The “Yemen Bill” Trump Just Vetoed Never Had Anything to do With Yemen
By Adam Garrie – EurasiaFuture – 2019-04-17
Donald Trump has just vetoed a bill passed by the US Congress which would have ended American financial support for the Saudi led coalition in the Yemen conflict. When the bill was passed by both the House of Representatives and Senate, many were surprised that an otherwise pro-war and pro-interventionist group of politicians would support something that was seemingly anti-war. However, to assume that the majority of votes were motivated by an anti-war sentiment is to deny the very specific circumstances behind the bill’s passage.
In the United States, both main political parties have incredibly strong relations with Saudi Arabia. Yet among the US public, this “special relationship” is far more controversial than the fact that both US parties also have strong ties to Saudi Arabia’s de facto ally Israel. While Israel and Saudi Arabia are both known for pursuing internationally controversial foreign policies, among the US public, Israel is generally viewed in a positive light while Saudi Arabia is not. As such, whenever an opportunity comes along for American politicians to virtue signal against Saudi Arabia without actually changing US foreign policy in a meaningful way, such an opportunity will be acted upon. Trump himself virtue signaled against Saudi Arabia during his 2016 election campaign.
When it became clear that elements of the Saudi “deep state” were responsible for the murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi and when after that it became clear that Donald Trump was not going to do anything to punish Riyadh for the Khashoggi murder, many in the opposition Democratic party sought to take advantage of a public opinion that had soured even further against Riyadh in the aftermath of the infamous murder which took place in Saudi Arabia’s Istanbul consulate.
In this sense, the vote to cut funding to the Saudi coalition in Yemen was a largely symbolic measure that most who voted for it knew would be vetoed. Making matters all the more stark, it can be assumed that some of those who voted for the bill even wanted it to be vetoed as the intention was only ever to virtue signal to an American public that had become somewhat upset in the aftermath of the Khashoggi murder. The bill was never actually meant to change Washington’s pro-Riyadh/anti-Tehran position vis-a-vis Yemen.
In this sense, while some are blaming Trump for prolonging the crisis in Yemen because of his veto, the reality is that Trump was handed a bill intended as a virtue signalling provocation rather than a genuine call to end the conflict in Yemen. As such, Trump responded in the way that virtually anyone in his position would have done.
A tale of two cities – Paris and New York
johnplatinumgoss | April 16, 2019
Paris
Sadly, last night, the impressive spire of the cathedral of Notre Dame de Paris fell onto the roof of the cathedral. Constructed of wood and covered with lead it burned for some seven hours before the weakest point gave way and the spire came down. I expect many others have drawn mental comparisons between the collapse of this spire and the structure called the “spire” which was demolished along with WTC1 in New York on 11 September 2001.
The collapse of the 19th century spire can be seen on several videos showing what would be expected to happen in accordance with Newtonian physics, the laws of motion and gravity. Newton’s first law (Law of inertia) is obeyed in that an object when acted upon by a force will continue in a linear direction unless acted upon by another force. In this case the force acting upon the spire was gravity (a natural force) which came into play when the point of least resistance gave way allowing the spire to fall. Importantly the spire continued to fall in the same direction until it was acted upon by another force – the cathedral roof – which stopped its further linear momentum.
This second picture shows that the spire continued in the same outward direction in which it started (featured image).
New York
While this article compares spires it is fair also to say that the whole of the North Tower fell without apparently following the laws of Newtonian physics though a case could be made for the stronger nuclear forces which can compromise atomic structures.
The “spire” which was a core column of WTC1 (North Tower) has been the subject of much speculation. It falls several seconds after other parts of the building have already fallen. It then appears to vanish into its own footprint, that is, straight down through the path of greatest resistance. Whereas the spire on Notre Dame cathedral leaves behind the structure that had been previously supporting it – the equal and opposite forces of Newton’s third law. Watch how it falls in the video below and imagine the stronger support structures beneath it. Where did they go?
As with the spire of the cathedral, which was a much weaker structure, one corner of WTC1, where the initial fire took place was weaker than other parts and the top section started falling, like Notre Dame spire, outwards. Unlike the spire in Paris it did not continue on that path. This photograph shows the original momentum and if a straight line was to be drawn from the corner edge the degree of tilt can be seen.
That still was taken from the video linked here. To obey Newton’s laws it would have continued in the same path for the simple reason that it is the path of least resistance. There are currently more than 3000 qualified engineers and architects who are seeking to find out what really happened almost 18 years ago. Below some of the pioneers of this movement explain why Newton’s laws of motion were not followed when the twin towers and Building 7 collapsed in almost freefall.
I hope people can see from the way the spire of Notre Dame fell that the twin towers -which were also much stronger below compared to the compromised section at the top – should have followed a similar path.
The noble corruption of climate science
By Larry Kummer | Fabius Maximus | April 11, 2019
The climate change campaign hits a dead end
On 24 June 1988, James Hansen’s testimony to the Senate began the campaign to fight anthropogenic global warming. During the following 31 years we have heard increasingly dire forecasts of doom. Some describe the distant future, beyond any reasonable forecasting horizon (due to both technical and social uncertainties). Some describe the near future. Many attribute almost all current extreme weather to our emissions of greenhouse gases (GHG) – using impossible to validate methods.
Karl Popper said that successful predictions, especially of the unexpected, were the gold standard of science (see here). That is a problem for climate activists. The Earth has been warming since the mid-19th century, when the Little Ice Age ended. The rate of warming in the past four decades (since 1977) is roughly the same as that during the four decades up to 1945. Anthropogenic GHG became a major factor only after WWII. So warming has occurred as predicted, but a naive forecast (without considering GHG) would have also predicted warming. There are explanations for this, but it makes model validation difficult (perhaps why it is seldom attempted: see links in section f in the For More Info section of this post).
Worse, the weather has not cooperated. Major hurricanes avoided America for 11 years, ending in 2017. Warming slowed during what climate scientists called the “pause” or “hiatus” (see links about its causes). And most forms of extreme weather have no obvious increasing trend. So surveys show little public support in America for expensive measures to fight climate change.
Activists grow desperate
“The Uninhabitable Earth” by David Wallace-Wells in New York Magazine –
“Famine, economic collapse, a sun that cooks us: what climate change could wreak
– sooner than you think.”
Expanded into a book: The Uninhabitable Earth: Life After Warming.“The five ways the human race could be WIPED OUT because of global warming.”
By Rod Ardehali at the Daily Mail. H/t to the daily links at Naked Capitalism.
