On Sunday, April 2, 2023, the well-known Russian journalist/blogger, Vladlen Tatarsky, whose real name was Maxim Fomin, was killed in what appears to have been a targeted assassination.
At the time of his murder, Tatarsky had over 560,000 followers on his Telegram channel, making him one of the most influential voices when it came to covering the ongoing Russian special military operation in Ukraine.
The Russian government has publicly condemned the attack, with Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs spokeswoman Maria Zakharova condemning the role played by the West, noting that the harassment of Russian journalists by the West constitutes a veritable “witch hunt” that represents an acquiescence, if not outright complicity, in the murder of persons like Tatarsky and Daria Dugina, the daughter of the noted Russian philosopher, Alexander Dugin, and a journalist in her own right.
“Not a single case of the violent death of a Russian journalist hailed as a ‘success’ by the Kiev regime and its thugs, has been investigated by Western countries, international organizations, or foreign professional communities, and not even basic human sympathy has been shown,” Zakharova noted.
The double standard of the collective West, and in particular the United States, which prides itself for its ostensible support of a free press, has been put on display for all the world to see. In 2012, Marie Colvin, a war correspondent for The Sunday Times, was killed while covering the conflict in Syria.
In February 2019, Judge Amy Berman Jackson, of the US District Court in Washington, DC, awarded Marie Colvin’s estate damages in the amount of $300 million, claiming that Colvin had been “specifically targeted” by the Syrian government “because of her profession.” Judge Jackson further stated that “The murder of journalists acting in their professional capacity could have a chilling effect on reporting such events worldwide,” adding that “a targeted murder of an American citizen whose courageous work was not only important, but vital to our understanding of war zones and of wars generally, is outrageous.” [Note: The Syrian government denies that Marie Colvin was specifically targeted. She died when a so-called “media center” in a rebel-held town that doubled as a command center was struck by Syrian artillery. Colvin was operating in Syria without the permission of the Syrian government, in an active war zone.]
The murder of Daria Dugina and Vladlen Tatarsky clearly represents the deliberate targeting of journalists operating in their professional capacity. Both Dugina and Tatarsky provided reporting that was “vital to our understanding of war zones and war,” and yet, because this “understanding” came with a Russian slant, the US government remains silent.
The “chilling effect” which Judge Amy Jackson warned about is, it seems, to be embraced when those chilled speak Russian, or whose facts sustain a Russian narrative.
The compassion shown Marie Colvin by the US government, in the defense of a free press, is exposed as a lie when confronted by the silence that followed the deaths of Daria Dugina and Vladlen Tatarsky. But this was to be expected — after all, the US is seeking the extradition of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange so he can be prosecuted for the crime of publishing so-called “secrets” that exposed war crimes and other official malfeasance on the part of the US government and military in both Iraq and Afghanistan.
Putting a journalist in jail for 175 years (the maximum sentence Julian Assange would face if found guilty) is the same thing as a death sentence. Free speech, American-style, is not free — it comes with a heavy price, especially if one publishes material that runs against the US-backed official narrative.
Both Daria Dugina and Vladlen Tatarsky were included on the notorious “Myrotvorets” “kill list,” purportedly promulgated by the Ukrainian Security Services, along with hundreds of others—many of them minor children—similarly marked for death for the crime of speaking out against the policies of the Ukrainian government.
I, too, am on that list, along with scores of other Americans and non-Ukrainians.
To date, the US government has yet to condemn the Ukrainian government for targeting US citizens to die for exercising their Constitutionally protected right of free speech.
If the US government won’t protect its own citizens, one cannot expect it to speak out in the defense of the lives of non-US citizens designated for speech-related assassination.
But this isn’t simply a case of remaining silent in the face of crimes being committed by others. The US government is an active participant in the Ukrainian government’s campaign to silence dissenting voices using whatever means possible, including targeted assassination. The US government funds, helps organize, and actively supports the work of the Center for Countering Disinformation, or CCD, a Ukrainian agency operating under the auspices of the Office of the President of Ukraine. The CCD publishes a so-called “black list” containing the names of persons designated by the Ukrainian government as facilitating “Russian propaganda,” and designates those whose names appear on this list as “information terrorists” and “war criminals” who must be prosecuted to the full extent of the law.
Just to be clear, the US actively hunts down and kills persons designated as terrorists. To fund and support similar designations of its own citizens by a foreign government — Ukraine — known to arrest, torture, and murder dissenting voices means the US, implicitly, supports marking them for death.
This is the truth behind the US silence in the face of the murders of Russian journalists like Daria Dugina and Vladlen Tatarsky. A nation founded on the principles of free speech cannot tolerate free speech when it is practiced by those who oppose the US-backed narrative. Rather than engaging these dissenting voices in fact-based debate, dialogue, and discussion, the US —cognizant of the fact that their side could not prevail in such a contest — opts to silence these voices forever. For Julian Assange, this means life in prison.
For Daria Dugina and Vladlen Tatarsky, this meant death.
This is how you kill a free press. Hopefully the voices of dissent that remain will not be “chilled” by this result, but rather opt to double down on their commitment to pursue the truth, whatever the cost.
I know I will.
