The West continues to persecute journalists whose work reveals the reality of the Ukrainian situation. Recently, French filmmaker Anne-Laure Bonnel reported that she received threats and lost her job as a result of her work in the Donbass. Bonnel recorded two documentary films showing the situation of the ethnically Russian people in the regions attacked by Kiev. In response, she was “cancelled” in Europe. The case shows how the West no longer has any commitment to media freedom and is willing to take dictatorial measures to silence journalists who expose the crimes committed by NATO allies.
Anne-Laure Bonnel first came to Donbass in 2015, shortly after the conflict in the east began. At the time, she witnessed the horror of the genocide committed by the Ukrainian authorities and filmed impactful scenes from the lives of Donbass’ residents. In 2016, Bonnel presented the film “Donbass” during a film festival at the Sorbonne University. At the time, her work had been applauded by critics – a situation very different from what would happen some years later.
In February 2022, just a few days before the start of the Russian special military operation, she returned to Donbass in order to continue her project to document the humanitarian crisis in the region. In this recent trip, she filmed the scenes that composed a new film, called “Donbass: eight years later”. As in the first film, the work was not permeated by any political or ideological content, being just a documentary focused on exposing the local situation in a neutral and impartial way. However, this time her work was not welcomed in Europe.
Bonnel’s film was simply banned from all major European events. She was barred from participating in the festivals she used to work at. More than that, in a recent interview to RIA Novosti on October 18, Bonnel said that she was fired from her job at the University of Paris, where she taught for more than 15 years, and that she even received threats from pro-Kiev activists.
Bonnel also emphasizes that she suffered high psychological pressure with all these problems she has encountered since her return from Donbass. For her, the situation became truly unbearable, as her life changed completely just by the fact that she continued to do her work in the Donbass even with the start of the Russian operation. Suddenly, all the critics and fans who praised her in Europe started ignoring her films and trying to “cancel” her. All this left her deeply terrified and led Bonnel to remain silent for the last few months, only now coming to the public to denounce the persecution she has unfairly experienced.
These were some of her words during the interview:
“When I (…) came back [to France], I had to show my recordings to several people, and then I encountered the first problem: people who were interested in my recordings stopped showing up. That was the first problem (…) Once the film was released, I encountered other issues – they may or may not be related, it’s hard to say. But I lost my job at the University of Paris, where I taught for 15 years (…) My contract was not renewed (…) In an email from the university, I was told that I no longer met the values of the university, so they could not allow me to continue to work (…) Psychological pressure was put on me, I received threats. That’s why I lived in the shadows for a long time. It’s not easy”.
It is curious to note how an institution as prestigious and traditional as the University of Paris acted in a rude and authoritarian way when firing an employee just for having done exactly what a journalist is supposed to do: expose reality. Bonnel’s case reveals the real face of the current liberal West, which increasingly violates its own democratic principles just to support an illegitimate neo-Nazi regime.
The Bonnel case is just another sad episode in the persecution of journalists that has been promoted by the West and its Ukrainian proxy since the beginning of Russia’s special military operation. Sincere reporters have become one of the main targets of Kiev and the West.
While in Western “democracies” attempts are made to “cancel” independent journalism or classify it as “spreader of disinformation”, in the Ukrainian dictatorship the persecution is carried out by military means. It is not by chance that neo-Nazi terrorists killed Daria Dugina and bombed the hotel where the RT staff was staying in Donbass. It is also important to remember that hundreds of journalists are included on “Myrotvorets”, the infamous Ukrainian kill-list.
In fact, on several occasions, the West has made it clear that it is willing to do anything to prevent the reality about Ukraine from being revealed.
Lucas Leiroz is a researcher in Social Sciences at the Rural University of Rio de Janeiro; geopolitical consultant.
Despite numerous publications about military research in secret US biology laboratories in the post-Soviet space and demands to place their activities under strict international control, there is, unfortunately, no qualitative improvement of the situation in this matter. Therefore, it is not surprising that at the recent 22nd Meeting of the SCO Council of Heads of State, the Chinese president additionally drew the attention of the association’s member countries to the need “to effectively meet the challenges in biosecurity, and other non-traditional security domains”. As part of the Samarkand Declaration of 2022, SCO countries were urged to strictly adhere to the Biological Weapons Convention and to adopt a protocol to it that provides for an effective verification mechanism.
After Russia initiated the special operation to denazify Ukraine, alongside publicly exposing the illegal US biological weapons development activities in secret biolabs, the Pentagon sought to move unfinished programs in Ukraine to other countries in the post-Soviet region as quickly as possible. This particularly pertains to the territory of the states of Central Asia (CA) and Eastern Europe.
Recently, Russia Today journalists have found out that the US has decided to study the deadly anthrax in a bio-lab in Kyrgyzstan. In this regard, the US Department of Health & Human Services plans to fund this work and allocate about a quarter of a million dollars for this purpose. According to the tender published on the procurement portal of the US government, the regional hospital in the city of Osh in the south of the republic will become the base for these tests. At the same time, the publication reminded that Kyrgyzstan and the United States are negotiating a new agreement between the two countries in the field of US biological laboratories in the Republic of Kazakhstan, but the nuances and points of the future document are hidden from the public.
Very disturbing information in this regard has recently come from Uzbekistan, where, according to the Telegram channel, the active work of US representatives to create a powerful military-biological cluster in that country is confirmed. This is particularly evidenced by the growing “work” in Uzbekistan in recent years on the part of the US Agency for International Development (USAID) and the US Defense Threat Reduction Agency (DTRA). On this issue, the publication has prepared an infographic on US military-biological activities in Uzbekistan, which clearly indicates the potential damage to the security of the countries of Central Asia, the Russian Federation and China, the main political opponents of the White House.