Promo for Falter: Has the Human Game Begun to Play Itself Out?, a book by Bill McKibben.
Activists responded to the uncooperative weather by making ever-more dire predictions (many of which have passed their due date and been proven false). All extreme weather was “climate change.” They made more vivid propaganda (e.g., the 10:10 video, showing a teacher exploding the heads of students who do not accept her propaganda). They increased the volume of their claims, with more 2-minute hate sessions for dissenters (with lies about even eminent climate scientists). The long-term effects of this are (hopefully) small, since these fear barrages have been the Left’s go-to tactic since the 1960s (see some classics of the genre).
But one tactic might have awful long-term consequences. Many activists are climate scientists (see the many stories about depression among them, overcome by fears about their worst-case scenarios, such as this and this). Some have reacted with noble lie corruption (from Plato’s The Republic). However well-intended, it might weaken the public’s trust in science (as might the replication crisis, of which this is an example, if they learn about it).
The Noble Lie in action
Obvious evidence of this is climate scientists’ relentless focus on RCP8.5, the worst-case scenario in the IPCC’s Fifth Assessment Report. As a good worst-case should be, it is almost impossible to happen without unlikely assumptions (details here; also see Dr. Curry’s articles). Yet it receives the majority of mentions in the climate science literature – usually with no mention of its improbable nature (see this history). Activists exaggerate these papers, whose stories are uncritically reported by journalists. A decade of this bombardment has a fraction of the Left terrified, certain that we are doomed.
For a recent example, see “A glacier the size of Florida is on track to change the course of human civilization” by “Pakalolo” at the Daily Kos. Widely reposted, quite bonkers. See the details here.
Worse, climate scientists remain silent when activists exaggerate their work, even when they materially misrepresenting it. The most extreme doomster predictions are greeted by silence. Even over-top climate doomster claims receive only mild push-back. For example, see the reactions to “The Uninhabitable Earth” by David Wallace-Wells. WaPo: “Scientists challenge magazine story about ‘uninhabitable Earth’.” Climate Feedback: “Scientists explain what New York Magazine article on “The Uninhabitable Earth” gets wrong.” It was too much even for Michael Mann.
Yet leading climate scientists are quick to loudly condemn skeptics – even fellow climate scientists – for questioning aggressive claims about climate change. Allowing activists to call scientists “deniers” for challenging the current paradigm is imo among the most irresponsible actions by leaders of science, ever. By ancient law, silence means assent to activists’ behavior. They are guilty of “aiding and abetting.” For more about this, see About the corruption of climate science.
But in the past few years, activist scientists’ desperation appears to have pushed them to take another step away from science.
Papers to generate alarmist news!
As Marc Morano of Climate Depot says, recent studies often appear designed to produce media stories for alarmists. I see several of these every week. The most recent is “Key indicators of Arctic climate change: 1971–2017” in Environmental Research Letters (April 2019), by scientists at the International Arctic Research Center at the University of Alaska-Fairbanks and the Geological Survey of Denmark and Greenland in Copenhagen. Abstract:
“Key observational indicators of climate change in the Arctic, most spanning a 47 year period (1971–2017) demonstrate fundamental changes among nine key elements of the Arctic system. …Downward trends continue in sea ice thickness (and extent) and spring snow cover extent and duration, while near-surface permafrost continues to warm. Several of the climate indicators exhibit a significant statistical correlation with air temperature or precipitation, reinforcing the notion that increasing air temperatures and precipitation are drivers of major changes in various components of the Arctic system. …
“The Arctic biophysical system is now clearly trending away from its 20th Century state and into an unprecedented state, with implications not only within but beyond the Arctic. The indicator time series of this study are freely downloadable at AMAP.no.”
Ecowatch describes it in their usual apocalyptic fashion: “Researchers Warn Arctic Has Entered ‘Unprecedented State’ That Threatens Global Climate Stability.”
The paper is odd in several ways. It is evidence showing the broken peer-review process. Five times they describe conditions in the arctic as “unprecedented.” But they start their analysis with data from the 1970’s. Given the various kinds of long-term natural fluctuations, five decades of data is too brief a period to draw such a bold conclusion.
The authors neglect to mention that the Arctic was also warm in the 1930’s. Which is strange since one of the authors, Uma S. Bhatt, was also a co-author of a major paper on the subject: “Variability and Trends of Air Temperature and Pressure in the Maritime Arctic, 1875–2000” in the Journal of Climate, June 2003. She did not even cite it in their new paper. Abstract …
“Arctic atmospheric variability during the industrial era (1875–2000) is assessed using spatially averaged surface air temperature (SAT) and sea level pressure (SLP) records. Air temperature and pressure display strong multidecadal variability on timescales of 50–80 yr [termed low-frequency oscillation (LFO)]. Associated with this variability, the Arctic SAT record shows two maxima: in the 1930s–40s and in recent decades, with two colder periods in between.
“In contrast to the global and hemispheric temperature, the maritime Arctic temperature was higher in the late 1930s through the early 1940s than in the 1990s. … Thus, the large-amplitude multidecadal climate variability impacting the maritime Arctic may confound the detection of the true underlying climate trend over the past century. LFO-modulated trends for short records are not indicative of the long-term behavior of the Arctic climate system.
“The accelerated warming and a shift of the atmospheric pressure pattern from anticyclonic to cyclonic in recent decades can be attributed to a positive LFO phase. It is speculated that this LFO-driven shift was crucial to the recent reduction in Arctic ice cover. Joint examination of air temperature and pressure records suggests that peaks in temperature associated with the LFO follow pressure minima after 5–15 yr. Elucidating the mechanisms behind this relationship will be critical to understanding the complex nature of low-frequency variability.”
Starting their analysis in the 1970s is misleading without disclosing that was a cold spell. There was concern then about global cooling (but not a consensus). See here and here for details. Starting in the 1970’s makes current conditions look extraordinary. Since we are in the warming period following the Little Ice Age, robust comparisons should include previous warm periods, such as the Medieval Warm Period and the Holocene climatic optimum.
A later paper provides more detail, showing the temperature anomaly in 2008 was aprox. 1°C warmer than the ~1940 peak: “Role of Polar Amplification in Long-Term Surface Air Temperature Variations and Modern Arctic Warming” by Roman V. Bekryaev et al. in Journal of Climate, 15 July 2010. Is that a one standard deviation from the long-term mean? Three? Are temperatures a normal distribution? They do not say. Climate science papers often use arcane statistics, but usually ignore the basics. (Here is an as yet unpublished estimate of arctic sea ice back to the 1880s. Here is a 2017 paper with arctic temperatures and sea ice extent back to 1900)
Two comments from climate scientists on this paper.
