Air attacks by NATO forces on Yugoslavia began this day 24 years ago. Between 1,200 and 2,500 people died within two months, and many more saw their lives crumbling into pieces when the US-led coalition unleashed war and destruction in the midst of Europe.
The decision to bomb Yugoslavia was made without the approval of the UN Security Council, and the order was issued to the commander of the allied forces, US General Wesley Clark, by NATO Secretary General Javier Solana.
Politicians, generals, and journalists from Europe and America engaged in an abominable competition, trying to justify the massacre and sugar-coat the violation of international laws.
The claims of the then-leaders of Western countries are displayed in this Sputnik gallery – alongside the results of the alliance’s brutal operation.
Located off the southern coast of Yemen in the Arabian Sea, the Socotra archipelago has become a focal point of regional and international interest because of its strategic proximity to one of the world’s busiest shipping lanes.
On 21 June, 2020, the Yemeni island was militarily occupied by Saudi Arabia’s Emirati coalition partner, which has aggressively pursued a policy of establishing and controlling ports throughout West Asia and the Horn of Africa since 1999.
The archipelago consists of four large islands: Socotra (3,796km2), Abd al-Kuri (130.2km2), Samhah (39.6km2), and Darsah (7.5km2), as well as three small islets.
Socotra, the biggest of the islands, lies 350 km south of the Arabian Peninsula and 95 km from Somalia. It is surrounded by the Gulf of Aden, the Indian Ocean, and the Arabian Sea, and faces the Horn of Africa from the west. Around 20,000 shipping vessels pass around Socotra each year, including 9 percent of the world’s annual global petroleum supply.
The War on Yemen
The assault on Yemen was launched on 26 March, 2015, in an announcement by Saudi Ambassador Adel al-Jubeir from Washington DC, in which he stated that a coalition of ten countries, led by Saudi Arabia and the UAE, would take military action to reinstate the government of Yemeni President Abdrabbuh Mansour Hadi.
Hadi had been ousted in popular protests in 2014, after losing the capital city, Sanaa, to the joint forces of the Ansarallah movement and their allies in the country’s armed forces. Based in northern Yemen, the Ansarallah movement had been advocating for fair representation in the government for a long time.
With US-backing, Saudi Arabia launched “Operation Decisive Storm,” and the air strikes began. Initially expected to last only a few weeks or months – and according to MbS himself, just “a few days” – the Yemeni war has now entered its eighth year and taken on a markedly different shape than the coalition initially contended.
Two years into the war, the Emiratis began pursuing their own hidden agenda of establishing a “self-styled maritime empire” in Yemen, which veered sharply from Riyadh’s objectives. To achieve this goal, Abu Dhabi sought to control the country’s southern coastline and its ports and enlisted the help of a local Yemeni proxy called the Southern Movement.
The Southern Movement was formed by secessionist tribes and groups seeking to divide Yemen along the old partition lines of 1967–1990. However, the movement had to be restructured to match the UAE’s aspirations, and in 2017 it was transformed into the Southern Transitional Council (STC).
Map of the Emirati-controlled areas and ports in southern Yemen
The significance of Socotra
Socotra Island falls under the territorial jurisdiction of the exiled Hadi government, which to this day – despite his physical absence and the replacement of the “presidency” with an 8-member, Saudi-sponsored Presidential Leadership Council (PLC) – remains Yemen’s internationally-recognized government.
However, on 30 April, 2018, the UAE deployed hundreds of troops with artillery and armored vehicles on the island, which is located 350 km away from the mainland conflict, without any prior coordination with Yemeni authorities.
The Riyadh-backed Yemeni government condemned the Emirati aggression, backed by local islanders protesting against the occupation of their territory. The Saudis were forced to intervene by sending troops and training locals to deter the UAE from seizing the island.
But later that year, UAE General Khalfan al-Mazrouei arrived on Socotra Island and has since been considered its de facto ruler. Under his leadership, the Emiratis gained the loyalty of local tribes by using bribery under the guise of “humanitarian aid.” They offered Socotra residents UAE passports and promised them an improved quality of life.
The STC seizes Socotra
On the morning of 21 June, 2020, the UAE-backed STC separatists forcibly seized control of Socotra and ousted the Saudi-backed, pro-Hadi forces.
The UAE had been planning and preparing for this operation for two years, using its Yemeni proxies to gain full control over the Socotra archipelago. The Emirati flag was raised across the territory, and UAE telecommunication companies replaced Yemeni ones. Consequently, all phone calls from Socotra now register Emirati phone networks.
UAE-Israel normalization
Three months after the seizure of Socotra, the highly-controversial Abraham Accords was signed in Washington DC between Israel and the UAE, along with Bahrain, Morocco, and Sudan. On the Arab side, the normalization thrust was led by Abu Dhabi, which quickly moved to expand its diplomatic, military, and economic ties with Tel Aviv.
Shortly after the signing of the Abraham Accords, reports and images of Israeli “tourists” visiting Socotra began to emerge. According to an Al-Mayadeenreport, however, the Israeli visitors were not tourists, but rather, military experts.
Abd al-Kuri Island
In February 2023, Ansarallah released a statement condemning the UAE’s eviction of residents from Abd al-Kuri, the archipelago’s second-largest island. The resistance movement accused Abu Dhabi of carrying out a long-planned operation to transform Socotra into an Israeli-Emirati military and intelligence hub.
These actions by the UAE are not isolated incidents. In another 2022 episode, Ansarallah accused Abu Dhabi of transferring fishermen from the small island of Perim (13 km2) to other parts of the Taiz Governorate. Several months later, satellite imagery revealed the construction of a military base runway on the volcanic Island. Perim is now empty of its original inhabitants, according to media reports.
An Emirati military base on Perim Island (Mayyun in Arabic) on the Bab al-Mandab Strait
Perim Island has historically divided the Bab al-Mandab Strait into two waterways – whoever controls the island holds strategic influence over the strait. While Ansarallah’s statement about Emirati designs on Socotra was not entirely new, it raised hackles throughout the Arab world by confirming Israel’s military and intelligence presence on this key Yemeni island.
The UAE’s maritime ambitions
Many have questioned Abu Dhabi’s motivation for seizing Socotra and risking its relationships with Saudi Arabia and neighboring Oman (virtually overnight surrounded by UAE ports and bases). The UAE’s actions may be entirely attributed to the strategic vision of its President Mohammed bin Zayed (MbZ) and his no-longer secret desire to establish an Emirati maritime empire –from the Persian Gulf to the Red Sea – by controlling the region’s key waterways.
The UAE’s economic reliance on these waterways is a clear driver of MbZ’s plans: non-petroleum commodity re-exports make up almost half of Abu Dhabi’s total exports. As such, maritime security is a top priority in the country’s foreign policy calculations.
The UAE currently controls 12 ports off the coast of Yemen, including Aden, Makha, Mukalla, Al-Dabba, Bir Ali, Belhaf, Rudum, Zoubab, Al-Khawkhah, Al-Khouba, Qena, and Al-Nashima. The country is also building a new port in Al-Mahra that will cost an estimated $100 million.
By controlling these ports and the Bab al-Mandab Strait, the UAE can dominate one of the busiest shipping lanes in the world, elevating its position in global and regional trade to a strategic player.
