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Iranian Media Confirms Use of Unstoppable Hypersonic Missiles in Israel Counterstrike

By Ilya Tsukanov – Sputnik – 15.04.2024

Tehran fired dozens of ballistic and cruise missiles and hundreds of drones at Israel Saturday night in response to the April 1 Israeli strike on the Iranian Embassy compound in Damascus, Syria. The IDF declared that “99 percent” of the projectiles were shot down and that the Iranian attack failed. Iran said it achieved its strategic objectives.

The Islamic Republic used hypersonic missiles during the Operation True Promise missile and drone barrage against Israel, with all of them hitting their targets after evading Israel’s air and missile defenses. That’s according to a Press TV report, citing informed sources.

The Iranian news agency and broadcaster did not elaborate on the details of the missiles which were used, how many were fired, or what their targets were. However, earlier, Iranian media reported that the Islamic Republic fired at least seven hypersonic missiles during the attack, with none of them intercepted. Separately on Sunday, Lebanese national security expert Ali Hamie told Sputnik that he had information that Iran had fired its new Fattah 2 hypersonic missiles in Saturday night’s strikes.

The Fattah 2 (literally “Conquerer 2” or “Victory Giver 2”) is a liquid-fueled hypersonic missile unveiled in November 2023, with a declared range of up to 1,500 km, a 450 kg warhead, and the ability to maneuver in flight. It is one of two hypersonic missiles in Iran’s arsenal, with the other being the Fattah 1 – a solid fuel, maneuverable hypersonic missile with a 1,400 km range, a 350-450 kg payload and the reported ability to accelerate to speeds of Mach 13-Mach 15 in the terminal stage.

These speeds, combined with Fattah missiles’ ability to maneuver, may have made it difficult for Israel’s sophisticated air and missile defenses to take them down. For decades, Israel’s air defense forces have had to concentrate on the threat posed by garage-built rockets fired by militias in Gaza, and by better-armed non-state actors in Lebanon and Yemen.

Iran, on the other hand, is one of the world’s top developers and manufacturers of advanced missiles, drones, and other weaponry, which has proven more than a match even for military systems possessed by the US, and produced at a lower cost (a former advisor to Israel’s chief of staff complained on Sunday that Israel spent $1.3 billion worth of air defense interceptor missiles to shoot down Iranian projectiles which had cost Iran nearly ten times less to build and fire).

New Info on Weapons Used

Iranian media has provided other details on the weapons used during Saturday night’s attack, with state TV confirming that Shahed-136 kamikaze drones were used in the assault. These UAVs have a 2,500 km range, a 185 km flight speed, and 50 kg of explosives on board.

The report further indicated that Emad missiles (which are liquid-fueled, have a 1,700 km range, a 750 kg payload, and a 10-50 meter circular error probable) were used.

30 cruise missiles, including the Paveh (a turbojet-engine powered smart missile with a 1,650 km range and the ability to change course mid-flight), and the Soumar (a little-known cruise missile with a range of at least 1,500 km and an unknown payload) are also said to have been deployed. The latter projectiles reportedly have the ability to fold and unfold their winglets midflight, with the projectiles able to communicate with one another to coordinate an attack.

Operational Failure or Operational Success?

Despite assurances by the Israel Defense Force that some “99 percent” of the drones and missiles used in Iran’s attack had been neutralized with help from the US, UK, France, and Jordan, further reports by US and Israeli media Sunday and Monday confirmed aspects of Iranian officials’ statements about the strikes’ objectives and effectiveness.

A senior US official told ABC News Sunday that “at least nine” Iranian missiles hit two Israeli airbases, with five missiles damaging infrastructure, including a C-130 military transport plane, runway, and storage facilities at the Nevatim Air Base, and four additional missiles touching down on a separate, undisclosed airbase in the Negev Desert, but not causing any significant damage (Iranian media said Sunday that “at least seven” missiles had struck the Ramon Air Base in the Negev, which hosts Israeli F-16I jets).

Iranian Armed Forces Chief of Staff Mohammad Bagheri said in a briefing early Sunday that Iran’s strikes had concentrated on the Nevatim Air Base, which he said hosted “the F-35 planes that were used for targeting our consulate in Damascus,” and an intelligence-gathering facility in Jabal al-Shaykh heights. “Both of these centers were destroyed to a considerable extent and became inactive,” Bagheri said, adding that Israel’s missile shield had proven incapable of blunting the attack.

Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps chief Hossein Salami said that Iran’s “limited” strikes were “more successful than we expected,” and that Iran’s missiles had broken through sophisticated Israeli air and missile defenses.

Former US Marine Corps intelligence officer and UN weapons inspector Scott Ritter told Sputnik on Sunday that Iran “deliberately chose not to inflict extremely lethal action against Israel,” and that Saturday night’s attack was a signal to Israel and the US “that it could do what it did in Nevatim, at Ramona, anywhere in Israel, anywhere in the Middle East, and there was nothing the United States or Israel could do in response.” Iran, Ritter said in a separate interview with George Galloway, had managed to inflict damage on the facilities it was targeting despite giving ample advance warning of its impending strikes, and forced Israel to concentrate resources and attention on its slow-moving drones and missiles, allowing its more sophisticated strike means to slip through and reach their targets.

General Bagheri said Sunday that Iran had deliberately avoided targeting population and economic centers, and warned that Iran could launch an attack “tens of times” more powerful than the demonstrative strikes carried out Saturday night if Israel retaliates.

April 15, 2024 Posted by | Militarism | , , | Leave a comment

A History of H5N1 Lab Accidents

A disturbing report by investigative journalist and author Alison Young

By John Leake | Courageous Discourse™ | April 12, 2024

Exactly one year ago, the investigative journalist and author, Alison Young, published a report in USA Today on an accident that occurred on December 9, 2019 at the University of Wisconsin’s Influenza Research Institute.

