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DOJ Asks Court to Toss Whistleblower Lawsuit Alleging Pfizer Defrauded U.S. Government

By Michael Nevradakis, Ph.D. | The Defender | March 14, 2024

The U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) on Tuesday asked to intervene in a lawsuit alleging Pfizer committed fraud during clinical trials for the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine.

The DOJ simultaneously asked the court to dismiss the lawsuit, which was filed by whistleblower Brook Jackson, against Pfizer.

“The United States should not be required to expend resources on a case that is inconsistent with its public health policy,” the DOJ said in its motion to dismiss.

Jackson told The Defender the DOJ’s motion was “expected” and “will clarify the standards for good cause being applied” regarding the U.S. government’s justification for “allowing Pfizer to commit fraud on the U.S. Food and Drug Administration” (FDA).

“This fraud has undoubtedly cost American taxpayers billions of dollars and has led to an untold number of injuries from the COVID-19 countermeasure, including permanent disability and death among my fellow citizens,” Jackson said.

Jackson is a former employee of the Ventavia Research Group, an independent lab that conducted some of the clinical trials for the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine.

In January 2021, she sued Pfizer, Ventavia and ICON plc, another Pfizer contractor, alleging the companies committed numerous violations of the False Claims Act during the trials.

In September 2022, Jackson filed an amended complaint, which was dismissed in April 2023. She subsequently filed a second amended complaint in October 2023, prompting the DOJ to claim it “has good cause to intervene and is entitled to dismissal” of the case.

Oral arguments in the case are scheduled for April 17 before the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Texas Beaumont Division.

Sasha Latypova, a former pharmaceutical industry executive with 25 years of experience in pharmaceutical research and development, told The Defender, “The case alleges that Pfizer committed fraud in order to get the contract for COVID-19 vaccines from the U.S. government while knowingly delivering a defective product.”

“The fraud that Jackson describes … has not been disputed by Pfizer,” Latypova said.

Robert Barnes, one of the lawyers representing Jackson, spoke at a March 8 presentation of the Vaccine Safety Research Foundation, where he said, “Any and every form of fraud they could commit, they did,” referring to Pfizer.

“[Jackson] discovered it, uncovered it and went through the appropriate internal review protocols and assumed that people would correct the defects,” Barnes said. “And instead of that occurring, she was summarily fired.”

‘Pfizer lied in order to get paid’

The DOJ’s motion to dismiss states that Jackson “alleged that defendants violated the protocol for the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine clinical trial at three study sites in Texas and that defendant Pfizer misrepresented the safety and efficacy of the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine to the Food and Drug Administration (FDA).”

Jackson filed her lawsuit under the False Claims Act, which allows the government or a party suing on its behalf, such as Jackson, to attempt to recover money for false claims made by parties in an attempt to secure payment from the government.

Those parties, such as Pfizer-BioNTech, can be held liable under the act if they knowingly made a false claim or used a false record or statement to secure payment.

According to the DOJ’s filing, the False Claims Act “requires the United States to notify the court whether it will intervene in the qui tam action or decline to take over the action,” following “a period of investigation.” A qui tam action refers to any legal case where a private citizen initiates legal action on behalf of a state.

The government may choose whether to intervene in qui tam cases. If it does, it may then proceed with the lawsuit instead of the citizen who originally filed the claim — known as a “relator.”

The government may subsequently opt to settle the case or to file a motion to dismiss, which the DOJ did.

The DOJ claims the U.S. “has good cause to intervene for the purpose of dismissal” based on U.S. Supreme Court precedent in a June 2023 ruling, United States ex rel. Polansky v. Executive Health Resources Inc., et al., that said the government may intervene and move to dismiss a False Claims Act case at any time in the life of the case.

The DOJ further claimed that the U.S. government has good cause to intervene in the case because it has access to the same clinical trial data, adverse event data and other scientific research Jackson refers to in her complaint.

To support the DOJ’s claims, the motion cites a Jan. 5, 2024, JAMA editorial authored by FDA Commissioner Robert Califf and the FDA’s Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research Director Peter Marks, claiming that:

“Contrary to a wealth of misinformation available on social media and the internet, data from various studies indicate that since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic tens of millions of lives were saved by vaccination.”

The DOJ also argued that, if the case is allowed to continue, the discovery process and ongoing legal proceedings “will impose a significant burden on FDA, HHS [U.S. Department of Health and Human Services], and DOJ.”

Referring to the Supreme Court’s Polansky ruling, Jackson said:

“The government came in at the very last moment and did what they’re doing in this case, trying to get rid of it.

“So, it went all the way to the Supreme Court and the Supreme Court ruled that based on the False Claims Act, the government has the ultimate authority to do whatever it wants to do in a sense. But again, having to show … good cause.”

Latypova said that once a case is filed under the False Claims Act, “it immediately goes under seal for an initial 60 days.” After this, “The government has 60 days to decide whether to intervene in the case or not. They could have intervened and dismissed or they could have declined to intervene and not dismiss.”

According to Jackson, “In February 2022, after keeping the case sealed and investigating the allegations for nearly 14 months, the government chose not to intervene but did not move to dismiss either. The case was then unsealed, allowing me to proceed with the action on my own, acting on behalf of the U.S.”

“The Justice Department waited until the last minute before the first round of dismissal hearings before the judge, and they made a very rare intervention, but not a full intervention,” Barnes said. “They attempted that and it partially worked,” he added, referring to the initial April 2023 dismissal of Jackson’s lawsuit.

Barnes added:

“We succeeded in getting the judge to reconsider his ruling, and he reinstated the fraud and the inducement claim, because that’s what the claim is fundamentally about — that Pfizer lied in order to get paid. They lied about what they were delivering. They said what they were delivering was safe. It wasn’t.”

Barnes said that under the U.S. government’s contract with Pfizer, the U.S. was “not paying for a therapeutic, they were not paying for a diagnostic, they were paying for something that would inoculate. And of course, this never did.”

According to Latypova, by waiting until now to file a motion to intervene, based on the Polansky ruling, the government opted to wait until “after they had an opportunity to get as many shots in as many arms as they possibly could.”

“This is the second time the DOJ is planning to intervene and to ask the court to dismiss the second amended complaint from Brook,” Latypova said. “This clearly points to the U.S. government’s desire to not investigate the clinical trial fraud for COVID-19 vaccines,” she said.

Jackson said the DOJ still must show good cause, noting that a motion to dismiss “must be done in good faith and they must provide good cause — this is key, and why I am confident that these motions will be denied,” she said.

“The government must show … why they have a reasonable argument that it is more likely than not that the downsides to the case exceed the upsides,” Barnes said. “In a multi-billion-dollar case, what’s that argument going to be from the Justice Department?”

