Aletho News

1. IRGC: Israel’s Dimnoa nuclear reactor not among Op. True Promise’s targets

Press TV – April 18, 2024

Iran's Islamic Revolution Guards Corps (IRGC) dismisses reports of affliction of damage to the Israeli regime's Dimona nuclear reactor during the Islamic Republic's recent Operation True Promise against the occupying regime.

"The Dimona reactor has not been among the bank of targets of the Islamic Republic's recent punitive measure against the Zionist regime," IRGC spokesman Brigadier General Ramezan Sharif said on Thursday.

"Publication of this news is a big lie and a malignant effort in line with the enemy's psychological operation towards deception of the public opinion," he added.

The remarks came after the Israeli regime's Ma'ariv newspaper claimed satellite images had allegedly shown that one of the reactor's buildings had been struck at least once during the Iranian operation, adding that up to two hits had also taken place in its vicinity.

The Corps launched the operation late on Saturday in response to a deadly attack by the regime against the Islamic Republic's diplomatic premises in the Syrian capital Damascus on April 1.

The Israeli attack had resulted in the martyrdom of Brigadier General Mohammad Reza Zahedi, a commander of the IRGC's Quds Force, his deputy, General Mohammad Hadi Haji Rahimi, and five of their accompanying officers.

In retaliation, the IRGC targeted the occupied territories with a barrage of drones and missiles. The retaliatory strikes inflicted damage on Israeli military bases across the occupied territories.

Amid speculation about fresh potential Israeli aggression, senior Iranian political and military leaders, including President Ebrahim Raeisi and Foreign Minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian, have warned of a stronger and more severe response.

2. US Shows True Attitude to Palestinians by Casting Veto on State’s Membership in UN – Russian Envoy

Sputnik – 18.04.2024

UNITED NATIONS – The United States has shown its true attitude towards the Palestinians by blocking the recommendation to admit the country to the UN. For Washington, the Palestinian people have no right to their own state, Russian Permanent Representative Vasily Nebenzia said at a meeting of the United Nations Security Council.

"In essence it was a simple question: whether the Palestinians deserve to be part of the world family, to fully participate in all decisions of international life," Nebenzia said.

"By using the veto for the fifth time since the beginning of the escalation in Gaza, they have again demonstrated their true attitude towards the Palestinians. For Washington, they do not deserve to have a state of their own. They are only an obstacle on the way to the realization of Israel's interests," the representative added.

The United States veto cast against the proposed resolution on Palestine's full membership in the United Nations is a hopeless attempt to change the course of history, the envoy stressed.

"Today's use of the veto by the US delegation is a hopeless attempt to stop the inevitable course of history. The results of the vote, where Washington was practically in complete isolation, speak for themselves," Nebenzia emphasized.

However, history will not forgive the United States for its actions, the diplomat added.

Earlier on Thursday, the UN Security Council convened and discussed the proposed resolution on Palestine's full membership in the United Nations. The United States, which is a permanent member of the UN Security Council, cast a veto against adopting the proposed resolution.

3. From October 7 to April 13: the era of Liberation has begun

By Sayed Hasan | Resistance News | April 18, 2024

While it would be difficult to overestimate the importance of the operation launched by Hamas and the factions of the Palestinian Resistance on October 7, a feat that forever annihilated the prestige of the Israeli army, the strikes launched by Iran on the night of 13 to 14 April are truly historic, and perhaps even more significant. For the first time, the backbone and only State of the Axis of Resistance targeted Israel directly from its territory, launching the largest missile attack ever recorded against Israel, and the largest drone attack in history. We have entered a whole new phase in the Arab-Israeli and Persian-Israeli conflict, and this is the final one, as all the taboos have now been broken and new equations have been established.

Here are the main achievements of this unprecedented attack:

