Due to the sealed borders and the minuscule passage of food, water medicine and fuel through the single Rafah crossing from Egypt, many Palestinians are already down to a single meal a day. 

 

 

.

 

Arábia Saudita, Catar, Egito, Turquia e Irã são potências regionais e, portanto, lideranças na região do Oriente Médio e entre os países de maioria islâmica. Contudo, a maioria desses países tem sido complacente com a humilhação imposta por Israel ao povo árabe e muçulmano nas últimas décadas, e o atual genocídio em Gaza é o episódio mais explícito dessa longa agonia.

De fato, a postura do conjunto das lideranças do Oriente Médio nestes últimos dois meses causa vergonha e indignação aos que guerrearam em 1948, 1967 e 1973 contra os ocupantes da Palestina. Apenas se observa o martírio de milhares de crianças, mulheres, idosos e homens sob os foguetes e bombas de Tel Aviv.

O Catar atua basicamente nos bastidores da diplomacia. A Arábia Saudita nada faz senão pedir, envergonhada, para Israel pegar leve. O Egito chegou ao cúmulo de fechar, em conluio com o regime israelense, o passo fronteiriço de Rafah. Síria e Líbano não respondem aos ataques diários a seus territórios. Jordânia e Tunísia limitam-se a oferecer caridade aos refugiados palestinos. Azerbaijão e Cazaquistão fornecem 60% do petróleo importado por Israel. A Turquia comporta-se como um cão que late, late e não morde, fazendo pura encenação demagógica. O Irã é o único que cumpre um papel minimamente decente, patrocinando a resistência palestina sem, no entanto, envolver-se diretamente.

Coube a um movimento guerrilheiro composto por indivíduos flagelados romper com a inércia dos dirigentes islâmicos. Os houthis iniciaram ataques contra navios israelenses e americanos que navegam pelo Mar Vermelho, anunciando represálias ao massacre de seus irmãos palestinos. Na prática, entraram na guerra. Trata-se de uma atitude extremamente corajosa e digna do mais profundo respeito e admiração, uma vez que estão comprando uma briga (que já tinham, mas que assim se torna muito maior) com o poderoso hegemon imperialista.

O movimento Ansarallah, dos rebeldes houthis, controla somente uma parte do miserável e minúsculo Iêmen, devastado por uma década de bombardeios sauditas patrocinados pelos Estados Unidos. Detém menos recursos que o Hamas, a Jihad Islâmica, o Hezbollah e o Talibã – e, logicamente, que qualquer governo nacional. Porém, ao contrário da maioria dos regimes árabes e muçulmanos, petrificados diante do suplício palestino, os houthis têm o respaldo de seu povo. Ou seja, têm um moral incomparável. E seu posicionamento lhes têm garantido uma admiração cada vez mais elevada não só dos iemenitas, mas dos povos árabes e muçulmanos de todo o mundo. Todos estão vendo que os houthis não são demagogos: suas declarações são seguidas de ações concretas e suas confiscações de navios e ataques, mesmo que interceptados pelos israelenses, ainda que não causem grandes danos ao inimigo, valem mais para a opinião pública do que qualquer coisa que os outros países fizeram até agora.

Os monarcas e burocratas do Oriente Médio desmoralizam-se a cada dia, à medida que o genocídio em Gaza se aprofunda e é exposto ao mundo inteiro. Embora tenham maior responsabilidade em acabar com os crimes de Israel do que quaisquer outros, ficam para trás até mesmo de nações irrelevantes no cenário internacional, como Belize, que rompeu relações com Tel Aviv devido a suas barbaridades.

Diariamente amplas manifestações ocorrem nas ruas das principais capitais do Oriente Médio em repúdio ao genocídio e em apoio aos palestinos. Certamente a indignação popular e o sentimento de que estão sendo humilhados por Israel exerce uma pressão crescente sobre os regimes da região, submissos ao domínio imperialista. Quanto menos se movem e mais se arrasta o suplício em Gaza, mais esses regimes serão vistos como traidores da causa palestina e de todos os povos árabes e islâmicos.

Situação semelhante já aconteceu 40 anos atrás, a partir da traição de Anwar Sadat do Egito, da vassalagem do xá Reza Pahlevi e da falta de independência dos burocratas nacionalistas no Afeganistão. O Hamas nasceu da capitulação vergonhosa da OLP diante do sionismo, e neste exato momento é o maior símbolo da resistência ao domínio imperialista na região.

Em um cenário como o atual, a tendência é o desenvolvimento da simpatia para com a resistência armada, livre das amarras com seus opressores que significa a detenção do poder oficial. Isso significaria não apenas uma agudização e radicalização da luta contra os ocupantes sionistas e senhores ocidentais, como também a desestabilização dos próprios regimes vassalos de Washington, pois apenas a superação de sua política conciliadora poderia levar à expulsão dos inimigos dos povos árabes e muçulmanos. Uma nova época de revoluções anti-imperialistas está sendo aberta, e elas poderiam varrer do mapa não apenas as forças ocupantes, mas também seus funcionários locais. O que ocorreu no Afeganistão em 2021 é um prelúdio e a ação do Hamas em 7 de outubro um desdobramento disso. Os exaltados estão sendo humilhados, e aqueles que sempre foram humilhados caminham em direção à exaltação.

Eduardo Vasco

 

Imagem : Pessoas agitam bandeiras palestinianas em Sanaa, a capital do Iémen controlada pelos Houthi. (Mohammed Huwais/AFP)

Eduardo Vasco : Jornalista e analista de política internacional, correspondente de guerra e autor dos livros O povo esquecido: genocídio e resistência no Donbass e Bloqueio: a guerra silenciosa contra Cuba.

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Featured image: A destroyed Vindicator at Ewa field, the victim of one of the smaller attacks on the approach to Pearl Harbor (Source: Wikimedia Commons). First published on December 4, 2017

December 7, 1941. Eighty-two years ago. incisive geopolitical analysis by  the late Professor Graeme McQueen. His Legacy will Live.

On December 7, 1941 the U.S. naval base in Pearl Harbor, Hawaii was attacked by Japanese forces. President Roosevelt, in his well known Infamy speech delivered on December 8, claimed the attack was “unprovoked” and, on this basis, asked for and received a declaration of war from the U.S. Congress. 

But the evidence suggests the attack was not unprovoked. On the contrary, it was carefully and systematically provoked in order to manipulate the U.S. population into joining WWII. 

This provocation game, spectacularly successful in 1941, is currently being played with North Korea.  The stakes are high.

Many good people are reluctant to look critically at the U.S. role in the Pearl Harbor attacks because they consider FDR a progressive president and because they are appalled at the thought of what might have happened if the U.S. had not joined the war. But they should not allow these considerations to prevent them from examining the Pearl Harbor operation. To give up such examination is to give up the understanding of a key method of manipulating populations.

***

By the late 1930s it was clear to much of the world that war was imminent. British planners worked hard to figure out how Britain could emerge on the winning side of the encounter. 

British propaganda expert Sidney Rogerson’s 1938 book, Propaganda in the Next War gives us an important glimpse of British thinking on the eve of war. Rogerson notes that “Japan’s distinction is that she is unpopular,” (p. 142) and he comments that U.S. citizens “are more susceptible than most peoples to mass suggestion–they have been brought up on it.” (p. 146). He is thus able to pose the challenge to the British propaganda community in this way: 

“Though we [Britain] are not unfavourably placed, we shall require to do much propaganda to keep the United States benevolently neutral. To persuade her to take our part will be much more difficult, so difficult as to be unlikely to succeed. It will need a definite threat to America, a threat, moreover, which will have to be brought home by propaganda to every citizen, before the republic will again take arms in an external quarrel. The position will naturally be considerably eased if Japan were involved and this might and probably would bring America in without further ado. At any rate, it would be a natural and obvious object of our propagandists to achieve this, just as during the Great War they succeeded in embroiling the United States with Germany.” (p. 148) 

Reading Rogerson prepares us for the discovery that the Pearl Harbor operation was a masterful exercise in deceit. 

FDR and his top advisors agreed with the British that the U.S. needed to get into the war on Britain’s side, and they felt, or claimed to feel, that conflict between the U.S. and Japan was in any case inevitable. Waiting for war with Japan to break out spontaneously was, they felt, a poor idea. But it was also a poor idea to have the U.S. fire the first shot: Japan had to appear as the aggressor. This was the only way to put the U.S. population in the mood for war. The majority of U.S. citizens opposed entering WWII (Stinnett, p. 7) just as they had opposed entering WWI in 1914. Therefore it was decided to goad the Japanese. As U.S. Secretary of War, Henry Stimson, put it shortly before the Pearl Harbor attack: “The question was how we should maneuver them into the position of firing the first shot without allowing too much danger to ourselves.” (Stinnett, p. 178)

Robert Stinnett served in the U.S. Navy in WWII. He spent 17 years researching the Pearl Harbor events before bringing out, in 2000, his book, Day of Deceit: The Truth about FDR and Pearl Harbor. I find his argument, based on solid documentary evidence unearthed through Freedom of Information requests, convincing.  

Stinnett names eight steps of provocation proposed on October 7, 1940 by Lieutenant Commander Arthur McCollum. The list includes instituting a complete embargo on trade with Japan (Stinnett, p. 8). Subsequent to McCollum’s list, it was decided also to institute “the deliberate deployment of American warships within or adjacent to the territorial waters of Japan” (Stinnett, p. 9). 

Stinnett says,

“Throughout 1941, it seems, provoking Japan into an overt act of war was the principal policy that guided FDR’s actions toward Japan” (Stinnett, p. 9).

He further claims that McCollum’s specific suggestions were followed closely (Stinnett, p. 9). 

In 1941 the U.S. leadership put into effect the complete embargo McCollum had proposed. This included cutting off Japan’s supply of oil, a move that would have made Japan’s continued participation in the war, and even its existence as an industrial nation, impossible. As one commentator put it:

“We cut off their money, their fuel and trade. We were just tightening the screws on the Japanese. They could see no way of getting out except going to war” (Stinnett, p. 121). 

The Japanese response was predictable. In their declaration of war against the United States (and Britain), published directly after the Pearl Harbor attack, they said: 

“They have obstructed by every means Our peaceful commerce and finally resorted to a direct severance of economic relations, menacing gravely the existence of Our Empire…This trend of affairs, would, if left unchecked, not only nullify Our Empire’s efforts of many years for the sake of the stabilization of East Asia, but also endanger the very existence of Our nation.” 

By the time Japan decided on its aggressive response U.S. intelligence had cracked the vital Japanese communication codes, both diplomatic and military (Stinnett, xiv and throughout), and was able to track closely Japanese vessels as they began their movements toward Pearl Harbor. The attack was permitted to proceed without obstruction. 

The day after December 7, 1941, after listening to FDR’s Infamy speech, and believing his claim that the attacks had been unprovoked, Congress duly passed a declaration of war against Japan. Because of treaties then in place, the U.S. was at war with all the Axis powers. 

Are we to believe that this provocation game, so useful to U.S. planners those many decades ago, now gathers dust on the shelf? On the contrary, U.S. strategy today requires it, and its proponents are in some cases surprisingly frank about this. For example, in the publication, Which Path to Persia?, authored by strategists at the Saban Centre (housed in the Brookings Institution), we find the following argument: 

(a) Any major, overt military action against Iran by the U.S. will be very unpopular (this was in 2009) internationally and domestically unless it is seen as a response to Iranian aggression.

(b) Waiting for the Iranians to carry out such an act may mean waiting forever, because Iran avoids such actions.

(c) It may, therefore, be necessary to goad Iran into such an action—especially if the aim is an invasion of Iran with regime change as in the Iraq case.

(d) The more violent the Iranian response to U.S. goading, the better. All military options are at that point easy to pursue.

The authors note: 

“it would be far more preferable if the United States could cite an Iranian provocation as justification for the airstrikes before launching them. Clearly, the more outrageous, the more deadly, and the more unprovoked the Iranian action, the better off the United States would be. Of course, it would be very difficult for the United States to goad Iran into such a provocation without the rest of the world recognizing this game, which would then undermine it. (One method that would have some possibility of success would be to ratchet up covert regime change efforts in the hope that Tehran would retaliate overtly, or even semi-overtly, which could then be portrayed as an unprovoked act of Iranian aggression.)” (pp. 84-85) 

Later they return to the theme of covert regime change as deliberate provocation: 

“Indeed, for this same reason, efforts to promote regime change in Iran might be intended by the U.S. government as deliberate provocations to try to goad the Iranians into an excessive response that might then justify an American invasion.” (p. 150)

The dream of these authors is an attack on the U.S. similar to the assaults of 9/11 (p. 66). Their problem is how to bring this about. If they could get an Iranian assault, they feel, U.S. forces could then do whatever they wanted to do to Iran without resistance from either the U.S. domestic population or the international community. 

This, then, is what the “game” looks like among certain U.S. strategic thinkers today. As for citizens of the relevant states–democratic or otherwise–we are outside the game and are supposed to remain in a state of political unconsciousness. If we recognize the game, we undermine it. 

At this moment, it seems to me that the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK, North Korea) is even more vulnerable to the provocation game than Iran. The game, in fact, is already in progress. 

We have seen several means employed to provoke the DPRK. The most blatant are insults and threats. For example, U.S. President Donald Trump and U.S. Secretary of Defense Mattis have threatened to commit the crime of genocide against the DPRK. 

Screengrab from independent.co.uk

Two further actions bring us unsavoury reminders of the provocative acts of the Pearl Harbor operation. 

(a) Military maneuvers in the region 

To antagonize its diminutive opponent (far smaller, in both area and population, than the state of California), the U.S. led a series of extremely provocative military exercises near the DPRK. The exercises included large numbers of weapons systems, some of them nuclear capable–a clear threat of not only aggressive action but nuclear attack. 

(b) Oil embargo 

In addition to escalating general economic sanctions strangling the DPRK economy, the U.S. has tried to cut off the DPRK’s entire supply of oil. The DPRK has no significant oil production of its own and relies on China and Russia for its oil, without which it cannot survive as an industrialized country. Only the noncooperation of China and Russia has forced the U.S. to accept, for the moment, a less draconian move. With UN Security Council resolution 2375, passed on September 11, 2017, the DPRK has lost about 30% of its oil imports. 

The cynicism of the UN Security Council in passing UNSC 2375 is staggering. How can the five permanent members of this body refer to the Nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty (NPT), which they piously do in the text of 2375, as a basis for the harsh treatment of the DPRK?  It is true that this treaty seeks to halt the spread of nuclear weapons to states that do not have them. But it also seeks to get rid of the nuclear weapons already possessed by nuclear states. Written in 1968, the NPT says: 

“Each of the Parties to the Treaty undertakes to pursue negotiations in good faith on effective measures relating to cessation of the nuclear arms race at an early date and to nuclear disarmament, and on a treaty on general and complete disarmament under strict and effective international control.” 

Far from doing this, the permanent members of the Security Council continue to guard their nuclear weapons and to resist attempts to get rid of them.  All five of the nuclear powers who happen to be the permanent members of the UN Security Council have refused to sign the recent Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons. 

As long as the Security Council’s permanent members continue to ignore the NPT’s call for nuclear disarmament, and as long as they likewise refuse other treaties calling on them to get rid of their nuclear weapons, they have no credibility when they insist that other states (the particular ones they designate as “rogue”) remain nuclear weapons-free. If the NPT disallows the spread of nuclear weapons while permitting existing nuclear powers to hold on to their nuclear weapons, it simply becomes a fancy way of maintaining the exclusive Nuclear Club. 

The NPT also states that

“in accordance with the Charter of the United Nations, States must refrain in their international relations from the threat of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of any State, or in any other manner inconsistent with the Purposes of the United Nations.”

Instead, we have the U.S., which authored UNSC 2375, threatening the most serious crimes it is possible to commit, including genocide, against the DPRK. 

To be clear, I do not approve of the acquisition of nuclear weapons by any state under any circumstances. I have spent my adult life opposing nuclearism.  I do not rejoice in the nuclear weapons of the DPRK.  But that government is not going to give up its nuclear program voluntarily as long as it feels under existential threat. What DPRK leaders say publicly–we need a deterrent against U.S. aggression–is the same thing their diplomats have said to me privately. And how can the permanent members of the Security Council reject this argument when every one of them believes in nuclear deterrence? Which one of them can claim to be under more threat than the DPRK? 

The sad fact is that as long as the so-called “great powers” continue to use treaties such as the NPT to get what they want, while denying other states equal rights, nuclear proliferation will be extremely difficult to prevent. 

I have no magical solution to the current crisis, but it seems to me that the Security Council is violating the UN Charter, which it has no authority to do, and is acting to prevent a peaceful outcome. 

If I had a global platform from which to address the world I would say the following. 

(a) To the leaders of the DPRK: 

Please do not play the provocation game. I know you are not insane and therefore I know you will not carry out a Pearl Harbor attack on the U.S. or its allies. But responding, as you have in some instances, with threats and harsh rhetoric is dangerous and cannot possibly benefit you. In fact, such responses make it possible for U.S. leaders to turn any accident or international incident against you. They may even fabricate an incident (create a false flag attack on themselves), in which case every threat you have ever made will be quoted to prove to the world that you are the guilty party. 

(b) To China and Russia: 

I understand why you do not want to risk the survival of  your states and your populations for the protection of the little DPRK, which you no doubt regard as something of a loose cannon. But remember that giving in to U.S. bullying is like giving in to the demands of a violent hostage-taker. No good is likely to come of it in the long run. 

(c) To the United Nations as a whole: 

Only by addressing the genuine and legitimate security concerns of the DPRK will you be likely to achieve a peaceful outcome to the current crisis. If you believe in your own organization, its purpose and Charter, you will not cooperate with the imperial policies of those members who, to the grief of the world, are installed in positions of privilege in the Security Council. 

(d) To the people of the world:

Remember Pearl Harbor. That is, understand the provocation game. Recognize it whenever it is played. Undermine it.

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When Russia was forced to respond to NATO’s crawling aggression by launching its strategic counteroffensive, officially known as the special military operation (SMO), top NATO commanders, such as General Mark Milley (ret), then the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, claimed that Kiev would fall “within 72 hours.” 

No Russian official ever said that Moscow would take over Kiev or the entire Ukraine, the largest country in Europe at the time, in just three days. However, the mainstream propaganda machine (ab)used this baseless claim to the maximum to present Russia’s SMO as some sort of a “failure” because this mythical “goal” that it never actually professed wasn’t accomplished.

Generals in the Kremlin never once had illusions that Kiev, a city of three million in which there were more police officers than soldiers in the entire Russian force that entered Ukraine at the beginning of the SMO, could possibly fall so quickly.

That was simply not the goal. However, the conflict would’ve been over in mere days if the political West, particularly the United States and the United Kingdom, hadn’t torpedoed the successful peace talks that would’ve ended the SMO back in early March. And yet, according to the latest Washington Post report about the failed counteroffensive of the Kiev regime forces, NATO and the Neo-Nazi junta certainly had illusions they could defeat Russia in 24 hours and reach the Azov Sea.

The report stated that the goal for the first 24 hours was to advance 15 km, reaching the village of Rabotino and then Melitopol, severing Russian supply lines. However, as WaPo itself admitted, nothing went as planned. Minefields, muddy terrain, Russian active defense and defense-in-depth all contributed to the humiliating failure of the much-touted counteroffensive. Russian artillery, ATGMs (anti-tank guided missiles), helicopters and drones obliterated column after column that were supposed to defeat them in 24 hours. According to WaPo, by day four, General Valery Zaluzhny, “had seen enough”. Incinerated NATO hardware, including American “Bradleys” and German “Leopards”, littered the battlefield.

Screenshot of WaPo article

The report also admitted that “the numbers of dead and wounded sapped morale“, forcing Zaluzhny to stop. He then rejected American plans of massed, mechanized attack and supporting artillery fire and decided that small groups of about 10 soldiers would advance on foot. WaPo then admits that “months of planning with the US was tossed aside on that fourth day, and the already delayed counteroffensive ground to a near-halt”, further complaining that “rather than making a nine-mile (14-15 km) breakthrough on their first day, the Ukrainians in the nearly six months since June have advanced about 12 miles (19 km) and liberated a handful of villages”, while “Melitopol is still far out of reach”.

This is the second part of two reports about what WaPo called “the futile attempts to breach Russian lines, as well as the widening rift between Ukrainian and US commanders over tactics and strategy”. It’s based on interviews with more than 30 senior Ukrainian and US military officials, as well as over two dozen frontline officers and troops. WaPo listed several “key findings”, claiming that “70% of troops in one of the brigades leading the counteroffensive, and equipped with the newest Western weapons, entered battle with no combat experience”. This claim could be true, but it also seems a lot like a futile attempt to justify the humiliating failures of the extremely overhyped NATO equipment.

Screenshot of WaPo article

The report then goes on to claim that “Ukraine’s setbacks on the battlefield led to rifts with the US” and that “the commander of US forces in Europe couldn’t get in touch with Ukraine’s top commander for weeks in the early part of the campaign amid tension over the American’s second-guessing of battlefield decisions”. Each side “blamed the other for mistakes or miscalculations”. US military officials “concluded that Ukraine had fallen short in basic military tactics, including the use of ground reconnaissance to understand the density of minefields”, while “Ukrainian officials said the Americans didn’t seem to comprehend how attack drones and other technology had transformed the battlefield“.

WaPo admitted that “Ukraine has retaken only about 200 square miles of territory, at a cost of thousands of dead and wounded and billions in Western military aid in 2023 alone”, adding that “nearly six months after the counteroffensive began, the campaign has become a war of incremental gains”, a laughable euphemistic way of saying it failed, something that independent analysts interviewed by InfoBRICS predicted months ago. The report then goes on to explain the training process of the 47th Separate Mechanized Brigade at the Grafenwoehr Training Area in Germany, where US General Mark Milley was advising Ukrainian servicemen on how to effectively breach Russian lines.

Milley kept yammering on the “essence of the counteroffensive’s combined arms strategy, which called for coordinated maneuvers by a massed force of infantry, tanks, armored vehicles, engineers and artillery”. However, he never mentioned that the US and NATO would’ve never dared to launch such operations without absolute air superiority. Precisely the 47th was selected to be a “breach force at the tip of the counteroffensive” and was equipped with NATO weapons. However, WaPo claims that the men conscripted into the brigade had no combat experience, as it was a newly established unit. The Neo-Nazi junta decided that “more experienced brigades would hold off the Russians during the winter”.

In the meantime, fresh recruits would form new brigades, receive NATO training and then be used in the then-upcoming counteroffensive, although WaPo claimed that “even the most battle-hardened brigades were now largely composed of drafted replacements”. The leadership of the 47th was also “strikingly young”, the report claims, stating that its commander was just 28 years old and his deputy was 25. However, their youth had been billed as “an advantage”, because they were supposed to “absorb NATO tactics unaffected by the Soviet way of war that still infused parts of the Ukrainian military”. Needless to say, it was precisely this “absorption of NATO tactics” that led to the disastrous losses during the counteroffensive.

In fact, even NATO commanders were forced to admit that this constantly denigrated “Soviet way of war” is actually superior to anything the political West has been able to devise since the (First) Cold War. WaPo even admitted that “Ukrainian soldiers thought the American trainers didn’t grasp the scale of the conflict against a more powerful enemy”, pointing out that countless drones, fortifications, minefields, etc. were not taken into account. Ukrainian soldiers who brought their own drones were rebuffed, as the training programs were predetermined and didn’t include drones. It should be pointed out that it’s certainly true that the political West is completely unable to fight a remotely capable or well-trained opponent.

For the most part, the belligerent power pole uses what can only be described as the “vulture tactics”, where a relatively powerful opponent is attacked only after it has been completely drained by decades of sanctions, coups, civil wars and other forms of subterfuge and orchestrated instability. The political West made the Kiev regime think that fighting Russia would be equivalent to their own countless invasions of relatively helpless opponents. The overall arrogance of NATO and its Neo-Nazi junta puppets went so far that they pompously announced the counteroffensive as if it was already a done deal, completely eliminating any chances of retaining the element of surprise, a critical aspect of warfare.

“We thought it was going to be a simple two-day task”, WaPo quoted a “Bradley” commander going by the call sign Frenchman.

The report then goes on to admit that Russian soldiers were well-prepared for the counteroffensive and refused to retreat, fighting heavily to maintain their positions, even under intense artillery fire. Then, somewhat astonishingly, an attempt to push for some standard war propaganda backfired in a single statement by a Ukrainian commander regarding fighting at Klescheyevka.

“Klishchiivka is actually a cemetery of equipment and Russian troops,” WaPo quoted the Lyut Brigade’s commander, police Colonel Oleksandr Netrebko, who then added: “Every square meter of liberated land is covered with the blood of our men.”

Obviously, this is pretty self-explanatory. WaPo then admits that repeated failures led to growing frustration among US officials “who became increasingly agitated over the summer that Ukraine was not dedicating enough forces to one of the southern axes, given the American view of its strategic value”. There were also major differences in the thinking of American top brass. WaPo further admits that General Christopher Cavoli, the Head of the US European Command, was a proponent of a much more cautious approach, which contrasted Milley’s “more optimistic, motivational tone”. However, Cavoli allegedly “couldn’t reach Zaluzhny during part of the summer, a critical phase of the counteroffensive”, the report claims.

WaPo cited “three people familiar with the matter”, but admitted that Cavoli declined to comment on the issue, while a “senior Ukrainian official noted that Zaluzhny spoke to Milley, his direct counterpart, throughout the campaign”, which directly contradicts the previous claim that Zaluzhny couldn’t be reached. The report then goes on to point out the growing frustration that Milley expressed directly to Zaluzhny, allegedly asking him: “What are you doing?” On the other hand, the Kiev regime was insistent that the West simply wasn’t giving them the air power and other weapons needed for a combined arms strategy to succeed. Olha Stefanishyna, Deputy Prime Minister for European and Euro-Atlantic integration complained:

“You want us to proceed with the counteroffensive, you want us to show the brilliant advances on the front line. But we do not have the fighter jets, meaning that you want us to throw our soldiers, you know, and accept the very fact that we cannot protect them,” to which she then added (after receiving a negative response): “We heard … ‘We are fine that your soldiers will be dying without support from the sky.'”

This is certainly true. The political West has been (ab)using hundreds of thousands of Ukrainians as cannon fodder against Russia while heavily exploiting their country. In addition, the weapons that were supposed to be “game changers” turned out to be nothing more than a ludicrous myth of the non-existent Western “technological superiority”. Even WaPo, one of the most prominent outlets of the mainstream propaganda machine, was forced to admit this, while the Neo-Nazi junta officials suggested that a lot of weapons that were relevant in 2022 were not delivered and that this hasn’t changed. In the meantime, the battered 47th brigade was transferred to fight in the Avdeyevka area, where the Russians are advancing.

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This article was originally published on InfoBrics.

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

Featured image is from InfoBrics

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

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It should already have been evident from the scale of death and destruction inflicted on Gaza over the past eight weeks that Israel was implementing a policy of ethnic cleansing and genocide against Palestinians in the besieged enclave.

Now Israeli whistleblowers have provided details of how these crimes against humanity are being carried out – and how they are being rationalised internally within Israel’s military and political echelons.

An extraordinary series of testimonies jointly published by the Israel-based publications 972 and Local Call last week established that the huge death toll of Palestinian civilians is, in fact, integral to Israel’s war aims, not an unfortunate side effect.

The known dead so far are estimated at almost 16,000, with a further 6,000 missing, presumably crushed under rubble. Two-thirds of those killed by Israel are women and children.

Two years ago, during an earlier attack on Gaza, Israeli military officials admitted for the first time that a computer was supplying them with potential targets. The intention appears to have been to bypass the restraints imposed by human assessments of likely casualties by outsourcing the killings to a machine.

The whistleblowers confirm that, given new, generous parameters of who and what can be attacked, the artificial intelligence system, called “Gospel”, is generating lists of targets so rapidly the military cannot keep up.

Israel’s inputs are now so broad that they allow the bombing without warning of high-rise apartment blocks, so long as it can be claimed that one person residing there is believed to have a connection to Hamas.

As Hamas not only has a military wing but runs the enclave’s government, the new policy potentially widens the circle of targets to include civil servants, police, health workers, educators, journalists and aid workers.

That helps explain how, according to United Nations figures, some 100,000 homes in Gaza have been levelled or made uninhabitable and at least 1.7 million Palestinians displaced, some three-quarters of the enclave’s population.

Basic Survival

The revelations definitively give the lie to claims by western politicians, such as US President Joe Biden, UK Prime Minister Rishi Sunak and opposition Labour leader Keir Starmer, that Israel is simply defending itself and trying to avoid civilian casualties.

In a report last Friday, the Guardian corroborated Israel’s reliance on the Gospel computing system. The paper quoted a former White House official familiar with the Pentagon’s development of autonomous offensive systems as stating that Israel’s no-holds-barred AI war on Gaza was an “important moment”.

The official added:

“Other states are going to be watching and learning.”

Perhaps the most significant of the disclosures from current and former Israeli officials who have spoken to 972 and Local Call is the fact that Israel is aware its many thousands of air strikes on Gaza’s residential areas are having a minimal impact on the armed wing of Hamas.

This contrasts with public declarations that Israel is seeking to eradicate the group.

Even according to the Israeli military’s own claims, likely based on the new, much broader definition of who counts as a Hamas target, Israel has killed between 1,000 and 3,000 “operatives” – meaning that, even by Israel’s assessment, civilians comprise between 85 and 95 per cent of those dead from its bombing campaigns.

This is not accidental, according to the sources.

Israel is continuing long-standing military policies towards Gaza – principally the so-called Dahiya doctrine, sometimes known as “mowing the lawn” – but has changed the focus to allow for far greater bloodshed among civilians.

The doctrine, which has guided Israel’s repeated attacks on Gaza over the last 15 years, is named after the destruction of an entire neighbourhood of Beirut in Israel’s war on Lebanon in 2006.

The doctrine has two key premises: that laying waste to an enemy area will force the population to concentrate on basic survival rather than resistance; and in the longer term it will encourage ordinary people to rise up against their rulers.

Traditionally, the Dahiya doctrine was chiefly about the destruction of infrastructure. At least officially, given the strictures of international law, Israel claimed it issued advance warnings. That was supposed to give civilians in the targeted area time to evacuate.

According to military officials, this notice period has largely ended, placing civilians directly in Israel’s crosshairs.

‘Not Surgical’

A source explained the effects of the new policy to 972:

“The numbers increased from dozens of civilian deaths [permitted] as collateral damage as part of an attack on a senior [Hamas] official in previous operations, to hundreds of civilian deaths as collateral damage.”

A former military intelligence official said the policy was designed to make most of Gaza’s infrastructure legitimate targets:

“Hamas is everywhere in Gaza; there is no building that does not have something of Hamas in it, so if you want to find a way to turn a high-rise into a target, you will be able to do so.”

According to these sources, given that Hamas’ armed wing is underground in tunnels, Israel has struggled to identify primary targets, such as weapons sites, armed cells and headquarters.

Jabalia refugee camp 

Instead, it has focused on what it calls “power targets” – or more accurately, symbolic targets – such as high-rise buildings and residential towers in urban areas, as well as public buildings such as universities, banks, government offices, hospitals and mosques.

These attacks, say the sources, are seen as a “means that allows damage to civil society”, weakening the ability of the society to organise and function, and families to subsist. According to 972, the former Israeli officials it spoke to “understood, some explicitly and some implicitly, that damage to civilians is the real purpose of these attacks”.

Referring to the high death toll among civilians, another source stated:

“Everything is intentional. We know exactly how much collateral damage there is in every home.”

Five different sources told 972 that Israel had compiled files on tens of thousands of private homes and apartments in Gaza where low-level Hamas members live. The homes, as well as everyone who lives in them, were viewed as a legitimate target as soon as a Hamas-linked person entered the building.

One noted:

“Hamas members who don’t really matter for anything live in homes across Gaza. So they mark the home and bomb the house and kill everyone there.”

Another source observed of this practice that its equivalent would be for Hamas to bomb “all the private residences of our families when [Israeli soldiers] go back to sleep at home on the weekend.”

An official who had overseen previous attacks on Gaza said Israel would claim one floor in a high-rise was serving as the office of a Hamas or Islamic Jihad spokesman to justify levelling the building.

“I understood that the floor is an excuse that allows the army to cause a lot of destruction in Gaza.”

If the truth were known about what Israel was doing, the source added,

“this would itself be seen as terrorism. So they do not say it.”

Another stated that Israel’s aim was to inflict maximum damage rather than hit the part of the building associated with Hamas.

“It was also possible to hit that specific target with more accurate weaponry. The bottom line is that they knocked down a high-rise for the sake of knocking down a high-rise.”

Don’t be fooled. Biden is fully signed up to genocide in Gaza.

My latest article here: https://t.co/cRfBfYf9RX

— Jonathan Cook (@Jonathan_K_Cook) November 15, 2023

Senior Israeli officials have made this goal explicit over the past few weeks. Omer Tishler, the head of the Israeli air force, told military reporters that entire neighbourhoods had been attacked “on a large scale and not in a surgical manner”.

A source said Israel’s long-term aim was “to give the citizens of Gaza the feeling that Hamas is not in control of the situation”.

Holy War

In previous attacks on Gaza, Israel adopted a strategy that inflicted wanton destruction on infrastructure and led to large numbers of Palestinians being killed. But according to the sources quoted by 972 and Local Call, all restraints have been removed, dramatically scaling up the fallout for civilians.

Tishler, the head of the air force, has confirmed that, in many cases before bombing a building, Israel no longer provides a warning strike with a small shell – known as “roof knocking”. The practice, he said, was “relevant to rounds [of fighting] and not to war.”

The risk this poses to civilians has been highlighted by the disclosure that the Israeli military is now using an artificial intelligence system, Habsora or Gospel, to identify targets.

The very name, with its biblical connotation, confirms the dangerous influences of religious fundamentalism now at play in the Israeli military, and the increasing assumption that Israel is engaged in a holy war against the Palestinians.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, traditionally seen as a secular figure, has adopted the language of the extremist settler right in calling Israel’s attack on Gaza a war against “Amalek” – a biblical enemy whose men, women and children the Israelites were commanded by God to exterminate.

Speaking of the military’s new reliance on Gospel, Aviv Kochavi, the former head of the Israeli military, told the Israeli Ynet website earlier this year:

“In the past, we would produce 50 targets in Gaza per year. Now, this machine produces 100 targets a single day, with 50 per cent of them being attacked.”

The goal, he observed, was to address a “problem” in earlier bombing campaigns against Gaza that the Israeli military quickly ran out of Hamas and Islamic Jihad targets its human staff could identify.

A former intelligence officer told 972 that the Targets Administrative Division that runs Gospel had been turned into a “mass assassination factory”. Tens of thousands of people had been listed as “junior Hamas operatives” and were therefore treated as targets. The officer added that the “emphasis is on quantity and not on quality”.

A source who worked in the division added that most of Gospel’s recommendations were being nodded through without meaningful scrutiny:

“We work quickly and there is no time to delve deep into the target. The view is that we are judged according to how many targets we manage to generate.”

Ethnic Cleansing Plan

The significance of these revelations – and what they disclose about Israel’s “war aims” – should not be underestimated.

Previously, the permanent siege on Gaza and Israel’s intermittent rampages based on the Dahiya doctrine were used as tools for managing the enclave.

They served as a constant reminder to Hamas of who is boss. The goal was to keep the group focused on administrative duties rather than armed resistance: repairing the destruction, devising ways to work around the siege, and restoring Hamas’ political legitimacy with a battle-weary wider public.

Now, Israel’s aim appears much more comprehensive – and final. According to a report in last week’s Financial Times, Israel is still in the early stages of a campaign that could last up to a year.

Despite the destruction of vast swaths of northern Gaza, and Israel’s current, intensified rampage in the south, an official familiar with the Israel’s war plans told the paper Israel still had a long way to go.

“This will be a very long war… We’re currently not near halfway to achieving our objectives.”

Most of Gaza’s population is being herded into the Rafah area, pressed up against the short border with Egypt. As has been explained in these pages before, Israel has had a long-term ethnic cleansing plan, seeking to pressure Cairo into rehousing Gaza’s population in Sinai.

The rapid onset of disease and starvation in the enclave from Israel’s intensified siege, denying the population food, water and power, is firmly aimed at forcing Egypt’s hand.

‘Thinning’ the Population

According to Israel Hayom, an Israeli paper with historically close links to Netanyahu’s ruling Likud party, officials in Washington have been presented with a scheme to weaken Egyptian opposition further.

The US would offer aid to other neighbouring states conditioned on their accepting refugees from Gaza, thereby lifting some of the burden from Egypt.

Additionally, the paper’s Hebrew edition refers to a plan drafted at Netanyahu’s request by Ron Dermer, one of his senior ministers, to “thin the population in Gaza to the barest minimum possible” through expulsions. The paper refers to this as a “strategic goal” for Netanyahu.

Netanyahu is reported to believe that, after the world has accepted millions of refugees displaced from Iraq, Syria and Ukraine, why should Gaza be different?

