All Global Research articles can be read in 51 languages by activating the Translate Website button below the author’s name (only available in desktop version).

To receive Global Research’s Daily Newsletter (selected articles), click here.

Click the share button above to email/forward this article to your friends and colleagues. Follow us on Instagram and Twitter and subscribe to our Telegram Channel. Feel free to repost and share widely Global Research articles.

Big Tech’s Effort to Silence Truth-tellers: Global Research Online Referral Campaign

***

The Eastern Portion of Europe and the End of WWI 

The end of WWI resulted in significant changes concerning the political boundaries of Central, East, and South-East Europe. For the reason of the extent of these changes and the newly born regional wars over the land distribution that erupted in several mini-regions in the eastern portion of Europe, it was to take around five to six years before new borders between the states were finally established and stabilized at least up to 1938. 

The political transformation of the eastern portion of Europe after 1918 was a direct result of the collapsing both the German Second Empire and the Austro-Hungarian Empire during the last months of 1918, as well as due to unsettled western borders of the ex-Russian Empire (collapsed in 1917) which still was involved into the revolution and civil war. Most of the boundary changes in this half of Europe after WWI were direct result of decisions reached by the Entente powers (Allied and Associated Powers during WWI) at the Paris Peace Conference that began in early 1919 resulting in five peace treaties, named after the castles outside Paris where they have been finally signed. Each of these peace treaties was dealing in part, but in some cases entirely, with states in Central Europe that was the case, for instance, with Poland which was in the post-WWI military-political conflict with the West Ukrainian nationalists over the land of East Galicia.

The state borders of post-WWI Poland were decided by the Paris Peace Conference by three means: 1) Through decisions of the Council of Ambassadors; 2) Plebiscites held under Entente direction; and 3) By the result of the war with West Ukraine and Bolshevik Russia. Concerning Poland, the final settlement of its eastern borders became the most complex. In fact, the first boundary problem became Galicia or more precisely East Galicia where Poles went to open war with Ukrainians. On November 1^st, 1918, when the rule of Austria-Hungary finally collapsed in the region, local Ukrainian nationalistic leaders proclaimed the independence of the West Ukrainian National (People’s) Republic. This new state claimed the whole of East Galicia (eastward from the San River with Lwów) to be Ukrainian followed by North Bukowina and Carpathian Rus’. However, these territorial claims became immediately challenged by local Poles who fought all over Galicia to be united with the post-WWI Poland. Consequently, the result was a Polish-Ukrainian War that lasted from November 1918 until the summer of 1919, when the Galician-West Ukrainian military detachments were expelled from East Galicia which finally became a part of the interwar Poland.  

East Galicia and Central Powers

The land of East Galicia was before WWI included in Austria-Hungary (Austrian part) having mixed ethnic composition (as a majority of the provinces of the Austrian-Hungarian Monarchy at the time). East Galician population before WWI was almost 5 million: a majority of it was “Ukrainians” (3,1 million), Poles (1,1 million), and Jews (620,000) followed by several other small ethnolinguistic communities. The Ukrainians (whatever this ethnic term meant at that time) had population domination in the countryside (villages), but the towns and cities were inhabited by the Polish and Jewish majorities. 

It was in general tolerant policy by Vienna toward national minorities which resulted in Ukrainian, Polish, and Jewish political and national organizations existing side by side in peace.

Ukrainian national organizations have been struggling to defend their own ethnic-regional autonomy and to strengthen Ukrainian national identity among the local Slavic people.

However, the reality on the ground was not so favorable for Ukrainian national propaganda for the very reason that regardless that the intelligentsia which was accepting Ukrainian ethnolinguistic identity had been quickly progressing but on other hand, an overwhelming number of the peasantry (majority of the population of East Galicia) was not affected with Ukrainian national identity’s propaganda.

Another fact was that both ethnic Poles and Jews had clear domination over the areas of education, culture, regional economy, and civil administration. The Poles regarded the city of Lwów/Lvov/Lemberg/L’viv (which was the crucially important settlement in East Galicia) as one of the most important cities of Polish culture and nation following Cracow, Warsaw, and Wilno/Vilnius. 

During WWI (1914−1918), the Central Powers but especially Germany stubbornly supported Ukrainian national identity, nationalism, and national goals – all of them directed against Russia and Russian national interests.

On February 9^th, 1918 in Brest-Litovsk it was signed the peace treaty between one hand the Central Powers (Germany, Austria-Hungary, Bulgaria, and the Ottoman Empire) and the Ukrainian People’s Republic (the UPR) – Brotfrieden in German (“Bread Peace”).

The peace treaty ended the war in East Galicia and recognized the sovereignty of the UPR. One of the most important points of this peace treaty was that the victorious Central Powers promised Ukraine some territories which included the Kholm region (populated by the Polish-speaking majority) as well as. It was also a secret initiative to transform both provinces of Bukovina and East Galicia into a crownland of Austria-Hungary (Austrian part) but the plan became soon extremely problematic issue for the reason that the Poles opposed it insisting on the indivisibility of the whole of Galicia in which they would have a dominance. In other words, for the Poles, the pro-Ukrainian policy of the Central Powers during WWI and especially in 1918 was not only anti-Russian but even more anti-Polish. Therefore, due to the policy of Berlin regarding the Ukrainian Question in 1918 the interethnic conflict between Poles and Ukrainians became, in fact, unavoidable. 

The Conflict

In the autumn of 1918 during the collapse of the Danube Monarchy (Austria-Hungary), national workers of several ethnic groups within the monarchy had been preparing plans for the creation or re-establishment of their own (united) national states after the war. That was the case as well as with the Polish politicians in Galicia who wanted to include the whole region of Galicia (Western and Eastern) into the united national state of the Polish people. However, the Ukrainian political workers from West Galicia opposed such a Polish idea and on the night of November 1^st, 1918 organized a coup.

As a result, helped by Ukrainian national units, they succeeded in occupying Lvov and other cities in East Galicia. At the same time, they proclaimed the West Ukrainian People’s Republic as an independent Ukrainian state. The Poles of Lvov (being a majority of the city) were taken by surprise but organized a military defense (including schoolchildren) and soon expelled Ukrainian forces from the biggest part of the city. Nevertheless, in other cities of East Galicia, the Ukrainians had the greatest success, except in the city of Przemyśl/Peremyshl. Polish troops made advances in other cities in the western portions of East Galicia but on the other hand, Poland failed in several attempts to resolve this Polish-Ukrainian conflict by arbitration. In other words, before Poland proclaimed its own independence on November 11^th, 1918, the war between Polish and Ukrainian forces already was going on over East Galicia and its most important city – Lvov.

The Polish armed forces expelled the Ukrainian military from Lvov on November 22^nd, 1918.

However, Lvov was under siege including constant firing by the Ukrainian military until April 1919 (five months). Nonetheless, immediately after the Ukrainian forces were drone away from Lvov, it happened the pogroms against the Jews in which up to 80 people died.

The issue was that the local Poles accused the Jews of supporting the Ukrainian side regarding the destiny of Lvov. Especially, the Jewish paramilitary units being armed by the Ukrainian side have been accused by the Poles of anti-Polish policy in the city.

During the war between the Polish and Ukrainian forces over East Galicia in 1918−1919, the Polish side was gradually winning over the enemy.

For the Ukrainian side in the conflict, the crucial problem was that the West Ukrainian political-military leaders did not succeed in mobilizing the biggest part of the Ukrainian peasantry for their course as the peasants have been much more involved in their economic than the political interests of existence. Another problem/question is how much they have felt themselves as “Ukrainians” at all in order to fight against the Poles. In such a political situation, in order to attract the peasants for the Ukrainian course, the Ukrainian nationalists tried to make use of some social-economic slogans and, therefore, promised the peasantry an agricultural reform after the war –distribution of land (the same have been propagating the Russian Bolsheviks at the same time). Nevertheless, the Ukrainian nationalists used all means of force for the reason to mobilize the peasants of West Ukraine for the Ukrainian military to fight Poles in East Galicia. 

The Mediation by Entente

After the Great War, in 1919 the Entente powers attempted to mediate in this Polish-Ukrainian war with the final purpose to bring the war to an end as quickly as possible taking into account the post-war peace conference in Paris and around castles. In fact, what they preferred was a priority of the fight against Russian Bolshevism and, therefore, the Polish-Ukrainian War was simply weakening the European forces against the potentially aggressive policy of the Bolsheviks who at that time supported all kinds of the left revolutions in Central Europe. In other words, this war occurring on the borders with the Bolshevik Russia was preventing the creation of a united anti-Bolshevik Polish-Ukrainian front which could block eventual aggression of Europe by Lenin’s Red Army. The first practical move by the Entente forces concerning the making of peace between Ukrainian and Polish military forces occurred in February 1919 when a special French-led military commission negotiated both a truce and a demarcation line between Poland and Ukraine. According to this proposal, the city of Lvov and the oil region to the south around Boryslav had to go to Poland. In other words, some 2/3 of East Galicia would be included in West Ukraine.

The Entente’s commission also decided that the West Ukrainian People’s Republic was a failed state – not a viable one. The real reason for such a conclusion was the fact that the East Galician movement of independence was based only on an extremely tiny stratum of intelligentsia without massive support by the people especially in the countryside. The Ukrainian nationalists and politicians in order to attract the local peasants of East Galizia promised them alongside the agrarian reform as well as houses and castles of Lvov. However, it happened that the West Ukrainian national fighters lost control over the peasant movement they had themselves inspired. 

As a matter of fact, the Polish leaders involved in the conflict accepted (half-heartedly) the set of peace-meal conditions required by the Entente commission. However, the same conditions Ukrainian leaders rejected and, automatically, ended the previously agreed Polish-Ukrainian truce. As a consequence, the Ukrainian armed forces on March 10^th, 1919 started a new offensive to occupy the city of Lvov which soon collapsed just after the following ten days. In essence, that became a real turning point in the 1918−1919 Polish-Ukrainian War over East Galicia and the making of a final border between newly re-established Poland and newly to-be-formed Ukraine. Nevertheless, from mid-March 1919, that was Poles who took the military and political initiatives over the Ukrainians.

Basically, it became obvious that the Ukrainian side would lose the war against Poland concerning East Galicia and the city of Lvov. During the night between April 14/15^th, 1919, the Poles launched a fruitful attack resulting in Lvov not anymore at the distance of firing the city by Ukrainian artillery fire. The Polish offensive was so successful that in May 1919 Poles took several other East Galician cities (Stanislawów in Polish or Ivano-Frankivsk in Ukrainian) – that was at that time the headquarters of the Ukrainian political and military authorities. 

At the very beginning of June 1919, West Ukrainian military detachments were in control of only several areas of East Ukraine. What happened, was pressure by the Entente commission on the Polish side to stop further offensive, and the bilateral truce negotiations between Poland and Ukraine were renewed. Nevertheless, West Ukrainian leaders did not respect the truce agreement and suddenly started an offensive on June 7^th, 1919 with the result of recapturing some areas of East Galicia from the Polish side. Therefore, Poles blamed Ukrainians for the prolongation of the military conflict in and over East Galicia to such an extent that Entente states were compelled to send a commission to the city of Lvov for the sake to do investigation regarding serious complaints about crimes against the civil population in the city committed, in fact, by both sides. The commission finally did not find relevant evidence of Polish war crimes but, oppositely, a lot of cases of war crimes were done by the Ukrainian side. What is of probably crucial importance to emphasize here is the fact that the commission found a very enthusiastic reception of the Polish troops by the city dwellers as liberators against the terror of the “Ukrainian bands”.

The commission composed of the representatives of the Entente powers in order to finally solve the problem of East Galicia proposed that the whole territory of this region be occupied by the Polish troops and, in fact, consequently, included in the post-WWI Polish national state. For that reason, the Council of Foreign Ministers in Paris on June 25^th, 1919 gave open permission to the Polish government in Warsaw to launch a new military offensive in East Galicia for the final purpose of expelling all West Ukrainian military detachments from the region and occupy the same completely. It was agreed that the Haller Army (armed in France) to be sent to Poland and deployed in the struggle against the communist units. For Eastern Galicia, autonomy had to be given within Poland, and the final decision on the status of East Galicia would be decided by referendum (but organized by the Polish authorities).

Finally, the Polish army led by Piłsudski himself, on July 2^nd, 1919 started its decisive military attack against West Ukrainian military troops and succeeded in expelling them from the complete territory of East Galicia. Up to July 18^th, 1919, the forces of West Ukraine composed of some 20,000 soldiers crossed the Zbruch River and entered the territory of the Ukrainian People’s Republic. Therefore, the destiny of East Galicia was decided in favor of Poland up to WWII.                          

Final Remarks

The war between Poland and West Ukraine was going on from November 1918 to July 1919. According to different scholars, the war took around 25.000 lives of the soldiers from both sides: around 10.000 Polish and 15.000 Ukrainian. However, due to the lack of sources, we can very hardly estimate the number of losses among the civilian population. Nevertheless, it was less than the overall number of soldiers lost combined from both sides. Another feature of this war was the fact that atrocities committed against both the civilian population and prisoners of war have been not on a large scale compared with some other cases during WWI, for instance, Serbia which lost around 25% of its population. 

This war between the Polish and Ukrainian sides, nevertheless, poisoned Polish-Ukrainian relations for decades and became clear during WWII when Ukrainians committed a large-scale genocide on the Poles (and Jews) in Galicia. 

The Polish-Ukrainian dispute was over the land:

1. For the Polish side, the problems concerning the belongings of East Galicia did not end with the military defeat of West Ukrainian armed forces in July 1919. However, the problem continues to be as such for the next two decades playing the focal influence in both inner and foreign affairs of Warsaw.
2. For the Ukrainian side, the problem was solved by J. V. Stalin at the end of WWII as according to his decision, East Galicia became annexed by Soviet Ukraine. The local Poles have been forced to live outside their motherland – Poland up to the present day while Ukrainians succeeded in creating within the USSR a Greater Ukraine by the annexation of the land from all neighbors. 
3. The Entente powers, nevertheless, being concerned with the direct threat of the export of the Bolshevik revolution from Russia to Europe, granted East Galicia (temporarily) to Poland having in mind to create at such a way a stronger defense corridor against Bolshevik Russia. However, the Treaty of Saint Germain signed in September 1919 gave only West Galicia (westward from the San River to Poland), leaving, therefore, the final resolution of the belonging of East Galicia as a problematic issue to be solved in the future. 
4. In December 1919, the British statesman Lord Curzon proposed two possible boundary lines throughout Galicia: 1) One of which would serve as the southern extension of what he proposed should be the eastern borders of Poland. That was officially accepted to be named as Curzon Line. The 2) variant, which was further east and included Lwów, would serve as Poland’s border. In reality, no one of these proposed solutions was accepted by Warsaw, whose annexation of all of East Galicia was, in March 1923, recognized by the Entente Council of Ambassadors.

*

Note to readers: Please click the share button above. Follow us on Instagram and Twitter and subscribe to our Telegram Channel. Feel free to repost and share widely Global Research articles.

Dr. Vladislav B. Sotirović is a former university professor in Vilnius, Lithuania. He is a Research Fellow at the Center for Geostrategic Studies. He is a regular contributor to Global Research.  

Featured image: Western and Eastern Galicia in the late 20th century (German-language map) (Licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0)

All Global Research articles can be read in 51 languages by activating the Translate Website button below the author’s name (only available in desktop version).

To receive Global Research’s Daily Newsletter (selected articles), click here.

Click the share button above to email/forward this article to your friends and colleagues. Follow us on Instagram and Twitter and subscribe to our Telegram Channel. Feel free to repost and share widely Global Research articles.

Big Tech’s Effort to Silence Truth-tellers: Global Research Online Referral Campaign

***

Ukraine will lose additional territory in the coming months due to a lack of US military support, White House National Security Council strategic communications coordinator John Kirby lamented on February 27. This comes as Washington confirmed that US troops would not be sent to fight in Ukraine even if discussions were held with France over this possibility.

“If they continue to get no support from the United States, in a month or two, it is very likely that the Russians will achieve more territorial gains and have more success against Ukrainian frontlines,” Kirby told reporters, adding that this could occur in not only eastern Ukraine but also potentially in the south of the country. 

In the same press conference, Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre repeatedly emphasised that the situation is “dire” for Ukraine and recalled how the CIA Director “laid out the — the consequences, how dire they were” and “what was going on in the battle — in a battlefield, obviously, and how Ukraine was losing ground, which is important.”

On the same day, US President Joe Biden also said that the need to provide additional support to Ukraine is urgent. However, the Republicans have blocked any further funding for Ukraine unless Biden relents on his open border policy, something that he is seemingly unwilling to do.

The lack of weapons and admission that Russia is about to liberate more territory compounds Kiev’s frustrations, especially after Washington confirmed that American troops would not be sent to fight in Ukraine. According to a military source interviewed by the AFP news agency, the US spent weeks discussing plans to send troops with France but ultimately deemed the risk to be too high.

On February 26, French President Emmanuel Macron raised the idea of sending troops to Ukraine, a surprising statement since the deployment of fighters was never publicly discussed or expected. Since Macron’s alarming statement, numerous European countries have disassociated from the idea, including Germany, Poland, Spain, Greece, and the Czech Republic. 

Now it was the White House’s turn to deny that US troops would be deployed in Ukraine. In a statement to the press, State Department spokesman Matthew Miller stated that “the US will not send troops to fight in Ukraine.”

According to a military source cited by AFP, NATO countries have been discussing for weeks the possibility of sending their own soldiers to support the Ukrainians, and the US was one of those who supported the idea.

Responding to Macron’s statement, the Kremlin said,

“The very fact of discussing the possibility of sending certain contingents to Ukraine from NATO countries is a very important new element.”

Russian presidential spokesman Dmitry Peskov said that if troops are sent,

“we would need to talk not about the probability, but about the inevitability (of a direct conflict).”

Macron seemingly wants to start a Russia-NATO war, a war that would inevitably lead to nuclear strikes and with no winner, and for this reason, it is obvious why the French president became immediately isolated, so much so that even Washington cowered and distanced itself from the idea.

French Foreign Minister Stéphane Séjourné attempted to soften the humiliating blow on February 28 by claiming that Macron had in mind sending troops for specific tasks such as helping with mine clearance, production of weapons on site, and cyber-defence.

“[This] could require a [military] presence on Ukrainian territory without crossing the threshold of fighting,” Sejourne told French lawmakers. “It’s not sending troops to wage war against Russia.”

This is an obvious cover story as Macron was almost immediately isolated, and as Russian Foreign Ministry spokesperson Maria Zakharova highlighted, France’s allies neither understood nor supported the French president’s idea.

“This same statement shocked their NATO allies. A few hours later, a series of statements were made by the leadership of NATO countries, foreign ministers, and defence ministers, who said that they […] disassociate themselves from Macron’s statement. That they themselves do not plan any of this, they do not plan to send anyone and understand that this will already be a different story,” she said.

With the West failing to meet weapon supply promises made to Kiev, further US financing blocked in Congress, and, more importantly, the recent liberation of the fortress town of Avdeyevka, Ukraine will inevitably lose territory at a rapid rate. Given that the White House is openly admitting to this reality, one would expect the Kiev regime to search for an end to the conflict, yet it still chooses to pin its hopes on weapons that are not arriving on time or, more delusionally, that the West will finally directly intervene in the conflict.

*

Note to readers: Please click the share button above. Follow us on Instagram and Twitter and subscribe to our Telegram Channel. Feel free to repost and share widely Global Research articles.

Ahmed Adel is a Cairo-based geopolitics and political economy researcher. He is a regular contributor to Global Research.

Featured image is from Al Mayadeen English

All Global Research articles can be read in 51 languages by activating the Translate Website button below the author’s name (only available in desktop version).

To receive Global Research’s Daily Newsletter (selected articles), click here.

Click the share button above to email/forward this article to your friends and colleagues. Follow us on Instagram and Twitter and subscribe to our Telegram Channel. Feel free to repost and share widely Global Research articles.

Big Tech’s Effort to Silence Truth-tellers: Global Research Online Referral Campaign

***

In all the furore that accompanied the House of Commons vote calling for an immediate ceasefire in Gaza, the substance of the debate has been completely forgotten.

The Scottish National Party (SNP) motion calling for an immediate ceasefire would have embarrassed a Labour leadership that has spent the last five months of homicidal bombing of Gaza avoiding saying just that.

The SNP motion was clear, unequivocal and totally in line with public opinion in the British Isles.

The SNP called for an immediate ceasefire without conditions. The Labour motion handed the Israeli government a right of veto, by insisting that Hamas release its hostages as a precondition for the ceasefire to start.

Labour’s call for “an immediate humanitarian ceasefire” was no such thing, as it allowed Israel to carry on fighting.

It is an inconvenient fact – both for the Tory and Labour defenders of Israel – that a clear and rapidly growing majority of the British public has had enough of this war. They want an immediate ceasefire.

Sixty-six percent of Britons support a ceasefire. The same percentage say that Israel should be prepared to enter peace negotiations with Hamas, up five points from November. Only 13 percent think that Israel should continue to pursue the war, and just 24 percent think the attack on Gaza is justified, a drop of five points.

In other words, the carefully and secretly choreographed effort to derail a vote on the  SNP’s motion defied the clearly expressed will of the British people.

The Commons speaker Lindsay Hoyle excused his decision to break with precedent by allowing votes on three separate motions, thus scuppering the SNP motion, by saying that he had been “very, very concerned about the security of all members”.

There then began a brief attempt to turn the MPs that have backed this vile war into victims, into the targets of “Islamist” hate speech. It takes some nerve to turn MPs, who have consistently justified a war which has killed 30,000 Palestinians into the victims of hate speech, rather than expose them as the deniers of genocide.

Orwellian Newspeak

Labour leader Keir Starmer has repeatedly said that Israel had the right to defend itself, long past the moment when it was clear that the war was directed at the people of Gaza as a whole. He has repeatedly prevented calls for a ceasefire.

The former human rights lawyer also defended collective punishment. He clearly said that Israel had the right to withhold water and fuel.

For that comment alone, Starmer, the former director of public prosecutions (DPP), could be prosecuted for incitement to genocide, even though he later withdrew it.

It takes even more Orwellian newspeak, and an even bigger inversion of reality to turn pro-Palestinian demonstrators into radical Islamists. Particular attention was focused on Ben Jamal, the director of the Palestine Solidarity Campaign (PSC).

Problem number one: Jamal is not a Muslim. He is a Christian, the son of an Anglican vicar, no less. Jamal does not endorse threatening MPs, but he does defend protesting outside their constituency offices and holding them to account.

Asked at a home affairs select committee in December whether he endorsed the chant “from the river to the sea” Jamal replied:

“I get asked the question: ‘Do you tolerate that chant?’ We don’t tolerate it, we chant it,” he said.

“I speak as a Palestinian, this is a chant used by the vast majority of Palestinians. It describes how their rights are deprived across all of historic Palestine, including if they are citizens of the state of Israel or living under military occupation. It in no shape or form seeks the abrogation of anybody else’s rights.”

The people who think that this chant is a call for genocide of the Jews who live in Israel and the occupied territories should pause for reflection.

Who Is the Extremist?

From the river to the sea has been used by all Likud politicians since 1977. The Likud manifesto of that year stated:

“Between the sea and Jordan, there will only be Israeli sovereignty”.

So the contention is thus: it is not genocidal when Israeli Jewish leaders use the phrase, but it is genocidal when Palestinians use it, be they Christian or Muslim. In the ever-expanding and uncontested definition of antisemitism, all criticism of Israel is now judged to be antisemitic.

As the events on Friday unfolded, it became clear that this debate was not about reason or justice, but about emotion and smear. It was also evidence-free. Curiously, no threats to MPs are being investigated by the police or the DPP.

The memory of Jo Cox, the MP who was murdered in her constituency in June 2016, was invoked. Little matter that Cox was murdered by a right-wing extremist. Three women MPs were given bodyguards on the public purse. But here comes problem number two: who and what is an extremist?

If the government of the Communities Secretary Michael Gove had its way, the definition of extremism would target the right people (Muslim Council of Britain, PSC), but would exclude the wrong people who happen to be fellow members of the Tory party (Lee Anderson, Liz Truss, Suella Braverman, Robert Jenrick).

Fortunately for democracy in Britain, the courts still function independently of the government, and lawyers have consistently prevented a definition of extremism as expressed in the Counter Terrorism and Security Bill of 2015 from being formulated. But the mood being created by both sides of the House is not one to balk at fundamental legal difficulty.

Unable to formulate a legally binding definition of extremism, the government outsourced the problem by creating a Commission for Countering Extremism (CCE), headed by people with a track record of partisanship on this issue.

First came Sarah Khan, who tried to rebrand non-violent extremism as “hateful extremism”. Under Khan, the CCE moved to expand the range of counter-extremism to focus not just on Islamist extremism, but also on the far right and other ideologies. Khan advocated a “victim-centred approach” to countering extremism.

Then came Robin Simcox, who succeeded her as commissioner for countering extremism. His appointment was described by Mend, a Muslim advocacy organisation, as “deeply worrying for Muslim communities”. Simcox has crossed the Atlantic to work for right-wing think tanks supportive of attacking Muslim communities.

From 2008 to 2011, Simcox worked at the Centre for Social Cohesion (CSC), which was described by one of its founders Matthew Jamison, as a “monstrous animal” and a “deeply anti-Muslim racist organisation”.

In 2016, Simcox took up a new role as Margaret Thatcher Fellow at the Heritage Foundation, considered so important to the Trump administration that the New York Times described it in 2018 as “stocking Trump’s government” with its staff.

In a 2019 article for the Heritage Foundation, he dismissed Islamophobia as a “slippery concept”. Simcox wrote:

“The ambiguity and confusion around the meaning of Islamophobia allows Islamists to use the term to shut down criticism of their religion and impose an informal blasphemy law on the sly.”

With a track record like this, it is hard to describe Simcox as an impartial arbiter of an issue which is fundamental to community relations in the UK. He is a cheerleader for the right’s own brand of extremism.

Toxic Potion

Mix an inherent tolerance of hate speech towards Muslims in the Tory party, and the use of advisers who see the electoral benefits in toying with the great replacement theory – mix all this with the issue of Palestine and you get a truly toxic potion, one that is capable of igniting the fire of community tension and subverting free speech in Britain.

It came to the fore when Lee Anderson told GB News that Islamists had got control of the Mayor of London Sadiq Khan.

“I don’t actually believe that the Islamists have got control of our country, but what I do believe is they’ve got control of Khan and they’ve got control of London… He’s actually given our capital city away to his mates.”

His comments followed an article by former Home Secretary Suella Braverman in the Daily Telegraph, in which she wrote

“the truth is that the Islamists, the extremists and the anti-Semites are in charge now”.

Anderson refused to apologise and the whip was withdrawn, but not without much hesitation.

Sayeeda Warsi, former chairwoman of the Conservative party, told Channel 4 News:

“If these comments were being made and they were antisemitic or homophobic they would have been withdrawn immediately. As Sadiq Khan said, we can not have a hierarchy of racism within political parties.”

But such a hierarchy surely now exists  on both sides of the House and make no mistake, it will be used to write new laws. The right will not go away. It will keep on pushing the boundaries, until free speech is lost.

Record weekly demonstrations for Palestine thus become morphed into “mobs”. No Labour representatives at any level are allowed to take part. They are bullied and intimidated by a party leadership that has lost any claim to independence on this question. 

Labour provides no opposition to a government that counters and flouts the clearly expressed will of the International Court of Justice that ordered Israel to comply with the Genocide Convention, by continuing to supply Israel with arms. 

Peace of Silence

Last week the UK argued at the ICJ that legal proceedings should be put to one side to allow political negotiations on a Palestinian state to proceed. 

As if on cue the Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu torpedoed the UK’s argument by claiming that Israel’s security needs would be incompatible with a Palestinian state.

“I will not compromise on full Israeli security control over all the territory west of Jordan – and this is contrary to a Palestinian state,” Netanyahu said in a post on X. 

Once again the UK has lined itself up behind negotiations that can not lead anywhere under this Israeli leadership or any other. The proponents of the status quo have only one state in mind: Israel.

So the question is this: who are the real democrats: the MPs inside parliament or the demonstrators outside? Who represents the British people better on this issue? And who is subverting British democracy? The Palestinians whose families are being butchered in Gaza or the unholy alliance of neoconservatives and Islamophobic racists, seeking to skew and criminalise all debate on Israel, until none exists in this country at all.

And which of the two camps supports international law?

The speaker Lindsay Hoyle is neither, but he bows to bullies. He reneged on his promise to the SNP to allow a second vote on their ceasefire motion. Peace will not be restored in the conflict by giving Israel free rein.

But a peace of sorts could be imposed on the streets of London. It will be the peace of silence. Is that what Britain has become?

*

Note to readers: Please click the share button above. Follow us on Instagram and Twitter and subscribe to our Telegram Channel. Feel free to repost and share widely Global Research articles.

David Hearst is co-founder and editor-in-chief of Middle East Eye. He is a commentator and speaker on the region and analyst on Saudi Arabia. He was the Guardian’s foreign leader writer, and was correspondent in Russia, Europe, and Belfast. He joined the Guardian from The Scotsman, where he was education correspondent.

All Global Research articles can be read in 51 languages by activating the Translate Website button below the author’s name (only available in desktop version).

To receive Global Research’s Daily Newsletter (selected articles), click here.

Click the share button above to email/forward this article to your friends and colleagues. Follow us on Instagram and Twitter and subscribe to our Telegram Channel. Feel free to repost and share widely Global Research articles.

Big Tech’s Effort to Silence Truth-tellers: Global Research Online Referral Campaign

***

The end of the Second World War was a calamitous catalyst, laying the bricks and mortar for institutions that were always going to look weary, almost comically so, after some decades. The United Nations was meant to be the umbrella international organisation, covering an eclectic array of bodies that seem, to this day, unfathomably complex. Its goals have been mocked, largely for their dew-eyed optimism: international peace, prosperity, levels of stable development. The balance sheet is, however, more complex.

In this organisational mix stands the haughty, sometimes interested, sometimes violent club known as the UN Security Council.  On paper – well, the UN Charter, anyway – it remains one of those bodies that is perky, powerful and determined.  It’s the only international body with all the cards that matter, capable of exerting near supreme powers. From the summit of the United Nations, it remains the policing enforcer, capable of adding teeth to what might be otherwise toothless tigers and enfeebled pussycats.

Member states on the Council can authorise, almost tyrannically, the use of force. They can impose sanctions, create ad hoc tribunals to try war crimes, and set up bodies of their own wish and design. But the supreme power of the Security Council granted under Chapter VII of the UN Charter has its own, self-stalling measure.  One might even call it retarding, a limitation that makes deliberations often look carnivalesque. The main participants in the carnival are always the permanent five (P5): the United States, United Kingdom, France, Russia and China. Their continued relevance lies in their unaccountable exercise of the veto, an aborting device that kills off a resolution with swiftness and finality. And only one of them need exercise it, whatever other Council Members think.

With such an uneven, ramshackle structure, proposals for reform were bound to come. For two decades, they have haunted the halls of the UN, with little threat of materialising. Since 2023, the ghosts of such proposals have been inspired by lethargy and inactivity on the part of the Security Council in various areas of conflict, with Ukraine and Gaza featuring prominently. Any matter concerning the Ukraine-Russia War is likely to end up being blocked by Russia. The United States performs the same spoiling role when it comes to Israel’s war in Gaza: anything deemed against the Jewish state’s interests will be stomped and snuffed out with haste.

During his speech at the General Assembly’s annual debate last November, GA President Dennis Francis warned delegates that the Council’s performance would inevitably continue to suffer in the absence of reform. “Violence and war continue to spread in regions across the world, while the United Nations seems paralysed due largely to the divisions in the Security Council.” In such a fractious, and fragmenting environment, the Council was “dangerously falling short” of its mandate as the guarding custodian of international peace and security.

The advocating parties for such changes are almost always likely to feel like disgruntled invitees to a party they cannot wholly enjoy. Exclusive benefits are only available to the blessed, anointed and those with historically appropriate character references.  The pathway is otherwise barred.

Unremarkably, the countries most keen to tout their credentials for admission are those putting the case that their time has come. The G4, comprising Brazil, Germany, India and Japan, are calling for a total of 11 permanent members (P11): China, France, The Russian Federation, the UK, the US, with six others. The process sounds wearisome and is outlined at some length by Thalif Deen of the Inter Press Service. Country candidates, upon adoption of a framework regarding Council reform, would inform the President of the General Assembly, who would then set a date for the election of the six permanent members. The change would have to be secured by two-thirds of the GA members via secret ballot. The GA rules of procedure would then apply to the election of the new members.

As with all clubs with stringent requirements, admission would also be subject to Article 23(1) of the UN Charter:

“due regard being specially paid, in the first instance to their contributions to the maintenance of international peace and security and to the other purposes of the Organization, and also to equitable geographical distribution.”

The G4 proposal further suggests that the six new permanent members be elected with a specific distribution in mind: two from African Member States; two from the Asia-Pacific; one from Latin American and Caribbean Member States; and one from Western European and Other Member States. To this grouping can also be added four or five new non-permanent members to further swell the Council, to be elected along similar lines.

Other countries are also weighing in.  Turkey, being another proclaimed actor of heft and influence, recently made sharp noises at the G20 international forum on the subject. On the second day of the G20 Foreign Ministers Meeting in Brazil held this month, Turkey’s Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan proved particularly active during the Global Governance Reform session.

Fidan had been appropriately briefed about the imprecise and often crude jargon that has come to characterise the field vaguely called international relations. According to TRT World, he spoke of the importance of “multinational institutions” and “effective global governance mechanisms” in coping with “geopolitical tensions in the evolving multipolar new world order.” To acknowledge such a change, one vital target stood out: the UNSC. The Council, he argued, “casts a shadow on the reputation of the entire UN system”. A “more democratic and accountable system” with sound international law foundations was needed.

As always, the impetus for reform is contingent on the jacketed traditionalists, long in the tooth and wary about a change in the furniture.  Not only will a two-thirds majority be required among all GA members; it would have to be approved by a jealous P5 less than enthusiastic in having their power diluted or checked.

Rigidly devoted to their model, the G4 may not necessarily be improving matters. Why assume that enlarging the pool of P5 veto-wielding powers to 11 will necessarily do so? The lines of power, instead of blurring, would only harden. The risk of procedure triumphing over the substance of peace and international security is all too apparent.

*

Note to readers: Please click the share button above. Follow us on Instagram and Twitter and subscribe to our Telegram Channel. Feel free to repost and share widely Global Research articles.

Dr. Binoy Kampmark was a Commonwealth Scholar at Selwyn College, Cambridge. He currently lectures at RMIT University. He is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG). Email: [email protected] 

Featured image source

All Global Research articles can be read in 51 languages by activating the Translate Website button below the author’s name (only available in desktop version).

To receive Global Research’s Daily Newsletter (selected articles), click here.

Click the share button above to email/forward this article to your friends and colleagues. Follow us on Instagram and Twitter and subscribe to our Telegram Channel. Feel free to repost and share widely Global Research articles.

Big Tech’s Effort to Silence Truth-tellers: Global Research Online Referral Campaign

***

“Day 13 after the Childhood Vaccines” (Feb, 2021)

 

Photo taken Jan.20, 2021 at 6 months (healthy)

 

Feb. 2021

7:39 am before daycare 5:10 pm intubated because he can’t breathe. Life flight coming to get him. Life flight leaving with him. Him TERRIFIED not knowing what is happening. Chronic ear infections needing antibiotics that wreck their gut? Sick shortly after receiving…

Stop. V-Ing. Your. Kids.

When I got to him that day he started to turn blue. I picked him up and held him out in front of me to open up his airway. He was still moving all extremities at that point. Minutes, maybe even seconds who knows, later his arms went limp and fell back behind him. The rest of his body then quit moving in my arms as well. 9-1-1 rushed us to the ER.

All tests, blood work, scans, x-rays were normal. They intubated him because he was struggling to breathe on his own. Life flight came and reintubated him because he was uncomfortable. We got to Childrens at the same time they did. They admitted him and immediately took him for his MRI. Dr. Cullimore knew what was happening before we even got there.

They had just had 2 children with the SAME thing leave in the last two weeks with it, they came from the same ER as each other. One left a day before we got there…but it’s “rare” right? They asked all sorts of questions. So many tried to blame his daycare provider. I knew that would never be the case. After his MRI she sat us down and specifically said “this can be caused by a vaccine or a virus”. My heart sank. I knew what happened to him. Still mad I didn’t get that on video. If you can plan a nursery, you can take the time to read an insert for your childs safety and wellbeing.

My baby was not sick. STOP V-ING YOUR KIDS!!!”

 

 

 

 

March 21, 2022

Click here to view the video

Click here to read the full article.

*

Note to readers: Please click the share button above. Follow us on Instagram and Twitter and subscribe to our Telegram Channel. Feel free to repost and share widely Global Research articles.

Dr. William Makis is a Canadian physician with expertise in Radiology, Oncology and Immunology. Governor General’s Medal, University of Toronto Scholar. Author of 100+ peer-reviewed medical publications.

Featured image is from COVID Intel

All Global Research articles can be read in 51 languages by activating the Translate Website button below the author’s name (only available in desktop version).

To receive Global Research’s Daily Newsletter (selected articles), click here.

Click the share button above to email/forward this article to your friends and colleagues. Follow us on Instagram and Twitter and subscribe to our Telegram Channel. Feel free to repost and share widely Global Research articles.

Big Tech’s Effort to Silence Truth-tellers: Global Research Online Referral Campaign

***

Recently two headlines concerning COVID vaccines appeared almost at the same time in media.

One of these concerns one of the largest studies which has confirmed earlier reports of serious risks relating to COVID vaccines.

The second of these relates to legislation being considered in France that will impose 3-year imprisonment plus big fines on those questioning the safety and hence desirability of COVID vaccines, saying this is ‘provocation to abstain from medical care’. Why is it that such draconian steps are being considered at a time when the evidence about high risks is piling up? Is it to prevent even more disturbing aspects from emerging?

Let us see what the latest study, as assessment of the COVID Vaccine Safety Project, has stated.

As reported, this study spanning 99 million people and investigating reports of adverse reactions, has found that instances of Guillain-Barre Syndrome, myocarditis, pericarditis, and cerebral venous sinus thrombosis (CVST) were at least 1.5 times more than expected following inoculation with mRNA and ChAdOXI vaccines.

COVID-19 vaccines have been widely discussed, but still safety aspects need more attention. Generally in the case of all vaccines adverse events recorded constitute an important part of discussion relating to them, and this is all the more so in the case of COVID-19 vaccines which were developed and distributed in unprecedented hurry.

Here in the context of the USA where comparable data over a time period of several years is available, the adverse events following all other vaccines are compared with adverse events following COVID-19 vaccine during 2020-21. Secondly the adverse events data for COVID vaccines is compared for various countries. Thirdly some other recent research of significance is reported.

First, we can compare the official data for per month deaths following COVID vaccines with the longer-term data from the same comparable official source for per month deaths following all other vaccines in the context of the USA.

The source of all this data is VAERS (Vaccine Adverse Events Reporting System) which has been recording adverse events, serious injuries and deaths following vaccinations for several years in the USA. 

There have been criticisms, supported by studies, that what gets recorded in VAERS may be very substantial under-estimates but still it is the only officially recognized data base we have in the public domain. VAERS figures do not establish a cause and effect relationship. This data base only tells us that a certain number of adverse events, including deaths, were reported and recorded in this system within a certain specified number of days following vaccination. The same is also true of the data on adverse events of other countries later in this review.

The VAERS data inform that for the roughly 16 and a half year period (198 months) from July 1997 to December 2013, counting all the various vaccines that are administered in the USA, many adverse events were recorded which included 2,149 deaths.

This figure is available in a paper titled ‘Deaths Reported to the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System 1997-2013, United States’, authored by Pedro L. Moro, Jorge Arana , Mario Cano and others. This paper, (Clin. Infect. Dis 2015 Sep.15; 61(6)), reproduced by National Library of Medicine, National Center for Biotechnology Information is based on what was recorded in VAERS. This paper also says that these deaths showed a declining trend.

Dividing 2,149 by 198 we find that on average per month 11 post-vaccine deaths were recorded, counting all the various vaccines administered in the USA.  

Now let us look at the post-vaccine deaths recorded only for COVID-19 vaccine in the USA under the VAERS since this vaccination started in December 2020. During the roughly 11 months period from December 14, 2020 to November 1-12, 2021, a total of 8,664 deaths were recorded. This works out to an average of about 788 deaths per month.

Thus we learn that the number of post-vaccine deaths recorded per month for  COVID-19 vaccine up to November 12, 2021 (788) is about 72 times of the deaths per month that were recorded earlier for all vaccines combined (11), as revealed in a longer-term study of VAERS records for 198 months, years 1997-2013.

While calculating this we have used the much lower VAERS estimate which excludes deaths following COVID vaccine attributed to ‘foreign reports’. However if a calculation based on those official estimates which include ‘foreign reports’ is made then the number of deaths recorded up to November 12 is 18,853. This means an average of 1,714 deaths per month or 156 times the deaths recorded for all vaccines per month earlier.

During the period of about 11 months December 14 to November 12 following COVID-19 vaccine, in the VAERS system of USA, after excluding foreign reports, a total of 654,413 adverse events and 54,962 serious injuries were recorded. If we include foreign reports the numbers are significantly higher at 894,145 adverse events and 139,126 serious injuries. 

These statistics, as also the findings of important studies that VAERS data on adverse side effects should be treated as substantial under-estimates, should have clearly got more attention in official decisions, as also the hardly discussed possibility of adverse impacts that may manifest much later. People should be adequately informed for a proper democratic debate to take place.

Now in the second part of this review let us try to compare the USA data with the data for some other countries. The USA data is up to around mid-November 2021 when around 410 million vaccines had been administered. In India up to this time about 1100 million vaccines had been administered. However the adverse events following COVID-19 vaccines as reported officially are very, very less compared to what has been reported for the USA. As reported in leading newspaper the Hindu November 29, 2021 the serious adverse events following COVD-19 vaccine till November are 2,116. (See report titled Vaccination adverse events less than 0.01%, Centre tells Supreme Court, written by Krishnadas Rajagopal).

As available data indicates adverse events data to be amazingly below that for the USA, there can be two interpretations. One interpretation can be that in terms of safety the COVID Vaccination in India has been enormously superior compared to the USA. This would be appear to be all the more so keeping in view that VAERS estimates also involved substantial under-reporting. The second interpretation is that the data on this subject is a huge underestimate of the actual situation. Which interpretation appears more acceptable to readers?

To give an update, if data till December 6, 2022 is considered, a total of 92,003 adverse events following vaccination have been reported in India, the Health Ministry told the Parliament.  

In the case of China, as in the case of India, the real situation in this context is not clear and more transparency is needed. However a Bloomberg report dated May 28, 2021 titled ‘China says it has about 0.01% adverse events from COVID vaccines’ may be mentioned here. This report mentions the figure of 31,434 adverse events from 265 million jabs administered till then. If we extrapolate the same figure for the nearly 2,300 million jabs given till the last days of November 2021, then we get a figure of about 280,000 adverse events (these are not described as serious adverse events, just adverse events in the Bloomberg report.). Comparing with the adverse events in the USA and other western countries, this again is a substantial underestimate.

In the case of nearly 27 countries of the European Union, an analysis of adverse events as reported in Health Impact News dated 28 November 2021 mentioned 31,000 deaths, 2,890,600 injuries including 1,355,192 serious injuries.

Hence the trend appears to be of high reporting from developed countries and of low reporting from developing countries. Another important aspect relates to extension of COVID-19 vaccination to teenagers and children and voices of caution voiced by several senior scientists in this context. In fact In India almost as soon as the official announcement in this context was made, on December 6, 2021 a senior epidemiologist of AIIMS Dr. Sanjay K. Rai, President of Indian Public Health Association and involved in Covaxin trials in India in a very senior position, stated that this will not yield any additional benefits.

At the world level Dr. Robert Malone, who has played a very important part in the debate, has warned against high risks involved in this. He has stated that thousands of scientists and doctors oppose this (Physicians Declaration II-Updated October 29, 2021, Global COVID Summit, International Association of Physicians and Medical Scientists). Dr. Malone is discoverer of in-vitro and in-vivo RNA Platform and architect of mRNA Vaccine Platform. Hence his views and those of several other senior scientists should not be ignored. In the interests of ensuring safety and avoiding any adverse impacts it is important to resolve these controversies in such a way that the health and safety concerns of all and particularly of children are well protected.

Excessively high adverse impacts of COVID-19 vaccines, as reported in several countries, have led to an intense debate on this subject. It is important to note that such high adverse impacts have been reported mostly in those countries, such as the USA and some European countries, which have relatively much better systems of recording such adverse impacts. 

In the context of this debate a peer-reviewed research paper published in late January 2024 has attracted a lot of attention. This has been published in Cureus-Journal of Medical Science which has been described as a “web-based peer-reviewed open access general medical journal.” This paper is titled ‘COVID-19 mRNA vaccines: Lessons Learned from the Registrational Trials and Global Vaccination Campaign’. This paper has been authored by M. Nathaniel Mead, Stephanie Seneff, Russ Wolfinger, Jessica Ruse, Kris Denhaernck, Steve Kirsh and Peter A. McCullough.

The authors state,

“Our understanding of COVID-19 vaccinations and their impact on health and mortality has evolved substantially since the first vaccine rollouts. Published reports from the original randomized phase 3 trials concluded that the COVID-19 mRNA vaccines could greatly reduce COVID-19 symptoms. In the interim, problems with the methods, execution, and reporting of these pivotal trials have emerged. Re-analysis of the Pfizer trial data identified statistically significant increases in serious adverse events (SAEs) in the vaccine group. Numerous SAEs were identified following the Emergency Use Authorization (EUA), including death, cancer, cardiac events, and various autoimmune, hematological, reproductive, and neurological disorders.”

In addition this paper says,

“Furthermore, these products never underwent adequate safety and toxicological testing in accordance with previously established scientific standards. Among the other major topics addressed in this narrative review are the published analyses of serious harms to humans, quality control issues and process-related impurities, mechanisms underlying adverse events (AEs), the immunologic basis for vaccine inefficacy, and concerning mortality trends based on the registrational trial data. The risk-benefit imbalance substantiated by the evidence to date contraindicates further booster injections and suggests that, at a minimum, the mRNA injections should be removed from the childhood immunization program until proper safety and toxicological studies are conducted. Federal agency approval of the COVID-19 mRNA vaccines on a blanket-coverage population-wide basis had no support from an honest assessment of all relevant registrational data and commensurate consideration of risks versus benefits.”

The authors of this paper recommend,

“Given the extensive, well-documented SAEs and unacceptably high harm-to-reward ratio, we urge governments to endorse a global moratorium on the modified mRNA products until all relevant questions pertaining to causality, residual DNA, and aberrant protein production are addressed.” 

In view of the very serious implications of what this paper states, as well as the fact that what it has stated is supported by a lot of scattered but important evidence, this paper as well as its recommendation deserves wide attention, of people, medical personnel and public health authorities. 

*

Note to readers: Please click the share button above. Follow us on Instagram and Twitter and subscribe to our Telegram Channel. Feel free to repost and share widely Global Research articles.

Bharat Dogra is Honorary Convener, Campaign to Save Earth Now. His recent books include Protecting Earth for Children, Planet in Peril, Man over Machine and A Day in 2071. He is a regular contributor to Global Research.

---

Price: $11.50 FREE COPY! Click here (docsend) and download.

We encourage you to support the eBook project by making a donation through Global Research’s DonorBox “Worldwide Corona Crisis” Campaign Page. 

All Global Research articles can be read in 51 languages by activating the Translate Website button below the author’s name (only available in desktop version).

To receive Global Research’s Daily Newsletter (selected articles), click here.

