PSYOP-19 UPDATE: New Variant Spreading Across UK – As Overall Cases Continue to Rise
2nd Smartest Guy in the World | August 5, 2023
The followup “pandemic” trial balloon intended to gauge the level of future societal “mandate” compliance has now been officially deployed.
According to the latest Mockingbird article by SKY NEWS entitled, COVID-19: New variant spreading across UK – as overall cases continue to rise:
A new COVID variant is spreading across the UK, according to the UK Health Security Agency (UKHSA) – and already makes up one in seven new cases.
Scientifically known as EG.5.1, it is descended from the Omicron variant of COVID.
The UKHSA has been monitoring its prevalence in the country due to increasing cases internationally, particularly in Asia, and it was classified as a variant here on 31 July.
Since viruses never mutate into more virulent strains, we must ask: is this another gain of function (GoF) release by the usual Intelligence Industrial Complex criminals, and their useful idiot “expert” apparatchiks ahead of the fall and winter flu season, or is this a consequence of the “vaccinated” genetically modified humans incubating and transmitting new viral mutations as a function of the Modified mRNA slow kill bioweapon injections?
In the week beginning 10 July, one in nine cases were down to the variant.
The latest data suggests it now accounts for 14.6% of cases – the second most prevalent in the UK.
It appears to be spreading quickly and could be one reason why there has been a recent rise in cases and hospitalisations.
COVID-19 rates have continued to increase – up from 3.7% of 4,403 respiratory cases last week to 5.4% of 4,396 this week.
The latest data also shows the COVID-19 hospital admission rate was 1.97 per 100,000 population, an increase from 1.17 per 100,000 in the previous UKHSA report.
Officials say they are “closely” monitoring the situation as COVID case rates continue to rise.
It is no surprise that the wholly fraudulent PCR tests are what these “officials” are yet again referencing; in other words, they are up to their same old junk science tricks.
“We have also seen a small rise in hospital admission rates in most age groups, particularly among the elderly,” said Dr Mary Ramsay, head of immunisation at the UKHSA.
“Overall levels of admission still remain extremely low and we are not currently seeing a similar increase in ICU admissions.
“We will continue to monitor these rates closely.”
Senicide is the gift that keeps on giving, as said “officials” happily discharge liabilities and assets of the elderly useless eaters. Any eugenics program worth it’s salt always commences with the oldsters, and then works it way across ever larger swaths of society.
The Arcturus XBB.1.16 variant – another descendant of Omicron – is the most dominant, UKHSA figures show. It makes up 39.4% of all cases.
Another variant with a menacing name and lots of decimals, another opportunity for the One World Government’s main eugenics node in the WHO to fear-monger:
The World Health Organisation (WHO) started tracking the EG.5.1 variant just over two weeks ago.
As this Substack has exposed on several occasions now, the WHO’s director-general is a Marxist war criminal deliberately selected for his extreme sociopathy by the Rockefeller Crime Syndicate’s most prominent puppet and genocidal frankenmosquito advocate Billy Boy Gates:
WHO director-general Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said though people are better protected by vaccines and prior infection, countries should not let down their guard.
“WHO continues to advise people at high risk to wear a mask in crowded places, to get boosters when recommended, and to ensure adequate ventilation indoors,” he said.
They also just can’t let up on the absurdly useless MK Ultra masks, because ensuring that the genetically ruined slaves reinforce their mass induced fear slavery is an effective means of self-policing into ever more mindless compliance.
“And we urge governments to maintain and not dismantle the systems they built for COVID-19.”
Of course, the WHO urges that their unconstitutional and anti-human systems for PSYOP-19 not to be dismantled because they need their said systems for their followup PSYOP-23 “pandemic” this fall.
What the WHO certainly does not want you to know is that inexpensive repurposed drugs will act as prophylaxis against all of their “pandemics,” along with the associated plethora of their “vaccine” induced adverse events like turbo cancers, and prion-based diseases, all while also protecting the genetically unmodified refuseniks from “vaccine” shedding, and environmental damage.
Do NOT comply.
