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148 Israeli violations against Palestinian journalists in May

MEMO | June 1, 2022

An Arab NGO has documented 148 Israeli rights violations against Palestinian journalists in the occupied Palestinian territories last month, Anadolu News Agency reports.

In a statement on Wednesday, the Journalists Support Committee said the month of May witnessed a surge in attacks on Palestinian journalists by Israeli forces and settlers.

It termed the attacks as “an attempt to prevent Palestinian journalists from covering Israeli assaults against Palestinians and their holy sites.”

According to the NGO, the Israeli violations varied from arrests, intimidation, shooting, verbal and physical assaults to car-ramming incidents.

It said 11 journalists were detained by Israeli forces in the West Bank during May, while the custody of five others was extended without trial.

“Israeli forces, in collaboration with settlers, disrupted the work of 61 journalists and media institutions while covering Israeli violations in the cities of Jerusalem, Hebron and Jenin,” it added.

The NGO also noted that the social media accounts of 11 Palestinian journalists were suspended for alleged violations of publication rules.

Last month, Al Jazeera journalist, Shireen Abu Akleh, 51, was shot dead while covering an Israeli military raid in the West Bank city of Jenin.

Palestinian officials and her employer, Al Jazeera, said she was killed by Israeli forces.

There was no comment from Israeli authorities on the NGO’s report.

June 1, 2022 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Full Spectrum Dominance | , , , , | Leave a comment

Mali has become another front in the Russia v NATO war in Ukraine

By Ramzy Baroud | MEMO | May 31, 2022

The distance between Ukraine and Mali is measured in thousands of kilometres, but the geopolitical distance is much closer. So close, in fact, that it appears as if the ongoing conflicts in both countries are the direct outcomes of the same geopolitical currents and transformation underway around the world.

After the Malian government accused French troops of carrying out a massacre in the West African country, on 23 April the Russian Foreign Ministry declared its support for Malian efforts, pushing for an international investigation into French abuses and massacres in the country. “We hope that those responsible will be identified and justly punished,” said the ministry.

In their coverage of the conflict in Mali, Western media have largely omitted the Malian and Russian claims about French massacres; instead, they gave credence to French accusations that the Malian forces, possibly with the help of “Russian mercenaries”, have carried out massacres and buried the dead in mass graves near the recently evacuated French army base in Gossi, in order to blame France.

Earlier in April, Human Rights Watch called for an “independent, credible” inquiry into the killings, though it negated both accounts. It suggested that a bloody campaign had indeed taken place, targeting mostly “armed Islamists” between 23 and 31 March.

Media whitewashing and official misinformation aside, Mali has indeed been a stage for much bloodletting in recent years, especially since 2012, when a militant insurgency in the north threatened the complete destabilisation of an already unstable and impoverished country. There were reasons for the insurgency, including the sudden access to smuggled weapon caches originating in Libya following the West’s war on Tripoli in 2011. Thousands of militants who were pushed out of Libya during the war and its aftermath found safe havens in the largely ungoverned Malian northern regions.

With that in mind, though, the militants’ success — they managed to seize nearly a third of the country in just two months — was not entirely linked to western arms. Large swathes of Mali have suffered from prolonged governmental neglect and extreme poverty. Moreover, the Malian army, often beholden to foreign interests, is much hated in these regions due to its violent campaigns and horrific human rights abuses. No wonder the northern rebellion found so much popular support in these parts.

Two months after the Tuareg rebellion in the north, a Malian officer and a contingency of purportedly disgruntled soldiers overthrew the elected government in Bamako, accusing it of corruption and of failure to rein-in the militants. This paved the way for France’s military intervention in its former colony in the guise of “fighting terrorism”.

The French war in Mali, starting in 2013, was disastrous from the Malians’ point of view. It neither stabilised the country nor provided a comprehensive scheme for pacifying the rebellious north. War, human rights violations by the French themselves, and more military coups followed, most notably in August 2020 and May 2021.

However, its intervention was fruitful from France’s viewpoint. As soon as French troops began pouring into Mali, France began to tighten its control over the Sahel countries, including Mali, leading to the signing of two defence agreements, in 2013 and 2020. That’s where the French West African “success story” ends.

Although Paris succeeded in digging itself in deeper, it gave no reason to the Malian people or government to support its actions. As the French became more involved in the life of Malians, ordinary people throughout the country, north and south, detested and rejected them. This shift was the perfect opportunity for Russia to offer itself as an alternative to France and the West. The arrival of Russia on this complex scene allowed Bamako to engineer a clean break from its total reliance on France and its Western, NATO allies.

Even before France formally ended its presence in the country, Russian arms and military technicians were landing in Bamako. Attack helicopters, mobile radar systems and other Russian military technology quickly replaced French arms. It is no wonder that Mali voted against the UN General Assembly resolution to suspend Russia from the Human Rights Council.

As a result of the Ukraine war and western sanctions starting in late February, Russia has accelerated its political and economic outreach, particularly in the Global South, with the hope of lessening the impact of the west-led international sanctions. In truth, though, Moscow’s geopolitical quest in West Africa began earlier than the Ukraine conflict, and Mali’s immediate support for Russia following the war was a testament to Moscow’s success in the region.

France officially began its withdrawal from Mali last February, but Paris and other European capitals have been increasingly aware of what they perceive to be a “Russian threat” in West Africa. How, though, can the West fight back against this threat, real or imagined, especially in light of the French withdrawal? The further destabilisation of Mali is one option. It was, perhaps, no coincidence that Bamako declared on 16 May that it had thwarted a military coup in the country, claiming that the coup leaders were soldiers “supported by a Western state”, presumably France. If the “coup” had succeeded, would this have meant that France — or another “western country” — was plotting a return to Mali on the back of yet another military intervention?

