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15 years of failed experiments: Myths and facts about the Israeli siege on Gaza

By Ramzy Baroud | MEMO | July 5, 2022

Fifteen years have passed since Israel imposed a total siege on the Gaza Strip, subjecting nearly two million Palestinians to one of the longest and most cruel politically-motivated blockades in history. Back then, the Israeli government justified its siege as the only way to protect Israel from Palestinian “terrorism and rocket attacks”. This is the occupation state’s official line to this day, and yet not many Israelis — certainly not in government, the media or even ordinary people — would argue that Israel today is safer than it was prior to June 2007.

It is widely understood that Israel imposed the siege as a response to the Hamas takeover of the Strip, following a brief, violent confrontation between the movement, which is the current de facto government in Gaza, and its main political rival Fatah, which dominates the Palestinian Authority in the occupied West Bank. However, the isolation of Gaza was planned years before the Hamas-Fatah clash, or even the legislative election victory of Hamas in January 2006.

In fact, the late Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon was determined to redeploy Israeli forces out of Gaza long before these dates, making the siege possible. Culminating in the Israeli disengagement from Gaza in August-September 2005, the plan was proposed by Sharon in 2003, approved by his government in 2004 and finally adopted by the Knesset in February 2005.

The “disengagement” was an Israeli tactic intended to remove a few thousand illegal Jewish settlers from occupied Gaza — to go to other illegal Jewish settlements in the occupied West Bank — while redeploying the Israeli army from crowded population centres in the Gaza Strip to the nominal border areas. This was the actual start of the Gaza siege.

The above assertion was even clear to James Wolfensohn, who was appointed by the Middle East Quartet as the Special Envoy for Gaza Disengagement. In 2010, he reached a similar conclusion: “Gaza had been effectively sealed off from the outside world since the Israeli disengagement… and the humanitarian and economic consequences for the Palestinian population were profound.”

The ultimate motive behind the “disengagement” was not Israel’s security, or even to starve the Palestinians in Gaza as a form of collective punishment. The latter was a natural outcome of a much more sinister political plot, as communicated by Sharon’s own senior advisor at the time, Dov Weisglass. In an interview with the Israeli newspaper Haaretz in October 2004, Weisglass put it plainly: “The significance of the disengagement plan is the freezing of the peace process.” How? “When you freeze [the peace] process, you prevent the establishment of a Palestinian state, and you prevent a discussion on the refugees, the borders and Jerusalem.”

Not only was this Israel’s ultimate motive behind the disengagement and subsequent siege of Gaza, but also, according to the seasoned Israeli politician, it was all done “with a presidential blessing and the ratification of both houses of [the US] Congress.” The US president at the time was none other than George W. Bush.

All of this took place before Palestine’s legislative election, Hamas’s victory and the Hamas-Fatah clash. The latter merely served as a convenient justification for what had already been discussed, “ratified” by Washington and implemented.

For Israel, the siege was a political ploy which acquired additional meaning and value as time passed. In response to the accusation that Israel was starving Palestinians in Gaza, Weisglass was very quick to reply: “The idea is to put the Palestinians on a diet, but not to make them die of hunger.”

What was then understood as a facetious, albeit thoughtless statement, turned out to be actual Israeli policy, as revealed in a 2008 report which was made available in 2012. Thanks to the Israeli human rights organization Gisha, the “redlines [for] food consumption in the Gaza Strip” — composed by the Israeli Coordinator of Government Activities in the Territories — were made known. It emerged that Israel was calculating the minimum number of calories necessary to keep Gaza’s population alive, a number that is “adjusted to culture and experience” in the Strip.

The rest is history. Gaza’s suffering is absolute, with 98 per cent of the Strip’s water undrinkable; hospitals lacking essential supplies and life-saving medications; and movement in and out of the territory more or less prohibited, with relatively few minor exceptions.

Even so, Israel has failed miserably, with none of its objectives achieved. Tel Aviv hoped that the “disengagement” would compel the international community to redefine the legal status of the Israeli occupation of Gaza. Despite pressure from Washington, that never happened. Gaza remains part of the Occupied Palestinian Territories as defined in international law.

Furthermore, Israel’s September 2007 designation of Gaza as an “enemy entity” and a “hostile territory” changed little, apart from allowing the Israeli government to carry out several devastating wars against the Palestinians in the enclave, starting in late 2008.

None of these wars have served a long-term Israeli strategy successfully. Instead, Gaza continues to fight back on a much larger scale than ever before, frustrating the calculations of Israeli leaders, a fact which became clear in the befuddled, disturbing language to which they resorted. During one of the deadliest Israeli wars on Gaza, in July 2014, right-wing Knesset member Ayelet Shaked wrote on Facebook that the war was “not a war against terror, and not a war against extremists, and not even a war against the Palestinian Authority.” Instead, according to Shaked, who a year later became Israel’s Minister of Justice, this was “a war between two people. Who is the enemy? The Palestinian people.”

In the final analysis, the governments of Sharon, Tzipi Livni, Ehud Olmert, Benjamin Netanyahu and Naftali Bennett all failed to isolate Gaza from the greater Palestinian body; break the will of the Palestinians in the Strip; or ensure Israeli security at the expense of the Palestinians.

Moreover, Israel has fallen victim to its own hubris. While prolonging the siege will achieve no short or long-term strategic value, lifting the siege, from Israel’s viewpoint, would be tantamount to an admission of defeat, and could empower Palestinians in the West Bank to emulate the Gaza model. This lack of certainty further accentuates the political crisis and lack of strategic vision that has defined all Israeli governments for nearly two decades.

