Aletho News

ΑΛΗΘΩΣ

Top UK Journalist Isabel Oakeshott Gloated Over The US’ Role In Imran Khan’s Deposal

BY ANDREW KORYBKO | AUGUST 27, 2023

The Mainstream Media’s (MSM) narrative about former Pakistani Prime Minister Imran Khan’s scandalous deposal in April 2022 has hitherto been that it supposedly represented a completely independent and purely democratic exercise that was entirely free of foreign influence. These analyses here and here argue that it was actually a US-backed post-modern coup carried out as punishment for his multipolar foreign policy, which readers can learn more about by reviewing the preceding pieces.

The details are beyond the scope of the present piece, however, which focuses on how the MSM’s narrative has abruptly shifted in light of the provocative op-ed published by top UK journalist Isabel Oakeshott for the Telegraph. In her article titled “Imran Khan isn’t a martyr for freedom. He’s a friend of the West’s worst enemies”, she breaks ranks with her peers after being triggered by a recent video about IK’s plight in prison that includes footage of his meeting with President Putin in February 2022.

Here’s her initial reaction to that from the article:

“But hang on a minute! Who’s that lurking in the video? Do I spy an image of Khan gladhanding Vladimir Putin, even as the Russian president rained bombs on Ukraine? Of all the many pictures his spin doctors could have selected of their man on the world stage, they chose this one, as well as an image of their leader meeting Xi Jinping, the Chinese president. What a blunder – and what a disturbing insight into Khan’s new allegiances, now he has left his colourful playboy past behind.”

She then gloated over the US’ role in his deposal:

“A sensational report by The Intercept claims that a leaked Pakistani government document shows his deposal was actively encouraged by the US State Department. No wonder! As the West united to support Ukraine, what was he doing gravitating towards the Kremlin? While his supporters wring their hands over his plight, others may be relieved that this complex character no longer has his finger on a nuclear button.”

Oakeshott is entitled to her opinion, but it surprised many that a leading UK journalist would break the MSM’s narrative on this ultra-sensitive issue in an op-ed for one of the West’s leading outlets. It’s also curious that the Telegraph didn’t include the typical disclaimer that their contributors’ views don’t necessarily reflect their own. Considering this, the message being conveyed is that they – and elements of the Western elite by extrapolation – are proud of the US’ most successful regime change in years.

The silver lining is that anyone who tries to gaslight by claiming that it’s a so-called “conspiracy theory” to allege US involvement in IK’s deposal is now discredited since those who they’re attacking can simply point to how top UK journalist Oakeshott gloated over this in the Telegraph. Without realizing it, she just dealt a powerful blow to Western soft power by exposing the hypocrisy of its “rules-based order”, which in this context lends credence to many Pakistanis’ claims that their government is illegitimate.

August 27, 2023 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Progressive Hypocrite | , | Leave a comment

Thought Police

The Center For Countering Digital Hate

BY DAVID MARKS | AUGUST 17, 2023

The assembling of a compelling and fair response to an infectious viral outbreak is an immense challenge. Ideally, unbiased experts without conflicts of interest develop a survey of potentially effective remedies. The team includes seasoned pathologists, broad-thinking social psychologists, experienced epidemiologists, holistic dieticians, and veteran practitioners of complementary and indigenous medicine.

Imagine a broadly trusted, well-meaning group gathering knowledge, and through consensus, generating recommendations and medical guidelines designed to have the greatest impact towards minimizing suffering. In making the best efforts to evaluate solutions and means of relief, they never lose sight of weighing risks versus benefits.

This did not happen. During the recent pandemic, all of those who considered or attempted to approach the crisis without the blessings of authorities were summarily belittled, repressed, and disgraced.

Many voices of reason were confounded by the enigmatic organization, the Center For Countering Digital Hate (CCDH). Their duplicitous activities were neither creative nor supportive, and simply aimed at destroying those who refused to agree with dogmatic mandates and protocols generated by the pharmaceutical industry.

At the peak of CCDH’s influence, they released a malicious piece of propaganda, called The Disinformation Dozen. The document was a frontal, full-scale attack on those who questioned the viability and motives of the mainstream response to the pandemic. This manifesto was conceived as a distractive and deceptive instrument — disseminated among the willing world press corps. Not only was the news media compromised by their funders, but they were also hungry for a scapegoat and eager to enthusiastically repeat easily drawn, though suspect conclusions.

The CCDH’s overt purpose was to stop any alternative thinking about how to respond to a viral outbreak. Their offense against those who failed to accept vaccines as a panacea presents a telling window into the boldness of authoritarian bullying over the last three years.

The Missouri v. Biden lawsuit alleges that the White House pressured social media to close accounts of pandemic policy dissenters. During discovery, Eric Waldo, the Senior Advisor to the Surgeon General admitted CCDH briefed their office before they pressured Facebook for more censorship.

Most recently CCDH has come under increased scrutiny with a lawsuit by Twitter claiming they are masquerading as a legitimate research firm and that they illegally obtained data to use it in a scare campaign to deter advertisers from the platform.

Concurrently, the publications and damage done by Imran Ahmed, the chief executive officer of CCDH, and his collaborators, are being examined by the House Judiciary Committee. The ongoing investigation into government censorship of alternative viewpoints during the pandemic has determined that CCDH’s activities are of interest. Ahmed was notified that he must supply all documents related to CCDH and its relationship with the federal government and social media companies.

CCDH purports to be a non-profit organization without political affiliation or funding, protecting the public from dangerous misinformation. As they face increasing scrutiny and pressure, a thorough examination of their origins and tactics reveals the mechanics of an organization whose mission is to censor enemies of the state and the pharmaceutical industry.

On The Attack

As the COVID crisis escalated, Ahmed assembled a primary list of competitors to Big Pharma; disparaging those who simply questioned a single prescribed solution. Without presenting evidence, The Disinformation Dozen claimed twelve individuals held the primary responsibility for vaccine hesitancy and thousands of deaths. While leaping to these conclusions, Ahmed also surmised that the motivation of anyone who expressed opinions that did not conform with industry and government — was financial. The report insists that sources of alternative information must be de-funded and de-platformed.

CCDH’s The Disinformation Dozen was preceded and followed by lesser-know reports and op-eds, including; The Anti-Vax Playbook, the Anti-Vax Industry, Substack & Anti-Vax Newsletters, Pandemic Profiteers, and How to Deal With Coronavirus Misinformation. This assembly of outright propaganda had a single intent: ending any dissent to unswerving allegiance to vaccine therapy.

Incredibly, there are no details in all of these publications that informs or assures the public about vaccine safety and effectiveness. What the CCDH reports all have in common is the assumption that vaccines are Big Pharma’s gift to mankind and that all other responses to infectious disease are heresy and worthy of scorn and condemnation. These assaults on dissenters are filled with strongly worded guidance, both for individuals and governments, urging people to resist and disregard those who dare counter the pharmaceutical narrative. Strikingly, the reports show complete indifference to free speech, lateral thinking, and medical autonomy.

CCDH leadership’s lack of qualifications in public health and epidemiology is indicative that their intentions and strategy are other than altruistic. Despite his organization’s goal to identify and counter digital hate, Imran Ahmed’s résumé reveals no recognition of medical or humanitarian ethics.

