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

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“The initial COVID-19 panic (and the ultimate economic shut-down that will kill small businesses) was no mistake; it wasn’t an overly cautious WHO or Dr. Fauci that made the call in haste. The panic and over-reaction was planned and prepared for. Bill Gates (and his billionaire’s club [the World Economic Forum]) held an exercise called “Event 201” in preparation for a coronavirus pandemic in which he calculated 33 million deaths would occur world-wide. Anthony Fauci also predicted a pandemic would happen while Donald Trump was president.

We see the actions of the WHO, Fauci, and Bill Gates – who somehow is the go-to authority on SARS COV 2 having never taken a medical course in his life. Laugh all you want but this is the New World Order attempting to take over.

And they can do it. They own the media, even FOX. They even own two of the major news outlets, Reuters and the AP. They have created a false reality in which anyone that questions what they are doing is labeled a conspiracy theorist. There IS a conspiracy and you are witnessing it right now. This makes no sense at all unless you factor in an active conspiracy of disinformation and lies.”  

– An anonymous respondent, reacting to an important Tony Robbins video (that interviewed a handful of highly-qualified health experts who never get interviewed by Mainstream Media journalists, whose narrative, though false, misleading and corporate-controlled, appears to be sacrosanct.)

“The Gates Foundation and the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), a part of the NIH, are both currently exploring gene-based treatments for HIV, together with other therapies … This collaboration is an ambitious step forward, harnessing the most cutting-edge scientific tools and NIH’s sizable global HIV research infrastructure to one day deliver a cure and end the global HIV pandemic.”

— NIAID director Anthony S. Fauci, MD

“Bill Gates wants the entire population vaccinated with a new mRNA-based COVID19 vaccine, and he wants the lock downs to continue until this vaccine is developed. Once it is developed, only those who have a COVID19 vaccine certificate will be allowed to travel.”

— Brian Shilhavy, Editor, Health Impact News

“Moderna dispatched vaccine vials to the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) in Bethesda, Md. The NIAID clinic aims to test the vaccine on about 20 to 25 healthy volunteers by late April (2020). The goal of the study will be to see if two doses of the vaccine are safe and produce a response in the immune system to fight off COVID-19 infection.”

— NIAID Director Dr. Anthony Fauci, commenting on the unprecedented speed at which a potential vaccine for a global disease outbreak could be created.

“Deborah Birx sits on the Board of The Global Fund, which is heavily funded by Bill Gates’ organizational network … The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation gave The Global Fund a $750 million promissory note in 2012.“

— Journalist Jordan Schactel

 “The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation is a key partner of the Global Fund, providing cash contributions, actively participating on its board and committees, and supporting the Global Fund’s advocacy, communications and fundraising efforts. The Gates Foundation has contributed US$2.24 billion to the Global Fund to date, and pledged US$760 million for the Global Fund’s Sixth Replenishment, covering 2020-2022.”

– From the Global Fund’s website

“The media hacks who push the pro-vaccine propaganda and hide the truth are complicit in crimes against humanity…The entire vaccine machine is built on lies of omission and fraudulent science. billions of dollars are quietly paid out by NVICP to vaccine injured people, but the overwhelming majority of vaccine injuries are never reported. Of the thousands that are reported, only a tiny few are compensated. Therefore, the real amounts that should have been paid out to vaccine injured people is in the trillions.”

– Dr William Christenson

“Fewer than 1% of vaccine adverse events are reported. The CDC’s entire vaccination propaganda campaign rests on their claim that side effects from vaccination are exceedingly rare, but according to the blatantly pro-over-vaccination, and Big Pharma-funded CDC, in 2016 alone, VAERS received 59,117 vaccine adverse event reports. Among those reports were 432 vaccine-related deaths, 1,091 permanent vaccine-related disabilities, 4,132 vaccine-related hospitalizations, and 10,274 vaccine-related emergency room visits. What if these numbers actually represent less than 1% of the total as this report asserts? You multiply those numbers by 100.”

– William Christenson

“The second point I could make is that in relationship to aluminum, being a nephrologist for a long time, is the potential for aluminum and central nervous system toxicity was well established by dialysis data. To think there isn’t some possible problem here is unreal.”

— Dr. Weil (Pediatrician representing the Committee on Environmental Health of the Academy, testifying at the CDC’s infamous Simpsonwood conference – 2000)

“Aluminum and mercury are often simultaneously administered (ie, injected intramuscularly) to infants … However … there is absolutely no data, including animal data, about the potential for synergy, additivity, or antagonism … from the simultaneous exposure to these two (metallic) salts in vaccines.”

– Dr Walt Ornstein (testifying at the Global Vaccine Safety Summit 2019)

”… vaccines like DPT contain the neurotoxin aluminum!! This vaccine adjuvant is causing huge problems … especially in vaccines such as Gardasil 9, which has the highest levels of aluminum of any vaccine. But research into its toxic effects is being suppressed. Professor Chris Exley, who is the World Expert in aluminum toxicity in living organisms, has found the link between aluminum adjuvants and autism, MS (multiple sclerosis), CFS (chronic fatigue syndrome), Alzheimer’s dementia (AD) and other chronic conditions. Exley’s research funding has dried up. ‘They’ don’t want you to know that aluminum (in vaccines) is harmful and has never been tested for safety ….”

– Angio Svizzera

“Our very great concern is that children worldwide are being exposed to unrecognised toxic chemicals that are silently eroding intelligence and causing disrupting behaviours, truncating future achievements, and damaging societies, perhaps most seriously in developing countries.”

– Philippe Grandjean, MD, MPH

“Safety testing, which typically requires months and years for other medical products, often lasts only a few days with vaccines – not nearly long enough to spot cancers or chronic conditions like autoimmune diseass (e.g. juvenile diabetes, rheumatoid arthritis, multiple sclerosis), allergic illnesses (e.g. food allergies, allergic rhinitis, eczema, asthma), or neurological and neurodevelopmental injuries (e.g. ADD, ADHD, narcolepsy, epilepsy, seizure disorders, and autism). Vaccine manufacturer’s vaccine inserts that accompany every vial of mandated vaccines include warnings about these and over 400 other injuries including many serious immune, neurological, and chronic illnesses for which FDA suspects that vaccines may be the cause.”

– Robert F. Kennedy, Jr

“Many of these illnesses became epidemic in American children after 1986, coterminous with the exploding vaccine schedule. For American kids born in 1986, only 12.8% had chronic diseases. That number has grown to 54% among the vaccine generation (those born after 1986) in lockstep with the expanding schedule.”

– Robert F. Kennedy, Jr

“The children who comprise this vaccine-injured generation are now aging out of schools that needed to build quiet rooms and autism wings, install wobble chairs, hire security guards and hike special ed spending to 25% to accommodate them. They are landing on the social safety net which they threaten to sink. … The good news for Big Pharma, of course, is that many of these vaccine-injured children have lifelong dependencies on unaffordable blockbuster drugs like insulin, Adderall, anti-psychotic drugs, Epi-Pens, asthma inhalers, and diabetes, arthritis, and anti-seizure meds made by the same companies that made the vaccines.”

– Robert F. Kennedy, Jr

“An overwhelming majority of the FDA officials directly charged with licensing vaccines, and the CDC officials who effectively mandate them for children, have personal financial entanglements with vaccine manufacturers. These ‘public servants’ are often shareholders in, grant recipients from, and/or paid consultants to vaccine manufacturers, and, occasionally, even patent holders of the very vaccines they vote to approve. Those conflicts of interest motivate them to recommend ever more vaccines with minimal support from evidence-based science”

– Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.

“The FDA receives 45% of its annual budget from the pharmaceutical industry. The World Health Organization (WHO) gets roughly half its budget from private sources, including Pharma and its allied foundations. And the CDC, frankly, is a vaccine company; it owns 56 vaccine patents and buys and distributes $4.6 billion in vaccines annually through the Vaccines for Children program, which is over 40% of its total budget.”

— Robert F. Kennedy, Jr

“The HHS (US Health and Human Services partners with vaccine makers to develop, approve, recommend, and pass mandates for new products and then shares profits from vaccine sales. HHS employees can personally collect up to $150,000 annually in royalties for products they work on. For example, key HHS officials collect money on every sale of Merck’s controversial HPV vaccine Gardasil, which also yields tens of millions annually for the agency in patent royalties.”

— Robert F. Kennedy, Jr

“In 1986, Congress—awash in Pharma money (the pharmaceutical industry is number one for both political campaign contributions and lobbying spending on legislators over the past 20 years) enacted a law granting vaccine makers blanket immunity from liability for injuries caused by vaccines. The subsequent gold rush by pharmaceutical companies boosted the number of recommended inoculations from twelve shots of five vaccines in 1986 to 54 shots of 13 vaccines today. A billion-dollar sideline grew into the $50 billion vaccine industry behemoth.”

— Robert F. Kennedy, Jr

“Since vaccines are liability-free – and effectively compulsory to a captive market of 76 million children – there is meager market incentive for companies to make them safe. The public must rely on the moral scruples of Merck, GlaxoSmithKline, Sanofi, and Pfizer. But these companies have a long history of operating recklessly and dishonestly, even with (the many drug) products for which they can be sued for injuries. The four companies that make virtually all of the recommended vaccines are all convicted felons.  Collectively they have paid over $35 billion since 2009 for defrauding regulators, lying to and bribing government officials and physicians, falsifying science, and leaving a trail of (incurable chronic illnesses) injuries and deaths from products they knew to be dangerous and still sold under pretense of safety and efficacy.”

– Robert F. Kennedy, Jr

“The CDC takes funding from industry… It is outrageous that industry is apparently allowed to punish the CDC if the agency conducts research that has potential to cut into profits.”

— Jerome R. Hoffman, MD, UCLA Professor of Medicine

“…there is no data that shows that vaccines only have protective effects. It is time to change our perception of vaccines. Vaccines are not merely a protective tool against a specific disease, they affect the immune system broadly. In spite of protecting against the diseases, DTP-vaccinated children had fivefold higher mortality than children who didn’t receive the vaccine.”

— Dr. C. Stabell Benn, M.D. Ph.D. Professor in Global Health University of Southern Denmark

“The medical profession is being bought by the pharmaceutical (and vaccine) industry, not only in terms of the practice of medicine, but also in terms of teaching and research. The academic institutions of this country are allowing themselves to be the paid agents of the pharmaceutical industry. I think it’s disgraceful.”

– Arnold Seymour Relman, MD (1923-2014), Harvard Professor of Medicine and former Editor-in-Chief of the New England Journal of Medicine

“The American Academy of Pediatrics derives a majority of its outside contributions – estimated at more than $25 million per year – from pharmaceutical companies that make vaccines. The pediatricians that the AAP represents derive the majority of their annual revenues from the administration of vaccines to their pediatric patients.”

— J.B. Handley

“The majority of studies that authorities point to as proof that vaccines do not cause autism have been published in a journal called Pediatrics, the official journal of the American Academy of Pediatrics. As we know, the AAP is a trade union for pediatricians.”

– J.B. Handley

“You’d be amazed at the number of physicians who don’t know what’s in a vaccine. They’ll say, well, there’s the bacteria, the virus you want to vaccinate against, and then there’s a little immune stimulant in there to help stimulate the immunity so they react against those viral antigens. They don’t know about these other chemicals in there like aluminum, mercury, formaldehyde, special proteins, special lipids that are known to be brain toxic, that are known to induce autoimmunity in the brain. They’re not aware of that. They don’t know that MSG is in a lot of vaccines―monosodium glutamate, a brain excitotoxin. They’re not aware of what’s in the vaccine they’re giving! 

—Russell Blaylock, MD

“Most physicians haven’t got a clue about vaccines. Physicians are undeservedly endowed with a mantle of authority and therefore most of their patients think vaccines are simple, safe and effective. And therefore there is nothing much to know about vaccines except that they somehow illicit an immune response and magical antibodies will protect the inoculated patient for life. Total ignorance. But that’s what ‘The Snake’ tells physicians starting in medical school; and, since medical school (and nursing school) professors are also undeservedly endowed with a mantle of authority, both of whose healthcare professional group believed it from the start. Until they get bit.”

– Anonymous Anti-Over-Vaccination activist parent

“The vaccine manufacturers, the Center for Disease Control, the FDA, and the various medical associations have failed miserably in their duty to protect our children….As a full-time professional research scientist for 50 years, and as a researcher in the field of autism for 45 years, I have been shocked and chagrined by the medical establishment’s ongoing efforts to trivialize the solid and compelling evidence that faulty vaccination policies are the root cause of the epidemic.…Mercury, one of the most toxic substances known, is used as a preservative in many vaccines. Some infants have had 125 times the maximum allowable limit of mercury injected … in one day, in vaccines.”

— Dr. Bernard Rimland, Director, Autism Research Institute and editor of Autism Research Review International, issued in a statement on July 14, 2003: “The Autism Epidemic Is Real, And Excessive Vaccinations Are the Cause”

“The really sad thing is the amount of doctors I’ve spoken to who say to me, ‘Del, I know that vaccines are causing autism, but I won’t say it on camera because the pharmaceutical industry will destroy my career just like they did to Andy Wakefield.’”

— Del Bigtree, Producer of “Vaxxed: From Cover-up to Catastrophe“

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This was originally published on LewRockwell.com in 2020.

Dr Kohls is a retired rural family physician from Duluth, Minnesota who has written a weekly column for the Reader Weekly, Duluth’s alternative newsweekly magazine since his retirement in 2008. His column, titled Duty to Warn, is re-published around the world. 

He practiced holistic mental health care in Duluth for the last decade of his family practice career prior to his retirement in 2008, primarily helping psychiatric patients who had become addicted to their cocktails of psychiatric drugs to safely go through the complex withdrawal process. His Duty to Warn columns often deals with various unappreciated health issues, including those caused by Big Pharma’s over-drugging, Big Vaccine’s over-vaccinating, Big Medicine’s over-screening, over-diagnosing and over-treating agendas and Big Food’s malnourishing food industry. Those four entities can combine to even more adversely affect the physical, mental, spiritual and economic health of the recipients of the medical treatments and the eaters of the tasty and ubiquitous “FrankenFoods” – particularly when they are consumed in combinations, doses and potencies that have never been tested for safety or long-term effectiveness.

Dr Kohls’ Duty to Warn columns are archived at: 

http://duluthreader.com/search?search_term=Duty+to+Warn&p=2;

http://www.globalresearch.ca/author/gary-g-kohls;

http://freepress.org/geographic-scope/national; https://www.lewrockwell.com/author/gary-g-kohls/; and 

https://www.transcend.org/tms/search/?q=gary+kohls+articles 

Featured image is from SHTFplan.com

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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).

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

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There is propaganda by commission and propaganda by omission, the former often serve to conceal the latter. Timing is crucial.

That the U.S. President Joseph Biden, his British, NATO, Israeli allies, and their corporate media mouthpieces are in need of a major propaganda victory is obvious. They are losing the war in Ukraine, have been condemned throughout the world for the genocide in Gaza, and are ruling over a disintegrating empire.

Biden and Netanyahu’s political lives are at serious risk. And so they have just rolled out a full-court propaganda press effort aimed at covering their losses. It should be crystal clear to anyone who can use logic to see the timing involved.

The great French scholar of propaganda and technology, Jacques Ellul, wrote years ago that propaganda

“is not the touch of a magic wand. It is based on slow constant impregnation. It creates convictions and compliance through imperceptible influences that are effective only by continuous repetition.”

However, once this groundwork has been laid over time – as it has been with the continuous anti-Russia Putin hysteria and support for Israel’s Zionist policies – it can be intensely ratcheted up in exigent circumstances when the long-serving narrative is in jeopardy, such as it is now.

Once the death in a Russian prison of the Western backed Russian dissident Alexei Navalny was announced on Friday, February 16, 2024, it was immediately followed by a cascade of anti-Russia pronouncements whose aim was to not only continue the demonization of Russia and its President Vladimir Putin but to serve other purposes as well.

With one fell stroke, the calm history lesson about Ukraine, Russia, and U.S./NATO that Putin had just delivered to the world via Tucker Carlson disappeared down the memory hole, as Biden, without any evidence, declared that “Putin and his thugs” and Putin’s “brutality” are responsible for Navalny’s death. This, of course, is a replay of the false charges sans evidence waged against Russia for an earlier poisoning of Navalny, the Skripals (since disappeared by the British government), Alexander Litvinenko, et al.

Shortly after, Zelensky, performing his puppet routine while coincidently appearing at the Munich Security Conference – on Saturday, February 17, a day after Navalny’s death was announced – with Navalny’s then widow, said it was “obvious” that Putin had killed Navalny, while Biden pushed for more money for Ukraine’s doomed war against Russia, a U.S./NATO war created by the U.S. from the start with its aggressive military push to Russia’s borders and its 2015 Ukrainian coup d’état that ousted the pro-Russian leader, setting the stage for Russia’s incursion into Ukraine in February 2022. That Putin told Carlson these obvious facts, while slyly mentioning to Carlson that he understood that Carlson once tried to join the CIA, is now for most people in the West history lost behind the headlines, if it ever were anything more.

All this happened while Russia pushed through Ukraine’s defenses and took the city of Avdeevka, which had long been contested. With each day that passes, it is obvious that Biden’s Ukraine war strategy is that of a desperate politician on the ropes and that Putin has completely outfoxed the American desperados and their NATO European stooges. The MSM prefer to suggest otherwise, that hope is just around the corner if we send billions more dollars and weapons, and if with the help of our British friends, we take the war further into Russian territory and risk a nuclear confrontation. But we are in a propaganda war for the minds of the Western public.

Much of the rest of the world has seen through the risible MSM headlines used to delude the public that Russia is the great threat to world peace and stability. Like the previous Russia-gate lies, this ongoing one, coinciding with Navalny’s death, is timed to divert the public’s attention from key ongoing matters.

Tomorrow and Wednesday, Julian Assange will have his final appeal in a British court to prevent his extradition to the United States. Biden wants this journalist prosecuted for doing the job that the MSM have failed to do: Exposing the facts about the ruthless U.S. killing machine. But the bruhaha about Navalny has rendered the absolute hypocrisy over the torture and imprisonment of the innocent and brave Assange secondary and “inconsequential.” As intended, this has now become an afterthought as the mainstream media’s Russia-obsessed headlines flow uninterruptedly. The New York Times, the key propaganda organ for the Biden administration and the deep-state, reports just today that “The gravity of President Putin’s threats is now dawning on Europe” and “Navalny’s Widow Promises to Carry on Opposition Leader’s Work.”  These are typical Times’ rants.  As is its Magazine article headline from yesterday “Marilyn Robinson [the writer and friend of Barack Obama] Considers Biden a Gift of God.”

I don’t think the Palestinians would agree, but then too, their slaughter by Israel with U.S. assistance – more than 29,000 Palestinians in Gaza alone have been killed so far – and the coming IDF invasion of Rafah, have also been pushed to the back pages or to nowhere by the propaganda about Navalny and Russia.

I won’t mention the Russian election in mid-March that might possibly factor into all this since we all will be dutifully and timely told that the evil killer Putin is a dictator, ignorant, ruthless – add your own adjectives – and is no doubt trying to rig the fair-and-square U.S. November presidential election – for someone, just as he did in 2016.

Nor mention The NY Times article of February 17 by David Sanger and Julian Barnes that the “U.S Fears Russia Might Put a Nuclear Weapon in Space.”

Everyone knows that the Russians are coming to get us, as they always have. They probably killed JFK, right?

It’s easy to follow along as this propaganda eruption circles the Internet like painted ponies on a carousel. There will be no time to stop and think, to pause; to ask what the hell is going on? The ponies will dip and bob and make you dizzy.

For more corroboration of these matters, read the political analyst Gilbert Doctorow’s astute piece on how the Turkish broadcaster TRT World refused to post the interview that they did with him. Doctorow claims British intelligence killed Navalny. For some reason this should not be broached, according to TRT.

Remember: The Russian are Coming

Whether Doctorow is right or not, only a very dimwitted person would think that Putin would have Navalny killed. He has nothing to gain and everything to lose by doing so.

Yet the MSM and their government overlords consider most people very stupid and so are trying to blitz them with obvious propaganda through commission and omission. We have heard this story before.

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This article was originally published on the author’s website, Behind the Curtain.

Edward Curtin is a prominent author, researcher and sociologist based in Western Massachusetts. He is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG).  

Featured image is from Land Destroyer Report

French “Democracy” Establishes Medical Tyranny

By Dr. Paul Craig Roberts, February 19, 2024

Professor Michel Chossudovsky, director of Global Research, has examined the new French law that defines dissent from official medical narratives as a “sectarian aberration” and criminalizes dissent from medical narratives, such as “the mRNA vaccine is safe and effective.”  

It Is Dark Before the Dawn, but Israeli Settler Colonialism Is at an End

By Ilan Pappe, February 20, 2024

Professor Ilan Pappe spoke at IHRC’s annual Genocide Memorial Day in London, UK on 21^st January 2024, on the need to understand that the genocide of Palestinians we are currently witnessing, as brutal as it is, is also the demise of the so-called Jewish state. We need to be ready to imagine a new world beyond it.

Children Dying or Disabled from Strep A Sepsis

By Dr. William Makis, February 19, 2024

8 year old Barbara Data had Strep A Septic shock in May 2023. It led to multiple organ failure and cardiac arrest but she survived. As a result of septic shock she had double below knee amputation in July 2023 and lost some digits in both hands.

Polish Farmers to Block Entire Border with Ukraine as Well as Transport Hubs, Railway Depots and Seaports

By Julian Rose, February 19, 2024

After the shock discovery of thousands of tons of illegal Ukraine rapeseed at a fuel, gas train and truck depot near the Ukraine border, Polish farmers vowed to step-up their actions against all food imports from outside the EU and increase pressure on Brussels and the Polish government to abandon the implementation of ‘Green Deal’ and outlaw uncontrolled mass food imports entering Poland.

Russian President Vladimir Putin Bursts the Bubble of Western “Perception Managers”

By Mark Taliano, February 19, 2024

Vladimir Putin’s conditions for Peace are not unreasonable. They include no NATO expansion into Ukraine and denazification of Ukraine. These are not unreasonable demands, especially considering that the installed Banderite/Washington-controlled dictatorship has been bombing Russian-speaking civilians in eastern Ukraine since 2014.

Farmers’ Protest in India Reignites. A Struggle for the Future of Food and Agriculture

By Colin Todhunter, February 19, 2024

In 2021, after a year-long protest, India’s farmers brought about the repeal of three farm laws that were intended to ‘liberalise’ the agriculture sector. Now, in 2024, farmers are again protesting. The underlying issues and the facilitation of the neoliberal corporatisation of farming that sparked the previous protest remain and have not been resolved.  

Assange’s Final UK Court ‘Moment of Truth’ Arrives as Wife Warns He ‘Will Die’ If Extradited to the US

By Zero Hedge, February 19, 2024

Tuesday, February 21 is the big day and ‘moment of truth’ for WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange and his legal team. That is when two high court judges in London will hear arguments on whether Assange can appeal a ruling to extradite him to the United States, where he would most certainly spend the rest of his life in prison, likely in a harsh ‘supermax’ federal facility.

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

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Within the next few days, it will be revealed whether Julian Assange’s appeal in the British courts against being extradited to the US succeeds or not during a two-day hearing, which is scheduled to take place in London on Tuesday and Wednesday next week, The Guardian reported.

In this case, Assange seeks leave to appeal against his extradition decision.

In a meeting organized by the Foreign Press Association, his wife, Stella, warned that he could be put on a plane to the US within days if the appeal fails, fearing his death if he is extradited. This is the final chance for Assange to challenge then-former Home Secretary Priti Patel’s decision in June 2022 for an extradition.

“The situation is extremely grave. Julian could be on a plane to the United States within days… It is the final hearing if it does not go Julian’s way, there is no possibility to appeal to the supreme court or anywhere else in this jurisdiction,” his wife said.

Labor strengthens stance on calls to release WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange #FreeAssange pic.twitter.com/WkkI3QguPw

— WikiLeaks (@wikileaks) February 15, 2024

His supporters have raised their voices as well, saying that the impact of the decision on press freedom “cannot be underestimated,” while one artist claimed that he will destroy works by Picasso, Rembrandt, Warhol, and others if Assange dies in prison.

Assange’s request to attend his hearing next week in person to communicate with his lawyers has not been granted yet, according to his wife, who added, “It is part of the greater absurdity of this case that keeps on shocking me”.

She continued that her husband has not spent one day outside of Belmarsh prison for almost five years except for his in-person appearance in court back in 2021.

Julian Assange's lawyer recently cited suicide as a possible outcome if the Australian is extradited to the #US on his espionage charges.
Here's a timeline of some key dates from Assange’s life.#JulianAssange #FreeAssange pic.twitter.com/FTSGibxwQO

— Al Mayadeen English (@MayadeenEnglish) October 30, 2021

Australia to the Rescue?

In a move to urge the US and the UK to end legal procedures against the imprisoned WikiLeaks founder, Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese and 85 lawmakers voted in favor of it and to allow him to return to Australia.

Proposed by independent legislator Andrew Wilkie in the Lower Chamber, the motion won 86 votes in favor and 42 against in a session at the Canberra Parliament.

Gabriel Shipton, Assange’s brother, said,

“The motion sends a clear message to the UK and the United States that Julian has the support of the Australian people.”

Albanese has taken on a more active role since he took office in 2022 regarding Assange’s potential extradition to the US, which was also negotiated with US President Joe Biden during Albanese’s visit to Washington in October 2023.

In an interview for the Australian ABC channel in 2023, Albanese said that the Assange matter is frustrating because “the person who leaked the information now walks freely after spending time in jail” – referring to ex-US Army intelligence analyst Chelsea Manning, who leaked the classified information and was released in 2017 following the commute of her 35-year prison sentence.

The International Federation of Journalists (IFJ) and the European Federation of Journalists (EFJ) said on Wednesday that the prosecution of Assange represents a global threat to media freedom.

“The ongoing prosecution of Julian Assange jeopardizes media freedom everywhere in the world,” the IFJ and EFJ said in a joint statement.

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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

***

Professor Ilan Pappe spoke at IHRC’s annual Genocide Memorial Day in London, UK on 21^st January 2024, on the need to understand that the genocide of Palestinians we are currently witnessing, as brutal as it is, is also the demise of the so-called Jewish state. We need to be ready to imagine a new world beyond it.

The idea that Zionism is settler colonialism is not new. Palestinian scholars in the 1960s working in Beirut in the PLO Research Centre had already understood that what they were facing in Palestine was not a classical colonial project.  They did not frame Israel as just a British colony or an American one, but regarded it as a phenomenon that existed in other parts of the world; defined as settler colonialism.  It is interesting that for 20 to 30 years the notion of Zionism as settler colonialism disappeared from the political and academic discourse.  It came back when scholars in other parts of the world, notably South Africa, Australia and North America agreed that Zionism is a similar phenomenon to the movement of Europeans who created the United States, Canada, Australia, New Zealand and South Africa.  This idea helps us to understand much better the nature of the Zionist project in Palestine since the late 19^th century until today, and it gives us an idea of what to expect in the future.

I think this particular idea in the 1990s, that connected so clearly the actions of European settlers especially in places such as North America and Australia, with the actions of the settlers who came to Palestine in the late 19^th century elucidated clearly the intentions of the Jewish settlers who colonised Palestine and the nature of the local Palestinian resistance to that colonisation. The settlers followed the most important logic adopted by settler colonial movements and that is that in order to create a successful settler colonial community outside of Europe you have to eliminate the natives in the country you have settled. This means that the indigenous resistance to this logic was a struggle against elimination, and not just liberation. This is important when one thinks about the operation of the Hamas and other Palestinian resistance operations ever since 1948.

The settlers themselves as the case of many of the Europeans who came to North America, Central America or Australia, were refugees and victims of persecution. Some of them were less unfortunate and were just seeking better life and opportunities. But most of them were outcasts in Europe and were looking to create a Europe in another place, a new Europe, instead of the Europe that didn’t want them.  In most cases, they chose a place where someone else already lived, the indigenous people. And thus the most important core group among them was that of their leaders and ideologues who provided religious and cultural justifications for the colonisation of someone else’s land. One can add to this, the need to rely on an Empire to begin the colonisation and maintain it, even if at the time the settlers rebelled against the empire that helped them and demanded and achieved independence, which in many cases they obtained and then renewed their alliance with empire. The Anglo-Zionist relationship that turned into an Anglo-Israeli alliance is a case in point.

The idea that you can remove by force the people of the land that you want, is probably more understandable – not justified – against the backdrop of the 16^th, 17^th and 18^th  centuries – because it went together with full endorsement for imperialism and colonialism. It was fed by the common dehumanisation of the other non-Western, non-European people. If you dehumanise people you can more easily remove them.  What was so unique about Zionism as a settler colonial movement is that it appeared on the international arena at a time where people all around the world had begun to have second thoughts about the rights of removing indigenous people, of eliminating the natives and therefore we can understand the effort and the energy invested by the Zionists and later the state of Israel in trying to cover up the real aim of a settler colonial movement such as Zionism, which was the elimination of the native.

But today in Gaza they are eliminating the native population in front of our eyes, so how come they have almost given up 75 years of attempting to hide their eliminatory policies?  In order to understand that we have to appreciate the transformation in the nature of Zionism in Palestine over the years.

At the early stages of the Zionist settler colonialist project, its leaders carried out their eliminatory policies with a genuine attempt to square the circle by claiming that it was possible to build a democracy and at the same time to eliminate the native population. There was a strong desire to belong to the community of civilised nations and it was assumed by the leaders, in particular after the Holocaust, that the eliminatory policies will not exclude Israel from that association.

In order to square this circle, the leadership insisted that their eliminatory actions against the Palestinians were a ‘retaliation’ or ‘response’ against Palestinian actions.  But very soon, when this leadership wanted to move into more substantial actions of elimination, they deserted the false pretext of ‘retaliation’ and just stopped justifying what they did.

In this respect, there is a correlation between the way the ethnic cleansing in 1948 developed and in the operations of the Israelis in Gaza today.   In 1948, the leadership justified to itself every massacre committed, including the infamous massacre of Deir Yassine on 9^th April, as the reaction to a Palestinian action: it could have been throwing stones at the bus or attacking a Jewish settlement, but it had to be presented domestically and externally as something that doesn’t come out of the blue, as self-defence. Indeed, that is why the Israeli army is called “Israeli Defence Forces”.  But because it is a settler colonial project it cannot rely all the time on ‘retaliation’.

The Zionist forces began the ethnic cleansing during the Nakba in February 1948, for a month all these operations were presented as retaliation to the Palestinian opposition to the UN partition plan of November 1947. On 10^th March 1948, the Zionist leadership ceased talking about retaliation and adopted a master plan for the ethnic cleansing of Palestine.  From March 1948 to the end of 1948 the ethnic cleansing of Palestine that led to the expulsion of half of Palestine’s population, the destruction of half of its villages and the de-Arabisation of most of its towns, was done as part of a systematic and intentional master plan of ethnic cleansing.

Similarly, after the occupation of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip in June 1967, whenever Israel wanted to change fundamentally the reality or engage in a full scale ethnic cleansing operation, it dispensed with the need of justification.

We are witnessing a similar pattern today. At first the actions were presented as retaliation to operation Tufun al-Aqsa, but now it is the war named “sword of war” aiming to return Gaza under direct Israeli control, but ethnically cleansing its people through a campaign of genocide.

The big question is why politicians, journalists, and academics in the west fell into the same trap they had fallen into in 1948? How can they still today buy into this idea that Israel is defending itself in the Gaza Strip?  That it is reacting to the actions of 7^th October?

Or maybe they are not falling into the trap.  They might know that what Israel is doing in Gaza is using 7^thOctober as a pretext.

Either way, so far, the Israelis claim to a pretext every time they assault the Palestinians, has helped the state to sustain the immunity shield that allowed it to pursue its criminal policies without fear of any meaningful reaction from the international community.  The pretext helped to accentuate the image of Israel as part of the democratic and western world, and hence beyond any condemnation and sanctions.  This whole discourse of defence and retaliation is important for the immunity shield that Israel enjoys from governments in the Global North.

But as in 1948, today too, Israel as its operation lingers on, they dispense with the pretext, and this is when even their greatest supports find it difficult to endorse its policies. The

magnitude of the destruction, the massive killings in Gaza, the genocide, are on such a level that Israelis find it more and more difficult to persuade even themselves that what they are doing is actually self-defence or reaction.  Thus, it is possible that in the future more and more people would find it difficult to accept this Israeli explanation for the genocide in Gaza.

For most people it is clear that what is required is a context and not a pretext. Historically and ideologically, it is very clear that 7^th October is used as a pretext to complete what the Zionist movement was unable to complete in 1948.

In 1948 the settler colonial movement of Zionism used a particular set of historical circumstances that I have written about in detail in my book The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine, in order to expel half of Palestine’s population.  As mentioned, in the process they destroyed half of the Palestinian villages, demolished most of the Palestinian towns, and yet half of the Palestinians remained inside Palestine.  The Palestinians who became refugees outside the boundaries of Palestine continued the resistance of the Palestinians and therefore the settler colonial ideal of eliminating the native was not fulfilled and incrementally Israel used all its power from 1948 to today to continue with the elimination of the native.

The elimination of the native from the beginning to the end includes not just a military operation, by which you would occupy a place, massacre people or expel them.  Elimination needs to be justified or become an inertia and the way to do it is constant dehumanization of those you intend to eliminate.  You cannot massively kill people or genocide another human being unless you dehumanise them.  Thus, dehumanisation of the Palestinians is an explicit and an implicit message conveyed to the Israeli Jews through their educational system, their socialisation system in the army, the media and the political discourse. This message has to be conveyed and maintained if the elimination is to be completed.

So we are witnessing a particular cruel new attempt to complete the elimination. And yet, it is not all hopeless. In fact, ironically, this particular inhuman destruction of Gaza exposes the failure of the settler colonial project of Zionism. This may sound absurd, because I’m describing a conflict between a small resistance movement, the Palestinian liberation movement and a powerful state with a military machine and an ideological infrastructure that is focused solely on the destruction of the indigenous people of Palestine people. This liberation movement does not have a strong alliance behind it, while the state it faces, enjoys a powerful alliance behind it – from the United States to multinational corporations, military industry security firms, mainstream media and mainstream academia – we’re talking about something that almost sounds hopeless and depressing because you have this international immunity for the policies of elimination that begin from the early stages of Zionism until today.  It will seem probably the worst chapter of the Israeli attempt to push forward eliminatory policies to a new kind of level into a much more concentrated effort of killing thousands of people in a short period of time as they have never dared to do before.

So how can it be also a moment of hope? First of all, this kind of a political entity, a state, that has to maintain the dehumanisation of the Palestinians in order to justify their elimination is a very shaky basis if we look into the more distant future.

This structural weakness was already apparent before 7^th October and part of this weakness is the fact that if you take out the elimination project, there is a very little that unites the group of people who define themselves as the Jewish nation in Israel.

If you exclude the need to fight and eliminate the Palestinians, you are left with two warring Jewish camps, which we saw actually fighting on the streets of Tel Aviv and Jerusalem up to 6^th October 2023.  Huge demonstrations between secular Jews, those who describe themselves as secular Jews – mostly of European origin – believing that it’s possible to create a democratic pluralistic state while maintaining the occupation and the apartheid towards the Palestinians inside Israel, were confronting  a messianic new kind of Zionism that developed in the Jewish settlements in the West Bank, what I called elsewhere the state of Judea, which suddenly appeared in our midst, believing they now have a way of creating a kind of a Zionist theocracy with no consideration for democracy, and believing that this is the only vision for a future Jewish state.

There is nothing in common between these two visions apart from one thing: both camps don’t care about the Palestinians, both camps believe that the survival of Israel depends on the continuation of the elimination policies towards the Palestinians.  This is not going to hold water.  This is going to disintegrate and implode from within because you cannot in the 21^st century keep together a state and a society on the basis that their shared sense of belonging is being part of an eliminatory genocidal project.  It can work for some definitely, but it cannot work for everyone.

We have seen already the indication for that before 7^th October, how Israelis who have opportunities in other parts of the world due to their dual nationality, professions and their financial abilities, are thinking seriously of relocating both their money and themselves outside of the state of Israel.  What you will be left with is a society that is economically weak, that is led by this kind of fusion of messianic Zionism with racism and eliminatory policies towards the Palestinians.  Yes, the balance of power at first would be on the side of the elimination, not with the victims of the elimination, but the balance of power is not just local, the balance of power is regional and international, and the more oppressive the eliminatory policies are (and it’s terrible to say but it’s true) the less they are able to be covered up as a ‘response’ or ‘retaliation’ and the more they are seen as a brutal genocide policy. Thus, it is less likely that the immunity that Israel enjoys today would continue in the future.