April 4, 2023
Posted by aletho |
Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance, War Crimes | Human rights, Ukraine, United States |
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Door cam footage of Natalya Vovk, Ukrainian national suspected of killing Russian journalist Daria Dugina.
The main suspect in the murder of prominent Russian military blogger Vladlen Tatarsky, Darya Trepova, has confessed to investigators details of her involvement in the incident, according to the news outlet Fontanka.
Tatarsky was killed in an explosion on Sunday at a cafe in St. Petersburg, after Trepova handed him a gift, a statuette, that contained an improvised explosive device (IED). The bombing, which also wounded 40 people, has been classified as a terrorist attack.
According to Fontanka, Trepova claims that it all started when she made friends with a certain activist online and was offered to move to Kiev to take up an editorial position at an unnamed media channel. Before she could be hired, however, she was told that she had to undergo an internship to “prove that she knows how to deal with Russian propaganda.”
Her first task was to go to the Listva bookstore in St. Petersburg and strike up a friendship with Tatarsky, who was holding an event there. Afterwards, she was reportedly told via Telegram that she had to travel to Moscow. There, a taxi driver, who was likely unaware of what he was doing, gave Trepova a package that contained a golden figurine.
Upon receiving the package, Trepova was instructed to go back to St. Petersburg to meet with Tatarsky at the Street Bar 1 café, where he was holding another event for his followers. She was allegedly told to give the figurine to Tatarsky as a gift, and “come up with something about the heroes of the Wagner PMC,” according to Fontanka.
“Then, we will act,” Trepova was reportedly told by her handlers, who said they had booked her a flight to Uzbekistan, where she would be transported to Kiev. Trepova reported her every move to her contact, sending messages such as “I’m arriving at the cafe,” “I’m about to present the figurine to Tatarsky,” and “I’ve handed it over.”
Trepova reportedly insists that she did not know the figurine contained a bomb and has repeatedly claimed that she was set up. Fontanka says her arguments seem plausible since she did not leave the building after handing over the statuette, and did not hesitate to sit next to it when Tatarsky invited her to join him on stage not long before it detonated.
Fontanka reports that explosives experts are now examining the blast site to confirm that the bomb was activated via SIM card, which would have made it possible to detonate it from anywhere in the world.
April 4, 2023
Posted by aletho |
Deception, War Crimes | Russia, Ukraine |
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On the one hand, we see peace deals; on the other, exploding pipelines
Early in January, I opined in Asia Times that “2023 bodes poorly for US international relations” under US President Joe Biden. I based my conclusion on China’s impressive success in making new friends versus the Biden administration’s inability to make any.
In less than three months since then, developments around the world have been seismic and spectacular and have made a prophet out of me, if I do say so myself.
In January, I reported that Chinese President Xi Jinping received red-carpet treatment from Saudi Arabia, concluded a US$25 billion deal for oil and met with the six Middle East nations that make up the Gulf Cooperation Council. Hosted by the Saudis, they talked about China buying energy and helping to build their infrastructure.
Two years earlier, China entered a 25-year strategic cooperation agreement with Iran. Thus China has become friends of both major sects of Islam that have been historically bitter rivals. (To be honest, I did not expect anything earthshaking out of all this.)
Then this March, China announced that after four days of meetings and discussion in Beijing, Saudi Arabia and Iran had agreed to resume diplomatic relations.
A peace deal for the ages
This was a big deal and caught the world by surprise. Heretofore, Saudi representing the Sunnis and Iran the Shiites have been bitter sectarian foes for centuries. Yet China was able to play the role of an honest broker and brought the two sides together.
China has the right set of credentials to be a mediator for peace. China is the second-strongest global power, but does not try to bully any lesser countries and seeks to get along with everyone.
China emphasizes three principles in its international relations: It respects the national sovereignty of other, does not interfere with the internal affairs of others, and seeks joint development based on common interests and mutual benefits.
A few days later, Xi called on his “good friend,” Russian President Vladimir Putin in Moscow, and brought with him a 12-point peace plan to resolve the conflict between Ukraine and Russia.
The West promptly labeled the peace plan as vague, ambiguous and failing to include terms that would revert Russian-occupied territories back to Ukraine. But the West missed the point that was clear to everybody else in the world: Namely, a true mediation for peace does not begin by stipulating what the outcome should look like.
Zelensky would like China to step in
But as pointed out in Asia Times, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky may find China’s peace proposal an acceptable starting point. He is facing Western allies getting weary of supporting the war. Without such support, Zelensky knows his goose is cooked.
While Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida was visiting Kiev acting as Washington’s envoy to encourage keeping the war going, Zelensky publicly welcomed China’s participation to broker a peace deal. He obviously found comfort in China’s role that brought peace to Saudi Arabia and Iran.
While Xi Jinping is enhancing his stature as a world leader that is proactive for peace, what has happened to Joe Biden during the same period?
History will show that blowback from two of Biden’s worst decisions ever made has come to haunt him in the first quarter of 2023.
Biden imposed economic sanctions and confiscated all the Russian dollar holdings held in the US in an attempt to bring Russia to its knees. But it didn’t work. Russia’s economy turned out to be far more resilient than Washington expected.