Israel’s political experiment in Gaza has backfired, inevitably so. The only way out is for the siege of Gaza to be lifted completely. Not eased; lifted. Completely. And this time, for good.

July 5, 2022 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Illegal Occupation, War Crimes | , , , , | Leave a comment

Crime and Punishment

Government officials must be held accountable

BY PHILIP GIRALDI • UNZ REVIEW • JULY 5, 2022

Quite likely a majority of Americans would agree that it is wrong for the government or police to torture someone, though some would surely accept the “ticking time bomb” exemption, where a detainee is withholding information that could save many lives. It is in fact illegal to torture someone as well as it being morally wrong. Indeed, it could constitute a crime against humanity or a war crime depending on circumstances. The United States, which has signed the United Nations Convention Against Torture and is bound by it, has thereby accepted legal sanctions to back up the view that torture is never permissible. Under US law, torture committed by “government officials and their collaborators upon a person restrained by the government is a felony punishable by up to 20 years in federal prison, and its fruits are inadmissible in all courts.” Given that background, one is astonished to learn that some in the government have not taken the obligation seriously. To be sure, the US has been quick to react when lower ranking officials, contractors and ordinary soldiers have reportedly been involved in torturing prisoners, as occurred with Abu Ghraib prior to 2004, but the higher one goes up the ladder of power the less do laws apply to even the most egregious misbehavior.

It has long been known that the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), in the wake of 9/11, resorted to torture in its overseas “black” prisons, but details of what took place and anything that would stand up in court as evidence has been difficult to discern as it has been easy for the Agency to shroud its more nefarious deeds through claims of protecting “states secrets.” But now some more details have emerged. The news that former Donald Trump appointed CIA Director Gina Haspel during her tour overseeing a prison in Thailand in 2002 personally observed at least one terrorist suspect being tortured by waterboarding, which simulates being drowned repeatedly until a confession is obtained. Waterboarding was used by the Japanese on prisoners of war in the Second World War and was subsequently considered to be torture, a war crime.

The new information came from one of the creators of the Agency’s “enhanced interrogation techniques” program, psychologist James E. Mitchell, who was testifying in a May pretrial hearing at Guantanamo Prison relating to the treatment of Saudi al-Qaeda linked terrorist suspect Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri, who has been accused of being complicit in the bombing of the USS Cole in 2000 that killed 17 American sailors. Al-Nashiri, who was shipped to Gitmo in 2006 and who has been waiting sixteen years for his trial, could face the death penalty if he is convicted. His defense is seeking to demonstrate that the evidence against him was obtained by torture and should therefore be inadmissible.

Al-Nashiri was subjected to four months of waterboarding as well as to what have been described as “other coercive techniques” during his questioning in Thailand. According to testimony, the hooded interrogators repeatedly slammed al-Nashiri’s head into a wall and forced him naked into a small confinement box. When he briefly went on a hunger strike due to his treatment he was fed rectally. It is not known how frequently Gina Haspel, the senior officer in charge of the base, observed the torture, which she allegedly watched but did not participate in, but she drafted up the classified cables detailing what had occurred and what information had been developed. Oddly, al-Nashiri was freely answering the questions from the interrogators, who recommended that the extreme measures be stopped, but CIA Headquarters insisted that the torture continue in the belief that nothing is “true” until it is verified under torture. Rather than resigning to demonstrate her disagreement, Haspel allowed the process to continue, which is why in part some of her former Agency colleagues regularly refer to her as “Bloody Gina.”

Videotapes were made of the torture but they were subsequently destroyed. Haspel participated in the November 2005 destruction of hundreds of hours of recordings contained on 92 tapes showing at least two interrogations of Abu Zubaydah and al-Nashiri. She did so while serving as chief of staff to the Director of the National Collection Service Jose A. Rodriguez Jr. At her Senate confirmation hearing as Director in 2018, she said “I would also make clear that I did not appear on the tapes.” Rodriguez, who made the decision to destroy the tapes, also reportedly determined how to handle a suspected terrorist detainee Gul Rahman. Rahman was chained, nearly naked, to a concrete floor for an extended time and then froze to death. There was an internal CIA investigation but no officer on-site nor at the Agency headquarters was punished – let alone prosecuted. In fact, Rodriguez, who was in charge of the detention site, received a $2,500 bonus for his “consistently superior work.”

The Agency currently regards the existence of the black prisons and the procedures used to elicit information as a “state secret” even though the existence of the sites is widely known and has been reported on extensively. After serving as Director of Central Intelligence Haspel retired from CIA in January 2021. She currently works for a major Washington law firm King & Spalding L.L.P., a typical transition for senior officials who are able to exploit the revolving door between government and the private sector. She reportedly is part of the firm’s Government Matters practice where she “advise[s] clients on cybersecurity and information technology, among other issues.”

Every instance of torture by the federal government or its agents is by law a separate felony. Beyond that, what went on in the Agency’s black overseas prisons is shocking even in a Washington where no crime is too low to be contemplated by the governments we have unfortunately placed into power. Some might object that Gina’s actions amounted to oversight of a dreadful necessity, but there is something particularly loathsome about a powerful Administration intelligence officer finding time to watch the horrors performed on a suspect who undoubtedly was not afforded any due process before he arrived in his cell to be experimented on by a team of modern-day Torquemadas.

