Ukrainian soldiers threaten to go AWOL if they are not demobilised
By Ahmed Adel | April 18, 2024
According to the Ukrainian portal Strana, Kiev is facing problems in increasing the number of military personnel as a new mobilisation law will take at least eight months to be imposed. Worsening the situation, military personnel in Odessa are threatening to abandon their positions and even kill if the new law does not allow them to demobilise.
On April 11, Ukraine’s Verkhovna Rada (Parliament) approved a bill on expanding mobilisation for the military. The National Security and Defence Committee removed the provision on demobilisation from the bill on the eve of its presentation to the Verkhovna Rada for its second reading. Dmitry Lazutkin, a representative of the Ukrainian Ministry of Defence, later said that a separate bill on demobilisation was planned, which would take eight months.
Ukrainian journalists in Odessa questioned military personnel about their thoughts towards the government’s decision to exclude demobilisation from the bill on military conscription.
In that case, “I will leave the unit without permission,” one of the soldiers told the Ukrainian portal Strana.
Another Ukrainian serviceman said that the deputies of the Verkhovna Rada should go to the front on an equal footing with them, whilst another believes that changes are necessary in the country and that it is not possible to fight with the same soldiers all the time, making demobilisation necessary.
“I’ll shoot them all. They don’t have such a right… So now I get up and go back to the war whilst they have grown their bellies and will sit in the Verkhovna Rada? This shouldn’t happen,” said another soldier.
“There is the expression ‘Servant of the People.’ It is not we who must serve them, but they who must serve us,” added another, in reference to the name of the ruling party founded by Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky.
These threats to go AWOL come as the New York Times reported that since the start of Russia’s special military operation, thousands of Ukrainian men have attempted to flee across the Tisza River from mandatory conscription. According to Romanian authorities cited by the American newspaper, approximately 6,000 men have arrived in their country across the river since February 2022.
“That thousands of Ukrainian men have chosen to risk the swim rather than face the dangers as soldiers on the eastern front highlights the challenge for President Volodymyr Zelensky as he seeks to mobilize fresh troops after more than two years of bruising, bloody trench warfare with Russia,” noted The New York Times.
The new law toughens penalties for attempting to evade military conscription and aims to increase the number of troops on the frontline. The newspaper also highlights that many of the Ukrainians who rushed to volunteer have fought continuously since 2022, with only two weeks of annual leave.
“Soldiers are enlisted until the end of hostilities, with no defined date for release from their obligation to serve. With casualty rates high, being drafted, soldiers say, is like getting a one-way ticket to the front,” the New York Times reported.
The escape of Ukrainians from the country has allowed human trafficking to flourish. In 2023, for example, the Mukachevo Border Guard dismantled 56 criminal gangs involved in this activity.
According to Lieutenant Lesya Fedorova, spokesperson for the Mukachevo Border Guard unit, and whom the newspaper cited, the cost to be taken to the other side of the Ukrainian border currently amounts to $10,000. This is incredibly expensive when considering that the average monthly salary is about $500.
Crossing to the Romanian side via the Tisza River also carries dangers, with Fedorova reporting that at least 22 bodies have been found on the river’s banks, with many more likely having drowned but never found. Yet, this is a risk Ukrainians are evidently willing to take since deployment to the frontlines all but guarantees death or permanent injuries.
It is evident that the new mobilisation law will struggle to recruit the 450,000-500,000 men the Kiev regime is believed to want since there is no morale among the general population and because all those who are motivated to fight have already volunteered. Failure to mobilise enough men will also lead to active soldiers abandoning their posts or even mutiny, a scenario which will be devastating for the country once Russia launches its offensive, expected at the end of spring or summer, and the Ukrainian military is driven back with high casualty numbers.
Ahmed Adel is a Cairo-based geopolitics and political economy researcher.
The collapse of the concept of a rules-based international order
By Veniamin Popov – New Eastern Outlook – 18.04.2024
After the collapse of the Soviet Union, the United States believed that a unipolar world would last forever: year after year, day after day, it became increasingly blatant in its disregard for the interests of others and the opinions of the rest of the world.
Then the concept of an international “rules-based order” was born: a group of American scholars, former and future officials, presented a paper at Princeton in 2006 entitled “A World of Freedom Under Law”. They framed this as a response to the weaknesses of international law, suggesting that when international institutions fail to produce the outcomes preferred by the “world of freedom”, there is “an alternative forum for liberal democracies to authorise collective action”. In practice, this forum has most often been the White House.
During the Libyan crisis of 2011, the United States and its allies used Security Council authorisation for a no-fly zone to overthrow Muammar Gaddafi.
American troops have now been operating in eastern Syria for more than eight years – yet there is no justification in international law for their presence.
Even American political scientists describe this concept as a kind of asterisk placed over international law. The “rules-based order” absolves the US and its allies of responsibility and fundamentally undermines the concept of international law. US policymakers use this theory to entrench US advantages as a global power. When the prerogatives and rules of international law coincide with the canons they establish, Washington calls them synonymous. Thus, on the eve of February 2022, i.e. the start of a special military operation in Ukraine, Secretary Blinken warned of a moment of danger for “the foundations of the United Nations Charter and the rules-based international order that preserves stability around the world”, but when US prerogatives diverge from international law, the concept of a “rules-based order” comes into play, which “should ultimately benefit global stability”.
A prime example is the 2003 US invasion of Iraq, which the George W. Bush administration cynically justified as a means of enforcing UN disarmament mandates. Iraq was declared an invader, it survived the military occupation, the death toll of Iraqis is approaching 1 million, and the country is still reeling from America’s brazen attack.
