“Russia has an adequate response to any attempts by the US to pressure it with the use of force,” Vladimir Yermakov, head of the Foreign Ministry’s Department for Weapons Control and Non-Proliferation, said.
“The American myth of it entering the era of all-round and undivided domination existed for less than a dozen years, but is now in tatters,” he said, adding that Russia is back in its historic role of “one of the guarantors of stability and justice in global affairs.”
Washington has to begin talking to Russia as soon as possible because “the military-technological weight of the US keeps steadily decreasing on the international arena,” Yermakov said.
Donald Trump has climbed down from the tree he climbed up a few days ago when he gathered a large military force and firepower similar to “Operation Desert Storm” (but without ground forces). “Plan A” consisted of a destructive attack on Syria to destroy its army, presidential palace, command and control bases, elite force, strategic military and ammunition warehouses, radar, defence systems and political leadership institutions.
Prior to the triple attack on Syria by the US – UK – France, intensive contacts were carried out by Russia and President Vladimir Putin himself – at around 04:00 AM – to reduce the attack and negotiate a softer, less significant “Plan B”.
Russia, in its contact with several heads of state, rejected any strike that could cripple the Syrian Army and instructed the leadership in Damascus that the West would now think very carefully before radically changing the balance of power in the Levant.
But what is the real reason behind the US – UK – France’s attack? Is it the claim of the “chemical attack” on Duma? The Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons is already in Damascus and its members are visiting Duma this Saturday to inspect the location where the claimed use of a chemical attack was alleged to have taken place. Why not wait for the results?
Sources in Damascus explain that the Syrian Army and its allies, supported by Russia, were carrying out a large attack on rural Idlib and had reached Abu al-Duhur airport when, all of a sudden, the military operation stopped. The entire spearhead force was moved to Ghouta. What happened?
Russia had informed the Syrian leadership of a large gathering of forces at Al-Tanf US-occupied military base on the Syrian-Iraqi borders, where tens of thousands of US proxies have received continuous military training. The Russians identified unusual military movements and understood that the US was preparing to push Syrian proxy forces to reach eastern Ghouta, linking itself with around 30,000 jihadists in Ghouta itself. This attack was planned to take place simultaneously with a diversion from Daraa, southern Syria, attacking south of Damascus so as to deceive the Syrian army and its allies into leaving smaller forces around the capital.
The US plan – said the sources – consisted in supporting its proxies and the Ghouta jihadists to reach Damascus and take full control of it. But the shifting of the military operation from rural Idlib to Ghouta spoiled the US plan to impose on Russia an enforced stay in Latakia and Tartous, confined to a limited place, and to finally change the Syrian regime. This “ingenius plan” would have spoiled all Russia’s efforts expended through almost three years of heavy involvement in the war in Syria, and would have given the US the upper hand, just at the moment when Moscow and the Syrian Army were about to end the war, with only few more pockets left to liberate.
Russia’s strategy and action in Ghouta broke the US plan into pieces, and imposed the withdrawal of tens of thousands of militants from Ghouta along with their families, to the north of Syria. The capital is now much safer, with only pockets remaining south of Damascus occupied by Al-Qaeda and the “Islamic State” group (ISIS) in Yarmouk camp and al-Hajar al-Aswad.
Today Russia rendered the US – UK – France attack meaningless, both in respect of its content and its objectives. Russia was able to force the US – UK – France to carry out only a “limited attack” of little value, and with not much chance of altering the reality on the ground in Syria.
When Russia vowed to shoot down missiles fired at Syria, Trump answered: “Get ready Russia because they will be coming, nice, new and smart”. Russia, after the bombardment, replied: “We have used the old Soviet anti-aiir defence system against these smart, new and very expensive missiles fired by the Americans.” Not only that, the US-UK air strikes hit objectives which Israel bombards almost on a regular basis. By showing the capability to stop two-thirds – as declared by Russia – of the incoming missiles, Syria is taking it as a kind of “training with live ammunition against any future Israeli attack on Syrian territory.” Israel is very disappointed and seems not at all pleased with this end result.
Showing restraint and control, US Secretary of Defence James Mattis – he who said “the Pentagon still has no independent evidence to confirm that there was a chemical weapons attack in Syria last week” – opposed any wide scale attack on Syria that could have triggered a direct Russian involvement and a deadly return of fire against US assets. Mattis accepted “an honorable strike” to save his inexperienced boss’s face. In point of fact, the trio’s strike on Syria seems to have boosted the Syrian Bashar al-Assad’s reputation: the population celebrated in the streets of Damascus and mocked the western attack on their country!
The trio avoided at all times direct provocation of Russia, circumventing Russian bases and operational theatres instead of flying over them. Russia imposed its will and provoked the US and French navy by carrying out a simulated air attack to show its willingness to hit back. The Russian navy was positioned off the Lebanese coast to cover that angle and avoid blind spots.
Moscow managed to avoid a direct confrontation with Washington outside its bases: US military bases surround Syria (Israel, Jordan, al-Tanf, al-Hasaka, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Qatar, Bahrein, Iraq, Turkey). Russia remembers how Leonid Brezhnev fell into the CIA’s trap in 1979, when he supported the Mujahedeen six months prior to the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. Zbigniew Brzezinski said the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan was deliberately provoked by the US: “It was an excellent idea. It drew the Soviets into the Afghan war and we gave them Vietnam.” Putin has avoided the same US trap almost 40 years later.
What is the next step?
All eyes are directed on the northern city of Idlib, controlled by al-Qaeda, now that the fate of Damascus is secured. But why Idlib?
The situation in Yarmouk camp, south of Damascus, seems directly linked to that of Fua and Kfarya. During the Zabadani negotiation, it was agreed between al-Qaeda and Damascus’s allies to keep away from al-Yarmouk, in exchange for the two besieged cities in the north of Syria. However, Damascus is now pushing to clean the capital completely, focusing on persuading its allies to bypass previous commitments.
As far as Daraa and Quneitra in the south are concerned, it seems no one in Syria seems willing to provoke the US and Israel at this tense moment; this will be left to the end. In al-Badiyah, the Syrian steppes, ISIS is totally surrounded and can only wait to be exterminated in the coming months.
Idlib remains despite the Turkish-Russian-Iranian economic and financial agreement. There is no doubt about the existence of strong differences of an economic nature between partners over Syria.
Turkish President Erdogan expressed his support and later satisfaction with the US strikes on Syria. Russia answered by asking him to deliver the city of Afrin to the Syrian government. Iran’s special envoy for Syrian affairs Ali Akbar Velayati overtly stated that the next objective is Idlib. Therefore, it is now feasible for Turkey to pull out of its dozen observation bases around Idlib, even as Russia pulled out of Afrin prior to the Turkish attack. And Russia expects Erdogan to cancel the previously agreed sale of the S-400 missiles any day.
Thus, the compass points to Idlib, Rastan, Jisr al-Shoughour and the Syrian Army forces gathering in rural Lattakia, ready to divide Idlib after liberating the many villages around it.
This will bring the world to the next “chemical attack” in the next operational theatre of the Syrian army and its allies. Would the US stand by al-Qaeda? Why not? The US has never really questioned the use of chemical weapons, as the US holds the largest stockpile of chemical weapons worldwide: for the US, the real issue is the defeat it faces in the Levant and the dominance of it by Russia.
In the early hours of April 14, 2018, at specifically 3:55 a.m., the United States, Britain and France, launched a misguided campaign of noise and fire against the government and people of Syria. The targets were already known by the Syrian government since the Russians had negotiated them with Secretary of Defense, James “Mad Dog” Mattis. Since everybody knew Trump was going to do something, sometime, some way, all precautions were taken to protect lives and materiel. Syria’s most advanced jets were stored in fortified hangars or flown to bases such as Humaymeem where Russian personnel are stationed.
The attack involved two U.S. cruise missile carrying destroyers in the Red Sea; tactical aircraft flying from one aircraft carrier in the Mediterranean; and several B-1 bombers traced to new runways in American-occupied Al-Tanf near the Jordanian-Iraqi borders. The British fllew a wing of Tornado bombers carrying cruise missiles out of Akritiri Airbase in Cyprus while the French used their Mirages and Rafal bombers based in Jordan.
The combined forces used 110 cruise missiles 71 of which were either intercepted and destroyed by Syria’s Pantsir air defense systems or were electronically toppled by a force which will remain unmentioned. Only 39 cruise missiles reached any target, many of them falling harmlessly in the Syrian Desert.
The only targets hit were a scientific research facility in Barza which contained classrooms and laboratories. All material had been removed so that the Americans could claim falsely that they had destroyed a CW-related institution. Another building which the Americans were allowed to destroy was a military warehouse in Homs, at Misyaaf, which the Americans could not hit because all the missiles aimed at that target were electronically toppled. As the cruise missiles were being deflected, they exploded on the ground injuring 3 civilians. The NATO allies also fired 12 missiles at the Al-Dhumayr AB east of Damascus. Russian news says all 12 were downed by Soviet-era air defense systems.
Of the 110 cruise missiles fired, 14 of them were American Tomahawks. Most of the others were British and Fench. None of the British or French missiles hit any target. Complete failure and a lesson to the allies of the U.S.
An helicopter airbase near the Lebanese border was also struck. However, because the attack took place in the early hours, nobody was at the base and, conveniently, no aircraft were to be found.
One thing is absolutely certain: this was a training exercise to see how well NATO weapons would work. The enemy here, Syria and Russia, was in on the planning and knew ahead of time what the attacking force was going to do. There was high drama, what with Trump calling Dr. Assad an “animal”. There was puffing with Trump tweeting about his “new, smart” missiles in response to a Russian diplomat claiming his country would knock down all attacking missiles. But, of course, Trump fancies himself a great negotiator and managed to negotiate the rules of this engagement.
