Taxpayer Funded NGO Releases Yet Another Climate Doomsday Report
By Eric Worrall | Watts Up With That? | February 26, 2020
According to MSM you can trust the “THE CENTER FOR CLIMATE & SECURITY” because they are non partisan experts.
Report warns climate change could become ‘catastrophic’ global, national security threat
BY REBECCA KLAR – 02/24/20 09:16 AM EST
National security and intelligence experts warn that climate change could become a “catastrophic” threat to security and recommended quick action to be taken to mitigate risks, according to a new report released Monday.
“Even at scenarios of low warming, each region of the world will face severe risks to national and global security in the next three decades,” experts wrote in the report released by the National Security, Military and Intelligence Panel of the Center of Climate and Security, a nonpartisan security policy institute.
“Higher levels of warming will pose catastrophic, and likely irreversible, global security risks over the course of the 21st century.”
The security threat assessment of global climate change warns that all levels of warming of climate change will pose “significant and evolving threats” to global security environments, infrastructure and institutions.
The report itself is available here.
I think the most ridiculous part of the report is a suggestion 1-2C of warming in Russia would cause serious problems.
… At 1-2°C/1.8-3.6°F of global average warming, the EUCOM area of responsibility will experience severe weather that threatens destabilization of its key economic sectors, rising regional inequality, and impacts on civil and military infrastructure. In this scenario, rising ethno- nationalist sentiments alongside rising migration waves pose serious threats to the alliances underlying existing security institutions.
At 2-4+°C/3.6-7.2+°F of global average warming, the EUCOM area of responsibility will likely experience prolonged drought and rising seas, leading to significant internal displacement, as well as an influx of migrants from neighboring areas. In this scenario, a breakdown in regional political, institutional, and security cohesion becomes likely. …
Read more: Same link as above
1-2C of warming in Russia might mean Northern Russia is slightly more habitable. Like Canada, most Russians live on the warm southern edge of their nation, because the North is simply too cold.
The section on human health quotes The Lancet;
… Climate change will pose serious challenges to human health, mainly by affecting delicate natural systems that make bodies more susceptible to stress and disease. Medical research increasingly demonstrates links between warming temperatures and increased vulnerability to heat stress, infectious diseases, extreme events, and pollution, as summarized by the now annual report on health and climate change published by the leading journal, The Lancet.67 …
Read more: Same link as above
The suggestion that warm weather compromises people’s immune systems is absurd. Humans are extreme tropical monkeys, we don’t have fur because our ancestors evolved in one of the hottest places on Earth. Across most of the Earth, humans need clothes to stay warm enough to survive. So it seems reasonable to infer that the human immune system is mostly still optimised to the hot tropical weather our ancestors experienced.
The report was likely paid for with US taxpayer’s money. The authors acknowledge the generous support of the Henry M. Jackson Foundation, which was set up by Congress in 1983. The Henry M Jackson foundation does a lot of good work supporting the medical needs of veterans, and also performs HIV research, so it seems a real shame they decided to waste some of their endowment and goodwill on yet another climate report.
When Is A Pandemic Not A Pandemic?
The World Health Organization is playing games
By Donna Laframboise | Big Picture News | February 26, 2020
In 2010, the World Health Organization (WHO) explained on its website:
A pandemic is the worldwide spread of a new disease.
An influenza pandemic occurs when a new influenza virus emerges and spreads around the world, and most people do not have immunity.
A WHO document advising countries how to respond to such outbreaks used the word ‘pandemic’ 485 times across 64 pages back in 2009. That same document contained a table describing the six phases of a pandemic:
click to enlarge
In 2013, an update used ‘pandemic’ 413 times across 60 pages. Then came the 2017 edition, which employed the term 408 times across 59 pages.
But two days ago, a spokesperson told Reuters the WHO no longer recognizes this term. ‘Pandemic’ has apparently been struck from its vocabulary.
click image to read full story
According to Tarik Jasarevic, people may use this term colloquially to describe the spread of a new pathogen, but that’s their private affair. Say what?
There’s a new, highly contagious, stealth virus out there. Some people who contract it will end up in ICU with serious complications. This isn’t a run-of-the-mill flu. It began killing people in China several weeks ago, and has now spread to 40 countries. A dozen Italian towns are currently in lock-down, complete with police roadblocks. Hong Kong has closed schools until late April. The deputy health minister of Iran has tested positive.
Take another look at Phase 6, above. Sustained outbreaks in at least three countries, in two different parts of the world. We’re well beyond that.
Yet the WHO is playing word games. It says this isn’t a pandemic. It’s merely a PHEIC – which stands for a Public Health Emergency of International Concern.
Does that make you feel safe?
Iran: Dubowitz’s coronavirus remarks ‘shameful and inhuman’
Press TV – February 26, 2020
Iranian Deputy Foreign Minister for Political Affairs Abbas Araqchi says the remarks by Mark Dubowitz, Chief Executive of Washington-based Foundation for Defense of Democracies (FDD), about the spread of coronavirus in Iran are “shameful and downright inhuman.”
Dubowitz claimed on Twitter Tuesday that coronavirus has halted Iran’s non-oil exports, achieving “what American economic sanctions could not.”
Araqchi, in response, said Wednesday that cheering for a deadly virus to spread is shameful, noting that at least Dubowitz “understands that the American economic sanctions were not — and will not be — as effective as a Covid-19 Virus.”
In another outrageous and unfounded claim, Dubowitz said that Tehran has “spread terrorism” in the Middle East and “now it’s spreading the coronavirus.”
