Kiev conducts ‘terrorist attack’ against Belgorod – MoD
RT | May 12, 2024
Kiev conducted a cross-border “terrorist attack” on residential buildings in the Russian city of Belgorod using Tochka-U ballistic missiles, the Russian Defense Ministry said in a statement on Sunday.
The capital of Belgorod Region was targeted with Tochka-U ballistic missiles and rockets from Olkha and Vampire multiple rocket launchers, the ministry said in a statement on Sunday.
Six Soviet-era Tochka-U missiles, four Vampire rockets and two Olkha projectiles have been intercepted by Russian air defenses, it stressed.
“Fragments of one of the downed Tochka-U missiles damaged a residential building in Belgorod,” the ministry said.
The Tochka-U is a mobile launch system developed by the Soviet Union in the 1970s. Russia has phased out its use in favor of more advanced Iskander ballistic missiles, which were introduced in the mid-2000s. However, Kiev still has Tochka-Us in its arsenal and has used them repeatedly during the conflict with Moscow.
Belgorod Region Governor Vyacheslav Gladkov said earlier that “an entire section of an apartment building – from the tenth to the first floor – collapsed as a result of a direct hit” during the Ukrainian bombardment of the city.
According to Russia’s acting health minister, Mikhail Murashko, 17 people have been hospitalized as a result of the incident.
There has so far been no official data on the number of fatalities. According to Mash, a Telegram channel, at least seven people have been killed. The rescuers have been able to recover 12 residents from the debris, but another ten could still be trapped inside, it said.
At some point, the roof of the damaged building collapsed while the rescuers were clearing the rubble underneath. A source in the governor’s office told Mash that no one was hurt, but Shot reported that one of the emergency workers suffered a leg fracture and two others were lightly wounded.
Russia’s Investigative Committee has said that a criminal terrorism case was launched following the strike on the apartment block.
Israeli military not a professional army; its ground incursions look like Daesh attacks
By Robert Inlakesh | Al Mayadeen | May 11, 2024
The Israeli military’s ground assaults in the Gaza Strip have been punctuated by the discovery of mass graves, the publicizing of war crimes of occupation soldiers for fun, and a record of mass slaughter, human shield taking, and widespread torture. Although most modern armies have committed war crimes, the Israeli military does not operate like a professional force, but rather a collection of ill-disciplined racist militia groups.
On May 6, following the announcement by Hamas that they had accepted a ceasefire proposal, the Israeli leadership immediately struck down any prospect of a viable agreement being reached and its military began sending tanks toward Rafah, under a massive airstrike campaign. The first objective that the Israeli regime’s military sought to achieve was the capturing of the Rafah Crossing, situated roughly 3 kilometers from the separation barrier between Gaza and the rest of occupied Palestine.
While immediately shutting off Gaza completely, preventing aid trucks and civilian passage through to the Egyptian side of the border, the conduct of the Israeli soldiers was also important to pay attention to. According to the Zionist military, it was the Givati Brigade that was responsible for the storming of the Rafah Crossing. Instead of professionally carrying out their very simple task – driving tanks into an area that was not defended – they decided to film videos of themselves using their military vehicles to crush and demolish areas throughout the border crossing, which were shared online in order to brag about it. The crossing was desecrated, Israeli flags were flown in place of Palestinian ones, and, according to reports, around 20 workers at the crossing were either slaughtered or kidnapped.
The Givati Brigade is supposed to be some of the most well-trained in the Israeli army and is not like the reservists. They are also one of the two brigades that make up the Israeli Southern Command, which collapsed within an hour of the Hamas-led Operation Al-Aqsa Flood on October 7. What these forces were sent to do on May 6 was to violate the terms of the 1978 Camp David agreement, which normalized ties between Cairo and Tel Aviv, as they had entered the Philadelphia Corridor. Although the Egyptian client regime was not willing to declare this act of war a reason to throw away the Camp David agreement, the callous way in which the Zionist forces went about their de facto act of war against Egypt was telling.
The clear provocations by Israeli soldiers who decided to pull out their iPhones and film themselves destroying property for laughs at the Rafah Crossing are nothing new, however. Throughout the ground war in Gaza, Zionist soldiers have filmed themselves humiliating, beating, and posing with Palestinian civilians they have kidnapped. They also filmed themselves stealing property, smashing stores and homes, and defecating and urinating inside Palestinian houses, in addition to randomly blowing up buildings for fun. Israeli soldiers have also filmed themselves playing with women’s lingerie, even wearing it and dancing in it for videos, while hurling insults at Palestinian women. These soldiers then post these videos on social media to brag about their war crimes and sexually motivated actions. Perhaps the most voluminous archive of these videos has been compiled on the Twitter account of Palestinian reporter Younis Tirawi.
Another common theme for the Israeli military’s forces is to go on their phones and film themselves for Tiktok Livestreams, which has even aided the Palestinian Resistance in pinpointing their locations on occasion so that they can carry out operations using short-range rockets and mortar attacks.
If it was just a few instances of Israeli soldiers doing this sort of thing, followed by strong disciplining action from their superiors, then it could be put down to individual actions. This is clearly not the case. Instead, this fits into a trend within the Israeli military that has been ongoing for years. The issue came to a head in 2018 in fact, during the non-violent protest movement in Gaza called ‘The Great Return March’, where Israeli soldiers would publish videos of themselves shooting unarmed civilians and breaking out into laughter, and then posting the video on social media. At that time, by observing the Israeli media’s commentary on it, it became clear that their soldiers do not listen to orders and will even help companies test their weapons on the battlefield, putting aside their standard-issue weapons.
The issue of whether an Israeli soldier has the right to do as he/she pleases emerged in a major way back in 2016. A soldier operating in al-Khalil for the occupation forces, named Elor Azaria, decided to pull out his rifle and shoot a Palestinian man in the head after he was already severely injured and lay on the ground. The incident was filmed, causing an international backlash and forcing the Israeli military to act. In the end, a large group of Israeli society rallied behind Azaria and supported him in his alleged “right” to slaughter Abdel Fattah al-Sharif, even protesting and creating a fundraiser for him. In the end, he was sentenced to 18 months imprisonment. He only served 9 months and exited to a demotion in his rank in the army, yet he was not kicked out of the military.
From Elor Azaria until now, this problem has only grown inside the Israeli military. The issue is that the Israeli military is composed of ill-disciplined soldiers who feel that they can behave in any way they choose. What the war in Gaza has revealed is that this issue is not just a growing problem, but is the culture of the Israeli armed forces. Even the ease with which Israeli soldiers are given high ranks is embarrassing and has created an environment for its soldiers of “participation awards”, enabling soldiers who are ill-prepared to be promoted and get to rule over other soldiers who have no idea what they are doing.