Discovery could show government covered up vaccine adverse events

If the DOJ’s motion to dismiss fails, the process of discovery will proceed and that may reveal more evidence of a possible government cover-up.

“We believe discovery will show the government wasn’t conducting any meaningful investigation at all,” Barnes said. “It was lying to Brook Jackson, it was lying to her counsel, and more importantly, to a certain degree, it was lying to the court.”

“What was really occurring all along is that the Justice Department was deliberately slow-rolling the case for the benefit of Pfizer,” Barnes added.

“We’re going to ask to potentially receive some discovery in what that 14 months of government investigation looked like and why they chose to keep it under seal so long and at that point, dismiss … We want to know why,” Jackson said.

As for what discovery may reveal, Latypova said she is “quite certain” that “it would confirm all allegations of fraud that have been observed by Brook — violations of the clinical trial protocol, unblinding, lack of proper informed consent, manipulation of data, hiding adverse events from the vaccines, and more.”

“I hope that the discovery would also produce unredacted contracts between the Department of Defense and Pfizer,” Latypova added.

The opportunity to file a second amended complaint also allowed more evidence to be incorporated into the case, Jackson said, as the previous complaint only allowed her to “claim what I knew as of September 2020.”

“We found out more about the approval process through the FDA’s release of the clinical trial documents. As more people came forward, as science evolved, we learned more,” Jackson said.

According to Latypova, this new information includes preclinical studies from Pfizer and Moderna, human adverse event data from the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS) and other databases, and “reports and published studies from thousands of physicians and injured people.”

“The data is overwhelming, showing severe damage caused by these products,” Latypova said. “The documentation also demonstrates that the manufacturers knew that the product is extremely dangerous … Yet, they lied about the product’s safety, efficacy and manufacturing quality and took billions of dollars in taxpayers’ money.”

According to Barnes, constitutional issues will also be at play if the lawsuit proceeds. This includes “whether or not impermissible First Amendment issues are motivating the Justice Department in pursuing this case, a case that might embarrass the current administration that was in bed with Pfizer as to this vaccine.”

“It’s been four years of fighting a system that I thought was on our side,” Jackson said. “We’ve lost sight of what, or rather who, the government serves. It’s the people.”

“I’ll remind the powers-that-be in Washington once again that according to the U.S. Constitution, the government’s job is to protect and serve the people. We are the sole interest, and we demand vindication.”

Michael Nevradakis, Ph.D., based in Athens, Greece, is a senior reporter for The Defender and part of the rotation of hosts for CHD.TV’s “Good Morning CHD.”

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.

March 15, 2024 Posted by | Deception, Science and Pseudo-Science | , , | Leave a comment

Israel Uber Alles?

Or is there finally a reckoning developing for its sins?

BY PHILIP GIRALDI • UNZ REVIEW • MARCH 15, 2024

There have been some interesting developments over the past few days relating to Israel’s demonstrated subjugation of the government at all levels in the United States as well as its domination of the entertainment and news media. Nearly everyone now accepts that the current situation is not due to ordinary Americans actually liking what Israel represents and is instead rather a consequence of the US Israel lobby’s deep pockets and the corruption that can be bought by being willing to spend billions of dollars to support a single highly focused cause. And there is also the tool used frequently to keep potentially troublesome politicians in line, which is the willingness to do whatever is necessary to discredit and marginalize any and all critics of the Jewish state, to include the liberal often bogus claims of the alleged crimes of antisemitism and holocaust-denial to demonize those who are targeted.

Both current and previous Israeli Prime Ministers have boasted that they control the United States and the evidence is there that they can in fact do so. Most dispiriting in the Zionist induced sturm und drang which is a covert war of sorts directed against the United States Constitution has been the impact on the actual rights of all Americans, including freedom of speech. Last week South Dakota governor and Republican vice-presidential candidate hopeful Kristi Noem boasted of new legislation in her state that would criminalize antisemitism. As criticizing Israel is considered to be ipso facto antisemitism and criminalized as a so-called “hate crime” it means, as some have observed, that Americans in South Dakota and also in Florida (thanks to Ron DeSantis) can criticize their own country, but not the self-declared Jewish state. Paul Craig Roberts puts it another way, observing that “I find it extraordinary that Jews alone among all ethnicities can control what can be said about them. The real threat is not anti-semitism. The real threat is the destruction of free speech and the rise of status based law that protects some chosen ethnicities and persecutes others. What is really needed is an alliance against those who are destroying the foundations of truth, freedom, and accountable government.”

Last week there was also an interesting vote in Congress, blocking or forcing the sale of the Chinese social media and networking site TikTok, which has become very popular among young people worldwide. What was not much discussed in the media in the lead-up to the vote, which claimed the site was a “national security threat,” was who was pushing for the bill. In reality, the story within the story was again all about Israel. “We have a major TikTok problem” complained the grotesque Anti-Defamation League chief executive Jonathan Greenblatt, apparently freaking out because global youth aren’t buying Israel’s propaganda anymore since the site has something like a “memory” that directs readers and viewers to new information or videos that they had previously expressed an interest in. Many users were, per Greenblatt, interested in what is going on in Gaza and were receiving information hostile to Israel. The passage of the bill overwhelmingly, which was rushed through Congress, demonstrates yet again the Israel Lobby power. The American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) was reportedly heavily engaged in lobbying up until the voting took place. It unfortunately demonstrates how Israel is able to decide how Americans choose to communicate and socialize with one another and the world. Summarizing the Israel Lobby’s view on the issue was the ever-delightful ex-presidential candidate Nikki Haley who responded to the legislation with “We really do need to ban TikTok once and for all and let me tell you why. For every 30 minutes that someone watches TikTok every day they become 17% more antisemitic, more pro-Hamas based on doing that.” And there’s even more to the damage done. The bill doesn’t just ban TikTok. It also creates a new unilateral authority for any president to ban any app or website he or she deems to be a “national security threat” if its owned or controlled by a “foreign adversary,” which includes not just China but also Russia, North Korea, and Iran. Goodbye free speech and association!

So, in return for considerable pain and nothing tangible to benefit the United States and its citizens, Israel is celebrated as “America’s best friend and closest ally” while also getting a free ride of billions of dollars from the US taxpayer and complete political protection bestowed by the clowns that run Washington no matter what it does and how much damage it actually inflicts on American people or interests. Along those lines, the biggest story recently has been Senate Majority Leader Charles Schumer’s denunciation of the Israeli government of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in a 40 minute speech delivered from the Senate floor followed up by an X tweet.

