EU Still Hooked on Russian LNG Despite Bloc’s Hardline Rhetoric
By Chimauchem Nwosu – Sputnik – 20.03.2024
Despite EU efforts to reduce reliance on Russian gas in the wake of the anti-Russian sanctions, recent data shows a surge in Russian LNG imports by France and Spain, suggesting that business is practically proceeding as usual.
Russian liquified natural gas (LNG) exports to France surged to an all-time high in 14 months (from November 2022 to late January 2024), amounting to €293 million, according to Eurostat data obtained by Sputnik.
Last December, French imports of Russian LNG exports were estimated to be €244 million, marking an increase of almost €50 million over the month. Spain’s LNG from Russia amounted to €274 million, 1.7 times higher than in December 2023, and a 12-month-high.
Additionally, other EU countries such as Belgium, Estonia, Finland, Lithuania, the Netherlands, and Sweden have also purchased Russian LNG. By the end of January, EU nations had collectively spent €684.3 million on Russian LNG.
Since the onset of Russia’s special military operation in Ukraine in February 2022, the EU has sought to cut its dependence on affordable Russian gas and liquefied natural gas (LNG) while simultaneously implementing US-led sanctions against Moscow.
However, despite harsh anti-Russian rhetoric by EU member states like France, recent data by the Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis (IEEFA) revealed that numerous European nations remain hooked on this energy source, while some, like Belgium, facilitate LNG transshipments through their import terminals.
Spain is at the forefront of EU countries importing Russian LNG, having purchased 5.21 billion cubic meters (bcm) between January and September 2023. Following closely behind are France, with 3.19 bcm, and Belgium, with 3.14 bcm. In 2023, the main EU terminals that received significant quantities of LNG shipments from Russia were located in Zeebrugge, Belgium; Montoir-de-Bretagne, France; and Bilbao, Spain, according to IEEFA.
By the end of 2023, Russia had delivered 5.24 billion cubic meters of LNG to Spain, 3.82 billion cubic meters to Belgium, and 2.1 billion cubic meters to the Netherlands. Spain received 40 percent of Europe’s imports, while Belgium accounted for 30 percent. It is worth noting that the supply to the Netherlands increased by 1.9 times compared to 2022.
European countries have not yet banned or restricted importing liquefied natural gas from Russia. The EU is contemplating such action, but there is division among its 27 members regarding the approach to be taken. Major importers of Russian LNG, including Belgium, France, and Spain, assert that severing ties with their Russian suppliers, with whom they have long-term contracts, would not be simple.
Russian President Vladimir Putin has repeatedly criticized the EU for implementing sanctions against Russia’s oil and gas industry for purely political reasons. He believes that the decision was made under pressure from the EU’s Western allies, rather than being based on economic considerations. Putin has voiced concern about the potential negative impact these sanctions could have on the shared economic competitiveness of both Russia and the EU.
Zelensky’s top adviser calls for more attacks on Russian border
RT | March 20, 2024
Ukraine should step up its ground and artillery attacks on Russian border regions to demoralize the population, Mikhail Podoliak, President Vladimir Zelensky’s top adviser, has suggested.
In an interview with Ukrainian TV anchor Vladimir Golovanov on Monday, Podoliak stated that Kiev would like to see the turmoil spread into Russia’s Kursk and Belgorod Regions. “I would like the scale of this to be much greater… So that Russia could feel what a war… is,” he said.
According to the adviser, many Russians who live far from the front line should feel the brunt of the conflict. “Once they live in bomb shelters, constantly hear sirens and so on, they will [think] differently. Although I doubt that. The Russian world, it has certain peculiar features.”
He also voiced support for the incursions into Russian territory of the so-called Russian Volunteer Corps (RDK) and Russian Freedom Legion, paramilitary units composed of Russian defectors and fugitive neo-Nazis that are collaborating with Kiev. Those units – which are designated as terrorist organizations by Moscow – should be supported and given all the necessary funding, Podoliak insisted.
The RDK and the Russian Freedom Region attempted to breach the Russian border earlier this month, but the attacks were repelled, according to the Defense Ministry in Moscow. Russian officials estimated the losses sustained by the units at 1,500 casualties and dozens of armored vehicles.
President Vladimir Putin has denounced Russians collaborating with Ukraine as “traitors,” signaling that such individuals would be given the same treatment as any others who took up arms in the combat zone.
Ukraine has routinely launched artillery and drone strikes on Russian border regions, many of which target critical infrastructure and residential blocks, resulting in numerous civilian casualties.
In light of this, Putin has suggested that Russia could at some point create a “cordon sanitaire” on Kiev-controlled territory large enough to prevent Ukraine from launching attacks on Russia.
The TikTok Totalitarians
By Daniel McAdams | Ron Paul Institute | March 18, 2024
On Wednesday, March 13th, a bipartisan group of US Representatives voted to give the US president the power to remove any website, computer or mobile application, or even service provider that the president determines – without due process – is run by “a person subject to the direction of control of a foreign person or entity” as long as that foreign person or entity is declared an “adversary” of the US.
And who gets to decide who is an “adversary”? The US President.
Cut through the hollow propaganda about the Chinese using it to spy on and subvert Americans – another “Saddam’s got WMDs” lie – and it is the most dangerous and un-American piece of legislation since the PATRIOT Act.
In fact it may be arguably worse. While the PATRIOT Act was a fig leaf for the government to spy on Americans, this demon of a bill will actually allow the US Government to determine what Americans can read and thereby what they will think. Isn’t that just what supporters of this bill claim the Chinese government is doing?
Take all the massive evidence of US government collusion and censorship of Americans’ “wrongthink” exposed by the heroic Matt Taibbi and the rest of the “Twitter Files” investigators and multiply it by a million and you won’t even then begin to understand the damage this law will do once it’s passed in the Senate and signed by Biden.
Twitter/X and its owner Elon Musk are routinely claimed to be biased toward (or sometimes against) Russia. Obviously “foreign adversary controlled.” Shut it down.