Nearly 140 people have been tested positive for coronavirus in Iran since the infection was identified in a city in central country last week. The government has put the number of deaths at 19 as of Wednesday noon local time.
Dubowitz’s remarks come as the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) Tuesday issued warnings about the virus, urging Americans to prepare and take precautionary measures.
“The data over the past week about the spread in other countries has raised our level of concern and expectation that we are going to have community spread here,” Dr. Nancy Messonnier, the CDC’s head of respiratory diseases, told reporters in a conference call.
The warning came as President Donald Trump tried to play down fears and said in a tweet Monday that the coronavirus was “very much under control in the USA.”
Meanwhile, growing economic pressure on Iran has hampered the country’s efforts to confront the outbreak of coronavirus as health bodies face restrictions importing test kits to detect the infection.
Ramin Fallah, a board member at Iran’s Association of Medical Equipment Importers, said on Sunday that US sanctions as well as restrictions newly imposed on Iran by a global money laundering watchdog had made it increasingly difficult to access the kits.
Under mounting pressure from Washington, the Paris-based Financial Action Task Force (FATF) decided on Friday to place Iran on its blacklist, making it more difficult for Iranian banks to settle payments with foreign counterparts.
Washington Post’s ‘relative quiet’ ignores Israeli violence against Palestinians
Nine-year-old Palestinian Malik Eissa, Feb. 20, 2020, after being shot in the face by Israeli police the previous week. (AP Photo/Mahmoud Illean)
By Alison Weir | If Americans Knew | February 24, 2020
On February 24th, the Washington Post reported that a “flare up” of violence in Israel-Palestine “followed weeks of relative quiet.” This statement ignores massive Israeli violence against Palestinians. The following is a partial list of Israeli actions against Palestinians during the previous three and a half weeks:
- Israeli soldiers Shot and killed 4 Palestinian civilians, including a 19-year-old shot in the neck, a 17-year-old shot in the head, and a 24-year-old policeman shot in the stomach.
- Israeli soldiers shot an additional 100 Palestinians, including 15 minors, 3 fishermen, 3 journalists, and a photographer working for an Israeli human rights organization. One of the injured minors was a 9-year-old whose eye was shot out.
- Israeli forces conducted 418 military raids into the West Bank, including occupied East Jerusalem.
- Israeli forces abducted 190 Palestinian civilians, including 52 teens and children and 4 women.
- Israeli forces perpetrated 15 shootings against Palestinian farmers and farm structures.
- Israeli forces perpetrated 7 shootings against Palestinian fishing boats.
- Israel demolished 8 Palestinian homes.
- Israeli interrogators tortured a Palestinian mother imprisoned by Israel.
- Israeli forces escorted thousands of Israeli settlers while they stormed two Palestinian villages.
- Israeli forces perpetrated several airstrikes on the Gaza Strip.
- A fifteen-year-old Palestinian boy, who had been shot earlier by Israeli forces, died.
(For details on the above incidents go here. For information on additional actions that took place during this time go here. For a Timeline of Israelis and Palestinians killed in the conflict go here.)
Ruth Eglash, Israeli citizen
Reporter Ruth Eglash partisan
Ruth Eglash, lead author of the Washington Post report that ignored the above events, moved to Israel 20 years ago, became an Israeli citizen, and was an editor of a right-wing Israeli newspaper for 10 years before moving to the Post.
She has been a featured speaker at events by pro-Israel organizations in the U.S. and used to be listed on the speakers’ bureau of the Jewish National Fund (JNF), known for taking over Palestinian land for Israel. (Her listing by the JNF has since been removed from the Internet.)
Shortly before joining the Post, Eglash had served on a panel entitled “Telling Israel’s Story,” alongside an Israeli army spokesperson. The panel was chaired by a former advisor to the Israeli government.
According to the Wisconsin Jewish Chronicle, Eglash lives in a “spacious home in Mevessert Zion,” which is one of the wealthiest enclaves in the area. It was built in the 1950s on top of the destroyed Palestinian villages of Al Qastal and Qalunya, which had been ethnically cleansed by Israeli forces. Some parts of the town are in the West Bank, making the residents settlers. Settlements are illegal under international law.
Eglash’s husband, also an Israeli citizen, is originally from Milwaukee, where he “lived and breathed Israel” as a student at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. He started and continues to head a PR firm called “Upstart” that markets Israel to the US.
Media watchdog organization Fairness and Accuracy In Media (FAIR) reports: “Upstart’s clients include the Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Ministry of Tourism, the Jewish Agency for Israel and the World Zionist Organization. Other clients, like Hillel and Birthright for Israel, are active in promoting a pro-Israel message on college campuses.”
Martin Baron, Washington Post executive editor
FAIR states that the Washington Post seems to be violating its own ethics conflict of interest code by employing a reporter “whose spouse works for an Israeli government-linked public relations firm.”
Marty Baron
The Editor of the Post is Martin Baron, whose parents immigrated to the U.S. from Israel. Baron says he has visited Israel often, where he has family connections. Baron sometimes gives talks on Israel.
(According to Israeli law, individuals who are born to a parent who is an Israeli citizen automatically are Israeli citizens themselves. It is unknown whether this is the case for Baron.)
A member of the Israel lobby once divulged to an undercover reporter that it was easy for the lobby to get stories onto the front page of the Washington Post.