Schumer, who is the highest ranking elected Jew in the US government, accused Netanyahu of continuing the Gaza war and running it in such a fashion so as to demonstrate that he “has lost his way to allow his political survival to take precedence over the best interests of Israel.” Schumer observed that Israel’s government, whoever heads it, must make “course corrections” and that “[Netanyahu] has been too willing to tolerate the civilian toll in Gaza, which is pushing support for Israel worldwide to historic lows. Israel cannot survive if it becomes a pariah” among nations, which has already to a certain extent taken place. In light of that, Schumer recommended that “At this critical juncture, I believe a new election is the only way to allow for a healthy and open decision-making process about the future of Israel,” adding that it’s “a time when so many Israelis have lost their confidence in the vision and direction of their government.”

Schumer also criticized Netanyahu for rejecting the Biden administration’s proposal to discuss the establishment of a Palestinian state immediately after the war ends. “As a lifelong supporter of Israel, it has become clear to me: The Netanyahu coalition no longer fits the needs of Israel after Oct. 7. The world has changed — radically — since then, and the Israeli people are being stifled right now by a governing vision that is stuck in the past.” He added that “As a democracy, Israel has the right to choose its own leaders, and we should let the chips fall where they may. But the important thing is that Israelis are given a choice. There needs to be a fresh debate about the future of Israel. In my opinion, that is best accomplished by holding an election.”

An election would not necessarily produce a change in Gaza policy, with most Israelis supporting the war by a large margin, according to opinion polls. But one survey released in January suggested that only 15% of voters wanted Netanyahu to remain in office after the conflict ends. War cabinet minister Benny Gantz, Netanyahu’s rival and most likely successor, basically supports the ongoing Gaza slaughter with only minor deviations from what the prime minister is currently doing.

Many congressional Democrats praised Schumer’s speech and a follow up X tweet but Republicans in the United States and leaders in Israel quickly responded negatively to his remarks. Israel’s Likud party saying Israel is not a “banana republic” while House Speaker Mike Johnson said in a statement “It is highly inappropriate and simply wrong for Senator Schumer to be calling for new elections in Israel.” Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell agreed with that judgment: “It is grotesque and hypocritical for Americans who hyperventilate about foreign interference in our own democracy to call for the removal of a democratically elected leader of Israel. This is unprecedented.” Opposing the Republican onslaught, some Democrats pushed back, including Senator Mark Warner of Virginia, who observed that “Netanyahu has certainly not been shy about trying to interfere in American politics.”

Schumer’s speech must be placed in context. Schumer, who has been in the US Senate for 25 years, has always been a strong and uncritical supporter of what Israel does and how it manages its security. He has described his own surname as derived from the Hebrew word “shomer” which means “protector” or “guardian” and has elaborated on that theme to declare openly that he is “Israel’s protector” in the Senate. That said, it is quite possible that Schumer does believe that Israel’s ongoing slaughter of Palestinians with no end in sight is doing grave damage to the long-term viability of the Jewish state. Many other prominent American Jews and friends of Israel like Tom Friedman of the New York Times, are likewise warning that the Jewish state is acting recklessly, not in its own self-interests. Polls suggest that Israel is the most despised nation in the world due to its torturing, starving and outright killing of Palestinian civilians. Number two in those polls is the United States, which is paying the price of being Netanyahu’s political, financial and weapons supplier, enabling the deaths and making it complicit in the conflict, much of it being done in secret by Biden and Secretary of State Anthony Blinken and covered by a series of lies.

The impact of Israeli actions with elections coming up in the US might well have motivated Schumer to speak up now while there is still time to correct course and reduce both the Palestinian death toll and the damage being done to the White House. President Joe Biden almost certainly would have approved of the Schumer speech, but he characteristically did not want to get too far in front on the issue. The trick will be making the Gaza conflict look like it is Netanyahu’s war while also establishing one’s “humanitarian” principles in a way that does not actually blame Israel. It will be difficult and there is no certainty of success, but Schumer and Biden might be smelling electoral defeat in November with the margin of difference being the Gaza war and how the Democratic Party base and independent voters have responded to it.

The White House has powerful allies, interestingly enough, in the Republican Party, which has been transformed into a hardline Israel loving propaganda machine, as well as in the mainstream media, which continues to slant its coverage of Gaza to favor Israel. Indeed, Schumer’s remarks came, not coincidentally, a day after Senate Republicans invited Netanyahu to speak as their special guest at an upcoming party retreat in Washington. Voters who are genuinely antiwar might well vote Democratic as the lesser of two evils, particularly given Donald Trump’s advice to the Israelis to “finish the job” in dealing with the Palestinians. In any event, it is likely that such possibilities are currently swirling through the heads of Biden and Schumer as well as those who are directing the Democratic Party campaign.

And make no mistake that the Administration is currently making sure that those who want to continue the struggle against what is being consistently labeled the international terrorist threat, which justifies ongoing wars, will have something to promote. Top US intelligence officials last Monday at an annual hearing on global security threats held at the Senate Intelligence Committee offices warned that the war in Gaza could embolden terrorist groups, which are aligned in their opposition to the United States for its support of Israel. “The crisis has galvanized violence by a range of actors around the world. And while it is too early to tell, it is likely that the Gaza conflict will have a generational impact on terrorism,” said Avril Haines, who is of course Jewish, the director of national intelligence. At the meeting Senator Tom Cotton a Republican from Arkansas and a stalwart backer of Israel, prodded CIA Director William Burns and Haines to refute critics’ allegations that Israel is ‘exterminating the Palestinian people’ with its military campaign.” Indeed, Zionist apologists like Cotton aside, no one in the room suggested that putting an end to the Israeli genocide might be the best way to put an end to the proliferating terrorism threat.

And so the beat goes on. How to do everything Israel wants without appearing to do so has plagued every White House since Harry Truman, only it has gotten harder to execute as Israel behavior has worsened and American politicians have become more corrupted and openly dependent on Jewish political contributions. It will be interesting to see if the Schumer speech will actually have some resonance or will only serve to trick the public into believing that the US government has actually regained its independence. Only time will tell but it might become an interesting run politically speaking between now and November.

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.

March 15, 2024 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Full Spectrum Dominance, Timeless or most popular, Wars for Israel | , , , | 2 Comments

USAID’s “Disinformation Primer:” Documents Reveal Censorship Promotion Across Sectors

By Didi Rankovic | Reclaim The Net | March 15, 2024

The authorities in the US are once again caught red-handed promoting censorship, this time via the US Agency for International Development (USAID).

USAID is normally used by the US government to spread its influence around the world, but now, according to documents from a case against the State Department’s Global Engagement Center (GEC), the agency also actively participates in analyzing and spreading various censorship methods.

The lawsuit in question was filed by America First Legal (AFL), alleging that the State Department, via GEC, engages with private media to advance what the non-profit believes is government/private sector censorship and propaganda collusion.

Now, USAID’s controversial activities have also been exposed thanks to the lawsuit, which revealed that one of the agency’s bureaus, the Center on Democracy, Human Rights, and Governance (DRG) has come up with a “Disinformation Primer” – a 97-page document marked as being “for internal use only.”

