Russia calls on US to store nuclear weapons only on its own territory
Press TV – July 18, 2019
Russia has called on the United States to keep its nuclear weapons only on its own territory, a day after a NATO report unwittingly revealed that Washington has stored some of its nuclear weapons in several European countries, including Turkey.
“Russia deploys and stores its nuclear weapons exclusively on its own territory. We call on the US and NATO to do the same,” said Mikhail Ulyanov, Russia’s permanent representative to international organizations in Vienna, including the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), on Wednesday.
His comments came a day after The Washington Post said in a report that a recently released — and subsequently deleted — document published by a NATO committee had inadvertently revealed that the US stores 150 items of its tactical nuclear weapons in Belgium, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, and Turkey.
The US-based daily said that it had seen “a copy of the document published Tuesday by Belgian newspaper De Morgen.”
The document, which is attributed to Canadian senator Joseph Day and written for the defense and security committee of the NATO Parliamentary Assembly, was titled “A New Era For Nuclear Deterrence? Modernization, Arms Control and Allied Nuclear Forces.”
“These bombs are stored at six US and European bases — Kleine Brogel in Belgium, Buchel in Germany, Aviano and Ghedi-Torre in Italy, Volkel in The Netherlands, and Incirlik in Turkey,” the document said.
The US unilaterally suspended the implementation of the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty (INF) with Russia earlier this year.
Moscow reciprocated later.
Under the treaty, both sides had been banned from creating ground-launched nuclear missiles with ranges from 500 to 5,500 kilometers. The pact also banned the sides from deploying short and intermediate-range, land-based missiles in Europe.
The US alleged that Russia’s new 9M729 missile was in violation of the INF and had to be dismantled.
Russia rebutted the claim in January by unveiling the missile and its key specifications, saying the missile’s maximum range was about 480 kilometers, well within what was allowed under the INF.
Two Think Tanks Claim Sputnik Meddled in 2017 French Election, Present No Proof… Again
Sputnik – July 11, 2019
Russian media outlets last year faced accusations of interfering in France’s internal politics, but a recent probe by French intelligence has reportedly found no signs of such activities.
The French Institute of Strategic Research of the Military School (IRSEM) and American think-tank the Atlantic Council have in a recent collaborative project produced a report, the latest in a row of similar ones, claiming that Russia meddled in the internal affairs of a foreign government. This time, the researchers accused Moscow of trying to prevent the victory of Emmanuel Macron in the 2017 French presidential election.
The researchers try to prove that by using state-funded media outlets, namely Sputnik, as an “information weapon”, the Kremlin allegedly organised a coordinated “disinformation campaign” against then presidential hopeful Macron. However, like many similar papers on alleged “Russian meddling”, this research also fails to present solid facts that substantiate the claims and stumbles into certain problems when trying to prove that such a targeted “campaign” actually existed in the first place.
Notably, the report’s key author and head of the IRSEM, Jean-Baptiste Jeangène Vilmer, who also serves on the Academic Advisory Board of the NATO Defence College, took most of his points of evidence from the works of Ben Nimmo, a researcher at the Atlantic Council. The latter, like many other Western think tanks, regularly publishes research devoted to proving the existence of Russian attempts to interfere in the internal affairs of Western countries and proposing ways in which they can counter this alleged “threat”.
“Anti-Macron Campaign” or Factual Reporting?
The IRSEM study recalls that back in February 2017, Macron’s digital manager accused Sputnik of publishing “fake news” about his employer from the “very beginning of [the election] campaign”. The author of the paper, Vilmer, claims that this “disinformation campaign” began when the French edition of Sputnik published a report about statements by WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, in which he revealed that he possessed “interesting information” about Macron, albeit without specifying whether it was compromising in any way.
Referring to the Sputnik article as “menacing”, the IRSEM report draws parallels to the 2016 US presidential election and WikiLeaks’ publication of Democratic National Committee (DNC) emails. At the same time, the paper didn’t elaborate any further on how exactly reporting on an interview with a famous whistle-blower, in which no compromising information about Macron was published, was able to affect the outcome of the election. It also failed to mention that WikiLeaks’ threats, covered by Sputnik, were not limited to Macron, but also touched his main opponent in the second round, Marine Le Pen.
“Hand-Picked” Speakers vs Hand-Picked Examples
The IRSEM head admits in the report that Sputnik didn’t publish any “fake news” during the election campaign in France, but instead accused it of “information manipulation”. Vilmer claims that the Russian media outlet had expressed “a strong bias” by allegedly leaving out important information and by “hiding behind the quotations” of the “right people”.
While failing to present any proof that Sputnik had omitted any important facts in its articles, the researcher instead tried to substantiate his claim by indicating that Sputnik had interviewed only two persons, who happen to be members of the French Parliament – Thierry Mariani and Nicolas Dhuicq – in regards to the upcoming election. However, a simple search on the news outlet’s website reveals that in reality Sputnik had interviewed far more contributors on the topic, such as Jacques Lamblin, another member of the country’s parliament, as well as various European lawmakers and pundits.
Alleged “Focus” on “Macron Affair”
The paper proceeds to claim that Sputnik covered the election in France with “a distinct bias against Macron”. According to Vilmer, this was expressed in a strategy of giving a deaf ear to scandals involving other contenders for the presidency, such as “the Kremlin’s favoured candidate”, Marine Le Pen, and instead focusing on “rumours” about Macron’s alleged offshore accounts.
The IRSEM research insisted that most of Sputnik’s articles were devoted to the “invented Macron affair” involving offshore accounts while it “defended Le Pen and amplified her party”. However, the paper does not include any factual proof of a discrepancy in the coverage of Macron-related scandals and controversies involving his rivals. It also fully omits the actual fact that Sputnik covered the latter.
“Blame Russia” Trend
France was the second Western country to try to blame Russia for interfering in its domestic affairs. This was preceded by an attempt by the US Democratic Party, and specifically its candidate Hillary Clinton, to shift the blame for the defeat in the 2016 presidential election on to supposed meddling by Moscow.
This blame-game later became a trend among Western governments and political parties in countries such as the UK, Germany, and Spain, to name only a few. But just as in the case of the US, none of these states managed to provide any credible evidence to substantiate the claims, at best referring to obscure “intelligence reports”. Moscow has repeatedly pointed out this lack of underlying proof when rejecting these groundless accusations
Notably, following Macron’s victory in the elections his team abandoned the narrative for a while, only to return to it in February 2019, accusing Moscow of “orchestrating” the Yellow Vest rallies, which demanded Macron’s resignation, and pointing to Sputnik and RT for this purpose. However, earlier reports by local news outlets said that the French intelligence services’ investigation had failed to find any signs indicating that the Russian media was able to impact French domestic affairs.
How Stupid Do They Think We Are?
By Patrick Armstrong | Strategic Culture Foundation | July 7, 2019
“I daresay you haven’t had much practice,” said the Queen. “When I was your age, I always did it for half-an-hour a day. Why, sometimes I’ve believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast.”
Consumers of the print or electronic output of the League of Copy Typists and their Instructors are expected to believe many impossible things and believe them, not just before breakfast, but all day too.
- Putin kills his enemies by using spectacular methods that can easily be traced back to Russia and preferably when he’s staging some high-profile event like the Olympics or World Cup.
- Russian submarines only fool around in the waterways of neutral countries whose elites want to get into NATO, never in NATO ones.
- Poison is smeared on the front doorknob. This requires the roof of the house to be replaced.
Come to think it, believing any part of the official Skripal story, from the incredibly lethal nerve agent that didn’t kill them, to the spectacular coincidence of the British Army’s chief nurse being on the scene, to the re-wrapped perfume bottle would tax the White Queen’s ability. Here’s a list. But that’s not to say that we’re finished yet: there always seems to be another absurdity like the dead ducks.
- Assad only uses chemical weapons or nerve agents when he’s winning.
- They bomb hospitals on purpose, we bomb them by accident.
- The USAF bombs with great precision and accuracy. But the cities it bombs are turned into rubble. Its “precision” is indistinguishable from random carpet bombing. Fallujah. Raqqa. Mosul.
- Washington’s enemy-of-the-moment always attacks just when Washington warns it might: vide recent Gulf of Tonkiran episode. Or shoots down innocent drones which are absolutely, positively, in international airspace. Or perhaps they aren’t.
- RT is tremendously effective at influencing people even though nobody you know actually watches it.
- Satellite photos vary between amazingly blurry and sharp as a tack. Obviously some mysterious law of optics is at work here: Russian artillery in Ukraine – blurry; Russian aircraft in Syria – sharp.
- Despite spending billions on intelligence agencies and equipment, NATO depends on Bellingcat and the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights for its information. They are credible sources despite being on NATO’s payroll (UK in the case of SOHR and the Atlantic Council in the case of Bellingcat ); Russian sources are not credible because they are on Moscow’s payroll.
- Putin is unable to rig elections in Ukraine or Georgia but he does it with ease in the USA and Europe.
- Russia is on the edge of collapse but tremendously powerful (Cleverly termed “Russophrenia” by Bryan MacDonald.)
- Democracies are inherently peaceful but always at war.
- No one knows where refugees come from; they just appear. See above and below. (They were warned.)
- NATO, despite its record in destabilising Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya and the Balkans, is a force for stability.
- Sanctions, combined with threats and subversions, are not really an act of war. Even if they kill people in Iraq or Venezuela.