Musk promises to help canceled workers sue their employers
RT | August 6, 2023
The billionaire owner of X, formerly known as Twitter, has offered legal help to users unfairly fired, canceled or otherwise mistreated by their employers over posts they had shared or liked.
“If you were unfairly treated by your employer due to posting or liking something on this platform, we will fund your legal bill,” Elon Musk tweeted on Saturday evening. “No limit. Please let us know.”
Musk, who has championed himself as a “free speech absolutist,” was forced to follow through on his promise to acquire the company for around $44 billion last October.
Since then, he has fired around three quarters of Twitter’s staff and introduced a controversial paid subscription model in a bid to make the company profitable. He has also rolled back many of the company’s restrictive speech policies and released troves of documents detailing its collaboration under previous management with the US government and pro-censorship NGOs, to stifle anti-establishment content.
Critics have accused Musk of turning the social media giant into a haven for bigotry and hate speech by loosening its censorship policies.
However, the billionaire has struggled to convince some conservative Twitter users of his free speech credentials since hiring NBCUniversal advertising chief and World Economic Forum member Linda Yaccarino as the platform’s new CEO in June.
This comes despite his taking a swipe at liberal bogeyman and fellow billionaire George Soros, and hosting Republican presidential candidate and anti-woke crusader Ron DeSantis’ announcement of entry into the 2024 race.
Recently rebranded as X, Twitter has complied with 80% of all government takedown requests in the first six months since Musk took over as CEO, a significant increase from the 50% rate in the pre-Musk era.
Brazil Censorship Regime: Popular Podcaster Criminally Investigated and Fined $75,000 For Online Speech
By Didi Rankovic | Reclaim The Net | August 5, 2023
One of Brazil’s most popular podcasters, Monark (real name Bruno Monteiro Aiub), is under criminal investigation and has received a fine equivalent to $75,000 for his online conduct.
Critics of the authority’s behavior here – like Brazil-based investigative journalist Glenn Greenwald – see this as a way to completely silence the online personality known as the country’s version of Joe Rogan.
And do this without any due process, as well.
Reports in the Brazilian press say that the decision to fine Monark, whom they refer to as a digital influencer, came from Federal Supreme Court’s Minister Alexandre de Moraes.
Moraes is no stranger to taking an active part in controversial policies and decisions slammed for suppressing free speech on the internet.
In fact, he now has a fairly long history of involvement in this, dating back to the campaign to oust Brazil’s previous president.
In line with this reputation, Moraes’ decision was explained as the podcaster’s failure to comply with a court order, and in addition to the fine, includes blocking his bank account, suspending any new social media accounts, and demonetizing his channels.
In other words, a pretty thorough deplatforming and canceling. And the reason: Moraes says he’s fighting “disinformation” allegedly spread by Monark, as well as his tactic of trying to get his voice heard by creating a new account, once an old one gets banned.
Monark’s defenders, including his lawyer, say that the “crime” he committed is that of having an opinion that is not liked by the government, and that accusations of “instigation of anti-democratic acts” are not true.
On the other hand, the lawyer, Jorge Salomao, notes that in Brazil things like “disinformation and fake news” are not crimes at all, therefore cannot be criminalized, but must be dealt with in civil courts.
Salomao summed the situation up in a statement as, “summarily and unconstitutionally criminalizing thought.”
Meanwhile, Greenwald, who spoke about Monark’s case on his show “System Update,” asserted that censorship is now flourishing in Brazil, illustrated with this example of a podcaster who has over the past couple of years lost the ability to do his job and earn a living.
More than that, Greenwald believes that the West is (ab)using Brazil as a “censorship laboratory, learning how to implement and escalate their totalitarian assault on free expression.”
BBC Admits to Smearing Anti-Ulez Protesters as ‘Far Right’
BY IAN PRICE | THE DAILY SCEPTIC | AUGUST 4, 2023
The BBC’s Executive Complaints Unit (ECU) has responded to complaints about its news coverage of an anti-Ulez protest in London’s Trafalgar Square on Saturday, April 15th, 2023. BBC London News broadcast at the time that:
Local protestors and mainstream politicians were joined by conspiracy theorists and Far Right groups.