Click the share button above to email/forward this article to your friends and colleagues. Follow us on Instagram and Twitter and subscribe to our Telegram Channel. Feel free to repost and share widely Global Research articles.

Big Tech’s Effort to Silence Truth-tellers: Global Research Online Referral Campaign

***

On Monday 26, February 2024, The Arab League, Zambia, and Turkey, addressed the World Court in The Hague, the International Court of Justice (ICJ), on consequences of Israel’s occupation of Gaza and the West Bank.

See this video recording of the full Court session (2:42:15 h). Starting with min 00:57 of the Youtube recording, Dr. Ralph Wilde, Sr. Council and Advocate, speaks on behalf of Palestine (26 min):

Dr. Wilde’s plaidoyer – ALL based on legal facts and international law – completely destroys the legality of Israel, of Israel’s existence. Going back by over 100 years to the Balfour Declaration of 1917, all the way to the illegal UK “handing over” of Palestine in 1947 to the United Nations.

Arthur James Balfour was a Conservative British politician, then Foreign Secretary, and formerly UK’s Prime Minister (1902-1905).

The Balfour Declaration was a public statement issued by the British Government in 1917 during WWI, announcing its support for the establishment of a “national home for the Jewish people” in Palestine, then an Ottoman region with a small minority Jewish population about 11%.

The Brits claimed unrightfully – as well-illustrated by Dr. Wilde – having the “Mandate” for Palestine (1918-1948), because of the British occupation of territories previously ruled by the Ottoman Empire.

However, the Peace Treaties that brought the First World War to an end, also established the principle of self-determination that emerged after the war.  Meaning that Palestine already in 1918 had the right of self-determination without any mandate of the UK or anybody else over its newly gained sovereignty.

See also this for history on Balfour Declaration.

In November 1947, the UK handed their falsely claimed Mandate over Palestine to the United Nations. The freshly established UN (24 October 1945 in San Francisco), with only 53 members in 1947 passed a Partition Resolution by the UN General Assembly (UNGA), which has no power to ratify legally binding resolutions. Thus, the UNGA vote had no force of international law.

This UNGA Resolution for the establishment of Israel was strongly opposed by the Arab States – but Zionist influence over other UN members was overwhelming. Still, the UN Resolution had no basis in international law.

The UK-supported UN ruling prompted the 1947-1948 Nakba (“catastrophe” in Arabic), referring to the mass displacement of Palestinians by Jews, claiming a portion (almost 80%) of Palestine to become Israel (21,670 km2 of total Palestine, 28,000 km2).

Nakba became a massacre and the first ethnic cleansing by what was to become Israel, as displaced Palestinians were deprived of their right to return to their homeland.

During the Nakba, Israel destroyed 531 Palestinian towns and killed some 15,000 Palestinians.

Before the Nakba, Palestine was a multi-ethnic and multi-cultural society, living in peace.

On 14 May 1948, Israel declared her independence formally, pronounced by David Ben-Gurion, the Executive Head of the World Zionist Organization, Chairman of the Jewish Agency for Palestine, and soon to be first Prime Minister of Israel (see this).

Ever since, for the last 76 years, Palestinians were considered and discriminated as second or even third-class citizens by racist Israel, with countless indiscriminate killings. Since 2007, the Gaza strip is militarily occupied by Israeli Defense Forces (IDF), and has become the world’s largest open-air prison with some 2.4 million Palestinians locked into a space of 365 square kilometers (km2).

See this for the extraordinary defense plaidoyer by Dr. Ralph Wilde on 26 February 2024 at the International Court of Justice, seated at Peace Palace in The Hague:

The Hamas attack of 7 October 2023 prompting the ongoing war, was planned at least 3 years before by the US, UK and Israel. In the last four and a half months it has claimed some 35,000 Palestinian lives – of which 70% women and children.

At present, about 1.4 million Palestinians are amassed in or around Rafah, border town to Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula. They are starving, as Israel is preventing international food and water deliveries from entering Gaza. Up to 7 kilometers of trucks with life support for Gaza are reported to be blocked by Israel from entering Gaza through the Rafah gate.

Despite the extreme suffering and massive dying of Palestinians, Egypt’s President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi is adamant in officially declaring that no Palestinian refugees shall pass into Egypt. Juxtapose this to the following observations.

Aerial photographs show that massive tent cities have been and are being built in the Sinai desert, leading to the conclusion that the expected Arab and supposedly Palestinian ally, Abdel Fattah el-Sisi, has made a secret agreement with Netanyahu to receive the remaining Palestinians of Gaza – up to 1.4 million – under certain circumstances.

Expulsion of Palestinians into the Sinai desert would be the ultimate ethnic cleansing of the racist Zionist state of Israel. It would also mean another massacre the world has not seen in recent history.

But what are these special circumstances? Despite Egypt’s huge debt to the point where the IMF has recently blocked disbursements of a US$ 3 billion IMF loan, the very same IMF has just granted Egypt a US$ 10 billion loan to help alleviating the socioeconomic consequences of the war in Gaza. In common jargon this would be called blackmail, or simply buying a country. For full details see this.

Even so-called international organizations like the International Monetary Fund (IMF) are not only infiltrated by Zionists, they are dominated by them. Same as the FED and the all-controlling financial giants – see this.

Question to be asked is – in a rapidly changing world, who will prevail?

Will it be the omni-power of Zionism, or the positive vibes of the determined, peaceful, and legally steadfast arguments made by Dr. Ralph Wilde, lawyer and advocate for Palestine, at the ICJ on 26 February 2024?

Hope never dies.

And the spiritual leverage of the hundreds of millions, if not billions of people around the world, who with their sheer thoughts support the Palestinian people, is mighty powerful.

*

Note to readers: Please click the share button above. Follow us on Instagram and Twitter and subscribe to our Telegram Channel. Feel free to repost and share widely Global Research articles.

Peter Koenig is a geopolitical analyst and a former Senior Economist at the World Bank and the World Health Organization (WHO), where he worked for over 30 years around the world. He is the author of Implosion – An Economic Thriller about War, Environmental Destruction and Corporate Greed; and co-author of Cynthia McKinney’s book “When China Sneezes: From the Coronavirus Lockdown to the Global Politico-Economic Crisis” (Clarity Press – November 1, 2020). 

Peter is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG). He is also a non-resident Senior Fellow of the Chongyang Institute of Renmin University, Beijing.  

Featured image is a screenshot from the first video above

All Global Research articles can be read in 51 languages by activating the Translate Website button below the author’s name.

To receive Global Research’s Daily Newsletter (selected articles), click here.

Click the share button above to email/forward this article to your friends and colleagues. Follow us on Instagram and Twitter and subscribe to our Telegram Channel. Feel free to repost and share widely Global Research articles.

Article first published by Global Research on May 23, 2023

***

 

****

 

Absolutely stunning,

An Astute Intelligence Op.

The election of Zelensky in 2019 was intent upon acquiring the ethnic Russian vote in Donbass. 

A Russian Jew transformed into a Nazi?

See the video below. 

***

Zelensky is Jewish. He supports the Nazi Azov Battalion, the two Nazi parties, which have committed countless atrocities against the Jewish community in Ukraine.  

He belongs to a Russian-Jewish family. He was brought up as a native Russian speaker, who until recently was not fluent in Ukrainian. 

And the Western media in chorus are endorsing the Zelensky proxy regime without bating an eyelid. The Kiev regime is upheld as a democracy. 

Video

And now this Jewish-Russian proxy president wants to “ban everything Russian”, including the Russian language (his mother tongue), the Russian media, the teaching of Russian in the schools.

He has been instructed by Washington to lead Kiev’s Neo-Nazi government, which is portrayed by the U.S. mainstream media including the NYT as a democracy. 

Zelensky also plans to ban Russian composers including Tchaikovsky, Prokofiev, Shostakovich,  Borodin, Glinka, Rimsky-Korsakov, and many more.

Are Russian films also slated to be banned?

Ironically if this were to be carried out, it  would include Zelensky’s movies (featured in Russian) (produced prior to him becoming president in 2019). These include “Servant of the People”, 2016 (in Russian on Netflix). Below is the Trailer of his Film entitled “8 First Dates”. 

Trailer of Zelensky’s Film entitled “8 First Dates”

Russian Books

He has ordered the removal of 100 million books by Russian authors, including Tolstoy, Pushkin, Dostoevsky, Gorky, from Ukraine’s libraries.

Meanwhile, the Kiev neo-Nazi regime (supported by US-NATO) has endorsed the writings of Stepan Bandera as well as Adolph Hitler’s Mein Kampf. 

 

 

Military Training of Young Children to fight the Russians

From the outset in 2014 as well as under president Zelensky’s government, the Azov battalion is supported by US and Canadian military aid channelled to the Ukraine National Guard via the Ministry of Internal Affairs. 

The Azov battalion is not only involved in para-military operations in Eastern Ukraine, it is running a Summer Camp military training project for young children and adolescents as part of a broader Nazi indoctrination program.

The Azov Battalion promotes Nazism. It actively coordinates the Neo-Nazi Summer School: 

 

Zelensky Betrays His Family

Zelensky has also betrayed his family. Many of his relatives were victims of the Nazi holocaust.  

In a twisted irony, days before he assumed office [May 2019], “he …laid flowers on the grave of his grandfather, Semyon Ivanovich Zelensky (image right), who fought in the Soviet Union’s Red Army during World War II”.

High Treason.

My Grandfather: “one of those heroes who defended Ukraine from the Nazis”. 

What a liar and a criminal.

Sponsored by America and Europe, Zelensky is leading a Neo-Nazi government, he is promoting Nazism in Ukraine. 

And the Western media in chorus are endorsing the Zelensky proxy regime without bating an eyelid. The Kiev regime is upheld as a democracy. 

 

 

Ottawa, House of Commons, September 22, 2023

And at Canada’s House of Commons (September 22, 2023), a standing ovation for the Neo-Nazi President of Ukraine.

Are Canada’s MPs totally ignorant or are they embracing an unfolding US-Canada-NATO “Neo-Nazi Consensus”? 

 

 

It is worth noting that David Pugliese of The Ottawa Citizen has carefully documented the Neo-Nazi features of the Kiev Regime. His report (which no doubt was read by several of Canada’s Members of Parliament) was published in 2021 during the Zelensky presidency (May 2019-)

 

Michel Chossudovsky, Global Research, September 23, 2023

*** 

Note to readers: Please click the share button above. Follow us on Instagram and Twitter and subscribe to our Telegram Channel. Feel free to repost and share widely Global Research articles.

Featured image: Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky delivers an address in Kiev, Ukraine, April 15, 2022. (Credit: Ukrainian Presidency)

“Cognitive Warfare”: Stop the World Competition for “Control of Human Brains”

By Mojmir Babacek, February 28, 2024

The USA, Russia and China own systems, which are, among others, capable of producing strong electric currents in the ionosphere by transmitting their pulsed microwaves in the brain frequencies. Those alternating currents produce in the ionosphere intensive electromagnetic waves in the brain frequencies which reach large areas of the planet and will control the brain activity of their populations.

“Is the Israeli occupation of the Gaza strip, the West Bank and East Jerusalem legal under international law?” A Palestinian Legal Masterpiece by Dr. Ralph Wilde at the ICJ

By Steven Sahiounie, February 29, 2024

51 countries, along with three international organizations, have sent representatives to The Hague to answer the ‘Legal Consequences arising from the Policies and Practices of Israel in the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including East Jerusalem’. Each person addressing the court was allotted 30 minutes to make their case for whether it is legal, or it is illegal.

Reporters Without Shame: Top ‘Media Rights’ Organization Ignores Rampant Killings of Gaza Journalists

By Eva Bartlett, February 29, 2024

At the end of 2023, Reporters Without Borders (Reporters sans Frontieres, RSF), the international organization ostensibly advocating for freedom of information, released its annual report. The paper massively downplays the widespread and deliberate targeting of Palestinian journalists in the Israel-Gaza war.

Armenia Pivoting to the West, Distancing from Eurasia, Enhancing Military Ties with France

By Uriel Araujo, February 28, 2024

The Prime Minister of Armenia, Nikol Pashinyan, has announced his country is “freezing” cooperation with the Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO), which may be a step towards leaving the Eurasian bloc altogether.

Former British PM Liz Truss Presents “Trussonomics” at the U.S. Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC)

By Dr. Binoy Kampmark, February 28, 2024

The silly will make print and leave bursts of digital traces; the idiots will make history, if only in small print. One such figure is shortest serving UK Prime Minister in living memory, the woeful, joke-packed figure of Liz Truss who lasted a mere 50 disastrous days in office.

Three Recent Surveys Re-emphasize the Need for Negotiations to End the Ukraine War

By Bharat Dogra, February 28, 2024

According to the results of a survey by Harris Poll and the Quincy Institute in the USA in February 2024, 70 per cent of the people in the USA want their government to push Ukraine towards a negotiated settlement with Russia as soon as possible. 

Sending NATO Troops to Ukraine Is “Not Ruled Out”

By Drago Bosnic, February 28, 2024

Several Western countries, including the US and UK, have already deployed black ops troops disguised as volunteers or mercenaries. The Russian military reportedly even captured Polish and German personnel deployed to support large-scale operations involving NATO-sourced armor.

All Global Research articles can be read in 51 languages by activating the Translate Website button below the author’s name (only available in desktop version).

To receive Global Research’s Daily Newsletter (selected articles), click here.

Click the share button above to email/forward this article to your friends and colleagues. Follow us on Instagram and Twitter and subscribe to our Telegram Channel. Feel free to repost and share widely Global Research articles.

Big Tech’s Effort to Silence Truth-tellers: Global Research Online Referral Campaign

***

The U.N. special rapporteur on the right to food Michael Fakhri charges Israel with the deliberate starvation of the Palestinians of Gaza:

“There is no reason to intentionally block the passage of humanitarian aid or intentionally obliterate small-scale fishing vessels, greenhouses and orchards in Gaza – other than to deny people access to food,” Michael Fakhri, the UN special rapporteur on the right to food, told the Guardian.

“Intentionally depriving people of food is clearly a war crime. Israel has announced its intention to destroy the Palestinian people, in whole or in part, simply for being Palestinian. In my view as a UN human rights expert, this is now a situation of genocide. This means the State of Israel in its entirety is culpable and should be held accountable – not just individuals or this government, or that person.”

The Israeli government has been inflicting collective punishment on the people of Gaza from the start of the war, and a major part of that punishment has been cutting them off from outside supplies of food, water, and fuel. Israeli forces have been systematically destroying Gaza’s local means of food production since then. It has been clear from official statements and the actions of their government that they mean to harm the entire population. Fakhri is the latest expert to confirm what we have been seeing for months: the people of Gaza are being starved to death on purpose by the Israeli government.

The Secretary General of Doctors Without Borders, Christopher Lockyear, spoke before the U.N. Security Council last week and described the horrific conditions that have been created by the Israeli campaign and blockade:

This situation is the culmination of a war Israel is waging on the entire population of the Gaza strip – a war of collective punishment, a war without rules, a war at all costs. The laws and the principles we collectively depend on to enable humanitarian assistance are now eroded to the point of becoming meaningless.

Lockyear also detailed how MSF staff and facilities have repeatedly been attacked by Israeli forces. He said,

“Israeli forces are attacking our convoys, they are shooting at and raiding our hospitals, they are detaining our staff, and bulldozing our vehicles. For a second time, one of our staff shelters has been hit. This pattern of attacks is either intentional or indicative of reckless incompetence.”

The head of the UN Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA), Phillipe Lazzarini, raised the alarm last week that the agency was “on the brink” because of the decisions of U.S. and other governments to halt funding:

I fear we are on the edge of a monumental disaster with grave implications for regional peace, security and human rights.

It is important to remember that the U.S. and other Western governments that chose to halt funding for UNRWA did so on the basis of unproven Israeli claims that a handful of agency employees took part in the October 7 attack. The entire population is being made to suffer for the alleged wrongdoing of a few people. Fakhri concludes that the governments that have cut off funding to UNRWA are complicit in the deliberate starvation of Gaza’s people:

“Ending funding almost instantaneously based on unsubstantiated claims against a small number of people has no other purpose other than collective punishment of all Palestinians in multiple countries. The countries that withdrew this lifeline are undoubtedly complicit in the starvation of Palestinians,” Fakhri said.

Despite the International Court of Justice’s order that Israel must facilitate the delivery of humanitarian aid and enable basic services, Amnesty International said this week that “Israel has failed to take even the bare minimum steps to comply.” According to Amnesty, the small trickle of aid that has been allowed in has actually decreased in the weeks since the ICJ ruling. The Israeli government flouts international law because it assumes that it will never pay a real price for doing so, and so far the Biden administration has given them every reason to think that.

In addition to the severe hunger created by the blockade and the destruction of food production, the people of Gaza are suffering from the collapse of the health care system, the breakdown in public sanitation, and the rapid spread of disease. The New York Times reported over the weekend:

Prominent epidemiologists have estimated that an escalation of the war in Gaza could cause up to 85,000 Palestinian deaths over the next six months from injuries, disease and lack of medical care, in addition to the nearly 30,000 that local authorities have already reported since early October.

Children are obviously among the hardest hit by these disasters. The executive director of UNICEF writes:

Even now, we estimate that at least 90% of Gaza’s children under the age of five are affected by one or more infectious diseases, and that 70% have had diarrhea in the past two weeks — a 23-fold increase compared with the 2022 baseline [bold mine-DL].

The children of Gaza are especially vulnerable to the spread of disease because they are so badly malnourished. The spread of malnutrition in Gaza has been extraordinarily fast. Fakhri spoke about this in his comments to The Guardian:

“The speed of malnourishment of young children is also astounding. The bombing and people being killed directly is brutal, but this starvation – and the wasting and stunting of children – is torturous and vile [bold mine-DL]. It will have a long-term impact on the population physically, cognitively and morally … All things indicate that this has been intentional,” said Fakhri, a law professor at the University of Oregon.

Children are dying of starvation in Gaza right now. The youngest children are at the greatest risk, and there are reports of many young children perishing from hunger. One of the latest victims was a two-month old infant, Mahmoud Fattouh. He will not be the last. UNICEF warns that there will soon be an “explosion of preventable child deaths” as a result of starvation.

This is the horrific and predictable result of the collective punishment of millions of people. Conditions will continue to deteriorate if the war is not halted and the blockade is not lifted. The U.S. is in a unique position to press for an end to both to avert an even greater man-made catastrophe, but our government refuses to do any of the things needed to prevent it from happening.

*

Note to readers: Please click the share button above. Follow us on Instagram and Twitter and subscribe to our Telegram Channel. Feel free to repost and share widely Global Research articles.

Featured image: Let Them Eat Dirt – by Mr. Fish

All Global Research articles can be read in 51 languages by activating the Translate Website button below the author’s name (only available in desktop version).

To receive Global Research’s Daily Newsletter (selected articles), click here.

Click the share button above to email/forward this article to your friends and colleagues. Follow us on Instagram and Twitter and subscribe to our Telegram Channel. Feel free to repost and share widely Global Research articles.

Big Tech’s Effort to Silence Truth-tellers: Global Research Online Referral Campaign

***

The International Court of Justice (ICJ) has been asked for an opinion. The question put before the panel of 15 judges at The Hague in the Netherlands, is simply put, “Is the Israeli occupation of the Gaza strip, the West Bank and East Jerusalem legal under international law?”.

A simple question about a complex problem between Israel and Palestine that began in 1948.

51 countries, along with three international organizations, have sent representatives to The Hague to answer the ‘Legal Consequences arising from the Policies and Practices of Israel in the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including East Jerusalem’. Each person addressing the court was allotted 30 minutes to make their case for whether it is legal, or it is illegal.

On Monday, February 26, the very last day of the court’s hearings, Dr. Ralph Wilde, representing the Arab League took his place behind the podium. Later, some of the audience may have said, “They saved the best for last.”

As Marwan Bishara would later comment, the Arab League has never been very effective, but this time they stole the show.

Dr. Ralph Wilde is a member of the Faculty of Laws at University College London. He is currently engaged in an interdisciplinary research project, funded by the European Research Council, on the extraterritorial application of international human rights law, called ‘human rights beyond borders’.

Dressed in his flowing legal robe, and speaking in a melodious British accent, everyone watching and listening was captivated by his presentation. He spoke in a dry, legal manner with neither emotion, nor drama. He proceeded to present his case like a surgeon cutting into a diseased body and removing the cancer, and sewing up the incision with tight, neat stiches.

“The Palestinian people have been denied the exercise of their legal right to self-determination through the more than century-long violent, colonial, racist effort to establish a nation State exclusively for the Jewish people in the land of Mandatory Palestine,” said Wilde.

“Today I will address, first, violations of international law arising out of the régime of racial domination — apartheid — perpetrated against the Palestinian people across the entire land of historic Palestine, and then, second, the existential illegality of Israel’s occupation of the Palestinian Gaza Strip and West Bank, including East Jerusalem, since 1967,” said Wilde.

The global citizenry has watched the conflict through successive generations. Many wondered why couldn’t Israel be a non-racist state, where all citizens are treated the same, have the same rights and obligations, and Palestinians who were living in exile could return home?

Israel’s greatest partner is the US, which is based on a secular government, with all races treated equally, and all live under the same laws and obligations. Why couldn’t Washington, DC, teach the Israelis the formula for success, and an end to conflict?

The UN, the US, and most other nations have stressed the two-state solution is the goal to be met. Others have offered that a one-state solution is more like the American model.

However, the US and UK have been working diligently and systematically since 1948 to keep Israel in constant turmoil and at odds with the oppressed Palestinians who are denied all human rights.

Israel is now considered to be a pariah state, similar to South Africa under apartheid.

“We as South Africans sense, see, hear and feel to our core the inhumane, discriminatory policies and practices of the Israeli regime as an even more extreme form of the apartheid that was institutionalized against black people in my country,” Vusimuzi Madonsela, South African ambassador to the Netherlands, told the court.”

Israel stands accused of the acquisition of Palestinian territory by force, denial of the right of the Palestinian people to self-determination, imposition of alien subjugation and rule, racial discrimination and apartheid, and genocide.

The worst crimes attributed to Israel are genocide and apartheid.  Apartheid is classed as a ‘crime against humanity’ under the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court.

Israel stands accused of breaching the laws of occupation, and its settlement plan has made creating an independent Palestinian state impossible, which a number of states relayed to the court.

Irish Foreign Minister Rossa Fanning also held the court enthralled.

“By transferring parts of its own civilian population into the OPT, Israel has violated Article 49(6) of the Fourth Geneva Convention,” Fanning said.

Israel’s settlement enterprise, accompanied by the application of domestic Israeli laws and administration in the occupied Palestinian territory, constitute a “disguised form of annexation,” added Fanning.

Fanning explained that annexation is acquisition of territory by force, and constitutes one of the gravest breaches of international law, which renders the occupation illegal.

The US State Department humiliated itself by sending their attorney, Richard Visek, to the court to argue in defense of Israel’s policy of occupation of Palestinian territories. A motley crew accompanying the US were Canada, UK, Zambia and Figi, who all claimed Israel had every right to deny the Palestinian people their rights. The US seemed to make the claim that there is international law, agreed to and recognized by all nations, but there is a sole exception to the laws, and rules of norm, for Israel. Just Israel sits alone, protected by the world’s superpower, and supported by the decadent remains of the British Empire.

However, Israel’s stanch supporters realize that they stand alone against international laws, opinions, and rules based global order. They know the outcome will shame them in their stance, and are now taking measures to soften the blow.

Judge Jeffrey White, of the US District Court, cited “undisputed evidence” that “the ongoing military siege on Gaza is intended to eradicate a whole people and therefore plausibly falls within the international prohibition against genocide.”

Judge White called on US officials “to examine the results of their unflagging support” for Israel.

Israel did not show up in court at The Hague. Apparently, they could not think up ways to justify how they have treated 6 million people since 1948.

If and when the court’s verdict is made known, it will hit Israel economically. Countries will be prevented in selling arms and weaponry to Israel, which has the 6^th strongest army on earth. It also means the end to all Israeli businesses who are located in illegal settlements in the West Bank. Most of the settlers are American Jews and they run businesses from their homes and neighborhoods which export abroad. All of that would have to stop, because countries will not buy from them any longer.

In January, the Netherlands cut off selling F-35 spare parts to Israel. In November 2023, the Norwegian Pension Fund withdrew its half-billion-dollar investment in Israel Bonds, and last week, four Norwegian universities terminated ties with Israeli universities.

If a court ruling is issued against Israel, the US government will also have to stop sending weapons and cash to Israel. This may dove-tail nicely with President Donald Trump, if he should win in November. Unlike past US presidents Obama, Bush, Clinton, and the current President Biden, Trump is against the US-NATO instigated wars, which have resulted in ‘forever-wars’. Trump’s foreign policy is inward looking, with a prime goal of making America great again, and doing so by using the money spent on foreign wars on the American people, infrastructure and security.

According to Wilde, and the evidence he presented, it is clear beyond a shadow of doubt, that the Israeli policies and practices over the course of its 56-year belligerent occupation of the Palestinian territories, including East Jerusalem, are illegal under international law, and the occupation must end immediately.

*

Note to readers: Please click the share button above. Follow us on Instagram and Twitter and subscribe to our Telegram Channel. Feel free to repost and share widely Global Research articles.

This article was originally published on Mideast Discourse.

Steven Sahiounie is a two-time award-winning journalist. He is a regular contributor to Global Research.

Featured image is from MD

All Global Research articles can be read in 51 languages by activating the Translate Website button below the author’s name (only available in desktop version).

To receive Global Research’s Daily Newsletter (selected articles), click here.

Click the share button above to email/forward this article to your friends and colleagues. Follow us on Instagram and Twitter and subscribe to our Telegram Channel. Feel free to repost and share widely Global Research articles.

Big Tech’s Effort to Silence Truth-tellers: Global Research Online Referral Campaign

***

The silly will make print and leave bursts of digital traces; the idiots will make history, if only in small print. One such figure is shortest serving UK Prime Minister in living memory, the woeful, joke-packed figure of Liz Truss who lasted a mere 50 disastrous days in office. She was even bettered by a satirical, dressed-up lettuce, filmed in anticipation of her brief, calamitous end.

With such a blotted record, the vacuous, inane Truss felt that her experiences were worthy of recounting to the Conservative Political Action Conference, held at National Harbor, Maryland between February 22 and 24. The gathering, conducted since the 1970s and organised by the American Conservative Union, has become something of a mandatory calendar event for US conservative activists. Those from other countries have also tried to make a splash – keeping Truss company was the demagogic voice of Brexit, Nigel Farage, arguably the most influential British politician not to hold a seat in Parliament.

A self-believer of towering insensibility, Truss oversaw during her flashpoint stint in office mind boggling budgetary decisions. On winning the Tory ballot after the fall of Boris Johnson in 2022, she promised £30 billion in tax cuts via an emergency budget, reversing the rise in National Insurance and a range of energy-price guarantees. That these tax cuts – eventually amounting to £45 billion – were primarily skewed to benefit those at the higher end of the scale did not bother her. “The people at the top of the income distribution pay more tax – so inevitably, when you cut taxes you tend to benefit the people who are more likely to pay tax.” What logic; what reasoning.

With figures of such incompetence, responsibility for failure is always attributed to someone, or something else. In Truss’s case, blame initially lay with fellow comic villain and Chancellor of the Exchequer, Kwasi Kwarteng, with whom she had taken a wrecking ball to the UK economy and the British pound. With Kwarteng, she had previously authored a dotty pamphlet “Britannia Unchained”, warning that Britain should not emulate the economic model of southern European countries, saddled with poor productivity and growth, along with hefty and inefficient public services.

The Economist tasted the irony of it all, seeing Trussonomics as typical of “Britaly”, a country “of political instability, low growth and subordination to bond markets.” A further irony was that the horrified market reaction to Truss suggested her inability to understand the very forces she prefers unleashed over the wickedness of big government and bureaucratic interference. Live by the free market; die by the free market.

What, then, to tell her New World colleagues? At first blush, nothing new. In April 2023, she had already made it across the Atlantic to speak to the Heritage Foundation, where she gave the Margaret Thatcher Freedom Lecture. Monumental failure can undergo changes in transatlantic journey, and the conservative think tank omitted mentioning her spell of prime ministerial lunacy, impressed, instead, by her “long-standing” advocacy “for limited government, low taxes, and freedom, both at home and the UK and around the world.”

The speech was barbed, resentful and absurd, an attempt to channel a politician she resembles in no serious respect, bar certain Little England prejudices, with a smattering of superficially similar economic beliefs. Truss complained of “coordinated resistance from inside the Conservative Party”, “the British corporate establishment”, “the IMF [International Monetary Fund] and even from President Biden.” She grumbled of “a new kind of economic model” that was taking hold in the UK and US, “one that’s focused on redistributionism, on stagnation and on the imbuing of woke culture into our businesses.” Seen from another perspective, this “anti-growth movement”, to use Truss’s daft terminology, had been responsible for her demise.

In her CPAC display, we see an attempt to flatter Donald Trump, drawing from the well of Deep State rhetoric, and various scripted points about insecurity, immigration, terrorism, gender, “wokenomics”, “the power of the left and the power of those bureaucracies.” There are also some head-scratching remarks that lent a cartoonish feel to the mad bat: “you can’t triangulate with terrorists, you can’t compromise with communists, you have to fight for what you believe in.”

The speech is not entirely nonsensical, though Truss misses the significance of any pertinent observations. “What has happened in Britain over the past 30 years is power that used to be in the hands of politicians has been moved to quangos and bureaucrats and lawyers so what you find is a democratically elected government actually unable to enact policies.”  While the estrangement of the elected from the elector, aided and abetted by unelected bureaucracies, is hard to deny, Truss is merely implying that an unaccountable dictatorship would surely be far better and representative.

To demonstrate the point, Truss raged against the Office of Budget Responsibility and the Bank of England who “sought to undermine the policies.” Again, the IMF, along with Biden, featured as targets. Again, ignorance of the free market and her ruin by its very dictates, was proudly displayed.

Decoding the Truss basket case of beliefs yields this question: Why were there such impediments to my mad realisation? It was far better, she proposed, to get “a bigger bazooka in order to be able to deliver. And I think we have got to challenge the institutions themselves.” A challenge is a good thing, but best bring a well thought out policy with you when going into battle.

*

Note to readers: Please click the share button above. Follow us on Instagram and Twitter and subscribe to our Telegram Channel. Feel free to repost and share widely Global Research articles.

Dr. Binoy Kampmark was a Commonwealth Scholar at Selwyn College, Cambridge. He currently lectures at RMIT University. He is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG). Email: [email protected] 

Featured image: Clicksbox / Shutterstock

All Global Research articles can be read in 51 languages by activating the Translate Website button below the author’s name (only available in desktop version).

To receive Global Research’s Daily Newsletter (selected articles), click here.

Click the share button above to email/forward this article to your friends and colleagues. Follow us on Instagram and Twitter and subscribe to our Telegram Channel. Feel free to repost and share widely Global Research articles.

Big Tech’s Effort to Silence Truth-tellers: Global Research Online Referral Campaign

***

The Prime Minister of Armenia, Nikol Pashinyan, has announced his country is “freezing” cooperation with the Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO), which may be a step towards leaving the Eurasian bloc altogether. According to Igor Korotchenko, director general of the Caspian Institute for Strategic Studies, this development is a direct result of recent agreements between the Caucasus nation and France, after Pashinyan discussed the matter earlier this month with French President Emmanuel Macron. Paris and Yerevan signed a weapons contract amid a general boost in their military and defense ties, with France having agreed to sell the Thales GM 200 (an advanced air defense system) to Armenia.

France’s agenda does not always align with that of the US-led NATO, as we can see in the Indo-Pacific itself, for example. Paris has of course its own traditional aspirations in the South Caucasus, pertaining to its competition with Britain (the so-called “Fashoda Syndrome”), and also its complex relationship with Turkey, as Paris has long sought to contain Turkish ambitions in the East Mediterranean and beyond. Be it as it may, the French clearly aspires to “replace” Russia’s position in Armenia and the European power is now promising to provide Armenians with short-range surface-to-air missiles, among other things.

Besides that, since 2022, Armenia has also signed various defense contracts worth $400 million with India, and the Caucasus nation also made a deal to buy PINAKA multi-barrel rocket launchers (MBRL), and anti-tank munitions from India. This has led some observers to talk about an emerging Euro-Asian strategic alliance, with a focus on the Indo-Pacific strategy. I have written elsewhere about the paradoxes of India’s “balancing” role between the West and Eurasia, both in the Pacific and in Central Asia – with India, member of both the Quad and the SCO, pushing for the former to engage in Afghanistan.

In any case, the complexities of France’s agenda apart, the overall Armenian pivoting to the West (through Paris in this case) fits into the larger context of NATO and Western “expansion” and the “encircling” of Russia. As POLITICO described it, France has just “planted its flag” in “Russia’s backyard” with the Armenian weapons’ deals. However, Pashinyan has also said there is no intention to shut a Russia military base in his country, at Gyumri.

For Korotchenko, the Armenian authorities in Yerevan  are gradually pivoting to NATO and Western structures, and “the only thing” keeping the country from “a final break” with the CSTO and Moscow is the economy, for “Armenia enjoys a number of serious preferences from Russia, and also enjoys all the advantages of membership in the Eurasian Economic Union, a regional economic bloc.” Some Western analysts are in fact talking about Armenia joining the EU and NATO, which thus far remains pure wishful thinking also due to the economic factor mentioned by Korotchenko. According to Robert M. Cutler (a Senior Research Fellow at the Institute of European, Russian & Eurasian Studies, Carleton University, Ottawa), the bilateral agreement regarding the Russian troops in Armenia runs until 2044, and this certainly hampers wider French or NATO ambitions in terms of “Westernizing” that Caucasus nation.

The CSTO, a Russia-led intergovernmental military alliance, consists of Russia and five other post-soviet states, namely, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, and Armenia. Albeit formally formed in 2002, the Treaty’s roots can be traced back to the short-lived United Armed Forces of the Commonwealth of Independent States (1992-1993), which in turn were preceded by the Soviet Armed forces. The Tashkent Treaty was signed in 1993 to create the  Collective Security Treaty (CST), taking effect in 1994, and lasting a 5-year period. Its goal was to become a legal framework for guaranteeing military security throughout the post-Soviet area, specifically in the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS). In 1999, the Treaty was renewed for five more years – then, in the context of military conflicts with Islamic fundamentalists in Kyrgyzstan, CST signatories agreed on joint military action, and such a development paved the way for the CST to finally become the CSTO in 2002.  

Soviet collapse, ideological aspects apart, has in a way left a geopolitical and power vacuum in Eurasia, with security concerns pertaining to Central Asian ethno-political destabilization while US-led NATO in turn never ceased to expand. In this context, regional players and Moscow particularly have been seeking to promote mechanisms towards regional integration and collective security.

Russia has thus been pursuing to strengthen the Eurasian Economic Union (EEU) alongside the CSTO itself and the BRICS group. The EEU has been focusing on Eurasian development and economic integration, whereas the CSTO, for its part, has been mostly tasked with security issues pertaining to member states’ territorial sovereignty. From an American perspective, such groupings threaten US unipolar hegemony and are thus met with hostility.

The challenge for countries such as Armenia involves precisely “balancing” their bilateral relations with both  their Eurasian partners and with an increasingly “cold war mentality”-driven West. As I wrote a year ago, Eurasian countries have been increasing trade with Russia in the aftermath of the Western sanctions against Moscow (which have largely backfired), with exports to Russia surging in Armenia. Such trade trends provided new opportunities for countries such as Armenia itself, a nation which has long envisioned itself as a potential bridge between the Eurasian Union and the European Union (EU).

In October 2023 I wrote on how the Western presence in Armenia was expanding – in spite of its failure. The ongoing and unchallenged Turkey-backed ethnic cleansing campaign in Nagorno-Karabakh (also known as Artsakh), conducted by Azerbaijan (also with the support of Israel) is an eloquent sign of the failure of Yerevan’s turn to the West. Much of the world is in fact increasingly alienated by Western “alignmentism” and its new Cold War mentality. Any Armenian “Western shift” will run contrary to the current trends of non-alignment, multi-alignment, and “strategic autonomy” that even France and Germany themselves have been proposing. “Decoupling” from Russia (and Eurasia) would be detrimental to Armenia’s own interests – but that is precisely what the West will most likely demand from it.

*

Note to readers: Please click the share button above. Follow us on Instagram and Twitter and subscribe to our Telegram Channel. Feel free to repost and share widely Global Research articles.

This article was originally published on InfoBrics.

Uriel Araujo is a researcher with a focus on international and ethnic conflicts. He is a regular contributor to Global Research.

Featured image is from InfoBrics

All Global Research articles can be read in 51 languages by activating the Translate Website button below the author’s name (only available in desktop version).

To receive Global Research’s Daily Newsletter (selected articles), click here.

Click the share button above to email/forward this article to your friends and colleagues. Follow us on Instagram and Twitter and subscribe to our Telegram Channel. Feel free to repost and share widely Global Research articles.

Big Tech’s Effort to Silence Truth-tellers: Global Research Online Referral Campaign

***

Two recent surveys have re-emphasized the need for ending the Ukraine war as early as possible. 

According to the results of a survey by Harris Poll and the Quincy Institute in the USA in February 2024, 70 per cent of the people in the USA want their government to push Ukraine towards a negotiated settlement with Russia as soon as possible. 

When people polled were told that this is likely to involve compromises on both sides, still nearly two-thirds or 66 per cent supported the push towards early peace. In late 2022 when a similar question was asked, the people supporting the drive for peace constituted 57% of those polled. Hence there is a 9 per cent increase in such support for a negotiated settlement that involves compromises[1].

The second survey was conducted by the Kyiv International Institute of Sociology.

This revealed that 72 per cent of Ukrainians believe that talks with Russia ought to get underway. The proportion of Ukrainians who believe that Ukraine can win ‘only militarily’ is only 23 per cent, although one year back it was 35 per cent, registering a drop of 12 per cent.[2]

A European Union poll conducted in 12 countries in January 2024 revealed that only 10 per cent of Europeans believe that Ukraine can defeat Russia. The poll also found that now most people in Europe support ‘compromise solutions’, unlike about a year back when there was much more emphasis on the Ukraine reclaiming all its territories.[3]

While these three surveys show that there is a clear preference in the USA as well as in Ukraine for finding a way out of the Ukraine war towards peace, this does not appear to be backed by the most powerful persons in the ruling establishments of these two countries.

In fact leaders at the top in the USA have continued to say that they are willing to support the Ukraine war effort against Russia for as long as it takes despite the terrible human costs of the war which have only continued to increase in recent times.

In a shocking display of lack of ethics a number of political leaders in the USA have been openly saying that the costs to the USA are very little as it is the Ukrainians who are doing the fighting for weakening their old adversary Russia. They also say that the supply of arms to Ukraine leads to jobs and business gains in the USA. What is completely forgotten by them is the immense human costs to the people of Ukraine in terms of the millions injured, displaced and killed. The lack of ethics shown in such statements by prominent leaders has shocked many people some of whom express disbelief that such statements have actually been made by leaders in responsible positions.[4]

Russian sources have told Reuters that Russia sent a peace offer to the USA in December 2023 and January 2024 which was rejected by the USA. However the USA has denied that such an offer was made.[1]

President Zelensky of Ukraine has also continued to make statements that are likely to result in the war continuing for an indefinitely long time, as he insists on Russia vacating all territories it has gained including Crimea before peace can be negotiated.

A much more viable solution with much higher chances of bringing ceasefire and peace would be to have ceasefire on the basis of existing lines of control and then to resolve all disagreements on the basis of peace negotiations which can be prolonged but should not be allowed to break down. This will result in conditions in which the overdue, really big rehabilitation effort in Ukraine can start. Peace and community –based rehabilitation on a large and adequate scale–these are the two most immediate and important needs of the people of Ukraine which must be met as soon as possible.

*

Note to readers: Please click the share button above. Follow us on Instagram and Twitter and subscribe to our Telegram Channel. Feel free to repost and share widely Global Research articles.

Bharat Dogra is Honorary Convener, Campaign to Save Earth Now. His most recent books include Planet in Peril, Protecting Earth for Children, A Day in 2071 and Earth without Borders. He is a regular contributor to Global Research.

Notes

1. New poll–nearly 70% of Americans want talks to end war in Ukraine. Article in ‘Responsible Statecraft’ by Connor Echols, February 16, 2024.
2. Zelensky must listen, Ukrainians want peace—article by Aydin Sezer, The Times of India, February 24, 2024.
3. Only 10% of Europeans believe Ukraine can defeat Russia—Report in Euronews by Joshua Askew.
4. Ukraine’s tragedies—A good deal for some war supporters, article in Responsible Statecraft by Branko Marcetik.        

Featured image: Graffiti “Stop War” on Russia’s war in Ukraine in the Mauerpark in Berlin, Germany. Image taken on March 11, 2022. Source: Wikimedia Commons.

All Global Research articles can be read in 51 languages by activating the Translate Website button below the author’s name (only available in desktop version).

To receive Global Research’s Daily Newsletter (selected articles), click here.

Click the share button above to email/forward this article to your friends and colleagues. Follow us on Instagram and Twitter and subscribe to our Telegram Channel. Feel free to repost and share widely Global Research articles.

Big Tech’s Effort to Silence Truth-tellers: Global Research Online Referral Campaign

***

On February 26, French President Emmanuel Macron refused to rule out sending ground troops to Ukraine.

Although he admitted there’s no consensus about this within NATO, Macron insisted that “nothing should be excluded” and that “we will do everything that we can to make sure that Russia does not prevail”. The next day, French Prime Minister Gabriel Attal reiterated his message, saying that “nothing can be ruled out in a war”. Just like Macron, he conceded there’s no consensus on the matter, but also insisted that “we will do whatever it takes to ensure that Russia cannot win this war”. This leaves the obvious question, what exactly can the political West (much less France alone) do to “ensure” Moscow’s defeat in Ukraine?

Firstly, a clear-cut coalition would have to be formed. NATO cannot collectively get involved in Ukraine due to the simple fact that the Neo-Nazi junta is not an official member.

Invoking Article 4 or Article 5 would require an external enemy threatening one or multiple NATO member states.

And even in such an eventuality, all members would need to agree to collective defense. How likely are countries such as Portugal, Spain or Italy to enter a direct confrontation with a global superpower such as Russia, even in the case that Moscow decided to intervene in NATO member states such as Estonia or Latvia? To say nothing of such a possibility when it comes to the Kiev regime. Helping such a corrupt and even terrorist entity is not very appealing.

Secondly, even if such a coalition were to be formed, it would almost certainly involve pathologically Russophobic countries such as the United Kingdom, Poland and the Baltic states (Estonia, Latvia Lithuania).

This would effectively divide NATO into tier members, depending on who’s in direct war with Russia and who’s not.

The United States couldn’t get involved directly, as this would push the world closer to thermonuclear annihilation, meaning that Washington DC would be largely limited to what it’s already doing in Ukraine – logistics, ISR (intelligence, surveillance, reconnaissance), covert ops and indirect support in general. This still leaves the obvious elephant in the room – who would do the actual fighting with Russian troops?

It’s quite clear that the Neo-Nazi junta would need to provide the bulk of the troops.

The only problem is that’s exactly what they’ve been doing for the last two years and it hasn’t been going very well, particularly in recent weeks.

The best NATO weapons and equipment have been obliterated by the Russian military in mere days. And while it’s operated by the Kiev regime forces (officially, at least), there’s no evidence that NATO soldiers would do any better, on the contrary even. Several Western countries, including the US and UK, have already deployed black ops troops disguised as volunteers or mercenaries. The Russian military reportedly even captured Polish and German personnel deployed to support large-scale operations involving NATO-sourced armor.

In addition, Western personnel are also widely believed to be operating other more complex assets such as the “Patriot” SAM (surface-to-air missile) system and similar air defenses that the Neo-Nazi junta forces simply haven’t had the time to master. The same can be said of other weapon systems such as the M270 MLRS (multiple, launch rocket system) and its wheeled version, the HIMARS. This alone makes NATO personnel a primary target for the Russian military, as evidenced by the January 16 strike that obliterated at least 60 French mercenaries in Kharkov. Russian sources reported that these were “highly trained specialists working on weapon systems too complex for average conscripts”. This could partially explain Macron’s rather emotional reaction.

Another strong possibility is that Paris wants revenge for losing its African (neo)colonies, particularly Niger, which jeopardizes its exploitation of Nigerien uranium and other important resources. The former is extremely important to France, as it’s still the world’s second-largest operator of nuclear power plants (56 in total). Having to pay full price for African uranium is rather “inconvenient” for Paris, which is why it kept countries like Niger, Mali and Burkina Faso in a (neo)colonial grip for well over half a century after officially granting them “independence”. After the Russian military, particularly the “Wagner” PMC (private military company) ended this, France was forced to look for alternatives, as upwards of 70% of its energy needs are covered by nuclear power plants.

Still, Macron’s energy issues are certainly not the reason for Europe to go to war with a military superpower such as Russia and the vast majority of European Union leaders have communicated that very clearly. In addition, even if a potential direct conflict with Russia were to unfold without the usage of weapons of mass destruction, a field entirely dominated by Moscow anyway, the political West does not have conventional superiority, despite all the reverie that it does. The Russian military would almost certainly not send millions of soldiers to take territory in Poland or other countries that would be involved in a potential intervention in western Ukraine. Instead, it would launch hundreds of long-range cruise, ballistic and hypersonic missiles at military targets.

This would only be the initial reaction and it would certainly progress to include other strategically important assets in all participant countries, in particular their energy systems, industrial facilities and generally anything with the so-called dual-use potential (meaning that it can be used for military purposes). In other words, Moscow would lay waste to any and all targets it deems militarily important, setting back the economies of targeted countries by decades. No sane leader of an independent (or at least partially independent) country would want that. And Europe doesn’t really have a way of responding without escalating the conflict into a thermonuclear exchange, one that it would most certainly lose, as it can’t even maintain its strategic arsenal in peacetime.

*

Note to readers: Please click the share button above. Follow us on Instagram and Twitter and subscribe to our Telegram Channel. Feel free to repost and share widely Global Research articles.

This article was originally published on InfoBrics.

Drago Bosnic is an independent geopolitical and military analyst. He is a regular contributor to Global Research.

Featured image is from InfoBrics

All Global Research articles can be read in 51 languages by activating the Translate Website button below the author’s name (only available in desktop version).

To receive Global Research’s Daily Newsletter (selected articles), click here.

Click the share button above to email/forward this article to your friends and colleagues. Follow us on Instagram and Twitter and subscribe to our Telegram Channel. Feel free to repost and share widely Global Research articles.

Big Tech’s Effort to Silence Truth-tellers: Global Research Online Referral Campaign

***

Since October, the Israeli press has uncovered damning evidence showing that an untold number of the Israeli victims during the October 7 Hamas attack were in fact killed by the IDF response.

While it is indisputable that the Hamas-led attackers were responsible for many Israeli civilian deaths that day, reports from Israel indicate that the IDF in multiple cases fired on and killed Israeli civilians.

It’s an important issue that demands greater transparency—both in terms of the questions it raises about IDF policy, and in terms of the black-and-white narrative Israel has advanced about what happened on October 7, used to justify its ongoing assault on the Gaza Strip.

Indeed, IDF responsibility for Israeli deaths has been a repeated topic of discussion in the Israeli press, accompanied by demands for investigations. But the most US readers have gotten from their own press about the issue is a dismissive piece from the Washington Post about October 7 “truthers.”

Implementing the Hannibal Directive?

Image: Israel’s Haaretz (12/13/23) is willing to raise questions that seem to be taboo in the US press.

In the wake of October 7, after Israel began its genocidal campaign against Gaza, reports began to emerge from the Israeli press of incidents in which Israeli troops made decisions to fire on Hamas targets regardless of whether Israeli civilians were present.

