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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

$12 Billion Over 10 Years: Pharma, Medical Devices Industries Shell Out Direct Payments to US Physicians

By Brenda Baletti, Ph.D. | The Defender | April 11, 2024

The pharmaceutical and medical devices industries paid physicians more than $12 billion over 10 years, according to a study published last month in JAMA.

The analysis found the industries made 85,087,744 payments totaling $12.13 billion to 826,313 physicians — 57.1% of practicing physicians across 39 specialties.

Orthopedic surgeons, neurologists and psychiatrists, and cardiologists received the most money. Trauma surgeons and pediatric surgeons received the least.

The drugs with the highest payouts were blood thinners Xarelto and Eliquis, along with Humira, an immunosuppressant.

The three medical devices with the highest payouts were robotic surgery systems, da Vinci Surgical System and Mako SmartRobotics, and CoreValve Evolut, a heart valve.

“Money given to doctors has a purpose: it is for marketing,” cardiologist Dr. John Mandrola and co-author of the study wrote on his Substack. “If these direct payments to doctors did not work, industry would not spend billions.”

Dr. Andrew Foy, lead author of the paper, told The Defender in an email he thought some people might find the numbers “shocking” and he hoped it would renew interest in having conversations about physician-industry payments and facilitate more research.

The researchers tracked and compared payments made to physicians across and within specialties. They also identified the top 25 drugs and medical devices associated with the largest total payments.

The analysis included only money received for consulting, travel, food, entertainment, education, gifts, grants and honoraria. The researchers excluded other major external funding sources for physicians such as research funding and royalties.

They analyzed data from 2013-2022 in the Open Payments database, established in 2013 by the Physician Payments Sunshine Act as part of the Affordable Care Act.

Legislators designed the Sunshine Act to address growing public concerns about Big Pharma’s influence over doctors. At the time, several studies had shown that increased interaction with pharmaceutical representatives influenced physician prescribing behavior.

The act requires medical product manufacturers to disclose to the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services any payments or other transfers of value made to physicians or teaching hospitals. Open Payments publishes the payments on its website.

The analysis found that payments varied significantly across specialties. The highest-paid specialties like orthopedic surgery received $1.36 billion, and neurology and psychology specialties received $1.32 billion. The lowest-paid specialties received substantially less.

Pediatric surgeons and trauma surgeons received only $2.89 million and $6.96 million respectively.

Payments also varied significantly among physicians within the same specialty, with a small number of physicians in each specialty receiving the largest amounts of money — often exceeding $1 million — while the median physician received significantly less, typically less than $100, ranging from zero to $2,339.

“Our paper is a modest analysis. It does not explain the problem of financial conflicts of interest. But it is a lot of money. And it’s highly targeted to lucrative procedures,” Mandrola wrote.

“Industry influence is way too strong,” he added, and commonly results in medical devices being approved “despite dodgy evidence.”

He said many doctors believe collaboration between industry and physicians is a good thing that drives innovation. However, he said, these payments weren’t simply supporting collaboration.

“Most of it, I would argue, is for marketing and goodwill. Goodwill goes a long way to help establish practice patterns.”

Top drugs and devices on list net billions for pharma

The blood thinner Xarelto, used to prevent blood clots from forming due to an irregular heartbeat or after hip or knee replacement surgery, topped the payment list, accounting for $176.3 million.

The drug, made by Bayer and marketed by Janssen Pharmaceuticals, was Bayer’s top drug in 2023, generating about 4.1 billion euros in revenue.

Payments for Eliquis, another blood thinner used to treat the same conditions, amounted to $102.62 million. Pfizer and Bristol-Myers Squibb manufacture Eliquis.

Pfizer in 2023 brought in over $6.7 billion from the drug, its second-most profitable product behind the Comirnaty COVID-19 vaccine. Bristol-Myers Squibb’s sales topped $12 billion.

Eliquis costs U.S. customers 3 to 7 times more than customers in other high-income countries.

Humira, an immunosuppressant used to treat rheumatoid arthritis, psoriasis and other autoimmune conditions paid out $100.17 million to physicians. Over the last two decades, the drug netted over $200 billion for drugmaker AbbieVie, which listed the medication at $50,000 per year.

Bayer, Pfizer, Bristol-Myers Squibb and AbbieVie did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

Other top drugs included diabetes treatments Invokana, Jardiance, and Farxiga, Dupixent, a drug for allergic diseases, and Botox.

The two medical devices topping the list — da Vinci Surgical System, which paid $307.5 million, and Mako SmartRobotics, which paid $50 million — are machines for robotic-assisted surgeries.

Mako focuses on hip and knee replacements. Da Vinci netted approximately $7.12 billion in 2023 and investors were “blown away” by the “robot-fueled growth” of Mako SmartRobotics device installation for hip and knee replacements. Mako’s parent company Stryker made over $20 billion last year.