• Israel's deterrence capacity no longer exists: since October 7, Hamas, Hezbollah, AnsarAllah and the Iraqi Resistance had shattered it, but these were Resistance movements, not a State with much more to lose; and this direct action by Iran is all the more significant as Israel has been threatening to bomb Iran for decades without ever daring to do so, while the Islamic Republic very quickly carried out its threats;
• Iran launched its strike despite US and Western threats, demonstrating unparalleled courage and a readiness to enter into a regional war, going as far as directly threatening the United States and its Arab vassals in the region with direct strikes in the event of complicity with any kind of reaction from Israel: this audacity foiled the bluff of the Biden administration, which officially declared that it would not support an Israeli response from which it disassociated itself in advance;
• Iran's military prowess was clearly demonstrated: despite the fact that this attack was known in advance, and that the capabilities, aviation and/or anti-missile defenses of no less than 5 powers were directly assisting Israel (the United States, Great Britain, France, Saudi Arabia and Jordan, and perhaps even Egypt), Israel's defense systems were saturated, hundreds of sirens sounded from north to south for hours and ten to twenty direct hits were recorded;
• Iran also demonstrated its moral superiority: it strictly applied Article 51 of the United Nations Charter, which authorizes the use of force in self-defense, targeted only military targets (three air bases that were destroyed according to Iran, and damaged according to Israel), and gave advance warning of its strike, which enabled the neighboring countries to close their airspace, thus protecting the civilian airliners that Israel had been endangering for days by massively jamming GPS signals throughout the region;
• finally, as Marwa Osman put it, the failure of Israel's 5 layers of defense was compensated for by a 6th layer of media defense, with journalists repeating that Israel and its allies were able to intercept 99% of the projectiles: in view of the direct impacts recorded, this would mean that Iran fired 1,000 to 2,000 drones and missiles, whereas all the data puts the figure below 500; the aim of this deceit was obviously to save Israel's face and enable it to claim an illusory victory.

"Those who make threats should have realized that military threats or attacks against Iran – in the sense of hit-and-run attacks – are no longer possible. Those who invade us will have to suffer from the devastating consequences of their actions", said Sayed Ali Khamenei, the Supreme Leader of the Islamic Republic of Iran, back in 2007. While this statement has been mocked many times, particularly in view of the numerous Israeli attacks on Iranian bases in Syria that have cost the lives of many members of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) with relative impunity, no one today doubts the seriousness of this assertion: when its territory is hit, as was the case with the blatant Israeli strike against its consulate in Damascus on April 1st, the aggressor is hit directly. And from now on, as Hossein Salami, the Commander-in-Chief of the IRGC, has stated, any open attack against Iranian interests will be met with the same retribution: "We have established a new equation with the Zionist entity, responding directly from Iranian territory to any aggression on its part against Iranian interests, property, personalities and citizens in any part of the world. We have opened a new chapter in the confrontation with the enemy". This is a truly tectonic shift in the equations of power and deterrence.

Those who play down the importance of the Iranian attack ignore its long-term political and strategic significance, which is in line with Iran's vision, shared by the entire Axis of Resistance, of the form, scale and timing of the struggle against Israel. As Fadi Quran points out,

"the scale of Iran's attack, the diversity of locations it targeted, and weapons it used, forced Israel to uncover the majority of anti-missile technologies the US and it have across the region. The Iranians did not use any weapons Israel didn't know it had, it just used a lot of them. But the Iranians likely now have almost a full map of what Israel's missile defence system looks like, as well as where in Jordan and the Gulf the US has installations. It also knows how long it takes to prepare them, how Israeli society responds… etc This is a huge strategic cost to Israel, while Arab regimes now are being blasted by their peoples, particularly the Jordanian monarchy, for not doing anything to protect Gazans but then going all out to protect Israel. Crucially, Iran can now reverse engineer all the intel gathered from this attack to make a much more deadly one credible. While the US and Israel will have to re-design away from their current model which has been compromised. Its success in stopping this choreographed attack is thus still very costly."

While Israel proved barely capable of defending itself (at an exorbitant cost of two billion dollars) against an attack that was limited in scope and lacked the element of surprise, and cost Iran a measly 35 million, there is no longer any doubt in anyone's mind that in the event of a regional war, Israel's defense capabilities would quickly be saturated, leaving its territory devastated and its population decimated. The Israeli population is now clearly aware of this, and the de-population process that has already cost the occupying entity hundreds of thousands of nationals since October 7 is only set to increase.

For their part, the Palestinian people, abandoned by the whole world, and the Arab regimes in particular, were able to enjoy a brief respite, Gaza having experienced its first hours of calm since October 7 during this unforgettable night. The Palestinians were able to let their joy burst forth when they saw the epic images of the Iranian missiles flying over the Knesset and the Al-Aqsa mosque before striking the heart of the Zionist entity. Like the psychological shock of October 7, that of the night of April 13 is engraved forever on people's consciences, and will galvanize the Resistance while speeding up the process of "reverse migration" of the Israeli settlers who have lived through a night of terror and nightmare, and are now convinced that their army is incapable of protecting them. The myth of the "land of milk and honey" is gone for ever, replaced by an unspoken promise of "blood, toil, tears and sweat" without any prospect of victory.

