The Convo Couch: Media Double Standards on Russia/Ukraine-with Vanessa Beeley

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DEFEAT CAPITALISM AND ITS DEADLY SPAWN, IMPERIALISM
ecological murder •
Craig Pasta Jardulla • Fiorella Isabel • Vanessa Beeley


First run in Late October, 2022


Independent journalist Vanessa Beeley joins the Convo Couch hosts for a wide-ranging chat on the leading topics of global concern: The still unresolved US/NATO fueled war in Syria (which thanks to Russian diplomacy may have now subtracted Turkey from the equation); the disinformation war across the globe, and the Ukraine War truths and lies, and the implicit risks in Washington's inability to accept defeat.



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Coleen Rowley Interview: An Objective Look at U.S. Foreign Policy

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John Rachel interviews Coleen Rowley

 


Events continue to unfold at a quickening pace. Facing an alarming escalation in tensions around the world, we asked Coleen Rowley for her current thoughts.

Coleen Rowley is an attorney, peace activist and whistleblower. She’s a retired FBI Special Agent and former FBI Minneapolis Division Legal Counsel. For her exposure of the FBI’s pre-911 failures, she was named one of Time Magazine’s “Persons of the Year” in 2002. Subsequently, she was a Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party candidate for Congress in Minnesota’s 2nd congressional district, one of eight congressional districts in Minnesota in 2006. Colleen is now a public speaker, writer, and blogger on The Huffington Post, Consortium News, and other prominent media channels. Her activism stresses the need to strike a balance between giving intelligence agencies the ability to conduct rigorous investigations of dangerous individuals, and protecting the civil liberties of the public.

We focus on the realities of the international power struggle unfolding in real time, specifically addressing the role of the U.S. in the tensions and its capacity to reduce them. We are looking for paradigm-shift ideas for improving the prospects for peace. Her responses below are exactly as she provided.

Here is what Coleen had to say.

 
Q. We hear a lot of terms and acronyms bandied about. ‘Deep State’ ... ‘MIC’ ...‘FIRE sector’ ... ‘ruling elite’ ... ‘oligarchy’ ... ‘neocons’. Who actually defines and sets America’s geopolitical priorities and determines our foreign policy? Not“officially”. Not constitutionally. But de facto.
 
CR: As retired CIA analyst Ray McGovern noted some time ago, the ruling MIC(Military Industrial Complex) is now more correctly enlarged to the MICIMATT(Military Industrial Congressional Intelligence Media Academia Think Tank)complex. Even as prescient as Eisenhower was over 60 years ago in warning how these war profiteering special interests would soon be the tail wagging the dog (i.e.whatever bit of democracy remains in the U.S.), that former president could not foresee the insatiable bloodthirstiness of the monster he and his post-WWII cronies had created, constantly bellowing “Feed Me!” right out of the “Little Shop of Horrors.”

Q. We’ve had decades of international tensions. Recent developments have seen a sharp escalation in the potential for a major war. The U.S. apparently cannot be at peace. “Threats” against the homeland are allegedly increasing in number and severity. The trajectory of our relations with the rest of the world appears to be more confrontations, more enemies, more crises, and more wars. Is the world really that full of aggressors, bad actors, and ruthless opponents? Or is there something in our own policies and attitudes toward other countries which puts us at odds with them, thus making war inevitable and peace impossible?

 
 
CR: The latest example of this is how US and allied officials usually stop short of calling their arming, training and intelligence directions given to Ukrainian fighters to “weaken Russia,” actual “war,” while various Russian officials have seen through these games and sugarcoated rhetoric to rightly conclude that the US-NATO IS waging an extremely destructive war on Russia via its Ukrainian proxies. Of course, current wars on Russia (and threatened war on China) can get a lot worse, given these nuclear superpowers all have thousands of nuclear missiles pointed at each other and especially having already included the dangerous bombing of the Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant, sabotage of Nordstream pipelines, threatened use of false flag "dirty bombs," etc. Dueling war propaganda machines and the fog of war allow both sides to effectively blame each other for this potential suicide certain to spread to other parts of Europe, if not to the rest of the world. (1)
The U.S. (similar to past empires throughout history) has long been waging illegal wars of aggression and conducting violent coups overturning foreign governments in order to retain “full spectrum dominance” or what it calls its “unipolar power” over the rest of the world. The problem is that the American empire has reached its twilight with its economic power and soft power “leadership” waning while its main economic rival China continues to grow in economic (and other soft power as well as in military power). So U.S. unipolar power strategists feel compelled to increasingly resort to more and more reckless use of hard military force (and accompanying war propaganda, given that part of U.S. "soft power," its control of Western Media is still at an all-point high) to compensate. China’s best efforts these last several years (ever since the U.S. announced its military “pivot” to China) arguing for a “win-win” mindset and multipolar coexistence to avoid this Thucydides Trap (the apparent tendency towards war when an emerging power threatens to displace an existing great power as a regional or international hegemon) have seemingly fallen on deaf ears. Naturally, the illegal war aggression and hypocrisy that goes with war propaganda has resulted in China and Russia becoming quite aligned in their resistance to US hegemony, preparing to fight in defense of their countries as they have little other option if the U.S. continues on its destructive path to full spectrum dominance/hegemony. See Jeffrey Sachs’ piece opinion |The West’s Dangerously Simple-Minded Narrative About Russia and China | Common Dreams.

