New Zealand says “misinformation” and Covid policies seen to be “infringing on rights” could fuel extremism
A secret service initiative
By Cindy Harper | Reclaim The Net | November 3, 2022
New Zealand authorities have released a guide to help people identify signs of violent extremism.
The secret service says they are usually closely monitoring between 40 to 50 potential terrorists, adding that most used to be motivated by their white identity or by religion – but in the past six months a third group has supposedly emerged; those motivated by politics, particularly around Covid.
“Recognizing a potential warning sign and then alerting New Zealand SIS or police could be the vital piece in the puzzle that ultimately saves lives,” NZSIS Director-General Rebecca Kitteridge said.
“To pay attention and to be alert so that if they see or hear about something that seems off, that worries them and concerns them, they might have a look at this information to say ‘does this indicate to me that this person is actually on the road to committing an attack.’”
The Director-General mentioned Covid specifically, adding that a growing number of people are also concerned about infringement on rights.
“So it could be the Covid measures that the Government took, or it could be other policies that are interpreted as infringing on rights and it’s a kind of what I describe as a hot mess of ideologies and beliefs fueled by conspiracy theories,” Kitteridge said.
Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern also had comments:
“It would be wrong to imply that we have this significant surge in threat in that regard – are there individuals who subscribe to a particular ideology that may border and dip into violent extremism? Yes,” she said.
On the topic of online misinformation, Ardern said, “it’s not about censorship,” adding “It’s about equipping people to identify when they may be subject to misinformation, making sure we’re building our resilience in our young people to be able to identify it… and to create trusted sources where people know they can go.”
Russia Says “Top Priority” Is To Avoid Nuclear Clash, Reiterates Purely Defensive Use
By Tyler Durden | Zero Hedge | November 2, 2022
Russia on Wednesday warned that the world’s “top priority” should be the nuclear-armed super powers avoiding confrontation at all costs or else this would lead to “catastrophic consequences.”
“We are firmly convinced that in the current difficult and turbulent situation — a consequence of irresponsible and shameless actions aimed at undermining our national security — the top priority is to prevent any military clash of nuclear powers,” a Foreign Ministry statement said.
While not naming its chief nuclear-armed rivals the United States or the United Kingdom specifically, the Kremlin called on all other nuclear states to “abandon dangerous attempts to infringe on each other’s vital interests.”
The statement reiterated a key tenet of Russia’s official nuclear doctrine, saying, “Russia is strictly and consistently guided by the tenet that a nuclear war cannot be won and must never be fought.” It reemphasized a nuclear doctrine that is “purely defensive in nature” – which only allows deployment of nuclear arms “when the very existence of our state is threatened.”
In a statement early last month, President Joe Biden expressed that he doesn’t think Russia’s Vladimir Putin will use nuclear weapons in Ukraine. “Well, I don’t think he will,” Biden previously said in a CNN interview. “But I think that it’s irresponsible for him to talk about it.”
Also on Wednesday The New York Times has published some hugely significant claims…
Senior Russian military leaders recently had conversations to discuss when and how Moscow might use a tactical nuclear weapon in Ukraine, contributing to heightened concern in Washington and allied capitals, according to multiple senior American officials.
President Vladimir V. Putin was not a part of the conversations, which were held against the backdrop of Russia’s intensifying nuclear rhetoric and battlefield setbacks.
But the fact that senior Russian military leaders were even having the discussions alarmed the Biden administration because it showed how frustrated Russian generals were about their failures on the ground, and suggests that Mr. Putin’s veiled threats to use nuclear weapons might not just be words.
According to follow-up reporting in CNN, the alleged Kremlin discussion among top officials of using tactical nukes against Ukraine is based on a US intelligence assessment.
But importantly, CNN cites that there remain dissenting opinions within the US intelligence community. CNN’s reporting begins, “Russian military officials have discussed how and under what conditions Russia would use a tactical nuclear weapon on the battlefield in Ukraine, according to a US intelligence assessment described to CNN by multiple sources who have read it.”
