Aletho News

ΑΛΗΘΩΣ

Orwellian Tactics? Libertarian Party Fears Targeting By FBI After Letter

By Kyle Anzalone and Will Porter | The Libertarian Institute | March 29, 2024

The Libertarian Party has questions for the Department of Justice after the FBI claimed that a “foreign threat” had accessed its Facebook account. A preliminary analysis by the LP was hindered by Meta, which has offered little clarity on the incident.

In a statement published on Friday, LP chair Angela McArdle shared a letter the party received from the bureau warning of the alleged breach. “The FBI maintains active investigations that seek to identify the activities of hostile foreign governments and their intelligence services who target the US government, private sector, and political processes,” the letter says. “The FBI recently obtained information showing that one of these foreign threat actors was in control of various IP addresses that the group used to log into a Facebook account controlled by your organization. The group accessed the account sometime between August 2023 and February 2024.”

One LP employee with knowledge of the letter told the Libertarian Institute that roughly 10 people have access to the Facebook account. The party has not changed access to the page within the past two months.

The employee said the LP was unable to access the user archive for its Facebook account to determine if it had been hacked and has so far received no assistance from Meta in resolving the issue. The organization plans to do what it can to learn more about the supposed “foreign threat actor” and why the FBI was surveilling the account in the first place.

While the source acknowledged that the letter could be the result of “good police work,” the party is concerned the move could amount to a veiled threat from federal agents. Those worries are significantly heightened as two members of the party’s leadership have been contacted by the FBI within the past year, the employee added.

McArdle expressed similar fears in her statement. “We do not trust the FBI. Stories of aggressive FBI field agents have been popping up all over the country. The Biden administration seems to be cracking down on dissenting voices in preparation for the general election.” She continued, “We will continue to dissent, and we will call out the corruption of the current DOJ and Biden administration.”

“The greatest threat to freedom in the US isn’t an anonymous ‘hostile foreign government.’ It is the United States Government. It is the current administration, who has engaged in an unprecedented amount of censorship, coercion, and Orwellian control tactics.”

The letter to the LP came after multiple pro-Palestinian activists said they received visits by FBI agents interested in their social media posts. Rights group Palestine Legal said the house calls amounted to efforts to “intimidate and censor” activists as the US heads toward an election in which Libertarian voters and supporters of Palestine could play a crucial role.

More than 100,000 democratic voters in Michigan voted “uncommitted” in last month’s primary to protest US support for Israel, while LP presidential hopeful Jo Jorgenson received more votes than the margin between Donald Trump and President Biden during the 2020 general election.

March 29, 2024 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Full Spectrum Dominance, Solidarity and Activism | , , , | 1 Comment

YouTube Says It Has a “Responsibility” To Manipulate Algorithms Leading Up to the 2024 Election

By Didi Rankovic | Reclaim The Net | March 28, 2024

“Responsibility” is a good word. It’s even better as an actual thing. But even just as a word, it’s a positive one. It signals that reliable people/entities are behind some project, or policy.

So no wonder then, that the thoroughly disgraced Google/YouTube – as far as censorship and biased political approach – are trying to use the word “responsibility” as a narrative fig leaf to cover what the giant platform is actually up to – and has been, for a long while.

Enter, YouTube’s newest chief product officer, Johanna Voolich. What are the priorities here? It could be summed up as, four R’s and One C – namely, YouTube’s “remove, raise, reward, reduce” content approach – that’s as per a blog post published by YouTube itself.

And then, C would be speculative, for “censorship” – which is what these supposedly fair and “uplifting” actions in reality end up achieving.

If you thought any of this could be achieved by YouTube without “boosting authoritative content” – think again. That is still a solid pledge, regurgitated by Voolich.

And if you thought somebody would finally come out and clearly spell out how, and according to whose definition, content gets to be dubbed “authoritative” or otherwise – just don’t hold your breath.

The sum total is that YouTube has a new product manager, but that nothing has changed.