Not surprisingly, Ahmed has a history of blindly supporting Big Pharma’s dictates concerning the viability and safety of vaccines. For years, he and his associates have specialized in attacking anyone who doesn’t follow the narrow guidelines of pharmaceutical industry preferences.

Ahmed is not medically qualified and shows no understanding of healthcare. However, he has been a political operative and has worked behind the scenes for power brokers at the highest level.

Profiles In Deception

Of particular interest is a telling British political scandal dubbed, Brickgate. Ahmed had been working for MP Hilary Benn, another pharma cheerleader. During the brief challenge in 2016 to the Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbin, he became the communications director for Angela Eagle, an MP who was one of two possible replacements for Corbin. Ahmed was the point man on an allegation that a brick was thrown through a window in Eagle’s office, with the implication that she was being threatened by her political opponents. The UK press promoted the story, reporting on Ahmed’s accusations and outrage.

The facts proved otherwise. The window turned out to be in a shared stairwell and broken from the inside. A brick was never found, and a police inquiry determined it was very unlikely a hostile act. Whereas Ahmed undoubtedly knew these details, he attempted to portray a different story to gain political points for his boss.

This seemingly minor tale illustrates that the noble role Ahmed presents currently was preceded by his willingness to do whatever it takes to serve his masters. It also confirms that his work has been other than in the service of revealing truth.

Ahmed’s shadowy background and relationships with politicians, including his co-founder of CCDH, Morgan McSweeney, certainly do not qualify him to judge anyone’s ethical standards.

Within a few years of Brickgate, Ahmed followed his political godfather, McSweeney, in further machinations toward engineering the agenda of Labour Party leadership. Ahmed took the helm of CCDH, and McSweeney remains integral to the senior staff of MP Keir Starmer. He is a serving member of the vaccine-friendly Trilateral Commission, the current head of the Labour Party, and a likely future UK Prime Minister. Starmer was an early proponent of the COVID vaccine and has a close relationship with Lexington Communications, a lobbying firm that represents Pfizer. With the strong support of Starmer, the United Kingdom was the first country to release the Pfizer COVID vaccine. Even as it was rolled out, he pressed for government repression in a joint effort with CCDH, harassing those who dared to question vaccine safety and effectiveness.

Most of Ahmed’s cohorts all have common interests that have little to do with well-being.

Board Member and MP Damian Collins is another pro-Pharma devotee. Pfizer’s main UK plant was in Kent — Collin’s home district — and he was a strong proponent of the early release of their COVID vaccine. He is also directly associated with the military intelligence group, Integrity Initiative, and a member of the Henry Jackson Society, a secretive association that has connections with the CIA.

The fabric of CCDH’s personnel is embroidered with intelligence community assets. There is no better example of this than Ahmed’s communications director, Lindsay Moran, a self-declared former CIA operative, with experience in consulting for mainstream media. Her previous employment does not make her a criminal, though it does bring further into question the intent and operations of CCDH.

Considering Imran Ahmed’s credentials, known associates, and the profile of other CCDH figures, it can be asserted that there is more to the organization than its stated purpose. At a minimum, this background brings into serious doubt Ahmed’s ability to inform and advise the public in an unbiased manner.

Without awareness or mention of his political affiliations, Ahmed has been relied on for stories and quoted by many news outlets, who present CCDH as a pristine source of factual information.

In one glowing personal profile, his work is described in an article from 2021 on the Global Citizen website. Avoiding questions about his past work, Ahmed’s views are swallowed whole by the authors and repeated gleefully, including the outrageous claim that almost all COVID deaths are among the unvaccinated. The most telling information in the entire piece is at the end: This series was made possible with funding from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.

It is important to evaluate this hagiographic portrait and consider that it is presented by Global Citizen, an international non-profit that does not hide ecstatic support of vaccination. According to its website, the organization’s central pursuit is raising and directing funds toward global poverty and health. Global Citizen sponsored a spectacular fundraising concert in 2021 called VAX Live — where among the luminaries who appeared among performers was President Biden, who described the crisis as a pandemic of the unvaccinated; perhaps the best advertising the pharmaceutical industry ever had. The concert successfully promoted and procured COVID-19 vaccines with funds raised by the event.

The Money Trail

Global Citizen has intimate relationships with the Gates Foundation, the Rockefeller Foundation, and the World Health Organization. These partners share a common interest in vaccine advancement and have gained undue influence over governments and the press. As political leadership floundered in the face of the building healthcare scare, these unelected power brokers stepped in to persuade the world that vaccination was the only remedy to consider.

CCDH insists that it does not take money from partisan organizations or receive government funds, however, this is difficult to confirm when they refuse to reveal all details of its funding. The world of non-profits has numerous routes for financing to be directed in ways to avoid scrutiny.

Some of the not-for-profit organizations that are partners with CCDH claim to have high-minded goals, yet support an organization that betrays indifference to freedom of expression. The Institute For Strategic Dialogue facilitates and defends CCDH in contrast to its stated mission:

The Institute for Strategic Dialogue (ISD) is an independent, non-profit organisation dedicated to safeguarding human rights and reversing the rising tide of polarisation, extremism and disinformation worldwide.

ISD structure and membership betray a different agenda. Attacking those with dissenting opinions who question mainstream corporate concerns is a cause of the polarized environment that they claim to safeguard.

Evidence points to well-endowed philanthropic organizations with ties to the pharmaceutical industry propping up CCDH and their hostile scheming. Support also includes money funneled through the shady world of PR agencies that are paid millions by Big Pharma to promote their interests. The Paris-based, Publicis Groupe, has directed such resources, admitting to relationships with fact-checkers that support their client’s positions. CCDH and a similar entity, Newsguard, both depend on minimal scrutiny of the structure and motivation for their financing. The perception of these non-profits would change dramatically if the public realized how their presentations are influenced by money.

Although financing has yet to be tracked, there are signals that point to a possible Bill Gates — CCDH relationship. Ahmed instinctively and repeatedly protects Gates and consistently attacks those who question his motivation for supporting vaccination.

In the Anti-Vaxx Playbook, Ahmed claims Gates is attacked symbolically within a word slaw that sidesteps the powerful influence of the Gates Foundation:

Anti-vaccine campaigners have collaborated with alternative health entrepreneurs and conspiracists to ensure that global health philanthropist Bill Gates has become a symbolic figure that represents all of their attacks on the trustworthiness of vaccine advocates.

These attacks are not aimed at influencing the ongoing debate over a Covid vaccine, in which the role of Bill Gates takes a back seat to more practical issues. The real utility of this campaign of vilification is to create a symbol and associated memes that aid the communication of interrelated beliefs about Covid, vaccines and conspiracies.

Bill Gates has come to represent a complex of anti-vaxxer talking points and conspiracy theories. Virtually every element of the on line anti-vaxx movement has found ways of featuring him in their narratives, in a variety of contexts and tones.

This description is a conspicuous attempt to deflect well-deserved attention from Bill Gates, claiming so-called anti-vaxxers are simply mentioning his name as a talking point.

