By Drago Bosnic | December 9, 2023
Ever since Russia started its full-scale strategic counteroffensive against NATO aggression in Europe, the political West has been insisting on the idea that the Eurasian giant is supposedly “isolated” and an “international pariah.” However, time and again, Moscow keeps debunking this laughable notion. Recent events have not only confirmed this, but are showing that the opposite is happening.
The Qatar trip of German President Frank-Walter Steinmeier has been mired in controversy as he was left waiting at least 30 minutes for someone to greet him during his visit on November 29. This could be partially explained by the fact that Berlin’s position is decidedly pro-Israeli, while Doha is firmly on the Palestinian side, formally at least.
However, this doesn’t explain why Russian President Vladimir Putin got virtually a hero’s welcome in the United Arab Emirates (UAE) during a visit to the Middle Eastern country exactly a week after Steinmeier’s trip to Qatar. These sharply differing, albeit seemingly unrelated events demonstrate an enormous paradigm shift in the geopolitics of the Middle East, arguably the most strategically important region on the planet. After the start of the special military operation (SMO), the political West has been trying to isolate Russia and limit its (geo)political maneuverability. However, ever since, this has only backfired, becoming a sort of litmus test for sovereignty and actual independence from the political West’s diktat.
After the sanctions warfare proved to be a spectacular failure, resulting in Russia even becoming the largest economy in Europe and fifth largest in the world, the United States and its numerous vassals and satellite states tried to find other ways to isolate Moscow and its leadership. That was when the so-called “International Criminal Court” (ICC), effectively a glorified NGO under the full control of the political West, issued an arrest warrant for Putin for allegedly “kidnapping Ukrainian children”, despite the fact that their parents, including enemy combatants, were able to reach them and even take them out of Russia. In contrast, the Neo-Nazi junta’s blatant child trafficking (aided by Washington DC) is completely unreported in the US and European Union.
Worse yet, any information about this horrendous practice is being actively suppressed, along with the fact that pregnant women are being forcibly conscripted by the Kiev regime, as evidenced by the recent attempt by NewsGuard to censor such information. It seems that this blatant hypocrisy is so obvious to the rest of the world which simply decided that Western demands for isolating Russia are unacceptable and should simply be ignored. The UAE could’ve easily chosen to follow basic protocol and greet Putin without any pomp. However, the fact that he was welcomed by Emirati jets painting the colors of the Russian flag in the sky signals something completely different from basic diplomatic protocol.
It should be noted that this in and of itself isn’t only about Putin, but Russia as a whole. Frank-Walter Steinmeier’s role as the German President is largely ceremonial, as most of the political power is officially held by the Chancellor. However, he is the foremost representative of his country and the fact that he was not welcomed as expected shows the increasing isolation of the political West in the actual world, where truly sovereign countries aren’t compelled to follow every foreign demand. Obviously, Putin’s balanced position in regard to the Israel-Gaza conflict certainly contributes to his popularity in the Arab world, but so does his firm stand in the face of NATO aggression, demonstrating time and again that Moscow has a geopolitical backbone.
Putin’s follow-up visit to Saudi Arabia was no less important in this regard, while the mainstream propaganda machine is trying to denigrate both trips. In reality, alarm bells are going off in the US, as having nations that are effectively the cornerstones of the highly exploitative petrodollar system welcome the political West’s archenemy so warmly is certainly a bad omen (for the neocolonialists, obviously). The process of dedollarization is a long-term one and will certainly not be completed overnight, but it’s virtually unstoppable at this point. The blatant theft of hundreds of billions in Russia’s forex (foreign exchange) reserves has left numerous countries worried that their assets are simply not safe, prompting them to find alternatives to the USD.
Another interesting aspect of Putin’s trip was the fact that his Ilyushin Il-96-300PU or “Russian Air Force One” was flanked by four Sukhoi Su-35S fighter jets all the way from Russia to the UAE, flying up to 2500 km nonstop, with no aerial refueling and no drop tanks. As if this technologically unprecedented accomplishment wasn’t brilliant enough, the Russian air superiority fighters did so while armed. They flew over the Caspian Sea, parts of Azerbaijan, the entirety of Iran and the Persian Gulf, touching down in Abu Dhabi. Now, it should be noted that countries rarely allow such escorts (much less armed) for state visits, but Moscow secured their free passage over three countries, including the temporary basing in the UAE. This has clear geopolitical implications.
Drago Bosnic is an independent geopolitical and military analyst.
December 9, 2023
Posted by aletho |
Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism | Germany, Middle East, Russia |
1 Comment
Moldovan municipalities controlled by “anti-European” forces will be deprived of funds provided by the EU, the country’s President Maia Sandu has said.
The president issued the threat on Saturday while speaking at a forum in Chisinau that brought together some 500 mayors, although the gathering was boycotted by certain opposition parties.
“Regarding European money, I want to ask you: those mayors who are against the EU, do you think that the European Union should give you money if you do not support the EU? Where is the logic here?” Sandu stated.
All municipalities will receive “state funds,” yet only those supporting Moldova’s EU aspirations and “European values’’ will be provided with money coming from “from the EU and taxpayers of EU countries,” the president explained. Sandu also accused Eurosceptic politicians of populism, stating that some of them use “anti-European rhetoric to collect votes,” while a “simple analysis shows that Moldova has survived and even begun to develop only thanks to the support of our external partners.”