With the senseless act of attacking the Iranian consulate in Damascus, Netanyahu sought to escape the ineluctable reality of the bitter military failure of the army of occupation, despite 6 months of unfathomable genocide and destruction, and to restore Israel's illusion of power. The result is the opposite of what was expected, with Israel weaker and more isolated than ever, and its Western backers disgraced beyond return, Biden having already lost the next election because of his unwillingness to end the massacre in Gaza. Israel now has only one alternative: end the war or go forward with a suicidal escalation that will set the whole of West Asia ablaze. The United States has clearly announced its desire to calm tensions and reach a ceasefire, even if the US taxpayer money & military industry keeps fueling the conflict. The question now is whether Netanyahu will put the interests of Israel, whose very future is at stake, before his own personal instinct for self-preservation, as his political career will be over the minute the war ends.

4. Wheels Within Wheels: Complexity is Real in War

By Bill Buppert | The Libertarian Institute | April 18, 2024

Sober observers may find another reason for the Iranian attack against Israel this month in retaliation for the Israeli bombing of the Iranian consulate annex building adjacent to the Iranian embassy in Damascus, Syria on April Fools Day.

May I suggest it is more important in this case to exhaust the kinetic Israeli/US air defense assets and accuracy doesn't matter as long as exquisite munitions are exhausted; whether shoot/shoot/look or shoot/look/shoot which is a slight permutation on dynamic retasking, controlled pairs or more of air defense munitions are launched as a matter of course to service incoming ordnance. If the object here is to empty the western magazine cupboards by sending your older and less effective munitions aloft (Iran), mission accomplished and you have a very sufficient intelligence mapping of Israeli Anti-Access Air Defense (A2AD) dispositions and tactics, techniques and procedures (TTP) for follow-on responses.

Nations and regions do stumble into war precipitously but there are conflicts in history where the weaker opponents plan and shape the conditions to prevail before the conflict is started; Vietnam is the best example in recent history of reading the tea leaves and setting the stage for success against superior forces.

The west has a manufacturing crisis right now that is existential in restocking and reconstituting the emptying stocks of war materiel. One can either favor or oppose doing that but the fact remains the manufacturing base and capability is an open question for America and its allies.The chaos avalanche of the competency crisis, the reproducibility problems in STEM research & application and the very real infrastructure failures increasing in frequency year by year doesn't bode well for those wishing to replenish the diminished war stocks potentially reconstituting with stuff that simply doesn't work.

The second 155mm artillery shell manufacturing plant in the west just went up in flames in the UK in less than a week. One in Scranton Army Ammunition Plant in PA and the BAE Systems Glascoed Plant in Monmouthshire, UK.

In war, there is a lot to be said for how to leverage shaping the conflict left of bang.

I'm fond of saying that many people are in charge but no one is in control.

5. Blinken shelves special request to probe Israeli war crimes: Report

The Cradle | April 18, 2024

US Secretary of State Anthony Blinken has failed to act on a State Department proposal to bar certain Israeli police and army units from receiving US funds over human rights abuses of Palestinians.

Blinken has disregarded this despite the growing concern over Israeli army conduct in Gaza, according to current and former State Department officials.

A special panel at the State Department made the proposal months ago. Recommendations for action against Israeli units were sent to Blinken in December but have "been sitting in his briefcase since then," one official told ProPublica on 17 April.

The Israeli rights abuses in question mainly took place in the occupied West Bank before Operation Al-Aqsa Flood on 7 October. They include the execution of Palestinians by Israeli border police, as well as torture and rape during interrogation.

"This process is one that demands a careful and full review … and the department undergoes a fact-specific investigation applying the same standards and procedures regardless of the country in question," ProPublica cites a State Department spokesman as saying.

"Blinken's inaction has undermined Biden's public criticism [of Israel], sending a message to the Israelis that the administration was not willing to take serious steps," according to several officials at the department who have worked on Israeli relations.

US President Joe Biden has publicly expressed frustration with the unprecedented number of Palestinian civilians killed in the Gaza Strip. However, US funds and arms continue to fuel the Israeli war effort, and no formal effort has been made to investigate the growing number of documented war crimes committed by Israel against Palestinians in the strip.

On Tuesday, the Washington Post published an in-depth investigation detailing Israel's role in the killing of a six-year-old and her family who were trapped in a car in northern Gaza. State Department spokesman Matthew Miller said Washington will ask Tel Aviv "for further information" on the matter.