The first rule was that the Russians have to convince Dr. Assad that his country was going to be hit, but not hard. The second rule was that Dr. Assad could use all air defense assets at his disposal. The third rule of this idiotic game was that Russia would only give minimal assistance such that Trump’s “smart” missiles could reach some targets which were already prepared. The 4th rule was that Trump, May and Macron would be allowed to give orotund speeches with plangent, stentorian appeals to the loftiest platitudes about “joint action” when international norms were being violated. The 5th rule was that nobody would talk about selling lethal weapons to the Saudi chimpanzees so they could use them to violate international law by murdering innocent Yemeni civilians.
So much for the touted Anglo-American-French attack to punish Syria. YAWN. OH, YAWN.
Russian MoD: US alongside UK and France launched 103 cruise missiles and air-surface missiles on Syrian civil and military facilities, 71 missiles were intercepted by Syrian air defense systems.
Killed-0, slightly wounded 3 civilian. To repel the attack, Damascus deployed Soviet-made surface-to-air missile systems, including S-125, S-200, 2K12 Kub, Buk, Osa.
A strong message indeed. 250 million US$ literally wasted over night only to be intercepted by Soviet era anti-air defense systems..
The complete ineffectiveness of the S-200 to successfully engage any of the attacking cruise missiles has been put down to the SAM system’s biased design towards intercepting high-altitude aircraft, not low-flying missiles.
The statistics likely fail to account for Western cruise missiles that were downed or driven off target due to ‘soft-kill’ electronic warfare systems – something which Russian sources will never confirm the use of.
In any case, going by official numbers, the interception rate of Syrian air defenses during the US-led missile attack stands at about 70 percent.
Two hundred American military troops have reportedly been killed in Syria along with approximately 1,800 American Private Military Contractors (PMC’s) by Russian air strikes, according to reports from two Russian news outlets: iarex.ru and wh24.ru The dead Americans were “revenge” for the Russian guys who died as a result of the American shelling reported in US media at the end of February.
The American troops and contractors were allegedly participating in “Rebel” activities to overthrow the government of Syrian President Bashar Assad, but were killed by fifth generation aircraft SU-57 air strikes on the east Ghouta area outside Damascus.
THAT is allegedly why the “White Helmets” – a group allegedly run by the “Army of Islam” and allegedly funded in part by George Soros – concocted an allegedly phony “Chemical Weapons attack” to give the US a public excuse for bombing Syria, says IAREX.ru.
NEWSWEEK reports that Mike Pompeo, the CIA director nominated to be secretary of state, told lawmakers Thursday (April 12) that the U.S. killed up to 200 Russians in airstrikes conducted against forces loyal to Syrian President Bashar al-Assad in February.
Prior to Pompeo’s statement, U.S. officials had remained silent about the number of casualties inflicted by a coalition assault on pro-Syrian government fighters that the Pentagon claimed opened fire on Syrian Democratic Forces in the eastern province of Deir Ezzor. Both a U.S.-led coalition and the Russia-backed forces supportive of Assad are battling the Islamic State militant group (ISIS) in the region, but recent tensions have produced fears of a conflict erupting between Washington and Moscow.
But American mass-media has remained silent about AMERICAN casualties inflicted by Syria and Russia in revenge for those dead Russians, says news outlet wh24.ru in Russia.
In March, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov strangely commented, “The time for negotiations has passed, the time of retribution has come.” No American media outlet could explain what Lavrov meant by those comments at the time. Now, with information about 200 dead American troops and 1800 dead American PMC’s, we have an idea what he meant.
“Russia does not intend to tolerate the antics of the United States either in Syria or elsewhere. And believe me, now in Ghouta [the turn-around] will be more abrupt than in Stalingrad. No live American soldier will leave from there.”
Over the past week, since the alleged “Chemical Attack” in Syria, the US has been publicly saying it would conduct missile strikes upon Syria over the purported use of chemical weapons against innocent civilians. But it is now becoming clear that the real reason for wishing to attack is the deaths of 2,000 Americans.
Perhaps if American troupes were not over there in Syria trying to forcibly overthrow its government, they wouldn’t have been killed.
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Video showing the Russian air strikes on east Ghouta which allegedly killed the Americans:
The US Army regularly produces deadly viruses, bacteria and toxins in direct violation of the UN Convention on the prohibition of Biological Weapons. Hundreds of thousands of unwitting people are systematically exposed to dangerous pathogens and other incurable diseases. Bio warfare scientists using diplomatic cover test man-made viruses at Pentagon bio laboratories in 25 countries across the world. These US bio-laboratories are funded by the Defense Threat Reduction Agency (DTRA) under a $ 2.1 billion military program– Cooperative Biological Engagement Program (CBEP), and are located in former Soviet Union countries such as Georgia and Ukraine, the Middle East, South East Asia and Africa.
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The Lugar Center, Republic of Georgia
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The US Army has been deployed to Vaziani Military Air Base, 17 km away from the Pentagon bio-laboratory at The Lugar Center.
Georgia is a testing ground for bioweapons
The Lugar Center is the Pentagon bio laboratory in Georgia. It is located just 17 km away from the US Vaziani military airbase in the capital Tbilisi. Tasked with the military program are biologists from the US Army Medical Research Unit-Georgia (USAMRU-G) along with private contractors. The Bio-safety Level 3 Laboratory is accessible only to US citizens with security clearance. They are accorded diplomatic immunity under the 2002 US-Georgia Agreement on defense cooperation.
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The USA-Georgia agreement accords diplomatic status to the US military and civilian personnel (including diplomatic vehicles), working on the Pentagon program in Georgia.
Information obtained from the US federal contracts registry clarifies some of the military activities at The Lugar Center – among them research on bio- agents (anthrax, tularemia) and viral diseases (e.g. Crimean-Congo Hemorrhagic Fever), and the collection of biological samples for future experiments.
Pentagon contractors produce bio agents under diplomatic cover
The Defense Threat Reduction Agency (DTRA) has outsourced much of the work under the military program to private companies, which are not held accountable to Congress, and which can operate more freely and move around the rule of law. US civilian personnel performing work at The Lugar Center have also been given diplomatic immunity, although they are not diplomats. Hence, private companies can perform work, under diplomatic cover, for the US government without being under the direct control of the host state – in this case the Republic of Georgia. This practice is often used by the CIA to provide cover for its agents.
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Three private American companies work at the US bio-laboratory in Tbilisi – CH2M Hill, Battelle and Metabiota. In addition to the Pentagon, these private contractors perform biological research for the CIA and various other government agencies.
CH2M Hill has been awarded $341.5 million DTRA contracts under the Pentagon’s program for bio-laboratories in Georgia, Uganda, Tanzania, Iraq, Afghanistan, South East Asia. Half of this sum ($161.1 million), being allocated to The Lugar Center, under the Georgian contract.
According to CH2M Hill, the US Company has secured biological agents and employed former bio warfare scientists at The Lugar Center. These are scientists who are working for another American company involved in the military program in Georgia – Battelle Memorial Institute.
Battelle as a $59 million subcontractor at Lugar Center has extensive experience in research on bio-agents, as the company has already worked on the US Bio-weapons Program under 11 previous contracts with the US Army (1952-1966).
Project Clear Vision (1997 and 2000), a joint investigation by the CIA and the Battelle Memorial Institute, under a contract awarded by the Agency, reconstructed and tested a Soviet-era anthrax bomblet in order to test its dissemination characteristics. The project’s stated goal was to assess bio-agents dissemination characteristics of bomblets. The clandestine CIA-Battelle operation was omitted from the US Biological Weapons Convention declarations submitted to the UN.
Anthrax spores under microscope
Top Secret Experiments
Battelle has operated a Top Secret Bio laboratory (National Biodefense Analysis and Countermeasures Center – NBACC) at Fort Detrick, Maryland under a US Department of Homeland Security (DHS) contract for the last decade. The company has been awarded a $344.4 million federal contract (2006 – 2016) and another $17.3 million contract (2015 -2026) by DHS.
Besides the military experiments at the Lugar Center in Georgia, Battelle has already produced bioterrorism agents at the Biosafety Level 4 NBACC Top Secret Laboratory at Fort Detrick in the US. A NBACC presentation lists 16 research priorities for the lab. Amongst them to characterize classical, emerging and genetically engineered pathogens for their BTA (biological threat agent) potential; assess the nature of nontraditional, novel and non-endemic induction of disease from potential BTA and to expand aerosol-challenge testing capacity for non-human primates.
Scientists engineer pathogens at the NBACC lab. Source: NBACC
Pentagon biolabs at the epicenter of the Ebola crisis
The US Company Metabiota Inc. has been awarded $18.4 million federal contracts under the Pentagon’s DTRA program in Georgia and Ukraine for scientific and technical consulting services.
Metabiota services include global field-based biological threat research, pathogen discovery, outbreak response and clinical trials.
Metabiota Inc. had been contracted by the Pentagon to perform work for DTRA before and during the Ebola crisis in West Africa and was awarded $3.1 million (2012-2015) for work in Sierra Leone – one of the countries at the epicenter of the Ebola outbreak.
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Metabiota worked on a Pentagon’s project at the epicenter of the Ebola crisis, where three US biolabs are situated.
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A July 17, 2014 report drafted by the Viral Hemorrhagic Fever Consortium, accused Metabiota Inc. of failing to abide by an existing agreement on how to report test results and for bypassing the Sierra Leonean scientists working there. The report also raised the possibility that Metabiota was culturing blood cells at the lab, something the report said was dangerous, as well as misdiagnosing healthy patients. All of those allegations were denied by Metabiota.
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2011,The Lugar Center, Andrew C. Weber (on the right) – US Assistant Secretary of Defense (2009-2014), US DoD Deputy Coordinator for Ebola Response (2014-2015), is currently a Metabiota ( the US contractor) employee.
Military Experiments on biting insects
Entomological warfare is a type of biological warfare that uses insects to transmit diseases. The Pentagon has allegedly performed such entomological tests in Georgia and Russia.