In addition to its aggressive accumulation of Yemeni ports, the UAE also has a significant presence in the Horn of Africa, where it currently controls two ports in Eritrea and one in Somalia. It previously owned a port in Djibouti, but this became a point of territorial friction between the two countries. The UAE’s control over these ports and their strategic location in the region allow it to project its power and expand its influence in East Africa.
Why is Socotra important to Israel?
The UAE and Israel share mutual security concerns over Iran’s regional ascension over the past decade. The Islamic Republic’s naval presence is expanding into many new waterways, and its seaborne activities from the Persian Gulf to the Red Sea alarm both nations. Given Washington’s growing reluctance to engage its armed forces in West Asia, MbZ turned to the region’s military behemoth and main Iranian rival to help him execute his vision. Unlike Israel, no other regional state has the ability to garner unconditional US support – nor the willingness to cavalierly defy international law and territorial integrity.
Abu Dhabi has calculated that it stands to benefit from Israel’s intelligence network and early warning systems, particularly after its cities were subject to unprecedented Ansarallah missile and drone strikes in January 2022.
For Tel Aviv, its physical presence in any Arab state is perceived as a victory, which aligns with its ambitions for regional expansion. By establishing a base on Abd al-Kuri Island, Israel can reinforce its maritime security – around 25 percent of its trade passes through the Bab al-Mandab Strait. Another objective of the Israeli-Emirati military and intelligence hub could be to gather data or engage in espionage activities in the southern Arabian Peninsula and the Horn of Africa.
During the 1973 Arab-Israeli war, Yemen – in partnership with Egypt – blocked the passage of Israeli ships and tankers from accessing the strategic strait, leading to disastrous consequences for Israel.
The tactic could be replicated under Ansarallah Chief Abdel Malak al-Houthi’s leadership, since the movement considers Israel one of its main regional adversaries. While it may seem like a distant possibility, if the war concludes under current Riyadh-Sanaa peace efforts and Ansarallah gains control of Yemen’s south, the movement will enjoy unusual leverage to obstruct Israeli shipments whenever Tel Aviv launches regional aggressions. It should be noted that Ansarallah has already publicly threatened, on several occasions, to strike sensitive Israeli sites with its new missile capabilities.
Moreover, there has been an ongoing “ghost ship war” between Israel and Iran for several years, with occasional reports of Iranian or Israeli ships being attacked in these waterways. Israel’s presence on Socotra Island could provide it with leverage over Iran in their waterway stand-off and enable Tel Aviv to counter Ansarallah inside Yemeni territory.
NATO’s Combined Maritime Forces
It is important to note that the involvement of the US in the Israeli-Emirati collaboration and actions in Yemeni waters is not confirmed. However, it is true that the US has been a maritime security provider for the Persian Gulf monarchies for decades, and its NATO-led Combined Maritime Forces (CMF) have been present in West Asian waters since 1983 – including leading hostile actions against Iraq and Somalia.
The CMF alliance has assumed responsibility for the security of four bodies of water: The Red Sea, Persian Gulf, Arabian Sea, and the Gulf of Aden.
But with China’s rapid rise as a global economic competitor, US policy pivotedfurther eastward, and Washington has sought to subcontract out its West Asian security policies to its regional allies.
As such, last December, the CMF assigned command of its Red Sea task force to the Egyptian Navy, who took over from US naval forces. In this regard, the UAE, backed by Israel, may be another candidate to lead a NATO-backed naval security operation in the region.
Map of the NATO-led Combined Maritime Forces (CMF) areas of operation in West Asian waterways
Implications for Iran and Saudi Arabia
Any Israeli expansion is likely to alarm Iran and vice versa, potentially leading to direct or proxy clashes in various regional theaters. However, the presence of the UAE – Iran’s second-largest trading partner – in southern Yemen may limit Tehran’s options. Unless Iran perceives a serious security threat from the new “Arab-Israeli alliance,” it is unlikely to take any significant actions that could harm its trade relations with Abu Dhabi.
The war against Yemen has severely damaged Saudi Arabia’s image as a regional powerhouse. During the last few years, all major Saudi cities have been the subject of Ansarallah missile and drone strikes – including the country’s key oil infrastructure.
It has been humiliating for the Persian Gulf’s wealthiest and most heavily militarized state to have its vulnerabilities so completely exposed by West Asia’s poorest nation. In contrast, the UAE has thus far only benefited from the Yemen war and expanded its influence in the region.
Recently, there have been reports of a possible breakthrough in negotiations between Riyadh and Ansarallah, and observers are hoping for an early roadmap to end the conflict during the holy month of Ramadan. Obstacles are aplenty: The UAE is notably absent from the discussions, the Emirati-backed Yemeni separatists – the STC – reject any solution that doesn’t leave them in control of the south, and the US has sought to scuttle any final solution that undermines Washington’s regional leverage.
Liberating the island
Of all the stakeholders with interest in Socotra Island, none are ultimately as important as the Yemeni ones, primarily the UAE-backed STC, the Saudi-backed PLC, and Iran-backed Ansarallah.
In his most recent televised appearance, Ansarallah’s Abdel Malik al-Houthi stated: “We seek to defeat the aggression, whether on the islands, on land or at sea, and from anyone who violates our independence and the sovereignty of our country.” Unlike other leaders, al-Houthi’s threats are usually translated into action and Ansarallah will not hesitate to strike the Israeli-Emirati bases or seize their ships if the aggression continues.
Ansarallah is currently the strongest player in Yemen, controlling more than 80 percent of the country in terms of population density. On the other hand, the PLC is the most vulnerable of the three main Yemeni players, and Riyadh’s recent rapprochement agreement with Tehran has further weakened the group. If an agreement is reached between Riyadh and Sanaa, the PLC will have one of two options: to hand over their weapons or merge into Ansarallah’s armed forces.
On the other side of the spectrum, the UAE-backed STC is worried about ongoing peace talks and fears being left alone to fight head-to-head with Ansarallah-aligned armed forces.
The question now is whether there will be a peace deal between Saudi Arabia and Ansarallah that excludes the UAE and its Yemeni proxies. If that happens, Sanaa’s armed forces will almost certainly turn their big guns on the Emiratis and their Yemeni interests. The Saudis will have already calculated this outcome as they seek to advance a deal with Ansarallah. In this event, it is unlikely that Riyadh will come to Abu Dhabi’s assistance. Their common goals in Yemen ended years ago.
The Commander of the Russian army’s Radiological, Chemical, and Biological Protection Forces, Igor Kirillov, on 24 March accused the US of using “no less than 300 tons of depleted uranium” during the early years of the Iraq war.
“In 2003-2004, the USA extensively used such munitions in strikes on targets in Iraqi cities: Amarah, Baghdad, Basra, Karbala, Fallujah. According to the UN, the US used no less than 300 tons of depleted uranium in Iraq,” Kirillov told reporters on 24 March.
He added that the resulting radioactive fallout in Fallujah alone was “worse than what happened in Hiroshima and Nagasaki.”
“This city is still called the second Chernobyl,” the Russian official stressed.
