NATURAL HEALTH NEWS

BIG STORY By Dilyana Gaytandzhieva, SPECIAL REPORT For Natural Blaze

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).

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Source: US Army Activities in the US, Biological Warfare Programs, vol. II, 1977, p. 82

The private company performs work for the Pentagon’s DTRA bio laboratories in Afghanistan, Armenia, Georgia, Uganda, Tanzania, Iraq, Afghanistan and Vietnam. Battelle conducts research, development, testing, and evaluation using both highly toxic chemicals and highly pathogenic biological agents for a wide range of US government agencies. It has been awarded some $2 billion federal contracts in total and ranks 23 on the Top 100 US government contractors list.

The CIA-Battelle Project Clear Vision

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.

NBACC is classified as a US Top Secret facility. Photo Credit: DHS

Amongst the secret experiments, performed by Battelle at NBACC, are: Assessment of powder dissemination technology ; Assessment of hazard posed by aerosolized toxins and Assessment of virulence of B. Pseudomallei (Meliodosis) as a function of aerosol particle in non-human primates. Melioidosis has the potential to be developed as a biological weapon, hence, it is classed as a category B. Bioterrorism Agent. B. Pseudomallei was studied by the US as a potential bioweapon in the past.

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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.

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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.

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Biting Flies in Georgia

In 2014 The Lugar Center was equipped with an insect facility and launched a project “Raising Awareness about Barcoding of Sand Flies in Georgia and Caucasus”. The project covered a larger geographic area outside of Georgia – Caucasus. In 2014-2015 Phlebotomine sand fly species were collected under another project “Surveillance Work on Acute Febrile Illness” and all (female) sand flies were tested to determine their infectivity rate. A third project, also including sand flies collection, studied the characteristics of their salivary glands.

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.

A Higher Form of Killing: The Secret History of Chemical and Biological Warfare

Biting Flies in Dagestan, Russia

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.

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Source: “Arthropods of medical importance in Asia and the European USSR”, US Army report, 1967

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.

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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.

Biohazard: The Chilling True Story of the Largest Covert Biological Weapons Program in the World–Told from Inside by the Man Who Ran It

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

Operation Bellweather

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.

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For reference: Outdoor Mosquito Biting Activity Studies, Project Bellweather I, 1960, Technical Report, US Army, Dugway Proving Ground

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.

Under the DTRA project “Virus and Other Arboviruses in Georgia” in 2014 the never-before-seen tropical mosquito Aedes albopictus was detected for the first time and after decades (60 years) the existence of Aedes Aegypti mosquito was confirmed in West Georgia.

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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.

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Under another DTRA project “Epidemiology and Ecology of Tularemia in Georgia” (2013-2016) 6,148 ground ticks were collected ; 5,871 were collected off the cattle and 1,310 fleas and 731 ticks were caught. In 2016 a further 21 590 ticks were collected and studied at The Lugar Center.

Germs: Biological Weapons and America’s Secret War

Anthrax Outbreak in Georgia and NATO Human Trials

In 2007 Georgia ended its policy of having compulsory annual livestock anthrax vaccination. As a result, the morbidity rate of the disease reached its peak in 2013. The same year NATO started human based anthrax vaccine tests at The Lugar Center in Georgia.

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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).

In 2017 the DTRA funded further research – Ten Genome Sequences of Human and Livestock Isolates of Bacillus anthracis from the Country of Georgia, which was performed by USAMRU-G at The Lugar Center.

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.

In 2016 another 21 590 ticks were collected for DNA database for future studies at The Lugar Center under the Pentagon project “Assessing the Seroprevalence and Genetic Diversity of Crimean-Congo Hemorrhagic Fever Virus (CCHFV) and Hantaviruses in Georgia”.

Symptoms of CCHF

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.

When Technology Fails: A Manual for Self-Reliance, Sustainability, and Surviving the Long Emergency, 2nd Edition

A Field Guide to Radiation

Why the Pentagon collects and studies bats

Bats are allegedly the reservoir hosts to the Ebola Virus , Middle East Respiratory Syndrome (MERS) and other deadly diseases. However, the precise ways these viruses are transmitted to humans are currently unknown. Numerous studies have been performed under the DTRA Cooperative Biological Engagement Program (CBEP) in a search for deadly pathogens of military importance in bats.

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221 bats were euthanized at the Lugar Center for research purposes in 2014.

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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.

Source: 1981 US Army Report

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.

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37 people have been hospitalized for Hepatitis A in the Ukrainian city of Mykolaiv as of January 2018. Local police have launched an investigation into “infection with human immunodeficiency virus and other incurable diseases”. Three years ago more than 100 people in the same city became infected with Cholera. Both diseases are alleged to have spread through contaminated drinking water.

In the summer of 2017 60 people with Hepatitis A were admitted to hospital in the city of Zaporizhia, the cause of this outbreak is still unknown.

In the Odessa region, 19 children from an orphanage were hospitalized for hepatitis A in June 2017.

29 cases of Hepatitis A were reported in Kharkiv in November 2017. The virus was isolated in contaminated drinking water. One of the Pentagon bio-labs is located in Kharkiv which was blamed for the deadly Flu outbreak a year ago which claimed the lives of 364 Ukrainians.

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.

Source: US Army Activities in the US, Biological Warfare Programs, vol. II, 1977, p. 82

Soviet Defector produced anthrax for the Pentagon

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Southern Research Institute was also a subcontractor on a Pentagon program for anthrax research in 2001. The prime contractor being Advanced Biosystems, whose president at that time was Ken Alibek (a former Soviet microbiologist and biological warfare expert from Kazakhstan who defected to the US in 1992).

