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The DOJ Quietly Prosecutes the Covid Resistance

Brownstone Institute | January 24, 2024

Midwives in New York and plastic surgeons in Utah didn’t close schools, shutter businesses, or add trillions of dollars to the national debt, yet they are the primary targets of the Biden DOJ’s Covid prosecution.

Court documents reveal how the Department of Justice has dedicated hundreds of thousands of dollars in resources to prosecuting Americans who forged Covid vaccination statuses, according to a new report from David Zweig.

The feds have used undercover agents to take down midwives and local doctors who forged vaccine cards. Many of the “criminals” had no profit motive; they objected to the mandates based on ideological principles or medical concerns, and they needed cards to participate in society.

Zweig highlights cases that have been brought as late as spring 2022, “long after it was widely known that the vaccines did not stop infection or transmission, which was the only ethical and logistical justification for mandates.”

More than ever, it is clear that the calls to “move on” from Covid are reserved for protecting those who implemented tyranny.

Politicians like Gavin Newsom, who celebrated their acquisition of dictatorial powers in 2020, demand forgiveness for eviscerating the Bill of Rights. In the Atlantic, Professor Emily Oster called for a “pandemic amnesty” after advocating for vaccine mandates for employees and students, school closures, “full lockdowns” over the holidays, and universal masking. “Let’s focus on the future,” she insists.

The Biden White House has largely adapted this strategy; substituting foreign conflicts as its new justifications for exorbitant foreign spending and widespread domestic censorship.

With the presumptive nomination of President Trump in the Republican Party, citizens’ hope for answers on the Covid response hinges on Robert Kennedy, Jr.’s participation in the presidential debates. Both parties will work to ensure that does not happen.

In effect, the powerful have already enjoyed a pandemic amnesty. Politicians have not lost their power nor faced a serious inquiry into their malfeasance. Pharmaceutical companies received government-sponsored immunity from lawsuits while pocketing billions of dollars from federal, state, and local mandates. The apparati behind the Covid response remain intact with little threat to their continued acquisition of power.

But the “focus on the future” does not extend to those who resisted the Covid hegemon. “The mandates were so feared and loathed by significant and diverse numbers of citizens that they were willing to become criminals rather than comply,” Zweig explains.

The Biden Department of Justice will not give dissidents the courtesy of a pandemic amnesty. Instead, the targets of the regime will join the ranks of Americans punished by the Department of Justice for their resistance while nondescript bureaucratic tyrants continue their careers unscathed.

The damage to the nation, however, cannot be glossed over. Learning loss, business closures, vaccine injuries, the erosion of trust in all major institutions, trillions of dollars added to the national debt, trillions more in collateral damage, and the institution of a censorship state will take decades to fix, if possible at all.

But there is no indication that the powerful will be held accountable for the damage they imposed. Instead, the Biden Administration has decided to target citizens who resisted its irrational edicts. The same edicts for which they insist they must be granted an “amnesty.” Such actions only increase the devastation from a disastrous policy response.

January 25, 2024 Posted by | Civil Liberties | , , , | Leave a comment

CHD, Parents Take on Philadelphia Health Officials in Bid to Overturn Law Allowing Kids to Get Vaccines Without Parents’ Consent

By Brenda Baletti, Ph.D.| The Defender | January 23, 2024

Children’s Health Defense (CHD) and seven Pennsylvania parents last week opposed the City of Philadelphia’s motion to dismiss their lawsuit seeking to overturn the city’s law that allows minors as young as 11 to consent to vaccination without their parents’ knowledge.

Tricia Lindsay, lead attorney for the plaintiffs, told The Defender it is important the case be heard and that its significance goes beyond the City of Philadelphia.

“This case is one which addresses pivotal issues, and is significant for all citizens,” Lindsay said, adding, “The right of a parent to the care, custody and control of their children is not a right which should be taken lightly, and is not one that can simply be extinguished with the stroke of a pen.”

The lawsuit, filed Nov. 1, 2023, alleges the City of Philadelphia engaged in a “wink and a nod” practice of vaccinating children behind parents’ backs without informed consent for the past 15 years, under the cover of its 2007 General Minor Consent Regulation (MCR).

That rule allows children 11 and older to consent to vaccination without parental knowledge as long as they receive a “vaccine information statement” for the administered shot.

It also absolves the vaccine administrator of liability related to the vaccine if the minor gives consent.

On May 14, 2021, the Philadelphia Department of Public Health enacted an additional COVID-19 Minor Consent Regulation, allowing children ages 11 and up to consent to the COVID-19 vaccine then available under emergency use authorization.

In its motion to dismiss, filed on Jan. 5, the city and its health department argued that none of the plaintiffs had been directly harmed or are likely to be harmed by the regulations and therefore they lack standing to sue.

City and health officials also argued that even if the plaintiffs did have standing, the complaint failed to “state a claim,” or show sufficient facts and legal justification, that Philadeliphia’s law violated federal or state law or that it violated parents’ constitutional rights to make decisions about their children’s upbringing.

But the defendants ignored a key relevant federal court decision — Booth v. Bowser — cited by the plaintiffs to support their claim and which legally “eviscerates” the regulations, CHD told the court.

Plaintiffs in Booth v. Bowser sought to stop the D.C. Minor Consent for Vaccinations Amendment Act of 2020, a bill that similarly would have allowed children as young as 11 in the District of Columbia to be vaccinated without the knowledge or consent of their parents. Defendants in that case tried to have the case thrown out using the same rationale invoked by Philadelphia plaintiffs — lack of standing and failure to state a claim.

In Booth v. Bowser, the court found the plaintiffs did have standing, had adequately pleaded their claims and were likely to win their case. When the amended version of the bill —  Consent for Vaccinations of Minors Amendment Act of 2022 — took effect March 10, 2023, the section allowing children under age 11 to consent to vaccines without their parents’ knowledge had been repealed.

