Sayyed Al-Houthi: Our Investigation Confirmed The American Role In Targeting Al-Sammad

Feb 24, 2023

Sayyed Al Houthi Addresses Americans, British, Saudis And Emiratis: “Leave All Our Provinces, Our Territorial Waters”

The leader of the revolution, Sayyed Abdulmalik Badr al-Din Al-Houthi, confirmed that the personality of the martyr President Saleh al-Sammad in loyalty and patriotism and his ability to unite the home front prompted the aggression to assassinate him.

This came in a speech he delivered on the occasion of the anniversary of the martyr President Saleh Al-Sammad.

Sayyed Abdulmalik affirmed that the aggression sought to target the martyr al-Sammad due to his active role in confronting the aggression and supporting the just cause of our people, adding that the aggression noticed in the martyr al-Samad his superior ability to unify the internal ranks as a priority of confronting the aggression.

Sayyed Abdulmalik Al-Houthi said: “On the anniversary of the martyr President Saleh al-Sammad, we remember him, as he was a model of honesty, loyalty, patience and relentless pursuit of God’s pleasure.”

Regarding the assassination of the martyr President Saleh Al-Sammad, Sayyed Abdulmalik indicated that “In the stages of escalation by the aggression to control Hodeidah, the martyr Al-Sammad was present there to mobilize the people and activate all official and popular capabilities.”

In his speech, Sayyed Abdulmalik accused the US of being behind the assassination of the martyr President Saleh Al-Sammad.

He said: “the US was the one who determined for the Saudi to target the martyr Al-Sammad as a primary target.”

The leader affirmed that all the campaigns carried out by the coalition forces in their aggression against Yemen, including the campaign that targeted Hodeidah, were carried out under US supervision.

In his speech, Commander Abd al-Malik Badr al-Din al-Houthi explained that the Yemeni people surprised the coalition, which had thought that the assassination of al-Sammad would break its will and weaken it, saying: “the result was completely the opposite.”

He added, “After the assassination of the martyr al-Sammad, Yemeni people showed an increase in their determination, patriotism and sacrifice”.

Sayyed Al Houthi Addresses Americans, British, Saudis And Emiratis: “Leave All Our Provinces, Our Territorial Waters”

Feb 24, 2023

Leader of the Yemeni revolution, Sayyed Abdul-Malik al-Houthi, revealed on Thursday the developments of the Muscat consultations between Sanaa and Riyadh, and the American role in obstructing them with the aim of benefiting from the sale of weapons and its continuation in occupying Yemen and its sea outlets.

This came in a speech that he delivered on the occasion of the anniversary of the martyred President Saleh Al-Sammad.

Al-Houthi explained that the American regime seeking to obstruct efforts by distancing the Saudi-led coalition from assuming any obligations arising from any agreement or understanding, trying to transform the issue and “as if it were a purely internal battle.

The leader of the revolution affirmed that who launched the aggression and war on Yemen is the Saudis, along with the Emiratis and their mercenaries who joined under American, British and Zionist supervision.

Therefore, the coalition cannot shirk through its well-known official statements announcing any commitments to any agreements or understandings, because it is the belligerent and aggressor party that leads the position and the war on our country as it is present at the political level in the United Nations and the Security Council, in addition to its planes and missiles that bomb, kill and destroy the infrastructure and destroy facilities in the country.

“Let the Americans and the British know, and let the Saudis and Emiratis know that they have to hold their obligations and entitlements that are legitimate for our people.”

Sayyed al-Houthi explained that the American sought to obstruct the understandings led by Oman by obstructing the file of salaries and entitlements that our people receive from our national wealth, noting that the national wealth and its sources are occupied by the coalition in Marib and Shabwa and Hadramout, as well as ports.

The aggression coalition practically controls our national wealth and is responsible for plundering that wealth and depriving the people of for eight years, in addition to compensation, he said.

The leader al-Houthi indicated to “the American played a game on the issue of the withdrawal of foreign forces from Yemen in trying to make this point postponed indefinitely and to keep the military presence in our country.

“We cannot accept the continuation of the imbalance in the country, or there be a solution to the internal problems in light of the existence of a state of war, siege and foreign presence in the country.”

He added, “We cannot accept understandings and search for solutions to political problems in light of the existence of war, siege and occupation, because understanding under such a situation is blackmail and direct interference in the affairs of our country. Let the Americans know that and let the picture be clear to our people.”

Al-Sayyed reaffirmed that one of the priorities and basic issues that we adhere to in any dialogues is the humanitarian and livelihood file for our people, and this is a priority and a humanitarian and legal entitlement, even as stipulated in the international law to which they belong.

Nord Stream Terror Attack: The Plot Thickens

February 14, 2023

by Pepe Escobar, widely posted on the Internet, reposted with the author’s permission

What’s left for all of us is to swim in a swamp crammed with derelict patsies, dodgy cover stories and intel debris.

Seymour Hersh’s bombshell report on how the United States government blew up the Nord Stream 1 and 2 pipelines in the Baltic Sea last September continues to generate rippling geopolitical waves all across the spectrum.

Except, of course, in the parallel bubble of U.S. mainstream media, which has totally ignored it, or in a few select cases, decided to shoot the messenger, dismissing Hersh as a “discredited” journalist, a “blogger”, and a “conspiracy theorist”.

I have offered an initial approach, focused on the plentiful merits of a seemingly thorough report, but also noting some serious inconsistencies.

Old school Moscow-based foreign correspondent John Helmer has gone even further; and what he uncovered may be as incandescent as Sy Hersh’s own narrative.

The heart of the matter in Hersh’s report concerns attribution of responsibility for a de facto industrial terror attack. Surprisingly, no CIA; that falls straight on the toxic planning trio of Sullivan, Blinken and Nuland – neoliberal-cons part of the “Biden” combo. And the final green light comes from the Ultimate Decider: the senile, teleprompt-reading President himself. The Norwegians feature as minor helpers.

That poses the first serious problem: nowhere in his narrative Hersh refers to MI6, the Poles (government, Navy), the Danes, and even the German government.

There’s a mention that on January 2022, “after some wobbling”, Chancellor Scholz “was now firmly on the American team”. Well, by now the plan had been under discussion, according to Hersh’s source, for at least a few months. That also means that Scholz remained “on the American team” all the way to the terror attack, on September 2022.

As for the Brits, the Poles and all NATO games being played off Bornhom Island more than a year before the attack, that had been extensively reported by Russian media – from Kommersant to RIA Novosti.

The Special Military Operation (SMO) was launched on February 24, almost a year ago. The Nord Stream 1 and 2 blow up happened on September 26. Hersh assures there were “more than nine months of highly secret back and forth debate inside Washington’s national security community about how to ‘sabotage the pipelines’”.

So that confirms that the terror attack planning preceded, by months, not only the SMO but, crucially, the letters sent by Moscow to Washington on December 2022, requesting a serious discussion on “indivisibility of security” involving NATO, Russia and the post-Soviet space. The request was met by a dismissive American non-response response.

While he was writing the story of a terror response to a serious geopolitical issue, it does raise eyebrows that a first-rate pro like Hersh does not even bother to examine the complex geopolitical background.

In a nutshell: the ultimate Mackinderian anathema for the U.S. ruling classes – and that’s bipartisan – is a Germany-Russia alliance, extended to China: that would mean the U.S. expelled from Eurasia, and that conditions everything any American government thinks and does in terms of NATO and Russia.

Hersh should also have noticed that the timing of the preparation to “sabotage the pipelines” completely blows apart the official United States government narrative, according to which this a collective West effort to help Ukraine against “unprovoked Russian aggression”.

That elusive source

The narrative leaves no doubt that Hersh’s source – if not the journalist himself – supports what is considered a lawful U.S. policy: to fight Russia’s “threat to Western dominance [in Europe].”

So what seems a U.S. Navy covert op, according to the narrative, may have been misguided not because of serious geopolitical reasons; but because the attack planning intentionally evaded U.S. law “requiring Congress to be informed”. That’s an extremely parochial interpretation of international relations. Or, to be blunt: that’s an apology of Exceptionalism.

And that brings us to what may be the Rosebud in this Orson Welles-worthy saga. Hersh refers to a “secure room on the top floor of the Old Executive Office Building …that was also the home of the President’s Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board”.

This was supposedly the place where the terror attack planning was being discussed.

So welcome to PIAB: the President Intelligence Advisory Board. All members are appointed by the current POTUS, in this case Joe Biden. If we examine the list of current members of PIAB, we should, in theory, find Hersh’s source (see, for instance, “President Biden Announces Appointments to the President’s Intelligence Advisory Board and the National Science Board”“President Biden Announces Key Appointments”“President Biden Announces Key Appointments to Boards and Commissions”“President Biden Announces Key Appointments to Boards and Commissions”; and “President Biden Announces Key Appointments to Boards and Commissions”.

Here are the members of PIAB appointed by Biden: Sandy WinnefeldGilman LouieJanet NapolitanoRichard VermaEvan BayhAnne FinucaneMark AngelsonMargaret HamburgKim Cobb; and Kneeland Youngblood.

Hersh’s source, according to his narrative, asserts, without a shadow of a doubt, that “Russian troops had been steadily and ominously building up on the borders of Ukraine” and that “alarm was growing in Washington”. It’s beggars belief that this supposedly well informed lot didn’t know about the massing of NATO-led Ukrainian troops across the line of contact, getting ready to launch a blitzkrieg against Donbass.

What everyone already knew by then – as the record shows even on YouTube – is that the combo behind “Biden” were dead set on terminating the Nord Streams by whatever means necessary. After the start of the SMO, the only thing missing was to find a mechanism for plausible deniability.

For all its meticulous reporting, the inescapable feeling remains that what Hersh’s narrative indicts is the Biden combo terror gambit, and never the overall U.S. plan to provoke Russia into a proxy war with NATO using Ukraine as cannon fodder.

Moreover, Hersh’s source may be eminently flawed. He – or she – said, according to Hersh, that Russia “failed to respond” to the pipeline terror attack because “maybe they want the capability to do the same things the U.S. did”.

In itself, this may prove that the source was not even a member of PIAB, and did not receive the classified PIAB report assessing Putin’s crucial speech of September 30, which identifies the “responsible” party. If that’s the case, the source is just connected (italics mine) to some PIAB member; was not invited to the months-long situation-room planning; and certainly is not aware of the finer details of this administration’s war in Ukraine.

Considering Sy Hersh’s stellar track record in investigative journalism, it would be quite refreshing for him to elucidate these inconsistencies. That would get rid of the fog of rumors depicting the report as a mere limited hangout.

Considering there are several “silos” of intel within the U.S. oligarchy, with their corresponding apparatuses, and Hersh has cultivated his contacts among nearly all of them for decades, there’s no question the allegedly privileged information on the Nord Stream saga came from a very precise address – with a very precise agenda.

So we should see who the story really indicts: certainly the Straussian neo-con/neoliberal-con combo behind “Biden”, and the wobbly President himself. As I pointed out in my initial analysis, the CIA gets away with flying colors.

And we should not forget that the Big Narrative is changing fast: the RAND report, the looming NATO humiliation in Ukraine, Balloon Hysteria, UFO psy op. The real “threat” is – who else – China. What’s left for all of us is to swim in a swamp crammed with derelict patsies, dodgy cover stories and intel debris. Knowing that those who really run the show never show their hand.

Why was British ISIS member ‘Jihadi George’ tried in a US court?

February 02 2023

Photo Credit: The Cradle

The decision to try one of the so-called “Beatles” ISIS members in the US was to conceal his previous links to British intelligence and his role in their regime-change efforts in Syria.

ByWilliam Van Wagenen

In January 2023, reports emerged that Alexanda Kotey, known as “Jihadi George” and one of the four British ISIS members collectively known as the “Beatles,” had disappeared from the custody of the US Bureau of Prisons (BOP).

In 2022, Kotey was convicted in a US court and sentenced to life in prison for the abduction and detention of multiple western hostages in Syria between 2012 and 2015, including journalists James Foley, John Cantlie, and Steven Sotloff, and aid workers Kayla Jean Mueller, Peter Kassig, David Haines, and Alan Henning, most of whom were later executed by ISIS.

A BOP spokesperson refused to provide details of Kotey’s whereabouts or why he had been moved, stating only that only that there are “several reasons” why an inmate may be referred to as “not in BOP custody,” including for “court hearings, medical treatment or for other reasons. We do not provide specific information on the status of inmates who are not in the custody of the BOP for safety, security, or privacy reasons.”

Kotey’s links with British intelligence

The refusal of BOP officials to provide details of Kotey’s whereabouts raises fears that Kotey may be able to escape facing justice for his crimes. This is due to Kotey’s previous links to British intelligence, which sought to use UK-based Islamist extremists such as Kotey as proxies in the 2011 US-led regime-change war against the Syrian government.

Kotey’s links to British intelligence are evidenced by the convoluted effort to prosecute him after his 2018 detention by the US-backed and Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF).

Although Kotey held UK citizenship like three of his alleged victims, Haines, Henning, and Cantlie, British officials insisted that Kotey and fellow Beatle Elshafee Elsheikh be tried in US rather than UK courts.

A review of events surrounding Kotey’s case reveals that prosecuting the West Londoner in the US was necessary to avoid revealing his and fellow Beatles’ links to British intelligence.

Laying the foundations for ISIS

Kotey traveled to Syria in August 2012 with fellow Beatle Muhammad Emzawi, known as “Jihadi John,” as part of a “terror-funnel” established by British intelligence. Upon arrival in Syria, Kotey and Emzawi immediately joined an armed group fighting against the Syrian government known as Katibat al-Muhajireen.

In November 2012, Emzawi participated in the abduction of American journalist James Foley and British journalist John Cantlie near the town of Binnish in northwestern Syria.

Kotey, Emzawi, and Elsheikh then served as prison guards for Foley, Cantlie, and other western hostages. Many members of Katibat al-Muhajireen – including the trio – then helped lay the foundation for the rise of ISIS by joining the terror group when it was established in April 2013.

Foley was brutally murdered by Emzawi in August 2014. In a video recording of the murder, a black-clad and masked Emzawi beheaded Foley, who was kneeling in the desert sand in an orange Guantanamo-style prisoner’s jumpsuit. Sotloff, Haines, Hennig, and Kassig were murdered subsequently, while Cantlie’s whereabouts are still unknown.

Terrorism researcher Raffaello Pantucci reports that Kotey and Elsheikh, “were longstanding figures of concern to the security services. Involved in a West London network that has long fed young British men to jihadi battlefields and created terrorist cells back in the UK.”

The Times reports that according to court papers filed in Kotey’s case, he first tried to travel to Syria with three other Britons via the Channel tunnel in February 2012 but was denied entry at the Turkish border and deported.

A month later, Kotey tried again but failed to reach Syria by flying from Barcelona. He returned to London through St Pancras station, where police arrested him for carrying a “lock-blade knife.”

The Times reported further that, “In August 2012 Kotey tried for a third time to make it to Syria by travelling overland across Europe with Emwazi. He has disclosed that the pair were detained at least twice during the two-month journey, although it is unclear in which countries. Each time, it seems, they were allowed to continue on their way.”

A spokesman for the SDF claimed that Kotey entered Turkey in 2012 “even though the Turkish intelligence had his jihadi record. He gained two months’ residence in Turkey and then he was allowed to go to Syria and he entered Syrian soil through the border crossing at Bab al Hawa.”

After years of fighting for Katibat al-Muhajireen and then ISIS, Kotey and Elsheikh were detained by the SDF in 2018 as the Caliphate faced defeat by the Syrian Arab Army (SAA) and its allies on the one hand, and US and SDF forces on the other, during the race to control Syria’s northeastern oil and grain producing regions. Emzawi had already been killed in a US airstrike in 2015.

Trial in the US instead of UK

By the time of Kotey’s detention in 2018, British police had long been collecting evidence of Kotey’s terrorist activities. As a result, the Guardian reported that the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) had charged Kotey with five counts of murder and eight counts of hostage-taking in February 2016, and issued warrants for his arrest.

However, once Kotey was in SDF custody, British officials took extraordinary legal measures to ensure he would not be brought back to the UK for trial, insisting instead that Kotey be tried in a US court.

The British Home Office then revoked Kotey’s British citizenship, making it more difficult to prosecute him in the UK. According to Ken Macdonald, a former UK director of public prosecutions, stripping Kotey of his citizenship appeared to be an attempt by the government “to duck responsibility for bringing this Briton to justice.”

The Guardian reports that UK Security Minister Ben Wallace claimed to parliament in July 2018 that the UK did not have enough evidence to try Kotey and a US trial was the only option. However, a legal source with knowledge of the case claimed that the “British families of those murdered by ‘the Beatles’ were misled by UK government officials” and told that “if these men are not sent to the US, we won’t be able to prosecute them.”

The Telegraph reported in 2018 that according to a leaked letter from British Home Secretary Sajid Javid, the Metropolitan Police and FBI had been investigating Kotey’s activities in Syria for the past four years, “collecting more than 600 witness statements in a criminal inquiry involving 14 other countries,” and that there was “intelligence” implicating Kotey in the “kidnap and murder” of two Britons and three Americans.

Britain’s support of terrorists in Syria

UK officials were correct, however, in saying to the victims’ families that if Kotey and Elsheikh were not sent to the US, they could not be prosecuted. This was because British intelligence had been directly supporting Katibat al-Muhajireen, the armed group Kotey, Elsheikh, and Emzawi initially fought for during the time they participated in the abduction and captivity of numerous western hostages.

Two previous efforts to convict British citizens on terrorism charges for their involvement with Katibat al-Muhajireen had fallen apart for this specific reason, illustrating British intelligence support for the armed group.

The first was the 2015 terror trial of Swedish citizen Bherlin Gildo, who according to the Daily Mail fought for Katibat al-Muhajireen and later for the official al-Qaeda affiliate in Syria, the Nusra Front.

The Guardian reports that after Gildo abandoned the conflict, he was detained while transiting through Heathrow Airport. He was accused by British authorities of attending a terrorist training camp and receiving weapons training between 31 August, 2012, and 1 March, 2013, as well as possessing information likely to be useful to a terrorist.

However, the terror trial collapsed “after fears of deep embarrassment” to the British security services. This was because, as Gildo’s lawyer explained, “British intelligence agencies were supporting the same Syrian opposition groups as he [Gildo] was.”

Another example is former Guantanamo detainee Moazzam Begg, who was also tried on terror charges for assisting Katibat al-Muhajireen. Begg traveled to Syria several times in 2012 and provided physical training to foreign fighters from the group in Aleppo, as reported by Foreign Policy. Begg made his latest trip to Syria in December 2012.