A biting fly in a bathroom in Tbilisi. Flies in Georgia
As a result Tbilisi has been infested with biting flies since 2015. These biting insects live indoors, in bathrooms, all year long, which was not the typical behaviour of these species in Georgia previously (normally the Phlebotomine fly season in Georgia is exceptionally short – from June to September). Local people complain of being bitten by these newly appeared flies while naked in their bathrooms. They also have a strong resistance to cold and can survive even in the sub-zero temperatures in the mountains.
Since the start of the Pentagon project in 2014 flies similar to those in Georgia have appeared in neighboring Dagestan (Russia). According to local people, they bite and cause rashes. Their breeding habitats are house drains.
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Flies in Georgia (on the left). The same fly in Dagestan (on the right)
Flies from the Phlebotomine family carry dangerous parasites in their saliva which they transmit through a bite to humans. The disease, which these flies carry, is of high interest to the Pentagon. In 2003 during the US invasion of Iraq American soldiers were severely bitten by sand flies and contracted Leishmoniasis. The disease is native to Iraq and Afghanistan and if left untreated the acute form of Leishmoniasis can be fatal.
A 1967 US Army report “Arthropods of medical importance in Asia and the European USSR” lists all local insects, their distribution and the diseases that they carry. Biting flies, which live in drains, are also listed in the document. Their natural habitats, though, are the Philippines, not Georgia or Russia.
Operation Whitecoat: Infected flies tested to bite humans
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In 1970 and 1972, Sand Fly Fever tests were performed on humans according to a declassified US Army report – US Army Activities in the US, Biological Warfare Programs, 1977, vol. II, p. 203.During operation Whitecoat volunteers were exposed to bites by infected sand flies. Operation Whitecoat was a bio-defense medical research program carried out by the US Army at Fort Detrick, Maryland between 1954 and 1973.
Despite the official termination of the US bio-weapons program, in 1982 USAMRIID performed an experiment if sand flies and mosquitoes could be vectors of Rift Valley Virus, Dengue, Chikungunya and Eastern Equine Encephalitis – viruses, which the US Army researched for their potential as bio-weapons.
Killer Insects
A. Aegypti
The Pentagon has a long history in using insects as vectors for diseases. According to a partially declassified 1981 US Army report, American bio warfare scientists carried out a number of experiments on insects. These operations were part of the US Entomological Warfare under the Program for Biological Weapons of the US.
The Pentagon: How to kill 625,000 people for just $0.29 cost per deat
A US Army report in 1981 compared two scenarios – 16 simultaneous attacks on a city by A. Aegypti mosquitoes, infected with Yellow Fever, and Tularemia aerosol attack, and assesses their effectiveness in cost and casualties.
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Operation Big Itch: Field tests were performed to determine coverage patterns and survivability of the tropical rat flea Xenopsylla cheopis for use as a disease vector in biological warfare.
Operation Big Buzz: 1 million A. Aegypti mosquitoes were produced, 1/3 were placed in munitions and dropped from aircraft, or dispersed on the ground. The mosquitoes survived the airdrop and actively sought out human blood.
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Source: Evaluation of Entomological Warfare as a potential Danger to the US and European NATO nations, US Army, March 1981 Report
Operation May Day: Aedes Aegypti mosquitoes were dispersed through ground based methods in Georgia, USA, during a US Army operation codenamed May Day.
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Parts of the 1981 US Army report such as the “Mass production of Aedes Aegypti” have not been declassified, potentially meaning that the project is still ongoing.
Aedes Aegypti, also known as yellow fever mosquito, have been widely used in US military operations. The same species of mosquitoes are alleged to be the vectors of dengue, chikungunya and the Zika virus, which causes genetic malformations in newborns
The US Army Chemical Research and Development Command, Biological Weapons Branch, studied outdoor mosquito biting activity in a number of field tests at Dugway Proving Ground, Utah, in 1960. Virgin female Aedes aegypti mosquitoes, which had been starved, were tested upon troops out in the open air.
Military Experiments with Tropical Mosquitoes and Ticks in Georgia
Such species of mosquitoes and fleas (studied in the past under the US Entomological Warfare Program) have also been collected in Georgia and tested at The Lugar Center.
Aedes Albopictus is a vector of many viral pathogens, Yellow fever virus, Dengue, Chikungunya and Zika.
These tropical mosquitoes Aedes Albopictus having never been seen before in Georgia, have also been detected in neighboring Russia (Krasnodar) and Turkey, According to data provided by the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control, Their spread is unusual for this part of the world.
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Aedes Aegypti Mosquitoes have been distributed only in Georgia, Southern Russia and Northern Turkey. They were detected for the first time in 2014 after the start of the Pentagon program at The Lugar Center.
In 2007 despite the anthrax outbreak the Georgian government terminated the compulsory vaccination for 7 years, 2013 saw NATO start human trials on a new anthrax vaccine in Georgia.
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Pentagon Research on Russian Anthrax
Anthrax is one of the bio agents weaponized by the US Army in the past. Despite the Pentagon’s claims that its program is only defensive, there are facts to the contrary. In 2016 at The Lugar Center American scientists carried out research on the “Genome Sequence of the Soviet/Russian Bacillus anthracis Vaccine Strain 55-VNIIVViM”, which was funded by the U.S. Defense Threat Reduction Agency’s (DTRA) Cooperative Biological Engagement Program in Tbilisi, and administered by Metabiota (the US contractor under the Pentagon program in Georgia).
34 people intentionally infected with Crimean-Congo Hemorrhagic Fever (CCHF) in Georgia
Crimean-Congo hemorrhagic fever (CCHF) is caused by infection through a tick-borne virus (Nairovirus). The disease was first characterized in Crimea in 1944 and given the name Crimean hemorrhagic fever. It was then later recognized in 1969 as the cause of illness in Congo, thus resulting in the current name of the disease. In 2014 34 people became infected (among which a 4-year old child) with CCHF. 3 of which died. The same year Pentagon biologists studied the virus in Georgia under the DTRA project “Epidemiology of febrile illnesses caused by Dengue viruses and other Arboviruses in Georgia”. The project included tests on patients with fever symptoms and the collection of ticks, as possible vectors of CCHV for laboratory analysis.
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33 people became infected with CCHF, 3 of them died in Georgia.
Source: NCDC-Georgia
The cause of the CCHF outbreak in Georgia is still unknown. According to the local Veterinary Department report, only one tick from all of the collected species from the infected villages tested positive for the disease. Despite the claims of the local authorities that the virus was transmitted to humans from animals, all animal blood samples were negative too. The lack of infected ticks and animals is inexplicable given the sharp increase of CCHF human cases in 2014, meaning that the outbreak was not natural and the virus was spread intentionally.
Military bio-lab blamed for deadly CCHF outbreak in Afghanistan
237 cases of Crimean-Congo Hemorrhagic Fever (CCHF) have also been reported across Afghanistan, 41 of which were fatal as of December 2017. According to Afghanistan’s Ministry of Health most of the cases have been registered in the capital Kabul where 71 cases have been reported with 13 fatalities, and in the province of Herat near the border with Iran (67 cases).
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Afghanistan is one of 25 countries across the world with Pentagon bio-laboratories on their territory. The project in Afghanistan is part of the US bio-defense program – Cooperative Biological Engagement Program (CBEP), which is funded by the Defense Threat Reduction Agency (DTRA). The DTRA contractors, working at The Lugar Center in Georgia, CH2M Hill and Battelle have also been contracted for the program in Afghanistan. CH2M Hill has been awarded a $10.4 million contract (2013-2017). The Pentagon contractors in Afghanistan and Georgia are the same and so are the diseases which are spreading among the local population in both countries.
Bats have been blamed for the deadly Ebola outbreak in Africa (2014-2016). However, no conclusive evidence of exactly how the virus “jumped” to humans has ever been provided, which raises suspicions of intentional and not natural infection.
Engineering deadly viruses is legal in the US
MERS-CoV is thought to originate from bats and spread directly to humans and/or camels. However, like Ebola, the precise ways the virus spreads are unknown.
1,980 cases with 699 deaths were reported in 15 countries across the world (as of June 2017) caused by MERS-CoV.
3 to 4 out of every 10 patients reported with MERS have died. Source: WHO
MERS-CoV is one of the viruses that have been engineered by the US and studied by the Pentagon, as well as Influenza and SARS. Confirmation of this practice is Obama’s 2014 temporary ban on government funding for such “dual-use” research. The moratorium was lifted in 2017 and experiments have continued. Enhanced Potential Pandemic Pathogens (PPPs) experiments are legal in the US.
Such experiments aim to increase the transmissibility and/or virulence of pathogens.
Tularemia as Bioweapon
Tularemia, also known as Rabbit Fever, is classified as a bioterrorism agent and was developed in the past as such by the US. However, the Pentagon’s research on tularemia continues, as well as on possible vectors of the bacteria such as ticks and rodents which cause the disease. The DTRA has launched a number of projects on Tularemia along with other especially dangerous pathogens in Georgia. Especially Dangerous Pathogens (EDPs), or select agents, represent a major concern for the public health globally. These highly pathogenic agents have the potential to be weaponized with proof of their military importance seen through the following Pentagon projects: Epidemiology and Ecology of Tularemia in Georgia (2013-2016) (60 000 vectors were collected for strain isolates and genome research); Epidemiology of Human Tularemia in Georgia and Human Disease Epidemiology and Surveillance of Especially Dangerous Pathogens in Georgia (study of select agents among patients with undifferentiated fever and hemorrhagic fever/septic shock).
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F. Tularensis is a highly infectious bacterium and has the potential to be weaponized for use through aerosol attacks.
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Tularemia is one of the bio-weapons that the US Army developed in the past.
Pentagon bio-laboratories spread diseases in Ukraine
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The DoD Defense Threat Reduction Agency (DTRA) has funded 11 bio-laboratories in the former Soviet Union Country Ukraine, bordering on Russia.
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The US military program is sensitive information
Ukraine has no control over the military bio-laboratories on its own territory. According to the 2005 Agreement between the US DoD and the Ministry of Health of Ukraine the Ukrainian government is prohibited from public disclosure of sensitive information about the US program and Ukraine is obliged to transfer to the US Department of Defense (DoD) dangerous pathogens for biological research. The Pentagon has been granted access to certain state secrets of Ukraine in connection with the projects under their agreement.