But in the Philadelphia case, rather than following that precedent and repealing the regulations, CHD attorneys wrote:

“Defendants here refuse to acknowledge that children, particularly those as young as eleven, are simply incapable of making vaccination decisions on their own, especially when defendants engage in manipulative tactics directly targeting children with false statements of safety and efficacy, calculated bullying, and peer pressure campaigns.

“Defendants have the audacity to say they are not actively interfering in compelling children to be vaccinated without parental knowledge and consent when they are blatantly manipulating children to the point of compelling children to make critical health decisions on their own and then, through the MCRs, providing the vehicle for children to obtain healthcare in secret.

“The MCRs are a critical part of [the] defendants’ propaganda machine. Without the MCRs, children cannot receive these vaccines in the absence of parental consent.”

Videos pressuring teens promote ‘name calling, outright bullying and violence’

CHD and the parents suing the city argued that whether or not their children were vaccinated without their consent, they were injured because the regulations put their children at risk of imminent vaccination, violating their constitutionally and statutorily protected parental rights.

The parents — all of whom are either residents of Philadelphia or travel frequently to Philadelphia — said they are concerned their children may be pressured into vaccination when they are in the city because of measures put in place targeting teens to get vaccinated.

During the COVID-19 pandemic, Philadelphia, like the district, created a “pressure-cooker environment,” in which children could be psychologically manipulated into defying their parents and getting vaccinated, the plaintiffs allege.

The plaintiffs’ memo included several examples illustrating the intense pressure teens could be subject to, which along with the arguments in the brief, “exposed the underbelly of city officials’ methods of persuasion and coercion by directing extreme forms of psychologically manipulative peer pressure under the guise of empowerment, equality, freedom and health,” Ray Flores, an attorney for the plaintiffs, told The Defender.

That evidence included two videos that Flores called “cringeworthy.”

In one video, teens perform a skit where one teen pressures another to go with her to get the COVID-19 vaccine, by pushing her and calling her an idiot. The video, Flores said, “promotes name calling, outright bullying and violence.”

No parents are present or referenced and the teens in the skit go to get vaccinated alone.

After the skit, another teen presents a series of “facts” about the vaccine, including a guarantee that the vaccines do not affect DNA, they have no adverse effects and that they provide immunity to the virus.

“We provide the facts, so you can get the vax!” the teens chant.

In a second video, a “Teen Vaxx Ambassador” talks about how effective “teen-to-teen” conversations are in convincing others to get vaccinated. She also details how they make getting the vaccine fun by creating a “party-like atmosphere” around the vaccine.

“The city indoctrinates these children to convince peers to make rash decisions without any professional information,” Flores said. “Given that these children can receive nearly any injection without parental permission, the dangers are clear and obvious since a plethora of vaccination sites are located within the city limits.”

The memo also included links to several news stories celebrating the city’s policy allowing minors to consent to vaccination and promoting vaccination to teens.

The plaintiffs also underscored several key arguments from the complaint.

They argued that Philadelphia’s regulations conflict with the consent requirements of the National Childhood Vaccine Injury Act of 1986 (NCVIA), the federal law that has primacy over conflicting local laws on such matters, according to the U.S. Constitution, and must be applied equally in all places.

They also argued that children are not “capable of providing informed consent” for vaccines, as the regulations suggest, because the vaccine information sheets or COVID-19 fact sheets are not written for children to understand. Additionally, children may not know their health history, or understand and be able to navigate the process for identifying and seeking compensation should they become vaccine-injured.

The memo reiterates that vaccinating a child without parental consent violates parental constitutional rights to direct their children’s upbringing. In their motion to dismiss, the defendants argued this right is only violated if the child is compelled to be vaccinated.

The plaintiffs countered that the injury occurs when parents are deprived of their right to make the decision in the first place.

They wrote:

“The Defendants have crafted a procedure to clandestinely bypass parents lawfully exercising their authority. Meanwhile, the City has ratcheted up the pressure on children whose parents have opted out of vaccines and even on children who do not know their vaccination status and thus even are susceptible to over-vaccination.

“The City has publicly and vocally encouraged children to be vaccinated as part of its program to do an end-run around parents.”


Brenda Baletti Ph.D. is a reporter for The Defender. She wrote and taught about capitalism and politics for 10 years in the writing program at Duke University. She holds a Ph.D. in human geography from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and a master’s from the University of Texas at Austin.

This article was originally published by The Defender — Children’s Health Defense’s News & Views Website under Creative Commons license CC BY-NC-ND 4.0. Please consider subscribing to The Defender or donating to Children’s Health Defense.

January 25, 2024 Posted by | Civil Liberties, War Crimes | , | Leave a comment

Insurance underwriters insert ‘no connection to Israel’ clause for shipping

MEMO | January 25, 2024

Insurance underwriters are requiring some clients to sign contracts guaranteeing that they have no connection to Israel or the US in order to obtain cover for cargo ships passing through the Suez Canal, the New York Times has reported. The demand comes as Houthi attacks in the Red Sea have pushed up insurance premiums for merchant vessels.

According to the NYT, the attacks at this critical choke point handling 12 per cent of global trade have more than doubled the average worldwide shipping costs. Some ships are opting to avoid the Suez Canal and instead take the longer route around the Cape of Good Hope in South Africa, adding weeks to delivery times.

Passing through the Red Sea still necessitates expensive speciality war risk insurance offered by London brokers to cover potential Houthi strikes. Rates have jumped as much as 50 times more than before the Yemen conflict, and now cost up to one per cent of a ship’s value despite relatively minimal damage to ships so far. For a ship carrying goods worth $100 million, that could mean an extra $1m to be insured.