Q. Our leaders relentlessly talk about our “national interests” and our “national security”, warning that both are under constant assault. Yet, we spend more than the next nine countries combined on our military. Why does such colossal spending never seem to be enough?

CR: I think the main reasons for U.S. spending trillions of dollars—money it doesn’t really have but just prints, hugely increasing the national debt and hollowing out the economy---on its military and weapons systems are not due to actual security threats but to the insatiable greed of weapons and military corporations which have effectively corrupted US politicians and created the MICIMATT monster described above. Most American citizens have not cared enough about ending this wasteful spending on US perpetual war because the various costs of war were made effectively invisible to them by ending the military draft, not raising taxes to actually pay for the wars, and by relying on the aerial bombing of foreign lands and use of foreign proxy forces (to even include terrorist and neo-Nazi groups) which only kill foreign people and destroy foreign lands—see my piece: Recipe Concocted for Perpetual War is a Bitter One – ConsortiumNews

If the U.S. dollar ever loses its status as the world’s reserve currency—with indications that this is already beginning to happen--it would seriously erode its ability to wantonly and endlessly print money and go further into debt. But of course that fear also fuels an ever more desperate U.S. to wage war to try to achieve hegemonic power, so that the dollar stays as the world’s reserve currency making U.S. debt irrelevant.

 
Q. It’s evident that you, and the many individuals who follow you and support your work, believe that America’s direction in both the diplomatic sphere and in the current conflict zones represents the exercise of government power gone awry. Can you paint for us in broad strokes the specific changes in our national priorities and policies you view as necessary for the U.S. to peacefully coexist with other nations, at the same time keeping us safe from malicious attacks on our security and rightful place in the world community?
 
CR: A lot of the answer to this question depends upon how one defines “security” and “rightful place in the world community.” Those in charge of US foreign policy going back to George Kennan’s famous post-WWII “containment” strategy would’ve defined both terms as maintaining the incredible “disparity” of the U.S. then having only “6.2% of the world’s population yet controlling 50% of the world’s wealth.”However, that advantageous (and exploitive) economic power spot has constantly decreased since being declared in 1948. It would seem that the more desperate the U.S. has become to maintain its economic power over the rest of the world, eventually disregarding Kennan’s advice to rely on “soft power,” instead resorting to the use of extremely costly hard military force wars and nefarious violent regime change coups, the more economic power it has lost, to the point that, according to Sachs, the U.S. now with 4.2% of the world’s population, has a mere 16% of world GDP. That's still some disparity but it's rapidly eroding. On top of that loss of economic power, U.S. wars of aggression (euphemistically referred to as “wars of choice” but the “supreme crime” per the Nuremberg Principles), involved numerous egregious war crimes, including illegal threats of launching nuclear bombs, which have eroded US moral leadership making it very hard, if not impossible for U.S. diplomats and other officials to lecture other countries to follow“international law” given US double-standards and hypocrisy or to have any confidence or trust in the U.S. abiding by international law, given its refusal to submit to international jurisdiction and its pulling out of so many past international treaties.
 
Of course, perched as we are on the brink of nuclear destruction, just seconds to midnight on the “Doomsday Clock,” no one in the world right now really possesses any actual “security.” So I would think economic interests need to take a back seat. For the U.S. to become serious about regaining security, this should be the top focus, to reduce the threat of global annihilation instead of the current delusions of US-UK leaders that they can “win” a nuclear war. Restoring a world order based on international law prohibiting the launching of wars of choice and respect for national sovereignty as well as some other very minimum standards would go along way towards restoring our "rightful place in the world community" whatever that is.
 