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Biowarfare scientists under diplomatic cover
Among the set of bilateral agreements between the US and Ukraine is the establishment of the Science and Technology Center in Ukraine (STCU) – an International organization funded mainly by the US government which has been accorded diplomatic status. The STCU officially supports projects of scientists previously involved in the Soviet biological weapons program. Over the past 20 years the STCU has invested over $285 million in funding and managing some 1,850 projects of scientists who previously worked on the development of weapons of mass destruction.
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The US personnel in Ukraine work under diplomatic cover.
364 Ukrainians died from Swine Flu
One of the Pentagon laboratories is located in Kharkiv, where in January 2016 at least 20 Ukrainian soldiers died from Flu-like virus in just two days with 200 more being hospitalized. The Ukrainian government did not report on the dead Ukrainian soldiers in Kharkiv. As of March 2016 364 deaths have been reported across Ukraine (81.3 % caused by Swine Flu A (H1N1) pdm09 – the same strain which caused the world pandemic in 2009).
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According to DPR intelligence information the US bio lab in Kharkiv leaked the deadly virus.
Police investigate infection with incurable disease
A highly suspicious Hepatitis A infection spread rapidly in just few months across South East Ukraine where most of the Pentagon biolabs are located.
Ukraine and Russia hit by new highly virulent cholera infection
In 2011 Ukraine was hit by a cholera outbreak. were reported to have contracted the disease. In 2015 at least 100 new cases were registered in the city of Mykolaiv alone.
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A new highly virulent variant of the cholera agent Vibrio cholera, with a high genetic similarity to the strains reported in Ukraine, hit Moscow in 2014. According to a 2014 Russian Research Anti-Plaque Institute genetic study the cholera strain isolated in Moscow was similar to the bacteria which caused the epidemic in neighboring Ukraine.
Southern Research Institute one of the US contractors working at the bio-laboratoriesin Ukraine, has projects on Cholera, as well as on Influenza and Zika – all pathogens of military importance to the Pentagon.
Along with Southern Research Institute, two other private American companies operate military bio-labs in Ukraine – Black&Veatch and Metabiota.
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Black & Veatch Special Project Corp. was awarded $198.7 million DTRA contracts to build and operate bio-laboratories in Ukraine (under two 5-year contracts in 2008 and 2012 totaling $128.5 million), as well as in Germany, Azerbaijan, Cameroon, Thailand, Ethiopia, Vietnam and Armenia.
Metabiota has been awarded a $18.4 million federal contract under the program in Georgia and Ukraine. This US company was also contracted to perform work for the DTRA before and during the Ebola crisis in West Africa, the company was awarded $3.1 million (2012-2015) for work in Sierra Leone .
Southern Research Institute has been a prime subcontractor under the DTRA program in Ukraine since 2008. The company was also a prime Pentagon contractor in the past under the US Biological Weapons Program for research and development of bio-agents with 16 contracts between 1951 and 1962.
Bacillus anthracis, magnified more than 12,000 times
Ken Alibek
Ken Alibek was the First Deputy Director of Biopreparat, where he oversaw a program for biological weapon facilities and was the Soviet Union’s main expert on anthrax. After his defection to the US, he was engaged on Pentagon research projects.
$250 000 for lobbying Jeff Sessions for “research for US intelligence”
Southern Research Institute lobbied the US Congress and US Department of State hard for “issues related to research and development for US intelligence” and “defense related research and development”. The lobbying activities coincided with the start of the Pentagon projects on bio-labs in Ukraine and other former Soviet states.
The company paid $ 250 000 for lobbying the then Senator Jeff Sessions in 2008-2009 (currently the US Attorney General appointed by Donald Trump), when the institute was awarded a number of federal contracts.
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US Attorney General Jeff Sessions, US Senator from Alabama (1997-2017)
Botulism is a rare and extremely dangerous illness caused by a toxin produced by the bacterium Clostridium botulinum.
1 gm of the toxin can kill as many as 1 million people
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Botulinum neurotoxin poses a major bio-weapon threat because of its extreme potency, ease of production and transport. It causes muscles paralyses, respiratory failure and ultimately death if not treated immediately. A single gram of crystalline toxin, evenly dispersed and inhaled can kill more than one million people. It could be disseminated via aerosol, or by contamination of water and/ or food supplies.
The Pentagon produces live Viruses, Bacteria & Toxins
Botulinum Toxin was tested as a bio-weapon by the US Army in the past, as well as Anthrax, Brucella and Tularemia. Although the US bio-weapons program was officially terminated in 1969 documents show that the military experiments have never ended. Presently the Pentagon produces and tests live bio- agents at the same military facility as it did in the past – Dugway Proving Ground.
The US Army produces and tests bio-agents at a special military facility located at Dugway Proving Ground ( West Desert Test Center, Utah), as proven in a 2012 US Army Report. The facility is overseen by the Army Test and Evaluation Command.
The Life Sciences Division (LSD) at Dugway Proving Ground is tasked with the production of bio-agents. According to the Army report, scientists from this division produce and test aerosolized bio-agents at Lothar Saloman Life Sciences Test Facility (LSTF).
Photo Credit: Dugway Proving Ground
Lothar Saloman Life Sciences Test Facility (LSTF) where bio-terrorism agents are produced and aerosolized.
Biological Agents produced by the US Army at Dugway Proving Ground, Utah, USA
The Life Sciences Division consists of an Aerosol Technology branch and a Microbiology Branch. The Aerosol Technology Branch aerosolizes biological agents and simulants. The Microbiology branch produces toxins, bacteria, viruses and agent-like organisms which are used in chamber and field testing.
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Click to see the full-size image
The fermentation laboratories at the Life Sciences Test Facility grow bacteria in fermentors ranging from a small 2 L to a large 1500 L system. The fermentors are tailored specifically to the requirements of the microorganism that is being engineered – pH, temperature, light, pressure, and nutrient concentrations that give the microorganism optimal growth rates.
A large 1500 L fermentator. Photos credit: Dugway Proving Ground
A post-production laboratory dries and mills test materials. Photos credit: Dugway Proving Ground
After the bio-agents are produced, the scientists challenge them at containment aerosol chambers.
Technicians disseminate live biological agents for identification sensitivity tests. Photos Credit: Dugway Proving Ground
Technicians disseminate live biological agents for identification sensitivity tests. Photos Credit: Dugway Proving Ground
Technicians disseminate live biological agents for identification sensitivity tests. Photos Credit: Dugway Proving Ground
Aerosol experiments with Botulinum Neurotoxin and Anthrax
Documents prove that the US Army produces, possesses and tests aerosols of the most lethal toxin in the world – Botulinum Neurotoxin. In 2014 the Department of the Army purchased 100 mg of Botulinum Toxin from Metabiologics for tests at Dugway Proving Ground.
The experiments date back to 2007 when an unspecified quantity of the toxin was procured to the Department of the Army by the same company – Metabiologics. According to the 2012 West Desert Test Center Report, the military facility performs tests with Botulinum Neurotoxin Aerosol, as well as with aerosolized Anthrax, Yersinia pestis, and Venezuelan Equine Encephalitis Virus (VEE).
Dissemination on the test grid. Photos Credit: Dugway Proving Ground
The US Army report lists numerous dissemination techniques including by bio-aerosol sprayers. Such sprayers called Micronair disseminators have already been developed by the US Army and tested at Dugway Proving Ground. According to the documents, they can be vehicle-mounted, or worn as a backpack, with a pump system which can be fitted to the unit to increase the accuracy of the release. Micronair sprayers can release 50 to 500 mL of bio-liquid simulant per minute from 12 L tanks.
The US stole bacteria from Saddam Hussein’s bio weapons factory
Bacillus thuringiensis is an insect pathogen that is widely used as a bio-pesticide. B. thuringiensis (BT) Al Hakam was collected in Iraq by the UN Special Commission led by the US in 2003. It is named after Al Hakam – Iraq’s bio-weapons production facility. Apart from Pentagon field tests, this bacterium is also used in the US for the production of GM corn, resistant to pests. Photos posted by the CIA prove that the bacteria was collected by the US in Iraq. According to the CIA, the vials containing bio-pesticide, were recovered from an Al Hakam scientist’s home.
CIA: A total of 97 vials-including those with labels consistent with the al Hakam cover stories of single-cell protein and bio-pesticides, as well as strains that could be used to produce BW agents were recovered from a scientist’s residence in Iraq in 2003.
Photo Credit: CIA
Bacillus thuringiensis
Information from the US federal contracts registry shows that the Pentagon performs tests using the bacteria stolen from Saddam Hussein’s bio-weapons factory in Iraq.
The Defense Threat Reduction Agency (DTRA) federal project for laboratory analysis and field tests with bacteria. Source: govtribe.com
The tests are performed on Kirtland Air Force Base (Kirtland is the home of the Air Force Materiel Command’s Nuclear Weapons Center). Here weapons are being tested, meaning that the field tests with biological simulants (bacteria) also fall into this group.
The DTRA contractor on this project – Lovelace Biomedical and Environmental Research Institute (LBERI), operates an Animal Bio-safety 3 Level (ABSL-3) laboratory which has Select Agent status. The facility is designed to conduct bioaerosol studies. The company has been awarded a 5-year contract for field tests with biological simulants at Kirtland Air Force Base.
Photo Credit: Kirtland Air Force Base. Photo credit: Dugway Proving Ground
Some of the tests are performed in a wind tunnel. Photo credit: Dugway Proving Ground
Field tests with Biological Simulants (bacteria)
What the Pentagon is now doing is exactly what it did in the past, meaning that its bio-weapons program was never terminated. The US Army performed 27 field tests with such biological simulants, involving the public domain from1949 to 1968, when President Nixon officially announced the end of the program.