The US has said it would look into several incidents, including late February's Flour Massacre against dozens of starving and desperate aid seekers. Yet no US probe has been launched into the matter since an internal Israeli army investigation absolved Israel of blame, and Washington refused to condemn the killings.

The Guardian reported in January, citing interviews and State Department documents, that "special mechanisms have been used over the last few years to shield Israel from US human rights laws."

The ProPublica report comes days after dozens of Palestinians detained by Israel in Gaza were released, with many giving testimonies of horrific treatment by Israeli forces, including humiliation and torture.

6. Ukrainian children ‘kidnapped’ by Moscow found in Germany

RT | April 18, 2024

Allegations by Kiev that Moscow has mass kidnapped Ukrainian children have been exposed as a lie after some of the purported victims were found in the EU, according to Russian children's rights commissioner Maria Lvova-Belova. She is among the officials to have been accused of abducting youngsters from Ukraine amid the conflict between Moscow and Kiev.

The head of Ukrainian national police, Ivan Vygovsky, on Wednesday hailed the discovery of 161 "children kidnapped by Russia" after they were discovered in Germany. He told the national media that he had discussed the issue with Holger Munch, president of the German Federal Criminal Police (BKA), during a meeting earlier in this week.

When asked for clarification by RT Deutsch, the BKA said its officers had identified the children after they were flagged as "kidnapping" victims by Kiev. Their personal details were checked against German records.

The majority of the youngsters had entered Germany as refugees accompanied by their parents or legal guardians, the police said. In a handful of cases, suspicion of "unlawful transfer" remained, the statement added, without offering further details.

Responding to the revelations, Lvova-Belova said Moscow has "long been drawing the attention of the international community to the fact that Ukraine has created a systemic myth regarding the children, who it claims had been 'deported' to Russia."

Last year, Lvova-Belova was named alongside Russian President Vladimir Putin by the International Criminal Court (ICC) as the key suspects in its investigation into the alleged unlawful deportation and transfer of minors during the Ukraine conflict. Moscow dismissed the claim as politically motivated, arguing that Kiev had lied to the court about what in reality was an evacuation of civilians from areas affected by the hostilities.

In her remarks about the German discoveries, Lvova-Belova said her office had identified multiple cases in which children described by Kiev as abductees were actually residing with their parents at home or in other nations, "never having been separated from their families."

She expressed hope that the Ukrainian "global disinformation campaign" would eventually stop and that the truth would prevail.

7. Ukraine strikes hospital in Donbass, injuring eight – authorities

RT | April 18, 2024

Ukrainian troops have struck a hospital and blood donation center in the Donbass town of Gorlovka, the head of Russia's Donetsk People's Republic, Denis Pushilin, has said. Eight civilians including a child were injured in the attack.

The victims sustained non-life-threatening injuries in the strike, Pushilin wrote on Telegram on Thursday.

The Ukrainian forces "deliberately" targeted the town center where healthcare facilities are located, he claimed. Both the hospital and the donation center were damaged in the strike.

Gorlovka Mayor Ivan Prikhodko published photos and videos from the scene showing damaged buildings, including the hospital and the blood donor center. The images show smashed windows and the area nearby littered with debris. One clip also showed destroyed and damaged furniture in a room at the healthcare facility.

Kiev's troops used the US-supplied High Mobility Artillery Rocket System (HIMARS) in the attack, according to preliminary data gathered by the Russian authorities.

Washington has sent dozens of these multiple rocket launchers to Ukraine since mid-2022. The systems provided to Kiev have a range of up to 160km (100 miles) when equipped with longer-range ATACMS missiles. Other projectiles launched by HIMARS and available to the Ukrainian military have a range of around 70km.

According to Pushilin, Kiev's forces carried out a total of 12 attacks on Thursday – missile and drone strikes – targeting Gorlovka as well as Donetsk and some other Donbass settlements. Cluster munitions were used in some of these attacks, the official said.

Last week, Ukrainian forces conducted a missile strike targeting a machinery plant in the city of Lugansk. Nine people were injured, including seven machinery plant workers and two local residents, the leader of the Lugansk People's Republic, Leonid Pasechnik, said at that time. UK-supplied long-range Storm Shadow missiles were used in that assault, according to Russian law enforcement.

8. Ukrainian soldiers threaten to go AWOL if they are not demobilised

By Ahmed Adel | April 18, 2024

According to the Ukrainian portal Strana, Kiev is facing problems in increasing the number of military personnel as a new mobilisation law will take at least eight months to be imposed. Worsening the situation, military personnel in Odessa are threatening to abandon their positions and even kill if the new law does not allow them to demobilise.