I was among many people to complain at the time, disgusted at the BBC’s smear. I was at the protest myself, the first of any kind that I had attended. Since my previous exposure to similar protests – such as those against the lockdowns over the course of the pandemic – was limited to watching clips on Twitter, I was slightly anxious. Were things likely to kick off? Were the police going to ‘kettle’ us all in a side street off the Strand?
I could not have been more wrong. I was overwhelmed by how many families were there, abundant small children clambering up the bases of Landseer’s lions. There were a handful of Tory politicians some of whom spoke from the platform, but there was no other political presence whatsoever.
When I saw the BBC London news coverage, I was therefore appalled. I wasn’t too concerned about the claim that there were a few conspiracy theorists there – quite a few placard-holders were plainly ‘Team James’ – but “Far Right groups” seemed to me something for which there was no evidence at all. This appeared to be an attempt on the BBC’s part to suppress dissent towards the Ulez expansion by smearing opponents. This struck me as a sinister turn from the national broadcaster and so I complained.
On April 21st, the BBC responded to my complaint as follows:
BBC London had deployed a reporter to the protest and she witnessed, and documented, first hand, motifs on tabards and placards with explicit Nazi references, along with other epithets about world order and democracy.
I walked around the protest for about three hours on April 15th and I must have missed the explicit Nazi references, presumably displayed by the “Far Right groups”. I complained again, asking for evidence.
On May 12th the BBC rejected my additional complaint as follows:
We remain satisfied our BBC London reporter gave an honest account of what she witnessed that day.
At this point, I escalated the complaint to the ECU, one of 44 people to do so on the grounds of both accuracy and impartiality. Today the BBC acknowledged the following:
In relation to “Far Right groups”, we recognised that the [conspiracy theory] groups named above might have Far Right (or indeed Far Left) adherents, but did not consider this to be evidence of the presence of “Far Right groups”. The programme-makers directed our attention to the deployment by some demonstrators of Nazi imagery, symbolism and slogans directed against the Mayor of London which we accepted was consistent with tactics used predominantly by certain Far Right groups, but we saw no grounds for concluding that they were used exclusively by such groups. We also noted the presence of an individual who seemed, from social media postings, very likely to have been associated with the presence of a Far Right group at a previous demonstration, but the evidence fell short of establishing that he was an adherent of that group, and we saw no evidence that other representatives of the group were present. While it was clear from our dealings with the programme-makers that the statement about the presence of Far Right groups was made in good faith, we assessed the evidence differently. In our judgement it was suggestive of the presence of Far Right groups but fell short of establishing that such groups had in fact been represented among the demonstrators. This aspect of the complaint has been upheld.
This shows pretty clearly that the idea of “Far Right groups” being present at the protest was a complete fiction. Feelings are running high about Khan and some placards quite possibly likened his administrative style to infamous dictators of the past but for anyone to have spun this as evidence of “Far Right groups” is a stretch to say the least. As for the “individual who seemed, from social media postings, very likely to have been associated with the presence of a Far Right group at a previous demonstration”, the words ‘straws’ and ‘clutching’ spring to mind.
In addition to upholding the complaint about accuracy, the BBC has also partially upheld the complaint on impartiality which derives from the close resemblance of the BBC’s language in its news report to that of Khan himself at a People’s Town Hall in Ealing in March. When asked about people’s misgivings about the Ulez expansion, he said that its opponents were “in coalition with the Far Right” and “joining hands with some of those outside who are part of a Far Right group”.
The BBC has now acknowledged the “impression of bias” and upheld this part of the complaint, while spinning it as something of an accident, something that “might well have been perceived as lending a degree of corroboration to the Mayor’s comments”.
While it is a step in the right direction for the BBC to uphold two aspect of the complaints, there remain unanswered questions about its broader coverage of Ulez and to what extent its coverage is being unduly influenced by Sadiq Khan.