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)

Watson Donald

For a 10-year period (2006-2016) Southern Research Institute paid $1.28 million for lobbying the US Senate, House of Representatives , the State Department and the Department of Defense (DoD). Senator Jeff Sessions’ aide on Capitol Hill – Watson Donald, is now a Senior Director at Southern Research Institute.

Police investigate Botulism toxin poisoning in Ukraine

115 Botulism cases, with 12 deaths, were reported in Ukraine in 2016.

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In 2017 the Ukrainian Ministry of Health confirmed a further 90 new cases, with 8 deaths, of botulinum toxin poisoning (one of the most poisonous biological substances known). According to the local health authorities, the cause of the outbreak was food poisoning into which police launched an investigation .

The Ukrainian government stopped supplying antitoxin in 2014 and no botulism vaccines in stock were available during the 2016-2017 outbreak.

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.

Current Field Tests

Source: Capabilities Report 2012, West Desert Test Center

Past Field Tests

Source: 1977 US Army Report, p. 135

Bioweapons factory in the US

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.

Source: Capabilities Report 2012, West Desert Test Center

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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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).

Source: Capabilities Report 2012, West Desert Test Center

Outdoor field test programs at Dugway Proving Ground

US Army documents and photos show that the Pentagon has developed various dissemination methods for bioterrorism attacks including by explosives.

Source: Capabilities Report 2012, West Desert Test Center

Dissemination of contaminants for biological/chemical tests. Photo credit: Dugway Proving Ground

Dissemination of contaminants for biological/chemical tests. Photo credit: Dugway Proving Ground

Liquid Dissemination. Photos Credit: Dugway Proving Ground

Powder Dissemination. Photos Credit: Dugway Proving Ground

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.

Aerosol Sprayers. Photo credit: Dugway Proving Ground

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.

Click to see the full-size image

Source: US Army Activities in the US, Biological Warfare Programs, vol. II, 1977, p. 125-126

Field tests in Chechnya

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.

Click to see the full-size image

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.

Source:fbo.gov

Genetically engineered humans

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.

Source: fbo.gov

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.

Chinese biological material has been collected under a series of federal projects including saliva and cancer tissue. Among them, Genotyping DNA Samples from Lymphoma cases and from controls (healthy patients), Breast cancer tissue blocks from breast cancer patients, Saliva samples of 50 families who have 3 or more cases of UGI cancer, Genotype 50 SNP’S for DNA samples from the Cancer Hospital, Beijing, Genotypes from 3000 cases of gastric cancer and 3000 controls (healthy patients) in Beijing.

Tobacco Vaccines

How the Pentagon helped tobacco companies to profit from Ebola

The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) has invested $100 million in vaccines production from tobacco plants.

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.

Twitter/@dgaytandzhieva

This article, The Pentagon Bioweapons, is published here at Natural Blaze with express permission from the author.

On 28 March 2018, the European Commission presented its plan for the creation of a “Military Schengen” [1].

Although the reference to Schengen free movement agreements suggests the contrary, this “military Schengen” is not a European project but something Nato wanted. The aim of this Military Schengen is not to give the armies of EU member states a free pass to roam about EU territory without red tape being put in their way, but to extend this privilege to all NATO armies (including US, Turkish armies or Canadian armies).

This plan must not be interpreted as being some way connected to the Skripal matter, which everyone is talking about today. Nato conceived this plan two years ago. It was already mentioned in a report by the European Parliament in October 2016. According to internal Nato documents, it could be implemented in two hypos: first, in the event of a war against Russia and second, in the case of a popular rising in a Nato member state. Between the lines is perhaps a third hypo: to enabling US armies to carry out a fireman role and extinguish riots in the popular suburbs of Europe’s big cities.

25 of the 28 Member^ states have received instructions to hand over detailed maps of all their communication routes and to specify the necessary works that would be carried out on their roads, tunnels and bridges to make them fit for Nato’s purpose. These countries have also been requested to reach an agreement for granting the necessary exemptions to the laws and regulations in force that prohibit the transport of arms and military materials on their territory.

Translation
Anoosha Boralessa

[1] Joint Communication to the European Parlament and the Council on the Action Plan on Military Mobility, JOIN(2018) 5 final, March 28, 2018.

by Thierry Meyssan

Thierry Meyssan pursues his study of national foreign policies. After having analysed the policy of France, he now turns to that of the United Kingdom. While the former is considered to be the « private domain » of the President of the Republic, and as such, escapes the democratic debate, the latter, even more so, is elaborated by an elite gathered around the monarch, outside of any form of popular control. Thus the elected Prime Minister can do no more than implement the choice of the hereditary Crown. Faced with the failure of the US project for a unipolar world, London is attempting to restore its erstwhile imperial power.

Global Britain

On 13 November last, Theresa May seized the opportunity offered by the Prime Minister’s annual speech at Lord Mayor’s Banquet to give an overview of the new British strategy after the Brexit [1]. The United Kingdom intends to re-establish its Empire (Global Britain) by promoting international free exchange with the help of China [2] and ejecting Russia from international instances with the help of its military allies – the United States, France, Germany, Jordan and Saudi Arabia.

Retrospectively, all the elements we can see today were mentioned in this speech, even if we didn’t immediately understand it at the time.

Let’s take a step back. In 2007, Russian President Vladimir Putin spoke at the Munich Security Conference. He noted that the unipolar world proposed by NATO was by essence anti-democratic, and he called upon the European states to dissociate themselves from this US fantasy [3]. Without responding to this essential comment about the absence of democracy in international relations, NATO denounced Russia’s desire to weaken the cohesion of the Alliance in order to threaten it more easily.

However, a British expert, Chris Donnelly, has since refined this rhetoric. In order to weaken the West, Russia is allegedly attempting to delegitimise its economic and social system, the foundation for its military power. That would be the hidden motive behind Russian criticism, particularly in the media. Let’s note that Donnelly does not respond any more than did NATO to the essential remark by Vladimir Putin, although why bother debating democracy with an individual who is suspected, a priori, of authoritarianism?