Contrary to where Ahmed would direct us, an examination of Gates is central to understanding how philanthropy, corporate influence, and profiteering form government policies. Attempts at blurring the role of Gates and his foundation as they support vaccines and COVID response policies reveal CCDH’s loyalty to protecting the milieu of its political and financial benefactors.

The philanthropic and corporate worlds’ support and reliance on CCDH is at the nucleus of this deceptive contrivance, enhancing the facade that protects CCDH from scrutiny.

There are a wide variety of theories about why this shaping of public perception is so important. One consequence is obvious; the fraud increases the amount of profits for the pharmaceutical industry and the billionaires who support vaccine sales. Financing organizations like CCDH is a necessity in the general plan to minimize public doubt about an immensely lucrative product.

CCDH is paid to manipulate sentiment without substantiation. It remains stunningly apparent that no supporting details, scientific reports, or verifiable sources of facts appear in any CCDH reports. They merely use the premise that vaccination is the only trustworthy solution for infectious diseases — to vilify their targets.

Defending The Indefensible

The repercussions of the antics of the pharmaceutical-philanthropic consortium are exhibited in this sordid tale. Yet the damning revelations about Imran Ahmed and CCDH are unreported as yet by a press corps that trusts and mimics a political hack.

There remains a wholesale and uncritical acceptance of CCDH while its ability to present an objective assessment of any medical or healthcare opinion is demonstrably biased. Their mission has no basis in exposing the truth, yet nodding promoters still acquiesce to their alleged veracity.

The growing evidence of connections between individuals and entities that promote vaccines and so-called fact-checkers underlines the degradation of news gathering and reporting. The willingness of the news media to accept and disseminate CCDH disinformation without scrutiny reveals these dynamics and the dangerous trend toward authoritarian censorship.

As CCDH faces legal consequences for its negligence and a congressional inquiry into its relationship with the government, the organization continues to manipulate the truth with deceptive lies. They must rely on the press and the public to remain blind to their duplicity.

As a response to the Twitter (X) lawsuit, in an open letter signed by its supporters, CCDH dares to invoke a threat to their rights to free speech;

We view these efforts as a threat to the right to the freedom of expression, resulting in a dangerous chilling effect on civil society, experts, and advocates – and ultimately the public, which deserves to know how X and similar platforms are spreading hate and disinformation.

The appeal ends with desperate phraseology that reflects the height of hypocrisy:

The misuse of the legal system and other forms of intimidation against researchers, experts, and advocates who seek to hold social media companies accountable is an attack of the right to freedom of expression and access to information and must cease. The bullying of those seeking to speak truth to power cannot be tolerated.

Indeed.

In attempting to defend themselves, these words further betray CCDH’s hypocrisy. And the list of those signing on to this rebuttal only indicates how deeply compromised the corporate world has become in pretending to have noble exploits.

It is most important to view the activities of CCDH from the broadest historical perspective.

Their censorship efforts are at the epicenter of an open collaboration between corrupt industrialists and compromised politicians; repressive methodology with hostile tactics display the apparatus and consequences of merging the corporate world with the government.

August 23, 2023 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Corruption, Deception, Full Spectrum Dominance, Progressive Hypocrite, Science and Pseudo-Science, Timeless or most popular | , , , , , , , , | 1 Comment

Maui officials slammed over wildfire response

RT | August 17, 2023

Hawaiian authorities delayed the release of water to Maui residents trying to save their properties from last week’s devastating wildfires, local media revealed on Tuesday, citing four insider sources.

The Maui Department of Land and Natural Resources reportedly stalled as West Maui Land Co., which manages agricultural and residential developments on the western part of the island, requested additional water to stop the fast-moving blaze that would ultimately level the tourist town of Lahaina last Tuesday.

The agency’s deputy director for water management, M. Kaleo Manuel, allegedly wanted the company to get permission from a farm located downstream from its property. By the time Manuel finally released the water, it was too late and the fire had spread.

Maui’s Emergency Management Agency was also criticized for its response to the inferno. Agency director Herman Andaya defended the decision not to activate the island’s warning sirens, a signal network designed to work even without electricity, arguing the network was meant to be used to warn of tsunamis – not wildfires. Using it to alert residents to last week’s devastating blaze would have “sen[t] the wrong message to the public,” he said on Wednesday.

However, the island’s own website describes the sirens as an “all-hazard” system, with fires one of several natural and human-caused events the system – “the largest single integrated outdoor siren warning system for public safety in the world” – was designed for.

The decision to warn residents via cell phone alert instead likely proved fatal for many, as the electricity had been out for hours when the fires ignited and cellular reception was down in most of the area. As a result, many residents only realized they were in danger when they smelled smoke, and with roads blocked by downed power lines some had no escape route but to jump into the ocean.

The wildfire was the deadliest to strike the US in over a century, leaving at least 106 people dead with over 1,300 still missing as of Wednesday. The cause remains unknown, though some have pointed to Hawaiian Electric, whose power lines were seen sparking in the powerful winds that engulfed the island that day. The company has been criticized in the aftermath of the fire for focusing on “green energy” window-dressing to the exclusion of wildfire mitigation.

Hawaii Governor Josh Green announced on Monday that a “comprehensive review” into decisions made before and during the fire response would be conducted by the state attorney general.

August 17, 2023 Posted by | Progressive Hypocrite | | 1 Comment

Biden Regime Argues Texas and Florida Anti-Censorship Laws are a First Amendment Violation

The Biden regime suddenly cares about the First Amendment

By Dan Frieth | Reclaim The Net | August 15, 2023

Presented as an effort to safeguard speech rights, the Biden administration has called on the Supreme Court to dismantle controversial segments of the anti-censorship social media laws ratified in Florida and Texas.

We obtained a copy of the filing for you here.

(President Biden is also using the argument that banning his administration from asking platforms to remove speech is a First Amendment violation.)

The laws in question restrict the autonomy of leading social media platforms by preventing them from censoring citizens speech and discriminating on the basis of political viewpoint.

Both Florida Governor Ron DeSantis and Texas Governor Greg Abbott staunchly support these laws as a means of protecting voices from being suppressed. Governor DeSantis, at the law signing in May 2021, criticized Big Tech’s bias for Silicon Valley ideology and emphasized the need for accountability.

The Texas law, featuring a provision prohibiting discrimination based on viewpoints, incorporates several exceptions, permitting platforms to ban content promoting violence, criminal behavior, child exploitation, and harassment of sexual-abuse survivors and more. The law presses social media platforms to adopt user complaint procedures, disclose content and data management practices, and publish a comprehensive biannual transparency report.

The legislation only applies to platforms attracting over 50 million monthly users.

The Florida law has a similar scope and, in addition, mandates a detailed justification for each content moderation. The legislation also forbids the banning of political contenders or “journalistic enterprises.”

US Solicitor General Elizabeth Prelogar perceives this as an encroachment on First Amendment rights. She contended in a recent court filing that such laws infringe the liberty of tech giants in selecting, editing, and arranging user-generated content. Essentially, she claimed these actions are all protected under the First Amendment.

Endorsing two industry trade groups that have formally contested the laws, she implored the Supreme Court to scrutinize both measures.