Consider the article in the Daily Express published on 24th June about a senior producer at the BBC that made contact with Reform U.K. London Mayoral candidate Howard Cox to blow the whistle on the BBC’s suppression of coverage critical of the Ulez expansion. (Cox, by the way, was also in attendance at the April demo but had not at that point declared as a Mayoral candidate):
The leak to Reform U.K. Mayoral candidate Howard Cox… reveals that Mr. Khan had applied pressure on the BBC over reporting the issue. It said that journalists wanting to run stories now needed top level clearance over something that is set to be a major electoral issue in the London Mayor election and general election both next year.
The Express article went on to explain email exchanges that the senior BBC producer had received:
The BBC producer was told in an email to news staff from Dan Fineman, Senior News Editor BBC South East: “If any platforms are doing a story on Ulez charges in the South and Southeast we now need to do a mandatory referral to Jason Horton or Robert Thomson (re) outstanding complaint with the Mayor of London which is very live at the moment.”
Jason Horton is the BBC’s Director of Production for BBC Local Services and Robert Thomson is Head of the BBC in London and the East. This suggests a level of collusion between very senior staff at the BBC and Sadiq Khan with a direct influence over editorial approaches to news coverage of anti-Ulez protests.
It was also reported by the whistleblower that a BBC London investigation into Ulez was now been paused because of the Mayor of London’s pressure on the BBC.
In short, Khan appears to be exercising at the very least some form of influence over the BBC’s coverage of anti-Ulez protests. This is not an “impression of bias” – this more closely resembles a real, undiluted bias against anti-Ulez campaigners on the part of the nation’s publicly-funded broadcaster at the behest of the Labour Mayor of London. The BBC has come up with a partial and grudging apology but I suspect that the truth about its willingness to suppress dissent with “Far Right” smears is more extensive than it’s prepared to admit. I hope that doesn’t make me a “conspiracy theorist”.
Is the Era of ‘Global Boiling’ Really Upon Us? The Climate Fear-Mongers are Becoming a Laughing Stock
BY CHRIS MORRISON | THE DAILY SCEPTIC | AUGUST 2, 2023
Increasing numbers of commentators are starting to call peak Net Zero and this process is being helped by the crumbling of the decades-long suffocating stranglehold exerted on ‘settled’ climate science by the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). The latest body-blow to its credibility has come from last year’s joint winner of the Nobel Prize for Physics, Dr John Clauser. He has warned the Nobel Foundation not to model a proposed new body to police ‘misinformation’ on the IPCC, adding: “In my opinion the IPCC is one of the worst sources of dangerous misinformation.” It would seem unhelpful that at a time when Clauser voiced his criticism, the UN’s Secretary General headed for a public stage and upgraded global warming to “global boiling”.
Of course, by ramping up the fear to ‘boiling’ point, the unhinged Antonio Guterres has fallen into the ‘worse than Hitler’ trap. Where can you go after you call someone a Nazi, or tell a world audience that the Earth is bubbling beneath its feet?
Details have recently been made public about the short speech Clauser gave to young scientists in South Korea. He implored them to follow the scientific method based on good observations and experiments. Good observations always overrule purely speculative theory, he told them. Referring to climate science, he noted the current world was “literally awash, saturated, with pseudoscience, with bad science, with scientific misinformation and disinformation”.
Referring often to climate science, he told his audience that if they are doing good science they must beware since it may take them on paths that lead them into “political incorrect” areas. “If you’re a good scientist, you will follow them… I can confidently say that there is no real climate crisis and that climate change does not cause extreme events,” he said.
Easier said than done of course since most scientists are funded in one form or another by governments. In the area of climate, politicians require scientific backing for their collectivist plans to re-order society around Net Zero. Huge amounts of public money are flowing into untested, unproductive new technologies, few of which would be viable in a free capital market. Green subsidy hunters are making serious fortunes with little risk involved. The climate narrative is absurd, says MIT Emeritus Professor Richard Lindzen, but trillions of dollars says it is not absurd.