I believe that Donnelly is correct in his analysis, and that Russia is correct in its objective. Indeed, the United Kingdom and Russia are two diametrically opposite cultures.

The former is a class-based society with three levels of nationality fixed by law and mentioned on all identity papers, while the latter – like France – is a Nation created by law, where all citizens are « equal in rights » and where the British distinction between civil rights and political rights is unthinkable [4].

The aim of social organisation in the United Kingdom is the accumulation of wealth, while in Russia it is the construction of one’s own individual personality. Therefore in the United Kingdom, the ownership of land is massively concentrated in very few hands, unlike Russia, and especially France. It is almost impossible to buy an apartment in London. The best that one can do – as in Dubaï – is to sign a 99-year lease. For many centuries, almost all of the city has belonged to no more than four people. When a British citizen dies, he or she decides freely to whom they will bequeath their heritage, and not necessarily to their children. On the contrary, when a Russian citizen dies, History begins again at zero – his or her property is divided equally between all the children, whatever the wishes of the deceased may have been.

Yes, Russia is indeed attempting to delegitimise the Anglo-Saxon model, which is all the more easy to do since it is an exception which horrifies the rest of the world as soon as they understand it.

Let’s return to Theresa May. Two months after her speech at the Lord Mayor’s Banquet, on 22 January 2018, Her Majesty’s Chief of Staff, General Sir Nick Carter, gave a very important speech which was entirely dedicated to the coming war with Russia, based on Donnelly’s theory [5]. Drawing the lessons from the Syrian experience, he described an enemy who possesses new, extremely powerful weaponry. (This was two months before President Putin revealed his new nuclear arsenal [6]). Sir Nick Carter confirmed the necessity of having many more ground troops, of developing the British arsenal, and of preparing for a war in which the images broadcast by the medias would be more important than victory on the ground.

The day after this shock conference at the Royal United Services Institute (the Defence think tank), the National Security Council announced the creation of a military unit to combat « Russian propaganda » [7].

How is the British project developing?

Although the Foreign Affairs Committee of the House of Commons has cast doubts on the reality of the Global Britain project [8], several of its points have moved ahead, despite a huge setback.

It is important to understand that Mrs. May is not attempting to change, but rather to reorganise her country’s policies. Over the last half century, the United Kingdom has been trying to integrate the European structure, progressively losing the advantages inherited from its former Empire. The question now is not to abandon everything that was achieved during this period, but to re-establish the former world hierarchy, in which Her Majesty’s officials and the gentry lived in clubs all over the world, waited on by the local populations.

In her journey to China the week following Sir Nick Carter’s speech, Theresa May negotiated several commercial contracts, but entered into political conflict with her hosts. Beijing refused to distance itself from Moscow, and London refused to support the Silk Road project. Free exchange, yes, but not via communication routes controlled by China. Since 1941 and the Atlantic Charter, the United Kingdom shares the charge of the « common spaces » (both maritime and aerial) with the United States. Their two navies are designed to be complementary, even though the US Navy is much more powerful than that of the Admiralty.
Thereafter, the Crown activated the government of its Australian dominion in order to reconstitute the Quads, the anti-Chinese group which used to meet during Bush Jr’s mandate [9]. Apart from Australia, this group is composed of Japan, India and the United States.
Presently the Pentagon is working on ways to create trouble on both the maritime Pacific Silk Road and the land-based Silk Road.

The announced military Alliance was constituted in the form of the very secret « Little Group » [10]. Germany was weathering a government crisis at the time and did not participate at first, but it seems that this late start was rectified at the beginning of March. All the members of this conspiracy coordinated their actions in Syria. Despite their efforts, they failed three times to organise a false-flag chemical attack in Western Ghouta, since the Syrian and Russian armies had seized their laboratories in Aftris and Chifonya [11]. However, they did manage to publish a common anti-Russian statement concerning the Skripal affair [12] and to mobilise both NATO [13] and the European Union against Russia [14].

How might this situation evolve?

It is obviously strange to see both France and Germany support a project which was specifically designed against them: Global Britain, insofar as the Brexit is not a retreat from the federal bureaucracy of the European Union, but an act of rivalry.

In any case, Global Britain today may be defined as follows :
the promotion of international free exchange, but exclusively in the thalassocratic context, in other words with the United States against the Chinese communication routes;
and the attempt to exclude Russia from the Security Council and cut the world in two, which implies the on-going manipulation with chemical weapons in Syria, and the Skripal affair.

We may anticipate several incidental consequences of this programme:

The current crisis is a reshuffle of the elements from the end of Obama’s mandate, except that London is now at the centre of the game rather than Washington. The United Kingdom, which can now no longer count on the support of Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, will turn to the new US National Security Advisor, John Bolton [15]. Contrary to the allegations of the US Press, Bolton is absolutely not a neo-conservative, but a close friend of Steve Bannon. He refuses the idea that his country could be submitted to international law, and howls at Communists and Muslims, but in reality he has no intention of launching any new wars, and desires only to live at peace in his own home. He will not fail to sign all the declarations proposed to him against Russia, Iran, Venezuela, and North Korea. London will be unable to manipulate him to exclude Moscow from the Security Council, because his personal objective is not to reform the UN, but to get rid of it altogether. He will however be a faithful ally concerning the the conservation of the « common spaces » and the opposition to the Chinese « Silk Road », particularly since he was the initiator of the Proliferation Security Initiative – PSI in 2003. We should therefore begin to notice the outbreak, here and there, along the traces of the Chinese routes, of new pseudo civil wars nourished by the Anglo-Saxons.