Credibility of European Court of Human Rights lies in ruins after judges’ links to Soros revealed
By John Laughland | RT | February 25, 2020
A study by the European Center for Law and Justice in Strasbourg has revealed several conflicts of interest between judges at the European Court of Human Rights and NGOs funded by George Soros.
The European Center for Law and Justice is an NGO which often appears at the court to campaign on social, family and religion-related issues. I am proud to be listed as a research fellow at the ECHR but in reality I have written only one article for the center’s website and I receive no salary from it. I had no role in writing the report.
The study has found that, out of the 100 judges who have served on the bench of the European Court of Human Rights in the period 2009-2019, nearly a quarter (22) have strong links to George Soros’ Open Society Foundation or to NGOs like Amnesty International and others which are funded by it. Human Rights Watch, for instance, has received $100 million from the Open Society Foundation since 2010.
Some of the NGOs receive so much of their budget from Soros that they are in effect wholly owned subsidiaries of his foundation.
The links between the judges and the NGOs are substantial. They include working for years as members of the board of directors or executive council of these NGOs; having teaching posts at institutes funded by them; being a salaried director of programs for the Open Society Foundation or associated NGOs; and undertaking other forms of paid work for them. The full list of these links can be found on pages seven and eight of the report.
A good example is that of the Bulgarian Yonko Grozev who, as leader of the Open Society Justice Initiative, defended the Pussy Riot case against Russia in 2018 before being elected as a judge of the court shortly thereafter.
The study does not include less formal forms of collaboration with NGOs, such as occasional work for them (see note 15 of the report). This means that the links are even greater than those specifically addressed in the study.
The report also covers other human rights officers, such as the commissioner for human rights at the Council of Europe from 2012-2018 (Nils Muiznieks), who does not sit as a judge but who was for years a salaried activist of the Open Society Foundation in Latvia and who has used his official position to campaign against the so-called “anti-Soros” legislation in Hungary.
These NGOs are extremely active at the ECHR. The Helsinki Foundation for Human Rights in Poland filed 16 applications, and defended 32 cases, in 2017 alone. Very often the role played by the NGOs does not appear in the court’s records but has to be discovered from the NGOs’ own reports instead. For instance, a case can be defended by lawyers from one NGO with pleas heard from other NGOs as third parties, even though the other organizations are in fact financed by the same source as the applicant, usually Soros.
There would not be anything wrong with judges having exercised a salaried activity for an NGO prior to becoming a judge if these same organizations were not themselves active as parties who bring cases to the ECHR, either as applicants themselves, as lawyers for applicants, or as third parties giving supposedly expert evidence (but in reality lobbying for a cause), and if those judges did not then hear those cases.
Indeed, the report’s worst finding is that in 88 cases judges sat on the bench ruling on cases brought to the court by NGOs they had previously worked for, without declaring a conflict of interest and without withdrawing from hearing the cases (see page 15 of the report and annexes 1 and 2.) In one case, ruled on in 2018, 10 out of the 14 NGOs that had brought the case were funded by the Open Society Foundation, while six out of the 17 judges who heard the case themselves had links to the same Soros-funded group.
The judges’ refusal to withdraw is a disgraceful professional failing which shows that Europe’s supreme human rights body is not, in fact, independent but is instead part of veritable “human rights industry” – a pyramid of money and a tight network of professional relationships, at the top of which sits George Soros with his billions. NGOs are supposed to represent “civil society” independent of states; in reality, a very large number of them are the creation of actors with no democratic legitimacy, like the Open Society Foundation.
The fact that this corrupt system has been able to flourish has several causes. The first is that Soros and the NGOs he finances dominate the human rights industry across the Balkans and in the Baltic states. His millions flood these small, poor countries (he has spent $131 million in Albania since 1992, for instance) and they in turn appoint judges to the ECHR which rules on human rights issues for the 47 member states of the Council of Europe. Indeed, the report finds that the total spending of the Open Society Foundation in Europe, $90 million a year, actually exceeds the annual budget of the European Court of Human Rights ($70 million).
Second, new procedures introduced in 2012 specifically provide for NGOs to take part in the selection procedure for judges at the ECHR. These NGOs can propose candidates and they can lobby for their selection. They have done this on many occasions, as the report shows. In the case of Albania in 2018, for instance, two out of the three candidates were executives of the Open Society Foundation; one of them was elected.
Finally, there is no requirement that people appointed to be judges at the ECHR have any judicial experience at all. Some 51 out of the 100 judges who have sat on the ECHR bench since 2009 had never been judges or magistrates before. Instead, they were very often human rights activists working for Soros or one of his front organisations.
This is a structural weakness which also affects international war crimes tribunals. As I showed in my book, ‘Travesty,’ and it means that people can wield judicial power who are not, in fact, trained judges or magistrates or even necessarily lawyers, but instead political activists. In some very egregious cases, people have become judges on the benches of these tribunals without even having a law degree.
The result is that the judges who sit on these bodies do not, in fact, behave as judges should. The role of the judge is to say what the law is, not to say what he or she thinks the law should be. Unfortunately, this is exactly what judges at the ECHR, and at the new international tribunals, do. In 1978, the ECHR proclaimed that the Convention was “a living instrument which must be interpreted in the light of present-day conditions” and that therefore its judges had the right to read new things into the Convention instead of agreeing to be bound by it. Such judicial activism is a travesty of the rule of law.