Several cardiology devices also made the list, including the third-highest payer CoreValve Evolut, another heart valve, Sapien 3 and LifeVest, a wearable defibrillator. They are all part of their parent companies’ multi-billion dollar product portfolios.

Conflicts of interest

The problem of physicians’ financial ties to pharmaceutical companies has plagued the industry for decades and garnered significant media attention.

Perhaps most famously, Purdue Pharma used misleading marketing to make massive profits from sales of opioids, sparking an epidemic. Nearly 645,000 Americans died from opioid overdose between 1999 and 2021.

However, Purdue Pharma’s policy of paying physicians has long been common practice. Research studies during the last two decades have found the vast majority of physicians accept payments and gifts from pharmaceutical companies. Influential studies include those by the Institute of Medicine and the Medicare Payments Advisory Commission that led to the passage of the Sunshine Act.

This latest study and other recent studies show that despite new mechanisms for transparency in payments, the payments continue.

And those payments are particularly high among physicians with prominent roles directing public policy.

For example, last year The New York Times revealed that while advisers at the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine were shaping public policy on opioids, they were also accepting payments from the Sackler family who owned Purdue Pharma.

Last month, The Defender reported that most of the nine new members appointed to the vaccine advisory committee for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention have received substantial direct payments or research funding from Big Pharma — largely from the companies whose products they will be reviewing.

Foy said he thought a major part of the problem is that physicians and researchers believe that if they make their conflicts of interest transparent, the problem is resolved.

“As if someone cannot be transparent about their conflicts and highly biased at the same time,” he said.

He said that payments don’t necessarily lead directly to prescribing one specific drug for which a payment is received.

Instead, he said, he worries that the payments lead to, “overly enthusiastic recommendations or guidelines from medical organizations to use new products when they have not been sufficiently tested, or where the evidence is not strong enough, to recommend them over old standards or nothing at all (in some cases).”

Industry payments to physicians, Foy said, have a way of “tilting physicians’ sympathy toward industry and the ‘medical advancements’ that come from industry so that they (the physicians) more willingly adopt new products just for the sake of ‘industry advancement’ even if they don’t have a direct COI [conflict of interest] with that particular product.”

Physicians, he said, “become cheerleaders for industry and more open to adopting new products simply due to this attachment.”

For example, he said it is not uncommon at medical conferences for attendees to stand up and cheer results from “late-breaking” research studies whose “benefits are very rarely ever more than marginal, tiny, or ‘teensy-weensy’ at best.”

“I never understood it,” Foy wrote.

Direct payments aren’t the only way industry collaborates with physicians, Foy said.

Industry ads are featured on the homepage of medical journals and ads bombard physicians at major medical conferences.

He said this gives the impression that “the event is built around industry and its involvement.”

He said he doesn’t think that anyone tries to hide the relationships. “The main reason being, at least in my opinion, is that many physicians, perhaps even the majority, believe that physician-industry collaboration is a net benefit to patients and society,” he said.

“I don’t necessarily share that view; however, I don’t believe there is strong, objective evidence to support one side or the other.”

Brenda Baletti Ph.D. is a reporter for The Defender. She wrote and taught about capitalism and politics for 10 years in the writing program at Duke University. She holds a Ph.D. in human geography from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and a master’s from the University of Texas at Austin.

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 13, 2024 Posted by | Corruption, Science and Pseudo-Science | | Leave a comment

Game Over? Persian Gulf Powers Reportedly Refuse to Give US Access to Bases for Anti-Iran Strikes

By Ilya Tsukanov – Sputnik – 13.04.2024

Going back to the Gulf War in 1991, the US has depended on regional allies for large-scale military operations across the Middle East. Now, as tensions between Israel and Iran rise and the US-led unipolar world order comes under strain, America’s traditional partners are apparently refusing to walk in lock step with Washington.

Persian Gulf countries have reportedly told the United States not to launch any attacks against Iran from their territory or airspace amid seething regional tensions.

Sources, including a senior US official told the Middle East Eye that Gulf monarchies have been “working overtime” on the diplomatic track “to shut down avenues that could link them to a US reprisal against Tehran or its proxies from bases inside their kingdoms.”

The countries include regional heavyweights Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Oman, and Kuwait, with their leaderships reportedly “raising questions” on the details of US basing agreements, and taking steps to prevent the use of their Iran-adjacent bases against the Islamic Republic.

NATO member Turkiye has also reportedly barred the US from using its airspace for strikes against Iran, but Sputnik has not been able to independently verify this information.
“It’s a mess,” a senior US official said, referring to the headache the Biden administration faces as it prepares for a potential Iranian retaliatory strike against its top regional ally Israel following Tel Aviv’s April 1 attack on the Iranian Embassy compound in Damascus, Syria.

