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Briefcase

Best of the Web: UK Supreme Court refuses Assange appeal

Assange
© Dan JensenJulian Assange takes extradition case to the Supreme Court
UPDATED: The case of the imprisoned publisher of WikiLeaks now moves to the Home Secretary Priti Patel. Assange's lawyers are set to cross appeal.

Julian Assange, the publisher of WikiLeaks, has been denied his petition to appeal the High Court's decision to extradite him to the United States, where he faces up to 175 years in prison for publishing U.S. state secrets that revealed evidence of American war crimes.

The next possible step for Assange to forestall extradition is to ask the High Court to hear a cross appeal against the lower court's judgement. Assange's attorneys on Monday indicated that that would likely be their next step.

Windsock

Best of the Web: Sahara dust storm turns sky orange in Spain and France

The scene in the Sierra Nevada, in Spain's Granada province.
© IDEALThe scene in the Sierra Nevada, in Spain's Granada province.
A dust storm hit Southern Europe today on March 14th and 15th 2022.

Storm Celia caused dust and sand to be blown from the Sahara desert across the Mediterranean into Spain and France.

The particles in the air turned the sky bright orange in areas. Areas particularly affected included Almeria and Murcia.


Eye 2

Best of the Web: DPR says Donetsk hit by ballistic missile in malicious attack on civilians

missile shot down donetsk
© Valentin Sprinchak / TASSA Tochka-U short-range ballistic missile has been shot down over the city of Donetsk, March 14, 2022
The Donbass republic's officials have said that at least 17 people were killed in the shelling

A Tochka-U ballistic missile was launched into Donetsk, the capital of the Donetsk People's Republic (DPR), on Monday, officials said. The reported incident took place amid the Russia military campaign in Ukraine.

DPR military spokesman Eduard Basurin said the missile was intercepted and destroyed mid-air, but one of its explosive parts managed to hit the city. DPR defense officials reported that at least 17 people were killed and 28 wounded.

"If the missile hadn't been shot down, we'd have a lot more casualties," DPR head Denis Pushilin told the media. He added that the part of the missile fell in the center of Donetsk, not far from the main government building.

Comment:




Warning, graphic content:





Biohazard

Flashback Best of the Web: Pentagon Biological Weapons Program Never Ended: US Bio-labs Around The World


Comment: In light of the 'COVID-19 pandemic', which - despite its mortality rate being blown up out of all proportion to reality - is, nevertheless, indeed an illness stemming from infection by the SARS-CoV-2 virus first discovered by the Chinese in Wuhan in December 2019, and in light of their pointed accusation against a certain US bio-lab in Maryland being a possible source of the virus, we're re-running this exposé from a couple of years ago concerning the massive global bio-weapons laboratory infrastructure that the US maintains...


Pentagon bio-weapons
Dilyana Gaytandzhieva is a Bulgarian investigative journalist and Middle East Correspondent. Over the last two years she has published a series of reports on weapons smuggling to ISIS in Syria. 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. The following report, first published on South Front, provides an overview of the Pentagon's secretive development of biological weapons in bio-labs around the world.

@dgaytandzhieva
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.

Pentagon's Biolabs

Comment: So much for Nixon ending the US deep state's mad science bio-weapons program in 1969.

Many years ago, we noted that Israel has a similar infatuation with finding something that would 'target Arabs '.

The Pentagon's bio-weapon Frankenstein-research is not only alive and well, like NATO, it has metastasized since the collapse of the USSR, spreading into Africa, the Middle East, and on Russia's doorstep.

President Putin noted the uptick in US bio-research focused on 'Russians/Caucasians' last October and, addressing Russia's Human Rights Council, said:
"[...] do you know that biological material is being collected all over the country, from different ethnic groups and people living in different geographical regions of the Russian Federation? The question is - why is it being done? It's being done purposefully and professionally. We are a kind of object of great interest."
Franz Klintsevich, the first deputy chairman of the Federation Council's Committee for Defense and Security went on to add this on his Facebook page:
"I'm not saying that it is about preparing a biological war against Russia. But its scenarios, are, no doubt, being worked on. That is to say, in case the need arises."
It may, for now, remain more sci-fi than fact, but the concept of ethnic-specific weapons and/or viral means of 'improving the human genome' are clearly uppermost in certain American minds.

What do they think is going to happen if they unleash some kind of bio-weapon pandemic that ostensibly targets 'only Russians'? Or if they accidentally unleash a global pandemic that will hurt Americans too because they were attempting to 'make people more docile'?