The unfortunate fact is the Gina Haspel is not alone. She committed what are undeniably felonies and now enjoys a well-paid sinecure with a law firm that deals extensively with the government. One might recall similar trajectories relating to the former CIA Director George Tenet who lied America into a war with Iraq that is regarded as the greatest foreign policy failure since the Second World War. He was rewarded with a professorship at Georgetown. And then there is his partner in crime Paul Wolfowitz, he of the fabricated intelligence, who was named head of the World Bank only to subsequently step down after an unacceptable sexual relationship with a subordinate whom he rewarded with promotions was exposed. He is now a Senior Fellow at the neocon affiliated American Enterprise Institute think tank. George and Paul just might consider how the Nuremberg Trials regarded starting a war of aggression as “the ultimate war crime.” And they might suggest a bit of retrospection from their friends George Bush, Doug Feith, Scooter Libby, and Condi Rice, all of whom have been complicit in the same infamy. And then there is Donald Trump’s assassination of Iranian General Qassem Soleimani based on a lie that he was seeking to kill Americans. They are all doing quite well, thank you, either still active or ensconced in highly respected retirement positions, shielded by their wealth and power.

As long as there is no accountability in Washington the farce of government “of the people, and for the people” will continue. That a government can use the “secrets privilege” to conceal and avoid any consequences when killing people without any due process is despicable. If you use government resources to murder someone, you should be tried and go to prison. If you start a war through deliberate lying, you should stay in prison forever. Those who make the decisions to commit crimes are wired into the system and are in a sense bullet-proof, while the public has been completely brainwashed and the beat goes on. Another recent story tells how the CIA was apparently planning to kill currently imprisoned journalist Julian Assange in London. It reportedly included scenarios for a possible shoot-out in the heart of the city, the ramming of Russian diplomatic vehicles and the disabling of any airplane that might be involved in an escape attempt. Who came up with that one? It dates back to 2010, when the noted constitutional lawyer Barack Obama was president. Didn’t he or his advisers know that murder is against the law?

Philip M. Giraldi, Ph.D., is Executive Director of the Council for the National Interest, a 501(c)3 tax deductible educational foundation (Federal ID Number #52-1739023) that seeks a more interests-based U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East. Website is councilforthenationalinterest.org, address is P.O. Box 2157, Purcellville VA 20134 and its email is inform@cnionline.org.

July 5, 2022 Posted by | Subjugation - Torture, Timeless or most popular, War Crimes | , | Leave a comment

Russia says Ukraine ‘tortured’ captured soldiers

Press TV – July 5, 2022

Russia says its soldiers recently released as part of a prisoner swap with Ukraine were “beaten” and “tortured with electricity in captivity.”

The Russian Investigative Committee, which probes major crimes, said in a statement on Tuesday that it was “verifying facts of inhuman treatment of Russia soldier prisoners in Ukraine.”

Moscow and Kiev exchanged 144 prisoners of war each last week.

The investigative committee said the freed Russian soldiers had told investigators about “the violence they had suffered.”

One of the soldiers, according to the Russian statement, said Ukrainian medics had treated him without applying anesthetics and that he was “beaten, tortured with electricity in captivity.” He said he was left without food and water for days.

Another Russian soldier said he was badly beaten and had his wound irritated by Ukrainian medics.

The Russian committee said the testimonies of the freed soldiers were examples of “violations of the Geneva Convention on prisoners of war.”

July 5, 2022 Posted by | Subjugation - Torture, War Crimes | , | Leave a comment

EU economies are down on their knees

BY M. K. BHADRAKUMAR | INDIAN PUNCHLINE | JULY 5, 2022

On July 1 at the White House, US President Joe Biden made a startling disclosure that “the idea we’re going to be able to click a switch, bring down the cost of gasoline, is not likely in the near term.” 

American gas exporters have positioned themselves accordingly to fill the gap as Europe turns away from Russian imports. FT reported recently that “US liquefied natural gas producers have announced a string of deals to boost exports as the industry capitalises on shortages that have left Europe with a mounting energy crisis.” 

The deals are so lucrative that Cheniere, America’s leading gas exporter, has taken an investment decision to push ahead with a project that will boost its capacity more than 20 per cent by late 2025, anticipating long-term supply deals and locked in purchases of US gas over the coming decades. The US producers of gas are reportedly running plants flat-out to increase supplies to the EU. 

The US has overtaken Russia for the first time as Europe’s top gas supplier. Although LNG from the US is sold to Europe at much higher costs than pipeline gas from Russia, EU countries have no choice. 

With Russian supply via Nord Stream at just 40% of capacity, and deliveries to be halted completely for annual maintenance on July 11-21, the outlook for near-term Russian gas supply to Europe appears bleak. 

Germany has warned of the risk that Nord Stream gas may not return at all following the maintenance. At any rate, Russian supply to Europe is at record lows and is “set to remain constrained through the third quarter,” per S&P Global.

Germany is heading for a major economic crisis. The head of the German Federation of Trade Unions has been quoted as saying in the weekend, “Entire industries are in danger of collapsing forever because of the gas bottlenecks — especially, chemicals, glass-making, and aluminium industries, which are major suppliers to key automotive sector.” Massive unemployment is likely. When Germany sneezes, of course, Europe catches cold — not only the Eurozone but even post-Brexit Britain. 

Welcome to the European Union’s “sanctions from hell.” The US literally hustled the Europeans into the Ukraine crisis. How many times did Secretary of State Antony Blinken travel to Europe in those critical months in the run-up to the Russian invasion of Ukraine to ensure that the door to any meaningful talks with the Kremlin remained shut! And American energy companies are today making windfall profits selling gas to Europeans. Won’t Europeans have the common intelligence to realise they have been had? 