Certainly not in this year of election.

And while Voolich made perfunctory references to creators benefiting from new features, and even being heard (via feedback), they also learn that when that’s convenient, AI is advertised as a tool to “empower creativity.” (Otherwise, AI is denounced as a scourge to democracy itself.)

But when all that’s said, there’s the overarching issue of YouTube’s “responsibility.” To do what, you might wonder – give its users/creators the best tools and opportunities – or act as proxy campaigner for a certain political and ideological option, in the US, but also, elsewhere in the world?

YouTube’s self-professed “4 R’s of responsibility” may or may not provide some insight into what the answer to that serious question might be.

R1 – “Remove content that violates our policy as quickly as possible.”

R2 – “Raise up authoritative voices when people are looking for breaking news and information.”

R3 – “Reward trusted, eligible creators and artists.”

R4 – “Reduce the spread of content that brushes right up against our policy line.”

And that, right there, is a solid foundation for continued, effective “C” – Censorship.

March 29, 2024 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance | , | Leave a comment

Do the Pertussis Vaccines Used in the US Stop Infection and Transmission of the Pertussis Bacterium?

Your bite-size dose of immunity against vaccine misinformation. Spread the truth.

Injecting Freedom by Aaron Siri | March 22, 2024

Do the pertussis (whooping cough) vaccines used in the United States stop infection and transmission of the pertussis bacterium?

“Yes” or “No”?

When picking an answer, keep in mind that the pertussis vaccine is part of a combination vaccine (DTap or Tdap) mandated to attend grades K-12 in every U.S. state – it is the “P” in DTaP and the “p” in Tdap – and the justification for this rights-crushing mandate is the belief that the vaccine prevents transmission of pertussis in the school setting.

The answer is “No”! In 1999, the CDC recommended “exclusive use of acellular pertussis vaccines for all doses of the pertussis vaccine series” and that vaccine does not prevent transmission. This is explained in an FDA study titled “Acellular pertussis vaccines protect against disease but fail to prevent infection and transmission in a nonhuman primate model” and confirmed in a consensus paper explaining that:

“aPVs [pertussis vaccines] … cannot avoid infection and transmission. … aPV pertussis vaccines do not prevent colonization. Consequently, they do not reduce the circulation of B. pertussis and do not exert any herd immunity effect.”

The CDC and FDA, in formal responses to the Informed Consent Action Network (ICAN), confirm the foregoing, as does this paper explaining:

“That vaccination does not prevent B. pertussis infection in humans, nor the circulation of the organism in human populations in any important manner, comes from the observation that the inter-epidemic intervals have not changed in a major way since the implementation of mass vaccination.”

Incredibly, the immunity provided by pertussis vaccines, while potentially reducing symptoms of the disease, actually renders those receiving these products susceptible to repeated infection with pertussis; meaning, it increases the potential to spread this bacterium because it renders those vaccinated repeat-asymptomatic-carriers. (See this study, “Lack of mucosal immune responses after aPV administration favor infection, persistent colonization, and transmission of the pathogen”, and this study, “Because of linked-epitope suppression, all children who were primed by DTaP vaccines will be more susceptible to pertussis throughout their lifetimes, and there is no easy way to decrease this increased lifetime susceptibility.”)

In any event, immunity from the pertussis vaccine wanes rapidly, even after six doses in childhood! As the CDC explains, a study of pertussis vaccine immunity found that four years after five doses of DTaP and one of Tdap “vaccine effectiveness was 8.9%.” Nonetheless, the CDC makes additional doses of the pertussis vaccine optional in adulthood.

Screenshots of the relevant portions of the websites linked above can be viewed here (in case they change).

March 29, 2024 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Science and Pseudo-Science | , | Leave a comment

Bill Blocking WHO, UN, and WEF from Imposing ‘Rule, Regulation, Fee, Tax, Policy, or Mandate of Any Kind’ Passes Louisiana Senate

BY JON FLEETWOOD | MARCH 27, 2024

In a landmark move on Tuesday for State sovereignty and local governance, the Louisiana Senate passed Senate Bill No. 133, a piece of legislation aimed at significantly limiting the influence and jurisdiction of certain international organizations within the state.