Insurers blame the increased risk on Israel’s military offensive against the Palestinians in Gaza. By forcing clients to guarantee that they have no ties with Israel and its Western allies, underwriters aim to shield themselves from inadvertently covering any vessels associated with the current geopolitical tensions underlying the attacks.

Analysts say that the ripple effects on global trade and consumer prices are still unfolding. They warn that if Red Sea transit remains high-risk, inflation could return.

The demand by underwriters follows previous preventative measures taken by vessels to avoid Houthi attacks. Earlier this month, cargo ships passing into the Red Sea began to declare that they have no links to Israel, according to data from the navigation safety feature known as the Automatic Identification System (AIS), which transmits the identity, location and destination of larger vessels.

Israel’s Western allies appear to be running out of options in their attempt to contain the Houthis. Yesterday, the Financial Times revealed that the US has urged China to help curb Houthi attacks around the crucial Bab Al-Mandab Strait. Chinese ships are not being targeted by the Yemeni group and nor are vessels of countries that are not supporting Israel’s genocidal campaign in Gaza. Nevertheless, China is reported to have expressed “concern” about the attacks, and called for “restraint”.

January 25, 2024 Posted by | Economics, Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Wars for Israel | , , , , , | Leave a comment

Yemeni missiles force US navy to turn back from Bab al-Mandab Strait

The Cradle | January 25, 2024

The Yemeni armed forces announced late on 24 January that intense clashes took place with several US warships escorting two commercial vessels attempting to transit the Bab al-Mandab Strait.

“A clash occurred today between a number of US destroyers and warships in the Gulf of Aden and Bab al-Mandab while they were protecting two US commercial ships,” the spokesman for the Yemeni armed forces, Brigadier General Yahya Saree, said in a video statement.

“Despite attempts by the warships to intercept them, our ballistic missiles reached their targets successfully,” Saree’s statement added, noting that a US warship was “directly hit” and the commercial vessels “were forced to retreat.”

According to the Yemeni official, the battle lasted for about two hours.

Abdullah bin Amer, Deputy Head of the Moral Guidance Department at the Yemeni Ministry of Defense in Sanaa, said that the US warships tried to counter the attack “in a confused and intense manner,” launching missiles that reportedly “fell into the sea [and] on the Yemeni mainland in empty areas.”

In the early hours of Thursday, Danish shipping giant Maersk confirmed that explosions nearby forced two ships operated by its US subsidiary – Maersk Line Limited (MLL) – were forced to turn around as they attempted to transit the Bab al-Mandab Strait with a US navy escort.

“While en route, both ships reported seeing explosions close by, and the US Navy accompaniment also intercepted multiple projectiles,” Maersk said in a statement, adding it was suspending Red Sea transits by vessels of its US subsidiary.

The two vessels were carrying “US military supplies.”

MLL carries cargo for the Department of Defense, Department of State, USAID, and other US government agencies.

Wednesday’s battle is the latest escalation between Yemen and the US, as the Ansarallah-led government in Sanaa has pledged to enforce a naval blockade against Israeli, US, and UK-linked vessels until the genocide of Palestinians in Gaza stops.

The crossfire came less than a day after US warplanes conducted their most recent air raid campaign over Yemen. US and UK warplanes, ships, and submarines have launched dozens of attacks across Yemen in retaliation for the country’s pro-Palestine actions.

Earlier on Wednesday, Yemeni authorities ordered US and British nationals to leave the country within a month.

“The ministry … would like to stress that you must inform officials and workers with US and British citizenships to prepare to leave the country within 30 days,” reads a letter sent by the Yemeni foreign ministry to the UN’s acting humanitarian coordinator in Yemen, Peter Hawkins.

January 25, 2024 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Wars for Israel | , , , | Leave a comment

Coverage of Gaza conflict by US media shows overwhelming support for Israel

MEMO | January 25, 2024

Prominent US newspapers have applied double standards in their coverage of the Gaza conflict, mostly showing support for Israel, according to an analysis, Anadolu Agency reports.

Leading newspapers, such as the New York TimesWashington Post and Los Angeles Times have published news biased against Palestinians during Israel’s attacks against Gaza, according to a 9 January report by US-based news outlet, The Intercept.

The New York Times, Washington Post, and Los Angeles Times’s coverage of Israel’s war on Gaza showed a consistent bias against Palestinians, according to an Intercept analysis of major media coverage,” it said.

Although 14,800 Palestinians, including more than 6,000 children, were killed in the first six weeks of the conflict, US newspapers maintained a close relationship with Israeli statements.

More than 1,000 articles regarding Israel’s attacks on Gaza were examined, and some keywords and the context in which they were used were calculated.

Major newspapers disproportionately emphasised Israeli deaths in the conflict and used emotive language to describe the killings of Israelis.

In the New York Times, Washington Post, and Los Angeles Times, “Israeli” or “Israel” appear more than “Palestinian” or variations thereof, even as Palestinian deaths far outpaced Israeli deaths.

The report said, for every two Palestinian deaths, Palestinians were mentioned once. For every Israeli death, Israelis are mentioned eight times, or a rate 16 times more per death than Palestinians.

Also, highly emotive terms for the killing of civilians like “slaughter”, “massacre” and “horrific” were reserved almost exclusively for Israelis who were killed by Palestinians.

Only two headlines out of more than 1,100 articles in the study mention “children” related to Gazan children.

“Despite Israel’s war on Gaza being perhaps the deadliest war for children in modern history, there is scant mention of the word “’children’ in headlines,” it added.

The report underlined that biased coverage in major newspapers and mainstream television affects general perceptions of the war and leads viewers to a distorted view of the conflict.

Tensions have been running high across the West Bank since Israel launched a deadly military offensive against the Gaza Strip following a cross-border attack by the Palestinian Resistance group, Hamas, in which Israel said 1,200 people were killed.