In recent weeks, the Moldovan president has repeatedly threatened to slash funding to opposition-controlled municipalities. The hostile rhetoric comes in the aftermath of local elections held in early November when 898 mayoral positions were contested across the country.
Sandu’s ruling Party of Action and Solidarity (PAS) failed to score a decisive victory, winning 291 races, with the main opposition force, the Party of Socialists, led by ex-President Igor Dodon taking 144. The rest were taken by either minor parties or independents. PAS suffered losses in key localities, including the country’s capital of Chisinau and the second-largest city of Balti.
Earlier, Dodon dismissed Sandu’s threats to slash funding to opposition controlled municipalities as “absurd,” stating that the external support to the country has not exactly been coming for free.
“The loans that the government is now actively taking from EU countries, in an attempt to plug the holes that have emerged due to the failures in the country’s governance, will have to be paid back by all citizens of the republic, including those who, according to Sandu and members of her party, voted incorrectly,” Dodon stated.
December 9, 2023
Posted by aletho |
Civil Liberties | European Union, Moldova |
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A report released by Statistics Canada (“StatsCan”) on 27 November showed that the number of covid deaths in highly vaccinated Canada rose by 36% last year.
The largest increase was in Atlantic Canada, where the number of covid deaths per 100,000 population in 2022 was more than seven times higher than in 2021. Atlantic Canada also had the highest uptake of covid “vaccines.”
As well as soaring covid deaths, Canadian government data reveals a staggering 135% death spike classified as “other ill-defined and unspecified causes of mortality.”
The report also reveals that Canadian life expectancy dropped for the third year in a row. The falling life expectancy trend coincidentally started in 2020.
According to StatsCan, the nation recorded a record number of covid deaths, despite high vaccination uptake and the pandemic having ended.
As of 10 September 2023, 83% of Canadians have had at least one dose of the covid injection.
Except for Nova Scotia where 83% of the population had at least one dose, Atlantic Canada – which makes up less than 7% of Canada’s population and comprises the provinces of New Brunswick, Newfoundland and Labrador, Nova Scotia, and Prince Edward Island – had higher vaccination uptake than the national average of 83%: New Brunswick (87%), Newfoundland and Labrador (96%) and Prince Edward Island (90%).
According to StatsCan, Atlantic Canada also had a seven-fold increase in covid deaths last year; 59.5 deaths per 100,000 population in 2022 versus 8.3 deaths per 100,000 in 2021.
Despite the clear safety signal of increased deaths, the Government has an autumn booster campaign recommending that Canadians get “an updated covid vaccine dose.”
Maxime Bernier, the leader of the conservative People’s Party of Canada (“PPC”), broke the story on Twitter about “more shocking data on the number and causes of deaths” in Canada released by StatsCan. He tweeted:
In a PPC newsletter dated 5 December, Bernier delved into the implications of the report, saying, “These deaths have almost TRIPLED since 2020 from 6,841 to 16,043 in 2022.”
“What happened in 2021 that could have caused this explosion of unexplained deaths over the last 2 years? An experimental pharmaceutical product was rushed to market and forced on Canadian society, is what happened. They told us it was ‘safe and effective’ but over the last few years we have learned more and more about how that covid shot was neither,” Bernier said.
The PPC leader then accused the establishment of ignoring such a significant development, saying this breaking news was “ignored by all of our crooked establishment politicians and the dishonest corporate media.”
Sources for this article include:
December 9, 2023
Posted by aletho |
Civil Liberties, Science and Pseudo-Science | Canada, COVID-19 Vaccine, Human rights |
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Achieving Net Zero means building 80 million kilometres of new and refurbished power lines within 17 years, equivalent to wrapping the Earth 2,000 times with new electricity grid capacity. All the high voltage lines built in the last century will need to be built again by 2040 to benefit from all the intermittent power produced by the vast number of wind turbines. The ecological costs of all this can only be guessed at. Electricity cables are made of aluminium and copper and strung on giant pylons made of steel and supported by large concrete bases. For their part, wind turbines are a menace to both avian and oceanic wildlife, consume vast quantities of raw materials, have a limited lifespan and are an increasing blight on both inland and offshore landscapes.
If the International Energy Agency (IEA) gets its way, you ain’t seen nothing yet. The roll-out of high voltage lines will be on an unprecedented scale. In a report on global electricity grids issued to coincide with COP28, the IEA states that “an unprecedented level of attention from policymakers and business leaders is needed to ensure grids support clean energy transitions and maintain electricity security”. Major changes in how grids operate and are regulated are said to be essential. Annual investment in grids, which has remained broadly stagnant, needs to double to more than $600 billion a year by 2030.
The Australian science journalist Jo Nova is in no mood to be understanding: “Remember, it’s not their fault that renewables need far more land, more space, more backup and more infrastructure – it’s our fault we didn’t build a world ready for their holy energy.”
The IEA paints a world where electricity grids are becoming a “bottleneck” for transitions to Net Zero emissions. While investment in renewables has been increasing rapidly, global investment in grids “has barely changed”. In Europe, policymakers can speed up progress on grids by “enhancing planning, ensuring regulatory risk assessments allow for anticipatory investment, and streamlining administrative processes”. In plain English this means ripping up local planning laws in over-populated Britain and blanketing the country with millions of giant electricity pylons. These will be required to bring energy to urban areas from power intermittently generated far away in the North Sea and off the Scottish coast.
