The War on ‘Misinformation’: Outlawing Dissident Data on the Road to Tyranny
Judge Terry A. Doughty’s Defense of the Right to be Wrong
Michael Hoffman’s Revelation of the Method | July 12, 2023
“Misinformation” [noun]: Any data that contradicts Establishment dogma
Fittingly, on Independence Day, July 4, U.S. Federal Judge Terry A. Doughty in the Western District of Louisiana, issued a preliminary injunction in the case of Missouri v. Biden, documenting and excoriating the Federal government’s abrogation of the First Amendment with regard to policing social media.
The patricians assigned exalted status as “First Amendment experts” by their cronies in the legacy media, have lied about Judge Doughty’s ruling and presume to explain it to the rest of us mere plebians in the hope that we will not read the 155 pages of his decision.
Thus, His Eminence Laurence Tribe, Carl M. Loeb University Professor of Constitutional Law Emeritus at Harvard University, together with Leah Litman, professor of law at the University of Michigan, contemptuously dismiss Justice Doughty’s decision as buncombe. They rely on their prestige to convince us of their evidence-free claim that, “The impetus behind the case is the now thoroughly debunked conspiracy theory that the government is somehow strong-arming Big Tech into censoring conservative speech and speakers in violation of the First Amendment.”
Words Intended to Trigger our Obeisance
Notice the words intended to trigger our obeisance to the anathema which Tribe and Litman have pronounced: “thoroughly debunked,” and the old reliable put-down, “conspiracy theory.”
No respectable true believer in the stature and renown of the Carl M. Loeb University Professor of Constitutional Law Emeritus will dare to think otherwise than as prescribed.
Tribe and Litman add to their pejorative-laden rant, stating, “the absurdity of different aspects of the decision…….Each step in the reasoning of the decision manages to be more outlandish than the last…”
“Absurd.” “Outlandish.”
They go further: “There is no shortage of errors in this opinion, which is trying to make the infamous ‘Twitter files’ into constitutional law. Who knows whether the equally infamous U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit will correct any of these mistakes…”
“Infamous.” “Equally infamous.”
A heretical thought occurs to the reader of Tribe and Litman’s invective: prove it. They can’t, so they don’t bother.
Ah, but there’s the rub, fellow plebe. This legal duo need not prove anything. They are famous legal scholars.
Musk’s Twitter file revelations are “infamous” and Justice Doughty is “absurd.” Therefore, predicated on their ad hominem adjudication, Tribe and Litman don’t stoop to offering a refutation because none is necessary. Their ipse dixit is sufficient. We are in the realm of the blind faith required of people by the secular religion that enforces a fundamentalist intellectual conformity which brooks no dissent.
Witness the 155 pages of Doughty’s decision dismissed without a single factual reply concerning the Federal government illegally threatening and pressuring social media which publish disfavored authors and data on the Internet.
But is misinformation really the crux of the issue? Witness the misinformation that pours forth daily from the presses of the sacrosanct New York Times. We need look no further than Michael Shear and David McCabe’s report July 5 in the Times regarding Judge Doughty’s ruling. The issue of government censorship, which concerns all civil libertarians across the political spectrum, is reduced to an “effort by conservatives to document what they contend is a liberal conspiracy.”
That’s not just misinformation, it’s a lie. Two victims of the government crackdown on social media who are plaintiffs in the case of Missouri v. Biden, Dr. Jay Bhattacharya and Dr. Martin Kulldorff, are infectious disease epidemiologists, not conservative Republican politics wonks.
The Great Barrington Declaration of October 4, 2020, criticized lockdown policies and expressed concern about the damaging physical and mental health impacts of lockdowns. Shortly after being published, the Great Barrington Declaration, which was signed and endorsed by numerous health science personnel holding a variety of political views, was censored on social media by Google, Facebook and Twitter under the threat of reprisals from the Biden administration.
Jill Hines is Co-Director of Health Freedom Louisiana, a consumer and human rights advocacy organization. Hines was censored because she advocated against the use of mask mandates for young children. Health Freedom Louisiana’s social-media page was suspended on Facebook in January 2022 for sharing a display board that contained Pfizer’s preclinical trial data. Facebook did the government’s bidding.
There are dozens of examples like these. The New York Times is misinforming its readers into believing that Missouri v. Biden is mainly an issue of Republican partisanship, with no wider significance for all liberty-loving Americans. The Times expects us to believe that Justice Doughty ruled in favor of the victims of government-inspired viewpoint censorship because, in the words of Shear and McCable, he is “favorable to right-wing lawsuits.”
The New York Times is determined to engage in misinformation by falsely characterizing the paramount issue, interdiction of freedom of the press by agents of the Federal government, as something of concern to right-wingers who see “liberal conspiracies” under every bed.
As of July 12, in almost every instance of legacy media misinformation related to the judge’s ruling that we have encountered, at no time were readers provided a link to Justice Doughty’s decision, which is published online, in order to facilitate the now out-of-fashion principle that the people should be encouraged to decide for themselves, rather than being told what to think.
Instead, the Times referred its readers to Litman and Tribe’s splenetic fulmination, in which government censorship is “content moderation,” and ensuring the Biden administration doesn’t threaten online news media if they don’t submit to their censorship orders, becomes, “a huge blow to vital government efforts to harden U.S. democracy against threats of misinformation.”
Without apprehension, we ought to call a thing by its accurate description. In their report, which appeared on New York University’s website, JustSecurity.org, we regret to say that the University of Michigan’s Litman, and Harvard’s Tribe, lied about Judge Doughty’s ruling—as follows:
“… the district court made no effort to identify circumstances where the government came even close to coercing social media companies into doing something they didn’t want to do…”
How does one parse a mendacity that is so transparently false it is beyond chutzpagh? The duo who put forth the preceding statement are insulting the intelligence of their readers on the assumption that they are too lazy to find and study Justice Doughty’s ruling—in which he clearly “identifies” the points at which the Federal government coerced social media companies into censoring scientists, activists and vital alternative information.
Judge for yourself:
Excerpts from Missouri v. Biden documenting Government Coercion of Social Media Companies
“On May 5, 2021, then-White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki (“Psaki”) publicly began pushing Facebook and other social-media platforms to censor COVID-19 misinformation. At a White House Press Conference, Psaki publicly reminded Facebook and other social-media platforms of the threat of ‘legal consequences’ if they do not censor misinformation more aggressively.
“Psaki further stated: ‘The President’s view is that the major platforms have a responsibility related to the health and safety of all Americans to stop amplifying untrustworthy content, disinformation, and misinformation, especially related to COVID-19 vaccinations and elections.’ Psaki linked the threat of a ‘robust anti-trust program’ with the White House’s censorship demand: ‘He also supports better privacy protections and a robust anti-trust program. So, his view is that there’s more that needs to be done to ensure that this type of misinformation; disinformation; damaging, sometime life-threatening information, is not going out to the American public.”