As a result, Begg was detained by UK authorities in 2014 and accused of attending a terrorist training camp. The Guardian reported, however, that Begg was freed after British intelligence officials from MI5, “belatedly gave police and prosecutors a series of documents that detailed the agency’s extensive contacts with him before and after his trips to Syria,” and which showed that MI5 told Begg he could continue his work for the so-called opposition in Syria “unhindered.”

It was therefore clear that any terror trial of Kotey and Elsheikh in the UK would collapse for the same reasons as the previous cases, leaving UK officials no choice but to have them tried in the US instead.

In the letter leaked to the Telegraph, former Home Secretary Sajid Javid explained that “the UK does not currently intend to request, nor actively encourage, the transfer of Kotey and El-sheikh to the UK to support future UK-based prosecution.” Showing that he was under pressure as a result of this decision, Javid wrote further to the letter’s addressee, “I do understand your frustration on this subject.”

The Telegraph notes further that, “despite repeated ministerial assurances that British jihadists traveling to Syria would be held to account in British courts, the Home Secretary’s letter discloses concerns that laws in this country may not be robust enough to ensure successful prosecution. He believes American terrorism laws are more effective.”

In other words, British law was not robust enough to convict someone on terrorism charges for fighting with a terrorist group the UK intelligence services themselves supported.

The capital punishment loophole

Despite claims that there was insufficient evidence to prosecute Kotey in the UK, any successful conviction in the US would have relied on evidence collected by UK prosecutors, which would have to be shared with their US counterparts.

This was problematic, however, because US officials had not provided assurances that Kotey would not face the death penalty if convicted. Because the death penalty is banned in the UK, it was contrary to long standing UK policy to provide evidence that could contribute to a death sentence.

Home Secretary Javid nevertheless approved providing evidence against Kotey and Elsheikh to US prosecutors after the pair were transferred from SDF to US custody.

House of Lords member Alex Carlile, a former reviewer of terrorism legislation, described Javid’s willingness to approve this as “a dramatic change of policy by a minister, secretly, without any discussion in parliament,” and that “Britain has always said that it will pass information and intelligence, in appropriate cases, provided there is no death penalty. That is a decades-old policy and it is not for the home secretary to change that policy.”

This led Elsheikh’s mother to sue the British government, fearing that if her son and Kotey were convicted in a US court, they would be executed. The case eventually went to the British Supreme Court, which according to the New York Times, “unanimously ruled that the British home secretary’s decision to transfer personal data to law enforcement authorities abroad for use in capital criminal proceedings without any safeguards violated a data protection law passed in 2018.”

As a result, US Attorney General William Barr belatedly gave the assurance in August 2020 that Kotey and Elsheikh would not face the death penalty, allowing the sharing of evidence and the prosecution to move forward.

A testimony of the west’s support of ISIS

In 2022, Kotey and Elsheikh were finally convicted and sentenced to life in prison. At the time, the Washington Post explained that the successful prosecution of Elsheikh and Kotey had been unlikely, given that at time of their capture, it was “unclear whether an American trial would happen at all. A federal prosecution was met with opposition at the highest levels of government on two continents.”

While the reason for Kotey’s recent disappearance from US Bureau of Prisons custody is unclear, the insistence of UK officials to have him and fellow Beatle Elsheikh prosecuted in a US rather than UK court, and the reluctance of both governments to try the two ISIS militants at all, indicates that British planners wished to hide their previous support for extremists who helped lay the foundation for ISIS.

While ISIS is widely understood to have emerged in Iraq, evidence continues to emerge showing that officials in London and Washington played the crucial role in the rise of the notorious terror group as part of a broader effort to topple the Syrian government of Bashar al-Assad.

The views expressed in this article do not necessarily reflect those of The Cradle.

‘Doomsday clock’: 90 seconds to midnight

Thursday, 26 January 2023 11:08 AM  [ Last Update: Thursday, 26 January 2023 11:17 AM ]

By Pepe Escobar

The Doomsday Clock, set by the US-based magazine Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, has been moved to 90 seconds to midnight.  

That’s the closest ever to total nuclear doom, the global catastrophe.

The Clock had been set at 100 seconds since 2020. The Bulletin’s Science and Security Board and a group of sponsors – which includes 10 Nobel laureates – have focused on “Russia’s war on Ukraine” (their terminology) as the main reason.

Yet they did not bother to explain non-stop American rhetoric (the US is the only nation that adopts “first strike” in a nuclear confrontation) and the fact that this is a US proxy war against Russia with Ukraine used as cannon fodder.

The Bulletin also attributes malignant designs to China, Iran and North Korea, while mentioning, only in passing, that “the last remaining nuclear weapons treaty between Russia and the United States, New START, stands in jeopardy”.

“Unless the two parties resume negotiations and find a basis for further reductions, the treaty will expire in February 2026.”

As it stands, the prospects of a US-Russia negotiation on New START are less than zero.

Now cue to Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov making it very clear that war against Russia is not hybrid anymore, it’s “almost” real.

“Almost” in fact means “90 seconds.”

So why is this all happening?

The Mother of All Intel Failures

Former British diplomat Alastair Crooke has concisely explained how Russian resilience – much in the spirit of Iranian resilience past four decades – completely smashed the assumptions of Anglo-American intelligence.

Talk about the Mother of All Intel Failures – in fact even more astonishing than the non-existent Iraqi WMDs (in the run-up to Shock and Awe in 2003, anyone with a brain knew Baghdad had discontinued its weapons program already in the 1990s.) 

Now the collective West “committed the entire weight of its financial resources to crushing Russia (…) in every conceivable way – via financial, cultural and psychological war, and with real military war as the follow-through.”

And yet Russia held its ground. And now reality-based developments prevail over fiction. The Global South “is peeling away into a separate economic model, no longer dependent on the dollar for its trading needs.”

And the accelerated collapse of the US dollar increasingly plunges the Empire into a real existential crisis.

All that hangs over a South Vietnam scenario evolving in Ukraine after a rash government-led political and military purge. The coke comedian – whose only role is to beg non-stop for bags of cash and loads of weapons – is being progressively sidelined by the Americans (beware of traveling CIA directors). 

The game in Kiev, according to Russian sources, seems to be that the Americans are taking over the Brits as handlers of the whole operation.

The coke comedian remains – for now – as a sock puppet while military control over what is left of Ukraine is entirely NATO’s.

Well, it already was – but now, formally, Ukraine is the world’s first de facto NATO member without being an actual member, enjoying less than zero national sovereignty, and complete with NATO-Nazi Storm troopers weaponized with American and German tanks in the name of “democracy”.

The meeting last week of the Ukraine Defense Contact Group – totally controlled by the US – at the US Air Force base in Ramstein solidified a sort of tawdry remix of Operation Barbarossa.

Here we go again, with German Panzers sent to Ukraine to fight Russia.

Yet the tank coalition seems to have tanked even before it starts.  Germany will send 14, Portugal 2, Belgium 0 (sorry, don’t have them). Then there’s Lithuania, whose Defense Minister observed, “Yes, we don’t have tanks, but we have an opinion about tanks.”

No one ever accused German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock of being brighter than a light bulb. She finally gave the game away,  at the Council of Europe in Strasbourg:

“The crucial part is that we do it together and that we do not do the blame game in Europe because we are fighting a war against Russia.”

So Baerbock agrees with Lavrov. Just don’t ask her what Doomsday Clock means. Or what happened after Operation Barbarossa failed. 

The NATO-EU “garden”

The EU-NATO combo takes matters to a whole new level. The EU essentially has been reduced to the status of P.R. arm of NATO.

It’s all spelled out in their January 10 joint declaration.

The NATO-EU joint mission consists in using all economic, political and military means to make sure the “jungle” always behaves according to the “rules-based international order” and accepts to be plundered ad infinitum by the “blooming garden”.

Looking at The Big Picture, absolutely nothing changed in the US military/intel apparatus since 9/11: it’s a bipartisan thing, and it means Full Spectrum Dominance of both the US and NATO. No dissent whatsoever is allowed. And no thinking outside the box.

Plan A is subdivided into two sections.

1. Military intervention in a hollowed-out proxy state shell (see Afghanistan and Ukraine).

2. Inevitable, humiliating military defeat (see Afghanistan and soon Ukraine). Variations include building a wasteland and calling it “peace” (Libya) and extended proxy war leading to future humiliating expulsion (Syria).

There’s no Plan B.

Or is there? 90 seconds to midnight?

Obsessed by Mackinder, the Empire fought for control of the Eurasian landmass in World War I and World War II because that represented control of the world.

Later, Zbigniew “Grand Chessboard” Brzezinski had warned: “Potentially the most dangerous scenario would be a grand coalition between Russia, China and Iran.”

Jump cut to the Raging Twenties when the US forced the end of Russian natural gas exports to Germany (and the EU) via Nord Stream 1 and 2.

Once again, Mackinderian opposition to a grand alliance on the Eurasian landmass consisting of Germany, Russia and China.

The Straussian neo-con and neoliberal-con psychos in charge of US foreign policy could even absorb a strategic alliance between Russia and China – as painful as it may be. But never Russia, China and Germany.   

With the collapse of the JCPOA, Iran is now being re-targeted with maximum hostility. Yet were Tehran to play hardball, the US Navy or military could never keep the Strait of Hormuz open – by the admission of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff. 

Oil price in this case would rise to possibly thousands of dollars a barrel according to Goldman Sachs oil derivative experts – and that would crash the entire world economy.

This is arguably the foremost NATO Achilles Heel. Almost without firing a shot a Russia-Iran alliance could smash NATO to bits and bring down assorted EU governments as socio-economic chaos runs rampant across the collective West. 

Meanwhile, to quote Dylan, darkness keeps dawning at the break of noon. Straussian neo-con and neoliberal-con psychos will keep pushing the Doomsday Clock closer and closer to midnight.   

Pepe Escobar is a Eurasia-wide geopolitical analyst and author. His latest book is Raging Twenties.

(The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect those of Press TV)


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Leaked files: How Britain trains Jordan to spy on its citizens

January 24 2023

The British government covertly trained Jordanian security services in techniques known as “digital media exploitation” which has been used to monitor, manipulate, and disrupt dissent in the kingdom.

Source: The Cradle

Photo Credit: The Cradle

ByKit Klarenberg

By Al Mayadeen English 

Leaked documents reviewed by The Cradle reveal that Britain secretly trained Jordanian security services in techniques used by the notorious UK security and cyber agency GCHQ, which provides signals intelligence to the British government and its armed forces.

Over three intensive, week-long, Foreign Office-funded training sessions conducted between June 2019 and March 2020, members of the Public Security Directorate’s shadowy Special Branch, handpicked by the British Embassy in Amman, were taught the finer points of “digital media exploitation.”

In theory, the purpose of the exercise was to assist “evidence gathering agencies in Jordan to effectively extract data from digital devices” to enhance their investigative capabilities, and improve the standard of prosecutions, particularly in the field of terrorism.

This would in turn enable enhanced sharing of evidence between Amman and London, “and lead to increased operational cooperation.”

Tried and tested tactics

As readers of The Cradle will well-know by this point, the officially stated noble objectives of Whitehall’s assorted security support and reform programs in West Asia may not align with the underlying reality of these efforts.

For example, this outlet has previously revealed how British operatives and technology are placed in Lebanon’s intelligence services under the guise of teaching them how to use digital forensic tools. This allows London to closely monitor their activities – and Lebanese citizens.

Those programs are delivered by British government contractor Torchlight, a company staffed by UK military and intelligence veterans with high-level security clearances. The same company was also behind the training provided to Jordan’s Special Branch.

According to its submissions to the Foreign Office, based on a “comprehensive on-site visit” in 2018, the Directorate’s operatives were already “satisfactorily equipped in terms of hardware and software” to conduct “digital media exploitation.”

Spying on citizens

However, Torchlight felt that they were not “adequately trained to fully exploit the potential of the equipment they possess.” Given the resources available to the Directorate, this “potential” could be highly concerning.

For example, Torchlight has noted that Special Branch uses Cellebrite’s suite of digital intelligence products. Cellebrite, an Israeli company with clients including multiple repressive governments, produces technology capable of breaking into encrypted devices and extracting and analyzing all data within it.

While the firm has helped solve murky murder cases, overwhelmingly it is deployed to monitor the activities of human rights activists, journalists and dissidents.

The professional backgrounds of Torchlight staffers involved in the Jordanian training project raise additional concerns. It was led by the company’s Head of Digital Intelligence, Andy Tremlett, a cyber and electronic warfare specialist who spent over a decade in senior positions at GCHQ.

Along the way, he was “charged with the provision of support to the most specialized and discreet areas” of British Special Forces operations, and responsible for expanding the agency’s “overseas footprint” and “potential delivery platform.” These positions granted him “vast experience in how to use and exploit digital material,” and integrating different forms of intelligence in broader espionage operations.

‘Destroy, deny, degrade and disrupt’

Further details of Tremlett’s ability to “exploit” the private data of targets aren’t offered, although he is said to have “spent a significant portion of his career within the Joint Threat Research Intelligence Group (JTRIG).” The existence of this unit was exposed by US National Security Agency whistleblower Edward Snowden in 2014, and the details of its operations are truly shocking.

JTRIG’s explicit mission is to employ a variety of dirty tricks to “destroy, deny, degrade and disrupt” enemies and “discrediting” them, by planting “negative information” about them online, and manipulating discussions on internet forums and social networks.

leaked presentation on JTRIG’s covert activities shows this harassment extends to changing an individual’s social media profile pictures to take their paranoia “to a whole new level” or simply deleting their online presence, writing anonymous blog posts “purporting to be [by] one of their victims” to damage their reputations, emailing and texting their work colleagues, neighbors and friends, and arranging “honey trap” stings.

“A great option. Very successful when it works,” the presentation states in regard to the latter strategy. “Get someone to go somewhere on the internet, or a physical location to be met by a ‘friendly face.’ JTRIG has the ability to ‘shape’ the environment on occasions.”

Writing incriminating blog posts was said to have “worked on a number of different ops,” with “Iran work” cited as a particularly effective example, although this is not expanded upon. Elsewhere, it is disclosed that JTRIG “significantly” disrupted the Taliban’s communications network by bombarding them with phone calls, texts and faxes “every 10 seconds or so.”

Evidently, it was not digital forensics with which Torchlight’s training modules were primarily concerned. In fact, JTRIG operations related to “digital media exploitation” were, per the leaked presentation, primarily concerned with placing information on “compromised” electronic devices, including “damning information, where appropriate.”

Protecting the British-installed monarchy

In Jordan, criticism of King Abdullah II – a member of the Hashemite dynasty installed on thrones across West Asia by the British following World War I, and himself a British Army veteran – and government officials and institutions is a very serious crime.

Journalists are routinely subject to harassment, arrest and prosecution by authorities for even mildly critical reporting or social media posts. And protests over rising hardship among the general population are becoming more frequent.

The prospect of Amman’s secret police being proficient in JTRIG’s malicious methods is therefore disturbing by definition. The ease with which they could be abused to ruin the lives of objectors, and/or jail them on bogus charges, is clear.

Britain’s willingness to export these techniques to Jordan is not surprising. The strict and widely criticized Cybercrime Law, which restricts freedom of expression online and citizens’ right to privacy, makes the country a perfect staging ground for London’s nefarious activities elsewhere in West Asia, and helps keep their presence and intentions secret.

For example, from the early days of the Syrian crisis, Britain operated a site located 45 minutes from Amman where fighters in the proxy war were trained. Leaked files related to the project predicted that some of these individuals would go on to join Al-Nusra and ISIS and that equipment would be stolen and used by them.

Despite this, the Foreign Office was unconcerned about these prospects, likely because there was little risk that they, or the training program more generally, would ever be publicly exposed.

By Kit Klaernberg

Our Agents in Erbil Told Us that Qassem Soleimani Is in the City…The Morale of Our Fighters Collapsed

January 4, 2023 

By Abir Kanso

An Englishman and an American have The Ukraine Talk (Douglas Maccregor)

January 03, 2023

Carthage Must Be Destroyed!

December 16, 2022

Source

By David Sant

During its rise to world domination, the City of Rome had one major competitor, which was its equal in every way. That city was Carthage, located 370 miles away, on the South side of the Mediterranean Sea.

Carthage had been planting colonies around the Mediterranean and Atlantic for over a century before Rome was even founded. As Rome rose to power, these two Mediterranean cities fought two wars for control over the Island of Sicily, called the Punic Wars. Despite an admirable performance by Hannibal who managed to invade Italy twice and inflicted a terrible defeat on the Romans at Cannae, Carthage still ended up losing both wars.

At the close of the second Punic War in 201 BC, Carthage was conquered by Rome and placed under a special administrative status that disallowed it from fielding a navy or overseas military without permission from the Roman Senate.

Carthage was one of only three powers that ever managed to directly threaten Rome during the days of the Republic, the others being the Gauls who sacked Rome in 390 BC, and the Macedonian Greeks, who were defeated in 197 BC.

The Roman attitude and behavior toward Carthage then was very similar to the Anglo-American attitude toward Russia, today. The main “sin” of Carthage in the eyes of the Romans was that it was equal in power and influence to Rome. And for that sin, it had to be destroyed.

Cato the Elder was a Roman soldier, who later became a Senator and famous orator who gave many speeches in the Senate even after his retirement. Over a period of forty years, he routinely ended his speeches on any subject with the statement, “And furthermore, I consider that Carthage must be destroyed!”

Cato repeatedly made this demand, despite the fact that Carthage was now a Roman client state bound by a peace treaty.

For fifty years after losing the Second Punic War, Carthage submitted to the terms of the treaty. However, after the death of Cato the Elder in 149 BC, a certain faction in Rome deliberately allowed the King of Numidia to pillage and conquer Carthagenian territories, in violation of the treaty.

This placed Carthage in a position where they had to defend themselves from predations by a neighboring Roman client state. Their appeals to the Roman Senate were ignored. So, they took action to defend their interests against Numidia without permission.

When they did so, the Roman Senate immediately interpreted this as a violation of the 201 BC peace treaty, and authorized the invasion and destruction of Carthage. This was not unlike the “rules based international order” of Washington, DC, where we make the rules (for you) but we don’t have to follow them ourselves.

Despite having surrendered their weapons at the outset of the Roman campaign, the walls of Carthage were so well made that it took the Romans nearly three years of siege to break through.