Washington’s military and economic might at the time ensured that America would face few consequences for invading without UN authorisation.
The very concept of a “rules-based order” set America at odds with the rest of the world, which recognised that international relations were becoming multipolar. Many leaders of developing countries, especially Russia, China, India and Brazil, talked about the same thing. Even American allies tried to show the flaws in the concept. Former German Chancellor Gerhard Schröder warned of the “undeniable danger of US unilateralism”, and former French Minister Hubert Védrine once said that “France’s entire foreign policy … is aimed at making tomorrow’s world consist of several poles, not just one”.
According to Harvard University professor Stephen Walt, the US was carried away by a show of force, disregarding the opinions of even its allies and international organisations, and then went off on its own to gain the advantage.
The Gaza war drew a final line under the concept of the “rules-based order”: on 25 March, 14 members of the UN Security Council adopted a resolution demanding an immediate end to the war in Gaza, with the US abstaining. The resolution became a legally enforceable document, but Israel, unwilling to accept UN mandates, continued to bomb the southern town of Rafah and besiege Al-Shifa Hospital in Gaza City. Shortly after the vote, a spokesman for the Biden administration called Resolution No. 2728 “non-binding”, in a clear attempt to deny its status as international law. At a State Department press briefing, the spokesman said the measure would not lead to an immediate ceasefire or affect the complex hostage negotiations.
International law is clearly against what Israel is doing in Gaza. 2 months before Resolution No. 2728 was adopted, the International Court of Justice ruled that Israel’s ongoing campaign could plausibly be considered genocide and called on Israel to take measures to prevent genocide.
On the eve of the passage of Bill 2728, the Canadian Parliament passed a motion to halt new arms transfers to Israel. On the day the Security Council adopted the resolution, the UN Special Rapporteur on the Occupied Palestinian Territories, Francesca Albanese, recommended that member states “immediately” impose an arms embargo on Israel for failing to comply with mandatory measures ordered by the International Court of Justice.
After the above resolution was passed, White House national security spokesman John Kirby clarified that American arms shipments and sales to Israel would not be affected, while the State Department stated, and the White House later confirmed, that “there are no incidents where the Israelis have violated international humanitarian law.
All of this comes after Israel has killed tens of thousands of Palestinians, most of them women and children, and displaced and permanently starved two million people in Gaza. In addition, the Israeli military bombed a convoy of aid workers from the World Central Kitchen.
The crux of the matter is that Washington is arming a country that has been ordered by the Security Council to cease hostilities. Washington’s actions are at odds with reality: the massacre in Gaza has made many foreign figures and organisations reluctant to listen to American officials on other issues. According to US press reports, Annelle Sheline, a State Department human rights official who recently resigned, said that some activist groups in North Africa have simply stopped meeting with her and her colleagues: “Trying to defend human rights has simply become impossible as long as the US is helping Israel,” she said.
Two years ago, US diplomats seeking support for Ukraine faced “a very clear negative reaction to America’s penchant for defining the global order and forcing countries to take sides”. In this regard, the New York Times concluded on 10 April this year that “Resolution No. 2728, which passed without result, may well be remembered as a watershed moment in the decline of the ‘rules-based international order’ – that is, the world the United States seeks to build and preserve… Gaza is a chilling reminder that in a world of exceptions to international law, it is the least powerful who suffer the most.
All these developments were accurately characterised by China’s Permanent Representative to the UN, who described the US statements and actions as incompatible with the status of a permanent member of the UN Security Council, and said that Washington was undermining the authority of the Security Council.
FBI Wanted to Install Backdoor to Spy on Users, Telegram Founder Tells Tucker Carlson
By Oleg Burunov – Sputnik – 17.04.2024
Speaking with Tucker Carlson, Russian-born IT entrepreneur and co-founder of the Telegram social network Pavel Durov focused on a variety of topics, including his visit to the United States. The 39-year-old revealed that he was closely watched and monitored by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) during his time in the country.
“We got too much attention from the FBI, [and] the security agencies, wherever we came to the US,” Durov said during the interview released on Wednesday.
According to the businessman, one of his top employees once told him that he had been approached by the US government. “There was an attempt to secretly hire my engineer behind my back by [US] cybersecurity officers,” Durov claimed.
He argued that those officers were trying to persuade the engineer to use “certain open-source tools,” which he would then integrate into Telegram’s code that, in Durov’s opinion, “would serve as backdoors” for hacking the platform.
The entrepreneur stressed that he believes what the employee said was true, adding, “There is no reason for my engineer to make up [such] stories.”
When asked if infiltrating Telegram’s systems would allow the US government to spy on its users, Durov stated that he did not dismiss the possibility, acknowledging that any government could potentially carry out such an action. “A backdoor is a backdoor, regardless of who uses it,” he underscored.
The 39-year-old tech tycoon noted that he had “personally experienced similar pressure” in the US, where law enforcement officials approached him on many occasions.
“Whenever I would go to the US, I would have two FBI agents greeting me at the airport, asking questions. One time, I was having breakfast at 9 am and the FBI showed up at the house that I was renting,” the businessman asserted. According to him, FBI agents knew what he and his team were doing, but the agents wanted the details.
“My understanding is that they [also] wanted to establish a relationship to in a way control Telegram better. I understand that they were doing their job. [But] for us running a privacy-focused social media platform, that probably wasn’t the best environment to be in. We want to be focused on what we do, not on government relations of that sort,” Durov pointed out.