So, I really think that at this very dark moment what we are experiencing – and it is a dark moment because the elimination of the Palestinians has moved to a new level, is unprecedented. In terms of the discourse employed by Israel, and the intensity and the purpose of the eliminatory policies – there wasn’t such a period in history, this is a new phase of the brutality against the Palestinians. Even the Nakba, which was an unimaginable catastrophe does not compare to what we are seeing now and what we are going to see in the next few months.  We are in my mind in the first three months of a period of two years that will witness the worst kind of horrors that Israel can inflict on the Palestinians.

But even in this dark moment we should understand that settler colonial projects that disintegrate are always using the worst kind of means to try and save their project. This happened in South Africa and South Vietnam. I am not saying this as a wishful thinking, and I am not saying this as a political activist: I am saying this as a scholar of Israel and Palestine with all the confidence of my scholarly qualifications. On the basis of sober professional examination, I am stating that we are witnessing the end of the Zionist project, there’s no doubt about it.

This historical project has come to an end and it is a violent end  – such projects usually collapse violently and thus it is a very dangerous moment for the victims of this project, and the victims are always the Palestinians along with Jews, because Jews are also victims of the Zionism. Thus, the process of collapse is not just a moment of hope it is also the dawn that will break after the darkness, and it is the light at the end of the tunnel.

Collapse like this however produces a void. The void appears suddenly; it is a like a wall that is slowly eroded by cracks in it but then it collapses in one short moment. And one has to be ready for such collapses, for the disappearance of a state or a disintegration of a settler colonial project. We saw what happened in the Arab world, when the chaos of the void, was not filled by any constructive and alternative project; in such a case the chaos continues.

One thing is clear, whoever thinks about the alternative to the Zionist state should not look for Europe or the West for models that would replace the collapsing state. There are much better models which are local and are legacies from the recent and more distant pasts of the Mashraq (the eastern Mediterranean) and the Arab world as a whole. The long Ottoman period has such models and legacies that can help us taking ideas from the past to look into the future.

These models can help us build a very different kind of society that respects collective identities as well as individual rights, and is built from scratch as a new kind of model that benefits from learning from the mistakes of decolonialisation in many parts of the world, including in the Arab world and Africa. This hopefully will create a different kind of political entity that would have a huge and positive impact on the Arab world as a whole.

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Ilan Pappé is Professor of History and Director for the European Centre for Palestine Studies at the University of Exeter. He is author of numerous books, the most recent being The Biggest Prison on Earth: A History of the Israeli Occupation of Palestine (Oneworld, 2015), The Idea of Israel (Verso, 2014) and The Modern Middle East; A Social and Cultural History (Routledge, 2014)

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

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It is now popular to talk about leaving fossil fuels to prevent climate change. Pretty much the same result occurs if we run short of fossil fuels: We lose fossil fuels, but it is because we cannot extract them. Practically no one tells us about the extent to which the current system depends upon fossil fuels, however.

The economy is extraordinarily dependent on fossil fuels. If there are not enough fossil fuels to go around, there is likely to be fighting over what is available. Some countries are likely to get far more than their fair share, while the rest of the world’s population will be left with very little or no fossil fuels.

If losing fossil fuels completely, or nearly completely, is a risk for some of the world’s population, it might be useful to think through some of the things that go wrong. The following are some of my ideas about things that change, mostly for the worse, in a fossil fuel-deprived economy.

[1] Banks, as we know them, will likely fail.

Before banks fail in areas with virtually no fossil fuels, my guess is that we will generally see hyperinflation. Governments will greatly increase the money supply in a vain attempt to get people to believe that more goods and services are being produced. This approach will be used because people equate having more money with the ability to buy more goods and services. Unfortunately, without fossil fuels it will be very difficult to produce very many goods.

More money will simply provide more inflation because it takes physical resources, including the proper types of energy, to operate machinery of all kinds to make goods. Creating services also requires fossil fuel energy, but generally, to a lesser extent than creating goods. For example, the pair of scissors used in cutting hair is made using fossil fuel energy. The person cutting hair needs to be paid; his or her pay needs to be high enough to cover energy-related costs such as buying and cooking food to eat. The shop where hair cutting is operated will also need to pay for the fossil fuel energy required for heat and light, assuming such energy is even available.

Banks will fail because too large a share of debts cannot be repaid with interest. Part of the problem will be that while wages will rise, the prices of goods and services will rise even faster, making goods unaffordable. Another part of the problem is that service economies, such as those of the US and eurozone, will be disproportionately affected by a declining economy. In such an economy, people will get their hair cut less often. Instead, they will spend their money on essentials, including food, water, and cooking supplies. Service-providing businesses, such as hair salons and restaurants, will fail for lack of customers, leading to defaults on their debts.

[2] Today’s governments will fail.

With failing banks, today’s governments will also fail. Partly, they will fail because of attempts to bail out banks. Another problem will be declining tax revenue because fewer goods and services are produced. Pension programs will become increasingly difficult to fund. All these issues will lead to increasingly divisive politics. In some cases, central governments may dissolve, leaving states and other smaller units, such as today’s provinces, to continue on their own.

Intergovernmental organizations, such as the United Nations and NATO, will find their voices becoming less and less heeded before they fail. Getting sufficient funding from member states will become an increasing problem.

Dictatorships ruled by leaders who wield absolute power and aristocracies ruled by leaders with hereditary rights are the types of governments with the least energy requirements. These are likely to become more common without fossil fuels.

[3] Nearly all of today’s businesses will fail.

Fossil fuels are essential for all kinds of businesses. They are used in the extraction of raw materials and in the transportation of goods. We use fossil fuels to pave roads and to build nearly all of today’s buildings. Without fossil fuels, even simple repairs of existing infrastructure become impossible. Without adequate fossil fuels, international companies are especially at risk of breaking into smaller units. They will find it impossible to operate in parts of the world with virtually no fossil fuel supply.

Fossil fuels are even used in making solar panels, wind turbines, and replacement parts for electric vehicles. Talking about solar and wind as “renewables” is to a significant extent misleading. At best, they can be described as fossil fuel “extenders.” They might help a problem of a slightly low fossil fuel supply, but they are far from adequate substitutes.

[4] Grid electricity and the internet will disappear.

Fossil fuels are important for maintaining the electrical transmission system. For example, restoring downed power lines after storms requires fossil fuels. Hooking up solar panels or wind turbines to the electric grid requires fossil fuels. Home solar panel systems may operate until their inverters fail. Once their inverters fail, their usefulness will be greatly degraded. Fossil fuels are needed to manufacture new inverters.

Fossil fuels are also important for maintaining every part of the internet system. Furthermore, without grid electricity, it becomes impossible to use computers to connect to the internet.

[5] International trade will be scaled back greatly.

At this time of year, many of us remember the story of the three kings from the East coming to visit the baby Jesus with precious gifts. We also remember stories in the Bible of Paul traveling to distant countries. From these and many other examples, we know that international trade and travel can continue without fossil fuels.

The problem is that without fossil fuels, some parts of the world will have very little to offer in return for goods made with fossil fuels. Countries with fossil fuels will quickly figure out that government debt from countries without fossil fuels doesn’t really mean much when it comes to paying for goods and services. As a result, trade will be scaled back to match available exports. Exports of goods will likely be very limited for parts of the world operating without fossil fuels.

[6] Agriculture will become much less efficient.

Today’s agriculture has been made unbelievably efficient using large mechanical equipment, generally powered by diesel, together with a huge number of chemicals, including herbicides, insecticides, and fertilizers. In addition, fences and netting made with fossil fuels are used to keep out unwanted animal pests. In some cases, greenhouses are used to provide a controlled climate for plants. Using fossil fuels, specialized hybrid seeds are developed that emphasize characteristics that farmers consider desirable. All these “helps” will tend to disappear.

Without these helps, agriculture will become much less efficient. Figure 1 shows that even with the small cutback in fossil fuel use in 2020, the share of employment provided by agriculture rose.

Figure 1. World employment in agriculture as a percentage of total employment, as compiled by the World Bank.

Employment in agriculture is essential. These workers did not get laid off, even as workers in tourism and workers making fancy clothes lost their jobs, so agricultural jobs as a share of total employment rose.

[7] Future labor needs are likely to be disproportionately in the agricultural sector.

People need to eat. Even if the economy is operating in a very inefficient manner, people will need food. The share of people in agriculture (including hunting and gathering) can be expected to rise considerably.

Some people hope that a shift to the use of permaculture will solve the problem of the dependence of agriculture on fossil fuels. I see permaculture as mostly a fossil-fuel extender, rather than a solution for getting along without fossil fuels, because it assumes the use of many fossil fuel-based devices, such as modern fences and today’s tools. Also, at best, permaculture only partly solves the inefficiency problem because it requires a huge amount of hands-on labor.

Figure 2. Comparison of US employment in agriculture as a share of total employment, with a similar ratio for the UN Least Developed Countries based on data of the World Bank.

Today, there is a wide divide between the share of employment in agriculture in the United States and in the same statistic for the UN group of least developed countries. Most of these countries are in sub-Saharan Africa. They use very little fossil fuels.

The US share of employment in agriculture has recently been about 1.7%. In the part of Europe using the Euro, the share of employment in agriculture has recently averaged about 3.0%. In either the US or Europe, it would take a huge change in employment to get to 70% in agricultural employment (as seen early in the 1990s for the UN least developed group), or even to 55% (as experienced recently by the same group).

[8] Home heating will become a luxury item available only to the wealthy.

Without fossil fuels, wood will come into high demand for its heat value. Wood will be needed for cooking food; it is very difficult to subsist on a diet of all raw foods. Wood will also be in demand for making charcoal, which in turn can be used to smelt some metals. With these demands on wood, deforestation is likely to become a major problem in many parts of the world. Wood in general will be quite expensive, given the considerable cost of harvesting and transporting it over long distances without the benefit of fossil fuels.

People living in sparsely populated wooded areas may be able to gather their own wood for home heating. For other people, home heating will likely become a luxury, affordable only by the very rich.

[9] Living alone will become a thing of the past.

Without enough heat, and with barely enough wood for cooking, people (and their animals) will have to huddle together more. Homes housing multiple generations, built over a place for keeping farm animals, may again become popular. It will be more efficient to cook for large groups than for one person at a time. People in cold areas will huddle together with each other in beds to keep warm. Or they will huddle together with their dogs, as in the saying, three dog night, meaning a night that is cold enough to need to have three dogs to keep a person warm.

Even in warm parts of the world, people will live together in groups, simply because maintaining a household for a single person will become impossibly expensive. Food and fuel for cooking will take up a huge share of a family’s income. There will be little left over for other expenses.

[10] Governments and their laws will shrink in importance. Instead, new traditions and new religions will play a greater role in keeping order.

Governments have made dozens of promises, but without a growing supply of fossil fuels (or an adequate substitute), they will not be able to keep them. Pensions will be gone. The ability of governments to enforce ownership laws will likely disappear. Without any good substitute for fossil fuels, mass disorder is a likely outcome.

People crave order. Without order, it is impossible to conduct business. We know from recent experience that “sustainability groups,” put together by people with a common interest in sustainability tend not to work well enough to provide order. They tend to fall apart as soon as obstacles arise.

What has seemed to work to provide order in the past is some combination of traditions and religions. With a changing world, both traditions and religions are likely to need to change. In the book, Communities that Abide, by Dmitry Orlov et al., the authors point out that having a strong (non-elected) leader, and a shared set of religious beliefs, helps keep a group together. In fact, it helps if the group is somewhat persecuted. Fighting for a common cause is part of what keeps the group together.

The Ten Commandments in the Bible are interpreted in a way that strongly suggests that they are rules for behavior within the group, not for behavior in general. For example, “Thou shalt not kill,” applies to other members of the group; wars against other groups were very much expected. In those wars, killing of members of another group was expected. This would seem to allow Israel’s killing of members of Hamas, today. Without enough fossil fuels to go around, fighting becomes more frequent.

Conclusion

In my opinion, the problem the world is facing today is like one that smaller economies have faced, over and over, in the past: The population has become too large for the economy’s resource base, which now includes fossil fuels. Today’s leaders reframe the problem as voluntarily moving away from fossil fuels to prevent climate change in order to make the situation sound less frightening.

As I see the situation, the world needs to scale down its use of fossil fuels because, ultimately, the laws of physics determine selling prices for fossil fuels. We extract the inexpensive-to-produce fossil fuels first. The problem is that fossil fuel selling prices cannot rise arbitrarily high. Prices must be both:

• High enough for producers to make a profit, with funds left over for reinvestment and for adequate taxes for their governments.
• Low enough for consumers to afford to buy food and other consumer goods produced with these fossil fuels.

If we assume that all the fossil fuels that seem to be under the ground can really be extracted, climate change from burning them may indeed be a problem. But it is hard to see that they can really be extracted, given the affordability issue. Politicians will hold down prices to get voters to vote for them if nothing else.

Researchers have been working diligently to find solutions, but to date, their success has been poor. Every supposed solution requires significant use of fossil fuels. So, we need to think through what might happen if we are forced to get along without fossil fuels and without an adequate substitute.

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Gail Tverberg is a writer and speaker about energy issues. She is especially known for her work with financial issues associated with peak oil. Prior to getting involved with energy issues, Ms. Tverberg worked as an actuarial consultant. This work involved performing insurance-related analyses and forecasts. Her personal blog is ourfiniteworld.com. She is also an editor of The Oil Drum.

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

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July 2023 – Drogheda, Ireland – 8 year old Barbara Data had Strep A Septic shock in May 2023. It led to multiple organ failure and cardiac arrest but she survived. As a result of septic shock she had double below knee amputation in July 2023 and lost some digits in both hands.

Healthy young children are dying or being disabled from Strep A Sepsis, but why?

Here are 15 cases:

Nov. 20, 2023 – Arvada, CO – 5 year old Rylan Horan is in the hospital diagnosed with invasive strep and sepsis. She is going into surgery to relieve some fluid in her lungs with a chest tube.

Aug. 28.2023 – 5 year old Cathy Kassis Sutton had a cold, but died from Strep A

Aug. 2023 – Melbourne, Australia – 16 month old Girsirat Kaur had a fever and was assured by family doctor it was nothing. She developed Strep A and spent 2 months fighting for her life including kidney failure, necrosis on her fingertips and was left unable to walk.

Mar. 25, 2023 – Kitchener, ON, Canada – 5 year old Quintessence Henderson was healthy but caught a regular cold, at hospital she rapidly deteriorated, was diagnosed with pneumonia and sepsis. Within 12 hours she was dead.

Mar. 25, 2023 – UK – Aiyla Griffith was rushed to St Mary’s Hospital on the 25th March 2023 critically ill & needing life saving support, after suffering from a severe case of Strep A. The disease took over her whole body causing sepsis shock, tonsillitis, pneumonia and organ failure to many of her organs.

Mar. 4, 2023 – Ontario – 2 year old Nevaeh Muley died suddenly of Strep A after her siblings had a common cold.

Feb. 28, 2023 – Woolloongabba, QLD, Australia – 2 year old Nicole Williams was a very bright, very happy and very healthy 2 year old. She caught influenza with usual symptoms but rapidly deteriorated and was taken to hospital where she suffered cardiac arrest, spent 2 days in ICU and died from complications of Strep A Sepsis.

Feb. 23, 2023 – IL – 7 year old Rose Tylor Kunkes died suddenly from Strep Throat

Dec. 5, 2022 – Belfast, Northern Ireland – 5 year old Stella-Lily McCorkindale died after falling ill with Strep A infection. Her 38 year old dad died suddenly on Jan. 8, 2024.

Click here to read the full article.

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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.

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

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Professor Michel Chossudovsky, director of Global Research, has examined the new French law that defines dissent from official medical narratives as a “sectarian aberration” and criminalizes dissent from medical narratives, such as “the mRNA vaccine is safe and effective.”  

The law also creates a new crime called “provocation to abstention from medical care.”  A French citizen is guilty of a crime if the person refuses a vaccine or medical treatment handed down by authorities. Had the law been in place during the mass vaccination campaign with the deadly mRNA “vaccine,” all who refused would have received three years imprisonment and paid a 45,000 euro fine. This ensures that next time everyone will receive the “vaccine,” because if you refuse you will be imprisoned and the prison rules will require you to be “vaccinated.”  

The new law also protects the pharmaceutical corporations from any accountability for the deaths and health damage their lies caused by criminalizing French citizens–including doctors and medical scientists–who speak against the Covid-19 “vaccines.”  This demonstrates the power of Big Pharma over democracy, which with this death blow given to free speech and medical fact no longer exists in France.

Here is Professor Chossudovsky’s account.

This is a very serious development.  It is an official act by an alleged “Western democracy” that criminalizes truth.  For example, French medical scientists who find that the mRNA “vaccines” result in death and health injury will be imprisoned if they report their findings.  The new French law takes the determination of medical fact out of the hands of medical scientists.  The “fact” henceforth is whatever Big Pharma’s paid shills among politicians and medical “authorities” say it is.

Something similar has occurred in Germany.  The distinguished German attorney Reiner Fuellmich was about to file a lawsuit supported by thousands of medical doctors and attorneys against the mRNA manufacturers when he was kidnapped by the German state and imprisoned in Germany where he is currently standing trial on trumped up charges brought by what appears to be paid “witnesses.”

This is not the way democracies operate. As I have written on many occasions, Western countries have ceased to be democracies.  The people have no voice.  The countries are governed by the agendas of the elites and powerful corporations with the money to purchase the laws that serve their agendas and interests.  The people who run for office are the people approved by these elites.  Trump was the exception, and look at what has happened to him.  The ruling elite have made their point: “Cross us and we will destroy you.”

Western governments serve at the expense of the people the material interests of the powerful and ideologies such as the World Economic Forum’s “Great Reset.”  Dutch and Irish governments are dispossessing under the rubric of “global warming” farmers of their flocks of sheep and herds of cattle, thereby driving up food prices by curtailing the supplies of meat, milk, butter, and cheese, while simultaneously allowing entry to hordes of immigrant-invaders whose support the people are forced to undertake.  Today a “Western democracy” is an institution that forces citizens to support interests that are not their own.

We are now witnessing, with the new French law, with the German government’s kidnapping of Reiner Fuellmich, with the American persecution of medical scientists who truthfully reported the mRNA danger, the Stalinist indictments of President Trump, and with media that no longer serve as watchdogs over the government but as propaganda ministries for government lies, the legalization and institutionalization of the tyranny that has displaced democracy in the Western world.

A large percentage of Western peoples are so indoctrinated and brainwashed that they do not see what is happening.  Moreover, Western countries having been turned into towers of babel means there is no social unity, which makes it impossible to oppose the tyranny as some of the diverse elements see tyranny useful in suppressing political and ideological opponents.  In the US the Democrats’ policy of wide-open borders for “people of color” but not for whites is dispossessing Americans of their own country.  Despite public opposition to the policy, it has moved into high gear with, according to official numbers, entry each year of immigrant-invaders in numbers equivalent to 12 cities the size of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.  There is no doubt whatsoever that the goal is to replace the white American population who are powerless to do anything about it.

Meanwhile the Western governments foment wars with Russia, China, and Iran and expect the demoralized citizens they are dispossessing to supply the army.

Does the Kremlin comprehend that its de-nazification agenda cannot be limited to Ukraine but must be applied to the entirety of the Western world?

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Paul Craig Roberts is a renowned author and academic, chairman of The Institute for Political Economy where this article was originally published. Dr. Roberts was previously associate editor and columnist for The Wall Street Journal. He was Assistant Secretary of the Treasury for Economic Policy during the Reagan Administration. He is a regular contributor to Global Research.

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The “protected class” is granted “safe harbor” only because their bets are so risky that to let them fail could crash the economy. But why let them bet at all?

This is a sequel to a Jan. 15 article titled “Casino Capitalism and the \ Market: Time for Another ‘Lehman Moment’?”, discussing the threat of a 2024 “black swan” event that could pop the derivatives bubble.

That bubble is now over ten times the GDP of the world and is so interconnected and fragile that an unanticipated crisis could trigger the collapse not just of the bubble but of the economy. To avoid that result, in the event of the bankruptcy of a major financial institution, derivative claimants are put first in line to grab the assets — not just the deposits of customers but their stocks and bonds. This is made possible by the Uniform Commercial Code, under which all assets held by brokers, banks and “central clearing parties” have been “dematerialized” into fungible pools and are held in “street name.”

This article will consider several proposed alternatives for diffusing what Warren Buffett called a time bomb waiting to go off. That sort of bomb just detonated in the Chinese stock market, contributing to its fall; and the result could be much worse in the U.S., where the stock market plays a much larger role in the economy.

The Chinese Derivative Crisis

A Jan. 30 article on Bloomberg News notes that “Chinese stocks’ brutal start to the year is being at least partly blamed on the impact of a relatively new financial derivative known as a snowball. The products are tied to indexes, and a key feature is that when the gauges fall below built-in levels, brokerages will sell their related futures positions.” 

Further details are in a Jan. 23^rd article titled “’Snowball’ Derivatives Feed China’s Stock Market Avalanche.” It states, “China’s plunging stock market is leading to losses on billions of dollars worth of derivatives linked to the country’s equity indexes, fuelling further selling as retail investors offload their positions…. Snowball products are similar to the index-linked products sold in the 2008 financial crisis, with investors betting that U.S. equities would not fall more than 25% or 30%,” which they did. 

Chinese shares rose on Feb. 6, as officials took measures to prop up the ailing market, including imposing new “zero tolerance” curbs for malicious short selling. 

The Greater U.S. Threat

The Chinese stock market is much younger and smaller than that in the U.S., with a much smaller role in the economy. Thus China’s economy remains relatively protected from disruptive ups and downs in the stock market. Not so in the U.S., where speculating in the derivatives casino brought down international insurer AIG and investment bank Lehman Brothers in 2008, triggering the global financial crisis of 2008-09. AIG had to be bailed out by the taxpayers to prevent collapse of the too-big-to-fail derivative banks, and Lehman Brothers went through a messy bankruptcy that took years to resolve. 

In a December 2010 article on Seeking Alpha titled “Derivatives: The Big Banks’ Quadrillion-Dollar Financial Casino,” attorney Michael Snyder wrote,

“derivatives were at the heart of the financial crisis of 2007 and 2008, and whenever the next financial crisis happens, derivatives will undoubtedly play a huge role once again…. Today, the world financial system has been turned into a giant casino where bets are made on just about anything you can possibly imagine, and the major Wall Street banks make a ton of money from it. The system … is totally dominated by the big international banks.”  

The Speculators Dominate the Regulators

In a 2009 Cornell Law Faculty publication titled How Deregulating Derivatives Led to Disaster, and Why Re-Regulating Them Can Prevent Another, Prof. Lynn Stout proposed stabilizing the market by returning to 20th century derivative rules. She noted that derivatives are basically wagers or bets, and that before 2000, the U.S. and U.K. regulated derivatives primarily by a common‐law rule known as the “rule against difference contracts.” She explained:

The rule against difference contracts did not stop you from wagering on anything you liked: sporting contests, wheat prices, interest rates. But if you wanted to go to a court to have your wager enforced, you had to demonstrate to a judge’s satisfaction that at least one of the parties to the wager had a real economic interest in the underlying and was using the derivative contract to hedge against a risk to that interest.… Using derivatives this way is truly hedging, and it serves a useful social purpose by reducing risk. 

… Under the rule against difference contracts and its sister doctrine in insurance law (the requirement of “insurable interest”), derivative contracts that couldn’t be proved to hedge an economic interest in the underlying were deemed nothing more than legally unenforceable wagers. 

… Hedge funds, for example, should really call themselves “speculation funds,” as it is quite clear they are using derivatives to try to reap profits at the other traders’ expense.

The rule against difference contracts died in 2000, when the US embraced wholesale deregulation with the passage of the Commodity Futures Modernization Act (CFMA):

The CFMA not only declared financial derivatives exempt from CFTC or SEC oversight, it also declared all financial derivatives legally enforceable. The CFMA thus eliminated, in one fell swoop, a legal constraint on derivatives speculation that dated back not just decades, but centuries. It was this change in the law—not some flash of genius on Wall Street—that created today’s $600 trillion financial derivatives market. 

The Casino Gets Special Privileges

Not only are speculative derivatives now legally enforceable, but under the Bankruptcy Act of 2005, derivative securities enjoy special protections. Most creditors are “stayed” from enforcing their rights while a firm is in bankruptcy, but many derivative contracts are exempt from these stays. Similarly, under the Dodd Frank Act of 2010, derivative claimants have “super-priority” in the bankruptcy of a financial institution. They are privileged to claim collateral immediately without judicial review, before bankruptcy proceedings even begin. Depositors become “unsecured creditors” who can recover their funds only after derivative, repo and other secured claims, assuming there is anything left to recover, which in the event of a major derivative crisis would be unlikely. 

That’s true not only of the deposits in a bankrupt bank but of stocks, bonds and money market funds held by a broker/dealer that goes bankrupt. Under the Bankruptcy Act of 2005 and Sections 8 and 9 of the Uniform Commercial Code (UCC), “safe harbor” is provided to entities described in court documents as “the protected class.” The customers who purchased the assets have only a “security entitlement,” a weak contractual claim to a pro rata share of a residual pool of fungible assets all held in the name of Cede & Co., the proxy of the Depository Trust and Clearing Corp. (DTCC). As Wall Street financial analyst John Rubino put it in a Jan. 27 podcast:

What we used to think of as a bank bail-in where they take your deposit in order to support a failing bank, that is now spread across the entire financial economy where whatever you have in an account anywhere can just disappear, because they’re going to transfer ownership of it to these big dominant entities out there in the financial system that need those assets in order to keep from blowing up.

Derivative speculators are considered “secured” because they post a portion of what they could wind up owing as “margin,” but why that partial security is superior to the 100% security posted by the depositor or purchaser is not explained. The “protected class” is granted “safe harbor” only because their bets are so risky that to let them fail could crash the economy. But why let them bet at all?

The Solution of the Regulators

The fix of the G20 leaders following the global financial crisis, however, was to force banks to clear over-the-counter derivatives through central counterparties (CCPs), which stand between buyer and seller and protect either party if the other blows up. By March 2020, 60% of credit default swaps and 80% of interest rate swaps were centrally cleared. The problem, as noted in a December 2023 publication by the Bank for International Settlements, is that these measures taken to protect the system can actually amplify risk. 

CCPs tend to ask for more collateral than banks did in the pre-crisis world; and when a CCP hikes its initial margin requirement to cover the risk of default, this applies to everyone in the market, meaning cash calls are synchronized. As explained in a May 2022 Reuters article:

It’s logical that CCPs ask for more collateral during a panic: that’s when defaults are most likely. The problem is that margin calls seem to have made things worse. In March 2020, for example, a so-called “dash for cash” saw investors liquidate even prime money-market funds and U.S. Treasury securities. 

… [R]ampant margin calls have intensified a financial panic twice in as many years, with central banks effectively bailing out markets in 2020. That’s better than in 2008, when taxpayers had to step in. But the problem of margin calls remains unsolved. 

… Central counterparty (CCP) clearing houses should consider asking clients for more collateral during good times to reduce the risk of destabilising margin calls during a financial panic, a Bank of England official said on May 19.

Yet all this, as Michael Snyder observes, is to allow the big international banks to run the largest derivatives casino that the world has ever seen. Why not just shut down the casino? Prof. Stout’s suggested solution is for Congress to return to the pre-2000 rule under which speculative derivative bets were not enforceable in court. That would include reversing the “superpriority” privileges in the Bankruptcy Act of 2005 and the Dodd-Frank Act. But it won’t be a quick fix, as Wall Street and our divided Congress can be expected to put up a protracted fight. 

What If the DTCC Goes Bankrupt?

In a 2015 law review article titled “Failure of the Clearinghouse: Dodd-Frank’s Fatal Flaw?,” Prof. Stephen Lubben points to a more ominous risk from pushing all derivatives onto exchanges; and that concern is shared by former hedge fund manager David Rogers Webb in his 2024 book “The Great Taking.” The exchanges are supposed to be safer than private over-the-counter trades because the exchange steps in as market maker, accepting the risk for both sides of the trade. But in a general economic depression, the exchanges themselves could go bankrupt. No provision for that is made in the Dodd-Frank Act, which purports to decree “no more bailouts.” Still, reasons Prof. Lubben, the government would undoubtedly step in to save the market from collapse. 

His proposed solution is for Congress to make legislative provision for nationalizing any bankrupt exchange, brokerage or Central Clearing Counterparty before it fails. This is something to which our gridlocked Congress might agree, since under current circumstances it would not involve any major changes, wealth confiscation or new tax burdens; and it could protect their own fortunes from confiscation if the DTCC were to go bankrupt.

Other Possible Federal Solutions

Another alternative that not only could work but could fix Congress’s budget problems at the same time is to impose a 0.1% tax on all financial transactions. See Scott Smith, A Tale of Two Economies: A New Financial Operating System, showing that U.S. financial transactions (the financialized economy) are over $7.6 quadrillion, more than 350 times the U.S. national income (the productive economy). See my earlier article summarizing all that here. On a financial transaction tax curbing speculation in derivatives, see also here, here and here. 

There are other possible solutions to customer title concerns. There is no longer a need for the archaic practice of holding all securitized assets in the street name of Cede & Co. The digitization of stocks and bonds was a reasonable and efficient step in the 1970s, but today digital cryptography has gotten so sophisticated that “smart contracts” can be attached by blockchain-like distributed ledger technology (DLT) to digital assets, tracking participants, dates, terms and other contractual details. The states of Delaware and Wyoming have explored maintaining corporate lists of stockholders on a state-run blockchain; but predictably, the measures were opposed. The practice of holding assets in street name has proven very lucrative for the DTCC’s member brokers and banks, as it facilitates short selling and the “rehypothecation” of collateral. 

In October 2023, the DTCC reported that it has been exploring adopting DLT; but the goal seems only to be speedier and safer trades. No mention was made of returning registered title to the purchasers of the traded assets, which could be done with distributed ledger technology.

South Dakota’s Innovative Solution

The most readily achievable solution is probably that in a South Dakota bill filed on Jan. 29.  The bill is detailed in a Feb. 2 article titled “You Could Lose Your Retirement Savings in the Next Financial Crash Unless Others Follow This State’s Lead”, which observes:  

… [I]f your broker … were to go bankrupt, the broker’s secured creditors (the people to whom the broker owes money) would be empowered to take the investments that you paid for in order to settle outstanding debts….

To avoid a catastrophe in the future, a nationwide movement is desperately needed to alter the existing Uniform Commercial Code. Of course, that won’t be easy to accomplish, especially because bank lobbyists and other powerful financial interests will almost certainly fight kicking and screaming to stop policymakers from taking away their advantage over consumers.

The good news is, this “great taking” can be stopped at the state level. Americans don’t need to count on a divided Congress to get the job done. Because the UCC is state law, state lawmakers can take concrete steps to restore the property rights of their constituents and protect them in the event of a financial crisis. 

On Monday, South Dakota legislators introduced a bill that would do just that. The legislation would ensure that individual investors have priority over securities held by brokerage firms and other intermediaries.

It would also alter jurisdictional provisions so that cases are determined in the state of the individual investor, rather than the state of the broker, custodian or clearing corporation. This would ensure that individual investors are able to rely on the laws of their local state.

Hopefully, other states will follow South Dakota’s lead. Tennessee, for one, is reported to have such a bill in the works.

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This article was first posted on ScheerPost.

Ellen Brown is an attorney, co-chair of the Public Banking Institute, and author of thirteen books including Web of Debt, The Public Bank Solution, and Banking on the People: Democratizing Money in the Digital Age. She also co-hosts a radio program on PRN.FM called “It’s Our Money.” Her 400+ blog articles are posted at EllenBrown.com. She is a regular contributor to Global Research.

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

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Pilot Deaths On Duty in 2023: 

Sep. 23, 2023 – Alaska Airlines Pilot Death – 37 year old Captain Eric McRae died suddenly in his hotel room during layover, was to fly that morning

Aug. 17, 2023 – IndiGo Flight (NAG-PNQ) Nagpur to Pune, India, 40 year old Pilot Manoj Subramanium died after collapsing at the boarding gate, about to board.

Aug. 16, 2023 – Qatar Airways Flight QR579 (DEL-DOH) Delhi to Doha, Qatar, 51 year old pilot collapsed as a passenger inflight and died, plane diverted to Dubai.

Aug. 14, 2023 – LATAM Flight LA505 (MIA-SCL) Miami to Santiago, Chile – 2 hours into 8hr flight, 56 year old Captain Ivan Andaur collapsed and died in the lavatory – plane diverted to Panama City!

July 16, 2023 – Small plane – 2006 Piper Meridian, flying from Westchester NY, crashed at Martha’s Vineyard Airport after pilot had medical emergency upon final approach and passenger took control of the plane and attempted a landing. Pilot, 79 year old Randolph Bonnist, died later in hospital.

June 4, 2023 – Small plane – Cessna Citation N611VG flying Tennessee to Long Island, fighter jets spotted pilot slumped over in cockpit unconscious, plane crashed and all onboard died

May 3, 2023 – Air Transat and Air Canada Pilot Eddy Vorperian, age 48, died suddenly during layover in Croatia

March 11, 2023 – British Airways (CAI-LHR) pilot died of heart attack in crew hotel in Cairo before a Cairo to London flight (name & age not released)

Military Pilot Incapacitations & Deaths:

July 19, 2023 – 37 year old US Air Force Lieutenant Colonel Andrew James Lingenfelter, of Wright Patterson Air Force Base in Dayton, Ohio, died on July 19, 2023 after battle with Pancreatic Turbo Cancer

May 9, 2023 – United Airlines and US Air Force Pilot Lt. Col. Michael Fugett, age 46, died unexpectedly at his home

Pilot Deaths (Not On Duty): 

Dec. 24, 2023 – Singapore Airlines – Captain Lee Meng Chye Martin died suddenly

Dec. 5, 2023 – Volaris (El Salvador) Pilot – 30s year old Jose Espinal – El Salvador Pilot for Volaris (El Salvador), Air Jazeera Airways (Kuwait) and former VECA & TACA Airlines, died suddenly on Dec.5, 2023.

Nov. 16, 2023 – Air India Pilot – 37 year old Air India Pilot Captain Himanil Kumar had cardiac arrest at Delhi’s Indira Gandhi International Airport during training

Oct. 18, 2023 – Austrian Airlines Pilot – 43 year old Christian Zimmerebner, AUA Austrian Airlines Pilot and member of Dorfgastein mountain rescue, died suddenly on Oct.18, 2023 due to “serious illness”

May 2023 – 4 Singapore Airlines pilots died suddenly in May 2023

May 26, 2023 – Singapore Airlines Pilot – Capt Sebestian Tan Aik Chuang: died May 26, 2023 (cancer)

May 25, 2023 – Singapore Airlines Pilot – Capt Tan Joo Huat Colin: died May 25, 2023 (sudden)

May 24, 2023 – Singapore Airlines Pilot – Capt Fernando Cid: died May 24, 2023 (cancer)

May 11, 2023 – Singapore Airlines Pilot – Capt Wee Loong: died May 11, 2023 (sudden death)

April 13, 2023 – Phil Thomas, graduate of Flight Training Pilot academy in Cadiz, Spain (FTEJerez) died suddenly.

March 17, 2023 – Westjet Pilot – 39 year old Benjamin Paul Vige died suddenly in Calgary

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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

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“I must say that as I travelled around the United States, Australia, New Zealand, and Europe I met many other fighters in the fight for freedom of speech along the way. We are therefore strengthening ourselves, even though Europe, together with the United States, Australia, Canada, and the United Kingdom, have absurdly made themselves partners and accomplices of genocide, as foreseen by Article 2 C of the Geneva Convention on genocide. I began to despair about vassal states.

All the Prime ministers of Europe, except Orban and the Prime Minister of Slovakia, seem to have come out of the same factory, as if they were Coca-Cola bottles, they have some minimal differences, but in the end, they are all the same. And this is a problem.”

I will never tire of repeating it: Julian is a persecution and a political prosecution and the prosecuting lawyers do what they are told to do: continue the prosecution.

I think at this point we’re at 27 court cases that Julian has had to deal with.

The problem is that the system that carries out his persecution is still intact: the Department of Justice has not yet been dissolved for example, and carries out this persecution, as does the colonial Foreign Office of the United Kingdom, together with the Prosecution Service of the Crown, they did not stop. Belmarsh Prison still pays the jailers who keep Julian locked up; the U.S. Attorney’s Office continues to seek charges against Julian.

These people, these government officials have indelibly stained themselves with Julian’s persecution, as well as with the genocide in the Middle East that they support.

They are stained indelibly, forever! It cannot be deleted!

Those…it’s hard for me to say…those 17,000 children will not be resurrected! Their blood will fertilize the land of Gaza. And what will be born from that land? What anger will spread in the souls of millions of human beings around the world, which will manifest itself in hatred and violence to defend the spirit of those lost children? We need to understand all this.”

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This article was originally published in Italian on Grandangolo – Pangea Special. 

