Category Archives: Military Affairs

Military Confrontation

The Pioneers of a Systematic Approach to Military Propaganda Were the British

via Eurasia & Multipolarity

https://t.me/russtrat/13529

The bloody staging in Bucha, the terrorist shelling of Kramatorsk attributed to Russia, the anti-Russian bacchanalia in the Western media and social networks… Today, Russia is once again being portrayed as universal evil. And who is the soloist in the current propaganda campaign? All the same.

The pioneers of a systematic approach to military propaganda were the British. They “trained” well during the Anglo-Boer War at the end of the previous century, in which the sympathies of many countries were on the side of the Boers – the first European settlers in Africa. The British press then made up hundreds of stories about their atrocities. And the “attack” on the Red Cross tents with the wounded was even filmed. Later it turned out that it was a staging with the participation of the actor Hampstead Heath.

At the same time, the concept was born, which was later called “atrocity propaganda.”

This “atrocity propaganda” flourished most luxuriantly during the First World War. In Great Britain, the ideological leader of this kind of propaganda was one of the founders of the English press, the “noble” Lord Northcliffe. He brought together the various propaganda organs that had hitherto existed independently and turned them into one of the most important instruments of war. Lloyd George wrote to him after the peace was signed:

“I have a lot of direct evidence of the success of your invaluable work, which contributed a lot to the defeat of the enemy.”

One of the most successful campaigns of English propagandists was the so-called Liege Tragedy. “Eyewitnesses” told the press about the brutality of the Germans they allegedly saw, how the hands of children were cut off, how German officers and soldiers raped 20 Belgian girls in the Liège market square, how German soldiers stabbed a two-year-old child with bayonets and cut off the breasts of a peasant girl in Maine how they tortured Catholic priests by hanging them from bells, how they mocked nuns.

A committee of jurists and historians, headed by Lord Bruce, the former British ambassador to the United States, even drew up a report stating that “murder, lust and plunder reigned in many parts of Belgium on a scale incomparable to any other wars between civilized nations throughout the last three centuries.”

At the same time, an abomination was thrown into the press that the Germans allegedly processed the corpses of soldiers, their own and others, into stearin and pig feed. Only after the end of the war did the truth surface – a special commission did not confirm a single case of atrocity cited in the report.

The Germans, in turn, also did not shun what is now called “fakes”. The “horror propaganda” of the Russian invasion of East Prussia continued in the German press until the very end of the war. The topics are exactly the same – Russian soldiers rape German women, kill children, rob the population.

Stories of atrocities made it possible to present a war against such an adversary as righteous, as upholding the “values of civilization” in the face of barbarism. Isn’t that what we see now if we read the Western and Ukrainian media and social networks?

More about this in the publication of the RUSSTRAT Institute “Blood Lies – the Birthmarks of Western Civilization”

NATO’s Eastward Expansion Orchestrated by US With Goal of Regime Change in Russia

via Sputnik

Over the weekend, NATO chief Jens Stoltenberg announced that the alliance will see a “fundamental transformation”, particularly by beefing up its eastern flanks and addressing the “threat” from Russia and China.

Russia has been repeatedly reiterating that it views NATO’s expansion eastward as a national security threat, highlighting it as one of the nation’s so-called “red lines” in December 2021.

Now, citing a “new normal” for European security, NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg has announced that the alliance will face a major resetthat envisages enhanced military on its eastern flanks.

With the decision – if there is one – regarding the readdressing of NATO’s strategic concept at a June summit in Madrid, the mere announcement of the alliance’s ambition could pose a series of concerns for Moscow – concerns that the West ignored when they were listed in December.

Scott Ritter, a military analyst and former US Marine Corps intelligence officer, who helped implement arms control treaties in the former Soviet Union, served in the Persian Gulf during Operation Desert Storm, and in Iraq, believes that NATO’s “transformation” is a response to the unflattering “truth on the ground in Ukraine today”.

“Right now NATO is waking up to the fact that despite all of the propaganda that NATO and the West, together with Ukraine, have been putting out about a Russian defeat in Ukraine, the military professionals are looking at the map, looking at this position of forces, and realising that Ukraine is about ready to suffer a very major strategic defeat; one that will transform the entire picture, so to speak, including any leverage Ukraine might enjoy at the negotiating table”, Ritter says, concluding that NATO strengthening its eastern flanks is a response to the potential grim scenario for the alliance.

It looks like Russia’s stance on the matter will not be too much of a concern for NATO, just like it wasn’t before the beginning of the special military operation in Ukraine. Pointing at how Russia warned that NATO’s expansion eastward would prompt a “military-technical response”, Ritter suggests that the alliance’s actions may trigger exactly that. However, it could be limited to “simply a re-disposition of forces in a manner that’s more forward-leaning”, he notes.

Pondering as to why NATO would continue its provocative actions despite clearly knowing Russia’s stance on its expansion eastward, Ritter pointed to it not being the alliance itself making this decision.

“I think the world is starting to wake up to the fact that NATO is an extension of American foreign policy, that NATO is not an independent entity capable of independent thinking or formulating an independent security policy, especially when it comes to Europe. Despite President Biden’s denials to the contrary, the United States does have a policy of regime change in Russia. It is the expressed desire of the United States that the government of Vladimir Putin be done away with, hopefully by an uprising by the Russian people”, Ritter says.

In order to achieve that goal, he continues, NATO, guided by the United States, will “move forward in a manner which is definitely counter to Europe’s security interests”, using a similar template to that observed in countries like Iraq, Libya, Syria, and other nations where Washington was willing to change power.

This template, Ritter says, is “to create a tremendous amount of pressure through economic sanctions”, then combining it with military pressure, a posturing of forces, and the like.