The interview comes just a day after Carlson published the first post on his newly-created Telegram page, the Tucker Carlson Network, where users will “get all the latest updates, behind-the-scenes insights, and exclusive content.”
There are already more than 150,000 subscribers for the channel, and their number is growing with every passing second.
Dutch Parliament instructs government to demand a delay in both WHO votes – and if no delay, to reject the proposals
BY MERYL NASS | APRIL 16, 2024
MOTION BY MEMBER of the Dutch Parliament Mona KEIJZER ET AL.
Proposed April 10, 2024. A majority voted in favour April 16, 2024
After hearing the deliberations, noting that both the Working Group International Health Regulations (WGIHR) and the International Negotiating Body (INB) are authorized to deliver the final legal formulation of the envisaged amendments to the International Health Regulations (IHR) and the Pandemic Treaty to the 77th World Health Assembly (WHA), which will take place at the end of May 2024; noting that this process is proceeding at an unprecedented pace, whereas such far-reaching measures require more time to be considered, reviewed and properly implemented; whereas ignoring procedural obligations under IHR and leaving unclear the link between the amended IHR and the new pandemic treaty undermines the international legal order and thus the democratic legitimacy of this regulation in violation of Article 55 of the IHR, which requires proposed amendments to be submitted to the Contracting States at least four months before deliberation and voting in the WHA; whereas this does not provide sufficient opportunity to examine the changes and their important legal, health, economic, financial and human rights implications; whereas the request to adopt the amendments to the IHR or the text of the envisaged pandemic treaty is not in line with the UN principles and guidelines; instructs the government to request a postponement of the vote on the amendments and thus on the IHR and the new pandemic treaty at the World Health Assembly and, if this postponement is not obtained, to vote against the proposed amendments to the IHR and the new pandemic treaty as a whole; and proceeds to the order of the day.
Mona Keijzer, Daniëlle Jansen, Fleur Agema Members Dutch Parliament
Over 350 Humanitarian Sites and Convoys Have Been Attacked in Gaza
By Connor Freeman | The Libertarian Institute | April 16, 2024
Prior to the Israeli military’s slaughter of seven World Central Kitchen (WCK) aid workers in Gaza this month, Middle East Eye (MEE) reports that at least 357 humanitarian-run sites and convoys had been attacked.
As with the incident involving the slain WCK workers which included an American citizen, the humanitarian orgs shared their coordinates in advance of operations with the warring parties. Israel hit them anyway and UN officials have warned of great difficulty in repairing the broken humanitarian notification system.
Current data shows that at least 216 aid workers have been killed during Israel’s indiscriminate bombing and relentless war on the Palestinian people trapped in the besieged, highly dense, coastal enclave. Aid workers told MEE the “scale of the incidents was unprecedented, even compared to the most dangerous war zones and emergencies they have experienced.” The vast majority of aid workers slaughtered have been employed by UNRWA, the UN aid agency for Palestinian refugees.
Nearly 34,000 people have been confirmed killed so far amidst Israel’s genocidal campaign, including more than 20,000 women and children. Brice de la Vingne, the head of the Doctors Without Borders (MSF) emergency unit said “To be frank, every single day we are discussing internally whether to leave Gaza. We should not be there.” He added, “The level of risk we are taking, I’ve never seen.”
He explained that aid operations in other wars are conducted outside the areas of actual fighting but the entire Strip has become a war zone. “In Gaza, we are in this nightmarish hell scenario where we are working in an environment where people are not supposed to be,” Vingne lamented.
According to the report, “The majority of the hits to deconfliction humanitarian sites – 352 – were to locations run by UNRWA, the largest aid organization operating in Gaza, including a food distribution center and schools sheltering thousands of civilians.”
MEE also found there were at least five other occasions where humanitarian sites or convoys were attacked including “a compound in Al-Mawasi housing staff working for the International Rescue Committee and Medical Aid for Palestine, the Gaza City offices of Doctors of the World, a [MSF] convoy in Gaza City and an MSF shelter in Al-Mawasi, and an American Near East Refugee (ANERA) shelter in Deir al-Balah.”
Despite Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant’s announcement of a new deconfliction cell for humanitarian aid groups, Jamie McGoldrick, the outgoing top UN aid official in Gaza, told the outlet “nothing substantive” has changed. Two weeks after the high-profile massacre of the WCK employees, communication between aid workers and the Israeli military regarding their location remains broken down or non-existent.
McGoldrick, whose final day at the post was last Friday, maintains that aid workers in the Gaza Strip require not only a hotline to correspond directly with the IDF but also must be provided with satellite phones and two-way radios. In other conflict zones, this is standard operating procedure. Not so amid Israel’s onslaught in the Strip, however, these devices are not furnished to aid workers ostensibly because the IDF fears they will fall into the hands of Hamas.
As Israel uses starvation as a weapon of war, the entire population in Gaza is on the brink of famine. Officials from the State Department and USAID have admitted that famine is already taking place in the northern parts of the Strip, where McGoldrick has warned that despite Israeli assurances the aid distribution system has seen no improvement.
The broken deconfliction system for aid workers in the Strip will only spell more deaths of deprivation, experts estimate that the death toll will surpass 100,000 by August if the situation remains unchanged. Moreover, Gaza’s medical system and infrastructure has been decimated by the Israeli campaign. Last month, the World Health Organization released statistics exposing that in excess of 400 medical facilities have been hit, killing nearly 700 people.
