British spy powers threaten freedom of expression, UN told
RT | October 11, 2016
Human rights groups warned the United Nations this week that a new British law allowing police to see journalists’ communications could threaten sensitive sources and the freedom of expression.
The English Pen writers association and the freedom of speech group Article 19 told the UN Human Rights Council that the Investigatory Powers Bill would jeopardize journalistic sources, particularly whistleblowers.
The Bill, which has been dubbed the “snooper’s charter” by critics, would allow British intelligence agencies and police to intercept communications between anyone in the country, including mobile phone conversations and internet records such as websites visited.
The Investigatory Powers Bill “remains vague and lacks adequate protections for freedom of expression and privacy, and if enacted will introduce broad powers that threaten to undermine these rights,” a joint letter by the organizations to the UN said.
“There is no upper limit on the number of people whose private communications may be intercepted or whose data may be collected and retained.
“In many instances, anonymity is the precondition upon which information is conveyed by a source to a journalist (or human rights organization). This may be motivated by fear of repercussions which might adversely affect their physical safety or job security. When sources cannot be sure of protection, the public loses its right to know critical information.”
The letter branded such interference with journalists’ private communications “inherently disproportionate.”
Almost 4,000 people have signed a petition launched by the industry magazine Press Gazette demanding UK Home Secretary Amber Rudd guarantee more serious protections for journalists and their sources in the Bill. The call was also supported by several British media groups, the National Union of Journalists and the News Media Association
The Bill is currently at its report stage in the House of Lords, but the English Pen and Article 19 believe it should go back for “fundamental reconsideration” by its authors.
It emerged on Monday that the new shadow attorney general Shami Chakrabarti, who just a few months ago said the Bill needed redrafting, is now planning to abstain on the vote in the Lords.
The opposition Labour Party will not be tabling amendments and is not expected to vote against the new powers.
Is Andrew Mitchell MP really suggesting we start WWIII?
OffGuardian | October 11, 2016
The House of Commons is set to have an “emergency debate” on the declaration of a no-fly zone over Syria, specifically to “defend Aleppo from Russia”. The debate, called by Andrew Mitchell, will be over whether or not NATO planes should confront, and attack, Russian jets. Speaking on the BBC’s Today programme Mitchell said:
… what we do say is that the international community has an avowed responsibility to protect and that protection must be exerted. If that means confronting Russian air power defensively, on behalf of the innocent people on the ground who we are trying to protect, then we should do that.”
He added:
I think that Britain should explore with its allies how it would enforce a no-fly zone.”
Well, we can save Britain and her allies some time here, there’s nothing to “explore”. There is only one way to enforce a no-fly zone, and that is by shooting down any plane that violates it. There is literally no other action to be taken.
Curiously, when the Today host John Humphrys pointed out – very reasonably – that this is tantamount to declaration of war, Mitchell disagreed:
It’s not a declaration of war against Russia but it is an absolute declaration that we will seek to protect the innocent victims of these war crimes.”
…. without any reference to that fact that, from Russia’s POV, it would DEFINITELY be an act of war.
This debate is, at best, some ridiculous macho-posturing from an idiot who wants to be seen as “tough”, and at worst an indication that the British political class are literally, totally divorced from reality. Either way it is a highly dangerous situation, because whatever the intentions of Mitchell and the Commons at large, there’s no telling how or when the lunatics in the Pentagon will pick up this ball and run with it. There are crazy hawks in Washington who genuinely want a war with Russia, and it is the responsibility of all people with any sense to box in this element and limit their opportunities to incite chaos.
If nothing else the debate is the first real test of Jeremy Corbyn since his re-election as Labour leader. Will he stand up to the increasingly bizarre and dangerous view of the Syrian conflict being presented in the Western press? Or will he vacillate and equivocate in the worst traditions of Britain’s soft-left non-opposition?
Watch this space.