Saudi Arabia is preparing the creation of the « Neom », a new fiscal paradise in the Sinaï and the Red Sea. It should replace Beyrouth and Dubaï, but not Tel-Aviv. London will connect it with the Crown’s different fiscal paradises – including the City of London, which is not English, but depends directly from Queen Elisabeth – in order to guarantee the opacity of international commerce.

The multitude of jihadist organisations which flows out of the Levant is still controlled by MI6, via the Muslim Brotherhood and the Order of the Naqshbandis. These troops may well be redeployed for use, mainly against Russia – and not against China or in the Caribbean, which is the option currently being studied.

After the Second World War, we were witness to the decolonisation of the European empires, and then, after the Vietnam war, we saw the financialisation of the world economy by the Anglo-Saxons, and finally, after the dissolution of the Soviet Union, we saw the solitary attempt at world domination by the United States. Today, with the powerful rise of modern Russia and China, the fantasy of a culturally globalised world governed in unipolar fashion is fading away, while the Western powers – and particularly the United Kingdom – are falling back on their own imperial dreams. Of course, the high level of current education in the old colonies is forcing them to rethink their models of domination.

Thierry Meyssan

Translation
Pete Kimberley

[1] “Theresa May speech to the Lord Mayor’s Banquet 2017”, by Theresa May, Voltaire Network, 13 November 2017.

[2] By doing so, Mrs. May confirms the prognosis I published just after the Brexit, sixteen months earlier : “The new British Foreign Policy”, by Thierry Meyssan, Translation Pete Kimberley, Voltaire Network, 4 July 2016. However, as I shall explain in the follow-up to this article, this vision was quickly confronted by the Russo-Chinese alliance.

[3] “The unipolar governance is illegal and immoral”, by Vladimir Putin, Voltaire Network, 11 February 2007.

[4] This is a fundamental question which was debated in depth by Edmund Burke and Thomas Paine. It is is this irreconcilable difference that opposes the Anglo-Saxon concept of Human Rights (defined by the Declaration of Mary II of England in 1689) and the resulting system of parliamentary monarchy, on the one hand, and on the other, the French concept of Human Rights (defined by the Declaration of the National Constituent Assembly of 1789) which put an end to the three orders of the Ancien Régime.

[5] “Dynamic Security Threats and the British Army”, by General Sir Nick Carter, Voltaire Network, 22 January 2018.

[6] “Vladimir Putin Address to the Russian Federal Assembly”, by Vladimir Putin, Voltaire Network, 1 March 2018.

[7] “British army to create a unit against Russian propaganda”, Translation Anoosha Boralessa, Voltaire Network, 6 February 2018.

[8] “Global Britain inquiry”, Foreign Affairs Committee, UK House of Commons.

[9] “Stealing China’s thunder: the Quads’ counter project to the Silk route”, Translation Anoosha Boralessa, Voltaire Network, 23 February 2018.

[10] « Syrieleaks : un câble diplomatique britannique dévoile la “stratégie occidentale” », par Richard Labévière, Observatoire géostratégique, Proche&Moyen-Orient.ch, 17 février 2018.

[11] “Discovered: two laboratories of chemical weapons of “moderate” Syrian rebels”, Translation Anoosha Boralessa, Voltaire Network, 16 March 2018.

[12] “Salisbury attack: Joint statement from the leaders of France, Germany, the United States and the United Kingdom”, Voltaire Network, 15 March 2018.

[13] “Statement by the North Atlantic Council on the use of a nerve agent in Salisbury”, Voltaire Network, 14 March 2018.

[14] “European Council conclusions on the Salisbury attack”, Voltaire Network, 22 March 2018.

[15] “John Bolton and Disarmament through War”, Voltaire Network, 30 November 2004.

Within the new $700 billion defense budget the U.S. Congress allocated more money for missile defense:

The Pentagon would spend an additional $1 billion on two of Lockheed’s missile defense systems, bringing total appropriations for the Missile Defense Agency to $11.5 billion.

Two incidents last night provide again that missile defense is a waste fo money. It hardly ever works. Strategic missile defense, which the U.S. builds to take down intercontinental missiles, will not protect against the new weapons Russia is now pursuing. The U.S. military acknowledges this. After Putin announced the new weapon systems the Trump administration raised the white flag and suddenly asked for new arms control talks.

Last night the Yemeni army launched (vid) seven ballistic missiles against Saudi Arabia. Three of those targeted the capital Riyadh, four were aimed ar military and infrastructure targets. In Riyadh the Saudi forces fired a a number of Patriot surface-to-air missiles and claimed that those successfully intercepted the Yemeni missiles. The Saudis Patriot Advanced Capabilities-2 system (PAC-2) are made by the U.S. company Raytheon which is also hiringformer U.S. soldiers as ‘Patriot Battery Systems Technician Field Engineers’ to man and maintain the Saudi systems.

Earlier Saudi claims of successful intercepts turned out to be false. The small warheads of the Yemeni missiles separate from the larger missile body and are difficult to detect. The U.S. provided systems inevitably aims at the bigger empty missile body.

This time various videos from Riyadh show that at least seven interceptors were fired against the three incoming missiles. At least two of the interceptors failed catastrophically. The other five seem to have simply self destructed at height. There is no sign of any real interception.

One of the Patriot interceptors prematurely exploded during its boost phase. Its burning debris showered the ground with hot parts.

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Another Patriot interceptor made a u-turn and struck the ground some hundred meters away from onlookers:

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Inevitably some snarky comments followed:

Jeffrey Lewis @ArmsControlWonk
When your PAC2 gets radicalized and turns on you …
—
Haykal Bafana @BaFana3
Even #Saudi Patriot missiles know who the real enemy is: They boomerang back to earth and bomb Saudi Arabia.
—
agitpapa @agitpapa
How a real Patriot should function, killing the guys who did 9/11 instead of serving them.