“On January 23, 2021, three days after President Biden took office, Clarke Humphrey (“Humphrey”), who at the time was the Digital Director for the COVID-19 Response Team, emailed Twitter and requested the removal of an anti-COVID-19 vaccine tweet by Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.2 Humphrey sent a copy of the email to Rob Flaherty (“Flaherty”), former Deputy Assistant to the President and Director of Digital Strategy…
“On February 7, 2021, Twitter sent Flaherty a ‘Twitter’s Partner Support Portal’ for expedited review of flagging content for censorship. Twitter recommended that Flaherty designate a list of authorized White House staff to enroll in Twitter’s Partner Support Portal and explained that when authorized reporters submit a ‘ticket’ using the portal, the requests are ‘prioritized’ automatically. Twitter also stated that it had been ‘recently bombarded’ with censorship requests from the White House and would prefer to have a streamlined process. Twitter noted that ‘[i]n a given day last week for example, we had more than four different people within the White House reaching out for issues…”
“On March 15, 2021, Flaherty…demanded a report from Facebook on a recent Washington Post article that accused Facebook of allowing the spread of information leading to vaccine hesitancy…Flaherty followed up by making clear that the White House was seeking more aggressive action on ‘borderline content.”
“On March 22, 2021, Flaherty responded to this email, demanding more detailed information and a plan from Facebook to censor the spread of ‘vaccine hesitancy’ on Facebook. Flaherty also requested more information about and demanded greater censorship by Facebook of ‘sensational,’ ‘vaccine skeptical’ content.”
“On April 13, 2021, after the temporary halt of the Johnson & Johnson vaccine…Flaherty also requested that Facebook monitor ‘misinformation’ relating to the Johnson & Johnson pause and demanded from Facebook a detailed report within twenty-four hours. Facebook provided the detailed report the same day.”
“On April 14, 2021, Flaherty demanded the censorship of Fox News hosts Tucker Carlson and Tomi Lahren because the top post about vaccines that day was ‘Tucker Carlson saying vaccines don’t work and Tomi Lahren stating she won’t take a vaccine..”
“Two days later, on April 16, 2021, Flaherty demanded immediate answers from Facebook regarding the Tucker Carlson video…Facebook…gave the video a 50% demotion for seven days and stated that it would continue to demote the video.”
“…examples of posts that did not violate Facebook’s policies but would nonetheless be suppressed included content that originated from the Children’s Health Defense, a nonprofit activist group headed by Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.” (Mr. Kennedy’s group was abeled by the government as one of the “Disinformation Dozen”).
“On April 21, 2021, Flaherty, Slavitt, and other HHS officials, met with Twitter officials about ‘Twitter Vaccine Misinfo Briefing.’…Twitter discovery responses indicated that during the meeting, White House officials wanted to know why Alex Berenson (“Berenson”) had not been ‘kicked off’ Twitter. Slavitt suggested Berenson was ‘the epicenter of disinfo that radiated outwards to the persuadable public.’ Berenson was suspended thereafter on July 16, 2021, and was permanently deplatformed on August 28, 2021.”
“On April 23, 2021, Flaherty sent Facebook an email including a document entitled “Facebook COVID-19 Vaccine Misinformation Brief” (“the Brief”)…The Brief recommended much more aggressive censorship of Facebook’s enforcement policies and called for progressively severe penalties.”
“From May 28, 2021, to July 10, 2021, a senior Meta (Facebook’s parent) executive reportedly copied Andrew Slavitt (‘Slavitt’), former White House Senior COVID-19 Advisor, on his emails to Surgeon General Murthy (‘Murthy’), alerting them that Meta was engaging in censorship of COVID-19 misinformation according to the White House’s ‘requests’ and indicating ‘expanded penalties’ for individual Facebook accounts that share misinformation…”
“Eric Waldo (‘Waldo’) is the Senior Advisor to the Surgeon General and was formerly Chief Engagement Officer for the Surgeon General’s office…Waldo and the Office of the Surgeon General received a briefing from the Center for Countering Digital Hate (‘CCDH’) about the “Disinformation Dozen.” The Center for Countering Digital Hate gave a presentation about the Disinformation Dozen and how they (CCDH) measured and determined that the Disinformation Dozen were primarily responsible for a significant amount of online misinformation.”
“At the July 15, 2021 press conference, Murthy described health misinformation as one of the biggest obstacles to ending the pandemic; insisted that his advisory was on an urgent public health threat; and stated that misinformation poses an imminent threat to the nation’s health and takes away the freedom to make informed decisions….Murthy also stated that people who question mask mandates and decline vaccinations are following misinformation, which results in illnesses and death. Murthy placed specific blame on social-media platforms for allowing ‘poison’ to spread and further called for an ‘all-of-society approach’ to fight health misinformation. Murthy called upon social-media platforms to operate with greater transparency and accountability, to monitor information more clearly, and to ‘consistently take action against misinformation super-spreaders on their platforms.’ Notably, Waldo agreed in his deposition that the word ‘accountable’ carries with it the threat of consequences.” (Emphasis supplied)
“…on July 20, 2021, at a White House Press Conference, White House Communications Director Kate Bedingfield (‘Bedingfield’) stated that the White House would be announcing whether social-media platforms are legally liable for misinformation spread on their platforms and examining how misinformation fits into the liability protection granted by Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act (which shields social-media platforms from being responsible for posts by third parties on their sites). Bedingfield further stated the administration was reviewing policies that could include amending the Communication Decency Act and that the social-media platforms ‘should be held accountable.’ The public and private pressure from the White House apparently had its intended effect. All twelve members of the ‘Disinformation Dozen’ were censored, and pages, groups, and accounts linked to the Disinformation Dozen were removed…”
“Murthy made statements on the following platforms: a December 21, 2021 podcast threatening to hold social-media platforms accountable for not censoring misinformation; a January 3, 2022 podcast with Alyssa Milano stating that ‘platformers need to step up to be accountable…”
“In addition to ‘misinformation’ regarding COVID-19, the White House also asked social-media companies to censor misinformation regarding climate change, gender discussions, abortion, and economic policy. At an Axios event entitled ‘A Conversation on Battling Misinformation,’ held on June 14, 2022, the White House National Climate Advisor Gina McCarthy (‘McCarthy’) blamed social-media companies for allowing misinformation and disinformation about climate change to spread and explicitly tied these censorship demands with threats of adverse legislation regarding the Communications Decency Act.”
“On June 16, 2022, the White House announced a new task force to target ‘general misinformation’ and disinformation campaigns targeted at women and LBGTQI individuals who are public and political figures, government and civic leaders, activists, and journalists. The June 16, 2022, Memorandum discussed the creation of a task force to reel in ‘online harassment and abuse’ and to develop programs targeting such disinformation campaigns. The Memorandum also called for the Task Force to confer with technology experts and again threatened social-media platforms with adverse legal consequences if the platforms did not censor aggressively enough.”
End quote of excerpts from Missouri v. Biden, July 4, 2023. This judicial freedom document is worthy of study and publication in its entirety.
The War on “Misinformation” — Outlawing Dissident Data on the Road to Tyranny
The question of who is qualified to arbitrate what constitutes misinformation is seldom discussed and mostly neglected, for obvious reasons. If it were deliberated, the bias of the legacy media’s anointed “misinformation experts” (Stanford Internet Observatory, Virality Project, Center for Countering Digital Hate, etc.) would be apparent, along with a larger question: why is “misinformation” supposedly lethal to the commonweal?
In the claustrophobic corridors of conformity where roost our supposed intellectual superiors, there is little historical memory of ideas once denounced as the vilest heresy having been proved right over the course of time, unless those views were on the “progressive” side of the ideological scale.