Russia, meanwhile, cannot afford to lose a precious friend like Mali at this critical time of western isolation and sanctions. In effect, this means that Mali will continue to be the stage for a geopolitical cold war that could last for years. The winner of this war could potentially claim the whole of West Africa, which remains hostage to global competition well beyond the national boundaries in the region.

June 1, 2022 Posted by | Aletho News | , , | Leave a comment

Biden tweaks Ukraine narrative

BY M. K. BHADRAKUMAR | INDIAN PUNCHLINE | JUNE 1, 2022

The US President Joe Biden’s op-Ed in the New York Times on Tuesday on the Ukraine war starts with a bluff. He says President Vladimir Putin had thought Russia’s special operation would only last days. How Biden arrived at such an estimation is unclear. Like the US narrative on the war, it is largely presumptive. 

Russians are rooted — and well-founded — in their belief that Ukraine has become an American colony and the leaders in Kiev are mere puppets. How could Putin and his Kremlin advisors have estimated that the special operation would be a cakewalk? The core objectives of the special operation are such — a treaty affirming Ukraine’s neutral status and its recognition of Donbass republics as independent states and Crimea as integral part of Russia — that an operation that “would last days” wouldn’t secure them. 

Moscow knew that the US had absolutely no intentions to accommodate Russia’s legitimate security concerns regarding NATO expansion into Ukraine that were formally projected in December in writing.  

That is the main reason why the Russians have no timeline for their special operation. They would love to round it off the soonest but knew that the integration of Ukraine’s southern regions — Zoporozhia, Kherson, Mykolaiv — that is vital for Crimea’s economy and security and Ukraine’s Black Sea Ports was not going to be child’s play and might be a long haul. 

In the fourth month of the special operation only, Putin could decree the streamlining of procedures for Russian citizenship from applicants in the Kherson, Zoporozhia regions of southern Ukraine.(here, here and here)

Zaporozhye Region in southern Ukraine has offered Russia a military airfield in Melitopol and a naval base in Berdyansk on the coast of the Sea of Azov. The Kherson region plans to integrate into Russia’s education system. Cars are using Russian number plates, Russian SIM cards operate internet and phones. Suffice to say, the shoe is on the other foot.

It was Biden who thought that Russia could be thrown away like a piece from a chessboard but only to realise belatedly that life is real. Biden threatened to render the Russian currency, the ruble, a mere rubble and destroy the Russian economy. Having been a hatchet man as a professional politician, Biden never really understood the resilience, fortitude and grit of the Russian people or their historical consciousness and psyche to rally behind Putin. 

In the Times op-Ed, Biden thinks that he makes a personal gesture toward Putin by promising that he “will not try to bring about his ouster in Moscow.” Yet, Putin’s rating in his country is around 80 percent, while Biden’s is less than half of that — 36%! 

Herein lies the predicament of the Biden Administration. The US is groping in the dark about the Russian intentions in Ukraine. It keeps improvising and updating its narrative to cope with emergent realities that keep coming as nasty surprises. 

This is not only about the military part but also about Russia’s political roadmap. The only constant in Washington is about providing Ukraine with “advanced” weaponry — but then, that is also either about regenerating lucrative business for the military-industrial complex by fuelling wars abroad, or, compensating for the NATO allies who transfer their Soviet-era redundant stockpiles to Ukraine.   

Nonetheless, Biden proclaims in his op-Ed that he will “stay the course” and the massive aid to Ukraine will continue “in the months to come.” That said, Biden makes a nuanced presentation in the op-ed, where, apart from the iteration of usual catechisms — about “a democratic, independent, sovereign and prosperous Ukraine”; allied unity; unprovoked Russian aggression; “rules-based international order”, etc. — he does some messaging as well to Moscow as the war graduates to a new phase. 

For a start, he no longer makes any false promises to send the Russians packing to Siberia. Biden doesn’t predict winners and losers. On the contrary, he acknowledges that this war can only have a diplomatic solution. He signals modestly that such massive scale of US military aid may put Kiev “in the strongest possible position at the negotiating table.” Carefully drafted words. 

Elsewhere, Biden estimates that the focus of the Russian operation is “to take control of as much of Ukraine as it can” before negotiations begin. Implicit here is the realisation that the Russians have turned the tide of the war and a reversal of fortunes is not to be expected. 

It is from such a rational perspective that Biden’s uncharacteristic avoidance of vituperative and belligerent rhetoric toward Russia (or Putin personally) needs to be understood. He reaffirms categorically: “So long as the United States or our allies are not attacked, we will not be directly engaged in this conflict, either by sending American troops to fight in Ukraine or by attacking Russian forces. We are not encouraging or enabling Ukraine to strike beyond its borders. We do not want to prolong the war just to inflict pain on Russia.” 

Of course, Washington will “continue cooperating” with allies regarding sanctions — “the toughest ever imposed on a major economy” — but Biden won’t evaluate its effectiveness. He promises to “work with our allies and partners to address the global food crisis that Russia’s aggression is worsening,” but won’t allege anymore that world food shortage is Russia’s creation. He will help European allies and others to “reduce their dependence on Russian fossil fuels” but also links it to “speed our transition to a clean energy future.” There is no acrimony. 

As regards the security issues, Biden reiterates the US policy to continue “reinforcing NATO’s eastern flank with forces and capabilities” and welcomes Finland’s and Sweden’s applications to join NATO — “a move that will strengthen overall U.S. and trans-Atlantic security by adding two democratic and highly capable military partners” — but refrains from directly linking either of these to Russian aggression. 