- Brian Hook, the US special representative on Iran, told reporters in Saudi Arabia that Iran “needs to meet diplomacy with diplomacy, not military force.” That statement doesn’t stand up to a millisecond’s consideration – sanctions, reconnaissance aircraft, more fighter planes, troop movements, more troops are not “diplomacy”. But the complaisant media re-prints it with a straight face.
- The US Navy always has the right of way at sea.
- Iran is the principal state sponsor of terrorism; the most deadly terrorist organisation is al Qaida/ISIS. Or so the US State Department has told us for many years. They’re telling us that a Twelver Shiite state is number one but a Sunni Takfiri entity inspired by ibn Taymiyya and Sayyid Qutb, which regards Shiites as even greater enemies, is also number one. Those who say this, over and over again, never quite explain how these two assertions fit together.
- Freedom for same-sex activity is to be encouraged everywhere except in countries where they face the death penalty.
- Russia’s Military Drills Near NATO Border Raise Fears of Aggression. Comment is neither necessary nor possible on that one, is it?
- US declares Venezuela a national security threat, sanctions top officials. Ditto. And that’s from Obama’s time. (“National security threat”? Wow! Little Venezuela?).
- One dollar spent by Russians on Facebook is more effective than 1,700 dollars spent by Clinton and Trump. Now that’s PPP!
- An investigation into an airplane crash that gives a suspect veto power and excludes the owner of the aircraft is the gold standard of investigations. Oh, and it’s quite proper to jump to the conclusion before the investigation has even begun. Because, after all, you just knew.
- If you accuse someone of a crime and he doesn’t immediately admit guilt, he’s admitting his guilt. Litvinenko: “Beyond the ‘rogue elements’ theories, pro-Kremlin media outlets in Russia have been pushing a slew of alternative theories“; MH17:The Kremlin’s Many Versions of the MH17 Story or Skripal: “Russia is pushing these 15 mutually contradictory theories to claim they weren’t behind the nerve agent attack“. Why don’t you just ‘fess up and stop wasting our time, Putin?
- AIPAC is not a foreign lobby and therefore is not a matter for FARA.
- Because we are proponents of the Rules-Based International Order we can violate the Vienna Convention whenever we want to and try to force military coups in neighbouring countries. And have as many uninvited soldiers in Syria as we want.
Pseudo psychology explains geopolitics. And pretty idiotically too: a whole country on the couch. “Russia is more insecure and paranoid“, “a kind of neurotic disorder that renders Russia’s sense of insecurity” “The deep sense of humiliation, the dread of arrogant Westerners, the fear of NATO encirclement.” or maybe it’s not the whole country, just Putin: Putin’s insecure because of Russia’s “diminished role in the world“. “Well, Russian President Vladimir Putin is a textbook case of someone with a serious inferiority complex.” Anyway, some gasbag pseudo-psychology explains it: there’s no reality, Russia/Putin is just naturally paranoid. Probably nothing you can do about it.
NATO is just going along, minding its own business when, entirely without provocation, hostile nations try to destabilise the world, interfere with freedom of navigation, assault the Rules-Based International Order, and otherwise force NATO to react. From a current Pentagon study: “Russia is adopting coercive strategies that involve the orchestrated employment of military and nonmilitary means to deter and compel the US, its allies and partners prior to and after the outbreak of hostilities.” “Deter and compel” – poor little NATO, so weak, so bullied! Russia does this because of its “deep-seated sense of geopolitical insecurity” which it has just because it has. (More geopolitical pseudo-psychology.)
And, finally, Putin is interfering in the West’s interference in another country.
Russia Vows Mirror Response to Mid-Range Missile Deployment in NATO Countries
Sputnik – July 5, 2019
Russia will provide a mirror response to the deployment of mid-range and low-range missiles in NATO nations in Europe, according to the First Deputy Chair of the Russian Federation Council, Vladimir Dzhabarov.
Meanwhile, Russia’s permanent mission to the alliance said Friday, after a meeting of the NATO-Russia Council, that Moscow considers NATO’s attempts to blame the destruction of the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty on Moscow groundless.
“We pointed to the fact that attempts to pin the blame over the destruction of the INF Treaty on Russia were groundless”, the mission said in a statement.
Russia stressed the need for restraint, the mission said. Russia confirmed that, should the United States quit the treaty, Moscow did not plan to install any “relevant weapons in Europe and other regions as long as there are no US missiles of short and medium range there.”
“We stressed that further inflaming the political and military situation in Europe carried real risks”, the statement said. “We have called on the NATO countries to make a similar statement”, the mission added.
Russia and NATO exchanged, at the NATO-Russia Council meeting, information on military exercises and called to boost military contacts, Russia’s Permanent Mission to NATO added
“The Parties had an information exchange on important exercises of NATO and Russia to increase the predictability of military activities and prevent misperceptions of each other’s intentions. The Russian Side noted the demand for intensifying mil-to-mil contacts”, it said.
On Wednesday, Russian President Vladimir Putin enacted the official suspension of Russia’s participation in the 1987 INF Treaty. The move came months after the United States suspended its obligations under the accord on 2 February and warned that it would launch a withdrawal process which would be completed in six months unless Moscow remedied the country’s alleged violations of the deal. Russia pledged to act proportionally.
The INF Treaty was signed in 1987 by then-leader of the Soviet Union Mikhail Gorbachev and then-US President Ronald Reagan. Under the agreement, the leaders agreed to destroy all cruise and ground-launched ballistic missiles with ranges between 500 and 5,500 kilometres (310 and 3,400 miles).
Germany vs. Iran – Has Germany Sold Out to the Devil?
By Peter Koenig – New Eastern Outlook – 22.06.2019
Madame Angela Merkel – the head of Europe’s strongest economy, of the leader of the European Union, said that there was strong evidence that Iran attacked the two tankers in the Gulf of Oman. Ten days ago, German Foreign Minister, Heiko Maas, travelled to Tehran, officially to “save” the Nuclear Deal (Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action – JCPoA), but in reality, to ‘negotiate’ with Tehran ways so Germany and by association other EU members, might still do business with Iran, against some “concessions” by Iran, in order to appease Washington.
Iran’s President Rouhani reacted quickly. FM Maas got the cold shoulder and was dismissed. And rightly so. Maas was not really representing Germany – but the United States. Iran gave the EU an “ultimatum” of 60 days to stick to their commitments on trading with Iran according to the Nuclear Deal – despite the US reneging on it – or else, Iran may bypass some of the conditions under the JCPOA accord. The EU – not being independent and her member countries having lost all sovereignty by submitting to the dictate first from Brussels, second from the tyranny of Washington, didn’t like the ultimatum, and said so in a joint statement. They added a weak and meek phrase, “We call on countries not party to the JCPoA to refrain from taking any actions that impede the remaining parties’ ability to fully perform their commitments;” not even daring calling the country by name, for whom the statement was destined, i.e. the US of A.
Germany’s position is as absurd as it has ever been since Merkel and the entire Bundestag accepted the sanctions imposed by Washington on Russia in 2014 – and replicated them along with the rest of the EU – even to their own detriment and to the detriment of the entire EU. Chancellor Merkel and apparently the entire Bundestag, again, go along with Washington’s equally absurd and false accusation that Iran has attacked the two tankers, one Japanese owned, the other Norwegian. The latter belonging to a close friend of Iran’s, and the Japanese one, hardest hit – exactly at the time when Japan’s PM Shinzō Abe, was visiting the Ayatollah in Tehran to discuss how to maintain the Nuclear Deal – trading – despite the sanctions and threats of Washington, hence, a friendly visit.
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A blind person can see that these were two false flags – so thinly masked, with badly fabricated US ‘video evidence’ that even according to CIA and US military brass did not deliver conclusive evidence. In fact, none at all. Madame Merkel – why do you not first ask the obvious question “Cui bono?”— Who benefits? Certainly not Iran – but the aggressor, the US which has been planning and preparing for war with Iran for decades, ever since the first Iraq war under Father Bush, in 1991. At the 2003 invasion of Iraq – Bolton openly expressed his dreams to demolish Iran. He and Pompeo are liars and war criminals, who run the White House and pretend to run the Pentagon – and who act in impunity. Their power seems limitless. Trump – seems to be a mere puppet.
Getting Merkel on board of the flagrant US lie that Iran was attacking two tankers in the Gulf of Oman, is a strategic hit, enhancing the lies’ credibility and, thus, making a US attack on Iran more palatable to the rest of the world. Yet, apparently this was not enough. The Pentagon sent an unmanned high-altitude Global Hawk drone into Iranian airspace, a provocation Iran could not resist and shot the drone down, but not before sending warning signals, about which today nobody talks. The world shouldn’t know that Iran had the noblesse to warn the US about the drone being in their airspace. As can be expected the White House gnomes deny that the drone was invading Iranian airspace, but pretend it was in international air space, when it was shot down.
This raised the ante for Washington to launch an attack on Iran. All was planned to be carried from Thursday to Friday (20 to 21 June), and at last minute Trump stopped it. Is it true? – It could be, because somebody a bit ‘higher up’ than Trump and his warrior minions, must have realized the danger that such an attack may pose to the rest of the world – or actually that it could trigger a nuclear conflict. However, that the attack plan was stopped doesn’t mean it was canceled. Maybe it was just postponed.