Weaponizing the dollar
Barred from trade with the European Union and others in the West, Russia turned to trade with China, India, East Asia and the Global South. Trade with China will surpass $200 billion this year, and Russia has agreed to accept China’s renminbi to settle their transactions.
As Russia earns a bounty of yuan from energy sales to China, other countries see the advantage of accepting the yuan from Russia for their trade. They avoid the extra cost of having to convert their own currency into dollars. Since China is likely to be their most important trading partner, yuan from Russia can simply be used when they do business with China.
By weaponizing the dollar, Biden has succeeded in implanting the idea in other central banks that the dollar is no longer a reliable reserve currency.
Recently, members of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) held a meeting to discuss ways to avoid using the dollar, euro or yen to settle their trade accounts. If not those, what then? Probably China’s yuan and their own currencies.
Indeed, China and even Japan have been reducing their dollar holdings. In recent months, China and Russia have been the major buyers of gold, no doubt with the dollars they owned.
The recent collapse of Silicon Valley Bank is an indicator that the US economy is caught between a rock and a hard place. To tamp down inflation, the Federal Reserve had to raise interest rates. Rising interest rates meant a devaluation of the long-term Treasury bills that the bank bought paying a lower interest rate. Thus the decline in the value of the collateral assets owned by SVB made the bank vulnerable to a bank run.
Most American banks operated in much the same way as SVB but were more fortunate because the Treasury Department quickly stepped in and injected liquidity to reassure depositors that their banks wouldn’t go the way of SVB.
US economy needs China’s help
To use a Chinese expression, US Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen and Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo have been acting like ants racing around a hot griddle, wanting and waiting for an invitation to visit Beijing. Why? Because Yellen urgently wants China to continue buying American IOUs and Raimondo would like to raise the level of bilateral trade, which would help keep the US economy going.
Somehow, these Biden cabinet officials do not know how to ask nicely or diplomatically. They seem to assume that an announcement of their wish is good enough for Beijing to express-mail an invitation to their offices. It has not occurred to them that they need to let Beijing know what’s in it for China to agree to meet with them.
The Biden administration has the arrogance to presume that it can pick and choose the economic sectors that it can decouple from China and which to select for collaboration with China. Apparently, Biden does not understand that China does not see itself as a vassal state and has its own priorities.
Obviously there exists a huge deficit of trust between the US and China. Nothing Biden has done is in the direction of healing the rift.
Blowing up Nord Stream
The revelation by Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist Seymour Hersh that Biden ordered the destruction of the Nord Stream pipelines has further emphasized that Biden is an unethical and ruthless national leader who cannot be trusted.
Biden has shown that he has no qualms in committing a war crime by severing the key economic linkage between Russia and the EU. Cutting off cheap energy from Russia has wreaked economic turmoil on Biden’s European allies. That Biden would do this to his own allies will shake the trust and confidence the EU allies hold for the US for a long time to come.
As matters stand now, Xi Jinping represents a proactive world leader who will apply his influence and prestige to work for world peace. Despite all the slander heaped on him and the blackening of China by Washington and the Western media, a long queue of world leaders jostle to meet with him in Beijing to discuss economic cooperation and collaboration on world peace.
At the other end of the world is Joe Biden, a world leader who is dishonest and unethical and has earned the wary distrust of virtually every national leader in the world. He gives lip service to peace while creating conflict and intimidating smaller countries to join the US military alliance and prepare for proxy wars.
Even his closest ally has to watch its back lest it’s abruptly discarded when it no longer figures in the US national interest.
George Koo retired from a global advisory services firm where he advised clients on their China strategies and business operations. Educated at MIT, Stevens Institute and Santa Clara University, he is the founder and former managing director of International Strategic Alliances. He is currently a board member of Freschfield’s, a novel green building platform.
April 3, 2023
Posted by aletho |
Economics, War Crimes | China, United States |
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Russian war correspondent Vladlen Tatarsky was killed in a blast at a cafe in St. Petersburg on Sunday.
Kiev continues to threaten Russian journalists with reprisals while international organizations turn a blind eye to the situation, Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova stated just hours after war correspondent Vladlen Tatarsky was killed in an explosion in St. Petersburg.
Zakharova stressed that Russian journalists are being intimidated by Kiev and its Western sponsors, “literally marked with special labels” on US social media platforms, and subjected to a witch hunt in Western media.
According to the diplomat, the fact that relevant international organizations ignore this can easily be interpreted as tacit approval if not complicity.
The Russian Foreign Ministry emphasized that Western countries have not investigated any case of violent death of a Russian journalist that was “assessed by the Kiev regime and its thugs as a ‘success’.”
“Not a single case of the violent death of a Russian journalist, assessed by the Kiev regime and its thugs as a ‘success’ has been investigated, or even treated with elementary human sympathy by Western countries, international organizations or foreign professional communities.”
“Up until recently, the West fought extremism and terrorism, marched as a united front in Paris in defense of journalists against whom terrorist attacks were committed. Today, the lack of reaction in the White House, Downing Street, the Elysee Palace, etc., given their alleged concern for the well-being of journalists and freedom of journalism, speaks volumes. The reaction in Kiev is striking, where recipients of Western grants demonstrate undisguised delight over what happened,” Zakharova said.