The accident involved experiments with an H5N1 influenza virus that had been modified through GoF to make it transmissible among ferrets. The research team leader—a renowned virologist named Yoshihiro Kawaoka—had gained international attention (or notoriety) for his controversial GoF research on H5N1. As Alison Young reported:

… in late 2011 the world learned that two scientific teams – one in Wisconsin, led by virologist Yoshihiro Kawaoka, and another in the Netherlands, led by virologist Ron Fouchier – had potentially pushed the virus in that direction. Each of these labs had created H5N1 viruses that had gained the ability to spread through the air between ferrets, the animal model used to study how flu viruses might behave in humans.

The ultimate goal of this work was to help protect the world from future pandemics, and the research was supported with words and funding by two of the most prominent scientists in the United States: Dr. Francis S. Collins, director of the National Institutes of Health, and Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the NIH’s National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases.

Kawaoka contended it would be “irresponsible not to study” how the virus might evolve in nature. “Some people have argued that the risks of such studies – misuse and accidental release, for example – outweigh the benefits. I counter that H5N1 viruses circulating in nature already pose a threat,” he said at the time.

In Nov. 2013, a needlestick accident happened on Kawaoka’s research team, followed by failure to adhere to the established quarantine rules. Though no human infection resulted from this accident, it was nevertheless alarming. Young’s report continues:

By 2014, there was a growing discomfort at the highest levels of the U.S. government about the risk of an accident with an engineered virus.

Wisconsin’s needlestick incident, which drew questions within NIH but wasn’t publicly known, was soon followed by a series of high-profile accidents at federal labs in 2014 – from safety breaches with anthrax and avian influenza at the CDC to the discovery of forgotten vials of smallpox that had been kept for decades in a storage room on the NIH campus.

In October 2014, citing these federal lab incidents, the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy announced a moratorium on new federal funding for certain gain-of-function research while the risks and benefits of the controversial experiments were studied.

The funding pause remained in place for three years until it was finally lifted in December 2017. But it was only in 2019 that some of the halted experiments were quietly allowed to begin again under a revised federal oversight process, which was criticized for keeping secret the details of the new experiments and the basis for the government approvals.

The second accident on Kawaoka’s team occurred less than a year after GoF experiments were allowed to resume. This time, a lab researcher in training was working with ferrets infected with the GoF-modified H5N1 when his respirator hose was discovered to have detached from his hood, allowing him to breathe the possibly contaminated air in the cabinet. Again the quarantine rules were not properly followed, and nor was the incident promptly reported to the NIH.

Though the accident purportedly did not result in a human infection, it nevertheless raises many questions about the prudence of manipulating the H5N1 virus in a lab in order to make it infectious and transmissible among mammals.

Alison Young’s report prompted me to start reading her book, Pandora’s Gamble: Lab Leaks, Pandemics, and a World at Risk, published on April 25, 2023. Young has a long history of researching and reporting on Bio-labs and their checkered past. Most lab manipulation of pathogens is purportedly done to develop vaccines against them in the event that their natural iterations should ever evolve to infect humans, but this rationale is highly questionable if not downright mendacious.

Indeed, on December 18, 2013, the Foundation for Vaccine Research wrote a letter to the European Commission, signed by 56 scientists (including Nobel Laureates) in which they sharply criticized the GoF experiments on H5N1 by virologist, Ron Fouchier.

The 56 scientists vehemently express their opinion that naturally-occurring H5N1 does NOT efficiently transmit to humans and therefore poses little risk to humans.

Far more dangerous, they claim, is the possibility of a lab-modified H5N1 virus escaping from a lab. The scientists refer to the resurgence of H1N1 influenza in 1977 after a 20-year hiatus, most likely after escaping from a lab in the former Soviet Union.

April 15, 2024 Posted by | Book Review, Science and Pseudo-Science, Timeless or most popular | , , | Leave a comment

THE APPROACHING ‘TIDAL WAVE’ OF CANCER

The Highwire with Del Bigtree | April 11, 2024

Many have abandoned the media’s desperate attempt to ignore why cancer rates are spiking. Now, the American Cancer Society is sounding the alarm, predicting an 80% increase in tumors by 2050. Meanwhile, independent researchers have stepped up and honed in on credible sources pointing to the mass COVID vaccine rollout in 2021 as the prime culprit.

April 15, 2024 Posted by | Video | , | Leave a comment

Russia Slams UNSC for Ignoring Attack on Iranian Consulate, Calls for End to Bloodshed

Sputnik – 14.04.2024

UNITED NATIONS – Russia’s Permanent Representative to the United Nations Vasily Nebenzia criticized the UN Security Council for failing to act on the Israeli attack on the Iranian consulate in Syria as he urged an end to bloodshed in the Middle East during an emergency UNSC meeting on Sunday.

“It is regrettable that unlike the meeting today, you did not propose to bring it to brief the Council on the 2nd of April,” he said, adding that Russia called an emergency briefing to discuss the Israeli strike against the consular premises in Damascus.

Nebenzia criticized Israel for not complying with the UN Security Council resolutions, which he said was “an obvious disrespect shown to the Council, to all of you who are here in the members seats, and a complete disregard to the decisions made by the Security Council.”

“This high level confrontation and bloodshed must be stopped We think it’s urgent for the entire international community to undertake all the efforts necessary to de-escalate the situation,” Nebenzia said.

Iran’s attack on Israel did not happen in a vacuum – it was a response to the shameful inaction of the UN Security Council, the Russian ambassador stressed.