And if it does follow such a scenario, then it could face a military conflict with Russia, with Moscow “showing in the instance of Ukraine” that Russia is “willing to go to war to defend its national security interests, that it deems to be of an existential nature”. Should Moscow deem the alliance’s ambition of beefing up its eastern flanks with more military, then the consequences could be grim for Europe.

“This is suicidal, in my viewpoint and normal, rational minds in Europe would normally caution against this. But again, NATO has been captured by the United States and NATO policy is merely an extension of American national security policy. That’s why I think NATO is doing this, because they’re being directed to, pressured by the United States to maintain pressure on Russia in a manner that, at least from the American perspective, they believe would be conducive to domestic unrest in Russia”, Ritter explains.

What Could NATO’s Permanent Presence in Eastern Europe Mean?

What NATO calls its “tripwire presence” in Eastern Europe could be reinforced primarily in the Baltic countries and Poland.

“That is to expand the current reinforced battalion-size battlegroups that NATO has stationed on the soil of the Baltic republics and Poland with larger, perhaps brigade-size elements; in the case of Poland, maybe divisions, etc. This would be a much larger force”, Ritter says.

His view comes as Lithuania announced on Monday that Vilnius and other countries of NATO’s eastern flank “are seeking NATO enhanced Forward Presence Battalions to be reinforced to the level of brigades”.

When it comes to Poland, Ritter continues, NATO might be contemplating the possibility of reconfiguring the Polish Army so that it could “withstand an invasion by Russia”, especially in light of military misfortunes already faced by the Ukrainian Army. However, given the slight difference between beefing up offensive and defensive combat due to manoeuvre warfare, Russia could view any Polish military buildup – even that carried out for defensive purposes – as a potential threat.

“So again, this reinforcement is counterproductive and counter-intuitive. I think only bad things can come from it”, Ritter concluded.

If The Pentagon Can Not Confirm The Bucha Tales, Who Can?

via Moon of Alabama

This was the most important one of yesterday’s news items.

bucha1-s.jpg
bigger

Pentagon can’t independently confirm atrocities in Ukraine’s Bucha, official says

WASHINGTON, April 4 (Reuters) – The U.S. military is not in a position to independently confirm Ukrainian accounts of atrocities by Russian forces against civilians in the town of Bucha, …

“The Pentagon can’t independently and single handedly confirm that, but we’re also not in any position to refute those claims.”

If the Pentagon, which includes the Defense Intelligence Agency and the National Security Agency, could not confirm what the government in Kiev claimed, who else could?

Certainly not the European minions who reacted to those dubious claims by removing more Russian embassy personal from their countries.

The U.S. is again pushing the Europeans into suiciding their economies. The U.S. would of course be the only country that would gain from that.

Its over. The Ukraine has lost the war. Its navy, air force and defense industry no longer exist. The Russia air force is doing hundreds of bombing runs per night eliminating any fuel and ammunition depot that is left in Ukraine.

Without fuel tanks and trucks are immobilized. Without ammunition artillery falls silent. The heavy Ukrainian units along Donbas are now unable to do maneuver warfare. They can not even flee. Replenishment and reserves are unable to reach them. They have the choice of giving up or getting destroyed in place.

Anyone who is still pushing more weapons into Ukraine or tells Kiev to prolong the war is putting more Ukrainian lives at risk for zero potential gain.

That’s criminal.

Ukraine Front, April 3, 2022

Here is what the map of the area of operations looks like today:

  • The yellow circle is roughly the area where the outcome of this battle will be decided.
  • The small black arrow represents the likely Ukrainian effort to send in reinforcements
  • The big black arrow represents the move away from Kiev and towards the Donbass by Russian forces

NATO’s Bombing of Serbia: The Unpunished War Crime

by Scott Ritter

Scott Ritter is a former US Marine Corps intelligence officer and author of ‘SCORPION KING: America’s Suicidal Embrace of Nuclear Weapons from FDR to Trump.’ He served in the Soviet Union as an inspector implementing the INF Treaty, in General Schwarzkopf’s staff during the Gulf War, and from 1991-1998 as a UN weapons inspector.

It is a travesty of international justice that the 1999 bombing remains unrecognized by the perpetrators and unpunished

Twenty-three years ago, NATO bombed Serbia. This act was the opening round of what was to become a 78-day illegal war of aggression, the repercussions of which haunt the world to this day.

Act One: The Encounter

It was a chance meeting – two men who had crossed paths in Iraq two years past, now running into each other on a stretch of highway connecting Kosovo to Macedonia. The date was March 20, 1999. Monitors assigned to the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) Kosovo Verification Mission (KVM) were in the process of being withdrawn from their assigned areas of responsibility to the town of Ohrid, in Macedonia, due to the collapse of diplomatic talks with Serbia about the devolving situation in the Serbian autonomous province of Kosovo, where Albanian separatists were engaged in a quasi-civil war with the Serbian authorities.

The British contingent of the KVM was stopped at the border between Kosovo and Macedonia, awaiting final clearance to cross the border. Among the British observers was a former Royal Marine officer who had previously served with the United Nations Special Commission (UNSCOM) in Iraq, helping oversee the dismantling of Iraqi weapons of mass destruction programs. While he and his fellow observers waited, he watched as other vehicles driven by members of the US observer contingent drove in the opposite direction – into Kosovo. At the wheel of one of these vehicles was a familiar face – a man who was known as ‘Kurtz’.

Kurtz was a man of tremendous experience who was brought into UNSCOM in mid-1997 for the purpose of providing operational planning and leadership. ‘Kurtz’, of course, was not his real name, but rather a nickname derived from the fact that with his shaved head, walrus mustache, and weathered face, he looked like a combination of Robert Duvall’s Colonel Kilgore and Marlon Brando’s Colonel Kurtz in the movie ‘Apocalypse Now’. With a wide-brim Stetson, cowboy boots, and an ever-present wad of chewing tobacco stuck in his cheek, he looked every bit the part.