When you have a military force of this nature, formed of entitled ethnic-supremacists who feel like they can behave however they choose, it is a recipe for disaster when you send them into an urban warfare combat zone, densely populated by a civilian population they are indoctrinated to believe are inferior to them. Now add on top of this the religious supremacist element to it, where even the Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is calling the people of Gaza “Amalek”, and it becomes clear why these ill-disciplined, entitled, racist, and ill-trained soldiers are carrying out a violent crusade against civilians.
This is why we see the Israeli military looting homes and businesses. This is why we see such mass scale torture, sexual humiliation, and even the rape of Palestinian women. It also explains why the Israeli military committed its series of what has been dubbed ‘Flour Massacres’, murdering over a thousand people who are waiting for food aid in various areas of Gaza, the worst cases being in the North of the besieged coastal enclave.
We have seen the evidence, presented at the International Court of Justice, showing Israeli soldiers chanting on films about their intention to kill “Amelek” arguing that there are no innocent civilians. The whole world has also seen drone footage of Israeli forces using their unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) to launch targeted strikes on groups of civilians walking in open areas, in addition to drone footage clearly showing Israeli soldiers using human shields. The Zionist military even shot dead their own prisoners in the al-Shujaiyah neighborhood, while waving their shirts as white flags.
The mass graves that are being uncovered throughout the Gaza Strip produce evidence that civilians were buried alive, stripped naked, and tied up before being executed, with many even showing signs of torture and that they were chucked in black bags among garbage. There are also the two most prominent mass grave cases, revealed after the Israeli army withdrew from the Al-Shifa Hospital and the Nasser Hospital complex.
Women, children, elderly individuals, journalists, UN employees, doctors, civil defense teams, disabled people, and even foreign aid workers were all carelessly slaughtered in the most inhumane ways possible and even with precision weapons.
It is not only the case in Gaza, as in southern Lebanon there is the case of 7 volunteer healthcare workers who were murdered with a precision weapon that completely destroyed the ambulance center they were stationed at.
This is the method of the Israeli military, chaos and insane precision strikes on civilian targets. While many of the killings were clearly ordered up the chain of command when such war crimes are carried out at a pre-approved level, why would soldiers on the ground care about the laws of war? They clearly see that no law applies to them. They don’t even bother changing their tactics often either, an example of this being that the Palestinian Resistance has filmed its operations targeting soldiers who stand in the windows of occupied buildings. Throughout the entire ground war, we see videos of Israeli soldiers making this obvious and stupid mistake. In one case, it appears that an Israeli soldier was smoking marijuana out of a bong when he was killed by a Yassin warhead.
All the abovementioned is meant to say that an invasion of Rafah’s population center, where some 1.4 million displaced civilians are packed into a densely populated area, is understood to be such a major catastrophe because of the nature of what the Israeli military is. This is not a professional army, for the most part, the soldiers are unprepared for what they are sent to face. They are cowardly and trigger-happy, knowing that no consequences will come for opening fire randomly when they freak out. They also have the space to freely carry out their racially and religiously motivated desires by inflicting any pain on civilians that they see fit. The Israeli soldiers know that they will never be held accountable, maybe receiving a slap on the wrist being the worst-case scenario, so they commit unspeakable acts on a daily basis.
Instead of the Israeli military being referred to as an army, it would be more appropriate to call them a collection of ethno-supremacist militias. They do whatever they like and will never be held accountable, serving a population that also believes in their genocidal mentality. There are only three discernable differences between the Israeli militia forces and their Daesh counterparts: Daesh are more willing to die for their sectarian cause, the Israelis inflict much higher civilian death tolls, and they do it with the latest in modern military equipment that is in endless supply from their Western backers.
US contradictory report on Israeli arms: credibility vs. inconsistency
Al Mayadeen | May 11, 2024
Between “credible and reliable” Israeli assurances that it will use US weapons in accordance with international humanitarian law, thus allowing for the further transfer of American arms to “Israel” amid its war on Gaza, and saying it was “reasonable” to assess that “Israel” did use US-supplied weapons that were “inconsistent” with its international humanitarian law obligations, the US seems lost for words when it comes to “Israel’s” use of its arms.
According to the American administration, the Israeli occupation has most likely violated international standards when it came to the protection of civilians in Gaza, the United States Department of State told Congress on Friday, as reported by The New York Times.
While the Israeli occupation is violating international standards, the US argued that there was no justification for withholding military aid.
The State Department report said the Israeli occupation “has the knowledge, experience, and tools to implement best practices for mitigating civilian harm in its military operations.” However, “Israel” is still not being held accountable for not doing so.
“The results on the ground, including high levels of civilian casualties, raise substantial questions” as to whether the Israeli occupation forces are making sufficient use of said tools, the report acknowledged.
Still, the report, in one of its many contradictions, said the US had no hard proof of Israeli violations in Gaza.
It underlined difficulties faced by Washington in collecting reliable information from Gaza, especially since the Israeli occupation was yet to share complete information to verify whether weapons it had been given by the US were used in specific incidents involving human rights violations.
Finally, somehow, the report differentiates between the broader potential for the Israeli occupation to have breached international law and drawing conclusions based on specific incidents that could substantiate what has been proven as factual time and time again.
For now, it seems that the Biden administration finds assurances given by “Israel”, i.e., mere word of mouth, that it would use US arms consistently with international law, sufficient.
How Britain Sabotaged Ukraine Peace
By Kit Klarenberg | Al Mayadeen | May 11, 2024
On April 16th, Foreign Affairs published an investigation, documenting in forensic detail how in May 2022 Kiev was a signature away from a peace deal with Russia “that would have ended the war and provided Ukraine with multilateral security guarantees,” which was scuppered by Western powers. The outlet attributes the failure of negotiations to “a number of reasons” – although it’s unambiguously clear the biggest was British Prime Minister Boris Johnson offering President Volodymyr Zelenskyy the blankest of blank cheques to keep fighting.
For two years, claims and counterclaims have abounded about these peace talks, initiated almost immediately after the conflict began, and why they collapsed. Independent journalists and researchers, the Kremlin, and some foreign officials involved, assert that a favorable settlement was within reach, only to be scuttled at the 11th hour by Western actors. By contrast, Kiev, its supporters, and proxy sponsors have strenuously denied that negotiations were ever taken seriously by either party, while claiming Moscow’s terms were completely unacceptable.
Foreign Affairs has now validated what anti-imperialists have consistently contended. Amicable peace could’ve been achieved in Ukraine at the earliest stages of the proxy conflict, on terms favourable to both parties. Western powers responsible for sabotaging negotiations in service of weakening Russia knew that all along. Yet, they kept this inconvenient reality consciously concealed until now, when the war is unambiguously an unwinnable lost cause for all concerned, bar Moscow.