The video hosting and streaming service Rumble minimizes restrictions on what can be uploaded. It rightly calls itself the free-speech platform. They even allow Russian media RT and Iran’s PressTV to give a perspective different than that given by the US government and mainstream media. Shut it down. “Foreign adversary controlled.”
How about the Ron Paul Liberty Report? We often take positions at odds with the policies of the US Administration and criticize, for example, sending hundreds of billions to fight a proxy war in Ukraine. Obviously “foreign adversary controlled.” Shut it down.
Every single independent conservative media outlet that is sympathetic to Donald Trump will be in the crosshairs of President Biden when this bill becomes law, as Biden and his crew consistently accuse Trump – even after all these years – of being in Putin’s back pocket. That is why right-winger Federalist CEO Sean Davis is horrified by the move, writing on Twitter/X:
“It’s not that the U.S. government wants to protect you from spying and data theft and manipulation. If only. No, the people behind the Russian collusion hoax, and the Kavanaugh hoax, and the natural origin COVID hoax, and the illegal warrantless spying, and the forced transing of your children—they want to be the ones spying on you and stealing your data and poisoning the minds of your children.”
Those on the Left should take heed: Be assured that if Donald Trump is elected president this fall, the bill will become the same political cudgel used by the Right to silence your alternative media outlets as well.
Libertarian-minded progressives like Glenn Greenwald see the danger – and the pattern – clearly, as he writes:
“The TikTok bill is how rights erosions always always always work: Pick a target to start with that everyone hates or fears, so that everyone unites in support, nobody wants to defend. Then the precedent is set, so when it expands inward, nobody can object any longer.”
See where this is going? It’s not about China. It’s about our freedom to consume whatever media we wish to consume. No one is forced to use TikTok. If an American exercising his or her First Amendment rights determines that any risk of using TikTok is one worth taking, that is his or her right.
Tucker Carlson – no friend of China – rightly deemed it, “the most far reaching act of censorship in the history of the United States.” He added, “it’s an attack on the right of American citizens to receive their information from any source they choose.”
After the ignominious House vote, Tucker had Sen. Rand Paul on his program to explain how the “we are protecting Americans from the Chinese Communists” explanation for attacking the US Constitution is nothing but a ruse. Watch that episode on Twitter/X here.
Sen. Paul himself pointed out the hypocrisy in the US government taking such an authoritarian approach to censorship, writing on Twitter/X, “Emulating Chinese communism is not the way to combat Chinese communism.”
There is a mafia element to the legislation as well. The bill demands that TikTok be sold to avoid being banned.
Remember when Michael Corleone told this then-girlfriend Kay Adams how his father, Don Vito Corleone, “encouraged” the bandleader that had Johnny Fontaine under contract to let him out of the contract when Johnny started to become a star:
- Michael Corleone: My father made him an offer he couldn’t refuse.
- Kay Adams: What was that?
- Michael Corleone: Luca Brasi held a gun to his head, and my father assured him that either his brains or his signature would be on the contract. That’s a true story.
This is exactly what the US government is doing with this legislation. It’s hardly surprising that now that this US government threat against TikTok has likely seriously devalued the company, deep state denizens like former US Treasury Secretary Steven “Goldman Sachs” Mnuchin is sniffing around ready to pick up TikTok for a song.
Either TikTok’s signature or its brains will be on Mnuchin’s contract.
This is gangsterism and authoritarianism on steroids, yet the uniparty running Washington DC lapped it up like mother’s milk. Perhaps that is why they lapped it up so enthusiastically.
When this bill becomes law, a big part of America will have died. That’s not an exaggeration.
Executive Director of the Ron Paul Institute for Peace and Prosperity and co-Producer/co-Host, Ron Paul Liberty Report. Daniel served as the foreign affairs, civil liberties, and defense/intel policy advisor to U.S. Congressman Ron Paul, MD (R-Texas) from 2001 until Dr. Paul’s retirement at the end of 2012. From 1993-1999 he worked as a journalist based in Budapest, Hungary, and traveled through the former communist bloc as a human rights monitor and election observer.
Russia to evacuate 9,000 children after Ukrainian strikes

A view shows a partially destroyed house by Ukrainian shelling of the Razumnoye settlement in the Belgorod region, Russia. © Sputnik/Anton Vergun
RT | March 20, 2024
Around 9,000 children will be evacuated from Russia’s Belgorod Region on the border with Ukraine, following increased attempts by Kiev’s forces to strike targets behind the front line, local Governor Vyacheslav Gladkov announced on Tuesday.
The first group of 1,200 children will be transported from unsafe areas on March 22 and will be relocated deeper inside Russia to Penza, Tambov, and Kaluga, Gladkov said.
“We are already relocating [people from] a large number of villages. Now we are planning to evacuate about 9,000 children from Belgorod and the surrounding regions, Shebekinsky and Grayvoronsky districts,” he added.
The announcement came a day after President Vladimir Putin said Russia wants to create a buffer zone to protect border regions and civilians from long-range Ukrainian strikes and cross-border raids, which have intensified in recent months.
Civilian areas of Belgorod have been struck with increased frequency in recent weeks. Despite Russian air defenses shooting down large numbers of missiles, 16 people have been killed and 98 wounded over the last week, according to Gladkov.
Around 600 people were in temporary accommodation as of Monday after being evacuated from their homes, the governor added.
On Saturday, Gladkov ordered the closure of shopping malls and schools for several days because of the situation.
Three people, including a teenage boy, were seriously injured on Tuesday following Ukrainian shelling of Belgorod, while the previous day four members of one family died in a missile attack on the village of Nikolskoye, the governor said. The Russian Defense Ministry announced last week that the military had thwarted a Ukrainian incursion in Belgorod and Kursk regions, killing 30 fighters.
School holidays for children from border areas in Belgorod Region will begin on Wednesday, earlier than planned, while colleges and universities will move to online learning, Gladkov announced.