Most important, Biden retracts from the dramatic prognosis by CIA Director William Burns that under military pressure, Putin might order use of tactical nuclear weapons in Ukraine.  

The sombre tone of Biden’s words is in sharp contrast with his own intemperate and tendentious past remarks. This eschewal of the “big macho tough guy” image betrays that some degree of realism is appearing in the US official narrative. But on the other hand, Biden also discloses in his op-ed that the US will provide the Ukrainians with “more advanced rocket systems and munitions that will enable them to more precisely strike key targets on the battlefield in Ukraine.”

All this adds up to a calculated signal to Moscow, no doubt. But it isn’t easy to resurrect the Atlanticist inclinations in the Kremlin. The tortuous policy procrastinations on NATO expansion through the past quarter century have cost Russia dearly in lives and treasure. That folly or naïveté — depending on one’s viewpoint — shouldn’t repeat.

Again, stalling the momentum of the special operation at this point would carry immense risks. The operation almost lost momentum on the outskirts of Kiev in March due to the “stop-and-go” approach. 

Fundamentally, there has been a certain inevitability about the western sanctions, with or without the Ukraine crisis, aimed at weakening Russia permanently. The compass is now set. Therefore, no matter the deliberate sobriety of Biden’s op-Ed, the big picture cannot be wished away.

Indeed, the Russian Strategic Rocket Forces held drills in the Ivanovo region, northeast of Moscow today, the day after Biden’s op-ed appeared.

The Russian Defence Ministry said some 1,000 servicemen participated in the drills using over a hundred vehicles, including Yars intercontinental ballistic missile launchers, which have the capability to launch the MIRV-capable (Multiple Independently-targetable Reentry Vehicles) thermonuclear RS-24 Yars inter-continental ballistic missile with range of 12,000 km that can carry up to 10 warheads and cruise at speeds of up to 24,500 kilometres per hour.

June 1, 2022 Posted by | Aletho News | , , , | Leave a comment

Four UK primary schools to feed youngsters insects

Free West Media | June 1, 2022

Insects are supposed to be nutritious and have a lower carbon footprint than regular meat, scientists have claimed. Young children will soon be eating insects to encourage a new generation to switch from meat to insects – and to convince their parents to follow their lead.

Pupils at four primary schools in Wales will be fed “alternative proteins” such as crickets, grasshoppers, silkworms, grasshoppers and mealworms. The project to change people’s diets starts this week.

The researchers hope their findings will provide information on how to make British children – and by extension, their parents – believe in the environmental and nutritional benefits of edible insects.

Surveys, workshops, interviews and focus groups will give feed-back on the experiences of alternative proteins. Researchers have teamed up with teachers in the hope to convince five- to 11-year-old participants to give up meat and dairy.

“We want children to think about alternative proteins as real things for now and not just foods for the future, so sampling some of these foods is a key part of the research,” said Christopher Bear of Cardiff University.

“Although edible insects are not – yet – sold on a large scale in the UK, they are part of the diet of around 2 billion people worldwide. A large proportion of these live in parts of the world where they are part of a long-standing culinary tradition. And they’re becoming popular elsewhere, too,” he added.

A 2020 study estimated that around 9 million European consumers ate insects in 2019 and predicted a rise to 390 million by 2030, according to the International Platform of Insects for Food and Feed (IPIFF), an insect producer.

Carl Evans, Head of School at Roch Community Primary School in Pembrokeshire, which is participating in the project, said that this was an “important link” to “wider global issues around sustainable development” even if it is “often confusing for them”.

Verity Jones of the University of the West of England in Bristol, said young children could “play a big role in family dietary changes”. According to Jones, most of us are already unwittingly eating insects: “Everyone eats insects every day – there are more than 30 parts of bugs in 100g of chocolate… Bread, fruit juices, hops… whatever you eat, you eat insects.”

Jones has tried to reassure children in this way that they would not get sick from eating insects because “all research, both in adults and children, showed that the notion of whole insects were unpleasant, “but crushed insects in food are very acceptable”.

“My research has found that, as with adults, boys are more willing to try new foods first,” she said.

The UK Food Standards Agency (FSA) is expected to allow insects to be temporarily sold in supermarkets and other retailers, with full approval expected next year.

But insects can compromise the nutritional value of many foods, especially those made from plants (like rice or flour). Some common anti-nutrients contained in them are phytic acid, tannins, and lectins. The exoskeleton, or “chitin,” of an insect has been found to contain these anti-nutrients.

Insects could have the same capacity to trigger allergic reactions as do crustaceans (like shrimp and lobster). Also, many insects feed on decaying matter: rotting food, animal corpses, human waste which are full of bacteria and is a common danger associated with wild insects. They can carry parasites which are harmful, or even deadly.

Notably vegans were significantly more determined than meat eaters that they would not eat foods of insect origin, even if they were nutritious, safe, affordable, and convenient. Insects are technically animals (they belong to largest phylum of the animal kingdom, arthropods) and are therefore not considered as a food source by vegans.

June 1, 2022 Posted by | Malthusian Ideology, Phony Scarcity | | Leave a comment

EU plotting to force Hungary to pay more for oil

Samizdat | June 1, 2022

The EU is reportedly considering imposing import tariffs on Russian crude if any members of the bloc refuse to implement the terms of the newly announced embargo on oil from the country, the FT reported on Wednesday.

Earlier this week, EU member states reached an agreement on a partial ban of Russian crude from the bloc’s market. The cushioned embargo will affect about 75% of Russian oil imports, with that percentage growing to 90% by the end of the year.