The bill passed unanimously with 37 ‘yes’ votes.

Not one senator voted against it.

Sponsored by Republicans, Senators Pressly and Valarie Hodges, along with Representative Edmonston, the bill explicitly targets the World Health Organization (WHO), United Nations (UN), and the World Economic Forum (WEF), restricting their power and the enforcement of their policies in Louisiana.

The bill, set to take effect on August 1, 2024, mandates that “the World Health Organization, United Nations, and the World Economic Forum shall have no jurisdiction or power within the state of Louisiana.”

The legislation marks a decisive stance against undue influence from these international bodies.

Further detailing its scope, the bill asserts, “No rule, regulation, fee, tax, policy, or mandate of any kind of the World Health Organization, United Nations, and the World Economic Forum shall be enforced or implemented by the state of Louisiana or any agency, department, board, commission, political subdivision, governmental entity of the state, parish, municipality, or any other political entity.”

The move addresses state sovereignty and the role of international organizations in local governance.

Proponents argue that this bill is a necessary step to safeguard Louisiana’s autonomy and prevent the imposition of external policies that may not align with the state’s interests or values.

The bill’s passage reflects a broader trend of skepticism toward global institutions and a preference for localized control over public affairs.

As the legislation prepares to be voted on in the House, all eyes will be on Louisiana to see the practical implications of this bold legislative move should it pass.

The bill is a clear declaration of Louisiana’s intent to chart its own course, free from the influence of selected international organizations.

With its enactment, the state legislature underscores its commitment to preserving state rights and governance free from what it views as unwarranted external interference.

You can read the full bill here:

Louisiana 2024 Sb133 Engrossed
42.4KB ∙ PDF file

Download

March 29, 2024 Posted by | Civil Liberties | , , , | 1 Comment

Is Russia sending the WHO a shot across the bow?

“Thinning of humanity,” lack of accountability and WHO coverups are all mentioned in a few sentences. What might this portend?

BY MERYL NASS | MARCH 28, 2024

Russian Senator Aleksey Pushkov took to Telegram to complain about the WHO, and then RIA Novosti reported on it.

What is RIA Novosti ? “RIA Novosti is the most cited Russian news agency in the mass media and across social media.”

Who is Pushkov? Below is his bio; but important to note that he is also claimed to be a good friend of Vladimir Putin.

Aleksey Konstantinovich Pushkov, born 10 August 1954, is a Russian politician who has been Senator from Perm Krai since 29 September 2016. He is also a former Deputy of the State Duma and former head of the Foreign Affairs Committee in the State Duma, the lower house of the Russian Parliament. As a member of the United Russia political party in the federation council, he is the chairman of the Commission on Information Policy.

What did Pushkov say, and how was it reported? Here is what RIA reported in English:

March 29, 2024 Posted by | Malthusian Ideology, Phony Scarcity, Science and Pseudo-Science | , | Leave a comment

Swedish police arrest Iranian prisoner’s son: Daughter

Press TV – March 29, 2024

Sweden’s police have reportedly arrested the son of an Iranian prisoner, who has been sentenced to life in prison by Stockholm, based on complaints filed by notorious anti-Iran figures living in exile in the Nordic country.

“After [spending] hours with no information about my brother, who had gone to visit my father…, we realized that Majid has been apparently arrested by Sweden’s police,” Atieh Nouri, daughter of Hamid Nouri, said in a post on X on Friday.

“We still do not know anything about the details of the matter,” she added.

Nouri, a former Iranian judiciary official, was arrested in Sweden back in 2019.

He was put on trial on unfounded allegations levelled against him by elements representing the Mujahedin-e-Khalq Organization (MKO) terrorist cult that has openly boasted about carrying out deadly terrorist operations against thousands of Iranian officials and civilians.