The Israeli air, land, and sea blockade imposed on the illegally occupied enclave 17 years ago was severely tightened after the October 7th Hamas attack on southern Israel. Gallant announced days later that the “human animals” living in the Strip, which includes more than a million children, will be indefinitely cut off from food, water, fuel, and medicine.
After the WCK massacre, the group ended its operations in Gaza along with ANERA. WCK had been providing more hot meals in Gaza than UNRWA and the World Food Program combined. In January, Israel launched a propaganda war against UNWRA by accusing some of their employees of having ties to Hamas and the October 7th attack.
More than a dozen Western countries including the United States stripped funding for the vital agency, over Tel Aviv’s claims which were supported by no evidence. UNRWA has since revealed that its aid workers were subjected to rape and waterboarding at the hands of the IDF seeking to extract just such spurious confessions.
During previous Israeli wars against Lebanon and Gaza, there was significant communication between the UN and COGAT, the Israeli agency overseeing the occupied territories, as well as its ancillary the Civilian Liaison Administration which is focused on the Strip. This is now not taking place.
If aid workers experience a security risk or incident, when they are enroute to a destination or attempting to pass through a checkpoint, it is not possible to communicate with the IDF.
McGoldrick explained to MEE, the UN “should have pushed harder earlier in the conflict to get closer to the Israeli military, if not physically embedding someone in a joint operations room, then at least being able to have a face-to-face conversation online, in real time.” This is imperative for two reasons, he said, “First, they understand better what you do and how you do it. Secondly, you can build trust in terms of what your expectations are on both sides.”
According to Grisha Yakubovich, the former chief of COGAT until 2016, previous Israeli bombing sprees against the open-air concentration camp saw UN and COGAT officials meet on a virtually daily basis to share plans for the next 24 hours. Yakubovich told the Washington Post this is not the case anymore because Israel’s military practically refuses to work with the UN. The IDF cites their lies about UN employees’ alleged ties with Hamas to justify the ongoing humanitarian catastrophe the Israeli war has wrought.
Other aid agencies besides the UN have expressed great frustration over the lack of a clear response, if any, when their sites are bombed by Israeli pilots. For instance, the International Rescue Committee and Medical Aid for Palestine says the Israeli authorities gave six different explanations for why an F-16 jet targeted one of their stand-alone compounds with a 1,000 pound “smart bomb” in January, weeks after their coordinates had been shared.
“It is clear from this experience that the Israeli military and government are either unable or unwilling to properly investigate this serious incident,” the group stated.
Gaza authorities slam Israel for torturing Palestinian children
Press TV – April 16, 2024
Authorities in the besieged Gaza Strip say the Palestinian children the Israeli regime recently freed have recounted instances of physical abuse, torture, and deliberate starvation.
In a statement released on Tuesday, Gaza’s Government Media Office said the testimonies include accounts from children younger than 12.
The accounts underscore “extreme torture, mistreatment and cases of medical neglect.”
The office called on rights groups and the international community to take action in respect of the “horrifying” testimonies.
“These testimonies from the affected individuals prove yet again the monstrosity of this criminal army.”
“It is yet another example of how it violates international and humanitarian laws as it continues committing war crimes and genocide against our people in Gaza,” the office stated.
According to multiple reports, corroborated by the Palestinian Health Ministry as well as the Defense for Children International (DCI) NGO, one child is being killed in Gaza every 10 minutes.
Aid agencies have warned that “nowhere and no one is safe” under Israel’s relentless onslaught.
Israeli forces have been denounced for mistreating Palestinian children, including by torturing those in custody and using others as human shields during the savage campaign in the besieged territory.
The death toll from the regime’s genocidal campaign in Gaza now tops 33,800.
The Save the Children organization is deeply alarmed by the toll and sufferings being exacted on children in the Gaza Strip.
According to the charity, more than 14,500 of Gaza’s 1.1 million children have been killed since October 7, 2023. And thousands more are missing, presumed buried under the rubble, their deaths unmarked.
The life-saving aid which families rely on has either been drip-fed or denied by Israeli authorities – while essential services have been decimated by ongoing Israeli hostilities.
The Global Education Cluster estimates that as of March 30, 87.7% of all school buildings in Gaza have been damaged or destroyed.
Ukrainian Special Services Behind Attempted Murder of Opposition Blogger Shariy – Source
Sputnik – 16.04.2024
Ukrainian Defense Ministry’s Main Intelligence Directorate attempted to assassinate Anatoly Shariy, a Ukrainian blogger and vocal Kiev regime critic, and pin the blame on Moscow, a Russian law enforcement source told Sputnik Tuesday.
“The circumstances of the organization of the attempted murder of popular Ukrainian blogger Anatoly Shariy, who lives in Spain, have been established. Once again, Ukraine’s special services are behind the terrorist action against a journalist undesirable to the Kiev regime,” the source said.
“According to the data received, the preparation of the assassination attempt on March 6, 2024, was carried out by the Main Intelligence Directorate … which, in close cooperation with the Security Service, developed a ‘false flag’ operation with the aim of physically eliminating the blogger, while placing responsibility for his murder on Russia. The operation was directly supervised by the head of the Main Intelligence Directorate of the Ukrainian Defense Ministry, Kyrylo Budanov,” the source added.
Spanish law enforcement officials did not take the investigation into the circumstances of the assassination attempt seriously, the source said, adding that they did not go to inspect the scene of the assassination attempt and did not interview witnesses.