However, the measure allows a temporary exemption for pipeline supplies, which was introduced to win the support of Hungary and other landlocked countries that had been blocking the proposal for about a month. The exemption reportedly didn’t come with any agreed timeframe, raising concerns that Budapest may continue importing Russian crude for as long as it wishes.

To avoid this scenario, the EU is seeking tariffs on Russian oil imports if Hungarian prime minister Viktor Orban doesn’t ultimately commit to a cut-off date, according to a senior European Commission official, as quoted by media.

The proposal of tariffs would reportedly require a qualified majority vote among the 27 member states, rather than the unanimity that is needed for normal sanctions, so Hungary could not veto the measure.

“The preferred option is the import ban,” the senior commission official told the FT, adding that tariffs are an “alternative possibility we can look into”.

If imposed, the tariffs are expected to make Russian oil less competitive, potentially forcing Moscow to discount its crude or Hungary and other nations to pay more.

Russian crude delivered through the Druzhba pipeline to Hungary, Slovakia and the Czech Republic, is reportedly 20% cheaper than the alternatives other member states have to use.

June 1, 2022 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Economics, Malthusian Ideology, Phony Scarcity | , , , | Leave a comment

Surprise! The Texas Shooter and the Ukraine Military Get Their AR-15s From the Same Place

By Michael Tracey | June 1, 2022

Like many pundits, Michael McFaul took a quick break this past week from his usual area of “expertise.” Instead of pontificating 24/7 about the need to funnel massive amounts of uncontrolled arms into Ukraine, he adroitly pivoted to pontificating about the need to more stringently control arms in the US. McFaul, a former Ambassador to Russia who is currently working with the Ukraine government to formulate war-related policy recommendations, issued the following command:

To all the manufacturers of AR15s, please stop. Just do the right thing. And the rest of us might consider stopping to focus on a legislative solution, and instead focus on a non-violent civic resistance campaign against these AR15 makers directly.

Few figures on the punditry scene are more adept at getting themselves into comical face-plant scenarios than McFaul — or more useful at highlighting unexamined contradictions of the yammering liberal commentariat. In this instance, McFaul demonstrates why he and likeminded commentators are so steadfastly determined to compartmentalize their positions on foreign policy versus domestic policy. Because it would apparently never even occur to McFaul that there might be some tension between his passionate calls to aggressively curtail gun circulation in the US, and his similarly passionate calls to circulate a giant number of guns in Ukraine.

McFaul and company demand both policies with roughly equal ardor, voicing them in the standard register that has come to define almost all left-liberal advocacy: “this thing must be done right now or everyone will die.” Meanwhile, they evince not even a hint of awareness that the positions could represent contradictory impulses. On the one hand, they want to ensure that the American populace is prevented from obtaining certain high-powered rifles. On the other hand, they want to ensure that the Ukrainian populace is enabled to obtain these same high-powered rifles. Both positions somehow manage to co-exist seamlessly alongside one another, like two of those inflatable tube things floating merrily downstream — never even coming close to clashing.

Is it possible that any contradictions between these stances could be resolved with some sort of reasoning or argumentation? Sure, it’s possible. A liberal who holds both positions could theoretically argue something along the lines of: “In the case of Ukraine, my purported belief in the sacrosanct necessity of gun control is superseded by my belief that unlimited, unregulated, uncontrollable proliferation of guns in Eastern Europe is necessary to Defend Democracy.” Or whatever — something to that effect. And then followup counter-arguments could be raised, such as: “Shouldn’t the mass proliferation of uncontrolled guns in Ukraine, which is occurring as a result of the policy you favor, call into question how vehemently you really value the principle of gun control? Because if the policy you favor in Ukraine is totally inimical to your stated belief in the absolute paramount necessity of gun control, shouldn’t that at least raise the bar for whether the Ukraine policy is justified?” And so on.

The point being, tensions between these two counterposing positions would at least require some argumentation to resolve. But what makes today’s McFaul-style advocacy so notable is the complete and total obliviousness to any such tension even existing in the first place. As they issue their emotionally-heated policy demands, most Democrats appear to have no concept whatsoever that there might be some discordance between their desire to increase regulation on gun ownership at home, while simultaneously obliterating any regulation on gun ownership abroad. Members of the media, the activist class, and the wider punditocracy lack even the basic cognizance that would be needed to broach the subject. So, as usual, the McFaul-style advocates just barrel zealously forward, demanding these two policy prescriptions with equal, unmitigated gusto — without anyone ever pausing to ask for clarification.

And there are plenty of good reasons why clarification might be sought. Here’s how an investigator for Amnesty International reacted to one of the many influxes of weapons to Ukraine ushered in recently by Congress and the Biden Administration. (Yes, the batches include thousands and thousands of assault rifles):

History predicts that someday I’ll track some of these weapons to a new conflict that hasn’t even started yet.

Does anyone feel as if these guns rapidly pouring into Ukraine are being subjected to adequate “control”? Because whenever US officials are given an opportunity to speak candidly on the topic, they grudgingly admit the weapons are dropping into what they call “a big black hole.” Which gives the strong impression that no “controls” are being applied, at least according to the criteria that would ordinarily be demanded by gun control proponents.

And yet amidst the frantic cries for domestic “gun control,” US policy continues to facilitate less “control” of guns entering key foreign markets. The newly-revived “Lend-Lease” law — enacted with near-universal backing from Congress — provides for certain Ukraine-specific exemptions from the Arms Export Control Act, the main statutory mechanism for “end-use monitoring of defense articles and defense services” that the US sends abroad. As one “defense” industry trade publication put it, the main allure of the new Lend-Lease law is that it “will trim the bureaucracy” involved in getting weapons to Ukraine as quickly as possible — eschewing the usual types of restrictions which would ordinarily govern these shipments.