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After the shock discovery of thousands of tons of illegal Ukraine rapeseed at a fuel, gas train and truck depot near the Ukraine border, Polish farmers vowed to step-up their actions against all food imports from outside the EU and increase pressure on Brussels and the Polish government to abandon the implementation of ‘Green Deal’ and outlaw uncontrolled mass food imports entering Poland.

NSZZ RI Solidarity on 9 February 2024, announced a 30-day farmers’ general strike, which was met with unprecedented support from the entire agricultural community and the public.

A Press Release of 16/02/2024 from National Solidarity Farmers Union on the general strike of farmers states:

“We know that this is only the beginning of a long road to victory….

The problem of profitability of agricultural production, processing and other industries in our country is the uncontrolled influx of goods from Ukraine, which are being imported due to the opening of the EU border with the country.

Therefore, for February 20, as part of the 30-day general strike of farmers, we announce that all protest activities will be focused on the complete blockade of all border crossings of Poland with Ukraine and protests in the field.

Not only border crossings will be blocked but also transport hubs and access roads to transshipment rail stations and seaports.

…Our actions have only one goal: “To ensure the country’s food security, by providing the public with healthy and top-quality Polish food.”

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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.

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

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Russian President Vladimir Putin burst the bubble of genocidal Western “Perception Managers” and allied Legacy Media stenographers during his recent interview with Tucker Carlson.

How did he do this? Simply by telling the truth.

Whereas war propagandists would have us believe that “Putin invaded Ukraine”, in fact it was the West that started the war in 2014, as admitted by NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg.

Prof. Michel Chossudovsky notes in “NATO Confirms that Ukraine ‘War Started in 2014’. ‘Fake Pretext’ to Wage War against Russia? To Invoke Article 5 of Atlantic Treaty?” that

On September 7, 2023, NATO’s Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg  in a presentation to the European Parliament, formally acknowledged that:

“the war didn’t start in February last year. It started in 2014.”

This far-reaching declaration confirms his earlier statement in May 2023 to the effect that the Ukraine War

“didn’t start in 2022”, “The war started in 2014”. 

Speaking on behalf of NATO, what this statement implies is that US-NATO was already at war in 2014. It also tacitly acknowledges that Russia did not “initiate the war” on Ukraine in February 2022. (1)

So the widely repeated mantra by Western politicians and propagandists that “Putin invaded Ukraine” in 2022 is both deceptive and inaccurate. More accurately, it started in 2014 with the bloody CIA/neo-nazi Maidan coup which ousted elected Ukrainian President Yanukovych, who was forced to flee the country. (2)

Putin reaches back in time and explains that the aforementioned coup did not happen in isolation. He explains that the West opened the door to Ukraine for NATO membership at the Bucharest Conference in 2008.

According to “North Atlantic Treaty News”, “NATO Allies welcomed Ukraine’s and Georgia’s Euro-Atlantic aspirations for membership and agreed that these countries will become members of NATO.” (3)

Not only does the above decision contradict earlier promises that NATO would not move “one inch eastward” (4), but it willfully violates a “red-line” as explained by Biden’s CIA director William Burns.

In 2008, when Burns was the American Ambassador to Moscow, he wrote to Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice that,

“Ukrainian entry into NATO is the brightest of all redlines for the Russian elite (not just Putin). In more than two and a half years of conversations with key Russian players, from knuckle-draggers in the dark recesses of the Kremlin to Putin’s sharpest liberal critics, I have yet to find anyone who views Ukraine in NATO as anything other than a direct challenge to Russian interests.” (5)

Vladimir Putin’s conditions for Peace are not unreasonable. They include no NATO expansion into Ukraine and denazification of Ukraine.

These are not unreasonable demands, especially considering that the installed Banderite/Washington-controlled dictatorship has been bombing Russian-speaking civilians in eastern Ukraine since 2014.

The demand that any future regime disallow nazism and genocidal ethnic nationalism as governing ideologies is reasonable.

Similarly, the demand that nuclear-armed NATO cease its expansion towards Russia’s border, thus violating Russia’s security, is not unreasonable.

The West does not tolerate Russian nuclear weapons or aggressive military alliances on its borders, and neither should Russia.

What about Peace initiatives?

Whereas Russia apparently acted in good faith when it signed the Minsk Agreements, (signed by Russia, France, Germany and Ukraine) Angela Merkel, Francois Hollande, and Pyotr Poroshenko have admitted that they signed the Accords to “buy time” and to militarize Ukraine to NATO standards. (6)

To conclude, despite the West’s apparent unwillingness to negotiate peace, President Putin appears willing:

“Let us go back to 1991,” he says, “when we were promised that NATO would not be expanded, to 2008 when the doors to NATO opened, to the Declaration of State Sovereignty of Ukraine declaring Ukraine a neutral state. Let us go back to the fact that NATO and US military bases started to appear on the territory of Ukraine creating threats for us. Let us go back to coup d’état in Ukraine in 2014. It is pointless though, isn’t it? We may go back and forth endlessly. But they stopped negotiations. Is it a mistake? Yes. Correct it. We are ready. What else is needed?” (7)

Peace is necessary and attainable, but the West, despite military losses in Ukraine, remains implacable.

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Mark Taliano is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG) and the author of Voices from Syria, Global Research Publishers, 2017. He writes on his website where this article was originally published.

Notes

(1) Prof.Michel Chossudovsky, “NATO Confirms that Ukraine ‘War Started in 2014’. ‘Fake Pretext’ to Wage War against Russia? To Invoke Article 5 of Atlantic Treaty?” Global Research, 11 February, 2024. (NATO Confirms that Ukraine “War Started in 2014”. “Fake Pretext” to Wage War against Russia? To Invoke Article 5 of Atlantic Treaty? – Global ResearchGlobal Research – Centre for Research on Globalization) Accessed 17 February, 2024.

(2) Mark Taliano, “The West Seeks War Not Peace.” Global Research, 30 November, 2022. (The West Seeks War, Not Peace – Global ResearchGlobal Research – Centre for Research on Globalization) Accessed 17 February, 2024.

(3) “NATO decisions on open-door policy.” North Atlantic Treaty Organization News, 3 April, 2008. (NATO news: NATO decision on open-door policy – 3 April 2008) Accessed 17 February, 2024.

(4) Dave Majumdar, “US gov’t knew NATO expansion to Ukraine would force Russia to intervene.” The National Interest, 12 December, 2017. (Newly Declassified Documents: Gorbachev Told NATO Wouldn’t Move Past East German Border | The National Interest ) Accessed 17 February, 2024.

(5) Ronald Suny, “Ukraine war follows decades of warnings that NATO expansion into Eastern Europe could provoke Russia.” The Conversation, 28 February, 2022. (Ukraine war follows decades of warnings that NATO expansion into Eastern Europe could provoke Russia (theconversation.com)) Accessed 17 February, 2024.

(6) Mark Taliano, “The West Seeks War, Not Peace.” Global Research, 30 November, 2022. (The West Seeks War, Not Peace – Global ResearchGlobal Research – Centre for Research on Globalization) Accessed 17 February, 2024.

See also:

https://sputnikglobe.com/20230325/former-french-president-hollande-admits-minsk-accords-allowed-kiev-to-boost-military-power-1108790881.html

(7) President Vladimir Putin, Tucker Carlson, TASS. “Video: Vladimir Putin Interviewed by Tucker Carlson. History of Russia, Ukraine. Denazification. Diplomacy, the U.S. Dollar. Peace Initiatives. Transcript.” Global Research, 9 Februry, 2024. (https://www.globalresearch.ca/video-tucker-carlson-interviews-vladimir-putin/5849094) Accessed 17 February, 2024.

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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.

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

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New Bill has been introduced into the US Congress that effectively seeks to punish South Africa after it sought a ruling from the International Court of Justice (ICJ) last month that Israel is committing genocide in its war against Palestinians in Gaza.

The bi-partisan legislation — the US-South Africa Bilateral Relations Review Act — was brought by two members of Congress, Republican John James of Michigan and Democrat Jared Moskowitz of Florida. It asks the Biden administration to determine within 30 days of the Act’s passage, “whether South Africa has engaged in activities that undermine United States national security or foreign policy interests.” It is unclear whether the Bill will have wide support.

A change in US relations with South Africa brought on by passage of the James-Moskowitz Bill could hurt South Africa economically, as it currently receives trade benefits through the African Growth and Opportunity Act.

The Bill makes more than two dozen accusations against South Africa, some of which border on the “totally trivial and embarrassingly dubious,” said University of Johannesburg sociology professor, Patrick Bond, in an interview with SABC News.

The Bill’s language is replete with the customary rhetoric that conflates criticism of the Netanyahu government with anti-semitism. It accuses South Africa of “siding with malign actors” such as Hamas, Iran, Russia and China, and the ruling ANC of having a “hardline stance of consistently accusing Israel of practicing apartheid.”

Black South Africans endured decades of bitter cruelty under the white apartheid regime. Countless people were illegally detained, tortured and murdered. A peaceful transition of power occurred in 1994 when ANC leader, Nelson Mandela, assumed the presidency, having been imprisoned for 27 years during which time he was labelled a “terrorist” by the US government.

The new US Bill mentions only the October 7 2023 “unprovoked and unprecedented horrendous attack” by Hamas, while avoiding any reference to Israel’s subsequent massacre of what is now more than 26,000 Palestinians, or the history that preceded the Hamas assault. Instead, it condemns what are now widely held opinions around the world that Israel escalated the violence after the Hamas massacre, has for decades occupied Palestinian land illegally, is committing a genocide and is guilty of war crimes.

Some of the more petty accusations in the Bill question the ANC’s competency to govern, accusing it of failing to provide adequate public services such as regular power supplies, efficient rail and mining operations and effective management of health epidemics, none of which have any bearing on the war in Gaza.

The Bill also cites ANC meetings with political leaders in China and Iran, diplomatic ventures that are hardly exclusive to South Africa. Indeed, President Joe Biden personally met Chinese leader Xi Jinping last November at a California summit.

But the Bill also overtly attacks South Africa for filing what it calls “a politically motivated suit in the International Court of Justice wrongfully accusing Israel of committing genocide.”

While the ICJ did not categorically rule that Israel was committing a genocide, it did call on Israel to prevent acts of genocide in Gaza and to punish those who may have already committed or incited such acts. It also ordered Israel to take immediate steps to improve the humanitarian situation for civilians in Gaza.

Instead, Israel has announced it will next attack the city of Rafah in south Gaza, the last refuge for around one million fleeing Palestinians, crowded into an area that Israel once promised would be a safe haven. “No-one will stop us, not The Hague, not the axis of evil and not anyone else,” Benjamin Netanyahu had said in a defiant speech after the court’s January ruling.

Last week, President Biden finally blanched at Israel’s latest acts of brutality, saying “the conduct of the response in Gaza, in the Gaza Strip, has been over the top.” But the US has done little material to alter its continued support and still refuses to describe Israel’s actions as a genocide or call for a cease-fire.

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Linda Pentz Gunter is a writer based in Takoma Park, Maryland.

Featured image: SOLIDARITY: Activists wave a giant Palestinian flag and South Africa flags during a protest demanding countries to resume funding of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestinians Refugees (UNRWA), near the European Union headquarters in Beirut, Lebanon

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

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Don’t let the alarmist sound of this column’s title put you off. It is not a “conspiracy theory.” This column is a factual report as you will see if you read on.

Everyone needs to understand that the ruling elite in the US are implementing a decision to redefine democracy in a way that eliminates democracy, makes Congress superfluous, voting pointless, and discards the Constitution as an outdated document inconsistent with the power the ruling elite intend to wield over Americans and the rest of the world.

The decision has been made to redefine democracy from the will of the people to protecting “the sanctity of democratic institutions.” Precisely, what are “democratic institutions”? They are not the institutions, such as Congress and representative government or the rule of law and an independent judiciary, that we currently regard as democratic institutions. “Democratic institutions” are the institutions of the censorship industry, such as the military/security complex, State Department, NATO, CIA, FBI, IMF, World Bank, NGOs, the Atlantic Council, the Aspen Institute, the presstitutes, Black Rock, JP Morgan/Chase and other of the consensus-building institutions that set agendas and control the narratives. To express disagreement with the consensus these elite institutions build is considered to be “an attack on democracy.” In other words, “democracy” is the property of the elite institutions, and the sanctity of these elite institutions must be protected from the people defined by Hillary Clinton as “the Trump deplorables.” The will of the people is eliminated from the picture.

It might surprise you, but universities (Stanford, for example, is fully involved), major corporations especially the tech companies and social media, law schools, medical associations, and governors and members of Congress associated with the WEF accept the redefinition of democracy that excludes the will of the people. They also agree that the Constitution is inconsistent with the power they intend to wield over citizens. As I write the State Department is busy at work obstructing the House of Representatives inquiry into the executive branch’s use of taxpayers’ money to censor what we may hear about Covid, the Covid “vaccine,” election fraud, the Ukraine war, Iran, Russia, China, etc. See this.

On February 16, Tucker Carlson interviewed Mike Benz, the world’s leading expert on the censorship industry. Here you have a complete and accurate explanation of who rules us–and No it is not the Rothschilds and the Bilderbergs–and why the US government has decided to deep-six the First Amendment: see this.

The decision has been made, and it is currently being implemented. It means that suppression will be used to convert the entirety of the Internet and social media into a propaganda ministry serving official narratives. All of the hope that libertarians had of the freedom to speak that the Internet would provide has turned out to be unrealistic. You can see already the trouble Elon Musk is in for permitting free speech on X. The government has launched investigations of Musk and his companies with the intent of forcing him out. Both the state of California and the EU have moved against Elon Musk to force him via enormous financial penalties to turn over to the censorship industry the information that the previous owner was supplying, information used in AI programs to determine who to ban and what tweets to take down.

Soon the alternative and social media will exist only as propaganda sites for the “consensus-building elite institutions.”

The disintegration of Western civilization is proceeding so rapidly that I cannot keep up with it even as a full time job. As I reported yesterday the French government has just criminalized medical truth, and WHO is about to do so in May of this year. People will no longer have control over their own health decisions.

The US government not only keeps the US border wide open for “people of color,” Washington also supplies the NGOs who are recruiting the immigrant-invaders with hundreds of millions of dollars with which to provide the immigrant-invaders with food, water, medical care, and sleeping accommodation along the mapped routes. See this.

It can’t happen you say? But it is happening right in front of our eyes.

Insouciant gullible Americans are expert at fleeing from unsettling bad news. Thus, they pave their own path to tyranny. Tyranny is easy to establish over peoples who have confidence in their Constitutional rights and integrity of their institutions. The more patriotic the population is, the more susceptible it is to deception and betrayal by government. Try telling patriots what is happening to them, and they will call you a commie for speaking badly about their beloved country.

Christian evangelicals have no opposition to the evil that is engulfing us, because they have been brainwashed that they will escape it by being wafted up to Heaven. The growth of evil is actually their escape from a sinful world into Heaven. The more evil, the sooner their escape.

For most of the rest, liberal interventionists and hegemonic neoconservatives have taught that America is exceptional and indispensable, so how can anything go wrong.

Combine these awareness-blockers with the fact that uncomfortable truths are a bad news turnoff, and that censorship is being established as a national security matter with the argument that it makes us safe and “protects democracy.”

Consequently, the criminalization of truth is rushing ahead. Even the word “truth” is slated to become a hate word that cannot be spoken.

Any information that you have saved that helps you to understand the tyranny that is engulfing us should be stored in thumb drives and not in the cloud as all information undermining of the “consensus-building institutions” will be consigned to the memory hole.

Note: at the 47-48 minute mark in the interview, the redefinition of democracy is explained. As there are more US government agencies committed to the death of the First Amendment than you have ever heard of, watch the one hour video several times in order to gain an appreciation of how deep the rabbit hole is.

Note: The Atlantic Council, one of the main anti-democratic “consensus-building (false narrative) organizations,” is possibly associated with the Burisma/Hunter Biden scandal. Burisma, a Ukrainian company, put Hunter Biden on its board and paid him large sums of money for his father’s protection against prosecution of the company by Ukrainian authorities.  US Vice President Biden actually admitted on TV, indeed he was proud of it, that he used  billions of dollars in US taxpayers money to threaten Ukraine to withhold the US aid unless Ukraine fired the prosecutor, an offer Ukraine could not refuse. Atlantic Council board members Sally Painter is under investigation by the US Justice (sic) Department for illegal lobbying on behalf of Burisma. She and former Atlantic Council board member Karen Tramontano created a partnership between the Atlantic Council and Burisma.

Burisma contributed $300,000 to the Atlantic Council.  Perhaps it was the purchase price for Burisma officials to speak at Atlantic Council forums and for prestigious Atlantic Council members to speak at a Burisma conference in Ukraine in 2018. All of this to show American protection of the company to Ukrainian prosecutorial authorities.

In 2021 the United Arab Emirates Embassy donated more than $1 million to the Atlantic Council, and the UAE’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs added another $100,00-250,000. This might have been the purchase price for the Atlantic Council to use its influence to have the UN choose the UAE for the location of its 2023 climate change conference.

Apparently, the Atlantic Council did not make the required or proper disclosures of the UAE’s donations.

The Atlantic Council, a principal member of the anti-democratic censorship industry is supported by the hapless, unaware American taxpayers by grants of taxpayer’s money from the Departments of Defense, State, and Energy and by the US Agency for International Development.  Thus, it is clear that “our” government in Washington is financing the replacement of American Democracy subject to the will of the people with the government’s protection of the elite institutions that have changed the definition of democracy to mean the service of their agendas.

Here are other major donors to the Atlantic Council:

Adrienne Arsht, Facebook, Goldman Sachs, the Rockefeller Foundation, the British Foreign and Commonwealth Office, the United Arab Emirates, a Swiss company System Capital Management, Abu Dhabu National Oil Company, the Swedish Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the US Department of State, the Embassy of Bahrain, the Embassy of Japan, the Finish Ministry of Defense, the Lithuanian  Minister of Defense, the Norwegian Ministry of Defense, the Norwegian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the Chevron Corporation, Google, Crescent Petroleum, the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, Raytheon Technologies, John F.W. Rogers (Goldman Sachs), Carnegie Corp of New York, Delegation of the EU to the US, Foreign Ministry of Germany, JP Morgan Chase Foundation, US Department of Defense, US Department of Energy, Charles Koch Foundation. Amazon, Verizon, Pfizer, Aramco, Lockheed Martin, Omidyar Network.

All of this information is available on the Atlantic Council’s website.

So, No, it is not a conspiracy theory.

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Paul Craig Roberts is a renowned author and academic, chairman of The Institute for Political Economy where this article was originally published. Dr. Roberts was previously associate editor and columnist for The Wall Street Journal. He was Assistant Secretary of the Treasury for Economic Policy during the Reagan Administration. He is a regular contributor to Global Research.

Featured image: A US government propaganda poster from the 1940s (Source: Multipolarista)

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

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The entire world, Christian, Jewish and Muslim has watched horrified as an alleged criminal leader has ordered his occupying force of US-armed, state military to kill or injure over 100,000 mainly civilian women and children in Gaza – with planes, drones, gunships, missiles, bombs, white phosphorus and shells, in an orgy of revenge for the Hamas massacre in the Israeli kibbutzim, of October 7th.

And as they fill the mass graves of bloodied, blackened bodies with their embedded American bullets, the global community and the United Nations are impotent in stopping this mass slaughter of civilians. However, notwithstanding this international  opprobrium, POTUS Biden and his US Congress continue to supply the bombs and bullets to sustain this crime against humanity – watched by an astonished and incredulous billions of ordinary people, on television, around the world.

And, as yet another child and mother are killed, global resentment and anger are now increasing exponentially and directed at the attacking Israeli forces and their American arms supplier.  And that anger is morphing into increased antisemitism as the international community erroneously believes that Jewish populations in the US, Canada, France, Argentina and Britain are equally responsible for these war crimes as are the actual perpetrators, the Likud revisionist Zionist government of Israel.

The tragic consequence is that this damaging hatred is now increasing by the day, causing extensive damage to national Jewish communities in general, with the fear that this hostility will  endure for generations, if not, forever. As for Israel itself: it will reap the whirlwind of Netanyahu’s legacy.

History will be scathing in its verdict on duplicitous, weak US and UK governments that, in the 21st century, succumbed to the machinations of the political lobbies and turned a tiny, 75 year-old, outlier state into a dangerous nuclear power that provided the spark for the inferno that consumed the Middle East and then Europe and beyond.

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

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In recent months, winds of rapprochement with the West have been blowing in Turkish foreign policy. While it remains unclear whether this spring weather will be permanent or not, it is necessary to understand the basic reason well in order to evaluate this rapprochement correctly. The question of how soundly a country struggling with economic difficulties can define geopolitical interests is at the center of all discussions.

In order to make the discussion meaningful, it is useful to first look at the general outlook of the Turkish economy, which has a size of more than 1 trillion dollars. When macroeconomic indicators are examined, first of all, the foreign trade volume, which is more than half of Türkiye’s GDP, and the unlimited international capital flows attract attention. This naturally makes the country very open to foreign economic influences. Moreover, there are other data that make this effect more complicated: It is seen that Türkiye had a foreign trade deficit of roughly 105 billion dollars and a current account deficit of 45 billion dollars last year. It is known that this deficit, which has become structural, has been closed through increasing foreign borrowing for years. It should be noted that the short-term external debt stock of the country, whose Central Bank net reserves are in negative, has reached 225 billion dollars by the end of 2023. Moreover, the majority of exports are made to European and North American countries and foreign debts are largely provided by Western financial centers.

On the other hand, it is observed that the Turkish economy has become extremely dollarized internally and has almost become a dual currency. It should be noted that, contrary to trends in the world, there is no effort to reverse this situation, and confidence in the Turkish lira, which has depreciated at a high rate in recent years, has been shaken. It should also be added that inflation has exploded as a result of the harsh interest rate cuts implemented three years ago and the people are in serious economic distress.

Under all these conditions, the concern that the economy is facing an acute balance of payments problem and that a total crisis may occur remains a reality for decision-makers in Ankara. As a matter of fact, it is known that President Erdoğan implemented election economy until he survived the 2023 elections, which are critical for the continuation of power, and changed his economic management team immediately after the elections. Two completely different economic policies were implemented and the economy was handed over to Mehmet Şimşek, who has close relations with Western financial capital centers. However, the dollar, which was suppressed and kept at the 18 band until the elections, rose at a record speed against the Turkish lira after the elections, reaching 30 levels, and the fact that the basic indicators did not improve shows that things are not going well.

With all this, another election cycle is on the agenda this year: The local elections to be held on March 31, 2024, and it is understood that winning Istanbul is very important for Erdoğan. Considering the possible constitutional amendment that may follow, this year is aimed to be ‘problem-free’ for the government. The connection between the huge economic problems as a result of wrong policies and political priorities of Ankara underlines the expression ‘problem-free’. The government seems to have abandoned the key to the economy for the continuation of the political order to the neoliberal economic approach, which is outdated in the world and has proven unsuccessful in Türkiye as well.

This is exactly where political relations with the West come into play for Ankara, which has such a dependent economic relationship with the West and has not done much other than rhetoric to break this dependence. The Government is re-evaluating its foreign policy choice to ensure that any additional problems with the West do not disrupt its 2024 plans. This re-evaluation package for now; It includes concessions such as not dealing with Greece in the Aegean, putting the brakes on energy exploration in the Mediterranean, détente with the EU, trying to purchase F-16s from the USA at astronomical prices, and approving Sweden’s NATO membership. Beyond these, pressures from the USA that will deeply shake Turkish geopolitics, such as breaking the Montreux Convention, taking sides in hot conflicts, and officially accepting the PYD/PKK presence in Syria, are on the table. Here, it is necessary to remind that no matter how challenging the economic crises are, it will not be easy for Türkiye to give up its basic security concerns.

In this case, the question of how the course will be shaped from now on comes to mind. There seem to be three possibilities: The scope of the package will either expand or narrow, or the situation will be ‘managed’ in this way for a certain period of time instead of permanent preferences. The developments after the March 31 elections will determine which way the needle will shift. Two main dynamics will be decisive in this: The first is the changes in Turkish politics, the second is the outcome of the US elections to be held in November. Depending on the local election results, the cards in domestic politics may be shuffled again and discussions on a new Constitution may flare up. In foreign policy, it can be thought that the ‘manage’ option will be dominant until November and that no maneuver will be permanent. As a matter of fact, the possibility of Trump being elected will have significant repercussions on Türkiye as well as world politics.

Beyond all this, it should be understood that Türkiye must be economically strong for the independent foreign policy that we advocate in the form of active neutrality between the West and the East. However, Ankara is both wasting its future with wrong economic policies and cannot benefit from the blessings of the multipolar international system enough. This situation, which we describe as ‘Economic Pincer-Geopolitical Swing’, should no longer be a fate for Türkiye. In any case, it is clear that a troubled period awaits Türkiye after March 31, in which new exchange rate attacks and political turmoil may occur.

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This article was originally published on ATASAM.

Featured image is from ATASAM

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The most rational option would be to pressure Ukraine into recommencing peace talks with a view towards ending the conflict and resuming arms control talks afterwards. The problem is that rationality hasn’t prevailed thus far, however, since risky zero-sum and ideologically driven policies take precedence among US policymakers nowadays.

Americans were terrified for a brief moment after a Republican congressman cryptically tweeted about the existence of a pressing national security threat, but it later turned out that they were exaggerating the impact of new intelligence on Russia’s alleged space weapons program. Most reports about lawmakers’ classified briefing on this conclude that the anti-satellite weapon at the center of this scandal, which might either be nuclear-armed or -powered, hasn’t yet been deployed and might not be for some time.

The emerging consensus is that this congressman sought to hype up the so-called “Russian threat” in order to pressure the House to pass the Senate-approved bill designating $60 billion more to Ukraine. Nevertheless, their stunt served to prompt a discussion about the militarization of space, and this has in turn predictably led to more anti-Russian fearmongering. In reality, it was the US that formally initiated this long-running and hitherto unofficial process through Trump’s creation of the so-called “Space Force”.

The pretext upon which this decision was made was that Russia and China were already secretly militarizing space, so it made sense from the US’ perspective to formalize the latest round of this “race” in order to secure as much public funding for America’s related programs as possible. About the aforementioned trend, while it’s difficult to discern fact from fiction, there’s a logic to those two exploring creative means for neutralizing the US’ space-based communications and targeting systems.

After all, a significant share of its global military force is dependent on some sort of space-based support, with GPS being the most well-known but by no means the only such form of this. In the worst-case scenario of a hot war between them, the failure to at least interfere with these systems’ operation would enable America to retain its strategic advantage, thus raising the chances that those countries would lose. That said, their programs remain secret, and no major details have been confirmed.

Even so, Russia might be experimenting with nuclear-powered anti-satellite weapons or even nuclear-armed ones, not to deploy right away but to keep up their sleeve for negotiation purposes aimed at encouraging the resumption of arms control talks upon the end of the Ukrainian Conflict. Its officials already said that they’re not interested in this until after that proxy war is over because the US betrayed their trust by having Kiev attack some of the same strategic sites that it earlier inspected.

According to the latest reports, the US doesn’t yet have the means to counteract this theoretical threat, hence why it’s such a cause for concern among some. The most rational option would therefore be to pressure Ukraine into recommencing peace talks with a view towards ending the conflict and resuming arms control talks afterwards. The problem is that rationality hasn’t prevailed thus far, however, since risky zero-sum and ideologically driven policies take precedence among US policymakers nowadays.

Circling back to the previously mentioned Republican congressman who spilled the beans about the US’ latest intelligence for the presumable purpose of pressuring the House to vote for more Ukrainian aid, they might have actually inadvertently sabotaged this cause. Comparatively “reasonable” foreign policy hawks might question why the US wants to give so many billions of dollars to Ukraine that could otherwise be much better invested in researching solutions to this theoretical threat instead.

It’s too early to confidently predict the future of the Senate’s bill since the House will return from recess on 28 February and a lot can happen before then to move the needle either way, but the point is that there’s no real connection between Ukraine aid and alleged Russian space nukes. Even that threat itself isn’t yet deployed and might not be for some time, if ever, since it could always be kept out of service upon agreement on a new strategic arms pact before the current one expires in 2026.

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This article was originally published on Andrew Korybko’s Newsletter.

Andrew Korybko is an American Moscow-based political analyst specializing in the relationship between the US strategy in Afro-Eurasia, China’s One Belt One Road global vision of New Silk Road connectivity, and Hybrid Warfare. He is a frequent contributor to Global Research.

He is a regular contributor to Global Research.  

Featured image is from the author

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

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On January 31st, the International Court of Justice (ICJ) issued a damning ruling in a case brought by Ukraine, in 2017. It accused Moscow of almost every conceivable “terrorism” offence codified in international law, particularly supporting, sponsoring, and committing “terrorism” in Donbas, while racially discriminating against ethnic Ukrainians and Tatars in Crimea, since 2014. In the end, the Court’s 13 judges ruled in Moscow’s favour in all but two instances. As we shall see, even these findings were highly questionable.

The ruling was highly significant, and threw up a great many seismic findings, raising multiple grave questions. First, about the Ukrainian government’s narrative about events in Crimea and Donbas over the past decade, duly parroted and reinforced by Western journalists, foreign policy pundits, military, intelligence and security officials, and politicians every step of the way. Second, about what precisely Kiev was itself doing during its “anti-terrorist operation”, launched in April 2014 against “pro-Russian separatists”.

While Kiev’s most ardent Western advocates are now admitting the war is already lost, and mainstream news outlets almost daily publish dire reports pointing unambiguously to a total frontline collapse in the very near future, the ICJ’s groundbreaking findings were universally ignored by the media. But of course – a Western government and media apparatus actively complicit in the horrors inflicted in Donbas by Ukraine and its British- and US-trained and armed fascist paramilitaries can only be expected to remain eerily silent.

‘Proving Facts’

Several charges levelled by Ukraine in 2017 related to purported treatment of Crimea’s Tatar and Ukrainian population, following the peninsula’s reunification with Moscow in March 2014. Kiev argued that Russian authorities had thereafter engaged in a concerted, state-sanctioned campaign of measures “that discriminate against persons of Crimean Tatar origin based on their ethnic origin.” The ICJ brutally slapped down almost everyone, while severely indicting the quality of evidence supplied in their support.

For example, the Court was “not convinced” the Russian Federation had discriminated against any Tatar or Ukrainian on the explicit basis of their ethnicity, or that Ukraine-supplied evidence indicated “a pattern of racial discrimination” against anyone. Judges furthermore dismissed witness testimony attesting to these accusations “collected many years after the relevant events” Kiev provided, which was “not supported by corroborating documentation.” They ruled any and all such “evidence” must be “treated with caution”, and associated charges “had not been established” as a result”:

“The reports relied on by Ukraine are of limited value in confirming that the relevant measures are of a racially discriminatory character…Ukraine has not demonstrated…reasonable grounds to suspect that racial discrimination had taken place, which should have prompted the Russian authorities to investigate.”

A particularly striking excerpt of the judgement noted the ICJ “held that certain materials, such as press articles and extracts from publications, are regarded ‘not as evidence capable of proving facts’,” speaking volumes about just how seriously the world’s premier international justice court views Western media reporting on serious matters. Which is to say, not at all. Kiev cited a wealth of negative press coverage to support its arguments, and reports from government-funded NGOs, on the purported plight of Tatars post-reunification.

Ukraine also claimed post-reunification, Crimean authorities created “difficulty” for local residents by forcing them to choose between Ukrainian and Russian citizenship. Again, this was robustly rejected by the Court, which also noted, “the Russian Federation…produced evidence substantiating its attempts at preserving Ukrainian cultural heritage.” Meanwhile, other Moscow-supplied documentation showed “ethnic Ukrainian and Crimean Tatar organizations” were “successful in applying to hold events,” but “multiple events organized by ethnic Russians” were denied. In other words, officials were clearly unconcerned by the population’s ethnic origin.

Elsewhere, Kiev had invoked a 90% reduction in demand across Crimea “for school instruction in the Ukrainian language” as a sign authorities had deliberately suppressed teaching in Ukrainian. Yet again, the ICJ was unmoved, attributing this to not only “a dominant Russian cultural environment and the departure of thousands of pro-Ukrainian Crimean residents to mainland Ukraine,” but to a genuine desire by locals to be taught in Russian, not Ukrainian.

Nonetheless, the ICJ did find Moscow “violated its obligations of the International Convention on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination,” as Russia did not adequately demonstrate “it complied with its duty to protect the rights of ethnic Ukrainians from a disparate adverse effect based on their ethnic origin.” This, despite the Court conceding it was “unable to conclude, on the basis of the evidence presented, that parents have been subjected to harassment or manipulative conduct aimed at deterring them from articulating their preference.”

‘Alleged Offenders’

On the other charges, the ICJ was particularly excoriating. Ukraine accused Moscow of presiding over a campaign of “terrorism” in Donbas, which included the July 2014 downing of MH17. Kiev moreover framed the breakaway Donetsk and Lugansk “people’s republics” as terrorist factions, on a par with Al Qaeda. Judges overwhelmingly rejected these characterizations:

“The Court reaffirmed that an organization cannot be considered to be ‘terrorist’ just because one state labels it this way… [Neither the Donetsk and Lugansk “people’s republics” had] previously been characterized as being terrorist in nature by an organ of the United Nations.”

The ICJ furthermore found that, contrary to Western and Ukrainian allegations, Russia could not be found liable for facilitating terror activity against Kiev. Documentation supplied to that effect was considered “vague and highly generalized,” lacking anything like substantive evidence, let alone proof. Moscow was nonetheless found to have fallen short of its “obligation…to investigate allegations of the commission of terrorism financing offences by alleged offenders present in its territory.”

Even this flaccid finding was spurred by Russia simply not providing evidence it had upheld this “obligation” to the ICJ, and government of Ukraine. Moscow conversely did launch investigations into some “alleged offenders” named by Kiev, and handed over their results, which determined the individuals in question either “[did] not exist in the Russian Federation or their location could not be identified.”

In sum, Kiev was not fighting a counterinsurgency campaign against Russia-supported “terrorists”, and there is no serious indication Moscow was responsible for the litany of violent acts – including all-out invasion of Ukraine – attributed to the Kremlin following the US-orchestrated Maidan coup 10 years ago. Little consolation to the scores of independent researchers, journalists and activists who spent the past decade attempting to challenge prevailing Western narratives. Although evidently, the truth does eventually out, even if it’s ignored by the mainstream.

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Featured image: The ICJ ruling was highly significant, and threw up a great many seismic findings, raising multiple grave questions (Illustrated by Hadi Dbouk to Al Mayadeen

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

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In 2021, after a year-long protest, India’s farmers brought about the repeal of three farm laws that were intended to ‘liberalise’ the agriculture sector. Now, in 2024, farmers are again protesting. The underlying issues and the facilitation of the neoliberal corporatisation of farming that sparked the previous protest remain and have not been resolved.  

The World Bank, the World Trade Organization, global agribusiness and financial capital are working to corporatise India’s agriculture sector. This plan goes back to the early 1990s and India’s foreign exchange crisis, which was used (and manipulated) to set this plan in motion. This ‘structural adjustment’ policy and process involves displacing the current food production system with contract farming and an industrial model of agriculture and food retail that serves the above interests.    

The aim is to reduce the role of the public sector in agriculture to a facilitator of private capital, which requires industrial commodity-crop farming. The beneficiaries will include Cargill, Archer Daniels Midlands, Louis Dreyfus, Bunge and India’s retail and agribusiness giants as well as the global agritech, seed and agrochemical corporations and the big tech companies with their ‘data-driven agriculture’.  

The plan is to displace the peasantry, create a land market and amalgamate landholdings to form larger farms that are more suited to international land investors and industrial farming. As a result, there has been an ongoing strategy to make farming non-viable for many of India’s smallholder farmers and drive hundreds of millions out of farming and into urban centres that have already sprawled to form peri-urban areas, which often tend to contain the most agriculturally fertile land. The loss of such land should be a concern in itself.  

And what will those hundreds of millions do? Driven to the cities because of deliberate impoverishment, they will serve as cheap labour or, more likely, an unemployed or underemployed reserve army of labour for global capital — labour which is being replaced with automation. They will be in search of jobs that are increasingly hard to come by the (World Bank reports that there is more than 23% youth unemployment in India).  

The impoverishment of farmers results from rising input costs, the withdrawal of government assistance, debt and debt repayments and the impacts of cheap, subsidised imports, which depress farmers’ incomes.  

While corporations in India receive massive handouts and have loans written off, the lack of a secure income, exposure to volatile and manipulated international market prices and cheap imports contribute to farmers’ misery of not being able to cover the costs of production and secure a decent standard of living.  

The pressure from the richer nations for the Indian government to further reduce support given to farmers and open up to imports and export-oriented ‘free market’ trade is based on nothing but hypocrisy. For instance, according to policy analyst Devinder Sharma, subsidies provided to US wheat and rice farmers are more than the market worth of these two crops. He also notes that, per day, each cow in Europe receives a subsidy worth more than an Indian farmer’s daily income.  