The Defense Threat Reduction Agency (DTRA), which runs the US military program at the Lugar Center in Georgia, is alleged to have already performed field tests with an unknown substance in Chechnya, Russia. In the spring of 2017 local citizens reported on a drone disseminating white powder close to the Russian border with Georgia. Neither the Georgian border police, nor the US personnel operating on the Georgia-Russia border, commented on this information.
$9.2 million US military project on Russia-Georgia border
DTRA has full access to the Russia-Georgia border, granted under a military program called “Georgia Land Border Security Project”. The activities, related to the project have been outsourced to a private American company – Parsons Government Services International. DTRA has previously contracted Parsons for similar border security projects in Lebanon, Jordan, Libya and Syria. Parsons have been awarded a $9.2 million contract under the Pentagon border security project on the Russia-Georgia border.
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Local citizens in Chechnya noticed a UAV sprayer near the Russian border with Georgia in 2017.
US Defense Agency tests GM Insects to transmit GM Viruses
The Pentagon has invested at least $65 million in gene editing. The US Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) has awarded 7 research teams to develop tools for genome engineering in insects, rodents and bacteria under DARPA’s Safe Gene program, using a novel CRISPR-Cas9 technology.
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Click to see the full-size image
Under another military program –Insect Allies, GM insects are engineered to transfer modified genes to plants. The $10.3 million DARPA project includes both gene editing in insects and in the viruses that they transmit. Ecological Niche-preference Engineering is a third ongoing military program for genome engineering in insects. The Pentagon’s stated objective is to engineer GM organisms so that they can resist certain temperatures, change their habitat and food sources.
Besides gene editing in insects and in the viruses they transmit, the Pentagon wants to engineer humans as well.
DARPA Advanced Tools for Mammalian Genome Engineering Project seeks to create a biological platform inside the human body, using it to deliver new genetic information, and thus altering humans at the DNA level.
DARPA wants to insert an additional 47th artificial chromosome into human cells. This chromosome will deliver new genes that will be used for engineering the human body. SynPloid Biotek LLChas been awarded two contracts under the program totaling $1.1 million (2015-2016 – $ 100,600 for the first phase of the research; 2015-2017 – $ 999,300 for work which is not specified in the federal contracts registry. The company has only two employees and no previous record on bio-research.
Top Secret Research on Synthetic Viruses
Between 2008 and 2014, the United States invested approximately $820 million in synthetic biology research, Defense being a major contributor. Much of the military projects on synthetic biology are classified, among them are a number of classified studies by the secretive JASON group of US military advisors – e.g. Emerging Viruses and Genome Editing for the Pentagon, and Synthetic Viruses for the National Counterterrorism Center.
JASON is an independent scientific advisory group that provides consulting services to the U.S. government on matters of defense science and technology. It was established in 1960 and most of their resulting JASON reports are classified. For administrative purposes, the JASON’s projects are run by the MITRE Corporation, which has contracts with the Defense Department, CIA and the FBI. Since 2014 MITRE has been awarded some $27.4 million in contracts with the DoD.
Although the JASON Reports are classified, another US Air Force study titled Biotechnology: Genetically Engineered Pathogens, sheds some light on what the secretive JASON group has researched – 5 groups of genetically engineered pathogens that can be used as bio-weapons. These are binary biological weapons (a lethal combination of two viruses), host swapping diseases (animal viruses that “jump” to humans, like the Ebola virus), stealth viruses, and designer diseases. Designer diseases can be engineered to target a certain ethnic group, meaning that they can be used as ethnic bio-weapons.
Ethnic Bioweapons
Ethnic biological weapon (biogenetic weapon) is a theoretical weapon that aims to primarily harm people of specific ethnicities, or genotypes.
Although officially the research and development of ethnic bio-weapons have never been publicly confirmed, documents show that the US collects biological material from certain ethnic groups – Russians and Chinese.
The US Air Force has been specifically collecting Russian RNA and synovial tissue samples, raising fears in Moscow of a covert US ethnic bio-weapons program.
Apart from Russians, the US has been collecting biological material from both healthy and cancer patients in China. The National Cancer Institute has collected biological samples from 300 subjects from Linxian, Zhengzhou, and Chengdu in China. While another federal project, titled Serum Metabolic biomarkers discovery study of Esophageal Squamous Cell Carcinoma in China, includes analysis of 349 serum samples which have been collected from Chinese patients.
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The US National Cancer Institute has been collecting biological material from patients of the Chinese Cancer Hospital in Beijing.
The companies, involved in the project, are owned by the biggest American tobacco companies – Mediacago Inc. is co-owned by Philip Morris and Kentucky BioProcessing, a subsidiary of Reynolds American which is owned by British American Tobacco. Currently they are producing Flu and Ebola vaccines from tobacco plants.
The $100 million program Blue Angel was launched as a response to the H1N1 pandemic in 2009. Medicago being awarded $21 million to produce 10, 000 million doses of an influenza vaccine within one month.
Blue Angel program manager Dr. John Julias explains: “Although there are multiple plant species and other organisms being explored as alternative protein production platforms, the US Government has continued to make an investment in tobacco-based manufacturing.”
Photos credit: DARPA
The plant-based vaccine production method works by isolating a specific antigen protein that triggers a human immune response from the targeted virus. A gene from the protein is transferred to bacteria, whichis used to infect plants. The plants then start producing the protein that will be used for vaccinations.
It is not clear why the Pentagon choses to invest in vaccines produced from tobacco plants amongst all other plant species, which they explored. Medicago, co-owned by Philip Morris, paid $495,000 for lobbying the Department of Defense, the Congress and The Department of Health and Human Services for “funding to advance technology to support public health preparedness applications”. The Pentagon funded tobacco companies to develop new technology and to profit from vaccines.
Biological Experiments are war crimes
Article 8 of The Rome Statute of The International Criminal Court (ICC) defines biological experiments as war crimes. The US, however, is not a state party to the international treaty, and cannot be held accountable for its war crimes.
Dilyana Gaytandzhieva is a Bulgarian investigative journalist and Middle East Correspondent. Over the last two years she has published a series of revealed reports on weapons smuggling. In the past year she came under pressure from the Bulgarian National Security Agency and was fired from her job in the Bulgarian newspaper Trud Daily without explanation. Despite this, Dilyana continues her investigations. Her current report provides an overview of Pentagon’s vigour in the development of biological weapons.
Today another chemical weapons stockpile was found in East Ghouta, produced in Germany, fully weaponized and commercially produced by Merck.
Merck was the primary producer of chemical weapons for Germany in World War I and George Merck founded the War Research Service along with Frank Olson in 1944, which using captured Germany and Japanese scientists and research facilities, took control of America’s biological and chemical warfare production which continues to this day in facilities at Fort Meade, Maryland and at the Lugar Lab in Tibilisi, Georgia in partnership with the current government of Ukraine.
Chlorine gas filled shell from Porton Down, Salisbury, found in East Ghouta with al Qaeda
Last week, Russia and Syria announced the capture of British chemical weapon stockpiles in East Ghouta along with the capture of a “coalition” command and chemical weapons facility with all personnel. Taken from the combined statement censored from the western press, from March 25, 2018
“The Syrian Arab Army and with the help of Russian captured a shipment of chemical weapons destined for the Eastern Ghouta. These were British weapons produced at Porton Down in Salisbury. Russian suspects that the Skripal incident is related as by their records, Skiripal was working at Porton Down as a chemical weapons trafficker in partnership with a Ukrainian firm. Russia denies attacking Skripal but admits he was under surveillance for his activities involving support of terrorism in Syria and arms trafficking.
Russia also confirms that there are British, American, Israeli and Saudi intelligence officers who were caught by the Syrian army in one of the heavily fortified operations rooms during the invasion of the Syrian army and its allies of the East Ghouta.”
VT asked the Syrian government for serial numbers and closeup photographs of chemical weapons used. Syria sent them to us today.
Today, the Syrian Army captured the following German made poison gas shells, shipped into Syria though Ukraine and Turkey and delivered to Jeish al Islam by a US CH53 helicopter, according to statements “allegedly” gotten from POW interrogations.
American, British and Israeli military personnel captured in Syria have confirmed they were ordered to stage chemical attacks in East Ghouta by their governments.
The Americans are still being held along with Israeli’s while British prisoners are being negotiated for. Sources in Damascus told us that representatives of Oman in Damascus approached the Russian Office of Reconciliation on behalf of Britain for the return of British chemical warfare personnel.
The shells in the above video are identified as VX gas from British stockpiles.
Russian officials in Syria informed Britain through Oman that they would have to directly deal with Syria for the return of their personnel. We have received no further information since, Damascus has remained silent on how or if negotiations were proceeding.
We do know that US Representative Tulsi Gabbard of Hawaii, a US Army combat veteran of Iraq, met with both President Assad and Donald Trump, in order to arrange for covert exchange, for substantial financial consideration, of captured Americans.
Initial introductions for this meeting were done by VT.
Israel bought back a Brigadier General (they claimed he was a colonel) in 2015 that we know about.
The recent gas attack in Syria, timed as the last terrorists were surrendering for relocation inside the Douma region of the Ghouta pocket, was planned personally by nominated presidential advisor John Bolton and President Donald Trump personally, according to highly placed sources.
Our sources in Russia, highest level, told us the attack was coming based on information they received from US and Israeli prisoners taken in East Ghouta after an evacuation attempt failed.
US casualty announcements in this effort have been released over the past few days as happening in other areas to cover US complicity in terrorism. This dishonors families of the dead, not just in the misuse of service members to support terrorism but in lying to families about combat deaths. This shame goes directly to coward Trump!
US casualties were listed as “four Marines killed on Tuesday in a CH-53E Super Stallion helicopter crash near El Centro, Calif”, also a US Air Force F16 that allegedly crashed at Nellis Air Force Base in Nevada and up to 6 Americans who the US claims were killed by “Kurdish forces” in the north of Syria.
All died in a failed combined US/Israel rescue operation to remove not only communications and command personnel but also chemical weapons operations teams as well.