It is a travesty because the areas in which ECHR judges exercise their judicial activism are precisely the most politically sensitive issues, which should properly be decided by politicians in elected parliaments, or by referenda, and not by an elite caste of unaccountable activists. Those areas include freedom of expression, asylum, LGBT rights, conditions of detention, minority rights, and so on. Using their freedom to make up the law, ECHR judges have over decades applied a new vision of man which is the opposite of the original intention of the Convention, which was to protect human beings and their families from abusive state power. Now the ECHR spends most of its time demanding more state power for this or that fashionable (“woke”) cause.
George Soros has long been attacked for the excessive political power his gigantic fortune has bought, especially in post-communist Eastern Europe. This report by the European Center for Law and Justice is, however, one of the first occasions in which the corrupting effect of that power has been scrupulously identified and documented with respect to the supreme body charged with protecting human rights in Europe. To date, the ECHR has not denied any of the facts outlined in the report and, to the extent that these facts cannot be denied because they come from the ECHR itself, its credibility as an independent judicial body now lies in ruins.
John Laughland has a doctorate in philosophy from the University of Oxford and has taught at universities in Paris and Rome. He is a historian and specialist in international affairs.
‘Deliberate hoax’: Russian military denies NGO report of airstrikes in Idlib
RT | February 24, 2020
Syrian Observatory for Human Rights reports of Russian airstrikes on two villages in Idlib province have nothing to do with reality, the Russian military said, adding that none of its planes operated in that area on Monday.
“The information provided by the British NGO is a deliberate hoax,” Rear Admiral Oleg Zhuravlev, head of the Russian Center for the Reconciliation in Syria, said at a briefing.
Earlier in the day, the UK-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR) claimed that an airstrike by Russian and Syrian forces on the villages of Kansafra and Al-Bara in Idlib led to the “killing and injuring of nearly ten Turkish soldiers.”
Ankara has not reported any casualties among its troops in Syria, however.
The SOHR claim came at a moment when Russia and Turkey stand on the brink of war over Syria. Ankara sent troops to Idlib – the last remaining terrorist stronghold in Syria – two weeks ago, provoking deadly clashes with the advancing Syrian army. Turkey has demanded Russia to pressure its allies in Damascus into ceasing its operations in the area, while Moscow blamed Ankara of not fulfilling its earlier promise to separate the “moderate” rebels from terrorists.
Last Thursday, Russian bombers struck militants who had launched an attack on Syrian positions with the support of Turkish artillery. However, both Russia and Turkey said they weren’t looking for a military conflict. A new round of consultation between the sides is being prepared in order to defuse the situation in Idlib, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov announced on Monday.
SOHR has been one of the key sources of Western media since the conflict in Syria broke out in 2011. However, a 2015 investigation revealed that the entire organization was run by a single man in Coventry, a former convict who fled Syria for the UK and has not been back since.
New settlement on Qalandia Airport Land to isolate East Jerusalem
By Madeeha Araj – PNN – February 24, 2020
The National Bureau for defending land and resisting settlements stated in its latest weekly report, that although the Israeli-American “Deal of the Century” proposes the right to establish a ‘special Palestinian tourism zone’ in the Atarot area (i.e. the old Qalandia Airport north of Jerusalem), to support Muslim tourism, the Israeli Ministry of Construction and Housing is planning to build a new settlement there, to be larger than “Ma’aleh Adumim” settlement in occupied East Jerusalem.
The Qalandia airport has been closed by Israeli authorities since the outbreak of the second Intifada, in the year 2000.
In an obvious escalation to isolate Jerusalem from its Palestinian surroundings, the Occupation Government decided to build the new settlement as the Israeli PM Netanyahu vowed to build 9,000 settlement units, commercial centers and a hotel, as well as water tanks and others, adding that the number of units will reach 11,000, by 2030. Thus, signs and marks were placed by the Israeli occupation, on 21 Palestinian homes in order to be demolished.
Within his campaign for the upcoming Knesset’s elections, the Israeli PM, Netanyahu, announced plans to build 5,200 new settlement units in Jerusalem, including 2,200 in the “Har Homa” settlement, and 3,000 settlement units in the “Givat Hamtus” settlement, which means increasing the number of settlers there up to 10.000 settlers. For his part, Minister of the Occupation Army, Naftali Bennett, decided to hold a meeting for the Higher Planning Committee affiliated to the Israeli Civil Administration, to approve the building of 1900 settlement units in the West Bank, in the Ramallah Governorate, of which 600 settlement units in the Eili settlement, and 534 units in the Shvut Rachel settlement.
It is also noted that the Israeli Government plans to control Areas B in the West Bank, as the Minister of the Israeli Occupation Army, Naftali Bennett decided to prevent the Palestinians from building in these areas under security pretext. Accordingly, the Israeli occupation forces started to build a 7-kilometer settlement road with a cost of NIS 100s of millions, including tunnels and bridges south of Nablus, extended from the Za’tara village through Hawara town, and Beita and Udala villages, which means confiscating about 406 dunums of 7 Palestinian villages.
For their part, a delegation from the American Congress visited settlements, and the Ibrahimi Mosque’s courtyard in Hebron, and the Jordan Valley in the West Bank, and the Gush Etzion’s pool as well. The delegation consisted of 2 Congress members, who said that these areas have to be part of Israel.
On the other hand, the UN Human Rights Office issued the black list of companies operating in settlements in the Palestinian territories occupied since 1967. For his part, Michael Link praised the decision, saying it is ‘an important step.’ Adding that because of settlements, thousands of Palestinian dunums were confiscated, thousands of homes and properties were destroyed, hundreds of thousands of Palestinian refugees were displaced, and several natural resources were leveled.