Boris Johnson calls for Russian Embassy protests during Syria debate
RT | October 11, 2016
UK Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson has used his debut at the House of Commons dispatch box to accuse Russia of bombing an aid convoy in Aleppo, and asked why anti-war activists have not mounted protests outside the Russian Embassy in London.
“Where is the Stop The War coalition at the moment? Where are they?” asked Johnson, during an emergency parliamentary debate on the situation in Aleppo, Syria.
“All the available evidence therefore points to Russian responsibility for the atrocity,” said Johnson, referring to the bombing of the UN aid convoy on September 20 that resulted in the deaths of 20 people, and the destruction of 18 trucks, which he had previously called a “war crime.”
“There is no commensurate horror, it seems to me, amongst some of those anti-war protest groups,” said Johnson.
“If Russia continues in its current path, then I believe that great nation is in danger of becoming a pariah nation,” said the Foreign Secretary, who was appointed by Theresa May in July.
Johnson also called for further sanctions against Russia, which is already under several Western embargoes over Crimea, and the conflict in eastern Ukraine.
“We’ve got to make sure we have innovative ways of getting aid into Aleppo, and as several members have said, we have to step up the pressure on Assad’s regime through sanctions and on the Russians through sanctions,” said the Conservative politician.
He also raised the possibility of an international legal effort to bring to justice those allegedly responsible for war crimes in Syria, a day after France and UN Secretary Ban Ki-Moon made the same appeal.
“I’m personally very attracted to the idea of getting these people [war criminals] to come before the International Criminal Court. That’s certainly something I would like to pursue,” said Johnson.
URGENT: MSM Syria Lies NEED TO BE EXPOSED…Before It’s Too Late
corbettreport – October 9, 2016
The world once again finds itself hurtling to the brink of war, and once again the establishment mouthpiece puppet propaganda media is leading the charge. This time around their lies defy description. In the sick world of the would-be warmongers, child beheading terrorist scum are now the heroes. The blood of the innocents that spill from here on in covers the hands of the mainstream media propagandists.
SHOW NOTES: https://www.corbettreport.com/?p=20107
London in arms talks with Riyadh despite Saudi war crimes in Yemen
Press TV – October 7, 2016
The UK’s leading arms maker, BAE Systems, says it is in talks with Saudi Arabia to secure a multi-billion-dollar arms contract, amid outrage over the use of British-made weapons by Riyadh in Yemen.
“Discussions between BAE Systems, the UK government and Saudi Arabia are progressing,” the London-based weapons maker said on Thursday.
BAE Systems also noted that it was working to define the scope of cooperation between the UK and the Arab kingdom over the next five years.
Under the terms of the contract, the multinational aerospace and electronics giant will provide training, support and upgrades for Hawk aircraft the UK has sold to Saudi Arabia. It also hopes to sell 48 Eurofighter Typhoon jets to the Saudis for a reported £4 billion ($4.97bn) under a separate deal.
This is while British lawmakers from a powerful committee said last month that there was evidence that UK-made weapons have been used in Yemen in violation of international humanitarian law.
“The weight of evidence of violations of international humanitarian law by the Saudi-led coalition is now so great, that it is very difficult to continue to support Saudi Arabia,” the Committee on Arms Export Control (CAEC) said.
The committee also raised serious concerns about the UK’s commitment to international law regarding the sale of arms.
CAEC inquiry chair Chris White stressed that the government must now take urgent action in halting the sale of weapons to Saudi Arabia.
UK supports repressive regimes
Meanwhile, the British government was accused on Thursday of sacrificing human rights in order to access oil from repressive regimes in the Persian Gulf region.
Human rights group War on Want said in a report that the UK regards Persian Gulf states as vital partners in securing Britain’s energy interests.
“From the sale of vast quantities of tear gas and other crowd control tools, to the training of sniper units used to put down pro-democracy protests, the UK government, working closely with a large number of private companies, are key partners for repressive regimes in the [Persian] Gulf, with devastating consequences for democracy and human rights,” said Dr. Sam Raphael, the report’s author and senior lecturer in international relations at the University of Westminster.