That the IDF’s initial reaction was chaotic at best is well-documented. Much of the early military response came from the air, with little information for pilots and drone operators to distinguish targets but orders to shoot anyway (Grayzone, 10/27/23). Citing a police source, Haaretz (11/18/23) reported that at the Supernova music festival site, “an IDF combat helicopter that arrived to the scene and fired at terrorists there apparently also hit some festival participants.” But there are also mainstream Israeli media reports that credibly suggest the IDF may have implemented a policy to sacrifice Israeli hostages.

Supernova music festival attendee Yasmin Porat had escaped the festival on foot to the nearby village of Be’eri, only to be held hostage in a home with 13 others. One of the captors surrendered and released Porat to IDF troops outside. She described how, after a prolonged standoff, Israeli tank fire demolished that home and killed all but one of the remaining Israeli hostages. Her account was verified by the other surviving hostage (Electronic Intifada, 10/16/23; Haaretz, 12/13/23). One of the Israeli victims was a child who had been held up as an example of Hamas’s brutality (Grayzone, 11/25/23).

Yedioth Ahronoth (1/12/24; translated into English by Electronic Intifada, 1/20/24)—one of Israel’s most widely read newspapers—published a bombshell piece that put these revelations in context. The paper reported that the IDF instructed its members

to stop “at any cost” any attempt by Hamas terrorists to return to Gaza, using language very similar to that of the original Hannibal Directive, despite repeated promises by the defense apparatus that the directive had been canceled.

The Hannibal Directive—named for the Carthaginian general who allegedly ingested poison rather than be captured by his enemies—is the once-secret doctrine meant to prevent at all costs the taking of IDF soldiers as hostages, even at the risk of harming the soldier (Haaretz, 11/1/11). It was supposedly revoked in 2016, and was ostensibly never meant to be applied to civilians (Haaretz, 1/17/24).

Yedioth Ahronoth reported:

It is not clear at this stage how many of the captives were killed due to the operation of this order on October 7. During the week after Black Sabbath [i.e., October 7] and at the initiative of Southern Command, soldiers from elite units examined some 70 vehicles that had remained in the area between the Gaza Envelope settlements and the Gaza Strip. These were vehicles that did not reach Gaza because on their way they had been hit by fire from a helicopter gunship, a UAV or a tank, and at least in some of the cases, everyone in the vehicle was killed.

Reports that the IDF gave orders to disregard the lives of Israeli captives have caused great consternation in Israel (Haaretz, 12/13/23). An author of the IDF ethics code called it “unlawful, unethical, horrifying” (Haaretz, 1/17/23). Yet any mention of the reports, or the debates they have inspired in Israel, seems to be virtually taboo in the mainstream US media.

The only mention of “Hannibal directive” FAIR could find in a major US newspaper the since October 7 came in a New York Post article (12/18/23) paraphrasing a released hostage who

claimed that Hamas told them the Israel Defense Forces would employ the infamous “Hannibal Directive” on civilians, a revoked protocol that once allegedly called on troops to prioritize taking out terrorists even if it meant killing a kidnapped soldier.

‘A General’s Dilemma’

A version of Supernova attendee Porat’s account was related a few days later in the New York Times (12/22/23), which published a lengthy investigative report piecing together what happened across the village of Be’eri. That report included a section about the standoff at the house where Porat was held, under the subhead “A General’s Dilemma.” It did not mention Porat’s prior revelations in Israeli media and the controversy they had caused.

The piece described how

the captors had forced roughly half of the hostages, including the Dagans, into Ms. Cohen’s backyard. They positioned the hostages between the troops and the house, according to Ms. Dagan and Ms. Porat.

After more than an hour of gunfire between the IDF and the gunmen, Ms. Dagan reported seeing at least two hostages in the backyard “killed in the gunfire. It wasn’t clear who killed them, she said.”

The article continued:

As the dusk approached, the SWAT commander and General [Barak] Hiram began to argue. The SWAT commander thought more kidnappers might surrender. The general wanted the situation resolved by nightfall.

Minutes later, the militants launched a rocket-propelled grenade, according to the general and other witnesses who spoke to the Times.

”The negotiations are over,” General Hiram recalled telling the tank commander. ”Break in, even at the cost of civilian casualties.”

The tank fired two light shells at the house.

Shrapnel from the second shell hit Mr. Dagan in the neck, severing an artery and killing him, his wife said.

During the melee, the kidnappers were also killed.

Only two of the 14 hostages—Ms. Dagan and Ms. Porat—survived.

It’s a shocking order; it’s also shocking that the Times offered no comment about the order. After the revelation caused a firestorm in Israel, including demands for an immediate investigation by family of those killed in the incident, the Times (12/27/23) published a followup about how General Hiram’s quote “stirred debate,” including multiple quotes from the general’s defenders.

Ignoring the Context

Image: The New York Times (1/5/24) neglected to mention its earlier report about the IDF being willing to sacrifice civilians.

There was another rare mention of Israeli friendly fire in New York Times (1/5/24), reporting on Palestinian Jerusalem resident Soheib Abu Amar, who was also held hostage and ultimately killed in the house Porat escaped from. Bizarrely, it did not mention the controversy over Hiram’s order.

Under the headline, “A Palestinian Man Vanished October 7. His Family Wants to Know Who Killed Him,” the Times traced Abu Amar’s disappearance that day, which began as a bus driver for partygoers at the music festival. Describing his final moments, the Times wrote that “Israeli security forces engaged in an intense battle with Hamas terrorists at the home” in which nearly “all of the hostages were killed.” It later mentioned that “families of the hostages…want an investigation to begin immediately,” but made no mention of Hiram’s order.

None of these Times articles put the Be’eri incident in the context of the Israeli press reports of other “friendly fire” incidents, and no other Times reporting has mentioned them, either, leaving the impression that the Hiram order was an isolated incident.

This is especially remarkable, given that one of the reporters on the Yedioth Ahronoth story, Ronen Bergenen, is also a New York Times contributor, and shared the byline on the Times‘ Be’eri investigation. His Yedioth Ahronoth revelations have yet to be mentioned in the Times, or elsewhere in US corporate media.

‘A Small but Growing Group’

Meanwhile, the first time the Washington Post (1/21/24) made any mention of the controversies, it did so indirectly, and only to dismiss them by conflating them with conspiracy theories. Under the headline “Growing October 7 ‘Truther’ Groups Say Hamas Massacre Was a False Flag,” Post“Silicon Valley correspondent” Elizabeth Dwoskin attacked “truthers” who question the Israeli narrative of October 7, equating them with Holocaust deniers.

The Post’s first subject was a woman named Mirela Monte, who subscribed to a Telegram channel called Uncensored Truths. This convinced her that October 7 was a “’false flag’ staged by the Israelis—likely with help from the Americans—to justify genocide in Gaza.” The Postreported that the channel had nearly 3,000 subscribers, but despite this relatively miniscule reach, still used it as its lead example of dangerous misinformation.

Another target was an anonymous poster on the niche subreddit r/LateStageCapitalism, who claimed that “the Hamas attack was a false flag for Israel to occupy Gaza and kill Palestinians.” Though this is an internet forum largely consisting of memes, the Post described the subreddit as “a community of left-wing activists.”

These were held up as examples of a “small but growing group” that “denies the basic facts of the attacks,” pushes “falsehoods” and “misleading narratives” that “minimize the violence or dispute its origins.” The Post cited a seemingly random woman at a protest who claimed that “Israel murdered their own people on October 7”—linking her to “some in the crowd” who allegedly shouted “antisemitism isn’t real.”

But the Post avoided any attempt to address the empirical question of whether Israel killed any of its own on October 7. Dwoskin’s only reference to the reports from Israel come in a paragraph meant to downplay that question:

Israeli citizens have accused the country’s military of accidentally killing Israeli civilians while battling Hamas on October 7; the army has said it will investigate.

Dwoskin’s framing suggests these are minor concerns that are being appropriately dealt with. But those accusations are not of accidental killings, but of deliberate choices to treat Israeli civilians as expendable. And an internal army investigation is not the same as an independent investigation.

Moreover, the IDF only agreed to investigate the Be’eri incident, not the question of whether the Hannibal Directive was issued—and only after press scrutiny and public pressure, demonstrating the importance of having journalists willing to challenge those in power rather than covering up for them, as Dwoskin’s article did.

Attacking Independent Journalism

Dwoskin continued by attacking independent media outlets that have been covering the story: “But articles on Electronic Intifada and Grayzone exaggerated these claims to suggest that most Israeli deaths were caused by friendly fire, not Hamas.”

Electronic Intifada and the Grayzone are among the few outlets that have exposed English-language audiences to the reporting from Israel about the IDF’s attacks on Israeli civilians on October 7. To criticize Grayzone‘s reporting (10/27/23), the Post cited the director of “an Israeli watchdog organization dedicated to fighting disinformation,” who said that Grayzone “distorts” a helicopter pilot’s account of having trouble “distinguishing between civilians and Hamas.”

On the word “distorts,” Dwoskin hyperlinked to a Haaretz op-ed (11/27/23) attacking Grayzone editor Max Blumenthal’s reporting. That piece accused him misusing ellipses when he quoted the pilot from the Ynet piece who said there was “tremendous difficulty in distinguishing within the occupied outposts and settlements who was a terrorist and who was a soldier or civilian.”

Haaretz complained that Blumenthal’s ellipses left out a statement from the pilot: “A decision was made that the first mission of the combat helicopters and the armed drones was to stop the flow of terrorists and the murderous mob that poured into Israeli territory through the gaps in the fence.” Blumenthal, the paper complained, ignored that “the pilots were assigned a different task: stopping the terrorists flowing in from Gaza,” and that there was “no ambiguity in this task.”

However, this is entirely consistent with Blumenthal’s claim that “the pilots let loose a fury of cannon and missile fire onto Israeli areas below.” Given that hundreds of hostages were concurrently being taken from Israel into Gaza, there was a great deal of “ambiguity” in the task of “stop[ping] the flow of terrorists…through the gaps in the fence.” It’s highly relevant that the pilot said it was very difficult to distinguish “who was a terrorist and who was a soldier or civilian,” and that only later did the IDF “carefully select the targets.”

The Haaretz piece made several other dubious accusations, including charging Blumenthal with using “biased language” when he described Hamas as “militants” and “gunmen”—terms chosen by many establishment news outlets precisely to avoid bias (AP on Twitter, 1/7/21; BBC, 10/11/23).

The op-ed also accused Blumenthal of omitting “everything related to the war crimes committed by Hamas terrorists,” ignoring his clear statement in his article that “video filmed by uniformed Hamas gunmen makes it clear they intentionally shot many Israelis with Kalashnikov rifles on October 7.”

The Post offered no example of the Grayzone claiming “most” Israeli deaths were caused by friendly fire, and FAIR could find no such claims in the outlet’s October 7 coverage. It has, however, reported extensively on the friendly fire reports in Israeli media that the Post has so studiously avoided.

Hiding the Accusations

The independent Palestinian-run outlet Electronic Intifada has also based its reporting on articles and interviews from the Israeli press (e.g., Ynet, 10/15/23; Haaretz, 10/20/23, 11/9/23, 11/18/23; Times of Israel, 11/9/23). The WashingtonPost, however, only wrote that EI senior editor Asa Winstanley was “basing the story, in part, on a YouTube clip (10/15/23) of a man who describes himself as a former Israeli general.”

As Winstanley noted in his response to Dwoskin, “‘Graeme Ipp’ described himself—and actually was—an Israeli major, as I explain in detail in the piece itself.” The Post did not link to the article, video or give any citation to help readers find the article in question, which served to conceal the blatant misquotation.

The Post also misquoted Winstanley to claim he wrote that “most” of the Israeli civilians were killed by the Israeli military that day. In reality, Winstanely (Electronic Intifada, 11/23/23) wrote that Ipp’s testimony was confirmation that “Israel killed many, if not most, of the civilians that died during the Palestinian offensive.”

Had the Post actually pointed its readers to the reporting from the Grayzone and Electronic Intifada, readers may have been able to more easily understand Dwoskin’s distortions. But discrediting those outlets serves an important political purpose: Along with Mondoweiss, they are some of the only English-language outlets that have covered the bombshell revelations that appear frequently within the Israeli press. Attacking their reporting hides from US public view the numerous accusations of deliberate mishandling of intelligence and mass killing by the IDF of its own civilians.

Holocaust Denial? 

Image: Mondoweiss (2/1/24): “Stories of atrocity, sometimes cobbled together from unreliable eyewitnesses, sometimes fabricated entirely, have made their way to heads of state and been used to justify Israel’s military violence.”

A sizable chunk of the Washington Post‘s article centered on interviews with pro-Israel “experts” linking October 7 “truthers” to Holocaust denialism, or promoting “internet-driven conspiracy theories.” Dwoskin cited Emerson Brooking, a researcher from the NATO-affiliated Atlantic Council think tank, who warned that “the long tail of Holocaust denial is a lesson in what may happen to October 7.”

Dismissing any actual investigation into the facts, Brooking says, “It’s generally indisputable that Hamas did something—the pro-Hamas camp can’t erase that entirely.” He never specifies what that “something” was—the exact issue in question. Instead, he assumes that “something” is settled fact, and that anyone who investigates it is trying to “chip away at it” in an attempt at “rewriting…history.”

The Post equates people questioning the Holocaust—which has a factual record established over decades of international investigations, scholarship and research—with questioning the details of what Hamas called the Al Aqsa Flood, which has only ever been investigated by the Israeli government. That government, it should be recalled, has a documented record of blatantly lying and fabricating evidence.

Israel’s justification for its relentless assault upon Gaza has depended in large part upon its narrative. Since October 7, the Israeli government has blocked or rejected any serious international inquiry into the attacks or the IDF response. The US government has declined to call for or engage in any investigation.

On the other hand, in a recent statement, Hamas—which maintains that the Al Aqsa Flood was a military, not a terror, operation—has publicly agreed to cooperate with an international investigation into its own war crimes (Palestine Chronicle, 1/21/24).

Many of the most lurid claims that mobilized public opinion in support of Israel’s attack (e.g., 40 beheaded babies, babies cooked in ovens, etc.) have since been debunked and disproven (Mondoweiss, 2/1/24). In fact, Haaretz (11/18/23) revealed that Hamas had no prior knowledge of the festival they were accused of targeting.

Israeli and US officials repeatedly attribute all civilian deaths to Hamas, even though this is certainly false. Clearly, then, some Israeli civilian casualties have been “blame[d] on another party.”

How many Israeli civilians were actually killed by Hamas, and how many by Israel? Was the Al Aqsa Flood a terrorist attack designed to kill as many civilians as possible? These are important questions that have yet to be conclusively and independently answered, but the Washington Post seems to want to dissuade people from even asking them. In evoking the specter of Holocaust denial, Dwoskin and the Post are not defending the truth, but attempting to protect readers from it.

*

Note to readers: Please click the share button above. Follow us on Instagram and Twitter and subscribe to our Telegram Channel. Feel free to repost and share widely Global Research articles.

Bryce Greene is a writer based in Indiana.

Featured image is from FAIR

All Global Research articles can be read in 51 languages by activating the Translate Website button below the author’s name (only available in desktop version).

To receive Global Research’s Daily Newsletter (selected articles), click here.

Click the share button above to email/forward this article to your friends and colleagues. Follow us on Instagram and Twitter and subscribe to our Telegram Channel. Feel free to repost and share widely Global Research articles.

Big Tech’s Effort to Silence Truth-tellers: Global Research Online Referral Campaign

***

Besieged. They are – not us. The long-term parking lot at Ben-Gurion International Airport is exploding with cars. We’re bombing them. Let them learn a lesson. Hungry. Crammed together. Around 50,000 people per square kilometer.

Who’s counting? The atrocities of October 7. The wounded. The bombed. The thirsty. That’s them. Our hostages. Shelled. We’re doing the shelling.

They drink contaminated water.

What do the hostages drink? Four hundred people lined up for a toilet. Diarrhea. There is no water or toilet paper.

The prices are sky-high. How are the hostages managing? There are no sanitary pads either. What are the hostages managing with?

A father cries as he carries his dead baby. You won’t see it on Israeli television. The Hamas leader in Gaza, Yahya Sinwar, walks in flip-flops through a tunnel. Yes, seen on Israeli television. With his children. Some 10,000 Palestinian children have been killed. Maybe 11,000 already. How many babies? Who can count them all? We’ve bombed them. We’ve killed them. A girl in a pink dress. A boy who loved ice cream. Blue plastic shrouds. A mass grave. White cloth shrouds.

Here lie their dead in the square. Impressive tactical achievements, the army spokesperson says. We make every effort not to harm innocent civilians. Today we killed dozens of terrorists. The army killed police officers securing aid trucks from looters. A soldier is killed in an encounter with terrorists in Gaza. Protecting their home. Was there a home?

Let the Israel Defense Forces finish its work in Gaza. Our soldiers know how to work. The Labor movement seems to be back. Red flag. Red line. Don’t stop at a red. Cross red lines. How many? Who can count them? We’ve run out of words. Silence. Indifference. What are 10,000 dead children?

A Red Crescent worker carries a child to the hospital after a bombing in Deir al-Balah, December.Credit: Palestine Red Crescent Society

We won’t forget you, children of the Israeli communities near Gaza. An eye for an eye. Thousands of eyes for one eye. Thousands of wounded children.

A child with an amputated limb. Smart bombs. Stupid shells. President Isaac Herzog writing a wish on a shell. A boy covered in dust is shaking all over. Where is his mother? He’s afraid and misses her. A girl is trembling all over. Where is her father? He’s looking for ways to leave Gaza. Horror and death as a means of expulsion. You won’t see it on Israeli television. There’s social media. Soldiers gone crazy. Why do they upload incriminating pictures of themselves?

The International Court of Justice refused South Africa’s request to issue an injunction against a ground offensive in Rafah. There is still time. Washington will provide Israel with more weapons. There is no time. The United States is checking cases where Palestinian civilians may have been killed by its ammunition. And the world stands still. You can’t compare. The war will continue for many months, Benjamin Netanyahu said. From where will he get so many kids who will kill? And get killed?

Photo by UNICEF/El Baba, Children at a shelter for the displaced, Gaza.

Miami. The prime minister’s son. A voyeuristic press. Serious journalism. The right-wing newspaper Makor Rishon. “Your brothers will go to war and you will sit idly by,” reads an ad sponsored by reservists addressing the ultra-Orthodox community; it was published this month in Makor Rishon, the newspaper “for people who think differently.” The ad includes the number of graduates of religious Zionist schools who have been killed in the fighting.

Elsewhere in that issue it’s written:

“1,962 years after the last red heifer was slaughtered by Ishmael Ben Phiabi (a high priest), and after a decade of labors by the Temple Institute to obtain a pure red heifer in a multitude of ways yet to prove themselves, it seems they are getting closer to the goal, which may even be achieved in the foreseeable future.” 

Where was the editor? This was the lead to an article by Arnon Segal, “The Red Heifer Status Report.” The ashes of a red heifer were used to purify a Jew who came into contact with a corpse, and will enable Jews to roam all over Al-Aqsa/the Temple Mount and, with God’s help, build the Third Temple.

“Next on the agenda are five red cows imported from the United States; they are being raised at the visitors’ center for this purpose at Tel Shiloh,” Segal reports. Tel Shiloh, the ancient city, is Khirbet Seilun, from which the village of Qaryut developed northeast of Ramallah in the West Bank. Khirbet Seilun was part of the village, whose residents were expelled. Like the Palestinians at Susya. Archaeology expels. 

Settlers with the help of the army also expelled Qaryut’s residents from their springs. Herds of kosher Jewish heifers expel shepherds from their land, and farmers from their water sources. The dairy and meat industry as a tool for expulsion. Kosher slaughter. Mitzvot. The Chosen People. Red heifers for sacrifice. Some of the five cows, Segal reports, “reached the age of 2, suitable to be used as red heifers, but they crossed the finish line with quite a few white hairs.” 

After the bombings, a few hairs on Gaza children’s heads turn white. White shrouds. Blue shrouds. A mass grave. The IDF excavates cemeteries. Brings back bodies in vans. The finish line. The red line.

Rabbi Azaria Ariel of the Temple Institute told Segal:

“The Holy One, Blessed Be He, decides. It was not for nothing that He placed the Temple where it exists. There is a special sensitivity regarding it, that to move something there by nature’s ways, widespread consent among the people of Israel will be needed.”

So he said, and left us wondering. Just move “something.” What does that mean? Something like the Dome of the Rock? Something like the Southern Mosque (Al-Aqsa)? And “by nature’s ways.” What does that mean? Earthquake? Airstrike? Powerful explosive? “And the earth opened her mouth and swallowed them up, and their households.” (Numbers 16:32) Miracles.

Miracles. By the hand of God. By the hand of Allah. One is great and one is greater. It’s all written in the holy scripture.

*

Note to readers: Please click the share button above. Follow us on Instagram and Twitter and subscribe to our Telegram Channel. Feel free to repost and share widely Global Research articles.

All Global Research articles can be read in 51 languages by activating the Translate Website button below the author’s name (only available in desktop version).

To receive Global Research’s Daily Newsletter (selected articles), click here.

Click the share button above to email/forward this article to your friends and colleagues. Follow us on Instagram and Twitter and subscribe to our Telegram Channel. Feel free to repost and share widely Global Research articles.

Big Tech’s Effort to Silence Truth-tellers: Global Research Online Referral Campaign

***

In 2023, the commander Cornelis van der Klaauw from the Royal Netherlands Navy and Expert from Strategic Communications and Information Operations NATO Joint Warfare Centre wrote in the article “Cognitive Warfare”:

“The reason why cognitive attacks go unnoticed by their targets is that cognitive activities bypass the conscious mind and directly target the subconscious of a person… most of our decisions are made by our subconscious… cognitive attacks are not science fiction anymore. They are already taking place now… neural nanotechnology can be used to bring nano-sized robots close to a neuron via the bloodstream and make it possible to link the human brain directly (i.e. not intercepted by our senses) to a computer, making use of artificial intelligence in the process… While other domains can provide tactical and operational victories, the human domain is the only domain in which we can secure a full victory“ (see this).

In December 2021, the U.S. Naval postgraduate school in Monterey, California awarded to two of its students a Master of Science degree in Defence Analysis for the thesis “Neurowar Is Here!“. In the study they stated:

“great power competition has returned to the forefront of international relations, as China and Russia seek to contest America’s global leadership… this contest is ultimately a battle… to manipulate and control both adversaries and domestic populations alike. The battle for influence begins and ends in the human mind, where reality is perceived“ (pg.V) .

They identified neuroweapons as the weapons of this battle,

“that specifically target the brain or the central nervous system in order to affect the targeted person’s mental state, mental capacity and ultimately the person’s behavior in a specific and predictable way” (pg.3).

None of those informations appeared in the world mass media. Does that not mean that we are living in a world, where mass media are (at the request of governments) hiding from people the ongoing battle for the control of their minds and thoughts?

In the year 2000, the European Parliament’s Panel for the Future of Science and Technology (STOA) published a study on “Crowd Control Technologies“, where it admitted that

“In October 1999 NATO announced a new policy on non-lethal weapons and their place in allied arsenals”

and explained that

“The most controversial non-lethal crowd control and anti-materiel technology proposed by the US are so-called Radio Frequency or Directed Energy Weapons that can allegedly manipulate human behavior in a variety of unusual ways“

and

“the greatest concern is with systems which can directly interact with the human nervous system… The research undertaken to date both in the US and in Russia can be divided into two related areas: (i) individual mind control and (ii) crowd control”  (pg.XIV, LIIII).

In January 1999, after a hearing at the European Parliament on the American system HAARP, the parliament approved a resolution, where it called “for an international convention introducing a global ban on all developments and deployments of weapons which might enable any form of manipulation of human beings” (see this).

The fact that mass media of the Member states of the European Union never publicly discussed those weapons proves that the member states of the NATO signed an agreement demanding them to classify this information. The same policy is observed by the governments around the world.

The EU is actually working “on a bill to ensure AI in Europe is safe, respects fundamental rights and democracy“. This bill is supposed to ban “AI systems that manipulate human behaviour to circumvent their free will“ and even “to influence the outcome of elections and voter behavior“ (see this). So far the European Union did not incorporate in this bill the ban of the use of energies which make it possible to use the artificial intelligence and neurotechnologies to control the human nervous system at distance. Evidently the EU is respecting the NATO agreement to classify this technology. For that matter the present EU documents mention only the brain computer inferfaces as a means threatening fundamental human rights and democracy.

The brain activity is changing according to changes in frequency and number of firing of neurons in the brain and is accessible to any energy which will produce in neurons electrical currents in the frequencies of different activities of the human brain. This may be induced by extra long electromagnetic waves transmitted in the natural frequencies of the human brain or by microwaves pulsed in the brain frequencies or possibly by energies discovered by quantum physics. Extra long electromagnetic waves will, due to their length, control the brain activity of masses of people while directed pulsed microwaves can be used to target individual brains.

The USA, Russia and China own systems, which are, among others, capable of producing strong electric currents in the ionosphere by transmitting there pulsed microwaves in the brain frequencies. Those alternating currents produce in the ionosphere intensive elecgtromagnetic waves in the the brain frequencies which reach large areas of the planet and will control the brain activity of their populations.

China, with the help of Russia, started the construction of its system manipulating the ionosphere in theHainan province in 2017 (see this). In July 2023, The Washington Times published an article, where it stated:

“China‘s People’s Liberation Army is developing high-technology weapons designed to disrupt brain functions and influence government leaders or entire populations, according to a report by three open-source intelligence analysts.“

The USA operate the system HAARP, which inspired the European Parliament to call for “for an international convention introducing a global ban on all developments and deployments of weapons which might enable any form of manipulation of human beings” (see this and this), and Russia operates the system Sura, the experimentation with which convinced China to build their own system in Hainan province.

Masses of people could be controlled as well by satelite systems pulsing microwaves in the brain frequencies, especially, if “nano-sized robots were delivered close to a neuron via the bloodstream“ into their brains, as Cornelis van der Klaauw put it at the beginning of this article. Those “robots“ (or rather antennas) are already used in medical neurotechnology (see this). They are so small that they can penetrate via blood through the blood-brain barrier into the brain. They can be delivered to the blood via breathing, drinking, eating or by vaccination.

The cell phone networks could be used to control the activity of the human nervous system, if their microwave frequencies were pulsed in the brain frequencies, as well. The first experiments with manipulation of the human brain activity by pulsed microwaves succeeded even without use of any particles in the brain (see this) and it is no secret that cell phone radiation, pulsed in 217 Herz produces this frequency in the human brain activity (see this).

At present time, there exists no international agreement banning the use of artificial intelligence and neurotechnologies for the remote control of the human nervous systems, thoughts, emotions, subconscious etc. There is no other explanation for it, than that the great powers are competing to master the world in this way. In 1997 the Strategic Studies Institute at the U.S. Army War College published the book ”Revolution in Military Affairs and Conflict Short of War”, where it wrote:

”Potential or possible supporters of the insurgency around the world were identified using the comprehensive Interagency Integrated Database. These were categorized as ”potential” or ”active”, with sophisticated personality simulations used to develop, tailor, and focus psychological campaigns for each” (pg. 24-25).

This is an American project for global control of the world. There is no doubt that similar projects are being developed in China and Russia as well.

To protect the world history from reaching this inhuman end, it is necessary that world governments sign an international agreement banning the use of neurotechnologies and artificial intelligence to control the activity of human brains at distance, similar to agreements that banned the use of chemical and biological weapons. The observance of this ban should be supervised by the United Nations Organization. For right now we can help it only by requiring the European Parliament to ban technologies of remote control of the activity of the human nervous system. It must be forbidden to natural persons, legal persons, marketing companies and criminal organizations, as well as to government agencies and foreign governments.

Sign the petition here.

The European Union can set an example and a challenge to the rest of the world in this way.

For more information, see this and this.

*

Note to readers: Please click the share button above. Follow us on Instagram and Twitter and subscribe to our Telegram Channel. Feel free to repost and share widely Global Research articles.

Mojmir Babacek was born in 1947 in Prague, Czech Republic. Graduated in 1972 at Charles University in Prague in philosophy and political economy. In 1978 signed the document defending human rights in  communist Czechoslovakia „Charter 77“. Since 1981 until 1988 lived in emigration in the USA. Since 1996 he has published articles on different subjects mostly in the Czech and international alternative media.

In 2010, he published a book on the 9/11 attacks in the Czech language. Since the 1990‘s he has been striving to help to achieve the international ban of remote control of the activity of the human nervous system and human minds with the use of neurotechnology.

All Global Research articles can be read in 51 languages by activating the Translate Website button below the author’s name (only available in desktop version).

To receive Global Research’s Daily Newsletter (selected articles), click here.

Click the share button above to email/forward this article to your friends and colleagues. Follow us on Instagram and Twitter and subscribe to our Telegram Channel. Feel free to repost and share widely Global Research articles.

Big Tech’s Effort to Silence Truth-tellers: Global Research Online Referral Campaign

***

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky complained that only 30% of the one million artillery shells the European Union promised had arrived, which is contributing to the rapid collapse of the Ukrainian military, especially now as Russian forces are beginning to go on the offensive. His complaint comes as Germany is taking desperate measures to supply Ukraine with military equipment, including purchases from foreign countries.

“Out of the million shells that the European Union promised us, not 50 percent came, but 30 percent, unfortunately,” Zelensky declared on February 26 at a press conference in Kiev with Bulgarian Prime Minister Nikolay Denkov.

It is recalled that the EU committed last year to sending one million artillery shells to Ukraine by the end of March 2024. However, in January, Brussels was forced to admit that it could only deliver half within the original time frame. Clearly, the EU cannot meet the promise in a timely manner, yet this did not stop Kiev from urging the bloc this month to send weapons quickly.

On the same day as Zelensky’s complaint about the EU’s failure to meet its promise, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz proclaimed his reluctance to send Taurus long-range cruise missiles to Ukraine on the grounds that this would risk his country becoming directly involved in the conflict.

After the US, Germany is the second largest supplier of military aid to Ukraine, and transfers are expected to increase even more this year. Nonetheless, Scholz has for months balked at Ukraine’s desire for Taurus cruise missiles, which have a range of up to 500 kilometres and could theoretically be used against targets as far as Moscow and St. Petersburg.

The German chancellor explained that the Taurus is “a very far-reaching weapon,” adding:

“What is being done in the way of target control and accompanying target control on the part of the British and the French cannot be done in Germany. Everyone who has dealt with this system knows that.”

Scholz did not specifically state that the cruise missiles would not be delivered, but he explained his hesitation, a position which upset both Germany’s conservative opposition and some in his own ruling tripartite coalition. Furthermore, he reinforced Kiev’s lack of military equipment.

“What Ukraine is missing is ammunition at all possible distances, but not decisively this thing from Germany,” acknowledged the German leader.

The chancellor has long emphasised his determination to help Ukraine without escalating the conflict and drawing the Germans and NATO into it. Previously, he stressed that no German soldiers would go to Ukraine.

Earlier this month, German lawmakers called on the government to deliver more long-range weapons to Ukraine but rejected an opposition call that explicitly urged sending the missiles. The situation is so desperate that Germany is resorting to unprecedented measures to find ammunition for Ukrainian forces.

“We are trying to buy ammunition all over the world,” said Christian Freuding, head of the Special Centre for Ukrainian Affairs at the German Defence Ministry, according to Spiegel.

The Major General noted that anti-aircraft and artillery ammunition “was not present in abundance on store shelves,” with the article adding that the German military was forced to look for new ways to obtain scarce projectiles for Kiev.

The newspaper reported that time is against Ukraine’s European allies as, according to Western intelligence agencies, Ukraine’s reserves will be exhausted by June, possibly earlier.

In early February, the deputy of the Ukrainian Supreme Rada, the country’s parliament, Yegor Chernev, admitted that the situation on the battlefield is critical due to the lack of ammunition. This was also attested by Ukraine’s Foreign Affairs Minister Dmytro Kuleba, a top Kiev regime propagandist, who once again appealed to Berlin to supply Taurus cruise missiles.

“The final decision rests with Germany. But I’d like everyone to be aware that we do need these weapons,” the minister said on February 26.

“I complain about the lack of ammunition at every meeting with our partners. They all realise it, they’ve made mistakes that they admit. They belatedly decided to increase their own output, enter into long-term contracts, and launch new production lines. Unfortunately, we are now paying the cost of these mistakes,” Kuleba added.

Even if these weapons arrived on time and in the quantity Ukraine wanted, it would have little effect on the course of the war, with the best-case scenario being minorly delaying Russia’s advancements and the liberation of Avdeyevka. What is demonstrated is that the Kiev regime is frustrated with the West for not just sending weapons without question and, at the same time, that the Western military-industrial complex is lagging and incomparable to Russia’s capabilities, with the European Commission recognising earlier this month in a document on the adoption of the 13th package of EU sanctions against Russia that output in 2023 was around 30-40% higher than in 2021.

*

Note to readers: Please click the share button above. Follow us on Instagram and Twitter and subscribe to our Telegram Channel. Feel free to repost and share widely Global Research articles.

Ahmed Adel is a Cairo-based geopolitics and political economy researcher. He is a regular contributor to Global Research.

Featured image: Ukrainian snipers attend shooting training near the front line amid Russia-Ukraine war in Zaporizhzhia, Ukraine, on February 18, 2023. [Source: businessinsider.com]

All Global Research articles can be read in 51 languages by activating the Translate Website button below the author’s name (only available in desktop version).

To receive Global Research’s Daily Newsletter (selected articles), click here.

Click the share button above to email/forward this article to your friends and colleagues. Follow us on Instagram and Twitter and subscribe to our Telegram Channel. Feel free to repost and share widely Global Research articles.

Big Tech’s Effort to Silence Truth-tellers: Global Research Online Referral Campaign

***

The Tucker Carlson interview with Mike Benz (here summarised with commentary) is probably the greatest expose of the activities of that globalist corporatism which is destroying democratic nations, provoking war abroad and a totalitarian war against their own people at home – hand in glove with the modern high tech industries and the old “legacy” media. The link to the full interview is at the bottom of this article.

Click here for the link to the entire interview.

Mike Benz had the cyber portfolio at the US State Department. He’s now executive director of the Foundation for Freedom Online. Benz points out that three developments were critical in the creation of the modern tyranny. 

1. The post war media exploitation by the West to undermine the communist Soviet union with broadcast western propaganda (like the USA funded Freedom Radio in Europe) 
2. the 1948 UN Declaration on Human Rights and the 1966 UN International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights which affirmed Under Article 1 the right to self-determination and  
3. the Gerasimov doctrine which declared the superior power of media propaganda aimed at nations’ populations over military invasion (at a proportion of 4:1). The Russian General saw in western methods of war:

“the importance of controlling the information space and the real-time coordination of all aspects of a campaign, in addition to the use of targeted strikes deep in enemy territory and the destruction of critical civilian as well as military infrastructure.”

This is very much the NATO/EU approach to the war in Yugoslavia (the lockstep of the mainstream media, the use of US PR agencies and the bombing of the Belgrade television station) and now in Ukraine where the information war is so “effective” that when things go wrong they cannot catch up with their own military failure so that artificial support for the war goes hand in glove with devastating human and infrastructure losses.

Benz says that at the beginning free speech was the ally in the cold war and:

All of that architecture, all the NGOs, the relationships between the tech companies and the national security state had been long established for freedom. 

Benz traces the change from the tool of the foreign policy freedom agenda to exploitation of the media for control and censorship at home and abroad to the US funded 2014 coup in Ukraine against the elected government and the counter move in Crimea – with the full support of that population for the return to Russia:

And when the hearts and minds of the people of Crimea voted to join the Russian Federation, that was the last straw for the concept of free speech on the internet in the eyes of NATO – as they saw it. The fundamental nature of war changed at that moment.

There followed the fundamental change in domestic politics, media and law which all western so called “democracies” have experienced in spades in recent years. As Tucker Carlson summarised:

In other words, you can say something that is factually accurate and consistent with your own conscience. And in previous versions of America, you had an absolute right to say those things. But now – because someone doesn’t like them or because they’re inconvenient to whatever plan the people in power have, they can be denounced as disinformation and you could be stripped of your right to express them either in person or online.

But did anyone at NATO or anyone at the State Department pause for a moment and say, wait a second, we’ve just identified our new enemy as democracy within our own countries?

Of course the whole State /corporate censorship and cancellation structure relies on the corporate ownership of all the major economic, media, medical, military, business and new tech areas of the modern State. These are of course in many ways trumped by their supra-national equivalents in the UN, World Health Organisation, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the self styled World Economic Forum etc where national electorates and even their governments have far less control.

Of course the very nature of the self perpetuating corporate (whose life span far exceeds that of the individuals who temporarily “control” them) means that their elitists are in fact functionaries wept along by the unaccountable powers they have created. No democracy brings them back down to earth by counter information, objection, public opinion or the inconvenience of election.

The decisions of the WHO for instance are apparently taken not by positive vote but by the lack of negative votes! And their new totalitarian Pandemic Treaty and international health regulations could pass on that basis. A classic tool of the authoritarian.

Google Origins in US Deep State

Mike Benz looks at one of the most powerful censorship tools at the disposal of the supranational globalist corporatists – Google. (Democracy is a perpetual search for information and truth. Ii is corporatists like Google who now control the search). He describes its initial agency for free speech:

Google began as a DARPA (the US Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency) grant by Larry Page and Sergey Brin when they were Stanford PhDs, and they got their funding as part of a joint CIA NSA program to chart how “birds of a feather flock together online” through search engine aggregation. And then one year later they launched Google and then became a military contractor. Quickly thereafter, they got Google Maps by purchasing a CIA satellite software essentially, and the ability to use free speech on the internet as a way to circumvent state control over media over in places like Central Asia and all around the world,

And all of the internet free speech technology was initially created by our national security state – VPNs, virtual private networks to hide your IP address, tour the dark web, to be able to buy and sell goods anonymously, end-to-end encrypted chats.    

All of these things were created initially as DARPA projects or as joint CIA NSA projects to be able to help intelligence backed groups, to overthrow governments that were causing a problem to the Clinton administration or the Bush administration or the Obama administration.

Just as vote counting systems were also developed to rig elections in countries where the regimes were targeted by the USA so they were then turned on domestic “democratic” elections. 

UK in Censorship Cartel:

Benz emphasises the international nature of the media manipulation industry in which the UK government took a leading role in this “political warfare”:

An industry had been created that spanned the Pentagon, the British Ministry of Defense and Brussels into a organized political warfare outfit, essentially infrastructure that was created initially stationed in Germany and in Central and eastern Europe to create psychological buffer zones, basically to create the ability to have the military work with the social media companies to censor Russian propaganda and then to censor domestic, right-wing populist groups in Europe who were rising in political power at the time because of the migrant crisis. 

One of the most frightening setbacks for these corporatist “rulers of the world” was (for them and Prime Minister Cameron who instigated the vote) the Brexit referendum of June, 2016 when Britain voted to leave the European Union. Benz:

The very next month at the Warsaw Conference, NATO formally amended its charter to expressly commit to hybrid warfare as this new NATO capacity. So they went from basically 70 years of tanks to this explicit capacity building for censoring tweets if they were deemed to be Russian proxies. And again, it’s not just Russian propaganda this, these were now Brexit groups or groups like Mateo Salvini in Italy or in Greece or in Germany or in Spain with the Vox Party.

The association by the Establishments of any opposition to the elitists globalist plans with Russia were of course nonsense and the complete failure of the Russia-gate attack on Donald Trump was typical.

Overcoming UN Declaration of Sovereign Right

Benz makes the point (see the Gerasimov discussion above) that UN Declarations had severely restricted the military solutions of the imperialist era.

So you can no longer run a traditional military occupation government in the way that we could in 1898, for example, when we took the Philippines, everything had to be done through a sort of political legitimisation process whereby there’s some ratification from the hearts and minds of people within the country. 

Benz notes that, although it was always illegal for the State Department, the Defense Department, and the CIA to operate on US soil the fraudulent Democratic Party and Deep State claim that Donald Trump was a Russian asset benefiting from “Russian disinformation” allowed the above agencies to claim this was not just a foreign policy issue but a domestic threat to democracy.

And so they were able to launder the entire democracy promotion regime change toolkit just in time for the 2020 election

But the Russia-gate attack on Trump was a fraud as a two year investigation by special counsel Robert Mueller showed.

But the whole process had allowed the State apparatus (“spanning DHS, the FBI, the CIA, the DOD, the DOJ, and then the thousands of government funded NGO and private sector mercenary firms” as Benz says) to pivot to the disinformation/censorship “threat to democracy” in time for the 2020 election.

The Sentinel Class

Benz describes the new corporatist fascist state system of control, marginalisation and censorship:

But then after Russiagate died and they used a simple democracy promotion predicate, then it gave rise to this multi-billion dollar censorship industry that joins together the military industrial complex, the government, the private sector, the civil society organizations, and then this vast cobweb of media allies and professional fact checker groups that serve as this sort of sentinel class that surveys every word on the internet.

Benz then talks about the State Department’s Global Engagement Center, which was created by a former journalist Rick Stengel who described himself as Obama’s propaganda in chief and had a track record of attacking free speech, despite having previously described himself as a free speech absolutist! (This is typical of the kind of people State corporatism attracts – absolutists, totalitarians, power crazed with their own political agenda but never accountable to the people through distasteful elections)

These people saw the Internet as a threat because unlike the established mainstream media the very atomistic nature of different actors reaching large numbers of people (even “influencers” today reach millions more than the typical newspaper) was a threat to their and governments’ control of the “narrative”. 

Their solution of course was not to compete with what they see as “the truth” but to censor and ban them and turn their own “news” into overt propaganda. A good example is qualifying reports of those they see as a threat with words like “unproven” or “without evidence”.

Mass Censorship – Weapons of Mass Deletion

Benz notes that The Atlantic Council in January, 2017 pressured European governments to pass censorship laws to create a transatlantic system of censorship.

One of the ways they did this was by getting Germany to pass something called Nets DG in August, 2017, which essentially kicked off the era of automated censorship in the US. What Nets DG required was, unless social media platforms wanted to pay a $54 million fine for each instance of speech, each post left up on their platform for more than 48 hours that had been identified as hate speech, they would be fined basically into bankruptcy when you aggregate 54 million over tens of thousands of posts per day. 

But to avoid that internet platforms could use artificial intelligence based censorship technologies to scan and ban speech automatically.

And this gave rise to what I call these weapons of mass deletion. These are essentially the ability to sensor tens of millions of posts with just a few lines of code

“With a few lines of code” is of course a clever technical achievement but which acts in real discussion and everyday political interaction as a simplistic and moronic intervention censoring those who attack “x” as well as those promoting “x”. 

University Censors Paid

Benz asserts that there are now over 60 universities getting federal government grants to do the censorship work. Profitable work if you can get it – with State payments creating even more distortion of teaching and research at those universities. (see for instance the long established corruption analysed in Dr David Lewis’s book “Science for Sale” Skyhorse Publishing 2014). The government academic complex is equivalent to Eisenhower’s warning about the military industrial version!

COVID Censorship

Doubts about the origins of COVID, the wisdom and enormous costs of lockdowns, the vaccine boost to infections and vaccine deaths and even publishing Governments’ own statistics on vaccine adverse reactions were unwelcome to the medical/pharmaceutical industrial complex. So discussion of them had to be silenced or mitigated.

Benz describes the VIRALITY PROJECT:

which mapped 66 different narratives that dissidents we’re talking about around covid, everything from COVID origins to vaccine efficacy. And then they broke down these 66 claims into all the different factual sub claims. And then they plugged these into these essentially machine learning models to be able to have a constant world heat map of what everybody was saying about covid. And whenever something started trending that was bad for what the Pentagon wanted or was bad for what Tony Fauci wanted, they were able to take down tens of millions of posts. 

Ballot Rigging Censorship

Benz told Carlson that “They did this in the 2020 election with mail-in ballots. It was the same”. It became important to deny vote rigging in the 2020 election and even censor legitimate doubts about the outcome of the election (which time has proven justified with 100,000 votes from the dead in one state alone and films of ballot box stuffing).

But the fascist US regime actually made the claim that questioning the legitimacy of the mail in ballots was itself illegitimate! Benz:

So just like that, you had this cybersecurity agency able to legally make the argument that your tweets about mail-in ballots if you undermine public faith and confidence in them as a legitimate form of voting you were now conducting a cyber attack on US critical infrastructure articulating misinformation on Twitter …..…

Of course there was no criticism of Hillary Clinton for challenging the outcome of the 2016 election which she lost! 

I am going to leave it there. There is much more and here is a taster of how the threat to the Deep State, the political class, the mainstream media, foreign policy and the military developed as mass communication via the Internet emancipated and gave power to alternative narratives which corporatist fascists call “populists”:

Internet 1.0 didn’t even have social media from 1991 to 2004, there was no social media at all. 2004, Facebook came out 2005, Twitter, 2006, YouTube 2007, the smartphone. And in that initial period of social media, nobody was getting subscriber ships at the level where they actually competed with legacy news media

But the German Marshall Fund held a meeting in 2019..…….when a four star general got up on the panel and posed the question, what happens to the US military? What happens to the national security state when the New York Times is reduced to a medium sized Facebook page?

You couldn’t get a story killed. You couldn’t have this favors for favors relationship. You couldn’t promise access to some random person with 700,000 followers who’s got an opinion on Syrian gas. And so this induced, and this was not a problem for the initial period of social media from 2006 to 2014 because there were never dissident groups that were big enough to be able to have a mature enough ecosystem on their own. And all of the victories on social media had gone in the way of where the money was, which was from the State Department and the Defense Department and the intelligence services. 

But then as that maturity happened, you now had this situation after the 2016 election where they said, okay, now the entire international order might come undone. 70 years of unified foreign policy from Truman until Trump are now about to be broken.

Click here for the link to the entire interview.

*

Note to readers: Please click the share button above. Follow us on Instagram and Twitter and subscribe to our Telegram Channel. Feel free to repost and share widely Global Research articles.

This article was originally published on Freenations.

Featured image is from Freenations

Egypt Sells Out Palestinians for $10 Billion Loan Package. Mike Whitney

By Mike Whitney, February 27, 2024

Despite public protestations, Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi is helping Israel transfer 1.4 million Palestinians from Rafah to tent cities in the Sinai Desert. On Saturday, western news agencies reported that closed-door negotiations took place in Paris that were aimed at reaching an agreement on a ceasefire in Gaza.

Many Untrue Things Have Been Said About Alexei Navalny Since He Rose to Prominence About 15 Years Ago

By John Laughland, February 27, 2024

When Alexei Navalny’s death was announced on 16 February, Western media immediately said it was a political assassination (something even the most virulent Western governments have not maintained). But how can we know with certainty what happened in a prison cell somewhere in Siberia, when we hardly even know which prison Navalny was in?

Why Would Anyone Kill Themselves to Stop a War? On Aaron Bushnell and Others. Ann Wright

By Colonel Ann Wright, February 27, 2024

This week, on Sunday, February 25, 2024, active duty U.S. Air Force member Aaron Bushnell set himself on fire at the Israeli Embassy in Washington, D.C., while he was stating “Free Palestine and stop the genocide.” Bushnell died from his injuries.

US Senator Chuck Schumer: “Zelensky told me Ukraine will lose the war.”

By Ahmed Adel, February 27, 2024

The Democrat and majority leader of the United States Senate, Chuck Schumer, announced on February 23 during a trip to Lviv that UkrainianPresident Volodymyr Zelensky warned him that his country would lose the conflict with Russia without American military aid.

