Biden halts new LNG exports
The fuel is seen as a vital lifeline for Western Europe, which has cut itself off from cheaper Russian gas imports
RT | January 26, 2024
US President Joe Biden has ordered a pause on liquefied natural gas (LNG) exports from new projects in the country, citing their potential contribution to climate change. Energy costs in Western Europe have skyrocketed since nations such as Germany switched from Russian gas to American LNG, but Biden insists the continent doesn’t currently need additional supplies.
The pause will allow the US Department of Energy (DOE) to update the economic and environmental guidelines it uses when approving new export licenses, and will last for several months.
“During this period, we will take a hard look at the impacts of LNG exports on energy costs, America’s energy security, and our environment,” Biden said in a statement on Friday. The president added that the pause “sees the climate crisis for what it is: the existential threat of our time.”
According to the White House, roughly half of American LNG exports went to Western Europe last year, and the US has exceeded its annual delivery targets to the EU for each of the last two years. “Today’s announcement will not impact our ability to continue supplying LNG to our allies in the near-term,” Biden claimed in his statement.
Europe remains mired in an energy crisis. The continent’s former industrial powerhouse, Germany, is “in a particularly difficult situation” after abandoning Russian gas supplies, Economy Minister Robert Habeck told lawmakers last week. Prior to the imposition of sanctions on Moscow over the Ukraine conflict, Germany received 40% of its gas imports from Russia. Replacing this fuel with LNG from the US, as well as energy from Norway and the Netherlands, has come at a cost, with the German government forced to roll out massive subsidy packages to prevent its largest industrial firms from leaving the country.
German industrial output fell by 2% last year, while the entire economy shrank by 0.3% in the same time period, the country’s Federal Statistical Office reported last week. The office blamed the decline on high inflation, soaring energy prices, and weak foreign demand.
LNG is transported on large tanker ships to regasification plants, where it is heated to return it to a gaseous state. Germany has rushed to bring three such offshore plants online since early 2022, and plans to open three more over the coming months. The US has also built out its LNG export infrastructure to cope with the demand, including the Calcasieu Pass 2 project in Louisiana, which once certified will be the nation’s largest export terminal.
The Calcasieu Pass 2 facility will likely come before the DOE for approval in the coming weeks, where it will be stalled indefinitely by Biden’s pause. With half of the terminal’s output set to go to Germany, a spokesman for the project’s developer, Venture Global, told Reuters last week that the pause would send a “devastating signal to our allies that they can no longer rely on the United States.”
The Hospitals Clinging to Covid Masks Despite All Evidence
BY DR GARY SIDLEY | THE DAILY SCEPTIC | JANUARY 17, 2024
Like those famous Japanese soldiers still fighting World War II on a remote island decades after everyone else had ended hostilities, a minority of healthcare settings in the U.K. enter 2024 with local managers attempting to insist that visitors and patients wear “face coverings” into a fourth consecutive year. For allowing the dogged persistence of this superstitious practice we can thank the U.K. Health Security Agency (UKHSA), despite the fact its own boss, Dame Jenny Harries, made a series of incredible admissions about the value of masking at the recent Covid Inquiry. There was no solid proof masks ever slowed the spread of Covid, Harries explained. The advice to the public to make their own “face coverings” was “ineffective”. Worst of all, by creating a false sense of security, masking may have actually made things worse, she said. Of course, if you’d been paying attention, you’d know Harries was really just coming full circle.
On March 11th 2020, in her previous role as Deputy Chief Medical Officer for England, less than two weeks before the first lockdown Harries was telling the public in a televised interview with then-Prime Minister Boris Johnson that “for the average member of the public” masks “are really not a good idea… people can put themselves at more risk than less… you can actually trap the virus in the mask and start breathing it in”. Harris was far from alone in dismissing the value of mask-wearing, of course, because in the early spring of 2020 the public health experts spoke with one tongue. “In terms of wearing a mask, our advice is clear: that wearing a mask if you don’t have an infection reduces the risk almost not at all. So we do not advise that,” Professor Chris Whitty, England’s Chief Medical Officer, had told Sky News on March 4th. “We do not recommend masks for general wearing,” echoed England’s Deputy Chief Medical Officer, Professor Jonathan Van Tam, on April 3rd. On the same day, Professor Jason Leitch, Scotland’s Clinical Director said, “the global evidence is masks in the general population don’t work”.
The experts were so clearly united in their anti-mask stance that, around this time, the Advertising Standards Agency (ASA) banned the advertisements of two companies because of spurious claims that their face coverings would protect against coronavirus. The intervention by the ASA won the unequivocal support of NHS Medical Director Professor Stephen Powis who said, “callous firms looking to maximise profits by pushing products that fly in the face of official advice is outright dangerous and has rightly been banned”.
On April 16th, then-Transport Secretary Grant Shapps had told ITV that wearing masks would be “counterproductive… the suggestions people would make their own masks; whether it’s clothing and that sort of thing which doesn’t really provide that much protection. Secondly, the way people take it off can sometimes do the reinfection [sic]. Thirdly, it can provide a false sense of security”. But only 49 days later, on June 4th 2020, Shapps announced that “face coverings – not surgical masks – the kind of face covering you can easily make at home” – would be compulsory on public transport from June 15th, on pain of fines of up to £100. A day later, Government announced that, effective June 15th, staff would be required to wear surgical masks – and visitors and outpatients “face coverings” – in all NHS hospitals, a state of affairs that would persist by law for almost two entire years.
Some may argue that, as there is no longer a legal requirement, there is therefore no problem. But there is no shortage of commentators periodically agitating to make the practice a legal requirement again. And in any case, healthcare settings see us at our most vulnerable. Why should we even be asked to live out an intrusive, dehumanising charade? Especially off the back of two years of state-driven hysteria and an unprecedentedly draconian global restriction regime that achieved the grimmest of logical conclusions when one victim, Stephanie Warriner, was choked to death by hospital guards for the ‘crime’ of wearing a mask too low on her face.
It has long been recognised that masks achieve no appreciable reduction in the transmission of respiratory viruses. We knew this in 2015-16 with regard to surgeons and their patients (here and here). We knew this in 2020 from a gold-standard Cochrane review, an analysis of 14 studies on influenza and a healthcare investigation that concluded that masks “may paradoxically lead to more transmissions”. The amount of robust evidence pointing to the ineffectiveness of face coverings has only increased since this time, culminating in the 2023 Cochrane review. On healthcare settings specifically, a study in April 2023 concluded that mask requirements in a large London hospital made “no discernible difference” to Covid transmission rates. UKHSA guidance acknowledges that the evidence of the effectiveness of non-pharmaceutical interventions (including masks) is “weak” and “would be graded as low or very low certainty”. Even when masks were legally required in healthcare settings, no quality standard was ever specified – we were asked to swallow the absurdity that strapping any old bit of rag to our faces was to ‘Follow the Science’. Refer to the Health and Safety Executive (HSE) and you will find that even surgical masks are not regarded as personal protective equipment (PPE) under the European Directive 89/686/EEC (PPE Regulation 2002 SI 2002 No. 1144). HSE notes that surgical masks “are normally worn during medical procedures to protect not only the patient but also the healthcare worker from the transfer of microorganisms, body fluids and particulate matter generated from any splash and splatter. Whilst they will provide a physical barrier to large projected droplets, they do not provide full respiratory protection against smaller suspended droplets and aerosols”.
Even leaving aside Harries’s now repeated suggestions that masks can cause more harm than good when it comes to Covid, health is of course about much more than attempting to avoid one virus, and masking has never been a benign intervention.
Routine masking, particularly for long periods of time, is increasingly recognised to be associated with a wide range of physical, psychological and social harms (see here for an overview). A recent research study highlighted the potential risks of elevated carbon dioxide levels associated with long-term mask wearing, particularly for children, adolescents and pregnant mothers.
Then there are the human costs of routine masking in healthcare settings: the exclusion of the hard-of-hearing; the re-traumatising of the historically abused; the increased risk of falls in the elderly; the exacerbation of confusion in the already confused; the aggravation of the autistic, anxious and panic-prone; the marginalisation of already stigmatised groups; and the impediment to the goal of soothing the frightened child or suicidal teenager. Faceless interactions impede the development of healing relationships. Humane healthcare, delivered with demonstrable warmth and compassion, will always be more effective than the robotic version emitted by a faceless professional hidden behind a veneer of sterility.