Nouri was handed the life sentence three years later after being found guilty of murder and crimes against the international law over his alleged role in executions of criminals in Iran in 1988.

Sweden’s Appeal Court upheld the verdict in December 2023.

Earlier in March, Sweden’s Supreme Court also upheld the sentence, refusing to hear an appeal that had been submitted by the Iranian prisoner.

Iranian authorities say Nouri’s imprisonment and trial in Sweden is politically-motivated, noting that the case has been influenced by pressure and propaganda of anti-Iran groups and individuals living in the West.

Nouri, himself, has vehemently denied the charges brought against him in the case, calling them fabricated.

March 29, 2024 Posted by | Aletho News | , | Leave a comment

US Approves Transfer of Bombs, Fighter Jets to Israel Amid Rafah Concerns – Reports

Sputnik – 29.03.2024

WASHINGTON – The Biden administration approved the transfer of billions of dollars of military equipment to Israel, amid concerns about a potential Israeli offensive in the Gaza Strip city of Rafah, The Washington Post reported on Friday.

The United States will provide Israel with more than 1,800 MK84 2,000-pound bombs and 500 MK82 500-pound bombs, the report said, citing State Department and Pentagon officials.

The MK84 bombs have been connected to mass-casualty incidents during Israel’s military operations in the Gaza Strip, the report said.

The US will also send 25 F-35A fighter jets and engines, the report said.

March 29, 2024 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, War Crimes | , , , , | Leave a comment

Suspected Israeli hitman caught in Malaysia

RT | March 29, 2024

Malaysian police have apprehended a heavily armed Israeli national who investigators believe might be a Mossad hitman and a member of a larger spy ring. The suspect recently arrived in the country on a French passport and claims he had come to murder a fellow Israeli in a family dispute.

The arrest was announced by Inspector-General of Police Razarudin Husain during a press conference on Friday. The 36-year-old suspect entered Malaysia on March 12, and was staying at a hotel in the country’s capital of Kuala Lumpur at the time of his arrest.

“During questioning, the suspect produced another passport which was issued by Israel. The six guns were found in a bag in his hotel room,” Husain said.

The suspect reportedly told police he had come to the country to find and kill a fellow Israeli national, citing a “family issue” as his motive. However, Husain noted that the man refused to divulge information about his job, and said investigators could not rule out that the suspect was linked to Israel’s Mossad intelligence agency.

“We don’t fully believe what this suspect is telling us, maybe he has another agenda because he has been here since March 12. We found that the weapons were bought using cryptocurrency,” the official said.

Police are now investigating how exactly the arsenal, which included various types of pistols, had been smuggled into the country. The police also seized some 200 rounds of ammunition, while three of the guns were loaded, the official noted.

The investigation also believes the suspected hitman likely had accomplices in the country and presumably was a member of a larger group. “We have not identified the others. We will also check the authenticity of his passport with the French embassy,” the inspector-general said.

Thus far, neither France nor Israel has made any public remarks on the affair.

March 29, 2024 Posted by | False Flag Terrorism, War Crimes | , , | 2 Comments

Dozens killed by joint Israeli, HTS attack on Syria

The Cradle | March 29, 2024

Israeli warplanes carried out a large attack on the countryside of Syria’s northwestern Aleppo province early on 29 March, coinciding with attacks by the Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) extremist militant group, formerly known as the Nusra Front.

Dozens were killed in the simultaneous attack, including Syrian soldiers and civilians.

“At around 1:45 AM, the Israeli enemy launched an air attack from the direction of Athriya, southeast of Aleppo, targeting several points in Aleppo countryside, which coincided with a drone attack carried out by terrorist organizations from Idlib and the western countryside of Aleppo province, in an attempt to target civilians in Aleppo and its surroundings,” a military source told Syrian news outlet SANA.