With regard to the giant American corporations that encourage settlement, the Financial Times newspaper conducted an extensive investigation on the Amazon corporation that provides free shipping to all Israeli settlements, but it does not provide the same free service to the Palestinians unless they include Israel as their country during the completion of the registration process. The newspaper pointed out during its investigation that the free shipping includes orders that exceed US$ 49, noting that the company started its activity there in last November. It stipulated that it provides the same free service to the Palestinians, in case they mentioned that they live in Israel.
US-funded “Disinformation Oversight” of Bio Weapons Prevention Programmes in Georgia
By Henry Kamens – New Eastern Outlook – 09.10.18
The Richard Lugar Lab is fast becoming a topic of household conversation in both Georgia and the Russian Federation, because increasing numbers of people care that it is not a public health facility, as claimed, but a threat to the population and humanity as we know it.
The Caucasus region is an ideal location for the United States to outsource its ‘grey zone’ research to. Many of the most ‘attractive’ viruses and bacteria for weaponization occur naturally in this region, so they can be studied in their natural habitat. The region is also known for its thriving black market economy and trafficking, as the lack of democracy and a civil society makes it easier to hide things from the world.
But what is now concerning US officials is the attention Russia is paying to the topic of bio weapons and other related medical programmes. What has been uncovered so far demonstrates that the question is NOT whether the US is in violation of the 1972 Biological Weapons Treaty BUT to what degree.
The US has long tried to deflect attention from these programmes. American journalist and Bureau Chief for Veterans Today in Georgia, Jeffrey Silverman, a long time resident of Georgia, is again in the cross fire for his articles and series of recent TV interviews, having endured a long series of indignities, and downright illegal acts, at the hands of his own government and embassy.
But the new attacks on Silverman coincide with recent revelations in the Russian media. Igor Giorgadze, the former State Security Minister of Georgia, dropped a bombshell in mid September when he leaked documents containing information about “a laboratory located near Tbilisi named after US Senator Richard Lugar”, and how some experiments had turned deadly.
Various media groups describe such breaking stories as recurring disinformation, and further claim that there is no factual evidence that the US is building biological laboratories in the Caucasus region in order to use it as a testing site. The same media groups also denied that the US was losing the Vietnam War and declared the well documented CIA human rights abuses in places like Paraguay weren’t happening either.
But Giorgadze, a former Georgian State Security Minister, and Silverman beg to differ. They claim that such labs and related medical projects may have secretly conducted experiments on people, some of which have had fatal outcomes.
Right or Wrong Person to Ask?
Giorgadze has asked Donald Trump to launch an investigation into the experiments conducted by the laboratory. This really has some in Georgia concerned, as Trump is no fan of Big Pharma. He recently stated that the much touted flu shot is the greatest scam in medical history, created by Big Pharma to make money off vulnerable people and make them sick.
US-government funded media watchdogs and strong-arm agencies have fought back by using Homeland Security to harass Silverman when he traveled to and from the United States earlier this year, when he was finally allowed to make his first trip home in over 14 years. On both arrival and departure he was subjected to repeated body and bag searches, including seizures of his phone and personal documents, in direct violation of the 4th Amendment to the US Constitution.
Such frontal attacks on this journalist date back to when the first stories about the Lugar laboratory, and the nefarious research linked with it, broke in Georgia in 2013. As he has since backed up many of his allegations with actual documents, there has been a concerted effort to discredit him, not only in Georgia but in the international media.
Silverman continues to publish in the Georgian language media, and has described how the concentration camp patients of Nazi Doctor Joseph Mengele can be compared to the civilians residing close to the Lugar laboratory, as they [too] did not understand the threat they were under until they were placed in the medical experiment section death camps—when it was too late.
“I am warning those who live near the Lugar Laboratory that they are under a big risk. The locals who settled there were misled that this was an ordinary laboratory and nothing else.”
Georgy Iremidze, head of the Georgian based Patriot news agency, which is labelled pro Russian by the same detractors, adds to the debate:
“On paper, the lab is run by the Georgian government, or rather the Ministry of Health. But in reality, it is operated by the American government. The idea is that, if something goes wrong, the Georgian government will take the blame so that the American government can stay under the radar”.
A Lot for Nothing
The United States has provided a total of US $350 million for the construction and technical equipping of the laboratory. In 2013 the laboratory was allegedly subordinated to the National Center for Disease Control and Public Health (NCDC), and from 2018 the Government of Georgia will assume responsibility for the full funding and operation of the Lugar center and laboratory network, or so we are told.
However it is only the US which has an interest in building such laboratories. Other countries would face sanctions from more powerful neighbours, who can build worse facilities of their own, for doing so. The US wants to flout the Biological Weapons Convention and then claim, if caught, that this is something only dubious, less-developed, “ignorant” countries do, as it usually does when questions are asked in places like Syria and Iraq.
The Lugar Laboratory is located not far from Tbilisi International Airport. This means that loading weaponized agents and moving viruses and bacteria around the world is expedited. It is conceivable that the United States may be trying to continue its losing battle in Syria by using biological and chemical weapons, as military planes, which are based at NATO airfields, have been landing at the airport with increasing regularity for no other apparent reason.
The same deadly and especially dangerous pathogens could also be targeted, as an aggressive act, against Turkey and the Russian Federation. The US has a history of doing this, and we might recall the Swine Flu outbreak in Russia 12 years ago.