The plan envisions Palestinians leaving Gaza across the border with Egypt or fleeing by boat to Europe and Africa.

Israel’s genocidal destruction of Gaza, making it uninhabitable, is entirely consistent both with its leaders’ stated aims of treating Palestinians as “human animals” and with the whistleblowers’ revelations.

And yet western politicians and media continue maintaining the fiction that Israel’s objectives are limited to “eliminating” Hamas – and that the only legitimate question is whether Israel is acting “proportionately”.

This wholesale failure to see the forest for the trees is not accidental. It is evidence that western elites are wholly complicit in Israel’s expulsion of Palestinians from Gaza.

However strong the proof, even when insiders disclose Israel’s policies of genocide and mass ethnic cleansing, the West is determined to turn a blind eye.

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Está a emergir uma ala radical entre os militantes pró-UE. Numa declaração recente, um proeminente político alemão de alto escalão apelou à Europa para ter armas nucleares para “dissuadir” a Rússia. Além de irresponsáveis, as suas palavras soam verdadeiramente ingênuas e mostram como os “especialistas” europeus não conseguem compreender a realidade do continente, pois insistem em ver a Rússia como um inimigo, em vez de um parceiro estratégico vital.

As palavras foram ditas pelo ex-ministro das relações exteriores da Alemanha, Joschka Fischer. Segundo ele, é necessário que o bloco europeu tenha armas nucleares próprias para evitar que a Rússia realize invasões contra países membros da UE. Numa entrevista ao Die Zeit, afirmou que a Europa deve restaurar a sua capacidade dissuasora face aos acontecimentos na Ucrânia. Além disso, enfatizou também o discurso propagandista de que a UE deve evitar uma vitória russa no conflito atual, acreditando que este desafio é vital para a segurança europeia.

Na verdade, esse tipo de afirmação não é novidade de Fischer. Sempre foi um político extremamente pró-Ocidente, tendo apoiado as medidas militares da OTAN.. Fischer foi o principal diplomata da Alemanha entre 1998 e 2005, quando apoiou, por exemplo, a invasão ilegal da Jugoslávia pela aliança liderada pelos EUA. Mais tarde, em 2011, foi um dos principais apoiantes do envio de tropas alemãs para ajudar as forças americanas no Afeganistão.

Como membro do Green Party, Fischer está alinhado com os setores mais radicais do liberalismo europeu, razão pela qual apoia abertamente o uso da força militar contra países que representem alguma forma de oposição ao projeto político do Ocidente. Atualmente, face aos movimentos militares na Ucrânia, este tipo de mentalidade está a tornar-se ainda mais extremista entre os militantes europeus, o que explica as palavras de Fischer em defesa da nuclearização europeia.

De um ponto de vista realista, porém, a estratégia proposta por Fischer parece ilógica e ingênua. Não haveria problema para a UE ter armas nucleares para garantir a sua própria segurança continental. Se operada de forma defensiva, a tecnologia nuclear é uma ferramenta importante para proteger a população e a soberania, razão pela qual os europeus poderiam tentar adquirir tais armas para se defenderem contra possíveis ameaças estrangeiras.

O problema, porém, é identificar erroneamente tais “ameaças”. Ao falar do “perigo russo”, Fischer mostra que não tem um pensamento geopolítico preciso, uma vez que a Rússia claramente não representa qualquer perigo para a UE. Moscou nunca demonstrou qualquer interesse em implementar medidas que pudessem prejudicar de alguma forma a UE – pelo contrário, é o lado russo que é constantemente ameaçado através de medidas coercivas, sanções ilegais e provocações militares.

No mesmo sentido, as relações amistosas com a Rússia sempre foram vistas por estrategistas europeus sérios como importantes para a estabilidade do bloco. Não é por acaso que a chamada “Ostpolitik” foi a principal diretriz estratégica alemã durante muitas décadas, tendo sido recentemente substituída pelo irresponsável e belicoso radicalismo anti-russo.

Fischer parece não compreender que a verdadeira ameaça aos interesses da UE reside precisamente na própria OTAN e nos EUA, que são o verdadeiro líder do bloco. O próprio país de Fischer tem sido vítima do intervencionismo americano há décadas, uma vez que Washington possui armas nucleares em território alemão, mantendo Berlim refém dos interesses geopolíticos dos EUA. Estas atitudes semicoloniais são típicas dos métodos ocidentais e nunca houve qualquer ação semelhante por parte da Rússia.

Para agir verdadeiramente como uma organização soberana, proteger os seus próprios interesses e evitar que outras nações interfiram nos seus assuntos internos, a UE deve reavaliar os seus laços com o Ocidente. Parece bastante evidente que as atuais relações são extremamente negativas para a Europa e precisam de ser repensadas urgentemente. Neste sentido, poderiam ser retomados projectos soberanistas como a criação de um exército europeu fora da OTAN, o que tornaria possível a independência europeia em relação aos EUA. Mas, infelizmente, os líderes europeus parecem simplesmente ignorar a realidade geopolítica.

Parece que os políticos europeus foram enganados pela sua própria propaganda. Eles realmente vêem a Rússia como um problema e a questão militar na Ucrânia como uma prova de que Moscou irá em breve atacar os países europeus. Esta narrativa falaciosa, criada para convencer a opinião pública a apoiar Kiev, é absolutamente infundada e não pode ser vista como uma análise geopolítica precisa, uma vez que o conflito ucraniano aconteceu evidentemente por causa do próprio Ocidente, o que fomentou a instabilidade no ambiente estratégico russo.

O caso mostra claramente que a falta de precisão analítica e o radicalismo pró-Ocidente entre os políticos europeus podem levar a uma catástrofe. Ao identificar Moscou como uma ameaça, a UE tende a implementar medidas anti-russas que farão do bloco uma ameaça real para a Rússia, tornando as expectativas de conflito numa espécie de “profecia auto-realizável”. É vital que mentalidades como a de Fischer sejam impedidas de alcançar um estatuto hegemónico, caso contrário haverá um agravamento significativo da segurança continental europeia.

Lucas Leiroz de Almeida

 

 

Artigo em inglês :

https://infobrics.org/post/40004

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

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During the early morning hours of December 2, the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) relaunched with full force their siege upon the Gaza Strip.

In press releases issued by the IDF, the entity claims that it is surrounding the city of Khan Younis where it is bombing and shelling residential areas causing more deaths and injuries among the Palestinians.

IDF fighter jets dropped ordnance on the towns of Aabsan, Bani Suhaila, and al-Qarara in the district of Khan Younis which is located in the southern Gaza Strip. In the northern region of Gaza, artillery units shelled neighborhoods in al-Shujaiya, al-Zeitoun, and al-Daraj in Gaza City. Correspondents from the Palestinian media reported that large numbers of people were killed by airstrikes on residential neighborhoods in Jabalia also in the northern Gaza Strip. See this.

However, Palestinian resistance forces such as the Al-Qassam Brigades, Al-Quds Brigades and others, say they are engaging Israeli military units utilizing anti-tank weapons and improvised explosive devices. Casualty figures among the Israeli Occupation Forces (IOF) which are growing rapidly have been rarely reported in the Israeli press along with their western corporate and governmental controlled counterparts.

Al-Qassam Brigades in Motion

Worldwide demonstrations have occurred since October 7 when the government of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu announced their military campaign to destroy the Hamas resistance movement which has controlled the territory since 2007. Notwithstanding the constant propaganda and psychological warfare promoted in the western industrialized states and their surrogates, huge segments of the people have recognized the necessity for expressing solidarity with the Palestinians.

Throughout the West Asia and Africa regions, rallies and marches have been held for the last two months. Within South America several governments have withdrawn their ambassadors, and some have broken diplomatic relations with Tel Aviv.

Even within the western capitalist countries such as the United States, which provides the bulk of Israeli military, economic, political and diplomatic assistance, millions have publicly expressed their dissatisfaction with the administration of President Joe Biden which has maintained unconditional support for the IDF’s genocidal war on Gaza and the other areas of the Occupied Palestinian Territories (OPT). Biden has been labelled by many young people as “Genocide Joe” in light of the escalation of weapons transfers to Israel and its his failure to call for a ceasefire. The mantra advanced by the administration and the overwhelming majority within the Congress is that the settler-colonial state has a right to defend itself from the oppressed Palestinian population and others throughout the region where Israel has either seized land or engaged in military attacks.

Despite the widespread protests from North America and Europe to Africa, Asia and Australia against the war on Gaza, the White House has maintained its tactical and strategic assistance to the IDF while more than 16,000 Palestinians have been killed, tens of thousands wounded and over two million displaced by the bombing, shelling and blockades carried out by the Netanyahu regime. Various humanitarian agencies within and outside the rubric of the United Nations have warned the international community about the dire circumstances now prevailing in Gaza.

In an article published by Al Jazeera on December 6 it notes the announcement by UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres that he is prepared to evoke Article 99 of the Charter, saying:

“This is the secretary-general’s equivalent of pushing the panic button. Article 99 in the UN charter gives him the authority to call for a Security Council meeting for any topic that he views as a threat to international peace and security. And he’s doing so over Gaza. He’s doing this as a majority of council members have expressed support for a humanitarian ceasefire. However, the council has not invoked a resolution. The United States has been very clear in its opposition. The U.S., as a veto-wielding member, as recently as yesterday, said it did not believe such a resolution would help the situation. It instead called for continued negotiations.”

The negotiations which occurred in Doha, Qatar were largely designed for the exchange of Palestinian prisoners and the captives held since October 7 by Hamas and other resistance organizations in Gaza. Washington and Tel Aviv are categorically opposed to a lasting ceasefire let alone any discussion centering on a permanent solution to the Palestinian question which must include the creation of an independent sovereign state and the abolition of the racist system of occupation.

Palestinians bombed in Khan Younis

Washington Facilitating Genocide in Palestine

Israel plays an indispensable role for U.S. imperialism in West Asia and North Africa. The constant repressive tactics against the Palestinians are part and parcel of a regional strategy to maintain hegemony for Washington and Wall Street over the flow of oil, natural gas and other valuable resources. Whether the Democrats or Republicans are in the White House and Congress, the same foreign policy remains enforce.

The Pentagon still has several thousand troops stationed in Iraq and Syria. There has been the deployment of two aircraft carriers to the eastern Mediterranean since the beginning of the Al-Aqsa Storm by the Gaza resistance on October 7. Under the guise of fighting “terrorism”, the U.S. has ignored the repeated calls by the governments in Iraq and Syria to leave their territory.
Consequently, there is rising animosity towards the presence of U.S. troops throughout the entire West Asia region. Resistance organizations in Iraq, Syria and Yemen are carrying out attacks on Pentagon bases and Israeli-linked vessels. In an attack on the Resistance in Iraq, the U.S. killed five fighters from Popular Mobilization Units (PMU).

In relation to the genocidal war in Gaza, the Israeli regime announced on December 6 that they have been receiving massive shipments of weapons from the U.S.:

“The Israeli Ministry of Security announced the arrival of the 200th cargo plane delivering military equipment for the Israel Occupation Forces (IOF). This marks the transportation of over 10,000 tons of military equipment to the Israeli regime since the start of the war on Gaza. ‘The 200th cargo plane carrying military equipment for the [IOF] has arrived in Israel. Over 10,000 tons of military equipment were delivered since the beginning of the war, including armored vehicles, armaments, personal protective equipment, medical supplies, ammunition, and more,’ the ministry said on X, formerly known as Twitter.” 

Historically there has been a wide variety of weapons being transferred from Washington to Tel Aviv:

“Referring to a comprehensive study by the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) Arms Transfers Database, Axios reported that the United States has provided the Israelis with more than 70,000 units of weapons, including aircraft, ground vehicles, missiles, and bombs, as military aid between 1950 and 2022.

Israel stands as the largest recipient of U.S. foreign military financing, with the majority of aid taking the form of weapon grants. According to Elias Yousif, a U.S. arms transfer expert at the Stimson Center, it is a ‘safe assumption’ that U.S. weapons are extensively used in the ongoing Israeli operations in Gaza.

In 2023 alone, the U.S. has supplied Israel with at least 16 types of weapons, including missiles and aircraft, although specific details regarding the exact numbers and types remain undisclosed.” See this.

Consequently, the people living in the U.S. have a monumental responsibility for ending the siege on Gaza and bringing about the liberation of Palestine. The national oppression of the Palestinian people and the blatant interference in the internal affairs of other independent states in the region are a by-product of U.S. imperialist foreign policy.

Demonstrations in the U.S. have targeted politicians for their refusal to withdraw their allegiance to Tel Aviv. Other actions have highlighted the trade relations between the U.S. and Israel. It is quite obvious to many people that the State of Israel could not exist in its present form without the politico-military assistance from the ruling class in the U.S. and its minions.

Solidarity with the Palestinian struggle is growing exponentially in North America and Western Europe posing a significant challenge to the status-quo. The Biden administration is ignoring the fact that two-thirds of the electorate in the U.S. are in favor of a ceasefire.

The upcoming 2024 national elections could become a referendum on both the domestic and foreign policies of the White House and the Congress. Nonetheless, what is actually needed is a new political dispensation which rejects imperialism and recognizes the right to self-determination and sovereignty for all nations and peoples of the 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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***

Oct. 29, 2023 – Plattsburgh, NY – 27 year old James Gurney died unexpectedly at his home on Oct. 29, 2023. He had a passion for the performing arts.

Oct. 27, 2023 – Ravenna, OH – 27 year old Police Officer Thomas Wike died suddenly at his home on October 27, 2023.

Oct. 23, 2023 – Hong Kong – 20 year old Mark Groeneveld, a Dutch professional cyclist, collapsed after a race on Oct. 23, 2023 and died suddenly of presumed cardiac arrest.

Oct. 22, 2023 – Belem, Brazil – 26 year old Dr. Lucas Borba, medical student at UFPA died on Oct. 22, 2023 after suffering from a mysterious infection that led to cardiac arrest, liver and kidney failure.

Oct. 22, 2023 – Newmarket, UK – 25 year old Dallon Holmes, amateur jockey who worked in racing yards and had ridden in 3 races was found dead in his home on Oct. 22, 2023.

Oct. 21, 2023 – Tavares, Brazil – 28 year old Paulo Sergio, cartoonist and caricaturist suffered a heart attack at his house around 3am and died in the hospital on Oct. 21, 2023.

Oct. 20, 2023 – Fort Moore infantry soldier died after suffering a medical emergency during a training event. 21 year old Pfc Cesar Gonzalez died on Oct. 20, 2023.

Oct. 17, 2023 – Los Angeles, CA – 24 year old Dominic Malachi died unexpectedly at his home on Oct. 17, 2023. He was a Police Cadet for the LAPD.

Oct. 17, 2023 – 27 year old firefighter suffered a medical emergency while running track at Maine Central Institute. He collapsed at 6:30am on Oct. 17, 2023 and died suddenly.

Oct. 14, 2023 – UK – 27 year old Arturas Rudy, rugby player died during a rugby match with Wisbech RUFC on Oct. 14, 2023.

Oct. 14, 2023 – Spokane, WA – 29 year old Quindrey Trevon Davis-Murphy, Spokane Jazz Orchestra, was diagnosed with leukemia & died of a brain bleed 4 days later Diagnosis to death: 4 days COVID-19 mRNA Vaccine Turbo Cancer Leukemia.

Oct. 13, 2023 – Australia – 27 year old Joshua Powell died suddenly at a $10,000 Exercise retreat & fitness camp He collapsed with cardiac arrest on Oct. 13, 2023 while training next to a Lake.

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.

Featured image is from COVID Intel

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Global Research Editor’s Note

We bring to the attention of our readers, this carefully researched report of SIPRI which documents the surge in weapons production which has contributed to feeding a war economy, to the obvious detriment of World Peace.

World Peace is not addressed in this report.

The impact of increased demand for weapons Worldwide has in recent years resulted in a crisis of the civilian economy. Massive so-called “defense expenditures”, particularly in the US and NATO member countries have indelibly contributed to a collapse civilian infrastructure as well as social services (health and education).

What we are witnessing is a multi-trillion war economy which is conducive to mass poverty and the demise of the Welfare State. 

Michel Chossudovsky, Global Research, December 7, 2023

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Revenues from sales of arms and military services by the 100 largest companies in the industry totalled $597 billion in 2022, 3.5 per cent less than 2021 in real terms, even as demand rose sharply, according to new data released today by the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI), available at www.sipri.org.

Read this press release in Catalan (PDF), French (PDF), Spanish (PDF) or Swedish (PDF).

Click here to explore the interactive table of the SIPRI Top 100 ranking of arms producers and military services providers.

Click here to explore the SIPRI Top 100 interactive map.

Download the SIPRI Fact Sheet here.

The decrease was chiefly the result of falling arms revenues among major companies in the United States. Revenues increased substantially in Asia and Oceania and the Middle East. Outstanding orders and a surge in new contracts suggest that global arms revenues could rise significantly in the next few years.

Demand for Weapons Grows but Production Lags Behind

Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine and geopolitical tensions around the world fuelled a strong increase in demand for weapons and military equipment in 2022. However, despite receiving new orders, many US and European arms companies could not significantly ramp up production capacity because of labour shortages, soaring costs and supply chain disruptions that were exacerbated by the war in Ukraine. In addition, countries placed new orders late in the year and the time lag between orders and production meant that the surge in demand was not reflected in these companies’ 2022 revenues.

‘Many arms companies faced obstacles in adjusting to production for high-intensity warfare,’ said Dr Lucie Béraud-Sudreau, Director of SIPRI’s Military Expenditure and Arms Production Programme.‘However, new contracts were signed, notably for ammunition, which could be expected to translate into higher revenue in 2023 and beyond.’

In contrast to the major US and European suppliers, companies in Asia and Oceania and the Middle East saw their arms revenues grow significantly in 2022, demonstrating their ability to respond to increased demand within a shorter time frame. This was especially true in countries where companies maintain responsive ‘ever-warm’ manufacturing capabilities, such as Israel and South Korea, and those where companies tend to rely on short supply chains.

Arms Revenues Fall in USA Due to Production Challenges

The arms revenues of the 42 US companies in the Top 100 fell by 7.9 per cent to $302 billion in 2022. They accounted for 51 per cent of the total arms revenue of the Top 100. Of the 42 US companies, 32 recorded a fall in year-on-year arms revenue, most commonly citing ongoing supply chain issues and labour shortages stemming from the Covid-19 pandemic.

‘We are beginning to see an influx of new orders linked to the war in Ukraine and some major US companies, including Lockheed Martin and Raytheon Technologies, received new orders as a result,’ said Nan Tian, SIPRI Senior Researcher. ‘However, because of these companies’ existing order backlogs and difficulties in ramping up production capacity, the revenue from these orders will probably only be reflected in company accounts in two to three years’ time.’

Asia Outperforms Europe on Back of Military Modernization Drives

The arms revenues of the 22 companies from Asia and Oceania listed in the ranking rose by 3.1 per cent to reach $134 billion in 2022. This was the second consecutive year where Top 100 arms revenues for Asia and Oceania were higher than those for Europe.

‘Domestic demand and reliance on local suppliers shielded Asian arms companies from supply chain disruptions in 2022,’ said Xiao Liang, a researcher with the SIPRI Military Expenditure and Arms Production Programme. ‘Companies in China, India, Japan and Taiwan all benefited from sustained government investment in military modernization.’

The combined arms revenues of the four South Korean companies in the Top 100 fell by 0.9 per cent, primarily due to an 8.5 per cent drop recorded by the country’s biggest arms producer, Hanwha Aerospace. Two South Korean companies reported revenue growth, most notably LIG Nex1. South Korean companies are likely to see increased revenues in coming years due to a surge in booked orders after signing major arms deals with Poland and the United Arab Emirates.

Modest Revenue Growth in Europe as Ukraine-linked Demand Starts to Filter Through

The arms revenues of the 26 companies in the Top 100 based in Europe rose by 0.9 per cent to reach $121 billion in 2022.

‘The war in Ukraine created demand for materiel suited to a war of attrition, like ammunition and armoured vehicles. Many European producers of these items saw their revenues grow,’ said Lorenzo Scarazzato, a researcher with the SIPRI Military Expenditure and Arms Production Programme. ‘They included companies based in Germany, Norway and Poland. For instance, Poland’s PGZ increased its arms revenue by 14 per cent, benefiting from the accelerated military modernization programme the country is pursuing.’

Trans-European companies Airbus and KNDS were among the main sources of arms revenue growth in Europe, largely due to deliveries against long-standing orders.

Turkish Companies Drive Significant Increase in Middle Eastern Arms Revenue  

The Middle East saw the largest percentage rise in arms revenue of any region in 2022, as all seven Middle East-based companies in the Top 100 recorded substantial growth. Their combined arms revenues of $17.9 billion marked an 11 per cent year-on-year increase. The four Turkish companies’ total arms revenues reached $5.5 billion—22 per cent more than in 2021. The aggregate arms revenues of the three Israeli companies in the ranking reached $12.4 billion in 2022, a 6.5 per cent increase compared with 2021.

‘Middle Eastern companies that specialize in less technologically sophisticated products were able to scale up production faster in response to surging demand,’ said Dr Diego Lopes da Silva, SIPRI Senior Researcher. ‘A case in point is Türkiye’s Baykar, producer of the Bayraktar TB-2 drone. Baykar entered the Top 100 for the first time after its arms revenue rose by 94 per cent, the fastest growth rate of any company in the ranking.’  

Other Notable Developments

• In 2022 China accounted for the second largest share of combined Top 100 arms revenues by country, at 18 per cent. The aggregate arms revenues of the eight Chinese arms companies in the ranking increased by 2.7 per cent to $108 billion.
• The arms revenues of the seven companies in the United Kingdom listed in the Top 100 grew by 2.6 per cent to reach $41.8 billion, or 7.0 per cent of the total.
• Due to a lack of data, only two Russian companies were included in the Top 100 for 2022. Their combined arms revenues fell by 12 per cent to $20.8 billion. Transparency among Russian companies continues to decline. Despite being a holding entity with no direct manufacturing capacity, Rostec is included in the 2022 ranking as a proxy for the companies it controls.
• The only Ukrainian company in the Top 100, UkrOboronProm, saw a 10 per cent real-terms drop in its arms revenue to $1.3 billion. Although its arms revenue increased in nominal terms, this was more than offset by the country’s high inflation.

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***

After an uneasy seven day truce, Israel and Hamas are now once again locked in a violent combat. Each side has accused the other of violating the truce. What is really important is the consequence of this resumption of conflict.

Thousands more Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank are going to be killed. According to various sources, within 24 hours of the end of the truce on Friday 1st December, 184 Palestinians were wiped out as a result of Israeli bombardments. This brings the total number of dead Palestinians at the hands of Israeli fire-power since the present phase of fighting broke out on 7^th of October 2023 to 15,500. In contrast, 1332 Israelis and others have been killed by Hamas and its allies.

Of the Palestinians killed, it is estimated that over 6,000 are children. That more than a third are children is a matter of great significance especially when we consider the figures for past conflicts between the two sides. During Israel’s Operation Cast Lead for instance from 27^th December 2008 to 18^th January 2009, children accounted for a quarter of the dead. In another clash between 1^st November 2021 and 18th  January 2022, 840 Palestinian children died. To this statistic we should add the number of women killed by Israel in the current tussle between the two protagonists. It is estimated that 2700 of them have perished.

The deliberate massacre of children and women is part of a pattern of annihilation closely related to Israel’s overall goal of eliminating Palestinians from their ancestral land.

In other words, it is central to ethnic cleansing. In 1948 when Israel was established on Palestinian land, something like 750,000 indigenous Palestinians were expelled or evicted from their homes and villages.

This has gone on, at regular intervals, on a smaller scale for the last 75 years. Massacres and military operations against the Palestinians have also been integral to the policy of decimating and destroying Palestinian families and communities. Considered as a whole, the implementation of this policy, buttressed by bellicose pronouncements by Israeli leaders over a long period of time amounts to genocide as understood in international law.

ETHNIC CLEANSING: Palestinian refugees in 1948 Photo: Public Domain

This time, unlike 1948, voices have been raised against the Israeli government’s brutal, barbaric carnage — carnage of largely defenceless, unarmed Palestinians. In villages and cities across the continents, millions of people of all shades and hues are demanding that Israel’s relentless bombardment of Gaza, the most congested place on earth, ends immediately.  They want a permanent ceasefire involving all parties in the conflict to be instituted without delay. Citizen groups all over the world should intensify their campaign for a ceasefire mediated and supervised by the United Nations. It is worth noting that Qatar, one of the countries that arranged the earlier truce between Israel and Hamas, is also committed to an immediate ceasefire.

Global citizens demanding a ceasefire should reinforce their call with two other critical concerns. They should request the UN to establish immediately an International Protection Force to ensure the safety of the residents of both Gaza and the West Bank. Such a Protection Force under the auspices of the UN will hopefully deter Israel from its incessant attacks upon civilians in Palestine. It will not only save human beings, especially children, but also offer some protection to hospitals, schools and other public amenities which have all been targeted by the Israeli armed forces.

The other concern relates to water, fuel, food, medicines and the other essentials of life. Since the 7^th October Hamas attack on Israeli communities living at the Gaza-Israel border, the Israeli government has imposed even more draconian restrictions upon accessibility to essentials. This has exacerbated the sufferings of the people of Gaza. With the resumption of the genocide, it is feared that many vulnerable groups in Gaza will die from starvation and disease— apart from bombs. The UN through its agencies like WHO and FAO should step in to ensure that there is uninterrupted and adequate flow of essentials to the people. This is an urgent task.    

An equally urgent challenge facing the UN is addressing the root causes of the conflict between Israel and Palestine. Unless this is done immediately, the conflict will recur over and over again as it has for so many decades. As many of us have argued for such a long while, the root causes are related to the Israeli occupation of Palestinian land since 1948.  The manner in which the UN divided the land —giving the larger portion to the recently domiciled Jewish minority while allowing the indigenous Arab Muslim and Christian majority to remain on the smaller portion — was in itself a supreme act of gross injustice. There was no plebiscite; no attempt to assess sentiments on the ground.

Gaza, 2023 (Source: Middle East Eye)

The cruel inhumanity that accompanied the division and the creation of the state of Israel — the expulsions and the massacres — has already been discussed. It is important to emphasise at this point that the Israeli state has perpetuated its power and authority through an apartheid system of governance. In some instances, Israelis and Palestinians have separate laws and separate facilities. There are roads on the West Bank for instance which are prohibited to Palestinians. The water they drink is of inferior quality compared what is available to Israelis.   

Apartheid Israel is so comfortably nestled in its privileged dominance that very, very few Israelis are troubled by the discrimination against, and marginalization of, the Palestinians in their midst. There is so little empathy in contemporary Israel for the immense sufferings of the Palestinians. On the contrary, a substantial segment of Israeli society wants its political and military elite to punish Palestinians even more severely for daring to resist Israeli hegemony and aggression.

This is why the pressure upon the Israeli elite and Israeli society to act justly towards the Palestinians will have to come from outside Israeli society. As shown by the mass outpouring of support for the Palestinian cause from all over the world since October 7, pressure will have to come from the people. People’s pressure could be directed towards three targets. One, the Israeli elite; two, the elite in the United States and Britain, Israel’s staunchest supporters in the West; and three, the elite in the Arab countries and the larger Muslim world.

In targeting elites, there is a critical resource the people can harness. This is the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement. The movement initiated by Palestinians in July 2005 directed against Israel can play a vital role at this moment. It has already achieved some success. Now is the time to enhance and expand the BDS movement. Citizens all over the world should give a huge push to the movement by persuading more and more institutions, organisations and companies to join the movement so that Israel will really feel the impact of efforts to boycott, divest and sanction her.

Under the BDS rubric, three other measures could be given some consideration. One, a worldwide movement to get those nations that recognize Israel to withdraw their Ambassadors from Israel as a way of isolating the country, diplomatically. This would be a temporary measure aimed at changing Israel’s behaviour vis-à-vis the Palestinians. Two, an arms embargo imposed by the UN which prohibits any state or entity from engaging in the arms trade with Israel. The prohibition will also extend to joint ventures in the manufacture of arms and military equipment with Israel or enterprises associated with it.  Under this proposal, the US, as a case in point, will have to suspend its military ties with Israel. Three, the UN must ensure that no country supplies oil to Israel as long as it pulverizes Gaza and the West Bank. If Arab and Muslim states that exercise considerable influence over the oil market are united in employing oil as a weapon to tame Israel, it is quite conceivable that it will be less contemptuous of the rights of others.       

In the ultimate analysis, the question is whether the people have the guts and the gumption to act against an arrogant state that tramples upon the dignity of another with impunity.

*

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Dr Chandra Muzaffar is the president of the International Movement for a Just World (JUST) Malaysia. He is a regular contributor to Global Research.

Featured image: Funeral for Palestine TV journalist Mohammad Abu Hattab. Credit: X/@MuhammadSmiry

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***

 

I have only a few minutes to write, but as the the Arab ambassadors at the UN, the Organization of Islamic Cooperation and countries around the globe use diplomacy to pursue the futile goal of a ceasefire in Gaza, children are beginning to starve, and dysentery is becoming an epidemic. Israel will not interrupt its genocide for a ceasefire, and Palestinians will not accept to return to the status quo ante of oppression and deprivation in the holding pen that was Gaza before October 7th.

Today, most of the Gaza Strip is a wasteland, thanks to carpet bombing.

According to Israeli plan, most of the 2.3 million population has been driven to the small, southernmost city of Rafah, where they compete for any space of land on which to lay their heads on the increasingly cold nights. Israel will soon face them with the choice of dying on that land or being driven into other countries. Not so much by mere bombing of hospitals and population centers as by lack, of food, water, medicine, medical treatment and everything needed to sustain life.

What is needed is military intervention, an international embargo on Israeli ports and airports and the closing of its borders, a complete blockade of all travel and transfer of goods and people to and from Israel, including diplomatic missions.

But apparently the world prefers to waste time rather than address the problem, and they all will wring their hands and ask how it could have happened, when the great genocide is accomplished, probably by the end of January.

*

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Paul Larudee is a retired academic and current administrator of a nonprofit human rights and humanitarian aid organization.

Featured image is from Khaled Hosseini/X

5G and the Irradiation of Dogs, Cats and Birds

By Arthur Firstenberg, December 06, 2023

Starting about 10 years ago I noticed strange things happening on our animal sanctuary. I would find a cat dead, not killed by an animal, not sickly. About 2 years ago it became even worse. Because we have an animal sanctuary we need to keep good care of these animals, not because of legal ramifications but because that is how it should be.

Peace Coalition Floods US Senate with Demands Ceasefire in Gaza in Day of Action

By CODEPINK, December 07, 2023

A coalition of passionate citizens and prominent organizations, spearheaded by CODEPINK and the American Palestinian Women’s Association, staged a gripping day of action within the hallowed halls of the Senate on Wednesday. Their mission: to demand an immediate ceasefire in Gaza and challenge Congress’s controversial proposal of an additional $14 billion in aid to Israel.

Damning Analysis: Short-Selling Deluge Points to Foreknowledge of October 7 Attacks

By Ben Bartee, December 07, 2023

The results of a statistical analysis below, published in the Social Science Research Network, point quantitatively to prior knowledge among certain actors of the impending October 7 attack who, working on apparent inside knowledge, engaged in the short-selling of various stocks to a windfall of millions of dollars. 

Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Outspoken Critic of U.S. Foreign Policy, Endorses the Zionist War in Palestine

By Renee Parsons, December 06, 2023

As the conflict in Gaza escalates with increased Palestinian deaths, prominent national political leaders have spoken in support of the Zionist regime as all  presidential candidates also support the Zionist campaign to eliminate the indigenous Palestinian people.   

Video: Kiev Sends Children to the Battlefield

By South Front, December 06, 2023

Despite the efforts of military commissars to hunt for new soldiers on the streets, the mobilization efforts in Ukraine have failed. The Ukrainian army is suffering from a shortage of personnel. The number mobilized no longer covers the losses at the front. While the number of women in Ukrainian trenches has already decreased, Kiev sends children to the battlefield.

Palestine Resistance and the Perceived Dimensions of the ‘Flood of Aqsa’: The Arab World and Muslim Countries Are Reassessing Their Relationship with “The Great Powers”?

By Pr. Elias Zahlaoui, December 06, 2023

The Palestinian Resistance “Operation Al-Aqsa Flood” took everyone by surprise but the dimensions of the operation are even more surprising. I intend to highlight and explain these dimensions one by one. I start with what seems to me to be obvious – the outrageous and total non-existence, without exception, of the so-called international laws which claim to govern relations between people and nations globally.

Fragile EU Ban on Russian Gas Imports: “Major Deliveries Continue”: Austria Imports More Than Half of Gas Demand from Russia’s GazProm

By Ahmed Adel, December 06, 2023

Austria is “overflowing” with Russian natural gas, which allows long-time customers of Russian state corporation Gazprom to increase sales to its neighbours, Bloomberg reported. The outlet added that the flow from Russia represents more than half of Austria’s demand, which is only taking timid steps to diversify its gas sources.

USA and Israel Should be Worried. The Muslim Middle East Is Moving Its Own Way

By Karsten Riise, December 06, 2023

Less than a month before Russia takes over the chairmanship of BRICS-11 where both UAE and Saudi Arabia will be full members, Russia makes a big move to bring cooperation with UAE and Saudi Arabia to an unprecedented level.

Bah Humbug: The Police State Wants Us to be a Nation of Snowflakes

By John W. Whitehead and Nisha Whitehead, December 06, 2023

Schools across the country now avoid anything that alludes to the true meaning of Christmas such as angels, the baby Jesus, stables and shepherds. In many of the nation’s schools, Christmas carols, Christmas trees, wreaths and candy canes have also been banned as part of the effort to avoid any reference to Christmas, Christ or God. One school even outlawed the colors red and green, saying they were Christmas colors and, thus, illegal.

The National Science Foundation Is a Driving Force Behind the Censorship Industrial Complex

By Prof. Bill Willers, December 06, 2023

Any entity, individual or collective, claiming authority to impose its determination of what is truth and what is “misinformation” is totalitarian and anti-science by definition. So it is the height of irony that the nation’s agency representing science, the National Science Foundation, has become a primary instrument for the protection of official governmental narrative and the attack on opposing views. But there you are.

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).

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).

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).

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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***

As the world crumbles around the edges with accelerated attacks in Gaza, military skirmishes in Syria and Iraq, a broken southern border and a US financial system threatening imminent disintegration, a majority of Americans are operating under the assumption that the 2024 election will solve all its problems. 

As the conflict in Gaza escalates with increased Palestinian deaths, prominent national political leaders have spoken in support of the Zionist regime as all  presidential candidates also support the Zionist campaign to eliminate the indigenous Palestinian people.   

Democrat Robert F. Kennedy Jr. of the distinguished political family began his quest for the Presidency as an outspoken critic of US foreign policy. In early May, I wrote perhaps the first analysis of his candidacy as he courageously articulated the collapse of US foreign policy with  his intent to close eight hundred US bases around the world.  

Some months later, well before the October 6^th event in Gaza, Kennedy inexplicably flipped. Quite suddenly he was enunciating a policy toward Israel that contradicted almost every foreign policy objective he had previously supported including an unprecedented genocide campaign. 

He has now gone full-bore in the role as a first-class champion for the diabolical Zionist regime when, in recognition of Elie Wiesel’s death, Kennedy ‘affirmed the commitment he stood for ‘never again” which may further lock Kennedy in to a military response in the Middle East. 

An opponent of the Ukraine war once his son, who served as an international volunteer was home safe, Kennedy has failed to equate the Zionist slaughter of thousands of Palestinian children with the children represented by the Children’s Defense Fund of which he founded and participated as Chair for many years – as  “unwavering in defense against any attack on children.”  

So now we know he meant only American children – and that presumably he had not yet learned that all God’s children are blessed and sacred. 

Nor has Kennedy stepped up to offer his insights with critical commentary or focus on the foreign policy implications of the conflict as it might impact an expanded war with Iran, spreading to the Islamic world until ultimately blossoming as WW III – nor has Kennedy taken the opportunity to propose an alternative to war in the Middle East. 

From a Navy family, Kennedy seems totally unfamiliar with Israel’s attack on the  USS Liberty in 1967, its history of terrorism as it blew up the King David Hotel or Israel’s devolution into a sadistic tyrannical state with an exceptional lack of humanity. More recently, Kennedy appeared to absolve Israel of any responsibility regarding Gaza fatalities, questioning whether the number of civilian casualties is accurate. 

Skirting direct comments on the Palestinians and its role in the conflict, Kennedy remains focused on Israel, as if Zionists making gardens in the desert is what matter while the real question is where do his loyalties lie? When Kennedy, in explanation for his participation in the Israel Day March waving a Zionist flag said “my family has a long relationship with Israel.” Exactly what does he mean?

