Recently, the Brazilian Ministry of Defense published a dossier on possible threats to national security over the next two decades. The document, however, is far from showing any sign of seriousness, being full of unfounded predictions, which call into question even the quality of the academic training of the military involved – or their commitment to the truth.
In the document, the Brazilian military set up a series of hypothetical scenarios and warn that France could become a real threat to Brazil in the coming years. The reason is due to a brief tension and war of words between the Presidents Jair Bolsonaro and Emmanuel Macron over the past year, due to the environmental crisis and bushfires in the Amazon Rainforest. For Brazilian generals, this is already a sufficient basis to see France as a real threat to national security, ignoring notable facts, such as that both countries are the biggest trading partners in military industry and that the tension between Bolsonaro and Macron has already calmed down months ago, in addition to the fact that the French interest in starting a transcontinental war over the Amazon territory is absolutely minimal.
Continuing with forecasts, the document testifies to a future of great tensions in South America, with Venezuela and Guyana fighting conflicts in the north and Bolivia and Chile in the south, in addition to the installation of Chinese and American military bases across the continent. Brazil, aligning itself with the USA, will act as a mediator of regional conflicts and will receive advanced armaments from Washington. The document also foresees the installation of three American military bases in Colombia and a conflict between this country and Venezuela. It is also speculated that Argentina will grow economically with oil exploration and that it will align with China, but that Brazil will veto the installation of Chinese bases in the neighboring country.
Brazil’s role in internal tensions and international geopolitics will depend exclusively on its good relations with the United States. The dossier speculates that China will overtake the United States as an economic power, but that Washington will remain the global military leader. Brazilian alignment with American hegemonic power, then, will be a matter of survival and will allow Brazil to mediate regional conflicts, pacify neighboring countries and curb Chinese influence in South America. The generals go even further with their unfounded speculations and claim that Brazil will arouse the fury of “ultranationalist groups in Southeast Asia” that, in retaliation, will launch biological weapons against the Brazilian population on the occasion of the musical festival “Rock in Rio” in its 2039 edition.
In brief summary, the document creates a hypothetical scenario in which Brazil’s alignment with the United States will no longer be a matter of political will, but of necessity and survival. In practice, a group of more than 500 military researchers created a myth to justify alignment with Washington, using predictions that lack meaning and material bases. The ultimate goal is simply to forcibly instill the belief that Brazil should become an American ally.
But the Brazilian military does not stop there. Recently, the Russian ship Yantar approached the Brazilian coast, having anchored for a few days in the state of Rio de Janeiro. When the ship was about 50 miles away from the beaches of Rio, the Brazilian Navy issued a communication signal that was not answered immediately. It happens, however, that the vessel responded to the communication attempts issued later, which was not enough for the Brazilian Navy to retreat in its false alarm that the Russian ship would be performing espionage services on the Brazilian coast, spreading the lie through several media agencies and creating an unnecessary tension atmosphere.
The scandal made by the Brazilian Navy would make any specialist in military and intelligence operations laugh. Do they really believe that such a vessel would be used for espionage purposes with such public exposure? Would the Brazilian State be irresponsible to the point of creating such an atmosphere of tension with Russia for absolutely nothing?
The scenario leads one to believe that it is not a collective idiocy of Brazilian generals, but rather a very well-designed project to create an environment of fear in relation to everything that is not of interest to the United States. Chinese military presence in South America, Russian espionage, French threat, regional wars, biological terrorism – these are all imaginary threats meticulously created by the military who are no longer interested in national defense, but in the country’s subordination to the hegemonic global power.
Brazil seems to be experiencing one of the worst moments in its history. Again, the higher generals are more committed to external interests than to the defense of their own country and seem to be willing to do anything to see Brazil become an American dependency.
Lucas Leiroz is a research fellow in international law at the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro.
Iran has blasted Washington for deploying submarines with low-yield nuclear warheads, arguing that the move increases the likelihood of unconventional war.
“Such provocative actions must be condemned,” Mohsen Baharvand, Iran’s deputy foreign minister for international and legal affairs, told the Conference on Disarmament in the UN building in Geneva. He added that the decision will make nuclear war “more likely” and sets the stage for an “accelerated” nuclear arms race.
The Pentagon announced this month that the Navy had fielded a low-yield, submarine-launched ballistic missile warhead, claiming the decision was aimed at deterring nuclear adversaries. The missiles are about as powerful as the nuclear bomb dropped on Hiroshima.
Washington has long accused Iran of seeking to develop its own nuclear weapons – an allegation that Tehran has fiercely denied. The Islamic Republic agreed to far-reaching inspections of nuclear sites as part of the 2015 sanctions-lifting deal reached with the US and several other signatories. US President Donald Trump pulled his country out of the agreement in 2018, even though Tehran was found to be in full compliance with the accord.
Iran’s parliamentary election on Friday took place in extraordinary circumstances. The pandemic fear over coronavirus significantly impacted the voter turnout, which is estimated to be around 42% (as compared to 62% in the 2016 election to the Majlis). A dozen people have died so far in Iran and a few dozen diagnosed with the virus outbreak. There are conflicting reports. Turkey, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Iraq and Armenia have closed their border with Iran.