Finally in 146 BC, Carthage fell for the last time to the Roman Army, and was deliberately razed to the ground and burned. The Romans slew all of its population, men, women, and children, except for 50,000 who were taken back to Italy as slaves. According to Polybius, the wife of the last general of Carthage threw herself and her own children into the burning temple of the city rather than surrender to Rome.

Moscow as the New Carthage

The dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991 was not the result of losing a war. It was caused by the failed policies of a centralized economy, exacerbated by American manipulation of the oil markets, and a costly American-backed guerilla war in Afghanistan. The United States moved in with “shock therapy” economic advisors and took the opportunity to restructure a confused and gullible Russia, including writing a new constitution.

For Russia the collapse of the Soviet Union had many similarities to the loss of Carthage in the Second Punic War.

Despite making peace with their former adversary, and honoring their treaties, Russia found that she could never be accepted as a friend on equal terms by the Western world order. And this was for the very same reason that Carthage could never be tolerated by Rome. Russia was and is in every way an equal to the Anglo-American Empire.

Ever since Vladimir Putin became President of Russia, the chorus of the West has become louder and louder that Putin must go. While they cannot say it aloud yet, what they really mean is “Russia must be destroyed!”

If Russia had continued the policy of submission to Western control that was begun by Boris Yeltsin, we can be assured that Moscow would have eventually met the same fate as Carthage from the Anglo-American Empire.

However, the appointment of Vladimir Putin as President of Russia derailed their plans. Under his rule Russia has steadily reasserted her former leadership and strength against the machinations of the Anglo-American Empire.

False Flag Attacks as a Means to an End

While at first Mr. Putin made a genuine effort to be a “partner” with the West, by the year 2011 it was clear that the West would never accept Russia as a friend or an equal. The West had enjoyed two decades of bossing everyone else around and had learned to enjoy giving orders rather than negotiating. One might say that the West forgot the art of diplomacy.

After watching in horror the NATO-led destructions of Serbia, Libya, and Syria, the Kremlin began asserting itself with foreign policy problems that directly affected Russian security interests starting in 2013.

The Obama Administration was very busy from 2011 to 2013 planning the overthrow of the Assad Regime in Syria. Two major hacks of intelligence related companies shed some unexpected light on what was going on behind the scenes. These were the Stratfor hack in 2011, and the hack of a British private security company (ie. mercenaries), that shall not be named, in January of 2013.

I must note that the private security company (PSC for short) admitted that they were hacked, but claimed that two of the most damning emails released within the gigabytes of leaked files were “fabricated.”

The “fabricated” email as reported by the Oriental Review, purportedly from the business development officer to the company founder reads as follows:

Phil

We’ve got a new offer. It’s about Syria again. Qataris propose an attractive deal and swear that the idea is approved by Washington.

We’ll have to deliver a CW to Homs, a Soviet origin g-shell from Libya similar to those that Assad should have. They want us to deploy our Ukrainian personnel that should speak Russian and make a video record.

Frankly, I don’t think it’s a good idea but the sums proposed are enormous. Your opinion?

Kind regards

David

The original story and its context can be found at The Oriental Review: https://orientalreview.org/2013/01/31/britamgate-staging-false-flag-attacks-in-syria/

Despite the file dump including personnel files containing copies of 58 real Ukrainian passports of employees of said PSC, the “fact checkers” at the time examined the email headers and noted that the email in question had a very similar time stamp, of three minutes before midnight, to another email in the release that was sent on a different date, also at three minutes before midnight. While this could be explained by a mail server or laptop setting which sent mail every day at the same time, it was accepted as proof of skullduggery and the entire affair was quickly dismissed and mostly forgotten.

Said PSC then sued The Daily Mail for libel for reporting the “obviously fake” email above as authentic, and was awarded damages and a partial retraction in January of 2022.

The supposedly fabricated email above happened to fall between several other breaches which revealed US and British intelligence were planning to release a video showing Russian-speaking soldiers as the operators of Syria’s chemical weapons depots.

I consider the aforementioned “hoax” to be one of the most amazing coincidences of the past two decades.

The PSC hack was shortly followed by claims of the Khan al-Assal chemical attack near Aleppo only three months later, and another at Ghouta five months after that, both of which were blamed by the West on the Assad Regime in the ramp up for an American invasion of Syria.

It is simply amazing that some unknown hacker managed to fabricate an email discussing the details of an event that hadn’t even happened yet. But the truth is often stranger than fiction.

Of course I know that the PSC referred to above couldn’t have had anything to do with either of the real chemical attacks which followed, because after their demonstrated incompetence of allowing all of their operations in the Middle East to be breached and published on the Internet, I seriously doubt they would be trusted to handle such an offer, had it been real.

The “fabricated” email shows us a picture of what was certainly going on in Syria as US and British intelligence farmed out projects to mercenary groups like Blackwater and other “private security companies.”

However, the invasion party was halted in its tracks in September of 2013, when Mr. Putin completely neutralized the Anglo-American casus belli against Syria by offering to help Syria destroy their chemical weapons stockpiles.

This was successfully completed and verified by the OPCW as being completed in late June of 2014. Thus Syria’s chemical stockpiles were completely removed before the American false flag plan could be convincingly executed. In poker this is known as calling the bluff.

Anyone who actually believed the Western propaganda about chemical weapons might have expected that President Vladimir Putin would be given some kind of international award for bringing Syria into the Chemical Weapons Convention and averting yet another major war in the Middle East.

However, rather than being pleased at the destruction of Syria’s chemical weapons, the Atlanticists were furious. This was the first major chess move by Mr. Putin that completely derailed the plans of the Atlanticists on the world stage. They shifted gears to the Euromaidan Revolution in Ukraine, beginning in November 2013.

However, the chemical weapons saga in Syria was only getting started. The Assad Regime continued to be accused of chemical weapons attacks in 2015, 2016, 2017, and even up until 2022. Syria has suffered from multiple attempted chemical weapons attacks since 2012, culminating in a major one in Idlib on April 4, 2017. The Idlib attack was used by President Trump to justify a cruise missile strike on Syria, two days later, before any facts could be ascertained about the event. Since 2017, Russia has warned repeatedly that the White Helmets group were planning false flag chemical attacks to be blamed on the Assad Regime. This activity has continued all the way up to the present year.

The most important lesson to be learned from the chemical weapons saga in Syria is that the Atlanticist intelligence agencies have such complete control over global mainstream media outlets that they do not fear exposure of their false flag attack plans. And furthermore, if you want to anticipate their plans, all you have to do is listen to what they say.

On August 20, 2012, a few months before any of the false flag chemical attacks in Syria, President Obama made the following comments:

We have been very clear to the Assad regime, but also to other players on the ground, that a red line for us is we start seeing a whole bunch of chemical weapons moving around or being utilized. That would change my calculus. That would change my equation.

Obama started warning Syria that using or even moving chemical weapons was a red line, shortly before the American false flag attempts began.

Thus, we can see that the US regime will telegraph their plans by first naming a casus belli, and then secretly working to create the false appearance of violation of the casus belli by the intended victim.

Even when the plans are exposed in advance, they will still be carried out. The MSM will pretend that there was no prior warning, and fact checkers will claim the prior warning was part of the deception by the country that was in reality falsely accused.

Russia Must Be Destroyed!

This brings us to the likely culmination of the Western war against Russia. In Septemer of 2022, Biden officials suddenly started clucking about how Russia must not use tactical nuclear weapons in Ukraine. This refrain was repeated to the media multiple times by officials including the PresidentSecretary of State, and National Security Advisor, as well as several retired military officers.

Anyone with an ounce of sense can see that using nuclear weapons in Ukraine would go against every interest Russia has there, as well as breaking all the rules of Russian nuclear doctrine. The majority of Russian citizens have relatives in Ukraine, which would make such an action political suicide. Russia has never threatened to use such weapons in Ukraine. So, why would the USA give such warnings?

The ridiculous American warnings against nuclear weapons in Ukraine show the wise observer exactly what the US State Department is planning to do. They obviously intend to deploy a nuclear weapon or dirty bomb through their proxies in order to blame Russia for it.

We have already seen this beginning to play out. The Kremlin warned several major countries in October of 2022 that Ukraine was planning to detonate a dirty bomb to be blamed on Russia. US Defense Secretary Austin immediately spun the story to say Russia is fabricating that accusation to justify their own intent to use nuclear weapons in Ukraine. Then the topic seemed to die down for a spell.

It is unfortunately naive to think Mr. Shoigu’s warnings averted anything. In the past, exposing the planned chemical false flag did not prevent its eventual execution. We know from the Russian MOD that a radiological or nuclear false flag event has definitely been planned for Ukraine.

Since Russia announced this, it is possible that the Atlanticists may have upgraded the plot to use an actual tactical nuclear weapon, because Ukraine supposedly doesn’t have those, and it would be harder for Russia to deny. It will probably be saved for a moment where it looks like Russia is about to win a major victory in Ukraine.

In the larger context, Britain’s MI6 has run a series of false flag poisonings blamed on Russia, starting with Litvinenko in 2006, followed by the Skripal poisoning, and most recently the Nalvany poisoning. The purpose of these theatrical false flag campaigns has always been to reduce Russia’s influence in the international community, and attempt to isolate Russia as a “rogue regime.”

And going back to the “fabricated” email of the PSC quoted above, we see that the requirement to get video of Russian-speakers deploying a chemical weapon against innocent Syrian civilians fit right in with the British narrative that, “Russia poisons people, because Russia is a venomous serpent!”

The downing of MH-17 would also count as the same class of false flag incident, but with a somewhat more tactical purpose of trying to create enough international hysteria to turn the victory of the Donbass militia into a major defeat for Russia internationally through sanctions.

The downing of MH-17 succeeded in energizing Europe to apply the first round of sanctions against Russia. And even more so, it generated enough hysteria that Russia no longer is given the chance to defend her actions, to cross examine witnesses, or bring her own witnesses with regard to accusations against her. Russia and her citizens are now routinely accused of atrocities by the West and summarily punished by confiscation of property with no recourse in the international bodies that were created to adjudicate such disputes.

As the Ukraine War has stopped trending on Twitter, freezing Europeans are ready to take up pitchforks against their masters, and Russia’s presumed Winter offensive seems very likely to inflict some major losses on Ukraine and the NATO backers, the Atlanticist spin masters badly need a bigger shock to jolt the UN and EU into doing their bidding.

As in the case of MH-17, the Satanists running the Empire of Lies need a large sacrifice of human lives to generate enough shock and outrage to achieve their next big foreign policy coup.

The reader should recognize the same playbook as the warnings for Syria not to use chemical weapons in 2012, followed by years of false flag attempts.

After hearing the US warnings against Russia using a nuclear weapon in Ukraine, we should not have been surprised to learn from the Russian MOD that the Zelensky regime was planning to deploy a dirty bomb to be blamed on Russia as a tactical nuclear weapon. The American forewarnings, followed by exposure of such a plot, express the same pattern seen in Syria playing out again.

I expect that some version of this nuclear plot will eventually be carried out with the backing of Atlanticist intelligence agencies.

To What End?

Russia’s position as a permanent member of the UN Security Council with veto power has been a thorn in the paw of the Atlanticist beast since the Cold War.

Russia’s willingness to use her military to defend allies in Syria, Ukraine, and Armenia presents an uncontrollable risk factor for Anglo-American hegemony. They cannot tolerate it.

Russia has used her veto on the Security Council multiple times to block American warmongering. If Russia cannot be destroyed literally, then at minimum, they must destroy Russia’s reputation to the point of revoking their seat on the Security Council.

If the Atlanticists cannot risk directly attacking Moscow itself, then they can achieve the next best thing by creating a provocation to justify kicking Russia off the United Nations Security Council.

The Atlanticist Axis is desperate to remove Russian leadership and influence on the rest of the world, because Russia keeps blocking their imperial plans, whether in Syria, Ukraine, Asia, Latin America, or Africa.

The purpose of such an overt false flag attack as a nuclear detonation, real or fake, would be to generate sufficient international horror and emotion to remove Russia from the UN Security Council, or expel her from the UN entirely. They will require a 9-11 level event to achieve that.

Rest assured that when the bomb is finally detonated, the paperwork to expel Russia will be presented to the UN General Assembly before the ashes have hit the ground.

It doesn’t make sense to view such an event as an attempt to stave off Russian advances in the Ukraine. A nuclear bomb might be tactical but its purpose is strategic – to excommunicate Russia from the UN and all other international bodies of which it is a member.

The long term campaign by the USA and UK intelligence services to frame Russia for provocations using weapons of mass destruction follows the dark parallel of Rome’s treatment of Carthage.

Cato and his faction demanded the destruction of Carthage, not because Carthage was involved in any current plots against Rome, but because Carthage was a near equal to Rome in wealth, in culture, and in potential military power. Carthage was a potential adversary that could block Rome’s path to Empire.

Cato made these speeches for decades prior to his death, and ended every one of them with the demand that Carthage must be destroyed. At first it was probably considered a joke. But eventually through repetition he succeeded in priming the minds of the Roman Senate to carry out his desire.

Rome could brook no competition, and therefore did not recognize Carthage as an equal. The existence of Carthage, to the Roman mind, required its destruction. And this is exactly how the think tanks in DC and London view Russia today. “Russia must be destroyed!”

Just as Rome used the peace treaty with Carthage to prevent Carthage from defending herself, while encouraging Numidia to go to war against Carthage, both Angela Merkel and Petro Poroshenko have now admitted that the Minsk Agreements were only used to buy time for Kiev to prepare for war against Russia.

Cato the Elder died at the old age of 85 years in 149 BC. Within a year of his death, the Roman Senate used their client kingdom, Numidia, to create the false pretext to go to war against Carthage. After an extended siege they burned the city to the ground and ensured that it was not rebuilt for generations.

The deliberate destruction of Carthage by Rome was completely irrational. They destroyed what would have been billions of 2020 Dollars worth of property. They destroyed a civilization that wasn’t even at war with them. The Roman Empire became poorer by the destruction of Carthage, not richer. The irrational destruction of Carthage was entirely driven by hatred and jealousy, both of which are irrational.

If Russia ever capitulates to the Atlanticist Axis she will meet the same fate. “Russia must be destroyed,” is the mantra that has been woven through all of the actions, plots, and strategies of the Atlanticists ever since Putin became President of Russia. We should have no doubt that Washington is willing to use nuclear weapons to achieve that objective, whether outright or by farce.

In the nearterm, we should expect the farce – a false flag nuclear attack on Ukraine. If Russia achieves a major breakthrough in Ukraine in the coming year, the nuclear false flag will probably be triggered, followed by hysterical condemnation and demands that Russia be immediately expelled from the United Nations.

The question to which I have no answer is, how can Russia defeat such a strategy?

The End of Mutually Assured Destruction

The doctrine of Mutually Assured Destruction is based on the assumption that two rational actors who understand that a certain action will destroy them both will avoid that action at all costs. This was the lynchpin of foreign policy during the Cold War.

The problem is that most humans are only rational some of the time. And some small percentage of us may reach a state of complete irrationality most of the time.

Furthermore, humans have a strange tendency on rare occasions to go mad together in crowds, not unlike lemmings who follow each other over the cliff into the sea. Nazi Germany in the 1930s comes to mind.

While Russia has recently been trying to protect herself from the acidic influence of Western imposed sodomy, the West has fully embraced it. And that, not merely as one of many valid options, but as a totalitarian state religion that children must be indoctrinated into. This is what Mr. Putin meant when he said that the West has become Satanic.

Sodomy is not merely an individual choice. It is a suicidal choice both for the individual and for human society. Consistent sodomites have no offspring, so they must recruit the offspring of normal people in order to grow in numbers. But in the end, a civilization that embraces sodomy as the preferred lifestyle will completely collapse morally, economically, and numerically.

The West has come under the spell of a death cult, currently led by the World Economic Forum. Their irrational desire to deindustrialize and depopulate the world in the name of environmentalism and technocracy can only be described as insanity. Ultimately both sodomy and Malthusian environmentalism are rejections of our Creator, and the mandate to be fruitful, multiply, and exercise dominion over the Earth and its living creatures. It is a rejection of the mission of transforming the Earth from wilderness and wasteland into a garden.

But he who sins against me wrongs his own soul; All those who hate me love death. (Proverbs 8:36)

Such leaders cannot be counted on to act rationally under the MAD regime, because they may view a nuclear war as a shortcut to achieve their goals of deindustrialization and depopulation. Of course, they have their bunkers in Switzerland and irrationally believe they will survive the conflagration to become the new elite of a greener world controlled by technocrats.

The Heaven’s Gate cult members also believed that by committing mass suicide they would ascend into a higher and better state. As far as anyone knows, they were completely wrong. But that did not stop them from carrying out mass suicide.

Jesus said that you don’t pour new wine into an old wineskin. The reason is that the leather of a wineskin stretches under the pressure of fermentation. An old wineskin has lost its elasticity, and cannot contain the power of a second batch of fermenting wine. It will burst.

It appears to me that Mutual Assured Destruction is an old wineskin of the twentieth century that may not be able to contain the fermenting minds of the annihilationist “young leaders” whose hearts were trained by the World Economic Forum.

In the past year we have already seen the West demonstrate it has reached a state of chronic criminal insanity.

First, they blew up the Nord Stream Pipeline which will cause the deindustrialisation of Western Europe.

That is criminally insane!

Then, Ukraine, under western supervision and using western weapons, has spent the past six months shelling the Zaporizhia Nuclear Power Station in an effort to cause a nuclear accident.

That is criminally insane!

Now, the Russian MOD already has said they have evidence that the NATO-backed Ukrainians are planning a false flag radiological or nuclear weapon detonation on their own soil!!!

That is criminally suicidally insane!

We have reached a point in world history where the West appears to be planning a nuclear false flag attack in Ukraine to be blamed on Russia in order to justify the next big change, whatever that is. And Russia stands in their way. The leaders of the West have gone certifiably mad. And this means that MAD is no longer a shield against nuclear war.

Any remaining sane powers in this world need to immediately take that into account, and start preparing and planning to survive and win a nuclear war against a diabolically insane and suicidal adversary who may not see a total nuclear war as a bad thing.

If Carthage waits for Rome to make their next move, trusting in the good faith of the parties to make rational decisions under international law, then it is quite likely that once more, Carthage shall be destroyed.

Kyrie eleison on us all!