The World Bank, the World Trade Organization, global institutional investors and transnational agribusiness giants require corporate-dictated contract farming and full-scale neoliberal marketisation for the sale and procurement of produce. They demand that India sacrifice its farmers and its own food security for the benefit of a handful of billionaires.  

Farmers are merely regarded as producers of raw materials (crops) to be fleeced by suppliers of chemical and biotech inputs and the food processing and retail conglomerates. The more farmers can be squeezed, the greater the profits these corporations can extract. This entails creating farmer dependency on costly external inputs and corporate-dominated markets and supply chains. Global agrifood corporations have cleverly and cynically weaved a narrative that equates eradicating food sovereignty and creating dependency with ‘food security’.  

Farmers’ Demands  

In 2018, a charter was released by the All India Kisan Sangharsh Coordination Committee (an umbrella group of around 250 farmers’ organisations). The farmers were concerned about the deepening penetration of predatory corporations and the unbearable burden of indebtedness and the widening disparities between farmers and other sectors.  

They wanted the government to take measures to bring down the input costs of farming, while making purchases of farm produce below the minimum support price (MSP) both illegal and punishable.  

The charter also called for a special discussion on the universalisation of the public distribution system, the withdrawal of pesticides that have been banned elsewhere and the non-approval of genetically engineered seeds without a comprehensive need and impact assessment.  

Other demands included no foreign direct investment in agriculture and food processing, the protection of farmers from corporate plunder in the name of contract farming, investment in farmers’ collectives to create farmer producer organisations and peasant cooperatives and the promotion of agroecology based on suitable cropping patterns and local seed diversity revival.  

These demands remain relevant today due to government inaction. In fact, the three farm laws that were repealed after a year-long protest by farmers in 2021 aimed to do precisely the opposite. They were intended to expose Indian agriculture to a massive dose of neoliberal marketisation and shock therapy. Although the laws were struck down, the corporate interests behind them never went away and are adamant that the Indian government implements the policies they require.  

This would mean India reducing the state procurement and distribution of essential foodstuffs and eradicating its food buffer stocks — so vital to national food security — and purchasing the nation’s needs with its foreign exchange reserves on manipulated global commodity markets. This would make the country wholly dependent on attracting foreign investment and international finance.     

To ensure food sovereignty and national food security, the Mumbai-based Research Unit for Political Economy (RUPE) says that MSPs, through government procurement of essential crops and commodities, should be extended to many major cops such as maize, cotton, oilseed and pulses. At the moment, only farmers in certain states who produce rice and wheat are the main beneficiaries of government procurement at the MSP.  

Since per capita protein consumption in India is abysmally low and has fallen further during the liberalisation era, the provision of pulses in the public distribution system (PDS) is long overdue and desperately needed. The PDS works with central government, via the Food Corporation of India, being responsible for buying food grains from farmers at MSPs at state-run market yards or mandis. It then allocates the grains to each state. State governments then deliver to ‘ration shops’.  

Today, in 2024, farm union leaders are (among other demands) seeking guarantees for a minimum purchase price for crops. Although the government announces support prices for more than 20 crops each year, government agencies buy only rice and wheat at the support level and, even then, in only some states.  

State agencies buy the two staples at government-fixed minimum support prices to build reserves to run the world’s biggest food welfare programme that entitles more than 800 million Indians to free rice and wheat. Currently, that’s more than half the population who per household will receive five kilos per month of these essential foodstuffs for at least the next four years, which would be denied to them by the ‘free market’. As we have seen throughout the world, corporate plunder under the guise of neoliberal marketisation is no friend of the poor and those in need who rely on state support to exist.  

If public procurement of a wider range of crops at the MSP were to occur — and MSPs were guaranteed for rice and wheat across all states — it would help address hunger and malnutrition, encourage crop diversification and ease farmer distress. Indeed, as various commentators have stated, by helping hundreds of millions involved in farming this way, it would give a massive boost to rural spending power and the economy in general.  

Instead of rolling back the role of the public sector and surrendering the system to what constitutes a transnational billionaire class and its corporations, there is a need to further expand official procurement and public distribution.  

The RUPE notes, it would cost around 20% of the current handouts (‘incentives’) received by corporations and their super-rich owners, which do not benefit the bulk of the wider population in any way. It is also worth considering that the loans provided to just five large corporations in India were in 2016 equal to the entire farm debt.  

However, it is clear that the existence of the MSP, the public distribution system and publicly held buffer stocks are an impediment to global agribusiness interests.  

Farmers’ other demands include a complete debt waiver, a pension scheme for farmers and farm labourers, the reintroduction of subsidies scrapped by the Electricity (Amendment) Bill 2020 and the right to fair compensation and transparency concerning land acquisitions.  

In the meantime, the current administration is keen to demonstrate to international finance capital and agricapital that it is being tough on farmers and remains steadfast in its willingness to facilitate the pro-corporate agenda.  

After the recent breakdown in talks between government and farmers’ representatives, the farmers decided to peacefully march to and demonstrate in Delhi. But at the Delhi border, farmers were met with barricades, tear gas and state violence.  

Farmers produce humanities’ most essential need and are not the ‘enemy within’. The spotlight should fall on the ‘enemy beyond’. Instead of depicting farmers as ‘anti-national’, as sections of the media and prominent commentators in India try to, the focus needs to be on challenging those interests that seek to gain from undermining India’s food security and sovereignty and the impoverishment of farmers.  

The issues discussed in the above article are set out in the author’s free-to-read book (2022), which can be accessed below.  

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Renowned author Colin Todhunter specialises in development, food and agriculture. He is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG). 

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Read Colin Todhunter’s e-Book entitled

Food, Dispossession and Dependency. Resisting the New World Order

We are currently seeing an acceleration of the corporate consolidation of the entire global agri-food chain. The high-tech/big data conglomerates, including Amazon, Microsoft, Facebook and Google, have joined traditional agribusiness giants, such as Corteva, Bayer, Cargill and Syngenta, in a quest to impose their model of food and agriculture on the world.

The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation is also involved (documented in ‘Gates to a Global Empire‘ by Navdanya International), whether through buying up huge tracts of farmland, promoting a much-heralded (but failed) ‘green revolution’ for Africa, pushing biosynthetic food and genetic engineering technologies or more generally facilitating the aims of the mega agri-food corporations.

Click here to read.

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).

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

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On February 20 and 21, the High Court of Justice in London will conduct a hearing to decide whether WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange can appeal the court’s earlier decision to extradite him to the U.S. to face 17 charges under the Espionage Act and one for computer crime, with a Methuselan prison sentence of 175 years. This, even though Julian is not an American citizen (he’s Australian), and he was not under U.S. jurisdiction when the “crimes” were allegedly committed. 

At the end of the two-day hearing the court could grant Julian permission to appeal, it could deny it, or it could postpone its decision to a later date. Or the two judges might have some other ruling up their puffy sleeves.

In the first instance, if permission to appeal is granted, whilst awaiting another hearing, Julian would most likely be returned to high-security Belmarsh Prison where he has been held for nearly five years under arbitrary detention in near-total solitary confinement, though he has been convicted of no crime. Belmarsh is known as Britain’s Guantanamo because of its torturous conditions as well as for its population of mostly alleged murderers and terrorists.   

Julian, an award-winning journalist and publisher, a life-long promoter of peace, a nine-time nominee for the Nobel Peace Prize, is quite obviously not in that category, though there are those who think he is. Most notable among these is former CIA Director Mike Pompeo, who pronounced Julian “a darling of terrorist groups”, and defined WikiLeaks as a “nonstate, hostile intelligence service”.

The crime that Julian is essentially “guilty” of is revealing truths most uncomfortable to the ruling powers—practicing journalism as it should be practiced.

The second possible outcome of the upcoming hearing, denial of permission to appeal, could mean that within hours Julian would be shackled and placed on a U.S. military jet headed for Alexandria, Virginia. There his case will be heard by the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia, where many residents work in national security (CIA, FBI, Department of Defense) or have a family member who does. The jury pool comes from this group and, not surprisingly, no one brought before this court under the Espionage Act has ever been exonerated.

Not only would Julian be denied a fair trial there, according to experts such as Nils Melzer, former U.N. rapporteur on torture, but he would not be able to use the defense that what he did was in the public interest, though clearly it was. The outcome there for Julian has virtually been decided even though his final appeal in Britain has not yet been heard.

What happens to Julian after a near-certain conviction by the federal court is that he will forthwith be sent to Supermax ADX Florence Colorado—or a comparable hell hole—which was described by a former supervisor there as being worse than death.

Possible Stay of the Extradition

There is one intervention that could at the very least delay Julian’s rendition to the U.S. if his appeal is denied: Julian’s lawyers will petition the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) to become involved as a last resort. Julian’s case certainly falls within the scope of Rule 39, under which the court takes on a case if “the applicant would otherwise face an imminent risk of irreparable damage”. This would be Julian’s case in the U.S. where he would be subject to inhuman and degrading treatment—torture.

But there are also a few complications: it is not certain that Britain would respect the court’s decision, and if extradition has already taken place, the U.S.  may very well not honor a decision made by a European court.

If (the big if) the plane bearing Julian has not yet left the tarmac in Britain, and the ECtHR has taken on the case in time, it’s probable Julian would be returned to Belmarsh to await the subsequent ruling. Bail has previously been denied, even for health concerns, because Julian is considered a high flight risk, and it’s doubtful bail would be granted at this point.

It’s possible that the judges will not hand down a decision on February 21, but postpone it. A delay would avoid a messy outcry from the increasing numbers of fervent supporters of Julian during an important election year for both the U.S. and Britain, when a virtual death sentence of a publisher would not look good for an incumbent or any candidate who condones the extradition yet touts “a democratic society”.

In any case, barring instant extradition, nothing short of a deus ex machina could prevent Julian from being returned to Belmarsh to await his appeal, intervention by the ECtHR, or a delayed decision on the right to appeal from the High Court.

Deus ex machina?

As improbable as it might seem, the suggestion of a deus ex machina did recently come onto the scene in the guise of former president Donald Trump. Donald Trump, Jr., one of his father’s chief advisors, recently said that based on what he knows now, he would be in favor of dropping the charges against Julian Assange.

Vivek Ramaswamy, former candidate in the Republican party primary, now a Trump supporter who throughout his campaign said he would pardon Julian on day 1, stated that in a recent meeting with Trump, when they discussed various issues, Trump said he would be amenable to pardoning Julian. Three other presidential candidates also want to see Julian freed: Jill Stein, Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., and Marianne Williamson.

For a Trump pardon of Julian to happen, many factors would have to come into play here. Trump has previously flipflopped with regard to Julian, and may well do so again. “I love WikiLeaks!” he declared with great fervor in 2016, lauding WikiLeaks for having published internal emails of the Democratic National Committee showing it undermined Bernie Sanders’ chances of becoming the Democratic presidential nominee and instead installed Hillary Clinton.

But then Trump indicted Julian under the spurious 107-year-old Espionage Act and declined to pardon him during his last days in office. And, under Trump’s presidency, the CIA plotted to kill Julian. Perhaps now Trump wants to be seen as doing the right thing for Julian—or just gain the hundreds of thousands of votes of those who want to see that happen.

The possibility of Trump being elected and then pardoning Julian is of course very far from certain. If indeed it did happen, it couldn’t be before January 2025. By that time, unless extradited, Julian will have suffered yet another year in Belmarsh prison, where he has been held since April 11, 2019, on remand, at the bidding of the U.S. 

Increasing Demands for Julian to be Freed

As Julian’s dire situation gathers more attention, voices from all around the world have risen up calling for his liberation. In a groundbreaking cross-party show of unity, members of Australia’s House of Representatives voted overwhelmingly (86 to 42) on February 14 for Julian not to be extradited but to be brought home. What was particularly significant here and welcomed by Julian’s supporters well beyond Australia is that Prime Minister Anthony Albanese also voted in favor, after months of waffling.  

“Enough is enough”, he kept saying, yet not insisting that the U.S. pardon and release his country’s most famous citizen. This despite the fact that Julian’s return is what nearly 80 percent of Australians want. Perhaps Albanese’s previous inaction was motivated by a recently signed juicy agreement with the U.S. to buy nuclear submarines, bringing the country yet more into the orbit of the U.S. as a strategic satellite in a geopolitically important part of the world.

In view of Albanese’s reticence, a multi-partisan group of Australian parliamentarians has been consistently acting on behalf of those constituents who want Julian freed. Recently they uncovered a ruling by the U.K. Supreme Court that could be the cog in the drive to send Julian to the U.S. According to the law, if a government stipulates that a country to which a person is to be extradited from Britain has given assurances that that person’s health or life won’t be threatened in the receiving country, then those “assurances” must be thoroughly investigated by a third party before extradition can take place.

And so the parliamentarians have written to British Home Secretary James Cleverly calling for a probe into the risks to Julian’s health should he be extradited to the U.S.

In the U.S., House Resolution 934, introduced by Rep. Paul Gosar, a Republican from Arizona, calls for the U.S. to drop the charges against Julian Assange, stating that “regular journalistic activities, including the obtainment and publication of information, are protected under the First Amendment”. The Resolution has eight other co-sponsors from both parties and is currently before the House Judiciary Committee. While its passage there, then onto the floor of the Congress, then over to the Senate could be a lengthy route, its supporters hope that thousands of people will write to their representatives urging their support for this resolution, thereby bringing massive attention to Julian’s case and what it means.

Parliamentarians in France, where Julian also has a family, have called for Julian to be granted political asylum, though it’s questionable if this could be allowed if a demand for asylum has not been requested while the person is actually on French soil. Mexico and Bolivia have offered Julian asylum. Cities in dozens of countries have named Julian an Honorary Citizen.

The five major publications, The New York Times, The Guardian, Le Monde, El Pais, and Der Spiegel, which had “partnered” with WikiLeaks in publishing thousands of files, signed an open letter on November 22 of last year calling for an end to the prosecution of Julian Assange They’re rather late to the game, even with that wishy-washy letter, having profited from enormous sales when the WikiLeaks files were released, then not only ignoring Julian, but criticizing him, often using lies and slander.

Julian’s importance has been acknowledged by hundreds of thousands of parliamentarians, human rights authorities, medical doctors, religious leaders (including the Pope), artists, teachers, trade unionists, legal professionals, journalists, students, writers all over the world who publicly demand his immediate release.

Nevertheless, the Americans and Brits may very well prevail, keeping Julian locked up for more years as he wastes away under the grueling prison conditions awaiting a final decision. Or they could prevail in having Julian sent to a supermax prison via the U.S. district court.

2 by 3 Meters in Belmarsh

During the nearly five years Julian has been incarcerated in Belmarsh, he has been kept mostly in solitary confinement in a cell measuring 2 meters by 3 meters, for 23 hours a day, allowed to stretch his long legs in an enclosed concrete area for an hour. Food is budgeted at 2 British pounds ($2.50) a day per prisoner, with meals consisting of gruel, thin soup, and little else.

Image: Julian Assange in Belmarsh Prison in 2019 (Source: WSWS)

Julian has not seen sunlight since he entered the Ecuadorian embassy in London in 2012 seeking asylum there, apart from the day he was dragged from the embassy, or the days he was driven in a van from Belmarsh to those court hearings he was actually allowed to attend in person—albeit enclosed in a glass box (as is often the case in British courtrooms).

Not surprisingly his health has been consistently declining. Julian has lost a lot of weight and is paler than any human should be. In 2021, during or before a court hearing, (it’s unclear) he suffered a mini stroke at the age of just 49. He has subsequently been diagnosed with nerve damage and memory problems, and may very well suffer a much more serious stroke.

Death is never far away in Belmarsh—when Julian’s father John Shipton visited his son there, he reported that three suicides and one murder had occurred in the prison just during the past month alone. Nor was death far away in the embassy, where plain-clothes and uniformed officers menacingly patrolled and surveilled the embassy 24/7.

While Julian was considered paranoid for believing the U.S. wanted to kill him, an exhaustive investigation by Yahoo News in September of 2019 revealed that the U.S. and British intelligence services conspired to assassinate Julian by poisoning him while he was in the embassy or shooting him on the street or else kidnapping him from there.

Psychological Torture

Julian’s mental health has also suffered severely, as would be the case for anyone incarcerated for so long in such horrifying conditions, undergoing repeated legal proceedings to determine whether the equivalent of a death sentence—lifelong internment in a U.S. supermax prison— will be imposed.

In a supermax prison, and especially under “special administrative measures” that would most likely be applied to Julian, he would be completely isolated. At least in Belmarsh he can now have some visitors, though restricted, and, finally, some books and writing paper. In the U.S. prison he would be in a virtually empty cell, forbidden any contact with the outside world, or even fellow prisoners, and thus denied any support or motivation to keep on living.

The toll on Julian’s mental health has been so significant that when Nils Melzer visited Julian in Belmarsh in May of 2019 with two medical experts, he stated unequivocally that Julian showed all the signs of psychological torture. His excellent book, The Trial of Julian Assange, lays out the case in great detail.

Judge Vanessa Baraitser, the magistrate who officiated during Julian’s first hearing, recognized Julian’s psychological fragility, as described in evidence presented to the court. Although she ruled in favor of extradition based on the 18 points presented by the American lawyers (obtaining, receiving, and disclosing classified information), she ruled against extradition on the grounds that she was certain Julian would commit suicide if placed in a supermax prison.

It’s unlikely Baraitser was motivated by the milk of human kindness, as she refused bail, saying Julian would “abscond”, and, ironically, had him sent back to the same place where, testimony showed, he had seriously contemplated and possibly even attempted suicide. Moreover, subsequent hearings and a final ruling on the 18 points for which she supported extradition would mean Julian would never be released from any prison.

It is clear to many that the process—the relentless persecution and prosecution of Julian—is the punishment. Keeping him silenced, in a deathly dungeon, unable to do what has always been his passion—revealing truths so that we may all act upon them to make the world a better place—is clearly an eroding and fatal punishment.

A Threat to the Real Criminals

Why this ongoing punishment has been inflicted on Julian is to completely break him down, physically and psychologically, without even having to impose the very questionable ultimate blow of locking him up in a supermax prison for 175 years. The 10 million documents Julian published on WikiLeaks earned the wrath of those politicians, officials, plutocrats, dictators, rulers, generals, corporate executives whose murderous, illegal deeds he revealed, whether war crimes, crimes against humanity, corruption, mass surveillance. Ironically none of the perpetrators of those crimes has ever been convicted, while the publisher who revealed them remains in prison.

Revelations have helped end torture in Guantanamo, for example, overturn corrupt governments as in Egypt, end wars, for example in Iraq, aided by the very disturbing  Collateral Murder video showing U.S. soldiers in Baghdad joyfully shooting down civilians from an Apache helicopter. Julian has done more than anyone to uncover how governments, politicians, corporations, the military, and the press truly operate. It’s not surprising they want him silenced forever.

The possibility of Julian’s cranking up WikiLeaks to once again be the propaganda and lies-shattering, truth-telling online publication that it was makes him a huge threat to all those all around the world who are committing unseen—or even seen—and with impunity the same and even more nefarious crimes Julian earlier revealed.

During Julian’s incarceration and WikiLeaks slowdown, alternative journalists and bloggers have done heroic jobs of reporting what must be brought to light—in Gaza, Ukraine, Yemen, Syria, Iraq, for example. But few, if any, has the capability to receive securely and completely anonymously major revelations from whistleblowers and then publish them for free for anyone anywhere in the world, as WikiLeaks did so successfully using a revolutionary method Julian invented and pioneered.

The two-day hearing beginning on February 20 will be the fourth time Julian’s case has been in court. The first time, under Judge Baraitser in the Magistrate’s court that denied extradition but upheld the Americans’ 18 points, was followed by a hearing before two judges of the High Court, ruling on the U.S. demand to appeal the extradition decision based on additional assurances. While highly unusual, if not illegal, to present new assurances at that point, the High Court nevertheless agreed to hear the appeal.

In December 2021 it  overturned the denial of extradition, accepting the specious assurance by the U.S. that Julian would be treated well in a U.S. prison, unless, their worthless caveat stated, he did something to warrant changing that. Not only could such “assurances” be revoked, but they are unenforceable.

Assange’s lawyers then filed an application for a cross appeal to the High Court of the first court’s judgement as well as the Home Secretary’s decision to extradite. That application was denied by a single High Court judge.

Craig Murray (craigmurray.org), Kevin Gosztola (Guilty of Journalism: The Political Case against Julian Assange), and the excellent Consortium News have done thorough reporting on all these hearings, while the brilliant investigative reporter Stefania Maurizi has followed Julian and WikiLeaks from the beginning, uncovering, as in a detective novel, the government forces arrayed against Julian and their treacherous tactics (Secret Power: WikiLeaks and Its Enemies).

The right to an appeal will now be heard this February 20 and 21 by two High Court judges, Mr. Justice Johnson and Dame Victoria Sharp, who were recently announced. Sharp and her family have long and strong connections to Conservative party leaders, and Sharp’s recent ruling against a journalist, Carole Cadwalladr, in a libel case, was denounced by press freedom advocates for supporting the repression of public interest journalism. Previous judges ruling on Julian’s case have had equally questionable connections. 

A Case Rife with Illegalities

The illegalities in this case are numerous, as the bona fides of some of the judges suggest, and further underscore the fact that all along this case has not been about justice but politics. Among the many transgressions of justice and the rule of law figure initially the conditions under which Julian was kept in the Ecuadorian embassy, from which he could never step outside, even for a moment, even for urgent medical care, without risk of being whisked away and imprisoned.

He and his visitors, including his doctors and lawyers, had all their interactions with him filmed and ultimately sent to the CIA. Their electronic devices were confiscated during their visits, photographed, and that information was also sent to the CIA, thereby violating the rights of legal and medical confidentiality—to say nothing of the Fourth Amendment right to privacy—and potentially severely compromising Julian’s legal case.

Two lawyers and two journalists have filed a lawsuit against the CIA and Mike Pompeo plus UC Global, a Spanish security company thatcarried out the spying in the embassy, for these violations, and a federal judge in New York has agreed to let the suit go through, though any final decision will not be immediate.

An embassy’s premises are meant to be inviolable safe places for those seeking asylum there, yet British police, with the agreement of the Ecuadorian embassy under its newly elected government, dragged Julian—who is also an Ecuadorian citizen—from the embassy and locked him away in Belmarsh. They kept all his belongings, including his computers and legal notes. In Belmarsh he has been kept under conditions that violate any sense of human rights.

Image: Julian Assange was secretly recorded while living at the Ecuadorean embassy in London. (Source: EPV)

The original “crime” for which Julian was brought to prison was breaching bail when he went to the Ecuadorian embassy, rightfully fearing extradition from Sweden to the U.S. following subsequently dismissed—and fabricated—allegations of sexual assault in Sweden. Breach of bail in Britain carries a maximum penalty of a year’s incarceration, though in most cases it results in a fine or dismissal.

Yet Julian has been kept in Belmarsh well beyond that limit, never convicted of any crime, in clear violation of habeas corpus. Much of the irrefutable evidence presented by Julian’s lawyers—he did heavily redact documents before releasing them on WikiLeaks, not a single person was harmed because of the releases, Julian did not help Chelsea Manning leak classified documents—was indeed fallaciously refuted by the judges.

The Espionage Act, under which a journalist or publisher has heretofore never been prosecuted, was designed, as its name suggests, to prosecute those Americans working to undermine the U.S. war efforts by delivering national defense information to the enemy—espionage coming from espion, or spy, in French. Not only is Julian not an American citizen, and he was in Europe when he was publishing WikiLeaks, but the “enemy” to whom he was meant to have supplied classified information—information in the public interest—must ipso facto be any member of the general public anywhere in the world!

The U.S. First Amendment protects the publication of documents, even those that are classified. Moreover per extradition agreements between Britain and the U.S., a person convicted for political reasons—and the case against Julian is purely political—or who could face a death penalty in the receiving country, may not be extradited from Britain.

One of the most egregious transgressions of justice during Julian’s first hearing was the fact that the principal evidence against him was supplied by a diagnosed sociopath, Sigurdur Thordarson, who had been convicted of fraud, embezzlement, and crimes against minors, and who later recanted his testimony, saying he had been bribed by the U.S. to say what he did.

Though Julian’s defense in any impartial courtroom based on the rule of law would undeniably be upheld, he remains condemned, locked up, perhaps forever, with the uncertainty of his future a gnawing torture.

Groundswell of Support

Thousands of people from all over the world plan to gather outside the Royal Courts of Justice where the hearing will be held on February 20 and 21 to support Julian, to demand that justice be done. As this is not a trial but a hearing to determine if an appeal against extradition can take place, it is unclear whether Julian will be present, though he has requested that he be allowed to be in court so he can confer with his lawyers. Though for most of his time in Belmarsh Julian was deprived of a computer—although he was once allowed one that had the keys glued—he has nevertheless played a major role in helping his lawyers prepare his legal case.

Stella Assange, Julian’s wife, mother of their two children, and one of his lawyers, has been travelling all over the world trying to convince world leaders, journalists, individuals why it’s in all of our interests that Julian be freed, that justice be upheld, that freedom of expression is sacrosanct, as is our right to know, and that governments must be held accountable.

There has been a groundswell of support for Julian as the court date approaches. Day X, as  this date has been referred to in calls to action, has rallied even those who haven’t been active in Julian’s defense to protest in support of what may be Julian’s last attempt to be freed. From Boston to Buenos Aires, Sydney to Naples, Mexico to Hamburg, San Francisco to Montevideo, Denver to Paris, and well beyond, major demonstrations have been planned all across the world on February 20 and 21.

What’s at Stake

What’s at stake for Julian is horrendous. What’s at stake for the rest of us is terrifying. If Julian is extradited and convicted under the draconian Espionage Act, the message will be that anyone anywhere in the world who says or writes anything that the U.S. considers against their interests can also be locked away forever.

While the U.S. seems to feel that extraterritorial jurisdiction is its right alone, other countries may decide to follow suit, picking off journalists or activists who don’t toe the government line. If a journalist and publisher is locked away forever for revealing truths, a clear message is broadcast, and even more journalists and publishers will self-censor, so the same fate isn’t rained down on them. And that ends a free and open press, that kills our right to know.

Today it is open season on journalists in many parts of the world, most egregiously in Palestine where some 120 journalists—and often their families as well—have been targeted and assassinated by the IDF of Israel. Increasing numbers of so-called news organizations unquestioningly publish government press releases essentially as news reports, to maintain access to those governments. Bloggers who write on Twitter or Facebook or other social media sites are frequently censored.

To understand what’s going on in the very complex world of today, we desperately need Julian Assange, with his analytical, erudite, prophetic mind, to reveal, assimilate, and interpret this precarious world so we might understand and act.

Some Good News

The good news is that Julian has behind him his devoted family, travelling the world, speaking out for him. The excellent film “Ithaka” shows this in detail and very movingly. Julian also has behind him a dogged legal team of hundreds of lawyers and researchers looking for every possible way to secure his freedom.

And he has behind him the hundreds of dedicated supporters who hold weekly vigils whether in Piccadilly Circus or outside Belmarsh prison or in a square in Brussels or Berlin, or who join marches and rallies all over the world.

The other good news is that Julian is indefatigable. While incarcerated in the Ecuadorian embassy, under very difficult circumstances, during the last year often without Internet or telephone connections, Julian helped to publish 5 million documents, produced 3 books, launched more than 30 publications, and gave 100 talks. And he is extraordinarily resilient—few, if any of us, would be able to go through what Julian has, and to keep on going.

John Pilger, the brilliant journalist and filmmaker who recently passed away, said of his dear friend, whom he visited on several occasions in Belmarsh, “Julian is the embodiment of courage.” As Pilger was leaving the prison visitors room, he looked back at Julian. “He held his fist high and clenched, as he always does.”

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Karen Sharpe is the author of Julian Assange in His Own Words, translated into French (Julian Assange parle), and into Spanish (Julian Assange habla).

Featured image: Campaigners pressing for the release of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange take part in a demonstration during a Night Carnival in Parliament Square in London, February 11, 2023

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

***

We owe a debt to Elie Wiesel, Leon Uris and all the historians, writers and filmmakers who produced thousands of books and films about the Nazi holocaust of the Jews, as well as some who documented the extermination of the Roma, homosexuals, communists, mentally handicapped and others in almost equal numbers. Even the fictionalized stories helped to sensitize us all to the horrors of genocide (a word coined in 1943 by the eminent Polish Jewish lawyer Rafael Lemkin to refer to the elimination of at least a quarter of the world’s Armenians, before he or anyone else knew of the Nazi horrors).

This is a great service, because their work removed all excuse for ignorance toward genocidal acts, among both the general public and the political elite. They helped, either directly or indirectly, to indict and prosecute many who participated in the holocaust and to cast everlasting shame upon those who looked the other way.

Lemkin and other eminent, hardworking and resourceful individuals and institutions also contributed to the 1948 Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, a major component of international law now shared by the 153 nations that are its signatories. Among other provisions, the convention requires its signatories to take action to stop genocidal acts when they occur, partly overriding national sovereignty.

This in turn gave rise to the Responsibility to Protect (R2P) doctrine, which espoused the duty of governments and other institutions to intervene in situations of genocidal activity. That doctrine has been abused and discredited by powerful nations, sometimes using it as a pretext to intervene for their own purposes, but it is nonetheless a testament to the pervasive awareness of genocide and the sensitivity to it, both public and official.

One effect of this awareness is the shame cast upon those who looked away or “didn’t want to get involved” during the Nazi holocaust and subsequent genocides, including Cambodia, Rwanda, Bosnia and others. “Where were you?” “Why didn’t you do something?” These are questions that no one wants to be asked, least of all public officials.

This makes it all the more difficult to understand how such awareness has failed to stop the Gaza genocide. It is by far the most widely covered genocide in history, replete with mass torture, glorification of the deaths of innocents, mass hysteria among the perpetrators, endorsement by government officials, and racism of the most extreme kind, all on video, social media and every other imaginable form of communication. The perpetrators are essentially crying to the world, “Watch us. We can do the unthinkable if we want to”. The utter cruelty is not just horrifying; it’s incomprehensible. If you’re really that evil, why would you say so in such a loud voice?

The answer, of course, is that they feel entitled to commit these crimes, and they believe that no one can or will stop them. In fact, they expect and demand complicity for their deeds, and they are getting it from the very powers – primarily the US – who backed the Genocide Convention and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. But this begs the question. We can easily understand what motivates Netanyahu and his government, and why they deserve life in prison, but why not the Biden administration and US government and war industry, as well? Do they think there will be no price to pay? Do they think there will be no Nuremberg trials?

The answer is yes, of course they do. In fact, they have everything to gain, if for no other reason than that offshore Gaza waters hold an estimated 30 billion cubic meters of natural gas. Their participation in the orgy of death assures them of a share in the spoils.

But what of the rest of us? Will we share in the spoils? Most of us, to our credit, would not want to and will not get a chance to do so in any case. Will Netanyahu, Gallant, Gantz, Smotrich, Ben-Gvir, Biden, Blinken, Austin, Nuland, Clinton (both) and others complicit in the greatest genocide of our century appear before Nuremberg trials?

That will at least partly on whether the rest of us escape the question, “What were you doing during the Gaza genocide?”

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Paul Larudee is a retired academic and current administrator of a nonprofit human rights and humanitarian aid organization. He is a regular contributor to Global Research.

Featured image: The UN says nearly 1.9 million people have now been displaced in Gaza. [AbdelHakim Abu Riash/Al Jazeera]

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

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The Ukrainian government desperately needs billions of dollars more in US aid, a senior Pentagon official admitted, citing the critical situation in Avdeyevka, a frontline town in Donetsk that Ukrainian forces withdrew from on February 17 due to sustained Russian pressure. More alarming for the Kiev regime is the fact that the Pentagon is warning even more territory will be lost to Russian forces following the fall of Avdeyevka.

The US Senate approved on February 13 a $95 billion aid package, which includes $61 billion to finance Ukraine’s war against Russia, but the House of Representatives did not approve the measure before going on a two-week break.

“Ukrainian forces are running short of ammunition and other critical supplies, and the city is at risk of soon falling into Russian hands,” a senior Department of Defense official told the media on February 16, the day before the city was lost.

“We see this as something that could be the harbinger of what is to come if we do not get this supplemental funding—because without supplemental funding, not only can we not resupply those forces that are bravely trying to defend Avdiivka, we also will find many other locations along the forward line of troops that will be running low on supplies of critical ammunition,” the official said. 

The official also said that besides Avdeyevka, other areas will also fall as Ukrainian forces run out of ammunition and air defence capabilities. 

In the early hours of February 17, the commander-in-chief of the Ukrainian Armed Forces, Oleksandr Syrskyi, who was born in Novinki to the east of Moscow, announced the decision to withdraw his troops from Avdeyevka and enter defensive mode. This decision was forced since the Armed Forces of Ukraine lost some 5,550 more troops, including deaths and injuries, in the week leading to the decision.

“Based on the operational situation around Avdeyevka, in order to avoid encirclement and preserve the lives and health of servicemen, I decided to withdraw our units from the city and move to defence on more favourable lines,” Syrskyi wrote on social media.

However, Ukraine’s withdrawal from Avdeyevka is not a surprise. It is recalled that then Commander-in-Chief of the Ukrainian Armed Forces, General Valery Zaluzhnyi, said in December that the Russian military could “concentrate its forces, including artillery and aviation, in one direction or another. And they can make it so that in two-three months, the town [Avdiivka] will have the same fate as Bakhmut,” which ultimately was proven true.

Maksym Zhorin, the deputy commander of Ukraine’s 3rd Assault Brigade, revealed on February 16 that his troops were outnumbered 15 to one after the Russian military sent seven brigades into combat, totalling about 15,000 personnel.

Even though the Institute for the Study of War claims that “the continued marginal rate of Russian advance in and around Avdiivka suggests that Ukrainian forces are currently conducting a relatively controlled withdrawal from Avdiivka,” the withdrawal has come at a huge cost as Russian units mined some routes, mostly muddy rural roads since all paved roads out of the town are under Russian control. Nonetheless, ISW warns that “Ukrainian forces may have to stabilise the frontline by counter-attacking in the area where Russian forces are trying to close the encirclement of Ukrainian forces in Avdiivka in order to conduct an orderly withdrawal.”

Contradicting the ISW’s claims of a “controlled withdrawal,” Commander of the Tavria group, Oleksandr Tarnavskyi, said on February 16 that “a number of Ukrainian servicemen were taken prisoner at the final stage of the operation, under pressure from the enemy’s superior forces,” even though the withdrawal was supposedly carried out in accordance to plans.

For his part, Zhorin also admitted, “The overall situation in this area is difficult, and we are facing some very tough battles ahead.”

There is no doubt that Ukraine will face even more difficulties ahead, which is why President Volodymyr Zelensky warned on February 17 of an “artificial deficit” of weapons following the fall of Avdeyevka.

“We can get our land back, and (Russian President Vladimir) Putin can lose, and this has already happened more than once on the battlefield,” he delusionally added.

Zelensky made the comment in the hope of securing more funding from the West, and although he might eventually achieve this, Russia’s capture of Avdeyevka has put another dent in Western resolve to continue supporting Ukraine since the situation will only worsen for Ukraine across the frontlines.

Avdeyevka is key to securing full control of Donbass since the town is a gateway to Donetsk city and will finally stop Ukrainian forces from indiscriminately bombing citizens in the city. Just as importantly, since Avdeyevka was a powerful fortress, just as Bakhmut was, the road has now opened for Russian forces to push on and evict Ukrainian troops from Donbass once and for all, a situation the Pentagon has more or less acknowledged.

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

Featured image source

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

***

The Zone of Interest is a film directed by Jonathan Glazer, who has said, “This is not about the past, it’s about now”. The film’s story mirrors the current story in Gaza, even though the film is set next door to the gas chambers at Auschwitz in the WW2 era.

A German family with children live in a lovely home and garden right on the walls of Auschwitz. The father of the family is a Nazi officer, and the wife and children live a seemingly normal life while ignoring the deaths of thousands of Jews next door.

The German wife enjoys wearing a lovely fur coat taken off a wealthy Jew who is murdered by her husband’s military unit. This reminded me of Laila Jardali, a Palestinian refugee in Fresno, California. She and her family were driven from their home in Palestine in 1948. She recalled seeing Jewish immigrants fresh off the refugee boats from Europe, living in Palestinian homes they had confiscated, and wearing the homeowners clothing, while eating on their China dishes. 

Having the garden plays a significant role in the family home, as the German father was a follower of the Artaman League, a German anti-urban, back-to-the-land movement that advocated for family farms and living off the land. Many Jews live in a Kibbutz in Israel, which are communal farms. The farm houses living on the walls of Gaza are full of families who chose to live within sight of the Palestinians living in Gaza because they lied farming.