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It was an interview with Rabbi Shumley Boteach where RFK fully revealed his level of secular  conviction yet confirmed he was grossly uninformed about basic truths of life in Israel: daily conquest, harassment and provocation of the population, IDF’s reputation for brutal abuse of Palestinian children and, as an illegal occupied force, theft of Palestinian land during the 1948 war and again during the 1976 war.  

There is an alarming trend in the Democratic Party to describe Israel as an apartheid state. This rhetoric is dangerous and inaccurate. @RepDWStweets. It’s time to set the record straight.

Thank you @RabbiShmuley for the opportunity. pic.twitter.com/hgDfOvHlBv

— Robert F. Kennedy Jr (@RobertKennedyJr) July 28, 2023

From there his comments spun common deceptions about Israel as  ‘free to practice any religion you want’ as the “only place open to criticism of the government” as he promised to make the “moral case of Israel” which now, 60 days into the Gaza conflict would appear to be not only futile but entirely disingenuous.  

Citing ‘freedom of expression for all citizens,’ RFK continues to resist any assertion of Israel as an apartheid state or that oppression of Palestinian as an indigenous population is a regular occurrence.  

In sync with Israeli policy, Kennedy supports a no development of nuclear weapons for Iran while Israel has an unconfirmed number of perhaps two hundred nukes.  Without ever signing onto the Nuclear Proliferation Treaty, Israel is one of a handful of nations with nuclear weapons that has refused to sign onto the NPT.  

Did RFK really mean to defend Knesset members like Ben Gvir and Netanyahu who ‘cooperated’ in the assassination of former Prime Minister Yitzak Rabin for enacting the Oslo Accords or excuse the Zionist war criminals or that the Israeli judiciary is the “most humane judiciary in the world”? As his campaign continues to define ‘apartheid’ as ‘absurd’, there is a noticeable decline in its forward-thinking agenda and he may no longer be counted on to speak truth to power.

*

Since the Kennedy family suffered so tragically by political assassinations and that the Biden Administration has irrationally refused to provide him with secret service protection, the Israel government’s public announcement that they intend to pursue political assassinations outside of Gaza should raise more attention as it resonates more personally.  Are the Zionists assuming the role of revolutionary  assassins at the same time they declare themselves to be a functioning democracy?

In the 1950s, the Eisenhower administration repeatedly insisted that the American Zionist Council (AZC) register as “agents of a foreign government” which they never did. 

In November 1962, Attorney General Robert Kennedy’s Department of Justice ordered AZC to register as a foreign agent because of FARA violations, alleging that it was being funded by the Jewish Agency for Israel. They never did register. 

Again, in 1963, AIPAC was given 72 hours to register and complete the task. Coincidentally during that time, JFK was assassinated and AIPAC never, to this day, has ever registered as a FARA.

In addition, President John F. Kennedy supported UN Resolution 194  that mandated the displaced Palestinians the “Right of Return” to Palestinian lands that had been taken by the Zionists in 1948. 

Presumably, both JFK and RFK may have visited Palestine together. Here is an undated photo of RFK in the streets of Palestine and another in front of the King David Hotel which was blown up by Irgun extremists in July, 1946. Also an undated portion of a letter from JFK to his father, former Ambassador Joseph P. Kennedy sometime in the last 1940’s describing Palestine-Zionist negotiations that was found in the Kennedy library.  

Kennedy outside of the King David Hotel striking a military pose. (Source: Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs)

Kennedy on King David Street in 1948. Behind him is a British military checkpoint at the intersection of what is today Agron Street. (Source: Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs)

The shocking bottom line seems obvious that RFK, Jr. once a strong advocate for peace and children, has lost his fervor with no emotional energy to care about Palestinian suffering or the fate of 16,000 civilian fatalities, 70% of them women and children. 

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Renee Parsons served on the ACLU’s Florida State Board of Directors and as president of the ACLU Treasure Coast Chapter. She has been an elected public official in Colorado, staff in the Office of the Colorado State Public Defender, an environmental lobbyist for Friends of the Earth and a staff member of the US House of Representatives in Washington DC.

She is a regular contributor to Global Research.

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***

Despite the efforts of military commissars to hunt for new soldiers on the streets, the mobilization efforts in Ukraine have failed. The Ukrainian army is suffering from a shortage of personnel. The number mobilized no longer covers the losses at the front.

While the number of women in Ukrainian trenches has already decreased, Kiev sends children to the battlefield.

The head of the Russian Foreign Intelligence Service already warned that London and Washington had ‘recommended’ Ukrainian authorities to reduce the conscription age to 17 and raise it to 70 year olds.

Kiev is already changing legislation according to its orders from the West.

Draft law on raising the military age up to 70 years has already been registered in the Ukrainian parliament.

In May, the conscription age was lowered to 25; but this was not enough to continue fighting for the interests of the West.

The new Minister of Defense of Ukraine proposed to further lower the military age. Educational institutions were obliged to transfer lists of students aged 16 and over.

Naive Ukrainians hope that teenagers will not be called to the front, but will be involved in safer work in the rear; but the hypocritical Kiev regime does not even spare children. As the NATO patrons ‘advised’, 17-year-old Ukrainian boys are already dying at the front. The first victims are orphans.

The combat reserve of minors is already being formed in Western Ukraine, where orphans are gathered for military training in the educational camp “Haidamatskaya Sich”. Underage conscripts are then sent to the 103rd Territorial Defense Brigade. This unit was formed in the Lviv region.

Initially, it was supposed to involve underage soldiers in the rear areas of the Kharkiv region, but the commander sent them to the front, where the “detachment of children” was used as an assault unit.

As a result, the losses were not long in coming. Vladimir Sachal, a 17-year-old orphan who died in the village of Novoselovskoye, in the LPR, became the first officially confirmed victim.

Meanwhile, the number of Ukrainian teenagers in Russian captivity is growing rapidly. One of the young prisoners said that he was taken to the front from the college. His father hid from mobilization in the forest, and his mother went to Poland for a better life. Without any descent training, he was sent into a meat grinder assault, where he was captured by the Russians, and thus, fortunately his life was saved.

Just as Germany created “Hitler Youth” detachments comprised of children in 1944, Ukraine is already sending the youth to slaughter.

The Kiev regime is not concerned about the future of its people. It copes perfectly with the task from its foreign patrons to empty Ukrainian lands and transfer them to the needs of the “prosperous West”.

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Featured image is from South Front

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***

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***

Austria is “overflowing” with Russian natural gas, which allows long-time customers of Russian state corporation Gazprom to increase sales to its neighbours, Bloomberg reported. The outlet added that the flow from Russia represents more than half of Austria’s demand, which is only taking timid steps to diversify its gas sources. It appears that despite the harsh rhetoric against Russia, Austria will not allow itself to suffer like neighbouring Germany.

As a hub for Russian flows for over half a century, the country has storage depots and pipelines historically set up to route fuel to Germany, Slovenia, Hungary and Italy, and Austrian state-owned company OMV AG has a contract with Gazprom until 2040. The Central European country has said it wants to diversify away from Russia, but trade data shows a steady flow through a pipeline from Ukraine that meets more than half of the economy’s demand.

However, Walter Boltz, a former Austrian regulator and current senior energy consultant at Baker & Mckenzie LLP, said he is increasingly alarmed by this so-called failure to diversify as Ukraine’s gas transport contract with Russia expires in December 2024, and Kiev has committed not to negotiate a new agreement with Russia.

The Bloomberg article also revealed a concern about the lack of work on the construction of alternative pipelines, as the €200 million WAG LOOP 1, which could supply 27 tW/h of gas, equivalent to around a third of Austria’s annual demand, is not expected to be ready until 2027, due to problems related to the failure to deliver the environmental licenses necessary for its extension.

Boltz and Gas Connect Austria believe the country can meet demand in 2025 even without supplies from Russia, but there is still the issue of prices, which will remain high without further connections.

“The risk in 2025 and 2026 is not so much that there will be no gas available, but that prices could again be quite high,” said the consultant at Baker & Mckenzie LLP, adding that another price crisis needs to be avoided.

However, Austria is not the only country in Europe to continue receiving Russian gas. It is recalled that Gazprom CEO Alexey Miller said in November that despite the European refusal of Russian gas, it continues to flow in significant quantities.

“I wouldn’t like to mention any numbers because the molecules in the pipeline have no national colour,” he said in response to a question about the percentage of Russian gas Europe receives, adding that major deliveries continue.

“The President of the Russian Federation, Vladimir Putin, very recently gave the example of a centre in Austria, Baumgarten. We are currently supplying gas to Baumgarten, which is a large European centre from which gas is supplied to other countries in the European Union,” the CEO continued.

Several European countries partially or completely lost gas from Gazprom in 2022 as the company cut or stopped supplies to Bulgaria, Poland, Finland, the Netherlands, Germany, and Denmark, mainly citing non-compliance with a presidential decree on payment in rubles or other technical reasons.

Months later, deliveries along the main route via the Nord Stream were stopped. Pumping via the Belarusian Yamal-Europe route has also been halted, while the Ukrainian route has also seen a significant decline. As a result, Russian pipeline gas is now supplied to Europe through one of the two entry points of the Ukrainian gas transportation system and through Turkey, where it arrives via the TurkStream.

Europe’s quest to diversify away from Russian gas has only sent prices sky-high and exposed the continent to shortages and risks, especially Germany.

The chief of RWE, one of Germany’s largest energy companies, said Europe needed to boost its capacity to import gas to ensure it could cope with any unexpected outages on pipelines or import terminals.

Speaking to the Financial Times, RWE CEO Markus Krebber said: “[Europe is] not where we need to be because we shouldn’t have an energy supply system which is without any margin or buffer.” His warning came despite Europe entering winter with gas stocks about 99% full after a major effort to fill them up over the summer to cope with supply cuts from Russia.

The situation is so bad in Germany that Economy Minister and Deputy Chancellor Robert Habeck cancelled his scheduled appearance at the COP28 climate summit in Dubai on December 4 so that he could focus on the government’s negotiations for a 2024 budget after its original spending plans were deemed illegal by the constitutional court. 

Berlin recently suspended the debt brake for 2023 to cover funds like energy subsidies and flood relief payments that the constitutional court also deemed illegitimate, with the money already spent. This comes as unemployment reaches a two-year high, the cost-of-living skyrockets and inflation remains stubbornly high. Austria continues pumping Russian gas in massive quantities so that it can avoid the very situation that Germany is suffering from, even if leaders in Vienna continue speaking out against Moscow.

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

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Israel’s Foreign Minister Eli Cohen announced on 5 December the state’s decision to revoke the resident visa of UN humanitarian coordinator Lynn Hastings.

“We will no longer be silent in the face of the bias of the UN!” the foreign minister said via social media. “I decided to revoke the residence visa to Israel of the UN humanitarian coordinator Lynn Hastings.”

מפסיקים לשתוק אל מול ההטיה של האו״ם!

החלטתי לשלול את אשרת השהייה בישראל של המתאמת ה״הומניטרית״ של האו״ם לין הייסטינגס.

מי שלא גינתה את חמאס על הטבח האכזרי של 1,200 ישראלים, על חטיפה של קשישים ותינוקות, על מעשי התעללות ואונס נוראיים, ועל שימוש בתושבי עזה כמגן אנושי, אך מגנה את… pic.twitter.com/9MaLsM6bHM

— אלי כהן | Eli Cohen (@elicoh1) December 5, 2023

“Someone who did not condemn Hamas for the brutal massacre of 1,200 Israelis, for the kidnapping of babies and the elderly and for the horrific acts of abuse and rape, and for using the residents of Gaza as human shields, but instead condemns Israel, a democratic country that protects its citizens, cannot serve in the UN and cannot enter Israel!” Cohen’s social media statement continued.

The Israeli foreign minister’s remarks came on the heels of comments made by Hastings, in which she voiced concern for the Palestinian people after Israel resumed indiscriminate attacks on residential neighborhoods, hospitals, and UN shelters.

“Nowhere is safe in Gaza, and there is nowhere left to go,” Hasting’s statement read. “The conditions required to deliver aid to the people of Gaza do not exist. If possible, an even more hellish scenario is about to unfold, one in which humanitarian operations may not be able to respond.” 

Israel’s UN envoy, Gilad Erdan, had also voiced his condemnation of the organization’s view regarding the war between Israel and Palestinian resistance.  

“There is no justification or point in talking to those who show compassion for the most terrible atrocities committed against the citizens of Israel and the Jewish people. There are simply no words,” Erdan said on social media.  

Cohen had also voiced his displeasure in October to a UN-fronted ceasefire despite Hamas being open to such a resolution.  

“We reject outright the [UNGA]’s despicable call for a ceasefire,” Israel Foreign Minister Eli Cohen said. “Israel intends to eliminate Hamas just as the world dealt with the Nazis and ISIS.”

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***

In cooperation with Russia and China, the UAE and Saudi Arabia are becoming not only oil powers, but powers in the modern AI, hi-tech knowledge and Space economy – and military powers.

The central Middle Eastern powers, UAE, Saudi Arabia, Iran, and even Türkiye, are emerging as pillars in the international policies of Russia and China – in all dimensions. Algeria builds deeper relations with its biggest arms supplier Russia, and Algeria opens defense cooperation China. Russia and Egypt have also for years been reinforcing cooperation, including defense cooperation, nuclear cooperation (a Russian nuclear powerplant is being built) and trade-logistics (a Russian trade zone near the Suez Canal). In Syria, Russia has already long ago stabilized the government in Damascus, and even in Iraq, Russia just a few days ago took over Iraq’s biggest oil field and kicked out the biggest western player in Iraq’s oil sector. Recently, Russia as the Chairman of BRICS-11 after 1 January 2024 even gave its nod of approval for the admission of China’s best friend Pakistan into BRICS in spite of Indian hesitations.

The Muslim Middle East is moving its own way – independently of the West. At a time when all the non-Western world including the Muslim world is outraged by Israel’s Nakba pressing out Palestinians with genocide on over 16,000 civilians in Gaza, Israel and its US backer should be worried.

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Karsten Riise is a Master of Science (Econ) from Copenhagen Business School and has a university degree in Spanish Culture and Languages from Copenhagen University. He is the former Senior Vice President and Chief Financial Officer (CFO) of Mercedes-Benz in Denmark and Sweden.

He is a regular contributor to Global Research.  

Featured image is from The Unz Review

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***

All civilization has disintegrated, not just Western civilization. 

This fact is obvious from the entire world sitting watching, perhaps as entertainment as Romans watched death in the Colosseum, the Genocide of Gaza.  The “moral democratic” US government rushes more bombs and money to enable Israel’s genocide of Palestine.  European governments call the genocide “Israel’s right of self-defense.” Christian Zionists justify genocide in Christ’s name. In Europe those whose moral conscience drives them to protest are arrested. In “free and democratic” UK waving a Palestinian flag is cause for arrest. The Muslim world does nothing, displaying its total impotence and lack of self-respect. And the Russians and Chinese sit there and allow the US and Israel to remake the Middle East in their interest, a development that will increase the power of evil.

For those of us mindful of the achievements of Western Civilization, as well as its blemishes and crimes, to experience the complete evaporation of moral consciousness in the Western world is devastating. The West is not merely permitting this to happen, the West is openly participating in the evil. For evil is what it is.  

The Israeli Jews portray themselves as victims as they destroy the lives of others. The Israeli Jews who complain of suffering a Holocaust are now conducting one. Things have been turned upside down. Evil is Good, and Good is Evil. Moral conscience has departed the 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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***

There have been recent elections in numerous principalities. The constellations by which governments— the outward and visible signs of obscured and conspiratorial power— have been formed since 2020 are not in themselves unique but have occurred with an intensity— I like here the German term Verdichtung, i.e. thickening or coagulation— perhaps unlike anything since the financial coup d‘etat that inaugurated the Great Depression (as it was called in the US).

In fact one could date this phenomenon to the unpredicted victory of  Donald Trump in 2016 over the repulsive other of presidential philanderer William J. Clinton. As I wrote at the time, no later than the inauguration of Donald Trump, it should have been apparent that the last pretenses of a diverse media had evaporated. The catastrophe of 2020 ought not to have surprised anyone.

Amidst the verbal streams, I hesitate to call them a debate, as to the significance of the current janitor in the US executive mansion, aka White House, we can observe the same impoverished thought that characterizes the choice of athletic footwear, meanwhile the universal equivalent to denim trousers for all but the princely functions.

Certainly there are criticisms that point to the superficiality of the bourgeois electoral systems, whether in the US or its vassal states. They are valid as far as they go.

Then there is the criticism which I certainly share that voters – real or virtual – are far too influenced by corrupt mass media. Although I am actually tired of repeating it, I will again iterate that the Press and the journalistic “profession“ was created for commercial propaganda and not for education of the population.

It is to paraphrase George Carlin, “a cute idea“ that journalism has duty to inform, but that is all it is, an idea. If journalists inform the public it is despite journalism and not because of it. One only needs to examine the history of this profession to recognize that it was conceived as prostitution and most of its practitioners have wittingly or unwittingly followed the strip.

Underlying all these distractions is a legitimate complexity of ancient quality. That is the difficulty of distinguishing between the person, the personality and the organization.

In conventional circumstances, e.g. intimate human contact, the terms are person, character and relationship.

So a marriage is seen as a relationship conditioned by the persons with their families and histories perhaps and the characters of those persons in the conditions under which the marriage‘s inception and experience unfolded. In the greater format of the world of which many people are only conscious through electronic media, this complexity is even harder to describe than that of marriage (which anyone who has been involved in matrimonial affairs can admit is complex enough).

The model for understanding this problem, in the West at least, is Latin Christendom. To illustrate the problem in the simplest manner I can imagine I have to draw on an anecdote. Many years ago, as a young man educated in a Latin household— although not strictly—I had a „revelation“ that I should apply myself to the priesthood. As a youth I did not believe in God or the saints. However I did not have to believe in the Church. It was there. I could see it and all those who constituted it with their clothes, rituals, buildings and special language. In fact, one would have to be an idiot not to believe in the Church at the empirical frontier of Western life (I almost wrote civilization but by Gandhi corrected).

So one fine day I entered the reception of the Latin seminary in a German city where I lived at the time. The priest who interviewed me upon my request to be accepted for study to join the clergy asked me first: would I tell him about my personal relationship to Jesus Christ?

I was quite shocked by the question. Trying to hide my surprise, I replied that when I was raised as a member of the Latin Catholic Church such a question was never raised. One did not have a personal relationship to the lord and king. There was the Church and its ruler and we were subjects. This answer did not satisfy my interlocutor. He was quite perfunctory and told me to come back when I had a better answer to the question.

At the time I thought, this was a question any evangelical Protestant might ask but surely not a Latin priest.

With time I began to see the problem in another light. The Latin Church, the DNA of Western life (although this cliché is also suspect like Crick‘s whole essentialist model of human genetics), created the person of Jesus to attract the individual with the idea that the deity was recognizable in human life— incarnate. However Christ the King was the dominant form in which this personality was propagated. So personal subjugation became internalized through an image of the human who was nonetheless a character in the organizational language and explanation of the Church hierarchy.

When people feel compelled to talk about how and who a particular courtier is elected or appointed to high office, e.g. POTUS, they are caught in the sleight of hand that presents a persona as a person.

The individual Jesus is not the founder of the Church. The persona of Jesus (or any other individual in another religious constellation) is not the same as a historical individual. He, she or it is a mere manifestation of an organization/explanation which expresses power through the representation of personae as if they were real, flesh and blood human beings.

It is not easy to distinguish people from the personae they adopt —or by which they are created— in the organizations they serve. However it is necessary to understand the scope of organizations in human life in order to even begin to recognize the discrepancy between our needs at the empirical frontier and the actions of organizations fundamentally antagonistic to them.

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Dr. T.P. Wilkinson writes, teaches History and English, directs theatre and coaches cricket between the cradles of Heine and Saramago. He is also the author of Church Clothes, Land, Mission and the End of Apartheid in South Africa.

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***

 

 

 

 

 

“This boy is Ignorance. This girl is Want. Beware them both, and all of their degree, but most of all beware this boy, for on his brow I see that written which is Doom, unless the writing be erased.”—Charles Dickens, A Christmas Carol

What a year.

It feels as if government Grinches and corporate Scrooges have been working overtime to drain every last drop of joy, kindness and liberty from the world.

After endless months of being mired in political gloom and doom, we could all use a little Christmas cheer right now.

Unfortunately, Christmas has become embattled in recent years, co-opted by rampant commercialism, straight-jacketed by political correctness, and denuded of so much of its loveliness, holiness and mystery.

Indeed, the season for giving has turned into the season for getting…and for getting offended.

To a nation of snowflakes, Christmas has become yet another trigger word.

When I was a child in the 1950s, the magic of Christmas was promoted in the schools. We sang Christmas carols in the classroom. There were cutouts of the Nativity scene on the bulletin board, along with the smiling, chubby face of Santa and Rudolph. We were all acutely aware that Christmas was magic.

Fast forward to the present day, and Christmas has become fodder for the politically correct culture wars.

Over the years, Christmas casualties in the campaign to create one large national safe space have ranged from the beloved animated classic Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer (denounced for promoting bullying and homophobia) to the Oscar-winning tune “Baby, It’s Cold Outside” (accused of being a date rape anthem) crooned by everyone from Dean Martin to Will Ferrell and Zooey Deschanel in the movie Elf.

Also on the endangered species Christmas list are such songs as “Deck the Halls,” “Santa Baby,” and “White Christmas.”

One publishing company even re-issued their own redacted version of Clement Clarke Moore’s famous poem “Twas the night before Christmas” in order to be more health conscious: the company edited out Moore’s mention of Santa smoking a pipe (“The stump of a pipe he held tight in his teeth, / And the smoke, it encircled his head like a wreath.”)

In the politically correct quest to avoid causing offense, Christmas keeps getting axed.

Examples abound.

Schools across the country now avoid anything that alludes to the true meaning of Christmas such as angels, the baby Jesus, stables and shepherds.

In many of the nation’s schools, Christmas carols, Christmas trees, wreaths and candy canes have also been banned as part of the effort to avoid any reference to Christmas, Christ or God. One school even outlawed the colors red and green, saying they were Christmas colors and, thus, illegal.

Students asked to send seasonal cards to military troops have been told to make them “holiday cards” and instructed not to use the words “Merry Christmas” on their cards.

Many schools have redubbed their Christmas concerts as “winter holiday programs” and refer to Christmas as a “winter festival.” Some schools have cancelled holiday celebrations altogether to avoid offending those who do not celebrate the various holidays.

In Minnesota, a charter school banned the display of a poster prepared to promote the school’s yearbook as a holiday gift because the poster included Jack Skellington from Tim Burton’s The Nightmare Before Christmas and other secular Christmas icons, not to mention the word “Christmas.”

In New Jersey, one school district banned traditional Christmas songs such as “Joy to the World” and “Silent Night” from its holiday concerts.  A New Jersey middle school cancelled a field trip to attend a performance of a play based on Charles Dickens’s “A Christmas Carol” because some might have found it “offensive.”

In Texas, a teacher in Texas who decorated her door with a scene from “A Charlie Brown Christmas,” including a scrawny tree and Linus, was forced to take it down lest students be offended or feel uncomfortable.

In Connecticut, teachers were instructed to change the wording of the classic poem “Twas the Night Before Christmas” to “Twas the Night Before a Holiday.”

In Virginia, a high school principal debated about whether he could mention Santa or distribute candy canes given that they were symbols of Christmas.

In Massachusetts, a fourth-grade class was asked to list 25 things that reminded them of Christmas. When one young student asked if she could include “Jesus,” her teacher replied that she could get fired if Christmas’ namesake appeared on the list.

Things have not been much better outside the schools, muddled by those who subscribe to the misguided notion that the Constitution requires that anything religious in nature be banned from public places.

In one West Virginia town, although the manger scene (one of 350 light exhibits in the town’s annual Festival of Lights) included shepherds, camels and a guiding star, the main attractions—Jesus, Mary and Joseph—were nowhere to be found due to concerns about the separation of church and state.

In Chicago, organizers of a German Christkindl market were informed that the public Christmas festival was no place for the Christmas story. Officials were concerned that clips of the film “The Nativity Story,” which were to be played at the festival, might cause offense.

In Delaware, a Girl Scout troop was prohibited from carrying signs reading “Merry Christmas” in their town’s annual holiday parade.

Clearly, Christmas has become one of many casualties in the misguided dispute over the so-called “separation of church and state,” a controversy that has given rise to a disconcerting and unconstitutional attempt to sanitize public places of any reference to God or religion.

Yet there’s a really simple solution to this annual angst of whether students and teachers can display Christmas-related posters, wear Christmas colors of red and green or sing Christmas songs, and that is for government officials to stop being such Humbugs and create a vibrant, open environment where all expression can flourish.

While the First Amendment prohibits the government from forcing religion on people or endorsing one particular religion over another, there is no legitimate legal reason why people should not be able to celebrate the season freely or wish each other a Merry Christmas or even mention the word Christmas.

After all, the First Amendment affirms the right to freedom for religion, not freedom from religion.

Hoping to clear up the legal misunderstanding over the do’s and don’ts of celebrating Christmas, The Rutherford Institute’s Constitutional Q&A on “Twelve Rules of Christmas” provides basic guidelines for lawfully celebrating Christmas in schools, workplaces and elsewhere.

Yet while Christmas may be the “trigger” for purging Christmas from public places, government forums and speech—except when it profits Corporate America—it is part and parcel of the greater trend in recent years to whittle away at free speech and trample the First Amendment underfoot.

Anything that might raise the specter of controversy is avoided at all costs.

We are witnessing the emergence of an unstated yet court-sanctioned right, one that makes no appearance in the Constitution and yet seems to trump the First Amendment at every turn: the right to not be offended.

In this way, emboldened by phrases such as “hate crimes,” “bullying,” “extremism” and “microaggressions,” free speech has been confined to carefully constructed “free speech zones,” criminalized when it skates too close to challenging the status quo, shamed when it butts up against politically correct ideals, and muzzled when it appears dangerous.

At the slightest hint of trouble, government officials (and corporations) are inclined to chuck anything that might be objectionable.

Yet when all is said and done, what the police state really wants is a nation of snowflakes, snitches and book burners: a legalistic, intolerant, elitist, squealing bystander nation willing to turn on each other and turn each other in for the slightest offense, while being incapable of presenting a united front against the threats posed by the government and its cabal of Constitution-destroying agencies and corporate partners.

You want to know why this country is in the state it’s in?

The answer is the same no matter what the problem might be, whether it’s the economy, government corruption, police brutality, endless wars, censorship, falling literacy rates, etc.: every one of these problems can be sourced back to the fact that “we the people” have stopped thinking for ourselves and relinquished responsibility for our lives and well-being to a government entity that sees us only as useful idiots.

The Greek philosopher Socrates believed in teaching people to think for themselves and in the free exchange of ideas. For his efforts, he was accused of corrupting the youth and was put to death. However, his legacy lived on in the Socratic method of teaching: posing questions that help young and old discover the answers by learning to think for themselves.

Now even the ability to think for oneself is in danger of extinction.

As Rod Serling, creator of the classic sci-fi series Twilight Zone and one of the most insightful commentators on human nature, once observed, “We’re developing a new citizenry. One that will be very selective about cereals and automobiles, but won’t be able to think.”

We face an immense threat in our society from this drive to obliterate our history and traditions in order to erect a saccharine view of reality. In the process, we are creating a schizophrenic world for our children to grow up in, and it is neither healthy nor will it produce the kind of people who will be able to face the challenges of a future ruled by a totalitarian regime.

As I make clear in my book Battlefield America: The War on the American People and in its fictional counterpart The Erik Blair Diaries, you can’t sanitize reality. You can’t scrub out of existence every unpleasant thought or idea. You can’t legislate tolerance. You can’t create enough safe spaces to avoid the ugliness that lurks in the hearts of men and women. You can’t fight ignorance with the weapons of a police state.

What you can do, however, is step up your game.

Opt for kindness over curtness, and civility over censorship. Choose peace over politics, and freedom over fascism. Find common ground with those whose politics or opinions or lifestyles may not jive with your own.

Do your part to make the world a little brighter and a little lighter, and maybe, just maybe, we’ll have a chance of digging our way out of this hole.

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This article was originally published on The Rutherford Institute.

Constitutional attorney and author John W. Whitehead is founder and president of The Rutherford Institute. His most recent books are the best-selling Battlefield America: The War on the American People, the award-winning A Government of Wolves: The Emerging American Police State, and a debut dystopian fiction novel, The Erik Blair Diaries. Whitehead can be contacted at [email protected].

Nisha Whitehead is the Executive Director of The Rutherford Institute. Information about The Rutherford Institute is available at www.rutherford.org.

They are regular contributors to Global Research.

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Essential to science, whether basic or applied, is the freedom of open discussion and debate. When varying interpretations exist, no opinion should be purged. Any entity, individual or collective, claiming authority to impose its determination of what is truth and what is “misinformation” is totalitarian and anti-science by definition. So it is the height of irony that the nation’s agency representing science, the National Science Foundation, has become a primary instrument for the protection of official governmental narrative and the attack on opposing views. But there you are.

That both the universities of Washington and Wisconsin are being funded by NSF through its Convergence Accelerator program was detailed on Global Research in August. To these NSF-funded projects must be added Stanford University, which is working in close association with U of WA. In all cases, the search is for detecting and countering “misinformation” on social media. Special emphasis is on Covid-19, vaccination hesitancy and the growing conviction that elections have been, and continue to be, stolen.

Stanford, through the Stanford Internet Observatory, and U of WA, through its Center For An Informed Public, joined with the Atlantic Council’s Digital Forensics Research Lab and Graphika, a company using AI to study the internet, to create the Election Integrity Partnership. A reading of the one page Executive Summary of EIP’s final report, which begins with “On January 6, 2021, an armed mob stormed the US Capitol…..”, and ends with “All stakeholders must focus on predicting and pre-bunking false narratives …..”, is an enlightening glimpse into the thinking and strategy permeating the Censorship Industrial Complex.

((ASIDE: On November 6, 2023 the Judiciary Committee of the House of Representatives reported that agencies in both the State Department and the Department of Homeland Security coordinated with Stanford University in creating the Election Integrity Partnership, which was created at the request of DHS. See HERE for a one page ‘bullet’ list of who is to be targeted by EIP for censorship.))

Meanwhile, faculty at the Hubbard School of Journalism and Mass Communication at the University of Minnesota was invited in 2022 to join a “team of researchers” in a project called Course Correct, a “weapon” designed to be “a tool for journalists that can help identify and correct misinformation online.” Again, funding for this “team of researchers” was coming from NSF. Here is the $5million grant, as outlined at the NSF website, revealing the lead role in this ‘Team’ to be the University of Wisconsin’s School of Journalism and Mass Communication, cited above regarding another NSF grant to U of WI. The University of Minnesota joined the “Team” to facilitate work on Phase 2 of the larger NSF grant.

Things are changing so quickly it’s hard to keep up. Only two years ago, virtually all governmental, media and celebrity “influencer” sources were functioning like a coordinated drone attack from every information outlet assuring the public that: Covid-19 vaccination is “safe and effective”, “stops the disease in its tracks”, “Nobody is safe until everyone is safe”, “The unvaccinated are the enemy… and … shouldn’t be welcomed in polite society”, etc. If you’ve forgotten, here’s an 11-minute trip down memory lane (see video below). Remember now?

At the same time, all voices to the contrary have been either rendered invisible or accused of “misinformation” or of “conspiracy theory”, that CIA-inspired gem. But as old items of misinformation and conspiracy theory are revealed as having been true all along (eg, here and here), the System simply doubles down. But then, why not, when all key elements — governmental agencies, intelligence/military, Pharma, big tech, big banks, mainstream media, “higher education” — all are now occupied territory by globalist interests that have placed their representative to form an information control grid. Even the White House is now part of it.

All of this harks back to a 2008 public law working paper, “Conspiracy Theories”, by two Harvard law professors. The authors claim that conspiracy theorists, a term the authors use interchangeably with “extremists”, suffer from “cognitive blunders” and “crippled epistemology” and cannot think clearly. And how do they intend to deal with the problem? “Practically speaking, the government might do well to maintain a more vigorous counter-disinformation establishment.” Specifically, they propose changing thinking of conspiracists through “cognitive infiltration” of citizen groups by governmental agents or their hirelings: “Government agents might enter chat rooms, online social networks, or even real-space groups and attempt to undermine percolating conspiracy theories.”

Conspiracy Theories authors suggest, as a means of destroying credibility, associating conspiracy theorists with people “mentally ill and subject to delusions”, with “Holocaust denial” and with “conspiracy entrepreneurs — who profit directly or indirectly from propagating their theories”. Nevertheless, they admit that conspiracy theories are difficult to counter and that “Extra resistance to correction through simple techniques is what makes conspiracy theories distinctly worrisome.” Incredibly, but perhaps not surprising, in 2009, a year after publication of Conspiracy Theories, Obama made the senior author, Cass Sunstein, Administrator of Information and Regulatory Affairs of the Office of Management and Budget. In connecting the dots, there is substantial indication that in this position paper one finds early indications of what, in time, is to morph into the Conspiracy Industrial Complex.

But it’s when the National Science Foundation has become a major player in the censorship complex that it seems as if it’s game over. It’s logical to conclude that when the presumed bastion of free inquiry and the objective pursuit of truth becomes a leading voice in the strategy to quash authoritarian-defined “misinformation”, it’s as if the last stronghold has been breached, and the System in its entirety is laid bare for all to see as thoroughly corrupt.

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Bill Willers is an emeritus professor of biology, University of Wisconsin at Oshkosh. He is founder of the Superior Wilderness Action Network and editor of Learning to Listen to the Land, and Unmanaged Landscapes, both from Island Press. He can be contacted at [email protected]. 

He is a regular contributor to Global Research.

Featured image: National Science Foundation’s former headquarters in Arlington County, Virginia; in 2017, the foundation relocated to Alexandria, Virginia (Licensed under the Public Domain)

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“The house was packed mostly with women and children. All of a sudden, a strike hit.”

Survivors of Israeli air strikes recounted the moment that a bombardment struck Khan Younis on Wednesday and described the destruction it caused. pic.twitter.com/FWP0cNlkHP

— Middle East Eye (@MiddleEastEye) December 6, 2023

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Featured image is from MEE

In Harm’s Way. What’s with the World’s Fascination with Dead, Dying and Orphaned Children?

By Barbara Nimri Aziz, December 05, 2023

Today, it’s dead young Palestinians. Months ago, it was Ukrainian (although its fallen fighters have ample attention—after all they’re European); before that we had fleeting glimpses of starved and bombed youngsters in Yemen.

COP28: Where Fossil Fuel Industries Go to Gloat

By Dr. Binoy Kampmark, December 06, 2023

The sequence of COP meetings, ostensibly a United Nations forum to discuss dramatic climate change measures in the face of galloping emissions, has now been shown for what it is: a luxurious, pampered bazaar for the very industries that fear a dip in their profits and ultimate obsolescence.

COVID Propaganda Roundup: Study Shows mRNA Shots May Trigger Psychosis

By Ben Bartee, December 05, 2023

Let’s have an empathy exercise: picture yourself so hopelessly propagandized, on your 30^th booster, masked alone in your house, retweeting fervently updated CDC guidelines, your immune system totally shot to hell, terrified out of your mind that something somewhere is allowed to breathe air unmolested, as to be sufficiently impressed by this total shitshow of a Moderna commercial that you decide to hit CVS that very day.

Argentina’s Javier Milei Administration: The Lunatic, the Beautiful and the Rich

By Hermann Ploppa, December 05, 2023

Milei wants to abolish the Argentine national currency and introduce the US dollar instead and at the same time “blow up” the Argentine central bank. Milei performs a wild dervish dance on stage when it is clear that he has won the election by a landslide, ten percent ahead of his rival from the Peronist party.

Towards a New Military Alliance? Russia-China-Iran-North Korea

By Huseyin Vodinali, December 05, 2023

There are currently four hot war/tension points in the world with high growth potential: Ukraine, Palestine, Taiwan and North Korea. In Ukraine, Russia is at the forefront and is winning. The days of Zionist Dictator clown Zelensky, who sent nearly 1 million people to the meat grinder for the sake of his Uncle Sam, are numbered. Most likely, Chief of General Staff Zaluzhny will replace him with the promise of making an agreement with Russia.

Maternal mRNA SARS-CoV-2 Vaccination Fails to Protect Babies

By Dr. Peter McCullough, December 05, 2023

For a vaccine to be considered in my practice, the theoretical vaccine efficacy would have to meet a lower bound of the confidence interval of >50%. Because we do not have randomized trials, we must consider the point estimate of VE in non-randomized studies to be a statistical blur.

Suicides Due to COVID-19 Vaccine Side Effects

By Dr. William Makis, December 05, 2023

21 year old Emilia Brangefalt was a professional Swedish trail runner (for Adidas Terrex) who won bronze in the 2022 Trail World Championships. She took her own life on Nov.13, 2023 after developing an extremely high heart rate in July 2023 that ended her training and running.