There is also information that the United States and the United Kingdom continue to conduct joint research at the Kazakhstan Central Reference Laboratory (CRL) in Almaty. In early 2022, the United Kingdom shipped a large number of samples of virus strains, laboratory equipment, diagnostic instruments, etc. through the British shipping company WN Shipping the first half of the year.
Kazakhstan’s CRL in Almaty was built with Pentagon funds and has a third level of biohazard because a repository for particularly dangerous infectious agents is located on the premises of this facility, which are examined by staff of specialized laboratories for plague, cholera, zoonotic bacterial and natural viral focal infections. According to Kazakhstan’s official information, no US military experts (biologists and virologists) reportedly work at CRL, and as of January 1, 2020, it is fully funded and owned exclusively by Kazakhstan’s budget. However, in reality, this facility is not directly funded by the United States, but through a system of American grants, i.e. the research is carried out in the interest of the United States under a certain program of the Pentagon. And apparently this “cooperation” continues.
This is confirmed, in particular, by the fact that on November 5, 2021, the Ministry of Industry and Infrastructure Development of Kazakhstan initiated the process of public discussion on the construction project of the BSL-4 laboratory for work with especially dangerous strains and an underground storage facility for a collection of dangerous and especially dangerous strains in the village of Gvardeisky in the Zhambyl region, the construction of which is planned for 2025. The fourth biological safety code BSL-4 (Biosafety Level 4) of this planned biological laboratory alone indicates that the facility poses a high risk to people and society of the viruses being studied, most of which are simply impossible to handle.
The Kyrgyz public has already reacted very critically to this project. Protesters have gathered in front of the US Embassy, outraged that the lab will be built near the border with Kyrgyzstan, just 90 kilometers from Bishkek. Kyrgyz experts, together with the International Association for the Control of Biological Research, sent a letter this summer to the president of Kazakhstan, Kassym-Jomart Tokayev, asking that the construction of a biological laboratory in the border region be stopped.
Obviously, Washington is eager to preserve the countries of Central Asia as a testing ground for its military biological research. Hence the US efforts to develop similar projects in Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan, Kazakhstan and Tajikistan. At the same time, Washington has an increased interest in Tashkent and Alma-Ata, as these two countries have better developed infrastructure and more qualified personnel compared to other Central Asian states. The increased US interest in Uzbekistan is also due to the fact that the country is not a member of the CSTO, which gives Washington more freedom of action.
Malaysia-based daily newspaper The Straits Times uncovered on 17 October the arrest of a Mossad-affiliated hit team, involved in the kidnapping of a Palestinian in Kuala Lumpur, on behalf of Israel.
The Mossad team was able to locate two Palestinian computer programming specialists while they were leaving a diner near Jalan Yap Kwan Seng by car, just after 10 pm.
The “snatch-and-grab” team consisted of four local Malaysians who kidnapped the driver of the car and took him into one of the two vehicles used for the operation, leaving the second Palestinian behind and allowing him to escape – something that would later come back to haunt them.
The vehicles left the scene and arrived at the chalet they were headed to, where the Palestinian IT specialist was tied up in one of the rooms and put on a video call with Israeli Mossad operatives who started to bark questions at him, inquiring about Hamas’s cyber unit.
The call was organized by two men, who interrogated the specialist for 24 hours, while the Malaysian team was on standby to torture the victim when answers were unsatisfactory.
The Straits Times learned that the Mossad wanted insight into his experience in software development and his role in assisting the Cyber unit of Hamas to develop new weapons.
Additionally, the Mossad wanted to uncover his associates in the hierarchy of leaders in the Al-Qassam Brigades, the military wing of Hamas.
Meanwhile, the other specialist who was able to escape sensed the gravity of the situation and alerted the security personnel at a hotel nearby, initiating the pursuit to arrest the cell.
Remarkably, it was revealed that the Mossad had prepared another chalet room for the second specialist. A team was waiting overseas to interrogate him as well, but miscommunication confused the kidnappers.
According to Al-Jazeera, the second specialist was a more valuable target. However, had he not been able to escape, the Malaysian police would have remained oblivious to the entire operation.
Reportedly, despite the cell’s training in Europe by Mossad operatives, the recruits failed to notice the CCTV cameras and used fake plates, giving the police enough information to locate them.
“Had the Malaysian police not acted swiftly, the victim would have likely disappeared,” informed sources told The Straits Times.
The newspaper added that the police arrived halfway through the video call, surprising the Israelis at the other end, who terminated the call as soon as they heard the chaos outside and saw the police.
The two Palestinian IT specialists, said to be natives of Gaza, have since left Malaysia for an undisclosed country.
There are no official relations between Malaysia and Israel, and this plot is one of several Mossad operations in southeast Asia. Nonetheless, its impact on the secret ties between both countries is questionable.
Back in 2015, then-prime minister Minister Najib Razak visited the Hamas-run government in Gaza and expressed his support for the besieged enclave in southern occupied Palestine.
“We believe in the struggle of the Palestinian people. They have been suppressed and oppressed for so long,” said Razak.
Nonetheless, data released by the Israeli Central Bureau of Statistics reveals that Malaysia imported $1.457 billion worth of products in 2014, a 24 percent increase since the previous year. Economic ties are unaffected as of today.
Scientists at Boston University claim to have created a new variant of Covid-19 with an 80% mortality rate, by combining the highly-transmissible Omicron variant of the coronavirus with the original Wuhan strain. The research, which echoes experiments thought to have created the virus in the first place, has caused outrage.