Facepalm Paradigm (Andrei Martyanov)

December 04, 2022

Please visit Andrei’s website: https://smoothiex12.blogspot.com/ and support him here: https://www.patreon.com/bePatron?u=60459185

Russia, India, China, Iran: the Quad that really matters

Tuesday, 15 November 2022 3:55 PM 

By Pepe Escobar

Southeast Asia is right at the center of international relations for a whole week viz a viz three consecutive summits: Association of South East Asian Nations (ASEAN) summit in Phnom Penh, the Group of Twenty (G20) summit in Bali, and the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) summit in Bangkok.  

Eighteen nations accounting for roughly half of the global economy represented at the first in-person ASEAN summit since the Covid-19 pandemic in Cambodia: the ASEAN 10, Japan, South Korea, China, India, US, Russia, Australia, and New Zealand. 

With characteristic Asian politeness, the summit chair, Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Sen (or “Colombian”, according to the so-called “leader of the free world”), said the plenary meeting was somewhat heated, but the atmosphere was not tense: “Leaders talked in a mature way, no one left.”

It was up to Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov to express what was really significant at the end of the summit.

While praising the “inclusive, open, equal structure of security and cooperation at ASEAN”, Lavrov stressed how Europe and NATO “want to militarize the region in order to contain Russia and China’s interests in the Indo-Pacific.”

A manifestation of this policy is how “AUKUS is openly aiming at confrontation in the South China Sea,” he said.

Lavrov also stressed how the West, via the NATO military alliance, is accepting ASEAN “only nominally” while promoting a completely “unclear” agenda. 

What’s clear though is how NATO “has moved towards Russian borders several times and now declared at the Madrid summit that they have taken global responsibility.”

This leads us to the clincher: “NATO is moving their line of defense to the South China Sea.” And, Lavrov added, Beijing holds the same assessment.

Here, concisely, is the open “secret” of our current geopolitical incandescence. Washington’s number one priority is the containment of China. That implies blocking the EU from getting closer to the key Eurasia drivers  – China, Russia, and Iran – engaged in building the world’s largest free trade/connectivity environment.

Adding to the decades-long hybrid war against Iran, the infinite weaponizing of the Ukrainian black hole fits into the initial stages of the battle.

For the Empire, Iran cannot profit from becoming a provider of cheap, quality energy to the EU. And in parallel, Russia must be cut off from the EU. The next step is to force the EU to cut itself off from China.

All that fits into the wildest, warped Straussian/neo-con wet dreams: to attack China, by emboldening Taiwan, first Russia must be weakened, via the instrumentalization (and destruction) of Ukraine.

And all along the scenario, Europe simply has no agency.     

Putin, Raeisi and the Erdogan track

Real life across key Eurasia nodes reveals a completely different picture. Take the relaxed get-together in Tehran between Russia’s top security official Nikolai Patrushev and his Iranian counterpart Ali Shamkhani last week.

They discussed not only security matters but also serious business – as in turbo-charged trade.

The National Iranian Oil Company (NIOC) will sign a $40 billion deal next month with Gazprom, bypassing US sanctions, and encompassing the development of two gas fields and six oilfields, swaps in natural gas and oil products, LNG projects, and the construction of gas pipelines.

Immediately after the Patrushev-Shamkhani meeting, President Putin called President Ebrahim Raeisi to keep up the “interaction in politics, trade and the economy, including transport and logistics,” according to the Kremlin.

Iranian president reportedly more than “welcomed” the “strengthening” of Moscow-Tehran ties.

Patrushev unequivocally supported Tehran over the latest color revolution adventure perpetrated under the framework of the Empire’s endless hybrid war.

Iran and the EAEU are negotiating a Free Trade Agreement (FTA) in parallel to the swap deals with Russian oil. Soon, SWIFT may be completely bypassed. The whole Global South is watching.

Simultaneous to Putin’s phone call, Turkiye’s Recep Tayyip Erdogan – conducting his own diplomatic overdrive, and just back from a summit of Turkic nations in Samarkand – stressed that the US and the collective West are attacking Russia “almost without limits”. 

Erdogan made it clear that Russia is a “powerful” state and commended its “great resistance”.

The response came exactly 24 hours later. Turkish intelligence cut to the chase, pointing out that the terrorist bombing in the perpetually busy Istiklal pedestrian street in Istanbul was designed in Kobane in northern Syria, which essentially responds to the US.

That constitutes a de-facto act of war and may unleash serious consequences, including a profound revision of Turkiye’s presence inside NATO.

Iran’s multi-track strategy

A Russia-Iran strategic alliance manifests itself practically as a historical inevitability. It recalls the time when the erstwhile USSR helped Iran militarily via North Korea, after an enforced US/Europe blockade.

Putin and Raeisi are taking it to the next level. Moscow and Tehran are developing a joint strategy to defeat the weaponization of sanctions by the collective West.

Iran, after all, has an absolutely stellar record of smashing variants of “maximum pressure” to bits. Also, it is now linked to a strategic nuclear umbrella offered by the “RICs” in BRICS (Russia, India, China).

So, Tehran may now plan to develop its massive economic potential within the framework of BRI, SCO, INSTC, the Eurasia Economic Union (EAEU), and the Russian-led Greater Eurasia Partnership.

Moscow’s game is pure sophistication: engaging in a high-level strategic oil alliance with Saudi Arabia while deepening its strategic partnership with Iran.

Immediately after Patrushev’s visit, Tehran announced the development of an indigenously built hypersonic ballistic missile, quite similar to the Russian KH-47 M2 Khinzal.

And the other significant news was connectivity-wise: the completion of part of a railway from strategic Chabahar Port to the border with Turkmenistan. That means imminent direct rail connectivity to the Central Asian, Russian and Chinese spheres. 

Add to it the predominant role of OPEC+, the development of BRICS+, and the pan-Eurasian drive to pricing trade, insurance, security, investments in the ruble, yuan, rial, etc.

There’s also the fact that Tehran could not care less about the endless collective West procrastination on the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), commonly known as Iran nuclear deal: what really matters now is the deepening relationship with the “RICs” in BRICS. 

Tehran refused to sign a tampered-with EU draft nuclear deal in Vienna. Brussels was enraged; no Iranian oil will “save” Europe, replacing Russian oil under a nonsensical cap to be imposed next month.

And Washington was enraged because it was betting on internal tensions to split OPEC.  

Considering all of the above, no wonder US ‘Think Tankland’ is behaving like a bunch of headless chickens.  

The queue to join BRICS

During the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) summit in Samarkand last September, it was already tacit to all players how the Empire is cannibalizing its closest allies.

And how, simultaneously, the shrinking NATO-sphere is turning inwards, with a focus on The Enemy Within, relentlessly corralling average citizens to march in lockstep behind total compliance with a two-pronged war – hybrid and otherwise – against imperial peer competitors Russia and China.

Now compare it with Chinese President Xi Jinping in Samarkand presenting China and Russia, together, as the top “responsible global powers” bent on securing the emergence of multipolarity.

Samarkand also reaffirmed the strategic political partnership between Russia and India (Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi called it an unbreakable friendship).

That was corroborated by the meeting between Lavrov and his Indian counterpart Subrahmanyam Jaishankar last week in Moscow.

Lavrov praised the strategic partnership in every crucial area – politics, trade and economics, investment, and technology, as well as “closely coordinated actions” at the UN Security Council, BRICS, SCO and the G20.

On BRICS, crucially, Lavrov confirmed that “over a dozen countries” are lining up for membership, including Iran: “We expect the work on coordinating the criteria and principles that should underlie BRICS expansion to not take much time”.

But first, the five members need to analyze the ground-breaking repercussions of an expanded BRICS+. 

Once again: contrast. What is the EU’s “response” to these developments? Coming up with yet another sanctions package against Iran, targeting officials and entities “connected with security affairs” as well as companies, for their alleged “violence and repressions”.

“Diplomacy”, collective West-style, barely registers as bullying.

Back to the real economy – as in the gas front – the national interests of Russia, Iran and Turkiye are increasingly intertwined; and that is bound to influence developments in Syria, Iraq, and Libya, and will be a key factor to facilitate Erdogan’s re-election next year.

As it stands, Riyadh for all practical purposes has performed a stunning 180-degree maneuver against Washington via OPEC+. That may signify, even in a twisted way, the onset of a process of unification of Arab interests, guided by Moscow.

Stranger things have happened in modern history. Now appears to be the time for the Arab world to be finally ready to join the Quad that really matters: Russia, India, China, and Iran.

(The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect those of Press TV.)


Press TV’s website can also be accessed at the following alternate addresses:

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www.presstv.co.uk

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No pain, no grain: Putin’s Black Sea comeback

After the western military attack on Sevastopol briefly halted Russian grain transports, Moscow is back in business with a stronger hand and more favorable terms.

November 02 2022

Photo Credit: The Cradle

By Pepe Escobar

So, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan picks up the phone and calls his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin: let’s talk about the “grain deal.” Putin, cool, calm and collected, explains the facts to the Sultan:

First, the reason why Russia withdrew from the export grain deal.

Second, how Moscow seeks a serious investigation into the – terrorist – attack on the Black Sea fleet, which for all practical purposes seems to have violated the deal.

And third, how Kiev must guarantee it will uphold the deal, brokered by Turkey and the UN.

Only then would Russia consider coming back to the table.

And then – today, 2 November – the coup de theatre: Russia’s Ministry of Defense (MoD) announces the country is back to the Black Sea grain deal, after receiving the necessary written guarantees from Kiev.

The MoD, quite diplomatically, praised the “efforts” of both Turkey and the UN: Kiev is committed not to use the “Maritime Humanitarian Corridor” for combat operations, and only in accordance with the provisions of the Black Sea Initiative.

Moscow said the guarantees are sufficient “for the time being.” Implying that can always change.

All rise to the Sultan’s persuasion

Erdogan must have been extremely persuasive with Kiev. Before the phone call to Putin, the Russian Ministry of Defense (MoD) had already explained that the attack on the Black Sea Fleet was conducted by 9 aerial drones and 7 naval drones, plus an American RQ-4B Global Hawk observation drone lurking in the sky over neutral waters.

The attack happened under the cover of civilian ships and targeted Russian vessels that escorted the grain corridor in the perimeter of their responsibility, as well as the infrastructure of the Russian base in Sevastopol.

The MoD explicitly designated British experts deployed in the Ochakov base in the Nikolaev region as the designers of this military operation.

At the UN Security Council, Permanent Representative Vassily Nebenzya declared himself “surprised” that the UN leadership “failed not only to condemn, but even to express concern over the terrorist attacks.”

After stating that the Brit-organized Kiev operation on the Black Sea Fleet “put an end to the humanitarian dimension of the Istanbul agreements,” Nebenzya also clarified:

“It is our understanding that the Black Sea Grain Initiative, which Russia, Turkey, and Ukraine agreed on under UN supervision on 22 July, must not be implemented without Russia, and so we do not view the decisions that were made without our involvement as binding.”

This means, in practice, that Moscow “cannot allow for unimpeded passage of vessels without our inspection.” The crucial question is how and where these inspections will be carried out – as Russia has warned the UN that it will definitely inspect dry cargo ships in the Black Sea.

The UN, for its part, tried at best to put on a brave face, believing Russia’s suspension is “temporary” and looking forward to welcoming “its highly professional team” back to the Joint Coordination Center.

According to humanitarian chief Martin Griffiths, the UN also proclaims to be “ready to address concerns.” And that has to be soon, because the deal reaches its 120-day extension point on November 19.

Well, “addressing concerns” is not exactly the case. Deputy Permanent Representative of Russia Dmitry Polyansky said that at the UN Security Council meeting western nations simply could not deny their involvement in the Sevastopol attack; instead, they simply blamed Russia.

All the way to Odessa

Prior to the phone call with Erdogan, Putin had already pointed out that “34 percent of the grain exported under the deal goes to Turkey, 35 percent to EU countries and only 3-4 percent to the poorest countries. Is this what we did everything for?”

That’s correct. For instance, 1.8 million tons of grain went to Spain; 1.3 million tons to Turkey; and 0.86 million tons to Italy. By contrast, only 0,067 tons went to “starving” Yemen and 0,04 tons to “starving” Afghanistan.

Putin made it very clear that Moscow was not withdrawing from the grain deal but had only suspended its participation.

And as a further gesture of good will, Moscow announced it would willingly ship 500,000 tons of grain to poorer nations for free, in an effort to replace the integral amount that Ukraine should have been able to export.

All this time, Erdogan skillfully maneuvered to convey the impression he was occupying the higher ground: even if Russia behaves in an “indecisive” manner, as he defined it, we will continue to pursue the grain deal.

So, it seems like Moscow was being tested – by the UN and by Ankara, which happens to be the main beneficiary of the grain deal and is clearly profiting from this economic corridor. Ships continue to depart from Odessa to Turkish ports – mainly Istanbul – without Moscow’s agreement. It was expected they would be “filtered” by Russia when coming back to Odessa.

The immediate Russian means of pressure was unleashed in no time: preventing Odessa from becoming a terrorist infrastructure node. This means constant visits by cruise missiles.

Well, the Russians have already “visited” the Ochakov base occupied by Kiev and the British experts. Ochakov – between Nikolaev and Odessa – was built way back in 2017, with key American input.

The British units that were involved in the sabotage of the Nord Streams – according to Moscow – are the same ones that planned the Sevastopol operation. Ochakov is constantly spied upon and sometimes hit out of positions that the Russians have cleared last month only 8 km to the south, on the extremity of the Kinburn peninsula. And yet the base has not been totally destroyed.

To reinforce the “message,” the real response to the attack on Sevastopol has been this week’s relentless “visits” of Ukraine’s electrical infrastructure; if maintained, virtually the whole of Ukraine will soon be plunged into darkness.

Closing down the Black Sea

The attack on Sevastopol may have been the catalyst leading to a Russian move to close down the Black Sea – with Odessa converted into an absolutely priority for the Russian Army. There are serious rumblings across Russia on why Russophone Odessa had not been the object of pinpointed targeting before.

Top infrastructure for Ukrainian Special Forces and British advisers is based in Odessa and Nikolaev. Now there’s no question these will be destroyed.

Even with the grain deal in theory back on track, it is hopeless to expect Kiev to abide by any agreements. After all, every major decision is taken either by Washington or by the Brits at NATO. Just like bombing the Crimea Bridge, and then the Nord Streams, attacking the Black Sea Fleet was designed as a serious provocation.

The brilliant designers though seem to have IQs lower than refrigerator temperatures: every Russian response always plunges Ukraine deeper down an inescapable – and now literally black – hole.

The grain deal seemed to be a sort of win-win. Kiev would not contaminate Black Sea ports again after they were demined. Turkey turned into a grain transport hub for the poorest nations (actually that’s not what happened: the main beneficiary was the EU). And sanctions on Russia were eased on the export of agricultural products and fertilizers.

This was, in principle, a boost for Russian exports. In the end, it did not work out because many players were worried about possible secondary sanctions.

It is important to remember that the Black Sea grain deal is actually two deals: Kiev signed a deal with Turkey and the UN, and Russia signed a separate deal with Turkey.

The corridor for the grain carriers is only 2 km wide. Minesweepers move in parallel along the corridor. Ships are inspected by Ankara. So the Kiev-Ankara-UN deal remains in place. It has nothing to do with Russia – which in this case does not escort and/or inspect the cargoes.

What changes with Russia “suspending” its own deal with Ankara and the UN, is that from now on, Moscow can proceed anyway it deems fit to neutralize terrorist threats and even invade and take over Ukrainian ports: that will not represent a violation of the deal with Ankara and the UN.

So in this respect, it is a game-changer.

Seems like Erdogan fully understood the stakes, and told Kiev in no uncertain terms to behave. There’s no guarantee, though, that western powers won’t come up with another Black Sea provocation. Which means that sooner or later – perhaps by the Spring of 2023 – General Armageddon will have to come up with the goods. That translates as advancing all the way to Odessa.

The views expressed in this article do not necessarily reflect those of The Cradle.

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SHOCKING DETAILS OF ZIONIST BIOLOGICAL WARFARE AGAINST PALESTINIANS EXPOSED

OCTOBER 28TH, 2022

By Kit Klarenberg

Source

Academics Benny Morris of Ben-Gurion University and Benjamin Z. Kedar of The Hebrew University of Jerusalem have produced an extraordinary paper based on a welter of archival material, exposing in disturbing detail the hitherto obfuscated dimensions of an operation by Zionist forces to use chemical and biological weapons against both invading Arab armies and local civilians during the 1948 war.

That brutal conflict created the state of Israel, and led to permanent displacement of hundreds of thousands of Palestinians, known as the “Nakba” – Arabic for disaster, catastrophe, or cataclysm.

Morris and Kedar offer a highly granular timeline of events, starting in the initial months of that year, as Britain prepared to evacuate Mandatory Palestine on May 15. In the lead up to that date, Zionist settlers were very much on the defensive, with militias “continuously” attacking their enclaves and convoys, with the support of neighboring armies, due to their joint rejection of UN Resolution 181, passed in November 1947, which proposed partitioning Palestine into separate Arab and Jewish states.

With Egypt, Iraq, Lebanon, Syria, and Transjordan all having expressed an intention to invade Palestine when Britain left – and having been actively encouraged in this regard by British intelligence – Zionist guerrillas began mounting an offensive, not merely to neutralize Arab fighters, but capture territory, destroying houses and civilian infrastructure along the way, to prevent displaced residents from returning.

In order to augment the latter component of this effort, ensure Zionist seizure of Arab villages and towns was permanent, facilitate easier conquest of further areas, and hinder the progress of advancing Arab armies, these militias began poisoning wells with bacteria to create local epidemics of typhoid, dysentery, malaria and other diseases, in direct violation of the 1925 Geneva Protocol, which strictly prohibits “the use of bacteriological methods of warfare.”

As we shall see, the Zionists were suitably emboldened by the clandestine operation’s success that they eventually attempted to expand their poisoning campaign to invading Arab armies’ home soil.

“STATE OF EXTREME DISTRESS”

The code name of the biological warfare operation, “Cast Thy Bread” was a reference to Ecclesiastes 11:1, which directs Jews to “cast thy bread upon the waters, for after many days you will find it again.”

The prospect of using biological weapons against the “enemy” had been percolating among the Zionist movement for some time, come the 1948 war. Three years earlier, immediately after the end of the war in Europe, Crimea-born Jewish partisan leader and poet Abba Kovner had, after reaching Palestine, hatched a plot to mass-poison Nazis, to avenge the Holocaust.

Kovner intended to either infect waterworks in German cities, or poison thousands of SS officers detained in Allied prisoner of war camps with a fatal disease. Having procured poison from two academics at Jerusalem’s Hebrew University, he travelled to Europe to enact the plans, but was arrested by British security officials en-route, right after dumping his deadly cargo in the sea, and aborting his mission.