On April 11, Ukraine's Verkhovna Rada (Parliament) approved a bill on expanding mobilisation for the military. The National Security and Defence Committee removed the provision on demobilisation from the bill on the eve of its presentation to the Verkhovna Rada for its second reading. Dmitry Lazutkin, a representative of the Ukrainian Ministry of Defence, later said that a separate bill on demobilisation was planned, which would take eight months.

Ukrainian journalists in Odessa questioned military personnel about their thoughts towards the government's decision to exclude demobilisation from the bill on military conscription.

In that case, "I will leave the unit without permission," one of the soldiers told the Ukrainian portal Strana.

Another Ukrainian serviceman said that the deputies of the Verkhovna Rada should go to the front on an equal footing with them, whilst another believes that changes are necessary in the country and that it is not possible to fight with the same soldiers all the time, making demobilisation necessary.

"I'll shoot them all. They don't have such a right… So now I get up and go back to the war whilst they have grown their bellies and will sit in the Verkhovna Rada? This shouldn't happen," said another soldier.

"There is the expression 'Servant of the People.' It is not we who must serve them, but they who must serve us," added another, in reference to the name of the ruling party founded by Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky.

These threats to go AWOL come as the New York Times reported that since the start of Russia's special military operation, thousands of Ukrainian men have attempted to flee across the Tisza River from mandatory conscription. According to Romanian authorities cited by the American newspaper, approximately 6,000 men have arrived in their country across the river since February 2022.

"That thousands of Ukrainian men have chosen to risk the swim rather than face the dangers as soldiers on the eastern front highlights the challenge for President Volodymyr Zelensky as he seeks to mobilize fresh troops after more than two years of bruising, bloody trench warfare with Russia," noted The New York Times.

The new law toughens penalties for attempting to evade military conscription and aims to increase the number of troops on the frontline. The newspaper also highlights that many of the Ukrainians who rushed to volunteer have fought continuously since 2022, with only two weeks of annual leave.

"Soldiers are enlisted until the end of hostilities, with no defined date for release from their obligation to serve. With casualty rates high, being drafted, soldiers say, is like getting a one-way ticket to the front," the New York Times reported.

The escape of Ukrainians from the country has allowed human trafficking to flourish. In 2023, for example, the Mukachevo Border Guard dismantled 56 criminal gangs involved in this activity.

According to Lieutenant Lesya Fedorova, spokesperson for the Mukachevo Border Guard unit, and whom the newspaper cited, the cost to be taken to the other side of the Ukrainian border currently amounts to $10,000. This is incredibly expensive when considering that the average monthly salary is about $500.

Crossing to the Romanian side via the Tisza River also carries dangers, with Fedorova reporting that at least 22 bodies have been found on the river's banks, with many more likely having drowned but never found. Yet, this is a risk Ukrainians are evidently willing to take since deployment to the frontlines all but guarantees death or permanent injuries.

It is evident that the new mobilisation law will struggle to recruit the 450,000-500,000 men the Kiev regime is believed to want since there is no morale among the general population and because all those who are motivated to fight have already volunteered. Failure to mobilise enough men will also lead to active soldiers abandoning their posts or even mutiny, a scenario which will be devastating for the country once Russia launches its offensive, expected at the end of spring or summer, and the Ukrainian military is driven back with high casualty numbers.

Ahmed Adel is a Cairo-based geopolitics and political economy researcher.

9. The collapse of the concept of a rules-based international order

By  Veniamin Popov – New Eastern Outlook – 18.04.2024

After the collapse of the Soviet Union, the United States believed that a unipolar world would last forever: year after year, day after day, it became increasingly blatant in its disregard for the interests of others and the opinions of the rest of the world.

Then the concept of an international "rules-based order" was born: a group of American scholars, former and future officials, presented a paper at Princeton in 2006 entitled "A World of Freedom Under Law". They framed this as a response to the weaknesses of international law, suggesting that when international institutions fail to produce the outcomes preferred by the "world of freedom", there is "an alternative forum for liberal democracies to authorise collective action". In practice, this forum has most often been the White House.

During the Libyan crisis of 2011, the United States and its allies used Security Council authorisation for a no-fly zone to overthrow Muammar Gaddafi.

American troops have now been operating in eastern Syria for more than eight years – yet there is no justification in international law for their presence.