“On behalf of the Russian special services, Ukrainian agents recruited participants in the assassination attempt from among ethnic Ukrainians living in Spain and representatives of local criminals. As part of the operation, surveillance was carried out, traffic routes were identified, weapons were delivered and handed over to the criminals,” the source said.
“Mobilisation has turned into a real nightmare for Ukrainians” – former PM Mykola Azarov
By Ahmed Adel | April 16, 2024
Former Ukrainian Prime Minister Mykola Azarov (2010-2014) has described the Kiev regime’s forcible conscription of civilians into the military as “a real nightmare for Ukrainians.” His comments come as the New York Times said that Ukrainian soldiers are being battered and exhausted by Russian forces.
“Territorial recruitment centres in Ukraine (…) began to use weapons against those who try to resist the anarchy and permissiveness they are perpetrating,” Azarov wrote on his Telegram channel.
As Azarov revealed, Anton Kudrich, an ordinary Ukrainian citizen, was driving to his village in the Transcarpathian region when recruitment officers stopped his car at a checkpoint and tried to conscript him. Even though Kudrich stated that he had the right to be exempt from military service according to the law “since his brother died in the war,” the officers ignored this and attempted to put him in their vehicle forcibly.
“Kudrich managed to escape, ran into the forest, but they opened fire on him. He was wounded in the arm and leg,” said the former Prime Minister of Ukraine, adding that the young man’s father is sure that the case will be hushed up since the Ukrainian authorities are covering for each other.
On April 11, the Verkhovna Rada (Parliament) of Ukraine adopted a law toughening the conditions for the mobilisation of military personnel. According to Ukrainian media, the clause stipulating the demobilisation of military personnel after 36 months of service was removed from the bill. The regulations give reservists a period of 60 days after mobilisation is decreed to appear before a military registration and enlistment office and update their personal data.
Likewise, the new law allows summons to be sent to electronic accounts and obliges male citizens aged 18 to 60 to carry military registration papers and present them at the request of military registration and enlistment officials, police officers, and border guards.
In another Telegram post, Azarov said that the Kiev regime is using former prisoners “to catch as much of the population as possible” since mobilisation has been “virtually exhausted,” in addition to civilians “fleeing the country in all possible ways.”
In Ukraine, the reserves are depleted, and at the front, the military is asking for rotation, which cannot be done due to a shortage in the Armed Forces of Ukraine. Thus, “while the Ukrainian authorities use force against their own people, fewer and fewer supporters remain in the country, and fewer and fewer volunteers appear in the ranks of the Ukrainian forces. This means that with such sentiments in society, Ukraine has a catastrophically small chance of holding out,” the former prime minister stressed.
It is recalled that Azarov has previously accused the Kiev regime of embezzling billions of dollars from the state budget through the procurement of overpriced and subpar equipment, such as ammunition and air defence weapons. In September 2023, Azarov revealed how the Kiev regime signed a contract for four air defence missiles, but only three were procured. Deepening the embezzling in this particular case, Azarov said that all four missiles were written off following a Russian attack, benefiting someone who allegedly used the funds to purchase a new apartment in Paris.
Azarov has been a consistent critic of the Kiev regime and continues to highlight the deeply ingrained corruption and authoritarianism, such as the forced and illegal conscription of civilians. However, he is no longer a rare voice, with more criticism of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and the conscription process emerging in the Verkhovna Rada.
“After voting in favour of the mobilisation bill, the Ukrainian people will become not an opponent, but a verdict for [Zelensky] and the Government’s deputies,” independent deputy Dmytro Razumkov wrote on his Telegram channel. “You cannot play with the life of Ukrainians.”
He asked deputies from the ruling Servant of the People party if they would be able to look into the eyes of the soldiers they visited at the front after they removed the clause on demobilisation and rotation of soldiers from the bill.
Alarmingly, much of the bill remains confidential, including the number of Ukrainians who will be mobilised. In recent months, Ukrainian generals and Zelensky have said that between 450,000 and 500,000 people are needed for conscription. This will be difficult to achieve, especially since an article published by The New York Times highlighted that Ukraine has faced a drastic reduction in its population. The military now has very few young men to conscript, while those fighting on the front lines are battered and exhausted.
According to the outlet, it is not clear how quickly Ukraine will recruit and train the additional troops it requires or whether they will be ready before the Russian offensive, which is expected between spring and summer. Despite this reality, the Kiev regime is still preparing for an offensive in 2025 instead of seeking to preserve the lives of thousands of Ukrainians by achieving a peace deal with Moscow.
Ahmed Adel is a Cairo-based geopolitics and political economy researcher.
Generating the “national will” to spend hundreds of billions and cede civil and human rights
The 25 year history of how this was foisted on us on the altar of pandemic safety. And how the WHO has repeatedly failed upward.
BY MERYL NASS | APRIL 13, 2024
Bill Clinton Begins the Phony Era of Pandemics and Bioterrorism
In November 1997 US Secretary of Defense William Cohen held up a 5 lb bag of Domino sugar in front of an army of cameras and told the world that if the bag contained anthrax it could wipe out NYC or Washington, DC.
That was not true, but it provided a fitting justification for the start of the DOD’s “biodefense” vaccine program, begining with mandatory anthrax vaccinations for soldiers in March 1998.
According to an NBC cover story,
“In April 1998, President Bill Clinton read a Richard Preston novel, “The Cobra Event,” about a biological attack on the U.S. using a lethal virus that spreads like the common cold.
“It scared the bejesus out of him,” recalls Kenneth Bernard, a now retired U.S. Public Health Service official who was then representing the U.S. in Geneva at the World Health Organization.”