Abba Kovner, center, poses in Lithuania in July 1944, before he made is way to the Ein Ha-Horesh settlement in Palestine. Source | Yad Vashem

The former strategy resurfaced in Zionist consciousness as the prospect of a war of independence loomed, and became formalized with the creation of HEMED by Haganah, the primary Jewish paramilitary organization in Mandatory Palestine 1920 – 1948. HEMED’s three components – titled A to C – dealt with chemical and biological defense and warfare, and nuclear research.

On April 1, 1948, David Ben-Gurion, a leading figure in the Zionist movement who is regarded as the primary founder of the state of Israel, and served as its first Prime Minister, met with a senior representative of Haganah to “discuss the development of science and speeding up its application in warfare.”

Two weeks later, bacteria that would induce typhoid and dysentery among those who consumed it was distributed to Haganah operatives across Palestine. Before war even broke out on May 15, it had been used to poison water sources in Arab-held areas, the West Bank city of Jericho being the first documented instance. This was done in order to “undermine Palestinian staying power in still inhabited sites and to sow hindrances along the prospective routes of advance of invading Arab armies.”

That Zionist militants did not expect areas earmarked for Palestinians under the UN’s partition plan to remain Arab-inhabited in the event of victory in the looming war is strongly underlined by their targeting of many of these villages and towns in advance.

A vital aqueduct in Kabri that was the primary if not sole source of water for many nearby Palestinian settlements was poisoned on May 15. The paper’s authors call it “the most serious and potent use” of biological weapons during the entire 1948 War.

The historic northern city of Acre, designated part of a future Arab state by the UN, was one of the areas dependent on the aqueduct for water. The morale of its inhabitants is said by Morris and Kedar to have been “already shaky” at this juncture, due to Haganah’s recent conquest of the Arab parts of nearby Haifa, the region’s capital, and resultant flight of most of its population, many of whom took up residence in Acre.

Haifa’s capture by Zionists – achieved despite protection from British forces – cut off Acre not only from Haifa but neighboring Lebanon, and the prospect of Britain’s departure contributed to “plummeting” spirits among the population. The outbreak of a typhus epidemic, courtesy of Operation Cast Thy Bread, left Acre “in a state of extreme distress,” the city’s mayor reported on May 3. No one had the slightest clue that it had been deliberately created, for precisely this reason.

‘WHAT WAS THE POINT?’

Morris and Kedar assert that despite the widespread campaign of biological warfare engaged in by Zionist militias across Palestine, there were comparatively few reported casualties as a result – although dozens of Palestinians, and some British soldiers, are confirmed to have been killed – and the progress of invading Arab armies was barely halted due to disease outbreaks among soldiers.

“The apparent ineffectiveness…and problems in producing and transporting the weaponised bacteria may well have curbed enthusiasm for the campaign among Israeli defence executives. What was the point?” the pair speculates.

Such conjecture is somewhat bizarre, given so many of their findings, and private communications between Haganah operatives cited elsewhere in the paper, make abundantly clear the strategy was highly valued, and proved pivotal in the permanent capture of many Arab villages, towns, and cities.

Take for instance the aforementioned Acre. One day into the war, Zionist forces attacked the city, and delivered an ultimatum: unless inhabitants capitulated, “we will destroy you to the last man and utterly.” The next night, local notables duly signed an instrument of surrender, and three-quarters of the Arab population – 13,510 out of 17,395 – were displaced in a proverbial pen stroke.

Acre Palestine

The Arab village of As Sumeiriya, on the outskirts of Acre, lay in ruins after being leveled by a demolition team in May 1948. Frank Noel | AP

Accordingly, the academics refer to a previously unpublished June 1948 report from Hanagah intelligence unit Shai, which attributed the speed and ease with which Acre fell into Zionist hands in part to the epidemic they had earlier unleashed. The city was far from unique in this regard – outbreaks of typhus, and “panic induced by rumours of the spread of the disease” was determined to be “an exacerbating factor in the evacuation” of several areas.

Hindsight can on occasion mislead, but it was not retrospective pattern recognition that led Zionist militants to eagerly expand the poisoning campaign as the war unfolded. Between June and August 1948, two pseudonymous Hanagah operatives exchanged a series of cables while the bitter battle for Jerusalem raged. One became increasingly angry at the lack of progress, imploring the other, “immediately stop your neglect of Jerusalem and take care to send Bread here [emphasis added].”

Then, on September 26, “an important Zionist executive” proposed to Ben-Gurion a wide-ranging blitz of “harassment by all means,” not only in target areas of Palestine, but also belligerent Arab countries. This counter-offensive was intended to reverse the Egyptian Army’s capture of UN-mandated Jewish territory, seize some or even all the West Bank for settlement, and prevent the return of displaced Palestinian to areas partially or wholly in Zionist control.

The utility of biological warfare in achieving those objectives was obvious, and cables initiating the literally toxic process were fired off from the highest levels of Hanagah to its assorted militias the same day. Cairo’s water supplies were a major stated destination. Plans to that effect were evidently being explored in advance elsewhere as well.

On September 21, a Hanagah operative hiding in Beirut reported to headquarters on possible targets for sabotage operations in Lebanon, including “bridges, railway tracks, water and electricity sources.”

Lebanon remained in the crosshairs for some time, even as the war neared its completion, and Zionist victory was all but assured. In January 1949, two months before the country and Israel signed an armistice agreement ending the war between them, Hanagah again tasked operatives with investigating “water sources [and] central reservoirs,” in Beirut, and “supplying maps of water pipelines” in major Lebanese and Syrian towns.

“IT’S A TRICK…”

Clearly, then, there was very obviously a “point” to the poisoning program from the perspective of Ben-Gurion et al.

The connivance allowed the Zionists to efficaciously seize Palestinian territory, evicting Arabs from lands they had inhabited for centuries and deterring them from coming back, without firing a shot. Neither their victims – nor the international community – had no idea that the community-threatening epidemics seizing much of the region were man-made, rather than naturally occurring, either.

While it is clear from the paper certain individual militants were horrified by Cast Thy Bread and sought to curtail its operation, the relative lack of casualties cannot be chalked down to humanitarian concerns. Senior Zionists knew well the dire effects those infected by the bacteria suffered, not least because several of their own operatives contracted typhus themselves after accidentally drinking bottles containing it, believing the contents to be “gazoz”, a popular carbonated drink in the Middle East then and now.

Instead, Cast Thy Bread helped conceal the settlers’ long-term objectives of annexing land far in excess of that which had been proposed under the UN partition plan, including Palestinian territory and portions of neighboring Arab countries. Clandestine use of low death rate biological weapons meant a mass purge of civilians from these areas would appear to be voluntary and self-initiated, and could be secured without the need for large-scale massacres, or local residents being evicted at gunpoint en masse.

Ben-Gurion spelled out the Zionists’ true territorial ambitions in October 1937, following publication of Britain’s Peel Commission findings, which first advocated partitioning Palestine between Arabs and Jews. He supported the proposal, “because this increase in possession is of consequence not only in itself, but because through it we increase our strength, and every increase in strength helps in the possession of the land as a whole.”

Such honesty is vanishingly rare. Obscuring at all times the genocidal character of Zionism, which underpins and is absolutely fundamental to the colonial ideology, has been of the utmost importance to all its adherents ever since its inception. It is an ever-increasingly difficult facade to maintain, as the days of employing covert techniques to purge Israel and the territories it illegally occupies of Arabs are largely over. Instead, the slow-burn annihilation of Palestinians is conducted overwhelmingly in broad daylight.

As former British Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn and his supporters found out to their immense personal, professional and political cost, the primary means by which Israel shields its systematic ethnic cleansing of Palestinians from public scrutiny and condemnation today is via bogus accusations of anti-Semitism against detractors. Shulamit Aloni, former Israeli Education Minister and winner of the Israel Prize, explained to Democracy Now! in 2002:

It’s a trick, we always use it. When from Europe somebody is criticizing Israel, then we bring up the Holocaust. When in [the U.S.] people are criticizing Israel, then they are anti-Semitic…It’s very easy to blame people who criticize certain acts of the Israeli government as anti-Semitic, and to bring up the Holocaust, and the suffering of the Jewish people, and that is to justify everything we do to the Palestinians.”

The material collated by Morris and Kedar suggests this is a long-established “trick”. On May 27, 1948, Egypt’s Minister of Foreign Affairs sent a cable to the UN Secretary General, revealing that the previous day his country’s soldiers had captured two “Zionist agents” who were attempting to contaminate springs “from which the Egyptian troops at Gaza draw their water supply,” and had “dropped typhoid and dysentery germs into the wells lying to the east of that town.”

Acre Aqueduct was poisoned by typhoid injected by Zionists in May 1948. Source | Palestine Land Society

The cable, intercepted by Hanagan, was read out at a UN Security Council meeting later that day by Syria’s representative. In response, Major Aubrey Eban, designated representative of the Jewish Agency for Palestine (Israel had not yet been internationally recognized and was not a member state at that time), offered a vicious riposte.

He charged that the Egyptian and Syrian governments had “chosen to associate themselves with the most depraved tradition of medieval anti-Semitic incitement – the charge that Jews had poisoned Christian wells.”

“The Security Council, we are convinced, will not wish to become a tribunal for recitations from the Protocols of the Elders of Zion offered from the words of Dr. Goebbels. We hope that the Security Council will be interested not in this contemptible incitement, but in the reality of [Arab] bombs and shells falling on Jerusalem and Tel Aviv at this moment,” he added furiously.

Such an intervention may account for why, after initial press interest in the two diplomats’ caustic war of words, Cast Thy Bread remained successfully buried for almost seven-and-a-half decades subsequently, despite opaque references to the monstrous machination appearing in several autobiographies of Zionist leaders and militants from the time, and a 2003 academic article.

Indeed, the operation was so secret that even Israeli government censors were apparently unaware of its existence, so allowed numerous highly incriminating papers referencing the operation’s codename to pass by them unexpurgated, straight into the publicly accessible archives of the Israeli Occupation Forces.

Reinforcing the significance of Operation Cast Thy Bread, and the eager Zionist embrace of its grisly constituent techniques, HEMED’s biological warfare division became the formally civilian Institute for Biological Research in Nes Ziona, a town in central Israel, after the 1948 War ended. Its first director was former Haganah officer Alexander Keynan, who was intimately involved in the planning and execution of “Bread”.

Little is known about the extent or nature of Israeli biological weapons research or development today. The Institute for Biological Research has remained largely hidden from public view ever since launch, not least due to extensive security measures blocking outsider access. British investigative journalist Gordon Thomas has described a site over which no aircraft are allowed to fly, and scientists toil in laboratories deep underground creating “bottled agents of death.”

Nonetheless, it may be significant that modern Israel is one of very, very few countries in the world that is neither a signatory to the 1975 Biological Weapons Convention nor the 1997 Chemical Weapons Convention. Could another “Cast Thy Bread” be in the literal and proverbial pipeline? At the very least, we have no reason to think it won’t be. If such a campaign was to be waged now, it would likely escape public detection even more effectively than last time.

A striking aspect of Palestinian writing about the 1948 War, identified by Morris and Kedar, is an almost total lack of reference to epidemic outbreaks at the time at all. Surviving victims of the Nakba today who contracted typhoid at the time, or had friends and relatives who did, now face the renewed indignity of learning, 74 years after the fact, they were deliberately poisoned.

HOW THE LEFT BECAME CHEERLEADERS FOR US IMPERIALISM

OCTOBER 27TH, 2022


JONATHAN COOK

One of the biggest problems for the left, as it confronts what seems like humanity’s ever-more precarious relationship with the planet – from the climate emergency to a potential nuclear exchange – is that siren voices keep luring it towards the rocks of political confusion and self-harm.

And one of the loudest sirens on the British left is the environmental activist George Monbiot.

Monbiot has carved out for himself a figurehead role on the mainstream British left because he is the only big-picture thinker allowed a regular platform in the establishment media: in his case, the liberal Guardian newspaper. It is a spot he covets and one that seems to have come with a big price tag: he is allowed to criticize the corporate elite’s capture of British domestic politics – he occasionally concedes that our political life has been stripped of all democratic content – but only, it seems, because he has become ever less willing to extend that same critique to British foreign policy.

As a result, Monbiot holds as a cherished piety what should be two entirely inconsistent positions: that British and Western elites are pillaging the planet for corporate gain, immune to the catastrophe they are wreaking on the environment and oblivious to the lives they are destroying at home and abroad; and that these same elites are fighting good, humanitarian wars to protect the interests of poor and oppressed peoples overseas, from Syria and Libya to Ukraine, peoples who coincidentally just happen to live in areas of geostrategic significance.

Because of the vice-like corporate hold on Britain’s political priorities, Monbiot avers, nothing the corporate media tells us should be believed – except when those priorities relate to protecting people facing down ruthless foreign dictators, from Syria’s Bashar al-Assad to Russia’s Vladimir Putin. Then the media should be believed absolutely.

Monbiot’s embrace of the narratives justifying Washington’s “humanitarian” interventions abroad has been incremental. Back in the late 1990s, while generally supporting the aims of NATO’s war on the former Yugoslavia, he called out its bombing of Serbia as a “dirty war”, highlighting the ecological and economic destruction it entailed. He would also sound the alarm – if ambivalently – over the Iraq war in 2003, and later become a leading proponent of jailing former U.K. prime minister Tony Blair as a war criminal for his involvement.

But as the ripples from the Iraq war spread to other parts of the Middle East and beyond, often in complicated ways, Monbiot took the good will he had earned among the anti-imperialist left and weaponized it to Washington’s advantage.

By 2007, he was swallowing wholesale the evidence-free narrative crafted in Washington and Tel Aviv that Iran was trying to acquire a nuclear bomb and needed to be stopped. In 2011, he was a reluctant supporter of the West’s campaign to violently depose Libya’s Muammar Gaddafi, turning the country into a failed state of slave markets.

In 2017, he legitimized President Trump’s grounds for bombing Syria and minimized the significance of those air strikes, which were a gross violation of international law. Washington’s rationalizations for the attack – based on a claim that President Assad had gassed his own people – started to unravel when whistleblowers from the United Nations’ chemical weapons inspections agency, the OPCW, came forward. They revealed that U.S. intimidation of the OPCW had led to the inspectors’ findings being distorted for political reasons: to put Assad in the frame rather than the more likely culprits of jihadists, who hoped a false-flag gas attack would pressure the West into removing the Syrian leader on their behalf.

Monbiot has staunchly refused to address the testimony of these OPCW whistleblowers, while at the same time implicitly maligning them as being responsible for feeding “conspiracy theories”.

In the case of the Ukraine war, Monbiot has insisted on adherence to the NATO narrative, decrying any dissent as “Westplaining”. Throughout this shift ever more firmly into the imperial NATO camp, Monbiot has besmirched prominent anti-war leftists, from the famed linguist Noam Chomsky to the journalist John Pilger, as “genocide deniers and belittlers”.

FIRST SHOCKWAVES

If this characterization of his position sounds unfair, watch this short video he recently made for Double Down News. According to Monbiot, the left’s slogan is a simple one: Whatever the situation around the world is, you side against the oppressor, and with the oppressed. That is the fundamental guiding principle of justice, and that is the principle we on the left should stick with, regardless of the identity of the oppressor and the oppressed.”

As an abstract principle, this one is sound enough. But no one characterizing themselves as speaking for the anti-imperialist left should be using a simple rule of thumb to analyze and dictate foreign policy positions in the highly interconnected, complex and duplicitous world we currently inhabit.

As Monbiot knows only too well, we live in a world – one pillaged by a colonial West to generate unprecedented, short-term economic growth for some, and mire others in permanent poverty – where global resources are rapidly being exhausted, beginning the gradual erosion of Western privilege.

We live in a world where intelligence agencies have developed new technologies to spy on populations on an unprecedented scale, to meddle in other states’ politics, and to subject their own populations to ever more sophisticated propaganda narratives to conceal realities that might undermine their credibility or legitimacy.

We live in a world where transnational corporations – dependent for their success on continued resource plunder – effectively own leading politicians, even governments, through political funding, through control of the think tanks that develop policy proposals, and through their ownership of the mass media. Here is a recent article by Monbiot explaining just that.

We live in a world where those same corporations are deeply entwined with state institutions in the very war and security industries that, first, sustain and rationalize the plunder and then “protect” our borders from any backlash from those whose resources are being plundered.

And we live in a world where the first shockwaves of climate collapse, combined with these resource wars, are fomenting mass migrations – and an ever greater urgency in Western states to turn themselves into fortresses to defend against a feared stampede.

ZEALOT FOR WAR

Monbiot knows this world only too well because he writes about it in such detail. He has won the hearts of many on the left because he describes so eloquently the capture of domestic politics by a shadowy cabal of Western corporations, politicians and media moguls. But he then concludes that this same psychopathic, planet-destroying cabal can be trusted when it explains – via its reliable mouthpieces in the right-wing press, the BBC, and his own Guardian newspaper – what it is doing in Syria, Libya or Ukraine.

And worse, Monbiot lashes out at anyone who dissents, calling them apologists for dictators, or war crimes. And he brings many on the left with him, helping to divide and weaken the anti-war movement.

One might have assumed Monbiot would have entertained a little more doubt in his foreign policy prescriptions over the past decade, if only because they have so squarely chimed with the United States and NATO narratives amplified by the establishment media. But not a bit of it. He is a zealot for the West’s wars when they can be presented either as humanitarian or as battling Russian imperialism. (For examples, see herehere, and here.)

The problem with Monbiot, as it is with much of the British left, is that he treats the various modern, great-power imperialisms – American, Russian and Chinese – as though they operate in parallel to each other rather than, as they do, constantly intersect and conflict.

To see the world as one in which the U.S. “does imperialism” in Afghanistan and Iraq, while Russia separately “does imperialism” in Syria and Ukraine may be satisfying to anyone with a desperate need to appear even-handed. But it does nothing to advance our understanding of world events.

The interests of great powers inevitably clash. They are fighting over the same finite resources to grow their economies; they are competing over the same key states to turn them into allies; they are waging conflicting narrative battles over the same events. And they are trying – always trying – to diminish or subvert their rivals.

To claim that the war in Ukraine somehow stands outside these great-power intrigues – and that the only justified response is a simple one of cheerleading the oppressed and reviling the oppressor, as Monbiot requires – is beyond preposterous.