So here we have Michael McFaul appealing to every gun manufacturer in the US to stop producing the AR-15. Plenty of Democrats and liberal pundits echo this exact sentiment: that the US must cease disseminating so-called “weapons of war,” lest they continue getting into the wrong hands. Special ire has been directed at Daniel Defense, the Georgia-based company that manufactures the AR-15 style rifle used by the school shooter in Uvalde, Texas. McFaul implores them to halt production.

Does McFaul know that this would also halt the production of AR-15 shipments to the Ukraine government? Because they get their rifles from the same place the Uvalde shooter did: Daniel Defense. The Ukraine Border Guard — which has been on the front-line of some of the war’s most fierce fighting — revealed as much in a statement announcing their conversion from shoddy old Kalashnikovs to a new modern rifle called the “UAR-15.” The parts for these new rifles come straight from the US, they proudly revealed: “The barrel and the trigger mechanism, on which the accuracy of firing directly depends, are made in the USA by the Daniel Defense company,” the statement reads.

Photos posted on the subreddit dedicated to fans of Daniel Defense purportedly show unidentified pro-Ukraine fighters posing on the battlefield with the exact same model that the Uvalde shooter used:


A website for Special Ops impresarios describes the fancy new Ukraine rifle as such: “The new addition to the small arms inventory of the Ukrainian Armed Forces is a UAR-15 (Zbroyar Z-15), which, as you can easily guess, is one of the many clones of the AR-15.” The site further notes that “American company Daniel Defense obtained the license” on behalf of a Ukrainian company “to produce weapons based on the worldwide AR-15 and AR-10 systems.” Daniel Defense, it would seem, is critical to this ongoing campaign to “Defend Democracy”!

And it’s not just this one newly-reviled company. A smaller manufacturer, Adams Arms, has been celebrated for delivering “more than 1,000 piston driven, semi-automatic AR-15 style rifles into Ukraine for civilian use” since the war started. They even put out press releases touting these shipments, indicating that they thought their pro-Ukraine disposition would be good for business — and were showered with laudatory media coverage for their efforts. Is McFaul saying he wants to shut down Adams Arms, thereby preventing them from continuing to ship rifles into Ukraine?

There have even been photos of Azov Battalion fighters brandishing the despised AR-15s…

I realize people will nonetheless insist that there is just no conceivable tension at all between the indiscriminate dumping of guns into a warzone, and the demand that these same guns be strenuously controlled in the US. But that’s just a testament to how carefully the two issues have been compartmentalized, as is very often the case with foreign policy and domestic policy.

Dreaded gun industry lobbying outfits have even released helpful tip-sheets for domestic US manufacturers, detailing how these companies can secure the necessary authorization to “donate” guns, ammo, and other equipment directly to Ukraine. One would assume McFaul also yearns for this practice to be shut down. But chances are, he’s never thought the matter through. Like most others shrieking for the AR-15 to be proscribed, while at the same time shrieking for AR-15s to be ferried off to the Donbas, the connections between foreign and domestic policy have never crossed their minds. They might be shocked to discover that even the relentlessly demonized NRA has found common ground with McFaul and ilk. As an NRA spokesperson told the Washington Times: “The NRA and our members support the efforts of firearms and ammunition manufacturers helping the people of Ukraine.”

Remington, the gun manufacturer that’s been sued into bankruptcy after being found liable for the Sandy Hook school shooting — because the perpetrator used a gun they produced — has also joined the frenzy to arm Ukraine:

We heard President Zelenskyy’s call. Remington is sending 1M rounds of ammo to Ukraine.

Do McFaul and his ideological peers want to shut down Remington’s ability to send boatloads of bullets to those brave warriors fighting on the frontlines of Democracy?

There’s obviously no direct, concrete, empirically-verifiable connection between the recent mass shootings in the US and the ongoing military escalation in Ukraine. But at one point, it was at least contemplated that US foreign policy could have some extenuating role in conditioning a certain subset of the population toward excess violence. In Bowling for Columbine, which became the most financially successful documentary of all time when it was released in 2002, Michael Moore makes the case that the prevalence of mass shootings in the US is not exclusively or even primarily explainable by the availability of guns.

Moore cites what he says are comparable rates of gun ownership in the US and Canada — and the far lesser prevalence of mass shootings in Canada — as reason to believe that other cultural and political pathologies unique to the US are to blame. In the movie, Moore goes out of his way to note that on the day of the Columbine shooting, April 20, 1999, Bill Clinton dropped more bombs on Yugoslavia than were dropped on any other day of that particular war. Moore further explained his theory about the prevalence of gun-related violence in the US by reference to cultural attitudes, such as those which say “It’s OK to reach for the gun whenever you have to resolve a dispute. Whether it’s personally with your neighbor, or someone in your family. Or whether it’s with Saddam Hussein.”

I don’t bring up this aspect of the Bowling for Columbine thesis to assert that Moore is 100% correct — only to point out that the connection between US foreign policy and mass shooting events at least used to be commonly discussed, including by the most successful documentary-maker of all time. And yet today, if you even mention the US shipping high-powered rifles into Ukraine as a potentially relevant factor to consider when talking about gun control in the US, you’ll draw blank stares. And that’s if you’re lucky. More likely, you’ll draw angry reproaches from people who are indignant that you’d dare to “go there,” when the only place you should be going is to support the latest 10-point plan for gun control furnished by one of Mike Bloomberg’s lavishly funded advocacy groups.