A truly non-partisan recollection of the past would lead to tolerance and judicious latitude for ideas which the 21st century consensus considers outside the limits of acceptable belief.
Error Has Rights
The precept that error has rights is as old as the Jeffersonian democracy which the Biden administration and its friends in high places, claim to defend. The battle for this principle was successfully fought in the 1780s, and again in the 1960s and ‘70s. It has since been nearly overturned in the new millennium, where it now hangs by a thread.
“Free Press” Smokescreen
The free press debate is mostly a smokescreen for an ideological conflict in which one side of the political spectrum seeks to gain an advantage over the other. Concerning censorship, the Left and the Right are often partners in slime. Trying to find an authentic Jeffersonian on either side is like searching for a Baptist in Mecca. The right of scholars who analyze flaws in the Talmud and the atrocities of the Israeli government to be free of censorship and cancellation, has zero support among most of the Republican legislators, jurists and pundits who are indignant over the suppression of their viewpoints by Biden’s bureaucrats.
In America, much of the interdiction of ideas and obstruction of free inquiry is perpetrated by private companies, and more specifically, the usury industry, which monopolizes online payment systems. In resistance to their monopoly, dissident writers are paid and sustained by readers rather than corporations, which helps to encourage the widest possible diversity of opinion, as well as independent investigative reporting which is vital to the democracy which Prof. Tribe and our would-be Overlords cynically extol with seigneurial conceit, and simultaneously thwart.
In 1789 the Catholic idea that the Blessed Virgin Mary was conceived without sin and assumed bodily into heaven was considered a depraved belief in the eyes of the majority of the Protestant population of the United States. Had it not been for the liberty of conscience enshrined in the Bill of Rights that year, those Catholic beliefs may very well have been outlawed.
234 years later, modern science has discovered that babies in the womb share the cells of their mothers: “Mothers around the world say they feel like their children are still a part of them long after they’ve given birth. As it turns out, that is literally true… Fetomaternal transfer… occurs in all pregnancies and in humans the fetal cells can persist for decades. Microchimeric fetal cells are found in various maternal tissues and organs including blood, bone marrow, skin and liver” (cf. here and here).
Consequently, the Son of God who was of one flesh with the humble Israelite girl we know as His mother Mary, shared his very tissue with her. In light of that discovery by avant-garde science, it seems far less likely that God would have allowed the body that contained within it the flesh of Jesus Christ, to rot on earth. In 1950, when Pius XII declared the bodily assumption of Mary into heaven, it seems he was prescient indeed.
Nowadays, with the desacralization of our society, where the outcome of the colosseum sports game is of infinitely greater interest than the corporeal fate of the human that served as the vessel for the incarnation of God, the once hotly disputed veracity or falsehood of the pontiff’s declaration doesn’t necessitate First Amendment protection. Other controversies however, are ablaze in the white hot fire of zealotry and the certitude that one side is right and the other is not only wrong, it has no right to be wrong. For example, disputing trans claims and COVID orthodoxies are subject to intense proscription.
The Left pretends to want libraries free of censorship. Some of them support trans books in children’s libraries because they have faith in the inherent value of that literature as drivers of transformative thinking in children, not due to any allegiance to the civil libertarian tenets of the First Amendment. Not for a minute would most Leftists countenance the introduction of holocaust denial or white supremacist books in a library under their control. For these folks “freedom of the press” is a pretext for overcoming the censorship demands of one’s adversaries while practicing it oneself.
The Right wants libraries stocked with writings by Karl Rove, Ludwig von Mises, Glenn Beck, John Bolton, Hannity and O’Reilly. A majority actively oppose the presence of books in public libraries by Noam Chomsky, Margaret Atwood, Edward Said, Alexander Cockburn, and Maureen Dowd. Like the Left, the Right mainly operates by a dual standard.
Knowledge of the history of the struggle for intellectual freedom and the life stories of John Lilburne, Michael Servetus, John Tyndale, Edmund Campion, Ignaz Semmelweis, Eugene V. Debs, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Harry Elmer Barnes, Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn and Norman Finkelstein, are instrumental in kindling a commitment to the American Way: •rights of conscience, •the necessity of a free press, and •toleration of opinions designated as “misinformation.”
The debate turns on whether or not a free people require intervention by “expert authorities” like fallible Fauci, who filter what would otherwise be unfettered access to information.
To prove his points in the Declaration of Independence, Jefferson stated, “… let Facts be submitted to a candid world.” The Founders of our nation were unequivocal in proclaiming their confidence in the people judging for themselves, without a king, commissar or president—backed by propaganda conglomerates in New York and Hollywood— preventing them from undertaking this sacred civic responsibility and divine right.
That the interdiction of information online is termed by Lucifer’s lexicographers “a defense of democracy,” is among the most egregious evocations of doublethink since George Orwell put pen to paper.
Distilled to its first principle, the defense of democracy depends on the defense of the right to be wrong.
The New York Times, Laurence Tribe, Leah Litman, Dr. Jay Bhattacharya, Bobby Kennedy Jr., Alex Berenson and Tucker Carlson, all have a right to be in error. Without that Constitutional liberty guaranteed to every individual — whether heretic or grandee — Fascism from the Right or Communism from the Left will inevitably take control and sift our nation like wheat.
“This country is planted thick with laws… And if you cut them down… do you really think you could stand upright in the winds that would blow then? Yes, I’d give the Devil benefit of law, for my own safety’s sake.” —Robert Bolt, A Man for All Seasons
FOR THE ADVANCEMENT TO KNOWLEDGE CONTRA CANCEL CULTURE
Michael Hoffman is the author of Secret Societies and Psychological Warfare (2001), The Occult Renaissance Church of Rome (2017) , Twilight Language (2021), six other books published in the United States, as well as overseas in Japanese and French translation, and 122 issues of Revisionist History® newsletter, 1997-2022. Since January, twenty-eight of his essays have been published on Substack. He is a former reporter for the New York bureau of the Associated Press. His podcast, Michael Hoffman’s Revisionist History,® is heard around the world.
Twitter: @HoffmanMichaelA
Copyright ©2023 Independent History and Research, Coeur d’Alene, Idaho 83816-0849
Targeted for Tyranny: We’re All Suspects Under the Government’s Precrime Program
By John & Nisha Whitehead | The Rutherford Institute | July 12, 2023
We’re all being targeted now.
We’re all guilty until proven innocent now.
And thanks to the 24/7 surveillance being carried out by the government’s spy network of fusion centers, we are all now sitting ducks, just waiting to be tagged, flagged, targeted, monitored, manipulated, investigated, interrogated, heckled and generally harassed by agents of the American police state.
Although these precrime programs are popping up all across the country, in small towns and big cities, they are not making us any safer but they are endangering individual freedoms.
Nationwide, there are upwards of 123 real-time crime centers (a.k.a. fusion centers), which allow local police agencies to upload and share massive amounts of surveillance data and intelligence with state and federal agencies culled from surveillance cameras, facial recognition technology, gunshot sensors, social media monitoring, drones and body cameras, and artificial intelligence-driven predictive policing algorithms.
