During his recent four-day European tour, U.S. President Joe Biden made headlines when, during a meeting with Polish President Andrzej Duda, he described Russian President Vladimir Putin as “a man who I quite frankly think is a war criminal,” adding “I think it will meet the legal definition of that as well.”
Putin’s spokesperson, Dmitry Peskov, condemned Biden’s comment as “unacceptable and unforgivable rhetoric on the part of the head of a state whose bombs have killed hundreds of thousands of people around the world.”
Biden made his remarks following a statement issued by Secretary of State Antony Blinken in which Blinken announced that the State Department had made a formal assessment that the Russian military had committed war crimes in Ukraine. “Based on information currently available,” Blinken said, “the U.S. government assesses that members of Russia’s forces have committed war crimes in Ukraine. “Our assessment,” Blinken added, “is based on a careful review of available information from public and intelligence sources.”
According to Blinken, “Russia’s forces have destroyed apartment buildings, schools, hospitals, critical infrastructure, civilian vehicles, shopping centers, and ambulances, leaving thousands of innocent civilians killed or wounded. Many of the sites Russia’s forces have hit have been clearly identifiable as in-use by civilians.” Blinken declared that this category “includes the Mariupol maternity hospital” as well as “a strike that hit a Mariupol theater, clearly marked with the Russian word for ‘children’ — in huge letters visible from the sky.”
Blinken’s accusations echo those made by the Ukrainian government and organizations such as Amnesty International. Karim Khan, the lead prosecutor for the International Criminal Court, has announced that his office will begin investigating allegations of Russian war crimes committed during its ongoing military operation in Ukraine.
The narrative that paints Russia and the Russian military as perpetrators of war crimes, however, runs afoul of actual international humanitarian law and the laws of war. The issue of jus in bello (the law governing conduct during the use of force) set forth a framework of legal concepts which, when allied to specific actions, help determine whether an actual violation of the law of war has occurred.
Jus in bello is derived from treaties, agreements, and customary international law. Two sets of international agreements, the Hague Conventions of 1899 and 1907, and the four Geneva Conventions of 1949, serve as the foundation for the modern understanding of jus in bello, regulating, respectively, what is permissible in the execution of war, and the protections provided to non-combatants, including civilians and prisoners of war. “Grave breaches” of jus in bello can be prosecuted in courts of relevant jurisdiction as war crimes.
Starting from the proposition that war is little more than organized murder, the issue of how to define what constitutes murder sufficient to be categorized a being of a criminal nature is far more difficult than one might think. Michael Herr gave voice to this reality in his book, Dispatches, about America’s war in Vietnam, when he observed that, “Charging a man with murder in this place was like handing out speeding tickets at the Indy 500.”
Distinction, Intention, Necessity
Israeli air and artillery attacks against apartment building, Beirut 2006. (Hamed Talebi/Mehr News Agency/Wikimedia Commons)
One of the key considerations that distinguishes a legitimate act of war, and a war crime, is the notion of “military necessity.” According to the precepts set forth in the law of war, military necessity “permits measures which are actually necessary to accomplish a legitimate military purpose and are not otherwise prohibited by international humanitarian law. In the case of an armed conflict the only legitimate military purpose is to weaken the military capacity of the other parties to the conflict.”
Working hand in glove with the concept of military necessity is the issue of “humanity”, namely that a military operation cannot inflict suffering, injury, or destruction that is not necessary to accomplish a legitimate military objective. While “humanity” is difficult to define (is there ever a humane way to take a human life during war?), it does relate to another principle of international humanitarian law, “proportionality.”
Proportionality in wartime has yet to be strictly codified, but in basic terms it revolves around “the idea that military means should be proportionate to their anticipated ends.”
In short, if there is an enemy sniper in a room on the third floor of an apartment building, proportionality would be met if the force necessary to eliminate the sniper in the room in question was used; if there were any civilians in the room at the time, this would not constitute a violation of the laws of war, as the civilians would unfortunately (and tragically) fall under the notion of “collateral damage.”
If, however, force is applied that results in the destruction of the entire apartment complex, killing scores if not hundreds of civilians, then a case could be made that the use of force was disproportionate to the expected military result, and as such constitutes a war crime.
The final principle of note is that of “distinction”, which holds that parties to an armed conflict must “at all times distinguish between the civilian population and combatants and between civilian objects and military objectives and accordingly shall direct their operations only against military objectives.” Distinction prohibits “indiscriminate attacks and the use of indiscriminate means and methods of warfare,” such as carpet bombing, or an artillery bombardment which lacked a specific military purpose.
From these basic precepts and principles, the international community has codified specific acts that constitute war crimes in the form of the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court, in particular Article 8 (War Crimes). Here we find enumerated various actions which give rise to most, if not all, of the accusations made by Biden and Blinken when leveling their accusations of war crimes at Putin and the Russian military:
- Intentionally directing attacks against the civilian population as such or against individual civilians not taking direct part in hostilities;
- Intentionally directing attacks against civilian objects, that is, objects which are not military objectives;
- Intentionally directing attacks against personnel, installations, material, units, or vehicles involved in a humanitarian assistance or peacekeeping mission in accordance with the Charter of the United Nations, as long as they are entitled to the protection given to civilians or civilian objects under the international law of armed conflict; and
- Intentionally launching an attack in the knowledge that such attack will cause incidental loss of life or injury to civilians or damage to civilian objects.
The Elements
Extreme example of lack of proportionality with intent: The bombing of Nagasaki as seen from the town of Koyagi, about 13 km south. (Hiromichi Matsuda/Wikimedia Commons)
Each of the crimes listed above consist of two elements, each of which must be proved as a matter of law, before the accusation of a war crime can be cognizable. These are the physical element, or actus reaus, namely the act itself, and the mental element, or mens rea, which constitutes specific intent, or dolus specialis, to commit the act in question.
Even if you can prove the physical element of an alleged crime, such as the bombing of a hospital or apartment complex, unless one can prove the actual intent behind the attack (i.e., not just directing attacks against a civilian population, but rather intentionally directing these attacks), no crime has been committed.