“What happened on the night of April 14 did not happen ‘in a vacuum.’ Iran’s steps were a response to the shameful inaction of the United Nations Security Council [and] a response to Israel’s blatant attack on Damascus… by no means the first. Syria is constantly being bombed by Israel,” Nebenzia said.

On April 3, the US and UK refused to discuss Russia’s proposed draft UN Security Council statement on the Israeli strike on the Iranian consulate in Damascus. London and Washington then cited the fact that there was no unity in the meeting’s assessment of what happened. On Sunday, an urgent meeting of the UN Security Council is taking place in connection with the retaliatory strike that Iran carried out on the territory of Israel. Meanwhile, shortly before that, Iran’s mission to the UN said that if the Security Council had condemned the Israeli strike on the Iranian consulate and brought the perpetrators to justice, the need for Iran to punish the Israeli side “could have been eliminated.”

Russia calls for restraint on all sides involved in the incident with Iran’s attack on Israel, Russia’s permanent representative to the UN highlighted.

Russia calls on Israel to follow the example of Iran, which has said it does not want further escalation, Nebenzia said.

“We note Tehran’s signal of unwillingness to further escalate hostilities with Israel. We urge West Jerusalem to follow its example and abandon the practice of provocative forceful actions in the Middle East, fraught with extremely dangerous risks and consequences on the scale of the entire region, already destabilized as a result of the escalation of the Palestinian-Israeli confrontation,” Nebenzia emphasized.

April 14, 2024 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism | , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Did the U.S. Death Rate from Measles Decline by over 98% Before Introduction of a Measles Vaccine?

Injecting Freedom by Aaron Siri | April 12, 2024

Did the death rate from measles in the United States decline by over 98% between 1900 and 1962, the year before the first measles vaccine was introduced?

According to the CDC’s data, the death rate from measles had already declined over 98% between 1900 and 1962, which was before the measles vaccine was introduced in the United States.

This official United States government data shows that in 1900, the rate of mortality from measles was 13.3 per 100,000 individuals and by 1960 it was 0.2 deaths per 100,000 individuals. The death rate was also 0.2 deaths per 100,000 individuals in 1961 and 1962. And the first measles vaccine did not come onto the market until 1963. Meaning, an over 98% decline in measles mortality between 1900 and the early 1960s before there was a measles vaccine.

If you like charts, the following is an official chart of measles mortality issued by the United States government showing the drop in measles mortality from 1900 to 1960. This chart was published before there was a measles vaccine — no doubt they would never publish such a chart today!

April 14, 2024 Posted by | Science and Pseudo-Science, Timeless or most popular | | Leave a comment

15 Federal Agencies Knew About EcoHealth’s Gain-of-Function Proposal in 2018 But Said Nothing

‘Trail of Lies, Obfuscations and Cover-ups’

By John-Michael Dumais | The Defender | April 12, 2024

Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) and the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee announced on Tuesday they will investigate 15 federal agencies that were briefed in 2018 on a proposal to “insert a furin cleavage site into a coronavirus to create a novel chimeric virus that would have been shockingly similar to the COVID-19 virus.”

The $14.2 million project — DEFUSE, developed by Peter Daszak, Ph.D., president of EcoHealth Alliance in collaboration with the Wuhan Institute of Virology (Wuhan lab) — was proposed on Jan. 30, 2018, during the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency’s (DARPA) PREventing EMerging Pathogenic Threats (PREEMPT) Proposers Day program.

“Disturbingly, not one of these 15 agencies spoke up to warn us that the Wuhan Institute of Virology had been pitching this research,” Paul said in the announcement, which noted that it took until 2021 before the public even learned of the DEFUSE project.

In announcing the investigation, Paul cited new information from documents not yet made public revealing that the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) Rocky Mountain Laboratories was a partner in the DEFUSE proposal.

In Paul’s letters to the agencies, he named Rocky Mountain Laboratories’s Vincent Munster, Ph.D., as the working partner in DEFUSE. Munster was co-author of a Jan. 24, 2020 New England Journal of Medicine article about “a novel coronavirus emerging in China” that neglected to mention the Wuhan lab or gain-of-function research on coronaviruses conducted there.

The letters also named the following newly discovered DEFUSE partners: the lab of Ralph Baric, Ph.D., at the University of North Carolina (UNC), Duke-NUS (National University of Singapore) Medical School and the lab of virologist Dr. Ian Lipkin at Columbia University.

Lipkin was one of the authors of the 2020 “Proximal Origin” paper that attempted to discredit the lab-leak theory of SARS-CoV-2 origins.

Paul requested the 15 federal agencies provide all documents, records and communications related to the DEFUSE project and PREEMPT Proposers Day events since 2016 at which agency personnel were present.

In addition to the NIAID and DARPA, Paul sent requests to the heads of the National Institutes of Health (NIH), the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), the U.S. Department of Agriculture, the Defense Health Agency, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, and the Navy and Army, among other agencies.

USAID funded EcoHealth GOF research in 2015

Marine Corps Major Joseph Murphy, an internal DARPA whistleblower, in 2021 was the first to expose the 2018 DEFUSE proposal. Murphy said the EcoHealth proposal was later funded by NIAID — then under the direction of Dr. Anthony Fauci — through sub-grants to EcoHealth Alliance.

EcoHealth Alliance in turn worked with Wuhan lab to engineer SARS-CoV-2.

Murphy shared a DARPA document outlining the agency’s decision not to approve the EcoHealth Alliance project, noting “prior work under USAID Predict,” a pandemic preparedness program that “identified high risk of SARSr-CoVs in specific caves in Asia.”

In a Senate hearing Tuesday, Paul grilled USAID Administrator Samantha Power about her agency’s funding of gain-of-function research in China through EcoHealth Alliance. Power denied knowledge of any such program, “USAID has not authorized gain-of-function research,” she said. “This is the first time seeing this.”