It is perhaps no coincidence that the British Government recently set out “major plans” to speed up connections and rapidly increase capacity on the electricity grid. The press release cunningly linked it with a £960 million government investment in “green industries”. The new package is “expected” to bring forward £90 billion of investment over the next 10 years. The Government promised that it will “reward” those living closest to new infrastructure with up to £1,000 a year off their electricity bills. In another part of the release, this is downgraded to communities “could” benefit, and the bung is limited to 10 years.
Whatever the money is spent on, it is likely to be chickenfeed compared with the growing £12 billion annual subsidy paid by electricity consumers to the producers of renewable energy. But the next British government will face an empty exchequer and soaring state debt. Lack of finance along with the end of low interest rates and free money printing is likely to kill many of the green fantasises currently being peddled by collectivist Net Zero fanatics. It is becoming clearer by the day, to an increasing number of people, that renewable energy is unreliable and uneconomic, and has an insatiable requirement for financial subsidy.
Emeritus Cambridge Professor Michael Kelly has long been a critic of the blind, un-costed rush to Net Zero. The U.K. electricity grid will require upgrading from top to bottom, he wrote in a recent GWPF essay. Leaving aside the massive roll out of long-distance transmission lines required, he noted the inadequacies of all the local cabling and sub-stations built before the need to charge electric cars and run heat pumps. “The whole distribution system will need to be upgraded… the work will be extraordinarily expensive, but without it there will either be regular brownouts, or drivers will be told where and when they can charge their batteries,” he explained.
Professor Kelly believes it is a failure of the British political machinery, notably the work of the unelected Climate Change Committee. “We have set out to decarbonise the economy without anyone having thought through all the engineering issues, let alone put a cost on the exercise,” he concluded.
But as Jo Nova observes, it is all our fault. “Apparently, we should have paid attention and built the right grid and now due to our laziness we will have to rush in another 80 million kilometres of interconnectors, just like that,” she writes. Tell the children they’ve been lied to, she concludes. “The Green future is an industrial wasteland of concrete and steel built to line the pockets of billionaires and bankers.”
Chris Morrison is the Daily Sceptic’s Environment Editor.
December 9, 2023
Posted by aletho |
Corruption, Economics, Malthusian Ideology, Phony Scarcity | UK |
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IMF Chief Kristalina Georgieva has called for every government to implement some form of carbon taxes or “carbon pricing” in the near future.
Yes, we’re into week two of the UN’s COP28 climate change summit, and the hits just keep on coming.
For example, yesterday it was announced sixty-three world governments have pledged to reduce the emissions from air conditioners and electrics fans.
[You can read a detailed breakdown of the other pledges made during COP28’s first week here.]
Speaking at COP28 in Dubai, and repeated in an interview with the Guardian, Georgieva extolled the virtues of “carbon pricing” and heaped praise on the EU and Canada for their implementation:
When you put a price on carbon, decarbonisation accelerates. The Europeans introduced the emission trading scheme [in 2005] and they have been growing and yet emissions went down by 37%. You see the same thing in Canada with their carbon tax.”
While both the speech and interview discuss the proposed carbon taxes in terms of corporations as “major polluters”, any tax applied to big business would be directly passed onto private citizens via price increases.
The Guardian acknowledges this, but of course, decides to add a weasel-word qualification [emphasis added]:
However, attractive though a carbon price may be in economic theory, in practice governments are reluctant to impose such explicit prices and taxes, because they can easily be attacked, and because they hit poorer people hardest, if badly applied.
“If badly applied”, sure.
The truth is economic destruction, designed to lower the standard of living for ordinary people, is the whole point of “carbon taxes”. just as it was the point of lockdowns.
Deceptive language aside, the undeniable fact that any carbon tax – corporate or individual – would directly harm the poorest is clearly understood by the people who would seek to enforce them.
Not that they have a problem with that, you understand, their concern is merely that purely public rage and/or civil disobedience makes direct taxation difficult to implement. The Guardian article gives the game away by referencing France’s Gilets Jaunes protests as an example.
So, even as Georgieva names carbon taxes the “perfect” solution to climate change, she recognizes the need to rely on more indirect methods.
Yes, the best way to introduce implement carbon prices [is] a carbon tax…But it is not politically feasible in some countries … We can also use regulatory compliance in which standards lead to implicit prices on carbon.”
These “regulations” and “implicit” prices would not be “carbon taxes” in name, but they would very much be so in spirit.
Again the Guardian cites an example, the EU’s recent “carbon border adjustment mechanisms”, which charge more import duties on goods coming from countries with “lax” emissions policies.
A global version of those rules is likely just one of many such measures we can expect moving forward since, according to Georgieva, the world’s biggest financial institutions are all working together on this issue:
[T]he IMF, World Bank, OECD and World Trade Organization [have] set up a taskforce to examine the different carbon prices that are implied in countries around the world by their carbon policies and regulations.”
The head of IMF has spoken, and the World Bank and World Trade Organization are all on board: Carbon Taxes are inevitable. The only question is what they decide to call them.
All the world’s biggest financial heavy-hitters are coming together to figure out the best way to scam people out of their hard-earned money… for the good of the planet, obviously.