Last week, VT Damascus received evidence that Americans, US Army Special Forces along with Israeli chemical weapons officers had been captured in East Ghouta. We were told that not only was a command facility captured with modern weapons but a stockpile of British made 81mm poison gas mortar shells, numbering in the hundreds, was seized as well.
All but two of the Germans [on trial at Nuremberg], in the 139 cases that we investigated, had their testicles kicked in beyond repair. This was standard operating procedure with our American investigators:” 23.1.49, The Sunday Pictorial (quoted in For Those Who Cannot Speak (ref. 27), p.21. The statements which were admitted as evidence were obtained from men who had first been kept in solitary confinement for three, four and five months. The investigators would put a black hood over the accused’s head, punch him in the face with brass knuckles, kick him and beat him with rubber hoses. Observer & American judge, van Roden:
– Judge van Roden’s allegation of torture to gain “confessions” is confirmed by Texas Supreme Court Judge, Gordon Simpson. He confirmed that savage beatings, smashing of testicles, and months of solitary confinement occurred. Congressional Record, appendix v. 95, sec.12, 3/10/49
– U.S. Congressional Representative, Lawrence H. Smith of Wisconsin said:
” The Nuremberg Trials are so repugnant to the Anglo-Saxon principles of justice that we must forever be ashamed of that page in our history.” Congressional Record, appendix, v.95, sec.14, 6/15/49
– “The prisoner was torn from the top bunk, the pajamas ripped from his body. He was then dragged naked to one of the slaughter tables, where it seemed to [Bernard] Clarke the blows and screams were endless. Eventually, the Medical Officer urged the Captain: ‘Call them off, unless you want to take back a corpse.’”(12) 12.R. Butler, Legions of Death, Hamlyn, (London, 1983), p.237
– The admission of Bernard Clarke was corroborated by Mr. Ken Jones in ‘The Wrexham Leader’, October 17, 1986.
Mr. Jones was then a private with the Fifth Royal Horse Artillery stationed at Heid in Schleswig-Holstein.
“They brought him to us when he refused to cooperate over questioning about his activites during the war. He came in the winter of 1945/6 and was put in a small jail cell in the barracks,” recalls Mr. Jones. Two other soldiers were detailed with Mr. Jones to join Hoess in his cell to help break him down for interrogation.”
“We sat in the cell with him, night and day, armed with axe handles. Our job was to prod him every time he fell asleep to help break down his resistance,” said Mr. Jones.
When Hoess was taken out for exercise, he was made to wear only jeans and a thin cotton shirt in the bitter cold. After three days and nights without sleep, Hoess finally broke down and made a full confession to the authorities.
The torture of Rudolf Hoess – perhaps the most infamous of all the “witnesses” at the IMT- is a case in point. He was captured by British commandos and held for nearly a week, during which he was beaten savagely and nearly killed by his captors. He was also threatened with having his family handed over to the Soviets. This is by the admission of the commanding officer of the “torture detail”- one Captain Bernard Clarke, who publicly boasted about it.
It was the testimony of Hoess that provided the principal foundation for the “Auschwitz-Birkenau factory of death” legend. The claims of Hoess regarding the “gas chambers” and “mass gassings” are so outlandish and ridiculous from a technical and logistical perspective that they really serve as a gold mine for revisionists.
– “The London Cage was used partly as a torture centre, inside which large numbers of German officers and soldiers were subjected to systematic ill-treatment. In total 3,573 men passed through the Cage, and more than 1,000 were persuaded to give statements about war crimes. The brutality did not end with the war, moreover: a number of German civilians joined the servicemen who were interrogated there up to 1948.
As the work of the Cage was wound down, the interrogation of prisoners was switched to a number of internment camps in Germany. And there is evidence that the treatment meted out in these places was, if anything, far worse. While many of the papers relating to these interrogation centres remain sealed at the Foreign Office, it is clear that one camp in the British zone became particularly notorious. At least two German prisoners starved to death there, according to a court of inquiry, while others were shot for minor offenses.
[…]In this article, I am not going to demonstrate, but simply hypothesize, that the leaking and revelation of the Pentagon Papers, and more broadly the role of the media establishment in the anti-Vietnam movement, were in the interest of Israel. At that moment Israel was starting to face a unified international front against its illegal occupation. There was a real threat that the US would force Israel to withdraw, as required by UN Resolution 242. But I will go further and suggest that the Vietnam War itself, not just the protest against it, served the interests of Israel, regardless of other factors that motivated it. There is, of course, no contradiction between these two theses, since the anti-Vietnam-war movement presupposes the Vietnam war. Significantly, until around 1969, the Washington Post’s editorials were unequivocally pro-war.
As I wrote in JFK-9/11 and again in From Yahweh to Zion, if John Kennedy had not been assassinated, the very expression “Vietnam War” would not exist in school textbooks. Under his presidency, US military deployment amounted officially to a mere 15,000 “military advisors.” At the end of 1963, Kennedy had taken the decision to withdraw from Vietnam. On November 11, he signed directive NSAM-263 for the removal of “1,000 U.S. military personnel by the end of 1963,” in anticipation for withdrawing “by the end of 1965 […] the bulk of U.S. personnel.”[1] On November 21, the day before his fatal visit to Texas, he expressed his resolution to his assistant press secretary Malcolm Kilduff, after reading a report on the latest casualties: “After I come back from Texas, that’s going to change. There’s no reason for us to lose another man over there. Vietnam is not worth another American life.”[2]
But on November 26, the day after Kennedy’s funeral, Johnson buried NSAM-263 and replaced it with NSAM-273, which required the military to develop a plan “for the United States to begin carrying the war north,” including “different levels of possible increased activity,” and “military operations up to a line up to 50 kilometers inside Laos”—which violated the 1962 Geneva Accords on the neutrality of Laos.[3] Johnson’s decision regarding Vietnam was a clear betrayal of Kennedy’s earlier policy, and the amazing expediency of his change of policy suggests premeditation. All ambiguities cleverly laid out in NSAM-273 would be lifted by another memo signed on January, 1964 by General Maxwell Taylor, which said: “National Security Action Memorandum n° 273 makes clear the resolve of the President to ensure victory over the externally directed and supported communist insurgency in South Vietnam […]. To do this, we must prepare for whatever level of activity may be required.” It is no longer a question of stopping the war, but rather winnings at any cost. Robert McNamara, continuing as Secretary of Defense, acceded to Johnson’s agenda, recommending the mobilization of 50,000 soldiers and a program of “graduated overt military pressure” against North Vietnam, a policy which Johnson rubberstamped in March 1964 by memorandum NSAM-288.[4]
A suitable pretext was still needed for aggression. It came in Gulf of Tonkin on the 2nd and 4th of August 1964, when torpedoes were allegedly launched by the North Vietnamese against American destroyers. It is now known that the second attack, if not the first, was imaginary, made up out of falsified NSA data.[5] With that faked event, Johnson could announce on national television a “retaliatory” bombing of the North Vietnamese navy, and push through Congress on August 7, 1964, the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution which gave him full powers to send up to 500,000 soldiers into North Vietnam. With that, Johnson plunged the Vietnamese people into a decade of unspeakable suffering, taking the lives of more than a million civilians. From 1965 to 1968, as part of Operation Rolling Thunder, 643,000 tons of bombs were dropped—three times more than during the entire Second World War—on a mostly rural country, and about 500,000 American soldiers were sent to Vietnam, where 50,000 perished. 19 million gallons of toxic chemicals were sprayed from the air to destroy approximately 40 percent of the South’s forests, one-third of its valuable mangrove swamps, and large areas of prime cropland. The chemicals are also suspected of causing widespread health problems, including cancer and birth defects. An estimated 3.5 million Vietnamese were killed directly in the war. One-third of the South’s population became “internal refugees”, their way of life destroyed, forced to live for years in the misery of refugee camps and overfull cities, with prostitution and other social problems as a result. Since the war ended for the US in 1975, nearly 40,000 Vietnamese have been killed by residual explosives, including an estimated 3.5 million land mines. Many more have been crippled for life. A decade after the war, over 13 percent of Vietnam’s population were still suffering from some war-related injury.[6]
It was during that period that Israel chose to launch its operation to annex Egyptian, Syrian and Jordanian territories, by creating the illusion that it was acting in self-defense. Johnson had given Israel a green light in a letter to Israeli Prime Minister Levi Eshkol, dated June 3: “I want to protect the territorial integrity of Israel […] and will provide as effective American support as possible to preserve the peace and freedom of your nation and of the area.”[7] Johnson also asked the CIA to transmit to the Israeli army the precise positions of the Egyptian air bases to be destroyed.
Four days after the start of the Israeli attack, Nasser accepted the ceasefire request from the UN Security Council. It was too soon for Israel, which had not yet achieved all its objectives. It was then that, on June 8, 1967, the USS Liberty, an unarmed NSA spy ship, was bombed, strafed, and torpedoed for 75 minutes by Israeli Mirage jets and torpedo boats. The Israelis obviously intended to sink it without leaving any survivors (even the lifeboats were machine-gunned), while Johnson personally prohibited the nearby Sixth Fleet from coming to its rescue. Had the USS Liberty been successfully sunk, the attack would have been blamed on the Egyptians, and would have given Johnson the pretext to intervene militarily alongside Israel, probably forcing the USSR to go to war.[8]
But it failed. The affair was successfully smothered by a commission of inquiry headed by Admiral John Sidney McCain II (father of Arizona Senator John McCain III). The survivors received a medal in an unadvertised ceremony, accompanied by a formal order never to mention the incident. Only recently have some broken the silence.[9]Johnson accepted Israel’s spurious “targeting error” explanation, and rewarded the unprovoked attack by lifting the embargo on the sale of offensive military equipment to Israel.