There are a number of fault lines that run through the IPCC science narrative. It maintains that all changes in the climate since 1900 are caused by humans burning fossil fuel. This is plainly odd since it asks us to ignore almost all natural variation, having accepted that natural causes were responsible for climate change in the past. It also suggests that the current period in the Earth’s history is the hottest for 125,000 years, ignoring copious evidence that temperatures were much higher in the Holocene Thermal Maximum about 9,700 – 5,700 years ago. The IPCC would have us believe that higher levels of carbon dioxide cause the temperature to inevitably rise, despite observational evidence throughout the paleo record that contradicts that simple hypothesis. After 50 years of trying, not a single credible paper has yet been published providing conclusive proof for the anthropogenic global warming boiling hypothesis.
Earlier this year, a group of scientists operating through the Clintel Foundation examined the latest work of the IPCC. The authors were damning about its most recent report, finding it emphasised worst-case scenarios, rewrote climate history and had a huge bias against good news. Its standout revelation was that 42% of the IPCC’s claims were based on climate models fed with the implausible assumption that global temperatures would rise by around 5°C in less than 80 years. Deep in the main body of its work, even the IPCC admits this is of “low likelihood”. Even worse, Clintel noted, was that about half the extreme climate model forecasts found across the entire body of scientific literature are based on this 5°C boost. It is a fair bet that almost 100% of the clickbait scare stories that dominate mainstream media are taken from these sources.
The former IPCC author and economics professor Roger Pielke Jr. thinks that the continuing reliance on these implausible assumptions by the IPCC is “one of the most significant failures of scientific integrity in the 21st Century”.
The tide could well be turning as the voices of previously cancelled giants of science are heard. In the UK, there is increasing media interest in the retrospective uplifts to temperature datasets enabling previous inconvenient pauses to be removed, and ‘records’ to be declared at regular intervals. Not before time, the Met Office’s habit of declaring heat highs amidst the jet exhaust at British airports is becoming something of a national joke.
One of those science giants, atmospheric scientist Richard Lindzen, recently told a U.S. government body that climate science “is awash with manipulated data, which provides no reliable scientific evidence”. In his view, the IPCC only issues “government-dictated findings”, noting that the important, and much quoted, “Summary for Policymakers” must be approved for publication by all governments. He further noted that, “misrepresentation, exaggeration, cherry-picking or outright lying pretty much covers all the so-called global warming caused by fossil fuel and CO2”.
Dr Clauser signed off his inspiring talk to young scientists in South Korea by telling them to observe nature directly so they could determine real truth. “Use the information gained from carefully performed experiments and research to stop the spread of scientific misinformation, disinformation,” he said.
Chris Morrison is the Daily Sceptic’s Environment Editor.
Helping Palestinians in need is not ‘terrorism’; they are the victims of Israeli terrorism
By Ibrahim Hewitt | MEMO | August 6, 2023
I know none of the details of the arrest of Palestinian Amin Abu Rashid and his daughter Israa in Holland recently. I do know, however, that the track record of European governments in levelling allegations of “funding terrorism” against Palestinian-European organisations over the past twenty years or so has been abysmal. In almost every case, when taken to court the authorities have lost the legal argument.
Will this happen again with Abu Rashid and Israa? Time will tell, but what is interesting is that it introduces to the world another no doubt well-funded “Israeli activist group”, Ad Kan.
It is well known, of course, that all allegations of “terrorism” and “funding Hamas” arise from “intelligence” shared by Israel and its propaganda groups in Israel and abroad. When the charity of which I was chair of trustees for almost 25 years, Interpal, was declared to be a “specially designated global terrorist entity” by the US Treasury in 2003, our name was simply one of a number of organisations and individuals on a list supplied by the Israeli foreign ministry for George W Bush to rubber stamp. The then US president announced to the world 20 years ago this month that our assets in the US were being frozen. I only found out from the BBC website. Interpal has never had any assets in the US, so Bush was simply involved in gesture politics at Israel’s instigation. When the British charity regulator asked the US treasury to provide the evidence for the “terrorist” designation of Interpal, none was forthcoming aside from half a dozen press cuttings.