The Middle East Eye report follows a report by Axios on Friday citing US officials who said that Iran has privately warned the US that it will target American forces in the Middle East if Washington gets involved in a military confrontation between Iran and Israel.

The US has an estimated 40,000+ military personnel at bases dotting the Middle East, including the Al Udeid Air Base in Qatar, which hosts at least 10,000 troops, and serves as the forward headquarters of United States Central Command – the combatant command responsible for military operations across the Middle East. Nearby Bahrain hosts up to 7,000 troops and the US Fifth Fleet – which operates in the Persian Gulf, the Red and Arabian Seas, and part of the Indian Ocean. The US also has a 15,000-troop garrison in Kuwait, at least 5,000 troops in the UAE, and about 2,700 troops and fighter jets at the Prince Sultan Air Base in Saudi Arabia. Oman hosts a few hundred US troops, and allows the US Air Force to conduct overflights and landings, and warships to make 80 port calls annually.

The Gulf powers’ increasingly independent foreign policy is potentially a major setback for Washington, which for many decades after World War II (and especially after the Cold War) was able to rely on the Persian Gulf monarchies for its military operations in the oil-rich region.

Regional countries led by Saudi Arabia and the UAE have taken a series of steps recently to wean themselves off of dependence on the US economically, politically and militarily, with Riyadh moving to break the petrodollar monopoly in the oil trade with China, pausing its military campaign against Yemen’s Houthi militia, restoring diplomatic ties with Iran and, together with Abu Dhabi, joining the BRICS Plus bloc.

The Palestinian-Israeli crisis has driven Gulf state leaders and their populations further from the idea of the establishing relations with Israel, and chilled ties with the US thanks to the Biden administration’s full-fledged support for Tel Aviv in the course of the Gaza War.

April 13, 2024 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Militarism, Wars for Israel | , , , , | Leave a comment

‘Russia turned off the gas’ – German leader

RT | April 12, 2024

Germans should blame Moscow and not Berlin for high energy prices, Chancellor Olaf Scholz said in an interview published on Friday. He claimed the embargo against Russia was necessary for defending Europe from “imperialism.”

Speaking with Die Tageszeitung, Scholz defended his government’s policy of unequivocal support for Ukraine.

“It’s about defending Europe’s peace order. Russia is waging an imperialist war and must not win,” he told the outlet. “Second: Russia stopped its gas deliveries, not us.”

Russia’s Gazprom delivered natural gas to Germany both via Ukraine – upholding the existing transit contracts – and via the Nord Stream pipeline, built under the Baltic Sea. Under pressure from the US, Germany blocked the certification of Nord Stream 2 in November 2021 – months before the Ukraine conflict escalated.

Berlin refused to certify Nord Stream 2 even after Nord Stream 1 was destroyed by explosive charges in September 2022. Western investigators have yet to name the culprit for the bombing.

According to Scholz, however, his government “developed new sources of supply for gas and oil and built terminals to import liquefied gas.” The LNG has come mainly from the US, at a much higher price.

“All of this has led to energy prices falling again,” the German chancellor said, arguing that his government prevented a ten-year economic crisis through “decisive action.”

Scholz seconded the message of his economy minister, Green leader Robert Habeck, who has argued that the German model of prosperity built around cheap Russian energy was over for good.

“The peacemaking effect of economic contacts was certainly overrated,” he told the Tageszeitung, claiming that Russia sacrificed its economic well-being by choosing violence. To defend its “democracy and freedom,” Germany needs a strong military, an efficient arms industry, and to support Ukraine, he insisted.

Scholz also brushed off the Germans’ concerns about the economy and inflation by saying that green energy and the pharmaceutical industry will soon turn things around.

On the same day his interview was published, Germany’s largest steelmaker Thyssenkrupp announced “a substantial reduction in production” at its Duisburg facility, laying off 13,000 employees. The company blamed “high energy costs and tight emission reduction regulations” as well as increased pressure from Asian imports.

April 13, 2024 Posted by | Economics, Russophobia | , | Leave a comment

All for One and One for All

By William Schryver – imetatronink – April 13, 2024

Russia, China, and Iran have now formed a de facto military and economic alliance — what they prefer to call a “partnership”.

In the case of Russia and China, a comprehensive full-spectrum partnership has emerged: military, economic, and monetary.

Trade between Russia and China has exploded both quantitatively and qualitatively.

Importantly, trade settlement is overwhelmingly denominated in rubles and renminbi. Use of the dollar and its international mechanisms is being aggressively deprecated.

Russia and China now conduct regular joint naval and air patrols of the western Pacific, from Alaska to the South China Sea.

Russia, China, and Iran conduct regular joint exercises in the Arabian Sea. Those exercises have increased in both scope and frequency in recent years.