The spokeswoman added that it is thanks to the Russian war correspondents that the world sees the truth and learns information about what is happening in Ukraine.
“The professional activities of Vladlen Tatarsky, his service to the Fatherland caused hatred with the Kiev regime. He was dangerous for them, but courageously went all the way, fulfilling his duty,” the diplomat added, expressing condolences to Tatarsky’s family.
The 40-year-old Donetsk-born blogger, journalist and war correspondent, whose real name was Maxim Fomin, was killed in an explosion at a cafe in St. Petersburg on Sunday, April 2. The Russian Investigative Committee has launched an investigation into the explosion to establish the circumstances of the blast. Twenty-five people were injured in the explosion. Authorities are yet to determine as to who was behind the blast.
April 2, 2023
Posted by aletho |
Full Spectrum Dominance, Progressive Hypocrite, War Crimes | European Union, Russia, United States |
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An explosion that rocked the ‘Street Bar’ café in St. Petersburg, Russia on Sunday has claimed at least one life and left 19 people injured, authorities have reported.
Vladlen Tatarsky (real name Maksim Fomin), a military correspondent and blogger, was killed in the incident, according to emergency services.
Tatarsky joined the Donbass militias back in 2014 in the wake of the Maidan coup in Kiev. He has since become known in Russia as a blogger and a correspondent reporting on the situation in the Donetsk and Lugansk People’s Republics. Tatarsky has also authored several books.
According to Readovka news outlet, the man was hosting a live event for supporters of his work when an explosion ripped through the building, blowing the café’s glass front into the street.
Emergency services have reported that an improvised explosive device was detonated near the stage in the cafe.
The incident is reminiscent of another attack on a Russian journalist. In August 2022, Darya Dugina was assassinated in a car blast. She was the daughter of philosopher Aleksandr Dugin, who Western media have described as an ideologue of Russian nationalism. According to some reports, he might have been the real target of the attack. The Russian security services later claimed that Ukrainian agents were behind it.
April 2, 2023
Posted by aletho |
Full Spectrum Dominance, War Crimes | Russia, Ukraine |
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A recent publication by the world-renowned scientific group, The Cochrane Collaboration, has shown that masks did little to nothing positive during the pandemic response. Following the release of this study, New York Times opinion writer, Zeynep Tufekci, along with the editor-in-chief of the Cochrane Collaboration, Karla Soares-Weiser, threw the authors of the mask study under the bus. Jefferey Jaxen does a deep dive to uncover the important details of this story.
The Highwire with Del Bigtree | March 30, 2023
Despite the CDC preparing for the COVID shot rollout in 2020, newly released internal documents reveal that VAERS, the system for tracking vaccine adverse events, was overwhelmed by the sheer volume of submissions despite expecting record reports. Even after planning for a ‘worse case scenario’ of 1,000 reports per day, an untenable deluge swamped the system and its contractors in just 6 days after going live. But it didn’t stop there. Jeffery Jaxen reports.
April 1, 2023
Posted by aletho |
Deception, Science and Pseudo-Science, Video, War Crimes | CDC, COVID-19 Vaccine, Joe Biden, United States |
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Hundreds of thousands of dollars in US artillery equipment, unspecified “weapons systems,” and specialized ammunition meant for US forces in Syria and Iraq have been stolen in recent years, The Intercept reported on 30 March.
According to criminal investigations files obtained under the Freedom of Information Act by The Intercept, at least four large-scale thefts and one loss of US equipment valued at some $200,000 have occurred in Iraq and Syria between 2020 and 2022. The lost items include 40mm high-explosive grenades stolen from US Special Forces.
The losses continue a previous pattern. The Intercept notes further that a 2020 audit by the Pentagon’s inspector general found that Special Operations Joint Task Force–Operation Inherent Resolve, the main unit that partners with the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) to illegally occupy northeast Iraq, did not properly account for $715.8 million of equipment purchased for the SDF.
The recent failure to prevent the theft of, and account for, US-supplied weapons is concerning because this previously played a key role in the rise of Al-Qaeda affiliated groups, including the Nusra Front and ISIS, in Iraq and Syria.
In the spring of 2015, an extremist coalition led by the Nusra Front successfully conquered Syria’s Idlib governorate, in large part thanks to US-manufactured and supplied TOW anti-tank missiles. The missiles were originally supplied to Free Syrian Army (FSA) groups working with closely with Nusra.
When Russia intervened in the Syria conflict to prevent the fall of the government to Al-Qaeda groups – including Nusra, ISIS, and Ahrar al-Sham – a few months later, in September 2015, US officials drastically escalated TOW missile shipments to FSA units working with these groups.
When journalist Sharmine Narwani asked why US-supplied weapons allegedly meant for FSA groups were showing up in the hands of the Nusra Front, CENTCOM spokesman Lieutenant Commander Kyle Raines responded: “We don’t ‘command and control’ these forces – we only ‘train and enable’ them. Who they say they’re allying with, that’s their business.”