“It is normalization of data cherry picking.”
— Dr. Judith Curry (bio). She her analysis of arctic sea ice trends here and here. She writes at Climate Etc.“Of course, if these changes are predominantly due to the Arctic Oscillation (AO) and/or the LFO, we should see a reversal. If not, the trend would continue. Time will eventually sort this out. But a proper literature summary should still be provided with papers that might disagree with the theme of a newer paper. All peer-reviewed perspectives on this subject should be given.”
— Dr. Roger Pielke Sr. (bio).
See other examples in the comments. These kind of stories are coming along like trolleys.
This is a follow-up to About the corruption of climate science.
Conclusions
Science has been politicized, distorting its results, before. It will be again. But climate science provides essential insights on several major public policy issues. Losing reliable guidance from it could have disastrous consequences. Worse, the high public profile of climate science means that a loss of public confidence in it might affect science as a whole.
Let’s hope that the leaders of climate science come to their senses soon, despite their personal, institutional, and ideological reasons to continue on this dark path.
For More Information
Hat tip on the ERL 2019 paper to Naked Capitalism’s daily links, who uncritically run climate alarmist articles, a one-side flow of information without context – terrifying their Leftist readers (other than that, their daily links are a valuable resource – which read every morning).
Why Attenborough’s Walrus Claims Are Fake
By Paul Homewood | Not A Lot Of People Know That | April 14, 2019
Our Planet has showcased hundreds of walruses falling off a 260ft cliff to a slow, agonising death in heartbreaking scenes
https://www.thesun.co.uk/tvandshowbiz/8800576/netflix-david-attenborough-our-planet-walrus-heartbreaking/
Last week, the new Netflix series, Our Planet, was launched with great fanfare. Narrated by David Attenborough, however, one segment made headlines around the world, showcasing hundreds of walruses falling off a 260ft cliff to a slow, agonising death in heartbreaking scenes.
Narrating the disturbing scene in the second episode, Attenborough began:
“They do so out of desperation not choice.
“Their natural home is out on the sea ice, but the ice has retreated away to the north and this is the closest place to their feeding grounds.
“Every square inch is occupied, climbing over the tightly packed bodies is the only way across the crowd – those beneath can get crushed to death.
“In a desperate bid to avoid the crush they try to head towards the cliffs.
“But walruses’ eyesight out of the water is poor, but they can sense the others down below, as they get hungry they need to return to the sea.
“In their desperation to do so, hundreds fall from heights they should never have scaled.”
But the story quickly began to unravel.
Zoologist, Dr Susan Crockford, suspected that the event was actually a well publicised incident in October 2017, at Ryrkaypiy in NE Russia, when a group of polar bears drove several hundred walruses over the cliffs to their deaths, before feasting on the corpses.
Then a couple of days later, Andrew Montford was able to positively identify Ryrkaypiy as the location in the Our Planet film. The Netflix producers denied seeing any polar bears, but this does not alter the fact that many bears were in the area at that time.
There is however another rather more sinister possible explanation for the stampede. According to the US Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS):
Walruses often flee haulouts en masse in response to the sight, sound, and especially odours from humans and machines.
So it is perfectly possible that it was the filmmakers themselves who caused the stampede up the cliffs.
Indeed, as this aerial shot showed, there must have been some sort of helicopter or drone flying immediately above the walrus, which seems to me to be an utterly irresponsible thing to do.
As the US Fish and Wildlife Service also note, events like this one are not uncommon:
Some haulout sites include shorelines that grade from little topographical relief to steep slopes and cliffs. As large numbers of walruses gather at these sites, the first to arrive move further inland and may eventually settle at the tops of the steeper slopes and cliffs. As most animals head back to sea to feed, those on the steeper slopes and cliffs are also rested and ready to feed and sometimes take the most direct route down the slope or off the cliff. This behavior has resulted in serious injuries and deaths. As with most animals whose eyes are oriented to the side of their head, rather than forward, walrus’s depth perception is likely poor and they are nearsighted.
Sea Ice and Haulouts
Regardless of the exact cause of the stampede, why were the walrus at Ryrkaypiy in the first place? Is it the case that they were forced to go ashore, because their sea ice had melted?
The US Fish and Wildlife Service explain the Pacific walrus’ migratory habits:
The distribution of Pacific walruses varies markedly with the seasons. Almost the entire population occupies the pack ice in the Bering Sea in the winter months. Through the winter they generally congregate in three areas, immediately southwest of St. Lawrence Island, south of Nunivak Island, and in the Gulf of Anadyr in Russia. As the Bering Sea pack ice begins to break up and melt in spring walruses begin to move northward and their distribution becomes less clumped. By late April walruses can be found from Bristol Bay northward to the Bering Strait. During the summer months, as the pack ice continues to recede northward, most of the population migrates into the Chukchi Sea. The largest concentrations are found near the coasts between 70 N latitude and Pt. Barrow in the east, and between the Bering Strait and Wrangel Island in the west. Concentrations, mainly of males, are also found on and near terrestrial haulouts in the Bering Sea in Bristol Bay and the northern Gulf of Anadyr throughout the summer. In October the pack ice begins to develop in the Chukchi Sea, and large herds begin to move southward. Many come ashore on haulouts on the Russian side of the Bering Strait region. Depending on ice conditions, those haulout sites continue to be occupied through November and into December, but with the continuing development of ice, most walruses move south of St. Lawrence Island and the Chukchi Peninsula by early to mid-December.
https://www.fws.gov/alaska/fisheries/mmm/walrus/wmain.htm
In short, adult males migrate south in summer, and haulout in Bristol Bay and the Gulf of Anadyr. (Per the red dots).
There is a very good reason for these haulouts, as the FWS go on to explain:
Walruses depend on hauling out to complete their moult and grow new hair, to whelp, to nurse young, and just to rest.
Hauling out is what they do naturally, not what they are forced to do because there is no sea ice around.
Whereas the males head south, the females and juveniles follow the sea ice north, as it recedes in Spring, eventually going as far as Wrangel Island and Point Barrow. Crucially, as the ice begins to grow back in October, these large herds follow it back south, often coming ashore at places like Ryrkaypiy on the Russian coast (No 51 on the map above). As the map indicates, such hauling out is commonplace and widespread along that stretch of coastline. (Green dots).
Remember that the Ryrkaypiy incident occurred in October 2017.
The earlier the sea ice reforms, the earlier the walrus arrive on Ryrkaypiy. This is the total opposite of Attenborough’s version, that they are there because of a lack of sea ice.