According to the report, Bahrain and Saudi Arabia are among the Persian Gulf countries regarded as priority markets. The two Arab kingdoms have been widely criticized by international advocacy groups for their human rights record.
London has been one of the biggest suppliers of weapons to Riyadh for 40 years.
According to sources, the UK supplied export licenses for close to £3 billion ($3.73bn) worth of arms to Saudi Arabia in 2015. The British government has also been accused of being involved in guiding the Saudi military aggression in Yemen.
Since the beginning of the Saudi war against Yemen in March of last year, nearly 10,000 people, including over 2,000 children, have been killed.
Making Al-Qaeda propaganda for Pentagon: Ex-PR worker describes secret campaign to RT
RT | October 4, 2016
A former employee of the UK PR firm that was hired by the Pentagon to create fake terrorist videos in Iraq told RT that he arrived thinking he would be working with media agencies, but ended up creating materials for a secret propaganda campaign instead.
Bell Pottinger’s staff was stationed inside a highly secured US military and intelligence HQ at Camp Victory in Baghdad.
“The arrival there [in Camp Victory in Iraq] was quite a shock… very very, I guess, distressing, really… You just felt you as if you didn’t know what was going to happen,” Martin Wells, a former employee of Bell Pottinger who worked for the US military in Iraq from 2006 to 2008, told RT.
The news that the Pentagon had paid Bell Pottinger over half a billion dollars to create fake terrorist videos in Iraq hit the headlines on Sunday when it was divulged by the Bureau of Investigative Journalism, which had received the information from Wells.
Wells says that he was initially told that he would be working on news.
“As it transpired, it was news, but not news as I expected. I expected it to be doing stuff for news agencies such as yourselves and Reuters. And just providing footage for them,” he said.
However, the reality turned out to be quite different from what the video editor had anticipated. Wells said that when he arrived at his workplace, he was introduced to the American intelligence staff there.
“I still at that point had no idea what I was doing, but I knew as soon as I walked through that door I certainly wasn’t doing news… Then, later as I went through… and worked out what I was actually doing, it transpired that it was essentially… a form of propaganda.”
The media was set completely abuzz when it was revealed that the Pentagon had paid Bell Pottinger $540 million for contracts from 2007 to 2011, with another contract for $120 million signed in 2006. The firm ended its work with the Pentagon in 2011.
Bell Pottinger is known for serving an array of controversial clients, including the Saudi government and Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet’s foundation.
The firm reported to the CIA, the National Security Council, and the Pentagon on the project, with a mandate to portray Al-Qaeda in a negative light and track suspected sympathizers. Critics claim, however, that the videos may have actually promoted the terrorists’ agenda instead.
The Bell Pottinger operation, which began soon after the US invasion of Iraq, was tasked with promoting “democratic elections” for the administration before moving on to more lucrative psychological and information operations.
The firm created television ads showing Al-Qaeda in a negative light, as well as content which looked as though it had come from “Arabic TV.” The videos were created to play on Real Player, which needs an internet connection to run. The CDs were embedded with a code linked to Google Analytics that allowed the military to track the IP addresses the videos were played on.
They would also craft scripts for Arabic soap operas in which characters would reject terrorism with favorable consequences. The firm also created fake Al-Qaeda propaganda videos, which were then planted by the military in homes that they raided.
“In terms of the [fake Al-Qaeda] VCDs, I was the only one, who while I was there, cut those. Nobody else was tasked with those because I was running the department. The footage was also given to us, and it was genuine Al-Qaeda footage that they’d shot, and we then repurposed this for our footage to put on the VCDs and then went out and dropped them,” he explained.
“Most of the stuff we did went out on local news, on national news, and would be broadcast in different countries in the region. But the VCDs were targeted at Al-Qaeda themselves. That was used by marines – left of raids amongst a bunch of VCDs people had been using anyway. If you watched that when it opened up, it was on a player that was linked to an analytical site, so wherever in the world you watched it, it could be tracked. So you’d know where it was played, and the IP address would flash up, so you’d basically know who had watched it,” he said.