One of the main mitigating circumstances against most alleged war crimes is the principle of “military necessity.” Take, for example, the act of bombing a hospital. If a bomb strikes a hospital, one has established de facto actus reas. Now, let’s say there exists a written order from a commander to a pilot ordering the pilot to bomb the hospital in question—dolus specialis has now been established, and a war crime has been committed.
Not so fast.
While the law of war prohibits direct attacks against civilian targets, such as housing, schools, and hospitals, as the International Committee of the Red Cross makes clear, “a hospital or school may become a legitimate military target if it contributes to specific military operations of the enemy and if its destruction offers a definite military advantage for the attacking side,” or if it is “being used as a base from which to launch an attack, as a weapons depot, or to hide healthy soldiers/fighters.”
Herein lies the rub. “Increasingly,” a recent article published in The Washinton Post noted, “Ukrainians are confronting an uncomfortable truth: The military’s understandable impulse to defend against Russian attacks could be putting civilians in the crosshairs. Virtually every neighborhood in most cities has become militarized, some more than others, making them potential targets for Russian forces trying to take out Ukrainian defenses.”
Moreover, “Ukraine’s strategy of placing heavy military equipment and other fortifications in civilian zones could weaken Western and Ukrainian efforts to hold Russia legally culpable for possible war crimes.”
Who is Guilty?
The bottom line is that if Russia has intelligence that Ukraine is using an otherwise protected civilian target for military purposes, and if a decision is made to attack the target using force deemed proportional to the threat, then no war crime has been committed.
Indeed, given what The Washington Post has documented, it appears that it is Ukraine, not Russia, which is committing war crimes. According to Richard Weir, a researcher in Human Rights Watch’s crisis and conflict division quoted in the Post article, the Ukrainian military has “a responsibility under international law” to either remove their forces and equipment from civilian areas, or to move the civilian population from the areas where military personnel and equipment are being stored.
“If they don’t do that,” Weir said, “that is a violation of the laws of war. Because what they are doing is they are putting civilians at risk. Because all that military equipment are legitimate targets.”
The bottom line is that while the Ukrainian government, American politicians, and human rights groups can make allegations of war crimes by Russia in Ukraine, proving these allegations is a much more difficult task.
Moreover, it appears that, upon closer examination, the accuser (at least when it comes to the Ukrainian government) might become the accused should any thorough investigation of the alleged events occur.
If the Ukrainian government contends that specific sites struck by Russia fall into a protected category, and that by attacking them Russia has committed a war crime, then it must be assumed that any undertaking by Ukraine to place military personnel and equipment in the vicinity of these targets constitutes “an intentional co-location of military objectives and civilians or persons hors de combat with the specific intent of trying to prevent the targeting of those military objectives.”
That is the legal definition of a human shield, which is in and of itself a violation of the laws of war.
Scott Ritter is a former U.S. Marine Corps intelligence officer who served in the former Soviet Union implementing arms control treaties, in the Persian Gulf during Operation Desert Storm and in Iraq overseeing the disarmament of WMD.
April 2, 2022
Posted by aletho |
Progressive Hypocrite, Timeless or most popular, War Crimes | Ukraine |
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Samizdat | April 1, 2022
The international community should provide a “fair, objective and professional” assessment of Russia’s allegations regarding alleged US military laboratories in Ukraine, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Zhao Lijian said.
In March, Russia shared evidence obtained from laboratories across Ukraine that apparently confirms that Pentagon-funded labs were working on “biological weapons components,” and may have been connected to suspicious outbreaks of dirofilariasis, tuberculosis, and avian flu over the past several years. According to the latest data revealed by military spokesman Major General Igor Konashenkov on March 30, Kiev was planning to use drones to deploy pathogens against the Donbass republics, as well as Russia itself.
Speaking at a regular press briefing on Friday, Zhao said the US has still not come up with a “constructive response” to Russia’s statements, and called on the international community to give serious consideration to Moscow’s claims.
He said, as quoted by TASS, that China “would welcome a fair, objective and professional assessment by the international community of the documents provided by Russia on the basis of the UN mechanisms and the Convention on the Prohibition of the Development, Production and Stockpiling of Bacteriological (Biological) and Toxin Weapons and on Their Destruction.”
China has consistently encouraged the US to make public all information about its biolabs. Two weeks ago, China’s permanent representative to the UN, Zhang Jun, told the UN Security Council that following the revelation by Russia of the newly discovered documents, “the party concerned should respond to questions, and offer timely and comprehensive clarifications to remove the doubts of the international community.”
Several days prior to that, Beijing disclosed for the first time the alleged number of US-controlled biolabs. Saying that laboratories in Ukraine are just the “tip of an iceberg,” Zhao revealed that the Pentagon “controls 336 biological laboratories in 30 countries around the world.” Noting that the US “has been exclusively obstructing” the establishment of an independent verification mechanism, the Foreign Ministry spokesman called on the US to “publish the relevant details as soon as possible, including which viruses are stored and which research has been carried out.”
The US has long claimed that allegations about military-funded biolaboratories in Ukraine are ‘Russian disinformation’. In March, however, US diplomat Victoria Nuland testified before the Senate that “biological research laboratories in Ukraine” did exist, and that Washington was working with Kiev “to ensure that the materials of biological research do not fall into the hands of Russian forces.”
April 1, 2022
Posted by aletho |
Deception, Timeless or most popular, War Crimes | China, United States |
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Two Australian Senators raised some serious vaccine issues during a recent debate in their parliament. As has been the case with questions raised by other parliamentarians from around the world, these speeches were made to an empty room. Fortunately, they are recorded for the world to listen too.
The first speech is by Malcolm Roberts, Senator for Queensland. He raised the issue of documented evidence and victim testimony of vaccine injuries which are hidden behind anonymous government data. The Senator says that the very least we can do for the victims is to say their names and he precedes to recall accounts of various individuals who have died after being vaccinated.