Still, to have the truth confirmed by Foreign Affairs – an elite US journal published by the notorious, highly influential Council on Foreign Relations – is hugely significant, and the narrative threat posed is evident. Within hours of release, Polish think tank operative Daniel Szeligowski took to X to rubbish the investigation at length, reinforcing the established Western fable that negotiations could never have succeeded, due to Kremlin intransigence, and Ukrainian resolve, in the face of industrial scale Russian war crimes.
Such pushback is only to be expected. After all, Foreign Affairs has raised a number of troublesome questions about the proxy war. In particular, why it continues to grind on today at unsustainable human and financial cost for Kiev and its foreign sponsors. The investigation also confirms Western governments that pushed Ukraine into conflict with its neighbor and historic ally were completely unwilling to come to the country’s rescue, in the event Russia responded to their provocations.
Talks begin, major concessions offered
Foreign Affairs bases its investigation on multiple “draft agreements exchanged between the two sides, some details of which have not been reported previously,” and interviews “with several participants in the talks as well as with officials serving at the time in key Western governments.” It offers a granular timeline of events, “from the start of the invasion through the end of May, when talks broke down.”
Before then, Vladimir Putin and Zelensky reportedly “surprised everyone with their mutual willingness to consider far-reaching concessions to end the war.” This included peacefully resolving “their dispute over Crimea during the next 10 to 15 years.” Talks began four days after the invasion in Belarus, with President Aleksandr Lukashenko playing mediator.
Putin appointed a negotiating team led by Vladimir Medinsky, a senior adviser to the Russian president who previously served as culture minister. By his side were deputy ministers of defense and foreign affairs, among others. Kiev dispatched Davyd Arakhamia, parliamentary leader of Zelensky’s political party, Defense Minister Oleksii Reznikov, presidential adviser Mykhailo Podolyak, and other senior officials. The individuals involved amply underlines how seriously negotiations were taken by both sides.
By the third round of talks, drafts of a peace treaty began to circulate. Many more materialized over subsequent weeks, as the two sides sought to overcome “substantial disagreements”, refining details face-to-face in a variety of international venues, and via Zoom. In brief, Kiev would accept various limits on the size of its Armed Forces, striking range of any missiles sited on its territory, and number of tanks and armored vehicles it could maintain.
Most crucially, Ukraine would implement the Minsk Accords, “renounce its NATO aspirations and never host NATO forces on its territory,” accepting permanent neutrality. In return for ensuring Russia’s “most basic security interests”, Kiev was free to pursue EU membership, and “security guarantees that would oblige other states to come to Ukraine’s defense if Russia attacked again in the future.”
Those guarantees could extend to “imposing a no-fly zone, supplying weapons, or directly intervening with the guarantor state’s own military force” – “obligations…spelled out with much greater precision than NATO’s Article 5,” Foreign Affairs observes. The outlet suggests this component was the undoing of negotiations, due to Kiev’s “risk-averse Western colleagues”:
“Kyiv’s Western partners were reluctant to be drawn into a negotiation with Russia, particularly one that would have created new commitments for them to ensure Ukraine’s security.”
Whitewashing Johnson’s Kiev visit
Foreign Affairs notes that Naftali Bennett, Israeli premier while the talks were ongoing, who was “mediating between the two sides”, has said that he “attempted to dissuade Zelensky from getting stuck on the question of security guarantees.’ He explained, “There is this joke about a guy trying to sell the Brooklyn Bridge to a passerby. I said, ‘America will give you guarantees? It will commit that in several years if Russia violates something, it will send soldiers? After leaving Afghanistan and all that?’ Volodymyr, it won’t happen.’”
Of course, several of Ukraine’s “Western patrons” have sent soldiers to assist in the proxy conflict – most prominently Britain, which in January signed a wide-ranging “security cooperation agreement” with Kiev. Foreign Affairs references Boris Johnson’s visit to the country in April 2022, and how Davyd Arakhamia has claimed the then-Prime Minister “said we won’t sign anything at all… let’s just keep fighting.”
The outlet adds that “already on March 30, Johnson seemed disinclined toward diplomacy, stating that instead ‘we should continue to intensify sanctions with a rolling program until every single one of [Putin’s] troops is out of Ukraine.’” So it was that he arrived in Kiev on April 9, “the first foreign leader to visit after the Russian withdrawal from the capital.” Johnson reportedly told Zelensky:
“Any deal with Putin was going to be pretty sordid… some victory for him. If you give him anything, he’ll just keep it, bank it, and then prepare for his next assault.”
Yet, Foreign Affairs downplays Johnson’s intervention, claiming allegations the British premier sabotaged negotiations are “Putin’s manipulative spin.” In support, the outlet notes how despite Moscow’s withdrawal from the northern front resulting in “the gruesome discovery of atrocities that Russian forces had committed in the Kyiv suburbs of Bucha and Irpin,” talks continued thereafter. The two sides worked “around the clock on a treaty that Putin and Zelensky were supposed to sign during a summit to be held in the not-too-distant future”:
“The sides were actively exchanging drafts [and] beginning to share them with other parties… the April 15 draft suggests that the treaty would be signed within two weeks. Granted, that date might have shifted, but it shows that the two teams planned to move fast… work on the draft treaty continued and even intensified in the days and weeks after the discovery of Russia’s war crimes, suggesting that the atrocities at Bucha and Irpin were a secondary factor in Kyiv’s decision-making.”
‘Bucha Effect’ leads to ‘frozen negotiations’
Bucha may have been a “secondary factor” in Ukrainian decision-making, but it wasn’t from the British government’s perspective. Unmentioned by Foreign Affairs, days before Johnson landed in Kiev, he boldly declared the alleged massacre of civilians in the town by Russian forces didn’t “look far short of genocide,” and “the international community – Britain very much in the front rank – will be moving again in lockstep to impose more sanctions and more penalties on Vladimir Putin’s regime.”
While a subsequent UN investigation failed to validate charges of genocide by Russia in Ukraine, once Johnson deployed the term, many Western officials followed suit. As a result, widespread public and state consent for keeping the proxy war going was very effectively manufactured across Europe and North America. To even speak of a negotiated settlement publicly became beyond the pale. Meanwhile, Britain’s shadowy, spook-infested Counter Disinformation Unit, which censors social media, began policing content related to Bucha online.
What happened in Bucha remains extremely murky. At the time, an anonymous US Defense Intelligence Agency official told Newsweek that civilian deaths could have resulted from “intense” ground combat over control of the town: “We forget two peer competitors fought over Bucha for 36 days, the town was occupied, Russian convoys and positions inside the town were attacked by the Ukrainians and vice versa.” They further warned the “Bucha Effect” had “led to frozen negotiations and a skewed view of the war”:
“I am not for a second excusing Russia’s war crimes nor forgetting that Russia invaded the country. But the number of actual deaths is hardly genocide. If Russia had that objective or was intentionally killing civilians, we’d see a lot more than less than .01 percent in places like Bucha.”