The election presages a robust comeback by the conservative faction known as the Principalists. In the 2016 election, the reformists, conservatives and independents won 41%, 29% and 28% of the vote respectively. But this time around, the reformists have been marginalised and the Principalists will dominate the 290-member Majlis with a commanding majority. The Principalists won all 30 seats from Tehran, which is traditionally a key battleground.
There are many underlying factors behind the popular discontent that the election results reflect — in particular, the anger at the 2015 nuclear deal’s failure to bring jobs and social improvements (as promised by President Hassan Rouhani), corruption, mounting social inequality, inflation and poverty rates, water shortages, spiralling cost of living and high unemployment. Strikes and protests among teachers and the working class became frequent in the recent years.
The US sanctions have devastated social conditions, driving up inflation and poverty rates. A report last year by the Iranian parliament’s research office acknowledged that some 57 million of Iran’s 80 million population would live in poverty.
Having established control over the Majlis, the Principalists will most certainly make a determined bid to capture the presidency in the August 2021 election when Rouhani completes the second term in office and must step down as stipulated by the constitution. A politically surcharged climate will prevail in the coming 18-month period.
Rouhani’s capacity to manoeuvre will be severely restricted and as a weakened president, he will have to depend on cooperation of the Principalists, which may not be forthcoming.
One peculiarity of the struggle is that it is also a reflection of differences over foreign policies, especially the standoff with the US. Broadly, the Principalists are hardliners in regard of Iran’s relations with the West, while the reformists have keenly (but vainly) sought Iran’s integration into the world economy by improving the country’s relations with the West.
Thus, the “big picture” is that the Trump administration’s maximum pressure approach has pushed Iran to the right. The assassination of the iconic IRGC general Qasem Soleimani in a US drone attack in January set in motion long-term shifts in Iran’s domestic politics.
Soleimani’s killing prompted the regime to resort to extreme measures to disqualify a broad swathe of moderate and centrist candidates from running in the parliamentary elections.
If Trump’s unilateral withdrawal from the 2015 nuclear deal dealt a mortal blow to Rouhani’s prestige and created a mass perception that the US is an undependable interlocutor with whom constructive engagement is simply not feasible, the killing of Soleimani has totally discredited Rouhani’s approach towards the US, which eschewed confrontation and placed the accent on diplomacy.
Put differently, the regime is circling the wagons, as it were, sensing an existential threat to the Velayat-e faqih — or guardianship of the Islamic jurist — which is the Shia Islamist system of governance since the country’s 1979 Islamic Revolution, built on the rule of the clergy over the state.
Several western analysts had warned that the Trump administration’s policies would inevitably discredit the reformists and shift Iran’s political calculus toward the right, with negative consequences for regional security. But such warnings fell on deaf ears.
It almost seems now as if the hardliners in the Trump administration preferred to have the Principalists at the helm of affairs in Tehran. Indeed, no sooner than the conservative surge in the Majlis election appeared, the US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo has floated an inflammatory idea, during a visit to Saudi Arabia this week, that in the coming months, he and Trump will make a major decision about whether to petition the UN to invoke what is known as “snapback” on a set of international sanctions on Iran that were lifted as part of the 2015 nuclear accord.
Such a move has been rumoured for some time but this is the first acknowledgement by the Trump administration. The idea is to “to deal a deathblow to the nuclear deal” and to provoke Tehran to react.
Tehran has already warned that any move to reimpose blanket UN sanctions on Iran will compel it to expel the IAEA inspectors and resume its pre-2015 nuclear programme. Iran may even quit the NPT (as North Korea did.)
“A snapping back of UN sanctions on Iran could also lead Iran to kick out international nuclear inspectors, resume additional nuclear activities, and threaten a regional war involving great powers, historic adversaries, and non-state actors across the Middle East. In short, it would manufacture a crisis that the world can ill afford.”
A reconciliation with the West seems all but out of the question for the foreseeable future. The ascendance of the conservatives will likely see Iran’s withdrawal from previous commitment to the 2015 nuclear deal. Free of international control, Tehran can redefine its stance as it wishes.
A concerted effort by Tehran to broaden and deepen relations with China and Russia can be expected. Iran will rely on China and Russia for investment and technology transfers in line with the pivot to “resistance economy”, dispensing with imported goods.
A newly-released Hilary Clinton email confirmed that the Obama administration has deliberately provoked the civil war in Syria as the “best way to help Israel.”
In an indication of her murderous and psychopathic nature, Clinton also wrote that it was the “right thing” to personally threaten Bashar Assad’s family with death.
In the email, released by Wikileaks, then Secretary of State Clinton says that the “best way to help Israel” is to “use force” in Syria to overthrow the government.
Although the Wikileaks transcript dates the email as December 31, 2000, this is an error on their part, as the contents of the email (in particular the reference to May 2012 talks between Iran and the west over its nuclear program in Istanbul) show that the email was in fact sent on December 31, 2012.
The email makes it clear that it has been US policy from the very beginning to violently overthrow the Syrian government—and specifically to do this because it is in Israel’s interests.