Even American political scientists describe this concept as a kind of asterisk placed over international law. The "rules-based order" absolves the US and its allies of responsibility and fundamentally undermines the concept of international law. US policymakers use this theory to entrench US advantages as a global power. When the prerogatives and rules of international law coincide with the canons they establish, Washington calls them synonymous. Thus, on the eve of February 2022, i.e. the start of a special military operation in Ukraine, Secretary Blinken warned of a moment of danger for "the foundations of the United Nations Charter and the rules-based international order that preserves stability around the world", but when US prerogatives diverge from international law, the concept of a "rules-based order" comes into play, which "should ultimately benefit global stability".

A prime example is the 2003 US invasion of Iraq, which the George W. Bush administration cynically justified as a means of enforcing UN disarmament mandates. Iraq was declared an invader, it survived the military occupation, the death toll of Iraqis is approaching 1 million, and the country is still reeling from America's brazen attack.

Washington's military and economic might at the time ensured that America would face few consequences for invading without UN authorisation.

The very concept of a "rules-based order" set America at odds with the rest of the world, which recognised that international relations were becoming multipolar. Many leaders of developing countries, especially Russia, China, India and Brazil, talked about the same thing. Even American allies tried to show the flaws in the concept. Former German Chancellor Gerhard Schröder warned of the "undeniable danger of US unilateralism", and former French Minister Hubert Védrine once said that "France's entire foreign policy … is aimed at making tomorrow's world consist of several poles, not just one".

According to Harvard University professor Stephen Walt, the US was carried away by a show of force, disregarding the opinions of even its allies and international organisations, and then went off on its own to gain the advantage.

The Gaza war drew a final line under the concept of the "rules-based order": on 25 March, 14 members of the UN Security Council adopted a resolution demanding an immediate end to the war in Gaza, with the US abstaining. The resolution became a legally enforceable document, but Israel, unwilling to accept UN mandates, continued to bomb the southern town of Rafah and besiege Al-Shifa Hospital in Gaza City. Shortly after the vote, a spokesman for the Biden administration called Resolution No. 2728 "non-binding", in a clear attempt to deny its status as international law. At a State Department press briefing, the spokesman said the measure would not lead to an immediate ceasefire or affect the complex hostage negotiations.

International law is clearly against what Israel is doing in Gaza. 2 months before Resolution No. 2728 was adopted, the International Court of Justice ruled that Israel's ongoing campaign could plausibly be considered genocide and called on Israel to take measures to prevent genocide.

On the eve of the passage of Bill 2728, the Canadian Parliament passed a motion to halt new arms transfers to Israel. On the day the Security Council adopted the resolution, the UN Special Rapporteur on the Occupied Palestinian Territories, Francesca Albanese, recommended that member states "immediately" impose an arms embargo on Israel for failing to comply with mandatory measures ordered by the International Court of Justice.

After the above resolution was passed, White House national security spokesman John Kirby clarified that American arms shipments and sales to Israel would not be affected, while the State Department stated, and the White House later confirmed, that "there are no incidents where the Israelis have violated international humanitarian law.

All of this comes after Israel has killed tens of thousands of Palestinians, most of them women and children, and displaced and permanently starved two million people in Gaza. In addition, the Israeli military bombed a convoy of aid workers from the World Central Kitchen.

The crux of the matter is that Washington is arming a country that has been ordered by the Security Council to cease hostilities. Washington's actions are at odds with reality: the massacre in Gaza has made many foreign figures and organisations reluctant to listen to American officials on other issues. According to US press reports, Annelle Sheline, a State Department human rights official who recently resigned, said that some activist groups in North Africa have simply stopped meeting with her and her colleagues: "Trying to defend human rights has simply become impossible as long as the US is helping Israel," she said.

Two years ago, US diplomats seeking support for Ukraine faced "a very clear negative reaction to America's penchant for defining the global order and forcing countries to take sides". In this regard, the New York Times concluded on 10 April this year that "Resolution No. 2728, which passed without result, may well be remembered as a watershed moment in the decline of the 'rules-based international order' – that is, the world the United States seeks to build and preserve… Gaza is a chilling reminder that in a world of exceptions to international law, it is the least powerful who suffer the most.

All these developments were accurately characterised by China's Permanent Representative to the UN, who described the US statements and actions as incompatible with the status of a permanent member of the UN Security Council, and said that Washington was undermining the authority of the Security Council.

10. Could the Russians Seize Congress?

By Patrick Lawrence | Consortium News | April 16, 2024

The Russians are coming — or coming back, better put.