The other defense missiles seem to have self destructed at height presumably after they lost contact with the target. Each of these Patriot MIM-104C missiles costs some $2-3 million.

The Saudis say that one man was killed and two were wounded in the Yemeni attack. It is more likely that these people were victims of the missile defense fire than of the attacking missiles.

In another missile defense incident yesterday Israel fired at least some twenty of its U.S. paid Iron Dome interceptors against presumed missiles coming from the Gaza strip:

Israel’s Iron Dome anti-missile shield intercepted a number of rockets fired from the Gaza Strip on Sunday, Israeli media reported, after warning sirens sounded around the Hamas-controlled Palestinian territory.

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Several videos show the missiles explode in a flash high up in the air. Such explosions are often interpreted as successful intercept but are usually just the programmed self-destruction which prevents that whole missile carcasses fall down on the people below. Indeed none of a missiles the Israeli army fired destroyed any targets as none were there:

Multiple Code Red false alarms were blasted in the Hof Ashkelon and Sha’ar HaNegev Regional Councils and in the southern city of Sderot Sunday evening as the Iron Dome missile-defense mistook bullets from the Gaza Strip for a fusillade of rockets.The regional councils originally reported that the Iron Dome anti-missile system was said to have intercepted every rocket rocket. However, the IDF later confirmed that no salvo had been fired at Israel.

“No salvo was fired at territory in the State of Israel. The situation in the Gaza region is usual. The interceptions by the Iron Dome system were activated because of the firing of bullets from the strip. Nothing fell in Israeli territory. It is being checked whether mortars or rockets were even fired at all,” the statement read.

Before the IDF clarification, the regional councils instructed the southern residents to remain in sheltered rooms.

Each Iron Dome missile costs at least $50,000. The IDF just spent $1,000,000 of U.S. taxpayer money because some ‘oversensitive‘ system mistook random gun fire not aimed at Israel for incoming missiles.

The U.S. strategic missile defense is against incoming long range missiles. The Patriot systems in Saudi Arabia are suposed to defend against medium range ballistic missiles. The Israeli Iron Dome systems should defend against short range missile attacks.

All three systems are obviously incapable of fulfilling their task. All three demonstrate that missile defense is prohibitively costly. The cost of each missile defense interceptor is a multitude of the costs of the attacking missile. The number of interceptors is limited and the systems can be exhausted and overwhelmed by swarm attacks of cheap dummies followed by a real attack.

Last year the Saudis were pushed by the Trump administration to buy the new Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) missile defense system:

The package that cleared Friday would include 44 THAAD launchers, 360 interceptors, 16 THAAD Fire Control and Communications Mobile Tactical Station Groups and seven AN/TPY-2 THAAD radars, along with associated support equipment and training.

This new system is supposed to defend Saudi Arabia against Iranian ballistic missiles. But according to a South-Korean analysis the THAAD missile defense system has the same problem the Patriot system has. It can easily be deceived by cheap decoys and it tends to hit the incoming missile body while missing the separate warhead which simply continues its attack on the target.

When the Saudi clown prince visited Washington last week The U.S. president made an embarrassing show (vid) out of such sales. The Saudis will have to pay some $15 billion for the basically useless THAAD system. “That’s peanuts to you,” said Trump, but Saudi citizens may not agree with such banter. The clown prince was, apparently, not amused.

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But what can he do? If he stops buying useless U.S. weapons the borg in Washington will ‘regime change’ him in no time.

Current missile defense is economically not viable. The limits of physics make it easy to overcome. But the systems still have their purpose.

For U.S. politicians they are a salable way to move taxpayer money towards the owners of the defense industry. For the Israeli government they are a (U.S. paid) psychological tool to prevent its people from protesting against the consequences of Zionist land robbery. The Saudis see them as inevitable ransom payment in the U.S. extortion scheme of its ‘allies’.

Yesterday’s public failures of missile defense endanger those schemes. If the general public comes to believe that missile defense can not work the whole scam falls apart. Any future sale should thus be conditioned on a promise to not ever use the acquired system.

“The West is going to war with the East. The likely initial targets are Syria, and Iran. Any attack on Iran is a declaration of war on Russia.”

Brad Cabana

As sad, and painful, as it is to contemplate, let alone say, it appears the West is going to war with Russia. Yes Russia. The firing of US National Security Advisor McMaster today, and most significantly his replacement with John Bolton point to a direct confrontation against Iran. Bolton has always advocated war with Iran, but never really been in a position to make good on the threat. Now he has been invited to join US President Trump’s cabinet – a cabinet already dominated by US Generals (for the most part retired). Trump now has what any clear analysis would point to – a war cabinet.

In a game of one-up-man-ship, UK Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson has been blowing the proverbial bridges between Russia and the western world to pieces in the last several weeks with comments that have really been beyond the pale. He suggested that Russian President Putin was the person that gave the go ahead for the attempted assassination of a former Russian spy in England. He then absolutely blew that out of the water by claiming yesterday that holding the World Soccer Cup in Russia was akin to Hitler’s 1936 Olympics. This last point I personally took huge exception to, because the fact is the 25 million or so Soviets that died actually fighting Hitler saved England fro German invasion – an invasion that England would have lost hands down. In truth, Johnson might just as well of accused modern day Israel of being a Nazi state. That’s just how bizarre Johnson’s attack on Russia was. And perhaps more importantly in the scheme of things, how incendiary the attack was.

What is becoming clear is that the US, and its western allies, are laying the groundwork for a massive war, perhaps a world war, with Eurasia and its allies in the Middle East. With the appointment of Bolton on the same day as Trump signed the first trade action against China (and he emphasized it was the first of many) the signs are very clear. The West is going to war with the East. The likely initial targets are Syria, and Iran. Any attack on Iran is a declaration of war on Russia. Iran after all is not just an important ally to Russia, but it sits right on the border with Russia. In other words, Russia would be pulled into such a war out of self-defence if for no other reason.