ECONOMIES DECIMATED

To imagine that the U.K. and wider West are somehow on Ukraine’s side, are sending untold billions in arms even as recession bites, are opposed even to testing the seriousness of Russian offers of peace talks, and are blocking Russian oil even though the results are decimating European economies – and all because it is the right thing to do, or because Putin is a madman bent on world conquest – is to be entirely detached from joined-up thinking.

It is entirely possible, if we engage our critical faculties, to consider far more complex scenarios for which there are no good guys and no easy solutions.

It might – just might – be that Russia is both sinner in Ukraine and sinned against. Or that Ukrainian civilians are victims both of Russian militarism and of more covert U.S. and NATO intrigues. Or that in a country like Ukraine, where a civil war has been raging for at least eight years between far-right (some of them exterminationist) Ukrainian ultra-nationalists and ethnic Russian communities, we would be better jettisoning our narrative premises of a single “Ukraine” or a single Ukrainian will. This kind of simple-mindedness may be obscuring far more than it illuminates.

Pointing this out does not make one a Putin apologist. It simply recognizes the lessons of history: that world events are rarely explicable through one narrative alone; that states have different, conflicting interests and that understanding the nature of those conflicts is the key to resolving them; and that what great powers say they are doing isn’t necessarily what they are actually doing.

And further, that elites – whether Russian, Ukrainian, European or American – usually have their own class-serving set of interests that have little to do with the ordinary populations they supposedly represent.

In such circumstances, Monbiot’s dictum that we must “side against the oppressor, and with the oppressed” starts to sound like nothing more than unhelpful sloganeering. It makes a complex situation that needs complex thinking and sophisticated problem-solving harder to understand and all but impossible to resolve.

Throw nuclear weapons into the mix, and Monbiot the environmentalist is playing games not only with the lives of Ukrainians, but the destruction of conditions for most life on Earth.

COVERT MEDDLING

Western solipsism of the kind indulged by Monbiot ignores Russian concerns or, worse, subsumes them into a fanciful narrative that a Russian army that is struggling to subjugate Ukraine (assuming that is actually what it is trying to do) intends next to rampage across the rest of Europe.

In truth, Russia has good reasons not only to take a special interest in what happens in neighboring Ukraine but to see events there as posing a potentially existential threat to it.

Historically, the lands that today we call Ukraine have been the gateway through which invading armies have attacked Russia. Long efforts by Washington, through NATO, to recruit Ukraine into its military fold were never likely to be viewed dispassionately in Moscow.

That was all the more so because Washington has been exploiting Russian vulnerabilities – economic and military – since the collapse of its empire, the Soviet Union, in 1991. The U.S. has done so both by converting former Soviet states into a massively enlarged, unified bloc of NATO members on Russia’s doorstep and by brashly excluding Russia from European security arrangements.

The U.S. moves looked overtly aggressive to Moscow, whether that was the way they were intended or not.

But Russia had good grounds to interpret these actions as hostile: because Washington has been not-so-covertly meddling in Ukraine over the past decade. That included its concealed role in fomenting protests in 2014 that overthrew an elected government in Kyiv sympathetic to Moscow, and its clandestine military role afterward, in training the Ukrainian army under President Obama and arming it under President Trump, which readied Ukraine for a coming war with Moscow that Washington appeared to be doing everything in its power to make happen.

Then there was the problem of the Crimean Peninsula, hosting Moscow’s only warm-water naval port and viewed as critically important to Russia’s defenses. It had been Russian territory until the 1950s when the then-Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev gifted it to Ukraine, at a time when national borders had been made largely redundant within the Soviet empire. The gift was supposed to symbolize the unbreakable bond between Russia and Ukraine. Khrushchev presumably never imagined that Ukraine might one day seek to become a forward base for a NATO openly hostile to Russia.

And of course, Ukraine is not simply a gateway for invaders; it is also Russia’s natural corridor into Europe. It is through Ukraine that Moscow has traditionally exported goods and its energy resources to the rest of Europe. Russia’s opening of the Nord Stream gas pipelines direct to Germany through the Baltic Sea, circumventing Ukraine, was a clear signal that Moscow saw a Kyiv under Washington’s spell as a threat to its vital energy interests.

Notably, those same Nord Stream pipelines were blown up last month after a long series of threats from Washington officials, from President Biden down, that the U.S. would find a way to end Russian gas supplies to Germany.

Russia has been excluded by Germany, Sweden, and Denmark – all U.S. allies – from participation in the investigation into those explosions on its energy infrastructure. Even more suspiciously, Sweden is citing “national security” (code for avoiding embarrassing a key ally?) as grounds for refusing to publish findings from the investigations.

LETHAL POWER

So where does all this leave Monbiot’s rule: “Whatever the situation around the world is, you side against the oppressor, and with the oppressed”?

Not only does his axiom fail to acknowledge the complex nature of global conflicts, especially between great powers, in which defining who is the oppressor and who is the oppressed may be no simple matter, but, worse, it disfigures our understanding of international power politics.

Russia and China may be great powers, but they are not – at least, not yet – close to being equal to the US super-power.

Neither can match the many hundreds of U.S. military bases around the world – more than 800 of them. The U.S. outspends both of its rivals many times over on its annual military budget. That means Washington can project lethal power around the globe on a scale unmatched by either Russia or China. The only deterrence either has against the military might of the U.S. is a last-resort nuclear arsenal.

Overwhelming U.S. military supremacy means that, unlike China or Russia, Washington does not need to win over allies with carrots. It can simply threaten, bully or bludgeon – directly or through proxies – any state that refuses to submit to its dictates. That way, it has gained control over most of the planet’s key resources, especially over its fossil fuels.

Similarly, the U.S. enjoys the manifold benefits of having the world’s principal reserve currency, pegging prices – most importantly energy prices – to the dollar. That does not just help reduce the costs of international trade for the U.S. and allow it to borrow money cheaply. It also makes other states and their currencies dependent on the stability of the dollar, as the U.K. has just found out when the value of the pound plunged against the dollar, threatening to decimate the business sector.

But there are other advantages for the U.S. in dominating global trade and currency markets. Washington is well positioned to impose economic sanctions to isolate and immiserate states that oppose it, as it is doing to Afghanistan and Iran. And its control of the world’s main financial institutions, such as the IMF and World Bank, means they act as little more than enforcers of Washington’s foreign policy priorities before agreeing to lend money.

SHADOW CAST

Both militarily and economically, the United States molds the world we live in. For those in the West, its grip on our material well-being and on our ideological horizons is almost complete. But the American shadow extends much further. All states, including Russia and China, operate within the framework of power relations, global institutions, state interests, and access to resources shaped by the U.S.

What distinguishes the status of Russia and China as great powers from the status of the U.S. as a solitary superpower is the fact that their role on the international stage is necessarily more reactive and defensive. Neither can afford to antagonize the American behemoth unnecessarily. They must protect their interests, rather than project them as Washington does.

That means neither is likely to start invading neighbors that wish to ally with the U.S. unless they feel existentially important state interests are being threatened by such an alliance. That is why Western narratives claiming to explain Russia’s invasion of Ukraine have to take as their starting points two improbable assumptions: that President Putin is solely responsible for launching the Ukraine war, over the heads of the Russian military; and that Putin himself is mad, evil or a megalomaniac.

To make such a case – the premise of all Western coverage of events in Ukraine – is already to concede that the only rational explanation for Russia invading Ukraine would be its perception that vital Russian interests were at stake – interests so vital that Moscow was prepared to defend them even if it meant incurring the wrath of the mighty American empire.

Instead, Monbiot and much of the left are throwing in their hand with the racist prescriptions of the apologists of U.S. empire: that Washington’s great-power rivals act in ways decried by the U.S. solely because they are irrational and evil.

This is a power-politics analysis of the playground. And yet it passes for neutral reporting and informed commentary in all establishment Western media. Catastrophically, Monbiot has played a crucial part in seeding these destructive ideas – ones that can only lead to intensified conflict and undermine peacemaking – into the anti-war movement.

Feature photo | Illustration by MintPress News

Jonathan Cook is a MintPress contributor. Cook won the Martha Gellhorn Special Prize for Journalism. His latest books are Israel and the Clash of Civilisations: Iraq, Iran and the Plan to Remake the Middle East (Pluto Press) and Disappearing Palestine: Israel’s Experiments in Human Despair (Zed Books). His website is www.jonathan-cook.net.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect MintPress News editorial policy.

Who killed Jeremy Corbyn’s social justice project?

Tuesday, 25 October 2022 3:25 PM  [ Last Update: Tuesday, 25 October 2022 3:25 PM ]

Jeremy Corbyn

By David Miller

The hidden truth about The Labour Files, the largest leak in Britain’s political history, is the opposite of the right-wing critics of the Labour Party. 

They say that Jeremy Corbyn, the former leader of the UK’s Labour Party, interfered to slow down the progress of antisemitism cases.

The truth was that he speeded them up massively. In doing so, he intensified the witch-hunt against ordinary party members, despite the lack of evidence of a specific problem in the Labour Party of so-called “antisemitism”.

In fact, the evidence shows that levels of antisemitism in the Labour Party were lower than in society in general.

The number of notices of investigation, suspensions and expulsions connected to antisemitism all surged exponentially once Jennie Formby took over as General Secretary in the spring of 2018.

In 2019, there were 45 expulsions; in 2017 there had only been one. Was this because there was a real and increasing problem of antisemitism? No. However, the Corbyn-led party took over and extended the witch hunt by internalizing Zionist talking points on what antisemitism was.

These sang from the hymn sheet produced by the Zionist regime in blurring together anti-Zionism with antisemitism.

Zionist talking points

By acting as if the Zionist talking points were evidence-based, key elements of the office of the Leader of the Opposition (known as LOTO), and those around it, came to believe that they were genuine. 

As a result, they appointed staff who also believed in the false Zionist talking points. At the head of the unit appointed to deal with complaints were three people, each of whom had drunk the antisemitism Kool-Aid:

  • Harry Hayball, who had previously been in Momentum and studied the history of antisemitism on the left” by reading Thats Funny You Dont Look Antisemitic and The Lefts Jewish Problem. The latter was written by an employee of the Community Security Trust which runs point for the Zionist regime in the UK. The former was by Steve Cohen published in 1984 and republished in 2005 by Engage the Zionist lobby group formed to oppose Boycott Divestment and Sanctions. Momentum in 2019 tweeted to recommend the book. As the leader of the Zionist-leaning Trotskyist sect, the Alliance for Workers Liberty (AWL) Sean Matgamna wrote in an obituary in March 2009 that towards the end of his life Cohen considered himself a supporter of AWL”. In other words, Hayball learned about the notion of “left antisemitism” from committed Zionist propaganda tracts. Hayball also states that he was lobbied by a wide range of stakeholders from JLM, Jewish communal organisations and the wider Jewish community. Prior to working in the antisemitism unit, Hayball had been the head of Digital with Momentum, the allegedly hard left support group for Corbyn.  While there he had proactively progressed the witch-hunt claiming of himself that from August 2018 onwards, Hayball submitted dozens of complaints to Labour about cases of antisemitism he had documented from social media posts by suspected Labour members”.  In the Labour files it was revealed that at a meeting after an elderly woman suffered a stroke and died soon after learning of her expulsion from the party, a senior officer had laughed and said “Look we’re anti-Semite killers now!”.  According to the Al Jazeera whistleblower: The whole room broke out in laughter. I can reveal that the official who made the “joke” was Harry Hayball.
  • Patrick Smith, a former member of the AWL, who resigned from the party in 2013 complaining about its Islamophobia. He then joined the Communist Party of Great Britain which, like the AWL, bandies about the Islamophobic term “Islamist”. Smith had previously complained about anti-Zionist views being problematic in the Palestine Solidarity Campaign and denounced its members as being essentially mad”.
  • Laura Murray is claimed in the leaked Labour Antisemitism Report, mainly written by Hayball –  to have developed her understanding of antisemitism through her work with the JLM and with Jewish communal organisations” in her role as Stakeholder Manager in the Leader’s Office. Murray also appears to have taken on the role of advocating the views of the Zionist groups to the leadership. She wrote to GLU about the concerns expressed by the JLM and Jewish communal organisations about the handling of antisemitism cases. Note that even the use of the phrase Jewish communal organisations is a Zionist talking point. The main Jewish communal groups are all Zionists. Murray was also said to have, “developed a comprehensive understanding of antisemitism on the left” through her work with “Jewish stakeholders” and “by undertaking further education and training, including” acourse on ancient and pernicious antisemitic tropes” at the Israeli government sponsored Yad Vashem.

The report goes on to say that the employment of Hayball was an indication of the internal desire of Murray and others to “build a team which understood the processes from the perspective of the complainant, which was self-critical.

The assumption was, of course, that the complainants were mainly acting in good faith, which was a recipe for a dramatic escalation of antisemitism suspensions, warnings and expulsions, with no basis on any rational or factual assessment of racism against Jews.

Corbyn’s Zionist advisers

In addition, Corbyn had surrounded himself with close advisors who were either soft on Zionism or were actually true believers. Momentum the so-called hard left support group for Corbyn – was set up by a variety of such people, including obviously Jon Lansman, who in an earlier period had been critical of Zionism.

But during the Corbyn period, he moved to a soft Zionist position, supporting the Zionist-produced IHRA working definition of anti-Semitism and repeatedly saying that the party had to regain the trust of the Jewish community. In May 2016, he wrote that what had been happening in Labour was a frenzied witch hunt in part fuelled by the fundamentalist wing of pro-Israeli organizations. But in the same piece, he argued that the left should drop the term Zionism altogether.

His argument is that Zionists in occupied Palestine are more hardline than those in the UK.  Maybe so, but they are unwilling to countenance the end of the Jewish state. So far, no Zionist group has accepted the end of the “Jewish State”. We are left, then, with the fact that Zionism inherently means support for a settler colony in occupied Palestine.

By 2019 Lansman had moved to the position  – the Party now had “a major problem with antisemitism and had “a much larger number of people with hardcore antisemitic opinions.

Lansman also invited into a key role in Momentum, a left Zionist activist from Scotland, Rhea Wolfson. She was a member of the Zionist affiliate to the Labour Party, the Jewish Labour Movement and was one of the editors (until April 2018) of the Clarion, the paper of the Zionist Trotskyist sect the AWL. According to her: One of the funniest things about Momentum is it’s just so Jewish.

James Schneider

Among other founders of Momentum was James Schneider. At Oxford University, he met his long-time friend Ben Judah, in whose play Schneider acted. It involved the inevitable Arab terrorist who subsequently turns out to be anti-Semitic. The pair were housemates in the period when Schneider founded Momentum in 2015 and they remain friends today.

Judah did his bit for the witch hunt between 2015 and 2019.  Prior to it, though, he had already claimed in May 2015 that he was pinned to the wall, throttled, punched in the head and told to Get out you f***ing Jew, by George Galloway supporters in Bradford, a charge emphatically denied by Galloway and his Respect Party.

Judah now works for the NATO lobby group the Atlantic Council, having previously worked at the “regime-change friendly” European Council on Foreign Relations and then the neoconservative US think tank the Hudson Institute, which champions aggressive, Israel-centric US foreign policies.

Schneider went on to become Corbyn’s strategic communications adviser. Press TV’s Palestine Declassified’ understands that he was among the key people pushing the idea that apologies needed to be made, and that the IHRA should be adopted.

He is on record as saying that the ridiculous judgement of the EHRC “should and must be implemented. He even highlighted what he thought were really good passages in a book by Dave Rich of the Zionist extremist Community Security TrustThe Left’s Jewish Problem: Jeremy Corbyn, Israel and Anti-Semitism. These suggestions, it is reported, include ditching conspiracy theories, not using Holocaust analogies or hysterical language when talking about Israel. These of course all relate at least in part to discussions of the Zionist entity as opposed to Jews.

As the leaked Labour Antisemitism report, the Forde report and the Labour Files show, the bullets used to assassinate Corbyn were produced and shaped by the Zionist regime. They were then carried to the scene of the crime by Zionist lobby groups, assets and fronts. 

But the key proximate actors that delivered the coup de grace to Corbyn were his own supporters and those in his own office.

David Miller is a writer, broadcaster and investigative researcher. He is the producer and expert commentator on Palestine Declassified, a weekly PressTV show. He was unjustly sacked by the University of Bristol in 2021 at the behest of the Zionist movement.


(The views expressed in this article are author’s own and do not necessarily reflect those of Press TV.)

Had Not It Been for Iran, Where Would Iraq Have Been? (Videos)

 October 24, 2022

Former head of IRGC’s Al-Quds Force General Martyr Qassem Suleimani and Deputy Head of the Hashd Shaabi Committee Hajj Martyr Abu Mahdi Al-Muhandis

Ahmad FarhatTranslated and Edited by Mohammad Salami

Hezbollah Secretary General Sayyed Hasan Nasrallah warned during a speech on October 1, 2022, against the anti-Iran propaganda promoted in Iraq, underlining the Iranian support to the Iraqis in their fight against ISIL terrorist group.

The two civilizations of Iraq, Mesopotamia, and Iran, Persia, are said to be among the most ancient civilizations throughout history. Iraqis and Iranians have been sharing joys and griefs and confronting the foreign interventions, especially the British influence on Shah regime in Iran and the US invasion of Iraq in 2003.

Numerous are the Iraqi civilization’s, Mesopotamia, feats, including Hammurabi code of laws, and the geographical location of features exposed Iraq to the foreign greedy attacks in light of the oil excavations in the twenties of the twentieth century.

The ambitions of the enemies and the foreign sides have been endless and concentrated on partitioning Iraq and divide its population over sectarian segments in order to plunder the Iraqi resources.

The historical paradox lies in the fact that the states which supported Saddam Hussein’s war on the Islamic Republic were the same that backed the US invasion of Iraq in addition to Britain.

The same paradox extends and shows that the same states are stirring sedition between Iraq and Iran and instigating the Iraqis against improving the relations with the Islamic Republic, knowing that some of those Arab regimes participated in besieging the Iraqi people and imposing the oil-for-food program.

In this regard, the former Iraq foreign minister, Naji Al-Hudaithi, exposed many of the scandals of the oil-for-food program, indicating that $50 billion had been plundered to fund the UN agencies and compensate the foreign states which supported Saddam Hussein in his war on Iran.

The UN agencies and inspectors used to waste huge amounts of money to purchase new gadgets and devices even before the old ones break down, Al-Hudaithi said.

Those countries did not stop at that limit; Saudi, for instance, dispatched 5000 suicide bombers to carry out attacks in Iraq and facilitated the movements of the two terrorist groups of Al-Qaeda and ISIL.