Since Bowling for Columbine came out two decades ago, a few mass shootings have given some credence to Moore’s thesis. In 2018, a veteran of the Afghanistan war named Ian David Long killed 12 people at a bar in Thousand Oaks, California, before killing himself. According to a report by the Ventura County Sheriff’s Office, Long was “a machine gunner in the US Marine Corps who had true combat experience while serving in Afghanistan,” having fought there from 2010 to 2011 — the period when the “surge” orchestrated by Barack Obama and David Petraeus produced more US casualties than at any other point of the 20-year war. According to the Sheriff’s report, ex-girlfriends of Long attested that he was “suffering emotionally from witnessing the travesties of war,” and was afflicted with PTSD. In the year or so before the shooting, he had become heavily isolated. Investigators concluded Long was motivated by “strong disdain for civilians, or individuals not associated with any branch of the US military,” in particular college students — hence his decision to target a “College Night” at the bar.

That’s one example of US foreign policy potentially having some conceivable bearing on a mass shooting. And you could go back further; one of the first mass shooters of the modern era, Charles Whitman, honed his skills as a Marine sharpshooter before firing at random from atop the Clock Tower on the campus of the University of Texas at Austin, all the way back in 1966.

So yes, sometimes there are theoretical connections that can be posited between US foreign policy and mass shootings, like a society-wide habituation to violence, as was suggested by Michael Moore. Sometimes you can get a little more tangible, as when an Afghanistan vet with PTSD shoots up a college bar. And sometimes you can even draw connections between the actual rifle used, such as when the Texas school shooter got his AR-15 from the same US company that also produces the AR-15 used by elements of the Ukraine armed forces. Don’t hold your breath for any “national conversation” about that latter connection, though.

Because all the while, Michael McFaul continues to spout off his desire to “increase arms to Ukraine,” even as he simultaneously calls for the shuttering of US gun manufacturer production lines — which would result in the cessation of arms being sent into Ukraine. But yeah, no tension at all between these dueling positions. Sure thing.

May 31, 2022 Posted by | Militarism, Progressive Hypocrite | , | Leave a comment

Psy Ops Goes Mainstream – Shootings, Poxes, War Stories & More

Amazing Polly | May 28, 2022

Coincidences at mass shootings, imaginary poxes to control the masses & bogus war coverage – we’ve seen it all before. Take a trip with me & see. If you’re able to send a gift of support I’d be grateful: https://amazingpolly.net/contact-support.php

May 31, 2022 Posted by | Deception, Fake News, Mainstream Media, Warmongering, Timeless or most popular, Video | Leave a comment

Liberals vote to keep travel ban against unvaccinated Canadians

The Counter Signal | May 30, 2022

Members of parliament today voted 202-117 to keep the current travel ban against unvaccinated Canadians in place.

The Conservatives proposed the motion to have the current travel ban against the unvaccinated lifted.

Trudeau, Jagmeet Singh, and Travel Minister Omar Alghabra voted against the motion, as did virtually every Liberal, NDP, and Bloq Quebecois member.

Conservatives all voted to lift the ban.

“Today, the NDP-Liberal government voted against our common-sense motion that would have returned to pre-pandemic rules and service levels for travel and helped end the delays we’re seeing at airports across the country,” their Conservative’s website reads.

“As Canadian travellers are being subject to extreme delays, line-ups, bottlenecks, and missed connections because of unnecessary protocols, our allies across the world, including the European Union and the United States, have loosened rules for passengers on flights and in airports.”

“. . . Airports have directly cited the Liberals’ policies as the reason for these delays . . .”

“After two long years of the pandemic, Canadians are finally looking to return to normalcy and begin travelling again. Unfortunately, the NDP-Liberal government continues to cling to outdated and unnecessary protocols that are exacerbating delays.”

Conservative members of parliament proposed the motion on May 17. However, Charter rights – such as freedom of movement – were not leveraged to justify their call to drop restrictions.

Instead, “unacceptable wait times” at the airport (for those who are allowed to travel), labour shortages, and economic losses caused by the restrictions were cited.

However, the motion also mentioned that the restrictions were ineffective and that international allies have all dropped their restrictions.

Indeed, Canada remains one of the only countries to have a ban on unvaccinated citizens from leaving their own country, and the efficacy of the restrictions appears questionable at best.

The Trudeau Liberal government was expected to renew the federal vaccine policy eight weeks ago but has still not announced anything.

May 31, 2022 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Science and Pseudo-Science | , , | Leave a comment

Fears of cover-up of vaccine caused deaths

Pathologist who said 30-40% of post-vaccine autopsies died of the vaccine went oddly silent and suddenly stopped carrying out autopsies

By Will Jones | The Daily Sceptic | May 31, 2022

If we are going to get to the bottom of whether and to what extent vaccines are contributing to the deaths of the vaccinated, autopsies are a crucial tool. So where are all the autopsies to help us answer these questions?

Back last summer, the Chief Pathologist at the University of Heidelberg, Dr. Peter Schirmacher, was pushing for many more autopsies of vaccinated people. His team had just finished conducting 40 autopsies of people who had died within two weeks of vaccination and concluded that 30-40% of them died from the vaccine.

Dr. Schirmacher warned of a high number of unreported deaths from vaccination and lamented that pathologists don’t notice most of the patients who die from a vaccination. The problem, he explained, is that vaccinated people do not usually die under clinical observation.