Kurtz was picked for this job in part because of his background, which was embedded in the world of covert special operations. His most recent assignment prior to coming on board at UNSCOM was preparing diplomats for E&E – escape and evasion – from hostile situations. Given the sensitivity of some of the UNSCOM operations taking place in Iraq at that time, it was thought that such training might be ideal for situations the inspectors might find themselves in.

But Kurtz’s background had been his undoing. He was, so to speak, too ‘black’, or covert, for his own good. Even though he was performing wonderfully in Iraq, his managers in Washington began to panic when the situation in Baghdad began to deteriorate in October 1997. The decision was made to pull Kurtz out of Iraq. It was bitter irony – the one man who was best equipped to deal with a hostage situation, to keep not only himself but other, less fully-trained personnel alive and well, was being withdrawn in haste out of fear of his being taken hostage.

Once Kurtz was assigned to UNSCOM, he was technically UN property for the duration of the assignment, and the US could not just simply snap its fingers and bring him home. But snap, they did, with the US ambassador, Bill Richardson, summoning the Australian diplomat who headed UNSCOM, Richard Butler, to the US Mission in New York for a meeting. “One of the personnel provided to you [Kurtz],” Richardson said, “is a bit too exposed by the current situation, and we feel that it would be best for us all if he were withdrawn at this time.”

I oversaw the team in Iraq that Kurtz and the British officer were assigned to. Butler called me up to his office after his meeting with Richardson. “The man’s CIA,” he told me. “The Americans want him out.”

Now, as the Kosovo Monitoring Mission was departing Kosovo, Kurtz was back in action. The Americans, it seemed, wanted this man with the impressive covert operations skill set back in.

The role played by the CIA in the OSCE KVM is quite controversial – at a time when the US and NATO were accusing the Serbian government of committing atrocities, the CIA was using the cover provided by the OSCE observer mission to coordinate with fighters from the Kosovo Liberation Army who were engaged in a guerilla war with the Serbian military. Serbian operations in response to CIA-directed KLA attacks were being characterized by the West as ‘genocide’, and used to justify a planned NATO aerial bombardment of Serbia.

These facts, however, ran counter to the narrative of a Serbian-initiated campaign of ethnic cleansing which the US and NATO were spinning. The British OSCE observers were well aware of the complex reality of what was transpiring inside Kosovo, where legitimate Serbian military operations against known KLA forces were being described as “massacres of innocent civilians” by the Western media. The truth, however, was often inconvenient, which is why at that moment in time, on March 20, 1999, the British observer contingent found itself exiting Kosovo at the same time Kurtz and his fellow CIA officers were going in.

Act Two: The Phone Call

March 24, 1999. 9:20am. In the White House Situation Room, an aid places a phone call to the Kremlin, where Russian President Boris Yeltsin is waiting. The call goes through, and the aid hands the phone to Bill Clinton, the 42nd president of the United States. The conversation started off with a grimnotification: The leaders of NATO, including himself, Clinton said, “have decided we have to launch air strikes against military targets in Serbia soon.”

The problem, Clinton noted, was the Serbian leader, Slobodan Milosevic. “He has displaced 30,000 more people just since last Friday,” Clinton said. “He is killing innocent people. We have reports of summary executions.” Left unspoken was the role played by Kurtz and his fellow CIA operatives in creating the conditions for such actions. Clinton continued. “He [Milosevic] has basically told Russian, EU, and American negotiators that he doesn’t care what any of us think.”

Clinton was getting worked up by the consequences he had triggered by unleashing the CIA on Kosovo. “My God, they [the Europeans] have nightmares they’ll [the Serbs] repeat Bosnia and all the instability and all the problems, and it will spread from Kosovo to Macedonia to Albania and engulf all of their southern flank. They are very, very worried about it. They are right to be worried about it.”

Again, left unsaid was the fact that the very scenario that was giving the Europeans nightmares had been carefully crafted by the CIA, at Bill Clinton’s direction.

Yeltsin wasn’t buying any of it. “It is easy to throw bombs about,” he said, dismissing Clinton’s characterization of the problem and proffered solution. “It is intolerable because of the hundreds of thousands of people who will suffer and die.”

The consequences of any NATO strike, Yeltsin warned Clinton, were dire. “In the name of our future, in the name of you and me, in the name of the future of our countries, in the name of security in Europe, I ask you to renounce that strike, and I suggest that we should meet somewhere and develop a tactical line of fighting against Milosevic, against him personally. And we are wiser, we are more experienced, and we can come up with a solution. That should be done for the sake of our relationship. That should be done for the sake of peace in Europe.”

The Russian leader’s pleas fell on deaf ears. “Well, Boris,” Clinton replied, “I want to work with you to try and bring an end to this, but I don’t believe there is any way to call off the first round of strikes because Milosevic continues to displace thousands of people every day… I don’t want this to be a great source of a split between Russia and Europe and Russia and the US. We have worked too hard. There are too many economic and political things for us to do together, and I regret this more than I can say.”

The American president was outright lying to his Russian counterpart – the events in Kosovo were unfolding along the lines of a carefully scripted game plan that had been in motion for some time. War was inevitable because the US, through the CIA, had shaped the narrative to make it so. Worse, the US president was willing to sacrifice relations between the US and Russia in pursuit of this NATO objective. This fact was driven home by Yeltsin in his closing remarks.

“[O]ur people,” Yeltsin lamented, “will certainly from now on have a bad attitude with regard to America and NATO. I remember how difficult it was for me to try and turn heads of our people, the heads of politicians towards the West, towards the United States, but I succeeded in doing that, and now to lose all that. Well, since I failed to convince the President, that means there is in store for us a very difficult, difficult road of contacts, if they prove to be possible. Goodbye.”