In the meantime, the US Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) has ordered all US airlines to avoid the Gulf of Oman and the Gulf of Hormuz. And, as could be expected, the airlines of Washington’s “true” puppet allies have followed suit, i.e. Australia’s Qantas Airways Ltd, Singapore Airlines Ltd, Germany’s Lufthansa, British Airways, Air France and its Dutch KLM affiliate, as well as Malaysia Airlines, said they were re-routing flights to avoid the area. Others may follow under direct or tacit pressure of the US. The Japanese airline ANA said they were considering alternative routings. Effectively, the US was able to declare a no-fly zone over a significant area of Iran.
Let’s make no mistake, all the visible key figures at the helm of the White House – are run in the back by Israel, by Netanyahu and the Chosen People he represents, those who also run Wall Street and the western world’s banking and financial system. Israel would like to see Iran in rubbles, or better, in eternal chaos, the goal that was set for Iraq, Afghanistan and that the US was and still is dreaming for Syria. This bunch of evil elite pulls the strings and hopes to soon pull just ONE string for global hegemony, under a ONE World Order.
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Back to Germany. Instead of jumping off the sinking ship of Washington and its faithful entourage of the willing, as rats would do, and as the vast majority of the German people would prefer, let alone German and European business, Madame Merkel and apparently all her circles, including Berlin’s Parliament, follow the US flagrant lie propaganda. Why? – Well, this is the deal: There are many ways to “buy” top politicians, with threats or with money or by outright inflicting fear through ‘proxy-assassinations’.
Once Germany is on board – the rest of Europe will follow suit. In that case, Washington – Trump and consortia – think they have Iran totally strangled, by blocking all trade and all financial transactions, plus confiscating Iranian assets abroad – on top of imposing stiff tariffs, so that Iran can no longer afford importing vital goods for manufacturing – or for sheer survival from the west. Once a country is weak, it can be taken over easily. So, the western, AngloZionist thinking goes.
Iran – her Fifth-Columnists aside – is strong and has already proven that it is detaching from the west. Even trying to adhere and fight for the Nuclear Deal which the west, i.e. Europe is incapable of respecting for lack of backbone, is a waste of time. To demonstrate that Iran has alternatives, Mr. Rouhani was attending the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) summit in Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan, on 13 and 14 June 2019, by invitation of China, the leader of the 8-member “club”.
SCO stands for promoting peace, trade and a non-aggressive defense strategy (the antidote to the NATO-type military aggression). As of now, Mr. Rouhani is an observer for his country, Iran which is in an advanced stage in the process of entering the SCO as a full member. This could happen later this year or in 2020. Iran would recover her sovereignty, her economic potential and would – and will – be able to detach from the west, pretty much as did Russia and China, the two super-powers under constant assaults of sanctions, denigration and false accusations.
Turkey – is in a similar situation. If Turkey is admitted by the SCO – also very likely – their NATO exit will be imminent. What that will mean for the rest of NATO, at this point we can only guess and dream of, especially since there is an ever-stronger people’s movement throughout Europe to exit NATO. It is particularly strong in Italy and paradoxically also in Germany. The vast majority of Germans want to exit NATO, but the government doesn’t listen. “So far” doesn’t listen. The German anti-NATO movement has been gaining strength ever since the anti-nuclear energy protests in the early seventies which were followed and intensified in the late 1970’s early 1980s against nuclear arms stockpiled in Germany by the US, particularly those stored at the US Air Force base of Ramstein, near Kaiserslautern.
The “so-far” is a precursor to a break with NATO, as the pressure against the USAF base Ramstein, against NATO, is mounting, and that, when Madame Merkel decides firmly to go with the sinking ship – risking to pull Germany and her people down the drain for sheer senseless and outdated obedience to the succumbing tyrant. How absurd!
While Iran is making smart moves, gradually away from western economics, from trading with the west – and moving eastwards – where the future is – Germany backtracks, literally into the orbit of a dying beast, into what is ever-more detectible – a decaying empire.
When will Germany wake up? When the first bombs fall on her cities – a WWI and WWII redux? Except this time, it may not be just the falling of conventional bombs. It may be nuclear meeting nuclear at Ramstein. Madame Merkel, your obligation to the people who apparently elected you is larger than you think and larger than yourself – and much larger than whatever goes on in your mind to follow a defeated warrior and rogue nation into hell.
Peter Koenig is an economist and geopolitical analyst. After working for over 30 years with the World Bank he penned Implosion, an economic thriller, based on his first-hand experience.
MH17 Probe – Perpetual Smear Job on Russia
By Finian Cunningham | Strategic Culture Foundation | June 22, 2019
The Joint Investigation Team (JIT) tasked with probing the Malaysian MH17 airliner disaster in 2014 is a travesty of legal due process and justice. It is a politically motivated vehicle for smearing Russia. A vehicle designed to run and run for years to come.
Despite its grand-sounding legal title, the JIT is a mockery of jurisprudence. It has, for example, included Ukrainian police in its “fact finding” while excluding Russia. That has ensured bias in the investigation in favor of a party – the Ukrainian state – which should have been treated as a suspect.
The Dutch-led investigation is also infused with a NATO bias which inherently blames Russia for the Ukraine conflict that began in 2014. It is a hopelessly flawed investigation based on prejudice and preconceived notions of guilt.
As with previous reports, the JIT has openly acknowledged cooperating with the private blog site Bellingcat for its purported evidence gathering. How can a supposed official investigation into a mass murder be taken seriously when it is relying on the “expertise” of a freelance blogger-sleuth? Moreover, Bellingcat is complicit in peddling NATO propaganda concerning chemical weapons false-flag attacks in Syria and the Skripal poisoning case.
The JIT report this week into the crash in eastern Ukraine on July 17, 2014 again draws on Bellingcat “information”. That information has been shown by other investigators to be based on fabricated video and audio material. Like previous JIT reports, the so-called “evidence” is vague and relies more on innuendo of guilt. The latest so-called report did not bring any new “evidence” to back up previous claims that Russia is culpable for the alleged shoot-down of the Boeing 777 over eastern Ukraine. The investigators claimed last year that a Russian anti-aircraft brigade based in Kursk entered Ukrainian territory with a Buk missile system. The munition was allegedly used by pro-Russian rebels fighting against Kiev-controlled military to blow the Boeing 777 from the sky.
The passenger jet was on its way from the Netherlands to Malaysia when it was apparently shot down by an anti-aircraft missile while traversing eastern Ukraine. All 298 onboard were killed in the crash.
Russia and the Ukrainian separatist militia have both denied any involvement. They reject the JIT claims as “baseless”.
The videos purportedly showing a Buk missile system being transported from Russia to eastern Ukraine – which Belllingcat and the JIT rely on as evidence – have long been exposed as doctored fakes.
What Dutch-led “investigators” did this week is more PR trick. They name four suspects ostensibly to prosecute for murder in a Dutch court next year. Three of the named persons are reportedly Russian nationals, while the fourth is Ukrainian. All are said to be located presently in the Russian Federation. The JIT will request Russia extradite the alleged suspects to face trial. The JIT investigators claim that the named individuals “prove” a link between Russian military and the Ukrainian rebels.
It is extremely unlikely that Russia will extradite the persons. That is because they will not receive a fair trial given the extreme prejudice of the prosecutors. And also because the Russian state has been continually refused participation in the investigation and fair access to investigation files. Russia’s own significant evidence into the air disaster – and what could have really happened – has also been continually and unreasonably repudiated by the JIT.
The Dutch-led investigators know full well that Russia will not cooperate with their extradition requests. What will happen therefore is that the “indictments” forever hang in the air and serve as a quasi-conviction. This is the same cynical technique of the Mueller Report into alleged Russian interference in the 2016 US presidential elections. Mueller indicted several Russian citizens for “meddling” in the elections, inferring they were serving a Kremlin-directed operation. Those accused citizens will never be extradited to face a trial in the US. Mueller knew that and didn’t expect it. The purpose was to let indictments hang in the air to serve as a perpetual smear against Russia.
Unlike the Mueller probe which wound up earlier this year after two years of meandering, empty-handed investigation into alleged “Russian collusion”, the MH17 investigation is set to trundle on for several years to come.
Wilbert Paulissen, head of the national investigative department of the Dutch police, said the investigation has much further to go, according to Radio Free Europe reporting.
“Today, we – the JIT – have taken an important step, but – as we said – our investigation will not end with the prosecution of those four people,” he said.
“There were more people who played a role in the downing of MH17. Investigation also continues into the personnel running the air-defense missile system Buk and into the people who were an important link in the Russian Federation’s decision-making process to provide military support to [separatists in] eastern Ukraine.”
Dutch chief prosecutor Fred Westerbeke was also quoted as saying that Russia was involved in the “crime in one way or another.” He added, the Kremlin is “in a position to tell us what happened… I’m sure they know what happened.”
For the head of Dutch police and the state attorney to make such prejudicial statements against Russia before a court case has even been opened is an astounding contempt of due process. Russia has been convicted and condemned for the Malaysian airliner disaster without even having a chance to present an alternative narrative, never mind defense.
Moscow’s response to the latest JIT accusations this week was one of dismay. The Kremlin said it was “regrettable” and “baseless” –unworthy of a substantial response.
Russia’s own significant evidence in the MH17 catastrophe has been repeatedly rebuffed by the JIT. That evidence reportedly includes radar and air traffic control data which puts the onus of responsibility for the crash on the Ukrainian authorities in Kiev. Why was the plane apparently directed by Kiev along an air route over a war zone?
Most revealing, however, is that Buk missile evidence presented last year by the JIT inadvertently showed that the casing of the projectile allegedly involved in downing the plane indicated it was a 1986 model of that munition. That strongly suggests that the missile did not come from Russia, but rather belonged to the Ukrainian armed forces dating from the Soviet era.