Such anxieties fell on deaf ears, although they reflect a broader resistance to escalating the proxy war on Washington’s part. In December 2022, the BBC reported that British officials were intensely worried about the “innate caution” of US President Joe Biden, “who is… concerned about provoking a wider global conflict.” A nameless state apparatchik revealed that London had “stiffened the US resolve at all levels”, via “pressure.”
Leaked material shows senior British military and intelligence officials leading London’s contribution to the proxy war are committed to challenging the “US position… firmly and at once.” One can only speculate whether incidents such as the Kerch Bridge bombing, which these officials secretly planned and helped Kiev execute – despite reported US opposition – were intended to escalate the conflict further, and keep Washington embroiled in the quagmire.
We are also left to ponder whether those officials played any role in the massacre of civilians in Bucha, whose names Ukraine refuses to release despite formal Russian requests. Kremlin apparatchiks, and Aleksandr Lukashenko, have claimed to possess evidence British special forces were responsible for the killings. None has emerged since, although why Britain prevented an emergency UN Security Council meeting on Bucha requested by Russia in April 2022 going ahead remains an open question.
‘Israel’ destroyed 53% of Gaza’s water treatment facilities: BBC
Al Mayadeen | May 9, 2024
A new BBC report based on obtained satellite images over Gaza showed that more than half of Gaza’s water sites have been destroyed and contaminated in targeted Israeli aggression.
Data revealed that 53% of the 603 examined water facilities were either destroyed or damaged. Water in the Gaza Strip was already a limited resource dependent on a network of water wells and desalination plants before “Israel” further exacerbated its scarcity.
The report further revealed that out of Gaza’s six wastewater treatment plants, which majorly contributed to the prevention of the accumulation of waste and contaminated waters to curb the spread of diseases, four were either damaged or completely destroyed.
The remaining two were forced to shut down due to the lack of supplies and fuel that kept operations running.
Most affected facilities, according to BBC, were located in northern Gaza, or the vicinity of southern Khan Younis.
It is worth noting that satellite images do not show the extent of Israeli damage and destruction of water facilities in Gaza, or those that stopped operating due to the lack of fuel amid the Israeli-imposed siege on the Strip.
Gaza is drinking unsafe, untreated water
In April, the Palestinian Health Ministry confirmed that the whole population of Gaza was drinking unsafe water “because of the closure of the public health laboratory and the inability to test drinking water… that puts their lives at risk.”
In its statement, the ministry attributed the disaster to “Israel’s” refusal to allow chlorine or any alternative for testing and treating drinking water.
In addition, the amount of waste accumulating is leading to the spread of disease, the ministry warned, as cases of meningitis and hepatitis have already been detected.
Protecting Israel Is Washington’s Number One Job
The White House and Congress rally around the Star of David Flag
BY PHILIP GIRALDI • UNZ REVIEW • MAY 8, 2024
When, as expected, President Joe Biden signs off on the Antisemitism Awareness Act the Department of Education will be empowered to send so-called antisemitism monitors to enforce civil rights law at public schools as well as at colleges to observe and report on levels of hostility towards Jews. The monitors’ reports will eventually wind up in Congress which can propose remedies as required, including cutting funding and recommending civil rights charges in extreme cases. One of the more regrettable features of the act is that it accepts the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance definition of antisemitism as it applies to the state of Israel, making criticism of the Jewish state ipso facto antisemitism. Its text includes the “targeting of the state of Israel, conceived as a Jewish collectivity” as an antisemitic act. In reality, however, actual antisemitism is not as prevalent as Israel partisans claim. Most of what they call antisemitism is simply criticism of the legally self-proclaimed apartheid “Jewish State” and most of the animosity Israel experiences is opposition to its brutal treatment of the Palestinians. Giving legal sanction to that presumption that Israel must be protected from bigots means that the United States is well on the way to forbidding any criticism of Israel at all. Americans can criticize their own country or nations in Europe, or at least they are able to do so currently, but bad-mouthing Israel could soon constitute a criminal offense.
The Antisemitism Awareness Act is just one aspect of how the power of organized Jewish groups over the government and media is shaping the kind of society that Americans will be living in in the near future. It will be a society devoid of several fundamental constitutional rights, like free speech, due to deference to the preferences of one tiny demographic. And the one most interesting aspect of that power is how it has successfully hidden the fact that it even exists while also propagating the myth that Jews and Israel are especially worthy of special consideration because they are frequently or even always perceived as victims, an extension of the holocaust myth.
Indeed, Israel is recently always in the news and most often completely protected by the media and the talking heads elements, particularly true if one sinks to watching Fox or reading the Wall Street Journal, New York Times or Washington Post. Even the loathsome Benjamin Netanyahu frequently gets good press while nonviolent student peace demonstrators are invariably described as anti-Israeli or pro-Hamas terrorists even when they are assaulted by Zionist thugs led by an Israeli special ops officer and funded and armed by Jewish billionaires as occurred recently in Los Angeles.
Nevertheless, sometimes something slips through the defenses that reveals all too clearly what is going on. In responding to a question from a journalist, Secretary of State Anthony Blinken made a claim recently that absolutely no one who has spent any time in Washington will believe. The journalist had asked whether the Federal Government in making its foreign policy decisions tended to favor and/or excuse the behavior of some countries while condemning others for exactly the same actions. Blinken replied “We apply the same standard to everyone. And that doesn’t change whether the country in question is an adversary, a competitor, a friend or an ally.”
Everyone in the room understood very clearly that Blinken wasn’t telling the truth and was trying to preserve the fiction that the United States holds allies and clients to the same “rules based international order” standard that it uses for others, most notably competitor nations like Russia and China or adversaries like Iran. No one takes what Blinken says seriously in any event, and it does not help his general credibility when he feels compelled to lie for no reason whatsoever.
Would that someone in the room had had the temerity to cite one of Blinken’s most egregiously partisan comments, his greeting to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on the airport tarmac of Ben Gurion airport shortly after the October 7th Hamas attack. He said “I come before you as a Jew. I understand on a personal level the harrowing echoes that Hamas’s massacres carry for Israeli Jews – indeed, for Jews everywhere.” It prompted one to mutter, “No Anthony, you are the Secretary of States of the United States of America. You are there to represent American interests in avoiding a major war in the Middle East, not to represent the interests of your tribe by declaring yourself one of them.”