“The best way to help Israel deal with Iran’s growing nuclear capability is to help the people of Syria overthrow the regime of Bashar Assad,” Clinton forthrightly starts off by saying.
She specifically links Iran’s mythical atom bomb program to Syria because, she says, Iran’s “atom bomb” program threatens Israel’s “monopoly” on nuclear weapons in the Middle East.
If Iran were to acquire a nuclear weapon, Clinton asserts, this would allow Syria (and other “adversaries of Israel” such as Saudi Arabia and Egypt) to “go nuclear as well,” all of which would threaten Israel’s interests.
Therefore, Clinton, says, Syria has to be destroyed.
Iran’s nuclear program and Syria’s civil war may seem unconnected, but they are. What Israeli military leaders really worry about — but cannot talk about — is losing their nuclear monopoly.
An Iranian nuclear weapons capability would not only end that nuclear monopoly but could also prompt other adversaries, like Saudi Arabia and Egypt, to go nuclear as well. The result would be a precarious nuclear balance in which Israel could not respond to provocations with conventional military strikes on Syria and Lebanon, as it can today.
If Iran were to reach the threshold of a nuclear weapons state, Tehran would find it much easier to call on its allies in Syria and Hezbollah to strike Israel, knowing that its nuclear weapons would serve as a deterrent to Israel responding against Iran itself.
It is, Clinton continues, the “strategic relationship between Iran and the regime of Bashar Assad in Syria” that makes it possible for Iran to undermine Israel’s security.
This would not come about through a “direct attack,” Clinton admits, because “in the thirty years of hostility between Iran and Israel” this has never occurred, but through its alleged “proxies.”
The end of the Assad regime would end this dangerous alliance. Israel’s leadership understands well why defeating Assad is now in its interests.
Bringing down Assad would not only be a massive boon to Israel’s security, it would also ease Israel’s understandable fear of losing its nuclear monopoly.
Then, Israel and the United States might be able to develop a common view of when the Iranian program is so dangerous that military action could be warranted.
Clinton goes on to assert that directly threatening Bashar Assad “and his family” with violence is the “right thing” to do:
In short, the White House can ease the tension that has developed with Israel over Iran by doing the right thing in Syria.
With his life and his family at risk, only the threat or use of force will change the Syrian dictator Bashar Assad’s mind.
The email proves—as if any more proof was needed—that the US government has been the main sponsor of the growth of terrorism in the Middle East, and all in order to “protect” Israel.
It is also a sobering thought to consider that the “refugee” crisis which currently threatens to destroy Europe, was directly sparked off by this US government action as well, insofar as there are any genuine refugees fleeing the civil war in Syria.
In addition, over 250,000 people have been killed in the Syrian conflict, which has spread to Iraq—all thanks to Clinton and the Obama administration backing the “rebels” and stoking the fires of war in Syria.
The real and disturbing possibility that a psychopath like Clinton—whose policy has inflicted death and misery upon millions of people—could become the next president of America is the most deeply shocking thought of all.
Clinton’s public assertion that, if elected president, she would “take the relationship with Israel to the next level,” would definitively mark her, and Israel, as the enemy of not just some Arab states in the Middle East, but of all peace-loving people on earth.
WASHINGTON – US Senators Chuck Schumer and Sherrod Brown are urging the Trump administration to impose sanctions on Russia following reports alleging that the country is meddling in the 2020 presidential election, a letter published on Monday showed.
“We urge you to immediately and forcefully impose sanctions on the government of the Russian Federation, any Russian actors determined to be responsible for such interference, and those acting on their behalf or providing material or financial support for these election interference efforts,” the senators wrote in a letter to Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin.
The list of Russian officials who the senators said should be designated includes Russian President Vladimir Putin and other government. Schumer and Brown noted that the US Congress has provided the administration with a broad range of sanction tools through the Countering America’s Adversaries Through Sanctions Act (CAATSA), a bill signed into law in 2017.
More Claims of “Russian Meddling” to Come?
As the senators demanded new sanctions on Russia, the Wall Street Journal reported on Monday that Facebook has been unable to substantiate claims that Russia is involved in any inauthentic activity in the run up to the 2020 vote.
Facebook spokesman Andy Stone told the newspaper that the company investigated a claim made by an independent researcher over suspicious content in support of Democratic candidate Bernie Sanders.
But the investigation yielded no evidence to substantiate the researcher’s claims, Stone told the Wall Street Journal.
In a separate development on Thursday, the New York Times reported, citing a senior Intelligence official who warned members of the House of Representatives’ Intelligence Committee of Russia’s alleged meddling in the election process to help Trump win the 2020 presidential race.
Trump hit back the following day, blasting Democrats for launching “another misinformation campaign.”
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said Moscow was preparing for an inflow of new allegations of Russian interference in the US election, noting that the claims are baseless.
Russian officials have repeatedly said Russia does not interfere in the US political system and have insisted that the allegations of collusion were made up to excuse the election loss of Trump’s opponent Hillary Clinton, as well as deflect public attention from instances of election fraud and corruption.