Paul presented a poster-sized enlargement of a 2015 paper, “A SARS-like cluster of circulating bat coronaviruses shows potential for human emergence,” co-authored by Shi Zhengli of the Wuhan lab — and others, including Baric — with an acknowledgment section that credited “USAID-EPT-PREDICT funding from EcoHealth Alliance.”

After reading sections of the paper establishing that the researchers were undeniably conducting gain-of-function research, Paul raised the 2018 PREEMPT meeting where the DEFUSE project was presented, with its intention to insert a novel furin cleavage site “which doesn’t exist in nature but makes it incredibly more infectious in humans,” he said.

Paul said USAID was at the meeting — before Power joined the agency. “But nobody from USAID and nobody from all 15 agencies ever told anyone about this project,” he said, expressing incredulity that those attending the meeting would not have made a connection between DEFUSE and SARS-CoV-2 when it emerged in 2020 and “come forward to warn us that this could be a virus not from nature.”

The DEFUSE grant proposal and the PREEMPT program

In 2018, EcoHealth Alliance’s Daszak proposed the DEFUSE (Defusing the Threat of Bat-borne Coronaviruses) project to DARPA’s PREEMPT program. The proposal aimed to develop a bat vaccine to prevent SARS-related coronaviruses in Asia, focusing on high-risk hotspot bat caves in China.

The PREEMPT program was established to identify and mitigate emerging pathogenic threats. The DEFUSE proposal aligned with the PREEMPT program’s goals by aiming to suppress the viral population of SARS-related coronaviruses in bat populations, reducing the risk of spillover into humans.

DARPA hosted the 2018 “PREEMPT Proposers Day” to introduce potential applicants to the PREEMPT program. The event provided an overview of the program, facilitated networking among potential proposers, and provided a platform for attendees to present their technical capabilities and interest in forming partnerships.

Attendees included government personnel — the 15 agencies Paul listed — academic researchers and representatives from various organizations interested in collaborating on the project.

Presenters were allowed only a single slide and three minutes to pitch their projects. EcoHealth’s slide included the following gain-of-function research proposition:

“Experimental assays to test QS0 jump potential: Sequence QS0 spike protein similarity to high-risk SARSr-CoVs, model spike structure to assess ACE2 binding, then in vitro and ACE2 humanized mouse experiments. Use results to test machine-learning genotype-to-phenotype model predictions of viral spillover risk.”

DARPA ultimately rejected the DEFUSE proposal due to significant weaknesses, including the potential for dangerous gain-of-function research and the lack of risk mitigation plans.

Daszak under increasing scrutiny

Paul on April 9 penned an op-ed for Fox News outlining his committee’s new investigation.

“Under duress, the administration finally released documents that show that the DEFUSE project was pitched to at least 15 agencies in January 2018,” he wrote.

Paul alleged Daszak concealed the DEFUSE proposal and that UNC scientist Baric failed to reveal that the Wuhan lab had already proposed to create a virus similar to COVID-19.

On the “RFK Jr Podcast” Thursday, Paul called Daszak “the bag man for Wuhan, China” and “basically a money guy” who has been able to procure “over $100 million from the government … through schmoozing and … fancy proposals.”

Daszak was a U.S. representative to the World Health Organization’s 2021 investigation into the origins of the SARS-CoV-2 virus, which ultimately found the lab-leak theory “extremely unlikely.”

Paul, who on April 1 announced the launch of a bipartisan investigation into the origins of COVID-19, told Kennedy he believed Daszak has been concealing information about the development of viruses in China. “He’s evidence of what’s gone wrong and what has gone amok in a scientific community and the grant community,” Paul said.

House Republicans have also been investigating Daszak. In November 2023, the House Oversight and Energy and Commerce committees conducted a closed-door transcribed interview with Daszak.

Because new documents recently received by the committees under a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request contradict portions of Daszak’s testimony, the committees have scheduled a public hearing with Daszak on May 1.

At issue is Daszak’s statement that EcoHealth Alliance would only be conducting gain-of-function research in the U.S. if DARPA approved the DEFUSE proposal. But the FOIA documents suggest, “EcoHealth intended to mislead DARPA and conduct the risky research at the Wuhan lab instead,” according to an Energy and Commerce Committee press release.

In the announcement for the upcoming hearing, the committee chairs quoted from their letter to Daszak:

“These revelations undermine your credibility as well as every factual assertion you made during your transcribed interview. The Committees have a right and an obligation to protect the integrity of their investigations, including the accuracy of testimony during a transcribed interview. We invite you to correct the record.”

‘Just a trail of lies, obfuscations and cover-ups’

In an interview with the Daily Mail, Paul said Fauci likely knew as early as 2018 about the Wuhan lab’s desire to create a coronavirus. He also said Fauci “commissioned people to say the opposite” of what they actually thought about the origins of the virus.

Fauci repeatedly denied that NIAID funded gain-of-function research under his watch. During a contentious exchange with Paul at a July 2021 Senate hearing, Fauci said, “Senator Paul, you do not know what you are talking about, quite frankly. … The NIH has not ever and does not now fund gain-of-function research in the Wuhan Institute of Virology.”

Francis Collins, M.D., Ph.D., then-director of the NIH, in a May 2021 statement made the denial even broader, saying, “Neither NIH nor NIAID have ever approved any grant that would have supported ‘gain-of-function’ research on coronaviruses.”

Paul told Kennedy he had a 250-page document on his desk concerning a briefing for Fauci on NIH’s interaction with coronaviruses, but that “every word has been … redacted.”

“I do think there was an enormous conspiracy … because they knew that they had funded this lab in Wuhan, and that … blame would attach to them for the pandemic,” Paul told Kennedy. “And there’s just a trail of lies, obfuscations and cover-ups.”

