book is based on the scientific projections from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. All we did was to add to the social and human aspects to it and to ask the question; what does this really mean in terms of what its potential impacts would be on people and its potential impacts on our institutions of governance?”

Her “science based” technical projection involved an angry summer in 2023 continuing year-round, “taking 500,000 lives worldwide and costing nearly $ 500 billion in losses due to fires , crop failure , and the deaths of livestock and companion animals” (p8) In 2014, how was Naomi (no-one’s perfect) to know that current agricultural output and yields continue smashing records?

The book’s “fact-based” projections have drought and desert ravaging the US in the 2050s:

The US government declared martial law to prevent food riots and looting [similar to 2020s’ mostly-peaceful burning and robbing]. A few years later, the United States announced plans with Canada for the two nations to begin negotiations … to develop an orderly plan for resource-sharing and northward population relocation (p26). 

The talks led to the combined United States of North America. I imagine Texans started adding “eh” to their sentences, as in Why do Canadians say “eh?”? It’s so silly right? Because we want to, eh.

Even at the age of 435 in 2393, Oreskes remains really sore about the Climategate email scandal of 2009 (IPCC climate scientists conspiring to fudge data). She blames Climategate on a “massive campaign” that was “funded primarily by fossil fuel corporations” (p8) — this alleged largesse must have by-passed sceptic bloggers, who still rely on their tip jars. Oreskes remains vigilant to smite deniers:

It will also be crucial not to allow new forms of denial to take hold. We are already seeing examples, such as the false claim that off-shore wind kills whales and that restrictions on gas stoves are the latest excuse by liberals to control our lives and deny our freedom. Scientists will have to work with climate activists to block the spread of such misleading narratives.

She finished her interview with the ABC’s Dr Williams by claiming, improbably, that some readers of  Collapse wished her 80-page book to be longer. She explained,

We didn’t want it to be too depressing, we didn’t want to go on and on and on, like 300 pages of misery, that really wouldn’t be any fun. So we are sort of hoping that the book, despite the fact that it’s a depressing topic, it’s actually we think kind of a fun read.

Apart from our dead kittens, that is.

[1] Speech at British Institute For Biology, September 1971. Link broken.

[2] The ABC Ombudsman told me it’s fine for people with honorary doctorates to be called “Dr” in any context.

“The ABC style guide does not form part of the editorial standards and we consider there is nothing materially inaccurate in referring to Ms O’Donoghue as Dr O’Donoghue.” Email from James, Investigations Officer, ABC Ombudsman’s Office, Feb 14, 2024. (The late Ms Donoghue’s Doctorates are honorary).

[3] On the ABC iview’s posting of the Oreskes/Williams interview, the ABC claimed the planet was warming at the top of the IPCC models’ forecasting. I wrote to my friend Kirsten McLiesh, who runs Audience & Consumer Affairs (i.e. the complaints department) pointing out that actual warming was at the bottom of the IPCC models’ range. In those days (2014) the ABC had some integrity and Kirsten wrote back,

“Having been alerted to your complaint, the program acknowledges that the sentence read on the website as an incontrovertible fact and have undertaken to remove it. An Editor’s Note has been added to the page.”

[4] Oreskes, Twitter May 4, 2023: “I’m often asked “What can I do to stop climate change.” That’s a hard question because so much of the change we need is structural, but this new study proves one thing: EAT LESS BEEF. (And now, drum roll, here come the beef industry trolls.)”

Tony Thomas’s latest book from Connor Court is Anthem of the Unwoke – Yep! The other lot’s gone bonkers. $34.95 from Connor Court here

April 17, 2024 Posted by | Book Review, Malthusian Ideology, Phony Scarcity, Science and Pseudo-Science | | Leave a comment

New Paper Finds Effect of Human-Caused Carbon Emissions on Climate is “Non-Discernible”

BY CHRIS MORRISON | THE DAILY SCEPTIC | APRIL 8, 2024

Every now and then, a giant of modern science should be allowed to express himself in language that we all understand. In the informative Climate: The Movie, the 2022 Nobel physics laureate Dr. John Clauser thundered: “I assert there is no connection whatsoever between climate change and CO2 – it’s all a crock of crap, in my opinion.” While not expressing himself in such forthright terms, the Greek scientist Professor Demetris Koutsoyiannis might agree. He recently published a paper that argues it is the recent expansion of a more productive biosphere that has led to increased CO2 concentrations in the atmosphere and greening of the Earth. It is widely argued that changing atmospheric carbon isotopes prove that most if not all recent warming is caused by the 4% human contribution from burning hydrocarbons, but such anthropogenic involvement is dismissed by Koutsoyiannis as “non-discernible”. Koutsoyiannis is Professor Emeritus of Hydrology and Analysis of Hydrosystems at the National Technical University of Athens.