December 9, 2023
Posted by aletho |
Deception, Economics, Malthusian Ideology, Phony Scarcity | Canada, European Union, IMF |
3 Comments
The leader of Germany’s coalition government attempted to scapegoat Russia for his country’s self-inflicted economic woes as Berlin faces the threat of deindustrialization.
In a recent address at the Social Democratic Party (SPD) congress, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz blamed Russia for halting gas supplies to Europe amid rising energy costs.
He accused Russian President Vladimir Putin of stopping gas flows through a functional pipeline, significantly reducing Germany’s gas intake and contributing to a shortfall in Europe’s energy reserves.
“Russia: Yes, Russia stopped supplying energy to Europe… It was the Russian president who halted gas supplies through a working gas pipeline,” Schoz stated. “This has implications for energy prices.”
But that narrative collapses in light of his country’s role in imposing sanctions on Moscow and restricting the flow of Russian energy to Western Europe.
Scholz’s decision to align with the US and Britain in sanctioning Russian energy sources worsened Germany’s problems.
The nation has denied itself around 120 billion cubic meters of Russian gas as a result. Germany has instead increased gas imports from Norway and built new liquified natural gas (LNG) [terminals] on its northern coast to import more-expensive supplies from the US — all choices made by the West, not Moscow.
The gas supply situation worsened further following last year’s terrorist attacks on the Nord Stream 1 and 2 gas pipelines that run from Russia to Germany under the Baltic Sea. Several countries, including Germany, Sweden, and Denmark, have conducted investigations into the incident, but have failed to name a culprit and refused to share their findings with Russia.
Russian authorities have accused the US and Britain as the main forces behind the attack on the Nord Stream pipelines.
Nikolai Shulginov, head of the Russian Ministry of Energy, stated in November that Russia had not “closed” the western direction of energy supplies and continues to be a reliable gas supplier even under current challenging conditions.
December 9, 2023
Posted by aletho |
Deception, Russophobia |
2 Comments
On Sunday, December 17, Dr. Jay Bhattacharya of Stanford, will debate Dr. Kate Klonick, Associate Professor of Law at St. John’s University Law School, on whether Judge Terry Doughty’s July 4 injunction restricting the Biden Administration’s communications with social media platforms hindered or helped “national internet policy.”
The topic refers to the federal district court’s 155-page ruling in Missouri v. Biden, which ordered the federal government to halt its efforts to induce Big Tech to censor its political opponents. Judge Doughty wrote that if the plaintiffs’ allegations are true, the case “arguably involves the most massive attack against free speech in United States’ history.”
Dr. Bhattacharya is a Plaintiff in the lawsuit, which alleges that he and his colleagues “experienced extensive censorship on social media” for their criticism of the US Government’s Covid policies. In his affidavit, Dr. Bhattacharya testifies that there was a “relentless covert campaign of social-media censorship of our dissenting view from the government’s preferred message.”
Dr. Klonick previewed her support for the Government’s ability to work with private companies to control the flow of information in a July op-ed for the New York Times, “The Future of Online Speech Shouldn’t Belong to One Trump-Appointed Judge in Louisiana.”
Klonick’s article raises factual and analytical questions that Bhattacharya should raise in their debate.
Does the Future of Online Speech Belong to Anyone?
Klonick’s headline is fundamentally at odds with the concept of free speech. Under the First Amendment, speech does not belong to any person or entity. Future speech receives heightened protections under Supreme Court precedent to curtail prior restraint.
Next Sunday, Dr. Bhattacharya should ask Klonick: who should “speech” belong to? This is not a pedantic or rhetorical point; those with control over information instinctively protect their own interests. A survey of American power structures demonstrates the corruption that power breeds.
Should the future of speech belong to CISA? The Department of Homeland Security subdivision monitored speech in the 2020 election through “switchboarding,” a process in which it flagged content for removal from social media platforms.
The US Security State censored posts related to natural immunity, Hunter Biden’s laptop, the lab-leak theory, and side effects of the vaccine, many of which were later proven true. In each instance, the suppression of information benefitted the country’s most powerful institutions.
Or should it belong to the Biden Administration? Every day, the White House slowly kills Julian Assange in Belmarsh Prison. The President hasn’t accused the Wikileaks publisher of falsehoods; instead, Assange has spent over ten years in confinement for disrupting the preferred narrative of the American political class.
Should speech belong to unelected bureaucrats? Biden cronies like Rob Flaherty and Andy Slavitt have worked for years to control Americans’ access to information, including censoring “mal-information,” meaning “often-true information” that they consider “sensational.”
Should it instead belong to health officials like Dr. Anthony Fauci? Fauci learned that he was complicit in funding the Wuhan Institute of Virology on January 27, 2020, and orchestrated a cover-up campaign to shield himself from criticism and potential legal liability. He called for a “quick and devastating… take down (sic)” of the Great Barrington Declaration, co-authored by Dr. Bhattacharya, because it questioned his judgment on lockdowns.
Our First Amendment demands that Congress shall make no law abridging the freedom of speech or of the press. Alleged falsehood does not overturn this principle. As the Supreme Court recognized in United States v. Alvarez: “Some false statements are inevitable if there is to be an open and vigorous expression of views in public and private conversation.”
Free speech is predicated on the notion that it belongs to no man or government entity. Klonick’s entire position is based on her opposition to that pillar of constitutional liberty.