The atrocities of Operation Condor – the U.S.-backed covert plan by Argentina, Chile, Brazil Paraguay, Uruguay and Bolivia to eliminate left-wing influence in Latin America – have been gradually revealed through declassified documents that detail the diplomatic maneuvering and state terror that left tens of thousands of people killed, tortured and disappeared.
Argentina is estimated to have the highest death toll with over 30,000 dictatorship opponents killed and disappeared. The Videla dictatorship in Argentina worked in close collaboration with Chile’s dictator Augusto Pinochet, who had ushered in a violent neoliberal experiment in Chile and a far reaching network of international surveillance to keep tabs on, and eliminate, any traces of organised resistance to the dictatorship that had the potential to form abroad.
U.S. intelligence was deeply involved in the propping of dictatorships in Latin America in particular after Chile’s Unidad Popular led by Salvador Allende triumphed at the polls. Declassified documents have shown that the U.S. knew about the tactics used by the Argentinian dictatorship – emulated after Chile’s practice of disappearing opponents into the ocean, packaged and thrown off helicopters provided by the U.S. In some cases, the death flights also served as a murder practice – some victims were thrown into the ocean drugged, yet still alive.
Recently, it has also been revealed that U.S. intelligence surveillance over the extent of human rights violations in Latin America was aided by Germany and Switzerland. A Swiss company, Crypto AG, was jointly owned by the U.S. and West Germany. The company was then acquired by the participating countries in Operation Condor and later incorporated into the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) technology.
News reports have revealed that the Swiss government was knowledgeable about the CIA operations conducted through Crypto AG, which makes the country complicit in the dealings of Operation Condor and sheds doubt about Switzerland’s purported political neutrality, a stance which has enabled it to embrace duplicity and serve both oppressor and the oppressed.
Eventually, the surveillance technology targeted over 100 countries. Swiss media have reported that along with Sweden, Israel and Britain, Switzerland was privy to the information compiled through the operation. The Swiss government has launched an investigation into the case and the company’s licence has been suspended.
Among the intelligence gathered by the U.S. through the surveillance programme was the plan for the assassination of Chilean diplomat and ambassador to the U.S. in the Allende era, Orlando Letelier, who was murdered by a car bomb in Washington in 1976. Michael Townley, a CIA agent who also worked for the Pinochet dictatorship’s National Intelligence Directorate (DINA) was responsible for placing the bomb underneath Letelier’s vehicle. The murder was directly ordered by Pinochet. Operation Silence, in which efforts were made to prevent judges from investigating dictatorship crimes in the 1990s, resulted in the murder of Townley’s DINA partner, Eugenio Berrios, a chemist tasked with producing sarin gas for the dictatorship. Berrios’s body was discovered, heavily mutilated, in Uruguay, thus eliminating the possibility of further evidence being given in the Letelier case.
The link between Chile and Argentina in terms of dictatorship cooperation to eliminate opponents resulted in the killing and disappearance of Revolutionary Left Movement (MIR) militants.
Revelations regarding Crypto AG will likely add to the level of U.S. complicity in Operation Condor, apart from other forms of political violence globally which were aided by the CIA. In Latin America, particularly given the current turbulence from coups, such as in the case of Bolivia, to popular mobilisation as we are seeing in Chile, the news regarding surveillance is likely to have an impact on both current happenings and in terms of the region’s collective memory.
One thing we’ve learned from the Trump Presidency is that the “deep state” is not just some crazy conspiracy theory. For the past three years we’ve seen that deep state launch plot after plot to overturn the election.
It all started with former CIA director John Brennan’s phony “Intelligence Assessment” of Russian involvement in the 2016 election. It was claimed that all 17 US intelligence agencies agreed that Putin put Trump in office, but we found out later that the report was cooked up by a handful of Brennan’s hand-picked agents.
Donald Trump upset the Washington apple cart as presidential candidate and in so doing he set elements of the deep state in motion against him.
One of the things candidate Donald Trump did to paint a deep state target on his back was his repeated praise of Wikileaks, the pro-transparency media organization headed up by Australian journalist Julian Assange. More than 100 times candidate Trump said “I love Wikileaks” on the campaign trail.
Trump loved it when Wikileaks exposed the criminality of Hillary Clinton and the Democratic Party, as it cheated to deprive Bernie Sanders of the Democratic Party nomination. Wikileaks’ release of the DNC emails exposed the deep corruption at the heart of US politics, and as a candidate Trump loved the transparency.
Then Trump got elected.
The real tragedy of the Trump presidency is nowhere better demonstrated than in Trump’s 180 degree turn away from Wikileaks and its founder Julian Assange. “I know nothing about Wikileaks,” he said as president. “It’s really not my thing.”
US pressure and bribes to the Ecuadorian government ended Assange’s asylum and his seven years in a room at the Ecuadorian embassy in London. After his dramatic arrest by London’s Metropolitan Police last April, he has been effectively tortured in British jails at the behest of the US deep state.
Today, Monday the 24th of February, Assange faces an extradition hearing in a UK courthouse. The Trump Administration – led by a man who praised Assange’s work – seeks a show trial of Assange worthy of the worst of the Soviet era. The US is seeking a 175 year prison sentence.