The former Iraqi premier Haidar Abadi announced a related Saudi confession:

After the Iraqis managed in 2011 to expel the US occupation forces, the entire Middle East witnessed the advent of the so-called Arab Spring which turned to be a black winter in Iraq.

Head of the Badr Organization Hadi Al-Ameri and the former premier Nuri Al-Maliki reflect on the Iranian support to Iraq:

108374

The enemies wanted Iraq to confront solely the terrorist era; however, the fraternal relations with the Islamic Republic were stronger than the colonial schemes.

The Iranian military support to Iraq moved swiftly into the front of confrontation with the US occupation, and the former head of IRGC’s Al-Quds Force General Martyr Qassem Suleimani coordinated with the Deputy Head of the Hashd Shaabi Committee Hajj Martyr Abu Mahdi Al-Muhandis all the operations.

Many questions can be raised in this domain about Iraq’s destiny, ruling system, political creed, defense capabilities and economic situation it in case the terrorist groups or the US occupation have prevailed.

A thorough look at the scene affirms that the endeavor to demonize Iran betrays the history, present and the future of Iraq. Those attempts have been launched by some Arab and Western states, which supported the Saddam Hussein’s war on Iran and the US invasion of Iraq, via media outlets.

Nevertheless, the majority of the Iraqi people rejects this approach and underscores the fraternal relations between Iraq and Iran, knowing that this stance is always reiterated by the Iraqi officials.

Aerial footage shows the heavy participation in the popular event marking the first anniversary of the martyrdom of the two leaders, Suleimani and Al-Muhandis

The Islamic Republic blocked all the schemes to destroy the Iraqi state and displace its people, sending the military personnel and equipment to help the Iraqi army and popular forces to overcome the ISIL terrorists.

Martyrs Suleimani and Al-Muhandis participating in relieving Al-Basra and Khuzestan locals in Iraq

While, the martyr leaders Suleimani and Al-Muhandis and their brethren in the IRGC as well as Hashd Shaabi fighting the terrorist groups, certain Arab regimes were dispatching suicide bombers to commit massacres against the Iraqis.

Iran sacrificed its elite commanders and fighters, headed by General Suleimani who has been a great symbol for the Iranian and most of the Iraqis.

The two leaders Suleimani and Al-Muhandis embraced martyrdom together in the US drone attack on their convoy near Baghdad airport on January 3, 2020, underlining the US keenness on the Israeli interests and the Iraqi fuel.

The United States has continued to intervene in all the local Iraqi politics and plundering the Mesopotamian resources. Whereas, the Islamic Republic has been offering Iraq economic aids and investment projects.

The Islamic Republic of Iran has never requested any Iraqi services in return. Its intention has been always concentrated on defending the sanctities and supporting the vulnerable against oppression, which in consecrated in its Constitution.

Supreme Leader of the Islamic Revolution in Iran Imam Sayyed Ali Khamenei highlights the importance of the fight against ISIL terrorists in protecting Imam Hussein (P) Holy Shrine in Karbala City. Martyr Suleimani, moreover, indicates that the terrorists plotted to destroy the Holy Shrines in Iraq.

Source: Al-Manar English Website

THE BBC-TO-NATO PIPELINE: HOW THE BRITISH STATE BROADCASTER SERVES THE POWERFUL

OCTOBER 6TH, 2022

By Alan Macleod

Source

The death of Queen Elizabeth II, where the BBC dropped programming to run endless, wall-to-wall coverage, has underlined the fact to many Britons that the network is far from impartial, but the voice of the state.

The BBC website draped itself in black, printing stories such as “Death of Queen Elizabeth II: The moment history stops,” while BBC News presenter Clive Myrie explicitly dismissed the cost of living and energy crisis wracking the country as “insignificant” compared to the news.

But even before the monarch’s death, the BBC’s reputation was in crisis. Between 2018 and 2022, the number of Britons saying they trusted its coverage dropped from 75% to just 55%. Yet it still remains a giant in media; more than three-quarters of the U.K. public rely on the network as a news source.

BBC trust poll

However, this investigation will reveal that the BBC has always been consciously used as an arm of the state, with the broadcaster openly collaborating with the U.K. military, the intelligence services and with NATO, all in an effort to shape British and world public opinion.

THE BBC-TO-NATO PIPELINE

The BBC has always cultivated a close relationship with the British military, despite the inherent journalistic conflicts of interest present. “In theory the BBC is supposed to hold power to account, but this is not how impartiality has tended to work in practice,” Tom Mills, an academic and author of “The BBC: Myth of a Public Service,” told MintPress, adding that “a certain deference is expected of you…It’s a structural feature of the organization, and to some extent journalism more broadly.”

Yet, studying employment databases and websites reveals the existence of a revolving door between the broadcaster and NATO.

Between 2007 and 2008, longtime BBC producer and news presenter Victoria Cook, for instance, was simultaneously collecting a paycheck from NATO, working as a journalist and media trainer.

Oana Lungescu, meanwhile, left her job as a correspondent at the BBC World Service (the broadcaster’s flagship international radio service) in 2010 to take a job as a NATO spokesperson.

Another BBC employee who went through the BBC-to-NATO-pipeline is Mark Laity, who left his position as the network’s defense correspondent to become the deputy spokesman to NATO Secretary General Lord Robertson – a man who journalistic ethics dictates Laity should have been closely scrutinizing, not doing public relations for him.

David McGee also left his role as a news producer for the BBC to work for NATO – in this case as a media manager, where he, in his own words, “Provided PR support to military and civilian stakeholders for external communications audience,” and, “Undertook crisis management of news events for [the] U.S. military.”

Others traveled the other way. One of them is Terence Sach, who left his job as an intelligence and security analyst at the U.K. Ministry of Defense in 2017 to become an information security specialist at the BBC.

WHERE NEWS MEETS PSYOPS

Perhaps most noteworthy, however, is the BBC’s employment of NATO psychological operations officers, tasking them to provide supposedly objective information while simultaneously moonlighting as propagandists for the military alliance.

Between 1994 and 2014, for example, Sulaiman Radmanish worked for the BBC World Service, primarily helping to produce content targeting the Afghan population. Over a similar time period (2005-2014), he worked as a video editor for NATO, “edit[ing] short Psyops clips” according to his LinkedIn profile. It is surely no coincidence that his work with both the BBC and NATO ended in the same year as Britain’s withdrawal from Afghanistan – a country it had been occupying since 2001.

THOSE ANGRY AT RUSHDIE’S STABBING HAVE BEEN MISSING IN ACTION OVER A FAR BIGGER THREAT TO OUR FREEDOM

Another operative with one foot in both NATO and the BBC was Bojan Lazic. At the same time as being a full-time psychological operations specialist for NATO, Lazic moonlighted as a BBC technical consultant. This employment coincided with NATO’s bombing of Lazic’s native Yugoslavia.

This close relationship with the military continues to the present day. One example of this is the BBC’s newly appointed head of assurance, Khushru Cooper. According to his social media profile, Cooper continues to be a commissioned British Army officer – a post he has held for 20 years.

THE MYTH OF A LEFT-WING BIAS

In August, top BBC news anchor Emily Maitlis caused a storm of controversy after she claimed that the network’s former head of political programming, Robbie Gibb, was, in her words, an “active agent of the Conservative party” who influenced politics coverage. Others agreed, including BBC media editor Amol Rajan, who said Gibb’s appointment “clearly strengthens the BBC’s links not just with Westminster, but with the Conservative Party specifically”.

At the time she made the remarks, Maitlis had recently resigned, although only after she had come under huge pressure for reporting on how senior Conservative politicians were blatantly flouting their own COVID-19 lockdown rules.

Richard Sharp, the BBC’s chairman, insisted that Maitlis was “completely wrong”. “We cherish the editorial independence of the BBC,” he added. Yet her claims were hardly outlandish. Robbie Gibb is the brother of Tory MP and former cabinet minister Nick Gibb, and left the BBC in 2017 to become Director of Communications for Conservative Prime Minister Theresa May. And Sharp himself was an advisor to senior Tories, including Chancellor Rishi Sunak and future Prime Minister Boris Johnson. He is also one of the party’s largest benefactors, donating at least £400,000 to its coffers.

Many of the BBC’s biggest and most influential names also have similar connections to conservative power. Tim Davie, the corporation’s director general, was the deputy chairman of the Hammersmith and Fulham Conservative Party and stood for election as a Tory on two occasions. Nick Robinson, the BBC’s former political editor and current host of its flagship Today program, was chairman of the National Young Conservatives and president of the Oxford University Conservative Association. And Andrew Neil, a longtime senior politics presenter at the BBC, was far-right media baron Rupert Murdoch’s right-hand man and the chairman of the hard-right Spectator magazine.

This glut of right-wingers in top jobs is not matched by an equal number on the left. Far from it. In fact, from the earliest days of the BBC, the secret services have vetted the majority of its staff – even for minor positions – in order to ensure that those it deems too left-wing, radical or anti-war will never enter its ranks. This practice continued until at very least the 1980s. However, when BBC journalists asked the company in 2018 whether this practice is still ongoing, they refused to answer, citing “security issues” – a response many took to be a tacit “yes”.

Nevertheless, the myth that the BBC is a left-leaning institution is a persistent one. Successive polls have shown that around one quarter of the public believe the corporation is biased in favor of the Labour Party and the left – a larger number than those that say the opposite is true.

Much of this sentiment is driven by the Conservative Party itself, which constantly harangues the BBC over what it claims is an anti-Tory bias, to the point where the current government under Liz Truss have vowed to pull all its funding, effectively destroying it. Earlier this week, Home Secretary Suella Braverman claimed that there has been a “march of socialism” throughout public life and that there was an “urgent need” to address the balance by placing right-wingers into more positions of power.

The BBC is not financed by advertising, but from a license fee paid for by all Britons (with some exceptions) who wish to have a television. The cost of the license – and therefore the budget of the BBC – is set by the government, giving it a weapon to use against the corporation.

As former Director of BBC personnel, Michael Bett said,

The license fee became a bigger and bigger political issue. Therefore, it mattered very much what the government thought about you, and you couldn’t rely on the general reputation. You had to please the government.”

“The BBC is essentially a state broadcaster with a high degree of operational autonomy. It’s reporting isn’t directed by government, or by any department of state…plus its public income comes from outside of general taxation,” Mills told MintPress, adding:

But governments control that income, they appoint executives to its board and they periodically define its terms of operations. Ultimately it is answerable to governments and this is well understood in the BBC itself. They are very conscious of how they are perceived by politicians.”

VOICE OF THE STATE

The work of Mills and others charting the history of the British Broadcasting Corporation has underlined the point that, from its very inception, it has been fundamentally intertwined with British state power, helping to promote and preserve it at home and abroad.

The BBC was established in October 1922 to take advantage of emerging radio technology, and played a key role in the U.K. General Strike of 1926. 1920s Europe was an extremely turbulent time, as class war, revolution and socialism had come to the fore. In 1917, Russia had overthrown its czar and brought Lenin’s Bolshevik party into power, only to be immediately invaded by Britain, the United States and other powers in an attempt to “strangle Bolshevism in its cradle” as Winston Churchill put it.

The German uprisings of 1917 and 1919 had ended the First World War and led to the fall of the monarchy. Closer to home, Ireland had fought its way to independence from Britain. Meanwhile, in 1922, a communist uprising in Scotland had come close to sparking a revolution across the country.

These actions deeply troubled BBC chief Lord John Reith. And so when the Trades Union Congress called a general strike in 1926, the Scottish aristocrat offered his organization’s services to the Conservative government. The BBC became a “vital instrument of propaganda for a government determined to break the strike,” in Mills’ words, putting out non-stop propaganda demonizing the strikers and banning broadcasts from the Labour Party.

After the strike was broken, Reith proudly announced to listeners,

You have heard the messages from the king and the prime minister. It remains only to add the conviction that the nation’s happy escape has been in large measure due to a personal trust in the prime minister.”

Reith would later say that the BBC “saved” Britain and quipped that if France had had a state broadcaster in 1789, “there would have been no French Revolution.” 

The government has long internally debated what its precise relationship with the BBC should be. Winston Churchill was in favor of officially taking over the corporation. However, others in government argued that it should be kept at arm’s length; that it would hold more persuasive power if it maintained a facade of independence. This was the approach Lord Reith favored, commenting that the government “know that they can trust us not to be really impartial”.

THE ENEMY WITHIN

True to Reith’s vision, the BBC has maintained its role as state broadcaster and has functioned as one of the British establishment’s most potent tools in destroying any threat to its power and prestige. As Greg Dyke, BBC secretary general between 2000 and 2004 stated, the organization “helps maintain an unequal political system by being part of a Westminster conspiracy. They don’t want anything to change. It’s not in their interests.”

This was seen in full effect in the 1980s during the Miners’ Strike, where the BBC put out round-the-clock propaganda to help the Conservative Thatcher government defeat the strikers, going so far as to doctor footage to make it appear that miners had attacked the police, when, in fact, the opposite was the case.

Nevertheless, the Thatcher government’s attack on the BBC was fierce. Following the commissioning of Duncan Campbell’s series “Secret Society”, which exposed the existence of spy satellites that even parliament was not told about, the security services raided BBC offices in Glasgow and banned its publication.

More recently, when Scotland faced an independence referendum in 2014, the BBC published a torrent of negative stories on the issue, warning Scots that ruination awaited them if they chose to break away. This came to be dubbed “Project Fear” by detractors. Studies showed a clear quantitative bias towards anti-independence sources, with BBC presenters displaying open contempt or even hatred towards Scottish First Minister Alex Salmond.

Likewise, when Jeremy Corbyn became leader of the Labour Party, the BBC immediately trained its guns on him, constantly attacking and slandering him, implying he was a terrorist sympathizer, an antisemite, and a national security threat. After strong public pushback to its reporting, the BBC eventually investigated itself and concluded its own political editor, Laura Kuenssberg, had breached its impartiality and accuracy standards when covering Corbyn. Despite this, senior BBC figures still publicly maintain that the idea the organization was biased against him is “risible.”

The BBC has often cultivated its “Auntie Beeb” persona – that of a reliable, comforting and non-threatening source of information that all Britons can rely upon. However, upon closer inspection, it is clear that the institution functions as an appendage of the state, with deep and long-lasting ties to all sectors of the British establishment, including the monarchy, the military, the secret services and the Conservative Party. In short, then, the BBC is not just state-funded media; it is a mouthpiece for the powerful.

Truss Condemned for Proposing Relocating British Embassy to Jerusalem

October 5, 2022

British Prime Minister Liz Truss. (Photo: Simon Dawson / No10 Downing Street, via Wikimedia Commons)

By Palestine Chronicle Staff

The UK-based organization Friends of Al-Aqsa (FoA) condemned British Prime Minister Liz Truss’s proposed relocation of the British Embassy in Israel from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem.

In a statement, a copy of which was sent to The Palestine Chronicle, FoA said that “Israel is an apartheid state whose ongoing occupation of Palestinian land is a flagrant violation of international law.”

 “As with the rest of occupied Palestine, Israel denies Palestinians in East Jerusalem basic human rights and inflicts a cruel system of oppression and domination in an attempt to ethnically cleanse Palestinians from their ancestral lands,” the statement added.

Therefore, “a move of the British Embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem would send a clear message of British support for the violation of international law,” it concluded. 

On September 22, Truss said she is considering relocating the British embassy in Israel from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, in a meeting with Israeli Prime Minister Yair Lapid, on the sidelines of the UN general assembly in New York.

(The Palestine Chronicle)

EU Pushes For More Sanctions Which Will Come Back To Bite It

October 5, 2022

On February 22, two days before Russian troops entered the Ukraine, the U.S. and the EU put reams of sanctions onto Russia. They also confiscated some $300 billion of Russia’s reserves that were invested in the ‘west’. The sanctions had been negotiated between the EU and the U.S. and prepared for over several months.

The idea was to bankrupt Russia within a few weeks. The deluded people behind those sanctions had no idea how big and sanctions proved Russia’s economy really is. The sanctions failed to influence Russia in any way but their consequences led to a shortfall of energy in Europe and increased the already high inflation rates. Inflation in Russia is sinking and its general economic numbers are good. The now higher energy prices generate sufficient additional income to completely finance its war efforts.

A sane actor would conclude that the sanctions were a mistake and that lifting them would help Europe more than it would help Russia. But no, the U.S. and European pseudo elites are no longer able to act in a sane manner. They are instead doubling down with the most crazy sanction scheme one has ever heard of:

[T]he European Union pushed ahead on Wednesday with an ambitious but untested plan to limit Russia’s oil revenue.

If the global price of oil remains high, it would complicate the European Union’s effort to impose a price cap on Russian oil that was expected to gain final approval on Thursday, after E.U. negotiators reached an agreement on the measure as part of a fresh package of sanctions against Moscow.

Under the plan, a committee including representatives of the European Union, the Group of 7 nations and others that agree to the price cap would meet regularly to decide on the price at which Russian oil should be sold, and that it would change based on the market price.

Several diplomats involved in the E.U. talks said that Greece, Malta and Cyprus — maritime nations that would be most affected by the price cap — received assurances that their business interests would be preserved, the diplomats said.

The countries had been holding up what would be the eighth sanctions package the European Union has adopted since the Russian invasion of Ukraine because of worries that a price cap on Russian oil exported outside the bloc would affect their shipping, insurance and other industries, the diplomats said.

With oil prices at a high, Russia is raking in billions of dollars in revenue, even as it sells smaller quantities. The cap — part of a broad plan pushed by the Biden administration that the G7 agreed to last month — is intended to set the price of Russian oil lower than where it is today, but still above cost. The U.S. Treasury calculates that the cap would deprive the Kremlin of tens of billions of dollars annually.

How do you make a big producer of a rare commodity sell those goods below the general market price? Unless you have a very strong buyers cartel that can also that product from elsewhere you can not do this successfully. It is an economic impossibility.

To make the measure effective, and cut Russian revenue, the United States, Europe and their allies would need to convince India and China, which buy substantial quantities of Russian oil, to purchase it only at the agreed upon price. Experts say that even with willing partners, the cap could be hard to implement.

Russia has declared that it will not sell any oil to any party that supports the G7 price fixing regime. That is why neither China nor India nor any other country besides the EU and U.S. will agree to adhere to it.

The whole idea is crazy and way too complicate to achieve anything:

Under the new rules, companies involved in the shipping of Russian oil — including shipowners, insurers and underwriters — would be on the hook for ensuring that the oil they are helping to transport is being sold at or below the price cap. If they are caught helping Russia sell at a higher price, they could face lawsuits in their home countries for violating sanctions.

