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Oxford Prof: “Jabbing Children Without Parental Consent Is Battery!”

By Richie Allen | September 6, 2021

Clinicians will be reluctant to administer covid-19 jabs to children without parental consent according to Oxford Family Law Professor Lucinda Ferguson. She told The Telegraph this morning that injecting a child without parental permission is “technically battery.”

Yesterday, vaccine minister Nadhim Zahawi said that if a 12- to 15-year-old said yes to the jab and was deemed to be “competent” then their decision would overrule the parents’ refusal.

However, according to The Telegraph :

Lucinda Ferguson, associate professor of family law at the University of Oxford, said: “In my view the clinician may well be reluctant to accept that because alongside that, you’ve now got the JCVI saying that they don’t consider it to be essentially in the medical best interests of children more generally.

She added: “At least at this early stage would be reluctant to accept that that consent [from a child] is good enough because of course if you treat a child without informed consent, either from them, or from a parent with parental responsibility, it’s technically battery and that would be what would be concerning the clinician.”

That seems perfectly reasonable to me. If I was a parent and my child was underage, I would consider it an assault if anyone laid their hands on the child without my express permission.

Further to that, aren’t those administering the jabs putting themselves at risk of litigation, if they ignore the parents wishes that the child not be jabbed and the child is subsequently injured?

Good luck relying on a defence that the now injured child gave you permission to inject her and that in your mind her wishes superseded those of her parents. No credible judge or jury would buy that.

September 6, 2021 Posted by | War Crimes | , | Leave a comment

Jabs for kids and the impossibility of informed consent

By Neil McCarthy | TCW Defending Freedom | September 6, 2021

‘THEY’RE coming after the children next’: these were the words of a Northern Ireland GP, Anne McCloskey, on a video she posted on social media a couple of weeks ago, much shared until predictably deleted from YouTube and Twitter; words which, amongst others, have led to her being ‘suspended’ by the Northern Ireland Health and Social Care Board pending a ‘full investigation’, due to there being ‘no evidence to support Dr McCloskey’s comments’.

It hasn’t taken long for the truth of Anne’s words to be revealed.

Although the Government’s own independent vaccination advice body, the Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation, advised as recently as July 15 that  ‘the JCVI’s view is that the minimal (my emphasis) health benefits of offering universal COVID-19 vaccination to children do not outweigh the potential risks’, that selfsame body performed a spectacular volte-face a mere couple of weeks later to advise that all 16- and 17-year-olds should receive a first dose of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine.

In tendering this advice they were unusually frank about the precise risks, as they saw them, for young people, especially young men. They characterised these risks as potential ‘serious side effects’ which include myocarditis (inflammation of the heart muscle) and pericarditis (inflammation of the membrane around the heart), with data from the US reporting ‘67 cases of myocarditis per million after the second dose.’ Although stating again that ‘Covid-19 is usually mild in younger people’ and that it is therefore ‘important to weigh up the benefits of any vaccine against the possible, although extremely rare, side effects’, the JCVI signally failed to do so in this statement. The simple arithmetic of Covid-19 fatally affecting approximately one in every 1.7million children compared with myocarditis affecting 9.8 in every million males aged 12 to 17 after receiving their first dose of the Pfizer-BioNTech jab seems to have eluded them.

Such an egregious reversal of a clearly set out and principled opposition to mass vaccination of young people within such a short time suggests that the heavily covered (in the legacy MSM) tussle between Government and the JCVI over whether to extend the mass vaccination programme to all children over the age of 12 and last Friday’s apparent refusal by the JCVI to recommend mass vaccination of 12- to 15-year-olds are merely stage-managed ploys to make us believe that some deep ethical and societal debate is taking place. Judiciously leaked comments before Friday from Government about its ‘frustration‘ and the description of the JCVI as a ‘black box‘ in which ‘no one knows what’s going on‘ were so many will-o’-the-wisps. It is surely no coincidence that one of the most outspoken opponents of the mass vaccination of young people amongst the membership of the JCVI, Robert Dingwall, was recently ‘axed’ from the body. Indeed, according to a Guardian report dated August 7, ‘the JCVI has moved to ‘refresh’ the membership of its Covid subcommittee in recent weeks‘.

The JCVI is clearly thoroughly compromised. Friday’s statement that the ‘margin of benefit’ of jabbing 12- to 15-year-olds is ‘considered too small’ was in reality a Pontius Pilate-style washing of hands with its express invitation to the Home Secretary to seek further advice. The JCVI is salving what remains of its conscience and is inviting the Government to do its dirty work for it. Therefore Dr Anne McCloskey is right: they are ‘coming after the children next’. Indeed, the Times reported on Saturday, one day after the JCVI’s apparent refusal, that ‘ministers are reported to be confident the medical officers will give swift backing to the mass immunisation programme . . . it could begin as early as next week’.

As if to clarify their malice aforethought, our Government had until Friday gone out of their way to make it known that they had decided in advance that children of 12 and up are ‘Gillick competent’. What this means, quite simply, is that the sole force which stands between our children and a state which is determined to inject them with what Dr McCloskey has rightly called an ‘unlicensed’ vaccine – i.e. parents – was to be pushed out of the way. Briefings to the Times last Friday to the effect that written consent from parents will be sought after all are just words. The Government simply cannot be trusted.

The 1985 case of Gillick v West Norfolk and Wisbech Area Health Authority was without doubt a great victory for the modern liberal state against the traditional notion that children belong to their families rather than the state. Victoria Gillick lost on the substantive issue of whether her teenage daughter could be lawfully prescribed contraception by the family GP without the consent of her parents being sought. A consolation of the ruling, however, was that such bypassing of parental consent to medical procedures for children under 16 could be lawful only in specific circumstances when, as Lord Scarman put it, ‘the child achieves sufficient understanding and intelligence to understand fully what is proposed’. A gratifying and very recent upholding of this ruling occurred in the Bell v Tavistock case, when the High Court decided that it must essentially be true in nearly all cases, a priori, that a child under the age of 16 could not understand fully the implications of receiving puberty blockers.

How children could fully understand the implications of receiving an unlicensed vaccine which, according to the JCVI itself, has the potential for ‘serious side effects’ and the safety trials of which are not due to conclude until 2023, is a question which the courts could surely only but answer in the same way as they did in Bell v Tavistock.

We need to take this government to court. Even if they stick to their new word and children under 16 are no longer classed as ‘Gillick competent’ in relation to receiving the Covid vaccines, the fight needs to move on to the general question of ‘informed consent‘, based upon the Montgomery case, which is detailed here. In the absence of full clinical trials and the suppression and non-investigation of adverse symptoms, ‘informed consent’ is simply an impossibility. This was one of Dr Anne McCloskey’s central points in that suppressed video, and doubtless her real crime.

