A document has revealed that late Colonel Binyamin Gibli, head of Israeli Military Intelligence between June 1950 and March 1955, was directly ordered by then-Defence Minister Pinhas Lavon to bomb US and UK targets in Egypt in 1954, Arab48.com reported on Friday.
Known as Operation Susannah, Gibli ordered nine Egyptian-Jewish undercover agents, members of Unit 131, to bomb UK and US targets.
The bombing aimed to turn the US and UK against then-Egyptian revolutionary leader Gamal Abdul Nasser and push the UK to reverse its decision to withdraw from the Suez Canal, which was nationalised by Abdul Nasser.
Gibli wrote in his biography, which had been banned, that Lavon disowned him after the operation was uncovered.
According to the Israeli newspaper Yedioth Ahronoth, he accused Lavon of: “Throwing him to the dogs and turning him into a scapegoat.”
The operation failed as Egyptian security forces uncovered the unit and arrested its members. One of them committed suicide in prison, two were executed and others spent long periods in jail.
Israeli authorities carried out several investigations into the issue, known as the Lavon Affair, that led to contradictory findings, resignations and political divisions. The case was never closed.
EcoHealth Alliance President Peter Daszak, who worked closely with the Wuhan Institute of Virology, helped steer the media and scientific community away from questions about whether COVID-19 could have originated in a lab, emails released under the North Carolina Public Records Act show.
Emails between Daszak and University of North Carolina virologist Ralph Baric, another collaborator of the laboratory at the pandemic’s epicenter, offer new behind-the-scenes insights into Daszak’s influence. Baric’s experiments with the Wuhan lab included gain-of-function experiments to make viruses more transmissible or virulent.
The White House was dissuaded from investigating the possibility of a lab origin of COVID-19 in part by discussions that included both Daszak and Baric, according to a March 2020 email written by Daszak.
And in a separate May 2020 email, Daszak told Baric that he used talking points intended to discourage reporters from asking questions about potential gain-of-function work on coronaviruses.
Daszak has been a vocal proponent of a natural origin of COVID-19. EcoHealth Alliance has worked closely with the Wuhan Institute of Virology, and received millions in government funding to discover and study animal viruses.
Though the public does not have a complete picture of the pre-pandemic work underway, none of the viruses published by EHA or the WIV could have directly sparked the COVID-19 pandemic.
These new revelations add to the evidence of Daszak’s central role in shaping public perceptions about COVID-19’s origins. He secretlyorganized a statement in the prestigious medical journal The Lancet deeming a lab origin a “conspiracy theory.” He served as the U.S. representative on the 2021 World Health Organization origins investigation in China, which dismissed a lab origin as “extremely unlikely.” He also formerly chaired a Lancet Commission probe into the origins of COVID-19 which was disbanded after Daszak declined to share his grant reports.
No lab release hypotheses ‘anytime soon’
Daszak told Baric in March 2020 that a National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine (NASEM) discussion they participated in helped sway the Trump White House away from examining a possible lab origin of COVID-19.
Daszak and Baric both participated in the task force convened by the National Academies to inform the White House’s science office about information required to determine the origin of the pandemic.
National security staff were on the call, Daszak told Baric. This suggests that biothreat experts guiding the government’s response heard the scientists’ message.
The resulting letter to the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy in 2020 assumed a natural origin. The possibility of a lab-related incident was not mentioned.
Both Daszak and Baric were consulted as experts for the letter.
Daszak seemed to think that this letter he influenced – together with a letter in the journal Nature Medicine beset by conflicts-of-interest – were strong enough to sway White House opinion and prevent NASEM committees from delving into possible lab origins.
“I don’t think this committee will be getting into the lab release or bioengineering hypothesis again any time soon — White House seems to be satisfied with the earlier meeting, paper in Nature and general comments within [the] scientific community,” Daszak told Baric.
After more evidence in favor of a lab origin emerged, including Daszak and Baric’s undisclosed conflicts of interest, the National Academies issued a new statement in 2021 acknowledging that the origin of the pandemic is unknown, and that a lab-related incident is a possibility.
‘I practice lines like that’
In the May 2020 email, Daszak coaches Baric on how to deflect a reporter’s questions on COVID-19’s origins and gain-of-function research.
“I practice lines like that,” Daszak said before suggesting ideas to change the topic, such as vaccines or the risks of natural spillover.
“They [reporters] will eventually move on to that topic. I will from now on make everything extremely clear to reporters about the way this all happens,” he said.
He first recommends saying that gain-of-function research issues have already been resolved by the NIH.
“That’s already been debated extensively and decided on by NIH,” Daszak suggests telling reporters.
(NIH hosted a debate among scientists about the limits of gain-of-function research in the years before the pandemic. New oversight mechanisms were developed in 2017, but many scientists believe these remain too weak and opaque.)
These efforts “clearly show the virus has a natural origin, no evidence of manipulation,” Daszak claimed.
However, neither source proved a natural origin for the pandemic.
Though the National Academies letter did not mention the possibility of a lab leak, discussions that led to the letter mentioned that a novel feature of the SARS-CoV-2 genome called the furin cleavage site could have arisen in a lab.
An early draft of the letter also mentioned the possibility of a lab origin, but the final draft did not.
The Nature Medicine paper, titled “The proximal origin of SARS-CoV-2,” was a correspondence rather than a scientific journal article presenting novel experimental results. Though it had an enormous impact, the paper was fraught with undisclosed conflicts of interest.
Elected as a member to the National Academies in 2018, Daszak was involved in many early discussions that may have influenced the research agenda of the COVID-19 task force advising the federal government.
Daszak also served on this National Academies task force and chaired a separate forum on microbial threats.
Following his nomination to the standing committee, Daszak offered to recuse himself from discussions concerning the origins of Covid-19.