But patients in healthcare settings aren’t the only victims of the mask farce. Respect for institutional science has rightly taken a knock as well, as Peter Horby, Professor of Emerging Infectious Diseases and Global Health at the University of Oxford, conveyed to the Covid Inquiry. During peak Covid, Horby chaired NERVTAG, a high-profile group of scientific experts who routinely provided advice to SAGE. Appearing before the Inquiry on October 18th 2023, he confirmed that “NERVTAG had looked at the issues of face masks in the past… and had taken quite a stringent scientific view that the highest quality evidence is randomised controlled trials… and those data were fairly clear… that the evidence was weak. And we maintained that position on how we saw the evidence, focusing on the data from randomised controlled trials.”
Lady Hallett (the less-than impartial Chair of the inquiry) interrupted, saying, “I’m sorry, I’m not following, Sir Peter. If there’s a possible benefit, what’s the downside?”
“The downside is that you are making a population-wide recommendation based on weak evidence which may weaken trust in your scientific independence and integrity,” Horby replied.
Why would scientists and public health experts risk this very obvious downside? The most obvious explanation is that forcing the public to wear masks was a highly visible way to be seen to be ‘doing something’ that came with at least a couple of attractive bonuses to politicians and bureaucrats. One, the practice had superficial ‘gut feel’ appeal to the layperson – if you didn’t think about it very much, and never looked at the evidence, masking felt like it should work. Two, as with most of the non-pharmaceutical interventions (NPIs) it shifted blame for Covid impacts away from the state and health service and onto individuals. ‘Rule breakers’ among the public – now easily identifiable by sight – made for convenient folk devils and scapegoats.
On June 1st 2022, in a letter co-signed by the same Professor Stephen Powis who had been so withering about “callous firms” promoting face masks to stop the spread of Covid, new guidance from NHS England – referencing “updates from UKHSA” – effectively passed the buck for masking down to local healthcare managers, amid general talk of “transitioning back” to pre-Covid policies.
At the time, the Smile Free campaign wrote:
Two years after the imposition of masking in English hospitals, it is most regrettable that NHS England and the authors of this latest guidance could not simply have signalled a clean break and consigned this unprecedented, poorly evidenced and ultimately failed policy to history. Since they have chosen not to, by far the most likely outcome is that masking in English hospitals will now become a ‘postcode lottery’ based on the whims of local staff.
In an open letter co-signed by over 2,200 doctors, scientists and healthcare professionals in summer 2022, we had called on the NHS Chief Executives in each of the home nations to revise the guidance for doctors, nurses and other health professionals with immediate effect, leaving the individual – whether a professional or service user – to decide whether he or she wanted to wear a mask or not, thereby bringing healthcare into line with other community settings. But with the Government having terrified the public with lurid fear campaigns, advised gravely that masks would “keep everyone safe” and endorsed this claim with the law and eye-watering fines of up to £3,200 for non-compliance, perhaps we should not be surprised that simply pulling the comfort blanket away again was rather too rich for the NHS’s blood.
A reply, dated October 4th 2022, from Dame Ruth May, Chief Nursing Office and national lead for infection control at NHS England, justified current mask advice to hospitals with a computer modelling report linked to Professor Neil Ferguson’s Imperial College that by its own admission was “highly uncertain”. We were startled to find the report was also literally labelled “Should not be used to inform clinical practice” on page one.
Despite masks never having actually gone away in many healthcare settings, the following day, news outlets were reporting the “return of the mask”. Between the Mail and Sun’s accounts, eight different NHS Trusts were reintroducing a range of measures, prominent among which were mask “requirements” for patients and visitors.
In all cases, these measures were apparently being introduced as a result of “Covid’s resurgence” with “surveillance data suggesting Covid is on the rise in England”.
Were those trusts imposing mask “requirements” in areas of above-average Covid prevalence? It appears not; there was no discernible pattern and, in fact, glaring contradictions. For example, Barnsley, with continuing significant restrictions, had a catchment area with the lowest daily new cases per 100,000 people; while Swindon and surrounding areas, served by the Great Western Trust that had reduced its mask restrictions, had the highest rate.
In investigating one trust, ESNEFT, the 10,000 patients reportedly seen every day were still being subjected to “safety theatre” going into a third year of the Covid saga, seemingly driven by a very small and unaccountable infection control team, if not in reality the whims of one man.
Even into autumn 2023, ESNEFT’s website giving advice for visitors to wards and to Accident & Emergency still states that people are required to wear “surgical face masks covering their nose and mouth” where there is a “high-risk of transmission of contagious respiratory infection” or if clinical staff ask them to wear one.
On September 26th 2023 the Smile Free campaign submitted a Freedom of Information (FOI) request to ESNEFT, seeking three pieces of information:
- Within the geographical boundaries covered by ESNEFT, COVID-19 case numbers (per 100,000 people) by month since October 2022.
- A copy of the full risk assessment document used to determine that it is necessary for ESNEFT to keep “mandating” the wearing of face masks.
- The most recent date that these mandates were subject to risk assessment and updated.
ESNEFT replied a month later, saying that it “does not have access” to any data related to Covid case numbers within its locality. Obviously, this raises the question as to how its staff ever knew whether ‘Covid cases’ were increasing, decreasing or staying flat? It further raises the question as to how they were ever able to make any decisions on mandating, or even recommending, the wearing of face coverings as ‘protection’ against a respiratory virus? It also throws into doubt ESNEFT’s operational competence. ESNEFT also claims that, as it hasn’t operated a “universal mandate” since May 2023, it doesn’t have a risk assessment. ESNEFT never answered the final question, concerning the most recent date at which it conducted a risk assessment. Should we conclude it has never done one?
In response to a similar FOI request around the same time, Sheffield Teaching Hospitals NHS Trust, which had reintroduced masking “requirements”, told us it doesn’t “hold the data for regional/community Covid data”, nor “a formal risk assessment” that would justify reintroduction of mask-wearing. In fact, it doesn’t have any “formal risk assessment” used to justify the mandating of masks at all, from any time. Instead it claims it has “a trust-wide expert group which reviews and agrees all actions required depending on the Covid prevalence level which includes the wearing of COVID-19 face masks”. In other words, unilateral decisions are made by a group of staff who don’t feel it necessary to follow the prescribed decision-making processes within their organisation (the NHS) and who don’t record their findings and document them in any formal way. We therefore followed up, asking for the roles of the individuals in this group. At time of writing, the trust had not provided an answer despite being long overdue based on FOI requirements.
In a second open letter in summer 2023, this time co-signed by over 2,500 doctors, scientists and healthcare professionals and 7,500 members of the public, we called on the NHS Chief Executives to immediately issue clear new guidance explicitly discouraging any routine requirement for staff, patients or visitors to cover their faces in healthcare settings.
This time, NHS England’s Dame Ruth May specifically referenced UKHSA guidance as the reason for the ongoing “postcode lottery”, stating “the current UKHSA guidance… sets out that in health and care settings, non-pharmaceutical interventions (such as mask wearing and enhanced ventilation) may be used, depending on local prevalence and risk assessment, with the aim to reduce the spread of SARS-CoV-2”. It is interesting that “local prevalence and risk assessment” should be emphasised as the key considerations, since our investigations show hospitals unable to provide any evidence of increased local prevalence, nor risk assessments, to underpin their arbitrary decisions.
On November 2nd 2023, a few weeks before Harries’s appearance at the Covid Inquiry, we wrote an open letter to her at UKHSA asking her to explain the discrepancy between UKHSA’s current guidance, which, while broadly recommending a return to pre-pandemic normality, continues to allow re-imposition of masks where there is a local appetite for it, and its recent literature review, which concluded the evidence for masks reducing viral transmission was, at best, very weak.