The USS Liberty failed false flag attack is proof of Johnson’s secret complicity with Israel, and of his high treason against the country he had sworn to protect. But Johnson had in fact always been Israel’s man. As early as 1948, his campaign for a Senate seat had been financed by Abraham Feinberg, president of Americans for Haganah Incorporated and financial godfather of Israel’s atomic bomb.[10] In 2013, the Associated Press reported on newly released tapes from Johnson’s White House office showing LBJ’s “personal and often emotional connection to Israel.” The tapes showed that during the Johnson presidency, “the United States became Israel’s chief diplomatic ally and primary arms supplier.” An article from the 5 Towns Jewish Times“Our First Jewish President Lyndon Johnson?” recalls Johnson’s continuous support of Jews and Israel in the 1940s and 50s, and concludes: “President Johnson firmly pointed American policy in a pro-Israel direction.” The article also mentions that, “research into Johnson’s personal history indicates that he inherited his concern for the Jewish people from his family. His aunt Jessie Johnson Hatcher, a major influence on LBJ, was a member of the Zionist Organization of America.” And, in an additional note: “The facts indicate that both of Lyndon Johnson’s great-grandparents, on the maternal side, were Jewish. […] The line of Jewish mothers can be traced back three generations in Lyndon Johnson’s family tree. There is little doubt that he was Jewish.”[11]
It is on record, thanks to Kennedy insider Arthur Schlesinger (A Thousand Days, 1965) that it was in fact Philip Graham and Joseph Alsop, respectively publisher and columnist of the Washington Post, both strong supporters of Israel, who convinced Kennedy to take Johnson on his ticket, in a closed door conversation.[12] Schlesinger doesn’t reveal Graham and Alsop’s arguments, and states that Kennedy’s final decision “defies historical reconstruction”—a curious statement for a historian so well informed, which can only be explained by Schlesinger’s refusal throughout his 872 pages to come to grips with Kennedy’s Middle East policy and his battle with Zionism. Alan Hart has convincingly filled in the blanks: both Graham and Alsop were strongly pro-Israel as well as pro-Johnson, and both could exert a huge influence on public opinion. So “Kennedy was forced by Israel’s supporters to take Johnson as his vice-presidential running mate.”[13]
Is there a connection between those two wars, each waged or supported by Lyndon Johnson? In my book JFK-9/11, I suggested that Johnson escalated the Vietnam War as a substitute for the invasion of Cuba that the CIA and Pentagon hawks involved in the plot to assassinate JFK had been led to believe that they could start by blaming the assassination on a communist plot. “In lieu of invasion,” I wrote, “Johnson offered to the generals the Vietnam War.” That was a grossly insufficient explanation. There is little evidence that Pentagon generals, let alone CIA officers, needed a war, any war, at all cost. But I could think of no other explanation, short of the unlimited greed of war profiteers, of whom Johnson was a highly representative specimen. (In the weeks preceding the Kennedy assassination, he had invested in the Dallas aircraft manufacturer Ling-Temco-Vought, which was to become one of the Pentagon’s biggest arms suppliers for the Vietnam War.[14] Johnson also owned stocks in Bell Helicopter, to which he transferred illegally a contract for 220 helicopters that had been signed in 1963 with its rival Kaman Aircraft.[15])
Only recently did the idea come to me of a hidden link between the Vietnam War and the Six-Day War. I could not conceive it before because I had not yet taken the full measure of the perversity of the Israeli leadership, whose collective psychopathy resonated deeply with Johnson’s personal psychopathy. Having now studied the deep thinking of those ultra-Machiavellian crypto-Likudniks whom we call neoconservatives, I have acquired the conviction that the tragedy of the world for the last hundred years is only comprehensible once we admit that Israel (before and after 1947) acts on the international scene in a biblical way, that is, with the same indifference and cruelty toward non-Jewish nations that Yahweh demanded of his people in the Bible. In their eyes, these populations are no more worthy than livestock, and their suffering is irrelevant (unless, of course, it can be exploited). There is absolutely no moral limit to the determination of Israel to pave its way toward hegemony through the ruin of whole nations. Absolutely none. This is what I meant when calling Israel the “psychopathic nation”.
And so my hypothesis is that one of the purposes of the Vietnam War desired by Johnson and his masters was to create a diversion while Israel was engaging in the decisive stage of its expansion. Let us imagine for a moment that there had been no Vietnam War, in 1967 and thereafter, to mobilize Americans’ limited attention on world affairs, and to divert their indignation. Could the Washington Post and the New York Times have managed to hide from the public the scandal of that war of aggression and illegal annexation? Even more importantly, Israel’s strategists surely understood that the legitimacy of the US state to condemn Israel’s crimes would be much diminished if the US could be blamed for even worse crimes.
French President Charles De Gaulle actually understood that the Vietnam War was preventing a peaceful solution in Palestine. In a press conference on November 27, 1967, after condemning Israel’s aggression and famously qualifying the Jews as “an elite people, self-confident and dominating,” he called for the four great powers to enforce an international settlement on the basis of Israel’s withdrawal from the occupied territories, and added:
“But one cannot see how such an agreement could be reached as long as one of the greatest among the four will not withdraw from the heinous war that they are waging elsewhere. Without the tragedy of Vietnam, the conflict between Israel and the Arabs would not have become what it has become. And if South-East Asia could experience a renewal of peace, the Middle-East would also find its way to peace, in the climate of détente which would follow such an event.”[16]
Soon after that press conference, De Gaulle’s government became the target of a major student protest that culminated in May 1968, ultimately forcing De Gaulle to resign. These students, led by predominantly Jewish Trotskyist activists,[17] were not protesting against the US aggression against Vietnam, nor against Israel’s aggression against its Arab neighbors, but against bourgeois society.
It is not an exaggeration to qualify the Vietnam War as a “holocaust”, as did the 2008 documentary film Vietnam: American Holocaust.[18] In the Bible, a holocaust designates an animal offering completely consumed by fire, producing an “enjoyable smell” for Yahweh (Genesis 8:20-21; Exodus 29:25). According to the Book of Ezra, a gigantic holocaust was offered “to the God of Israel who resides in Jerusalem” by the Judeo-Babylonians who (re)colonized Palestine, in preparation for the (re)building of the Temple (7:12–15).
Strangely, it is during the Vietnam War that the term “Holocaust” became the common designation of the killing of Jews during World War II. Unless we consider that Hitler was working for the glory of Yahweh, that expression seems absurd. Surely, the anti-Zionist rabbi Moshe Shonfeld believes that “The Zionist leaders saw the spilt Jewish blood of the Holocaust as grease for the wheels of the Jewish national state.”[19] But the term logically applies much better to the Vietnam War if we consider that by focusing the attention of the American public, then the protests of American youths and liberal intellectuals, it left the field wide open for Israel’s conquest of Palestinian, Egyptian, and Syrian territories. After all, the Vietnamese plight was greater than the Palestinians’. This, I believe, provides a plausible answer to the question: Why did Johnson, who did not satisfy the CIA hawks on Cuba, draw the US into the Vietnam inferno? The strongest Johnson administration advocate for a deepening commitment in Vietnam was National Security Advisor Walt Rostow, whose brother Eugene was Under-Secretary of State. They happened to be sons of Jewish immigrants. The historian David Milne has called Rostow “America’s Rasputin.”
Two months after his election in 1968, Nixon secretly and illegally expanded the war into Cambodia, ordering a massive bombardment under the codename Breakfast, followed by Lunch, Dessert, Snack, Dinner and Supper—all of which led to the rise of the Khmer Rouge, an exceptionally bloody, tyrannical regime responsible for the extermination of one third of the Cambodian population. The man who pushed him in that direction was National Security Advisor Henry Kissinger, also acting as Secretary of State. Like the Rostows, Kissinger happens to be Jewish.
Many of the leading figures of the anti-war movement were also Jewish. But soon after the leaking of the Pentagon Papers by Daniel Ellsberg, with the help of Anthony Russo, Noam Chomsky and Howard Zinn (all Jewish by birth), other liberal Jewish intellectuals made a 180-degree turn and became leading advocate of the war: they called themselves “neoconservatives”. We have here a fine example of dialectical engineering of history: as Jewish leftists like Noam Chomsky started to protest against the war, former Jewish leftists like Irving Kristol started to protest against the protesters. Meanwhile, Israel could be pushed out of the headlines. Kristol wrote in the magazine of the American Jewish Congress in 1972 that it was necessary to fight against George McGovern’s proposal to reduce the military budget by 30 percent: “This is to drive a knife into the heart of Israel. […] Jews don’t like a big military budget, but it is now an interest of the Jews to have a large and powerful military establishment in the United States. […] American Jews who care about the survival of the state of Israel have to say, no, we don’t want to cut the military budget, it is important to keep that military budget big, so that we can defend Israel.”[20]
Against McGovern’s demand for immediate withdrawal from Vietnam, Kristol could have added: “American Jews who care about the survival of the state of Israel have to say, no, we don’t want to withdraw from Vietnam, it is important to pursue the genocide of the Vietnamese, so that America’s youthful idealists will protest against their own government rather than against Israel’s violation of international law.”
[6] Figures taken from “Vietnam Holocaust, 140 years of pillage, slaughter & persecution,” ã Föreningen Levande Framtid, Sweden, 2001: http://www.nnn.se/vietnam/holocaust.pdf
[8] Robert Allen, Beyond Treason: Reflections on the Cover-up of the June 1967 Israeli Attack on the USS Liberty, an American Spy Ship, CreateSpace, 2012.
[9] Watch the 2014 Al-Jazeera documentary The Day Israel Attacked America.
[10] Alan Hart, Zionism: The Real Enemy of the Jews, vol. 2: David Becomes Goliath, Clarity Press, 2013, p. 250.
[11] Morris Smith, “Our First Jewish President Lyndon Johnson? – an update!!,” 5 Towns Jewish Times, April 11, 2013, on 5tjt.com.
[12] Arthur Schlesinger, A Thousand Days: John Kennedy in the White House (1965), Mariner Books, 2002, p. 56.
[13] Alan Hart, Zionism, vol. 2: op. cit., p. 257.
[14] Joan Mellen, A Farewell to Justice, Potomac Books, 2007.