Update

We read today that Nadhim Zahawi is ALREADY rowing back on last Friday’s briefings to the Times about the need for written consent and that children deemed ‘Gillick competent’ will be able override their parents. https://www.theguardian.com/society/2021/sep/05/vaccine-passports-to-be-required-for-nightclubs-and-mass-events-in-england

September 6, 2021 Posted by | Science and Pseudo-Science, War Crimes | , | Leave a comment

A Twelve Year-Old Cannot Give Informed Consent For Vaccination

By Richie Allen | September 6, 2021

Professor Adam Finn from the Joint Committee on Vaccination (JCVI) has just been speaking to the BBC. He was on Radio 5 Live’s Breakfast Show. Finn reiterated the JCVI stance, that is that healthy children should not be offered a covid jab.

Finn did say that the JCVI stood by its earlier advice, that children with underlying health conditions should be offered the jab. He was speaking to the BBC’s Rachel Burden. Strangely, Burden didn’t ask Finn for his thoughts on comments made by vaccine minister Nadhim Zahawi (pictured) yesterday.

Zahawi told The Marr Show yesterday, that if the parents of a given child refused to give their consent but the child wanted the jab, once the child was ruled to be competent, he/she could overrule mum and dad. Zahawi gave no details as to how it would be determined whether or not the child was competent.

Adam Finn made a point of telling Rachel Burden this morning that parental consent is needed for every vaccine that is offered to children. Burden, either through incompetence or because she’d been warned off, didn’t press him. She should of course have said, “Well Professor, it sounds like you disagree with the vaccine minister. Is that right?”

The government will ignore the JCVI advice. It will roll out the jabs in schools to perfectly healthy children. England’s Chief Medical Officer Chris Whitty and his deputy Jonathan Van Tam will give the go ahead.

Parents, you need to seek legal advice at the speed of light. It is preposterous to claim that a child under 16 years-old can give informed consent to be jabbed. You need to move quickly.

The government’s plan is to administer the jabs in schools. Children will come under tremendous pressure to take the needle. It’s fiendishly clever. The government knows that by doing it in schools and not at vaccine centres where parents would need to be present, they’ll be in a better position to overcome the problem of parental consent.

They’re coming for your children. Seek legal advice now.

September 6, 2021 Posted by | War Crimes | , | Leave a comment

Children can get Covid-19 vaccine even if their parents are opposed: UK minister Zahawi

RT | September 5, 2021

Asked by Times Radio’s Tom Newton Dunn what would happen if a teenager’s parents said no to vaccination but the teenager said yes, UK vaccine minister Nadhim Zahawi said they would still be able to get jabbed without permission.

Claiming that the NHS “is really well-practiced in this because they’ve been doing school immunisation programmes for a very long time,” Zahawi told Newton Dunn on Sunday said that “what you essentially do is make sure that the clinicians discuss this with the parents, with the teenager, and if they are then deemed to be able to make a decision that is competent, then that decision will go in the favour of what the teenager decides to do.”

Newton Dunn questioned, “So to be clear, the teenager can override the lack of parental consent? If a teenager really wants a jab and is only 15, the parents say no, the teenager can have it?” to which Zahawi responded, “They’d need to be competent to make that decision, with all of the information available.”

Bizarrely, on the same day, Zahawi told Sky News that children would require parental consent to get vaccinated against Covid-19.

Asked by Sky News’ Trevor Phillips whether he could “assure parents that if there is a decision to vaccinate 12 to 15-year-olds, it will require parental consent,” Zahawi declared, “I can give that assurance, absolutely.”

Despite the fact that the UK’s Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation (JCVI) refused to recommend on Friday that healthy children between the ages of 12 and 15 be vaccinated against Covid-19, given they are considered extremely low risk, the government is still pushing for vaccination – with The Times newspaper reporting that child vaccination could occur as early as next week.

JCVI’s deputy chairman, Professor Anthony Harnden, noted on Saturday that “the health benefits from vaccinating well 12- to 15-year-olds” are only “marginally greater than the risks,” and said that any decision should ultimately require “parents’ consent.”

“Both the teenagers and the parents need to be involved in that choice,” he argued.

The age of consent in the UK is 16.

On Friday, protesters stormed the London headquarters of the UK’s Medicines and Healthcare Products Regulatory Agency in protest of the government’s likely intention to vaccinate children under the age of 16.

September 5, 2021 Posted by | War Crimes | , | Leave a comment

Why Testing Your Immunity to COVID-19 Is Important

By Dr. Joseph Mercola | September 4, 2021

Antibody testing is the gold standard for determining immunity, says immunologist and physician Dr. Hooman Noorchashm. Yet, the CDC and FDA are actively deterring people from testing their immunity. Why?

In May 2021 the FDA issued an advisory discouraging Americans from testing the status of their antibody immunity to COVID-19, Noorchashm wrote in an editorial on his blog. “Those who are adequately immune to COVID-19 are rarely, if ever, getting reinfected — regardless of whether this immunity comes from vaccination or from a natural infection,” Noorchashm said.

Meanwhile, “those who are NOT immune to SARS-CoV-2 are susceptible to being infected,” he said. He surmises that to end the pandemic upward of 90% of the population need to become immune.

As far as testing for immunity, according to Noorchashm, the FDA advisory prevents people from obtaining critical information necessary to protect themselves during the pandemic. “ … by not encouraging liberal COVID-19 antibody testing, especially in fully vaccinated Americans, the FDA and CDC are preventing vaccinated, but inadequately immune, persons from finding out that they remain susceptible to infection,” he wrote.

Citing his own experience as a physician, he said “patients who hesitate to undergo vaccination are far more likely to do so when they are confronted with a negative antibody test demonstrating they are susceptible.”

SOURCES:

Noorchashm.medium.com August 27, 2021

Epoch Times August 19, 2021

September 4, 2021 Posted by | Science and Pseudo-Science, War Crimes | , , | Leave a comment

Crocodile Tears for Women’s Rights in Afghanistan

By Jacob G. Hornberger | FFF | September 2, 2021

Interventionist dead-enders are crying crocodile tears over the Taliban’s defeat of the Pentagon and the CIA in Afghanistan because, they say, women’s rights are not likely to be protected by the Taliban. 

Oh? 

Well, now let’s see. According to the Watson Institute at Brown University, civilian deaths in Afghanistan and Pakistan from 2001 to date exceed 70,000 people. 

We don’t know how many of those dead people were women but we can safely assume that a large percentage of them were. 

How many of those dead women would have been able to exercise “women’s rights” if the Pentagon and the CIA had won the war? 

Answer: None of them. At the risk of belaboring the obvious, women who are dead cannot exercise “women’s rights.”

The interventionist dead-enders would say that those deaths were “worth it” because the women who survived the invasion and occupation would then have been able, with a U.S. military victory, to exercise “women’s rights.”

But where do the Pentagon and the CIA get the moral authority to sacrifice tens of thousands of  innocent lives — or even just one innocent life — in order that others will have the potential opportunity to exercise “women’s rights”?