Senator Roberts says the Australian regulators have been bullying medical practitioners not to report or talk about vaccine harms. Furthermore, he claims 98% of the 800 vaccine deaths, reported by physicians, have been erased without autopsy or consideration of medical data.
He says data recently revealed in US court papers shows vaccine harm was apparent in the Pfizer clinical trials. This information should have resulted in the refusal of the application for provisional use. No data was provided on individuals in the trials and no independent analysis of the fundamental issues surrounding novel mRNA vaccines was conducted in Australia. Instead, the Secretary just took Pfizer, AstraZeneca and Moderna’s word for it.
The Senator goes on to list the fines that these same pharmaceutical companies have been issued with (for criminal behaviour) over the years. AstraZeneca had a US $355 million fine for fraud and US $550 million fine for making unfounded efficacy claims. Pfizer had a US $430 million fine for unfounded claims about efficacy and a US $2.3 billion fine for unfounded claims about efficacy and for paying kickbacks.
Indemnities have been made against any damage caused by the vaccines which he calls deceit and criminal incompetence. Some of the Australian political parties have accepted $1 million each from the pharmaceutical companies in this election cycle alone. Billions more are being set aside in the Australian budget to continue the pharmaceutical companies’ COVID-19 gravy train.
Senator Roberts says mention should be made to the decision to ban safe, fully approved and widely accepted alternatives to COVID-19 vaccines, including hydroxychloroquine, Ivermectin, vitamins, minerals, natural antivirals, healthy eating and lifestyles. This ban was taken to ensure the fastest and widest-possible adoption of the vaccines and the vaccines approval was funded by the same pharmaceutical companies that produce them.
He thinks the Australian Bureau of Statistics is culpable in this scandal and cover-up. It’s annual budget is $400 million but the most recent mortality data is from November 2021. The most recent breakdown of mortality by cause and age is from 2020 as is the most recent data on live births. Birth data used to be available six weeks after so he asks are they hiding miscarriages?
The Senator says peer reviewed and soon to be published data is to be released from outside the government which must require the secretary to cancel the provisional approval of the vaccines.
He recaps the extent to which we have been misled:
- Freedom of information documents show there has been a failure to assess the reproductive toxicology of the vaccines;
- Documents indicate a failure to assess the impact of micro RNA sequences and related molecular genetic issues on the human body;
- Peer-reviewed and published in-vitro research shows gene based vaccine generated spike proteins can migrate into human cell nuclei to disrupt DNA repair mechanisms;
- Vaccine derived RNA can be reverse transcribed leading to possible integration into the human genome, which is denied based on what the pharmaceutical companies say.
- Internal Pfizer data indicate they accepted 1,272 different adverse vaccine events, including paralysis and death. German and US insurance actuarial data suggests the Australian database of adverse events notifications is under reporting by nine fold. Documents show there are two databases, an official one and one for the public meaning vaccine injury is likely to be significantly higher than reported.
He reports on German pathologists describing pathological aggregates of spike proteins and lymphocyte infiltrations in inflamed organs in autopsies related to deaths post vaccination. Whistle-blowers to the British Medical Journal provide reports on inadequacies, irregularities and possible fraudulent practises in the Pfizer vaccine trials.
Too frequent vaccines for respiratory viruses runs the risk of desensitising the immune response to the virus and lead to hypo immunity, a worse illness than without the immunisation. He says repeated vaccination is doing more harm than good.
The Senator concluded by asking a question to all those who have gone along with the deceit, “how the hell do you expect to get away with it? We’re not going to let you get away with it, we won’t let you get away with it. We’re coming for you. We have the stamina to hound you down and we damn well will.”
The next speech was by Senator Gerard Rennick, another representative from Queensland.
He says, to date, government figures show there have been over 116,000 reported, suspected adverse events to the vaccines in Australia. This is more than all other drugs put together since 1971 and the number is still climbing. Is it any wonder the Australian health system is struggling?
Most of these cases are prepared by medical professionals and almost every one has ticked the box indicating that they suspect the injury was caused by the vaccine. Anyone who has failed to speak up is destroying the lives of so many Australian people.
March 31, 2022
Posted by aletho |
Science and Pseudo-Science, Timeless or most popular, Video, War Crimes | AstraZeneca, Australia, COVID-19 Vaccine, Moderna, Pfizer |
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New revelations surfaced this month around the suppression of ivermectin as a treatment for COVID-19.
The Frontline Covid-19 Critical Care Alliance (FLCCC) Community on March 8 lauded Phil Harper, a documentary director and producer, for his efforts to identify the unnamed individual responsible for influencing leading expert opinion on the safety and efficacy of ivermectin in treating COVID early in 2021.
The actions of this hidden hand resulted in the systematic and tragic dismissal of a powerful remedy that could have saved millions of lives across the world.
Before we dig deeper into Harper’s discovery, let’s look at the latest attempt by a mainstream media outlet to discredit ivermectin’s utility in treating COVID.
The Wall Street Journal misleads the public
The Wall Street Journal on March 18 published an article with this headline: “Ivermectin Didn’t Reduce Covid-19 Hospitalizations in Largest Trial to Date.”
Headline readers will easily reach the seemingly obvious conclusion: Drs. Anthony Fauci and Rochelle Walensky, along with the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, were right all along.
However, for those who read beyond the headline and first few paragraphs, the story begins to morph.
The headline clearly states the trial in question was the largest to date. However, this is not the case — as the article’s author, Sarah Toy, explains early in the piece:
“The latest trial, of nearly 1,400 Covid-19 patients at risk of severe disease, is the largest to show that those who received ivermectin as a treatment didn’t fare better than those who received a placebo.”
This wasn’t the largest trial to date — it was only the largest trial to date among the subset of trials that have shown no benefit of ivermectin.
Was this an oversight? Or was it a deliberate attempt to confuse the 42 million readers of The Wall Street Journal’s digital content?
Putting aside the possible intention to mislead, it is impossible for a study to definitively prove that no effect exists. This is what is referred to in science as the null hypothesis, meaning an intervention has no effect.