The doctor examining the corpse does not establish any context with the vaccination and certifies a natural death and the patient is buried. Or he certifies an unclear manner of death and the public prosecutor sees no third-party fault and releases the body for burial.

Dr. Schirmacher’s claims were dismissed at the time by Government scientists, but he stuck to his guns. “The colleagues are definitely wrong because they cannot judge this specific question competently,” he said. He clarified that he is in favour of the vaccines to fight Covid and has been vaccinated himself, but says the benefits and risks must be considered for each person. He argued in favour of “individual protection considerations” instead of ​​quickly vaccinating everyone.

At the time, the Federal Association of German Pathologists was also pushing for more autopsies of vaccinated people. Johannes Friemann, head of the autopsy working group in the association, said this was the only way that connections between deaths and vaccinations could be ruled out or proven. The association had already in March 2021 sent a letter to Health Minister Jens Spahn requesting that German state governments instruct health authorities to order autopsies on site. Five months later, in August, this letter remained unanswered.

Following the reports in the media of his comments, Dr. Schirmacher fell oddly silent. Today, ten months later, no further autopsies by his group have been reported and no further calls for them have been heard. There are also no reports of autopsies being conducted specifically on those who died shortly after Covid vaccination in any other countries – save for the 15 done by Dr. Arne Burkhardt towards the end of 2021, which found “clear evidence of vaccine-induced autoimmune-like pathology in multiple organs” in 14 of 15 cases, but which were ignored by all health authorities and mainstream media.

Where are all the autopsies to investigate the role of vaccines in post-vaccine deaths, and why have Dr. Schirmacher and his colleagues gone quiet, after being so emphatic about the risks and the need?

This looks very much like a cover-up and a silencing. If it isn’t, then why don’t governments order autopsies to be carried out, to put the matter to rest? What have they got to hide?

May 31, 2022 Posted by | Deception, Full Spectrum Dominance | | Leave a comment

Connecticut to hire “misinformation” expert who will urge social media sites to censor “false” posts

By Tom Parker | Reclaim The Net | May 31, 2022

Connecticut plans to pay a “misinformation” expert $150,000 per year to scour the internet for election content that they deem to be “false” and then urge social media platforms to flag or remove posts containing this information.

According to The New York Times, this misinformation expert will flag information that’s going viral, memes, and “emerging narratives.” They will also be instructed to look for this information on alt-tech platforms such as GETTR and Rumble.

Connecticut officials said they would prefer candidates that are fluent in English and Spanish so that they can target misinformation in both languages.

Connecticut is one of several Democrat-controlled states that are launching efforts to flag and censor misinformation in the run-up to the 2022 US midterm elections.

Colorado is redeploying a “Rapid Response Election Security Cyber Unit” that it created for the 2020 election. This unit is made up of three election security experts who will surveil the internet for election misinformation and report it to federal law enforcement.

And California’s office of the Secretary of State is working with the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and academics to search for “patterns of misinformation across the internet.”

In addition to these flagging and censorship efforts, Colorado, Oregon, Idaho, and Arizona will also be spending millions of dollars on ad campaigns that push “accurate” election information.

Colorado’s Democratic Secretary of State, Jena Griswold, will head the Rapid Response Election Security Cyber Unit. She justified her team’s flagging of misinformation to federal law enforcement by claiming that “lies are being used to chip away at our fundamental freedoms.”

Connecticut’s Deputy Secretary of the State, Scott Bates, justified his state’s misinformation censorship program by insisting that the state needs to have “situational awareness by looking into all the incoming threats to the integrity of elections.”

Bates added: “Misinformation can erode people’s confidence in elections, and we view that as a critical threat to the democratic process.”

While representatives of these states are framing these programs as a way to boost confidence in elections and protect the democratic process, Tom Fitton, founder of the conservative, non-partisan educational foundation Judicial Watch, argued that these states are “setting up ‘Ministries of Truth’ to censor Americans.”

These programs are the latest of many online censorship initiatives pushed by politicians that raise First Amendment flags. Some other examples include the recently paused DHS “Disinformation Governance Board” which was launched with the intention of fighting “disinformation,” the Biden administration’s admission that it flags content for Facebook to censor, and Democrats working with Twitter to get tweets taken down.

Critics have argued that programs that involve public officials flagging speech for Big Tech platforms to censor violate the First Amendment because the government is coercing these private companies to censor on its behalf. However, courts have so far dismissed lawsuits that allege these public-private censorship initiatives violate the First Amendment.

A lawsuit that was filed in March and alleged that several of the Biden administration’s actions, including its admission that it flags content for Facebook to censor, violated the First Amendment was dismissed in May.

Journalist Alex Berenson’s December 2021 lawsuit, which accused Twitter of violating several laws when banning his account and alleged that the federal government coerced Twitter to deprive Berenson of his right to speak, was recently allowed to proceed but the First Amendment claim was dismissed.

May 31, 2022 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance | | Leave a comment

Ukraine fires top official behind claims of Russian war crimes

Samizdat | May 31, 2022

Ukrainian lawmakers voted on Tuesday to remove the nation’s human rights commissioner, Lyudmila Denisova, from her post. The official has been accused of failing to perform duties and in particular of spreading unverified information about atrocities supposedly committed by Russian troops in Ukraine. Such actions only tarnished Ukraine’s image, MPs have argued.

A no-confidence resolution has been supported by 234 lawmakers out of 450 or 52% of the MPs in Verkhovnaya Rada, said Yaroslav Zheleznyak, a member of the Golos (‘Voice’) faction in the Ukrainian parliament. Denisova had previously been criticized, both by lawmakers and the Ukrainian media, over a purported failure to execute her duties, particularly amid the ongoing conflict between Russia and Ukraine.