ISIS was also a major beneficiary of US-supplied weapons. Conflict Armament Research (CAR), a UK-based organization that tracks the supply of weapons into conflict-affected areas, reported that “Unauthorised retransfer – the violation of agreements by which a supplier government prohibits the re-export of materiel by a recipient government without its prior consent – is a significant source of [ISIS] weapons and ammunition. The US and Saudi Arabia supplied most of this material without authorization, apparently to Syrian opposition forces.”
By way of example, CAR noted that it had recovered US-supplied anti-tank missiles used by ISIS in Ramadi in February 2016. CAR confirmed that the missiles had been exported from the United States in December 2015. This indicates that the weapons were diverted to ISIS “in a matter of days or weeks after their supply.”
March 31, 2023
Posted by aletho |
Deception, War Crimes | al-Qaeda, Iraq, ISIS, Syria, United States |
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This year’s twentieth anniversary of the illegal Iraq invasion paradoxically coincided with major international events. Xi Jinping, General Secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China, was in Moscow on the day, while a Russia-Africa Parliamentary Forum opened at the same time.
In 2003, at the height of its power, the US proclaimed its “unipolar moment” in which it would dominate unchallenged, needing no allies and tolerating no objections from adversaries. History, it was believed, had a single purpose, and they would stop at nothing to achieve it. Indeed, American military, political and economic dominance seemed total at the time, echoing the sentiments of Henry Kissinger, who a few years earlier had written “America at the Apex.” Twenty years later, we are witnessing the flowering of multi-polarity: in Moscow, the General Secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China was talking to the Russian President, two countries contributing to a change the world has not seen in a hundred years. This transience of world history shows how quickly historical cycles change, but it is also important that the US itself, through its actions in different parts of the world, is accelerating its course.
One of the most important strategic mistakes made by Washington was the invasion of Iraq. Based on a false pretext and the deliberate misleading of the international community, it led to a series of significant war crimes, a catastrophic civil war, the shattering of Iraqi statehood and enormous repercussions for the entire Middle East. Just a few years of American presence in Iraq resulted in huge numbers civilian deaths, indiscriminate use of force, and the destruction of several cities, including Mosul. During the evacuation of the Russian embassy amid the 2003 US invasion, a convoy of diplomats came under American fire and several were injured. US private military contractors, who at one point had the same presence in the country as official troops, committed a number of war crimes. The abuse of prisoners by the US military at Abu Ghraib prison near Baghdad has been well documented. When the International Criminal Court raised the question of American citizens being charged over offenses in Afghanistan and Iraq, the US responded that it would prosecute the judges who raised the issue and that they should withdraw their initiatives immediately.
Arguably the greatest crime of the US in Iraq has been to create a civil war that has resulted in a terrible number of casualties with estimates ranging from 600,000 to one million.
From 2005 to 2007, the country’s population curve flattened, despite the fact that it has always had one of the highest birth rates in the region. The dismantling of the central government triggered geopolitical processes in the region and power in the formerly Sunni-ruled country fell into the hands of the Shia Arab majority, which began a rapprochement with Shia Iran. Since then, Tehran’s strategic position in Iraq has remained significant.
Some of the consequences of the US invasion have backfired as well. For example, the fight against terror led to an increase in the influence of ISIS, an organization banned in Russia, in Iraq. Unexpectedly, Iran’s strengthened role in the country meant that 150,000 US troops were unable to control the situation in Iraq, while a few dozen Iranian diplomats in the embassy in Baghdad were quite capable of doing so. The metastasis of the Arab Spring, which began to spread to various countries in the region, was also one of the consequences of the Iraq war.
Meanwhile, US financial costs for the war are estimated at several trillion dollars. Overall, the politically unsuccessful operations in Iraq and Afghanistan have led to a decline in American influence and status in the region, as evidenced by the recent restoration of diplomatic relations between Saudi Arabia and Iran, mediated by China.
The Americans formulated a reasonable objective for the military operation as early as 2007. It was voiced by General David Petraeus at a US congressional hearing. In response to a question about American interests in the country, he said, “Our purpose is not to create a Jeffersonian democracy, our purpose is to create the conditions for our troops to withdraw.” The implication was that pulling out should not look like defeat. At the time, this reasoned objective was well in line with American interests and showed the depth of the strategic error the Americans had made in preparing for the 2003 invasion.
Today, many of those responsible for that war – and their media and academic cheerleaders – are now loudly supporting Washington’s position on Ukraine.
It’s unlikely that the impact of their actions will be any different this time.
Andrey Sushentsov is the Valdai Club program director.
March 30, 2023
Posted by aletho |
Illegal Occupation, War Crimes | China, Iraq, Middle East, Russia, Ukraine, United States |
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Syria has reasserted its “inalienable right” to restore its sovereignty to the Israeli-occupied Syrian territory of the Golan Heights, denouncing the US’s support for the regime that has emboldened it to prolong the occupation.
Syria’s permanent representative to the United Nations Office in Geneva, Ambassador Haider Ali Ahmed made the remarks, addressing a session of the Human Rights Council on the situation in the Middle East, the official Syrian Arab News Agency (SANA) reported on Wednesday.
The Israeli regime seized the Golan Heights from Syria during the 1967 Six-Day War and later occupied it in a move that has never been recognized by the international community. The regime has built dozens of settlements in the area ever since and has been using the region as a launch pad for its military operations against the Arab country.