Q. The general public, especially when it’s aware of the self-sabotaging results of our current foreign policies and military posturing, clearly wants less war and militarism, preferring more peaceful alternatives on the world stage and greater concentration on solving the problems at home. As peace activists, we are thus more in line with the majority of citizens on issues of war and peace, than those currently in power.

What happens if we determine that those shaping current U.S. policy don’t care what the citizenry thinks, are simply not listening to us? What if we conclude that our Congress, for example, is completely deaf to the voice of the people? What do we do? What are our options then? What are the next concrete steps for political activists working toward a peaceful future?

 
CR: If, if, if, if only there was some way to effectively inform people of this reality when Big Media and social media are so effectively controlled by the Government's machine. The MICIMATT has not only unfortunately corrupted nearly all U.S. government officials but it has also effectively brainwashed its own citizens (especially via US wars being made to seem totally cost-free to Americans) and via the cultivation of the two-party "divide and conquer" political partisanship. Officials whose hubris has blinded them and who are now so drunk on power, do believe they can make their own reality. Americans are neither informed of nor concerned about the “self-sabotaging” consequences of "perpetual war" that are boomeranging back on them. In a lawless, democracy-free, corrupt and totally brainwashed Empire, THERE IS NO WAY to replace elected or appointed government officials or the larger MICIMATT that controls the country with sensible, honest, peace-oriented leaders. A very large majority of American voters, albeit out of total ignorance, the banality of evil obliviousness or party loyalty only effectively support US dominance now which has led to politicians of both parties trying to outdo each other as to who is the most hawkish. The entire electoral system is a joke, given that there is nothing to hold any politician to his or her campaign promises. So it's not restricted to certain psychopathic leaders. It's not possible to elect anyone calling for peace! Don't forget that I've been there, done that (having tried to run for congress in 2006). Political campaigns become immediately corrupted due to the Big Money needed to reach voters, the only source of which are special corporate interests like the MIC and Big Pharma. Even the one in a million like a Tulsi Gabbard who did explicitly call for peace (in contrast to almost all the rest who simply hedge or lie), cannot be held to any pre-election promise no more than anyone could hold Zelensky to his pre-election promises to restore the Minsk Agreements and seek peace. So calling for a change in leadership just begs the question unless there's a way to do that without additional campaign finance reform and/or expansion of electoral issue referendums. If the progressive CFAR track record during recent elections is any guide, even calling on candidates to sign "iron-clad" contracts has not worked. Was Ro Khanna the only CFAR candidate to get elected?! And even he has since quickly turned Warhawk. There are many obstacles to getting VIABLE political candidates to sign a "contract" or even a solemn pledge although many lobbies and other special interests do make such attempts. But given that money is power resulting in the corruption of almost all important Media as well as the politicians, these are kind of "Hail Mary" attempts. Heck, most incumbents (or other viable candidates) won't even publicly debate. The hardest part, if not Mission Impossible would be enforcing the breaking of an actual signed and sealed CFAR contract. It's definitely worth giving more thought to overcoming these obstacles even though there presently do not seem to be any easy solutions.

Of course, I can't answer for others in the ever-dwindling "peace movement" here in the U.S.--diminished even further due to the persistent division (with a couple of Quincy Institute-type exceptions) between antiwar conservative libertarians on the right and antiwar "progressives" on the Left. These few stalwarts do continue to write and speak out as best as they can to ever smaller audiences, to demonstrate in ever smaller numbers, and in ever less successful efforts to reach fellow Americans, in ongoing feeble efforts to counter the enormous power of Warhawk propaganda coming from the U.S. MICIMATT complex.