Gove’s Ministry of Truth Reporting for Duty
Health Advisory & Recovery Team | March 19, 2024
For those paying attention to the rising tide of totalitarianism here in the UK, the latest from The Ministry of Truth, AKA HM Government should really make your blood run cold. Michael Gove has now overseen the redefining of extremism.
It is not hard to see what is at play here. You sell the peasants an idea that they think they want. I mean, who wouldn’t like to stop extremism? Boo, we hate extremists. That’s a good thing right?
Well that rather depends on who is doing the defining of what constitutes extremism. In this case, Michael Gove. No it doesn’t leave us feeling reassured either.
In the latest egregious bout of trolling from HM Gov, it takes about 3 milliseconds of studying the new definition of extremism to realise that during the so-called ‘pandemic’, the government did precisely everything therein:
- negate or destroy the fundamental rights and freedoms of others;
What, like denying them social contact, denying them the right to be with their dying relatives, forcing medical procedures on them in order to continue their job, denying them the right to earn a living, denying their rights of free movement, locking them in their homes and arresting them for sitting on a bench? That kind of thing?
- undermine, overturn or replace the UK’s system of liberal parliamentary democracy and democratic rights;
What, you mean like introducing a brand new legal act (in spite of there already existing an appropriate instrument) that completely tramples parliamentary democracy, giving the sitting government the right to jackboot their way into people’s lives as outlined in point 1 above? Or like shutting down parliament entirely and cancelling elections? Or perhaps like Matt Hancock telling parliament that he had unilaterally decided to offer the pharmaceutical companies indemnity for their products.
- intentionally create a permissive environment for others to achieve the results in (1) or (2).
What, you mean by censoring and smearing any opposing views, demonising anyone who didn’t get with the programme and creating an environment of extremism via a media monopoly that would have been more fitting in Mao Zedong’s China.
This upside down clown world is really getting too much. The government is now brazenly behaving like a criminal mafia gang. You do as they say, as defined by them, otherwise you’re an extremist. And you will be punished.
The boiled frog analogy seems to be a good one. What will it take for the British public to realise that they live in a liberal democracy in name only? The architecture being rapidly put in place is the polar opposite of a liberal democracy and if we study our history books, this particular trend tends to end very badly for the non-ruling classes.
Jailed Palestinian leader Marwan Barghouti beaten by guards
MEMO | March 19, 2024
Prominent Palestinian political prisoner Marwan Barghouti has been attacked with clubs by Israeli prison guards and suffered bleeding in his eye, Al-Arabi Al-Jadeed reported the Palestinian Commission for Detainees and Ex-Prisoners’ Affairs and Barghouti’s family saying.
Barghouti, 64, who is a member of the Central Committee of Fatah, is being subjected to isolation, torture and humiliation, said his wife, Fadwa Barghouti.
Fadwa explained that her husband’s life and the lives of other prominent prisoners are in great danger, adding that the Israeli prison administration “deliberately brutalises them in order to break their morale.”
“Marwan was subjected to continuous attacks, which we learned of on 6 and 12 March [through lawyers], which caused bleeding in one of his eyes, while the prison’s repressive forces constantly threatened him,” she added, explaining that he had been relocated five times during the last three months, and each time he was assaulted and his prison conditions were tightened.
In four prisons he was put in solitary confinement, she said, warning of a “real war” being waged against Palestinians prisoners and their leaders, which hurts their morale.
For its part, the Free Marwan Barghouti and All Palestinian Political Prisoners campaign said in a statement that lawyers who had visited Megiddo Prison learned of the brutal attack on Barghouti and other prominent prisoners by the prison’s special repression units, adding that many of them had been placed in solitary confinement.
The campaign said it had contacted a number of international figures, including diplomats, parliamentarians and human rights institutions, as well as leaders of the Fatah movement and the National and Islamic Action factions, calling on them to provide protection to the Palestinian people including political prisoners in Israeli jails.
Barghouti was arrested in 2002 and later sentenced to five life terms on charges of “killing and injuring Israelis.”
In parallel with the onslaught on the Gaza Strip that has killed more than 31,000 Palestinians, Israel has increased raids and arrests in the occupied West Bank, arresting more than 7,000 people, alongside a campaign of harassment against prisoners in Israeli jails, resulting in the deaths of at least 13 prisoners since 7 October 2023.
Children among dozens executed by Israeli troops following Al-Shifa raid

Photo credit: QNN
The Cradle | March 19, 2024
Israeli forces executed dozens of people and detained almost 200 during its latest assault on Gaza City’s Al-Shifa Hospital, the Government Media Office in the Gaza Strip announced on 19 March.
Among the dozens executed were children, the media office said in a statement on Tuesday.
“The Israeli occupation committed a bloody massacre, executing 50 citizens and arresting nearly 200 others in the Shifa Medical Complex and its surrounding in Gaza City,” the statement read.
“We also received field information about … a number of children among those executed, as well as civilians, the sick, and the displaced,” it added. Some of the facilities inside the hospital were also torched by the Israeli army, according to the statement.
According to the Gaza media office, at least 250 Palestinians have been killed so far in the current Israeli assault on Al-Shifa Hospital, which began during the early hours of Monday and remains ongoing.
The Israeli army said on Tuesday that it killed “dozens of terrorists” in Al-Shifa Hospital, adding that it will “continue large-scale operations in the hospital.”
Israeli forces launched a massive operation in and around the hospital at around 2:00 am on 18 March. Israeli bombardment of the hospital killed dozens of Palestinians in the first hours of the attack.
Medical teams were unable to treat the wounded, and Israeli forces fired at anyone who approached the windows of the hospital, medical sources told WAFA news agency.
Clashes between the army and several resistance factions raged around the vicinity of the hospital as the Israeli incursion was commencing.
The attack on Al-Shifa Hospital came hours after Hamas’ Qassam Brigades revealed the details of a sniping operation that targeted and killed an officer in the elite Israeli Shaldag Unit who was behind Israel’s November raid of the medical facility.