The Trump Administration argues that the Australian Assange should be tried and convicted of espionage against a country of which he is not a citizen. At the same time the Trump Administration argues that the First Amendment does not apply to Assange because he is not an American citizen! So Assange is subject to US law when it comes to publishing information embarrassing to the US deep state but he is not subject to the law of the land – the US Constitution – which protects all journalists and is the backbone of our system of government.
It is ironic that a President Trump who has been victim of so much deep state meddling has done the deep state’s bidding when it comes to Assange and Wikileaks. President Trump should preempt the inevitable US show trial of Assange by granting the journalist blanket pardon under the First Amendment of the United States Constitution.
The deep state Trump is serving by persecuting Assange is the same deep state that continues to plot Trump’s own ouster. Free Assange!
The National Bureau for defending land and resisting settlements stated in its latest weekly report, that although the Israeli-American “Deal of the Century” proposes the right to establish a ‘special Palestinian tourism zone’ in the Atarot area (i.e. the old Qalandia Airport north of Jerusalem), to support Muslim tourism, the Israeli Ministry of Construction and Housing is planning to build a new settlement there, to be larger than “Ma’aleh Adumim” settlement in occupied East Jerusalem.
The Qalandia airport has been closed by Israeli authorities since the outbreak of the second Intifada, in the year 2000.
In an obvious escalation to isolate Jerusalem from its Palestinian surroundings, the Occupation Government decided to build the new settlement as the Israeli PM Netanyahu vowed to build 9,000 settlement units, commercial centers and a hotel, as well as water tanks and others, adding that the number of units will reach 11,000, by 2030. Thus, signs and marks were placed by the Israeli occupation, on 21 Palestinian homes in order to be demolished.
Within his campaign for the upcoming Knesset’s elections, the Israeli PM, Netanyahu, announced plans to build 5,200 new settlement units in Jerusalem, including 2,200 in the “Har Homa” settlement, and 3,000 settlement units in the “Givat Hamtus” settlement, which means increasing the number of settlers there up to 10.000 settlers. For his part, Minister of the Occupation Army, Naftali Bennett, decided to hold a meeting for the Higher Planning Committee affiliated to the Israeli Civil Administration, to approve the building of 1900 settlement units in the West Bank, in the Ramallah Governorate, of which 600 settlement units in the Eili settlement, and 534 units in the Shvut Rachel settlement.
It is also noted that the Israeli Government plans to control Areas B in the West Bank, as the Minister of the Israeli Occupation Army, Naftali Bennett decided to prevent the Palestinians from building in these areas under security pretext. Accordingly, the Israeli occupation forces started to build a 7-kilometer settlement road with a cost of NIS 100s of millions, including tunnels and bridges south of Nablus, extended from the Za’tara village through Hawara town, and Beita and Udala villages, which means confiscating about 406 dunums of 7 Palestinian villages.
For their part, a delegation from the American Congress visited settlements, and the Ibrahimi Mosque’s courtyard in Hebron, and the Jordan Valley in the West Bank, and the Gush Etzion’s pool as well. The delegation consisted of 2 Congress members, who said that these areas have to be part of Israel.
On the other hand, the UN Human Rights Office issued the black list of companies operating in settlements in the Palestinian territories occupied since 1967. For his part, Michael Link praised the decision, saying it is ‘an important step.’ Adding that because of settlements, thousands of Palestinian dunums were confiscated, thousands of homes and properties were destroyed, hundreds of thousands of Palestinian refugees were displaced, and several natural resources were leveled.
With regard to the giant American corporations that encourage settlement, the Financial Times newspaper conducted an extensive investigation on the Amazon corporation that provides free shipping to all Israeli settlements, but it does not provide the same free service to the Palestinians unless they include Israel as their country during the completion of the registration process. The newspaper pointed out during its investigation that the free shipping includes orders that exceed US$ 49, noting that the company started its activity there in last November. It stipulated that it provides the same free service to the Palestinians, in case they mentioned that they live in Israel.
Idlib is facing a humanitarian disaster as hundreds of thousands flee a Syrian and Russian military campaign to retake the province from militant rule. Overlooked in Western coverage of the crisis is that Idlib is mostly controlled by Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, a rebranded affiliate of Al-Qaeda — and that Turkey, with U.S. backing, has intervened to keep the extremist group in place.
Guest: Scott Ritter, former UN Weapons Inspector and Marine Corps Intelligence Officer.
Military public land grabs and intrusions into civilian spaces are raging in the West. Wild landscapes are targeted for huge seizures of public land, increases in hideously loud war plane overflight impacts, or development of facilities like threat emitters. The military already has seized vast areas of the American West for use as ground and air ranges. … Full article
The Richard Lugar Lab is fast becoming a topic of household conversation in both Georgia and the Russian Federation, because increasing numbers of people care that it is not a public health facility, as claimed, but a threat to the population and humanity as we know it.
The Caucasus region is an ideal location for the United States to outsource its ‘grey zone’ research to. Many of the most ‘attractive’ viruses and bacteria for weaponization occur naturally in this region, so they can be studied in their natural habitat. The region is also known for its thriving black market economy and trafficking, as the lack of democracy and a civil society makes it easier to hide things from the world.