Incredibly, for a so-called international criminal investigation, such highly pertinent evidence from Russia has been shunned. However, this oversight is not incredible when one considers that the real purpose of the Dutch-led JIT is not to uncover the truth and guilt over the MH17 incident. The real purpose is to serve as a NATO vehicle to frame-up Russia for an atrocity. An atrocity which in all likelihood was perpetrated by one of the investigating parties – the NATO-backed Ukrainian regime in Kiev.
US sees Turkey’s S-400 deal as fait accompli
By M. K. BHADRAKUMAR | Indian Punchline | June 8, 2019
Three developments in quick succession in the weekend bring closer to a flashpoint the brewing discord between the US and Turkey on account of the latter’s purchase of the S-400 air defence system.
First, Russia disclosed on Friday that the delivery of the S-400 missile defense system will begin within two months. Turkey has made the advance payments and the Turkish military personnel have completed their training in Russia to operate the system. It appears that the die is cast.
Second, Washington has reacted instantaneously, as if anticipating that Turkey is sticking to its decision despite immense American pressure.
The US Acting Defence Secretary Patrick Shanahan has addressed a letter to his Turkish counterpart Hulusi Akar — and simultaneously leaked it to the media — intimating that “Turkey will not receive the F-35 if Turkey takes delivery of the S-400. You still have the option to change course on the S-400.”
Shanahan added that “Turkish F-35 students currently in training” in the US will be sent back by July 31 and no new training programme for Turkish personnel is being scheduled “as we anticipate they would be recalled in the near future.” Meanwhile, in immediate terms, “To facilitate an orderly cessation of Turkish participation in the programmatic management activities of the F-35 program, we will not plan for Turkish participation in the annual F-35 Chief Executive Officer Roundtable on June 12, 2019 and planned updates to the program’s governing programs will proceed without Turkey’s participation.”
Shanahan referred to the Russia-related Countering America’s Adversaries Through Sanctions Act (CAATSA), but concluded that the two countries should endeavour to “manage this matter in a respectful way, to preserve other aspects of our deep security cooperation.”
Third, an innocuous-sounding US State Department readout on June 6 said: “Deputy Secretary of State John J. Sullivan met today with Greek Defense Minister Evangelos Apostolakis to reaffirm the U.S. and Greek commitment to cooperation that strengthens bilateral defense and security and NATO, and to continue discussions started at the December 2018 U.S.-Greece Strategic Dialogue. Deputy Secretary Sullivan underscored the strategic importance of the Eastern Mediterranean and Balkans and highlighted Greece’s role as a pillar of stability and key partner in the region.”
Considering that Turkey’s hostile relations with Greece are even more ancient than India-Pakistan enmity, it is at once apparent that Washington is hitting back at Turkey on the geopolitical plane. Turkey’s principal motivation to procure the S-400 missile defence system is its unmatched capability to threaten aircraft up to 200 miles away—giving it so-called anti-access/area-denial (A2AD) (A2AD) potential.
The Turkish motivation is comparable to India’s (except that India has problematic relationships with two countries.) In layman’s terms, Turkey’s interest in the S-400 needs to be understood in terms of its ongoing rivalry with fellow NATO member Greece, with which it has nearly fought a war over the island of Cyprus. The S-400’s anti-access capabilities strengthen Turkey’s hand in its security competition with Greece.
Quite simply, S-400 system is peerless. The Patriot system that the US has offered Turkey as an alternative is optimised for relatively short-range (less than 40 kms) ballistic missile defence, lacking in A2AD potential.
Like any divorce, this is going to be a messy affair. Out of all the issues complicating the Turkish-American relationship — starting with the US-backed failed coup d’état attempt in July 2016 to kill President Recep Erdogan and overthrow his nationalist government — the S-400 issue has surged as the coup de grâce.
To be sure, if the US cancels the collaboration with Turkey on the development and production of F-35 fighter jets, the latter will look for alternate sources of stealth technology. The fact of the matter is that Turkey seems unperturbed that it is parting ways with the US’ program to develop the F35 fighter and buy 100 planes. But Turkey would like the US to initiate the break-up so that it is free to develop options. In the Turkish assessment, F-35 has serious deficiencies.
Equally, Turkey (like India) has already stated its ambitions to develop a domestic stealth fighter and knows that the US will never transfer such cutting edge technology. In all probability, Turkey may approach Russia. Speculation is rife.
Quite obviously, all this has very serious implications for India, which merit a separate analysis.
Latest attempt to prosecute President Assad at the ICC is further criminalisation of “international justice”
Toby Cadman. Co-founder of Guernica Chambers 37, one of legal entities bringing latest case against President Assad at the ICC. (Photo: The ICC and our politics)
By Vanessa Beeley | 21st Century Wire | May 28, 2019
In March 2019 two law firms filed cases at the ICC against Syria’s President Bashar Al Assad and unnamed members of the Syrian government. Toby Cadman of Guernica Chambers and Rodney Dixon of Temple Garden Chambers were the protagonists in this latest attempt to criminalise the Syrian President and government.
These law firms are basing their case upon the testimony of 28 “refugees” from Syria who claim they were “forced” to flee to Jordan during the war that has been waged against Syria by a collective of interventionist mafia states that form the U.S coalition, determined to achieve regime change in Syria.
Syria is not a signatory to the ICC in the Hague but precedent was set by the ICC when a preliminary investigation was opened into military leaders of Myanmar for alleged crimes against humanity involving deportation of Rohingya people. Refugees fled to Bangladesh which is party to the Rome statute that established the ICC, as is Jordan where more than 1 million Syrian refugees now reside. Guernica Chambers and Rodney Dixon are clearly hoping that the Rohingya precedent will open up the legal avenue for their case.
Both legal firms are claiming the intended deportation of Syrian civillians by the Syrian government as part of their cases.
However, even some members of the legal profession, have already remarked upon possible holes in the case being presented by both legal entities. Kevin John Heller is Associate Professor of Public International Law at Amsterdam University. According to Heller, there is a vital element of the Syrian situation that distinguishes it from the Myanmar situation. Heller argues that in Myanmar, it is evident that the government “intended to drive the Rohingya into Bangladesh” while in Syria it is not evident that the Syrian government intended (in the legal sense) that their civilians end up in other countries. Heller points out that without sufficient evidence, the Syrian government may only be accused of “forcible transfer” but not “deportation”. “Forcible transfer” falls outside the ICC’s jurisdiction because it takes place uniquely on Syrian territory.
“In other words: for the Court to investigate the forcible displacement of Syrian civilians proprio motu, it is deportation or bust.” ~ Kevin John Heller
This is not the first time that Guernica Chambers (GC) have attempted such a legal attack against the Syrian government. In March 2017, the Madrid offices of GC tried to bring a case against eight members of the Syrian security and intelligence services. The case was based upon the testimony of a Syrian national’s sister who had Spanish citizenship. Spain is party to the Rome Statute of the ICC. The woman allegedly identified the body of her brother among the photos that were “smuggled out of Syria” and formed part of the Caesar Report which I will discuss later in this article.
Who is really behind the legal war being waged against Syria?
I asked Peter Ford, former UK Ambassador to Syria and outspoken critic of the UK government’s role in the eight year regime change campaign in Syria, to comment on the timing of this legal initiative. Ford told me:
Nothing could be more likely to bring the ICC into disrepute than this attempted action by actors transparently serving the political agenda of the British and Qatari governments. Having failed in attempted regime change via miltant proxies Syria’s enemies are now embarked on an enterprise to secure the same result by waging economic war which must be justified by constant demonizing of Assad. That is the game being played here.
“if the ICC goes along with it, that will provide more justification for those who accuse the ICC of being a tool of the rich and powerful, and an incentive to Assad to halt any move towards elections in Syria which might see him removed from power. This is just a cheap trick designed to make political capital out of the remaining credibility of the ICC, such as it is.”
Ford pinpointed the drivers behind these legal cases and the UK Government and intelligence services must be considered as primary players. The UK/US-led intervention alliance have seen their terrorist-proxy-military-campaign fail dismally after hitting the brick wall of the axis of resistance -Syria, Hezbollah, Iran and Russia with China offering diplomatic and technological support.
What will follow is perhaps an even more destructive economic warfare campaign that will capitalise upon the post war dissonance in Syria to pressurise the Syrian state and to further foment discontent among civilians now struggling to cope with life in a Syria that has been severely impacted by 8 years of terrorist occupation and destruction of infrastructure.
“I believe that the reason why this attempt is being made to circumvent the fact that the International Criminal Court has no jurisdiction over Syria, is to remove Assad from power and to de-legitimise him as part of the future of Syria. This has been the goal of the jihadists from the very beginning.”
Historian and analyst, Dr Marcus Papadopoulos, further expanded upon the timing of the legal case:
Well, talk of war crimes cases being brought against President Assad, at the International Criminal Court, has been in the air for some years now. Indeed, I remember how such talk was emanating from Western capitals in 2012. However, there is no doubt that the today’s timing of lawyers, acting on behalf of Syrian refugees in Jordan, submitting lawsuits against the Syrian president at the ICC, is not coincidental. Because today, the Syrian people have all but won the war against Western-backed terrorism and so by submitting cases now to the ICC is a way of Western governments subtly informing President Assad that whilst the military war against him has been lost, the legal, media and communications war against him will continue.