Act Three: The Bomb

On the evening of March 24, 1999, the secretary general of NATO, Javier Solana, a Spanish diplomat, authorized aircraft operating under the auspices of NATO to begin bombing targets in Serbia. It was no coincidence that the first aircraft to drop bombs on Serbia were F/A-18s belonging to the Spanish Air Force.

March 1999, several facts stick out. First is that Spain, as a member of the United Nations, is bound by its commitment to the Charter of that organization. When it comes to the use of force, the UN Charter is quite clear – there are only two acceptable conditions under which such force might be legitimately employed by a member state. One is an enforcement action to maintain international peace and security, carried under the authority of a resolution passed by the Security Council under Chapter VII of the Charter. The other is the inherent right of individual and collective self-defense, as enshrined in Article 51 of the Charter.

As Spanish bombs fell on Serbian soil, two things were quite clear – there was no Chapter VII resolution in existence which authorized an enforcement action against Serbia, and Serbia had committed no act of aggression against either Spain or its NATO allies that would justify any claim of self-defense in explaining the Spanish (and NATO) military assault on Serbia.

In short, by dropping bombs on Serbia, the Spanish Air Force was initiating an illegal war of aggression. “To initiate a war of aggression,”the judges who comprised the International Military Tribunal convened in Nuremburg to judge the crimes of Nazi Germany, declared, “is not only an international crime; it is the supreme international crime differing only from other war crimes in that it contains within itself the accumulative evil of the whole.”

Spain wasn’t alone that night – aircraft from the air forces of the United States, Great Britain, Germany, France, and other NATO members participated in this “supreme international crime.” Viewed individually, there is no doubt that each nation involved in the attack on Serbia violated the UN Charter and, as such, is guilty of the crime of initiating an illegal war of aggression.

Not so fast! NATO, it seems, had crafted a novel legal argument built around the notion that it had a right to anticipatory collective self-defense under Article 51 of the UN Charter, and that this right was properly exercised under “normative expectation that permits anticipatory collective self-defense actions by regional security or self-defense organizations where the organization is not entirely dominated by a single member.” NATO, ignoring the obvious reality that it is, indeed, dominated by the United States, postulates that it is, indeed, such an organization, comprised as it is of “a number of powerful states, three of which are permanent members of the Security Council.”

The credibility of the NATO claim of “anticipatory collective self-defense,”however, arises from its characterization of the Kosovo crisis as a humanitarian disaster infused with elements of genocide which created not only a moral justification for intervention, but a moral necessity.

Tell that to Kurtz, the man who, together with his fellow CIA operatives acting under the authority given them by the president of the United States, Bill Clinton, worked to create conditions on the ground inside Kosovo that could then be used to manufacture the very narrative of a humanitarian crisis sufficient in scope and scale to allow NATO to craft its novel legal justification for attacking Serbia.

The problem for NATO is that its legal justification was built on a foundation of lies. The fiction that NATO is an organization not entirely dominated by the United States evaporates the moment one understands the role played by the CIA in preparing the script used by NATO to justify its actions. The fact that this script promulgated outright fabrications of alleged crimes perpetrated by Serbia to justify NATO military intervention only underscores the criminal nature of the entire NATO enterprise.

There is no escaping the fact that when the first bomb dropped by the Spanish Air Force on Serbia that evening 23 years ago to this date impacted on the ground, Spain and every other member of NATO had committed the “ultimate crime.”

That this crime remains unpunished is a travesty of international justice. That this crime remains unrecognized by those who perpetrated it is a testament to the hypocrisy of nations. That this crime set in motion the events that have led to the current state of affairs between the US and NATO on the one hand, and Russia on the other, is a global tragedy.

via RT

The US is Now Doing to China What It’s Done in the Build-up to Every War

by Tom Fowdy

Tom Fowdy is a British writer and analyst of politics and international relations with a primary focus on East Asia.

The US is now doing to China what it's done in the build-up to every war
Protesters hold placards as they take part in a rally against the extradition bill ahead of 2019 G20 Osaka summit at Edinburgh Place in Central district on June 26, 2019 in Hong Kong, China. © Anthony Kwan / Getty Images

A recent article published by Joshua Kurlantzick in the Council of Foreign Relations dissects what he describes as the declining public image of China. At first glance, he isn’t wrong. Over the past two years, positive opinion of China has indeed collapsed in Western and US-aligned countries. But the reasons he states for why that has happened are as disingenuous as they are outright false. The piece goes off on a tirade listing all the ways he thinks China is bad. From Covid-19, to so-called “wolf warrior diplomacy,” to the Belt & Road Initiative (BRI) “being a debt-trap,” to “aggressive and coercive behavior,” to Chinese vaccines apparently being “ineffective” and so on.

What is curious about these reasons is that they do not seem to resemble actual facts as much as anti-China cliches which are commonplace in American discourse, irrespective of whether they’re true or not. For example, he claims that “BRI is stalling” – but there is no evidence of this happening, with much to the contrary.

The author obliviously fails to mention what is in fact truly going on here concerning opinions of China in the West: The United States is and has been, in conjunction with its closest partners, waging a propaganda war against Beijing in order to legitimize its goals of containing China.

If you believe this conventional narrative, China is to be disliked now because all of a sudden it one day started doing bad things, such as those mentioned above, and became an “aggressive” country, alienating everyone with its “wolf warrior diplomacy.” It is as if this randomly happened for no reason, and other countries are perfectly vindicated in their response to it.

At least that’s how the average Westerner has been conditioned to understand it. They would not believe that China is effectively the same state it has been since 1949, with the same ruling party, with highly consistent territorial claims and goals, even if it has different policies to achieve those, but only that it suddenly started “changing for the worse” under Xi Jinping who set it on a course for “world domination.”

What Westerners might never be inclined to think is that they have been manipulated into these beliefs by a deliberate US campaign to change public opinion against China, to demonize, discredit and isolate the country, to derail its international engagement and justify Washington’s new priorities against it.