Both Russia and China are investing vast sums of capital in Iran, much of it in the energy sector and in ambitious transportation projects aiming to construct fast and efficient trade corridors linking China, Iran, and Russia as primary nodes of Eurasian commerce.

Arms and technology transfers between the three countries have reached unprecedented levels.

Russian foreign minister Sergey Lavrov just concluded several days of talks with Chinese leaders, including both Wang Yi and Xi Jinping. In its report of the talks, the Chinese government’s flagship media organ, Global Times, summarized (in the words of prominent CPC commentator Li Haidong) the current state of the Russia/China relationship:

“China and Russia will not target any third party, but if hegemonic forces threaten China and Russia, or threaten world peace, China and Russia will stand together and fight to protect their own interests and safeguard world peace together.”

It is increasingly evident that Russia, China, and Iran recognize that an attack against any one of them would constitute an existential threat to them all. The strategic interests of all three countries are now inextricably intertwined.

Most importantly, they are united in a single overriding strategic objective: to dismantle the dominion of the long-reigning Anglo-American empire.

Naturally, the rapidly waning global hegemon is not inclined to relinquish its throne without a fight. What form that fight takes remains to be seen. But if the empire attempts to preserve its so-called “rules-based international order” via force of arms, it is essential to understand this incontrovertible reality:

In order for the United States to make war against any ONE of Russia, China, or Iran, it would be necessary to effectively vacate every major US base on the planet in order to concentrate enough military power to undertake the mission.

In a putative war between the United States and Iran, both Russia and China would actively support Iran. I’m not suggesting Russian or Chinese forces would fight alongside Iranians — although that could happen. But it would likely not be necessary. Iran would simply be supplemented with arms and other logistical necessities from both its partners — and quite possibly taken under their nuclear umbrella in an explicit act of deterrence.

Additionally, in consequence of the US weakening its force posture in Europe and the western Pacific in a bid to militarily subdue Iran, Russia and China would be enabled to apply immense pressure to western logistics, trade, and political influence in those regions. This is not to suggest that China would invade Taiwan or Russia would invade the Baltics or Poland. They would need only to exert their dominant influence in what were previously considered to be unassailable American imperial domains in east Asia and Europe.

The empire is stretched so thin and its potential for power projection is so diluted that undertaking even one Big War would be enough to bring the entire house of cards tumbling down.

This is the harsh reality the Masters of Empire are now facing, and no amount of mythologizing about the “limitless” power at their disposal can change it.

There is a vast difference between imagined power and the actual ability to project and sustain power against the adversaries the United States military must now face and defeat in order to prevent or even meaningfully delay the end of American global hegemony.

And, to the extent Russia, China, and Iran are determined to act all for one and one for all, they represent a combination of global military and economic power that cannot be defeated.

April 13, 2024 Posted by | Economics, Solidarity and Activism | , , , | Leave a comment

US has ‘no viable plan’ for Ukraine – senator

RT | April 12, 2024

Kiev cannot win against Moscow because it has run out of men and needs more weapons and ammunition than Washington could possibly provide, US Senator J.D. Vance said on Friday.

Earlier this week, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer argued that “the biggest reason Ukraine is losing the war is because the hard-right in the Congress has paralyzed the US from acting.” The New York Democrat claimed that a small group of Republicans have been holding up a vital $60 billion aid package for Kiev.

In an op-ed published by the New York Times, Vance addressed Schumer’s claim and accused President Joe Biden of having “failed to articulate even basic facts” about what Ukraine needs and the reality on the ground.

“The Biden administration has no viable plan for the Ukrainians to win this war,” Vance argued.

“Ukraine’s challenge is not the GOP; it’s math,” the Ohio Republican wrote. “Ukraine needs more soldiers than it can field, even with draconian conscription policies. And it needs more matériel than the United States can provide.”

Not only is $60 billion a fraction of what Ukraine would need to turn the tide, Americans “lack the capacity to manufacture the amount of weapons Ukraine needs us to supply to win the war,” Vance argued.

He pointed to the fact that the US can make 360,000 shells for 155mm artillery per year, “less than a tenth of what Ukraine says it needs,” and that’s after doubling prewar production capacity.

Vance also took aim at the White House’s messaging that funding Kiev is good for US military industry.

“The notion that we should prolong a bloody and gruesome war because it’s been good for American business is grotesque. We can and should rebuild our industrial base without shipping its products to a foreign conflict,” he wrote.

The US insistence on not negotiating with Russia is “absurd” and Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky’s goal of restoring Ukraine’s 1991 borders is “fantastical,” Vance added. He urged Kiev to dig in and hold until some kind of peace can be brokered by Washington.

Earlier this week, however, Zelensky said Ukraine was planning yet another counteroffensive – after the costly failure of last summer’s operation – but needed even more weapons and ammunition from the West.