However, since then, it has been revealed by Haaretz that helicopters and tanks of the Israeli army had, in fact, killed many of the 1,139 soldiers and civilians claimed by Israel to have been killed by the Palestinian Resistance.

At least 25,700 Palestinians have since been killed, mostly women and children, and more than 63,740 injured, according to Palestinian health authorities.

January 25, 2024 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Mainstream Media, Warmongering | , , , , , | Leave a comment

Top Democrat-linked PR firm tapped by pro-Israel groups to control Gaza war narrative

By Kit Klarenberg | MintPress News | December 29, 2023

On December 6, it was announced with much fanfare that the 10/7 Project, a new “centralized communications operation to promote continued US bipartisan support for Israel; push for accurate, complete coverage of the Israel-Hamas war,” and achieve a “stronger” media “focus” on the victims of October 7’s Al-Aqsa Flood would be launched, by a quintet of the largest Israeli lobby groups on U.S. soil.

Who and what is funding the 10/7 Project isn’t at all clear. Publicity material spoke vaguely of an unnamed “coterie of philanthropists” and the organization’s interest in sourcing “more philanthropic support” moving forward. Future formal financial disclosures may make for fascinating reading, but its founders offer some clues.

The five comprise the American Jewish Committee (AJC), the Jewish Federations of North America (JFNA), the Anti-Defamation League (ADL), the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), and the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations. This is quite the rogue’s gallery of Zionist entities, several of which have deplorable track records of actively whitewashing, if not outright facilitating, Israeli apartheid propaganda activities that have become turbocharged since October 7.

As such, the 10/7 Project’s professed mission of countering “disinformation” about October 7 and “Israel’s response” to the events can only be considered highly disquieting, especially given its target audience is “key media and government influencers.” In reality, of course, the organization is just the latest salvo in the Zionist state’s long-running information war against Palestinians and the Western world. This pitched battle has recently become ever more treacherous, specifically due to Tel Aviv’s genocidal “response” to Operation Al-Aqsa Flood.

One could be forgiven for thinking the 10/7 Project had already floundered in its objectives. After an initial ripple of mainstream interest, primarily from Israeli outlets and Zionist news platforms, the organization has seemingly vanished without a trace from the media landscape – or at least, its name has. As we shall see, though, it’s evident that in the manner of an iceberg, the 10/7 Project’s public footprint represents but the visible tip of something far larger and considerably more destructive.

‘STRANGLEHOLD ON CONGRESS’

While the 10/7 Project may not be directly making headlines daily, its parent organizations certainly are. The ADL has since October 7 published a steady stream of reports, lapped up by the media largely without question, testifying to an explosion of “anti-Semitic incidents” across the Western world in the wake of Operation Al-Aqsa Flood.

Shocking stuff, one might think. Yet, as an investigation by MintPress News Senior Staff Writer Alan MacLeod revealed, the ADL is producing such staggering figures by categorizing anti-Israel and pro-Palestine rallies and corresponding chants at both as individual “anti-Semitic incidents.” Despite the exposure of its embarrassing, Enron-style accounting, the League continues to pump out the same bogus “research” at regular intervals. On December 12, it claimed “anti-Semitism” in the US was now up 337% in the wake of October 7, “an all-time record.”

It is far from the first time ADL definitions of anti-Semitism have failed to pass muster. For example, in December 2022, The Grayzone’s Alex Rubinstein revealed that the League did not categorize Ukraine’s openly Neo-Nazi paramilitary Azov Battalion to be the “far right group it once was.” This, despite the fact that Azov’s mission to “lead the white races of the world in a final crusade… against Semite-led Untermenschen,” as articulated by founder Andriy Biletsky, remains unchanged.

Meanwhile, the infamous AIPAC – accurately described by U.S. political scientist John Mearsheimer as “a de facto agent for a foreign government, [with] a stranglehold on Congress” – has made clear its significantly intensified mission to rid Washington DC of any elected official possessed of even vaguely anti-war, pro-Palestinian views, by declaring war on lawmakers such as Rashida Tlaib and Ilhan Omar.

When AIPAC moves against, or in favor, of particular politicians, they mean business – and depressingly, the organization usually wins. Annually, the organization publishes a report on its “policy and political achievements” that year. Its 2022 installment boasts, among other things, of bagging $3.3 billion “for security assistance to Israel, with no added conditions” and having gifted $17.5 million – the most of any U.S. PAC – to “pro-Israel candidates,” 98% of whom won their elections, in the process defeating 13 anti-Israel challengers.

CONFLICTS OF INTEREST

The official website of the 10/7 Project is spartan in the extreme. Visitors are offered a “contact us” form, a link to subscribe to its regular newsletter, and a “what we do” section listing purported activities. This includes informing the public “with credible, real-time information about events in Israel and Gaza,” highlighting “excellent reporting,” calling out “biased coverage,” holding “biased media accountable,” and offering “expert spokespeople for press and broadcast outlets.”

Unmentioned anywhere is that the 10/7 Project is represented by a trio of notorious PR and political consultancies – CKR Solutions, OnMessage Public Strategies, and SKDK. Together, they move in the shadows to advance the organization’s interests and messaging publicly and on Capitol Hill. SKDK’s contribution will inevitably be the most insidious and impactful.

Since its founding in 2004, the company has careened from damaging scandal to damaging scandal yet consistently secures major, big-ticket clients. The reason for this is clear. SKDK was founded by and employs a retinue of high-ranking, well-connected Democratic operatives. Among them is Anita Dunn, Barack Obama’s White House Communications Director, credited as the “mastermind” of Joe Biden’s 2020 election win and widely regarded as a key member of the President’s “inner circle.”