But if you're merely asking what will we do, it's a no-brainer to expect the same efforts to continue. Even if it's difficult to muster much enthusiasm for continuing to make such feeble efforts, lacking all realistic expectation of any bit of success reaching people here in the U.S. due to the effectiveness of the recipe the hugely powerful MICIMATT has concocted for perpetual war in its pursuit of world domination. In my opinion, the deadly "banality of evil" obliviousness here is a combination of Big Media propaganda-induced dehumanization-based war fever and the well-accepted notion that only foreign people suffer the costs, that the U.S. is too powerful, too exceptional, and too virtuous to ever suffer any actual adverse consequences of its wars and fools' errand quest for world domination. In contrast to Europeans who are increasingly beginning to suffer real costs, most Americans seem to think it will always be possible to stay a step ahead of war blowback. Most will simply remain in complete denial and simply be devoid of any ability to care, as I repeatedly attempt to explain when there are no visible costs TO THEMSELVES. Obviously, the overriding majority of Americans don't want a military draft forcing them to kill or be killed; they don't want higher taxes and they naturally don't want more American casualties. Talk of nuclear war is far more acceptable than any such real sacrifice. But mostly Americans believe they are exceptional, that war will never directly impact them as it hasn't happened on US soil for over 150 years. So try as we might, I'm afraid that people in this American empire just don't want to hear or know that war costs are already coming home to roost.

The related question: what should we do is a lot harder to answer. I constantly receive ideas from peace activists on various lists and some seem good but most are recycled ideas from what worked during the Vietnam War era (when Americans DID increasingly suffer costs to themselves so became less vulnerable to propaganda manipulation and consequently started to care). Given the level of MICIMATT propaganda that has so effectively blinded and manipulated people in the U.S. by pressing their emotional buttons, their vulnerability to fear, hate, greed, false pride, and blind loyalty, I don’t think a silver bullet answer actually exists. I admit to being pessimistic as to what we effectively can do to stop or even curtail-NATO military aggression, living in this end-of-empire moment when the democratic process becomes weaker and weaker, elections are between tweedle-dee and tweedle-dum hawks of both war parties, when U.S. leaders have become more and more desperate to hold onto power and thus more reckless, an Orwellian situation where most average citizens have also been so effectively brainwashed as to believe that war is peace, that their perpetual wars are humanitarian and virtuous because bombing a village is how to save it (for our "rules-based order"). No action presently being implemented or which I’ve seen suggested these last years, therefore, appears to have any significant chance of turning this militarily aggressive, pro-imperialist mindset around given the decades-long, solidly entrenched MICIMATT control of the U.S. which has now come to include prosecution of whistleblowers and publishers exposing war crimes and nearly full censorship of any effective anti-war voices in violation of the First Amendment.

 
It seems more likely to me that irrelevant of any of our actions, the Empire is on a trajectory to crash of its own accord, either taking the rest of the world with it via global nuclear annihilation or by a somewhat softer landing, yet one that still entails enormous destabilization and misery for the U.S. and its “allies” (vassals) as well as most of the rest of the world. Barring a minor miracle, avoiding nuclear omnicide is probably the best we can realistically hope for.
• • •
 
We are grateful to Coleen Rowley for sharing her valuable and thought-provoking views. The interview was arranged by John Rachel, Director of the Peace Dividend Project. The Peace Dividend strategy is not a meme or a bumper sticker. It is an end-to-end methodology for challenging the political establishment and removing from power those compromised individuals who work against the interests of the great majority of U.S. citizens. The only hope for our hyper-militarized nation is each and every one of us having a decisive voice in determining the future we want for ourselves and our children.
 

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
John Rachel has a B. A. in Philosophy, has traveled extensively, is a songwriter and music producer. He currently resides in Japan.


Notes

(1) EDITOR'S FOOTNOTE: I feel this point needs stressing along with a bit of clarification. As Coleen herself points out, it can be argued that neither in intent nor in terms of sheer magnitude are the Western and Eurasian propaganda machines (Russia, China, Iran, etc.) comparable at this point. The Western machine—anchored in the US disinformation apparatus, which includes its powerful pop culture component—is immensely superior in reach and global penetration, a demonstrable case of asymmetry favoring the West. Further, while the US uses this huge hybrid war capacity to advance what can only be defined as a criminal and deception-riddled hegemonic agenda, neither Russia nor China (or Iran) are interested in doing so, being, in fact, champions of a new world order based on egalitarian sovereignty, peace, non-predatory international relations, and multipolarity. A case could be made that the world woul not find itself in this horrible pickle if it were not for the monstrous Anglo-American propaganda power. If we survive this chapter, it is hoped that humanity will learn to control the ugly dimensions of this sort of invisible power, and insure a far more democratic, truthful, and untrammeled distribution of all informational spaces.—PG


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What is the Rules-Based Order?