April 12, 2024 Posted by | Aletho News | , , | Leave a comment

War and Peace in an Ocean of Lies

Does anyone in Washington care about Israel’s crimes?

BY PHILIP GIRALDI • UNZ REVIEW  • APRIL 11, 2024

One expects that anyone involved in politics will lie whenever they think they can get away with it to burnish one’s own image and while also distorting reality to promote policies that are being favored. Nevertheless, the record of high crimes committed by a series of presidents and their top aides since the so-called “war on terror” began has established a new low for government veracity. One would have thought that the fake intelligence fabricated by a group of Zionists in the Pentagon and White House to launch the misadventures in Afghanistan and Iraq would be as bad as it could possibly get, but the Joe Biden team has outdone even those unfortunately unindicted criminals by allowing itself to be maneuvered by friends in NATO and by Israel into situations that are one step short of nuclear war.

Listening to John Kirby, Lloyd Austin, and Linda Thomas-Greenfield speak suggests that a course of remedial English might be in order as they cannot articulate a sentence that is coherent, especially as they are frequently lying or being deliberately evasive. And then there is teleprompter Joe himself who can pout over the killing of 13,000 children in Palestine while also secretly sending weapons to the Israelis who are eager to slaughter still more based on the judgement that they will grow up to be “terrorists.” Joe’s idea of a exchange of views with the Israeli government is a threat to maybe do something unspecific followed by a strongly worded message from Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu telling him to “Go to hell!”

Joe’s gang cannot confirm that the Israelis are committing war crimes linked to genocide even though the rest of the world, including a majority of Americans, watch it happening on television and are convinced regarding what is taking place. But hey, Israel is a wonderful little democracy and America’s best friend and ally in the whole wide world. Or at least that is what Congress and the White House as well as the Jewish dominated media want you to believe. In reality, Israel is a racist and sectarian state that has been a US liability since it was founded, something that Secretary of State George Marshall warned about, but Harry Truman wanted Jewish money so he could get reelected. Some things never change as we watch Biden and Trump battle for the shekels by pledging their loyalty to Israel.

The latest wrinkle on the consequences of loving Israel so much comes with what is going on with Iran, which had its Embassy Consulate General building in Damascus Syria attacked by Israeli fighter planes, killing two senior Iranian generals plus a number of other Iranians, Lebanese and Syrians. For what it’s worth, embassies and consulates are generally speaking regarded as untouchable military targets under the terms of the Vienna Convention, which sought to keep enemies talking to each other even under the most adverse circumstances. In fact, Syria last fought Israel in 1973, more than fifty years ago, and has not gone to war with the Israelis since that time while Israel has been bombing Syria regularly as well as killing Iranian officials and scientists for many years. Iran, like Syria of late, has never attacked Israel.

Iran has said it will retaliate and Israel has gone on high alert. So what does Biden do? He warned Iran to back off and ignores the fact that it was Israel that did the unprovoked attacking and started the whole business and pledges “ironclad” support for the Jewish state if Iran dares to do anything serious in response. There are also reports that Israel and the US are planning jointly their possible retaliation if Iran were to strike. General Erik Kurilla, commander of the US Central Command, is now on his way to Israel and is expected to meet Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant and senior Israel Defense Forces officials to coordinate possible US responses with those of Israel. Nota bene that President Biden has flipped the right or wrong of the entire affair over to do exactly what Israel wants, i.e. hopefully have the US go to war with the Iranians. This has been Netanyahu’s intention right from the beginning and there is also a bit of blackmail thrown in for good measure with Israel threatening to start using its secret nuclear arsenal if the United States stops supplying the Jewish state with weapons. Israeli Knesset member Nissim Vaturi, a representative in Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s ruling Likud party, issued the threat in an unsubtle way while discussing the probability that Iran would retaliate against Israel for bombing its embassy. He said “In the event of a conflict with Iran, if we do not receive American ammunition … we will have to use everything we have.” In other words, Israel will have no choice but to start dropping nuclear weapons on its enemies and might also attack its friends who failed to support it, a reference to the Samson Option in which a beleaguered Israel would use its nukes to “take everyone down with them.”

The timing of the embassy attack suggests that Israel is acting as it does, i.e. taking steps to shift the narrative and restore its perpetual “victimhood,” because it definitely needs a public relations boost in a world where only the US and a few other nations aligned with Washington are not yet ready to give up on Bibi and his wild plans for regional domination. The horrific killing of hundreds of Palestinians in the Al-Shifa hospital in Gaza as well as the targeted assassination of seven employees of a charity that was bringing in food to those starving due to Israel’s blocking the entry of relief supplies have been the top stories all over the world, and rightly so. The Israeli disdain for any behavior that might show weakness in the drive to remove the Palestinians from Palestine has resulted in the Jewish state’s being condemned and boycotted by much of the world with more to come.