Humanitarians for War: Language and the New Orientalists
By Alex Ray | OffGuardian | October 5, 2016
A UK House of Commons inquiry into the 2011 attack on Libya and the country’s subsequent collapse has found what many suspected: NATO and its Gulf Arab allies used their ‘Responsibility To Protect’ to launch their attack even though:
“… the proposition that Muammar Gaddafi would have ordered the massacre of civilians in Benghazi was not supported by the available evidence.”
Though the MPs’ damning report blames Libya’s political and economic collapse on former Prime Minister David Cameron, the manipulation of public opinion to lay the basis for war is built upon longstanding – but now sharpened – processes and semantic structures that prepare populations to accept punitive action against a targeted ‘other’.
In an earlier example, on October 10 1990, a young Kuwaiti woman known as ‘Nayirah’ testified before the United States’ Congressional Human Rights Caucus that invading Iraqi soldiers had gone into hospitals and thrown babies from their incubators.
Nayirah turned out to be the daughter of the then Kuwaiti ambassador to Washington. Her testimony was false and prepared by a PR company. But it was solid gold for the US campaign to intervene militarily. Amnesty International provided influential support for Nayirah’s story. The ‘depravity’ of Saddam Hussein’s government was proffered by governments and mainstream media as a key reason for military intervention.
In March, 2011, Libyan opposition fighters and a Libyan psychologist, Dr Seham Sergewa told foreign media that pro-Qaddhafi fighters were being ordered to carry out viagra-fuelled mass rapes. The claim – spread by Al-Jazeera – was this time picked up by the prosecutor of the International Criminal Court, Luis Moreno-Ocampo. Although Amnesty International questioned some of the claims this time, the rape story was one of many myths that contributed to the NATO bombardment of Libya – the beginning of the end of the Libyan state.
The ‘humanitarian’ battle cry of 2011 was another manifestation of neo-Orientalist rhetoric directed towards out-of-favour leaders or groups.
Edward Said’s “Orientalism” referred to Western stereotyping of Arabs and Arab culture through a colonial lens. Currently, Neo-Orientalism is typically based on sensational claims that target ‘others’ (leaders or groups) by depicting them as intrinsically alien, evil and irrational, in order to justify aggression against them.
Qaddhafi’s relationship with the West was full of moments that prepared us to unquestionably accept claims of his barbarity – to the extent that Hillary Clinton could mock his torture and murder by rebels.
Regardless of his positive and negative attributes, the language used to describe Qaddhafi – a son of peasant goat herders – was often insulting and unprofessional. Journalist and historian Gwynne Dyer for example: “
… resplendent in the gold brocade robes that he probably made from his mother’s curtains and wearing his usual bug-eye sunglasses… The world’s oldest teenager…”
The New York Times treated Qaddhafi’s international visits featuring his bedouin tent as a circus fit for New York’s Coney Island rather than an important cultural symbol of Libya’s or Qaddhafi’s heritage. One wonders whether anyone would dare attempt similar treatment of Australia’s Aboriginal Tent Embassy which has been a feature of the capital Canberra since 1972.
There were numerous stories of the ‘chauvinistic’ displays of Qaddhafi’s ‘Amazonian’ republican guard. However ‘Amazonian’ legends of powerful female bodyguards have a long history in North Africa and especially Libya. Greek mythology – the source of Amazonian legends – speaks of Queen Myrina the Amazonian queen who led military victories in Libya. Under Islam there was the wealthy and powerful King Musa I of Mali, who was protected by such an Amazonian troop while undertaking the Hajj in 1332. It seems not a single commentator bothered to note the antecedents of such symbolism before resorting to ridicule.
It is not only the media and politicians who join the neo-Orientalist derision of disagreeable leaders. Descriptions of Qaddhafi in Harvard professor and historian Roger Owen’s recent work The Rise and Fall of Arab Presidents for Life, exhibit shades of cultural superiority. After indulging in psychological speculation about Arab leaders, Owen (p.199) criticises Qaddhafi’s relationship with the African Union particularly his “bringing African heads of state to Libya and posturing before them in ‘African’ costumes of his own design with absurd-looking little round caps”.