Bearing Russia’s position in mind, think back to last week when Russia announced a number of new generation weapons it stated were untouchable by Western anti-missile capabilities. It is quite obvious that Russia is attempting to dissuade the West from its intended push against one of Russia’s most strategic interests – Iran. It’s also quite evident from Trump’s gestures today that he is completely unmoved by Russia’s message. That can only mean one thing – we are going to war. When I say we, I mean the West. As someone who has served, and the son of a World War II veteran I am disgusted by Western aggression toward Eurasia. Yes, I said Western aggression. Have a look around at all the conflicts going on. They’re all going on around Russia’s or China’s backyard – not so much in the West…

Nobody knows for certain how this will play its deadly hand out. One thing is for certain, scrapping of the Iran Nuclear Agreement appears imminent. Also, a reigniting of the Saudi/Iran conflict is sure to follow. The West will need an easily understandable excuse to attack Iran, and that can only be one of three things really: an attack on Israel; coming to the aid of Saudi; or a North Korea style action against Iran having a nuclear weapon once the aforementioned agreement is unilaterally cancelled.

This won’t be a picnic for the West though. Leave a direct conflict with Russia and China out of the equation for the moment. Consider that a Saudi/Iran conflict, or an Israeli/Iran conflict would have the affect of tripling oil prices over night. Then consider a massive sell off on the stock market. Factor in the US Federal Reserves increases in its over night lending rates. All these things, and quite a few economic problems not mentioned here, would plummet the Western economies into a cataclysmic spiral. The markets are very jittery as it is, sensing as they do that things have gone quite far off the tracks. Many people have said to me that such an economic collapse would cause Eurasia to fall as well, but I always answer that statement like this: “Remember in 2008 when the market collapsed? China sent 250 million people home to their villages, without a job, and that was that. There was no revolt, or any social turmoil. If that happened in the US or any Western economy, there would be civil insurrection almost over night. Therein lies the difference. While China would be hurt, it can sustain the blow. The Western world cannot. In other words, a war of economic attrition.”

I don’t know if there is anything the ordinary citizen can do to forestall this madness – as one American recently said to me: “all I can do is vote”. But, I suggest if you like the world in one piece and you are concerned about the end of humanity, get out and say something. Be accountable to yourself, to humanity, and the world. Don’t be a sheeple.

Source: Rock Solid Politics

Authored by Nafeez Ahmed via Oriental Review,

The official claim that ‘Novichok’ points solely to Russia has been discredited…

On Monday, Prime Minister Theresa May announced that former Russian spy, Sergey Skripal and his daughter Yulia, were poisoned with “a military-grade nerve agent of a type developed by Russia” known as ‘Novichok’.

The chemical agent was identified by the Defence Science and Technology Laboratory at Porton Down. May referred to the British government’s “knowledge that Russia has previously produced this agent and would still be capable of doing so” as a basis to conclude that Russia’s culpability in the attack “is highly likely.”

On these grounds, she claimed that only two scenarios are possible:

“Either this was a direct act by the Russian State against our country. Or the Russian government lost control of this potentially catastrophically damaging nerve agent and allowed it to get into the hands of others.”

The British government’s line has been chorused uncritically by the entire global press corps, with little scrutiny of its plausibility.

But there is a problem: far from offering a clear-cut evidence-trail to Vladimir Putin’s chemical warfare labs, the use of Novichok in the nerve gas attack on UK soil points to a wider set of potential suspects, of which Russia is in fact the least likely.

Russia did actually destroy its nerve agent capabilities according to the OPCW

Yet a concerted effort is being made to turn facts on their head.

No clearer sign of this can be found than in the statement by Ambassador Peter Wilson, UK Permanent Representative to the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW), in which he claimed that Russia has “failed for many years” to fully disclose its chemical weapons programme.

Wilson was parroting a claim made a year earlier by the US State Department that Russia had not made a complete declaration of its chemical weapons stockpile: “The United States cannot certify that Russia has met its obligations under the Convention.”

Yet these claims are contradicted by the OPCW itself, which in September 2017 declared that the independent global agency had rigorously verified the completed destruction of Russia’s entire chemical weapons programme, including of course its nerve agent production capabilities.

OPCW Director-General, Ahmet Üzümcü, congratulated Russia with the following announcement:

“The completion of the verified destruction of Russia’s chemical weapons programme is a major milestone in the achievement of the goals of the Chemical Weapons Convention. I congratulate Russia and I commend all of their experts who were involved for their professionalism and dedication. I also express my appreciation to the States Parties that assisted the Russian Federation with its destruction program and thank the OPCW staff who verified the destruction.”

The OPCW’s press statement confirmed that:

“The remainder of Russia’s chemical weapons arsenal has been destroyed at the Kizner Chemical Weapons Destruction Facility in the Udmurt Republic. Kizner was the last operating facility of seven chemical weapons destruction facilities in Russia. The six other facilities (Kambarka, Gorny, Maradykovsky, Leonidovka, Pochep and Shchuchye) completed work and were closed between 2005 and 2015.”

The OPCW’s reports on Russia confirm that the agency found no evidence of the existence of an active Novichok programme. It should be noted that Dr. Robin M. Black, formerly of Porton Down’s Defence Science and Technology Laboratory, sits on the Scientific Advisory Board of the OPCW. And a scientific review by Dr. Black also raised doubts about Novichok, noting that its properties and structures had not been independently confirmed.