“I got some questions from NAM (National Academies of Medicine) about my relationship to the Wuhan lab, but I explained that it’s purely academic (no funds from China to me), and I offered to recuse myself from any discussions about the conspiracy theories re. lab release or bioengineering,” wrote Daszak to Baric on March 17, 2020.
However, the extent of his recusal is unclear.
Documents written in April 2020 show Daszak on two NAM working groups, one whose goal was to examine “viral genetics, origin, and evolution of SARS-CoV-2.”
Notes in the document suggest their research focused on analyzing how the SARS-CoV-2 genome changed over time and in different countries. This information was needed for the “development of diagnostics and therapeutics” rather than determining how the pandemic began.
Yet in October 2020, Daszak appears to steer National Academy discussions with the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) toward “natural history” hypotheses for the comfort of their Chinese colleagues.
“We discussed ways we could frame a future topic that would allow us to talk about some important issues around the ‘natural history’ of SARS-CoV-2, that might also be comfortable for our Chinese colleagues,” wrote Daszak.
Benjamin Rusek, a senior program officer at the National Academy of Sciences (NAS), appears to adopt or agree with Daszak’s suggestion.
“More discussion on the origin or “natural history” of the virus focused on preventing future outbreaks (since George Gao seems to be open to it) might be possible as well,” wrote Rusek about potential NAS-CAS dialogues.
In an earlier email dated May 7, 2020, Rusek suggests that there are “issues we should probably avoid” during US-China dialogues on COVID-19.
Rusek and Daszak’s sentiments may reflect a desire to maintain scientific collaboration on public health issues of mutual interest amid rising political tensions between China and the U.S. Indeed, joint NAS-CAS meetings focused on Covid-19 public health responses, understanding of the disease, “vaccine development and delivery”, and “immunity, testing, and diagnostics.”
Daszak didn’t respond to requests for comment.
The documents reported on in this article were obtained from the University of North Carolina through litigation under the North Carolina Public Records Act. Documents obtained by U.S. Right to Know about COVID-19 origins and risky virological research can be found here.
Emily Kopp is an investigative reporter with U.S. Right to Know.
Karolina Corin, Ph.D., is a staff scientist with backgrounds in both engineering and biology.
The CIA is withholding evidence that it knew Lee Harvey Oswald, the “lone gunman” who allegedly killed then-US president John F. Kennedy in 1963, was involved in anti-Cuban covert ops just months before the assassination, journalist Jefferson Morley has claimed.
Not only was the agency aware of his activities, they never told the Warren Commission – the ostensibly independent body tasked with investigating Kennedy’s killing. They even went so far as to deny they had any knowledge of them at all, Morley – a prominent JFK researcher – stated at a press conference held by the Mary Ferrell Foundation on Monday.
“What the CIA is hiding is what they’ve always hidden, which is their sources and methods as they relate to Lee Harvey Oswald,” he said. “We’re talking about smoking-gun proof of a CIA operation involving Lee Harvey Oswald.”
According to the journalist, Oswald was involved in an operation aimed at discrediting American supporters of Cuban communist leader Fidel Castro.
Morley bases his claims on the files of CIA agent George Joannides, who worked with anti-Castro Cuban exile groups. At least 44 documents in Joannides’ files are still classified by the CIA and, he said, could provide further insight into the apparent effort to present Oswald as an “unhinged pro-Castro figure.”
The Mary Ferrell Foundation sued the Biden administration and the National Archives in October, demanding the release of 16,000 classified documents on the JFK assassination that were ordered unsealed by former president Bill Clinton in 1992.
While most experts don’t believe the trove contains irrefutable evidence of CIA or other government involvement in Kennedy’s murder, many suspect they include information on the agency’s contacts with Oswald prior to the killing. Morley has previously sued the CIA in an effort to have the Joannides files declassified, but has been unsuccessful so far.
READ MORE: America’s most controversial pathologist dissects JFK’s assassination in explosive new book
JFK had fallen out with the CIA in the months before his death due to the Cuban Missile Crisis and the Bay of Pigs disaster, which he saw as an attempt to railroad the US into war with Cuba. The agency was deeply involved in the anti-Castro movement in the US, and Oswald, who returned to the US in 1962 after defecting to the Soviet Union two and a half years earlier, was involved in the local “Fair Play for Cuba” movement.
In 2008, American President George Bush announced that he would disregard the 1999 peace agreement and support an independent Kosovo protected by NATO. Russia and Serbia condemned this unilateral action. The United States had used massive force to bomb the European state of Serbia without United Nations approval and then violated a peace agreement to redraw its national boundaries while establishing a new American military base in Serbia.
The rapid growth and aggressiveness of NATO concerned Russian leaders, but it was the building of American missile bases in Eastern Europe that alarmed them. In 2009, President Barack Obama announced that American missile bases would be built in Romania and Poland capable of hitting Moscow with long-range cruise missiles. This was a flagrant violation of the Founding Act that barred new NATO bases and the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty. The Soviet Union had disbanded and freed Eastern Europe after assurances that NATO forces would not move east. Yet NATO forces gradually moved east and now assembled on Russian borders and included German troops, from a nation that had invaded Russia twice the past century.
NATO troops also appeared in Ukraine and in Georgia on Russia’s southern border. Russian President Putin appealed to European leaders to stop this madness, noting that efforts for American military domination of all of Europe could lead to war.
Climate fanatics demand that we stop driving, flying on holidays, eating meat and completely change our lives. But it’s not enough. We must have fewer children and decrease in numbers overall to save the planet, these self-proclaimed world-improvers claim. Otherwise, we are all threatened by overpopulation, despite the fact that in the West and large parts of the world we have a population decrease.
Their demands seem to be met when the number of new-born children has suddenly begun to drop dramatically and alarmingly.