Aside from Owen’s dismissal of the African Union, he sees no irony in ridiculing Qaddafi for doing exactly what the leaders of the world’s most powerful countries do at APEC and G20 meetings – put on ‘absurd’ cultural uniforms like the imagined Australian stockmen’s outfits worn by APEC leaders in Sydney in 2007:
John Howard and George W. Bush at APEC in Sydney 2007, Source: The Guardian
Owen depicts Arab governments as wholly subject to the whims of a strongman leader. While the West – and sometimes Arab leaders themselves – like to portray authoritarian governments as ruled by maniacal and all-powerful men individually, this is rarely the case – especially in Libya as demonstrated by this Wikileaks cable showing disagreements amongst the Libyan leadership.
Such systems are far too complex to be overseen by one person. As Oxford Professor Richard Bosworth argues, in addition to clouding other factors involved in the operation of such states, judgemental and presumptive treatments such as Owen’s tend to dismiss leaders as mad and evil which prevents comprehensive understanding.
The terminology of ‘regimes’ and ‘governments’ is another rhetorical tool aimed at demonising chosen targets. ‘Regimes’ sound all controlling, mechanical and despotic while ‘governments’ sound rational, responsive and civil. But as academic Lisa Anderson has pointed out the term ‘regime’ is widely misused. A regime is the: “set of rules, or cultural or social norms that regulate the relations between ruled and rulers. Including how laws are made and administered and how the rulers are themselves selected”. As such regimes come in types, Totalitarian, Authoritarian, Democratic etc.
A ‘government’ on the other hand “comprises those incumbents and the policies associated with them”. Referring to the ‘Qaddhafi Regime’ or ‘Mubarak Regime’ is a problematic conflation of regime type, government and the actors involved in it. Applying the same conflation to Western governments would result in labels like ‘Obama regime’.
‘Orientals’ or just the non-compliant?
Neo-Orientalist language cannot be explained away as a reaction to brutality. If a leader’s brutality was the benchmark for engaging in this form of vitriol, it could be just as easily applied to every US President.
Rather the point of this type of language is to de-legitimise and de-humanise or barbarise a targeted ‘other’. Neo-Orientalist language has (mostly) retreated from typecasting entire civilisations – as this has become less acceptable among western audiences – and has retreated to depictions of individual leaders, sub-groups or sub-ideologies.
Those selected, most commonly for their ‘uncooperative’ international behaviour, are not worthy of engagement or understanding, simply of fear and loathing. The use of violence against such ‘irrational’ forces becomes legitimate and ‘just’.
The language of neo-Orientalism takes many guises, from the ‘war on terror’ to ‘humanitarian intervention’ and has been so successful in cloaking itself in ‘liberal’ values that it attracts support from across the political spectrum.
As Robert Irwin pointed out in his 2006 critique of Edward Said’s Orientalism, the expression of ‘Orientalist’ language does not need to be limited in time (to the European colonial period) or place (the Arab world). By seeking to solely link Orientalism to the European and American imperial ages Said confused and understated the breadth of his argument. Orientalism was not limited to ‘the Orient’, but was and is directed at other groups – both ethnic and political.
For example, western media treatment of Russian President Vladimir Putin also involves ridicule of both cultural symbolism and psychological state.
According to Vox News and Angela Merkel, Putin’s machismo is a cover for “personal insecurity as a weak leader” and is responsible for his “invasion of Ukraine”. We are also told Putin’s ‘machismo’ and ‘aggression’ is the cumulative embodiment of Russian shame and weakness. Merkel was quoted as saying “Russia has nothing, no successful politics or economy. All they have is this [machismo].”