In a research paper published last week, the scientists explained that they isolated the spike protein of the Omicron variant and combined it with the “backbone” of the original strain that circulated in early 2020. This created a virus that “robustly escapes vaccine-induced… immunity” and inflicts “serious disease” on laboratory mice, 80% of whom died during testing, the paper stated.
While the team admitted that their mutant strain would likely be less deadly in humans than mice, they found that it produced five times as many virus particles in lab-grown human lung cells when compared to the Omicron variant.
The paper has yet to be peer reviewed.
News of the research caused outrage online, as it is widely believed that similar ‘gain-of-function’ research – a term describing the alteration of a pathogen to enhance its potency – at the Wuhan Institute of Virology in China led to the global Covid-19 pandemic. The US funded such research at the Wuhan Institute, although it is still unclear whether the specific coronavirus that caused the pandemic originated in the lab.
“This should be totally forbidden, it’s playing with fire,” former Israel Institute for Biological Research head Shmuel Shapira said of the Boston experiments. “How many times did virologists say they were not making chimeric SARS viruses more deadly? How many???” reporter Paul Thaker tweeted.
The Boston team aren’t the only scientists returning to potentially dangerous research in the aftermath of the pandemic. EcoHealth Alliance, the private company responsible for much of the Wuhan Institute’s pre-2020 gain-of-function research, was awarded a $650,000 grant by the US last month to study “the potential for future bat coronavirus emergence in Myanmar, Laos, and Vietnam.”
As a non-partisan, volunteer activist group, Fearless Canada was present at the beginning and on several other occasions during the Freedom Convoy protest in Ottawa. As such, many of our members witnessed first-hand what the situation looked like on the ground and how it all began. We took extensive video footage of the events during the first weekend from the moment when truckers were being directed toward Parliament by Ottawa police. We have decided to submit our evaluation of the events as well as our strongly held view that the invocation of the Emergency Measures Act (hereafter referred to as “EMA”) by the Trudeau government was not only inappropriate, but also unlawful and unconstitutional.
We must first unequivocally state that, in our view, the Trudeau government’s decision to invoke the EMA in no way met the legal threshold to do so. The usage of the EMA is reserved for exceptional circumstances in which a serious foreign or existential threat imperils the security of the nation. Such security threats would be typically related to war, as the older, subsequently replaced War Measures Act aimed to address. In no conceivable way could the temporary discomfort or inconvenience borne by Ottawa citizens or businesses justify the use of an Act that is meant to aid the government in protecting the nation against threats of an incalculably larger scale. As such, the purpose of the Commission is not to determine whether the invocation of the EMA served the Trudeau government in its objective to deescalate the so-called “occupation” of Ottawa’s downtown core, but rather to assess whether the legal threshold for its invocation was met.
The Early Days in Ottawa
Our group arrived in Ottawa in the early afternoon of January 28, 2022. The first thing we noticed was Ottawa police directing truckers and their rigs onto Wellington Street towards Parliament. The atmosphere was festive and light despite the frigid weather. As more protesters arrived in Ottawa over the course of the weekend, we would quickly observe that the crowds were both peaceful and diverse. Men, women, and children from all different backgrounds and walks of life gathered in the capital with a common goal. They demanded that the Trudeau government lift measures that, in their view, were both unjustified and discriminatory in nature. As a result of those measures, the majority of protesters in Ottawa were themselves directly impacted in profound and often irreversible ways.
In talking with dozens of truckers and protesters, we learned that many had lost their jobs, connections to loved ones, access to essential services, and much more. While speaking with police officers, we learned that many felt they were unlawfully coerced into taking a COVID vaccine in order to keep their jobs. Our impression on the ground was that the majority of police officers were in fact aligned with the goals of the protest. They, too, wanted to see an immediate end to damaging and ineffective policies that divided our nation along medical lines previously acknowledged as a matter of private and personal concern.
Legacy Media and the Trudeau Government’s Portrayal of the Freedom Convoy
While in Ottawa, our group kept an eye on the news coming out of legacy media outlets such as the CBC, CTV News, and Global News. It became impossible not to notice that a concerted narrative had quickly taken shape to misrepresent the situation and characterize protesters as far-right extremists, racists, antisemites, and more. The unjustified slander of protesters directly conflicted with our experience on the ground. What we saw was a festive and peaceful rally, replete with volunteers offering food and shelter from the cold, routinely cleaning streets and sidewalks, and organizing fun activities for the kids. At no time did we spot a single racist or Nazi in the vast crowds, as was incessantly suggested by both the Liberal government and the mainstream media. From what we could tell, these characterizations were fabricated in order to serve a narrative that aimed to discredit the legitimacy and lawfulness of the protest.
As time went on, the media’s portrayal of the situation continued to unhinge itself from reality. The press published stories about imminent violence, a van loaded with illegal firearms, and more. None of these allegations turned out to be true. Yet, the misrepresentation of the situation had already reached the eyes and ears of Canadians from coast to coast, very few of which witnessed the event themselves. But by then, the damage had already been done, just as it seemed to have been intended.
The Invocation of the EMA
At the moment the Trudeau government invoked the EMA, it must be noted that the protest in Ottawa was already in the process of de-escalation. The protest organizers and their lawyers had already brokered a dismantlement deal with the Ottawa mayor and police services. Truckers were already on their way out of the downtown core and the blockades at two Canadian points of entry had already long-since been dismantled. Yet rather than follow an organized de-escalation plan agreed to by all factions, Ottawa police and the Trudeau government instead opted to escalate the situation by using violence and propaganda against Canadian citizens. The impacts of the invocation of the EMA were profound and unwarranted.