We have all heard about the climate and overpopulation threat. But those who preach this rarely talk about the fact that it is almost only in Africa that there is a very large population growth, while in the West and large parts of the rest of the world there is a de facto population decrease.
We can expect this milestone to be used extensively in the globalists’ propaganda going forward. It is important then that we remember that countries like Japan can barely take care of their many elderly people and that millions of empty houses are now standing and decaying there. Or that rural areas are being depopulated in Sweden and other developed countries, so that in many places it is no longer possible to get even basic services. This despite the fact that the long-term trend of moving to the cities has reversed in many countries.
In Sweden, fertility has slowly fallen from 1.91 children per woman in 2012, to 1.67 children per woman in 2021. Each woman must have 2.1 children on average to keep the population stable. So despite mass immigration for a long time, also of predominantly fertile groups, the net birth rate in Sweden continues to shrink year by year. This is how it looks throughout the Western world. But despite that, we will be forced to change our lives and give birth to fewer children. The propaganda for this and other things that achieve the same result, such as abortion or same-sex relations, is much stronger in the West than in Africa. The globalists’ dream now seems to be coming true.
Sweden’s low birth rate, which had a stable downward trend over time, has suddenly collapsed this year. In Stockholm, the number of births has decreased by 14 percent in the first quarter of 2022, compared to 2021. And it’s not just in Stockholm, fertility has dropped all over Sweden.
– It is a drastic and remarkable reduction beyond the ordinary. We have never seen anything like this before, that the bottom completely disappears in just one quarter, Gunnar Andersson, professor of demography at Stockholm University, told Dagens Nyheter in July.
On 28 October, Åland’s Statistics and Investigations Agency presented a report called “Population movements in the third quarter of 2022”. Already in the subtitle we can read that “Fewer births and more deaths have reduced this year’s population growth”. From the statistics we can then deduce that the number of births has decreased by 15.6 percent compared to the same time last year and that 13.3 percent more have died.
It looks similar or worse across Europe and large parts of the world. In the Netherlands and Germany, for example, the negative figures for the number of births this year are 11 and 12 percent, respectively. Taiwan saw an alarming 27.7 percent drop – over a quarter – in birth rates for the month of June this year. At the beginning of October, Taiwan’s Ministry of the Interior released statistics for the month of September, where it appeared that the country’s population decreased by 1 percent since September 2021. It is almost a doubling compared to the previous year, September 2020 to September 2021.
Newly released data from the Australian Bureau of Statistics ABS shows that from October to November 2021 there was a 21 per cent drop in the number of births compared to the ten-year average. From November to December 2021, just one month later, the figure was a frightening 63 percent. The information is said to be preliminary and may therefore be revised, but it nevertheless shows that something is not right. The December figure also coincides with the fact that approximately nine months have passed, the time for a pregnancy, since the corona vaccine was given on a larger scale in Australia.
MISCARRIAGE AND STILLBIRTH IN THE US between the years 1990 and 2022 where a reaction to a vaccine is listed as the cause. The increase is dramatic after mass vaccinations for the corona began around the turn of the year 2020-2021. There are fewer this year, because the statistics are lagging. There are also significantly fewer who took booster injections this year than those who received the first two doses in 2021, something some believe could possibly come into play. Systematic underreporting also means that there are usually at least 100 times more cases in reality. Source & graphics: OpenVAERS
A chart (above) is circulating on social media showing the number of miscarriages and stillbirths in the United States between the years 1990 and 2022 where a reaction to vaccines is listed as the cause. This is a dramatic increase over the past two years. Globalist-sponsored “fact checkers” quickly pounced, describing the chart as “misleading.” Reuters’ main argument for it was that it “contradicts the growing evidence that vaccines are safe during pregnancy”, something that goes completely against all the statistics that are starting to come out this year around the world. They then make a point of the graph coming from a “privately run website”, without mentioning that it is about OpenVAERS – a site that takes raw data directly from authority-run VAERS and gives the public the opportunity to use a simplified interface to search otherwise difficult-to-access government statistics.
Reuters then says that there were not 3 500 miscarriages and stillbirths at all in 2021, but they find in VAERS only 2 608 such cases linked to “vaccinations”. However, Reuters only finds 53 miscarriages and stillbirths for 2019. We can state that the “fact checkers” themselves thus admit an increase of 4 820 percent when comparing the years 2019 and 2021.
As final “proof” that the corona vaccine has nothing to do with the dramatic increase in miscarriages and stillbirths, they point out that the data in VAERS is only reported, but not investigated. However, they omit that several research reports over the years – such as the well-known Lazarus report – concluded that “less than 1 percent of all vaccine adverse events are reported”. This means that the already terrifying numbers are at least 100 times higher in reality. However, the reports were made before the alleged pandemic, so it can be assumed that health professionals, after the aggressive vaccine propaganda, are even more reluctant to report suspected vaccine injuries.
If the Corona vaccine is so “safe”, then why is this suddenly happening all over the world? And why is it so important for the establishment and its media to cover up everything that shows that vaccines are harmful, from clear statistics and new reports to scientists and doctors sounding the alarm? Shouldn’t it be natural for the authorities, with demands from massive drives in the media, to investigate what is happening and the bad wit? But the media is not doing its job, and neither are the regulatory agencies that exist solely to protect us from this very thing. If they do not do their duty, the alternative media and the people remain. It is high time to demand answers from politicians and the health establishment, especially those who have pushed for vaccinations – not infrequently in such a way that people felt forced to be inoculated against their will.
Who knew that the House of Lords had a Committee on Climate Change? I didn’t until I heard about the report published on October 12 titled In Our Hands: behaviour change for climate and environmental goals. It’s worth an examination to see just what these unelected, self-important individuals on the Upper House’s Environment and Climate Change Committee would like to impose on us proles.