The isotope argument has been around for some time and has been useful in closing down debate on the role of human-caused CO2 and its supposed effect in causing a ‘climate emergency’. The carbon in living matter has a slightly higher proportion of 12C isotopes, and recent lowering levels of 13C, which accounts for 99% of carbon in the atmosphere, are used to promote the idea that it is caused by burning hydrocarbons. But Koutsoyiannis argues that the more productive biosphere has resulted in “natural amplification of the carbon cycle due to increased temperature”. He suggests this may be a “primary factor for the decrease in the isotopic signature 13C in atmospheric CO2”.

Clauser’s remarks, along with contributions from a number of other distinguished scientists, have led to widespread attempts to shadow-ban Martin Durkin’s Climate: The Movie in mainstream and social media. If Clauser and scientists like Koutsoyiannis are correct, there is no need for the Net Zero global collectivisation. Trillions of dollars can be taken back from the Climate Industrial Network to be used to solve more pressing environmental and social problems. In such circles, the idea that humans control the climate thermostat is regarded as little short of pseudoscience. In the film, the former Princeton professor William Happer says he can live with the descriptive suggestion “hoax”, although he prefers the word “scam”. Disregarding the role of natural forces and promoting a 50 year-old hypothesis – science speak for ‘opinion’ – that can’t even agree on the degree of warming caused by higher levels of CO2 – holds little attraction for these sceptical science minds.

During the course of the Durkin film, the evidence mounts that the warming ‘opinion’ can’t explain any of the climate change observations seen over the last 500 million years of life on Earth. As the Daily Sceptic has noted on numerous occasions, it would help if there was at least one peer-reviewed paper that proved conclusively that humans caused all or most changes in the climate. A politically-manufactured ‘consensus’ and appeals to UN authority do not count.

Koutsoyiannis provides some of the historical background to the evolution of the isotope story, and its use to promote the ‘settled’ science narrative around CO2. The generally accepted hypothesis “may reflect a dogmatic approach or a postmodern ideological effect, i.e., to blame everything on human actions”, he observes. Hence, he says, the null hypothesis that all observed changes are mostly natural has not seriously been investigated. To add weight to his contention, Koutsoyiannis repeats the infamous claim made recently at a World Economic Forum meeting by Melissa Fleming, Under Secretary-General for Global Communications at the United Nations: “We own the science, and we think that the world should know it.”

The Koutsoyiannis paper is long and detailed and he uses data obtained from the California-based Scripps Institute that has been measuring isotopic signatures since 1978, along with proxy data going back five centuries. The complex workings can be viewed in the full paper with the author concluding that instrumental carbon isotopic data of the last 40 years shows no discernible signs of human hydrocarbon CO2 emissions. He also found that the modern record did not differ in terms of net isotopic signature of atmospheric CO2 sources and sinks from the proxy data, including Antarctica ice cores, going back 500 years.

The lack, or otherwise, of a discernible human-caused carbon isotope signature is an interesting branch of climate science to investigate, although, as we have seen, it is constrained by the political requirements governing the settled science narrative. In 2022, three physics professors led by Kenneth Skrable from the University of Massachusetts broke ranks and examined the atmospheric trail left by the isotopes. They discovered that the amount of CO2 released by hydrocarbon burning since 1750, “was much too low to be the cause of global warming”. The scientists found that claims of the dominance of anthropogenic fossil fuel in the isotope record had involved the “misuse” of statistics. They stated that the assumption that the increase in CO2 is dominated by or equal to the anthropogenic component is “not settled science”.

They warned that “unsupported conclusions” of human involvement “have severe potential societal implications that press the need for very costly remedial actions that may be misdirected, presently unnecessary and ineffective in curbing global warming”.

Chris Morrison is the Daily Sceptic’s Environment Editor.

April 17, 2024 Posted by | Film Review, Science and Pseudo-Science | Leave a comment

‘AVOID FALSE BALANCE’: AP Style Guide Aims to Silence Dissent From Climate Alarmist Narrative

By Tyler O’Neil | Daily Signal | April 7, 2024

Most news outlets rely on The Associated Press style guide—officially known as the AP Stylebook—as the arbiter for grammar, spelling, and terminology in news coverage. While AP puts forth its style guide as an impartial rubric for fair coverage, its rules often exclude conservative views from the outset.