Immediately ensuing the invocation of the EMA, police and governmental authorities froze protesters’ bank accounts and deployed violent anti-riot squads all over the downtown core of Ottawa. Several protesters were injured as police again escalated tensions using all manner of crowd dispersal techniques. In the days following the invocation of the EMA, Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland wasted no time in announcing that certain aspects of the EMA would be written into law, granting broad and unconstitutional powers to government without the requisite EMA enacted. It had become clear that the Trudeau government had a predetermined objective in enacting the EMA, one that would grant greater leverage over political dissidents and, more broadly, Canadians that disagreed with its ideology. This in itself represents an egregious misuse of the EMA in order to further a political agenda.
Conclusion
The volunteer activists at Fearless Canada include Canadian scholars, lawyers, professors, small business owners, and artists. We unanimously and unequivocally feel that the Trudeau government’s invocation of the EMA as a response to ongoing protests in Ottawa was both unlawful and unconstitutional. We submit that the government manipulated public opinion by fabricating evidence of unlawful activity in Ottawa and invoked the EMA under false pretenses in order to abet their predetermined agenda. We believe that the evidence overwhelmingly supports our position, and we look forward to seeing all of it brought to light during the Commission’s discovery process.
This statement was authored by the executive of Fearless Canada and endorsed by members.
The statement has been submitted to the Public Order Emergency Commission of Canada, which began public hearings on Thursday, October 13, which will run every weekday until November 25. Live hearings can be viewed here, and True North Centre publishes a recap for each day.
Press TV Correspondent from Donetsk, Johnny Miller, says Ukraine has been hitting civilian areas on the outskirts of Donetsk, and today, the central city administrative building was hit by US-made missiles.
Ukraine attacked Donetsk with American missiles – mayor
Samizdat | October 16, 2022
Ukrainian forces have carried out a strike on Donetsk using the US-made HIMARS multiple rocket launch system, with one missile hitting the city administration building, local authorities claimed on Sunday. Four people were reportedly wounded.
Alexey Kulemzin, the mayor of Donetsk, posted a video on his Telegram account depicting a pile of rubble around what appeared to be the city administration. Another clip uploaded by Kulemzin shows extensive damage to the building, as well as several wrecked and charred cars nearby.
According to the territorial defense of the Donetsk People’s Republic (DPR), four people were wounded during the shelling.
Meanwhile, local authorities told RIA Novosti that they are looking into the strike on the city administration, with one official saying that the shell fragments will be submitted for ballistic examination.
Moscow has repeatedly accused Ukraine of targeting residential blocks and civilian infrastructure in various towns in Donbass, with the strikes often resulting in destruction, injuries, and deaths.
Since the start of Russia’s military campaign in Ukraine, Western countries have supplied Ukraine with a significant amount of weaponry, munitions, and other aid. The US, in particular, has provided Ukraine with 20 HIMARS systems and ammunition for them, which Kiev has allegedly used to target civilians on numerous occasions.
Pfizer just reported FDA’s decision to approve a bivalent Covid booster for “emergency use” for children 5-17 years of age.
What is amazing is that the approved bivalent vaccine was NOT tested on children or even on baby mice, at all!
For each of the bivalent COVID-19 vaccines authorized today, the FDA relied on immune response and safety data that it had previously evaluated from a clinical study in adults of a booster dose of a bivalent COVID-19 vaccine that contained a component of the original strain of SARS-CoV-2 and a component of omicron lineage BA.1. The FDA considers such data as relevant and supportive of vaccines containing a component of the omicron variant BA.4 and BA.5 lineages. In addition, the FDA has evaluated and considered immune response and safety data from clinical studies of the monovalent mRNA COVID-19 vaccines, including as a booster dose in pediatric age groups. These data and real-world experience with the monovalent mRNA COVID-19 vaccines, which have been administered to millions of people, including young children, support the EUA of the bivalent COVID-19 vaccines in younger age groups.
May I ask, why no testing? The FDA and Pfizer had plenty of time: they were testing bivalent boosters on adults since the beginning of the year. No testing on children was done with any bivalent booster.
Could Pfizer at least purchase 8 baby mice and try their booster on 8 mouse babies? They surely could do that along with the adult dose testing.
An added touch of ridiculousness here is that the FDA also chose NOT to consult “FDA advisors” and thus did not convene the VRBPAC committee. That committee would, of course, approve anything. So, what is the reason for not convening it? The reason is that the FDA did not want to have any votes — even one vote — against this vaccine and did not want to have a public hearing about this travesty.
Three-Year-Old Spike Injections Still Required for Primary Series
It gets worse, of course. Only 30% of children 5-11 years of age are Covid vaccinated.
Should the parents of the 70% of unvaccinated children decide that they want their child to receive a bivalent (updated with Ba.5 formulation) shot, they would have to first give that child two shots of a three-year-old monovalent Wuhan-based vaccine (primary series), and only then they would be allowed to give their children the new and updated shot. Why? The FDA is not telling us.
The Moderna COVID-19 Vaccine, Bivalent is authorized for administration at least two months following completion of primary or booster vaccination in children down to six years of age.
If someone asked me three years ago, whether it is possible that the FDA would approve a children’s vaccine with ZERO testing on children, I would of course laugh the question off as ludicrous. Now it is reality. Even worse, schools and camps may start requiring it.
I thought that the reputation of our health authorities could only bottom at zero. Clearly, though, they want to drive it down to the negative territory.
Elon Musk has expressed concerns over a controversial website that lists supposed enemies of Kiev, amid claims that his own name briefly appeared on Mirotvorets following his threats to cut funding for Starlink satellite internet services actively used by the Ukrainian troops.