Without delving into to the possible objections to this account, why is Putin’s ‘aggressive’ behaviour seen as a unique flaw in individual and national character? What about the destruction that the United States wrought following the ‘injury’ to the American ego that was September 11? What about the UK’s war of indignation in the Falkland Islands? With the same logic and tone one could posit that the entire British colonial age was a result of ego issues within the ‘lonely little island in the North Sea’.
What of Hillary Clinton’s psychological state or the culture she embodies? Sold as the ‘normal’ presidential candidate, this is the woman who mocked Qaddhafi’s death with “We came, we saw, he died…” and seems to carry no baggage from the destruction of a country on almost entirely false pretences.
One persuasive critic of neo-Orientalism, Alastair Crooke, identifies it as a manifestation of a Western mindset of dominance in the present era. “
… this is the new racialism… a hierarchy of civilisations in which the West sees its civilisation as the most appropriate one for the future… superior and the template that should be imposed on others…”
Status quo powers deploy much effort and money to explain their transgressions but most are based on the simple assumption that equal standards do not apply; we are ‘rational’ and ‘just’, they are not.
Alex Ray works on cultural exchange between the West and the Arab world. Based in Jordan, he holds a MA in Middle East and Central Asian Studies from the Australian National University and is a former student of the University of Damascus. He writes at https://betweendeserts.wordpress.com/
Why Deterring ‘Unprecedentedly Terrible Nuclear Attacks’ Is Now on the Pentagon’s Agenda
By Yuriy RUBTSOV | Strategic Culture Foundation | 05.10.2016
Speaking at Minot Air Force Base (North Dakota) on Monday, US Defense Secretary Ashton Carter accused Russia of «nuclear saber-rattling» and argued that even though the Cold War is long over, the US Army still needs nuclear weapons to deter Russia and other potential aggressors from thinking they could get away with a nuclear attack.
However, knowing it would be difficult to sell the image of «Russian aggressors» as suicidal, (everything will burn in a global nuclear war, including those who started it), the head of the Pentagon was quick to say that people should probably not expect a global conflict. «Today», he stated, «it’s a sobering fact that the most likely use of nuclear weapons is not the massive nuclear exchange of the classic Cold War-type, but rather the unwise resort to smaller but still unprecedentedly terrible attacks, for example, by Russia or North Korea».
The manner in which Ashton Carter frightened his audience could be considered a banal attempt to get even more money to modernise America’s nuclear weapons and their means of delivery. It seems that the $108 billion he mentioned, which will be used for this purpose over the next five years, is not enough for the Pentagon.
Carter’s speech in North Dakota was not limited to this, however. The head of the Pentagon also expressed attitudes of a political-military and international legal nature.
I would like to ask: what has Russia done, exactly, to justify the US Defense Secretary’s allegation that Moscow is preparing «unprecedentedly terrible attacks» involving the use of nuclear weapons? Has it issued the kind of threats that have made the world more volatile, perhaps? Or abandoned its international obligations? Or is it following America’s example and deploying nuclear weapons outside of its borders?
We can assume that our negative responses to all these questions are neither here nor there to Mr. Carter, but there is an expert who responds in the same vein that Carter cannot disregard so easily, and that is one of his predecessors at the US Department of Defense, former US Defense Secretary William Perry. When asked by journalists how much more volatile the world has become in recent years, Perry replied: «Fundamentally nothing has changed… The number of weapons are sufficient to destroy, obliterate all of civilization… It doesn’t take that many. We still have more than 1,000 nuclear weapons on alert ready to go».
In other words, neither Russia’s position as a nuclear power nor the status of America’s nuclear capabilities gives grounds for warmongering and the rapid modernisation of strategic nuclear forces (nuclear deterrents). In this regard, William Perry has unwittingly disarmed his successor.
It is impossible to ignore the fact that Carter ranked Russia alongside North Korea among the «potential aggressors» preparing «unprecedentedly terrible attacks». He is willing to admit that Russia and the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea are very different countries, but they are seemingly distinguished by the fact that both are prepared to resort to a nuclear attack «to try to coerce a conventionally superior opponent to back off or abandon an ally during a crisis».