During the assault on 18 March, Israeli troops assassinated Brigadier General Fayeq al-Mabhouh, the director of police in the Gaza Strip – who was in charge of facilitating the entry of much-needed humanitarian aid into north Gaza.
Since the start of the war, Israel has alleged that Hamas operates a command center underneath Al-Shifa Hospital.
This is the second assault on Al-Shifa since November, when Israeli troops stormed the facility, arrested dozens, evacuated the hospital at gunpoint, and turned it into a detention center.
There’s no protection from genocide in the colonial framework of international law

Palestinian children wait to get water amid clean water and food crisis due to Israeli attacks and imposed blockade in Rafah, Gaza on March 16, 2024. [Yasser Qudaih – Anadolu Agency]
By Ramona Wadi | MEMO | March 19, 2024
The entire Palestinian population in Gaza has been declared “acutely food insecure” by the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification. “The famine threshold for household acute food insecurity has already been far exceeded,” explained the IPC.
Very belatedly, the EU’s Foreign Policy Chief Josep Borrell has declared that Israel is provoking famine in Gaza, and that Israel is using starvation as a weapon of war. What happens now that Borrell has spoken? Palestinians spoke out long before this catastrophe, remember, and — quite intentionally — not a single EU diplomat listened.
What’s more, the statistics seemed to have influenced US Secretary of State Antony Blinken enough to make a statement acknowledging the famine as having affected all Palestinians in Gaza. “This only underscores both the urgency, the imperative, of making this [humanitarian aid] the priority,” Blinken said during a press conference in Manila, the capital of the Philippines. “We need more, we need it to be sustained, and we need it to be a priority if we’re going to effectively address the needs of people.” Of the US halting its weapons exports to Israel, or joining forces to stop Israel’s genocide in Gaza, not a single syllable, never mind word, was uttered.
Israel’s response, of course, was to weaponise starvation even further. As Al Jazeera reported yesterday, the settler-colonial state asked the International Court of Justice (ICJ) to refrain from issuing emergency orders as requested by South Africa, describing these as “an abuse of procedures”. South Africa’s legal recourse of 6 March, declared Israel’s lawyers, is “wholly unfounded in fact and law, morally repugnant, and represents an abuse both of the Genocide Convention and of the court itself.”
And there you have it in a nutshell: Israel’s twisted logic. The slightest measures to prevent genocide are “morally repugnant.” That tells you all you need to know about Israeli morality. It is probably only a matter of time before the apartheid state deems genocide to be in accordance with international law as long as it suits its own colonial interests.
Israel’s intention is for famine to work as a weapon of genocide.
It blocks and hinders the entry of humanitarian aid, and its illegal settlers block the border crossing to prevent aid trucks getting past. Israel does nothing to stop this. The meagre amount allowed through was weaponised as a death trap, as Israeli soldiers massacred Palestinians for merely attempting to take some food home. This morning, Israel killed Major Raed Al-Banna and his family in an air strike. Al-Banna was involved in taking humanitarian aid into northern Gaza.
On the sidelines of its massacres, Israel has told the ICJ that it “has real concern for the humanitarian situation and innocent lives, as demonstrated by the actions it has and is taking,” with reference to Gaza.
It beggars belief that Israel’s quest for normalising all of its actions has reached such a level of contempt for international laws and conventions that it is allowed to waste the court’s time by lying so blatantly. The international community’s complacency, as if its only power rests in waiting for statistical updates to include in their speeches, is equally horrendous.
The genocide in Gaza is exposing all that is wrong with the colonial concept of human rights and international law, both of which only exist as foundations to protect the violators and collaborators. There is clearly no protection from genocide for its victims in the colonial framework of international law.
How the Democrats Plan to Steal the Election
By Llewellyn H. Rockwell, Jr. | March 18, 2024
Biden and Trump have clinched the nominations of their parties for President. Everybody is gearing up for a battle between them for the election in November. It’s obvious that Biden is “cognitively impaired.” In blunter language, “brain-dead”. Partisans of Trump are gearing up for a decisive victory. But what if this battle is a sham? What if Biden’s elite gang of neo-con controllers won’t let Biden lose?
How can they stop him from losing? Simple. If it looks like he’s losing, the elite forces will create enough fake ballots to ensure victory. Our corrupt courts won’t stop them. They have done this before, and they will do it again, if they have to.
I said the Democrats have done this before. The great Dr. Ron Paul explains one way they did this in 2020. The elite covered up a scandal that could have wrecked Biden’s chances:
“Move over Watergate. On or around Oct. 17, 2020, then-senior Biden campaign official Antony Blinken called up former acting CIA director Mike Morell to ask a favor: he needed high-ranking former US intelligence community officials to lie to the American people to save Biden’s lagging campaign from a massive brewing scandal.
The problem was that Joe Biden’s son, Hunter, had abandoned his laptop at a repair shop and the explosive contents of the computer were leaking out. The details of the Biden family’s apparent corruption and the debauchery of the former vice-president’s son were being reported by the New York Post, and with the election less than a month away, the Biden campaign needed to kill the story.
So, according to newly-released transcripts of Morell’s testimony before the House judiciary Committee, Blinken “triggered” Morell to put together a letter for some 50 senior intelligence officials to sign – using their high-level government titles – to claim that the laptop story “had all the hallmarks of a Russian disinformation campaign.”
In short, at the Biden campaign’s direction Morell launched a covert operation against the American people to undermine the integrity of the 2020 election. A letter signed by dozens of the highest-ranking former CIA, DIA, and NSA officials would surely carry enough weight to bury the Biden laptop story. It worked. Social media outlets prevented any reporting on the laptop from being posted and the mainstream media could easily ignore the story as it was merely “Russian propaganda.”
Asked recently by Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan (R-OH) why he agreed to draft the false sign-on letter, Morell testified that he wanted to “help Vice President Biden … because I wanted him to win the election.” Morell also likely expected to be named by President Biden to head up the CIA when it came time to call in favors.