We asked Harries to immediately update UKHSA guidance so as to:
- Acknowledge the ineffectiveness of masks as a viral barrier;
- Explicitly recognise the range of harms associated with the masking of staff, patients and visitors in healthcare settings;
- Actively discourage the routine wearing of masks in all clinical areas.
At time of writing, we still await a reply – though we note that via her Covid Inquiry testimony Harries has clearly conceded point one above, and identified one extremely significant harm – the false sense of security engendered by masking – from point two.
In everyday life, it only makes sense to initiate a new action if we are reasonably confident it will not result in more harms than benefits. The importance of this notion is amplified manyfold when it is powerful actors – politicians and their public health experts – forcing the change on their citizens. The ‘Precautionary Principle‘ in its original form endorsed this important rule and complemented the Hippocratic oath of our medical doctors to “first do no harm”. Yet throughout the Covid saga we have witnessed a total disregard for this principle with the imposition of a series of non-evidenced restrictions, driven more by politics than science, where the resulting collateral damage – to both the public and to the reputation of medicine and institutional science – has dwarfed any benefits. A prominent example of such absurdity has been the mask requirement in community settings.
Dr. Gary Sidley is a retired NHS Consultant Clinical Psychologist and co-founder of the Smile Free campaign opposed to mask mandates.
Federal Court Judge Pulls Canada Back from the Brink
By Bruce Pardy | Brownstone Institute | January 25, 2024
The Canadian government’s use of the Emergencies Act was unlawful. The Trucker Convoy did not constitute a national emergency. So said a judge of the Federal Court on Tuesday. The decision may help to pull Canada back from the brink of authoritarian rule.
The Federal Court decision contains four conclusions. Two prerequisites for invoking the Emergencies Act, said Justice Richard Mosley, were not met. Moreover, the two regulations issued under it were unconstitutional. Predictably, the government has promised to appeal. For the government to prevail, an appeal panel would have to overturn all four. But there is a wrinkle, which I will get to momentarily.
Between 1963 and 1970, the Front de libération du Québec (FLQ), a separatist organization in Quebec, committed bombings, robberies, and killed several people. In October 1970, they kidnapped British trade commissioner James Cross, and then kidnapped and killed Pierre Laporte, a minister in the Quebec government. In response, Pierre Trudeau’s government invoked the War Measures Act, the only time it had been used in peacetime. In the years that followed, the invocation of the Act became regarded as a dangerous overreach of government powers and breach of civil liberties.
The Emergencies Act, enacted in 1988 to replace the War Measures Act, had higher thresholds. It was supposed to be more difficult for governments to trigger. Before Covid and the trucker convoy, it had never been used.
The Freedom Convoy arrived at Parliament Hill in Ottawa on January 29, 2022 to protest Covid vaccine mandates. The truckers parked unlawfully in downtown Ottawa. They violated parking bylaws and probably the Highway Traffic Act. Authorities could have issued tickets and towed the trucks away. But they didn’t.
In the meantime, protests in other parts of the country emerged. Trucks blocked border crossings in Coutts, Alberta and at the Ambassador Bridge in Windsor, Ontario. Local and provincial law enforcement dealt with those protests and cleared the borders. By February 15, when Justin Trudeau’s government declared a public order emergency and invoked the Emergencies Act, only the Ottawa protests had not been resolved.
The government issued two regulations under the Act. One prohibited public assemblies “that may reasonably be expected to lead to a breach of the peace.” The other outlawed donations and authorized banks to freeze donors’ bank accounts. On February 18 and 19, police brandishing riot batons descended on the crowd. They arrested close to 200 people, broke truck windows, and unleashed the occasional burst of pepper spray. By the evening of the 19th, they had cleared the trucker encampment away. Banks froze the accounts and credit cards of hundreds of supporters. On February 23, the government revoked the regulations and use of the Act.
Governments cannot use the Emergencies Act unless its prerequisites are met. A public order emergency must be a “national emergency” and a “threat to the security of Canada,” both of which are defined in the Act. A national emergency exists only if the situation “cannot be effectively dealt with under any other law of Canada.” “Threats to the security of Canada” can be one of several things. The government relied upon the clause that requires activities “directed toward or in support of the threat or use of acts of serious violence against persons or property for the purpose of achieving a political, religious or ideological objective.”
The trucker protests were neither a national emergency, Mosley concluded, nor a threat to the security of Canada.
There was no national emergency:
Due to its nature and to the broad powers it grants the Federal Executive, the Emergencies Act is a tool of last resort. [Cabinet] cannot invoke the Emergencies Act because it is convenient, or because it may work better than other tools at their disposal or available to the provinces.…in this instance, the evidence is clear that the majority of the provinces were able to deal with the situation using other federal law, such as the Criminal Code, and their own legislation…For these reasons, I conclude that there was no national emergency justifying the invocation of the Emergencies Act and the decision to do so was therefore unreasonable and ultra vires.
A threat to the security of Canada did not exist:
Ottawa was unique in the sense that it is clear that [Ottawa Police Services] had been unable to enforce the rule of law in the downtown core, at least in part, due to the volume of protesters and vehicles. The harassment of residents, workers and business owners in downtown Ottawa and the general infringement of the right to peaceful enjoyment of public spaces there, while highly objectionable, did not amount to serious violence or threats of serious violence…[Cabinet] did not have reasonable grounds to believe that a threat to national security existed within the meaning of the Act and the decision was ultra vires.
Nor were the regulations constitutional. The prohibition on public assemblies infringed freedom of expression under section 2(b) of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms. Empowering financing institutions to provide personal financial information to the government and to freeze bank accounts and credit cards was an unconstitutional search and seizure under section 8. Neither was justified, Mosley concluded, under section 1 of the Charter, the “reasonable limits” clause.
To prevail on appeal, the government would have to reverse all four conclusions. Justice Mosley did not make obvious errors of law. But there are a couple of odd bits. In particular, Mosley admits to doubts about how he would have proceeded had he been at the cabinet table himself:
I had and continue to have considerable sympathy for those in government who were confronted with this situation. Had I been at their tables at that time, I may have agreed that it was necessary to invoke the Act. And I acknowledge that in conducting judicial review of that decision, I am revisiting that time with the benefit of hindsight and a more extensive record of the facts and law…
Which brings us to the wrinkle. In April 2022, Richard Wagner, the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of Canada, gave an interview to Le Devoir. Speaking in French, he characterized the protest on Wellington Street in Ottawa, where Parliament and the Supreme Court are located, as “the beginning of anarchy where some people have decided to take other citizens hostage.” Wagner said that “forced blows against the state, justice and democratic institutions like the one delivered by protesters… should be denounced with force by all figures of power in the country.” He did not mention the Emergencies Act by name. But his comments could be interpreted as endorsing its use.
The government’s appeal will go first to the Federal Court of Appeal but then to the Supreme Court of Canada. Its chief justice appears to have already formed an opinion about the dispute. Having made his public comments, the chief justice should announce that he will recuse himself from the case to avoid a reasonable perception of bias. That too would help bring Canada back from the brink.
Bruce Pardy is executive director of Rights Probe and professor of law at Queen’s University.
Israel clinches new US arms deal as Gaza atrocities mount
The Cradle | January 26, 2024
The US is finalizing three major military aircraft sales to Israel, as it continues to bomb Gaza, across a series of meetings led by the director general of the Israeli Defense Ministry, Eyal Zamir, Haaretz reported on 25 January.
Progress was made toward purchasing 25 F-35 fighter jets, 25 F-15 fighter jets, and a new squadron of Apache attack helicopters, possibly involving 12 units. These jets and helicopters will reportedly be paid for using the US aid provided to Israel.
Zamir, alongside other officials, held a series of meetings in Washington with senior Pentagon and State Department officials. The Israeli officials met with arms dealers, namely Lockheed Martin, manufacturer of the F-35, and Boeing, manufacturer of the F-16 and Apache.
Haaretz reports that the sale “demonstrated the urgent need to deploy attack helicopters to hit enemy targets and to assist [Israeli army] ground forces.”
The F-35 and F15 purchases will be carried out after completing previous purchases of a second F-35 squadron. The third F-35 group will arrive in Israel from 2027 onward, and the new F-15s will be received a year later. The Apaches are expected to arrive in Israel within two years.