It is entirely possible that a study may demonstrate no measurable effect. It is quite a different thing to prove that that same intervention will not have an effect under any circumstances.
To put it flatly, one cannot prove that something doesn’t exist.
Toy chose not to mention the 81 separate studies — involving a combined 128,000 participants — that demonstrated an average efficacy of 65% for several different outcomes.
She also did not mention the 22 studies — involving nearly 40,000 people — around the outcome in question, hospitalization. Those studies showed an average efficacy of 39%.
The Wall Street Journal did not cite the study that was the focus of its article, because the study hasn’t yet been published. Yet Toy assured readers the study has been “accepted for publication in a major peer-reviewed medical journal.”
With no paper to cite, the journal instead quoted Edward Mills, one of the study’s lead researchers and a professor of health sciences at Canada’s McMaster University in Hamilton, Ontario:
“There was no indication that ivermectin is clinically useful.”
Of note, all participants in this prospective study were drawn from one of 12 clinics in the Minas Gerais region of Brazil. All were at risk for severe disease due to underlying comorbidities.
The dosing regimen was unspecified and COVID diagnosis was made through rapid testing only.
The real story behind ivermectin and COVID-19
The Wall Street Journal article is yet another widely read piece that cherry-picks studies that purportedly show no benefit while categorically ignoring the mounting evidence to the contrary.
The systematic suppression of ivermectin’s efficacy against COVID has been well documented by The Defender here, and in Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.’s New York Times bestselling book, “The Real Anthony Fauci.”
However, as mentioned at the outset of this article, FLCCC this month shed more light on the mystery behind Dr. Andrew Hill’s stunning decision early in 2021 to recommend that more research would be required to support the use of ivermectin to treat COVID patients — despite the enormous amount of data suggesting otherwise.
It was Hill’s so-called systematic review that effectively scuttled the World Health Organization’s (WHO) acceptance of ivermectin as a potent COVID remedy.
Other governing medical bodies, including the NIH, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration and the UK’s Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency immediately fell in line behind the WHO’s stance.
Hill had been a strong advocate for ivermectin in the closing months of 2020. In October 2020, he was tasked by the WHO to present the findings on ivermectin.
Hill, Dr. Tess Lawrie, director of The Evidence-Based Medicine Consultancy, Ltd. and other researchers were collaborating to publish their findings in early 2021. Those findings would definitively conclude that ivermectin could and should be used to treat COVID at all stages of the disease.
On Jan. 18, 2021, days before the planned publication of this joint effort, Hill chose to independently release his findings on preprint servers. He concluded the opposite of what he and others had found through their research:
“Ivermectin should be validated in larger appropriately controlled randomized trials before the results are sufficient for review by regulatory authorities.”
His shocking reversal of opinion drew immediate consternation from members of FLCCC and Lawrie. Soon after Hill released his paper, he spoke with Lawrie in a recorded zoom meeting that raised more questions.
Oracle Films released an informative and succinct video that contextualizes the pivotal conversation between Hill and Lawrie.
When Lawrie confronted a squirming Hill, Hill eventually admitted the conclusions in his analysis had been influenced by Unitaid, a quasi-governmental advocacy organization funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and several countries — France, the UK, Norway, Brazil, Spain, the Republic of Korea and Chile — to lobby governments to finance the purchase of medicines from pharmaceutical multinationals for distribution to the African poor.
As Kennedy, chairman and chief legal counsel for Children’s Health Defense, writes in his book:
“Unitaid gave $40 million to Andrew Hill’s employer, the University of Liverpool, four days before the publication of Hill’s study. Hill, a Ph.D., confessed that the sponsors were pressuring him to influence his conclusion.
“When Dr. Lawrie asked who was trying to influence him, Hill said, ‘I mean, I, I think I’m in a very sensitive position here …’”
Who was the Unitaid member who impelled Hill to change his tune?
Thanks to the sleuthing by Phil Harper, producer, director and author of a Substack newsletter under the moniker “The Digger,” we may have an answer.
The hidden hand that muzzled ivermectin
Harper explained his remarkable discovery, writing:
“Sometimes information can be sitting right underneath your nose. Many suspected that ‘persons unknown’ had altered the paper, but we didn’t know who. Who are these people who nudge science into profitable shapes?!”
In another Substack article, Harper explained how he was able to identify crucial changes made in the days prior to the study’s distribution by comparing it to a previous version that was emailed to Lawrie. This original version was not made public.
The changes were subtle but clearly designed to weaken the conclusions of the analysis. Even more suspicious was the deletion of Unitaid’s financial contribution in the form of an “unrestricted research grant” from the funding declaration portion of the paper.
By examining the metadata attached to the PDF document Hill submitted to several preprint servers, Harper discovered that the author (as indicated in the metadata) of the paper was Andrew Owen, a professor of pharmacology & therapeutics and co-director of the Centre of Excellence in Long-acting Therapeutics (CELT) at the University of Liverpool.
Harper continues:
“His authorship is tied programmatically to the document, meaning a device or software programme registered to the name Andrew Owen saved off the document as a PDF. When exporting a PDF, Microsoft Word automatically adds title and author information.
“Unless someone used his computer, Andrew Owen has his digital fingerprint on the Andrew Hill paper. A paper we have very strong reason to believe was altered by ‘people’ at Unitaid.”
Owen is also a scientific advisor to the WHO’s COVID-19 Guideline Development Group. Just days before Hill’s original paper was to be published, a $40 million grant from Unitaid, the paper’s sponsor, was given to CELT. Owen is the project lead for that grant.
According to Harper:
“The $40 million contract was actually a commercial agreement between Unitaid, the University of Liverpool and Tandem Nano Ltd (a start-up company that commercializes ‘Solid Lipid Nanoparticle’ delivery mechanisms) — for which Andrew Owen is a top shareholder.”
Owen is not listed as an author of the analysis, yet his digital fingerprint is on its last-minute revisions.