Right at the start we read in the summary that they consider there to be a twin crisis of climate change and nature loss which demands an immediate and sustained response. Analysis by the committee suggests that without behavioural change now the Net Zero target of 2050 is not achievable. Their lordships and ladyships have kindly identified for us that 32 per cent of emission reductions up to 2035 require decisions by individuals and households to adopt low-carbon technologies and choose low-carbon products and services as well as reduce carbon-intensive consumption.
They think that polling shows that we are clamouring for leadership on this and are eagerly waiting to be told how to modify our behaviour to help achieve the 2050 target. They write that behavioural science evidence and best practice show that a combination of policy levers, including regulation and fiscal incentives, must be used by government, alongside clear communication, as part of a joined-up approach to overcome the barriers to making low-carbon choices.
They go on: ‘Fairness is key to effective behaviour change and now more than ever must be at the heart of policy design. As the country faces a cost-of-living crisis, the Government must tailor behaviour change interventions to avoid placing a burden on those who can least afford it. The Government must also work with the many groups and organisations at different levels of society who have a critical role in securing behaviour change for climate change and the environment. Businesses are in a position to enable behaviour change through increasing the affordability and availability of greener products and services and engaging customers and employees, but need direction from government if they are to act against their immediate financial interests. Numerous civil society organisations and local authorities work tirelessly to deliver behaviour change projects on a local level, and their efforts should be both supported and celebrated better by central Government.
‘Lessons can be learned from both successful and unsuccessful behaviour change interventions in other policy areas. Most notably, the widespread behaviour change brought about by the Covid-19 pandemic. We recognise that the changes demanded by the pandemic were seen as a short-term response to a short-term emergency, nonetheless it will be a major missed opportunity if the Government does not seize the chance to evaluate behaviour change interventions implemented during the pandemic and apply lessons learned.’
Chapter 1 says they found that we cannot rely on large-scale and unproven technologies alone to achieve the transition to Net Zero. Behaviour change is also needed. This means the whole country needs to be engaged in this immense challenge – every government department, every layer of devolved and local government, every business, every charity, civil society group and faith community, and every household. Leadership and co-ordination from the Government are vital.
In Chapter 2, Behaviour Change: Why, What and Who, the report says that many witnesses said behaviour change is needed to achieve net zero emissions by 2050 and to comply with international obligations under the Paris Agreement. Of course they did. They quote witness Sir Patrick Vallance, the government Chief Scientific Adviser (for it is he): ‘The reality is that behaviour change is a part of reaching Net Zero. It is unarguable.’ It seems we’re not even to be allowed to debate it.
The Tony Blair Institute for Global Change stirs the pot too: Tim Lord, Associate Senior Fellow at the Institute, said: ‘There is not a counterfactual where we carry on as we are and everything is okay. A world of 2.5, 3 or 3.5 degrees of warming will also require significant behavioural changes in other respects.’
Chapter 3 details the public’s appetite for change. It starts by quoting the Tory MP and minister Greg Hands, who says: ‘We know that the public are keen to play their part. The BEIS Public Attitudes Tracker shows that 85 per cent of the public are concerned or, indeed, very concerned about climate change. That number has doubled since 2016.’ This is backed up by paragraphs detailing the wailing and gnashing of teeth, particularly among the young (just who was it who scared them?) They go on to claim that most of the UK public support some form of action by the Government and others to address climate change and environmental issues.
Subsequent chapters go on to discuss theories, drivers and levers of change, read-across from other policy areas, delivering behaviour change in partnership, challenges and opportunities, communications and the Government’s approach and role. You won’t be surprised to read that the infamous Behavioural Insights Team, or Nudge Unit, will be heavily involved.
The report runs to 140 pages including appendices. It’s worth having a read if only to click on the links of the committee members so you can see just who is behind this and what their outside interests are. Lord (Peter) Lilley stands out as the only one fighting any rearguard action. He lost the vote 1-11.
Not to be outdone, the ‘independent’ Climate Change Committee (not to be confused with the HoL Committee on CC) is getting in on the act of behavioural change too. Its report has been produced by Imperial College London (what could possibly go wrong?) It covers behavioural change in surface transport, aviation, domestic heating and shifting to ‘sustainable ‘diets (pass the mealworms).
An outlier but helping to pull this all together is the Human Behavioural Change Project, sponsored by the Wellcome Trust and UCL among others, which is developing AI systems to scan, organise and interpret human behaviour-change literature. A few clicks on the website leads you, under Grant Holders, to the director, our communist friend Professor Susan Michie. Well, who’d have thought it?
It’s probably a good idea to be up to date on this stuff, or at least have it downloaded and available, just so we know what’s coming down the track: this should enable adequate avoidance, non-compliance and/or resistance.
The recent visit of Iran’s deputy foreign minister for political affairs, Ali Bagheri Kani, to New Delhi manifested a new chapter of relations between the traditional allies, India and Iran.
India, which used to be among the largest buyers of Iranian oil, stopped its crude imports from Iran in May 2019 after the US banned oil trade with Iran by lifting sanction waivers, a year after Washington unilaterally walked out of the landmark nuclear deal.
The imprudent move resulted in bilateral trade between the two countries nose-diving to $2 billion in the fiscal year 2021-22, compared to $16 billion in 2018-19.
Since the outbreak of war in Ukraine in late February, Russia has slowly edged past other oil-rich countries to become India’s largest crude supplier, with New Delhi refusing to join the Western charade of anti-Moscow sanctions and prioritizing its energy security.
That has opened a window of opportunity for Tehran and New Delhi to recalibrate their ties, and resume oil trade, in defiance of Western sanctions.
According to reports, New Delhi is strongly considering the resumption of oil imports from Tehran amid the simmering energy crisis in the country and no help from the Western countries.
India prioritizing energy security
Deepika Saraswat, an associate fellow at New Delhi-based Manohar Parrikar Institute for Defense Studies and Analyses, asserts that New Delhi prioritizes its energy security.