According to security sources cited by Reuters, at least 38 people were killed. Five members of the Lebanese resistance group Hezbollah were reportedly among the casualties.

Al-Mayadeen’s correspondent in Damascus confirmed that the Israeli strikes were launched simultaneously with the drone attacks by extremist militants. It added that the attack hit the Jibreen and Safira areas.

The attack came one day after Israeli jets struck a residential building in the Sayyida Zaynab neighborhood in the Damascus countryside, resulting in the injury of at least two civilians.

Extremist groups in Syria have long coordinated with Israel throughout the US-backed war on the country that began in 2011, particularly in the 2014 battles in Quneitra between the Nusra Front and the Syrian army.

Following an Israeli assault on Syria in late March 2023, which also coincided with attacks by extremist militants, the Syrian Foreign Ministry said in a statement: “These repeated attacks show the close coordination between … Israel and terrorist groups … The coordination proves beyond any doubt the deliberate intentions against Syria, which aim to prolong the crisis and deplete the country’s capabilities.”

March 29, 2024 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, War Crimes | , , | Leave a comment

Imagine If Russia or China Did the Things Israel Is Doing in Gaza

By Caitlin Johnstone | March 28, 2024

Imagine how the western political-media class would be acting if Russia or China was bombing and starving a walled-in population of two million, half of them children. Seriously, imagine it. Imagine the rage and vitriol. Imagine the nonstop media coverage.

When Russia invaded Ukraine, US media coverage of that war exceeded the media coverage of all US wars in the previous three decades. If Russia were deliberately and systematically exterminating civilians in Ukraine or anywhere else, the western media coverage of those war crimes would be many times more.

It’s almost cliché at this point to say “imagine if Russia or China did this”, but such comparisons are important for retaining a sense of perspective on just how evil the western political-media class is being about Gaza right now. We’re seeing articles come out in the mass media about starvation in Gaza which never once even mention the word “Israel”. Do you think that would be happening if this were being perpetrated by a government which defies the western empire? Of course not.

Imagine how the western political-media class would be acting if Russia or China was deliberately blockading food from an imprisoned population of millions of people.

Imagine how the western political-media class would be acting if Russia or China was relentlessly raining military explosives on densely packed urban areas known to be full of children.

Imagine how the western political-media class would be acting if Russia or China was deliberately and methodically ethnically cleansing an oppressed population for entirely racist reasons.

Imagine how the western political-media class would be acting if evidence that Russia or China are committing horrific war crimes was surfacing on a daily basis.

Imagine how the western political-media class would be acting if Russia or China were getting caught in lie after lie after lie while carrying out such a mass atrocity.

Imagine how the western political-media class would be acting if Russia or China tried to present them with blatantly fabricated evidence of crimes committed by the targeted population in justification of their atrocities.

We’d be living in a different political and media landscape. If Russia or China was doing what Israel is doing, entire presidential campaigns would have been built around who would oppose it most aggressively. Every sanction and embargo in the book would have been slammed upon the perpetrating government. The western press would be falling all over themselves to expose every atrocity and every lie and blaring those expositions as feature stories on every platform for months, and showering one another with awards for doing so.

Instead we get this. Government officials babbling nonstop about Israel’s “right” to “defend itself” and how this would all be over if Hamas didn’t keep fighting, while showering Israel with weapons to help it continue its atrocities. The mass media churning out a constant deluge of passive-language “Gazans are having trouble finding food for some reason” headlines and continuous reminders that this is all happening because of October 7, while repeating Israeli atrocity propaganda like it’s gospel truth. All viable US presidential candidates vowing their unconditional support for Israel while occasionally impotently finger-wagging at this or that aspect of Israel’s atrocities to avoid looking like complete psychopaths.

That contrast between how the western political-media class is acting toward the Gaza genocide and how we all know they’d be acting if an unaligned government was doing something similar is exactly why the US-centralized empire cannot be permitted to rule our world anymore. It pretends to stand for peace, justice, freedom and democracy, but in reality it just inflicts nonstop death and suffering upon human beings around the world and covers it up with propaganda spin from its servile mainstream press. It purports to uphold the “rules-based international order”, but all that means in practice is that it upholds an international order in which the US empire makes up the rules as it goes along and changes them as it pleases.