Federal appeals courts, however, are divided over the issue. The 11th US Circuit Court of Appeals in Atlanta has primarily blocked Florida’s legislation, deeming it potentially unconstitutional. Conversely, the New Orleans-based 5th Circuit backed the Texas law but held it back to permit an appeal to reach the Supreme Court.

Certainly, both states, as well as the trade groups, are petitioning the Supreme Court to adjudicate on a range of issues concerning the two cases. An announcement of the court’s decision is expected as early as September.

While Prelogar largely aligns with the social media companies, she refrained from endorsing their protest against the “general-disclosure provisions” that require the publishing of content-management policies and production of transparency reports. These issues, she argued, are not the main subject of the lawsuits and high court review would be premature.

August 15, 2023 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance, Progressive Hypocrite | | Leave a comment

US leaked cable on Pakistan fits a pattern

By Uriel Araujo | August 15, 2023

Pakistan’s former Prime Minister, Imran Khan, has been found guilty of corruption, sentenced to three years in prison, and arrested. In 2022, amid a constitutional crisis, he was removed from office after the April 10 no-confidence motion. In August the same year, after accusing the judiciary and the police of detaining and torturing his close aide, Imran Khan was charged with anti-terror laws for allegedly making threats against state officials in Islamabad. This year, on May 9 he was arrested by paramilitary forces – and this sparked nation-wide protests.

Khan has always accused the Pakistani military of having played a role in his 2022 removal from office, and his followers, once again enraged, claim his recent sentencing is far from unbiased. To add fuel to the fire, it has come to light that a month before the no-confidence motion, the US State Department encouraged Islamabad on March 7, 2022, to remove Khan as Prime Minister over his neutral stance on the Russian-Ukrainian conflict. This stance was indeed reversed after his removal.

A secret Pakistani diplomatic cable (a “cipher”, as it is called) which was obtained by the Intercept discusses the meeting between Asad Majeed Khan, the Pakistani ambassador to the US at the time, and American State Department authorities, including Donald Lu, Assistant Secretary of State for the Bureau of South and Central Asian Affairs. The meeting between the US officials and the Pakistani ambassador had long been the subject of speculation and controversy, in the context of Pakistan’s power struggle between the former Prime Minister supporters and the country’s military.

According to the leaked cable, during the meeting Lu said: “people here and in Europe are quite concerned about why Pakistan is taking such an aggressively neutral position (on Ukraine).” He added: “I think if the no-confidence vote against the Prime Minister succeeds, all will be forgiven in Washington because the Russia visit is being looked at as a decision by the Prime Minister.” “Otherwise,” he went on: “I think it will be tough going ahead”, adding that Pakistan could face “isolation” by the US and by European powers.

The day before the meeting, Khan basically called for a non-aligned stance and sovereign pragmatism. He said: “we are friends of Russia, and we are also friends of the United States. We are friends of China and Europe. We are not part of any alliance.” On the same occasion, rhetorically addressing Western powers, he asked: “What do you think of us? That we are your slaves and that we will do whatever you ask of us?”

The document basically shows that, amid a heated Pakistani crisis, Washington pressured Islamabad to go ahead specifically with a no-confidence motion (which it did), threatening the country with isolation. So far one can only speculate on how much weight such pressure carried in the eyes of Pakistani political elites. It is not too far-fetched to assume it carried some.

Donald Lu’s incredibly arrogant tone (“all will be forgiven in Washington”) is reminiscent of US diplomat Victoria Nuland’s infamous 2014 leaked phone conversation with US Ambassador to Ukraine Geoffrey Pyatt. During the exchange she uses the F-word to disdainfully refer to the European Union. If that 2014 leak exposed a certain Washington attitude towards its transatlantic European allies (and such an  attitude does not seem to have changed much at all), one can only imagine how the US sees Pakistan – and the rest of the world, for that matter. Washington has of course a well-known record of betraying its most devoted allies.

Even if one condemns the Russian military campaign in Ukraine, which started in February 2022, one should at least acknowledge the fact that far from being an “unprovoked” aggression, it was the result of an escalation of frictions, involving border tensions – a tale in which the US played a major role. Ukraine itself had been in a civil war since 2014, and Kiev has, for nine years now, been bombing the Donbass region and committing a series of human rights infringements largely related to far-right Ukrainian nationalism.

When the US crossed the sea to invade far-away Iraq in 2003, there was no immediate danger or a near border. No Iraqi weapons of mass destruction, the American main claim to legitimize the occupation, were ever found. For 8 years, Washington carried on a neocolonial policy, including a so-called Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA) which, from the very start, was created and funded as a US Department of Defense division, in a failed American attempt to “democratize” and to “reconstruct” the Middle-Eastern nation.

Under the tremendously corrupt CPA rule, over $8 billion destined for the country’s reconstruction disappeared and remain unaccounted for to this very day. Up to 1 million deaths, according to ORB International, an independent polling agency located in London, are estimated as a result of the war and American invasion. And yet no international movement arose to sanction or isolate Washington – nor American companies, for that matter (which greatly profited from the war). To this day, former US President George W. Bush is a popular speaker in the US. All of this, once again, whether one condemns the Russian military campaign in neighboring Ukraine or not, goes to show an immense degree of Western hypocrisy, to say the least. And many non-Western leaders see it this way.

To sum it up, the recently leaked document is yet another blatant instance of American “alignmentism” and its cold war mentality – an approach that can only further alienate potential partners and allies, especially in the Global South.

August 15, 2023 Posted by | Progressive Hypocrite, Timeless or most popular | , | Leave a comment

Sweden’s “Psychological Defense Agency” is Using Cold War Strategies to Combat “Disinformation”

By Didi Rankovic | Reclaim The Net | August 14, 2023

Sweden is blaming Russia for the backlash it faces in the Islamic world because of incidents, such as the burning of copies of Quran, that have occurred in that country.

Apparently, Muslims around the world, and in Sweden, would not be outraged by this if there weren’t for Russia’s alleged campaign on social media to spread this information. That is defined as “amplifying global reaction.”

At least, that is being cited as the reason – or an excuse that few will dare criticize – for yet another government devising and putting in motion plans to “combat misinformation.”

Sweden seems very eager to join that club, even if it doesn’t look like it’s brimming with innovative ideas: namely, the Scandinavian country is going all the way back to the Cold War playbook.

With the stage set like this, enter the Ministry of Defense’s Psychological Defense Agency, set up last year, but according to reports, modeled after Sweden’s Cold War-era “solutions” in case of a hot war.

Just like elsewhere around the world when (mis)information is “fought” by introducing new agencies and increasing government intervention in the realm of free speech, that often ends up in censorship – and often looks like it was actually designed to promote censorship – the justification is that such fundamental things like national security and democracy are under fire from “misinformation.”

The Psychological Defense Agency, which currently numbers 55 employees, is explained as a necessity for a country which believes it is currently facing the most serious security “situation” since WW2. At least that’s according to Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson.

Whether or not Kristersson exaggerates the situation, thus creating a “misinformation campaign” of his own aside, the Defense Ministry outfit’s existence has produced some protestations.

Speaking of threats to democracy – Hanna Linderstal of Earhart Business Protection Agency noted that, “The government can’t control the truth if it’s going to be a democracy.”