Nevertheless, even in those countries that have made illegal pro-Palestinian expressions, demonstrations calling for a ceasefire have attracted hundreds of thousands of protesters. The governments confronting elections later this year, including the US and Germany, are under considerable pressure to respond to the popular sentiment. Indeed, it is already being mooted that President Joe Biden might well fail to be re-elected due to his kid gloves handling of Netanyahu who has assessed Biden’s weakness and has heedlessly taken US support as a given while also ignoring the warnings that are now coming out of Washington and elsewhere over the genocide taking place.

Indeed, it would be useful to speculate that the conflict in Gaza is in part being used as a smokescreen for developments with Iran and other Israeli neighbors that may prove more dangerous in the long run. Even the well-informed might be surprised to learn that even though Israel is not actually at war legally with several of its neighbors, it is nevertheless de facto at war with three countries, Lebanon, Syria and Iran. It has been exchanging fire with the Lebanese Hezbollah militias on its northern border on an almost daily basis since fighting with Hamas began in October and has sought and apparently obtained US guarantees of direct support should Hezbollah escalate its activity. In Syria, which has not in any way attacked Israel, the Israeli air and missile forces have staged numerous attacks against targets that it invariably claims to be “Iranian” even though most of the casualties are Syrians. There have been missile and bombing attacks on Syria nearly weekly since 2017, including a number of recent incidents involving both Damascus and Aleppo international airports that endangered civilian passengers and air crews.

As reported above, the most recent and most damaging attack was directed against the Iranian Consulate General, which was attached to the Iranian Embassy located in an upscale neighborhood in Damascus, Syria’s capital. The building was completely destroyed by six missiles fired from F-35 fighter planes that had crossed over the Syrian border from Israel, killing several long-serving diplomats alongside Brigadier General Mohammad Reza Zahedi and Zahedi’s deputy, General Haji Rahimi. It was also reported that Brigadier General Hossein Amirollah, the chief of general staff for the al-Quds force in Syria and Lebanon, was among the victims as was at least one Hezbollah member. Sources in Syria confirmed that a total of 13 people were killed in the attack, including six Syrians. Iran’s foreign minister, Hossein Amir-Abdollahian, said afterwards that “We consider this aggression to have violated all diplomatic norms and international treaties. Benjamin Netanyahu has completely lost his mental balance due to the successive failures in Gaza and his failure to achieve his Zionist goals.” Both Iran and Hezbollah vowed revenge.

And just days before the attack on the Iranian consulate in Damascus, the Israeli military had launched massive strikes against a target in Syria’s northern province of Aleppo which killed at least 40 people, most of them soldiers. The air strikes hit a weapons depot, resulting in a series of explosions that also killed six Hezbollah fighters.

The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) subsequently revealed that it had strengthened air defenses and called up reservists in expectation of a response either from Lebanon or directly from Iran itself. Zahedi was an important Iranian official, reportedly responsible for the IRGC’s operations in Syria and Lebanon, for Iranian militias there, and for ties with Hezbollah, and was thus the most senior commander of Iranian forces in the two countries. His killing was the most significant death of a senior Iranian official since the murder in Baghdad of General Qassim Soleimani by the Trump Administration in January 2020. As the IRGC is a US-designated terrorist organization, Washington may have in advance approved of the Israeli action, though that was denied by the Pentagon.

Iran’s possible reprisal includes the capability to respond by directly launching missiles from its own territory rather than via any of its proxy groups, which include the militias it supports in Lebanon, Iraq and Yemen. Responding to that possibility, Israeli Minister of Foreign Affairs Israel Katz has warned on social media that if Tehran attacked from its territory, Israel would react and “attack in Iran.” Iran may therefore choose to respond indirectly or through a proxy, but any major reprisal would be giving Israel an excuse to elevate the conflict, which just might be the main reason for the attack on the Consulate General in the first place. It is, however, widely believed that the Iranian leadership is eager to avoid any escalation into a major or even a minor exchange that could be referred to as a war. Nevertheless, posters have gone up around Tehran in a sign of public pressure for an Iranian response. “The defeat of the Zionist regime in Gaza will continue and this regime will be close to decline and dissolution,” Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said in a speech to the country’s officials in Tehran. “Desperate efforts like the one they committed in Syria will not save them from defeat. Of course, they will also be slapped for that action,” he added.

Israeli Defense Minister Gallant responded to the Ayatollah, saying that Israel is “increasing preparedness” in the face of threats from all across the Middle East. Gallant said that the country’s defense establishment is “expanding our operations against Hezbollah, against other bodies that threaten us,” and reiterated that Israel “strikes our enemies all over the Middle East… We will know how to protect the citizens of Israel and we will know how to attack our enemies.”