The Disinformation Primer – in fact, a censorship primer, to sum up the Foundation for Freedom Online watchdog’s interpretation of the strategy – was “up and running” only one month after Joe Biden got sworn in, in February 2021.

The extensive “primer” seeks to exert influence on how private tech, but also media companies can increase the level of existing censorship; the already existing engagement with private entities is at the same time commended by USAID.

Other targets, more in line with USAID’s overall activities, include foreign governments, specifically education departments, and funding sources. Inevitably, more “partners” are NGOs, non-profits, and think tanks, often themselves with ties to the government.

Some of the censorship techniques that USAID likes and recommends are Advertiser Outreach, which is designed to cut off media and accounts on social platforms from ad revenue, if their speech is what’s known as “disfavored” (by those in power).

Another is propping up legacy media as these outlets steadily lose trust, with things like “prebunking” and the Redirect Method, developed by Google, which “relies on advertising using an online advertising platform such as Google AdWords, targeting tools and algorithms to combat online radicalization that comes from the spread and threat of dangerous, misleading information.”

One striking quote from the document is that gaming sites and gamers should be prevented from forming “interpretations of the world that differ from ‘mainstream’ sources.”

Worth noting is that this censorship, propaganda and indoctrination “handbook” – aimed at curtailing citizens’ freedom of expression and thought – was made using taxpayer money.

March 15, 2024 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Deception, Full Spectrum Dominance | , | Leave a comment

Patriot Missile Systems Too Complex and Expensive to Be Sent to Ukraine Without US Chaperones

Sputnik – 15.03.2024

While more and more US-supplied weapon systems are taken out by Russian forces in the Ukrainian conflict, the Pentagon vehemently denies the presence of US military personnel in Ukraine who may be operating and maintaining this hardware.

Though a spokesperson for the Pentagon told Russian media that there are no US personnel in Ukraine servicing Patriot missile launchers or some other US hardware, retired US Air Force Lt. Col. Karen Kwiatkowski, a former analyst for the US Department of Defense, did not seem convinced by these claims.

“I think the US government is lying, by omission and also directly, on this question of US servicemen operating or maintaining equipment, specifically the Patriot system, in Ukraine,” Kwiatkowski told Sputnik.

“Given the vulnerability and the expense and the limited number of these systems, I find it difficult to believe that the US contractors and US operators are not involved and monitoring day-to-day activities in each of these areas of operation,” she said. “Maintenance of these systems requires over a year of training, and I expect major maintenance is being monitored and done by US contractors and servicemen.”

Noting that the Patriot missile systems supplied to Kiev were provided by Germany and the US, along with “some missiles and parts from the Netherlands,” the former analyst speculated that “contracted US support connected directly to those countries may also be in the country,” thus “providing deniability for the Pentagon.”

Kwiatkowski also brought up the recent affair involving a leaked call between German military officers discussing attacks against Russian territory, who mentioned “somewhat humorously the large number of people aiding the fight in Ukraine who have ‘an American accent’.”

She pointed out that the CIA that has been “heavily involved in Ukraine” since long before 2022, “often serves as a vehicle with which to take on experts from the US military via direct hiring, temporary assignment, or via the contracted use of skilled retirees from the US active duty military and reserve forces.”

Kwiatkowski added that, considering the cost of the Patriot systems and their missiles, along with the “extensive training required for all aspects of this expensive system,” it would seem that the predictions made last year about the transfer of these weapons being “largely a political statement of support rather than a significant system of air defense for Ukrainian cities” were correct.

March 15, 2024 Posted by | Deception, Militarism | , , | 1 Comment

The big lie behind the Western narrative on Russia is leading us to World War III

By Tarik Cyril Amar | RT | March 15, 2024

The current situation in the conflict between Ukraine – serving (while being demolished) as a proxy for the West – and Russia, can be sketched in three broad strokes.

First, Russia now clearly has the upper hand on the battlefield and could potentially accelerate its recent advances to achieve an overall military victory soon. The West is being compelled to recognize this fact: as Foreign Affairs put it, in an article titled “Time is Running Out in Ukraine,” Kiev and its Western supporters “are at a critical decision point and face a fundamental question: How can further Russian advances… be stopped, and then reversed?” Just disregard the bit of wishful thinking thrown in at the end to sweeten the bitter pill of reality. The key point is the acknowledgment that it is crunch time for the West and Ukraine – in a bad way.

Second, notwithstanding the above, Ukraine is not yet ready to ask for negotiations to end the war on terms acceptable to Russia, which would be less than easy for Kiev. (Russian President Vladimir Putin, meanwhile, reiterated in an important recent interview that Moscow remains principally open to talks, not on the basis of “wishful thinking” but, instead, proceeding from the realities “on the ground.”)

The Kiev regime’s inflexibility is little wonder. Since he jettisoned a virtually complete – and favorable – peace deal in the spring of 2022, President Vladimir Zelensky has gambled everything on an always improbable victory. For him personally, as well as his core team (at least), there is no way to survive – politically or physically – the catastrophic defeat they have brought on their country by leasing it out as a pawn to the Washington neocon strategy.

The Pope, despite the phony brouhaha he triggered in Kiev and the West, was right: a responsible Ukrainian leadership ought to negotiate. But that’s not the leadership Ukraine has. Not yet at least.

Third, the West’s strategy is getting harder to decipher because, in essence, the West cannot figure out how to adjust to the failure of its initial plans for this war. Russia has not been isolated; its military has become stronger, not weaker – and the same is true of its economy, including its arms industry.

And last but not least, the Russian political system’s popular legitimacy and effective control has neither collapsed nor even frayed. As, again, even Foreign Affairs admits, “Putin would likely win a fair election in 2024.” That’s more than could be said for, say, Joe Biden, Rishi Sunak, Olaf Scholz, or Emmanuel Macron (as for Zelensky, he has simply canceled the election).

In other words, the West is facing not only Ukraine’s probable defeat, but also its own strategic failure. The situation, while not a direct military rout (as in Afghanistan in 2021) amounts to a severe political setback.

In fact, this looming Western failure is a historic debacle in the making. Unlike with Afghanistan, the West will not be able to simply walk away from the mess it has made in Ukraine. This time, the geopolitical blowback will be fierce and the costs very high. Instead of isolating Russia, the West has isolated itself, and by losing, it will show itself weakened.

It is one thing to have to finally, belatedly accepted that the deceptive “unipolar” moment of the 1990s has been over for a long time. It is much worse to gratuitously enter the new multipolar order with a stunning, avoidable self-demotion. Yet that is what the EU/NATO-West has managed to fabricate from its needless over-extension in Ukraine. Hubris there has been galore, the fall now is only a matter of time – and not much time at that.