A 2018 investigation by Al Araby shows Iraq recorded the highest rate of congenital malformations in the world over the previous decade. These rates were worse in Fallujah, which was showered in depleted uranium and white phosphorus by US coalition forces.
“According to the Iraqi government, in 2005, the incidence of cancer in the country due to the use of depleted uranium munitions increased from 40 to 1,600 cases per 100,000 citizens. In this regard, Baghdad filed an official lawsuit with the International Court of Arbitration in Stockholm on December 26, 2020, against Washington, claiming compensation for the damages sustained,” Kirillov added.
In 2014, the Dutch peace group Pax revealed that US jets and tanks fired nearly 10,000 depleted uranium rounds in Iraq, many of which were fired in or near populated areas.
The Kremlin official made his statement on Friday in response to the UK government saying earlier this week they will provide Ukraine with armor-piercing rounds containing depleted uranium.
Depleted uranium is a byproduct of creating enriched uranium used in nuclear fuel and weapons. Although it can not generate a nuclear reaction, depleted uranium is higher in density than lead, making it highly attractive as a projectile.
“It’s so dense, and it’s got so much momentum that it just keeps going through the armor – and it heats it up so much that it catches on fire,” Edward Geist, a nuclear expert at research organization RAND, told Al Jazeera on Thursday.
US officials backed London’s decision, claiming the ammunition is “not anywhere close to going into” the sphere of nuclear weaponry.
“This is a commonplace type of munition … If Russia is particularly concerned about the welfare of their tanks and their tank soldiers … they could just take them across the border back into Russia,” White House National Security Council spokesman John Kirby said.
The UN Environment Program described depleted uranium ammunition as “chemically and radiologically toxic heavy metal.” A 2001 World Health Organization (WHO) report concluded that depleted uranium could accumulate at the ground surface and enter the food chain, while uranium dust can be inhaled and retained in the lungs.
London’s plan to send the radioactive arms to Ukraine came to light as the twentieth anniversary of the Iraq invasion passed. Last December, the US navy named a next-generation warship the ‘USS Fallujah.’
MOSCOW – The use of uranium ammunition will cause irreversible harm to the health of the military and civilian population of Ukraine, but NATO is ready to supply them to Kiev, Lt. Gen. Igor Kirillov, the head of the radiation, chemical and biological defense troops of the Russian armed forces, said on Friday.
“Despite the fact that the use of such ammunition [with depleted uranium] will cause irreparable harm to the health of the Armed Forces of Ukraine and the civilian population, NATO countries, in particular the UK, express their readiness to supply this type of weapon to the Kiev regime,” Kirillov told a briefing.
Depleted uranium compounds, remaining in the soil after its use as part of projectiles, may be dangerous for people, animals and the environment for a long time, the official added.
After the use of shells with depleted uranium on the territory of Ukraine, significant cultivation areas will be contaminated — through vehicles, radioactive substances will be carried to the territory outside the combat zone, he said.
Lt. Gen. added that use of depleted uranium shells can provoke serious diseases, and the ingestion of dust into the body is a radiation hazard.
“As a result of the impact of a depleted uranium munition, a mobile hot cloud of a finely dispersed aerosol of uranium-238 and its oxides is formed, which, when exposed to the body in the future, can provoke the development of serious diseases,” Kirillov said.
The main radiation hazard from depleted uranium occurs if it enters the body in the form of dust, the official added.
“The flux of alpha-radiation from small uranium particles deposited in the upper and lower respiratory tract, lungs and esophagus cause the development of malignant tumors. Uranium dust accumulating in the kidneys, bone tissue and liver leads to changes in internal organs,” Lt. Gen. explained.
NATO fired about 40,000 shells with more than 15 tons of depleted uranium during the 1999 bombing of Yugoslavia, Kirillov recalled.
“It is necessary to recall that depleted uranium aircraft munitions were used by NATO forces during the bombing of Yugoslavia in 1999. In total, about 40,000 armor-piercing air shells with a total amount of depleted uranium of more than 15 tons were used on the territory of this country,” Kirillov told reporters.
The level of uranium contamination of soil and groundwater in Serbia still requires constant monitoring to assess potential risks, the official added.
NATO soldiers have become victims of the use of depleted uranium ammunition in Iraq and Yugoslavia, he stressed.
“The victims of the irresponsible policy of their own leadership were NATO servicemen who took part in military campaigns in Iraq and Yugoslavia,” Kirillov told a briefing.
According to a 2016 report by the Chief Military Medical Inspector of Italy, it is reported that more than 4,000 servicemen of the national armed forces had malignant tumors of various types. These soldiers were deployed in the Balkans in 1994-1999 and in Iraq in 2003 in areas where the alliance forces used depleted uranium ammunition. At the same time, 330 people — 8% of cases — died as a result of the disease, official concluded.
Meanwhile, Kirillov stressed the fact that depleted uranium shells do not have significant advantage over tungsten shells in conditions of modern military operations.
“The use of ammunition containing depleted uranium has no significant advantage over tungsten in the conditions of modern military operations,” he told.
The term depleted uranium is a trivial name for a metal based on over 90% of the isotopes of uranium-238 and less than 1% of uranium-235, the official said.
“The use of depleted uranium in such ammunition is associated with its high density, which ensures a high armor-piercing effect. This effect is achieved by using the kinetic energy of the core itself, as well as its shell. Upon impact with the armor, the shell made of soft steel is destroyed and transfers its energy to the core, which penetrates into the armor,” Kirillov explained.
According to the military, tungsten alloys have similar characteristics, but ammunition based on them is much more expensive to manufacture. Therefore, depleted uranium ammunition is much more often used in those countries where there are uranium reserves, its processing technology, and their use is planned on foreign territory when there is no need to think about environmental consequences.
US President Joe Biden ordered the sabotage of the Nord Stream pipelines because he was unhappy with the level of support provided by German Chancellor Olaf Scholz to Ukraine in its conflict with Russia, veteran investigative journalist Seymour Hersh has claimed.
Hersh first accused Washington of destroying the key European energy route in an article released in February, and made more allegations in an interview with the China Daily newspaper published on Friday.
“The [US] president was afraid of Chancellor Scholz not wanting to put more guns and more arms [forward for Kiev]. That’s all. I don’t know whether that it was anger or punishment, but the net effect is that it cut off a major power source through Western Europe,” Hersh claimed.
Despite attempts by the US to deny its involvement in the Nord Stream attack, “Europe is in crisis now” and Biden will receive “a lot of criticism for what he did” in the coming months, the journalist argued.
The Pulitzer Prize winner alleged that “the people that were initially asked to do the job” of destroying the pipelines were contacted by US National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan towards the end of 2021.
The initial purpose of mining Nord Stream 1 and 2, built to deliver Russian gas to Europe through Germany, was “to give the [US] president an option to say to [Russian] President Putin, ‘If you go to war [in Ukraine], we’re going to destroy the pipelines,’” Hersh claimed.
Biden himself publicly confirmed that stance but “unfortunately, those people in the Western press seemed to have forgotten,” the journalist stated.
Just under three weeks before the launch of Moscow’s military operation in Ukraine, Biden warned during a press conference on February 7 that “if Russia invades… there will no longer be a Nord Stream 2. We will bring an end to it.”