The World Health Organization Pandemic Treaty, a Road to Medical Enslavement

By Richard Gale and Dr. Gary Null, December 05, 2023

The World Health Organization’s institutional transparency and public perception have been very problematic during the past couple decades. Many critics perceive the WHO as a dire threat to global health and the sovereignty of nations’ domestic health policies. The organization largely operates under a veil of secrecy.

Ukraine’s Former Top General Says the Counteroffensive Failed: “Why is Ukraine continuing the war”?

By Ahmed Adel, December 05, 2023

The Ukrainian counteroffensive, which began in June with much confidence amid expectations that assault brigades equipped with Western military equipment would easily crush Russian defensive lines and reach Crimea, ended with a sobering humiliation as the dreams and aspirations of strategists in Kiev did not survive the harsh reality.

Israel Reopens the Gaza Slaughterhouse. Chris Hedges

By Chris Hedges, December 05, 2023

The skies over Gaza are filled — after a seven-day truce — with projectiles of death. Warplanes. Attack helicopters. Drones. Artillery shells. Tank shells. Mortars. Bombs. Missiles. Gaza is a cacophony of explosions and forlorn screams and cries for help beneath collapsed buildings. Fear, once again, is coiling itself around every heart in the Gazan concentration camp. 

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The sequence of COP meetings, ostensibly a United Nations forum to discuss dramatic climate change measures in the face of galloping emissions, has now been shown for what it is: a luxurious, pampered bazaar for the very industries that fear a dip in their profits and ultimate obsolescence.  Call it a drugs summit for narcotics distributors promoting clean-living; a convention for casino moguls promising to aid problem gamblers.  The list of wicked analogies is endless.

Reading the material from the gathering that is known in its longer form as the United Nations Climate Change Conference, one could be forgiven for falling for the sweetened agitprop.  We find, on the UN website explaining the role of COP28, that the forum is “where the world comes together to agree on ways to address the climate crisis, such as limiting global temperature rise to 1.5 degrees Celsius, helping vulnerable communities adapt to the effects of climate change, and achieving net-zero emissions by 2050.”

Then comes the boggling figure: 70,000 delegates will be mingling and haggling, including the parties of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). “Business leaders, young people, climate scientists, Indigenous Peoples, journalists, and various other experts and stakeholders are also among the participants.”

The view from outside the conference is a matter of night and day. Fernando Racimo, evolutionary biologist and member of the activist group Scientist Rebellion, sums up the progress of ever bloating summitry in this field since 1995:

“Almost 30 years of promises, of pledges,” he told Nature, “and yet carbon emissions continue to go up to even higher levels.  As scientists, we’re recognizing this failure.”

In Dubai, where COP28 is being held, representatives from the coal, oil and gas industries have come out in numbers to talk about climate change. They, it would seem, are the business leaders and stakeholders who matter.  And such representatives have every reason to be encouraged by the rich mockery of it all: the United Arab Emirates is a top oil producer and member of the Organisation of Petroleum Exporting Countries.

According to an analysis from the environmental Kick Big Polluters Out (KBPO) coalition, 2,456 fossil fuel lobbyists were granted access to the summit.

“In a year when global temperatures and greenhouse gas emissions shattered records, there has been an explosion of fossil fuel lobbyists heading to UN talks, with nearly four times more than were granted last year.”

The breakdown of the attendee figures makes for grim reading. In the first place, fossil fuel lobbyists have outdone the number delegates from climate vulnerable nations: the number there comes to a mere 1,509. In terms of country delegations, the fossil fuel group of participants is only outdone by Brazil, with 3,081 people.

In contrast, the numbers of scientist presents are minimal to the point of being invisible.  Climate change activists, the young, and journalists serve in decorative and performative roles, the moralising priests who give the last rites before the execution.

Image: Dr. Sultan Al Jaber (Licensed under CC BY 2.0)

The theme of the conference had already been set by COP president Sultan al-Jaber, who felt, in his vast wisdom, that he could simultaneously host the conference with high principle and still conduct his duties as CEO of the Abu Dhabi National Oil Company (Adnoc).

This, after all, presented a wonderful chance to gossip about climate goals in hazy terms while striking genuine fossil fuel deals with participating countries. This much was shown by leaked briefing documents to the BBC and the Centre for Climate Reporting (CCR).

The documents in question involve over 150 pages of briefings prepared by the COP28 team for meetings with Jaber and various interested parties held between July and October this year. They point to plans to raise matters of commercial interest with as many as 30 countries.  The CCR confirms

“that on at least one occasion a nation followed up on commercial discussions brought up in a meeting with Al Jaber; a source with knowledge of discussions also told CCR that Adnoc’s business interests were allegedly raised during a meeting with another country.”

The COP28 team did not deny using bilateral meetings related to the summit to discuss business matters. A spokesperson for the team was mightily indifferent in remarking that Jaber “holds a number of positions alongside his role as COP28 President-Designate. That is public knowledge. Private meetings are private, and we do not comment on them.”

The Sultan proved to be more direct, telling a news conference that such “allegations are false, not true, incorrect, are not accurate. And it’s an attempt to undermine the work of the COP28 presidency.” Jaber went on to promise that he had never seen “these talking points that they refer to or that I ever even used such talking points in my discussions.” No need for notes, then, when advancing the fossil fuel interests of country and industry.

Concerned parties are attempting to find various ways of protesting against a summit that has all the hallmarks of gross failure.  Scientists and environmentalists are choosing to voice their disagreement in their respective countries, thereby avoiding any addition to the increasingly vast carbon footprint being left by COP28.  As well they should: Dubai is, essentially, hosting an event that could be best described as a museum piece of human failings.

Currently, delegates are pouring over a draft of the final agreement that proposes “an orderly and just phase-out of fossil fuels”.  What is just here is a fascinating question, given the lobbying by the fossil fuel advocates who have a rather eccentric notion of fairness. As Jean Paul Prates, CEO of Brazil’s state-run oil company Petrobras declared, “The energy transition will only be valid if it’s a fair transition.” The prospects for an even more grandiose, stage-managed failure, helped along by oil and gas, is in the offing.

With the figures of science essentially excluded from these hot air gatherings in favour of industries that see them as troubling nuisances best ignored, the prospect for local and domestic reform through informed activism becomes the only sensible approach.  There are even heartening studies suggesting that climate protest can warm frigid public opinion, the only measure that really interests the vote getting politician.  Unfortunate that this seems like a last throw for much of humanity and the earth’s ecosystem.

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Dr. Binoy Kampmark was a Commonwealth Scholar at Selwyn College, Cambridge. He currently lectures at RMIT University. He is a regular contributor to Global Research and Asia-Pacific Research. Email: [email protected] 

Featured image: UNCTAD at the United Nations Climate Change Conference – COP28 (Licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0)

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***

Israeli reserve officers say surveillance video and audio recordings from the Gaza border during the Hamas attack have been deleted, potentially to prevent an investigation into what happened that day

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Israeli military surveillance video from the Gaza border from 7 October, the day of Hamas’ surprise attack, has disappeared, Israeli news site Walla reported on 3 December.

During a visit by a senior female officer from the Israeli army general staff to the various division headquarters, senior officers in the reserves commented that “an invisible hand” had deleted videos from the various military surveillance cameras showing the events of that day, the Hebrew language outlet stated.

The videos were deleted from the military network known as “ZeeTube,” potentially to prevent their use in an in-depth investigation of how thousands of Hamas fighters managed to breach the border fence and infiltrate Israel to carry out the attack.

“We sat down with one of the generals and were going to show him a video about one of the events, and we found out that someone had deleted the videos,” said a senior reserve officer from one of the divisions, adding, “It was very embarrassing. Then suspicion arose as to why someone would do that. And at the end the excuses started that it was decided to give special privileges to certain officers to view the footage. Do officers in our ranks need privileges? It looks like a war between generals and officials. There is a feeling that everyone is now trying to take care of themselves for the day after,” when an investigation into events of that day takes place.

Israeli officials, including top generals and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, have acknowledged the Hamas attack, in which 1,200 Israeli soldiers and civilians were killed, resulted from an intelligence failure. However, they insist the events of that day cannot be investigated until after the war in Gaza, in which some 20,000 Palestinians have been killed by Israeli bombing, ends.

Officials in the Gaza Division said that there was also a “disruption” in recordings of audio communications from 7 October. According to them,

“Some of the recordings have disappeared or were simply downloaded from the network and transferred to another location at the direction of commanders. We are unable to hear them … Someone decided to transfer or delete them so that no one will hear them. The recordings tell the whole story of what happened, what we did, especially in the first 8 hours and in the moments when there was really no one to talk to.”

In response to the claims, an Israeli military spokesperson told Walla that no videos were deleted from the operational systems after the events of 7 October. The videos have been blocked to unauthorized individuals to prevent viewing out of curiosity and voyeurism. The videos are all kept for the benefit of the in-depth investigation that will be carried out on the subject by relevant parties, the spokesperson said.

A military official stated,

“In the system in question, videos are automatically deleted after a few days. If necessary, the videos are saved in a separate folder. In this case, all the videos were saved.”

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Featured image: Abandoned and damaged cars parked at the festival (12 October) (Licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0)

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First published on December 14, 2022

***

Don’t look up lest you could see what nobody wants you to see – namely the Big-Big Lie. As time goes on and Agenda 2030, alias The WEF’s Great Reset progresses, the asteroid approaching Mother Earth is ever moving closer, is an ever greater risk for the destruction of our planet. Its ever more obvious. And we all feel it – we feel the heat of the approaching meteor. 

Yet, we are afraid to look up. We are even told there is a comet approaching that could destroy us all. We are scared, but we don’t look up to see the ever-growing enormity. Because if we would, we would have to take measures to stop the meteor from hitting our planet.

It would “disturb” our comfort; we would have to stand up, we would have to act in unison to muster the strength to bring about a change in the direction of the asteroid, to save our planet.

We seem to be scared out of our minds – so much so, that we’d prefer the ostrich-behavior, looking down, even sticking our heads in the sand – not to see the obvious.

Literally, the destruction of our lives. The longer we wait the lesser our chances to deviate the “colossal monster” approaching us. We know it, deep down, our innermost intuition tells us that there is something mighty wrong with what is approaching.

Doing nothing is like committing suicide. Because the warning signals have been there and here and everywhere – for years, not just since January 2020, when the meteor was first sighted and officially registered.

Cognitive dissonance and FEAR, yes, repeated FEAR, is their greatest instrument of intimidation.

They don’t hide the comet. But it’s up to us to look up and see it, to do whatever it takes to swerving its trajectory away from our Mother Earth. We can do it – we can still do it.

This call for attention, for looking up, is not meant to spread more fear. Quite the contrary.

By seeing your enemy, by looking him in the eye, you gain strength and lose fear. By doing this collectively, as a solidarity unit of humans – facing the lies and stepping finally away from the lies that have swallowed our lives for decades, for centuries, probably for at least the last 2000 years – then we will be able to breathe fresh air. New Energy.

“Don’t Look Up”

Don’t Look Up is the title of a 2021 released movie about a comet that approaches Mother Earth threatening to destroy her.

The comet is a metaphor for the horrendously forceful corporate finance-digital power engineered covid and climate change crises about to destroy Mother Earth. The movie is yet another warning.

It tells us: Do look up! Look the Monster right into its expressionless, cold killer-face.

That’s a step WE have to take in order to stop it. And we can stop it.

The film director Adam McKay points out that we live in a society that allows us to bypass scientific fact and ignore the threat of our own self-destruction for rich people’s short-term gain.

He is absolutely right.

“Don’t Look Up” is also the title of a German Video entitled “Schau Nicht Nach Oben. (18-min podcast in “apolut” – German alternative media)

See the German video below. There is a German transcript.

While it addresses the German context, it is relevant to Western Europe and most of the western world.

 

Propaganda tells us not to “look up”

Propaganda tells us not to “look up” unless we forego our comfort and may see a reality that we have ignored for the past few hundred years of human history – if not longer – and we would not like to see the dark hole which is affecting our lives.

Most will not look up and do what the dark power tells them to do – “get vaxxed” and follow the “Green Agenda, the so-called New Green Deal – for your safety and health”.

The New Green Deal that uses fake climate change as a pretext for stopping using energy, for collapsing our industry, our livelihood, for destroying agriculture, our sources of food,  bringing about famine, with the ultimate goal of “depopulation”. It’s genocide on behalf of the “elite masters” who are carrying out this diabolical plan on behalf of the financial-digital-military complex.

Those who despite propaganda and threats to the contrary would like to see what the “comet” looks like, become vulnerable to losing their life-earning activities, their “raison d’être” – unless they let themselves be “vaccinated” with a deadly mNRA-injection (a gene-modifying poison) which since early 2021 has resulted in an upward trend in mortality and morbidity.

The WEF elites also want us to eat lab-made food, meat, or insects from Bill Gates’ insect farms and meat factories:

“Company Gets Grant to Develop Food Based on Insects to Fight Malnutrition

Bill Gates’ Patent 6,754,472 B1

There is more: Bill Gates has acquired a patent from the US Patent Office. In 2004 Microsoft was awarded US Patent 6,754,472 B1, which is titled: Method and Apparatus for Transmitting Power and Data using the Human Body. See this for details.

Click Here or Screenshot to Access the Patent Document

Although this patent dates back to June 2004, it is now of utmost relevance, with possibly as many as half or more of the world’s population having been injected with a vaccine which contains electromagnetic graphene oxide. This electromagnetic substance is slated to play a role. The Patent confirms  that “The human body is used as a conductive medium”. According to The Abstract of U.S Patent 6,754,472 B1: 

Look up! It’s there.

We are writing mid-December 2022. Forced and fake energy saving measures, mandated by the EU, and adhered to also by the UK, has most of the European Continent already freezing. Sub-freezing temps coupled with dramatic overnight increases in energy prices prevent millions of poor Europeans from heating, pushing them into freezing – all in the name of population reduction.

The artificially created food shortages are an integral part of the noble Green Agenda. British farmers warn: it will bring about a food supply crisis. And in some countries it’s famine.

Guardian, December 6, 2022

A true Cult to be successful has to warn people of what they are up to – but normally nobody listens. “They” know that – we were warned already in late summer, as the heat was fading, that we may expect a cold, a very cold Global Northern Winter, affecting especially Europe.

In the UK, according to figures from the End Fuel Poverty Coalition, 16.4 million people (25% of the British population) will be unable to afford heating this winter.

The Warm Welcome Campaign stated that one in ten excess deaths this winter will be attributable to fuel poverty, and that government assistance – despite adding billions of pounds to the national debt, will still fall US$980 equivalent per household short of making up for the increased cost of living.

Some 3,300 ‘warm banks’ have been opened across the UK, as millions of people face the prospect of fuel poverty this winter. The Met Office predicts that temperatures could drop to -10 degrees Celsius in some locations over the next week.

Screenshot The National News

Organized by a coalition of Christian groups, the Warm Welcome Campaign has seen “warm banks” emerging, in the form of community organizations, churches, libraries, and businesses opening their doors to people desperate to come in from the cold. Some of these spaces offer free tea and a space to work. Many are filling up rapidly.

“There’s little doubt that we are heading towards a moment of crisis this winter in the face of energy and fuel inflation,” Christian activist Carl Beech stated on the campaign’s website. “People will be facing a stark choice between food and warmth. Creating warm and super welcoming spaces…is going to be an absolute necessity” (RT – 11 December 2022).

Look up! – And you will see, there is something deadly wrong.

Then look across the Atlantic, from where the energy shortage-drive emanates – “it’s Putin’s fault – Russia, Russia, Russia!” – the mandate on Europe to create an energy cum food shortage, to demolish her industrial base, her employment, her livelihood – look across the Atlantic to the Atlantists who have almost zilch, zero energy savings measures in place.

They are still driving over 5-liter-engine SUVs, pick-up trucks, and otherwise fancy gas-guzzling luxury cars, at literally a third or less the gasoline price from what it is in Europe. Most restaurants are still freezing cold from super energy-swallowing air-conditioning. Even though, outside temps have become quite pleasant in the south, and even cool in the mid- and northern part of the country. – And nobody talks about saving on heating costs.

All the while, in tiny Switzerland, paradise of the money masters and white collar “gangsters”, where (per capita) most Teslas are sold worldwide, a status symbol of the rich, of course! – in this little country, they are talking about banning electric cars for saving energy. The Power of the Greens! Can you imagine!

About 60% of all energy produced in Switzerland stems from renewable hydro-power. The other 40% come from four still operating nuclear power plants. But in 2017 the government decided to phase them out – to follow the powerful Green all destructive Agenda.

To the contrary of the Green Propaganda, nuclear power is one of the cleanest, and, yes, safest sources of energy. What will replace nuclear power? – Environmentally harmful – in every sense of the word – windmills and solar panels? Just to conform to the “Soros-philanthropy-funded” Green Agenda?

Look up! – And you’ll see every-increasing excess mortality everywhere in the Global North.

Then look closer, and find out where these excess deaths come from. A myriad of causes. All sorts of aggressive cancers, from liver, to male and female reproductive systems, leukemia and other blood cancers, stomach, even eyes – heart attacks, Sudden Deaths, myocarditis – and so many other diseases. Yes, diseases that always existed. To some extent. But not to today’s extent. As clearly shown by the excess mortality stats.

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On Excess mortality in Canada and US see: 

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Already in early 2021, Mike Yeadon, former VP of Pfizer and Director of Pfizer Research, clearly warned, there will be so many diseases as time goes on after the coercive vaccination campaigns, they will be hard or impossible to trace back to the vaxxes.

But they are the cause of the poisonous, toxic injections, called vaccines, we, the people were forced – and in many countries are still forced – to accept, so as to hold on to our jobs, our livelihoods.

Crime has no name anymore.

Our vocabulary lacks the strength to appropriately describe the monstrous ongoing deadly tyranny.

What can you say, when you have a country like New Zealand, that just passed legislation, allowing the NZ authorities to take kids away from anti-vaxxer parents; or you have a country, the UK, that allows one of their counties, Oxfordshire, to lock down an entire society for climate change reasons, which every half-way educated person knows it’s a harsh criminally enforced hoax:

Oxfordshire County Council yesterday approved plans to lock residents into one of six zones to ‘save the planet’ from global warming. The latest stage in the ’15 minute city’ agenda is to place electronic gates on key roads in and out of the city, confining residents to their own neighbourhoods.

Under the new scheme if residents want to leave their zone they will need permission from the Council who gets to decide who is worthy of freedom and who isn’t. Under the new scheme residents will be allowed to leave their zone a maximum of 100 days per year, but in order to even gain this every resident will have to register their car details with the council who will then track their movements via smart cameras round the city.

People may travel only within their county, or with a special permit crossing into a neighboring county. The legislation is drafted, so it could last forever. – And it can and may most certainly be replicated in other counties and other countries. (emphasis added)

The WEF’s Academy for Young Global Leaders (YGL)

Let’s remind us all, who the leaders of these two countries are. Ms. Jacinda Ardern, PM of New Zealand, and Mr. Rishi Sunak, PM of the UK, are both scholars of Klaus Schwab’s (WEF), Academy for Young Global Leaders (YGL). In one of his recent self-gratulatory statements, Klaus Schwab said, how proud he was that the WEF was able to “penetrate” governments around the world:

I have to say then I mention names like Mrs Merkel, even Vladimir Putin and so on they all have been Young Global Leaders of The World Economic Forum. But what we are really proud of now with the young generation like Prime Minister Trudeau, President of Argentina and so on, is that we penetrate the cabinets… It is true in Argentina and it is true in France now… (Klaus Schwab)

Click here or image to access Video 

Look up!

Again, and again – learn, look the enemy in the eye. Seek out on your own statistics – and you will see that fertility rates are going down drastically, by both women and men. In many EU countries life-child births have gone down by 40%. Emphasis on life-births, because death born fetuses are drastically on the rise. – The vaxxes. In many hospitals, pregnant women are forced to be vaxxed.

Crime no-end!

An urgent call for a Nuremberg 2.0 is of the order.

A call for a new justice system. Nothing that exists today can be reformed. It is rotten to the core. A rotten tomato cannot be reformed.

Our society needs renewal.

No Reset.

Schwab, Gates, Rockefeller, Soros – et al – must go.

The colossus financial-digital-military complex, that dictates the ever-growing tyranny and totally genocidal and enslaving control from the shadow, must be sidestepped.

RENEWAL of everything.

But we have to “look up” to see it.

Reaching out hands to each other, in a spiritual and physical solidarity, We the People, can overcome. We MUST. Otherwise……

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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 is a non-resident Senior Fellow of the Chongyang Institute of Renmin University, Beijing. 

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***

By chaos we understand something unpredictable and that escapes the myopic vision that only our eyes can outline in the face of events that escape the known parameters since our mind is capable of sequencing only fragments of the total sequence of the immense genome of chaos.

Likewise, a crisis always implies a break in the linear course of events that results in a series of alternatives between which one must choose and to get out of said labyrinth, it is necessary to use the ability to differentiate and think critically following the call “Occam’s razor” or law of parsimony.

This law is a philosophical principle enunciated by the scholar William of Occam, which is translated into the following axiom: “Given two theories on equal terms about the same phenomenon, the simpler one has a better chance of being correct” and what they would be a paradigm for Charles Darwin’s theory of the evolution of species; Isaac Newton’s law of universal gravitation or the law of supply and demand.

However, given the teleonomic scenario in which we find ourselves, marked by an extreme dose of volatility and which will especially affect complex systems such as Meteorology, Demography, Epidemic Detection and Prevention, Migratory Flows, the Stock Market and the New Geopolitical World Order, the human capacity to differentiate and think critically is seriously limited.

Thus, we inevitably resort to the term “butterfly effect” to try to explain the dizzying conjunction of centripetal and centrifugal forces that will end up configuring the unconnected puzzle of ordered chaos that is developing.

The aforementioned “butterfly effect” transferred to complex systems such as Demoscopy would have As a side effect, the impossibility of detecting an immediate future in advance since the quantum models they use would only be simulations based on previous models, so the inclusion of just one incorrect variable or the sudden appearance of an unforeseen variable causes the margin to increase.

The error of these models is amplified in each simulated unit of time until it even exceeds the stratospheric limit of one hundred percent.

Brexit, the COVID pandemic and the emergence of Cold War 2.0 thus marked the end of the “teleological scenario” in which the purpose of creative processes were planned by finite models that could intermodel or simulate various alternative futures and in which that priority was given to intention, purpose and foresight and its replacement by the “teleonomic scenario”.

This scenario will be marked by an extreme dose of volatility, so the aforementioned principle of Occam’s razor seems useless given the complexity of the scenarios that lie ahead and we will have to resort to the advice attributed to the poverello d’assisi:

“Start by doing what is necessary, then what is possible and suddenly, you will be doing the impossible.”

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Germán Gorraiz López is a political analyst. He is a regular contributor to Global Research.

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***

There are many official and unofficial as well as academic and non-academic approaches and formal/informal definitions of politics and its functioning in society. However, as the most universal concept, it can be concluded that politics is simply the ability to direct and administer a state (in ancient Greek – polis or a city-state) or some other political organizations (like multilateral, international, supranational, etc.). In essence, the administration of the state or other political subjects is a matter of art. 

The state can be defined as a political association that establishes autonomous/sovereign jurisdiction within defined territorial borders. In addition, sovereignty is the practice of superior political authority that is reflected by the state to be the only and superior creator of laws and power to protect them within the borders of the state (real or imaginable). In practice, there are two types of state sovereignty: external and internal.

External (political) sovereignty considers the state’s ability to act as an independent actor in international relations. However, practically, it implies two crucial points: 

1) That states have to be from different viewpoints (or at least legal) equal in relations with each other; and 

2) That the territorial integrity followed by the political independence of a state is inviolable.

Internal (political) sovereignty of the state, however, refers to the territory within the state borders by the supreme political power (government, in practice backed by armed security forces). Finally, politics is closely related to the concept of authority which is the ability to influence the politics of others, basically, based on required duty and obey.        

Nevertheless, as can be expected, the understanding and especially some official definitions of politics is historically speaking very highly and even essentially contested matter. In practice, there exists a high degree of disagreement about very practical issues on which aspects of social life and human environments can be applied to the art of politics.

According to one approach, a person by birth is political which simply means in the practice that the fundamental essence of political life is going to be seen in any inter-human relationship including, for instance, gender relations (male/female). However, in popular usage around the world (but especially in the West), the restricted framework for politics is designed.

In order words, it is, basically, understood that politics is working only on the governmental level dealing with state affairs. In Western societies, politics, in addition, has to involve political party competition followed by multiparty elections for different levels of authority. In general, politics as a sociohistorical phenomenon is extremely limited in both space and time.

The traditional understanding of the phenomenon of politics was that it is “the art and science of government” or “management of the state affairs”. However, in this case, the practical problem is still unresolved: it was never reached a common agreement about the scope of which activities and levels of state management the government is responsible for. For instance, some of the focal questions are: 

1) Is the government restricted only to state affairs?;  

2) Does the government have the right to interfere in the affairs of the church, local community, or family?; 

3) Does the government take place in a (liberal) economy?; etc.

Historically, the philosophers of political science have been dealing with two crucial questions applied to the phenomenon of politics: 

1) Do other creatures except human beings exercise politics; and 

2) Is it possible for society to exist without politics? 

Some of them claimed that other creatures (like bees) have politics and that some kind of society, at least theoretically, (like Utopian) can exist without politics. In practice, nonetheless, politics is applied only to human beings; in other words, to those beings who can communicate symbolically and as a result make statements, accept certain principles, argue, and finally disagree.

For instance, politics happens in cases when human beings argue about some practical issues in their societies and have certain procedures to resolve the problem in order to find a common agreement acceptable at least by the arithmetic majority (democracy) but not necessary.

In the Western (liberal democratic) concept of politics, no (real) politics in cases when there is a monolithic and total agreement on the rights and duties in a society (for example, in the one-party dictatorial/totalitarian system). 

However, from the broadest viewpoint, politics refers to certain activities used by human beings to create, defend, and change rules on different levels under which they are living. Politics was all the time closely linked to both conflicts and cooperations and agreements and disagreements.

From one viewpoint, there is the practice of opposite arguments, opposite wishes on how to solve the problem, competing political, economic, social, etc. wishes, and beating the interests of the others. In this case, there is disagreement about the rules under which the people of certain societies are living.

However, in many practical cases, for the sake of influencing such rules (law) or forcing their practical implementation, people can work with other people. Nevertheless, politics in essence is an extremely contested phenomenon as it was historically understood as the art of government/state, as public affairs in most general viewpoints, as the non-violent resolution of different disputes, and, finally, as power and the distribution of various kinds of resources. Finally, statecraft (political management of the state) can be defined as the art of conducting public affairs and foreign politics to realize national interest: goals of state foreign policy for (supposedly) the benefit of society. 

In any case of the acting of the state as an independent political actor either in inner or outer politics, the possession of real power is necessary.

The phenomenon of political power can be understood as the ability to influence the results of certain actions, which includes the ability of the state to manage political and other affairs within its own borders without the interference of other (outside) political actors. In this sense, state politics and power are in very close relations, basically synonyms.  

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

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***

In the clip below, Moderna CEO Stéphane Bancel appears to cop to his complicity in the widest-ranging criminal enterprise in world history at a Davos summit in January 2023:

“Moderna had made 100,000 [vaccine] doses in 2019, for the whole year. And I remember walking, after Davos, into the office of my head of manufacturing and I said “how will we make a billion doses next year?”, and he looked at me a bit funny and said “what?”. I said “yeah, we need to make a billion doses next year, there’s going to be a pandemic.”

Speaking at the WEF, Moderna CEO Stéphane Bancel, admits to having prior knowledge in 2019 that there would be a "pandemic" in 2020.

"Moderna had made 100,000 doses in 2019, for the whole year. And I remember walking, after Davos, into the office of my head of manufacturing and… pic.twitter.com/MYb6OY0L0V

— Wide Awake Media (@wideawake_media) November 20, 2023

If that’s not an admission of foreknowledge of, if not active participation in, a criminal conspiracy, I’ll be dipped and rolled in cracker crumbs!

Ultra-cringe Moderna Spot: ‘Vaxx that Body’ 

“The line separating good and evil passes not through states, nor between classes, nor between political parties either — but right through every human heart.”
-Alexander Solzhenitsyn

Let’s have an empathy exercise: picture yourself so hopelessly propagandized, on your 30^th booster, masked alone in your house, retweeting fervently updated CDC guidelines, your immune system totally shot to hell, terrified out of your mind that something somewhere is allowed to breathe air unmolested, as to be sufficiently impressed by this total shitshow of a Moderna commercial that you decide to hit CVS that very day.

😬 I'm not dying of myocarditis, but I might die of Cringe after watching this!

New Moderna Covid Vax commercial is airing on TV. This is real, guys. Not satire. 🤯 pic.twitter.com/2tax020PtM

— Natural Immunity FTW (@NaturallyFTW) November 22, 2023

Here’s the horrible truth Solzhenitsyn was driving at: minus a bit of critical thinking skills imparted by some competent authority figure in our youth and perhaps some psychedelic-assisted enlightenment on the nature of things, sprinkling in some public-school indoctrination and a postgraduate liberal arts degree, it could be any of us.

Shot Psychosis

Continuing with the theme here of Branch COVIDian neurosis and their pathological inability to rationally process information, here we have a fascinating pair of case studies suggesting that the shots themselves — accompanying fear porn propaganda notwithstanding — might, in fact, induce psychosis.

Via Elsevier

“The aim of the study is to investigate whether there is a causal relationship between the administration of the COVID-19 vaccine and the onset of psychotic symptoms in patients without a previous mental health history…

A case series of two patients with first psychotic episode after administration of this vaccine is presented. Both patients were attended by the psychiatric unit of the Regional University Hospital in Malaga…

Two male patients, 23 and 30 years old, with no previous history of mental illness or substance use presented with auditory and cenesthetic hallucinations, disorganized behavior and speech, and a feeling of derealization 24-72 hours after COVID-19 vaccine administration. On the first day they had presented febrile fever and fatigue as somatic symptoms. One of them also had insomnia and delusions, with significant psychotic distress, which required hospitalization in the psychiatric ward. Physical examination and complementary tests were normal. In both patients, with the introduction of low antipsychotic doses, the symptomatology resolved almost completely within a week, with good insight.”

Certainly, to establish a definitive causal link between the injections and psychosis, we would need more robust research than two case studies. But, mechanistically, this passes the smell test.

These shots artificially induce the cells to produce synthetic mRNA, which then wreaks havoc on the immune system and generates autoimmunity in ways that even the sadomasochistic scientists who designed the shots barely understand.

The injections also circumvent the blood-brain barrier — an evolutionary feature designed to protect the delicate brain from dangerous bits of foreign pathogenic material such as artificial mRNA.

Via New Medical Life Sciences:

“The harmful effects of mRNA vaccine-produced high levels of S protein are not yet completely understood. Researchers have cautioned that they induce complex reprogramming of innate immune responses; moreover, the vaccine-produced S protein remains near the vaccination site and even circulates in the bloodstream to directly affect the host cells with long-term consequences. Therefore, it is crucial to monitor the biodistribution and location of S protein from mRNA vaccines.

Studies have recovered COVID-19 mRNA from the cerebrospinal fluid of vaccinees, suggesting it can cross the blood-brain barrier (BBB). In addition, even without crossing the BBB, several cytokines induced by COVID-19 infection cross the BBB to affect central nervous system (CNS) function.

In this way, COVID-19 mRNA reaches the brain, infects astrocytes, and triggers neuropathological changes that contribute to the structural and functional alterations in the brain of COVID-19 patients. The researchers have also raised concerns that the lipid nanoparticles (LNPs) can diffuse quickly to the CNS through the olfactory bulb or blood. However, these phenomenons, including the role of innate memory responses to LNPs, need to be further explored in future research.” 

Once again, these totally megalomaniacal Public Health™ and pharmaceutical technocrats have no idea what they are doing to their test subjects, which is the population at large. The world is Pfizer’s petri dish, and it has not given informed consent.

For this malfeasance and total abdication of the “first do no harm” principle in medicine, justice and common decency demand that we have Nuremberg II.

N-95 Study Exposes the Mask Scam (Again) 

Here we have the twelfth or so totally damning study on the mask scam from scientific outlets/institutions otherwise considered legitimate by the ruling class — except when they disseminate unapproved information.

Contained below are the results of an analysis of the toxic concentration of volatile organic compounds found in the “safe and effective” N95 masks from the well-documented domestic terrorists at the Journal of Ecotoxicology and Environmental Safety:

“In this study, VOCs [volatile organic compounds] generated from various types of masks, including commonly used KF94 disposable masks, were assessed. The types and concentrations of VOCs that humans are likely to be exposed to from these masks under various conditions (i.e., emission time, temperature, and mask types) were calculated and compared. This study demonstrated that disposable masks (KF94) released higher concentrations of TVOCs in comparison to cotton masks, with values of 3730 ± 1331 µg m–3 for KF94 and 268 ± 51.6 µg m–3 for cotton masks. The concentrations of TVOCs in KF94 masks are high enough to pose a concern based on indoor air quality guidelines established by the German Federal Environment Agency…

It is clear that particular attention must be paid to the VOCs associated with the use of KF94 masks their effects on human health.”

Of course, we can’t expect this study to stop public school teachers from taping these devices to children’s faces for Public Health™. Those kids are going to learn good and hard how to respect their masters.

*

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This article was originally published on the author’s Substack, Armageddon Prose.

Ben Bartee, author of Broken English Teacher: Notes From Exile, is an independent Bangkok-based American journalist with opposable thumbs. He is a regular contributor to Global Research.

Featured image:  A hand holding an mRNA vaccine vial. (Spencer Davis / Unsplash)

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***

He exudes the charisma of a vacuum cleaner salesman who uses cocaine and alcohol to get the most out of himself. The presidential candidate is waving around wildly with a chainsaw. The man wants to use this to saw apart the political caste on the Rio de la Plata. Fake dollar bills with the face of this very presidential candidate, Javier Milei, rain down on his cheering fans.

Milei wants to abolish the Argentine national currency and introduce the US dollar instead and at the same time “blow up” the Argentine central bank. Milei performs a wild dervish dance on stage when it is clear that he has won the election by a landslide, ten percent ahead of his rival from the Peronist party. “The Wig” (La Peluca), as Milei is called by his fans because of his wild rocker hair, never minces his words and uses sub-proletarian jargon to rant against anyone whom he doesn’t like. The Argentinian Pope Francis is also disqualified as an “emissary of evil” by Milei. The “wig” enjoys an almost inexplicable immunity and jester’s licence in the country.

The last presidential election in Argentina was at least not boring at any stage because of this Latin American version of a buffoon. In Argentina, too, you score points by attacking the ruling caste of politicians with hateful tirades.

But while we in the northern hemisphere are still complaining at a very high level, the Argentinians have had nothing to laugh about or bite about for a long time.

The annual inflation rate is an incredible 145 percent.

Unemployment is officially only seven percent. But there is hidden unemployment, and it can be as high as 44 percent.[1]

There are big regional differences. While the greater area around the capital Buenos Aires is still relatively well positioned, people in structurally weak regions can definitely go hungry. The proportion of Argentines living below the poverty line is currently estimated to be over forty percent[2].

Argentina was an extremely wealthy country until the mid-1950s. Back then, people immigrated en masse from crisis-ridden Europe to finally find orderly conditions in Argentina. The political coordinates in Argentina are different from the rest of the world. The politician Juan Peron, who sympathized with fascism, dominated the scene for a long time.

His authoritarian style of government went hand in hand with an active social policy. The price-performance ratio was right for the common people.

But the military repeatedly seized power and left scorched earth behind. The so-called Peronism developed many different varieties.

Social Democratic Peronists dominated the scene, repeatedly interrupted by military coups. In the long term, this contributed to the disastrous alliance of oligarchs, latifundistas, reactionary Catholic clergy and Peronist politicians who mismanaged to a power stalemate. The ever-increasing unemployment was disguised by creating always new jobs in the public service. In this way, 22 percent of all employees are active in the public sector[3]. An eternal back and forth between half-baked approaches to social justice and market-radical clear-cutting policies has ruined the country.

In this situation, large sections of Argentine society are clearly willing to vote for anyone who looks different from the established politicians. It is not good news that Javier Milei has to announce. The state apparatus should be dismantled with a chainsaw, so to speak.

Whatever is not nailed down should be privatized.

The state should only be there to protect property and create legal certainty. Everything else should be handled by the private sector. Private prisons. To make this worthwhile, the minimum age for imprisonment should be lowered. Gun laws should be relaxed. Instead of human rights, there should only be the right to own one’s own body. That’s why anyone can sell their body organs on the open market as they wish. Since children are the products of parental efforts, the children can also be sold. Compulsory schooling is abolished. It is up to the parents how they raise and educate their children[4].

Argentina’s membership in the loose BRICS confederation, which has just been established, will be terminated on January 1st next year.

Trade with China shall be reduced to zero. ??

This is of course particularly risky because the People’s Republic of China is currently the country’s second strongest trading partner on Rio de la Plata after Brazil. Instead there will be strong support for Israel and Ukraine once Milei is inaugurated as president.