How he can get such a basic fact as this wrong is beyond my comprehension.
Walrus are thriving
Given all of this mayhem and loss of sea ice, you might think that walrus were an endangered species. But you would be wrong.
According to the FWS:
The size of the Pacific walrus population is uncertain. The size of the pre-exploitation population (1700’s) may have been between 200,000-250,000 animals. Cooperative aerial surveys by the U.S. and the former Soviet Union (now Russia) occurred in 1975, then at five-year intervals until 1990. The 1975 survey estimated the population size at 221,360. The joint census conducted in 1980 estimated population size at 246,360. Surveys conducted in 1985 and 1990 produced estimates of 234,020 and 201,039, respectively. Cooperative aerial surveys ceased in 1995 due to budget limitations and unresolved methodological problems. After much deliberation and testing, another aerial survey occurred in 2006 incorporating advanced thermal imaging and telemetry technologies, resulting in an estimate of 129,000 animals with a confidence interval of 55,000-550,000. The estimates generated from these aerial surveys are conservative minimum population estimates that are not useful for detecting population trends.
In 2012, a new approach to population estimation using the genetic fingerprint of individual walruses within a mark-recapture framework began testing. Two aspects of the approach were successfully assessed in 2013, the genetic identification of individuals and the ability to collect an adequate sample. The surveys then continued through 2017. A preliminary estimate for the year 2014 was about 283,000 individuals and a confidence interval of 93,000-479,000. The data for subsequent years is currently under analysis.
The decline in population in the 1980s and 90s was largely due to an increase in hunting, which followed a relaxation of harvest restrictions.
https://www.fws.gov/alaska/fisheries/mmm/walrus/pdf/final-pacific-walrus-species-status-assessment.pdf
The FWS also state that:
Pacific walrus population size has varied substantially in the last 150 years, it increased between 1960 and 1980 and may have reached the carrying capacity of the marine environment
In other words, the current population, which is believed to be similar to those earlier ones, may also be at maximum levels of sustainability.
Certainly, if Our Planet is correct about there being 100,000 walrus at Ryrkaypiy, the global population must be much greater than estimated, and would explain why the beach there was so crowded.
What we do know is that the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service found after a comprehensive review in 2017 that the Pacific walrus does not require protection as threatened or endangered under the Endangered Species Act.
Breathtaking dishonesty
The migratory habits of walrus are pretty basic knowledge, which a natural historian such as David Attenborough should be familiar with.
Why then has he chosen to ignore the truth, and instead present a fictionalised account?
Is it to further his own political agenda? Is it simply incompetence? Or has he merely followed the script given to him by the WWF?
We don’t expect to hear the truth from the WWF. But if Netflix doesn’t quickly correct and retract this particular segment of the series, it will be highly damaging for their own credibility at a time when they are just embarking on producing serious documentaries.
As for Attenborough’s upcoming programme for the BBC on climate change, this little episode offers a clue about how inaccurate and biased it will be.
French-Made Weapons Reportedly Used in Yemen War, More Arms to Be Delivered
Sputnik – April 15, 2019
Journalists claim to have uncovered the “massive use” of French-made weapons in war-torn Yemen through a leak of secret military documents.
Radio France and investigative reporters from the NGO Disclose say they have obtained a classified 2018 report about French arms sold to Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, both of which form part of the Saudi-led coalition fighting Houthi militiamen in Yemen since 2015.
The paper was allegedly compiled last September by France’s military agency DRM and handed over to President Emmanuel Macron and other cabinet-level officials. It apparently contains a list of all French weapons deployed in Yemen by the two Arab monarchies.
“These include Leclerc battle tanks, long-rod penetrator ammunition, Mirage 2000-9 fighter jets, COBRA counter-battery radar systems, Aravis armoured troop-carrying vehicles, Cougar and Dauphin helicopters, CAESAR truck-mounted howitzers,” reads a statement on Disclose’s website.
The journalists went on to claim that some of the French-made weapons are being used in combat operations in Yemen, including in civilian zones. Specifically, two French-made warships — a missile-launching corvette and a warfare frigate — are said to be taking part in the naval blockade of Yemen, as per the report.
The leaked report appears to include a map titled “Population under threat of bombs”, which indicates the deployment of 48 CAESAR guns near the Saudi-Yemeni border.
“Put more simply, the guns are used to bombard Yemeni territory to open up a path for the tanks and armoured vehicles invading the country,” the journalists argue. The population living within the range of potential artillery fire is estimated at being over 436,000.
According to the report, at least 129 CAESAR howitzers are due to be delivered to Saudi Arabia between by 2023.
French authorities are yet to comment on the matter.
French Minister of Armed Forces Florence Parly said in a radio interview in February that the military had “recently sold no weapons that can be used in the Yemeni conflict”.
Last October, she rejected claims that domestically made weapons were targeting civilian population. “To my knowledge, the weapons we have sold recently have not been used against civilians,” she told reporters.
The minister also described France’s weapons exports to Saudis as “relatively modest”, saying they were subject to tight restrictions. “We don’t sell weapons like they’re baguettes,” she added.
Disclose and Radio France note, meanwhile, that the French parliament has been “deliberately kept apart” from this information by the government, which has so far given only “fragmentary answers or even falsehoods”.
Despair or distraction? Pompeo’s ‘push for peace’ in Libya does not pass smell test
By Alex Benley – RT- April 12, 2019
The US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo may have called for peace in Libya but his lack of credibility makes one suspect something else is going on.
“There is no military solution,” warns West Point graduate, former CIA chief and waterboarding defender, Mike Pompeo.
“We have made clear that we oppose the military offensive by Khalifa Haftar’s forces and urge the immediate halt to these military operations against the Libyan capital,” Pompeo’s statement read.
There is something not right about Pompeo’s call. Otherwise, it would seem to mark a major U-turn in US foreign policy. But the record of this and previous administrations does not corroborate such an assumption.
Libya is a great case study when it comes to the gap between US leaders’ public statements and their underlying intent.
In his address to the nation on March 28, 2011, Nobel peace prize laureate Barack Obama framed the mission as one “to protect the Libyan people from immediate danger and to establish a no-fly zone… Broadening our military mission to include regime change would be a mistake.” Roger that.
During a Senate hearing, Hillary Clinton’s deputy, James Steinberg said, “President Obama has been equally firm that our military operation has a narrowly defined mission that does not include regime change.”
During the months that followed, however, the US provided rebels with $25 million in assistance and reportedly allowed advanced weapons to be delivered by Egypt and Qatar.