Jamie Metzl, a former senior fellow at the Atlantic Council who in 2021 called for the removal of Daszak as president of EcoHealth Alliance, weighed in on the emerging controversy:

NIAID has not commented on its involvement, according to the Daily Mail. Spokespersons for the Army and CDC acknowledged receipt of Paul’s letters and said they would be responding, according to The Epoch Times.

A statement released by EcoHealth Alliance claimed Paul’s op-ed “uncritically repeats several unfounded and false claims” and that the organization “did not support ‘gain-of-function’ research at Wuhan lab” or “send ‘millions of dollars’ to another scientist to create chimeric coronaviruses.”

EcoHealth further claimed that at the time of the 2018 meeting, the DEFUSE proposal had not yet been drafted or submitted to DARPA, and that “the presence of a Federal Agency at the Proposer’s Day event does not mean that they had detailed information” about the proposal.

John-Michael Dumais is a news editor for The Defender. He has been a writer and community organizer on a variety of issues, including the death penalty, war, health freedom and all things related to the COVID-19 pandemic.

This article was originally published by The Defender — Children’s Health Defense’s News & Views Website under Creative Commons license CC BY-NC-ND 4.0. Please consider subscribing to The Defender or donating to Children’s Health Defense.

April 14, 2024 Posted by | Deception, Science and Pseudo-Science, Timeless or most popular, Video | , , | Leave a comment

Israeli general pegs cost of defending against attack – media

RT | April 14, 2024

Israel has claimed success in defending itself against Saturday’s drone and missile barrages by Iran, but that effort reportedly came at a high price.

The interceptors, jet fuel and other materials expended in shooting down Iran’s unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) and missiles cost about 4 billion to 5 billion shekels ($1.06 billion to $1.33 billion), Israeli Brigadier General Reem Aminoach told local media outlet Ynet News on Sunday. The estimate included only Israel’s direct costs, not counting the considerable weaponry used by the US and other allies in helping to defend against the attack.

Aminoach, formerly the financial adviser to the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) chief of staff, said West Jerusalem used such munitions as Arrow and David’s Sling interceptor missiles, which have per-unit costs of about $3.5 million and $1 million, respectively. He also included sortie expenses for the fighter jets that did the bulk of the work in shooting down Iranian drones.

The general lamented that it was far cheaper for Iran to launch the attack than for Israel to defend itself. “The attack cost Iran less than 10% of what it cost us to defend against it,” he told Ynet. “In the future – in a year, two years, or five years – they can carry out 50 such attacks. And let’s say that if the IDF’s net budget in 2023 was 60 billion shekels, with less than double that you have no chance of reaching a situation where we can maintain the required amounts.”

The IDF claimed that 99% of the more than 300 kamikaze drones and missiles launched from Iranian territory were successfully intercepted. All of the UAVs and cruise missiles were shot down, military spokesman Daniel Hagari said, while a few ballistic missiles got through Israel’s defenses.

Those projectiles fell at the Nevatim Airbase and caused “only minor damage to infrastructure,” the spokesman said. He added that the drones launched by Iranian-backed militants in Iraq and Yemen all failed to reach Israeli territory. The only casualty was a shrapnel wound to a 10-year-old Bedouin Israeli girl who was hit while sleeping at her home in southern Israel.

Saturday’s attack came in response to an April 1 airstrike that killed seven Iranian military officers, including two senior commanders, at Tehran’s consulate in Damascus. Israel has vowed to “exact a price” from Iran for striking back.

April 14, 2024 Posted by | Economics, Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Wars for Israel | , , , | Leave a comment

Strike on Israel Shows US Bases Near Iran Are ‘Achilles Heel’ – Analyst

By Svetlana Ekimenko – Sputnik – 14.04.2024

Fears of a greater Middle East escalation were triggered after Iran launched a massive drone and missile attack against Israel, aided by Hezbollah and the Yemeni Houthis. Iran said the attack was in response to Israel’s bombing of the Iranian consulate in Damascus, Syria, which killed seven members of the elite Revolutionary Guard Corps.

Iran’s massive retaliatory attack on Israel from its own territory is a sign that the conflict could “escalate out of control.”

Michael Maloof, a former senior security analyst in the office of the US secretary of defense, told Sputnik that the first ever direct Iranian attack on Israel set a dangerous precedent.
“My concern is that this could easily escalate into something not only between Iran and Israel, but beyond the Middle East region,” he said.

Iran’s assault, which it stated was an act of “self-defense” after the Israeli strike on its consulate in Damascus, was originally intended to be a “limited” one, said Maloof.

Iran first sent in “swarms of drones with lights on as a sign of psychological warfare,” but sending in cruise and ballistic missiles by Tehran was a “distinct escalation,” said Maloof.

The scale of Iran’s attack on Israel suggests that Tehran was sending a message, demonstrating that it possesses “extraordinary capabilities,” said Maloof.

“They have built up their missile capabilities extraordinarily, they have drones, cruise missiles, and some of the most accurate ballistic missiles in the region right now,” he added.

“I think that this clearly showed that Iran has a capability. I think it’s limited. They cannot do this on a sustained basis. And they did send their slower ordinance, such as drones, UAVs. But they also claim to have hypersonics,” Maloof noted.

“I think that if Israel were to retaliate, then I think they would engage the more sophisticated missiles and hypersonics, potentially, if they have them,” He added. “Then you’re talking some very serious escalation in the entire region. It’s already unprecedented, but this escalation could be even ratcheted up that could conceivably bring in other and extend beyond just this region.”

All signs point to the potential of a larger regional war erupting, Maloof warned, adding that everything now depends on Israel’s reaction. “Is this a tit-for-tat, a one-on-one, or a further escalation?” he asked.