Joe Biden speaks with SKDK’s Anita Dunn ahead of his State of the Union address in February 2023. Adam Schultz | White House

Ever since Obama’s 2008 election win, SKDK has been plausibly accused of selling privileged access to the White House to clients despite failing to register as a lobbying firm. This means major corporations have a direct means of encouraging – and bribing – the Oval Office to offer tax breaks, shred regulations, dump legislation, smash unions, and generally harm the U.S. public interest with total impunity and in absolute secrecy.

SKDK’s expansive Rolodex also helps politicians get out of serious trouble. In 2018-2019,  Illinois House Speaker Michael Madigan paid the company $200,000 for “crisis communications” assistance after one of his campaign workers sued him for harming her professionally when she complained of sexual harassment by one of his top aides. Meanwhile, in August 2021, it was revealed a senior SKDK staffer personally intervened to suppress negative media coverage of sexual harassment allegations against New York Governor Andrew Cuomo.

Even more perversely, it’s since been revealed that at the same time, SKDK was advising Madigan on how to navigate his public controversy, the company was also helping his former campaign worker bring a lawsuit against the aide who’d sexually harassed her. A more perfect demonstration of the DC blob’s incestuous nature and SKDK’s total lack of ethical and professional scruples one would be hard-pressed to find. And both are highly competitive categories.

SKDK played a pivotal role in Biden’s 2020 presidential bid, decisively reversing his fortunes after abysmal performances in various caucuses. While the mainstream media primarily praised the miraculous work of the company and Dunn – his de facto campaign director – there has also been fierce controversy surrounding its electioneering activities. For example, SKDK fired off daily “Misinformation Briefings” to major tech and social media firms, including Google, Meta and Twitter, requesting that specific content be suppressed or removed.

In most cases, the recipients complied, meaning SKDK exerted extraordinary influence over what voters did and did not know and could and could not see during the controversial 2020 Presidential election. Which surely at least partially accounts for Biden’s victory. To make matters even worse, the company was simultaneously. reaping a $35 million windfall from the government of California by running the state’s supposedly bipartisan “get-out-the-vote” campaign. The contract, originally to be financed by local taxpayers, was mysteriously awarded to SKDK on a “no-bid” basis.

‘DICTATE TERMS’

Clearly, the 10/7 Project was intended to be a very public affair. In an early promotional interview, executive director Josh Isay – perhaps unsurprisingly, until August 2022 SKDK’s longtime CEO – boasted about the “widespread enthusiasm” with which the organization’s “efforts to set the record straight and combat misinformation spouted by Hamas terrorists and their anti-Israel allies” had so far been received:

We look forward to continuing to do the critically important work of providing policymakers and the American public with reliable information about Israel and Hamas, and uplifting the stories of the innocent victims of the October 7th massacre.”

Yet, there is no obvious sign of those ambitions bearing fruit to date. A partial explanation for this failure may lie in the 10/7 Project’s wish to transform the “innocent victims” of Operation Al-Aqsa Flood into human interest stories and atrocity propaganda while elevating the organization’s eponymous date to the position of 9/11 in the American public’s mind.

In the weeks since the 10/7 Project’s inception, it has become ever-increasingly clear the Zionist narrative of what unfolded when Hamas breached Gaza’s armored concentration camp walls – unquestioningly regurgitated over and again for weeks after that by the Western media – is completely and grotesquely fraudulent.

For example, on December 15, it was reported based on social security data that Tel Aviv’s claim that 1,200 civilians died in the initial assault was greatly exaggerated. In reality, just 695 lost their lives. The previous figure was itself a revision from an initial civilian casualty “estimate” of 1,400.

Every civilian death in a warzone is an extremely grave crime. It is surely for this reason that Tel Aviv on December 12 desperately argued “it would not be morally sound” to investigate “friendly fire” incidents in “kibbutzim and southern Israeli communities” during Operation Al Aqsa Flood – civilians killed by Israeli Occupation Forces. Nonetheless, the numbers involved are avowedly “immense.”

Among the “stories of the innocent victims of the October 7th massacre” selected by the 10/7 Project for public “uplifting” in service of whitewashing and justifying the Gaza genocide will have been a great many individuals slaughtered in cold blood by indiscriminate, excessively violent IDF actions. This is all but inevitable. Urgently casting those victims into obscurity while ensuring the entire issue of Zionist “friendly fire” is not examined is now of paramount importance.

More significantly, though, the exposure – and occasional admission – of Tel Aviv’s brazen lies has fundamentally shifted mainstream narratives and sympathies away from Israel and towards the Palestinians. Audiences of every extraction globally can witness the monstrous reality of the genocide in Gaza and learn of Zionist abuse of the Palestinians even before the colonial entity’s founding in 1948 with their own eyes and ears.

Israeli deceit has been so relentless and so readily exposed that even typically subservient Western news networks and their featured pundits are treating official claims with enormous skepticism. Similarly, Zionist violence is so constantly unremitting and wantonly sadistic that graphic reports of carpet bombs maiming and slaughtering every generation of Palestinians are now commonplace.

Meanwhile, developments such as the revelation that IDF soldiers killed three shirtless Israelis waving a white flag, speaking Hebrew and seeking their assistance have traveled widely, in turn highlighting prior examples of identical “peacetime” atrocities inflicted upon Palestinians. By contrast, there has to date been no “misinformation spouted by Hamas terrorists and their anti-Israel allies” to combat at all.

A LOSING BATTLE

As a result, the 10/7 Project and its founders are placed in the invidious position of having to publicly defend the indefensible – namely, a modern-day genocide unfolding on television screens and front page headlines the world over. In such circumstances, overt and unashamed advocacy work is best conducted behind the scenes. Yet, it is precisely in this context that the 10/7 Project may be most dangerous and potent due to its open-door Oval Office access.

Tireless solidarity efforts by European activists, protesters, citizen journalists, and civil society organizations have produced significant results. Paris went from mulling legislation criminalizing anti-Zionism in November to now leading global pressure for a ceasefire. Multiple governments and opposition leaders are likewise changing their tune. Senior British officials openly warn Netanyahu to drastically rein in his unquenchable bloodlust if he wishes to retain any international support.