Throughout the 20 years of the Afghanistan war, there was a strange and callous indifference to the people who were being killed in Afghanistan. It’s a reflection of what the national-security state way of life has done to the consciences of the American people. We actually don’t even know the exact number of civilians who were killed. That 70,000 is just an estimate. That’s because early in the conflict, U.S. officials made a conscious decision not to count the Afghan dead. What mattered was the number of U.S. soldiers who were being killed, not the number of Afghans being killed.

In Sunday services in Christian churches across America, ministers would exhort their congregations to “pray for the troops” and “thank them for their service.” Hardly ever would American Christian churchgoers be asked to pray for the people, including women, who were being killed by the troops as part of their “service.” Those lives just didn’t matter. 

The interventionist mindset with respect to “women’s rights” was always based on a mathematical calculation. This mindset held that in the quest to establish a regime that protected “women’s rights,” it was morally acceptable to kill some number of Afghan women (and men). The idea was that it was morally permissible to sacrifice the lives of some for the benefit of others. 

Moreover, there was never an upward limit on the number of Afghan women (and men) who could be sacrificed for the greater good of “women’s rights.” 70,000? 100,000? 250,000? It didn’t matter. What mattered to the interventionist dead-enders is that a U.S. puppet regime be installed that would protect “women’s rights” for those who weren’t killed by the violence entailed in installing and maintaining such a regime in power.

Think about all the wedding parties that U.S. forces bombed during the 20 years of conflict. Dead brides. Dead mothers of the brides. Dead mothers of the grooms. Dead sisters of the brides and grooms. Dead flower girls. Dead bridal assistants. None of them would be around at the end to celebrate a U.S.-installed regime that protected “women’s rights.” But it was all considered worth it because those who weren’t killed would be able to exercise “women’s rights.”

It’s one thing for people to deliberately sacrifice themselves in what they consider is a grand and glorious cause. 

It’s quite another thing to knowingly and intentionally kill innocent people so that others can experience “women’s rights.” It would be difficult to find a more evil notion than that.

September 2, 2021 Posted by | Militarism, War Crimes | , , | Leave a comment

Recent drone strikes in Afghanistan prove ‘Over-the-horizon’ is just a buzz phrase for US incompetence

By Scott Ritter | RT | August 31, 2021

Following the Kabul airport attack, the US military conducted two “over-the-horizon” air strikes against suspected ISIS-K targets. The results inspire zero confidence in the efficacy of this approach toward counterterrorism.

The August 26 suicide bombing outside Hamid Karzai International Airport in the Afghan capital killed more than 150 people, including 13 American troops. The Islamic State-Khorasan, or ISIS-K, claimed responsibility for the attack.

That night, in a televised address to the American people, President Joe Biden declared “We will not forgive. We will not forget. We will hunt you down and make you pay,” adding that the US “will respond with force and precision at our time, where we choose and when we choose.”

The next day, August 27, the US carried out what it termed an “over-the-horizon” attack against an ISIS-K “planner” and “facilitator” at a home in the city of Jalalabad in Nangarhar Province in eastern Afghanistan, killing both men and, according to the US, wounding a third accomplice.

US defense sources sources said the men were killed by a special variant of the Hellfire missile, known as the R9X, or ‘flying Ginsu’, a reference to the six blade-like devices which emerge from the missile, killing its target by cutting it to shreds in lieu of the normal high explosive payload carried by the Hellfire. The R9X was developed specifically to handle situations such as the one in Jalalabad, where legitimate targets have taken refuge among a civilian population.

According to reports, the “planner” and “facilitator” were traveling in a three-wheeled vehicle common to the region as public transportation. The men were tracked by an MQ-9 ‘Reaper’ drone which maintained sufficient “eyes and knowledge” of the target to confirm their identities. The three-wheeled vehicle entered a compound believed to be the home of the “planner.” Reportedly, US personnel monitoring the live video images coming from the MQ-9 drone waited until the planner’s wife and children left the compound before launching the ‘flying Ginsu’.

“Initial indications are that we killed the target,” a CENTCOM spokesperson said. “We know of no civilian casualties.” The strike was reportedly authorized by President Biden and ordered by Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin.

The US assertions about casualties were contradicted by a Jalalabad community elder, Malik Adib, who declared that three people were killed and four were wounded in the drone strike, noting that “women and children are among the victims.”

If the statements of Malik Adib are to be believed, then something went very wrong with the analysis of the imagery used to justify the launching of the missile. While no one has questioned the validity of the US claims that the targets struck were in fact affiliated with ISIS-K (while keeping in mind the US has provided no evidence that corroborates its claim that they were, in fact, ISIS-K operatives), either someone is lying about waiting for the wife and children to leave, or there were other civilians in the vicinity of the attack, one of whom was killed.

Before the media could press the Pentagon about the apparent inconsistencies in the official US account, however, the US launched a second drone strike, this time targeting a vehicle in Kabul, eliminating “an imminent ISIS-K threat” to Hamid Karzai International Airport. According to US officials, the existence of a “large secondary explosion” at the scene of the attack confirmed the assessment about the existence of a car bomb. It is not known if the US used a conventional Hellfire or one of the non-explosive RX9 variants in the attack.

According to unnamed defense sources, the alleged ISIS-K operatives inside the vehicle had been observed placing what was assessed to be a considerable amount of explosives in the trunk of a white Toyota Corolla, before driving the vehicle into the driveway of a home located near the airport. The decision was made to strike, resulting in the destruction of the vehicle. US officials claimed that at least one ISIS-K suicide bomber was killed in the incident. Allegedly, nine civilians also perished as a result of the attack.

“We are aware of reports of civilian casualties,” Major General William Taylor, a spokesperson for the Joint Staff, told the media on Monday. “We take these reports extremely seriously.”

The driver of the vehicle, Zemari Ahmadi, did not fit the profile one would expect of an ISIS-K suicide bomber. Zemari worked for an American-based charity called Nutrition and Education International.

According to his family, he was on his way home from work after dropping off colleagues on Sunday evening. As he pulled into the driveway of his home, where he lived with three brothers and their families, the children of his relatives ran out to greet him. The missile believed to be launched by the American drone struck the rear of the vehicle, killing Zemari and nine others, including seven children, the youngest of whom was two years old. Also killed was Zemari’s nephew, Ahmad Naser, who had previously served as a guard at a US military facility in Herat, and who was awaiting final approval of his Special Immigrant Visa paperwork so that he could leave Afghanistan.

“No military on the face of the Earth works harder to avoid civilian casualties than the United States military,” Pentagon spokesman John Kirby said after reports emerged about possible civilian casualties. “We take it very, very seriously. And when we know that we have caused innocent life to be lost in the conduct of our operations, we’re transparent about it.”