Trident Missile Failure Exposes Folly of Nuclear Weapons

By Kate Hudson, February 27, 2024

Last month, the Royal Navy failed to test fire a Trident missile, which is the only delivery system for Britain’s nuclear warheads. It was the second such failure in a row. The previous test took place in 2016. Launched from the submarine HMS Victorious, a malfunction in the system caused the missile to spin out of control. 

Biden Wants to Put the US on Permanent War Footing

By Julia Gledhill, February 27, 2024

The Biden administration is supersizing the defense industry to meet foreign arms obligations instead of making tradeoffs essential to any effective budget.

Houthi Red Sea Strikes Conducive to Disruptions in Global Maritime Trade. Supply Shortages, Dramatic Increase in Retail Prices

By Arab News, February 27, 2024

Research conducted by the British Chambers of Commerce across more than 1,000 companies in the UK found that container shipping prices have jumped as much as 300 percent, while goods have been delayed for up to a month, prompting supply shortages and cash flow problems.

All Global Research articles can be read in 51 languages by activating the “Translate Website” drop down menu on the top banner of our home page (Desktop version).

To receive Global Research’s Daily Newsletter (selected articles), click here.

Visit and follow us on Instagram, Twitter and Facebook. Feel free to repost and share widely Global Research articles.

 

 

In Solidarity with the People of Haiti 

On the 29th of February  2024, we commemorate in solidarity with the people of Haiti, the 20th anniversary of the coup d’Etat against Haiti’s elected president Jean-Bertrand Aristide.

The US sponsored Coup d’Etat — with the support of France and Canada– was followed up with the deployment of a  foreign military occupation force, coordinated by Brazil under the helm of President Luis (Lula) Inacio da Silva.

For details see: 

The Destabilization of Haiti: Anatomy of a Military Coup d’Etat

By Prof Michel Chossudovsky, February 24, 2024

 

The article below pertains to:

Haiti’s January 12, 2010 Earthquake

Haiti has a longstanding history of US military intervention and occupation going back to the beginning of the 20th Century. US interventionism has contributed to the destruction of Haiti’s national economy and the impoverishment of its population.

The devastating January 2010 earthquake was presented to World public opinion as the sole cause of the country’s predicament.

A country has been destroyed, its infrastructure demolished. Its people precipitated into abysmal poverty and despair. More than 200,000 deaths have been recorded. 

From one day to the next, an outright military surge has occurred: 10,000 troops, marines, special forces, intelligence operatives, etc., not to mention private mercenary forces on contract to the Pentagon have been deployed.

The alleged humanitarian operation was used as a pretext and a justification to establish a more permanent US military presence in Haiti.

We are dealing with a massive deployment: a “surge” of military personnel assigned to emergency relief.

The first mission of SOUTHCOM was to take control of what remained of the country’s communications, transport and energy infrastructure.  

While presidents Obama and Préval spoke on the phone, the deployment of US troops was taken and imposed unilaterally by Washington. The total lack of a functioning government in Haiti was used to legitimize, on humanitarian grounds, the sending in of a powerful military force (Michel Chossudovsky, Global Research, February 2010)

The US military had “come to the rescue” of an impoverished Nation. What was its Mandate?

Was it a Humanitarian Operation or an Invasion?

The main actors in America’s “humanitarian earthquake operation” were the Department of Defense, the State Department and the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID).

USAID was also entrusted in channelling food aid to Haiti, which was distributed by the World Food Program.

The military component of the US mission, however, overshadowed the civilian functions of rescuing a desperate and impoverished population. The alleged “humanitarian operation” as well as the influx of military personnel was under the jurisdiction of The Pentagon. 

The decision-making and organization was entrusted by the Pentagon to US Southern Command (US-SOUTHCOM).

A massive deployment of military hardware and personnel was implemented. 

The Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Admiral Mike Mullen confirmed that the US would be sending nine to ten thousand troops to Haiti, including 2000 marines. (American Forces Press Service, January 14, 2010)

Aircraft carrier, USS Carl Vinson (image below) and its complement of supporting ships had already arrived in Port au Prince, three days following the earthquake (January 15, 2010).

Does it look like a humanitarian entity or is part of America’s War Machine? (See image below)

The  2,000-member Marine Amphibious Unit as well as soldiers from the U.S. Army’s 82nd Airborne division “are trained in a wide variety of missions including security and riot-control in addition to humanitarian tasks.”

This influx of US and allied combat troops into Haiti in 2010 contributed to reinforcing MINUSTAH’s “peacekeeping” contingent bringing total occupation forces to more than 20,000. 

What Happened on the Day preceding the Earthquake?

The  January 11, 2010 “Haiti Disaster Relief Scenario” at US-SouthCom 

A Haiti Disaster Relief Scenario and Exercise were

HELD ONE DAY BEFORE IT HAPPENED, on January 11, 2010:

Held under the auspices of US Southern Command (US-SOUTHCOM), the regional military command responsible for the Southern part of the Western Hemisphere.

Was this coincidental or did US-SOUTHCOM and the Pentagon have foreknowledge of what was going to happen the following day?

The evidence suggests that already on January 11, 2010, the U.S. Armed forces and Navy were already in an advanced state of readiness.

it was not a spontaneous ad hoc military response to the earthquake. You do not plan a military operation of this nature in 48 hours. This was planned well in advance. 

A decision was taken immediately after the earthquake hit on Tuesday January 12, 2010:  

“SOUTHCOM decided to ‘Go Live'”

Foreknowledge?

Bear in mind, US-SOUTHCOM is not a humanitarian entity with a mandate and ability to channel emergency assistance. 

SOUTHCOM’s foreknowledge of the earthquake raises the following issue:  Were environmental modification techniques (ENMOD) used to trigger the earthquake?

While ENMOD techniques for military use were fully operational in 2010, there is no firm evidence of their use in relation to Haiti’s earthquake. 

The following article was first published more than 14 years ago in the immediate wake of the Haiti earthquake of January 12, 2000.

Edits, revisions and corrections of the January 2010 article on February 27, 2024

In solidarity with the People of Haiti

Michel Chossudovsky,  Global Research, August 23, 2021, February 27, 2024

 

***

Haiti’s January 12, 2010 Earthquake:

Disaster Relief Scenario

Tested by US Military One Day Before It Happened 

By Michel Chossudovsky

January 21, 2010

 

 

A Haiti disaster relief scenario had been envisaged at the headquarters of US Southern Command (SOUTHCOM) in Miami one day prior to the January 12, 2010  earthquake.

The holding of “pre-disaster simulations” pertained to the impacts of a hurricane in Haiti. They were held on January 11, 2010

The Actors involved in the January 11, 2010 “Tests and Simulations”: 

1. US Southern Command (US-SOUTHCOM) in Miami, responsible for carrying out the tests and simulations.
2. The Defense Information Systems Agency (DISA), under the jurisdiction of the Pentagon: entrusted in organizing the tests and scenarios (January 11, 2010) on behalf of US Southern Command (US-SOUTHCOM). 
3. DISA’s Transnational Information Sharing Cooperation project (TISC): a communications -information project which: “links non-government organizations [with the US government and military] in coordinating and organizing relief efforts”.The TISC is an essential component of the militarization of emergency relief. (See Government IT Scrambles To Help Haiti, TECHWEB January 15, 2010).

The Defense Information Systems Agency (DISA) is a military entity. It does not have a mandate to lead a humanitarian emergency. It is defined by the US Department of Defense (DoD) as:

“a combat support agency composed of military, federal civilians, and contractors. DISA provides information technology (IT) and communications support to the President, Vice President, Secretary of Defense, the military services, the combatant commands, and any individual or system contributing to the defense of the United States” 

On the Day Prior to the Earthquake

“Jean Demay, DISA’s technical manager for the DISA agency’s Transnational Information Sharing Cooperation (TISC) project, happened to be at the headquarters of the U.S. Southern Command in Miami preparing for a test of the system in a scenario that involved providing relief to Haiti in the wake of a hurricane.”

(Bob Brewin,  Defense launches online system to coordinate Haiti relief efforts (1/15/10) — GovExec.com, link no longer active. 

Note, the simulation was based on a Hurricane, Not An Earthquake.

The US military through DISA oversees the information – communications system used by participating aid agencies. Essentially, it is a communications sharing system controlled by the US military, which is made available to approved non-governmental partner organizations. The Defense Information Systems Agency also “provides bandwidth to aid organizations involved in Haiti relief efforts.”

Bob Brewin of Government Executive, (See complete text of the Defense Information Systems Agency (DISA) Press Release and Bob Brewin’s text in Annex). (hyperlink to GovExec.com no longer functional)

While DISA’s Jean Demay was in charge of coordinating the tests and scenarios under the auspices of US-SOUTHCOM, there are no details in the public domain on the nature of the scenarios conducted on January 11, 2010. Moreover, there were no available reports on the participants (both military and civilian) involved in the tests and disaster relief scenarios. 

One would expect, given DISA’s mandate, that the tests pertained to simulating communications. logistics and information systems in the case of a major emergency relief program in Haiti.

The fundamental concept underlying DISA’s Transnational Information Sharing Cooperation project (TISC) is  to “Achieve Interoperability With Warfighters, Coalition Partners And NGOs” (Defense Daily, December 19, 2008)

Upon completing the tests and disaster scenarios on January 11, the TISC project was considered to be, in relation to Haiti, in “an advanced stage of readiness”.

“Going Live “

“After the earthquake hit on Tuesday [January 12, 2010], Demay said

“SOUTHCOM decided to go live with the system [tests and simulation scenarios conducted on January11, 2010].

On Monday [January 11, 2010, a day before the earthquake], Jean Demay, DISA’s technical manager for the agency’s Transnational Information Sharing Cooperation project (TISC), happened to be at the headquarters of the U.S. Southern Command in Miami preparing for a test of the system in a scenario that involved providing relief to Haiti in the wake of a hurricane.

After the earthquake hit on Tuesday [January 12, 2010], Demay said SOUTHCOM decided to go live with the system. On Wednesday [January 13, 2010], DISA opened up its All Partners Access Network, supported by the Transnational Information Sharing Cooperation project, to any organization supporting Haiti relief efforts.

On January 13, the day following the earthquake, SOUTHCOM took the decision to implement the TISC system, which had been rehearsed in Miami two days earlier.

“On [the following day] Wednesday [January 13, 2010], DISA opened up its All Partners Access Network, supported by the Transnational Information Sharing Cooperation project, to any organization supporting Haiti relief efforts.

Demay said that since DISA set up a Haiti Humanitarian Assistance and Disaster Relief Community of Interest on APAN on Wednesday [the day following the earthquake], almost 500 organizations and individuals have joined, including a range of Defense units and various nongovernmental organizations and relief groups. 

(Bob Brewin, Defense launches online system to coordinate Haiti relief efforts (1/15/10) — GovExec.com emphasis added)

DISA has a Southern Command (SOUTHCOM) Field Office in Miami.

Source: US Air Force

 

Related article

The Militarization of Emergency Aid to Haiti: Is it a Humanitarian Operation or an Invasion?
– by Michel Chossudovsky – 2010-01-15

 

 

---

ANNEX

 

Under the Haiti Disaster Emergency Program initiated on January 12, DISA’s mandate is described as part of a carefully planned military operation

Defense Information Systems Agency (DISA) Press Release

 

“DISA is providing US Southern Command with information capabilities which will support our nation in quickly responding to the critical situation in Haiti,” said Larry K. Huffman, DISA’s Principal Director of Global Information Grid Operations. “Our experience in providing support to contingency operations around the world postures us to be responsive in meeting USSOUTHCOM’s requirements.”

DISA, a Combat Support Agency, engineers and [sic] provides command and control capabilities and enterprise infrastructure to continuously operate and assure a global net-centric enterprise in direct support to joint warfighters, National level leaders, and other mission and coalition partners across the full spectrum of operations.

As DoD’s satellite communications leader, DISA is using the Defense Satellite Communications System to provide frequency and bandwidth support to all organizations in the Haitian relief effort.

This includes Super High Frequency missions that are providing bandwidth for US Navy ships and one Marine Expeditionary Unit that will arrive shortly on station to provide medical help, security, and helicopters among other support. This also includes all satellite communications for the US Air Force handling round-the-clock air traffic control and air freight operations at the extremely busy Port-Au-Prince Airport. DISA is also providing military Ultra High Frequency channels and contracting for additional commercial SATCOM missions that greatly increase this capability for relief efforts. (DISA -Press Release, January 2010, undated, emphasis added)

In the immediate wake of the earthquake, DISA played a key supportive role to US-SOUTHCOM, which was designated by the Obama administration as the de facto “lead agency” in the US Haitian relief program. The underlying system consists in integrating civilian aid agencies into the orbit of an advanced communications information system controlled by the US military. “DISA is also leveraging a new technology in Haiti that is already linking NGOs, other nations and US forces together to track, coordinate and better organize relief efforts”

(emphasis added)

Defense Information Systems Agency (DISA)

Launches online system to coordinate Haiti relief efforts

By Bob Brewin, Government Executive at Govexec.com 01/15/2010

http://www.govexec.com/story_page.cfm?articleid=44407&dcn=e_gvetwww (no longer active)

As personnel representing hundreds of government and nongovernmental agencies from around the world rush to the aid of earthquake-devastated Haiti, the Defense Information Systems Agency has launched a Web portal with multiple social networking tools to aid in coordinating their efforts.

On Monday [January 11, 2010, a day before the earthquake], Jean Demay, DISA’s technical manager for the agency’s Transnational Information Sharing Cooperation project, happened to be at the headquarters of the U.S. Southern Command in Miami preparing for a test of the system in a scenario that involved providing relief to Haiti in the wake of a hurricane.

After the earthquake hit on Tuesday [January 12, 2010], Demay said SOUTHCOM decided to go live with the system. On Wednesday [January 13, 2010], DISA opened up its All Partners Access Network, supported by the Transnational Information Sharing Cooperation project, to any organization supporting Haiti relief efforts.

The information sharing project, developed with backing from both SOUTHCOM and the Defense Department’s European Command, has been in development for three years. It is designed to facilitate multilateral collaboration between federal and nongovernmental agencies.

Demay said that since DISA set up a Haiti Humanitarian Assistance and Disaster Relief Community of Interest on APAN on Wednesday, almost 500 organizations and individuals have joined, including a range of Defense units and various nongovernmental organizations and relief groups.

APAN provides a series of collaboration tools, including geographical information systems, wikis, YouTube and MySpace-like pages and multilingual chat rooms.

Meanwhile, other organizations are tackling different technological challenges. Gianluca Bruni, the Dubai-based information technology chief for emergency preparedness and response for the World Food Programme, is setting up networks and systems to support United Nations and nongovernmental organizations in Haiti. WFP already has dispatched two communications kits to Haiti, with satellite systems that operate at 1 megabit per second and can support up to 100 users. It also has sent laptop computers, Wi-Fi access points and long-range point-to-point wireless systems to connect remote users to the satellite terminals. Bruni said eventually WFP plans to set up cyber cafés in Haiti for use all relief workers in the country.

Jon Anderson, a DISA spokesman, said the agency is supplying 10 megabits of satellite capacity to Navy, Marine and Air Force units engaged in the Haiti relief operation.

Many of the relief organizations and agencies in Haiti are bringing their own radio systems to the country. DISA has deployed a three-person team from its Joint Spectrum Management Element to help manage radio frequency spectrum.

The Joint Forces Command’s Joint Communications Support Element deployed two teams equipped with satellite systems and VoIP phones to support SOUTCOM in Port-au-Prince late Wednesday. Those systems were operational “in a matter of hours,” said JCSE Chief of Staff Chris Wilson. The organization will send another team to Haiti in the next few days.

Wilson said JCSE was able to get its gear into Haiti quickly because the systems already were loaded on pallets in Miami in preparation for an exercise that has been canceled.

So many governments and agencies from around the world have responded to the crisis in Haiti that they have overwhelmed the ability of the Port-au-Prince airport to handle incoming relief flights. The Federal Aviation Administration has had a ground-stop on aircraft headed for Haiti for much of the past two days.

FAA warned in an advisory Friday that “due to limited ramp space at Port-au-Prince airport,” with the exception of international cargo flights, “the Haitians are not accepting any aircraft into their airspace.”

The advisory added that domestic U.S. military and civilian flights to Haiti must be first be cleared by its command center. Exemptions will be based solely on the basis of ramp space. The agency also starkly warned “there is no available fuel” at the Port-au-Prince airport. (emphasis added)

Copyright Bob Brewin, Govexec.com, 2010.

 

All Global Research articles can be read in 51 languages by activating the Translate Website button below the author’s name (only available in desktop version).

To receive Global Research’s Daily Newsletter (selected articles), click here.

Click the share button above to email/forward this article to your friends and colleagues. Follow us on Instagram and Twitter and subscribe to our Telegram Channel. Feel free to repost and share widely Global Research articles.

Big Tech’s Effort to Silence Truth-tellers: Global Research Online Referral Campaign

***

When the Nord Stream pipelines were blown up in September 2022, the media rushed to say that Russia did it. We now know that the Americans did it, attacking their main European ally, Germany, and with it, the whole of Europe.

When Alexei Navalny’s death was announced on 16 February, Western media immediately said it was a political assassination (something even the most virulent Western governments have not maintained). But how can we know with certainty what happened in a prison cell somewhere in Siberia, when we hardly even know which prison Navalny was in?

Will we discover in a year or so that this is untrue, as we did with Nord Stream (although some of us knew the truth immediately)? Certainly, many untrue things have been said about Navalny since he rose to prominence about 15 years ago.

It was alleged, for instance, that he had been poisoned with Novichok in an attempted assassination in 2020. Yet this was obvious nonsense. Two years previously, two Russians in Britain had allegedly been targeted with the same Novichok in Salisbury. The UK government peddled the line that Russia had used a secret chemical weapon to try to murder Sergei Skripal, an MI6 agent and Russian traitor who had done time in prison and then been exchanged for other spies many years previously. 

The Skripal story itself was impossible to believe.  However if one did hold that the Russian plot to use a secret weapon had been uncovered and had failed – Skripal and his daughter did not die, they have been since whisked away from public view by the British secret services and nobody knows where they are now – then it is literally impossible to claim that the Russians would try the same failed tactic again, two years later, against an even more famous opponent, Navalny. 

In any case, when Navalny fell ill on a domestic flight in Russia, the plane made an emergency landing and Navalny was rushed to hospital. He was treated there before being sent to a hospital in Germany on his wife’s request. Is this what you do when you are trying to kill someone? If Navalny had had an illegal chemical weapon in his blood, why would the Russians send him to Germany where it would be discovered?

Other untruths of a similar nature have circulated in the know-all Western media – media which rush to embrace conspiracy theories when they support their chosen narrative, but which dismiss them as nutty and even dangerous when they do not. The more gruesome these stories, the better – whether it is the alleged but unproven murder of Alexander Litvinenko in London with radioactive material, or the absurd fantasy that Viktor Yushchenko was poisoned with dioxin in 2004. Russian assassins, it seems, never use guns or knives, preferring instead to use toxins which leave plenty of trace and often do not work. If they tried less baroque ways to eliminate their opponents, that would not fit in with the James Bond / SMERSH narrative which Western elites have imbibed with their mother’s milk.

The best known case, elevated to the status of law in the United States, is the death in a Russian prison of Sergei Magnitsky in 2009. It was immediately alleged by his associate Bill Browder that he had been murdered for denouncing corruption. But as the film maker Andrei Nekrasov and the German weekly Der Spiegel have shown conclusively – Nekrasov’s superb documentary, ‘Magnitsky: Behind the Scenes,’ has once again been taken down from Youtube – not one element of this story stands up to scrutiny. The European Court of Human Rights, for what it is worth, agrees. It ruled in 2019 that Magnitsky’s arrest had been perfectly reasonable – far from denouncing corruption, he was himself accused of it – and that there was no evidence to say he was murdered. 

Another untruth told about Navalny was that he was a or the leader of the Russian opposition. Navalny was not the leader of anything. His finest hour came in 2013 when he garnered 670,000 votes in a Moscow mayoral election. He never had any national party structure or any national support outside the liberal capital city. Just over half a million votes in a country of 140 million needs to be against the 12 million votes which went in the 2012 presidential election to the Communist Party candidate, 6 million to the ephemeral liberal candidate, Mikhail Prokhorov, and 4.5 million to the nationalist, Vladimir Zhirinovsky.

Finally, his troubles with the law were not initially political. His initial convictions date from a corruption case brought against him and his brother by the French cosmetics company Yves Rocher in 2012.  He repeatedly broke his travel ban and this led to house arrest. Later, after his stay in a Berlin hospital, he was convicted for contempt of court for having refused to obey various court orders. 

The notion that Navalny had support in Russia which only repression stymied is not credible. In 2021 the Levada Centre found that he had a 62% disapproval rating, up from 50% the previous year, with approval ratings of 20% in 2020 and 14% in 2021.

Instead, Navalny prefigured Vladimir Zelensky. A creation of his American advisors and a minor corrupt figure, Navalny’s initial plan, when he first came to prominence in the second decade of the 21^st century, was to unite nationalists and liberals against Putin. He tried to appeal to the extreme right, for instance in this video (watch below) to trail a party called ‘Narod’ (People), for National Russian Liberation Movement which describes Muslims as cockroaches and advocates murdering them. His earliest foray into politics, with Maria Gaidar, daughter of a prominent liberal former Prime Minister, was supported financially by the USA’s regime change operation, the National Endowment for Democracy, as Wikileaks revealed in 2006.

No doubt conditions in Siberian prisons are not conducive to good health. But Navalny himself was a sick man. The events of 2020, when he collapsed on a plane and his life was then saved by Russian doctors, were an indication of severe problems with his blood sugar. If he had been poisoned, he would have died. It is therefore perfectly feasible that his death is innocuous – but of course that truth, if it is truth, is far less interesting than another grisly tale about Dr. Evil in the Kremlin.

Cui bono?

Even if you believe that Navalny was a political force who threatened Putin, his allegedly political imprisonment had solved the supposed problem. What is the possible motive for taking the extra step of murdering him?

On the contrary Russia and Putin have just had their biggest publicity coup for years, with the Tucker Carlson interview having been viewed by hundreds of millions of viewers. His shorts about the Moscow Metro and the cost of living in Russia are also doing the rounds. For Navalny to die in the very same week is surely very bad publicity for the Kremlin – especially when, by an astonishing coincidence, his wife Yulia is today attending the Munich Security Conference together with the Ukrainian president and the collective West.

Come to think of it, maybe there is a conspiracy theory worth pondering here …

*

Note to readers: Please click the share button above. Follow us on Instagram and Twitter and subscribe to our Telegram Channel. Feel free to repost and share widely Global Research articles.

John Laughland is the Director of Forum for Democracy International.

Featured image is from FDI

All Global Research articles can be read in 51 languages by activating the Translate Website button below the author’s name (only available in desktop version).

To receive Global Research’s Daily Newsletter (selected articles), click here.

Click the share button above to email/forward this article to your friends and colleagues. Follow us on Instagram and Twitter and subscribe to our Telegram Channel. Feel free to repost and share widely Global Research articles.

Big Tech’s Effort to Silence Truth-tellers: Global Research Online Referral Campaign

***

The White House is steering the United States into a budgetary ditch it may not be able to get out of.

The Biden administration is supersizing the defense industry to meet foreign arms obligations instead of making tradeoffs essential to any effective budget. Its new National Defense Industrial Strategy lays out a plan to “catalyze generational change” of the defense industrial base and to “meet the strategic moment” — one rhetorically dominated by competition with China, but punctuated by U.S. support for Ukraine’s fight against Russia and Israel’s military campaign in Gaza.

Instead of reevaluating its maximalist national security strategy, the Biden administration is doubling down. It is proposing a generation of investment to expand an arms industry that, overall, fails to meet cost, schedule, and performance standards. And if its strategy is any indication, the administration has no vision for how to eventually reduce U.S. military industrial capacity.

When the Cold War ended, the national security budget shrank. Then-Secretary of Defense Les Aspin and deputy William Perry convened industry leaders to encourage their consolidation in a meeting that later became known as the “Last Supper.” Arms makers were to join forces or go out of business. So they ended up downsizing from over 50 prime contractors to just five. And while contractors needed to pare down their industrial capacity, unchecked consolidation created the monopolistic defense sector we have now — one that depends heavily on government contracts and enjoys significant freedom to set prices.

In the decades since, contractors have leveraged their growing economic power to pave inroads on Capitol Hill. They have solidified their economic influence to stave off the political potential for future national security cuts, regardless of their performance or the geopolitical environment.

Growing the military industrial base over the course of a generation would only further empower arms makers in our economy, deepening the ditch the United States has dug itself into for decades by continually increasing national security spending — and by doling about half of it out to contractors. The U.S. spends more on national security than the next 10 countries combined, outpacing China alone by over 30%.

Ironically, the administration acknowledges in the strategy that “America’s economic security and national security are mutually reinforcing,” stating that “the nation’s military strength depends in part on our overall economic strength.” The strategy further states that optimizing the nation’s defense needs typically requires tradeoffs between “cost, speed, and scale.” It doesn’t mention quality of industrial output — arguably the biggest tradeoff the U.S. government has made in military procurement.

Consider, for instance, the B-2 bomber, the F-35 fighter jet, the Littoral Combat Ship, the V-22 Osprey, and many other examples of acquisition failures that have spanned decades. More recently, the Government Accountability Office has reported that while the number of major defense acquisition programs has fallen, both costs and average delivery time have risen.

So what is the military really getting from more and more national security spending? Less for more: Fewer weapons than it asked for, usually late and over budget, and, much of the time, dysfunctional. Acquisition failures are a major reason the Congressional Budget Office projects that operations and maintenance spending will significantly exceed the rate of inflation for the next decade — a considerable budgeting issue for a military that seemingly has no plans to reduce either its force structure or its industrial capacity. Quite the opposite, in fact.

Biden’s new National Defense Industrial Strategy specifically states there is a need for the U.S. to “move aggressively toward innovative, next-generation capabilities while continuing to upgrade and produce, in significant volumes, conventional weapons systems already in the force.” Ironically, the military has spent over two decades developing the F-35, next-generation technology that the Pentagon still hasn’t greenlit for full-rate production.

Throwing more money at an industrial base comprised of businesses too big to fail won’t increase the quantity or quality of its output. But that’s exactly what the strategy urges. One of the priorities is to “institutionalize supply chain resilience.” It’s an important goal, but one the administration proposes the Pentagon tackle, in part by investing in “spare production capacity,” what the strategy defines as “excess capacity a company or organization maintains beyond its current production needs.”

But building factories to sit empty is not supply chain resilience. It’s wasting money on unnecessary infrastructure, creating a profit motive for arms makers to make more weapons. And for an industry constantly sounding the alarm about the need for consistent “demand signals” from Congress, the Pentagon’s plans to invest a generation of U.S. taxpayer money in “spare production capacity” sounds a lot like throwing the demand-supply principle out the window. In that case, the U.S. might as well consider nationalizing the defense industry, which already lacks competition and relies almost entirely on the government. Why not eliminate the profit motive? It’s not like making money drives contractors to produce quality products on time or within budget.

Besides supply chain resilience, another priority laid out in this strategy is “flexible acquisition.” The stated goal is to reduce costs and development times while increasing scalability. In pursuit of that goal, the administration proposes “a flexible requirements process” for multiyear contracts, and the expansion of multiyear contracting writ large. It reasons that as priorities shift in an “evolving threat environment,” so too should contractors’ deliverables. But pairing flexible requirements with an increasing number of multiyear contracts is a recipe for disaster.

Before Russia attacked Ukraine, multiyear contracts were relatively rare — limited to major aircraft and ships. The Congressional Research Service notes that estimated savings on these programs have historically fallen within the range of 5% — 10%. But those are estimates, and they may not apply to other munitions now produced under multiyear contracts. The report also confirms that actual savings are “difficult to observe,” in part because the Pentagon does not track the cost performance of multiyear contracts.

Just because multiyear contracting is more common doesn’t mean it’s cheaper. And while the Pentagon argues that multiyear contracts give contractors the so-called demand signal they need to ramp up production, contractors don’t usually spend their extra money on identifying efficiencies or making capital investments to increase output at a lower cost — and the Pentagon isn’t checking.

The strategy also proposes “aggressive expansion of production capacity.” It notes that during peacetime, weapons acquisition tends to focus on “greater efficiency, cost effectiveness, transparency, and accountability.” Taking caution not to assert that the United States is in wartime, the strategy contrasts peacetime acquisition policy with “today’s threat environment,” calling for“crisis period acquisition policy” that revitalizes the industrial base and shifts focus from efficiency and effectiveness to ensuring that military contractors are “better resourced.” But contractors don’t have a resource problem, and “crisis acquisition policy” puts the United States on a “permanent war footing.”

Lawmakers must challenge the administration’s maximalist national security strategy by interrogating its push to expand military industrial capacity so drastically. It’s critical that they do, not only because the U.S. is limited in what it can produce and provide to other countries but also because arms industry greed is boundless — and without off-ramps or constraints, the U.S. government may find in 20 or 30 years that it’s in a ditch it can’t get out of.

*

Note to readers: Please click the share button above. Follow us on Instagram and Twitter and subscribe to our Telegram Channel. Feel free to repost and share widely Global Research articles.

Julia Gledhill is an analyst in the Center for Defense Information at the Project on Government Oversight. Before joining POGO, she was a foreign policy associate at the Friends Committee on National Legislation.

All Global Research articles can be read in 51 languages by activating the Translate Website button below the author’s name (only available in desktop version).

To receive Global Research’s Daily Newsletter (selected articles), click here.

Click the share button above to email/forward this article to your friends and colleagues. Follow us on Instagram and Twitter and subscribe to our Telegram Channel. Feel free to repost and share widely Global Research articles.

Big Tech’s Effort to Silence Truth-tellers: Global Research Online Referral Campaign

***

Despite public protestations, Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi is helping Israel transfer 1.4 million Palestinians from Rafah to tent cities in the Sinia Desert.

On Saturday, western news agencies reported that closed-door negotiations took place in Paris that were aimed at reaching an agreement on a ceasefire in Gaza.

According to Reuters the talks represented “the most serious push for weeks to halt the fighting in the battered Palestinian enclave and see Israeli and foreign hostages released.”

Regrettably, the reports from Paris were largely a media-engineered deception intended to divert attention from the real purpose of the confab.

Keep in mind, the primary attendees of the gathering were not senior-level diplomats or trained negotiators, but the directors of the Intelligence services including the head of Israel’s Mossad, David Barnea, Egyptian spy-chief Abbas Kamel, and CIA Director William Burns.

These are not the men one would choose to hammer-out a hostage exchange or a ceasefire deal, but to implement electronic surveillance, espionage or black ops. Thus, it is extremely unlikely that they met in Paris to settle on a plan for the cessation of hostilities. The more probable explanation is that the respective spy-chiefs are putting the finishing touches on a collaborative plan to breach the Egyptian border wall so that one and a half million severely-traumatized Palestinians can flee into Egypt without any serious opposition from the Egyptian army.

Such an operation would require considerable coordination in order to minimize the casualties while, at the same time, achieving its overall objective. Naturally, any breach would have to be blamed on Hamas who will undoubtedly be the convenient scapegoat for blowing up a section of the wall creating an opening for thousands of stampeding Palestinians.

In this way, Israel could characterize the mass expulsion as a “voluntary migration” which is the cheery-sounding Zionist sobriquet for ethnic cleansing. In any event, the bulk of Gaza’s Moslem population will have been evicted from their historic homeland and forced into refugee camps scattered across the Sinai Desert. This is Netanyahu’s endgame which could take place at any time.

There is some doubt as to whether Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi will cooperate with Israel and allow the Palestinians to enter Egypt en masse, but those doubts are based on speculation not fact.

For those who care to dig a bit deeper, there’s a clear money-trail connecting the dodgy Egyptian president to a policy-change that will more than accommodate Netanyahu’s ambitious ethnic cleansing plan. In other words, the fix is already in. This is from Reuters:

Talks with Egypt to boost its International Monetary Fund loan program are making excellent progress, the IMF said on Thursday, saying that Egypt needs a “very comprehensive support package” to deal with economic challenges, including pressures from the war in Gaza….

Asked about the impact on the talks from challenges posed by the expected entry of Gaza refugees into Egypt, Kozack said: “There is a need to have a very comprehensive support package for Egypt, and we’re working very closely with both the Egyptian authorities and their partners to ensure that Egypt does not have any residual financing needs and also to ensure that the program is able to ensure macroeconomic and financial stability in Egypt.” IMF sees progress on Egypt loan program amid Gaza pressures,Reuters

Repeat: “to ensure that Egypt does not have any residual financing needs”?

WTF? So the IMF now provides financial support for ethnic cleansing?

It certainly looks that way. The IMF wants to make sure that el-Sisi has sufficient money to cover the costs of feeding and housing one and a half million refugees.

But is that where those billions of dollars will actually go; to the starving Palestinians who have lost their homes and all their material possessions, or will it vanish into the offshore accounts of corrupt Egyptian politicians just as it has in Ukraine. We’ve all seen this movie many times before and it doesn’t end well. Here’s more from the Financial Times:

Georgieva made clear that the war in Gaza was the main reason why the IMF was pushing ahead with an expanded loan deal despite having stopped disbursements on an earlier $3bn loan…..

Analysts say the Egypt-IMF discussions have focused on a package of at least $10bn, some of which would come from the lender and the rest from other donors likely to include the World Bank. IMF ‘very close’ to fresh Egypt loan deal, Kristalina Georgieva says, Financial Times

Let me get this straight: The IMF halted payouts on a $3 billion loan to Egypt, but now they are prepared to hand-over $10 billion to a debt-ridden, credit risk nation whose currency suffered a 40% devaluation last year and whose economy is presently in the dumps? Does that make sense? Of course, not. Here’s more from The Cradle:

The International Monetary Fund (IMF) says there is “excellent progress” in talks with Egypt over a loan program that seeks to “support” the country in weathering its financial woes and handling a potential deluge of Palestinian refugees that Israel seeks to ethnically cleanse from Gaza.

So, someone finally has the courage to say what everyone knows to be true already, that the IMF is financing the ethnic cleansing of Gaza. Here’s more from the same article:

IMF Managing Director Kristalina Georgieva said in November that the agency was “seriously considering” a possible augmentation of Egypt’s loan program due to “economic difficulties posed by the Israel–Gaza war.”

“The loan could reach up to $10 billion to help the Egyptian economy survive amid local and external factors, including the Israeli onslaught on the neighboring Gaza Strip and tensions in the Red Sea…

This coincided with the start of construction work on an “isolated security zone” in the eastern Sinai Desert on the border with the Gaza Strip, which many expect will serve as a buffer zone for displaced Palestinians.

“The construction work seen in Sinai along the border with Gaza – the establishment of a reinforced security perimeter around a specific, open area of land – are serious signs that Egypt may be preparing to accept and allow the displacement of Gazans to Sinai, in coordination with Israel and the United States.” IMF vows to support Egypt as nation braces for mass displacement of Gazans, The Cradle

It’s worth noting, that by accepting the IMF loan of $10 billion, el-Sisi has agreed to peg Egypt’s currency to black market rates, which means its value will be cut in half on the day the deal is consummated. Egyptian working people—half of who already live below the poverty line—will be severely hurt by the bailout although not nearly as much as the Palestinians who be left to rot in tent cities in the desert.

Also, it appears that the IMF will continue to dangle the $10 billion loan(bribe?) beneath el-Sisi’s nose until the Palestinians finally cross-over into Egypt and the operation is concluded. This is how western oligarchs use international institutions like the IMF to coerce their puppets to do what they want. In this case, they needed a pliable Judas who would be willing to double-cross his fellow Muslims in order to line his pockets and those of his closest allies. They apparently found their man in el-Sisi.

This may also help to explain why Egypt is currently clearing a vast track of land just a stone’s throw from the Gaza border. Cairo is preparing the land to accommodate the burgeoning flow of refugees who will soon be pouring into the country. This is from Forbes:

Egypt is setting up a camp near its border with Gaza as a contingency for a potential exodus of Palestinians from the enclave if Israel goes ahead with a ground offensive on Rafah, the border region where more than half of Gaza’s population is taking refuge, Reuters reported….

Citing four unnamed sources, Reuters reported Egypt is preparing a “desert area with some basic facilities” to shelter potential refugees as a “temporary and precautionary measure,”

The human rights group, the Sinai Foundation, has shared images of the purported camps, showing trucks and cranes in the area setting up a “high-security area” surrounded by concrete fences.

The New York Times corroborated the images and spoke to contractors at the site who said they had been hired to build a 16-foot-high concrete wall around a five-square-kilometer patch of land near the border. Egypt Is Preparing Camps To Shelter Fleeing Palestinians Before Israel’s Offensive On Rafah, Report Says, Forbes

Let’s summarize:

1. Israeli, American and Egyptian Intel chiefs met in Paris (IMO) to put the finishing touches on a plan to expel the Palestinians from Gaza.
2. The International Monetary Fund (IMF) is about to provide Egypt with a $10 billion loan for “handling a potential deluge of Palestinian refugees that Israel seeks to ethnically cleanse from Gaza.” (The Cradle)
3. Egypt is preparing a “desert area with some basic facilities” to shelter potential refugees” in the near future.
4. The IDF has continued its daily airstrikes on civilian sites in Rafah in order to intensify feelings of high-anxiety and panic that will help to trigger a stampede into Egypt.
5. Food trucks are prevented from entering Gaza. Israel is deliberately starving the Palestinians so they will flee their homeland as soon as there is an opening at the border.

All of these measures are aimed at one objective alone, the complete eradication of the Palestinian population. And, now—after a bloody four month-long military campaign—Israel’s goal is clearly in sight.

It will take a monumental effort to stop this evil plan from going forward.

*

Note to readers: Please click the share button above. Follow us on Instagram and Twitter and subscribe to our Telegram Channel. Feel free to repost and share widely Global Research articles.

This article was originally published on The Unz Review.

Michael Whitney is a renowned geopolitical and social analyst based in Washington State. He initiated his career as an independent citizen-journalist in 2002 with a commitment to honest journalism, social justice and World peace.

He is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG).  

Featured image is from TUR

All Global Research articles can be read in 51 languages by activating the Translate Website button below the author’s name (only available in desktop version).

To receive Global Research’s Daily Newsletter (selected articles), click here.

Click the share button above to email/forward this article to your friends and colleagues. Follow us on Instagram and Twitter and subscribe to our Telegram Channel. Feel free to repost and share widely Global Research articles.

Big Tech’s Effort to Silence Truth-tellers: Global Research Online Referral Campaign

***

Disruptions to global trade caused by the Houthi campaign against shipping in the Red Sea is affecting more than half of all retailers in the UK.

Research conducted by the British Chambers of Commerce across more than 1,000 companies in the UK found that container shipping prices have jumped as much as 300 percent, while goods have been delayed for up to a month, prompting supply shortages and cash flow problems.

The Houthis launched their campaign against commercial vessels in November in a bid to end Israeli military strikes on Gaza, which began in the aftermath of the Oct. 7 Hamas attack.

Air and sea strikes against the Houthis in Yemen by US and UK forces have so far failed to curtail the attacks. Eighteen Houthi targets were hit in airstrikes over the weekend. 

The average cost of shipping goods from China to Europe has more than doubled, with most ships preferring to travel around Africa rather than risk attack by approaching the Suez Canal.

In 2023, around 22 percent of all commercial shipping containers passed through the canal, according to the UN Conference on Trade and Development. That total has since fallen by 82 percent, with 586 ships rerouting around Africa.

The BCC’s head of trade policy, William Bain, urged the UK government to provide more support to British retailers ahead of its budget next week.

“There has been spare capacity in the shipping freight industry to respond to the difficulties, which has bought us some time. And recent (government) data also indicates the impact has yet to filter through to the UK economy, with inflation holding steady in January,” he said.

“But our research suggests that the longer the current situation persists, the more likely it is that the cost pressures will start to build.”

Bain said new post-Brexit laws “adding to costs and delays” had made it “a difficult time for firms.”

Credit ratings agency Moody’s warned this month that retailers would experience a “material impact on profitability by the end of 2024” if the situation in the Red Sea did not significantly improve.

Bain said:

“The UK economy saw a drop in its total goods exports for 2023 and, with global demand weak, there is a need for the government to look at providing support in the March budget.”

The crisis has also led to an increase in pressure on air freight companies, with delivery aggregator ParcelHero noting an uptick of 8 percent on spot rates between Europe and China, and 14 percent between China and the US.

Supply issues are expected to worsen in March as Chinese exports increase following the country’s New Year holidays, which concluded over the weekend.

David Jinks, head of consumer research at ParcelHero, said:

“Initially, there was a scramble for aviation services as businesses rushed to get products out before the festivities began.

“Now the continuing demand for air freight on this route is because many ships are berthed for the duration and containers are stuck firmly in Chinese ports until manufacturing ramps up enough to restore full services.

“Air freight enables those companies manufacturing and operating in Asia to leapfrog the Chinese bottleneck.”

*

Note to readers: Please click the share button above. Follow us on Instagram and Twitter and subscribe to our Telegram Channel. Feel free to repost and share widely Global Research articles.

Featured image source

All Global Research articles can be read in 51 languages by activating the Translate Website button below the author’s name (only available in desktop version).

To receive Global Research’s Daily Newsletter (selected articles), click here.

Click the share button above to email/forward this article to your friends and colleagues. Follow us on Instagram and Twitter and subscribe to our Telegram Channel. Feel free to repost and share widely Global Research articles.

Big Tech’s Effort to Silence Truth-tellers: Global Research Online Referral Campaign

***

In a recent CNN interview, the normally very confident US Under Secretary of State Victoria Nuland sounded a little desperate. She was trying to make the case for Congress to pass another $61 billion dollars for the neocons’ proxy war project in Ukraine and she was throwing out the old slogans that the neocons use when they want funding for their latest war.

Asked by CNN whether she believes that Congress will eventually pass the bill, Nuland responded that she has confidence that,

“we will do what we have always done, which is defend democracy and freedom around the world…”

What Nuland is attempting here is what the neocons always do. They try to wrap their terrible policies up in the American flag and sell it to the American people as something reflective of “our” values. If you oppose another neocon war, well then you are unpatriotic according to their trickery.

But Americans are waking up to the lies of the neocons and more and more are realizing that there is no “we” when the neocons are trying to sell another war. It is “them.” The “we” in the equation are the people who are being robbed to pay for what will inevitably be another neocon failure.

Does any American still believe that Washington was “defending democracy and freedom” when it used a pack of lies to get us into Iraq, where a country was destroyed and perhaps a million people were killed? How about when, after 20 years in Afghanistan, we managed to replace the Taliban…with the Taliban? And Syria and Libya and all the other interventions?

Was Washington “defending democracy” when Nuland and the rest of the neocons successfully overthrew a democratically elected government in Ukraine in 2014?

It’s getting harder and harder for the American people to choke down the war lies of the neocons. That is something that should make us feel optimistic. In the same interview, Nuland said she was confident that when House Members return to session next week, “after they’ve been out in their districts hearing from the American people,” they will vote to send the $61 billion to Ukraine.

Looking at public opinion polls, however, it is far more likely that any Member meeting with constituents during the break will hear the opposite. It is likely they will hear a demand that not another penny be spent on the brutal, futile, and disastrous Ukraine war. According to a Harris poll taken earlier this month, some 70 percent of Americans want talks to end the Ukraine war!

Americans no longer support the neocon war project in Ukraine. That is something to celebrate.

Perhaps in a last show of desperation, Victoria Nuland debuted another argument for keeping the war money flowing for Ukraine. She said, “we have to remember that the bulk of this money is going right back into this economy to make those weapons…”

Is this supposed to be attractive to the American people? The middle class and the poor are being destroyed by inflation and squeezed by a debased currency so that the wealthy, politically-connected weapons manufacturers can get even richer? Instead of money to rebuild this country and protect its borders, Americans should be thrilled to see their hard work go up in smoke, literally, in Ukraine?

*

Note to readers: Please click the share button above. Follow us on Instagram and Twitter and subscribe to our Telegram Channel. Feel free to repost and share widely Global Research articles.

Featured image source

All Global Research articles can be read in 51 languages by activating the Translate Website button below the author’s name (only available in desktop version).

To receive Global Research’s Daily Newsletter (selected articles), click here.

Click the share button above to email/forward this article to your friends and colleagues. Follow us on Instagram and Twitter and subscribe to our Telegram Channel. Feel free to repost and share widely Global Research articles.

Big Tech’s Effort to Silence Truth-tellers: Global Research Online Referral Campaign

***

Six years ago in 2018, after returning from a Veterans For Peace trip to Vietnam, I wrote an article called “Why Would Anyone Kill One’s Self In an Attempt to Stop A War?”

Now, six years later, in the past three months, two people in the United States have taken or risked taking their own lives in an attempt to change U.S. policies on Palestine and call for a cease-fire and stop U.S. funding to the State of Israel that would be used to kill in the Israeli genocide of Gaza. A yet unidentified woman, wrapped in a Palestinian flag, set herself on fire in front of the Israeli consulate in Atlanta, Georgia, on December 1, 2023. Three months later authorities have yet to release the name of the woman. Her condition was unknown as of mid-December.

This week, on Sunday, February 25, 2024, active duty U.S. Air Force member Aaron Bushnell set himself on fire at the Israeli Embassy in Washington, D.C., while he was stating “Free Palestine and stop the genocide.” Bushnell died from his injuries.

Content Warning: Viewers may find the following video disturbing. It shows the moments leading up to and including Bushnell’s final act. The moment of self-immolation itself has been blurred.

The last walk of Aaron Bushnell, a 25-year-old member of the US Air Force who self-immolated outside the Israeli embassy in Washington in protest against US involvement in Israel's genocide in Gaza.https://t.co/FwAAH0GJ8B

— Lowkey (@Lowkey0nline) February 26, 2024

As I mentioned in the article in 2018, many in U.S. admire young men and women who join the military and profess to be willing to give up their lives for whatever the U.S. politicians or government decide is best for another country—“freedom and democracy” for those who don’t have the U.S. version of it, or overthrowing self-rule that is not compatible with the U.S. administration’s view. Actual U.S. national security seldom has anything to do with U.S. invasions and occupations of other countries.

But, what about a private citizen giving up his or her life to try to stop the politicians or government from deciding what is best for other countries? Could a “mere” citizen be so concerned about politicians’ or government actions that she or he is willing to die to bring public attention to those actions?

One well-known and several little-known actions of private citizens from five decades ago provide us with the answers.

While on a Veterans for Peace trip to Vietnam in 2014 and while on another VFP delegation in March 2018, our delegation saw the iconic photo of a well-known Buddhist monk Thich Quang Duc who set himself on fire in June 1963 on a busy street in Saigon to protest the Diem regime’s crackdown on Buddhists during the early days of the American war on Vietnam. That photo is seared into our collective memories.

Journalist Malcolm Browne’s photograph of Quảng Đức during his self-immolation. (From the Public Domain)

The photos show hundreds of monks surrounding the square to keep the police out so that Quang Duc could complete his sacrifice. The self-immolation became a turning point in the Buddhist crisis and a pivotal act in the collapse of the Diem regime in the early days of the American war on Vietnam.

But, did you know that several Americans also set themselves on fire to attempt to end U.S. military actions during those turbulent war years in the 1960s?

I didn’t, until our VFP delegation saw the portraits displayed of five Americans who gave their lives to protest the American war on Vietnam, among other international persons who are revered in Vietnamese history, at the Vietnam-USA Friendship Society in Hanoi. Though these American peace persons have fallen into oblivion in their own nation, they are well-known martyrs in Vietnam, 50 years later.

Portraits displayed in the Friendship Society Building in Hanoii, Vietnam.