However, that, of course, is exactly what has happened. America’s foreign policy engine relies on a playbook which is known as “manufacturing consent” – the weaponization of the resources of the state to coordinate experts, think tanks and journalists to focus attention on issues which subsequently sway public opinion to create organic support for Washington’s policy preferences.

It is a strategy designed to create a “self-fulfilling prophecy” by masking aggression under the guise of inciting a “moral case” against the target in question. This is often done using the mantra of human rights, exploiting and manipulating people’s goodwill through the theatrical orchestration of crisis, and subsequently masking the intended foreign policy objectives as a justified act of benevolence and“concern.” It’s what the US has done in the build-up to every war, and it’s what they are doing now regarding China.

It was in 2018 that America, under the Trump administration, launched its public opinion war against China. After having “dealt” with the North Korea issue, the White House turned its focus on Beijing and unleashed a swathe of initiatives against it. It was that year that the national security strategy labeled China a “geopolitical competitor” and launched wars against Chinese trade and technology. In conjunction, the march to manufacture public consent against China began. It was no matter of coincidence that allegations and coverage regarding Xinjiang suddenly began to emerge. There is evidence showing how the wheels were placed in motion here.

The Victims of Communism group, a vitriolic right-wing think tank in Washington, reported that its donations suddenly surged from $2 million to $12 million in 2018. What was going on? Where did the sudden influx of donations come from? And more importantly: Why? The answer was Washington’s new focus on China. This organization suddenly went from something obscure into an important voice advocating anti-China content on Xinjiang through the scholar Adrian Zenz. Other hawkish think tanks, such as the Australian Strategic Policy Institute in Canberra, which receives US State Department funding, also rose to prominence, publishing allegations of“forced labor.” Again, Xinjiang was the focus, and Western mainstream media followed in tandem. The campaign to demonize Beijing was underway.

The Trump administration then used the Covid-19 pandemic to build on this new consensus, scapegoating China for an alleged cover-up. Utilizing this “atrocity propaganda” and jibes about the “China virus” was designed to whip up paranoia and fear against all things China-related. Every Chinese company, organization, or individual were vehicles for espionage, such as Huawei and the Confucius Institutes. Governments who sought to engage with Beijing favorably were denounced, lobbied, and strong-armed into changing their minds.

This is the art of “manufacturing consent” – the US uses its extensive networks to big up dissidents, coordinate mainstream media, set the agenda, poison civil society by weaponizing human rights activists against the target country by giving them preferential coverage and resources (whilst ignoring atrocities elsewhere), and create a self-sustaining narrative that conforms to its own foreign policy goals.

The US conducted an active and successful sledgehammer operation on Western opinion of China. When Beijing has the temerity to hit back at this propaganda war against it, then, insidiously, as you can see with articles like the Council of Foreign Relations, its own analysts blame Beijing for the geopolitical context they created.

The discourse of “wolf warrior diplomacy” in this light is dishonest, misleading, and unhelpful because it frames China as the perpetrator when it is simply reacting to hostility weaponized against it. Beijing is scorned for being forced to make political responses to hostile moves by the US. For example, by the kidnapping of Huawei executive Meng Wanzhou in Canada in 2018 and forcing China to respond in turn, Beijing is then framed as the aggressor and “commits hostage diplomacy.” Likewise, China’s positions on Taiwan, the South China Sea, Hong Kong, and so on, are not new at all, but America has gaslighted these issues by moving the goalposts on them and seeking to force Beijing’s hand.

In a nutshell, there is scant analysis in the West as to how America’s active and deliberative stoking of geopolitical conflict creates such hostility, or any holding Washington to account for its global propaganda.

However, its cold war against China is very much real. It can only truly be understood in the framework of the rivalry between the two powers and appreciating US foreign policy in the dynamics of its continuing desire for sole power, and not the facade of a righteous and heroic nation having “concerns” about certain issues. Such articles as Kurlantzickin’s ultimately insult the public’s intelligence, who are fed an endless array of lies teaching them to hate and fear China. It’s time to wake up to the truth.

US Pardoned Japan’s War Criminals in Exchange for Unit 731 Bio Weapons

The US is a country with a long history of using and developing chemical and biological weapons in other countries, and such moves, that contravene human rights bills and international laws that could be traced back to 1940s after World War II, have been largely ignored by most mainstream Western media outlets, and analysts have predicted that the US’ dirty record in this field could spike global concerns over its recent operating of biological laboratories worldwide.
According to information gathered and gleaned from interviews done by the Global Times reporters, the US government has cooperated and colluded with Japanese war criminals to obtain data and technologies for the making of biological and chemical weapons for which Japan conducted inhumane live human experiments on innocent Chinese people during Japan’s invasion of China. 

Most of the data and files collected by said Japanese war criminals were acquired by scientists in Fort Detrick, the center of the US’ biological weapons program, and after the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) was established in 1947, the agency participated in the relevant research pertaining to the development of biowarfare weapons.

Ruins of Japan's notorious Unit 731 facilities in Harbin, Northeast China's Heilongjiang Province Photo: VCG

Ruins of Japan’s notorious Unit 731 facilities in Harbin, Northeast China’s Heilongjiang Province Photo: VCG

Nasty cooperation

Unit 731, infamous for conducting Japanese biological warfare experiments, was located near Harbin, Northeast China’s Heilongjiang Province, which was occupied by Japanese invaders. The monstrous unit was created by Japanese war criminal, microbiologist Shiro Ishii in 1936, and eventually was comprised of 150 buildings and had the capacity to hold 600 people at a time to be experimented on, according to the book titled Factories of Death: Japanese Biological Warfare, 1932-1945, and the American Cover-up.

Unit 731’s experiments involved deliberately infecting people, primarily Chinese prisoners of war and civilians, with infectious agents, and exposing prisoners to bombs designed to penetrate the skin with infectious particles.