Alongside the procurement of jets and helicopters, Israel has also increased its aerial munitions purchases, costing hundreds of millions of dollars, that are expected to arrive shortly.
These arms are needed to both replenish their quickly depleting stockpile in the fight against Palestinian resistance forces in Gaza as well as to prepare the front in the north against the Lebanese resistance group Hezbollah.
The US has voiced concerns over its potential need to stretch an already thin ammunition stockpile to support Israel as well as continue its support for Ukraine.
Israel’s new proposed budget has increased its weapons spending budget by an extra $8.3 billion, now projecting it to a historic high of about $37 billion.
Israel has been carrying out a brutal bombing campaign on the Gaza Strip since their war on the besieged enclave began in October. To date, according to the Palestinian Ministry of Health, at least 26,083 Palestinians have been killed and with over 64,000 injuries.
US enlists extremists to attack Russian troops in Syria: Official
The Cradle | January 26, 2024
The Russian President’s Special Envoy to Syria, Alexander Lavrentiev, has accused Washington of directing Syrian armed groups to carry out attacks against Russian troops in the country.
“There are indications that the Americans are specifying tasks for their forces from among the Syrian armed opposition to inflict the greatest amount of damage on Russian military forces in Syria,” Lavrentiev said on 26 January.
Lavrentiev added these attacks are planned not only against Russian forces in southern Syria but also in what is known as the Idlib de-escalation zone northwest of the country – patrolled by Russian and Turkish forces in line with a 2018 agreement.
“[The US] has begun … supplying [extremist groups] with modern weapons and modern drones so that it can carry out raids, including on the Hmeimim base.”
Hmeimim is a Russian-operated military base located southeast of the Syrian city of Latakia. Hostile, unidentified drones have approached the Hmeimim base in the past.
On 3 October, Idlib-based extremists launched a drone towards a crowded military college in the city of Homs, killing dozens of civilians and graduating officers.
Russian officials have repeatedly accused the US of harboring and training extremist militants in Syria, particularly inside Washington’s Al-Tanf military base.
Russian and Syrian officials have also accused US forces of providing ISIS with logistical support and allowing it to operate from the 55-kilometer area surrounding the Al-Tanf base.
Lavrentiev’s comments come as ISIS is making a resurgence in Syria. Despite losing the majority of its territory in the country, the group’s cells operate in the Syrian desert – geographically linked to Al-Tanf and the 55-kilometer zone around it – carrying out frequent hit and run attacks against Syrian troops, civilians, farmers, and truffle harvesters.
This marked resurgence in ISIS activity coincides with ongoing attacks on US bases in Syria and Iraq by Iraqi resistance factions in support of Gaza and in rejection of US support for Israel.
Since October, the Iraqi resistance has launched at least 153 attacks on the US bases.
US officials are reportedly also in talks to establish a time-table with the Iraqi government for a withdrawal of their troops from Iraq.
However, sources told Reuters that the talks “are expected to take several months, if not longer, with the outcome unclear and no US troop withdrawal imminent.”
As US bases in Syria come under fire, the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) – a US-backed Kurdish militia which helps oversee Washington’s occupation of the country’s oilfields – has also been facing a widespread rebellion since last August, waged by Arab tribes with Syrian government backing.
Saudi, Chinese vessels undeterred by Yemen Red Sea ops
The Cradle | January 26, 2024
Saudi Aramco, the world’s largest oil company, is continuing to send oil and fuel tankers through the Red Sea, despite US and UK bombing of Yemen and attacks by Yemen’s armed forces on Israeli, US, and UK-linked ships passing through the Bab al-Mandeb Strait.
“We’re moving in the Red Sea with our oil and products cargoes,” Mohammed al-Qahtani, head of Aramco’s refining and oil trading and marketing businesses, told Bloomberg on 26 January.
The risks of continuing to use the Red Sea route to Europe amid the violence are “manageable,” he said.
In November, Yemen’s de-facto government, led by the Ansarallah resistance movement, began targeting ships with Israeli links and ships traveling to Israel via the Red Sea and Suez Canal.
Ansarallah took the decision in response to Israel’s bombing and ground campaign against Gaza, which many view as a genocide.
Rather than press Israel to end attacks on Gaza, the US and UK began bombing targets in Yemen, endangering not only Israeli-linked ships but ships from other nations as well.
In response, many of the world’s largest shipping companies began redirecting ships around the Horn of Africa, adding two weeks to the journey from Asia to Europe.
But in January, Aramco increased crude shipments through the Red Sea toward Europe, according to vessel tracking data compiled by Bloomberg.
“That is also giving us huge access and optionality,” Qahtani said. “We are assessing that almost on a daily basis.”
He said that the cost of these shipments has increased, as few shipping companies are willing to travel the route, and insurance costs have risen. “But overall it’s is very manageable.”
Most Saudi crude is exported east to Asia, but the kingdom has been able to continue using the Red Sea route for western shipments due to its continued ties with the Yemeni government.
Saudi Arabia and Ansarallah continue to negotiate a formal end to the war they fought between 2015 and 2022.
As western shipping companies have rerouted their ships, Chinese firms have stepped in to fill the void, as China also enjoys good relations with Ansarallah and does not fear its ships being attacked in the Red Sea.
Chinese firms have been serving ports such as Doraleh in Djibouti, Hodeidah in Yemen, and Jeddah in Saudi Arabia, which all saw major drops in port traffic following the attacks.
Cichen Shen, the China expert at Lloyd’s List Intelligence, told the Financial Times that the “easiest explanation” for the rush of Chinese operators into the region was that they seek to exploit their relative invulnerability to attack to win business.
“You have commercial interest and you see this capacity gap and you see the demand,” Shen said of the lines’ motivation for moving ships to the region. “I think the commercial interest is probably the biggest reason.”
The UN and Israel are on the same page
The Palestinian anti-colonial struggle is legitimate
By Ramona Wadi | MEMO | January 26, 2024
Even in the midst of Israel’s genocide of the Palestinians, the UN Secretary-General is still pursuing the defunct two-state paradigm. While addressing the UN Security Council earlier this week, Antonio Guterres called for an end to Israel’s occupation of Palestine, while calling out Israeli officials on their rejection of the two-state “solution”. However, if this so-called solution is defunct as a result of Israel’s colonial expansion which the UN allowed — as it is — what exactly is Israel rejecting and what is Guterres upholding?
“The right of the Palestinian people to build their own fully independent state must be recognised by all,” Guterres stated. “And any refusal to accept the two-state solution by any party must be firmly rejected.”
At this point, rejecting the two-state diplomacy means rejecting a defunct hypothesis. Guterres, however, continued: “What is the alternative? How would a one-state solution look with such a large number of Palestinians inside without any rights and dignity? This would be inconceivable.”
There are many implications to Guterres’s statement, none of which are favourable for Palestinians. Primarily, he is assuming that the one-state concept emanates solely from the Israeli colonial narrative, which would see a single colonial entity established over the entirety of Palestine. Moreover, by promoting the two-state paradigm, Guterres is advancing the one-state colonial reality for Israel, for the simple reason that the UN is completely behind Israel in its endeavours. This is besides the fact that two states are no longer viable, not to mention still unfavourable for Palestinians in terms of land ownership and liberation, even if it were still possible to achieve.
The secretary-general’s rhetoric gives Palestinians no options. The two-state “solution” is defunct, which means Palestinians can aspire to nothing in that regard. A one-state colonial reality only entrenches the current reality and leaves Palestinians exposed to even more Israeli colonial terrorism. However, there is an alternative, and one which Guterres pretends does not exist. It’s called decolonisation.
This is a fact which the UN and Guterres have eliminated completely from their discourse because it doesn’t suit the two-state propaganda. In a post-colonial era, Palestinians are still living a colonial reality and decolonisation is the only viable option for a population which was ethnically cleansed in 1948 and is now experiencing genocide in a tiny besieged enclave. The UN has done nothing but talk about another humanitarian ceasefire — even though in November that led to an increase in Israel’s killing of Palestinian civilians — and remind the world that Palestinians deserve nothing better than rhetoric about “two states”. Essentially, Guterres is stating that Palestinians are undeserving of political rights, of their land, and of liberation, which takes the UN full circle back to when it endorsed partition in 1947 based on colonial superiority and indigenous subjugation. The UN and Israel are on the same page.