Post-designation, $120,000 donated to Interpal was taken by a major US bank because all transactions in dollars have to pass through New York. The bank grabbed the $120,000 and still has it.
So when I read that, “Abu Rashid leads the Israa Foundation… which is part of a network known as the Union of [sic] Good.” and that, “The US Department of the Treasury labelled the Union of Good [as] a terrorist group in 2008,” any credibility that these Israeli “investigations” might have had disintegrated. We know how these things work, and credible evidence has little or no role to play.
A number of things have to be borne in mind with such “news”, the first of which is that just because the US Treasury puts an organisation or individual on a “terrorist list”, it doesn’t necessarily mean that the group or person in question is actually a “terrorist”. It simply means that Israel is trying yet again — it’s never really stopped — to prevent any humanitarian aid from getting through to the Palestinians living under its brutal military occupation and siege in the Gaza Strip.
After a number of years trying to have Interpal removed from the same list, our New York lawyer was told by Treasury officials “off the record” that our designation was a “political decision” and State Department intervention would be needed to remove the charity from the list. It wasn’t due to any proven criminal activity; if it was, we would surely have been closed down once the British authorities were presented with the evidence, neither of which happened. Furthermore, a senior Metropolitan Police officer said: “The absence of any police involvement is hugely significant.” I once asked a very senior British Army officer who was showing me around a major military base in the south of England if he was aware of the allegations against Interpal and, by implication, myself as its chairman. “Of course,” he replied, “Interpal; terrorist entity; we know it’s all a load of rubbish.”
When Wikileaks released a transcript of a conversation between US and UK officials about Interpal, the phrase “absent a smoking gun” was mentioned in the discussion about closing Interpal down. In other words, the Americans had no evidence. And the British security authorities, we know, were clear that Israeli “intelligence” claims would not stand up in open court.
What’s more, let us not forget that Abu Rashid and his family are Palestinians who are prevented by Israel from exercising their legitimate right of return to their homeland. Israeli “intelligence” — now there’s a thought — is, therefore, hardly likely to be objective. Israel under Benjamin Netanyahu has been trying for years to get the definition of a “Palestinian refugee” changed so that if the apartheid state allows a few thousand to return it will be seen as having fulfilled its duty. Allowing the 750,000 Palestinian refugees ethnically cleansed in 1948 or their descendants to return to their homes remains a condition of Israel’s membership of the UN that has never been fulfilled. Netanyahu has even been putting pressure on successive US presidents to close down the UN agency set up specifically to help “Palestine refugees”, UNRWA. No UNRWA, no refugees, is his warped Zionist logic.
The article in The National Interest covering Abu Rashid’s arrest is straight from the Israeli propaganda playbook — to use a term from the article — in that it is taken as read that allegations of terrorism are true, without any due legal process, without any evidence being presented in court, and without anyone being found guilty. It does mention the Holy Land Foundation in the US, whose senior officials are in prison and are likely to be for many more years, but it is silent on the fact that the “trial has been criticised by some NGOs, including Human Rights Watch” and was described as a “grave miscarriage of justice” which “capitalised on post-9/11 Islamophobic hysteria” in order to get a conviction. Indeed, “Civil rights attorney Emily Ratner wrote that the use of anonymous and hearsay evidence by the prosecutors was ‘constitutionally questionable’ at best.”
There is also the simple fact to consider that Hamas is a national resistance movement, and resistance against a military occupation is legitimate under international law. That is undeniable, and yet the level of propaganda put out by Israel and its Zionist allies in the West, including media outlets, is such that this is ignored, deliberately. Demonise the victims of Israel’s state terrorism — and the state was founded on terrorism against the British and the Palestinians, remember — and it is an easy next step to demonise those who seek to support the victims with humanitarian aid.
Zionist pressure and threats led to Interpal’s bank accounts being closed down, making it impossible for the charity to operate. Nevertheless, when it was distributing a relatively meagre average of £5 million per annum to Palestinians in desperate need and local community groups trying to fill gaps in healthcare and education provision caused by decades of Israel’s brutal military occupation, it did so with total impartiality. There was never any question of the charity asking individuals or organisations if they were Hamas supporters or Fatah supporters, or supporters of any other Palestinian faction; to do so would have broken Britain’s charity laws, which insist, rightly, that aid must be given solely on the basis of need, and nothing else.