It apparently hasn't yet dawned on them that most Caucasians are of mixed descent/genotype. Additionally, attempting to 'improve' the human genome would likely backfire on them.

UPDATE 16 April 2020

See here for a follow-up report in 2018 from the above reporter on this global bio-weapons lab architecture.

See here for the original report during the Covid-19 pandemic that linked Fort Detrick with SARS-CoV-2.

UPDATE 13 March 2022

As Gaytandzhieva aptly states, "what the Pentagon is currently doing is exactly what it did in the past, meaning that its bio-weapons program was never terminated." After Nuland's admission that the US was "concerned" that the Russians may obtain research materials from labs in Ukraine, the MSM went into overdrive alleging that there was 'nothing to see here' apart from Russian disinformation and that it was Putin himself who was planning a chemical or bioweapons attack. The truth is much darker, as the above report shows. Bioweapons research and attacks have been the West's modus operandi for the last 70 years at least! Most relevant to the current situation were numerous mysterious outbreaks of illnesses in countries bordering Russia, such as n Ukraine and Georgia.

Vanessa Beeley reported on 10/03/2022 that four-hundred and fifty extremists have arrived in Ukraine with White Helmets in tow, these are the same groups who have a murky history of "organ trafficking, child abduction, and trafficking, staging of "chemical weapon" events, murder, theft, corruption, and being weapon-carrying members of extremist armed groups". Are we about to see their most theatrical production yet?

See also: Malone on US BIO Weapon Research: Are We the Good Guys or the Bad Guys Here?


Target

Best of the Web: 'Up to 180 foreign mercenaries' dead in Ukraine after precision strike - Moscow

forward observation american mercenaries ukraine
© Topcor-ruFILE PHOTO: Mercenaries in Ukraine
An air strike on Ukrainian military training facilities in the early hours of Sunday has resulted in the liquidation of "up to 180 foreign mercenaries," the Russian Ministry of Defense has announced.

The strike, conducted with use of "high-precision long-range weapons," targeted "the training centers of the Armed Forces of Ukraine" in the village of Starichi and at Yavoriv polygon.

According to the ministry's spokesman Igor Konashenkov, these facilities served as "a base for the training and combat coordination of foreign mercenaries before they were sent to the combat zones to fight against Russian military personnel." The sites were also being used to store, as Konashenkov put it, "weapons and military equipment coming from foreign countries."

Comment: There's evidence showing that not only was Ukraine planning an offensive against the Donbass in early March, but that it was also planning on making a dirty bomb to use against Russia.

RFE/RL reports on the Russian airstrikes:
Russian Attack On Base Brings War In Ukraine Right To NATO's Doorstep
Yavoriv ukraine damage
Smoke rises amid damaged buildings following an attack on the Yavoriv military base in Ukraine on March 13.
A local official said 35 people were killed and 134 wounded in the March 13 attack on the sprawling Yavoriv International Centre for Peacekeeping and Security, a training base just 25 kilometers from the Polish border, bringing the conflict to the doorstep of the Western security alliance.

Regional governor Maksym Kozytskiy said Russian planes fired around 30 rockets at the facility, adding that some were intercepted before they hit.

President Joe Biden "has been clear, repeatedly, that the United States will work with our allies to defend every inch of NATO territory and that means every inch," Sullivan said.


An empty threat since Russia has no intention of striking a NATO country, although Russia will respond if attacked by a NATO country.


The attack highlighted the intensification of Russia's assault on Ukraine, with heavy fighting reported in many areas across the country.

Amid the fighting, Ukrainian officials said Russia had agreed to open more than 10 humanitarian corridors on March 13, including from the besieged port city of Mariupol, where the city council said 2,187 people have been killed since the invasion started on February 24.


Note: these humanitarian corridors were Russia's suggestion, and the Ukrainian military in Mariupol were using civilians as a human shield, threatening to shoot any who tried to evacuate: Greek in Mariupol on Ukraine's neo-Nazi Azov Battalion: 'The fascists won't let us leave the city, they would kill me.'


The International Committee of the Red Cross said on March 13 that hundreds of thousands of Mariupol's residents are "facing extreme or total shortages of basic necessities like food, water and medicine."

"Dead bodies, of civilians and combatants, remain trapped under the rubble or lying in the open where they fell," it said in a statement.