Meanwhile Magnus Hjort, who heads the Psychological Defense Agency, and others under his “command” have not publicly presented what evidence they have of Russia being behind harmful to Sweden information “amplification.”

But he did reveal the agency is “regularly in touch” with social media companies – denying, however, that they have demanded that accounts or content be taken down.

August 14, 2023 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance, Progressive Hypocrite, Russophobia | | Leave a comment

German media and political establishment ponder whether to ban the political preferences of 1/5 of the population

eugyppius: a plague chronicle | August 14, 2023

Since 19 June, polls have consistently placed support for the right-populist party Alternative für Deutschland at 20% or higher, making them the second most popular party in Germany – slightly ahead of government-leading SPD, and behind the CDU/CSU. Last week, Thomas Haldenwang, the head of the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution (BfV), gave a state media interview in which he accused the party yet again of harbouring “a significant number of people … who repeatedly spread hatred and agitation against minorities.” Despite serious questions about whether Haldenwang’s repeated slander is even legal, spokesmen for all the major parties immediately declared themselves in agreement with the assessment.

It’s very important to note that Haldenwang is himself a member of the CDU. The Christian Democrats ought to be the big winners in the opposition, as Olaf Scholz’s coalition government stumbles from one crisis to the next. Yet they’re doing no better than they were in mid-2021. Angela Merkel has done the party no favours, implicating the Christian Democrats in the catastrophic pandemic response, as well as the ongoing mass migration crisis and even the ascendancy of the Green climate programme. They’ve failed to offer any real alternative to the present government, and the AfD is reaping the gains instead.

A day after Haldenwang’s renewed warnings, the German president Frank-Walter Steinmeier published an editorial in Der Spiegel, in which he condemned the AfD as directly as the dictates of etiquette permit, at one point even calling for “militant” resistance against the party:

Our constitution can tolerate the hardest and toughest disputes. It cannot, however, integrate enemies of the constitution – and we must not ignore the danger they pose. Political antagonism is one thing, constitutional hostility something else entirely.

So what is to be done? In the fight against extremism, there is a historical lesson that runs like a red thread through the earliest draft constitution set down at Herrenchiemsee – and which still applies today: A democracy must be fortified against its enemies. Never again should democratic rights of freedom be abused in order to abolish freedom and democracy. To be robust and defensible daily political life means first of all to demonstrate an openness to political debate and not to accept the trumped-up lies propagated by the enemies of freedom, whether with silence or appeasement, and thereby to encourage them. The democratic parties are required to demonstrate clear, resolute, even militant opposition …

That militant opposition is already here. On Friday night, the Augsburg AfD politician Andreas Jurca was beaten unconscious by immigrants in a targeted political attack, which left him with severe facial bruising and a broken ankle.

Bild

Hessen Antifa have also published the personal addresses of all AfD candidates for the state parliamentary elections in October. I doubt it is very easy to come by such information without help from the government.

Yesterday, SPD head Saskia Esken declared herself in favour of banning AfD, should the constitutional protectors declare the party guilty of “confirmed right-wing extremism,” something which is almost certain to happen sooner or later: “The fight against the AfD is a fight that the whole of society, all democrats, must wage together.”

There’s considerable doubt about whether a ban is feasible. Oliver Maksan, writing from the Berlin bureau of the Neue Zürcher Zeitung, points out that the party falls far short of meeting the criteria, even accepting for the sake of argument all the establishment characterisations about its “anti-democratic” tendencies:

The Federal Government, Bundesrat or Bundestag would have to convince the Federal Constitutional Court that the whole party, not just individual members, has included anti-constitutional goals in its programme and pursues them in a planned, militant and effective manner. …

Even the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution … does not see the AfD as a unified bloc. Its 2022 annual report still reads that “In view of the continuing heterogeneity of content within the party … not all party members can be regarded as supporters of extremist tendencies.”

Moreover, it is not enough to point to the widespread rejection of the EU, sympathies towards Russia or NATO scepticism within the party. One may think such attitudes are wrong, but they are not forbidden. What would have to be proven are genuine attempts to eliminate the free democratic basic order, specifically the principles of democracy, human dignity and the rule of law, in whole or in part.

I might share Maksan’s optimism if Covid hadn’t happened. Clearly the German state will do whatever it wants and worry about how to justify it after the fact. Maksan is more convincing in his argument that the process of a formal ban would involve protracted procedures, and contribute enormously to AfD support in the meantime. It is a risk that the BfV seems to be on the verge of accepting:

“The political centre is currently melting like ice in the sun,” a high-ranking East German BfV recently told WELT on background. In the East, he said, there are now districts where it is not merely 20 to 30 percent voting for the AfD, but as many as 40 or 50 percent.

The major parties could at any moment deprive the AfD of considerable support simply by moderating their political programme. What is most ominous about these developments is the general refusal even to consider this path. As I said in another context, democracy has become for our rulers not a political system, but a series of desired outcomes. Formally democratic processes which threaten these outcomes are now considered anti-democratic and beyond consideration. It is not the AfD or their supporters who have been radicalised; many AfD statements denounced by the media as extreme and fascistic were in fact political commonplaces two decades ago. It is rather the political establishment that has grown extreme and lost touch with vast sectors of the electorate. I fear this is a unidirectional, self-reinforcing process, and that our rulers will never find their way back.

August 14, 2023 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance, Progressive Hypocrite | , , | Leave a comment

Imran Khan and the ‘successful’ outcome of US ‘interference’ in Pakistan: Fascism under a totalitarian military dictatorship

By Junaid S. Ahmad | Global Research | August 14, 2023

So, my friends and comrades in virtually the entire Pakistani Left spent more than a year mocking at least 80 percent of the country’s population for believing former Prime Minister Imran Khan about American ‘interference’ (to put it mildly) in Pakistan’s internal politics, and more specifically about removing him from office.

My comrades’ contributions to political life since Khan was ousted from power in April of 2022 have been a fanatical obsession with the man, an understandable deeply emotional envy of the tens of millions of people he was mobilizing, and a crazed fixation to convince the ‘Western Left’ that Khan isn’t really that popular (Democracy Now) and is no ‘anti-imperialist hero’ (Jacobin) – who cares about engaging other outsiders like suffering Kashmiris or Palestinians under occupation for whom Khan took a strong stand (apparently the ‘Western Left’ is just much more important). I guess my comrades thought that these were the most productive strategies to ‘liberate’ the Pakistani ‘working class.’

Ultimately, the Left with which I’ve always identified has facilitated not merely the return of the ‘ancien regime’ of kleptocratic politicians and an all-powerful military establishment, but the most fascist face of these two forces that the country has ever witnessed. We are now in a ruthless military dictatorship which is wholeheartedly supported by the two dynastic political parties akin to more like personal feudal fiefdoms which have taken turns in plundering and impoverishing the country since the late 1980s/early 1990s.

The new fascist regime has decimated the, by far and away, largest and most popular political party in the country, disappeared, arrested, illegally detained, tortured, sexually abused, and killed tens of thousands of not primarily men, but women, children, and the elderly – anyone that even remotely had any association with Khan’s political party, which included mothers, grand-mothers, children, neighbors, friends, etc. All of this was done in a deliberate and calculated way, and even though Democracy Now informed us that Khan’s views on women are identical to the Taliban, the majority of supporters of Khan are women, not men.