Regarding EU-Europe in particular, on one thing French President Emmanuel Macron is half right. Russia’s victory “would reduce Europe’s credibility to zero.” Except, of course, a mind of greater Cartesian precision would have detected that Moscow’s victory will merely be the last stage in a longer process.

The deeper causes of EU/NATO-Europe’s loss of global standing are threefold. First, its own wanton decision to seek confrontation instead of a clearly feasible compromise and cooperation with Russia (why exactly is a neutral Ukraine impossible to live with again?) Second, the American strategy of systematically diminishing EU/NATO-Europe with a short-sighted policy of late-imperial client cannibalization which takes the shape of aggressive deindustrialization and a “Europeanization” of the war in Ukraine. And third, the European clients’ grotesque acquiescence to the above.

That is the background to a recent wave of mystifying signals coming out of Western, especially EU/NATO elites: First, we have had a wave of scare propaganda to accompany the biggest NATO maneuvers since the end of the Cold War. Next Macron publicly declared and has kept reiterating that the open – not in covert-but-obvious mode, as now – deployment of Western ground troops in Ukraine is an option. He added a cheap demagogic note by calling on Europeans not to be “cowards,” by which he means that they should be ready to follow, in effect, his orders and fight Russia, clearly including inside and on behalf of Ukraine. Never mind that the latter is a not an official member of either NATO or the EU as well as a highly corrupt and anything but democratic state.

In response, a divergence has surfaced inside EU/NATO Europe: The German government has been most outspoken in contradicting Macron. Not only Chancellor Scholz rushed to distance himself. A clearly outraged Boris Pistorius – Berlin’s hapless minister of defense, recently tripped up by his own generals’ stupendously careless indiscretion over the Taurus missiles – has grumbled that there is no need for “talk about boots on the ground or having more courage or less courage.” Perhaps more surprisingly, Poland, the Czech Republic as well as NATO figurehead Jens Stoltenberg (i.e., the US) have been quick to state that they are, in effect, not ready to support Macron’s initiative. The French public, by the way, is not showing any enthusiasm for a Napoleonic escalation either. A Le Figaro poll shows 68 percent against openly sending ground troops to Ukraine.

On the other side, Macron has found some support. He is not entirely isolated, which helps explain why he has dug in his heels: Zelensky does not count in this respect. His bias is obvious, and his usual delusions notwithstanding he is not calling the shots on the matter. The Baltic states, however, while military micro-dwarfs, are, unfortunately, in a position to exert some influence inside the EU and NATO. And true to form, they have sided with the French president, with Estonia and Lithuania taking the lead.

It remains impossible to be certain what we are looking at. To get the most far-fetched hypothesis out of the way first: is this a coordinated bluff with a twist? A complicated Western attempt at playing good-cop bad-cop against Russia, with Macron launching the threats and others signaling that Moscow could find them less extreme, at a diplomatic price, of course? Hardly. For one thing, that scheme would be so hare-brained, even the current West is unlikely to try. No, the crack opening up in Western unity is real.

Regarding Macron himself, too-clever-by-half, counter-productive cunning is his style. We cannot know what exactly he is trying to do; and he may not know himself. In essence, there are two possibilities. Either the French president now is a hard-core escalationist determined to widen the war into an open clash between Russia and NATO, or he is a high-risk gambler who is engaged in a bluff to achieve three purposes. Frighten Moscow into abstaining from pushing its military advantage in Ukraine (a hopeless idea); score nationalist “grandeur” points domestically in France (which is failing already); and increase his weight inside EU/NATO-Europe by “merely” posturing as, once again, a new “Churchill” – whom Macron himself has made sure to allude to, in all his modesty. (And some of his fans, including Zelensky, a grizzled veteran of Churchill live action role play, have already made that de rigueur if stale comparison.)

While we cannot entirely unriddle the moody sphinx of the Elysée or, for that matter, the murky dealings of EU/NATO-European elites, we can say two things. First, whatever Macron thinks he is doing, it is extremely dangerous. Russia would treat EU/NATO-state troops in Ukraine as targets – and it won’t matter one wit if they turn up labeled “NATO” or under national flags “only.” Russia has also reiterated that it considers its vital interests affected in Ukraine and that if its leadership perceives a vital threat to Russia, nuclear weapons are an option. The warning could not be clearer.

Second, here is the core Western problem that is now – due to Russia undeniably winning the war – becoming acute: Western elites are split between “pragmatists” and “extremists.” The pragmatists are as Russophobic and strategically misguided as the extremists, but they do shy away from World War Three. Yet these pragmatists, who seek to resist hard-core escalationists and rein in at least high-risk gamblers, are brought up short against a crippling contradiction in their own position and messaging: As of now, they still share the same delusional narrative with the extremists. Both groupings keep reiterating that Russia plans to attack all of EU/NATO-Europe once it defeats Ukraine and that, therefore, stopping Russia in Ukraine is, literally, vital (or in Macron’s somewhat Sartrean terms “existential”) to the West.

That narrative is absurd. Reality works exactly the other way around: The most certain way to get into a war with Russia is to send troops to Ukraine openly. And what is existential for EU/NATO-Europe is to finally liberate itself from American “leadership.” During the Cold War, a case could be made that (then Western) Europe needed the US. After the Cold War, though, that was no longer the case. In response, Washington has implemented a consistent, multi-administration, bipartisan, if often crude, strategy of avoiding what should have been inevitable: the emancipation of Europe from American dominance.

Both the eastward expansion of NATO, programmed – and predicted – to cause a massive conflict with Russia and the current proxy war in Ukraine, obstinately provoked by Washington over decades, are part of that strategy to – to paraphrase a famous saying about NATO – “keep Europe down.” And the European elites have played along as if there’s no tomorrow, which, for them, there really may not be.

We are at a potential breaking-point, a crisis of that long-term trajectory. If the pragmatists in EU/NATO-Europe really want to contain the extremists, who play with triggering an open war between Russia and NATO that would devastate at least Europe, then they must now come clean and, finally, abandon the common, ideological, and entirely unrealistic narrative about an existential threat from Moscow.

As long as the pragmatists dare not challenge the escalationists on how to principally understand the causes of the current catastrophe, the extremists will always have the advantage of consistency: Their policies are foolish, wastefully unnecessary, and extremely risky. And yet, they follow from what the West has made itself believe. It is high time to break that spell of self-hypnosis, and face facts.

Tarik Cyril Amar is a historian from Germany working at Koç University, Istanbul, on Russia, Ukraine, and Eastern Europe, the history of World War II, the cultural Cold War, and the politics of memory.

March 15, 2024 Posted by | Militarism, Russophobia | , , , , , , | 1 Comment

Why the TikTok Ban is So Dangerous

Did they tell you the part about giving the president sweeping new powers?

By Matt Taibbi | Racket News | March 15, 2024

It’s funny how things work.