Our 2014 delegation of 17—six Vietnam veterans, three Vietnam-era vets, one Iraq-era vet, and seven civilian peace activists—with four Veterans for Peace members who live in Vietnam, met with members of the Vietnam-USA Friendship Society at their headquarters in Hanoi. I returned to Vietnam in March 2018 with another Veterans for Peace delegation. After seeing one particular portrait again—that of Norman Morrison—I decided to write about these Americans who were willing to end their own lives in an attempt to stop the American war on the Vietnamese people.

What distinguished these Americans to the Vietnamese was that, as American soldiers were killing Vietnamese, there were American citizens who ended their own lives in order to try to bring the terror of invasion and occupation for Vietnamese citizens to the American public through the horror of their own deaths.

The first person in the United States to die of self-immolation in opposition to the war on Vietnam was 82-year-old Quaker Alice Herz who lived in Detroit, Michigan. She set herself on fire on a Detroit street on March 16, 1965. Before she died of her burns 10 days later, Alice said she set herself on fire to protest “the arms race and a president using his high office to wipe out small nations.”

Six months later on November 2, 1965, Norman Morrison, a 31-year-old Quaker from Baltimore, a father of three young children, died of self-immolation at the Pentagon. Morrison felt that traditional protests against the war had done little to end the war and decided that setting himself on fire at the Pentagon might mobilize enough people to force the United States government to abandon its involvement in Vietnam. Morrison’s choice to self-immolate was particularly symbolic in that it followed President Lyndon Johnson’s controversial decision to authorize the use of napalm in Vietnam, a burning gel that sticks to the skin and melts the flesh.

Image: A photo shows the portrait of Norman Morrison at the Vietnam-USA Friendship Society in Hanoi, Vietnam.

Apparently, unbeknownst to Morrison, he chose to set himself on fire beneath the Pentagon window of then-Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara.

Thirty years later in his 1995 memoir, In Retrospect: The Tragedy in Lessons of Vietnam, McNamara remembered Morrison’s death:

Antiwar protests had been sporadic and limited up to this time and had not compelled attention. Then came the afternoon of November 2, 1965. At twilight that day, a young Quaker named Norman R. Morrison, father of three and an officer of the Stony Run Friends Meeting in Baltimore, burned himself to death within 40 feet of my Pentagon window. Morrison’s death was a tragedy not only for his family but also for me in the country. It was an outcry against the killing that was destroying the lives of so many Vietnamese and American youth.

I reacted to the horror of his action by bottling up my emotions and avoided talking about them with anyone—even with my family. I knew (his wife) Marge and our three children shared many of Morrison’s feelings about the war. And I believed I understood and shared some of his thoughts. The episode created tension at home that only deepened as the criticism of the war continued to grow.

Before his memoir In Retrospect was published, in a 1992 article in Newsweek, McNamara had listed people or events that had had an impact on his questioning of the war. One of those events, McNamara identified as “the death of a young Quaker.”

One week after Norman Morrison’s death, Roger LaPorte, 22, a Catholic Worker, became the third war protester to take his own life. He died of burns suffered through self-immolation on November 9, 1965 on the United Nations Plaza in New York City. He left a note that read, “I am against war, all wars. I did this as a religious act.”

The three protest deaths in 1965 mobilized the anti-war community to begin weekly vigils at the White House and Congress. And every week, Quakers were arrested on the steps of the Capitol as they read the names of the American dead, according to David Hartsough, one of the delegates on our 2014 VFP trip.

Hartsough, who participated in anti-war vigils 50 years earlier, described how they convinced some members of Congress to join them. Rep. George Brown (D-Calif.) became the first member of Congress to do so. After the Quakers were arrested and jailed for reading the names of the war dead, Brown would continue to read the names, enjoying congressional immunity from arrest.

Two years later, on October 15, 1967, Florence Beaumont, a 56-year-old Unitarian mother of two, set herself on fire in front of the Federal Building in Los Angeles. Her husband George later said,

“Florence had a deep feeling against the slaughter in Vietnam… She was a perfectly normal, dedicated person, and felt she had to do this just like those who burned themselves in Vietnam. The barbarous napalm that burns the bodies of the Vietnamese children has seared the souls of all who, like Florence Beaumont, do not have ice water for blood, stones for hearts. The match that Florence used to touch off her gasoline-soaked clothing has lighted a fire that will not go out—ever—a fire under us complacent, smug fat cats so damned secure in our ivory towers 9,000 miles from exploding napalm, and THAT, we are sure, is the purpose of her act.”

Three years later, on May 10, 1970, 23-year-old George Winne, Jr., son of a Navy captain and a student at the University of California, San Diego, set himself on fire on the university’s Revelle Plaza next to a sign that said “In God’s name, end this war.”

Winne’s death came just six days after the Ohio National Guard fired into a crowd of Kent State University student protesters, killing four and wounding nine, during the largest wave of protests in the history of American higher education.

At our 2014 meeting at the Vietnam-USA Friendship Society office in Hanoi, David Hartsough presented Held in the Light, a book written by Ann Morrison, the widow of Norman Morrison, to Ambassador Chin, a retired Vietnamese ambassador to the United Nations and now an official of the Society. Hartsough also read a letter from Ann Morrison to the people of Vietnam.

Ambassador Chin responded by telling the group that the acts of Norman Morrison and other Americans in ending their lives are well remembered by the people of Vietnam. He added that every Vietnamese school child learns a song and poem written by Vietnamese poet Tố Hữu called “Emily, My Child” dedicated to the young daughter that Morrison was holding only moments before he set himself on fire at the Pentagon. The poem reminds Emily that her father died because he felt he had to object in the most visible way to the deaths of Vietnamese children at the hands of the United States government.

Sparking Revolutions

In other parts of the world, people have ended their lives to bring attention to special issues. The Arab Spring began on December 17, 2010 with a 26-year-old street Tunisian vendor named Mohamed Bouazizi setting himself on fire after a policewoman confiscated his food street vending cart. He was the only breadwinner for his family and had to frequently bribe police in order to operate his cart.

His death sparked citizens throughout the Middle East to challenge their repressive governments. Some administrations were forced from power by the citizens, including Tunisian President Zine El Abidine Ben Ali, who had ruled with an iron fist for 23 years.

Or Being Ignored as Irrational Acts

In the United States, acts of conscience such as taking one’s own life for an issue of extraordinary importance to the individual are viewed as irrational and the government and media minimize their importance.

For this generation, while thousands of U.S. citizens are arrested and many serve time in county jails or federal prisons for protesting U.S. government policies, in April, 2015, young Leo Thornton joined a small but important number of women and men who have chosen to publicly end their lives in hopes of bringing the attention of the American public to change specific U.S policies.

On April 13, 2015, Leo Thornton, 22 years old, committed suicide by gun on the West Lawn of the U.S. Capitol. He had tied to his wrist a placard that read “Tax the 1%.” Did his act of conscience have any effect on Washington—the White House or the U.S. Congress? Unfortunately, not.

The following week, the Republican-led House of Representatives passed legislation that would eliminate the estate tax applying only to the top 1% of estates. And no mention of Leo Thornton, and his decision to end his life over inequitable taxation, appeared in the media to remind us that he ended his life in opposition to another piece of favorable legislation for the rich.

Then years ago, in October 2013, 64-year-old Vietnam veteran John Constantino set himself on fire on the Washington, D.C. National Mall—again for something he believed in. An eyewitness to Constantino’s death said Constantino spoke about “voter rights” or “voting rights.” Another witness said he gave a “sharp salute” toward the Capitol before he lit himself on fire. A neighbor who was contacted by a local reporter said Constantino believed the government “doesn’t look out for us and they don’t care about anything but their own pockets.”

The media didn’t investigate any further into the rationale for Constantino’s taking his own life in a public place in the nation’s capital.

In the case of U.S. Air Force Senior Airman Aaron Bushnell, Aaron told the world his reason:

“I do not want to be complacent in the genocide of Gaza! Free Palestine!”

His sentiments are echoed by hundreds of millions around the world who recognize the horrific Israeli genocide of Gaza. For U.S. citizens, it is our duty to keep pressure on the Biden administration to stop funding Israel’s genocide of Gaza and violence in the West Bank.

*

Note to readers: Please click the share button above. Follow us on Instagram and Twitter and subscribe to our Telegram Channel. Feel free to repost and share widely Global Research articles.

Ann Wright is a 29 year US Army/Army Reserves veteran who retired as a Colonel and a former US diplomat who resigned in March 2003 in opposition to the war on Iraq. She served in Nicaragua, Grenada, Somalia, Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan, Sierra Leone, Micronesia and Mongolia. In December 2001 she was on the small team that reopened the US Embassy in Kabul, Afghanistan. She is the co-author of the book “Dissent: Voices of Conscience.”

Featured image: Self-immolation of Aaron Bushnell (Licensed under Fair Use)

All Global Research articles can be read in 51 languages by activating the Translate Website button below the author’s name (only available in desktop version).

To receive Global Research’s Daily Newsletter (selected articles), click here.

Click the share button above to email/forward this article to your friends and colleagues. Follow us on Instagram and Twitter and subscribe to our Telegram Channel. Feel free to repost and share widely Global Research articles.

Big Tech’s Effort to Silence Truth-tellers: Global Research Online Referral Campaign

***

This is a shocking data point. The Israeli Democracy Institute released a survey this week showing that over 2/3 of Jewish Israelis – 68% that is – opposed “the transfer of humanitarian aid to Gaza residents at this time.” 

It gets even worse – the survey lowered the bar to exclude any possible opposition to either UNRWA (which Israel has been inciting against) or the Hamas authorities (which Israel considers terrorists). To no avail. Over two-thirds still oppose humanitarian help “via international bodies that are not linked to Hamas or to UNRWA… A majority of Jewish respondents (68%) oppose the transfer of humanitarian aid even under these conditions,” the survey notes.

The numbers are worse when it comes to right-wing Jewish Israelis, where the opposition is at 80% – four out of five. And consider that about 2/3 of Israeli voters are considered right-wing. 

One really has to pause here. We are in a situation where Palestinians in Gaza are starving, people are consuming animal feed in their desperation. The week the UN’s World Food Programme reported people in Gaza are “already dying from hunger-related causes,” and a UNICEF nutrition screening in north Gaza found that 1 in 6 children under two years old are acutely malnourished. Israelis are not completely ignorant of this. They are supporting genocide by an overwhelming majority. 

It is now mainstream within Israeli society to discuss from which age it is acceptable for children to be starved. A recent discussion on the mainstream public broadcaster news program reached a consensus between a former Mossad official and the veteran host that children over the age of 4 were legitimate to starve. 

Much of the world, including the United States, seems to be in denial at quite how murderously and explicitly genocidal Israeli society really is. Nancy Pelosi keeps talking about Israel as “the only democracy in the region” while Israelis themselves are supporting the starvation of children. People just don’t seem to get it. 

Humanitarian help was one of the main points of the January 26 International Court of Justice order that was issued when the court found it plausible Israel is committing genocide, as charged by South Africa. It was point 4 of the 6, stating that: 

“The State of Israel shall take immediate and effective measures to enable the provision of urgently needed basic services and humanitarian assistance to address the adverse conditions of life faced by Palestinians in the Gaza Strip.” 

Even the ad-hoc Israeli judge Aharon Barak, who voted against 4 out of the 6 urgent measures, voted for this one (it was passed 16-1, with the Ugandan judge Julia Sabutinde, who voted against absolutely all measures, being the outlier). 

This is such a basic thing, such a basic requirement – even in war. When you oppose such a basic matter, it becomes something else than war – it becomes genocide. As we are seeing.

This poll only seems to confirm what we already have been seeing. Israeli protesters have been holding up aid trucks at the southern border near Rafah. One could be tempted to frame these as fringe extremists – but the poll shows they are in the mainstream. The poll also affirms that Israeli leaders like Defense Minister Yoav Galant, who said at the beginning of the genocide, “I have ordered a full siege on the Gaza Strip – no power, no food, no gas, everything is closed – we are fighting human animals and we act accordingly,” are really representative of the wider population.    

This is the worst level of dehumanization in Israeli society that I can remember since I was born there 52 years ago. Of course, this dehumanization didn’t start on October 7, and it existed way before I was born and even before the state existed. But now it seems to be culminating. Israelis don’t seem to care anymore about even maintaining a semblance of liberalism – they’ve gone into full genocide mode. And when I say dehumanization, it’s not only the Palestinians who are being dehumanized in this process. Israelis are reducing themselves to a level of barbarism. It’s really something that we have done to ourselves while convincing ourselves that taking tens of thousands of Palestinian lives will somehow redeem us from this abyss. It won’t.  

*

Note to readers: Please click the share button above. Follow us on Instagram and Twitter and subscribe to our Telegram Channel. Feel free to repost and share widely Global Research articles.

Featured image: Sustained scream performed by Israeli protesters in front of Tel Aviv’s Museum of Art, January 2024 (Source)

All Global Research articles can be read in 51 languages by activating the Translate Website button below the author’s name (only available in desktop version).

To receive Global Research’s Daily Newsletter (selected articles), click here.

Click the share button above to email/forward this article to your friends and colleagues. Follow us on Instagram and Twitter and subscribe to our Telegram Channel. Feel free to repost and share widely Global Research articles.

Big Tech’s Effort to Silence Truth-tellers: Global Research Online Referral Campaign

***

Meanwhile, to prepare for its next carpet bombing campaign, similar to what the Americans did to the Vietnamese in Vietnam, the Zionists will  be using the same 2,000 lb bombs the Americans used in Vietnam with the same devastating effect; while countries like Canada, continue to find bureaucratic loopholes to ship their military war hardware and blood monies of their taxpayers to Israel via the U.S.

The more things change, the more they stay the same.

“And, it’s One, Two, Three, What Are We Fighting For, Don’t worry I Don’t Give a Damn, Next Stop is, OH, Who Gives a Damn!”

Nothing will ever stop the warmongering of America and Israel and their Western allies.

Not the charge of genocide by the UN!

Not rational diplomatic negotiations!

Not any religious moral arm-twisting by the Pope or some other religious leader!

That is, if there still even remotely exists the possibility of such things happening.

Nothing short of the world, collectively, at once imposing a total arms embargo and BDS movement against the Zionists will ever work; which, of course, will never happen.

All Global Research articles can be read in 51 languages by activating the Translate Website button below the author’s name (only available in desktop version).

To receive Global Research’s Daily Newsletter (selected articles), click here.

Click the share button above to email/forward this article to your friends and colleagues. Follow us on Instagram and Twitter and subscribe to our Telegram Channel. Feel free to repost and share widely Global Research articles.

Big Tech’s Effort to Silence Truth-tellers: Global Research Online Referral Campaign

***

The Democrat and majority leader of the United States Senate, Chuck Schumer, announced on February 23 during a trip to Lviv that Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky warned him that his country would lose the conflict with Russia without American military aid. Whether Ukraine receives further aid or not will not determine Russia’s final victory, but what can be observed is how opposition to aid for Ukraine is becoming increasingly popular, especially among Republicans.

Days after using the humiliating Ukrainian defeat in Avdeyevka as a pretext to try and pressure Washington to send more weapons, Zelensky is now turning to the influential senator to approve new military and financial aid for Kiev, currently held up in the House of Representatives by the Republican opposition, as soon as possible.

“President Zelensky told me and our delegation that Ukraine will lose the war with dire consequences for the Ukrainian people, the United States, and democracy and freedom without this vital aid,” Schumer wrote on X (formerly Twitter), adding that the House of Representatives must pass the Senate’s national security bill as soon as possible.

President Zelenskyy told me and our delegation that Ukraine will lose the war with dire consequences for the Ukrainian people, the US, and democracy & freedom without this vital aid

Speaker Johnson and the House must stand up now and pass the Senate’s national security bill ASAP pic.twitter.com/xWBUXFg2rj

— Chuck Schumer (@SenSchumer) February 23, 2024

Although Schumer’s visit to Ukraine comes after the US Senate passed a $95 billion supplemental funding bill, which includes $60 billion in additional aid to Ukraine and $14.1 billion in security aid to Israel, it was without security measures on the border with Mexico, the main reason the Republicans are still refusing to pass the bill. Reaffirming the Republican commitment to strengthening the US southern border, the Speaker of the House of Representatives, Mike Johnson, stressed that the House does not plan to review the current legislation after the Senate failed to propose “adequate” provisions on border security.

Another blow to the Democrats desperate endeavour to send more funds and arms to Ukraine is the investigation into more than 50 cases related to US aid provided. Pentagon Inspector General Robert Storch said in a briefing on February 21 that the cases, which are at different stages of the investigation, are looking at issues that include “procurement fraud, product substitution, theft, fraud or corruption, and diversion.”

Storch also warned that there would likely be more investigations into abuses or diversion of equipment from the US “given the quantity and speed” of equipment flowing into Ukraine.

So far, according to the inspector, auditors have discovered “stresses and gaps” in the provision of assistance. For example, audits revealed incomplete manifests for shipments transferred to Kiev through Poland.

Bloomberg reported that in June last year, the cabinet had already signalled that Department of Defense personnel “did not have required visibility and accountability of all types of equipment during the transfer process.”

Storch’s office has more than 200 people involved in overseeing Ukraine and aims to increase the number of people working in Kiev from the current 28, which includes two at the US Embassy in the Ukrainian capital.

Among other ongoing audits, the Pentagon is evaluating issues related to 155mm artillery shells to determine whether the US has met its objectives while balancing the needs of its own reserves, training, and operations. Recently, a Department of Defense report was released in which Storch admits that authorities failed to plan the maintenance and support of weapons and equipment sent to Ukraine.

Entrenched corruption in Ukraine, which is seeing weapons destined for the Ukrainian military end up on the black market, among other major scandals, is only consolidating Republican opposition to support the Kiev regime blindly. This is reflected in an NBC poll released in November, which found that more than half of Republicans opposed aid for Ukraine, a huge increase from the only 9%, according to Pew Research, of Republicans and right-leaning independents who opposed support for Ukraine in March 2022, just weeks after the Russian special military operation began.

Donald Trump is the likely Republican candidate to face Joe Biden in the upcoming US presidential elections, and his “America First” approach to foreign policy clearly resonates with Americans and influences views on the Ukraine war. This is obviously extremely problematic for Zelensky as Trump’s re-election will force Ukraine to end its reckless war with Russia and result in a negotiation that will force Kiev to acknowledge that Crimea, Donbass, Zaporozhye, and Kherson are under Moscow’s sovereignty.

It is recalled that Trump famously said last year: “If I’m president, I will have that war settled in one day, 24 hours.” Although there is much scepticism to this statement, the most important aspect is Trump’s intentions to end the war as quickly as possible, which will include the end of military aid. As Trump leads in the polls, Zelensky and Schumer are desperately trying to get the US to approve more aid for Ukraine, but as said, even if it is eventually approved, it will have no bearing on Russia’s final victory.

*

Note to readers: Please click the share button above. Follow us on Instagram and Twitter and subscribe to our Telegram Channel. Feel free to repost and share widely Global Research articles.

Ahmed Adel is a Cairo-based geopolitics and political economy researcher. He is a regular contributor to Global Research.

Featured image source

All Global Research articles can be read in 51 languages by activating the Translate Website button below the author’s name (only available in desktop version).

To receive Global Research’s Daily Newsletter (selected articles), click here.

Click the share button above to email/forward this article to your friends and colleagues. Follow us on Instagram and Twitter and subscribe to our Telegram Channel. Feel free to repost and share widely Global Research articles.

Big Tech’s Effort to Silence Truth-tellers: Global Research Online Referral Campaign

***

Two years ago, Russia finally decided it had had enough and on February 24, 2022, launched its counteroffensive against decades of NATO aggression in Europe. The special military operation (SMO) ushered in a tectonic shift in the geopolitical arena, with Washington DC and Brussels finally showing their true colors.

Apart from the full-blown economic siege of Russia, which includes the illegal seizure of its massive forex reserves, the political West also launched a crawling war with Moscow by providing ever more advanced weapons to its Neo-Nazi puppets in Kiev. The Russian military initially used BTGs (battalion tactical groups) to take direct control over a massive area in mere days, helping shape the battlefield to Moscow’s liking and setting the stage for the SMO’s most important aspect – demilitarization.

This process would’ve been over in just two to three weeks, formalized in a peace deal that would’ve ended the Kiev regime’s brutal shelling of the Donbass and prevented further escalation of the NATO-orchestrated Ukrainian conflict. However, the political West had other plans, the then Prime Minister of the United Kingdom Boris Johnson in particular. He sabotaged the already-signed peace deal immediately after Russia withdrew from northern Ukraine, resulting in a massive escalation of the conflict. Hundreds of thousands of Ukrainians, many of them forcibly conscripted, were sent to certain death against a technologically superior opponent able to wage war from thousands of kilometers away. The conflict evolved into a bloody WWI-style trench warfare with little maneuvering.

This resulted in little territorial change, but the positional warfare was certainly not in the Neo-Nazi junta’s favor. Namely, its forces simply lack the resources to match the Russian military’s firepower, both in air and on land.

Moscow’s long-range strike systems laid waste to the Kiev regime’s military infrastructure, while its superior artillery and newly-built defenses in the Donbass, Zaporozhye and Kherson oblasts (regions) completely obliterated the Neo-Nazi junta’s forces, defeating their much-touted counteroffensive. The exact losses are yet to be determined, but the latest estimates are that at least 125,000 Kiev regime soldiers died before major operations stopped. On the other hand, the Neo-Nazi junta frontman Volodymyr Zelensky insists that his forces lost only 31,000 soldiers during the entire duration of the SMO, killing 400,000 Russians in the process.

Now, if that wasn’t laughable enough, Zelensky also said that the Kiev regime is planning for new counteroffensives, as the previous one went “so well”. This sort of dangerous self-delusion is not only present in Kiev, but also in the political West, where the mainstream propaganda machine continues to push the ludicrous narrative that the Russian military supposedly “failed” because it didn’t take nearly 600,000 km² in just three days while avoiding civilian casualties (unlike the Neo-Nazi junta) and being outnumbered approximately 2:1 or perhaps even 3:1. We should also take into account the task president Putin gave to the Russian military on February 24, 2022, best illustrated by two words — demilitarization and denazification. According to reports citing Turkish and Israeli intelligence, both tasks seem to be going exactly as planned.

The staggering losses of the Kiev regime forces (including the virtually total annihilation of a number of purely Neo-Nazi formations) have no parallel in any conflict in recent memory, anywhere in the world and most likely since the end of the Second World War. And while Russia’s losses are certainly not negligible, the casualty ratio with the Neo-Nazi junta forces is simply incomparable.

If nearly nine Kiev regime soldiers dying for every Russian serviceman killed means “defeat”, then yes, the political West’s mainstream propaganda machine is certainly “right”, the Russian military is most definitely “losing”. However, in all seriousness, being one of the largest and most important systems of Russia’s state apparatus, its armed forces have made some pretty dramatic changes, significantly enhancing their already exceptional capabilities.

This is particularly true in regard to unmanned systems and ISR (intelligence, surveillance, reconnaissance) capabilities, both tactical and strategic. Having the ability to locate and continuously observe enemy forces is of crucial importance for improving the precision of both the frontline troops and long-range weapons. The more traditional approach of pummeling the enemy with massive amounts of firepower, while still useful, is slowly giving way to surgical strikes at ever longer ranges. In addition, Russia’s already top-of-the-line air defense units gained invaluable insights and experience on how to better counter hostile long-range precision weapons and munitions. This is particularly true for short-range/point-defense systems such as the already legendary “Pantsir” and “Tor”, as well as the medium-range “Buk”.

Other important changes include the comprehensive revamping of Russia’s military industry, which is now getting upgrades faster than at any point in the last 30 years. Many of the Soviet-era facilities have been restored and restarted, which is also helping the Russian economy to become even more self-sufficient. The massive 1990s economic contraction in defense production and procurement (halted only in the early 2000s) has now being completely reversed, which will ensure Russia’s strategic security in the foreseeable future and beyond. It’s virtually impossible to avoid problems in such a massive system, but these issues are being tackled. This is particularly true in terms of the removal of decades-old bureaucratic procedures that were largely slowing down the necessary reforms.

This will inevitably result in an even more efficient command structure, particularly as the flow of real-time battlefield information increases due to enhanced ISR. In turn, improving such capabilities will likely push further investments in Russia’s space sector, as space-based systems are becoming increasingly important. Additionally, although NATO’s vast satellite network has been preventing a complete defeat of the Kiev regime forces for two years now, this gave the Russian military precious experience to develop successful counters to such capabilities, including improvements to its ASAT (anti-satellite) weapons. This could very well undermine NATO’s capabilities in the long run, drastically reducing the chances for a potential “Barbarossa 2.0” against Russia. However, the political West also seems to be pushing for global escalation.

Namely, with the unprecedented sanctions against Moscow proving to be nothing more than a spectacle for domestic consumption, the belligerent power pole is now trying a bit of a different approach.

According to the IMF, the economic siege of Russia resulted not only in a failure, but it turns out that it also pushed the Eurasian giant into a sort of industrial renaissance that the political West simply has no way of stopping.

However, that certainly doesn’t mean they won’t try and that’s precisely what’s going on now. To that end, the United States just announced a new sanctions package that will effectively target half of the planet for doing business with Russia. This also includes companies from China, which will most certainly result in even closer ties between the two superpowers that are already strategic allies in practical terms.

As for the SMO itself, the political West is determined to turn it into a global confrontation by testing Moscow’s patience. The deliveries of ever more advanced and longer-range weapons to the Neo-Nazi junta are a clear proof of this. The Kiev regime itself is becoming increasingly desperate, as demonstrated by the escalation of its terrorist attacks, as well as the readiness to jeopardize even Western leaders in order to push Europe into the conflict. On the other hand, the troubled Biden administration wants to circumvent Congress by codifying the so-called “Ukraine aid”, showing that the Neo-Nazi junta is not the only desperate party to the ongoing conflict. In the meantime, Russian President Vladimir Putin seems to be a “global threat” even when he’s just speaking, so Tucker Carlson is facing sanctions for letting him do exactly that.

All things considered, the political West seems increasingly akin to a runaway train, particularly as its most powerful entities are completely ignoring their own rapidly growing issues while (over)focusing on the rest of the world that simply wants to be left alone. Some, such as the UK, are looking to hurt Russia while their own military is effectively falling apart. Others, such as the US, are disregarding the fact that their very cohesion is dangerously close to disintegrating, but they still insist on “defending” the Kiev regime’s borders instead of their own. Considering the latter’s readiness to target its most loyal henchmen, it can be argued that allying oneself with such entities is not only self-defeating, but outright mindless. However, it seems that the political West crossed that line long ago.

*

Note to readers: Please click the share button above. Follow us on Instagram and Twitter and subscribe to our Telegram Channel. Feel free to repost and share widely Global Research articles.

This article was originally published on InfoBrics.

Drago Bosnic is an independent geopolitical and military analyst. He is a regular contributor to Global Research.

Featured image is from InfoBrics

All Global Research articles can be read in 51 languages by activating the Translate Website button below the author’s name (only available in desktop version).

To receive Global Research’s Daily Newsletter (selected articles), click here.

Click the share button above to email/forward this article to your friends and colleagues. Follow us on Instagram and Twitter and subscribe to our Telegram Channel. Feel free to repost and share widely Global Research articles.

Big Tech’s Effort to Silence Truth-tellers: Global Research Online Referral Campaign

***

Three years ago, Boris Johnson’s government announced a significant gear shift in nuclear weapons policy. 

Trashing David Cameron’s decision to reduce the nuclear arsenal to 180 warheads, he instead unveiled an increase to 260. 

At odds with the UK – and global – trend of gradual reductions for over three decades, the decision received widespread international condemnation.

The news was published in the government’s integrated review, an extensive document that aimed to portray a post-Brexit ‘Global Britain’ on the offensive, ‘projecting force’ globally. 

It made much of Britain being western Europe’s most heavily armed nation, of its leadership role in NATO, and its deployment of forces worldwide. 

Britain, it claimed, was ready to deter – and defeat adversaries if necessary.

Trident Test Failure

There is much in the document that now just seems pathetically hubristic. 

Repeated references to the UK’s ‘credible nuclear deterrent’, seem particularly delusional.

Last month, the Royal Navy failed to test fire a Trident missile, which is the only delivery system for Britain’s nuclear warheads. It was the second such failure in a row. 

The previous test took place in 2016. Launched from the submarine HMS Victorious, a malfunction in the system caused the missile to spin out of control. 

Instead of flying over the Atlantic, the missile flew over the US and later self-destructed.

This time, the missile was supposed to travel 6,000 kilometres before landing in the Atlantic between Africa and Brazil, but it failed to launch properly from the submarine HMS Vanguard and actually crashed into the sea just yards away.

Defence secretary Grant Shapps, who was onboard, was keen to assert that the failure was an “anomaly” with no implications for the reliability of the wider systems and stockpiles. 

Seeming sillier by the minute, he went on to claim that Trident “remains the most reliable weapons system in the world.”

Catalogue of Failures

Funny though this would be if it wasn’t so deadly serious, the failed launch is just the tip of the iceberg of a whole catalogue of failures. 

Delays, cost overruns and dangerous incompetence give the lie to the grandiose claims made by the British government about its vastly expensive weapons of mass destruction.

There is a backstory to this too. The submarine that launched the missile, HMS Vanguard, was required to undertake the test because it had just come out of a “deep maintenance period”.

Vanguard was sent to the Navy’s Devonport Dockyard in Plymouth in 2015 for a major refit, scheduled to take three years. 

However, delays and malfunctions meant the refit actually lasted seven years. Costs ballooned from under £300 million to over £500 million. 

Delays included the discovery that superglue was used by workers to attach broken bolts to the submarine’s nuclear reactor.

Apparently the Trident test failure won’t prevent Vanguard from returning to active service. 

Fleet-wide Issues

Other serious concerns have emerged about the fleet of four Vanguard-class submarines that carry Britain’s nuclear weapons.

Recently, only two of the submarines have been operational. 

While Vanguard was out of action in Devonport, HMS Victorious suffered a fire onboard in 2022. 

A blaze broke out in an electrical component in one of the submarine’s systems and it had to surface in the North Atlantic and return to port in Faslane. 

It is now in dry dock at Devonport for repair and maintenance.

Last November, a faulty depth gauge on one of the subs resulted in the vessel continuing to dive. 

It almost approached crush depth before submariners noticed the equipment had malfunctioned and corrected course, narrowly averting disaster.

In order to maintain the co-called “continuous at-sea deterrent”, with one submarine out on patrol at all times, these subs – and their crews – have been forced to undergo longer and longer missions. 

Last September, one was spotted returning to port covered in barnacles and slime after a record six month patrol. 

In 2022 it was reported that the lack of available Vanguard-class submarines meant crews were increasingly serving tours in excess of 150 days. 

By comparison, the average patrol on the previous generation of nuclear vessels rarely exceeded 60-70 days.

Jobs for the Boys

In addition to concerns about the state of the vessels, there have also been concerns about the impact these extended tours have on crew discipline, morale, and psychological well being. 

The Royal Navy has already opened an investigation into claims by female submariners working on Vanguard-class subs of sexual abuse and bullying by male colleagues and senior officers.

Not surprisingly, questions have also been raised about Babcock, the arms company responsible for running the Devonport dockyard and maintaining the Vanguard fleet. 

Ministry of Defence data seen by The i newspaper last November found that “suppliers tasked with providing parts and replacement equipment to the Royal Navy recently missed their targets, with the Government rating their performance as inadequate.” 

Yet in the 12 months to March 2023, Babcock made £178 million in profit from MoD contracts.

The truth is, nuclear weapons are big business for a number of companies. 

Over one trillion US dollars will be spent globally over the next ten years, modernising and developing the existing nine state arsenals. 

That’s around a hundred billion a year, of which over half is spent by the US. 

The companies that make the most out of nuclear weapons are Boeing, Honeywell International and Northrop Grumman. 

Here in Britain, the companies with the most significant involvement are BAE Systems, Rolls-Royce and Serco. 

All these companies, together with the many banks, insurance companies, pension funds and asset managers that invest in them, have a vested interest in high nuclear weapons budgets. 

That money comes from the government. In other words, it comes from us – the tax payers.

Nuclear weapons have got to go: for all the reasons we know, nuclear war, annihilation and the end times. 

But also because they are a shocking, useless waste of our money, driven by vanity and stupidity. We need to spend the money on something else.

*

Note to readers: Please click the share button above. Follow us on Instagram and Twitter and subscribe to our Telegram Channel. Feel free to repost and share widely Global Research articles.

Kate Hudson is General Secretary of the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament in the UK.

Featured image: A Trident missile spins out of control. (Photo: U.S. National Archives)

All Global Research articles can be read in 51 languages by activating the Translate Website button below the author’s name (only available in desktop version).

To receive Global Research’s Daily Newsletter (selected articles), click here.

Click the share button above to email/forward this article to your friends and colleagues. Follow us on Instagram and Twitter and subscribe to our Telegram Channel. Feel free to repost and share widely Global Research articles.

Big Tech’s Effort to Silence Truth-tellers: Global Research Online Referral Campaign

***

The KYIV POST just reported a statement by Kyrylo Budanov, Head of Ukraine’s Military Intelligence, that the imprisoned Russian dissident, Alexei Navalny died of a blood clot.

“I may disappoint you, but as far as we know, he indeed died as a result of a blood clot. And this has been more or less confirmed,” Budanov told journalists on the sidelines at the “Ukraine. Year of 2024” forum on Sunday.

Coming so soon on the heels of Tucker Carlson’s interview with Vladimir Putin—who makes President Biden look like a special needs kindergartner—Navalny’s death is indeed suspicious. However, because his death was so quickly proclaimed in the West to be a homicide directed by Putin, I wondered if, in fact, it was a homicide engineered by U.S. or Ukrainian intelligence to make Putin look like the villain.

That Ukrainian intelligence is now concurring with the Kremlin’s declaration of natural causes is an interesting plot twist.

The only thing that seems almost certain is that whatever is going on in Russia and in Ukraine is NOT being accurately reported in the American legacy media.

Click here read Kyiv Post story.

*

Note to readers: Please click the share button above. Follow us on Instagram and Twitter and subscribe to our Telegram Channel. Feel free to repost and share widely Global Research articles.

Featured image is from Land Destroyer Report

All Global Research articles can be read in 51 languages by activating the Translate Website button below the author’s name (only available in desktop version).

To receive Global Research’s Daily Newsletter (selected articles), click here.

Click the share button above to email/forward this article to your friends and colleagues. Follow us on Instagram and Twitter and subscribe to our Telegram Channel. Feel free to repost and share widely Global Research articles.

Big Tech’s Effort to Silence Truth-tellers: Global Research Online Referral Campaign

***

It’s been over three years since scientists first found microplastics swimming in four different human placentas, and as it turns out, that was just the tip of the iceberg.

A few years later, at the start of 2023, researchers announced they had found microscopic particles of plastic waste in no fewer than 17 different placentas. By the end of 2023, a local study in Hawai’i analyzed 30 placentas that were donated between 2006 and 2021 only to find plastic contamination had increased significantly over time. 

Using a new technique, researchers have now identified tiny particles and fibers of plastic less than a micron in size in the largest sample of placentas yet.

In all 62 tissue samples studied, the team found microplastics of various concentrations in every single one. These concentrations ranged from 6.5 to 685 micrograms per gram of tissue, which is much higher than levels found in the human bloodstream.

No one yet knows what this plastic pollution is doing – if anything – to the health of the fetus or the mother. While microplastics have been found in every major organ of the human body, including the brain, it’s unknown if these pollutants are temporary visitors or permanent and accumulating threats to health.

As environmental plastic pollution continues to worsen, contamination of the placenta is on track to only increase, as humans breathe in and ingest more plastic than ever before.

“Dose makes the poison,” explains biologist Matthew Campen from the University of New Mexico.

“If the dose keeps going up, we start to worry. If we’re seeing effects on placentas, then all mammalian life on this plant could be impacted. That’s not good.”

Determining how much microplastics are accumulating in human tissue has proved extremely difficult given the very small size of these particles.

For years now, scientists have been working on a solid detection method that can quantify the mass of these pollutants and determine their specific brand of plastic. Only then can the impact on health be properly evaluated.

The new study uses a novel, high resolution technique to scan for plastics in human blood and tissue. First, researchers separated the majority of biological material from plastic solids, using chemicals and extremely high speed ultracentrifuges to separate very small molecules. Then, they broke down the polymers to determine their specific compounds.

When applied to the 62 placenta samples the technique revealed that more than half of all plastics found in placenta are polyethylene – the most commonly produced plastic on our planet, responsible for most single-use bags and bottles.

Other plastic particles identified in the placenta include polyvinyl chloride, nylon, and polypropylene, all of which are probably several decades old, having been weathered and oxidized for years in the environment before being inhaled or ingested by humans.

“This method,” the authors of the study argue, “paired with clinical metadata, will be pivotal to evaluating potential impacts of nano MPs on adverse pregnancy outcomes.”

So far, clinical studies on the effects of plastic pollution are few and far between. Early research suggests that the smaller plastic pollutants are, the more easily they can invade cells. And yet at this miniscule size it is harder to determine their potentially toxic effects.

In research on mini-models of the human intestine, microplastics show potentially dangerous immune effects. What’s more, early experiments on mice suggest that micro- and nanoplastics have the “potential to disrupt fetal brain development, which in turn may cause suboptimal neurodevelopmental outcomes.”

The reasons for the wide range of microplastic concentrations found in human organs, including the placenta, is currently unknown. It could be due to analytical error, or, researchers say, it could be due to “a combination of environmental, dietary, genetic, maternal age, and lifestyle factors.”

“The factors that drive such extreme concentration ranges are not known, nor is it apparent if such concentrations contribute negatively to growth and development of the placenta or fetus, or to other maternal health consequences,” add the researchers.

“The placenta receives relatively high blood flow and takes up a great deal of nutrients from the maternal blood, which might make it more highly exposed; the extent to which nano- and microplastic pollution can be carried across the complex placental barrier, either passively or actively requires further investigation.’

The study was published in Toxicological Sciences.

*

Note to readers: Please click the share button above. Follow us on Instagram and Twitter and subscribe to our Telegram Channel. Feel free to repost and share widely Global Research articles.

All Global Research articles can be read in 51 languages by activating the Translate Website button below the author’s name.

To receive Global Research’s Daily Newsletter (selected articles), click here.

Click the share button above to email/forward this article to your friends and colleagues. Follow us on Instagram and Twitter and subscribe to our Telegram Channel. Feel free to repost and share widely Global Research articles.

First published on November 29, 2023

***

 

Part I

Focusses on  “Option C” of Israel’s “Secret” Intelligence Memorandum, which was endorsed by the Netanyahu government. Option C. defines and confirms Netanyahu’s criminal agenda directed against the People of Palestine: 

“It recommends a full population transfer as its preferred course of action. …” 

I should mention that the Intelligence Memorandum was leaked and made public. There are no doubt several classified military intelligence documents (including agreements with US-NATO) which are not intended for release. 

Option C defines the framework of the operation directed against the People of Palestine, with the full support of the U.S. and NATO. It confirms that the ongoing genocide against the People of Palestine was a carefully planned undertaking. 

It consists in “the evacuation of the civilian population from Gaza to Sinai.” 

Part II

Provides photographic evidence and drone footage pertaining to Israel’s bombing campaign, which confirms the criminal nature of Israel’s attack on Gaza under “Operation C”. More than 30,000 civilians have been killed.

Our thanks to Pelham, Mohammed Al Hajjar and The Middle East Eye.

 

Michel Chossudovsky, Global Research, November 29, 2023

---

Scroll down for the Photographic Evidence of extensive crimes against humanity resulting from the conduct of the Secret Intelligence Memorandum  entitled “Option C”. It confirms the conduct of a carefully planned genocide. 

“Wiping Gaza Off the Map”

Israel’s “Secret” Intelligence Memorandum

“Option C”

by

Michel Chossudovsky 

 

The above drone footage as well as photographic evidence confirm Netanyahu’s criminal undertaking. It’s genocide. The underlying modalities are confirmed in an official “secret” memorandum of Israel’s  Ministry of Intelligence. Washington is fully supportive of this military-intelligence operation.

Both US and British Operation  Forces are collaborating with the I.D.F. (See this) 

The 10 page document  recommends “the forcible and permanent transfer of the Gaza Strip’s 2.2 million Palestinian residents to Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula”, namely to a refugee camp in Egyptian territory. There are indications of Israel-Egypt negotiations as well as routine consultations with U.S. intelligence. 

Video Interview on Netanyahu and the “Secret Intelligence” Memorandum: Michel Chossudovsky

 

 

In this review, we provide selected excerpts and analysis pertaining to Israel’s Ministry of Intelligence “Option C” which is currently being carried out.

Option C consists in “the evacuation of the civilian population from Gaza to Sinai”. 

Israel’s Intelligence Memorandum

“… assesses three options regarding the future of the Palestinians in the Gaza Strip … It recommends a full population transfer as its preferred course of action. …” 

The released document, the authenticity of which was confirmed by the Ministry of Intelligence, has been translated into English.

Click here to access complete document (10 pages).

The 10-page document, dated Oct. 13, 2023, bears the logo of the Intelligence Ministry.

Israeli Intelligence Ministry Policy Paper On Gaza’s Civilian Population, October 2023.

Click here to access complete document (10 pages).

---

Drone Footage: More Than 30,000 Civilians Killed

by

Pelham 

Pelham Twitter

Out of Gaza’s 2.3 million people, 

1.73 million are now displaced…

20,030 civilians killed…

8,176 children have been killed…

4,112 women have been killed…

7,000 people remain unaccounted for, including more than 4,700 children…

36,350 civilians have been injured.

Out of Gaza’s 2.3 million people, 1.73 million are now displaced…

20,030 civilians killed

8,176 children have been killed

4,112 women have been killed

7,000 people remain unaccounted for, including more than 4,700 children

36,350 civilians have been injured

Source:… pic.twitter.com/UHIX7q2ZsS

— Pelham (@Resist_05) November 26, 2023

---

Photographic Evidence of Crimes Against Humanity 

by

Mohammed Al Hajjar 

Photos Below Mohammed Al Hajjar, Middle East Eye

*

Note to readers: Please click the share button above. Follow us on Instagram and Twitter and subscribe to our Telegram Channel. Feel free to repost and share widely Global Research articles.

What the Mass Media Needs to Cover on Israel/Gaza Conflict. Ralph Nader

By Ralph Nader, February 27, 2024

Last October 27, I suggested subjects the mainstream media needed to cover relating to the saturation bombing of Gaza and its defenseless civilian families and infrastructure. Looking at these topics now, four months later, despite massive reporting, the attention to these subjects is still thin and more deserving of reporting than ever.

Crimes Against Humanity. The Eradication of Palestinian Children: “Ten Little Palestinians and Then There Were None”

By Irwin Jerome, February 26, 2024

The time-honored children’s nursery counting rhyme originally referred to ‘Ten Little Indians’ but, now, for the children in the 21^st century, it should be adapted to refer to the rapid rate of the eradication of Palestinian children by the Jewish Zionist hordes that continue to sweep through the former native homelands of the natives of Palestine, like a plague of invasive insects or human ‘Genghis Khan’s’.

Now It Can be Told — Murder by Suicide at Guantanamo

By Mark Adams, February 27, 2024

Many Americans would be shocked to know that our government has a history of covering up horrible prison murders; many times by spewing outrageous lies. One of the most notorious incidents happened at a secret CIA facility located just outside the perimeter of Guantanamo.

After This Week’s Julian Assange Court Hearing, This Is Clear: Extradition Would Amount to a Death Sentence

By Duncan Campbell, February 26, 2024

Which is the more serious criminal activity: extrajudicial killings, routine torture of prisoners and illegal renditions carried out by a state, or exposing those actions by publishing illegally leaked details of how, where, when and by whom they were committed?

Assange Final Appeal – Your Man in the Public Gallery. Craig Murray

By Craig Murray, February 26, 2024

The CIA had made plans to kidnap, drug and even to kill Mr Assange. This had been made plain by the testimony of Protected Witness 2 and confirmed by the extensive Yahoo News publication. Therefore Assange would be delivered to authorities who could not be trusted not to take extrajudicial action against him.

The Fates of Gaza and Julian Assange Are Sealed Together

By Jonathan Cook, February 26, 2024

While the cases of Assange and Israel might appear to share little in common, they are, in fact, intimately connected – and in ways that have underscored the degree to which the West’s so-called “rules-based order” is being exposed as a hollow sham.

Sacrificing Denmark for the USA. EU’s Number Three Spender for War in Ukraine

By Karsten Riise, February 26, 2024

To prove their loyalty to the US to the point of Denmark’s own self-destruction, Denmark’s politicians just gave all Denmark’s artillery including ammunition to Ukraine. Lock, stock, and barrel. Imagine that! Denmark has no artillery left. None.

All Global Research articles can be read in 51 languages by activating the Translate Website button below the author’s name (only available in desktop version).

To receive Global Research’s Daily Newsletter (selected articles), click here.

Click the share button above to email/forward this article to your friends and colleagues. Follow us on Instagram and Twitter and subscribe to our Telegram Channel. Feel free to repost and share widely Global Research articles.

Big Tech’s Effort to Silence Truth-tellers: Global Research Online Referral Campaign

***

Read Part I and II.

Many Americans would be shocked to know that our government has a history of covering up horrible prison murders; many times by spewing outrageous lies. One of the most notorious incidents happened at a secret CIA facility located just outside the perimeter of Guantanamo.

On the evening of June 9, 2006, Army Staff Sergeant Joseph Hickman was on duty at Guantanamo Bay. From his unique vantage point high above on the sally port, he observed, three times, at approximately 20-minute intervals, a paddy wagon drive to Alpha Block and then drive away with a manacled prisoner.

Curiously the paddy wagon did not seem headed for any familiar part of the compound but, instead, ambled off in the direction of an area external to the prison perimeter to a place known colloquially as Camp No, purportedly a secret CIA base.

How did this happen?

Hickman learned of the deaths of three Gitmo prisoners at midnight on June 10. The next day, the New York Times published a front-page article featuring the headline: 3 Prisoners Commit Suicide at Guantánamo.

That was news to Hickman. In fact, that rogue explanation touched off a tsunami of events that eventually culminated in a decade-long investigation by students and faculty at Seton Hall Law School.

The New York Times article quotes Rear Admiral Harry Harris Commander of the Guantánamo Naval Forces declaring that the hanging suicides were an act of “asymmetrical warfare!”

The Pentagon explanation, prepared by Naval Criminal Investigative Service (NCIS), is that the three prisoners simultaneously hanged themselves inside their cells. However, as the Seton Hall investigators slowly learned crucial facts regarding the dreadful events on that fateful night, the hanging “explanation” made no sense.

To begin with, according to the government, the prisoners had to:

• tear up bed sheets and fashion a noose;
• tie their legs and hands together;
• climb up on the sink to hang the makeshift nooses from the metal mesh of the ceiling;
• and then release their weight and remain hanging for the next two hours before any of the six guards continually patrolling Alpha Block discovered them.

If this isn’t enough to tip the Richter scale of lunacy into the certifiably deranged zone, consider the gruesome fact that two of the three victims had a tightly coiled rag jammed deep down their throats!

UNCOVERING THE COVER-UPS: Death In Camp Delta, Full text available. [Page 5]

Incredulously a high-level State Department official, Colleen Graffy, described the triple deaths as “a good public relations move” for the detainees. See this.

Although an investigation into the deaths was promptly set in motion, its conclusions, which sustained Admiral Harris’ suicide assertion, were held in secret.

“Beginning on June 10, 2006, the Naval Criminal Investigation Service (NCIS) conducted an investigation into the detainees’ cause and manner of death. … “Within eleven days following the deaths, the NCIS secretly ratified Admiral Harris’s original statement in concluding ‘that the three deaths were suicides as a result of hanging undertaken solely by the victims themselves.’”