Pakistani journalists have been hunted down and killed as far away as in Kenya, forget about their mass disappearances, torture, and killing within Pakistan itself. And the final act being, since they failed in their assassination attempts, to throw Khan in a remote, wretched jail cell in which he can barely fit – to thoroughly and barbarically humiliate him.

The point was to strike so much terror in the population, and to show us that if this can be done to Imran Khan, then anyone and everyone is fair game to be disappeared, tortured, or killed.

Where has our Left been during all of this? Why were my comrades not confronting the ‘establishment’ we’ve always railed against? You had the most direct and persistent people’s confrontation with the sadistic military elite in the nation’s history (joined by many soldiers and junior and mid-rank officers, many former students of mine), and there was an astonishing absence of any of our Left in this struggle of many months.

This has and has not been about Khan. This is about Khan because he helped to politicize a society, the level of mass politicization not seen since the late 1960s/early 1970s. The popular reaction to his ouster from power, unlike any previous ouster of the country’s prime ministers (all of which elicited absolute indifference from the population precisely because civilian rule was not different for them from military rule – both were equally corrupt and repressive), literally shocked everyone (including Khan himself): tens of millions of people mobilizing and demonstrating in every corner of the country of 240 million.

And it is not about Khan because, since April 2022, each month you could see a population (the vast majority demonstrating were not card-carrying members of Khan’s party and had myriad criticisms of his term in power) becoming even more radically opposed to the cruelties and injustices of the social and political order – a situation which the Left could have completely taken advantage of to sharpen popular analysis and help organize and mobilize more effectively. There has been no moment more opportune for the country’s Left to help radically undermine the political status quo that has been the norm virtually since the nation’s birth in 1947, and have popular engagement – to make the case for more progressive values – as they struggle in solidarity with the bulk of the country’s population.

But that was not to be since, from the beginning, the Left dismissed Khan as the ‘military’s puppet’ simply because he and the military high command, at ONE particular moment in 2018, agreed on ONE single issue: ending the US occupation of Afghanistan. It was an absurd analysis of the most popular political and public personality – by far – in the country. And it was a convenient way to not only do nothing, but ridicule and mock (especially the youth and students) who were involved in these mobilizations.

Finally, the silence of Western governments and Western media on this barbaric period of military brutality in the fifth largest country in the world, nuclear-armed, contrasted with the obsession with a bloodless coup in Niger which seems either welcomed or just shown indifference by the majority of that country’s population, tells you everything how the Deepest State made sure its vassal Deep State resolve the ‘Khan problem’ once and for all.

Friends, imperialism and its domestic enforcers/torturers have taken my country to a period of darkness that I have never witnessed.

(The government in Pakistan has now blocked access to The Intercept for this exposé. This 20 minute video (see below) by the Intercept’s co-author Ryan Grim is an attempt at a workaround.)

Prof. Junaid S. Ahmad teaches Religion and Global Politics, and is the Director of the Center for the Study of Islam and Decoloniality, Islamabad, Pakistan.

August 14, 2023 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance, Progressive Hypocrite | , , | 1 Comment

US response to Russia-China naval patrol exposes glaring hypocrisy

By Timur Fomenko | RT | August 8, 2023

Last week, the US sent a group of warships and a reconnaissance plane to waters off the coast of Alaska after Chinese and Russian vessels conducted a joint naval patrol in the area.

A former US Navy captain and analyst for right-wing think tank the Heritage Foundation described the patrol as “highly provocative.” Because the US and its allies would never, ever do something like that, right?

The US is engaged in the full-blown militarisation of the peripheries of both China and Russia in a manner that implies it has an unconditional right to do so. This behaviour has not only provoked one war, in Ukraine, but risks triggering a second one, over the Taiwan Strait, too. The reality, of course, is that neither Russia nor China poses any threat to Alaska whatsoever, because the conflict, or risk thereof, is at their own front doors, not America’s.

The US is the most militaristic and aggressive country in modern history. It has established a global military presence that spans every single continent with hundreds of military bases. In doing so, it claims it supports the freedom and self-determination of others. In reality, it provocatively encircles states that it deems rivals to its own global dominance, escalates tensions, and then when these states respond to the situation, subsequently brands them as the “aggressors,” thus affirming and even expanding its military footprint in these given regions.

With Russia, the US has pursued a relentless expansion of NATO eastwards since the Cold War, absorbing former members of the Soviet Union’s alliance system even when Russia had no will to compete with it. NATO has evolved from a unit of collective self-defence in a specific geographic region into an increasingly global ideological crusade which serves the goals of the US. The words “North Atlantic” in its name are increasingly redundant as Washington even endeavours to broaden its reach to Asia and the Pacific.

Which leads to the next point, China. The US is pushing for a full-scale military and naval encirclement around China’s eastern periphery, deliberately using the Taiwan independence issue as a wedge to ramp up tensions despite the One China Policy and giving the island region more and more arms. While doing this, it is forcing more and more countries to accept a greater American military presence. This recently included the Philippines, where the US gained access to a number of bases, as well as Papua New Guinea, where a defence cooperation agreement was recently signed. At the same time, the US constantly sails warships through the South China Sea and the Taiwan Strait, citing so-called “freedom of navigation” from a law which it does not even ratify. China’s retaliatory actions are then branded “aggressive” and threatening the peace of the region.

If this constitutes normal behaviour and a sovereign right of the US, why can China and Russia not sail patrols up to Alaskan waters? Why is one behaviour described as “freedom of navigation” but the other is labelled “highly provocative”? The reality is that because both countries are concerned about the US on their doorsteps, they have little interest in ever waging war as far afield in Alaska. The same cannot be said about US actions on their doorsteps, whereby the threat of war is very, very real and is being cranked up even higher by Washington. The US deems it has rights which other countries do not, which leads to the double standards voiced in the media regarding these seemingly equal actions.

China-Russia military cooperation is a product of the US antagonising them both, rather than so-called “provocative behaviour.” In the geographic sphere of Northeast Asia, the two countries have shared strategic interests which concern checking the expansion of US military power in Japan and the Korean Peninsula. This extends to the Northern Pacific. Neither country has any specific ambitions regarding Alaska. Neither China nor Russia is attempting to foster an independence or separatist movement there, unlike what the US is doing with Taiwan, and then groom it into a military partner hostile to Washington. Therein lies the difference between the two sets of military behaviour. China and Russia may cooperate for common strategic objectives, but they are not exerting aggression in the process. On the other hand, the US’ military presence and patrols are designed to upend a region and turn countries against other, provoke strife, and of course advance its economic goals. The irony is that media discourse presents this as entirely normal and justified, but then depicts Russia-China cooperation as a potential threat to Alaska.

August 8, 2023 Posted by | Militarism, Progressive Hypocrite | , , | 1 Comment

Watchdog or lapdog? West’s blatant hypocrisy on media freedom

By Shabbir Rizvi | Press TV | August 7, 2023

The last few weeks have seen dramatic shifts in geopolitical alignment in Africa, especially in Niger. Growing resentment over Western meddling has led to the overthrow of West-friendly President Mohamed Bazoum and the establishment of a military junta.