“New Delhi’s purchase of oil from Russia despite the Western sanctions on the country showed the importance of energy security given the context of high energy prices and supply constraints,” Saraswat told the Press TV Website.
“Therefore, India has been an important voice supporting the return of Iranian and Venezuelan oil to the market,” she hastened to add, hinting at the resumption of the Iran-India oil trade.
Bagheri, during his visit to New Delhi, reportedly delivered Tehran’s message to Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi on the country’s willingness and preparedness to resume oil trade with New Delhi.
“Not a choice but a necessity,” Bagheri was quoted as saying on the importance of closer India-Iran ties.
“Both countries enjoy different types of cooperation in the economic sphere. They are partners and complete each other. Iran enjoys a huge energy resource, and thus it can provide energy supplies to India,” Bagheri told the Indian media.
Bagheri’s visit to New Delhi and discussion about oil trade came weeks after the Iranian ambassador to India, Iraj Elahi, stressed the importance of a close partnership between the two sides.
“There is no doubt that Iran and India were the best friends in dealing in oil. Iran was [meeting] the oil needs of India. But unfortunately, cooperation was affected by sanctions,” the envoy said.
“We always express our readiness to increase our economic ties with India. It’s up to India, we are ready to deliver oil.”
Oil trade and sanctions
In September, Tehran had called on New Delhi to resume oil purchases from the country, “ignoring unilateral” sanctions imposed by the US, similar to what New Delhi has done with Russian oil by skirting western sanctions.
Saurabh Kumar Shahi, a New Delhi-based journalist and commentator who mostly covers the Middle East region, is also of the opinion that New Delhi must go ahead with oil purchases from Iran.
“India should not be afraid of the illegal unilateral sanctions imposed on Iran by the US,” he told the Press TV Website in an interview.
Saraswat, referring to the new Iranian government’s ‘look eastward’ policy, said it means Tehran’s relations with regional countries will only improve.
“Since the new government came to power in Iran, its ‘Asian orientation’ in economic diplomacy means that relations with countries like China, Russia, and India have become a priority,” she stressed.
“Foreign Minister Abdollahian’s visit in June gave a much-needed boost to India-Iran ties, especially the commitment the two countries have shown in charting out a long-term roadmap for their relationship.”
Amid the changing geopolitical dynamics, New Delhi has begun to assert itself on the world stage, with top ministers defending the decision to continue importing oil from Russia.
India’s petroleum minister Hardeep Puri during his visit to Washington in October said New Delhi “will buy oil from wherever it has to”, pointing to the country’s new, vibrant foreign policy.
Saraswat said India has a “tradition” of independent foreign policy that is based on the country’s “own national interest calculus.”
What goes around comes around
Amid the raging Ukraine war and the end of the unipolar world order, the power center is gradually shifting towards Asia, according to observers, which means the death of the American hegemony.
The main protagonists of the new world order are Russia, China, Iran and India.
This political atmosphere could act as a perfect catalyst to resurrect different spheres of the relationship between New Delhi and Tehran, according to observers.
“The world is changing at a fast pace, and the Western order is slowly starting to collapse, under these circumstances India also wants to secure its interests in the region and beyond,” Shahi said.
“And in securing those interests, Russia and Iran are very, very important pillars as far as India is concerned,” he hastened to add.
With Iran set to join the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) and the BRICS grouping, of which Russia, China, and India are already core members, the future belongs to these countries.
However, not everything is hunky-dory as inimical forces are at play to prevent the partnership between New Delhi and Tehran from blossoming further.
New Delhi has a strategic alliance with the US and it is also part of groups such as I2U2 (India, Israel, US, and UAE), QUAD (United States, Australia, India, and Japan), which may act as obstructions.
“This relationship has not been performing as it should have, as India valued an alliance with the US, it dithered a lot about some of the responsibilities it had towards Iran,” Shahi explained.
Saraswat, however, believes that India has a “tradition of strategic autonomy”.
“It (India) does not believe in alliances against a third state, but partnerships based on mutual interests. In West Asia, India pursues a balanced policy of expanding relations with all key countries,” she said.
Where there’s a will, there’s a way
Amid the disruptions in international trade and transport routes caused by the Ukraine war and Western sanctions on Russia, Iran has emerged as a transit and transport hub connecting China and Central Asia to Europe, and also Russia with India along the International North–South Transport Corridor (INSTC).
Iran’s geological location in the region is such that it becomes the gateway for India to the INSTC that has sea, rail and road routes between India, Russia, Iran, Europe and Central Asia.
“The INSTC is an important route that links South Asia with Eurasia, it becomes important for India to be a part of it in a more proactive way,” said Shahi.
For India, the gateway to this route is the Chabahar Port in Iran’s southeastern Sistan and Baluchistan province. It not only provides key access to India to reach landlocked countries such as Afghanistan but also acts as the gateway for New Delhi and Tehran’s shared interests in the energy sector, in connecting resource-rich Central Asia to the Indian Ocean and their common security challenges in Afghanistan.
In New Delhi, Bagheri also stressed the importance of the development of the port, saying the project is not only important for Iran and India, but also for other countries in the region as it has a key role in the completion of the INSTC and connectivity in the region.
“In the last two decades, Iran has emerged as the pivot of India’s connectivity to Central Asia, wider Eurasia and also its development and humanitarian role in Afghanistan,” Saraswat said.
Shahi says India is now looking for its interests in the region, bypassing the threat of US sanctions.
In early November, during his address at the 21st Meeting of SCO Council of Heads of Government (CHG), Jaishankar underlined the potential of the Chabahar port in Iran for the economic future of the grouping, saying India will “unlock” the “economic potential” of this (SCO) region in which Chabahar port and the International North-South Transport Corridor could become “enablers.”