As a result, Milei immediately flew to Washington before his inauguration on December 10th to meet with representatives of the US government.

And on site, Milei went to New York just to visit the grave of Rabbi Menachim M. Schneerson, who had once emigrated from Ukraine to the USA. At this occasion Milei was wearing the obligatory Kipa. He also declared that he would soon convert from Catholicism to Judaism[5].

That’s quite a paradox for a man who prefers to surround himself with his four cloned mastiffs and thus mess with God’s plan of creation. However, these are contradictions that the Catholic Church has come to terms with comfortably. Milei owes his clear victory, among other things, to the fact that he was able to win Victoria Villaruel, a representative of the old clerical-fascist clique, as vice president.

Villaruel is the daughter of a general in the Jorge Videla military junta that held Argentina firmly under its military boots from 1976 to 1983. An estimated 30,000 people were killed in that infamous era. Villaruel says, just like Milei: no, there were “only” 9,000 people who were brutally murdered.

General Jorge Videla and Henry Kissinger 

And that was actually only right and fair in the fight against dangerous left-wing “terrorists”. 

Furthermore Milei took advantage by the fact that presidential candidate Patricia Bullrich, who was eliminated in the first round, recommended Milei for the runoff election. So who or what does Milei actually want to dismantle with his chainsaw? He was catapulted into office with the help of the same power coalition that has been driving the country into agony for decades. In Argentina, as everywhere in the Western community of values, the old set of politicians is now worn out.

Everywhere the compromised liberal conservative and social democratic politicians are being replaced by snotty loudmouths who promise people everything they want to hear. But installed into government, these “populists” differ not that much from their mainstream predecessors. Except that the state is ruined much more quickly and consistently than before.

So the question arises: who pushed this freaky eccentric Javier Milei into the saddle?

And what do the generous patrons hope to gain from it?

Milei grew up in humble circumstances and no longer maintains relationships with his parents. He played football in school. His comrades just called him “El Loco,” the lunatic. This nickname would become permanent for obvious reasons, and the first biography about Milei is entitled “El Loco”[6]. In addition, Milei is considered to be choleric and quick-tempered. He studied economics and even completed it. And then he started his career as an economist pretty quickly. He was working at the scandal-ridden HSBC bank for a while.

It is rarely mentioned in the media that Milei was also an advisor to the Argentine government at the International Center for Settlement of Investment Disputes. Unfortunately, this scandalous international institution is completely unknown.

It was founded in 1965. It now includes 156 countries around the world. This department of the World Bank provides an arbitration tribunal that becomes active whenever a global corporation feels that its investment activities are being disrupted by the democratically legitimate decisions of national governments. The jury works completely behind closed doors. The deciding jury chairman is almost always a corporate lawyer. And so it is not surprising that this jury almost always decides in favor of the global corporations. Many environmental protection measures have been defeated in this way. The threatened fines for violations by nation states are in the dystopian range of billions. What our friend Milei did at this arbitration board is not known.

Image: World Economic Forum / Benedikt von Loebell

Milei then advised the coup leader General Antonio Domingo Bussi, who served twice as governor of the Argentine province of Tucumán. Some teaching positions at universities still need to be mentioned. As an adjunct professor at the University of Belgrano, he set the bar for his students so high that no one passed the exam.

Because Milei not only offended the students in his choleric manner, but even insulted them, he was removed from his teaching position. But from 2008 onwards, Javier Milei’s working life reached more quiet waters. Until 2021, he worked steadily in his fatherly mentor Eduardo Eurnekian’s company Corporación America.

Eurnekian’s father immigrated to Argentina from Armenia in the 1930s and became rich with a textile company. The textile company had to close in 1981. Eduardo Eurnekian rose to wealth again with a media company. He sold his media conglomerate at a huge profit and now operates 53 airports around the world under franchise.

But major transport projects have also at least been considered. Eurnekian commissioned his protégé Milei to plan a new publicly-privately financed road from Argentina with a tunnel through the Andes to Chile. This is how Milei made his first and so far only appearance at the World Economic Forum in Davos in 2014. Because Eurnekian sponsors the WEF and is therefore listed as a member[7].

And so he sent Milei to a fairly unimportant panel discussion at the WEF concerning the use of “human capital” in Latin America. Milei is also mentioned on the WEF website[8]. This marginal speech by Milei, which he could not even deliver in English, is all he has to do with the WEF[9].

There are other forces that will catapult Milei to the top. But first Milei has to become well known in the media. Milei’s patron Eurnekian uses his influence to box his protégé into relevant talk shows and radio programs. Eurnekian also pays a trainer to get Milei fit for media formats[10]. And so Milei chats about God and the world on talk shows and quickly gains popularity because he freely criticizes everything that comes his way. With the popular sports reporter Alejandro Fantino, he goes on a rampage against liberals and “communists”[11]. On his own radio show, he regularly demolishes doctrines that he considers to be myths. Milei was already known throughout Argentina long before he entered politics in 2020[12].

Then Milei decides to become a politician. Namely, as a prophet of a new, even more radical direction of market radicalism that had never been seen before: anarcho-capitalism. The military junta, which wreaked havoc from 1976 to 1983, was already market radical oriented.

In addition to Chile and Uruguay, Argentina was the third “experimental laboratory” that market radicals maintained with the help of the US secret service CIA in order to test in open-air experiments whether the principles developed by Milton Friedman at the University of Chicago were actually valid.

However, this type of market radicalism still requires a very proactive state that is supposed to order things in the interests of global corporations. Anarcho-capitalism is a relatively young dialect of market radicalism.

According to its inventor, Murray Rothbard, the state is merely a criminal organization that illegally steals property from citizens under legalistic pretexts. The politicians and the state institutions are therefore always parasites.

That is why the destruction of the state is morally imperative. In 1973, Rothbard published a so-called Libertarian Manifesto outlining the principles of anarcho-capitalism[13]. Every person has the right to property over themselves. He can decide for himself whether he takes drugs, no matter which drugs; whether he carries weapons wherever and whenever; He can drive 250 kilometers per hour on the road if he considers himself fit for that adventure. The state is not entitled to any restrictions on such arbitrary powers.

Of course, Rothbard didn’t come up with such bold ideas entirely on his own. Rather, there was a strong community behind Rothbard from the beginning, according to whose needs he tailored his home-grown ideology. First, Rothbard founded the ultra-conservative Cato Institute with money from Texas oil tycoon Charles Koch in order to wrap the ideology of market radicalism into a scientific guise and to calmly hatch political strategies for seizing power[14]. But in the early 1980s, Rothbard fell out with Charles Koch and founded the Ludwig von Mises Institute in Alabama. Rothbard. However, he did not live to see his seeds sprout. He died in 1995.

The dismantling of states takes place in several phases. First of all, market radicals infiltrated into governments just to ruin public finances.

The inability to act due to insolvency that is now coming to light, as is becoming all too visible with the so-called government shutdown in the USA, is the first successful milestone of the market radicals.

Politicians and state officials who have become unable to act are now providing radical market evidence that the state is no good and its actors are all just crooks. The people’s anger is directed towards the state itself. In fact, the state, no matter how inadequate it may be, is still the last large organism that could check the global corporations’ totalitarian claim for absolute and unrestricted power.

Image: Alberto Benegas Lynch (Source: Wikimedia Commons)

This is the hour of the anarcho-capitalists. Now it’s time to demolish the last remnants of the wall against the neo-feudal subjugation of humanity to the digital-military complex.

In order to give the state a coup de grace, the Atlas network was founded in 1981 by the British entrepreneur Antony Fisher. Fisher had become rich through the large-scale use of industrial laying hen factories in Europe. He then wanted to use his money to promote “entrepreneurial freedom”.

The Atlas Network provides advice and start-up money for radical market, anarcho-capitalist think tanks in nearly all countries around the world. Atlas helps start-ups get on their own feet with acquired donations and government grants. Atlas has already launched several hundred spin-offs in this cost-effective way.

There are ten Atlas network organizations in Argentina alone. The central coordinator of these radical market organizations is the Argentine economist Alberto Benegas Lynch. Lynch is also an important figure in the Mont Pelerin Society, from which all radical market activities emanated[15].

And that brings us finally back to our protagonist, Javier Milei.

Milei openly refers to Alberto Lynch[16]. Lynch is Milei’s guru, nothing less than that. Milei is a constant guest at the Atlas spin-offs Fundacion Federalismo y Libertad, at Instituto Libertad y Progreso and the Fundacion Atlas[17]. This network has chosen Javier Milei as its executor of its radical market agenda. That’s why the Fundacion Atlas decorated Javier Milei with its Liberty Prize back in 2018. Lynch planned Milei’s career and gave him the anarcho-capitalist program along the way. Ultimately, all paths of the Atlas network lead directly to Washington, the US government. The link between Atlas Latin America and the US government is called: Center for Dissemination of Economic Knowledge for Liberty (CEDICE for short). This center receives funding and strategic instruction from Washington through the National Endowment for Democracy and the U.S. government. Agency for International Development[18].

However, things turned out differently than Milei’s former sponsor, Eduardo Eurnekian, had hoped. The now ninety-year-old airport entrepreneur was recently sitting in the front row when the elected Argentine President Milei shouted at the entrepreneurs present:

“The state is breathing down your neck! I will get him off your neck!” And although Nicolas Posse, a former top manager of Eurnekian’s empire, serves as the government’s chief of staff, the old oligarch is not really happy about his political offspring. Eurnekian told the Financial Times that he did not believe in the Dollarization of Argentina at all and that he considered the abrupt termination of trade relations with China to be unfeasible and disastrous. He also disapproves of Milei’s insult of the Peronist politicians as “criminals” and also his insult of the Pope as an “imbecile”[19].

This shows the changing function of political puppets in Latin America and elsewhere in the southern hemisphere. Oligarchs in façade democracies have always chosen talented people who they then hyped up with a lot of money and influential connections to state leaders. But this time the national oligarch has been booted out by a powerful international network.

We will see whether Javier Milei really succeeds in destroying the Argentine state and its power cartel, and whether he really intends to do so.

In any case, he does not have any political power. His party La Libertad Avanza only has a few seats in parliament. Political forces will stand in Milei’s way if he really wants to use a chainsaw to put hundreds of thousands of public servants out of work. If he really breaks with China and possibly Brazil as trading partners, it will likely cause even more difficulties for the Argentine economy.

But one should not underestimate such bizarre extreme creatures like Milei. At the beginning of his chancellorship, Otto von Bismarck was also considered a crazy idiot. And so were Adolph Hitler and Maggie Thatcher. At the beginning, no one believed that these extremists would get very far with their agenda. But they got through. Because their opponents did not recognize that a radical new agenda was being launched and implemented. Nobody expected the brutality with which all three extremists were able to enforce their new order. Maybe things will be different this time. Simply because the public is informed about the agenda in good time.

*

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Notes

[1] https://www.deutschlandfunk.de/verarmt-enttaeuscht-empoert-100.html

[2] https://www.spiegel.de/ausland/argentinien-mehr-als-40-prozent-der-menschen-unter-armutsgrenze-a-23070e21-d2c9-4f39-8be4-190a7c12c33a

[3] https://papers.gws-os.com/L%C3%A4nderreport-29_AR.pdf Seite 2

[4] https://www.watson.ch/international/argentinien/354797004-javier-milei-so-steht-er-zu-organhandel-klonen-und-abtreibung

[5] https://www.smh.com.au/world/south-america/the-pro-israel-world-leader-who-is-converting-to-judaism-20231128-p5enck.html

[6] https://www.eldiarioar.com/economia/eurnekian-ayudo-milei-entrar-politica-medios_1_10370106.html

[7] https://www.weforum.org/people/eduardo-eurnekian/

[8] https://www.weforum.org/people/javier-gerardo-milei/

[9] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5IHa8OzqiTw&t=31s

[10] Das wird ausführlich beschrieben im Text Fußnote <6>

[11] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6UOHGuaqzYs

[12] https://www.youtube.com/@JavierMileiOK

[13] https://mises.org/library/new-liberty-libertarian-manifesto

[14] https://www.cato.org/

[15] https://www.desmog.com/2023/08/22/javier-milei-argentina-atlas-network/

[16] https://www.lanacion.com.ar/lifestyle/el-padre-de-la-criatura-quien-es-el-procer-de-los-liberales-que-milei-cita-de-memoria-en-sus-nid16082023/

[17] https://www.libertadyprogreso.org/?s=milei&lang=es

[18] https://the-revolution-report.com/articles/who-funds-the-far-right-in-argentina-latin-america-and-the-world-the-oligarchs-of-atlas-network-and-other-mafias/

[19] https://www.ft.com/content/2cc06399-8214-4a49-a195-4b5be3d32752 

Featured image: (CC BY-NC 4.0) Mídia NINJA

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***

There are currently four hot war/tension points in the world with high growth potential: Ukraine, Palestine, Taiwan and North Korea.

In Ukraine, Russia is at the forefront and is winning.

The days of Zionist Dictator clown Zelensky, who sent nearly 1 million people to the meat grinder for the sake of his Uncle Sam, are numbered.

Most likely, Chief of General Staff Zaluzhny will replace him with the promise of making an agreement with Russia.

American journalist Seymour Hersh wrote that Zaluzhny secretly messaging with Russian Chief of General Staff Valery Gerasimov.

The USA is in trouble with the terrible fait accompli created by the Zionist fascists in Israel and seems to want to end Ukraine now.

Iran has the leading role on the Palestine and Levant front. Iran and its affiliated resistance front I mean.

The Houthis in Yemen (also allied to Iran) are acting as a geopolitical game changer by blocking the sea route to Israel.

The USA has deployed 69 warships in the region and also uses Incirlik in Turkey and British bases in Cyprus.

If we return to Taiwan, the interlocutor there is China.

The USA wanted to surround China, its main target and rival, from the sea and squeeze it through Taiwan.

This is nothing new either.

Rt. Colonel Lawrence Wilkerson, the private secretary of former US Secretary of Defense Colin Powell, has just told in an interview that during the Bush period, Dick Cheney and Rumsfeld tried to provoke the administration in Taiwan, and Powell prevented this.

Now Ukraine and the ensuing Palestine war have ruined the USA’s plans.

In addition to NATO, the United States uses Ukraine as a proxy against Russia in Europe, Israel against Iran in West Asia, and the Philippines, Australia and Japan against China.

However, things are not going well for the USA there either.

As China becomes increasingly stronger at sea, the administration in Taiwan understands that relying on the United States is a mistake, based on the example of Ukraine.

In short, the USA, a maritime empire, and its ally, UK, are beginning to understand the impossibility of confining Asian powers to land.

Russia announced on November 5 that its new strategic nuclear submarine named ‘Emperor Alexander III’ has successfully completed the sea-based intercontinental ballistic missile tests called ‘Bulava’.

According to Russian military officials, the 4th generation nuclear submarines developed within the scope of the Borey and Borey-A projects, equipped with Bulava intercontinental ballistic missiles, will form the basis of the strategic nuclear forces of the Russian army in the coming years.

Iran, on the other hand, relies on its hypersonic missiles rather than its navy. It has the power to instantly close the Persian Gulf. Iran has important resistance partners in Lebanon, Syria, Iraq and Yemen. They are also provided with advanced weapons. In this way, Yemen was able to hit the most critical oil facilities of Saudi Arabia, with which it had been fighting for years.

The Chinese Navy has made tremendous progress in the last 20 years. They increased their naval power both in quality and quantity. According to the latest news, they have also developed advanced technologies that can observe under the sea. Under normal conditions, the undersea is still an area that cannot be monitored. This is the main element that gives submarines their superiority.

As for North Korea, the 70-year de facto ceasefire could be broken at any time. Because North Korea is sending weapons and ammunition to Russia at a critical time and is eager to join the newly formed Asian Quartet.

Pyongyang also has advanced nuclear missiles. It also launched a spy satellite –thanks to Russia – into orbit and the US has the intention of shooting it down. North Korea announced that if the USA attacked the satellite, it would be considered a ‘declaration of war’.

Asian Four

The Warsaw Pact, with the USSR at its center, was an Eastern European defense organization against NATO.

So geographical coverage was limited.

This “Asian Square Ace”, which is now forming before our eyes, covers all of Asia from north to south, east to west.

In addition, some medium and large-sized countries that tend to go beyond the US order may also welcome this.

Even NATO member Türkiye is showing its own resistance by not letting the USA into the Black Sea.

Or Indonesia does not want to spoil its relations with China.

India cut off its unconditional support to the USA, thanks to its profitable oil exchange with Russia.

The European continent, especially Germany, is thinking hard about how to undo the American scam in Ukraine.

Africa and South America are no longer the playground of western colonialists.

Developments in the Arctic have the potential to radically change the global game.

China and Russia are making important moves here and gaining a large area.

China’s Belt and Road Initiative, all over the world, prioritizes social and regional development with all its infrastructure investments with the motto of “cooperate, not war”, not a fake capitalist financial growth. 

They are undermining Pax Americana, which has been stripped of its plaster by formations such as the Shanghai Cooperation Organization and BRICS.

The USA, on the other hand, is facing a dire economic and domestic political situation.

For the first time in history, daily interest expenses exceeded daily defense expenses.

In the interview with Wilkerson, the American Strategist said, “The USA is ruled by idiots like Biden, Blinken and Sullivan, there is a smart Vic Nuland who is trying to start a war” he said.

Geopolitical Expert Ret. Admiral Cem Gurdeniz says:

“While the USA spent 2.19 billion dollars on defense every day this year, it paid 2.46 billion dollars in interest on federal debt loans. A similar and common cause of empires collapse is the inability of the treasury to continue supporting the army and navy. The USA has already reached this stage. I hope this collapse will not cause humanity great suffering like what happened in Palestine.”

Gurdeniz adds that the US navy is in its worst condition in history.

Wilkerson also says, “China builds a ship in a week that we take a year to build.”

For the first time after 1990, the USA finds an organized and powerful (and even stronger in some aspects -hypersonic missiles, etc.) Asian Fortress.

China-Russia and Iran have been taking every step they take in consultation lately and have been displaying a great team play.

While economic support for Russia under Western sanctions comes from China, China’s energy needs are met by Russia and Iran, and North Korea eagerly joins this trio. Iran and North Korea also provide arms support to Russia. Russia provides hypersonic technology to all of them.

Joint Sino-Russian-Persian exercises in the Persian Gulf can now be added to the joint exercises of the Russian and Chinese navies in the oceans.

The Military Industrial Complex in the USA, which is owned behind the scenes by global financial barons (a bottomless pit; it has failed to account for 20 trillion dollars in the last 20 years), shouts out its hunger for war at every opportunity to prevent the impending economic collapse.

But the main contradiction is that the US army cannot find soldiers to fight, cannot renew its navy, and can lag behind its rivals in military technology.

Herein lies the real question.

The Asian Century will definitely rule! Whether it will be bloody or bloodless will be clear soon!

*

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Featured image: US Flag Around the Earth — Image by © Images.com/Corbis

Valentina Lisitsa torna in Italia per “Ponti di Musica”, uno straordinario concerto evento a Venezia. La sua musica costruirà un ponte per unire i popoli e, con tutta la sua forza, abbatterà, ancora una volta, ogni forma di censura dell’arte.

Dopo l’indimenticabile esibizione del 29 aprile scorso, Valentina Lisitsa ci regala un suggestivo concerto privato insieme al maestro Mauro Valli, virtuoso del violoncello, con un repertorio eccezionale che spazia da Bach a Beethoven fino a Liszt.

Byoblu vi porta nel cuore di Palazzo Cà Sagredo, che s’affaccia sul Canal Grande, per farvi vivere tutte le emozioni del concerto della grande pianista e del violoncellista Mauro Valli.

Byoblu trasmetterà in esclusiva il concerto di Valentina Lisitsa e Mauro Valli sul 262 del digitale terrestre, sul 462 di TìvuSat e 816 di Sky.

Scegli di assistere in prima fila a un nuovo, eccezionale capitolo nella storia della musica.

Quando guardare il concerto in Tv:
Sabato 2 dicembre alle 20:30

Repliche:
Venerdì 8 dicembre alle 17:00
Lunedì 11 dicembre alle 22:00
Domenica 17 dicembre alle 11:00
Sabato 23 dicembre alle 21:30
Lunedì 25 dicembre alle 14:00

Concerto : https://www.byoblu.com/valentina-lisitsa-secondo-concerto/

*

Intervistas a Valentina Lisitsa, a Mauro Valli : https://www.byoblu.com/valentina-lisitsa-secondo-concerto/

Questa intervista sarà trasmessa in replica su Byoblu TV:

Giovedì 7 dicembre alle 18:00

Domenica 10 dicembre alle 9:00

Domenica 17 dicembre alle 16:00

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***

 

 

 

 

The Studies the CDC Refuses to Do

This book is based on over one hundred studies in the peer-reviewed literature that consider vaccinated versus unvaccinated populations. Each study is analyzed, and health differences among infants, children, and adults who have been vaccinated and those who have not are presented and put in context. Readers will find information on:

• The infant/child vaccination schedule
• Thimerosal in vaccines
• Live virus vaccines
• The human papillomavirus (HPV) vaccine
• Vaccination and Gulf War illness
• Influenza (flu) vaccines
• Hepatitis B vaccination
• The COVID-19 vaccine
• Vaccines during pregnancy

Given the massive push to vaccinate the entire global population, this book is timely and necessary for individuals to make informed choices for themselves and their families.

Click here to purchase.

Reviews

“Millions of people—myself included—initially believed the Covid-19 vaccine disaster to be a one-off, the result of a novel, rapidly evolving virus combined with a rushed therapeutic packaged in an experimental delivery system.

Today I laugh at such naiveté.

In Vax-Unvax, Kennedy and Hooker shine a blinding light on the appalling lack of research and blatant propaganda behind the entire inflated and ever-expanding childhood vaccine schedule.

The authors’ painstaking investigation and rigorous analyses are rivaled only by their bravery in exposing the depth and breadth of the lies we’ve been told.

As a physician who never dreamed of questioning the safety and efficacy claims of routine immunizations and who believed he was protecting his patients and his own children by endorsing them, I am humbled and enraged.

Our government, the media, and the powerful and rapacious pharmaceutical industrial complex have deceived, endangered, and gaslit the public for far too long. I hope this explosive and important book finds a worldwide audience and becomes a staple in every pediatrician’s and parent’s library.”

—Dr. Pierre Kory, author of The War on Ivermectin, cofounder of the Front Line Covid-19 Critical Care Alliance, cofounder of the Leading Edge Tele-Health Clinic

“As the threat of fatal infectious diseases in childhood has dissipated, there has been a lagged increase in the intensity of vaccination for rare illnesses. Modern treatment and supportive care have taken much of the concern out of the infections on the childhood vaccine schedule. However, with the rise of hyper-vaccination, Kennedy and Hooker uncover a concurrent explosion of childhood allergic, immune, and neuropsychiatric illnesses. Massive systemic perturbation of the immune system with indiscriminate immunization has come at a sobering cost. Read Vax-Unvax carefully and keep it close at hand—this dawn of a new age in public health will be tumultuous for years to come.”

—Dr. Peter McCullough, author of The Courage to Face COVID-19

“In this book, Kennedy and Hooker provide the complete, definitive demolition of the mythos and propaganda that tells the public vaccines improve the health of children. Not a plank of this false house remains by the end of this book. The lies are dismantled in cool, clear language void of bombast, which allows the facts, figures, and data to shine through, to a devastating conclusion. This is the book you can hand to people who are still in trance states about vaccines.”

—Celia Farber, journalist and author of Serious Adverse Events

“‘The Science’ is finally here in one place. If you want to follow the science related to vaccines and health problems, this is a must read. With over one hundred references, the actual harm being caused by vaccines is exposed. Parents, don’t listen to an authority figure without doing your own research. This book is required reading for every informed parent.”

—Paul Thomas, MD, author of The Vaccine-Friendly Plan and The Addiction Spectrum; founder and host of With the Wind: Science Revealed; cofounder KidsFirst4Ever.com

“This clear, compelling, timely book lays to rest most myths about the ‘science’ and safety of many existing vaccines and exposes shoddy testing, shocking damage to health, and corrupt business practices. An important follow-up to Kennedy’s The Real Anthony Fauci.”

—Naomi Wolf, bestselling author of The Beauty Myth and The Bodies of Others

“While the CDC continues to refuse to do the type of vaccinated versus unvaccinated study that parents have long been demanding, independent researchers have forged ahead, and the results are now quite clear: unvaccinated children are healthier. In Vax-Unvax: Let the Science Speak, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and Dr. Brian Hooker review that data as well as many additional studies comparing health outcomes between those who did or did not receive individual vaccines. This is an essential resource for the serious researcher and a valuable guide for anyone wishing to exercise truly informed consent. The graphs helpfully included with the discussion of each study covered speak for themselves. It is past time for the ‘public health’ establishment to stop deceiving the public with their proclamations of official dogma about the ostensible safety of these pharmaceutical products.”

—Jeremy R. Hammond, independent journalist and author of The War on Informed Consent

“In 1999, I gave a vaccine that caused such a bad side effect that it altered the trajectory of my patient’s life. Thus began my journey into vaccine safety research. This book is a great compilation of scientific studies you never heard about on the news. With easy-to-understand graphics and explanations of statistics, you can analyze data from clinicians and researchers from around the world. You may find yourself doubting the simplistic ‘safe and effective’ doctrine repeated by health authorities. You will find yourself more empowered to make vaccine decisions for your child.”

—Elizabeth Mumper, MD, IFMCP, president & CEO, Rimland Center for Integrative Medicine

“RFK Jr. and Dr. Hooker present the science that supports what I have personally witnessed in my twenty-five years as a pediatrician—unvaccinated children are healthier and have fewer chronic medical problems compared to vaccinated kids. Today’s parents, and a growing number of my colleagues, are now coming to recognize this grand irony in our modern pediatric health care system.”

—Dr. Bob Sears, author of The Vaccine Book and host of TheVaccineConversation.com podcast

“Bobby Kennedy and Brian Hooker are tireless heroes on the front line of a great battle to protect our health freedom. Biomedical studies are being falsified and the masses are being deceived by health authorities, the vaccine industry, and a complicit media. Read this book and let the true science speak!”

—Neil Z. Miller, author of Miller’s Review of Critical Vaccine Studies

“When I met Dr. Hooker on August 29, 2014, he was more than a decade into his relentless efforts through the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) to reveal not only the studies the CDC refused to do but the plague of corruption surrounding CDC whistleblower William Thompson’s confession regarding the censorship and fraud in the MMR vaccine trial by the CDC to cover up the fraud in the in clinical literature surrounding all vaccines. Stunned by the blatant corruption in Dr. Hooker’s presentation that day, Kent Heckenlively and I, in collaboration with Robert F. Kennedy Jr., began to write Plague of Corruption. Throughout 2019, Dr. Hooker and Kennedy collaborated to reveal much of the CDC, FDA, and NIH corruption in the thirty-four page foreword to Plague of Corruption that revealed manipulation of hundreds of basic research studies showing dangers of xenotransplantation, microbial contamination, and environmental toxins including mercury, aluminum, PEG, and the corruption of the agencies tasked to protect public health.

Vax-Unvax is the result of their heroic effort to reveal the censored science and truth behind the role of a failure by these agencies tasked to conduct safety studies in three decades of liability-free vaccines and the resultant explosion of chronic disease and disability facing our world today. Given the massive push to vaccinate a new generation, this book is a must read supporting a moratorium on inoculations in favor of oral and mucosal immunization strategies.”

—Judy A. Mikovits, PhD

“In Vax-Unvax: Let the Science Speak, authors Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. and Brian Hooker have provided a deep dive into vaccine safety by looking at published data from independent researchers. The resulting review of vaccinated and unvaccinated children’s health outcomes clearly shows the damage, much of it neurological, that blind adherence to the CDC’s current vaccine schedule can induce. The studies highlighted are those that both the FDA and CDC have routinely refused, and continue to refuse, to do themselves. The official reason for not providing such studies is based on the erroneous notion that conducting vaccinated-unvaccinated evaluations would somehow be ‘unethical.’ Kennedy and Hooker demolish this argument and then proceed to review the safety of different vaccines, many that contain adjuvant aluminum or Thimerosal, the latter an ethyl mercury compound. Overall, for those trying to understand the often-confusing claims and counterclaims, particularly lay people, the book provides some badly needed clarity.

The book also considers the current Covid-19 mRNA vaccines in context to the older childhood vaccine platforms. This is a particularly timely contribution in that the Covid-19 pandemic and resulting vaccine mandates have paradoxically served to make more people question the official ‘safe and effective’ mantra that tends to surround all vaccines: If the conventional vaccine platforms using compounds with aluminum and mercury are not safe, then why should anyone trust the completely new and largely experimental vaccine platforms developed for Covid (and soon numerous vaccines)? For parents it can be both confusing and frightening to consider the pros and cons of vaccines against childhood diseases: What if they make the wrong decision, in either direction, and their child is harmed?

While many in the medical profession may not like the book because it exposes the outright deception of the pharmaceutical industry, the CDC and FDA, I strongly believe that many parents, or parents-to-be, will be grateful for the information it contains. Simply put, at the end of the day the ability to consider all aspects of vaccine safety in order to make an informed choice for one’s children, or oneself, is an absolutely critical aspect of real health freedom. In turn, health freedom is intimately tied to the concept of ‘security of the person,’ perhaps the most fundamental of natural rights.

Kennedy and Hooker should be commended for tackling this crucial issue in order to bring clarity to the mass of ‘dis-’ and ‘mis-’ information peddled by the health establishment and the mainstream media. If indeed the ‘truth can set you free,’ then this book is a huge step in the right direction.”

—Christopher Shaw, neuroscientist and professor of ophthalmology at University of British Columbia, author of Dispatches from the Vaccine Wars

“If there is only one book you read in your entire life, let it be this one! If you want the science to speak . . . then have the courage to look at the actual science, data, and truth found in the pages of Vax-Unvax. Arm yourself with the information that puts the power back into the hands of parents where it belongs, not in the hands of corrupt Pharma, captured government officials, and incentivized doctors spouting catch phrases with little to no evidence to back it up. RFK Jr. and Dr. Brian Hooker are the bold voices of truth, presenting evidence that cannot be disputed. The main purpose of a parent is to love your child and keep them safe. If you have not had the courage before, I boldly implore you to find the courage now, and educate before you vaccinate!”

—Leigh-Allyn Baker, actress, producer, and star of the global hit Good Luck Charlie

*

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***

What’s with the world’s fascination with dead, dying and orphaned children? Wait, before you condemn what seems to be callousness, my point is this: our focus is to the exclusion of those children’s fathers, uncles and big brothers? Intentional or not. 

Fascination or fixation, it’s basically the same – it amounts to a diversion, perhaps to make the toll appear lower than it really is. Perhaps because our compassion is measured.

Today, it’s dead young Palestinians.

Months ago, it was Ukrainian (although its fallen fighters have ample attention—after all they’re European);

before that we had fleeting glimpses of starved and bombed youngsters in Yemen.

(Dead Syrian kids never warrant notice; except a single little boy washed up on a beach somewhere; even then, he was said to be Kurdish, maybe blue-eyed, not quite Arab.)

Don’t forget Iraq: we hardly remember the 50,000 Iraqi children (a handy media number), and then only when Albright, former U.S. foreign secretary, commented that “yes, their deaths were worth it.”

Neat rows of white, gently-shrouded Palestinian bodies lengthen, day by day.

Deposited wordlessly, one after another, on hospital corridors, or in the danger zones beyond – every square meter being a target for Israeli guns. Not to mention as many souls, if not more, still unaccounted for—unwrapped, rotting in rubble, missing under their bombed homes, shops, play-grounds and schools. No longer targets.

My distaste of our society’s focus on child victims may seem unappreciative, dispassionate. The child is the most vulnerable, you say. Helpless, thereby more deserving.

More deserving of what? More deserving than whom? By and large, our narrowly focused pity is gratuitous sympathy. It fits the model of our enduring colonialist mentality, our determination to appear humane. A child seems most precious, most worthy of need and thus arouses our pity. Is it because we have too little of this to dispense to everyone who’s been killed and wounded in these calamitous weeks?

As Chris Hedges writes,

“There are no … fathers, teachers, doctors, lawyers, cooks, poets, taxi drivers or shopkeepers…. Palestinians, in the Israeli lexicon, are a single contagion that must be eradicated.”

So if Israel does not distinguish, why do those of us far away, witnessing that deadly indiscrimination?

Yes, those images are ugly. We can be counted on to gasp and stir uncomfortably. It’s embarrassing. But, reflect on it: do they arouse our guilt? I think not – not for the vast majority of us.

The toll mounts day by day. Numbers of this and that; numbers of those missing, presumed dead unmeasurable. Today’s number is after October 7^th. What about this figure set against those accumulated over 4, 11, 14, or 17 and more years ago.

Numbers have become the news focus. Quantification is easy. Registering a 4-year-old’s corpse’s name, or her surviving sister or his missing father, those of her aunt or grandfather is complicated, and unmanageable as the carnage goes on, and on, and on.

Many years ago, I documented the embargo war in Iraq, 13 years of the shameless and deadly U.S.-engineered, U.N.-endorsed sanctions regime.

The absence of adult male victims in foreign news reports of the death toll did more than alarm me – it was callous, disgraceful, hypocritical. Being inside the country for sustained periods, I was privy to reports of fathers who died of heart attack and stroke, of conscripted students’ careers cut short, of women stricken by cancer, dying due to blockaded medication leaving grieving fathers and orphans. Noah, whose disease was kept in abeyance for years with drugs obtained only from abroad, perished when that supply was unavailable, embargoed.

A bookstore owner, a young woman, I would later learn, simply went mad from trauma. (That disease was not uncommon during the war.) All were somebody’s child; they were also somebody’s cherished elder – father, sister, brother, uncle. It seemed they didn’t seem to count.

Those weeping, wounded children you may glance in passing are not just crying for their mothers, least of all for outside help. They want their elder brother, the comforting arms of big sister; they want their Aba; they want their Jido. They need them at any time, more desperately at these moments. Thousands of them are gone; many more too wounded to help their babies.

Then there are the walking wounded – surely we can’t miss those many thousands of young men, who, forgetting their own families, scratch through rubble, even for corpses. If lucky they may discover someone breathing and rush them out in search of medical care. In hospital corridors, they move the newly expired to make room for more wounded; they wrap corpses and take them for identification, then burial prayers. They search for someone who may be their father. Where do these fellows go at the end of a day? How can they survive what is surely to be a lasting trauma in their lives?

What about those young men recruited to help in the hospitals (where 198 medics have been killed)? Such heroes: washing bloodied bodies, wrapping bandages, cuddling, comforting, playing with wounded toddlers.

Can they even stop to ponder, “When this is over, I will resume my studies; I will marry, I will find a job in the bakery, in a phone-repair shop”?

As the years of the Iraqi embargo lengthened, as food shortages rose, as electrical cuts increased, as whoever could flee, left, as diseases spread – those remaining moaned: “Only, we know today is better than tomorrow.”

*

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Barbara Nimri Aziz whose anthropological research has focused on the peoples of the Himalayas is the author of the newly published “Yogmaya and Durga Devi: Rebel Women of Nepal”, available on Amazon. 

She is a regular contributor to Global Research.

Source of all images in this article is the author

---

“Yogmaya and Durga Devi: Rebel Women of Nepal”

By Barbara Nimri Aziz

A century ago Yogmaya and Durga Devi, two women champions of justice, emerged from a remote corner of rural Nepal to offer solutions to their nation’s social and political ills. Then they were forgotten.

Years after their demise, in 1980 veteran anthropologist Barbara Nimri Aziz first uncovered their suppressed histories in her comprehensive and accessible biographies. Revelations from her decade of research led to the resurrection of these women and their entry into contemporary Nepali consciousness.

This book captures the daring political campaigns of these rebel women; at the same time it asks us to acknowledge their impact on contemporary feminist thinking. Like many revolutionaries who were vilified in their lifetimes, we learn about the true nature of these leaders’ intelligence, sacrifices, and vision during an era of social and economic oppression in this part of Asia.

After Nepal moved from absolute monarchy to a fledgling democracy and history re-evaluated these pioneers, Dr. Aziz explores their legacies in this book.

Psychologically provocative and astonishingly moving, “Yogmaya and Durga Devi” is a seminal contribution to women’s history.

Click here to order.

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

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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.

***

Canadians for Justice and Peace in the Middle East (CJPME) condemns Israel’s decision not to renew the visa of a top United Nations humanitarian aid official, who is also a Canadian national. Israel has notified the UN that it will not renew the visa for Lynn Hastings, resident humanitarian coordinator for the occupied Palestinian territories, when her visa expires later this month. CJPME urges the Canadian government to demand that Israel renew Hastings’ visa, and take action to hold Israel accountable for its attacks on humanitarian workers.

“It is outrageous that Israel is expelling a UN humanitarian official at the same time as it is creating a humanitarian catastrophe in Gaza through bombardment and siege,” states Michael Bueckert, Vice President of CJPME. “This is a vindictive action against the UN itself, and only adds to the chaos and catastrophe inflicted by Israel’s lethal and unparalleled attacks on humanitarian workers,” continued Bueckert.”