Take AP’s latest round of updates, released Friday. The updates include guidance on how to avoid “stigmatizing” obese people, admonitions to avoid calling people “homeless” as it might be “dehumanizing,” and warnings to avoid the term “female” since “some people object to its use as a descriptor for women because it can be seen as emphasizing biology and reproductive capacity over gender identity.”

AP’s style guide prefers “anti-abortion” and “abortion-rights” as adjectives, urging journalists to avoid “pro-life,” “pro-choice,” and “pro-abortion.”

Yet one of the largest sections of the updated style guide involves “climate change,” a term that AP says “can be used interchangeably” with the term “climate crisis.”

“Climate change, resulting in the climate crisis, is largely caused by human activities that emit carbon dioxide, methane and other greenhouse gases into the atmosphere, according to the vast majority of peer-reviewed studies, science organizations and climate scientists,” the AP style guide intones. “This happens from the burning of coal, oil and natural gas, and other activities.”

“Greenhouse gases are the main driver of climate change,” the guide adds.

AP insists that this is true, with a capital T. When “telling the climate story,” the style guide urges journalists to “avoid false balance—giving a platform to unfounded claims or unqualified sources in the guise of balancing a story by including all views. For example, coverage of a study describing effects of climate change need not seek ‘other side’ comment that humans have no influence on the climate.”

Naturally, this is a red herring. Those who doubt the climate-alarmist narrative don’t maintain that “humans have no influence on the climate.” Rather, we say that the direct impact of human activities—including the burning of fossil fuels—is poorly understood and that efforts to predict future events based on various climate alarmist models have repeatedly failed.

In the 1970s, alarmists warned of a coming ice age. In the 1990s, the form of the destroyer would be global warming. Now, the alarmists have adopted the catch-all term “climate change,” so they can retroactively assign human agency to any disaster that strikes us at the moment.

It’s quite clever, if you want a perpetual fear-mongering tactic. Of course, the narrative is rather inconvenient for the rest of us who want cheaper energy and wish to solve the humanitarian crisis of extreme poverty in other parts of the world.

In fact, The Associated Press tacitly admits that the climate alarmists have no smoking-gun evidence that human activities are bringing about Armageddon.

“Avoid attributing single occurrences to climate change unless scientists have established a connection,” the style guide advises. “At the same time, stories about individual events should make it clear that they occur in a larger context.”

AP’s willingness to completely write off the “other side” proves particularly instructive, considering the style guide’s claim that climate change affects many other issues.

“The climate story goes beyond extreme weather and science,” the Stylebook notes. “It also is about politics, human rights, inequality, international law, biodiversity, society and culture, and many other issues. Successful climate and environment stories show how the climate crisis is affecting many areas of life.”

If journalists can throw out any pretense of objectivity on climate, and insist that climate change impacts all other social issues, can they also safely dismiss the obligation to cover “both sides” on politics, inequality, society, and culture? How does AP aim to prevent this rot from spreading across other topics and preventing fair coverage entirely?

The prognosis is not good. AP has repeatedly put its thumb on the scale to silence criticism of abortion and gender ideology — even going so far as telling journalists to avoid the term “transgenderism” because it “frames transgender identity as an ideology.”

Even while urging journalists to avoid using the terms “climate change deniers” and “climate change skeptics,” the AP style guide suggests a more “specific” alternative, such as “people who do not agree with mainstream science that says the climate is changing” or “people who disagree with the severity of climate change projected by scientists.” Talk about “stigmatizing.”

AP doesn’t admit that the supposed unanimity of scientists on man-made catastrophic climate change is based on a lie—that 97% of scientists don’t actually believe the world is going to end because we burn fossil fuels.

The study claiming to reach that conclusion merely analyzed peer-reviewed research papers, put them in seven categories, and then artificially claimed that the vast majority of the papers making any claim favored the alarmist view. Many scientists have said the study mischaracterized their research.

It remains unclear exactly how greenhouse gases are affecting the planet, mainly because the global atmosphere is extremely complicated. Most climate models fail to predict exactly what will happen. Perhaps decreasing carbon emissions will help the climate, but the science is far less settled than AP would have journalists believe.

If news coverage dismisses all skepticism of an alarmist narrative, it will skew the information ecosystem and disincentivize the very research that helps determine what precise impacts greenhouse gases have on the environment. It may also lead skeptical Americans to dismiss climate science altogether, in the same way that the medical establishment squandered much of its public credibility by suppressing concerns during the COVID-19 pandemic.