These data fusion centers, which effectively create an electronic prison—a digital police state—from which there is no escape, are being built in partnership with big tech companies such as Microsoft, Google and Amazon, which helped to fuel the rise of police militarization and domestic surveillance.
While these latest expansions of the surveillance state are part of the Biden Administration’s efforts to combat domestic extremism through the creation of a “precrime” crime prevention agency, they have long been a pivotal part of the government’s plans for total control and dominion.
Yet this crime prevention campaign is not so much about making America safer as it is about ensuring that the government has the wherewithal to muzzle anti-government discontent, penalize anyone expressing anti-government sentiments, and preemptively nip in the bud any attempts by the populace to challenge the government’s authority or question its propaganda.
As J.D. Tuccille writes for Reason, “[A]t a time when government officials rage against ‘misinformation’ and ‘disinformation’ that is often just disagreement with whatever opinions are currently popular among the political class, fusion centers frequently scrutinize peaceful dissenting speech.”
Indeed, while the Biden Administration was recently dealt a legal blow over its attempts to urge social media companies to do more to combat so-called dis- and mis-information, these fusion centers are the unacknowledged powerhouses behind the government’s campaign to censor and retaliate against those who vocalize their disagreement and discontent with government policies.
Already, the powers-that-be are mobilizing to ensure that fusion centers have the ability to monitor and lockdown sectors of a community at a moment’s notice.
For instance, a 42,000-square-foot behemoth of a fusion center in downtown Washington is reportedly designed to “better prepare law enforcement for the next public health emergency or Jan. 6-style attack.” According to an agency spokeswoman, “Screens covering the walls of the new facility will show surveillance cameras around the city as well as social media accounts that may be monitored for threatening speech.”
It’s like a scene straight out of Steven Spielberg’s dystopian film Minority Report.
Incredibly, as the various nascent technologies employed and shared by the government and corporations alike—facial recognition, iris scanners, massive databases, behavior prediction software, and so on—are incorporated into a complex, interwoven cyber network aimed at tracking our movements, predicting our thoughts and controlling our behavior, the dystopian visions of past writers is fast becoming our reality.
What once seemed futuristic no longer occupies the realm of science fiction.
The American police state’s take on the dystopian terrors foreshadowed by George Orwell, Aldous Huxley and Phillip K. Dick have all been rolled up into one oppressive pre-crime and pre-thought crime package.
In this way, the novel 1984 has become an operation manual for an omnipresent, modern-day surveillance state in which ordinary Americans find themselves labeled domestic extremists for engaging in lawful behavior that triggers the government’s precrime sensors.
With the help of automated eyes and ears, a growing arsenal of high-tech software, hardware and techniques, government propaganda urging Americans to turn into spies and snitches, as well as social media and behavior sensing software, government agents are spinning a sticky spider-web of threat assessments, behavioral sensing warnings, flagged “words,” and “suspicious” activity reports aimed at snaring potential enemies of the state.
It’s also a setup ripe for abuse.
For instance, an investigative report by the Brennan Center found that “Over the last two decades, leaked materials have shown fusion centers tracking protestors and casting peaceful activities as potential threats. Their targets have included racial justice and environmental advocates, right-wing activists, and third-party political candidates.”
One fusion center in Maine was found to have been “illegally collecting and sharing information about Maine residents who weren’t suspected of criminal activity. They included gun purchasers, people protesting the construction of a new power transmission line, the employees of a peacebuilding summer camp for teenagers, and even people who travelled to New York City frequently.”
This is how the government is turning a nation of citizens into suspects and would-be criminals.
This transformation is being driven by the Department of Homeland Security, the massive, costly, power-hungry bureaucracy working hard to ensure that the government is all-seeing, all-knowing and all-powerful.
Yet here’s the thing: you don’t have to do anything illegal or challenge the government’s authority in order to be flagged as a suspicious character, labeled an enemy of the state and locked up like a dangerous criminal.
In fact, all you need to do is live in the United States.
It’s just a matter of time before you find yourself wrongly accused, investigated and confronted by police based on a data-driven algorithm or risk assessment culled together by a computer program run by artificial intelligence.
Before long, every household in America will be flagged as a threat and assigned a threat score.
Without having ever knowingly committed a crime or been convicted of one, you and your fellow citizens have likely been assessed for behaviors the government might consider devious, dangerous or concerning; assigned a threat score based on your associations, activities and viewpoints; and catalogued in a government database according to how you should be approached by police and other government agencies based on your particular threat level.
Combine predictive policing with surveillance, overcriminalization and precrime programs, then add in militarized police trained to shoot first and ask questions later, and as I make clear in my book Battlefield America: The War on the American People and in its fictional counterpart The Erik Blair Diaries, you’ll be lucky to escape with your life.
If you’re not scared yet, you should be.
Constitutional attorney and author John W. Whitehead is founder and president of The Rutherford Institute. His most recent books are the best-selling Battlefield America: The War on the American People, the award-winning A Government of Wolves: The Emerging American Police State, and a debut dystopian fiction novel, The Erik Blair Diaries. Whitehead can be contacted at staff@rutherford.org. Nisha Whitehead is the Executive Director of The Rutherford Institute. Information about The Rutherford Institute is available at www.rutherford.org.
Syrians lash out at Israeli plan to raze entire village in occupied Golan Heights
Press TV – July 11, 2023
Residents of the occupied Golan Heights have staged a demonstration to express their fierce opposition to the Tel Aviv regime’s plan to completely raze a village in the strategic plateau to build a military base, in a blatant violation of international law.
According to a report by Syria’s official news agency, SANA, protesters rejected the demolition of the remaining homes in the village of Ain Fiet, whose residents were forcibly displaced by the Israeli regime over the past years.
“The Zionist entity aims to obliterate the national identity, establish a military outpost on our lands and Judaize them,” the protesters said.
They said the regime’s scheme to raze the village is contrary to the United Nations Security Council resolution 497.
The UN resolution, adopted unanimously on December 17, 1981, declares that the Israeli annexation of the occupied Golan Heights is “null and void and without international legal effect” and further calls on the Tel Aviv regime to rescind its action.
The protesters further reiterated their devotion to their homeland and Syrian identity in the face of the Israeli regime’s practices, including arbitrary arrests and systematic oppression.
In 1967, Israel waged a full-scale war against Arab territories, during which it occupied a large area of the Golan and annexed it four years later – a move never recognized by the international community.
Israeli forces destroyed Ain Fiet, one of the most fertile and beautiful villages in the Syrian Golan Heights, following the 1967 Six-Day War.
Nearly 131,000 people living there were forcibly displaced, while 7,000 people opted to remain in six other nearby villages, namely Majdal Shams, Masa’da, Baqatha, Ain Qunya, Ghajar and Sahita.
Later on, the Israeli military razed Sahita village and turned it into a military post. It forced its local residents to abandon the village and move to Masa’da.
In 1973, another war broke out and a year later, the United Nations brokered a ceasefire and established a buffer zone between the Israeli and Syrian forces. The UN also adopted several resolutions calling for Israel’s withdrawal from the Golan, but the regime has ignored them.
Earlier this month, Israel further occupied Ghajar village by erecting fences to the north of the area, cutting it off completely from Lebanon.
Last month, dozens of residents and landowners in the towns of Majdal Shams and Masa’deh were prevented from reaching their lands by Israeli forces, leading to confrontations.