Jews in Europe were rounded up by the Nazis and forcibly displaced to concentration camps, like Auschwitz. The UN and other human rights organizations have labeled Gaza the largest open-air concentration camp on earth, which had housed about 3 million people prior to the Israeli attack which has killed about 28,000 people, mainly women and children, with another 65,000 injured.

The Jews live in freedom just yards away from 3 million Palestinians who are denied all human rights. Gaza has been under siege since 2007, and life had deteriorated there prior to the October 7 Hamas attack on Israel.

Now, the last remaining Palestinians in Gaza are huddled in the extreme southern portion of Gaza, with nowhere to hide. 1.2 million people are just hours away from the promised Israeli ground invasion of Rafah which will likely end in a bloodbath of civilians.

The Jewish farm-kids can grow up with the opportunity to go to any University abroad for higher degrees, while having the right to return home to Israel and work. The Palestinian children have no opportunity to study abroad, or to return home if they leave.  Studies abroad result in a lifetime of exile.

In the film, the Nazi family lived a normal life just yards away from the gas chambers, and yet were seemingly oblivious to their neighbors suffering. This is a mirror image of Gaza; faced on two sides by Israeli homes, schools and farms full of seemingly educated and sophisticated Jews who are well aware of their neighbors plight, but chose to ignore it. Their self-absorption and self-isolation turns them into unfeeling narcissists, who only feel their own pain acutely.  The inability to feel the pain of others is a sign of mental illness, as the ability to feel empathy is the foundation to having a healthy mind.

But, the Jews are not alone in their lack of empathy. The US, UK, France, Germany and Italy all have sent weapons to Israel to use to commit genocide in Gaza. 

In WW2, the Germans were taking over land, and expanding the Nazi state. It was this expansion and occupation which brought the US government into the war. While the Nazis were marching through Europe, the US President Franklin D. Roosevelt declined to step in to stop the genocide of Jews. Roosevelt ignored the obvious and allowed the gas chambers to keep functioning until the British PM Winston Churchill begged FDR to save Great Britain from invasion and occupation.  The holocaust did not sway F.D.R., it was only the land-grab by Hitler’s regime that got the US to enter the war.

Just as the American newspapers in WW2 were publishing the articles of incredible suffering in Europe, and the American Jewish groups were speaking out in an effort to save the Jews in the concentration camps, the US and European media, and social media, today carry the news of the genocide unfolding in Gaza. The whole world is well aware of what atrocities are being carried out by the IDF in Gaza, but no one takes action today, and in WW2 no one took action until the US stood up to Hitler. 

Only the US President Joe Biden can stop the genocide in Gaza. Pleading, and begging Netanyahu, Ben Gvir and Smotrich to stop the war crimes will not have any affect. Biden needs to play his hand, as he holds all the weapons and cash promised to Israel in his hand.  Biden simply needs to say, “Ceasefire now, or no more weapons and cash.”

The German Nazi officer was following an unquestioning commitment to National Socialism, which made it acceptable to murder millions of Jews.  This parallels with the Israeli dedication to Zionism, which also is a political ideology, which makes it acceptable, and necessary, to kill and displace millions of Palestinians.  Israeli ministers in the Netanyahu government, 

Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant said on October 9,

“We are fighting human animals and we will act accordingly,” and added, “there will be no electricity, no food, no fuel. Everything is closed”. 

“My right, my wife’s, my children’s, to roam the roads of Judea and Samaria are more important than the right of movement of the Arabs,” said Israel’s National Security Minister, Itamar Ben Gvir.

Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich said, that there is “no such thing as Palestinians” and they are a “fictitious nation invented only to battle against the Zionist movement.”

The Nazi party was based on a racist view that German “Aryan” blood was pure, and Jews were inferior and deserved to be exterminated because of their race. The Zionist political ideology of the Jewish State of Israel is the same, but with a twist. In their view, Jews are the exalted race, and all non-Jews are inferior and sub-human. 

The reviews written about this shocking, and chilling film are describing it a film which will change the viewer forever. There are some films which stick in your mind a lifetime, and this film is branded a hard film to watch. It has secured Oscar nominations in the category of best screenplay, best picture, best director and others.

What happens when you deny your neighbors of their human rights? Israelis, Americans and Europeans all live in freedom. The Palestinians in Gaza and the Occupied West Bank are asking for their rights which for 75 years have been denied from them.  Jews refer to the holocaust and like to say, “Never again”, but it is happening once again, and the Zone of Interest makes us all come to face the ugly truth.

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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

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

***

Introduction

This heart-wrenching article – a reality account as close as can be – had been published by the Los Angeles Times two days ago. It depicts the horrendous inhumanity thrust upon Gaza – and ultimately, upon Rafah, the southern-most city in Gaza, border to Egypt, where an estimated 1.5 million Gazans are amassed in catastrophic conditions, many of them living side by side, so close that they touch each other or in makeshift tents that leave no space to breathe. 

The stench from human proximity and lack of hygiene is unbearable – acceptable only by getting used to it by the human struggle to survive.

Let us not even mention the constant famine, the wanton lack of food and water, while kilometers after kilometers of aid trucks with food and water and medical supplies are stranded in Egypt, in front of the Rafah border entrance, but barred from entering by Israeli military forces. 

Inhumanity, injured, maimed, force-amputated, no anesthesia, constant humming of drone surveillance, endless deafening noise from bombings and sniper shootings, has no name in current vocabulary. The Zionists have “elevated” the term “inhumanity” to a level between extreme suffering for which there is no verbal description — and death.

While operating and working for 14-16 hours a day, at one point, Dr. Irfan Galaria makes one of the saddest possible reflections – wishing that some of the kids and adults, so badly maimed and hurting, that they may have better died, thus escaping this tremendous and non-stop suffering.

Please read on, understanding what Dr. Irfan Galaria means, when he says “What I saw was not war, it was annihilation”.

—Peter Koenig, February 19, 2024

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I’m an American Doctor Who Went to Gaza. What I Saw Wasn’t War — It Was Annihilation

By Irfan Galaria, Los Angeles Times

In late January, I left my home in Virginia, where I work as a plastic and reconstructive surgeon and joined a group of physicians and nurses traveling to Egypt with the humanitarian aid group MedGlobal to volunteer in Gaza.

I have worked in other war zones. But what I witnessed during the next 10 days in Gaza was not war — it was annihilation. At least 28,000 Palestinians have been killedin Israel’s bombardment of Gaza. From Cairo, Egypt’s capital, we drove 12 hours east to the Rafah border. We passed miles of parked humanitarian aid trucks because they weren’t allowed into Gaza. Aside from my team and other envoy members from the United Nations and World Health Organization, there were very few others there.

Entering southern Gaza on Jan. 29, where many have fled from the north, felt like the first pages of a dystopian novel. Our ears were numb with the constant humming of what I was told were the surveillance drones that circled constantly. Our noses were consumed with the stench of 1 million displaced humans living in close proximity without adequate sanitation. Our eyes got lost in the sea of tents. We stayed at a guest house in Rafah. Our first night was cold, and many of us couldn’t sleep. We stood on the balcony listening to the bombs, and seeing the smoke rise from Khan Yunis.

As we approached the European Gaza Hospital the next day, there were rows of tents that lined and blocked the streets. Many Palestinians gravitated toward this and other hospitals hoping it would represent a sanctuary from the violence — they were wrong.

People also spilled into the hospital: living in hallways, stairwell corridors and even storage closets. The once-wide walkways designed by the European Union to accommodate the busy traffic of medical staff, stretchers and equipment were now reduced to a single-file passageway. On either side, blankets hung from the ceiling to cordon off small areas for entire families, offering a sliver of privacy. A hospital designed to accommodate about 300 patients was now struggling to care for more than 1,000 patients and hundreds more seeking refuge.

There were a limited number of local surgeons available. We were told that many had been killed or arrested, their whereabouts or even their existence unknown. Others were trapped in occupied areas in the north or nearby places where it was too risky to travel to the hospital. There was only one local plastic surgeon left and he covered the hospital 24/7. His home had been destroyed, so he lived in the hospital, and was able to stuff all of his personal possessions into two small hand bags. This narrative became all too common among the remaining staff at the hospital. This surgeon was lucky, because his wife and daughter were still alive, although almost everyone else working in the hospital was mourning the loss of their loved ones.

I began work immediately, performing 10 to 12 surgeries a day, working 14 to 16 hours at a time. The operating room would often shake from the incessant bombings, sometimes as frequent as every 30 seconds. We operated in unsterile settings that would’ve been unthinkable in the United States. We had limited access to critical medical equipment: We performed amputations of arms and legs daily, using a Gigli saw, a Civil War-era tool, essentially a segment of barbed wire. Many amputations could’ve been avoided if we’d had access to standard medical equipment. It was a struggle trying to care for all the injured within the constructs of a healthcare system that has utterly collapsed.

I listened to my patients as they whispered their stories to me, as I wheeled them into the operating room for surgery. The majority had been sleeping in their homes, when they were bombed. I couldn’t help thinking that the lucky ones died instantaneously, either by the force of the explosion or being buried in the rubble. The survivors faced hours of surgery and multiple trips to the operating room, all while mourning the loss of their children and spouses. Their bodies were filled with shrapnel that had to be surgically pulled out of their flesh, one piece at a time.

I stopped keeping track of how many new orphans I had operated on. After surgery they would be filed somewhere in the hospital, I’m unsure of who will take care of them or how they will survive. On one occasion, a handful of children, all about ages 5 to 8, were carried to the emergency room by their parents. All had single sniper shots to the head. These families were returning to their homes in Khan Yunis, about 2.5 miles away from the hospital, after Israeli tanks had withdrawn. But the snipers apparently stayed behind. None of these children survived.

On my last day, as I returned to the guest house where locals knew foreigners were staying, a young boy ran up and handed me a small gift. It was a rock from the beach, with an Arabic inscription written with a marker: “From Gaza, With Love, Despite the Pain.” As I stood on the balcony looking out at Rafah for the last time, we could hear the drones, bombings and bursts of machine-gun fire, but something was different this time: The sounds were louder, the explosions were closer.

This week, Israeli forces raided another large hospital in Gaza, and they’re planning a ground offensive in Rafah. I feel incredibly guilty that I was able to leave while millions are forced to endure the nightmare in Gaza. As an American, I think of our tax dollars paying for the weapons that likely injured my patients there. Already driven from their homes, these people have nowhere else to turn.

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Irfan Galaria is a physician with a plastic and reconstructive surgery practice in Chantilly, Va.

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 lectures at universities in the US, Europe and South America. He writes regularly for online journals and 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: Ahmad Shabat and his uncle Ibrahim at Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital in Deir el-Balah in the central Gaza Strip [Atia Darwish/Al Jazeera]

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

***

He was sweet and well meaning, but he was old. He was hazy. His memory was poor. Doddering, confused, the self-proclaimed leader of the Free World seemed ready to check into a retirement village. That, at least, is the thick insinuation of the Special Counsel’s report on President Joe Biden’s mishandling of classified documents when vice president during the Obama administration.

The findings of the Special Counsel Robert Hur were not punitive. But they were laceratingly wounding. It seemed to resemble more of a nurse’s assessment of whether you need an upgrade in aged-care treatment, a bolstering of services for a person in declining years. (“Have you lost your mind, dear?”)

During the course of the investigation, things did not get better. “In his interview with our office, Mr. Biden’s memory was worse.  He did not remember when he was vice president, forgetting on the first day of the interview when his term ended (‘if it was 2013 – when did I stop being Vice President?’), and forgetting on the second day of the interview when his term began (‘in 2009, am I still Vice President?’).”

At an ill-tempered press conference, Biden insisted that his memory was “fine”, that Hur should never have asked such questions as whether the president could recall when his son died and that he was “well meaning. And I’m an elderly man. And I know what the hell I’m doing. I’ve been president – I put this country back on its feet.”

The picture is not a good one. But then again, when was it? Prior to coming to power, Biden already had a bookshelf list of bungles, gaffes and misjudgements. The only question looming behind was the degree of intent behind them. In 1987, he notoriously plagiarised much of a speech by the then leader of the British Labor Party, Neil Kinnock and, to show he was on a hot streak, generously decorated his academic record from Syracuse Law School. Despite describing this as “much ado about nothing,” he withdrew from the contest for the Democratic presidential nomination that September.

His campaign team, terrified that he might verbally snare himself leading up to the 2020 election, tried their best to insulate him from penetrative public scrutiny. This was very much aided by the ravages and restrictions of the pandemic, which afforded him the perfect excuse to operate in conditions of masked isolation.

As commander-in-chief matters have only worsened. Figures, for example, were airily revised – a million dead US residents and citizens from the ravages of COVID-19 became the somewhat reduced figure of “over 100”. World leaders dead or alive were swapped in Biden’s memory channel – a flattering form of death revival, and a denigration of the living. Biden, for instance, confused the current French president, Emmanuel Macron, with the late François Mitterrand before a campaign rally in Las Vegas.

His geographical recall was not too good either.

“Right after I was elected, I went to a G7 meeting in southern England. And I sat down and said, ‘America is back!’ and Mitterrand from Germany – I mean France – looked at me and said, ‘How long are you back for?’”

In terms of wars, he has remarked that Russia’s Vladimir Putin was “losing the war in Iraq”, which would have surprised the Russians, Ukrainians and everybody else. More could have been made by the Republicans about this in Congress, but then again, their aged warriors are hardly endowed with brainbox memories of sound recall or cognition either.

Other mishaps could cause titters of amusement – the harmless, dotty chap who muddles the facts, lighting up pub conversation.  During his April visit to Ireland last year, light entertainment was caused by his confusion between the terroristic Black and Tan enforcers during the Irish War of Independence (1919-21) and the All Blacks, New Zealand’s fabled rugby team. The remarks were made in Louth in the context of speaking about a former rugby player and distant cousin Rob Kearney.  “He beat the hell out of the Black and Tans,” an admiring Biden recalled.

The more significant, and dangerous problem is that a decaying, eroding memory can become the perfect pretext of making appalling policy even as it is forgotten, a form of erasure as things are being done. Policies long pursued and understood can be given the heave-ho. Biden’s belligerence over the Taiwan question, and whether a war over the province with China would be worthwhile, is a case in point.

Biden’s opponent does not, oddly enough, have that problem.  Donald Trump, even at 77-years of age, has a habit of transmuting inability to faux talent. One never knows whether his confusions are intentional in their malice or genuine acts of indifference or imbecility. (He very intentionally forgot the existence of WikiLeaks after the 2016 election, despite lauding the organisation’s press achievements prior.) More recently, competing Republican contender Nikki Haley got switched with Democrat veteran Nancy Pelosi. Petulant, hysterical, and stubbornly adolescent, he has a form of counterfeit youth on his side, the child in rompers who always screams even after downing the milk. When he errs, he is not only forgiven but given candied approval by his understanding supporters.

What matters now is the sense that the errors and lapses have arisen because of Biden’s age, the causal attribution to worn memory that renders the ruling magistrate enfeebled and vulnerable to overthrow. The campaign trail till November 2024 will be long and vicious, and Biden’s team may well have to reprise their role as quarantine specialists for their leader.  In the meantime, best consult the RAND Corporation study about the risks posed by dementia afflicting the US imperium’s aged security and intelligence community. It promises to only get worse.

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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]

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

***

The inhumane conduct of Israel’s military and its political leaders in the bloody campaign in the Gaza Strip puts Israel outside the civilised countries of the world. Regardless of whose side we stand on in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, it is time to admit that the international mechanisms to protect civilians and non-combatants have completely failed. According to the most recent data, nearly 30,000 Palestinian civilians have already been killed, and this number will continue to rise unless the world quickly and effectively takes decisive action to stop the Israeli butchery in the Gaza Strip. Even previously staunch supporters of Israel, including US President Joe Biden, are now trying to get Israel to halt its killing machinery in Gaza. The completely destroyed neighbourhoods in the Gaza Strip, people living on the streets without shelter, ubiquitous diseases and acute shortages of food, water, medicine and other necessities of daily life are just a stark list of the atrocities that the Israeli army has resorted to, collectively punishing civilians in the most heinous and despicable way.

It is evident that at this stage of the conflict, all this is not about the elimination of the Hamas movement (which was only pium desiderium from the very beginning), but nothing less than the deliberate mass murder of civilians who have nowhere to escape and nowhere to hide from non-stop bombing campaigns and violent incursions by the Israeli army. Thirty thousand deceased Palestinians are apparently not enough for the world to say a resolute no to this human catastrophe for which Israel must be held accountable. If something is to be changed, then it is absolutely necessary and urgent to impose even stronger international pressure, even if that means excluding Israel from the international community, which would be an appropriate and legitimate measure in the current situation. It is not possible to stand by idly any longer and silently observe how the Israeli army massacres civilians and decimates the Gaza Strip, including the livelihoods of the Palestinians, without any realistic future plan for the two million suffering inhabitants.

Let’s not forget how convincingly Israeli leaders claimed they knew precisely where the Hamas Operational Centre was and where its leaders were hiding. First, it was under the Al-Shifa Hospital in central Gaza, where nothing was found, then it was Khan Yunis, where the leadership of Hamas was also not found. Now, it should be the last habitable city of Rafah – the last refuge of 1.5 million civilians who did nothing but obey the instructions of the lying politicians of the Jewish state “to move south where they would be safe.” Safety was only an illusion and pretext for Israeli soldiers to destroy all the civilian infrastructure so that the civilians could not return to their homes and be forced to leave the Gaza Strip forever.

Israel, now increasingly infamous for its army and intelligence services, greatly failed, and this is clearly shown in the tragic civilian death toll and total destruction of the Gaza Strip. Israel has not yet reached any significant military victory, and this fact has driven it to the conviction that the desired results will only be achieved by total destruction and unprecedented killing. Unfortunately, the only thing Israel is doing without realising it is destroying itself, and it’s only a matter of time before this situation gets out of control and past the turning point.

We know all too well, despite the populist statements in many of the world‘s media, that the attack of 7 October is not a new pogrom against the Jews but that it was preceded by a long and well-documented eighteen years of a complete blockade of the Gaza Strip, which threw more than two million Gazans into despair, striking poverty and utter hopelessness. There is no need to be pro-Palestinian or pro-Israeli, but it is clear that action provokes a reaction. The primary action and the main problem of Israel is the constant oppression of the Palestinians, multiplied by immunity, impunity and the double standards that Western powers have been using for a long time and without precedent on the one hand to Israel and, on the other, to the rest of the world.

We can repeatedly point to Hamas and claim that it is a terrorist movement based on the fact that its fighters killed 1,200 Israelis on 7 October. However, we will also have to be fair that since 7 October, Israel has killed ten times more Palestinians than Hamas has killed Israelis and thus has no less terrorist practices than Hamas (the opposite is true). The information circulating in the media outlets favourable to Israel not only deliberately ignores this fact and mistakenly gives us an image of a morally behaving and legitimately self-defending Israel and evil terrorists from Hamas, which could not be further from the truth, that is, if we look at the whole matter objectively.

So why has Israel been demonising Hamas and trying to destroy it at all costs?

Let’s not forget on what basis Israel has been building its security policy for decades: an invincible army that can withstand anyone’s attack and can fight on several fronts at the same time. This may have been true until 7 October when Hamas fighters made a mockery of Israel and managed to deal it a blow from which it has not yet recovered and may never recover. This whole strategy of deterrence and invincibility of the Israeli army was just a paper tiger and suddenly collapsed. Even those in the Arab world who once believed that it was reasonable to conclude a peace treaty with Israel, such as Jordan or Egypt, will quite possibly back down in the near future since they will not want to maintain relations with the state that proudly and openly commits the crime of genocide. For both Jordan and Egypt, the termination of the peace treaties with Israel would be a pragmatic step with regard to the fragile internal political equilibrium, which would be violated by the exodus of Palestinians from Gaza to either Sinai or to Jordan from the West Bank. Neither President Abdel Fattah Al-Sisi nor King Abdullah can allow that in the current fragile situation.

Of course, this is only one side of the coin – perhaps the easier side to argue. The other is the rational perception of the fact that Israel is militarily vulnerable and more so than anyone ever thought (which was not true until 7 October). It is now trying to regain its lost reputation and “masculinity” by razing the Gaza Strip and slaughtering as many innocent Palestinians as possible so that it can blame its suffering on the bad policies of Hamas leadership. But that is not how things are; in the long run, it will not save Israel. On the contrary, by killing civilians, it is exposing its vulnerability and shameful incompetence to destroy the Hamas movement conventionally. Even with its most modern espionage technologies, Israel cannot locate the Hamas leaders nor most of the kidnapped Israeli hostages, and we are only talking about an area of around 40 by eight kilometres.

It was none other than Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah, who has long and consistently claimed that Israel is vulnerable and militarily paralysed. Nasrallah perceives this fact about Israel’s weakness very well and will try to use it to the fullest. The leader of Hezbollah is a pragmatic thinker and a very smart person, and without a cast of doubt, superior to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his right-wing racist partners, and that is very dangerous in the current situation.

It is surprising that despite the tragically bad results of the Israeli army in the Gaza Strip, the voices of hawks (for example, the historian Benny Morris) are still heard in Israel. Insanely, they are trying to force Israel into another military campaign against Iran or the Lebanese Hezbollah. The endless wars that Israel has provoked with its neighbours in the region will certainly not bring it security, a simple fact understood by everyone except perhaps Israel. In the long term, Israel loses strategically not only on the geopolitical map of the Middle East but also in the Western countries in particular, losing support among the majority of the world population. This sharp drop in popular support is a clear sign that people largely oppose Israel’s policy of genocide and apartheid.

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Featured image: A view of Palestinians as they try to continue their daily life amid Israeli attacks at the Jabalia Refugee Camp in Jabalia, Gaz on February 17, 2024 [Dawoud Abo Alkas – Anadolu Agency]

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

***

Now is the time for the United States, and in its wake the international community, to make a decision: Will the endless cycle of violence between Israel and the Palestinians continue, or are we going to try to put a stop to it? Will the United States continue to arm Israel and then bemoan the excessive use of these armaments, or is it finally prepared to take real steps, for the first time in its history, to change reality? And above all, will the cruelest Israeli attack on Gaza become the most pointless of all, or will the opportunity that came in its aftermath not be missed, for a change?

Laugh, because over the years Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has done all he can to foil negotiations; cry, because Israel is the one employing coercion – the nature of its policy toward the Palestinians is coercion carried out in one big unilateral, violent, aggressive and arrogant move. All of a sudden, Israel is against acts of coercion? Irony hides its head in shame.

It is therefore pointless to expect the current Israeli government to change its character. To expect a government led by Benny Gantz, Gadi Eisenkot or Yair Lapid to do so is also painfully futile. None of them believe in the existence of a Palestinian state that is equal in its sovereign status and rights to Israel. The three of them together and each one separately will at most, on a really good day, agree to the establishment of a Bantustan on part of the land. A genuine solution will not be found here. It’s best to leave Israel to wallow in its refusal.

But the world cannot afford to let this opportunity pass. This is the world that will soon have to reconstruct, with its funds, the ruins of the Gaza Strip, until the next time Israel demolishes it. It is the world whose stability is undermined as long as the occupation persists, and is further undermined every time Israel embarks on another war. This is the world that agrees that the occupation is bad for it, but has never lifted a finger to bring it to an end. Now, an opportunity to do so has cropped up. Israel’s weakness and dependence following this war must be exploited, for Israel’s benefit as well.

Enough with words. Enough with the futile rounds of talks held by U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken and the barbed words uttered by President Joe Biden. They lead nowhere. The last Zionist president, perhaps the last one to care about what is happening in the world, must take action. One could, as a prelude, learn something from the amazingly simple and true words of European Union foreign policy chief Josep Borrell, who said:

“Well, if you believe that too many people are being killed, maybe you should provide less arms [to Israel].”

However, the issue is not just ending the war, but mainly, what will happen when it’s over. If it depended on Israel, under any government, we would return to the warm bosom of apartheid and to living by the sword. The world cannot accept this any longer and cannot leave the choice to Israel. Israel has spoken: No. The time has come for a Dayton Accords-like solution. It was a forced and imperfect agreement reached in Bosnia-Herzegovina that put an end to one of the cruelest wars, and in contrast to all predictions, it has held for 29 years. The agreement was imposed by coercion.

A Palestinian state may no longer be a viable solution because of the hundreds of thousands of settlers who ruined the chances for establishing one. But a world determined to find a solution must pose a clear choice for Israel: sanctions, or an end to the occupation; territories or weapons; settlements or international support; a democratic state or a Jewish one; apartheid, or an end to Zionism. When the world stands firm, posing these options in such a manner, Israel will have to decide. Now is the time to force Israel to make the most fateful decision of its life.

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

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

***

Tuesday, February 21 is the big day and ‘moment of truth’ for WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange and his legal team. That is when two high court judges in London will hear arguments on whether Assange can appeal a ruling to extradite him to the United States, where he would most certainly spend the rest of his life in prison, likely in a harsh ‘supermax’ federal facility. The hearing is scheduled through Wednesday.

Stella Assange, his wife, has warned that if the judges rule against Assange, he could be on a plane to US soil in a matter of days. He would be removed from the high security Belmarsh prison for a trial in the US on espionage-related charges and publishing state secrets, where a 175 year jail sentence would await him.

His wife told a Thursday press briefing,

“It is the final hearing if it does not go Julian’s way, there is no possibility to appeal to the supreme court or anywhere else in this jurisdiction.”

She said further that situation is “extremely grave” given his health continues to be “in decline”. She warned: “If he is extradited, he will die.”

The Guardian has meanwhile commented on US authorities’ attempts to bully journalists who worked with Assange to turn against him:

At least four well-known journalists have been approached by the Metropolitan police on behalf of the FBI: James Ball, his ex-WikiLeaks colleague, who is now with the Bureau of Investigative Journalism; David Leigh, the former Guardian and Observer journalist; Heather Brooke, a freedom of information campaigner; and Andrew O’Hagan, who had been commissioned to ghost Assange’s autobiography.

All of them have declined to cooperate with the FBI. In an article for Rolling Stone last year, Ball said that he had first been approached in 2021 and subjected to pressure, including the threat of being prosecuted himself.

O’Hagan said that although he had his differences with Assange, he would happily go to jail rather than assist the FBI. “I would only add that the attempt to punish Assange for exposing the truth is an attack on journalism itself. I notice that none of those mainstream collaborators who published his material – the New York Times, the Guardian, and Der Spiegel – are being pursued, which demonstrates that a generational bias against internet-based journalism is at the heart of the case … If Julian goes to the US, Britain will have failed to protect one of the first principles of democracy.”

Editor-in-chief of WikiLeaks Kristinn Hrafnsson has commented on what Assange’s prosecution and possible extradition means for the future of press freedoms.

“It cannot be underestimated, the effect that it will have,” he said. “If an Australian citizen publishing in Europe can face prison time in the United States, that means no journalists anywhere are safe in the future.”

As for Assange’s native Australia, its parliament has just voted to issue formal request that charges against Julian Assange be dropped. The motion adopted by parliament emphasized “the importance of the UK and USA bringing the matter to a close so that Mr. Assange can return home to his family in Australia.”

The clock is ticking! My friend @MearsheimerJ on #FreeAssange #FreeAssangeNOW #FreeAssange2024

PLEASE repost. Use Hashtags. Together, we will get this message to the #HighCourt to #SETHIMFREE pic.twitter.com/mMMqUUURhY

— Judge Napolitano (@Judgenap) February 17, 2024

Days ago, Amnesty International also renewed its call to drop the charges against Assange. 

“The risk to publishers and investigative journalists around the world hangs in the balance. Should Julian Assange be sent to the U.S. and prosecuted there, global media freedoms will be on trial, too,” a statement said.

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American Strategists Fearing War with Russia. Rand Corporation Report

By Lucas Leiroz de Almeida, February 18, 2024

Apparently, American strategists are concerned about the future of US-Russian relations in a post-Ukrainian conflict scenario. In a recent report, one of the most important US think tanks stated that Washington’s implementation of a “hardline” policy in Europe could lead to a direct war with Russia, encouraging American decision-makers to rethink the country’s European policy.

Which Countries Have Stopped Supplying Arms to Israel?

By Al-Jazeera, February 19, 2024

According to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute’s arms transfers database, 68 percent of Israel’s weapons imports between 2013 and 2022 came from the US. The US military also stockpiles weapons on the ground in Israel, presumably for use by the US army itself. However, the US has allowed Israel to make use of some of these supplies during the Gaza war.

Beware of Big Bad Russian Space Nukes!

By Drago Bosnic, February 18, 2024

It’s truly inexplicable how the “evil” Kremlin is being “defeated” in Ukraine, mostly because its soldiers “lack” weapons and ammo and are forced to fight with “shovels and tree branches”, but still, Russia is somehow able to deploy “nukes in space”.

Pan-African Struggles Against Colonialism and the First Imperialist War, 1876-1919

By Abayomi Azikiwe, February 16, 2024

Several years after the Belgian intervention in Congo during 1884-85, the Berlin West Africa Conference was held in Germany which carved up the continent as spheres of interests for the imperialist powers.

Is Lebanon the Next War After Gaza? Interview with Alwan N. Amin Eddine

By Alwan N. Amin Eddine and Steven Sahiounie, February 16, 2024

On February 14, Israeli airstrikes in Lebanon killed at least seven civilians, after Hezbollah rocket fire killed an Israeli soldier. In Souaneh, a woman was killed along with her two children. Rawaa al-Mohammed, and her two sons, Hassan Mohsen, 13, and Amir Mohsen, 2 were killed in their home.

UCSF Chair of Medicine Dr. Bob Wachter (6x COVID-19 Vaccinated) Collapsed in the Shower

By Dr. William Makis, February 16, 2024

He had a very close call with that bad fall, he got COVID anyways, and his wife has been harmed as well, yet he persists with pushing the same failed pharma products that have almost certainly damaged his family. It really does seem like many doctors are willing to quietly accept shortened lives, disability and even death, rather than admit they were wrong.

American Foreign Policy Seems to Have Nowhere to Go. “The bombing of Gaza into the stone age”

By Philip Giraldi, February 16, 2024

The bombing of Gaza into the stone age continues with hardly any coverage in the mainstream media as if it is an atrocity that will disappear from the collective conscience if no one refers to it in spite of the rows of dead women and children.

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

***

“In Gaza, everyone is involved. Everyone voted for Hamas. Anyone over the age of four is a Hamas supporter. And our goal at the moment, and this is in continuation of what you said, is to turn them from Hamas supporters to Hamas dislikers,” stated former head of Mossad’s Captive and Missing Division.

Rami Igra claimed, during an interview broadcast on Israeli state television, that all civilians in Gaza are guilty and deserve to face Israel’s policy of collective punishment, which prevents food, medicine and humanitarian aid.

#TheySaid

STARVE THOSE CHILDREN 36 months or older!!!

all Palestinians in Gaza over the age of 4 are “involved” and deserve to face Israel’s collective punishment policy of withholding food and humanitarian aid – Fmr Mossad official Rami Igra #genocide https://t.co/F8vNmWSEy2

— Osama Bin Javaid (@osamabinjavaid) February 16, 2024

This is not the first time that Israeli officials have incited against civilians in Gaza. In November, the Israeli occupation Minister of Heritage Amihai Eliyahu said that dropping a nuclear bomb on Gaza is a possible solution to destroy it and an option that must be studied.

Eliyahu, a member of the extremist Otzma Yehudit party headed by Itamar Ben-Gvir, explained in statements to the Israel Hayom newspaper:

“Death does not frighten the residents of Gaza, and we must know what scares and terrifies them, in order to force them to leave, and wipe them off the face of the Earth. They should tremble in fear and terror.”

He added:

“I do not agree with describing the residents of Gaza as civilians. There are no civilians in Gaza and there is no difference between them and Hamas.”

In mid-October, Israeli President Isaac Herzog incited the killing of civilians in the Gaza Strip, asserting that everyone in Gaza was involved in the war.

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Featured image: Palestinian children try to eat from a single bowl inside the tent as Palestinians, trying to live in makeshift tents they set up, are viewed in Rafah, Gaza on February 14, 2024 [Abed Zagout – Anadolu Agency]

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

***

The United States Senate has approved a bill committing $14bn to support Israel’s war on Gaza this week.

Even before the start of the war last October, the US firmly supported Israel with the supply of military equipment, contributing $3bn annually in military aid. Many other countries provide military support to Israel via arms sales.

Civilian casualties continue to mount in Gaza – currently standing at more than 28,000 dead with thousands more trapped under rubble and presumed dead in just four months of bombardment and ground invasions. The rising death toll is prompting international condemnation from humanitarian and civil society groups in the form of statements, protests and lawsuits filed against countries alleged to be providing military support to Israel. Some countries are responding to this pressure.

On Monday, the European Union foreign policy chief, Josep Borrell, commented on US President Joe Biden’s description of Israel’s response to the October 7 Hamas attacks as “over the top”. “Well, if you believe that too many people are being killed, maybe you should provide less arms in order to prevent so many people being killed,” Borrell told reporters.

So which countries continue to send weapons to Israel and which are taking steps to suspend supply?

Who Supplies Arms to Israel?

According to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute’s arms transfers database, 68 percent of Israel’s weapons imports between 2013 and 2022 came from the US.

The US military also stockpiles weapons on the ground in Israel, presumably for use by the US army itself. However, the US has allowed Israel to make use of some of these supplies during the Gaza war.

Besides the US, Israel also receives military imports from other nations.

• Weapons imported from Germany make up 28 percent of Israel’s military imports. Germany’s military exports rose nearly tenfold in 2023 compared with 2022 after it increased sales to Israel in November, according to figures from the German Economic Ministry. Germany primarily supplies Israel with components for air defence systems and communications equipment, according to the German press agency dpa.
• The United Kingdom has licensed at least 474 million pounds ($594m) in military exports to Israel since 2015, Human Rights Watch reported in December 2023. These exports included aircraft, missiles, tanks, technology and ammunition, including components for the F-35 stealth bomber used in Gaza.
• In Canada, dozens of civil society groups have recently urged Prime Minister Justin Trudeau to end arms exports to Israel. The government says it does not send full weapons systems to Israel, but these civil society groups claim it is downplaying the amount of military support it provides. “Canadian companies have exported over $84m [114 million Canadian dollars] in military goods to Israel since 2015,” said Michael Bueckert, vice president of Canadians for Justice and Peace in the Middle East, an advocacy group, adding that the government has continued to approve arms exports since the start of the war.
• Australia’s foreign affairs minister has said the country has not provided weapons to Israel since the start of the war. However, The Australian Greens party’s defence spokesperson, David Shoebridge, has asked for the government to be more transparent about exactly what items have been exported to Israel, adding that the country has one of the most secretive weapons export systems in the world. Amnesty International has also called on Australia to halt arms sales to Israel and claims the country has approved 322 defence exports to Israel over the past six years.
• In France, a pro-Palestine demonstration on February 7 called on French companies, including Dassault Aviation, to stop selling arms to Israel. Demonstrators said, according to the Anadolu news agency, “all French companies that sell arms to the Tel Aviv administration are complicit in Israel’s genocide in Gaza”.

Click here to read the full article on Al Jazeera.

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Featured image: Golan Heights, Israel – An Israeli soldier prepares 155m shells for firing (Gal Rotem/Shutterstock)

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

***

After more than 130 days of war on Gaza, many of the coastal enclave’s universities and educational institutions lie in ruins.

At least 28,700 Palestinians have been killed by Israeli forces since the start of the war on 7 October and around 70 percent of the Strip’s buildings have been damaged or destroyed.

Palestine has one of the highest literacy rates in the world, but the war on Gaza has devastated the education sector, killing thousands of students, and leaving hundreds of thousands out of school for almost five months.

According to the Euro-Med Monitor, Israel’s army has so far killed 94 university professors, along with hundreds of teachers, in what the rights group describes as “deliberate and specific air raids” on the homes of academic, scientific or intellectual figures.

“The targeted academics studied and taught across a variety of academic disciplines, and many of their ideas served as cornerstones of academic research in the Gaza Strip’s universities,” the rights group said. 

Here, Middle East Eye looks at some of the academics and scientists killed in the war on Gaza.

1. Amin al-Bahiti, al-Azhar University

Amin al-Bahiti, a 24-year-old from Gaza, was a dentist and assistant lecturer at al-Azhar University. 

Al-Bahiti was killed on 5 November, after leaving his home to find food for his mother and nine siblings. 

Israel cut off all supplies from the besieged enclave, including food, water, electricity, fuel and aid on 9 October, forcing many Palestinians to leave their homes amidst heavy bombardment to find food.

Al-Bahiti’s body was found two days after he left his home.

He graduated from university in 2021 and one of his biggest ambitions was to open his own dental surgery. 

Dr. Amin Al-Bahtiti, 24 years old,

A dentist and an assistant lecturer at Al-Azhar University, beloved by all students for his high morals. He had a smiling face, laughing from the depths of his heart. He dreamt of opening his own dental clinic.

Extremely humble with a good… pic.twitter.com/r20xmeezN7

— ‏Martyrs of Gaza (@GazaMartyrs) December 10, 2023

Tributes online described him as “talented, smart and hardworking”.