I must confess that I have never Googled to see how much one surface to air missile, for example, might cost; or one AK47 assault rifle. To do so would provide the sort of “evidence” of evil intent that the Zionists and their lackeys in the West would jump on with glee. However, I guess that £5m a year is hardly going to fill anyone’s arsenal, especially when every Interpal penny has been accounted for on charitable expenditure in any case.
The argument of terrorist funding is, therefore, unsustainable, and always has been as far as Interpal is concerned. Whether it will be the same for Amin Abu Rashid and his daughter Israa will no doubt come out as their case proceeds through the courts, if it actually gets that far. On past experience, though, I wouldn’t trust the “evidence” presented against them one iota, especially if it comes from Israeli sources. Israel has too much invested in trying to block all humanitarian aid from getting to the Palestinians, and thus making life as miserable as possible for them in the hope that they will give up and leave their homeland.
In Zionist terminology this is called “silent transfer”. It is an evil concept with an evil objective, which is hardly surprising given the racist nature of Zionism and the state it underpins. Helping Palestinians in desperate need is not “terrorism”; they are the victims of Israel’s state terrorism.
Israel greenlights settler attacks on Palestinians: Army official
The Cradle | August 6, 2023
Israeli military official, Reserve Colonel Kobi Merom, said on 5 August that settler attacks against Palestinians in the occupied West Bank are greenlit by the government and its ministers, according to Hebrew media.
“What we have seen in recent weeks are dozens of terrorist operations [by settlers] against Palestinian villages, without resulting in arrests,” the general said.
These attacks are “greenlit” and supported by government ministers, Merom added, including Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich and others.
“Minister Smotrich allows the establishment of illegal outposts. Amid the state of collapse that we are spiraling down toward … I am not surprised by the armed incident that took place yesterday in Burqa.”
The colonel was referring to the killing of a 19-year-old Palestinian, Qusai Jamal Matan, by extremist settlers east of Ramallah on 4 August.
Armed Israeli settlers had stormed the village of Burqa that day, sparking clashes with residents of the area. Matan was “shot dead by settlers” during the clashes. That same day, an 18-year-old Palestinian was killed by Israeli troops in a military raid on a camp east of Tulkarem.
In response to the settler killing of Matan, Palestinian resistance fighter Kamel Abu Bakr shot and killed an Israeli policeman in Tel Aviv on 5 August, before being killed himself.
“If the prime minister … does not stop this matter and put his foot down at the cabinet table, we are heading toward complete chaos on the ground,” the Israeli colonel warned.
According to the UN, around 600 settler attacks against Palestinians have been recorded since the start of 2023.
Settler violence has always been common in the occupied West Bank, but has surged significantly since Israel’s current government came to power.
Following a resistance operation in February, which killed two Israelis, settlers launched a massive assault on Nablus’ village of Huwara – laying waste to the town and resulting in numerous casualties.
Following the attack, Smotrich called for the village of Huwara to be “wiped out.”
Later in June, another shooting in the Eli settlement prompted settlers to launch a five-day rampage across the West Bank. The rampage occurred with the approval of the Israeli military.
US Aid to Afghanistan ‘Was Plundered in Washington’
By Oleg Burunov – Sputnik – 06.08.2023
The Taliban was hardly behind corrupt deals related to US military aid to Afghanistan, Moscow-based political analyst Alexander Knyazev told Sputnik.
US Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction (SIGAR) John Sopko has warned of “unanticipated consequences” from possible corruption pertaining to America’s hefty spending on Ukraine.
Speaking hours after Senate Democrats blocked an effort to install greater oversight over the billions of dollars of US military aid to Ukraine, Sopko recalled that Washington has sent more money to Kiev in one year than it spent in Afghanistan in 12 years.