Last year at this time, Americans overwhelmingly supported a ban on TikTok. Polls showed a 50-22% overall margin in support of a ban and 70-14% among conservatives. But Congress couldn’t get the RESTRICT Act passed.

As the public learned more about provisions in the bill, and particularly since the outbreak of hostilities in Gaza, the legislative plan grew less popular. Polls dropped to 38-27% in favor by December, and they’re at 35-31% against now.

Yet the House just passed the “Protecting Americans from Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications Act” by a ridiculous 352-64 margin, with an even more absurd 50-0 unanimous push from the House Energy and Commerce Committee. What gives?

As discussed on the new America This Week, passage of the TikTok ban represents a perfect storm of unpleasant political developments, putting congress back fully in line with the national security establishment on speech. After years of public championing of the First Amendment, congressional Republicans have suddenly and dramatically been brought back into the fold. Meanwhile Democrats, who stand to lose a lot from the bill politically — it’s opposed by 73% of TikTok users, precisely the young voters whose defections since October put Joe Biden’s campaign into a tailspin — are spinning passage of the legislation to its base by suggesting it’s not really happening.

“This is not an attempt to ban TikTok, it’s an attempt to make TikTok better,” is how Nancy Pelosi put it. Congress, the theory goes, will force TikTok to divest, some kindly Wall Street consortium will gobble it up (“It’s a great business and I’m going to put together a group to buy TikTok,” Steve Mnuchin told CNBC), and life will go on. All good, right?

Not exactly. The bill passed in the House that’s likely to win the Senate and be swiftly signed into law by the White House’s dynamic Biden hologram is at best tangentially about TikTok.

You’ll find the real issue in the fine print. There, the “technical assistance” the drafters of the bill reportedly received from the White House shines through, Look particularly at the first highlighted portion, and sections (i) and (ii) of (3)B:

As written, any “website, desktop application, mobile application, or augmented or immersive technology application” that is “determined by the President to present a significant threat to the National Security of the United States” is covered.

Currently, the definition of “foreign adversary” includes Russia, Iran, North Korea, and China.

The definition of “controlled,” meanwhile, turns out to be a word salad, applying to:

(A) a foreign person that is domiciled in, is headquartered in, has its principal place of business in, or is organized under the laws of a foreign adversary country;

(B) an entity with respect to which a foreign person or combination of foreign persons described in subparagraph (A) directly or indirectly own at least a 20 percent stake; or

(C) a person subject to the direction or control of a foreign person or entity described in subparagraph (A) or (B).

A “foreign adversary controlled application,” in other words, can be any company founded or run by someone living at the wrong foreign address, or containing a small minority ownership stake. Or it can be any company run by someone “subject to the direction” of either of those entities. Or, it’s anything the president says it is. Vague enough?

As Newsweek reported, the bill was fast-tracked after a secret “intelligence community briefing” of Congress led by the FBI, Department of Justice, and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI). The magazine noted that if everything goes as planned, the bill will give Biden the authority to shut down an app used by 150 million Americans just in time for the November elections.

Say you’re a Democrat, however, and that scenario doesn’t worry you. As America This Week co-host Walter Kirn notes, the bill would give a potential future President Donald Trump “unprecedented powers to censor and control the internet.” If that still doesn’t bother you, you’re either not worried about the election, or you’ve been overstating your fear of “dictatorial” Trump.

We have two decades of data showing how national security measures in the 9-11 era evolve. In 2004 the George W. Bush administration defined “enemy combatant” as “an individual who was part of or supporting Taliban or al Qaeda forces, or associated forces that are engaged in hostilities against the United States.” Yet in oral arguments of Rosul et al v Bush later that year, the government conceded an enemy combatant could be a “little old lady in Switzerland” who “wrote a check” to what she thought was an orphanage.

Eventually, every element of the requirement that an enemy combatant be connected to “hostilities against the United States” was dropped, including the United States part. Though Barack Obama eliminated the term “enemy combatant” in 2009, the government retained (and retains) a claim of authority to do basically whatever it wants, when it comes to capturing and detaining people deemed national security threats. You can expect a similar progression with speech controls.

Just ahead of Monday’s oral arguments in Murtha v. Missouri, formerly Missouri v. Biden — the case so many of us hoped would see the First Amendment reinvigorated by the Supreme Court — this TikTok bill has allowed the intelligence community to re-capture the legislative branch. Just a few principled speech defenders are left now. Fifty Democrats voted against the bill, which is heartening, although virtually none argued against it on First Amendment grounds, whis is infurating. Pramila Jayapal had a typical take, saying the ban would “harm users who rely on TikTok for their livelihoods, many of whom are people of color.”

Contrast that with Kentucky Senator Rand Paul, who went after members of his own party, singling out Republicans encouraging a governmental power grab after years of fighting big tech abuses not just at TikTok but other platforms. These people claim to be horrified, he said, but actions speak louder than words.

“Look at their legislative proposals,” he said, noting many want to “set up government agencies and panels” on speech, effectively saying “If you’re not putting enough conservatives on there, by golly we’re going to have a government commission that’s going to determine what kind of content gets on there.”

These, he said, are “scary ideas.”

He’s right, and shame on papers like the New York Post that are going after Paul for having donors connected to TikTok. Paul has been consistent in his defense of speech throughout his career, so the idea that his opinion on this matter is bought is ludicrous. It’s a relief to be able to expect at least some adherence to principle on this topic from him or fellow Kentuckian Thomas Massie, just as we once could expect it from Democrats like Paul Wellstone or Dennis Kucinich.

I don’t often do this, but as Walter pointed out in today’s podcast, this bill is so dangerous, the moment so suddenly and unexpectedly grave, that we both recommend anyone who can find the time to call or write their Senators to express opposition to any coming Senate vote. It might help. Yes, collection of personal information and content manipulation by the Chinese government (or Russia’s, or ours) are serious problems, but the wider view is the speech emergency. As the cliché goes, forget the furniture. The house is on fire. Let’s hope we’re not too late.

March 15, 2024 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance | , | 1 Comment

SXSW Is Accused of Using Copyright and Trademark Claims To Suppress Criticism

Copyright and trademark strikes are increasingly being used to force content takedowns

By Christina Maas | Reclaim The Net | March 15, 2024

In a contentious battle over the use of copyright claims to suppress speech, South by Southwest (SXSW), an organizer of a popular annual conference and music festival in Austin, has found itself facing some backlash due to its connections with arms manufacturers that supply Israel.

Rather than responding to the criticism directly, or simply ignoring it, SXSW attempted to get the criticism hidden with questionable legal tactics against a local advocacy group, Austin for Palestine Coalition.

This group has been organizing protests against SXSW, employing strategies such as organizing rallies and spreading awareness through social media.