2. Adham Hassouna, professor at Gaza and al-Aqsa universities 

Adham Hassouna was a professor at the Gaza and al-Aqsa Universities, as well as a freelance journalist. 

Journalist Adham Hassouna and his entire family have just been killed in an Israeli strike.

That's the third journalist to be killed today after Abdallah Darwish and Montasser al-Sawwaf. pic.twitter.com/O9PRyF2YQ2

— Maha Hussaini (@MahaGaza) December 1, 2023

Hassouna was killed alongside several members of his family in an Israeli air strike, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists.

The air strike targeted his home on 1 December.

3. Jihad al-Masri, al-Quds Open University

Jihad al-Masri was a historian and university professor, as well as the director of al-Quds Open University’s Khan Younis branch. 

He was killed on 17 October, after succumbing to wounds sustained in Israeli shelling on Khan Younis.

According to reports, he was on the way to join his wife and daughter when the attack happened. 

Al-Masri was known for publishing research papers on Islamic history and Palestinian oral traditions in both regional and international journals.   

4. Tariq Thabet, University College of Applied Sciences 

Tariq Thabet was a fellow at Michigan State University in the US as well as a professor in Gaza.

He was a Fulbright scholar, studying economic development and entrepreneurship in developing countries as part of the Humphrey Fellowship Program in Michigan. 

He was killed in November in Gaza, along with 15 members of his extended family.

Thabet’s research focused on empowering small business owners in places like Gaza, where he was born.

According to Kyle Hess, the programme manager for the Humphrey Program, Thabet hoped to take what he learnt in the US and bring it back home to Gaza to help improve the local economy.

His fellowship programme issued a statement saying: “While at MSU, he built on his extensive experience in the nonprofit sector and entrepreneurship by taking courses in finance and marketing, networking extensively with his local counterparts, and speaking to local community groups and youth.”

Engineer Tariq Thabet, one of the kindest and most incredible persons I've ever met in my life, a creative, persevering, energetic, intelligent and dedicated.

A few months ago, he was in the United States in a program supported by the United States.

He returned to #Gaza and was… pic.twitter.com/I1TUxLVviE

— عاصم النبيه (@AsemAlnabeh) November 2, 2023

The community in East Lansing, Michigan, where he spent a year while studying, mourned his loss, remembering his positive impact.

“For a person coming from a territory which is effectively under siege by Israel, he had a very positive and upbeat attitude to life,” said Thasin Sardar, a member of the board of trustees at the Islamic Centre of East Lansing. 

“He came here with a mission to learn, and he was trying to make use of his time very effectively and give back to his country,” he added.

According to Sardar, multiple generations of his family were killed in the bombing. 

Thabet was remembered as a “warm and bright” person who regularly attended Friday prayers at the Islamic Centre of East Lansing. 

5. Sufyan Tayeh, scientist 

Sufian Tayeh, the president of the Islamic University of Gaza, was a leading researcher in physics and applied mathematics.

He was killed in an Israeli air strike on the al-Faluja neighbourhood northeast of Gaza City on 2 December. 

His death was announced by the Palestinian Higher Education Ministry. The air strike also killed several members of his family. 

Tayeh was born in 1971 in Gaza’s Jabalia refugee camp, going on to gain a bachelor’s degree in physics from the Islamic University of Gaza.

He won the Palestine Islamic Bank Award for Scientific Research for the years 2019 and 2020, among many other awards. 

BREAKING: Dr. Sufyan Tayeh, the President of the Islamic University of Gaza, was killed today in the Israeli massacre in Jabalia, north of the Gaza Strip, according to medical sources.#GazaGenocide pic.twitter.com/tp77g6UB0m

— Quds News Network (@QudsNen) December 2, 2023

According to reports, Tayeh was considered to be in the top two percent of scientific researchers worldwide in 2021.

He had also been appointed Unesco’s chair for physics and space sciences in Palestine. 

6. Sirin Mohammed al-Attar, Islamic University of Gaza

Born in 1984, Sirin Mohammed al-Attar was a gynaecologist working for the UN agency Unrwa as well as a professor at the Islamic University of Gaza.

She was killed in an Israeli air strike on the al-Bureij camp on 11 October.

According to Unrwa, she was a highly accomplished medical professional, holding Arab, Jordanian, and Palestinian board certifications in obstetrics and gynaecology. 

Al-Attar graduated from al-Quds University’s Faculty of Medicine and was the mother of three daughters.

Unrwa remembered her for her “generosity, deep love for her work and the care and affection she extended to her patients, offering unwavering support to them”.

“She was one of the best, most wonderful and most humane doctors I have met and dealt with,” said Ghada al-Jadba, chief of the agency’s field health programme in Gaza.

7. Raed Qaddoura, academic

Raed Qaddoura, who held a PhD from the National University of Malaysia, was killed on 19 November alongside 29 other members of his family.

According to reports, his twin children were born two weeks before he died. Qaddoura was described as a “smart and talented writer and thinker”.

In 2022, he published an article in Mondoweiss on his grandfather’s expulsion from the city of Jaffa in 1948. 

Dr. Raed Qaddoura was killed along with his family in #Gaza last night, 29 members of his extended family including his parents, wife and children. His twin girls were born two weeks ago. All gone. Raed holds an MA from @unimalaya and a PhD from @ukm_my in political science . pic.twitter.com/9xSrmdzqOD

— Yousef Aljamal 🪁 (@YousefAljamal) November 20, 2023

“For my grandfather, Jaffa was his first love before Israel deprived him of that bride by forcing him to move out along with hundreds of thousands of other Palestinians, in search of a safer place and escape from the criminality of the Zionist gangs,” he wrote.

“Then, as soon as my grandfather arrived in Gaza, he swore to return again and not to leave his beloved to anyone else.” 

8. Saher Yaghi, psychologist 

Shaher Yaghi, a professor and renowned psychologist, worked for Gaza’s education ministry and was found dead after an Israeli air strike on the Jabalia refugee camp in December. 

He was killed alongside his wife and children, a neighbour and family friend announced on social media on 10 December. 

Yaghi worked with several non-profit organisations and was a school quality assurance coordinator for over nine years. 

He also worked with Unrwa as a special educational needs supervisor as well as a mental health counsellor.

He graduated from the University of Calgary in 1994 with a bachelor’s degree in rehabilitation, and then went onto study at the Islamic University of Gaza, where he achieved a master’s degree in psychology in 2006.

9. Ibrahim al-Astal, Islamic University of Gaza

Ibrahim al-Astal was a professor and dean of the Islamic University of Gaza.

Born in 1961, he was an educational theorist and researcher, who spent many years writing and editing publications on educational and psychological studies. 

Al-Astal was killed in an Israeli attack on 23 October, along with his wife, daughters and a number of family members. According to some reports, a total of 87 members of his family were killed in the air strikes. 

He was known for working on programmes related to improving the quality of technological education in universities and colleges in Gaza.

In 2005, he co-wrote a book called The Teaching Profession and the Roles of Teachers in the School of the Future.

10. Saeed al-Dahshan, international law expert

Saeed Talal al-Dahshan was an expert in international law as well as an author.

He was killed, along with his family in Gaza, on 11 October.

In his book, The International Prosecution of Israel and its Leaders for Their Crimes Against the Palestinians, he outlines the legal path to hold Israel accountable for breaking international laws.

Ismail Thawbta, head of the government media office in Gaza, said that al-Dahsan, like many other academics in Gaza, was intentionally targeted.

“Israel is systematically selecting top Palestinian academics to inflict maximum damage on the Palestinian community and obstruct scientific and technological development in the future,” he said. 

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Featured image: Dr. Amin Al-Bahtiti was killed on 5 November, after leaving his home to find food for his mother and nine siblings (Screengrab/X)

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A global watchdog group for the treatment of journalists found that Israeli forces were responsible for about three-quarters of all journalists killed in war zones during 2023. The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) found that 72 Palestinian reporters were killed last year. 

“More than three-quarters of the 99 journalists and media workers killed worldwide in 2023 died in the Israel-Gaza war, the majority of them Palestinians killed in Israeli attacks on Gaza, The CPJ report concluded. “The conflict claimed the lives of more journalists in three months than have ever been killed in a single country over an entire year.”

In the last three months of 2023, Israel killed 72 Palestinian and three Lebanese journalists. Two Israeli journalists were killed in the Hamas attack on October 7. Excluding the Israeli onslaught in Gaza, CPJ found worldwide deaths of journalists last year was less than half of 2022’s total. At least 11 Palestinian journalists have been killed so far in 2024. 

CPJ believes some of the Palestinian journalists were targeted by Israel, and the organization is conducting further investigations. The Gaza Strip’s Government Media Office puts the number higher, saying at least 126 Palestinian media workers have been killed.

“This war is unprecedented in terms of the threat to journalists,” Jodie Ginsberg, president of the CPJ, said. 

She explained that Israel’s killing of journalists prevents war crimes in Gaza from being seen by the international community.

“What’s important to remember about this war is that Gazan journalists are the only journalists able to report on what’s happening inside Gaza. International journalists have not been able to get in, have not been allowed in, except on very, very controlled trips that are overseen by the Israeli army.” Ginsberg continued, “So we are entirely reliant on those [Palestinian] journalists, who are risking their lives to bring us this story.” 

The head of CPJ went on to express she was “disappointed … at the lack of public solidarity that we have seen” with Palestinian journalists. The Biden administration has denounced and sanctioned several governments over their treatment of journalists. However, President Biden has refused to condition American aid to Israel even as Tel Aviv has ordered the massive slaughter of civilians and journalists in Gaza. 

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Kyle Anzalone is news editor of the Libertarian Institute, opinion editor of Antiwar.com and co-host of Conflicts of Interest with Will Porter and Connor Freeman.

Featured image: The funeral of two Palestinian journalists killed by Israeli forces in Gaza. (Photo: Mahmoud Ajjour, The Palestine Chronicle)

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Among the puzzling questions that the media chooses to ignore is asking high government officials why they are exercising the illegal use of power that violates the rule of law which they are required to obey.

This week, the Veterans for Peace (VFP) made it very easy for reporters to pose questions by sending an open letter (see veteransforpeace.org) to the inspector general of the U.S. State Department and Antony Blinken, secretary of state, invoking several U.S. statutes that require the “termination of provision of military weapons and munitions to Israel.”

Josh Paul, a former senior official in the State Department’s office charged with reviewing weapon transfers to foreign countries, said:

“The secretary and all relevant officials under his purview should take this letter from Veterans for Peace with the utmost seriousness. It is a stark reminder of the importance of abiding by the laws and policies that relate to arms transfers.”

What laws are being violated by the State Department daily as it approves ships and cargo planes full of weapons of mass destruction to be used in Israel’s war crimes and genocide against hundreds of thousands of Gaza’s civilians, mostly children and women?

These are the laws highlighted in the VFP letter:

• The Foreign Assistance Act, which forbids the provision of assistance to a government which “engages in a consistent pattern of gross violations of internationally recognized human rights.”
• Arms Export Control Act, which says countries that receive U.S. military aid can only use weapons for legitimate self-defense and internal security. Israel’s genocidal campaign in Gaza goes way beyond self-defense and internal security.
• The U.S. War Crimes Act, which forbids grave breaches of the Geneva Conventions, including wilful killing, torture or inhuman treatment, wilfully causing great suffering or serious injury to body or health, and unlawful deportation or transfer, perpetrated by the Israeli Occupying Forces.
• The Leahy Law, which prohibits the U.S. Government from using funds for assistance to units of foreign security forces where there is credible information implicating that unit in the commission of gross violations of human rights.
• The Genocide Convention Implementation Act, which was enacted to implement U.S. obligations under the Genocide Convention, provides for criminal penalties for individuals who commit or incite others to commit genocide

Under these laws, the State Department has a “Conventional Arms Transfer Policy” which, the letter notes, “prohibit [U.S. weapons transfers when it’s likely they] will be used by Israel to commit… genocide, crimes against humanity, grave breaches of the Geneva Conventions of 1949, [including attacks intentionally directed against civilian objects or civilians protected] or other serious violations of international humanitarian or human rights laws.”

The VFP letter continues, “Dozens of authoritative complaints and referrals made by hospital administrators in Gaza, as well as by Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, Palestine Authority, South Africa, Turkey, Medicins san Frontieres, UNRWA, UNICEF, the secretary-general of the United Nations, the Norwegian Refugee Council, and the World Food Program have confirmed that there is an ongoing human rights and humanitarian disaster due to Israel’s cutoff of water and electricity, deliberate destruction of sewage infrastructure, and delaying of aid shipments by Israeli forces.”

If you are wondering why these laws are not being enforced—the answer is that individual citizens or groups of citizens do not have any “legal standing” to sue Secretary Blinken, according to the U.S. Supreme Court. Only a committee of Congress, backed by a Senate or House resolution, can take the State Department to federal court. That action to enforce congressionally passed and enacted laws is not likely to happen in this lawless, Israeli government-indentured Congress which refuses even to demand a ceasefire.

Mike Ferner, VFP national director, observed, “Just as any good soldiers can recognize when they are given an unlawful order, we believe some State Department staff are horrified at the orders they’re given and will decide to uphold the law, find the courage to speak out, and demand an end to the carnage.”

There is a related serious matter, pointed out by international law practitioner Bruce Fein, who said: “The United States has clearly become a co-belligerent with Israel in its war against Hamas-Gaza Palestinians by systematically supplying the IDF with weapons and intelligence without conditions. Under the Fourth Geneva Convention, nationals of a co-belligerent state are not regarded as protected persons if their state has customary diplomatic relations with an allied nation [in this case, Israel].”

For decades, the State Department has had an independent Office of the Legal Adviser. The present occupant of that post, acting legal adviser Richard C. Visek, has been publicly silent. I am sending the Veterans for Peace letter to him and asking him to respond to this letter and to the American people who pay his salary.

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Ralph Nader is a consumer advocate and the author of “The Seventeen Solutions: Bold Ideas for Our American Future” (2012). His new book is, “Wrecking America: How Trump’s Lies and Lawbreaking Betray All” (2020, co-authored with Mark Green).

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More and more evidence is emerging about illegal US biomedical activities in ex-Ukrainian territories. In addition to the topic of biological weapons, it was recently discovered that Western Big Pharma companies were conducting drug tests on ethnic Russian citizens in a psychiatric hospital in Donbass with approval and support from Ukrainian authorities.

According to recently discovered documents published by Russian media, patients at a psychiatric hospital in Mariupol (Donetsk People’s Republic) were being subjected to irregular medical tests by agents linked to Western Big Pharma companies.

The hospital “No. 7″ in Mariupol is currently undergoing restoration work. During the repair activities, local employees found documents in the basement of the psychiatric sector’s facilities which prove that foreign companies were unofficially testing rheumatological drugs on local patients.

The objective of the research was to evaluate the effectiveness of medicines according to the standards established by the American College of Rheumatology (ACR). Several companies participated in the experiments, including large Big Pharma corporations, such as “Pfizer, AstraZeneca, Celltrion, Novatris International AG, IQVIA, Sanofi, Galapagos NV, Janssen Pharmaceuticals, Abbott Laboratories, Covance, Merck KGaA, Centocor Biopharmaceutical and [even] a branch of Samsung that produces medical equipment.”

In the same place where the documents were stored, boxes containing biomaterials were also found. The materials were apparently ready to be sent to laboratories in the US, UK and Switzerland. With this, the Russian authorities were able to obtain biological evidence, not just documentary one, about such research – showing that the experiments were in fact carried out.

“According to the results of studying the documents, it became known that the drugs were tested on people with numbers, without names. The drugs themselves were in white envelopes and also without names. The main purpose of the research was to evaluate the effectiveness of drugs in relation to the proportion of patients who achieved a response to it according to the criteria of the American College of Rheumatology. In addition, boxes were found containing many envelopes from logistics companies and containers for biomaterial with recipient addresses in laboratories in Switzerland, the United Kingdom and the United States,” Russian report says.

The selection of psychiatric patients appears to have been a “strategic” decision on the part of Western companies and Ukrainian authorities.

Obviously, people with fragile psychiatric conditions are an “easier” target to be convinced to undergo such experiments. More than that, many of the patients may have been subjected to the tests completely unconsciously, having their bodies abusively exploited by foreign doctors.

These practices do not sound surprising, however. It had previously been revealed that foreign agents had carried out tests with neuromodulators on socially vulnerable patients in the Kharkov region. In 2022, Russian forces exposed evidence that experiments of this type had taken place in American military biolaboratories, causing irreversible damage to the nervous systems of several patients submitted to the illegal procedures.

“In accordance with the available information, highly active substances of neuromodulators were tested on socially vulnerable citizens of Ukraine, which caused, among other things, irreversible damage to the central nervous system. This is a clear violation of the norms of international treaties in the field of human rights (…) Thanks to the documents obtained during the special military operation, we became aware that such studies have been carried out in Ukraine since at least 2011, and Alharoun has repeatedly visited the branch of the Merefa laboratory, built at the expense of the Pentagon in the village of Sorokovka, Kharkov region,” Lt. Gen. Igor Kirillov, the head of the radiation, chemical and biological defense of the Russian Armed Forces said at the time.

In fact, American biolaboratories in Ukraine were joint civilian-military schemes, having received funding not only from the Pentagon but also from private organizations such as Big Pharma companies and even “philanthropic” foundations. This broad network to promote biomedical research operated in a cooperation system in which the Pentagon developed biological weapons and private companies used military facilities to operate irregular experiments by inoculating their drugs on vulnerable native patients.

It is shocking to know that the Ukrainian government cooperated with this type of practice and allowed its citizens to be subjected to such abuse by foreign agents. This just shows how in fact the Kiev regime never cared about its own people, being willing to even allow operations of high biological, health danger in its territory just to please its Western “partners”.

Indeed, territorial liberation through Russian military force was the only way to prevent the continuation of these brutal acts.

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This article was originally published on InfoBrics.

Lucas Leiroz is a journalist, researcher at the Center for Geostrategic Studies, geopolitical consultant. You can follow Lucas on X (former Twitter) and Telegram. He is a regular contributor to Global Research.

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It’s truly inexplicable how the “evil” Kremlin is being “defeated” in Ukraine, mostly because its soldiers “lack” weapons and ammo and are forced to fight with “shovels and tree branches”, but still, Russia is somehow able to deploy “nukes in space”.

Precisely this is the “logic” of the mainstream propaganda machine, stuck in a schizophrenic limbo of trying to underestimate Moscow while grossly exaggerating its losses and the need to present it as an immediate threat to the political West.

Namely, on February 14, Ohio Republican Mike Turner, the Chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, said that his panel had “made available to all Members of Congress information concerning a serious national security threat”. The major, imminent, grave, terrifying security threat soon turned out to be “Russian space nukes”!

The mainstream propaganda machine didn’t specify how these weapons got to space, as Russia is just a “nuclear-armed gas station with little to no real economy”. However, in all seriousness, ABC News quoted “two sources familiar with deliberations on Capitol Hill” who allegedly said that “the intelligence has to do with the Russians wanting to put a nuclear weapon into space”.

Still, what the fearmongering media “forgot” to mention in its reports is that this “nuclear weapon in space” would actually be a nuclear-powered anti-satellite weapon (ASAT).

There’s a massive difference between having thermonuclear warheads pointed at Earth from space and having a nuclear-powered spacecraft. The Russian military is already in possession of the former, as it was the world’s first operator of the FOBS back in the early 1960s.

FOBS, an acronym for the Fractional Orbital Bombardment System (СЧОБ in Russian), is a thermonuclear weapon system found on intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs), designed to make their range effectively limitless.

China tested its own version of the technology only in 2021, while the United States has been unable to create anything similar.

Thus, Russia has had this capability for well over half a century, so why is there such hype over a supposed nuclear-powered ASAT all of a sudden?

It’s exceedingly difficult to ignore the fact that this is being used as yet another excuse to push several warmongering agendas at once.

First, it furthers the idea that there “cannot be peace” with Moscow, and

Second, it gives Washington DC the perfect excuse to continue militarizing space, started years before the special military operation (SMO).

House Speaker Mike Johnson played the role of a “good cop” and stated there was “no need for public alarm”, while Turner kept his role as a “bad cop”, calling on President Joe Biden to “declassify information about a serious national security threat”.

On the other hand, three members of the House Intelligence Committee told Politico that the “threat caused by this new Russian capability is disturbing”, but that it’s a “longer-term concern, not a today thing” and that it’s a “serious issue, but not an immediate crisis”.

In other words, it’s extremely likely that Moscow hasn’t even deployed this ASAT system (provided it even plans to). On February 15, the White House even said so, with National Security Council spokesman John Kirby vaguely confirming this assumption by saying that it’s “related to an [ASAT] capability that Russia is developing”.

In fact, Kirby even said that “this is not an active capability that’s been deployed”. In other words, this was an admission that the mainstream propaganda machine’s “end of the world” panic mode in the last two days was absolutely unnecessary.

Kirby even went on to admit that, although this Russian capability is “troubling”, the weapon itself isn’t really a threat to anyone’s safety, as “it cannot be used to attack human beings or cause physical destruction here on Earth”.

It’s very important to note that ASAT weapons have existed for much of the (First) Cold War and that all the fearmongering we’ve seen in the last two days would be almost the same as if somebody complained about thermonuclear weapons that have been around for nearly 80 years at this point. Worse yet, the latter can actually destroy the world, while ASAT weapons can’t.

Still, the US and NATO are indeed looking to militarize space and both have been saying so in recent years.

This includes the belligerent alliance’s top officials, in particular its Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg who openly stated that space is the “next operational domain” back in 2019. Much earlier, during the (First) Cold War, the Reagan administration launched the much-touted SDI (Strategic Defense Initiative) program, now better known under its more popular name – “Star Wars”.

However, unlike the US, whose SDI was largely a PR stunt, Russia actually built space-based weapons, including orbital lasers. What’s more, back in 1987, it launched a laser-armed spacecraft called the “Polyus/Skif-DM”. Although the program was scrapped due to the unfortunate dismantling of the Soviet Union, Moscow kept its know-how.

In fact, Russia even built land-based laser and other directed energy ASAT defenses in recent years, reactivating numerous programs, particularly in the aftermath of NATO-backed long-range attacks by the Kiev regime. Namely, the world’s most aggressive military alliance, a chronic threat to global security, is providing targeting data to its Neo-Nazi puppets through the usage of various ISR (intelligence, surveillance, reconnaissance) assets, including its vast network of space satellites. It has even embedded private space companies such as SpaceX into its military capabilities. Both Russia and China see this as a threat and are responding in kind, including through close technological cooperation. However, the political West adamantly refuses their overtures to uphold international treaties that ban the militarization of space.

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

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Apparently, American strategists are concerned about the future of US-Russian relations in a post-Ukrainian conflict scenario. In a recent report, one of the most important US think tanks stated that Washington’s implementation of a “hardline” policy in Europe could lead to a direct war with Russia, encouraging American decision-makers to rethink the country’s European policy.

The document was published by the Rand Corporation. According to the think tank’s analysts, if the US tightens its policies in Europe after the conflict, a situation of war with Russia will become very likely. Experts do not believe that Washington is capable of deterring Russia through the militarization of Europe, with all policies in the region becoming forms of provocation against Moscow.

“A hardline postwar US strategy in Europe could make conflict with Russia more — not less — likely,” the report reads.

Analysts also warn of the danger of American policies damaging the unity of the Western bloc. According to them, by implementing bellicose measures in Europe, Washington could come to be seen as a provocateur by its own European partners – mainly France and Germany. Obviously, this would generate discontent and crisis in EU-US relations, as Europeans would feel directly threatened by the imminence of a conflict, given their geographical location close to Russia – which would supposedly make them “easy targets”.

“Russia reinvigorated its defense industry during the war, addressed some military challenges (such as poor training), and gained lethal aid from China. Although NATO is still stronger than Russia, hardline postwar U.S. policies, such as bilateral agreements to deploy more forces to Eastern Europe, lead some allies (such as France and Germany) to see the United States as a provocateur. As a result, those allies’ commitments to collective defense are less robust (…) Both the United States and Russia bolster their force postures along the NATO-Russia frontier. Diplomatic relations remain poor and threat perceptions run high, creating conditions ripe for misperception about intentions. Therefore, the risk of catastrophic conflict is higher than before the war in Ukraine, even if the absolute risk remains low,” Rand’s experts predicted.

Click below. Complete Report in PDF can be downloaded 

The group also warned that a serious escalation of violence in the Ukrainian conflict could have irreversible negative consequences for US’ interests in Europe. American experts believe that at the current moment the best thing for NATO to do is to encourage Kiev and Moscow to negotiate and reach a ceasefire, trying to calm the situation as quickly as possible and reducing the damage on both sides.

However, analysts also state that, although the scenario of war is possible in the future, the current situation generates less fear, as it appears that the US is already taking measures to de-escalate tensions.

They believe that Washington wants to resume dialogue on arms control and that it will not be willing to accept Kiev into NATO, thus reducing the risks of war with Russia.

Unrealistically, Rand also believes that NATO’s deterrent power remains strong enough to prevent Russia from attacking other countries – although this could change in a post-conflict scenario, when Moscow will become even stronger.

“Washington’s willingness to return to bilateral arms control, its lack of support for deeper Ukrainian integration with NATO, and its restraint on engagement with other non-NATO former Soviet countries all reduce U.S.-Russia political tensions. Despite fears that such moves would embolden Russia, these less hardline policies do not undermine NATO’s already strong deterrent. After all, Russia did not attack NATO member states during the war, despite the allies’ unprecedented support for Ukraine.”

In fact, although there are many interesting points in this analysis, most of Rand’s arguments are biased and baseless.

Obviously, an escalation in the militarization of Europe would lead to a scenario of increasing tensions between the US and Russia, which could end in a direct conflict. It is curious to see that even radically anti-Russian think tanks like the Rand Corporation are already admitting this. In practice, this shows how the West’s defeat in Ukraine is already being widely recognized.

However, analysts are wrong in assessing that the US is already taking steps to prevent the worst-case scenario. There is no diplomatic goodwill from the US to resume arms control dialogue with Russia – on the contrary, more and more American aggressive mentality is making the treaties fail, promoting a new arms race.

In the same sense, it is clear that NATO is weakened and at a disadvantage when compared to Russian military capacity. The Western alliance has invested heavily in Ukraine to “wear down” Moscow, spending massive amounts of money and weapons on pointless and unwinnable battles. The bloc is weakened and does not have deterrent power enough to threaten Russia. Therefore, the fact that Russia has not attacked any NATO country is not a consequence of any deterrence or de-escalation measure, but of the lack of Russian interest in waging any war.

Despite the errors in analysis, it would be interesting for the report to be read by American decision makers, so that they can start thinking about the post-conflict scenario. Increasing the militarization of Europe may not only pose a risk of war with Russia, but may be a step towards the destruction of NATO itself, as the Europeans may decide to no longer be used as cannon fodder for American plans.

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This article was originally published on InfoBrics.

Lucas Leiroz is a journalist, researcher at the Center for Geostrategic Studies, geopolitical consultant. You can follow Lucas on Twitter and Telegram. He is a regular contributor to Global Research.

Featured image is from Al Mayadeen

Kiev mais uma vez atacou Belgorod. Num bombardeamento brutal contra a cidade fronteiriça russa em 15 de Fevereiro, as forças neonazistas mataram pelo menos seis pessoas, incluindo uma criança. O fato de o ataque ter ocorrido nos primeiros dias da administração militar de Aleksandr Syrsky é talvez um sinal de que o novo general ucraniano seguirá uma estratégia centrada em incursões terroristas contra a zona desmilitarizada da Rússia.

O ataque foi realizado usando um sistema de lançamento múltiplo de foguetes RM-70 “Vampire” fornecido pelo Ocidente. Vários mísseis foram disparados contra Belgorod, tendo mais de uma dúzia deles sido neutralizados pelas forças de defesa russas. Alguns mísseis, no entanto, atingiram alvos civis, resultando em vítimas. É possível que o número de mortes aumente nos próximos dias, tendo em vista que diversas pessoas continuam internadas com ferimentos graves.

Fotos e vídeos gravados por moradores locais têm circulado na internet mostrando as consequências dos atentados. Como se pode verificar nas imagens, os alvos não tinham qualquer relevância militar, tratando-se de instalações como centros comerciais e outros pontos civis. A absoluta ausência de impacto militar na operação ucraniana comprova a intenção de Kiev de matar civis, razão pela qual o ataque pode ser classificado como terrorista.

Os repetidos ataques contra Belgorod – a mesma região onde há algumas semanas Kiev abateu um avião com prisioneiros ucranianos no interior – geraram preocupação entre as autoridades locais. O governo regional pediu à população que permanecesse em alerta máximo, incentivando os residentes a procurarem abrigo em instalações seguras.

Existem algumas razões pelas quais Belgorod é uma cidade particularmente visada por Kiev para este tipo de incursão terrorista. Sendo uma cidade fronteiriça e geograficamente próxima da Ucrânia, Belgorod torna-se um alvo relativamente mais fácil do que outros territórios russos, aumentando o interesse do regime neonazista em lançar ataques na região. Não por acaso, em Dezembro, as forças ucranianas mataram 25 russos e feriram mais de 100 outros durante um violento ataque a Belgorod.

As autoridades russas manifestaram-se várias vezes sobre a gravidade de tais ataques, sublinhando que os atos de terrorismo são absolutamente intoleráveis ​​e que os ataques nas zonas indiscutíveis e desmilitarizadas da Federação legitimam importantes medidas de retaliação. Ao condenar o terrorismo, Moscou não retalia com ataques semelhantes, tendo o cuidado de evitar vítimas civis. O foco das operações de retaliação são as instalações militares e a infraestrutura ucraniana. Neste sentido, são esperados ataques russos de alta intensidade contra tais alvos nos próximos dias.

Um detalhe interessante é que o ataque ocorreu nos primeiros dias da administração militar de Alesaksandr Syrsky. O novo comandante-em-chefe das Forças Armadas da Ucrânia tem gerado expectativas entre os analistas sobre qual será a sua postura na atual crise ucraniana. Alguns especialistas tendenciosos pró-Ocidente acreditam que Syrsky liderará movimentos estratégicos relevantes e permitirá à Ucrânia “mudar o jogo” no campo de batalha, enquanto analistas mais realistas afirmam que ele apenas repetirá nas batalhas atuais o que fez anteriormente no “moedor de carne”. de Bakhmut, quando liderou tropas ucranianas numa operação suicida, gerando perdas desnecessárias para Kiev.

Considerando o incidente em Belgorod, é possível prever que a tática utilizada por Syrsky consistirá na combinação de um “moedor de carne” na linha de frente com o aumento das operações terroristas na fronteira e nas regiões desmilitarizadas. Esta combinação faz sentido para as atuais ambições ucranianas, uma vez que, enfraquecido e sem qualquer hipótese de vencer a guerra, só resta ao regime neonazista se esforçar para continuar a lutar, a fim de provar aos seus patrocinadores ocidentais que vale a pena receber mais armas. Os ataques terroristas não têm valor estratégico do ponto de vista militar, mas funcionam como operações de natureza psicológica, levando o público ocidental a pensar que a Ucrânia é capaz de atingir profundamente a Rússia – legitimando assim o envio de armas de longo alcance.

Contudo, é improvável que as táticas de Syrsky tenham um efeito relevante no longo prazo. A Ucrânia está demasiado fraca para continuar a resistir à retaliação por todos os atos terroristas. Se sofrer muitos ataques russos massivos, Kiev terá rapidamente destruído completamente a sua infraestrutura militar remanescente. Além disso, no campo de batalha o regime ucraniano não consegue continuar a criar novos “moedores de carne”. A capacidade de mobilização de Kiev diminui dia a dia, razão pela qual não será possível repetir novos cenários como os de Bakhmut sem entrar em colapso militar.

Paralelamente, é necessário realçar que estes ataques terroristas ucranianos estão a gerar efeitos cada vez menos positivos na opinião pública ocidental. Em vez de provar ser capaz de vencer a guerra, Kiev simplesmente prova ser um Estado disposto a matar pessoas inocentes para servir os interesses da OTAN. Com o atual crescimento de opiniões críticas sobre a Ucrânia nos países ocidentais, a estratégia de angariar apoio através do terrorismo poderá ser verdadeiramente “suicida” para o regime neonazista.

Lucas Leiroz de Almeida

 

Artigo em inglês :

https://infobrics.org/post/40499/

Imagem : InfoBrics

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Lucas Leiroz, jornalista, pesquisador do Center for Geostrategic Studies, consultor geopolítico.

Você pode seguir Lucas Leiroz em: https://t.me/lucasleiroz e https://twitter.com/leiroz_lucas

Articolo e trasmissione a cura di Manlio Dinucci.

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Stralci dall’intervista a John Shipton, padre di Julian Assange, realizzata da Berenice Galli.

“Devo dire che girando gli Stati Uniti, l’Australia, la Nuova Zelanda e l’Europa ho incontrato sul mio cammino molti altri combattenti per la battaglia della libertà di parola. Ci stiamo dunque rafforzando, nonostante che l’Europa, assieme agli Stati Uniti, all’Australia, al Canada e al Regno Unito, si siano assurdamente resi partner e complici di un genocidio, come previsto da l’articolo 2 C della convenzione di Ginevra sul genocidio.

Ho cominciato a disperare riguardo agli stati vassalli. Tutti i primi ministri d’Europa tranne Orban e il Primo Ministro della Slovacchia, sembrano usciti da una stessa fabbrica, come se fossero tante bottiglie di Coca Cola, hanno qualche minima differenza, ma alla fine sono tutti uguali. E questo è davvero un problema.

Non mi stancherò mai di ripeterlo: quella nei confronti di Julian è una persecuzione e una prosecuzione politica e gli avvocati dell’accusa fanno quello che gli viene detto di fare: continuare la prosecuzione. Mi pare che a questo punto siamo a 27 casi giudiziari che Julian ha dovuto affrontare. Il problema è che il sistema che porta avanti la sua persecuzione è ancora integro: il Dipartimento di Giustizia non si è ancora dissolto per esempio, e porta avanti questa persecuzione, così come il coloniale Ministero degli Esteri del Regno Unito, assieme al Servizio della Procura della Corona, loro non si sono fermati. La prigione di Belmarsh ancora paga i carcerieri che tengono Julian rinchiuso; l’Ufficio della Procura statunitense continua a cercare accuse contro Julian.

Queste persone, questi funzionari governativi si sono macchiati in modo indelebile della persecuzione di Julian, come del genocidio in Medio Oriente che essi sostengono.Macchiati in modo indelebile, per sempre! Non può essere cancellato! Quei…è difficile per me dirlo… quei 17.000 bambini non resusciteranno! Il loro sangue fertilizzerà la terra di Gaza. E cosa nascerà da quella terra? Quale rabbia si diffonderà nell’anima di milioni di esseri umani in tutto il mondo, che si manifesterà con l’odio e con la violenza per difendere lo spirito di quei bambini perduti? Dobbiamo capire tutto questo.”

 

VIDEO :

https://www.byoblu.com/2024/02/16/parla-il-padre-di-assange-mio-figlio-perseguito-politicamente/

 

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

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Beginning in 1876, the monarchy in Belgium initiated a massive campaign to fully conquer the Congo where tremendous wealth existed in natural resources and labor power.

King Leopold I pursued the riches and workforce in Congo as a private enterprise where agents of the monarchy and other transnational corporations functioned as a de facto regime.

Over the next 32 years until 1908 when the colonial administration in Brussels took over the national oppressive and exploitative system in Congo, several reports indicate that up to ten million Africans were killed in the territories claimed by Belgium.

Several years after the Belgian intervention in Congo during 1884-85, the Berlin West Africa Conference was held in Germany which carved up the continent as spheres of interests for the imperialist powers.

Nonetheless, in the so-called Belgian Congo, Africans from various regions of the country resisted the horrendous methods of domination and forced labor. According to Calvin C. Kolar in his review of the literature on the efforts by the people to repel colonial rule noted that:

“A Force Publique officer reported, ‘I expect a general uprising…the motive is always the same, the natives are tired of the existing regime transport work, rubber collection, furnishing [food] for whites and black…For three months I have been fighting, with ten days rest…Yet I cannot say I have subjugated the people. They prefer to fight or die…What can I do?’ These revolts by the Mongo people highlighted the fact that revolts were not constrained to the Kasai region. Reacting to various pressures, violent resistance was widespread throughout the Congo.”

These developments were by no means isolated incidents. Africans resisted the onslaught of classical colonialism which resulted in the reported deaths of millions. From the late 19th century through the period of World War I, there were several rebellions and organized wars of resistance in the areas now known as Zimbabwe and Malawi, then controlled by Britain, along with Southwest Africa and Tanganyika under German domination.

The attempts to conquer Mashonaland and Matabeleland, now known as Zimbabwe, by the British military forces prompted the First Chimurenga (war of resistance). Africans fought a series of battles over a two-year period (1896-97) against the British.