According to Hersh, the US leader decided to order the detonation of mines at the bottom of the Baltic Sea last September because the conflict “wasn’t going great in Ukraine” from a US perspective. There was “at best a stalemate” during that period, in what Hersh described as “the American war that President Biden was so eager to support.”
A controversial bill submitted to the Romanian parliament this week has urged the government to drop its recognition of Ukraine’s borders by 2027 and “annex” territories where ethnic Romanians live.
The bill, introduced by right-wing lawmaker Diana Sosoaca, would repeal a provision in the 1997 treaty with Ukraine, which pledged respect for each other’s national borders. She described the document as “the biggest act of treason” in Romania’s modern history because it “recognized the Ribbentrop-Molotov Pact,” according to a formal justification of the bill.
Sosoaca was referring to the non-aggression agreement between the USSR and Nazi Germany, sealed in August 1939, which included a classified portion delineating spheres of influence for Moscow and Berlin.
The pact was one of several such agreements signed by European nations with Adolf Hitler’s government, as they maneuvered diplomatically in the last days of the interwar period. Romania was a Nazi ally for a significant portion of World War II, before switching sides. It lost some of its territories in the post-war settlement, which were added to Soviet Ukraine and Soviet Moldova.
Sosoaca listed several lands, which she deems as historically Romanian and currently “abusively held by Ukraine,” from Northern Bukovina to Snake Island. The latter was part of a lengthy legal battle over maritime borders, which ended in 2009 with Kiev keeping sovereignty over the islet.
Romania would “annex” those territories under the bill. The legislator cited a need to protect ethnic Romanians living in Ukraine from Kiev’s discriminatory policies, and ensure that they can maintain their cultural identity.
After the bill was met with pushback in Romania, Sosoaca stressed that she did not want Bucharest to go to war with Kiev for a land grab. However, she added: “peace cannot be based on the forced ethnic assimilation of the Romanian minority, which is the practice of the Ukrainian state.”
The initiative was introduced in the upper chamber of the Romanian parliament on Monday, with Sosoaca’s SOS Party holding a presentation the next day. She used to be a member of a different political force, but was expelled from its parliamentary faction in 2021 for allegedly breaking with its political strategy, and is now technically independent.
Critics have described Sosoaca as “far right” and claimed that she has ties with Russia, based on her attempts to soften a diplomatic dispute a few years ago, and her calls for a neutral stance on the Ukrainian conflict. The Romanian government is a staunch supporter of Kiev.
British and French invaders exit from Crimea in defeat
By Drago Bosnic | March 24, 2023
One of the most self-defeating and yet inexplicably persistent mistakes Russia’s enemies have been making for over a thousand years is underestimating it. Regardless of the direction the invasion was coming from, Moscow was able to prevail each time. Its ability to not just successfully defend itself, but also counterattack and reach the opponent’s heartland has been unmatched in modern history. And yet, the myth of Russia’s supposed perpetual decline and dilapidation is an incessant propaganda trope used by its enemies for centuries. None of it ever came true, despite all the grim predictions, which are still being parroted to this very day and are unlikely to go away any time soon, especially nowadays, when the political West needs to keep its populace under the illusion that Moscow is supposedly “losing”.
We often hear that Russia is no more than a regional power with an economy the size of Spain’s, a military budget that has been consistently smaller than the Saudi one, etc. And indeed, on paper, this may seem true. Taking into account nominal GDP as the only measure of success and power, one might fall into the trap of believing such statistics. However, the reality is quite different. All one needs to do is ask just a few logical questions. Could the Spanish economy ever withstand the sanctions imposed on Russia, let alone grow and outperform those enforcing them? Is the Spanish economy a key global supplier of vital commodities such as food, oil, natural gas, various types of heavy machinery, crucial chemical products (such as fertilizers), enriched uranium for nuclear power plants, etc?
And yet, perhaps the most “inexplicable” segment of Russia’s resilience is its military power, particularly the cost-effectiveness of its forces, both on a tactical and strategic level. In 2021, Russia officially spent $65 billion on defense. For comparison, NATO spent close to $1.2 trillion. If we add other key US vassals such as Japan, Australia and South Korea, that figure is close to $1.4 trillion, meaning that the political West spends approximately 22 times more than Russia. So, is “global” NATO 22 times more powerful than Russia? The notion is even more ludicrous if we take into account that Moscow actually outproduces NATO in terms of air defense missiles, artillery shells and other munitions, while also maintaining a strategic arsenal greater and more powerful than that of the political West, combined.
This is without considering Russia’s absolute dominance in key technologies such as hypersonic weapons, with no NATO/Western countries deploying a single operational missile of that type and with no prospects of doing so before 2025 (or beyond). There are other aspects such as Moscow being able to fight on multiple fronts simultaneously, including in Syria, another US/NATO invasion ever so euphemistically dubbed the “Syrian Civil War”, where the Pentagon keeps complaining that its forces there are essentially powerless to stop Russia. This discrepancy in official figures is even more pronounced in Ukraine, where the political West spent approximately $120 billion in little more than a year, which is nearly twice as much as Moscow’s entire annual military budget and approximately 25 times more than what Russia has allocated for the special military operation.
And yet, the Kiev regime forces are suffering staggering losses at a rate of nearly 9:1 in Russia’s favor. Worse yet, Russian forces have consistently been outnumbered 2:1 for over a year now, all the while conducting offensive operations in multiple directions simultaneously. It should also be noted that several former high-ranking US/NATO officers have pointed out that the Neo-Nazi junta forces would be among the top three NATO military powers had the Kiev regime been admitted into the belligerent alliance. Given their performance against the Russian military, while having a massive numerical advantage and NATO providing all the targeting data, as well as getting up to 25 times more funding than the Russian forces deployed on the frontlines, should we be surprised by the panic at the Pentagon?
John Kirby, Spokesman for the National Security Council and a former US admiral, was recently asked to comment on the Russian pilots being awarded medals for masterfully downing a US MQ-9 “Reaper” drone, to which he stated they were “idiots, at best”. However, when we compare the US handling of the so-called “balloon controversy”, things become a lot clearer. It took the Pentagon approximately a week to use the F-22 “Raptor”, its most expensive fighter jet, and shoot down weather balloons with missiles costing nearly $450,000 each. In addition, the F-22 is infamous for its flight hour of around $85,000, as well as costing approximately $350 million apiece. According to The Guardian, the price of one of its targets was a meager $12. Worse yet, it took at least two missiles for the “Raptor” to down one of the balloons it engaged.
If we were to compare this to Moscow’s interception of the US drone which took part in the Kiev regime’s attacks on Russian soldiers and civilians, the discrepancy becomes even more staggering. As previously mentioned, Russian pilots downed a US MQ-9 (the latest Block 5, costing over $32 million) without firing a single shot in an action that lasted no longer than 30 minutes. It should also be noted that the Su-27s they were flying cost approximately $15 million, with the flight hour being around $15,000. When considering those facts, Mr. Kirby should double-check the definition of the term “idiot” or maybe take a good look in the mirror, “at best”.