NATO ships stationed in the Mediterranean to enforce an arms embargo under Section 9 of Resolution 1970 let go a rebel tugboat with small arms, 105mm howitzer rounds, and “lots of explosives.”
On the day Vice Adm. William Gortney, director of the Joint Staff, “guaranteed” the press that Muammar Gaddafi is “not on a targeting list,” bombs hit the presidential compound.
Clinton’s eventual “we came, we saw, he died” is the most striking giveaway that regime change was the White House’s goal right from the start.
The US action under the guise of a peace and humanitarian narrative resulted in the collapse of a once rich and stable country that has since turned it into a playground for extremist forces, with spillover effects for the entire region. It has been a de-facto failed state for eight years now.
Need more examples of Washington’s hypocrisy? Promoting peace in Yemen and Syria on paper did not preclude the US from launching airstrikes against Damascus and exporting weapons that kill civilians in the protracted Saudi-led war on Yemen’s Houthis.
The US is clearer on Venezuela but again not everything is said in public. Remember National Security Advisor John Bolton’s hand-written reminder to send 5,000 troops to Colombia captured on camera?
Going back to Libya, there is another detail that is adding flavor to the story.
It is common knowledge that Haftar’s military experience helped topple the Gaddafi regime in 2011 following his return to Libya from the US where he gained American citizenship. Other than being a skilled commanding officer, he is said to have become a CIA asset and was trained in guerilla warfare by the agency’s paramilitary arm. This was after Washington saved him from a prison in Chad following a botched Libyan campaign and abandonment by Gaddafi in 1987. In March 1996, Haftar took part in the uprising against the Libyan leader.
However, Haftar has also been building ties with Russia. He’s flown to Moscow and has met several times with Defense Minister Sergey Shoigu.
If the general has made up his mind, he could run his homeland on his own terms. The US is just trying to buy time to figure out his and its own next move.
Also on rt.com Libya’s military strongman Haftar to meet Russian FM Lavrov in Moscow
But the timing of the general’s offensive – just days ahead of a major UN conference – might indicate he may have been directed by the US to thwart European and broader international efforts. The goal would be to show who the real powerbroker is, to scare the Europeans with potentially more refugees, and punish the EU for seeking greater autonomy from the US.
So, what’s truly behind Pompeo’s statement – a distraction to prove their alibi while a special CIA op is underway or a signal to a former asset gone rogue in a geopolitical tug of war over who defines Libya’s future?
Whatever the case, make no mistake: Pompeo is no peace dove and the US will have no qualms about issuing secret orders to advance their strategic interests that run counter to their publicly stated objectives.
Roméo Dallaire and the Toronto Star’s distortion of Rwanda’s tragedy
By Yves Engler · April 11, 2019
The Toronto Star should get its facts straight and stop distorting Rwanda’s tragedy.
A day after the 25th anniversary of when two Hutu presidents were blown out of the sky, the Star’s editorial board published “There’s no excuse for ignoring lessons of Rwanda’s genocide”. It claims, “on Jan. 11, 1994, Canadian Maj.-Gen. Roméo Dallaire, at the time force commander with the United Nations Assistance Mission for Rwanda, sent a chilling and urgent cable to UN Headquarters in New York. He had been informed of the details of a plan for the ‘extermination’ of ethnic Tutsis by Hutus.” After stringing together a few hundred more humane-sounding, though meaningless, words Star editorialists returned to their core liberal interventionist Canadian hero theme: “In his cable of January 1994 he urged UN leaders to act by telling them the obvious: Where there’s a will to prevent mass killing, there is a way.”
The Star should check Dallaire’s fax more closely. Revealingly, the much-celebrated “genocide fax” the editorialists reference is not titled “‘genocide’ or ‘killing’ but an innocuous ‘Request for Protection of Informant’”, reports International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR) lawyer Christopher Black in a 2005 story titled “View from Rwanda: The Dallaire Genocide Fax: A Fabrication”. The two-page “genocide fax”, as New Yorker reporter Philip Gourevitch dubbed it in 1998, was probably doctored a year after the mass killings in Rwanda ended. In a chapter devoted to the fax in Enduring Lies: The Rwandan Genocide in the Propaganda System, 20 Years Later Edward S. Herman and David Peterson argue two paragraphs were added to a cable Dallaire sent to Canadian General Maurice Baril at the UN Department of Peacekeeping Operations in New York about a weapons cache and protecting an informant (Dallaire never personally met the informant). The added paragraphs said the informant was asked to compile a list of Tutsi for possible extermination in Kigali and mentioned a plan to assassinate select political leaders and Belgian peacekeepers.
At the ICTR former Cameroon foreign minister and overall head of the UN mission in Rwanda, Jacques-Roger Booh-Booh, denied seeing this information and there’s no evidence Dallaire warned the Belgians of a plan to attack them, which later transpired. Finally, a response to the cable from UN headquarters the next day ignores the (probably) added paragraphs. Herman and Peterson make a compelling case that a doctored version of the initial cable was placed in the UN file on November 27, 1995, by British Colonel Richard M. Connaughton as part of a Kigali-London-Washington effort to prove the existence of a plan by the Hutu government to exterminate Tutsi.
Even if the final two paragraphs were in the original version, the credibility of the information would be suspect. Informant “Jean-Pierre” was not a highly placed official in the defeated Hutu government, reports Robin Philpott in Rwanda and the New Scramble for Africa: From Tragedy to Useful Imperial Fiction. Instead, “Jean-Pierre” was a driver for the MRDN political party who later died fighting with the Rwandan Patriotic Front.
Incredibly, the “genocide fax” is the primary source of any documentary record demonstrating UN foreknowledge of a Hutu “conspiracy” to exterminate Tutsi, a charge even the victor’s justice at the ICTR failed to convict anyone of. According to Herman and Peterson, “when finding all four defendants not guilty of the ‘conspiracy to commit genocide’ charge, the [ICTR] trial chamber also dismissed the evidence provided by ‘informant Jean-Pierre’ due to ‘lingering questions concerning [his] reliability.’”
Tellingly, Dallaire didn’t even initially adhere to the “conspiracy to commit genocide” version of the Rwandan tragedy. Just after leaving his post as UNAMIR force commander Dallaire replied to a September 14, 1994, Radio Canada Le Point question by saying, “the plan was more political. The aim was to eliminate the coalition of moderates. … I think that the excesses that we saw were beyond people’s ability to plan and organize. There was a process to destroy the political elements in the moderate camp. There was a breakdown and hysteria absolutely. … But nobody could have foreseen or planned the magnitude of the destruction we saw.”