Furthermore, I suspect that by initiating ICC proceedings against the Syrian leader – which will only increase in volume and go on indefinitely – may be a way of the Americans and the British maintaining their military presence in Syria, as well as their sanctions on the Arab country, on the pretext that the region has a leader in power who ‘waged war against his own people, destabilising not just his country but the wider region’ hence the presence of American and British forces in Syria is a means to limiting any future ‘carnage’ that the Syrian ‘strongman’ (a favoured word from the West’s lexicon to describe leaders whom it disapproves of) can inflict on both Syria and the region.” (Emphasis added)
International criminal lawyer, Christopher C. Black, pointed out the importance of the NATO and UK government links of the legal firms:
“The answer is revealed in the lawyers who are behind this scheme to try to drag the ICC into the picture. Rodney Dixon and Toby Cadman, and, it seems, from your information, Geoffrey Nice. All of them have links to the British governent and NATO through acting for them in various capacities.”
Links to UK Foreign Office, NATO and the CIA
Guernica Chambers – offices in London, Spain and Washington.
Toby Cadman. (Photo: Guernica 37 website)
Toby Cadman is the Co-founder and Head of Guernica 37 International Justice Chambers in London. According to the International Forum for Democracy and Human Rights (IFDHR), Cadman was hired by the UK Foreign Office in 2012 to “head a team to investigate crimes committed in the Syrian Arab Republic“.
I would challenge Cadman to demonstrate any serious investigation by Guernica into the ongoing crimes committed by the terrorist/extremist groups in Syria, armed and financed by the U.S Coalition. The fact that Cadman is a hired legal hand of one of the central players in the international campaign to reduce Syria to another Libya-style failed state, should immediately raise the alarm.
Doctors Under Fire – cluster of anti-Syria medical, legal and chemical “experts”
Cadman is also on the board of directors of Doctors Under Fire (formerly Medics Under Fire). Alongside him are Hamish De Bretton Gordon, Dr David Nott (Nott Foundation) and Dr Saleyha Ahsan.
Dr David Nott. (Photo: Nott Foundation website)
Nott has run UK Government-endorsed training courses for Syrian doctors in Gaziantep, Turkey – the hub of UK intelligence training for Syrian “opposition”, with a reputation for being the centre of ISIS organ and human trafficking operations. The flight from Istanbul to Gaziantep was known as the Jihad Express. The town itself was reported to be the area where new ISIS recruits from around the world would gather before being transported into Syria. The UK FCO-midwived and financed White Helmet propaganda construct also have their base in Gaziantep, established in 2013 by former MI6-turned-private-security expert, James Le Mesurier.
In 2013, Nott was largely responsible for the rumours that Syrian Arab Army snipers were targeting pregnant women in East Aleppo, which was freshly under control of the armed extremist gangs that included Al Qaeda in Syria, Nusra Front. The photo of a bullet lodged in an alleged foetal brain was published by most mainstream media outlets in the West without any expert second opinion regarding the credibility of such an image. Nott has operated on ISIS fighters during his forays (exclusively) into terrorist held territory of Syria.
Nott also amplified the discredited narrative surrounding Omran Daqneesh during the final moments before liberations of East Aleppo from terrorist rule. This story is now known to be another of the fraudulent campaigns to criminalise the Syrian government. This article by journalist, Steven Sahiounie, goes into depth about the bias and misprepresentation of reality by Nott during his time in the terrorist-held enclaves of Aleppo and Idlib.
Dr Saleyha Ahsan’s contradictory accounts of alleged chemical attack, showcased in BBC Panorama’s Saving Syria’s Children – forensically investigated by researcher, Robert Stuart.
Dr Saleyha Ahsan’s role in the BBC Panorama documentary, Saving Syria’s Children, has been exposed as potentially fraudulent by independent researcher, Robert Stuart. Actor and director Keith Allen is fronting a new crowdfunding campaign for a documentary examining the 2013 BBC Panorama programme Saving Syria’s Children. The project is in collaboration with British film, TV and radio producer, Victor Lewis-Smith. In 2017 Lewis-Smith challenged the BBC Panorama office over the issue. Failing to get satisfactory answers, Victor tore up a contract for a forthcoming comedy pilot with BBC Radio 4.
Hamish de Bretton Gordon. The media establishment go-to expert on chemical weapons.
Hamish de Bretton Gordon has been the go-to expert for the majority of corporate media outlets, particularly with regard to the alleged chemical weapon attacks in Syria that BG invariably blames upon the Syrian government. David Miller, Professor of Political Sociology at the University of Bristol and a member of the Academic-established Working Group on Syria, Propaganda and Media, stated very clearly in a recent interview that HBG:
“is an operative for MI6. He’s not a staff member of MI6 but he works very closely with MI6 in Syria trying to create evidence of chemical and biological weapons’ attacks.”
The full briefing note by the WGSPM can be found at this link: The alleged chemical attack in Douma on 7 April 2018, and other alleged chlorine attacks in Syria since 2014.
Doctors Under Fire appears to be another compromised organisation with a focus on misleading the British public into approving further military intervention in Syria under a familiar “humanitarian” pretext. Its ties to state media and intelligence services should be examined closely before their “expert” opinions be given serious consideration.
Toby Cadman – Ibrahim Olabi – White Helmets
Ibrahim Olabi. Joined Guernica Chambers in November 2018 as a pupil barrister. (Photo: Guernica Chambers website)
The Guernica inks to UK Government intellligence operations in Syria continue. Ibrahim Olabi joined Guernica Chambers in November 2018 as a pupil barrister. According to his bio on the GC website, Ibrahim Olabi “has worked extensively on international legal matters related to the Syrian conflict, including international humanitarian law, international criminal law and international human rights law” for the last five years.
Olabi is UK educated, having completed his LLB and LLM (Security and International Law) at the University of Manchester. Olabi is the director of the Syrian Legal Development Programme (SLDP). According to the GC website:
SLDP has provided legal expertise to Syrian NGOs, including training that Ibrahim delivered to more than 550 trainees on a range of complex legal surrounding forced displacement, torture, UN mechanisms, facilitation of humanitarian aid and other matters. He has trained both in Syria, near the front lines, and in neighbouring countries.
SLDP has received funding from the Swiss Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the Dutch Ministry. What seems extraordinary for a “pupil barrister” who only joined GC in November 2018, Olabi has an impressive track record of influencing major global institutions and state-linked think tanks on the Syrian conflict:
Ibrahim has also advocated in Geneva, Brussels, Washington and London on human rights issues relevant to Syria. He received personal invitations from the Heads of States such as Germany and The United Kingdom, and from the UN Secretary General. Ibrahim has spoken and chaired panels in forums such as Chatham House and Amnesty International, and delivered presentations at UK universities such as UCL, SOAS, Nottingham and Manchester amongst others. He also spoken on TV channels such as the CNN and the BBC.
Training the White Helmets. (Photo from SLDP website)
Among those trained by the SLDP are the primarily UK FCO-cultivated White Helmets who are exposed as terrorist group-auxiliaries and stand accused of committing crimes against the Syrian people that include child abduction and running organ trafficking operations from inside the terrorist-occupied territories.
The White Helmets have also been instrumental in producing the Syrian “chemical weapon” narratives supported by Cadman and his associate directors at Doctors Under Fire – designed to criminalise the Syrian government, often during the closing stages of military campaigns to liberate areas under control of the Western-sponsored armed groups.
The most recent White Helmet chemical attack narrative was in Douma, Eastern Ghouta, April 2018 – an alleged attack that precipitated the French, UK, US unlawful bombing of Syria before an investigation had been carried out by the OPCW (Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons).
Since this event, it has been demonstrated that the White Helmets had staged the hospital scenes that were widely published by western media to support the shaky narrative. Furthermore, a leaked engineers report, omitted from the OPCW final report, has raised alarming questions over OPCW’s impartiality and independence. The revelatory engineers report was sent to the aforementioned Working Group on Syria, Propaganda and Media who produced the briefing note which can be found here.
Guernica Chambers Advisory Board – Steve Rapp – CIA
Ambassador Stephen J. Rapp. (Photo: Guernica Chambers)
A look at the Guernica Chambers Advisory Board members reveals that Ambassador Stephen J. Rapp is listed as a board member. International criminal lawyer, Christopher Black, had clashed with Rapp during the Rwanda tribunal when Rapp was in charge of prosecutions:
“Stephen Rapp-well, there is your link to the CIA, US government. Rapp was at one time the guy in charge of prosecutions at the Rwanda tribunal. During his tenure, 2 of his henchmen-“investigators” began interviewing a former Rwandan cabinet minister in Lille, France. The investigators were two ex Montreal cops kicked off the force for corruption. There were rumours when I was there they had murdered witnesses.
Well at some point their interview of this guy became too heavy and he wrote a letter to the President of the tribunal stating that Rapp and his men were pressuring him to give false testimony against accused before the tribunal and that if he did not they were threatening to kill him and cut his body into pieces.
Two weeks later he disappeared after going to a final interview. We raised this letter in court. Two weeks after that his body was found in a canal in Brussels naked with his hands cut off. I asked that Rapp and his men be detained pending an investigation into that murder as they were the prime suspects.” ~ Christopher Black
Stephen Rapp with Mouaz Moustafa of the Syrian Emergency Task Force (SETF) responsible for bringing John McCain into Syria illegally in 2013. (Photo: Zoom info)
Rapp is included in an index of contact profiles for the Syrian Emergency Task Force (SETF) whose executive director is Mouaz Moustafa. Moustafa is probably best known for his role in bringing neocon warhawk, John McCain, into Syria illegally in 2013. McCain’s trip was dogged with controversy after he met with recognised militant kidnappers:
“US Senator John McCain was photographed with a known affiliate of the rebel group responsible for the kidnapping of 11 Lebanese Shiite pilgrims one year ago, during a brief and highly publicized visit inside Syria this week.” ~ Daily Star
Salim Idris, chief of the Supreme Military Council of the Free Syrian Army and Mouaz Moustafa on right with John McCain.