"In the name of humanity, this cannot continue," Peter Maurer, president of the ICRC added in a tweet.


The United Nations said on March 13 that nearly 2.7 million Ukrainians have fled to neighboring countries during the conflict.

The crisis prompted thousands to take to the streets in several cities in Europe, Russia, and even inside Ukraine, where people paraded past Russian soldiers in some cities waving Ukrainian flags and chanting slogans such as "Fascists Go Home!".

"Today is the largest rally in Kherson! In the eyes of the occupiers there is despair, they hide behind balaclavas and look away. Yes, they have weapons, but we are morally stronger," a post on a Twitter account set up for videos from the city to be posted reads.


In Russia, thousands of people gathered and shouted anti-war slogans despite a heavy police presence and threats of arrests from security officials.


Police brutality at lockdown protests across the planet was much worse, and attendance was greater: "This is torture": UN rapporteur condemns criminal police brutality at lockdown protest in the Netherlands


According to OVD-Info, an NGO that monitors arrests during protests, 866 people were arrested as anti-war protests erupted in at least three dozen cities in Russia.

Almost 15,000 people have now been arrested in Russia for protesting against President Vladimir Putin's decision to invade Ukraine,


It's an incursion, not an invasion.


Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy, meanwhile, again warned Russian forces that they face a fight to the death if they try to occupy the capital, Kyiv, whose residents woke again to the sound of air raid sirens.

"If they decide to carpet bomb and simply erase the history of this region...and destroy all of us, then they will enter Kyiv. If that's their goal, let them come in, but they will have to live on this land by themselves," Zelenskiy said on March 13.


If Russia was going to carpet bomb, they'd have done it already, as NATO and the US were wont to do during their many invasions and occupations; as it is, Russia is clearly doing everything it can to minimise civilian casualties, even to the detriment of its mission.



The president, who has repeatedly appeared on social media from the capital, said some small towns no longer existed in the third week of the Russian attacks.

Despite the intense fighting, Russian and Ukrainian negotiators signaled some progress in talks to resolve the crisis on March 13.

"We will not concede in principle on any positions. Russia now understands this. Russia is already beginning to talk constructively," Ukrainian negotiator and presidential adviser Mykhaylo Podolyak said in a video posted online.


Russia said that the talks achieved nothing and that Ukraine instead chose to waste time.


"I think that we will achieve some results literally in a matter of days," he said.

Leonid Slutsky, a Russian negotiator was quoted as saying by the RIA news agency that the talks had made substantial progress.

"According to my personal expectations, this progress may grow in the coming days into a joint position of both delegations, into documents for signing," Slutsky said.

Neither side said what the scope of any agreement might be.

In separate statements, Podolyak and Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said that the talks were scheduled to resume by videoconference on March 14.

Three rounds of talks between the two sides in Belarus had focused mainly on humanitarian issues and led to the limited opening of some corridors for civilians to escape fighting.
UPDATE: As for the foreign legion, these stories should give some idea of what they're up against, and how they're coping (hint: it's not what they were expecting, to put it mildly - this isn't Afghanistan):






Fireball 4

Best of the Web: Small asteroid 2022 EB5 tracked hitting Earth's atmosphere on March 11

Asteroid 2022 EB5
© K. Sarneczky
On 2022 March 11.80, K. Sarneczky found a small asteroid using the 0.60-m Schmidt + CCD of GINOP-KHK, Piszkesteto (K88 MPC code) that was soon after put on the NEOCP list with the provisional designation Sar2593 for the follow-up by other observers. The Minor Planet Center subsequently assigned the following official designation to this object 2022 EB5.

Discovery images (19:25UT) of asteroid 2022 EB5

Credit: K. Sarneczky

At 20:46UT of March 11, Bill Gray sent an alert in the MPML mailing list about the impact of Sar2593 with the Earth's atmosphere and: "to urge European observers to take a look for this object, currently on NEOCP. It should come in at 21:23 UTC at latitude +70.47, longitude W 10.40, plus or minus a few dozen km. That's about forty minutes from "right now", a bit north of Iceland". Below you can see a map of the impact location as calculated by Gray, southwest of Jan Mayen island.
Jan Mayen island
© B.Gray

Comment: To be clear, by 'impact', in this case, they mean that it detonated high up in the atmosphere as a meteor fireball.