So why does The Associated Press put its thumb on the scale? The creators of the style guide may legitimately believe there is only one perspective, but they also have a hefty economic incentive to act like it.

AP has received large grants from left-wing foundations, particularly for its climate reporting.

The William and Flora Hewlett Foundation spent $2.5 million on AP’s climate and education reporting, the Washington Free Beacon reported. That foundation also funds Planned Parenthood.

The Rockefeller Foundation awarded AP a $750,000 grant in 2021 for a climate change initiative to report on “the increased and urgent need for reliable, renewable electricity in underserved communities worldwide.”

The KR Foundation, a Danish nonprofit that seeks the “rapid phase-out of fossil fuels,” gave approximately $300,000 to The Associated Press in December 2022, but AP appeared to hide that donation until late last year.

AP may push climate alarmism even without these funds—the latest style guide appears to feature left-wing groupthink on a host of issues—but the money still provides extra incentive.

The AP’s increasingly leftward tilt—and its attempt to force its groupthink through its style guide—creates a rather hostile climate for actual journalism, let alone good science.

April 17, 2024 Posted by | Corruption, Fake News, Mainstream Media, Warmongering, Science and Pseudo-Science | | Leave a comment

Dutch Parliament instructs government to demand a delay in both WHO votes – and if no delay, to reject the proposals

BY MERYL NASS | APRIL 16, 2024

MOTION BY MEMBER of the Dutch Parliament Mona KEIJZER ET AL.

Proposed April 10, 2024. A majority voted in favour April 16, 2024

After hearing the deliberations, noting that both the Working Group International Health Regulations (WGIHR) and the International Negotiating Body (INB) are authorized to deliver the final legal formulation of the envisaged amendments to the International Health Regulations (IHR) and the Pandemic Treaty to the 77th World Health Assembly (WHA), which will take place at the end of May 2024; noting that this process is proceeding at an unprecedented pace, whereas such far-reaching measures require more time to be considered, reviewed and properly implemented; whereas ignoring procedural obligations under IHR and leaving unclear the link between the amended IHR and the new pandemic treaty undermines the international legal order and thus the democratic legitimacy of this regulation in violation of Article 55 of the IHR, which requires proposed amendments to be submitted to the Contracting States at least four months before deliberation and voting in the WHA; whereas this does not provide sufficient opportunity to examine the changes and their important legal, health, economic, financial and human rights implications; whereas the request to adopt the amendments to the IHR or the text of the envisaged pandemic treaty is not in line with the UN principles and guidelines; instructs the government to request a postponement of the vote on the amendments and thus on the IHR and the new pandemic treaty at the World Health Assembly and, if this postponement is not obtained, to vote against the proposed amendments to the IHR and the new pandemic treaty as a whole; and proceeds to the order of the day.

Mona Keijzer, Daniëlle Jansen, Fleur Agema Members Dutch Parliament

April 17, 2024 Posted by | Civil Liberties | , , | Leave a comment

US-UK launch new strikes on Yemen’s Hudaydah

MEMO | April 17, 2024

The US and Britain yesterday carried out two air raids on Yemen’s Bajil district, in the Hudaydah province in the west of the country.

No details regarding casualties or damage following the air strikes have been released so far.

Separately, it was also reported yesterday that a Yemeni civilian was killed following renewed Saudi targeting of Yemen’s border areas in Saada governorate.

A security source said that the Saudi army attacked the Al-Sheikh area in Munabeh district with artillery shells, which led to the death of a civilian and property damage.

Reacting to the latest US and British strikes, Russia has condemned the acts of aggression against Yemen. Russia’s deputy delegate to the Security Council, Dmitry Polyansky, said at a council meeting that the strikes on Yemeni territory were unacceptable, stressing that they harm the internal Yemeni settlement.

“We note the destructive role of the coalition that has established itself as its ruler, led by the United States and Britain, and which continues to launch weekly attacks on Yemeni territory,” Polyansky said.

He added: “We reiterate that the missile and bomb attacks launched by the Western coalition led by the United States on the territory of sovereign Yemen are categorically unacceptable, as are attempts to justify aggression by Security Council Resolution 2722 or by referring to the right to self-defence under Article 51 of the United Nations Charter.”

Since 12 January, a coalition led by the US has been conducting intermittent air strikes in Yemen as part of measures against the de facto government based in Sanaa. These air strikes are aimed at diminishing the capabilities of the Houthi-aligned armed forces who have been targeting Israeli-linked vessels in and around the Red Sea in support of the Palestinians amid the war on Gaza.