The Blinken meeting with Netanyahu was particularly telling as few in Washington would doubt that the Joe Biden White House and Congress have totally surrendered to Israeli interests rather than serving the needs of their constituents in the United States. Paul Craig Roberts describes it as “The US Congress has become an extension of the Israeli government.” To answer the journalist’s question honestly Blinken should have admitted that the Biden government is fully committed to protecting Israel and even its perceived interests when they conflict with normal US policy. On Wednesday the Biden administration indicated that it has indefinitely delayed a required report investigating potential Israeli war crimes in Gaza that was supposed to be released by the US State Department. If the report had concluded, which it should have, that Israel violated international humanitarian law, the US would have to stop sending foreign aid due to the Leahy Law, which makes it illegal for the US government to provide aid to any foreign security forces found to be committing “gross violations of human rights.” So Joe Biden and Anthony Blinken decided to deep six the report instead to protect Israel by breaking US law, though they have reportedly delayed one shipment of bombs lest they be used on civilians in Rafah. Nevertheless, Biden clearly means what he says when he repeatedly stumbles to confirm that US security guarantees to Israel are “ironclad.” Indeed, the tie with the Jewish state goes well beyond what is generally due to anyone even described as an ally, which Israel, also no democracy, is not in any event, as an alliance requires both reciprocity and a precise understanding of the red lines in the relationship.
Nothing illustrates the total subservience of Washington to Israel better than how the United States is unnecessarily getting itself involved in an argument that might well prove to be a major embarrassment as well as trouble in America’s relationship with many foreign states. And, as is often the case, it involves Israel. There have been confirmed reports that the International Criminal Court (ICC) in The Hague is preparing to issue arrest warrants for Netanyahu and two other senior Israeli officials in connection with war crimes related to the ongoing genocide directed against the Gazans. Netanyahu is reportedly reaching wildly out to his many “friends” to prevent such a development. And, in line with Washington-Jerusalem thinking that every good crisis deserves an excessive use of force or even a military solution, there are already reports that pressure, including threats, is being exerted both by Israel and the US against the jurists on the court and even directed against their families. The Israeli government warned the Biden administration that if the ICC issues arrest warrants against Israeli leaders, it will take retaliatory steps against the Palestinian Authority that could lead to its collapse, further destabilizing the region. Israel is also conducting a parallel diplomatic channels outreach in Europe to convince the local governments to advise their representatives on the court that it would be desirable to squash its investigation.
Netanyahu, who called President Joe Biden and asked for help, has in response to news reports tweeted that Israel “will never accept any attempt by the ICC to undermine its inherent right of self-defense. The threat to seize the soldiers and officials of the Middle East’s only democracy and the world’s only Jewish state is outrageous. We will not bow to it.” Netanyahu also denounced the possible warrants as an “unprecedented antisemitic hate crime.” As ICC deliberations are secret it would appear that an American or British jurist must have leaked the story to enable Netanyahu to mount a campaign against it. The White House and Congress are already moving full speed ahead to make the warrants go away and are exploring options to directly confront and discredit the court if the Israelis are actually punished.
The US has nothing to gain and much to lose in confronting the ICC as the court is generally well respected. And more might be coming. There are reports that prosecutors from the ICC have interviewed medical staff at two of Gaza’s largest hospitals in their investigation of other possible war crimes committed by Israel in connection with the mass graves recently discovered. ICC was founded in 2002 as a last resort court to deal with war crimes and crimes against humanity that were not addressable otherwise. The court was established by the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court (Rome Statute). Israel is not a party to the Rome Statute and does not recognize the ICC’s jurisdiction. However, should a warrant in Netanyahu’s name be issued, his travel could be restricted, as the 123 countries that recognize the court may consider themselves obliged to arrest him.
As of March 2023, there were 123 member states of the Court. The United States is no longer a member because on May 6th, 2002, the United States, having previously signed the Rome Statute, formally withdrew its signature and indicated that it did not intend to ratify the agreement. Another state that has withdrawn its signature is the Sudan while some states that have never become parties to the Rome Statute include India, Indonesia, and China. United States policy concerning the ICC has varied by administration. The Clinton administration signed the Rome Statute in 2000, but did not submit it for Senate ratification. The George W. Bush administration, which was the US administration at the time of the ICC’s founding, stated that it would not join the ICC. The Obama administration subsequently re-established a working relationship with the Court as an observer. There has been no change in the status since that time, but the relationship is regarded as inactive.
What will the United States do to bail out Israel one more time? It has already made its position known. White House spokesperson Karine Jean-Pierre stated “We’ve been really clear about the ICC investigation. We do not support it. We don’t believe that they have the jurisdiction.” Deputy spokesperson Vedant Patel doubled down on that declaring “Our position is clear. We continue to believe that the ICC does not have jurisdiction over the Palestinian situation.” The White House was joined by leading congressional Republicans. Zionist Speaker of the House Mike Johnson has pressured the White House and State Department to “use every available tool to prevent such an abomination,” explaining how conceding the point to ICC “would directly undermine US national security interests. If unchallenged by the Biden administration, the ICC could create and assume unprecedented power to issue arrest warrants against American political leaders, American diplomats, and American military personnel.”
There is a precedent to the US taking action against the ICC. On September 2, 2020, the United States government imposed sanctions on the ICC prosecutor, Fatou Bensouda, in response to an investigation by the court into US war crimes in Afghanistan, so there is some sensitivity to the fact that as the US is the world’s leading source of war crimes, it would be wise to delegitimize agencies that would look too deeply into that fact. But the ICC sometimes has its uses as when the Biden administration publicly welcomed a war crimes investigation by the ICC against Russian President Vladimir Putin over the war in Ukraine. Asked why the United States supported an International Criminal Court investigation into Russian officials, Patel declared that “There is no moral equivalency between the kinds of things that we see [Russian President Vladimir Putin] and the Kremlin undertake in comparison to the Israeli government,” once again demonstrating that what Blinken said to the journalist was nonsense.
The Republican Party is seeking to outdo the White House in demonstrating its love for Israel. A letter signed by twelve GOP Senators was sent to Karim Khan, chief prosecutor on the ICC. The letter threatens members of the court over the possible indictment of Netanyahu and company. The group of 12 Republican senators who I like to refer to as the “Dirty Dozen” due to the large political contributions they receive from pro-Israel sources, sent a letter to the chief prosecutor of the International Criminal Court (ICC) Karim Khan that threatens “severe sanctions” if the court goes ahead with the plan to issue arrest warrants for Netanyahu, his Defense Minister and one other senior official. The letter, dated April 24, referenced the American Service-Members’ Protection Act, a law that authorizes the president to use any means to free any US personnel detained by the ICC even though it does not apply to Israel. It says, ridiculously, that “If you issue a warrant for the arrest of the Israeli, we will interpret this not only as a threat to Israel’s sovereignty but as a threat to the sovereignty of the United States” and goes on to deny that the ICC even has jurisdiction to issue warrants since Israel is not a member of the court. The apparent drafter, Senator Tom Cotton, was seemingly unaware that Palestine is a member of the ICC and the arrest warrants would be based on war crimes committed by Israel on its nominal territory, Gaza and the West Bank.