The Flaws in Klonick’s Argument
Beyond the title, each prong of Dr. Klonick’s argument relies on falsehoods. First, she described the case as “part of a wider war conservatives believe they are fighting, in which tech executives and Democratic government officials are supposedly colluding to censor conservative voices.”
Like Professor Larry Tribe, the censors use terms like believe and supposedly to imply the censorship doesn’t exist. They call it a “thoroughly debunked conspiracy theory” while ignoring the documented suppression of Alex Berenson, Jay Bhattacharya, the Great Barrington Declaration, Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., and others.
Klonick never mentions that Facebook banned users who promoted the lab-leak hypothesis at the behest of the CDC, that the Biden Administration launched a campaign to censor dissent surrounding vaccines in July 2021, or that the Twitter Files demonstrated the infiltration of the US Security State in Big Tech. Acknowledging those facts would unravel her premise.
Second, Klonick argued that the injunction was “overbroad” because it “seems to prevent anyone in the Biden administration from having any kind of communication with online platforms about matters related to speech.”
Here, she either didn’t read the order or deliberately misrepresented it. The injunction does not “prevent anyone” in government from communicating with online platforms “about matters related to speech,” as she claims; to the contrary, the injunction explicitly permits the Defendants to communicate with social media companies provided it does not infringe upon “free speech [protected] by the Free Speech Clause in the First Amendment.”
Third, she described the Biden Administration’s demands to social media giants to remove content as “classic examples of what political scientists call jawboning: the government’s use of public appeals or private channels to induce change or compliance from businesses.”
This ignores the inter-agency and systemic nature of what Michael Shellenberger calls the “Censorship Industrial Complex.” Recent reports have revealed military contractors’ role in establishing systems for global censorship and the Intelligence Community’s direct involvement in the operations of our information centers.
The “content moderation” demands were not mere requests that could be freely accepted or denied. As Brownstone has detailed, they were mafia-like tactics where thuggish officials used the threat of retaliation to demand compliance.
Klonick exemplifies the censors’ repeated strategy: deny, deflect, and defend. The prongs of her augment are inherently contradictory. She defends the censorship tactics that she pretends don’t exist. Further, she either remains willfully blind to the corruption behind the usurpation of First Amendment freedoms or deliberately omits any mention of it.
No matter her intentions or misunderstandings, her aim is unconstitutional.
The Pretext for Tyranny
Pro-censorship advocates like Klonick and The New York Times imply that the internet presents unique challenges that require the government to “stifle disinformation.” But “disinformation” has long been the pretext for tyrants to banish unwanted speech.
In 1919, the Supreme Court upheld the Wilson Administration’s convictions of journalists, immigrants, and presidential candidate Eugene Debs for their opposition to the Great War. Charles Schenck, a pamphleteer, argued that the military draft violated the US Constitution. Debs told his followers, “You need to know that you are fit for something better than slavery and cannon fodder.”
Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. affirmed their jail sentences, offering the now-famous slander that the First Amendment did not protect “falsely shouting fire in a crowded theater.”
Holmes’ metaphor was a precursor to disinformation. It dismissed the dissidents as liars and accused them of endangering those around them. In the Covid era, we saw the slanderous nature of Holmes’ glib principle return to the public square as men like Dr. Bhattacharya were accused of killing grandmothers, hating teachers, and spreading Russian propaganda.
A century after the censorship of the Great War, Dr. Klonick asserts that the future of speech should belong to someone, just not Trump-appointed judges. But history, through figures such as Holmes, warns us of the tyranny inherent in that principle.
As one Irish Senator recently demonstrated, censors justify their totalitarianism in the name of the “common good.” They march under innocuous banners like public health, anti-racism, and civility.
But the results always serve the censors’ interests, stifling dissent to augment power.
Judge Doughty’s injunction may have flaws, but on the question of whether it advances or hinders free speech in the United States, the answer is undeniable. Missouri v. Biden is a litmus test for Americans. Either the Government has a right to curate citizens’ newsfeeds by using the power of the federal government to nationalize our information centers, or we embrace the First Amendment and unshackle ourselves from the militarized system of informational warfare that has dominated our airwaves for over three years. Dr. Klonick must answer, who would she appoint to control the future of our speech, to determine whether there really is fire in the theater?
December 9, 2023
Posted by aletho |
Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance | Covid-19, Human rights, New York Times, United States |
1 Comment
Judicial Watch has come forward with newly acquired evidence of an intriguing alliance during the US 2020 election. The investigative body was able to obtain, via a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) suit, a series of records demonstrating a comprehensive synergy between the Department of Homeland Security’s Cybersecurity and Information Security Agency (CISA) and a controversial entity, the Election Integrity Partnership (EIP).
These files reveal a concerted effort to execute “real-time narrative tracking” on principal social media networks during the critical days leading up to the 2020 election. Interestingly, these records illustrate instances of social media post “takedowns” and an intentional avoidance of creating public records that would be subject to the FOIA process.
These records also allow us a peek into the operations of EIP. Originally known as the Election Misinformation Partnership, it invested in monitoring online election discourse round the clock, especially prioritizing “disinformation that is going viral.”
A lawsuit launched under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) gave Judicial Watch access to the records. The lawsuit was deemed necessary in response to a lack of transparency from the DHS, which did not respond to a formal request submitted by Judicial Watch on October 5, 2022.