This also brings us to a rather amusing episode that happened in Serbia over two decades ago. Namely, two years after the (hopefully) final direct US/NATO attack (on this day 24 years ago) on Serbia at the end of nearly a decade-long aggression, a delegation from the Pentagon visited Belgrade, including the main Serbian aviation museum. During the tour that included showcasing downed American aircraft, a member of the US group arrogantly asked one of the Serbian officers how it felt fighting the most powerful military force in history, to which he replied: “I wouldn’t know. We never fought the Russians.” At the time it seemed like a jest that the Americans didn’t take too kindly. However, over 20 years later, the statement seems like anything but a joke.
Drago Bosnic is an independent geopolitical and military analyst.
I recently read Lenin’s Tomb, David Remnick’s Pulitzer Prize winning 1993 account of the decay and political collapse of the Soviet Union, and one of the crucial points he emphasized was that Soviet history contained many important “Blank Spots,” deeply suppressed facts or incidents central to the true history of that unfortunate country.
Just as information suppressed by the Soviet authorities had once circulated freely in the West, topics totally banned from today’s Western media are openly discussed in other societies, which possess entirely different taboos.
A few months ago I was contacted by a host for Iranian broadcast television who had decided to feature interviews with a number of Western dissident thinkers, individuals whose controversial views had excluded them from American media outlets. Channel Four of the Iran Broadcasting Corporation is one of that country’s largest, having a potential audience of ten million, and I gladly spent four hours discussing a variety of my topics, while also suggesting a number of other figures who were also interviewed as well.
Thirty-odd segments featuring about a dozen different guests were ultimately recorded, and as they have been aired, they are also being released on a streaming website. About half are now available, including most of my own and those featuring E. Michael Jones, Nick Kollerstrom, Kevin Barrett, and Laurent Guyénot. For more convenient Western access, I had them video-captured and uploaded to a Rumble channel, realizing that many of the taboo topics would immediately trigger a purge on Youtube.
Those of my interviews already broadcast included discussions of the JFK Assassination, the 9/11 Attacks, and the Holocaust, and I was reasonably pleased with how they came out. I’m embedding these video segments below, followed in each case by some of the main articles I had previously published on those particular topics.
The Iraq War was spawned by a deadly combination of political depravity and media complicity. Unfortunately, on the twentieth anniversary of the war, both elements of that conspiracy are being whitewashed. Instead, politicians and their pundit accomplices are prattling as if the Iraq war was a well-intentioned mistake, not a crime against humanity.
In the days after 9/11, when pollsters asked Americans who they thought had carried out the 9/11 attacks, only 3 percent of respondents suggested Iraq or Saddam Hussein as culprits. But President George W. Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney worked ceaselessly to convince Americans that Saddam was the 9/11 culprit. Official propaganda trumpeting the Saddam/al-Qaeda link was the linchpin for exploiting 9/11 to justify war. A February 2003 poll found that 72 percent of Americans believed that Saddam was “personally involved in the September 11 attacks.” Shortly before the March 2003 invasion, almost half of all Americans believed that “most” or “some” of the 9/11 hijackers were Iraqi citizens. Only 17 percent of respondents knew that none of the hijackers was Iraqi.
In his official notification of invasion sent to Congress (in lieu of a declaration of war) on March 18, 2003, Bush declared that he was attacking Iraq “to take the necessary actions against international terrorists and terrorist organizations, including those nations, organizations, or persons who planned, authorized, committed, or aided the terrorist attacks that occurred on September 11, 2001.” Bush tied Saddam to 9/11 even though confidential briefings he received informed him that no evidence of any link had been found. Three years after the war started, Bush publicly admitted that Saddam had nothing to do with 9/11.
On March 17, 2003, Bush also justified invading Iraq by invoking UN resolutions purportedly authorizing the U.S. “to use force in ridding Iraq of weapons of mass destruction.” In a speech giving Saddam 48 hours to abdicate power, Bush declared, “Intelligence gathered by this and other governments leaves no doubt that the Iraq regime continues to possess and conceal some of the most lethal weapons ever devised.” In the weeks and months after the fall of Baghdad, Bush repeatedly asserted that U.S. forces had discovered WMDs or that Saddam had weapons programs. “We found the weapons of mass destruction. We found biological laboratories,” Bush declared to journalists on May 29, 2003. Five weeks later, he again claimed vindication because “we found a biological lab” in a truck trailer. However, CIA investigators concluded that the trailer had nothing to do with an Iraqi WMD program. False claims by the Bush administration on Saddam seeking uranium in Niger sparked an uproar and leaks seeking to destroy the former ambassador who exposed the sham.
In June 2003, Bush repeatedly denounced “revisionist historians” who kept asking about the missing WMDs. In a November 12, 2003 interview with the BBC’s David Frost, Bush declared that he had sent a team to Iraq “to find the weapons or the intent of weapons.” Bush did not reveal how he defined “the intent of weapons.” The following month, Bush told ABC News that the war was justified because there was “the possibility that [Saddam] could acquire weapons.” In January 2004, David Kay—the man Bush chose to head the search for WMDs in Iraq—testified to Congress that “we were almost all wrong,” as far as Iraq possessing WMDs. Kay’s testimony demolished one of the prime pretexts for the war.
Bush responded by portraying the lack of evidence as proof of his courage. On February 8, 2004, Bush justified invading Iraq because Saddam “had the ability to make weapons at the very minimum.” This is like justifying a violent no-knock raid on someone’s house because they could have purchased gunpowder and tin cans.
In a March 2, 2004 speech to Homeland Security Department employees, Bush offered a new justification for invading Iraq: “America will not allow terrorists and outlaw regimes to threaten our Nation and the world with the world’s most dangerous technologies.” The mere suspicion that a nation might have “dangerous technologies” justified devastating their land.
But what did George W. Bush really think? That mystery was solved a few weeks later at the annual Washington dinner for the Radio and Television Correspondents Association.Bush performed a skit featuring slides showing him crawling around the Oval Office peeking behind curtains. Bush quipped to the poohbah attendees: “Those weapons of mass destruction have got to be somewhere…Nope, no weapons over there… Maybe under here?” The crowd loved it and TheWashington Post headlined its report on the evening: “George Bush, Entertainer in Chief.” Greg Mitchell, the editor of Editor & Publisher, labeled the performance and the press’s reaction that night as “one of the most shameful episodes in the recent history of the American media and presidency.”By the time of Bush’s performance, hundreds of American soldiers and tens of thousands of Iraqi civilians had already been killed.
Most of the media had embedded themselves for the Iraq war long before that dinner. The Washington Post buried pre-war articles questioning the Bush team’s shams on Iraq; their award-winning Pentagon correspondent Thomas Ricks complained, “There was an attitude among editors: ‘Look, we’re going to war, why do we even worry about all this contrary stuff?’” Instead, before the war started, the Post ran 27 editorials in favor of invasion and 140 front-page articles supporting the Bush administration’s case for attacking Saddam. PBS’s Bill Moyers noted that “of the 414 Iraq stories broadcast on NBC, ABC and CBS nightly news, from September 2002 until February 2003, almost all the stories could be traced back to sources from the White House, the Pentagon, and the State Department.” Jim Lehrer, the host of government-subsidized PBS Newshour, explained his timidity in 2004: “It would have been difficult to have had debates [about invading Iraq]… you’d have had to have gone against the grain.” Lehrer’s admission did not disgrace him since groveling to officialdom is the job description for Washington journalists.