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DEFEAT CAPITALISM AND ITS DEADLY SPAWN, IMPERIALISM
ecological murder •
by Kim Petersen

Vassal meeting fellow vassal: Pedro Sanchez, Spain's PM, shakes hands with Canada's Justin Trudeau. Their nations are no longer sovereign, but submission to the US-enforced "Rules-Based Order" does not seem to bother them.

In fits of, what might well be termed, masochism, some of us now-and-then tune in to the legacy media. When doing so, one is likely to hear western-aligned politicians rhetorize ad nauseam about the linguistically vogue rules-based order. Now and then, the word “international” is also inserted: the rules-based international order.

But what exactly is this rules-based order?

The way that the wording rules-based order is bandied about makes it sound like it has worldwide acceptance and that it has been around for a long time. Yet it comes across as a word-of-the-moment, both idealistic and disingenuous. Didn’t people just use to say international law or refer to the International Court of Justice, Nuremberg Law, the UN Security Council, or the newer institution — the International Criminal Court? Moreover, the word rules is contentious. Some will skirt the rules, perhaps chortling the aphorism that rules are meant to be broken. Rules can be unjust, and shouldn’t these unjust rules be broken, or better yet, disposed of? Wouldn’t a more preferable wording refer to justice? And yes, granted that justice can be upset by miscarriages. Or how about a morality-based order?

Nonetheless, it seems this wording of a rules-based order has jumped to the fore. And the word order makes it sound a lot like there is a ranking involved. Since China and Russia are advocating multipolarity, it has become clearer that the rules-based order, which is commonspeak among US and US-aligned politicians, is pointing at unipolarity, wherein the US rules a unipolar, US-dominated world.

An Australian think tank, the Lowy Institute, has pointed to a need “to work towards a definition” for a rules-based order. It asks, “… what does America think the rules-based order is for?

Among the reasons cited are “… to entrench and even sanctify an American-led international system,” or “that the rules-based order is a fig leaf, a polite fiction that masks the harsh realities of power,” and that “… the rules-based order can protect US interests as its power wanes relative to China…”

China is aware of this, and this is expressed in the Asia Times headline: “US ‘rules-based order’ is a myth and China knows it.”

The Hill wrote, “The much-vaunted liberal international order – recently re-branded as the rules-based international order or RBIO – is disintegrating before our very eyes.” As to what would replace the disintegrated order, The Hill posited, “The new order, reflecting a more multipolar and multicivilizational distribution of power, will not be built by Washington for Washington.”

The Asia Times acknowledged that it has been a “West-led rules-based order” and argued that a “collective change is needed to keep the peace.”

It is a given that the rules-based order is an American linguistic instrument designed to preserve it as a global hegemon. To rule is America’s self-admitted intention. It has variously declared itself to be the leader of the free world, the beacon on the hill, exceptional, the indispensable nation (in making this latter distinction, a logical corollary is drawn that there must be dispensable nations — or in the ineloquent parlance of former president Donald Trump: “shithole” nations).

chemical-weapons inventory, and it allegedly carries out bioweapons research, as alluded to by Russia, which uncovered several clandestine biowarfare labs in Ukraine. This news flummoxed Fox News’ Tucker Carlson. Dominance is not about following rules, it is about imposing rules. That is the nature of dominating. Ergo, the US rejects the jurisdiction of the International Criminal Court and went so far as to sanction the ICC and declare ICC officials persona non grata when its interests were threatened.

*****

Having placed itself at the forefront, the US empire needs to keep its aligned nations in line.

Thus it was that Joe Biden, already back in 2016, was urging Canada’s prime minister Trudeau to be a leader for rules-based world order.

When Trudeau got together with his Spanish counterpart, Pedro Sánchez, they reaffirmed their defence of the rule-based international order.

It is a commonly heard truism that actions speak louder than words. But an examination of Trudeau’s words compared to his actions speaks to a contradiction when it comes to Canada and the rule of law.

So how does Trudeau apply rules based law? [1]

Clearly, in Canada it points to a set of laws having been written to coerce compliance. This is especially evident in the case of Indigenous people. [2]

It seems Canada is just a lackey for the leader of the so-called free world.

One of the freedoms the US abuses is the freedom not to sign or ratify treaties. Even the right-wing thinktank, the Council on Foreign Relations lamented, “In lists of state parties to globally significant treaties, the United States is often notably absent. Ratification hesitancy is a chronic impairment to international U.S. credibility and influence.”