The US’ recent multidimensional asymmetric offensive against all manner of Russian interests isn’t the random symptom of psychotic Russophobia that it’s being presented as, but is part of a comprehensive strategy for pressuring Moscow to abandon its close cooperation with China & Iran in exchange for a “New Détente”, a scenario that shouldn’t be ruled out if Trump gets his way during the upcoming meeting with President Putin.
Many people are struggling to find any rhyme or reason behind the US’ anti-Russian moves over the past couple of years, especially the ones that Trump was supposedly forced into by the “deep state” out of the mistaken belief that it would relieve the fake news-driven Russiagate pressure on his administration, but the answer to it all is a lot simpler than it appears. The fact of the matter is that everything that’s happening is intentional and part of a comprehensive strategy for getting Russia to abandon its close cooperation with China & Iran in response to the US’ multidimensional asymmetric offensive against its interests, although it’s proven itself to be a failed plan that requires urgent reform. Whether it’s the West’s “Russian propaganda” witchhunt or the Skripal chemical weapons false flag scandal, every single anti-Russian move that’s been undertaken in the last few years is designed to advance this objective.
Taking Apart The Multipolar Triangle
Iran:
There was right after Trump’s 2016 victory that his administration would try to split the Russian-Chinese-Iranian multipolar triangle in Eurasia, and that’s exactly what the President and his team are trying to do, albeit in a different fashion than what people might have expected. Trump rightly calculated that Obama’s unprecedented outreach to Iran through the 2015 nuclear deal was being taken advantage of by Tehran and that the Islamic Republic never had any serious intentions in agreeing to the tacit quid-pro-quo being offered at the time to replace Saudi Arabia as America’s preferred regional partner. Accordingly, he decided to pivot away from his predecessor’s policy and use nothing but “muscular means” to coerce Iran into submitting to the US’ military might, which is a work in progress and one that will certainly be made all the more difficult by Tehran’s mastery of asymmetrical responses.
China:
As for China, Trump also learned from the mistake of his predecessor who at one time offered the People’s Republic a global partnership through the so-called “G-2” or “Chimerica” concept but was rebuffed by a Beijing that’s both too proud to share world leadership with America and also reluctant into being tricked to take on responsibilities that it didn’t agree to or anticipate at the time. It wasn’t coincidental that the G-2’s failure was soon thereafter followed up by China’s announcement of its One Belt One Road (OBOR) global vision of New Silk Road connectivity in order to economically reform the structural basis for the “Washington Conesus” and consequently facilitate the emerging Multipolar World Order. Trump’s Kraken-like answer to this challenge was to continue with Obama’s Hybrid War policy in targeting the most vulnerable “Global South” transit states for China’s transnational infrastructure megaprojects simultaneously with the commencement of a trade war against the People’s Republic.
Russia:
Iran’s full-blown ideological resistance to striking a “deal with the devil” and China’s unflinching commitment to challenging the US’ unipolar dominance of the world mean that there’s no realistic chance that either of them will budge from their previous refusals to abandon the other in exchange for an alleviation of American pressure on their countries, thereby pointing Trump in Russia’s direction because he considers it to be the “weakest link” in this multipolar arrangement. After all, Russia has always insisted with total sincerity that it wants nothing more than an equal relationship with what it still continues to call its “Western partners”, which logically entails them respecting the country’s so-called “sphere of influence” in the former Soviet space. Previous US administrations smacked away Russia’s olive branch every time it was offered, but Trump seemed to actually be interested in cutting a deal with Moscow before the “deep state” intervened to stop him.
The “Deep State’s” Folly
Ironically, that move might go down in history as the last possible chance that the US had to realistically bring Russia back into the “Washington Consensus” by peaceful means, as Moscow signaled that it was prepared to enter into a so-called “New Détente” with Washington that would have obviously involved mutual “concessions/compromises”. That “lost opportunity” might never be regained because Russia’s resolve has since hardened after feeling betrayed by Trump and subject to his administration’s humiliating punishments for not submitting to America without any preconditions (“mutual concessions/compromises”), which is what the “deep state” wanted after making the massive error of judgement in convincing themselves through “groupthink” that President Putin would follow in Yeltsin’s footsteps and surrender if the powerful “oligarchic” class put enough pressure on him to do so in exchange for lifting the sanctions. That ship has sailed and what’s happening now is a combination of scorn and strategy.
The US will never forgive President Putin for refusing to bow down to the Obama-era liberal-globalist “deep state” that sabotaged Trump’s outreach plan, which is why it’s getting so nasty in carrying out witch hunts against Russian media and expelling the country’s diplomats on unproven pretexts. For the “deep state”, this is “personal”, though while Trump seems to understand the “effectiveness” of “playing dirty” as a form of psychological warfare against the Russian leadership, he’s never publicly swayed from his campaign pledge to cut a deal with Russia if it was possible (i.e. the “deep state” lets him or he goes around their backs). It’s with this backdrop in mind that Trump invited President Putin to the White House for a forthcoming meeting that will presumably be about “ironing out their differences” and advancing the presumably mutual goal of a so-called “New Détente”, albeit not on the one-sided unconditional terms that the “deep state” is obsessed with.
Describing The “New Détente”
Trump realized that Russia is digging in its heels by deepening its partnerships with China and Iran in response to the “deep state’s” multidimensional asymmetric aggression and that this policy has been nothing but counterproductive to America’s predominant New Cold War interest in “containing” China. Furthermore, the President seems to have convinced the “patriotic” and “pragmatic” elements of the “deep state” that this is the case and that it’s impossible for America to make any tangible progress in stopping the Silk Road if it has to multitask between “containing” China, Iran, and Russia in vastly different theaters and with completely different methods. It’s much better, the billionaire businessman likely reckoned, to walk back some of his administration’s unnecessarily aggressive moves in Europe and perhaps elsewhere as part of his country’s “mutual concessions/compromises” with Russia for a “New Détente” than to continue with this completely failed policy of pressure.
What the US wants from Russia in exchange is simple, and it’s that it expects Moscow to scale back its strategic partnerships with Tehran & Beijing and to not interfere with Washington’s “containment” campaigns against both of them. Russia is already passively allowing the US and its allies to “contain” Iran in Syria out of self-interested prudence in preventing World War III, but it has yet to pull back from its Silk Road relationship with China. It’s unclear exactly how the US envisions Russia doing this in a “plausibly deniable” way that mirrors the Iranian approach and avoids provoking a hostile reaction from China, but whatever it is that Washington has in mind, it hopes that Moscow will agree to it so that President Putin can forget about international drama and completely focus on fulfilling the comprehensive domestic reform agenda that he plans to carry out during his fourth and final term.
It’s impossible to speculate on whether Russia is even interested in such a scenario at this point in time given all that’s transpired between it and the West in the past year alone, but playing “devil’s advocate” for a moment, there might be another enticing reason aside from the domestic one why Moscow might decide to “play ball”. The increasing polarization of the world economic system into globalization-spreading China and protectionist-espousing America is broadly returning International Relations to its Old Cold War-era bipolarity in advance of its eventual transition to multipolarity, and it’s here where Russia could play a pivotal role in leading a new Non-Aligned Movement (Neo-NAM) that helps other countries “balance” their relations with both superpowers. The US might begrudgingly be forced under the current circumstances and the objective limits of its power to accept the relative curtailment of its influence over some countries by Russia so long as Moscow fulfills a similar role vis-à-vis them and China.
The Great Unknown
It’s a risky gamble because a Russian-led Neo-NAM could just as easily tilt the strategic balance of global influence in the New Cold War towards China as it could towards America, but Washington is wagering that Moscow might conclude that its self-interest could best be protected by maintaining “harmony” between the two superpowers in Eurasia, thus enabling the US to focus more on destabilizing the Silk Road through Hybrid Wars in Africa and the parts of the supercontinent not covered by this “balancing bloc”. Russia’s low-cost but high-impact “balancing” investments could yield enormous dividends for its influence, while any prospective de-escalation in Europe due to the “New Détente” would free up the country’s resources to focus more on carrying out President Putin’s ambitious domestic reform agenda and delivering on the campaign promises that he made his countrymen in order to sustainably guarantee his legacy.
Concluding Thoughts
To reiterate what was just written, there is no way to know for certain whether the US’ latest gambit in trying to reach a “New Détente” with Russia will succeed or not, but it needs to be recognized that the multidimensional asymmetric aggressions that it’s waged against its rival’s interests will eventually take their financial toll and that President Putin might find it increasingly challenging to execute his comprehensive reform agenda on the home front unless he cuts some kind of deal. This doesn’t imply that Russia is at risk of “selling out” to the US, but just that President Putin is accountable first and foremost to his people and then only secondly to his country’s international partners.
If the Kremlin concludes that Russia’s interests would best be advanced through engaging in a series of “mutual concessions/compromises” with the US as part of a “New Détente”, then it won’t hesitate to make that move; likewise, if the savvy Russian leader recognizes that he’s being “taken for a ride” by Trump and that his “counterpart” is offering him a lopsided deal that’s doomed to make his country America’s “junior partner” in Eurasia, then he won’t think twice about walking away with no “deal”. Ultimately, everything depends on whatever deal Trump puts on the table and whether he can convince President Putin that his newfound truce with the neoconservatives translates into being able to get the “deep state” to abide by the terms of any prospective agreement.
If Russia is swayed by the carrot-and-stick combination of the Trump Administration’s possibly sincere commitment to a “New Détente” in exchange for an alleviation of multisided and sometimes humiliating pressure against it, then the geopolitical implications would be profound since Moscow would be ascending into the perfect position for “balancing” Eurasian affairs. It wouldn’t just have China’s tacit support for this initiative but America’s too because each superpower would appreciate Moscow becoming a “balancing” force vis-à-vis the other and freeing them up to focus on their rival in other areas of concern, mostly in Africa. As such, Russia could count on being courted by both of them and finally fulfilling its grand strategic goal to “balance” Eurasia, though provided that this speculative deal goes through in the first place and is actually respected by the US afterwards.