In his 1971 opinion on the Pentagon Papers case, Justice Hugo Black declared that a free press has “the duty to prevent any part of the government from deceiving the people and sending them off to distant lands to die of foreign fevers and foreign shot and shell.” But during the Iraq War, most of the media preferred to trumpet official lies instead of exposing them.
A 2005 American University survey of hundreds of journalists who covered Iraq concluded: “Many media outlets have self-censored their reporting on the conflict in Iraq because of concern about public reaction to graphic images and details about the war.” Individual journalists commented:
“In general, coverage downplayed civilian casualties and promoted a pro-U.S. viewpoint. No U.S. media show abuses by U.S. military carried out on regular basis.”
“Friendly fire incidents were to show only injured Americans, and no reference made to possible mistakes involving civilians.”
“The real damage of the war on the civilian population was uniformly omitted.”
The media sugarcoated the war and almost always refused to publish photos incriminating the U.S. military. TheWashington Post received a leak of thousands of pages of confidential records on the 2005 massacre at Haditha, including stunning photos taken immediately after Marines killed 24 civilians (mostly women and children). Though the Post headlined its exclusive story, “Marines’ Photos Provide Graphic Evidence inHadithaProbe,” the article noted that “Post editors decided that most of theimages are too graphic to publish.” The Post suppressed the evidence at the same time it continued deferentially reporting official denials that U.S. troops committed atrocities.
In 2007, two Apache helicopters targeted a group of men in Baghdad with 30 mm. cannons and killed kill up to 18 people. Video from the helicopter revealed one helicopter crew “laughing at some of the casualties, all of whom were civilians, including two Reuters journalists.” “Light ’em all up. Oh yeah, look at those dead bastards,” one guy on the recording declared. Army Corporal Chelsea Manning leaked the video to Wikileaks, which disclosed it in 2010. Wikileaks declared on Twitter: “Washington Post had Collateral Murder video for over a year but DID NOT RELEASE IT to the public.” Wikileaks also disclosed thousands of official documents exposing U.S. war crimes and abuses, tacitly damning American media outlets that chose to ignore or shroud atrocities.
In 2007, Fox News talk show host Bill O’Reilly declared that at the beginning of the war in Iraq, “everybody in the country [was] behind it, except the kooks.” The “kooks” included UN weapons inspectors, the head of the International Atomic Energy Agency, and many foreign governments. The “kook” label was also attached to Antiwar.com, The American Conservative, Counterpunch, the Future of Freedom Foundation, and an array of individual journalists who often found closed doors to their submissions.Likewise, the hundreds of thousands (if not millions) of protestors who took to the streets of American cities to oppose the war were redefined into a laughingstock.
In his rush to war, President Bush showed boundless bad faith—followed by boundless righteousness after his lies were exposed. By the summer of 2008, only 22 percent of Americans approved of Bush and 41 percent said he was the “worst president ever.” But the same media outlets that championed the Iraq War helped resurrect Bush’s public image a decade later. Bush was exalted like the second coming of George Washington for his slams against the Trump administration. By early 2018,a poll showed that 61 percent of Americans approved of Bush, and his support among Democrats quintupled, from 11 percent in early 2009 to 54 percent now. The key to Bush’s rehabilitation was burying his Iraq War record in the Memory Hole.
The media played the same trick to expunge its own tawdry Iraq record. Four years ago, the Washington Post spent a king’s ransom to produce and run a Super Bowl ad on its “Democracy Dies in the Darkness” motto. At that time, the Post was whipping up RussiaGate hysteria and reaping torrents of new subscribers. The Super Bowl ad, a paean to reporters, declared, “When we go off to war… knowing keeps us free.”
But kowtowing leaves people dead. Twenty years after the start of the Iraq War, President Biden is dragging America deeper into a foreign conflict that could spiral into World War III. Most of the mainstream media is again parroting whatever the U.S. government or its foreign lackeys say about the Russia-Ukraine conflict.
Lies are political weapons of mass destruction, obliterating all limits on government power. The Iraq War should have taught Americans not to trust presidents or pundits who seek to unleash mass carnage. But don’t trust the Washington elite to ever learn or admit that lesson.
The radioactive substance that contaminated Serbian soil during NATO’s bombing of Yugoslavia in 1999 is still killing people, Dr. Zorka Vukmirovic, former scientific advisor at the Institute of Physics in Belgrade, told Sputnik, commenting on London’s plans to supply Ukraine with depleted uranium shells.
As one of the most glaring examples of the terrible consequences, she pointed to the depleted uranium bombing of a telecommunications station near Vranje in Serbia’s south in the spring of 1999 and the repercussions for the workers who had cleaned up the area around the destroyed facility. Seven of them have already died of cancer, and the eighth is suffering from cancer as well.
“It is a well-known fact that NATO has admitted to having dropped 10 tons of depleted uranium ammunition on the territory of Serbia. It was important to show where these munitions were used. A map was made in consultation with our army, which concluded that it was 15 tons of depleted uranium. The map was supplemented with some locations, and the map turned out to be far larger than NATO was trying to present,” Vukmirovic specified.
According to Dr. Vukmirovic, it is crucial to find places where pollution is still present because that is where people live, grow food and use water.
“The worst consequence is that all the dumped uranium, which gets into the groundwater with the rain, can endanger drinking water. Most of the known sites are along the border with Albania, and most of these sites belong to the Drin River. So it flows into the Adriatic Sea,” the expert said.
Vukmirovic points out that it is essential to clean up contaminated soil and properly dispose of waste throughout Serbia so that everyone can have healthy children.
“If this is not done, there is a great danger. Otherwise, the soil will remain contaminated for billions of years. Another problem is the solubility of uranium in contact with water. Rain dissolves this waste and sends it deeper into the groundwater, which is the source of drinking water,” she noted.
No Accurate Data on Illnesses
Sputnik’s source regrets that the exact number of people who came down with cancer as a result of the attacks with depleted uranium shells is unknown. No one has systematically collected such data.
According to the Institute of Public Health of Serbia, by 2014, 35,319 people nationwide were sick with cancer and 20,806 people had died. That’s more than 5,000 cases per million people, 2.8 times the global average.
In 2016, 22,004 people died, 60.8% more than in 1991.
With an annual mortality increase of 2.8%, Serbia has become the world’s leader in cancer deaths. In the US, for example, which has left the Serbs with tons of depleted uranium, these rates have been falling. During that time, the incidence rate there dropped by 0.6% and the mortality rate by 1.6%.
In a previous article, we described the concept of survivor bias in studies that claimed better outcomes for covid vaccinated women in pregnancy: since the greatest risk to babies occur early in pregnancy, the babies of women who are vaccinated during pregnancy must already have survived the riskiest period.
In fact, a similar survivor bias more generally affects mortality rates for the vaccinated. If you see a study claiming much higher mortality rates of the ‘never vaccinated’ versus the ‘ever vaccinated’ you need to be sure it’s not just a statistical illusion due to survivor bias. This (7 minute) video provides an animated explanation:
The video shows this particular bias is avoided by using ‘person years in each vaccination category’ rather than people in each category. So a person who first gets vaccinated 6 months into a one year study and lives until the end of the year will be counted as 6 months never vaccinated and 6 months ever vaccinated.