Now, Biden has washed his hands of the gas crisis. He brusquely stated at a press conference in Madrid on June 30 that such premium on oil prices will continue “as long as it takes, so Russia cannot, in fact, defeat Ukraine and move beyond Ukraine. This is a critical, critical position for the world. Here we are. Why do we have NATO?” 

Biden’s counterfactual narrative is that the sanctions against Russia are going to work eventually and a long war in Ukraine would be Russia’s undoing. The US narrative is that if you look under the hood of the Russian economy, it may not be flexible and resourceful enough to develop an entrepreneurial bunker spirit and adopt new business models to neutralise the sanctions. Biden is convinced that the Russian economy is in the grip of industrial mafias that are not very innovative and, therefore, there aren’t many options for Russia under the western sanctions. 

Biden said in Madrid: “Look at the impact that the war on Ukraine has had on Russia… They’ve (Russians) lost 15 years of the gains they made in terms of their economy…  They can’t even — you know, they’re having — they’re going to have trouble maintaining oil production because they don’t have the technology to do it. They need American technology. And they’re also in a simi- — similar situation in terms of their weapons systems and some of their military systems. So they’re paying a very, very heavy price for this.” 

But even if that’s the case, how does all that help the Europeans? On the other hand, President Putin’s strategic calculations with respect to the war remain very much on track. Russian forces made indisputable progress in establishing full control over Luhansk. On Monday, Putin gave the green signal to a proposal from the army commanders to launch “offensive operations.” Five months into the war, Ukrainians are staring at defeat and Russian army generals know it.

Russia didn’t wander into Ukraine unprepared, either. Evidently, it took precautionary steps both before and since the war to shield its economy. And this enables the Russian economy to settle down to a “new normal”. Washington’s options are quite limited under the circumstances. Fundamentally, western sanctions do not address the causes of the Russian behaviour, and therefore, they are doomed to fail to solve the problem at hand. 

To be sure, Putin has some nasty surprises in store for Biden closer to the November mid-term elections. Biden blithely assumes that he controls all the variables in the situation. Schadenfreude is never a rational basis for statecraft. 

Yesterday, the strategically important Kherson region bordering Crimea formed a new government with the First Deputy Prime Minister of Russia’s Kaliningrad region heading the cabinet and Russian nationals among his deputies. Now that HIMARS multiple launch rocket system, contrary to Biden’s promise, is blasting Russian cities, expect some major Russian retaliation. 

The pathway of Russia’s offensive operations is being relaid to include Kharkov and Odessa as well, apart from Donbass. The influential Kremlin politician and chairman of Duma Vyacheslav Volodin said on Tuesday. 

“Some people are asking what our goal is and when all this will end. It will end when our peaceful cities and towns no longer come under shelling attacks. What they are doing is forcing our troops not to stop on the borders of the Lugansk and Donetsk republics (Donbass) because strikes (on Russian regions) are coming from the Kharkov regions and other regions of Ukraine.”

How long does Biden think the Europeans will want to be involved in a protracted proxy war with Russia? Bild reported on Sunday that 75% of German respondents see recent price hikes as a heavy burden, while 50% said they feel their economic conditions are worsening; every second German fears a lack of heating this coming winter due to reduced Russian gas supplies and rising inflation in the European Union. 

Yet, Biden says war will go on “for as long as it takes” and fuel shortage will continue “for as long as it takes.” The European economy is expected to start contracting over the course of the second half of 2022 and the recession may continue until the summer of 2023 at least. 

Analysts at JP Morgan Chase, the US investment bank, said last week that Russia could also cause “stratospheric” oil price increases if it used output cuts to retaliate. It said, “The tightness of the global oil market is on Russia’s side.” Analysts wrote that prices could more than triple to $380 a barrel if Russia cut production by 5m barrels a day.

Putin’s decree last week is ominous — the Kremlin taking full control of the Sakhalin-2 oil and gas project in Russia’s Far East. State-owned Gazprom held a 50% plus one share stake in the project and its foreign partners included Shell (27.5%), Mitsui (12.5%), and Mitsubishi (10%). The decree stipulates that Gazprom will keep its majority stake, but foreign investors must ask the Russian government for a stake in the newly created firm within one month or be dispossessed. The government will decide whether to approve any request. 

This will unsettle energy markets further and put more strain on the LNG market, and can be seen as a move to put more pressure on the West by concurrently restricting gas supplies to Europe and creating more demand for LNG in Asia that will draw off supplies currently going to Europe. Sakhalin-2 supplies circa 4% of the global LNG market! 

The only part of the US agenda that is going well seems to be the unspoken part of it: the very same Anglo-American objectives that Lord Ismay once predicted as the rationale behind the NATO’s existence —”to keep the Russians out, the Americans in, and the Germans down.”  

July 5, 2022 Posted by | Economics | , , | Leave a comment

Foreign Policy Fail: Biden’s Sanctions are a Windfall For Russia!

By Ron Paul | July 4, 2022

It’s easy to see why, according to a new Harris poll, 71 percent of Americans said they do not want Joe Biden to run for re-election. As Americans face record gas prices and the highest inflation in 40 years, President Biden admits he could not care less. His Administration is committed to fight a proxy war with Russia through Ukraine and Americans just need to suck it up.

Last week a New York Times reporter asked Biden how long he expects Americans to pay record gasoline prices over his Administration’s Ukraine policy. “As long as it takes,” replied the president without hesitation.