Doctoring a fax to make it appear the UN had foreknowledge of a plot to exterminate Tutsi may sound outlandish, but it’s more believable than many other elements of the dominant narrative of the Rwandan genocide. The day after their editorial, for instance, the Star published a story titled “25 years after genocide, Rwanda rebuilds” which included a photo of President Paul Kagame leading a walk to commemorate the mass killings. But, Kagame is the individual most responsible for unleashing the hundred days of genocidal violence by downing a plane carrying two Hutu presidents and much of the Rwandan military high command.
Even the Star has reported as much. A year ago they published a story titled “Did Rwanda’s Paul Kagame trigger the genocide of his own people?” For its part, the Globe and Mail has published a series of front-page reports in recent years confirming Kagame’s responsibility for blowing up the plane carrying Rwandan President Juvénal Habyarimana, which triggered mass killings in April 1994. In an October story titled “New information supports claims Kagame forces were involved in assassination that sparked Rwandan genocide” the Globe all but confirmed that the surface-to-air missiles used to assassinate the Rwandan and Burundian Hutu presidents on April 6, 1994, came from Uganda, which backed the RPF’s bid to conquer its smaller neighbour. (A few thousand exiled Tutsi Ugandan troops, including the deputy minister of defence, “deserted” to invade Rwanda in 1990.) These revelations strengthen the case of those who argue that responsibility for the mass killings in spring 1994 largely rests with the Ugandan/RPF aggressors and their US/British/Canadian backers.
By presenting the individual most culpable for the mass killings at the head of a commemoration for said violence the Star is flipping the facts on their head. The same might be said for their depiction of the Canadian general. At the end of their chapter tracing the history of the “genocide fax” Herman and Peterson write, “if all of this is true,” then “we would suggest that Dallaire should be regarded as a war criminal for positively facilitating the actual mass killings of April-July, rather than taken as a hero for giving allegedly disregarded warnings that might have stopped them.”
Like America With Russiagate, India Is Now Obsessed With Pakistangate
By Andrew Korybko | EurasiaFuture | 2019-04-11
The Indo-American Strategic Partnership has rapidly progressed to such a point that the South Asian state is now copying some of the same conspiracy theories as its new patron, though instead of India being obsessed with suspected Russian interference in its elections like America was, its people can’t stop talking about its imaginary Pakistani variant.
Pakistangate
Pakistani Prime Minister Khan made global headlines earlier this week when he said that it might be easier for his country to clinch peace talks with India and resolve the Kashmir Conflict if Modi wins re-election after his country’s month-long electoral process concludes at the end of May. This took many Indians completely off guard who had hitherto been preconditioned by none other than the ruling BJP itself to think that Pakistan was “meddling” in their elections in order to support the opposition Congress party and their coalition allies. The Pakistani leader explained his initially surprising position by rationally noting how it would be less likely that right-wing forces would oppose any BJP-led peace talks unlike the spoiling effect they could have if left-leaning Congress attempted to initiate the same, which makes sense upon further contemplation and is actually a very wise observation.
From -Gate To -Gate
Instead of being interpreted as such, however, India’s “confirmation bias” on all sides caused it to continue cannibalizing itself over the entirely speculative issue of “who Pakistan really supports”, with practically all parties refusing to believe that their neighbor is just sitting on the sidelines watching in awe as the Indian political class tears itself apart over this issue and discredits their claim to being the self-professed “world’s largest democracy”. Interestingly, what’s unfolding in India at the moment with Pakistangate is very similar to what has been taking place in its military-strategic partner over the past couple of years with Russiagate. This suggests that the vassal state is copying some of the same conspiracy theories as its new patron, including the role that elements of its permanent military, intelligence, and diplomatic bureaucracies (“deep state”) are playing in this process.
“Deep State” Meddling
Democratic-friendly elements of the American “deep state” essentially entrapped Carter Page, after which they consequently used this false flag as the pretext for “justifying” a far-reaching FISA surveillance operation against the entire Trump campaign which then sought to exploit its “six degrees of separation” from Russia to concoct a weaponized narrative that ultimately failed to prevent him from winning the election and then later getting him overthrown through a de-facto coup. Something along the same lines happened with the BJP-friendly elements of the Indian “deep state” that “passively facilitated” the Pulwama incident which was later blamed on Pakistan and used as the pretext for “justifying” a so-called “surgical strike” against it that also miserably failed in what it sought out to do, though it nevertheless succeeded in making Indians hysterical about anything to do with Pakistan.
Witch Hunts
The BJP has even gone as far as to imply that all dissidents who disagree with its official version of events are treasonous, which is reminiscent of how the then-ruling Democrats suggested that anyone supporting Trump was either under the influence of “Russian propaganda” or a “Russian bot” if they were expressing their views in cyberspace. Just as Russia became a convenient scapegoat for the pro-incumbent elements of the American “deep state” to centralize their power behind the scenes and meddle in their own country’s elections, so too has Pakistan been abused to serve the same purpose vis-a-vis the pro-incumbent elements of the Indian “deep state”, with both of their permanent bureaucracies presently in the process of merging their narratives into a geopolitically weaponized one ridiculously alleging that Russia and Pakistan are jointly waging “hybrid wars” across the world.
Concluding Thoughts
It therefore shouldn’t be surprising that India’s “deep state” is copying its American counterpart’s Russiagate conspiracy theory and remixing it with a national touch to produce Pakistangate in pursuit of the exact same purpose of remaining in power, though just like with its inspiration, this might ultimately end up backfiring against its practitioners since it’s impossible to control chaotic processes once Pandora’s Box has been opened. In any case and regardless of the eventual electoral outcome, the Indian and American “deep states” will continue to converge into a single unipolar shadow entity dedicated to the shared objective of stopping multipolarity, using the “bonding experience” of their respective manufactured -gate conspiracies to accelerate this ongoing process and ensure that the Indo-American Strategic Partnership is one of the Eastern Hemisphere’s most geopolitically disruptive developments this century.
Who Is Killing Whom in the Middle East? Blaming Iran Might be an Excuse for War
By Philip M. GIRALDI | Strategic Culture Foundation | 11.04.2019
Newsweek is reporting a story regarding how Iran “was responsible for the deaths of at least 608 American troops in Iraq between 2003 and 2011.” The account is sourced to a newly revised estimate prepared by analysts at the Pentagon that was discussed by Special Representative for Iran Brian Hook at a State Department press briefing on April 2nd. According to Hook, Tehran is now being blamed for 17 per cent of all US military deaths because it supplied weapons to the several Shiite militias that were opposing the US invasion, occupation and subsequent presence in the country.