Stateside, however, while the crusading work of grassroots pro-Palestine voices and groups has been redoubtable, the Biden administration’s commitment to facilitating, encouraging, and exacerbating the Gaza genocide, however it can, remains undimmed. While the President has demanded Netanyahu’s slaughter be wrapped up by the new year, there is no indication material, financial, and diplomatic support upon which the new Nakba depends is being curtailed. On December 18, during an official visit to Tel Aviv, Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin issued a bloodcurdling oath:

This is Israel’s operation, and I’m not here to dictate timelines or terms. Our support [for] Israel’s right to defend itself is ironclad, as you’ve heard me say a number of times, and that’s not going to change.”

One way greater pressure could be brought to bear against the Biden administration might be for citizens to demand their elected representatives in Washington to disclose what dealings they may have had with the 10/7 Project or its representatives since its launch.

To ascertain whether and how White House policy and public pronouncements are being directly informed, if not explicitly dictated, by the wishes and wills of a shadowy and unaccountable lobbying coalition with indeterminate but no doubt intimate political and financial connections to the perpetrators of a 21st century Holocaust.

Kit Klarenberg is an investigative journalist and MintPress News contributor exploring the role of intelligence services in shaping politics and perceptions. His work has previously appeared in The Cradle, Declassified UK, and Grayzone. Follow him on Twitter @KitKlarenberg.

January 25, 2024 Posted by | Corruption, Deception, Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Full Spectrum Dominance, Mainstream Media, Warmongering, Timeless or most popular | , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Arizona GOP Chair Resigns After Kari Lake Threatens “More Damaging” Recording

By Tyler Durden | Zero Hedge | January 24, 2024

One day after the Daily Mail published a leaked recording of Arizona GOP Chairman Jeff DeWit trying to bribe Trump ally Kari Lake to stay out of politics for two years, DeWit resigned.

“This morning, I was determined to fight for my position,” he said in a statement reported by Just the News. “However, a few hours ago, I received an ultimatum from Lake’s team: resign today or face the release of a new, more damaging recording. I am truly unsure of its contents, but considering our numerous past open conversations as friends, I have decided not to take the risk. I am resigning as Lake requested, in the hope that she will honor her commitment to cease her attacks, allowing me to return to the business sector—a field I find much more logical and prefer over politics.”

Arizona Senate candidate Kari Lake called on the state’s GOP chair Jeff DeWit to resign after a recording emerged of him trying to bribe Lake to stay out of politics for two years.

In the recording, first reported by the Daily Mail, DeWit, 51, can be heard asking lake to name her price not to run.

“There are very powerful people who want to keep you out,” he can be heard telling her in a conversation recorded last March.

He then, after asking her not to mention the conversation to anyone, makes his first offer:

“So the ask I got today from back east was: “Is there any companies out there or something that could just put her on the payroll to keep her out?

Lake is taken aback.

“This is about defeating Trump and I think that’s a bad, bad thing for our country,” she replied.

DeWit later framed it in a different way.

“Just say, is there a number at which –

“I can be bought?” Lake interjected. “That’s what it’s about?”

“You can take a pause for a couple of years. You can go right back to what you’re doing,” DeWit replied.

Lake repeatedly shuts him down, and says she wouldn’t pull out for a billion dollars.

“This is not about money, it’s about our country,” she says (one her own recording, we’re guessing).

Listen (via Collin Rugg).

Following the report, Lake called on DeWit to resign.

“He’s gotta resign. We can’t have somebody who is corrupt and compromised running the Republican Party,” she told an NBC reporter during Trump’s New Hampshire primary victory party.

January 25, 2024 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Corruption, Deception | | Leave a comment

Abolish the FBI

By Jacob G. Hornberger | FFF | January 23, 2024

Among the worst mistakes America has ever made is to bring into existence the Federal Bureau of Investigation — the FBI.

A national police force is an essential part of any tyrannical regime. Just look at any tyrannical foreign regime, either right wing and left wing, over the past 100 years. I will guarantee you that you will find a national police force. It serves as a useful adjunct to a big military-intelligence establishment to keep people in line.

Of course, we are all familiar with such things as COINTELPRO and the FBI’s murder of innocent people at Waco and Ruby Ridge. We are also familiar with the FBI’s fierce opposition to Martin Luther King and the civll-rights movement as well as the virtual certainty that the FBI orchestrated King’s murder. We are also familiar with former FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover’s longtime penchant for keeping secret files on people’s personal lives with the aim of blackmailing them into supporting whatever the FBI wants. We are also familiar with the FBI’s ardent support of the Vietnam War, the Cold War, and the anti-communist crusade. We are also familiar with the FBI’s active role in America’s political system.

Less familiar is the FBI’s ubiquitous practice of inducing people to commit crimes in order to justify its continued existence and its continued receipt of taxpayer-funded largess. That practice involves entrapping people into committing crimes and then proudly patting itself on the back for “keeping America safe” by supposedly busting dangerous criminals.

An example of this sordid practice is detailed in a January 19, 2024, article in the New York Times that involved four men whose lives were partially destroyed by the FBI as part of its attempt to make itself look good by creating and encouraging a crime supposedly committed by those four men.

The four men — James Cromitie, Laguerre Payen, David Williams and Onta Williams — were from Newburgh, New York, and became known as the “Newburgh Four.” Given the FBI’s history of viewing Martin Luther King and the civil-rights movement as communist agents, it’s not surprising that the FBI targeted four Black men for its entrapment scheme. The fact that they were poor also figured into the FBI’s plot, given that the FBI used the lure of big amounts of taxpayer money to induce the men to commit a crime.