Rapp and Moustafa were both heavily involved in the promotion of the Caesar report – Caesar is a codename for an alleged Syrian police photographer who apparently smuggled 53,275 photographs out of Syria implicating the Syrian government in a campaign of torture. This story has been investigated and discredited by independent researcher and journalist, Rick Sterling, his findings can be read here. Prof. Tim Hayward also analysed the credibility of the Caesar report in his more recent article in April 2019.
Caesar with Mouaz Moustafa in Washington DC. (Photo: Syrian American Council)
Having taken into account the glaring anomalies in Caesar’s accounts and in the identification of the photographs of “tortured” corpses attributed exclusively and erroneously to alleged victims of the Syrian government – Hayward drew the following conclusions:
“To put bluntly this contextualised concern about Operation Caesar: not only may it already have altered the historical record, and not only may its effects have served to alter somewhat the course of history to date, but in serving to influence decision makers, it may contribute more indelibly to shifting the baseline of normative consensus in a direction favourable to ousting non-compliant leaders of sovereign states. That is effectively to bestow legitimacy on imperialist regime change projects.”
The FBI conducted its investigations into the Caesar report at Rapp’s request. The FBI carried out standard authentification analysis of 27,000 of the photographs and concluded that it could not “definitively rule out the possibility of tampering“. The report emerged at a crucial juncture in the dirty war being waged against Syria – just as members of Congress were pushing for increased “aid” for “rebels” and the creation of No-Fly-Zones and safe-zones for the U.S terrorist proxies disguised as “moderates”. Those members — including House Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman Rep. Ed Royce and ranking minority member Rep. Eliot Engelwere sponsor and co-sponsor of the subsequent Caesar bill, introduced in March 2017.
The bill had previously hit obstacles within the Obama administration in October 2016, when it was perceived that Obama was effectively trying to weaken the bill in favour of maintaining the ceasefire agreement with Moscow that was still active at that time.
The Caesar bill – Caesar Syria Civilian Protection Act of 2017/2018 was a means of increasing economic sanctions against Syria – never anything more than collective punishment for the Syrian people who have resisted eight years of regime change war that has decimated their infrastructure and severely affected their ability to survive economically.
Rapp defended the Caesar bill:
“It’s important to send the signal that those who engage in war crimes and those who aid and abet them are held to account with tools that are effective, and in the short term the most effective is sanctions”
Historically, sanctions are never effective as leverage against a target government, they are always “effective” against the people of a nation that is struggling to resist the machinations of U.S neo-colonialism. Sanctions are economic terrorism, designed to increase the pressure on those most affected by war and the associated poverty and homelessness. They amount to abject cruelty, compounding an already desperate situation brought about by the military adventurism of globalist nations.
So, Rapp alongside Cadman, has a clear intention to criminalise the Syrian government and to weaken the Syrian nation in preparation for a U.S-friendly regime change operation.
As Peter Ford has remarked – the latest attempt to prosecute President Assad and members of the Syrian government in the ICC is another element in the long running and insidious economic war that has been waged alongside the (failed) miliary campaign to destabilise Syria:
“Having failed in attempted regime change via miltant proxies Syria’s enemies are now embarked on an enterprise to secure the same result by waging economic war which must be justified by constant demonizing of Assad. That is the game being played here.”
Rodney Dixon – Qatar – Rwanda – Former Yugoslavia
Rodney Dixon, lawyer acting for Temple Garden Chambers.
Rodney Dixon is lawyer acting for Temple Garden Chambers who have also submitted a case against President Assad and the Syrian government at the ICC. According to his biography at Legal 500, Dixon appears to have had a long career protecting NATO interests, including:
He has prosecuted and defended before the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) including as defence counsel on behalf of the former Prime Minister of Kosovo in protracted trial, appellate and retrial proceedings. He acted on behalf of the government of Rwanda before the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR).
Christopher Black interpreted this career path as follows:
“So Dixon acted for mass muderer and KLA leader, Hashim Thaci, in a staged trial the ICTY, arranged so that Thaci could be charged but aquitted-a game to give the ICTY some credibility. Thaci is a NATO asset. Dixon also acted as agent for mass murderer Paul Kagame the dictator of Rwanda put in power by the US, UK, Canada etc. and was his agent at the Rwanda tribunal (ICTR) which framed all the accused there as scapegoats for the crimes of Kagame and his western allies.
So, Dixon has been used by the NATO powers to protect their interests and that is his role in the scheme regarding Syria. Looking back on events, if he was at the ICTR in 2007 then he may have been behind the Rwandan government’s demand to have me arrested during my defence of General Nindiliyimana (Chief of Staff, Rwanda Gendarmerie, acquitted on all counts in 2014) when I demanded Kagame be charged with war crimes.”
Dixon has a history of working for Qatari clients. In 2017 Dixon represented three prominent Qatari nationals – who were unlawfully detained and tortured in the UAE between 2013 and 2015 by UAE security officials. In 2018, Dixon chaired a panel of experts calling for an end to the blockade of Qatar by Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Egypt and the UAE. The event was organised by the Arab Organisation for Human Rights in the UK and was held at University College, London.
Qatar has been one of the primary financiers of the terrorist forces that have invaded and occupied areas of Syria during the eight year conflict. The Caesar report was commissioned by London law firm, Carter-Ruck on contract to Qatar. Guy Martin, a specialist in sanctions in international law and partner at Carter Ruck Solicitors was also speaking on the panel protesting the sanctions against Qatar, chaired by Dixon.
According to French investigative journalist, Thierry Meyssan, Dixon had already declared an interest in pursuing the Syrian goverment for alleged war crimes, based upon the Carter Ruck-orchestrated Caesar Report:
“Mr. Dixon had already declared that he intended to pursue the Syrian leaders for « crimes against humanity ». He based his case on the Caesar Report; a document made public by Qatar, via the London cabinet Carter-Ruck, on 20 January 2014, two days before the peace negotiations of Geneva 2.”
The only conclusion to be drawn after examining the origins and motives of the cases being brought against President Assad at the ICC – is that the driver behind them is not international justice but regime change which is the ultimate goal of the U.S alliance in Syria. This renders any “humanitarian” outrage expressed by the legal entities involved nothing more than hollow rhetoric, a marketing ploy to elicit sympathy for the further persecution of a nation that has refused to submit to an unprecedented level of military pressure by terrorist proxy.
Expert opinions
I asked John Laughland how this case, if accepted by the ICC, reflects the nature and state of “international justice” in our world today. Laughland replied:
“International justice is political justice. Typically, heads of state are judged by international courts for acts of state. They are never judged as actual perpetrators and therefore the acts adjudicated are state acts for which they have state responsibility. The trials are therefore not criminal trials in the proper sense of the word because state acts cannot be compared to private crimes, as they often are by the ideologues of international justice. I have explained this at length in the final chapter of the second edition of my book, “A History of Political Trials from Charles I to Charles Taylor” (Oxford: Peter Lang, 2016).
Much of what I have been warning about for over a decade has now been proved true. For instance, Laurent Gbagbo, the former president of Ivory Coast, was the subject of a political indictment in 2011, the same year as Gaddafi, and this indictment was used to get him out of his home country (just as Charles Taylor was removed from Liberia for explicitly political reasons – again, see my book). Yet earlier this year, more than eight years later, he was found innocent and released. A court which imprisons and innocent man for eight years should be immediately closed down.”
Like Ford, Laughland argued that if the case is accepted “the re-integration of Syria into the international or regional system will be impeded. Some states will back off from building bridges with Damascus” – another example of the weaponisation of “international justice” to punish an independent nation for protecting its interests and refusing to comply with U.S demands for ultimate control over their internal and external affairs.
Laughland did not believe that Syria could succeed with a positive engagement with the ICC, he believes that Damascus should ignore any proceedings at the ICC, “especially as they would be clearly illegal under international law”. Laughland cited the case of President Al-Bashir of Sudan:
“Ignoring the ICC was what President Al-Bashir of Sudan has done, and it has worked very well. Other states have ignored the warrant against him too, notably South Africa, which refused to arrest him on a visit there. This is one of the reasons why the ICC is in such spectacular crisis.”
Christopher Black also referred to the case of Laurent Gbagbo:
“If the prosecutor accepted the case on clearly trumped up evidence as it did with regard to President Gbagbo of Ivory Coast then it would confirm once again that the ICC is not an organ of international justice but a propaganda organ of US and British and EU imperialism.”
Black also concurred that there would be negative implications for President Assad and the Syrian government should the case be accepted by the ICC:
“President Assad can expect that he will be labeled in the western mass media as a war criminal in a mass propaganda campaign, and that this propaganda will bombard the Syrian people to undermine the Syrian government. To try to overcome that I suggest the formation of an international committee for his defence as we formed for President Milosevic to include not only international lawyers who support Syria but also artists, intellectuals, poets, etc who can try to counter this propaganda because Syrian denials will just be dismissed.”