Kirby went on to suggest that the civilians were killed as a result of the detonation of the explosives alleged to have been contained in Zemari’s vehicle. At a later press conference, Kirby maintained this position, but refused to release any imagery that would sustain his contention of a powerful secondary explosion.

The drone strike that killed Zemari Ahmadi and his relatives represented the very scenario the Biden administration was trying to avoid when setting up the “over-the-horizon” strike capability used in the two responses to the suicide-bomb attack on Kabul Airport.

Back in April, when the totality of the failure that was to mark the US withdrawal from Afghanistan remained unknown (although not unknowable – many military and intelligence professionals anticipated the collapse of the Afghan government, but the Biden White House overrode their concerns in favor of better “optics”), General Frank McKenzie, the Marine commanding US Central Command, responsible for all US forces deployed in the Middle East, Central and South Asia, testified before Congress about his command’s efforts to conduct “over-the-horizon” counterterrorism missions once the US drawdown in Afghanistan was completed.

CENTCOM had a long history of conducting “over-the-horizon” (OTH) operations in support of its counterterrorism mission, using a mix of special operations commandos (i.e., the Bin Laden and Abu al-Baghdadi assaults), manned aircraft (the airstrikes against pro-Iranian militias in Syria and Iraq), and drone strikes, such as that carried out against Qassem Soleimani at Baghdad International Airport in January 2020.

“I don’t want to make light of it, I don’t want to put on rose-colored glasses and say it’s going to be easy to do,” McKenzie told the House Armed Services Committee. Any OTH operations in Afghanistan in a post-US drawdown, McKenzie noted, would require significant intelligence support at a time when US intelligence collection capabilities in Afghanistan were diminished to the point of non-existence. “It will be harder to do that, it is not impossible.”

The bulk of the burden of maintaining this OTH capability would fall on the US system of armed drones, which in the past operated from bases inside Afghanistan, providing them with greater reaction time and longer loiter time over the target. Any post-Afghanistan operation of drones in support of OTH operations would mean operating from bases outside of Afghanistan.

According to acting Air Force Secretary John Roth, the US planned on using existing bases in the region to host the drones, noting that the US operated from Al Udeid Air Base in Qatar, Al Dhafra Air Base in the United Arab Emirates, and Kuwait’s Ali Al Salem and Ahmad al-Jaber air bases. The cost of maintaining this OTH capability for fiscal year 2022 was expected to run somewhere around $10 billion.

The Biden White House engaged in a policy review of OTH operations, temporarily placing limits on counterterrorism drone strikes and commando raids, and tightening the approval process for such missions, which had been loosened under the Trump administration.

Biden, according to press reports, was particularly sensitive to the need to limit civilian deaths as it looked into how it would respond to future terrorist threats from Afghanistan and elsewhere in the Middle East. The decision was made to continue the program of drone-based assassination/pre-emptive killing but restrict the ability of field commanders to make the final decision, instead requiring White House permission before any OTH attack could occur.

The MQ-9 drones that were involved in the Jalalabad and Kabul drone attacks were operated out of Al Udeid Air Base in Qatar. The MQ-9 system, however, operates according to what the Air Force calls “remote split operations,” which employs a launch-and-recovery ground control station for takeoff and landing operations at Al Udeid, before passing control of the MQ-9 to a crew based out of Creech Air Force Base in Nevada, which takes control of the aircraft for the remainder of the mission using satellite communication links.

Traditionally, an MQ-9 crew consists of a pilot and a sensor operator, who employ what is known as the Multi-Spectral Targeting System, which integrates an infrared sensor, color/monochrome daylight TV camera, image-intensified TV camera, laser range finder/designator, and laser illuminator, all of which can be viewed together or separately on display screens set up in front of the crew.

The MQ-9 would usually operate as part of an overall “intelligence surveillance reconnaissance” (ISR) package which used a variety of intelligence collection resources to identify and track potential targets. The US drawdown in Afghanistan, however, eliminated most if not all of the supporting infrastructure normally available to the MQ-9 crew to discriminate targets. To help compensate for this loss of capability, the US Air Force developed a special signals intelligence (SIGINT) pod that could be carried by the MQ-9 that provided full-spectrum SIGINT capability to the drone operators, who could now search for, identify and track signals of interest, such as the cell phones, walkie-talkies or satellite phones that comprise the communications network of terrorist organizations like ISIS-K. To better employ this capability, the MQ-9 crew would be supplemented by a linguist who could listen in real time to any conversations of interest, helping with the evaluation of potential targets in terms of both identity and intent.

Intelligence, properly done, is a combination of art and science which requires those involved to be true subject matter experts in the mission they have been given. Imagery analysts need to understand not only what it is they are seeing, but also what it means. Likewise, linguists monitoring conversations need not only be fluent in the language, but adept at slang and other colloquialisms used by people in their daily conversations. For this reason, the best imagery analysts and intercept linguists have been doing their respective jobs for years and, in doing so, are adept at sifting out the unusual from the normal.

However, the airmen operating the MQ-9 most likely did not have this level of experience and expertise. By way of example, the vehicle Zemari Ahmadi was driving was allegedly tracked as “containers containing explosives” were loaded into its trunk. While there is no doubt that an imagery analyst witnessed items being loaded into the trunk of the vehicle, the key question is what was in those containers. Basic identification signatures for car bombs include the use of bags of fertilizer mixed with diesel oil placed in the trunk of a car. However, were the analysts trained to know that Afghanistan blocked the sale of fertilizer back in 2010 because of its extensive use as a bomb-making material, and that the terrorists instead began using potassium chlorate as the primary bomb making material, and that potassium chlorate is loaded into containers virtually identical to those used to store cooking oil?

Moreover, experienced terrorist operatives, which you would expect to be operating from inside Kabul, would anticipate that their communications are being monitored, and as such never use specific words or phrases that could trigger interest on the part of anyone listening in. As such, it is highly unlikely that Zemari or anyone he might have been communicating with would have spoken about explosives or the intent to build a car bomb. He might, however, state that he is picking up cooking oil. If an experienced linguist intercept specialist were listening in, he or she would be able to discern if this was part and parcel of normal activity, or a deviation from the norm. An inexperienced linguist, however, would not possess such insights, and be prone to reading into Zemari’s words content and intent that did not, in reality, exist.

It is unlikely the public will ever know the truth about what happened in Creech Air Base that led the MQ-9 crew to believe that their targets were affiliated with ISIS-K. Despite John Kirby’s assertions regarding transparency, the US military and intelligence community is loath to discuss the specifics regarding intelligence collection capabilities. Likewise, to what extent the extended chain of approval was involved in modifying these assessments as they made their way up the White House will likewise most likely remain secret, further shielding all involved from the kind of scrutiny that full transparency demands.