UNCOVERING THE COVER-UPS: Death In Camp Delta, Full text available. [Page 4]

The government went to great lengths to hide information about what really happened. Buried in a mountain of random, highly redacted documents that the government released is part of a report from the Staff Judge Advocate’s Office (SJA), which conducted an independent inquiry into the calamitous events of June 9, 2006. Included in the SJA report—but not the NCIS report—is a statement from a medical escort identified as MA3 Denny.

MA3 Denny declared in a sworn statement that, while inside the clinic, he observed a medical corpsman tying shreds of a bed sheet around the wrists of an unconscious person identified as ISN 093. The inference is that this was deliberately done to promote the self-bondage hanging scenario.

“I observed a Corpsman wrapping an altered detainee sheet, that looked like the same material ISN 093 had used to hang himself, around the detainee’s right wrist. The other side of the material was bound to the detainee’s left wrist with approximately a foot of cloth in between. The cloth was not on the detainees [sic] wrists when the Camp 1 guards removed the handcuffs a few minutes earlier.”

Full text available. [Page 12]

After Denny’s statements were discovered within the SJA Report, the Seton Hall investigators uncovered yet another startling discovery: Denny’s sworn statement was included and then removed from NCIS’s final report!!

The Seton Hall investigators provided this chilling account:

“The most lucid and compelling sworn statement taken by the NCIS in its investigation – which contradicts essential aspects of the NCIS Report narrative and its findings – was physically removed from the NCIS Report…before it was released to the public.”

“Only a thorough examination of the materials produced outside the NCIS Report led to the discovery of the covered up sworn statement, which was included as an attachment to the Staff Judge Advocate report …”

UNCOVERING THE COVER-UPS: Death In Camp Delta, Full text available. [Page 11]

Through diligent efforts, the Seton Hall investigators also discovered a narrative from the Senior Medical Officer who was summoned to the clinic and discovered a rag stuffed down the throat of two of the three victims. 

“The Senior Medical Officer, [name redacted], arrived and assessed [ISN 693]…. Once the mouth was open we saw that there was a big piece of cloth lodged in the back of [ISN 693’s] mouth. [Name redacted] extracted it with forceps and it appeared to take a good amount of force to get it out. Once it was out I saw that it was folded repeatedly on itself and nearly as big as a wash cloth that was folded once in half…. [W]e thought there may have been something else obstructing the airway.”

“The doctor was able to open ISN-693’s mouth slightly by prying the jaws apart with a specialized tool.” UNCOVERING THE COVER-UPS: Death In Camp Delta, Full text available. [Page 16] (Emphasis added.)  

Incredibly, the NCIS report of the deaths excluded the Narrative Summary that the Senior Medical Officer prepared. Again, from the Seton Hall investigation report:

“In short, it is beyond strange for NCIS agents investigating the cause and manner of death of three detainees in one of the most notorious prisons on Earth not to interview the doctor who pronounced two of the three deaths.”

UNCOVERING THE COVER-UPS: Death In Camp Delta, Full text available. [Page 15]

By all accounts, the detainees did not die inside their cells. Instead, the events leading to their deaths occurred inside the secret CIA facility, Camp No, where someone viciously assaulted these prisoners, resulting in their deaths.

Covering Up the Cover-up

Congresswoman Anna G. Eshoo (D-CA), a member of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, was fed up with the Pentagon and wrote to Attorney General Eric Holder to request that the Justice Department conduct its own investigation. Four months later, Assistant Attorney General Ronald Weich flatly refused even to consider Eshoo’s request.

In response to the Justice Department’s non-response, Seton Hall investigators tartly penned:

“Following the request of a Congresswoman, the Justice Department covered-up the Defense Department’s cover-up.” (Emphasis added.)

What About Autopsy Findings?

Military pathologists from the Armed Forces Institute of Pathology arranged autopsies for the three dead prisoners. Each of the heavily redacted autopsy reports states that “the manner of death is suicide.” See this. [Section 8. “The Removal of the Neck Organs”]

The report about one of the victims, Al-Zahrani, curiously states that the hyoid was broken “during the removal of the neck organs.” See this. [Section 8. “The Removal of the Neck Organs”]

Given that these are the very body parts—the larynx, the hyoid bone, and the thyroid cartilage—that would have been essential to determining whether death occurred from hanging or strangulation, it is difficult to understand why they should be removed, not just from one of the victims but apparently from all three, or why the break should occur during the autopsy and not before.

At the time of his death Al-Zahrani was twenty-two years old. His father, Talal Al-Zahrani, a former brigadier general in the Saudi police, describes how the CIA arrested his son:

“They snatched my seventeen-year-old son for a bounty payment (of $5,000). They took him to Guantánamo and held him prisoner for five years. They tortured him. Then they killed him and returned him to me in a box, cut up.” See this. [ Section 7.“Yasser Couldn’t Even Make a Sandwich!”]

When the three families requested independent autopsies, each pathologist independently noted the removal of the structure that would have been the natural focus of the postmortem: the throat. When they contacted the Armed Forces Institute of Pathology for an explanation, the Institute did not respond. See this. [Section 8. “The Removal of the Neck Organs”]

The incidents at Guantanamo starkly reveal how easy it is for the DEEP STATE to conceal crimes of murder. Instead of being forthright, they spew out nonsense with impunity. It’s almost as if they know that no one in the media or the U.S. Congress will make a serious effort to expose their audacious crimes and their daunting lies.

When taught correctly there is a timeless lesson we can learn from history: A nation of sheep will be ruled by wolves.

*

Note to readers: Please click the share button above. Follow us on Instagram and Twitter and subscribe to our Telegram Channel. Feel free to repost and share widely Global Research articles.

All Global Research articles can be read in 51 languages by activating the Translate Website button below the author’s name (only available in desktop version).

To receive Global Research’s Daily Newsletter (selected articles), click here.

Click the share button above to email/forward this article to your friends and colleagues. Follow us on Instagram and Twitter and subscribe to our Telegram Channel. Feel free to repost and share widely Global Research articles.

Big Tech’s Effort to Silence Truth-tellers: Global Research Online Referral Campaign

***

While falsely claiming to have received “independent confirmation” of since-debunked assertions of mass rape by Hamas, the State Department’s spokesman said he “cannot independently verify” allegations by UN human rights experts that Israeli soldiers have sexually abused and systematically slaughtered Palestinian women and girls in the besieged Gaza Strip.

The US State Department has downplayed the findings of UN human rights experts who received “credible allegations” that Israeli soldiers have raped, tortured, and executed Palestinian women and girls amid their siege of Gaza.

US media has similarly overlooked the UN human rights report, focusing instead on yet another dubious report by the Israeli Association of Rape Crisis Centers alleging the deployment of “systematic sexual violence” by Hamas on October 7, 2023.

As The Grayzone’s Max Blumenthal reported, the Israeli report was “short on new research, absent of hard evidence, and reliant instead on clips from factually-challenged articles by the same Western outlets promoting its publication.” Its publication was funded by US-based Israel lobby heavyweights involved in a public relations scheme to justify the ongoing siege of Gaza.

The UN’s Office of the High Commission on Human Rights reported receiving testimonies from Palestinian women and girls in Israeli custody of rape and being “subjected to multiple forms of sexual assault, such as being stripped naked and searched by male Israeli army officers.”

The Grayzone has also gathered video testimony from 39-year-old Abier Mohammed Gheben, a Palestinian abducted in Gaza by Israelis during their ongoing siege. She described being subjected to torture, deprivation and humiliation during over 50 days in captivity. “We had to sleep for a night… out in the open” while “blinded and handcuffed,” she told The Grayzone, adding that her interrogator “would call women dogs.”

Asked by journalists about the UN report alleging Israeli sexual abuse of Palestinian female detainees, State Department spokesman Matthew Miller told journalists that he “cannot independently verify the reports.”

*Heated exchange* about the State Department's double standard of UN experts' report on sexual violence of Palestinians women: "I have seen those allegations I can't independently confirm those reports"

"Did you ever have [independent] confirmation what Hamas allegedly did to… pic.twitter.com/d7phRxsFhf

— HalalFlow (@halalflow) February 20, 2024

Though he insisted the US “strongly [urges] Israel to thoroughly and transparently investigate credible allegations,” Miller stopped well short of the dramatic denunciations he reserves for Hamas. The State Department flack previously claimed without evidence that Hamas refuses to release female Israeli captives because “they don’t want these women to be able to talk about what happened to them during their time in custody.”

Miller’s latest pronouncement triggered intensive questioning by reporters in the press gallery, who seemed to pick up on the apparent double standard.

“You said you had no independent confirmation of what the UN experts found,” AP journalist Matt Lee noted, “but did you ever have confirmation of what Hamas allegedly did to Israeli women, girls?”

Miller replied that the US had, in fact, received “independent confirmation” of supposed sexual violence against Israelis by Hamas combatants, citing the findings of unspecified “Israeli medical experts.”

Moreover, “it is a well-accepted fact” that Palestinian militants sexually abused Israelis, the spokesman insisted, “because the investigations produced credible evidence that not just the US accepted, but countries around the world accepted.”

“We have no reason at all to doubt those reports,” Miller concluded.

Later in the the exchange, Miller appeared to dismiss the credentials of the UN experts, telling journalists that the US would not treat the allegations of rape by the Israeli military as confirmed until they’re examined by “a credible medical expert.”

“With respect to these new allegations, we want to see an investigation. And we will of course look at the investigation and make our judgments when that investigation has concluded,” Miller stated.

The UN experts’ findings, which are reportedly “based on accounts provided by Palestinian female detainees, as well as information obtained via human rights organizations,” have been almost universally ignored by the Western press. As of publication, less than half a dozen mainstream outlets had reported on the shocking allegations.

Given the US State Department’s role in fast-tracking weapons to Israel, it may have good reason to downplay credible allegations of the mass killing and abuse of Palestinian women in Gaza. While it may not have been accused directly, Foggy Bottom has been a willing accomplice to any and all of Israel’s crimes.

*

Note to readers: Please click the share button above. Follow us on Instagram and Twitter and subscribe to our Telegram Channel. Feel free to repost and share widely Global Research articles.

Wyatt Reed is the managing editor of The Grayzone. As an international correspondent, he’s covered stories in over a dozen countries. Follow him on Twitter at @wyattreed13.

Featured image is from TG

All Global Research articles can be read in 51 languages by activating the Translate Website button below the author’s name (only available in desktop version).

To receive Global Research’s Daily Newsletter (selected articles), click here.

Click the share button above to email/forward this article to your friends and colleagues. Follow us on Instagram and Twitter and subscribe to our Telegram Channel. Feel free to repost and share widely Global Research articles.

Big Tech’s Effort to Silence Truth-tellers: Global Research Online Referral Campaign

***

All Global Research articles can be read in 51 languages by activating the Translate Website button below the author’s name (only available in desktop version).

To receive Global Research’s Daily Newsletter (selected articles), click here.

Click the share button above to email/forward this article to your friends and colleagues. Follow us on Instagram and Twitter and subscribe to our Telegram Channel. Feel free to repost and share widely Global Research articles.

Big Tech’s Effort to Silence Truth-tellers: Global Research Online Referral Campaign

***

 “One little, two little, three little Palestinians, three little, two little, one little Palestinian, then no little Palestinians more”. Okay, Boys and Girls! Everyone, All Together, Now! Let’s hear it again from the top, yet one more time.”

Hypocrisy Reigns Supreme in the Western World’s War Against the Palestinians

The time-honored children’s nursery counting rhyme originally referred to ‘Ten Little Indians’ but, now, for the children in the 21^st century, it should be adapted to refer to the rapid rate of the eradication of Palestinian children by the Jewish Zionist hordes that continue to sweep through the former native homelands of the natives of Palestine, like a plague of invasive insects or human ‘Genghis Khan’s’.

The original invading colonists of the New World, in the budding new countries of Australia, New Zealand, Canada, the United States and rest of the America’s didn’t originally really care a whit how many native children and their elders had to be eradicated, exterminated or obliterated to make way for their own kind. When it comes down to the nub of it, they don’t really care a whit, anymore than the Jewish Zionists, and all their allies in the New and Old World’s, do about how many human beings, young and old alike, must be eradicated – exterminated – obliterated in Gaza and throughout the occupied territories of Palestine for the sake of yet the new conquers and their offsprings greedily-lusting again for yet whatever more desired ultimate power, money, and control. It doesn’t matter how many horrific accounts are still to be revealed of young Palestinian infants, children and teenagers who have had: all their limbs, and even their heads, blown off; died from starvation, malnutrition; treated for life-threatening injuries and diseases without any anesthetics; or left to wallow in the mud, rain, blistering sun in their own feces from the lack of proper housing and sanitational infrastructure.

Otherwise, if that were not the truth, the world’s human defenders of humanity, decency and the higher purposes of life upon Planet Earth, collectively, have long since cried out so loudly for that a massive army of defenders already would have been invoked to carry out: a world-wide BDS Movement; Arms and Financial Embargos; yet another WWIII, or whatever else it would have to take, to stop all those out-of-control Christian-Jewish-Zionist zealots and aggressors who seek so much financial, political, territorial, spiritual gain at the expense of yet another of the world’s unfortunate indigenous people, who now are the Palestinians. 

The mass of humanity has simply been hopelessly brainwashed and brow-beaten to passively accept what is the case on the ground. This is why the Canadian, American, Australian, British citizenry, as well as the majority of all the other humans in the world, continue to look the other way as they, themselves, struggle to cope with the exigencies of life, and passively continue to allow the world’s corporate news and mass media to invoke almost total censorship and management of world news and collective consciousness to suppress what truly is happening everywhere in the world; and, specifically, what  is happening to the Palestinian people. 

Meanwhile, as they and whatever other new indigenous peoples in the future will find themselves being thrown under the Western World’s oppressive, steamrolling juggernaut, crunching and flattening everything and everyone in its wake as it mindlessly rumbles onward towards some nefarious end, the whole movement of the human world inexorably continues on its unknown course to wherever or nowhere.

Pink Floyd’s Robert Waters Speaks on Gaza, Israel, War, Propaganda, Human Ignorance

Nevertheless, what continues to unfold in Gaza, gives one cause to pause and wonder, “What the Hell, in God’s good name, are still even lower depths of human depravity is the human race yet capable of descended to, as modern history already has shown in places like Auschwitz? Will the world’s moviemakers, writers and playwrights now spend the next 50 years and more, fretting, puzzling, wondering how yet such another monstrous, bestial ‘Holocaust’ could have again be committed, this time, ironically, cynically, by the victims of the original Holocaust themselves, who should have already known better by dint of their own personal horrific experiences? It challenges the human brain to endlessly question and wonder about whether or not Humans aren’t just another species of lower primates, not much better than their lesser relatives, somewhere still far down the evolutionary biological ladder?

Pink Floyd’s Founding Bassist Roger Waters Knows the Truth

The legendary pop music band Pink Floyd’s founding bassist, Roger Waters, is one who has bravely chosen to face this conundrum head-on in defiance of it all; for which, in his case, in the world of music, he has been horrendously castigated, vilified and economically persecuted by those sectors of higher-ups around him in the music industry who accuse Waters of being “one of the most widely-known antisemites in the world”.

Because of the famed rocker’s defiant attitude towards Zionist Israel’s genocide of the Palestinians, as well as other related disparaging, comments he has made in the past about America’s involvement in the war in Ukraine, the record giant BMG that once lionized Waters music, has since dropped its contracture plans to do a 50^th anniversary release of Pink Floyd’s historic signature album Dark Side of the Moon; that nevertheless was subsequently released by the UK Label Cooking Vinyl.

Waters, in return, has characterized his separation from Bertlesmann (BMG) as the “brutal suppression of my political beliefs. “They’re trying to cancel me like they cancelled Jeremy Corbyn and Julian Assange, and I will not be cancelled.” Waters candidly declares, “War isn’t about ideology. It isn’t about religion, it’s about money.” 

As a result of being a longtime supporter of Palestine and critic of Israel, Waters vehemently continues to deny such accusations; while further causing an uproar in 2023 when he wore a “Nazi-style” uniform on stage in Berlin. Many of his concerts continue to be cancelled over his support for an international boycott of Israel.

Roger Waters Music and Political Beliefs Sing to This Writer’s Soul 

Yet Water’s words and music continue to salve this writer’s soul at this moment in time when the fate of the Palestinians is in such a grim, dire state, precisely; because of so much propaganda, ignorance, absence of truth and indifferent silence now the norm in place of what everywhere should be honest, real emotions being expressed by humans everywhere who find themselves engulfed and entrapped by so much mute ignorant silence. Waters remains yet one of those many, decent human beings who struggle to speak truth to power for whatever that means and whatever it’s worth.

As one who has attempted to endlessly write about all the madness and depravity that is now afoot in places like Ukraine and Gaza, this writer constantly, daily, has to fight off so much depression’ for the sake of his own conscious awareness.

Another Statistic of War Madness. “Sadism”

Such depression is especially keen since having just listened to yet another endless account of many in Gaza of a little innocent, very scared, very terrified 14-year-old girl and her little 4-Year-old sister who recently were machine-gunned to death by IDF forces.

The family’s 14-year-old and her younger sister were in a car with all their family’s adults and relatives attempting to flee the death and destruction they were facing, when their vehicle was sprayed by IDF machine gun fire, and they all were killed save for the teen and her little sister who had been stuffed onto the floorboards of their vehicle for protection, with the adult’s bodies above them used as protective shields. 

Their riddled car had come to a halt near a bombed-out tank and, after a time, as pitch black darkness engulfed them, the teenager managed to use one of her dead relatives cell phones and finally was able to connect with Palestine’s Red Crescent ambulance services. They remained in conversation with her, consoling her all the while, while one of their brave paramedic teams was dispatched to drive their ambulance and themselves in harms way, indifferent to their own survival, to attempt to rescue two very scared, very little, terrified girls.

But obviously her transmission had been monitored by the IDF who already had malevolently set up an ambush for them; waiting until the Red Crescent ambulance and its paramedic team had been lured deep into their death trap. While they were enroute, the terrified teenager and her sister were kept on the line,; consoled by a very kind women’s voice who told them not to worry because help would soon arrive..

UNTIL……..That is, when the Red Crescent receptionist next heard the two frightened little girl’s voices suddenly scream in abject terror, abruptly cut off by the sound of machine gun fire, followed by deathly silence.

When investigating authorities finally arrived, they found the burnt-out Red Crescent ambulance, with the two dead paramedics and bullet-riddled car nearby with all the dead family in a bloody heap inside, with the teenager and her 4 year-old sister lying dead atop the pile.

Such abject evilness is beyond the capacity of the human mind to cope with when so few in the world in positions of power, who could make a significant difference, care so little as to allow such evilness and barbarity to continue, unaddressed and unimpeded.

Especially when countries like Canada, and the rest of the United Nation countries leaders, could at once invoke: a total arms and financial embargo; BDS movement against Zionist Israel, or; immediately marshal together an ad hoc armed forces of volunteer peace keepers prepared to immediately put themselves, at the risk of their own lives, between the out-of-control mad men Zionist leaders, IDF forces, settler militias and Jewish citizenry who obviously, themselves, have become murderously insane by it all, and since, apparently, have even been given carte blanche to do whatever heinous actions they will, with few questions ever asked. Yet, instead, look for every legal loophole to continue to ship monies and war materials to the Zionist to continue their macabre killing spree

One has to wonder? Is there no hope, whatsoever, for the human race?

Has it descended so far down into the black pit of oblivion and hate within the human heart? 

For all the peoples of the world to decide what personal action each of them now must take in the future, especially all those long-time lovers of Pink Floyd’s music, they should listen to the TRT World interview with Roger Waters, as he speaks truth as he sees it in his life about Gaza, Israel, War, Propaganda, Human Ignorance.

TRI World itself, ironically, constantly is criticized and labeled by the Western corporate press as being a propaganda news outlet because it dares to broadcast, worldwide, 24 hours daily, with studies in Washington D.C. and London, controversial issues pertaining to Turkey, Africa and Southern Asia towards which the Western corporate press is ideologically opposed to or unwilling to air themselves. Such as TRT World being awarded, in 2023, an International Emmy for its documentary Off The Grid; Ukraine Wartime Stories on the war in Ukraine.

“One little, two little, three little Palestinians, three little, two little, one little Palestinian, no little Palestinians more”. Okay, Boys and Girls! Everyone, All Together, now! Let’s hear it again from the top, yet one more time.”

*

Note to readers: Please click the share button above. Follow us on Instagram and Twitter and subscribe to our Telegram Channel. Feel free to repost and share widely Global Research articles.

Jerome Irwin is a Canadian-American writer who, in previous lives, has been involved in a wide range of diverse and varied worlds, including the Criminology profession with an American police department, and later for a brief-time in the capacity of clandestine communications with the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency. For decades, in various professional capacities as an educator, researcher, geo-political analyst, and writer. Irwin has sought to call attention to a broad spectrum of world problems pertaining to the degradation and unsustainability caused by a host of environmental-ecological-spiritual-ideological issues that exist between the conflicting world philosophies of indigenous and non-indigenous peoples.

Irwin is the author of the book, “The Wild Gentle Ones; A Turtle Island Odyssey” (www.turtle-island-odyssey.com), a spiritual odyssey among the native peoples of North America that over the decades has produced numerous articles pertaining to: Ireland’s Fenian Movement; native peoples Dakota Access Pipeline Resistance Movement; AIPAC, Israel & the U.S. Congress anti-BDS Movement; the historic Battle for Palestine & Siege of Gaza, as well as; the many violations constantly being waged by industrial-corporate-military-propaganda interests against the World’s Collective Soul. To examine a portion of the eclectic body of his work goggle: “Jerome Irwin, writer” The author and his wife are long-time residents on the North Shore of British Columbia.

He is a regular contributor to Global Research.  

Featured image: Displaced Palestinians wait to receive free food from a volunteer-run hospice near Nasser Medical Hospital in Khan Younis, southern Gaza, on Tuesday, January 9, 2024. Bloomberg

All Global Research articles can be read in 51 languages by activating the Translate Website button below the author’s name (only available in desktop version).

To receive Global Research’s Daily Newsletter (selected articles), click here.

Click the share button above to email/forward this article to your friends and colleagues. Follow us on Instagram and Twitter and subscribe to our Telegram Channel. Feel free to repost and share widely Global Research articles.

Big Tech’s Effort to Silence Truth-tellers: Global Research Online Referral Campaign

***

As President of the Indian Business Alliance (IBA) and Founder of The Imperial Tailoring Co., Sammy Kotwani offers comprehensive insights on the evolving dynamics of Indian investment prospects in the Russian Federation. He also discusses, in this interview, aspects of business challenges and roadblocks in the context of geopolitical changes and competition as well as the current economic cooperation between India and Russia. Here are the interview excerpts:

How would you characterize the geopolitical changes on investment prospects for Indians in Russian Federation?

Geopolitical changes have significantly influenced investment prospects for Indians in the Russian Federation. The strategic partnership between the two countries has created favorable conditions for Indian investors, with a renewed focus on economic cooperation and enhanced bilateral relations. This has opened new avenues for Indian businesses to explore investment opportunities in sectors such as energy, technology, pharmaceuticals, and infrastructure.

What are your estimation of the current Russia’s economic presence in India? And how does it look like in the private sector there?

Russia’s economic presence in India is noteworthy, especially within the private sector. There has been a visible upward trajectory in Russian investments and collaborations in key sectors such as defense, nuclear energy, and strategic infrastructure. The private sector in India has increasingly engaged in joint ventures and technology transfers with Russian counterparts, fostering mutually beneficial partnerships.

By the way, do you see an increasing trend, particularly, in trade between the two countries? What are the supporting factors here in the bilateral trade?

The trade between India and Russia has, indeed, been experiencing an upward trend, backed by several prominent factors. Enhanced diplomatic relations, the implementation of preferential trade agreements, and increased cooperation in sectors such as aerospace, agriculture, and pharmaceuticals have been instrumental in fostering robust bilateral trade ties.

Naturally there must be a number of challenges and roadblocks, problems and pitfalls in policy and, of course, business approach in relation to Indian players in the Russian Federation. Is it possible to comment on them?

Challenges and roadblocks are inherent in any international business engagement. An understanding of regulatory frameworks, cultural nuances, and local business practices is crucial for Indian players in the Russian Federation. It is essential to address issues related to bureaucratic hurdles, legal complexities, and market entry barriers. A harmonized approach to policy frameworks and regulatory norms will be pivotal in mitigating these challenges and fostering a conducive business environment.

Do these still persist in the entrepreneurial activities and operations during these few years? What do you suggest, in terms, rules and regulations to facilitate business relations?

Persistent efforts are required to streamline and optimize entrepreneurial activities and operations in the Russian Federation. Clear and transparent regulations, simplified procedures for obtaining permits and licenses, and efforts to minimize bureaucratic red tape will provide a conducive environment for Indian businesses to thrive.

In the context of the current changes, what else could stimulate business innovations and initiatives to attract more Indian investment to Russia?

To stimulate business innovations and initiatives and attract more Indian investment to Russia, proactive measures such as the establishment of special economic zones, investment protection mechanisms, and collaborative research and development efforts can play a transformative role. Additionally, facilitating technology transfers, promoting joint ventures, and encouraging skill development programs will further bolster business prospects for Indian investors in Russia.

And finally, what are your perspectives, for instance, on geopolitical competition in relation to, say, India and China and probably other external players in Russia’s market landscape?

In the context of geopolitical competition, it is imperative to emphasize that India and Russia share a time-tested bilateral relationship based on mutual trust and strategic cooperation.

While geopolitical dynamics in the region continue evolving, India and Russia maintain a strong foundation of partnership and collaboration. The convergence of interests and shared commitment to stability and economic progress underpins the enduring relationship between the two countries. Furthermore, India’s engagement with Russia complements its relations with other external players, including China, through a balanced and pragmatic approach aimed at promoting mutual prosperity and stability in the region.

In conclusion, the evolving landscape of Indo-Russian relations presents a wealth of opportunities for both countries to deepen economic engagement and foster enduring partnerships. By harnessing the potential for collaboration across diverse sectors, India and Russia can pave the way for sustained economic growth and shared prosperity.

*

Note to readers: Please click the share button above. Follow us on Instagram and Twitter and subscribe to our Telegram Channel. Feel free to repost and share widely Global Research articles.

Kester Kenn Klomegah, who worked previously with Inter Press Service (IPS), Weekly Blitz and InDepthNews, is now a regular contributor to Global Research. He researches Eurasia, Russia, Africa and BRICS. His focused interest areas include geopolitical changes, foreign relations and economic development questions relating to Africa. As a versatile researcher, he believes that everyone deserves equal access to quality and trustworthy media reports. 

Featured image is from InfoBrics

All Global Research articles can be read in 51 languages by activating the Translate Website button below the author’s name (only available in desktop version).

To receive Global Research’s Daily Newsletter (selected articles), click here.

Click the share button above to email/forward this article to your friends and colleagues. Follow us on Instagram and Twitter and subscribe to our Telegram Channel. Feel free to repost and share widely Global Research articles.

Big Tech’s Effort to Silence Truth-tellers: Global Research Online Referral Campaign

***

Today is the second Sunday in Lent. This is the most sacred period of the Christian calendar: the 40 days leading up to the crucifixion and resurrection of our lord and savior, Jesus Christ.

Every Sunday the churches feature passages from the Bible that are read from the lectern by a member of the congregation. The first reading today was the story of how God told Abraham to sacrifice his son Isaac as a burnt offering, then called it off at the last moment. The purpose, says the church, was to test Abraham’s faith. The story is found in Genesis 22.

In today’s homily, the priest explained that in the days of Abraham, in what became the Holy Land, the local tribes practiced ritual sacrifice of children to appease their pagan gods. He said that the story of Abraham and Isaac showed how the Jews rose above that despicable practice to a more civilized and honorable form of worship.

After the service, I went up to the priest and asked him why, if the Jews no longer practiced ritual sacrifice, has Israel under Netanyahu murdered tens of thousands of innocent Palestinians, including civilian women and children?

I will not repeat the priest’s answer, except to say that he found my question quite unexpected and that he gave no satisfying response. He briefly tried to justify the genocide but trailed off, knowing he could not.

To me, any answer must take into account the obvious fact that the god of today’s Israel and its leader, Netanyahu, and by extension, Netanyahu’s enabler, U.S. President Joe Biden, cannot possibly be the god of Abraham and Isaac, or, by extension, that of Jesus Christ and of Jesus’s true followers.

The god of Netanyahu and Biden must be, rather, that of the child-sacrificing pagans the Judeo-Christian religion was founded, at least in part, to displace from power. My own belief is that the god of Netanyahu and Biden is actually Satan. As the heads of their respective governments, they do appear to be, in fact, “priests of Satan”.

I would go further in Biden’s case, and point to several other aspects of his governance that support my contention. One is Biden’s acquiescence in the ongoing genocide of the Covid “pandemic,” where millions of people have died, either from the government’s protocols when hospitalized, or from the deadly government-approved mRNA “vaccine.” Another pandemic appears to be in the planning stages, for “Disease X.”

Another instance is Biden’s war policy, not only in backing Netanyahu’s genocidal actions in Gaza, but also the U.S. proxy war against Russia in Ukraine, which the U.S. began by overthrowing the democratically-elected government of Ukraine in 2014, and where the supplying of unlimited money and weapons to the Zelensky regime has led to the unnecessary deaths of hundreds of thousands of Ukrainian soldiers and the emigration of millions more Ukrainians out of their homeland.

Another is Biden’s personal corruption and that of his family members which is currently under investigation by the U.S. House of Representatives, with impeachment a possibility.

Yet another is Biden’s “open border” policy that has allowed millions of illegal aliens to enter the country and conceal themselves within our towns and cities with the possible intent to:

a) allow criminal cartels and drug gangs to corrupt our nation with deadly drugs and massive human trafficking;

b) create a uniparty nation by packing the rolls with millions of new Democratic Party voters;

c) generate future indebted victims of the U.S. usury-based banking system;

d) enlist millions of cheap non-union workers for menial jobs; and, worst of all,

e) possibly to infiltrate an army of terrorists to aid the Deep State and its controllers in their likely plans to replace our constitutional system with a totalitarian takeover of the U.S.

So, during the Lenten system, we should reflect on where all this is headed for our nation and the world. Those who are able should take action to prevent these abuses. The rest of us, as individuals, can do our own part by respecting the intent of the Lenten season through improving our lives and following Jesus’s injunction to “take up your cross and follow me.” Most inspiring are the words of the old Christian hymn:

Take Up Your Cross

Take up your cross, the Savior said,
If you would my disciple be;
Deny yourself, the world forsake,
And humbly follow after me.

Take up your cross, be not ashamed!
Let not disgrace your spirit fill!
For God himself endured to die
Upon a cross, on Calvary’s hill.

Take up your cross, which gives you strength,
Which makes your trembling spirit brave;
‘Twill guide you to a better home
And lead to vict’ry o’er the grave.

Take up your cross, and follow Christ,
Nor think till death to lay it down;
For only they who bear the cross
May hope to wear the glorious crown.

*

Note to readers: Please click the share button above. Follow us on Instagram and Twitter and subscribe to our Telegram Channel. Feel free to repost and share widely Global Research articles.

Paul Yesse is a pen name.

A Global Chorus of Pretence to Halt the Gaza Bloodbath. The New World Order’s “Global Welfare”

By Julian Rose, February 26, 2024

For those who have failed to recognise the true colours of the global institutions charged with acting for world peace, health and human rights, it will surely come as a shock to realise that such international bodies are part of the problem and not the solution.

Dissolving Illusions About Vaccine Safety

By Dr. Joseph Mercola, February 26, 2024

The vaccine industry intentionally deceives us about the risks and benefits of vaccines in order to make a profit, with complete disregard for human suffering and the destruction of public health over time.

A Copper’s Skewed Logic: Politicising Palestinian Visas

By Dr. Binoy Kampmark, February 26, 2024

If only we could say that Peter Dutton, Australia’s federal opposition leader and curator of bigoted leanings, was unusual in assuming that granting humanitarian visas to Palestinians might be problematic. But both he, and his skew-eyed spokesman on home affairs, James Patterson, have concluded that votes are in the offing. 

The West’s Involvement in the Syrian Conflict. Shane Quinn

By Shane Quinn, February 26, 2024

Since 2011 members of British organisations such as MI6 and the Special Air Service (SAS) had been training anti-government forces within Syria, according to the Israeli intelligence outlet Debkafile.

What Does Maternal Mortality Rate Tell Us About Contemporary USA?

By Bharat Dogra, February 26, 2024

Maternal Mortality Rate (MMR) (measured per 100,000 live births) is a widely used human development indicator. In addition this also has a strong emotional connect and any country would normally be very keen to accord very high priority to reducing its maternal mortality.

The Silence of the Guilty. The Death of Alexei Navalny. Manlio Dinucci

By Manlio Dinucci, February 26, 2024

The West in unison accuses Putin of ordering Navalny’s assassination. The timing of his death, however, is more than suspicious: Navalny died on February 16, on the same day the Munich Security Conference opened, a week after Putin’s successful interview with Tucker Carlson, a month before the presidential elections in Russia where Putin is a candidate.

Netanyahu Has Lost Saudi Arabia, and Biden Will Lose Re-election

By Steven Sahiounie, February 25, 2024

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu stated in late 2022 that his priority was to sign a normalization agreement with Saudi Arabia. He called it his number one objective for Israel’s national security. Now, he has lost his dream.

All Global Research articles can be read in 51 languages by activating the Translate Website button below the author’s name (only available in desktop version).

To receive Global Research’s Daily Newsletter (selected articles), click here.

Click the share button above to email/forward this article to your friends and colleagues. Follow us on Instagram and Twitter and subscribe to our Telegram Channel. Feel free to repost and share widely Global Research articles.

Big Tech’s Effort to Silence Truth-tellers: Global Research Online Referral Campaign

***

Which is the more serious criminal activity: extrajudicial killings, routine torture of prisoners and illegal renditions carried out by a state, or exposing those actions by publishing illegally leaked details of how, where, when and by whom they were committed?

That is essentially the question that was asked this week at the Royal Courts of Justice in London. It has sometimes seemed during the proceedings that the ornate building at the end of Fleet Street, opened by Queen Victoria in 1882, had become more of a theatre than a court. Outside, vast crowds gathered, chanted, listened to speeches, halted traffic and asked passing drivers to hoot their support. Inside, some of the UK’s leading barristers, watched by journalists from all over the world, spelled out the plot to packed public galleries in overflow courts. This drama started more than a decade ago, yet only now are we approaching the final act.

We are talking, of course, about the case of Julian Assange. He has been seeking leave to appeal against the decision to extradite him to the US to face trial under its Espionage Act for his publication of documents, via WikiLeaks, which detailed illegal US actions in Afghanistan, Iraq, Guantanamo Bay and elsewhere and which were leaked to him by the former US soldier Chelsea Manning.

The elegant cage in court five, where traditionally those who have been brought from prison have to sit while their appeal is heard, was empty. The lead character was missing. Assange, now in his fifth year in high security Belmarsh prison, despite having been convicted of no crime, was too unwell to attend or even watch the proceedings remotely. But, along with all his supporters, including his wife, Stella, and his father and brother, there were some important ghosts in court.

It is nearly 50 years since the former CIA agent Philip Agee leaked details of his country’s illegal activities on behalf of rightwing dictators in Latin America to the London magazine Time Out – then in its early, radical days – and his case was cited by Assange’s lawyers, Edward Fitzgerald KC and Mark Summers KC. Crucially, despite false claims that his leaks had led to deaths, Agee was never extradited to the US, although he was deported from Britain by a Labour government in 1977. When we met up again in Germany in 2007, not long before his death, I asked what might now happen to someone who acted as he had, leaking information to expose US criminality. “I think it would be much harder,” said Agee. “A person who tried to do what I did would face kidnapping and possibly being put on ice in a secret prison for many years to come.” How right he was.

In court also was the ghost of another heroic truth-teller, Daniel Ellsberg, who died last year and who faced the same charges as Assange in 1973 for exposing US activities in Vietnam – and who had given evidence for him in a previous hearing. The mention in court of those two names was an indication of the vital importance of this week’s hearing. It is a case that will define how seriously our judiciary and our politicians consider the notion of free speech. As Fitzgerald told the court, this is a “legally unprecedented prosecution (that) seeks to criminalise the application of ordinary journalistic practices”.

For the US, Clair Dobbin KC said the charges against Assange were not political but were brought because he went “far beyond the acts of a journalist who was merely gathering information” and “responsible” journalists would not have acted as he did. She said that some of those identified in the leaked material had had to flee their homes. Yet in evidence given at Manning’s sentencing hearing in 2013, it was revealed that a team of 120 counterintelligence officers had been unable to find a single person who could be shown to have died because of WikiLeaks’s revelations.

The Americans have recently been arguing for the release from detention in Russia of Evan Gershkovich, the Wall Street Journal reporter who was arrested last year in Yekaterinburg despite having full press credentials from Russia’s foreign ministry. No wonder Vladimir Putin mocks US pleas made on his behalf when they are simultaneously trying to lock away Assange on equally bogus espionage charges.

Some of the “responsible” press in this country have barely covered this case, too busy with stories about tiffs in the royal family or the news that footballer Wayne Rooney had applied to study law – cue jolly pic of Wayne in barrister’s wig – while the real life barristers have been fighting for the life of a journalist who, as things stand, could die in prison. Judgment has been reserved, but what did emerge from this week’s hearings was that, while Assange would avoid the oft-quoted potential sentence of 175 years in the US, he would probably face a sentence of between 30 and 40 years. For a 52-year-old in poor health that almost certainly means dying behind bars.

Politicians in the UK often express their horror at “cancel culture”, but few have so far managed to denounce the US’s attempts to cancel a journalist for the offence of causing shame and embarrassment. So, after this week, the next question is this: does our judiciary and our government have the steel to fight this extradition? Everyone who values the right to free speech undoubtedly should.

*

Note to readers: Please click the share button above. Follow us on Instagram and Twitter and subscribe to our Telegram Channel. Feel free to repost and share widely Global Research articles.

Duncan Campbell is a freelance writer who worked for the Guardian as crime correspondent and Los Angeles correspondent.

All Global Research articles can be read in 51 languages by activating the Translate Website button below the author’s name (only available in desktop version).

To receive Global Research’s Daily Newsletter (selected articles), click here.

Click the share button above to email/forward this article to your friends and colleagues. Follow us on Instagram and Twitter and subscribe to our Telegram Channel. Feel free to repost and share widely Global Research articles.

Big Tech’s Effort to Silence Truth-tellers: Global Research Online Referral Campaign

***

It may take more than 10 years for someone injured by a COVID-19 vaccine to receive a decision on whether their claim is eligible for compensation by the government’s vaccine compensation program—if they receive a response at all.

U.S. health officials responded to questions on America’s failing vaccine injury compensation system in a hearing that left the vaccine-injured feeling like addressing the system’s shortcomings is not a priority on Capitol Hill.

As of Jan. 1, there were 12,854 claims filed for injuries caused by COVID-19 countermeasures with the government’s Countermeasures Injury Compensation Program (CICP), including 9,600 related to injuries caused by COVID-19 vaccines. Of the 12,854 claims, 2,214 have been processed, but only 40 claims have been found eligible for compensation.

According to testimony given during a Feb. 15 hearing of the Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic, there’s a backlog of about 10,800 claims. With only 35 employees processing claims at a rate of 2.7 cases per employee per month, it will take about 10 years to process the remaining claims. 

“I just don’t think it’s right. I think we need to streamline this process,” Rep. Rich McCormick (R-Ga.) said during the hearing. “We need to speed up this process by about tenfold in order to do our job for the American people.”

According to CICP data, as of Jan. 1, only 11 people have received compensation for their injuries out of 40 COVID-19 claims found eligible for compensation. The average award was a mere $3,700, whereas the average payout under the National Vaccine Injury Compensation Program (VICP) that handles injuries caused by routine vaccines is $490,000.

“If you die or get injured from a COVID-19 vaccine, your average payout is $3,700,” said Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) to U.S. health officials during the hearing.

Vaccine-Injured Community Left ‘Very Disappointed’

The Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic met to discuss the federal government’s post-marketing surveillance of COVID-19 vaccine safety and the process for adjudicating compensation claims in the first session of a multi-part hearing titled “Assessing America’s Vaccine Safety Systems, Part 1.”

Witnesses at the hearing included Dr. Daniel Jernigan, director of the National Center for Emerging and Zoonotic Infectious Diseases at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), Dr. Peter Marks, director of the FDA’s Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research, and Cmdr. George Reed Grimes. Dr. Grimes is the director of the Division of Injury Compensation Programs for the Health Resources and Services Administration, the agency of the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) that oversees both the CICP and VICP.

Prior to the hearing, React19 and the COVID-19 vaccine-injured community were looking forward to Drs. Marks, Grimes, and Jernigan answering tough questions about the failings of the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System known as VAERS and the CICP, co-chairman of React19 Dr. Joel Wallskog told The Epoch Times in an email.

React19 is a science-based nonprofit offering financial, physical, and emotional support for more than 30,000 individuals suffering from long-term COVID-19 vaccine injuries.

Dr. Wallskog said the vaccine-injured community was “very disappointed” by the hearing stating that most of the U.S. representatives used much of their allotted time during the hearing to “pontificate” instead of asking tough questions. The questions that were asked “failed to go into any needed detail,” with many representatives engaging in what he called nonconstructive partisan banter.

“There were no in-depth discussions of the failures of the vaccine safety monitoring systems and no discussions of remedies. There were no in-depth discussions of the obvious complete failure of the CICP and no discussion of remedies,” Dr. Wallskog added.

“The testimonies of the witnesses were generic, as they have been in the past.” At one point, a representative “suggested that those injured by the COVID-19 shots were false positives,” which was “truly insulting,” he said.

In an online interview, Dr. Wallskog said he was a physically active, successful orthopedic surgeon forced to leave his practice after experiencing transverse myelitis from his one and only Moderna vaccine. Prior to being vaccinated, Dr. Wallskog experienced an asymptomatic case of COVID-19 but followed CDC guidance and got vaccinated three months later, despite having antibodies indicative of natural immunity.

Dr. Wallskog filed a vaccine injury claim with the CICP in May 2021, received a denial in November 2022, and appealed in December 2022. He has yet to receive a response to his appeal.

How the Two Vaccine Injury Compensation Programs Work

The CICP and VICP are the U.S. government’s two systems for adjudicating and compensating vaccine-related injuries. However, only the CICP accepts claims related to COVID-19 vaccines.

The CICP was established by the 2005 Public Readiness and Emergency Preparedness (PREP) Act to compensate individuals who “sustain a covered serious physical injury or death as a direct result of the administration or use of a covered countermeasure,” including a vaccine, medication, device, or other item used to diagnose, prevent, mitigate, or treat during a pandemic or epidemic, and provides immunity for manufacturers for the harms caused by their products. People injured by a vaccine covered by the PREP Act can only seek compensation through the CICP.

The VICP was established by the National Childhood Vaccine Injury Act of 1986, based on the U.S. Supreme Court decision in Russell Bruesewitz et al. v. Wyeth et al. that gave vaccine manufacturers, doctors, and other vaccine administrators broad liability protections when a government recommended or mandated vaccine causes permanent injury or death.

The VICP covers injury claims related to 16 common vaccines and involves a unique, no-fault tribunal housed within the U.S. Court of Federal Claims. Payouts, including attorneys fees and pain and suffering damages up to $250,000, are funded by a 75-cent excise tax per vaccine dose paid for by the pharmaceutical companies. The VICP proceedings are often drawn out into contentious expert battles, and the backlog of cases is substantial. Yet the VICP to date has awarded more than $5 billion for vaccine injuries.

It is much harder to get compensation under the CICP. Of the 13,406 claims filed since the program’s inception in 2010, only 0.3 percent of claims have been compensated. People who go through the CICP do not have the protections afforded by the U.S. legal system and only have one year from the time of their injury to file a claim—even if they don’t recognize they’ve been injured until after the one-year period has passed. There is no court, judge, or right to discovery under the CICP. Unlike the VICP, decisions regarding compensation are administratively made by Dr. Grimes’ team of 35 employees.

In establishing the CICP, Congress defined the threshold that must be met for an individual to receive compensation. To be eligible for compensation, the covered countermeasure, such as a COVID-19 vaccine, must have directly caused the covered injury. It cannot just be “temporally associated” with receiving the countermeasure, and the determination is based on “compelling, reliable, valid, medical, and scientific evidence.”

The CICP only pays unreimbursed medical expenses, a portion of lost employment income, and a death benefit. In essence, it is a payer of last resort, covering only what remains unpaid or unpayable by other third parties, such as other government benefits, workers’ compensation, or private insurance. Under the CICP, there are no damages for pain and suffering or attorney fees.

Brianne Dressen, co-chairman of React19, filed a claim with the CICP for her vaccine injury more than two years ago and, like many others, has never received a response. Even so, with an average payout of only $3,700, this doesn’t go very far in helping with Ms. Dressen’s medical expenses related to her injury, which, according to Ms. Greene, total more than $433,000 a year.

Addressing Compensation Failures ‘Is Not a Priority’

According to Dr. Grimes, for COVID-19 vaccines to be added to the VICP’s list of covered vaccines, they must be recommended by the CDC for routine administration in children and pregnant women, an excise tax must be imposed by Congress, and the secretary of HHS must provide a notice to add the vaccine to the VICP. The CDC currently recommends COVID-19 vaccines for children and pregnant women, but Congress has not taken action to impose the excise tax, nor has HHS Secretary Xavier Becerra issued a notice.

“There is no one who knows the failures of both of these programs better than those who stand to benefit or be harmed by them. That is us, the vaccine injured,” Ms. Dressen told The Epoch Times in an email.

“While the white house earmarks $10 billion for COVID vaccine distribution and vaccine confidence, the COVID vaccine injured have been paid $41,000,” Ms. Dressen said. “The numbers speak louder than any of these officials trying to tell us otherwise. Addressing the failures with vaccine injury compensation is not a priority on The Hill.”

According to the latest VAERS data, 1,626,370 adverse events following COVID-19 vaccines were reported between Dec. 14, 2020, and Jan. 26, 2024. This includes 311,196 reports of serious injuries and 37,100 deaths.

“The COVID-19 vaccine-injured community continues to feel abandoned by our health care providers, health care systems, and our federal regulatory agencies. We are dismissed, censored, and ridiculed. Our federal regulatory agencies are tasked with protecting the public. They have failed thousands of Americans injured by these shots,” Dr. Wallskog told The Epoch Times in an email.

Dr. Wallskog said React19 will continue to advocate for all Americans injured by COVID-19 vaccines, regardless of their political affiliations.

“React19 remains committed to giving the COVID-19 vaccine-injured community hope and healing despite this so-called hearing or investigation,” he added. “Rest assured, the COVID-19 shot-injured community should remain confident that React19 will stand with them until we get acknowledgment, adequate medical care, and just compensation.”

*

Note to readers: Please click the share button above. Follow us on Instagram and Twitter and subscribe to our Telegram Channel. Feel free to repost and share widely Global Research articles.

This article was originally published on The Epoch Times.

Featured image source

All Global Research articles can be read in 51 languages by activating the Translate Website button below the author’s name (only available in desktop version).

To receive Global Research’s Daily Newsletter (selected articles), click here.

Click the share button above to email/forward this article to your friends and colleagues. Follow us on Instagram and Twitter and subscribe to our Telegram Channel. Feel free to repost and share widely Global Research articles.

Big Tech’s Effort to Silence Truth-tellers: Global Research Online Referral Campaign

***

The vaccine industry intentionally deceives us about the risks and benefits of vaccines in order to make a profit, with complete disregard for human suffering and the destruction of public health over time

One of the reasons the polio vaccine doesn’t work is because polio isn’t caused by an infectious virus.

It’s caused by toxins. Poliovirus is a commensal virus that is completely harmless in the absence of toxic onslaught

The changing of definitions is part of the vaccine industry’s playbook.