Intelligence sources in Washington suggest that Iran will try to respond by possibly blowing up an Israeli Embassy or other building, or even by assassinating an Israeli official, but they will more likely do something indirectly through a proxy like Hezbollah or the Houthis. They could also send a more subtle message by accelerating their nuclear program, though there is a danger that that would definitely bring the US into the game, which is precisely what Israel would like to see. They want to cripple Iran but would much prefer that all the heavy lifting – and the casualties and costs – be endured by Washington. If a US intervention were to occur and there were a misstep, it could easily escalate into a regional war with Lebanon, Syria, Iraq and Iran all lined up against the US and Israel with China and Russia likely to be playing a supporting role aiding the Arabs and Iranians. And don’t forget that Israel is nuclear armed. If it gets in trouble it would see itself as a victim and would be tempted to do something very dangerous.

So it is easy to see that Israel has staged a deliberate provocation to draw Washington into its wars. It is playing with fire in an attempt to once and for all establish its dominance over all of its neighbors. Interestingly, the tone deaf Biden Administration appears to be falling into the trap set by the Israelis. Beyond the “ironclad” pledge, it also voted against a Russian and Chinese drafted UN Security Council resolution to condemn the Israeli attack on the Iranian Consulate General. The vote should have been a no brainer given the clear violation of international law and act of war committed by Israel in doing what it did, but the US was joined by Britain and France in casting the veto vote “no” reportedly after “Diplomats said the US told council colleagues that many of the facts of what happened on Monday in Damascus remained unclear.” It all means that Biden is stepping in it yet again in a situation where Netanyahu is in control and running circles around him.

Philip M. Giraldi, Ph.D., is Executive Director of the Council for the National Interest, a 501(c)3 tax deductible educational foundation (Federal ID Number #52-1739023) that seeks a more interests-based U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East. Website is councilforthenationalinterest.org, address is P.O. Box 2157, Purcellville VA 20134 and its email is inform@cnionline.org.

April 12, 2024 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Timeless or most popular, Wars for Israel | , , , , | Leave a comment

Abu Ghraib survivors to get their day in court

RT | April 12, 2024

Twenty years on from reports that the US military was torturing prisoners at Iraq’s Abu Ghraib prison, three survivors will finally get a chance to bring their claims before an American jury.

A trial in the civil lawsuit filed by former Abu Ghraib inmates against the US military contractor that they blame for their suffering is scheduled to begin on Monday in a federal court near Washington. The private security contractor, CACI International, has strung the case along for 16 years by making over 20 unsuccessful attempts to have the lawsuit dismissed.

CACI, which supplied the interrogators who worked at Abu Ghraib, has insisted that its employees weren’t accused of abusing detainees. The Virginia-based company also has argued that as a Pentagon contractor, it should be protected by the government’s sovereign immunity against the torture allegations.

However, the plaintiffs claimed that CACI set the conditions for their torture by directing or encouraging abuses by military guards, at least partly to “soften up” prisoners for interrogations. All three of the former detainees are Iraqi civilians who were held at Abu Ghraib until eventually being released without charges.

The trial will be “an exceedingly rare opportunity for accountability for the egregious harms suffered by Iraqis after the US invasion in 2003,” according to a statement earlier this month by the Center for Constitutional Rights, a US group that is representing the plaintiffs. “In fact, this is the first lawsuit where victims of US post-9/11 torture will get their day in court.”

The Abu Ghraib scandal first came to public attention in April 2004, when photos of abused prisoners and their smiling US guards were published. At the time, CBS News aired a report describing the abuse and showing American soldiers taunting naked prisoners. The abuses included stacking nude prisoners in pyramids or dragging them by leashes around their necks. Others were threatened by dogs or hooded and attached to electrical wires.

One of the plaintiffs, former Al-Jazeera reporter Salah Al-Ejaili, claimed he was forced to wear women’s underwear, terrorized by dogs, deprived of sleep, and put in stress positions that caused him to vomit black liquid. Another survivor, Suhail Al-Shimari, has claimed that he suffered beatings, electrical shocks, and sexual assaults.

CACI has argued that its employees weren’t in a position to give orders to military police and that the US government was responsible for setting the conditions at Abu Ghraib. The company has continued to receive lucrative US government contracts for the past two decades, and only low-level soldiers were criminally prosecuted for the abuses.

A Pentagon investigation found that acts of “brutality and purposeless sadism” occurred at the prison at the hands of military police and US intelligence agency personnel. Retired US Army General Antonio Taguba, who led the investigation, concluded that at least one CACI interrogator should be held accountable for directing military police to set the conditions that led to abuses. Taguba will reportedly testify at the Abu Ghraib trial.

April 12, 2024 Posted by | Subjugation - Torture | , , , , | Leave a comment

Late admission: Who is really responsible for the chemical attacks in Syria?