CJPME warns that the expulsion of a top humanitarian official undermines the UN’s efforts to respond to the grave humanitarian catastrophe in Gaza, which is already significantly restrained by Israeli actions. Israel’s strategy of ‘total siege’ has cut off access to water, food, electricity, medicine, and fuel, bringing the hospital system to collapse and deliberately harming the basic conditions of health of the civilian population. Former ICC prosecutor Luis Moreno Ocampo has said that Israel’s siege is itself “a form of genocide” under the Genocide Convention because – backed by the genocidal statements of Israeli leaders – it is inflicting conditions designed to destroy an entire group.

Israel’s expelling of a UN official is part of a series of malicious actions taken against UN humanitarian efforts in Gaza. Israel has repeatedly bombed facilities run by UNRWA, the UN agency for Palestine refugees, killing over 100 UNRWA staff, while claiming at the UN Security Council that many UN staff are members of Hamas and therefore constitute legitimate military targets. The UN Secretary-General has said that this represents the “highest number of aid workers killed in UN history in such a short time.”

“Israel’s open contempt for the UN should prompt Canada to harshly censure Israel at the UN. It is a moral failing of Canada to continue to protect Israel from criticism at the UN as Israel is bombing UN facilities, killing UN staff in large numbers, and expelling their top officials,” said Bueckert.

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The Bio-Pharmaceutical Complex pushed COVID-19 vaccines on pregnant women with a false message that vaccination would “protect” their babies. The CDC makes this deceptive claim on their website:

CDC Website accessed December 4, 2023

For a vaccine to be considered in my practice, the theoretical vaccine efficacy would have to meet a lower bound of the confidence interval of >50%. Because we do not have randomized trials, we must consider the point estimate of VE in non-randomized studies to be a statistical blur. Reality could be any value within the 95% confidence interval. Therefore a conservative position would be to focus on the lower bound of the confidence interval as the FDA does commonly with other products.

Goh and colleagues from Singapore recently reported on infants testing positive for COVID-19 within 6 months of delivery. There was no mention of any of the babies with adjudicated COVID-19 illness. Nevertheless, the theoretical VE for passive protection to the newborn was abysmal for the poorly conceived vaccines as shown in the table.

Goh O, Pang D, Tan J, Lye D, Chong CY, Ong B, Tan KB, Yung CF. mRNA SARS-CoV-2 Vaccination Before vs During Pregnancy and Omicron Infection Among Infants. JAMA Netw Open. 2023 Nov 1;6(11):e2342475. doi: 10.1001/jamanetworkopen.2023.42475. PMID: 37948079; PMCID: PMC10638647.

Lesson learned, do not to be deceived by a vaccine syndicate trying to tap into maternal instincts to “protect” their babies. In contradistinction, an astute mother would recognize the potential dangers of her injection with mRNA coding for the lethal Spike protein.

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The Ukrainian counteroffensive, which began in June with much confidence amid expectations that assault brigades equipped with Western military equipment would easily crush Russian defensive lines and reach Crimea, ended with a sobering humiliation as the dreams and aspirations of strategists in Kiev did not survive the harsh reality.

It calls into question why Ukraine is continuing the war, especially since President Volodymyr Zelensky admits that many in Donbass do not want to live under Kiev’s rule.

The former chief of staff of the Ukrainian Armed Forces, Viktor Muzhenko, told Western media that the summer counteroffensive “disappointed many” in Kiev and beyond.

Having admitted that Kiev’s expectations of capturing Russian territory had not translated into reality, Muzhenko advocated a switch to a “strategically active defence” and the creation of a “powerful reserve, not only quantitative, but also qualitative.”

“A quality reserve is the presence of military organisations: a brigade, a corps, and so on. Prepared, equipped, coordinated, with high morale and able to solve problems,” he told Newsweek magazine.

Muzhenko also questioned previous suggestions by Ukrainian generals that Kiev regime forces could force their way into Crimea in just a few months, wondering aloud whether the “Ukrainian side” would “really able to adequately assess the enemy and its capabilities.”

The former chief of staff questioned Ukraine’s military leadership for suggesting that Ukrainian forces could reach Crimea within four months of the counteroffensive, referencing Ukraine’s commander-in-chief, General Valery Zaluzhny, who made remarks in an interview with The Economist in November.

“If you look at NATO’s textbooks and at the maths which we did, four months should have been enough time for us to have reached Crimea, to have fought in Crimea, to return from Crimea and to have gone back in and out again,” Zaluzhny said.

In fact, as NBC News wrote on December 3, “With its much-vaunted counteroffensive fizzling into the snow, with little to show for months of planning and billions in allied military support, Kiev is also beset by growing internal wrangling.”

The outlet cited Kiev-based political analyst Volodymyr Fesenko as saying,

“Many Ukrainians are disappointed that a quick victory was not achieved. There is severe fatigue from the war.”

Besides former military commanders and experts noting the failure and disappointment of the counteroffensive, this acknowledgement is only now beginning to be heard in the upper echelons of Kiev’s leadership.

Speaking to the AP during a visit to the Kharkov region on December 1, Zelensky acknowledged the failure of the counteroffensive, saying that he would have liked to see “faster” results and that “from that perspective, unfortunately, we did not achieve the desired results. And this is a fact.” He attributed the failure of the counteroffensive to the West not sending the weapons that the Ukrainian military needed.

Regarding the weapons he wanted but did not receive, Zelensky claimed that it limited the size of his military force and a quick advance, a ridiculous notion since the US alone has provided more than $43 billion in military aid since February 2022. This is even coming at a political cost for US President Joe Biden, as a recent survey found that nearly half of Americans think too much is being spent on Ukraine aid.

According to the Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research published on December 2, 45% of Americans say Washington is spending too much on aid to Ukraine in the war against Russia. 38% of Americans believe that current spending is “about the right amount.”

When Zelensky was asked about the poll result, he bluntly replied that “the choice of Americans is the choice of Americans” and falsely claimed that Americans are also helping themselves by helping Ukraine.

“In the case of Ukraine, if resilience fails today due to lack of aid and shortages of weapons and funding, it will mean that Russia will most likely invade NATO countries,” he said. “And then the American children will fight.”

In a lecture to university students in Nikolaev days before the AP interview, Zelensky commented on the situation in Donetsk and Lugansk, which were bombed for eight years by Ukrainian forces, and admitted that the population of the two territories did not express their desire to also become part of Ukraine again.

“I believe that all territories should return, but if people don’t want to, it will be very difficult. Before, there were separatist militants who fought in the contact zone. This means that not all families from Donbass returned. And when Russia fights against us, the separatists are with them,” he said in a video released on Telegram by the El Ojo channel.

It is recalled that the accession of the People’s Republics of Donetsk and Lugansk, as well as the regions of Zaporozhye and Kherson, to the Russian Federation, was decided in referendums that took place in September 2022. The results were indisputable, as 99.23% of people voted in favour of Donetsk’s accession, 98.42% in Lugansk, 87.05% in Kherson and 93.11% in Zaporozhye.

With the counteroffensive having failed, as acknowledged now by every echelon of Ukraine, it brings into question why Zelensky is stubbornly continuing the war, especially since he knows that the people of Donetsk, Lugansk, Kherson and Zaporozhye no longer wanted to live under Kiev’s ultranationalist and racist regime.

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

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Nov. 13, 2023 – 21 year old Emilia Brangefalt was a professional Swedish trail runner (for Adidas Terrex) who won bronze in the 2022 Trail World Championships. She took her own life on Nov.13, 2023 after developing an extremely high heart rate in July 2023 that ended her training and running.

Story by R.Ghosh, Ibtimes.sg, Nov.23, 2023

Swedish trail runner Emilia Brangefalt has died by suicide.

She was just 21 years old. The accomplished long-distance runner won a bronze medal in the 40km race at the 2022 Trail World Championships in Chiang Mai. This year, she achieved a fifth-place finish in a world championship race in Innsbruck.

However, Brangefalt had to take a prolonged hiatus from the sport after being diagnosed with an exceptionally high heart rate. In a post shared to her Instagram account on November 4, Brangefalt openly discussed the physical and mental challenges she was facing after being compelled to take a break from the sport.

“Just taking a walk is painful right now,” Brangefalt wrote. “Have been to the hospital and visit the medical over 20 times but every single blood test/ ekg/ cycle test is good. Still my body is super stressed although I have given it so much love the past months.”

“Maybe it was to much for a 21 year old girl to run Transvulcania 48k and WMTRC 45k with less then one month in between. I am super sad because running and training means so much,” the athlete added.

“But now, just living a normal life is difficult. I have spent more hours in bed than on my feet this past month. Maybe one day I will be back. Or I won’t. I hope my body can recover from this.”

On Wednesday evening, the Swedish Athletics Federation officially confirmed that Brangefalt had taken her own life earlier this month.

“During her last months, Emilia felt very bad, both physically and mentally. She had good support from those closest to her, but on November 13, she ended her life,” a statement from the Swedish Athletics Federation read.

Tributes Pour In

The statement also contained remarks from Kasja Bergqvist, the captain of the Swedish Athletics Federation (SAF), who said that Emilia Brangefalt’s death was “so deeply tragic” that she struggled to find words to convey the sorrow.

“I didn’t know Emilia personally but have understood that she was a very nice person, a forward-thinking, lovely, talented girl with her whole life ahead of her,” she said.

Brangefalt’s running association, Vasteras FK, also released a statement on its website expressing that they are all “in mourning” over her sudden death.

The club plans to commemorate Brangefalt’s life at their annual gala on Friday.

In a tribute to his sister on Instagram, Brangefalt’s brother, Adam, shared that she sought psychiatric support on November 12 but was unable to receive treatment due to a “lack of staff.”

Adam paid tribute to his sister’s athletic prowess and passion, writing, “Your love for your sport and being able to move, was indescribable. A love for sports that we have always shared. All the hundreds of kilometers we skied, all the jumps we made and all the nice memories we created through movement.

“But love is difficult. When your love for what you loved most painfully rips from you and your body. You couldn’t take it anymore.”

My Take

Emilia is presumed to have been COVID-19 Vaccinated. The only question is how many COVID-19 Vaccines did she take and when did she take them?

She was sponsored by Adidas Terrex and she traveled extensively for competitions, including the Nov.3-6, 2022 World Trail Championships in Chiang Mai, Thailand. Thailand required proof of COVID-19 Vaccination until Oct.1, 2022 and she was preparing for the competition for months.

“Since the end of July (2023), my body shut down. Haven’t been able to train anything due to a extremely high heart rate (120-150 bpm) just standing up.”

She may have developed COVID-19 Vaccine Induced POTS which is an extremely common side effect.

Postural orthostatic tachycardia syndrome (POTS) is a condition that causes your heart to beat faster than normal when you transition from sitting or lying down to standing up

• Postural: Related to the position of your body.
• Orthostatic: Related to standing upright.
• Tachycardia: A heart rate over 100 beats per minute.
• Syndrome: A group of symptoms that happen together. 

Dec. 1, 2023 – UK – 39 year old Kelly Louise Smith-May, mother of four, has spent the last 18 months battling a long Covid ‘death sentence’ that has left her ‘imprisoned’ in a dark room in constant agony and unable to care for her children – she wants to end her life in Switzerland and is raising funds for it. Her husband believes it was the COVID-19 Vaccine.

Mrs Smith-May’s condition gradually deteriorated after she caught Covid in December 2021.

It has now gotten so bad that the 39-year-old, from Chipping Sodbury, Gloucestershire, has ‘reached the point where dying would end her suffering’. 

After a loved one launched a £10,000 fundraiser to finally end her ‘torture’, Mr. May shared his heartbreaking account of how they have come to this decision. 

Speaking to MailOnline from his home, Mr. May — who has become his wife of eight year’s full-time carer, quitting his job as a digger driver in order to do so — said they wanted to make the most of what might be their last Christmas together.

Mr. May said: ‘I had no choice but to give up work and step in and do absolutely everything.

‘People say we’ve got a lovely home but that’s all the stuff we had when Kelly was fit and well.

‘Kelly was very house proud, she wanted the best for her children like any mum.

‘But for more than 18 months she’s been bed bound – I wash her hair once a month and I have to turn her over. She’s in so much pain.’

Mr May said his wife was diagnosed with long Covid shortly after catching the virus nearly two years ago.

She was, it is claimed, later diagnosed with chronic fatigue syndrome, also known as myalgic encephalomyelitis (ME).

But, although unable to prove it, Mr May believes the Covid vaccine, which his wife received in April 2022, exacerbated her symptoms. 

‘I know it’s difficult to prove,’ he said.

‘At first doctors said it was psychological, then she was diagnosed with long Covid. 

‘After they said it was chronic fatigue and ME but they didn’t know which because the symptoms are the same.’

There is no scientific evidence the jab is responsible for Kelly’s condition or if the timing was a coincidence. 

Regardless of the trigger, Mr May said the process of getting his wife help has been a terrible ordeal.

‘Kelly has been let down by doctors for the last two years and now she has reached the point where dying would end her suffering,’ he said.   

Mr May said that, at first, the GP didn’t believe Kelly was ill and ‘tried to fob her off with the mental health team’.

He said: ‘They made out she was lying. They said cancer patients could get themselves to the surgery so Kelly should be able to.

‘The doctors treated her badly, they were ignoring what she was telling them when she was in so much agony she couldn’t get off the bed.

‘They wanted her to go into respite care for two weeks but it was a place where you had to do your own cooking and look after yourself. Kelly wasn’t able to do any of those things.

‘Every doctor we’ve had come round here has not really believed her. All the health professionals who have seen her don’t give a toss.’

Mrs Smith-May, once a bubbly, loud and creative person, hasn’t left her bedroom at the couple’s three-bedroomed house since June last year.

Mr May said: ‘The health service has left her like a dying dog. She’s been left to suffer, a doctor comes out every few weeks but we are not getting anywhere.

‘The blinds are down, she has no TV, there’s just an electric bed and a commode in there. It’s torture, like being prison.

She was in regular contact with a woman from Florida seriously ill with ME, who travelled to Switzerland to end her life at the Swiss Pegasos clinic.

Mr May said: ‘That’s where the idea came from, we’ve talked about it a lot and it’s what Kelly wants.

My Take 

I believe the husband is absolutely correct – whatever COVID-19 Vaccines she took would have made her Long COVID symptoms much worse.

Describes her illness as “being poisoned every minute of the day” and a “living death sentence”.

This is what COVID-19 Vaccines have done to millions of people.

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June 1, 2023 – 41yo model and Hollywood actress Katerina Pavelek ended her life at an assisted suicide clinic in Basel, Switzerland on June 1, 2023, due to COVID-19 vaccine booster injuries (ME, CFS, ALS).

Los Angeles, CA – Katerina Pavelek, a Slovakian model and Hollywood actress, ended her life in a Swiss clinic this past weekend at the age of 41 (June 1, 2023) (Pegasos Swiss Association, Basel).

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May 25, 2023 – Alysia was a young lady who was receiving financial help from Synergy Talk Show Host Stephan Reis after she took the first Pfizer vaccine in order to keep her job at a restaurant. She became paralyzed from the waist down, a condition better known as Transverse Myelitis, & could no longer work. Unfortunately, Alysia committed suicide on May 25, 2023, leaving her husband behind.

Mar. 14, 2023 – Sassari, Italy – 37 year old personal trainer, swimmer and triathlete Claudio Rais committed suicide by jumping off the Rosello Bridge, the highest bridge in the city of Sassari in Italy, on March 14, 2023. He took first two Pfizer doses in 2021 and Moderna booster on Feb. 10, 2022. By Sep. 2022, he was severely vaccine injured (click here).

Claudio Rais had his first two COVID-19 mRNA vaccine doses with Pfizer in 2021, and then had a Moderna booster shot on Feb. 10, 2022.

He had a successful swimming summer season of 2022, winning multiple championships.

But by September 2022, he described suffering horrible injuries from his Moderna COVID-19 booster shot. In his own words:

By December 2022, he was seriously contemplating suicide:

Claudio Rais would go on to commit suicide only 3 months later on March 14, 2023, by jumping off the Rosello bridge in his town of Sassari, Italy.

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Nov. 3, 2022 – Hungary – 36 year old Timike Timea Balogh took her own life on Nov. 3, 2022. “Since the two Moderna shots, my body is constantly inflamed and my hair loss is unstoppable. I’ve tried everything” “Please somebody help me.”

Nov. 11, 2021 – 29 year old Kyle Warner, professional Mountain biker, developed pericarditis, POTS + reactive arthritis following 2nd dose of Pfizer’s COVID shot – posted a video on Instagram stating that 6 vaccine injured people committed suicide in a month (Nov. 11, 2021).

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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Days before the Oct. 7 Hamas attack on Israel, stock traders magically began anticipating events to come:

Research by law professors Robert Jackson Jr from NYU and Joshua Mitts of Columbia reveals MASSIVE short-selling leading up to the attacks:

The short-selling before Oct. 7 was so extreme it “exceeded the short-selling that occurred during numerous other periods of crisis” including after the Great Recession of 2008, the 2014 Israel-Gaza war, and the COVID pandemic.

“Our findings suggest that traders informed about the coming attacks profited from these tragic events…”

In the days before the attack, bets against Israeli securities traded on the Tel Aviv Stock Exchange “increased dramatically,” the paper said.

For example, the researchers found that between September 14 and October 5, there were 4.4 million new shares sold short in Bank Leumi, one of Israel’s largest banks. Bank Leumi’s share prices tumbled 23% between October 4 and October 23.”

What on earth is going on here? Who knew what and when?

Why are we allowing these people to get away with this? We need criminal investigations immediately.

Days before the Oct. 7 Hamas attack on Israel, stock traders magically began anticipating events to come:

Research by law professors Robert Jackson Jr from NYU and Joshua Mitts of Columbia reveals MASSIVE short-selling leading up to the attacks:

The short-selling before Oct. 7…

— Charlie Kirk (@charliekirk11) December 5, 2023

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Please enjoy – to the extent you can – my Foreword to ‘The Indoctrinated Brain’, by Dr Michael Nehls. The book, which explains the neuroscience of propaganda, will chill your soul, but may explain a great deal.

‘The fact that the brain is plastic—modifiable—has become much better understood by the public in the past few decades.

General readers understand by now that the human brain can be altered; and that experiences can modify its reactions and processes. We understand now for example that PTSD leaves lasting changes in brain functioning. It’s been established that motherhood changes the brain and that bonding itself is a chemical process modified by the brain.

We also understand, as general readers, that propaganda is real.

Some of us have studied propaganda in the past. We have a working knowledge of Joseph Goebbels, and of the artistry and craft that underlay his manufacturing of National Socialist consent. The work of Edward Bernays, one of the earliest practitioners of what became the field of public relations, has been widely read in English. Decades-old bestsellers such as Subliminal Seduction by Wilson Bryan Key exposed the fact that advertisers use every tool at their disposal to alter our reactions to their products—down to the level of the subconscious mind.

Modern general audiences also understand that governments use “messaging”—and often, heavy-handed propaganda—to lead us to take actions that can be against our interests or our better conscious judgments; to create prejudices and divisions that may not otherwise exist; to heighten fears and to trigger a sense of vulnerability in us, so that we can be better manipulated and guided to goals that are not our own.

But Dr. Michael Nehls’s thesis in this book is revolutionary because it brings together all of these fields of inquiry and proposes a set of questions so radical that they make the mysteries of the past three years fall into place. This is the indispensable book. In The Indoctrinated Brain, Dr. Nehls brings these areas of study together in a way that has never been done before. By applying neuroscience to the otherwise bizarre events of the recent past, he explains what has happened to humanity.

Many of us have noted that our loved ones and colleagues have changed. Post- mRNA injection rollout, we notice that people who were highly educated critical thinkers, have become unable to think outside of two simple binaries. We watch in astonishment as formerly sophisticated loved ones and friends regurgitate talking points with no self-awareness. We wonder why there is a sense of something inchoately missing when we sit with a vaccinated or COVID-fearful friend. We cannot fathom what has caused this sea change.

Dr. Nehls’s hypothesis can explain it.

“The Indoctrinated Brain introduces a largely unknown, powerful neurobiological mechanism whose externally induced dysfunction underlies these catastrophic developments,” as the publisher notes.

Dr. Nehls argues that the spike protein, along with other COVID measures, represents an intentional attack on the human hippocampus—where autobiographical memory and individuality itself originate—and that “fear porn” keeps us from holding on to the autobiographical memories that encompass our former selves. As a result, humans have become deindividualized, more suggestible, more forgetful, more compliant, and less able to engage in critical thinking and creative reasoning. This argument utterly accords with what many of us are seeing, to our horror, every day. Dr. Nehls’s The Indoctrinated Brain is an indispensable book because it applies neuroscience to politics and especially to the politics of fascism. The need for that has existed for as long as modern fascism has existed.

Neuroscience should be applied to politics and to social change, but it is rare indeed when those fields of analysis meet. By bringing these fields of knowledge together and mapping neurological science against propaganda, and vice versa, Dr. Nehls brings vast new insights to the reader that would not have been attainable previously.

After you read The Indoctrinated Brain, you will think: Of course. Of course, the propaganda of the past few years must have been predicated upon intensive study of the brain and its reactions. Of course, the hundreds of millions of dollars that were recently spent and are currently being spent by the US and other governments on behavioral science and behavior modification would result in insights that would be applied by the US and other governments to making populations more tractable, less able to reason, less creative and more compliant.

Why else would they so heavily have invested in such studies? Of course, the constant messaging, especially about fear, over the past three years, would have an effect that is not just about public health or perhaps not at all about public health—but that it is rather about making humans in free societies more tractable—with public health as the excuse, the proxy, for this deployment of life-altering and consciousness-altering fear. It is not the fear porn about the specific scary thing that matters, Dr. Nehls persuasively argues here: the fear itself is deliverable. The fear itself changes and indeed damages the brain.

I’ve long been interested in the psychiatric effects and, as I guessed, intentionalities behind “lockdowns” and “pandemic” messaging. But I did not have the neuroscientific background to understand exactly what was being done to people via “lockdowns” and the “fear porn” of the pandemic years related to the virus—to other human beings.

Through my study of the psychiatric effects of torture and isolation, that I took on for a book about closing democracies, I realized that isolation causes profound and sometimes permanent changes in the brain. I knew intuitively in the post-9/11, “Global War on Terror” years, that constant fear would wear down faculties needed for critical thinking. And I applied those insights to the isolation and fear messaging of 2020–22. But I did not have the complete picture.

This book provides it. It is the “aha” hypothetical for our time.

The Indoctrinated Brain provides the missing practical knowledge of neuroscience, that explains why isolating people creates a more befuddled, more easily manipulated population. It explains exactly why a message that closeness with other human beings can kill you, or you can kill others (especially your grandma) through physical closeness, might rewire the human brain to create the vulnerability to delusion and bad science and cultlike thinking, that many of us observed in formerly critically thinking loved ones and friends, post-2020. It even raises the question of whether the spike protein contributes to brain fog and to the erasure of a sense of an autonomous, resilient, individuated, and questing self.

If Dr. Nehls is right, his theory here will be as important as Dr. Sigmund Freud’s discovery of the subconscious, if not more so. If he is right, his theory explains why governments around the world mandated “lockdown” measures and mRNA injections, which would not ultimately then be about public health but about creating manipulable, passive citizens.

If Dr. Nehls is right, it explains so many baffling features of the past three years—notably the fact that formerly thoughtful, highly individuated leaders of institutions, down to rank-and-file citizens, followed cultlike dicta without a mur- mur, and pursued nonsensical goals such as isolation, masking, and submission to vaccine mandates, without protest. Dr. Nehls’s thesis would explain the bizarre experience many of us are having of watching our formerly analytical loved ones, find themselves unable to keep two thoughts in their heads at the same time, unable to engage in calm debate without exploding emotionally, unable to maintain contact and connection with people with whom they disagree.

As I write, another global crisis is being spun up, this one in the Middle East. Within a day, highly educated and formerly skeptical loved ones of mine are repeating glaring legacy media talking points without any self-consciousness. It’s upsetting not to know why they would change in this way—and it is even more upsetting, though incredibly enlightening, to read Dr. Nehls’s argument and realize what the cause may be of their submissiveness to propaganda narratives. It makes it both easier and harder to contend with loved ones, friends, and colleagues who have been intellectually blunted in this way, to understand Dr. Nehls’s point of view and realize that this sad change in cognition might be simply physical—the spike protein—and neuropsychiatric: the repetition of fear messages and their impact on the brain.

In my social media feed today—on a day when the news has brought images of endless atrocities to our media streams, and when we are being told that this Friday will be a “Day of Jihad” with plenty of stabbings—someone wrote, “Protect your amygdala.” That meant, do not expose yourself to endless scenes of rape, murder, beheadings, atrocities, and horrors.

Dr. Nehls’s book is ultimately a hopeful one, since if we understand the damage to our brains from both spike proteins and fear pornography, we can find ways to prospect ourselves and our conscious minds. I appreciate the practical suggestions Dr. Nehls gives us to do just that.

It is scary that we are living in a time in which there is, as Dr. Nehls so powerfully points out, a war on our brains. But it must be less scary to understand what is being done to us, with Dr. Nehls’s help, so we can protect and strengthen our autobiographical memory and critical thinking, and so we can survive this onslaught with the full range of our intelligence—and our humanity—intact.‘

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The Indoctrinated Brain

How to Successfully Fend Off the Global Attack on Your Mental Freedom

By Michael Nehls, Naomi Wolf

Global War on the Human Brain

Throughout the world, mental capacity is declining, especially among young people, while depression rates are rising dramatically. Meanwhile, one in forty men and women suffers from Alzheimer’s, and the age of onset is falling rapidly. But the causes are not being eliminated, quite the opposite. Can this just be coincidence?

The Indoctrinated Brain introduces a largely unknown, powerful neurobiological mechanism whose externally induced dysfunction underlies these catastrophic developments.

Michael Nehls, medical doctor and internationally renowned molecular geneticist, lays out a shattering chain of circumstantial evidence indicating that behind these numerous negative influences lies a targeted, masterfully executed attack on our individuality. He points out how the raging wars against viruses, about climate change, or over national borders are—more likely intended than not—fundamentally providing the platform for such an offensive against the human brain that is steadily changing our being and is aimed at depriving us of our ability to think for ourselves.

But it is not too late. By exposing these brain-damaging processes and describing countermeasures that anyone can take, Nehls brings light and hope to this fateful chapter in human history. Nothing less will be decided than the question of whether our species can retain its humanity and its creative power or whether it will lose them irretrievably.

• 288 Pages
• December 12, 2023
• ISBN: 9781510778368
• Imprint: Skyhorse Publishing
• Trim Size: 6in x 9in x 0in

Click here to purchase.

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Permissive airstrikes on non-military targets and the use of an artificial intelligence system have enabled the Israeli army to carry out its deadliest war on Gaza, a +972 and Local Call investigation reveals.

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The Israeli army’s expanded authorization for bombing non-military targets, the loosening of constraints regarding expected civilian casualties, and the use of an artificial intelligence system to generate more potential targets than ever before, appear to have contributed to the destructive nature of the initial stages of Israel’s current war on the Gaza Strip, an investigation by +972 Magazine and Local Call reveals. These factors, as described by current and former Israeli intelligence members, have likely played a role in producing what has been one of the deadliest military campaigns against Palestinians since the Nakba of 1948.

The investigation by +972 and Local Call is based on conversations with seven current and former members of Israel’s intelligence community — including military intelligence and air force personnel who were involved in Israeli operations in the besieged Strip — in addition to Palestinian testimonies, data, and documentation from the Gaza Strip, and official statements by the IDF Spokesperson and other Israeli state institutions.

Compared to previous Israeli assaults on Gaza, the current war — which Israel has named “Operation Iron Swords,” and which began in the wake of the Hamas-led assault on southern Israel on October 7 — has seen the army significantly expand its bombing of targets that are not distinctly military in nature. These include private residences as well as public buildings, infrastructure, and high-rise blocks, which sources say the army defines as “power targets” (“matarot otzem”).

The bombing of power targets, according to intelligence sources who had first-hand experience with its application in Gaza in the past, is mainly intended to harm Palestinian civil society: to “create a shock” that, among other things, will reverberate powerfully and “lead civilians to put pressure on Hamas,” as one source put it.

Several of the sources, who spoke to +972 and Local Call on the condition of anonymity, confirmed that the Israeli army has files on the vast majority of potential targets in Gaza — including homes — which stipulate the number of civilians who are likely to be killed in an attack on a particular target. This number is calculated and known in advance to the army’s intelligence units, who also know shortly before carrying out an attack roughly how many civilians are certain to be killed.

In one case discussed by the sources, the Israeli military command knowingly approved the killing of hundreds of Palestinian civilians in an attempt to assassinate a single top Hamas military commander. “The numbers increased from dozens of civilian deaths [permitted] as collateral damage as part of an attack on a senior official in previous operations, to hundreds of civilian deaths as collateral damage,” said one source.

“Nothing happens by accident,” said another source. “When a 3-year-old girl is killed in a home in Gaza, it’s because someone in the army decided it wasn’t a big deal for her to be killed — that it was a price worth paying in order to hit [another] target. We are not Hamas. These are not random rockets. Everything is intentional. We know exactly how much collateral damage there is in every home.”

According to the investigation, another reason for the large number of targets, and the extensive harm to civilian life in Gaza, is the widespread use of a system called “Habsora” (“The Gospel”), which is largely built on artificial intelligence and can “generate” targets almost automatically at a rate that far exceeds what was previously possible. This AI system, as described by a former intelligence officer, essentially facilitates a “mass assassination factory.”

According to the sources, the increasing use of AI-based systems like Habsora allows the army to carry out strikes on residential homes where a single Hamas member lives on a massive scale, even those who are junior Hamas operatives. Yet testimonies of Palestinians in Gaza suggest that since October 7, the army has also attacked many private residences where there was no known or apparent member of Hamas or any other militant group residing. Such strikes, sources confirmed to +972 and Local Call, can knowingly kill entire families in the process.

In the majority of cases, the sources added, military activity is not conducted from these targeted homes. “I remember thinking that it was like if [Palestinian militants] would bomb all the private residences of our families when [Israeli soldiers] go back to sleep at home on the weekend,” one source, who was critical of this practice, recalled.

Another source said that a senior intelligence officer told his officers after October 7 that the goal was to “kill as many Hamas operatives as possible,” for which the criteria around harming Palestinian civilians were significantly relaxed. As such, there are “cases in which we shell based on a wide cellular pinpointing of where the target is, killing civilians. This is often done to save time, instead of doing a little more work to get a more accurate pinpointing,” said the source.

The result of these policies is the staggering loss of human life in Gaza since October 7. Over 300 families have lost 10 or more family members in Israeli bombings in the past two months — a number that is 15 times higher than the figure from what was previously Israel’s deadliest war on Gaza, in 2014. At the time of writing, around 15,000 Palestinians have been reported killed in the war, and counting.

“All of this is happening contrary to the protocol used by the IDF in the past,” a source explained. “There is a feeling that senior officials in the army are aware of their failure on October 7, and are busy with the question of how to provide the Israeli public with an image [of victory] that will salvage their reputation.”

‘An excuse to cause destruction’

Israel launched its assault on Gaza in the aftermath of the October 7Hamas-led offensive on southern Israel. During that attack, under a hail of rocket fire, Palestinian militants massacred more than 840 civilians and killed 350 soldiers and security personnel, kidnapped around 240 people — civilians and soldiers — to Gaza, and committed widespread sexual violence, including rape, according to a report by the NGO Physicians for Human Rights Israel.

From the first moment after the October 7 attack, decisionmakers in Israel openly declared that the response would be of a completely different magnitude to previous military operations in Gaza, with the stated aim of totally eradicating Hamas. “The emphasis is on damage and not on accuracy,” said IDF Spokesperson Daniel Hagari on Oct. 9. The army swiftly translated those declarations into actions.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Defense Minister Yoav Gallant, and Minister without Portfolio Benny Gantz hold a joint press conference at the Defense Ministry, Tel Aviv, November 11, 2023. (Marc Israel Sellem/POOL)

According to the sources who spoke to +972 and Local Call, the targets in Gaza that have been struck by Israeli aircraft can be divided roughly into four categories. The first is “tactical targets,” which include standard military targets such as armed militant cells, weapon warehouses, rocket launchers, anti-tank missile launchers, launch pits, mortar bombs, military headquarters, observation posts, and so on.

The second is “underground targets” — mainly tunnels that Hamas has dug under Gaza’s neighborhoods, including under civilian homes. Aerial strikes on these targets could lead to the collapse of the homes above or near the tunnels.

The third is “power targets,” which includes high-rises and residential towers in the heart of cities, and public buildings such as universities, banks, and government offices. The idea behind hitting such targets, say three intelligence sources who were involved in planning or conducting strikes on power targets in the past, is that a deliberate attack on Palestinian society will exert “civil pressure” on Hamas.

The final category consists of “family homes” or “operatives’ homes.” The stated purpose of these attacks is to destroy private residences in order to assassinate a single resident suspected of being a Hamas or Islamic Jihad operative. However, in the current war, Palestinian testimonies assert that some of the families that were killed did not include any operatives from these organizations.

In the early stages of the current war, the Israeli army appears to have given particular attention to the third and fourth categories of targets. According to statements on Oct. 11 by the IDF Spokesperson, during the first five days of fighting, half of the targets bombed — 1,329 out of a total 2,687 — were deemed power targets.

“We are asked to look for high-rise buildings with half a floor that can be attributed to Hamas,” said one source who took part in previous Israeli offensives in Gaza. “Sometimes it is a militant group’s spokesperson’s office, or a point where operatives meet. I understood that the floor is an excuse that allows the army to cause a lot of destruction in Gaza. That is what they told us.

“If they would tell the whole world that the [Islamic Jihad] offices on the 10th floor are not important as a target, but that its existence is a justification to bring down the entire high-rise with the aim of pressuring civilian families who live in it in order to put pressure on terrorist organizations, this would itself be seen as terrorism. So they do not say it,” the source added.

Various sources who served in IDF intelligence units said that at least until the current war, army protocols allowed for attacking power targets only when the buildings were empty of residents at the time of the strike. However, testimonies and videos from Gaza suggest that since October 7, some of these targets have been attacked without prior notice being given to their occupants, killing entire families as a result.

The wide-scale targeting of residential homes can be derived from public and official data. According to the Government Media Office in Gaza — which has been providing death tolls since the Gaza Health Ministry stopped doing so on Nov. 11 due to the collapse of health services in the Strip — by the time the temporary ceasefire took hold on Nov. 23, Israel had killed 14,800 Palestinians in Gaza; approximately 6,000 of them were children and 4,000 were women, who together constitute more than 67 percent of the total. The figures provided by the Health Ministry and the Government Media Office — both of which fall under the auspices of the Hamas government — do not deviate significantly from Israeli estimates.

The Gaza Health Ministry, furthermore, does not specify how many of the dead belonged to the military wings of Hamas or Islamic Jihad. The Israeli army estimates that it has killed between 1,000 and 3,000 armed Palestinian militants. According to media reports in Israel, some of the dead militants are buried under the rubble or inside Hamas’ underground tunnel system, and therefore were not tallied in official counts.

UN data for the period up until Nov. 11, by which time Israel had killed 11,078 Palestinians in Gaza, states that at least 312 families have lost 10 or more people in the current Israeli attack; for the sake of comparison, during “Operation Protective Edge” in 2014, 20 families in Gaza lost 10 or more people. At least 189 families have lost between six and nine people according to the UN data, while 549 families have lost between two and five people. No updated breakdowns have yet been given for the casualty figures published since Nov. 11.

The massive attacks on power targets and private residences came at the same time as the Israeli army, on Oct. 13, called on the 1.1 million residents of the northern Gaza Strip — most of them residing in Gaza City — to leave their homes and move to the south of the Strip. By that date, a record number of power targets had already been bombed, and more than 1,000 Palestinians had already been killed, including hundreds of children.

In total, according to the UN, 1.7 million Palestinians, the vast majority of the Strip’s population, have been displaced within Gaza since October 7. The army claimed that the demand to evacuate the Strip’s north was intended to protect civilian lives. Palestinians, however, see this mass displacement as part of a “new Nakba” — an attempt to ethnically cleanse part or all of the territory.

‘They knocked down a high-rise for the sake of it’

According to the Israeli army, during the first five days of fighting it dropped 6,000 bombs on the Strip, with a total weight of about 4,000 tons. Media outlets reported that the army had wiped out entire neighborhoods; according to the Gaza-based Al Mezan Center for Human Rights, these attacks led to “the complete destruction of residential neighborhoods, the destruction of infrastructure, and the mass killing of residents.” 

As documented by Al Mezan and numerous images coming out of Gaza, Israel bombed the Islamic University of Gaza, the Palestinian Bar Association, a UN building for an educational program for outstanding students, a building belonging to the Palestine Telecommunications Company, the Ministry of National Economy, the Ministry of Culture, roads, and dozens of high-rise buildings and homes — especially in Gaza’s northern neighborhoods.