“Israel commits a war crime by building colonies and settlements in the occupied Syrian Golan, and its colonization plans have witnessed an escalation since the end of 2021, when it announced the doubling of the number of settlers in the Golan over a period of five years,” the Syrian envoy said.
Ahmed also pointed to a plan by the occupying regime to install wind turbines in Golan, saying the scheme proved Tel Aviv’s intransigence in keeping up its colonial and racist practices in the Syrian territory.
“The time has come to start taking concrete steps to put an end to the Israeli regime’s occupation of Arab lands, which comes as a result of the support that the US and other countries provide to the Israeli occupation entity,” added the Syrian diplomat.
The United States has proven the Israeli regime’s biggest and most dedicated ally since 1948, when the regime claimed existence after occupying huge expanses of regional territories during a similar war.
With a cast-iron resolve, Washington has invariably provided sustained arms, logistical, and political support for Tel Aviv that has encouraged it to sustain the occupation and keep up its near-daily deadly crimes against the peoples of the occupied territories, foremost among them the Palestinians.
The Syrian official said the US’s continuing to provide this support despite the horrible crimes served as the greatest evidence of Washington’s contempt for the provisions of international law, the United Nations Charter, and international resolutions.
March 30, 2023
Posted by aletho |
Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Illegal Occupation, War Crimes | Israel, Syria, United States, Zionism |
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Everyday Dr. McCullough and I speak to people who have been injured—or have a family member who has been killed—by one of the COVID-19 vaccines. Almost every day, Dr. McCullough examines one or more vaccine injuries in his clinical practice. Because he has become a go-to doctor for people who are suffering from these injuries, his view of the problem is not statistical, but at the individual human level.
The United States has a census counted population of 332 million. Thus, if even a small percentage of these people are injured or killed from COVID-19 vaccines, it’s still a frightful number.
Consider that 58,000 men were killed in ten years of fighting in Vietnam. This was just a tiny percentage of the 100 million American men counted in the 1968 census, but it was still a huge number of men to die in their early twenties.
Yesterday, former BlackRock portfolio manager Ed Dowd and his analysts at the research firm, Phinance Technologies, published a report on the cost of the COVID-19 vaccine program in the United States for the year 2022.
I know from multiple, probing conversations with Mr. Dowd that he is a conservative analyst. A serious and sober-minded man, he is ruthless in eliminating biases and wild assumptions. He and his team have focused their research on the 148 million Americans (between the ages of 18-64) who are employed. The Bureau of Labor Statistics compiles much data on this cohort, as does the life insurance industry, because many employed people receive policies as part of their compensation packages.
Mr. Dowd’s report is grim. As he encapsulated the results in a tweet:
As a true crime author, I always focus on the human cost. I know that the death of a single young person can devastate a family and even an entire community. 26.6 million injuries; 1.36 million disabilities; 300,000 excess deaths. Note that this death count in one year is 5.2 times the number of men killed in ten years of combat in Vietnam.
Perhaps the most extraordinary thing about this state of affairs is that most Americans don’t know it’s happening. Every day, young people are dying from heart attacks, strokes, and seizures caused by COVID-19 vaccines. Most of their families and friends are led to believe that they just died—suddenly and unexpectedly—of acute conditions that were extremely rare in young people prior to 2021.
Click here to read the full Phinance Technologies Report.
Also, be sure to pick up a copy of Mr. Dowd’s magisterial book, “Cause Unknown”: The Epidemic of Sudden Deaths in 2021 & 2022.
March 29, 2023
Posted by aletho |
Timeless or most popular, War Crimes | COVID-19 Vaccine, United States |
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Russia and China are determined to hold the American perpetrators of the Nord Stream sabotage to account. Uncle Sam’s days – indeed decades – of wanton criminality are over. There’s going to be hell to pay as the imperialist tyranny in Washington hits a wall of reality.
Several weeks have gone by with the United States and its Western lackeys stonewalling at the United Nations Security Council, squirming and resisting calls from Moscow and Beijing for an international criminal investigation into the sabotage of the Baltic Sea pipelines that were blown up in September.
A swathe of independent observers, such as American economics professor Jeffrey Sachs and former CIA analyst Ray McGovern, have concurred with the investigative report published on February 8 by renowned journalist Seymour Hersh which claims that U.S. President Joe Biden and his senior White House staff ordered the Pentagon to take out the natural gas pipeline that runs along the Baltic Sea bed from Russia to Germany.
Russia and China are adamant about not letting this vital subject be ignored. They want a proper investigation, international accountability and criminal prosecution. Moscow and Beijing are right to insist on this. Washington and its Western allies’ presumption of impunity has gone on for too many decades. The buck stops here and both Russia and China are strong enough to ensure that the United States cannot threaten, blackmail, or arm-twist its way out of scrutiny.
The Nord Stream project is a major international civilian infrastructure, costing in excess of $20 billion to construct over more than a decade. At 1,200 kilometres in length under the Baltic Sea, it is an impressive feat of engineering, symbolizing the mutual benefits of good neighborliness and cooperative trading.