As the November elections draw near, let us brace for another barrage of preposterous propaganda to the effect Russians are poisoning our minds with "disinformation," "false narratives," and all the other misnomers deployed when facts contradict liberal authoritarian orthodoxies.

We had a rich taste of this new round of lies and innuendo in late January, when Nancy Pelosi, the California Democrat who served as House speaker for far too long, asserted that the F.B.I. should investigate demonstrators demanding a ceasefire in Gaza for their ties, yes indeedy, to the Kremlin.

Here is Pelosi on CNN's State of the Union program Jan. 28:

"For them to call for a cease-fire is Mr. Putin's message. Make no mistake, this is directly connected to what he would like to see. Same thing with Ukraine… I think some financing should be investigated. And I want to ask the F.B.I. to investigate that."

O.K., we have the template: If you say something that coincides with the Russian position, you will be accused of hiding your "ties to Russia," as the common phrase has it.

Be careful not to mention some spring day that the sky is pleasantly blue: I am here to warn you—"make no mistake" — this is exactly what "Putin," now stripped of a first name and a title, "would like to see."

There is invariably an ulterior point when those in power try on tomfoolery of this kind. In each case they have something they need to explain away.

In 2016, it was Hillary Clinton's defeat at the polls, so we suffered four years of Russiagate. Pelosi felt called upon to discredit those objecting to the Israeli–U.S. genocide in Gaza.

Protest against Israeli genocide in Freedom Plaza, Washington, D.C., Nov. 4, 2023. (Diane Krauthamer, Flickr, CC BY-NC-SA 2.0)

Now we have a new ruse. Desperate to get Congress to authorize $60.1 billion in new aid to Ukraine, Capitol Hill warmongers charge that those objecting to this bad-money-after-bad allocation are… do I have to finish the sentence?

Two weeks ago Michael McCaul, a Republican representative who wants to see the long-blocked aid bill passed, asserted in an interview with Puck News that Russian propaganda has "infected a good chunk of my party's base." Here is the stupid-sounding congressman from Texas, as quoted in The Washington Post,  elaborating on our now-familiar theme:

"There are some more nighttime entertainment shows that seem to spin, like, I see the Russian propaganda in some of it — and it's almost identical on our airwaves. These people that read various conspiracy-theory outlets that are just not accurate, and they actually model Russian propaganda."

I read in the Post that McCaul's staff abruptly cut short the interview when Julia Ioffe, a professional Russophobe who has bounced around from one publication to another for years, asked him to name a few names.

So was this latest ball of baloney set in motion.

A week after McCaul's Puck News interview, Michael Turner, an Ohio Republican who, as chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, swings a bigger stick, escalated matters when, reacting to McCaul's statements, reported that this grave Russian penetration was evident in the upper reaches of the American government, as again reported in The Washington Post :

"Oh, it is absolutely true. We see directly coming from Russia attempts to mask communications that are anti–Ukraine and pro–Russia messages, some of which we even hear being uttered on the House floor."

Masked communications uttered on the House floor: Hold the thought, as I will shortly return to it.

The VOA Rendition 

The taker of the cake — so far, anyway — arrived last week from Voice of America, the Central Intelligence Agency front posing as a radio broadcaster, under the headline, "How Russia's disinformation campaign seeps into U.S. views." Same theme: The Rrrrrussians are poisoning America's otherwise pristine discourse in an effort to block authorization of the assistance bill, which also includes aid to Israel ($14.1 billion) and Taiwan ($4 billion).

To drive home its point, VOA quotes a lobbyist named Scott Cullinane, who works for something called Razom, which means "together" in the Ukrainian language. Razom is a non-governmental organization "formed in 2014 to support Ukrainians in their quest for freedom." That is, Razom's founding coincided with the coup in Kiev the U.S. orchestrated in February 2014.

Razom works with a variety of Ukrainian NGOs to advance this cause and sounds to me like a player in the old civil-society-subterfuge game, though one cannot be sure because, on its website and in its annual reports, it does not say, per usual in these sorts of cases, who funds it.

Here is a little of VOA's report on Cullinane's recent doings on Capitol Hill:

"On a near daily basis, Scott Cullinane talks with members of Congress about Russia's war in Ukraine. As a lobbyist for the nonprofit Razom, part of his job is to convince them of Ukraine's need for greater U.S. support to survive.