“Russia cannot defeat Ukraine,” added Biden as justification for his Administration’s pro-pain policy toward Americans. The president has repeatedly tried to deflect blame for the growing economic crisis by claiming Russia is solely behind recent inflation. “The reason why gas prices are up is because of Russia. Russia, Russia, Russia,” he said in the same press conference.

But Biden has a big problem: Americans do not believe him. According to a Rasmussen poll earlier this month, only eleven percent of Americans believe Biden’s claim that Russian president Vladimir Putin is to blame for high prices.

When it comes to disdain for the average American hurt by higher prices, there is more than enough in the Biden Administration to go around.

Brian Deese, Director of President Biden’s National Economic Council, was asked in a recent CNN interview, “What do you say to those families that say, listen, we can’t afford to pay $4.85 a gallon for months, if not years?”

His answer? “This is about the future of the Liberal World Order and we have to stand firm.”

Has there ever been an Administration more out of touch with the American people? If you asked working Americans whether they’d be happy to suffer poverty for the “liberal world order,” how many would say “that sounds like a great idea”?

President Biden’s attempts to bring down gasoline prices are bound to fail because he does not understand the problem. He can beg the Saudis to pump more oil, he can even threaten the US oil companies as he did in a Tweet yesterday. He can buy and sell from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve in an attempt to give the impression that prices are lowering. None of it will work.

The strangest part of this idea that Americans must suffer to hurt the Russians is that these policies aren’t even hurting Russia! On the contrary: Russia has seen record profits from its oil and gas exports since the beginning of the Ukraine war.

According to a recent New York Times article, increasing global oil and gas prices have enabled Russia to finance its war on Ukraine. US sanctions did not bring the Russian economy to its knees, as Biden promised. They actually brought the American economy to its knees while Russian profits soared.

As Newsweek noted last week, Russian television pundits are joking that with the financial windfall Russia has seen since sanctions were imposed, “Biden is of course our agent.”

Washington’s bi-partisan foreign policy of wasting trillions on endless wars overseas has finally come home. Biden is clearly out of touch, but there is plenty of blame to go around. The only question is whether we will see an extended recession… or worse.

Copyright © 2022 by RonPaul Institute.

July 5, 2022 Posted by | Economics, Russophobia | , | Leave a comment

Moscow responds to Japan’s threat to cap Russian oil prices

Samizdat | July 5, 2022

Tokyo’s proposal to place a cap on Russian oil prices would lead to significantly less oil on the market and could drastically push oil prices higher, former Russian president Dmitry Medvedev warned on Tuesday.

Responding to the idea put forward by Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida on Sunday, Medvedev wrote on his Telegram channel that Japan “would have neither oil nor gas from Russia, as well as no participation in the Sakhalin-2 LNG project” if Tokyo decided to go through with the proposal.

“Japanese PM Kishida recently blurted out that the price ceiling for Russian oil would be set at half its current price. Plus, a mechanism will be created that will not allow the purchase of our oil at a price higher than the established one,” the former president wrote.

He went on to explain what this would mean when “translated from Japanese into Russian,” writing that such a move would severely limit the amount of oil available on the market, causing its price to be “much higher.”

“In fact, it will be even higher than the predicted astronomical price of $300-400 a barrel. Compare this with the dynamic of gas prices,” Medvedev said.

During last week’s G7 summit, the leaders of Germany, France, Canada, the US, the UK, Japan, and Italy agreed to explore the feasibility of introducing temporary import price caps on Russian fossil fuels, including oil, citing the ongoing military conflict between Moscow and Kiev.

However, as the Kremlin has pointed out, implementing a measure such as the one proposed by Japan would first require the approval of other countries. Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov stated on Monday that Kishida’s idea was merely “a single statement only, without any decisions taken.”

July 5, 2022 Posted by | Economics, Malthusian Ideology, Phony Scarcity | , | Leave a comment

London wants social media to “proactively” tackle would-be disinformation from states such as Russia

Samizdat | July 5, 2022

London has proposed new legislation that would require social media to “proactively” tackle “disinformation” that allegedly pours into the UK from foreign states such as Russia and harms the nation, the government said on Tuesday. Platforms failing to do so will be subject to huge fines or could be blocked.

The legislation, which is subject to parliamentary approval, would oblige social media platforms to hunt down what the government believes to be fake accounts that act in the interests of foreign states and seek to influence UK politics, including elections.

The new amendment will also compel social media, search engines and other websites to crack down on such accounts in order to minimize the number of people exposed to “state-sponsored disinformation.”

“We cannot allow foreign states or their puppets to use the internet to conduct hostile online warfare unimpeded,” said Nadine Dorries, the UK culture and digital secretary, pointing out that the Ukraine conflict has shown that Russia is ready to weaponize information.

According to the proposed law, social media will have to make creating fake accounts more difficult and will also need to fight bots used for misleading the public. Ofcom, the British media regulator, will have the authority to fine any internet resources that don’t comply up to 10% of their global turnover.

The amendment is set be included in the National Security Bill, which will be discussed by British MPs next week.

This latest move by the UK government would directly target, for instance, the Russian pranksters known as Vovan and Lexus, who had pulled a stunt on UK Defense Secretary Ben Wallace and Home Secretary Priti Patel. As a result, their channel was banned by YouTube in late May.

On Monday, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov criticized the West for harassment of Russian journalists, saying that Western countries have “buried the freedom of speech with their own hands.” In his view, Western governments intentionally create their own laws allowing them to decide what is “freedom of information” and what is “propaganda.”