Black Magic

Best of the Web: US tried to fund bio-labs in Ukraine as early as 2005, records show

microscope
Moscow has unveiled evidence that Kiev ordered several bio laboratories, which received US funding, to destroy samples of dangerous pathogens. Russia's Defence Ministry says it has proof that these bio labs were working on biological weapons targeting certain ethnicities. Both Kiev and Washington deny it.

The US government has been dodging questions for some time about the fact that it funded biolabs in Ukraine, until Under-Secretary of State for Political Affairs, Victoria Nuland, admitted on 8 March that Washington did provide assistance to these laboratories (but still avoided confirming accusations by Russia that Kiev developed biological weapons there). It is not clear what took the US so long - especially since it knew perfectly well about at least one such lab for more than a decade.

Thanks to the work of the US Armed Forces' Counterproliferation Center, a media clipping was preserved from 17 June 2010, telling how then-US Senator Richard Lugar "applauded the opening of the Interim Central Reference Laboratory (ICRL) in Odessa, Ukraine".

Biohazard

Best of the Web: Robert Malone: Ukraine Biolab Watchtower

biological threat reduction
"No reason to get excited"
The thief, he kindly spoke
"There are many here among us
Who feel that life is but a joke
But you and I, we've been through that
And this is not our fate
So let us not talk falsely now
The hour is getting late"
Buckle up. This is going to be a long one, but I think the topic deserves a deep dive.

What a mess. Are there any grownups in the house? This is what happens in a world in which no one trusts anyone anymore, integrity is treated as an obsolete concept, both information and legacy media have become weaponized to such an extent that what passes for official reality becomes just a funhouse hall of mirrors, and the experience, intellect and maturity of those entrusted to manage these matters is just not up to the task.

Yesterday I published a substack article titled "All Along the Watchtower", which posed the question "Would the Russian invasion of Ukraine be justified if it were for biodefense?".

Since then, we have had a flood of new information drop:

Comment: The U.S. government gave this non-denial denial on Wednesday:
"The United States does not own or operate any chemical or biological laboratories in Ukraine, it is in full compliance with its obligations under the Chemical Weapons Convention and Biological Weapons Convention, and it does not develop or possess such weapons anywhere," US State Department spokesperson Ned Price said.
Weapons are only weapons when they are defined as such. Otherwise they are "research materials" or some other such euphemism. The U.S. obviously and provably has such weapons. They were used in the 2001 anthrax attacks, for example.

The only mainstream outlet covering this is Fox's Tucker Carlson:

Russia is asking for a UN Security Council meeting over the Ukrainian biolabs.


X

Best of the Web: Deleted web pages show Obama led an effort to build a Ukraine-based biolab handling 'especially dangerous pathogens'

Obama
© Win McNamee/Getty ImagesFormer US President Barack Obama
A deleted web article recovered by The National Pulse reveals that former President Barack Obama spearheaded an agreement leading to the construction of biolabs handling "especially dangerous pathogens" in Ukraine.

The news comes on the same day that Biden regime apparatchik Victoria Nuland told the U.S. Senate that the American government is concerned about biological research facilities falling into Russian hands as a result of the ongoing conflict in Eastern Europe.

Originally posted on June 18th, 2010, the article "Biolab Opens in Ukraine" details how Obama, while serving as an Illinois Senator, helped negotiate a deal to build a level-3 bio-safety lab in the Ukrainian city of Odessa.

The article, which also highlighted the work of former Senator Dick Lugar, was additionally included in Issue No. 818 of the United States Air Force (USAF) Counterproliferation Center's Outreach Journal.

Arrow Up

Best of the Web: Inflation rose 7.9% in February, as food and energy costs push prices to highest in more than 40 years

grocery store
Inflation grew worse in February amid the escalating crisis in Ukraine and price pressures that became more entrenched.

The consumer price index, which measures a wide-ranging basket of goods and services, increased 7.9% over the past 12 months, a fresh 40-year high for the closely followed gauge, according to the Labor Department's Bureau of Labor Statistics.

The February acceleration was the fastest pace since January1982, back when the U.S. economy confronted the twin threat of higher inflation and reduced economic growth.

On a month-over-month basis, the CPI gain was 0.8%. Economists surveyed by Dow Jones had expected headline inflation to increase 7.8% for the year and 0.7% for the month.

Food prices rose 1% and food at home jumped 1.4%, both the fastest monthly gains since April 2020, in the early days of the Covid-19 pandemic.

Comment: That's the official rate. God only knows what the more realistic rate is.