When Guterres states that everyone must recognise the Palestinians’ right to build their independent state, does he include himself in the equation? And when he speaks of the two-state “solution”, does he realise that the UN is thus condoning the ethnic cleansing since 1948 and the deprivation of Palestinians of their land? Just like Israel, the UN endorses the colonial approach and implementation, and just like Israel, Guterres is depriving Palestinians of their political rights by refusing to promote the only viable solution: decolonisation.
Russian Foreign Ministry Ties Red Sea Blockade to Gaza Blockade, Backs Houthis in Moscow Meeting
By John Helmer | Dances with Bears | January 25, 2024
For the time being, there are no official photographs of the meeting in Moscow on Thursday evening at the Russian Foreign Ministry between Mikhail Bogdanov, the deputy foreign minister and chief Russian negotiator in the Middle East and Africa, and Mohammed (Mukhameddov) Abdelsalam leading a delegation of the Ansarallah government of Yemen, known as the Houthi movement.
Bogdanov’s communiqué said “special attention was paid to the development of tragic events in the Palestinian-Israeli conflict zone, as well as the aggravation of the situation in the Red Sea in this regard. In this context, the missile and bomb attacks on Yemen undertaken by the United States and Great Britain, which are capable of destabilizing the situation on a regional scale, were strongly condemned.”
This is the plainest signal to date of Russian backing for the southern front of the Arab war against Israel, and the link which the Houthis have made between the Israeli blockade of Gaza, the genocide of the Palestinians, and the Red Sea blockade which the Houthis have imposed on vessels owned or directed by Israeli shipowners, US naval fleet, and American-flagged and other vessels carrying military and civil cargoes to Israel or reload ammunition for future attacks on Yemen.
At the same time across Moscow, unusually large delegations of officials of the Russian Security Council, led by Nikolai Patrushev, and Ali-Akbar Ahmadian, special presidential representative and Secretary of Iran’s National Security Council, have been meeting to discuss a detailed agenda which Patrushev’s communiqué calls a “wide range of Russian-Iranian security cooperation” and “the practical implementation of the agreements reached at the highest level.”
In an open statement for reporters, Ahmadian told Patrushev: “”America’s grandeur has shattered, and today, it cannot even rally its traditional allies. A country that considers itself a superpower is engaged in war against resistance groups and the people of the region.”
The display of Russian support for the Axis of Resistance against Israel and the US is unprecedented. The Foreign Ministry and Security Council meetings confirm there is now a new definition of “terrorism” in Russian warfighting strategy, in which there is both public and secret support for Hamas, the Houthis, and other groups in Lebanon and Iraq fighting for national liberation against Israel and the US. (On the differentiation between national liberation which Russia supports, and terrorism which it condemns, click to read this.)
Bogdanov’s meeting with Abdelsalam was not the first high-level Russian contact with the Houthis, nor their first negotiation. The two officials had met in Moscow on July 24, 2019, when they discussed terms for ending the civil war in Yemen; Bogdanov was also meeting at the time with other Yemeni political factions. Abdelsalam said then: “The meeting discussed the most important issues related to the Yemeni policy and the steps of the national delegation [the Houthi delegation] in the Stockholm Agreement in addition to the regional crisis, in addition to the importance of the Russian role at the regional level, and its reflection on the situation in Yemen to calm the escalation and prevent further tension as Yemen represents a key point towards regional calm that will be positively reflected in the tense regional situation.”
Bogdanov met Abdelsalam again in Oman on August 30, 2019.
So long as the agenda was limited to the Yemen civil war and the intervention of Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Qatar, the Israelis were not exercised. But they are now, as the Russian Foreign Ministry announcement of Thursday evening’s negotiations caught Israeli intelligence agents and government officials by surprise. The first Israeli press reports over Thursday night cribbed from Reuters which had followed Tass in reading the Foreign Ministry communiqué; no Israeli officials were available to comment to their reporters.
The Russian-Houthi negotiations took place in parallel with the talks between the Russian Security Council and their Iranian counterparts headed by Ali-Akbar Ahmadian, head of Iran’s Security Council. Tass reported that Nikolai Patrushev had invited Ahmadian to the talks. Ahmadian issued a statement through the Iranian Embassy in Moscow to say “the Supreme National Security Council secretary hailed Iran-Russia cooperation in the fight against terrorism, particularly in Syria, saying that cooperation must continue.” By terrorism Ahmadian meant Israeli attacks on Iranian military advisers in Syria, as well as the bombing of civilians at the Kerman cemetery on January 3.
Here is the full text of the Bogdanov-Abdelsalam communiqué:
On the meeting of the Special Representative of the President of the Russian Federation for the Middle East and Africa, Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs of Russia Mikhail Bogdanov with a delegation of the Yemeni Ansar Allah movement
On January 25, the Special Representative of the President of the Russian Federation for the Middle East and Africa, Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs of Russia Mikhail Bogdanov received a delegation of the Yemeni Ansar Allah movement headed by Mohammed Abdelsalam.
During the in-depth conversation, an in-depth discussion took place on the issues of a comprehensive settlement of the military-political crisis in Yemen, which has been going on for almost nine years. At the same time, the importance of increasing international efforts to create the necessary conditions for establishing a full-scale inter-Yemeni national dialogue under the auspices of the United Nations was emphasized.
Special attention was paid to the development of tragic events in the Palestinian-Israeli conflict zone, as well as the aggravation of the situation in the Red Sea in this regard. In this context, the missile and bomb attacks on Yemen undertaken by the United States and Great Britain, which are capable of destabilizing the situation on a regional scale, were strongly condemned.
Here is the Russian Security Council communiqué following the plenary session between Patrushev, Ahmadian and their delegations, before they broke up into working-group meetings:
In Moscow Russian Security Council Secretary Nikolai Patrushev held talks with the Secretary of the Supreme National Security Council of Iran Ali Ahmadian
A wide range of Russian-Iranian security cooperation was discussed. The focus is on the interaction of the security councils, law enforcement agencies and special services of the two countries. Special attention is paid to the fight against terrorism, information security issues, problems of ensuring the economic security of Russia and Iran in the face of sanctions pressure from Western countries, as well as countering attempts to interfere in the internal affairs of sovereign states. The development of a new bilateral comprehensive long-term agreement was touched upon. It was emphasized that the conclusion of this fundamental document will give a powerful impetus to the further development of mutually beneficial cooperation in all spheres.
In addition, the conversation discussed global and regional trends, as well as the upcoming bilateral and multilateral contacts between the Security Councils of Russia and Iran in 2024. The schedule of activities of the working groups of the Security Councils of the two countries on issues of mutual interest has been agreed.
The parties noted that relations between Russia and Iran continue to strengthen and reach a qualitatively new level across the entire spectrum of areas. The focus on the practical implementation of the agreements reached at the highest level was confirmed.
Hours after this meeting in Moscow, but before the Houthis arrived at Bogdanov’s office in Moscow, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov held a press conference at the United Nations in New York. Lavrov did not mention the Houthis explicitly nor did he condemn their blockade of Israeli ports, shipping and deliveries, but he did attack the Anglo-American bombings of Yemeni territory.
“Regarding the Red Sea,” Lavrov said, “there is a direct and illegal aggression there in violation of all international norms. Those taking part in it and who are behind this aggression are lying when they claim that this is an act of self-defence in accordance with the UN Charter. Our mission in New York has circulated a real document that reviews all the arguments put forward by the UK and the US and exposes their actions as outright robbery rather than self-defence.”
Asked about Russia’s relationship with India and the plan for an eastern maritime corridor for shipping between the two countries, Lavrov replied by emphasizing Russia’s strategic priority is to defend against US and NATO attacks, including economic warfare against its oil exports.