The Israeli forces have raided the farmlands to install wind turbines, which according to the farmers, could pose environmental hazards to their lands and interfere with their farming practices.
Israel has over the past several decades come up with dozens of illegal settlements in the occupied Golan in defiance of international calls for the regime to stop its illegal construction activities there.
In 2019, former US president Donald Trump signed a decree recognizing Israeli “sovereignty” over the Golan Heights, in a move that was widely condemned by the international community.
Syria denounced the US decision as a violation of its sovereignty and territorial integrity.
In December 2021, Israel announced its plan to double the number of its illegal settlements in the Golan Heights despite a resolution by the UN General Assembly demanding that the regime stop its settlement activities and withdraw from the occupied territory.
Damascus has repeatedly reaffirmed its sovereignty over the area, saying it must be completely restored to its control.
Ansarallah forces surround Saudi-controlled Marib: Report
The Cradle | July 12, 2023
Yemen’s Ansarallah resistance movement fired two ballistic missiles at the country’s central city of Marib on 11 July, coinciding with heavy mobilization of fighters and equipment outside the city, sources in the Saudi-backed government were quoted as saying.
A military official, Rashad al-Mekhlafi, told Arab News that two missiles landed in northern Marib, near a military base and a camp for internally displaced people.
“The missiles exploded in an open area in Marib without causing any injuries,” he said.
Sources in the Saudi-backed Presidential Leadership Council (PLC) recently told Arab News that Ansarallah has been deploying large numbers of fighters and equipment in preparation for an offensive against the city, which had been halted last year by a truce that was implemented in April.
“They have assembled fighters and enormous military equipment, including armored vehicles, cannons, and drone launchers, on the southern, western, northern, and east-northern surroundings of Marib,” Mekhlafi said.
“We are prepared to repel any attack. We bolstered the front lines with newly graduated military battalions, including sniper and infantry forces. What the Houthis were unable to achieve in previous years would be possible today,” he added.
Another government source was anonymously quoted as saying that the “legitimate government is prepared to repel any attack even as Saudi, UN, American, and European mediators advise restraint.”
Following the implementation of a truce agreement in April last year, intense fighting in Marib ceased, and Ansarallah was unable to capture the city. However, border skirmishes and periodic clashes have since been common.
While significant areas of the energy-rich province are under Ansarallah’s control, the main city is fully in the hands of the Saudi-backed government and the forces loyal to it.
Omani-mediated negotiations have recently resulted in agreements between the Saudi-led coalition and Ansarallah, particularly regarding the blockades on Hodeidah port and Sanaa airport, as well as the payment of salaries of government employees.
Saudi Arabia, as a result, has significantly reduced the scale of its bombing campaign on the country.
Many factors continue to complicate peace in war-torn Yemen – particularly a widespread Emirati occupation of the country and its ports and oilfields, as well as the presence of US, UK, and French troops.
Some have suggested in recent months that Saudi and Emirati interests in Yemen have begun to diverge, claiming that the UAE aims to maintain control over the country’s resources and strategic ports and waterways while Riyadh is increasingly looking to find a way out of the war.
What are SCALP Missiles and How May They Affect Ukraine’s Counteroffensive?
CC BY-SA 3.0 / David Monniaux / Storm Shadow missile
By Ekaterina Blinova – Sputnik – 12.07.2023
French President Emmanuel Macron’s decision to provide Ukraine with SCALP long-range cruise missiles won’t affect the existing status quo given the experience the Russian military gained while thwarting the weapon’s analog called “Storm Shadow”, a Russian military expert told Sputnik.
During the NATO summit in Vilnius, President Emmanuel Macron committed to providing dozens of SCALP long-range missiles to Ukraine. However, the French president did not specify when the weapons would be delivered to Kiev. France has become the second country, after the UK, to equip Ukraine with long-range rockets.
“In light of the situation and the counteroffensive being conducted by Ukraine, I have decided to increase deliveries of weapons and equipment and to provide the Ukrainians with deep strike capabilities,” Macron told journalists upon arrival at the summit.
What is the Difference Between SCALP and Storm Shadow?
The SCALP-EG (Emploi Général, meaning General Purpose) is a French name for “Storm Shadow,” the stealthy air-launched long range, conventionally armed, deep strike weapon, produced by European multinational missile-maker MBDA. The missile was based on the Apache, a French-developed, air-launched, anti-runway cruise missile.
“The French SCALP rocket is actually a joint development of Great Britain and France,” Russian military expert Yury Knutov told Sputnik. “And therefore, many aspects related to the production and use of these missiles are unified. Figuratively, we can say that the SCALP rocket is an analog of the British Storm Shadow.
What is the Range of a SCALP/Storm Shadow Missile?
“The only difference [between the SCALP and Storm Shadow] is the flight range. The export version of the Storm Shadow has a range of approximately 300 kilometers. The export version of the French missiles has a range of approximately 250 kilometers,” Knutov explained.
The SCALP is powered by a turbojet at Mach 0.8 (987.8 km/h). It weighs 1300 kg which includes a conventional warhead of 450 kilograms. The weapon’s length and diameter are 5.10 meters and 0.166 m, respectively, with a wingspan of 3 m. The missile costs approximately $3.19 million per unit.
How Do SCALP and Storm Shadow Operate?
The SCALP is a “fire-and-forget” missile, meaning that it is programmed before launch. Having been launched the missile cannot be controlled: it follows its path semi-autonomously. Close to its target, the weapon climbs to a higher altitude to maximize the odds of penetrating the target. Finally, it hits the target before a delayed fuse explodes the main warhead.
“If we are talking about the combat use of these cruise missiles, then we should not forget that this is a high-precision weapon,” said Knutov. “[The missile’s] warhead weighs over 400 kilograms and it is quite powerful. There are concrete-piercing variants with a special high-strength rod inside the rocket; together with the explosive, it allows one to pierce concrete ceilings up to 1.5 meters in thickness. And most importantly, the accuracy of hitting these missiles is very high.”
How Are SCALPs and Storm Shadows Carried?
The weapon can be carried by the Tornado GR4, Italian Tornado IDS, Eurofighter Typhoon, Dassault Mirage 2000 and Dassault Rafale aircraft. It was used by the UK, France and Italy in the Gulf, Iraq and Libya attacks.
When it comes to Ukraine, it was earlier reported that the nation’s air force would use the Su-24 – a supersonic, all-weather tactical bomber developed in the Soviet Union – for launching the Franco-British weapon. Initially, pictures released by the Ukrainian media showed a Su-24 with a Storm Shadow placed under the fixed-wing “glove” pylon. Ukraine’s Su-24 combat and Su-24MR reconnaissance warplanes have been modified to fire the stealthy long-range missile.
Can Russia Intercept SCALP and Storm Shadow Missiles?
The missile is very difficult to detect due to its extremely small radar cross-section (RCS), according to Knutov. “That is, the Storm Shadow [SCALP EG] has a radar cross-section of 0.01 to 0.03 square meters, which is very small,” he said.
Nonetheless, Russia’s air defenses are capable of detecting and destroying the Storm Shadow/SCALP cruise missiles, Knutov underscored. The Ministry of Defense has repeatedly reported about intercepting the Franco-British stealthy long-range missiles.