The letter concludes with a heavy-handed threat: “The United States will not tolerate politicized attacks by the ICC on our allies. Target Israel and we will target you. If you move forward with the measures indicated in this report, we will move to end all American support for the ICC, sanction your employees and your associates, and bar you and your family from the United States. You have been warned.” A few days later, the ICC issued a statement condemning the threats made against the court and said attempts to “impede, intimidate, or improperly influence” ICC officials must “cease immediately.” The 12 Republican senators who signed on to the letter include Mitch McConnell, Tom Cotton, Marsha Blackburn, Katie Boyd Britt, Ted Budd, Kevin Cramer, Ted Cruz, Bill Hagerty, Pete Ricketts, Marco Rubio, Rick Scott, and Tim Scott. Only Lindsay Graham was missing and he was probably busy drumming up support for his plan to “destroy the enemies of the state of Israel.” Cotton, who has recommended that people who are inconvenienced by protesters should confront them and beat them up, has also introduced legislation denying college loan relief to students who faced state or federal charges while demonstrating against the deaths in Gaza. Some other Republican congressmen who are short on brain cells but strong on Israel are seeking to have protesters “convicted of unlawful activity on the campus of an American university since October 7th 2023” deported to do six months community service in Gaza, though how that would be implemented is not clear. Congressman Randy Weber of Texas explained “If you support a terrorist organization and you participate in unlawful activity on campuses, you should get a taste of your own medicine. I am going to bet that these pro-Hamas supporters wouldn’t last a day, but let’s give them the opportunity.”
So the United States will again go to bat for Israel and Israel will ignore what comes out and dodge any consequences. The real losers in the process will be the American people, who more clearly than ever will see and hopefully recognize that they have a government that spends an awful lot of time and money on Israel and doing things that are being promoted by Jewish groups. We have a legislature and executive branch that have been corrupted and compromised from top to bottom, always doing what is wrong for the most selfish reasons, often out of loyalty to foreign governments like Israel that could care less. The United States was once a symbol of freedom and opportunity. Now it has become an international embarrassment.
Philip M. Giraldi, Ph.D., is Executive Director of the Council for the National Interest, a 501(c)3 tax deductible educational foundation (Federal ID Number #52-1739023) that seeks a more interests-based U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East. Website is councilforthenationalinterest.org, address is P.O. Box 2157, Purcellville VA 20134 and its email is inform@cnionline.org.
Israeli authorities raze dozens of Palestinian homes in Negev
Palestinian Information Center – May 8, 2024
NEGEV – The Israeli authorities demolished on Wednesday morning 47 Palestinian houses in the Wadi al-Khalil area near Umm Batin village, north of the Negev desert.
According to local sources, the houses belonged to the Abu Asa family in the Negev desert, whose members clashed with Israeli police officers who protected the bulldozers.
Police officers reportedly assaulted members of the Abu Asa family as they tried to prevent the demolition of their homes.
This was the largest Israeli demolition campaign in one day in several years in the Negev region, according to the Higher Steering Committee of the Negev Arabs.
The Committee said that these demolitions were carried out at the behest of far-right ministers Itamar Ben Gvir and Amichai Chikli, accusing them of seeking to ignite the Negev region in order to deepen racial discrimination.
“The Israeli authorities are trying to force the Abu Asa family to move to another place under threat and intimidation in order to expand Road 60 southwards, but they refuse and insist on living in an agreed-upon neighborhood in Tel as-Sabi town,” the Committee added.
US Report on Israel’s Conduct in Gaza Strip Delayed Indefinitely – Reports
Sputnik – 08.05.2024
WASHINGTON – The Biden administration’s report on whether Israel violated US law and international humanitarian law during its military operations in the Gaza Strip has been delayed indefinitely, Politico reported on Tuesday.
If the report determines that US and international law have been violated, the Biden administration would be expected to stop sending military assistance to Israel.
The administration emailed Congress notifying lawmakers that it will miss the deadline to submit the report but did not provide additional details.
When the National Security Council was asked to explain the delay, they referred any inquiries to the State Department.
Earlier on Tuesday, State Department spokesperson Matthew Miller said that the US government is trying very hard to meet the “self-imposed deadline.”
Miller said it is possible to “slip” a little bit, but the administration is trying to get the report done by Wednesday.
On Monday night, some 200 attorneys, 27 of whom are currently in the Biden administration, sent a letter to top US officials arguing that sending weapons to Israel would be illegal.
The report’s delay comes as Israel started a military operation in Rafah in the southern Gaza Strip, where some 1.4 million Palestinians – are sheltering.
Ecocide: Israel’s systematic destruction of Palestinian agriculture revealed
British-based investigation unveils targeting, destruction of land by Israeli forces in Gaza Strip since last October
By Dilara Hamit – AA – 05.05.2024
A British-based investigation group has unveiled the systematic targeting and destruction of orchards and greenhouses by Israeli forces in the Gaza Strip since last October, when the current conflict in Gaza began, undermining Gazan Palestinians’ ability to feed and provide for themselves.
Analysis by Forensic Architecture, a multidisciplinary research group based at Goldsmiths, University of London, identified more than 2,000 agricultural sites, including farms and greenhouses, that have been deliberately destroyed, and often replaced with Israeli military earthworks.
The destruction, particularly intense in northern Gaza, has led to the devastation of nearly one-third of the region’s greenhouses and approximately 40% of agricultural land previously used for food production.
The investigation suggests that the destruction is a deliberate act of ecocide exacerbating the ongoing catastrophic famine in Gaza, part of a wider pattern of depriving Palestinians of critical resources for survival.
“Since 2014, Palestinian farmers along Gaza’s perimeter have seen their crops sprayed by airborne herbicides and regularly bulldozed, and have themselves faced sniper fire by the Israeli occupation forces. Along that engineered ‘border,’ sophisticated systems of fences and surveillance reinforce a military buffer zone,” according to a statement from Forensic Architecture marking March 30, Land Day, a day when Palestinians protest and plant olive trees to reaffirm their connection to the land.
The investigation, built on collaborations with local farmers’ associations and agricultural workers, highlights the ongoing Israeli destruction of vegetation in Gaza and its severe effects on Palestinian food security and livelihoods.
The analysis indicates the ongoing resilience of Palestinian farmers who continue to cultivate their lands despite forced alterations to the landscape by the Israeli occupation.
Greenhouses, farmland replaced by Israeli military construction
Before 2023, Gaza boasted 170 square kilometers (65 square miles) of agricultural land, or 47% of its total area. The fields and orchards were crucial for local food security amid the siege conditions faced by Palestinians under the 15-year blockade of Gaza since 2007, followed by the even harsher blockade since last Oct. 7.
“Our analysis shows that Israel’s ground invasion has advanced over nearly 50 percent of Gazan farms and orchards,” said Forensic Architecture.