It is characteristic that, in unison with Carter, Theresa May also pointed to Russia and North Korea as potential threats in her first parliamentary speech as UK Prime Minister, when she justified the need to modernise the UK’s nuclear arsenal.
If Pyongyang is aspiring to become a fully-fledged member of the nuclear club in violation of UN sanctions, carrying out nuclear weapons testing, and stating its willingness to launch a nuclear strike against US and South Korean armed forces in the event of provocation in the Asia-Pacific Region, then how is any of this similar to Russia’s actions? It’s not. Yet the head of the Pentagon has brought Russia and North Korea together as nuclear threats and has undoubtedly made this sound significant. One must assume that Moscow is drawing conclusions from this.
There is another side to Ashton Carter naming Russia and North Korea as the main nuclear threats, however. While Russia, China, North Korea and Iran were identified in the US National Military Strategy, updated last year, as «revisionist states» that need to be countered, Iran and China have now (take note!) disappeared from the traditional group of ‘global villains’. Why Iran – following the closure of Iran’s nuclear dossier and the lifting of international sanctions – is understandable. But China? Or is it that against the backdrop of the «Russian danger», the US does not regard China’s nuclear weapons as a threat?
Hardly. It is simply that with such a curious selection of targets, Carter is aiming to divide Beijing and Moscow, which hold similar, and in some cases identical, positions on a number of key issues of strategic stability and the strengthening of the nuclear deterrent regime.
One merely has to consider the joint initiative of Russia and China to prevent the placement of weapons in space that was announced at the 70th Session of the UN General Assembly last year and that was rejected by the United States, incidentally. According to Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, who spoke at the ongoing 71st Session of the UN General Assembly, «the start of substantial negotiations on… the Russian-Chinese draft Treaty on the Non-Deployment of Weapons in Space could end the impasse over the key component of the multilateral disarmament mechanism – the Disarmament Conference».
Ashton Carter’s lengthy speech at the military base in North Dakota did not contain a single concrete fact that would implicate Russia in attempts to undermine strategic stability, but the United States is undertaking such attempts. One need only think of America’s plans to deploy additional modernised nuclear weapons – ‘general-purpose’ B61-12 bombs – in Europe. There will be plenty of these US bombs in the Old World – estimates range from 250 to 400. And the fact that these new bombs are «more ethical», as the Pentagon puts it, i.e. they have a smaller yield, only exacerbates the situation. A smaller yield, but greater accuracy. This may suggest that they are going to be used against military targets, including in densely-populated areas.
Finally, the US is planning to give the right of control over the use of these nuclear weapons systems to its European allies and is already training military pilots in Poland and the Baltic States how to use the nuclear weapons. This is a direct violation of the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons, as recently emphasised by Russia’s Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov.
By accusing Russia, without evidence, of intending to depart from the «long-established rules of using nuclear weapons» (to quote Carter’s speech once again), the US is using this accusation as a cover for its own actions, which are undermining the nuclear non-proliferation regime.
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Raffi Berg: BBC Middle East Editor Exposed as CIA, Mossad Collaborator
By Alan Macleod | MintPress News | January 3, 2025
A senior BBC editor at the center of an ongoing scandal into the network’s systematic pro-Israel bias is, in fact, a former member of a CIA propaganda outfit, MintPress News can reveal. Raffi Berg, an Englishman who heads the BBC’s Middle East desk, formerly worked for the U.S. State Department’s Foreign Broadcast Information Service, a unit that, by his own admission, was a CIA front group.
Berg is currently the subject of considerable scrutiny after thirteen BBC employees spoke out, claiming, among other things, that his “entire job is to water down everything that’s too critical of Israel” and that he holds “wild” amounts of power at the British state broadcaster, that there exists a culture of “extreme fear” at the BBC about publishing anything critical of Israel, and that Berg himself plays a key role in turning its coverage into “systematic Israeli propaganda.” … continue
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