What’s more, Russian forces’ recent capture of a Storm Shadow missile may prove invaluable for studying ways to defeat the weapon. The rocket was shot down in the Zaporozhye region and remained mostly intact. Dissecting the missile could uncover its potential weaknesses and determine the optimal direction from which to strike the cruise missile with an interceptor.
“After our military was able to capture such a cruise missile, we now have more opportunities to study it, determine the composite materials from which the body is made, deal with the homing head: the frequencies at which it operates, and the principle of operation of this homing head,” said Knutov.
According to the military expert, that will allow Russia to improve its radars and missile guidance stations to better detect the stealthy missiles. He explained that studying the body of the rockets is important, because the Russian engineers will be able to see which range of radio waves transmitted by the missile is radio-transparent and which is partly reflected. “It will be possible to create electronic warfare systems that will more effectively affect the homing heads of both Storm Shadow and SCALP missiles,” Knutov said.
“I think that in the next month or two we will see that our air defense will operate more effectively [against SCALPs]. Moreover, electronic warfare stations will be mainly used, which is much cheaper than firing projectiles to intercept these cruise missiles,” he projected.
How Many SCALPs is France Sending to Ukraine?
In his statement, Macron did not specify the number of missiles, but Western media cite sources saying that France may deliver 50 units to Ukraine.
“If we are talking about 50 missiles (…) one should bear in mind that it could be more than 50,” Knutov said. “This may be a leak that is organized for the media. Of course, they play a certain role, because now the NATO bloc is trying to help the Kiev regime to somehow break through our defense line.”
Will SCALP Make a Difference on the Ukrainian Battlefield?
NATO is sending longer-range missiles to strike Russia’s personnel, ammo, equipment, and command posts which are currently kept at a distance of over 100 km from the frontline, according to the expert.
The US-made HIMARS are launching rockets with a strike range of 80 km which is not enough in the eyes of NATO war planners to exert pressure on the Russian Armed Forces. NATO member states sending missiles with a range of 300 kilometers, like Storm Shadow/SCALP (or, potentially, the US-made ATACMS), pose a certain challenge to the Russian military, the expert noted.
“But it is not critical, and the maximum that it can affect is the timing of the combat missions that Russia’s [military] units face,” Knutov concluded.
Here’s why the US may never allow Ukraine to join NATO
Kiev has to face up to some bad news – for the first time, NATO enlargement has become a threat to Washington itself
By Timofey Bordachev | RT | July 12, 2023
The Ukrainian crisis marks the first time in history that the United States has exposed itself to serious risks in defining the limits of its military presence in Europe. Any genuine move by Washington to invite Kiev into NATO would imply a willingness to enter into a direct military confrontation with Russia. A less risky option, many believe, would be to promise the Vladimir Zelensky regime some special bilateral guarantees.
The NATO military bloc was created on the basis of the real division of Europe into zones of influence between the US and the USSR after the Second World War. As a result of the greatest armed confrontation in the history of mankind, the bulk of European states lost forever the ability to determine fundamental issues of their national policy. These included, first and foremost, defense and the ability to form alliances with other countries. Europe was divided between the real winners of the conflict – Moscow and Washington. Only Austria, Ireland, Sweden, Finland and a small part of Switzerland were outside their zone of dominance.
Both of the great powers had an informal right to determine the internal order of the territories under its control. This was because the countries concerned had lost their sovereignty as such. Even France, which continued to demonstrate freethinking for several decades, had no doubt on whose side it would fight in the event of a new global conflict.
NATO was created in 1949 to formally deprive American allies of the ability to make their own foreign policy decisions and military doctrines. In this respect, the alliance was no different from the Warsaw Pact that had emerged in the USSR’s sphere of influence.
The relationship between the United States and other NATO countries has never been an alliance in the traditional sense. In the last century, classic alliances ceased to exist altogether – the gap in military capabilities between the nuclear superpowers and every other country in the world became too great.
A military alliance between relative equals is possible, as it was until the middle of the last century, but nuclear weapons have made this impossible. The former sovereign states of Europe became a territorial base from which the great powers could negotiate in peace and act in war. The creation of NATO and the subsequent accession of countries such as Greece, Turkey, Spain and West Germany to the alliance was a formalization of the boundaries of US dominance that the USSR had already agreed to in bilateral relations.
After the Soviet collapse, extending American rule to Moscow’s former allies in Eastern Europe and even the Baltic republics was also not a policy that posed serious risks for Washington. Incidentally, this is why NATO has an informal rule of not admitting countries with unresolved territorial disputes with third states – the US has never been willing to occupy land whose ownership is disputed. NATO’s post-Cold War expansion was based on deception, with the US promising Moscow that it would not expand NATO to Russia’s borders. But, initially, Russia did not have the physical strength to resist. This meant that the US could occupy “unclaimed” states without the threat of immediate military conflict. The US approach to NATO remained true to the philosophy of the 1945 victors: there are no sovereign states, only controlled territories.
Once the decision was taken in Washington, it was only a matter of strategy to ensure that local governments made the “right” decisions. This was all the more so as the accession of new countries to NATO in the 1990s and 2000s was ‘packaged’ with the enlargement of the European Union. This gave local elites every reason to aspire to join the bloc, from which they expected tangible material benefits. For some – the Baltic states and Poland – membership in the club also provided the possibility of solving internal problems through an aggressive anti-Russian policy by fostering fear of the big neighbor to the east. In the Baltic states, the status of an American outpost was also used by elites to combat any local opposition from radical nationalists.
For the countries that joined the bloc, NATO became a guarantee of internal stability. Since the most important decisions for them were taken outside their national political systems, there was no reason for internal competition and no danger of serious destabilization.
Of course, no country is safe from minor internal political disturbances, such as those caused by a change of government – especially if the one in power is not liked by the US. But radical changes, which generally involve foreign policy issues, have become impossible.
In this sense, Western Europe increasingly resembles Latin America, where the quality of life of the population doesn’t have dramatic consequences for the elites. There, geographical proximity to the US has long been a reason for almost total American control. The only exceptions have been Cuba and, in recent decades, Venezuela. In Western Europe, because of Russia’s proximity, this control is of a formal nature, which should in principle rule out any surprises.
Joining NATO is an exchange of state sovereignty for the indefinite retention of power by the ruling elite. This is the secret of every political regime’s desire to join the bloc: it gives them the possibility of “immortality” in spite of any domestic or economic failures. The regimes in Eastern Europe and the Baltics immediately realized that they would not last long in power without being under Washington’s control – the break with Moscow and the peripheral position of their countries promised them too many problems. And the reason Finland joined NATO is that the local elites no longer have confidence in their ability to hold power on their own.
For the United States itself, as we have seen, the expansion of its presence has never posed any serious threat or risk. At least until now. This is precisely what is being pointed out by those in America who are calling for a careful approach to be taken in response to the demands of the authorities in Kiev for membership. A call which is supported by some members of the bloc.
It is understood that a military clash between Moscow and NATO would mean global nuclear war. Nevertheless, back in the Soviet period, the US believed that any conflict with the USSR could be confined to Europe and would not involve direct attacks on each other’s territory. There is reason to believe that Moscow felt the same way during the Cold War.