April 17, 2024 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Wars for Israel | , , , , , , | Leave a comment

West’s backing of Israel after Iran’s retaliation ‘reckless, irresponsible’: Legal analyst

By Alireza Hashemi – Press TV – April 2024

A legal analyst has criticized Western countries for mischaracterizing Iran’s defensive military action in response to Israel’s attack on the country’s diplomatic mission in Syria, warning that the “reckless” and “irresponsible” position could embolden the regime to launch more attacks.

In an interview with the Press TV website on Wednesday, three days after Iran’s retaliatory military action, Reza Nasri touched on the legality of the Iranian response to the Israeli aggression.

“By misrepresenting Iran’s act of self-defense as an act of aggression, Western countries are effectively paving the ground for Benjamin Netanyahu to justify yet another attack on Iran,” he said.

Nasri was referring to Western leaders rallying behind Israel following Iran’s retaliation on Sunday.

He said the irony is these Western countries call for de-escalation on one hand and at the same time – by misrepresenting Iran’s legitimate act of self-defense – give Netanyahu the pretext to justify yet another attack on Iran and to consequently expand the war to the entire region.

“I believe those Western countries’ position is not only inconsistent with international law but it is reckless and highly irresponsible,” the political analyst and international lawyer stressed.

The pattern of Israeli aggression

Nasri emphasized that Iran’s military operation was not an unprovoked attack but a legitimate response to a series of unauthorized acts of aggression by the Israeli regime targeting Iranian interests.

“Iran’s military operation was not an ‘attack’ that occurred in a vacuum but a ‘response’ to an illegal armed attack by Israel that followed a series of previous acts of aggression against Iranian interests in the region,” the analyst asserted.

Nasri, whose expertise lies in international law, explained that Iran’s action was justified under the right of self-defense as outlined in Article 51 of the United Nations Charter.

Referring to allegations that Iran’s attack endangered and harmed civilians, the analyst pointed out that Iran’s operation targeted only Israeli military bases and avoided civilian infrastructure and hence it was compliant with the principle of proportionality in international humanitarian law (IHL).

“Unlike Israel, Iran did not target any civilian residence, hospital, school, synagogue, bakery, water storage, journalist, ambulance, or nursery! It conducted a spectacular attack in which only the military bases from which Israel conducted its initial aggression were hit and damaged,” he remarked.

“Had Iran intended to inflict significant damage to Israeli towns and infrastructure, it would have used more of the same supersonic missiles it used to target Israel’s military bases or launched a third or fourth wave of attacks after Israel’s air defense system was exhausted. So, Iran’s response was proportionate and in compliance with norms and principles of IHL.”

Nasri said Israel’s airstrike on the Iranian consulate, unlike Iran’s military operation in response, was an illegal act of aggression violating the UN Charter and the Vienna Conventions on diplomatic relations.

“The Israeli attack on Iran’s embassy constituted an illegal act of aggression in violation of Article 2 (4) of the UN Charter and blatant breach of the principle of “inviolability of diplomatic and consular premises” as enshrined in the 1961 and 1963 Vienna conventions,” he noted.

Iran’s response was deemed necessary due to a series of lethal strikes by Israel against Iranian interests in the region, which had resulted in the assassinations of prominent Iranian officials and military commanders, Nasri explained.

“The armed attack against the Iranian embassy – coupled with the pattern of Israeli acts of aggression on previous occasions – led Iran to the assessment that further military attacks were looming large and that it was necessary to mitigate the threat through military action, as any other country would have in similar circumstances,” he hastened to add.

“Even the UK foreign minister – Mr. David Cameron – stated in a recent interview that the UK would have taken ‘very strong action’ had any country conducted an attack against his country’s diplomatic and consular premises abroad.”

UNSC must protect international peace

The analyst underscored the responsibilities of international bodies in preventing further escalation, urging the UN Security Council to fulfill its duties by recognizing Iran’s right to self-defense in the face of aggression and condemning Israel’s threat to use force against Iran, which violates the UN Charter.

“In principle, it should at this point condemn Israel’s current threat to use force against Iran – which constitutes a violation of Article 2 (4) of the Charter – and take the necessary measures to prevent further escalation,” he said. “Normally, the Security Council should endorse an act of self-defense against an act of aggression, not the other way around,” Nasri stated.

“Israel must understand that it cannot conduct an unlawful armed attack against a sovereign country’s embassy in a third country, then pledge to militarily attack that state again once the latter takes legitimate measures of self-defense.”

April 17, 2024 Posted by | War Crimes | , , , | Leave a comment

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