Dr Marcus Papadopoulos had a more optimistic viewpoint:
“From the time I began giving television interviews on Syria, beginning in 2011, I have said that most Syrians, either actively or passively, support President Assad. And I hold the view that even more Syrians support their leader today. There are numerous factors in accounting for the Syrian people’s support of their president, and a key one is that Mr Assad guarantees Syria’s traditional status as a secular, multi-confessional country.
In light of their support, together with how they repelled Western, Turkish, Israeli and Saudi aggression, I do not believe that the Syrian people will pay any notice to what happens at the ICC regarding President Assad. Indeed, I know that Syrians are asking – demanding, in fact – for Barack Obama, Erdogan and Mohammad bin Salman to be tried for crimes against Syrian civilians and Syrian prisoners of war by Islamist terrorists, such as the so-called Free Syrian Army, who all three leaders were supporting in Syria.”
Papadopoulos drew parallels between the politically motivated case against former Yugoslav leader, President Slobadan Milosevic and the threat of an equally politically motivated case against President Assad and members of the Syrian government:
“There are most certainly precedents, most notably the unfounded and politically-motivated case against President Slobodan Milosevic. That case against the former Yugoslav leader laid the foundation for what may very well transpire at the ICC against President Assad. But, Mr Milosevic faced Western aggression on his own, at a time when Russia was incapable of finding fuel for its tanks so that they could parade on Red Square. Conversely, Mr Assad faced Western aggression with Russia by his side, with Moscow capable of finding fuel for its aircraft so that they could fly all the way to Syria and take part in the fight against Wahhabi terrorism there.
So if the ICC does indict the Syrian president, it will not alter the reality on the ground in Syria – namely, that the Syrian people have prevailed over the hordes of Al-Qaeda and ISIS. Turning to whether the ICC will proceed to hear the case against President Assad, this probably will happen. But consider this: America, Britain, France, Turkey and Saudi Arabia are keen to start doing business with Syria again. In light of that, dropping the case against President Assad might be in the interests of the aforementioned countries.”
Conclusions – the U.S is riding roughshod over international justice
In April 2019, President Trump and the U.S administration revoked the visa of the ICC’s chief prosecutor, Fatou Bensouda. The U.S warned that they would take action against anyone from the ICC who dared to investigate allegations of war crimes levied against U.S personnel in Afghanistan.
Ironically the U.S claimed its citizens and military personnel are outside the ICC’s jurisdiction – the ICC claims that Afghanistan is within its purview because the country had ratified the Rome Statute which established the court in 2003. A prime example of the perversion of “international justice” to serve the powerful global hegemons.
Shortly after, Israeli media reported that Trump had decreed that Israel should be exempt from prosecution at the ICC. One exceptionalist nation protecting another while both are guilty of violations of international law, human rights law and have committed a catalogue of war crimes and violated UN resolutions throughout their history. The United States and Israel are effectively exploiting the ICC without any intention of recognising its jurisdiction in relation to their own transparent criminality.
So, while the U.S legal machinery is determined to crush the Syrian government under the weight of its global tyranny, the same entity will not entertain any investigation into its bloody record of military interference abroad nor will it permit any legal pursuance of its allies for the human rights crimes they are persistently committing. This renders the entire concept of “international justice” a travesty and nothing more than a rogue state protectionist racket.
The campaign to prosecute President Assad at the ICC is a misdirection away from the real criminals in the UK/U.S Coalition who have violated every related element of international law in their campaign to destabilise Syria and the region. Without international law we are living in a world of the utmost insecurity where the most powerful can denigrate human rights in their surge to dominance and resource plundering at will from weaker and less supported nations.
The case against Syria at the ICC is the weaponisation of “international justice” to pressurise a militarily undefeated nation into submitting to and complying with U.S geopolitical doctrine. This process will benefit those within the interventionist alliance whose goal is regime change in Syria, it will not benefit the more rational political players who do, perhaps, accept that working with President Assad is the only way to re-establish bilateral economic relations with Syria.
As always, this is all about propaganda and the mobilisation of bias and not about “justice”. It is a colossal act of misdirection. Those countries and individuals who have armed, financed and promoted the terrorist extremism and savagery that has ravaged Syria and her people for eight years should be in the dock.
While the ICC is effectively controlled by the US/UK criminal ruling classes, there will be no true “international justice” only the facade of justice meted out against nations that are deliberately deprived of the opportunity to defend themselves.
Global Elites Started The Russia Nonsense
Ted Eytan (Flickr/CC)
By Thomas Farnan | Human Events | May 24, 2019
Attorney General William Barr has turned the attention of the Russia probe to its origin: who started this and why? The answer, as in all the best crime dramas, is probably hiding in plain sight.
On July 13, 2016, British academic Dr. Andrew Foxall penned an op-ed in the New York Times, “Why Putin Loves Brexit.” He blamed Russia for the previous month’s Brexit vote, adding in a little noted aside:
The United States is so concerned over Moscow’s determination to exploit European disunity that in January, James R. Clapper Jr., the director of national intelligence, began a review of Russia’s clandestine funding of European parties.
The British aristocracy has a condescending view of the hoi polloi who voted for Brexit, regarding them as easily manipulated Pygmalion-like by smarter people.
Bingo! The Obama administration was spying on conservative European political parties. Which means, almost necessarily under the Five Eyes Agreement, foreign agents were returning the favor and spying on the Trump campaign.
On August 11, 2018, I wrote:
The British aristocracy has a condescending view of the hoi polloi who voted for Brexit, regarding them as easily manipulated Pygmalion-like by smarter people. They assumed Vladimir Putin was somehow playing Professor Henry Higgins to the flower girls who voted to reject the EU, because that’s how they see the world. Among the Cambridge class, this simple prejudice renders Russian collusion a first principle with no need for supporting evidence….
Without supporting evidence to prove their fantastical worldview, the global elite set out to manufacture some.
First up was Christopher Steele, who hasn’t set foot in Russia since 2009. He wears as a badge the claim that Putin hates him which, if true, means he has no real Russian sources. Maybe because of that, Steele’s farcical dossier on Trump was not enough for the FBI to open an investigation, and these international men of mystery needed something more.
They invited George Papadopoulos to London, used a Maltese asset disguised as a Russian agent – Joseph Mifsud – to feed him a whopper about Hillary Clinton’s emails, then claimed he repeated the lie to Andrew Downer, an Australian diplomat with ties to the Clinton Foundation.
That was the final straw that caused lovestruck counterintelligence specialist Peter Strzok to open an FBI investigation into the Trump campaign which he called “Crossfire Hurricane.” Apropos, because when MI6 was joined on its flank by an FBI investigation, it was officially a crossfire: two rogue intelligence services raining fire upon Trump.
Conspiracies are mere abstractions unless they do something criminal. The Russian interference fantasy needed a crime. The DNC sold a doozy of an actus reus to the FBI after John Podesta’s negligent disclosure of damaging Clinton campaign emails: Putin did it.
Conveniently, the FBI delegated the inspection of the computer servers to CrowdStrike, an insider paid by the DNC. James Comey testified to the Senate Intelligence Committee in January 2017 that CrowdStrike was “a highly respected private company.”
What he failed to mention was that a month before his testimony, CrowdStrike had been caught falsely blaming Russia for a hack into a Ukrainian artillery computer app.
In other words, at the same time this “highly respected private company” was blaming the Russians for stealing the Clinton campaign’s emails, it was fabricating a different Russian hack to serve Ukrainian misinformation.
Why all the fuss about Russia? Liberal elites – who tended to love the Soviet Union – hate present day Russia, which dares to assert nationality and culture against the pieties of the one-world-order crowd.
The Patriarch of the Orthodox Church passes on all legislation in the country. Putin put the girl rock band Pussy Riot in prison for desecrating an altar, a crime that has not been punished since the 13th century. President Obama sent gay representatives to the Sochi Olympics on his behalf, in protest.
That explains the leftists, but how about Republican elites? Mitch McConnell recently took to the floor of the U.S. Senate to declare the “case closed” on collusion, urging republicans and democrats to unite against Putin’s election interference.
That’s a problem. If Trump was a product of KGB-esque intrigue, then Hillary is a victim of meddling. Trump is merely an un-indicted hapless beneficiary. The deplorables are not only racist, stupid losers, they are also Putin’s unwitting stooges.
The same non-evidence cited to show collusion, though, undergirds the “but Russia interfered” stupidity. It is a three-legged stool that teetered for a while upon Christopher Steele, Joseph Mifsud, and CrowdStrike, and has now crashed to the ground.
President Eisenhower – the furthest thing from a conspiracy theorist America has ever produced – famously warned in his farewell address to beware “the military industrial complex.”
The great funding pipeline that makes Washington D.C. the wealthiest region in America feeds mostly on military spending which still, nearly thirty years removed from the Cold War, requires a Russian enemy.
Unconventional candidate Donald Trump rattled Washington to its core in March 2016 when he wondered about NATO’s continued relevance and questioned America’s foreign policy in Ukraine.
That’s when this “Putin’s candidate” stuff started among both Republicans and Democrats, egged on by Ukrainians – who almost certainly fed Steele the fake kompromat in the dossier.
Russia may be a convenient boogeyman that serves as a necessary foil to both sides in the Washington establishment. But, for once, let’s fight the real enemy: the global elites who started this nonsense.
EU Establishment Set for Popular Rebuke in Elections
Strategic Culture Foundation | May 24, 2019
Over this weekend 28 member states of the European Union go to the polls in an impressive exercise of democracy. Polling takes place over four days, ending on Sunday. The full results won’t be finalized until next week. But already it is widely anticipated that so-called populist parties across the bloc will make significant gains in winning seats in the 751-member chamber of the European Parliament.