The Democrats and the mainstream media have relentlessly pushed the lie that the ruckus inside the US Capitol on Jan. 6th 2021 was a move by President Trump to overthrow the election results. Hundreds of “trespassers” were arrested and held in solitary confinement without trial to bolster the false narrative that a conspiracy to steal the election was taking place.
It turns out that there really was a conspiracy to steal the election, but it was opposite of what was reported. Just as the Steele Dossier was a Democratic Party covert action to plant the lie that the Russians were pulling strings for Trump, the “Russian disinformation campaign” letter was a lie to deflect scrutiny of the Biden family’s possible corruption in the final days of the campaign.
Did the Biden campaign’s disinformation campaign help rig the election in his favor? Polls suggest that Biden would not have been elected had the American electorate been informed about what was on Hunter Biden’s laptop. So yes, they cheated in the election.
The Democrats and the mainstream media are still at it, however. Now they are trying to kill the story of how they killed the story of the Biden laptop. This is a scandal that would once upon a time have ended in resignation, impeachment, and/or plenty of jail time. If they successfully bury this story, I hate to say it but there is no more rule of law in what has become the American banana republic.” See here.
But the main way the election can be rigged is by fraudulent “voting.” It’s much easier to do this with digital scanning of votes than with old-fashioned ballot boxes.
Dr. Naomi Wolf explains how electronic voting machines make it easier to steal elections:
“People could steal elections in this ‘analog’ technology of paper and locked ballot boxes, of course, by destroying or hiding votes, or by bribing voters, a la Tammany Hall, or by other forms of wrongdoing, so security and chain of custody, as well as anti-corruption scrutiny, were always needed in guaranteeing accurate election counts. But there was no reason, with analog physical processing of votes, to query the tradition of the secret ballot.
Before the digital scanning of votes, you could not hack a wooden ballot box; and you could not set an algorithm to misread a pile of paper ballots. So, at the end of the day, one way or another, you were counting physical documents.
Those days are gone, obviously, and in many districts there are digital systems reading ballots.” See here.
This isn’t the first time the Left has stolen an election. It happened in the 2020 presidential election too. Ron Unz offers his usual cogent analysis:
“There does seem to be considerable circumstantial evidence of widespread ballot fraud by Democratic Party forces, hardly surprising given the apocalyptic manner in which so many of their leaders had characterized the threat of a Trump reelection. After all, if they sincerely believed that a Trump victory would be catastrophic for America why would they not use every possible means, fair and foul alike, to save our country from that dire fate?
In particular, several of the major swing-states contain large cities—Detroit, Milwaukee, Philadelphia, and Atlanta—that are both totally controlled by the Democratic Party and also notoriously corrupt, and various eye-witnesses have suggested that the huge anti-Trump margins they provided may have been heavily ‘padded’ to ensure the candidate’s defeat.” See here.
In a program aired right after Biden’s pitiful State of the Union speech, the great Tucker Carlson pointed out that Biden’s “Justice” Department has already confessed that it plans to rig the election. It will do this by banning voter ID laws as “racist.” This permits an unlimited number of fake votes:
“If Joe Biden is so good at politics, why is he losing to Donald Trump, who the rest of us were assured was a retarded racist who no normal person would vote for? But now Joe Biden is getting stomped by Donald Trump, but he’s also at the same time good at politics? Right.
Again, they can’t win, but they’re not giving up. So what does that tell you? Well, they’re going to steal the election. We know they’re going to steal the election because they’re now saying so out loud. Here is the Attorney General of the United States, the chief law enforcement officer of this country in Selma, Alabama, just the other day.
[Now Carlson quotes the Attorney General, Merrick Garland:]
“The right to vote is still under attack, and that is why the Justice Department is fighting back. That is why one of the first things I did when I came into office was to double the size of the voting section of the Civil Rights Division. That is why we are challenging efforts by states and jurisdictions to implement discriminatory, burdensome, and unnecessary restrictions on access to the ballot, including those related to mail-in voting, the use of drop boxes and voter ID requirements. That is why we are working to block the adoption of discriminatory redistricting plans that dilute the vote of Black voters and other voters of color.
[Carlson then comments on Garland:]
“Did you catch that? Of course, you’re a racist. That’s always the takeaway. But consider the details of what the Attorney General of the United States just said. Mail-in balloting, drop boxes, voter ID requirements. The chief law enforcement officer of the United States Government is telling you that it’s immoral, in fact racist, in fact illegal to ask people for their IDs when they vote to verify they are who they say they are. What is that? Well, no one ever talks about this, but the justification for it is that somehow people of color, Black people, don’t have state-issued IDs. Somehow they’re living in a country where you can do virtually nothing without proving your identity with a government-issued ID without government-issued IDs. They can’t fly on planes, they can’t have checking accounts, they can’t have any interaction with the government, state, local, or federal. They can’t stay in hotels. They can’t have credit cards. Because someone without a state-issued ID can’t do any of those things.
But what’s so interesting is these same people, very much including the Attorney General and the administration he serves, is working to eliminate cash, to make this a cashless society. Have you been to a stadium event recently? No cash accepted. You have to have a credit card. In order to get a credit card you need a state-issued ID, and somehow that’s not racist. But it is racist to ask people to prove their identity when they choose the next President of the United States. That doesn’t make any sense at all. That’s a lie. It’s an easily provable lie, and anyone telling that lie is advocating for mass voter fraud, which the Attorney General is. There’s no other way to read it. So you should know that. You live in a country where the Attorney General is abetting, in fact calling for voter fraud, and that’s the only chance they have to get their guy re-elected.” See here.
Because of absentee ballots, the voting can be spread out over a long period of time. This makes voting fraud much easier. Mollie Hemingway has done a lot of research on this topic:
“In the 2020 presidential election, for the first time ever, partisan groups were allowed—on a widespread basis—to cross the bright red line separating government officials who administer elections from political operatives who work to win them. It is important to understand how this happened in order to prevent it in the future.