Due to the lack of sophisticated weapons in abundance, the people of Mashonaland and Matabeleland were eventually defeated militarily and brought under colonial domination. See this.

Later between 1904-1907, the Herero and Nama people of Southwest Africa, now known as Namibia, waged a resistance war against German colonialism. In retaliation for their resistance, the German imperialists systematically relocated and slaughtered 80 percent of the Namibian people. See this.

Also under German control, the colony of Tanganyika experienced a war of resistance popularly referred to as the Maji Maji Revolt of 1905-7. Africans in Tanganyika objected to the theft of their land, the paying of taxes to the colonialists while being subjected to forced labor in the production of agricultural products. (See this)

Image: Belgian colonialism in Congo

These events in Southern and Eastern Africa are highlighted to emphasize that African people responded in similar ways to the rise of colonialism during the 19th and early 20th centuries across the continent. The atrocities committed by the Belgian, British and German colonialists have been well documented by numerous journalists and historians during this period and in subsequent years.

The military phase of the struggle against imperialism in Africa was paralleled by the formation of mass organizations and conferences throughout the world. This process of opposition to European domination was a combined political, cultural and military effort to bring about the eventual independence of these territories and colonial states.

Colonialism in Africa and the Movements Against Racism

On July 23-25, the First Pan-African Conference was held in London, England just prior to the Paris Exposition. The gathering was attended by Africans and people of African descent largely from the British colonies and other English-speaking territories.

This meeting followed the Chicago Columbian Exposition and the Congress on Africa in 1893 where African American leaders such as anti-slavery organizer, women’s suffrage advocate and diplomat Frederick Douglass along with Ida B. Wells, who had built an international reputation as a journalist and an outspoken critic of the United States legal system for its refusal to prosecute mobs and law-enforcement personnel for carrying out thousands of lynchings in the South, utilized Douglass’ links with the Haitian government to distribute thousands of pamphlets exposing the actual conditions of Black people during this period. Wells’ work in defense of the security and rights of African Americans played an instrumental role in the launching of the African American women’s movement which came into fruition during the late 1890s and early 1900s. (See this)

The 1900 Pan-African Conference was described by the following source in this way:

“Speakers over the three days addressed a variety of aspects of racial discrimination. Among the papers delivered were ‘Conditions Favoring a High Standard of African Humanity’ (C. W. French of St. Kitts), ‘The Preservation of Racial Equality’ (Anna H. Jones, from Kansas), ‘The Necessary Concord to be Established between Native Races and European Colonists’ (Benito Sylvain, Haitian aide-de-camp to the Ethiopian emperor), ‘The Negro Problem in America’ (Anna J. Cooper, from Washington), ‘The Progress of our People’ (John E. Quinlan of St. Lucia) and ‘Africa, the Sphinx of History, in the Light of Unsolved Problems’ (D. E. Tobias from the USA). 

By 1912, Duse Muhammad Ali from Egypt, founded the African Times and Orient Review in London. The newspaper published articles in opposition to colonialism in Africa and Asia.

People such as Marcus Garvey, the founder of the Universal Negro Improvement Association-African Communities League (UNIA-ACL) in 1914 worked at the African Times and Orient Review prior to his emergence as world leader. In 1916 Garvey re-located to the U.S. and by the early 1920s, the UNIA-ACL had grown to an international movement with chapters around the U.S., the Caribbean, South America, Europe and in some regions of the African continent. (See this)

Consequently, leading up to the beginning of World War I, there were many instances of political and military resistance to imperialism on the part of African people on the continent and within the Diaspora. The First imperialist war from 1914-1918 led to an intensification of the struggle to end institutional racism and colonialism.

African Resistance to World War I

One of the earliest rebellions against the First Imperialist War took place in the British colony of Nyasaland, which is modern-day Malawi in early 1915. The rebellion was led by John Chilembwe, a U.S.-trained Baptist minister and educator who sought to prevent Africans from being recruited into the war effort.

There were battles on the African continent between German and British imperialist forces over the control of territories. Chilembwe protested the conscription of Africans into the British military for the purpose of fighting the Germans.

The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) in a publication said of the Nyasaland Revolt:

“John Chilembwe’s rising was precipitated by the enlistment of Nyasas and their large death toll in the first weeks of the war in battle with the Germans. In his memorable censored letter to the Nyasaland Times of 26 November 1914 he protested ‘We understand that we have been invited to shed our innocent blood in this world’s war … we are imposed upon more than any other nationality under the sun’.” (See this)

John McCracken in his book entitled “A History of Malawi, 1859-1966, the author said of the Nyasaland Revolt:

“Within a fortnight the revolt had been suppressed. Three Europeans had died; two had been severely wounded, 36 convicted rebels had been executed, many others had been killed by the security forces. ‘For a rebellion against foreign rule, it had been, on the face of it, singularly ineffective’ noted Shepperson and Price in their authoritative account of the rising. Yet, as they also commented, the importance of the rising was far greater than its immediate, quantifiable, impact. A leading historian has claimed that this was the only significant rebellion in the whole of Africa to be inspired by Christianity prior to the First World War. It provided Malawi with its one unproblematic hero, John Chilembwe; his image is now depicted on Malawian bank notes.” 

In the U.S., A. Philip Randolph and Chandler Owens, editors of the Messenger newspaper, which was affiliated with the Socialist Party during World War I, were charged with violating the Espionage Act of 1917. The paper opposed African American involvement in the imperialist war. (See this)

Although Randolph and Owens were arrested at a Socialist Party rally in Cleveland on August 4, 1918, and brought into court for espionage, the judge refused to sentence them because he did not believe that the two young African Americans could have written and edited the Messenger. He believed that they were mere agents of the Socialists and ordered them to leave the city.

Randolph and Owens were only two of the estimated 10,000 people who were arrested for opposing the war, many of whom were socialists. Others were deported for advocating peace and social change. The repression initiated by the Department of Justice during the war continued under Attorney General W. Mitchell Palmer when in 1919-20, 6,000 people were unlawfully detained in over 30 cities.

After the conclusion of the First Imperialist War, Dr. W.E.B. Du Bois convened the Pan-African Congress in Paris. This gathering in 1919 coincided with the escalation of racist violence inside the U.S. along with anti-colonial rebellions in Egypt. (See this and this)

As the 1920s and 1930s would reveal, the struggle against national oppression, institutional racism and imperialism escalated. By the beginning of the Second Imperialist War, the historical stage was set for the advent of the independence and civil rights movements which swept the entire African world.

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Abayomi Azikiwe is the editor of the Pan-African News Wire. He is a regular contributor to Global Research.

All images in this article are from the author

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The United Kingdom paid a high price for Brexit, which spurred inflation, reduced the size of its economy, and compromised the country’s investment capacity, Bloomberg reported on February 12, citing economists at Goldman Sachs. Yet, despite Britain’s economic suffering, the media are demanding a greater financial commitment to support Ukraine’s war on Russia.

Leaving the European Union reduced the UK’s GDP by around 5% compared to the performance of its economic peers, according to Goldman Sachs’ chief European economist, Sven Jari Stehn. He noted that seven years after the referendum campaign, the UK has ended up with an underperforming economy and a rising cost of living due to shrinked international trade, weak business investment and a reduction in migrants from the EU, the UK’s biggest trading partner.

“The evidence points to a significant long-run output cost of Brexit,” Goldman Sachs economists wrote in a note. “The UK has significantly underperformed other advanced economies since the 2016 EU referendum.”

Previous estimates from other observers also pointed to a negative long-term impact of Brexit. In November, the UK’s National Institute for Economic and Social Research (NIESR) estimated that Brexit reduced the size of the economy by 2-3%, an impact that is expected to increase to 5-6% by 2035. According to estimates made last year by the UK’s Office for Budget Responsibility, leaving the EU likely reduced economic output by 4%.

However, according to Goldman economists, not all the UK’s economic problems can be linked to leaving the EU. The headwinds of Brexit add to the damage caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, the high interest rates necessary to control inflation, which has reached historic highs in the UK, and the energy crisis triggered by the UK-sponsored Ukraine war on Russia.

British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak said in January that he would increase military aid to Ukraine in the next financial year to £2.5 billion pounds, an increase of £200 million on the previous two years. Sunak and Volodymyr Zelensky also signed a security agreement that the Ukrainian president said would remain in place until Kiev joins NATO, something that will certainly not occur in the short-medium term.

London’s unrelenting support for the Kiev regime has resulted in Russia imposing sanctions on 18 British citizens, including officials, academics, and so-called Russia experts.

“We are forced to state that Russophobically charged British representatives do not shy away trying to discredit the constitutional system and socio-political processes in our country,” Russia’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs said on February 12. “By pushing the Zelensky regime to continue the bloodshed, the British must realise that, along with Ukrainian neo-Nazis, they bear responsibility for crimes against civilians.”

Despite the UK’s economic suffering, there is very little criticism in the British media about billions of pounds being wasted on a futile war that Ukraine has no chance of winning. Although there is a begrudging acknowledgement that sanctions against Russia are failing whilst the British economy struggles, there is no critiquing or criticism of the billions of pounds being funnelled to Ukraine.

Notable is the Sun’s article published on February 10, ludicrously titled: “Two years of war and sanctions but as the UK economy struggles, tyrant Vladimir Putin’s Russia is GROWING.”

“By imposing the toughest-ever ­economic sanctions on the Kremlin to add to our generous backing for Ukraine, Joe Biden and Co assumed that the Russian economy would tank, Putin would run out of cash to pay for his army, then the Russian people — not least the pampered super-rich oligarchs — would rebel against Putin for plunging them into poverty,” the outlet wrote, adding that the Russian economy has grown faster than any in Western Europe, unemployment in Russia has fallen sharply since war broke out.

However, staying true to form, the British outlet, rather than demanding an end to the war and a prioritisation of fixing the economy, stated that “the world must give Ukraine enough to win, not just survive.”

Very few realise that the British media juggernaut has adopted an anti-Russia position since the 19th century and has continued unrelentingly ever since. The vitriolic Russophobia is so entrenched that even during a period of economic struggle, the British media are demanding an increase in financial support for Ukraine on the delusional premise that the war-torn country has any chance of pushing back Russian forces from their former territories. With such an attitude, it is demonstrable why the UK has never been able to recover from Brexit.

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

Featured image: UK Prime Minister Rishi Sunak greets Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelensky outside Chequers, the prime minister’s countryside residence, where the president arrived by helicopter on Monday seeking pledges of further military support. The UK promised hundreds of air-defense missiles and drones to Ukraine. / UK Government photo.

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On February 14, Israeli airstrikes in Lebanon killed at least seven civilians, after Hezbollah rocket fire killed an Israeli soldier.

In Souaneh, a woman was killed along with her two children.  Rawaa al-Mohammed, and her two sons, Hassan Mohsen, 13, and Amir Mohsen, 2 were killed in their home.

In Aadchit, one man was killed, and 10 others were injured by Israel.

In another Israeli strike, two women, and four members of one family were killed by Israel, and none of those killed had any connection to Hezbollah.

Israeli government spokesperson Ilana Stein told Reuters,

“The current reality, where tens of thousands of Israelis are displaced [in the north] and cannot return to their homes, is unbearable. They must be able to return home and live in peace and security.”

Stein never mentioned the 28,000 killed in Gaza, or the 1.2 million in Rafah now awaiting planned extermination by the Israel Defense Forces.

On February 13, Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah warned Israeli leaders,

“To those who threaten us with a widening of the war: if you widen, we will too,” he said, adding that “those who think the resistance might be afraid are very mistaken”.

He also vowed that Hezbollah would only cease fire “when the aggression stops and there is a ceasefire in Gaza”.

While the Israeli war on the people of Gaza rages on, Steven Sahiounie of MidEastDiscourse interviewed Alwan N. Amin Eddine, founder of Sita Institute, Beirut, and the author of ‘Paths to War: An Analysis of International and Regional Potential Sources of Conflict’, 2019. 

Steven Sahiounie (SS): The situation between Hezbollah and Israel is very tense. In your opinion, do you see the US supporting Israel in a large air campaign to destroy Hezbollah?

Alwan N. Amin Eddine (AE):  I don’t see the US being able to do anything in Lebanon, especially since the US is in an election year.  The US tradition for a presidential election year is one that they will not begin a major war and hand it over to a new president.  Therefore, it is my opinion that the US will not enter a major war in Lebanon at this time.  Of course, Hezbollah is a target for both Israel and the US, and especially after all the accusations Hezbollah has faced in the past from the US and others.

We should be fearful of the madness of Benjamin Netanyahu, because he has not achieved any field victories in Gaza.  Netanyahu’s only achievement in Gaza has been the deaths of civilians, the destruction of civilian infrastructure, and freeing only two hostages.

Netanyahu is afraid of the corruption charges against him, because he will certainly be put in prison.  For this reason, he must remain in power in order to remain personally free. The only reason Netanyahu wants to continue the Gaza war as long as possible, is to delay his own incarceration.  This war in Gaza is fought by Netanyahu as a personal matter, to save himself.  And I think, the political future of Netanyahu is at risk, and he does not want to end up like Ehud Olmert, who was sentenced to prison for the Lebanese war in 2006, and the first Gaza war.

Today, Netanyahu is behaving like a gambler; he is losing, but still borrowing money while hoping he will win eventually. 

In my opinion, the US interference in a war in Lebanon is out of the question.  The only way the US could begin a major war in Lebanon, would be in response to some big unexpected event.

All of the Europeans, and Americans who have come to Lebanon recently, have said they are against enlarging the Gaza war into a regional war. In his last visit to the Middle East, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken assured the various Arab leaders that the Gaza war will not be enlarged upon.

Even the Iranian Foreign Minister announced that the fear is not from a regional war, but the fear is what Netanyahu, and his Likud Party might do in Gaza, and against the Palestinian people.

SS: Prime Minister Mikati and others have condemned the Israeli airstrikes and drone attacks. In your view, can the Lebanese government do anything to decrease tensions?

AE: The Lebanese government has a very weak military, because the Lebanese Army is dependent on US aid, which comes with conditions.  Even when Lebanon asks for the smallest, and most basic weapons, the US still places conditions on them.  The Americans will say where, when and how those weapons can be used.

An example of this, is when the Lebanese Army clashed with the Radical Islamic terrorist group, Fetah al-Islam in Nahar al-Bared, US Secretary of State Condelezza Rice refused to allow the Lebanese Army to arm their helicopters in the fight.  However, the Lebanese Army insisted on using them, and making adjustments, according to my recollections.

The Lebanese government, and its army, are severely handicapped due to the lack of aircraft and helicopters.  The aircraft are not war-ready or capable. The Lebanese Army is one of the strongest armies in the region concerning training.  The ideology of the Lebanese Army includes resistance to the Israeli occupation. 

Concerning the Israeli attacks on Lebanon, the government sent formal complaints to the UN, and the Arab leaders, and Hezbollah responds to the attacks on the battlefield.  The Lebanese government have stated officially they do not want the war to enlarge, and they have no ability to prevent the many Israeli attacks.  However, the Lebanese Army may respond to the Israeli attacks, and they have done so in the past, and have lost martyrs to the Israeli aggression.

SS: Lebanon has experienced a financial disaster. In your opinion, if a ceasefire begins in Gaza, what effect will it have on Lebanon?

AE: Concerning the financial crisis in Lebanon: it is not related to the war in Gaza. Only if there were major regional changes, like peace treaties, or UN resolution 1701 being implemented, the surrendering of weapons, and Hezbollah being pull back, then the west will give the government a financial inducement which could help the economy.

The financial crisis in Lebanon, is not similar to the crisis in Greece and Cyprus in the past.  The Lebanese crisis is rooted in the fundamentals of the country. There are conflicting financial decisions throughout the government, and corruption in every corner of the regime. In my opinion, I do not see a connection between the war in Gaza and the financial crisis in Lebanon.

The Lebanese financial crisis is continuing, and Lebanon needs new financial resolutions, emerging banks, and remitting money back to account holders, even if it may be done in segments over time.

In my opinion, there might be a connection between the war on Gaza and the US presidential election, because if Hamas keeps resisting, and the Israeli army pulls out, and Israel realizes this point very well, that it will be an achievement for the axis of resistance.  The axis of resistance will use this to implement several conditions that they demand in the various countries they reside in, such as: Yemen, Gaza, Lebanon, Iraq, but not Syria.  In Syria, the situation is different because of the presence of Russia and the alliances between them. 

Although there is not a connection between Gaza and the Lebanese financial crisis, there could be a connection between Gaza and filling the Lebanese presidential vacancy.

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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.

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

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July 12, 2023 – UCSF Doctor Dr. Bob Wachter contracts COVID and collapses (6x COVID-19 Vaccinated).

We’re all wishing a speedy recovery to UCSF’s cult-hit COVID sage Dr. Bob Wachter,  who contracted the virus himself this week, then collapsed in the shower and suffered bleeding around the brain and a neck fracture.

SFist has often turned to UCSF Department of Medicine Chair Dr. Bob Wachter for advice on navigating COVID-19, and he’s become something of a local Twitter superstar for his data-rich, highly approachable, lengthy Twitter threads on the matter. He also conducted a weekly “Grand Rounds” forum on the pandemic on YouTube, which just aired its last episode two weeks ago.

Yet Dr. Wachter himself had not yet contracted COVID-19 — though he tweeted through his son getting the virus and when his wife had long COVID.

But Wachter did recently contract COVID-19, and started experiencing symptoms this past Sunday. And one of the consequences of those symptoms was pretty out of the ordinary, as the Chronicle reports Wachter collapsed in the shower and suffered some brutal injuries. 

If you’re saying  “Pics or GTFO,” Wachter has the pics to prove it. Be warned, some of them are graphic, and they are of course displayed in a signature Bob Wachter tweetstorm.

 

First, yes, that is the bathroom trash can onto which Wachter fell, and left a significant dent in. The fall happened during or just after a shower — he doesn’t remember — and this was after he woke up with serious sweats from the virus.

“I made a mistake – I took a shower,” he said. “While the instinct to take a shower when you’re sweaty and gross is understandable, stepping into hot water when you’re dehydrated and flu-ish can cause your blood vessels to dilate, leading to a dangerous drop in blood pressure.”

“And that’s what happened: I [woke] up in a bloody pool on my bathroom floor,” he added. “I had smashed the hell out of both my right forehead & the back of my scalp.”

 

Being Dr. Bob Wachter, he of course gets highly technical with the medical terminology. “Given the extent of injuries on both front & back of head, the ED docs ordered a head and cervical spine CT,” he tweeted. “The head CT showed a small subdural hematoma, a little rim of bleeding in the space around the brain. This bought me an overnight stay in the hospital for a repeat scan to ensure the bleeding wasn’t enlarging; it also led to a week of an anti-seizure medication.”

“More fun: the spine CT showed a small non-displaced cervical fracture (C3 for aficionados), which bought me a cervical spine collar and a few neurological exams to be sure I had no symptoms of spinal cord damage,” he added. “With that kind of syncope and fall, I could easily have taken out an eye, been paralyzed from my spine injury, or died of a subdural bleed. I must have bruised my flank pretty good going down, since that’s what hurts more than anything – no fun while I was coughing.”

 

But Wachter says he is not alarmed enough to make any changes to his famously COVID-cautious behavior.

“As long as the case rates remain low (they are now, tho wastewater is showing a little uptick; Figure), I’ll continue being relatively careful, but no more than I’ve been,” he concluded on Twitter. “I will, however, be more careful about showering or taking a hot bath or hot tub when dehydrated. That’s one important takeaway from this mess.”

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July 26, 2023:

 

 

Dr. Bob Wachter, UCSF Chair of Medicine is 6x Vaccinated. How do we know?

 

 

These are the COVID-19 Vaccines recommended in Canada, but the recommendations are almost identical in the US:

• 2 doses in early 2021
• 1st booster in late 2021
• 2nd booster in April 2022
• 3rd (Omicron bivalent booster) in Oct. 2022
• 4th (Omicron bivalent booster) in Mar. 2023
• 5th (XBB.1.5 monovalent booster) in Sep. 2023

If he had his 2nd bivalent in April 2023, that was his 6th COVID-19 Vaccine.

It makes sense that the UCSF Chair of Medicine would always be “UPTODATE” on his jabs.

2024:

 

 

 

 

Dr. Bob’s wife has “Long COVID” (April 2023):

Click here to view the video

Dec. 15, 2023 – Philippines, DOCTOR Rowena Burden, 58, dead of a HEART ATTACK on December 15, 2023. “6th COVID-19 Vaccination Done..2 primary series (2 Sinovac and 2 full-dose Moderna) #heterologous and 2 boosters (half-dose Moderna & full-dose #Pfizer“

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Dec. 2023 – New Zealand family doctor Dr. Sandhya Ramanathan had her 6th COVID-19 Vaccine. She got COVID after her booster but is thankful for the vaccine that did absolutely nothing for her.

My Take… 

The idea that anyone would take 6 failed experimental COVID-19 mRNA Vaccines, let alone a doctor, seems utterly irrational.

It is unclear what caused UCSF Dr.Bob Wachter’s collapse. He believes it was COVID. But it could also have been a COVID-19 mRNA Vaccine TIA (Transient ischemic attack) or a mini-stroke.

How common are post COVID-19 Vaccine strokes or collapses? WHO VigiAccess Database shows:

• 398,269 Dizziness
• 74,906 Syncope
• 34,623 Loss of consciousness
• 18,461 Cerebrovascular accidents
• 6,331 transient ischemic attack (mini-strokes)

 

 

In 2022, COVID-19 Vaccine Induced strokes skyrocketed: 

UK Government Disability Data shows a stunning rise of strokes causing disability in 2022 for all age groups of +127%.

 

Conclusion 

I’m glad Dr. Bob made a full recovery from his fall. But it seems he hasn’t even considered the possibility of injury from 6 COVID-19 Vaccines, especially considering that clotting is one of the more common side effects.

His wife, presumably 6x COVID-19 Vaccinated also, allegedly suffers from Long COVID (or more likely COVID-19 Vaccine injury).

With his strict N95 masking regimen, I have to assume that he is a “true believer” and not that he is putting on a theatrical performance.

He had a very close call with that bad fall, he got COVID anyways, and his wife has been harmed as well, yet he persists with pushing the same failed pharma products that have almost certainly damaged his family.

It really does seem like many doctors are willing to quietly accept shortened lives, disability and even death, rather than admit they were wrong.

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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

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

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How do you like the idea of 3 years in prison for speaking out against the toxic jabs?

This is an evolving issue. In recent developments according to France Info:

The rejection of the measure on the night of Tuesday, February 13 had caused an outcry in the macronist ranks in the Assembly.

After long debates, the deputies adopted at first reading the draft law against sectarian excesses on Wednesday, February 14, in which they reintegrated the controversial article 4, which creates a new crime of “provocation to abstention from medical care”.

Translated from French

Décret de présentation

La Première ministre,

Sur le rapport du ministre de l’intérieur et des outre-mer,

Vu l’article 39 de la Constitution,

Décrète :

Le présent projet de loi visant à renforcer la lutte contre les dérives sectaires, délibéré en conseil des ministres après avis du Conseil d’État, sera présenté au Sénat par le ministre de l’intérieur et des outre-mer, qui sera chargé d’en exposer les motifs et d’en soutenir la discussion, avec le concours de la secrétaire d’État auprès du ministre de l’intérieur et des outre-mer, chargée de la citoyenneté et auprès du ministre de l’intérieur et des outre-mer et du ministre de la transition écologique et de la cohésion des territoires, chargée de la ville.

Fait à Paris, le 15 novembre 2023

Signé : Élisabeth BORNE

Par la Première ministre :

Le ministre de l’intérieur et des outre-mer

Signé : Gérald DARMANIN

La secrétaire d’État auprès du ministre de l’intérieur et des outre-mer, chargée de la citoyenneté et auprès du ministre de l’intérieur et des outre-mer et du ministre de la transition écologique et de la cohésion des territoires, chargée de la ville

Signé : Sabrina AGRESTI-ROUBACHE

TRANSLATION

Presentation decree

The Prime Minister,

On the report of the Minister of the Interior and Overseas,

Having regard to Article 39 of the Constitution,

Decree:

This draft law to strengthen the fight against sectarian excesses, deliberated in the Council of Ministers pursuant to the opinion of the Council of State, will be presented to the Senate by the Minister of the Interior and Overseas, who will be responsible for setting out the reasons and supporting the discussion, with the assistance of the Secretary of State to the Minister of the Interior and Overseas, in charge of citizenship and to the Minister of the Interior and Overseas and the Minister of Ecological Transition and Territorial Cohesion, in charge of the city.

Paris, November 15, 2023

Signed: Élisabeth BORNE

By the Prime Minister:

The Minister of the Interior and Overseas

Signed: Gérald DARMANIN

The Secretary of State to the Minister of the Interior and Overseas, in charge of citizenship and to the Minister of the Interior and Overseas and the Minister of Ecological Transition and Territorial Cohesion, in charge of the city

Signed: Sabrina AGRESTI-ROUBACHE

After article 223-1-1 of the penal code, article 223-1-2 is inserted as follows:

”  Art. 223-1-2 . – Provocation to abandon or abstain from following therapeutic or prophylactic medical treatment is punishable by one year of imprisonment and a fine of 15,000 euros, when this abandonment or abstention is presented as beneficial for the health of the persons targeted when it is, in the state of medical knowledge, clearly likely to result in serious consequences for their physical or psychological health, taking into account the pathology from which they suffer.

“Provocation to adopt practices presented as having a therapeutic or prophylactic purpose for the persons concerned is punishable by the same penalties when it is, in the state of medical knowledge, clear that these practices expose them to an immediate risk of death. or injuries likely to result in mutilation or permanent disability.

“When the provocation provided for in the first two paragraphs has been followed by effects, the penalties are increased to three years of imprisonment and a fine of 45,000 euros.

“When these offenses are committed through the written or audiovisual press, the specific provisions of the laws which govern these matters are applicable with regard to the determination of the persons responsible. »

The “authoritarians” in the French government wanted a law where they could shut down anyone presenting any alternatives to their “state of medical knowledge”.

For example, anyone claiming that their modRNA gene therapy treatments are harmful. The punishment? Up to three years in prison.

Surely, no parliament would ever agree to this, Right?

Stupid rhetorical question since we already know they wanted to imprison people for not taking the jabs in Canada, and they did imprison people in Austria, and our “leaders” talked about critics as “taking up space” and being “dangerous extremists” – it was clear where this was heading a long time ago).

But now it is formalized in France

On February 13, 2024 , the French National Assembly approved the bill:

While the National Assembly had rejected, on the night of Tuesday February 13 to Wednesday February 14, article 4 of the bill aimed at “strengthening the fight against sectarian aberrations”, a second deliberation took place on Wednesday after- noon, on the measure relating to the creation of an offense of inciting people to abandon care. The government and its relative majority this time won their case against the main opposition groups. 

“ The transpartisan work paid off .” Not without a certain optimism, this is how the Secretary of State for Citizenship, Sabrina Agresti-Roubache , chose to summarize the bitter battle waged in the hemicycle of the National Assembly between defenders and slayers of Article 4 of the bill “aimed at strengthening the fight against sectarian abuses” , at the end of the examination of the text on first reading.  

Specifically dedicated to therapeutic abuses, this article 4 creates a new offense aimed at punishing

” provocation to abandon or abstain from following therapeutic or prophylactic medical treatment “, as well as

” provocation to adopt practices presented as having a therapeutic or prophylactic purpose “,

when these incentives can prove to be “particularly serious” for physical or psychological health .

Seen by most opposition groups – with the exception of the Socialist group – as an a priori condemnation of so-called “parallel” medicine, as posing a threat to whistleblowers, the government and the majority have in initially failed to get the measure adopted.

“ The sincerity of this fight against sectarian aberrations must not consist of sanctioning by law complementary care practices or the consumption of phytotherapeutic products ,” said Jean-François Coulomme (La France insoumise) , when Thomas Ménage (Rassemblement national) had castigated ” a liberticidal drift ” and Paul Molac (LIOT) a ” danger for [ the ] freedom of expression “. The amendments to delete article 4 – presented by deputies from Les Républicains, Rassemblement national, Gauche Démocrate et Républicaine, and LIOT – were adopted by almost 8 votes ( 116 For, 108 Against ).

This was without taking into account the determination of the government and the majority.

Wednesday February 14, at the end of the examination of the bill, the president of the Laws Committee, Sacha Houlié (Renaissance) , spoke in the hemicycle to request a second deliberation , as permitted by the Article 101 of the  Regulations of the National Assembly. This provides that ” the second deliberation is by right at the request of the Government or the commission seized with the merits “.

Brigitte Liso therefore presented an amendment to reinstate – and rewrite – Article 4.

If the rapporteur stressed that the offense would not be constituted ” when proof of the free and informed consent of the person is provided “ , she also specified that the new wording brought an additional dimension linked to the protection of whistleblowers, which was  the reason for the law of December 9, 2016 relating to transparency, the fight against corruption and the modernization of economic life.

An objective reaffirmed in the text of the amendment, according to which ” the information reported or disclosed by the whistleblower under the conditions provided for in Article 6 ” of the law previously cited ” does not constitute provocation ” in the sense of article 4 of this bill.

A precaution that the Socialists group itself had proposed by amendment, allowing one of its members, Arthur Delaporte , to unreservedly praise the reinstatement in the text of the offense aimed at punishing incitement to abandon care. “ With this article, we defend science ,” he also welcomed.

A tone radically different from that expressed by the main opposition groups – Rassemblement national, La France insoumise, Les Républicains – who voted against the amendment aimed at reinstating article 4.

During the debates, Nicolas Dupont-Aignan (no registered) denounced a method of “contempt, of force “,

Jean-François Coulomme (LFI) deplored the absence of ” seriousness of the deliberation “.

And following the  reinstatement of article 4 (by 182 votes “for” and 137 “against”, details of the vote here ), Aurélien Pradié (LR) denounced ” a Pyrrhic victory “.

The entire bill was finally adopted, on first reading, by 151 votes to 73 .  He will now continue his legislative journey by returning to the Senate. 

It just needs to pass the Senate now, and the French will be well on the way to the authoritarian medical dystopia we have predicted.

Just as in Canada, and elsewhere, it is the authoritarian “Left/Liberals” [coopted by the WEF, powerful financial interests as well as Big Pharma] who are using The Science ™ (State Scientism) as a weapon against their enemies, the people. It is the “populist” parties who are defending the people.

In France, the biggest opposition to the Bill came from the Rassemblement National, which Wikipedia describes as:

…right-wing populist party in France.^[9] It is the largest parliamentary opposition group in the National Assembly…It is an anti-immigration party, advocating significant cuts to legal immigration and protection of French identity,^[10] as well as stricter control of illegal immigration. It also advocates for a ‘more balanced’ and ‘independent’ French foreign policy by opposing French military intervention in Africa and by distancing France from the American sphere of influence by leaving NATO’s integrated command. It supports the reform of the European Union (EU) and its related organisations. It also supports economic interventionism and protectionism, and zero tolerance of breaches of law and order.^[11] The party has been accused of promoting xenophobia and antisemitism.^[12]

If the Senate approves this Bill, which they probably will, the populists will grow in strength.

We have long predicted that populist/libertarian/traditionalist political parties will regain control; but will this be before the social fabric of our societies has been totally destroyed?

And, even more pressingly, will this be before the globalists roll out their plan for global vaccine mandates?

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In the New York Times on October 5, 2002, reporter Michael Gordon authored “C.I.A. Says Iraq Revived Forbidden Weapons Programs After the U.N. Inspectors Left.” It reported “a classified National Intelligence Estimate on Iraq’s programs to make weapons of mass destruction was provided to Congress early this week,” and quoted an unclassified summary of that Estimate, or NIE, saying “although Saddam probably does not yet have nuclear weapons… he remains intent on acquiring them.”

A month earlier, Gordon worked with Judith Miller to co-author what was to become an infamous article, “U.S. Says Hussein Intensifies Quest for A-Bomb Parts.” That piece was based on interviews with George W. Bush administration officials who previewed the public case for war, claiming “Iraq has sought to buy thousands of specially designed aluminum tubes” that “could be used to make centrifuges to enrich uranium.” Miller and Gordon added that technical specifications “persuaded American intelligence experts” that the attempted tube purchases were for Iraq’s nuclear program.

Both articles were important parts of the Bush administration’s case for war, but the second was more impactful than the first. Everyone knew the White House was hot to take out Hussein, but news that a major intelligence report backed the administration’s belief about a reconstituted Iraqi nuclear program suggested widespread agreement across government about the White House’s conclusions. The CIA’s “intent on acquiring them” line was critical in helping Bush build public consensus and gain congressional approval to attack. As Gordon noted, the report came at “a critical juncture in the Congressional debate over the possible use of force.”

As it turned out, the 2002 NIE was a pioneering effort in a new form of executive mischief, one that wedded selective releases of classified research to suppression of dissent to build public cases for action, with secrecy rules guaranteeing long delays between initial public deceptions and later disillusioning revelations. This practice is at the center of today’s Racket/Public story about how the January 6, 2017 report that “Cooked the Intelligence” to hide that Russia didn’t fear a Clinton presidency, and people of all political persuasions should care about it because the corruption issue isn’t partisan.

This is a process problem, and what was laid out to us about the crooked techniques used to “cook” the last surviving myth of the Russiagate era — that Vladimir Putin ordered an “influence campaign” to help Trump — could be used by any party, any administration, any group of intelligence officials seeking to use a bogus pretext to do something nasty.

Using dubious foreign conclusions to buttress the initial domestic campaigns is part of the pattern. The October 2002 American report on “Iraq’s Continuing Programs for Weapons of Mass Destruction” was written on the heels of a British assessment from September 24, 2002, that among other things claimed that some of Saddam Hussein’s WMDs were ready for deployment “within 45 minutes of an order to use them.” Not until a year later, in August of 2003, did reports begin to emerge sourced to British dossier scientist David Kelly that the UK assessment had been “sexed up.” British journalist Alistair Campbell described talking to Kelly, who said he’d been told a week before publication that the British report was insufficiently exciting. From the Guardian:

“He said ‘until the last week, it wasn’t very exciting, it was transformed the week before publication.’

“I said ‘To make it sexy?’ and he said ‘Yes, to make it sexy.’”

For the U.S., the WMD story fell apart on the ground in Iraq, where searches came up empty, but it also fell apart on paper, as intelligence secrets began to leak out. On July 25th, 2003, after the invasion, a paper called “Declassified and Released Excerpts of the October 2002 National Intelligence Estimate on Iraq,” was released that began to hint at things the public wasn’t told in October 2002. Lines like We have low confidence in our ability to assess when Saddam Hussein might use WMD stood out.

Only in 2015, when the 2002 NIE was finally declassified, did we find out how badly our own intel had been “sexed up.” A remarkable array of crude tricks was used to manipulate opinion toward invasion. A little white-out transformed “We judge that Iraq has continued its weapons of mass destruction (WMD) programs” into the far more convincing pre-invasion line: “Iraq has continued its weapons of mass destruction (WMD) programs.”

The early NIE also redacted dissenting opinions from the Department of Energy, the Air Force, and the intelligence wing of the State Department, the Bureau of Intelligence and Research (INR), reduced to a distant implication in lines like “most analysts assess” or “most analysts believe.” Officials even added lines for the public’s benefit only about Saddam having biological agents capable of threatening “the US Homeland.” It was all a scam.

The manipulation of Iraq intelligence remains, for modern Democrats, the archetypal corruption story of our century. It’s the unforgivable sin that sullied Bush forever in our eyes and also, incidentally, helped launch “constitutional lawyer” and Iraq critic Barack Obama to the White House over Hillary Clinton, who saw the classified NIE and voted for the war anyway. The “sexed up” British scandal will forever be a black mark on Labor Prime Minister Tony Blair, once slated for historical honors as a paradigm-shifting “Third Way” politician. It therefore makes no sense that Democrats and progressives on both sides of the pond shouldn’t be horrified by the story of how the 2017 ICA was corrupted, a tale that we also learned this week followed an equally upsetting campaign of political espionage targeting at least 26 Trump aides and associates.

The story released in Racket and Public today is remarkably similar to the 2002 disaster, and likely worse. In the 2017 “Intelligence Community Assessment” which is the subject of today’s piece, dissent wasn’t just confined to the classified version and kept from the public, but rather pre-empted entirely. Here, the State Department’s INR was barred from participating in the analysis process, as was the enormous Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA), which has coverage responsibility for a supposed key player in the Russian influence story, the GRU. This is why it was, in fact, a big deal when news agencies erroneously reported that “17 agencies” backed the ICA instead of three, as Clapper later conceded in testimony. An assessment of Russian activity based on opinions from all 17 agencies would almost certainly have been as riddled with dissent as the Iraq NIE.