The example is, of course, extremely simplified. Ideally, to calculate the correct number of person years in each category we need to know, for each person in the study, the exact date of each vaccination. And we also need to take account of the varying infection rate at different time intervals. That’s because the survivor bias is further exaggerated if (as was the case in most Western nations for the covid vaccines) the initial vaccine roll-out happened during the winter – meaning that fatality rates would inevitably fall anyway as more people were vaccinated. So, irrespective of the vaccine, more deaths were occuring at a time when more people were unvaccinated. Most of those classified as vaccinated would therefore already have survived the initial death peak when first vaccinated.
The ONS attempt to avoid survivor bias, but most reporting organisations and published studies do not
The ONS data on deaths by covid vaccine status uses person years to avoid this kind of survivor bias (although there are other biases not avoided in the ONS data as explained here). However, most studies and reports comparing mortality rates of vaccinated and unvaccinated (whether it is for covid deaths or all-cause deaths) fail to make the adjustment and are therefore overestimating the mortality rate of the unvaccinated while underestimating the mortality rate of the vaccinated.
Death rates are calculated as the number of deaths in each group, divided by the total number of people in this group. This is given per 100,000 people.
So, all of the graphs shown there, such as this one for the USA, are subject to survival bias (one of the tell-tale signs of survivor bias is that the overestimation of the unvaccinated mortality rate will be highest during the time when large numbers of people are still being vaccinated and lowest during periods when there are few new vaccinations):
The regular CDC reports such as this most recent one not only fail to adjust for survivor bias but fail to mention this among the many listed limitations of their analysis. Since, as our simple video example shows, survivor bias makes it inevitable that a placebo vaccine can be shown to reduce mortality and will do so the more jabs you have. Therefore, it is unsurprising that these reports all have to assert the following to keep up the illusion:
All persons should stay up to date with COVID-19 vaccination
Survival bias is just one of the many biases and flaws that have led to massively exaggerated claims of vaccine efficacy and safety
As we have explained several times before there are many biases and flaws in the way covid data is collected and analysed which (curiously) all favour exaggerated claims of vaccine efficacy and safety:
Tucker Carlson accused the NSA of spying on his personal communications when he tried to schedule an interview with Russian President Vladimir Putin. I can corroborate his story.
On March 10, Fox News host Tucker Carlson told the Full Send podcast that the US government “broke into [his] text messages” in the summer of 2021, just months before the launch of Russia’s February 2022 invasion of Ukraine.
Carlson claimed the spying occurred as he was planning a trip to Russia, where he hoped to record a conversation with the country’s president. According to Carlson, he learned of the surveillance after a US government source arranged to meet him in Washington and proceeded to share information with him that only someone with access to his private, personal text messages could have known.
“This person’s like… ‘Are you planning a trip to go see Putin?’ This was the summer before the war started. And I was like, ‘how would you know that? I haven’t told anybody,’” Carlson recalled.
“I was intimidated,” he added. “I’m embarrassed to admit, but I was completely freaked out by it.”
Carlson’s interview with Full Send did not represent the first time he spoke publicly about the NSA’s surveillance of his private communications. On June 28, 2021, Carlson opened his primetime Fox News show with a monologue accusing the Biden Administration of spying on his team, disclosing that an NSA whistleblower had contacted him and “repeated back to us information about a story that we are working on that could have only come directly from my texts and emails.” At the time, he did not disclose specific details about the story in question.
“The NSA captured that information without our knowledge, and did it for political reasons,” the Tucker Carlson Tonight host declared, asserting his source informed him that the Biden Administration planned to “leak” his private texts “in an attempt to take this show off the air.”
Carlson’s colleagues at Fox proceeded to studiously ignore his allegations, while other mainstream news outlets appeared to mock the host for going public with the information. When anonymous NSA officials announced that an internal agency review found “no evidence” to support Carlson’s claims the following month, the corporate press took them at their word.
Amidst the NSA’s denials, however, a report surfaced that seemed to directly support Carlson’s narrative. On July 7, an Axios “scoop” cited unnamed US officials accusing the Fox host of “talking to U.S.-based Kremlin intermediaries about setting up an interview with Vladimir Putin shortly before [he] accused the National Security Agency of spying on him.”
Though the government officials who planted that story remain anonymous, I can confirm the identity of at least one of the “US-based Kremlin intermediaries” in question.
It was me. They lied.
In April 2021, Tucker Carlson told me that he was trying to book an interview with Russian President Vladimir Putin, but that he kept running into roadblocks. Though Tucker knew I previously worked as an anchor and correspondent for the Russian government-funded news channel RT America in Washington DC, he was not asking for my assistance. In fact, I do not believe he even considered that I could help him book the interview in any way.
Regardless, I attempted to assist Tucker’s pursuit of the interview through a senior Russian government contact. Ironically, the contact had not been established through my time at RT America, but my work as a correspondent for The Grayzone, the online outlet that has employed me since early 2019. The Grayzone is fully independent and not connected to Russia or any other government, financially or otherwise.
In July 2019, I traveled to Caracas, Venezuela, to cover a high-level diplomatic meeting of the Non-Aligned Movement. While in Caracas, I met Russia’s Deputy Foreign Minister, Sergey Ryabkov and interviewed him for The Grayzone’s YouTube channel. (Many of the predictions Ryabkov made, including that the US dollar would soon lose its significance in the global economy, are currently playing out as a direct result of US and European sanctions levied in response to the Ukraine war).
Having found his insights on international relations extremely relevant to my coverage of the emerging multi-polar world, I maintained occasional contact with Ryabkov over email in the months following our discussion. When Tucker told me that he was hoping to arrange an interview with Putin, I offered to connect him with Ryabkov.
I had met Tucker in July 2018, when we both covered President Trump’s highly anticipated summit with his Russian counterpart in Helsinki, Finland. Though Tucker had been dispatched to the Finnish capital for an interview with Trump, I personally always believed that a far more interesting conversation would have resulted from an exchange between him and Putin (who was instead left to have a predictably hostile, largely forgettable encounter with Chris Wallace, then of Fox, now at CNN).
When Tucker expressed his desire to interview Putin three years later, I volunteered to put him in contact with Ryabkov by email so they could discuss his plan to visit Russia. I expected to write a basic introductory email, receive a standard “thank you” from both parties, and let Tucker’s team manage communication from there.
Both Tucker and Ryabkov replied to my initial message within hours. Yet their digital exchange took an inexplicable turn.
On the evening of April 16, 2021, I sent a brief email introducing Ryabkov to Tucker. Tucker responded within minutes, informing Ryabkov that he planned to record shows in Russia in the summer of that year. Just over five hours later, Ryabkov replied that he would be happy to talk with Tucker and proposed time slots for a phone call the following week.
I assumed my role was done. Yet on April 20, I received a follow-up email from Ryabkov.
“Strangely, I can not send my message of interest to talk to Mr.Carlson directly to him. I tried it twice with no success,” the diplomat informed me, before asking me to relay his message.