Instead, Hill listed all the authors of the studies that his systematic review was critiquing as co-authors of the review itself. This is a striking departure from standards of a systematic review, as it undermines the purpose and objectivity of such an analysis.
Conclusion
It is difficult to summarize this situation without diluting the impact of what has been presented here.
Mainstream media sources such as The Wall Street Journal continue to publish unbalanced and poorly researched articles while enormous stories are unfolding behind the wall of corporate-funded propaganda.
Hill’s own opinion, when untrammeled by hidden influence, suggested 75% of COVID deaths could have been prevented by using ivermectin as treatment.
The “hidden hands” of profit-driven operatives are taking an enormous toll on humanity through their manipulation of public and scientific opinion.
In the end, the public must decide when enough is finally enough.
© 2022 Children’s Health Defense, Inc. This work is reproduced and distributed with the permission of Children’s Health Defense, Inc. Want to learn more from Children’s Health Defense? Sign up for free news and updates from Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. and the Children’s Health Defense. Your donation will help to support us in our efforts.
March 31, 2022
Posted by aletho |
Fake News, Mainstream Media, Warmongering, Science and Pseudo-Science, Timeless or most popular, War Crimes | Covid-19, Wall Street Journal |
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Stop the narrative I want to get off!
The semi-official United States government plus media lie machine knows that constructing a plausible reason to bomb the crap out of someone all depends on where you begin your narrative. If you keep starting your accusations at a point where the target has done something bad, all you have to do is repeat yourself over and over again to drown out any alternative backstory that surfaces. And if you really want to demolish all contrary views, all you have to do is liken the targeted foreign leader to Adolph Hitler and keep repeating. That tactic was used with Saddam Hussein of Iraq and is now being employed against Vladimir Putin of Russia and it always works.
In the current context of Ukraine versus Russia the trick has been to tie everything to the invasion by Putin’s armed forces over four weeks ago, an undoubted act of aggression. Once you establish that as your launching point, preceding developments are rendered moot. Who cares about US promises not to expand the NATO alliance eastwards after the Soviet Union broke up in 1991? And there is also Washington’s role in regime change in Ukraine in 2014? Or even the relentless demonization of Russia linked to the 2016 US presidential election followed by any unwillingness by Washington to negotiate even the most reasonable of Putin’s demands? Fuggedabout it! And also forget about considering whether or not the US has any national interest in going to war over Ukraine. Only Tucker Carlson and Tulsi Gabbard seem inclined to challenge the basic premise, which is to raise the question “Since Russia does not threaten us why are we doing this? Do we really want a possible nuclear war over Ukraine?”
Just read the New York Times and you will learn that it is not about what’s good for America at all. It is all about a big bully country attacking a “democratic” neighbor with the US and its brave allies standing up as the standard bearers of a Washington imposed “rules based international order.” And now the US is upping the ante by pushing ahead with its insistence that Russia is committing war crimes. But convincing the world on that point is a bit more difficult to accomplish. If one were to ask the question “Which nation in the world commits the most war crimes?” the general international response might well be Israel or the United States. Part of the problem would be working out an acceptable definition for a war crime while also developing a methodology for defining “the most.” If Israel attacks Syria four times in a week is that four separate war crimes or only part of one continuous war crime. As the United States has military bases in both Syria and Iraq that the respective governments have not authorized, and have in fact, asked the Americans to leave, is that a single war crime of illegal invasion and occupation or a continuous one punctuated only by the occasions when US troops kill a few of the natives?
In any event it is difficult to “convict” Russia as neither Israel nor the US has ever been held accountable for the war crimes they have committed, to include shooting and bombing civilians, hospitals, schools at random and occasionally wedding parties and other social gatherings. President George W. Bush even started a couple of wars in places like Afghanistan and Iraq based on fabricated “intelligence” and the greatly beloved Barack Obama did the same to Libya and Syria. Both are now regarded as venerable elder statesmen even though they should be in prison and there is lately some talk among Democrats of seeing Obama or his wife run again in 2024 for the highest office in the land. And is that Hillary waiting in the wings for a second try? Either way, it will be a bad day for anyone trying to establish a modus vivendi for working with Russia.
America’s blood lust vis-à-vis Russia is completely bipartisan, with the few sensible voices in Congress drowned out by the drumroll in high places accompanying the avalanche of propaganda pouring out of the mainstream media. It has long been axiomatic that the first victim of war propaganda is truth, but the United States only needs the stimulus of the possibility of war or conflict to begin its pattern of lying. And, as the current situation illustrates, it is quite prepared to designate enemies that in reality do not threaten the country. It did so to bring about a greatly enlarged US commitment in Vietnam and also through the Cold War by deliberate CIA overestimates of the power and reach of the Soviet Union. Since 9/11 there has been a succession of presidents who have lied about nearly everything relating to national security and foreign policy, leading to invasions, assassinations, other types of interventions, and a “sanctions” prone government that has denied ordinary citizens of food and medicines while leaving the leadership of the targeted countries untouched.
One of the recent lies is a replay of the old “let’s get Saddam Hussein” playbook. Remember those savage Iraqi soldiers tearing Kuwaiti babies out of their incubators and throwing them onto the floor? Of course, it was all a lie concocted by the Kuwaiti ruling family and US government largely neocon accomplices. Now we are learning that the vile Russians bombed a maternity hospital! Except, of course, that it may have turned out to be completely untrue. And the media is now exclaiming that “Russia is putting the planet on the brink of World War 3!” while the New York Times is indicting political conservatives as purveyors of Russian propaganda. Actually, it was the United States and NATO that have opened the door to a possible nuclear holocaust, but one hates to dispute what is an apparently a profitable and well-received story line.
But the best bit of lying has to be the ongoing propaganda war over twenty-six biological laboratories in Ukraine funded at least in part by the Pentagon. “Nothing to see here” says the Biden White House, while Russia is saying “Just a minute, folks…” Meanwhile the plot thickens as emails have now surfaced indicating that Joe Biden’s son Hunter was involved in obtaining, and profited from, the US government’s funding of the labs.