The ombudsperson had “hardly exercised her powers to organize humanitarian corridors” or prisoner exchanges, a Ukrainian MP, Pavlo Frolov, wrote in a Facebook post ahead of Tuesday’s vote. The human rights commissioner had barely shown “human rights activism” at all, he said, adding that Denisova’s duties eventually fell to Ukraine’s Deputy Prime Minister Irina Vereshchuk, who repeatedly sought to organize humanitarian corridors.

According to Frolov, the ombudswoman’s “inexplicable focus” on supposed sex crimes and “rape of minors in the occupied territories, which she could not substantiate with evidence” only harmed Ukraine. The MP has also accused Denisova of spending most of her time abroad as the conflict unfolded.

Instead of traveling to Russia specifically to negotiate prisoner exchanges, Denisova spent her time in the “warm and calm” cities of Europe, such as Davos, Vienna or Warsaw, Frolov said.

Earlier, a group of journalists, human rights activists and psychologists slammed Denisova over what they called breach of ethics, and accused her of turning the reports on the alleged sexual crimes committed by Russian troops into a “scandalous newsreel”-style publication.

Denisova herself, who served as Ukraine’s ombudsperson since 2018, said on Monday that she could face a vote of no confidence in the parliament, accusing the administration of President Volodymyr Zelensky of being behind the move. She has also claimed at that time that the procedure for her removal would violate Ukraine’s constitution. The human rights commissioner took up her post under Zelensky’s predecessor, Petro Poroshenko, who served as Ukraine’s president until May 2019.

In March, Russian ombudsperson Tatyana Moskalkova called on Denisova to stop the torture of Russian soldiers captured by Ukrainian forces. The Russian official cited reports on “cases of cruel and inhuman treatment of Russian soldiers in captivity in Ukraine” at that time. According to Moskalkova, Denisova told her that there could be “no agreements on that matter.”

On Tuesday, the head of the Russian presidential human rights council, Valery Fadeev, called on Denisova to be put on trial. “You cannot prove anything to a person whose profession is to lie,” he said, referring to the Ukrainian human rights commissioner.

May 31, 2022 Posted by | Deception | | Leave a comment

Duque forces MNNA status on Colombia despite unpopularity of NATO

By Paul Antonopoulos | May 31, 2022

Colombian president Iván Duque announced on his social media that his country is officially a non-NATO strategic ally. With less than two months to go until the end of his government, the Colombian president will seemingly be replaced with a centre-left candidate, the first in the country’s history.

“We welcome the memorandum sent by US President Joe Biden and the Secretary of State, which formalizes the designation of Colombia as a strategic non-member ally of NATO. A decision that reaffirms the good ties in our bilateral relations,” Duque wrote on Twitter on May 23.

The South American country will now have privileges when it comes to accessing the US military industry and extensive financing for procurements. However, this action by Duque has not been welcomed by the Colombian opposition, who showed their rejection of the announcement and reiterated that it is just one more move by the current administration to try and bolster the presidential elections that will have its second round on June 19.

Sandra Ramírez, a senator for the opposition Commons Party, said: “Colombia as an extra ally of NATO does not benefit us at all. On the contrary, we join their interventionist and war policies. In addition, it goes against sovereignty, which in the end is the voice of the majority of Colombians, and which is anchored to the self-determination of the peoples.”

Ramírez highlights that it is a simple lobby on the part of Duque, who has always put his personal interests above Colombia. “Surely that’s what his advisers told him and that’s why he spent so much time lobbying and not governing. NATO represents a policy of war and here we want a policy of peace and social inclusion to prevail. With this agreement we will continue to be at the mercy of US interests, which we reject.”

With Gustavo Petro, founder of the centre-left Humane Colombia, leading the polls and expected to be the next president of the Latin American country, Ramírez says he must reverse Duque’s decision and leave the NATO program immediately to focus his energies on solving local problems instead.

Another Commons Party Senator, Carlos Antonio Lozada, says that according to his sources, “Petro will get out of any military agreement that ties us to the geopolitical interests of the United States, which would be aimed against strengthening regional integration.”

A Major Non-NATO Ally (MNNA) does not mean that in the event that Colombia suffers external aggression, the US will intercede to protect the country, as is the case with actual members states. In this way, Colombia’s only advantage is that it can gain access to American weapons – at a time when much of South America is moving towards the just as effective but far cheaper Russian and Chinese weaponry.

The process for Colombia’s MNNA status began on March 10 during the meeting between Duque and Biden at the White House. Colombia thus joined the list of 17 MNNA countries, being the third in Latin America after Brazil and Argentina. The other allies are Australia, Egypt, Israel, Japan, South Korea, Jordan, New Zealand, Thailand, Kuwait, Morocco, Pakistan, Bahrain, the Philippines, Afghanistan and Tunisia.

Colombia having MNNA status certainly makes the June 19 election all the more interesting, especially when considering this could be the country’s most historic election as for the first time a progressive candidate could be president of the country.

As Colombia has a central place for US policy in Latin America, the second round vote then holds an even greater importance for Washington, which closely observes events in the world’s leading cocaine-producing country.

For the South American country, a progressive government could mean more favorable conditions for the strengthening of Latin American integration. Colombia, with its first potential progressive president, could leave behind a foreign policy that looks exclusively at the US and be an active part of continental integration. But until then, the question remains whether Petro would engage in the task of reversing Colombia’s MNNA status.

Paul Antonopoulos is an independent geopolitical analyst.

May 31, 2022 Posted by | Militarism | , , | Leave a comment

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