One glaring anomaly is that Britain is participating in these elections, even though, in theory, it was supposed to have departed the EU in March. The Brexit wrangling has persisted without a clear result, meaning that the United Kingdom is obliged to hold EU parliamentary elections like the other 27 member states. European parliamentarians elected in Britain may not actually take their seats in Brussels or Strasburg because the Brexit process when complete – whenever that happens – will make their seats redundant.
Another anomaly is that the 2019 elections have been overshadowed with political and media claims in the run-up to the polls that Russia would launch an “interference campaign” to sway voters to vote for political parties opposed to the EU status quo.
Yet on the eve of the ballots being cast, Western news media and various EU security pundits have had to admit that there has been no evidence of the anticipated “Kremlin influence campaign”. Such an alleged Russian meddling campaign in the EU is an echo of the long-running, baseless narrative applied to the US presidential elections in 2016. No evidence has ever been produced to substantiate either scenario.
Russia has consistently and vehemently denied any such notion of “peddling influence” over Western voters. But the great anomaly is that Western media and European security agencies are having to admit that there is no indication that Russia has targeted the EU elections with a campaign of media interference.
The rise of nationalist, anti-immigrant, Eurosceptic, anti-austerity, anti-war, anti-capitalist political movements across Europe is simply due to this: a surge in anti-establishment parties. The surge of protests among European citizens against a neoliberal establishment has nothing to do with alleged “Russian interference” and everything to do with an inherent democratic deficit in the 28-member bloc.
By trying to blame Russia for “malignly influencing” EU citizens and funding “anti-EU parties”, as the government scandal in Austria sought to do this week, is an act of desperate denial politics by the EU establishment as to its own dire political and economic failings. Such official denial and scapegoating of Moscow is only fueling even more popular protest and instability within the EU.
French President Emmanuel Macron this week typically blamed “collusion between nationalist parties and foreign interests for threatening the existence of Europe”. Macron’s elitist views are symptomatic of the establishment malaise which is actually at the core of the problem in the EU’s crumbling cohesion and authority.
Britain’s Brexit referendum held in 2016 was a forewarning of the popular dissent across the EU towards an establishment in Brussels perceived as anti-democratic, beholden to big finance and Neo-liberal capitalist austerity, as well as kowtowing to a Washington-led consensus for illegal overseas wars and NATO expansionism.
The EU status quo has led to massive problems of immigration from pandering to America’s illegal warmongering in the Middle East and North Africa. European citizens have become awake to those problems and are opposed to the degeneration of Europe as an adjunct of Washington’s imperialism. That dissent is also manifest in many European citizens being opposed to the EU’s compliance with US-led sanctions and hostility towards Russia. The fact of that does not mean that Russia is somehow influencing opposition movements. It is simply a fact that European citizens are in revolt against an anti-democratic status quo that is all too often servile to a transatlantic axis that is not in their fundamental democratic interests, like so many other policies that the EU status quo slavishly adheres to.
Emmanuel Macron and other EU establishment figures may push the fantasy that the bloc is under threat from “far-right nationalist parties in cahoots with the Kremlin”.
The fact is that the EU is simply perceived by a growing number of its 512 million citizens as a monolith that is unresponsive to democratic needs. That’s why they are rebelling against the status quo by voting for a range of anti-establishment parties. If the EU can’t recognize the democratic impulse from within its own bloc then its future is destined for further disruption as the Brexit movement portends. Blaming “external enemies” like Russia for its own inherent political problems is being proven for the desperate denial that it is.
The people are speaking this weekend. The EU establishment better listen.
Rand Corp: how to destroy Russia
By Manlio Dinucci | Voltairenet | May 21, 2019
The conclusions of the latest confidential report by the Rand Corporation were recently made public in a « Brief ». They explain how to wage a new Cold War against Russia. Certain recommendations have already been implemented, but this systemic exposure enables us to understand their true objective.
Force the adversary to expand recklessly in order to unbalance him, and then destroy him. This is not the description of a judo hold, but a plan against Russia elaborated by the Rand Corporation, the most influential think tank in the USA. With a staff of thousands of experts, Rand presents itself as the world’s most reliable source for Intelligence and political analysis for the leaders of the United States and their allies.
The Rand Corp prides itself on having contributed to the elaboration of the long-term strategy which enabled the United States to win the Cold War, by forcing the Soviet Union to consume its own economic resources in the strategic confrontation. It is this model which was the inspiration for the new plan, Overextending and Unbalancing Russia, published by Rand [1]. According to their analysts, Russia remains a powerful adversary for the United States in certain fundamental sectors. To handle this opposition, the USA and their allies will have to pursue a joint long-term strategy which exploits Russia’s vulnerabilities. So Rand analyses the various means with which to unbalance Russia, indicating for each the probabilities of success, the benefits, the cost, and the risks for the USA.
Rand analysts estimate that Russia’s greatest vulnerability is that of its economy, due to its heavy dependency on oil and gas exports. The income from these exports can be reduced by strengthening sanctions and increasing the energy exports of the United States. The goal is to oblige Europe to diminish its importation of Russian natural gas, and replace it by liquefied natural gas transported by sea from other countries.
Another way of destabilising the Russian economy in the long run is to encourage the emigration of qualified personnel, particularly young Russians with a high level of education. In the ideological and information sectors, it would be necessary to encourage internal contestation and at the same time, to undermine Russia’s image on the exterior, by excluding it from international forums and boycotting the international sporting events that it organises.
In the geopolitical sector, arming Ukraine would enable the USA to exploit the central point of Russia’s exterior vulnerability, but this would have to be carefully calculated in order to hold Russia under pressure without slipping into a major conflict, which it would win.
In the military sector, the USA could enjoy high benefits, with low costs and risks, by increasing the number of land-based troops from the NATO countries working in an anti-Russian function. The USA can enjoy high probabilities of success and high benefits, with moderate risks, especially by investing mainly in strategic bombers and long-range attack missiles directed against Russia.
Leaving the INF Treaty and deploying in Europe new intermediate-range nuclear missiles pointed at Russia would lead to high probabilities of success, but would also present high risks. By calibrating each option to gain the desired effect – conclude the Rand analysts – Russia would end up by paying the hardest price in a confrontation, but the USA would also have to invest huge resources, which would therefore no longer be available for other objectives. This is also prior warning of a coming major increase in USA/NATO military spending, to the disadvantage of social budgets.
This is the future that is planned out for us by the Rand Corporation, the most influential think tank of the Deep State – in other words the underground centre of real power gripped by the economic, financial, and military oligarchies – which determines the strategic choices not only of the USA, but all of the Western world.
The « options » set out by the plan are in reality no more than variants of the same war strategy, of which the price in sacrifices and risks is paid by us all.
Translation by Pete Kimberley
Source: Il Manifesto (Italy)
[1] Overextending and Unbalancing Russia. Assessing the Impact of Cost-Imposing Options, by James Dobbins, Raphael S. Cohen, Nathan Chandler, Bryan Frederick, Edward Geist, Paul DeLuca, Forrest E. Morgan, Howard J. Shatz, Brent Williams, Rand Corporation, May 2019.
UK to warn NATO allies of Russian cyber attack campaign
Press TV | May 23, 2019
Britain is providing information to 16 allies in the NATO military alliance about Russia’s cyber activities in their territories over the last 18 months, Foreign Minister Jeremy Hunt will announce later on Thursday, a statement that is expected to further muddy the waters between London and Moscow.
Hunt will make the remarks during a speech at the NATO Cyber Defense Pledge Conference in London, where he is expected to accuse Russia’s intelligence services of running a “global campaign” that has targeted the critical infrastructure of at least 16 member-states, according to extracts of the speech released by his department.
“This global campaign also seeks to compromise central government networks,” he will warn the meeting, which is to be attended by the alliance’s head Jens Stoltenberg.
“I can disclose that in the last 18 months, the National Cyber Security Centre has shared information and assessments with 16 NATO Allies — and even more nations outside the Alliance — of Russian cyber activity in their countries,” Hunt will add.
The British FM will call on NATO’s all 29 members to team up against Moscow and deliver a “proportionate” response if Russia ever attacks.
“Together, we possess options for responding to any attacks. We should be prepared to use them.”
The remarks come as ties between London and Moscow are at a deadlock. Tensions began last year, when the UK accused Russia of orchestrating a poison attack against former double agen Sergey Novichok in Salisbury.
London expelled 23 Russian diplomats in March after accusing Moscow of masterminding a nerve agent attack against Russia’s former double agent Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia on the British soil in March.
Russia has denied any involvement in the attack, dismissing the UK accusations as an extension of the anti-Russia propaganda campaign by the West.
London since the Salisbury attack has stepped up its anti-Russia rhetoric by backing a NATO buildup on Russia’s borders while siding with Ukraine in a standoff with the government of Russian President Vladimir Putin.
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From the Archives
Registered Israeli foreign agent driving contrived campus antisemitism crisis
By Wyatt Reed | The Grayzone | December 17, 2023
Lawsuits accusing top US universities of harboring antisemitism all originate from one source: a corporate law firm that fielded the pro-settler ex-US ambassador to Israel, and which was registered as a foreign agent of an Israeli principal as recently as 2021.
The firm now represents professional Israel lobby activists posing as victimized “Jewish students” and seeking to crush the free speech rights of Palestine solidarity activists. … continue
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