The biolab controversy began when the United States government’s State Department number three Victoria Nuland recently admitted to a congressional panel that the labs exist and also added that Ukraine possesses chemical and biological weapons. She then realized her error and both backtracked and elaborated that “uh, Ukraine has, uh, biological research facilities [and] we are now in fact quite concerned that Russian troops, Russian forces, may be seeking to, uh, gain control of [those labs], so we are working with the Ukrainiahhhns [sic] on how they can prevent any of those research materials from falling into the hands of Russian forces should they approach.”
The statement is absurd as the Russians undoubtedly already possess their own stocks of bioweapons. The existence of the labs themselves may be linked to the legacy of the break-up of the Soviet Union in 1991, when, by one account, the US provided assistance through its “Cooperative Threat Reduction Program” to manage the existing bio and chem labs lest their toxic chemicals and pathogens fall into the wrong hands. But the US has actually done much more than that, Ron Unz observes how “Over the decades America had spent over $100 billion dollars on ‘biodefense,’ the euphemistic term for biowarfare development, and [has] had the world’s oldest and largest such program, one of the few ever deployed in real life combat.”
Currently, the US government claims blandly that the labs, which are run by America’s Department of Defense, remain active for “peaceful research and the development of vaccines.” The US Embassy in Kiev described the activity in greater detail as working “to consolidate and secure pathogens and toxins of security concern and to continue to ensure Ukraine can detect and report outbreaks caused by dangerous pathogens before they pose security or stability threats.”
Some Ukrainians have, however, been suspicious of their purpose, particularly as their activities are secret and are managed by the Pentagon rather than some civilian agency. And if the original objective was to prevent the development of bioweapons, why is the US still hanging around seventeen years later? Former Ukrainian Prime Minister Mykola Azarov, who held the post under President Viktor Yanukovych, spoke about how the decision to start collaborating with the Americans was taken by Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko’s office and subsequently implemented under President Viktor Yushchenko in 2005. It was generally believed in the government that the agreement was focused on Ukrainian biosecurity, but all its related activities were and are classified and Ukrainian citizens were not even allowed to work together with the Americans.
There was some pushback on the labs, to include a cursory inspection in 2010-2012 and by 2013 the Ukrainian government sent an official letter demanding that the labs be closed. The 2014 regime change intervened however, and the decision was never implemented by the new regime.
It should be noted that if one is to protect against toxins and pathogens one must first create them in order to manipulate them or prevent them. If one thinks back to the notorious Anthrax scare in the United States in 2001, investigators determined that the lethal strain of the pathogen had actually been created in a US Army biological weapons lab at Fort Detrick Maryland. One might also consider COVID and the widely held belief that the Wuhan Institute of Virology had been manipulating various coronavirus strains to make them more contagious and lethal.
Nuland clearly admitted that there were US-funded bioweapons in Ukraine when she expressed concern that Russia might occupy one of the labs and be tempted to acquire the material for its own use against Kiev. And the Biden Administration, clearly embarrassed by the admission, has attempted to turn the tables by rejecting Russian suggestions that the labs might be seeking to design biological pathogens that target certain ethnic groups, which is why the existing labs have been placed all around the world, including Ukraine. As far back as 2017, Russian President Vladimir Putin expressed his concerns about US collection of biological material from ethnic Russians, as Unz puts it “certainly a very suspicious project for our government to have undertaken.”
If these Pentagon funded laboratories are indeed involved in propagating mutated strains of pathogens like anthrax and plague as biological weapons, like may have taken place at Wuhan, it would be a violation of Article I of the “UN Biological Weapons Convention,” making the United States government indisputably a War Criminal, with its leaders subject to the death sentence under the Nuremberg Laws which were in large part established by the United States Government itself in 1946. That aside, the real concern right now should be that the US/NATO will stage some kind of false flag incident which will lead to calls for direct military intervention. Watching Biden’s serial blunders and cover-ups suggests that there is nothing that Biden and Blinken will not do, up to and including starting some kind of hopefully manageable war to boost the presidents sinking approval ratings. Now that Joe Biden is talking tough, it is hard to imagine how he will get off of the horse that he is riding without stepping into some sort of armed conflict. As the former Reagan Administration official Paul Craig Roberts has astutely observed “The evil that [now] resides in Washington is unprecedented in human history.”
Philip M. Giraldi, Ph.D., is Executive Director of the Council for the National Interest, a 501(c)3 tax deductible educational foundation (Federal ID Number #52-1739023) that seeks a more interests-based U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East. Website is councilforthenationalinterest.org, address is P.O. Box 2157, Purcellville VA 20134 and its email is inform@cnionline.org.
March 29, 2022
Posted by aletho |
Deception, Timeless or most popular, War Crimes | Joe Biden, Ukraine, United States |
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Last year there was a sudden spike in deaths among 25 to 44 year olds. Biologist & data analyst, Dr. Jessica Rose joins The HighWire to discuss her latest investigation into this phenomena, and the overwhelming evidence she has uncovered on the possible culprit.
March 29, 2022
Posted by aletho |
Science and Pseudo-Science, Timeless or most popular, Video, War Crimes | COVID-19 Vaccine |
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During the bombing of FR Yugoslavia, NATO also poisoned Europe, Dr Danica Grujičić told the Russian news agency RIA Novosti.
The director of the Institute of Oncology and Radiology of Serbia explained that chemical plants and various dangerous industries were bombed, which, as she says, created an ecological catastrophe and poisoned Europe.
According to Grujičić, the use of NATO bombs with depleted uranium and the destruction of environmentally dangerous facilities during air strikes have led to Serbia being now the leader in the number of cancer deaths in Europe, with almost 60.000 new cancer patients a year.
“The North Atlantic Alliance did not pay attention to civilian casualties. Everyone knows the famous conversation between former Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic and Finnish diplomat Martti Ahtisaari, who said that Belgrade would be levelled to the ground (if it does not accept the ultimatum),” Grujičić added.