But what is now concerning US officials is the attention Russia is paying to the topic of bio weapons and other related medical programmes. What has been uncovered so far demonstrates that the question is NOT whether the US is in violation of the 1972 Biological Weapons Treaty BUT to what degree.
The US has long tried to deflect attention from these programmes. American journalist and Bureau Chief for Veterans Today in Georgia, Jeffrey Silverman, a long time resident of Georgia, is again in the cross fire for his articles and series of recent TV interviews, having endured a long series of indignities, and downright illegal acts, at the hands of his own government and embassy.
But the new attacks on Silverman coincide with recent revelations in the Russian media. Igor Giorgadze, the former State Security Minister of Georgia, dropped a bombshell in mid September when he leaked documents containing information about “a laboratory located near Tbilisi named after US Senator Richard Lugar”, and how some experiments had turned deadly.
Various media groups describe such breaking stories as recurring disinformation, and further claim that there is no factual evidence that the US is building biological laboratories in the Caucasus region in order to use it as a testing site. The same media groups also denied that the US was losing the Vietnam War and declared the well documented CIA human rights abuses in places like Paraguay weren’t happening either.
But Giorgadze, a former Georgian State Security Minister, and Silverman beg to differ. They claim that such labs and related medical projects may have secretly conducted experiments on people, some of which have had fatal outcomes.
Right or Wrong Person to Ask?
Giorgadze has asked Donald Trump to launch an investigation into the experiments conducted by the laboratory. This really has some in Georgia concerned, as Trump is no fan of Big Pharma. He recently stated that the much touted flu shot is the greatest scam in medical history, created by Big Pharma to make money off vulnerable people and make them sick.
US-government funded media watchdogs and strong-arm agencies have fought back by using Homeland Security to harass Silverman when he traveled to and from the United States earlier this year, when he was finally allowed to make his first trip home in over 14 years. On both arrival and departure he was subjected to repeated body and bag searches, including seizures of his phone and personal documents, in direct violation of the 4th Amendment to the US Constitution.
Such frontal attacks on this journalist date back to when the first stories about the Lugar laboratory, and the nefarious research linked with it, broke in Georgia in 2013. As he has since backed up many of his allegations with actual documents, there has been a concerted effort to discredit him, not only in Georgia but in the international media.
Silverman continues to publish in the Georgian language media, and has described how the concentration camp patients of Nazi Doctor Joseph Mengele can be compared to the civilians residing close to the Lugar laboratory, as they [too] did not understand the threat they were under until they were placed in the medical experiment section death camps—when it was too late.
“I am warning those who live near the Lugar Laboratory that they are under a big risk. The locals who settled there were misled that this was an ordinary laboratory and nothing else.”
Georgy Iremidze, head of the Georgian based Patriot news agency, which is labelled pro Russian by the same detractors, adds to the debate:
“On paper, the lab is run by the Georgian government, or rather the Ministry of Health. But in reality, it is operated by the American government. The idea is that, if something goes wrong, the Georgian government will take the blame so that the American government can stay under the radar”.
A Lot for Nothing
The United States has provided a total of US $350 million for the construction and technical equipping of the laboratory. In 2013 the laboratory was allegedly subordinated to the National Center for Disease Control and Public Health (NCDC), and from 2018 the Government of Georgia will assume responsibility for the full funding and operation of the Lugar center and laboratory network, or so we are told.
However it is only the US which has an interest in building such laboratories. Other countries would face sanctions from more powerful neighbours, who can build worse facilities of their own, for doing so. The US wants to flout the Biological Weapons Convention and then claim, if caught, that this is something only dubious, less-developed, “ignorant” countries do, as it usually does when questions are asked in places like Syria and Iraq.
The Lugar Laboratory is located not far from Tbilisi International Airport. This means that loading weaponized agents and moving viruses and bacteria around the world is expedited. It is conceivable that the United States may be trying to continue its losing battle in Syria by using biological and chemical weapons, as military planes, which are based at NATO airfields, have been landing at the airport with increasing regularity for no other apparent reason.
The same deadly and especially dangerous pathogens could also be targeted, as an aggressive act, against Turkey and the Russian Federation. The US has a history of doing this, and we might recall the Swine Flu outbreak in Russia 12 years ago.
Even unsuspecting humans could be weaponized and board civilian fights, just as was described in Station 11, a work of fiction, and how the Georgian flu killed over 95 percent of the world’s population. Emily St. John Mandel’s fourth novel, “Station Eleven,” begins with a spectacular tragedy on a considerably vaster scale arrives in the form of a flu pandemic so lethal that, within weeks, most of the world’s population has been killed.
It is standard medical practice that nothing that is injected into the body should be used past its expiration date. But the US military, and other organizations like MARFOREUR, USAMRIID, ClinicalRM, WRAIR, and DTRA, are being accused of giving many such preparations to allied countries as “aid”. They have been widely used on the general population in Georgia, even children, without the victims’ full knowledge and informed consent.
When questions are asked, it funnels this aid not through medical bodies but TMC Global Professional Services. This company has overseas offices in nine countries throughout Eastern Europe and Central Asia, and two offices in the US, in Virginia and New Mexico. Most of its work is as a US Government contractor on Defense Threat Reduction Agency (DTRA) programmes, with national laboratories and other DoD customers. For example, it manages an international project at the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant site (ChNPP).