“We used remote sensing to measure the scale of agricultural destruction resulting from this military activity, by comparing the region’s ‘vegetation index’ (an indicator of the health and robustness of plant life, measured by analysing satellite imagery) before and after the invasion. This comparison reveals that as of March 2024, of the agricultural areas targeted, approximately 40 percent of the land in Gaza previously used for food production has been destroyed.”
The findings show that the destruction of agriculture along Gaza’s perimeter suggests a potential expansion of the Israeli army’s buffer zone, further limiting livable space for Palestinians.
Additionally, vital agricultural infrastructure like greenhouses has been systematically targeted since the onset of the ground invasion.
It stressed that satellite imagery reveals extensive destruction of greenhouses, with nearly one-third of Gaza’s greenhouses demolished between last October and this March. Forensic Architecture identified more than 2,000 agricultural sites, including farms and greenhouses, destroyed during that period, often replaced by Israeli military constructions.
The destruction has been particularly severe in northern Gaza, where 90% of greenhouses were demolished in the early stages of the invasion, an area which the head of the UN World Food Program (WFP) said Saturday was in “full-blown famine.”
“As the Israeli military advances south, destruction of agricultural land and infrastructure moves with it. We observe that 40% of the greenhouses in the areas around the southern city of Khan Younis, where many hundreds of thousands of Palestinians are now displaced, have been destroyed since January 2024,” said Forensic Architecture.
“Military support vehicles and tractors accompany the Israeli ground invasion, routinely building earthworks to reinforce military outposts. Once those vehicles depart, they leave behind a devastated and unliveable area,” it added.
Dutch police smash pro-Palestine protest camp
The Cradle | May 7, 2024
Riot police bulldozed barricades and temporarily detained 125 people to break up a pro-Palestine student protest at the University of Amsterdam in the early hours of 7 May, Reuters reported.
Four of the protesters are still being held on charges of public violence and insulting an officer, while the remainder have been released.
Organizers said they were “taking back this campus” in solidarity with Palestine and “in the spirit” of student protests that began in the US in response to Israel’s genocide in Gaza.
Along with pro-Palestine demonstrators at universities in the US and Europe, the Dutch students are demanding the university boycott academics and businesses in Israel.
Similar protests have occurred at Ghent University in Belgium and France’s prestigious Sciences Po University.
The National reported that in a social media message shortly before 3 am, organizers said they were being “violently evicted” by police arriving in riot vans.
Dutch television showed footage of police wielding batons advancing on the protesters and destroying tents.
Reuters adds that the police claimed student protesters ignored requests from university administrators and the mayor for the protesters to leave the campus and threw stones and fireworks.
“The police’s input was necessary to restore order. We see the footage on social media. We understand that those images may appear as intense,” police claimed.
Due to pressure from students, the University of Amsterdam published a list of eight research projects with ties to Israel.
It said one was about detecting explosives but “does not contribute to Israel’s military actions,” while others involved machine learning, gender issues, and safer streets.
Israel has used machine learning and artificial intelligence to generate bombing targets in Gaza.
A group of academics called Dutch Scholars for Palestine expressed support for the student protests.
“We have to resist political frames that will cast their efforts as antisemitic or a danger to the university community,” they said.
The media in the US and Europe have attempted to cast the protests as driven by antisemitism rather than by anger at Israel’s horrific bombing campaign in Gaza that has killed over 14,000 children.
Many Jewish students have participated in the university protests in opposition to Israeli policies.
“As the death toll and humanitarian crisis in Gaza increases … we should be proud of our students who are standing up to these abhorrent atrocity crimes,” the academics added.
American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists Still Pushing COVID Shots for Pregnant Women
Could Millions in Government Funding Explain Why?
By Brenda Baletti, Ph.D. | The Defender | May 2, 2024
The American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists (ACOG) missed a May 1 deadline to explain why the organization recommends COVID-19 vaccines for pregnant women despite growing evidence that they pose a serious risk.
Reform Pharma, a Children’s Health Defense (CHD) initiative, sent ACOG a letter on March 22 outlining the extensive and mounting scientific research documenting the risks of the vaccines to mothers and infants.
The letter also addressed grant money ACOG accepted from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS).
The funding was contingent on the organization’s full compliance with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s (CDC) guidance endorsing the vaccine during pregnancy.
The grant also stipulated that ACOG admonish doctors who failed to follow CDC protocols and track women who declined the vaccine, then target them with follow-up pressure to get the shot.
Reform Pharma demanded ACOG end its practice of recommending COVID-19 vaccination for pregnant women and explain why it has continued to push the shot until now.
The letter stated:
“It’s time for ACOG to reconcile and admit its mistake. … Our team demands that ACOG stop intimidating and misleading both physicians and pregnant women. …
“It is imperative that ACOG take proper action now to prevent needless further injury and death, as it is under a legal, ethical, and moral obligation to stop the shots!”
After ACOG didn’t respond, Reform Pharma sent a follow-up letter on April 22 via certified mail and email to the ACOG president and its chief legal officer.
The letter gave ACOG until May 1 to explain, in writing, why it continues to push the COVID-19 vaccines.
ACOG President Verda J. Hicks responded by blocking Reform Pharma’s email.
An automated out-of-office reply was the only response from the organization’s chief legal officer, Molly Meegan.
“The fact that the ACOG president blocked us shows that they are not even willing to have a conversation to explain why they continue to push COVID-19 shots on pregnant women despite mounting scientific evidence of the safety risks,” Reform Pharma co-director Amy Miller told The Defender.
Reform Pharma continues working to publicize what it says is ACOG’s corruption.
“The American people need to know that ACOG is using its authority and influence to push dangerous COVID-19 shots on pregnant women but failed to disclose its backdoor deal with the CDC,” Justine Tanguay, an attorney and Reform Pharma’s co-director, told The Defender.
“Sacrificing the lives and health of pregnant women and their unborn babies in exchange for money is unacceptable,” she added.
Reform Pharma’s mission is to systematically end corruption in Big Pharma and restore integrity to the U.S. healthcare system.
“Reform Pharma is doing critically important work shining a light on organizations like ACOG which purport to represent the interests of their member physicians and the patients those physicians treat,” Kim Mack Rosenberg, CHD general counsel and a signatory to the letter, told The Defender.
“In reality, money talks, and it appears that payments and incentives from pharmaceutical companies may influence and capture such organizations.”
ACOG a ‘massively powerful’ organization that dominates maternal-fetal health
ACOG is a “massively powerful” organization with 60,000 members, maternal-fetal medicine expert Dr. James Thorp told The Defender.
The professional membership organization for obstetricians and gynecologists produces practice guidelines, educational materials and initiatives to improve women’s health, according to its website.
It is also — along with the Society for Maternal-Fetal Medicine (SMFM) and American Board of Obstetrics and Gynecology (ABOG) — a key gatekeeper organization for the field of obstetrics and gynecology, exercising tremendous power over the practices and norms among its members who are practitioners in women’s health, Thorp said.