But that’s not all. Anti-Western sentiment has grown with demonstrators burning French flags and chanting slogans outside the French embassy in Niger’s capital Niamey.

The West has condemned the country’s junta takeover. For centuries, France has maintained colonial control over countries such as Niger. A vast amount of resources are extracted from the landlocked West African country and brought to France, fueling its economy while keeping Niger’s stagnant.

The military junta has now banned the movement of these precious resources to France.

France is naturally furious – the EU is already suffering a major economic setback due to its dogged insistence to let the Ukraine war drag on, throwing billions of dollars into weapons and resources.

Now, it’s facing the additional burden of keeping its crisis-hit industries running – a glaring admission of the country’s colonial practices to this day.

With Niger banning the export of key natural resources like Uranium to France – French and other Western media are taking to the internet and airwaves to smear the junta.

The anti-Western sentiment has come to a boiling point from decades of Western abuse and hyper-exploitation of African countries. It is a completely organic phenomenon, and so the West will need to use its media apparatuses to counter and stifle the sentiments.

Western media outlets have unleashed an aggressive campaign to accomplish this task. Parroting the narratives of Western regimes, French media such as France 24 and Radio France Internationale condemned the junta while using fear-mongering tactics to draw support for Western intervention.

They also sought to reaffirm support for French and other colonial structures within Niger – all while threatening the very people wishing to break the shackles of colonialism with military intervention.

In response, the junta leadership in Niger moved to ban the hostile French media outlets.

French officials blasted the move: “France reaffirms its constant and determined commitment to press freedom, freedom of expression, and the protection of journalists,” the French foreign ministry stated.

A European Union spokesperson joined in: “This step is a serious violation of the right to information and freedom of expression. The EU strongly condemns these violations of fundamental freedoms.”

These statements should be a textbook study of hypocrisy. Time and time again, the EU and the collective West have unleashed mass censorship campaigns, banned outlets, and arrested journalists.

It was only last year when the EU outright banned Russia’s RT and Sputnik news.

European Union satellite providers have also directly collaborated in media censorship campaigns. It has been less than a year since French satellite company Eutelsat removed Press TV from the air.

Western countries brazenly allow media outlets that affirm their own imperialistic goals to remain on air and uncensored. This includes outlets that outwardly promote foreign meddling and violence.

“Iran International” – which has significant funding from Saudi Arabia – played a large role in drumming up Western support during the failed foreign-backed riots in Iran last year.

Based in Washington D.C, the outlet pushed anti-Iran narratives, reporting misleading information or withholding context. It is an open-propaganda outlet created specifically to attack a sovereign country.

However, it is welcomed by the West with open arms. Not a single sanction has been placed on it.

If an outlet carries water for the US and EU, it will be allowed to operate without a single hurdle. If you criticize the goals of the empire in any way, you may be sanctioned. Shadowbanned. Censored. Labeled “state media.” Your very website may be seized entirely, as has been the case with Press TV.

For the crime of journalism in the West, you can be locked up in horrific conditions, fearing for your life.

Does the West seem to have completely forgotten about their ongoing treatment of Julian Assange, who exposed the war crimes of the United States – only to be smeared and pushed into solitary confinement?

If you are aligned with the American Empire’s goals, then you can even get away with killing journalists – and Western officials will try to brush it under the rug.

When Israeli occupation forces deliberately murdered Palestinian journalist Shireen Abu Akleh, the US dragged its feet to release a statement, ultimately claiming they can’t say for certain how the shooting death occurred – though all evidence affirms that she was targeted by regime soldiers.

And who can forget Jamal Khashoggi, an American journalist who actually did carry water for the West – only that he angered Saudi Arabia, so he was tortured, murdered, and dismembered on the orders of Saudi Crown Prince Mohammad Bin Salman (MBS).

Instead of demanding any explanation or even condemning the act, the US granted the Saudi leader immunity over the killing.

“Freedom of the Press” is a mockery in the West. A joke with no punchline. Freedom of the press in the EU and the US does not exist – not really. Through loopholes, shadowy dealings, and outright hypocrisy Western regimes always have the final say in what media can operate and what can’t.

It boils down to the simple goal of advancing its own interests.

Knowing this, it should come as no surprise that Niger banned France’s colonial media outlets. Their specific function is to carry France’s interests in foreign lands. Their goal is not honest and objective journalism or asking difficult questions. Their goal is to maintain and push public opinion of their own regime. A more honest classification of their work would be regime stenography.

France and the rest of the EU can condemn Niger’s actions all they want, but ultimately they have set the precedent of banning media outlets. The West will go as far as killing journalists, and then point a finger using that same bloodied hand at countries that refuse to give them a podium.

Ultimately, the world can expect more of the same double standards from the West.

The question is: if Western media’s role is to carry out its imperialistic missions rather than question and report, then why should anyone allow hostile media to operate in their country?

Shabbir Rizvi is a Chicago-based political analyst with a focus on US internal security and foreign policy.

August 7, 2023 Posted by | Full Spectrum Dominance, Mainstream Media, Warmongering, Progressive Hypocrite | , | Leave a comment

Bernie Sanders Leads Calls To Prosecute “Illegal Misinformation” On Climate Change

By Didi Rankovic | Reclaim The Net | August 3, 2023

Before there was the narrative pushed by the mainstream media that the 2016 US presidential election was rigged – there were the Democratic primaries, regarding which the evidence of actual rigging taking place has been much more solid.

The victim was hapless presidential hopeful Bernie Sanders – but now, this once great hope of left-wing citizens seems to be turning increasingly authoritarian, at least in his rhetoric.

He is, essentially, providing a solution to a problem that shouldn’t exist (not in a democracy) – namely, what to do, legally, to stop political opponents?

In this case, it’s about corporate skeptics around the “climate change panic.” And Sanders has the answer – prosecute them, and if found guilty, put them in prison.

Sounds fairly extreme, but here we are.

In a letter co-signed by Senator Sanders, a group of his Democrat colleagues is asking the US Department of Justice (DoJ) to do just such a thing, aimed at what’s termed the fossil fuel industry.

We obtained a copy of the letter for you here.

And although it seems careful to point the finger and demand retribution from companies that are accused of, basically, organizing campaigns to improve their business (shocking (NOT) – and, that business anyway is far from being illegal) – once a precedent of legally hounding dissenters is set, it can go anywhere.

ExxonMobile, Shell, and other giants are mentioned, perhaps as a way to soften the blow of that reality, but if what the senators are asking is to become reality, next up could be journalists, and then social media users, and just in general, it’s turtles all the way down.

Sanders and his companions would not want any of their actions to be seen that way, naturally. So they assert that, “the fossil fuel industry has had scientific evidence about the dangers of climate change and the role that burning fossil fuels play in increasing global temperatures for more than 50 years.”

The letter continues: “To coordinate their illegal misinformation campaign, the fossil fuel industry funded a multimillion-dollar plan through the American Petroleum Institute that sought to make climate change a ‘non-issue.’”

But the exact same argument could be used (in court) against any “regular Joe” not into the whole climate change – in court, down the line, should such extreme red lines as requested by the letter get established.