“Is this list real? What’s the URL?” the SpaceX CEO tweeted in response to independent journalist Eva Karene Bartlett, who on Friday shared a viral screenshot that claims to show his persona added to the notorious database.
“I’ve been speaking and writing about this list for years, after being placed on it in 2019, but now that Musk is on it, after Roger Waters and others, perhaps the ‘peacemaker’ list might itself be killed…,” Bartlett wrote.
Elon Musk’s name was not on the list as of Saturday, and it remains unclear whether it indeed briefly appeared on Mirotvorets. Some reports alleged his profile was swiftly scrubbed from the database, while Ukrainian activists claimed the picture was fake and called it a Russian provocation.
Many of Musk’s followers were surprised to find out that he’d never heard of Mirotvorets before, and bombarded him with examples of prominent public figures on the database, some already marked “liquidated.” Musk admitted it was “concerning,” after checking with Wikipedia that such a list does indeed exist, and was allowed to stay online since 2014.
Mirotvorets, or “Peacemaker,” is a supposedly independent database of individuals whom anonymous moderators consider to be threats to Ukrainian national security. The site denies being a kill list; rather, it claims to be a source of information for law-enforcement agencies and “special services” about pro-Russian terrorists, separatists and war criminals, among others. It allegedly has links to Ukraine’s Interior Ministry.
The Mirotvorets project gained some notoriety in 2015, when writer and historian Oles Buzina and politician Oleg Kalashnikov were assassinated in Ukraine after their profiles appeared on the website. In 2016, EU officials and journalist groups condemned Mirotvorets for leaking data on more than 4,000 members of the media.
Human rights activists have discovered that the website features the personal details of 327 children, prompting the Russian authorities to share their concerns over this “huge injustice” with UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres. The website has published personal details – names, addresses, photos, social media pages – of children, the youngest of whom is not even 10 years old yet, according to the head of the Foundation for the Fight against Repressions.
The allegations of Musk briefly featured on the ‘kill list’ have been making the rounds on social media for the past two days, following reports that he sought to cut free Starlink service for Ukraine unless the Pentagon covers his company’s losses. On Saturday Musk made an abrupt U-turn, saying “the hell with it… we’ll just keep funding Ukraine govt for free.”
While once regarded as only a rumor, newfound documents reveal that Israeli troops tried to poison wells and contaminate the drinking water of the Palestinian community in 1948 under Israel’s first Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion (David Grün).
Operation “Cast Thy Bread” was a plan to poison wells with bacteria in Arab neighborhoods and even some Jewish pockets to evacuate several locations and expand the state-in-the-making.
The Israeli news outlet Haaretz published an extensive article about the documents and the involvement of high-ranking officials such as the prime minister and military generals.
Though partially exposed decades ago, the extent of the operation as well as the involvement of high-ranking officials remained in the dark, until now.
Alongside high-ranking military officials, Prime Minister Ben Gurion was very interested in the idea of biological weapons.
On 1 April 1948, he wrote about “the development of science and speeding up its application in warfare,” in his journal, while purchasing “biological materials” just a month and a half later for the sum of around $2,000.
Moshe Dayan, the former minister of defense, was also directly involved in the operation.
Under the pseudonym “Moshe Neptune,” he instructed senior Israeli army commanders about the operation.
“There is an immediate need to appoint in your HQ a special officer for Cast Thy Bread matters. The matter is of utmost importance and must be kept in great secrecy by you,” he is quoted as saying in the documents.
“Cast Thy Bread will be activated by Nahshon [meaning Operation Nahshon forces, which included the Harel Brigade] on Monday or Tuesday. I will come down mid-week with all the material,” the document reveals.
Dayan also describes that the various location will be evacuated under his command, once successfully poisoned.
“Is there authorization to use B [the Hebrew letter Bet] in the areas that will be evacuated by us [i.e., Israel],” he asked.
Intent, motive and means: People serving life sentences in U.S. prisons have been convicted on weaker grounds than the circumstantial evidence against Washington for the attack on the Nord Stream pipelines.
Circumstantial evidence, just like direct proof, can be used to prove the elements of a crime, the existence or completion of certain acts and the intent or mental state of a defendant. Generally speaking, a prosecutor, to obtain a conviction, needs to show beyond a reasonable doubt that a defendant committed a certain act and that the defendant acted with specific intent.
Nord Stream 1 is a multi-national project operated by Swiss-based Nord Stream AG intended to supply some 55 billion cubic meters (bcm) of Russian natural gas annually to Europe by directly transporting it from Russia, through twin 1,224 kilometer-long pipelines laid beneath the Baltic Sea, to a German hub, from which the gas would be distributed to other European consumers.
The first of the twin pipelines was completed in June 2011 and began supplying gas in November 2011. The second was completed in April 2012 and began supplying gas in October 2012. Gazprom, the Russian gas giant, owns 51 percent interest in the Nord Stream 1 pipeline project.
Nord Stream 2 is a near clone of the Nord Stream 1 project, consisting of twin 1,220-kilometer pipelines laid beneath the Baltic Sea connecting Russia to Germany. Started in 2018, it was completed in September 2021. Like Nord Stream 1, the Nord Stream 2 is designed to deliver approximately 55 bcm of natural gas from Russia to Europe through Germany. Nord Stream 2, like Nord Stream 1, is operated by a multinational company in which Gazprom has 51 percent ownership.
Unlike Nord Stream 1, Nord Stream 2 was never allowed to begin supplying gas.