Months after the election, Time magazine published a triumphant story of how the election was won by “a well-funded cabal of powerful people, ranging across industries and ideologies, working together behind the scenes to influence perceptions, change rules and laws, steer media coverage and control the flow of information.” Written by Molly Ball, a journalist with close ties to Democratic leaders, it told a cheerful story of a “conspiracy unfolding behind the scenes,” the “result of an informal alliance between left-wing activists and business titans.”
A major part of this “conspiracy” to “save the 2020 election” was to use COVID as a pretext to maximize absentee and early voting. This effort was enormously successful. Nearly half of voters ended up voting by mail, and another quarter voted early. It was, Ball wrote, “practically a revolution in how people vote.” Another major part was to raise an army of progressive activists to administer the election at the ground level. Here, one billionaire in particular took a leading role: Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg.
Zuckerberg’s help to Democrats is well known when it comes to censoring their political opponents in the name of preventing “misinformation.” Less well known is the fact that he directly funded liberal groups running partisan get-out-the-vote operations. In fact, he helped those groups infiltrate election offices in key swing states by doling out large grants to crucial districts.
The Chan Zuckerberg Initiative, an organization led by Zuckerberg’s wife Priscilla, gave more than $400 million to nonprofit groups involved in “securing” the 2020 election. Most of those funds—colloquially called “Zuckerbucks”—were funneled through the Center for Tech and Civic Life (CTCL), a voter outreach organization founded by Tiana Epps-Johnson, Whitney May, and Donny Bridges. All three had previously worked on activism relating to election rules for the New Organizing Institute, once described by The Washington Post as “the Democratic Party’s Hogwarts for digital wizardry.”
Flush with $350 million in Zuckerbucks, the CTCL proceeded to disburse large grants to election officials and local governments across the country. These disbursements were billed publicly as “COVID-19 response grants,” ostensibly to help municipalities acquire protective gear for poll workers or otherwise help protect election officials and volunteers against the virus. In practice, relatively little money was spent for this. Here, as in other cases, COVID simply provided cover.
According to the Foundation for Government Accountability (FGA), Georgia received more than $31 million in Zuckerbucks, one of the highest amounts in the country. The three Georgia counties that received the most money spent only 1.3 percent of it on personal protective equipment. The rest was spent on salaries, laptops, vehicle rentals, attorney fees for public records requests, mail-in balloting, and other measures that allowed elections offices to hire activists to work the election. Not all Georgia counties received CTCL funding. And of those that did, Trump-voting counties received an average of $1.91 per registered voter, compared to $7.13 per registered voter in Biden-voting counties.
The FGA looked at this funding another way, too. Trump won Georgia by more than five points in 2016. He lost it by three-tenths of a point in 2020. On average, as a share of the two-party vote, most counties moved Democratic by less than one percentage point in that time. Counties that didn’t receive Zuckerbucks showed hardly any movement, but counties that did moved an average of 2.3 percentage points Democratic. In counties that did not receive Zuckerbucks, “roughly half saw an increase in Democrat votes that offset the increase in Republican votes, while roughly half saw the opposite trend.” In counties that did receive Zuckerbucks, by contrast, three quarters “saw a significant uptick in Democrat votes that offset any upward change in Republican votes,” including highly populated Fulton, Gwinnett, Cobb, and DeKalb counties.
Of all the 2020 battleground states, it is probably in Wisconsin where the most has been brought to light about how Zuckerbucks worked.
CTCL distributed $6.3 million to the Wisconsin cities of Racine, Green Bay, Madison, Milwaukee, and Kenosha—purportedly to ensure that voting could take place “in accordance with prevailing [anti-COVID] public health requirements.”
Wisconsin law says voting is a right, but that “voting by absentee ballot must be carefully regulated to prevent the potential for fraud or abuse; to prevent overzealous solicitation of absent electors who may prefer not to participate in an election.” Wisconsin law also says that elections are to be run by clerks or other government officials. But the five cities that received Zuckerbucks outsourced much of their election operation to private liberal groups, in one case so extensively that a sidelined government official quit in frustration.
This was by design. Cities that received grants were not allowed to use the money to fund outside help unless CTCL specifically approved their plans in writing. CTCL kept tight control of how money was spent, and it had an abundance of “partners” to help with anything the cities needed.
Some government officials were willing to do whatever CTCL recommended. “As far as I’m concerned I am taking all of my cues from CTCL and work with those you recommend,” Celestine Jeffreys, the chief of staff to Democratic Green Bay Mayor Eric Genrich, wrote in an email. CTCL not only had plenty of recommendations, but made available a “network of current and former election administrators and election experts” to scale up “your vote by mail processes” and “ensure forms, envelopes, and other materials are understood and completed correctly by voters.”
Power the Polls, a liberal group recruiting poll workers, promised to help with ballot curing. The liberal Mikva Challenge worked to recruit high school-age poll workers. And the left-wing Brennan Center offered help with “election integrity,” including “post-election audits” and “cybersecurity.”
The Center for Civic Design, an election administration policy organization that frequently partners with groups such as liberal billionaire Pierre Omidyar’s Democracy Fund, designed absentee ballots and voting instructions, often working directly with an election commission to design envelopes and create advertising and targeting campaigns. The Elections Group, also linked to the Democracy Fund, provided technical assistance in handling drop boxes and conducted voter outreach. The communications director for the Center for Secure and Modern Elections, an organization that advocates sweeping changes to the elections process, ran a conference call to help Green Bay develop Spanish-language radio ads and geofencing to target voters in a predefined area.
Digital Response, a nonprofit launched in 2020, offered to “bring voters an updated elections website,” “run a website health check,” “set up communications channels,” “bring poll worker application and management online,” “track and respond to polling location wait times,” “set up voter support and email response tools,” “bring vote-by-mail applications online,” “process incoming [vote-by-mail] applications,” and help with “ballot curing process tooling and voter notification.”
The National Vote at Home Institute was presented as a “technical assistance partner” that could “support outreach around absentee voting,” provide and oversee voting machines, consult on methods to cure absentee ballots, and even assume the duty of curing ballots.