So in short, the OPCW does not agree with the vague US and British insistence that Russia failed to declare all its chemical weapons stockpiles and facilities, and does not agree with the insistence that Novichok stockpiles or production facilities still exist in Russia. But it seems that neither does His Excellency Peter Wilson himself.

Amb. Peter Wilson (United Kingdom)

In a statement to the OPCW in November 2017, Ambassador Wilson congratulated the OPCW on verifying the complete destruction of Russia’s chemical weapons programme with high praise for its director, Ahmet Üzümcü. Wilson listed the latter’s numerous achievements including:

“… the completion of the verified destruction of Russia’s declared chemical weapons programme.”

He did not say anything about Russia’s actions being incomplete, or OPCW’s actions being inadequate. So how credible is his recent insinuation that the OPCW’s position is wrong?

Arguably, not very. The lack of credibility of the Anglo-American critique of Russia’s destruction of its chemical weapons was called out in a detailed report by the respected Clingandael Institute of International Relations. The report, co-funded by the European Union, criticised the United States for adopting an unhelpful politicised approach to the chemical weapons issue in relation to Russia, while hypocritically delaying its own compliance obligations, all of which was done in a manner which bypassed OPCW mechanisms. It’s worth reproducing that entire text in full:

“… on a political level there have been some drawbacks. Particularly interesting is that compliance concerns tend to be raised by the US, while this state is itself being criticized for delays in disarmament. In 2005, the US expressed concern about active offensive CW research and development (R&D) programmes, as well as inaccurate declarations regarding past CW transfers and undeclared CW facilities in Russia, China, Iran, Libya and Sudan. The US decided to address these concerns through bilateral channels, rather than directly engaging formal OPCW mechanisms. In the meantime, the US itself has been criticized for exporting arms classified as ‘toxicological agents’ (notably tear gas) to numerous countries in the Middle East (between 2009–13). Since 9/11, the US has also intensified its R&D on non-lethal chemical agents, along with new means of delivery and dispersal. The CWC (Article II, para. 2) does cover chemical compounds with incapacitating or irritant effects… Taken together with the delay in destroying US CW stockpiles, this has taken a toll on the US’ standing within the CWC, undermining its role as a ‘regime hegemon’. Since these compliance concerns remain unresolved, this has also, ipso facto, affected the authority of the CWC, and hence the OPCW.”

At this point, neither the US nor Britain have offered any actual evidence as to why the OPCW’s verification process regarding Russia’s dismantlement of its chemical weapons capability should be disbelieved. They have provided no evidence that Russia retains any Novichok stockpiles.

The OPCW is, of course, the same agency whose independent investigations the West is relying on to determine culpability in major chemical weapons attacks in Syria. Why, then, would the OPCW’s conclusions on Syria be considered gospel truth, while its conclusions on Russia be rejected?

Other states have Novichok capabilities, but the British government doesn’t want to investigate them

The OPCW’s authoritative verdict on Russia’s now destroyed chemical weapons capabilities should be enough to give anyone pause for thought in rushing to judgement concerning Russian responsibility for the Novichok attack.

Instead, the British government appears to have no interest in investigating the fact that there are other state agencies with significant nerve agent capabilities. Like its ally, the United States.

Under Boris Yeltsin, who won Russian elections thanks to Western covert meddling, the Russian government had declared that it was not stockpiling Novichok. This is why Yeltsin did not report Novichok’s existence under chemical-weapons conventions at the time — because the official Russian position was that the stockpiles no longer existed. Yeltsin’s Western allies did not disagree at the time.

On the contrary, the Americans were involved in the dismantlement of Russia’s remaining Novichok capabilities.

In August 1999, as the BBC reported, US defence experts arrived in Uzbekistan to help “dismantle and decontaminate one of the former Soviet Union’s largest chemical weapons testing facilities.” The facility was known as “a major research site for a new generation of secret, highly lethal chemical weapons, known as Novichok”, and provided the US ample opportunity to learn about this nerve agent and reproduce it for testing and defence purposes.

But it is not just the US. According to Craig Murray — former US Ambassador to Uzbekistan and prior to that a longtime career diplomat in the UK Foreign Office who worked across Africa, Eastern Europe, and Central Asia — the British government itself has advanced capabilities in Novichok:

“The ‘novochok’ group of nerve agents — a very loose term simply for a collection of new nerve agents the Soviet Union were developing fifty years ago — will almost certainly have been analysed and reproduced by Porton Down. That is entirely what Porton Down is there for. It used to make chemical and biological weapons as weapons, and today it still does make them in small quantities in order to research defences and antidotes. After the fall of the Soviet Union Russian chemists made a lot of information available on these nerve agents. And one country which has always manufactured very similar persistent nerve agents is Israel.”

But the British government doesn’t want to investigate Porton Down, not even to rule out the possibility that it may have ‘lost control’ of some of its Novichok stockpiles.

Porton Down: proudly experimenting with nerve gas on the British public from the 1950s to 1989

Porton Down, Salisbury, the UK Ministry of Defence’s Defence Science and Technology Laboratory.

Perhaps the government is worried about what it might actually discover if it asks too many questions about Porton Down itself.

The facility has a somewhat chequered history in relation to the abuse of chemical and biological weapons programmes that has been largely forgotten. This history illustrates that the British government has not at all been averse to using chemical and biological weapons on its own population, just to see what happens.

Two years ago, the Independent reported on new historical research which found that during the Cold War, the British government “used the general public as unwitting biological and chemical warfare guinea pigs on a much greater scale than previously thought.”

Over 750 secret operations had been carried out on “hundreds of thousands of ordinary Britons” involving “biological and chemical warfare attacks launched from aircraft, ships and road vehicles.”