NATO’s eastward expansion after the Cold War was a case of acquiring territories for which no one wanted to fight. However, in the situation of Ukraine, for the US is not a question of gaining territory, but rather of taking it from a rival power that wants to keep Washington out. This has never happened in the history of NATO, and one can understand those in Western Europe and the US who are calling for serious consideration of the likely consequences.
Inviting Kiev to join NATO could mean something entirely new for American foreign policy – a willingness to fight a peer adversary like Russia. Throughout their history, Americans have shied away from this, using other players as battering rams willing to sacrifice and suffer for American interests. This was the case in both the First and Second World Wars. The most likely scenario, therefore, is that the US will limit itself to promising to address the issue of Ukraine and NATO after the Kiev regime has resolved its problems with Russia in one way or another. In the meantime, it will only be promised some “special” terms on a bilateral basis.
Timofey Bordachev is the Valdai Club Programme Director.
Reports from Russia Make Clear There Was No “Wagner Mutiny”
By Paul Craig Roberts | Institute For Political Economy | July 12, 2023
Reports from Russia have clarified what the alleged “Prigozhin Mutiny” was all about. The Russian military brass told Prigozhin that his independent Wagner group would be incorporated into the Russian military as of July 1 and be subject to the chain of command. Prigozhin and his commanders rejected this and saw it as an act of envy of the Wagner Group’s success compared to Russian Army units. The alleged “march on Moscow” was a protest to get Putin’s attention, not an attempt to overthrow Putin or the government.
On June 29 Putin met with Prigozhin and his commanders for several hours where the Wagner commanders gave their version of events and expressed their commitment to MotherRussia. Having witnessed the Wagner Group’s effectiveness in battle, Putin was desirous of keeping the Wagner Group on the front line in Ukraine. The Belarus president, Lukashenko, also wanted the unit and invited them to Belarus.
Prigozhin and his commanders agreed to be incorporated into the Russian chain of command. There is no information whether Putin met Prigozhin’s demand/request for a more competent Russian general staff and a more determined effort to bring the conflict to a victorious conclusion.
Clearly, no move has been made against Prigozhin. He is a billionaire Russian businessman separate from his Wagner Group, and no moves have been made against his business.
Now, compare these facts with the amazingly stupid accounts given by the entirety of the US and UK media, politicians, and alleged “Russian experts.” Do you remember the headlines: “Prigozhin marches on Moscow,” “Putin’s Last Days,” “Putin damaged by mutiny,” “Weakened, will Putin now be overthrown”?
It was obvious to anyone with a bit of intelligence that it could not possibly have been a military mutiny to overthrow Putin. The military brass, the media, and Putin’s aides told him it was a mutiny before he spoke with Lukashenko and Prigozhin.
As long as the media reports news as its ideological wishes and official narratives instead of facts, we will live in a fictional existence.
Rep. Massie Promises Vote to Establish Audit Overseeing Ukraine War Money
The SIGUA office is opposed by President Biden but may be forced by a congressional vote
BY LEE FANG | JULY 12, 2023
The United States has allocated around $113 billion to Ukraine over the last seventeen months, soon to surpass the money spent on the Marshall Plan to rebuild Europe after World War II and quickly approaching the cost of twenty years of war and reconstruction in Afghanistan.
Despite this unprecedented spending, there is no overarching Special Inspector General to oversee the Ukraine funds to root out waste, fraud, and abuse.
Change may be on the horizon. “There will also be a vote this week,” Rep. Tom Massey, R-Ky., tweeted this morning, on establishing the IG for Ukraine.
The push for a Special Inspector General for Ukraine Assistance (SIGUA) has unfortunately become a partisan issue, another casualty of the negative polarization cycle in Washington, D.C. Last March, Sen. Josh Hawley, R-Mo., attempted to establish the audit office as an amendment. The bill splintered the Republican caucus in half, while every Democratic Senator, except Sens. Jon Tester, D-Montana, and Jon Ossoff, D-Georgia, voted against it.
Surprisingly, notable opposition to establishing the office came from Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., and Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass. Warren, before her rise to the Senate, became a national figure as an oversight official working alongside the SIGTARP, the auditor that oversaw the 2008 bank bailout funds. As Warren has touted in the past, SIGTARP, with relatively limited investigative resources, brought criminal charges against 144 individuals, obtained criminal convictions of 107 defendants, and obtained civil judgments and restitution totaling $4.3 billion.
The Afghanistan auditor, known as SIGAR, discovered even more breathtaking fraud and contractor abuse. The auditor found that U.S. Agency for International Development wasted $335 billion on a diesel power plant in the country that was over-budget and barely used, over $90 million on a program to place only 55 Afghan women in government jobs, and over $1 billion on “ghost schools” to build classrooms that were never utilized and left empty and dilapidated. The Pentagon reportedly “spent $6 million on a project that imported nine Italian goats to boost Afghanistan’s cashmere market” and $43 million on a single gas station.
The Afghanistan audit office was established by congressional Democrats after the 2006 midterm elections, during which the party gained power. Press releases from that era showcased the Democratic Party’s celebration of its efforts to create SIGAR. Progressive lawmakers like Sanders once championed SIGAR as a model for better oversight of the Defense Department.
Now, as President Joe Biden leads U.S. efforts to support Ukraine in its war and recovery against Russia, the tables have turned. Democrats have so far refused to cosponsor or propose a single bill in Congress to establish a similar SIGUA office to oversee Ukraine war money. The bills now before lawmakers include proposals from Rep. Wittman, R-Va.; Rep. Chip Roy, R-Tex.; Sen. John Kennedy, R-La.; and Sen. Josh Hawley, R-Mo.
On Monday, the Biden administration directed lawmakers to vote against the creation of a SIGUA to oversee Ukraine money. The administration claims that new audit efforts are unnecessary, given that the government already has internal offices devoted to finding waste.
John Sopko, appointed by President Obama to head the SIGAR office for Afghanistan, has criticized the current administration’s position, noting that with such high levels of spending in Ukraine, a “whole of government” special audit office is vital. He also lashed out at officials who argue that new oversight might impede the flow of needed military or recovery assistance.
“Those are statements made by corrupt contractors, corrupt politicians, or politicians and contractors who don’t know anything about effective oversight,” said Sopko, speaking recently to the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft.
The new effort to establish a SIGUA will likely be a recorded vote on an amendment to the National Defense Authorization Act, the military funding package now before Congress. Lawmakers are using the legislative proposal to tweak a number of Ukraine war issues, including an expected vote to block the Biden administration from supplying illegal cluster munitions to the Ukrainian military, as well as a push to force the Pentagon to disclose casualty figures for “both sides of the conflict” in Ukraine.
An updated list of amendments, released this morning from the House Armed Services Committee, suggests that the SIGUA amendment by Roy may be folded into a bloc vote.
I asked the offices of Sens. Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren for comment, over whether they have reconsidered their position on the Ukraine war money audit, but did not get a response.
Western analysts support NATO’s direct participation in Ukraine
By Lucas Leiroz | July 12, 2023
Western analysts are encouraging NATO’s direct participation in the conflict. On July 8, foreign affairs commentator Simon Tisdall published an article in The Guardian called “Defeat for Ukraine would be a global disaster. Nato must finally step in to stop Russia“. He argues that Ukraine’s entry into NATO should be accelerated, with a process similar to the one that guaranteed Finland’s accession. According to him, this is the proper way to avoid Kiev’s defeat and the failure of the “counteroffensive”, since the direct support of the alliance supposedly would make a Ukrainian victory possible.