“If we had a nuclear power plant, they would definitely hit it, because they attacked everything on the list of facilities dangerous for the environment. They knew that a local environmental catastrophe would be created in every oil refinery, chemical company. They did it on purpose”, she said.
Grujičić recalled that about 15 tons of depleted uranium were officially dumped on Serbia, but emphasized that “no one knows how much it really was, and it will never be known.”
“We have taken the initiative to determine with mathematical precision, not only medical, but also environmental consequences. The data we received show that the whole of Europe was polluted. Europeans who were looking forward to the bombs over Belgrade and Serbia are also endangered and do not know what they were breathing, eating, drinking,” she added.
March 26, 2022
Posted by aletho |
Timeless or most popular, War Crimes | NATO, Serbia |
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The details of torture in an Israeli-run prison in Lebanon, including the electrocution of a female detainee and denial of medical care, have been uncovered in newly declassified Israeli documents.
Arab prisoners were subjected to inhumane treatment at the Khiam Prison run by Israel in Southern Lebanon, which operated for fifteen years until the occupation state withdrew from its northern neighbour in 2000. Details of the torture and serious human rights violations were found within the archive documents released by Israel’s internal security agency, Shin Bet.
The documents were released following a petition to the High Court of Justice by human rights activists including lawyer Eitay Mack, who over recent years has uncovered Israel’s questionable ties to rogue human rights abusing regimes. The materials, the activists say, record “torture and cruel and inhumane punishments” in the prison.
“Together with the South Lebanon Army, the Israel Defence Forces and Shin Bet ran a detention and torture facility like those in the military dictatorships in Latin America,” Mack told Haaretz. The Israeli paper reported the gruesome details at length.
“The torture inflicted in Khiam Prison is a crime against humanity,” Mack said. “The documents that were revealed due to the petition are shocking, and constitute only a miniscule glimpse into the hell that they ran there. We will continue to fight until all the documents are made available to the public and those responsible for the horrors are brought to justice.”
Khiam Prison was opened in 1985 near the eponymous village, which is located in South Lebanon, a few kilometres north of the Israeli border. It was originally built as an army barracks in the 1930s.
Only a tiny fraction of the documents has been released. Legal proceedings are underway to obtain all of the material. The full scale of the torture is likely to be even more shocking.
Nevertheless, the small sample of declassified documents still paints a horrific picture. Between 250 and 300 detainees were said to have been held in the prison at any given time. They belonged to various organisations and political parties, including Amal, Hezbollah, the Communist Party, Fatah and the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine.
According to one document, a female detainee being interrogated on suspicion of being “connected to Hezbollah” was electrocuted. The victim “received electricity in her fingers”, which is another way of saying that she was tortured during the interrogation.
A document dated 1988 testifies to the hunger from which the prisoners suffered in the jail. “This morning, the manager of the local prison reported that yesterday a hunger strike erupted in the prison due to a shortage of food,” it says.
Another document, from 1997, discussed medical problems from which the detainees suffered. In summary, the document says that there exists “a painful problem” and that the source who warned about it feels “that he has no support in the event that a detainee dies in prison due to medical problems or a failure to administer treatment recommended by the doctor.”
According to Amnesty International, during the prison’s fifteen years of operation, 11 detainees died. With the full scale of the torture still to be unveiled, the death toll may actually be much higher.
March 25, 2022
Posted by aletho |
Subjugation - Torture, Timeless or most popular, War Crimes | Human rights, Israel, Lebanon |
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Hunter Biden’s abandoned laptop has reared its ugly head again, as it reportedly contains emails that appear to back up Russian military claims that the US president’s son was involved in financing military research into dangerous pathogens at biolabs in Ukraine.
Biden helped arrange millions of dollars in financing for Metabiota, a Pentagon contractor that specialized in researching pandemic-causing pathogens that could be used as bioweapons, the UK’s Daily Mail newspaper reported on Friday, citing newly obtained emails and letters from the laptop. President Joe Biden’s son and his partners in a firm called Rosemont Seneca also invested $500,000 in the contractor.
At least one of the documents suggested that Metabiota’s interest in Ukraine went beyond research and money-making. An executive with the contractor, Mary Guttieri, spoke in an April 2014 memo to Hunter Biden of “how we can potentially leverage our team, networks and concepts to assert Ukraine’s cultural and economic independence from Russia and continued integration into Western society.”
Another memo showed that Biden had pitched a “science project” involving Metabiota and Burisma, the Ukrainian natural gas company where Biden made millions of dollars as a board member. His pay was cut in half after his father’s stint as US vice president ended in January 2017.
The revelations come one day after Russian military officials alleged that US agencies and high-level Democrats, including Hunter Biden, have been involved in backing bioweapons research in Ukraine. The officials cited documents that had been seized by Russian soldiers in the former Soviet republic.
However, some Western media outlets dismissed the claims as Russian propaganda meant to justify Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine. In many cases, the allegations were brushed off or ridiculed without even taking them seriously enough to include a US government response. For instance, the Daily Beast declared in a headline, “Russia ramps up the crazy,” while state-funded NPR and other outlets referred to the accusations as “false” or “propaganda” without any apparent probing of the facts. Even the Daily Mail itself, before obtaining the latest Biden emails, said Russia had ramped up its “wild propaganda campaign” by making its bioweapons claims.
The reaction echoed the response in October 2020, when the New York Post broke a story alleging overseas influence-peddling by the Biden family, citing emails obtained from a laptop that Hunter Biden had abandoned at a Delaware repair shop. Spreading of the report was blocked on social media, where the Post was censored, and legacy media outlets suggested that the scandal was the result of a Russian disinformation campaign.
The original laptop scoop was essentially squashed just weeks before Biden was elected president. Just last week, the New York Times admitted that the laptop and its contents were authentic.
Government records show that Metabiota was awarded an $18.4 million contract by the Pentagon, the Daily Mail said. Emails showed that Hunter Biden claimed to help the contractor “get new customers,” including government agencies.