This data was part of an extensive request by Judicial Watch that included all communication records between CISA and EIP, minute details of a meeting between DHS officials and EIP members on July 9, 2020, and all records of communication between CISA and Stanford University’s Internet Observatory or the University of Washington’s Center for an Informed Public, specifically regarding the Election Integrity Partnership, the 2020 US election, online misinformation and disinformation, or various social media platforms.
The Election Integrity Partnership, established right before the Presidential elections in July 2020, was composed of four major entities: Stanford Internet Observatory (SIO), the Atlantic Council’s Digital Forensic Research Lab, University of Washington’s Center for an Informed Public, and social media analytics firm Graphika.
This partnership provided a valuable service to federal bodies, such as Homeland’s Cybersecurity Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA), enabling them to file tickets for flagging or censoring specific social media posts and online stories. It also extended similar privileges to three liberal organizations – the Democratic National Committee, Common Cause, and the NAACP – along with the Homeland-funded Elections Infrastructure Information Sharing and Analysis Center.
In 2023, a report by the Committee on the Judiciary and the Select Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government revealed the drastic evolution of CISA. Established in 2018 to protect critical infrastructure from cyber threats, it had emerged by 2020 as the central conduit for domestic surveillance and censorship of social media by the federal government. CISA’s focus shifted to reporting supposed disinformation on social media. By the following year, they had officially formed a team specializing in misinformation, disinformation, and malinformation. As criticism intensified in 2022 and 2023, CISA sought to obscure its activities, ostensibly serving a purely “informational” role despite judicious allegations of unconstitutional conduct.
“These records show the lengths to which a ‘Homeland Security’ Deep State agency went in its effort to censor and suppress Americans during and after the 2020 election,” said Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton. “That it took a federal lawsuit to extract these disturbing records should raise additional worries about what else this Biden administration is up to.”
December 9, 2023
Posted by aletho |
Civil Liberties, Deception, Full Spectrum Dominance | Human rights, United States |
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In case you hadn’t noticed, the liberal media, and the liberal Establishment behind it, hates “right-wing extremists.” Since 2016, when Trump was elected on a control-the-borders platform, “right-wing extremism” has replaced “Islamic terrorism” as the new bogeyman. Don’t like mandatory vaccines and COVID lockdowns? You’re a “right-wing extremist” and deserve to be censored. Don’t like censorship? You’re defending “right-wing extremists” so you must be one yourself. Don’t like the war on Russia? You must be a “right-wing extremist” like Putin, who is the new Hitler because he doesn’t like LGBTQ indoctrination and mandatory sex change surgery for toddlers.
In the past, being antiwar, pro-free-speech, pro-civil-liberties, and pro-alternative-medicine put you on the left side of the spectrum. Now those are all signs of “right-wing extremism.”
What’s so terrible about all this “right-wing extremism”? Ultimately, it’s all about the Nazis. If you are pro-free-speech, you’re giving a platform to Nazis. If you support the COVID dissidents, you must like that one guy with the swastika tattoo at the rally where RFK Jr. spoke. And if you don’t support the war on Russia, and refuse to click your heels and sig heil for Zelensky, it must be because you are a follower of the new Hitler, Vladimir Putin.
The logic goes something like this: Right-wing extremists are Nazis. Nazis, as we all know, commit genocide. Therefore if we allow extremists to support border control, oppose war on Russia, speak their minds without censorship, and practice alternative medicine instead of masking and jabbing, one thing will lead to another and pretty soon they’ll be committing genocide.
You might say it’s the new domino theory.
What makes the whole thing even crazier is that there are really only two places on Earth where “right-wing extremist Nazis” are committing genocide: Israel under fuhrer Netanyahu, and Ukraine under fuhrer Zelenksy. But the liberal media, despite its ostensible hatred of right-wing extremist Nazis, supports both genocides! Zelinsky’s effort to murder and expel the Russian-speaking people of Eastern Ukraine, and obliterate the culture of any who remain, is a textbook case of genocide, and a direct descendant of Hitler’s lebensraum project with its planned murder and expulsion of millions of Slavs. And Netanyahu’s even bloodier attempt to murder and expel the Palestinians is orders of magnitude worse—probably worse than anything Hitler ever did.
Both Zelensky’s Ukraine and Netanyahu’s Israel are fanatical right-wing ultra-nationalist regimes, built on exaltation of a “master race” (Ukrainians/Jews in one case, and just plain Jews in the other) and the genocidal demonization of the untermenschen (Russian-speaking Christians in Ukraine, Palestinians in Palestine). These two regimes are the apotheosis of everything pro-tolerance, anti-racist, pro-multiculturalism liberals profess to hate. And yet the liberal Establishment loves them, and even runs nonstop pro-genocide propaganda on their behalf. Whatever can those liberals be thinking?
The Cosmopolitan Empire
When we peel back the veneer of increasingly threadbare liberalism, we find that the so-called liberal Establishment isn’t very liberal at all. Its real roots are in Trotskyism and illuminism, not classical Enlightenment liberalism, and its end-game is totalitarian global dictatorship. That, at least, is the argument of Peter Myers’ new book The Cosmopolitan Empire.
The way Myers tells it, since the Enlightenment exploded into the French Revolution, non-conservative forces have basically been divided into two camps. The first camp, the reformists, includes classical liberals, democratic socialists, moderate libertarians, and others seeking gradual, peaceful change. The second camp consists of nihilists, meaning those who seek a clean break with the current order via creative destruction so they can build a global dictatorship on the ruins. Myers traces this group from the Illuminati of Adam Weishaupt through Marxian communism and finally to the neo-Trotskyism that he sees as the real animating force behind today’s pseudo-liberal Establishment.