A question of this kind calls for a lengthy answer. To put it briefly, just like most countries on the Eurasian continent, Russia needs new corridors as a way of cutting logistics costs and ensuring faster deliveries compared to using the Suez Canal or sending ships around Africa. Everyone is interested in creating these transport and logistics chains and ensuring that they are independent from the West and those who regularly abuse their standing in global trade and along the shipping routes.
There is the North-South corridor that ensures quick, effective and reliable shipments from the Baltic Sea to the Persian Gulf. There are plans to link Russian ports in the Far East with India. There is also an initiative called Europe–Middle East–India, backed by western Europeans. For us, the North-South corridor remains a priority and India stands to directly benefit from it. This route will cross Russia, Azerbaijan, Iran and go all the way to India. Pakistan is also interested.
There has been much talk about this lately. India is looking at the Northern Sea Route with a lot of interest. The same goes for China. Considering global warming and the fact that it is expected to become operational year-around, the Northern Sea Route can directly compete against all other routes since it cuts shipping time by a third compared to the Suez Canal, to give you one example. We have been discussing it with our Indian colleagues but, of course, not at the Foreign Ministry level. The ministers of economy, finance, transport and our prime ministers are working on this matter. This is one of the most promising tasks in terms of our regional development.
Source: https://splash247.com
Moscow sources say the official communiqués indicate the multi-track approach Russian strategy is adopting, and speak for themselves, requiring no comment at this stage
Vzglyad, the semi-official Moscow website for security analysis, which has followed a pro-Israel, anti-Hamas line since October 7, reported on January 24 that their sources are confident that Russian oil shipments to India and China, through the Suez Canal and Red Sea, remain secure from attack by the Houthis, and also that there will be no behind-the-scenes interference from Saudi Arabia. Without saying as much, the Vzglyad reporter conceded this is only possible because there have been direct Russian agreements with the Houthis and Iran.
“Russia has not changed logistics at all,” Vzglyad reported a source, Igor Yushkov, an analyst of the National Energy Security Fund. “Ships with our oil are still sailing through the Red Sea past Yemen, and we will most likely be the last to leave the Suez Canal. Russia will [sic] obviously try to negotiate with Iran to coordinate the passage of Russian tankers through the Suez Canal and the Red Sea.”
“In general, Russia, of course, benefits if all the other oil producers are forced to send their ships around Africa via the Cape of Good Hope, while Russia itself retains the shorter, previous route through the Suez Canal and the Red Sea… Because the logistics will become more expensive for all other companies, these costs will be included in the cost of oil, and so that will grow. Whereas Russia’s transportation costs will remain the same, and it will then be possible to sell Russia’s oil more expensively. As for Saudi Arabia, Russia has many more points of common interest with it than differences. Therefore, the West’s bet on a contest between the two countries over the entire situation with navigation in the Red Sea is premature.”
Premature is official Russian-speak for wishful thinking.
Boris Rozhin, chief of the Colonel Cassad internet platform and one of the leading military analysts in Moscow, noted on the evening of January 25: “Since the Yemeni Ansar Allah movement began its operations against shipping related to Israel, the volume of cargo traffic through the Suez Canal has decreased by about 85%. Navigation on the Suez Canal has almost completely stopped after the attacks in the Red Sea. This has a serious impact on the Israeli economy.” Rozhin, who has been writing on the Yemen conflict for several years, has not yet commented on the Houthi visit to Moscow.
According to Vzglyad’s source, “I don’t see any serious reduction in Russian oil supplies to India and China. Moreover, by itself Russia is now reducing production and exports; these are included in the new commitments under the agreement with OPEC+. At the same time, Russia is still the largest supplier for both India and China. Therefore, it is not worth saying that we have left these markets or someone has pushed us out… There are no problems with the sale of Russian oil, and it is unclear why Saudi Arabia would squeeze Russia out of the Asian market. In the previous two years, we have swapped markets — the Saudis got the European market after Russia left. At the same time, Saudi Arabia is still represented in Asia, where Russia has now become a strong player. It makes no economic sense to compete and knock the ground out from under each other’s feet… In order to displace Russian oil from the Asian markets, the Saudis would have to offer the same price as Russia offers. However, it is more profitable for Saudi Arabia to send oil to Europe, even around Africa, than to give the same discount of $10 per barrel which Russia gives to India and China.”
CURRENT PRICE QUOTES IN THE CRUDE OIL MARKET (BEFORE DISCOUNTING)
Source: https://oilprice.com/
Vzglyad concludes: “Even if Saudi Arabia gives this discount, Russia will still have nowhere to go, because we cannot supply this oil to Europe. This means that we would have to give an even bigger discount to Asian customers. Why should Saudi Arabia compete with us in the amount of this discount in order to supply oil to China and India, if they have the European market… One more point: if Saudi Arabia and Russia supply oil to Asia, who will supply oil to Europe? Then there will be a shortage of oil in Europe, the price will rise, and the Europeans will lure non–Russian oil at a high price.”
Moscow sources note that since this is the consensus calculation of the Russian oil exporters, the political and military calculation follows that agreement on terms with the Houthis and Iran is a must. “There is no place left for Israel in this calculation of Russia’s national interest”, one of the sources adds.
Who Is the Antiwar Candidate?
Fuggedaboutit!
BY PHILIP GIRALDI • UNZ REVIEW • JANUARY 25, 2024
I sometimes wonder what the Founders, if they could return to life and see their creation, would think of today’s American Republic. President George W. Bush described the Constitution of the United States as “just a goddamned piece of paper” before he went on a rampage all over the world in what he called the “war on terror.” Of course, he had probably never even read the Constitution or the Federalist Papers and therefore did not understand how the Founders had deliberately made it difficult to go to war, which they regarded as the greatest evil confronting the new nation. Bush proceeded to push through other unconstitutional legislation including the so-called Patriot Act which empowered him to kill some hundreds of thousands of innocent human beings in places like Afghanistan and Iraq without declaring war on anyone after having produced fabricated information to justify the brutality.
But that was then and now is quite different and even worse, with a president who often appears to be lacking any brain cells holding hands behind his furrowed brow. The United States is currently at war in two countries, has illegal occupying military forces based in at least three more, and is quite possibly conniving at adding a few more enemies du jour, namely Iran, North Korea, Venezuela, China and Russia. All of this is being accomplished without declarations of war from Congress and without even compliance with the 1973 unconstitutional War Powers Act, which mandated that the president should be confronting an imminent threat to take such action. Joe Biden and his Secretary of State Antony Blinken have also twice sidestepped the requirement that Congress should approve all arms transfers to foreign nations by falsely claiming an “emergency” to ship $250 million of armaments to Israel, weapons that are being used to carry out a genocide against the Palestinians, making the US totally complicit in that war crime.
I have of course been following the Republican primaries as well as the flow of self-justifying verbiage otherwise known as lying coming out of the mouths of the Democratic Party incumbents, most notably the Zionist-Catholic Commander-in-Chief Joe Biden; his able sidekick Kamala “has anyone seen her lately” Harris; his Antony Blinken who goes to Israel to negotiate and the first thing he tells Bibi is that he is a Jew; his Director of Homeland Security Alejandro Mayorkas who has forgotten that real countries have borders; and his Treasury Secretary Janice Yellen who is happy funding multiple wars simultaneously while running up the already unsustainable federal debt. Behind it all is the apparent belief that the United States should be empowered to tell the rest of the world how to behave. Oh, and the Democrats have decided to base their 2024 campaign on the highbrow principle of free abortions for everyone! Joe Biden’s confessor would like to hear that!
And then there is Congress, which is following the Senator John McCain principle that one should always embrace the possibility for a new war. Congressman Nancy Pelosi and Senator Schumer seem to love Ukraine and Israel so much that it leaves little time to do anything for their actual constituents. Schumer often reminds audiences that his surname is close to the Hebrew word for protector, making him “the Jewish state’s protector in the Senate.”
The problem is that America’s so-called government has been so corrupted by both money pouring in from defense contractors and Jewish/Israeli interests that they have lost sight of the people who have the misfortune of having voted the bastards into office. Opinion polls suggest that the public has gone off both the comedians running Ukraine and the Israeli baby killers in Gaza. The voters have also learned that they have little to no say regarding what the psychopaths in the White House and on Capitol Hill decide to do with their tax money and even their very lives.