Hook also stated that the American casualties are in addition to the “thousands” of Iraqi troops and civilians that were killed in attacks initiated by what he referred to as the Iranian proxy forces. Hook noted that the new number is higher than the 2015 confirmed death total of 500 that was reported by then Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Joseph Dunford, who qualified his estimate by saying “We were not always able to attribute the casualties that we had to Iranian activity, although many times we suspected it was Iranian activity, even though we did not necessarily have the forensics to support that.”
There is little doubt that Tehran provided weapons to Shiite militias in Iraq after the invasion of the country by American forces in April 2003 and the defeat and replacement of the Saddam Hussein regime. The US was occupying the country at the time and Shiites were a repressed majority of the population given the fact that Saddam ruled through his Sunni minority.
The most controversial and lethal weapons used by the Shiite and Sunni resistance to the United States were the Improvised Explosive Devices or IEDs, subsequently also referred to as Explosively Formed Penetrators or EFPs which were capable of penetrating the armor on US military vehicles. They first appeared in Iraq in the summer of 2004, but they were initially mostly used by Sunni insurgents, not by the Shiites.
Now that the US occupation has ended, Iran and Iraq enjoy a close relationship that is based on their common Shiite religion. The former militiamen are now referred to as Popular Mobilization Forces, which were key to the eventual defeat of ISIS. The United States, which retains a major military base inside Iraq, continues to rail against Iran. During the briefing, Hook said “We are imposing costs on the [Iranian] regime for behaving as an outlaw expansionist regime. The regime is weaker today than when we took office two years ago. Its proxies are also weaker. Unless the regime demonstrates a change in policy and behavior, the financial challenges facing Tehran will mount.”
There are several problems with the Hook analysis, if that is actually what it was. The United States government has been arguing since 2005 that Iran is “interfering” in neighboring Iraq, combined with allegations about “they are killing our soldiers” to make sure that Tehran continues to be everyone’s recognizable regional enemy. Specific claims by generals and US politicians were made between 2005 and 2007 regarding Iranian involvement in the production of the shaped charges, which were increasingly exacting a bloody toll of US and allied military personnel.
But the claims being made by the Bush Administration, by Congress, and by the media regarding Iranian support of militants in Iraq had a number of things in common: they were generic and lacking in specificity, they were based on possibly unwarranted assumptions about Iranian interactions with other players in the region, they played fast and loose with statistics, and they seldom provided actual verifiable evidence to back up the assertions being made. One might also point out that nearly all the reports were derivative in that they build on each other to develop credibility, much like the reports about Iraq in 2002.
It has also been noted that the arguments about Iranian involvement are logically inconsistent. The Iraqi insurgency in the period 2004-2006 was largely Sunni. That the Iranians would be supplying the Sunnis or that the Sunnis would even seek such assistance does not appear probable. In an April 2007 briefing Major General William Caldwell explained, “We have, in fact, found some cases recently where Iranian intelligence services have provided to some Sunni insurgent groups some support.” Three uses of “some” in one sentence suggest a degree of uncertainty. Even the relatively tame media at the briefing were skeptical, asking “Do the Iranians support all the militias in Iraq?”
The fact that the EFP is very simple to make also argues against a largely Iranian provenance. The EFP or variations thereof has been around for a long time. It was reportedly used under its old name “shaped charge” by the French resistance against the Germans and by the Irish Republican Army against British armored vehicles and it has been used extensively by both Hezbollah and Hamas against the Israelis.
The case against Iran basically relies on a basic argument that the EFP is actually a sophisticated weapon that has to have its copper disk machined in a weapons shop that is accustomed to milling metal to the finest tolerances. According to those who believe in an Iranian hand in EFP attacks, it is not possible that the weapons are being produced by Iraqis without Iranian assistance but the fact is that the Iraqis are more than capable of making the weapon. Iraq had a large and relatively sophisticated military prior to 2003. It had its own weapons shops and ordnance experts, many of whom were Sunnis and many of whom became unemployed in the spring of 2003 when the army was disbanded.
So Iran’s EFP weapon of choice that, according to the Pentagon, has killed 608 Americans turns out to be not that hard to make and not uniquely Iranian. But the real argument against Brian Hook’s numbers is the assumption made by the government analysts that supplying weapons, even if and when the end user can be demonstrated, makes one responsible for who gets killed as a result. Since the US is the world’s leading arms manufacturer, that argument leads down a slippery slope as “Made in USA.” weapons are likely featured in every conflict.
Also bear in mind that the United States in Iraq was an invading army in what became a guerrilla war in which that country’s civilians ultimately constituted most of the victims. By one estimate, 460,000 Iraqis died, many by US-made ordnance. To cite one other more recent example of what that measure of accountability might mean, the United States could be considered responsible for the deaths of tens of thousands civilians in Yemen, 5,000 in 2018 alone, as the Saudis are using US supplied weapons. And there are a lot of other instances of American made weapons winding up in all kinds of places, including the arsenals of ISIS and al-Qaeda. Al-Qaeda in its war against the Russians in Afghanistan relied largely on American weaponry. Some of those weapons are still being used to kill American rather than Russian soldiers.
Since the United States government is selectively charging Iran with offenses that might well be exploited by neoconservatives named Bolton and Pompeo to initiate a war it should be more careful in how it attempts to frame its arguments. Iran did not kill those 4,424 American soldiers who died in Iraq. President George W. Bush, Vice President Dick Cheney and the band of psychopaths at the Pentagon and National Security Council did that when they initiated a chain of events that began with attacking a country that they knew posed no threat against the United States. The bloody consequences of that action continue to this day.
Hypocrisy Inc: Washington’s Selective Sanctions
By Brian CLOUGHLEY | Strategic Culture Foundation | 08.04.2019
On April 3 US Vice President Pence told Germany and Turkey to stop dealing with Russia. In a speech in Washington marking the 70th Anniversary of the US-NATO military alliance he declared that “If Germany persists in building the Nord Stream 2 pipeline, as President Trump said, it could turn Germany’s economy into literally a captive of Russia,” while Turkey is being “reckless” and “must choose — does it want to remain a critical partner of the most successful military alliance in the history of the world, or does it want to risk the security of that partnership by making reckless decisions that undermine our alliance?”
(We’ll pass over the fact that “the most successful military alliance in the history of the world” bombed and rocketed Libya in a nine-month blitz in 2011 and claimed a “model intervention” in a country it reduced to anarchy, as reported on April 5.)