The scheme was part of the FBI’s post-9/11 plot to invent criminal conspiracies to commit terrorist attacks. That’s what the FBI did with the Newburgh Four. The FBI used the services of an informant named Shahed Hussain. The FBI had Hussain infiltrate various mosques and identify poor people who could be induced to engage in acts of terrorism. That would enable the FBI to exclaim, “We’ve busted terrorists! We’re keeping you safe! Give us more taxpayer money!”

Hussain promised the Newburgh Four $250,000 if they would agree to participate in a terrorist plot. After several months of refusing the offer, the four black men, at least one of whom was unemployed and broke, agreed to participate in bomb plots at various synagogues.

The men were busted and given 25-year jail sentences. They had served 14 years in jail until a heroic federal judge recently ordered their release. As reported in the New York Times article, the judge, Colleen McMahon, called the case “notorious.”  She pointed out that “nothing about the crimes of conviction” had been of the “defendants’ own making.” She pointed out that the FBI’s agent in the crime, Shahed Hussain, was a “small time grifter and petty drug dealer.”

Judge McMahon correctly pointed out that the “real lead conspirator was the United States.” She added, “The F.B.I. invented the conspiracy; identified the targets; manufactured the ordnance.” The New York Times pointed out that McMahon added that the FBI “federalized” the charges — ensuring long prison terms — by driving several of the men into Connecticut to view the “bombs.”

After 14 years in jail on FBI-manufactured crimes, the Newburgh Four are free. But the best way to ensure that the FBI doesn’t destroy other people’s lives is to abolish it. Its dismantling would go a long way toward restoring freedom and justice in America. Anyway, criminal justice belongs at the state and local level, not the federal level.

January 25, 2024 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Corruption, Deception, Islamophobia, Timeless or most popular | , , | 1 Comment

Why Russia is Winning the Drone War in Ukraine

By Brian Berletic – New Eastern Outlook – 24.01.2024 

Ukraine is losing the drone war. This isn’t a claim made by the Russian Ministry of Defense or by Russian state media, but rather the headline of an article appearing in Foreign Affairs magazine, written by former Google CEO Eric Schmidt who now heads a think tank, the Special Competitive Studies Project (SCSP), advising the US government regarding artificial intelligence and other emerging technology.

The article titled, “Ukraine is Losing the Drone War – How Kyiv Can Close the Innovation Gap With Russia,” makes a wide range of claims, from repeating unlikely narratives regarding astronomically high Russian losses, to admissions regarding Russia’s many and multiplying advantages over both Ukraine and its Western supporters. Schmidt’s narrative is contradictory, and the article ultimately fails to deliver a coherent explanation as to how Ukraine can actually “close the innovation gap with Russia.”

It is a mystery as to why Schmidt is even writing this article in the first place, not being a journalist or a politician, but rather a leader of the US high-tech industry. But the article demonstrates how even at the highest levels of political and industrial leadership in the US, there lies a fundamental misunderstanding of not only the ongoing conflict in Ukraine, but of the fundamental premise upon which all American foreign policy is built.

Why Ukraine is Losing the Drone War, and will Continue Losing

Schmidt’s article lays out a distorted account of the ongoing conflict in Ukraine, following familiar narratives found across the collective West’s media. This includes the notion that Ukraine initially “held the upper hand in drone warfare” and had managed to keep “Russian forces on the back foot.” Such conclusions are drawn by focusing solely on the trading of territory, and in particular, on Ukraine’s Kharkov and Kherson offensives in 2022.

However, because the Ukraine conflict is fundamentally a war of attrition, the true measure of Ukraine’s success or failure is measured in the loss of manpower and equipment versus its ability to regenerate forces, replace equipment, and replenish ammunition stockpiles. In all of these regards, Ukraine has been losing the war from the moment it began – some may even look back in hindsight and conclude the war was lost before it even began.

The collective West for decades developed a large, for-profit military industrial base. It focused on maximizing profits through the production of high-cost systems built in relatively small quantities, while eliminating extra manufacturing capacity for large-scale production that rarely if ever was necessary to sustain the West’s “small wars” following the collapse of the Soviet Union.

Russia, on the other hand, inherited the Soviet Union’s massive military industrial base, maintained certain aspects of it, modernized and expanded others, preparing for large-scale, high-intensity, protracted warfare within or along its borders.

From 2008, when US-armed and trained Georgian forces attacked Russian troops in the South Caucasus region, Moscow began preparing for a conflict by proxy with NATO it considered inevitable. From 2014, following the US overthrow of the elected Ukrainian government, it was almost certain that conflict by proxy with NATO would be fought in Ukraine.

From that point onward, Russia began building up the military industrial base required to fight and win a large-scale proxy war against a NATO-armed and trained Ukraine. Because Russia’s military industrial base consists of a large network of state-owned enterprises, a preference for purpose over profits prevailed.

Today, this fundamental reality is reflected in virtually every aspect of the fighting in Ukraine, from Russia’s advantage in quantity regarding low-tech artillery shells, to more advanced systems like main battle tanks, cruise missiles, and warplanes that both outnumber and outperform their NATO counterparts, to – perhaps especially – drones of all kinds.

Schmidt’s article admits that Russia is not only outproducing Ukraine in terms of drones, placing the number of drones produced monthly to around 100,000, but also admits Russia possesses drones Ukraine has no equivalent of. Schmidt singled out the Orlan reconnaissance drone and the Lancet kamikaze drone in particular.

Ukraine, however, has been provided with a large variety of drones produced across the collective West. It began the conflict with a number of much more sophisticated Bayraktar TB-2 drones manufactured by Türkiye. While these drones are formidable weapons, they are inappropriate for the battlefield in Ukraine, where they face Russia’s extensive integrated air defense network and Russia’s extensive array of electronic warfare (EW) capabilities.