“The SCO provides a multilateral framework for India to further cooperation on key issues of counter-terrorism, connectivity with Central Asian countries and regional stability,” said Saraswat.
“With Iran soon becoming a full member of the grouping, the two countries will benefit from their shared positions on several issues of connectivity via Chabahar, on Afghanistan among other things.”
Saurabh said as the world moves towards multipolarity, India and Iran “will need each other’s help”.
Mehdi Moosvi is an Indian journalist, presently based in Tehran.
It has become almost certain that the new Israeli Minister of Defence will be retired General Yoav Gallant.
Gallant was elected to the Knesset in 2015, within the Kulanu Party led by former Finance Minister Moshe Kahlon, but he defected from it and joined the Likud Party led by former and future Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on the eve of the 2019 Israeli elections.
Galant, who was a minister in Netanyahu’s second government in 2009, was a member of the Israeli cabinet for political and security affairs. He is a reserve general in the Israeli army, and previously served as commander of the southern region in the occupation army. He is wanted in several European countries on charges of committing war crimes and crimes against humanity.
Galant, who has also served as Minister of Construction and Housing, had threatened to assassinate the head of the Hamas movement in the Gaza Strip, Yahya Sinwar, if the Al-Qassam Brigades and the resistance factions began a military escalation against the occupation army.
Speaking to Israel’s the MediaLine website, Galant said that if Israel loses the Negev, it will also lose Tel Aviv and Jerusalem later, and accused the Palestinians in the territories occupied in 1948 of committing criminal acts on a national basis. He claimed that “those who wanted to throw the Jewish people in the sea by using violence and war failed to implement their plans, but a group of them did not abandon their dreams, principles and ideas, and some ‘Israeli Arabs’ do not surrender or recognise the State of Israel, and they certainly do not accept the idea of having one sovereignty over this land, only the Zionist sovereignty.”
A confession by former German chancellor Angela Merkel regarding the true nature of the Minsk agreements – a roadmap for peace in Ukraine that was brokered by Berlin – could be used as evidence in a tribunal involving Western politicians responsible for provoking the ongoing conflict between Moscow and Kiev, Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova has said.
The former German leader admitted in an interview with Die Zeit on Wednesday that the actual purpose of the Minsk agreements was to give Ukraine time to prepare for a military confrontation with Russia.
“They talk a lot about legal assessments of what is happening around Ukraine, certain tribunals and so on in all sorts of ways,” Zakharova said during a media briefing on Thursday. “But this is a specific reason for a tribunal.”
She claimed that Merkel’s comments were nothing short of the testimony of a person who had openly admitted that everything done between 2014 and 2015 was meant to “distract the international community from real issues, play for time, pump up the Kiev regime with weapons, and escalate the issue into a large-scale conflict,” Zakharova added.
She said Merkel’s statements “horrifyingly” reveal that the West uses “forgery as a method of action,” and resorts to “machinations, manipulation and all kinds of distortions of truth, law and rights imaginable.”
The spokeswoman claimed that the West had known well in 2015, when it spent hours negotiating the second part of the Minsk accords, that it would never even attempt to fulfill any part of the agreements and would instead pump weapons into Kiev.
“They did not feel sorry for anyone: women, children, the civilian population of Donbass or the whole of Ukraine. They needed a conflict and they were ready for it back then, in 2015,” Zakharova said.
Earlier this month, a number of Western officials called for the creation of a special UN-backed court to investigate alleged war crimes committed by Russia during its ongoing military campaign in Ukraine.
The Kremlin has said the West has no legal or moral right to set up any courts to investigate or prosecute Russia over the conflict, which Moscow claims was ultimately provoked by the US and its allies.
Russian servicemen have alleged they endured brutal torture while being held captive by Kiev’s forces. The country’s Investigative Committee announced on Wednesday that it will be launching a criminal investigation into the abuse claims.
According to testimony published on the armed service’s official Telegram channel, Russian soldiers were subjected to merciless interrogations. One fighter alleged he was taken prisoner when he was already wounded, having had a bone in his right hand broken by a bullet. He claims that Ukrainian interrogators beat him with a shovel and with rebar, shot him in both feet, broke his jaw, several ribs and punctured his lungs.
Another soldier claimed his interrogation began with a knife stab to the leg, which caused severe bleeding that remained untreated. When his captors didn’t like his answers, they beat him with thumps and kicks, and then with a helmet or the with butt of a rifle, he alleged. After the interrogation ended, the soldier testified that he was held down by three men as a fourth cut off one of his fingers.
He also claims that he was forced to sign an agreement to cooperate with Ukrainian special services, under a threat of murder and harm to his loved ones.
The Investigative Committee has also stated that “the testimonies of Russian military personnel indicate that representatives of Ukraine are grossly violating the requirements of the Geneva Convention on the Treatment of Prisoners of War, which prohibit ill-treatment, torture and abuse.”
Investigators say they will continue to work with the Ministry of Internal Affairs, the Federal Security Service and Russia’s Defense Ministry to identify those responsible for the murder and torture of civilians and of captured Russian servicemen. The committee has vowed to record all evidence of brutal crimes committed by Kiev’s forces.
Оn Tuesday Moscow and Kiev conducted their latest prisoner exchange in the 60-60 format, where both sides released 60 captive soldiers who were considered to be in “mortal danger.” The released Russian servicemen have since been transported to Moscow to undergo treatment and rehabilitation, and to receive psychological and medical assistance.
Eighty-one years ago today, Japanese forces attacked Pearl Harbor, Hawaii. The attack killed 2,335 military personnel and 68 civilians. It also damaged or destroyed 19 U.S. Navy ships, including 8 battleships. December 7, 1941, was, President Franklin Roosevelt stated, a “date that would live in infamy.”
What will also live in infamy is that Roosevelt wanted the Japanese to attack the United States, so that he could achieve his objective of embroiling the United States in World War II.