The Biden administration has placed its hopes for containing terrorism in a post-Afghanistan drawdown on “over-the-horizon” strike capabilities that the president and his supporters believe adequate for the task of identifying and interdicting terrorists before they can carry out an attack against US interests, all the while reducing the likelihood of unintended civilian casualties. If the experience in Afghanistan proves anything, it is that OTH is no panacea when it comes to counterterrorism.

It also underscores the reality that the US intelligence community and military is prone to see what it wants to see. The time-tested adage of “if the only tool available is a hammer, then every problem looks like a nail” holds true in every respect when it comes to OTH in a counterterrorism role: when the only tool available is an MQ-9 drone operated by crews who are not up to the task of properly identifying and tracking targets, then the only solution will be a Hellfire missile which, when employed, will more often than not kill innocent civilians.

August 31, 2021 Posted by | War Crimes | , | Leave a comment

Revealed, the vaccine safety alert that drugs watchdog is ignoring

By Sally Beck | TCW Defending Freedom | September 1, 2021

FOR nearly a decade, Dr Tess Lawrie, MBBCh, DFSRH, PhD, has run the Evidence-Based Medicine Consultancy, an independent company concerned with rigorous medical research in healthcare.

She produces reports that can be found in the Cochrane Library, a respected organisation providing unbiased scientific paper analyses.

Dr Lawrie is a frequent member of technical teams developing international guidelines in the healthcare sector, and her peer-reviewed publications have received more than 3,000 citations. In short, Dr Lawrie should not be ignored.

Unless of course you are the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency, the deaf-eared UK body regulating the novel, experimental, and under-tested Covid-19 mRNA and traditional vaccines.

With vaccine-associated deaths passing 1,600 in Britain, the MHRA should suspend the vaccination programme, like it did after 47 deaths caused by the Pandemrix swine flu jab.

However, it has no intention of doing so and continues to insist that the vaccine is ‘safe and effective and the best protection against Covid-19’.

Dr Lawrie sent Dr June Raine, the MHRA’s chief executive, a 39-page, fully-referenced paper criticising the agency’s complicated Yellow Card Scheme, a government system designed to collate information about adverse events caused by new drugs, as ‘not fit for purpose.’

She reminded Dr Raine, and copied in 15 of her colleagues, that they had a duty to ‘take any necessary action to minimise risk to individuals, after weighing risks against expected benefits.’ She pointed out that because of omissions in their data collecting, such as age and gender, and the timeframe of reaction post vaccination, the Yellow Card Scheme is non-transparent.

She said: ‘These omissions mean that basic conclusions about safety cannot be drawn. Consequently, the public and trial participants are not fully informed of the potential risks of taking a Covid-19 vaccine and are unable to give fully informed consent.’

Dr Lawrie concluded that the voluntary reporting system needed a complete overhaul, saying the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS) in the US was doing a much better job giving citizens and healthcare professionals detailed information.

From VAERS’ database, she was able to conclude that more than 90 per cent of deaths occurred afterfirst vaccination and there was a clear link between vaccination and death, something MHRA members frequently say they cannot prove and insist is more than likely ‘coincidental’.

Speaking of VAERS, Dr Lawrie said: ‘From that system it is apparent that sporadic event reporting is high in number, as in the UK, and that there is a tight temporal relationship between Covid-19 vaccination and deaths: 15 per cent of deaths occurring within 24 hours, 22 per cent within 48 hours and in 37 per cent of deaths, the patient became unwell within 48 hours of Covid-19 vaccination with an event that led to their death.

‘The deaths analysed followed an almost equal number of Pfizer and Moderna Covid-19 vaccinations, and 91 per cent of deaths occurred after administration of the first Covid-19 vaccine.’

With the AstraZeneca #clotshot, which has not been approved for use in the US, double the number of people are impacted compared with Pfizer.

Dr Lawrie said that, as well as vaccine-induced immune thrombotic thrombocytopaenia (VITT), the European Medicines Agency has identified Guillain-Barreì Syndrome as a potential risk from the AstraZeneca vaccine.

It is adding a warning to the product information that ‘vaccinated persons need to seek immediate medical attention if they develop weakness and paralysis in the extremities.’

In conclusion, Dr Lawrie asked Dr Raine a simple question, yet to be answered: ‘Why is this clear safety signal not being acted upon by MHRA?’

This is an updated report published on August 26, 2021, detailing MHRA Yellow Card Reporting up to August 18:

• Pfizer – 21.3million people, 37.9million doses. Yellow Card reporting rate, one in 199 impacted.

• AstraZeneca – 24.8million people, 48.7million doses. Yellow Card reporting rate, one in 108 impacted.

• Moderna – 1.4million people, 2.1million doses. Yellow Card reporting rate, one in 100 impacted.

Overall, one in 135 people experience a Yellow Card Adverse Event from the 47.5million injected (20.7million men, women and children remain not injected in UK).

The Yellow Card reporting rate may be approximately ten per cent of actual figures, according to MHRA.

Proportional to the number of weeks each brand has been administered, currently the reported toll is:

• Approximately 47 linked deaths reported per week

• More than 10,500 reported adverse event injuries per week with unknown long-term consequences.

A significant proportion of these adverse events require urgent medical care, may be life-changing or long-lasting. These figures represent immense distress for those 351,404 people suffering adverse events and their families.

Reactions: 302,146 (Pfizer) + 816,393 (AZ) + 43,949 (Moderna) + 3,148 (Unknown) = 1,165,636.

Reports: 107,215 (Pfizer) + 229,134 (AZ) + 14,019 (Moderna) + 1,036 (Unknown) = 351,404.

Fatal: 508 (Pfizer) + 1,056 (AZ) + 17 (Moderna) + 28 (Unknown) = 1,609.

Acute Cardiac: 4,831 (Pfizer) + 9,102 (AZ) + 495 (Moderna) + 35 (Unknown) = 14,463.

Pericarditis/Myocarditis (Heart inflammation): 362 (Pfizer) + 245 (AZ) + 65 (Moderna) + 2 (Unknown) = 674

Anaphylaxis: 466 (Pfizer) + 810 (AZ) + 32 (Moderna) + 1 (Unknown) = 1,309

Blood Disorders: 10,283 (Pfizer) + 7,354 (AZ) + 829 (Moderna) + 44 (Unknown) = 18,510.

Infections: 7,116 (Pfizer) + 18,102 (AZ) + 730 (Moderna) + 89 (Unknown) = 26,037

Herpes: 1,574 (Pfizer) + 2,475 (AZ) + 75 (Moderna) + 13 (Unknown) = 4,137.

Headaches: 21,646 (Pfizer) + 83,513 (AZ) + 2576 (Moderna) + 229 (Unknown) = 107,964

Migraine: 2,474 (Pfizer) + 8,015 (AZ) + 284 (Moderna) + 29 (Unknown) = 10,802.

Eye Disorders: 5,025 (Pfizer) + 13,718 (AZ) + 495 (Moderna) + 55 (Unknown) = 19,293.