Just to show how useless voting has become, it is interesting to look at the policies concerning war and peace that have been enunciated by current and recent presidential candidates to find out if anyone seriously wants to step on the brakes of the war machine. Bear in mind that the Neocons have come to control the foreign policies of both major parties which means that Israel will always come first in Washington while war will also be a constant element in America’s relationship with the world.
First comes Genocide Joe whose record speaks for itself. He managed to get out of Afghanistan by abandoning many billions of dollars-worth of military equipment and killing a bunch of American soldiers, but he quickly sought to make up for that by avoiding a negotiated end to the Ukraine-Russia conflict and giving Israel a free hand backed by money and weapons to undertake the slaughter in Gaza. He has made America accessory to both conflicts and has a hit list of other countries he might decide to weaken or attack to demonstrate that he is a strong leader. The possible victims include major nations like Iran, Russia and China. He is now attacking the Houthis in Yemen and has warned that if even a single American is killed at the illegal military bases in Iraq and Syria he might have to go to war with Iran, which he blamed for the incidents without providing any evidence. His Vice President is Kamala Harris, who is married to a Hollywood Jewish lawyer. She is, of course, little more than an affirmative action token in place, but makes noises indicating that she is fully on board with what is going on with Israel and Ukraine.
Trump the GOP nominee-apparent? He is completely ignorant on most issues including foreign policy and wars and he appoints reckless hawks and neocons like Mike Pompeo and John Bolton to senior positions. Christian Zionist Mike Pence, a dispensationalist who wants the world to end so he can be wafted up to heaven, was his Vice President. Trump is totally owned by the Israel Lobby operating through his son-in-law and his former Ambassador to Israel David Friedman. Friedman notably spent his time in the Jewish state supporting Israel rather than working on behalf of American citizens or US interests. Trump moved the US Embassy to Jerusalem in spite of international agreements making such a move illegal after receiving $100 million in political donations from Las Vegas casino magnate Sheldon Adelson. He also recognized Israel’s illegal annexation of the Syrian Golan Heights, allowed illegal settlement expansion, and gave Netanyahu a free hand in dealing with the Palestinians. Trump also ordered the killing of Qassim Suleimani, a senior Iranian official who was in Baghdad on a peace mission and staged missile attacks on Syria based on false intelligence. Trump gives lip service to ending “useless wars” but never did so in practice when he was in office. He is prone to throwing around threats and has declared recently that if an enemy in the Middle East spills a “’drop of American blood’ I will spill a ‘gallon of yours.’” This comes from a man who avoided the Vietnam War draft because he found a doctor who discovered that he suffered from “bone spurs.”
And then there is still standing the Republican contender Nikki Haley, former Governor of South Carolina and Donald Trump’s United Nations representative. She has been described as the female version of John McCain and she is a complete supporter of the carnage in Ukraine and is even more so a total Israel firster. She is a hawk across the board and it is believed that the bulk of her political financial support comes from Jewish sources that are tied to Israel. She has said that Israel should eliminate Hamas, which she considers to encompass all Palestinians, and that the US should not take in any Palestinian refugees. She also rejects the two-state solution to the Israel-Palestine conflict because the Palestinians, who have rejected several two states solutions according to Nikki, want instead a one-state solution that would eliminate Israel. She also supports the war against Russia in Ukraine.
And then there is good old Governor Ron DeSantis of Florida, who recently dropped out of the race. He might just be the most vicious Zionist of them all. He has led a number of delegations from Florida to Israel and was one of the first to respond to October 7th Gaza events by banning Palestinian groups at all state universities due to their alleged “antisemitism.” He did not ban or even criticize a single Jewish group for cheerleading the subsequent slaughter of the Palestinians and even opposes giving Palestinian refugees US visas because he claims they are all “antisemites.” He fully supports everything Israel is doing in Gaza and believes that Netanyahu should have a free hand to do whatever he wants to the Arabs. When DeSantis was a Congressman he notoriously refused to meet with survivors in his district from the 1967 Israeli attack on the USS Liberty which killed 34 American crewmen and injured more than 170. The Israelis sought to sink the ship and a cover-up of the incident ensued thanks to President Lyndon Baines Johnson, who declared that he would rather see the ship go to the bottom of the sea and all on board killed than embarrass his Israeli friends. LBJ also ordered the recall of a squadron of US jet fighters that were sent to help the Liberty.
Not much room left! Finally there is Robert F. Kennedy Jr (RFK Jr) who initially did a good job in fooling potential voters into thinking he was a man of peace, but he turned all John McCain after he blundered by praising Pink Floyd’s Roger Waters. Israel’s friends and partisans quickly informed him that Waters was on their enemies list because of his openly expressed support for the Palestinian cause. Kennedy immediately deleted his praise of Waters and declared him to be a “vicious anti-Semite.” He also claimed falsely that the Palestinian Authority has offered to pay a bounty to any Palestinians who “kill a Jew anywhere in the world” while also claiming that Palestinian children are all “being raised as serial killers. He approves of the demolitions of Palestinians’ homes and argues that in Gaza “Israel is doing more right now to protect human life” while he also praises the IDF’s “unique moral approach” to war.
Kennedy also issued a detailed statement online and has become one of the Jewish state’s most outspoken supporters. He posted on X: “This ignominious, unprovoked, and barbaric attack on Israel must be met with world condemnation and unequivocal support for the Jewish state’s right to self-defense. We must provide Israel with whatever it needs to defend itself — now. As President, I’ll make sure that our policy is unambiguous so that the enemies of Israel will think long and hard before attempting aggression of any kind. I applaud the strong statements of support from the Biden White House for Israel in her hour of need. However, the scale of these attacks means it is likely that Israel will need to wage a sustained military campaign to protect its citizens. Statements of support are fine, but we must follow through with unwavering, resolute, and practical action. America must stand by our ally throughout this operation and beyond as it exercises its sovereign right to self-defense.”
Kennedy’s inability to separate fact from fiction is evident in his referral to “Palestinian settlements within Israel,” when describing Palestinians living in what is left of their former land that is now under Israeli occupation and subject to constant settlement expansion, as though the Palestinians are the ones colonizing the Israelis. Kennedy is now running as an independent but has lost many of his staffers because of his position on Gaza. Many antiwar Americans were initially thrilled when Kennedy announced that he would be against Joe Biden in this year’s primaries and that he’d hired former Democratic congressman Dennis Kucinich, an antiwar progressive, to be his campaign manager. But Kucinich quit in the middle of October. In November, Kennedy’s field team, headed by former California Congressman Dana Rohrabacher’s wife Rhonda, also quit. In December, his foreign policy and veteran’s affairs adviser James R. Webb, Marine Corps veteran of Iraq War II and son of the former senator from Virginia, also submitted his resignation. Webb revealed that his resignation was in disgust over Kennedy’s stance on Israel’s ethnic cleansing of the Palestinians in the Gaza strip and Kennedys’ claim that “collective punishment” of civilians is justified.
One might add that there is another interesting more-or-less independent in the race, namely Jill Stein who will be seeking the nomination of the Green Party. She is a genuine antiwar person whom I have known for eight years and she has criticized the “endless war machine” as well as what is going on in Ukraine and in Gaza, where she has called for an immediate cease fire. Alas, she has no chance of getting more than a couple percentage points of the votes cast.
Other fringe candidates include Cornel West, an independent, and two Democrats who will continue to appear on the primary ballots going ahead. They are Dean Phillips and Marianne Williamson. So, there you have it folks. To paraphrase the immortal Donald Trump, peace on earth is for losers!
Philip M. Giraldi, Ph.D., is Executive Director of the Council for the National Interest, a 501(c)3 tax deductible educational foundation (Federal ID Number #52-1739023) that seeks a more interests-based U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East. Website is councilforthenationalinterest.org, address is P.O. Box 2157, Purcellville VA 20134 and its email is inform@cnionline.org.
ICJ orders Israel to prevent acts of genocide in Gaza
Press TV – January 26, 2024
The United Nations’ top court has ordered the Israeli regime to take all measures within its power to prevent genocide in Gaza, but stopped short of ordering a ceasefire.