March 25, 2022
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Deception, War Crimes |
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Samizdat | March 25, 2022
Russia wants to hear comments from the US regime on the alleged involvement of Hunter Biden into financing a network of biolabs in Ukraine, which Moscow suspects of conducting bioweapons research, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said on Friday. The embattled presidential son was financially linked to the Ukrainian labs by the Russian military this week.
“We will certainly demand explanations. And not us alone. You know that China has asked for explanations, demanded transparency over this program and this situation,” Peskov said.
He was commenting on a connection, which the Russian military claimed to have discovered between the embattled son of President Joe Biden and biolabs in Ukraine.
Hunter Biden used to head the now-defunct DC-based Rosemont Seneca Partners LLC, a branch of the Rosemont Seneca investment fund. The Russian military claimed that the fund had close ties to the Pentagon and helped finance bioresearch in Ukraine.
The labs drew public attention after US Undersecretary of State for Political Affairs Victoria Nuland said under oath this month that Washington didn’t want research materials from the facilities to fall into the hands of Russia.
Washington denied that facilities in Ukraine – and other parts of the world – which the Pentagon funds through its Defense Threat Reduction Agency, had anything to do with germ research. Russia and China complained that the operation was shrouded in secrecy and called on the US to open the labs to international inspections.
Peskov dismissed statements coming from the White House, which alleged that Russia was talking about the biolabs to pave the ground for a false flag attack in Ukraine with weapons of mass destruction.
“The Americans are trying to switch attention … from the unfolding scandal,” the Russian official assessed.
March 25, 2022
Posted by aletho |
Deception, Timeless or most popular, War Crimes | China, Russia, Ukraine, United States |
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By Lucas Leiroz | March 25, 2022
While Washington refuses to give answers about its scandals in biological weapons research in clandestine laboratories in Ukraine, other facts are revealed, which point not only to inappropriate conduct on the part of the American government, but also to the Biden family itself. Hunter Biden, son of the US president, who is proven to be involved in several corruption schemes in Ukraine, is now suspected of being one of the main financiers of US laboratories on Ukranian soil. The suspicion is already generating strong international repercussions, with Moscow demanding an immediate response from Washington. With this situation, once again the Biden administration is approaching a crisis of legitimacy.
Rosemont Seneca Partners has been accused of being a major financier of US laboratories in Ukraine. The company would sponsor the entire Pentagon’s biomilitary program, sending more than 2 billion dollars in resources for the maintenance of several laboratories abroad, including more than thirty facilities in Ukraine. The company would be acting in partnership with other key military companies, such as Metabiota, in addition to many NGOs and international foundations.
The head of Russia’s Radiation, Chemical and Biological Defense Troops, Igor Kirillov, commented on the report: “Incoming materials have allowed us to trace the scheme of interaction between US government bodies and Ukraine’s biolabs. The involvement in the financing of these activities by structures close to the current US leadership, in particular the Rosemont Seneca investment fund managed by Hunter Biden, draws attention to itself (…) At the same time, a close relationship has been established between the fund and key contractors of the US military, including Metabiota, which alongside Black & Veatch is one of the main suppliers of equipment for Pentagon biolaboratories around the world”.
Hunter Biden, who has accumulated several crimes of corruption and financial scandals in Ukraine during his time working in Kiev, is the chairman of the Rosemont Seneca financial fund. This fund receives money from a wide range of companies, banks and philanthropic organizations around the world, including George Soros’ Open Society Foundations. These connections reveal the real dimension of the Pentagon’s program, which involves many of the key names of the global elites.
“The scale of the [American biomilitary] program is impressive. Along with the Pentagon, the US Agency for International Development (USAID), the Soros’ Open Society Foundations, and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention are directly involved in its implementation (…) Scientific supervision is carried out by leading research organizations, including the Los Alamos National Laboratory, which developed nuclear weapons for the Manhattan Project. All of this activity has been carried out under the direct control of the Pentagon”, Kirillov adds.
It is important to note that the Russian allegations are made on the basis of official documents captured by Moscow intelligence on Ukrainian soil during the Special Operation, which guarantees credibility for the pronouncements of Russian officials. Several accusations on the existence of research on biological weapons had already been made previously, mainly by the US, which accuses China of having created the new coronavirus. However, none of these accusations were elaborated justified on scientific evidence and official documents, being just unsubstantiated narratives – which is not the case now.
According to data contained in documents captured by the Russians, about 16,000 biosamples have been exported from Ukraine in recent times, supposedly with the aim of reporting the results of military research in those laboratories to their funders in other countries. Kirillov reports that there are real risks of a new pandemic to start soon, considering that US forces are indeed in possession of advanced biological weapons, which include diverse pathogenic biomaterials, from coronavirus mutations to anthrax variants.
It is impossible to say in advance whether or not the West will use the biological weapons it currently possesses. The risks of a new pandemic are real, and this scenario would have negative impacts on the whole world. It is possible that the fact that research data have become public is reason enough to prevent the use of such weapons, as this would harm the international image of the US government and the private agencies that finance these laboratories. However, the very existence of this type of illegal and unethical activity must be reason for strong condemnations against the US and Ukraine on the international organizations and courts.
Kremlin’s spokesman Dmitry Peskov demanded answers from the US government about Hunter Biden’s involvement in funding biomilitary research. China’s previous demands also remain. The White House’s stance is one of total silence – while, at the same time, other American officials give ambiguous and contradictory answers, either confirming or denying the existence of the biolabs.
In fact, this scenario also tends to have a major internal impact on the American electorate, intensifying the current legitimacy crisis of the Biden administration. In addition to several domestic and international management mistakes, Biden has to deal with family scandals due to his son’s criminal activities, which complicates his acceptance by the American people. Indeed, a strong wave of disapproval and protests is about to come soon in America.
Lucas Leiroz is a researcher in Social Sciences at the Rural Federal University of Rio de Janeiro; geopolitical consultant.
March 25, 2022
Posted by aletho |
Deception, Timeless or most popular, War Crimes | Open Society Foundation, Ukraine, United States, USAID |
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