A few weeks after the five Wisconsin cities received their grants, CTCL emailed Claire Woodall-Vogg, the executive director of the Milwaukee Election Commission, to offer “an experienced elections staffer that could potentially embed with your staff in Milwaukee in a matter of days.” The staffer leading Wisconsin’s portion of the National Vote at Home Institute was an out-of-state Democratic activist named Michael Spitzer-Rubenstein. As soon as he met with Woodall-Vogg, he asked for contacts in other cities and at the Wisconsin Elections Commission.
Spitzer-Rubenstein would eventually take over much of Green Bay’s election planning from the official charged with running the election, Green Bay Clerk Kris Teske. This made Teske so unhappy that she took Family and Medical Leave prior to the election and quit shortly thereafter.
Emails from Spitzer-Rubenstein show the extent to which he was managing the election process. To one government official he wrote, “By Monday, I’ll have our edits on the absentee voting instructions. We’re pushing Quickbase to get their system up and running and I’ll keep you updated. I’ll revise the planning tool to accurately reflect the process. I’ll create a flowchart for the vote-by-mail processing that we will be able to share with both inspectors and also observers.”
Once early voting started, Woodall-Vogg would provide Spitzer-Rubenstein with daily updates on the numbers of absentee ballots returned and still outstanding in each ward—prized information for a political operative.
Amazingly, Spitzer-Rubenstein even asked for direct access to the Milwaukee Election Commission’s voter database: “Would you or someone else on your team be able to do a screen-share so we can see the process for an export?” he wrote. “Do you know if WisVote has an [application programming interface] or anything similar so that it can connect with other software apps? That would be the holy grail.” Even for Woodall-Vogg, that was too much. “While I completely understand and appreciate the assistance that is trying to be provided,” she replied, “I am definitely not comfortable having a non-staff member involved in the function of our voter database, much less recording it.”
When these emails were released in 2021, they stunned Wisconsin observers. “What exactly was the National Vote at Home Institute doing with its daily reports? Was it making sure that people were actually voting from home by going door-to-door to collect ballots from voters who had not yet turned theirs in? Was this data sharing a condition of the CTCL grant? And who was really running Milwaukee’s election?” asked Dan O’Donnell, whose election analysis appeared at Wisconsin’s conservative MacIver Institute.
Kris Teske, the sidelined Green Bay city clerk—in whose office Wisconsin law actually places the responsibility to conduct elections—had of course seen what was happening early on. “I just don’t know where the Clerk’s Office fits in anymore,” she wrote in early July. By August, she was worried about legal exposure: “I don’t understand how people who don’t have the knowledge of the process can tell us how to manage the election,” she wrote on August 28.
Green Bay Mayor Eric Genrich simply handed over Teske’s authority to agents from outside groups and gave them leadership roles in collecting absentee ballots, fixing ballots that would otherwise be voided for failure to follow the law, and even supervising the counting of ballots. “The grant mentors would like to meet with you to discuss, further, the ballot curing process. Please let them know when you’re available,” Genrich’s chief of staff told Teske.
Spitzer-Rubenstein explained that the National Vote at Home Institute had done the same for other cities in Wisconsin. “We have a process map that we’ve worked out with Milwaukee for their process. We can also adapt the letter we’re sending out with rejected absentee ballots along with a call script alerting voters. (We can also get people to make the calls, too, so you don’t need to worry about it.)”
Other emails show that Spitzer-Rubenstein had keys to the central counting facility and access to all the machines before election night. His name was on contracts with the hotel hosting the ballot counting.
Sandy Juno, who was clerk of Brown County, where Green Bay is located, later testified about the problems in a legislative hearing. “He was advising them on things. He was touching the ballots. He had access to see how the votes were counted,” Juno said of Spitzer-Rubenstein. Others testified that he was giving orders to poll workers and seemed to be the person running the election night count operation.
“I would really like to think that when we talk about security of elections, we’re talking about more than just the security of the internet,” Juno said. “You know, it has to be security of the physical location, where you’re not giving a third party keys to where you have your election equipment.”
Juno noted that there were irregularities in the counting, too, with no consistency between the various tables. Some had absentee ballots face-up, so anyone could see how they were marked. Poll workers were seen reviewing ballots not just to see that they’d been appropriately checked by the clerk, but “reviewing how they were marked.” And poll workers fixing ballots used the same color pens as the ones ballots had been filled out in, contrary to established procedures designed to make sure observers could differentiate between voters’ marks and poll workers’ marks.
The plan by Democratic strategists to bring activist groups into election offices worked in part because no legislature had ever imagined that a nonprofit could take over so many election offices so easily. “If it can happen to Green Bay, Wisconsin, sweet little old Green Bay, Wisconsin, these people can coordinate any place,” said Janel Brandtjen, a state representative in Wisconsin.
She was right. What happened in Green Bay happened in Democrat-run cities and counties across the country. Four hundred million Zuckerbucks were distributed with strings attached. Officials were required to work with “partner organizations” to massively expand mail-in voting and staff their election operations with partisan activists. The plan was genius. And because no one ever imagined that the election system could be privatized in this way, there were no laws to prevent it.
Such laws should now be a priority.” See here.
Let’s do everything we can to publicize the steal. That way, we have a chance to prevent it.
Niger broke military pact with US after being ‘warned’ about Iran, Russia ties
Press TV – March 19, 2024
Niger’s junta decided to suspend a military agreement with the United States after a delegation of senior US military officials visited the Western African country and “expressed concerns” about its growing relations with Russia and Iran.
The Pentagon said on Monday that the officials traveled to the Nigerien capital Niamey last week to discuss the matter with the country’s military leadership, seeking clarification about the way ahead.
Pentagon spokesperson Sabrina Singh asserted that the US government had “direct and frank” conversations in Niger, and was continuing to communicate with the country’s ruling military council – known as the National Council for the Safeguard of the Homeland (CNSP).
“The US delegation was there to raise a number of concerns. … We were troubled (about) the path that Niger is on. And so these were direct and frank conversations, to have those in person, to talk about our concerns and to also hear theirs.