“I think we are already getting that message from Netanyahu, his ministers, that they are going to respond… How they respond is going to determine the extent of that escalation through the [Middle East] region,” stressed Maloof. “I am quite concerned that neither side is going to stand down at this point.”

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is prepared to “continue an endless war in the region,” suggested Maloof, adding that he “knows he had the US backing,” and could opt to strike now, taking advantage of this “window of opportunity.”

“He may not get such an opportunity under a potential Trump administration coming in [after the US elections in November],” said the expert.

Looking at possible scenarios for Israel’s response, he noted that Tel Aviv had already stated publicly an intention to “go after the nuclear sites in Iran.”

“That is going to be exceedingly difficult, plus I don’t know that they have the power projection to do that on any consistent basis, and secondly, I don’t believe they have the so-called ‘bunker busters’ that would be needed to be able to drill down through the mountains to reach those facilities. The US has been reluctant to give Israel these bunker buster [munitions],” said Maloof.

As for the US, it has already “gotten sucked into this,” Maloof noted.

US President Joe Biden issued a statement on Iran’s attack against Israel after speaking with Netanyahu by phone. Biden condemned the attack “in the strongest possible terms”.

He reaffirmed Washington’s “ironclad commitment” to help support Israel’s security. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said the US does “not seek escalation” but will “continue to support” Israel’s defense. “I will be consulting with allies and partners in the region and around the world in the hours and days ahead,” he added.

“There is already a call in Congress to put on fast-track the legislation to approve new ordinance, and the $14 billion for Israel,” said the pundit. He remarked that the Pentagon might “empty its stockpiles to provide support to Israel,” and recalled that besides giving Israel bombs and artillery, the US supports its Iron Dome air defense system, whose missiles will need to be replenished.

“If you have a swarm, wave after wave of swarms, Israel is going to be very hard pressed to be able to defend against that. And that’s why the US now is coming in, and that gets the US directly involved,” Maloof pointed out. “And that could then open up US assets in the region.” We have got some 35 bases that surround Iran, and they thereby become vulnerable. They were meant to be a deterrence. Clearly, deterrence is no longer on the table here. Now they become the American Achilles heel because of their vulnerabilities to attack. They’ve got air defense systems, but they’ve got to be replenished. And given that you got active war going on right now in the region, it’s going to be difficult to replenish those supplies.”

According to the ex-Pentagon analyst, much now also depends upon what stockpiles Iran has and “with what consistency they can keep sending these wave after wave of drones and ballistic missiles… Ultimately, if they have them, the hypersonics… and there’s no defense against hypersonics. Not even Israel’s ‘Arrow’ system, which is designed to deal with ballistic missiles… And apparently, that’s been engaged tonight, as well as the Iron Dome.”

The United Nations (UN) Security Council is to meet on Sunday in response to a request from Gilad Erdan, Israel’s permanent representative to the United Nations. The meeting is scheduled for 4 pm New York time (2000 GMT), as announced by the UN Department of Global Communications.

“I’m hoping that the UN Security Council can take this up and maybe some adult supervision could begin to intervene in this and maybe try to bring it to a halt for now,” Maloof said. “But right now, this minute, it doesn’t look like it. And again, it’s going to depend upon the response from the Israelis if they go directly into Iran in response.”

The current media frenzy surrounding the Iran strike is “disproportionately amplified compared to the actual events transpiring on the ground,” Dr Ahmed Al Ibrahim, a Riyadh-based political analyst, told Sputnik.

He added that any true aftermath of Iran’s strike will be discernible after a “thorough assessment.”

“Indeed, I dismiss the current situation as largely sensationalized, a “bubble” inflated by media coverage and public attention,” the political analyst said.

He expressed skepticism that any Middle Eastern countries would “willingly entangle themselves in the unfolding chaos.” Arguing that “Iran’s capacity to directly threaten Israel is limited by geographical constraints,” Ibrahim agreed that there is “potential for escalation.”

April 14, 2024 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Militarism | , , , , | Leave a comment

Scott Ritter: Iran’s Retaliatory Attack ‘Reestablished Deterrence’ to Hold Israel, US in Check

By Svetlana Ekimenko | Sputnik | April 14, 2024

Iran’s mission to the United Nations stated earlier that Tehran’s retaliatory drone and missile attack against Israel had “concluded.” The “military action” was a response to Israel’s “aggression against our diplomatic premises in Damascus,” it said, adding that the strike “hit designated targets.”

By launching its retaliatory drone and missile attack on Israel, Iran “reestablished deterrence,” former UN weapons inspector Scott Ritter told Sputnik.

“Israel believed that it could launch a strike against Iran and suffer no consequence. That is no longer the case,” Ritter noted.

As Israeli military officials survey the damage done to their bases, “they understand the following: that Iran deliberately chose not to inflict extremely lethal action against Israel,” the analyst remarked.

Iran launched a massive drone and missile attack against Israel overnight, assisted by Hezbollah and the Yemeni Houthis. Over 300 projectiles were fired at Israeli territory from Iran, with Iran’s mission to the United Nations stating that its retaliatory attack on Israel had “concluded,” and that the strike “hit designated targets.” Israel’s military has claimed that 99% of the projectiles were intercepted.

Iran’s strike was designed to send a signal to Israel and the United States, “that it could do what it did in Nevatim, at Ramona, anywhere in Israel, anywhere in the Middle East, and there was nothing the United States or Israel could do in response.”

“This is deterrence. This means that in the future, if either Israel or the United States plan on carrying out an action against Iran, they have to weigh in the consequences of their actions knowing that Iran has the capacity to reach out and touch any place, any spot, any target in the region in Israel or out of Israel, and there’s nothing anybody could do to stop that,” the retired US Marine Corps intelligence officer said.