The order by the International Court of Justice was part of its interim ruling on the emergency measures requested by South Africa in its genocide case against Israel over its war on the Gaza Strip.
The court demanded Israel try to contain death and damage in the Gaza Strip and warned it to “take all measures in its power to prevent” acts that could fall under the UN Genocide Convention set up in 1948.
The court also ordered Israel to take measures to prevent and punish direct incitement of genocide in the Gaza Strip.
Israel must take “immediate and effective measures to enable the provision of urgently needed basic services and humanitarian assistance to address the adverse conditions of life faced by Palestinians,” the court said.
It ordered the regime to report back in one month on the measures it has been asked to carry out.
Palestinians appear to be a protected group under the genocide convention, the court said, noting that it has jurisdiction to rule in the case.
Friday’s ruling at the ICJ did not deal with the core accusation of the case – whether genocide occurred – but focused on the urgent intervention sought by South Africa.
The case was brought by South Africa, which has accused Israel of breaching the UN Genocide Convention.
Over two days of hearings earlier this month in the gilded hall of the Peace Palace, where the ICJ sits, lawyers from both sides battled over the interpretation of this Convention.
South Africa said Israel had carried out “genocidal” acts that were intended to cause the “destruction of a substantial part of the Palestinian national, racial and ethnical group.”
It urged the court to order Israel to “immediately suspend” its military operations in Gaza and allow humanitarian aid to reach the civilians there.
The question now is whether the court’s rulings will be obeyed. Although its rulings are legally binding, the ICJ has no mechanism to enforce them and they are sometimes completely ignored.
South Africa has been one of the outspoken critics of Israel’s ongoing onslaught against Palestinians and has led some initiatives to hold Israel accountable for its actions in Gaza. The African country, which has experienced long years of an apartheid regime, has been praised by activists as the vanguard of the global conscience and voice of the oppressed.
At least 26,083 Palestinians, around 70 percent of them women, young children, and adolescents, have been killed in the Gaza Strip in Israeli bombardments and ground offensive since October 7.
Only Democrats are allowed to question election validity
By Drago Bosnic | January 26, 2024
Ever since Joe Biden took the presidency in the United States, the mainstream propaganda machine has been absolutely merciless toward anyone who’d dare to question the validity of the 2020 presidential election. The DNC-dominated federal institutions, particularly the highly politicized Department of Justice (DoJ), offered full support in this regard, looking to suppress any attempts of “undermining American democracy”, which is just another lifeless euphemism used against anyone daring to expose lies and outright voter fraud. However, this sort of behavior uncovers another form of hypocrisy and double standards in American politics (not that those were ever in deficit). Namely, the Democratic Party never had any qualms about questioning the validity of the 2016 presidential election, as well as countless other instances when elections on state and other levels weren’t beneficial to them.
In fact, it could easily be argued that the so-called “Russiagate” conspiracy theory that has been recycled over and over in the last well over half a decade is a prime example of questioning the validity of elections by the Democrats. What’s more, this laughable claim was even used as a pretext to change the geopolitical landscape by bringing the relations between Russia and the US to (First) Cold War levels, perhaps even worse, pushing the world to the edge of an abyss. Of course, no such concern was shown during the much more controversial 2020 election that saw actual mass voter fraud committed, as evidenced by recent findings. However, that’s a forbidden topic for the DNC, the so-called “Big Tech” and the mainstream propaganda machine. God forbid anyone would ask any questions about it, as they’d get nothing but open hostility or even get prosecuted.
Steve Watson of the Modernity News recently covered this topic, showing the case of the Fox News reporter Peter Doocy who confronted the troubled Biden administration’s Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre over this practice. Namely, on January 24, he pointed out the recent footage of Joe Biden calling Democrat Terry McAuliffe “the real governor of Virginia”. Doocy asked whether questioning election validity is a joke now, resulting in an awkward exchange with Jean-Pierre, who was clearly agitated by the question. Her rather clumsy attempt to play ignorance didn’t last long and she soon found herself having to defend Joe Biden’s statement as a supposed “joke”. When Doocy asked for further clarification, Jean-Pierre failed to provide one, trying to go around the question. However, the Fox News reporter refused to back down and stood his ground, asking the following:
“How are you going to convince people, though, that this idea of denying election results is very bad if President Biden is going out and making jokes like this?”
Jean-Pierre kept insisting that this was “merely a joke”. However, as Watson pointed out, this wasn’t the first time Joe Biden questioned election validity. He previously called former president Donald Trump “an illegitimate president”. Biden’s practice of denying election results goes back decades, as evidenced by his claim that “Al Gore really won the 2000 election”. There are numerous other examples of the DNC’s top people questioning election validity, perhaps best illustrated by this video showing 24 minutes of footage proving it. And yet, the mainstream propaganda machine is “worried about our democracy” whenever the Republicans question election results. Apparently, claiming that Trump is supposedly “illegitimate” and even “Vlad’s pal” is perfectly fine and doesn’t constitute any sort of “danger for American democracy“. However, similar criticism of the DNC is “deplorable“.
Worse yet, these same people are demanding Trump be prosecuted and even jailed for “undermining our democracy” by refusing to acknowledge that the 2020 election was valid. What’s more, on December 19, the Colorado Supreme Court banned Trump from running for presidency under the pretext that he led the so-called “January 6 insurrection”. Although he was never formally charged (let alone convicted) for that highly controversial event, the Court made its decision based precisely on that premise. On the other hand, the DNC-aligned judges probably didn’t expect this obviously partisan decision would open up a political “Pandora’s box” in the US. Namely, in response to the ruling, high-ranking officials from Texas, Arizona and Pennsylvania suggested taking Biden off the ballot. Such developments could even lead to America’s collapse along state lines.
As for election validity, recent findings show that the public’s trust in the impartiality of federal institutions has been severely undermined. The latest poll, conducted jointly by Heartland Institute and Rasmussen Reports, found that 20% of voters who cast mail-in ballots during the 2020 presidential election admitted to participating in voter fraud. However, such findings aren’t limited to polls, as evidenced by a recent court ruling in Connecticut. Namely, according to the Epoch Times, Superior Court Judge William Clark overturned the results of a Democrat mayoral primary in November 2023 and ordered a new election. The ruling was based on hours of video evidence showing hundreds of illegally harvested absentee ballots being stuffed into drop boxes in the city of Bridgeport. Clark called the videos shocking and warned they “should be shocking to all the parties”.
The report further points out other instances when election results were nullified by lower court decisions across the US, including the 2021 Compton City Council run-off race that was initially decided by a single vote. The judge tossed four fraudulent ballots cast by people not legally registered in the jurisdiction, while five people pleaded either guilty or no contest to conspiring to commit election fraud. The report cites an even worse case in Mississippi, where both state and federal institutions were deeply involved in election fraud and attempted cover-up. There are dozens of such cases across the country, many still pending for court proceedings. The Epoch Times also pointed out the thousands of court convictions for election fraud in the last two decades. This is yet another proof that the “rule of law” in the US is nothing but a myth that not even Americans themselves believe.
Drago Bosnic is an independent geopolitical and military analyst.
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The lies about the 1967 war are still more powerful than the truth
By Alan Hart | June 4, 2012
In retrospect it can be seen that the 1967 war, the Six Days War, was the turning point in the relationship between the Zionist state of Israel and the Jews of the world (the majority of Jews who prefer to live not in Israel but as citizens of many other nations). Until the 1967 war, and with the exception of a minority of who were politically active, most non-Israeli Jews did not have – how can I put it? – a great empathy with Zionism’s child. Israel was there and, in the sub-consciousness, a refuge of last resort; but the Jewish nationalism it represented had not generated the overtly enthusiastic support of the Jews of the world. The Jews of Israel were in their chosen place and the Jews of the world were in their chosen places. There was not, so to speak, a great feeling of togetherness. At a point David Ben-Gurion, Israel’s founding father and first prime minister, was so disillusioned by the indifference of world Jewry that he went public with his criticism – not enough Jews were coming to live in Israel.
So how and why did the 1967 war transform the relationship between the Jews of the world and Israel? … continue
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