The Nord Stream 1 and 2 pipelines are anathema to U.S. national security policy, which for decades has been sour on the degree to which Russian natural gas dominates the European energy market. This animus was perhaps best captured by a column published in the German newspaper DieWelt in July 2019.
The piece, co-authored by Richard Grenell, Carla Sands, Gordon Sondland (respectively, the U.S. ambassadors to Germany, Denmark and the European Union), was entitled “Europe must retain control of its energy security” and made the argument that the “Nord Stream 2 pipeline will drastically increase Russia’s energy leverage over the EU,” noting that “[s]uch a scenario is dangerous for the bloc and the West as a whole.”
Observing that “a dozen European countries rely on Russia for more than 75 percent of their natural gas needs,” the ambassadors concluded “This makes United States allies and partners vulnerable to having their gas shut off at Moscow’s whim.”
Moreover, the ambassadors claimed,
“European Union reliance on Russian gas presents risks for Europe and the West as a whole and makes U.S. allies less secure. The Nord Stream 2 pipeline will heighten Europe’s susceptibility to Russia’s energy blackmail tactics. Europe must retain control of its energy security.”
The ambassadors also wove in some critical geopolitical context as well, declaring
“Make no mistake: Nord Stream 2 will bring more than just Russian gas. Russian leverage and influence will also flow under the Baltic Sea and into Europe, and the pipeline will enable Moscow to further undermine Ukrainian sovereignty and stability.”
Russia’s “weaponization” of energy against Europe was the topic of a “debate” that Gary Peach and I carried out in December 2018 on the pages of Energy Intelligence, which monitors issues pertaining to global energy security. Gary, one of EI’s senior writers, covers Russian energy.
I argued that “Russia has never sought to use its status as a major supplier of energy to Europe as a vehicle of policy influence,” noting that:
“[t]he weaponization of Russian energy comes in the form of sanctions imposed against Moscow and the pursuit of policies designed to curtail development of Russia’s energy sector. It is far easier to make a case that the U.S. and Europe pose a threat to Russian energy security rather than vice versa.”
Gary, on the other hand, noted that
“Gazprom’s supply contracts exhibit the underlying economic threat from Moscow: The pricing formula is roughly the same for all countries, but those countries in Russia’s good graces receive an arbitrary ‘discount.’” He concluded that “when Gazprom is the only conceivable gas supplier, it has shamelessly abused the monopoly.”
In December 2019 the administration of President Donald Trump imposed sanctions in a desperate last-second bid to prevent the Nord Stream 2 pipeline from being completed.
These sanctions were waived by the administration of President Joe Biden in May 2021 in an effort to be seen as repairing relations with Germany that had been severely frayed during the Trump administration. However, upon completion, Nord Stream 2 was prevented from operating by objections raised by German regulators regarding licensing issues, which were not expected to be resolved until mid-2022.
In the lead up to the Russian invasion of Ukraine, the Biden administration devised a plan to punish Russia by imposing severe economic sanctions which would target the Russian energy sector, including measures designed to halt the delivery of gas from Russia to Germany via the Nord Stream pipelines.
One of the issues confronting U.S. policy makers was finding the right mix of sanctions that would succeed in harming Russia without destroying the European economy in the process. Policy makers on both sides of the Atlantic, however, recognized that meaningful sanctions which targeted Russian energy contained collateral risk to the European economy which could not be avoided.
One of the mechanisms that U.S. and E.U. policy makers were hoping would alleviate the economic consequences of sanctioning Russian energy was to increase the supply of U.S. liquified natural gas (LNG) to Europe. Since 2016 the amount of LNG supplied by the U.S. to Europe has increased, with more than 21 bcm delivered in 2021.
But 21 bcm couldn’t begin to offset the quantity of natural gas being shipped by Russia to Europe in case of any large-scale disruption of Russian energy supplies brought on by the imposition of economic sanctions that targeted the Russian energy sector.
After the Russian invasion of Ukraine — and the realization that the energy disruption to Europe was going to be far greater than had been anticipated — Biden made good on his promise to increase the supply of U.S. LNG to Europe. But the quantities still fell far short of demand, and at prices that were, literally, bankrupting all of Europe.
The Victims
With Germany blocking the operation of Nord Stream 2 and sanctions precluding the repair of the Nord Stream 1, the German population began bearing the brunt of the sanctions on Russian energy.
Despite their government’s insistence that it would remain resolute in confronting what it perceived as Russian aggression against Ukraine, the German people had other plans. By Sept. 26 they began taking to the streets in large numbers to demand that their government open the Nord Stream 2 pipeline and provide the German people and economy with the energy needed to survive.
The Crime
On Sept. 26, the Nord Stream 2 pipeline reported a massive drop in pressure. The next day, the Nord Stream 1 pipeline reported the same. A Danish fighter jet, flying over the pipeline route, reported seeing a one-kilometer diameter disturbance in the water off the island of Bornholm, directly over the Nord Stream 2 pipeline, created by the massive release of natural gas underwater. (Danish authorities have estimated that between the two pipelines the total amount of methane released into the atmosphere was around 500,000 metric tons.)
The incident took place in the exclusive economic zone of Sweden, and the Swedish Security Service took the lead in investigating what had happened. (Curiously, Russia was not invited to participate, despite having a vested economic and security interest in the matter.)
“After completing the crime scene investigation,” the Swedes reported, “the Swedish Security Service can conclude that there have been detonations at Nord Stream 1 and 2 in the Swedish economic zone,” noting that the blasts had caused “extensive damage” to the lines.
The Swedes also declared that they had retrieved some materials from the incident site, which were being analyzed to determine who was responsible. This evidence, the Swedes stated, “strengthened the suspicions of gross sabotage.”