By Bakhtiar Urusov – New Eastern Outlook – 12.04.2024 

On 22 February this year, the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) issued an opinion from the Investigation and Identification Team (IIT) that found ISIL responsible for the use of chemical weapons (CW) in the Syrian town of Mari in September 2015.

Despite the fact that it took the OPCW more than 8 years to state a known fact, the conclusion uses cautious language such as “there is reason to believe” that “only ISIL could have had the intent, motive and capability” to use CW at this location.

The conclusion is based on another OPCW document, the Fact-Finding Mission (FFM) report on the Mari incident, dated 24 January 2022.

It is noteworthy that the OPCW inspectors conclude that CW has been used by ISIL fighters against other “armed groups”, including the US-controlled terrorist organisation Jabhat al-Nusra. Despite its official recognition by the international community as a terrorist organisation, the report refers to this international terrorist organisation as “armed opposition to ISIL”. It also states separately that there were no Syrian army forces in the Mari area. In reality, this refers to the presence of chemical weapons in the terrorists’ possession, which they used in their struggle for power.

At the same time, there are known facts of the use of chemical weapons by Jebhat al-Nusra itself. For example, in 2015, Turkish parliamentarians presented evidence of supplies of precursors for CW (sarin) and CW missiles by militant groups from Turkey.

Details of British and American intelligence assistance to extremists in the creation of CWs are revealed in the book “The Red Line and the Rat Line” by the well-known American journalist Seymour Hersh.  In it, the author refers to the documents of the US military intelligence, according to which the US not only knew about the creation of CW by pro-Turkish militants with the help of Turkey, Saudi Arabia and Qatar, but also actively contributed to it.

This fact played a key role in President Obama’s declaration of readiness to attack Syrian troops if CW were used. The Americans knew that such a scenario had already been prepared by extremists supported by Washington and its allies – Ankara, Riyadh and Qatar. The “White Helmets” and “Belingcat” organisations, created by Britain’s MI6, were to provide the necessary media image to justify the invasion of Syria.

Damascus’ proposal to destroy Syria’s CW stockpiles, with Moscow’s active mediation, postponed for a while, but did not stop the provocations with its use. Apparently, the initiative took the members of the anti-Assad coalition by surprise and they had no plan B. Against the background of the defeat of the terrorists in Syria, it was too late to create another pretext for a quick invasion of Syria.

The subsequent chemical attacks in Syrian cities were clearly attributed to the Syrian army. Without any investigation, based only on the testimony of the White Helmets and Belingcat, the Americans, British and French launched several massive attacks against the Syrian army in an attempt to prevent the defeat of the terrorists. Just three days after the Syrian Air Force destroyed a militant CW depot in Khan Shaykhun (April 2017), the US Navy struck the Syrian Air Force’s Shayrat airbase with missiles, a base which had played a key role in pushing al-Nusra militants out of northern Idlib province. When the Syrian military forced the militants to retreat from the suburb of Douma in April 2018, the militants staged a chemical attack there, prompting a massive missile attack by US, French and British forces on the advancing Syrian army just six days after the incident. As before, the White Helmets’ testimony about the Syrian army’s use of CW was enough for the West. With the full cooperation of Damascus, OPCW experts inspected the site of the alleged CW use. Subsequently, one of the inspectors appeared at the UN with a refutation of the White Helmets’ conclusion, providing evidence of a staged use of CW. However, his testimony was rejected by the OPCW and he was ostracised and dismissed without any legal basis.

Similar provocations have been carried out in other cities in Syria. All of them have one thing in common – preliminary military successes of the Syrian army against terrorists in a particular area, the absence of any military sense in the use of CW, as well as immediate air strikes by the “friends of Syria” led by the United States, the invasion of foreign troops into the territory of the Syrian Arab Republic.

If it took more than eight years to recognise ISIL responsibility for the use of CW, it took only a few days for the West to accuse and attack government forces. All the CW provocations in Syria are reminiscent of the infamous test tube of white powder demonstrated by US Secretary of State C. Powell at the UN in 2003. With the passage of time this lie, which became the pretext for the invasion of Iraq, has become obvious to everyone. The use of CWs by terrorists supported by the West, Turkey and KSA is also becoming obvious. But we should not expect Washington, London, Paris or Ankara to acknowledge this fact any time soon. This would mean admitting that they have committed crimes against humanity, violated many international conventions and carried out aggressions against sovereign states.

Collective condemnation of the crimes of these countries in the UN, the OPCW and other international and regional organisations should be a defence against such a policy of the West. International cooperation should be established to repel such hybrid attacks on yet another “overly independent” state that, according to Washington, intends to defend its national interests “to the detriment of the interests of the United States.”

April 12, 2024 Posted by | Book Review, Deception, False Flag Terrorism, Timeless or most popular, War Crimes | , , , , , | Leave a comment

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