The definition of a “vaccine” was radically altered to allow for the use of experimental modified RNA gene therapy

Another part of the fraud is using another vaccine as the control in lieu of a true placebo. You simply cannot prove a vaccine is safe by comparing it to another, most likely unsafe, vaccine

According to Dr. Suzanne Humphries, there are no worthwhile vaccines, not even smallpox or tetanus. Tetanus can be successfully treated using high-dose intravenous vitamin C and other essential nutrients

Vitamin C works because tetanus is a bacterial disease caused by an obligate anaerobe that cannot survive in the presence of oxygen. Other oxidative therapies that could be used if the infection is related to a wound include hydrogen peroxide and ozone therapy

*

In this interview, Dr. Suzanne Humphries discusses the recent update to her classic book, “Dissolving Illusions: Disease, Vaccines, and the Forgotten History,” published in 2013. “Dissolving Illusions” is one of my favorite books on vaccines, so I was honored to write the foreword for this 10th anniversary edition.

The ‘Safe and Effective’ Narrative Is a Carefully Fabricated Illusion

That word, “illusions,” is an apt one, because the vaccine industry really is all about promoting illusions. They intentionally deceive us about the risks and benefits of vaccines in order to make a profit, with complete disregard for human suffering.

“What I’ve learned over 15 years of really immersing myself in this is that it’s the same old story over and over and over again,” Humphries says. “Sometimes people ask me, ‘What is the driver? Why do they do this?’ My answer is that I cannot completely answer why. Yes, certainly, there’s greed involved, especially today, but I think there’s probably some more sinister operations at play.

The one thing we can say is that for 225 years, the same story has been repeated over and over again, which is that vaccines come out, and they make previous diseases that were not really very problematic worse. The vaccines cause problems.

The death rates were always coming down for any disease before any therapy came in at all, whether it’s an antibiotic or a vaccine … Trying to help humans live better, longer lives, to strengthen their bodies and their resilience, that’s always been the key.

Malicious Acts

In the interview, Humphries recounts the impetus behind the book. She first became aware that vaccines might be problematic when she was working as a nephrologist in northern Maine.

After a three-years-long struggle with the hospital administration, who refused to listen to any of her concerns, she finally got out, paid off her student loans and moved into a pop-up camper on a friend’s farm in Virginia, where she wrote the first edition of “Dissolving Illusions,” together with Roman Bystrianyk, who had been researching the history of disease and vaccines since 1998.

She spent the next seven years giving lectures around the world, and got her fair share of death threats. The brake line on her car was sabotaged, someone shot a crossbow arrow into the ground in front of her front door, and an obvious nut job detailed how he intended to torture and kill her in horrible ways. All for speaking out about the hazards of vaccines and the lies that keep the vaccine industry going.

“I think it’s because when you’re someone that has credibility — I was considered a top doctor in Maine, as a nephrologist — and comes out saying what I was saying, it is a big threat. It’s not necessarily that I was some important person, but it was where I came from,” she says.

CDC Has Been Hiding Vaccine Injuries for Years

Humphries also recounts how the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has been hiding vaccine injuries by deleting reports filed.

“I started reporting these vaccine injuries to the CDC. I would report them because my colleagues around me wouldn’t. But then they started bringing them to me, going ‘Here’s another one, Suzanne. Here’s another one.’ Each time I would report one, I would get a call from the CDC saying, ‘OK, someone else will be calling you,’ and then I’d get another call.

It was just a creepy, weird thing. Then after six months, I get a call from the main representative of the CDC, this doctor, and we had a flat out fight on the phone. He said to me, ‘What happened to you that you think all these vaccines are causing so many problems?’

I’m like, ‘What happened to me is that I’ve been watching it happen, and then you’re giving this live flu vaccine to children when the insert tells you exactly the symptoms you’re going to get, which is the flu.’ He’s like, ‘Well, that’s my specialty and that absolutely doesn’t happen.’ I said, ‘Well, I think we’re going to have to agree to disagree on that.’ He hung up on me, and that was the last I ever heard of him.

And guess what? They never made it to the VAERS database. They were deleted. I had the actual vaccine lot numbers. Everything was meticulously documented in these reports.”

What’s in the ‘Dissolving Illusions’ Update?

One of the silver linings of the COVID mass injection campaign is that it has awakened many to the notion that vaccines aren’t all they’re cracked up to be. The COVID shots are so toxic, even though the injuries are being swept under the carpet like never before, there are just so many of them that the carnage cannot be hidden. And, because government and health authorities refuse to acknowledge the problem, many are now questioning all vaccines, not just the COVID shot.

“It’s a dark night of the soul when you wake up to it,” Humphries says. “Your whole world does get a bit shattered, because you start to realize that the entire medical system is corrupt and backwards and that there’s probably better ways to do just about everything.

And you know what? For 225 years, doctors have been saying that, and for 225 years, those doctors have been ignored. That’s one of the reasons we wrote the second book, ‘The Dissolving Illusions Companion book.’

It’s another huge book, about 600 pages, with 230-something doctors giving different quotes about what they saw, boots on the ground, for smallpox vaccines to the toxoid vaccines to scarlet fever, typhoid, and the worsening of all diseases that occurred after they gave vaccines.

Some of them basically come out and say, ‘The entire profession of medicine is a complete waste of time. [They’re doing] damage to humanity. It would be better if all the doctors just were taken off the Earth and for humanity to do nothing.’

What we’ve done over the past 10 years is, in my travels, I would have to do more research to present different diseases. I would go one place and they say, ‘We want to hear about tetanus,’ or they want to hear more about whooping cough. More medical literature has also come out. So, we’ve added basically another book to ‘Dissolving Illusions.’

We’ve expanded it by 200 pages. We’ve added on a chapter on tuberculosis, which was called the White Plague. There’s an extra addition to the smallpox chapter. I’ve added about 20 or 30 new pages to the pertussis chapter. There is a chapter on deadly medicine, the practices from the early 1800s through to the 1940s that were provably causing lots of harm.

Roman came up with more charts. There’s a follow-up on the polio chapter. Dr. Jacob Puliyel, who lives in India, wrote the papers on the oral polio vaccines, how they were causing paralysis in children. We added those follow-up papers, as well as a lot of other data that we left out of the original chapter to try to save space, but it’s so important, it really needs to be put out there.”

The Polio Illusion

Based on the available science, Humphries is convinced that one of the reasons the polio vaccine doesn’t work is because polio isn’t caused by an infectious virus. It’s caused by toxins. Poliovirus is a commensal virus that is completely harmless in the absence of toxic onslaught.

“We have to distinguish poliovirus from poliomyelitis,” Humphries explains. “Poliomyelitis is when there’s damage to a certain part of the spinal cord or the brain stem in the gray matter and causes paralysis in one or more muscle groups. It can cause paralysis to nerves that supply the diaphragm, which is why the iron lung was brought in.

[Poliomyelitis] was always attributed to a virus, which is really interesting when you consider that the early researchers were trying to infect monkeys with poliovirus and they couldn’t infect them. They stuck it up their noses. They would inject it into their bodies. They couldn’t cause paralysis in these monkeys until they injected matter from other paralyzed humans or animals into their brains.

That’s what it took to actually paralyze them. It’s a commensal virus. Polio is a commensal virus that has existed from time immemorial. When researchers went down to the Brazilian rainforest and found the Xavante Indians and convinced them to give them some blood samples and fecal samples, they found that just about 100% of these native people were colonized with polio, and there was no history of paralysis anywhere in the tribes.

Nobody talked about people that couldn’t breathe. They were fetchingly healthy. Same happened in the Philippines. When you look at the people living close to the earth, living healthy lives, and then comes the … [Western] lifestyle habits of sugar, tobacco, medicines that contain mercury, lead, arsenic and vaccinations spreading syphilis.

Latent syphilis gives you poliomyelitis. Lead can give you poliomyelitis. Arsenic is probably the most interesting, because not only does it clinically give you the exact scenario of poliomyelitis, but even in the spinal cord, it’s exactly the same. That’s been proven. I’m not a virus denier. There is actual virus that is commensal.”

Are Viruses Real?

By now, you’ve probably heard the theory that there are no viruses, period. That the entire field of virology is a hoax, and that what we perceive as viruses are merely a type of cellular debris being shed when your body is trying to detox. Having delved deep into the science of infectious disease, Humphries disagrees with this theory. Viruses do exist. The question is whether they’re as dangerous as they’re made out to be. Humphries comments:

“You get chickenpox one time and you’re immune to it forever. You can be exposed to it over and over again and you don’t get it. Well, if it’s a detox, like they say, why doesn’t it carry on? I’m still as polluted as I probably was 10 years ago. I’m not getting chickenpox over and over again. I got it one time.

Why do these children that are nonimmune get it? … When you look at it that way, it’s like, ‘Come on, people. These viruses are all different. They have different manifestations.’ Influenza virus is a completely different entity.

The measles virus hasn’t really shifted genetically very much over the years. The natural one hasn’t. What’s really shifted it is the vaccines. When you start injecting people with the virus, having it go into the body in an unnatural way so that there is not a full immune response, that’s what causes mutations in the viruses because they’re able to work their way around the vaccine.

It’s happened very slowly with measles. It happened very quickly with the whooping cough bacteria, because of the really inefficient vaccine that was created for that.

The flu shots don’t work at all. Even Anthony Fauci came out with paper in 2023 that was almost a confession; about how poorly they’ve done with these viral vaccines and flu shots, and how if they were compared to all the other vaccines, they wouldn’t even be allowed to be on the market.

He said the COVID vaccines have the same problem. It’s because they’re not getting immunity where immunity is required, which is on the lung and the mucosal surfaces. How crazy to inject into a muscle a vaccine and think that you’re going to get solid immunity on the nasal and upper respiratory mucosa. Absolute insanity.

Same with the polio vaccine … Salk comes along and creates this injectable vaccine. They had to manipulate that data so much. They had to change the definition of what they considered as polio.

That’s what we added to [the polio] chapter. We’re showing the charts and what they would look like in their pure form, without changing the definitions. The rates of polio actually went up hugely after that vaccine was introduced. So, there’s never been a vaccine that’s really worthwhile giving.”

Changing Definitions Is Part of the Illusion

The changing of definitions is part of the vaccine industry’s playbook. They had to do the same for the COVID pandemic. Not only was the definition of “pandemic” changed, but also the definition of a “vaccine,” to allow for the use of experimental modified RNA gene therapy.

“They did the same thing they did with the Salk vaccine,” Humphries says. “See, history just repeats itself. So, the first vaccine that came out, the Salk vaccine, had merthiolate [thimerosal], a mercury compound, in it to kill off unwanteds, but Salk wasn’t happy with the field trials — the results of the antibody response from those children — so they took the merthiolate out.

So, we had one vaccine that was used for the testing and another that was given to the public. The same happened with the COVID vaccine. The mRNA technology, that’s not how the original ones were given.

I did a talk not that long ago in Denver, where I went into this in depth; how the vaccine that was given for the trials was completely different to the one given to the public. It was much more pure for instance … It was a very, very different vaccine that was used on the population. Then of course, that vaccine changed. So, different companies had different ways of manufacturing.”

Another part of the fraud is using another vaccine as the control in lieu of a true placebo. You simply cannot prove a vaccine is safe by comparing it to another, most likely unsafe, vaccine.

Yet that’s how it’s done. By using a toxic “control,” many of the adverse effects are automatically hidden as people in the control group end up suffering similar adverse events, and at a similar rate. This tactic was used in some of the COVID shot trials as well.

Why You Don’t Need a Tetanus Vaccine

According to Humphries, there are no worthwhile vaccines, not even smallpox or tetanus, and certainly not the polio vaccine. She’s treated several cases of tetanus in the last five years, including in at least one fully vaccinated individual, using high-dose intravenous vitamin C and other essential nutrients.

One of the reasons why this works is because tetanus is not a viral disease. It’s a bacterial disease caused by the Clostridium tetani bacterium, an obligate anaerobe. It can reside in soils, but it can also reside in your intestine where there’s no oxygen.

Oxygen is toxic to it. If you expose that organism to oxygen, as you do with vitamin C (because the metabolite of vitamin C is hydrogen peroxide), it’s instantaneously killed. Ozone therapy would likely be even more effective, for this reason.

So, if you get tetanus from a wound, the last thing you need is a tetanus shot or tetanus antibodies. All you need to do is apply ozone to the wound. It’ll instantly destroy the bacteria. Applying hydrogen peroxide would also work. As explained by Humphries, vitamin C is also a neutralizer of toxins, which is another reason it works.

Tetanus is a spore, and it transforms under anaerobic conditions into a toxin-producing organism. If you can neutralize the toxin and kill the microbe, then you’ve won the battle. One hundred percent, we’ve won the battle. Humphries comments:

“In rabbit studies, they got tetanus spores and ground glass and put it under the skin of rabbits, sewed it up. If they gave rabbits vitamin C at the time that they did this, 100% of them survived. If they did it afterwards, the majority of them survived. If they already had high levels of vitamin C, all of them survived.

So, the rabbit study showed us that not only is tetanus preventable, it’s treatable. I don’t necessarily believe that by [injecting] a toxoid, that you’re going to respond …

There are so many case reports of people with paralytic tetanus after having five vaccines … I don’t care what wound I have. There’s no way a tetanus vaccine or a tetanus immune globulin, which is a human pooled blood product, is going into me …

[The tetanus shot] actually changes your T-3 to T-4 ratio. This is all documented. I didn’t put it in the book, but I’ve got a video out there from when I was in Finland, showing that it definitely changes the way your immune system works. All vaccines do.”

More Information

What people have to realize is that the schemes used to push the COVID shots is nothing new. “It’s pretty much exactly the same as it’s been for 225 years, where the recipients are not the beneficiaries of this technology and humanity is not getting healthier by any means as a result of it,” Humphries says.

To truly understand the vaccine industry’s modus operandi, be sure to pick up Humphries’ “Dissolving Illusions” 10th anniversary edition. It’s coming out in two forms: a standard hard copy, and a special coffee table edition. The standard hard copy has been translated into 10 languages, with more coming. Kindle and audio book formats are also available.

Also consider picking up a copy of “The Dissolving Illusion’s Companion” book, which features the quotes of hundreds of doctors, stories of vaccination tragedies, the timeline of vaccines, rare documents that have been scrubbed off the internet, a recommended reading list and much more. For more details and free sample chapters, see dissolvingillusions.com. In closing, Humphries comments:

“This is a really important point: It’s not just about not vaccinating. If you’re going to feed your children garbage and if you’re not going to have a healthy lifestyle, I say go vaccinate, because when you get sick and you have to go to the hospital, you’re going to be abused.

But if people follow your recommendations — you’re like the underscore to ‘Dissolving Illusions,’ you’re the solution to how to stay healthy so that the perceived need for these vaccines isn’t there …

Historically, [survival] has not been about vaccines. It’s not been about medications, it’s not been about antibiotics. It’s always been about plumbing, nutrition, fresh air, vitamin D, lifestyle, and keeping poisons out of our bodies. That’s always what it’s been about in terms of survival.

Does that mean we’ll never get sick? No, it doesn’t. But I personally believe it’s good to get sick once in a while and get some of that effusions out of your lungs and your nose. I think that does us some good once in a while.”

*

Note to readers: Please click the share button above. Follow us on Instagram and Twitter and subscribe to our Telegram Channel. Feel free to repost and share widely Global Research articles.  

Featured image source

All Global Research articles can be read in 51 languages by activating the Translate Website button below the author’s name (only available in desktop version).

To receive Global Research’s Daily Newsletter (selected articles), click here.

Click the share button above to email/forward this article to your friends and colleagues. Follow us on Instagram and Twitter and subscribe to our Telegram Channel. Feel free to repost and share widely Global Research articles.

Big Tech’s Effort to Silence Truth-tellers: Global Research Online Referral Campaign

***

CBS has seized the confidential files of reporter Catherine Herridge, who was investigating the Hunter Biden laptop scandal before she was fired last week.

Herridge was one of 20 CBS News staffers who were let got as part of a larger layoff – however her firing came as a shock to many given her general popularity as a reporter.

“It’s so extraordinary,” one insider told the NY Post, adding that the files most likely contain confidential materials from Herridge’s time at both Fox and CBS.

According to the source who called the move ‘unprecedented,’ the network boxed up all her stuff and told her they would decide what, if anything, would be returned to her.

“They never seize documents [when you’re let go],” a second source told the outlet. “They want to see what damaging documents she has.”

A network spokesperson pushed back – telling the Post: “We have respected her request to not go through the files, and out of our concern for confidential sources, the office she occupied has remained secure since her departure,” adding “We are prepared to pack up the rest of her files immediately on her behalf – with her representative present as she requested.”

Sources feared the network’s actions could have an impact on Herridge’s First Amendment case because her documents may contain privileged conversations she had with her lawyers or the identities of sources.

Herridge is under fire for not complying with US District Judge Christopher Cooper’s order to reveal how she learned about a federal probe into a Chinese American scientist who operated a graduate program in Virginia. -NY Post

Herridge may also be held in contempt of court for refusing to divulge her source for a Fox News investigative piece in 2017, and could be ordered to pay fines of as much as $5,000 per day.

According to the Post, Herridge clashed with CBS execs over her Hunter Biden coverage – particularly CBS News President Ingrid-Ciprian Matthews who was previously investigated for (and cleared of) hiring discrimination.

The Post‘s second source suggested that Herridge’s files may contain information that could support a wrongful termination lawsuit.

“She was pursuing stories that were unwelcomed by the Biden White House and many Democratic powerhouses,including the Hur report on Joe Biden’s diminished mental capacity, the Biden corruption scandal and the Hunter Biden laptop,” legal scholar Jonathan Turley wrote in The Hill.

According to Turley, CBS’ “heavy-handed” approach with Herridge and her files is “dead wrong.”

It’s also ‘deeply concerning’ to SAG-AFTRA, which represents CBS staffers.

“This action is deeply concerning concerning to the union because it sets a dangerous precedent for all media professionals and threatens the very foundation of the First Amendment,” the union told the Post.

*

Note to readers: Please click the share button above. Follow us on Instagram and Twitter and subscribe to our Telegram Channel. Feel free to repost and share widely Global Research articles.

Featured image is from ZH

All Global Research articles can be read in 51 languages by activating the Translate Website button below the author’s name (only available in desktop version).

To receive Global Research’s Daily Newsletter (selected articles), click here.

Click the share button above to email/forward this article to your friends and colleagues. Follow us on Instagram and Twitter and subscribe to our Telegram Channel. Feel free to repost and share widely Global Research articles.

Big Tech’s Effort to Silence Truth-tellers: Global Research Online Referral Campaign

***

If only we could say that Peter Dutton, Australia’s federal opposition leader and curator of bigoted leanings, was unusual in assuming that granting humanitarian visas to Palestinians might be problematic. But both he, and his skew-eyed spokesman on home affairs, James Patterson, have concluded that votes are in the offing. Refugees may be accepted from the Ukrainian-Russian War, as long as they are Ukrainian, but anything so much as a whiff of a Palestinian fleeing the Israel-Hamas conflict is bound to be concerning.  Ukrainians are noble victims; the latter might be terrorist sympathisers or Hamas militants.

This view started being floated in November last year, when Dutton began warning the public that visitor visas for Palestinians could result in a calamity. (At that point, 860 visas had been issued to Palestinians.) 

“The inadequacy of these checks could result in a catastrophic outcome in our country,” he foamed. “Taking people out of a war zone without conducting the checks, particularly those that are available to us in the US, is reckless.”

No concern was voiced about the possibility that Israelis, who had also been offered 1,793 visas, might pose a problem to the heavenly idyll of Australian security. It is also worth mentioning that Dutton, when home affairs minister, approved over 500 visas a week to Syrians fleeing the civil war. Ditto the granting of 5,000 visas to Afghans the month the Taliban resumed control of Kabul in the aftermath of retreating Western armies.

Dutton’s arithmetic is that of the typical copper: simple, direct, amateurish. Among the Palestinians, “one person, or could be 10 people, I don’t know” might be of concern. His concerns are feverishly listed:

“Have interviews been conducted, do we know people’s ideologies, do we know their interest in the west, why they want to come to Australia.”

This template would be applicable to every group of visitors or migrants seeking to come to Australia at any one point. No one is likely to say on their visa application: “I come to see your new country and hope to commit atrocities.”

Given the number of conflict zones on Planet Earth, Dutton was offering an obtuse statement calculated to boost flagging popularity. It was also timed within a matter of hours after the declaration of a four-day ceasefire in Gaza. While proving, at times, sketchy in her role as Home Affairs Minister, Clare O’Neil was close to the mark in stating that,

“Dutton is a reckless politician who will do and say anything to score political points – even if it puts the national security of Australians at risk.”

But Dutton did not want to be dismissed as a paranoid former police officer who sees criminals everywhere and innocence as a constipated afterthought. 

“The prime minister here needs to hit the pause button – I’m not saying people shouldn’t come at some point – but people should come when all the checks are conducted.”

Again, a strange sentiment, given that visa applicants tend to face a series of tests that are more demanding than most when seeking to visit the Down Under Paradise where perfection is assumed. 

“If a visa applicant is assessed as posing a risk to the health, safety or good order of the Australian community, their visa may be considered for refusal,” were the dull words of a government spokesperson.

With the arrival of irregular migrants on the shores of Western Australia this month, cockeyed bigotry again assumed its role on the podium of Australian politics. Seeking to tie the arrivals as connected with shoddy security credentials, the opposition fanned out the implications of granting up to 2,000 visas for Palestinians, a fact seen as particularly galling to the shadow home affairs minister. 

“In the middle of an unprecedented antisemitism crisis, the government should be taking much greater care in granting visas to people from a war zone run by a terrorist organisation,” bleated Patterson. “How can they possibly assure themselves there is not one Hamas supporter among them?  And how will it help social cohesion if they manage to slip through?”

By this logic, no one should ever leave a war zone, an area of devastation, a territory blighted by terror. You just might be a regime supporter, a sympathiser, despite suffering possible harm, even death. But there is an inadvertent slant coming through in Patterson’s mangled world view: Palestinians, having been maimed, murdered and traumatised, might wish to take out their grievance on a foreign power, possibly one sympathetic to Israel. Ignore the survival imperative, the desire to find, rather than abandon, security; focus, instead, on the motivation for vengeance. Even this view suffers for one obvious point: those wishing to avenge their families and friends are bound to wish to stay in Gaza and the West Bank, rather than flee and plot from afar.

With the current arrivals from Gaza – some 340 or so have managed to drip themselves from the Palestinian territories – the bedwetting fantasies of terror being induced by the opposition seem absurd and callous. But absurdity is a proven calculus for electoral success – at least sometimes.

*

Note to readers: Please click the share button above. Follow us on Instagram and Twitter and subscribe to our Telegram Channel. Feel free to repost and share widely Global Research articles.

Dr. Binoy Kampmark was a Commonwealth Scholar at Selwyn College, Cambridge. He currently lectures at RMIT University. He is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG). Email: [email protected]

All Global Research articles can be read in 51 languages by activating the Translate Website button below the author’s name (only available in desktop version).

To receive Global Research’s Daily Newsletter (selected articles), click here.

Click the share button above to email/forward this article to your friends and colleagues. Follow us on Instagram and Twitter and subscribe to our Telegram Channel. Feel free to repost and share widely Global Research articles.

Big Tech’s Effort to Silence Truth-tellers: Global Research Online Referral Campaign

***

Since 2011 members of British organisations such as MI6 and the Special Air Service (SAS) had been training anti-government forces within Syria, according to the Israeli intelligence outlet Debkafile. These British groups were further supplying weapons and ammunition to the insurgents trying to topple Bashar al-Assad’s government in Damascus, along with providing the opposition forces with SIGINT, that is intelligence accumulated through interception of signals. 

In November 2011 the newspapers Le Canard enchaîné (in Paris) and Milliyet (in Istanbul) reported that personnel from the French foreign intelligence agency, DGSE, and the French Special Operations Command (COS) were involved in operations pertaining to Syria. They had been helping to organise the so-called Free Syrian Army (FSA) and were training anti-government troops and deserters from Syria’s regular army, such as in guerrilla warfare tactics. 

The training camps were located along the Turkish-Syrian border, in north-eastern Lebanon which rests on Syria’s western frontier and also in Tripoli, the Libyan capital, after the fall in 2011 of the country’s long-time leader Muammar Gaddafi. The Free Syrian Army consisted of mercenaries and jihadists brought over from Libya, and Islamic fundamentalists from Al-Qaeda and Salafist and Wahhabi fighters, who had entered Syria through Lebanon and Turkey. 

Sources in the Pentagon stated that the CIA sent large numbers of drones over Syria’s airspace. The CIA drones were keeping track of the location of Syrian government soldiers, and their battles with the enemy which included many thousands of terrorists from Al-Qaeda, Al-Qaeda-linked groups and from Islamic State. 

British and Qatari special forces were present from 2011 in Homs, Syria’s third biggest city, located less than 100 miles north of the capital Damascus. They were partaking in covert operations as military advisers and communications analysts, assisting the anti-government elements by providing them with arms and recruiting mercenaries. 

Islamic jihadists entered Syria who before were living in Scandinavian states like Norway. From October 2012 dozens of men of Muslim origin travelled from Norway to Syria where they fought beside Al-Qaeda members. Kjell Grandhagen, the head of Norway’s military intelligence service (NIS), said he was deeply concerned about this because they routinely chose to join with Al-Qaeda fighters in Syria. 

The China Post, a newspaper based in Taiwan, reported that Uyghur radicals from the region of Xinjiang in north-western China were present in Syria since May 2012 fighting alongside Al-Qaeda and other fundamentalists. The Uyghurs were members of the East Turkestan Islamic Movement (ETIM), a terrorist organisation, and the East Turkistan Education and Solidarity Association, the latter of which the Chinese government believes has links to the ETIM, which has been called the Turkistan Islamic Party. 

Also in 2012 more than 10,000 Libyans were undergoing training in Jordan which has a 230 mile border with Syria. Author Moniz Bandeira outlined that the Libyans were being paid about $1,000 per month by the Saudis and Qataris, to persuade them to partake in the conflict against Assad’s government. 

By October 2012 there were 150 soldiers from the US Special Operations Forces (SOF) in Jordan. Part of the task of the American SOF was to prepare Jordanian forces in the event of war spreading beyond Syria’s borders. 

Through 2011 and beyond, NATO aircraft flying without insignia or coat of arms were landing in Turkish military facilities in the south of the country close to the region of Iskenderun, near Syria’s border. The NATO planes were transporting weapons that had belonged to Gaddafi’s military, along with mercenaries and jihadists from Libya to join the insurgency. 

British special forces continued to co-operate with the opposition, and they were assisted by the CIA and military personnel from the US Special Operations Command (SOCOM). The CIA and SOCOM were using telecommunications devices that enabled the co-ordination of attacks on Syrian soldiers. 

Near the air base at Incirlik in the far south of Turkey, where thousands of American troops are stationed, the insurgents were receiving advanced training with grenade launchers, anti-tank and anti-aircraft weapons and Stinger missiles. General Nikolai Makarov, a top-level Russian commander, said in October 2012 the opposition forces were using portable anti-aircraft missiles including the US-made Stinger missiles. That same month, in the Bustan al-Qasr district of Aleppo, Syrian government units repelled an attack and four Turkish militants were reportedly among those killed. 

In September 2012 around 50 senior intelligence agents from countries like the US, Britain, France and Germany were active along the border between Turkey and Syria. According to Bandeira, American paramilitaries present in the consulate in the southern Turkish city of Adana, and at the Incirlik Air Base in Adana, were conducting covert operations related to Syria with some assistance from Turkey’s intelligence agency (MIT). 

By attempting to overthrow the Syrian government, Al-Qaeda was in effect aligned with the liberal “democracies” of the US, Britain, France and Germany, which among the Western powers had participated most heavily in stoking unrest in Syria. During February 2012 the Al-Qaeda boss Ayman al-Zawahiri released a video in which he called for jihadists from countries like Lebanon, Jordan and Iraq to unite on the battlefronts of Syria with the aim of toppling the “anti-Islamic” Assad government. Zawahiri requested that foreign jihadists assist their Syrian brothers with cash and useful information. 

The US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton acknowledged early in 2012 that Zawahiri was supporting the insurrections in Syria. Undeterred by this she promised the Syrian National Council, an anti-Assad coalition force, that the US would continue furnishing logistical and communications support to the insurgents. 

Washington was aware from classified analysis that most of the Western weapons sent through Saudi Arabia and Qatar ended up in the hands of Islamic fundamentalists. They wanted to recreate the Great Caliphate in Greater Syria, Bilad al-Sham, reaching from the Euphrates river in western Asia to the Mediterranean Sea. The Persian Gulf monarchies, working with the CIA, increased military aid to the insurgents which included dropping weapons from the air. 

The intelligence site Debkafile noted in August 2013 that the US, Israel and Jordan were supporting 30 Syrian opposition groups, some of whom had taken command of the Syrian side of the Quneitra Crossing, the only transit point between Israel and the part of the Golan Heights controlled by Damascus. 

Germany’s foreign intelligence agency (BND) revealed to the German parliament that, in the six-month period from late December 2011, around 90 terrorist attacks occurred in Syria which were carried out by extremists linked to Al-Qaeda and affiliated groups. The BND itself was involved in aiding the anti-government forces in Syria, through such activities as intelligence gathering and the monitoring of military undertakings on the battlefield. 

The methods of terrorism included unprovoked bombing raids and suicide bombings. Among the prominent victims were Syria’s Minister of Defence, Dawoud Rajiha, the country’s former Minister of Defence, Hasan Turkmani, and the Deputy Minister of Defence, Assef Shawkat. They were killed as a result of another unprovoked bomb attack in Damascus on 18 July 2012. Shawkat was also Assad’s brother-in-law. 

Groups such as Ahrar al-Sham and Jabhat al-Nusra, associated with Al-Qaeda, were entering northern Syria where they could conceivably move along the coast towards the Syrian port of Latakia. Until September 2013 the jihadists received 400 tons of armaments from Persian Gulf countries in the space of two years, which included machine-guns, automatic anti-aircraft weapons, and ammunition. 

In June 2013 the prime minister of Jordan, Abdullah Ensour, said that 900 American troops were in Jordan, which it can be recalled borders Syria. Two hundred of these men were involved in training related to chemical warfare, while the other 700 were operating a Patriot missile defence system and F-16 fighter jets which the Americans had deployed to Jordan in June 2013. 

Two months before the US Secretary of Defense, Chuck Hagel, told the Senate Armed Forces Committee regarding Syria that a military intervention in the country was always on the table. He said the US State Department and USAid would assist the “moderate opposition”. 

In early 2012 the Obama administration with the CIA’s knowledge had sanctioned a weapons route, which enabled military hardware from post-Gaddafi Libya to be sent eastwards to Syria to bolster the opposition, many of whom were jihadists and terrorists. In February 2013 Washington pledged $60 million in military aid to anti-Assad forces, while France publicly supported the sending of war materiel to Syria. 

The NATO attack on Libya in March 2011 had been concerned with strengthening the West’s control over the lucrative Mediterranean region, and gaining authority over Libya’s resources, such as its oil reserves which are the largest in Africa. For similar reasons the Western powers were attempting regime change in Syria which like Libya is a Mediterranean state. 

Syria is also of course part of the Middle East, a region rich in raw materials and considered by Western analysts as particularly important. Furthermore, in the waters close to Syria’s western shoreline there is an estimated 122 trillion cubic feet of natural gas and 107 billion barrels of oil. 

By August 2013 American, British and French warships were sailing in the Mediterranean Sea with the potential to attack Syria with tomahawk missiles. Among the warships were five destroyers and an American amphibious transport vessel, the USS San Antonio (LPD-17), with 100 US marines on board and equipped with a helicopter platform. 

The French president Francois Hollande was prepared to go ahead with an invasion of Syria in 2013 together with the US. Yet president Barack Obama was warned by his former Secretary of Defense, Leon Panetta, that Syria was a more challenging and complex problem than Libya. Syria’s territory is less accessible to a major ground assault and the Americans, already involved in other large-scale wars like in Afghanistan, would have needed at least as big a military presence in Syria as they had on Afghan territory. 

Perhaps most importantly of all, a US-led invasion of Syria would have run the risk of direct armed conflict with Russia, which has had a naval facility at the Syrian city of Tartus since the early 1970s. The Russian military presence in Syria has since expanded to Latakia, a short distance north of Tartus. Launching an attack on Syria could also have destabilised most of the Middle East, following the failed US invasion and occupation of Iraq which shares a 380 mile western border with Syria. Obama was preoccupied too with other regions like the Pacific where the Americans have hoped to contain China. 

There were signs that Sunni jihadists fighting against the government in Damascus were co-operating with Sunni jihadists in Iraq, where terrorist atrocities were becoming commonplace. The Israeli military intelligence officer Aviv Kochavi admitted in July 2012 that there was a continuous stream of Al-Qaeda fighters and other radicals entering Syria. 

In parts of north-western Syria, close to the city of Idlib, the black flag frequently used by Al-Qaeda and its allies was raised over numerous checkpoints and municipal and public buildings. These were the “moderate forces” that Western governments and the liberal media insisted were in opposition to Syrian government troops.

*

Note to readers: Please click the share button above. Follow us on Instagram and Twitter and subscribe to our Telegram Channel. Feel free to repost and share widely Global Research articles.

This article was originally published on Geopolitica.RU.

Shane Quinn obtained an honors journalism degree and he writes primarily on foreign affairs and historical subjects. He is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG).

Sources

Luiz Alberto Moniz Bandeira, The Second Cold War: Geopolitics and the Strategic Dimensions of the USA (Springer; 1st edition, 23 June 2017) 

“Free Syrian Army Fighters killed on Lebanon’s border”, Sputnik, 6 October 2012 

“Allaw: Syria’s oil production fell between 20 and 25% because of the sanctions… No company withdraw”, Syrian Oil & Gas News, 1 November 2011 

“900 US troops in Jordan”, Dawn, 23 June 2013 

Luiz Alberto Moniz Bandeira, The World Disorder: US Hegemony, Proxy Wars, Terrorism and Humanitarian Catastrophes (Springer; 1st edition, 4 February 2019) 

Gabriel Kolko, World in Crisis: The End of the American Century (Pluto Press, 20 March 2009)

Featured image is from Geopolitica.RU

---

The Globalization of War: America’s “Long War” against Humanity

Michel Chossudovsky

The “globalization of war” is a hegemonic project. Major military and covert intelligence operations are being undertaken simultaneously in the Middle East, Eastern Europe, sub-Saharan Africa, Central Asia and the Far East. The U.S. military agenda combines both major theater operations as well as covert actions geared towards destabilizing sovereign states.

ISBN Number: 978-0-9879389-0-9

Year: 2015

Pages: 240 Pages

Price: $9.40

Click here to order.

All Global Research articles can be read in 51 languages by activating the Translate Website button below the author’s name (only available in desktop version).

To receive Global Research’s Daily Newsletter (selected articles), click here.

Click the share button above to email/forward this article to your friends and colleagues. Follow us on Instagram and Twitter and subscribe to our Telegram Channel. Feel free to repost and share widely Global Research articles.

Big Tech’s Effort to Silence Truth-tellers: Global Research Online Referral Campaign

***

Denmark is Europe’s number 3 spender for war in Ukraine, after UK and Germany.

Danish newspapers boast about it today. Because Denmark with 6 million people has a much smaller economy than Germany with 80 million and the UK with 60 million, Denmark is, relative to GDP, probably Europe‘s number One spender on Ukraine.

To prove their loyalty to the US to the point of Denmark’s own self-destruction, Denmark’s politicians just gave all Denmark’s artillery including ammunition to Ukraine. Lock, stock, and barrel. Imagine that! Denmark has no artillery left. None. And with no equipment for training and exercises, and endless delivery times for new NATO artillery equipment and ammunition, Denmark may have self-destroyed its artillery capability for 5-10 years. For the next 5-10 years, Denmark’s army will be without effective artillery – and as importance of artillery has been demonstrated by the war in Ukraine, without artillery, Denmark’s army will be defenseless in any big war (which Denmark’s own politicians shout up about coming).

Denmark’s politicians are in reality sacrificing Denmark’s own security just to further their personal careers and please the USA.

Denmark a Leader in the War of Lies and Propaganda

On the 2 year anniversary of the war in Ukraine, I checked newspapers in Denmark, the UK, Germany, France, Sweden, Norway, and of course the US.

No other of the mentioned countries comes even close to the warmongering intensity of the Ukraine war reporting of Denmark’s two leading newspapers.

Denmark’s two leading newspapers “Berlingske Tidende” and “Politiken” are filled to the brim with “experts” and “comments” that Ukraine can go on in the war, that Denmark as part of Europe is about to be overrun by Russia and so on. A demonstration at the Ukrainian embassy to “make Russia pay” is covered as if it was a million people public demonstration – until you down in the text see that only 500 persons (probably all Ukrainian citizens) participated. Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen also gives a long interview to “Berlingske Tidende” dedicated to support for Ukraine’s continuation of its lost fight. PM Mette Frederiksen’s choice of outlet for her war propaganda is a message in itself. As a Social Democrat leader, it would have been the logical choice for PM Mette Frederiksen to give an interview with Denmark’s biggest “Liberal” newspaper “Politiken” – but having a defense propagandistic intention with the interview, PM Mette Frederiksen instead chose to give her interview with “Berlingske Tidende”, the newspaper which is Denmark’s traditionally conservative supporter of military and defense. Louder than most even EU leaders, PM Mette Frederiksen claims that “Ukraine can still win”, claims that all of the EU is in mortal danger – basically, Denmark’s PM Mette Frederiksen tells the Danes, that they have to give up social benefits to pay for an immense militarization of Denmark.

The level of Denmark’s war-cheering and denial of reality just as NATO is losing its Ukraine war is stunning – but should come as no surprise. 

Denmark the Loyal Vassal

Denmark “delivered” the highest number of dead soldiers relative to its population size in Afghanistan. Denmark participates in the US electronic spying on European allies, incl. Germany. When the US wanted to shelter one of Saddam’s generals, Denmark supplied a village for the purpose. When the CIA wanted a host country for the television activity of an “Arab independence” terror group operating in Iran, Denmark delivered the perfect cover. Denmark has all the underwater surveillance around the island of Bornholm, where the Nordstream was sabotaged close by. Any crab or hering moving is monitored – Denmark was complicit. The critic French analyst Emmanuel Todd regards Denmark as the 6th members of America’s “Five Eyes” spy network.

In spite of being pulled in its strings by Washington’s neoconservative circles, Denmark with its Social Democratic image manages to uphold the lie of its morality image. In the “Global South”, many are still fooled by Denmark’s “do-good” image. But make no mistake.

Denmark is one of the most important and 200% controlled US assets. Not because of Denmark’s size, but precisely because of Denmark’s “moral” image and above all the widely unrecognized role Denmark plays for the USA.

This goes back 80 years when the US wanted an offensive missile base to fire nuclear rockets on Russia (then the Soviet Union), Denmark gladly supplied the territory of Greenland for the purpose – in spite of Denmark officially always having declared itself “nuclear-free”. So much for Denmark’s “talk peace – act war” hypocrisy.

*

Note to readers: Please click the share button above. Follow us on Instagram and Twitter and subscribe to our Telegram Channel. Feel free to repost and share widely Global Research articles. 

Karsten Riise is a Master of Science (Econ) from Copenhagen Business School and has a university degree in Spanish Culture and Languages from Copenhagen University. He is the former Senior Vice President and Chief Financial Officer (CFO) of Mercedes-Benz in Denmark and Sweden.

He is a regular contributor to Global Research. 

All Global Research articles can be read in 51 languages by activating the Translate Website button below the author’s name (only available in desktop version).

To receive Global Research’s Daily Newsletter (selected articles), click here.

Click the share button above to email/forward this article to your friends and colleagues. Follow us on Instagram and Twitter and subscribe to our Telegram Channel. Feel free to repost and share widely Global Research articles.

Big Tech’s Effort to Silence Truth-tellers: Global Research Online Referral Campaign

***

Reporting on Julian Assange’s extradition hearings has become a vocation that has now stretched over five years. From the very first hearing, when Justice Snow called Assange “a narcissist” before Julian had said anything whatsoever other than to confirm his name, to the last, when Judge Swift had simply in 2.5 pages of glib double-spaced A4 dismissed a tightly worded 152-page appeal from some of the best lawyers on earth, it has been a travesty and charade marked by undisguised institutional hostility.

We were now on last orders in the last chance saloon, as we waited outside the Royal Courts of Justice for the appeal for a right of final appeal.

The architecture of the Royal Courts of Justice was the great last gasp of the Gothic revival; having exhausted the exuberance that gave us the beauty of St Pancras Station and the Palace of Westminster, the movement played out its dreary last efforts at whimsy in shades of grey and brown, valuing scale over proportion and mistaking massive for medieval. As intended, the buildings are a manifestation of the power of the state; as not intended, they are also an indication of the stupidity of large scale power.

Court number 5 had been allocated for this hearing. It is one of the smallest courts in the building. Its largest dimension is its height. It is very high, and lit by heavy mock medieval chandeliers hung by long cast iron chains from a ceiling so high you can’t really see it. You expect Robin Hood to suddenly leap from the gallery and swing across on the chandelier above you. The room is very gloomy; the murky dusk hovers menacingly above the lights like a miasma of despair; below them you peer through the weak light to make out the participants.

A huge tiered walnut dais occupies half the room, with the judges seated at its apex, their clerks at the next level down, and lower lateral wings reaching out, at one side housing journalists and at the other a huge dock for the prisoner or prisoners, with a massy iron cage that looks left over from a production of The Hunchback of Notre Dame.

This is in fact the most modern part of the construction; caging defendants in medieval style is a Blair era introduction to the so-called process of law.

Rather incongruously, the clerks’ tier was replete with computer hardware, with one of the two clerks operating behind three different computer monitors and various bulky desktop computers, with heavy cables twisting in all directions like sea kraits making love. The computer system seems to bring the court into the 1980’s, and the clerk behind it looked uncannily like a member of a synthesiser group of that era, right down to the upwards pointing haircut.

In period keeping, this computer feed to an overflow room did not really work, which led to a number of halts in proceedings.

All the walls are lined with high bookcases, housing thousands of leather bound volumes of old cases. The stone floor peeks out for one yard between the judicial dais and the storied wooden pews, with six tiers of increasingly narrow seating. The barristers occupied the first tier and their instructing solicitors the second, with their respective clients on the third. Up to ten people per line could squeeze in, with no barriers on the bench between opposing parties, so the Assange family was squashed up against the CIA, State Department and UK Home Office representatives.

That left three tiers for media and public, about thirty people. There was however a wooden gallery above which housed perhaps twenty more. With little fuss and with genuine helpfulness and politeness, the court staff – who from the Clerk of Court down were magnificent – had sorted out the hundreds of those trying to get in, and we had the UN Special Rapporteur on Torture, we had 16 Members of the European Parliament, we had MPs from several states, we had NGOs including Reporter Without Borders, we had the Haldane Society of Socialist Lawyers, and we had, (checks notes) me, all inside the Court.

I should say this was achieved despite the extreme of official unhelpfulness from the Ministry of Justice, who had refused official admission and recognition to all of the above, including the United Nations. It was pulled together on the day by the police, court staff and the magnificent Assange volunteers led by Jamie. I should also acknowledge Jim, who with others spared me the queue all night in the street which I had undertaken at the International Court of Justice, by volunteering to do it for me.

This sketch captures the tiny non-judicial portion of the court brilliantly. Paranoid and irrational regulations prevent publication of photos or screenshots.

My rough sketch while trying to listen on a difficult audio feed.

At front two Counsels for #Assange, to right behind them Gareth Perice, then from right John Shipton, @GabrielShipton, @Stella_Assange, behind them @ChrisLynnHedges. Also saw @CraigMurrayOrg and @suigenerisjen. pic.twitter.com/pNI2mHMRHW

— Matt Ó Branáin (@MattOBranain) February 20, 2024

The acoustics of the court are simply terrible. We are all behind the barristers as they stood addressing the judges, and their voices were at the same time muffled yet echoing from the bare stone walls.

I did not enter with a great deal of hope. As I have explained in How the Establishment Functions, judges do not have to be told what decision is expected by the Establishment. They inhabit the same social milieu as ministers, belong to the same institutions, attend the same schools, go to the same functions.

The United States’ appeal against the original blocking of Assange’s extradition was granted by a Lord Chief Justice who is the former room-mate, and still best friend, of the minister who organised the removal of Julian from the Ecuadorean Embassy.

The blocking of Assange’s appeal was done by Judge Swift, a judge who used to represent the security services, and said they were his favourite clients. In the subsequent Graham Phillips case, where Mr Phillips was suing the Foreign Commonwealth and Development Office (FCDO) for sanctions being imposed upon him without any legal case made against him, Swift actually met FCDO officials – one of the parties to the case – and discussed matters relating to it privately with them before giving judgment. He did not tell the defence he had done this. They found out, and Swift was forced to recuse himself.

Personally I am surprised Swift is not in jail, let alone still a High Court judge. But then what do I know of justice?

The Establishment politico-legal nexus was on even more flagrant display today. Presiding was Dame Victoria Sharp, whose brother Richard had arranged an £800,000 loan for then Prime Minister Boris Johnson and immediately been appointed Chairman of the BBC, (the UK’s state propaganda organ). Assisting her was Justice Jeremy Johnson, another former barrister representing MI6.

By an amazing coincidence, Justice Johnson had been brought in seamlessly to replace his fellow ex-MI6 hiree Justice Swift, and find for the FCDO in the Graham Phillips case!

And here these two were now to judge Julian!

What a lovely, cosy club is the Establishment! How ordered and predictable! We must bow down in awe at its majesty and near divine operation. Or go to jail.

Well, Julian is in jail, and we stood ready for his final shot for an appeal. We all stood up and Dame Victoria took her place. In the murky permanent twilight of the courtroom, her face was illuminated from below by the comparatively bright light of a computer monitor. It gave her a grey, spectral appearance, and the texture and colour of her hair merged into the judicial wig seamlessly. She seems to hover over us as a disturbingly ethereal presence.

Her colleague, Justice Johnson, for some reason was positioned as far to her right as physically possible. When they wished to confer he had to get up and walk. The lighting arrangements did not appear to cater for his presence at all, and at times he merged into the wall behind him.

Dame Victoria opened by stating that the court had given Julian permission to attend in person or to follow on video, but he was too unwell to do either. After that disturbing news, Edward Fitzgerald KC rose to open the case for the defence to be allowed an appeal.

There is a crumpled magnificence about Mr Fitzgerald. He speaks with great authority and a moral certainty that compels belief. At the same time he appears so large and well-meaning, so absent of vanity or pretence, that it is like watching Paddington Bear in a legal gown. He is a walking caricature of Edward Fitzgerald.

Barristers’ wigs have tight rolls of horsehair stuck to a mesh that stretches over the head. In Mr Fitzgerald’s case, the mesh has to be stretched so far to cover his enormous brain, that the rolls are pulled apart, and dot his head like hair curlers on a landlady.

Fitzgerald opened with a brief headline summary of what the defence would argue, in identifying legal errors by Judge Swift and Magistrate Baraitser, that meant an appeal was viable and should be heard.

Firstly, extradition for a political offence was explicitly excluded under the UK/US Extradition Treaty which was the basis for the proposed extradition. The charge of espionage was a pure political offence, recognised as such by all legal authorities, and Wikileaks’ publications had been to a political end, and even resulted in political change, so were protected speech.

Baraitser and Swift were wrong to argue that the Extradition Treaty was not incorporated in UK domestic law and therefore “not justiciable”, because extradition against its terms engaged Article V of the European Convention (on Human Rights on Abuse of Process) and Article X (on Freedom of Speech).