“British military aircraft dropped thousands of kilos of a chemical of ‘largely unknown toxic potential’ on British civilian populations in and around Salisbury in Wiltshire, Cardington in Bedfordshire and Norwich in Norfolk… Substantial quantities were also dispersed across parts of the English Channel and the North Sea. It’s not known the extent to which coastal towns in England and France were affected… commuters on the London underground were also used as guinea pigs on a substantially larger scale than previously thought. The new research has discovered that a hitherto unknown biological warfare field trial was carried out in the capital’s tube system in May 1964. The secret operation — carried out by scientists from the government’s chemical and biological warfare research centre at Porton Down, Wiltshire — involved the release of large quantities of bacteria called Bacillus globigii…”

The new research also shows that many of the British scientists involved “had grave misgivings about the field trials… some had long felt that it was not politically advisable to conduct large-scale trials in Britain with live bacterial agents.” Such reservations did not stop the government from authorising these dangerous experiments.

Porton Down also conducted extensive nerve agent tests on British soldiers around this time.

Less well-known, though, is the fact that members of the British armed forces “were experimented on with Sarin, the deadly nerve gas, as late as 1983 at the Government’s defence research centre at Porton Down,” according to Ministry of Defence documents obtained by The Telegraph. Operation Antler, as the police investigation into the experiments was called, found that the nerve agent trials had gone on as late as 1989.

A secret British intelligence unit is actively arranging ‘honey trap’ propaganda operations to incriminate ‘adversaries’

There are strong reasons, then, not to fall slavishly in line with the British government’s rush to judgement on Russia.

But this is particularly the case given what we now know about British intelligence service’s disinformation intent and capabilities when dealing with “adversaries.”

National Security Agency documents leaked by whistleblower Edward Snowden revealed that a secret British intelligence unit, Joint Threat Research and Intelligence Group (JTRIG), uses a range of “dirty tricks” against “nations, hackers, terror groups, suspected criminals and arms dealers that include releasing computer viruses, spying on journalists and diplomats, jamming phones and computers, and using sex to lure targets into ‘honey traps,’” according to a NBC News investigation.

Although much of the focus of these operations is online, they also include the goal of “having an impact in the real world” and “using online techniques to make something happen in the real or online world.” The modus operandi is to “destroy, deny, degrade [and] disrupt” enemies by “discrediting” them and planting misinformation designed to look like actions were performed by them.

Propaganda campaigns can use deception, mass messaging and “pushing stories” via Twitter, Flickr, Facebook and YouTube. One section of the document explains that such influence operations can involve direct efforts to manipulate people’s behaviour into compromising situations:

“Honey trap; a great option. Very successful when it works.

– Get someone to go somewhere on the internet, or a physical location to be met by a ‘friendly face’.

– JTRIG has the ability to ‘shape’ the environment on occasions.”

Such capabilities and operations of deception at the heart of the British state raise perfectly reasonable questions about whether the UK’s intelligence services are deliberately seeking to pin the blame on Russia for geopolitical reasons — or perhaps, even, to distract from scrutiny of allies who might be legitimate suspects.

According to former British diplomat Craig Murray, for instance, it is more reasonable to cast the net of suspicion onto Israel for many of the same reasons cited by the British government:

“Israel has the nerve agents. Israel has Mossad which is extremely skilled at foreign assassinations. Theresa May claimed Russian propensity to assassinate abroad as a specific reason to believe Russia did it. Well Mossad has an even greater propensity to assassinate abroad. And while I am struggling to see a Russian motive for damaging its own international reputation so grieviously, Israel has a clear motivation for damaging the Russian reputation so grieviously. Russian action in Syria has undermined the Israeli position in Syria and Lebanon in a fundamental way, and Israel has every motive for damaging Russia’s international position by an attack aiming to leave the blame on Russia.”

Murray further points out that it is unlikely the Russians “waited eight years to do this, they could have waited until after their World Cup.” Similarly, it makes little sense to suddenly assassinate a “swapped spy” who had already served his time and been living out in the open for years in London.

Murray is no blind Russiaphile, and so his critical analysis cannot be dismissed on grounds of partisanship. He describes himself as “someone who believes that agents of the Russian state did assassinate Litvinenko, and that the Russian security services carried out at least some of the apartment bombings that provided the pretext for the brutal assault on Chechnya. I believe the Russian occupation of Crimea and parts of Georgia is illegal.”

But he cautions that, given the severe lack of credible evidence on this case, he is “alarmed by the security, spying and armaments industries’ frenetic efforts to stoke Russophobia and heat up the new cold war.”

Indeed, INSURGE just reported on an extensive US Army study published last year which not only stated quite unequivocally that NATO expansionism is the main driver of Russian belligerence, but that NATO’s main interest has always been to rollback Russia’s regional influence so that the West can dominate Central Asian natural resources and oil pipeline routes.

The document recommended that in 2018, the US should consider pursuing a concerted covert “information” campaign to undermine Putin.

Is this what we are seeing play out right now as Theresa May rushes to punish Putin?

This leaves us with the following. The actual history of Novichok shows that out of the countries discussed here, Russia is the only state to have been certified by the OPCW as having destroyed its chemical weapons programme, including its nerve agent capabilities. The OPCW found no evidence to indicate that Russia retains an active Novichok capability. The same is not the case for the US, Britain and Israel.

There is no legitimate reason for the British authorities to rule out that any of these states could have at the very least ‘lost control’ of their nerve agent stockpiles. The fact that the government chose, instead, to shut down all avenues of inquiry other than to claim falsely that the “only possibility” is for all roads to lead to Russia, demonstrates that we are almost certainly in the midst of a concerted state propaganda operation.

It may turn out that Russia did indeed carry out the Novichok attack. But at this time, the British state has no real basis to presume this. Which implies that the state has already decided that it wants to manufacture a path to heightened hostilities with Russia, regardless of the evidence. And that does not bode well.