The USG invested in a new smallpox vaccine, ACAM2000, based on the older Dryvax vaccine. The fact that it caused high rates of myocarditis (1 case in 175 doses administered according to CDC) has been ignored.
And the biodefense era began, supplying handsome contracts to those who promised remedies in the new wild west of biowarfare and infectious disease. Many of those who got the contracts had friends in high places, like FOB Ronald Perelman, who made a killing on a smallpox remedy (Tpoxx) that was eventually used as a monkeypox drug. Did it work? Who knows?
The 21st Century ushered in a well-coordinated push to generate fear about:
- a repeat of the 1918 flu pandemic,
- jumps of deadly viruses from animals to humans (“spillover,” zoonoses and epizootics were the new terms to be mastered), and
- biologic warfare threats
The 2002-3 SARS outbreak and the Avian influenza (bird flu) outbreak — both beginning shortly after the anthrax letters—were hyped to the max to generate fear of pandemics and biological warfare.
How many people did these infectious diseases kill in the US and around the world?
- The anthrax letters caused 5 human deaths, all in the US.
- SARS-1 caused under 800 deaths around the world. There were 27 US cases designated as SARS-1 and not a single US death.
- Avian flu is said to have caused 463 deaths total in the entire world over the past 20 years, according to the WHO. Only 2 Americans have been identified as having an illness associated with avian flu, and both were very minor. Not a single American has died from avian flu. The recent case of conjunctivitis is recovering.
The CDC and mainstream media claim that avian flu has killed over 100 million chickens. It has not. USDA rules have forced growers to cull over 100 million chickens. When one chicken has a positive PCR test for bird flu, every chicken in the chicken house (and sometimes all those on the farm) must be killed. Was that test even accurate? But expansive claims like these are what gets the public going, and putting up with incursions on their freedoms.
So, on the basis of a bioterrorism ‘performance’ using letters containing anthrax spores sent to Congress and the media that were made in a lab, and two relatively minor zoonotic diseases that failed to kill a single American, we Americans were led by the nose into the era of BIODEFENSE.
In 2009 the Pandemic Preparedness/Biosecurity Agenda really took off with an expensive BANG!
The WHO’s Director-General Margaret Chan declared a Pandemic Phase Level 6 for a “swine flu” outbreak that was milder than a normal influenza outbreak: triggering tens of billions of dollars in “sleeper “contracts that the WHO had initiated (and most likely been cut in on) between national governments and vaccine manufacturers. The contracts guaranteed that nations would buy millions or hundreds of millions of doses of vaccines for any future Level 6 pandemic that a WHO Director-General declared.
The contracts did NOT say that the definition of a Level 6 pandemic could be changed so that any new virus at all could meet the definition. But that is what happened. The definition of a level 6 pandemic was changed so that it was meaningless, and a few weeks later Director-General Margaret Chan declared a level 6 pandemic, the contracts were triggered, and on the order of a billion doses of H1N1 flu vaccines were administered. Grandfathered in. Liability-free. Some caused serious side effects: especially the European Pandemrix brand made by GSK. Regulators identified very serious problems early and simply covered them up. Problems like being associated with 10 times higher rates of serious adverse events than other H1N1 vaccines.
Drugs were also ushered in without a license. Here is some archived information on the drugs and other products given EUAs for the mild 2009 swine flu.
Having wrought great harm in 2009, the WHO bounced to another debacle with West Africa’s Ebola pandemic of 2014. Below I have excerpted from a Royal Society opinion piece, but there are many others that provided strong criticisms of the WHO response, including from some of the WHO’s strongest supporters. It seems that really bad mistakes can lead to calls for reform and a bigger budget. We’ve seen Congress “solve” problems this way all the time. Then those “reform” efforts can be used to move an organization in the new desired direction. In this case, the WHO was maneuvered in the biodefense direction.
Reading the article below, it appears that the WHO is an inept, disorganized bureaucracy that has a large stable of authors to write policy briefs, press releases and has other employees who put on conferences. But the WHO has little understanding of actual epidemics and does not like to dirty its hands tending to them on the ground.
What did the UK Royal Society publish about the WHO’s response to West Africa’s Ebola pandemic?
https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/full/10.1098/rstb.2016.0307
Extract:
However, after the initial errors of downplaying the outbreak [26], the WHO did maintain continued activity in tackling Ebola. The WHO documents its role in training healthcare workers and burial teams in infection control, community engagement activities and providing epidemiological data [27]. Furthermore, the organization published numerous technical guidance documents, hosted a series of meetings on vaccine options, developed diagnostic tools and expanded laboratory services [21, p. 1309]. Yet none of these activities provided direct patient care, strategic managerial oversight or the infection control that the outbreak response needed. Ultimately, due to a vacuum of international leadership in the operational response (which several in the international community expected the WHO to perform), the patient care, infection control and management were left to others, including Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF), a new UN body (United Nations Mission for Ebola Emergency Response—UNMEER) and even the domestic and international militaries [10,19,28].
All reviews attribute some blame to the World Health Organization (WHO) for its delay to take action and for a lack of an operational response in the outbreak. However, while the WHO made some pivotal mistakes, as it itself admits [8], the outbreak exposed tensions between the normative and operational roles of the WHO, and furthermore between what the WHO is able to do (suffering from financial and organizational constraints) and what the global community expects the WHO to do.