“There’s a risk, if the current counteroffensive produces no breakthrough, weapons supplies run short, a new winter energy crisis strikes and western public support drops further, that Zelenskiy will be forced into negotiations – even into trading territory for peace. Secret, informal US-Russia talks are already under way. If Ukraine were already a NATO member, as promised 15 years ago, all this would not be happening”, he said.
The author believes in the possibility of accepting Ukraine even during the situation of the conflict. One of Tisdall’s arguments is that there are “historical precedents” for the Ukrainian case. Then, he reminds West Germany’s accession to NATO, which took place in the 1950s, still during the absence of German national unity.
“But there are precedents. West Germany gained NATO protection in 1955 even though, like Ukraine, it was in dispute over occupied sovereign territory – held by East Germany, a Soviet puppet. In similar fashion, NATO’s defensive umbrella could reasonably be extended to cover the roughly 85% of Ukrainian territory Kyiv currently controls”, he added.
Tisdall criticizes the posture of American and Western European leaders, who have been cautious, avoiding hasty decisions. The author does not see any validity in the existence of concerns about the possible impacts of Ukraine joining the bloc, stating that the actions of Western politicians are “rooted in American and west European fears that Putin, provoked, might attack the west”.
On the other hand, the analyst praises the posture of the NATO’s Eastern European countries. According to him, Bulgaria, Czech Republic, Estonia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Romania and Slovakia – the so called “Bucharest Nine” – have a “thankfully more robust” stance than Westerners. With this, Tisdall endorses the fanatical anti-Russian state ideology that currently prevails in that region.
In addition, Tisdall mentions in a positive way the opinion of former NATO Secretary General Anders Rasmussen. In June, Rasmussen stated that, if the NATO summit in Vilnius does not manage to change the Ukrainian situation, the eastern countries will certainly start to take individual actions to support Ukraine with troops on the ground.
“If NATO cannot agree on a clear path forward for Ukraine, there is a clear possibility that some countries individually might take action. We know that Poland is very engaged in providing concrete assistance to Ukraine. And I wouldn’t exclude the possibility that Poland would engage even stronger in this context on a national basis and be followed by the Baltic states, maybe including the possibility of troops on the ground … I think the Poles would seriously consider going in and assemble a coalition of the willing if Ukraine doesn’t get anything in Vilnius”, Rasmussen said on the occasion.
Indeed, considering all these factors, what appears to be happening in this case is an attempt by the pro-war western media to pressure NATO’s decision makers to advance the direct intervention agenda during the summit in Vilnius. From a strategic point of view, the pressure is meaningless and does not seem to have any effect, as NATO obviously does not plan to sacrifice its regular forces in favor of a proxy state. However, Tisdall and other pro-war international “experts” have no military experience, being just fanatical defenders of the so-called [Western] “rules-based order”, supporting any military measure necessary to prevent relevant geopolitical changes.
There is a clear absence of a realistic perspective in Tisdall’s words, with several mistakes in his analysis. For example, he tries to show a similarity of cases between present-day Ukraine and Germany in the 1950s, which does not exist. Although divided, Germany at the time was not in a situation of open conflict, which invalidates his narrative.
However, it must be admitted that in fact the direct involvement of Poland and the Baltics seems to be close to reality, as warned by Rasmussen. While analysts like Tisdall approve this anti-Russian disposition of some Eastern European countries, in reality it only tends to do them harm. Some post-communist states went through a process of extreme anti-Russian collective indoctrination, resulting in phenomena such as the rehabilitation of Nazism and the real desire for war against Moscow.
The problem is that NATO does not seem interested in helping them in such a work. For the alliance, what matters is keeping aggression against Russia restricted to non-member countries, which is why the bloc arms Ukraine and incites violence in Georgia and Moldova to open new flanks. The involvement of Western regular troops would be negative, as a direct war against Russia does not seem to be winnable.
Polish and Baltic authorities, however, seem willing to take irrational and anti-strategic actions to defend the Kiev regime. They believe that if it escalates, NATO will defend them from Russian responses, but this does not seem so sure to happen, as the alliance wants to avoid involving its troops in direct war. It remains to be seen how the other NATO countries would react to seeing the alliance disrespecting the collective defense pact.
Indeed, supporting NATO’s direct intervention is supporting the start of WW3. And, in the same vein, by supporting Poland and the Baltics individually going to war with Russia, Western analysts are unwittingly defending the path that could lead to the end of the alliance. The most rational and logical alternative is simply for NATO to accept the defeat in Ukraine and agree to negotiate with the emerging powers a new geopolitical reality.
Lucas Leiroz, journalist, researcher at the Center for Geostrategic Studies, geopolitical consultant.
US Legislator Tables Motion to Withdraw America from NATO
Sputnik – 12.07.2023
Republican Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene from Georgia argues that the US should “only fund our country’s defense, not another country’s war.”
US Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene has proposed a series of amendments to the proposed fiscal year 2024 defense budget, including one calling on President Joe Biden to begin the country’s withdrawal from NATO and suspend supplies to Kiev until the Ukrainian conflict is over.
A US House special committee earlier held hearings on the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), which would provide some $886 billion in funding for US military needs. Lawmakers introduced hundreds of tabled amendments to the bill, including those initiated by scandal-plagued Congresswoman Green.
In particular, one of the proposed amendments mandates the American president to “take such steps as may be necessary” to withdraw the United States from NATO. The other imposes a ban on the allocation of US federal funds to Ukraine until Biden can confirm to Congress that the conflict in that country has been resolved through diplomatic means.
In addition, the congresswoman looked to amend the draft national defense budget to prohibit the delivery of fourth-generation F-16 fighter jets and long-range missiles to Ukraine.
“The NDAA should only fund our country’s defense, not another country’s war,” Greene tweeted about her initiatives.
The day before, Matt Gaetz, a Republican congressman from Florida, made a statement that he intended to co-sponsor an amendment to the budget that would prohibit Washington from sending cluster munitions to Ukraine or any other country. At the same time, he expressed confidence that the delivery of such munitions would not end the conflict in Ukraine.
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The lies about the 1967 war are still more powerful than the truth
By Alan Hart | June 4, 2012
In retrospect it can be seen that the 1967 war, the Six Days War, was the turning point in the relationship between the Zionist state of Israel and the Jews of the world (the majority of Jews who prefer to live not in Israel but as citizens of many other nations). Until the 1967 war, and with the exception of a minority of who were politically active, most non-Israeli Jews did not have – how can I put it? – a great empathy with Zionism’s child. Israel was there and, in the sub-consciousness, a refuge of last resort; but the Jewish nationalism it represented had not generated the overtly enthusiastic support of the Jews of the world. The Jews of Israel were in their chosen place and the Jews of the world were in their chosen places. There was not, so to speak, a great feeling of togetherness. At a point David Ben-Gurion, Israel’s founding father and first prime minister, was so disillusioned by the indifference of world Jewry that he went public with his criticism – not enough Jews were coming to live in Israel.
So how and why did the 1967 war transform the relationship between the Jews of the world and Israel? … continue
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