Of course, there’s no way to say that will happen – but also, that it won’t.

Kind of the same argument that climate change skeptics are trying to make about the climate change policy push.

August 3, 2023 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance, Malthusian Ideology, Phony Scarcity, Progressive Hypocrite | | Leave a comment

US cluster munitions will bring more pain and death to Donbass civilians, and Washington doesn’t care

Kiev will use its newly received weapons to target residential areas, just as it has for the past nine years

By Eva Bartlett | RT | August 1, 2023

The recent US decision to send cluster munitions to Ukraine is immoral, unethical, and criminal. We’ve already seen the horrific results of the use of such weapons – civilians mutilated and murdered (often decades later) in Iraq and Southeast Asia, for example, and in Lebanon.

In addition to the ethical reasons not to send these weapons to Ukraine, there are pragmatic reasons why, from a military perspective. They are pointless for Ukraine, in spite of Western promises that they will “do more damage across a larger area than standard unitary artillery shells by releasing bomblets, or submunitions.”

In reality, while covering a wider area than a conventional high explosive munition, the cluster bomblets do not inflict more powerful damage, certainly not against Russian fortified positions. Their use is mainly for targeting troops in the open and lightly armoured vehicles. Not a game changer for Kiev.

According to former US Marine Corps intelligence officer Scott Ritter, “these are the worst weapon in the world for trench warfare. With trench warfare, you need a high explosive round that collapses bunkers, that collapses trenches.”

If the US knows that cluster munitions won’t change facts on the ground for Ukraine, why is it sending them? Because, as President Joe Biden himself has said, Ukraine is “running out of  ammunition and we’re low on it.” So, the US might as well offload its old stock of cluster munitions. They will not, as Biden claimed, “stop those tanks from rolling.” Nor will they – as the Biden administration claims – “save civilian lives.” They will almost certainly be used to kill, maim, and terrorize more Donbass civilians immediately and for years to come.

US Colonel Douglas Macgregor has emphasized that the cluster munitions have a high dud rate. According to Ritter, close to 40% of them fail to explode. Macgregor also highlighted how children are “attracted to these bright shiny objects that look like baseballs,” so insidious is their design.

US National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan assures us that Kiev will not misuse the clusters. He claims that “Ukraine is committed to post-conflict de-mining efforts to mitigate any potential harm to civilians,” and that “Ukraine has provided written assurances that it is going to use these in a very careful way that is aimed at minimizing any risk to civilians.”

The US never signed the Convention on Cluster Munitions – which prohibits all use, production, transfer, and stockpiling of cluster munitions – but didn’t mind virtue signalling its abhorrence of them when it lobbed accusations against Russia (also not a signatory of the convention) on February 28, 2022, with Biden’s then press secretary, Jen Psaki, calling the use of cluster munitions a potential “war crime.”

As usual, it’s a heinous war crime when a US enemy supposedly does it, but not when an ally – or the US itself – actually does. As for Ukraine’s feeble promises to not use the cluster munitions against civilians, it has already been doing so since 2014.

Ukraine’s history of cluster-bombing civilians

By way of a personally witnessed example, in late March 2022, I visited the site of a Ukrainian missile attack that earlier that month had killed 22 civilians and injured 33 more. Because the Ukrainian-fired Tochka-U missile was intercepted, not all of its 50 cassettes of cluster munitions inside exploded in the city streets. Otherwise, the bloodbath would have been much worse. Then, in April 2022, Ukrainian forces targeted a railway station in Kramatorsk, likewise firing a Tochka-U with a cluster munition, killing a reported 50 people. Western media predictably accused Russia of the war crime, although investigations showed the missile emanated from Ukrainian-held territory to the southwest.

But like most of Kiev’s war crimes against Donbass civilians, its use of cluster munitions didn’t start in 2022. Back in 2014, Human Rights Watch (HRW) reported on Ukrainian government forces’ use of cluster munitions in populated areas in Donetsk city. An October 2 attack on the centre of Donetsk that included the use of cluster munition rockets killed an employee of the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC).

The New York Times likewise reported that on several occasions in October 2014, “the Ukrainian Army appears to have fired cluster munitions into the heart of Donetsk, unleashing a weapon banned in much of the world into a rebel-held city with a peacetime population of more than one million.” Citing physical evidence and interviews with witnesses and victims, the newspaper wrote there were “clear signs that cluster munitions had been fired from the direction of army-held territory.”

Ukrainian ‘petal mines’ continue to maim

But these aren’t the only clusters Ukraine has fired on Donbass civilians. In fact, over the course of last year, I documented the aftermath of Ukraine firing rockets containing cassettes of internationally-banned PFM-1 “petal” mines, over 300 of the mines per rocket.

Due to their design, they generally glide to the ground without exploding, until someone or something steps on or otherwise disturbs them.

According to authorities in the Donetsk People’s Republic (DPR), Ukraine began firing these tiny, indiscriminate mines on March 6, 2022, during the battles for Mariupol, and then from May 18, 2022, into DPR and Kharkov Region settlements.

Since first documenting the aftermath of Ukraine’s use of the mines in central Donetsk in late July, 2022, I’ve interviewed victims, and reported on the painstaking work of Russian sappers to locate and destroy the mines. As of July 25 this year, 124 civilians have been injured by the mines, including ten children. Three civilians died as a result of their injuries.

Western weapons used to kill Donbass civilians

It should be mentioned that over the course of its now nine-year war against Donbass, Ukraine has been using conventional NATO munitions to slaughter and maim civilians. The high explosive shells Ukraine fires throughout Donbass cities and towns, but also countless times in the very heart of Donetsk, tear people apart, leaving mangled bodies and remains on streets and sidewalks, and in marketplaces.

On July 22, Ukrainian forces allegedly shelled Russian journalists in Zaporozhye Region with cluster munitions, killing one and injuring three others.

These deliberate attacks on the media, on civilians’ homes, hospitals, infrastructure, and on civilians themselves should be condemned as loudly as Ukraine’s firing of petal mines and of cluster munitions in general. But the US announcement that it would send cluster munitions to Ukraine resulted in some mild tutting from other Western nations, but no seriously strong condemnation. Canada is one of the nations voicing at least some objection to sending cluster bombs, the leadership in Ottawa probably feeling it ought to mildly protest, given Canada’s convention.

The Canadian government recently stated that it is fully against the use of cluster munitions and is “committed to putting an end to the effects cluster munitions have on civilians – particularly children.” Yet aside from polite grumblings regarding the US clusters, I’ve seen no Canadian condemnation of Ukraine’s repeated use of cluster munitions on the civilians of Donbass.

But the real criminals here are the US government, which knows sending its cluster munitions won’t actually help Ukraine fight the Russian military in any tangible way, but that it is highly likely Ukraine will instead use them against Donbass civilians. Apparently, that’s just fine with the crocodile-tear-crying US hypocrites.

Eva Bartlett is a Canadian independent journalist. She has spent years on the ground covering conflict zones in the Middle East, especially in Syria and Palestine (where she lived for nearly four years).

August 1, 2023 Posted by | Progressive Hypocrite, Timeless or most popular, War Crimes | , | Leave a comment

« Previous Entries     Next Entries »