The CFR added, “In fact, the United States has one of the worst records of any country in ratifying human rights and environmental treaties.”

US has serially abused its veto power to protect the racist, scofflaw nation of Israel; it ignored a World Court ruling that found the US guilty of de facto terrorism for mining the waters around Nicaragua.

The historical record reveals that the US, and its Anglo-European-Japanese-South Korean acolytes, are guilty of numerous violations of international law (i.e., the rules-based, international order).

When it comes to the US, the contraventions of the rules-based order are myriad. To mention a few:

  1. The US funded the Maidan coup that overthrew the elected president of Ukraine, leading to today’s special military operation devastating Ukraine, which continues to fight a US-NATO proxy war.
  2. Then, there is the undeniable fact that the US exists because of a genocide wreaked by its colonizers, which has been perpetuated ever since.
  3. Even the accommodations that the US imposed on the peoples it dispossessed are ignored, revealed by a slew of broken treaties. [3]

The history of US actions (as opposed to its words) and its complicit tributaries needs to be kept firmly in mind when the legacy media unquestioningly reports the pablum about adhering to a rules-based order.

ENDNOTES

  1. See also Yves Engler, “Ten ways Liberals undermined international rules-based order,” rabble.ca, 17 September 2021.
  2. Read Bob Joseph, 21 Things You May Not Know About the Indian Act: Helping Canadians Make Reconciliation with Indigenous Peoples a Reality, 2018.
  3. Vine Deloria, Jr., Behind the Trail of Broken Treaties: An Indian Declaration of Independence, 1985. This governmental infidelity to treaties is also true in the Canadian context.
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ABOUT THE AUTHOR / SOURCE
Kim Petersen is an independent writer. He can be emailed at: kimohp at gmail.com.


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John Bolton Coauthored Strategy on Creating Bioweapons to Ensure US ‘Global Leadership’: Russian MOD

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Ilya Tsukanov
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Facilitated by Titanic Lifeboat Academy

Bolton remains one of the world's most notorious (and unrepentant) war criminals.His continued presence at the very core of US power testifies to the moral bankruptcy of this system.

 
Russia's Radiation, Chemical and Biological Protection Troops have released trove after trove of confidential documents detailing Pentagon bioweapons programs across the globe, particularly in Ukraine. US officials and media have broadly ignored the revelations, but part of the information has been corroborated in independent reporting.

John Bolton, the Washington arch-neocon who served as one of the architects of George W. Bush's invasion of Iraq, and as former President Donald Trump's national security advisor before resigning in disgrace, was intimately involved in formulating the US drive for global dominance in bioweapons research, a top Russian military official has indicated.

"The ongoing research by the United States to enhance the pathogenic properties of microorganisms is forcing us to rethink the statements of US officials in charge of countering biological threats. One such official is John Bolton, who [previously] served as the US national security advisor," Russian RCBP Troops chief Igor Kirillov said in a briefing Saturday.


"Consider Bolton's September 2000 report 'Rebuilding America's Defenses,'" Kirillov said, recalling the paper's call for the US to take steps to maintain its military superiority deep into the 21st century. "The paper noted that to achieve a position of world leadership, the United States must maintain its military superiority, and one of the ways to do so was the creation of biological weapons. At the same time, the paper indicated that advanced forms of biological weapons capable of targeting certain genotypes could change the role of this type of weapon - from a deterrent into a beneficial policy tool," the senior officer said.

Kirillov further recalled that John Bolton led the US delegation to the Biological and Toxin Weapons Convention's Fifth Review Conference in November-December 2001. Thereafter, Washington blocked the functioning of the UN body's verification mechanism, as well as proposed measures to check bioweapons storage sites, citing threats such verification measures would pose to US "national interests." Bolton also characterized the BTWC's verification protocol as "dead," and promised that it's "not going to be resurrected."
The MoD's briefing included the relevant quote from the 2000 document, which would go on to serve as a blueprint of sorts for the Bush administration's foreign and security policy.


Excerpt from the September 2000 document Rebuilding America's Defenses by the Project for the New American Century. © Photo : PNAC


The "Rebuilding America's Defenses" paper's reference to the need for "some catastrophic and catalyzing event - like a new Pearl Harbor" for neocons to be able to implement their empire-building plans raised eyebrows among journalists and historians in the aftermath of the September 11, 2001 terror attacks, which took place one year after the paper was published.