Should drones equivalent to the Orlan and Lancet exist in sufficient numbers to provide to Ukraine, the inability to overcome Russia’s advantages in both air defenses and EW would still impair their use.

Schmidt, in fact, notes Russia’s EW capabilities as “superior,” capable of jamming and spoofing signals between Ukrainian drones and their operators. While Ukraine has been provided with EW capabilities as well, the collective West is admittedly years behind Russia in this field of expertise.

At one point, the article admits:

Most Western-supplied weapons have fared poorly against Russia’s antiaircraft systems and electronic attacks. When missiles and attack drones are aimed at Russian sites, they are often spoofed or shot down. U.S. weapons in particular can often be thwarted via GPS jamming.

While Schmidt spends the rest of the article discussing “winning the drone war,” he never actually articulates a coherent strategy in doing so.

He claims, “Ukraine will need to secure additional Western ammunition supplies,” without acknowledging the fact that such supplies do not exist, and will not any time in the foreseeable future because the production capacity to manufacture them in sufficient quantities does not exist.

Schmidt continues, suggesting, “Ukraine also needs antiaircraft and attack missiles to strike fast-moving airborne targets.” Just as with artillery shells, antiaircraft missiles were in short supply even before the conflict began in Ukraine, and have only dwindled further. If producing low-tech artillery shells in greater quantities will take the West years to do, producing more complex missile interceptors will take even longer.

Schmidt claims that, “Ukrainian startups are working around the clock to develop advanced drones that can resist spoofing and jamming.” Yet, this ignores the fact that many more Russians with far greater resources are working around the clock to develop better means of spoofing and jamming.

Ultimately, Schmidt’s “solution” to Ukraine’s losing drone war (and losing the war in general) is for “Kyiv’s allies” to sustain “financial and technical support.” He never explains how this can be done in a way matching or exceeding Russia’s own efforts to constantly expand its military industrial output in both quantity and quality. Russia began with and continues to maintain a headstart over Ukraine and its Western backers. Simply suggesting Ukraine needs more of everything doesn’t address the shortcomings that created these disadvantages in the first place, nor suggest any way of solving them.

Schmidt’s stated objective in the article is “neutralizing the advantages that Russia has gained.” The only actual way to achieve this would be to build a military industrial base capable of matching or exceeding Russia’s ability to research and develop new technology, and then mass produce and place this technology on the battlefield.

It would require the creation of massive state-owned enterprises able to subordinate profit to purpose, the creation of an education system able to supply a steady stream of the necessary human resources this expanded industry would require, and the ability to source raw materials and components from adjacent, likewise state-owned enterprises.

It would take years for the United States to complete such a transformation – years Ukraine doesn’t have. It would also require the political will to do so in the first place, which simply does not and will never exist because of the systemic composition of American political and industrial power.

America’s Tenuous Grasp on Reality, its Worst Enemy  

Eric Schmidt has a close relationship with both the leading edge of high-tech American industry and the US government itself. His think tank, SCSP, says on its official website that its purpose is:

To make recommendations to strengthen America’s long-term competitiveness as artificial intelligence (AI) and other emerging technologies are reshaping our national security, economy, and society. We want to ensure that America is positioned and organized to win the techno-economic competition between now and 2030, the critical window for shaping the future.

SCSP sees 2025-2030 as a critical window in which the US must establish a clear lead over its “rivals” Russia and China. SCSP admits that the “margin for error is shrinking.”

Yet, Schmidt’s admission to Russia’s success in Ukraine and the advantages it holds over not only Ukraine but its Western supporters as well, seems to suggest that this critical window may have already closed.

The very premise that the United States can maintain techno-economic primacy over both Russia and China (and the rest of the world) is fundamentally flawed. All else built upon this flawed premise will find itself drifting further and further from the realm of practicality, and is reflected in a growing detachment from reality many Western leaders in politics and industry seem to exhibit, including Schmidt.

China alone has a larger population than the collective West. Its higher education system is larger than the United States’, graduating millions more each year in critical fields related to science, technology, engineering, and mathematics. China’s industrial base dwarfs the collective West’s, and continues to expand, while the West continues to overextend itself and contract.

Given these fundamental realities, how exactly would the United States still somehow match or exceed China’s technological development unless one assumes “Americans” are simply “better” than the Chinese, and despite all of China’s fundamental and growing advantages over the United States, it will still somehow fall short?

These same assumptions have been prevalent throughout commentary and analysis focused on the conflict in Ukraine. These assumptions have consistently been proven wrong, with disastrous consequences. Russia’s many fundamental advantages on the battlefield ahead of the vaunted 2023 Ukrainian offensive unequivocally guaranteed the offensive would fail. Yet, “intangible” factors were added into an equation assuming Western supremacy and Russian inferiority, to skew projections of the offensive’s success in Ukraine’s favor.

A similar formula is being applied to US competition with Russia and China, ignoring fundamental realities and applying “intangible” assumptions of Western superiority to sidestep the reality that China will irreversibly surpass not just the US, but the collective West.

This reality demands the US reevaluate its position and role within international relations, and begin a transition from a hegemon, into a constructive, cooperative partner with Russia, China, and the emerging multipolar world. But just as battlefield fundamentals in Ukraine ahead of the 2023 offensive demanded Kiev negotiate an end to the war in Russia’s favor, only to be ignored at catastrophic costs, these increasingly clear geopolitical fundamentals will be ignored by the political and industrial leadership of the West, by those like Schmidt, at catastrophic costs to the collective West.

It will be the multipolar world and the restraint and patience it has exhibited as well as the political maturity it exercises in developing and implementing policies, that will attempt to temper and manage these costs, both for the sake of global peace and stability, but also and most ironically, for the sake of the collective West itself.

Brian Berletic is a Bangkok-based geopolitical researcher and writer.

January 25, 2024 Posted by | Militarism, Timeless or most popular | , , , | Leave a comment