Ever since the attack on Pearl Harbor, there has been a running controversy over whether Roosevelt knew that the attack on Pearl was imminent and turned a blind eye to it. Regardless of how one comes out on that controversy, it is beyond any reasonable doubt that Roosevelt wanted the Japanese to attack the United States. Why, even some Roosevelt apologists praise him for this, arguing that he was a far-sighted statesman who saved America and the world from a Nazi takeover.
FDR was a crafty politician, one who was a master of political intrigue and manipulation. When he was running for an unprecedented third term in 1940, he said, “And while I am talking to you, mothers and fathers, I give you one more assurance. I have said this before, but I shall say it again, and again and again. Your boys are not going to be sent into any foreign wars.”
Roosevelt was lying. In fact, he was doing everything he could to embroil the United States in the European war.
When Roosevelt made that statement, he knew that he was playing to the overwhelming sentiment of the American people. Having experienced the disaster of World War I, Americans wanted no part of a second world war. Roosevelt knew that. He also knew that if he disclosed that he wanted the United States to get embroiled in the war, he stood a good chance of losing the election. To guarantee his reelection, he felt he had to lie.
Why didn’t Roosevelt simply send his army to attack Nazi Germany? After all, that’s what American presidents do today when they perceive a foreign threat. The answer is that this was still a period of time when U.S. presidents complied with the declaration-of-war requirement in the Constitution. It prohibits the president from waging war without first securing a declaration of war from Congress.
Given the overwhelming anti-interventionist sentiment among the American people, FDR knew that he would never be able to get Congress to issue a declaration of war against Nazi Germany, unless Germany were to attack first. In that case, he knew that a congressional declaration of war would come easily.
FDR began his machinations by doing everything he could to provoke the Germans into attacking U.S. vessels in the Atlantic. In that way, he could exclaim, “We’ve been attacked! Now, give me my declaration of war!” But the Nazi regime knew what FDR was up to and refused to take the bait.
That was when Roosevelt turned to the Pacific, in the hope that a Japanese attack on the United States would give him a “back door” to the war against Germany.
That’s what FDR’s oil embargo against Japan was all about. Japan had invaded China and was occupying the country. Its war machine necessarily depended on a continuous supply of oil. The purpose of FDR’s embargo was to prevent Japan from acquiring that badly needed oil.
FDR’s oil embargo was remarkably successful. It maneuvered Japan into a position of having to make a choice: Either invade the Dutch East Indies to secure its oil supplies or meekly withdraw its military forces from China. (As an aside, it’s worth mentioning that more recently, U.S. officials, operating through NATO, maneuvered Russia into having to make a similar choice: Either accept Ukraine’s membership in NATO, which would enable the Pentagon to station its nuclear missiles and troops along Russia’s border, or invade Ukraine to prevent that from happening.)
Not surprisingly, Japan decided to invade the Dutch East Indies rather than withdraw from China. But Japan knew that the invasion stood the risk of the U.S. Navy interfering with its operations in the Dutch East Indies. That was what the attack on Pearl Harbor was for — to knock out the U.S. Pacific fleet so that Japan would have a free hand in securing those oil supplies in the Dutch East Indies.
In other words, Japan never planned or intended to invade the United States, either at Pearl Harbor or at the U.S. West coast. They knew that they lacked the personnel, the logistics, and the supply lines necessary to undertake such a monumental endeavor. They knew that if they invaded the West coast, they would end up getting massacred.
Thus, their aim in attacking Pearl Harbor was very limited. They just wanted to knock out the Pacific fleet so that it couldn’t interfere with their invasion and occupation of the Dutch East Indies. While they knocked out several battleships and other vessels at Pearl, what they didn’t know was that the wily Roosevelt had cannily removed his aircraft carriers before the attack. That action, along with having broken Japanese military codes, enabled U.S. Naval forces to later defeat the Japanese in the Pacific.
Immediately after the Japanese attack at Pearl, Nazi Germany declared war on the United States. The U.S. Congress naturally responded with a declaration of war against both Germany and Japan. The wily Roosevelt had gotten what he wanted — U.S. entry into World War II.
As US officials travel the world lecturing everyone on human rights, that same world has accused Washington of being the number one human rights violator. Saudi Arabia’s war against Yemen, instigated and widely supported by the West and the United States in particular, is a prime example of this.
On March 25, 2015, the then Saudi Arabian Ambassador to the United States, Adel al-Jubeir, under pressure from the American ruling circles, declared war on Yemen. This was done specifically from the American capital, Washington. He said that the military action would be “aimed at protecting the people of Yemen,” adding that “the operation will be limited in nature.”
The alleged “limited in nature” war has already turned into eight years of almost daily aerial bombardments in the provinces of the Saudi kingdom’s southern neighbor. Prior to the war, Yemeni officials argued that Riyadh controlled nearly every sector of Yemeni society, from the economy to culture, and that the time had come for independence, sovereignty and territorial integrity. This war still brings innumerable hardships and misfortunes to the Yemenis, from which the “democratic” United States shamelessly capitalizes.
The list of US support for the Saudi war in Yemen is so long that senior Yemeni officials say it was America that started the war against their country, using the Saudis and other Gulf kingdoms as its “proxies.” Human rights organizations accuse other Western countries of complicity in what they call war crimes against the defenseless Yemeni people. But the same “democratic” United States remains conspicuously silent about this, forbidding not only its own, but also the Western media to write about this massacre in negative terms.