New Documents

As is typical in his briefings, Kirillov accompanied his presentation with a fresh trove of documents, including papers related to US efforts to build up the country's military-biological potential. Unlike in earlier briefings, which featured classified materials, most of the documents cited in Saturday's presentation are already publicly available, with the MoD's take focusing on analyzing what is said and reading between the lines to uncover their implications.
 
The docs included the National Biodefense Strategy and Implementation Plan, a policy document published by the White House in October detailing US efforts ostensibly aimed at "countering biological threats, enhancing pandemic preparedness, and achieving global health security." Kirillov pointed out that the strategy has received $88 billion in funding for its implementation over five years, including $17 billion during the first year.
 
Pointing to the document's statement that "biological risk management requires understanding and assessing biological risks and taking steps to mitigate those risks, regardless of whether they originate in the United States or abroad," Kirillov cited this as evidence of US attempts to interfere in the internal affairs of other states.
 
The officer also pointed to US plans to continue the study of the pathogens of especially dangerous infectious diseases endemic to certain geographical areas, and efforts to cover up accusations of military biological activity by inviting the participation of civilian health organizations and scientists to work as contractors for the Pentagon.
 
"Thus, within the framework of the strategy, the United States intends to strengthen global control over the biological situation in the world, and reserve the right to conduct 'dual purpose' research, including outside US territory," Kirillov said.


Excerpt from White House national biodefense strategy document pointing to the dual-use nature of life sciences and biotech research. © Photo : White ouse


Kirillov also pointed to the Defense Threat Reduction Agency's (DTRA) Strategy document for the years 2022-2027, whose unclassified portion similarly acknowledges the "dual use nature" of biological research, and prioritizes US and allied forces' "ability to compete and, when necessary, win against potential WMD-armed adversaries," including by "highlighting WMD warfighting challenges and adversary vulnerabilities through strategic and operational analysis, and supporting DoD plans and exercises focused on CWMD threats."


Unclassified portion of the DTRA's 2022-2027 Strategy document. © Photo : DTRA

The Russian MoD previously implicated the DTRA in a broad range of bioweapons-related activities around the globe, including the operation, funding, construction, and modernization of biolabs across Ukraine working with dangerous pathogens since at least 2005.

Kirillov also pointed to the heavily redacted 345-page trove of documents recently retrieved by Judicial Watch through a FOIA request regarding the Pentagon's biological activities in Ukraine, including financing to Pentagon contractor Black and Veatch. The contractor and others like it received tens of millions of dollars to assist in a range of biowarfare-related programs across the Eastern European nation, from research into plague and typhus to diseases targeting agriculture, flora, fauna and even certain ethnic groups.

"The published documents once again confirm the extent of cooperation between Kiev and Washington, as well as attempts to establish control over pathogens in Ukrainian laboratories through the introduction of the Pathogen Asset Control System (PACS), elements of which were transferred to Ukraine under the label 'property of the US Government,'" Kirillov said.

"This corresponds to the materials at our disposal," the Russian officer said, pointing out that the MoD has already detailed how PACS has been used to enable the Pentagon to monitor in real time the location and use of deadly pathogens in laboratories across the planet, and provide it access to the results of ethically and legally dubious experimentation.


Unredacted excerpt from government document obtained via FOIA request detailing the PACS system and US reliance on contractor Black & Veatch. © Photo : Screengrab of document obtained by Freedom Watch


What Could Go Wrong?

One example of such dubious research has been the effort by virologists from Boston University to create a modified, chimeric SARS-CoV-2 strain with the spike protein of its Omicron strain and the remaining viral structures of the original virus, resulting in an estimated deadliness of 80 percent.
 
"Although the US Department of Health and Human Services has decided to conduct an investigation into the activities of the university's leadership, the Boston experiment suggests that the United States does not have a system of state oversight on R&D in place in the field of genetic engineering and synthetic biology. Despite the high biological risks, the study was conducted using US government funds and without the appropriate approval from the national biosafety regulator," Kirillov said.
The officer cited a recent US media analysis of over 5,500 pages of National Institutes of Health documents uncovered evidence of hundreds of accidents at biolabs across the US over the past two decades, with the incidents going undisclosed to the public and including instances of intralaboratory infections by deadly, genetically modified pathogens, and the escape of viruses and infected lab animals into heavily populated urban areas.