Even unsuspecting humans could be weaponized and board civilian fights, just as was described in Station 11, a work of fiction, and how the Georgian flu killed over 95 percent of the world’s population. Emily St. John Mandel’s fourth novel, “Station Eleven,” begins with a spectacular tragedy on a considerably vaster scale arrives in the form of a flu pandemic so lethal that, within weeks, most of the world’s population has been killed.
It is standard medical practice that nothing that is injected into the body should be used past its expiration date. But the US military, and other organizations like MARFOREUR, USAMRIID, ClinicalRM, WRAIR, and DTRA, are being accused of giving many such preparations to allied countries as “aid”. They have been widely used on the general population in Georgia, even children, without the victims’ full knowledge and informed consent.
When questions are asked, it funnels this aid not through medical bodies but TMC Global Professional Services. This company has overseas offices in nine countries throughout Eastern Europe and Central Asia, and two offices in the US, in Virginia and New Mexico. Most of its work is as a US Government contractor on Defense Threat Reduction Agency (DTRA) programmes, with national laboratories and other DoD customers. For example, it manages an international project at the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant site (ChNPP).
Too Many Roads Lead to Rome
The Myth Detector claims to have debunked “disinformation” spread around the Hepatitis C elimination programme on several occasions—but it fails to mention the nexus of this programme to TMC. Nor does it give, or investigate, the technical backgrounds of those doing the debunking, who just post pre-written statements provided by their Embassy contacts or PR staff working in the Lugar lab.
It is not difficult to expose those actually working in these military projects at the management level. Silverman was once hired by International Crisis Group, ICG, and the French government to look at the links of these researchers. He soon discovered how the Lugar and partner projects are connected to American, European and other scientific centres.
All the highly skilled professionals in the TMC office in Georgia left in 2010 to form a new organisation, Sigma. The most high profile of these was Richard Mah, who had worked at Los Alamos. You do not leave the golden handcuffs, and diamond pension, of a US defence contractor to start a company from scratch unless you feel too compromised to stay with that contractor. But nobody is interviewing Mah, or the main TMC person in Georgia nowadays, Giorgi Begiashvili, before claiming “disinformation”.
Day Late and Fact Short
The US can get away with violations of treaty law because what it addresses has been superseded by new developments and changed beyond recognition. It has often been observed that when a certain narcotic is made illegal, another one comes along which is equally deadly but gets round the laws as written. Claims that any treaty violations are accidental are difficult to disprove because such violations are so widespread as to be unavoidable.
The US bio weapons legislation is codified in Section 817 of the Patriot Act. It effectively gives the US immunity from violating its own bioweapons laws, despite the fact that such a national law cannot override an international treaty that country is bound by. Specifically, it states that “the prohibitions contained in this section shall NOT apply to any duly authorised US governmental activity.”
Prior to enactment of the Patriot Act, federal law proscribed the use of biological agents or toxins as weapons, in 18 U.S.C. 175. This outlaws possession of a type or quantity of biological agents or toxins that cannot be justified for peaceful purposes. In short, what is being done for the purpose of military use, offensive, is now being justified under the guise of peaceful purposes.
Regardless of the ledger of truth and innocence, a public debate has begun which is cross cultural and beyond borders. As a result of it, some of what goes on behind closed doors, under the flimsy disguise of public health protection and non-proliferation of bio weapons and especially dangerous pathogens, is now out in the open.
One only needs to look more closely at what has been done in Georgia at various DOD funded labs and medical projects. There is a long list to explore, including deaths from experimental TB antibiotics, a succession of dodgy programs doctors refuse to talk about, and various experimental treatments on what is often an unsuspecting population.
If you do not wish to believe Silverman or the Russian media, enough can be gleaned from open sourced academic materials which clearly demonstrate that proper procedures for informed consent are not being implemented. These shine light on what appear to be “backhanders” paid by and to various funding agencies, the UN, the US State Department, Big Pharma and various partner organizations, including the Ministry of Health, various American universities and the Center for Disease Control in Atlanta Georgia.
Information is now being shared with the Congressional Oversight Budget Office, about the apparent planting of false and misleading information. However, all this demonstrates is that US-funded disinformation oversight is in fact blatant disinformation itself, as anyone who has lived in a country on which the US has an “official narrative”, such as Georgia, has always known.
Not only are some of these new generation bacteria agents and especially dangerous pathogens so evolved that there is no antibiotic or other treatment that can save a patient. Often the cure is only available in the form of bacteriophage preparations, as also is being produced in Tbilisi Georgia on the first floor of Building B at Eliava Institute.
It comes as no coincidence that the US Department of Defense and other agencies have also poured money into improvement of infrastructure at the laboratories on the second and third floors, where the planned production area is housed. These laboratories are used to produce bacteriophage on short notice and will be used for phage concentrate production that is used in the final phage product.
Founded in 1923, the Eliava Institute is a world renowned institution working in the field of Applied Microbiology, Virology and Infectious Immunology. Bacteriophage research and application is its main direction.
Henry Kamens is a columnist and expert on the Central Asia and Caucasus regions.
Democrats resurrect ‘Russiagate’ to go after both Trump and Bernie Sanders, hide their own election trickery
By Nebojsa Malic | RT | February 22, 2020
Establishment Democrats have now used the claims of ‘Russian meddling’ to go after their own progressive wing as well as President Donald Trump. The bogus accusation seems to be nothing more than cover for their own wrongdoing.
Moscow is now supposedly helping Bernie Sanders in the 2020 US presidential election – that is, if you believe the anonymously sourced Washington Post “bombshell.” This follows a New York Times claim on Thursday that the Kremlin is “again” betting on Trump, written by known partisan hacks and likewise based on anonymous sources.