SIGAR said that he was “not opposed to spending that” and he just wanted “to make sure it’s done correctly and there’s oversight.” Sopko especially warned about the risk of fueling graft, stressing that in Afghanistan, “corruption was the existential threat.” According to him, “it wasn’t the Taliban. It was corruption that did us in.”
As far as corruption in Afghanistan is concerned, one can already refer to this evil as a thing of the past, Russian political scientist Alexander Knyazev said.
“As for Afghanistan, I understand that we should now mention this kind of corruption in the past tense. First and foremost, there are few facts about the spread of Western weapons outside Afghanistan. Secondly, even external observers disloyal to the Taliban movement underscore a decrease in the level of corruption in Afghanistan after the Taliban came to power there,” Knyazev pointed out.
He added that over the past twenty years, “all Western aid to Afghanistan has been plundered, which importantly was not the work of Afghans.” One way or another, the analyst went on to say, “this period for Afghanistan is over.”
He also said that “the lion’s share of American aid to Afghanistan did not reach the country at all, [because] it was immediately plundered in Washington.”
“Probably, if someone ever calculates the US’ aid to Ukraine that was stealthily stolen, the sum will likely exceed what was pinched from America’s Afghan aid that came between 2001 and 2021,” Knyazev argued.
With the US spending a whopping $2.26 trillion on Afghanistan-related issues, such as the national army and security, within the above-mentioned period, this huge sum finally didn’t help America prevent the Taliban from seizing power in the South Asian country in August 2021.
This resulted in the collapse of the Washington-backed Afghan civilian government and mass evacuations, something that came amid the chaotic withdrawal of the US-led coalition troops from Afghanistan, which wrapped on August 30, 2021.
The Jeddah Talks Backfired On Zelensky
BY ANDREW KORYBKO | AUGUST 6, 2023
The latest Western-centric Ukrainian peace talks in Jeddah were intended to sway the Global South towards Kiev’s side in the NATO-Russian proxy war by pressuring these countries to support Zelensky’s so-called “peace formula”. That goal was always doomed to fail from the get-go, however, since this event also provided the representatives of neutral countries like China and India with the opportunity to share their own envisaged endgame to the conflict as well as their shared Russian partner’s.
This resultant dialogue led to the meeting being a double-edged sword for Zelensky. On the one hand, he had yet another high-profile opportunity to repeat his talking points about why Russia needs to be punished for its special operation, but this time with all of that country’s BRICS partners in attendance. On the other hand, however, China and India ensured that his demands weren’t the only scenario on the table. Just like Zelensky, they too were able to share these views with a diverse international audience.
As was expected, no consensus was reached on the way forward, but Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergey Rybkov revealed on Sunday that Russia’s BRICS partners plan to brief it about the event. This is much more significant than the simple courtesy that it might appear to be at first glance since Moscow will be able to obtain a better understanding of all the attendees’ positions, which will in turn enable it to fine-tune its diplomacy towards those countries that might be interested in a compromise solution.
About that, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov debunked the speculation swirling around the Mainstream Media and even among some in the Alt-Media Community alleging that Russia wants to control more than the four former Ukrainian territories that united with it last September. He reaffirmed on the same day as Ryabkov’s earlier statement that “We just want to control all the land we have now written into our Constitution as ours”, which aligns with what President Putin strongly suggested in June.
This position was already known to Russia’s BRICS partners with whom it’s candidly discussed the special operation, particularly the Chinese and Indian representatives who attended the Jeddah talks. Special Representative on Eurasian Affairs Li Hui and National Security Advisor Ajit Doval each visited Moscow several months back, during which time they met with President Putin. Considering this context, it’s likely that they brought up his stance during the Jeddah talks when explaining their countries’.
Via Special Representative Li and National Security Advisor Doval, President Putin was therefore able to convey his country’s pragmatic position towards this conflict’s endgame to the largest international audience so far, thus breaking through the West’s information blockade. Upon learning that he doesn’t have any maximalist goals unlike Zelensky, those other representatives whose countries truly want peace as soon as possible might be in favor of tacitly recognizing Russia’s gains in exchange for a ceasefire.