Russian crude will come under an embargo in most of the European Union on Dec. 5, and petroleum products will follow in February. The price cap on shipments to non-E.U. countries has been championed by U.S. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen as a necessary complement to the European oil embargo.

Under the E.U. deal, Greece, Malta and Cyprus will be permitted to continue shipping Russian oil. Had they not agreed to place their companies at the forefront of applying the price cap, they would have been forbidden from shipping or insuring Russian oil cargo outside the European Union, a huge hit for major industries.

More than half of the tankers now shipping Russia’s oil are Greek-owned. And the financial services that underpin that trade — including insurance, reinsurance and letters of credit — are overwhelmingly based in the European Union and Britain.

This is of course an open invitation to other countries to enter the oil shipping and related financial services businesses at the cost of European companies.

China and India will both it to increase their market shares in those fields. Their ships will transport Russian oil to whoever wants to buy it for the market price minus the always negotiable Russian rebate. Greek ships will sit idle or will be sold off while Indian and Chinese and other Asian tankers will be very, very busy. China’s big insurance companies will happily join that new global services business.

That European bureaucrats agreed to his stupid U.S. idea, which will foremost hurt European businesses, is another sign that Brussels has given up on having any agency.

Today OPEC+ countries, the seller cartel for oil, reacted to the crazy sanctions idea and the upcoming global depression by agreeing to decrease their daily output by 2 million barrels. This was not done out of Saudi solidarity with Russia. Saudi Arabia needs oil at above $80/bl to finance its budget.

Brent Crude, which had fallen to $83/bl on September 26, has since risen to $93/bl.

The global demand for oil is around 100 million barrels per day. Should the demand stay up the 2% reduction in OPEC+ production will have significant price effects and $100 per barrel will be in easy reach.

But OPEC+ is committed to stable prices, not to significant price increases. During the OPEC+ session today the Saudi Prince Abdulazis showed this table:
bigger

Since the beginning of the year the prices for all forms of carbon based energy except crude oil have increased considerably. Abdulazis argued that the chart shows that OPEC+ is managing oil prices responsibly. The EU is certainly not doing similar.

The Biden administration has meanwhile nearly halved the content of the U.S Strategic Petroleum Reserve. This to keep U.S. pump prices down and the Democrats in power.
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Neither is a responsible step to take.

Posted by b on October 5, 2022 at 16:48 UTC | Permalink

HOW WESTERN INTELLIGENCE AGENTS TRAFFICKED TEENS INTO ISIS’ HANDS, WITH SALLY LETTS

By Lowkey

Source

The MintPress podcast, “The Watchdog,” hosted by British-Iraqi hip hop artist Lowkey, closely examines organizations about which it is in the public interest to know – including intelligence, lobby and special interest groups influencing policies that infringe on free speech and target dissent. The Watchdog goes against the grain by casting a light on stories largely ignored by the mainstream, corporate media.

Lowkey begins this latest episode by delving into recent revelations around the case of Shamima Begum, a British national who fled the U.K. as a teenager and joined ISIS in Syria.  Lowkey examines the new admission that a Canadian secret service agent trafficked at least 140 British citizens into Syria. He also examines Turkish police claims that this agent’s handler was believed to be British intelligence working out of the Canadian Embassy. It is important to remember that the British Monarch is the head of state in Canada.

When asked about these activities, Canadian prime minister Justin Trudeau responded that his intelligence agencies must be “creative and flexible.” To gauge the response to this, Lowkey is joined by Sally Letts, the mother of Jack Letts, a Canadian citizen who is currently detained in a prison in Northern Syria after travelling there during the war. Both Letts and Begum have had their British citizenship stripped by the government, despite the question marks surrounding their journeys there.

As a direct reply to Trudeau, Sally Letts suggests his statement could be read as meaning that it is “perfectly acceptable for the Canadian Security Service here to engage in child trafficking.”

Richard Walton, former head of the Metropolitan Police Counter Terrorism Command, sought to justify this policy:

If you are running agents on the ground, you are acquiescing to what they are doing. You are turning a blind eye”.

During the podcast, Sally and Lowkey explored the Active Change Foundation and its curious role in obtaining the conviction of her and her husband for funding terrorism. Their son had been imprisoned three times by ISIS and his family sought to rescue him. Discussing how this Prevent-backed counter-extremist organization, which initially portrayed itself to be an ally to the family, was secretly gathering intel and giving false impressions to the family about rescuing their son. This in turn led to the conviction of Jack’s parents. Thus, the steps taken by Active Change Foundation toward the Letts family are eerily reminiscent of FBI entrapment cases in the United States.

Sally Letts identifies parallel similarities between her son’s case and Shamima Begum, pointing out that the person who facilitated Jack’s journey to Syria has gone uncharged by the police, despite ample evidence. Sally told Lowkey that the family now believes it likely that the person that facilitated Jack’s entry is an informant of the intelligence services. She laments the dehumanization of both Shamima Begum and her son Jack have been,

Demonized as monsters. They are not given human rights like other people…universal human rights seem to have been thrown out the window in all of these cases under the guise of terrorism.”

HOW COVERT BRITISH INFORMATION WARS TARGET RUSSIA, THREATENING CIVILIANS AND JOURNALISTS 

By Kit Klarenberg

Source

In late July, a shocking interview with a captured Azov Battalion fighter began circulating online.

In the clip, the prisoner-of-war claimed that Oleksiy Arestovych, once a key advisor to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, had, prior to the war, ordered his Neo-Nazi regiment (among other military units) to carry out and film “brutal murders” of captured Russian soldiers in service of an “information campaign.”

The purpose of this effort, the Azov fighter claimed, was to transmit the grisly footage to Russia in order to stoke anti-war sentiment among the population, and thus protests and upheaval.

Incendiary confessions and allegations emanating from prisoners-of-war should always be treated with intense skepticism. The likelihood they will be made under significant duress, and/or result from extensive coaching, is invariably high. Nonetheless, there are sound reasons not to reflexively discount the nameless combatant’s testimony.

While you would barely know it from Western media reporting, countless Russian soldiers have been tortured and killed in the most savage ways imaginable post-capture, each and every horrifying incident representing a grave war crime. There are numerous reports of prisoners being burnt with blowtorches and/or having their eyes gouged out before execution, and even those kept alive are frequently shot in their kneecaps to cripple them for life. Accompanying clips are voluminous, and have traveled widely.

As such, questions can only abound over whether this is a matter of dedicated strategy for Kiev, rather than the isolated, vengeful actions of individual soldiers or units, particularly given numerous officials have made dire public threats about the fate that awaits Russians should they participate in the war. For example, a senior battlefield doctor told Ukrainian state media in late March he had ordered his staff to castrate captives, as they were “cockroaches”.

Arestovych has also over the years made numerous deeply concerning comments endorsing ISIS, in particular the terror group’s “cruelty for show,” which he believes to be a “wise strategy.”

“They are acting very correctly…Those methods, the world needs them, even though this means terrorism, medieval levels of cruelty, burning people alive, shooting them or cutting off their heads. This is absolutely the way of the future,” he said in one TV interview.

Even more compellingly, leaked documents reviewed by MintPress show covert plans to “achieve influence” with Russians and turn them against the war and their government have been drawn up by a shadowy British intelligence contractor, led by an individual intimately tied to a previous clandestine effort aimed at achieving the same end, using atrocity propaganda from the Syrian crisis, in which Ukraine was also central.

As we shall see, there is no reason to believe this effort will be anything but counterproductive, and in the process put the liberty if not lives of Russians at significant risk, while emboldening the Kremlin significantly, and furthering its informational objectives.

‘A STREAM OF NARRATIVE OPPORTUNITIES’

The proposals were crafted by Valent Projects, exposed by MintPress in July as running a sinister social media censorship operation on behalf of U.S. intelligence front USAID, in conjunction with Chemonics International, which its own founder has admitted was created so he could “have my own CIA.” The contractor was the primary conduit via which U.S. funds and equipment reached bogus Syrian humanitarian group the White Helmets.

Submitted to the Partnership Fund for a Resilient Ukraine, a support mechanism created by the governments of Britain, Canada, Sweden, Switzerland and the U.S., the pair pledged to “map audiences critical to the Kremlin’s efforts, and identify opportunities to impact their narratives,” in order to support Kiev’s “strategic communications efforts.”

This would provide key decision makers within the Ministries of Defense and Foreign Affairs, and the Office of the President “a stream of ‘narrative opportunities’” with which to “influence” and “engage” audiences not only in Russia, but “other key states” including India and Turkey, via news outlets and social media.

Valent pledged to not only identify potential target demographics, but “their prevailing worldviews, how they access information and what narratives are likely to influence them,” and monitor their online interactions in real-time, in particular identifying when “key audiences express potential tension with official positions,” which could be exploited by Kiev.

This data could be segmented for different government departments, if say Defense chiefs were “interested in different audiences” than their Foreign Affairs counterparts. Overall, the entire Ukrainian administration would, it was pledged, be able to “affect measurable attitudinal and behavioral change amongst key Russian audiences” with Valent’s help.

While no mention is made in the document of this setup being used to further Arestovych’s macabre purported plans, it would certainly provide an efficacious means of achieving them. What is more though, there are sinister echoes in the proposal of an operation conducted by British intelligence contractor InCoStrat during the Syrian crisis, which was led by Valent’s founder-and-chief, Amil Khan.

Dubbed “Project Aurelius”, it sought to “increase the cost to the Russian leadership of sustained or increased intervention in the Syrian conflict by sensitizing Russian public opinion to the opportunity costs of their intervention in the conflict” – in the process not only ending the country’s decisive military involvement in the West’s dirty war, but destabilizing the government by disrupting its “domestic balancing act.”

A document related to the connivance spells out a “basic mechanism to achieving” its lofty objectives. In brief, it entailed “leveraging the reality of Russia’s Syria intervention as depicted in Syrian opposition media and presenting it to key Russian audiences, including mainstream news consumers.”

InCoStrat avowedly had “a number of assets already available to build this mechanism,” including “access to opposition-made media products” producing content refuting “Russian claims”, “the ability to task Syrian opposition media activists to capture raw material,” and “international communications specialists” based in Jordan with “the ability to establish and manage the effort” – Khan being chief among them.

‘EMBEDDED WITH TERRORISTS’

Such boasts significantly underplay the staggering scale of InCoStrat’s cloak-and-dagger machinations in Damascus. The contractor played a pivotal role in London’s long-running propaganda efforts over the course of the dirty war, which sought to disrupt and displace the government of Bashar al-Assad, convince citizens and international bodies that rabid Western and Gulf-backed militant groups rampaging across the country were a credible, “moderate” alternative, and would then flood media internationally with pro-opposition agitprop.

In service of this effort, InCoStrat trained hundreds of “stringers” across the country who fed content to three separate media production offices it managed, and established 10 separate FM radio stations, as well as numerous print magazines. On top of extensive domestic consumption in both occupied and government-controlled areas of Syria, the company fed this output to a network of “over 1,600 journalists and people of influence” globally.

InCoStrat furthermore carried out various elaborate “guerrilla” operations, which it described as “[using] the media to create [an] event” and “[initiating] an event to create media effect.” One example of these activities was “[exploiting] the concentrated presence of journalists” during the Geneva II conference in January 2014 “to put pressure on the regime.”

The company produced “postcards, posters and reports” to “draw behavioral parallels” between the Assad government and ISIS and dishonestly further the fiction that “a latent relationship exists between the two.” The company alleged in Foreign Office submissions that these productions were subsequently republished by “major news outlets” including the Qatari-funded Al-Jazeera.

In another, InCoStrat smuggled materials emphasizing alleged government atrocities – such as pictures “depicting the aftermath of a barrel bomb attack or victims of torture” – into “regime-held” areas of Syria, including Damascus. The company sought to “keep regime perpetration of war crimes in the spotlight at a crucial time when media attention has shifted almost exclusively towards ISIS and some influential voices are calling for co-operation with the Syrian regime to combat ISIS.”

This work placed the company and its staff in extremely close quarters with numerous armed militias guilty of monstrous abuses, who have been credibly accused of orchestrating “false flag” events to precipitate Western intervention, including chemical weapons strikes, which may have necessitated choreographed massacres by the individuals and groups staging them.

For instance, InCoStrat bragged of having contacts with violent gangs in “some of the most impenetrable areas in the country,” such as Syria’s “eastern front,” which, at the time of writing, was dominated by ISIS. Its stringers were said to have “access to a variety of groups,” including Al-Qaeda affiliate Jabhat al-Nusra, “with whom they have conducted interviews.” Amil Khan may well have been fundamental to cultivating these connections.

In one leaked file, InCoStrat is asked to provide evidence of its “proven track record of establishing and developing contacts in Arabic-speaking conflict affected states.” Khan’s alleged history of having “established relationships with, and embedded himself into terrorist organizations in the UK and the Middle East,” experience granting him “unique insight into their narratives, communication methods, recruitment processes and management of networks,” is cited as an example of the company’s prowess in this field.

‘UNDERMINE THE RUSSIAN POSITION’

To say the least, then, InCoStrat had “a number of assets available” to carry out Project Aurelius effectively.

The “only” public-facing element of the operation was a “Russian anti-Kremlin activist collective” based in Ukraine, “with access to foreign journalists and opinion influencers with media profiles,” who were able to “establish and run Russian social media pages” and infiltrate Russian opposition networks online on InCoStrat’s behalf.

Financing for the effort was markedly opaque, sent from Amman to a Syrian-run “media activist group” registered in Germany, which then dispatched regular payments to a parallel organization created in Kiev, covering its staffing and running costs, and expenses. Publicly, the money appeared to flow from a “Syrian interlocutor”, running crowdfunders and “eliciting donations from wealthy Syrians.”

The output of InCoStrat’s assorted Syrian media assets – and other opposition communications platforms – were monitored by a team led by Khan in Jordan, to “[identify] products that undermine the Russian position,” which were then compiled according to a “distribution plan that aims to maximize negative impact on Russian narratives around the intervention in Syria,” with a specific focus on “points of vulnerability.”

This material was then circulated to the Ukraine-based activists, translated, and spread across social media via private chats and social media groups. It was hoped the entire breadth of the Russian media, from opposition outlets such as Meduza and Novaya Gazeta, establishment liberal newspapers including Kommersant, and even “directly controlled pro-government media” would in turn pick up the stories, leading to wider civil society debate about the Syrian intervention, and corrosion in the government’s position at home and abroad.

It’s uncertain whether Aurelius succeeded in its goal of flooding Russian opposition channels with damaging disinformation, or how many journalists and publications recycled this targeted content believing it to be organic and grassroots in nature, but Moscow’s Syrian mission certainly doesn’t appear to have been deterred one iota.

Today, despite ongoing Israeli airstrikescrippling Western sanctions and US occupation of its oil-producing areas, the country is steadily rebuilding itself and overwhelmingly under government control, in no small part due to Russian intervention.

It seems likely the proposal of Valent and Chemonics will be similarly impotent, not least because the brutality reserved for captured Russian soldiers, as apparently advocated by Arestovych, has surely reduced to zero the opportunity for Kiev to stage timely interventions, and exploit “potential tension with official positions” with target audiences in Russia. As the nameless Azov Battalion prisoner acknowledged in their testimony, such behavior “caused negativity in world public opinion,” least of all in Russia itself.

Other callous developments, including the widespread scattering of petal mines in civilian areas across the Donbas, indiscriminate attacks on the majority Russian Crimea, and Ukrainian soldiers using the cellphones of slain Russians to call and laughingly taunt their victims’ mothers back home, have inevitably been exploited by the Kremlin to further and legitimize its narratives about Kiev being a rabid, murderous fascist regime in urgent need of “denazification” and “demilitarization”.

One might argue that as a country embroiled in a David and Goliath battle, it is not only morally necessary, but eminently sensible, for Ukraine to explore any and all possible methods of evening the playing field. Yet Project Aurelius amply underlines the significant dangers and inherently counterproductive nature of covert Western information warfare initiatives.

Several media outlets identified as fruitful targets for Aurelius product have since fallen victim to Moscow’s Draconian, debilitating “foreign agent” laws, or simply been shut down by court order. In recent years, harassment and closure of opposition NGOs and information providers in Russia has frequently been triggered by the exposure of illicit – or insufficiently clear – Western funding and sponsorship.

The onset of conflict in Ukraine means an even less safe space for dissent in Russia. Thousands have reportedly received fines or prison sentences for opposing the war, while Kommersant reporter Ivan Safronov has been jailed for 22 years on dubious charges of treason. What fate would befall a journalist who wrote up content surreptitiously broadcast to them by Kiev courtesy of Valent and Chemonics, or a private citizen who shared it?

A NOBLE LIE?

If this war is won by Ukraine, it certainly will not be via covert psyops campaigns. Yet both Kiev and its Western backers have a significant vested interest in propagandizing the public in North America and Europe. Stories true or false of victimhood, heroism and battlefield success are key to ensuring the endless flow of weaponry and financial aid to a country outgunned and outmanned by its much larger neighbor, the economy and industry of which has already been comprehensively crippled.

During the Syrian crisis, the U.S. spent potentially in excess of one trillion on regime change efforts, a core component of which was a failed $1 billion secret dirty war led by the CIA. Britain pumped at least $400 million into achieving the same goal, a figure that does not take into account black operations conducted by intelligence agencies or covert military units. The sums involved in the Ukraine conflict will likely dwarf those totals.

International aid tracker DevEx calculated in late August that in the first six months of the war, over $100 billion had been committed to Kiev by Western countries, only a tiny fraction of which was “humanitarian-focused”. Seemingly each and every month, if not more frequently, yet further billions are allocated to Kiev by Washington, meaning the country is on track to become the largest recipient of U.S. military assistance since World War II. Europe has likewise committed vast resources.

Along the way, major arms manufacturers are making a literal killing, in every sense. Despite a general downturn in stock markets the world over, the share prices of companies including BAE Systems, Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman, and Thales have remained strong. In a particularly brash manifestation of the Military Industrial Complex in effect, Zelensky is scheduled to deliver a headline speech at a major U.S. defense industry conference on September 21st.

There are legitimate and reasonable arguments for and against regular arms shipments to Kiev, although consideration of the latter perspective has been almost entirely absent from mainstream discourse. As such, one cannot help but wonder if the ultimate intended target audience of the kind of informational connivance plotted by Valent and Chemonics is, as with Syria, Western publics.

After all, it is their support and acquiescence that keeps the war machine ever-whirring – and the profits rising. And if enemy state citizens, journalists, and civil society activists end up as collateral damage, who cares.

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