July 5, 2022 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance, Russophobia | , | Leave a comment

Western plan to severely isolate Russia fails

By Lucas Leiroz | July 5, 2022

The Western world has tried to “isolate” and “cancel” Russia, but apparently this plan has failed and Moscow remains absolutely integrated with its major trading and strategic partners. China and India remain willing to cooperate with Russia widely, increasing current levels of bilateral trade. This demonstrates how the current situation in Eastern Europe cannot be resolved by coercive means.

The Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs pledged April 19 that it will strengthen cooperation with Russia, no matter what happens in the international scenario. The message comes in an official statement from the foreign ministry following a meeting held the day before between Chinese deputy MOFA Le Yucheng and Russian ambassador to Beijing Andrey Denisov. The document says:

“No matter how the international situation changes, China will, as always, strengthen strategic coordination with Russia to achieve win-win cooperation, jointly safeguard the common interests of both sides, and promote the building of a new type of international relations and a community with a shared future for mankind (…) In the first quarter of this year, the bilateral trade volume between China and Russia reached 38.2 billion US dollars, an increase of nearly 30%, [which] fully demonstrates the great resilience… of cooperation between the two countries”.

Later, commenting on the statement, Ambassador Denisov stated:

“Russia always regards developing relations with China as its diplomatic priority and is ready to further deepen bilateral comprehensive strategic coordination and all-round practical cooperation in the direction set by the two heads of state (…) [Further efforts to strengthen Russia-China ties] will continuously benefit the two peoples.”

Although it is a well-known fact that bilateral relations between Moscow and Beijing have improved substantially in recent years, forming an important axis of economic and diplomatic cooperation, the current message is of enormous importance, as it works as a response to recent US pressure against China. Last month, US President Joe Biden called his Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping and during an hour-long conversation “warned” about the possible “consequences” that would be suffered by Beijing if there was not an immediate end to its economic support for Russia.

Naturally, Xi ignored Biden’s threats and the Chinese foreign ministry maintained its stance of absolute neutrality on the ongoing conflict in Ukraine. Not mixing political and economic issues is a key point of the Chinese foreign policy tradition and this is exactly what is being applied now. Beijing refuses to maintain positions on any political event outside its strategic environment, which is why it keeps the Russian military operation  off the agenda in Beijing-Moscow bilateral relations, continuing to have projects to improve cooperation, independently of such extra-economic issues.

However, it is not only the Chinese who show interest in cooperating with the Russians, ignoring the Western attempts of “cancellation”. Apparently, India is about to announce its highest ever level of trade cooperation with Russia in oil. According to reliable sources quoted by the Economic Times on April 19, state-owned companies in New Delhi are planning to buy as much Russian oil as possible in the short term, considering the expected availability and low prices of the commodity.

The Indian attitude sounds absolutely pragmatic and not ideological: faced with the conflict scenario, Indians seek to benefit from the availability of Russian oil, which arises as a consequence of the sanctions applied by the West to prevent the oil from entering the European market. With large quantities available and prices dropping, it is in India’s interest to acquire as many Russian barrels as possible and this is what is about to be done.

Obviously, this was not what the West expected from the Indians. The US has always tried to make its military partnership with India – focused on creating an “anti-China axis” – a kind of hierarchical relationship, in which Indians would automatically obey and align themselves with every decision taken by the Americans. However, despite the pressure in this direction and the constant US threats to cut ties with New Delhi, India remains convinced of defending its interests above all, making it clear that it will continue to cooperate with Russia in terms of both military trade and energy partnership.

It is impossible to look at such news and continue to believe the Western media narrative that “Russia is isolated”. Moscow has lost a part of world trade and even then, not completely, as Western countries have not yet managed to fully break off relations with Russia. On the other hand, it has not only preserved most of the global consumer market in emerging nations but has also boosted its ties with China and India, which indicates great economic support and, even more, the emergence of new intra-BRICS cooperation opportunities.

What all this means is simple to understand: the special military operation in Ukraine will not end through economic pressures, coercive measures and attempts at “cancellation”, but through the Ukrainian willingness to accept the peace terms, which are (as Russia insists) political and military neutrality and recognition of the sovereign republics of Donbass and Russian Crimea. As long as the Ukrainian government is unwilling to do so, Russia seems to continue the operation and have sufficient economic strength to maintain it.

Lucas Leiroz is a researcher in Social Sciences at the Rural Federal University of Rio de Janeiro; geopolitical consultant.

July 5, 2022 Posted by | Economics, Russophobia | , , , | Leave a comment

Parents Catch FBI In Plot To Force Mentally Ill Son To Be A Right Wing Terrorist

By Matt Agorist | The Free Thought Project | August 17, 2017

It’s become a near-weekly occurrence. Somewhere in some state, the FBI will announce that they’ve foiled yet another terrorist plot and saved lives. However, as the data shows, the majority of these cases involve psychologically diminished patsies who’ve been entirely groomed, armed, and entrapped by FBI agents. Simply put, the FBI manufactures terror threats and then takes credit for stopping them.

While many of these cases have garnered attention and been exposed in the alternative media, a recent case out of Oklahoma sets a new low for FBI and exposes how insidious these plots can be.

Through the hundreds of ‘foiled terror plots’ the FBI has ‘busted’ over the years, many of them have been focused on people of Middle Eastern descent or people associated with ISIS or al-Qaeda. This time, in the case of Jerry Drake Varnell, the 23-year-old diagnosed schizophrenic, accused of attempting to bomb a bank, the FBI fomented terror from a right wing dialogue.