Radio Free Europe noted that Pence “voiced US opposition to Turkey’s purchase of a Russian air-defense system… which he said ‘poses great danger to NATO’.” He also threatened that “we will not stand idly by while NATO allies purchase weapons from our adversaries”.
The weapons system to which Washington so violently objects is the S-400 Triumf surface-to-air missile which Army Technology describes as “capable of firing three types of missiles to create a layered defence [and] engaging all types of aerial targets including aircraft, unmanned aerial vehicles, and ballistic and cruise missiles within the range of 400 km, at an altitude of up to 30 km. The system can simultaneously engage 36 targets.” In other words it’s a world-beater with a real punch, as is evidenced by the fact that so many other countries have either got it or want it.
The first sanctions Washington imposed against Turkey concern supply of the 100 Lockheed Martin F-35 combat aircraft ordered at a cost of 16 billion dollars. According to CNN a US spokesman said “Pending an unequivocal Turkish decision to forgo delivery of the S-400, deliveries and activities associated with the stand-up of Turkey’s F-35 operational capability have been suspended.” This is harsh action against a longtime partner and military ally, but it doesn’t stop there, because Washington objects to Russia providing military equipment to other nations.
China is an example. In September 2018 sanctions were imposed on China by Washington because it had engaged in “significant transactions” with Russia’s Rosoboronexport by purchasing SU-35 combat aircraft and S-400 systems.
A US official told reporters “The ultimate target of these sanctions is Russia… [sanctions are] aimed at imposing costs upon Russia in response to its malign activities.” This is effected by US Public Law 115-44, the ‘Countering America’s Adversaries Through Sanctions Act’ (CAATSA) which is intended to “provide congressional review and to counter aggression by the Governments of Iran, the Russian Federation, and North Korea, and for other purposes.”
“Other purposes” is quite a large sphere of implied threat, but the ruling of US legislators in this case is clear, in that any country that acquires S-400 air defence missile systems (for example) from Russia is going to be penalised because Washington is determined to continue “imposing costs upon Russia” for providing such equipment. And it is inevitable that the imposed penalties will impact on the country that has dared to engage with Russia. The Diplomat summed it up by observing that the policy “decrees the imposition of mandatory economic sanctions on countries importing Russian military hardware.”
Except when it doesn’t.
It is apparent that the anti-Russia “Countering Adversaries” legislation directed by Congress is being selectively ignored by Washington, because India is being provided with the S-400 system, and no sanctions have been imposed by America. An agreement for supply of S-400s was signed on October 5, 2018 in Delhi during an India-Russia summit meeting attended by Indian Prime Minister Modi and President Putin. The Economic Times reported that India and Russia “have formally inked the $ 5.2 billion deal for S-400 system. The air defence system is expected to be delivered by the year 2020.”
Following the summit, Outlook India noted approvingly that “Other areas of collaboration, which figured prominently in the joint statement between the two sides, are nuclear reactors, investments by Indian diamond companies in Russian Far East, and ‘joint collaboration in precious metals, minerals, natural resources and forest produce, including timber, through joint investments, production processing and skilled labour’. The review of priority investment projects in the spheres of mining, metallurgy, power, oil, and gas, railways, pharmaceuticals, information technology, chemicals, infrastructure, automobiles, space, shipbuilding and manufacturing of different equipment reflects a focus on the desire for diversification. PM Modi has invited Russian companies to set up industrial parks in India for defence manufacturing.”
It might be thought that such bilateral collaboration in defence matters, especially in regard to provision of the S-400 system, would attract instant action by Washington, designed to penalise India for flagrant contravention of US directives.
But no.
In some fashion, India is different from Turkey and China when it comes to acquiring S-400 missile systems, and an explanation of sorts was offered by the Pentagon’s Assistant Defence Secretary Randall Schriver in testimony to the House of Representatives Armed Forces Committee on March 27. He declared that the US-India “Major Defence Partnership” was prospering by “moving toward deeper security cooperation by increasing operational cooperation and availing key maritime security capabilities.” But then there was mention of the purchase for over five billon dollars by India from Russia of a world-beating air defence system, and Mr Schriver wasn’t comfortable with that.
He was asked by Congressman Seth Moulton how India’s purchase of S-400 systems and the lease of Russian nuclear submarines would impact India-US relations and avoided any reply concerning the submarine lease while stating that purchase of S-400s has “not gone to contract or completed”, which, like so many official statements in Washington, was only half true. Certainly, delivery of the S-400s has not been completed; but for Mr Schriver to claim that the matter “has not gone to contract” is a downright lie.
The effects of Washington’s sanctions on its adversaries have been wide as well as selective. In the case of Turkey, what Pence calls the “reckless decision” to acquire S-400s has shown Ankara that America is not an ally and cannot be trusted, while encouraging it to further examine the dubious benefits of belonging to the US-NATO military alliance. China reacted by saying “We strongly urge the US side to immediately correct the mistake and rescind the so-called sanctions, otherwise the US side will necessarily bear responsibility for the consequences,” while reinforcing China-Russia cooperation and strengthening resistance to US policy of global dominance.
In the case of India, US sanctions’ policy was highlighted on April 2 when the Pentagon announced that India would be provided with 24 US Seahawk maritime attack helicopters for use against China and Pakistan, at a cost of 2.6 billion dollars. India is content that it can do whatever it wants, and New Delhi will continue to benefit from Washington’s total lack of principles and ethical consistency. Selective sanctions are the name of the game.
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The Vaccine Mafia: Pfizer’s Former Chief Toxicologist Proves How Toxic Substances Were Unlawfully Sold to Us as a Solution for COVID-19
By Helmut Sterz
Former Pfizer chief toxicologist Helmut Sterz presents a critical examination of the development, approval, and global rollout of mRNA COVID-19 vaccines—particularly those produced by Pfizer/BioNTech. The Vaccine Mafia details the failure of pharmaceutical companies, regulatory authorities, politicians, and international organizations to follow established scientific and ethical standards during the pandemic. Drawing on the author’s decades of experience in pharmaceutical toxicology, Sterz reveals the many ways the vaccines’ inadequate or omitted preclinical safety testing put the world’s population at risk.
Sterz demonstrates how “emergency” approvals allowed manufacturers to bypass long-standing international guidelines governing toxicity testing, especially with regard to reproductive and cancer risks. They also allowed governments and health authorities to ignore or conceal evidence of serious adverse effects that occurred, including myocarditis, reproductive harm, and other long-term health risks.
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