To his credit, Myers is not afraid of mentioning the elephant in the room: the Jewish connection to the nihilist camp. If Jews have traditionally scorned the goyim societies that hosted them, and occasionally sought to undermine those societies, it seems natural that some would participate in, or even lead, modern movements that sought to destroy traditional societies in service to a utopian vision not unlike the one that has long inspired the many flavors of Jewish messianic millenarianism. That utopian vision posits a Messiah who conquers the world and subjugates the goyim to the Jews, making the world a paradise for Jews, each of whom will own 2800 goyim slaves.
Ostensibly secular nihilist radicals, from Weishaupt to Lenin and Trotsky to H.G. Wells and George Soros, have led disproportionately secular-Jewish movements to destroy traditional religions and cultures in order to create a world state, meaning a technocratic global dictatorship ruled by a privileged elite. This one-world project, not classical liberalism, appears to be the driving force behind today’s Establishment. And that is why the “liberal” establishment supports genocidal uber-nationalists in Ukraine and Occupied Palestine. The Ukrainian Nazis (financed by Jewish oligarchs) have been weaponized against the rebirth of Russia, with its patriotism and Orthodox religion and family values; while the Zio-Nazis have been weaponized against traditional Islamicate civilization.
The faux-liberal Establishment propagandizes for such genocides and bloodbaths not because its highest value is individual freedom and dignity, as classical liberalism would have it, but because its liberal bromides are just a smokescreen for a totalitarian world domination project. In other words, it isn’t the “freedom” of two-year-olds to have their genders re-assigned that motivates them. Instead, the faux-liberals are waging war on the traditional family, the basis of organic traditional social life, because it stands in the way of their totalitarian world state. Likewise they hate Putin not because he disapproves of rainbow flags, but because he is rallying Russia to stand as a sovereign Christian-Muslim nation against impending global dictatorship.
Myers’ schema helps explain why so many atheist Jews have “transitioned” from Trotskyite to neoconservative. Max Shpak wrote:
Perhaps even more significant a factor in the origins of neoconservatism was the emergence of an independent Israeli state. While many Jewish Marxists eagerly supported the Zionist state, the more intellectually consistent Left opposed Zionism on the grounds that all nationalisms, including Jewish ones, are enemies of global proletarian revolution. Thus, Jewish leftists who once advocated internationalism for gentile nations were forced to come to terms with the implications of this ideology for their own nationalist sentiments. Thus, they needed an ideology which would let them have their cake (opposing gentile nationalism) and eat it too (by supporting Israel), and they found just such a worldview with neoconservatism.
The neocons have inherited Trotsky’s project of destroying the nations, and the religions and families on which they are based, in hopes that utopia will emerge from the rubble. By posing as liberals — as in Kagan’s veiled call for Trump’s assassination on the pretext that Trump threatens liberal democracy — the neocons have succeeded in remaking what passes for liberalism in their own image.
No wonder today’s “liberalism” is totalitarian and genocidal.
December 9, 2023
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Book Review, Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Mainstream Media, Warmongering, Progressive Hypocrite, Timeless or most popular | Human rights, Zionism |
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More than 5,000 Israeli soldiers have been injured in Gaza since the conflict began on Oct. 7, with more than 2,000 officially recognized by the Ministry of Defence as disabled, an Israeli newspaper revealed on Saturday, adding that more than 58% of those injured suffered serious harm to their hands and feet, necessitating amputations.
“More than 5,000 wounded soldiers arrived in hospitals in Israel,” the daily Yedioth Ahronoth newspaper reported.
“More than 2,000 were officially recognized by the Ministry of Defense as disabled,” the daily added.
“We have never experienced anything similar to this. More than 58% of the wounded we receive have serious injuries to their hands and feet, including amputations,” Limor Luria, deputy director general and head of Israel’s Ministry of Defense’s Rehabilitation Department, told the newspaper.
“About 12% of injuries are internal consisting of damage to the spleen, kidneys, and rupture of internal organs,” Luria said.
“About 7% suffer from psychological distress, a number we know will rise sharply,” the official said.
The Israeli army said at least 420 soldiers have been killed since the outbreak of the Gaza conflict on Oct. 7.
Israel resumed its military offensive against the Gaza Strip on Dec. 1 after the end of a weeklong humanitarian pause with the Palestinian group, Hamas.
At least 17,487 Palestinians have been killed and more than 46,480 others injured in relentless air and ground attacks on the enclave since Oct. 7 following a cross-border attack by Hamas.
The Israeli death toll in the Hamas attack stood at 1,200, according to official figures.
December 9, 2023
Posted by aletho |
Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Militarism | Israel, Palestine |
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A group of pro-Israeli tech investors and executives in California’s Silicon Valley are seeking to influence media coverage of Israel’s war on Gaza and “combat the slightest deviations from the pro-Israel script,” a new investigation by journalists Lee Fang and Jack Poulsen shows.
The investors and executives have joined with pro-Israeli activists and Israeli government officials to terminate pro-Palestinian employees at multi-national corporations from their jobs, smear Palestinian journalists, cancel speaking events at US universities by Palestinian writers and politicians, remove social media posts critical of Israel, “ridicule” pro-Palestinian social media influencers and lawmakers, and send military equipment to Israeli forces.