In 1945-46, representatives of the US government made similar discoveries in both Germany and Japan, unearthing evidence of unethical experiments conducted on human beings. 

However, the US played an equally key role in concealing information about biological warfare experiments by Japan and secured immunity from prosecution for the perpetrators. Along with the data from Unit 731 and experiments inside Fort Detrick, Howard Brody, director at the Institute for the Medical Humanities, University of Texas Medical Branch, shared in an article released in 2014 details of the shady deal, titled United States Responses to Japanese Wartime Inhuman Experimentation after World War II: National Security and Wartime Exigency.

Masks used by Japan's notorious Unit 731 are exhibited in a museum in Harbin, Northeast China's Heilongjiang Province. Photo: VCG

Masks used by Japan’s notorious Unit 731 are exhibited in a museum in Harbin, Northeast China’s Heilongjiang Province. Photo: VCG

Fort Detrick, which is an enormous complex, has, for decades, been the center of American military research related to biology with only a select few being privy to details of operations, Stephen Kinzer, senior fellow at the Watson Institute for International and Public Affairs at Brown University, was cited by the Xinhua News Agency in a report in July 2021. 

Kinzer is the author of bestseller Poisoner in Chief, which revealed the little-known life story of Sidney Gottlieb, master CIA chemist and head of secret mind control experiments at Fort Detrick and elsewhere in the world.

He said in order to find out “the limits of human endurance – how can you kill people, at what moment do they die, how can you seize control of their bodies and their minds,” Gottlieb and the CIA hired “Nazi doctors who worked on the concentration camps, and their Japanese comrades,” for example, war criminal Shiro Ishii, who headed the notorious Japanese military biological warfare program called Unit 731 during World War II.

Keep it in the dark

The CIA and the US Army Chemical Corps worked closely together. When the US finalized its secret agreement of cooperation with Shiro Ishii and Unit 731 after World War II, it was decided that the cooperation would be kept strictly within “intelligence channels,” Jeffrey Kaye, a former clinical psychologist in San Francisco, told the Global Times. 

Kaye wrote a book published in 2017 on the torture of detainees in the Guantanamo Bay detention camp, and later started his research into US biological warfare during the Korean War (1950-53), most  documents of which were systematically redacted and destroyed during the McCarthy era.

Kaye said that such cooperation was kept top secret and purely on a need-to-know basis. From 1949, the CIA had a unit inside Fort Detrick – which was called Camp Detrick back in those days – which researched and developed biological weapons for use in covert operations. 

“Much of this was done in a CIA program known as MKNAOMI. It was this unit, called the Special Operations Division, that developed, for instance, the feather bomb, which was an adapted bomb used to deliver propaganda leaflets, except instead it delivered feathers and similar material coated with pathogens like anthrax. The use of infected feathers for such warfare was pioneered by Unit 731,” Kaye revealed.  

Kaye said that although he does not have a document that specifically states the US got the idea from Unit 731, it is still a reasonable inference to make given the known level of alliance between Japanese units like the Unit 731 and Fort Detrick, that the feather bomb idea came from contact with Unit 731. Moreover, an official from Fort Detrick who was involved with the initial interviews of Unit 731 officers after the war, Colonel Murray Sanders, told two British researchers that Ishii was brought to lecture at Fort Detrick. In addition, the chief of the CIA Special Operations Division at Fort Detrick, John Schwab, submitted an affidavit under oath in a criminal trial in 1959 that the US had the means to conduct biological warfare as far back as 1949, according to Kaye. 

An aerial view of the barracks in Camp Detrick (later Fort Detrick) in Maryland, September 24, 1944 
Photo: VCG

An aerial view of the barracks in Camp Detrick (later Fort Detrick) in Maryland, September 24, 1944 Photo: VCG

Biolabs worldwide

Russian President Vladimir Putin gave an extensive speech on the Ukraine crisis on March 16 and he pointed out that the US is conducting military biological programs in Ukraine. 

“There was a network of dozens of laboratories in Ukraine, where military biological programs were conducted under the guidance and with the financial support of the Pentagon, including experiments with coronavirus strains, anthrax, cholera, African swine fever, and other deadly diseases,” Putin said during his speech.

Russia's Ambassador to the UN Vasily Nebenzya shows pictures during the UN Security Council meeting discussing US biological warfare labs in Ukraine, on March 11, 2022. Photo: IC

Russia’s Ambassador to the UN Vasily Nebenzya shows pictures during the UN Security Council meeting discussing US biological warfare labs in Ukraine, on March 11, 2022. Photo: IC

This is the latest example to spark global concern over the US’ biolabs worldwide. According to the information provided by the US to the Conference of Parties of the Biological Weapon Convention (BWC), there are 336 US laboratories around the world. Scientists and analysts from all around the globe have once again expressed their worries and concerns over the US biological programs.

But unfortunately, effectively enforcing the law when it comes to the US under the influence of US hegemony remains an enduring problem for the international community, said experts, noting that the countries most affected by the US biological programs should push the US to accept the protocol for monitoring biological weapons by the BWC.

US' dirty records of using, developing bio, chemical weapons. Graphic: Zhao Jun/GT
US’ dirty records of using, developing bio, chemical weapons. Graphic: Zhao Jun/GT

China Warns of “Unimaginable Consequences” of Forcing a Nuclear Power into a Corner

via RT

China’s vice foreign minister blames NATO for stoking the instability that led to the Russia-Ukraine conflict

Vice Foreign Minister Le Yucheng said that globalization should not be “weaponized” while military bloc politics must be “rejected,” a day after US President Joe Biden warned his Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping of “consequences” if Beijing supported Russia’s military action in Ukraine.