Too Many Roads Lead to Rome
The Myth Detector claims to have debunked “disinformation” spread around the Hepatitis C elimination programme on several occasions—but it fails to mention the nexus of this programme to TMC. Nor does it give, or investigate, the technical backgrounds of those doing the debunking, who just post pre-written statements provided by their Embassy contacts or PR staff working in the Lugar lab.
It is not difficult to expose those actually working in these military projects at the management level. Silverman was once hired by International Crisis Group, ICG, and the French government to look at the links of these researchers. He soon discovered how the Lugar and partner projects are connected to American, European and other scientific centres.
All the highly skilled professionals in the TMC office in Georgia left in 2010 to form a new organisation, Sigma. The most high profile of these was Richard Mah, who had worked at Los Alamos. You do not leave the golden handcuffs, and diamond pension, of a US defence contractor to start a company from scratch unless you feel too compromised to stay with that contractor. But nobody is interviewing Mah, or the main TMC person in Georgia nowadays, Giorgi Begiashvili, before claiming “disinformation”.
Day Late and Fact Short
The US can get away with violations of treaty law because what it addresses has been superseded by new developments and changed beyond recognition. It has often been observed that when a certain narcotic is made illegal, another one comes along which is equally deadly but gets round the laws as written. Claims that any treaty violations are accidental are difficult to disprove because such violations are so widespread as to be unavoidable.
The US bio weapons legislation is codified in Section 817 of the Patriot Act. It effectively gives the US immunity from violating its own bioweapons laws, despite the fact that such a national law cannot override an international treaty that country is bound by. Specifically, it states that “the prohibitions contained in this section shall NOT apply to any duly authorised US governmental activity.”
Prior to enactment of the Patriot Act, federal law proscribed the use of biological agents or toxins as weapons, in 18 U.S.C. 175. This outlaws possession of a type or quantity of biological agents or toxins that cannot be justified for peaceful purposes. In short, what is being done for the purpose of military use, offensive, is now being justified under the guise of peaceful purposes.
Regardless of the ledger of truth and innocence, a public debate has begun which is cross cultural and beyond borders. As a result of it, some of what goes on behind closed doors, under the flimsy disguise of public health protection and non-proliferation of bio weapons and especially dangerous pathogens, is now out in the open.
One only needs to look more closely at what has been done in Georgia at various DOD funded labs and medical projects. There is a long list to explore, including deaths from experimental TB antibiotics, a succession of dodgy programs doctors refuse to talk about, and various experimental treatments on what is often an unsuspecting population.
If you do not wish to believe Silverman or the Russian media, enough can be gleaned from open sourced academic materials which clearly demonstrate that proper procedures for informed consent are not being implemented. These shine light on what appear to be “backhanders” paid by and to various funding agencies, the UN, the US State Department, Big Pharma and various partner organizations, including the Ministry of Health, various American universities and the Center for Disease Control in Atlanta Georgia.
Information is now being shared with the Congressional Oversight Budget Office, about the apparent planting of false and misleading information. However, all this demonstrates is that US-funded disinformation oversight is in fact blatant disinformation itself, as anyone who has lived in a country on which the US has an “official narrative”, such as Georgia, has always known.
Not only are some of these new generation bacteria agents and especially dangerous pathogens so evolved that there is no antibiotic or other treatment that can save a patient. Often the cure is only available in the form of bacteriophage preparations, as also is being produced in Tbilisi Georgia on the first floor of Building B at Eliava Institute.
It comes as no coincidence that the US Department of Defense and other agencies have also poured money into improvement of infrastructure at the laboratories on the second and third floors, where the planned production area is housed. These laboratories are used to produce bacteriophage on short notice and will be used for phage concentrate production that is used in the final phage product.
Founded in 1923, the Eliava Institute is a world renowned institution working in the field of Applied Microbiology, Virology and Infectious Immunology. Bacteriophage research and application is its main direction.
Henry Kamens is a columnist and expert on the Central Asia and Caucasus regions.
With the US election campaign gaining speed, political opponents of the incumbent President are getting back to their old mantras of Vladimir Putin standing by his old friend and partner – if not his puppet – Donald Trump. This belief remains one of the very few issues on which there appears to be a strong consensus among such different people as Hillary Clinton, Nancy Pelosi, Joe Biden, Charles Schumer, and even Bernie Sanders. All of them seem to be convinced that Trump is “Putin’s best friend” in Washington and therefore, the Kremlin will be supporting Trump’s reelection in 2020 with the same vigor and with the same disrespect of the US sovereignty, as it allegedly supported his presidential race back in 2016.
Let me put aside an important question about whether the Kremlin can indeed exercise a significant influence on the course of the US elections or even define its outcome. I personally tend to believe that no external player has the resources, the skills, and the infrastructure needed to do that. Maybe, I have a higher opinion on the resilience of US political institutions and procedures than leaders of the Democratic Party have these days. However, let us imagine for a second that Vladimir Putin has all the needed resources, skills and infrastructure to define who is going to reside in the White House after January 20, 2021. Should he really support Donald Trump as his best bet for better relations between the two nations?