“The assessment, drafted by the National Intelligence Council, is not a high confidence product and is not raw intelligence but rather analysis, multiple people who have read it told CNN,” the report continues, before emphasizing: “For that reason, some officials believe the conversations reflected in the document may have been taken out of context, and do not necessarily indicate that Russia is preparing to use a nuclear weapon.”
It is a significant and eye-brow raising moment when CNN spotlights the likelihood of intelligence ‘cherry picking’ in a story which relates to Russia, which indeed casts serious doubt on the original NYT Times reporting and claims by unnamed US intelligence officials.
Biden administration sponsors yet another campaign against Orbán
Free West Media | November 3, 2022
The US government has opened a new chapter in the propaganda and disinformation war against Hungary. It now supports an allegedly “independent” media portal, whose sponsors, however, make it quite easy to see the goals which are being pursued against the country.
According to its own statements, the Internews platform focuses “on promoting a strong independent media sector” in Hungary. There will be further activities in Armenia, Georgia, Poland, Romania and the Ukraine. The aim is to “resist powerful interests trying to manipulate, isolate or control the press”.
The US embassy recently even produced a video listing Hungarian politicians and journalists who have allegedly made “anti-American” statements by name. Essentially these voices either criticized globalist policies to foment the Ukraine war or spoke out against the futility of sanctions.
The list of sponsors for the news portal is revealing. On it one will find, among other things, the well-known Open Society Foundations (OSF) by George Soros, the Rockefeller Foundation and Freedom House, which is financed by the US government. US-based global tech giants like Facebook and Google are also among the backers.
Those in the know recall that Internews is not the US government’s first attempt to reshape the Hungarian media scene. As early as 2017, the US State Department launched a support program right before the elections for “independent Hungarian media in the countryside”. At the time, the government in Budapest accused the US State Department of interfering in Hungarian domestic politics. The programme was later de facto scrapped, presumably because ex-President Donald Trump valued good relations with Hungary.
Under the Biden administration, however, “democracy” exports are back in fashion. Just a few months ago, the Hungarian opposition’s prime ministerial candidate caused a scandal when he admitted that he had received a substantial sum of money for his election campaign from a US foundation.
UN Security Council votes against probe into US biolabs
Samizdat – November 3, 2022
The UN Security Council has rejected Russia’s call for an international investigation into claims that the US used laboratories in Ukraine to develop biological weapons.
While China backed Russia’s proposal, the US, Britain, and France voted against it, and the ten rotating council members abstained.
Russia insists that the US and Ukraine have been violating the 1972 international convention that bans the development, production, and stockpiling of biological weapons. According to Moscow, several laboratories in Ukraine were working on a secret “military-biological” program, which involved studies and the stockpiling of samples of anthrax, cholera, and other infectious diseases.
Washington and Kiev both deny developing biological weapons. Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky said in March that the laboratories were conducting “ordinary scientific research.”
During the vote in the Security Council on Wednesday, US envoy, Linda Thomas-Greenfield, argued that the Russian proposal for a probe is “based on disinformation, dishonesty, bad faith, and a total lack of respect for this body.”
Thomas-Greenfield reiterated that the activities under the Pentagon’s Cooperative Threat Reduction (CTR) program in Ukraine and other former Soviet states “are not for military purposes.”
The US Mission to International Organizations in Geneva, Switzerland said in April that the CTR’s goal in Ukraine was to help the country “consolidate and secure pathogens and to continue to ensure Ukraine can detect and report disease outbreaks before they pose security or stability threats.”
Dmitry Polyansky, Russia’s deputy envoy to the UN, meanwhile, said he was “deeply disappointed” by the vote. He said “the Western countries are simply afraid” of an international investigation into the issue.