Blindness: 99 (Pfizer) + 281 (AZ) + 12 (Moderna) + 4 (Unknown) = 396.

Deafness: 185 (Pfizer) + 360 (AZ) + 13 (Moderna) + 2 (Unknown) = 560.

Psychiatric Disorders: 6,135 (Pfizer) + 17,011 (AZ) + 884 (Moderna) + 74 (Unknown) = 24,104.

Skin Disorders: 21,263 (Pfizer) + 50,240 (AZ) + 6,657 (Moderna) + 211 (Unknown) = 78,371.

Spontaneous Miscarriages: 278 + 6 stillbirth/foetal death (Pfizer) + 195 + 2 stillbirth (AZ) + 24 + 1 foetal death (Moderna) + 1 (Unknown) = 499 + 9 (figures imply 20 related maternal deaths – four more this week alone).

Vomiting: 3,242 (Pfizer) + 11,347 (AZ) + 496 (Moderna) + 41 (Unknown) = 15,126.

Facial Paralysis including Bell’s Palsy: 691 (Pfizer) + 860 (AZ) + 48 (Moderna) + 5 (Unknown) = 1,604.

Nervous System Disorders: 52,947 (Pfizer) + 173,935 (AZ) + 6788 (Moderna) + 600 (Unknown) = 234,270.

Strokes and CNS haemorrhages: 496 (Pfizer) + 1,993 (AZ) + 17 (Moderna) + 9 (Unknown) = 2,515

Guillain-Barré Syndrome: 42 (Pfizer) + 388 (AZ) + 2 (Moderna) + 5 (Unknown) = 437.

Tremor: 1,288 (Pfizer) + 9673 (AZ) + 153 (Moderna) + 38 (Unknown) = 11,152.

Pulmonary Embolism and Deep Vein Thrombosis: 601 (Pfizer) + 2,696 (AZ) + 25 (Moderna) + 18 (Unknown) = 3,340.

Respiratory Disorders: 12,950 (Pfizer) + 27,425 (AZ) + 1,138 (Moderna) + 109 (Unknown) = 41,622.

Seizures: 713 (Pfizer) + 1,874 (AZ) + 119 (Moderna) + 9 (Unknown) = 2715

Paralysis: 301 (Pfizer) + 735 (AZ) + 39 (Moderna) + 6 (Unknown) = 1,081.

Haemorrhage (All types): 2,568 (Pfizer) + 4713 (AZ) + 321 (Moderna) + 24 (Unknown) = 7,626.

Vertigo/Tinnitus: 2,692 (Pfizer) + 6313 (AZ) + 271 (Moderna) + 25 (Unknown) = 9,301.

Renal & Urinary Disorders: 795 (Pfizer) + 2,507 (AZ) + 93 (Moderna) + 23 (Unknown) = 3,418

Reproductive/Breast: 17,108 (Pfizer) + 16,689 (AZ) + 2,215 (Moderna) + 120 (Unknown) = 36,132.

For full reports see Annex One.

August 31, 2021 Posted by | War Crimes | , , | Leave a comment

US Drone Strike in Kabul Kills Nine Members of Single Family, Including 6 Kids

by Asya Geydarova – Sputnik – 30.08.2021

The death toll from a US airstrike that targeted a vehicle in the Afghan capital of Kabul on Sunday has gone up to nine, all members of the same family, a relative of those killed told CNN.

A brother of one of the dead told a journalist working with CNN on Sunday that they were “an ordinary family,” not affiliated with Daesh.

There are six children, including his four-year-old sister Armin, 3-year-old brother Benyamin, and two two-year-old sisters Ayat and Sumaya among those killed, the man said, as he reportedly cried.

Earlier, US central command spokesman Capt. Bill Urban said that a drone strike was carried out on Sunday on a vehicle in Kabul, eliminating a Daesh-K threat to the airport.

“We are still assessing the results of this strike,” Urban said, adding that “it is unclear what may have happened,” and the US military is investigating further.

Afghan media reported on Sunday that at least four children were killed in the airstrike that destroyed two vehicles and part of a residential building. CBS said that the size of the secondary explosion suggests that the US strike destroyed a fully loaded car bomb, and did not just kill a suicide bomber riding in the car.

On Saturday, US Army Maj. Gen. William Taylor said that two Daesh-K leaders were killed and another was injured in a US airstrike in the Nangarhar province of Afghanistan.

On Friday, the White House admitted a breakdown in the security process that allowed the Thursday suicide bombing at the Kabul airport, which reportedly killed at least 182, including 13 US troops. The attack, claimed by Daesh-K, comes amid a chaotic US evacuation from Afghanistan following the Taliban’s* takeover of Kabul on August 15.

While the Biden administration has come under fire from both Democrats and Republicans over the evacuation of American forces and Afghans from Kabul, netizens have slammed US media for hypocritical reporting on the situation in Afghanistan.

This comes amid allegations by the media, citing locals, that Afghans killed in the attack on August 26 were shot dead by American soldiers in the panic following the explosion.

US drone operations targeting terrorists in countries have been deemed highly controversial due to reported civilian deaths, which military chiefs define as “collateral damage”. Casualties among civilians became publicly known due to independent investigations and information disclosed by whistleblowers. Last month, ex-US Air Force analyst Daniel Hale was given a prison sentence after leaking classified intel on US drone strikes from his deployment to Afghanistan that reportedly killed innocent people, including children.

August 29, 2021 Posted by | Militarism, War Crimes | , | Leave a comment

China Urges WHO to Scour US Military Biolab in Search for Covid’s Origins

By Ilya Tsukanov – Sputnik – 26.08.2021

Washington and Beijing are in the midst of a heated back-and-forth campaign of claims accusing one another of responsibility for unleashing the coronavirus pandemic on the world. US officials allege that the virus may have been leaked from the Wuhan Institute of Virology, while Chinese officials claim it may have originated in a US military biolab.

Chen Xu, China’s permanent representative to the United Nations office in Geneva, has sent the World Health Organisation a formal request asking the global health authority to open a probe into Fort Detrick, the Maryland-based US Army laboratory once known as the centre of America’s biological weapons programme, and its possible role in the origins of the novel coronavirus.

In a letter addressed to WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, Chen reiterated Beijing’s position on SARS-CoV-2, which states that the Wuhan lab leak theory is an “extremely unlikely” scenario. The letter went on to ask the WHO to probe the lab at Fort Detrick, and to investigate research carried out by University of North Carolina professor Ralph Baric, suggesting that “if some parties are of the view that the ‘lab leak’ hypothesis remains open, it is the labs of Fort Detrick and the University of North Carolina in the US that should be subject to transparent investigation with full access.”

Chen accompanied his letter with an online petition signed by over 25 million Chinese nationals demanding an investigation into Fort Detrick, as well as two documents, entitled “Doubtful Points About Fort Detrick” and “Coronavirus Research Conducted by Dr. Ralph Baric’s Team at the University of North Carolina”.