According to Reform Pharma, ACOG takes its marching orders from Big Pharma and public health agencies.
“It functions primarily as a shill for the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services and, in particular, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention — both lobbying arms for the pharmaceutical industry,” Reform Pharma wrote in its letter.
This became even more concerning once ACOG started promoting the COVID-19 vaccines, Reform Pharma said.
When the vaccines came on the market in December 2020, ACOG held a neutral position on vaccination during pregnancy, recommending pregnant women “be free to make their own decision regarding COVID-19 vaccination.”
That changed in July 2021, when the organization began encouraging its members to “enthusiastically recommend vaccination to their patients,” after accepting $11 million in grant money from HHS and CDC to adopt and promote the agencies’ positions on COVID-19 to its members.
“If ACOG should waver or fail to toe the line, ACOG would be required to return all the grant money it received,” according to Reform Pharma’s letter.
“ACOG made a deal with the devil and willingly sacrificed the health of pregnant women and their unborn babies in exchange for money,” Reform Pharma said.
Reform Pharma also accused ACOG of pressuring and intimidating doctors into strongly recommending the vaccine to their patients and directing them to “harass” women who refused until they capitulated.
Attorney Maggie Thorp, who last year identified the HHS grant funding — which she told The Defender is now up to $17 million since the COVID-19 pandemic period began — said she believes the CDC is just using ACOG as its mouthpiece.
Based on her analysis of the documents acquired through a Freedom of Information Act request, Maggie Thorp said the collaboration between the public health agency and the private organization is so tight that it was “hard to identify where CDC ended and where ACOG began.”
She said HHS is using ACOG to do what it cannot — “dictate the content of private conversations that happen between doctors and their pregnant patients.”
In that sense, Maggie Thorp said, HHS is “using ACOG to quell doctors’ free speech and their ability to express dissent.”
As a result, she said, patients don’t get access to the information they need to give “true, valid informed consent.”
James Thorp said that ACOG then collaborates with its partner organizations, SMFM, ABOG, and the Federation of State Medical Boards, which can take away doctors’ medical licenses or accreditation if they don’t comply, as the federation openly said it would in a July 2021 letter.
“They have the power to fire doctors or remove their accreditation from the medical board. That destroys an obstetrician,” he said. “So it’s extraordinarily intimidating.”
‘Sad’ that ACOG ‘ignores the science’
Reform Pharma provided ACOG with an extensively footnoted overview of current science showing the risks COVID-19 shots pose to pregnant women and the general population.
For example, studies have shown that the vaccine can pass through the blood-brain barrier and the placenta.
Early reporting in 2021 by the CDC’s Dr. Tom Shimabukuro in the New England Journal of Medicine claiming the shots were safe based on the CDC’s own Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS) and Vaccine Safety Monitoring System (V-safe) data was statistically flawed, the letter stated.
Shimabukuro concluded there were no “obvious safety signals” among pregnant women who received the vaccine. However, he presented the numbers in a misleading manner that obscured the actual rate of spontaneous abortions.
According to Reform Pharma’s letter:
“Failure to disclose the true incidence of spontaneous abortion is at best gross incompetence and at worst malfeasance. The true incidence of spontaneous abortion [in his statistics, among first- and second-trimester pregnancies] is alarming, ranging between 82% to 91%.”
Early research also linked the shot to “autism-like behaviors” in newborn rats, indicating the shot could complicate neurodevelopment and underscoring the need for more studies.
Several studies in top journals have shown that nursing mothers shed the spike protein in their breast milk, causing potentially serious adverse reactions in their newborn babies.
And, according to the letter, the COVID-19 shots pose safety risks for all people that also extend beyond complications associated with pregnancy. That data has been published extensively in places ranging from VAERS to peer-reviewed studies and beyond — sources readily available to anyone at ACOG who cares to investigate.
Given the extensive evidence summarized in the letter, “It is sad that ACOG appears not to be doing a deep dive into all the science concerning COVID-19 injections, instead taking the word of the pharmaceutical companies themselves and the FDA and CDC, which similarly rely on pharma science,” Mack Rosenberg said.
“Particularly tragic is the failure of ACOG to acknowledge and investigate the important evidence from patients themselves of the tragic impact these injections have had on pregnant women, their babies and their families,” she added.
“Pregnant women should never take this vaccine,” said James Thorp, who also has extensively documented the literature on the dangers of the COVID-19 shots for pregnant women.
“It isn’t even really a vaccine,” he said. “It’s an experimental genetic therapy with absolutely zero long-term follow-up. This is unprecedented. This is a complete violation of the golden rule of pregnancy.”
‘Wrongdoers will be held accountable’
The “public health emergency” has been officially over since May 11, 2023, and it has been demonstrated that vaccines don’t stop transmission and that there is extensive evidence regarding risks to pregnant women and all people, Reform Pharma wrote.
That means, “the only explanation for ACOG continuing to push this poison on pregnant women and their unborn children is that the organization is ‘bought off,’” the letter said. “Wrongdoers will be held accountable.”
Reform Pharma reiterated its concerns in the second letter, but aside from the blocked email and out-of-office notifications, ACOG has not responded.
Brenda Baletti, Ph.D., is a senior reporter for The Defender. She wrote and taught about capitalism and politics for 10 years in the writing program at Duke University. She holds a Ph.D. in human geography from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and a master’s from the University of Texas at Austin.
This article was originally published by The Defender — Children’s Health Defense’s News & Views Website under Creative Commons license CC BY-NC-ND 4.0. Please consider subscribing to The Defender or donating to Children’s Health Defense.
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New Book
New Book: No Autoimmunity The Body Doesn’t Attack Itself
Lies are Unbekoming | September 24, 2026
The label for Humira, once the best-selling drug in the world, lists its risks in plain print. One of them, in the label’s own words, is new “autoimmune” disease.
A drug prescribed for a condition labelled autoimmune carries a warning that it can cause a condition labelled autoimmune. That contradiction sits in every box, on a folded paper almost nobody reads.
My new book starts there.
No Autoimmunity: The Body Doesn’t Attack Itself
For seventy years, “your body is attacking itself, and we don’t know why” has ended the conversation for people diagnosed with multiple sclerosis, lupus, rheumatoid arthritis, Hashimoto’s, Type 1 diabetes, Crohn’s and psoriasis. More than eighty conditions now carry the autoimmune label. The diagnosis comes with a prescription for life. It almost never comes with a question about cause.
This book asks the question and answers it from the framework’s own records: its drug labels, its journals, its regulatory filings, and its own experiments. … continue
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- Energy Crisis: Germany Enters Heating Season With Historically Low Gas Reserve Fill Levels
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- New Study: Antarctic Ice Melt Has Contributed Less Than 1 Centimeter To Sea Level Rise In The Last 30 Years