While all parties involved with the Nord Stream pipeline “sabotage” concur that the cause was manmade, no nation outside Russia has named a suspect. (Russian President Vladimir Putin has attributed the attack, which Russia has labeled an act of “international terrorism,” on the “Anglo-Saxons” — the British and Americans.)
Biden dismissed the Russian claims. The pipeline attack “was a deliberate act of sabotage and the Russians are pumping out disinformation and lies,” the U.S. president said. “At the appropriate moment, when things calm down, we’re going to be sending divers down to find out exactly what happened. We don’t know that yet exactly.”
But we do know. Biden told us himself. So did Secretary of State Antony Blinken. So did the U.S. Navy. Between the three, we have incontrovertible evidence of intent, motive and means — more than enough needed to prove guilt beyond any reasonable doubt in a court of law.
Intent
Speaking to reporters on Feb. 7, Biden declared “If Russia invades, that means tanks or troops crossing the border of Ukraine again, there will no longer be a Nord Stream 2. We will bring an end to it.”
When a journalist asked how Biden could do such a thing, given that Germany was in control of the project, Biden retorted: “I promise you: We will be able to do it.”
No prosecutor has ever had a more concise statement of intent — a veritable confession before the event — than this. Joe Biden should be taken at his word.
Motive
When asked by reporters on Oct. 3 to comment on the Nord Stream pipeline attacks, Blinken responded in part by noting that the attack was “a tremendous opportunity to once and for all remove the dependence on Russian energy and thus to take away from Vladimir Putin the weaponization of energy as a means of advancing his imperial designs.”
Blinken further declared that the U.S. would work to alleviate the “consequences” of the pipeline attack on Europe, alluding to the provision of U.S. LNG at exorbitant profit margins for U.S. suppliers — another “opportunity.”
Prosecutors often speak of cui bono, a Latin phrase that means “who benefits,” when seeking to import motive for a crime committed, under the presumption that there is a high probability that those responsible for a specific crime are the ones who stand to gain from it.
Blinken. Tremendous opportunity.
Cui Bono.
Means
In early June, in support of a major NATO exercise known as BALTOPS (Baltic Operations) 2022, the U.S. Navy employed the latest advancements in unmanned underwater vehicle, or UUV, mine hunting technology to be tested in operational scenarios.
According to the U.S. Navy, it was able to evaluate “emerging mine hunting UUV technology,” focusing on “UUV navigation, teaming operations, and improvements in acoustic communications all while collecting critical environmental data sets to advance the automatic target recognition algorithms for mine detection.”
One of the UUV’s used by the U.S. Navy is the Seafox.
In September, specialized U.S. Navy helicopters — the MH-60R, capable of employing the Seafox UUV — were tracked flying off the Danish island of Bornholm, directly over the segments of the Nordstream 1 and 2 pipelines that were later damaged in the sabotage incidents.
“On November 6, 2015, the NATO Seafox mine disposal unmanned underwater vehicle was found during the scheduled visual inspection of the Nord Stream 1 gas pipeline. It lay in space between gas pipelines, clearly near one of strings. NATO said the underwater mine disposal vehicle was lost during exercises. Such NATO exercises when the combat explosive device turned out to be exactly under our gas pipeline. The explosive device was deactivated by Swedish Armed Forces at that time.”
Guilty Beyond Reasonable Doubt
The burden that exists to prove guilt beyond a reasonable doubt “is fully satisfied and entirely convinced to a moral certainty that the evidence presented proves the guilt of the defendant.” In the matter of the Nord Stream 1 and 2 attacks, this burden has been met when it comes to assigning blame to the United States.
Biden all but confessed the crime beforehand, and his secretary of state, Blinken, crowed about the “tremendous opportunity” that was created by the attack. Not only did the U.S. Navy actively rehearse the crime in June 2022, using the same weapon that had been previously discovered next to the pipeline, but employed the very means needed to use this weapon on the day of the attack, at the location of the attack.
Guilty as Charged
The problem is, outside of Russia, no one is charging the United States. Journalists run away from the evidence, citing “uncertainty.” Europe, afraid to wake up to the reality that its most important “ally” has committed an act of war against its critical energy infrastructure, condemning millions of Europeans to suffer the depravations of cold, hunger and unemployment —all the while gouging Europe with profit margins from the sale of LNG that redefine the notion of “windfall” — remains silent.
There is no doubt in any thinking person’s brain as to who is responsible for the attacks on the Nord Stream 1 and 2 pipelines. The circumstantial case is overwhelming and fully capable of winning a conviction in any U.S. court of law.
But no one will bring the case, at least not at this moment.
Shame on American journalism for ignoring this flagrant attack on Europe.
Shame on Europe for not having the courage to publicly name their attacker.
But most of all, shame on the administration of Joe Biden, who has lowered the U.S. to the same standard of those it hunted down and killed for so many years — a simple international terrorist, and a state sponsor of terrorism.
Stockholm has rejected a plan to set up an official joint investigation team together with Germany and Denmark to look into the explosions that damaged the Nord Stream 1 and 2 gas pipelines in late September, Reuters reported, citing a Swedish investigator. Sweden reportedly argued that its own findings are too sensitive to share even with other EU nations.
The EU’s agency for criminal justice cooperation, Eurojust, recently came up with a proposal to establish a Joint Investigation Team (JIT) to launch a probe into the Nord Stream explosions, Reuters said, adding that Sweden blocked the initiative. On Friday, Mats Ljungqvist, a Swedish prosecutor involved in the nation’s probe into the incident, told the news agency that this development would impose unwanted obligations on his nation.