The latter document, published in full by Xinhua, calls into question US epidemiologist Dr. Ralph Baric’s work into coronaviruses, including gain-of-function research, and points to his team’s research into synthesizing and modifying SARS-related coronaviruses going back to at least 2003, including bat-related coronaviruses, since at least 2008.

In a press briefing on Wednesday, Fu Cong, director general of the Chinese Foreign Ministry’s department of arms control and disarmament, commented on Chen’s letter, suggesting that “the international community has long been seriously concerned about Fort Detrick,” and pointing to the facility’s “advanced capabilities to synthesise and modify SARS-related coronaviruses as early as 2003.”

Fu pointed to “multiple” alleged biological safety-related accidents taking place at the institute, including the mysterious July 2019 shutdown, after which “outbreaks of respiratory diseases sharing similar symptoms of COVID-19” began to be reported “in the communities near Fort Detrick.”

The diplomat further alleged that US biological research activities, including at Fort Detrick and an estimated 200+ US biological institutions abroad, were “not in line with the Biological Weapons Convention,” and “not known [about] by the international community.”

Earlier this month, China rejected a push by the WHO to continue its investigation into COVID-19’s origins at the Wuhan lab, citing their support for ‘scientific, not politicised’ theories on the virus’s roots. On 12 August, the world health authority called on Beijing to share raw data on the earliest cases of Covid.

US President Joe Biden, who spent the 2020 campaign dismissing then-president Donald Trump’s claims on Covid’s Wuhan potential man-made origins, reversed course and ordered a probe into how the virus may have spread to humans in May, giving intelligence agencies until the end of August to put a report on his desk. Chinese media have accused Washington of using “second-hand, unreliable evidence to compile a report that tries to smear China,” while officials in Beijing continue to support the original WHO-China joint study, which concluded that a leak from the Wuhan lab was “highly unlikely”.

In addition to the ‘China did it’/‘US did it’ theories being pushed by officials in both countries, some US lawmakers, including Senator Rand Paul of Kentucky, have hinted that both nations may be directly or indirectly responsible. In a recent Senate probe, Paul asked questions about the complex web of US government financing for potentially dangerous coronavirus gain-of-function research at Wuhan in the years leading up to the pandemic. In July, Paul grilled coronavirus czar Anthony Fauci, accusing him of backing such funding and lying to Congress about it. Fauci vocally denied the allegations and told Paul that he “did not know what [he was] talking about”.

August 26, 2021 Posted by | Deception, Timeless or most popular, War Crimes | , , | Leave a comment

Israel’s airstrikes in Syria aren’t newsworthy for Western media, as a consequence civilians continue to suffer

By Eva Bartlett | RT | August 22, 2021

Israel again illegally bombed Syria last week, violating Lebanese airspace to do so and putting at risk the lives of untold numbers of civilians. And following this, crickets in the media, again.

On Thursday, just after 11pm, Israeli missiles targeted the vicinities of Damascus and Homs, according to a statement from the Syrian army. Russia’s Reconciliation Center for Syria said Israel did so via six planes which fired 24 guided missiles at Syria.

In its attack on Syria, Israeli missiles put two passenger airplanes in Syrian and in Lebanese airspace at risk, particularly the 130 civilians and flight crew on a Middle East Airlines flight coming from Abu Dhabi to Beirut. Flight trackers show the plane abruptly changed course to avoid being targeted.

Flashback to 2018, when Israel attacked Syria using the cover of a Russian plane – whose presence was legal in Syria, having been invited by the Syrian government, contrary to the invading Israeli plane. Syrian air defense missiles responded to the threat, downing the Russian plane.

Just last month, Israel attacked Syria on multiple occasions, including during Eid al-Adha, one of the holiest times for Muslims.

The reality is that Israel’s bombings of Syria are so routine that this latest attack is hardly ‘news’ and it is hard to make it newsworthy to write about. I’ve written about such attacks before, including noting (February 2021): “Israel’s military chief of staff boasted earlier about hitting over 500 targets in just 2020 alone.”

But each attack is, in my opinion, newsworthy, because each of them affects, if not kills, civilians.

Surely, it would be newsworthy if the routine bombings of a neighboring sovereign country were committed by, say, Russia or China. The entirety of Western media and all of the internet would be livid and demanding accountability.

Israel’s pretext when bombing Syria is usually that it is, “targeting Iranian-backed fighters,” a charge gleefully reprinted in media and by sources supporting the fall of the Syrian government.

In reality, reports claim, Thursday’s bombings killed four Syrian civilians, including at least one youth.

The psychological terror

British journalist Vanessa Beeley, who lives in a heavily populated suburb on the outskirts of Damascus, tweeted of feeling the impacts of the bombings.

Now imagine all of the people in the vicinity feeling that impact, not knowing if that night they would finally be struck. That’s the thing we don’t hear much of if these attacks even make any media coverage: how they impact on civilians, even those not directly injured but terrorized by them.

I know very well of the terror of being near a site Israel has just bombed. And although I have many anecdotes from my three years of living in Gaza, one rather poignant incident involved me sleeplessly musing on the rooftop of the simple central Gazan home I lived in on a hot August 2011 night. I wrote:

“I am watching sporadic shooting stars when the first F-16 appeared from the direction of the sea. Three more follow. The roar is normal, F-16s are normal, and reading in the news the next day that some part of Gaza was bombed is normal. They continue eastward and a bombing seems imminent. It is. A thick cloud of black smoke blots the dim lights of houses in eastern Deir al Balah where the F-16s have struck.”

I went on to write about the planes attacking the city of Khan Younis to the south, and suddenly, bombing close to me.

“Two massive blasts, the house shakes. They’ve bombed somewhere near the sea, which is only a few hundred meters away. Concrete dust flutters down upon us. There is a sustained honking in Gaza that everyone recognizes as make way, we’ve got another victim here.”

And, if I may dwell on this one simple anecdote, I remarked on how the men in the house tried to appear calm and cool but, while we were all accustomed to such random bombings and either put on a brave face or genuinely stop flinching, they do still affect you deeply.

“Every time one of those f***ing F-16s flies over us, it’s a reminder of the last war, or of previous attacks, or of random bombings, or of friends and family martyred in their sleep, cars, homes… Every time those F-16s intentionally break the sound barrier to create a bomb-like sonic boom, everyone within range instinctively remembers their own personal horror at whichever Israeli war or attacks.”

I have more terrifying, all night long bombing memories, with massive bombs landing nearby, including just tens of meters away. Those were during the 2008/9 war on Gaza. With the above account, I want to emphasize how these terrors occur on any random day, but will never be heard of in the media.

But it isn’t just the already bad enough bombings. The psychological terror aspect includes the near-continuous presence of drones overhead.

After Israel’s latest bombing of Syria, I spoke with Lebanese journalist Marwa Osman. She emphasized how Israel’s violation of Lebanese airspace is an almost daily occurrence.