Nobody can question the apparent reality that since Donald Trump got to power three years ago, the US – Russian relations have not become any better. In fact, they have further significantly deteriorated. There was only one bilateral summit in Helsinki, which turned into a complete fiasco; the US government continues to throw restlessly multiple sanctions at Moscow; bilateral strategic arms control is more dead than alive, and the US and Russian Embassies respectively in Moscow and in DC look more like besieged castles than like full-fledged diplomatic missions.
A Trump’s opponent would probably argue that all this is not an outcome of Trump’s policies, but a result of successful attempts by the Deep State and the opposition on the Hill to prevent the President from reckless and potentially very dangerous moves to reach out to Vladimir Putin and to appease the Kremlin. In fact, the current deterioration of the relationship between Moscow and Washington looks like a dubious accomplishment no matter who claims it. Still, it would be unfair to argue that in this relationship, Congress has always been the bad cop, and the White House – the good one.
For instance, it was the White House, not Congress, to take the initiative in getting the United States out of the INF Treaty with Russia and in questioning the value of the New Start Agreement for the US side. It was the White House to start a fierce war against the North Stream – 2 pipeline and to launch a ‘maximum pressure’ policy on the Islamic Republic of Iran, which happens to be Russia’s strategic partner in the Middle East region. On many issues, the Trump administration went much further in challenging the Kremlin than many experienced and prudent politicians on the Hill would like it to do.
Moreover, what Democrats often label as ‘Trump’s presents to Putin,’ from a closer range do not look like valuable gifts. For example, can Russia really benefit a lot from the planned US withdrawal from Afghanistan or even from Syria? I doubt it very much. In both cases, we are likely to see the strategic vacuum left by the United States more likely to be filled by forces hostile to Moscow than by Russia’s allies or friends.
Donald Trump might personally like Vladimir Putin, and this feeling might be truly mutual. The two men share many views on the world and on how to conduct foreign policy. Both stand for sovereignty, both put specific national interests above abstract global commons. Both like transactional approaches and are not particularly fond of multilateralism. However, the commonality or similarity of views do not make Trump and Putin natural allies; they simply do not have much of offer to each other. Donald Trump cannot convince Vladimir Putin to break his alliances with Beijing, Tehran or Damascus and to move to the ‘right side of history,’ while Putin cannot expect Trump to dismantle the deep anti-Russian consensus existing today in Washington and to put the bilateral relationship back on track.
The outcome of the 2020 Presidential election in the United States will affect not only America but the rest of the world as well, including Europe, China, the Middle East, and so on. Russia is no exception. Nevertheless, for Russia, this election in relative terms will mean less than for many other international players.
Unfortunately, the US – Russian relationship will remain adversarial no matter who gets to the White House in 2021. At this juncture, the best we can do is to try managing this adversity by reducing risks and avoiding prohibitively high costs of an uncontrolled confrontation. And let us hope that the next Presidential election of 2024, which will take place the same year in both the US and Russia, will give us reasons to aim higher than that.
The volcanic mineral medicine will not patent — for the toxic burden medicine will not name
Lies are Unbekoming – October 30, 2026
Zeolite is old. It is in Roman concrete that has held for two thousand years. It’s in the water filters of ancient cisterns. It’s in the stomachs of Pacific livestock whose keepers knew, somehow, that this grey crumbling rock made the animals healthier. It’s in Soviet clinical protocols from the 1960s. It’s in the standard emergency response to the Chernobyl explosion.
In 1986, after the Chernobyl reactor failure, the Soviet Union manufactured and distributed natural zeolite at industrial scale — for soil remediation, for livestock feed, for human consumption, for the cleanup itself. Karl Hecht, who had been director of the Institute for Experimental and Clinical Pathophysiology at the Charité of Humboldt University Berlin, spent the six decades after that building the clinical research base — on silicon’s role in human health, on zeolite’s clinical safety, on its applications in ageing. In 2018, Pavelić and colleagues published a comprehensive clinical safety review of natural clinoptilolite in Frontiers in Pharmacology. In 2019, Mastinu analysed its binding affinities. In the Western medical literature, these works sit largely uncited.
What has not been treated at book length, until now, is how a volcanic mineral with six decades of Soviet clinical work behind it, two major peer-reviewed Western reviews, and ongoing clinical use across the former Eastern Bloc, remains almost entirely absent from Western medical practice — and what the toxic burden it’s meant to address actually is.
The Zeolite Book gathers the Soviet clinical record, the Western peer-reviewed studies, three contemporary practitioner voices, and three serious counterviews into one honest treatment. That’s why the book runs to seven appendices. 288 pages, four parts, three practitioner voices, three counterviews, seven appendices. The honest treatment is the argument.
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Zeolite is old. It is in Roman concrete that has held for two thousand years. It’s in the water filters of ancient cisterns. It’s in the stomachs of Pacific livestock whose keepers knew, somehow, that this grey crumbling rock made the animals healthier. It’s in Soviet clinical protocols from the 1960s. It’s in the standard emergency response to the Chernobyl explosion.