“This is because there is information in our investigation that is subject to confidentiality directly linked to national security,” Ljungqvist said, adding that his nation is already cooperating with Germany and Denmark on the matter anyway.
According to the prosecutor, establishing a JIT would involve signing a legally binding information-sharing agreement. Eurojust says on its website that a JIT mechanism indeed includes a legal agreement between the involved parties for the purposes of conducting criminal investigations.
Earlier, citing “security circles,” Germany’s Der Spiegel magazine said that Sweden considered the sensitivity level of its own probe’s findings to be “too high to share them with other countries.” News portal Tagesschau, owned by the German ARD broadcaster, also reported on Friday that Germany, Sweden, and Denmark initially wanted to investigate the incident together but “that’s not the case now.”
According to Tagesschau, Denmark also eventually opposed the idea of a joint probe. Now, all three nations will conduct their own separate investigations, it added. Swedish Prime Minister Magdalena Andersson denied the reports, however, adding that “we are working together with Germany and Denmark on this issue.”
Earlier, all three nations refused to grant Russia access to the probe, prompting Moscow to summon their ambassadors. Russia also said it would not recognize the results of any probe unless its specialists were allowed to participate. Andersson said on Monday that Stockholm would not share its investigation results with Moscow.
The Nord Stream 1 and 2 pipelines were damaged and rendered inoperable following a series of powerful underwater explosions off the Danish island of Bornholm. No nation conducting a probe into the incident has officially named any suspects that could have been involved in the alleged attacks on the pipelines.
Russian President Vladimir Putin has previously hinted at a potential “beneficiary.”
“One can now force the liquefied natural gas from the US on to European countries on a much larger scale,” he said earlier this week. US Secretary of State Antony Blinken called the incidents a “tremendous opportunity” for Europe “to once and for all remove dependence on Russian energy.”
Social media has been in an uproar since a member of European Parliament posted a video of a hearing in which a Pfizer director admitted the company never tested whether its Covid mRNA vaccine prevents transmission prior to its approval for emergency use.
Though the fact that Covid mRNA vaccines do not prevent transmission was, of course, abundantly clear from the data soon after their implementation, this myth was a primary justification for vaccine passes and a primary cause of the unprecedented venom launched at those who refused Covid vaccines throughout 2021 and continuing through today.
Not only did governments exert this pressure through policy, but in many cases politicians and officials used their office to deliberately stoke the social stigmatization of the unvaccinated. Here’s a look back at some of the unprecedented vitriol that was launched at those who refused Covid vaccines from 2021 and beyond.
Officials in many jurisdictions proposed making the unvaccinated pay more for healthcare.
In Victoria, Australia — where lockdowns were longer than in perhaps any other city in the world—one politician proposed cutting the unvaccinated out of the national health system entirely.
A particularly disturbing idea that began to gain serious traction among the elite commentariat was to have hospitals triage emergency care to serve the unvaccinated last, or even deny healthcare to the unvaccinated entirely—a fairly clear-cut crime against humanity.
One vocal proponent of the idea of triaging emergency care to disfavor the unvaccinated was David Frum, Senior Editor of the Atlantic, most famous for his outspoken support for the invasion of Iraq. When his infamous tweet on the subject sparked an uproar, Frum doubled down.
Piers Morgan agreed that the unvaccinated should be denied emergency care.
Shockingly, this appalling idea of triaging emergency care based on vaccination status is still being proposed to this day.
The demonization of the unvaccinated was, of course, far from limited to healthcare. Vilifying the unvaccinated became a kind of illiberal fad among the elite commentariat. The US CDC even paid screen writers and comedians to promote Covid vaccines, which in some cases involved paying them to mock the unvaccinated.
In a bout of recidivism to the early 20th century, Austria and Germany introduced the chilling concept of “lockdown for the unvaccinated.”
“Lockdown for the unvaccinated” gained traction in the English-speaking world as well.
Most countries, cities, and states across the western world introduced vaccine passes that their own citizens had to show in order to partake in daily life. The World Health Organization published an extensive document on implementing a digital vaccine-pass system, including an international vaccine status registry and instructions on how to later revoke someone’s vaccine pass.
The most dystopian of these vaccine pass systems was in Lithuania, where the unvaccinated were banned from nearly all public spaces and employment outside their homes; the few shops where they could purchase essentials had to post large red signs on their doors indicating that unvaccinated persons could be present.
And of course, who could forget Justin Trudeau’s classic fuhrer-style rant about having to share public transportation with the unvaccinated, despite government documents later revealing that he had no science to back any of these claims.
Like so much of the response to Covid, these vaccine passes and the illiberal fad of stigmatizing the unvaccinated were unscientific, unprecedented, ineffective, totalitarian, brutal, and dumb.
It was never remotely realistic for any government to expect every single person to get vaccinated, especially when the vaccine in question involved a novel genetic-based therapy. Thus, these proposals to impose draconian hardships on those who refused Covid vaccines would inevitably involve the state imposing draconian hardships on a sizable portion of the population.
According to Harvard epidemiologist Martin Kulldorff, one of the most credible voices on the subject, Covid vaccines likely yielded benefits for the elderly and vulnerable, but it remains entirely unclear whether Covid vaccines have yielded any benefit at all for healthy adults and especially for children. Coupled with the still-unknown risks associated with mRNA technology and the now well-documented cases of death and serious injury from these vaccines, for governments across the world to have exerted extreme pressure on children and healthy adults to get these vaccines is absolutely sickening.
That some healthy young people were surely coerced into receiving an injection that led to their death or serious injury, when the data showed that the benefits did not outweigh the risks, is an unconscionable tragedy.
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