Speaking at the Fourth International Forum on Security and Strategy in Beijing on Saturday, the Chinese official agreed with Moscow’s assessment that NATO’s unchecked expansion in Eastern Europe and the failure to address Russia’s national security concerns paved the way to the current crisis, saying that a simple “commitment of no eastward expansion could have easily ended the crisis and stopped the sufferings.”

“Instead, one chose to fan the flames at a safe distance, watching its own arms dealers, bankers and oil tycoons make a fortune out of the war while leaving people of a small country with the wounds of war that would take years to heal,” he said.

NATO’s pursuit of “absolute security” leads to “absolute non-security,” Le added.

The consequences of forcing a major power, especially a nuclear power, into a corner are even more unimaginable.

Moscow has vehemently opposed NATO’s presence close to its borders, and embarked on a mission to obtain written guarantees that would halt the US-led military bloc’s expansion and bar Ukraine from joining its ranks. However, the West ignored Russia’s concerns.

President Vladimir Putin announced a “special military operation” on February 24, with a stated goal to “demilitarize and denazify” the government in Kiev, ensuring that it no longer poses a threat to either Russia or the newly recognized Donbass republics, which have suffered seven years of grueling siege.

The US and its NATO allies have accused Russia of starting an “unprovoked”war to gobble up Ukraine. Moscow has seen thousands of harsh new curbs and sanctions slapped on it, with the US, EU and many other countries seeking to “isolate” and “destroy” the Russian economy.

“History has proven time and again that sanctions cannot solve problems,” Le said. “The sanctions against Russia are getting more and more outrageous… Sanctions will only harm ordinary people, impact the economic and financial system… and worsen the global economy.”

Beijing has come under increased Western pressure to distance itself and sever its trade ties with Moscow, after China abstained from backing the United Nations General Assembly resolution that condemned Russia’s military action in Ukraine, and chose to stay neutral alongside India, Pakistan, South Africa and 30 other countries.

In a video conference call with President Biden on Friday, China’s leader Xi Jinping stressed that Beijing has always stood “for peace and opposes war,”urging all the parties involved in the ongoing conflict between Moscow and Kiev to stick to diplomacy. Biden in response reportedly warned Xi that Beijing would face “consequences” should it provide material support or help Moscow evade Western sanctions.

US/NATO vs. Russia?

From my perspective, Russia is in the right on this. We have a family of 5 Ukrainian refugees staying with us and they are more or less pro-Russian. The horrors of the Nazis in Khakov they recount to me just re-affirm my belief. They are angry at Putin for NOT invading in 2014 when everyone in Ukraine was hoping for it. They felt abandoned and then horribly abused by the Nazi regime which got much worse after Zelensky came into power. Now their home was destroyed by the Ukrainians in downtown Kharkiv and they have left Ukraine forever and are heading to Spain. And yes, they are real bold-faced dyed in the wool Nazis. The US leadership’s support just shows who they are and probably always have been thus. Pelosi giving the Ukrainian Nazi salute in Congress is mind-blowing.

This brings into question another end game problem. I believe Russia will be forced to take the whole country and it will be easy once the majority is removed from battle. The way west will be unimpeded until they reach the area of Lviv and then they will systematically wipe out all Nazis. But the refugees, and it looks like a large majority leaving from west Ukraine are in fact non-Ukrainians including Indians, Africans, Middle East, etc. The ethnic Russians all went East which goes unmentioned. The Hungarians went into Hungary or Slovakia and the Nazis’ are heading into Poland. If they can manage a way to cross the border without being shot by the Ukrainian police for cowardice.

So, if Ukraine becomes split and I think this is the best solution with the Polish area hoping back to Poland, the Hungarian to Hungary, and the Romanian back to Romania which doesn’t leave too much if the country is divided down highway 95. Odessa and Mariupol will go the whatever is formed in the east but it won’t be called Ukraine. Kyiv is a big question and is a serious tar baby. So, what will be left to call Ukraine will be a tiny part west of highway 95 and east of the Polish, Hungarian, and Romanian (not to mention Moldova and Transnistria). They will have no big cities (unless Kyiv goes to them which would be a mistake) so can rule the countryside. Citizenship will be a big issue for everyone who left and from where they left from and what country that area becomes. Of course, the US will maintain the Zelensky regime as a government in exile and will try and block entry into the UN of the countries formed from the remains of Ukraine. It could end with the dissolution of the UN which is basically impotent anyway. The US breaking UN rules by denying visas for UN personnel is a symptom of why the US cannot host the UN any longer. So, maybe it is easier to form something new and leave the western nations out of it.

Russia and China both need to leave the IMF and World bank both conveniently located in Washington and very firmly under US control. They need to stop all trading in dollars everywhere that recognizes that the US crossed a line that cannot ever be redeemed by seizing Central Bank assets. No one will trust the US ever again permanently. Credibility like virginity once lost cannot ever be regained. The US is now definitely agreement incapable and absolutely untrustworthy.

One thing I have noticed is the US has slowly moved 100,000 soldiers into Europe. Most people are unaware that US forces are really quite small and even then have support to combat forces of 20:1. Meaning for everyone 20,000 soldiers there are only 1,000 gunfighters. The US depends on force multipliers like aviation to make it viable. Russia has effective anti-aircraft and aerospace forces near-peer enough to take on the NATO (US) and can easily negate their effect. Precision weapons to take out all runways and supply dumps negates the NATO ability to fight. They still organize as in WWII so easily defeated. Another thing is Russian weapons systems are designed for real combat by real men in harsh conditions. They are far simpler, more robust, repairable in the field, and can be managed by relatively unspecialized soldiers. Western stuff is delicate and requires a lot of training and specialization. Russian aircraft, as an example, all have screens to keep debris out of the engine intakes so can take off and land on damaged runways. If you look at USAF runways they must do a walk down the runway every day usually with 50 or so men to remove pebbles and small items which if ingested into the engines will destroy them. Russia doesn’t bother as it isn’t a factor at all. This is why a single cruise missile can take out a runway for days. It is like that for everything. MiA2 tanks use turbine engines and have zero user maintenance. They must be returned to depot maintenance for air filter changes etc. every 100 hours. They also consume massive amounts of JP4 which is more needed for aviation assets (and command HQ which runs turbine generators and requires 10,000 liters a day to operate) than tanks. My point is Russia designs and trains to fight actual peer adversaries. Additionally, without aviation dominance, the US cannot re-supply at all. If you examine where the S-500 batteries are located they cover all of Europe. This doesn’t even get into Russian jamming and EMP weapons which we haven’t seen much of yet.