In a June meeting with the agent, according to FBI documents, Varnell described himself as a believer in “Three Percenter” ideology, a right-wing group claiming to be committed to standing against and exposing corruption and injustice.

According to federal documents, Varnell drove what he believed was a stolen van containing a 1,000-pound ammonium nitrate bomb on Saturday morning to blow up an Oklahoma City bank. Vile, indeed.

However, if we backtrack just a bit, to when the FBI began grooming their would-be right-wing militia terrorist, the vileness comes directly from the government.

“The FBI knew he was schizophrenic,” Varnell’s parents declared on Wednesday in an open letter bravely published by NewsOK.

“Underneath his condition, he is a sweet-hearted person and we are extremely shocked that this event has happened. However, what truly has us flabbergasted is the fact that the FBI knew he was schizophrenic. The State of Oklahoma found him mentally incompetent and we, his parents have legal guardianship over him by the Court. These documents are sealed from the public, which is why no news media outlet has been able to obtain them. The FBI clearly knew that he was schizophrenic because they have gathered every ounce of information on him.”

Yet they knowingly continued to groom him, despite the clear immoral implications.

When they began grooming him, according to the family, the FBI knew that Varnell was declared mentally unfit to live by himself and that he was a paranoid schizophrenic. Without their criminal informant and the FBI tactics playing mind games with this vulnerable man, the idea of him committing an act of terror would have likely never materialized.

“What the public should be looking at is the fact that the FBI gave our son the means to make this happen. He has no job, no money, no vehicle, and no driver’s license, due to the fact that he is schizophrenic and we; his parents do everything we can possible to keep him safe and functional….. He has suffered through countless serious full-blown schizophrenic delusional episodes and he has been put in numerous mental hospitals since he was 16 years old. The FBI came and picked him up from our home, they gave him a vehicle, gave him a fake bomb, and every means to make this happen none of which he had access to on his own.”

The parents noted that during the setup, they suspected something was going on and Jerry’s father told the informant to stay away from their son. However, according to the parents, the informant “continued to sneak onto our residence. The FBI paid him to continue this operation and I believe they have cleared his criminal record.”

Because they knew Varnell had severe mental disabilities, the FBI should have had stopped their plans to do this and immediately sought an option of hospitalization. However, they pressed on.

Knowing a sane person would likely never attempt to blow up a bank, the FBI deliberately targeted a severely delusional and mentally ill person. This is wrong on so many levels. Will the next mass murderer they groom come directly from a mental institution?

“The FBI should have filed conspiracy on our son and had him committed to a mental institution. They should not have aided and abetted a paranoid schizophrenic to commit this act. There are many more facts that I will not make public that will support my son and the disturbing acts made by the FBI.

I realize that many will say my son could have found another person to commit this act. Yet, any person that has access to the materials and the state of mind necessary to bomb a building would not have any need for a schizophrenic who has no resources to contribute.”

Clifford and Melonie Varnell, Jerry’s parents make a powerful point. No one — other than the FBI — would’ve attempted to get a schizophrenic man with nothing to contribute to do their bidding as it would most likely be a futile effort — unless you are the FBI looking for an easy patsy to keep fear alive.

David Steele, a 20-year Marine Corps intelligence officer, the second-highest-ranking civilian in the U.S. Marine Corps Intelligence, and former CIA clandestine services case officer, had this to say about these most unscrupulous operations:

“Most terrorists are false flag terrorists, or are created by our own security services. In the United States, every single terrorist incident we have had has been a false flag, or has been an informant pushed on by the FBI. In fact, we now have citizens taking out restraining orders against FBI informants that are trying to incite terrorism. We’ve become a lunatic asylum.”

Indeed, we’ve become a lunatic asylum.

July 5, 2022 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Deception, False Flag Terrorism, Timeless or most popular | , , | Leave a comment

Twitter censors story of British mother who died after reaction to Covid vaccine

By Didi Rankovic | Reclaim The Net | July 4, 2022

Three children in the UK were left without a mother after she died from a massive stroke determined to be caused by blood clots that formed after she received the AstraZeneca coronavirus vaccine, but Twitter is labeling conversations about this information taking place on the platform as “misinformation.”

Previously healthy Lucy Taberer, whose youngest is a five-year-old boy, succumbed to the consequences of the Covid shot 22 days after she was vaccinated. At first, the 47-year-old experienced mild side-effects, described in reports as common, to then develop a bruise, skin rash, and pain that the doctors at first dismissed as being caused by kidney stones.

In the end, it turned out that the victim’s reaction to the vaccine had been to develop blood clots that proved to be fatal.

Her death certificate reads that Taberer died of cerebral venous sinus thrombosis and vaccine-associated thrombosis with thrombocytopenia.

Local media, including Leicester Mercury, reported about it, and Taberer’s step daughter tweeted a link to the story, but was quickly shut down by Twitter, which labeled the post as “misleading.”

To add insult to injury, she was advised to click another link, provided by Twitter’s “fact-checkers,” that would “explain” why health officials think Covid vaccines are safe “for most people.”

Since the tweet about the woman’s death did not claim the vaccines were unsafe for most people, it remains unclear what logic drives Twitter’s censorship around the topic, other than the desire to stop any mention of the jabs in a negative context, whether true or false.

GB News reported on this, wondering if it wasn’t enough for a child to deal with the loss, but also “have to be insulted in their grief if they mention it on the internet.”

Host Mark Steyn noted that three guests who regularly appear on his show were among those awarded compensation after the UK government last week admitted Covid vaccines in some cases can be deadly. All three lost their loved ones to the vaccine.