Austin for Palestine’s social media campaign notably includes altered versions of SXSW’s arrow logo, now featuring fighter jets stained with blood, and other images that mimic SXSW’s marketing style but juxtaposed with stark symbols like bombs or bleeding doves.

This bold visual commentary quickly drew a legal reaction from SXSW. The festival sent a cease-and-desist letter to the advocacy group, alleging trademark and copyright infringement, demanding the removal of these posts.

Additionally, Instagram notified Austin for Palestine about SXSW’s claim on their posts.

According to the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), SXSW’s copyright infringement claims are baseless. Fundamental elements like their arrow logo do not qualify for copyright protection. Even if SXSW’s allegations targeted the group’s adaptation of their promotional style, such mimicry is arguably not eligible for copyright protection.

Moreover, these posts exemplify non-infringing fair use. Notably, the advocacy group’s use of these materials serves a distinctly different purpose from their original intent, causing no harm to SXSW beyond potential reputation damage, which does not constitute a valid copyright complaint.

Read the EFF’s letter to SXSW here.

March 15, 2024 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Full Spectrum Dominance, Solidarity and Activism | , , | 1 Comment

State Of The Great Barrier Reef 2024

By Paul Homewood | Not A Lot Of People Know That | March 14, 2024

The Australian Environment foundation (AEF), which is a farmer friendly conservation group, has issued a new report entitled “State of the Great Barrier Reef 2024.”

Peter Ridd, the Chairman of the AEF, said the report shows that the reef is in excellent condition with record amounts of coral. “Despite all the catastrophism about hot water bleaching events in the last decade, the species most susceptible to bleaching, (the plate and staghorn corals), have exploded in number. Sadly, the impact of bleaching is routinely exaggerated by the media and some science organisations.”

“The impact of farm pollution in the Reef is negligible and all 3000 individual reefs have excellent coral. No other Australian ecosystem has shown such little change in modern times” Ridd said.

Peter Ridd added, “Australia spends roughly $500 million each year to “save the reef” but this money could be much better spent on genuine environmental problems such as control of invasive weeds and feral animals, or restoring indigenous fire practices into forests and rangeland”.

He concluded, “The public is being deceived about the reef. How this occurred is a serious issue for the reef-science community which has embraced emotion, ideology, and raw self-interest to maintain funding”.

“This new report distils a great deal of data about the reef” said Ridd “it is time that the reef science institutions confront this data rather than ignoring it and hoping nobody will notice. I challenge them to a public science duel – any time any place.”

The Great Barrier Reef is the largest reef system in the world, and scientists have been warning of its imminent demise since the 1960s.

The report is here.

March 15, 2024 Posted by | Environmentalism, Science and Pseudo-Science | | Leave a comment

German teen pulled out of classroom and questioned by police for TikTok post stating Germany is her home

BY THOMAS BROOKE | REMIX NEWS | MARCH 15, 2024

Three police officers stormed a German high school last month and took a 16-year-old girl out of class to question her about a TikTok video she posted in which she called Germany her home and not just a place on a map.

The incident occurred on Feb. 27 at the Richard Wossidlo High School in Ribnitz-Damgarten, Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania.

In an interview with the German news outlet Junge Freiheit, the mother of the student explained how her daughter had been suspected of spreading “unconstitutional content on social media.”

The school principal had been made aware of her TikTok account and “informed the police about a possible criminal matter,” Marcel Opitz, the press spokesman for Stralsund police station, told the site.

The offensive content is understood to have been two posts. The first included a joke about how the Smurfs and Germany have something in common; they are both blue — an apparent reference to support for the Alternative for Germany (AfD) party whose primary color is blue. The AfD is now a mainstream party across Germany and sits second in national polls, much to the irritation of the German political and media establishment.

The second post saw the German teen seemingly innocuously refer to Germany as her home and not just a place on a map.

The 16-year-old was subsequently apprehended at her school in front of classmates and given what the police explained to Junge Freiheit when asked what they described as a “risk of harm” talk by officers.

“I am horrified,” the girl’s mother said. “This is such violent, if I may say so, Stasis shit, I would never have believed what was done to my daughter here possible in my entire life.

“My daughter posted a Smurfs video on TikTok a few months ago. It said that the Smurfs and Germany have something in common: The Smurfs are blue and so is Germany. That was probably a funny AfD advertising post. And then, she once posted that Germany is not a place, but a home.”

The mother explained how, according to her daughter, “three police officers suddenly appeared in the classroom and picked her up,” escorting her away “like she’s a criminal… That’s what made me so incredibly angry.”

The girl was reportedly told by police that “for her own protection” she should “refrain from posting such posts in the future,” but accepted that she had not committed a criminal offense.

However, the state interior minister, Christian Pegel, said he had “no problems” with the police’s behavior of coming to the girl’s classroom and pulling her, saying their approach to the threat was “proportionate.”

“I believe that proportionality was maintained,” he stated.

When the mother questioned the school principal and told him to contact her first if he thought there was a problem, he “told me that he wasn’t allowed to do that, he was told to inform the police immediately.”

Both the school and its principal declined to issue a statement to the German press on the matter, but the issue has now been brought by the AfD to the state parliament.

“This scandalous incident reveals that our schools are being used more and more to sniff out attitudes,” said Enrico Schult, the party’s education policy spokesman. “If there was actually an order from the Ministry of Education about this, it must have political consequences.

“A headmaster should stand in front of his students and at least take the parents into his confidence first, instead of calling three police officers because he receives an anonymous denunciation email about a student,” he added.

March 15, 2024 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance | , | Leave a comment

US issues veiled threat to Hungary

RT | March 15, 2024

Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban is isolating his country from the Western “community of democracies,” US Ambassador David Pressman claimed on Thursday in wide-reaching rebuke.

Ties between the two nations should not depend on “temporary” leaders, the diplomat argued, as he delivered a list of grievances against Budapest.

“While the Orban government may want to wait out the United States government, the United States will certainly not wait out the Orban administration. While Hungry waits, we will act,” Pressman warned.

The ambassador was referring to Orban’s expressed hope that Donald Trump will defeat President Joe Biden in the upcoming presidential election.

Pressman’s speech was delivered at the Central European University (CEU) in Budapest, for an event dedicated to the 25th anniversary of Hungary’s accession to NATO. The private institution, founded in the early 1990s by George Soros, has faced a crackdown in Budapest, since Orban accused the Hungarian-born US billionaire of using NGOs to apply political pressure.

The fact that the CEU has relocated its main campus to Vienna, and “moved further to the west as Hungary opened eastward” is significant and “epitomizes the sacrifice of something great in exchange for… talking points,” the American diplomat claimed.