EU’s carrot and stick policy toward Serbia ends as Brussels drops carrot from equation
By Drago Bosnic | November 3, 2022
After over two decades of keeping Serbia in a semi-colonial state, the European Union seems to finally admit that it sees the Southeast European country precisely as such – a semi-colony. For approximately 20 years, Brussels played the carrot and stick cards with Belgrade, forcing it to renounce important segments of its sovereignty in return for access to EU funds and markets.
The neoliberal economic framework that the EU insisted on devastated the country’s hybrid market socialist economy and ruined domestic economic power, paving the way for the dominance of foreign investors and turning the country into yet another source of cheap labor for Western corporate interests. However, even while implementing such policies, disastrous for any country’s economic (or any other form of) sovereignty, it created an image of growth.
And yet, the waning economic power of Brussels, resulting primarily from its suicidal subservience to Washington DC’s Barbarossa-like push against Russia, is starting to affect the “carrot” portion of the EU’s policy toward Serbia. Frustrated by the country’s refusal to conform with the political West’s clinically Russophobic frenzy, the bureaucratic empire is now resorting to using the “stick”. With little to nothing left to offer, the EU is now threatening to scale back the benefits it gave Serbia in the last two decades to punish the country for its non-compliance in regards to the bloc’s anti-Russian sanctions and policies. To make matters worse, Brussels insists that Belgrade should still continue renouncing parts of its sovereignty while the EU is rolling back the apparent benefits it previously gave in return.
What does Serbia get from all this? A geopolitically worthless shoulder tap that will not help the country in any conceivable way. On the contrary, it may very well ruin its centuries-old relationship with Russia, a country exerting no pressure on Serbia while helping it preserve what’s left of its sovereignty and territorial integrity. For the political West, now effectively operating under a “you’re either with us or against us” foreign policy framework, Serbia’s neutrality is seen as nothing short of hostile. Belgrade is forced to beg to stay neutral in the Ukraine crisis, but to no avail, it seems. Anything less than full compliance is unacceptable to the imperialist power pole. To show just how much, the EU now considers Serbia’s membership ambitions effectively dead, as the negotiations to join the bloc have become a mere formality, having been stalled for years.
Brussels now thinks Serbia should not be conditioned by the termination of accession negotiations, since “joining the EU is as realistic as going to Mars,” as Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung put it. The analogy is quite indicative of how the bloc sees Serbia’s future and should serve as an eye-opener in Belgrade. Coupled with recent allegations that Serbia is “trying to destabilize the EU at the behest of Russia”, it’s clear that despite how much sovereignty it renounces, how far it’s ready to go against its national interests, the country will never be good enough to join the bloc. The question remains then, what’s the point? Why would Serbia even want to join the EU? It seems the Serbian populace is well aware of this and it’s not so keen on joining either.
The EU now realizes that stopping membership negotiations would effectively mean nothing to the Serbian people. Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung thinks that “the warnings about the possible freezing of accession negotiations are a blunt sword against Belgrade,” as the negotiations have been stagnant for years. “Their termination would not leave an impression on the Serbian population, which is critical of the EU anyway. In addition, even among the advocates of the EU in Belgrade, almost no one believes that joining the EU is realistic. Equally, Serbia could be threatened with a ban on access to Mars,” the report states.
However, it’s a different story when it comes to abolishing visa-free travel for Serbian citizens, a topic first mentioned by the European Commissioner for Internal Affairs Ylva Johansson. “It would greatly affect the Serbian economy, as well as the predominantly urban population that travels, as well as the authorities. It is the most lethal weapon in Brussels’ arsenal,” the German paper commented. “If visas were introduced again, that sense of isolation would be like a nightmare again, which first ended when the visas were abolished in 2009. Anger due to a return to the dark times would certainly be directed against the Serbian government,” the report adds.