Humanity cannot allow itself to be abused and tyrannized by this murderous, hypocritical globe-spanning power structure any longer. A better world is possible, but we’re going to have to find a way to pry the talons of these monsters off the steering wheel first.

March 29, 2024 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Progressive Hypocrite | , | 2 Comments

Ukraine is ‘tip of the iceberg’ – Lavrov

RT March 29, 2024

The Ukraine conflict is only one part of a wider stand-off between Russia and the West, which seeks to contain Moscow at all costs, Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov has said.

In an interview with Izvestia published on Friday, Lavrov stated that after the Western-backed coup in Kiev in 2014, the new Ukrainian authorities unleashed “a war… against their own people” in Donbass.

The hostilities, the minister said, were only stopped by the now-defunct Minsk agreements, which were designed to give the regions of Donetsk and Lugansk special status within the Ukrainian state.

The ensuing governments of both ex-Ukrainian President Pyotr Poroshenko and Vladimir Zelensky cracked down on the Russian language and culture, introducing stringent restrictions targeting its use in all aspects of life, according to Lavrov.

Moscow repeatedly urged Kiev’s backers in the West to condemn and halt the discriminatory policies, which also violate Ukraine’s constitution, but “not one of the Western countries that are now shielding Ukraine from all accusations has ever publicly condemned these absolutely illegal actions,” he insisted.

“The only explanation is that Ukraine is the tip of the iceberg. And that the declared goal of the West is to inflict a strategic defeat on Russia.”

Lavrov added that in practice this implies that those who do the West’s bidding when it comes to this mission, “are allowed to do anything, including direct support for… Nazism. It is sad”.

On Thursday, Russian President Vladimir Putin said that the Ukraine conflict could have been easily avoided if the West had taken Moscow’s security interests into account. However, those interests “were completely ignored” as NATO moved closer to Russia’s borders by incorporating Eastern European states and former Soviet republics, Putin added.

The Russian president has also repeatedly said that the main goals of Moscow’s military campaign in Ukraine are to “denazify” and “demilitarize” the neighboring state, as well as protecting the population of Donbass from Kiev’s attacks. The two Donbass republics, along with two other former Ukrainian regions, overwhelmingly voted to join Russia in the autumn of 2022.

March 29, 2024 Posted by | Militarism | , , | 1 Comment

October 7 | Al Jazeera Investigations

Al Jazeera | March 20, 2024

Hamas’s incursion into Israel on October 7 transformed the politics of the Middle East. Al Jazeera’s Investigative Unit (I-Unit) has carried out a forensic analysis of the events of that day – examining seven hours of footage from CCTV, dashcams, personal phones and headcams of dead Hamas fighters, and drawing up a comprehensive list of those killed.

In October 7, the I-Unit reveals widespread human rights abuses by Hamas fighters and others who followed them through the fence from Gaza into Israel.

But the investigation also found that many of the worst stories that came out in the days following the attack were false. This was especially true of atrocities that were used repeatedly by politicians in Israel and the West to justify the ferocity of the bombardment of the Gaza Strip, such as the mass killing of babies and allegations of widespread and systematic rape.

In particular the I-Unit reveals that claims by the Israel Defence Force that it found 8 burned babies at a house in Kibbutz Be’eri were entirely untrue. There were no babies in the house and the 12 civilians inside were killed by Israeli forces when they stormed the house.

This was one of a number of incidents where the police and army appear to have killed Israeli citizens.

October 7 is a deep dive into the events that led to the deaths of tens of thousands of people, the significance of which will reverberate for decades.

March 29, 2024 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Fake News, Mainstream Media, Warmongering, Timeless or most popular, Video | , , , | Leave a comment