The Wikileaks revelations had revealed serious state illegality by the government of the United States, up to and including war crimes. It was therefore protected speech.

Article III and Article VII of the ECHR were also engaged because in 2010 Assange could not possibly have predicted a prosecution under the Espionage Act, as this had never been done before despite a long history in the USA of reporters publishing classified information in national security journalism. The “offence” was therefore unforeseeable. Assange was being “Prosecuted for engaging in the normal journalistic practice of obtaining and publishing classified information”.

The possible punishment in the United States was entirely disproportionate, with a total possible jail sentence of 175 years for those “offences” charged so far.

Assange faced discrimination on grounds of nationality, which would make extradition unlawful. US authorities had declared he would not be entitled to First Amendment protection in the United States because he is not a US citizen.

There was no guarantee further charges would not be brought more serious than those which had already been laid, in particular with regard to the Vault 7 publication of CIA secret technological spying techniques. In this regard, the United States had not provided assurances the death penalty could not be invoked.

The CIA had made plans to kidnap, drug and even to kill Mr Assange. This had been made plain by the testimony of Protected Witness 2 and confirmed by the extensive Yahoo News publication. Therefore Assange would be delivered to authorities who could not be trusted not to take extrajudicial action against him.

Finally, the Home Secretary had failed to take into account all these due factors in approving the extradition.

Fitzgerald then moved into the unfolding of each of these arguments, opening with the fact that the US/UK Extradition Treaty specifically excludes extradition for political offences, at Article IV.

 

 

Fitzgerald said that espionage was the “quintessential” political offence, acknowledged as such in every textbook and precedent. The court did have jurisdiction over this point because ignoring the provisions of the treaty rendered the court liable to accusations of abuse of process.

He noted that neither Swift nor Baraitser had made any judgment on whether or not the offences charged were political, relying on the argument the treaty did not apply anyway.

But the entire extradition depended on the treaty. It was made under the treaty. “You cannot rely on the treaty, and then refute it”.

This point brought the first overt reaction from the judges, as they looked at each other to wordlessly communicate what they had made of it. It was a point of which they had felt the force.

Fitzgerald continued that when the 2003 Extradition Act, on which the Treaty depended, had been presented to Parliament, ministers had assured parliament that people would not be extradited for political offences. Baraitser and Swift had said that the 2003 Act had deliberately not had a clause forbidding extradition for political offences. Fitzgerald said you could not draw that inference from an absence. There was nothing in the text permitting extradition for political offences. It was silent on the point.

Nothing in the Act precluded the court from determining that an extradition contrary to the terms of the treaty under which the extradition was taking place, would be a breach of process. In the United States, there had been cases where extradition to the UK under the treaty had been prevented by the courts because of the ‘no political extradition’ clause. That must apply at both ends.

Of the UK’s 158 extradition treaties, 156 contained a ban on extradition for political offences. This was plainly systematic and entrenched policy. It could not be meaningless in all these treaties. Furthermore this was the opposite of a novel argument. There were a great many authoritative cases, stretching back centuries, in the UK, US, Ireland, Canada, Australia and many other countries in which “no political extradition” was firmly established jurisprudence. It could not suddenly be “not justiciable”.

It was not only justiciable, it had been very extensively adjudicated.

All of the offences charged were as “espionage” except for one. That “hacking” charge, of helping Chelsea Manning in receiving classified documents, even if it were true, was plainly a similar allegation of a form of espionage activity.

The indictment describes Wikileaks as a “non-state hostile intelligence agency”. That was plainly an accusation of espionage. This is self-evidently a politically motivated prosecution for a political offence.

Julian Assange is a person in political conflict with the view of the United States, who seeks to affect the policies and operations of the US government.

Section 87 of the Extradition Act 2003 provides that a court must interpret it in the light of the defendant’s human rights as enshrined in the European Convention of Human Rights. This definitely brings in the jurisdiction of the court. It means all the issues raised must be viewed through the prism of the ECHR and from no other angle.

 

 

To depend on the treaty yet ignore its terms is abuse of process and contrary to the ECHR. The obligation in UK law to respect the terms of the extradition treaty with the USA while administering an extradition under it, was comparable to the obligation courts had found to follow the Modern Slavery Convention and Refugee Convention.

Mark Summers KC then arose to continue the case for Assange. A dark and pugnacious character, he could be well cast as Heathcliff. Summers is as blunt and direct as Fitzgerald is courteous. His points are not so much hammered home, as piledriven.

This prosecution, Summers began, was “intended to prohibit and punish the exposure of state level crime”. The extradition hearing had heard unchallenged evidence of this from many witnesses. The speech in question was thus protected speech. This extradition was not only contrary to the US/UK Extradition Treaty of 2007, it was also plainly contrary to Section 81 of the Extradition Act of 2003.

 

 

This prosecution was motivated by a desire to punish and suppress political opinion, contrary to the Act. It could be shown plainly to be a political prosecution. It had not been brought until years after the proposed offence; the initiation of the charges had been motivated by the International Criminal Court stating that they were using the Wikileaks publications as evidence of war crimes. That had been immediately followed by US government denunciation of Wikileaks and Assange, by the designation as a non-state hostile intelligence agency, and even by the official plot to kidnap, poison, rendition or assassinate Assange. That had all been sanctioned by President Trump.

This prosecution therefore plainly bore all of the hallmarks of political persecution.

The magistrates’ court had heard unchallenged evidence that the Wikileaks material from Chelsea Manning contained evidence of assassination, rendition, torture, dark prisons and drone killings by the United States. The leaked material had in fact been relied on with success in legal actions in many foreign courts and in Strasbourg itself.

The disclosures were political because the avowed intention was to effect political change. Indeed they had caused political change, for example in the Rules of Engagement for forces in Iraq and Afghanistan and in ending drone killings in Pakistan. Assange had been highly politically acclaimed at the time of the publications. He had been invited to address both the EU and the UN.

The US government had made no response to any of the extensive evidence of United States state level criminality given in the hearing. Yet Judge Baraitser had totally ignored all of it in her ruling. She had not referred to United States criminality at all.

At this point Judge Sharp interrupted to ask where they would find references to these acts of criminality in the evidence, and Summers gave some very terse pointers, through clenched teeth.

Summers continued that in law it is axiomatic that the exposure of state level criminality is a political act. This was protected speech. There were an enormous number of cases across many jurisdictions which indicate this. The criminality presented in this appeal was tolerated and even approved by the very highest levels of the United States government. Publication of this evidence by Mr Assange, absent any financial motive for him to do so, was the very definition of a political act. He was involved, beyond dispute, in opposition to the machinery of government of the United States.

This extradition had to be barred under Section 81 of the Extradition Act because its entire purpose was to silence those political opinions. Again, there were numerous cases on record of how courts should deal, under the European Convention, with states reacting to people who had revealed official criminality.

In the judgment being appealed Judge Baraitser did not address the protected nature of speech exposing state criminality at all. That was plainly an error in law.

Baraitser had also been in error of fact in stating that it was “Purely conjecture and speculation” that the revelation of US war crimes had led to this prosecution. This ignored almost all of the evidence before the court.

The court had been given evidence of United States interference with judicial procedure over US war crimes in Spain, Poland, Germany and Italy. The United States had insulated its own officials from ICC jurisdiction. It had actively threatened both the institutions and employees, of the ICC and of official bodies of other states. All of this had been explained in detail in expert evidence and had been unchallenged. All of it had been ignored by Baraitser.

Following the publication of the Manning material, there had been six years of non-prosecution of Assange. Why was there then a prosecution after six years? What had changed?

Following the declaration by the International Criminal Court that it would use Wikileaks material to investigate US government officials for war crimes, US officials described Assange as “a political actor”. This period saw the origin of the phrase “non-state hostile intelligence agency”. Assange had been accused of “working with Russia” and “trying to take down the USA”.

Baraitser had acknowledged in her judgment the hostility from the CIA but stated that “the CIA does not speak on behalf of the US administration”.

It was important to note that it was after the Baraitser judgment that Yahoo News had published its investigation into the US government plot against Assange.

*

Note to readers: Please click the share button above. Follow us on Instagram and Twitter and subscribe to our Telegram Channel. Feel free to repost and share widely Global Research articles.

Featured image is from Lawyers for Assange

All Global Research articles can be read in 51 languages by activating the Translate Website button below the author’s name (only available in desktop version).

To receive Global Research’s Daily Newsletter (selected articles), click here.

Click the share button above to email/forward this article to your friends and colleagues. Follow us on Instagram and Twitter and subscribe to our Telegram Channel. Feel free to repost and share widely Global Research articles.

Big Tech’s Effort to Silence Truth-tellers: Global Research Online Referral Campaign

***

On November 6, 2023, Èzili Dantò’s Haitian Lawyers Leadership Network and Evel Fanfan’s Actions of Organizations Motivated for a Haiti Ruled by Law (AUMOHD), filed a lawsuit against the unelected Ariel Henry’s defacto Haiti Government for requesting foreign troops to deploy to Haiti in violation of the Haiti Constitution and Haiti sovereignty. See PDF of Press Release, and the original complaint in French, registered in the High Court of Port au Prince, No. I 3970329 (PDF of original filing) and, english translation below. (See also, Kenya Court Delays Troop Deployment To Haiti After U.N. Security Council Resolution.)

Click here to read the English translation.

*

Note to readers: Please click the share button above. Follow us on Instagram and Twitter and subscribe to our Telegram Channel. Feel free to repost and share widely Global Research articles. 

Featured image is from Haiti News

All Global Research articles can be read in 51 languages by activating the Translate Website button below the author’s name (only available in desktop version).

To receive Global Research’s Daily Newsletter (selected articles), click here.

Click the share button above to email/forward this article to your friends and colleagues. Follow us on Instagram and Twitter and subscribe to our Telegram Channel. Feel free to repost and share widely Global Research articles.

Big Tech’s Effort to Silence Truth-tellers: Global Research Online Referral Campaign

***

Introduction

Israel has been engaged in a campaign of genocide in the Gaza Strip (GS) since 7/10/2023, striving to destroy everything that could sustain human life in the region. This includes targeting Palestinian lives and destroying homes, healthcare facilities, infrastructure, schools, universities, mosques, churches, bakeries, shops and refugee camps.

The genocide perpetrated by Israel necessitates justifications to the international community, achieved through the dehumanization and demonization of victims via false testimonies and allegations against Palestinians. These narratives are extensively propagated in the Western world, persisting without retractions or apologies despite their debunking.

Israel’s objective extends beyond seeking justice, as it claims, rather, it aims to solidify its aggressive settler colonialism in Palestine, prioritizing the Judaization of the land and its inhabitants over the plight of Palestinians.

Israeli allegations against Palestinian resistance forces and GS residents involved in Operation al-Aqsa Flood on 7/10/2023, were diverse. These claims, orchestrated by organized entities within Israel’s government, aimed to justify its assault on GS and globally vilify Palestinian resistance, despite lacking validity.

Despite most of the claims against Palestinians being refuted, Israel launched an international campaign in mid-November 2023 to compile files against Palestinians involved in the events of 7/10/2023, in anticipation of criminal prosecution. Israel disseminated false and fabricated information through sympathetic journalists, accounts and websites to garner global public opinion support for its GS war. This article will address some of these allegations and present evidence to debunk them.

First: The Killing of Civilians and Hannibal Protocol

It has been over three months since Operation al-Aqsa Flood led by the Islamic Resistance Movement (Hamas) on 7/10/2023, in which approximately 1,139 people were killed according to the latest and non-final Israeli official statistics. This number has been repeatedly and gradually adjusted by Israel, initially reported as 1,405 killed, then reduced to 1,200, claiming that the difference is due to bodies later identified as belonging to Hamas due to charring. This suggests that Israel initially included around 200 Palestinian fatalities among its killed civilians, leveraging them in its international media campaign to gain sympathy and justify its actions against GS. This is also evidence of the Israeli forces’ use of brutal methods in killing people at the time, to the extent that they did not distinguish between Jewish and Palestinian casualties in their tallies due to body charring. This proves that Israeli airstrikes and artillery shelling killed “civilian” Israelis, as the Qassam Brigades do not possess weapons capable of killing and burning such numbers.

As it seems, the majority of civilians killed on that day can be attributed to the implementation of the Israeli military leadership’s Hannibal Directive. This directive operates on the principle of “a dead soldier is better than a kidnapped one,” believing that the abduction of soldiers imposes an exceedingly high cost on Israel, which it must pay to secure their release. The directive allows for indiscriminate fire if a soldier is captured, with the intention of killing both the captors and the captive, as precisely done by the Israeli forces on 7/10/2023. They launched rockets at populated areas to repel the attackers, resulting in the killing and burning of numerous Israeli and Palestinian civilians, as reported by international and Israeli media outlets.

An investigative report published on Ynet website, on 12/1/2024 revealed that the Israeli military high command ordered all units on 7/10/2023 to prevent the abduction of Israeli citizens “at all costs,” “even if this means risking or harming the lives of civilians in the area, including the abductees themselves.” The report disclosed that about 70 vehicles driven by Palestinians returning to GS “were shot by a combat helicopter, an anti-tank missile or a tank,” many of which contained Israeli captives.

The New York Times newspaper extensively detailed, in an investigative report, the deaths of 12 Israeli settlers, when Brig. Gen. Barak Hiram, overseeing the Israeli operations aimed at reclaiming the Be’eri settlement and its vicinity, instructed the tank commander, “Break in, even if it means civilian casualties,” thus urging Israeli forces to overpower the Palestinian militants who held 14 captives in one of the houses. Israeli Channel 12 broadcasted footage captured by a military helicopter showing an Israeli tank firing at a civilian house in the Be’eri settlement. Furthermore, at the site of one of the clashes on October 7 at Kibbutz Kfar Aza, Col. Golan Vach, the commander of an Israeli search and rescue team, told the press that in one destroyed house, they discovered 15 people dead, including 8 infants, but also admitted, “The destruction is a result of the attack by our tanks. Since these houses were seized by Hamas, we had to reclaim the entire settlement. It wouldn’t have been possible without tanks.” Additionally, during a Channel 12 interview on 24/11/2023, young, inexperienced female tank operators, aged around 20 years old, who were directed to enter the Holit settlement, confessed that they were instructed to fire regardless of the circumstances.

Multiple survivors have provided accounts confirming the sighting of Israeli helicopters and tanks firing at the settlements. These include the testimony of Erez Tidhar, a military veteran who was on October 7 as a rescue and evacuation volunteer for the Eitam unit, as well as the statement of a former Israeli captive Doron Katz-Asher, released during an exchange operation. Katz-Asher recounted the Israeli army’s firing at the tractor transporting her to GS, killing her mother and leaving her and her daughter wounded.

Image: Yasmin Porat

Yasmin Porat, one of only two survivors of the Israeli attack on a house in the Be’eri settlement testified to Israeli State Radio Kan that Palestinian resistance members treated them “very humanely.” However, the Israeli army, ordered by Barak Hiram, ended the confrontation by deliberately shelling the entire house, despite the captives still being inside. Porat reported that among the casualties was 12-year-old Liel Hatsroni, whose image Israeli officials later used in propaganda, falsely claiming that she was burned alive by Hamas. Former Prime Minister Naftali Bennett also alleged that “She was murdered just because she’s Jewish.”

Family members of Israelis killed by Israeli tank fire demanded in a letter to the Israeli army Chief of Staff Lt. Gen. Herzi Halevi to conduct a “comprehensive and transparent probe into the decisions and actions that led to this tragic outcome.”

Reports by The Electronic Intifada website confirm that a significant number of Israeli civilians killed on 7/10/2023 were victims of Israeli attacks rather than Palestinian actions. By the end of that day, Israeli drone squadron 161 alone “performed no fewer than 110 attacks on some 1,000 targets, most of which were inside Israel,” following an initial assault, in the first four hours, in which “helicopters and fighter craft attacked about 300 targets, most in Israeli territory.”

On 15/10/2023, Ynet reported that

“28 combat helicopters fired over the course of a day,” with Apache pilots skipping “all the restrictions.” “A large part of the fire direction and receiving the targets from the forces fighting in the field reached the pilots through phone calls or sending pictures on WhatsApp,” leading to the launch of hundreds of 30mm cannon shells as well as Hellfire missiles.

In an article published by Haaretz newspaper on 18/11/2023, and according to Israeli police, 364 people were killed at the Nova festival out of 4,400 were present at the event. The investigation revealed that an Israeli combat helicopter arrived at the scene and fired at resistance forces, also hitting some of the revelers who were there. The Israeli security establishment assessed that Palestinian resistance forces did not know in advance about the festival.

Second: Claim of Killing Children

Although the falsehood of a claim has been proven, it sparked widespread outrage upon its publication, with the Israeli side exploiting it to manipulate inaccurate stances. On 10/10/2023, Nicole Zedeck, a correspondent for i24News, alleged that the Palestinian resistance had decapitated babies and that “About 40 babies were taken out on gurneys” in the Kfar Aza settlement. Soon after that, prominent international media outlets, such as sites of FOX News and NBC Montana; the New York Post and The Times newspapers; and site of Mailonline; in addition to CNN news channel, and the Daily Express, The Independent, Metro and The Daily Telegraph newspapers, all echoed this misleading assertion despite the lack of any official Israeli confirmation. Consequently, it created a widespread belief in the Western world that Hamas had perpetrated significant atrocities, influencing political decisions and public sentiment in these countries. This was not only unjust to Palestinian resistance but also harmed the Palestinian people, who endured atrocious attacks based on these inaccurate reports.

'About 40 babies were taken out on gurneys… Cribs overturned, strollers left behind, doors left wide open'

Our correspondent @Nicole_Zedek continues to survey the horror scenes left behind in Kibbutz Kfar Aza where Hamas invaded and murdered dozens of Israelis in their homes pic.twitter.com/ZZCwDGkV8z

— i24NEWS English (@i24NEWS_EN) October 10, 2023

It also sparked significant global concern, especially after President Joe Biden asserted that he had seen “confirmed pictures of terrorists beheading children.” However, the White House spokesperson later refuted Biden’s personal viewing of the pictures, clarifying that

“The president based his comments about the alleged atrocities on the claims from Netanyahu’s spokesman and media reports from Israel.”

The investigative news site The Grayzone reported on 11/10/2023 that it has identified a key source of that claim,

“He is David Ben Zion, a Deputy Commander of Unit 71 of the Israeli army who also happens to be an extremist settler leader who incited violent riots against Palestinians,” and demanded a Palestinian town be “wiped out.”

Despite some media outlets retracting the story, the majority of its negative impact had already taken hold. Removing it from the minds of many who had been exposed to it, even from those newspapers and sources that later denied its accuracy, became challenging.

Colonel Golan Vach, a commander of the IDF National Rescue Unit, stated on 17/10/2023 that “he had carried the bodies of decapitated babies” in Kfar Aza settlement. Also, Retired Lt. Col. Yaron Buskila, a member of the Israel Defense and Security Forum (IDSF), an organization founded by retired army generals that advocates (particularly on the international level) for the idea that peace in Israel can only be achieved through force, stated to The Epoch Times, an extreme right-wing international newspaper, that he spoke to a rabbi who reportedly visited the Kfar Aza settlement and told him that he saw decapitated children.

These allegations have been repeated by well-known Israeli organizations and institutions known for their lack of accuracy and credibility, such as the ZAKA organization and United Hatzalah.

On the other hand, official Israeli institutions have proven these allegations to be false. The National Insurance Institute of Israel (NII) published on its website on 9/11/2023 a list of 695 Israeli civilians who were killed on 7/10/2023 (and in the days that followed), along with their IDs and the circumstances of their deaths. Among them were 36 minors, 20 of whom were under the age of 15, including seven children under the age of ten. Ten were killed as a result of rocket attacks. According to NII, 46 civilians were killed in Kfar Aza, the youngest of whom was 14 years old. Only one infant girl, Mila Cohen (ten months old), along with her father and grandmother, was killed in Be’er Sheva. Her mother survived, and the perpetrator of her murder has not been identified.

The Israeli newspaper Haaretz denied, in a report, the allegations of beheaded babies and burnt babies on 7/10/2023, affirming that such a narrative is untrue and lacks evidence. It mentioned that “Most of the other children who were murdered were killed in or near their homes, usually with other family members,” and confirmed that there is no evidence that children from several families were murdered together, rendering inaccurate Netanyahu’s remark to President Biden that Hamas forces “took dozens of children, tied them up, burned them and executed them.” Haaretz stated, after examining each victim’s name individually, that the total number of casualties is 1,219, including 1,105 killed on 7/10/2023; 851 civilians (including 32 children aged between 4-17 years and a 10-month-old infant), and 368 Israeli soldiers.

Therefore, these Israeli claims are false and inaccurate, and several media outlets and journalists have retracted reports they published regarding the allegation of beheaded babies. Among them is CNN channel, whose correspondent Sara Sidner apologized for reporting the news. The White House also retracted the statement made by Biden, and the Israeli army spokesperson to Anadolu Agency stated that the army does “not have any details or confirmation about that.” Israeli journalist Yishai Cohen also deleted an interview he had posted on the X platform, which included claims that dead “Babies and children were hung on a cloth line in a row,” during the attack launched by Palestinian resistance on Israeli settlements in the Gaza envelope on 7/10/2023. Cohen clarified, in tweets he posted on 29/11/2023 on the social media site X, that

“The interview was offered to me by the IDF spokesperson. I did not know the interviewee [Yaron Buskila] before. A representative of DoC was present in all the filming and approved the broadcast.”

Furthermore, Chaim Otmazgin, head of Zaka’s “special forces,” in a statement to Agence France-Presse (AFP), admitted that the organization’s volunteers “sometimes misinterpreted what they saw.” Whereas Haaretz published a report exposing Zaka’s “cases of negligence, misinformation and a fundraising campaign that used the dead as props,” and that Zaka “was entangled in debts of millions of shekels,” while noting that since October 7, “says a source at Zaka, they have raised over 50 million shekels ($13.7 million).” Additionally, Otmazgin, who “serves in the Home Front Command’s rescue unit” was highlighted for having “played a central role in the association between the organization and the IDF.”

Third: Claim of Killing Pregnant Women and Fetuses

On 24/10/2023, Yossi Landau, head of the Zaka organization in southern Israel, made false claims to various international media outlets, including the German daily newspaper Bild asserting that he found the body of a pregnant woman with a gunshot wound to her head and her abdomen cut open to remove the fetus. Landau specified to Haaretz the location where he purportedly witnessed this incident. However, survivors interviewed by the Israeli newspaper from the same building contradicted Landau’s account, stating that there was no pregnant woman. Despite attempts by CheckNews, a fact-checking website launched by the French newspaper Libération, to contact Landau, no response was received. Nevertheless, Israeli authorities emphasized Landau’s testimony, and the Israeli embassy in the United States shared it on X/Twitter and Instagram on 27/10/2023.

In her article published on 22/11/2023, in Newsweek magazine, Michal Herzog, the wife of Israeli President Isaac Herzog, referred to this testimony and falsely claimed that there is a video showing Palestinians in one of the settlements “torturing a pregnant woman and removing her fetus.” However, it later became apparent that “the images are in reality taken from a video shared in 2018, which allegedly shows the abuse committed by a Mexican cartel.” Asked by CheckNews, the Israeli presidency implicitly acknowledged its mistake and attempted to evade by defending the Zaka organization claiming that its witness “was not able to answer us due to the traumas experienced”! But according to a source within the forensic services involved in the identification of the October 7 casualties, no one corresponding to this description would have been taken care of, and this decisively proves the falsehood of the Israeli claim.

Several other dubious or disproven stories have as their source another non-governmental organization, United Hatzalah, whose manager Eli Beer recounted to the Republican Jewish Coalition in Las Vegas, USA, on 28/10/2023, stories that were later proven to be false. On 15/11/2023, Sara Netanyahu, the wife of the Israeli Prime Minister, wrote to several “first ladies”, including the wife of the President of the United States, Jill Biden, a message containing false and inflammatory content, alleging that “One of the kidnapped women was pregnant. She gave birth to her baby while a Hamas prisoner.” This letter was widely relayed by numerous Israeli and western media. On 18/11/2023, three days later, the British tabloid Daily Mail published an article claiming that a Thai woman, hostage of Hamas, had given birth in captivity. Information denied in the following days by the family of the hostage in question. None of the women released were pregnant or had just given birth.

Channel 13 journalist Raviv Drucker refuted many Israeli claims on 25/1/2024, and asked journalist Micky Rosenthal, who was with him on the program, about the reason behind using these false statements. Rosenthal replied, “to increase the magnitude of hatred for Hamas.” As Rosenthal put it, “The war is not only military, not only political, it’s mainly media.”

Fourth: Claims of Rape Crimes

On 18/11/2023, CNN aired a report by journalist Jake Tapper. The report claims to provide testimonies on “rape crimes” against Israeli women that allegedly took place on 7/10/2023. The CNN report begins with an interview with Cochav Elkayam-Levy. She is identified as an “expert in human rights law who organized a civil committee to document evidence.” The speaker is indeed an expert, but not of human rights law, according to a report on Mondoweiss website, on 1/12/2023, she had a post for the Israeli government’s Attorney General’s Office in the International Law Department. She has tight connections with the National Security Council for the Israeli Prime Minister. Elkayam-Levy is also the founder and director of the “Dvora Institute,” which works as a close advisory body to the Israeli prime minister’s “National Security Council.” However, in her interview, which opens the CNN report, Elkayam-Levy presents nothing but justifications for the absence of evidence and facts.

A CNN report presented a video of an Israeli soldier, showing his back only, identified by the letter “G,” claiming to be a paramedic of unit “669” – the Israeli Air Force Special Tactics rescue unit. In his testimony, which was later proven false, the soldier says that during a search in the houses of Kibbutz Be’eri, during combat, he opened a door of a bedroom to find the bodies of two girls aged between 13 and 15, both killed, one of them naked with semen remains on her lower back. But according to a report on Mondoweiss website, upon examining the names of all the girls killed in Kibbutz Be’eri on 7/10/2023, to match the facts, no pair of Israeli teenagers meeting that description were found dead together. Furthermore, according to an interview with Channel 13, the leader of the Kibbutz Be’eri battle, Brigadier General Barak Hiram, counted 13 different military units that formed the combat force that were there – Unit 669 was not among them.

The CNN report then brings two witnesses to talk about the conditions of the dead bodies they have seen. The first appears under a pseudonym for an unknown reason, despite showing her face and wearing civilian clothes. The report identified her as a “volunteer” at the morgue of the Shura military base. The witness previously appeared in a written report by Ynet, published on 31/10/2023, that included a photo of her in military uniform, where she was identified as a reservist corporal in the Israeli army, and in which she did not mention any claims of sexual violence. The second witness is Rami Shmuel, identified by the report as one of the organizers of the “Nova” festival. In fact, he is an organizer of the “UNITY” festival – another electronic music festival, held the day before the “Nova” in the same location. CNN fails to mention the fact that Rami Shmuel was not present at the festival location during the attack. According to Shmuel’s Facebook post, published on the afternoon of 7/10/2023, he was “safe” in a villa in Netivot settlement.

Abandoned and damaged cars parked at the festival (12 October) (Licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0)

In her Newsweek article on 22/11/2023, Michal Herzog referred to a video showing Naama Levy, a soldier in the Israeli army and border patrol officer, being captured from the Nahal Oz military base, described as “in bloodied pants held captive at gunpoint.” However, there’s no evidence presented to support this accusation besides the blood, which isn’t enough to prove the claim of rape. It’s possible that the blood on Levy’s pants came from her wounded and tied hands behind her back, or from sitting on the ground stained with someone else’s blood. This is because the video showing Levy’s arrest depicts her standing against a wall with female soldiers in the military barracks when she was captured. She had the blood stain on her pants at that time, and then she was taken away in a military jeep as shown in the video.

Israel has not provided any criminal evidence or testimonies from women it claims were raped. According to The Times of Israel, its investigation “found physical evidence of sexual assault was broadly not collected” from bodies, and the window for gathering conclusive evidence had passed because “rape kits, which have a 48-hour window to be collected after an assault, were not prioritized.” Israeli police spokesperson Dean Elsdunne stated on 14/11/2023, that during the first 48 hours, the Gaza envelope area was still an “active combat zone.” Elsdunne added that “many bodies arriving at Shura were in such bad condition that collecting physical evidence of sexual assault, such as semen or DNA samples, was not possible.” Mirit Ben Mayor, who leads communications for the Israeli police, said much of the state’s case will rest on “circumstantial evidence.” In addition, Police Commissioner Kobi Shabtai said, “Many of the victims who survived the massacres are not ready to speak.” According to May Golan, Israel’s Women’s Empowerment Minister, “the very few ‘victims’ who survived are receiving psychiatric treatment and are therefore, conveniently, unable to talk.” How can Israel prove rape accusations without concrete evidence or testimony from the “victims” alleging sexual assault?

However, the world saw Israel’s detainees from the Palestinian resistance in Gaza saying goodbye warmly to women and children in front of cameras. They exchanged handshakes, jokes and smiles, showing clear evidence of the resistance’s treatment of women.

Despite the majority of detainees not giving public interviews, the media shared the experience of detainee Mia Limberg, who left captivity with her dog Bella. Also, there was a thank-you message from detainee Daniel Aloni to Hamas members for their treatment of her and her daughter Emilia. Additionally, a TV interview of a mother Chen Goldstein-Almog and her released daughter Agam Goldstein-Almog recounted how Hamas members treated them with respect, where one Hamas member, for example, used a towel during arm-wrestling to avoid physical contact. The daughter said, “For them, women are sacred. Women are like queens.” Chen mentioned that “they gave her [daughter] a beautiful name there… Salsabeel, it means water and it is mentioned in the Quran.” Is this the same Palestinian resistance group that Israel alleges, using unfounded fabricated accounts, committed the rape crime on 7/10/2023, in an attempt to convince the world?

Hamas’s Narrative

It’s important to note that the Hamas movement, amidst numerous false Israeli accusations after Operation al-Aqsa Flood on 7/10/2023, had its media office issue a document in January 2024 to clarify that their operation specifically “targeted the Israeli military sites, and sought to arrest the enemy’s soldiers to pressure on the Israeli authorities to release the thousands of Palestinians held in Israeli jails through a prisoners exchange deal. Therefore, the operation focused on destroying the Israeli army’s Gaza Division, the Israeli military sites stationed near the Israeli settlements around Gaza.” These locations were responsible for bombarding Gaza and its residents.

It also clarified that

“Avoiding harm to civilians, especially children, women and elderly people is a religious and moral commitment by all the Al-Qassam Brigades’ fighters. We reiterate that the Palestinian resistance was fully disciplined and committed to the Islamic values during the operation and that the Palestinian fighters only targeted the occupation soldiers and those who carried weapons against our people,” adding, “if there was any case of targeting civilians; it happened accidently.”

Hamas paraglider troops cross into Israel, October 7, 2023 (Source)

Conclusion

The Israeli accusations against the Palestinian resistance and GS residents of brutality and inhumanity in the attack on 7/10/2023 are an attempt to legitimize further Israeli crimes in GS. These accusations do not justify the retaliation against more than 2.3 million Palestinians living there, nor do they justify the commission of more than 2,325 massacres, the killing of more than 27,238, including more than 12,000 children, and more than 8,190 women, 122 journalists, 339 medical staff, and 46 civil defense members. Nor do they justify the loss of more than 7 thousand Palestinians under the rubble (70% of them are children and women), the injury of more than 66,452 Palestinians, the displacement of more than 2 million people in GS, and the destruction of hundreds of thousands of residential units, mosques, churches, health centers and government buildings, all until 3/2/2024, the 120th day of the war.

Israeli crimes in GS are well-documented with audio and visual evidence, and even admitted by Israeli officials, despite their false denials. This is often encouraged by the extreme right-wing settlement movement, which, according to a Haaretz article by Uri Misgav, prohibits criticism of the government and Israel’s “saintly soldiers.” They believe that “it is forbidden to end the fighting; dead soldiers and hostages are a worthy, noble sacrifice on the way to redemption, the silver platter on which the State of Judea will arise. For this camp, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is the Messiah’s donkey, a useful idiot. They keep warning him that the day he dares stop the fighting is the day that his government falls.”

*

Note to readers: Please click the share button above. Follow us on Instagram and Twitter and subscribe to our Telegram Channel. Feel free to repost and share widely Global Research articles.

Fatima Hassan is a Researcher in Palestinian Affairs at al-Zaytouna Center for Studies and Consultations. 

Featured image is from PIC

All Global Research articles can be read in 51 languages by activating the Translate Website button below the author’s name (only available in desktop version).

To receive Global Research’s Daily Newsletter (selected articles), click here.

Click the share button above to email/forward this article to your friends and colleagues. Follow us on Instagram and Twitter and subscribe to our Telegram Channel. Feel free to repost and share widely Global Research articles.

Big Tech’s Effort to Silence Truth-tellers: Global Research Online Referral Campaign

***

Wikileaks founder Julian Assange could face the death penalty for a prosecution based on ‘state retaliation ordered from the very top’, the High Court heard today. 

Assange is accused by the US government of conspiring with army intelligence analyst Chelsea Manning to leak classified military documents online between January and May 2010. 

The Australian is seeking permission to appeal a 2021 decision by a UK court to approve his extradition to the US, where he faces charges under the country’s 1917 Espionage Act. 

The 52-year-old had initially won his fight against extradition on the grounds he was likely to kill himself if held under harsh US prison conditions. 

But in December 2021 judges found the US authorities had given sufficient assurances to the UK that Assange would be treated humanely in an American prison, and overturned the decision. 

Assange appealed against that ruling, but last June High Court judges upheld the decision to approve the US extradition order, which was signed by then UK Home Secretary Priti Patel in June 2022. 

If he is refused permission to bring a further appeal, Assange is likely to be extradited in the coming weeks to face trial for 18 charges, 17 of which fall under the Espionage Act. The charges include conspiracy to receive, obtain, and disclose classified diplomatic and military documents. 

Assange’s lawyers say he faces up to 175 years in jail if convicted, but the US government claimed the sentence would probably be between four and six years. He has spent the last five years at Belmarsh maximum security prison in southeast London. 

The charges against Assange relate to the 2010 release by WikiLeaks of 500,000 secret files detailing aspects of military campaigns in Afghanistan and Iraq and secret cables about Guantanamo Bay. 

This included the notorious ‘Collateral Murder’ video, which showed the July 2007 killing by an American Apache helicopter crew of eleven civilians, including Reuters journalists Namir Noor-Eldeen, 22, and Saeed Chmagh, 40. 

The video, recorded by the helicopter gunsight, showed the helicopter crew firing into a group of Iraqi civilian men in Baghdad after being given permission from a commanding officer, killing 11 men and seriously wounding two children. 

Joel Smith, representing the US, disputed the claim from Assange’s legal team that the sentence Assange would face in the US would be ‘disproportionate’ and a breach of his human rights. 

He dismissed the 175-year prison sentence Assange’s barristers said he would face if extradited as ‘calculated by simply totting up the maximum sentence for every single offense.’ 

Mr Smith added that Assange’s barristers had said he would face a sentence of 30-40 years. 

He said:

‘Other cases involving unauthorized disclosures of classified information to the media have led to significantly lower sentences.’ 

He gave three examples where defendants were given sentences of 42, 48, and 63 months, despite the ‘maximum exposure’ in these cases running to as many as 130 years. 

The maximum sentence given for the same offenses Assange is facing under the Espionage Act was 63 months. 

He added that sentencing would follow guidelines, and would reflect consideration of aggravating and mitigation factors. 

Mr Smith said the alleged offences were ‘extremely serious’ and that if the sentence was a lengthy one ‘that would reflect the fact his conduct had been aggravated.’ 

He added:

‘Looked at through an American lens the offense is grave. 

‘Looked at through a UK lens the offence is grave. And entirely unprecedented.’ 

He gave a list of Assange’s alleged offending, including ‘the accusation of encouraging others to circumvent legal safeguards on information to provide information to WikiLeaks for dissemination. 

‘The continuing pattern of illegally procuring and providing protected information to WikiLeaks for distribution to the public. 

‘The recruitment of Manning and other hackers, the encouragement of Manning who was subject to the American equivalent of the Official Secrets Act, assisting her to crack a password. 

‘The obvious point of naming sources, who were put in danger.’ 

He added:

‘That’s a sweep of offending. It’s beyond the scope of anything that any of the criminal courts in this country have had to grapple with.’ 

Mr Smith said that given ‘such grave and unprecedented criminality’ it could not be said that a lengthy sentence would be disproportionate. 

Responding to the US case, Edward Fitzgerald, KC, repeated that Assange was being prosecuted on political grounds and that it was not legal to extradite him on this basis. 

He said the absence of any mention of the political offense exception in the 2003 Extradition Act did not amount to disapplying it from individual treaties that include it. 

He said:

‘The act is silent. You can’t read into that act a deliberate omission. You cannot say the act disapplies a provision that’s in every treaty we sign with other countries. 

‘You can’t say the silence means it expressly disapplies its appearance in a treaty.’ 

He said the political offenses exception was included in almost every treaty the UK had signed, and that US, UN, and Interpol treaties always include this provision. 

‘In what sense can it be properly said this [exception] is out of date? It’s not out of date.’ 

He also said that as a non-US citizen, Assange risked being denied rights available to a US citizen. 

He said:

‘Mr [Mike] Pompeo said Assange wouldn’t have these rights because he’s a foreigner, and that’s evidence he might be prejudiced in the USA.’ 

This included, he said, US constitutional rights, including the First Amendment right which guarantees freedom of the press, which US citizens are entitled to. 

He continued:

‘So there is a real risk, said to be 15 percent, he may well be prejudiced by that approach and put in a position where he’s discriminated against because of his status and loses his right that US citizens would have.’ 

Mark Summers, KC, another member of Assange’s legal team said there had been no reference to the fact the material he published exposed war crimes. 

The barrister said this was ‘the exposure of a state-level crime’. 

He said the barristers for the US authorities were dodging the issue when they accused Assange of questioning the probity of US prosecutor Gordon Kromberg when they alleged the extradition was politically motivated. 

He said:

‘We don’t suggest that Mr Kromberg is a lying individual or that he’s personally not carrying out his prosecutorial duties in good faith. 

‘We say that the prosecution and extradition is a decision taken way above his head. You can’t focus on the sheep and ignore the shepherd. 

‘What happened is state retaliation ordered from the very top.’ 

Mr Summers said this was reflected in the fact Assange had been denounced at senior government level, and then-president Trump was drawing up plans to assassinate him. 

He said:

‘It was submitted to you that the US government has acted at all times in good faith in bringing this prosecution. 

‘We don’t understand how that can be advanced with a straight face in the face of evidence the president was planning on kidnapping and killing him.’ 

He also reiterated that Assange had gone to ‘extraordinary’ lengths in the year prior to publication to redact names from the documents and that he could not be held responsible for their eventual publication. 

The barrister said the eventual publication of the names by third parties who gained access to the encrypted files was ‘Unintended, unforeseen and unwanted. 

‘At best Mr Assange could be alleged to have been reckless in the provision of the key to Mr Lee. It would be an absurd allegation to make but that’s the highest anyone could place it.’ 

He added that there was ‘no proof at all that any harm actually eventuated’ to any of the people named in the leaked documents. 

Mr Summers also returned to what he described as the ‘horrendous punishment’ awaiting Assange were he to be extradited to the US. 

He said Assange would be imprisoned for the rest of his natural life, a punishment, he said, ‘that would shock the conscience of every journalist around the world.’ 

He said the courts in the UK should have carried out a balancing exercise on Assange’s actions to determine the public interest in the disclosures. 

He noted that the Strasbourg court deemed ‘exposure of state-level crimes as the very highest level of public interest.’ 

‘The crimes being discussed here were real and ongoing and were happening then to real people. And the disclosures had the capacity and capability of stopping that happening, and they did. 

‘Drone killings in Pakistan came to an end, the war in Iraq came to an end’. 

He said that in a balancing exercise on whether the disclosures were in the public interest ‘colossal, ongoing, real criminal wrongdoing outweighs the risk of some harm to some of the criminals performing or facilitating the criminality.’ 

Judge Dame Victoria Sharp challenged him on whether all the people named in the leaked documents were criminals. 

Mr Summers replied that ‘their names are in there because they have engaged in the criminality that’s been exposed. 

‘The fact is there’s context to these names. They are the names of people who have facilitated America doing what the disclosures reveal them to have been doing.’ 

He added that even if they were innocent, the fact the disclosures protected people against practices like rendition and war crimes would outweigh the potential harm to them. 

Mr Summers said there was no guarantee the US would not subject Assange to the death penalty in the event of his extradition. 

He said:

‘We don’t understand why there is no usual death penalty assurance in this case.’ 

‘The consequences of it are that discharge must follow if they continue to decline to give it.’ 

The judges have reserved their decision.

*

Note to readers: Please click the share button above. Follow us on Instagram and Twitter and subscribe to our Telegram Channel. Feel free to repost and share widely Global Research articles.

Featured image is from Assange Defense

All Global Research articles can be read in 51 languages by activating the Translate Website button below the author’s name (only available in desktop version).

To receive Global Research’s Daily Newsletter (selected articles), click here.

Click the share button above to email/forward this article to your friends and colleagues. Follow us on Instagram and Twitter and subscribe to our Telegram Channel. Feel free to repost and share widely Global Research articles.

Big Tech’s Effort to Silence Truth-tellers: Global Research Online Referral Campaign

***

For those who have failed to recognise the true colours of the global institutions charged with acting for world peace, health and human rights, it will surely come as a shock to realise that such international bodies are part of the problem and not the solution.

They are complicit in the carefully planned entanglement agenda which obscures truth, strings out discussion and evades taking action, while presenting themselves as ‘the caring face of global welfare’.

These bodies are agents of the elite globalist push for ‘A New World Order’, top down power now going for full spectrum dominance.

Heading this list must be The United Nations, followed closely by The World Health Organisation and the World Economic Forum. These three institutions are in fact, inseparably joined at the hip.

UN-WEF Partnership 

There are many more such groupings, of course, but it’s beyond the scope of this article to go into their part in the power game.

It is deeply shocking to witness the UN’s CEO, Antonio Guterres, issuing pleas for a sustained humanitarian break in the Israeli army’s mass murder of men, women and children in Gaza, while simultaneously enforcing the elite cabal’s monstrous Agenda 2030 Sustainable Development programme for a ‘Net Zero’ techno-globalist take over of humanity. 

It must be remembered that this is the organisation that backed the Agenda 21 ‘sustainability’ programme which was tied into the 1992 Rio Earth Summit, placing a centralised industrial scale ‘Fake Green Agenda’ at the centre of efforts to disenfranchise the world’s true human scale food producers, energy providers and health practitioners. 

A plan specifically geared to put corporate banking institutions in charge of globalising this false green agenda – while casting aside the true wisdom and experience of independent, benign, artisan and local/regional manufacturing and farming enterprises that form the only equitable base for a creative and diverse national and international economy.

All this is, of course, intimately bound up with the dissemination of ‘Global Warming’ scare stories via the manipulated and entirely deficient UN International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) computer modelling exercises designed to ‘prove’ anthropogenic CO2 to be the ‘Mr Evil of industrial output’.

The UN is funded by nation states and by private ‘elite’ personalities like Bill Gates, determined to exert and maintain their power base within the top-of-the-pyramid status quo.

Given its historical standing, is the UN likely to genuinely push for a permanent cease fire and establishment of a peace keeping force to block the wholesale slaughter of the innocence in Gaza?

Guterres, Schwab (WEF) and Ghebreyesus (WHO) are puppets of the shadow government responsible for fomenting wars, famine and planetary depopulation, all under the guise of offering benign interventions in conflicts they themselves are party to setting in motion. 

The Great Reset is the latest name given to this particular phase in the establishment of the long promised totalitarian New World Order. 

Ghebreyesus, at the WHO, overseas the ‘health genocide’ side of things. He is hoping to pull-off the great post Covid ‘Emergency Health Treaty’ this May (May 2024), whereby every country in the world is expected to offer itself up in compliance to whatever commands are issued by this latest model of health dictatorship. A substantial gift for Big Pharma and for depopulation fanatics.

‘Rule by dictatorship’ is also heavily promoted by Klaus Schwab at the WEF, a man/organisation completely devoid of sympathy for the human race, but of key significance to the A.I.techno industrial push for a transhuman take over of life on earth.

Further feeble proclamations of intent to save innocent lives in Gaza come from global heads of state, of course. With one wary eye on public opinion and the other on the vindictive power of the Zionist lobby, they attempt to steer a ‘middle path’ which will not unduly upset either side.

Witnessing such duplicity coming from individuals supposed to act with wisdom and responsibility at moments of intense human crisis, is deeply unnerving.

Cowardice barely describes the weak, apologetic vacillations that such individuals spew forth in front of expectant TV cameras and hobbled journalists supplying ‘breaking’ stories for mass media outlets.

The obsession to ‘protect one’s interests’ over making any commitment to finding genuine solutions to urgent crises has become the only instinct left functioning in these sad representatives of modern day ‘political diplomacy’.

A remarkably stark example of this disease was on display amongst Britain’s political milieu in February. Sir Keith Starmer, head of the British Labour Party, was apparently ‘shocked’ when one of his MP’s standing for re-election in local elections – was on the record (recorded) saying that the October 7^th Hamas uprising was allowed to happen by Netanyahu as a pretext for preserving his power base and genociding the Palestinian population of Gaza.

Starmer, terrified of the British Zionist lobby accusing his party of being antisemitic, made the unfortunate MP apologise profusely for his ‘terrible error’ and then informed him that he would be ‘deselected’ as a candidate at the forthcoming elections.

So that’s it – anyone falling for the egregious political error of speaking the truth, is immediately consigned to the doghouse.  There to become a useful victim of the blame passing exercise designed to save the reputations of such effigies of political vacuity as Sir Keith Starmer.

He is no exception, the political class is schooled in the art of self preservation; mostly through seamless lying and the blatant evasion of duty.

It is abundantly clear that the ruling elite/shadow government regards all human life as simply ‘collateral’ and useful only in so far as it serves their cause of achieving ‘full spectrum dominance’.

It is equally clear – and many degrees more tragic – that billions of planetary citizens accept such behaviour as ‘the new normal’ for world governance, thereby spectacularly failing in their duty to call it out. 

It is at this level that we who are aware each have a crucial role to play in preventing our already traumatized world descending further into the abyss.

What role might this be? I hear some asking.

It is quite simply to hold the line of humane decency, moral courage and a determination to act as guardians of the health and welfare of humanity as a whole. And this must always also mean ‘the planet’. Humanity and the planet are inseparable from one another. 

We are charged, whether as generals or foot soldiers, with the defence and preservation of that which was gifted to us by the Supreme.

Extraordinary people are doing extraordinary things to save lives in the midst of this pandemic of mindless cruelty. They are the true heroes of the hour. Every one of us has it in us to join that highly esteemed band of courageous souls. 

Everyone of us who will now step forward to engage in the pact-less struggle to overcome the agents of darkness, will be enriched beyond measure for taking such a bold stand – and will be held in the highest esteem along with those already engaged.

Those who don’t want to stand defiant in the face of the present calculated destruction of life’s most precious values, will suffer the fate of never knowing what it means to be alive.

*

Note to readers: Please click the share button above. Follow us on Instagram and Twitter and subscribe to our Telegram Channel. Feel free to repost and share widely Global Research articles.

Julian Rose is an organic farmer, writer, broadcaster and international activist. He is author of four books of which the latest ‘Overcoming the Robotic Mind’ is a clarion call to resist the despotic New World Order takeover of our lives. Do visit his website for further information www.julianrose.info 

He is a regular contributor to Global Research. 

Featured image: Hundreds of people gather in front of the Gare du Nord building to protest against Israeli attacks on Gaza [File: Dursun Aydemir/Anadolu]