Budapest’s relatively cordial relations with Moscow and its refusal to follow the US lead on the Ukraine conflict were identified by Pressman as major points of contention. Hungary is ignoring the “legitimate security concerns” of the other 31 members of NATO and is “standing with Russia” by advocating a negotiated peace, he claimed, describing the latter as a call for Ukraine’s “surrender and subjugation.”

“This is not the approach of the Transatlantic alliance,” he insisted.

Pressman also blasted Hungarian politicians who use nationalist sentiment in domestic campaigning, and depict the US as a meddling foreign power. He called such remarks “wild rhetoric” and “dangerously unhinged anti-American messaging”, by Orban and his allies.

“We’re not really asking for much: transparency, dialogue, nonpartisanship, and a commitment to democracy would suffice,” the ambassador described what course correction was expected from the host nation. Washington requires NATO members to follow its lead on “big things” and is not objecting, even if they disagree on “most” other issues, he said.

March 15, 2024 Posted by | Militarism, Russophobia | , , | Leave a comment

Kiev regime promotes terror in Belgorod

A vehicle destroyed by Ukraine shelling in Belgorod. © Telegram / Valentin Demidov
By Lucas Leiroz | March 15, 2024

The Belgorod region has been the target of several Ukrainian attacks in recent days, even more intensely on March 14, just before the start of the Russian elections. The targets of the attacks were civilian facilities, without any military relevance, which makes the Ukrainian attitude absolutely criminal according to international law.

Participating in a press expedition with the BRICS Journalists Association, I was in Belgorod to report the local tragedy on the ground. Several missile and drone attacks took place throughout the day, leaving at least two dead and several injured. I visited most of the affected places and spoke to some victims, obtaining a lot of relevant information.

Locals said that these raids have become increasingly frequent and that raids intensify during important dates for the Russian Federation. Religious and patriotic holidays, for example, are often marked by intense Ukrainian shelling on the border. Currently, due to the Russian election period, these attacks are once again becoming extremely violent.

Ukrainian missiles and drones on March 14 hit facilities such as shopping centers, common streets and residential buildings. There were no military targets in the attacks, with all victims being civilians. Apparently, the Ukrainian objective is simply to promote terror throughout the city and prevent people from living normally during election time. Unable to leave their homes for fear of bombings, ordinary citizens could be prevented from voting, damaging the electoral process.

In addition to drone and missile attacks, there was a land invasion, with Ukrainian troops trying to enter Russian territory using tanks and armored vehicles, with aerial support from helicopters. The invasion, however, was quickly neutralized by the joint action of the Russian military and security forces. Some villages close to the border were severely affected, such as in the Belovskoye region, where three people were seriously injured by Ukrainian forces – including two nine-month-old children, whose bodies were partially burned by shrapnel from bombs. The damage to the civilian population was severe, despite Kiev’s absolute failure to gain ground on the Russian side of the border.

I asked local residents on the city’s streets how they felt about the Ukrainian threat during this election period. Despite the danger, the locals showed courage and fearlessness, stating that the elections would not need to be canceled or postponed. Residents said they trust the work of the Russian defense forces, which is why they feel safe going to the polls.

It must be emphasized that these attacks could have had much worse consequences if the Russian defense forces were not sufficiently precise in containing the damage. Most enemy missiles and drones are destroyed by Russian air defense before reaching their targets, saving the lives of hundreds of civilians. Although some projectiles hit their targets, the damage from the attacks is partially low, which makes the local people feel reasonably safe, despite the constant threat.

In addition to the work of the Russian defense forces, the city of Belgorod is structured to protect as many civilians as possible. There are anti-missile shelters along the streets, where locals hide as soon as the air raid sirens start to sound. This protective structure allows life to continue reasonably as normal in the city, despite the attacks. Commerce and transport services continue to operate, for example, with only small interruptions during the most critical moments.

In fact, this type of terrorist operation was already expected. The neo-Nazi regime intensifies attacks and killings of civilians during important periods, such as elections, which is why it is no surprise to Russians that this is happening now. However, the brutality with which Ukrainian forces target civilian areas should be seen as a reminder of the real nature of the Kiev regime. The Ukrainian Junta simply has a military guideline to target and kill civilians, and there is no limit to its bombings in absolutely demilitarized and strategically irrelevant regions.

Also, considering that the weapons used by Ukraine in these operations are supplied by NATO, it is also possible to say that the West is a co-participant in these crimes, having responsibility for the deaths of Russian civilians in Belgorod and other regions. As long as Ukraine has “carte blanche” from its Western partners to murder ordinary people, terrorist attacks like those in Belgorod on the 14th will be frequent – and only by the military action of the Russian forces will it be possible to save civilian lives.

Lucas Leiroz, journalist, researcher at the Center for Geostrategic Studies, geopolitical consultant.

March 15, 2024 Posted by | War Crimes | , | Leave a comment

Israel commits new ‘premeditated massacre’ against Gaza aid seekers

The Cradle | March 15, 2024

Israeli forces committed a new massacre against Palestinians late on 14 March as they were waiting for aid near Gaza City’s Kuwait Roundabout, marking the second attack of its kind in the last 24 hours.

Footage on social media shows dead Palestinians laid out across the ground, covered in dust and rubble.

The Health Ministry in Gaza said on Thursday night that at least 20 corpses and 155 injured Palestinians arrived at Al-Shifa Hospital following the attack, calling it a “new premeditated massacre.”

Gaza’s government media office said in a statement that the Israeli army targeted “a gathering of citizens while they were waiting for relief aid at the Kuwait Roundabout in Gaza City.” Israeli troops opened fire at the aid seekers with tanks and helicopters, killing and wounding at least 100, it said.

The attack is “to be added to the series of massacres and brutal attacks against the defenseless civilians who face the Zionist starvation policy,” the media office added, calling the attack “deliberate.”

“The occupation targeted aid recipients for the 20th consecutive day,” the government media office continued.

Israeli forces have repeatedly attacked aid seekers at the Kuwait Roundabout in Gaza City and elsewhere.

Israeli forces shot and killed six Palestinians waiting for aid at the roundabout late on 13 March. Hours earlier, at least five Palestinians were killed and several injured by Israeli army shelling on a UNRWA aid distribution center in the Gaza Strip’s southernmost city of Rafah.

The Rafah attack came a day after Israeli forces opened fire at dozens of Palestinians lined up for food aid near the Kuwait Roundabout.

Israeli troops committed a massacre against Palestinians seeking aid in northern Gaza’s Al-Rashid Street near the Kuwait Roundabout on 29 February. The brutal attack, which killed over a hundred Palestinians, has come to be known as the Flour Massacre.

Due to the several attacks on hungry Gazans near the Kuwait Roundabout and Al-Rashid Street, Al-Jazeera’s correspondent Hani Mahmoud said on 14 March that the area “is now known as a death trap.”

March 15, 2024 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, War Crimes | , , , , | Leave a comment

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