But, he noted, social media have been slow (or not interested) in catching up, even as governments are starting to pay out compensation.

July 4, 2022 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance, Science and Pseudo-Science | , , | Leave a comment

ICC: International Federation of Journalists to be lawsuit partner against Israel

MEMO | July 4, 2022

The International Federation of Journalists will be a partner in a lawsuit against Israel at the International Criminal Court (ICC) following the murder of Al Jazeera journalist Shireen Abu Akleh by an Israeli sniper, Wafa news agency has reported.

“Palestinian journalists are fighters who face on a daily basis the aggression of the occupation in all fields as well as the main project of the occupation to expel the Palestinians from their land,” Ali Youssef, a member of the federation’s executive board, told Wafa. He added that the IFJ has succeeded in exposing Israel’s acts of aggression against media professionals and the Palestinian people.

Palestinians argue that the Israeli military deliberately targeted and killed Abu Akleh. Israel denies this, claiming that she may have been hit by errant army fire or by a bullet from one of the Palestinian gunmen who were clashing with its forces at the scene. According to eyewitnesses, however, there was no such clash at the time that the journalist was killed.

The ICC recognised in a February 2021 ruling that it has jurisdiction over the situation in the occupied Palestinian territories of Gaza, the West Bank and East Jerusalem. This has paved the way for cases to be brought against Israel over alleged war crimes and crimes against humanity.

Last month, Palestinian Foreign Minister Riyad Al-Maliki handed the ICC prosecutor the official outcome of the Palestinian investigation into the murder of Abu Akleh. He noted that it constitutes a turning point in the crimes committed by Israel against the Palestinian people.

During the meeting with ICC Prosecutor Karim Khan, Maliki demanded that the criminals responsible for targeting civilians, children, women, journalists, doctors and other protected groups be brought to international justice.

Moreover, a video message by Nasser Abu Bakr, President of the Palestinian Journalists’ Syndicate, urged Prosecutor Khan to hold Israel to account. “Fifty Palestinian journalists have been killed since 2000 alone,” he explained. “Seven thousand crimes against Palestinian journalists have been documented.”

A detailed account of Abu Akleh’s killing was given by her colleague, Walid Al-Omari. “Why would they target Shireen?” asked Al Jazeera’s Jerusalem Bureau Chief. He suggested that Israel was seeking to inflict a direct and powerful blow against the network. By killing Abu Akleh, he suggested, the colonial-occupation state hoped to silence one of the most powerful voices in the Arab world.

Al Jazeera described Abu Akleh’s killing as a “blatant murder” that violates “international laws and norms”. In its statement following her murder, the network pointed out that according to Article 8 of the ICC Charter, “Targeting war correspondents, or journalists working in war zones or occupied territories by killing or physically assaulting them, is a war crime.”

July 4, 2022 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Full Spectrum Dominance, War Crimes | , , , | Leave a comment

Abu Akleh family says it is incredulous at today’s announcement by US State Department on killing of Shireen

WAFA | July 4, 2022 

JERUSALEM – The Abu Akleh family said in a statement issued today that they are incredulous at today’s announcement by the State Department that a test of the spent round that killed Shireen Abu Akleh, an American citizen, was inconclusive as to the origin of the gun that fired it.

Following is the full statement issued by the family of al-Jazeera journalist Shireen Abu Akleh:

With respect to today’s announcement by the State Department – on July 4, no less – that a test of the spent round that killed Shireen Abu Akleh, an American citizen, was inconclusive as to the origin of the gun that fired it, we are incredulous.

There were numerous eyewitnesses to the killing, and we have now had the benefit of reports from multiple local and international media outlets, human rights organizations, and the United Nations that an Israeli soldier fired the fatal shot, as there were no other armed elements in the area of Jenin where Shireen was murdered. The focus on the bullet has always been misplaced and was an attempt by the Israeli side to spin the narrative in its favor as if this were some kind of police whodunit that could be solved by a CSI-style forensic test.

The notion that the American investigators, whose identity is not disclosed in the statement, believe the bullet “likely came from Israeli positions” is cold comfort. We say this in light of the addition of a conclusory pronouncement that the killing was not intentional but rather the result of a purported Israeli counterterrorism raid gone wrong, which is frankly insulting to Shireen’s memory and ignores the history and context of the brutal and violent nature of what is now the longest military occupation in modern history.

The truth is that the Israeli military killed Shireen according to policies that view all Palestinians – civilian, press or otherwise – as legitimate targets, and we were expecting that an American investigation would focus on finding the responsible parties and holding them accountable, not parsing over barely-relevant details and then assuming good faith on behalf of a recalcitrant and hostile occupying power.

In other words, all available evidence suggests that a US citizen was the subject of an extrajudicial killing by a foreign government that receives billions of dollars in American military aid each year to perpetuate a prolonged and entrenched military occupation of millions of Palestinians. We were hoping that, for example, the FBI or other relevant authorities would open a murder investigation, much like they do in ordinary cases when American citizens are killed abroad.

Further, the United States should take action to clarify the extent to which American funds were involved in Shireen’s killing. To say that this investigation, with its total lack of transparency, undefined goals, and support for Israel’s overall position is a disappointment would be an understatement.

We will continue to advocate for justice for Shireen, and to hold the Israeli military and government accountable, no matter the attempts to obfuscate the reality of what happened on May 11. We continue to call on the American government to conduct an open, transparent, and thorough investigation of all the facts by independent agencies free from any political consideration or influence.

July 4, 2022 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Full Spectrum Dominance | , , , , | Leave a comment

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