For the United States to blow this pipeline up in order to knock Russia out of the European energy market so that it could muscle in with its own more expensive gas supplies is a shocking act of state terrorism and criminality. It is also potentially an act of war against Russia and callous sabotage against supposed European allies whose citizens are now suffering economic misery from soaring energy bills. German workers have this week shut down the entire economy from industrial protests over collapsing businesses and unbearable cost of living.
Of course, the Nord Stream sabotage is an urgent matter of basic justice, accountability for an atrocious crime, as well as massive international financial reparations. It’s almost hilarious how the self-proclaimed American protagonist of “rules-based global order” is desperately procrastinating over a glaring incident of dereliction and chaos.
But more than the essential obligation of justice is the legacy of impunity. For the perpetrators of such a wanton terrorist act not to be held accountable sets a perilous precedent. Otherwise, what is stopping the state terrorists from repeating equally brazen acts of sabotage and warmongering? The very concept of international law and the United Nations Charter is demolished, not simply undermined.
The Nord Stream incident potentially opens an era of rampant lawlessness and state banditry – by a nuclear superpower, the United States, using its Western minions for cover. The Western news media, in their reluctance to investigate, are also exposed as nothing more than propaganda channels in the service of imperial masters.
The present is reminiscent of the 1930s during a time of fascist expansionism by Nazi Germany and other imperialist nations, including the United States, Britain, France, Italy, Spain and Japan, and others. Nazi Germany was not the unique culprit during that earlier time of barbarism, notwithstanding the official Western revisionism of history to absolve itself.
After the Second World War amid the ashes of international destruction and up to 85 million deaths, the United Nations and its Charter were founded to ostensibly enshrine the stricture that there would be no repetition of the 1930s-style lawlessness and state terrorism.
That lofty aspiration was always a pathetic illusion. The decades after WWII saw no halt to the imperialist warmongering and subterfuges carried out primarily by the United States and its Western allies, in particular Britain. What a mockery that the U.S. and Britain were afforded permanent member states of the UN Security Council given that these two rogue powers have been largely responsible for countless wars post-1945. The decades-long wars in Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan are but the most notorious war crimes of the Anglo-American “special relationship”.
During the Cold War decades, the Soviet Union provided a limited check on the worst depredations by Western imperialists. The People’s Republic of China was not strong enough to act as a deterrent force.
For about two decades after the Cold War officially ended in 1991 following the dissolution of the Soviet Union, the United States rulers perceived a license for “full-spectrum dominance”. Washington embarked on a frenzy of endless wars that up till recently have prevailed.
The first reality check on the unbridled violence of the U.S. imperialists and their NATO henchmen was Russia’s military intervention in Syria in late 2015 to put an end to the Western machinations for yet another regime-change operation. Washington and its accomplices failed in their nefarious goals in Syria, albeit the Americans persist in illegally occupying part of the Arab country and stealing its oil resources.
Ukraine is the full manifestation of the end to impunity for the United States.
Russia under Vladimir Putin has recovered the military strength that was lost with the dissolution of the Soviet Union. In some ways, present-day Russia is even more formidable owing to the development of new forms of weapons, such as hypersonic missiles and S-500 air defenses. Also, Russia’s economy is on a sounder footing than the Soviet Union which relied excessively on militarism. Hence, Moscow has been able to withstand the economic assault that Washington and its allies have tried to mount over the Ukraine conflict.
Just as important, too, China has risen to economic and military superpower status. Together, Russia and China now present an invulnerable countervailing force to the United States and its Western allies.
For nearly eight decades after World War Two, the United States was relatively free to run amok, trashing international law and nations’ sovereignty, racking up death tolls by the millions, and terrorizing the planet with its “benign”, narcissistic tyranny.
The conflict in Ukraine, where Russia has said “enough is enough” to years of U.S.-led NATO aggression, is demonstrating that the days of impunity are finally over for the would-be American hegemon.
Washington has recklessly raised the stakes to an unsustainable height in Ukraine. It has bet the house – and farm – on subjugating Russia for its next insatiable imperial move against China. But Moscow and Beijing are calling Uncle Sam’s bluff. The buck stops here.
The edifice of American imperial power has never been challenged at its foundation. It is now.
March 29, 2023
Posted by aletho |
Illegal Occupation, Timeless or most popular, War Crimes | Afghanistan, China, Iraq, Russia, Syria, UK, Ukraine, United States |
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The failure of a Russian-Chinese Security Council resolution to set up an international probe into the Nord Stream attacks is not the end of the road, and Moscow has over half a dozen avenues to pursue the matter, both at the UN and at other venues, says Dr. Alfred de Zayas, a former UN rapporteur and veteran expert on international law.
Moscow expressed confidence Tuesday that the truth about the Nord Stream explosions would eventually “break through” in spite of the United Nations Security Council’s failure to adopt a Russian-Chinese resolution demanding a formal international investigation into the sabotage.
“Any tribunal would convict the US on the basis of the available information today, a fortiori in the absence of any credible evidence to the contrary. In the United States, any grand jury would find that the evidence already in the public domain suffices to indict the suspect for the crime and open formal criminal proceedings,” de Zayas told Sputnik.