At the time, I did not think much of the issue. I thought that perhaps Tucker’s email service, which was different than mine, had sent the note to spam, or that I had mistyped an email address. In retrospect, however, I should have been suspicious. Both Tucker and Ryabkov had received and replied to my initial message, meaning their respective addresses were typed correctly in the thread. And Ryabkov’s email to Tucker wasn’t going to spam – it was failing to deliver altogether.
The digital communication error between Ryabkov and Tucker was not a one-off event. Weeks later, on May 25, I received a message from Ryabkov’s team explaining that Tucker had failed to reply to a yet another email. They kindly requested I ask Tucker if he had received their message. Once again, he had not.
Roughly one month later, Tucker informed me that a source inside the NSA had contacted him to warn that the US government had caught wind of his effort to interview Putin by spying on his electronic communications. Tucker went public with the story on June 28. As summarized above, virtually every single mainstream reporter, including those at Fox, trusted the denials of the US government rather than rally behind one of their own.
There are three points I must emphasize here. One: it is completely normal and routine for journalists to maintain contact with high-level government sources, domestic or otherwise. Two: it is also normal and routine for journalists to share those connections with trusted colleagues and friends. Three: at the time, I genuinely believed that a Tucker-Putin interview would have moved us closer to peace. Instead, we are currently positioned on the brink of nuclear war.
Oh, and the obligatory fourth point: I am absolutely not a Kremlin operative or “intermediary.” I have no relationship with the Kremlin, and I have not accepted financial support from any state or state-sponsored organization since my departure from RT America in December 2018. Even then, my “relationship” with the Russian government was completely transparent. Would anyone suggest that US or British citizens employed by Al Jazeera, for example, are representatives of the Emir of Qatar? I worked for RT America because they gave me an opportunity to cover the actions of my own country at home and abroad from a perspective that domestic, corporate-run networks would have never allowed. When that reality changed (paradoxically thanks to US, not Russian, government interference), I walked out — but that’s a story for another day.
In truth, even my “Russian” forename is simply a product of the fact that my Indian-American father and American mother could not agree on anything else to call me. So why did US government sources characterize me as a Kremlin intermediary? Do they have any evidence to formally accuse me of being such? Or did they simply dump that information on an unquestioning Axios reporter without even offering them my name?
The answer to the second question is of course, no. The answer to the third: probably. As for the first? Clues can be found in the more recent effort to tarnish Tucker’s reputation through legal machinations and the selective leaking of his private text messages.
Target: Tucker
In March 2021, Dominion Voting Systems filed a $1.6 billion defamation lawsuit against Fox News on the basis that it incurred financial damages as a result of the network’s coverage of the 2020 Presidential Election. Though Tucker is not named in the suit, last year a judge allowed Dominion to seize the Fox host’s private text messages. Within months, the contents of Carlson’s personal texts had made their way to the pages of the Washington Post.
Curiously, coverage of Carlson’s private messages has so far focused on a single comment he made about former President Trump — not Dominion Voting Systems. Earlier this month, mainstream outlets seized on a January 2021 text the Fox host sent one of his producers in which he claimed to “passionately” hate the former president. The story represented an obvious attempt to drive a wedge between Carlson and Trump just before the the 2024 presidential election season officially heats up.
Whether such tactics will succeed in undermining Carlson and Trump’s relationship is a question only they can answer. It is worth noting, however, that Carlson consistently attempted to reorient Trump toward his “America First” agenda throughout the latter’s time in the White House, using his show to offer principled critiques of the former president’s decision to bomb Syria, escalate regime change operations against Venezuela, and assassinate Iranian Major General Qasem Soleimani. In June of 2019, Carlson personally persuaded Trump to reject the advice of his national security team and elect not to retaliate against Iran over its decision to shoot down a US drone that had violated its sovereign airspace. The Fox host’s actions not only averted a deadly US military strike on Iran, but a potential regional war.
For anyone who values peace and diplomatic engagement over military conflict, Carlson’s influence over Trump — and the US public, for that matter — must be regarded as positive. Perhaps that is why the press, including his colleagues at Fox, have refused to publicly denounce the US government’s selective targeting of Tucker. After all, aside from a handful of Fox News hosts who have attempted to cop his anti-interventionist style, the mainstream media are in virtual lockstep when it comes to inciting continued US involvement in the Ukraine conflict.
Tucker is by far the most popular US media figure to consistently denounce Washington’s escalations in the Ukraine battle, articulate the looming reality of World War III, and sound the alarm over the threat of global nuclear war. As if such positions did not threaten powerful forces enough already, last December he even dedicated a lengthy show open to investigating the murder of President John F. Kennedy, revealing a source with “direct knowledge” of classified information told him the CIA did in fact have a hand in the assassination.
Though the campaign to cancel Tucker is largely framed in terms of the culture wars and partisan debate over the events of January 6, it is substantially driven by neoconservative interventionists seeking to muzzle the pro-war Uniparty’s single greatest foe. If the Dominion lawsuit succeeds in bankrupting Fox, or even casting Tucker as the network’s scapegoat, it will have succeeded in punishing the media’s pre-eminent opponent of the escalating Ukraine proxy war.
Which brings us back to the question: why did US government sources characterize me as a “Kremlin intermediary” while feeding a “journalist” information about Tucker’s private texts back in July 2021? The answer is simple: US officials weaponized my mere existence, through innuendo, in order to suggest Tucker was involved with Kremlin agents. By undermining his credibility, they aimed to invalidate his character and by extension, his anti-war positions.
Beyond the financial threat it poses to Fox, the Dominion suit similarly aims to discredit Tucker. And politics aside, it poses a major threat to the First Amendment.
What does the fact that a corporation can sue a media organization over critical coverage, allege financial damage, and gain access to a journalist’s private texts say about a society that claims to value a free press? If Dominion is able to target a company as powerful as Fox in such a manner, what does that mean for those of us who challenge corporate and government interests in independent media? Why aren’t more journalists asking these questions?
And finally, if the Fox-obsessed Beltway press corps is truly so concerned with holding journalists accountable for “knowingly lying” to the public, there is no shortage of willful deceptions to reckon with. After all, this week marks 20 years since the launch of the US military campaign in Iraq, a catastrophic war that was directly enabled by lies its greatest cheerleaders in the press still repeat to this day.
Anya Parampil is a journalist based in Washington, DC. She has produced and reported several documentaries, including on-the-ground reports from the Korean peninsula, Palestine, Venezuela, and Honduras.
By Mazin Qumsiyeh | Popular Resistance | August 18, 2013
There is no way to say this truth nicely: Politicians lie. That includes Japanese, American, Egyptian, Israeli, and Palestinian politicians! Is there something more common sense than that? Yet, so many citizens around the world believe their own politicians or wistfully acknowledge lies but think it is part of the job needed to run things. They believe even when politicians contradict themselves blatantly. This phenomenon is rather remarkable. It is a dissonance and disconnect from reality that many seem oblivious to. It is very dangerous because it can lead to accepting rationales for going to war. These can be deadly wars that lead to millions of lives lost as happened in what was called World War 1 and WW2. Even when incredible and declassified evidence abound, politicians continue to lie and old mythologies refuse to die. Here are just a few of the countless lies told to us over the past few decades… continue
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