The Following Hamas’ 7 October attack on Israeli military bases and settlements surrounding Gaza, the group formed a WhatsApp group to coordinate their activities.
The WhatsApp group, officially named the “J-Ventures Global Kibbutz Group,” is a project of J-Ventures, a US-Israeli investment fund.
The journalists obtained access to thousands of the group’s WhatsApp messages dating back to mid-October showing the group’s efforts to help Israel in its public relations war, in particular as Israel’s killing of Palestinians in Gaza quickly reached shocking levels, resulting in harsh international condemnation.
They described how members of the group coordinated on WhatsApp to have Courtney Carey, a Dublin-based employee of the Israeli website building company Wix, fired. Carey posted the Irish words “SAOIRSE DON PHALAISTIN” which means, “Freedom for Palestine” on her LinkedIn page, and was terminated 24 hours later.
The group includes prominent Silicon Valley venture capitalist Jeff Epstein – a former CFO of Oracle – and Andy David, a diplomat-cum-venture capitalist who also serves as the Israeli foreign ministry’s head of innovation, entrepreneurship, and tech.
Adam Fisher, the head of the Israel office of Bessemer Venture Partners, gave a presentation to the group on how US “high-tech leaders, investors, and entrepreneurs,” such as himself, could help the Israeli army win the “information war” on social media.
The Israel-based venture capitalist spoke of how to “sow doubt” among young people in the US sympathetic to the Palestinian cause so they would not speak out or attend protests against Israel’s killing of Palestinians in the Gaza Strip. “So it’s really about creating some kind of confusion,” Fisher said,” to make it clear to them that it’s really a lot more complicated.”
The group also petitioned Netflix to remove the award-winning Jordanian film “Farha,” claiming that its accurate portrayal of the actions of Israeli soldiers during the 1948 massacre and forced displacement of Palestinians constituted “blood libel,” while another said the film was based “antisemitism and lies.”
J-Ventures documents and affiliated WhatsApp discussions also show support for a variety of automated attempts to remove pro-Palestinian content on social media, including via DigitalDome.io, an initiative that promotes itself as an online version of Israel’s Iron Dome missile defense system, promising that “offensive and malicious content is intercepted here.”
Digital Dome’s “recent achievements” included the censorship of Hamas’s channels on the Telegram communications platform using Android phones and the removal of pro-Palestinian content from Instagram and Twitter/X.
Members of the WhatsApp group successfully lobbied to have speaking events of Palestinian-US Congresswoman Rashida Tlaib and Palestinian writer for the Nation Magazine, Mohamed al-Kurd, canceled.
The group circulated a push poll suggesting Representative Tlaib should resign from Congress.
Finally, the group has also attempted to provide tactical gear to Israel’s equivalent of the US Navy SEALs, known as Shayetet-13, and donated to a foundation dedicated to supporting the Israeli army’s undercover “Duvdevan” unit, which is known for assassinating Palestinians in the occupied West Bank.
December 9, 2023
Posted by aletho |
Civil Liberties, Deception, Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Full Spectrum Dominance | Human rights, Israel, Palestine, United States, Zionism |
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An Israeli politician has called for burying alive hundreds of Palestinian civilians captured by Israeli forces during the occupying entity’s war on the besieged Gaza Strip.
In a post on X on Friday, Aryeh Yitzhak King, the deputy mayor of the occupied al-Quds (Jerusalem), called on the Israeli military to “bury alive” hundreds of Palestinian civilians captured in the war-torn Palestinian enclave.
In his post, which made specific reference to recently-published footage by the Israeli army showing captured Palestinians stripped to their underwear, King stressed that the army was eliminating what he called “Muslim Nazis” in Gaza, suggesting it needed to pick up the pace.
The footage, confirmed by the Israeli military after it emerged on Thursday, shows the stripped Palestinian men sitting on the street somewhere in northern Gaza as they are watched over by several troops.
These Palestinians are thought to have been arrested in Beit Lahia, in the far north of the impoverished coastal sliver. Tel Aviv claims that these Palestinians were members of the Palestinian resistance movement Hamas.
“If it were up to me, I would have dispatched D-9 bulldozers and put them behind the mounds of dirt and would have given the order to cover all these hundreds of ants, while they’re still alive,” King further said in his post, which has since been deleted for violating rules on X.
“They aren’t human beings and not human animals. They’re subhuman and that’s how they should be treated,” King further said, adding “Eradicate the memory of Amalek, and never forget.”
He used “Amalek” to refer to the arch-foe of Israelites in ancient times. The biblical reference has also been used by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, meaning that every man, woman and child, and their livestock, belonging to this ancient enemy of the Jewish people must be eliminated.
“They are committed to completely eliminating this evil from the world. You must remember what Amalek has done to you, says our Holy Bible. And we do remember,” Netanyahu said in Hebrew in early November.
Israel waged the war on Gaza on October 7 after the Palestinian Hamas resistance group carried out the surprise Operation Al-Aqsa Storm against the occupying entity in response to the Israeli regime’s atrocities against Palestinians.
More than 17,000 Palestinians have been killed, most of them women and children, and at least 46,000 others injured since the onset of the current US-backed war on Gaza.
December 9, 2023
Posted by aletho |
Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, War Crimes | Human rights, Israel, Palestine, Zionism |
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