US President Joe Biden issued a statement on Iran’s attack against Israel after he spoke on the phone with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. The POTUS condemned the strike “in the strongest possible terms.” He also reaffirmed Washington’s “ironclad commitment” to help support Israel, and added that there were no attacks on US forces or facilities on Saturday, but that the US “will remain vigilant to all threats.”

Secretary of State Antony Blinken said the US does “not seek escalation,” but will “continue to support” Israel’s defense. “I will be consulting with allies and partners in the region and around the world in the hours and days ahead,” he added.

Weighing in on the flurry of talks between US and Israeli leaders, Scott Ritter said:

“This is why President Biden has been on the phone with Benjamin Netanyahu, the prime minister of Israel, telling him, ‘Do not retaliate.’ The United States will not be a partner in any offensive action against Iran. Not because the United States is friendly to Iran, but the United States understands the consequences that will accrue, should such an attack take place. The United States has been deterred against further action against Iran.”

The question uppermost at the moment is, “what will Israel do?” Ritter noted.

“Israel has been trying to lead the United States into a larger conflict with Iran for some time now. Indeed, some people have speculated that the Israeli attack against the Iranian Consulate in Damascus was designed for just that purpose… But the Iranians were very clever in designing their response – just like they did, when they retaliated against the United States for the assassination of Qasem Soleimani back in 2020,” Ritter said.

He recalled that at the time, Iran launched over a dozen missiles against the Al-Asad air base in Iraq, but Tehran gave Washington advance notice that that base was going to be struck. Thus, Iran ended up destroying empty buildings, Ritter recalled.

“But it demonstrated to the United States that it had the capacity to strike any American base in the region with extreme precision and kill as many Americans as they wanted – if they wanted to do that. And America was deterred against future action of that sort. Will Israel be deterred?” the analyst wondered.

No decision has been made yet regarding an Israeli response to the Iranian missile and drone attack, an Israeli official told The Times of Israel. It was added that a potential response would be discussed at a war cabinet meeting set for later on Sunday. Israel’s response to the Iranian attack will be coordinated with its allies, The New York Times reported earlier, citing an Israeli official.

After Iran’s unprecedented strike, Tel Aviv “understands that any escalation could mean the destruction of Israel,” Scott Ritter noted.

“Israel probably isn’t going to launch a response against Iran. Israel has been deterred from launching that response by the Iranian actions. In this case, we can say that operation ‘True Promise’ was an extraordinarily successful operation, not only for Iran, but indeed for the world, because Iranian deterrence now is a reality that can hold Israel and the United States in check,” Ritter said.

April 14, 2024 Posted by | Aletho News | , , , | Leave a comment

Iran describes response to Israeli attack as ‘legitimate defense’

Press TV – April 13, 2024

Iran’s permanent mission to the United Nations defends the country’s retaliation against the Israeli regime’s recent terrorist attack on the Islamic Republic’s diplomatic premises in the Syrian capital.

“Iran’s military action was based on Article 51 of the United Nations Charter concerning legitimate defense in response to the Zionist regime’s aggression against our diplomatic premises in Damascus,” the mission said in a statement on Saturday.

“The matter can be considered as concluded,” it added.

The mission, however, warned that if the Israeli regime perpetrated another mistake, Iran’s subsequent response could be “remarkably more intense.”

The statement concluded that the conflict was one between Iran and the rogue regime, “of which the United States should stay away.”

Iran’s Islamic Revolution Guards Corps (IRGC), on Saturday night, launched “extensive” retaliatory missile and drone strikes against the occupied territories, defining the mission as “Operation True Promise.”

The Israeli attack had resulted in the martyrdom of Brigadier General Mohammad Reza Zahedi, a commander of the IRGC’s Quds Force, his deputy, General Mohammad Hadi Haji Rahimi, and five of their accompanying officers.

The terrorist attack drew sharp condemnation from senior Iranian political and military leaders, who vowed “definitive revenge.”

On Thursday, the Iranian mission to the United Nations said the UN Security Council’s condemnation of the Israeli atrocity could have prevented the need for retaliation.

“Had the UN Security Council condemned the Zionist regime’s reprehensible act of aggression on our diplomatic premises in Damascus and subsequently brought to justice its perpetrators, the imperative for Iran to punish this rogue regime might have been obviated,” it said on the social media platform X Thursday.

April 14, 2024 Posted by | Militarism | , , , | Leave a comment

Let’s Talk About the Moon

It’s time

NewZealandDoc | April 13, 2024

The night that Neil Armstrong was one small step for (a) man from the lunar surface I was taking my first airplane flight to a hockey camp near Toronto. I remember gazing out the window of the jet as a fourteen year old in July 1969 and imagining the Apollo craft on its impossible and miraculous journey to the very moon which I and countless others had marveled at and regarded as forever out of reach.

Yet reach it we did — we being the all-powerful United States of America, then simultaneously wielding its might in the jungles of a faraway country with perverse ferocity and with the sacrifice of American youngsters in the service of the hazy ideal of protection against Communism.

For many years, while cognizant of the endless warpath trodden by the country of my birth AFTER it had emerged as the glowing victor of World War II, bursting with economic and creative energy and bestriding the rest of the globe as the Colossus, I consoled myself and others with that magnificent and scarcely imaginable achievement of lunar landings.

Placing a man on the moon, that pure and nearly snow-white surface as far removed from the heat and grime of the napalmed Vietnamese jungles, somehow unified humanity in praise and deference, and established the United States as the artificer of miracles. In so doing it also lent a burnished sheen of intimidating and awe-inspiring power to an America whose tradition of can-do individualism was seen to have vanquished its socialistic rival, Russia.