The WHO admitted:
“The initial response was slow and insufficient, we were not aggressive in alerting the world, our surge capacity was limited, [I would suggest that WHO staff chose not to endanger themselves or that WHO was instructed to allow the Ebola outbreak to expand across Africa—Nass] we did not work effectively in coordination with other partners, there were shortcomings in risk communication, and there was confusion of role and responsibilities at the three levels [Headquarters, Regional Office and Country Offices] of the organisation [20,21].”
… despite the launch of a WHO Roadmap in August 2014 strategizing the end of the epidemic within six to nine months, [the WHO is full of planners, but has a dearth of doers—Nass] a coordinated international response with WHO at the helm failed to materialize [25] with the outbreak rapidly developing into a humanitarian emergency.
So, the WHO has been failing upward with every global infectious disease crisis for at least the past 20 years, well before COVID.
What does the organization offer us? Apart from providing a hook for globalists to gain more power, control and wealth, the WHO offers nothing to the citizens of developed nations. It does provide some benefits to developing nations, but those benefits could probably be achieved at a much lower cost, and with preferable local decision-making and control, through another organization or through health ministries.
As Dr. Inouye has said and written, it is time for us to Exit the WHO.
Germany confirms its collaboration with genocide
By Rick Sterling | Dissident Voice | April 15, 2024
A three day Palestine conference in Berlin was forcibly shut down after three hours on Friday. Electricity was abruptly terminated in the midst of the presentation by Salman Abu Sitta, the 87 year old author of the authoritative “Atlas of Palestine”.
Former Greek Finance Minister and leader of DIEM25, Yanis Varoufakis, was prevented from entering Germany to attend the conference. He went on Twitter/X to send a message:
Do you know that the German Interior Ministry has just banned me from entering Germany? Indeed if that were not enough, I have been banned from talking to you via zoom, or indeed through a video message like this, exactly like this. The threat being that I will be tried in Germany for breaking German law. Why? Because of a speech that I published yesterday on my blog calling for universal human rights in Israel- Palestine …. So my question to my German friends, to Germans in general whether you agree with me or not doesn’t matter. … Is this (banning) in your name? Is it something that you feel comfortable happening in your democracy? From my perspective this is essentially the death knell of the prospects of democracy in the Federal Republic of Germany.
Another banned guest speaker was UK citizen Dr. Ghassan Abu Sittah. He reported on Twitter/X:
I have just returned from Germany where I was prevented from entering the country for attending a conference in Germany to give evidence on the war in Gaza and my witness statement as a doctor working in its hospitals. This morning at 10 I landed in Berlin to attend a conference on Palestine where I had been asked … to give my evidence of the 43 days that I had seen in the hospitals in Gaza, working in both Shifa and al-Ahli Hospital. Upon arrival I was stopped at the passport office. I was then escorted down to the basement of the airport where I was questioned for around 3.5 hours. At the end of 3.5 hours I was told that I will not be allowed to enter German soil and that this ban will last the whole of April. Not just that … if I were to try to link up by Zoom or Facetime with the conference even if I were outside Germany or if I were to send a video of my lecture to the conference in Berlin, then that would constitute a breach of German law and that I would endanger myself to have a fine or even up to a year in prison.
Dr. Abu Sitta further commented:
Germany is defending itself against Nicaraguan charges that it is an accomplice to genocidal war as described by the International Court of Justice. This is exactly what accomplices to a crime do. They bury the evidence and they silence or harass or intimidate the witnesses. …. This crackdown on free speech is a dangerous precedent… We are watching the first genocide unfold in the 21st Century and for Germany to become implicated as an accomplice in silencing the witnesses of this genocide does not bode well for the rest of the century.
A large contingent of police invaded the conference and shut off the electricity. Organizers told the reported 250 conference attendees to not provoke the police to violence. Afterward, organizers held a press conference reporting on the behaviour of police before and during the crackdown. Even before the conference, police tried to intimidate supporters of the conference and the owner of the conference venue. They threatened the venue owner might not be able to hold events in future if the conference went ahead. An organizer asked, “Are these the methods of the mafia or democracy?”
Western and Israeli media reported the closure was to prevent “anti semitism” or “hatred of Israel”. On this dubious and hypothetical basis, public education about a real ongoing massacre and mass starvation was made illegal.
Censorship & persecution of dissident voices continues across the world
The ‘cautionary tale’ modus operandi
Health Advisory & Recovery Team | April 15, 2024
Those who, like the members of HART, have been speaking out for three or four years about the perils of lockdowns, the lack of access to proper medical care and the utter debacle of the unsafe and ineffective vaccines, keep hoping the tide is turning. But for every stone upturned another boulder seems to descend to crush the truth. There is also no apparent end to the persecution of doctors speaking out.
Two physicians from opposite ends of the world and facing loss of their medical careers for speaking out against the vaccine saviour narrative, typify the current authoritarian approach. Charles Hoffe from Canada and Shankara Chetty from South Africa have two things in common, firstly both are clinicians serving a large local population and secondly both have shared their experiences widely. In Dr Chetty’s case he has reported his success at treating over 1000 covid patients with a combination of repurposed drugs including antihistamines in a clinical centre in rural South Africa with no access to oxygen let alone intensive care. In Dr Hoffe’s case, he first hit the headlines when he reported a high frequency of serious adverse events when his patients started receiving the mRNA vaccines.
Both these hard working and ethical physicians now, three years on, are being subjected to investigations by their medical boards. For Dr Chetty, he has previously been found guilty of professional misconduct but was called to attend a further hearing last week in front of the Health Professionals Council of South Africa. The results of their deliberations are awaited.