Former Ambassador to Russia Jack Matlock claimed years ago that the INR was kept out because “it did, in fact, have a different opinion” on the central question of Russia’s motives. One source I spoke with for this story said the same thing, while another suggested CIA chief John Brennan barred the INR out of concern about leaks. The structure of the informal ICA, a more “agile” intelligence product that’s come in vogue only recently, allowed Brennan and Director of National Intelligence James Clapper to create a “hand-picked” team of analysts that included the likes of Peter Strzok, the senior FBI counterintelligence official who ran the investigation targeting Trump. Brennan couldn’t secure unanimity even within this group, as Admiral Michael Rogers of the NSA and at least two senior CIA Russia experts refused to sign off on the conclusion that the “influence campaign” was undertaken to help Trump. Even James Comey didn’t endorse this crucial idea until mid-December, 2016. In fact, the FBI leaked statements to the contrary to the New York Times days before the election.

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Featured image: Former CIA directors George Tenet (left), and John Brennan (center), and Gina Haspel (right) at the funeral of George H.W. Bush in 2018

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Over the past four months I have carried out my daily morning scan of the major online news websites increasingly concerned over what I would be seeing given the mainstream media’s reluctance to report honestly and the persistent management by government propaganda mills of what is leaked to the journalists.

News regarding what is taking place with Russia-Ukraine suffered initially as the war turned sharply in Moscow’s favor late last year, so much so that the likely outcome is only being challenged on neocon dominated sites like American Enterprise Institute, Foundation for Defense of Democracies and the National Review. President Joe Biden and team are now only struggling to raise $61 billion for Volodymyr Zelensky to prolong the conflict through the US election later this year so Biden can appear to be a strong “wartime” president fighting hard to defend the United States from the threatening Red Hordes. That the money will essentially drop down the hole of Ukrainian corruption seems to bother no one in the White House, but the game goes on with Biden saying

“This bipartisan bill sends a clear message to Ukrainians and to our partners and to our allies around the world: America can be trusted, America can be relied upon, and America stands up for freedom. We stand strong for our allies. We never bow down to anyone, and certainly not to Vladimir Putin. So, let’s get on with this….Are [we] going to side with terror and tyranny? Are [we] going to stand with Ukraine, or are [we] going to stand with Putin? Will we stand with America or – or with Trump?”

The president is also currently pumping the line that he is somehow saving or protecting “democracy.” The fact that Ukraine, banning political parties and even religious groups and the Russian language, is no democracy does not seem to impact on the narrative. And don’t forget how the Zelensky government recently murdered American journalist Gonzalo Lira for his exercising freedom of the press!

Biden argues that standing by America’s “allies,” even when they are not actual allies, is essential to maintain confidence in the United States and its leadership mission to create a “rules based international order” and thereby save the world. Beyond Ukraine, there is, of course, America’s “best friend” and “greatest ally” Israel which also is no democracy as Palestinian citizens have limited rights, with those living on the Israeli army occupied West Bank having effectively no protection from being arrested arbitrarily or even shot on sight by rampaging soldiers and settlers, who fear no consequences for killing and robbing Arabs because there are no consequences.

The bombing of Gaza into the stone age continues with hardly any coverage in the mainstream media as if it is an atrocity that will disappear from the collective conscience if no one refers to it in spite of the rows of dead women and children. The US and European media meanwhile blithely report every new “Hamas atrocity” promoted by the habitually lying Israeli Army (IDF) as if it were the truth while Biden is pulling out the stops to provide the cash ($14 billion) and weapons to enable the IDF to kill more Palestinians while at the same time mock-mourning the slaughter of the innocents that is taking place. The ghastly death toll is a direct result of Joe’s lack of any action to force the Israelis to change course, which he has the leverage to do with a phone call to Benjamin Netanyahu threatening to cut off the cash, arms and political support. But the administration has made plain that it has no intention to do anything like that.

But even given all of that excitement last week there is one story that stands out, the video of former Secretary of State and CIA Director Mike Pompeo in Israel grinning and dancing with celebrating Israeli soldiers, who presumably have just returned from Gaza after having had the pleasure of blasting a few more score of civilians, including a large percentage of children.

The Israeli Army’s latest stunt is to position snipers and tanks around the last functioning major medical facility in Rafah district in the south of Gaza, the Nasser Hospital in Khan Younis. The Palestinians trying to survive in Gaza were previously ordered by Israel to go to Rafah where they would be “safe” but it was a self-serving lie and the military then proceeded to bomb and shoot civilians, even when they were trying to surrender, and also destroying infrastructure like hospitals and schools to make the area uninhabitable. The army in Gaza’s snipers have now joined in the fun by shooting doctors and patients inside the building and on the grounds to force Nasser Hospital to evacuate and shut down. They followed up on the shooting gallery by storming the hospital, allegedly in search of “hostages.” It is all part of what is developing as Netanyahu has announced that the ground invasion of Rafah will soon begin even though the encaged Palestinians, who are already starving due to the Israeli blockade of humanitarian aid, have nowhere to go and many more thousands will die one way or another.

As a taste of what is to come that is even more bizarre than what has already transpired, Israel’s “most moral army in the world” has now also gone into the entertainment business. It has begun to invite groups of Israeli civilians into detention centers and prisons that have been holding West Bank Palestinian prisoners as well as detainees from the Gaza Strip. The civilians are able to observe the detainees, stripped to their underwear, and laugh and jeer as the men are being beaten, humiliated and tortured, with many of the viewers also allowed to film what is happening on their own cell phones to share with their friends and families. Mike Pompeo, who is a Christian Zionist of dispensationalist persuasion, believes that the former Palestine belongs to the Israelis because it says so in the Bible, which he has carefully “studied.” He also, while Trump’s Secretary of State, declared that the US no longer regards the illegal Israeli settlements on the West Bank as “illegal” and he similarly approved of the Israeli annexation of the Syrian Golan Heights as perfectly acceptable under international law, which it is not. Wonder what Mike as a self-identified pious Christian thinks about all those dead and mutilated Palestinian babies if he ever chooses to think about it at all?

Also in the running for god-awful narrative of the week was a piece claiming that the successful first step by way of a majority vote in the House of Representatives to bring about the richly deserved impeachment of Department of Homeland Security’s ghastly Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas on Thursday was the result of an “antisemitic conspiracy theory” because he is a “Sephardic Jew,” not due to his own incompetence which he has been demonstrating regularly for the past three years. The deep hole of depression that I crawled into as I watched the fat twerp Pompeo cavorting while the midget Mayorkas touted his Jewish credentials drove me to rethink the whole issue of US foreign and national security policy. I came to the conclusion that the players are caricatures and it should not be taken seriously and should instead be regarded as a comedy routine, something like Monty Python but terribly lethal and without the intelligence and wit of John Cleese, Eric Idle, Michael Palin and Graham Chapman.

To be sure the Biden administration can always be counted upon to produce a laugh, particularly when it brings on the clowns named Anthony Blinken, Victoria Nuland, Karine Jean-Pierre and Jake Sullivan. There has been a lot of funny stuff lately, most particularly the chatter about a solution to the Palestinian genocide, even though Biden seems quite comfortable to let the Israelis finish their ethnic cleansing of Gaza before anyone looks for a place willing acquire two million more stateless and homeless Palestinians. Former presidential aspirant and totally owned Zionist stooge Governor Ron DeSantis of Florida has already declared that no Palestinians should be allowed into the US as refugees as they are “antisemites.”

Nevertheless, Biden and Blinken’s State Department want to come up with some kind of formula, if only because the worldwide blowback due to the White House’s unflinching support for Israeli brutality has begun to have consequences as it constitutes complicity in crimes against humanity. Some kind of limited sovereignty, disarmed for sure, allowed to Palestine is envisioned but Netanyahu and his political allies, long opposed to a two-state solution, have recently repeatedly rejected proposals for any Palestinian sovereign entity. Israel is even now using its formidable lobby and international press/narrative control to work assiduously against any diplomatic recognition of a Palestinian state by individual countries or as a full member at the UN. Not surprisingly, the greatest effort to keep things on track is being directed against voices raised in support of Palestine in the United States. Biden is listening to be sure and is having both Blinken and National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan carefully coordinate every step the administration takes with the Israeli Minister for Strategic Affairs and former ambassador to Washington Ron Dermer. Even though Israel and Netanyahu definitely hold the whip hand, the president is nevertheless inevitably looking over his shoulder and is fearful of alienation of voters with the national election coming up if the carnage in Gaza continues. Not for the first time the endless farce of US internal politics will likely at least somewhat influence what eventually takes place in countries six thousand miles away. And given Biden’s propensity to avoid doing the right thing, one can be pretty sure that the result won’t be pretty!

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This article was originally published on The Unz Review.

Philip M. Giraldi, Ph.D., is Executive Director of the Council for the National Interest, a 501(c)3 tax deductible educational foundation (Federal ID Number #52-1739023) that seeks a more interests-based U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East. Website is councilforthenationalinterest.org, address is P.O. Box 2157, Purcellville VA 20134 and its email is [email protected].

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

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A number of Freedom Convoy protesters who had their bank accounts frozen by the Trudeau Government’s invocation of Emergencies Act have sued the Prime Minister and Finance Minister, Chrystia Freeland.

The development comes just weeks after a Federal Court judge ruled that Trudeau’s decision to invoke the Emergencies Act, which gave the government unprecedented power, was a violation of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms.

Two lawsuits were announced on Wednesday, the first of which was announced by lawyer Keith Wilson.  

“BREAKING: On the 2-year anniversary of the Federal Government illegally invoking war measures against its citizens and targeting key protestors in Ottawa by freezing their bank accounts, today Tamara Lich, Chris Barber, Tom Marazzo, Danny Bulford and other protestors who were targeted by @JustinTrudeau and @cafreeland have filed lawsuits against the Federal Government,” he stated on X.

“Sec. 24 of our Charter of Rights and Freedoms gives Canadians the right to sue their government for damages when Charter rights are violated.”

Wilson further stated that the lawsuits seeks $2 million in damages for each plaintiff.

Hours later on Wednesday’s Valentine’s Day — the two year anniversary that Trudeau invoked the Emergencies Act — a second class-action lawsuit consisting of twenty plaintiffs was announced, this time by Loberg Ector LLP, a law firm based out of Calgary, Alberta.

Loberg Ector’s Facebook account stated that

“The Plaintiffs in this action seek compensation and related relief arising from the unjustified and unconstitutional actions of the Liberal government, as well as the actions of certain police agencies and Canadian financial institutions who followed the unlawful orders of the Liberal government, and other defendants who participated in or promoted these actions.”

Happy Emergencies Act Day! I hope you all look back and fondly remember how your government shot you with rubber bullets and tear gas for your own good!

— Tamara Lich (@LichTamara) February 14, 2024

Tamara Lich, one of the main organizers of the 2022 Ottawa protest, celebrated the day by wishing social media users a “Happy Emergencies Act Day!”

“I hope you all look back and fondly remember how your government shot you with rubber bullets and tear gas for your own good!”

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

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Hospitals are prime strategic targets of Israel’s military campaign in Gaza. The Nasser hospital in Rafah is the only major one still standing, along with a handful of smaller ones. All the rest have been destroyed, along with many of the patients and medical staff. Many have been slaughtered, while the helpless have been left to die, like the premature babies in their incubators, simply abandoned to the inevitable.

Doctors and other personnel have been taken captive for an unknown length of time. Even the Nasser hospital is no longer functioning, having been taken over by Israeli soldiers, and all its patients and medical staff expelled. Its existence as a structure is a mere technicality. It is no longer a hospital, and it wouldn’t be the first to be exploded into yet another pile of rubble. 

These attacks are not random, nor are the ones against bakeries, schools, and infrastructure, including water, sewage and electricity. Although more than half of all the buildings in Gaza are now rubble or unusable, the ratio for hospitals is much higher. Why? 

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu claims that his objective is to destroy Hamas, but he is in fact destroying everything but Hamas.

He knows perfectly well that Hamas is not using the hospitals, nor any of the other places laid waste by the Israeli military, armed with inexhaustible US munitions. To the extent that he even bothers to use Hamas as an excuse, few believe him anymore.

If he wants to find Hamas, he knows where they are: deep underground, in hundreds of miles of their armored and fortified hi-tech tunnels.

The 10,000 tons of bombs dropped on Gaza thus far have not even been aimed at Hamas or the tunnels. Israel is casualty averse, and they know that fighting Hamas leads to casualties that will hurt Netanyahu’s popularity, already in the cellar. This is why their target has been the entire population of Gaza. Massive killing of Palestinian civilians, more than 2/3 of them women and children, make it look like he is accomplishing something.

This helps to explain the hospitals. If there is no place to treat the wounded and the sick, more Palestinians die. If your real target is the entire Palestinian population, this is an effective way to do it.

Destroying hospitals has a multiplier effect upon the death toll. Furthermore, it is mainly the hospitals that compile the statistics of Palestinian dead and wounded for the Gaza Ministry of Health. If there are no hospitals, more people will die anonymously, reducing the evidence of genocide. 

The multiplier effect of hospitals on the death toll also works for water, sewage, shelter, fuel, and of course food. The removal of such facilities and provisions causes deaths that tend not to be included as war dead. If Netanyahu’s objective is to decrease – or entirely eliminate – the inhabitants of Gaza, these are much more effective ways to do it. Granted, Zyklon-B might be even more effective, but there are limits to what even Netanyahu might be willing to use.

This is not speculation. Netanyahu and most of his government have publicly declared their intentions. Quotes and videos of their genocidal purpose have been used by South Africa’s attorneys to win an injunction from the International Court of Justice.  Netanyahu is running out of options. Hamas presented its ceasefire/peace proposal, which (as predicted) is unacceptable to Israel, because it fails to advance Israel’s plans for either territorial expansion or ethnic cleansing, or both. 

Israel is losing the combat war in Gaza, thanks to the brilliant Hamas strategy of 1) making itself impervious to air bombardment, 2) an ability to manufacture its own weapons locally, designed specifically for Israeli systems, and 3) impeccable training of fighters capable of acting in small units, with intimate knowledge of both their enemy and Israeli weapons systems, as well as their own. Israel is not prepared to take significant casualties among its own population, and apparently its 5000-6000 mercenaries are not prepared to go on suicide missions.

That leads, once again, to genocide as the only strategy. That’s why Netanyahu is planning to up his game by destroying Rafah city, the tiny pen into which he has herded most of the population, swelling its numbers some 400%, most of them in tents or under tarpaulins providing flimsy protection from the rain and cold.

An Israeli attack will probably yield a lot more casualties per day than heretofore, to which Netanyahu can point with pride among his dwindling followers.

But the US can’t appear to condone such actions, so its humanitarian-minded president has asked his Israeli counterpart to provide an evacuation plan for the civilians. Netanyahu has agreed, and when asked where they can go, he points to newly bombed out expanses in what used to be the neighboring city of Khan Younis. Now his friend, Genocide Joe, can rest easy. ICJ? No problem. Israel still has time to submit its progress report to the Court on ending its “plausibly genocidal” actions.

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Paul Larudee is a retired academic and current administrator of a nonprofit human rights and humanitarian aid organization. He is a regular contributor to Global Research.

Featured image: Dr Suleiman Qaoud surveys the damage at the Rantisi Specialist Hospital, part of the Nasser Medical Complex in Gaza City, following Israeli missile attacks on November 6, 2023 [Abdelhakim Abu Riash/Al Jazeera]

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

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In a compelling piece of live television, British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak was recently confronted by a COVID-19 vaccine injury victim during an unscripted question and answer session. Describing the pain and trauma he suffered, audience member John Watt told the Prime Minister how he had been left with no help at all after the vaccine caused him to develop a heart condition. Already under pressure over his links to a hedge fund that has seen massive returns from an investment in COVID-19 vaccine maker Moderna, Sunak was like a rabbit caught in the headlights.

Broadcast on the GB News channel during what had been billed as a ‘People’s Forum’, the incident occurred while Sunak was being posed a mostly innocuous series of questions by members of a studio audience. But the atmosphere quickly changed when Watt stood up and demanded that the Prime Minister look him in the eyes. Stating that he knows people who have had limbs amputated as a result of COVID-19 vaccines, Watt asked why he had had to set up a support group to look after those affected.

Visibly furious, Watt also asked Sunak why tens of thousands of British COVID-19 vaccine victims had been left to rot. Telling the Prime Minister that the country’s so-called ‘Vaccine Damage Payment Scheme’ was not fit for purpose, he said that in Scotland alone more than 30 thousand people have had adverse reactions to the shots. Tellingly, Watt’s contribution was given an enthusiastic round of applause by the assembled audience.

Predictably, Sunak’s response largely avoided Watt’s concerns. Despite claiming that he was very sorry to hear about Watt’s circumstances, it was quickly clear that straight answers to his questions would not be forthcoming. As Sunak’s evasiveness became apparent, Watt interrupted saying that he and other victims had been silenced on social media. “We are the most silenced people in this country,” he said.

The event then briefly descended into chaos with another vaccine-injured audience member speaking up and the television program’s presenter desperately trying to regain control over the situation. Despite being told that the Prime Minister would look at his concerns, Watts will have heard little to reassure him.

Sunak’s Alleged Links to Moderna

The reasons behind Sunak’s failure to address this issue properly are not simply down to politics, as he has recently been facing scrutiny over his connections to a hedge fund, Theleme Partners, which has seen substantial gains from an investment in COVID-19 vaccine maker Moderna. A co-founder of Theleme Partners before entering politics in 2013, Sunak says his involvement with the fund is managed through a blind trust, meaning he supposedly has no knowledge or control over its investments. Nevertheless, questions persist regarding whether he personally benefited from the dramatic rise in Moderna’s share price during the pandemic.

Despite repeated criticism, however, Sunak maintains he is unaware of any financial gains. But with publicly available evidence indicating that the Theleme Partners investment in Moderna is worth hundreds of millions of dollars, concerns over potential conflicts of interest have continued.

Only rarely are senior politicians confronted by the victims of COVID-19 vaccines. The fact that this latest incident occurred on live television makes it all the more remarkable. Realizing that the handling of the pandemic is coming under increased worldwide scrutiny, Prime Minister Sunak may be less keen on taking live unscripted questions in future.

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This article was originally published on Dr. Rath Health Foundation.

Executive Director of the Dr. Rath Health Foundation and one of the coauthors of our explosive book, “The Nazi Roots of the ‘Brussels EU’”, Paul is also our expert on the Codex Alimentarius Commission and has had eye-witness experience, as an official observer delegate, at its meetings. You can find Paul on Twitter at @paulanthtaylor

He is a regular contributor to Global Research.

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

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War has always been a source of immense human distress. What is more important to point out is that its capacity to cause distress and destruction has been increasing in very dangerous ways.

The World Report on Violence and Health, published by the WHO, has provided the following information on deaths caused by war and conflict during the last five centuries—

• 16^th century—1.6 million
• 17^th century—6.1 million
• 18^th century—7.0 million
• 19^th century—19.4 million
• 20^th century—109.7 million

Of course population has also been increasing but the almost six-fold increase from the 19^th to the 20^th century is deeply disturbing. This figure indicates that over a million perished per year on average during the 20^th century in wars and conflicts. What is more, this figure may not include all of the mortality caused by many indirect impacts of wars and conflicts. 

As the Brown University’s estimates for the ‘War on Terror’ of the 21^st century have made clear, if indirect impacts of war are included then mortality can be many times more than the deaths caused directly by war and conflict.

These estimates have stated that the ‘war on terror’ claimed about 0.9 million lives directly, but if indirectly caused mortality is included then this figure rises much more menacingly to 4.5 million. In other words, in this context, indirectly caused deaths are about four times the directly caused deaths. This figure does not include all the countries ravaged by the war on terror, and needs updating too.

This is a reminder that the enormous death toll of the 20^th century is being maintained in the 21^st century, more or less, if we add up the mortality of all the dozens of wars and conflicts of the world during the first 23 years of the 21^st century.

What is more disturbing is that talk of the possibility of the third world war and a nuclear war has been heard more during the last two years than in the several decades preceding this, largely due to the possibility of a direct conflict between the USA/NATO and Russia, taking off from the ongoing proxy war in Ukraine, and to a lesser extent the possibility of a direct war between the USA and China. An even broader war with NATO, a few Asian allies and possibly Australia on one side and the ‘axis’ of Russia, China, Iran and North Korea on the other side has also been discussed as a more distant possibility which, however, cannot be entirely ruled out, even though it would surely be a complete disaster.

Einstein, when asked about what a third world war would look like responded that he does not know how the third war would be fought, but the fourth one would be fought with stones. He was referring of course to the reality of wars becoming so destructive that the third world war would in fact ruin the world almost entirely.

Wars have become even more destructive since Einstein spoke these words, and their destructiveness appears destined to increase further, as more and more resources and human ingenuity are being diverted to increase destructive capabilities instead of constructive ones, even though millions and millions remain deprived of even basic needs and the requirements of ecological repair and rehabilitation are perhaps the most urgent.

Hence while the 20^th century witnessed a six fold increase in war and conflict related mortality compared to the 19^th century , the 21^st century may witness something unique and unprecedented in the already highly destructive history of war and conflict—it may witness wars with the capacity of wiping out, in terms of direct and indirect impacts, most of the life on earth and almost the entire human life, apart from disrupting very badly the basic life-enabling and life-nurturing conditions of the planet.

This would be the inevitable result if only 10 per cent of the existing stockpile of nuclear weapons are used. However even more destructive weapons of mass destruction are being developed, and due to a relentless quest for dominance that appears to be blind to all its grave dangers, the biggest military and economic powers are more frequently seen to be on the verge of direct confrontation and war.

Hence this writer has been arguing consistently for quite some time that the present time is not just for incremental reform (although even that would be welcome) but instead for bravely and steadily moving towards a no-war future. In such a future scenario, no soldier or officer or armed forces (army, air force or navy) would suffer any loss of job or income but would merely be diverted, with some training, towards jobs relating to ecological rehabilitation of land and oceans, to preventing and reducing disasters and to various kinds of rescue ad life-saving efforts.

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

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

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Thousands of Israelis gathered in Jerusalem on 28 January for a far-right conference.

It called for the Jewish resettlement of the Gaza Strip and the transfer of the population living there, described dubiously using the euphemism “a legal way to voluntarily emigrate them”.

Featuring as key speakers were prominent extremist government leaders. This included Itamar Ben-Gvir, the national security minister from the Jewish Power Party, and finance minister Bezalel Smotrich from the Religious Zionist Party.

Their scheme, which members of the far-right Israeli government were floating from the earliest days of the Gaza war, constitutes ethnic cleansing.

Any Palestinians remaining in Gaza would be subjected to the extension into the territory of the state-sanctioned apartheid prevailing in pre-1967 Israel, post-1967 West Bank and the Golan Heights.

This genocidal plan was hailed by Likud’s tourism minister Haim Katz as an “opportunity to rebuild and expand the land of Israel”.

‘Antisemitic Bias’

This signified a comprehensive rejection of the 26 January decision of the UN’s International Court of Justice (ICJ) that “Israel must take action to prevent genocidal violence by its armed forces” and “prevent and punish” the incitement to genocide.

It was also an endorsement of the flood of accusations of antisemitic treatment of Israel that the ICJ decision provoked. First out of the blocks were Israeli government representatives. The court displayed “antisemitic bias”, they declared.

Leaders of the J7, the large US Jewish Communities’ Task Force Against Antisemitism, concurred. The ICJ has been “captured by antisemitic propaganda”, wrote Jewish Chronicle editor Jake Wallis Simons in the Telegraph.

Such a deployment of weaponised antisemitism to deflect criticism of Israel’s responses to the Hamas 7/10 attacks on Jewish settlements and Israeli army units beyond the security fence on the eastern side of the Gaza strip was evident even as news of the atrocities was still emerging.

And reaction to the ICJ decision came as no surprise. After all, this is a gift that keeps on giving—using past experience of anti-Jewish persecution to neutralise criticism of, and generate sympathy for, the Jewish state—and is decades old.

Propaganda Offensive

As I have analysed in my book Whatever Happened to Antisemitism? this ploy is remarkably adaptable to practically any Israeli violation of the human rights of Palestinians.

It was deployed from the first day to describe Hamas’s motives, and continuously since then to undermine and deflect demands for an immediate ceasefire.

Within hours, in what had all the hallmarks of a coordinated propaganda offensive, Israeli government officials and politicians were calling the attacks “pogroms” and characterising the events as the “deadliest day for Jews since the Holocaust”.

And these descriptions continue to frame public discourse and understanding of the 7/10 events.

Pogrom is a Russian word referring to violent attacks by local non-Jewish populations on Jews in the Russian Empire and in other countries in the 19th century. They were perpetrated by the powerful oppressor against the weak and vulnerable.

However grotesque, Hamas’s attack was precisely the opposite: “an unprecedented display of anti-colonial violence”, wrote Tareq Baconi in a comment for Al Shabaka, the international Palestinian think tank.

It was an attack on what was always a vulnerable target that symbolised the anti-Palestinian racist regime, the powerful Israeli state, driving subjugation of Gaza’s population.

‘Trick We Always Use’

As for the Holocaust comparison, such apocalyptic language distorts and trivialises the Nazi genocide of Jews.

The late outspoken and respected head of Israel’s then most left-wing party Meretz in the 1990s, Shulamit Aloni, candidly condemned it “as a trick, we always use it. When from Europe somebody is criticizing Israel, then we bring up the Holocaust.”

If we compare the weaponisation of antisemitism then, when it was still in its infancy, with its dimensions today, we find that the role the Holocaust is shamelessly made to play in whitewashing Israeli apartheid and justifying ongoing dispossession and ethnic cleansing of Palestinians has become increasingly significant.

The institution through which this was made possible is the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance and the “working definition” of antisemitism it adopted in 2016, known worldwide simply by the organisation’s acronym: IHRA.

Irrespective of what’s in the definition, who would question something disseminated by a body with ‘Holocaust Remembrance’ in its name? Especially since the definition’s promoters virtually decreed that it was sacreligious to do so.

And yet most of the examples of antisemitism the definition contains serve the purpose of justifying the curtailing of the right of Palestinians to speak publicly about their experiences of ethnic cleansing and ongoing dispossession, and do nothing to protect Jews from real antisemitism.

Protected Behaviour

Even before 7/10, standard antisemitism narratives characterised Palestinians as almost exclusively associated with terrorism.

Today, “Palestinian” and “Hamas terrorist” are often seen as synonymous. Therefore, to suggest Palestinians might be deserving of rights, sovereignty, and solidarity is itself an expression of support for violence against Jews, writes the journalist and academic Natasha Roth-Rowland.

Preventing this and fighting it when it happens “essentially posits Israeli state violence—ethnic cleansing, mass incarceration, extrajudicial killing, land theft—as a form of protected behaviour because it is being carried out by Jews”.

As some plausibly argue, one manifestation of the redefinition of antisemitism as anti-Zionism is that antisemitism is no longer about “who hates Jews”, but “who Jews hate”.

Anti-Zionism

The continued success of weaponisation relies on a distorted and instrumentalised view of Jewish history: the notion that, on the one hand, antisemitism is eternal and unchanging, and yet on the other, anti-Zionism is the ‘new antisemitism’.

Either way, the politicised anti-antisemitism organisations constantly encourage people to believe that antisemitic annihilation is just around the corner.

The first, eternalist understanding of the Jewish past, described as the lachrymose view, ignores antisemitism’s contingent and historically specific forms.

As for anti-Zionism, nothing could be more Jewish. Jews were the first anti-Zionists, overwhelmingly remained so until the Second World War, and hundreds of thousands remain anti-Zionist to this day.

However, it serves Israel’s interests to continue to cultivate the view that Jews everywhere are equally and eternally vulnerable, even though Zionism was supposed to bring Jew-hatred to an end.

When so many seem to welcome being milked for sympathy because of doubtful claims of ever-rising antisemitism, why not continue to instrumentalise the discourse of Holocaust and pogroms as clear and present dangers?

For Israeli leaders, every military confrontation, every battle with Hamas or Hezbollah is on behalf of the ‘Jewish people’. Never mind that making no distinction between the state of Israel and Jews worldwide is an antisemitic belief according to the IHRA.

Ephraim Mirvis, the British United Synagogue’s chief rabbi, certainly hadn’t read the script when he praised the Israeli soldiers committing genocide in Gaza in the name of eradicating antisemitism, as “our incredible heroic soldiers”.

Could it be any more obvious that weaponised antisemitism is a clear and present danger for Jews not calling for equal rights for all from the river to the sea?

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Antony Lerman is a Senior Fellow at the Bruno Kreisky Forum for International Dialogue, Vienna, and Honorary Fellow at the Parkes Institute for the Study of Jewish/non-Jewish Relations, Southampton University. He is the author of Whatever Happened to Antisemitism? Redefinition and the Myth of the ‘Collective Jew’ (Pluto Press 2022) and The Making and Unmaking of a Zionist: A Personal and Political Journey (Pluto Press 2012).

Featured image: Israel’s prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu. (Photo: Valeriano Di Domenico / WEF)

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

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Dear President Biden:

Do you not have a conscience when it comes to the genocide in Gaza?

I have read countless anecdotes of your genuine empathy for human suffering during your decades of public service. Does the slaughter of more than 28,000 Palestinians in Gaza—primarily children and women—not stir your conscience? More than 50,000 injured, hundreds of thousands without access to medical care, thousands buried under the rubble, millions of displaced and starving Palestinians cowering from the terror unleashed by the IDF and its patron the United States of America. Does it not awaken a glimmer of mercy or compassion in your hardened soul? Does it not create even a minute breach in your “unwavering” support of Israel?

Do you not have a moral compass when it comes to the genocide in Gaza?

I recently read a profile that described how your father educated you and your siblings about the Holocaust over the dinner table:

“My dad taught us about the horror of the Shoah,” Biden explainedlast month at a Hanukkah celebration, repeating a well-worn tale. “It awakened in me and my brothers and sisters and our children a sense… that this can happen again.”

Sadly, Mr. President, “It”—another holocaust of Palestinians—is not only happening before our very eyes, you, Sir, are one of the two key perpetrators of this genocide. As U.S. citizens and taxpayers, we also share the guilt of being complicit in this atrocity. But for your unwavering military, diplomatic, monetary, and moral support to Israel, the genocide would cease immediately. Mr. President, the culpability lies squarely on your shoulders and those of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu who was emboldened by your unquestioning “embrace” of the horrors visited upon the Palestinians. You have failed to call for a permanent cease-fire.

Do you not have any personal sense of dignity or for the office of President of the United States?

Netanyahu publicly and defiantly disparages your suggested solutions and efforts to put an end to the genocide in Gaza. A human with any sense of self respect and dignity would interpret that as a grave insult, especially given the decades of your personal friendship and support demonstrated for the State of Israel. Despite Netanyahu spitting in your face, you publicly refuse to condemn the virulent hate and violence perpetrated by the politicians and military of the State of Israel. Personal dignity aside, Israel’s actions are demeaning to the office of the President of the United States. The United States ensures the very existence of Israel in the region with billions if not trillions in taxpayer-funded military and other aid since its founding in 1948. When pro-Palestine protesters use the chant “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free,” it is deemed genocidal by Zionists. However, when Netanyahu states that “the state of Israel has to control the entire area from the river to the sea” in direct contravention of your proposed two-state solution, why do you not take umbrage at this willful flouting of your guidance as POTUS?

Have you lost your political acumen, or do you genuinely not care to be reelected?

I am a lifelong Democrat. Yet, I actively support the #AbandonBiden movement in the 2024 presidential election and will continue to support it and not cast my vote for you in November 2024 unless you call for a cease-fire now! As one of the longest-serving politicians in public service, how have you lost sight of the political peril that awaits you in November? Polling suggests that a majority of Americans, especially Democrats, support a cease-fire now. I am just a layperson. I am certain your staffers in the executive branch and your reelection campaign have apprised you of the risks associated with not standing on the right side of history. Billions across the globe now get information about this unfolding genocide directly on their digital devices. The days of rationing government-controlled messaging through mainstream media to the public about major world events is over.

You have become as reviled a figure as Netanyahu in the eyes of billions across the globe for butchering innocent Palestinian civilians. I urge you to reset your moral and political bearings and use the leverage of being POTUS and a staunch supporter of Israel to negotiate a permanent cease-fire in Gaza. I joined the hundreds of thousands of protesters in Washington D.C. on Nov 4 demanding a cease-fire now. I marched with them to the gates of the White House to convey our horror and opposition to this unfolding genocide. Sadly, the killing of innocent civilians has continued over three more months. History repeats itself incessantly. It would be tragic if your commendable political legacy is marred by your inability to bring about an immediate cessation of the suffering of innocent Palestinians and the war in Gaza. Let Gaza not be akin to LBJ’s Vietnam.

I trust your inherent goodness and compassion will prevail. I trust the conviction and courage you have so ably demonstrated in championing for the public good will compel you to take affirmative and immediate action to stop the genocide in Gaza. One does not have to share a faith to have empathy for the dying and the suffering Palestinians. Our shared humanity must make us champions for Peace.

[From Common Dreams: Our work is licensed under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0). Feel free to republish and share widely.]

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Kalindi Bhatt is a CPA by training with a long career in accounting and finance. She cares deeply about human rights, the environment, and social justice. Bhatt hold a JD and LLM in Environmental Law from the Pace University Elisabeth Haub School of Law and is an advocate and volunteer for progressive policy and peace.

Featured image: People sheltering at the Saint Porphyrius Orthodox church which was hit by an Israeli airstrike on Thursday, killing 18 including several children [Abdelhakim Abu Riash/Al Jazeera]

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

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Introduction

The Washington foreign policy establishment is on the precipice of making yet another strategic blunder.

The Senate is poised to ram through the Rebuilding Economic Prosperity and Opportunity (REPO) for Ukrainians Act. This legislation will provide the president the authority to confiscate Russia’s frozen sovereign assets in the United States and transfer them to Ukraine for its reconstruction.

Confiscating Russia’s sovereign assets is an act of economic war. Seizing and transferring these assets to Ukraine may make Washington feel virtuous, but it will not bring peace. Passage of this bill will only reinforce the view of hardliners in Moscow that Russia’s war lies not just with Ukraine, but really with the United States and the West. Any hope that the United States and Russia could work toward stabilizing or improving relations will subsequently be destroyed.

There is no justification for Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, but enacting this bill will make peace less likely. Ukrainians have courageously defended their country for nearly two years, but even Ukraine’s former top military commander General Valery Zaluzhny admits the war is now a stalemate.

Russia’s frozen assets could be used as a bargaining chip during negotiations, but once Congress provides the president the authority to seize Russian assets, there will be immense political pressure on him to carry out the policy to avoid looking weak. President Biden was recently pilloried by the media and members of my party for returning frozen Iranian assets in exchange for five American hostages. He is unlikely to make that decision again.

Confiscation will only convince Moscow that there is no negotiated settlement to be had with Ukraine. The result will be a destroyed Ukraine. More Ukrainian soldiers and civilians will die, and more cities and towns will be turned to rubble.

History is replete with examples of economic warfare turning into violent hostilities. Many historians believe the U.S. embargo of 1807, which was intended to punish France and England for their aggressions at sea, led to the War of 1812. Likewise, FDR’s decision to freeze Japan’s sovereign assets and implement an embargo on oil and gasoline exports led to Tokyo’s decision to attack Pearl Harbor.

The past teaches us the folly of embracing every proposed act of revenge. U.S. senators are duty-bound to ask whether our actions will ensure American security and prosperity. In regard to the REPO Act, the Russians already answered that question for us. Moscow says they will retaliate in kind against the United States and our allies, with some estimates claiming upward of $288 billion in Western assets that Moscow could confiscate.

Nicholas Mulder, an assistant professor of history at Cornell University, highlights the danger of the “destabilizing precedent that western countries would set by seizing assets to end a war they are not openly involved in.” Professor Mulder states that such an action “would broaden the coercive actions that states could take for disputes to which they are not a direct party.”

Confiscating Russia’s assets will also certainly convince other countries, including China, that the United States can no longer be trusted as the guarantor of the global economy. They will seek to move away from the dollar and hold their reserves in other currencies. This process of de-dollarization will be an unmitigated disaster as it will degrade America’s financial strength and ensure the prosperity Americans have come to expect is no longer attainable.

In addition, this bill will hand the Russians another tool to fuel resentment against the United States. American leaders speak of a “rules-based international order” but the theory that the United States can confiscate the assets of another country we are not at war with is legally dubious.

Professor Mulder argues that “economic reprisals are the prerogative of injured states, not of third parties.” Rather than compel respect for international law, our actions will demonstrate to our adversaries that we are flouting it. This bill will be used by the Kremlin to show the world that while Washington demands that others follow the rules, we are happy to break them whenever we see fit.

In a multipolar world, Washington can no longer expect to act with impunity, particularly when dealing with a nuclear power. We understood the serious dangers our country faced during the Cold War. But three decades of repeated foreign policy disasters proves that Washington’s foreign policy establishment is badly broken.

A good way to start on the road to fixing that broken foreign policy is rejecting this disastrous bill.

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Sen. Rand Paul is the junior Senator from Kentucky, and a Republican. He is a member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.

Featured image is from RS

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