The ruins of Al-Amin Muhammad Mosque which was destroyed in an Israeli airstrike on October 20, Khan Younis refugee camp, southern Gaza Strip, October 31, 2023. (Mohammed Zaanoun/Activestills)

On the fifth day of fighting, the IDF Spokesperson distributed to military reporters in Israel “before and after” satellite images of neighborhoods in the northern Strip, such as Shuja’iyya and Al-Furqan (nicknamed after a mosque in the area) in Gaza City, which showed dozens of destroyed homes and buildings. The Israeli army said that it had struck 182 power targets in Shuja’iyya and 312 power targets in Al-Furqan.

The Chief of Staff of the Israeli Air Force, Omer Tishler, told military reporters that all of these attacks had a legitimate military target, but also that entire neighborhoods were attacked “on a large scale and not in a surgical manner.” Noting that half of the military targets up until Oct. 11 were power targets, the IDF Spokesperson said that “neighborhoods that serve as terror nests for Hamas” were attacked and that damage was caused to “operational headquarters,” “operational assets,” and “assets used by terrorist organizations inside residential buildings.” On Oct. 12, the Israeli army announced it had killed three “senior Hamas members” — two of whom were part of the group’s political wing.

Yet despite the unbridled Israeli bombardment, the damage to Hamas’ military infrastructure in northern Gaza during the first days of the war appears to have been very minimal. Indeed, intelligence sources told +972 and Local Call that military targets that were part of power targets have previously been used many times as a fig leaf for harming the civilian population. “Hamas is everywhere in Gaza; there is no building that does not have something of Hamas in it, so if you want to find a way to turn a high-rise into a target, you will be able to do so,” said one former intelligence official.

“They will never just hit a high-rise that does not have something we can define as a military target,” said another intelligence source, who carried out previous strikes against power targets.

“There will always be a floor in the high-rise [associated with Hamas]. But for the most part, when it comes to power targets, it is clear that the target doesn’t have military value that justifies an attack that would bring down the entire empty building in the middle of a city, with the help of six planes and bombs weighing several tons.”

Indeed, according to sources who were involved in the compiling of power targets in previous wars, although the target file usually contains some kind of alleged association with Hamas or other militant groups, striking the target functions primarily as a “means that allows damage to civil society.” The sources understood, some explicitly and some implicitly, that damage to civilians is the real purpose of these attacks.

In May 2021, for example, Israel was heavily criticized for bombing the Al-Jalaa Tower, which housed prominent international media outlets such as Al Jazeera, AP, and AFP. The army claimed that the building was a Hamas military target; sources have told +972 and Local Call that it was in fact a power target.

“The perception is that it really hurts Hamas when high-rise buildings are taken down, because it creates a public reaction in the Gaza Strip and scares the population,” said one of the sources. “They wanted to give the citizens of Gaza the feeling that Hamas is not in control of the situation. Sometimes they toppled buildings and sometimes postal service and government buildings.”

Although it is unprecedented for the Israeli army to attack more than 1,000 power targets in five days, the idea of causing mass devastation to civilian areas for strategic purposes was formulated in previous military operations in Gaza, honed by the so-called “Dahiya Doctrine” from the Second Lebanon War of 2006.

According to the doctrine — developed by former IDF Chief of Staff Gadi Eizenkot, who is now a Knesset member and part of the current war cabinet — in a war against guerrilla groups such as Hamas or Hezbollah, Israel must use disproportionate and overwhelming force while targeting civilian and government infrastructure in order to establish deterrence and force the civilian population to pressure the groups to end their attacks. The concept of “power targets” seems to have emanated from this same logic.

The first time the Israeli army publicly defined power targets in Gaza was at the end of Operation Protective Edge in 2014. The army bombed four buildings during the last four days of the war — three residential multi-story buildings in Gaza City, and a high-rise in Rafah. The security establishment explained at the time that the attacks were intended to convey to the Palestinians of Gaza that “nothing is immune anymore,” and to put pressure on Hamas to agree to a ceasefire. “The evidence we collected shows that the massive destruction [of the buildings] was carried out deliberately, and without any military justification,” stated an Amnesty report in late 2014.

In another violent escalation that began in November 2018, the army once again attacked power targets. That time, Israel bombed high-rises, shopping centers, and the building of the Hamas-affiliated Al-Aqsa TV station. “Attacking power targets produces a very significant effect on the other side,” one Air Force officer stated at the time. “We did it without killing anyone and we made sure that the building and its surroundings were evacuated.”

Previous operations have also shown how striking these targets is meant not only to harm Palestinian morale, but also to raise the morale inside Israel. Haaretz revealed that during Operation Guardian of the Walls in 2021, the IDF Spokesperson’s Unit conducted a psy-op against Israeli citizens in order to boost awareness of the IDF’s operations in Gaza and the damage they caused to Palestinians. Soldiers, who used fake social media accounts to conceal the campaign’s origin, uploaded images and clips of the army’s strikes in Gaza to Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, and TikTok in order to demonstrate the army’s prowess to the Israeli public.

During the 2021 assault, Israel struck nine targets that were defined as power targets — all of them high-rise buildings. “The goal was to collapse the high-rises in order to put pressure on Hamas, and also so that the [Israeli] public would see a victory image,” one security source told +972 and Local Call.

However, the source continued,

“it didn’t work. As someone who has followed Hamas, I heard firsthand how much they did not care about the civilians and the buildings that were taken down. Sometimes the army found something in a high-rise building that was related to Hamas, but it was also possible to hit that specific target with more accurate weaponry. The bottom line is that they knocked down a high-rise for the sake of knocking down a high-rise.”

‘Everyone was looking for their children in these piles’

Not only has the current war seen Israel attack an unprecedented number of power targets, it has also seen the army abandon prior policies that aimed at avoiding harm to civilians. Whereas previously the army’s official procedure was that it was possible to attack power targets only after all civilians had been evacuated from them, testimonies from Palestinian residents in Gaza indicate that, since October 7, Israel has attacked high-rises with their residents still inside, or without having taken significant steps to evacuate them, leading to many civilian deaths.

Such attacks very often result in the killing of entire families, as experienced in previous offensives; according to an investigation by AP conducted after the 2014 war, about 89 percent of those killed in the aerial bombings of family homes were unarmed residents, and most of them were children and women.

Tishler, the air force chief of staff, confirmed a shift in policy, telling reporters that the army’s “roof knocking” policy — whereby it would fire a small initial strike on the roof of a building to warn residents that it is about to be struck — is no longer in use “where there is an enemy.” Roof knocking, Tishler said, is “a term that is relevant to rounds [of fighting] and not to war.”

The sources who have previously worked on power targets said that the brazen strategy of the current war could be a dangerous development, explaining that attacking power targets was originally intended to “shock” Gaza but not necessarily to kill large numbers of civilians. “The targets were designed with the assumption that high-rises would be evacuated of people, so when we were working on [compiling the targets], there was no concern whatsoever regarding how many civilians would be harmed; the assumption was that the number would always be zero,” said one source with deep knowledge of the tactic.

“This would mean there would be a total evacuation [of the targeted buildings], which takes two to three hours, during which the residents are called [by phone to evacuate], warning missiles are fired, and we also crosscheck with drone footage that people are indeed leaving the high-rise,” the source added.

However, evidence from Gaza suggests that some high-rises — which we assume to have been power targets — were toppled without prior warning. +972 and Local Call located at least two cases during the current war in which entire residential high-rises were bombed and collapsed without warning, and one case in which, according to the evidence, a high-rise building collapsed on civilians who were inside.

Devastation is seen in the area of Al-Rimal at the heart of Gaza City after Israeli bombing, October 23, 2023. (Mohammed Zaanoun/Activestills)

On Oct. 10, Israel bombed the Babel Building in Gaza, according to the testimony of Bilal Abu Hatzira, who rescued bodies from the ruins that night. Ten people were killed in the attack on the building, including three journalists.

On Oct. 25, the 12-story Al-Taj residential building in Gaza City was bombed to the ground, killing the families living inside it without warning. About 120 people were buried under the ruins of their apartments, according to the testimonies of residents. Yousef Amar Sharaf, a resident of Al-Taj, wrote on X that 37 of his family members who lived in the building were killed in the attack: “My dear father and mother, my beloved wife, my sons, and most of my brothers and their families.” Residents stated that a lot of bombs were dropped, damaging and destroying apartments in nearby buildings too.

Six days later, on Oct. 31, the eight-story Al-Mohandseen residential building was bombed without warning. Between 30 and 45 bodies were reportedly recovered from the ruins on the first day. One baby was found alive, without his parents. Journalists estimated that over 150 people were killed in the attack, as many remained buried under the rubble.

The building used to stand in Nuseirat Refugee Camp, south of Wadi Gaza — in the supposed “safe zone” to which Israel directed the Palestinians who fled their homes in northern and central Gaza — and therefore served as temporary shelter for the displaced, according to testimonies.

According to an investigation by Amnesty International, on Oct. 9, Israel shelled at least three multi-story buildings, as well as an open flea market on a crowded street in the Jabaliya Refugee Camp, killing at least 69 people. “The bodies were burned … I didn’t want to look, I was scared of looking at Imad’s face,” said the father of a child who was killed. “The bodies were scattered on the floor. Everyone was looking for their children in these piles. I recognized my son only by his trousers. I wanted to bury him immediately, so I carried my son and got him out.”

According to Amnesty’s investigation, the army said that the attack on the market area was aimed at a mosque “where there were Hamas operatives.” However, according to the same investigation, satellite images do not show a mosque in the vicinity.

The IDF Spokesperson did not address +972’s and Local Call’s queries about specific attacks, but stated more generally that “the IDF provided warnings before attacks in various ways, and when the circumstances allowed it, also delivered individual warnings through phone calls to people who were at or near the targets (there were more from 25,000 live conversations during the war, alongside millions of recorded conversations, text messages and leaflets dropped from the air for the purpose of warning the population). In general, the IDF works to reduce harm to civilians as part of the attacks as much as possible, despite the challenge of fighting a terrorist organization that uses the citizens of Gaza as human shields.”

‘The machine produced 100 targets in one day’

According to the IDF Spokesperson, by Nov. 10, during the first 35 days of fighting, Israel attacked a total of 15,000 targets in Gaza. Based on multiple sources, this is a very high figure compared to the four previous major operations in the Strip. During Guardian of the Walls in 2021, Israel attacked 1,500 targets in 11 days. In Protective Edge in 2014, which lasted 51 days, Israel struck between 5,266 and 6,231 targets. During Pillar of Defense in 2012, about 1,500 targets were attacked over eight days. In Cast Lead” in 2008, Israel struck 3,400 targets in 22 days.

Intelligence sources who served in the previous operations also told +972 and Local Call that, for 10 days in 2021 and three weeks in 2014, an attack rate of 100 to 200 targets per day led to a situation in which the Israeli Air Force had no targets of military value left. Why, then, after nearly two months, has the Israeli army not yet run out of targets in the current war?

The answer may lie in a statement from the IDF Spokesperson on Nov. 2, according to which it is using the AI system Habsora (“The Gospel”), which the spokesperson says “enables the use of automatic tools to produce targets at a fast pace, and works by improving accurate and high-quality intelligence material according to [operational] needs.” 

In the statement, a senior intelligence official is quoted as saying that thanks to Habsora, targets are created for precision strikes “while causing great damage to the enemy and minimal damage to non-combatants. Hamas operatives are not immune — no matter where they hide.”

According to intelligence sources, Habsora generates, among other things, automatic recommendations for attacking private residences where people suspected of being Hamas or Islamic Jihad operatives live. Israel then carries out large-scale assassination operations through the heavy shelling of these residential homes.

Habsora, explained one of the sources, processes enormous amounts of data that “tens of thousands of intelligence officers could not process,” and recommends bombing sites in real time. Because most senior Hamas officials head into underground tunnels with the start of any military operation, the sources say, the use of a system like Habsora makes it possible to locate and attack the homes of relatively junior operatives.

One former intelligence officer explained that the Habsora system enables the army to run a “mass assassination factory,” in which the “emphasis is on quantity and not on quality.” A human eye “will go over the targets before each attack, but it need not spend a lot of time on them.” Since Israel estimates that there are approximately 30,000 Hamas members in Gaza, and they are all marked for death, the number of potential targets is enormous.

In 2019, the Israeli army created a new center aimed at using AI to accelerate target generation. “The Targets Administrative Division is a unit that includes hundreds of officers and soldiers, and is based on AI capabilities,” said former IDF Chief of Staff Aviv Kochavi in an in-depth interview with Ynet earlier this year.

“This is a machine that, with the help of AI, processes a lot of data better and faster than any human, and translates it into targets for attack,” Kochavi went on. “The result was that in Operation Guardian of the Walls [in 2021], from the moment this machine was activated, it generated 100 new targets every day. You see, in the past there were times in Gaza when we would create 50 targets per year. And here the machine produced 100 targets in one day.”

“We prepare the targets automatically and work according to a checklist,” one of the sources who worked in the new Targets Administrative Division told +972 and Local Call. “It really is like a factory. We work quickly and there is no time to delve deep into the target. The view is that we are judged according to how many targets we manage to generate.”

A senior military official in charge of the target bank told the Jerusalem Post earlier this year that, thanks to the army’s AI systems, for the first time the military can generate new targets at a faster rate than it attacks. Another source said the drive to automatically generate large numbers of targets is a realization of the Dahiya Doctrine.

Automated systems like Habsora have thus greatly facilitated the work of Israeli intelligence officers in making decisions during military operations, including calculating potential casualties. Five different sources confirmed that the number of civilians who may be killed in attacks on private residences is known in advance to Israeli intelligence, and appears clearly in the target file under the category of “collateral damage.” 

According to these sources, there are degrees of collateral damage, according to which the army determines whether it is possible to attack a target inside a private residence. “When the general directive becomes ‘Collateral Damage 5,’ that means we are authorized to strike all targets that will kill five or less civilians — we can act on all target files that are five or less,” said one of the sources.

“In the past, we did not regularly mark the homes of junior Hamas members for bombing,” said a security official who participated in attacking targets during previous operations. “In my time, if the house I was working on was marked Collateral Damage 5, it would not always be approved [for attack].” Such approval, he said, would only be received if a senior Hamas commander was known to be living in the home.

“To my understanding, today they can mark all the houses of [any Hamas military operative regardless of rank],” the source continued. “That is a lot of houses. Hamas members who don’t really matter for anything live in homes across Gaza. So they mark the home and bomb the house and kill everyone there.”

A concerted policy to bomb family homes

On Oct. 22, the Israeli Air Force bombed the home of the Palestinian journalist Ahmed Alnaouq in the city of Deir al-Balah. Ahmed is a close friend and colleague of mine; four years ago, we founded a Hebrew Facebook page called “Across the Wall,” with the aim of bringing Palestinian voices from Gaza to the Israeli public.

The strike on Oct. 22 collapsed blocks of concrete onto Ahmed’s entire family, killing his father, brothers, sisters, and all of their children, including babies. Only his 12-year-old niece, Malak, survived and remained in a critical condition, her body covered in burns. A few days later, Malak died.

Twenty-one members of Ahmed’s family were killed in total, buried under their home. None of them were militants. The youngest was 2 years old; the oldest, his father, was 75. Ahmed, who is currently living in the UK, is now alone out of his entire family.

Al-Nasser Hospital in Khan Younis overflows with the bodies of Palestinians killed and wounded overnight in Israeli airstrikes, Gaza Strip, October 25, 2023. (Mohammed Zaanoun/Activestills)

Ahmed’s family WhatsApp group is titled “Better Together.” The last message that appears there was sent by him, a little after midnight on the night he lost his family. “Someone let me know that everything is fine,” he wrote. No one answered. He fell asleep, but woke up in a panic at 4 a.m. Drenched in sweat, he checked his phone again. Silence. Then he received a message from a friend with the terrible news.

Ahmed’s case is common in Gaza these days. In interviews to the press, heads of Gaza hospitals have been echoing the same description: families enter hospitals as a succession of corpses, a child followed by his father followed by his grandfather. The bodies are all covered in dirt and blood.

According to former Israeli intelligence officers, in many cases in which a private residence is bombed, the goal is the “assassination of Hamas or Jihad operatives,” and such targets are attacked when the operative enters the home. Intelligence researchers know if the operative’s family members or neighbors may also die in an attack, and they know how to calculate how many of them may die. Each of the sources said that these are private homes, where in the majority of cases, no military activity is carried out.

+972 and Local Call do not have data regarding the number of military operatives who were indeed killed or wounded by aerial strikes on private residences in the current war, but there is ample evidence that, in many cases, none were military or political operatives belonging to Hamas or Islamic Jihad.

On Oct. 10, the Israeli Air Force bombed an apartment building in Gaza’s Sheikh Radwan neighborhood, killing 40 people, most of them women and children. In one of the shocking videos taken following the attack, people are seen screaming, holding what appears to be a doll pulled from the ruins of the house, and passing it from hand to hand. When the camera zooms in, one can see that it is not a doll, but the body of a baby.

One of the residents said that 19 members of his family were killed in the strike. Another survivor wrote on Facebook that he only found his son’s shoulder in the rubble. Amnesty investigated the attack and discovered that a Hamas member lived on one of the upper floors of the building, but was not present at the time of the attack.

The bombing of family homes where Hamas or Islamic Jihad operatives supposedly live likely became a more concerted IDF policy during Operation Protective Edge in 2014. Back then, 606 Palestinians — about a quarter of the civilian deaths during the 51 days of fighting — were members of families whose homes were bombed. A UN reportdefined it in 2015 as both a potential war crime and “a new pattern” of action that “led to the death of entire families.”

In 2014, 93 babies were killed as a result of Israeli bombings of family homes, of which 13 were under 1 year old. A month ago, 286 babies aged 1 or under were already identified as having been killed in Gaza, according to a detailed ID list with the ages of victims published by the Gaza Health Ministry on Oct. 26. The number has since likely doubled or tripled.

However, in many cases, and especially during the current attacks on Gaza, the Israeli army has carried out attacks that struck private residences even when there is no known or clear military target. For example, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists, by Nov. 29, Israel had killed 50 Palestinian journalists in Gaza, some of them in their homes with their families.

Roshdi Sarraj, 31, a journalist from Gaza who was born in Britain, founded a media outlet in Gaza called “Ain Media.” On Oct. 22, an Israeli bomb struck his parents’ home where he was sleeping, killing him. The journalist Salam Mema similarly died under the ruins of her home after it was bombed; of her three young children, Hadi, 7, died, while Sham, 3, has not yet been found under the rubble. Two other journalists, Duaa Sharaf and Salma Makhaimer, were killed together with their children in their homes.

Israeli analysts have admitted that the military effectiveness of these kinds of disproportionate aerial attacks is limited. Two weeks after the start of the bombings in Gaza (and before the ground invasion) — after the bodies of 1,903 children, approximately 1,000 women, and 187 elderly men were counted in the Gaza Strip — Israeli commentator Avi Issacharoff tweeted: “As hard as it is to hear, on the 14th day of fighting, it does not appear that the military arm of Hamas has been significantly harmed. The most significant damage to the military leadership is the assassination of [Hamas commander] Ayman Nofal.”

‘Fighting human animals’

Hamas militants regularly operate out of an intricate network of tunnels built under large stretches of the Gaza Strip. These tunnels, as confirmed by the former Israeli intelligence officers we spoke to, also pass under homes and roads. Therefore, Israeli attempts to destroy them with aerial strikes are in many cases likely to lead to the killing of civilians. This may be another reason for the high number of Palestinian families wiped out in the current offensive.

The intelligence officers interviewed for this article said that the way Hamas designed the tunnel network in Gaza knowingly exploits the civilian population and infrastructure above ground. These claims were also the basis of the media campaign that Israel conducted vis-a-vis the attacks and raids on Al-Shifa Hospital and the tunnels that were discovered under it.

Israel has also attacked a large number of military targets: armed Hamas operatives, rocket launcher sites, snipers, anti-tank squads, military headquarters, bases, observation posts, and more. From the beginning of the ground invasion, aerial bombardment and heavy artillery fire have been used to provide backup to Israeli troops on the ground. Experts in international law say these targets are legitimate, as long as the strikes comply with the principle of proportionality.

In response to an enquiry from +972 and Local Call for this article, the IDF Spokesperson stated: “The IDF is committed to international law and acts according to it, and in doing so attacks military targets and does not attack civilians. The terrorist organization Hamas places its operatives and military assets in the heart of the civilian population. Hamas systematically uses the civilian population as a human shield, and conducts combat from civilian buildings, including sensitive sites such as hospitals, mosques, schools, and UN facilities.”

Intelligence sources who spoke to +972 and Local Call similarly claimed that in many cases Hamas “deliberately endangers the civilian population in Gaza and tries to forcefully prevent civilians from evacuating.” Two sources said that Hamas leaders “understand that Israeli harm to civilians gives them legitimacy in fighting.”

At the same time, while it’s hard to imagine now, the idea of dropping a one-ton bomb aimed at killing a Hamas operative yet ending up killing an entire family as “collateral damage” was not always so readily accepted by large swathes of Israeli society. In 2002, for example, the Israeli Air Force bombed the home of Salah Mustafa Muhammad Shehade, then the head of the Al-Qassam Brigades, Hamas’ military wing. The bomb killed him, his wife Eman, his 14-year-old daughter Laila, and 14 other civilians, including 11 children. The killing caused a public uproar in both Israel and the world, and Israel was accused of committing war crimes.

That criticism led to a decision by the Israeli army in 2003 to drop a smaller, quarter-ton bomb on a meeting of top Hamas officials — including the elusive leader of Al-Qassam Brigades, Mohammed Deif — taking place in a residential building in Gaza, despite the fear that it would not be powerful enough to kill them. In his book “To Know Hamas,” veteran Israeli journalist Shlomi Eldar wrote that the decision to use a relatively small bomb was due to the Shehade precedent, and the fear that a one-ton bomb would kill the civilians in the building as well. The attack failed, and the senior military wing officers fled the scene.

In December 2008, in the first major war that Israel waged against Hamas after it seized power in Gaza, Yoav Gallant, who at the time headed the IDF Southern Command, said that for the first time Israel was “hitting the family homes” of senior Hamas officials with the aim of destroying them, but not harming their families. Gallant emphasized that the homes were attacked after the families were warned by a “knock on the roof,” as well as by phone call, after it was clear that Hamas military activity was taking place inside the house.

After 2014’s Protective Edge, during which Israel began to systematically strike family homes from the air, human rights groups like B’Tselem collected testimonies from Palestinians who survived these attacks. The survivors said the homes collapsed in on themselves, glass shards cut the bodies of those inside, the debris “smells of blood,” and people were buried alive.

This deadly policy continues today — thanks in part to the use of destructive weaponry and sophisticated technology like Habsora, but also to a political and security establishment that has loosened the reins on Israel’s military machinery. Fifteen years after insisting that the army was taking pains to minimize civilian harm, Gallant, now Defense Minister, has clearly changed his tune. “We are fighting human animals and we act accordingly,” he said after October 7.

*

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Yuval Abraham is a journalist and activist based in Jerusalem.

Featured image: Palestinian rescue services remove the bodies of members of the Shaaban family, all six of whom were killed in an Israeli airstrike on the Sheikh Radwan neighborhood, western Gaza, October 9, 2023. (Mohammed Zaanoun)

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***

The World Health Organization’s institutional transparency and public perception have been very problematic during the past couple decades. Many critics perceive the WHO as a dire threat to global health and the sovereignty of nations’ domestic health policies. The organization largely operates under a veil of secrecy. It is not uncommon for leaked information from the WHO’s internal affairs and closed door meetings to contradict its public statements to the media. 

Regardless of whether you view the Covid-19 pandemic as a natural and very real global health threat or as an orchestrated release of a human engineered virus to enforce Western nations to usurp greater social control over their populations, in either scenario the US, the WHO, UK and many EU nations performed dismally in a scientifically valid pandemic response. Consequently, and in light of global pandemic unpreparedness, the WHO in alignment with Western nations began undertaking a major overhaul of existing legally binding global health policies, rules and regulations. New amendments to the World Health Assembly’s International Health Regulation (IHR) treaty and the creation of a WHO Pandemic Treaty have raised alarms worldwide among politicians, public health professionals, and health policy advocates. 

The pandemic treaty and IHR pandemics would tighten the existing enforcement of nations’ behavior and policies during pandemic responses.  It entrusts the WHO with overreaching powers that undermine national sovereignty, including the final word on health and vaccine passports, testing and tracing, permissible medical treatments, lockdown and border crossing protocols and quarantine zones. Rather than functioning as a counsel proposing recommendations, the WHO would be a dictator over nations’ emergency response. It would strengthen the pharmaceutical industry’s intellectual property rights for diagnostics, drugs and vaccines; and the WHO would pay itself 20 percent for “pandemic-related products.” 

Even worse, lower income nations would find themselves economically subservient to wealthy nations that would threaten their domestic health security. Finally, the treaty would be anchored in the UN health agency’s constitution and endow the WHO with policing policies and the authority to impose judicial charges upon nations who violate the treaty’s rules. This could even include the imposition of international sanctions against a country. According to Human Rights Watch, the treaty has come under strong attack by human rights organizations for failing to enshrine core human rights protections under international law.

The good news is that during the last World Health Assembly in May 2022 with the majority of the 194 member nations participating, the WHO confronted a surprising backlash.

Although there was no formal vote, 47 African nations, all of the five original BRICS countries (Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa) and others rejected the treaty amendments. At the time, Brazil threatened to leave the Assembly if the treaty were to be approved.

This has pushed the WHO against the wall since a formal vote in May 2024 will require a two-thirds majority. Given the events during the past year, the weakening of the US’ global prestige, the West’s debacle in Ukraine, Europe’s economic crises, and the expansion and influence of BRICS, current trends seem to indicate it will be a very difficult uphill battle for the WHO to get the treaty passed. 

Source: World Health Organization

However, the pandemic treaty also exposes deeper nefarious motivations by the Western nations and the WHO itself that demand attention. Although many critics of both the WHO and China have accused the two operating in cahoots together, China’s rebuking of the treaty has left some mouths open.

Other critics wrongly associate the WHO treaty as a China project because of China’s past support of the WHO’s current Director-General Tedros Ghebreyesus. But that relationship seems to have soured after the WHO reproached China’s zero Covid policy and regulations. Therefore, the treaty may be best understood from several competing motivations by different players.

On the one hand, the WHO represents the worst of the transnational globalist intentions to grab control from sovereign nations. The WHO in effect is the informal servant of the World Economic Forum’s stakeholder vision of a global unipolar architecture to write and control all rules that will lead humanity into the future. Second, Western nations, notably the US and European Union—which are already entrenched in the missions of WHO and the UN—may benefit from the treaty’s harsh policing measures on other nations.

Penalties for violating the treaty’s rules can ideally serve as an economic weapon against nations on America’s enemies list such as China, Iran and Russia.  For example, if during a future pandemic China or Russia decide to enact their own pandemic response measures that may contradict the rules of the WHO treaty, economic sanctions or perhaps bank or investment freezes could be enforced. And since the US has always been slap happy to impose sanctions on any country that turns its nose up to American demands and threats, what sane nation outside of the US’s sphere of control would agree to ratify a draconian treaty?

It shouldn’t be difficult to understand the BRICS’ rejection of the pandemic treaty. As the most vital emerging economic bloc spearheading a multipolar order to challenge globalist unipolarity, an underlying principle in the BRICS’ economic development and trade relations is respect for each other’s national sovereignty. National sovereignty and the BRICS’ reluctance to interfere in the political affairs and culture of a nation is diametrically opposed to a treaty basically written and enforced by unelected officials in an international organization with a dreadful track record in upholding his mandate to protect public health.

The third important player in the pandemic treaty is the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and Gates’ GAVI Vaccine Alliance on which the WHO is one of its four permanent Board members.

Other friendly observers in the pandemic planning include the Gates’ funded Global Fund and the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations (CEPI).  Besides China, Director-General Tedros gained his WHO job with Gates’ backing. Consequently, the treaty may be viewed as an ancillary expansion of Gates’ funded projects and financial philanthropic interests and investments. It has the potential to serve as a backdoor for his own global empire.

Gates has publicly stated his admiration for the Chinese Community Party’s draconian zero Covid policy, which has terrorized millions of Chinese citizens and deprived them of their human rights.

In the topsy-turvy universe philanthropic capitalism, humans simply serve technology that reward private coffers. The perversion of such philanthropy can lead to the dehumanization and mechanization of humanity in order to further drive technological progress and capital profits, as the French sociologist Jacques Ellul presciently warned in the early 1960s.  

During the Covid-19 pandemic, Gates took the opportunity to expand his influence over international responses by creating some rather odd organizations such as Act Accelerator (a public-private partnership) and its vaccine enterprise Covax.

Acting in parallel to the WHO’s early backdoor strategic efforts to write amendments to the IHR and begin the design of a pandemic treaty, these new ventures were motivated by the need to develop a new structure for an international pandemic response specifically for Covid. According to Health Policy Watch, because this was a plan of action created and funded by the world’s most renowned “humanitarian altruist”, governments complacently supported his efforts.

The architecture, goals and motivation of the WHO pandemic treaty are clearly antidemocratic and violate basic human rights. As the second largest WHO funder, we urgently need to evaluate all of Bill Gates’ donations, grants, credit lines, new ventures and partnerships in a similar light.

For example, his Foundation has donated to the neoconservative war mongering Council of Foreign Relations’ Global Health Program to chart global disease outbreaks and provide analysis to governments, policymakers and business leaders. Despite the apparent benefits of mapping the course of infectious diseases, such as measles, pertussis, polio and others, this program is not professionally peer-reviewed. The Program is largely based upon anecdotal evidence and offers no science-based analysis or solutions for confronting real-time health risks. 

Bill Gates’ role in the research and development of new vaccines and efforts behind global vaccination campaigns are public and very well documented. In 2012, he called upon the global health community to inaugurate a decade of vaccines. For Gates, vaccines are God’s work, a “miracle” but also a “fantastic investment.”  His determination to get every child fully vaccinated, and to establish the infrastructure for a robust and everlasting treadmill to bring new vaccines into the market is seemingly a personal mission.  In his own words, he has stated there is nothing “to stop us succeeding.”

In 2000, the Gates Foundation founded GAVI Vaccine Alliance and that organization’s Global Fund for Children’s Vaccines.

GAVI is a global collaboration that includes governments, the WHO, the Rockefeller Foundation, the World Bank, the International Federation of Pharmaceutical Manufacturers, UNICEF, private vaccine companies, and other influential entities. Each has been a zealot vaccination promoter. The organization’s mission is to vaccinate every child in Africa. In addition to donations and traditional grant giving, it also provides lines of credit. For example, the International AIDS Vaccine Initiative received a $100 million line of credit to empower the nonprofit organization to influence HIV vaccine development within the vaccine industrial complex.

But Gates’ vaccination mission has been overly enthusiastic and in some documented cases clearly nefarious. Some of the Gates’ funded vaccination projects have had very serious consequences: 

• In 2014, Foundation funds went to experimental HPV vaccine trials in India, in joint collaboration with Glaxo and Merck, that violated ethical standards. Over 1,000 girls between the ages of 9 and 15 developed severe autoimmune diseases and fertility disorders. Seven girls died. The Gates’ Foundation faced a lawsuit by the Supreme Courts of India following an investigation into the scandalous trial fraud. 
• Gates’ collaboration with India’s National Technical Advisory Group resulted in a catastrophe of unmonitored overlapping polio immunization programs triggering an epidemic of non-polio acute flaccid paralysis that affected 49,000 children. Gates vaccine programs were forced to leave India. Cases of vaccine derived polio now outnumber cases from wild polio
• In December 2012, in the small village of Gouro, Chad on the edge of the Sahara Desert, 500 children were locked in their school and force-vaccinated with an unlicensed meningitis A vaccine. Students who refused would have their education terminated. These children were vaccinated without their parents’ knowledge. During investigations, the entire operation was discovered to be run by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation through the WHO’s and UNICEF’s on-the-ground networks. Despite the scandal, the Gates Foundation statement to the press reported, “MenAfriVac is a tremendous success story for the global health community. It is the first vaccine developed specifically for Africa, and it proves that global partnerships can develop and deliver high-quality, low-cost vaccines.” 
• In 2010, the Foundation’s support for Glaxo’s experimental malaria vaccine trials killed 151 African infants and seriously injured another 1,000. 
• A tetanus vaccine administered to Kenyan women in child bearing years was laced with Human Chorionic Gondatropin (hCG), which causes miscarriage and renders a woman sterile. The discovery was made by the Kenyan Catholic Doctors Association and the UNICEF vaccine campaign’s funding was traced back to Gates Foundation. 

Gates is also the major funder for the Vaccine Confidence Project with the mission to “to monitor public confidence in immunization programs by building an information surveillance system for early detection of public concerns around vaccines; by applying a diagnostic tool to data collected to determine the risk level of public concerns in terms of their potential to disrupt vaccine programs; and, finally, to provide analysis and guidance for early response and engagement with the public to ensure sustained confidence in vaccines and immunization.”

Shortly after the WHO officially announced the Covid-19 pandemic as a global threat, Gates announced he would spend billions of dollars to fund seven separate coronavirus vaccine development projects. The pandemic leveraged the Foundation to emerge as the foremost leader in the vaccine industry’s response to the Covid crisis. Gates gained free entrance into the offices and boardrooms of all the leading players savoring the opportunity to launch a fast-tracked vaccine in the hopes it would become mandatory and reap astronomical revenues. 

However, in our opinion, Gates’ honesty and integrity has always been questionable.

Duplicity between his organizations’ actual financial investments and humanitarian funding are common.

For example, frequently Gates has stated his opposition to Big Tobacco and claims he refuses to invest or fund any organization and company contributing to smoking. However, an investigation uncovered the Foundation had invested in Big Tobacco for quite some time. Similarly, behind his verbiage on tackling climate change and shifting to non-fossil fuel technologies at the TED conference,

Gates remains a heavy investor in Big Oil, particularly Exxon-Mobile and British Petroleum—perhaps the two most corrupt oil companies in recent decades. Therefore as a billionaire investor, irrespective of the persona he exhibits as a humanitarian and admirable philanthropist, the motivations of the Foundation’s funding should be held with a great deal of suspicion.  

During his time as the president of Microsoft, Gates’ reputation as an upstanding tech entrepreneur and genius was destroyed during an antitrust lawsuit. What Gates managed to achieve was to monopolize the PC operating system by leveraging what economists call “network effects,” which drive monopolization.

According to Rob Larson, an economics professor at Tacoma College, who writes about the corruption of Silicon Valley, network effects are the ability to dominate a young market and take advantage of a product’s rapid usage. In effect, a company is legally bribing customers’ loyalty. In many respects, this is what Gates has been doing in his faux philanthropy.

Stories and accounts about Gates present the picture of a man-child with a caustic and often crass personality. It is no secret that Gates was a difficult boss to work with. He was known to be extremely critical, belligerent, sarcastic and his anger would often degrade employees. He was a fierce taskmaster as the Washington Post reported, and Fortune magazine listed him as an “egotistical jerk” along with other billionaires such Steve Jobs and Jeff Bezos. Often he would vow to destroy competitors or put them out of business, such as Apple, Netscape, Lotus, Sun Microsystems, etc. Temper tantrums involving yelling and fist pounding were spectacles during Microsoft’s internal meetings. Therefore to regard Gates as a legitimate philanthropist is in our opinion an oxymoron. The Greek word “philanthropy” means to love humanity. And Gates is anything but.  

Before embarking upon his philanthropic crusade, Gates’ reputation took a beating in the media as a very unlikeable person. As one commenter observed, “his philanthropy… helped rebrand his name.” This raises questions about the transformation of Gates into a benevolent benefactor to human needs and crises. Or his philanthropy another act of genius to earn exorbitant profits? Yet profit earned under the disguise of charity only serves Gates’ more unquenchable ambition for power. 

Rabia Zakaria writing for The Baffler notes that the large NGOs, funded by billionaires, end up taking the place of governments, and this enables “the individuals who control them [to] function as a quasi-autocracy, where Gates, Bezos and Zuckerberg are free to meddle in anything, forcing the world’s poorest to tolerate their megalomaniacal and stupid plans.” Nobody ever elected any of these wealthy moguls to lead the world in any public health endeavor; nevertheless their wealth alone empowers them to do so. British sociology professor Linsey McGoey described Bill Gates’ philanthropy as “asking an arsonist to hose down your house after he just set it on fire.” And in his book Winners Take All, Anand Giridharadas defined corporate-based philanthropy as “marketworld” – a world where billionaires like Gates play the market based upon who and what companies will most prosper from their charitable giving.

This has been very evident in the enormous wealth Gates has acquired through his philanthropic giving to vaccine development for illnesses in the developing world while donating to the World Health Organization, which pilots widespread vaccination campaigns. The Foundation is another “network effect” designed to gain from a monopoly again; however now Gates has camouflaged it as a humanitarian enterprise. Furthermore, Tim Schwab, author of The Bill Gates Problem, observes the oligarchic elites’ fake philanthropy is best understood as “tax-privileged political power.”