The previously veiled threats by Brussels seem to have become quite direct at this point, since the EU isn’t just planning to get the “carrot” out of the equation (it effectively did already), but will also not hesitate using the “stick” now. What’s more, the move is openly aimed against Serbia’s political stability, as the EU expects to cause widespread discontent which, in turn, would result in exerting additional pressure on the Serbian government. Belgrade certainly could comply and start distancing itself from Moscow. It might even feign this while coordinating with Russia by implementing policies that would affect quite literally nothing.
For instance, it could impose sanctions on Russian sea shipping (Serbia is landlocked) or ban access to Russian airline companies, which can’t reach Serbia anyway, as the country is surrounded by EU members which already did that. But the question remains, where does it stop? Will the political West ever be content enough to stop blackmailing and threatening the country? It might be politically unwise for the Serbian government to answer that (rhetorical) question, but it certainly isn’t for the Serbian people.
Drago Bosnic is an independent geopolitical and military analyst.
Moscow Has Info on UK’s Transfer of Unmanned Underwater Drones to Kiev Ahead of Sevastopol Attack
Samizdat – 03.11.2022
The Foreign Ministry summoned Britain’s ambassador to Russia on Thursday in connection with last week’s Ukrainian attack targeting Russian military and civilian vessels in Sevastopol. The act of terrorism prompted Moscow to temporarily freeze its participation in the Black Sea grain export deal with Kiev.
Moscow summoned British Ambassador to Russia Deborah Bronnert in connection with London’s suspected involvement in the October 29 attack on the Russian Black Sea Fleet, the Foreign Ministry has revealed.
In a statement, the Ministry indicated that it had information that London transferred a number of unmanned underwater drones to Kiev, and that British specialists have been actively involved in the training and supply of Ukrainian special operations forces, including those involved in sabotage operations at sea.
Moscow warned that Britain’s actions threaten to escalate the security crisis and lead to “unpredictable and dangerous consequences,” and that such “hostile provocations” on London’s part were “inadmissible” and must be stopped immediately.
“If such acts of aggression, fraught with [the UK’s] direct involvement in the conflict, continue, the entire responsibility for their disastrous consequences and the growth of tensions in relations between our states will lie entirely on the British side,” the Foreign Ministry said.
The Russian Black Sea Fleet port of Sevastopol repelled a massive drone attack on October 29, shooting down multiple UAVs and remote-controlled surface vessels in Sevastopol Bay. According to Russia’s Defense Ministry, the warships attacked included ships providing security for the so-called ‘grain corridor’ – the secure maritime route agreed by Moscow and Kiev this summer through which cargo vessels carrying grain from Ukrainian ports through the Black Sea for export abroad.
The Russian military later retrieved drone wreckage from the sea floor to examine the remains, finding Canadian-made navigation modules installed on the maritime drones. Preparations for the drone attack were carried out under the guidance of British specialists in the Ukrainian port city of Ochakov, according to the Russian MoD. Russia destroyed a multi-million pound British-built and financed military base in Ochakov in a missile strike in February during the opening stages of its military operation in Ukraine.
The Sevastopol attack is the second time in weeks that Moscow has called out London on terrorism-related charges. Last week, Russia’s Defense Ministry concluded that the Royal Navy took part in the planning, organization and execution of the late September attacks on the Nord Stream natural gas pipeline network.
On Tuesday, Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova asked London to explain the mysterious “It’s done” iPhone text message reportedly sent by now former Prime Minister Liz Truss to US Secretary of State Antony Blinken just moments after Nord Stream was struck.
Earlier this year, Ukrainian and Western media reported that Moscow and Kiev appeared to be on the brink of a peace agreement this spring, but that (now former) British Prime Minister Boris Johnson was quickly dispatched to the Ukrainian capital to scuttle any potential agreement.
RSV OUTBREAKS LEAVE MORE QUESTIONS THAN ANSWERS
The Highwire with Del Bigtree | October 27, 2022
No longer a seasonal childhood illness, respiratory syncytial virus has been seen for the second year in a row outside its normal window. Speculation on cause has become a focus for sources on every side of the Covid equation.