"The high risk of accidents in American biological laboratories is one of the reasons for their withdrawal from US jurisdiction and transfer to the territory of third countries, including Ukraine and other states. This explains the deterioration of the epidemiological situation in areas where they are situated, the emergence of diseases uncommon for these regions and their vectors," Kirillov said, pointing to the spread of a range of exotic diseases across Ukraine during the period that US biolabs have operated there.


Russia's Proposals

Ahead of the upcoming Ninth Review Conference to the Convention on the Prohibition of Biological and Toxin Weapons, which will kick off in Geneva on November 28, Kirillov outlined a series of steps which can be taken to reduce the global risks posed by both natural and man-made epidemiological risks.
The officer pointed out that since the last meeting of the parties to the treaty was held in 2016, the world has faced a number of new threats, "including the pandemic spread of human and animal infections (COVID-19, monkeypox, African swine fever), risks posed by modern advances in biotechnology and synthetic biology, as well as the military biological activities of the Pentagon in various regions of the world."


World: US Bio-Military Activities in Ukraine Should Receive ‘Full Attention’: Chinese Envoy to UN

"In the face of the emerging challenges and threats, the Russian Federation proposes: First: restarting negotiations on the creation of a legally binding protocol to the BTWC which would include lists of pathogenic microorganisms, toxins, and specialized equipment, taking into account modern scientific and technological achievements in biology to provide for an effective verification mechanism," Kirillov said.

 
"Second: Complementing confidence-building measures with information about biosecurity-related research outside parties' national jurisdictions, as well as information about animal vaccine production facilities. Third: Providing for the creation of a scientific advisory committee to assess developments in science and technology relevant to the Convention, with broad geographical representation and equal rights for participants," he added.
 
According to Kirillov, the implementation of these three proposals would increase the transparency of national biological research, and help assure the observance of BTWC requirements by state parties.
The officer promised that Moscow would bring up US bioresearch activities outside its national borders, and the funding these projects get from the Pentagon, at the Geneva conference.


Russia: Russian Military Points to Presence of US-Funded Biolabs in Nigeria Amid Global Monkeypox Scare

ABOUT THE AUTHOR / SOURCE
Ilya Tsukanov is a Moscow-based correspondent specializing in Eastern European, US and Middle Eastern politics, Cold War history, energy security and military affairs. Member of the Sputnik team since the site's inception in 2014.


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Scott Ritter Interview: An Objective Look at U.S. Foreign Policy

Please make sure these dispatches reach as many readers as possible. Share with kin, friends and workmates and ask them to do likewise.


John Rachel of the Peace Dividend Project interviews Scott Ritter

 
 

https://peacedividend.us

Scott Ritter is a former US Marine Corps intelligence officer and author of “SCORPION KING: America’s Suicidal Embrace of Nuclear Weapons from FDR to Trump”, and his most current book, “Disarmament in the Time of Perestroika: Arms Control and the End of the Soviet Union”. He served in the Soviet Union as an inspector implementing the INF Treaty, served in General Schwarzkopf’s staff during the Gulf War, and from 1991 to 1998 served as a chief weapons inspector with the UN in Iraq. He is highly regarded for his expertise in international security, military affairs, Russia, and the Middle East, as well as arms control and nonproliferation. Even more awe-inspiring than this admirable record is the resolve, energy and time Scott has given to bringing sanity and truth to the national conversation, since the US and NATO, with full focused intent and cold calculation, created the ongoing conflict in Ukraine. Scott knows better than any of us how merciless and ruthless the warmongering establishment can be in punishing truth-tellers . . . those individuals with the integrity and courage to expose and stand up to the lies we citizens of our rogue empire are bombarded with to enlist our support for needless wars and military aggression. Yet, he remains steadfast and true to his values. Scott is a true patriot and a real national treasure.


ABOUT THE AUTHOR
JOHN RACHEL  has a B. A. in Philosophy, has traveled extensively, is a songwriter, music producer, neo-Marxist and a bipolar humanist. He has written eight novels and three political non-fiction books. His most recent polemic is "The Peace Dividend: The Most Controversial Proposal in the History of the World." His political articles have appeared at OpEdNews, Russia Insider, Greanville Post, and other alternative media outlets. Currently in development is a new novel set in Japan and another in Africa. You can follow his adventures and developing world view at:  http://jdrachel.com. "Scribo ergo sum."


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