But as lawmakers debated a $95 billion package that includes about $60 billion in aid for Ukraine, Cullinane noticed an increase in narratives alleging Ukrainian corruption. What stood out is that these were the same talking points promoted by Russian disinformation.

So, when The Washington Post published an investigation into an extensive and coordinated Russian campaign to influence U.S. public opinion to deny Ukraine the aid, Cullinane says he was not surprised.

'This problem has been festering and growing for years,' he told VOA. 'I believe that Russia's best chance for victory is not on the battlefield, but through information operations targeted on Western capitals, including Washington.'"

Straight off the top, there has been no Washington Post "investigation." The Post simply quoted two paranoid congressmen without bothering to question, never mind investigate, the veracity of their assertions.

Beyond this, the question of Ukrainian corruption is another case of the sky being blue. There is no "alleging" the Kiev regime's corruption: It is thoroughly documented by, among other authorities, Transparency International, which ranks Ukraine among the world's most corrupt nations.

You see what is going on here? This is an echo chamber, ever treasured by the propagandists.

Puck News, a web publication of no great account, puts out a warmongering reporter's interview with a warmongering congressman, The Washington Post reports it, another congressman seconds the assertions of the first, the Post reports that, and then VOA joins the proceedings to report that well-established, beyond-dispute facts are Russian disinformation.

And the echoes multiply, like the circles in a pond when a rock is tossed in. Here is how Tagesspiegel, a Berlin daily whose Russophobia dates to its founding during the U.S. occupation after World War II, reported on the assistance bill immediately after the VOA report:

"The controversy about the aid, which has already passed the U.S. Senate, is reflected in numerous posts on social media and articles on news sites. As The Washington Post reports, one actor has played a decisive role in this: the Russian government."

When propaganda is king, you have to conclude, what goes around keeps going around.

It is well enough to laugh at this silly business, transparently calculated as it is. Except that this kind of chicanery has a long history, and we learn from it that the Russians have been coming, off and on, for seven-plus decades. The consequences of these conjured imaginings, we also learn, are very other than funny.

When I decided to write the book that came out last autumn as Journalists and Their Shadows, exploring the past was essential to the project. If we want to understand our "press mess," as I call the current crisis in our media, we had better understand how it got this way.

In the course of my researches into the exuberant anti–Communism of the early Cold War years, I came upon a lengthy takeout Look magazine published on Aug. 3, 1948, under the headline, "Could the Reds Seize Detroit?" This piece was exemplary of its time.

"Detroit is the industrial heart of America," the writer began. "Today, a sickle is being sharpened to plunge into that heart… The Reds are going boldly about their business."

Before he finishes, James Metcalfe — let this byline be recorded — has Motor City besieged in "an all-out initial blow in the best blitzkrieg fashion." The presentation featured masked Communists murdering police officers and telephone operators, seizing airports, blowing up bridges, power grids, rail lines, and highways.

"Caught in the madness of the moment, emboldened by the darkness, intoxicated by an unbridled license to kill and loot, mobs would swarm the streets." Communist mobs, naturally.

It is easy to read this now with some combination of derision and contempt. Do we have any grounds to do so? Are we doing things so differently now?

There were dangers implicit in the Look piece. It published Metcalfe's paranoic fantasy a year and a few months after President Harry Truman gave his famous "scare hell out of the American people" speech to Congress in March 1947. Look was in essence recruiting the public as the Truman administration launched the Cold War crusade.

Representatives McCaul and Turner are on a recruitment drive of the very same kind. They are not lying to one another in any kind of effort to clean up Congress. Do not wait for them to lift a finger on that score. They are lying to you and me in what amounts to a scare-hell operation.

And the danger this time is the same as the danger last time. It is the cultivation of a climate of fear wherein the American public is to acquiesce as the new Cold War proceeds and all manner of laws and constitutional rights are abused.

Last Friday the House reauthorized, for two more years, the law known as Section 702, which allows the intelligence cabal to surveille Americans' digital communications — without warrants and on U.S. soil — if they claim to be targeting foreigners suspected of subversive activities.

What does this have to do with the way the paranoids on Capitol Hill, reporters at The Washington Post, and professional propagandists at VOA are currently carrying on about assistance to Ukraine?

Nothing. And everything.

Patrick Lawrence, a correspondent abroad for many years, chiefly for The International Herald Tribune, is a columnist, essayist, lecturer and author, most recently of Journalists and Their Shadows, available from Clarity Press or via Amazon.  Other books include Time No Longer: Americans After the American Century. His Twitter account, @thefloutist, has been permanently censored.