“US officials expressed concern over Niger’s potential relationships with Russia and Iran,” Singh said.
Niger’s junta announced on Saturday that it had canceled a 2012 defense cooperation agreement with the US.
“The government of Niger, considering the aspirations and interests of its people, responsibly decides to denounce with immediate effect the agreement that permitted US military personnel and civilian employees from the American Department of Defense on Niger’s territory,” Nigerien government spokesman Amadou Abdramane said in a statement on national television.
The move followed a visit to Niamey by a delegation of senior US military officials led by Under Secretary of State for African Affairs Molly Phee.
Abdramane accused US officials of not following diplomatic protocol and not informing Niger about the composition of the delegation.
He added that Niger regretted the “intention of the American delegation to deny the sovereign Nigerien people the right of choosing their partners and partnerships capable of truly helping them fight against terrorism.”
High-level Russian military officials, including Deputy Defense Minister Yunus-bek Yevkurov, have visited Niger and met with the country’s military leadership.
The prime minister of the ruling junta, Ali Mahamane Lamine Zeine, visited Iran in January.
Foreign Minister of Niger, Bakary Yaou Sangare, visited Tehran in October 2023 to explore opportunities for strengthening political and economic ties, as well as boosting cooperation in scientific and technological sectors between the two countries.
Commending Iran’s skills in various economic, scientific, and technological sectors, the Nigerien diplomat underscored that Iran’s capabilities are well-matched to cater to Niger’s requirements in the energy and industrial domains.
Germany: Green Party demands TikTok ban of popular AfD party
By Denes Albert | Remix News | March 19, 2024
To keep people away from Alternative for Germany (AfD) content, the Green-affiliated campaign network Campact wants to ban the AfD from TikTok. With the AfD the second most popular party in the country, part of the party’s appeal may be tied to its popularity on TikTok, where it is more popular than all the other German parties and has twice as many followers as all other parties combined.
The ruling left-liberal government is desperate to stop the AfD, including using anti-democratic means. While the government works towards banning the party entirely, a part of this all-out effort against AfD means cutting it off from the marketplace of ideas, where the other parties are outright losing.
Campact is working to collect signatures in this effort, calling for the AfD to be banned from TikTok. They will deliver this petition to representatives of the company’s headquarters in Berlin.
The reason given is: “The right-wing extremist slogans reach children and young people in particular.” The Green-backed organization claims this is “dangerous.”
The campaign network is aiming to obtain 200,000 signatures before it delivers its petition to the Berlin branch of the short-form video platform. However, Campact has overshot this mark, earning around 250,000 signatures in what it describes as a campaign against “hatred and agitation.”
AfD’s popularity is a major problem for rival parties on the platform, where AfD features over 409,000 followers, while the Social Democrats (SPD), the Left Party, Free Democrats (FDP), the Christian Democrats (CDU), and the Greens only have a combined total of 220,000 followers. AfD videos are also wildly popular in comparison, earning twice the number of views of all other parties combined.
The former campaign manager of the Green Party and an influential political advisor, Johannes Hillje, is warning about the party’s success.
“The TikTok generation is threatening to become an AfD generation,” he said to Der Spiegel. He said that AfD’s strong showing in state elections is tied to younger people voting for the party, which is due in part to the AfD’s successful TikTok strategy.
Teens and young people are also openly backing the AfD on TikTok. Notably, this week, a freedom-of-speech scandal erupted after reports that a 16-year-old, Loretta B., posted comments on TikTok supportive of the AfD party. When three officers pulled her out of her school in Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, it resulted in a major scandal and warnings of a repressive police state. The scandal has made international news, with billionaire Elon Musk even defending the girl on X.
Remix News’ TikTok channel faces a shadowban on TikTok after earning millions of views. The account featured numerous warnings for news content and multiple suspensions, showcasing TikTok’s willingness to ban or shadowban news platforms and opinions. However, AfD’s channel has so far avoided such censorship.
NATO troops active in Ukraine – El Pais
RT | March 19, 2024
Active and former military personnel from NATO states have long been operating in Ukraine, overseeing Kiev’s use of Western-supplied weapons, El Pais reported on Monday.
The US-led military bloc has been involved “in virtually every possible aspect” of the hostilities aside from active combat operations, the Spanish newspaper claimed. That includes supplying weapons, providing targeting information, and training Ukrainian soldiers inside the country, El Pais reported, citing interviews conducted throughout the conflict.
Retired foreign military service members who have joined the Ukrainian armed forces as “volunteers” are also serving as de facto agents for their home nations, El Pais said. They provide “knowledge about the situation on the front, to identify the effectiveness of the weapons supplied and possible problems in their use, as well as to detect possible cases of corruption concerning the aid provided,” the outlet claimed.
The presence of current and former NATO troops has been tacitly admitted by officials, the Spanish newspaper reported. It described recent suggestions by French President Emmanuel Macron that Western nations could send soldiers to Ukraine as “taboo-breaking,” in the sense of proposing active combat roles for Western military personnel.
While a handful of Western leaders have backed Macron’s position that deployments to aid Kiev in the conflict with Russia cannot be ruled out, numerous officials – including NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg – have dismissed the idea.
Moscow perceives the Ukraine conflict as a US-led proxy war against Russia, in which Ukrainians serve as ‘cannon fodder’ for Western interests. It considers foreigners fighting for Kiev as “mercenaries” who are doing the bidding of Western governments.
“We hear both French and English speech there [in the Ukraine conflict]. There is nothing good in this, first of all for them, because they die there and in large numbers,” President Vladimir Putin said last week, commenting on Macron’s remarks on potential Western troop deployments.
Senior Russian officials have suggested that more complex weapon systems provided to Kiev are highly likely operated by NATO staff, as there was not sufficient time to train Ukrainians on how to handle them.
Last month, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz revealed the involvement of British and French forces in preparing Ukrainian missile launches, as he explained why Berlin would not supply similar weapons to Kiev.