“All day, you can hear them [Israeli drones]. It causes a nervous breakdown for any human to keep listening to this all day. I can’t even imagine what they feel in Gaza when they have them all the time overhead.”

If you haven’t ever been under one, much less tens, of military drones, you won’t know how deeply disturbing hearing them is. It is hard to concentrate with such an ominous cacophony constantly overhead.

When in early August, in what the Israel army claimed was a “retaliation” attack, Israel fired artillery shells at the Khiam region of southern Lebanon, Osman was at her home less than one kilometer from the bombings. She spoke of the terror of her children. “I found one of them hiding under the sink, I found two of them hiding in my bedroom near the closet because they thought this was the safest place to be.”

Limited condemnations, but continued status quo?

Lebanon’s minister of defense condemned Israel’s recent attack and has, “called on the UN to deter Israel from carrying out airstrikes on Syria using Lebanese airspace.” Russia and Iran have on more than one occasion condemned the attacks, rightly noting they violate international law and Syria’s sovereignty. And of course the Syrian government condemns such attacks every time they occur.

But in spite of this, the condemnations get limited notice and the status quo continues. In a day or two, or a week or month, there will be another such Israeli attack that will, again, be deemed not newsworthy.

Eva Bartlett is a Canadian independent journalist and activist. She has spent years on the ground covering conflict zones in the Middle East, especially in Syria and Palestine (where she lived for nearly four years).

August 23, 2021 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Militarism, War Crimes | , , | Leave a comment

What Afghanistan’s Saigon moment teaches us about America’s ‘humanitarian wars’

By Maram Susli | RT | August 16, 2021

What we’ve just witnessed in Afghanistan is a historical repeat of the ‘Saigon moment’. But the final hours of the US occupation have been accompanied by a cacophony of neocons decrying the decision to end the war.

They cite women’s rights, regional stability and anti-terrorism as reasons the US should have remained in Afghanistan. But those were the very reasons cited for starting the war in the first place, back in 2001. How many more decades do they expect the world to be held hostage to the narratives of ‘the humanitarian war’? It’s now, at the end of the US’s longest war, that we must reflect on the past 20 years, and consider how it was that those false “humanitarian” narratives led us to this point.

Some of the most grave human rights violations occurred at the very onset of the war.

In the first months, the US dropped thousands of yellow cluster bombs around Afghan villages. They resembled aid packages – also yellow. Children would rush to collect what they believed to be food, only to end up dead after picking up and setting off an explosive device.

In an incident now known as ‘the convoy of death’, Taliban fighters who surrendered to the Afghan Northern Alliance were stuffed into sealed shipping containers and allowed to asphyxiate as they were driven across the desert – allegedly under the watchful eye of the CIA.

The list of US war crimes grew as the years went by. Reports emerged that US soldiers were killing civilians and allegedly keeping their body parts as souvenirs. Thanks to the bravery of former British Army major turned Australian army lawyer David McBride, who leaked secret documents, we learnt that Australian special forces had a similar kill team operating in Afghanistan.

One of the strongest narratives that sold the war on Afghanistan to the public was what removing the Taliban could do for women’s rights. But the notion that the US had any real interest in women’s rights is ludicrous, since, in the first place, it was the US that helped the Taliban take control of Afghanistan away from the Soviet-backed secular government.

In 2001, when the former Islamist commanders from the days of the anti-Soviet insurgency came to power, ‘bacha bazi’ – a practice linked with the oppression of women’s rights and child sex abuse that had been outlawed by the Taliban – became common again. American soldiers were reportedly instructed not to intervene, not even when their Afghan allies abused boys on US military bases. In fact, in 2010, a WikiLeaks cable revealed that American mercenaries in the employ of DynCorp paid to bring bacha bazi boys onto a military base to dance for Afghan commanders.

Afghan women deserve rights, but not through US occupation.

And, while we’re talking about rights abuses, what about the rights of American soldiers? How many young men were buried in pursuit of this ill-fated war? Many who survived face a lifetime of pain or mental illness. Veterans are twice as likely as the average American to die from an overdose using opioids – which, ironically, likely originated in Afghanistan.

According to the US military, 90% of the world’s heroin is made from Afghan opium. In 2000, the Taliban outlawed its cultivation, but after the US invasion, there was record-high production year after year. The US effectively turned Afghanistan into a narco-state. Even the longest-running US-backed Afghan president, Hamid Karzai, had a brother who was a drug lord and allegedly on the CIA’s payroll. It is perhaps no coincidence that the US is now facing one of the deadliest opioid epidemics in a century.

In order to buy into the notion that the US pull-out will be a threat to peace and stability in the region, we would first have to believe the occupation of Afghanistan was a source of peace and stability. The reality is, in the past 20 years, not a day went by without violence, and it has left Afghanistan in ruins. The invasion was sold as a way to defeat Al-Qaeda in the War on Terror, but instead, we saw the rise of Islamic State (IS, formerly ISIS) across the Middle East and an increase in terrorist activity across the globe. Again, if the US were serious about defeating terrorism, it wouldn’t be backing Al-Qaeda-linked militants in Syria.

There is no reason to believe that America’s goals in Afghanistan had anything to do with maintaining stability. Although the US military has pulled out, that may, in fact, be part of Washington’s calculus to cause instability from afar – a cheaper alternative to the occupation. After all, as it pivots towards a confrontation with China, the US needs to retain its resources. China’s volatile Xinjiang province shares a border with Afghanistan. It would want to avoid any instability that could mean militants flowing over that border. Perhaps the US hopes to draw China into the graveyard of empires.

No one has a higher stake in maintaining Afghanistan’s stability than its neighbours – in particular, Pakistan, China, Iran, and Russia. After 40 years of conflict, the Taliban is now decidedly more pragmatic in its dealings with all of them. Russia, in spite of its own history of war in Afghanistan, has decided to normalise relations with the Taliban in the interests of stability. Iran, which had its share of animosity towards the formerly anti-Shi’ite Taliban, hosted peace talks with the militants and the US-backed Afghan government. China, too, has had its issues with the Taliban, as members of its Uighur minority have previously crossed the border to join Al-Qaeda and fight alongside them. The Taliban has promised not to intervene in China’s Uighur issue and, in return, China has offered to build Afghanistan’s infrastructure and bring it out of an era of ruin into an era of economic prosperity. That’s something else the decades of US control failed to accomplish.

Whatever may come next, as the last Chinook takes off from the US Embassy, Afghans finally have the ability to decide their own destiny. May we all stop to think twice when next the neocons spin a humanitarian narrative to breach the sovereignty of a nation.

Maram Susli is a Syrian-Australian political analyst and commentator. She has written for New Eastern Outlook and Sputnik UK, among others.

August 16, 2021 Posted by | Timeless or most popular, War Crimes | , , | Leave a comment