Posted by: Old Microbiologist

An observation from reading the Russian intelligence reports on the 2003 Iraq invasion. (Stolzuntermensch’a site) All the things western analysts are saying the Russian army is going through reads like a recap of what the US/UK experienced in Iraq. It was a comedy of errors replete with running out of fuel, not having enough reserves because they just thought it would be a pleasant trip to Baghdad. The tanks didn’t work because it was sandy, the fancy imaging gear didn’t work because it was sandy, the air support they depended on couldn’t fly when it was sandy.

There were command demands that objectives be captured in a set time because of the schedule and perception. The whole thing almost failed miserably because it was poorly planned and poorly executed. The mighty US army was nearly beaten by Iraq after a decade of sanctions. The US finally “gave up” securing actual military victories, raced to the government buildings of Baghdad, took them and declared victory. While settling in for a long insurgency it is still losing.

It becomes clear that the US expectation was that Russia would act the same as the US and obviously suffer the same setbacks. That does not appear to be happening beyond the scale of all military operations not happening just as planned. NATO isn’t coming to save the day, it’s scared. It’s been 20 years since it almost got whipped by a force nothing like Russia and in an environment that should have given the US a massive advantage. In fact if not for limited Iraqi mobility on open ground against US air power, the US may well have lost.

Of particular note is an editorial that to fight the US, Russia would have to invest in air defenses and combining air defense with the Air Force was a terrible mistake. It does, however, look the Russian military took the advice to heart and concentrated on air defense systems over fighters.

Enter: Second Phase of Ukraine Wipe Out

The second phase of the military operation has begun. Russia first used hypersonic missile “Daggers” and began to destroy entire brigades of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, now the fighting will be tougher

At today’s briefing of the Ministry of Defense, information was announced about the use of the Bastion and Dagger complexes as part of a special military operation. This is the first officially confirmed use of these types of weapons in a real conflict.

This fact, as well as the emerging information about the successful use of cruise missiles against the mercenary base near Lvov and the location of the 79th brigade of the Armed Forces of Ukraine near Nikolaev, suggests that Russia, with a high degree of probability, has begun the second phase of the NMD. And now, unlike the first stage, the conduct of hostilities is built not on the classical concept of a large-scale offensive, but on the principles of “new generation” armed conflicts, when, instead of a ground offensive, priority is given to the use of long-range precision weapons and mobile special-purpose sabotage groups. Such an approach, although it will require more time for the complete demilitarization of Ukraine, will significantly reduce the possible losses of regular ground formations of the RF Armed Forces.

Thus, the military operation is increasingly beginning to look like a tough modern war by all the rules, which greatly frightens the Ukrainian leadership, which is increasingly turning to NATO with a request to create a no-fly zone. However, predictably, there is no talk of any no-fly zone.

*

More and more details on the results of the strike on a military base near Lviv

According to radio interception, losses among foreign mercenaries and special forces of the Armed Forces of Ukraine as a result of a strike on a base near Lvov have already amounted to at least 267

According to 50-year-old Peter from Austria, who was a member of the “International Legion of Ukraine”, on the basis of the Yavoriv training ground, at the time of the strike of the Russian Aerospace Forces there were from 800 to a thousand foreigners.

The wounded are still being taken out – about 450/300 have been evacuated to Poland.

Many have burns to their faces and bodies, and some have their limbs torn off.

The number of missing people, who are under the rubble of the corps, in which there were American, Romanian and Polish mercenaries, is not yet completely known.

Arms deliveries worth $400 million have been completely destroyed.

Among the dead are a large number of officers of the Armed Forces of Ukraine and former NATO officers.

The authorities of Ukraine and the United States carefully hide the real scale of the losses, secretly raking up the consequences of a successful attack by the Russian Armed Forces.

After the incident, the enthusiasm of mercenaries from all over the world noticeably faded.

An Austrian mercenary said this about the strike on the Yavorovsky training ground: “These people will all die, no one will get out of here alive!”

*

In my German city people hoard sunflower oil at the moment, whether to use it as alternative fuel or for food prepairing is unknown to me, but either is obviously stupid. Furthermore, about the “solidarity with Ukraine”: in the last 30 neoliberal years, the concept of solidarity was at least suspicious of socialism and therefore barely mentioned – after all it doesn’t fit the neoliberal and social-darwinistic narrative of a society of competition. It got revived for covid, ridiculously, all the no-vaxxers were accused of being unsolidary. And now all of Germany “stands together with Ukraine in solidarity”. The last time I heard those words as often was back pre- 1989 in East Germany. Of course back then we stood together with the Soviet Union in Solidarity. Or Cuba. Or Nicaragua. How time changes…or maybe doesn’t.

Also, I’m pretty sure the situation in Germany is at least partly caused by “vorauseilendem Gehorsam” – which translates into anticipatory obedience. I don’t know if it’s a specific German trait, but it surely is quite prevalent here. Any small business knows about virtue signalling nowadays and wants to be first to show they belong to the right side. Bakeries selling cake in blue and yellow. It’s beyond ridiculous, it’s disgusting, but the absolut majority of them really don’t know any better. And as if the last century wasn’t enough – every day now I feel more ashamed for my country and people.