Of course, Gates’ philanthropic enterprises are not limited to medicine, vaccines and public health. In order to capture the power and influence of a monopolist “network effect” funding needs to reach into other industries and private and public programs, ventures and activities. The Foundation’s funding, therefore, has penetrated chemical agriculture and farming, GMO PR groups such as the Cornell Alliance for Science and Emerging Ag, the latter a covert coalition of academics to infiltrate the UN’s decision-making regarding genetics, and education.

To give an idea of the extent to which the Foundation has penetrated academia and scientific literature, it has bequeathed to universities $8 billion during the past two decades and has funded over 20,000 scientific papers in the Web of Science database.

For example, the Chicago Times reported that the Foundation poured $4 billion into projects to transform American public school education by developing “engagement pedometers—biometric devices students would wear to enable teachers to determine students’ attention in the classroom. One critic charged Gates with viewing children as Pavlov dogs.

Other disturbing projects include “temporary sterilization microchips” for women in low income countries, non-profit health education projects to undermine traditional medicine such as Ayurveda in India, the Better

Than Cash Alliance to push for a cashless society, a massive 5G structured smart city near Phoenix, and solar engineering projects to dim the sun by high altitude dispersion of chemical dust. Finally, the Gates Foundation has become a major force in for-profit and nonprofit media and journalism to control narratives favorable towards his investments. Among the media outlets that have received Gates’ funding and coaching are ABC, the PBS NewsHour, NPR, New York Times, Huffington Post, the Guardian and many health policy and medical magazines and journals. 

This portrait of the WHO and its leading private funder painted above leaves with a serious question.  What can we do to put the breaks on the WHO pandemic treaty amendment?  It seems certain that if the World Health Assembly vote next May defeats the treaty, this would be a harsh blow to the Gates’ empire. Although only sovereign nations will participate in the vote, Gates evidently has been banking on its success. 

What can be done at the grassroots level is to keep abreast of the pandemic treaty’s developments and updates. Recognize that the treaty is not only an assault on the sovereign rights of nations, but also a direct attack on your personal human rights and freedoms.  

Passing laws, bills, and binding treaties, either by honest or by unscrupulous means, is always easier to accomplish than to undo. If passed, the treaty will inevitably become a new template, a new operating system, for even more draconian and oppressive globalist measures to be added. There are voices in Congress, largely within the GOP, who realize the WHO’s threat to American sovereignty and oppose the treaty.

These are times when citizens need to drop their delusional partisanship and support whatever is morally and ethically correct regardless of which side of the aisle states simple common sense truths that protect individual freedoms rather private interests. Therefore, write and nag your Senators and Representatives on a regular basis. Likewise, badger the mainstream media with condemnations for ignoring the WHO”s pandemic treaty’s human rights violations and for their negligent reporting.  

Oddly, this may be an occasion when the US worst real or imagined enemies, such as China, Iran and Russia are actually on your side. Go figure. 

*

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Richard Gale is the Executive Producer of the Progressive Radio Network and a former Senior Research Analyst in the biotechnology and genomic industries.

Dr. Gary Null is host of the nation’s longest running public radio program on alternative and nutritional health and a multi-award-winning documentary film director, including his recent Last Call to Tomorrow.

They are regular contributors to Global Research.

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Religious Diversity of the Middle East

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What is of a paramount importance to assert at the outset is that the ongoing assault on Gaza did not start when Hamas militants launched the “Al-Aqsa Flood” military operation on 7 October. In this respect, an epic parallel information warfare is raging, pitting Israel’s backers in the West against the Palestinians and their supporters across the world.

Whistleblower Calls for WEF Founder Klaus Schwab to be Arrested Over “Crimes Against Humanity”

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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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Many countries, including the UK, have continued to experience an apparent excess of deaths long after the peaks associated with the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020 and 2021.[1,2] Numbers of excess deaths estimated in this period are considerable. The UK Office for National Statistics (ONS) has calculated that there were 7.2% or 44,255 more deaths registered in the UK in 2022 based on comparison with the five-year average (excluding 2020).[1] This persisted into 2023 with 8.6% or 28,024 more deaths registered in the first six months of the year than expected.[1] The Continuous Mortality Investigation (CMI) found a similar excess (28,500 deaths) for the same period using different methods.[3] Several methods can be used to estimate excess deaths, each with limitations which should be considered in interpretation, however the overall trends tend to be consistent across the various methods.

The causes of these excess deaths are likely to be multiple and could include the direct effects of Covid-19 infection,[1] acute pressures on NHS acute services resulting in poorer outcomes from episodes of acute illness,[4] and disruption to chronic disease detection and management.[5] Further analysis by cause and by age- and sex-group may help quantify the relative contributions of these causes.

Since July 2020, the Office for Health Improvement and Disparities (OHID) has published estimates of excess mortality based on a Poisson regression model for England week by week, overall and decomposed by age, ethnicity, region and cause.[6] This model finds that in the period from week ending 3rd June 2022 to 30th June 2023, excess deaths for all causes were relatively greatest for 50–64 year olds (15% higher than expected), compared with 11% higher for 25–49 and < 25 year olds, and about 9% higher for over 65 year old groups. While the median age of these groups has changed since 2020, age-standardised mortality analysis breaking down death rates by sex find clearer age differences still. The age-standardised CMI found similar patterns with the largest relative excess deaths for 2022 observed in young (20–44 years) and middle-aged (45–64 years) adults.[7] These findings should be interpreted carefully because of greater than usual delay in registration of deaths in the latter part of 2022.[8]

Several causes, including cardiovascular diseases, show a relative excess greater than that seen in deaths from all-causes (9%) over the same period (week ending 3rd June 2022–30th June 2023), namely: all cardiovascular diseases (12%), heart failure (20%), ischaemic heart diseases (15%), liver diseases (19%), acute respiratory infections (14%), and diabetes (13%).[6]

For middle-aged adults (50–64) in this 13-month period, the relative excess for almost all causes of death examined was higher than that seen for all ages. Deaths involving cardiovascular diseases were 33% higher than expected, while for specific cardiovascular diseases, deaths involving ischaemic heart diseases were 44% higher, cerebrovascular diseases 40% higher and heart failure 39% higher. Deaths involving acute respiratory infections were 43% higher than expected and for diabetes, deaths were 35% higher. Deaths involving liver diseases were 19% higher than expected for those aged 50–64, the same as for deaths at all ages.[9]

Looking at place of death, from 3rd June 2022 to 30th June 2023 there were 22% more deaths in private homes than expected compared with 10% more in hospitals, but there was no excess in deaths in care homes and 12% fewer deaths than expected in hospices. For deaths involving cardiovascular diseases the relative excess in private homes was higher than all causes at 27%. Deaths in hospital were 8% higher and deaths in care homes only 3% higher.[9]

The greatest numbers of excess deaths in the acute phase of the pandemic were in older adults. The pattern now is one of persisting excess deaths which are most prominent in relative terms in middle-aged and younger adults, with deaths from CVD causes and deaths in private homes being most affected. Timely and granular analyses are needed to describe such trends and so to inform prevention and disease management efforts. Leveraging such granular insights has the potential to mitigate what seems to be a continued and unequal impact on mortality, and likely corresponding impacts on morbidity, across the population.

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Notes

[1] Office for National Statistics. Deaths involving coronavirus (COVID-19) by month of registration. 2023 (UK)

https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/birthsdeathsandmarriages/deaths/datasets/deathsinvolvingcovid19bymonthofregistrationuk

[2] Alicandro G., La Vecchia C., Islam N., et al. A comprehensive analysis of all-cause and cause-specific excess deaths in 30 countries during 2020.

Eur J Epidemiol. 2023; https://doi.org/10.1007/s10654-023-01044-x

[3] Institute and Faculty of Actuaries, England & Wales mortality monitor – week 26. 2023

https://www.actuaries.org.uk/system/files/field/document/Mortality%20monitor%20Week%202023-26%20v01%202023-07-11.pdf

[4] Katsoulis M., Gomes M., Lai A.G., et al.

Estimating the effect of reduced attendance at emergency departments for suspected cardiac conditions on cardiac mortality during the COVID-19 pandemic. Circ Cardiovasc Qual Outcomes. 2020; 14e007085

[5] Dale C.E., Takhar R., Carragher R., et al. The impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on cardiovascular disease prevention and management. Nat Med. 2023; 29: 219-225

[6] Office for Health Improvement and Disparities, Excess mortality in England and English regions. 2023

https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/excess-mortality-in-england-and-english-regions

[7] Institute and Faculty of Actuaries, CMI mortality monitor – Q4 2022. 2023

https://www.actuaries.org.uk/system/files/field/document/Mortality%20monitor%20Q4%202022%20v01%202023-01-17_0.pdf

[8] Institute and Faculty of Actuaries, CMI mortality monitor – Q3 2023. 2023

https://www.actuaries.org.uk/system/files/field/document/Mortality%20monitor%20Q3%202023%20v01%202023-10-10.pdf

[9] Office for Health Improvement and Disparities, Excess mortality: bespoke analyses. 2023

https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/excess-mortality-bespoke-analyses 

Featured image is from NaturalNews.com

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The skies over Gaza are filled — after a seven-day truce — with projectiles of death. Warplanes. Attack helicopters. Drones. Artillery shells. Tank shells. Mortars. Bombs. Missiles. Gaza is a cacophony of explosions and forlorn screams and cries for help beneath collapsed buildings. Fear, once again, is coiling itself around every heart in the Gazan concentration camp. 

By Friday evening, 184 Palestinians — including three journalists and two doctors — had been killed by Israeli air strikes in the north, south and central Gaza, and at least 589 injured, according to the Ministry of Health in Gaza. Most of them are women and children. Israel will not be deterred. It plans to finish the job, to obliterate what is left in the north of Gaza and decimate what remains in the south, to render Gaza uninhabitable, to see its 2.3 million people driven out in a massive campaign of ethnic cleansing via starvation, terror, slaughter and infectious diseases. 

The aid convoys, which brought in token amounts of food and medicine — the first batch was shrouds and coronavirus tests according to the director of al-Najjar hospital — have been halted. No one, least of all President Joe Biden, plans to intervene to stop the genocide. Secretary of State Antony Blinken visited Israel this week, and while calling for Israel to protect civilians, refused to set conditions that would disrupt the $3.8 billion Israel receives in annual military assistance or the $14.3 billion supplemental aid package. The world will watch passively, muttering useless bromides about more surgical strikes, while Israel spins its roulette wheel of death. By the time Israel is done, the 1948 Nakba, where Palestinians were massacred in dozens of villages and 750,000 were ethnically cleansed by Zionist militias, will look like a quaint relic of a more civilized era. 

Nothing is off limits. Hospitals. Mosques. Churches. Homes. Apartment blocks. Refugee camps. Schools. Universities. Media offices. Banks. Sewer systems. Telecommunications infrastructure. Water treatment plants. Libraries. Wheat mills. Bakeries. Markets. Entire neighborhoods. Israel’s intent is to destroy Gaza’s infrastructure and daily kill or wound hundreds of Palestinians. Gaza is to become a wasteland, a dead zone that will be incapable of sustaining life. 

Israel began to bomb Khan Younis on Friday after dropping leaflets warning civilians to evacuate further south to Rafah, located on the border crossing with Egypt. Hundreds of thousands of displaced Palestinians had sought refuge in Khan Younis. Once Palestinians are pushed to Rafah, there is only one place left to flee — Egypt. The Israeli Ministry of Intelligence, in a leaked report, calls for the forcible transfer of Gaza’s population to Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula. A detailed plan to intentionally displace the Palestinians in Gaza and push them into Egypt has been embedded in Israeli doctrine for five decades. Already, 1.8 million Palestinians in Gaza have been driven from their homes. Once Palestinians cross the border into Egypt — which the Egyptian government and Arab leaders are seeking to prevent despite pressure from the U.S. — Palestinians will never return. 

This is not a war against Hamas. It is a war against Palestinians.

Israeli strikes are generated at a dizzying rate, many of them from a system called “Habsora” — The Gospel — which is built on artificial intelligence that selects 100 targets a day. The AI-system is described by seven current and former Israeli intelligence officials in an article by Yuval Abraham on the Israeli sites +972 Magazine and Local Call, as facilitating a “mass assassination factory.” Israel, once it locates what it assumes to be a Hamas operative from a cell phone, for example, bombs and shells a wide area around the target, killing and wounding tens, and at times hundreds of Palestinians, the article states.

“According to intelligence sources,” the story reads, “Habsora generates, among other things, automatic recommendations for attacking private residences where people suspected of being Hamas or Islamic Jihad operatives live. Israel then carries out large-scale assassination operations through the heavy shelling of these residential homes.”

Some 15,000 Palestinians, including 6,000 children and 4,000 women, have been killed since Oct. 7. Some 30,000 have been wounded. Over six thousand are missing, many buried under the rubble. More than 300 families have lost 10 or more members of their families. More than 250 Palestinians have been killed in the West Bank since Oct. 7, and more than 3,000 injured, although the area is not controlled by Hamas. The Israeli military claims to have killed between 1,000 and 3,000 of some 30,000 Hamas fighters, a relatively small number given the scale of the assault. Most resistance fighters shelter in their vast tunnel system. 

Source: OCHA

Israel’s playbook is the “Dahiya Doctrine.” The doctrine was formulated by former Israel Defense Forces (IDF) Chief of Staff Gadi Eizenkot, who is a member of the war cabinet, following the 2006 war between Israel and Hezbollah in Lebanon. Dahiya is a southern Beirut suburb and a Hezbollah stronghold. It was pounded by Israeli jets after two Israeli soldiers were taken prisoner. The doctrine posits that Israel should employ massive, disproportionate force, destroying infrastructure and civilian residences, to ensure deterrence.

Daniel Hagari, spokesman of the IDF, conceded at the start of Israel’s most recent attack on Gaza that the “emphasis” would be “on damage and not on accuracy.”

Israel has abandoned its tactic of “roof knocking” where a rocket without a warhead would land on a roof to warn those inside to evacuate. Israel has also ended its phone calls warning of an impending attack. Now dozens of families in an apartment block or a neighborhood are killed without notice.

The images of mass destruction feed the thirst for revenge within Israel following the humiliating incursion by Hamas fighters on Oct. 7 and the killing of 1,200 Israelis, including 395 soldiers and 59 police officers. There is a sadistic pleasure voiced by many Israelis over the genocide and a groundswell of calls for the murder or expulsion of Palestinians, including those in the occupied West Bank and those with Israeli citizenship. 

The savagery of the air strikes and indiscriminate attacks, the cutting off of food, water and medicine, the genocidal rhetoric of the Israeli government, make this a war whose sole objective is revenge. This will not be good for Israel or the Palestinians. It will fuel a conflagration throughout the Middle East. 

Israel’s attack is the last desperate measure of a settler colonial project that foolishly thinks, as many settler colonial projects have in the past, that it can crush the resistance of an indigenous population with genocide. But even Israel will not get away with killing on this scale. A generation of Palestinians, many of whom have seen most, if not all, of their families killed and their homes and neighborhoods destroyed, will carry within them a lifelong thirst for justice and retribution. 

This war is not over. It has not even begun.  

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Now that the international legal system of humanitarian protection from war has been thrown in the bin by the Israeli government, in Gaza, no one is safe. It has already killed 60 journalists in addition to the 15,000 defenceless women and children of Palestine, in their revenge drive for the October massacre by Hamas.

No one, Muslim, Hindu, Christian, Druze or Jain is now safe from the indiscriminate killing capacity of the US-supplied strike aircraft of the IAF with its lethal missiles, rockets and bombs, in its quest for complete domination of the Middle East and, in particular, of all that land from Cairo to the River Jordan – as, apparently, promised to them by God: notwithstanding that Netanyahu, the chief protagonist, is a secular Jew who never goes near a synagogue.

However, he has his career prospects to consider, so the deliberate killing, by the IDF, of acclaimed Al Jazeera journalist, Shireen Abu Akleh, just a year ago together with, now, at least 59 other unarmed, media reporters, is just another bloodied step along his career path, as he tears up international treaties on human rights and the rules of war.

Eventually, of course, he will be indicted before the ICC, under charges of war crime.

Meanwhile, however, this Likud leader of the Political Zionists, is power-hungry, as was his mentor and idol, Vladimir Jabotinsky, the leader of the former terrorist paramilitary, ETZEL, the Irgun Zvai Leumi, and, incidentally, the previous employer of Netanyahu’s father, Benzion.

Of course, Jabotinsky has long since gone but Political Zionism and the principle of forcibly annexing land to double or treble the size of the Israeli state, is still extant in the mind and actions of this now aging demagogue who still decides who will live, and who will die, among the 2.2 million of now destroyed Gaza.

If he is not stopped, WW3 is likely to ensue as a direct consequence of this escalating attack on 2.2 million civilians, and then both Israel and Gaza will be immaterial in the context of a global war with nuclear and chemical weapons being deployed.  Already, the EU and other nation states around the world are preparing for war.   At some point, soon, human survival itself will be at risk.

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Hans Stehling is a regular contributor to Global Research.

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***

Read Part I:

The Hidden Reasons Behind the War on Gaza. Netanyahu’s Plan for “A New Middle East”

By Richard Medhurst, December 04, 2023

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“Israel” and the United States have been planning for decades to build the so-called “Ben Gurion Canal,” a rival to the infamous Suez Canal in Egypt. This Ben Gurion Canal would begin at “Eilat”, and finish right next to, if not directly through, Gaza.

The Suez Canal is one of the most important construction and irrigation projects in history, connecting the Red Sea to the Mediterranean Sea. So vital to trade is the Suez Canal that a war was even fought over it in 1956: “Israel”, Britain, and France attacked Egypt for daring to nationalize the Suez Canal – its own land.

A document declassified in the 1990s showed that just a few years after the Suez Crisis, the Americans hatched a secret plan in 1963 to detonate 520 nuclear bombs in al-Naqab desert to help “Israel” construct the “Ben Gurion Canal.”

US classified document from 1963 proposing the use of nuclear bombs to clear a path for the “Ben Gurion Canal” in al-Naqab Desert, Palestine 

How the opening of Egypt’s Suez Canal revolutionized world trade and cut shipping time and costs

The Suez Canal is a geostrategic asset in every sense of the word: it sits at the intersection of three continents and two bodies of water.

It cuts shipping times and costs by so much that today 12% of global trade and 30% of global container traffic pass through the Suez Canal.

Egyptian President el-Sisi was told in the last weeks that if he accepts “Israel’s” plan to take Palestinians in Gaza and put them in the Sinai desert, which “Israel” would pay for, then the United States would wipe Egypt’s national debt.

This is why “Israel” is absolutely obliterating Gaza – they want to seize Gaza for themselves and kill off all Palestinians and the Resistance.

Nile River

In addition to offering debt relief, the United States and “Israel” have another incentive for Egypt lined up.

Egypt has been suffering from acute water shortages since its neighbor Ethiopia built the so-called Renaissance Dam in 2011, cutting much-needed water from the Nile to both Sudan and Egypt. It has caused a huge dispute ever since that has yet to be resolved.

Ethiopia’s Renaissance Dam, built in 2011

Ethiopia has a significant Jewish population. The United States and “Israel” could theoretically lean on Ethiopia, as they have done before, and pressure it not to fill up its reservoirs, which would be detrimental to Egypt and incentivize el-Sisi to take in Palestinians from Gaza.

While it is a natural human response to flee war, Palestinians have refused to abandon their homes in Gaza for a very good reason: they know that if they leave, they will never see their homes again. Most people in Gaza originally came from other parts of Palestine. They already lost their homes once to Israeli settlers from 1948 onward, and they are not willing to lose their homes again.

So despite the appeal of having Gazans move to supposed “safety” in the Sinai, this would be a betrayal of the Palestinian cause and the surrender of even more land to the Zionist occupation. The Israelis would then build their “Ben Gurion Canal,” cementing Washington and “Tel Aviv’s” control over the world’s most important shipping lane and global maritime trade.

The “Ben Gurion Canal” is the last piece of the puzzle in “Israel” and the United States attempts to control all strategic shipping lanes

1. The Red Sea

The Red Sea, which would feed into the “Ben Gurion Canal,” already has a huge presence of American and Israeli troops. Did you know that “Israel’s” biggest military base is located in the Red Sea, on the Island of Dahlak, in Eritrea?

This base was hit by Yemen in the last few weeks, in support of Gaza, as Yemen is an integral part of the Resistance Axis.

2. The Gulf of Aden and Bab el-Mandab Strait

Yemen is located near Eritrea, in a crucial area: the Gulf of Aden and Bab al-Mandab Strait. Tens of thousands of ships pass this area every year, including a large percentage of the world’s petroleum vessels.

The US has been trying for decades to control this important shipping lane by putting troops right opposite Yemen, inside Djibouti, Somalia, and the region known as the Horn of Africa.

The United States has also tried to control this area by attacking Yemen from the rear, using Saudi Arabia and other Gulf countries, and carrying out its own drone strikes. This war has been ongoing for 8 years; it devastated Yemen, and the media barely covered it.

3. Socotra Island

We come then to the Yemeni island of Socotra. To remind you how strategic this area is, it is located between the Horn of Africa, the Gulf of Aden, the Arabian Sea, and the Indian Ocean.

The UAE, after normalizing ties with “Israel”, helped “Israel” to establish a military presence and spy bases on Socotra.

The importance of the Bab al-Mandab Strait is that both Iran and China need to use this shipping lane, for Iran to export fuel and for China as the world’s largest economy and largest trading partner of most countries.

4. The Strait of Hormuz

Continue up the Arabian coast, and you get to another vital strait: the Strait of Hormuz.

There is an entire de facto Cold War taking place here: a tanker war.

The US and “Israel” constantly try to sink Iranian fuel ships, and Iran responds in kind by hitting Israeli-owned ships. Britain also tried playing this game in the Strait of Gibraltar by hijacking an Iranian ship. Only when Iran gave Britain a taste of its own medicine did Britain get the message and let the Iranian ship go.

The US has gone so far as to even steal Iranian fuel tankers and sell off the cargo – a practice commonly referred to as piracy.

The US and “Israel” want to control this vital part of the world, so they can attack Iranian and Chinese ships in Bab al-Mandab Strait, up into the Red Sea, and of course by replacing the Suez Canal with the “Ben Gurion Canal.”

This final piece of the puzzle will allow the US and “Israel” to dominate world maritime trade.

They can use this not only to the benefit of their own economies but also to damage and attack other countries’ economies, such as those of China, Iran, Egypt, Syria, and Lebanon. It is literally a robbery highway on the high seas.

And the “Ben Gurion Canal” is the key to all of this.

Where Are the Arabs and Muslims?

Egypt could stop this war in Gaza right now by shutting down the Suez Canal. Were late Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser still here, he wouldn’t have even thought twice.

It’s bewildering that Egypt doesn’t shut the Suez– if not for Gaza’s sake, then for its own sake. It is Egypt’s economy and the Suez Canal that will suffer if “Israel” gets away with genocide in Gaza and building its “Ben Gurion Canal.”

Why doesn’t Saudi Arabia threaten to cut oil production for one week – even just for a day to try and stop the war? Or is there something in it for them, were Gaza to be replaced with a canal?

Where are the Arabs? Where are the Muslims? Why don’t the kingdoms in the Gulf use their wealth and resources to help Gaza?

If you look at the European Union, they have nothing in common except geography. They speak over 24 languages. Whereas the Arab world today, from Morocco to Oman, has a common tongue, common geography, common religion, common history, and common culture.

This automatically makes the Arabs a global superpower – not to mention the enormous wealth of natural resources, the geographical landmass, and the population, which are all essential criteria of “hard power”.

It is not only the size of the Arab world, but look at the straits: all the vital straits and shipping lanes are located in Arab countries: The strait of Gibraltar, (originally Jabal Ṭāriq), the Suez Canal, the Bab al-Mandob Strait, and the Strait of Hormuz between Iran and Oman.

All vital straits are located in Arab countries

European colonial powers understood how powerful Arab countries were a long time ago, so they planted “Israel” right in the middle to create chaos. And then they worked on bringing the Arab kingdoms over to their side and to make them normalize ties with “Israel”.

All these borders in the Middle East didn’t even exist until Britain and France – the same European powers that created and back “Israel” today – drew them.

Europe’s foreign policy toward the Middle East is a divide-and-conquer strategy. It is all about colonialism and theft. It is about dividing up the Arab world, creating instability, and controlling the resources and straits.

European colonial powers always play the sectarian card to achieve this: they pitted Sunni against Shia in Iraq and Lebanon. Now they try to do it between Arabs and Iran. In Palestine, they lie again and say the struggle is “between Jews and Muslims”. It has never been about that. This war has nothing to do with Hamas or religion. It has always been about colonialism because the West is afraid of unity between Arabs and Muslim countries.

The entire world can’t believe how “Israel” is allowed to slaughter Palestinians like this in broad daylight and get away with it. How is it that the so-called “civilized West” supports this behavior? Why won’t Western leaders even call for a ceasefire? The answer is that this genocide in Gaza is their project too. “Israel” itself is a European and American imperialist project, and these “leaders” are all complicit.

The theft of Arab resources and control over the straits and canals will ultimately impact everybody in the Middle East negatively – not to mention all the suffering Palestinians have had to endure. And that is precisely why the whole Axis of Resistance – Palestine, Yemen, Iran, Iraq, Syria, Lebanon – is involved in this fight on multiple fronts. It is about time for other Arab and Muslim countries to do their part for Gaza too: cut all ties with “Israel”, impose an oil embargo on the West, and shut down the Suez Canal. The entire world is watching you.

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Featured image: Illustrated By Zeinab al-Hajj; Al Mayadeen English

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High-level Israeli military officers are conducting private briefings for members of the U.S. Congress on Israel’s war on Gaza, according to documents reviewed by The Intercept. The briefings ramped up as questions emerged on Capitol Hill about Israel’s conduct in the war and ceasefire calls gained steam.

“There’s an Israel PR blitz happening this week facilitated by a handful of senators,” said a source familiar with the meetings in the upper chamber. “Practically all of the briefings on this issue these last few weeks have been members-only,” meaning congressional staff and the public are not welcome.

One briefing exclusive to members of the Senate scheduled on Monday and organized by Sen. Tammy Duckworth, D-Ill., involved three senior Israel Defense Forces officers stationed at the Israeli Embassy.

“Sen. Duckworth would like to invite your boss to a last-minute meeting with Israeli Defense officials to discuss Israel’s strategy, how they are waging the war and what to expect in the day after the scenarios,” according to a memo obtained by The Intercept. (Duckworth did not immediately respond to a request for comment.)

The briefings are coming as Israel faces an international backlash over its assault on the Gaza Strip. Israel says it is seeking to eliminate Hamas, the Palestinian terror group that killed hundreds of Israeli civilians in its October 7 surprise attack.

The Intercept has learned of around half a dozen events coordinated with Israeli officials during recent weeks. The Intercept reviewed materials relating to four of the briefings. Sen. J.D. Vance, R-Ohio, who said he had not spoken with the Israel Defense Forces in recent days, told The Intercept,

“I know there are going to be some folks from the IDF here tomorrow or the day after to brief members of Congress.”

Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand, D-N.Y., told The Intercept,

“I have had private conversations with IDF officials but I didn’t attend any briefings.” (She declined to comment on her meetings.)

In response to the Hamas attack, Israel launched airstrikes against Gaza and undertook a ground invasion. Israel’s offensive has faced criticisms for its death toll, with more than 14,000 Palestinians dying, according to the Gaza Health Ministry, and enormous damage to Gaza, one of the most densely populated places on Earth. Over the weekend, Hamas and Israel agreed to a “pause” in fighting to allow for the release of Israeli hostages in Gaza in exchange for humanitarian aid for Palestinians. The temporary truce is set to expire, but talks for an extension are ongoing.

Calls for a ceasefire on Capitol Hill started slowly but have gained steam in recent weeks. As of Tuesday morning, a total of 43 members from both chambers of Congress had called for a ceasefire. Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., a progressive who had publicly sided with Israel after the October 7 attack, said on Tuesday he may put forward a bill conditioning aid to Israel, The Intercept reported.

The shifts spurred the increased pace of congressional briefings with IDF officials, some of which were hastily arranged.

“The IDF didn’t anticipate that there would be this much backlash to Israel,” said the source, who asked for anonymity because they were not authorized to speak. “And, with the prospect of an even longer-term ceasefire, are putting together an all-hands-on-deck PR blitz to keep Senators at bay.”

Frequent and Secret Briefings

While members of Congress and their staff frequently hold meetings with foreign officials, including military officials, the invitations for briefings with current and former Israeli officials have come in rapid succession over recent weeks.

“It isn’t entirely unusual for senators to have member-only meetings or briefings on sensitive or classified issues,” said the source. “What is unusual is the frequency with which they’ve happened recently — especially this week — the secrecy involved, and the single-issue focus.”

Sen. Cory Booker, D-N.J., appeared to suggest some of the briefings were secret.

“My friend, I would not speak about those classified meetings,” Booker told The Intercept when asked about the IDF briefings. (None of the materials reviewed by The Intercept indicated the briefings were classified.)

Briefers in the closed-door meetings were to include several senior Israeli military officials stationed at the embassy, including Maj. Gen. Tal Kelman, former head of the strategic directorate and Iran Division; Col. Itai Shapira, a former senior Israeli Defense Intelligence officer; and Lt. Col. Yotam Shefer of the Coordinator of Government Activities in the Territories, the Israeli military unit responsible for mediating between Israel and the Palestinian Authority. (The Israeli Embassy referred questions to the IDF, which did not immediately respond.)

One briefing was scheduled to take place in-person on Capitol Hill for an hour on Monday evening.

Another briefing, scheduled for Tuesday, is slated to have the former chief of Israeli military intelligence, retired Maj. Gen. Amos Yadlin, brief Sen. Martin Heinrich, D-N.M. Yadlin has issued fiery statements following the Hamas attack, saying that Hamas “will pay like the Nazis paid in Europe.” (Heinrich and Yadlin did not immediately respond to requests for comment.)

Another briefing, scheduled for Tuesday morning and organized by Sens. Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn., and Marco Rubio, R-Fla., is a closed screening of 47 minutes of footage of Hamas atrocities committed on October 7.

“It’s important to bear witness in real time,” Sen. Jacky Rosen, D-Nev., who helped arrange the viewing, told reporters. “Sometime in the future, we’ll go — there’ll be a museum, there’ll be a memorial, there’ll be another Yad Vashem or Holocaust museum.”

“It isn’t a coincidence that these briefings are now happening as public opinion is shifting and the pressure to corral lawmakers,” the source said, “and the recipients of their campaign contributions.”

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***

Ever since the failure of the Kiev regime’s much-touted counteroffensive, one that was supposed to “turn the tables” and “drive Russian forces behind the Urals”, the mainstream propaganda machine has been fighting tooth and nail to justify the failure, while some have engaged in straight up denial and stubbornly tried to portray it as a supposed “win”.

However, the Neo-Nazi junta frontman Volodymyr Zelensky himself just admitted that they will be going on the defense.

In reality, this was neither his decision, nor that of his NATO overlords, but the logical consequence of the failed counteroffensive.

As the Kiev regime is trying to stay afloat amid disastrous losses, both in manpower and equipment, as well as a chronic lack of virtually everything needed to wage a war, the Russian military is slowly moving from active defense and defense-in-depth to careful and incremental offensive operations.

This process is yet to be launched on the entirety of the frontline, but it’s already ongoing in several important directions, including in Avdeyevka, a town some 15 km north/northwest of Donetsk.

Before the NATO-orchestrated war that started in 2014, it was effectively part of the wider Donetsk conurbation.

However, since then, the Kiev regime turned it into a stronghold from which it has kept shelling Donetsk daily for the last nearly ten years.

The Neo-Nazi junta and NATO invested enormous resources into making Avdeyevka a virtual fortress, packed with artillery and various types of munitions necessary to keep the deadly attacks on Donetsk as regular as possible. Thousands of people, the vast majority of them civilians, have been killed, with many more wounded. The town itself was left without most of its inhabitants as the Kiev regime forces took over and heavily militarized it, particularly after the start of the SMO (special military operation).

MAP

Avidiika (Part of Donesk Oblast).

North of the City of Donesk, 

Ever since, Russian forces have been targeting the artillery installations in Avdeyevka to prevent the near-constant shelling. The effort has been largely successful, but the high command in Moscow has been reluctant to launch any massive offensive operations towards the area and for good reason. Namely, the Neo-Nazi junta, aided by the best NATO specialists, spent nearly a decade building an elaborate network of fortifications in the entirety of the western part of Donbass, including Avdeyevka. A series of complex strongholds of that sort would’ve required tens of thousands of soldiers and thousands of pieces of equipment of various kinds concentrated in the area, an exceedingly difficult and dangerous task that would’ve resulted in enormous Russian casualties. Not willing to turn the area into another meatgrinder, Moscow simply kept it in check by preventing the concentration of any large enemy formations (particularly artillery).

These would’ve jeopardized not only Donetsk and the surrounding areas, but the entirety of the frontline in central DNR. However, with the failure of the Kiev regime’s counteroffensive, the situation has changed drastically.

Namely, Russia has not only managed to defeat the abortive attacks by inflicting insurmountable losses on the enemy, with relatively negligible losses for itself, but has also amassed considerable forces.

Supported by its increasingly deadly Aerospace Forces (VKS) and continuous enhancements to its electronic and drone warfare, Moscow exponentially amplified its strike capabilities. Along with massively improved tactical ISR (intelligence, surveillance, reconnaissance), these pinpoint strikes have helped mechanized infantry to make incremental advances in areas surrounding Avdeyevka, putting the Neo-Nazi junta’s garrison there in an extremely difficult position.

It could be said that the Russian military is attempting to repeat the strategic success at Artyomovsk (previously known as Bakhmut) when the garrison there was defeated after several months of heavy fighting.

It should be noted that Avdeyevka is not defended by the ideologically driven Neo-Nazi battalions, but the regular units of the Kiev regime. These formations are much less motivated to resist, while their equipment and training are almost certainly not on the same level. In addition, heavy losses have made it virtually impossible for the Neo-Nazi junta to ensure proper rotation of units in the area, while the opposite is true for Russian forces. This gives Moscow the ability to send fresh troops into the fray, while their opponents are exhausted by over 20 months of heavy attrition warfare in which they’ve never had any sort of advantage. However, this doesn’t mean Russia will mindlessly throw assault units into the fire and sacrifice them for a propaganda “win”.

It’s important to note that Moscow is in no hurry. On the contrary, the time is working against the Kiev regime that’s now facing an increasingly disillusioned populace, both at home and abroad, with many in the political West talking about the so-called “Ukraine fatigue”.

Russian military sources, such as the “Operation Z: War Correspondents of the Russian Spring” Telegram channel, are reporting extensively on the incremental progress of their forces.

Citing Ukrainian assessments, Russian experts claim that their troops have “a total advantage”. This is not an exaggeration, as Moscow has sent some of its best and most experienced troops to the area, supported by heavy armor, all sorts of artillery and frontline aviation, among other things. This includes thousands of drones that are conducting tactical ISR and strikes against Neo-Nazi junta forces, which is affecting both their already crumbling morale and increasingly scarce resources.

According to “Operation Z”, as of December 3, Russian troops are steadily carrying out assault operations, concentrating mainly on Stepovoye (just northwest of Avdeyevka) and its outskirts. The delivery of equipment and personnel takes place in Krasnogorovka, the main point of troop concentration, with which they keep advancing further west. Russian forces are currently trying to take control of all areas between the railways to secure their flank and continue advancing toward Ocheretino.

North of Stepovoye, the Russian military is attempting the encirclement of Berdychi. They currently control the eastern part, the most populated area of the settlement, but are closing in on the center. The Russians are advancing in large numbers to the south of Berdychi, trying to press on toward Stepovoye. Their advantages are overwhelming, particularly in terms of numerical superiority, equipment, logistics and other modern battlefield aspects.

Target acquisition, aided by force reconnaissance (conducted by special forces), artillery, drones, attack helicopters, tanks and infantry are all used to great effect against the entrenched Kiev regime forces. According to Semyon Pegov, a prominent Russian war blogger (known for his WarGonzo Telegram channel), Avdeyevka is effectively a fortress due to its countless reinforced bunkers.

He has also compared the fighting to the infamous trench warfare of World War One. Pegov recently reported that Russian forces took control of Avdeyevka’s industrial zone and that the cluster munitions used by the VKS are inflicting enormous losses on the Neo-Nazi junta forces. However, as previously mentioned, Moscow will need to tread carefully to avoid massive casualties. It’s impossible to conduct this sort of offensive operation without losses, but the goal of the high command is to keep them at a minimum.

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

Featured image: Residential building in Avdiivka city (Donetsk region of Ukraine) after Russian shelling and airstrikes on the city on 17 March 2023 (Licensed under CC BY 4.0)