The resolution received support from Russia, China, and Brazil. The US, the UK, France, and rotating Security Council members Albania, Gabon, Ghana, Malta, Mozambique, the UAE, Switzerland, Ecuador, and Japan abstained. Russian Deputy Permanent representative to the UN Dmitry Polyanskiy told Sputnik the resolution failed thanks to “big pressure” on the part of the West.
Seymour Hersh, the Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist whose bombshell reporting revealed that US Navy divers assisted by the Norwegian military were responsible for the pipelines’ destruction, said he was not at all surprised the resolution failed. “What else did you think they would do? If they did do anything else that would be news,” Hersh told Sputnik.
De Zayas characterized Hersh’s reporting as “thorough, coherent and prima facie credible,” and said his investigations “constitute a solid basis to commence an independent international investigation, which would require the consent of those countries whose territorial sovereignty extends over the area where the explosions took place, namely Sweden and Denmark.”
Unfortunately, the legal expert said, Sweden has so far stonewalled on the issue and hasn’t shared its own probe’s findings with the UN. “Sweden’s silence can only be interpreted as a cover-up, because the consequences of revealing proof of US violation of Swedish and Danish sovereignty, and the colossal violation of international law and the laws of war, would have exploded NATO in the same way as the US exploded the pipelines,” he suspects.
The international legal expert emphasized that to be credible, any probe by the Nordics into the Nord Stream attacks will have to be open to all interested parties, including Russia. Otherwise, “bearing in mind that all three countries have ganged up against Russia, the great danger is that their investigations might be a cover-up or a white-wash operation.”
8 Tools at Russia’s Disposal
Luckily, de Zayas says, there are a number of avenues Russia and other countries can pursue at the international level. These include:
- For starters, countries could turn to Article 19 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, which gives all persons the right to access information, and to seek and impart information of all kinds, particularly when the information withheld concerns criminal acts such as terrorism.
- Secondly, de Zayas notes, because the Security Council has failed to establish an international Commission of Inquiry, or Fact-finding Mission – tools for examining potential serious violations of international humanitarian and human rights law, the General Assembly may do so. “The General Assembly should go beyond the mere condemnation of the Nord Stream sabotage and adopt a resolution under Article 96 of the UN Charter requesting an advisory opinion from the International Court of Justice on the question of the legal consequences of the blowing up of the pipelines, in particular the civil and penal liabilities involved,” the lawyer explained.
- Third, the legal expert says, since the Nord Stream explosions fall under the definition of international terrorism, they are under the remit of the UN’s Vienna Office on Drugs and Crime, which should conduct its own investigation.
- Fourth, de Zayas argues, an investigation could be started by the UN’s Environmental Program office in Nairobi, given that its purview extends to investigating the adverse ecological impacts the blasts may have had on fisheries in the Baltic Sea.
- Fifth, de Zayas proposes filing a so-called “inter-state complaint” under Article 41 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, saying violations of Articles 1, 2, 6, 19, and 26 of the document could be argued.
- Sixth, the lawyer says the UN’s Human Rights Council could set up a Fact Finding Mission to investigate “the adverse human rights impacts in the region and the world” of the Nord Stream blasts, “as indeed, the attack on energy supplies has widespread consequences, especially for the enjoyment of economic and social rights.”
- Seventh, there are the Special Procedures of the Human Rights Council – independent human rights experts with mandates to report and advise on human rights matters, which have their own avenues for investigating the Nord Stream attacks. “Surely it is within the remit of three Rapporteurs – the Rapporteur on Terrorism, the Rapporteur on the Right to Truth, Justice, and Reparation, and the Rapporteur on Freedom of Opinion and Expression” to investigate, de Zayas suggested.
- Finally, the expert suggests that Russia and other countries could argue the Nord Stream attacks constitute a violation of the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea. “And even if the US never ratified [the treaty], nothing stops the UNCLOS Secretariat from establishing a working group to study the implications of the sabotage of undersea pipelines,” he explained.
‘Double Standards’
De Zayas stressed that the failure of the UNSC to condemn the terrorist sabotage of Nord Stream in the same way it condemned the 9/11 terror attacks in 2001 signals “the application of double-standards.”
“The silence of the UN with regard to the terrorist sabotage of Nord Stream is as deafening as its silence with regard to the 40 US biolabs in Ukraine,” the lawyer said.
Fortunately, de Zayas argues, pressure on the US is building, not least because of US officials’ proven hostility to Russian pipeline infrastructure long before it was destroyed.
“It was certainly careless of Joe Biden to have threatened that if Russia invaded Ukraine, Nord Stream would be no more. This was repeated by officials of the State Department.
Moreover, the US had already done everything in its power to frustrate the completion of Nord Stream II, as evidenced by the illegal unilateral coercive measures imposed on businesses throughout the world to intimidate enterprises such as the Dutch-Swiss Allseas and a Swiss insurance company with colossal penalties. Such actions were illegal, constituted interference in the internal affairs of states and illegal extraterritorial application of US laws, but the world somehow tolerated them. Still they contribute to the growing legal dossier against the US,” de Zayas concluded.
March 29, 2023
Posted by aletho |
Timeless or most popular, War Crimes | NATO, Sweden, United States |
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