The eyes of humankind for as long as it has trodden this precious Earth have looked heavenward and followed the glowing and bright and changeable Moon with a plethora of dreams and wishes and sighs. To have reached the lunar surface, to have made that impossibly giant leap, became the stuff of insurmountable accomplishment. In sum, no matter how degraded or destructive or sinister the Deep State factions of the United States had been with their never-ending wars and atrocities, the Apollo missions were an offsetting balm, a reminder of greatness and goodness and magnificence on which all could agree as the fulfillment of one of the grandest of dreams.

I had heard, throughout the years, of the cavils of small-minded conspiracy theorists who questioned the Apollo landings, but I had dismissed them or, more accurately, simply ignored them. Knowledgeable though I was about the devastating State-sponsored murders of JFK, MLK, RFK and Malcolm X, and cognizant as I was of the sickening exhibition of destructive deception that was 9/11, Apollo was a glowing ember of hope and beneficence, an emblem of the possibilities of a beneficent collective — the very stuff that dreams are made on, dreams which all of us could share and revel in and be proud about having realized, utterly without qualm.

Nonetheless, for one reason or other, nagged no doubt by an itch fostered by State duplicity, I decided to look into Apollo a bit more closely. I decided, in fact, to do my own bit of sleuthing just to make sure that the stirrings and suspicions about Apollo could be attributed to malaise and malcontents rather than to veracity.

My looking about and digging in resulted in a personal surprise, and a personal awakening. I discovered, in fact, that the case for legitimate human footsteps upon the lunar surface was ridiculously absurd. I discovered that I — and most of the world, I supposed — had accepted a grand illusion as reality when a cool examination of the evidence led to the deflating conclusion that Apollo was a hoax. A big one, a splendid one, an unparalleled one, but a hoax nonetheless.

I wrote my first article about Apollo in 2018, entitled, “How High the Moon”, which appeared on the http://www.aulis.com website. Others followed, including “Moon Landings: Magnificent and Deviously Contrived Propaganda,” and a review of a film by the Italian documentarian Massimo Mazzucco. I urge you to take a look at them.

Determined to lay the matter to rest for myself I even lit upon a small but telling anomaly — the Apollo 11 command module’s extra-vehicular handles. Made of aluminum, these handles should have melted under the intense heat of reentry; but they didn’t. I have published my findings comprehensively here and, in a more accessible fashion, here. These are small potatoes compared to the work of Kaysing, René, Sibrel, Percy, Bennett, Allen, Henderson, McGowan, Wisnewski and many others, whose extensive investigations have revealed and exposed innumerable discrepancies and problems with the official NASA account about virtually every aspect of the Apollo missions. Randy Walsh’s recent books are highly recommended for their overviews.

But allow me, in passing, to direct your attention to this famous video clip of what has become known as the ‘lunar grand prix’:

You be the judge as you watch the robotically immobile driver and listen to the comically insipid commentary.

The single greatest argument against the Apollo missions from 1969 to 1972 is the fact that despite the astronomically exponential growth of computational and technological power since then, somehow or other getting ‘back’ to the moon in the 21st century has not yet been achieved.

Interestingly enough, the trailer for a new film about Apollo has just been released:

From what I can tell it brazenly suggests that NASA actually undertook to film a fake lunar landing just in case the ‘real’ one didn’t fly. I wonder why, just now, in the aftermath of a fake pandemic, this candy-coated message has been released. Is it a clever piece of propaganda designed to forestall the obvious astonishment and questioning of generations born into the internet age when they are asked to accept the clumsy and comical NASA videos of last century? Is it a sophisticated psychological way to resuscitate the halo of the Apollo achievements? What will the impact of encasing a truth within the envelope of a lie amount to, over time?

My point however is that of all the psyops, Apollo stands out supremely. Unlike the assassinations of JFK or RFK, unlike 9/11 or covid, it is not terrifyingly destructive. It is instead positive, meant to induce awe — which creates a different kind of fear among those worshipping at the altar of the miracle — and to bathe us in the aura of supreme human achievement, of conquering the unconquerable and patting ourselves on our backs, we denizens of the little species that could.

It is and has also been a way to cover over the darker and rabidly perverse and destructive machinations of State factions whose goals have been and still are endless war, power and profit — sprinkled with a dash of what I call ‘brinkmanship madness’.

For it is eminently possible that the corrupt Deep State JFK sought to confront, the one that brought us to the lip of nuclear war in the Sixties and is now bringing us all to the edge of a New Tyrannical Order, replete with hot wars and wars irregular and concealed against our very humanity, has a wild and unpredictably calamitous streak.

Those at the helm can be crazy enough to bring us all down in an orgy of annihilation even as they promise themselves visions of transhumanist immortality.

Let’s see.

I thought long and hard about discussing the Moon and the myths of America’s Apollo, because these views might cast aspersion on an already fragile alliance of people protesting against the deceptions of the covid operation. But I think the time is right — maybe Fly Me to the Moon nudged me a little?

If we are going to prevail and really create a better world — as I think we indeed are on another brink of doing — what better way to begin than by discarding all of the grand illusions in favor of humility and truth?

One final note. At the famous press conference of Apollo 11 astronauts Armstrong, Aldrin and Collins were asked by a reporter if they could see stars from the lunar surface.

The answers are instructive.

Emanuel E. Garcia, M.D.

April 2024

April 14, 2024 Posted by | Deception, Film Review, Science and Pseudo-Science, Timeless or most popular, Video | | Leave a comment

End of Escalatory Ladder in Ukraine & MidEast – John Mearsheimer, Alexander Mercouris & Glenn Diesen

The Duran | April 12, 2024

April 14, 2024 Posted by | Militarism, Video | , , , , , , | Leave a comment

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