In March 2015, a Bacchanalia of American politicians, economists and financiers emerged, who all together and individually simply pitted Riyadh against Yemen. Even the American media did not hide this interest in unleashing another war on the Arabian Peninsula. First, there were huge orders from the Saudis for the purchase of a wide variety of weapons, and the American military-industrial complex was loaded to capacity, with work conducted in three shifts. It is quite natural that the prices for these weapons were very high, and the Saudis did not even discuss them, buying weapons in bulk for a future war. Second, having got stuck in this difficult war against the fraternal Yemeni people, Riyadh could not take any independent steps on the world stage, obediently trailing in the wake of Washington’s policy. And besides, the Washington administration was pleased that the Yemenis had been “taught a lesson” by the Saudis, avenging the unsuccessful drone war against Yemen that the Pentagon had unleashed and pursued for a whole decade.
When war broke out in Yemen, the US Department of Defense immediately provided hundreds of billions of dollars worth of weapons to the Saudi-led coalition. Among the many other types of support the US provided to the Saudis during the war was intelligence products to be targeted by US-made Saudi warplanes. The Pentagon has also provided military advice and logistical support, such as air-to-air refueling of military aircraft, while Washington said it had authorized US contractors to service Saudi military aircraft.
But the war did not go quite as America had planned. Washington simply did not expect the brave resistance of the Yemeni people and their staunch support for the popular revolution led by the Houthi movement (officially called Ansar Allah). The Pentagon had to urgently intervene in hostilities, supplying not only modern weapons, but also air defense systems. And yet, the Yemenis delivered several sensitive strikes against Saudi forces, including successfully shelling an oil field and refinery on Saudi territory. These actions led to a surge in oil prices and sowed panic among the ruling circles in Saudi Arabia.
But the war has created an extremely difficult situation for civilians living in the poorest country in Western Asia. Especially for Yemeni children who are suffering from untold humanitarian conditions. Hundreds of thousands of people have died during the hostilities, due to American-made bombs. Saudi pilots, trained in the US and the UK, using American aircraft at the prompting of American military intelligence dropped American bombs on Yemeni houses, schools, hospitals, funeral parlors and foreign humanitarian organizations, forcing them to withdraw staff from the country.
Here is what the Yemeni monitoring group, Entesaf Organization for Women and Child Rights, recently published (compared to data from other groups and institutions, these are very conservative numbers):
– 8,116 children have been killed and wounded since the beginning of the US-Saudi war;
– 5,559 Yemeni children have become disabled as a result of hostilities since the beginning of the war;
– 632,000 children in Yemen are suffering from acute malnutrition that threatens their lives with death during the current year;
– 2,400,000 children do not attend school, forming a generation that has completely lost education.
Entesaf has documented that the number of Yemeni people with disabilities has increased from three million before the start of the US-backed war to 4.5 million today. This highlights the consequences of Yemen’s total blockade (in addition to the war being waged on it), which has placed its airspace, sea and land under unprecedented blockade by the West.
The organization also drew attention to the increase in child labor in Yemen due to the aggression and total blockade, pointing out that 1.4 million child laborers are deprived of their most basic rights, and that about 34.3% of child laborers are between the ages of 5 and 17. These new occurrences of child labor during the war are four times the rate of child labor than before the start of the war in Yemen.
In the healthcare sector, it is reported that public and private hospitals across the country are facing the threat of closure due to the blockade and detention by the US and Saudi Arabia of ships with petroleum derivatives.
Entesaf holds the coalition led by the US and Saudi Arabia responsible for all crimes and violations against civilians, especially children, in the last eight years of the war, calling on the international community, global organizations, human rights and humanitarian organizations to be held accountable for violations and heinous massacres that occurred against civilians. The organization also called on the international community to take effective and positive action to end the aggression and blockade against the civilian population and form an independent international commission to investigate all crimes committed against the Yemeni people and to bring to justice all those found complicit.
In August 2018, munitions experts reported that the bomb fired by Saudi warplanes that killed dozens of Yemeni children on a school bus was a 500-pound (227 kg) laser-guided MK 82 bomb made by Lockheed Martin, one of America’s largest arms manufacturers. Photos of the shrapnel taken immediately after the attack were sent to CNN, and a cameraman working for the company filmed the shrapnel footage. Munitions experts confirmed that the numbers on it identified Lockheed Martin as its manufacturer and that this particular MK 82 was a Paveway, which is a laser-guided bomb.
The CNN report said some of the bodies were so mutilated that identification was impossible, leaving behind scraps of school textbooks, mangled metal and one backpack. Of the 51 people who died in the attack, 40 were children. Another 79 people were injured, 56 of them also children.
Among the tens of thousands of Saudi airstrikes, another one was documented by CNN – a market strike by a US-supplied MK 84 precision bomb that killed 97 Yemenis. The bomb was very similar to the one that targeted a funeral parlor in October 2016, killing hundreds and injuring innumerable others.
These are just a few of the tens of thousands of similar attacks using American weapons to intimidate the Yemeni people into submission. However, the country’s armed forces, women and children have shown unprecedented resilience in their struggle.
Also during the war in Yemen, Washington’s complete disregard for human rights and its attempts to deprive children of their right to life was demonstrated. This applies not only to Yemen, but to US wars around the world that have resulted in unprecedented suffering for children, from Cuba and Vietnam to Western Asia and beyond. And it is the same United States that claims to be the flag-bearer of human rights and uses this pretext for its own political agenda in attacking numerous other countries.
I doubt these professors have anything to fear from a food tax
By Eric Worrall | Watts Up With That? | November 19, 2016
A group of researchers in Oxford University, England have suggested that imposing a massive tax on carbon intensive foods – specifically protein rich foods like meat and dairy – could help combat climate change. […]
This proposal, from a group of people who have probably never missed a meal in their lives, is totally obscene. High income countries often have a lot of poor people who would be hard hit by increases in the price of food.
Needlessly exacerbating the risk poor people don’t get enough to eat, especially children and pregnant mothers, who are especially vulnerable to adverse health impacts from lack of protein in their diet – if this ghastly proposal is ever implemented, future generations will look upon it as a crime against humanity. – Read full article
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