In the minds of the ‘Russiagate’ cult, the Kremlin is backing Sanders either to get Trump re-elected, or to get a “socialist” president. Never mind that Russia is not socialist, try arguing that there has been precisely zero evidence – now, or back in 2016 – that Russia has backed any US candidate, and watch people’s heads explode. Much like the vaunted US “intelligence community,” they want to believe. That’s the only way they can explain the mind-breaking shock of Hillary Clinton losing to Trump.
Through endless repetition and paranoid denunciations, “Russian meddling” has been elevated to an article of faith, and anyone who dares question it in the slightest is a heretic fit only for the pyre.
So there was little surprise when the canard was trotted out on Thursday, in what was clearly an effort to delegitimize Trump’s pick of Richard Grenell as Director of National Intelligence with a rumored mandate to “clean house” – of, I don’t know, maybe the people involved in spying on Trump’s campaign on false pretenses and manufacturing the predicate for ‘Russiagate’, perhaps?
What’s more shocking, however, is that this accusation has now been leveled against Sanders – and after him spending the past four years proving time and again how he was a loyal DNC foot soldier. Not only did he bend the knee to Clinton after it was documented that she and the DNC colluded to rob him in the primaries, he also jumped on the ‘Russiagate’ bandwagon, and even tried using it just this week to deflect from the Clintonite smear about “Bernie bros” being mean to people online.
Even so, Bernie has now been smeared as a “Russian asset.” Looking at the state of Democrat primaries, the answer is obvious: because he’s winning, despite the DNC’s attempts to promote Pete Buttigieg or literally anyone else in the Iowa caucuses and New Hampshire primaries. With Joe Biden crashing and burning, the party even embraced billionaire media mogul Mike Bloomberg, only to see him wither on the debate stage last Friday and Sanders climb in the polls.
So the paper owned by Jeff Bezos, who reportedly asked Bloomberg to run and stands to pay billions in taxes if Sanders gets elected, breaks the glass and pushes the big red Russiagate button. Perfectly normal, you see.
In what surely must be a coincidence, the DNC had changed its debate rules to accommodate Bloomberg, even as it bent itself into pretzels to exclude Hawaii Congresswoman Tulsi Gabbard. In an even more remarkable coincidence, Gabbard was accused last fall of being a “Russian favorite” by none other than Hillary Clinton, the very source of the original ‘Russiagate’ conspiracy.
There’s no way these things are related, though, and anyone who thinks so simply must be a Russian agent! Expect armed FBI agents to show up at your door, accompanied by CNN cameras, and a federal judge to declare you a danger to Our Democracy any moment now.
That is not to say that US elections haven’t been targeted for meddling, influence, and even hacking. Trouble is, every documented incident tends to point to, well… Democrats.
Lost in the shrieking about “Russia helping Bernie” on Friday was the announcement that the FBI has arrested and charged a hacker linked to California Democrat Katie Hill, who allegedly conducted cyber-attacks against her (Democrat) primary rivals back in 2018. Oops.
Then there is New Knowledge, the “cybersecurity” company that the Senate Intelligence Committee chose to inform its understanding of “Russian active measures.” They were uniquely qualified, you see, because they actually ran a disinformation campaign during the 2017 special election for the Senate in Alabama, using fake Russian bots to frame and defame the Republican candidate.
When you factor in that the loudest shrieking about ‘Russian meddling’ comes from the people who were actually involved in election shenanigans – such as illegally spying on Trump’s campaign using a dodgy dossier compiled by a British spy – what emerges is a damning picture of psychological projection.
Nebojsa Malic is a Serbian-American journalist, blogger and translator, who wrote a regular column for Antiwar.com from 2000 to 2015, and is now senior writer at RT. Follow him on Twitter @NebojsaMalic
Another ‘highly likely’-style accusation: Moscow brushes aside ‘evidence-free’ Georgia cyberattack
RT | February 21, 2020
The US and its allies have claimed Russia’s military intelligence defaced Georgian websites with an image of the country’s former president. Moscow says the accusation is not backed by any evidence and is clearly just a PR stunt.
In late October last year, Georgia suffered what was described as the largest cyberattack in its history. Over 15,000 web pages – including those of government agencies, newspapers and banks – were defaced and later became inaccessible. The original content was replaced with a photo of former Georgian president Mikhail Saakashvili, currently a fugitive from justice, with the words “I’ll be back” above his head.
Many in Georgia immediately blamed the attack on Russia, and lo and behold, more than three months later the accusation is official. The Georgian foreign ministry claimed the GRU, Russia’s military intelligence agency, was behind it, citing its own investigation and information from “foreign partners.” The partners soon piled on Russia, with the charges repeated by the US, the UK, Canada and some others.
Notably, Russia’s accusers were tight-lipped on what evidence they had to support their claims. Neither technical details of the attack nor even a brief explanation of the investigation process were provided. The Russian foreign ministry pointed to this fact as it brushed aside the accusation.
“The lack of evidence and political motivation behind this obviously orchestrated information attack are impossible to miss,” it said in a statement. “It took almost four months to make an attempt to scapegoat Russia for the incident that happened on October 28 last year. All the charges are along the lines of the notorious ‘highly likely’ approach,” they concluded, referring to the line used by former UK Prime Minister Theresa May when accusing Russia following the poisoning of Sergei Skripal in 2018.