For Charles Hoffe the situation is even more bizarre. He was due for a hearing last week but when he submitted all the supportive evidence for his case, the health board in British Columbia deposited a large amount of evidence of their own but then threatened to invoke a ruling by which their evidence would be accepted as ‘fact’ by the court and Dr Hoffe and his legal team would be unable to cross question the data or present any information to the contrary. It looks like the right to a free trial has been abandoned in Canada, along with the right to free speech.
Below is a list of some senior clinicians and academics from across the world who have been vilified for speaking truth to power. It is by no means comprehensive.
USA:
Canada:
Australia:
- Dr Robert Brennan
- Dr Melissa McCann (subject to ‘re-education’)
- Dr Ros Neelon-Cook
- Dr Paul Oosterhuis
New Zealand:
Germany:
- Sucharit Bhakdi (acquitted of charge of antisemitism)
France:
- Dr Didier Raoult (an outspoken academic accused of unethical practice)
Switzerland:
- Thomas Binder (initially incarcerated in a mental institution)
UK:
- Dr David Cartland (GMC investigation ongoing)
- Professor Angus Dalgleish (clinical work suspended by St George’s Hospital)
- Dr Jayne Donegan (struck off by GMC, working as an independent)
- Professor Christopher Exley (told by Keele University to discontinue all research into Aluminium toxicity)
- Dr Aseem Malhotra (GMC initially declined to investigate until a legal case was brought to force an investigation)
- Mr Ahmad Malik (suspended by his private hospital for online posts)
- Dr Sarah Myhill (suspended by GMC, appeal pending)
- Dr Anne McCloskey (suspended by GMC in 2021, further hearing April 2024)
- Dr Sam White (NHS suspended him and GMC placed restrictions which were overturned in the High Court, currently working in independent practice)
This list is continuing to grow despite the increasing reports in the scientific literature which confirm almost everything they have said.
When does it stop?
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Argentina’s Javier Milei sells out his country for Israel
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Book Review
The Greatest Threat to World Peace? A Review of Daniele Ganser’s ‘USA: The Ruthless Empire’
Review by Marilyn Langlois | November 10, 2023
If you regard the United States as perhaps flawed but overall a force for good in the world . . .
If you scoff at the notion that the US, a republic founded on principles of freedom and democracy, has morphed into a world empire, perpetrating assassinations, coups d’état, acts of terror and illegal warfare . . .
If you want to promote peace but haven’t yet explored deceptive events that precipitate US warmongering . . .
. . . here is a volume that will clear the air and paint an honest picture of the significant, not-so-rosy impact US foreign policy and actions have had in the world around us.
USA: The Ruthless Empire, by Swiss historian and peace researcher Daniele Ganser, is the newly published English language translation of his book Imperium USA, originally written in German and published in 2020. Here is a summary of key points — including some lesser-known ones — along with remedies for a more peaceful future, that are covered in the book. … continue
Blog Roll
Aletho News- Argentina’s Javier Milei sells out his country for Israel
- Putting Nukes in Finland Won’t Make Country Safer, Finnish Politician Cautions
- Ukrainian drone strike kills worker at Europe’s largest nuclear power plant
- What the West Hides About Soviet Role in De-Colonization
- Villains of Judea: Douglas Feith
- US pension fund invests hundreds of millions in weapons firms supplying Israel
- US bill to grant Americans serving in Israeli army same rights as US troops
- What a president, a movie star, a congressman, and a cell phone all dared to say
- ‘An entire nation is being humiliated by the Iranian leadership’: Merz
- Pakistan Throws Open Its Gates for Iran’s Transit Trade to Third Countries
- If Americans Knew
- Palestinians in Gaza Want to Rebuild Food Systems. Israel Isn’t Letting Them.
- Under Trump, Green Card Seekers Face New Scrutiny for Views on Israel
- Sheep Theft Sent Shockwaves Through a Palestinian Village. Then, a 12-year-old Boy Was Shot Dead
- Trump alum helps Israel mount AI influence campaign
- Dispatches From Catastrophe
- Despite Denials, AIPAC Is Now Funding Campaign of Ala Stanford In Philadelphia
- Israel’s neighbors are irate about its treatment of religious sites
- Israel escalates in Gaza: killing, torture, hunger – Daily Update
- Six Months into Gaza Ceasefire, Setting the Record Straight About Aid
- ‘Silent suffering’: Why children in Gaza are losing their ability to speak
- No Tricks Zone
- New Study: Extreme Heat Records, Heatwaves, Extreme Cold Records Declining Across US Since 1899
- It’s The Cold, Stupid! Cold 20 Times More Lethal Than Heat, Multiple Studies Show
- European Institute For Climate And Energy: “Climate Debate is Seldom About Science”
- New Study: The Climate May Be 5 Times More Sensitive To Solar Forcing Than Commonly Assumed
- EV Industry Reached $70 Billion In Losses In 2024 Due To Delusional Green Ideologies
- Reality Check: Maldives Have Actually Grown In Size Or Remained Stable Over Recent Decades
- Abrupt Climate Change Also Occurred NATURALLY In The Past …25 Times During Last Ice Age
- Cave Discovery Reveals Today’s Desert Climates Were Recently Far Warmer, Wetter, Teeming With Life
- German Expert: Heat Dome Led To Record Temps In Western USA…Warmer In 1934, 1936
- New Study: No Linear Warming Or Glacier Retreat Along Northern Antarctic Peninsula Since 1980s
Aletho News 