In the absence of actual proof, people with a record of accusing Russia of various nefarious cyber deeds resorted to speculation. Georgia is “in their neighborhood,” said Adam Meyers from the security firm CrowdStrike. “It’s in line with Russian tactics. The specific outcome is less important than causing upheaval and conflict between different groups in the country”.
CrowdStrike is most famous as the source of the claim that Russia hacked the servers of the DNC during the 2016 presidential race. It was tasked with investigating the situation, and was apparently trusted so much by the Obama administration that the FBI didn’t deem it necessary to double check their assessment.
Washington and its friends said the culprit was the GRU’s Unit 74455, which first entered the global spotlight in 2018, after the US Department of Justice indicted three of its presumed employees with hacking the DNC.
Other sins pinned on the unit include unleashing the ransomware NotPetya and its derivative Bad Rabbit in 2017. Like an earlier extortion virus WannaCry, this malware is believed to be based on cyber-warfare tools, belonging to the US National Security Agency, which were leaked a year earlier. The outbreaks affected computers running an unpatched version of Windows. Among their victims were Russian oil giant Rosneft, metal-maker Evraz and the Russian Central Bank.
Ocasio-Cortez to Constituents on Bolivian Coup: Drop Dead
By Jacob Levich | CounterPunch | February 14, 2020
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, the celebrity who moonlights as my Congressional representative, has repeatedly claimed to speak for “ordinary people,” but she refuses listen to them, even if they are constituents.
In late November, shortly after the US-backed military coup that unseated the legitimate president of Bolivia, I together with my life companion requested a meeting with Rep. Ocasio-Cortez, whose local offices are located just a short walk from our Jackson Heights apartment building. Working on behalf of a group of anti-imperialists opposing the fascist junta, we hoped to persuade her of the need to act quickly to thwart the coup and defend the lives and rights of the Bolivian people.
Although we never got past the reception desk, we were permitted to present a petition signed by leading academics and anti-imperialist organizers on behalf of the people of Bolivia. We provided all personal data and contact info requested by the office. We were promised that we would be contacted promptly to discuss scheduling a meeting.
We were not contacted. For weeks. After pressing the issue, always taking care to remain courteous and respectful of process, we were subjected to a galling and contemptuous bureaucratic runaround that sometimes felt like applying to – and being rejected by – an exclusive private school.
This three-month process involved repeated visits to her office, where our reception ranged from chilly to downright intimidating, endless emails and telephone calls, bureaucratic excuses and dissimulations, and eventually, after much persistence on our part, a half-hour vetting via conference call by a Washington staffer.
The result? As we say in Queens, bubkes.
By contrast, a group of imperialist sympathizers who had been promoting the coup for months were granted instant access. On November 16, four days after the military coup that destroyed Bolivian democracy, Ocasio-Cortez met with a group of pro-Áñez, pro-Camacho activists led by one Ana Carola Traverso. Traverso’s connections to the Bolivian coup plotters have been extensively documented online.
Rep. Ocasio-Cortez symbolically embraced the coup by posing for a photo with this group as they brandished the tricolor Bolivian flag, which during that period had become a signal of support for the golpistas (as opposed to the Wiphala flag, which symbolized popular resistance to the takeover). She told them that she supports their “democratic grassroots movement” and offered them “direct lines of communication.”
In sum, a gang of coup supporters, not constituents, were granted instant access, a photo op and promises of ongoing support. Actual constituents, opposing the coup, were shown the door.
Our reception by Rep. Ocasio-Cortez was radically different from that I received from her predecessor, Joe Crowley. When, in 2004, I requested a meeting on behalf of the Queens Antiwar Coalition, we were granted prompt and respectful access to the Congressman. We did not have high hopes of changing his vote on the Iraq war, but we felt it was important that he hear from his constituents.
So, apparently, did he. We were greeted warmly in his rather funky local office – a striking contrast with AOC’s soulless corporate-style digs, where underlings refer to her as “the Boss” – and were encouraged to speak our piece. Crowley never pretended to be an opponent of US imperialism, but he gave us a respectful hearing, stated his position, and engaged in what felt like meaningful discussion of the war. At a minimum, as Twitter’s bluecheck pundits would say, we felt “seen.”
AOC, by contrast, has no time for people who cannot help her to burnish her brand as she prepares to run for higher office. As a local staffer (who declined to introduce himself) proudly informed us: “She refuses 99 percent of meeting requests from constituents.”
Meanwhile, she happily clears her schedule for interviews about her makeup routine, canned videos in which she postures as a fearless progressive, and closed-door meetings with regime-change sympathizers.
But she will not make time for residents of her district. So much for “ordinary people.”
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From the Archives
Sanctions, War and the Policy of Dual Containment
By SASAN FAYAZMANESH | March 17, 2008
It is now nearly three decades since the Unites States adopted the policy of dual containment of Iran and Iraq. While much has been written about the containment of Iraq, there has been very little in-depth analysis of this policy when it comes to Iran. In a book that is going to be released on March 31, 2008, entitled The United States and Iran: Sanctions, Wars and the Policy of Dual Containment (Routledge), I attempt to address this shortcoming by investigating when and why the US policy of containment of Iran came about, how it evolved, and where it stands today.[1] To the extent that Israel has been involved in US policy making, the study will also include the role that Israel has played in the containment of Iran. Also, since the fate of Iran has been inextricably linked to that of Iraq, occasionally the investigation will overlap with the containment of Iraq.
The policy of dual containment of Iran and Iraq originated during the Carter Administration, but it was not until the Clinton Administration that the expression “dual containment” became popular. … continue
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